Moon-Face and Other Stories
by
Jack London
Part 3 out of 3
down through the warm-trunked redwoods. But she watched in a
mechanical, absent way. She looked at the scene as from a long way
off, without interest, herself an alien, no longer an intimate part
of the earth and trees and flowers she loved so well.
So far removed did she seem, that she was aware of a curiosity,
strangely impersonal, in what lay around her. Through a near vista
she looked at a buckeye tree in full blossom as though her eyes
encountered it for the first time. Her eyes paused and dwelt upon
a yellow cluster of Diogenes' lanterns that grew on the edge of
an open space. It was the way of flowers always to give her quick
pleasure-thrills, but no thrill was hers now. She pondered the
flower slowly and thoughtfully, as a hasheesh-eater, heavy with the
drug, might ponder some whim-flower that obtruded on his vision. In
her ears was the voice of the stream--a hoarse-throated, sleepy old
giant, muttering and mumbling his somnolent fancies. But her fancy
was not in turn aroused, as was its wont; she knew the sound merely
for water rushing over the rocks of the deep canyon-bottom, that and
nothing more.
Her gaze wandered on beyond the Diogenes' lanterns into the open
space. Knee-deep in the wild oats of the hillside grazed two horses,
chestnut-sorrels the pair of them, perfectly matched, warm and
golden in the sunshine, their spring-coats a sheen of high-lights
shot through with color-flashes that glowed like fiery jewels. She
recognized, almost with a shock, that one of them was hers, Dolly,
the companion of her girlhood and womanhood, on whose neck she had
sobbed her sorrows and sung her joys. A moistness welled into her
eyes at the sight, and she came back from the remoteness of her
mood, quick with passion and sorrow, to be part of the world again.
The man sank forward from the hips, relaxing entirely, and with a
groan dropped his head on her knee. She leaned over him and pressed
her lips softly and lingeringly to his hair.
"Come, let us go," she said, almost in a whisper.
She caught her breath in a half-sob, then tightened her lips as she
rose. His face was white to ghastliness, so shaken was he by the
struggle through which he had passed. They did not look at each
other, but walked directly to the horses. She leaned against Dolly's
neck while he tightened the girths. Then she gathered the reins in
her hand and waited. He looked at her as he bent down, an appeal for
forgiveness in his eyes; and in that moment her own eyes answered.
Her foot rested in his hands, and from there she vaulted into the
saddle. Without speaking, without further looking at each other,
they turned the horses' heads and took the narrow trail that wound
down through the sombre redwood aisles and across the open glades to
the pasture-lands below. The trail became a cow-path, the cow-path
became a wood-road, which later joined with a hay-road; and they
rode down through the low-rolling, tawny California hills to where a
set of bars let out on the county road which ran along the bottom of
the valley. The girl sat her horse while the man dismounted and
began taking down the bars.
"No--wait!" she cried, before he had touched the two lower bars.
She urged the mare forward a couple of strides, and then the animal
lifted over the bars in a clean little jump. The man's eyes
sparkled, and he clapped his hands.
"You beauty! you beauty!" the girl cried, leaning forward
impulsively in the saddle and pressing her cheek to the mare's neck
where it burned flame-color in the sun.
"Let's trade horses for the ride in," she suggested, when he had led
his horse through and finished putting up the bars. "You've never
sufficiently appreciated Dolly."
"No, no," he protested.
"You think she is too old, too sedate," Lute insisted. "She's only
sixteen, and she can outrun nine colts out of ten. Only she never
cuts up. She's too steady, and you don't approve of her--no, don't
deny it, sir. I know. And I know also that she can outrun your
vaunted Washoe Ban. There! I challenge you! And furthermore, you may
ride her yourself. You know what Ban can do; so you must ride Dolly
and see for yourself what she can do."
They proceeded to exchange the saddles on the horses, glad of the
diversion and making the most of it.
"I'm glad I was born in California," Lute remarked, as she swung
astride of Ban. "It's an outrage both to horse and woman to ride in
a sidesaddle."
"You look like a young Amazon," the man said approvingly, his eyes
passing tenderly over the girl as she swung the horse around.
"Are you ready?" she asked.
"All ready!"
"To the old mill," she called, as the horses sprang forward. "That's
less than a mile."
"To a finish?" he demanded.
She nodded, and the horses, feeling the urge of the reins, caught
the spirit of the race. The dust rose in clouds behind as they tore
along the level road. They swung around the bend, horses and riders
tilted at sharp angles to the ground, and more than once the riders
ducked low to escape the branches of outreaching and overhanging
trees. They clattered over the small plank bridges, and thundered
over the larger iron ones to an ominous clanking of loose rods.
They rode side by side, saving the animals for the rush at the
finish, yet putting them at a pace that drew upon vitality and
staying power. Curving around a clump of white oaks, the road
straightened out before them for several hundred yards, at the end
of which they could see the ruined mill.
"Now for it!" the girl cried.
She urged the horse by suddenly leaning forward with her body, at
the same time, for an instant, letting the rein slack and touching
the neck with her bridle hand. She began to draw away from the man.
"Touch her on the neck!" she cried to him.
With this, the mare pulled alongside and began gradually to pass the
girl. Chris and Lute looked at each other for a moment, the mare
still drawing ahead, so that Chris was compelled slowly to turn his
head. The mill was a hundred yards away.
"Shall I give him the spurs?" Lute shouted.
The man nodded, and the girl drove the spurs in sharply and quickly,
calling upon the horse for its utmost, but watched her own horse
forge slowly ahead of her.
"Beaten by three lengths!" Lute beamed triumphantly, as they pulled
into a walk. "Confess, sir, confess! You didn't think the old mare
had it in her."
Lute leaned to the side and rested her hand for a moment on Dolly's
wet neck.
"Ban's a sluggard alongside of her," Chris affirmed. "Dolly's all
right, if she is in her Indian Summer."
Lute nodded approval. "That's a sweet way of putting it--Indian
Summer. It just describes her. But she's not lazy. She has all the
fire and none of the folly. She is very wise, what of her years."
"That accounts for it," Chris demurred. "Her folly passed with her
youth. Many's the lively time she's given you."
"No," Lute answered. "I never knew her really to cut up. I think the
only trouble she ever gave me was when I was training her to open
gates. She was afraid when they swung back upon her--the animal's
fear of the trap, perhaps. But she bravely got over it. And she
never was vicious. She never bolted, nor bucked, nor cut up in all
her life--never, not once."
The horses went on at a walk, still breathing heavily from their
run. The road wound along the bottom of the valley, now and again
crossing the stream. From either side rose the drowsy purr of
mowing-machines, punctuated by occasional sharp cries of the men who
were gathering the hay-crop. On the western side of the valley the
hills rose green and dark, but the eastern side was already burned
brown and tan by the sun.
"There is summer, here is spring," Lute said. "Oh, beautiful Sonoma
Valley!"
Her eyes were glistening and her face was radiant with love of the
land. Her gaze wandered on across orchard patches and sweeping
vineyard stretches, seeking out the purple which seemed to hang like
a dim smoke in the wrinkles of the hills and in the more distant
canyon gorges. Far up, among the more rugged crests, where the steep
slopes were covered with manzanita, she caught a glimpse of a clear
space where the wild grass had not yet lost its green.
"Have you ever heard of the secret pasture?" she asked, her eyes
still fixed on the remote green.
A snort of fear brought her eyes back to the man beside her. Dolly,
upreared, with distended nostrils and wild eyes, was pawing the air
madly with her fore legs. Chris threw himself forward against her
neck to keep her from falling backward, and at the same time touched
her with the spurs to compel her to drop her fore feet to the ground
in order to obey the go-ahead impulse of the spurs.
"Why, Dolly, this is most remarkable," Lute began reprovingly.
But, to her surprise, the mare threw her head down, arched her
back as she went up in the air, and, returning, struck the ground
stiff-legged and bunched.
"A genuine buck!" Chris called out, and the next moment the mare was
rising under him in a second buck.
