THE white giant, sun-stricken, drooping languidly, crumbled and dissolved before their eyes. The air softened. The streams rushed full, the southern hillsides showed bare and gaunt.
In the lake cabin they felt aged by their imprisonment. It had been so long, so remote from the world rush. Like prisoners long confined, they were loath to leave a dungeon where life had been well ordered if not exhilarating. Benumbed in the first days of the change, they returned indoors to the soothing evenness of their six months' hibernation. They found those first changes unbelievable. Winter would surely go on forever; too mighty a jailer it was to be vanquished by a mere breath of honey and flowers. They stayed in to warn one another against false appearances.
But there came a day when, in the blaze of noontime, Ben Crider moved his chair out by the door and sang softly to the strains of his guitar. His eyes blinked in the sunlight as he sang, yet they did not fail to detect the signs of spring so plentiful about the clearing in bud and leaf and tiny grass shoot, even though patches of snow still lay in the shaded spots.
The woman who cooked came also to the door as Ben sang. He had spoken of her the winter through as "the woman," dimly perceiving her as a spirit that mumbled endless complainings as she toiled, for shewas one who had been disillusioned by much cooking. She cooked acceptably, and Ben had burgeoned in the uncanny luxury of food prepared by another hand than his own, but he had given her little attention beyond discovering her opinion that cooking was a barren performance, since people perversely ate and thereby destroyed, and the thing must be done again endlessly. He had vaguely observed that this woman was not beautiful, and now, as she faced him with a sudden joviality in the spring sunshine, he saw that she could never have been beautiful. She beamed amicably on the balladist, and he, turning casual eyes on her, was stricken to dismayed silence; the tuneful praise of young love fainted on his lips as he stared, aghast, and his startled hand hushed the vibrant strings. A moment he looked, recovering from the shock. Then, in swift recoil, he grasped his chair and went resolutely out under the big hemlock, there to resume his song and his absent contemplation of Nature's awakening—his back to the cabin door. In this sensitive mood he wished not to incur again a vision that blighted song.
It was no longer disputable that spring was real; no baseless tradition, but an unfolding reality. Ben had divined it, and the other prisoners were not long in proving it.
One of them surveyed it in panic wonder, turning in upon herself to face the ordeal of enforced living. They wandered in the open, three of them, now, finding it good to feel the bare, elastic earth under their feet again, and prove the noiseless but sensational life of growing things all about them. They plucked buds to see their secret hearts, and exposed the roots ofpeeping herbs that had begun their strivings before the snow went.
When the sunny places had been dried and warmed, and were pulsing in their myriad hidden hearts, so that winter began to fade in their minds as some dream of night, they would penetrate the sunless depths of a narrow cañon where the snow yet lay deep and the stream was a mere choking of ice in a gorge.
It was in the flush of this exultation over winter's downfall that they planned camp life in a vale at the edge of the lake, where the spruces thinned to leave wide-vaulted arches, and spread the floor with yielding brown rugs of the pine needle. They began it as a play, and finished with a permanent camp into which they moved from the cabin. There were tents and beds, a table, a sheet-iron stove, chests for their stores, and hammocks in which to be fanned by the south wind.
Bartell promised his sister vast benefits from this life.
"This will put the finishing touches to you, Sis. A month here and you'll be loping over the range, high, wide, and handsome. It'll take an elk-high fence to hold you after you've slept awhile out here."
She felt the truth of what he said, and was appalled by it. Almost daily she dismayed herself by recalling some unpremeditated feat of strength or endurance. Life had crept back to her like a whipped dog, and bitterly she felt the sting of its satire. She was loath to leave the cabin in which she had so long nursed death. She had impregnated the very walls with an atmosphere of dissolution. But she understood now that that prison house could no longer suffice her. Stubborn life had prevailed over all its powers of suggestion.There she had clung stubbornly to the old solution, cherishing a hope of some sudden relapse, despite the new life that taunted her with its animal buoyance. But once in the open, her brain was washed of that. Her mind was as clear as the fathomless blue above them at noon; and the stars at night were not more coldly luminous than the reasoning she bent upon herself, nor sharper than a certain deduction she made.
