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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Garden of Eden, by Max Brand
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Garden of Eden
+
+
+Author: Max Brand
+
+
+
+Release Date: July 3, 2010  [eBook #33066]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GARDEN OF EDEN***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Suzanne Shell, Mary Meehan, and the Project Gutenberg
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)
+
+
+
+THE GARDEN OF EDEN
+
+by
+
+MAX BRAND
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Dodd, Mead & Company
+New York
+
+Copyright 1922 by Popular Publications, Inc.
+Copyright renewed 1950 by Dorothy Faust
+All rights reserved
+
+No part of this book may be reproduced in any form
+without permission in writing from the publisher
+
+First published in book form October, 1963
+
+Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 63-20473
+
+Printed in the United States of America
+by Vail-Ballou Press, Inc., Binghamton, N.Y.
+
+
+     The characters, places, incidents, and situations in this book
+     are imaginary and have no relation to any person, place, or
+     actual happening.
+
+
+
+
+_CHAPTER ONE_
+
+
+By careful tailoring the broad shoulders of Ben Connor were made to
+appear fashionably slender, and he disguised the depth of his chest by a
+stoop whose model slouched along Broadway somewhere between sunset and
+dawn. He wore, moreover, the first or second pair of spats that had ever
+stepped off the train at Lukin Junction, a glowing Scotch tweed, and a
+Panama hat of the color and weave of fine old linen. There was a
+skeleton at this Feast of Fashion, however, for only tight gloves could
+make the stubby fingers and broad palms of Connor presentable. At
+ninety-five in the shade gloves were out of the question, so he held a
+pair of yellow chamois in one hand and in the other an amber-headed
+cane. This was the end of the little spur-line, and while the train
+backed off down the track, staggering across the switch, Ben Connor
+looked after it, leaning upon his cane just forcibly enough to feel the
+flection of the wood. This was one of his attitudes of elegance, and
+when the train was out of sight, and only the puffs of white vapor
+rolled around the shoulder of the hill, he turned to look the town over,
+having already given Lukin Junction ample time to look over Ben Connor.
+
+The little crowd was not through with its survey, but the eye of the
+imposing stranger abashed it. He had one of those long somber faces
+which Scotchmen call "dour." The complexion was sallow, heavy pouches of
+sleeplessness lay beneath his eyes, and there were ridges beside the
+corners of his mouth which came from an habitual compression of the
+lips. Looked at in profile he seemed to be smiling broadly so that the
+gravity of the full face was always surprising. It was this that made
+the townsfolk look down. After a moment, they glanced back at him
+hastily. Somewhere about the corners of his lips or his eyes there was a
+glint of interest, a touch of amusement--they could not tell which, but
+from that moment they were willing to forget the clothes and look at the
+man.
+
+While Ben Connor was still enjoying the situation, a rotund fellow bore
+down on him.
+
+"You're Mr. Connor, ain't you? You wired for a room in the hotel? Come
+on, then. My rig is over here. These your grips?"
+
+He picked up the suit case and the soft leather traveling bag, and led
+the way to a buckboard at which stood two downheaded ponies.
+
+"Can't we walk?" suggested Ben Connor, looking up and down the street at
+the dozen sprawling frame houses; but the fat man stared at him with
+calm pity. He was so fat and so good-natured that even Ben Connor did
+not impress him greatly.
+
+"Maybe you think this is Lukin?" he asked.
+
+When the other raised his heavy black eyebrows he explained: "This ain't
+nothing but Lukin Junction. Lukin is clear round the hill. Climb in, Mr.
+Connor."
+
+Connor laid one hand on the back of the seat, and with a surge of his
+strong shoulders leaped easily into his place; the fat man noted this
+with a roll of his little eyes, and then took his own place, the old
+wagon careening toward him as he mounted the step. He sat with his right
+foot dangling over the side of the buckboard, and a plump shoulder
+turned fairly upon his passenger so that when he spoke he had to throw
+his head and jerk out the words; but this was apparently his
+time-honored position in the wagon, and he did not care to vary it for
+the sake of conversation. A flap of the loose reins set the horses
+jog-trotting out of Lukin Junction down a gulch which aimed at the side
+of an enormous mountain, naked, with no sign of a village or even a
+single shack among its rocks. Other peaks crowded close on the right and
+left, with a loftier range behind, running up to scattered summits white
+with snow and blue with distance. The shadows of the late afternoon were
+thick as fog in the gulch, and all the lower mountains were already dim
+so that the snow-peaks in the distance seemed as detached, and high as
+clouds. Ben Connor sat with his cane between his knees and his hands
+draped over its amber head and watched those shining places until the
+fat man heaved his head over his shoulder.
+
+"Most like somebody told you about Townsend's Hotel?"
+
+His passenger moved his attention from the mountain to his companion. He
+was so leisurely about it that it seemed he had not heard.
+
+"Yes," he said, "I was told of the place."
+
+"Who?" said the other expectantly.
+
+"A friend of mine."
+
+The fat man grunted and worked his head around so far that a great
+wrinkle rolled up his neck close to his ear. He looked into the eye of
+the stranger.
+
+"Me being Jack Townsend, I'm sort of interested to know things like
+that; the ones that like my place and them that don't."
+
+Connor nodded, but since he showed no inclination to name his friend,
+Jack Townsend swung on a new tack to come to the windward of this
+uncommunicative guest. Lukin was a fairly inquisitive town, and the
+hotel proprietor usually contributed his due portion and more to the
+gossips.
+
+"Some comes for one reason and some for another," went on Townsend,
+"which generally it's to hunt and fish. That ain't funny come to think
+of it, because outside of liars nobody ever hooked finer trout than what
+comes out of the Big Sandy. Some of 'em comes for the mining--they was a
+strike over to South Point last week--and some for the cows, but mostly
+it's the fishing and the hunting."
+
+He paused, but having waited in vain he said directly: "I can show you
+the best holes in the Big Sandy."
+
+There was another of those little waits with which, it seemed, the
+stranger met every remark; not a thoughtful pause, but rather as though
+he wondered if it were worth while to make any answer.
+
+"I've come here for the silence," he said.
+
+"Silence," repeated Townsend, nodding in the manner of one who does not
+understand.
+
+Then he flipped the roan with the butt of his lines and squinted down
+the gulch, for he felt there might be a double meaning in the last
+remark. Filled with the gloomy conviction that he was bringing a silent
+man to his hotel, he gloomily surveyed the mountain sides. There was
+nothing about them to cheer him. The trees were lost in shadows and all
+the slopes seemed quite barren of life. He vented a little burst of
+anger by yanking at the rein of the off horse, a dirty gray.
+
+"Giddap, Kitty, damn your eyes!"
+
+The mare jumped, struck a stone with a fore foot, and stumbled heavily.
+Townsend straightened her out again with an expert hand and cursed.
+
+"Of all the no-good hosses I ever see," he said, inviting the stranger
+to share in his just wrath, "this Kitty is the outbeatingest, no good
+rascal. Git on, fool."
+
+He clapped the reins along her back, and puffed his disgust.
+
+"And yet she has points. Now, I ask you, did you ever see a truer
+Steeldust? Look at that high croup and that straight rump. Look at them
+hips, I say, and a chest to match 'em. But they ain't any heart in her.
+Take a hoss through and through," he went on oracularly, "they're pretty
+much like men, mostly, and if a man ain't got the heart inside, it don't
+make no difference how big around the chest he measures."
+
+Ben Connor had leaned forward, studying the mare.
+
+"Your horse would be all right in her place," he said. "Of course, she
+won't do up here in the mountains."
+
+Like any true Westerner of the mountain-desert, Jack Townsend would far
+rather have been discovered with his hand in the pocket of another man
+than be observed registering surprise. He looked carefully ahead until
+his face was straight again. Then he turned.
+
+"Where d'you make out her place to be?" he asked carelessly.
+
+"Down below," said the other without hesitation, and he waved his arm.
+"Down in soft, sandy irrigation country she'd be a fine animal."
+
+Jack Townsend blinked. "You know her?" he asked.
+
+The other shook his head.
+
+"Well, damn my soul!" breathed the hotel proprietor. "This beats me.
+Maybe you read a hoss's mind, partner?"
+
+Connor shrugged his shoulders, but Townsend no longer took offense at
+the taciturnity of his companion; he spoke now in a lower confiding
+voice which indicated an admission of equality.
+
+"You're right. They said she was good, and she was good! I seen her run;
+I saddled her up and rode her thirty miles through sand that would of
+broke the heart of anything but a Steeldust, and she come through
+without battin' an eye. But when I got her up here she didn't do no
+good. But"--he reverted suddenly to his original surprise--"how'd you
+know her? Recognize the brand, maybe?"
+
+"By her trot," said the other, and he looked across the hills.
+
+They had turned an angle of the gulch, and on a shelf of level ground,
+dishing out from the side of the mountain, stretched the town.
+
+"Isn't it rather odd," said Connor, "for people to build a town over
+here when they could have it on the railroad?"
+
+"Maybe it looks queer to some," nodded Townsend.
+
+He closed his lips firmly, determined to imitate the terseness of his
+guest; but when he observed with a side-glance that Connor would not
+press the inquiry, talk suddenly overflowed. Indeed, Townsend was a
+running well of good nature, continually washing all bad temper over the
+brim.
+
+"I'll show you how it was," he went on. "You see that shoulder of the
+mountain away off up there? If the light was clearer you'd be able to
+make out some old shacks up there, half standin' up and half fallin'
+down. That's where Lukin used to be. Well, the railroad come along and
+says: 'We're goin' to run a spur into the valley, here. You move down
+and build your town at the end of the track and we'll give you a hand
+bringing up new timber for the houses.' That's the way with railroads;
+they want to dictate; they're too used to handlin' folks back East
+that'll let capital walk right over their backs."
+
+Here Townsend sent a glance at Connor to see if he stirred under the
+spur, but there was no sign of irritation.
+
+"Out here we're different; nobody can't step in here and run us unless
+he's asked. See? We said, you build the railroad halfway and we'll come
+the other half, but we won't come clear down into the valley."
+
+"Why?" asked Connor. "Isn't Lukin Junction a good place for a village?"
+
+"Fine. None better. But it's the principle of the thing, you see? Them
+railroad magnates says to us: 'Come all the way.' 'Go to the devil,'
+says we. And so we come halfway to the new railroad and built our town;
+it'd be a pile more agreeable to have Lukin over where the railroad
+ends--look at the way I have to drive back and forth for my trade? But
+just the same, we showed that railroad that it couldn't talk us down."
+
+He struck his horses savagely with the lines; they sprang from the
+jog-trot into a canter, and the buckboard went bumping down the main
+street of Lukin.
+
+
+
+
+_CHAPTER TWO_
+
+
+Ben Connor sat in his room overlooking the crossing of the streets. It
+was by no means the ramshackle huddle of lean-to's that he had expected,
+for Lukin was built to withstand a siege of January snows and
+storm-winds which were scooped by the mountains into a funnel that
+focused straight on the village. Besides, Lukin was no accidental,
+crossroads town, but the bank, store, and amusement center of a big
+country. The timber was being swept from the Black Mountain; there were
+fairly prosperous mines in the vicinity; and cattlemen were ranging
+their cows over the plateaus more and more during the spring and summer.
+Therefore, Lukin boasted two parallel main streets, and a cross street,
+looking forward to the day when it should be incorporated and have a
+mayor of its own. At present it had a moving-picture house and a dance
+hall where a hundred and fifty couples could take the floor at once;
+above all, it had Jack Townsend's hotel. This was a stout, timber
+building of two stories, the lower portion of which was occupied by the
+restaurant, the drug store, the former saloon now transformed into an
+ice-cream parlor, and other public places.
+
+It was dark, but the night winds had not yet commenced, and Lukin
+sweltered with a heat more unbearable than full noon.
+
+It was nothing to Ben Connor, however, for he was fresh from the choking
+summer nights of Manhattan, and in Lukin, no matter how hot it became,
+the eye could always find a cool prospect. It had been unpleasant
+enough when the light was burning, for the room was done in a hot,
+orange-colored paper, but when he blew out the lamp and sat down before
+the window he forgot the room and let his glance go out among the
+mountains. A young moon drifted across the corner of his window, a
+sickle of light with a dim, phosphorescent line around the rest of the
+circle. It was bright enough to throw the peaks into strong relief, and
+dull enough to let the stars live.
+
+His upward vision had as a rule been limited by the higher stories of
+some skyscraper, and now his eye wandered with a pleasant sense of
+freedom over the snow summits where he could imagine a cold wind blowing
+through reach after reach of the blue-gray sky. It pleased and troubled
+Ben Connor very much as one is pleased and troubled by the first study
+of a foreign language, with new prospects opening, strange turns of
+thought, and great unknown names like stars. But after a time Ben Connor
+relaxed. The first cool puff moved across his forehead and carried him
+halfway to a dreamless sleep.
+
+Here a chorus of mirth burst up at him from the street, men's voices
+pitched high and wild, the almost hysterical laughter of people who are
+much alone. In Manhattan only drunken men laughed like this. Among the
+mountains it did not irritate Ben Connor; in tune with the rest, it was
+full of freedom. He looked down to the street, and seeing half a dozen
+bearded fellows frolic in the shaft of light from a window, he decided
+that people kept their youth longer in Lukin.
+
+All things seemed in order to Connor, this night. He rolled his sleeves
+higher to let all the air that stirred get at his bulky forearms, and
+then lighted a cigar. It was a dark, oily Havana--it had cost him a
+great deal in money and nerves to acquire that habit--and he breathed
+the scent deep while he waited for the steady wind which Jack Townsend
+had promised. There was just enough noise to give the silence that
+waiting quality which cannot be described; below him voices murmured,
+and lifted now and then, rhythmically. Ben Connor thought the sounds
+strangely musical, and he began to brim with the same good nature which
+puffed the cheeks of Jack Townsend. There was a substantial basis for
+that content in the broiled trout which he had had for dinner. It was
+while his thoughts drifted back to those browned fish that the first
+wind struck him. Dust with an acrid scent whirled up from the
+street--then a steady stream of air swept his face and arms.
+
+It was almost as if another personality had stepped into the room. The
+sounds from the street fell away, and there was the rustling of cloth
+somewhere, the cool lifting of hair from his forehead, and an odd sense
+of motion--as if the wind were blowing through him. But something else
+came with the breeze, and though he noted it at first with only a
+subconscious discontent, it beat gradually into his mind, a light
+ticking, very rapid, and faint, and sounding in an irregular rhythm. He
+wanted to straighten out that rhythm and make the flutter of tapping
+regular. Then it began to take on a meaning; it framed words.
+
+"Philip Lord, jailed for embezzlement."
+
+"Hell!" burst out Ben Connor. "The telegraph!"
+
+He started up from his chair, feeling betrayed, for that light,
+irregular tapping was the voice of the world from which he had fled. A
+hard, cool mind worked behind the gray eyes of Ben Connor, but as he
+fingered the cigar his brain was fumbling at a large idea. Forty-Second
+and Broadway was calling him back.
+
+When he looked out the window, now, the mountains were flat shapes
+against a flat sky, with no more meaning than a picture.
+
+The sounder was chattering: "Kid Lane wins title in eighth round. Lucky
+punch dethrones lightweight champion." Ben Connor swallowed hard and
+found that his throat was dry. He was afraid of himself--afraid that he
+would go back. He was recalled from his ugly musing by the odor of the
+cigar, which had burned out and was filling the room with a rank smell;
+he tossed the crumbled remnants through the window, crushed his hat upon
+his head, and went down, collarless, coatless, to get on the street in
+the sound of men's voices. If he had been in Manhattan he would have
+called up a pal; they would have planned an evening together; but in
+Lukin--
+
+At the door below he glared up and down the street. There was nothing to
+see but a light buggy which rolled noiselessly through the dust. A dog
+detached itself from behind the vehicle and came to bark furiously at
+his feet. The kicking muscles in Connor's leg began to twitch, but a
+voice shouted and the mongrel trotted away, growling a challenge over
+its shoulder. The silence fell once more. He turned and strode back to
+the desk of the hotel, behind which Jack Townsend sat tilted back in his
+chair reading a newspaper.
+
+"What's doing in this town of yours to-night?" he asked.
+
+The proprietor moistened a fat thumb to turn the page and looked over
+his glasses at Connor.
+
+"Appears to me there ain't much stirrin' about," he said. "Except for
+the movies down the street. You see, everybody's there."
+
+"Movies," muttered Connor under his breath, and looked savagely around
+him.
+
+What his eyes fell on was a picture of an old, old man on the wall, and
+the rusted stove which stood in the center of the room with a pipe
+zigzagging uncertainly toward the ceiling. Everything was out of order,
+broken down--like himself.
+
+"Looks to me like you're kind of off your feet," said Jack Townsend, and
+he laid down his paper and looked wistfully at his guest. He made up his
+mind. "If you're kind of dry for a drink," he said, "I might rustle you
+a flask of red-eye--"
+
+"Whisky?" echoed Connor, and moistened his lips. Then he shook his head.
+"Not that."
+
+He went back to the door with steps so long and heavy that Jack Townsend
+rose from his chair, and spreading his hands on the desk, peered after
+the muscular figure.
+
+"That gent is a bad hombre," pronounced Jack to himself. He sat down
+again with a sigh, and added: "Maybe."
+
+At the door Connor was snarling: "Quiet? Sure; like a grave!"
+
+The wind freshened, fell away, and the light, swift ticking sounded
+again more clearly. It mingled with the alkali scent of the
+dust--Manhattan and the desert together. He felt a sense of persecuted
+virtue. But one of his maxims was: "If anything bothers you, go and find
+out about it."
+
+Ben Connor largely used maxims and epigrams; he met crises by
+remembering what some one else had said. The ticking of the sounder was
+making him homesick and dangerously nervous, so he went to find the
+telegrapher and see the sounder which brought the voice of the world
+into Lukin.
+
+A few steps carried him to a screen door through which he looked upon a
+long, narrow office.
+
+In a corner, an electric fan swung back and forth through a hurried arc
+and fluttered papers here and there. Its whining almost drowned the
+ticking of the sounder, and Ben Connor wondered with dull irritation how
+a tapping which was hardly audible at the door of the office could carry
+to his room in the hotel. He opened the door and entered.
+
+
+
+
+_CHAPTER THREE_
+
+
+It was a room not more than eight feet wide, very long, with the floor,
+walls, and ceiling of the same narrow, unpainted pine boards; the
+flooring was worn ragged and the ceiling warped into waves. Across the
+room a wide plank with a trapdoor at one end served as a counter, and
+now it was littered with yellow telegraph blanks, and others, crumpled
+up, were scattered about Connor's feet. No sooner had the screen door
+squeaked behind him and shut him fairly into the place than the staccato
+rattling of the sounder multiplied, and seemed to chatter from the wall
+behind him. It left an echoing in the ear of Ben Connor which formed
+into the words of his resolution, "I've made my stake and I'm going to
+beat it. I'm going to get away where I can forget the worries. To-day I
+beat 'em. Tomorrow the worries will beat me."
+
+That was why he was in Lukin--to forget. And here the world had sneaked
+up on him and whispered in his ear. Was it fair?
+
+It was a woman who "jerked lightning" for Lukin. With that small finger
+on the key she took the pulse of the world.
+
+"Belmont returns--" chattered the sounder.
+
+Connor instinctively covered his ears. Then, feeling that he was acting
+like a silly child, he lowered his hands.
+
+Another idea had come to him that this was fate--luck--his luck. Why not
+take another chance?
+
+He wavered a moment, fighting the temptation and gloomily studying the
+back of the operator. The cheapness of her white cotton dress fairly
+shouted at him. Also her hair straggled somewhat about the nape of her
+neck. All this irritated Connor absurdly.
+
+"Fifth race," said the sounder: "Lady Beck, first; Conqueror, second--"
+
+Certainly this was fate tempting tune.
+
+Connor snatched a telegraph blank and scribbled a message to Harry
+Slocum, his betting commissioner during this unhappy vacation.
+
+"Send dope on Murray handicaps time--trials of Trickster and Caledonian.
+Hotel Townsend."
+
+This done, having tapped sharply on the counter to call the operator's
+attention, he dropped his elbows on the plank and scowled downward in
+profound reverie. They were pouring out of Belmont Park, now, many a
+grim face and many a joyous face. Money had come easy and gone easy. Ah,
+the reckless bonhomie of that crowd, living for to-day only, because
+"to-morrow the ponies may have it!" A good day for the bookies if that
+old cripple, Lady Beck, had found her running legs. What a trimming they
+must have given the wise ones!
+
+At this point another hand came into the circle of his vision and turned
+the telegram about. A pencil flicked across the words, checking them
+swiftly. Connor was fascinated by that hand, it was so cool, so slender
+and deft. He glanced up to her face and saw a resolute chin, a smiling
+mouth which was truly lovely, and direct eyes as dark as his own. She
+carried her head buoyantly, in a way that made Connor think, with a
+tingle, of some clean-blooded filly at the post.
+
+The girl made his change, and shoving it across, she bent her head
+toward the sounder. The characters came through too swiftly for even Ben
+Connor's sharp ear, but the girl, listening, smiled slowly.
+
+"Something about soft pine?" queried Connor.
+
+She brightened at this unexpected meeting-point. Her eyes widened as she
+studied him and listened to the message at the same time, and she
+accomplished this double purpose with such calm that Connor felt a
+trifle abashed. Then the shadow of listening vanished, and she
+concentrated on Connor.
+
+"Soft pine is up," she nodded. "I knew it would climb as soon as old
+Lucas bought in."
+
+"Speculator in Lukin, is he?"
+
+"No. California. The one whose yacht burned at Honolulu last year. Sold
+pine like wild fire two months ago; down goes the price. Then he bought
+a little while ago, and now the pine skyrockets. He can buy a new yacht
+with what he makes, I suppose!"
+
+The shade of listening darkened her eyes again. "Listen!" She raised a
+hushing forefinger that seemed tremulous in rhythm with the ticking.
+
+"Wide brims are in again," exclaimed the operator, "and wide hats are
+awful on me; isn't that the luck?"
+
+She went back to her key with the message in her hand, and Connor,
+dropping his elbows on the counter, watched her send it with swift
+almost imperceptible flections of her wrist.
+
+Then she sat again with her hands folded in her lap, listening. Connor
+turned his head and glanced through the door; by squinting he could look
+over the roof just across the street and see the shadowy mountains
+beyond; then he looked back again and watched the girl listening to the
+voice of the outer world. The shock of the contrast soothed. He began to
+forget about Ben Connor and think of her.
+
+The girl turned in her chair and directly faced him, and he saw that she
+moved her whole body just as she moved her hand, swiftly, but without a
+jerk; she considered him gravely.
+
+"Lonely?" she inquired. "Or worried?"
+
+She spoke with such a commonplace intonation that one might have thought
+it her business to attend to loneliness and worries.
+
+"As a matter of fact," answered Ben Connor, instinctively dodging the
+direct query, "I've been wondering how they happened to stick a
+number-one artist on this wire.
+
+"I'm not kidding," he explained hastily. "You see, I used to jerk
+lightning myself."
+
+For the first time she really smiled, and he discovered what a rare
+thing a smile may be. Up to that point he had thought she lacked
+something, just as the white dress lacked a touch of color.
+
+"Oh," she nodded. "Been off the wire long?"
+
+Ben Connor grinned. It began with his lips; last of all the dull gray
+eyes lighted.
+
+"Ever since a hot day in July at Aqueduct. The Lorrimer Handicap on the
+11th of July, to be exact. I tossed up my job the next day."
+
+"I see," she said, becoming aware of him again. "You played Tip-Top
+Second."
+
+"The deuce! Were you at Aqueduct that day?"
+
+"I was here--on the wire." He restrained himself with an effort, for a
+series of questions was Connor's idea of a dull conversation. He merely
+rubbed his knuckles against his chin and looked at her wistfully.
+
+"He nipped King Charles and Miss Lazy at the wire and squeezed home by a
+nose--paid a fat price, I remember," went on the girl. "I suppose you
+had something down on him?"
+
+"Did a friend of yours play that race?"
+
+"Oh, no; but I was new to the wire, then, and I used to cut in and
+listen to everything that came by."
+
+"I know. It's like having some one whisper secrets in your ear, at
+first, isn't it? But you remember the Lorrimer, eh? That was a race!"
+
+The sounder stopped chattering, and by an alternation in her eyes he
+knew that up to that moment she had been giving two-thirds of her
+attention to the voice of the wire and the other fraction to him; but
+now she centered upon him, and he wanted to talk. As if, mysteriously,
+he could share some of the burden of his unrest with the girl. Most of
+all he wished to talk because this office had lifted him back to the old
+days of "lightning jerking," when he worked for a weekly pay-check. The
+same nervous eagerness which had been his in that time was now in this
+girl, and he responded to it like a call of blood to blood.
+
+"A couple of wise ones took me out to Aqueduct that day: I had all that
+was coming to me for a month in my pocket, and I kept saying to myself:
+'They think I'll fall for this game and drop my wad; here's where I fool
+'em!'"
+
+He chuckled as he remembered.
+
+"Go on," said the girl. "You make me feel as if I were about to make a
+clean-up!"
+
+"Really interested?"
+
+She fixed an eager glance on him, as though she were judging how far she
+might let herself go. Suddenly she leaned closer to Connor.
+
+"Interested? I've been taking the world off the wire for six years--and
+you've been where things happen."
+
+"That's the way I felt at Aqueduct when I saw the ponies parade past the
+grand stand the first time," he nodded. "They came dancing on the bitt,
+and even I could see that they weren't made for use; legs that never
+pulled a wagon, and backs that couldn't weight. Just toys; speed
+machines; all heart and fire and springy muscles. It made my pulse jump
+to the fever point to watch them light-foot it along the rail with the
+groom in front on a clod of a horse. I felt that I'd lived the way that
+horse walked--downheaded, and I decided to change."
+
+He stopped short and locked his stubby fingers together, frowning at her
+so that the lines beside his mouth deepened.
+
+"I seem to be telling you the story of my life," he said. Then he saw
+that she was studying him, not with idle curiosity, but rather as one
+turns the pages of an absorbing book, never knowing what the next moment
+will reveal or where the characters will be taken.
+
+"You want to talk; I want to hear you," she said gravely. "Go ahead.
+Besides--I don't chatter afterward. They paraded past the grand stand,
+then what?"
+
+Ben Connor sighed.
+
+"I watched four races. The wise guys with me were betting ten bucks on
+every race and losing on red-hot tips; and every time I picked out the
+horse that looked good to me, that horse ran in the money. Then they
+came out for the Lorrimer. One of my friends was betting on King Charles
+and the other on Miss Lazy. Both of them couldn't win, and the chance
+was that neither of them would. So I looked over the line as it went by
+the stand. King Charles was a little chestnut, one of those long fellows
+that stretch like rubber when they commence running; Miss Lazy was a
+gangling bay. Yes, they were both good horses, but I looked over the
+rest, and pretty soon I saw a rangy chestnut with a white foreleg and a
+midget of a boy up in the saddle. 'No. 7--Tip-Top Second,' said the wise
+guy on my right when I asked him; 'a lame one.' Come to look at him
+again, he was doing a catch step with his front feet, but I had an idea
+that when he got going he'd forget all about that catch and run like the
+wind. Understand?"
+
+"Just a hunch," said the girl. "Yes!"
+
+She stepped closer to the counter and leaned across it. Her eyes were
+bright. Connor knew that she was seeing that picture of the hot day, the
+crowd of straw hats stirring wildly, the murmur and cry that went up as
+the string of racers jogged past.
+
+"They went to the post," said Connor, "and I got down my bet--a hundred
+dollars, my whole wad--on Tip-Top Second. The bookie looked just once at
+me, and I'll never forget how his eyebrows went together. I went back to
+my seat."
+
+"You were shaking all over, I guess," suggested the girl, and her hands
+were quivering.
+
+"I was not," said Ben Connor, "I was cold through and through, and never
+moved my eyes off Tip-Top Second. His jockey had a green jacket with two
+stripes through it, and the green was easy to watch. I saw the crowd go
+off, and I saw Tip-Top left flat-footed at the post."
+
+The girl drew a breath. Connor smiled at her. The hot evening had
+flushed his face, but now a small spot of white appeared in either
+cheek, and his dull eyes had grown expressionless. She knew what he
+meant when he said that he was cold when he saw the string go to the
+post.
+
+"It--it must have made you sick!" said the girl.
+
+"Not a bit. I knew the green jacket was going to finish ahead of the
+rest as well as I knew that my name was Ben Connor. I said he was left
+at the post. Well, it wasn't exactly that, but when the bunch came
+streaking out of the shoot, he was half a dozen lengths behind. It was a
+mile and an eighth race. They went down the back stretch, eight horses
+all bunched together, and the green jacket drifting that half dozen
+lengths to the rear. The wise guys turned and grinned at me; then they
+forgot all about me and began to yell for King Charles and Miss Lazy.
+
+"The bunch were going around the turn and the two favorites were
+fighting it out together. But I had an eye for the green jacket, and
+halfway around the turn I saw him move up."
+
+The girl sighed.
+
+"No," Connor continues, "he hadn't won the race yet. And he never should
+have won it at all, but King Charles was carrying a hundred and
+thirty-eight pounds, and Miss Lazy a hundred and thirty-three, while
+Tip-Top Second came in as a fly-weight eighty-seven pounds! No horse in
+the world could give that much to him when he was right, but who guessed
+that then?
+
+"They swung around the turn and hit the stretch. Tip-Top took the curve
+like a cart horse. Then the bunch straightened out, with King Charles
+and Miss Lazy fighting each other in front and the rest streaking out
+behind like the tail of a flag. They did that first mile in 1.38, but
+they broke their hearts doing it, with that weight up.
+
+"They had an eighth to go--one little measly furlong, with Tip-Top in
+the ruck, and the crowd screaming for King Charles and Miss Lazy; but
+just exactly at the mile post the leaders flattened. I didn't know it,
+but the man in front of me dropped his glasses and his head. 'Blown!' he
+said, and that was all. It seemed to me that the two in front were
+running as strongly as ever, but Tip-Top was running better. He came
+streaking, with the boy flattening out along his neck and the whip going
+up and down. But I didn't stir. I couldn't; my blood was turned to ice
+water.
+
+"Tip-Top walked by the ruck and got his nose on the hip of King Charles.
+Somebody was yelling behind me in a squeaky voice: 'There is something
+wrong! There's something wrong!' There was, too, and it was the
+eighty-seven pounds that a fool handicapper had put on Tip-Top. At the
+sixteenth Miss Lazy threw up her head like a swimmer going down and
+dropped back, and Tip-Top was on the King's shoulder. Fifty yards to the
+finish; twenty-five--then the King staggered as if he'd been hit between
+the ears, and Tip-Top jumped out to win by a neck.
+
+"There was one big breath of silence in the grand stand--then a groan. I
+turned my head and saw the two wise guys looking at me with sick grins.
+Afterward I collected two thousand bucks from a sicker looking bookie."
+
+He paused and smiled at the girl.
+
+"That was the 11th of July. First real day of my life."
+
+She gathered her mind out of that scene.
+
+"You stepped out of a telegraph office, with your finger on the key all
+day, every day, and you jumped into two thousand dollars?"
+
+After she had stopped speaking her thoughts went on, written in her
+eyes.
+
+"You'd like to try it, eh?" said Ben Connor.
+
+"Haven't you had years of happiness out of it?"
+
+He looked at her with a grimace.
+
+"Happiness?" he echoed. "Happiness?"
+
+She stepped back so that she put his deeply-marked face in a better
+light.
+
+"You're a queer one for a winner."
+
+"Sure, the turf is crowded with queer ones like me."
+
+"Winners, all of 'em?"
+
+His eye had been gradually brightening while he talked to her. He felt
+that the girl rang true, as men ring true, yet there was nothing
+masculine about her.
+
+"You've heard racing called the sport of kings? That's because only
+kings can afford to follow the ponies. Kings and Wall Street. But a
+fellow can't squeeze in without capital. I've made a go of it for a
+while; pretty soon we all go smash. Sooner or later I'll do what
+everybody else does--put up my cash on a sure thing and see my money go
+up in smoke."
+
+"Then why don't you pull out with what you have?"
+
+"Why does the earth keep running around the sun? Because there's a pull.
+Once you've followed the ponies you'll keep on following 'em. No hope
+for it. Oh, I've seen the boys come up one after another, make their
+killings, hit a streak of bad luck, plunge, and then watch their
+sure-thing throw up its tail in the stretch and fade into the ruck."
+
+He was growing excited as he talked; he was beginning to realize that he
+must make his break from the turf now or never. And he spoke more to
+himself than to the girl.
+
+"We all hang on. We play the game till it breaks us and still we stay
+with it. Here I am, two thousand miles away from the tracks--and sending
+for dope to make a play! Can you beat that? Well, so-long."
+
+He turned away gloomily.
+
+"Good night, Mr. Connor."
+
+He turned sharply.
+
+"Where'd you get that name?" he asked with a trace of suspicion.
+
+"Off the telegram."
+
+He nodded, but said: "I've an idea I've been chattering to much."
+
+"My name is Ruth Manning," answered the girl. "I don't think you've said
+too much."
+
+He kept his eyes steadily on her while he shook hands.
+
+"I'm glad I know some one in Lukin," said Connor. "Good night, again."
+
+
+
+
+_CHAPTER FOUR_
+
+
+When Connor wakened the next morning, after his first impression of
+blinding light, he closed his eyes and waited for the sense of unhappy
+doom which usually comes to men of tense nerves and active life after
+sleep; but, with slow and pleasant wonder, he realized that the old
+numbness of brain and fever of pulse was gone. Then he looked up and
+lazily watched the shadow of the vine at his window move across the
+ceiling, a dim-bordered shadow continually changing as the wind gathered
+the leaves in solid masses and shook them out again. He pored upon this
+for a time, and next he watched a spider spinning a web in the corner;
+she worked in a draft which repeatedly lifted her from her place before
+she had fastened her thread, and dropped her a foot or more into space.
+Connor sat up to admire the artisan's skill and courage. Compared to men
+and insects, the spider really worked over an abyss two hundred feet
+deep, suspended by a silken thread. Connor slipped out of bed and stood
+beneath the growing web while the main cross threads were being
+fastened. He had been there for some time when, turning away to rub the
+ache out of the back of his neck, he again met the contrast between the
+man of this morning and the man of other days.
+
+This time it was his image in the mirror, meeting him as he turned. That
+deep wrinkle in the middle of the forehead was half erased. The lips
+were neither compressed nor loose and shaking, and the eye was calm--it
+rested him to meet that glance in the mirror.
+
+A mood of idle content always brings one to the window: Connor looked
+out on the street. A horseman hopped past like a day shadow, the
+hoofbeats muffled by thick sand, and the wind, moving at an exactly
+equal pace, carried a mist of dust just behind the horse's tail.
+Otherwise there was neither life nor color in the street of
+weather-beaten, low buildings, and the eye of Connor went beyond the
+roofs and began to climb the mountains. Here was a bald bright cliff,
+there a drift of trees, and again a surface of raw clay from which the
+upper soil had recently slipped; but these were not stopping
+points--they were rather the steps which led the glance to a sky of pale
+and transparent blue, and Connor felt a great desire to have that sky
+over him in place of a ceiling.
+
+He splashed through a hasty bath, dressed, and ran down the stairs,
+humming. Jack Townsend stood on a box in the corner of the room, probing
+at a spider web in the corner.
+
+"Too late for breakfast?" asked Connor.
+
+The fat shoulders of the proprietor quivered, but he did not turn.
+
+"Too late," he snapped. "Breakfast over at nine. No favorites up here."
+
+Connor waited for the wave of irritation to rise in him, but to his own
+surprise he found himself saying:
+
+"All right; you can't throw a good horse off his feed by cutting out one
+meal."
+
+Jack Townsend faced his guest, rubbing his many-folded chin.
+
+"Don't take long for this mountain air to brace up a gent, does it?" he
+asked rather pointedly.
+
+"I'll tell you what," said Connor. "It isn't the air so much; it's the
+people that do a fellow good."
+
+"Well," admitted the proprietor modestly, "they may be something in
+that. Kind of heartier out here, ain't they? More than in the city, I
+guess. I'll tell you what," he added. "I'll go out and speak to the
+missus about a snack for you. It's late, but we like to be obligin'."
+
+He climbed carefully down from the box and started away.
+
+"That girl again," thought Connor, and snapped his fingers. His spirits
+continued to rise, if that were possible, during the breakfast of ham
+and eggs, and coffee of a taste so metallic that only a copious use of
+cream made it drinkable. Jack Townsend, recovering to the full his
+customary good nature, joined his guest in a huge piece of toast with a
+layer of ham on it--simply to keep a stranger from eating alone, he
+said--and while he ate he talked about the race. Connor had noticed that
+the lobby was almost empty.
+
+"They're over lookin' at the hosses," said Townsend, "and gettin' their
+bets down."
+
+Connor laid down knife and fork, and resumed them hastily, but
+thereafter his interest in his food was entirely perfunctory. From the
+corner of his eye a gleam kept steadily upon the face of Townsend, who
+continued:
+
+"Speaking personal, Mr. Connor, I'd like to have you look over them
+hosses yourself."
+
+Connor, on the verge of speech, checked himself with a quick effort.
+
+"Because," continued Townsend, "if I had your advice I might get down a
+little stake on one of 'em. You see?"
+
+Ben Connor paused with a morsel of ham halfway toward his lips.
+
+"Who told you I know anything about horses?" he asked.
+
+"You told me yourself," grinned the proprietor, "and I'd like to figure
+how you knew the mare come from the Ballor Valley."
+
+"From which?"
+
+"From the Ballor Valley. You even named the irrigation and sand and all
+that. But you'd seen her brand before, I s'pose?"
+
+"Hoofs like hers never came out of these mountains," smiled Ben Connor.
+"See the way she throws them and how flat they are."
+
+"Well, that's true," nodded Jack Townsend. "It seems simple, now you say
+what it was, but it had me beat up to now. That is the way with most
+things. Take a fine hand with a rope. He daubs it on a cow so dead easy
+any fool thinks he can do the same. No, Mr. Connor, I'd still like to
+have you come out and take a look at them hosses. Besides"--he lowered
+his voice--"you might pick up a bit of loose change yourself. They's a
+plenty rolling round to-day."
+
+Connor laughed, but there was excitement behind his mirth.
+
+"The fact is, Townsend," he said, "I'm not interested in racing now. I'm
+up here for the air."
+
+"Sure--sure," said the hotel man. "I know all that. Well, if you're dead
+set it ain't hardly Christian to lure you into betting on a hoss race, I
+suppose."
+
+He munched at his sandwich in savage silence, while Connor looked out
+the window and began to whistle.
+
+"They race very often up here?" he asked carelessly.
+
+"Once in a while."
+
+"A pleasant sport," sighed Connor.
+
+"Ain't it, now?" argued Townsend. "But these gents around here take it
+so serious that it don't last long."
+
+"That so?"
+
+"Yep. They bet every last dollar they can rake up, and about the second
+or third race in the year the money's all pooled in two or three
+pockets. Then the rest go gunnin' for trouble, and most generally find a
+plenty. Any six races that's got up around here is good for three
+shooting scrapes, and each shooting's equal to one corpse and half a
+dozen put away for repairs." He touched his forehead, marked with a
+white line. "I used to be considerable," he said.
+
+"H-m," murmured Connor, grown absentminded again.
+
+"Yes, sir," went on the other. "I've seen the boys come in from the
+mines with enough dust to choke a mule, and slap it all down on the
+hoss. I've seen twenty thousand cold bucks lost and won on a dinky
+little pinto that wasn't worth twenty dollars hardly. That's how crazy
+they get."
+
+Connor wiped his forehead.
+
+"Where do they race?" he asked.
+
+"Right down Washington Avenue. That is the main street, y'see. Gives 'em
+about half a mile of runnin'."
+
+A cigarette appeared with magic speed between the fingers of Connor, and
+he began to smoke, with deep inhalations, expelling his breath so
+strongly that the mist shot almost to the ceiling before it flattened
+into a leisurely spreading cloud. Townsend, fascinated, seemed to have
+forgotten all about the horse race, but there was in Connor a suggestion
+of new interest, a certain businesslike coldness.
+
+"Suppose we step over and give the ponies a glance?" he queried.
+
+"That's the talk!" exclaimed Townsend. "And I'll take any tip you have!"
+
+This made Connor look at his host narrowly, but, dismissing a suspicion
+from his mind, he shrugged his shoulders, and they went out together.
+
+The conclave of riders and the betting public had gathered at the
+farther end of the street, and it included the majority of Lukin. Only
+the center of the street was left religiously clear, and in this space
+half a dozen men led horses up and down with ostentatious indifference,
+stopping often to look after cinches which they had already tested many
+times. As Connor came up he saw a group of boys place their wagers with
+a stakeholder--knives, watches, nickels and dimes. That was a fair token
+of the spirit of the crowd. Wherever Connor looked he saw hands raised,
+brandishing greenbacks, and for every raised hand there were half a
+dozen clamorous voices.
+
+"Quite a bit of sporting blood in Lukin, eh?" suggested Townsend.
+
+"Sure," sighed Connor. He looked at the brandished money. "A field of
+wheat," he murmured, "waiting for the reaper. That's me."
+
+He turned to see his companion pull out a fat wallet.
+
+"Which one?" gasped Townsend. "We ain't got hardly any time."
+
+Connor observed him with a smile that tucked up the corners of his
+mouth.
+
+"Wait a while, friend. Plenty of time to get stung where the ponies are
+concerned. We'll look them over."
+
+Townsend began to chatter in his ear: "It's between Charlie Haig's roan
+and Cliff Jones's Lightning--You see that bay? Man, he can surely get
+across the ground. But the roan ain't so bad. Oh, no!"
+
+"Sure they are."
+
+The gambler frowned. "I was about to say that there was only one horse
+in the race, but--" He shook his head despairingly as he looked over the
+riders. He was hunting automatically for the fleshless face and angular
+body of a jockey; among them all Charlie Haig came the closest to this
+light ideal. He was a sun-dried fellow, but even Charlie must have
+weighed well over a hundred and forty pounds; the others made no
+pretensions toward small poundage, and Cliff Jones must have scaled two
+hundred.
+
+"Which was the one hoss in your eyes?" asked the hotel man eagerly.
+
+"The gray. But with that weight up the little fellow will be anchored."
+
+He pointed to a gray gelding which nosed confidently at the back hip
+pockets of his master.
+
+"Less than fifteen hands," continued Connor, "and a hundred and eighty
+pounds to break his back. It isn't a race; it's murder to enter a horse
+handicapped like that."
+
+"The gray?" repeated Jack Townsend, and he glanced from the corner of
+his eyes at his companion, as though he suspected mockery. "I never seen
+the gray before," he went on. "Looks sort of underfed, eh?"
+
+Connor apparently did not hear. He had raised his head and his nostrils
+trembled, so that Townsend did not know whether the queer fellow was
+about to break into laughter or a trade.
+
+"Yet," muttered Connor, "he might carry it. God, what a horse!"
+
+He still looked at the gelding, and Townsend rubbed his eyes and stared
+to make sure that he had not overlooked some possibilities in the
+gelding. But he saw again only a lean-ribbed pony with a long neck and a
+high croup. The horse wheeled, stepping as clumsily as a gangling
+yearling. Townsend's amazement changed to suspicion and then to
+indifference.
+
+"Well," he said, smiling covertly, "are you going to bet on that?"
+
+Connor made no answer. He stepped up to the owner of the gray, a swarthy
+man of Indian blood. His half sleepy, half sullen expression cleared
+when Connor shook hands and introduced himself as a lover of fast
+horse-flesh.
+
+He even congratulated the Indian on owning so fine a specimen, at which
+apparently subtle mockery Townsend, in the rear, set his teeth to keep
+from smiling; and the big Indian also frowned, to see if there were any
+hidden insult. But Connor had stepped back and was looking at the
+forelegs of the gelding.
+
+"There's bone for you," he said exultantly. "More than eight inches,
+eh--that Cannon?"
+
+"Huh," grunted the owner, "I dunno."
+
+But his last shred of suspicion disappeared as Connor, working his
+fingers along the shoulder muscles of the animal, smiled with pleasure
+and admiration.
+
+"My name's Bert Sims," said the Indian, "and I'm glad to know you. Most
+of the boys in Lukin think my hoss ain't got a chance in this race."
+
+"I think they're right," answered Connor without hesitation.
+
+The eyes of the Indian flashed.
+
+"I think you're putting fifty pounds too much weight on him," explained
+Connor.
+
+"Yeh?"
+
+"Can't another man ride your horse?"
+
+"Anybody can ride him."
+
+"Then let that fellow yonder--that youngster--have the mount. I'll back
+the gray to the bottom of my pocket if you do."
+
+"I wouldn't feel hardly natural seeing another man on him," said the
+Indian. "If he's rode I'll do the riding. I've done it for fifteen
+years."
+
+"What?"
+
+"Fifteen years."
+
+"Is that horse fifteen years old?" asked Connor, prepared to smile.
+
+"He is eighteen," answered Bert Sims quietly.
+
+The gambler cast a quick glance at Sims and a longer one at the gray. He
+parted the lips of the horse, and then cursed softly.
+
+"You're right," said Connor. "He is eighteen."
+
+He was frowning in deadly earnestness now.
+
+"Accident, I suppose?"
+
+The Indian merely stared at him.
+
+"Is the horse a strain of blood or an accident? What's his breed?"
+
+"He's an Eden gray."
+
+"Are there more like him?"
+
+"The valley's full of 'em, they say," answered Bert Sims.
+
+"What valley?" snapped the gambler.
