CHAPTER XXXIIIHORSEMEN IN THE NIGHT
MEANWHILE Cole of Spyglass Mountain of days had worked at fencing his claim or studying, and of nights had kept vigil at the eye-piece of his telescope, lost to this earth, his mind and soul transported to other worlds all bright and peaceful.
Once as he walked up the trail to the observatory a bullet had whizzed close to his head, followed by the distant bark of a heavy firearm. And when Sweet’s vaqueros had driven the first of the cattle into the mountains the herd had stampeded Argo, at graze on his rope beside the lake, and Joshua had scoured the country a week before he found him. The gray had pulled his pin and raced away in a frenzy of fright as the cowpunchers, with deliberate intent, drove the cows upon him, yelling and firing into the air.
These things worried Joshua, for it seemed next to impossible for him to fight back. He could not have overtaken the mounted cowboys on foot and fought it out with them; and afterward he was unable to tell who had been responsible because he knew none of Sweet’s men. Had he carried a gun when fired upon as he climbed Spyglass Mountain he would have been helpless to use it, since he had gained no sight of the man who had shot toward him.
All this gave him a feeling of utter helplessness and dejection. He harmed no man, wished no man ill. All he wanted was to be allowed to go placidly on his way through life, devoted to his studies, unobtrusive, simple, kindly, anddeep in his own affairs. Fight he would if the fight came into the open, but he was unable to make it thus. He was destined to be on the offensive so long as Sweet saw fit to worry him, unless he went direct to Sweet and had it out with him, face to face. And this he had about decided to do when Madge’s letter came.
Madge had known when she left the country that he had given up his Eastern trip because of Sweet’s firing on his cabin from the shelf on Spyglass Mountain. So he had not written her, as California Bill had advised. She had gone on the twenty-seventh of April. Not a word had he received from her in all those days, and often he had found his mind wandering from the abstruse problems on his home-made desk to her, down there in the city in “a swell apartment.” Then came her letter, on the fourteenth of June; and if his heart had been heavy before it turned to a lump of clay as his moist eyes read her message:
“My dear Poet-Astronomer:“Many matters have prevented me from writing until now. We’ve been so busy, and have had so much fun, that I am sure, if you knew the half of it, you would forgive me. I’ve been living, Joshua—living as I never lived before. Dances, automobile rides, yachting off San Pedro and Coronado Beach, and parties—parties—parties! And my new clothes, Joshua! Oh, if you could only see me! Nothing expensive, of course—that is out of the question. But they’re so pretty, and everybody flatters me so that I’m afraid my head is a little turned.“But all this means nothing to you, wrapped up as you are in bigger things. I had to start this letter some way, though, and work up to what I have to say. Joshua, it is going to hurt you—what I have to tell you now. And I hate to hurt you. But it is all for the best, I suppose, as Ma always told me when I was a little girl.“I know it will be better for you that I am going to marryJack Montgomery. You and I never could be happy together, dear boy, for the simple reason that you are too far above me—too big for me in more ways than one. I am frivolous—more frivolous than I knew throughout all the years on the railroad grade. It took Los Angeles, with its brilliant throngs, dazzling hotels, and everything that has given me pleasure to teach me the shallowness of my nature.“So, Joshua, I want you to forget me as unworthy of you. You are a dreamer, with an unpractical mind far above the sordid things that I find so interesting. You are young and will soon forget me when you become a great astronomer, which I am sure will happen some day. And then you can find a girl who appreciates you. I am too shallow to do that.“We haven’t decided what to do with the homestead yet. Ma wants to go back the worst way, but of course Jack wouldn’t approve of my returning for keeps, so, as I said, we are still undecided just what to do. But, please, please, Joshua, forgive me and try to forget me, for really I am not worth your notice.