Lute looked on, astounded at the unprecedented conduct of her mare,
and admiring her lover's horsemanship. He was quite cool, and was
himself evidently enjoying the performance. Again and again, half a
dozen times, Dolly arched herself into the air and struck, stiffly
bunched. Then she threw her head straight up and rose on her hind
legs, pivoting about and striking with her fore feet. Lute whirled
into safety the horse she was riding, and as she did so caught a
glimpse of Dolly's eyes, with the look in them of blind brute
madness, bulging until it seemed they must burst from her head.
The faint pink in the white of the eyes was gone, replaced by a
white that was like dull marble and that yet flashed as from some
inner fire.
A faint cry of fear, suppressed in the instant of utterance, slipped
past Lute's lips. One hind leg of the mare seemed to collapse, and
for a moment the whole quivering body, upreared and perpendicular,
swayed back and forth, and there was uncertainty as to whether it
would fall forward or backward. The man, half-slipping sidewise from
the saddle, so as to fall clear if the mare toppled backward, threw
his weight to the front and alongside her neck. This overcame the
dangerous teetering balance, and the mare struck the ground on her
feet again.
But there was no let-up. Dolly straightened out so that the line of
the face was almost a continuation of the line of the stretched
neck; this position enabled her to master the bit, which she did
by bolting straight ahead down the road.
For the first time Lute became really frightened. She spurred Washoe
Ban in pursuit, but he could not hold his own with the mad mare, and
dropped gradually behind. Lute saw Dolly check and rear in the air
again, and caught up just as the mare made a second bolt. As Dolly
dashed around a bend, she stopped suddenly, stiff-legged. Lute saw
her lover torn out of the saddle, his thigh-grip broken by the
sudden jerk. Though he had lost his seat, he had not been thrown,
and as the mare dashed on Lute saw him clinging to the side of the
horse, a hand in the mane and a leg across the saddle. With a quick
cavort he regained his seat and proceeded to fight with the mare for
control.
But Dolly swerved from the road and dashed down a grassy slope
yellowed with innumerable mariposa lilies. An ancient fence at the
bottom was no obstacle. She burst through as though it were filmy
spider-web and disappeared in the underbrush. Lute followed
unhesitatingly, putting Ban through the gap in the fence and
plunging on into the thicket. She lay along his neck, closely, to
escape the ripping and tearing of the trees and vines. She felt the
horse drop down through leafy branches and into the cool gravel of
a stream's bottom. From ahead came a splashing of water, and she
caught a glimpse of Dolly, dashing up the small bank and into a
clump of scrub-oaks, against the trunks of which she was trying to
scrape off her rider.
Lute almost caught up amongst the trees, but was hopelessly
outdistanced on the fallow field adjoining, across which the mare
tore with a fine disregard for heavy ground and gopher-holes. When
she turned at a sharp angle into the thicket-land beyond, Lute took
the long diagonal, skirted the ticket, and reined in Ban at the
other side. She had arrived first. From within the thicket she could
hear a tremendous crashing of brush and branches. Then the mare
burst through and into the open, falling to her knees, exhausted, on
the soft earth. She arose and staggered forward, then came limply to
a halt. She was in lather-sweat of fear, and stood trembling pitiably.
Chris was still on her back. His shirt was in ribbons. The backs of
his hands were bruised and lacerated, while his face was streaming
blood from a gash near the temple. Lute had controlled herself well,
but now she was aware of a quick nausea and a trembling of weakness.
"Chris!" she said, so softly that it was almost a whisper. Then she
sighed, "Thank God."
"Oh, I'm all right," he cried to her, putting into his voice all the
heartiness he could command, which was not much, for he had himself
been under no mean nervous strain.
He showed the reaction he was undergoing, when he swung down out of
the saddle. He began with a brave muscular display as he lifted his
leg over, but ended, on his feet, leaning against the limp Dolly for
support. Lute flashed out of her saddle, and her arms were about him
in an embrace of thankfulness.
"I know where there is a spring," she said, a moment later.
They left the horses standing untethered, and she led her lover into
the cool recesses of the thicket to where crystal water bubbled from
out the base of the mountain.
"What was that you said about Dolly's never cutting up?" he asked,
when the blood had been stanched and his nerves and pulse-beats were
normal again.
"I am stunned," Lute answered. "I cannot understand it. She never
did anything like it in all her life. And all animals like you
so--it's not because of that. Why, she is a child's horse. I was
only a little girl when I first rode her, and to this day--"
"Well, this day she was everything but a child's horse," Chris broke
in. "She was a devil. She tried to scrape me off against the trees,
and to batter my brains out against the limbs. She tried all the
lowest and narrowest places she could find. You should have seen her
squeeze through. And did you see those bucks?"
Lute nodded.
"Regular bucking-bronco proposition."
"But what should she know about bucking?" Lute demanded. "She was
never known to buck--never."
He shrugged his shoulders. "Some forgotten instinct, perhaps,
long-lapsed and come to life again."
The girl rose to her feet determinedly. "I'm going to find out,"
she said.
They went back to the horses, where they subjected Dolly to a
rigid examination that disclosed nothing. Hoofs, legs, bit, mouth,
body--everything was as it should be. The saddle and saddle-cloth
were innocent of bur or sticker; the back was smooth and unbroken.
They searched for sign of snake-bite and sting of fly or insect,
but found nothing.
"Whatever it was, it was subjective, that much is certain,"
Chris said.
"Obsession," Lute suggested.
They laughed together at the idea, for both were twentieth-century
products, healthy-minded and normal, with souls that delighted in
the butterfly-chase of ideals but that halted before the brink where
superstition begins.
"An evil spirit," Chris laughed; "but what evil have I done that I
should be so punished?"
"You think too much of yourself, sir," she rejoined. "It is more
likely some evil, I don't know what, that Dolly has done. You were
a mere accident. I might have been on her back at the time, or Aunt
Mildred, or anybody."
As she talked, she took hold of the stirrup-strap and started to
shorten it.
"What are you doing?" Chris demanded.
"I'm going to ride Dolly in."
"No, you're not," he announced. "It would be bad discipline. After
what has happened I am simply compelled to ride her in myself."
But it was a very weak and very sick mare he rode, stumbling and
halting, afflicted with nervous jerks and recurring muscular
spasms--the aftermath of the tremendous orgasm through which she had
passed.
"I feel like a book of verse and a hammock, after all that has
happened," Lute said, as they rode into camp.
It was a summer camp of city-tired people, pitched in a grove of
towering redwoods through whose lofty boughs the sunshine trickled
down, broken and subdued to soft light and cool shadow. Apart from
the main camp were the kitchen and the servants' tents; and midway
between was the great dining hall, walled by the living redwood
columns, where fresh whispers of air were always to be found, and
where no canopy was needed to keep the sun away.
"Poor Dolly, she is really sick," Lute said that evening, when they
had returned from a last look at the mare. "But you weren't hurt,
Chris, and that's enough for one small woman to be thankful for. I
thought I knew, but I really did not know till to-day, how much you
meant to me. I could hear only the plunging and struggle in the
thicket. I could not see you, nor know how it went with you."
"My thoughts were of you," Chris answered, and felt the responsive
pressure of the hand that rested on his arm.
She turned her face up to his and met his lips.
"Good night," she said.
"Dear Lute, dear Lute," he caressed her with his voice as she moved
away among the shadows.
* * *
"Who's going for the mail?" called a woman's voice through the trees.
Lute closed the book from which they had been reading, and sighed.
"We weren't going to ride to-day," she said.
"Let me go," Chris proposed. "You stay here. I'll be down and back
in no time."
She shook her head.
"Who's going for the mail?" the voice insisted.
"Where's Martin?" Lute called, lifting her voice in answer.
"I don't know," came the voice. "I think Robert took him along
somewhere--horse-buying, or fishing, or I don't know what. There's
really nobody left but Chris and you. Besides, it will give you an
appetite for dinner. You've been lounging in the hammock all day.
And Uncle Robert must have his newspaper."
"All right, Aunty, we're starting," Lute called back, getting out of
the hammock.
A few minutes later, in riding-clothes, they were saddling the
horses. They rode out on to the county road, where blazed the
afternoon sun, and turned toward Glen Ellen. The little town slept
in the sun, and the somnolent storekeeper and postmaster scarcely
kept his eyes open long enough to make up the packet of letters and
newspapers.