Ewing brought his drawing to the camp and spent the mornings in work. He had finished his series for theKnickerbockerduring the winter, and these drawings, with the illustrations for the story previously made, had brought him enough to discharge the Teevan debt. He had reported this transaction significantly to Mrs. Laithe, and was now busy on pictures for another story for theKnickerbocker.
"Only a little longer," he said, with a meaning she could not fathom, and he returned to his work with a singular absorption. Not even Ben could distract him when he sauntered up for his daily criticism. Ben was respectful to the drawings after he saw the checks they brought, but his summing up of the purchaser's acumen never varied.
"Well, well—fools and their money! The idee of payin' out cash for a thing that looks as much like Red Phinney as that there does!"
When work was done for the day Ewing would turn to Mrs. Laithe with a smile of release, and they would stray along some dim trail or off into pathless, shaded silences of the wood, lingering in grassy mountain meadows, or skirting the base of bleak crags where streaks of snow in shadow still clung to the gray walls. She was conscious then of a tumult throbbing wonderfullybeneath the surface of their companionship—a tumult of life aching for release. In little chance moments of silence this rumbled ominously, leaving her fearful, but curiously resigned, moved to blind flight, yet chained and submissive as were the hills themselves.
One afternoon they sought their cañon of delayed winter after many days' neglect of it. They wondered if spring might not have reached even that secret recess at last. They left the trail that skirted the edge and descended a rocky way that Ewing found, emerging at last through a fringe of the stunted cedars into the gloom of the depths.
At first glance this last stronghold of winter seemed to have remained impregnable. Snow lay deep along the bottom, enormous stalactites of ice depended from overhanging ledges, and the stream itself appeared to be still only a riven glacier. But, listening intently, they heard a steady liquid murmur, the very music of spring come at last to sing the gorge awake. As they stood, listening, there was a shivering crash; one of the huge icicles had dropped, shattering on a lower ledge and raining its fragments into the soft snowbed below.
"It's the very last of winter," said Ewing mournfully. "That snow is eaten through and through. See how those bits of ice drove into it. And hear that running water. It will be off with a rush now. It's the very last of it—all I shall have to look back to—that winter of ours together." His tone was full of a meaning she dared not question. They climbed in silence to the summer above and traversed, still silently, the stretch of green woods that grew beyond the cañon wall. Only at the first mountain meadow, a dazzleof emerald under the slanting sun, did they halt to gaze at each other. His eyes were wonderfully alight with sadness and rejoicing as she faced him, radiant in a moment of forgetfulness, flagrant in her beauty's renewal.
"You're wonderful again," he said, almost whisperingly, "you're all in flower now!" She quickened under his look, feeling the glow on her cheeks. But that faded at his next words.
"I finished the last of those drawings to-day. Now I must go."
"Ah—go?" It was a little cry, half of question, half of understanding.
"Yes—I can go now. I couldn't go before, but I have the money now."
She sickened as they walked on in silence, fearing to question him, and when they reached the camp she ran to throw herself on the bed in her tent, covering her eyes with her hands, pressing the lids down, but making no sound.
As they sat about their camp fire that evening Ewing was struck by a certain view he caught of her. She sat in shadow on a stool at the foot of a towering hemlock, and once when he rose to stir the waning fire a flame shot up from a half-burned log, with a volley of sparks that fell back in a golden rain. He glanced over to be sure that she escaped these, and saw her sharply revealed in the sudden light, unconscious of it, unaroused by the crackling explosion. She was staring fixedly into the darkness, her body relaxed, her hands half clasped, her head, the profile toward him, leaning wearily against the tree. Before this background she seemed frail again, her face pallid under the darkof her hair and against the rough, ruddy brown of the tree bole, her whole body contrasting in its fragile lines with the tree's strength—human weakness showing starkly against the vigor of the woods.