“I don’t just know whether I love Jack or not, just between you and me, and I shouldn’t be writing this to you about the man I mean to marry. But I have written it, and I hate to scratch things out, and am too lazy to begin my letter over again. So I have written that I don’t know whether I’m in love with him or not, and I’ll let it stand. Sometimes I think I am, he’s so kind and considerate and—oh, so sort of buoyant and happy-go-lucky, you know. And everybody likes him here. And he’s really brilliant, Joshua. But all that aside, he can offer me what I want in life, and I’m selfishly going to take it. Very few girls marry for love these days. A couple who are congenial can learn to like each other almost like love, and that’s what most couples who are successful in marriage are doing nowadays.“So this is good-by, Joshua, and you don’t know how it hurts me to write it. It will hurt you, too, I know, but if you devote yourself to your work—which I know you will do—you soon will be laughing at yourself for ever thinking that you could tolerate Shanty Madge as a wife. Good-by, then, my poet-astronomer. And please forgive me. You know that I never, never encouragedyou in the least. I knew better. I knew I was unworthy of you. Don’t you understand? Write me a good long letter and wish me well. How I wish I could be there on Spyglass Mountain when the big night comes in June!“Ma wants to be remembered to you, and says tell you she, at least, will see you soon, provided you don’t go East before the eighteenth—which I know you won’t. Well, good-by again, dear Joshua. But I’m merely running around in circles. I’ve said all that I have to say, and how I dreaded it. Good-by, then, dear Joshua—and all the luck in the world. Oh, how I hate myself! And, still it’s all for the best, I fully believe.“Contritely,“Madge.”
“My dear Poet-Astronomer:
“Many matters have prevented me from writing until now. We’ve been so busy, and have had so much fun, that I am sure, if you knew the half of it, you would forgive me. I’ve been living, Joshua—living as I never lived before. Dances, automobile rides, yachting off San Pedro and Coronado Beach, and parties—parties—parties! And my new clothes, Joshua! Oh, if you could only see me! Nothing expensive, of course—that is out of the question. But they’re so pretty, and everybody flatters me so that I’m afraid my head is a little turned.
“But all this means nothing to you, wrapped up as you are in bigger things. I had to start this letter some way, though, and work up to what I have to say. Joshua, it is going to hurt you—what I have to tell you now. And I hate to hurt you. But it is all for the best, I suppose, as Ma always told me when I was a little girl.
“I know it will be better for you that I am going to marryJack Montgomery. You and I never could be happy together, dear boy, for the simple reason that you are too far above me—too big for me in more ways than one. I am frivolous—more frivolous than I knew throughout all the years on the railroad grade. It took Los Angeles, with its brilliant throngs, dazzling hotels, and everything that has given me pleasure to teach me the shallowness of my nature.
“So, Joshua, I want you to forget me as unworthy of you. You are a dreamer, with an unpractical mind far above the sordid things that I find so interesting. You are young and will soon forget me when you become a great astronomer, which I am sure will happen some day. And then you can find a girl who appreciates you. I am too shallow to do that.
“We haven’t decided what to do with the homestead yet. Ma wants to go back the worst way, but of course Jack wouldn’t approve of my returning for keeps, so, as I said, we are still undecided just what to do. But, please, please, Joshua, forgive me and try to forget me, for really I am not worth your notice.
“I don’t just know whether I love Jack or not, just between you and me, and I shouldn’t be writing this to you about the man I mean to marry. But I have written it, and I hate to scratch things out, and am too lazy to begin my letter over again. So I have written that I don’t know whether I’m in love with him or not, and I’ll let it stand. Sometimes I think I am, he’s so kind and considerate and—oh, so sort of buoyant and happy-go-lucky, you know. And everybody likes him here. And he’s really brilliant, Joshua. But all that aside, he can offer me what I want in life, and I’m selfishly going to take it. Very few girls marry for love these days. A couple who are congenial can learn to like each other almost like love, and that’s what most couples who are successful in marriage are doing nowadays.