An hour later Lute and Chris turned aside from the road and dipped
along a cow-path down the high bank to water the horses, before
going into camp.
"Dolly looks as though she'd forgotten all about yesterday," Chris
said, as they sat their horses knee-deep in the rushing water.
"Look at her."
The mare had raised her head and cocked her ears at the rustling of
a quail in the thicket. Chris leaned over and rubbed around her
ears. Dolly's enjoyment was evident, and she drooped her head over
against the shoulder of his own horse.
"Like a kitten," was Lute's comment.
"Yet I shall never be able wholly to trust her again," Chris said.
"Not after yesterday's mad freak."
"I have a feeling myself that you are safer on Ban," Lute laughed.
"It is strange. My trust in Dolly is as implicit as ever. I feel
confident so far as I am concerned, but I should never care to see
you on her back again. Now with Ban, my faith is still unshaken.
Look at that neck! Isn't he handsome! He'll be as wise as Dolly when
he is as old as she."
"I feel the same way," Chris laughed back. "Ban could never possibly
betray me."
They turned their horses out of the stream. Dolly stopped to brush a
fly from her knee with her nose, and Ban urged past into the narrow
way of the path. The space was too restricted to make him return,
save with much trouble, and Chris allowed him to go on. Lute, riding
behind, dwelt with her eyes upon her lover's back, pleasuring in the
lines of the bare neck and the sweep out to the muscular shoulders.
Suddenly she reined in her horse. She could do nothing but look, so
brief was the duration of the happening. Beneath and above was the
almost perpendicular bank. The path itself was barely wide enough
for footing. Yet Washoe Ban, whirling and rearing at the same time,
toppled for a moment in the air and fell backward off the path.
So unexpected and so quick was it, that the man was involved in
the fall. There had been no time for him to throw himself to the
path. He was falling ere he knew it, and he did the only thing
possible--slipped the stirrups and threw his body into the air, to
the side, and at the same time down. It was twelve feet to the rocks
below. He maintained an upright position, his head up and his eyes
fixed on the horse above him and falling upon him.
Chris struck like a cat, on his feet, on the instant making a leap
to the side. The next instant Ban crashed down beside him. The
animal struggled little, but sounded the terrible cry that horses
sometimes sound when they have received mortal hurt. He had struck
almost squarely on his back, and in that position he remained, his
head twisted partly under, his hind legs relaxed and motionless,
his fore legs futilely striking the air.
Chris looked up reassuringly.
"I am getting used to it," Lute smiled down to him. "Of course I
need not ask if you are hurt. Can I do anything?"
He smiled back and went over to the fallen beast, letting go the
girths of the saddle and getting the head straightened out.
"I thought so," he said, after a cursory examination. "I thought so
at the time. Did you hear that sort of crunching snap?"
She shuddered.
"Well, that was the punctuation of life, the final period dropped at
the end of Ban's usefulness." He started around to come up by the
path. "I've been astride of Ban for the last time. Let us go home."
At the top of the bank Chris turned and looked down.
"Good-by, Washoe Ban!" he called out. "Good-by, old fellow."
The animal was struggling to lift its head. There were tears in
Chris's eyes as he turned abruptly away, and tears in Lute's eyes as
they met his. She was silent in her sympathy, though the pressure of
her hand was firm in his as he walked beside her horse down the
dusty road.
"It was done deliberately," Chris burst forth suddenly. "There was
no warning. He deliberately flung himself over backward."
"There was no warning," Lute concurred. "I was looking. I saw him.
He whirled and threw himself at the same time, just as if you had done
it yourself, with a tremendous jerk and backward pull on the bit."
"It was not my hand, I swear it. I was not even thinking of him.
He was going up with a fairly loose rein, as a matter of course."
"I should have seen it, had you done it," Lute said. "But it was all
done before you had a chance to do anything. It was not your hand,
not even your unconscious hand."
"Then it was some invisible hand, reaching out from I don't know
where."
He looked up whimsically at the sky and smiled at the conceit.
Martin stepped forward to receive Dolly, when they came into the
stable end of the grove, but his face expressed no surprise at sight
of Chris coming in on foot. Chris lingered behind Lute for moment.
"Can you shoot a horse?" he asked.
The groom nodded, then added, "Yes, sir," with a second and
deeper nod.
"How do you do it?"
"Draw a line from the eyes to the ears--I mean the opposite ears,
sir. And where the lines cross--"
"That will do," Chris interrupted. "You know the watering place at
the second bend. You'll find Ban there with a broken back."
* * *
"Oh, here you are, sir. I have been looking for you everywhere since
dinner. You are wanted immediately."
Chris tossed his cigar away, then went over and pressed his foot on
its glowing fire.
"You haven't told anybody about it?--Ban?" he queried.
Lute shook her head. "They'll learn soon enough. Martin will mention
it to Uncle Robert tomorrow."
"But don't feel too bad about it," she said, after a moment's pause,
slipping her hand into his.
"He was my colt," he said. "Nobody has ridden him but you. I broke
him myself. I knew him from the time he was born. I knew every bit
of him, every trick, every caper, and I would have staked my life
that it was impossible for him to do a thing like this. There was
no warning, no fighting for the bit, no previous unruliness. I have
been thinking it over. He didn't fight for the bit, for that matter.
He wasn't unruly, nor disobedient. There wasn't time. It was an
impulse, and he acted upon it like lightning. I am astounded now at
the swiftness with which it took place. Inside the first second we
were over the edge and falling.
"It was deliberate--deliberate suicide. And attempted murder. It was
a trap. I was the victim. He had me, and he threw himself over with
me. Yet he did not hate me. He loved me . . . as much as it is
possible for a horse to love. I am confounded. I cannot understand
it any more than you can understand Dolly's behavior yesterday."
"But horses go insane, Chris," Lute said. "You know that. It's
merely coincidence that two horses in two days should have spells
under you."
"That's the only explanation," he answered, starting off with her.
"But why am I wanted urgently?"
"Planchette."
"Oh, I remember. It will be a new experience to me. Somehow I missed
it when it was all the rage long ago."
"So did all of us," Lute replied, "except Mrs. Grantly. It is her
favorite phantom, it seems."
"A weird little thing," he remarked. "Bundle of nerves and black
eyes. I'll wager she doesn't weigh ninety pounds, and most of that's
magnetism."
"Positively uncanny . . . at times." Lute shivered involuntarily.
"She gives me the creeps."
"Contact of the healthy with the morbid," he explained dryly. "You
will notice it is the healthy that always has the creeps. The morbid
never has the creeps. It gives the creeps. That's its function.
Where did you people pick her up, anyway?"
"I don't know--yes, I do, too. Aunt Mildred met her in Boston,
I think--oh, I don't know. At any rate, Mrs. Grantly came to
California, and of course had to visit Aunt Mildred. You know the
open house we keep."
They halted where a passageway between two great redwood trunks gave
entrance to the dining room. Above, through lacing boughs, could be
seen the stars. Candles lighted the tree-columned space. About the
table, examining the Planchette contrivance, were four persons.
Chris's gaze roved over them, and he was aware of a guilty
sorrow-pang as he paused for a moment on Lute's Aunt Mildred and
Uncle Robert, mellow with ripe middle age and genial with the gentle
buffets life had dealt them. He passed amusedly over the black-eyed,
frail-bodied Mrs. Grantly, and halted on the fourth person, a
portly, massive-headed man, whose gray temples belied the youthful
solidity of his face.
"Who's that?" Chris whispered.
"A Mr. Barton. The train was late. That's why you didn't see him at dinner.
He's only a capitalist--water-power-long-distance-electricity-transmitter,
or something like that."
"Doesn't look as though he could give an ox points on imagination."
"He can't. He inherited his money. But he knows enough to hold on to
it and hire other men's brains. He is very conservative."
"That is to be expected," was Chris's comment. His gaze went back to
the man and woman who had been father and mother to the girl beside
him. "Do you know," he said, "it came to me with a shock yesterday
when you told me that they had turned against me and that I was
scarcely tolerated. I met them afterwards, last evening, guiltily,
in fear and trembling--and to-day, too. And yet I could see no
difference from of old."