+
+"I ain't been in it. If I was I wouldn't talk."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+In reply Sims rolled the yellow-stained whites of his eyes slowly toward
+his interlocutor. He did not turn his head, but a smile gradually began
+on his lips and spread to a sinister hint at mirth. It put a grim end to
+the conversation, and Connor turned reluctantly to Townsend. The latter
+was clamoring.
+
+"They're getting ready for the start. Are you betting on that runt of a
+gray?"
+
+
+
+
+_CHAPTER FIVE_
+
+
+Conner shook his head almost sadly. "A horse that stands not a hair more
+than fourteen-three, eighteen years old, with a hundred and eighty
+pounds up--No, I'm not a fool."
+
+"Which is it--the roan or the bay?" gasped Townsend. "Which d'you say?
+I'll tell you about the valley after the race. Which hoss, Mr. Connor?"
+
+Thus appealed to, the gambler straightened and clasped his hands behind
+his back. He looked coldly at the horses.
+
+"How old is that brown yonder--the one the boy is just mounting?"
+
+"Three. But what's he got to do with the race?"
+
+"He's a shade too young, or he'd win it. That's what he has to do with
+it. Back Haig's horse, then. The roan is the best bet."
+
+"Have you had a good look at Lightnin'?"
+
+"He won't last in this going with that weight up."
+
+"You're right," panted Townsend. "And I'm going to risk a hundred on
+him. Hey, Joe, how d'you bet on Charlie Haig?"
+
+"Two to one."
+
+"Take you for a hundred. Joe, meet Mr. Connor."
+
+"A hundred it is, Jack. Can I do anything for you, Mr. Connor?"
+
+"I'll go a hundred on the roan, sir."
+
+"Have I done it right?" asked Townsend fiercely, a little later. "I
+wonder do you know?"
+
+"Ask that after the race is over," smiled Connor. "After all, you have
+only one horse to be afraid of."
+
+"Sure; Lightnin'--but he's enough."
+
+"Not Lightning, I tell you. The gray is the only horse to be afraid of
+though the brown stallion might do if he has enough seasoning."
+
+For a moment panic brightened the eyes of Townsend, and then he shook
+the fear away.
+
+"I've done it now," he said huskily, "and they's no use talking. Let's
+get down to the finish."
+
+The crowd was streaming away from the start, and headed toward the
+finish half a mile down the street beyond the farther end of Lukin. Most
+of this distance Townsend kept his companion close to a run; then he
+suddenly appealed for a slower pace.
+
+"It's my heart," he explained. "Nothin' else bothers it, but during a
+hoss race it sure stands on end. I get to thinkin' of what my wife will
+say if I lose; and that always plumb upsets me."
+
+He was, in fact, spotted white and purple when they joined the mob which
+packed both sides of the street at the finish posts; already the choice
+positions were taken.
+
+"We won't get a look," groaned Townsend.
+
+But Connor chuckled: "You tie on to me and we'll get to the front in a
+squeeze." And he ejected himself into the mob. How it was done Townsend
+could never understand. They oozed through the thickest of the crowd,
+and when roughly pressed men ahead of them turned around, ready to
+fight, Connor was always looking back, apparently forced along by the
+pressure from the rear. He seemed, indeed, to be struggling to keep his
+footing, but in a few minutes Townsend found himself in the front rank.
+He mopped his brow and smiled up into the cool face of Connor, but there
+was no time for comments. Eight horses fretted in a ragged line far down
+the street, and as they frisked here and there the brims of the
+sombreros of the riders flapped up and down; only the Eden gray stood
+with downward head, dreaming.
+
+"No heart," said Townsend, "in that gray hoss. Look at him!"
+
+"Plenty of head, though," replied Connor; "here they go!"
+
+His voice was lost in a yell that went up wailing, shook into a roar,
+and then died off, as though a gust of wind had cut the sounds away. A
+murmur of voices followed, and then an almost womanish yell, for
+Lightning, the favorite, was out in front, and his rider leaned in the
+saddle with arm suspended and a quirt which never fell. The rest were a
+close group where whips worked ceaselessly, except that in the rear of
+all the rest the little gray horse ran without urge, smoothly, as if his
+rider had given up all hope of winning and merely allowed his horse to
+canter through.
+
+"D'you see?" screamed Townsend. "Is that what you know about hosses, Mr.
+Connor? Look at Cliff Jones's Lightning! What do you--"
+
+He cut his upbraidings short, for Connor's was a grisly face, white
+about the mouth and with gathered brows, as though, with intense effort,
+he strove to throw the influence of his will into that mass of
+horse-flesh. The hotel-keeper turned in time to see Lightning, already
+buckling under the strain, throw up his head.
+
+The heavy burdens, the deep, soft going, and the fact that none of the
+horses were really trained to sprint, made the half-mile course a very
+real test, and now the big leader perceptibly weakened. Out of the pack
+shot a slender brown body, and came to the girth--to the neck of the
+bay.
+
+"The stallion!" shouted Townsend. "By God, you do know hosses! Who'd of
+thought that skinny fellow had it in him?"
+
+"He'll die," said Connor calmly.
+
+The bay and the brown went back into the pack together, even as Connor
+spoke, though the riders were flogging hard, and now the roan drew to
+the front. It was plain to see that he had the foot of the rest, for he
+came away from the crowd with every leap.
+
+"Look! Look! Look!" moaned Townsend. "Two for one! Look!" He choked with
+pleasure and gripped Connor's arm in both his hands in token of
+gratitude.
+
+Now the race bore swiftly down the finish, the horses looming bigger;
+their eyes could be seen, and their straining nostrils now, and the
+desperate face of each rider, trying to lift his horse into a great
+burst.
+
+"He's got it," sobbed Townsend, hysterical. "Nothin' can catch him now."
+
+But his companion, in place of answer, stiffened and pointed. His voice
+was a tone of horror, almost, as he said: "I knew, by God, I knew all
+the time and wouldn't believe my eyes."
+
+For far from the left, rounding the pack, came a streak of gray. It
+caught the brown horse and passed him in two leaps; it shot by the
+laboring bay; and only the roan of Charlie Haig remained in front. That
+rider, confident of victory, had slipped his quirt over his wrist and
+was hand-riding his horse when a brief, deep yell of dismay from the
+crowd made him jerk a glance over his shoulder. He cut the quirt into
+the flank of the roan, but it was too late. Five lengths from the finish
+the little gray shoved his nose in front; and from that point, settling
+toward the earth, as he stretched into a longer and longer stride, every
+jump increased his margin. The nose of the roan was hardly on the rump
+of the gelding at the finish.
+
+A bedlam roar came from the crowd. Townsend was cursing and beating time
+to his oaths with a fat fist. Townsend found so many companion losers
+that his feelings were readily salved, and he turned to Connor, smiling
+wryly.
+
+"We can't win every day," he declared, "but I'll tell you this, partner;
+of all the men I ever seen, you get the medal for judgin' a hoss. You
+can pick my string any day."
+
+"Eighteen years old," Connor was saying in the monotonous tone of one
+hypnotized.
+
+"Hey, there," protested Townsend, perceiving that he was on the verge of
+being ignored.
+
+"A hundred and eighty pounds," sighed the big man.
+
+Townsend saw for the first time that a stop-watch was in the hand of his
+companion, and now, as Connor began to pace off the distance, the hotel
+proprietor tagged behind, curious. Twenty steps from the starting point
+the larger man stopped abruptly, shook his head, and then went on. When
+he came to the start he paused again, and Townsend found him staring
+with dull eyes at the face of the watch.
+
+"What'd they make it in?" asked the little man.
+
+The other did not hear.
+
+"They ran from this line?" he queried in a husky voice.
+
+"Sure. Line between them posts."
+
+"Fifty-nine seconds!" he kept repeating. "Fifty-nine seconds!
+Fifty-nine!"
+
+"What about the fifty-nine seconds?" asked Townsend, and receiving no
+answer he murmured to himself: "The heat has got to his head."
+
+Connor asked quietly: "Know anything about these gray horses and where
+they came from?"
+
+"Sure. As much as anybody. Come from yonder in the mountains. A Negro
+raises 'em. A deaf mute. Ain't ever been heard to say a word."
+
+"And he raises horses like that?"
+
+"Sure."
+
+"And nobody's been up there to try to buy 'em?"
+
+"Too far to go, you see? Long ride and a hard trail. Besides, they's
+plenty of good hoss-flesh right around Lukin, here."
+
+"Of course," nodded Connor genially. "Of course there is."
+
+"Besides, them grays is too small. Personally, I don't hanker after a
+runt of a hoss. I look like a fool on one of em."
+
+The voice of Connor was full of hearty agreement.
+
+"So do I. Yes, they're small, if they're all like that one. Too small.
+Much too small."
+
+He looked narrowly at Townsend from the corner of his eyes to make sure
+that the hotel proprietor suspected nothing.
+
+"This deaf-mute sells some, now and then?"
+
+"Yep. He comes down once in a while and sells a hoss to the first gent
+he meets--and then walks back to the garden. Always geldings that he
+sells, I understand. Stand up under work pretty well, those little
+hosses. Harry Macklin has got one. Harry lives at Fort Andrew. There's a
+funny yarn out about how Harry--"
+
+"What price does the mute ask?"
+
+"Thinking of getting one of 'em?"
+
+"Me? Of course not! What do I want with a runt of a horse like that? But
+I was wondering what they pay around here for little horses."
+
+"I dunno."
+
+"What's that story you were going to tell me about Harry Macklin?"
+
+"You see, it was this way--"
+
+And he poured forth the stale anecdote while they strolled back to the
+hotel. Connor smiled and nodded at appropriate places, but his absent
+eyes were seeing, once more, the low-running form of the little gray
+gelding coming away from the rest of the pack.
+
+
+
+
+_CHAPTER SIX_
+
+
+When he arrived at the hotel Ben Connor found the following telegram
+awaiting him:
+
+     Lady Fay in with ninety-eight Trickster did mile and furlong in
+     one fifty-four with one hundred twenty Caledonian stale mile in
+     one thirty-nine Billy Jones looks good track fast.
+
+     HARRY SLOCUM.
+
+That message blotted all other thoughts from the mind of Connor. From
+his traveling bag he brought out a portfolio full of wrinkled papers and
+pamphlets crowded with lists of names and figures; there followed a time
+of close work. Page after page of calculations scribbled with a soft
+pencil and in a large, sprawling hand, were torn from a pad, fluttered
+through the air and lay where they fell. When the hour was ended he
+pushed away the pamphlets of "dope" and picked up his notes. After that
+he sat in deep thought and drove puff after puff of cigarette-smoke at
+the ceiling.
+
+As his brown study progressed, he began crumpling the slips in his moist
+fingers until only two remained. These he balanced on his finger-tips as
+though their weight might speak to his finely attuned nerves. At length,
+one hand closed slowly over the paper it held and crushed it to a ball.
+He flicked this away with his thumb and rose. On the remaining paper was
+written "Trickster." Connor had made his choice.
+
+That done, his expression softened as men relax after a day of mental
+strain and he loitered down the stairs and into the street. Passing
+through the lobby he heard the voice of Jack Townsend raised obviously
+to attract his attention.
+
+"There he goes now. And nothing but the weight kept him from bettin' on
+the gray."
+
+Connor heard sounds, not words, for his mind was already far away in a
+club house, waiting for the "ponies" to file past. On the way to the
+telegraph office he saw neither street nor building nor face, until he
+had written on one of the yellow blanks, "A thousand on Trickster," and
+addressed it to Harry Slocum. Not until he shoved the telegram across
+the counter did he see Ruth Manning.
+
+She was half-turned from the key, but her head was canted toward the
+chattering sounder with a blank, inward look.
+
+"Do you hear?" she cried happily. "Bjornsen is back!"
+
+"Who?" asked Connor.
+
+"Sveynrod Bjornsen. Lost three men out of eight, but he got within a
+hundred and fifty miles of the pole. Found new land, too."
+
+"Lucky devil, eh?"
+
+But the girl frowned at him.
+
+"Lucky, nothing! Bjornsen is a fighter; he lost his father and his older
+brother up there three years ago and then he went back to make up for
+their deaths. Luck?"
+
+Connor, wondering, nodded. "Slipped my mind, that story of Bjornsen. Any
+other news?"
+
+She made a little gesture, palms up, as though she gathered something
+from the air.
+
+"News? The old wire has been pouring it at me all morning. Henry
+Levateur went up thirty-two thousand feet yesterday and the Admiral Barr
+was launched."
+
+Connor kept fairly abreast of the times, but now he was at sea.
+
+"That's the new liner, isn't it?"
+
+"Thirty thousand tons of liner at that. She took the water like a duck.
+Well, that's the stuff for Uncle Sam to give them; a few more like the
+Admiral Barr and we'll have the old colors in every port that calls
+itself a town. Europe will have to wake up."
+
+She counted the telegram with a sweep of her pencil and flipped the
+change to Connor out of the coin-box. The rattle of the sounder meant
+new things to Connor; the edges of the world crowded close, for when the
+noise stopped, in the thick silence he watched her features relax and
+the light go out of her eyes. It enabled him to glance into her life in
+Lukin, with only the chattering wire for a companion. A moment before
+she had been radiant--now she was a tired girl with purple shadows
+beneath her eyes making them look ghostly large.
+
+"Oh, Bobby," she called. A tall youth came out of an inner room. "Take
+the key, please; I'm going out for lunch."
+
+"Come to the hotel with me," suggested Connor.
+
+"Lunch at Townsend's?" She laughed with a touch of excitement. "That's a
+treat."
+
+Already she gained color and her eyes brightened. She was like a motor,
+Connor decided, nothing in itself, but responding to every electric
+current.
+
+"This lunch is on me, by the way," she added.
+
+"Why is that?"
+
+"Because I like to pay on my winning days. I cashed in on the Indian's
+horse this morning."
+
+In Connor's own parlance--it brought him up standing.
+
+"_You_ bet on it? You know horse-flesh, then. I like the little fellow,
+but the weight stopped me."
+
+He smiled at her with a new friendliness.
+
+"Don't pin any flowers on me," she answered. "Oh, I know enough about
+horses to look at their hocks and see how they stand; and I don't
+suppose I'd buy in on a pony that points the toe of a fore-foot--but I'm
+no judge. I bet on the gray because I know the blood."
+
+She had stopped at the door of the hotel and she did not see the change
+in Connor's face as they entered.
+
+"Queer thing about horses," she continued. "They show their strain,
+though the finest man that ever stepped might have a son that's a
+quitter. Not that way with horses. Why, any scrubby pinto that has a
+drop of Eden Gray blood in him will run till his heart breaks. You can
+bet on that."
+
+Lunch at Townsend's, Connor saw, must be the fashionable thing in Lukin.
+The "masses" of those who came to town for the day ate at the
+lunch-counters in the old saloons while the select went to the hotel.
+Mrs. Townsend, billowing about the room in a dress of blue with white
+polka-dots, when she was not making hurried trips into the kitchen, cast
+one glance of approval at Ben Connor and another of surprise at the
+girl. Other glances followed, for the room was fairly well filled, and a
+whisper went trailing about them, before and behind.
+
+It was easy to see that Ruth Manning was being accused of "scraping"
+acquaintance with the stranger, but she bore up beautifully, and Connor
+gauging her with an accurate eye, admired and wondered where she had
+learned. Yet when they found a table and he drew out a chair for her, he
+could tell from the manner in which she lowered herself into it that she
+was not used to being seated. That observation gave him a feeling of
+power over her.
+
+"You liked the gray, too?" she was saying, as he took his place.
+
+"I lost a hundred betting against him," said the gambler quietly. "I
+hope you made a killing."
+
+He saw by the slight widening of her eyes that a hundred dollars was a
+good deal of money to her; and she flushed as she answered:
+
+"I got down a bet with Jud Alison; it was only five dollars, but I had
+odds of ten to one. Fifty dollars looks pretty big to me," she added,
+and he liked her frankness.
+
+"But does everybody know about these grays?"
+
+"Not so many. They only come from one outfit, you see. Dad knew horses,
+and he told me an Eden Gray was worth any man's money. Poor Dad!"
+
+Connor watched her eyes turn dark and dull, but he tossed sympathy aside
+and stepped forward in the business.
+
+"I've been interested since I saw that little streak of gray shoot over
+the finish. Eighteen years old. Did you know that?"
+
+"Really? Well, Dad said an Eden Gray was good to twenty-five."
+
+"What else did he say?"
+
+"He didn't know a great deal about them, after all, but he said that now
+and then a deaf and dumb Negro comes. He's a regular giant. Whenever he
+meets a man he gets off the horse and puts a paper into the hand of the
+other. On the paper it says: Fifty dollars in gold coin! Always that."
+
+It was like a fairy tale to Connor.
+
+"Jude Harper of Collinsville met him once. He had only ten dollars in
+gold, but he had three hundred in paper. He offered the whole three
+hundred and ten to the deaf-mute but he only shook his head."
+
+"How often does he come out of the valley?"
+
+"Once a year--once in two years--nobody knows how often. Of course it
+doesn't take him long to find a man who'll buy a horse like one of the
+grays for fifty dollars. The minute the horse is sold he turns around
+and starts walking back. Pete Ricks tried to follow him. He turned back
+on Pete, jumped on him from behind a rock, and jerked him off his horse.
+Then he got him by the hair and bent his head back. Pete says he
+expected to have his neck broken--he was like a child in the arms of
+that giant. But it seemed that the mute was only telling him in
+deaf-and-dumb talk that he mustn't follow. After he'd frightened the
+life out of Pete the big mute went away again, and Pete came home as
+fast as his horse could carry him."
+
+Connor swallowed. "Where do they get the name Eden Gray?"
+
+"I don't know. Dad said that three things were true about every gray.
+It's always a gelding; it's always one price, and it always has a flaw.
+I looked the one over that ran to-day and couldn't see anything wrong,
+though."
+
+"Cow-hocked," said Connor, breathing hard. "Go on!"
+
+"Dad made up his mind that the reason they didn't sell more horses was
+because the owner only sold to weed out his stock."
+
+"Wait," said Connor, tapping on the table to make his point. "Do I
+gather that the only Eden Grays that are sold are the poorest of the
+lot?"
+
+"That was Dad's idea."
+
+"Go on," said Connor.
+
+"You're excited?"
+
+But he answered quickly: "Well, one of those grays beat me out of a
+hundred dollars. I can't help being interested."
+
+He detached his watch-charm from its catch and began to finger it
+carelessly; it was the head of an ape carved in ivory yellowed with age.
+
+The girl watched, fascinated, but she made no mention of it, for the jaw
+of the gambler was set in a hard line, and she felt, subconsciously, a
+widening distance between them.
+
+"Does the deaf-mute own the horses?" he was asking.
+
+"I suppose so."
+
+"This sounds like a regular catechism, doesn't it?"
+
+"I don't mind. Come to think of it, everything about the grays is queer.
+Well, I've never seen this man, but do you know what I think? That he
+lives off there in the mountains by himself because he's a sort of
+religious fanatic."
+
+"Religion? Crazy, maybe."
+
+"Maybe."
+
+"What's his religion?"
+
+"I don't know," said the girl coldly. "After you jerk lightning for a
+while, you aren't interested much in religion."
+
+He nodded, not quite sure of her position, but now her face darkened and
+she went on, gathering interest in the subject.
+
+"Oh, I've heard 'em rave about the God that made the earth and the stars
+and all that stuff; the mountains, too. I've heard 'em die asking for
+mercy and praising God. That's the way Dad went. It was drink that got
+him. But I'm for facts only. Far as I can see, when people come up
+against a thing they can't understand they just close their eyes and
+say, God! And when they're due to die, sometimes they're afraid and they
+say, God--because they think they're going out like a snuffed lantern
+and never will be lighted again."
+
+The gambler sat with his chin buried in his palm, and from beneath a
+heavy frown he studied the girl.
+
+"I don't hold malice more than the next one," said the girl, "but I saw
+Dad; and I've been sick of religion ever since. Besides, how do you
+explain the rotten things that happen in the world? Look at yesterday!
+The King of the Sea goes down with all on board. Were they all crooks?
+Were they all ready to die? They can tell me about God, but I say, 'Give
+me the proofs!'"
+
+She looked at Connor defiantly. "There's just one thing I believe in,"
+she said, "that's luck!"
+
+He did not stir, but still studied her, and she flushed under the
+scrutiny.
+
+"Not that I've had enough luck to make me fond of it. I've been stuck up
+here on the edge of the world all my life. And how I've wanted to get
+away! How I've wanted it! I've begged for a chance--to cut out the work.
+If it doesn't make callouses on a girl's hands it will make them on her
+heart. I've been waiting all my life for a chance, and the chance has
+never come." Something flared in her.
+
+"Sometimes I think," she whispered, "that I can't stand it! That I'd do
+anything! Anything--just to get away."
+
+She stopped, and as her passion ebbed she was afraid she had said too
+much.
+
+"Shake," he said, stretching his hand across the table, "I'm with you.
+Luck! That's all there is running things!"
+
+His fingers closed hard over hers and she winced, for he had forgotten
+to remove the ivory image from his hand, and the ape-head cut into her
+flesh.
+
+
+
+
+_CHAPTER SEVEN_
+
+
+That evening Ruth sent a boy over to the hotel with a telegram for
+Connor. It announced that Trickster, at six to one, came home a winner
+in the Murray. But Connor had time for only a grunt and a nod; he was
+too busy composing a letter to Harry Slocum, which read as follows:
+
+     DEAR HARRY:
+
+     I'm about to put my head in the lion's mouth; and in case you
+     don't hear from me again, say within three months, this is to
+     ask you to look for my bones. I'm starting out to nail a
+     thousand-to-one shot. Working a hunch for the biggest clean-up
+     we ever made. I'm going into the mountains to find a deaf mute
+     Negro who raises the finest horses I've ever seen. Do you get
+     that? No white man has gone into that valley; at least, no one
+     has come out talking. But I'm going to bring something with me.
+     If I don't come out it'll be because I've been knocked on the
+     head inside the valley. I'm not telling any one around here
+     where I'm bound, but I've made inquiries, and this is what I
+     gather: No one is interested in the mute's valley simply
+     because it's so far away. The mute doesn't bother them and they
+     won't bother him. That's the main reason for letting him alone.
+     The other reasons are that he's suspected of being a bad actor.
+
+     But the distance is the chief thing that fences people away.
+     The straight cut is bad going. The better way around is a slow
+     journey. It leads west out of Lukin and down into the valley of
+     the Girard River; then along the Girard to its headwaters. Then
+     through the mountains again to the only entrance to the valley.
+     I'm telling you all this so that you'll know what you may have
+     ahead of you. If I'm mum for three months come straight for
+     Lukin; go to a telegraph operator named Ruth Manning, and tell
+     her that you've come to get track of me. She'll give you the
+     names of the best dozen men in Lukin, and you start for the
+     valley with the posse.
+
+     Around Lukin they have a sort of foggy fear of the valley, bad
+     medicine, they call it.
+
+     I have a hard game ahead of me and I'm going to stack the
+     cards. I've got to get into the Garden by a trick and get out
+     again the same way. I start this afternoon.
+
+     I've got a horse and a pack mule, and I'm going to try my hand
+     at camping out. If I come back it will be on something that
+     will carry both the pack and me, I think, and it won't take
+     long to make the trip. Our days of being rich for ten days and
+     poor for thirty will be over.
+
+     Hold yourself ready; sharp at the end of ninety days, come West
+     if I'm still silent.
+
+     As ever,
+
+     BEN.
+
+Before the mail took that letter eastward, Ben Connor received his final
+advice from Jack Townsend. It was under the hotel man's supervision that
+he selected his outfit of soft felt hat, flannel shirts, heavy socks,
+and Napatan boots; Townsend, too, went with him to pick out the pack
+mule and all the elements of the pack, from salt to canned tomatoes.
+
+As for the horse, Townsend merely stood by to admire while Ben Connor
+went through a dozen possibilities and picked a solidly built chestnut
+with legs enough for speed in a pinch, and a flexible fetlock--joints
+that promised an easy gait.
+
+"You won't have no trouble," said Townsend, as Connor sat the saddle,
+working the stirrups back and forth and frowning at the creaking new
+leather. "Wherever you go you'll find gents ready to give you a hand on
+your way."
+
+"Why's that? Don't I look like an old hand at this game?"
+
+"Not with that complexion; it talks city a mile off. If you'd tell me
+where you're bound for--"
+
+"But I'm not bound anywhere," answered Connor. "I'm out to follow my
+nose."
+
+"With that gun you ought to get some game."
+
+Connor laid his hand on the butt of the rifle which was slung in a case
+under his leg. He had little experience with a gun, but he said
+nothing.
+
+"All trim," continued Townsend, stepping back to look. "Not a flaw in
+the mule; no sign of ringbone or spavin, and when a mule ain't got them,
+he's got nothin' wrong. Don't treat him too well. When you feel like
+pattin' him, cuss him instead. It's mule nature to like a beatin' once
+in a while; they spoil without it, like kids. He'll hang back for two
+days, but the third day he'll walk all over your hoss; never was a hoss
+that could walk with a mule on a long trip. Well, Mr. Connor, I guess
+you're all fixed, but I'd like to send a boy along to see you get
+started right."
+
+"Don't worry," smiled Connor. "I've written down all your suggestions."
+
+"Here's what you want to tie on to special," said the fat man. "Don't
+move your camp on Fridays or the thirteenth; if you come nigh a town and
+a black cat crosses your trail, you camp right there and don't move on
+to that town till the next morning. And wait a minute--if you start out
+and find you've left something in camp, make a cross in the trail before
+you go back."
+
+He frowned to collect his thoughts.
+
+"Well, if you don't do none of them three things, you can't come out far
+wrong. S'long, and good luck, Mr. Connor."
+
+Connor waved his hand, touched the chestnut with his heel and the horse
+broke into a trot, while the rope, coming taut, first stretched the neck
+of the mule and then tugged him into a dragging amble. In this manner
+Connor went out of Lukin. He smiled to himself, as he thought
+confidently of the far different fashion in which he would return.
+
+The first day gave Connor a raw nose, a sunburned neck and wrists, and
+his supper was charred bacon and tasteless coffee; but the next morning
+he came out of the choppy mountains and went down a long, easy slope
+into the valley of the Girard. There was always water here, and fine
+grass for the horse and mule, with a cool wind off the snows coming down
+the ravine. By the third day he was broken into the routine of his work
+and knew the most vulnerable spot on the ribs of the mule, and had a pet
+name for the chestnut. Thereafter the camping trip was pleasant enough.
+It took him longer than he had expected, for he would not press the
+horse as the pitch of the ravine grew steeper; later he saw his wisdom
+in keeping the chestnut fresh for the final burst, for when he reached
+the head-spring of the Girard, he faced a confusion of difficult, naked
+mountains. He was daunted but determined, and the next morning he filled
+his canteens and struck into the last stage of his journey.
+
+Luck gave him cool weather, with high moving clouds, which curtained the
+sun during the middle of the day, but even then it was hard work. He had
+not the vestige of a trail to follow; the mountain sides were bare rock.
+A scattering of shrubs and dwarfed trees found rooting in crevices, but
+on the whole Connor was journeying through a sea of stone, and
+sometimes, when the sun glinted on smooth surface, the reflection
+blinded him. By noon the chestnut was hobbling, and before nightfall
+even the mule showed signs of distress. And though Connor traveled now
+by compass, he was haunted by a continual fear that he might have
+mistaken his way, or that the directions he had picked up at Lukin might
+be entirely wrong. Evening was already coming over the mountains when he
+rounded a slope of black rock and found below him a picture that tallied
+in every detail with all he had heard of the valley.
+
+The first look was like a glance into a deep well of stone with a flash
+of water in the bottom; afterward he sat on a boulder and arranged the
+details of that big vista. Nothing led up to the Garden from any
+direction; it was a freak of nature. Some convulsion of the earth, when
+these mountains were first rising, perhaps, had split the rocks, or as
+the surface strata rolled up, they parted over the central lift and left
+this ragged fissure. Through the valley ran a river, but water could
+never have cut those saw-tooth cliffs; and Connor noted this strange
+thing: that the valley came to abrupt ends both north and south. By the
+slant sunlight, and at that distance--for he judged the place to be some
+ten or fifteen miles in length--it seemed as if the cliff fronts to the
+north and south were as solid and lofty as a portion of the sides; yet
+this could not be unless the river actually disappeared under the face
+of the wall. Still, he could not make out details from the distance,
+only the main outline of the place, the sheen of growing things, whether
+trees or grass, and the glitter of the river which swelled toward the
+center of the valley into a lake. He could discover only one natural
+entrance; in the nearest cliff wall appeared a deep, narrow cleft, which
+ran to the very floor of the valley, and the only approach was through a
+difficult ravine. The sore-footed chestnut had caught the flash of
+green, and now he pricked his ears and whinnied as if he saw home.
+Connor started down the rocks toward the entrance, leading the horse,
+while the mule trailed wearily behind. As he turned, the wind blew to
+him out of the valley a faint rhythmical chiming. When he paused to
+listen the sound disappeared.
+
+He dipped out of the brighter level into a premature night below;
+evening was gathering quickly, and with each step Connor felt the misty
+darkness closing above his head. He was stumbling over the boulders,
+downheaded, hardly able to see the ground at his feet, yet when he
+reached the bottom of the little ravine which ran toward the entrance,
+he looked up to a red sky, and the higher mountains rolled off in waves
+of light. Distances were magnified; he seemed to look from the bottom of
+the world to the top of it; he turned, a little dizzy, and between the
+edges of the cleft that rose straight as Doric pillars, he saw a fire
+burning at the entrance to the Garden of Eden. The sunset was above
+them, but the fire sent a long ray through the night of the lower
+valley. Connor pointed it out to his horse, and the little cavalcade
+went slowly forward.
+
+
+
+
+_CHAPTER EIGHT_
+
+
+With every step that he took into the darkness the feeling of awe
+deepened upon Connor, until he went frowning toward the fire as though
+it were an eye that watched his coming. He was quite close when the
+chestnut threw up its head with a snort and stopped, listening; Connor
+listened as well, and he heard a music of men's voices singing together,
+faint with distance; the sound traveled so far that he caught the pulse
+of the rhythm and the fiber of the voices rather than the tune itself,
+yet the awe which had been growing in Connor gathered suddenly in his
+throat. He had to close his hands hard to keep from being afraid.
+
+As though the chestnut felt the strangeness also, he neighed suddenly;
+the rock walls of the ravine caught up the sound and trumpeted it back.
+Connor, recovering from the shock, buried his fingers in the nostrils of
+the horse and choked the sound away; but the echo still went faintly
+before them and behind. The alarm had been given. The fire winked once
+and went out. Connor was left without a light to guide him; he looked up
+and saw that the sunset flush had fallen away to a dead gray.
+
+He looked ahead to where the fire had been. Just then the horse jerked
+his nose away and gasped in a new breath. Even that slight sound
+flurried Connor, for it might guide the unknown danger to him. Connor
+remembered that after all he was not a bandit stealing upon a peaceful
+town; he composed his mind and his nerves with an effort, and was about
+to step forward again when he saw in the night just before him a deeper
+shade among the shadows. Peering, he discovered the dim outlines of a
+man.
+
+Ben Connor was not a coward, but he was daunted by this apparition. His
+first impulse was to flee; his second was to leap at the other's throat.
+It spoke much for his steadiness in a crisis that he did neither, but
+called instead: "Who's there?"
+
+Metal gritted on metal, and a shaft of light poured into Connor's face
+so unexpectedly that he shrank. The chestnut reared, and turning to
+control the horse, Connor saw his eyes and the eyes of the mule shining
+like phosphorus. When he had quieted the gelding he saw that it was a
+hooded lantern which had been uncovered. Not a ray fell on the bearer of
+the light.
+
+"I saw a light down here," said Connor, after he had tried in vain to
+make out the features of the other. "It looked like a fire, and I
+started for it; I've lost my bearing in these mountains."
+
+Without answering, the bearer of the lantern kept the shaft staring into
+Connor's face for another moment; then it was as suddenly hooded and
+welcome darkness covered the gambler. With a gesture which he barely
+could make out, the silent man waved him forward down the ravine. It
+angered Connor, this mummery of speechlessness, but with his anger was
+an odd feeling of helplessness as though the other had a loaded gun at
+his head.
+
+The man walked behind him as they went forward, and presently the fire
+shone out at them from the entrance to the valley; thus Connor saw the
+blanket which had screened the fire removed, and caught a glimpse of a
+second form.
+
+Even the zenith was dark now, and it was double night in the ravine.
+With the chestnut stumbling behind him, Connor entered the circle of the
+fire and was stopped by the raised hand of the second man.
+
+"Why are you here?" said the guard.
+
+The voice was thin, but the articulation thick and soft, and as the
+questioner stepped into the full glow of the fire, Connor saw a Negro
+whose head was covered by white curls. He was very old; it seemed as
+though time had faded his black pigment, and now his skin, a dark
+bronze, was puckered at the corners of his mouth, about his eyes, and in
+the center of his forehead, seeming to have dried in wrinkles like
+parchment. While he talked his expression never varied from the weary
+frown; yet years had not bowed him, for he stood straight as a youth,
+and though his neck was dried away until it was no thicker than a strong
+man's forearm, he kept his head high and looked at Connor.
+
+The man who had gone out to stop Connor now answered for him, and
+turning to the voice the gambler saw that this fellow was a Negro
+likewise; as erect as the one by the fire, but hardly less ancient.
+
+"He is lost in the mountains, and he saw the fire at the gate, Ephraim."
+
+Ephraim considered Connor wistfully.
+
+"This way is closed," he said; "you cannot pass through the gate."
+
+The gambler looked up; a wall of rock on either side rose so high that
+the firelight failed to carry all the distance, and the darkness arched
+solidly above him. The calm dignity of the men stripped him of an
+advantage which he felt should be his, but he determined to appear at
+ease.
+
+"Your best way," continued Ephraim, "is toward that largest mountain.
+You see where its top is still lighted in the west, while the rest of
+the range is black.
+
+"Jacob can take you up from the ravine and show you the beginning of the
+way. But do not pass beyond the sight of the fire, Jacob."
+
+"Good advice," nodded Connor, forcing himself to smile, "if it weren't
+that my horse is too sore-footed to carry me. Even the mule can hardly
+walk--you see."
+
+He waved his hand and the chestnut threw up its head and took one or two
+halting steps to the side.
+
+"In the meantime, I suppose you've no objection if I sit down here for a
+moment or two?"
+
+Ephraim, bowing as though he ushered the other into an apartment of
+state, waved to a smooth-topped boulder comfortably near the fire.
+
+"I wish to serve you," he went on, "in anything I can do without leaving
+the valley. We have a tank just inside the gate, and Jacob will fill
+your canteen and water the horse and mule as well."
+
+"Kind of you," said Connor. "Cigarette?"
+
+The proffered smoke brought a wrinkling of amazed delight into the face
+of Ephraim and his withered hand stretched tentatively forth. Jacob
+forestalled him with a cry and snatched the cigarette from the open palm
+of Connor. He held it in both his cupped hands.
+
+"Tobacco--again!" He turned to Ephraim. "I have not forgotten!"
+
+Ephraim had folded his arms with dignity, and now he turned a reproving
+glance upon his companion.
+
+"Is it permitted?" he asked coldly.
+
+The joy went out of the face of Jacob.
+
+"What harm?"
+
+"Is it permitted?" insisted Ephraim.
+
+"He will not ask," argued Jacob dubiously.
+
+"He knows without asking."
+
+At this, very slowly and unwillingly, Jacob put the cigarette back into
+the hand of Ben Connor. A dozen curious questions came into the mind of
+the gambler, but he decided wisely to change the subject.
+
+"The boss gives you orders not to leave, eh?" he went on. "Not a step
+outside the gate? What's the idea?"
+
+"This thing was true in the time of the old masters. Only Joseph can
+leave the valley," Ephraim answered.
+
+"And you don't know why no one is allowed inside the valley?"
+
+"I have never asked," said Ephraim.
+
+Connor smoked fiercely, peering into the fire.
+
+"Well," he said at length, "you see my troubles? I can't get into the
+valley to rest up. I have to turn around and try to cross those
+mountains."
+
+"Yes," nodded Ephraim.
+
+"But the horse and mule will never make it over the rocks. I'll have to
+leave them behind or stay and starve with them."
+
+"That is true."
+
+"Rather than do that," said Connor, fencing for an opening, "I'd leave
+the poor devils here to live in the valley."
+
+"That cannot be. No animals are allowed to enter."
+
+"What? You'd allow this pair to die at the gate of the valley?"
+
+"No; I should lead them first into the mountains."
+
+"This is incredible! But I tell you, this horse is my friend--I can't
+desert him!"
+
+He fumbled in his coat pocket and then stretched out his hand toward the
+chestnut; the horse hobbled a few steps nearer and nosed the palm of it
+expectantly.
+
+"So!" muttered Ephraim, and shaded his eyes with his hand to look. He
+settled back and said in a different voice: "The horse loves you; it is
+said."
+
+"I put the matter squarely up to you," said Connor. "You see how I
+stand. Give me your advice!"
+
+Ephraim protested. "No, no! I cannot advise you. I know nothing of what
+goes on out yonder. Nevertheless--"
+
+He broke off, for Connor was lighting another cigarette from the butt of
+the first one, and Ephraim paused to watch, nodding with a sort of
+vicarious pleasure as he saw Connor inhale deeply and then blow out a
+thin drift of smoke.
+
+"You were about to say something else when I lighted this."
+
+"Yes, I was about to say that I could not advise you, but I can send to
+Joseph. He is near us now."
+
+"By all means send to Joseph."
+
+"Jacob," ordered the keeper of the gate, "go to Joseph and tell him what
+has happened."
+
+The other nodded, and then whistled a long note that drifted up the
+ravine. Afterward there was no answer, but Jacob remained facing
+expectantly toward the inside of the valley and presently Connor heard a
+sound that made his heart leap, the rhythmic hoofbeats of a galloping
+horse; and even in the darkness the long interval between impacts told
+him something of the animal's gait. Then into the circle of the
+firelight broke a gray horse with his tail high, his mane fluttering. He
+brought his gallop to a mincing trot and came straight toward Jacob, but
+a yard away he stopped and leaped catlike to one side; with head tossed
+high he stared at Connor.
+
+Cold sweat stood on the forehead of the gambler, for it was like
+something he had seen, something he remembered; all his dreams of what a
+horse should be, come true.
+
+Ephraim was saying sternly:
+
+"In my household the colts are taught better manners, Jacob."
+
+And Jacob answered, greatly perturbed: "There is a wild spirit in all
+the sons of Harith."
+
+"It is Cassim, is it not?" asked Ephraim.
+
+"Peace, fool!" said Jacob to the stallion, and the horse came and stood
+behind him, still watching the stranger over the shoulder of his master.
+
+"Years dim your eyes, Ephraim," he continued. "This is not Cassim and he
+is not the height of Cassim by an inch. No, it is Abra, the son of Hira,
+who was the daughter of Harith."
+
+He smiled complacently upon Ephraim, nodding his ancient head, and
+Ephraim frowned.
+
+"It is true that my eyes are not as young as yours, Jacob; but the
+horses of my household are taught to stand when they are spoken to and
+not dance like foolish children."
+
+This last reproof was called forth by the continual weaving back and
+forth of the stallion as he looked at Connor, first from one side of
+Jacob and then from the other. The old man now turned with a raised
+hand.
+
+"Stand!" he ordered.
+
+The stallion jerked up his head and became rigid.
+
+"A sharp temper makes a horse without heart," said the oracular Ephraim.
+
+Jacob scowled, and rolling his eyes angrily, searched for a reply; but
+he found none. Ephraim clasped one knee tightly in both hands, and
+weaving his head a little from side to side, delighted in his triumph.
+
+"And the hand which is raised," went on the tormentor, "should always
+fall."
+
+He was apparently quoting from an authority against which there was no
+appeal; now he concluded:
+
+"Threats are for children, and yearlings; but a grown horse is above
+them."
+
+"The spirit of Harith has returned in Abra," said Jacob gloomily. "From
+that month of April when he was foaled he has been a trial and a burden;
+yes, if even a cloud blows over the moon he comes to my window and calls
+me. There was never such a horse since Harith. However, he shall make
+amends. Abra!"
+
+The stallion stepped nearer and halted, alert.
+
+"Go to him, fool. Go to the stranger and give him your head. Quick!"
+
+The gray horse turned, hesitated, and then came straight to Connor, very
+slowly; there he bowed his head and dropped his muzzle on the knee of
+the white man, but all the while his eyes flared at the strange face in
+terror. Jacob turned a proud smile upon Ephraim, and the latter nodded.
+
+"It is a good colt," he admitted. "His heart is right, and in time he
+may grow to some worth."
+
+Once more Connor fumbled in his pocket.
+
+"Steady," he said, looking squarely into the great, bright eyes.
+"Steady, boy."
+
+He put his hand under the nose of the stallion.
+
+"It's a new smell, but little different."
+
+Abra snorted softly, but though he shook he dared not move. The gambler,
+with a side glance, saw the two men watching intently.
+
+"Ah," said Connor, "you have pulled against a headstall here, eh?"
+
+He touched an old scar on the cheek of the horse, and Abra closed his
+eyes, but opened them again when he discovered that no harm was done to
+him by the tips of those gentle fingers.
+
+"You may let him have his head again," said Connor. "He will not leave
+me now until he is ordered."
+
+"So?" exclaimed Jacob. "We shall see! Enough Abra!"
+
+The gray tossed up his head at that word, but after he had taken one
+step he returned and touched the back of the white man's hand, snuffed
+at his shoulder and at his hat and then stood with pricking ears. A soft
+exclamation came in unison from Jacob and Ephraim.
+
+"I have never seen it before," muttered Jacob. "To see it, one would say
+he was a son of Julanda."
+
+"It is my teaching and not the blood of Julanda that gives my horses
+manners," corrected Ephraim. "However, if I might look in the hand of
+the stranger--"
+
+"There is nothing in it," answered Connor, smiling, and he held out both
+empty palms. "All horses are like this with me."
+
+"Is it true?" they murmured together.
+
+"Yes; I don't know why. But you were going to bring Joseph."
+
+"Ah," said Ephraim, shaking his head. "I had almost forgotten. Hurry,
+Jacob; but if you will take my advice in the matter you will teach your
+colts fewer tricks and more sound sense."
+
+The other grunted, and putting his hand on the withers of Abra, he
+leaped to the back with the lightness of a strong youth. A motion of his
+hand sent the gray into a gallop that shot them through the gate into
+darkness.
+
+
+
+
+_CHAPTER NINE_
+
+
+That faint and rhythmic chiming which Connor had heard from the mountain
+when he first saw the valley now came again through the gate, more
+clearly. There was something familiar about the sound--yet Connor could
+not place it.
+
+"Did you mark?" said Ephraim, shaking his head. "Did you see the colt
+shy at the white rock as he ran? In my household that could never
+happen; and yet Jacob does well enough, for the blood of Harith is as
+stubborn as old oak and wild as a wolf. But your gift, sir"--and here he
+turned with much respect toward Connor--"is a great one. I have never
+seen Harith's sons come to a man as Abra came to you."
+
+He was surprised to see the stranger staring toward the gate as if he
+watched a ghost.
+
+"He did not gallop," said Connor presently, and his voice faltered. "He
+flowed. He poured himself through the air."
+
+He swept a hand across his forehead and with great effort calmed the
+muscles of his face.
+
+"Are there more horses like that in the valley?"
+
+Ephraim hesitated, for there was such a glittering hunger in the eyes of
+this stranger that it abashed him. Vanity, however, brushed scruple
+away.
+
+"More like Abra in the valley? So!"
+
+He seemed to hunt for superlatives with which to overwhelm his
+questioner.
+
+"The worst in my household is Tabari, the daughter of Numan, and she was
+foaled lame in the left foreleg. But if ten like Abra were placed in
+one corral and Tabari in the other, a wise man would give the ten and
+take the one and render thanks that such good fortune had come his way."
+
+"Is it possible?" exclaimed Connor in that same, small, choked voice.
+
+"I speak calmly," said Ephraim gravely. He added with some hesitation:
+"But if I must tell the whole truth, I shall admit that my household is
+not like the household of the blood of Rustir. Just as she was the queen
+of horses, so those of her blood are above other horses as the master is
+above me. Yet, if ten like Tabari were placed in one corral and the
+stallion Glani were placed in another, I suppose that a wise man would
+give the ten for the one."
+
+He added with a sigh: "But I should not have such wisdom."
+
+Connor smiled.
+
+"And at that rate it would require a hundred like Abra to buy Glani?" he
+asked.
+
+"A thousand," said the old man instantly, "and then the full price would
+not be paid. I have already asked the master to cross him with Hira. He
+will answer me soon; one touch of Glani's blood will lift the strain in
+my household. My colts are good mettle--but the fire, the soul of
+Glani!"
+
+He bowed his head.
+
+"Ah, they are coming, Jacob and Joseph."
+
+His keen ear heard a sound which was not audible to Connor for several
+moments; then two gray horses swept into the circle of the firelight,
+and from the mare which led Abra by several yards, a huge Negro
+dismounted.
+
+"If you are Joseph," the gambler said, "I suppose Jacob has already told
+you about me. My name is Connor. I've been hunting up the Girard River,
+struck across the mountains yonder, and here I've brought up with a lame
+mule and a lamer horse. The point is that I want to rest up in your
+valley until my animals can go on. Is it possible?"
+
+While he spoke the giant watched him with eyes which squinted in their
+intensity, but when he ended Joseph answered not a word. Connor
+remembered now what he had heard of the deaf mute who alone went back
+and forth from the Garden of Eden, and his heart fell. It was talking to
+a face of stone.