“So this is good-by, Joshua, and you don’t know how it hurts me to write it. It will hurt you, too, I know, but if you devote yourself to your work—which I know you will do—you soon will be laughing at yourself for ever thinking that you could tolerate Shanty Madge as a wife. Good-by, then, my poet-astronomer. And please forgive me. You know that I never, never encouragedyou in the least. I knew better. I knew I was unworthy of you. Don’t you understand? Write me a good long letter and wish me well. How I wish I could be there on Spyglass Mountain when the big night comes in June!
“Ma wants to be remembered to you, and says tell you she, at least, will see you soon, provided you don’t go East before the eighteenth—which I know you won’t. Well, good-by again, dear Joshua. But I’m merely running around in circles. I’ve said all that I have to say, and how I dreaded it. Good-by, then, dear Joshua—and all the luck in the world. Oh, how I hate myself! And, still it’s all for the best, I fully believe.
“Contritely,“Madge.”
In a dazed manner Joshua looked about his little cabin, as if half-expecting to find Madge hiding somewhere there, ready to step out and laughingly tell him it was all a dream. But he saw only the dear, familiar objects of his daily life—the walls lined with huge tough envelopes ten inches by a foot in size, four tiers high, and filled to overflowing with notes and clippings; his typewriter; his much-marked books; his astronomical photographs above the notes; the several benches covered with more notes still unfiled; and in the other half of the room his cot, the stove, and the table where he prepared his food and ate it. Slowly he lowered his head and rested his chin on his breast, then crossed his arms before him on his work and laid his head upon them. He was tired, it seemed—only tired. And his eyes ached. He had worked too hard that day.
And there, shortly after midnight, he fell asleep and slept till morning called him to the woodpile and the daily routine again.
He ate a little breakfast, and settled down at his desk once more. But the printed words blurred before his eyes, and his mind wandered from subjects that theretofore hadheld him spellbound. He arose and went outdoors, walked for hours along the lake, moved Argo’s picket pin, then returned to the cabin and chopped more wood. In this he took a fierce delight, chopping, chopping, chopping all day long, with only a little rest at noon.
At evening, just as the sun sank behind Saddle Mountain and the gorgeous afterglow began to paint the waters of the lake in impossible hues, he remembered something and rested on the helve of his double-bitted ax. His mind had been wandering back to his boyhood, to Silvanus Madmallet, his mother and father, to Shanty Madge as he had seen her in the skating rink and afterward in the gypo camp—and then it was that he remembered Madge was about the age of his brother Lester, and with a start recalled the date. It was the fifteenth of June, Lester’s birthday—and he would be twenty-one.
How had he remembered it in his stunned condition? For stunned he seemed to be, stunned and bewitched by an unfamiliar dullness. Why, thinking of Madge’s girlhood had recalled it to his mind, of course. How stupid of him to ask himself such questions, he who always reasoned logically, from cause to effect, as a scientist should. He wondered how Lester was getting on? Why hadn’t he answered the several letters that he had written him?
Well, no matter. Lester was like all the rest—indifferent to him and what befell him. He was hungry. He would cook a bite and climb the trail to the observatory—for, family outcast though he was, ex-inmate of a boys’ reformatory where he had been imprisoned unjustly, tramp, hounded by Lee Sweet, rejected by the girl he loved, he still had a mistress who was always true to him, who always rewarded his devotion; and the shrine where he worshiped her was on the lofty summit of Spyglass Mountain. And she could and would transport him to anotherworld where, so far as man could see, everything was steeped in brilliant white serenity. They might hammer Joshua Cole to earth, but Cole of Spyglass Mountain was consecrated to Science, and her he would serve to the bitter end. And the great night was almost at hand. All throughout the recent opposition of Mars to the earth he had trained his refractor on that planet and sat immovable, watching for the slightest indication of what he longed to see. Mars was out of opposition now, and in three nights more he would be nearer to the earth than at any time since Joshua took up the study of astronomy. Yes, he must eat a little to fortify himself against hours of ceaseless concentration.