"Dear man," Lute sighed. "Hospitality is as natural to them as the
act of breathing. But it isn't that, after all. It is all genuine in
their dear hearts. No matter how severe the censure they put upon
you when you are absent, the moment they are with you they soften
and are all kindness and warmth. As soon as their eyes rest on you,
affection and love come bubbling up. You are so made. Every animal
likes you. All people like you. They can't help it. You can't help
it. You are universally lovable, and the best of it is that you
don't know it. You don't know it now. Even as I tell it to you, you
don't realize it, you won't realize it--and that very incapacity to
realize it is one of the reasons why you are so loved. You are
incredulous now, and you shake your head; but I know, who am your
slave, as all people know, for they likewise are your slaves.
"Why, in a minute we shall go in and join them. Mark the affection,
almost maternal, that will well up in Aunt Mildred's eyes. Listen to
the tones of Uncle Robert's voice when he says, 'Well, Chris, my boy?'
Watch Mrs. Grantly melt, literally melt, like a dewdrop in the sun.
"Take Mr. Barton, there. You have never seen him before. Why, you
will invite him out to smoke a cigar with you when the rest of us
have gone to bed--you, a mere nobody, and he a man of many millions,
a man of power, a man obtuse and stupid like the ox; and he will
follow you about, smoking; the cigar, like a little dog, your little
dog, trotting at your back. He will not know he is doing it, but he
will be doing it just the same. Don't I know, Chris? Oh, I have
watched you, watched you, so often, and loved you for it, and loved
you again for it, because you were so delightfully and blindly
unaware of what you were doing."
"I'm almost bursting with vanity from listening to you," he laughed,
passing his arm around her and drawing her against him.
"Yes," she whispered, "and in this very moment, when you are
laughing at all that I have said, you, the feel of you, your
soul,--call it what you will, it is you,--is calling for all the
love that is in me."
She leaned more closely against him, and sighed as with fatigue.
He breathed a kiss into her hair and held her with firm tenderness.
Aunt Mildred stirred briskly and looked up from the Planchette
board.
"Come, let us begin," she said. "It will soon grow chilly. Robert,
where are those children?"
"Here we are," Lute called out, disengaging herself.
"Now for a bundle of creeps," Chris whispered, as they started in.
Lute's prophecy of the manner in which her lover would be received
was realized. Mrs. Grantly, unreal, unhealthy, scintillant with
frigid magnetism, warmed and melted as though of truth she were dew
and he sun. Mr. Barton beamed broadly upon him, and was colossally
gracious. Aunt Mildred greeted him with a glow of fondness and
motherly kindness, while Uncle Robert genially and heartily
demanded, "Well, Chris, my boy, and what of the riding?"
But Aunt Mildred drew her shawl more closely around her and hastened
them to the business in hand. On the table was a sheet of paper. On
the paper, rifling on three supports, was a small triangular board.
Two of the supports were easily moving casters. The third support,
placed at the apex of the triangle, was a lead pencil.
"Who's first?" Uncle Robert demanded.
There was a moment's hesitancy, then Aunt Mildred placed her hand on
the board, and said: "Some one has always to be the fool for the
delectation of the rest."
"Brave woman," applauded her husband. "Now, Mrs. Grantly, do your
worst."
"I?" that lady queried. "I do nothing. The power, or whatever you
care to think it, is outside of me, as it is outside of all of you.
As to what that power is, I will not dare to say. There is such a
power. I have had evidences of it. And you will undoubtedly have
evidences of it. Now please be quiet, everybody. Touch the board
very lightly, but firmly, Mrs. Story; but do nothing of your own
volition."
Aunt Mildred nodded, and stood with her hand on Planchette; while
the rest formed about her in a silent and expectant circle. But
nothing happened. The minutes ticked away, and Planchette remained
motionless.
"Be patient," Mrs. Grantly counselled. "Do not struggle against any
influences you may feel working on you. But do not do anything
yourself. The influence will take care of that. You will feel
impelled to do things, and such impulses will be practically
irresistible."
"I wish the influence would hurry up," Aunt Mildred protested at the
end of five motionless minutes.
"Just a little longer, Mrs. Story, just a little longer," Mrs.
Grantly said soothingly.
Suddenly Aunt Mildred's hand began to twitch into movement. A mild
concern showed in her face as she observed the movement of her hand
and heard the scratching of the pencil-point at the apex of
Planchette.
For another five minutes this continued, when Aunt Mildred withdrew
her hand with an effort, and said, with a nervous laugh:
"I don't know whether I did it myself or not. I do know that I was
growing nervous, standing there like a psychic fool with all your
solemn faces turned upon me."
"Hen-scratches," was Uncle Robert's judgement, when he looked over
the paper upon which she had scrawled.
"Quite illegible," was Mrs. Grantly's dictum. "It does not resemble
writing at all. The influences have not got to working yet. Do you
try it, Mr. Barton."
That gentleman stepped forward, ponderously willing to please, and
placed his hand on the board. And for ten solid, stolid minutes he
stood there, motionless, like a statue, the frozen personification
of the commercial age. Uncle Robert's face began to work. He
blinked, stiffened his mouth, uttered suppressed, throaty sounds,
deep down; finally he snorted, lost his self-control, and broke out
in a roar of laughter. All joined in this merriment, including Mrs.
Grantly. Mr. Barton laughed with them, but he was vaguely nettled.
"You try it, Story," he said.
Uncle Robert, still laughing, and urged on by Lute and his wife,
took the board. Suddenly his face sobered. His hand had begun to
move, and the pencil could be heard scratching across the paper.
"By George!" he muttered. "That's curious. Look at it. I'm not doing
it. I know I'm not doing it. Look at that hand go! Just look at it!"
"Now, Robert, none of your ridiculousness," his wife warned him.
"I tell you I'm not doing it," he replied indignantly. "The force
has got hold of me. Ask Mrs. Grantly. Tell her to make it stop,
if you want it to stop. I can't stop it. By George! look at that
flourish. I didn't do that. I never wrote a flourish in my life."
"Do try to be serious," Mrs. Grantly warned them. "An atmosphere of
levity does not conduce to the best operation of Planchette."
"There, that will do, I guess," Uncle Robert said as he took his
hand away. "Now let's see."
He bent over and adjusted his glasses. "It's handwriting at any
rate, and that's better than the rest of you did. Here, Lute, your
eyes are young."
"Oh, what flourishes!" Lute exclaimed, as she looked at the paper.
"And look there, there are two different handwritings."
She began to read: "This is the first lecture. Concentrate on
this sentence: 'I am a positive spirit and not negative to any
condition.' Then follow with concentration on positive love. After
that peace and harmony will vibrate through and around your body.
Your soul-- The other writing breaks right in. This is the way it
goes: Bullfrog 95, Dixie 16, Golden Anchor 65, Gold Mountain 13,
Jim Butler 70, Jumbo 75, North Star 42, Rescue 7, Black Butte 75,
Brown Hope 16, Iron Top 3."
"Iron Top's pretty low," Mr. Barton murmured.
"Robert, you've been dabbling again!" Aunt Mildred cried accusingly.
"No, I've not," he denied. "I only read the quotations. But how the
devil--I beg your pardon--they got there on that piece of paper I'd
like to know."
"Your subconscious mind," Chris suggested. "You read the quotations
in to-day's paper."
"No, I didn't; but last week I glanced over the column."
"A day or a year is all the same in the subconscious mind," said
Mrs. Grantly. "The subconscious mind never forgets. But I am not
saying that this is due to the subconscious mind. I refuse to state
to what I think it is due."
"But how about that other stuff?" Uncle Robert demanded. "Sounds
like what I'd think Christian Science ought to sound like."
"Or theosophy," Aunt Mildred volunteered. "Some message to a
neophyte."
"Go on, read the rest," her husband commanded.
"This puts you in touch with the mightier spirits," Lute read.
"You shall become one with us, and your name shall be 'Arya,' and
you shall--Conqueror 20, Empire 12, Columbia Mountain 18, Midway
140--and, and that is all. Oh, no! here's a last flourish, Arya,
from Kandor--that must surely be the Mahatma."
"I'd like to have you explain that theosophy stuff on the basis of
the subconscious mind, Chris," Uncle Robert challenged.
Chris shrugged his shoulders. "No explanation. You must have got a
message intended for some one else."
