The bright afternoon sun of late October shone slantingly on the train of weathered54wagons that stretched out like an uncoiling spring from the group collected in front of the little farm-house. From near and afar the neighbors had gathered; and now, falling slowly into line, they formed a chain a full quarter-mile in length.
Guy Landers was glad that at last it was over and they were out in the sunshine once more. He turned into the carefully reserved place at the head of the procession with almost a sense of relief. He was tired, fiercely tired, of the well-meant but insistent pity which dogged him with a tenacity that drove him desperate. They would not even allow him to think.
He rode alone on the front seat of the open wagon. Behind him, his mother and Jim sat stiffly, hand in hand. They gazed dully at the black thing ahead, and sobbed softly, now singly, now together. Both––himself as well––were dressed in complete black; old musty black, gotten out of the dark, hurriedly, and with the close smell of the closet still upon it. Even the horses conformed to the sober shade.55They had been supplied by a neighbor on account of their sombre color.
A heavy black tassel swung back and forth with the motion of the uneven road just ahead of the horses’ heads, and Landers sat watching it idly. He even caught himself counting the vibrations, as though it were a pendulum, dividing the beats into minutes. Very slow time it was; but somehow it did not surprise him. It all conformed so perfectly with the brown, quiet prairie, and the sun shining, slanting and sleepy.
The swinging tassel grew indistinct, and thepatter,patter,patterof the teams behind came as from a distance. He closed his eyes, and the events of the past two days drifted through his mind. Already they seemed indistinct, as a dream. He wondered dully that they could be true and yet seem so foreign to his life, now. He even began to doubt their verity, and opened his eyes slowly, half expecting to see the cool, green campus, and the big college buildings. The slanting sunlight met him full in the face, and the black pendant swung monotonously,56from side to side, as before. He wearily closed his eyes again.
Only two days since he had heard the taunting “Dance, freshy!” of the seniors, and felt the mighty rush of the freshman hosts; since the “rah, rah, rah, Landers!” had shook the old amphitheatre and the dozens of welcoming hands had greeted him; and then––the darkness––the hesitating leave-taking of the building, and the lingering walk across the deserted campus toward his room––the walk he knew so well he would take no more. A brief time of waiting––a blank––and then the bitter, thumping ride across two States toward his home, when he could only think, and think, and try to adjust himself––and fail; and at last the end. And again, at the little station, when he felt the touch of his mother’s hand, and heard her choking “Guy, my boy––” that spoke so much of love and of trust; when he heard his own voice answering cheerily, with a firmness which surprised him even then, speaking that which all through the long ride he had known he must speak––but could not: “It’s all right, mother; don’t worry; I’ll not leave you57again!”––it all came back to him now, and he lived it over again and again.
The big, black tassel danced tantalizingly in front of him. Yes, he had said that he would never leave again. He dully repeated the words now to himself: “never again.” It was so fitting; quite in accordance with the rest of the black pageant. His dream of life, his new-felt ambitions––all were dead, dead, like his father before him, where the black plume nodded.
They passed up through the little town and the shop-keepers came out to look. Some were in their shirt sleeves; the butcher had his white apron tucked up around his belt. They gathered together in twos and groups, nodding toward the procession, their lips moving as in pantomime. One man walked out to the crossing, counting aloud as the teams went by. “One, two, three, four, five, six––” he intoned. To him it was all a thing to amuse, like a circus parade,––interesting in proportion to its length.
Landers looked almost curiously at the stolid shopmen. It required no flush of inspiration to tell him that but a few years of this life were58necessary to make him as impassive as they. He who had sworn to make the world move would be contentedly sitting on an empty goods box, diligently numbering a passing procession!
The biting humor of the thought appealed to him. He smiled grimly to himself.
Once more on an early evening, a man turned out from a weather-stained prairie farm-house, through the frosted grass, arriving presently at the dusty public road. As before, he walked slowly along between the tall cottonwoods; but not, as on a memorable former occasion, because it would be for the last time. He was tired, tired with that absolute abandon of youth that sees no hope in the future, and has no philosophy to support it. Only thirty odd days since he went that way before! That many years would not add more to his life in the future.
Unconsciously he searched along the way for the landmarks he had watched with so much interest the past summer. He found the nest59where the quail had reared their brood, empty now, and covered thick with the scattered dust of passing teams. Forgetful that he was weary he climbed well up the bole of a shaggy old friend, to peep in at the opening of a deserted woodpecker’s home. He came to the big tree at whose roots, on that other night he remembered so well, he had thrown himself hopelessly. With a stolid sort of curiosity he looked down at the spot. Yes, there was the place. A few fallen leaves were scattered upon the earth where his body had pressed tightly against the tree-trunk, and there were the hollows where his clenched hands had found hold. A dull rebellion crept over him as he looked. It had been needless to torture him so!
He came in sight of the familiar little farm-house and turned in slowly at the break between the trees. It was growing dark now, but the odor of tobacco was on the air, and looking closely, he could catch the gleam from a glowing pipe-bowl in the doorway. He passed his hand across his brow, almost doubting––it was all so like––before––
A light step came tapping quickly down the60pathway toward him. “Guy!” a voice called softly. “Guy, is that you?”
The voice was quite near him now, and he stopped short, a big maple above him.
“Yes, Faith.”
She came up close, peering into the shadow.
“Guy––” she repeated, “Guy, where are you?”
He reached out and clasped her hand; then again, and took both hands. Her breath came quickly. Slowly his arm slipped about her waist, she struggling a little against her own will; then her head fell forward on his breast, and he could feel her whole body tremble.