+
+In the meantime Joseph continued to examine the stranger. From head to
+foot the little, bright eyes moved, leisurely, and Connor grew hot as he
+endured it. When the survey was completed to his own satisfaction,
+Joseph went first to the mule and next to the horse, lifting their feet
+one by one, then running his hands over their legs. After this he turned
+to Jacob and his great fingers glided through the characters of the
+language of the mute, bunching, knotting, darting out in a fluid
+swiftness.
+
+"Joseph says," translated Ephraim, "that your horse is lame, but that he
+can climb the hills if you go on foot; the mule is not lame at all, but
+is pretending, because he is tired."
+
+An oath rose up in the throat of Connor, but he checked it against his
+teeth and smiled at Joseph. The big man hissed through his teeth and his
+mare sprang to his side. She was not more than fourteen two, and
+slenderly made compared with Abra, yet she had borne the great bulk of
+Joseph with ease before, and now she was apparently ready to carry him
+again. He dropped his hand upon her withers, and facing Connor, swept
+his arm out in a broad gesture of dismissal. Vaguely the gambler noticed
+this, but his real interest centered on the form of the mare. He was
+seeing her not with that unwieldy bulk crushing her back, but with a
+fly-weight jockey mounted on a racing pad riding her past the grand
+stand. He was hearing the odds which the bookies offered; he was
+watching those odds drop by leaps and bounds as he hammered away at
+them, betting in lumps of hundreds and five hundreds, staking his
+fortune on his first "sure thing." Even as she stood passive, tossing
+her nose, he knew her speed, and it took his breath. Abra himself would
+walk away from ordinary company, but this gray mare--slowly Connor
+looked back to the face of Joseph and saw that the giant was waiting to
+see his command obeyed. For the first time he noted the cartridge belt
+strung across the fellow's gaunt middle and the holster in which pulled
+the weight of a forty-five. In case of doubt, here was a cogent reason
+to hurry a loiterer. To persuade the giant would never have been easy,
+but to persuade him through an interpreter made the affair impossible.
+Struggling for a loophole of escape, he absentmindedly unsnapped from
+his watch chain the little ivory talisman, the ape head, and commenced
+to finger it. It had been his constant companion for years and in a
+measure he connected his luck with it.
+
+"My friend," said Connor to Ephraim, "you see my position? But if I
+can't do better is there any objection to my using this fire of yours
+for cooking? The fire, at least, is outside the valley."
+
+Even this question Ephraim apparently did not feel qualified to answer.
+He turned first to the gigantic mute and conversed with him at some
+length; his own fluent signals were answered by single movements on the
+part of Joseph, and Connor recognized the signs of dissent.
+
+"I have told him everything," said Ephraim, turning again to Connor and
+shaking his head in sympathy. "And how Abra came to you, but though the
+horse trusted you, Joseph does not wish you to stay. I am sorry."
+
+Connor looked through the gate into the darkness of the Garden of Eden;
+at the entrance to his promised land he was to be turned back. In his
+despair he opened his palm and looked down absently at the little
+grinning ape head of ivory. Even while he was deep in thought he felt
+the silence which settled over the three men, and when he looked up he
+saw the glittering eyes of Joseph fixed upon the trinket. That instant
+new hope came to Connor; he closed his hand over the ape head, and
+turning to Ephraim he said:
+
+"Very well. If there's nothing else for me to do, I'll take the chance
+of getting through the mountains with my lame nags."
+
+As he spoke he threw the reins over the neck of the chestnut; but before
+he could put his foot in the stirrup Joseph was beside him and touched
+his shoulder.
+
+"Wait!" said he, and the gambler paused with astonishment. The mask of
+the mute which he had hitherto kept on his face now fell from it.
+
+"Let me see," the giant was saying, and held out his hand for the ivory
+image.
+
+The pulse of Connor doubled its beat--but with his fingers still closed
+he said:
+
+"The ivory head is an old companion of mine and has brought me a great
+deal of luck."
+
+The torchlight changed in the eyes of Joseph as the sun glints and
+glimmers on watered silk.
+
+"I would not hurt it," he said, and made a gingerly motion to show how
+light and deft his fingers could be.
+
+"Very well," said Connor, "but I rarely let it out of my hand."
+
+He stepped closer to the firelight and exposed the little carving again.
+It was a curious bit of work, with every detail nicely executed;
+pinpoint emeralds were inset for eyes, the lips grinned back from tiny
+fangs of gold, and the swelling neck suggested the powerful ape body of
+the model. In the firelight the teeth and eyes flashed.
+
+Joseph grinned in sympathy. Ephraim and Jacob also had drawn close, and
+the white man saw in the three faces one expression: they had become
+children before a master, and when Connor placed the trinket in the
+great paw of Joseph the other two flashed at him glances of envy. As for
+the big man, he was transformed.
+
+"Speak truth," he said suddenly. "Why do you wish to enter the Garden?"
+
+"I've already told you, I think," said Connor. "It's to rest up until
+the horse and mule are well again."
+
+The glance of the huge man, which had hitherto wandered from the trinket
+to Connor's face, now steadied brightly upon the latter.
+
+"There must be another reason."
+
+Connor felt himself pressed to the wall.
+
+"Look at the thing you have in your hand, Joseph. You are asking
+yourself: 'What is it? Who made it? See how the firelight glitters on
+it--perhaps there is life in it!'"
+
+"Ah!" sighed the three in one breath.
+
+"Perhaps there is power in it. I have used it well and it has brought me
+a great deal of good luck. But you would like to know all those things,
+Joseph. Now look at the gate to the Garden!"
+
+He waved to the lofty and dark cleft before them.
+
+"It is like a face to me. People live behind it. Who are they? Who is
+the master? What does he do? What is his power? That is another reason
+why I wish to go in; and why should you fear me? I am alone; I am
+unarmed."
+
+It seemed that Joseph learned more from Connor's expression than from
+his words.
+
+"The law is the will of David."
+
+The Garden became to Connor as the forbidden room to Bluebeard's wife;
+it tempted him as a high cliff tempts the climber toward a fall. He
+mustered a calm air and voice.
+
+"That is a matter I can arrange with your master. He may have laws to
+keep out thieves, but certainly he has nothing against honest men."
+
+Joseph shrugged his big shoulders, but Ephraim answered: "The will of
+David never changes. I am no longer young, but since I have been old
+enough to remember, I have never seen a man either come into the valley
+or leave it except Joseph."
+
+The solemnity of the old man staggered Connor. He felt his resolution to
+enter at any cost waver, and then Abra, the young stallion, came to his
+side and looked in his face.
+
+It was the decisive touch. The life which the devotee would risk for his
+God, or the patriot for his country, the gambler was willing to venture
+for the sake of a "sure thing."
+
+"Let us exchange gifts," said Connor; "I give you the ivory head. It may
+bring you good luck. You give me the right to enter the valley and I
+accept any good or evil that comes to me."
+
+The huge fingers of Joseph curled softly over the image.
+
+"Beware of the law!" cried Ephraim. "And the hand of the master!"
+
+The giant shrank, but he looked at Ephraim with sullen defiance.
+
+"Come," he said to Connor. "This is on your own head."
+
+
+
+
+_CHAPTER TEN_
+
+
+"It is a long ride to the house of David," said Jacob. "Your horse is
+footsore; take Abra."
+
+But Ephraim broke in: "If you care for speed and wise feet beneath you,
+Tabari herself is there."
+
+He whistled as Jacob had done before, but with another grace-note at the
+end.
+
+"Those of my household answer when they are called," continued the old
+man proudly. "Listen!"
+
+A soft whinny out of the darkness, and Tabari galloped into the
+firelight, and stopped at the side of her master motionless.
+
+"Choose," said Ephraim.
+
+He smiled at Jacob, who in return was darkly silent.
+
+The mare tugged at the heartstrings of Connor, but he answered, slipping
+carefully into the formal language which apparently was approved most in
+the valley.
+
+"She is worthy of a king, but Abra was offered to me first. But will he
+carry a saddle?"
+
+"He will carry anything but a whip," said Jacob, casting a glance of
+triumph at Ephraim. "You will see!" He was already busy at the knot
+under the flap of Connor's saddle, and presently he slipped the saddle
+from the back of the chestnut. "Come!" he called.
+
+Abra came, but he came like a fighter into the ring, dancing, ready for
+trouble.
+
+"Fool!" shouted Jacob, stamping. "Fool, and grandson of a fool, stand!"
+
+The ears of Abra flicked back along his neck and he trembled as the
+saddle was swung over him. Under its impact he crouched and shuddered,
+but the outbreak of bucking for which Connor waited did not come. The
+jerk on the cinch brought a snort from him, but that was all.
+
+"We may not put iron in his mouth," said Jacob, as Connor came up with
+the bridle, "but a touch on this will turn him or stop him, as you
+wish."
+
+As he spoke he picked up a small rope, which he knotted around the neck
+of Abra close to the ears, and handed the end to Connor.
+
+"Look!" he said to the horse, pointing to Connor. "This is your master
+to-night. Bear him as you would bear me, Abra, without leaping or
+stumbling, smoothly, as son of Khalissa should do. And hark," he added
+in the ear of the young stallion; "if the mare of Joseph outruns you,
+you are no horse of my household, but a mongrel, a bloodless knave."
+
+Joseph was already trotting through the gate and growing dim beyond, so
+Connor put his foot in the stirrup and swung into the saddle. He landed
+as upon springs, all the lithe body of the stallion giving under the
+shock; and Connor felt a quivering power beneath him like the vibration
+of a racing motor. Abra's eyes glinted as he threw his head high to take
+stock of the new master.
+
+"Go," commanded Jacob; "and remember your speed, for the honor of him
+who trained you!"
+
+The last words were whipped away from the ear of Connor and trailed into
+a murmur behind him, for without a preliminary step Abra sprang from a
+stand into a full gallop. That forward lurch swayed Connor far back; he
+lost touch with his stirrups, but, clinging desperately with his knees,
+he was presently able to right himself. There was hard gravel beneath
+them, but the gait was as soft as if Abra ran in deep sand without
+labor; there was no more wrench and shock than the ghost of a man
+riding a ghost of a horse.
+
+A column of black shot by on either hand; Connor was through the gate to
+the Garden of Eden and rushing down the slope beyond. He knew this
+dimly, but chiefly he was aware only of the whipping of the wind.
+Something Ephraim had said came into his memory: "If there were ten like
+Abra in one corral, and one like Tabari in another, a wise man--" But,
+no doubt, Ephraim had jested.
+
+For, glancing up, he saw the tops of tall trees rushing past him against
+the sky, and for the first time he knew the speed of that gallop. In his
+exultation he threw up his hand, and his shout rang before him and
+behind. That taught him a lesson he would never forget when he sat the
+saddle on an Eden Gray; for Abra lurched into a run with a suddenness
+that swayed Connor against the cantle again.
+
+He steadied himself quickly and called to Abra; the first word cut down
+that racing gait to the long, free stride, but the brief rush had taken
+the breath of the rider, and now he looked about him.
+
+He had been in California years before, and now he recognized the
+peculiar, clean perfume of the trees which lined the road; they were the
+eucalyptus, and they fenced the way with a gigantic hedge several rows
+deep. It was a winding road that they followed, dipping over a rolling
+ground and swinging leisurely from side to side to avoid high places, so
+that the vista of the trees was continually in motion, twisting back and
+forth; or when he looked straight up he saw the slender tree-points
+brushing past the stars. So he galloped into a long, straight stretch
+with a pale gleam of water beyond it; and between he saw Joseph.
+
+It was strange that in spite of the speed of Abra, Joseph's mare had not
+been overtaken; for no matter what quality the mare might have, she
+carried in the gigantic Negro an impost of some two hundred and fifty
+pounds. A suspicion of discourtesy on his part must have come to Joseph,
+for now he brought his horse back to a canter that allowed Connor to
+come close, so close indeed that he saw Joseph laughing in a horrible
+soundless way and beckoning him on, very much as though he challenged
+Abra. Surely the fellow must know that no horse could concede such
+weight to Abra, but Connor waved his arm to signify that he accepted the
+challenge, and called on Abra.
+
+There followed the breathless lunge forward, the sinking of the body as
+the stride lengthened, the whir of wind against his face; Connor sat the
+saddle erect, smiling, and waited for Joseph to come back to him.
+
+But Joseph did not come, and as the mare reached the river and her hoofs
+rang on the bridge Connor saw with unspeakable wonder that he had
+actually lost ground. Once more he called on Abra, and as they struck
+the bridge in turn the young stallion was fully extended, while Connor
+swung forward in the saddle to throw more weight on the withers and take
+the strain from the long back muscles. Leaning close to the neck of
+Abra, with the mane whipping his face, he squinted down the road at
+Joseph, and growled with savage satisfaction as he saw the mare drift
+back to him. If he could reach her with a sprint she was beaten, for she
+bore the extra burden. Once more he called on Abra, and heard a slight
+grunt as the stallion gave the last burst of his strength; the hoofs of
+the two roared on the hard road, and Joseph came back hand over hand.
+Connor, laughing exultantly, squinted into the wind.
+
+"Good boy!" he muttered. "Good old Abra! If he had Salvator under him
+we'd get him at this rate. We're on his hip--Now!"
+
+He was indeed in touch with the flying mare, and, looking through the
+dimness, he marveled at her long, free swing, the level drive of the
+croup, and--he saw with astonishment--her pricking ears! Not as if she
+were racing, but merely galloping. He flattened himself along the neck
+of Abra and called on him again, slapped his shoulder with the flat of
+his hand, flicked him along the flank with the butt of the rope; but the
+mare held him invincibly; he could not gain the breadth of a hair, and
+by the pounding of Abra's forefeet he knew that the stallion was running
+himself out. At that moment, to crown his bewilderment, Joseph turned,
+laughing again in that soundless way. Only for a moment; then he turned,
+and, leaning over the withers of his mount, the mare lengthened, it
+seemed to Connor, and moved away.
+
+Her hips went past him, then her tail, flying out straight behind, a
+streak of silver; and last of all, there was the hiss of derision from
+Joseph whistling back to him.
+
+Connor threw himself back into the saddle and brought the stallion down
+to a moderate pace. One hand was clutched at his throat, for it seemed
+to him that his heart was beating there. Before him raced a vision of
+Ben Connor, king of the racetracks of the world, with horses no
+handicapper could measure.
+
+
+
+
+_CHAPTER ELEVEN_
+
+
+A Second thought made him lean a little, listening closely, and then he
+discovered that after this terrific trial Abra was breathing deep and
+free. Connor sat straight again and smiled. They must be close to the
+lake he had seen from the mountain, for among the trees to his left was
+a faint gleam of water. A moment later this glimmer went out, and the
+hoofbeats of Abra were muffled on turf. They had left the road and
+headed for a scattering of lights. Joseph had drawn the mare back to a
+hand-gallop, and Abra followed the example; at this rocking gait they
+swept through the grove between two long, low buildings, always
+climbing, and came suddenly upon a larger house. On three sides Connor
+looked down upon water; the building was behind him. Not a light showed
+in it, but he made out the low, single story, the sense of weight, and
+crude arches of the Mission style. Through an opening in the center of
+the facade he looked into darkness which he knew must be the patio.
+
+Following the example of Joseph, he dismounted, and while the big man,
+with his waddling, difficult walk, disappeared into the court, Connor
+stepped back and looked over Abra. Starlight was enough to see him by,
+for he glimmered with running sweat even in the semidarkness, but it was
+plain from his high head and inquisitive muzzle that he was neither
+winded nor down-hearted. He followed Connor like a dog when the gambler
+went in turn to the mare. She turned about nervously to watch the
+newcomer. Not until Abra had touched noses with her and perhaps spoken
+to her the dumb horse-talk would she allow Connor to come close, and
+even then he could not see her as clearly as the stallion. By running
+his finger-tips over her he discovered the reason--only on the flanks
+and across the breast was she wet with perspiration, and barely moist on
+the thighs and belly. The race had winded her no more than a six-furlong
+canter.
+
+He was still marveling at this discovery when Joseph appeared under the
+arch carrying a lantern and beckoned him in, leading the way to a large
+patio, surrounded by a continuous arcade. In the center a fountain was
+alternately silver and shadow in the swinging lantern light. The floor
+of the patio was close-shaven turf.
+
+Joseph hung the lantern on the inside of one of the arches and turned to
+Connor, apparently to invite him to take one of the chairs under the
+arcade. Instead, he raised his hand to impose silence. Connor heard,
+from some distance, a harsh sound of breathing of inconceivable
+strength. For though it was plainly not close to them, he could mark
+each intake and expulsion of breath. And the noise created for him the
+picture of a monster.
+
+"Let us go to the master," said Joseph, and turned straight across the
+patio in the direction of that sonorous breathing.
+
+Connor followed, by no means at ease. From the withered old men to huge
+Joseph had been a long step. How far would be the reach between Joseph
+himself and the omnipotent master?
+
+He passed in the track of Joseph toward the rear of the patio. Presently
+the big man halted, removed his hat, and faced a door beneath the
+arcade. It was only a momentary interruption. He went on again at once,
+replacing his hat, but the thrill of apprehension was still tingling in
+the blood of the gambler. Now they went under the arcade, through an
+open door, and issued in the rear of the house, Connor's imaginary
+"monster" dissolved.
+
+For they stood in front of a blacksmith shop, the side toward them being
+entirely open so that Connor could see the whole of the interior. Two
+sooty lanterns hung from the rafters, the light tangling among wreaths
+of smoke above and showing below a man whose back was turned toward them
+as he worked a great snoring bellows with one hand.
+
+That bellows was the source of the mysterious breathing. Connor
+chuckled; all mysteries dissolved as this had done the moment one
+confronted them. He left off chuckling to admire the ease with which the
+blacksmith handled the bellows. A massive angle of iron was buried in
+the forge, the white flames spurting around it as the bellows blew,
+casting the smith into high relief at every pulse of the fire. Sometimes
+it ran on the great muscles of the arm that kept the bellows in play;
+sometimes it ran a dazzling outline around his entire body, showing the
+leather apron and the black hair which flooded down about his shoulders.
+
+"Who--" began Connor.
+
+"Hush," cautioned Joseph in a whisper. "David speaks when he
+chooses--not sooner."
+
+Here the smith laid hold on the iron with long pincers, and, raising it
+from the coals, at once the shop burst with white light as David placed
+the iron on the anvil and caught up a short-handled sledge. He whirled
+it and brought it down with a clangor. The sparks spurted into the
+night, dropping to the ground and turning red at the very feet of
+Connor. Slowly David turned the iron, the steady shower of blows bending
+it, changing it, molding it under the eye of the gambler. This was that
+clangor which had floated through the clear mountain air to him when he
+first gazed down on the valley; this was the bell-like murmur which had
+washed down to him through the gates of the valley.
+
+At least it was easy to understand why the servants feared him. A full
+fourteen pounds was in the head of that sledge, Connor guessed, yet
+David whirled it with a light and deft precision. Only the shuddering of
+the anvil told the weight of those blows. Meantime, with every leap of
+the spark-showers the gambler studied the face of the master. They were
+features of strength rather than beauty from the frowning forehead to
+the craggy jaw. A sort of fierce happiness lived in that face now, the
+thought of the craftsman and the joy of the laborer in his strength.
+
+As the white heat passed from the iron and it no longer flowed into a
+shape so readily under the hammer of the smith, a change came in him.
+Connor knew nothing of ironcraft, but he guessed shrewdly that another
+man would have softened the metal with fire again at this point.
+Instead, David chose to soften it with strength. The steady patter of
+blows increased to a thundering rain as the iron turned a dark and
+darker red.
+
+The rhythm of the worker grew swifter, did not break, and Connor watched
+with a keen eye of appreciation. Just as a great thoroughbred makes its
+supreme effort in the stretch by a lengthening and slight quickening of
+stride, but never a dropping into the choppy pace of unskilled labor at
+speed, so the man at the anvil was now rocking steadily back and forth
+from heel to toe, the knees unflexing a little as he struck and
+stiffening as he swung up the hammer. The greater effort was told only
+by the greater ring of the hammer face on the hardening iron--by that
+and by the shudder of the arm of the smith as the fourteen pounds went
+clanging home to the stroke.
+
+And now the iron was quite dark--the smith stood with the ponderous
+sledge poised above his head and turned the bar swiftly, with study, to
+see that the angle was exactly what he wished. The hammer did not
+descend again on the iron; the smith was content, and plunging the big
+angle iron into the tempering tub, his burly shoulders were obscured for
+a moment by a rising cloud of steam.
+
+He stepped out of this and came directly to them. Now the lantern was
+behind him, he was silhouetted in black, a mighty figure. He was panting
+from his labor, and the heavy sound of his breathing disturbed the
+gambler. He had expected to find a wise and simple old man in David.
+Instead, he was face to face with a Hercules.
+
+His attention was directed entirely to Joseph.
+
+"I come from my work unclean," he said. "Joseph, take the stranger
+within and wait."
+
+Joseph led back into the patio to a plain wooden table beside which
+Connor, at the gesture of invitation, sat down. Here Joseph left him
+hurriedly, and the gambler looked about. The arcade was lightened by a
+flagging of crystalline white stone, and the ceiling was inlaid with the
+same material. But the arches and the wall of the building were of
+common dobe, massive, but roughly built.
+
+Beyond the fountain nodded like a ghost in the patio, and now and then,
+when the lantern was swayed by the wind, the pool glinted and was black
+again. The silence was beginning to make him feel more than ever like an
+unwelcome guest when another old Negro came, and Connor noted with
+growing wonder the third of these ancients. Each of them must have been
+in youth a fine specimen of manhood. Even in white-headed age they
+retained some of that noble countenance which remains to those who have
+once been strong. This fellow bore a tray upon his arm, and in the free
+hand carried a large yellow cloth of a coarse weave.
+
+He placed on the table a wooden trencher with a great loaf of white
+bread, a cone of clear honey, and an earthen pitcher of milk. Next he
+put a wooden bowl on a chair beside Connor, and when the latter
+obediently extended his hands, the old man poured warm water over them
+and dried them with a napkin.
+
+There was a ceremony about this that fitted perfectly with the
+surroundings, and Connor became thoughtful. He was to tempt the master
+with the wealth of the world, but what could he give the man to replace
+his Homeric comfort?
+
+In the midst of these reflections soft steps approached him, and he saw
+the brown-faced David coming in a shapeless blouse and trousers of rough
+cloth, with moccasins on his feet. Rising to meet his host, he was
+surprised to find that David had no advantage in height and a small one
+in breadth of shoulder; in the blacksmith shop he had seemed a giant.
+The brown man stopped beside the table. He seemed to be around thirty,
+but because of the unwrinkled forehead Connor decided that he was
+probably five years older.
+
+"I am David," he said, without offering his hand.
+
+"I," said the gambler, "am Benjamin."
+
+There was a flash that might have been either pleasure or suspicion in
+the face of David.
+
+"Joseph has told me what has passed between you," he said.
+
+"I hope he's broken no law by letting me come in."
+
+"My will is the law; in disregarding me he has broken a law."
+
+He made a sign above his shoulder that brought Joseph hurrying out of
+the gloom, his keen little eyes fastened upon the face of the master
+with intolerable anxiety. There was another sign from David, and Joseph,
+without a glance at Connor, snatched the ivory head out of his pocket,
+thrust it upon the table, and stood back, watching the brown man with
+fascination.
+
+"You see," went on David, "that he returns to you the price which you
+paid him. Therefore you have no longer a right to remain in the Garden
+of Eden."
+
+Connor flushed. "If this were a price," he answered, clinging as closely
+as he could to language as simple and direct as that of David, "it could
+be returned to me. But it is not a price. It is a gift, and gifts cannot
+be returned."
+
+He held out the ape-head, and when Joseph could see nothing save the
+face of David, he pushed the trinket back toward the huge man.
+
+"Then," said the brown man, "the fault which was small before is now
+grown large."
+
+He looked calmly upon Joseph, and the giant quailed. By the table hung a
+gong on which the master tapped; one of the ancient servants appeared
+instantly.
+
+"Go to my room," said David, "and bring me the largest nugget from the
+chest."
+
+The old man disappeared, and while they waited for his return the little
+bright eyes of Joseph went to and fro on the face of the master; but
+David was staring into the darkness of the patio. The servant brought a
+nugget of gold, as large as the doubled fist of a child, and the master
+rolled it across the table to Connor.
+
+A tenseness about his mouth told the gambler that much was staked on
+this acceptance. He turned the nugget in his hand, noting the
+discoloration of the ore from which it had been taken.
+
+"It is a fine specimen," he said.
+
+"You will see," said David, "both its size and weight."
+
+And Connor knew; it was an exchange for the ivory head. He laid the
+nugget carelessly back upon the table, thankful that the gift had been
+offered with such suspicious bluntness.
+
+"It is a fine specimen," he repeated, "but I am not collecting."
+
+There was a heavy cloud on the face of David as he took up the nugget
+and passed it into the hand of the waiting servant; but his glance was
+for Joseph, not Connor.
+
+Joseph burst into speech for the first time, and the words tumbled out.
+
+"I do not want it. I shall not keep it. See, David; I give it up to
+him!" He made a gesture with both hands as though he would push away the
+ape-head forever.
+
+The master looked earnestly at Connor.
+
+"You hear?"
+
+The latter shrugged his shoulders, saying: "I've never taken back a
+gift, and I can't begin now."
+
+Connor's heart was beating rapidly, from the excitement of the strange
+interview and the sense of his narrow escape from banishment. Because he
+had made the gift to Joseph he had an inalienable right, it seemed, to
+expect some return from Joseph's master--even permission to stay in the
+valley, if he insisted.
+
+There was another of those uncomfortable pauses, with the master looking
+sternly into the night.
+
+"Zacharias," he said.
+
+The servant stepped beside him.
+
+"Bring the whip--and the cup."
+
+The eyes of Zacharias rolled once toward Joseph and then he was gone,
+running; he returned almost instantly with a seven foot blacksnake,
+oiled until it glistened. He put it in the hand of David, but only when
+Joseph stepped back, shuddering, and then turned and kneeled before
+David, the significance of that whip came home to Connor, sickening him.
+The whites of Joseph's eyes rolled at him and Connor stepped between
+Joseph and the whip.
+
+"Do you mean this?" he gasped. "Do you mean to say that you are going to
+flog that poor fellow because he took a gift from me?"
+
+"From you it was a gift," answered the master, perfectly calm, "but to
+him it was a price. And to me it is a great trouble."
+
+"God!" murmured Connor.
+
+"Do you call on him?" asked the brown man severely. "He is only here in
+so far as I am the agent of his justice. Yet I trust it is not more His
+will than it is the will of David. Also, the heart of Joseph is stubborn
+and must be humbled. Tears are the sign of contrition, and the whip
+shall not cease to fall until Joseph weeps."
+
+His glance pushed Connor back; the gambler saw the lash whirled, and he
+turned his back sharply before it fell. Even so, the impact of the lash
+on flesh cut into Connor, for he had only to take back the gift to end
+the flogging. He set his teeth. Could he give up his only hold on David
+and the Eden Grays? By the whizzing of the lash he knew that it was laid
+on with the full strength of that muscular arm. Now a horrible murmur
+from the throat of Joseph forced him to turn against his will.
+
+The face of David was filled, not with anger, but with cruel disdain;
+under his flying lash the welts leaped up on the back of Joseph, but he,
+with his eyes shut and his head strained far back, endured. Only through
+his teeth, each time he drew breath, came that stifled moan, and he
+shuddered at each impact of the whip. Now his eyes opened, and through
+the mist of pain a brutal hatred glimmered at Connor. That flare of rage
+seemed to sap the last of his strength, for now his face convulsed,
+tears flooded down, and his head dropped. Instantly the hand of David
+paused.
+
+Something had snapped in Connor at the same time that the head of Joseph
+fell, and while he wiped the wet from his face he only vaguely saw
+Joseph hurry down the corridor, with Zacharias carrying the whip behind.
+
+But the master? There was neither cruelty nor anger in his face as he
+turned to the table and filled with milk the wooden cup which Zacharias
+had brought.
+
+"This is my prayer," he said quietly, "that in the justice of David
+there may never be the poison of David's wrath." 79
+
+He drained the cup, broke a morsel of bread from the loaf and ate it.
+Next he filled the second cup and handed it to the gambler.
+
+"Drink."
+
+Automatically Connor obeyed.
+
+"Eat."
+
+In turn he tasted the bread.
+
+"And now," said the master, in the deep, calm voice, "you have drunk
+with David in his house, and he has broken bread with you. Hereafter may
+there be peace and good will between us. You have given a free gift to
+one of my people, and he who gives clothes to David's people keeps David
+from the shame of nakedness; and he who puts bread in the mouths of
+David's servants feeds David himself. Stay with me, therefore, Benjamin,
+until you find in the Garden the thing you desire, then take it and go
+your way. But until that time, what is David's is Benjamin's; your will
+be my will, and my way be your way."
+
+He paused.
+
+"And now, Benjamin, you are weary?"
+
+"Very tired."
+
+"Follow me."
+
+It seemed well to Connor to remove himself from the eye of the master as
+soon as possible. Not that the host showed signs of anger, but just as
+one looks at a clear sky and forebodes hard weather because of misty
+horizons, so the gambler guessed the frown behind David's eyes. He was
+glad to turn into the door which was opened for him. But even though he
+guessed the danger, Connor could not refrain from tempting Providence
+with a speech of double meaning.
+
+"You are very kind," he said. "Good night, David."
+
+"May God keep you until the morning, Benjamin."
+
+
+
+
+_CHAPTER TWELVE_
+
+
+From the house of David, Joseph skulked down the terraces until he came
+to the two long buildings and entered the smaller of these. He crossed a
+patio, smaller than the court of David's house; but there, too, was the
+fountain in the center and the cool flooring of turf. Across this, and
+running under the dimly lighted arcade, Joseph reached a door which he
+tore open, slammed behind him again, and with his great head fallen upon
+his chest, stared at a little withered Negro who sat on a stool opposite
+the door. It was rather a low bench of wood than a stool; for it stood
+not more than six inches above the level of the floor. His shoes off,
+and his bare feet tucked under his legs, he sat tailorwise and peered up
+at the giant. The sudden opening of the door had set his loose blouse
+fluttering about the old man's skeleton body. The sleeves fell back from
+bony forearms with puckered skin. He was less a man than a receptacle of
+time. His temples sank in like the temples of a very old horse; his
+toothless mouth was crushed together by the pressure of the long bony
+jaw, below which the skin hung in a flap. But the fire still glimmered
+in the hollows of his eyes. A cheerful spirit lived in the grasshopper
+body. He was knitting with a pair of slender needles, never looking at
+his work, nor during the interview with Joseph did he once slacken his
+pace. The needles clicked with such swift precision that the work grew
+perceptibly, flowing slowly under his hands.
+
+Meanwhile this death's head looked at the giant so steadily that Joseph
+seemed to regret his unceremonious entrance. He stood back against the
+door, fumbling its knob for a moment, but then his rage mastered him
+once more, and he burst into the tale of Connor's coming and the ivory
+head. He brought his story to an end by depositing the trinket before
+the ancient man and then stood back, his face still working, and waited
+with every show of confident curiosity.
+
+As for the antique, his knitting needles continued to fly, but to view
+the little carving more closely he craned his skinny neck. At that
+moment, with his fallen features, his fleshless nose, he was a grinning
+mummy head. He remained gloating over the little image so long that
+Joseph stirred uneasily; but finally the grotesque lifted his head. It
+at once fell far back, the neck muscles apparently unable to support its
+weight. He looked more at the ceiling than at Joseph. His speech was a
+writhing of the lips and the voice a hollow murmur.
+
+"This," he said, "is the face of a great suhman. It is the face of the
+great suhman, Haneemar. It was many years ago that I knew him. It was a
+time so long ago that I do not know how to tell you. It was before your
+birth and the birth of your father. It was when I lived in a green
+country where the air is thick and sweet and the sun burns. There I knew
+Haneemar. He is a strong suhman. You see, his eyes are green; that is
+because he has the strength of the great snake that ties its tail around
+a branch and hangs down with its head as high as the breast of a man.
+Those snakes kill an antelope and eat it at a mouthful. Their eyes are
+green and so are the eyes of Haneemar. And you see that Haneemar has
+golden teeth. That is because he has eaten wisdom. He knows the meat of
+all things like a nut he can crack between his teeth. He is as strong as
+the snake which eats monkeys, and he is as wise as the monkeys that run
+from the snake and throw sticks from the tops of the trees. That is
+Haneemar.
+
+"There is no luck for the man who carries the face of Haneemar with him.
+That is why David used the whip. He knew Haneemar. Also, in the other
+days I remember that when a child was sick in the village they tied a
+goat in the forest and Haneemar came and ate the goat. If he ate the
+goat like a lion and left tooth marks on the bones then the child got
+well and lived. If he ate the goat like a panther and left the guts the
+child died. But if the goat was not eaten for one day then Haneemar came
+and ate the child instead. I remember this. There will be no luck for
+you while you carry Haneemar."
+
+The big man had heard this speech with eyes that grew rounder and
+rounder. Now he caught up the little image and raised his arm to throw
+it through the window. But the old man hissed, and Joseph turned with a
+shudder.
+
+"You cannot throw Haneemar away," said the other. "Only when some one
+takes him freely will you be rid of him."
+
+"It is true," answered Joseph. "I remember the visitor would not take
+him back."
+
+"Then," said the old sage, "if the stranger will not take him back, bad
+luck has come into the Garden, for only the stranger would carry
+Haneemar out again. But do not give Haneemar to one of our friends, for
+then he will stay with us all. If you dig a deep hole and bury him in
+it, Haneemar may not be able to get out."
+
+Joseph was beginning to swell with wrath.
+
+"The stranger has put a curse on me," he said. "Abraham, what shall I do
+to him? Teach me a curse to put on him!"
+
+"Hush!" answered Abraham. "Those who pray to evil spirits are the slaves
+of the powers they pray to."
+
+"Then I shall take this Benjamin in my hands!"
+
+He made a gesture as though he were snapping a stick of dry wood.
+
+"You are the greater fool. Is not this Benjamin, this stranger, a guest
+of the master?"
+
+"I shall steal him away by night in such a manner that he shall not make
+even the noise of a mouse when the cat breaks its back. I shall steal
+him away and David will never know."
+
+The loose eyelids of the old man puckered and his glance became a ray of
+light.
+
+"The curse already works; Haneemar already is in your mind, Joseph.
+David will not know? Child, there is nothing that he does not know. He
+uses us. We are his tools. My mind is to him as my hand is to me. He
+comes inside my eyes; he knows what I think. And if old Abraham is
+nothing before David, what is Joseph? Hush! Let not a whisper go out! Do
+not even dare to think it. You have felt the whip of David, but you have
+not felt his hand when he is in anger. A wounded mountain lion is not so
+terrible as the rage of David; he would be to you as an ax at the root
+of a sapling. These things have happened before. I remember. Did not
+Boram once anger John? And was not Boram as great as Joseph? And did not
+John take Boram in his hands and conquer him and break him? Yes, and
+David is a greater body and a stronger hand than John. Also, his anger
+is as free as the running of an untaught colt. Remember, my son!"
+
+Joseph stretched out his enormous arms and his voice was a broken wail.
+
+"Oh, Abraham, Abraham, what shall I do?"
+
+"Wait," said the old man quietly. "For waiting makes the spirit strong.
+Look at Abraham! His body has been dead these twenty years, but still
+his spirit lives."
+
+"But the curse of Haneemar, Abraham?"
+
+"Haneemar is patient. Let Joseph be patient also."
+
+
+
+
+_CHAPTER THIRTEEN_
+
+
+Connor wakened in the gray hour of the morning, but beyond the window
+the world was much brighter than his room. The pale terraces went down
+to scattered trees, and beyond the trees was the water of the lake.
+Farther still the mountains rolled up into a brighter morning. A horse
+neighed out of the dawn; the sound came ringing to Connor, and he was
+suddenly eager to be outside.
+
+In the patio the fountain was still playing. As for the house, he found
+it far less imposing than it had been when lantern light picked out
+details here and there. The walls and the clumsy arches were the
+disagreeable color of dried mud and all under the arcade was dismal
+shadow. But the lawn was already a faintly shining green, and the
+fountain went up above the ground shadow in a column of light. He passed
+on. The outside wall had that squat, crumbling appearance which every
+one knows who has been in Mexico--and through an avenue of trees he saw
+the two buildings between which he had ridden the night before. From the
+longer a man was leading one of the gray horses. This, then, was the
+stable; the building opposite it was a duplicate on a smaller scale of
+the house of David, and must be the servants' quarters.
+
+Connor went on toward a hilltop which alone topped the site of the
+master's house; the crest was naked of trees, and over the tops of the
+surrounding ones Connor found that he commanded a complete view of the
+valley. The day before, looking from the far-off mountaintop, it had
+seemed to be a straight line very nearly, from the north to the south;
+now he saw that from the center both ends swung westward. The valley
+might be twelve miles long, and two or three wide, fenced by an unbroken
+wall of cliffs. Over the northern barrier poured a white line of water,
+which ran on through the valley in a river that widened above David's
+house into a spacious lake three or four miles long. The river began
+again from the end of the lake and continued straight to the base of the
+southern cliffs. Roads followed the swing of the river closely on each
+side, and the stream was bridged at each end of the lake. His angle of
+vision was so small that both extremities of the valley seemed a solid
+forest, but in the central portion he made out broad meadow lands and
+plowed fields checkering the groves. The house, as he had guessed the
+evening before, stood into the lake on a slender peninsula. And due west
+a narrow slit of light told of the gate into the Garden. It gave him a
+curiously confused emotion, as of a prisoner and spy in one.
+
+He had walked back almost to the edge of the clearing when David, from
+the other side went up to the crest of the hill. Connor was already
+among the trees and he watched unobserved. The master of the Garden, at
+the top of the hill, paused and turned toward Connor. The gambler
+flushed; he was about to step out and hail his host when a second
+thought assured him that he could not have been noticed behind that
+screen of shrubbery and trunks; moreover the glance of David Eden passed
+high above him. It might have been the cry of a hawk that made him turn
+so sharply; but through several minutes he remained without moving
+either hand or head, and as though he were waiting. Even in the distance
+Connor marked the smile of happy expectation. If it had been another
+place and another man Connor would have thought it a lover waiting for
+his mistress.
+
+But, above all, he was glad of the opportunity to see David and remain
+unseen. He realized that the evening before it had been difficult to
+look directly into David's face. He had carried away little more than
+impressions; of strength, dignity, a surface calm and strong passions
+under it; but now he was able to see the face. It was full of
+contradiction; a profile irregular and deeply cut, but the full face had
+a touch of nobility that made it almost handsome.
+
+As he watched, Connor thought he detected a growing excitement in
+David--his head was raised, his smile had deepened. Perhaps he came here
+to rejoice in his possessions; but a moment later Connor realized that
+this could not be the case, for the gaze of the other must be fixed as
+high as the mountain peaks.
+
+At that instant came the revelation; there was a stiffening of the whole
+body of David; his breast filled and he swayed forward and raised almost
+on tiptoe. Connor, by sympathy, grew tense--and then the miracle
+happened. Over the face of David fell a sudden radiance. His hair, dull
+black the moment before, now glistened with light, and the swarthy skin
+became a shining bronze; his lips parted as though he drank in strength
+and happiness out of that miraculous light.
+
+The hard-headed Connor was staggered. Back on his mind rushed a score of
+details, the background of this picture. He remembered the almost
+superhuman strength of Joseph; he saw again the old servants withering
+with many years, but still bright-eyed, straight and agile. Perhaps
+they, too, knew how to stand here and drink in a mysterious light which
+filled their outworn bodies with youth of the spirit, at least. And
+David? Was not this the reason that he scorned the world? Here was his
+treasure past reckoning, this fountain of youth. Here was the
+explanation, too, of that intolerable brightness of his eye.
+
+The gambler bowed his head.
+
+When he looked up again his soul had traveled higher and lower in one
+instant than it had ever moved before; he was staring like a child.
+Above all, he wanted to see the face of David again, to examine that
+mysterious change, but the master was already walking down the hill and
+had almost reached the circle of the trees on the opposite side of the
+slope. But now Connor noted a difference everywhere surrounding him. The
+air was warmer; the wind seemed to have changed its fiber; and then he
+saw that the treetops opposite him were shaking and glistening in a
+glory of light. Connor went limp and leaned against a tree, laughing
+weakly, silently.
+
+"Hell," he said at length, recovering himself. "It was only the sunrise!
+And me--I thought--"
+
+He began to laugh again, aloud, and the sound was caught up by the
+hillside and thrown back at him in a sharp echo. Connor went
+thoughtfully back to the house. In the patio he found the table near the
+fountain laid with a cloth, the wood scrubbed white, and on it the heavy
+earthenware. David Eden came in with the calm, the same eye, difficult
+to meet. Indeed, then and thereafter when he was with David, he found
+himself continually looking away, and resorting to little maneuvers to
+divert the glance of his host.
+
+"Good morrow," said David.
+
+"I have kept you waiting?" asked Connor.
+
+The master paused to make sure that he had understood the speech, then
+replied:
+
+"If I had been hungry I should have eaten."
+
+There was no rebuff in that quiet statement, but it opened another door
+to Connor's understanding.
+
+"Take this chair," said David, moving it from the end of the table to
+the side. "Sitting here you can look through the gate of the patio and
+down to the lake. It is not pleasant to have four walls about one; but
+that is a thing which Isaac cannot understand."
+
+The gambler nodded, and to show that he could be as unceremonious as his
+host, sat down without further words. He immediately felt awkward, for
+David remained standing. He broke a morsel from the loaf of bread, which
+was yet the only food on the table, and turned to the East with a solemn
+face.
+
+"Out of His hands from whom I take this food," said the master--"into
+His hands I give myself."
+
+He sat down in turn, and Isaac came instantly with the breakfast. It was
+an astonishing menu to one accustomed to toast and coffee for the
+morning meal. On a great wooden platter which occupied half the surface
+of the table, Isaac put down two chickens, roasted brown. A horn-handled
+hunting knife, razor sharp, was the only implement at each place, and
+fingers must serve as forks. To David that was a small impediment. Under
+the deft edge of his knife the breast of one chicken divided rapidly; he
+ate the white slices like bread. Indeed, the example was easy to follow;
+the mountain air had given him a vigorous appetite, and when Connor next
+looked up it was at the sound of glass tinkling. He saw Isaac holding
+toward the master a bucket of water in which a bottle was immersed
+almost to the cork; David tried the temperature of the water with his
+fingers with a critical air, and then nodded to Isaac, who instantly
+drew the cork. A moment later red wine was trickling into Connor's cup.
+He viewed it with grateful astonishment, but David, poising his cup,
+looked across at his guest with a puzzled air.
+
+"In the old days," he said gravely, "when my masters drank they spoke to
+one another in a kindly fashion. It is now five years since a man has
+sat at my table, and I am moved to say this to you, Benjamin: it is
+pleasant to speak to another not as a master who must be obeyed, but as
+an equal who may be answered, and this is my wish, that if I have doubts
+of Benjamin, and unfriendly thoughts, they may disappear with the wine
+we drink."
+
+"Thank you," said Connor, and a thrill went through him as he met the
+eye of David. "That wish is my wish also--and long life to you, David."
+
+There was a glint of pleasure in the face of David, and they drank
+together.
+
+"By Heaven," cried Connor, putting down the cup, "it is Medoc! It is
+Chateau Lafite, upon my life!"
+
+He tasted it again.
+
+"And the vintage of '96! Is that true?"
+
+David shook his head.
+
+"I have never heard of Medoc or Chateau Lafite."
+
+"At least," said Connor, raising his cup and breathing the delicate
+bouquet, "this wine is Bordeaux you imported from France? The grapes
+which made this never grew outside of the Gironde!"
+
+But David smiled.
+
+"In the north of the Garden," he said, "there are some low rolling
+hills, Benjamin; and there the grapes grow from which we make this
+wine."
+
+Connor tasted the claret again. His respect for David had suddenly
+mounted; the hermit seemed nearer to him.
+
+"You grew these grapes in your valley?" he repeated softly.
+
+"This very bottle we are drinking," said David, warming to the talk. "I
+remember when the grapes of this vintage were picked; I was a boy,
+then."
+
+"I believe it," answered Connor solemnly, and he raised the cup with a
+reverent hand, so that the sun filtered into the red and filled the
+liquid with dancing points of light.
+
+"It is a full twenty years old."
+
+"It is twenty-five years old," said David calmly, "and this is the best
+vintage in ten years." He sighed. "It is now in its perfect prime and
+next year it will not be the same. You shall help me finish the stock,
+Benjamin."
+
+"You need not urge me," smiled Connor.
+
+He shook his head again.
+
+"But that is one wine I could have vowed I knew--Medoc. At least, I can
+tell you the soil it grows in."
+
+The brows of the host raised; he began to listen intently.
+
+"It is a mixture of gravel, quartz and sand," continued Connor.
+
+"True!" exclaimed David, and looked at his guest with new eyes.
+
+"And two feet underneath there is a stone for subsoil which is a sort of
+sand or fine gravel cemented together."
+
+David struck his hands together, frankly delighted.
+
+"This is marvelous," he said, "I would say you have seen the hills."
+
+"I paid a price for what I know," said Connor rather gloomily. "But
+north of Bordeaux in France there is a strip of land called the
+Medoc--the finest wine soil in the world, and there I learned what
+claret may be--there I tasted Chateau Lafite and Chateau Datour. They
+are both grown in the commune of Pauillac."