He ate hurriedly, forcing himself to swallow food that he actually eschewed, then with his camera and other apparatus set out upon the trail.
Slowly he climbed, winding in and out among the giant rocks that studded the mountainside. Night had fallen when he reached the summit and stood, breathing hard, looking down on the desert, across which the shadow of the mountains swiftly spread a black enveloping poncho. The spring winds had ceased, and a stillness hung in the air that to many would have proved depressing. High on the pinnacle of this remote mountain he stood, and for once he felt very much alone, like Hagar must have felt when she was driven into the wilderness. But Hagar had her Ishmael!
For a time he watched the desert as it was blotted out before him. Then he turned and slowly entered the observatory.
He lighted a coal-oil lamp, and climbed up on his ladder to open the slit in the conical roof. Down again, he placed the lamp so that it would be behind him during his observation. By pulling a cord he moved the revolving roofuntil the refractor was pointing through the slit. Then he moved the ladder behind the eye-piece and climbed high upon it, for Mars was not far above the horizon. He placed his eye to the finder and moved the delicately adjusted instrument until he found the image. Next he clambered down and started the driving clock which caused the telescope to follow the object in its course across the sky for two hours and a half. He climbed the ladder again and took his seat, with his head only a few feet from the roof; and, as the eye-piece was already in focus, he began searching the surface of the planet for the region central to Uranius, Nilokeras, and Ganges, moving the instrument slowly.
And there he sat through the unbroken quietude of several hours, his steady, far-seeing right eye fixed on the glowing surface of the distant ball of soft white fire. The atmosphere was remarkably clear to-night, and the planet at times threw off a glow that heightened its brilliancy and dazzled his eye, and then the glow would subside and well-known markings would stand out clearly for an instant. But he gained not even a fleeting glimpse of the figure that he fancied he had seen before, and upon which he had based his hopes of writing his name indelibly on the scientific roster.
How long he had been on watch through the eternal stillness of Spyglass Mountain he did not know, when of a sudden he heard the thud of hoofs outside the observatory. He felt a quick stab of apprehension. He was unarmed. Was it Sweet?
But a familiar voice now called:
“Hey! Tony! Are ye in there? This is California Bill!”
“Yes!” answered Joshua, with a feeling of vast relief. “What on earth are you doing up here this time o’ night?”
“I’ll show ye in a minute,” answered Bill; and then Joshua heard him speak in a lower tone to some one else.
Joshua climbed down from his ladder, loath to leave the eye-piece of the refractor, and opened the door. In came a man whose little pale-blue eyes darted a glance of supreme hatred at him, and then were lowered instantly. California Bill brought up the rear.
“Hello, Cole of Spyglass Mountain,” was his greeting. “I’ve brung a—athingto see ye to-night, an’ it’s got a tale to tell. Kick them boxes over here so’s we c’n all set down together. Slim Wolfgang he’s gonta talk.”
Deeply mystified, Joshua obeyed and distributed the boxes over the unfloored ground.
“Set down, Slim,” softly ordered California Bill. “You, too, Tony. I’ll take this’n’, right next th’ door. Now, Tony, get ready for the hardest jolt that ever hit ye. I’ll hand it to ye first, an’ Slim here c’n tell ye th’ rest afterwards. This man, Tony—this thing, I mean—has helped to rob ye of a fortune amountin’ to a hundred and fifty thousan’ dollars. If we’d ’a’ known about it less’n a week ago we coulda saved ’er for ye. But to-night’s th’ last night f’r ye to claim it. An’ we’re ’way out in California, on top o’ Spyglass Mountain, while yer money’s back on th’ Atlantic, three thousan’ miles away. That’s th’ devilish end o’ th’ thing. Now Slim Wolfgang’s gonta tell ye th’ first of it. Start yer voice, Wolfgang.”