"Lines were crossed, eh?" Uncle Robert chuckled. "Multiplex
spiritual wireless telegraphy, I'd call it."
"It IS nonsense," Mrs. Grantly said. "I never knew Planchette to
behave so outrageously. There are disturbing influences at work. I
felt them from the first. Perhaps it is because you are all making
too much fun of it. You are too hilarious."
"A certain befitting gravity should grace the occasion," Chris
agreed, placing his hand on Planchette. "Let me try. And not one of
you must laugh or giggle, or even think 'laugh' or 'giggle.' And if
you dare to snort, even once, Uncle Robert, there is no telling what
occult vengeance may be wreaked upon you."
"I'll be good," Uncle Robert rejoined. "But if I really must snort,
may I silently slip away?"
Chris nodded. His hand had already begun to work. There had been no
preliminary twitchings nor tentative essays at writing. At once his
hand had started off, and Planchette was moving swiftly and smoothly
across the paper.
"Look at him," Lute whispered to her aunt. "See how white he is."
Chris betrayed disturbance at the sound of her voice, and thereafter
silence was maintained. Only could be heard the steady scratching of
the pencil. Suddenly, as though it had been stung, he jerked his
hand away. With a sigh and a yawn he stepped back from the table,
then glanced with the curiosity of a newly awakened man at their
faces.
"I think I wrote something," he said.
"I should say you did," Mrs. Grantly remarked with satisfaction,
holding up the sheet of paper and glancing at it.
"Read it aloud," Uncle Robert said.
"Here it is, then. It begins with 'beware' written three times, and
in much larger characters than the rest of the writing. BEWARE!
BEWARE! BEWARE! Chris Dunbar, I intend to destroy you. I have
already made two attempts upon your life, and failed. I shall yet
succeed. So sure am I that I shall succeed that I dare to tell you.
I do not need to tell you why. In your own heart you know. The wrong
you are doing--And here it abruptly ends."
Mrs. Grantly laid the paper down on the table and looked at Chris,
who had already become the centre of all eyes, and who was yawning
as from an overpowering drowsiness.
"Quite a sanguinary turn, I should say," Uncle Robert remarked.
"I have already made two attempts upon your life," Mrs. Grantly read
from the paper, which she was going over a second time.
"On my life?" Chris demanded between yawns. "Why, my life hasn't
been attempted even once. My! I am sleepy!"
"Ah, my boy, you are thinking of flesh-and-blood men," Uncle Robert
laughed. "But this is a spirit. Your life has been attempted by
unseen things. Most likely ghostly hands have tried to throttle you
in your sleep."
"Oh, Chris!" Lute cried impulsively. "This afternoon! The hand you
said must have seized your rein!"
"But I was joking," he objected.
"Nevertheless . . ." Lute left her thought unspoken.
Mrs. Grantly had become keen on the scent. "What was that about this
afternoon? Was your life in danger?"
Chris's drowsiness had disappeared. "I'm becoming interested
myself," he acknowledged. "We haven't said anything about it. Ban
broke his back this afternoon. He threw himself off the bank, and I
ran the risk of being caught underneath."
"I wonder, I wonder," Mrs. Grantly communed aloud. "There is
something in this. . . . It is a warning. . . . Ah! You were hurt
yesterday riding Miss Story's horse! That makes the two attempts!"
She looked triumphantly at them. Planchette had been vindicated.
"Nonsense," laughed Uncle Robert, but with a slight hint of
irritation in his manner. "Such things do not happen these days.
This is the twentieth century, my dear madam. The thing, at the very
latest, smacks of mediaevalism."
"I have had such wonderful tests with Planchette," Mrs. Grantly
began, then broke off suddenly to go to the table and place her hand
on the board.
"Who are you?" she asked. "What is your name?"
The board immediately began to write. By this time all heads, with
the exception of Mr. Barton's, were bent over the table and
following the pencil.
"It's Dick," Aunt Mildred cried, a note of the mildly hysterical in
her voice.
Her husband straightened up, his face for the first time grave.
"It's Dick's signature," he said. "I'd know his fist in a thousand."
"'Dick Curtis,'" Mrs. Grantly read aloud. "Who is Dick Curtis?"
"By Jove, that's remarkable!" Mr. Barton broke in. "The handwriting
in both instances is the same. Clever, I should say, really clever,"
he added admiringly.
"Let me see," Uncle Robert demanded, taking the paper and examining
it. "Yes, it is Dick's handwriting."
"But who is Dick?" Mrs. Grantly insisted. "Who is this Dick Curtis?"
"Dick Curtis, why, he was Captain Richard Curtis," Uncle Robert
answered.
"He was Lute's father," Aunt Mildred supplemented. "Lute took our
name. She never saw him. He died when she was a few weeks old. He
was my brother."
"Remarkable, most remarkable." Mrs. Grantly was revolving the
message in her mind. "There were two attempts on Mr. Dunbar's life.
The subconscious mind cannot explain that, for none of us knew of
the accident to-day."
"I knew," Chris answered, "and it was I that operated Planchette.
The explanation is simple."
"But the handwriting," interposed Mr. Barton. "What you wrote and
what Mrs. Grantly wrote are identical."
Chris bent over and compared the handwriting.
"Besides," Mrs. Grantly cried, "Mr. Story recognizes the
handwriting."
She looked at him for verification.
He nodded his head. "Yes, it is Dick's fist. I'll swear to that."
But to Lute had come a visioning. While the rest argued
pro and con and the air was filled with phrases,--"psychic
phenomena," "self-hypnotism," "residuum of unexplained truth,"
and "spiritism,"--she was reviving mentally the girlhood
pictures she had conjured of this soldier-father she had never
seen. She possessed his sword, there were several old-fashioned
daguerreotypes, there was much that had been said of him, stories
told of him--and all this had constituted the material out of
which she had builded him in her childhood fancy.
"There is the possibility of one mind unconsciously suggesting to
another mind," Mrs. Grantly was saying; but through Lute's mind was
trooping her father on his great roan war-horse. Now he was leading
his men. She saw him on lonely scouts, or in the midst of the
yelling, Indians at Salt Meadows, when of his command he returned
with one man in ten. And in the picture she had of him, in the
physical semblance she had made of him, was reflected his spiritual
nature, reflected by her worshipful artistry in form and feature
and expression--his bravery, his quick temper, his impulsive
championship, his madness of wrath in a righteous cause, his warm
generosity and swift forgiveness, and his chivalry that epitomized
codes and ideals primitive as the days of knighthood. And first,
last, and always, dominating all, she saw in the face of him the
hot passion and quickness of deed that had earned for him the name
"Fighting Dick Curtis."
"Let me put it to the test," she heard Mrs. Grantly saying.
"Let Miss Story try Planchette. There may be a further message."
"No, no, I beg of you," Aunt Mildred interposed. "It is too uncanny.
It surely is wrong to tamper with the dead. Besides, I am nervous.
Or, better, let me go to bed, leaving you to go on with your
experiments. That will be the best way, and you can tell me in the
morning." Mingled with the "Good-nights," were half-hearted protests
from Mrs. Grantly, as Aunt Mildred withdrew.
"Robert can return," she called back, "as soon as he has seen me to
my tent."
"It would be a shame to give it up now," Mrs. Grantly said. "There
is no telling what we are on the verge of. Won't you try it, Miss
Story?"
Lute obeyed, but when she placed her hand on the board she was
conscious of a vague and nameless fear at this toying with the
supernatural. She was twentieth-century, and the thing in essence,
as her uncle had said, was mediaeval. Yet she could not shake off
the instinctive fear that arose in her--man's inheritance from the
wild and howling ages when his hairy, apelike prototype was afraid
of the dark and personified the elements into things of fear.
But as the mysterious influence seized her hand and sent it meriting
across the paper, all the unusual passed out of the situation
and she was unaware of more than a feeble curiosity. For she was
intent on another visioning--this time of her mother, who was also
unremembered in the flesh. Not sharp and vivid like that of her
father, but dim and nebulous was the picture she shaped of her
mother--a saint's head in an aureole of sweetness and goodness
and meekness, and withal, shot through with a hint of reposeful
determination, of will, stubborn and unobtrusive, that in life
had expressed itself mainly in resignation.