The man looked out through the rifts in the half-naked trees; into the sky, clear and sparkling beyond; on his face an expression of sadness, of joy, of abandon––all blended indescribably.
Two soft arms crept gently about his neck, and a mass of fluffy hair caressed his face.
“Oh! Guy! Guy!” sobbed the girl, “it’s wicked, I know, but I’m so glad––so glad––”
61THE DOMINANT IMPULSE
Calmar Bye was a writer. That is to say, writing was his vocation and his recreation as well.
As yet, unfortunately, he had been unable to find publishers; but for that deficiency no reasonable person could hold him responsible. He had tried them all––and repeatedly. A certain expressman now smiled when he saw the long, slim figure approaching with a package under his arm, which from frequent reappearances had become easily recognizable; but as a person becomes accustomed to a physical deformity, Calmar Bye had ceased to notice banter.
Of but one thing in his life he was positively certain; and that was if Nature had fashioned him for any purpose in particular, it was to do the very thing he was doing now. The reason for62this certainty was that he could do nothing else with even moderate satisfaction. He had tried, frequently, to break away, and had even succeeded for a month at a time in an endeavor to avoid writing a word; but inevitably there came a relapse and a more desperate debauch in literature. Try as he might he could not avoid the temptation. An incident, a trifle out of the ordinary in his commonplace life, a sudden thrill at the reading of another man’s story, a night of insomnia, and resolution was in tatters, and shortly thereafter Calmar Bye’s pencil would be coursing with redoubled vigor over a sheet of virgin paper.
To be sure, Calmar did other things besides write. Being a normal man with a normal appetite, he could not successfully evade the demands of animal existence, and when his finances became unbearably low, he would proceed to their improvement by whatever means came first to hand. Book-keeping, clerical work, stenography––anything was grist for his mill at such times, and for a period he would work without rest. No better assistant could be found anywhere––until he had satisfied his63few creditors and established a small surplus of his own. Then, presto, change!––and on the surface reappeared Bye, the long, slender, blue-eyed, dreaming, dawdling, irresponsible writer.
Being what he was, the tenor of Calmar’s life was markedly uneven. At times the lust to write, the spirit of inspiration, as he would have explained to himself in the privacy of his own study, would come upon him strong, and for hours or days life would be a joyous thing, his fellow-men dear brothers of a happy family, the obvious unhappiness and injustice about him not reality, but mere comedy being enacted for his particular delectation.
Then at last, his work finished, would come inevitable reaction. The product of his hand and brain, completed, seemed inadequate and commonplace. He would smile grimly as with dogged persistence he started this latest child of his fancy out along the trail so thickly bestrewn with the skeletons of elder offspring. In measure, as badinage had previously passed him harmlessly by, it now cut deeply. No one in the entire town thought him a more complete64failure than he considered himself. Skies, from being sunny, grew suddenly sodden; not a tenement or alley but thrust obtrusively forward its tale of misery.
“Think of me,” he confided to his friend Bob Wilson one evening as during his transit through a particularly dismal slough of despond they in company were busily engaged in blazing the trail with empty bottles; “One such as I, a man of thirty and of good health, without a dollar or the prospect of a dollar, an income or the prospect of an income, a home or the prospect of a home, following a cold scent like the one I am now on!” He snapped his finger against the rim of his thin drinking glass until it rang merrily.
“The idea, again, of a man such as I, untravelled, penniless, self-educated, thinking to compete with others who journey the world over to secure material, and who have spent a fortune in preparation for this particular work.” He excitedly drained the contents of the glass.
“It’s preposterous, childlike!”––he brought the frail trifle down to the table with an emphasis65which was all but its destruction––“imbecile! I tell you I’m going to quit.
“Quit for good,” he repeated at the expression on the other’s face.
Bob Wilson scrutinized his companion with a critical eye.
“Waiter,” he said, speaking over his shoulder, “waiter, kindly tax our credit further to the extent of a couple of Havanas.”
“Yes, sah,” acknowledged the waiter.
Silence fell; but Bob’s observation of his friend continued.
“So you are going to quit the fight?” he commented at last.
“I am,”––decidedly.
Wilson lit his cigar.
“You have completed that latest––production on which you were engaged, I suppose?”
The writer scratched a match.
“This afternoon.”
“And sent it on?”
A nod. “Yes, on to the furnace room.”
A smile which approached a grin formed over Bob’s big face.
“You have hope of its acceptance, I trust?”66
Calmar Bye blew a cloud of smoke far toward the ceiling, and the smile, a shade grim, was reflected.
“More than hope,” laconically. “I have certainty at last.”
Another pause followed and slowly the smile vanished from the faces of both.
“Bob,” and the long Calmar straightened in his chair, “I’ve been an ass. It’s all apparent, too apparent, now. I’ve tried to compete with the entire world, and I’m too small. It’s enough for me to work against local competition.” He meditatively flicked the ash from his cigar with his little finger.
“I realize that a lot of my friends––women friends particularly––will say they always knew I had no determination, wouldn’t stay in the game until I won. They’re all alike in this one particular, Bob; all sticklers for the big lower jaw.
“But I don’t care. I’ve been shooting into a covey of publishers for twelve years and never have touched a feather. Perseverance is a good quality, but there is such a thing as insanity.”67He stared unconsciously at the portieres of the booth.
“Once and for all, I tell you I’m through,” he repeated.
“What are you going at?” queried Bob, sympathetically, a shade quizzically.
The long Calmar reached into his pocket with deliberation.
“Read that.” He tossed a letter across the tiny table.
Bob poised the epistle in his hand gingerly.