To dull the sudden wanting of his heart for her he walked off alone over the path that bordered the lake, to reduce the amazing actuality of things, if he could, to proportions seemly with normal life. But the lake was a mirror of enchantment, the booming of an owl was a magic portent, the shadowed wall of granite was a turreted castle of mysteries, vague in the starlight, and the very stars themselves huddled down on him excitingly. He was in a world of the unreal, and must do an unreal thing. He stumbled blindly back to camp. He was surprised to find Mrs. Laithe as he had left her, still drooping against the rough-barked tree, weak, submissive, overborne. He touched her arm gently to recall her from some troubled distance. She looked at him with eyes unseeing at first.
"Isn't it bedtime?" he suggested.
She smiled and stood up to shrug away the spell of her dreaming. She spoke with such clear strength of tone that he was at once reassured of her vigor.
"Yes, it's sleeping time—in a moment. I haven't said much to you, but there's really little to say. You feel that you must go?"
"How could I stay here—after that?"
She repressed a sudden spasm of wild, weeping laughter that threatened to overcome her.
"And you'll not come back?" She waited breathless.
"There isn't much chance of it."
"You dear, dear fool!" was on her lips, but she held back the words and said very quietly:
"Go out, then, and live as you must. Only don't let life cow you. Don't ever fear that living is intricate or hard or tragic—a thing to be gone about warily. The wary people make the same mistakes as the careless ones, and feel them ten times more. Don't be afraid to dream—afraid to believe. I'm glad I've dreamed every dream of mine—false or true. Never be afraid to want." She turned half away as if to go, but halted, and he thought she had grown suddenly weak.
"You're going——"
"To-morrow, I'd thought—the sooner the better."
"Ah, but that's so soon. Can't we have one more day here? One more day to think of it?"
"I've thought of it all winter, days and nights as well; but I'd like another day—" He watched her longingly as she went beyond the firelight.
"Not a day to think about it," he called softly—"a day to forget."
They made it a day of forgetting, as he had said. In the morning they planned to ride, and their spirits were such as they rode off that Ben was moved to regard them knowingly, as one who had taken a fling at life in his time.
The day long they rode or rambled, talking of all but obvious things—making it, indeed, a day of forgetting and a day to remember. Deep in the woman's heart stirred an instinct of primal coquetry, an impulse to wield her charm upon him, to make the woman prevail over the man, beating all reason down, blindly, madly. And she yielded to this, watching its effect on him, divining the power of her freshened beauty each time she compelled his eyes. Instinctively she would have had him say, "I give up. I can't go.Let me stay—stay by you!" The natural woman in her fought for that. But reason reigned above the conflict. She knew he would not surrender and knew she would not have him surrender. Still she could not resist that impulse to enchain him, and exulted each time she made him tremble at their nearness.
Not until night had come did the imminence of his going seem to lie upon them. But then it lay with a weight. Together they left the camp and felt a way over the darkened trail to the cabin. Ewing had spoken of packing he must do, of matters in which she might help him.
But when they were in the studio, and he had started a great blaze in the fireplace he sat before it with her, silent. She spoke at length of the packing.
"There's none to do," he answered. "I'm taking scarcely anything—only what I can carry back of the saddle."
Her blood leaped with a quick hope.
"Then you're not going for long—youwillcome back—" But he only shook his head.
"I can't expect to come back." He looked at her with a sudden lighting of his eyes. "Come near to me this once." He moved a stool in front of him. "Sit here, this once."
She sat on the low stool at his feet and felt herself drawn slowly forward until her arms rested on his knees. She laid her head on them, shaken to the heart. Then she felt him bending over her, hovering, sheltering her, and at last, with a long sigh, come to rest, his face buried in her hair. They remained so, immovable, without further speech.
The absurdity of the thing between them had neverseemed so egregious to her. The words rang in her mind, burning behind her closed eyes—"It's all a mistake, that. How could you believe it, even you, unused to the world though you are?" But she knew the questions this would bring from him, the doubt that would stay with him; knew she could never satisfy him with less than the truth. For a moment she heard herself telling him this truth, gently, delicately, tenderly. But he spoke, even while she was thinking this.
"I wanted to be here to-night with you, and with her." He raised his head at last, to look at the portrait of his mother. "She understands, I'm sure. And she would have me go—she would have me do as I am doing."