Lute's hand had ceased moving, and Mrs. Grantly was already reading
the message that had been written.
"It is a different handwriting," she said. "A woman's hand.
'Martha,' it is signed. Who is Martha?"
Lute was not surprised. "It is my mother," she said simply. "What
does she say?"
She had not been made sleepy, as Chris had; but the keen edge of her
vitality had been blunted, and she was experiencing a sweet and
pleasing lassitude. And while the message was being read, in her
eyes persisted the vision of her mother.
"Dear child," Mrs. Grantly read, "do not mind him. He was ever quick
of speech and rash. Be no niggard with your love. Love cannot hurt
you. To deny love is to sin. Obey your heart and you can do no
wrong. Obey worldly considerations, obey pride, obey those that
prompt you against your heart's prompting, and you do sin. Do not
mind your father. He is angry now, as was his way in the earth-life;
but he will come to see the wisdom of my counsel, for this, too, was
his way in the earth-life. Love, my child, and love well.--Martha."
"Let me see it," Lute cried, seizing the paper and devouring the
handwriting with her eyes. She was thrilling with unexpressed love
for the mother she had never seen, and this written speech from the
grave seemed to give more tangibility to her having ever existed,
than did the vision of her.
"This IS remarkable," Mrs. Grantly was reiterating. "There was never
anything like it. Think of it, my dear, both your father and mother
here with us tonight."
Lute shivered. The lassitude was gone, and she was her natural self
again, vibrant with the instinctive fear of things unseen. And it
was offensive to her mind that, real or illusion, the presence or
the memorized existences of her father and mother should be touched
by these two persons who were practically strangers--Mrs. Grantly,
unhealthy and morbid, and Mr. Barton, stolid and stupid with a
grossness both of the flesh and the spirit. And it further seemed a
trespass that these strangers should thus enter into the intimacy
between her and Chris.
She could hear the steps of her uncle approaching, and the situation
flashed upon her, luminous and clear. She hurriedly folded the sheet
of paper and thrust it into her bosom.
"Don't say anything to him about this second message, Mrs. Grantly,
please, and Mr. Barton. Nor to Aunt Mildred. It would only cause
them irritation and needless anxiety."
In her mind there was also the desire to protect her lover, for she
knew that the strain of his present standing with her aunt and uncle
would be added to, unconsciously in their minds, by the weird
message of Planchette.
"And please don't let us have any more Planchette," Lute continued
hastily. "Let us forget all the nonsense that has occurred."
"'Nonsense,' my dear child?" Mrs. Grantly was indignantly protesting
when Uncle Robert strode into the circle.
"Hello!" he demanded. "What's being done?"
"Too late," Lute answered lightly. "No more stock quotations for
you. Planchette is adjourned, and we're just winding up the
discussion of the theory of it. Do you know how late it is?"
* * *
"Well, what did you do last night after we left?"
"Oh, took a stroll," Chris answered.
Lute's eyes were quizzical as she asked with a tentativeness that
was palpably assumed, "With--a--with Mr. Barton?"
"Why, yes."
"And a smoke?"
"Yes; and now what's it all about?"
Lute broke into merry laughter. "Just as I told you that you would
do. Am I not a prophet? But I knew before I saw you that my forecast
had come true. I have just left Mr. Barton, and I knew he had walked
with you last night, for he is vowing by all his fetishes and idols
that you are a perfectly splendid young man. I could see it with my
eyes shut. The Chris Dunbar glamour has fallen upon him. But I have
not finished the catechism by any means. Where have you been all
morning?"
"Where I am going to take you this afternoon."
"You plan well without knowing my wishes."
"I knew well what your wishes are. It is to see a horse I have
found."
Her voice betrayed her delight, as she cried, "Oh, good!"
"He is a beauty," Chris said.
But her face had suddenly gone grave, and apprehension brooded in
her eyes.
"He's called Comanche," Chris went on. "A beauty, a regular beauty,
the perfect type of the Californian cow-pony. And his lines--why,
what's the matter?"
"Don't let us ride any more," Lute said, "at least for a while.
Really, I think I am a tiny bit tired of it, too."
He was looking at her in astonishment, and she was bravely meeting
his eyes.
"I see hearses and flowers for you," he began, "and a funeral
oration; I see the end of the world, and the stars falling out of
the sky, and the heavens rolling up as a scroll; I see the living
and the dead gathered together for the final judgement, the sheep
and the goats, the lambs and the rams and all the rest of it, the
white-robed saints, the sound of golden harps, and the lost souls
howling as they fall into the Pit--all this I see on the day that
you, Lute Story, no longer care to ride a horse. A horse, Lute! a
horse!"
"For a while, at least," she pleaded.
"Ridiculous!" he cried. "What's the matter? Aren't you well?--you
who are always so abominably and adorably well!"
"No, it's not that," she answered. "I know it is ridiculous, Chris,
I know it, but the doubt will arise. I cannot help it. You always
say I am so sanely rooted to the earth and reality and all that,
but--perhaps it's superstition, I don't know--but the whole
occurrence, the messages of Planchette, the possibility of my
father's hand, I know not how, reaching, out to Ban's rein and
hurling him and you to death, the correspondence between my father's
statement that he has twice attempted your life and the fact that in
the last two days your life has twice been endangered by horses--my
father was a great horseman--all this, I say, causes the doubt to
arise in my mind. What if there be something in it? I am not so sure.
Science may be too dogmatic in its denial of the unseen. The forces
of the unseen, of the spirit, may well be too subtle, too sublimated,
for science to lay hold of, and recognize, and formulate. Don't you
see, Chris, that there is rationality in the very doubt? It may be a
very small doubt--oh, so small; but I love you too much to run even
that slight risk. Besides, I am a woman, and that should in itself
fully account for my predisposition toward superstition.
"Yes, yes, I know, call it unreality. But I've heard you paradoxing
upon the reality of the unreal--the reality of delusion to the mind
that is sick. And so with me, if you will; it is delusion and
unreal, but to me, constituted as I am, it is very real--is real
as a nightmare is real, in the throes of it, before one awakes."
"The most logical argument for illogic I have ever heard," Chris
smiled. "It is a good gaming proposition, at any rate. You manage
to embrace more chances in your philosophy than do I in mine. It
reminds me of Sam--the gardener you had a couple of years ago. I
overheard him and Martin arguing in the stable. You know what a
bigoted atheist Martin is. Well, Martin had deluged Sam with floods
of logic. Sam pondered awhile, and then he said, 'Foh a fack, Mis'
Martin, you jis' tawk like a house afire; but you ain't got de show
I has.' 'How's that?' Martin asked. 'Well, you see, Mis' Martin,
you has one chance to mah two.' 'I don't see it,' Martin said. 'Mis'
Martin, it's dis way. You has jis' de chance, lak you say, to become
worms foh de fruitification of de cabbage garden. But I's got de
chance to lif' mah voice to de glory of de Lawd as I go paddin' dem
golden streets--along 'ith de chance to be jis' worms along 'ith
you, Mis' Martin.'"
"You refuse to take me seriously," Lute said, when she had laughed
her appreciation.
"How can I take that Planchette rigmarole seriously?" he asked.
"You don't explain it--the handwriting of my father, which Uncle
Robert recognized--oh, the whole thing, you don't explain it."
"I don't know all the mysteries of mind," Chris answered. "But I
believe such phenomena will all yield to scientific explanation in
the not distant future."
"Just the same, I have a sneaking desire to find out some more from
Planchette," Lute confessed. "The board is still down in the dining
room. We could try it now, you and I, and no one would know."
Chris caught her hand, crying: "Come on! It will be a lark."
Hand in hand they ran down the path to the tree-pillared room.
"The camp is deserted," Lute said, as she placed Planchette on the
table. "Mrs. Grantly and Aunt Mildred are lying down, and Mr. Barton
has gone off with Uncle Robert. There is nobody to disturb us." She
placed her hand on the board. "Now begin."