“South Dakota,” he commented, as he observed the postmark. “Humph, I can’t make out the town.”
“It’s not a town at all, only a postoffice. Immaterial anyway,” explained Calmar, irritably.
The round-faced man unfolded the letter slowly and read aloud:––
“My Dear Sir:––
“Your request, coming from a stranger, is rather unusual; but if you really mean business, I will say this: Provided you’re willing to take hold and stay right with me, I’ll take68you in and at the end of a half-year pay $75.00 per month. You can then put into the common fund whatever part of your savings you wish and have a proportionate interest in the herd. Permit me to observe, however, that you will find your surroundings somewhat different from those amid which you are living at present, and I should advise you to consider carefully before you make the change.
“Very truly yours,“E. J. Douglass.”
Bob slowly folded the sheet, and tossed it back.
“In what particular portion of that desert, if I may ask, does your new employer reside?” There was uncertainty in the speaker’s voice, as of one who spoke of India or the islands of the Pacific. “Likewise––pardon my ignorance––is that herd he mentions––buffalo?”
Calmar imperturbably returned the letter to his pocket.
“I’m serious, Robert. Douglass is a cattle man west of the river.”
“The river!” apostrophized Bob. “The69man juggles with mysteries. What river, pray?”
“The Missouri, of course. Didn’t you ever study geography?”
“I beg your pardon,” in humble apology. “Is that,” vaguely, “what they call the Bad Lands?”
Bye looked across at his friend, of a mind to be indignant; then his good-nature triumphed.
“No, it’s not so bad as that,” with a feeble attempt at a pun. He paused to light a cigar, and absent-minded as usual, continued in digression.
“I’ve dangled long enough, old man; too long. I’m going to do something now. I start to-morrow.”
Bob Wilson the skeptic, looked at his friend again critically. Resolutions of reconstruction he had heard before––and later watched their downfall; but this time somehow there was a new element introduced. Perhaps, after all––
“Waiter,” he called, “we’ll trifle with another quart of extra-dry, if you please.”
“To your success,” he added to his companion70across the table, when the waiter had returned from his mission.
A year passed around, as years have a way of doing, and found Calmar Bye, the city man, metamorphosed indeed. Bronzed, bearded, corduroy-clothed, cigarette-smoking,––for cigars fifty miles from a railroad are a curiosity,––as the seasons are dissimilar, so was he unlike his former inconsequent self. In his every action now was a directness and a purpose of which he had not even a conception in his former existence.
Very, very thin upon us all is the veneer of civilization; very, very swift is the reversion to the primitive when opportunity presents. Only twelve short months and this man, end product of civilization, doer of nothing practical, dreamer of dreams and recorder of fancies, had become a positive force, a contributor to the world’s food supply, a producer of meat. What a satire, in a period of time of which the shifting seasons could be counted upon one71hand, to have vibrated from manuscript to beef, and for the change to be seemingly unalterable!
To be sure there had been a struggle; a period of travail while readjustment was being established; a desperate sense of homesickness at first view of the undulating, grass-covered, horizon-bounded prairies; an insatiable need of the shops, the theatres, the telephones, thecafés, the newspapers, all of which previously had constituted everything that made life worth living. But these emotions had passed away. What evolvement of civilization could equal the beauty of a dew-scented, sun-sparkling prairie morning, or the grandeur of a soundless, star-dotted prairie night, wherein the very limitlessness of things, their immensity, was a never ending source of wonder? Verily, all changes and conditions of life have their compensations.
Calmar Bye, the one time listless, had learned many things in this unheard-of world.
First of all, most insistent of all, he was impressed with the overwhelming predominance of the physical over the mental. Later, in practical knowledge, he grew inured to the “feel” of a native bucking broncho and the sound of72mocking, human laughter after a stunning fall; in direct evolution, the method of throwing a steer and the odor of burnt hair and hide which followed the puff of smoke where the branding iron touched ceased to be cruel.
Last of all, highest evolvement of all, came the absorption of revolver-lore under the instruction of experts who made but pastime of picking a jack-rabbit in its flight, or bringing a kite, soaring high in air, tumbling precipitate to earth. A wild life it was and a rough, but fascinating nevertheless in its demonstration of the overwhelming superiority of man, the animal, in nerve and endurance over every other live thing on earth.
At the end of the year, with the hand of winter again pressed firmly upon the land, it seemed time could do no more; that the adaptation of the exotic to his new surroundings was complete. Already the past life seemed a thing interesting but aloof from reality, like the fantastic exploits of a hero of fiction, and the present, the insistently active, vital present, the sole consideration of importance.
In the appreciation of the stoic indifference73of the then West it was a slight incident which overthrew. One cowboy, “Slim” Rawley, had a particularly vicious broncho, which none but he had ever been able to control, and which in consequence, he prized as the apple of his eye. During his temporary absence from the ranch one day aconfrère, “Stiff” Warwick, had, in a spirit of bravado, roped the “devil” and instituted a contest of wills. The pony was stubborn, the man likewise, and a battle royal followed. As a buzzard scents carrion, other cowboys anticipated sport, and a group soon gathered. Ere minutes had passed the blood of the belligerents was up, and they were battling as for life, with a dogged determination which would have lasted upon the part of either, the man or the beast, until death. Rough scenes and inhuman, Bye had witnessed untilblasé; but nothing before like this. The man used quirt, rowel, and profanity like a fiend. The pony, panting, quivering, bucking, struggling, covered with foam and streaming with blood, shrilled with the impotent anger of a demon. Even the impassive cowboy spectators from chaffing lapsed into silence.74
Of a sudden, loping easily over the frost-bound prairie and following the winding trail of a cowpath, appeared the approaching figure of a horse and rider. It came on steadily, clear to the gathered group, and stopped. An instant and the newcomer understood the scene and a curse sprang to his lips. Another instant and his own mustang was spurred in close by the strugglers. His right hand raised in air and bearing a heavy quirt, descended; not upon the broncho, but far across the cursing, devilish face of the man, its rider. Then swift as thought and simultaneously as twin machines, the hands of the intruder and of the struggling “buster” went to their hips.