She knew finally, then, that she could never tell him. She ceased all vain considering of that. He was going away from her because of the lie he believed. The truth might come to him some day, but it must never come from her. The certainty brought her a kind of rest. She could fall back on laughter and tears for the thing.
A long time they sat there, speaking little, her head still cradled on his knees. But when the fire died they knew it must be late and rose to go. Ewing looked long at the portrait, then turned to her.
"I'm doing what I would do for her," he said, "and I'm glad I had you both with me this last time. You'll always keep that for me, won't you?" He raised a hand toward the portrait.
"If you wish it," she said.
When they came in sight of the camp fire they stopped and turned to each other. He caught her by the shoulders.
"Good night and good-by!" he whispered.
She tried to speak, but could not for the trembling of her lips. She turned to go, and took a few faltering steps, then flew back, and with a wild gesture, drew him down and pressed his head against her heart.
Ben came sleepily from the cabin next morning as Ewing was about to mount his horse. He had felt at ease about this journey, because of the slender equipment with which Ewing was setting out. An early return was to be inferred.
Ewing held out his hand, and Ben, observing that it was scarce daylight, and that the act could in no way be considered a public scandal, grasped it cordially.
"So long, Kid—and good luck, whatever you're goin' to do!"
"There's a man down in New York needs killing, Ben."
"Now, look a here, Kid, you better look out"—but the practical aspects of the affair at once seized his mind, and he broke off with, "Got your gun?"
"No—a gun's too good for him."
Ben considered this, and became again solicitous.
"Well, look a here, now, you be darned careful. If it's needed, why, do it. But you jest want to remember that New York ain't Hinsdale County. You want to be mighty careful you don't git into some trouble over it."
THE zest had gone from camp life with Ewing's departure, and the cabin was again occupied. Mrs. Laithe filled the days with a sort of blind waiting. It could not end so, she felt, despite the eyes of Kitty Teevan, so watchful of her, and so certain that it had ended. Something must happen. That was the burden of her hope—as vague as a child's hope. She would set no time, nor would she name the thing. But come it must, and she could wait.
When Beulah Pierce rode by on his way from Pagosa and left their mail one afternoon, she felt no eagerness about it. There could be nothing so soon, she was sure. Virginia brought her some letters and read aloud one from the aunt at Kensington. Then Mrs. Laithe looked through her own letters and found one from Ewing. She did not open it, but rose after a few moments, and walked swiftly over to the lake camp. Only there, alone, could she trust herself.
She read the thing staringly, haltingly, testing each phrase as if it were worded in some strange tongue.
"I can tell you now what I came for," the letter ran, "because the thing will be done before this letter can reach you. It's a thing you want done, but if you had known I meant to do it you would have tried to prevent me, and that would only have distressed us both. But now, when it is all over, you will see that I was the oneperson in the world to do it for you. Think if you had killed him yourself that night, the pain you would have brought to yourself and to others. It wasn't a woman's work. I would have done it for you then, but I owed him money. I couldn't kill him till I had paid that.
"I used to dream of doing things for you always, many things, big and little, but it has turned out that I can do only this. So won't you try to believe that I am putting all my heart into it for you, all that thing I would have tried to show you if it had been scattered over the rest of our lives? I must put it all into this one act.
"Ben seemed to suspect that such affairs could be managed here with the informality that often marks them in the San Juan, but you and I know better. I cannot expect to return, nor to see you again. Yet I shall see you always; see no one else—while they let me see at all. We must take life as it falls, do the next thing without complaining, even if it is the hardest thing. And be sure of this—I shall do it so quickly that he will have no chance to tell me anything. He will not even speak your name. Afterwards you can have this to remember, that I did it gladly, knowing what the consequences would be. I hope that will be, in time, the happiness to you that it is to me. It is enough for me."
Over and over she read it, and at last she mastered it—all the horror of it. A long time she gazed dumbly at the sheets, then once more she laughed the old, low laugh, with a sinister note in it now. Ben Crider found her there an hour later, staring blankly out over the flawed surface of the lake. The breeze was swirling many finely torn bits of paper about her feet.