For a few minutes nothing happened. Chris started to speak, but she
hushed him to silence. The preliminary twitchings had appeared in
her hand and arm. Then the pencil began to write. They read the
message, word by word, as it was written:
There is wisdom greater than the wisdom of reason. Love proceeds not
out of the dry-as-dust way of the mind. Love is of the heart, and is
beyond all reason, and logic, and philosophy. Trust your own heart,
my daughter. And if your heart bids you have faith in your lover,
then laugh at the mind and its cold wisdom, and obey your heart, and
have faith in your lover.--Martha.
"But that whole message is the dictate of your own heart," Chris
cried. "Don't you see, Lute? The thought is your very own, and your
subconscious mind has expressed it there on the paper."
"But there is one thing I don't see," she objected.
"And that?"
"Is the handwriting. Look at it. It does not resemble mine at all.
It is mincing, it is old-fashioned, it is the old-fashioned feminine
of a generation ago."
"But you don't mean to tell me that you really believe that this is
a message from the dead?" he interrupted.
"I don't know, Chris," she wavered. "I am sure I don't know."
"It is absurd!" he cried. "These are cobwebs of fancy. When one
dies, he is dead. He is dust. He goes to the worms, as Martin says.
The dead? I laugh at the dead. They do not exist. They are not. I
defy the powers of the grave, the men dead and dust and gone!
"And what have you to say to that?" he challenged, placing his hand
on Planchette.
On the instant his hand began to write. Both were startled by the
suddenness of it. The message was brief:
BEWARE! BEWARE! BEWARE!
He was distinctly sobered, but he laughed. "It is like a miracle
play. Death we have, speaking to us from the grave. But Good Deeds,
where art thou? And Kindred? and Joy? and Household Goods? and
Friendship? and all the goodly company?"
But Lute did not share his bravado. Her fright showed itself in her
face. She laid her trembling hand on his arm.
"Oh, Chris, let us stop. I am sorry we began it. Let us leave the
quiet dead to their rest. It is wrong. It must be wrong. I confess I
am affected by it. I cannot help it. As my body is trembling, so is
my soul. This speech of the grave, this dead man reaching out from
the mould of a generation to protect me from you. There is reason in
it. There is the living mystery that prevents you from marrying me.
Were my father alive, he would protect me from you. Dead, he still
strives to protect me. His hands, his ghostly hands, are against
your life!"
"Do be calm," Chris said soothingly. "Listen to me. It is all a
lark. We are playing with the subjective forces of our own being,
with phenomena which science has not yet explained, that is all.
Psychology is so young a science. The subconscious mind has just
been discovered, one might say. It is all mystery as yet; the laws
of it are yet to be formulated. This is simply unexplained
phenomena. But that is no reason that we should immediately account
for it by labelling it spiritism. As yet we do not know, that is
all. As for Planchette--"
He abruptly ceased, for at that moment, to enforce his remark, he
had placed his hand on Planchette, and at that moment his hand had
been seized, as by a paroxysm, and sent dashing, willy-nilly, across
the paper, writing as the hand of an angry person would write.
"No, I don't care for any more of it," Lute said, when the message
was completed. "It is like witnessing a fight between you and my
father in the flesh. There is the savor in it of struggle and
blows."
She pointed out a sentence that read: "You cannot escape me nor the
just punishment that is yours!"
"Perhaps I visualize too vividly for my own comfort, for I can see
his hands at your throat. I know that he is, as you say, dead and
dust, but for all that, I can see him as a man that is alive and
walks the earth; I see the anger in his face, the anger and the
vengeance, and I see it all directed against you."
She crumpled up the scrawled sheets of paper, and put Planchette
away.
"We won't bother with it any more," Chris said. "I didn't think it
would affect you so strongly. But it's all subjective, I'm sure,
with possibly a bit of suggestion thrown in--that and nothing more.
And the whole strain of our situation has made conditions unusually
favorable for striking phenomena."
"And about our situation," Lute said, as they went slowly up the
path they had run down. "What we are to do, I don't know. Are we to
go on, as we have gone on? What is best? Have you thought of
anything?"
He debated for a few steps. "I have thought of telling your uncle
and aunt."
"What you couldn't tell me?" she asked quickly.
"No," he answered slowly; "but just as much as I have told you. I
have no right to tell them more than I have told you."
This time it was she that debated. "No, don't tell them," she said
finally. "They wouldn't understand. I don't understand, for that
matter, but I have faith in you, and in the nature of things they
are not capable of this same implicit faith. You raise up before me
a mystery that prevents our marriage, and I believe you; but they
could not believe you without doubts arising as to the wrong and
ill-nature of the mystery. Besides, it would but make their
anxieties greater."
"I should go away, I know I should go away," he said, half under his
breath. "And I can. I am no weakling. Because I have failed to
remain away once, is no reason that I shall fail again."
She caught her breath with a quick gasp. "It is like a bereavement
to hear you speak of going away and remaining away. I should never
see you again. It is too terrible. And do not reproach yourself for
weakness. It is I who am to blame. It is I who prevented you from
remaining away before, I know. I wanted you so. I want you so.
"There is nothing to be done, Chris, nothing to be done but to go on
with it and let it work itself out somehow. That is one thing we are
sure of: it will work out somehow."
"But it would be easier if I went away," he suggested.
"I am happier when you are here."
"The cruelty of circumstance," he muttered savagely.
"Go or stay--that will be part of the working out. But I do not want
you to go, Chris; you know that. And now no more about it. Talk
cannot mend it. Let us never mention it again--unless . . . unless
some time, some wonderful, happy time, you can come to me and say:
'Lute, all is well with me. The mystery no longer binds me. I am
free.' Until that time let us bury it, along with Planchette and all
the rest, and make the most of the little that is given us.
"And now, to show you how prepared I am to make the most of that
little, I am even ready to go with you this afternoon to see the
horse--though I wish you wouldn't ride any more . . . for a few
days, anyway, or for a week. What did you say was his name?"
"Comanche," he answered. "I know you will like him."
* * *
Chris lay on his back, his head propped by the bare jutting wall
of stone, his gaze attentively directed across the canyon to the
opposing tree-covered slope. There was a sound of crashing through
underbrush, the ringing of steel-shod hoofs on stone, and an
occasional and mossy descent of a dislodged boulder that bounded
from the hill and fetched up with a final splash in the torrent
that rushed over a wild chaos of rocks beneath him. Now and again
he caught glimpses, framed in green foliage, of the golden brown
of Lute's corduroy riding-habit and of the bay horse that moved
beneath her.
She rode out into an open space where a loose earth-slide denied
lodgement to trees and grass. She halted the horse at the brink
of the slide and glanced down it with a measuring eye. Forty feet
beneath, the slide terminated in a small, firm-surfaced terrace,
the banked accumulation of fallen earth and gravel.
"It's a good test," she called across the canyon. "I'm going to put
him down it."
The animal gingerly launched himself on the treacherous footing,
irregularly losing and gaining his hind feet, keeping his fore
legs stiff, and steadily and calmly, without panic or nervousness,
extricating the fore feet as fast as they sank too deep into the
sliding earth that surged along in a wave before him. When the firm
footing at the bottom was reached, he strode out on the little
terrace with a quickness and springiness of gait and with glintings
of muscular fires that gave the lie to the calm deliberation of his
movements on the slide.
"Bravo!" Chris shouted across the canyon, clapping his hands.
"The wisest-footed, clearest-headed horse I ever saw," Lute called
back, as she turned the animal to the side and dropped down a broken
slope of rubble and into the trees again.
Chris followed her by the sound of her progress, and by occasional
glimpses where the foliage was more open, as she zigzagged down the
steep and trailless descent. She emerged below him at the rugged rim
of the torrent, dropped the horse down a three-foot wall, and halted
to study the crossing.
Four feet out in the stream, a narrow ledge thrust above the surface
of the water. Beyond the ledge boiled an angry pool. But to the
left, from the ledge, and several feet lower, was a tiny bed of
gravel. A giant boulder prevented direct access to the gravel bed.
The only way to gain it was by first leaping to the ledge of rock.
She studied it carefully, and the tightening of her bridle-arm
advertised that she had made up her mind.
Chris, in his anxiety, had sat up to observe more closely what she
meditated.
"Don't tackle it," he called.
"I have faith in Comanche," she called in return.
"He can't make that side-jump to the gravel," Chris warned. "He'll
never keep his legs. He'll topple over into the pool. Not one horse
in a thousand could do that stunt."