The spectators held their breaths; not one stirred. Before them they saw the hands which had gone to hips flash up and forward like pistons from companion cylinders, and they saw two puffs of smoke like escaping steam.
Smoothly, as a scene in a rehearsed play, the reports mingled, the riders, scarcely ten feet apart, tottered in their saddles, and slowly, unconsciously resistant even in death, the two bodies slipped to earth.
They saw the hands which had gone to hips flash up and forwardlike pistons, and two puffs of smoke like escaping steam.
They saw the hands which had gone to hips flash up and forwardlike pistons, and two puffs of smoke like escaping steam.
75
But there the unison ended. The mustang which “Slim” Rawley rode stood still in its tracks; but before the spectators could rush in, the “devil” broncho, relieved of the hand upon the curb, sprang away, and with the “buster’s” foot caught fast in the stirrup ran squealing, kicking, crazy mad out over the prairie, dragging by its side the limp figure of its unseated enemy.
Calmar Bye watched the whole spectacle as in a dream. So swift had been the action, so fantastic the denouement, that he could not at first reconcile it all with reality. He went slowly over to the prostrate “Slim” Rawley, whom the others had laid out decently upon the ground, half expecting him to leap up and laugh in their faces; but the already stiffening figure with the fiendish scowl upon its face, was convincing.
Besides,––gods, the indifference of these men to death! The party of onlookers were already separating––one division, mounted, starting in pursuit of the escaping broncho,76along the narrow trail made by the dragged man; the others impassively reconnoitring for spades and shovels, were stolidly awaiting the breaking of the lock of frost-bound earth at the hands of a big, red-shirted cowboy with a pick!
“Here, Bye,” suggested one toiler, “you’re an eddicated man; say a prayer er something, can’t ye, before we plant old ‘Slim.’ He wa’nt sech a bad sort.”
The tenderfoot complied, and said something––he never knew just what––as the dry clods thumped dully upon the huddled figure in the old gunny sack. What he said must have been good, for those present resisted with difficulty a disposition to applaud.
This labor complete, the cowboys scattered, miles apart, each to his division of the herd, which for better range had been distributed over a wide territory. Bye was in charge of the home bunch, and sat long after the others had left, upon the new-formed mound in the ranch dooryard.
Far over the broad, rolling prairies, as yet bare and frost-bound, the sun shone brightly.77A half-mile away he could see his own herd scattered and grazing. The stillness after the sudden excitement was almost unbelievable. Minutes passed by which dragged into an hour. Over the face of the sun a faint haze began to form and, unnoticeable to one not prairie-trained, the air took on a sympathetic feel, almost of dampness. A native would have sensed a warning; but Calmar Bye, one time writer, paid no heed. An instinct of his life, one he had thought suppressed, a necessity imperative as hunger, was gathering upon him strongly––the overwhelming instinct to portray the unusual.
Under its guidance, as in a maze, he made his way into the rough, unplastered shanty. Automatically he found a pencil and collected some scraps of coarse wrapping paper. Already the opening words of the tale he had to tell were in his mind, and sitting down by the greasy pine-board table, he began to write.
Hours passed. Over the sun the haze thickened. The whole sky grew sodden, the earth a corresponding grayish hue. Now and anon puffs of wind, like sudden breaths, stirred the78dull air, and the short buffalo grass trembled in anticipation. The puffs increased until their direction became definite, and at last here and there big, irregular feathers of snow drifted languidly to earth.
Within the shanty the man wrote unceasingly. Many fragments he covered and deposited, an irregular heap, at his right hand. At his left an adolescent mound of cigarette stumps grew steadily larger. A cloud of tobacco smoke over his head, driven here and there by vagrant currents of air, gathered denser and denser.
As the light failed, the writer unconsciously moved the rough table nearer and nearer the window until, blocked, it could go no farther. To one less preoccupied the grating over the uneven floor would have been startling. Once just outside the door the waiting pony neighed warningly––and again. Upon the ledge beneath the window-pane a tiny mound of snowflakes began to take form; around the shanty the rising wind mourned dismally.
The light failed by degrees, until the paper was scarcely visible, and, brought to consciousness,79the man rose to light a lamp. One look about and he passed his hand over his forehead, absently. Striding to the door, he flung it wide open.
“Hell!” he muttered in complex apostrophe.
To put on hat and top-coat was the act of a moment. To release the tethered pony the work of another; then swift as a great brown shadow, out across the whitening prairie to the spot he remembered last to have seen the herd, the delinquent urged the willing broncho––only to find emptiness; not even the suggestion of a trail.
Back and forth, through miles and miles of country, in semi-circles ever widening, through a storm ever increasing and with daylight steadily diminishing, Calmar Bye searched doggedly for the departed herd; searched until at last even he, ignorant of the supreme terrors of a South Dakota blizzard, dared not remain out longer.
That he found his way back to the ranch yard was almost a miracle. As it was, groping at last in utter darkness, blinded by a sleet which cut like dull knives, and buffeted by a wind like80a hurricane, more dead than alive he stumbled upon the home shanty and opening the door drew the weary broncho in after him. Man and beast were brothers on such a night.