As they walked back to the cabin she reflected that the letter had lain four days in the postoffice at Pagosa. It had been written nine days before. Then Ewing had done the thing. She no more believed that Randall Teevan still lived than she believed that the mountains about her were phantoms. A sentence from the letter ran in her mind. "We must take life as it falls—do the next thing without complaining, even if it is the hardest thing."
"The hardest thing!"
She pleaded fatigue and lack of appetite to Virginia and sought her bed to lie and think in the dark. She saw her own hardest thing, the thing she must do.
She had caused a man to be put to death; a vicious, mischievous fool, it was true, but still a man. That was sad and horrible. But of another man, one she had thought to guard and cherish and care for in all of woman's ways—she had made a murderer, and she had murdered him. For she knew that Ewing must die. It was as if he were already dead. Perhaps out there in the agonized void of the world he had already killed himself, his work being done. Or, if not, they would kill him. She felt a blind, hollow sickness, as if her heart had broken and was bleeding away inside her. She had made her beloved a slayer and had slain him. She could not live with it. She hungered for her own death with intolerable desire.
She arose with a despair-cleared mind the next morning, her resolve made. Only the smaller details were to be worked out. She walked by the lake,resolvingthese. Once she wept, from the very abundance and color of life about her. Life was so full, and she had taken it from him in his splendid youth. But she wouldnot shirk the penalty of her blood-guiltiness. She looked out to the hills beyond the valley that fell away from the lake, studying headland and wooded slope and cañon opening, choked with green. Some spot far out there would be secret and gracious to her—welcome her with a finger on its lips—take her and keep. Death, to her, was no longer terrible. There had been a long intimacy with it. She rushed to the idea of it as to a home—a benignant succor from the unendurable thought.
Back in the cabin she lay counting the minutes as they rushed—thinking and counting. She must not let herself be prisoned by a mere body that exulted blindly, basely, in its vigor. She could make everything right. She could conform to the law of a life for a life.
"The hardest thing," she murmured. "I must do the hardest thing." That would be her expiation, though not a sufficing one; she recognized that. She longed for it too avidly, for the relief from thought, from torturing visions. Yet it was formally perfect as a punishment, according to the world's standards. She would be her own executioner, and it would satisfy the world if the world knew. And despite her longing for release, it was still, she thought, the hardest thing, although it saved—saved her from that old man and that young man slain: that young beloved one, lying dead with blood upon his hands. Poor sacrificed, poor betrayed, poor ruined one! Again, the hollow sickness, as if her heart were bleeding away inside her. To expiate—to do the hardest thing. She came back to that always. It was the hardest thing, although it saved.
When her brother rode up in the afternoon, she instantly saw her plan completed. There came an hour in which she walked and talked and laughed in a waking dream,without sensation, except as she could imagine it felt by a creature she seemed to watch from afar, a creature who had looked strangely like herself. She saw this woman greet the others and sit at table with them to laugh and talk with acceptable ease. Their voices were soundless as voices in a dream, their shapes and flittings as illogical. So benumbed was her spirit that she suffered little even at the moment of hurried parting from Virginia. Her rôle was played with flawless detachment. She studied herself coolly and guarded against wrong speeches.
"I shall go home with Clarence; I haven't seen that magnificent ranch yet," she remarked carelessly, and Virginia and her brother had applauded this.
"I'll show you a ranch that is a ranch," Bartell had answered.
Ben led Cooney around, saddled. She kissed Virginia lightly and was on the little horse. She turned to wave gayly as she fell in ahead of Bartell on the trail to the lake.
The moon had sailed up over the eastern hills with the going down of the sun, and the shadows were sharply cut in its light. They reined in at the lake, lingering there a moment in its charm. Under the slanting moon rays it shone like another moon, radiantly silver in its setting of cloudlike leafage. She drew a long breath as her brother started on, and called to him.
"Clarence!" He pulled up his horse, looking back at her.
"You'll think me absurd, but I've decided not to go with you, after all. I believe I'd rather stay with Virginia. She'll be lonesome."
He came back to her, scolding whimsically.
"I know I'm foolish," she persisted, "but you're so dreadfully busy and noisy over there."