+
+"France?" echoed David, with the misty eyes of one who speaks of a lost
+world. "Ah, you have traveled?"
+
+"Wherever fine horses race," said Connor, and turned back to the
+chicken.
+
+"Think," said David suddenly, "for five years I have lived in silence.
+There have been voices about me, but never mind; and now you here, and
+already you have taken me at a step halfway around the world.
+
+"Ah, Benjamin, it is possible for an emptiness to be in a manlike
+hunger, you understand, and yet different--and nothing but a human voice
+can fill the space."
+
+"Have you no wish to leave your valley for a little while and see the
+world?" said Connor, carelessly.
+
+He watched gloomily, while an expression of strong distaste grew on the
+face of David. He was still frowning when he answered:
+
+"We will not speak of it again."
+
+He jerked his head up and cleared away his frown with an effort.
+
+"To speak with one man in the Garden--that is one thing," he
+went on, "but to hear the voices of two jabbering and gibbering
+together--grinning like mindless creatures--throwing their hands out to
+help their words, as poor Joseph does--bah, it is like drinking new
+wine; it makes one sick. It made me so five times."
+
+"Five times?" said Connor. "You have traveled a good deal, then?"
+
+"Too much," sighed David. "And each time I returned from Parkin Crossing
+I have cared less for what lies outside the valley."
+
+"Parkin Crossing?"
+
+"I have been told that there are five hundred people in the city," said
+David, pronouncing the number slowly. "But when I was there, I was never
+able to count more than fifty, I believe."
+
+Connor found it necessary to cough.
+
+"And each time you have left the valley you have gone no farther than
+Parkin Crossing?" he asked mildly, his spirits rising.
+
+"And is not that far enough?" replied the master, frowning. "It is a
+ride between dawn and dark."
+
+"What is that in miles?"
+
+"A hundred and thirty miles," said David, "or thereabout."
+
+Connor closed his eyes twice and then: "You rode that distance between
+dawn and dark?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Over these mountains most of the way?" he continued gently.
+
+"About half the distance," answered David.
+
+"And how long"--queried Connor hoarsely--"how long before your horse was
+able to make the trip back after you had ridden a hundred and thirty
+miles in twelve hours?"
+
+"The next day," said David, "I always return."
+
+"In the same time?"
+
+"In the same time," said David.
+
+To doubt that simple voice was impossible. But Connor knew horses, and
+his credence was strained to the breaking point.
+
+"I should like very much," he said, "to see a horse that had covered two
+hundred and sixty miles within forty-eight hours."
+
+"Thirty-six," corrected David.
+
+Connor swallowed.
+
+"Thirty-six," he murmured faintly.
+
+"I shall send for him," said the master, and struck the little gong
+which stood on one side of the table. Isaac came hurrying with that
+light step which made Connor forget his age.
+
+"Bring Glani," said David.
+
+Isaac hurried across the patio, and David continued talking to his
+guest.
+
+"Glani is not friendly; but you can see him from a distance."
+
+"And yet," said Connor, "the other horses in the Garden seem as friendly
+as pet dogs. Is Glani naturally vicious?"
+
+"His is of other blood," replied David. "He is the blood of the great
+mare Rustir, and all in her line are meant for one man only. He is more
+proud than all the rest."
+
+He leaned back in his chair and his face, naturally stern, grew tender.
+
+"Since he was foaled no hand has touched him except mine; no other has
+ridden him, groomed him, fed him."
+
+"I'll be glad to see him," said Connor quietly. "For I have never yet
+found a horse which would not come to my hand."
+
+As he spoke, he looked straight into the eyes of David, with an effort,
+and at the same time took from the pocket of his coat a little bulbous
+root which was always with him. A Viennese who came from a life half
+spent in the Orient had given him a small box of those herbs as a
+priceless present. For the secret was that when the root was rubbed over
+the hands it left a faint odor on the skin, like freshly cut apples; and
+to a horse that perfume was irresistible. They seemed to find in it a
+picture of sweet clover, blossoming, and clean oats finely headed; yet
+to the nostrils of a man the scent was barely perceptible. Under cover
+of the table the gambler rubbed his hands swiftly with the little root
+and dropped it back into his pocket. That was the secret of the power
+over Abra which had astonished the two old men at the gate. A hundred
+times, in stable and paddock, Connor had gone up to the most intractable
+race horses and looked them over at close hand, at his leisure. The
+master seemed in nowise disturbed by the last remark of Connor.
+
+"That is true of old Abraham, also," he said. "There was never a colt
+foaled in the valley which Abraham had not been able to call away from
+its mother; he can read the souls of them all with a touch of his
+withered hands. Yes, I have seen that twenty times. But with Glani it is
+different. He is as proud as a man; he is fierce as a wolf; and Abraham
+himself cannot touch the neck of my horse. Look!"
+
+
+
+
+_CHAPTER FOURTEEN_
+
+
+Under the arch of the entrance Connor saw a gray stallion, naked of
+halter or rope, with his head raised. From the shadow he came shining
+into the sunlight; the wind raised his mane and tail in ripples of
+silver. Ben Connor rose slowly from his chair. Horses were religion to
+him; he felt now that he had stepped into the inner shrine.
+
+When he was able to speak he turned slowly toward David. "Sir," he said
+hoarsely, "that is the greatest horse ever bred."
+
+It was far more than a word of praise; it was a confession of faith
+which surrounded the moment and the stallion with solemnity, and David
+flushed like a proud boy.
+
+"There he stands," he said. "Now make him come to your hand."
+
+It recalled Connor to his senses, that challenge, and feeling that his
+mind had been snatched away from him for a moment, almost that he had
+been betrayed, he looked at David with a pale face.
+
+"He is too far away," he said. "Bring him closer."
+
+There was one of those pauses which often come before crises, and Connor
+knew that by the outcome of this test he would be judged either a man
+or a cheap boaster.
+
+"I shall do this thing," said the master of the Garden of Eden. "If you
+bring Glani to your hand I shall give him to you to ride while you stay
+in the valley. Listen! No other man had so much as laid a hand on the
+withers of Glani, but if you can make him come to you of his own free
+will--"
+
+"No," said Connor calmly. "I shall make him come because my will is
+stronger than his."
+
+"Impossible!" burst out David.
+
+He controlled himself and looked at Connor with an almost wistful
+defiance.
+
+"I hold to this," he said. "If you can bring Glani to your hand, he is
+yours while you stay in the Garden--for my part, I shall find another
+mount."
+
+Connor slipped his right hand into his pocket and crushed the little
+root against the palm.
+
+"Come hither, Glani," commanded the master. The stallion came up behind
+David's chair, looking fearlessly at the stranger.
+
+"Now," said David with scorn. "This is your time."
+
+"I accept it," replied Connor.
+
+He drew his hand from his pocket, and leaning over the table, he looked
+straight into the eye of the stallion. But in reality, it was only to
+bring that right hand closer; the wind was stirring behind him, and he
+knew that it wafted the scent of the mysterious root straight to Glani.
+
+"That is impossible," said David, following the glance of Connor with a
+frown. "A horse has no reasoning brain. Silence cannot make him come to
+you."
+
+"However," said Connor carelessly, "I shall not speak."
+
+The master set his teeth over unuttered words, and glancing up to
+reassure himself, his face altered swiftly, and he whispered:
+
+"Now, you four dead masters, bear witness to this marvel! Glani feels
+the influence!"
+
+For the head of Glani had raised as he scented the wind. Then he circled
+the table and came straight toward Connor. Within a pace, the scent of
+strange humanity must have drowned the perfume of the root; he sprang
+away, catlike and snorted his suspicion.
+
+David heaved a great sigh of relief.
+
+"You fail!" he cried, and snatching up a bottle of wine, he poured out a
+cup. "Brave Glani! I drink this in your honor!"
+
+Every muscle in David's strong body was quivering, as though he were
+throwing all the effort of his will on the side of the stallion.
+
+"You think I have failed?" asked Connor softly.
+
+"Admit it," said David.
+
+His flush was gone and he was paler than Connor now; he seemed to desire
+with all his might that the test should end; there was a fiber of
+entreaty in his voice.
+
+"Admit it, Benjamin, as I admit your strange power."
+
+"I have hardly begun. Give me quiet."
+
+David flung himself into his chair, his attention jerking from Glani to
+Connor and back. It was at this critical moment that a faint breeze
+puffed across the patio, carrying the imperceptible fragrance of the
+root straight to Glani. Connor watched the stallion prick his ears, and
+he blessed the quaint old Viennese with all his heart.
+
+The first approach of Glani had been in the nature of a feint, but now
+that he was sure, he went with all the directness of unspoiled courage
+straight to the stranger. He lowered the beautiful head and thrust out
+his nose until it touched the hand of Connor. The gambler saw David
+shudder.
+
+"You have conquered," he said, forcing out the words.
+
+"Take Glani; to me he is now a small thing. He is yours while you stay
+in the Garden. Afterward I shall give him to one of my servants."
+
+Connor stood up, and though at his rising Glani started back, he came to
+Connor again, following that elusive scent. To David it seemed the last
+struggle of the horse before completely submitting to the rule of a new
+master. He rose in turn, trembling with shame and anger, while Connor
+stood still, for about this stranger drifted a perfume of broad green
+fields with flowering tufts of grass, the heads well-seeded and sweet.
+And when a hand touched his withers, the stallion merely turned his head
+and nuzzled the shoulder of Connor inquisitively.
+
+With his hand on the back of the horse, the gambler realized for the
+first time Glani's full stature. He stood at least fifteen-three, though
+his perfect proportions made him seem smaller at a distance. No doubt he
+was a giant among the Eden Grays, Connor thought to himself. The gallop
+on Abra the night before had been a great moment, but a ride on Glani
+was a prospect that took his breath. He paused. Perhaps it was the
+influence of a forgotten Puritan ancestor, casting a shade on every hope
+of happiness. With his weight poised for the leap to the back of the
+stallion, Connor looked at David. The master was in a silent agony, and
+the hand of Connor fell away from the horse. He was afraid.
+
+"I can't do it," he said frankly.
+
+"Jump on his back," urged David bitterly. "He's no more to you than a
+yearling to the hands of Abraham."
+
+Connor realized now how far he had gone; he set about retracing the
+wrong steps.
+
+"It may appear that way, but I can't trust myself on his back. You
+understand?"
+
+He stepped back with a gesture that sent Glani bounding away.
+
+"You see," went on Connor, "I never could really understand him."
+
+The master seized with eagerness upon this gratifying suggestion.
+
+"It is true," he said, "that you are a little afraid of Glani. That is
+why none of the rest can handle him."
+
+He stopped in the midst of his self-congratulation and directed at
+Connor one of those glances which the gambler could never learn to meet.
+
+"Also," said David, "you make me happy. If you had sat on his back I
+should have felt your weight on my own shoulders and spirit."
+
+He laid a hand on Connor's shoulder, but the gambler had won and lost
+too often with an impenetrable face to quail now. He even managed to
+smile.
+
+"Hearken," said David. "My masters taught me many things, and everything
+they taught me must be true, for they were only voices of a mind out of
+another world. Yet, in spite of them," he went on kindly, "I begin to
+feel a kinship with you, Benjamin. Come, we will walk and talk together
+in the cool of the morning. Glani!"
+
+The gray had wandered off to nibble at the turf; he whirled and came
+like a thrown lance.
+
+"Glani," said David, "is usually the only living thing that walks with
+me in the morning; but now, my friend, we are three."
+
+
+
+
+_CHAPTER FIFTEEN_
+
+
+In the mid-afternoon of that day Connor rested in his room, and David
+rested in the lake, floating with only his nose and lips out of water.
+Toward the center of the lake even the surface held the chill of the
+snows, but David floated in the warm shallows and looked up to the sky
+through a film of water. The tiny ripples became immense air waves that
+rushed from mountain to mountain, dashed the clouds up and down, and
+then left the heavens placid and windless.
+
+He grew weary of this placidity, and as he turned upon one side he heard
+a prolonged hiss from the shore. David rolled with the speed of a water
+moccasin and headed in with his arm flashing in a powerful stroke that
+presently brought him to the edge of the beach. He rose in front of old
+Abraham.
+
+A painter should have seen them together--the time-dried body of the old
+man and the exuberant youth of the master. He looked on the servant with
+a stern kindness.
+
+"What are you doing here without a covering for your head while the sun
+is hot? Did they let you come of their own accord, Abraham?"
+
+"I slipped away," chuckled Abraham. "Isaac was in the patio, but I went
+by him like a hawk-shadow. Then I ran among the trees. Hat? Well, no
+more have you a hat, David."
+
+The master frowned, but his displeasure passed quickly and he led the
+way to the lowest terrace. They sat on the soft thick grass, with their
+feet in the hot sand of the beach, and as the wind stirred the tree
+above them a mottling of shadow moved across them.
+
+"You have come to speak privately with me," said David. "What is it?"
+
+But Abraham embraced his skinny knees and smiled at the lake, his jaw
+falling.
+
+"It's not what it was," he said, and wagged his head. "It's a sad lake
+compared to what it was."
+
+David controlled his impatience.
+
+"Tell me how it is changed."
+
+"The color," said the old man. "Why, once, with a gallon of that blue
+you could have painted the whole sky." He shaded his face to look up,
+but so doing his glance ventured through the branches and close to the
+white-hot circle of the sun. His head dropped and he leaned on one arm.
+
+"Look at the green of the grass," suggested David. "It will rest your
+eyes."
+
+"Do you think my eyes are weak? No, I dropped my head to think how the
+world has fallen off in the last fifty years. It was all different in
+the days of John. But that was before you came to the valley."
+
+"The sky was not the same?" queried the master.
+
+"And men, also," said Abraham instantly. "Ho, yes! John was a man; you
+will not see his like in these days."
+
+David flushed, but he held back his first answer. "Perhaps."
+
+"There is no 'perhaps.'"
+
+Abraham spoke with a decision that brought his jaw close up under his
+nose.
+
+"He is my master," insisted Abraham, and, smiling suddenly, he
+whispered: "Mah ol' Marse Johnnie Cracken!"
+
+"What's that?" called David.
+
+Abraham stared at him with unseeing eyes. A mist of years drifted
+between them, and now the old man came slowly out of the past and found
+himself seated on the lawn in a lonely valley with great, naked
+mountains piled around it.
+
+"What did you say?" repeated David.
+
+Abraham hastily changed the subject.
+
+"In those days if a stranger came to the Garden of Eden he did not stay.
+Aye, and in those days Abraham could have taken the strongest by the
+neck and pitched him through the gates. I remember when the men came
+over the mountains--long before you were born. Ten men at the gate, I
+remember, and they had guns. But when my master told them to go away
+they looked at him and they looked at each other, but after a while they
+went away."
+
+Abraham rocked in an ecstasy.
+
+"No man could face my master. I remember how he sat on his horse that
+day."
+
+"It was Rustir?" asked David eagerly.
+
+"She was the queen of horses," replied the old man indirectly, "and he
+was the king of men; there are no more men like my master, and there are
+no more horses like Rustir."
+
+There was a pause, then David spoke.
+
+"John was a good man and a strong man," he said, looking down at his own
+brown hands. "And Rustir was a fine mare, but it is foolish to call her
+the best."
+
+"There was never a horse like Rustir," said the old man monotonously.
+
+"Bah! What of Glani?"
+
+"Yes, that is a good colt."
+
+"A good colt! Come, Abraham! Have you ever opened your dim eyes and
+really looked at him? Name one fault."
+
+"I have said Glani is a good colt," repeated Abraham, worried.
+
+"Come, come! You have said Rustir was better."
+
+"Glani is a good colt, but too heavy in the forehand. Far too heavy
+there."
+
+The restraint of David snapped.
+
+"It is false! Ephraim, Jacob, they all say that Glani is the greatest."
+
+"They change like the masters," grumbled Abraham. "The servants change.
+They flatter and the master believes. But my master had an eye--he
+looked through a man like an eagle through mist. When I stood before my
+master my soul was naked; a wind blew through me. But I say John was one
+man; and there are no other horses like his mare Rustir. My master is
+silent; other men have words as heavy as their hands."
+
+"Peace, Abraham, peace. You shame me. The Lord was far from me, and I
+spoke in anger, and I retract it."
+
+"A word is a bullet that strikes men down, David. Let the wind blow on
+your face when your heart is hot."
+
+"I confess my sin," said David, but his jaw was set.
+
+"Confess your sins in silence."
+
+"It is true."
+
+He looked at Abraham as if he would be rid of him.
+
+"You are angry to-day, Abraham."
+
+"The law of the Garden has been broken."
+
+"By whom?"
+
+"David has unbarred the gate."
+
+"Yes, to one man."
+
+"It is enough."
+
+"Peace, Abraham. You are old and look awry. This one man is no danger. I
+could break him in my hands--so!"
+
+"A strong man may be hopeless against words," said the oracular old man.
+"With a word he may set you on fire."
+
+"Do you think me a tinder and dry grass? Set me on fire with a word?"
+
+"An old man who looks awry had done it with a word. And see--again!"
+
+There was a silence filled only by the sound of David's breathing and
+the slow curling of the ripples on the beach.
+
+"You try me sorely, Abraham."
+
+"Good steel will bend, but not break."
+
+"Say no more of this man. He is harmless."
+
+"Is that a command, David?"
+
+"No--but at least be brief."
+
+"Then I say to you, David, that he has brought evil into the valley."
+
+The master burst into sudden laughter that carried away his anger.
+
+"He brought no evil, Abraham. He brought only the clothes on his back."
+
+"The serpent brought into the first Garden only his skin and his forked
+tongue."
+
+"There was a devil in that serpent."
+
+"Aye, and what of Benjamin?"
+
+"Tell me your proofs, and let them be good ones, Abraham."
+
+"I am old," said Abraham sadly, "but I am not afraid."
+
+"I wait."
+
+"Benjamin brought an evil image with him. It is the face of a great
+suhman, and he tempted Joseph with it, and Joseph fell."
+
+"The trinket of carved bone?" asked David.
+
+"The face of a devil! Who was unhappy among us until Benjamin came? But
+with his charm he bought Joseph, and now Joseph walks alone and thinks
+unholy thoughts, and when he is spoken to he looks up first with a
+snake's eye before he answers. Is not this the work of Benjamin?"
+
+"What would you have me do? Joseph has already paid for his fault with
+the pain of the whip."
+
+"Cast out the stranger, David."
+
+David mused. At last he spoke. "Look at me, Abraham!"
+
+The other raised his head and peered into the face of David, but
+presently his glance wavered and turned away.
+
+"See," said David. "After Matthew died there was no one in the Garden
+who could meet my glance. But Benjamin meets my eye and I feel his
+thoughts before he speaks them. He is pleasant to me, Abraham."
+
+"The voice of the serpent was pleasant to Eve," said Abraham.
+
+The nostrils of David quivered.
+
+"What is it that you call the trinket?"
+
+"A great suhman. My people feared and worshiped him in the old days. A
+strong devil!"
+
+"An idol!" said David. "What! Abraham, do you still worship sticks and
+stones? Have you been taught no more than that? Do you put a mind in the
+handiwork of a man?"
+
+The head of Abraham fell.
+
+"I am weak before you, David," he said. "I have no power to speak except
+the words of my master, which I remember. Now I feel you rise against
+me, and I am dust under your feet. Think of Abraham, then, as a voice in
+the wind, but hear that voice. I know, but I know not why I know, or how
+I know, there is evil in the valley, David. Cast it out!"
+
+"I have broken bread and drunk milk with Benjamin. How can I drive him
+out of the valley?"
+
+"Let him stay in the valley if you can keep him out of your mind. He is
+in your thoughts. He is with you like a shadow."
+
+"He is not stronger than I," said the master.
+
+"Evil is stronger than the greatest."
+
+"It is cowardly to shrink from him before I know him."
+
+"Have no fear of him--but of yourself. A wise man trembleth at his own
+strength."
+
+"Tell me, Abraham--does the seed of Rustir know men? Do they know good
+and evil?"
+
+"Yes, for Rustir knew my master."
+
+"And has Glani ever bowed his head for any man saving for me?"
+
+"He is a stubborn colt. Aye, he troubled me!"
+
+"But I tell you, Abraham, he came to the hand of Benjamin!"
+
+The old man blinked at the master.
+
+"Then there was something in that hand," he said at last.
+
+"There was nothing," said David in triumph. "I saw the bare palm."
+
+"It is strange."
+
+"You are wrong. Admit it."
+
+"I must think, David."
+
+"Yes," said the master kindly. "Here is my hand. Rise, and come with me
+to your house."
+
+They went slowly, slowly up the terrace, Abraham clinging to the arm of
+the master.
+
+"Also," said David, "he has come for only a little time. He will soon be
+gone. Speak no more of Benjamin."
+
+"I have already spoken almost enough," said Abraham. "You will not
+forget."
+
+
+
+
+_CHAPTER SIXTEEN_
+
+
+Although David was smiling when he left Abraham, he was serious when he
+turned from the door of the old man. He went to Connor's room, it was
+empty. He summoned Zacharias.
+
+"The men beyond the mountains are weak," said David, "and when I left
+him a little time since Benjamin was sighing and sleepy. But now he is
+not in his room. Where is he, Zacharias?"
+
+"Shakra came into the patio and neighed," Zacharias answered, "and at
+that Benjamin came out, rubbing his eyes. 'My friend,' said he to me,
+and his voice was smooth--not like those voices--"
+
+"Peace, Zacharias," said David. "Leave this talk of his voice and tell
+me where he is gone."
+
+"Away from the house," said the old man sullenly.
+
+The master knitted his brows.
+
+"You old men," he said, "are like yearlings who feel the sap running in
+their legs in the spring. You talk as they run--around and around.
+Continue."
+
+Zacharias sulked as if he were on the verge of not speaking at all. But
+presently his eye lighted with his story.
+
+"Benjamin," he went on, "said to me, 'My friend, that is a noble mare.'
+
+"'She is a good filly,' said I.
+
+"'With a hundred and ten up,' said Benjamin, 'she would make a fast
+track talk.'"
+
+"What?" said David.
+
+"I do not know the meaning of his words," said the old servant, "but I
+have told them as he said them."
+
+"He is full of strange terms," murmured David. "Continue."
+
+"He went first to one side of Shakra and then to the other. He put his
+hand into his coat and seemed to think. Presently he stretched out his
+hand and called her. She came to him slowly."
+
+"Wonderful!"
+
+"That was my thought," nodded Zacharias.
+
+"Why do you stop?" cried David.
+
+"Because I am talking around and around, like a running yearling," said
+Zacharias ironically. "However, he stood back at length and combed the
+forelock of Shakra with his fingers. 'Tell me, Zacharias,' he said, 'if
+this is not the sister of Glani?'"
+
+"He guessed so much? It is strange!"
+
+"Then he looked in her mouth and said that she was four years old."
+
+"He is wise in horses, indeed."
+
+"When he turned away Shakra followed him; he went to his room and came
+out again, carrying the saddle with which he rode Abra. He put this on
+her back and a rope around her neck. 'Will the master be angry if I ride
+her?' he asked.
+
+"I told him that she was first ridden only three months before to-day,
+and that she must not be ridden more than fifty miles now in a day.
+
+"He looked a long time at me, then said he would not ride farther than
+that. Then he went galloping down the road to the south."
+
+"Good!" said the master, and sent a long whistle from the patio; it was
+pitched as shrill and small as the scream of a hawk when the hawk itself
+cannot be seen in the sky.
+
+Zacharias ran into the house, and when he came out again bringing a pad
+Glani was already in the patio.
+
+David took the pad and cinched it on the back of the stallion.
+
+"And when Shakra began to gallop," said Zacharias, "Benjamin cried out."
+
+"What did he say?"
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"Zacharias, men do not cry out without speaking."
+
+"Nevertheless," said Zacharias, "it was like the cry of a wolf when they
+hunt along the cliffs in winter and see the young horses and the cattle
+in the Garden below them. It was a cry, and there was no spoken word in
+it."
+
+The master bit his lip.
+
+"Abraham has been talking folly to you," he said; and, springing on the
+back of the stallion, he raced out of the patio and on to the south road
+with his long, black hair whipping straight out behind his head.
+
+At length the southern wall rose slowly over the trees, and a deep
+murmur which had begun about them as soon as they left the house, light
+as the humming of bees, increasing as they went down the valley, now
+became a great rushing noise. It was like a great wind in sound; one
+expected the push of a gale, coming out from the trees, but there was
+only the river which ran straight at the cliff, split solid rock, and
+shot out of sunlight into a black cavern. Beside this gaping mouth of
+rock stood Connor with Shakra beside him. Twice the master called, but
+Connor could not hear.
+
+The tumbling river would have drowned a volley of musketry. Only when
+David touched his shoulder did Connor turn a gloomy face. They took
+their horses across the bridge which passed over the river a little
+distance from the cliff, and rode down the farther side of the valley
+until the roar sank behind them. A few barriers of trees reduced it to
+the humming which on windless days was picked up by echoes and reached
+the house of David with a solemn murmur.
+
+"I thought you would rest," said David, when they were come to a place
+of quiet, and the horses cantered lightly over the road with that
+peculiar stride, at once soft and reaching, which Connor was beginning
+to see as the chief characteristic of the Eden Gray.
+
+"I have rested more in two minutes on the back of Shakra than I could
+rest in two hours on my bed."
+
+It was like disarming a father by praise of his son.
+
+"She has a gentle gait," smiled David.
+
+"I tell you, man, she's a knockout!"
+
+"A knockout?"
+
+The gambler added hastily: "Next to Glani the best horse I have seen."
+
+"You are right. Next to Glani the best in the valley."
+
+"In the world," said Connor, and then gave a cry of wonder.
+
+They had come through an avenue of the eucalyptus trees, and now they
+reached an open meadow, beyond which aspens trembled and flashed silver
+under a shock from the wind. Half the meadow was black, half green; for
+one of the old men was plowing. He turned a rich furrow behind him, and
+the blackbirds followed in chattering swarms in their hunt for worms.
+The plow team was a span of slender-limbed Eden Grays. They walked
+lightly with plow, shaking their heads at the blackbirds, and sometimes
+they touched noses in that cheery, dumb conversation of horses. The plow
+turned down the field with the sod curling swiftly behind. The
+blackbirds followed. There were soldier-wings among them making flashes
+of red, and all the swarm scolded.
+
+"David," said Connor when he could speak, "you might as well harness
+lightning to your plow. Why in the name of God, man, don't you get mules
+for this work?"
+
+The master looked to the ground, for he was angered.
+
+"It is not against His will that I work them at the plow," he answered.
+"He has not warned me against it."
+
+"Who hasn't?"
+
+"Our Father whose name you spoke. Look! They are not unhappy, Jurith and
+Rajima, of the blood of Aliriz."
+
+He whistled, whereat the off mare tossed her head and whinnied.
+
+"By Heaven, she knows you at this distance!" gasped Connor.
+
+"Which is only to say that she is not a fool. Did I not sit with her
+three days and three nights when she was first foaled? That was
+twenty-five years ago; I was a child then."
+
+Connor, staring after the high, proud head of Jurith, sighed. The horses
+started on at a walk which was the least excellent gait in the Eden
+Grays. Their high croups and comparatively low withers, their long
+hindlegs and the shorter forelegs, gave them a waddling motion with the
+hind quarters apparently huddling the forehand along.
+
+Indeed, they seemed designed in every particular for the gallop alone.
+But Glani was an exception. Just as in size he appeared a freak among
+the others, so in his gaits all things were perfectly proportioned.
+Connor, with a deep, quiet delight, watched the big stallion stepping
+freely. Shakra had to break into a soft trot now and then to catch up.
+
+"Let us walk," said David. "The run is for when a man feels with the
+hawk in the sky; the gallop is for idle pleasure; the trot is an ugly
+gait, for distance only; but a walk is the gait when two men speak
+together. In this manner Matthew and I went up and down the valley
+roads. Alas, it is five years since I have walked my horse! Is it not,
+Glani, my king? And now, Benjamin, tell me your trouble."
+
+"There is no trouble," said Connor.
+
+But David smiled, saying: "We are brothers in Glani, Benjamin. To us
+alone he has given his head. Therefore speak freely."
+
+"Look back," said Connor, feeling that the crisis had come and that he
+must now put his fortune to the touch.
+
+David turned on the stallion. "What do you see?"
+
+"I see old Elijah. He drives the two mares, and the furrow follows
+them--the blackbirds also."
+
+"Do you see nothing else?"
+
+"I see the green meadow and the sky with a cloud in it; I see the river
+yonder and the aspens flash as the wind strikes them."
+
+"And do you hear nothing?"
+
+"I hear the falling of the Jordan and the cry of the birds. Also, Elijah
+has just spoken to Rajima. Ah, she is lazy for a daughter of Aliriz!"
+
+"Do you wish to know what I see and hear, David?"
+
+"If it is your pleasure, brother."
+
+"I see a blue sky like this, with the wind and the clouds in it and all
+that stuff--"
+
+"All of what?"
+
+"And I see also," continued Connor, resolving to watch his tongue,
+"thousands of people, acres of men and women."
+
+David was breathless with interest. He had a way of opening his eyes and
+his mind like a child.
+
+"We are among them; they jostle us; we can scarcely breathe. There is a
+green lawn below us; we cannot see the green, it is so thickly covered
+with men. They have pulled out their wallets and they have money in
+their hands."
+
+"What is it?" muttered David. "For my thoughts swim in those waves of
+faces."
+
+"I see," went on Connor, "a great oval road fenced on each side, with
+colored posts at intervals. I see horses in a line, dancing up and down,
+turning about--"
+
+"Ah, horses!"
+
+"Kicking at each other."
+
+"So? Are there such bad manners among them?"
+
+"But what each man is trembling for, and what each man has risked his
+money upon, is this question: Which of all those is the fastest horse?
+Think! The horses which fret in that line are the finest money can buy.
+Their blood lines are longer than the blood lines of kings. They are
+all fine muscles and hair-trigger nerves. They are poised for the start.
+And now--"
+
+"Benjamin, is there such love of horses over the mountains? Listen!
+Fifty thousand men and women breathe with those racers."
+
+"I know." There was a glint in the eyes of David. "When two horses match
+their speed--"
+
+"Some men have wagered all their money. They have borrowed, they have
+stolen, to get what they bet. But there are two men only who bet on one
+of the horses. You, David, and I!"
+
+"Ha? But money is hard to come by."
+
+"We ask them the odds," continued Connor. "For one dollar we shall take
+a hundred if our horse wins--odds of a hundred to one! And we wager. We
+wager the value of all we have. We wager the value of the Garden of Eden
+itself!"
+
+"It is madness, Benjamin!"
+
+"Look closer! See them at the post. There's the Admiral. There's
+Fidgety--that tall chestnut. There's Glorious Polly--the little bay. The
+greatest stake horses in the country. The race of the year. But the
+horse we bet on, David, is a horse which none of the rest in that crowd
+knows. It is a horse whose pedigree is not published. It is a small
+horse, not more than fourteen-three. It stands perfectly still in the
+midst of that crowd of nervous racers. On its back is an old man."
+
+"But can the horse win? And who is the old man?"
+
+"On the other horses are boys who have starved until they are wisps with
+only hands for the reins of a horse and knees to keep on his back. They
+have stirrups so short that they seem to be floating above the racers.
+But on the back of the horse on which we are betting there is only an
+old, old man, sitting heavily."
+
+"His name! His name!" David cried.
+
+"Elijah! And the horse is Jurith!"
+
+"No, no! Withdraw the bets! She is old."
+
+"They are off! The gray mare is not trained for the start. She is left
+standing far behind."
+
+"Ah!" David groaned.
+
+"Fifty thousand people laughing at the old gray mare left at the post!"
+
+"I see it! I hear it!"
+
+"She's too short in front; too high behind. She's a joke horse. And see
+the picture horses! Down the back stretch! The fifty thousand have
+forgotten the gray, even to laugh at her. The pack drives into the home
+stretch. There's a straight road to the finish. They straighten out.
+They get their feet. They're off for the wire!"
+
+The voice of Connor had risen to a shrill cry. "But look! Look! There's
+a streak of gray coming around the turn. It's the mare! It's old
+Jurith!"
+
+"Jurith!"
+
+"No awkwardness now! She spreads herself out and the posts disappear
+beside her. She stretches down low and the rest come back to her. Fine
+horses; they run well. But Jurith is a racing machine. She's on the hip
+of the pack! Look at the old man all the thousand were laughing at. He
+sits easily in the saddle. He has no whip. His reins are loose. And then
+he uses the posts ahead of him. He leans over and speaks one word in the
+ear of the gray mare.
+
+"By the Lord, she was walking before; she was cantering! Now she runs!
+Now she runs! And the fifty thousand are dumb, white. A solid wall of
+faces covered with white-wash! D'you see? They're sick! And then all at
+once they know they're seeing a miracle. They have been standing up
+ever since the horses entered the home-stretch. Now they climb on one
+another's shoulders. They forget all about thousands--the hundreds of
+thousands of dollars which they are going to lose. They only know that
+they are seeing a great horse. And they love that new, great horse. They
+scream as they see her come. Women break into tears as the old man
+shoots past the grand stand. Men shriek and hug each other. They dance.
+
+"The gray streak shoots on. She is past the others. She is rushing for
+the finish wire as no horse ever ran before. She is away. One length,
+two lengths, six lengths of daylight show between her and the rest. She
+gallops past the finish posts with Elijah looking back at the others!
+
+"She has won! You have won, David. I have won. We are rich. Happy. The
+world's before us. David, do you see?"
+
+"Is it possible? But no, Benjamin, not Jurith. Some other, perhaps,
+Shakra--Glani--"
+
+"No, we would take Jurith--twenty-five years old!"
+
+Connor's last words trailed off into hysterical laughter.
+
+
+
+
+_CHAPTER SEVENTEEN_
+
+
+David was still flushed with the excitement of the tale, and he was
+perplexed and troubled when Connor's strange, high laughter brought to
+an abrupt end the picture they had both lived in.
+
+The gambler saw the frown on David's brow, and with an effort he made
+himself suddenly grave, though he was still pale and shaking.
+
+"David, this is the reason Jurith can win. Somewhere in the past there
+was a freak gray horse. There are other kinds of freaks; oranges had
+seeds in 'em; all at once up pops a tree that has seedless fruit. People
+plant shoots from it. There you have the naval orange, all out of one
+tree. It's the same way with that gray horse. It was a freak; had a high
+croup and muscles as stretchy as India-rubber, and strong--like the
+difference between the muscles of a mule and the muscles of most horses.
+That's what that first horse was. He was bred and the get came into this
+valley. They kept improving--and the result is Glani! The Eden Gray,
+David, is the finest horse in the world because it's a _different_ and a
+better horse!"
+
+The master paused for some time, and Connor knew he was deep in thought.
+Finally he spoke:
+
+"But if we know the speed of the Eden Grays, why should we go out into
+the world and take the money of other men because they do not know how
+fast our horses run?"
+
+Connor made sure the master was serious and nerved himself for the
+second effort.
+
+"What do you wish, David?"
+
+"In what measure, Benjamin?"
+
+"The sky's the limit! I say, what do you wish? The last wish that was in
+your head."
+
+"Shakra stumbled a little while ago; I wished for a smoother road."
+
+"David, with the money we win on the tracks we'll tear up these roads,
+cut trenches, fill 'em with solid blocks of rock, lay 'em over with
+asphalt, make 'em as smooth as glass! What else?"
+
+"You jest, Benjamin. That is a labor for a thousand men."
+
+"I say, it's nothing to what we'll do. What else do you want? Turn your
+mind loose--open up your eyes and see something that's hard to get."
+
+"Every wish is a regret, and why should I fail of gratitude to God by
+making my wishes? Yet, I have been weak, I confess. I have sometimes
+loathed the crumbling walls of my house. I have wished for a tall
+chamber--on the floor a covering which makes no sound, colors about
+me--crystal vases for my flowers--music when I come--"
+
+"Stop there! You see that big white cliff? I'll have that stone cut in
+chunks as big as you and your horse put together. I'll have 'em piled on
+a foundation as strong as the bottom of those hills. You see the way
+those mountain-tops walk into the sky? That's how the stairways will
+step up to the front of your house and put you out on a big terrace with
+columns scooting up fifty feet, and when you walk across the terrace a
+couple of great big doors weighing about a ton apiece will drift open
+and make a whisper when you mosey in. And when you get inside you'll
+start looking up and up, but you'll get dizzy before your eyes hit the
+ceiling; and up there you'll see a lighting stunt that looks like a
+million icicles with the sun behind 'em."
+
+He paused an instant for breath and saw David smiling in a hazy
+pleasure.
+
+"I follow you," he said softly. "Go on!" And his hand stretched out as
+though to open a door.
+
+"What I've told you about is only a beginning. Turn yourself loose;
+dream, and I'll turn your dream into stone and color, and fill up your
+windows with green and gold and red glass till you'll think a rainbow
+has got all tangled up there! I'll give you music that'll make you
+forget to think, and when you think I'll give you a room so big that
+you'll have silence with an echo to it."
+
+"All this for my horses?"
+
+"Send one of the grays--just one, and let me place the wagers. You don't
+even have to risk your own money. I've made a slough of it betting on
+things that weren't lead pipe cinches like this. I made on Fidgety
+Midget at fifty to one. I made on Gosham at eight to one. Nobody told me
+how to bet on 'em. I know a horse--that's all! You stay in the Garden; I
+take one of the grays; I bring her back in six months with more coin
+than she can pack, and we split it fifty-fifty. You furnish the horse. I
+furnish the jack. Is it a go?"
+
+A bird stopped above them, whistled and dipped away over the treetops.
+David turned his head to follow the trailing song, and Connor realized
+with a sick heart that he had failed to sweep his man off his feet.
+
+"Would you have me take charity?" asked David at length.
+
+It seemed to Connor that there was a smile behind this. He himself burst
+into a roar of laughter.
+
+"Sure, it sounds like charity. They'll be making you a gift right
+enough. There isn't a horse on the turf that has a chance with one of
+the grays! But they'll bet their money like fools."
+
+"Would it not be a sin, then?"
+
+"What sin?" asked Connor roughly. "Don't they grab the coin of other
+people? Does the bookie ask you how much coin you have and if you can
+afford to lose it? No, he's out to get all that he can grab. And we'll
+go out and do some grabbing in turn. Oh, they'll squeal when we turn the
+screw, but they'll kick through with the jack. No fear, Davie!"
+
+"Whatever sins may be theirs, Benjamin, those sins need not be mine."
+
+Connor was dumb.
+
+"Because they are foolish," said David, "should I take advantage of
+their folly? A new man comes into the valley. He sees Jurith, and
+notices that she runs well in spite of her years. He says to me: 'This
+mare will run faster than your stallion. I have money and this ring
+upon my finger which I will risk against one dollar of your money; If
+the mare beats Glani I take your dollar. If Glani beats the mare, you
+take my purse and my ring; I have no other wealth. It will ruin me, but
+I am willing to be ruined if Jurith is not faster than Glani.
+
+"Suppose such foolish man were to come to me, Benjamin, would I not say
+to him: 'No, my friend. For I understand better than you, both Jurith
+and Glani!' Tell me therefore, Benjamin, that you have tempted me toward
+a sin, unknowing."
+
+It made Connor think of the stubbornness of a woman, or of a priest. It
+was a quiet assurance which could only be paralleled from a basis of
+religion or instinct. He knew the danger of pressing too hard upon this
+instinct or blind faith. He swallowed an oath, and answered, remembering
+dim lessons out of his childhood:
+
+"Tell me, David, my brother, is there no fire to burn fools? Is there no
+rod for the shoulders of the proud? Should not such men be taught?"
+
+"And I say to you, Benjamin," said the master of the Garden: "what wrong
+have these fools done to me with their folly?"
+
+Connor felt that he was being swept beyond his depth. The other went on,
+changing his voice to gentleness:
+
+"No, no! I have even a kindness for men with such blind faith in their
+horses. When Jacob comes to me and says privately in my ear: 'David,
+look at Hira. Is she not far nobler and wiser than Ephraim's horse,
+Numan?' When he says this to me, do I shake my head and frown and say:
+'Risk the clothes on your back and the food you eat to prove what you
+say.' No, assuredly I do neither of these things, but I put my hand on
+his shoulder and I say: 'He who has faith shall do great things; and a
+tender master makes a strong colt.' In this manner I speak to him,
+knowing that truth is good, but the whole truth is sometimes a fire that
+purifies, perhaps, but it also destroys. So Jacob goes smiling on his
+way and gives kind words and fine oats to Hira."
+
+Connor turned the flank of this argument.
+
+"These men are blind. You say that your horses can run a mile in such
+and such a time, and they shrug their shoulders and answer that they
+have heard such chatter before--from trainers and stable boys. But you
+put your horse on a race track and prove what you say, and they pay for
+knowledge. Once they see the truth they come to value your horses. You
+open a stud and your breed is crossed with theirs. The blood of Rustir,
+passing through the blood of Glani, goes among the best horses of the
+world. A hundred years from now there will be no good horse in the
+world, of which men do not ask: 'Is the blood of Glani in him? Is he of
+the line of the Eden Grays?' Consider that, David!"
+
+He found the master of the Garden frowning. He pressed home the point
+with renewed vigor.
+
+"If you live in this valley, David, what will men know of you?"
+
+"Have you come to take me out of the Garden of Eden?"
+
+"I have come to make your influence pass over the mountains while you
+stay here. A hundred years from now who will know David of the Garden of
+Eden? Of the men who used to live here, who remains? Not one! Where do
+they live now? Inside your head, inside your head, David, and no other
+place!"
+
+"They live with God," said David hoarsely.
+
+"But here on earth they don't live at all except in your mind. And when
+you die, they die with you. But if you let me do what I say, a thousand
+years from to-day, people will be saying: 'There was a man named David,
+and he had these gray horses, which were the finest in the world, and he
+gave their blood to the world.' They'll pick up every detail of your
+life, and they'll trace back the horses--"
+
+"Do I live for the sake of a horse?" cried David, in a voice unnaturally
+high.
+
+"No, but because of your horses the world will ask what sort of a man
+you are. People will follow your example. They'll build a hundred
+Gardens of Eden. Every one of those valleys will be full of the memories
+of David and the men who went before him. Then, David, you'll never
+die!"
+
+It was the highest flight to which Connor's eloquence ever attained. The
+results were alarming. David spoke, without facing his companion,
+thoughtfully.
+
+"Benjamin, I have been warned. By sin the gate to the Garden was opened,
+and perhaps sin has entered in you. For why did the first men withdraw
+to this valley, led by John, save to live apart, perfect lives? And you,
+Benjamin, wish to undo all that they accomplished."
+
+"Only the horses," said the gambler. "Who spoke of taking you out of the
+Garden?"
+
+Still David would not look at him.
+
+"God grant me His light," said the master sadly. "You have stirred and
+troubled me. If the horses go, my mind goes with them. Benjamin, you
+have tempted me. Yet another thing is in my mind. When Matthew came to
+die he took me beside him and said:
+
+"'David, it is not well that you should lead a lonely life. Man is made
+to live, and not to die. Take to yourself a woman, when I am gone, wed
+her, and have children, so that the spirit of John and Matthew and Luke
+and Paul shall not die. And do this in your youth, before five years
+have passed you by.'
+
+"So spoke Matthew, and this is the fifth year. And perhaps the Lord
+works in you to draw me out, that I may find this woman. Or perhaps it
+is only a spirit of evil that speaks in you. How shall I judge? For my
+mind whirls!"
+
+As if to flee from his thoughts, the master of the Garden called on
+Glani, and the stallion broke into a full gallop. Shakra followed at a
+pace that took the breath of Connor, but instantly she began to fall
+behind; before they had reached the lake Glani was out of sight across
+the bridge.
+
+Full of alarm--full of hope also--Connor reached the house. In the patio
+he found Zacharias standing with folded arms before a door.
+
+"I must find David at once," he told Zacharias. "Where has he gone?"
+
+"Up," said the servant, and pointed solemnly above him.
+
+"Nonsense!" He added impatiently: "Where shall I find him, Zacharias?"
+
+But again Zacharias waved to the blue sky.
+
+"His body is in this room, but his mind is with Him above the world."
+
+There was something in this that made Connor uneasy as he had never been
+before.
+
+"You may go into any room save the Room of Silence," continued
+Zacharias, "but into this room only David and the four before him have
+been. This is the holy place."
+
+
+
+
+_CHAPTER EIGHTEEN_
+
+
+Glani waited in the patio for the reappearance of the master, and as
+Connor paced with short, nervous steps on the grass at every turn he
+caught the flash of the sun on the stallion. Above his selfish greed he
+had one honest desire: he would have paid with blood to see the great
+horse face the barrier. That, however was beyond the reach of his
+ambition, and therefore the beauty of Glani was always a hopeless
+torment.
+
+The quiet in the patio oddly increased his excitement. It was one of
+those bright, still days when the wind stirs only in soft breaths,
+bringing a sense of the open sky. Sometimes the breeze picked up a
+handful of drops from the fountain and showered it with a cool rustling
+on the grass. Sometimes it flared the tail of Glani; sometimes the
+shadow of the great eucalyptus which stood west of the house quivered on
+the turf.
+
+Connor found himself looking minutely at trivial things, and in the
+meantime David Eden in his room was deciding the fate of the American
+turf. Even Glani seemed to know, for his glance never stirred from the
+door through which the master had disappeared. What a horse the big
+fellow was! He thought of the stallion in the paddock at the track. He
+heard the thousands swarm and the murmur which comes deep out of a man's
+throat when he sees a great horse.
+
+The palms of Connor were wet with sweat. He kept rubbing them dry on the
+hips of his trousers. Rehearsing his talk with David, he saw a thousand
+flaws, and a thousand openings which he had missed. Then all thought
+stopped; David had come out into the patio.