Of the hours which followed, of moaning wind and drifting sleet, nature kindly gave him oblivion. Dead tired, he slept. And morning, crisp, smiling, cloudless, was about him when he awoke.
Rising, and scarcely stopping for a lunch, the man again sallied forth upon his search, wading through drifts blown almost firm enough to bear the pony’s weight and alternate spots wind-swept bare as a floor; while all about, gorgeous as multiple rainbows, flashed mocking bright the shifting sparkle from innumerable frost crystals.
All the morning he searched, farther and farther away, until the country grew rougher and he was full ten miles from home. At last, stopping upon a small hill to reconnoitre, the searcher heard far in the distance a sound he recognized and which sent his cheek pale––the faint dying wail of a wounded steer. It came from a deep draw between two low hills,81one cut into a steep ravine by converged floods and hidden by the tall surrounding weeds. Bye knew the place well and the significance of the sound he heard. In a cattle country, after a sudden blizzard, it could have but one meaning, and that the terror of all time to animals wild or domestic––the end of a stampede.
Only too soon thereafter the searcher found his herd. Upon the brow of a hill overlooking the ravine he stopped. Below him, bellowing, groaning, struggling, wounded, dying, and dead––a great mass of heavy bodies, mixed indiscriminately––bruised, broken, segmented, blood-covered, horrible, lay the observer’s trust, the wealth of his employer, his own hope of regeneration, worse now than worthless carrion. And the cause of it all, the sole excuse for this delinquency, lay back there upon a greasy table in the shanty––a short scrawling tale scribbled upon a handful of scrap paper!
“Yes, I’m back, Bob.”
The tall, thin Calmar Bye leaned back in his82chair and looked listlessly about the familiarcafé, without a suggestion of emotion. It seemed to him hardly credible that he had been away from it all for a year and more. Nothing was changed. Across the room the same mirrors repeated the reflections he had observed so many times before. Nearby were the same booths and from within them came the same laughter and chatter and suppressed song. Opposite the tiny table the same man with the broad, good-natured face was making critical, smiling observation, as of yore. As ever, the look recalled the visionary to the present.
“Back for good, Bob,” he repeated slowly.
The speaker’s attitude was far from being that of a conquering hero returned; the sympathies of the easy-going Robert, ever responsive, were roused.
“What’s the matter, old man?” he queried tentatively. “Weren’t you a success as a broncho-buster?”
“A success!” Calmar Bye stroked a long, thin face with a long, thin hand. “A success!” he repeated. “I couldn’t have been a worse83failure, Bob.” He paused a moment, smoothing the table-cloth absently with his finger tips.
“Success!” once more, bitterly. “I’m not even a mediocre at anything unless it is at what I’m doing now, dangling and helping spend the money some one else has worked all day to earn.” He looked his astonished friend fair in the eyes.
“You don’t know what an idiot, a worse than idiot, I’ve made of myself,” and he began the story of the past year.
Monotonously, unemotionally he told the tale, omitting nothing, adding nothing; while about him the sounds of the restaurant, the tinkling of glassware, the ring of silver, the familiar muffled pop of extracted corks, played a soft accompaniment. Occasionally Bob would make a comment or ask explanation of something to him entirely new; but that was all until near the end,––where the delinquent herder, coming swiftly to the brow of the hill, looked down upon the scene in the ravine below. Then Bob, the care-free, the pleasure-seeking, raised a hand in swift protest.84
“Don’t describe it, please, old man,” he requested. “I’d rather not hear.”
The speaker’s voice ceased; over his thin features fell the light of a queer little half-smile which, instead of declaring itself, only provoked Bob Wilson’s curiosity. In the silence Bye, with a hand unaccustomed to the exercise, made the familiar gesture that brought one of the busy attendants to his side.
“And the story you wrote––?” suggested Wilson while they waited.
For answer Calmar Bye drew an envelope from his pocket and tossed it across the table to his friend. Wilson first noted that it bore the return address of one of the country’s foremost magazines; he then unfolded the letter and read aloud:
“Dear Mr. Bye:––
“The receipt of your two stories, ‘Storm and Stampede’ and ‘The Lonely Grave,’ has settled a troublesome question for us, namely: What has become of Mr. Calmar Bye?
“No doubt you will recall that our criticisms of the material which you have submitted from85time to time in the past, were directed chiefly against faults arising out of your unfamiliarity with your subjects. The present manuscripts bear the best testimony that you have been gathering your material at first hand. We have the feeling, as we read, that every sentence flows straight from the heart.
“Now we want just such vivid, gripping, red-blooded cross-sections of life as these, your two latest accomplishments; in fact, we can’t get enough of them. Therefore, instead of making you a cash offer for these two stories, we suggest that you first call at our office at your earliest convenience. If agreeable, we should like to arrange for a series of Western stories and articles, the evolving of which should keep you engaged for some time to come.
“Cordially,“––––”
The hands of the two friends clasped across the table. No word disturbed the silence until the forgotten waiter broke in impatiently:
“Yo’ o’der, sahs?”
“Champagne”––this time it was Calmar86Bye who gave it––“a quart. And be lively about it, too.”
“Well, well!” Bob Wilson’s admiration burst forth. “It is worth a whole herd of steers.”