"Nonsense! And Virgie will be all right. She doesn't need you for a few days."
"I'm sure she'll need me. No—go on alone, there's a dear. I can ride over myself and bring you back for a few days, after your rush is over."
"Well, if you're really set." He submitted, grumbling.
"And kiss me, dear!"
He did so, still grumbling. "And you skip back, if you're going back. You're cold as ice. So long, weathervane! And come over when you feel like it."
"I'll be warm, dear—and good-by."
She watched him down the slope and across the meadow until he vanished into the black of the forest wall. Then she rode on to the camp. Without dismounting she took from the end of a broken branch a revolver in its holster that she had hung there earlier in the day. She made sure again that it was loaded and buckled the holster about her waist.
Turning from the ranch trail, then, she found another that led off to the north and away from the Pagosa road—off into a wooded wilderness of hills where she would be safe from discovery. She halted again on the first ridge above the camp, sitting motionless in the shadow, her eyes on the little moon-flooded opening across the lake where the cabin trail came down to the shore. That was a walk for lovers, but they could not walk there now. After a little time she whirled Cooney about in a sudden gust of fierceness and sent him along the winding ridge, keeping close within the shadow.
When the trail fell away into the first of the unknown valleys she breathed a sigh of relief and release. Her burden was falling from her. She could not again be cheated back from her refuge.
She began to rejoice in the wide, wild sweetness of the night, its piny fragrance, the soft-footed scurryings of its lesser people, the gloom of its sharply defined shadows, and the silvering haze that enveloped the peaks. She came on a deer feeding in the open, and was delighted when it did not run. It only lifted its head to look at her.
She began to rejoice, also, in the cleverness of her plan. As well as she might she had preserved the decencies. A week might ensue before they missed her. Cooney, stripped of his trappings, would appear at the lake cabin, to be laughed at and chided for his desertion of the Bar-B ranch, a week before she was missed; and then she would never be found. There was, indeed, small chance of their having the pain of that. She would keep to the trail as long as the night hid her; then a climb up some unpathed slope, over rocks that would show no trace of her passage; then a tangled thicket, remote, secret, improbable—and the tale of a lost woman, a woman who wandered confusingly far on a night of tempting splendor. She thought of Virginia's pain with a feeble pity. It seemed as if humanity was dead in her.
The narrow trail wound beckoningly before her, the land stretched off to peaks of silver or barren gray slopes or shadowed promontories, glooming above ravines where little rivers turned restlessly in their beds; and over all hung the mystic shimmer of moon rays, softening all angles and picking the fronds of trees with dancing lights as she passed.
An owl boomed from a dead pine, and a little off the trail she heard the scream of a cougar, like the scream of a woman in some strange terror. But all sounds were indifferently alike to her, the shrilling of the beast, thesibilance of running water, the bellow of the owl, the whistle of a deer, or the throaty mutterings of an awakened bird. She heard them as receding echoes of a life already remote.
She kept Cooney moving as rapidly as the trail permitted, checking his little snatches at the wayside herbage. He could fast with her for one night, she told him. To-morrow he could feast his way home harassed by no rider. He stopped at times to test some doubtful bit of trail with a cautious forefoot; or slowed to feel a sure way down a gullyside of loose stones; or lingered knee deep in a melody of swift water, to drink, with swelling sides. She was glad to have this last night with the little horse that had been Ewing's. Ewing—only not to think of him—for one cannot ride with the heart all bled away.
The light faded from the lower ways after a while. The moon had completed its short arc and fell below the mountain ahead of her; defining sharp little notches in its rim.
The hills seemed to steal upon her in the darkness then, huddling close about her, muffling her with their black plumage. But she was glad of this—surmounting the mere physical oppression of it—for she felt that it doubled the secrecy of her going; and Cooney's eyes, with his skilled feet, sufficed for the trail.