+
+He came straight to Connor, smiling, and he said:
+
+"The words were a temptation, but the mind that conceived them was not
+the mind of a tempter."
+
+Ineffable assurance and good will shone in his face, and Connor cursed
+him silently.
+
+"I, leaving the valley, might be lost in the torrent. And neither the
+world nor I should profit. But if I stay here, at least one soul is
+saved to God."
+
+"Your own?" muttered Connor. But he managed to smile above his rage.
+"And after you," he concluded, "what of the horses, David?"
+
+"My sons shall have them."
+
+"And if you have no sons?"
+
+"Before my death I shall kill all of the horses. They are not meant for
+other men than the sons of David."
+
+The gambler drew off his hat and raised his face to the sky, asking
+mutely if Heaven would permit this crime.
+
+"Yet," said David, "I forgive you."
+
+"You forgive me?" echoed Connor through his teeth.
+
+"Yes, for the fire of the temptation has burned out. Let us forget the
+world beyond the mountains."
+
+"What is your proof that you are right in staying here?"
+
+"The voice of God."
+
+"You have spoken to Him, perhaps?"
+
+The irony passed harmless by the raised head of David.
+
+"I have spoken to Him," he asserted calmly.
+
+"I see," nodded the gambler. "You keep Him in that room, no doubt?"
+
+"It is true. His spirit is in the Room of Silence."
+
+"You've seen His face?"
+
+A numbness fell on the mind of Connor as he saw his hopes destroyed by
+the demon of bigotry.
+
+"Only His voice has come to me," said David.
+
+"It speaks to you?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Connor stared in actual alarm, for this was insanity.
+
+"The four," said David, "spoke to Him always in that room. He is there.
+And when Matthew died he gave me this assurance--that while the walls of
+this house stood together God would not desert me or fail to come to me
+in that room until I love another thing more than I love God."
+
+"And how, David, do you hear the voice? For while you were there I was
+in the patio, close by, and yet I heard no whisper of a sound from the
+room."
+
+"I shall tell you. When I entered the Room of Silence just now your
+words had set me on fire. My mind was hot with desire of power over
+other men. I forgot the palace you built for me with your promises. And
+then I knew that it had been a temptation to sin from which the voice
+was freeing me.
+
+"Could a human voice have spoken more clearly than that voice spoke to
+my heart? Anxiously I called before my eyes the image of Benjamin to ask
+for His judgment, but your face remained an unclouded vision and was not
+dimmed by the will of the Lord as He dims creatures of evil in the Room
+of Silence. Thereby I knew that you are indeed my brother."
+
+The brain of Connor groped slowly in the rear of these words. He was too
+stunned by disappointment to think clearly, but vaguely he made out that
+David had dismissed the argument and was now asking him to come for a
+walk by the lake.
+
+"The lake's well enough," he answered, "but it occurs to me that I've
+got to get on with my journey."
+
+"You must leave me?"
+
+There was such real anxiety in his voice that Connor softened a little.
+
+"I've got a lot to do," he explained. "I only stopped over to rest my
+nags, in the first place. Then this other idea came along, but since the
+voice has rapped it there's nothing for me to do but to get on my way
+again."
+
+"It is a long trip?"
+
+"Long enough."
+
+"The Garden of Eden is a lonely place."
+
+"You'll have the voice to cheer you up."
+
+"The voice is an awful thing. There is no companionship in it. This
+thought comes to me. Leave the mule and the horse. Take Shakra. She will
+carry you swiftly and safely over the mountains and bring you back
+again. And I shall be happy to know that she is with you while you are
+away. Then go, brother, if you must, and return in haste."
+
+It was the opening of the gates of heaven to Connor at the very moment
+when he had surrendered the last hope. He heard David call the servants,
+heard an order to bring Shakra saddled at once. The canteen was being
+filled for the journey. Into the incredulous mind of the gambler the
+truth filtered by degrees, as candlelight probes a room full of
+treasure, flashing ever and anon into new corners filled with
+undiscovered riches.
+
+Shakra was his to ride over the mountains. And why stop there? There was
+no mark on her, and his brand would make her his. She would be safe in
+an Eastern racing stable before they even dreamed of pursuit. And when
+her victories on the track had built his fortune he could return her,
+and raise a breed of peerless horses. A theft? Yes, but so was the
+stealing of the fire from heaven for the use of mankind.
+
+He would have been glad to leave the Garden of Eden at once, but that
+was not in David's scheme of things. To him a departure into the world
+beyond the mountains was as a voyage into an uncharted sea. His dignity
+kept him from asking questions, but it was obvious that he was painfully
+anxious to learn the necessity of Connor's going.
+
+That night in the patio he held forth at length of the things they would
+do together when the gambler returned. "The Garden is a book," he
+explained. "And I must teach you to turn the pages and read in them."
+
+There was little sleep for Connor that night. He lay awake, turning over
+the possibilities of a last minute failure, and when he finally dropped
+into a deep, aching slumber it was to be awakened almost at once by the
+voice of David calling in the patio. He wakened and found it was the
+pink of the dawn.
+
+"Shakra waits at the gate of the patio. Start early, Benjamin, and
+thereby you will return soon."
+
+It brought Connor to his feet with a leap. As if he required urging!
+Through the hasty breakfast he could not retain his joyous laughter
+until he saw David growing thoughtful. But that breakfast was over, and
+David's kind solicitations, at length. Shakra was brought to him; his
+feet were settled into the stirrups, and the dream changed to a sense of
+the glorious reality. She was his--Shakra!
+
+"A journey of happiness for your sake and a speed for mine, Benjamin."
+
+Connor looked down for the last time into the face of the master of the
+Garden, half wild and half calm--the face of a savage with the mind of a
+man behind it. "If he should take my trail!" he thought with horror.
+
+"Good-by!" he called aloud, and in a burst of joy and sudden
+compunction, "God bless you, David!"
+
+"He has blessed me already, for He has given to me a friend."
+
+A touch of the rope--for no Eden Gray would endure a bit--whirled Shakra
+and sent her down the terraces like the wind. The avenue of the
+eucalyptus trees poured behind them, and out of this, with astonishing
+suddenness, they reached the gate.
+
+The fire already burned, for the night was hardly past, and Joseph
+squatted with the thin smoke blowing across his face unheeded. He was
+grinning with savage hatred and muttering.
+
+Connor knew what profound curse was being called down upon his head, but
+he had only a careless glance for Joseph. His eye up yonder where the
+full morning shone on the mountains, his mind was out in the world, at
+the race track, seeing in prospect beautiful Shakra fleeing away from
+the finest of the thoroughbreds. And he saw the face of Ruth, as her
+eyes would light at the sight of Shakra. He could have burst into song.
+
+Connor looking forward, high-headed, threw up his arm with a low shout,
+and Shakra burst into full gallop down the ravine.
+
+
+
+
+_CHAPTER NINETEEN_
+
+
+When Ruth Manning read the note through for the first time she raised
+her glance to the bearer. The boy was so sun-blackened that the paler
+skin of the eyelids made his eyes seem supremely large. He was now
+poised accurately on one foot, rubbing his calloused heel up and down
+his shin, while he drank in the particulars of the telegraph office. He
+could hardly be a party to a deception. She looked over the note again,
+and read:
+
+     DEAR MISS MANNING:
+
+     I am a couple of miles out of Lukin, in a place to which the
+     bearer of this note will bring you. I am sure you will come,
+     for I am in trouble, out of which you can very easily help me.
+     It is a matter which I cannot confide to any other person in
+     Lukin. I am impatiently expecting you.
+
+     BEN CONNOR.
+
+She crumpled the note in her hand thoughtfully, but, on the verge of
+dropping it in the waste basket, she smoothed it again, and for the
+third time went over the contents. Then she rose abruptly and confided
+her place to the lad who idled at the counter.
+
+"The wire's dead," she told him. "Besides, I'll be back in an hour or
+so."
+
+And she rode off a moment later with the boy. He had a blanket-pad
+without stirrups, and he kept prodding the sliding elbows of the horse
+with his bare toes while he chattered at Ruth, for the drum of the
+sounder had fascinated him and he wanted it explained. She listened to
+him with a smile of inattention, for she was thinking busily of Connor.
+Those thoughts made her look down to the dust that puffed up from the
+feet of the horses and became a light mist behind them; then, raising
+her head, she saw the blue ravines of the farther mountains and the sun
+haze about the crests. Connor had always been to her as the ship is to a
+traveler; the glamour of strange places was about him.
+
+Presently they left the trail, and passing about a hillside, came to an
+old shack whose unpainted wood had blackened with time.
+
+"There he is," said the boy, and waving his hand to her, turned his pony
+on the back trail at a gallop.
+
+Connor called to her from the shack and came to meet her, but she had
+dismounted before he could reach the stirrup. He kept her hand in his
+for a moment as he greeted her. It surprised him to find how glad he was
+to see her. He told her so frankly.
+
+"After the mountains and all that," he said cheerfully, "it's like
+meeting an old chum again to see you. How have things been going?"
+
+This direct friendliness in a young man was something new to the girl.
+The youths who came in to the dances at Lukin were an embarrassed lot
+who kept a sulky distance, as though they made it a matter of pride to
+show they were able to resist the attraction of a pretty girl. But if
+she gave them the least encouragement, the merest shadow of a friendly
+smile, they were at once all eagerness. They would flock around her,
+sending savage glances to one another, and simpering foolishly at her.
+They had stock conversation of politeness; they forced out prodigious
+compliments to an accompaniment of much writhing. Social conversation
+was a torture to them, and the girl knew it.
+
+Not that she despised them. She understood perfectly well that most of
+them were fine fellows and strong men. But their talents had been
+cultivated in roping two-year-olds and bulldogging yearlings. They could
+encounter the rush of a mad bull far more easily than they could
+withstand a verbal quip. With the familiarity of years, she knew, they
+lost both their sullenness and their starched politeness. They became
+kindly, gentle men with infinite patience, infinite devotion to their
+"womenfolk." Homelier girls in Lukin had an easier time with them. But
+in the presence of Ruth Manning, who was a more or less celebrated
+beauty, they were a hopeless lot. In short, she had all her life been in
+an amphibious position, of the mountain desert and yet not of the
+mountain desert. On the one hand she despised the "slick dudes" who now
+and again drifted into Lukin with marvelous neckties and curiously
+patterned clothes; on the other hand, something in her revolted at the
+thought of becoming one of the "womenfolk."
+
+As a matter of fact, there are two things which every young girl should
+have. The first is the presence of a mother, which is the oldest of
+truisms; the second is the friendship of at least one man of nearly her
+own age. Ruth had neither. That is the crying hurt of Western life. The
+men are too busy to bother with women until the need for a wife and a
+home and children, and all the physical destiny of a man, overwhelms
+them. When they reach this point there is no selection. The first girl
+they meet they make love to.
+
+And most of this Ruth understood. She wanted to make some of those
+lumbering, fearless, strong-handed, gentle-souled men her friends. But
+she dared not make the approaches. The first kind word or the first
+winning smile brought forth a volley of tremendous compliments, close on
+the heels of which followed the heavy artillery of a proposal of
+marriage. No wonder that she was rejoiced beyond words to meet this
+frank friendliness in Ben Connor. And what a joy to be able to speak
+back freely, without putting a guard over eyes and voice!
+
+"Things have gone on just the same--but I've missed you a lot!"
+
+"That's good to hear."
+
+"You see," she explained, "I've been living in Lukin with just half a
+mind--the rest of it has been living off the wire. And you're about the
+only interesting thing that's come to me except in the Morse."
+
+And what a happiness to see that there was no stiffening of his glance
+as he tried to read some profound meaning into her words! He accepted
+them as they were, with a good-natured laughter that warmed her heart.
+
+"Sit down over here," he went on, spreading a blanket over a chairlike
+arrangement of two boulders. "You look tired out."
+
+She accepted with a smile, and letting her head go back against the
+upper edge of the blanket she closed her eyes for a moment and permitted
+her mind to drift into utter relaxation.
+
+"I _am_ tired," she whispered. It was inexpressibly pleasant to lie
+there with the sense of being guarded by this man. "They never guess how
+tired I get--never--never! I feel--I feel--as if I were living under the
+whip all the time."
+
+"Steady up, partner." He had picked up that word in the mountains, and
+he liked it. "Steady, partner. Everybody has to let himself go. You tell
+me what's wrong. I may not be able to fix anything, but it always helps
+to let off steam."
+
+She heard him sit down beside her, and for an instant, though her eyes
+were still closed, she stiffened a little, fearful that he would touch
+her hand, attempt a caress. Any other man in Lukin would have become
+familiar long ago. But Connor did not attempt to approach her.
+
+"Turn and turn about," he was saying smoothly. "When I went into your
+telegraph office the other night my nerves were in a knot. Tell you
+straight I never knew I _had_ real nerves before. I went in ready to
+curse like a drunk. When I saw you, it straightened me out. By the Lord,
+it was like a cool wind in my face. You were so steady, Ruth; straight
+eyes; and it ironed out the wrinkles to hear your voice. I blurted out a
+lot of stuff. But when I remembered it later on I wasn't ashamed. I knew
+you'd understand. Besides, I knew that what I'd said would stop with
+you. Just about one girl in a million who can keep her mouth shut--and
+each one of 'em is worth her weight in gold. You did me several thousand
+dollars' worth of good that night. That's honest!"
+
+She allowed her eyes to open, slowly, and looked at him with a misty
+content. The mountains had already done him good. The sharp sun had
+flushed him a little and tinted his cheeks and strong chin with tan. He
+looked more manly, somehow, and stronger in himself. Of course he had
+flattered her, but the feeling that she had actually helped him so much
+by merely listening on that other night wakened in her a new
+self-reverence. She was too prone to look on life as a career of manlike
+endeavor; it was pleasant to know that a woman could accomplish
+something even more important by simply sitting still and listening. He
+was watching her gravely now, even though she permitted herself the
+luxury of smiling at him.
+
+All at once she cried softly: "Thank Heaven that you're not a fool, Ben
+Connor!"
+
+"What do you mean by that?"
+
+"I don't think I can tell you." She added hastily: "I'm not trying to be
+mysterious."
+
+He waved the need of an apology away.
+
+"Tell you what. Never knew a girl yet that was worth her salt who could
+be understood all the time, or who even understood herself."
+
+She closed her eyes again to ponder this, lazily. She could not arrive
+at a conclusion, but she did not care. Missing links in this
+conversation were not vitally important.
+
+"Take it easy, Ruth; we'll talk later on," he said after a time.
+
+She did not look at him as she answered: "Tell me why?"
+
+There was a sort of childlike confiding in all this that troubled Ben
+Connor. He had seen her with a mind as direct and an enthusiasm as
+strong as that of a man. This relaxing and softening alarmed him,
+because it showed him another side of her, a new and vital side. She was
+very lovely with the shadows of the sombrero brim cutting across the
+softness of her lips and setting aglow the clear olive tan of her chin
+and throat. Her hand lay palm upward beside her, very small, very
+delicate in the making. But what a power was in that hand! He realized
+with a thrill of not unmixed pleasure that if the girl set herself to
+the task she could mold him like wax with the gestures of that hand. If
+into the softness of her voice she allowed a single note of warmth to
+creep, what would happen in Ben Connor? He felt within himself a chord
+ready to vibrate in answer.
+
+Now he caught himself leaning a little closer to study the purple stain
+of weariness in her eyelids. Even exhaustion was attractive in her. It
+showed something new, and newly appealing. Weariness gave merely a new
+edge to her beauty. What if her eyes, opening slowly now, were to look
+upon him not with the gentleness of friendship, but with something
+more--the little shade of difference in a girl's wide eyes that admits a
+man to her secrets--and traps him in so doing.
+
+Ben Connor drew himself up with a shake of the shoulders. He felt that
+he must keep careful guard from now on. What a power she was. What a
+power! If she set herself to the task who could deal with her? What man
+could keep from her? Then the picture of David jumped into his mind out
+of nothingness. And on the heels of that picture the inspiration came
+with a sudden uplifting of the heart, surety, intoxicating insight. He
+wanted to jump to his feet and shout until the great ravine beneath them
+echoed. With an effort he remained quiet. But he was thinking
+rapidly--rapidly. He had intended to use her merely to arrange for
+shipping Shakra away from Lukin Junction. For he dared not linger about
+the town where expert horse thieves might see the mare. But now
+something new, something more came to him. The girl was a power? Why not
+use her?
+
+What he said was: "Do you know why you close your eyes?"
+
+Still without looking up she answered: "Why?"
+
+"All of these mountains--you see?" She did not see, so he went on to
+describe them. "There's that big peak opposite us. Looks a hundred yards
+away, but it's two miles. Comes down in big jags and walks up into the
+sky--Lord knows how many thousand feet. And behind it the other ranges
+stepping off into the horizon with purple in the gorges and mist at the
+tops. Fine picture, eh? But hard to look at, Ruth. Mighty hard to look
+at. First thing you know you get to squinting to make out whether that's
+a cactus on the side of that mountain or a hundred-foot pine tree. Might
+be either. Can't tell the distance in this air. Well, you begin to
+squint. That's how the people around here get that long-distance look
+behind their eyes and the long-distance wrinkles around the corners of
+their eyes. All the men have those wrinkles. But the women have them,
+too, after a while. You'll get them after a while, Ruth. Wrinkles around
+the eyes and wrinkles in the mind to match, eh?"
+
+Her eyes opened at last, slowly, slowly. She smiled at him plaintively.
+
+"Don't I know, Ben? It's a man's country. It isn't made for woman."
+
+"Ah, there you've hit the nail on the head. Exactly! A man's country. Do
+you know what it does to the women?"
+
+"Tell me."
+
+"Makes 'em like the men. Hardens their hands after a while. Roughens
+their voices. Takes time, but that's what comes after a while.
+Understand?"
+
+"Oh, don't I understand!"
+
+And he knew how the fear had haunted her, then, for the first time.
+
+"What does this dry, hot wind do to you in the mountains? What does it
+do to your skin? Takes the velvet off, after a while; makes it dry and
+hard. Lord, girl, I'd hate to see the change it's going to make in
+you!"
+
+All at once she sat up, wide awake.
+
+"What are you trying to do to me, Ben Connor?"
+
+"I'm trying to wake you up."
+
+"I _am_ awake. But what can I do?"
+
+"You think you're awake, but you're not. Tell you what a girl needs, a
+stage--just like an actor. Think they can put on a play with these
+mountains for a setting? Never in the world. Make the actors look too
+small. Make everything they say sound too thin.
+
+"Same way with a girl. She needs a setting. A room, a rug, a picture, a
+comfortable chair, and a dress that goes with it. Shuts out the rest of
+the world and gives her a chance to make a man focus on her--see her
+behind the footlights. See?"
+
+"Yes," she whispered.
+
+"Do you know what I've been doing while I watched you just now?"
+
+"Tell me."
+
+He was fighting for a great purpose now, and a quality of earnest
+emotion crept into his voice. "Around your throat I've been running an
+edging of yellow old lace. Under your hand that was lying there I put a
+deep blue velvet; I had your shoulders as white as snow, with a flash to
+'em like snow when you turned in the light; I had you proud as a queen,
+Ruth, with a blur of violets at your breast. I took out the tired look
+in your face. Instead, I put in happiness."
+
+He stopped and drew a long breath.
+
+"You're pretty now, but you could be--beautiful. Lord, what a flame of a
+beauty you could be, girl!"
+
+Instead of flushing and smiling under the praise, he saw tears well into
+her eyes and her mouth grow tremulous. She winked the tears away.
+
+"What are you trying to do, Ben? Make everything still harder for me?
+Don't you see I'm helpless--helpless?"
+
+And instead of rising to a wail her voice sank away at the end in
+despair.
+
+"Oh, you're trapped well enough," he said. "I'm going to bust the trap!
+I'm going to give you your setting. I'm going to make you what you ought
+to be--beautiful!"
+
+She smiled as at any unreal fairy tale.
+
+"How?"
+
+"I can show you better than I can tell you! Come here!" He rose, and she
+was on her feet in a flash. He led the way to the door of the shack, and
+as the shadows fell inside, Shakra tossed up her head.
+
+The girl's bewildered joy was as great as if the horse were a present to
+her.
+
+"Oh, you beauty, you beauty," she cried.
+
+"Watch yourself," he warned. "She's as wild as a mountain lion."
+
+"But she knows a friend!"
+
+Shakra sniffed the outstretched hand, and then with a shake of her head
+accepted the stranger and looked over Ruth's shoulder at Connor as
+though for an explanation. Connor himself was smiling and excited; he
+drew her back and forgot to release her hand, so that they stood like
+two happy children together. He spoke very softly and rapidly, as though
+he feared to embarrass the mare.
+
+"Look at the head first--then the bone in the foreleg, then the length
+above her back--see how she stands! See how she stands! And those black
+hoofs, hard as iron, I tell you--put the four of 'em in my double hands,
+almost--ever see such a nick? But she's no six furlong flash! That
+chest, eh? Run your finger-tips down that shoulder!"
+
+She turned with tears of pleasure in her eyes. "Ben Connor, you've been
+in the valley of the grays!"
+
+"I have. And do you know what it means to us?"
+
+"To _us_?"
+
+"I said it. I mean it. You're going to share."
+
+"I--"
+
+"Look at that mare again!"
+
+She obeyed.
+
+"Say something, Ruth!"
+
+"I can't say what I feel!"
+
+"Then try to understand this: you're looking at the fastest horse that
+ever stepped into a race track. You understand? I'm not speaking in
+comparisons. I'm talking the cold dope! Here's a pony that could have
+given Salvator twenty pounds, run him sick in six furlongs, and walked
+away to the finish by herself. Here's a mare that could pick up a
+hundred and fifty pounds and beat the finest horse that ever faced a
+barrier with a fly-weight jockey in the saddle. You're looking at
+history, girl! Look again! You're looking at a cold million dollars.
+You're looking at the blood that's going to change the history of the
+turf. That's what Shakra means!"
+
+She was trembling with his excitement.
+
+"I see. It's the sure thing you were talking about. The horse that can't
+be beat--that makes the betting safe?"
+
+But Connor grew gloomy at once.
+
+"What do you mean by sure thing? If I could ever get her safely away
+from the post in a stake race, yes; sure as anything on earth. But
+suppose the train is wrecked? Suppose she puts a foot in a hole? Suppose
+at the post some rotten, cheap-selling plater kicks her and lays her
+up!"
+
+He passed a trembling hand along the neck of Shakra.
+
+"God, suppose!"
+
+"But you only brought one; nothing else worth while in the valley?"
+
+"Nothing else? I tell you, the place is full of 'em! And there's a
+stallion as much finer than Shakra as she's finer than that broken-down,
+low-headed, ewe-necked, straight-shouldered, roach-backed skate you have
+out yonder!"
+
+"Mr. Connor, that's the best little pony in Lukin! But I know--compared
+with this--oh, to see her run, just once!"
+
+She sighed, and as her glance fell Connor noted her pallor and her
+weariness. She looked up again, and the great eyes filled her face with
+loveliness. Color, too, came into her cheeks and into her parted lips.
+
+"You beauty!" she murmured. "You perfect, perfect beauty!"
+
+Shakra was nervous under the fluttering hands, but in spite of her
+uneasiness she seemed to enjoy the light-falling touches until the
+finger-tips trailed across her forehead; then she tossed her head high,
+and the girl stood beneath, laughing, delighted. Connor found himself
+smiling in sympathy. The two made a harmonious picture. As harmonious,
+say, as the strength of Glani and the strength of David Eden. His face
+grew tense with it when he drew the girl away.
+
+"Would you like to have a horse like that--half a dozen like it?"
+
+The first leap of hope was followed by a wan smile at this cruel
+mockery.
+
+He went on with brutal tenseness, jabbing the points at her with his
+raised finger.
+
+"And everything else you've ever wanted: beautiful clothes? Manhattan? A
+limousine as big as a house. A butler behind your chair and a maid in
+your dressing room? A picture in the papers every time you turn around?
+You want 'em?"
+
+"Do I want heaven?"
+
+"How much will you pay?"
+
+He urged it on her, towering over her as he drew close.
+
+"What's it worth? Is it worth a fight?"
+
+"It's worth--everything."
+
+"I'm talking shop. I'm talking business. Will you play partners with
+me?"
+
+"To the very end."
+
+"The big deaf-mute doesn't own the grays in that valley they call the
+Garden of Eden. They're owned by a white man. They call him David Eden.
+And David Eden has never been out in the world. It's part of his creed
+not to. It's part of his creed, however, to go out just once, find a
+woman for his wife, and bring her back with him. Is that clear?"
+
+"I--"
+
+"You're to go up there. That old gray gelding we saw in Lukin the day of
+the race. I'll finance you to the sky. Ride it to the gates of the
+Garden of Eden. Tell the guards that you've got to have another horse
+because the one you own is old. Insist on seeing David. Smile at 'em;
+win 'em over. Make them let you see David. And the minute you see him,
+he's ours! You understand? I don't mean marriage. One smile will knock
+him stiff. Then play him. Get him to follow you out of the valley. Tell
+him you have to go back home. He'll follow you. Once we have him outside
+you can keep him from going back and you can make him bring out his
+horses, too. Easy? It's a sure thing! We don't rob him, you see? We
+simply use his horses. I race them and play them. I split the winnings
+with you and David. Millions, I tell you; millions. Don't answer. Gimme
+a chance to talk!"
+
+There was a rickety old box leaning against the wall; he made her sit on
+it, and dropping upon one knee, he poured out plan, reason, hopes,
+ambitions in fierce confusion. It ended logically enough. David was
+under what he considered a divine order to marry, and he would be clay
+in the hands of the first girl who met him. She would be a fool indeed
+if she were not able to lead him out of the valley.
+
+"Think it over for one minute before you answer," concluded Connor, and
+then rose and folded his arms. He controlled his very breathing for fear
+of breaking in on the dream which he saw forming in her eyes.
+
+Then she shook herself clear of the temptation.
+
+"Ben, it's crooked! I'm to lie to him--live a lie until we have what we
+want!"
+
+"God A'mighty, girl! Don't you see that we'd be doing the poor fathead a
+good turn by getting him out of his hermitage and letting him live in
+the world? A lie? Call it that if you want. Aren't there such things as
+white lies? If there are, this is one of 'em or I'm not Ben Connor."
+
+His voice softened. "Why, Ruth, you know damned well that I wouldn't put
+the thing up to you if I didn't figure that in the end it would be the
+best thing in the world for you? I'm giving you your chance. To save
+Dave Eden from being a fossil. To earn your own freedom. To get
+everything you've longed for. Think!"
+
+"I'm trying to think--but I only keep feeling, inside, 'It's wrong! It's
+wrong! It's wrong!' I'm not a moralizer, but--tell me about David Eden!"
+
+Connor saw his opening.
+
+"Think of a horse that's four years old and never had a bit in his
+teeth. That's David Eden. The minute you see him you'll want to tame
+him. But you'll have to go easy. Keep gloves on. He's as proud as a
+sulky kid. Kind of a chap you can't force a step, but you could coax him
+over a cliff. Why, he'd be thread for you to wind around your little
+finger if you worked him right. But it wouldn't be easy. If he had a
+single suspicion he'd smash everything in a minute, and he's strong
+enough to tear down a house. Put the temper of a panther in the size of
+a bear and you get a small idea of David Eden."
+
+He was purposely making the task difficult and he saw that she was
+excited. His own work with Ruth Manning was as difficult as hers would
+be with David. The fickle color left her all at once and he found her
+looking wistfully at him.
+
+She returned neither answer, argument, nor comment. In vain he detailed
+each step of her way into the Garden and how she could pass the gate.
+Sometimes he was not even sure that she heard him, as she listened to
+the silent voice which spoke against him. He had gathered all his energy
+for a last outburst, he was training his tongue for a convincing storm
+of eloquence, when Shakra, as though she wearied of all this human
+chatter, pushed in between them her beautiful head and went slowly
+toward Ruth with pricking ears, inquisitive, searching for those light,
+caressing touches.
+
+The voice of Connor became an insidious whisper.
+
+"Look at her, Ruth. Look at her. She's begging you to come. You can have
+her. She'll be a present to you. Quick! What's the answer!"
+
+A strange answer! She threw her arms around the shoulder of the
+beautiful gray, buried her face in the mane, and burst into tears.
+
+For a moment Connor watched her, dismayed, but presently, as one
+satisfied, he withdrew to the open air and mopped his forehead. It had
+been hard work, but it had paid. He looked over the distant blue waves
+of mountains with the eye of possession.
+
+
+
+
+_CHAPTER TWENTY_
+
+
+"The evil at heart, when they wish to take, seem to give," said Abraham,
+mouthing the words with his withered lips, and he came to one of his
+prophetic pauses.
+
+The master of the Garden permitted it to the privileged old servant, who
+added now: "Benjamin is evil at heart."
+
+"He did not ask for the horse," said David, who was plainly arguing
+against his own conviction.
+
+"Yet he knew." The ancient face of Abraham puckered. "Po' white trash!"
+he muttered. Now and then one of these quaint phrases would break
+through his acquired diction, and they always bore home to David a sense
+of that great world beyond the mountains. Matthew had often described
+that world, but one of Abraham's odd expressions carried him in a breath
+into cities filled with men.
+
+"His absence is cheaply bought at the price of one mare," continued the
+old servant soothingly.
+
+"One mare of Rustir's blood! What is the sin for which the Lord would
+punish me with the loss of Shakra? And I miss her as I would miss a
+human face. But Benjamin will return with her. He did not ask for the
+horse."
+
+"He knew you would offer."
+
+"He will not return?"
+
+"Never!"
+
+"Then I shall go to find him."
+
+"It is forbidden."
+
+Abraham sat down, cross-legged, and watched with impish self-content
+while David strode back and forth in the patio. A far-off neighing
+brought him to a halt, and he raised his hand for silence. The neighing
+was repeated, more clearly, and David laughed for joy.
+
+"A horse coming from the pasture to the paddock," said Abraham, shifting
+uneasily.
+
+The day was old and the patio was filled with a clear, soft light,
+preceding evening.
+
+"It is Shakra! Shakra, Abraham!"
+
+Abraham rose.
+
+"A yearling. It is too high for the voice of a grown mare."
+
+"The distance makes it shrill. Abraham, Abraham, cannot I find her voice
+among ten all neighing at once?"
+
+"Then beware of Benjamin, for he has returned to take not one but all."
+
+But David smiled at the skinny hand which was raised in warning.
+
+"Say no more," he said solemnly. "I am already to blame for hearkening
+to words against my brother Benjamin."
+
+"You yourself had said that he tempted you."
+
+Because David could find no ready retort he grew angry.
+
+"Also, think of this. Your eyes and your ears are grown dull, Abraham,
+and perhaps your mind is misted also."
+
+He had gone to the entrance into the patio and paused there to wait with
+a lifted head. Abraham followed and attempted to speak again, but the
+last cruel speech had crushed him. He went out on the terrace, and
+looking back saw that David had not a glance for him; so Abraham went
+feebly on.
+
+"I have become as a false prophet," he murmured, "and I am no more
+regarded."
+
+His life had long been in its evening, and now, at a step, the darkness
+of old age fell about him. From the margin of the lake he looked up and
+saw Connor ride to the patio.
+
+David, at the entrance, clasped the hand of his guest while he was still
+on the horse and helped him to the ground.
+
+"This," he said solemnly, "is a joyful day in my house."
+
+"What's the big news?" inquired the gambler, and added: "Why so happy?"
+
+"Is it not the day of your return? Isaac! Zacharias!"
+
+They came running as he clapped his hands.
+
+"Set out the oldest wine, and there is a haunch of the deer that was
+killed at the gate. Go! And now, Benjamin, did Shakra carry you well and
+swiftly?"
+
+"Better than I was ever carried before."
+
+"Then she deserves well of me. Come hither, Shakra, and stand behind me.
+Truly, Benjamin, my brother, my thoughts have ridden ten times across
+the mountains and back, wishing for your return!"
+
+Connor was sufficiently keen to know that a main reason for the warmth
+of his reception was that he had been doubted while he was away, and
+while they supped in the patio he was even able to guess who had raised
+the suspicion against him. Word was brought that Abraham lay in his bed
+seriously ill, but David Eden showed no trace of sympathy.
+
+"Which is the greater crime?" he asked Benjamin a little later. "To
+poison the food a man eats or the thoughts in his mind?"
+
+"Surely," said the crafty gambler, "the mind is of more importance than
+the stomach."
+
+Luckily David bore the main burden of conversation that evening, for the
+brain of Connor was surcharged with impatient waiting. His great plan,
+he shrewdly guessed, would give him everything or else ruin him in the
+Garden of Eden, and the suspense was like an eating pain. Luckily the
+crisis came on the very next day.
+
+Jacob galloped into the patio, and flung himself from the back of Abra.
+
+David and Connor rose from their chairs under the arcade where they had
+been watching Joseph setting great stones in place around the border of
+the fountain pool. The master of the Garden went forward in some anger
+at this unceremonious interruption. But Jacob came as one whose news is
+so important that it overrides all need of conventional approach.
+
+"A woman," he panted. "A woman at the gate of the Garden!"
+
+"Why are you here?" said David sternly.
+
+"A woman--"
+
+"Man, woman, child, or beast, the law is the same. They shall not enter
+the Garden of Eden. Why are you here?"
+
+"And she rides the gray gelding, the son of Yoruba!"
+
+At that moment the white trembling lips of Connor might have told the
+master much, but he was too angered to take heed of his guest.
+
+"That which has once left the Garden is no longer part of it. For us,
+the gray gelding does not exist. Why are you here?"
+
+"Because she would not leave the gate. She says that she will see you."
+
+"She is a fool. And because she was so confident, you were weak enough
+to believe her?"
+
+"I told her that you would not come; that you could not come!"
+
+"You have told her that it is impossible for me to speak with her?" said
+David, while Connor gradually regained control of himself, summoning all
+his strength for the crisis.
+
+"I told her all that, but she said nevertheless she would see you."
+
+"For what reason?"
+
+"Because she has money with which to buy another horse like her gelding,
+which is old."
+
+"Go back and tell her that there is no money price on the heads of my
+horses. Go! When Ephraim is at the gate there are no such journeyings to
+me."
+
+"Ephraim is here," said Jacob stoutly, "and he spoke much with her.
+Nevertheless she said that you would see her."
+
+"For what reason?"
+
+"She said: 'Because.'"
+
+"Because of what?"
+
+"That word was her only answer: 'Because.'"
+
+"This is strange," murmured David, turning to Connor. "Is that one word
+a reason?
+
+"Go back again," commanded David grimly. "Go back and tell this woman
+that I shall not come, and that if she comes again she will be driven
+away by force. And take heed, Jacob, that you do not come to me again on
+such an errand. The law is fixed. It is as immovable as the rocks in the
+mountains. You know all this. Be careful hereafter that you remember. Be
+gone!"
+
+The ruin of his plan in its very inception threatened Ben Connor. If he
+could once bring David to see the girl he trusted in her beauty and her
+cleverness to effect the rest. But how lead him to the gate? Moreover,
+he was angered and his frown boded no good for Jacob. The old servant
+was turning away, and the gambler hunted his mind desperately for an
+expedient. Persuasion would never budge this stubborn fellow so used to
+command. There remained the opposite of persuasion. He determined on an
+indirect appeal to the pride of the master.
+
+"You are wise, David," he said solemnly. "You are very wise. These
+creatures are dangerous, and men of sense shun them. Tell your servants
+to drive her away with blows of a stick so that she will never return."
+
+"No, Jacob," said the master, and the servant returned to hear the
+command. "Not with sticks. But with words, for flesh of women is tender.
+This is hard counsel, Benjamin!"
+
+He regarded the gambler with great surprise.
+
+"Their flesh may be tender, but their spirits are strong," said Connor.
+The opening he had made was small. At least he had the interest of
+David, and through that entering wedge he determined to drive with all
+his might.
+
+"And dangerous," he added gravely.
+
+"Dangerous?" said the master. He raised his head. "Dangerous?"
+
+As if a jackal had dared to howl in the hearing of the lion.
+
+"Ah, David, if you saw her you would understand why I warn you!"
+
+"It would be curious. In what wise does her danger strike?"
+
+"That I cannot say. They have a thousand ways."
+
+The master turned irresolutely toward Jacob.
+
+"You could not send her away with words?"
+
+"David, for one of my words she has ten that flow with pleasant sound
+like water from a spring, and with little meaning, except that she will
+not go."
+
+"You are a fool!"
+
+"So I felt when I listened to her."
+
+"There is an old saying, David, my brother," said Connor, "that there is
+more danger in one pleasant woman than in ten angry men. Drive her from
+the gate with stones!"
+
+"I fear that you hate women, Benjamin."
+
+"They were the source of evil."
+
+"For which penance was done."
+
+"The penance followed the sin."
+
+"God, who made the mountains, the river and this garden and man, He made
+woman also. She cannot be all evil. I shall go."
+
+"Then, remember that I have warned you. God, who made man and woman,
+made fire also."
+
+"And is not fire a blessing?"
+
+He smiled at his triumph and this contest of words.
+
+"You shall go with me, Benjamin."
+
+"I? Never!"
+
+"In what is the danger?"
+
+"If you find none, there is none. For my part I have nothing to do with
+women."
+
+But David was already whistling to Glani.
+
+"One woman can be no more terrible than one man," he declared to
+Benjamin. "And I have made Joseph, who is great of body, bend like a
+blade of grass in the wind."
+
+"Farewell," said Connor, his voice trembling with joy. "Farewell, and
+God keep you!"
+
+"Farewell, Benjamin, my brother, and have no fear."
+
+Connor followed him with his eyes, half-triumphant, half-fearful. What
+would happen at the gate? He would have given much to see even from a
+distance the duel between the master and the woman.
+
+At the gate of the patio David turned and waved his hand.
+
+"I shall conquer!"
+
+And then he was gone.
+
+Connor stared down at the grass with a cynical smile until he felt
+another gaze upon him, and he became aware of the little beast--eyes of
+Joseph glittering. The giant had paused in his work with the stones.
+
+"What are you thinking of, Joseph?" asked the gambler.
+
+Joseph made an indescribable gesture of hate and fear.
+
+"Of the whip!" he said. "I also opened the gate of the Garden. On whose
+back will the whip fall this time?"
+
+
+
+
+_CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE_
+
+
+Near the end of the eucalyptus avenue, and close to the gate, David
+dismounted and made Jacob do likewise.
+
+"We may come on them by surprise and listen," he said. "A soft step has
+won great causes."
+
+They went forward cautiously, interchanging sharp glances as though they
+were stalking some dangerous beast, and so they came within earshot of
+the gate and sheltered from view of it by the edge of the cliff. David
+paused and cautioned his companion with a mutely raised hand.
+
+"He lived through the winter," Ephraim was saying. "I took him into my
+room and cherished him by the warmth of my fire and with rubbing, so
+that when spring came, and gentler weather, he was still alive--a great
+leggy colt with a backbone that almost lifted through the skin. Only
+high bright eyes comforted me and told me that my work was a good work."
+
+David and Jacob interchanged nods of wonder, for Ephraim was telling to
+this woman the dearest secret of his life.
+
+It was how he had saved the weakling colt, Jumis, and raised him to a
+beautiful, strong stallion, only to have him die suddenly in the height
+of his promise. Certainly Ephraim was nearly won over by the woman; it
+threw David on guard.
+
+"Go back to Abra," he whispered. "Ride on to the gate and tell her
+boldly to be gone. I shall wait here, and in time of need I shall help
+you. Make haste. Ephraim grows like wet clay under her fingers. Ah, how
+wise is Benjamin!"
+
+Jacob obeyed. He stole away and presently shot past at the full gallop
+of Abra. The stallion came to a sliding halt, and Jacob spoke from his
+back, which was a grave discourtesy in the Garden of Eden.
+
+"The master will not see you," he said. "The sun is still high. Return
+by the way you have come; you get no more from the Garden than its water
+and its air. He does not sell horses."
+
+For the first time she spoke, and at the sound of her voice David Eden
+stepped out from the rock; he remembered himself in time and shrank back
+to shelter.
+
+"He sold this horse."
+
+"It was the will of the men before David that these things should be
+done, but the Lord knows the mind of David and that his heart bleeds for
+every gelding that leaves the Garden. See what you have done to him! The
+marks of the whip and the spur are on his sides. Woe to you if David
+should see them!"
+
+She cried out at that in such a way that David almost felt she had been
+struck.
+
+"It was the work of a drunken fool, and not mine."
+
+"Then God have mercy on that man, for if the master should see him,
+David would have no mercy. I warn you: David is one with a fierce eye
+and a strong hand. Be gone before he comes and sees the scars on the
+gray horse."
+
+"Then he is coming?"
+
+"She is quick," thought David, as an embarrassed pause ensued. "Truly,
+Benjamin was right, and there is danger in these creatures."
+
+"He has many horses," the girl went on, "and I have only this one.
+Besides, I would pay well for another."
+
+"What price?"
+
+"He should not have asked," muttered David.
+
+"Everything that I have," she was answering, and the low thrill of her
+voice went through and through the master of the Garden. "I could buy
+other horses with this money, but not another like my gray. He is more
+than a horse. He is a companion to me. He understands me when I talk,
+and I understand him. You see how he stands with his head down? He is
+not tired, but hungry. When he neighs in a certain way from the corral I
+know that he is lonely. You see that he comes to me now? That is because
+he knows I am talking about him, for we are friends. But he is old and
+he will die, and what shall I do then? It will be like a death in my
+house!"
+
+Another pause followed.
+
+"You love the horse," said the voice of Ephraim, and it was plain that
+Jacob was beyond power of speech.
+
+"And I shall pay for another. Hold out your hand."
+
+"I cannot take it."
+
+Nevertheless, it seemed that he obeyed, for presently the girl
+continued: "After my father died I sold the house. It was pretty well
+blanketed with a mortgage, but I cleared out this hundred from the
+wreck. I went to work and saved what I could. Ten dollars every month,
+for twenty months--you can count for yourself--makes two hundred, and
+here's the two hundred more in your hand. Three hundred altogether. Do
+you think it's enough?"
+
+"If there were ten times as much," said Jacob, "it would not be enough.
+There--take your money. It is not enough. There is no money price on the
+heads of the master's horses."
+
+But a new light had fallen upon David. Women, as he had heard of them,
+were idle creatures who lived upon that which men gained with sweaty
+toil, but this girl, it seemed, was something more. She was strong
+enough to earn her bread, and something more. Money values were not
+clear to David Eden, but three hundred dollars sounded a very
+considerable sum. He determined to risk exposure by glancing around the
+rock. If she could work like a man, no doubt she was made like a man and
+not like those useless and decorative creatures of whom Matthew had
+often spoken to him, with all their graces and voices.
+
+Cautiously he peered and he saw her standing beside the old, broken gray
+horse. Even old Ephraim seemed a stalwart figure in comparison.
+
+At first he was bewildered, and then he almost laughed aloud. Was it on
+account of this that Benjamin had warned him, this fragile girl? He
+stepped boldly from behind the rock.
+
+"There is no more to say," quoth Jacob.
+
+"But I tell you, he himself will come."
+
+"You are right," said David.
+
+At that her eyes turned on him, and David was stopped in the midst of a
+stride until she shrank back against the horse.
+
+Then he went on, stepping softly, his hand extended in that sign of
+peace which is as old as mankind.
+
+"Stay in peace," said David, "and have no fear. It is I, David."
+
+He hardly knew his own voice, it was so gentle. A twilight dimness
+seemed to have fallen upon Jacob and Ephraim, and he was only aware of
+the girl. Her fear seemed to be half gone already, and she even came a
+hopeful step toward him.
+
+"I knew from the first that you would come," she said, "and let me buy
+one horse--you have so many."
+
+"We will talk of that later."
+
+"David," broke in the grave voice of Ephraim, "remember your own law!"
+
+He looked at the girl instead of Ephraim as he answered: "Who am I to
+make laws? God begins where David leaves off."
+
+And he added: "What is your name?"
+
+"Ruth."
+
+"Come, Ruth," said David, "we will go home together."
+
+She advanced as one in doubt until the shadow of the cliff fell over
+her. Then she looked back from the throat of the gate and saw Ephraim
+and Jacob facing her as though they understood there was no purpose in
+guarding against what might approach the valley from without now that
+the chief enemy was within. David, in the pause, was directing Jacob to
+place the girl's saddle on the back of Abra.
+
+"For it is not fitting," he explained, "that you should enter my garden
+save on one of my horses. And look, here is Glani."
+
+The stallion came at the sound of his name. She had heard of the great
+horse from Connor, but the reality was far more than the words.
+
+"And this, Glani, is Ruth."
+
+She touched the velvet nose which was stretched inquisitively toward
+her, and then looked up and found that David was smiling. A moment later
+they were riding side by side down the avenue of the eucalyptus trees,
+and through the tall treetrunks new vistas opened rapidly about her.
+Every stride of Abra seemed to carry her another step into the life of
+David.
+
+"I should have called Shakra for you," said David, watching her with
+concern, "but she is ridden by another who has the right to the best in
+the garden."
+
+"Even Glani?"
+
+"Even Glani, save that he fears to ride my horse, and therefore he has
+Shakra. I am sorry, for I wish to see you together. She is like
+you--beautiful, delicate, and swift."
+
+She urged Abra into a shortened gallop with a touch of her heel, so that
+the business of managing him gave her a chance to cover her confusion.
+She could have smiled away a compliment, but the simplicity of David
+meant something more.
+
+"Peace, Abra!" commanded the master. "Oh, unmannerly colt! It would be
+other than this if the wise Shakra were beneath your saddle."