87THE STUFF OF HEROES
Springtime on the prairies of South Dakota. It is early morning, the sun is not yet up, but all is light and even and soft and all-surrounding, so that there are no shadows. In every direction the gently rolling country is dotted brown and white from the incomplete melting of winter’s snows. In the low places tiny streams of snow-water, melted yesterday, sing low under the lattice-work blanket the frost has built in the night. Nearby and in the distance prairie-chickens are calling, lonely, uncertain. Wild ducks in confused masses, mere specks in the distance, follow low over the winding curves of the river. High overhead, flocks of geese in regular black wedges, and brant, are flying northward, and the breezy sound of flapping wings and of voices calling, mingle in the sweetest of all music to those who know the prairies––Nature’s morning song of springtime.88
“What a country! Look there!” The big man in the front seat of the rough, low wagon pointed east where the sun rose slowly from the lap of the prairie. The other men cleared their throats as if to speak, but said nothing.
“And I’ve lived sixty years without knowing,” continued the first voice, musingly.
“I’ve never been West before, either,” admitted De Young, simply.
They drove on, the trickling of snow-water sounding around the wagon wheels.
The third man, Clark, pointed back in the direction they had come.
“Did any one back there inquire what we were doing?” he asked.
“A fellow ‘lowed,’ with a rising inflection, that we were hunting ducks,” said De Young. “I temporized; made him forget that I hadn’t answered. You know what will happen once the curiosity of the natives is aroused.”
“I wasn’t approached,” Morris joined in, without turning. The corners of the big man’s mouth twitched, as the suggested picture formed swiftly in his mind.
After a pause, De Young spoke again.89
“I gave the postmaster a specially good tip to see that we got our mail out promptly.”
“So did I,” Clark admitted.
The face of the serious man lighted; and, their eyes meeting, the three friends smiled all together.
The sun rose higher, without a breath of wind from over the prairies, and one after another the men removed their top-coats. The horses’ hoofs splashed at each step in slush and running water, sending drops against the dashboard with a sound like rain.
The trail which they were following could now scarcely be seen, except at intervals on higher ground, where hoof-prints and the tracks of wheels were scored in the soft mud, and with each mile these marks grew deeper and broader as the partly frozen earth softened.
The air of solemnity which had hung about the men for days, and which lifted from time to time only temporarily, now silenced them again. Indeed, had there been anybody present to observe, he doubtless would have been impressed most of all with the unwonted90soberness of the wagon’s occupants, a gravity strangely at variance with the rampant, fecund season.
And the object of their journeying into this unknown world was in all truth a matter for silence rather than speech; its influence was toward deep and earnest meditation, to which the joyous, awakening world could do no more than chant in a minor key a melancholy accompaniment. Never did a soldier advancing upon a breach in the enemy’s breastworks more certainly confront the grinning face of Death, than did this trio in their progress across the singing prairie; but where the plaudits of the world spelled glory for the one, the three in the wagon knew that for them Death meant oblivion, extinction, a blotting out that must needs be utter and inevitable.
The thoughts of each dwelt upon some aspect of two scenes which had happened only a brief fortnight previously. There had been a notable convention of physicians in a city many miles to the east. One delegate, a man young, slender, firm of jaw, his face shining91with zeal and the spirit which courts self-immolation, had addressed the body. His speech had made a profound impression––after its first effect of sensation had subsided––upon the hundreds gathered there, who hearkened amazedly; but of those hundreds only two had been moved to lay aside the tools of their calling and follow him.
And whither was he leading them? Into the Outer Darkness, each firmly believed. For them the future was spellednihil; for the world, salvation––perhaps.
The inspired voice still rang in memory.
“Gentlemen, I repeat, it is a challenge.... The flag of the enemy is hung up boldly, flauntingly, in every public place.... Are we to permit this? Are we to sit idle and acknowledge ourselves beaten in the great struggle against Death? No, no, no! The Nation––yea, the whole civilized world––shrinks and shudders in terror before the sound of one dread word––tuberculosis!
“Our professional honor––our personal honor as well, gentlemen––is at stake. A solemn charge is laid upon us.... We92must die if need be; but we must conquer this monstrous scourge, which is the single cause of more than one death in every ten.”
And then, the deep silence which had marked the closing words:
“Gentlemen, I can cure consumption,” came the simple declaration. “If there are those among you who value Science more than gain; who are willing to dare with me, willing to pay the extreme price, if necessary––if there are any such among you, and I believe there are, meet with me in my rooms this evening.”
To the eight who accepted that invitation, Dr. De Young disclosed the details of his Great Experiment. It included, among many other things which no one but a physician can appreciate, the lending of their bodies to the Experiment’s exemplification. Of the eight, two had agreed to follow him to the end. Each of the three had placed his house in order, and here they were, nearing that end, whatever it was to be.
An hour passed, and now ahead in the distance a rough shanty came into view. It was the only house in sight, and the three men knew93it was to be theirs. In silence they drew up where the men were unpacking their goods.
“Good morning for ducks––saw a big flock of mallards back here in a pond,” observed the man who took their team.
The three doctors alighted without answering, and watching them, the man stroked a stubby red whisker in meditation.
“Lord, they’re a frost!” he commented.
Night had come, and the stars shone early from a sky yet light and warm. In the low places the waters sang louder than before, with the increase of a day’s thawing. Looking away, the white spots were smaller and the brown patches larger; otherwise, all was the same, the prairie of yesterday, of to-day, and to-morrow.
Tired with a day of settling, the three men stood in the doorway and for the first time viewed the country at night. They were not talkers at best, and now the immensity of the broad prairies held them silent. The daily struggle of life, the activity and rivalry and ambition which before to-night had seemed so great to these city-bred men, here alone with94Nature and Nature’s God, where none other might see, assumed their true worth. The tangled web of life loosened and many foreign things caught and held therein, fell out. Man, introspecting, saw himself at his real worth, and was not proud.