"And Comanche is that very horse," she answered. "Watch him."
She gave the animal his head, and he leaped cleanly and accurately
to the ledge, striking with feet close together on the narrow space.
On the instant he struck, Lute lightly touched his neck with the
rein, impelling him to the left; and in that instant, tottering on
the insecure footing, with front feet slipping over into the pool
beyond, he lifted on his hind legs, with a half turn, sprang to the
left, and dropped squarely down to the tiny gravel bed. An easy jump
brought him across the stream, and Lute angled him up the bank and
halted before her lover.
"Well?" she asked.
"I am all tense," Chris answered. "I was holding my breath."
"Buy him, by all means," Lute said, dismounting. "He is a bargain. I
could dare anything on him. I never in my life had such confidence
in a horse's feet."
"His owner says that he has never been known to lose his feet, that
it is impossible to get him down."
"Buy him, buy him at once," she counselled, "before the man changes
his mind. If you don't, I shall. Oh, such feet! I feel such
confidence in them that when I am on him I don't consider he has
feet at all. And he's quick as a cat, and instantly obedient.
Bridle-wise is no name for it! You could guide him with silken
threads. Oh, I know I'm enthusiastic, but if you don't buy him,
Chris. I shall. Remember, I've second refusal."
Chris smiled agreement as he changed the saddles. Meanwhile she
compared the two horses.
"Of course he doesn't match Dolly the way Ban did," she concluded
regretfully; "but his coat is splendid just the same. And think of
the horse that is under the coat!"
Chris gave her a hand into the saddle, and followed her up the slope
to the county road. She reined in suddenly, saying:
"We won't go straight back to camp."
"You forget dinner," he warned.
"But I remember Comanche," she retorted. "We'll ride directly over
to the ranch and buy him. Dinner will keep."
"But the cook won't," Chris laughed. "She's already threatened to
leave, what of our late-comings."
"Even so," was the answer. "Aunt Mildred may have to get another
cook, but at any rate we shall have got Comanche."
They turned the horses in the other direction, and took the climb of
the Nun Canyon road that led over the divide and down into the Napa
Valley. But the climb was hard, the going was slow. Sometimes they
topped the bed of the torrent by hundreds of feet, and again they
dipped down and crossed and recrossed it twenty times in twice as
many rods. They rode through the deep shade of clean-bunked maples
and towering redwoods, to emerge on open stretches of mountain
shoulder where the earth lay dry and cracked under the sun.
On one such shoulder they emerged, where the road stretched level
before them, for a quarter of a mile. On one side rose the huge bulk
of the mountain. On the other side the steep wall of the canyon fell
away in impossible slopes and sheer drops to the torrent at the
bottom. It was an abyss of green beauty and shady depths, pierced by
vagrant shafts of the sun and mottled here and there by the sun's
broader blazes. The sound of rushing water ascended on the windless
air, and there was a hum of mountain bees.
The horses broke into an easy lope. Chris rode on the outside,
looking down into the great depths and pleasuring with his eyes in
what he saw. Dissociating itself from the murmur of the bees, a
murmur arose of falling water. It grew louder with every stride of
the horses.
"Look!" he cried.
Lute leaned well out from her horse to see. Beneath them the water
slid foaming down a smooth-faced rock to the lip, whence it leaped
clear--a pulsating ribbon of white, a-breath with movement, ever
falling and ever remaining, changing its substance but never its
form, an aerial waterway as immaterial as gauze and as permanent as
the hills, that spanned space and the free air from the lip of the
rock to the tops of the trees far below, into whose green screen it
disappeared to fall into a secret pool.
They had flashed past. The descending water became a distant murmur
that merged again into the murmur of the bees and ceased. Swayed by
a common impulse, they looked at each other.
"Oh, Chris, it is good to be alive . . . and to have you here by my
side!"
He answered her by the warm light in his eyes.
All things tended to key them to an exquisite pitch--the movement of
their bodies, at one with the moving bodies of the animals beneath
them; the gently stimulated blood caressing the flesh through and
through with the soft vigors of health; the warm air fanning their
faces, flowing over the skin with balmy and tonic touch, permeating
them and bathing them, subtly, with faint, sensuous delight; and
the beauty of the world, more subtly still, flowing upon them and
bathing them in the delight that is of the spirit and is personal
and holy, that is inexpressible yet communicable by the flash of an
eye and the dissolving of the veils of the soul.
So looked they at each other, the horses bounding beneath them, the
spring of the world and the spring of their youth astir in their
blood, the secret of being trembling in their eyes to the brink of
disclosure, as if about to dispel, with one magic word, all the irks
and riddles of existence.
The road curved before them, so that the upper reaches of the canyon
could be seen, the distant bed of it towering high above their
heads. They were rounding the curve, leaning toward the inside,
gazing before them at the swift-growing picture. There was no sound
of warning. She heard nothing, but even before the horse went down
she experienced the feeling that the unison of the two leaping
animals was broken. She turned her head, and so quickly that she saw
Comanche fall. It was not a stumble nor a trip. He fell as though,
abruptly, in midleap, he had died or been struck a stunning blow.
And in that moment she remembered Planchette; it seared her brain
as a lightning-flash of all-embracing memory. Her horse was back on
its haunches, the weight of her body on the reins; but her head was
turned and her eyes were on the falling Comanche. He struck the
road-bed squarely, with his legs loose and lifeless beneath him.
It all occurred in one of those age-long seconds that embrace an
eternity of happening. There was a slight but perceptible rebound
from the impact of Comanche's body with the earth. The violence with
which he struck forced the air from his great lungs in an audible
groan. His momentum swept him onward and over the edge. The weight
of the rider on his neck turned him over head first as he pitched to
the fall.
She was off her horse, she knew not how, and to the edge. Her lover
was out of the saddle and clear of Comanche, though held to the
animal by his right foot, which was caught in the stirrup. The slope
was too steep for them to come to a stop. Earth and small stones,
dislodged by their struggles, were rolling down with them and before
them in a miniature avalanche. She stood very quietly, holding one
hand against her heart and gazing down. But while she saw the real
happening, in her eyes was also the vision of her father dealing the
spectral blow that had smashed Comanche down in mid-leap and sent
horse and rider hurtling over the edge.
Beneath horse and man the steep terminated in an up-and-down wall,
from the base of which, in turn, a second slope ran down to a second
wall. A third slope terminated in a final wall that based itself on
the canyon-bed four hundred feet beneath the point where the girl
stood and watched. She could see Chris vainly kicking his leg to
free the foot from the trap of the stirrup. Comanche fetched up hard
against an outputting point of rock. For a fraction of a second his
fall was stopped, and in the slight interval the man managed to grip
hold of a young shoot of manzanita. Lute saw him complete the grip
with his other hand. Then Comanche's fall began again. She saw the
stirrup-strap draw taut, then her lover's body and arms. The
manzanita shoot yielded its roots, and horse and man plunged over
the edge and out of sight.
They came into view on the next slope, together and rolling over and
over, with sometimes the man under and sometimes the horse. Chris no
longer struggled, and together they dashed over to the third slope.
Near the edge of the final wall, Comanche lodged on a buttock of
stone. He lay quietly, and near him, still attached to him by the
stirrup, face downward, lay his rider.
"If only he will lie quietly," Lute breathed aloud, her mind at work
on the means of rescue.
But she saw Comanche begin to struggle again, and clear on her
vision, it seemed, was the spectral arm of her father clutching the
reins and dragging the animal over. Comanche floundered across the
hummock, the inert body following, and together, horse and man, they
plunged from sight. They did not appear again. They had fetched
bottom.
Lute looked about her. She stood alone on the world. Her lover was
gone. There was naught to show of his existence, save the marks of
Comanche's hoofs on the road and of his body where it had slid over
the brink.
"Chris!" she called once, and twice; but she called hopelessly.
Out of the depths, on the windless air, arose only the murmur of
bees and of running water.
"Chris!" she called yet a third time, and sank slowly down in the
dust of the road.
She felt the touch of Dolly's muzzle on her arm, and she leaned her
head against the mare's neck and waited. She knew not why she
waited, nor for what, only there seemed nothing else but waiting
left for her to do.
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