+
+"No, I am content with Abra. Let Shakra be for your servant."
+
+"Not servant, but friend--a friend whom Glani chose for me. Consider how
+fickle our judgments are and how little things persuade us. Abraham is
+rich in words, but his face is ugly, and I prefer the smooth voice of
+Zacharias, though he is less wise. I have grieved for this and yet it is
+hard to change. But a horse is wiser than a fickle-minded man, and when
+Glani went to the hand of Benjamin without my order, I knew that I had
+found a friend."
+
+She knew the secret behind that story, and now she looked at David with
+pity.
+
+"In my house you will meet Benjamin," the master was saying
+thoughtfully, evidently encountering a grave problem. "I have said that
+little things make the judgments of men! If a young horse shies once,
+though he may become a true traveler and a wise head, yet his rider
+remembers the first jump and is ever uneasy in the saddle."
+
+She nodded, wondering what lay behind the explanation.
+
+"Or if a snake crosses the road before a horse, at that place the horse
+trembles when he passes again."
+
+"Yes."
+
+She found it strangely pleasant to follow the simple processes of his
+mind.
+
+"It is so with Benjamin. At some time a woman crosses his way like a
+snake, and because of her he has come to hate all women. And when I
+started for the gate, even now, he warned me against you."
+
+The clever mind of the gambler opened to her and she smiled at the
+trick.
+
+"Yes, it is a thing for laughter," said David happily. "I came with a
+mind armed for trouble--and I find you, whom I could break between my
+hands."
+
+He turned, casting out his arms.
+
+"What harm have I received from you?"
+
+They had reached the head of the bridge, and even as David turned a
+changing gust carried to them a chorus of men's voices. David drew rein.
+
+"There is a death," he said, "in my household."
+
+
+
+
+_CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO_
+
+
+The singing took on body and form as the pitch rose.
+
+"There is a death," repeated David. "Abraham is dead, the oldest and the
+wisest of my servants. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. Glory
+to His name!"
+
+Ruth was touched to the heart.
+
+"I am sorry," she said simply.
+
+"Let us rejoice, rather, for Abraham is happy. His soul is reborn in a
+young body. Do you not hear them singing? Let us ride on."
+
+He kept his head high and a stereotyped smile on his lips as the horses
+sprang into a gallop--that breath-taking gallop which made the spirit of
+the girl leap; but she saw his breast raise once or twice with a sigh.
+It was the stoicism of an Indian, she felt, and like an Indian's was the
+bronze-brown skin and the long hair blowing in the wind. The lake was
+beside them now, and dense forest beyond opening into pleasant meadows.
+She was being carried back into a primitive time of which the type was
+the man beside her. Riding without a saddle his body gave to the swing
+of the gallop, and she was more conscious than ever of physical
+strength.
+
+But now the hoofs beat softly on the lawn terraces, and in a moment they
+had stopped before the house where the death had been. She knew at once.
+The empty arch into the patio of the servants' house was eloquent, in
+some manner, of the life that had departed. Before it was the group of
+singers, all standing quiet, as though their own music had silenced
+them, or perhaps preparing to sing again. Connor had described the old
+servant, but she was not prepared for these straight, withered bodies,
+these bony, masklike faces, and the white heads.
+
+All in an instant they seemed to see her, and a flash of pleasure went
+from face to face. They stirred, they came toward her with glad murmurs,
+all except one, the oldest of them all, who remained aloof with his arms
+folded. But the others pressed close around her, talking excitedly to
+one another, as though she could not understand what they said. And she
+would never forget one who took her hand in both of his. The touch of
+his fingers was cold and as dry as parchment. "Honey child, God bless
+your pretty face."
+
+Was this the formal talk of which Connor had warned her? A growl from
+David drove them back from her like leaves before a wind. He had slipped
+from his horse, and now walked forward.
+
+"It is Abraham?" he asked.
+
+"He is dead and glorious," answered the chorus, and the girl trembled to
+hear those time-dried relics of humanity speak so cheerily of death.
+
+The master was silent for a moment, then: "Did he leave no message for
+me?"
+
+In place of answering the group shifted and opened a passage to the one
+in the rear, who stood with folded arms.
+
+"Elijah, you were with him?"
+
+"I heard his last words."
+
+"And what dying message for David?"
+
+"Death sealed his lips while he had still much to say. To the end he was
+a man of many words. But first he returned thanks to our Father who
+breathed life into the clay."
+
+"That was a proper thought, and I see that the words were words of
+Abraham."
+
+"He gave thanks for a life of quiet ease and wise masters, and he
+forgave the Lord the length of years he was kept in this world."
+
+"In that," said David gravely, "I seem to hear his voice speaking.
+Continue."
+
+"He commanded us to sing pleasantly when he was gone."
+
+"I heard the singing on the lake road. It is well."
+
+"Also, he bade us keep the first master in our minds, for John, he said,
+was the beginning."
+
+At this the face of David clouded a little.
+
+"Continue. What word for David?"
+
+Something that Connor had said about the pride and sulkiness of a child
+came back to Ruth.
+
+Elijah, after hesitation, went on: "He declared that Glani is too heavy
+in the forehead."
+
+"Yes, that is Abraham," said the master, smiling tenderly. "He would
+argue even on the death bed."
+
+"But a cross with Tabari would remedy that defect."
+
+"Perhaps. What more?"
+
+"He blessed you and bade you remember and rejoice that he was gone to
+his wife and child."
+
+"Ah?" cried David softly. His glance, wandering absently, rested on the
+girl for a moment, and then came back to Elijah. "His mind went back to
+that? What further for my ear?"
+
+"I remember nothing more, David."
+
+"Speak!" commanded the master.
+
+The eyes of Elijah roved as though for help.
+
+"Toward the end his voice grew faint and his mind seemed to wander."
+
+"Far rather tremble, Elijah, if you keep back the words he spoke,
+however sharp they may be. My hand is not light. Remember, and speak."
+
+The fear of Elijah changed to a gloomy pride, and now he not only raised
+his head, but he even made a step forward and stood in dignity.
+
+"Death took Abraham by the throat, and yet he continued to speak. 'Tell
+David that four masters cherished Abraham, but David cast him out like a
+dog and broke his heart, and therefore he dies. Although I bless him,
+God will hereafter judge him!'"
+
+A shudder went through the entire group, and Ruth herself was uneasy.
+
+"Keep your own thoughts and the words of Abraham well divided," said
+David solemnly. "I know his mind and its working. Continue, but be
+warned."
+
+"I am warned, David, but my brother Abraham is dead and my heart weeps
+for him!"
+
+"God will hereafter judge me," said David harshly. "And what was the
+further judgment of Abraham, the old man?"
+
+"Even this: 'David has opened the Garden to one and therefore it will be
+opened to all. The law is broken. The first sin is the hard sin and the
+others follow easily. It is swift to run downhill. He has brought in
+one, and another will soon follow.'"
+
+"Elijah," thundered David, "you have wrested his words to fit the thing
+you see."
+
+"May the dead hand of Abraham strike me down if these were not his
+words."
+
+"Had he become a prophet?" muttered David. "No, it was maundering of an
+old man."
+
+"God speaks on the lips of the dying, David."
+
+"You have said enough."
+
+"Wait!"
+
+"You are rash, Elijah."
+
+She could not see the face of David, but the terror and frenzied
+devotion of Elijah served her as mirror to see the wrath of the master
+of the Garden.
+
+"David has opened the gate of the Garden. The world sweeps in and shall
+carry away the life of Eden like a flood. All that four masters have
+done the fifth shall undo."
+
+The strength of his ecstasy slid from Elijah and he dropped upon his
+knees with his head weighted toward the earth. The others were frozen in
+their places. One who had opened his lips to speak, perhaps to intercede
+for the rash Elijah, remained with his lips parted, a staring mask of
+fear. In them Ruth saw the rage of David Eden, and she was sickened by
+what she saw. She had half pitied the simplicity of this man, this gull
+of the clever Connor. Now she loathed him as a savage barbarian. Even
+these old men were hardly safe from his furies of temper.
+
+"Arise," said the master at length, and she could feel his battle to
+control his voice. "You are forgiven, Elijah, because of your
+courage--yet, beware! As for that old man whose words you repeated, I
+shall consider him." He turned on his heel, and Ruth saw that his face
+was iron.
+
+
+
+
+_CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE_
+
+
+From the gate of the patio Connor, watching all that time in a nightmare
+of suspense, saw, first of all, the single figure of David come around
+the trees, David alone and walking. But before that shock passed he saw
+Glani at the heels of the master, and then, farther back, Ruth!
+
+She had passed the gate and two-thirds of the battle was fought and won.
+Yet all was not well, as he plainly saw. With long, swift steps David
+came over the terrace, and finally paused as if his thoughts had stopped
+him. He turned as Glani passed, and the girl came up to him; his
+extended arm halted Abra and he stood looking up to the girl and
+speaking. Only the faint murmur of his voice came unintelligibly to
+Connor, but he recognized danger in it as clearly as in the hum of bees.
+Suddenly the girl, answering, put out her hands as if in gesture of
+surrender. Another pause--it was only a matter of a second or so, but it
+was a space for life or death with Connor. In that interval he knew that
+his scheme was made or ruined. What had the girl said? Perhaps that
+mighty extended arm holding back Abra had frightened her, and with the
+wind blowing his long black hair aside, David of Eden was a figure wild
+enough to alarm her. Perhaps in fear of her life she had exposed the
+whole plan. If so, it meant broken bones for Connor.
+
+But now David turned again, and this time he was talking by the side of
+Abra as they came up the hill. He talked with many gestures, and the
+girl was laughing down to him.
+
+"God bless her!" muttered Connor impulsively. "She's a true-blue one!"
+
+He remembered his part in the nick of time as they came closer, and
+David helped the girl down from the saddle and brought her forward. The
+gambler drew himself up and made his face grave with disapproval. Now or
+never he must prove to David that there was no shadow of a connection
+between him and the girl. Yet he was by no means easy. There was
+something forced and stereotyped in the smile of the girl that told him
+she had been through a crucial test and was still near the breaking
+point.
+
+David presented them to one another uneasily. He was even a little
+embarrassed under the accusing eye of Connor.
+
+"I make you known, Ruth," he said, "to my brother Benjamin. He is that
+man of whom I told you."
+
+"I am happy," said the girl, "to be known to him."
+
+"That much I cannot say," replied the gambler.
+
+He turned upon David with outstretched arm.
+
+"Ah, David, I have warned you!"
+
+"As Abraham warned me against you, Benjamin. And dying men speak truth."
+
+The counter-attack was so shrewd, so unexpected, that the gambler, for
+the moment, was thrown completely off his guard.
+
+He could only murmur: "You are the judge for yourself, David."
+
+"I am. Do not think that the power is in me. But God loves the Garden
+and His voice is never far from me. Neither are the spirits of the four
+who lived here before me and made this place. When there is danger they
+warn me. When I am in error the voice of God corrects me. And just as I
+heard the voice against the woman, Ruth, and heed it not."
+
+He seemed to have gathered conviction for himself, much needed
+conviction, as he spoke. He turned now toward the girl.
+
+"Be not wroth with Benjamin; and bear him no malice."
+
+"I bear him none in the world," she answered truthfully, and held out
+her hand.
+
+But Connor was still in his role. He folded his arms and pointedly
+disregarded the advance.
+
+"Woman, let there be peace and few words between us. My will is the will
+of David."
+
+"There speaks my brother!" cried the master of the valley.
+
+"And yet," muttered Connor, "why is she here?"
+
+"She came to buy a horse."
+
+"But they are not sold."
+
+"That is true. Yet she has traveled far and she is in great need of food
+and drink. Could I turn her away hungry, Benjamin?"
+
+"She could have been fed at the gate. She could surely have rested
+there."
+
+It was easy to see that David was hardpressed. His eye roved eagerly to
+Ruth. Then a triumphant explanation sparkled in his eye.
+
+"It is the horse she rides, a gelding from my Garden. His lot in the
+world has been hard. He is scarred with the spur and the whip. I have
+determined to take him back, at a price. But who can arrange matters of
+buying and selling all in a moment? It is a matter for much talk.
+Therefore she is here."
+
+"I am answered," said Connor, and turning to Ruth he winked broadly.
+
+"It is well," said David, "and I foresee happy days. In the meantime
+there is a duty before me. Abraham must be laid in his grave and I leave
+Ruth to your keeping, Benjamin. Bear with her tenderly for my sake."
+
+He stepped to the girl.
+
+"You are not afraid?"
+
+"I am not afraid," she answered.
+
+"My thoughts shall be near you. Farewell."
+
+He had hardly reached the gate of the patio when Joseph, going out after
+finishing his labor at the fountain, passed between the gambler and the
+girl. Connor stopped him with a sign.
+
+"The whip hasn't fallen, you see," he said maliciously.
+
+"There is still much time," replied Joseph. "And before the end it will
+fall. Perhaps on you. Or on that!"
+
+He indicated the girl with his pointing finger; his glance turned
+savagely from one to the other, and then he went slowly out of the patio
+and they were alone. She came to Connor at once and even touched his arm
+in her excitement.
+
+"What did he mean?"
+
+"That's the one I told you about. The one David beat up with the whip.
+He'd give his eye teeth to get back at me, and he has an idea that
+there's going to be hell to pay because another person has come into the
+valley. Bunk! But--what happened down the hill?"
+
+"When he stopped me? Did you see that?"
+
+"My heart stopped the same minute. What was it?"
+
+"He had just heard the last words of Abraham. When he stopped me on the
+hill his face was terrible. Like a wolf!"
+
+"I know that look in him. How did you buck up under it?"
+
+"I didn't. I felt my blood turn to water and I wanted to run."
+
+"But you stuck it out--I saw! Did he say anything?"
+
+"He said: 'Dying men do not lie. And I have been twice warned. Woman,
+why are you here?'"
+
+"And you?" gasped Connor. "What did you say?"
+
+"Nothing. My head spun. I looked up the terrace. I wanted to see you,
+but you weren't in sight. I felt terribly alone and absolutely helpless.
+If I'd had a gun, I would have reached for it."
+
+"Thank God you didn't!"
+
+"But you don't know what his face was like! I expected him to tear me
+off the horse and smash me with his hands. All at once I wanted to tell
+him everything--beg him not to hurt me." Connor groaned.
+
+"I knew it! I knew that was in your head!"
+
+"But I didn't."
+
+"Good girl."
+
+"He said: 'Why are you here? What harm have you come to work in the
+Garden?'"
+
+"And you alone with him!" gasped Connor.
+
+"That was what did it. I was so helpless that it made me bold. Can you
+imagine smiling at a time like that?"
+
+"Were you able to?"
+
+"I don't know how. It took every ounce of strength in me. But I made
+myself smile--straight into his face. Then I put out my hands to him all
+at once.
+
+"'How could I harm you?' I asked him.
+
+"And then you should have seen his face change and the anger break up
+like a cloud. I knew I was safe, then, but I was still dizzy--just as
+if I'd looked over a cliff--you know?"
+
+"And yet you rode up the hill after that laughing down to him! Ruth,
+you're the gamest sport and the best pal in the world. The finest little
+act I ever saw on the stage or off. It was Big Time stuff. My hat's off,
+but--where'd you get the nerve?"
+
+"I was frightened almost to death. Too much frightened for it to show.
+When I saw you, my strength came back."
+
+"But what do you think of him?"
+
+"He's--simply a savage. What do I think of an Indian?"
+
+"No more than that?"
+
+"Ben, can you pet a tiger after you've seen his claws?"
+
+He looked at her with anxiety.
+
+"You're not going to break down later on--feeling as if he's dynamite
+about to explode all the time?"
+
+"I'm going to play the game through," she said with a sort of fierce
+happiness. "I've felt like a sneak thief about this. But now it's
+different. He's more of a wolf than a man. Ben, I saw murder in his
+face, I swear! And if it isn't wrong to tame wild beasts it isn't wrong
+to tame him. I'm going to play the game, lead him as far as I can until
+we get the horses--and then it'll be easy enough to make up by being
+good the rest of my life."
+
+"Ruth--girl--you've covered the whole ground. And when you have the
+coin--" He broke off with laughter that was filled with drunken
+excitement. "But what did you think of my game?"
+
+She did not hear him, and standing with her hands clasped lightly behind
+her she looked beyond the roof of the house and over the tops of the
+western mountains, with the sun-haze about them.
+
+"I feel as if I were on the top of the world," she said at last. "And I
+wouldn't have one thing changed. We're playing for big stakes, but we're
+taking a chance that makes the game worth while. What we win we'll
+earn--because he's a devil. Isn't it what you'd call a fair bet?"
+
+"The squarest in the world," said Connor stoutly.
+
+
+
+
+_CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR_
+
+
+They had no means of knowing when David would return and the ominous
+shadow of Joseph, lingering near the patio, determined Connor on a walk
+out of any possible earshot. They went down to the lake with the singing
+of the men on the other side of the hill growing dim as they descended.
+The cool of the day was beginning, and they walked close to the edge of
+the water with the brown treetrunks on one side and the green images
+floating beyond. Peace lay over Eden valley and the bright river that
+ran through it, but Ben Connor had no mind to dwell on unessentials.
+
+He had found in the girl an ally of unexpected strength. He expected
+only a difficult tool filled with scruples, drawing back, imperiling his
+plans with her hesitation. Instead, she was on fire with the plan. He
+thought well to fan that fire and keep it steadily blazing.
+
+"It's better for David; better for him than it is for us. Look at the
+poor fool! He's in prison here and doesn't know it. He thinks he's
+happy, but he's simply kidding himself. In six months I'll have him
+chatting with millionaires."
+
+"Let a barber do a day's work on him first."
+
+"No. It's just the long-haired nuts like that who get by with the
+high-steppers. He has a lingo about flowers and trees that'll knock
+their eye out. I know the gang. Always on edge for something
+different--music that sounds like a riot in a junk shop and poetry that
+reads like a drunken printing-press. Well, David ought to be different
+enough to suit 'em. I'll boost him, though: 'The Man that Brought Out
+the Eden Grays!' He'll be headline stuff!"
+
+He laughed so heartily that he did not notice the quick glance of
+criticism which the girl cast at him.
+
+"I'm not taking anything from him, really," went on Connor. "I'm simply
+sneaking around behind him so's I can pour his pockets full of the coin.
+That's all there is to it. Outside of the looks, tell me if there's
+anything crooked you can see?"
+
+"I don't think there is," she murmured. "I almost hope that there
+isn't!"
+
+She was so dubious about it that Connor was alarmed. He was fond of Ruth
+Manning, but she was just "different" enough to baffle him. Usually he
+divided mankind into three or four categories for the sake of fast
+thinking. There were the "boobs," the "regular guys," the "high
+steppers," and the "nuts." Sometimes he came perilously close to
+including Ruth in the last class--with David Eden. And if he did not do
+so, it was mainly because she had given such an exhibition of cool
+courage only a few moments before. He had finished his peroration, now,
+with a feeling of actual virtue, but the shadow on her face made him
+change his tactics and his talk.
+
+He confined himself, thereafter, strictly to the future. First he
+outlined his plans for raising the cash for the big "killing." He told
+of the men to whom he could go for backing. There were "hard guys" who
+would take a chance. "Wise ones" who would back his judgment. "Fall
+guys" who would follow him blindly. For ten percent he would get all the
+cash he could place. Then it remained to try out the grays in secret,
+and in public let them go through the paces ridden under wraps and
+heavily weighted. He described the means of placing the big money before
+the great race.
+
+And as he talked his figures mounted from tens to hundreds to thousands,
+until he was speaking in millions. In all of this profit she and David
+and Connor would share dollar for dollar. At the first corner of the
+shore they turned she had arrived at a snug apartment in New York. She
+would have a housekeeper-companion. There would be a cosy living room
+and a paneled dining room. In the entrance hall of the apartment house,
+imitation of encrusted marble, no doubt.
+
+But as they came opposite a little wooded island in the lake she had
+added a maid to the housekeeper. Also, there was now a guest room. Some
+one from Lukin would be in that room; some one from Lukin would go
+through the place with her, marveling at her good fortune.
+
+And clothes! They made all the difference. Dressed as she would be
+dressed, when she came into a room that queer, cold gleam of envy would
+be in the eyes of the women and the men would sit straighter!
+
+Yet when they reached the place where the shore line turned north and
+west her imagination, spurred by Connor's talk, was stumbling along
+dizzy heights. Her apartment occupied a whole floor. Her butler was a
+miracle of dignity and her chef a genius in the kitchen. On the great
+table the silver and glass were things of frosted light. Her chauffeur
+drove a monster automobile with a great purring engine that whipped her
+about the city with the color blown into her cheeks. In her box at the
+opera she was allowing the deep, soft luxury of the fur collar to slide
+down from her throat, while along the boxes, in the galleries, there was
+a ripple of light as the thousand glasses turned upon her. Then she
+found that Connor was smiling at her. She flushed, but snapped her
+fingers.
+
+"This thing is going through," she declared.
+
+"You won't weaken?"
+
+"I'm as cold as steel. Let's go back. He'll probably be in the house by
+this time."
+
+Time had slipped past her unnoticed, and the lake was violet and gold
+with the sunset as they turned away; under the trees along the terraces
+the brilliant wild flowers were dimmed by a blue shadow.
+
+"But I never saw wild flowers like those," she said to Connor.
+
+"Nobody else ever did. But old Matthew, whoever he was, grew 'em and
+kept crossing 'em until he got those big fellows with all the colors of
+the rainbow."
+
+"Hurry! We're late!"
+
+"No, David's probably on top of that hill, now; always goes up there to
+watch the sun rise and the sun set. Can you beat that?"
+
+He chuckled, but a shade had darkened the face of the girl for a moment.
+Then she lifted her head resolutely.
+
+"I'm not going to try to understand him. The minute you understand a
+thing you stop being afraid of it; and as soon as I stop being afraid of
+David Eden I might begin to like him--which is what I don't want."
+
+"What's that?" cried Connor, breaking in on her last words. When Ruth
+began to think aloud he always stopped listening; it was a maxim of his
+to never listen when a woman became serious.
+
+"It's that strange giant."
+
+"Joseph!" exclaimed Connor heavily. "Whipping did him no good. He'll
+need killing one of these days."
+
+But she had already reverted to another thing.
+
+"Do you think he worships the sun?"
+
+"I don't think. Try to figure out a fellow like that and you get to be
+just as much of a nut as he is. Go on toward the house and I'll follow
+you in a minute. I want to talk to big Joe."
+
+He turned aside into the trees briskly, and the moment he was out of
+sight of the girl he called softly: "Joseph!"
+
+He repeated the call after a trifling wait before he saw the big man
+coming unconcernedly through the trees toward him. Joseph came close
+before he stopped--very close, as a man will do when he wishes to make
+another aware of his size, and from this point of vantage, he looked
+over Connor from head to foot with a glance of lingering and insolent
+criticism. The gambler was somewhat amused and a little alarmed by that
+attitude.
+
+"Now, Joseph," he said, "tell me frankly why you're dodging me about the
+valley. Waiting for a chance to throw stones?"
+
+His smile remained without a reflection on the stolid face of the
+servant.
+
+"Benjamin," answered the deep, solemn voice, "I know all!"
+
+It made Connor peer into those broad features as into a dim light. Then
+a moment of reflection assured him that Joseph could not have learned
+the secret.
+
+"Haneemar, whom you know," continued Joseph, "has told me about you."
+
+"And where," asked Connor, completely at sea, "did you learn of
+Haneemar?"
+
+"From Abraham. And I know that this is the head of Haneemar."
+
+He brought out in his palm the little watch-charm of carved ivory.
+
+"Of course," nodded Connor, feeling his way. "And what is it that you
+know from Haneemar?"
+
+"That you are evil, Benjamin, and that you have come here for evil. You
+entered by a trick; and you will stay here for evil purposes until the
+end."
+
+"You follow around to pick up a little dope, eh?" chuckled Connor. "You
+trail me to find out what I intend to do? Why don't you go to David and
+warn him?"
+
+"Have I forgotten the whip?" asked Joseph, his nostrils trembling with
+anger. "But the good Haneemar now gives me power and in the end he will
+betray you into my hands. That is why I follow you. Wherever you go I
+follow; I am even able to know what you think! But hearken to me,
+Benjamin. Take back the head of Haneemar and the bad luck that lives in
+it. Take it back, and I shall no longer follow you. I shall forget the
+whip. I shall be ready to do you a service."
+
+He extended the little piece of ivory eagerly, but Connor drew back. His
+superstitions were under the surface of his mind, but, still, they were
+there, and the fear which Joseph showed was contagious.
+
+"Why don't you throw it away if you're afraid of it, Joseph?"
+
+"You know as I know," returned Joseph, glowering, "that it cannot be
+thrown away. It must be given and freely accepted, as I--oh
+fool--accepted it from you."
+
+There was such a profound conviction in this that Connor was affected in
+spite of himself. That little trinket had been the entering wedge
+through which he had worked his way into the Garden and started on the
+road to fortune. He would rather have cut off his hand, now, than take
+it back.
+
+"Find some one else to take it," he suggested cheerily. "I don't want
+the thing."
+
+"Then all that Abraham told me is true!" muttered Joseph, closing his
+hand over the trinket. "But I shall follow you, Benjamin. When you think
+you are alone you shall find me by turning your head. Every day by
+sunrise and every day by the dark I beg Haneemar to put his curse on
+you. I have done you no wrong, and you have had me shamed."
+
+"And now you're going to have me bewitched, eh?" asked Connor.
+
+"You shall see."
+
+The gambler drew back another pace and through the shadows he saw the
+beginning of a smile of animal-cunning on the face of Joseph.
+
+"The devil take you and Haneemar together," he growled. "Remember this,
+Joseph. I've had you whipped once. The next time I'll have you flayed
+alive."
+
+Instead of answering, Joseph merely grinned more openly, and the
+gambler, to forget the ape-face, wheeled and hurried out from the trees.
+The touch of nightmare dread did not leave him until he rejoined Ruth on
+the higher terrace.
+
+They found the patio glowing with light, the table near the fountain,
+and three chairs around it. David came out of the shadow of the arcade
+to meet them, and he was as uneasy as a boy who had a surprise for
+grown-ups. He had not even time for a greeting.
+
+"You have not seen your room?" he said to Ruth. "I have made it ready
+for you. Come!"
+
+He led the way half a pace in front, glancing back at them as though to
+reprove their slowness, until he reached a door at which he turned and
+faced her, laughing with excitement. She could hardly believe that this
+man with his childish gayety was the same whose fury had terrified the
+servants that same afternoon.
+
+"Close your eyes--close them fast. You will not look until I say?"
+
+She obeyed, setting her teeth to keep from smiling.
+
+"Now come forward--step high for the doorway. So! You are in. Now
+wait--now open your eyes and look!"
+
+She obeyed again and saw first David standing back with an anxious smile
+and the gesture of one who reveals, but is not quite sure of its effect.
+Then she heard a soft, startled exclamation from Connor behind her. Last
+of all she saw the room.
+
+It was as if the walls had been broken down and a garden let inside--it
+gave an effect of open air, sunlight and wind. Purple flowers like warm
+shadows banked the farther corners, and out of them rose a great vine
+draping the window. It had been torn bodily from the earth, and now the
+roots were packed with damp moss, yellow-green. It bore in clusters and
+single flowers and abundant bloom, each blossom as large as the mallow,
+and a dark gold so rich that Ruth well-nigh listened for the murmur of
+bees working this mine of pollen. From above, the great flowers hung
+down against the dull red of the sunset sky; and from below the distant
+treetops on the terrace pointed up with glimmers of the lake between.
+There was only the reflected light of the evening, now, but the cuplike
+blossoms were filled to the brim with a glow of their own.
+
+She looked away.
+
+A dapple deerskin covered the bed like the shadow under a tree in
+mid-day, and the yellow of the flowers was repeated dimly on the floor
+by a great, tawny hide of a mountain-lion. She took up some of the
+purple flowers, and letting the velvet petals trail over her finger
+tips, she turned to David with a smile. But what Connor saw, and saw
+with a thrill of alarm, was that her eyes were filling with tears.
+
+"See!" said David gloomily. "I have done this to make you happy, and now
+you are sad!"
+
+"Because it is so beautiful."
+
+"Yes," said David slowly. "I think I understand."
+
+But Connor took one of the flowers from her hand. She cried out, but too
+late to keep him from ripping the blossom to pieces, and now he held up
+a single petal, long, graceful, red-purple at the broader end and deep
+yellow at the narrow.
+
+"Think of that a million times bigger," said Connor, "and made out of
+velvet. That'd be a design for a cloak, eh? Cost about a thousand bucks
+to imitate this petal, but it'd be worth it to see you in it, eh?"
+
+She looked to David with a smile of apology for Connor, but her hand
+accepted the petal, and her second smile was for Connor himself.
+
+
+
+
+_CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE_
+
+
+When they went out into the patio again, David had lost a large part of
+his buoyancy of spirits, as though in some subtle manner Connor had
+overcast the triumph of the room; he left them with word that the
+evening meal would soon be ready and hurried off calling orders to
+Zacharias.
+
+"Why did you do it?" she asked Connor as soon as they were alone.
+
+"Because it made me mad to see a stargazer like that turning your head."
+
+"But didn't you think the room was beautiful?"
+
+"Sure. Like a riot in a florist's shop. But don't let this David take
+you off guard with his rooms full of flowers and full of silence."
+
+"Silence?"
+
+"Haven't I told you about his Room of Silence? That's one of his queer
+dodges. That room; you see? When anything bothers him he goes over and
+sits down in there, because--do you know what he thinks sits with him?"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"God!"
+
+She was between a smile and a gasp.
+
+"Yep, that's David," grinned Connor. "Just plain nut."
+
+"What's inside?"
+
+"I don't know. Maybe flowers."
+
+"Let's find out."
+
+He caught her arm quickly.
+
+"Not in a thousand years!" He changed color at the thought and glanced
+guiltily around. "That would be the smash of everything. Why, he turned
+over the whole Garden of Eden to me. I can go anywhere, but not a step
+inside that room. It's his Holy Ground, you see! Maybe it's where he
+keeps his jack. And I've a hunch that he has a slough of it tucked away
+somewhere."
+
+She raised her hand as an idea came to her half way through this speech.
+
+"Listen! I have an idea that the clew to all of David's mystery is in
+that room!"
+
+"Drop that idea, Ruth," he ordered gruffly. "You've seen David on one
+rampage, but it's nothing to what would happen if you so much as peeked
+into that place. When the servants pass that door they take off their
+hats--watch 'em the next time you have a chance. You won't make a slip
+about that room?"
+
+"No." But she added: "I'd give my soul--for one look!"
+
+Dinner that night under the stars with the whispering of the fountain
+beside them was a ceremony which Connor never forgot. The moon rose late
+and in the meantime the sky was heavy and dark with sheeted patchwork of
+clouds, with the stars showing here and there. The wind blew in gusts.
+A wave began with a whisper on the hill, came with a light rushing
+across the patio, and then diminished quickly among the trees down the
+terraces. Rough, iron-framed lanterns gave the light and showed the
+arcade stepping away on either side and growing dim toward the entrance.
+That uncertain illumination made the crude pillars seem to have only the
+irregularity of vast antiquity, stable masses of stone. Where the circle
+of lantern-light overlapped rose the fountain, a pale spray forever
+dissolving in the upper shadow. Connor himself was more or less used to
+these things, but he became newly aware of them as the girl sent quick,
+eager glances here and there.
+
+She had placed a single one of the great yellow blossoms in her hair and
+it changed her shrewdly. It brought out the delicate coloring of her
+skin, and to the darkness of her eyes it lent a tint of violet. Plainly
+she enjoyed the scene with its newness. David, of course, was the spice
+to everything, and his capitulation was complete; he kept the girl
+always on an uneasy balance between happiness and laughter. And Connor
+trembled for fear the mirth would show through. But each change of her
+expression appeared to delight David more than the last.
+
+Under his deft knife the choicest white meat came away from the breast
+of a chicken and he heaped it at once on the plate of Ruth. Then he
+dropped his chin upon his great brown fist and watched with silent
+delight while she ate. It embarrassed her; but her flush had a tinge of
+pleasure in it, as Connor very well knew.
+
+"Look!" said David, speaking softly as though Ruth would not hear him.
+"How pleasant it is, to be three together. When we were two, one talked
+and the other grew weary--was it not so? But now we are complete. One
+speaks, one listens, and the other judges. I have been alone. The
+Garden of Eden has been to me a prison, at many times. And now there is
+nothing wanting. And why? There were many men before. We were not
+lacking in numbers. Yet there was an emptiness, and now comes one small
+creature, as delicate as a colt of three months, this being of smiles
+and curious glances, this small voice, this woman--and at once the gap
+is filled. Is it not strange?"
+
+He cast himself back in his chair, as though he wished to throw her into
+perspective with her surroundings, and all the time he was staring as
+though she were an image, a picture, and not a thing of flesh and blood.
+Connor himself was on the verge of a smile, but when he saw the face of
+Ruth Manning his mirth disappeared in a chill of terror. She was
+struggling and struggling in vain against a rising tide of laughter,
+laughter in the face of David Eden and his sensitive pride.
+
+It came, it broke through all bonds, and now it was bubbling from her
+lips. As one who awaits the falling of a blow, Connor glanced furtively
+at the host, and again he was startled.
+
+There was not a shade of evil temper in the face of David. He leaned
+forward, indeed, with a surge of the great shoulders, but it was as one
+who listens to an entrancing music. And when she ceased, abruptly, he
+sighed.
+
+"Speak to me," he commanded.
+
+She murmured a faint reply.
+
+"Again," said David, half closing his eyes. And Connor nodded a frantic
+encouragement to her.
+
+"But what shall I say?"
+
+"For the meaning of what you say," said David, "I have no care, but only
+for the sound. Have you heard dripping in a well, a sound like water
+filling a bottle and never reaching the top? It keeps you listening for
+an hour, perhaps, always a soft sound, but always rising toward a
+climax? Or a drowsy day when the wind hardly moves and the whistling of
+a bird comes now and then out of the trees, cool and contented? Or you
+pass a meadow of flowers in the warm sun and hear the ground murmur of
+the bees, and you think at once of the wax films of the honeycomb, and
+the clear golden honey? All those things I heard and saw when you
+spoke."
+
+"Plain nut!" said Connor, framing the words with silent lips.
+
+But though her eyes rested on him, apparently she did not see his face.
+She looked back at Connor with a wistful little half-smile.
+
+At once David cast out both his hands toward hers.
+
+"Ah, you are strange, new, delightful!" He stopped abruptly. Then: "Does
+it make you happy to hear me say these things?"
+
+"Why do you ask me that?" she said curiously.
+
+"Because it fills me with unspeakable happiness to say them. If I am
+silent and only think then I am not so pleased. When I see Glani
+standing on the hilltop I feel his speed in the slope of his muscles,
+the flaunt of his tail, the pride of his head; but when I gallop him,
+and the wind of his galloping strikes my face--ha, that is a joy! So it
+is speaking with you. When I see you I say within: 'She is beautiful!'
+But when I speak it aloud your lips tremble a little toward a smile,
+your eyes darken with pleasure, and then my heart rises into my throat
+and I wish to speak again and again and again to find new things to say,
+to say old things in new words. So that I may watch the changes in your
+face. Do you understand? But now you blush. Is that a sign of anger?"
+
+"It is a sign that no other men have ever talked to me in this manner."
+
+"Then other men are fools. What I say is true. I feel it ring in me,
+that it is the truth. Benjamin, my brother, is it not so? Ha!"
+
+She was raising the wine-cup; he checked her with his eager, extended
+hand.
+
+"See, Benjamin, how this mysterious thing is done, this raising of the
+hand. _We_ raise the cup to drink. An ugly thing--let it be done and
+forgotten. But when _she_ lifts the cup it is a thing to be remembered;
+how her fingers curve and the weight of the cup presses into them, and
+how her wrist droops."
+
+She lowered the cup hastily and put her hand before her face.
+
+"I see," said Connor dryly.
+
+"Bah!" cried the master of the Garden. "You do not see. But you, Ruth,
+are you angry? Are you shamed?"
+
+He drew down her hands, frowning with intense anxiety. Her face was
+crimson.
+
+"No," she said faintly.
+
+"He says that he sees, but he does not see," went on David. "He is
+blind, this Benjamin of mine. I show him my noblest grove of the
+eucalyptus trees, each tree as tall as a hill, as proud as a king, as
+beautiful as a thought that springs up from the earth. I show him these
+glorious trees. What does he say? 'You could build a whole town out of
+that wood!' Bah! Is that seeing? No, he is blind! Such a man would give
+you hard work to do. But I say to you, Ruth, that to be beautiful is to
+be wise, and industrious, and good. Surely you are to me like the rising
+of the sun--my heart leaps up! And you are like the coming of the night
+making the world beautiful and mysterious. For behind your eyes and
+behind your words, out of the sound of your voice and your glances, I
+guess at new things, strange things, hidden things. Treasures which
+cannot be held in the hands. Should you grow as old as Elijah, withered,
+meager as a grasshopper, the treasures would still be there. I, who have
+seen them, can never forget them!"
+
+Once more she covered her eyes with her hand, and David started up from
+his chair.
+
+"What have I done?" he asked faintly of Connor. He hurried around the
+table to her. "Look up! How have I harmed you?"
+
+"I am only tired," she said.
+
+"I am a fool! I should have known. Come!" said David.
+
+He drew her from the chair and led her across the lawn, supporting her.
+At her door: "May sleep be to you like the sound of running water,"
+murmured David.
+
+And when the door was closed he went hastily back to Connor.
+
+
+
+
+_CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX_
+
+
+"What have I done? What have I done?" he kept moaning. "She is in pain.
+I have hurt her."
+
+"Sit down," said Connor, deeply amused.
+
+It had been a curious revelation to him, this open talk of a man who was
+falling in love. He remembered the way he had proposed to a girl, once:
+"Say, Betty, don't you think you and me would hit it off pretty well,
+speaking permanently?"
+
+This flaunting language was wholly ludicrous to Connor. It was
+book-stuff.
+
+David had obeyed him with childlike docility, and sat now like a pupil
+about to be corrected by the master.
+
+"That point is this," explained Connor gravely. "You have the wrong
+idea. As far as I can make out, you like Ruth?"
+
+"It is a weak word. Bah! It is not enough."
+
+"But it's enough to tell her. You see, men outside of the Garden don't
+talk to a girl the way you do, and it embarrasses her to have you talk
+about her all the time."
+
+"Is it true?" murmured the penitent David. "Then what should I have
+said?"
+
+"Well--er--you might have said--that the flower went pretty well in her
+hair, and let it go at that."
+
+"But it was more, more, more! Benjamin, my brother, these hands of mine
+picked that very flower. And I see that it has pleased her. She had
+taken it up and placed it in her hair. It changes her. My flower brings
+her close to me. It means that we have found a thing which pleases us
+both. Just as you and I, Benjamin, are drawn together by the love of one
+horse. So that flower in her hair is a great sign. I dwell upon it. It
+is like a golden moon rising in a black night. It lights my way to her.
+Words rush up from my heart, but cannot express what I mean!"
+
+"Let it go! Let it go!" said Connor hastily, brushing his way through
+this outflow of verbiage, like a man bothered with gnats. "I gather what
+you mean. But the point is that about nine-tenths of what you think
+you'd better not say. If you want to talk--well, talk about yourself.
+That's what I most generally do with a girl. They like to hear a man say
+what he's done."
+
+"Myself!" said David heavily. "Talk of a dead stump when there is a
+great tree beside it? Well, I see that I have much to learn."
+
+"You certainly have," said Connor with much meaning. "I'd hate to turn
+you loose in Manhattan."
+
+"In what?"
+
+"Never mind. But here's another thing. You know that she'll have to
+leave pretty soon?"
+
+The meaning slowly filtered into David's mind.
+
+"Benjamin," he said slowly, "you are wise in many ways, with horses and
+with women, it seems. But that is a fool's talk. Let me hear no more of
+it. Leave me? Why should she leave me?"
+
+Triumph warmed the heart of Connor.
+
+"Because a girl can't ramble off into the mountains and put up in a
+valley where there are nothing but men. It isn't done."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Isn't good form."
+
+"I fail to understand."
+
+"My dear fellow, she'd be compromised for life if it were known that she
+had lived here with us."
+
+David shook his head blankly.
+
+"In one word," said Connor, striving to make his point, "she'd be
+pointed out by other women and by men. They'd never have anything to do
+with her. They'd say things that would make her ashamed, hurt her, you
+know."
+
+Understanding and wrath gathered in David's face.
+
+"To such a man--to such a dog of a man--I would talk with my hands!"
+
+"I think you would," nodded Connor, not a little impressed. "But you
+might not be around to hear the talk."
+
+"But women surely live with men. There are wives--"
+
+"Ah! Man and wife--all very well!"
+
+"Then it is simple. I marry her and then I keep her here forever."
+
+"Perhaps. But will she marry you?"
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Well, does she love you?"
+
+"True." He stood up. "I'll ask her."
+
+"For Heaven's sake, no! Sit down! You mustn't rush at a woman like this
+the first day you know her. Give her time. Let me tell you when!"
+
+"Benjamin, my dear brother, you are wise and I am a fool!"
+
+"You'll do in time. Let me coach you, that's all, and you'll come on
+famously. I can tell you this: that I think she likes you very well
+already."
+
+"Your words are like a shower of light, a fragrant wind. Benjamin, I am
+hot with happiness! When may I speak to her?"
+
+"I don't know. She may have guessed something out of what you said
+to-night." He swallowed a smile. "You might speak to her about this
+marriage to-morrow."
+
+"It will be hard; but I shall wait."
+
+"And then you'll have to go out of the Garden with her to get married."
+
+"Out of the Garden? Never! Why should we?"
+
+"Why, you'll need a minister, you know, to marry you."
+
+"True. Then I shall send for one."
+
+"But he might not want to make this long journey for the sake of one
+marriage ceremony."
+
+"There are ways, perhaps, of persuading him to come," said David, making
+a grim gesture.
+
+"No force or you ruin everything."
+
+"I shall be ruled by you, brother. It seems I have little knowledge."
+
+"Go easy always and you'll come out all right. Give her plenty of time.
+A woman always needs a lot of time to make up her mind, and even then
+she's generally wrong."
+
+"What do you mean by that?"
+
+"No matter. She'll probably want to go back to her home for a while."
+
+"Leave me?"
+
+"Not necessarily. But you, when a man gets engaged, it's sometimes a
+couple of years between the time a woman promises to marry him and the
+day of the ceremony."
+
+"Do they wait so long, and live apart?"
+
+"A thousand miles, maybe."
+
+"Then you men beyond the mountains are made of iron!"
+
+"Do you have to be away from her? Why not go along with her when she
+goes home?"
+
+"Surely, Benjamin, you know that a law forbids it!"
+
+"You make your own laws in important things like this."
+
+"It cannot be."
+
+And so the matter rested when Connor left his host and went to bed. He
+had been careful not to press the point. So unbelievably much ground had
+been covered in the first few hours that he was dizzy with success. It
+seemed ages since that Ruth had come running to him in the patio in
+terror of her life. From that moment how much had been done!
+
+Closing his eyes as he lay on his bed, he went back over each incident
+to see if a false step had been made. As far as he could see, there had
+not been a single unsound measure undertaken. The first stroke had been
+the masterpiece. Out of a danger which had threatened instant
+destruction of their plan she had won complete victory by her facing of
+David, and when she put her hand in his as a sign of weakness, Connor
+could see that she had made David her slave.
+
+As the scene came back vividly before his eyes he could not resist an
+impulse to murmur aloud to the dark: "Brave girl!"
+
+She had grown upon him marvelously in that single half-day. The ability
+to rise to a great situation was something which he admired above all
+things in man or woman. It was his own peculiar power--to judge a man or
+a horse in a glance, and dare to venture a fortune on chance. Indeed, it
+was hardly a wonder that David Eden or any other man should have fallen
+in love with her in that one half-day. She was changed beyond
+recognition from the pale girl who sat at the telegraph key in Lukin and
+listened to the babble of the world. Now she was out in that world,
+acting on the stage and proving herself worthy of a role.
+
+He rehearsed her acts. And finally he found himself flushing hotly at
+the memory of her mingled pleasure and shame and embarrassment as David
+of Eden had poured out his amazing flow of compliments.
+
+At this point Connor sat up suddenly and violently in his bed.
+
+"Steady, Ben!" he cautioned himself. "Watch your step!"
+
+
+
+
+_CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN_
+
+
+Ben Connor awoke the next morning with the sun streaming across the room
+and sprang out of bed at once, worried. For about dawn noises as a rule
+began around the house and the singing of the old men farther down the
+hill. The Garden of Eden awakened at sunrise, and this silence even when
+the sun was high alarmed the gambler. He dressed hastily, and opening
+his door, he saw David walking slowly up and down the patio. At the
+sight of Connor he raised a warning finger.
+
+"Let us keep a guard upon our voices," he murmured, coming to Connor. "I
+have ordered my servants to move softly and to keep from the house if
+they may."
+
+"What's happened?"
+
+"She sleeps, Benjamin." He turned toward her door with a smile that the
+gambler never forgot. "Let her waken rested."
+
+Connor looked at the sky.
+
+"I've come too late for breakfast, even?"
+
+A glance of mild rebuke was turned upon him.
+
+"Surely, Benjamin, we who are strong will not eat before her who is
+weak?"
+
+"Are you going to starve yourself because she's sleepy?"
+
+"But I have not felt hunger."
+
+He added in a voice of wonder: "Listen!"