The absolute quiet, so unusual, made them wakeful, and though tired, they sat long in the doorway, smoking, thinking. Small talk seemed to them profanation, and of that which was uppermost in each man’s mind, none cared first to speak. A subtle understanding, called telepathy, was making of their several minds a thing united.
“No, not to-night, it’s too beautiful,” said De Young at length, and the protesting voice sounded to his own ears as that of a stranger.
The men started at the sound, and the glowing tips of three cigars described partial arcs in the half light as they turned each to each. No one answered. They were face to face with fundamentals at last.
Minutes, an hour, passed. The cigars burned out, and as the pleasant odor of tobacco died away, there came the chill night air of the95prairie. The two older men rose stiffly, and with a low good-night, stumbled into the darkness of the shanty.
De Young sat alone in the doorway. He realized that it was the supreme hour of his life. In his mind, memory of past and hope of future met on the battlefield of the present, and meeting, mingled in chaos. Thoughts came crowding upon each other thick––the thoughts which come to few more than once in life, to multitudes, never; the thoughts which writers in every language, during all time, have sought words to express, and in vain.
Everywhere the snow-streams sang lower and lower. A fog, dense, penetrating, born of early morning, wrapped all things about, uniting and at the same time setting apart. Shivering, he shut the door on the night and the damp, and as by instinct crept into bed. Listening in the darkness, the sound of the sleepers soothed him. Happier thoughts came, thoughts which made his heart beat more swiftly and his eyes grow tender; for he was yet young, and love untold ever dwelleth near heaven. Thus he fell asleep with a smile.96
“Choose, please. We’ll take our turns in the order of length,” said De Young, holding up the ends of three paper strips. Each man drew, and in the silence that followed, without a word Morris turned away, preparing swiftly for the operation.
“Give me chloroform,” he said, stretching himself horizontally,––adding as the others bent over him, “Inoculate deep, please. Let’s not waste time.”
Swiftly, with the precision of absolute knowledge, the two physicians did their work. A mist was over their eyes, so that all the room looked dim, as to old men; and hands which had not known a tremor for years, shook as they emptied the contents of the little syringe, teeming with tiny, unseen, living rods. Clark’s forehead was damp with a perspiration that physical pain could not have brought, and on De Young’s face, time marked those minutes as months.
It was all done with the habit of years. The two doctors carefully sterilized their instruments and replaced them in cases, then, silently, drawn nearer together than ever before, the two friends watched the return of consciousness.97And Morris awakening, things real and of dreamland still confused to his senses, heard the soft voice which a legion of patients had thus heard and blessed, saying cheerily, “Wake up! wake up, my friend!”
Thus the day passed. In turn, the men, hours apart, with active brains, and eyes wide open, sent their challenges to Death––each man his own messenger.
The months slipped by. Suns became torrid hot, and cooled until it seemed there was light but not heat on earth. Days grew longer, and in unison, earth waxed greener; then in descending scale, both together waned. Migratory wings fluttering at night, and passing voices calling in the darkness––most lonely sounds of earth––gave place to singers of the day. The robin, the meadow-lark, the ubiquitous catbird, all born of prairie and of summer, came and went. Blackbirds in countless flocks followed. Again the calling of prairie-chickens was heard at eve and morning, and anon frost glistened in the air.
At last throughout the land no sound of animal voice was heard, for winter bound all98things firm and white. Another cycle was complete; yet, almost ere the record could be made, there appeared, moving far in the distance, a black triangle. Passing swiftly, with the sound of wings and calling voices, there sprang anew in all things animate a mixed feeling of gladness and unrest, which was the spirit of returned spring.
Thus twice the cycle of the seasons passed, and again the sun of early spring, shining bright, set the tiny snow-streams singing. It glistened over the prairie on snow-drift and frost; it lit up the few scattered shingled roofs of settlers newly come; and shone in at the open door of a rough cabin we know, touching without pity the faces of the two men who watched its rise. Shining low, even with the prairie, it touched in vivid contrast an oblong mound of fresh earth, heaped up target distance from the cabin door.
The mound had not been there long; neither snow or rain had yet touched it; it was still strange to the men in the doorway, who saw it vividly now, at time of sunrise. Though thus99early, each man sat idly smoking, an open book reversed on the knee.
De Young first broke the silence.
“We must do something, or else decide to do nothing about Clark’s mail.” He shifted in his seat, looking away from the open door.
“I don’t know––whether––it would be kinder to tell them or not.”
A coughing fit shook Morris, and answering, a twitch as of pain tightened the corners of his companion’s eyes. Minutes passed, and Morris sat limply in his chair, before he answered,
“I thought at first we’d better write; now it seems different. Let’s wait until we go back.”
Neither of the men looked at the other. They seldom did now; it was useless pain. Filled with the incomparable optimism of the consumptive, neither man realized his own condition, but marked the days of his friend. Morris, unbelieving, spoke of his friend’s return; yet, growing weaker each day himself, spoke in all hope and conviction of his future work, recording each day his mode of successful treatment, despite interruptions of coughing which left him breathless and trembling for minutes. De100Young saw, and in pity marvelled; yet, seeing, and as a physician knowing, he not for a moment applied the gauge to himself.
Nature, in sportive mood, commands the Angel of Death, who with matchless legerdemain, keeps the mirror of illusion, unsuspected, before the consumptive’s eyes; and, seeing, in derision the satirist smiles.
Unavoidably acting parts, the two friends found a barrier of artificiality separating them, making each happier when alone. Thus day after day, monotonous, unchanging, went by. Not another person entered their door. From the little town a man at periods brought provisions and their mail, but the house was acquiring an uncanny reputation. They were not understood, and such are ever foreign. With the passage of time and the coming of the mound in the dooryard, the feeling had developed into positive fear, and travellers avoided the place as though warned by a scarlet placard.
Morris grew weaker daily. At last the disillusionment that precedes death came to him. The artificial slipped from both men and a101nearness like that of brothers, joined them. They spoke not of the future but of the past. Years slipped aside and left them back in the midst of active, brain-satisfying practice. Over again they performed operations, where life and death were separated but by a hair’s width. Again, with eyes that brightened and breath that came more quickly, they lived their successes, and hand in hand, as children in the dark, told of their failures, and the tale was long, for they were but men.
The end came quietly. A hemorrhage, a big spot of blood on the cover, a firm hand pressure, and Morris’s parting words,
“Save my notes.”
That night De Young knew no sleep. “I must finish the work,” he said, in lame excuse. Well he knew there could be no rest for him that night. He did his task thoroughly, making record of things that had passed, with the precision of a physician who knows a patient but as material.
A tramp, who, unknowing, had taken shelter in an outbuilding, waking in the night, saw the light. Moved by curiosity, he crawled up102softly in the darkness, and peeped in at the window. In the half light he saw on the bed a thin, white face motionless in the expression which even he knew was death; and at the table, writing rapidly with manuscript all about, a man whose eyes shone with the brilliancy of disease, and with a face as pale as the face on the pillow. In the blank, unreasoning terror of superstition, he fled until Nature rebelled and would carry him no farther. Next day to all he saw, he told the tale of supernatural things which lingers yet around a prairie ruin, in whose dooryard are mounds built of man.
The mail carrier calling next day saw a man with spots of scarlet heightening the contrast of a face pale as death, digging in the dooryard. The man worked slowly, for he coughed often and must rest. In kindness the carrier offered help, but was refused with words that brought to the listener’s eyes a moisture unknown since boyhood, and the thought of which in days that followed, kept him silent concerning what he had seen.
Summer, with the breath of warm life and103the odor of growing things; with days made dreamy and thoughtful by the purring of the soft wind and the droning of insects; and nights when all was good; with stars above and crickets singing below––summer had come and was passing.
De Young could no longer deceive himself. The personal faith that had upheld him so long––when friends had failed––could fight the inevitable no longer. With eyes wide open, he saw at last clearly, and, seeing, realized the end. He cared not for death; he was too strong for that; but it must needs be that, now, with the shadow of defeat lying dark over the future, the problem of motive, the great “why,” should come uppermost in his mind demanding an answer.
Once before, at the time when other men read from their lives, he caught glimpses of something beyond. Now again the mood returned, and he knew why he was as he was; that with him love was, and had been, stronger than Science and all else beside. He knew that whatever he might have done, the entering into his life of The Woman, and the knowledge104that followed her coming, had inspired the supreme motive that thenceforth drove him forward. With this realization came a new life, a happier and a sadder life, in which all things underwent readjustment.
Regret came as sadness, regret that he had not told this woman all; that in his blind confidence he had not written, but had waited––waited for this. He would wait no longer. He would tell her now. A thousand new thoughts came to his mind; a thousand new feelings surged over him as a flood, and he poured them out on paper. The man himself, not the physician, was unfolded for the first time in his life, and the writing of that letter which told all, his life, his love, that ended with a good-bye which was forever, was the sweetest labor of his life. He sealed the letter and sat for hours looking at it, dreaming.
It was summer and the nights were short, so that with the writing and the dreams, morning had come. He could scarce wait that day for the carrier; time to him had become suddenly a thing most precious; and when at last the man appeared. De Young twice exacted the105promise that the letter should be mailed special delivery.
The reaction was on and all the world was dark. Fool that he was, two years had passed since he had heard from her. She also was a consumptive; might not––?
The very thought was torture; perspiration started at every pore, and with the little strength that was left he paced up and down the room like a caged animal. A fit of coughing, such as he had never known before, seized him, and he dropped full length upon the bed.
The limit was reached; he slept.
As he had worked one night before to forget, so he spent the following days. It was the end, and he knew it; but he no longer cared. His future was centred on one event––the coming of a letter. Beyond that all was shadow, and he cared not to explore. He worked all that Nature would allow, carrying to completion his observations, admitting his mistake with a candor which now caused no personal pain. He spent much time at his journal, writing needless things: his actions, his very thoughts,––things which could not106have been wrung from him before; but he was lonely and desperate. He must not think––’t was madness. So he wrote and wrote and wrote.
He watched for the carrier all the daylight hours. His mail was light, and the coming infrequent. There had been time for an answer, and the watcher could no longer compose himself to write. All day he sat in the doorway, looking across the two mounds, down the road whence the carrier would come.
And at last he came. Far down the road toward town one morning a familiar moving figure grew distinct. De Young watched as though fascinated. He wanted to shout, to laugh, to cry. With an effort that sent his finger nails deep into his palms, he kept quiet, waiting.
A letter was in the carrier’s hand. Struck by the look on De Young’s face, the postman did not turn, but stood near by watching. The exile, once the immovable, seized the missive feverishly, then paused to examine. It was a man’s writing he held, and he winced as at a blow, but with a hand that was nerved too107high to tremble, he tore open the envelope. He read the few words, and read again; then in a motion of weariness and hopelessness indescribable, hands and paper dropped.
“My God! And she never knew,” he whispered.
When next the carrier came, he shaped the third mound.