+
+Ruth Manning was singing in her room, and Connor turned away to hide his
+frown. For he was not by any means sure whether the girl sang from the
+joy she found in this great adventure or because of David Eden. He was
+still further troubled when she came out to the breakfast table in the
+patio. He had expected that she would be more or less confused by the
+presence of David after his queer talk of the night before, but sleep
+seemed to have wiped everything from her memory. Her first nod, to be
+sure, was for the gambler, but her smile was for David of Eden. Connor
+fell into a reverie which was hardly broken through the meal by the deep
+voice of David or the laughter of Ruth. Their gayety was a barrier, and
+he was, subtly, left on the outside. David had proposed to the girl a
+ride through the Garden, and when he went for the horses the gambler
+decided to make sure of her position. He was too much disturbed to be
+diplomatic. He went straight to the point.
+
+"I'm sorry this is such a mess for you; but if you can buck up for a
+while it won't take long to finish the job."
+
+She looked at him without understanding, which was what he least wanted
+in the world. So he went on: "As a matter of fact, the worst of the job
+hasn't come. You can do what you want with him right now. But
+afterward--when you get him out of the valley the hard thing will be to
+hold him."
+
+"You're angry with poor David. What's he done now?"
+
+"Angry with him? Of course not! I'm a little disgusted, that's all."
+
+"Tell me why in words of one syllable, Ben."
+
+"You're too fine a sort to have understood. And I can't very well
+explain."
+
+She allowed herself to be puzzled for a moment and then laughed.
+
+"Please don't be mysterious. Tell me frankly."
+
+"Very well. I think you can make David go out of the valley when we go.
+But once we have him back in a town the trouble will begin. You
+understand why he's so--fond of you, Ruth?"
+
+"Let's not talk about it."
+
+"Sorry to make you blush. But you see, it isn't because you're so
+pretty, Ruth, but simply because you're a woman. The first he's ever
+seen."
+
+All her high coloring departed at once; a pale, sick face looked at
+Connor.
+
+"Don't say it," murmured the girl. "I thought last night just for a
+moment--but I couldn't let myself think of it for an instant."
+
+"I understand," said Connor gently. "You took all that highfaluting
+poetry stuff to be the same thing. But, say, Ruth, I've heard a young
+buck talk to a young squaw--before he married her. Just about the same
+line of junk, eh? What makes me sick is that when we get him out in a
+town he'll lose his head entirely when he sees a room full of girls.
+We'll simply have to plant a contract on him and--then let him go!"
+
+"Do you think it's only that?" she said again, faintly.
+
+"I leave it to you. Use your reason, and figure it out for yourself. I
+don't mean that you're in any danger. You know you're not as long as I'm
+around!"
+
+She thanked him with a wan smile.
+
+"But how can I let him come near me--now?"
+
+"It's a mess. I'm sorry about it. But once the deal goes through I'll
+make this up to you if it takes me the rest of my life. You believe me?"
+
+"I know you're true blue, Ben! And--I trust you."
+
+He was a little disturbed to find that his pulse was decidedly quickened
+by that simple speech.
+
+"Besides, I want to thank you for letting me know this. I understand
+everything about him now!"
+
+In her heart of hearts she was hating David with all her might. For all
+night long, in her dreams, she had been seeing again the gestures of
+those strong brown hands, and the flash of his eyes, and hearing the
+deep tremor of his voice. The newness of this primitive man and his ways
+and words had been an intoxicant to her; because of his very difference
+she was a little afraid, and now the warning of Connor chimed in
+accurately with a premonition of her own. That adulation poured at the
+feet of Ruth Manning had been a beautiful and marvelous thing; but flung
+down simply in honor of her sex it became almost an insult. The memory
+made her shudder. The ideal lover whom she had prefigured in some of her
+waking dreams had always spoken with ardor--a holy ardor. From this
+passion of the body she recoiled.
+
+Something of all this Connor read in her face and in her thoughtful
+silence, and he was profoundly contented. He had at once neutralized all
+of David's eloquence and fortified his own position. It was both a blow
+driven home and a counter. Not that he would admit a love for the girl;
+he had merely progressed as far as jealousy. He told himself that his
+only interest was in keeping her from an emotion which, once developed,
+might throw her entirely on the side of David and ruin their joint
+plans. He had refused to accompany the master of the Garden and the girl
+on their ride through the valley because, as he told himself, he
+"couldn't stand seeing another grown man make such an ass of himself" as
+David did when he was talking with the girl.
+
+He contented himself now with watching her face when David came back to
+the patio, followed by Glani and the neat-stepping little mare, Tabari.
+The forced smile with which she met the big man was a personal triumph
+to the gambler.
+
+"If you can win her under that handicap, David," he said softly to
+himself, "you deserve her, and everything else you can get."
+
+David helped her into the saddle on Tabari, and himself sprang onto the
+pad upon Glani's back. They went out side by side.
+
+It was a cool day for that season, and the moment the north wind struck
+them David shouted softly and sent Glani at a rushing gallop straight
+into the teeth of the wind. Tabari followed at a pace which Ruth, expert
+horse-woman though she was, had never dreamed of. For the first time she
+had that impression of which Ben Connor had spoken to her of the horse
+pouring itself over the road without strain and without jar of smashing
+hoofs.
+
+Ruth let Tabari extend herself, until the mare was racing with ears flat
+against her neck. She had even an impression that Glani, burdened by the
+great weight of David, was being left behind, but when she glanced to
+the side she saw that the master half a length back, was keeping a
+strong pull on the stallion, and Glani went smoothly, easily, with
+enormous strides, and fretting at the restraint.
+
+She gained two things from that glance. The first was a sense of
+impatience because the stallion kept up so easily; in the second place,
+the same wind which drove the long hair of David straight back blew all
+suspicious thoughts out of her mind. She drew Tabari back to a hand
+gallop and then to a walk with her eyes dimmed by the wind of the ride
+and the blood tingling in her cheeks.
+
+"It was like having wings," she cried happily as David let the stallion
+come up abreast.
+
+"Tabari is sturdy, but she lacks speed," said the dispassionate master.
+"When she was a foal of six months and was brought to me for judgment, I
+thought twice, because her legs were short. However, it is well that she
+was allowed to live and breed."
+
+"Allowed to live?" murmured Ruth Manning.
+
+"To keep the line of the gray horse perfect," said David, "they must be
+watched with a jealous eye, and those which are weak must not live. The
+mares are killed and the stallions gelded and sold."
+
+"And can you judge the little colts?"
+
+Her voice was too low for David to catch a sense of pain and anger in
+it.
+
+"It must be done. It is a duty. To-day is the sixth month of Timeh, the
+daughter of Juri. You shall witness the judging. Elijah is the master."
+
+His face hardened at the name of Elijah, and the girl caught her breath.
+But before she could speak they broke out of a grove and came in view of
+a wide meadow across which four yoked cattle drew a harrow, smoothing
+the plow furrows to an even, black surface.
+
+It carried the girl far back; it was like opening an ancient book of
+still more ancient tales; the musty smell completes the illusion. The
+cattle plodding slowly on, seeming to rest at every step, filled in the
+picture of which the primitive David Eden was the central figure.
+
+"Yokes," she cried. "I've never seen them before!"
+
+"For some work we use the horses, but the jerking of the harrow ruins
+their shoulders. Besides, we may need the cattle for a new journey."
+
+"A journey? With those?"
+
+"That was how the four came into the Garden. And I am enjoined to have
+the strong wagons always ready and the ox teams always complete in case
+it becomes necessary to leave this valley and go elsewhere. Of course,
+that may never be."
+
+
+
+
+_CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT_
+
+
+He brought Glani to a halt. They had left the sight of the meadow,
+though they could still hear the snorting of the oxen at their labor, a
+distant sound. Here, on one side of the road, the forest tumbled back
+from a swale of ground across which a tiny stream leaped and flashed
+with crooked speed, and the ground seemed littered with bright gold, so
+closely were the yellow wild flowers packed.
+
+"Two days ago," said David, "they were only buds. See them now!"
+
+He slipped from his horse and, stooping, rose again in a moment with his
+hands full of the yellow blossoms.
+
+"They have a fragrance that makes them seem far away," he said. "See!"
+
+He tossed the flowers at her; the wind caught them and spangled her hair
+and her clothes with them, and she breathed a rare perfume. David fell
+to clapping his hands and laughing like a child at the picture she made.
+She had never liked him so well as she did at this moment. She had never
+pitied him as she did now; she was not wise enough to shrink from that
+emotion.
+
+"It was made for you--this place."
+
+And before she could move to defend herself he had raised her strongly,
+lightly from the saddle, and placed her on the knoll in the thickest of
+the flowers. He stood back to view his work, nodding his satisfaction,
+and she, looking up at him, felt the old sense of helplessness sweep
+over her. Every now and then David Eden overwhelmed her like an
+inescapable destiny; there was something foredoomed about the valley and
+about him.
+
+"I knew you would look like this," he was saying. "How do men make a
+jewel seem more beautiful? They set it in gold! And so with you, Ruth.
+Your hair against the gold is darker and richer and more like piles and
+coils of shadow. Your face against the gold is the transparent white,
+with a bloom in it. Your hands are half lost in the softness of that
+gold. And to think that is a picture you can never see! But I forget."
+
+His face grew dark.
+
+"Here I have stumbled again, and yet I started with strong vows and
+resolves. My brother Benjamin warned me!"
+
+It shocked her for a reason she could not analyze to hear the big man
+call Connor his brother. Connor, the gambler, the schemer! And here was
+David Eden with the green of the trees behind, his feet in the golden
+wild flowers, and the blue sky behind his head. Brother to Ben Connor?
+
+"And how did he warn you?" she asked.
+
+"That I must not talk to you of yourself, because, he said, it shames
+you. Is that true?"
+
+"I suppose it is," she murmured. Yet she was a little indignant because
+Connor had presumed to interfere. She knew he could only have done it to
+save her from embarrassment, but she rebelled at the thought of Connor
+as her conversational guardian.
+
+Put a guard over David of Eden, and what would he be? Just like a score
+of callow youths whom she had known, scattering foolish commonplaces,
+trying to make their dull eyes tell her flattering things which they had
+not brains enough to put into words.
+
+"I am sorry," said David, sighing. "It is hard to stand here and see
+you, and not talk of what I see. When the sun rises the birds sing in
+the trees; when I see you words come up to my teeth."
+
+He made a grimace. "Well, I'll shut them in. Have I been very wrong in
+my talk to you?"
+
+"I think you haven't talked to many women," said Ruth. "And--most men do
+not talk as you do."
+
+"Most men are fools," answered the egoist. "What I say to you is the
+truth, but if the truth offends you I shall talk of other things."
+
+He threw himself on the ground sullenly. "Of what shall I talk?"
+
+"Of nothing, perhaps. Listen!"
+
+For the great quiet of the valley was falling on her, and the distances
+over which her eyes reached filled her with the delightful sense of
+silence. There were deep blue mountains piled against the paler sky;
+down the slope and through the trees the river was untarnished, solid,
+silver; in the boughs behind her the wind whispered and then stopped to
+listen likewise. There was a faint ache in her heart at the thought that
+she had not known such things all her life. She knew then what gave the
+face of David of Eden its solemnity. She leaned a little toward him.
+"Now tell me about yourself. What you have done."
+
+"Of anything but that."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"No more than I want you to tell me about yourself and what you have
+done. What you feel, what you think from time to time, I wish to know; I
+am very happy to know. I fit in those bits of you to the picture I have
+made."
+
+Once more the egoist was talking!
+
+"But to have you tell me of what you have done--that is not pleasant. I
+do not wish to know that you have talked to other men and smiled on
+them. I do not wish to know of a single happy day you spent before you
+came to the Garden of Eden. But I shall tell you of the four men who are
+my masters if you wish."
+
+"Tell me of them if you will."
+
+"Very well. John was the beginning. He died before I came. Of the others
+Matthew was my chief friend. He was very old and thin. His wrist was
+smaller than yours, almost. His hair was a white mist. In the evening
+there seemed to be a pale moonshine around his face.
+
+"He was very small and old--so old that sometimes I thought he would dry
+up or dissolve and disappear. Toward the last, before God called him,
+Matthew grew weak, and his voice was faint, yet it was never sharp or
+shaken. Also, until the very end his eyes were young, for his heart was
+young.
+
+"That was Matthew. He was like you. He liked the silence. 'Listen,' he
+would say. 'The great stillness is the voice; God is speaking.' Then he
+would raise one thin finger and we caught our breath and listened.
+
+"Do you see him?"
+
+"I see him, and I wish that I had known him."
+
+"Of the others, Luke was taller than I. He had yellow hair as long and
+as coarse as the mane of a yellow horse. When he rode around the lake we
+could hear him coming for a great distance by his singing, for his voice
+was as strong as the neigh of Glani. I have only to close my eyes, and I
+can hear that singing of Luke from beside the lake. Ah, he was a huge
+man! The horses sweated under him.
+
+"His beard was long; it came to the middle of his belly; it had a great
+blunt square end. Once I angered him. I crept to him when he slept--I
+was a small boy then--and I trimmed the beard down to a point.
+
+"When Luke wakened he felt the beard and sat for a long time looking at
+me. I was so afraid that I grew numb, I remember. Then he went to the
+Room of Silence. When he came out his anger was gone, but he punished
+me. He took me to the lake and caught me by the heels and swung me
+around his head. When he loosened his fingers I shot into the air like a
+light stone. The water flashed under me, and when I struck the surface
+seemed solid. I thought it was death, for my senses went out, but Luke
+waded in and dragged me back to the shore. However, his beard remained
+pointed till he died."
+
+He chuckled at the memory.
+
+"Paul reproved Luke for what he had done. Paul was a big man, also, but
+he was short, and his bigness lay in his breadth. He had no hair, and he
+stood under Luke nodding so that the sun flashed back and forth on his
+bald head. He told Luke that I might have been killed.
+
+"'Better teach him sober manners now,' said Luke, 'than be a jester to
+knock at the gate of God.'
+
+"This Paul was wonderfully silent. He was born unhappy and nothing could
+make him smile. He used to wander through the valley alone in the middle
+of winter, half dead with cold and eating nothing. In those times, even
+Luke was not strong enough to make him come home to us.
+
+"I know that for ten days at one time he had gone without speech. For
+that reason he loved to have Joseph with him, because Joseph understood
+signs.
+
+"But when silence left him, Paul was great in speech. Luke spoke in a
+loud voice and Matthew beautifully, but Paul was terrible. He would fall
+on his knees in an agony and pray to God for salvation for us and for
+himself. While he kneeled he seemed to grow in size. He filled the room.
+And his words were like whips. They made me think of all my sins. That
+is how I remember Paul, kneeling, with his long arms thrown over his
+head.
+
+"Matthew died in the evening just as the moon rose. He was sitting
+beside me. He put his hand in mine. After a while I felt that the hand
+was cold, and when I looked at Matthew his head had fallen.
+
+"Paul died in a drift of snow. We always knew that he had been on his
+knees praying when the storms struck him and he would not rise until he
+had finished the prayer.
+
+"Luke bowed his head one day at the table and died without a sound--in
+spite of all his strength.
+
+"All these men have not really died out of the valley. They are here,
+like mists; they are faces of thin air. Sometimes when I sit alone at my
+table, I can almost see a spirit-hand like that of Matthew rise with a
+shadow-glass of wine.
+
+"But shall I tell you a strange thing? Since you came into the valley,
+these mist-images of my dead masters grow faint and thinner than ever."
+
+"You will remember me, also, when I have gone?"
+
+"Do not speak of it! But yes, if you should go, every spring, when these
+yellow flowers blossom, you would return to me and sit as you are
+sitting now. However you are young, yet there are ways. After Matthew
+died, for a long time I kept fresh flowers in his room and kept his
+memory fresh with them. But," he repeated, "you are young. Do not talk
+of death!"
+
+"Not of death, but of leaving the Garden."
+
+He stared gravely at her, and flushed.
+
+"You are tormenting me as I used to torment my masters when I was a boy.
+But it is wrong to anger me. Besides I shall not let you go."
+
+"Not _let_ me go?"
+
+"Am I a fool?" he asked hotly. "Why should I let you go?"
+
+"You could not keep me."
+
+It brought him to his feet with a start.
+
+"What will free you?"
+
+"Your own honor, David."
+
+His head fell.
+
+"It is true. Yes, it is true. But let us ride on. I no longer am pleased
+with this place. It is tarnished; there are unhappy thoughts here!"
+
+"What a child he is!" thought the girl, as she climbed into the saddle
+again. "A selfish, terrible, wonderful child!"
+
+It seemed, after that, that the purpose of David was to show the
+beauties of the Garden to her until she could not brook the thought of
+leaving. He told her what grew in each meadow and what could be reaped
+from it.
+
+He told her what fish were caught in the river and the lake. He talked
+of the trees. He swung down from Glani, holding with hand and heel, and
+picked strange flowers and showed them to her.
+
+"What a place for a house!" she said, when, near the north wall, they
+passed a hill that overlooked the entire length of the valley.
+
+"I shall build you a house there," said David eagerly. "I shall build it
+of strong rock. Would that make you happy? Very tall, with great rooms."
+
+An impish desire to mock him came to her.
+
+"Do you know what I'm used to? It's a boarding house where I live in a
+little back bedroom, and they call us to meals with a bell."
+
+The humor of this situation entirely failed to appeal to him.
+
+"I also," he said, "have a bell. And it shall be used to call you to
+dinner, if you wish."
+
+He was so grave that she did not dare to laugh. But for some reason that
+moment of bantering brought the big fellow much closer to her than he
+had been before. And when she saw him so docile to her wishes, for all
+his strength and his mastery, the only thing that kept her from opening
+her heart to him, and despising the game which she and Connor were
+playing with him, was the warning of the gambler.
+
+"I've heard a young buck talk to a young squaw--before he married her.
+The same line of junk!"
+
+Connor must be right. He came from the great city.
+
+But before that ride was over she was repeating that warning very much
+as Odysseus used the flower of Hermes against the arts of Circe. For the
+Garden of Eden, as they came back to the house after the circuit, seemed
+to her very much like a little kingdom, and the monarch thereof was
+inviting her in dumb-show to be the queen of the realm.
+
+
+
+
+_CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE_
+
+
+At the house they were met by one of the servants who had been waiting
+for David to receive from the master definite orders concerning some
+woodchopping. For the trees of the garden were like children to David of
+Eden, and he allowed only the ones he himself designated to be cut for
+timber or fuel. He left the girl with manifest reluctance.
+
+"For when I leave you of what do you think, and what do you do? I am
+like the blind."
+
+She felt this speech was peculiar in character. Who but David of Eden
+could have been jealous of the very thoughts of another? And smiling at
+this, she went into the patio where Ben Connor was still lounging. Few
+things had ever been more gratifying to the gambler than the sight of
+the girl's complacent smile, for he knew that she was judging David.
+
+"What happened?" he asked.
+
+"Nothing worth repeating. But I think you're wrong, Ben. He isn't a
+barbarian. He's just a child."
+
+"That's another word for the same thing. Ever see anything more brutal
+than a child? The wildest savage that ever stepped is a saint compared
+with a ten-year-old boy."
+
+"Perhaps. He acts like ten years. When I mention leaving the valley he
+flies into a tantrum; he has taken me so much for granted that he has
+even picked out the site for my house."
+
+"As if you'd ever stay in a place like this!"
+
+He covered his touch of anxiety with loud laughter.
+
+"I don't know," she was saying thoughtfully a moment later. "I like
+it--a lot."
+
+"Anything seems pretty good after Lukin. But when your auto is buzzing
+down Broadway--"
+
+She interrupted him with a quick little laugh of excitement.
+
+"But do you really think I can make him leave the valley?"
+
+"Of course I'm sure."
+
+"He says there's a law against it."
+
+"I tell you, Ruth, you're his law now; not whatever piffle is in that
+Room of Silence."
+
+She looked earnestly at the closed door. Her silence had always bothered
+the gambler, and this one particularly annoyed him.
+
+"Let's hear your thoughts?" he asked uneasily.
+
+"It's just an idea of mine that inside that room we can find out
+everything we want to know about David Eden."
+
+"What do we want to know?" growled Connor. "I know everything that's
+necessary. He's a nut with a gang of the best horses that ever stepped.
+I'm talking horse, not David Eden. If I have to make the fool rich, it
+isn't because I want to."
+
+She returned no direct answer, but after a moment: "I wish I knew."
+
+"What?"
+
+She became profoundly serious.
+
+"The point is this: he _may_ be something more than a boy or a savage.
+And if he _is_ something more, he's the finest man I've ever laid eyes
+on. That's why I want to get inside that room. That's why I want to
+learn the secret--if there is a secret--the things he believes in, how
+he happens to be what he is and how--"
+
+Connor had endured her rising warmth of expression as long as he could.
+Now he exploded.
+
+"You do me one favor," he cried excitedly, more moved than she had ever
+seen him before. "Let me do your thinking for you when it comes to other
+men. You take my word about this David Eden. Bah! When I have you fixed
+up in little old Manhattan you'll forget about him and his mystery
+inside a week. Will you lay off on the thinking?"
+
+She nodded absently. In reality she was struck by the first similarity
+she had ever noticed between David of Eden and Connor the gambler:
+within ten minutes they had both expressed remarkable concern as to what
+might be her innermost thoughts. She began to feel that Connor himself
+might have elements of the boy in his make up--the cruel boy which he
+protested was in David Eden.
+
+She had many reasons for liking Connor. For one thing he had offered
+her an escape from her old imprisoned life. Again he had flattered her
+in the most insinuating manner by his complete trust. She knew that
+there was not one woman in ten thousand to whom he would have confided
+his great plan, and not one in a million whose ability to execute his
+scheme he would have trusted.
+
+More than this, before her trip to the Garden he had given her a large
+sum of money for the purchase of the Indian's gelding; and Ruth Manning
+had learned to appreciate money. He had not asked for any receipt. His
+attitude had been such that she had not even been able to mention that
+subject.
+
+Yet much as she liked Connor there were many things about him which
+jarred on her. There was a hardness, always working to the surface like
+rocks on a hard soil. Worst of all, sometimes she felt a degree of
+uncleanliness about his mind and its working. She would not have
+recoiled from these things had he been nearer her own age; but in a man
+well over thirty she felt that these were fixed characteristics.
+
+He was in all respects the antipode of David of Eden. It was easier to
+be near Connor, but not so exciting. David wore her out, but he also was
+marvelously stimulating. The dynamic difference was that Connor
+sometimes inspired her with aversion, and David made her afraid. She was
+roused out of her brooding by the voice of the gambler saying: "When a
+woman begins to think, a man begins to swear."
+
+She managed to smile, but these cheap little pat quotations which she
+had found amusing enough at first now began to grate on her through
+repetition. Just as Connor tagged and labeled his idea with this
+aphorism, so she felt that Connor himself was tagged by them. She found
+him considering her with some anxiety.
+
+"You haven't begun to doubt me, Ruth?" he asked her.
+
+And he put out his hand with a note of appeal. It was a new role for him
+and she at once disliked it. She shook the hand heartily.
+
+"That's a foolish thing to say," she assured him. "But--why does that
+old man keep sneaking around us?"
+
+It was Zacharias, who for some time had been prowling around the patio
+trying to find something to do which would justify his presence.
+
+"Do you think David Eden keeps him here as a spy on us?"
+
+This was too much for even Connor's suspicious mind, and he chuckled.
+
+"They all want to hang around and have a look at you--that's the point,"
+he answered. "Speak to him and you'll see him come running."
+
+It needed not even speech; she smiled and nodded at Zacharias, and he
+came to her at once with a grin of pleasure wrinkling his ancient face.
+She invited him to sit down.
+
+"I never see you resting," she said.
+
+"David dislikes an idler," said Zacharias, who acknowledged her
+invitation by dropping his withered hands on the back of the chair, but
+made no move to sit down.
+
+"But after all these years you have worked for him, I should think he
+would give you a little house of your own, and nothing to do except take
+care of yourself."
+
+He listened to her happily, but it was evident from his pause that he
+had not gathered the meaning of her words.
+
+"You come from the South?" he asked at length.
+
+"My father came from Tennessee."
+
+There was an electric change in the face of the Negro.
+
+"Oh, Lawd, oh, Lawd!" he murmured, his voice changing and thickening a
+little toward the soft Southern accent. "That's music to old
+Zacharias!"
+
+"Do you come from Tennessee, Zacharias?"
+
+Again there was a pause as the thoughts of Zacharias fled back to the
+old days.
+
+"Everything in between is all shadowy like evening, but what I remember
+most is the little houses on both sides of the road with the gardens
+behind them, and the babies rolling in the dust and shouting and their
+mammies coming to the doors to watch them."
+
+"How long ago was that?" she asked, deeply touched.
+
+He grew troubled.
+
+"Many and many a year ago--oh, many a long, weary year, for Zacharias!"
+
+"And you still think of the old days?"
+
+"When the bees come droning in the middle of the day, sometimes I think
+of them."
+
+He struck his hands lightly together and his misty-bright eyes were
+plainly looking through sixty years as though they were a day.
+
+"But why did you leave?" asked Ruth tenderly.
+
+Zacharias slowly drew his eyes away from the mists of the past and
+became aware of the girl's face once more.
+
+"Because my soul was burning in sin. It was burning and burning!"
+
+"But wouldn't you like to go back?"
+
+The head of Zacharias fell and he knitted his fingers.
+
+"Coming to the Garden of Eden was like coming into heaven. There's no
+way of getting out again without breaking the law. The Garden is just
+like heaven!"
+
+Connor spoke for the first time.
+
+"Or hell!" he exclaimed.
+
+It caused Ruth Manning to cry out at him softly; Zacharias was mute.
+
+"Why did you say that?" said the girl, growing angry.
+
+"Because I hate to see a bad bargain," said the gambler. "And it looks
+to me as if our friend here paid pretty high for anything he gets out of
+the Garden."
+
+He turned sharply to Zacharias.
+
+"How long have you been working here?"
+
+"Sixty years. Long years!"
+
+"And what have you out of it? What clothes?"
+
+"Enough to wear."
+
+"What food?"
+
+"Enough to eat."
+
+"A house of your own?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Land of your own?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Sixty years and not a penny saved! That's what I call a sharp bargain!
+What else have you gained?"
+
+"A good bright hope of heaven."
+
+"But are you sure, Zacharias? Are you sure? Isn't it possible that all
+these five masters of yours may have been mistaken?"
+
+Zacharias could only stare in his horror. Finally he turned away and
+went silently across the patio.
+
+"Ben," cried the girl softly, "why did you do it? Aside from torturing
+the poor man, what if this comes to David's ear?"
+
+Connor snapped his finger. His manner was that of one who knows that he
+has taken a foolish risk and wishes to brazen the matter out.
+
+"It'll never come to the ear of David! Why? Because he'd wring the neck
+of the old chap if he even guessed that he'd been talking about leaving
+the valley. And in the meantime I cut away the ground beneath David's
+feet. He has not standing room, pretty soon. Nothing left to him, by
+Jove, but his own conceit, and he has tons of that! Well, let him use it
+and get fat on it!"
+
+She wondered why Connor had come to actually hate the master of the
+Garden. Sure David of Eden had never harmed the gambler. She remembered
+something that she had heard long before: that the hatred always lies on
+the side of injurer and not of the injured.
+
+They heard David's voice, at this point, approaching, and in another
+moment a small cavalcade entered the patio.
+
+
+
+
+_CHAPTER THIRTY_
+
+
+First, a white flash beneath the shadow of the arched way, came a colt
+at full run, stopping short with four sprawling, braced feet at the
+sight of the strangers. It was not fear so much as surprise, for now it
+pricked its ears and advanced a dainty step or two. Ruth cried out with
+delight at the fawn-like beauty of the delicate creature. The Eden Gray
+was almost white in the little colt, and with its four dark stockings it
+seemed, when it ran, to be stepping on thin air. That impression was
+helped by the comparatively great length of the legs.
+
+Next came the mother, walking, as though she was quite confident that no
+harm could come to her colt in this home of all good things, but with
+her fine head held high and her eyes luminous with concern, a little
+anxious because the youngster had been out of sight for a moment.
+
+And behind them strode David with Elijah at his side.
+
+Ruth could never have recognized Elijah as the statuesque figure which
+had confronted David on the previous day. He was now bowing and scraping
+like some withered old man, striving to make a good impression on a
+creditor to whom a great sum was owing. She remembered then what David
+had told her earlier in the day about the judging of Timeh, the daughter
+of Juri. This, then, was the crisis, and here was Elijah striving to
+conciliate the grim judge. The old man kept up a running fire of talk
+while David walked slowly around the colt. Ruth wondered why the master
+of the Garden did not cry out with pleasure at sight of the beautiful
+creature. Connor had drawn her back a little.
+
+"You see that six months' mare?" he said softly, with a tremor in his
+voice. "I'd pay ten thousand flat for her the way she stands. Ten
+thousand--more if it were asked!"
+
+"But David doesn't seem very pleased."
+
+"Bah! He's bursting with pleasure. But he won't let on because he
+doesn't want to flatter old Elijah."
+
+"If he doesn't pass the colt do you know what happens?"
+
+"What?"
+
+"They kill it!"
+
+"I'd a lot rather see them kill a man!" snarled Connor. "But they won't
+touch _that_ colt!"
+
+"I don't know. Look at poor Elijah!"
+
+David, stopping in his circular walk, now stood with his arms folded,
+gazing intently at Timeh. Elijah was a picture of concern. The whites of
+his eyes flashed as his glances rolled swiftly from the colt to the
+master. Once or twice he tried to speak, but seemed too nervous to give
+voice.
+
+At length: "A true daughter of Juri, O David. And was there ever a more
+honest mare than Juri? The same head, mark you, deep from the eye to the
+angle of the jaw. And under the head--come hither, Timeh!"
+
+Timeh flaunted her heels at the sun and then came with short, mincing
+steps.
+
+"At six months," boasted Elijah, "she knows my voice as well as her
+mother. Stay, Juri!"
+
+The inquisitive mare had followed Timeh, but now, reassured, she dropped
+her head and began cropping the turf of the patio. Still, from the play
+of her ears, it was evident that Timeh was not out of the mother's
+thoughts for an instant.
+
+"Look you, David!" said Elijah. He raised the head of Timeh by putting
+his hand beneath her chin.
+
+"I can put my whole hand between the angles of her jaw! And see how her
+ears flick back and forth, like the twitching ears of a cat! Ha, is not
+that a sign?"
+
+He allowed the head to fall again, but he caught it under his arms and
+faced David in this manner, throwing out his hand in appeal. Still David
+spoke not a word.
+
+With a gesture he made Elijah move to one side. Then he stepped to
+Timeh. She was uneasy at his coming, but under the first touch of his
+hand Timeh became as still as rock and looked at her mother in a scared
+and helpless fashion. It seemed that Juri understood a great crisis was
+at hand; for now she advanced resolutely and with her dainty muzzle she
+followed with sniffs the hand of David as it moved over the little colt.
+He seemed to be seeing with his finger-tips alone, kneading under the
+skin in search of vital information. Along the muscles those dexterous
+fingers ran, and down about the heavy bones of the joints, where they
+lingered long, seeming to read a story in every crevice.
+
+Never once did he speak, but Ruth felt that she could read words in the
+brightening, calm, and sudden shadows across his face.
+
+Elijah accompanied the examination with a running-fire of comment.
+
+"There is quality in those hoofs, for you! None of your gray-blue stuff
+like the hoofs of Tabari, say, but black as night and dense as rock.
+Aye, David, you may well let your hand linger down that neck. She will
+step freely, this Timeh of mine, and stride as far as a mountain-lion
+can leap! Withers high enough. That gives a place for the ligaments to
+take hold. A good long back, but not too long to carry a weight. She
+will not be one of your gaunt-bellied horses, either; she will have wind
+and a bottom for running. She will gallop on the third day of the
+journey as freely as on the first. And she will carry her tail well out,
+always, with that big, strong dock."
+
+He paused a moment, for David was moving his hands over the hindlegs and
+lingering long at the hocks. And the face of Elijah grew convulsed with
+anxiety.
+
+"Is there anything wrong with those legs?" murmured Ruth to Connor.
+
+"Not a thing that I see. Maybe the stifles are too straight. I think
+they might angle out a bit more. But that's nothing serious. Besides, it
+may be the way Timeh is standing. What's the matter?"
+
+She was clinging to his arm, white-faced.
+
+"If that colt has to die I--I'll want to kill David Eden!"
+
+"Hush, Ruth! And don't let him see your face!"
+
+David moved back from Timeh and again folded his arms.
+
+"The body of the horse is one thing," ran on Elijah uneasily, "and the
+spirit is another. Have you not told us, David, that a curious colt
+makes a wise horse? That is Timeh! Where will you guess that I found her
+when I went to bring her to you even now? She had climbed up the face of
+the cliff, far up a crevice where a man would not dare to go. I dared
+not even cry out to her for fear she would fall if she turned her head.
+To have climbed so high was almost impossible, but how would she come
+down when there was no room for her to turn?
+
+"I was dizzy and sick with grief. But Timeh saw me, and down she came,
+without turning. She lifted her hoofs and put them down as a cat lifts
+and puts down wet paws. And in a moment she was safe on the meadow and
+frisking around me. Juri had been so worried that she made Timeh stop
+running and nosed her all over to make sure that she was unhurt by that
+climb. But tell me: will not a colt that risks its life to climb for a
+tuft of grass, run till its heart breaks for the master in later years?"
+
+For the first time David spoke.
+
+"Is she so wise a colt?" he said.
+
+"Wise?" cried Elijah, his eye shining with joy at the opening which he
+had made. "I talk to her as I talk to a man. She is as full of tricks as
+a dog. Look, now!"
+
+He leaned over and pretended to pick at the grass, whereat Timeh stole
+up behind him and drew out a handkerchief from his hip pocket. Off she
+raced and came back in a flashing circle to face Elijah with the cloth
+fluttering in her teeth.
+
+"So!" cried Elijah, taking the handkerchief again and looking eagerly at
+the master of the Garden. "Was there ever a colt like my Timeh?"
+
+"The back legs," said David slowly.
+
+Elijah had been preparing himself to speak again, with a smile. He was
+arrested in the midst of a gesture and his face altered like a man at
+the banquet at the news of a death.
+
+"The hind legs, David," he echoed hollowly. "But what of them? They are
+a small part of the whole! And they are not wrong. They are not very
+wrong, oh my master!"
+
+"The hocks are sprung in and turned a little."
+
+"A very little. Only the eye of David could see it and know that it is
+wrong!"
+
+"A small flaw makes the stone break. At a rotten knot-hole the great
+tree snaps in the storm. And a small sin may undermine a good man. The
+hind legs are wrong, Elijah."
+
+"To be sure. In a colt. Many things seem wrong in a colt, but in the
+grown horse they disappear!"
+
+"This fault will not disappear. It is the set of the joint and that can
+never be changed. It can only grow worse."
+
+Elijah, staring straight ahead, was searching his brain, but that brain
+was numbed by the calamity which had befallen him. He could only stroke
+the lovely head of the little colt and pray for help.
+
+"Yesterday," he said at length in a trembling voice, "Elijah, as a fool,
+spoke words which angered his master. Back on my head I call them now.
+David, do not judge Timeh with a wrathful heart.
+
+"Let the sins of Elijah fall on the head of Elijah, but let Timeh go
+unpunished for my faults."
+
+"You grow old, Elijah, and you forget. The judgment of David is never
+colored by his own likes and dislikes, his own wishes and prejudice. He
+sees the right, and therefore his judgments are true."
+
+"Aye, David, but truth is not merciful, and blessed above all things is
+mercy. When you see Timeh, think of Elijah. How he has watched over the
+colt, and loved it, and played with it, and taught it, by the hours, the
+proper manners for a colt and a mare of the Garden of Eden."
+
+"That is true. It is a well-mannered colt."
+
+Elijah caught at a new straw of hope.
+
+"Also, in the field, if two colts race home for water and Timeh is one,
+she reaches the water first--always. She comes to me like a child. In
+the morning she slips out of the paddock, and coming to my window, she
+puts in her head and calls me with a whinny as soft as the voice of a
+man. Then I arise and go out to her and to Juri."
+
+Ruth was weeping openly, her hand closed hard on the arm of Connor; and
+she felt the muscles along that arm contract. She almost loved the
+gambler for his rage at the inexorable David.
+
+"Consider Juri, also," said Elijah. "Seven times--I numbered them on my
+fingers and remembered--seven times when the horses were brought before
+you in the morning, you have called to Juri and mounted her for the
+morning ride--that was before Glani was raised to his full strength. And
+always the master has said:
+
+"'Stout-hearted Juri! She pours out her strength for her rider as a
+generous host pours out his wine!'"
+
+David frowned, but plainly he was touched.
+
+"Juri!" he called, and when the noble mare came to him, he laid his hand
+on her mane.
+
+"Who has spoken of Juri? Surely I am not judging her this day. It was
+Matthew who judged her when she was a foal of six months."
+
+"And it was Matthew," added Elijah hastily, "who loved her above all
+horses!"
+
+"Ah!" muttered David, deeply moved.
+
+"Consider the heart of Juri," went on Elijah, timidly following this new
+thread of argument. "When the mares neigh and the colts come running,
+there will be none to gallop to her side. When she goes out in the
+morning there will be no daughter to gallop around and around her,
+tossing her head and her heels. And when she comes home at night there
+will be no tired foal leaning against her side for weariness."
+
+"Peace, Elijah! You speak against the law."
+
+In spite of himself, the glance of Elijah turned slowly and sullenly
+until it rested upon Ruth Manning. David followed the direction of that
+look and he understood. There stood the living evidence that he had
+broken the law of the Garden at least once. He flushed darkly.
+
+"The colt's gone," said Connor in a savagely-controlled murmur to the
+girl. "That devil has made up his mind. His pride is up now!"
+
+Elijah, too, seemed to realize that he had thrown away his last chance.
+
+He could only stretch out his hands with the tears streaming down his
+wrinkled face and repeat in his broken voice: "Mercy, David, mercy for
+Timeh and Juri and Elijah!"
+
+But the face of David was iron.
+
+"Look at Juri," he commanded. "She is flawless, strong, sound of hoof
+and heart and limb. And that is because her sire and her mother before
+her were well seen to. No narrow forehead has ever been allowed to come
+into the breed of the Eden Grays. I have heard Paul condemn a colt
+because the very ears were too long and flabby and the carriage of the
+horse dull. The weak and the faulty have been gelded and sent from the
+Garden or else killed. And therefore Juri to-day is stout and noble, and
+Glani has a spirit of fire. It is not easy to do. But if I find a sin in
+my own nature, do I not tear it out at a price of pain? And shall I
+spare a colt when I do not spare myself? A law is a law and a fault is a
+fault. Timeh must die!"
+
+The extended arms of Elijah fell. Connor felt Ruth surge forward from
+beside him, but he checked her strongly.
+
+"No use!" he said. "You could change a very devil more easily than you
+can change David now! He's too proud to change his mind."
+
+"Oh," sobbed the girl softly, "I hate him! I hate him!"
+
+"Let Timeh live until the morning," said David in the same calm voice.
+"Let Juri be spared this night of grief and uneasiness. If it is done in
+the morning she will be less anxious until the dark comes, and by that
+time the edge of her sorrow shall be dulled."
+
+"Whose hand," asked Elijah faintly--"whose hand must strike the blow?"
+
+"Yesterday," said David, "you spoke to me a great deal of the laws of
+the Garden and their breaking. Do you not know that law which says that
+he from whose household the faulty mare foal has come must destroy it?
+You know that law. Then let it not be said that Elijah, who so loves the
+law, has shirked his lawful burden!"
+
+At this final blow poor Elijah lifted his face.
+
+"Lord God!" he said, "give me strength. It is more than I can bear!"
+
+"Go!" commanded the master of the Garden.
+
+Elijah turned slowly away. As if to show the way, Timeh galloped before
+him.
+
+
+
+
+_CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE_
+
+
+David watched them go, and while his back was turned a fierce, soft
+dialogue passed between Ruth Manning and Ben Connor.
+
+"Are you a man?" she asked him, through her set teeth. "Are you going to
+let that beautiful little thing die?"
+
+"I'd rather see the cold-hearted fool die in place of Timeh. But what
+can we do? Nothing. Just smile in his face."
+
+"I hate him!" she exclaimed.
+
+"If you hate him, then use him. Will you?"
+
+"If I can make him follow me, tease him to come, make him think I love
+him, I'll do it. I'd do anything to torture him."
+
+"I told you he was a savage."
+
+"You were right, Ben. A fiend--not a man! Oh, thank Heavens that I see
+through him."
+
+Anger gave her color and banished her tears. And when David turned he
+found what seemed a picture of pleasure. It was infinitely grateful to
+him. If he had searched and studied for the words he could not have
+found anything to embitter her more than his first speech.
+
+"And what do you think of the justice of David?" he asked, coming to
+them.
+
+She could not speak; luckily Connor stepped in and filled the gap of
+awkward silence.
+
+"A very fine thing to have done, Brother David," he said. "Do you know
+what I thought of when I heard you talk?"
+
+"Of what?" said David, composing his face to receive the compliment. At
+that Ruth turned suddenly away, for she dared not trust her eyes, and
+the hatred which burned in them.
+
+"I thought of the old story of Abraham and Isaac. You were offering up
+something as dear to you as a child, almost, to the law of the Garden of
+Eden."
+
+"It is true," said David complacently. "But when the flesh is diseased
+it must be burned away."
+
+He called to Ruth: "And you, Ruth?"
+
+This childish seeking after compliments made her smile, and naturally he
+misjudged the smile.
+
+"I think with Benjamin," she said softly.
+
+"Yet my ways in the Garden must seem strange to you," went on David,
+expanding in the warmth of his own sense of virtue. "But you will grow
+accustomed to them, I know."
+
+The opening was patent. She was beginning to nod her acquiescence when
+Connor, in alarm, tapped on the table, once and again in swift
+telegraphy: "No! No!"
+
+The faint smile went out on her face.
+
+"No," she said to David.
+
+The master of the Garden turned a glance of impatience and suspicion
+upon the gambler, but Connor carefully made his face a blank. He
+continued to drum idly on the edge of the table, and the idle drumming
+was spelling to the girl's quick ear: "Out!"
+
+"You cannot stay?" murmured David.
+
+She drank in his stunned expression. It was like music to her.
+
+"Would you," she said, "be happy away from the Garden, and the horses
+and your servants? No more am I happy away from my home."
+
+"You are not happy with us?" muttered David. "You are not happy?"
+
+"Could you be away from the Garden?"
+
+"But that is different. The Garden was made by four wise men."
+
+"By five wise men," said the girl. "For you are the fifth."
+
+He was so blind that he did not perceive the irony.
+
+"And therefore," he said, "the Garden is all that the heart should
+desire. John and Matthew and Luke and Paul made it to fill that
+purpose."
+
+"But how do you know they succeeded? You have not seen the world beyond
+the mountains."
+
+"It is full of deceit, hard hearts, cruelty, and cunning."
+
+"It is full of my dear friends, David!"
+
+She thought of the colt and the mare and Elijah; and it became suddenly
+easy to lure and deceive this implacable judge of others. She touched
+the arm of the master lightly with her finger tips and smiled.
+
+"Come with me, and see my world!"
+
+"The law which the four made for me--I must not leave!"
+
+"Was it wrong to let me enter?"
+
+"You have made me happy," he argued slowly. "You have made me happier
+than I was before. And surely I could not have been made happy by that
+which is wrong. No, it was right to bring you into the valley. The
+moment I looked at you I knew that it was right."
+
+"Then, will it be wrong to go out with me? You need not stay! But see
+what lies beyond the mountains before you judge it!"
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"Are you afraid? It will not harm you."
+
+He flushed at that. And then began to walk up and down across the patio.
+She saw Connor white with anxiety, but about Connor and his affairs she
+had little concern at this moment. She felt only a cruel pleasure in her
+control over this man, half savage and half child. Now he stopped
+abruptly before her.
+
+"If the world, after I see it, still displeases me, when I return, will
+you come with me, Ruth? Will you come back to the Garden of Eden?"
+
+In the distance Ben Connor was gesturing desperately to make her say
+yes. But she could not resist a pause--a pause in which torment showed
+on the face of David. And then, deliberately, she made her eyes
+soften--made her lips smile.
+
+"Yes, David, I will come back!"
+
+He leaned a little toward her, then straightened with a shudder and
+crossed the patio to the Room of Silence. Behind that door he
+disappeared, and left Connor and the girl alone. The gambler threw down
+his arms as if abandoning a burden.
+
+"Why in the name of God did you let him leave you?" he groaned. "Why?
+Why? Why?"
+
+"He's going to come," asserted Ruth.
+
+"Never in a thousand years. The fool will talk to his dummy god in
+yonder and come out with one of his iced looks and talk about
+'judgment'! Bah!"
+
+"He'll come."
+
+"What makes you think so?"
+
+"Because--I know."
+
+"You should have waited--to-morrow you could have done it, maybe, but
+to-day is too soon."
+
+"Listen to me, Ben. I know him. I know his childish, greedy mind. He
+wants me just as much as he wants his own way. It's partly because I'm
+new to him, being a woman. It's chiefly because I'm the first thing he's
+ever met that won't do what he wants. He's going to try to stay with me
+until he bends me." She flushed with angry excitement.
+
+"It's playing with fire, Ruth. I know you're clever, but--"
+
+"You don't know how clever, but I'm beginning to guess what I can do.
+I've lost all feeling about that cruel barbarian, Ben. That poor little
+harmless, pretty colt--oh, I want to make David Eden burn for that! And
+I can do it. I'm going to wind him around my finger. I've thought of
+ways while I stood looking at him just now. I know how I can smile at
+him, and use my eyes, and woo him on, and pretend to be just about to
+yield and come back with him--then grow cold the next minute and give
+him his work to do over again. I'm going to make him crawl on his knees
+in the dust. I'm going to make a fool of him before people. I'm going to
+make him sign over his horses to us to keep them out of his vicious
+power. And I can do it--I hate him so that I know I can make him really
+love me. Oh, I know he doesn't really love me now. I know you're right
+about him. He simply wants me as he'd want another horse. I'll change
+him. I'll break him. When he's broken I'm going to laugh in his
+face--and tell him--to remember Timeh!"
+
+"Ruth!" gasped Connor.
+
+He looked guiltily around, and when he was sure no one was within reach
+of her voice, he glanced back with admiration.
+
+"By the Lord, Ruth, who'd ever have guessed at all this fire in you?
+Why, you're a wonder. And I think you can do it. If you can only get him
+out of the infernal Garden. That's the sticking point! We make or break
+in the next ten minutes!"
+
+But he had hardly finished speaking before David of Eden came out of the
+Room of Silence, and with the first glance at his face they knew that
+the victory was theirs. David of Eden would come with them into the
+world!
+
+"I have heard the Voice," he said, "and it is just and proper for me to
+go. In the morning, Ruth, we shall start!"
+
+
+
+
+_CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO_
+
+
+Night came as a blessing to Ruth, for the scenes of the early day had
+exhausted her. At the very moment when David succumbed to her
+domination, her own strength began to fail. As for Connor, it was
+another story. The great dream which had come to him in far away Lukin,
+when he watched the little gray gelding win the horse race, was now
+verging toward a reality. The concrete accomplishment was at hand. Once
+in the world it was easy to see that David would become clay, molded by
+the touch of clever Ruth Manning, and then--it would be simply a matter
+of collecting the millions as they rolled in.
+
+But Ruth was tired. Only one thing sustained her, and that was the
+burning eagerness to humble this proud and selfish David of Eden. When
+she thought how many times she had been on the verge of open admiration
+and sympathy with the man, she trembled and grew cold. But through the
+fate of poor little Timeh, she thanked Heaven that her eyes had been
+opened.
+
+She went to her room shortly after dinner, and she slept heavily until
+the first grayness of the morning. Once awake, in spite of the early
+hour, she could not sleep again, so she dressed and went into the patio.
+Connor was already there, pacing restlessly. He had been up all night,
+he told her, turning over possibilities.
+
+"It seems as though everything has worked out too much according to
+schedule," he said. "There'll be a break. Something will happen and
+smash everything!"
+
+"Nothing will happen," she assured him calmly.
+
+He took her hand in his hot fingers.
+
+"Partner"--he began, and then stopped as though he feared to let himself
+go on.
+
+"Where is he?" she asked.
+
+"On his mountain, waiting for the sun, I guess. He told the servants a
+while ago that he was leaving to-day. Great excitement. They're all
+chattering about it down in the servants' house."
+
+"Is no one here?"
+
+"Not a soul, I guess."
+
+"Then--we're going into that Room of Silence!"
+
+"Take that chance now? Never in the world! Why, Ruth, if he saw us in
+there, or guessed we'd been there, he'd probably murder us both. You
+know how gentle he is when he gets well started?"
+
+"But how will he know? No one is here, and David won't be back from the
+mountain for a long time if he waits for the sun."
+
+"Just stop thinking about it, Ruth."
+
+"I'll never stop as long as I live, unless I see it. I've dreamed
+steadily about that room all night."
+
+"Go alone, then, and I'll stay here."
+
+She went resolutely across the patio, and Connor, following with an
+exclamation, caught her arm roughly at the door.
+
+"You aren't serious?"
+
+"Deadly serious!"
+
+The glitter of her dark eyes convinced him more than words.
+
+"Then we'll go together. But make it short!"
+
+They swept the patio with conscience-stricken glances, and then opened
+the door. As they did so, the ugly face of Joseph appeared at the
+entrance to the patio, looked and hastily was withdrawn.
+
+"This is like a woman," muttered Connor, as they closed the door with
+guilty softness behind them. "Risk her life for a secret that isn't
+worth a tinker's damn!"
+
+For the room was almost empty, and what was in it was the simplest of
+the simple. There was a roughly made table in the center. Five chairs
+stood about it. On the table was a book, and the seven articles made up
+the entire furnishings. Connor was surprised to see tears in the eyes of
+Ruth.
+
+"Don't you see?" she murmured in reply to his exclamation. "The four
+chairs for the four dead men when David sits down in his own place?"
+
+"Well, what of that?"
+
+"What's in the book?"
+
+"Are you going to wait to see that?"
+
+"Open the door a little, Ben, and then we can hear if any one comes
+near."
+
+He obeyed and came back, grumbling. "We can hear every one except David.
+That step of his wouldn't break eggs."
+
+He found the girl already poring over the first page of the old book, on
+which there was writing in a delicate hand.
+
+She read aloud: "The story of the Garden of Eden, who made it and why it
+was made. Told without error by Matthew."
+
+"Hot stuff!" chuckled Connor. "We got a little time before the sun comes
+up. But it's getting red in the east. Let's hear some more."
+
+There was nothing imposing about the book. It was a ledger with a
+half-leather binding such as storekeepers use for accounts. Time had
+yellowed the edges of the paper and the ink was dulled. She read:
+
+"In the beginning there was a man whose name was John."
+
+"Sounds like the start of the Bible," grinned Connor. "Shoot ahead and
+let's get at the real dope."
+
+"Hush!"
+
+Without raising her eyes, she brushed aside the hand of Connor which had
+fallen on the side of the ledger. Her own took its place, ready to turn
+the page.
+
+"In the beginning there was a man whose name was John. The Lord looked
+upon John and saw his sins. He struck John therefor. First He took two
+daughters from John, but still the man was blind and did not read the
+writing of his Maker. And God struck down the eldest son of John, and
+John sorrowed, but did not understand. Thereat, all in a day, the Lord
+took from John his wife and his lands and his goods, which were many and
+rich.
+
+"Then John looked about him, and lo! he was alone.
+
+"In the streets his friends forgot him and saw not his passing. The
+sound of his own footfall was lonely in his house, and he was left alone
+with his sins.
+
+"So he knew that it was the hand of God which struck him, and he heard
+a voice which said in the night to him: 'O John, ye who have been too
+much with the world must leave it and go into the wilderness.'
+
+"Then the heart of John smote him and he prayed God to send him not out
+alone, and God relented and told him to go forth and take with him three
+simple men.
+
+"So John on the next morning called to his Negro, a slave who was all
+that remained in his hands.
+
+"'Abraham,' he said, 'you who were a slave are free.'
+
+"Then he went into the road and walked all the day until his feet bled.
+He rested by the side of the road and one came who kneeled before him
+and washed his feet, and John saw that it was Abraham. And Abraham said:
+'I was born into your service and I can only die out of it.'
+
+"They went on together until they came to three robbers fighting with
+one strong man, and John helped this man and drove away the robbers.
+
+"Then the tall man began to laugh. 'They would have robbed me because I
+was once rich,' he said, 'but another thief had already plundered me,
+and they have gotten only broken heads for their industry.' Then John
+was sorry for the fortune that was stolen.
+
+"'Not I,' said the tall man, 'but I am sorry for the brother I lost with
+the money.' Then he told them how his own brother had cheated him.
+'But,' he said, 'there is only one way to beat the devil, and that is to
+laugh at him.'
+
+"Now John saw this was a good man, so he opened his heart to Luke, which
+was the name of him who had been robbed. Then Luke fell in with the two
+and went on with them.
+
+"They came to a city filled with plague so that the dead were buried by
+the dying and the dog howled over his master in the street; the son fled
+from the father and the mother left her child. They found one man who
+tended the sick out of charity and the labor was too great for even his
+broad shoulders. He had a broad, ugly face, but in his eye was a clear
+fire.
+
+"'Brother, what is your name?' said John, and the man answered that he
+was called Paul, and begged them for the sweet mercy of Christ to aid
+him in his labors.
+
+"But John said: 'Rise, Paul, and follow me.'
+
+"And Paul said: 'How can I follow the living when the dying call to me?'
+
+"But John said: 'Nevertheless, leave them, for these are carrion, but
+your soul in which is life eternal is worth all these and far more.'
+
+"Then Paul felt the power of John and followed him and took, also, his
+gray horses which were unlike others, and of his servants those who
+would follow him for love, and in wagons he put much wealth.
+
+"So they all rode on as a mighty caravan until they came, at the side of
+the road, to a youth lying in the meadow with his hands behind his head
+whistling, and a bird hovering above him repeated the same note. They
+spoke to him and he told them that he was an outcast because he would
+not labor.
+
+"'The world is too pleasant to work in,' he said, and whistled again,
+and the bird above him made answer.
+
+"Then John said: 'Here is a soul worth all of ours. Rise, brother, and
+come with us.'
+
+"So Matthew rose and followed him, and he was the third and last man to
+join John, who was the beginning.
+
+"Then they came to a valley set about with walls and with a pleasant
+river running through it, and here they entered and called it the Garden
+of Eden because in it men should be pure of heart once more. And they
+built their houses with labor and lived in quiet and the horses
+multiplied and the Garden blossomed under their hands."
+
+Here Ruth marked her place with her finger while she wiped her eyes.
+
+"Do you mean to say this babble is getting you?" growled Ben Connor.
+
+"Please!" she whispered. "Don't you see that it's beautiful?"
+
+And she returned to the book.
+
+
+
+
+_CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE_
+
+
+"Then John sickened and said: 'Bring me into the room of silence.' So
+they brought him to the place where they sat each day to converse with
+God in the holy stillness and hear His voice.
+
+"Then John said: 'I am about to depart from among you, and before my
+going I put this command on you that you find in the world a male infant
+too young to know its father or mother, or without father and mother
+living. Rear that child to manhood in the valley, for even as I depart
+so will you all do, and the Garden of Eden will be left tenantless.'
+
+"So when John was dead Matthew went forth and found a male child and
+brought him to the valley and the two said: 'Where was the child found
+and what is its name?' And Matthew said: 'It was found in the place to
+which God led me and its name hereafter shall be David.'
+
+"So peace was on the valley, and David grew tall and strong. Then Luke
+died, and Paul died in a drift of snow and Matthew grew very old and
+wrote these words for the eye of David."
+
+The smooth running, finely made letters come to an end, the narrative
+was taken up in fresher ink and in a bold, heavy hand of large
+characters.
+
+"One day Matthew called for David and said: 'My hands are cold, whereby
+I know I am about to die. As I lay last night with death for a bedfellow
+thoughts came to me, which are these: We have been brother and father
+and son to one another. But do not grieve that I am gone. I inherit a
+place of peace, but you shall come to torment unless you find a woman in
+the world and bring her here to bear children to you and be your wife.'
+
+"Then David groaned in his heart and he said: 'How shall I know her when
+I find her?'
+
+"And Matthew said: 'By her simplicity.'
+
+"And David said: 'There may be many who are simple.'
+
+"And Matthew said: 'I have never known such a woman. But when you see
+her your heart will rise up and claim her. Therefore, within five years,
+before you are grown too old, go out and find this woman and wed her.'
+
+"And on that day Matthew died, and a great anguish came to David. The
+days passed heavily. And for five years he has waited."
+
+There was another interval of blank paper, and then the pen had been
+taken up anew, hurriedly, and driven with such force and haste that it
+tore the paper-surface.
+
+"The woman is here!"
+
+Her fingers stiffened about the edges of the book. Raising her head, she
+looked out through the little window and saw the tree tops down the
+hillside brightening against the red of the dawn. But Connor could not
+see her face. He only noted the place at which she had stopped, and now
+he began to laugh.
+
+"Can you beat that? That poor dub!"
+
+She turned to him, slowly, a face so full of mute anguish that the
+gambler stopped his laughter to gape at her. Was she taking this
+seriously? Was this the Bluebeard's chamber which was to ruin all his
+work?
+
+Not that he perceived what was going on in her mind, but her expression
+made him aware, all at once, of the morning-quiet. Far down the valley a
+horse neighed and a bird swooping past the window cast in on them one
+thrilling phrase of music. And Connor saw the girl change under his very
+eye. She was looking straight at him without seeing his face and into
+whatever distance her glance went he felt that he could not follow her.
+Here at the very threshold of success the old ledger was proving a more
+dangerous enemy than David himself. Connor fumbled for words, the Open
+Sesame which would let in the common sense of the everyday world upon
+the girl. But the very fear of that crisis kept him dumb. He glanced
+from the pale hand on the ledger to her face, and it seemed to him that
+beauty had fallen upon her out of the book.
+
+"The woman is here! God has sent her!"
+
+At that she cried out faintly, her voice trembling with self-scorn: "God
+has sent me--me!"
+
+"The heart of David stood up and beat in his throat when he saw her,"
+went on the rough, strong writing. "She passed the gate. Every step she
+took was into the soul of David. As I went beside her the trees grew
+taller and the sky was more blue.
+
+"She has passed the gate. She is here. She is mine!
+
+"What am I that she should be mine? God has sent her to show me that my
+strength is clumsy. I have no words to fit her. When I look into her
+eyes I see her soul; my vision leaps from star to star, a great
+distance, and I am filled with humility. O Father in Heaven, having led
+her to my hand, teach me to give her happiness, to pour her spirit full
+of content."
+
+She closed the book reverently and pressed her hands against her face.
+He heard her murmuring: "What have I done? God forgive me!"
+
+Connor grew angry. It was no time for trifling.
+
+He touched her arm: "Come on out of this, Ruth. If you're going to get
+religion, try it later."
+
+At that she flung away and faced him, and what he saw was a revelation
+of angry scorn.
+
+"Don't touch me," she stammered at him. "You cheat! Is that the
+barbarian you were telling me about? Is that the cruel, selfish fool you
+tried to make me think was David of Eden?"
+
+His own weapons were turning against him, but he retained his
+self-control.
+
+"I won't listen to you, Ruth. It's this hush-stuff that's got you. It's
+this infernal room. It makes you feel that the fathead has actually got
+the dope from God."
+
+"How do you know that God hasn't come to him here? At least, he's had
+the courage and the faith to believe it. What faith have we? I know your
+heaven, Ben Connor. It's paved with dollar bills. And mine, too. We've
+come sneaking in here like cowardly thieves. Oh, I hate myself, I loathe
+myself. I've stolen his heart, and what have I to give him in exchange?
+I'm not even worthy to love him! Barbarian? He's so far greater and
+finer than we are that we aren't worthy to look in his face!"
+
+"By the Lord!" groaned Connor. "Are you double-crossing me?"
+
+"Could I do anything better? Who tempted me like a devil and brought me
+here? Who taught me to play the miserable game with David? You, you,
+you!"
+
+Perspiration was streaming down the white face of Connor.
+
+"Try to give me a chance and listen one minute, Ruth. But for God's sake
+don't fly off the handle and smash everything when we're next door to
+winning. Maybe I've done wrong. I don't see how. I've tried to give
+this David a chance to be happy the way any other man would want to be
+happy. Now you turn on me because he's written some high-flying chatter
+in a book!"
+
+"Because I thought he was a selfish sham, and now I see that he's real.
+He's humbled himself to me--to me! I'm not worthy to touch his feet! And
+you--"
+
+"Maybe I'm rotten. I don't say I'm all I should be, but half of what
+I've done has been for you. The minute I saw you at the key in Lukin I
+knew I wanted you. I've gone on wanting you ever since. It's the first
+time in my life--but I love you, Ruth. Give me one more chance. Put this
+thing through and I'll turn over the rest of my life to fixing you up
+so's you'll be happy."
+
+She watched him for a moment incredulously; then she broke into
+hysterical laughter.
+
+"If you loved me could you have made me do what I've done? Love? You?
+But I know what real love is. It's written into that book. I've heard
+him talk. I'm full of his voice, of his face.
+
+"It's the only fine thing about me. For the rest, we're shams, both of
+us--cheats--crooked--small, sneaking cheats!"
+
+She stopped with a cry of alarm; the door behind her stood open and in
+the entrance was David of Eden. In the background was the ugly, grinning
+face of Joseph. This was his revenge.
+
+Connor made one desperate effort to smile, but the effort failed
+wretchedly. Neither of them could look at David; they could only steal
+glances at one another and see their guilt.
+
+"David, my brother--" began the gambler heavily.
+
+But the voice of the master broke in: "Oh, Abraham, Abraham, would to
+God that I had listened!"
+
+He stood to one side, and made a sweeping gesture.
+
+"Come out, and bring the woman."
+
+They shrank past him and stood blinking in the light of the newly risen
+sun. Joseph was hugging himself with the cold and his mute delight. The
+master closed the door and faced them again.
+
+"Even in the Room of Silence!" he said slowly. "Was it not enough to
+bring sin into the Garden? But you have carried it even into the holy
+place!"
+
+Connor found his tongue. The fallen head of Ruth told him that there was
+no help to be looked for from her, and the crisis forced him into a
+certain boisterous glibness of speech.
+
+"Sin, Brother David? What sin? To be sure, Ruth was too curious. She
+went into the Room of Silence, but as soon as I knew she was there I
+went to fetch her, when--"
+
+He had even cast out one arm in a gesture of easy persuasion, and now it
+was caught at the wrist in a grip that burned through the flesh to the
+bones. Another hand clutched his coat at the throat. He was lifted and
+flung back against the wall by a strength like that of a madman, or a
+wild animal. One convulsive effort showed him his helplessness, and he
+cried out more in horror than fear. Another cry answered him, and Ruth
+strove to press in between, tearing futilely at the arms of David.
+
+A moment later Connor was miraculously freed. He found David a long pace
+away and Ruth before him, her arms flung out to give him shelter while
+she faced the master of the garden.
+
+"He is saved," said David, "and you are free. Your love has ransomed
+him. What price has he paid to win you so that you will even risk death
+for him?"
+
+"Oh, David," sobbed the girl, "don't you see I only came between you to
+keep you from murder? Because he isn't worth it!"
+
+But the master of the Garden was laughing in a way that made Connor look
+about for a weapon and shrink because he found none; only the greedy
+eyes of Joseph, close by. David had come again close to the girl; he
+even took both her hands in one of his and slipped his arm about her. To
+Connor his self-control now seemed more terrible than that one outbreak
+of murdering passion.
+
+"Still lies?" said David. "Still lies to me? Beautiful Ruth--never more
+beautiful than now, even when you lied to me with your eyes and your
+smiles and your promises! The man is nothing. He came like a snake to
+me, and his life is worth no more than the life of a snake. Let him
+live, let him die; it is no matter. But you, Ruth! I am not even
+angered. I see you already from a great distance, a beautiful, evil
+thing that has been so close to me. For you have been closer to me than
+you are now that my arm is around you, touching you for the last time,
+holding your warmth and your tender body, keeping both your hands, which
+are smaller and softer than the hands of a child. But mighty hands,
+nevertheless.
+
+"They have held the heart of David, and they have almost thrown his soul
+into eternal hellfire. Yet you have been closer to me than you are now.
+You have been in my heart of hearts. And I take you from it sadly--with
+regret, for the sin of loving you has been sweet."
+
+She had been sobbing softly all this time, but now she mastered herself
+long enough to draw back a little, taking his hands with a desperate
+eagerness, as though they gave her a hold upon his mind.
+
+"Give me one minute to speak out what I have to say. Will you give me
+one half minute, David?"
+
+His glance rose past her, higher, until it was fixed on the east, and as
+he stood there with his head far back Connor guessed for the first time
+at the struggle which was going on within him. The girl pressed closer
+to him, drawing his hands down as though she would make him stoop to
+her.
+
+"Look at me, David!"
+
+"I see your face clearly."
+
+"Still, look at me for the one last time."
+
+"I dare not, Ruth!"
+
+"But will you believe me?"
+
+"I shall try. But I am glad to hear your voice, for the last time."
+
+"I've come to you like a cheat, David, and I've tried to win you in
+order to steal the horses away, but I've stayed long enough to see the
+truth.
+
+"If everything in the valley were offered me--the horses and the
+men--and everything outside of the valley, without you, I'd throw them
+away. I don't want them. Oh, if prayers could make you believe, you'd
+believe me now; because I'm praying to you, David.
+
+"You love me, David. I can feel you trembling, and I love you more than
+I ever dreamed it was possible to love. Let me come back to you. I don't
+want the world or anything that's in it. I only want you. David--I only
+want you! Will you believe me?"
+
+And Connor saw David of Eden sway with the violence of his struggle.
+
+But he murmured at length, as one in wonder:
+
+"How you are rooted in me, Ruth! How you are wound into my life, so that
+it is like tearing out my heart to part from you. But the God of the
+Garden and John and Matthew has given me strength." He stepped back from
+her.
+
+"You are free to go, but if you return the doom against you is death
+like that of any wild beast that steals down the cliffs to kill in my
+fields. Begone, and let me see your face no more. Joseph, take them to
+the gate."
+
+And he turned his back with a slowness which made his resolution the
+more unmistakable.
+
+
+
+
+_CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR_
+
+
+It was, unquestionably, a tempting of Providence, but Connor was almost
+past caring. Far off he heard the neighing of an Eden Gray; Ruth, with
+her bowed head and face covered in her hands, was before him, sobbing;
+and all that he had come so near to winning and yet had lost rushed upon
+the mind of the gambler. He hardly cared now whether he lived or died.
+He called to the master of the Garden, and David whirled on him with a
+livid face. Connor walked into the reach of the lion.
+
+"I've made my play," he said through his teeth, "and I don't holler
+because I've lost the big stakes. Now I'm going to give you something to
+show that I'm not a piker--some free advice, Dave!"
+
+"O man of many lies," said David. "Peace! For when I hear you there is a
+great will come on me to take you by the throat and hear your life go
+out with a rattle."
+
+"A minute ago," said Connor coolly enough, "I was scared, and I admit
+it, but I'm past that stage. I've lost too much to care, and now you're
+going to hear me out to the last damned word!"
+
+"God of Paul and Matthew," said David, his voice broken with rage, "let
+temptation be far from me!"
+
+"You can take it standing or sitting," said Connor, "and be damned to
+you!"
+
+The blind fury sent David a long step nearer, but he checked himself
+even as one hand rose toward Connor.
+
+"It is the will of God that you live to be punished hereafter."
+
+"No matter about the future. I'm chattering in the present. I'm going to
+come clean, not because I'm afraid of you, but because I'm going to
+clear up the girl. Abraham had the cold dope, well enough. I came to
+crook you out of a horse, Dave, my boy, and I did it. But after I'd got
+away with the goods I tried to play hog, and I came back for the rest of
+the horses."
+
+He paused; but David showed no emotion.
+
+"You take the punishment very well," admitted Connor. "There's a touch
+of sporting blood in you, but the trouble is that the good in you has
+never had a fair chance to come to the top. I came back, and I brought
+Ruth with me.
+
+"I'll tell you about her. She's meant to be an honest-to-God woman--the
+kind that keeps men clean--she's meant for the big-time stuff. And where
+did I find her? In a jay town punching a telegraph key. It was all
+wrong.
+
+"She was made to spend a hundred thousand a year. Everything that money
+buys means a lot to her. I saw that right away. I like her. I did more
+than like her. I loved her. That makes you flinch under the whip, does
+it? I don't say I'm worthy of her, but I'm as near to her as you are.
+
+"I admit I played a rotten part. I went to this girl, all starved the
+way she was for the velvet touch. I laid my proposition before her. She
+was to come up here and bamboozle you. She was to knock your eye out and
+get you clear of the valley with the horses. Then I was going to run
+those horses on the tracks and make a barrel of coin for all of us.
+
+"You'd think she'd take on a scheme like that right away; but she
+didn't. She fought to keep from going crooked until I showed her it was
+as much to your advantage as it was to ours. Then she decided to come,
+and she came. I worked my stall and she worked hers, and she got into
+the valley.
+
+"But this voice of yours in the Room of Silence--why didn't it put you
+wise to my game? Well, David, I'll tell you why. The voice is the bunk.
+It's your own thoughts. It's your own hunches. The god you've been
+worshiping up here is yourself, and in the end you're going to pay hell
+for doing it.
+
+"Well, here's the girl in the Garden, and everything going smooth. We
+have you, and she's about to take you out and show you how to be happy
+in the world. But then she has to go into your secret room. That's the
+woman of it. You blame her? Why, you infernal blockhead, you've been
+making love to her like God Almighty speaking out of a cloud of fire!
+How could she hear your line of chatter without wanting to find out the
+secrets that made you the nut you are?
+
+"Well, we went in, and we found out. We found out what? Enough to make
+the girl see that you're 'noble,' as she calls it. Enough to make me see
+that you're a simp. You've been chasing bubbles all your life. You're
+all wrong from the first.
+
+"Those first four birds who started the Garden, who were they? There was
+John, a rich fellow who'd hit the high spots, had his life messed up,
+and was ready to quit. He'd lived enough. Then there was Luke, a gent
+who'd been double-crossed and was sore at the world on general
+principles.
+
+"Paul would have been a full-sized saint in the old days. He was never
+meant to live the way other men have to live. And finally there's a guy
+who lies in the grass and whistles to a bird--Matthew. A poet--and all
+poets are nuts.
+
+"Well, all those fellows were tired of the world--fed up with it. Boil
+them down, and they come to this: they thought more about the welfare
+of their souls than they did about the world. Was that square? It
+wasn't! They left the mothers and fathers, the brothers and sisters, the
+friends, everything that had brought them into the world and raised 'em.
+They go off to take care of themselves.
+
+"That wasn't bad enough for 'em--they had to go out and pluck you and
+bring you up with the same rotten hunches. Davie, my boy, d'you think a
+man is made to live by himself?
+
+"You haven't got fed up with the world; you're no retired high liver;
+you haven't had a chance to get double-crossed more than once; you're
+not a crazy poet; and you're a hell of a long ways from being a martyr.
+
+"I'll tell you what you are. You're a certain number of pounds of husky
+muscle and bone going to waste up here in the mountains. You've been
+alone so much that you've got to thinking that your own hunches come
+from God, and that'd spoil any man.
+
+"Live alone? Bah! You've had more happiness since Ruth came into this
+valley than you've ever had before or you'll ever have again.
+
+"Right now you're breaking your heart to take her in your arms and tell
+her to stop crying, but your pride won't let you.
+
+"You tried to make yourself a mystery with your room of silence and all
+that bunk. But no woman can stand a mystery. They all got to read their
+husband's letters. You try to bluff her with a lot of fancy words and
+partly scare her. It's fear that sent the four men up here in the first
+place--fear of the world.
+
+"And they've lived by fear. They scared a lot of poor unfortunate men
+into coming with them for the sake of their souls, they said. And they
+kept them here the same way. And they've kept you here by telling you
+that you'd be damned if you went over the mountains.
+
+"And you still keep them here the same way. Do you think they stay
+because they love you? Give them a chance and see if they won't pack up
+and beat it for their old homes.
+
+"Now, show me that you're a man and not a fatheaded bluff. Be a man and
+admit that what you call the Voice is just your pride. Be a man and take
+that girl in your arms and tell her you love her. I've made a mess of
+things; I've ruined her life, and I want to see you give her a chance to
+be happy.
+
+"Because she's not the kind to love more than one man if she lives to be
+a thousand. Now, David Eden, step out and give yourself a chance!"
+
+It had been a gallant last stand on the part of Connor. But he was
+beaten before he finished, and he knew it.
+
+"Are you done?" said David.
+
+"I'm through, fast enough. It's up to you!"
+
+"Joseph, take the man and his woman out of the Garden of Eden."
+
+The last thing that Connor ever saw of David Eden was his back as he
+closed the door of the Room of Silence upon himself. The gambler went to
+Ruth. She was dry-eyed by this time, and there was a peculiar blankness
+in her expression that went to his heart.
+
+Secretly he had hoped that his harangue to David would also be a
+harangue to the girl and make her see through the master of the Garden;
+but that hope disappeared at once.
+
+He stayed a little behind her when they were conducted out of the patio
+by the grinning Joseph. He helped her gently to her horse, the old gray
+gelding, and when he was in place on his own horse, with the mule pack
+behind him, they started for the gate.
+
+She had not spoken since they started. At the gate she moved as if to
+turn and look back, but controlled the impulse and bowed her head once
+more. Joseph came beside the gambler and stretched out his great palm.
+In the center of it was the little ivory ape's head which had brought
+Connor his entrance into the valley and had won the hatred of the big
+Negro, and had, eventually, ruined all his plans.
+
+"It was given freely," grinned Joseph, "and it is freely returned."
+
+"Very well."
+
+Connor took it and hurled it out of sight along the boulders beyond the
+gate. The last thing that he saw of the Garden of Eden and its men was
+that broad grin of Joseph, and then he hurried his horse to overtake
+Ruth, whose gelding had been plodding steadily along the ravine.
+
+He attempted for the first time to speak to her.
+
+"Only a quitter tries to make up for the harm he's done by apologizing.
+But I've got to tell you the one thing in my life I most regret. It
+isn't tricking David of Eden, but it's doing what I've done to you. Will
+you believe me when I say that I'd give a lot to undo what I've done?"
+
+She only raised her hand to check him and ventured a faint smile of
+reassurance. It was the smile that hurt Connor to the quick.
+
+They left the ravine. They toiled slowly up the difficult trail, and
+even when they had reached such an altitude that the floor of the valley
+of the Garden was unrolling behind them the girl never once moved to
+look back.
+
+"So," thought Connor, "she'll go through the rest of her life with her
+head down, watching the ground in front of her. And this is my work."
+
+He was not a sentimentalist, but a lump was forming in his throat when,
+at the very crest of the mountain, the girl turned suddenly in her
+saddle and stopped the gray.
+
+"Only makes it worse to stay here," muttered Connor. "Come on, Ruth."
+
+But she seemed not to hear him, and there was something in her smile
+that kept him from speaking again.
+
+
+
+
+_CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE_
+
+
+The Room of Silence had become to David Eden a chamber of horror. The
+four chairs around him, which had hitherto seemed filled with the ghosts
+of the four first masters of the Garden, were now empty to his
+imagination. In this place where he had so often found unfailing
+consolation, unfailing counsel, he was now burdened by the squat, heavy
+walls, and the low ceiling. It was like a prison to him.
+
+For all his certainty was gone. "You've made yourself your God," the
+gambler had said. "Fear made the Garden of Eden, fear keeps the men in
+it. Do you think the others stay for love of you?"
+
+Benjamin had proved a sinner, no doubt, but there had been a ring of
+conviction in his words that remained in the mind of David. How could he
+tell that the man was not right? Certainly, now that he had once doubted
+the wisdom of that silent Voice, the mystery was gone. The room was
+empty; the holiness had departed from the Garden of Eden with the
+departing of Ruth.
+
+He found himself avoiding the thought of her, for whenever her image
+rose before him it was torture.
+
+He dared not even inquire into the depression which weighed down his
+spirits, for he knew that the loss of the girl was the secret of it
+all.
+
+One thing at least was certain: the strong, calming voice which he had
+so often heard in the Room of Silence, no longer dwelt there, and with
+that in mind he rose and went into the patio.
+
+In a corner, screened by a climbing vine, hung a large bell which had
+only been rung four times in the history of the Garden of Eden, and each
+time it was for the death of the master. David tore the green away and
+struck the bell. The brazen voice crowded the patio and pealed far away,
+and presently the men came. They came in wild-eyed haste, and when they
+saw David alive before them they stared at him as if at a ghost.
+
+"As it was in the beginning," said David when the circle had been formed
+and hushed, "death follows sin. Sin has come into the Garden of Eden and
+the voice of God has died out of it. Therefore the thing for which you
+have lived here so long is gone. If for love of David, you wish to stay,
+remain; but if your hearts go back to your old homes, return to them.
+The wagons and the oxen are yours. All the furnishing of the houses are
+yours. There is also a large store of money in my chest which Elijah
+shall divide justly among you. And on your journey Elijah shall lead
+you, if you go forth, for he is a just man and fit to lead others. Do
+not answer now, but return to your house and speak to one another.
+Afterward, send one man. If you stay in the Garden he shall tell me. If
+you depart I shall bid you farewell through him. Begone!"
+
+They went out soft-footed, as though the master of the Garden had turned
+into an animal liable to spring on them from behind.
+
+He began to pace up and down the patio, after a time, rather
+impatiently. No doubt the foolish old men were holding forth at great
+length. They were appointing the spokesman, and they were framing the
+speech which he would make to David telling of their devotion to him,
+whether the spirit was gone or remained. They would remain; and
+Benjamin's prophecy had been that of a spiteful fool. Yet even if they
+stayed, how empty the valley would be--how hollow of all pleasure!
+
+It was at this point in his thoughts that he heard a sound of singing
+down the hillside from the house of the servants--first a single, thin,
+trembling voice to which others were added until the song was heartened
+and grew full and strong. It was a song which David had never heard
+before. It rang and swung with a peculiarly happy rhythm, growing
+shriller as the old men seemed to gather their enthusiasm. The words,
+sung in a thick dialect, were stranger to David than the tune, but as
+nearly as he could make out the song ran as follows:
+
+     "Oh, Jo, come back from the cold and the stars
+     For the cows they has come to the pasture bars,
+     And the little game chicken's beginning to crow:
+     Come back to us, Jo; come back to us, Jo!
+
+     "He was walkin' in the gyarden in the cool o' the day
+     When He seen my baby Jo in the clover blossoms play.
+
+     "He was walkin' in the gyarden an' the dew was on His feet
+     When He seen my baby Jo so little an' sweet.
+
+     "They was flowers in the gyarden, roses, an' such,
+     But the roses an' the pansies, they didn't count for much.
+
+     "An' He left the clover blossoms fo' the bees the next day An'
+     the roses an' the pansies, but He took Jo away.
+
+     "Oh, Jo, come back from the cold and the stars
+     For the cows they has come to the pasture bars,
+     And the little game chicken has started to crow:
+     Come back to us, Jo; come back to us Jo!"
+
+He knew their voices and he knew their songs, but never had David heard
+his servants sing as they sang this song. Their hymns were strong and
+pleasant to the ear, but in this old tune there was a melody and a lilt
+that brought a lump in his throat. And there was a heart to their
+singing, so that he almost saw them swaying their shoulders to the
+melody.
+
+It was the writing on the wall for David.
+
+Out of that song he built a picture of their old lives, the hot
+sunshine, the dust, and all the things which Matthew had told him of the
+slaves and their ways before the time of the making of the Garden.
+
+He waited, then, either for their messenger or for another song; but he
+neither saw the one nor heard the other for a considerable time. An
+angry pride sustained him in the meantime, in the face of a life alone
+in the Garden. Far off, he heard the neigh of the grays in the meadow
+near the gate, and then the clarion clear answer of Glani near the
+house. He was grateful for that sound. All men, it seemed, were traitors
+to him. Let them go. He would remain contented with the Eden Grays. They
+would come and go with him like human companions. Better the noble head
+of Glani near him than the treacherous cunning of Benjamin! He accepted
+his fate, then, not with calm resignation, but with fierce anger against
+Connor, who had brought this ruin on him, and against the men who were
+preparing to desert him.
+
+He could hear plainly the creaking of the great wains as the oxen were
+yoked to them and they were dragged into position to receive the burdens
+of the property they were to take with them into the outer world. And,
+in the meantime, he paced through the patio in one of those silent
+passions which eat at the heart of a man.
+
+He was not aware of the entrance of Elijah. When he saw him, Elijah had
+fallen on his knees near the entrance to the patio, and every line of
+his time-dried body expressed the terror of the bearer of bad tidings.
+David looked at him for a moment in silent rage.
+
+"Do you think, Elijah," he said at last, "that I shall be so grieved to
+know that you and the others will leave me and the Garden of Eden? No,
+no! For I shall be happier alone. Therefore, speak and be done!"
+
+"Timeh--" began the old man faintly.
+
+"You have done that last duty, then, Elijah? Timeh is no longer alive?"
+
+"The day is still new, David. Twice I went to Timeh, but each time when
+I was about to lead her away, the neighing of Juri troubled me and my
+heart failed."
+
+"But the third time you remembered my order?"
+
+"But the third time--there was no third time. When the bell sounded we
+gathered. Even the watchers by the the gates--Jacob and Isaac--came and
+the gate was left unguarded--Timeh was in the pasture near the gate with
+Juri--and--"
+
+"They are gone! They have passed through the gate! Call Zacharias and
+Joseph. Let them mount and follow and bring Juri back with the foal!"
+
+"Oh, David, my master--"
+
+"What is it now, Elijah, old stammerer? Of all my servants none has cost
+me so much pain; to none shall I say farewell with so little regret.
+What is it now? Why do you not rise and call them as I bid you? Do you
+think you are free before you pass the gates?"
+
+"David, there are no horses to follow Juri!"
+
+"What!"
+
+"The God of John and Paul give me strength to tell and give you strength
+to hear me in patience! When you had spoken, and the servants went back
+to speak of the strange things you had said, some of them spoke of the
+old days before they heard the call and followed to the Garden, and then
+a song was raised beginning with Zacharias--"
+
+"Zacharias!" echoed David, softly and fiercely. "Him whom I have favored
+above the others!"
+
+"But while the others sang, I heard a neighing near the gate and I
+remembered your order and your judgment of Timeh, and I went sorrowfully
+to fulfill your will. But near the gate I saw the meadow empty of the
+horses, and while I stood wondering, I heard a chorus of neighing beyond
+the gate. There was a great answer just behind me, and I turned and saw
+Glani racing at full speed. I called to him, but he did not hear and
+went on, straight through the pillars of the gate, and disappeared in
+the ravine beyond. Then I ran to the gate and looked out, but the horses
+were gone from sight--they have left the Garden--they are free--"
+
+"And happy!" said David in a terrible voice. "They, too, have only been
+held by fear and never by love. Let them go. Let all go which is kept
+here by fear. Why should I care? I am enough by myself. When all is gone
+and I am alone the Voice shall return and be my companion. It is well.
+Let every living thing depart. David is enough unto himself. Go, Elijah!
+And yet pause before you go!"
+
+He went into his room and came out bearing the heavy chest of money,
+which he carried to the gate.
+
+"Go to your brothers and bid them come for the money. It will make them
+rich enough in the world beyond the mountains, but to me there is need
+of no money. Silence and peace is my wish. Go, and let me hear their
+voices no more, let me not see one face. Ingrates, fools, and traitors!
+Let them find their old places; I have no regret. Begone!"
+
+And Elijah, as one under the shadow of a raised whip, skulked from the
+patio and was gone.
+
+
+
+
+_CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX_
+
+
+The last quiet began for David. He had heard the sounds of departure. He
+had heard the rumble of the oxwains begin and go slowly toward the gate
+with never the sound of a human voice, and he pictured, with a grim
+satisfaction, the downcast faces and the frightened, guilty glances, as
+his servants fled, conscious that they were betraying their master. It
+filled him with a sort of sulky content which was more painful than
+sorrow. But before the sound of the wagons died out the wind blew back
+from the gate of the Garden a thin, joyous chorus of singing voices.
+They were leaving him with songs!
+
+He was incredulous for a time. He felt, first, a great regret that he
+had let them go. Then, in an overwhelming wave of righteousness, he
+determined to dismiss them from his mind. They were gone; but worse
+still, the horses were gone, and the valley around him was empty! He
+remembered the dying prophecy of Abraham, now, as the stern Elijah had
+repeated it. He had let the world into the Garden, and the tide of the
+world's life, receding, would take all the life of the Garden away
+beyond the mountains among other men.
+
+The feeling that Connor had been right beset him: that the four first
+masters had been wrong, and that they had raised David in error. Yet his
+pride still upheld him.
+
+That day he went resolutely about the routine. He was not hungry, but
+when the time came he went into the big kitchen and prepared food. It
+was a place of much noise. The great copper kettles chimed and murmured
+whenever he touched them, and they spoke to him of the servants who were
+gone. Half of his bitterness had already left him and he could remember
+those days in his childhood when Abraham had told him tales, and
+Zacharias had taught him how to ride at the price of many a tumble from
+the lofty back of the gentle old mare. Yet he set the food on the table
+in the patio and ate it with steady resolution. Then he returned to the
+big kitchen and cleansed the dishes.
+
+It was the late afternoon, now, the time when the sunlight becomes
+yellow and loses its heat, and the heavy blue shadow sloped across the
+patio. A quiet time. Now and again he found that he was tense with
+waiting for sounds in the wind of the servants returning for the night
+from the fields, and the shrill whinny of the colts coming back from the
+pastures to the paddocks. But he remembered what had happened and made
+himself relax.
+
+There was a great dread before him. Finally he realized that it was the
+coming of the night, and he went into the Room of Silence for the last
+time to find consolation. The book of Matthew had always been a means of
+bringing the consolation and counsel of the Voice, but when he opened
+the book he could only think of the girl, as she must have leaned above
+it. How had she read? With a smile of mockery or with tears? He closed
+the book; but still she was with him. It seemed that when he turned in
+the chair he must find her waiting behind him and he found himself
+growing tense with expectation, his heart beating rapidly.
+
+Out of the Room of Silence he fled as if a curse lived in it, and
+without following any conscious direction, he went to the room of Ruth.
+
+The fragrance had left the wild flowers, and the great golden blossoms
+at the window hung thin and limp, the bell lips hanging close together,
+the color faded to a dim yellow. The green things must be taken away
+before they molded. He raised his hand to tear down the transplanted
+vine, but his fingers fell away from it. To remove it was to destroy the
+last trace of her. She had seen these flowers; on account of them she
+had smiled at him with tears of happiness in her eyes. The skin of the
+mountain lion on the floor was still rumpled where her foot had fallen,
+and he could see the indistinct outline where the heel of her shoe had
+pressed.
+
+He avoided that place when he stepped back, and turning, he saw her bed.
+The dappled deerskin lay crumpled back where her hand had tossed it as
+she rose that morning, and in the blankets was the distinct outline of
+her body. He knew where her body had pressed, and there was the hollow
+made by her head in the pillow.
+
+Something snapped in the heart of David. The sustaining pride which had
+kept his head high all day slipped from him like the strength of the
+runner when he crosses the mark. David fell upon his knees and buried
+his face where her head had lain, and his arms curved as though around
+her body. Connor had been right. He had made himself his god, and this
+was the punishment. The mildness of a new humility came to him in the
+agony of his grief. He found that he could pray, not the proud prayers
+of the old days when David talked as an equal to the voice, but that
+most ancient prayer of sinners:
+
+"O Lord, I believe. Help Thou mine unbelief!"
+
+And the moment the whisper had passed his lips there was a blessed
+relief from pain. There was a sound at the window, and turning to it, he
+saw the head and the arched neck of Glani against the red of the
+sunset--Glani looking at him with pricked ears. He went to the stallion,
+incredulous, with steps as short as a child which is afraid, and at his
+coming Glani whinnied softly. At that the last of David's pride fell
+from him. He cast his arms around the neck of the stallion and wept with
+deep sobs that tore his throat, and under the grip of his arms he felt
+the stallion trembling. He was calmer, at length, and he climbed through
+the window and stood beside Glani under the brilliant sunset sky.
+
+"And the others, O Glani," he said. "Have they returned likewise? Timeh
+shall live. I, who have judged others so often, have been myself judged
+and found wanting. Timeh shall live. What am I that I should speak of
+the life or the death of so much as the last bird in the trees? But have
+they all returned, all my horses?"
+
+He whistled that call which every gray knew as a rallying sound, a call
+that would bring them at a dead gallop with answering neighs. But when
+the thin sound of the whistle died out there was no reply. Only Glani
+had moved away and was looking back to David as if he bid the master
+follow.
+
+"Is it so, Glani?" said the master. "They have not come back, but you
+have returned to lead me to them? The woman, the man, the servants, and
+the horses. But we shall leave the valley, walking together. Let the
+horses go, and the man and the woman and the servants; but we shall go
+forth together and find the world beyond the mountains."
+
+And with his hand tangled in the mane of the stallion, he walked down
+the road, away from the hill, the house, the lake. He would not look
+back, for the house on the hill seemed to him a tomb, the monument of
+the four dead men who had made this little kingdom.
+
+By the time he reached the gate the Garden of Eden was awash with the
+shadows of the evening, but the higher mountain-tops before him were
+still rosy with the sunset. He paused at the gate and looked out on
+them, and when he turned to Glani again, he saw a figure crouched
+against the base of the rock wall. It was Ruth, weeping, her head fallen
+into her hands with weariness. Above her stood Glani, his head turned to
+the master in almost human inquiry. The deep cry of David wakened her.
+The gentle hands of David raised her to her feet.
+
+"You have not come to drive me away again?"
+
+"To drive you from the Garden? Look back. It is black. It is full of
+death, and the world and our life is before us. I have been a king in
+the Garden. It is better to be a man among men. All the Garden was mine.
+Now my hands are empty. I bring you nothing, Ruth. Is it enough? Ah, my
+dear, you are weeping!"
+
+"With happiness. My heart is breaking with happiness, David."
+
+He tipped up her face and held it between his hands. Whatever he saw in
+the darkness that was gathering it was enough to make him sigh. Then he
+raised her to the back of Glani, and the stallion, which had never borne
+a weight except that of David, stood like a stone. So David went up the
+valley holding the hand of Ruth and looking up to her with laughter in
+his eyes, and she, with one hand pressed against her breast, laughed
+back to him, and the great stallion went with his head turned to watch
+them.
+
+"How wonderful are the ways of God!" said David. "Through a thief he has
+taught me wisdom; through a horse he has taught me faith; and you, oh,
+my love, are the key with which he has unlocked my heart!"
+
+And they began to climb the mountain.
+
+
+
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