At times she shrank as under the touch of a palpable hand reached out to her from the darkness, a thing that frantically protested, pleaded, expostulated—but she knew it for the hand of mere brute life, a cowardly, blind, soulless thing, that would subvert all fitness. She shook it off, knowing herself its superior by right of mind, with power to inflict justice upon it. Andhewas dead, he, the young and strong—alas, poor slayer, poor slain! How her heart bled away. To expiate——
She clung to that: it was an obligation that lay on her, a secret obligation, but the more imperative for that. She could not hold a forfeited life. She must redeem herself. The hardest thing was demanded of her. And then, one could not go on with this bleeding heart.
"The hardest thing—the hardest thing!" she murmured, shutting her lips tightly on the words, with a sudden inexplicable fear of some flaw in her logic. Again and again she forced the words from her lips with stubborn, deaf insistence, to still some mental voice of inquiry, a passionless, cold thing that lifted itself in her brain, but which she could beat down with this bludgeon of her phrase. She was even bold enough to cross-examine herself presently. The hardest thing was demanded of her, and she was doing the hardest thing. Her hand fell on the laden holster at her side with a panic impulse to rush the thing through. But the touch reassured her and she laughed in the consciousness of her security. She could not be thwarted now, and she need not hurry. She could afford to the very end that deliberate thoroughness with which she had begun. Her will for the thing had lost none of its iron.
An hour or so after the darkness had crowded the hills in upon her she rode into a dense mist, chilling to the bone after the dryness of the early night. The range of her vision was again shortened, and even the little horse halted more frequently to feel his way. Once he seemed to have wandered, and stood a moment in uncertainty. She let him rest, then flicked his shoulder with the bridle rein, and he struggled stanchly on over the ridge of loose gravel where he had halted, feelingfor the trail with expert hoofs. He found it a moment later, and was moving forward again. She patted his neck and blessed him for being so "trail wise." He, too, was doing the hardest thing, and doing it faithfully.
She fell again into the rhythm of her battle cry—"The hardest thing—the hardest thing!"
And yet it was not hard. She was so near to it now that she could afford the luxury of this admission. It required only a sense of justice, of moral symmetry. She had taken a life—two, doubtless—and by the law she must pay. But no debtor could have had a willinger spirit. And she would not be paying too much. She recalled certain homely words of an old man whose life she had watched out, a man whose worn, seamed face showed his right to speak.
"Experience, lady, a dear thing sometimes—yes—but never too dear. It is worth always just what we pay for it. It is had at slightest cost, high or low. No other thing is like it thus. All else of the world may cheat us in their price, but not experience. Our fee shall vary as we are quick to learn, but the good God teaches us what we must know at flat cost, as says the merchant, with never the penny of profit. This it saves much to know—much sorrowing, much whining. It would make us wise—so!"
"So!" She echoed his rich guttural imitatively and laughed as she drew in a deep breath of the damp air. She was numb with the cold now, and laughed at foolish life for registering so petty a discomfort at such a moment. The humor of it came home to her—that she should sensually feel the cold.
Another span of hours the little horse strode on at his quick step, valiantly lifting her up steep ascents,or descending the sides of ravines with devoted sureness of foot, treading narrow ways where she could feel that he hugged the bush-lined bank, and knew that a fall lay the other side.
"The hardest thing—the hardest thing!" Again she muttered it, beating at her purpose. And again, that mental, passionless query lifted its head. Strike it down as she would, its cool, curious eyes were always on her, not denying, not disputing, only questioning, calmly but implacably, until her soul seemed to writhe in loyalty to her motives, holding them sacred even from questioning.
"The hardest thing"—but her brain rang with the relentless question—"are you doing it because it is the hardest thing or because you want to do it?"
"I am doing it because I want to do the hardest thing."
"A quibble!"
She set her lips, shut her eyes, even to the darkness, and tried to deafen her ears to the sounding thing. A long time she rode so. And then she wept because she was alone and cold and dying and unsuccored by the only one who could have comforted her.
"I would never, never have leftyou!" she called back toward Ewing, with the first reproach she had ever given him. Her voice had a broken sweetness like that of a child speaking through tears. "I'd never have let you be so cold! I'd have stayed—stayed by you—warmed you—comforted you!"
But after a little her tears ceased, as an unpitied child wears out its crying, and her eyes closed again as she laughed at her own sad lack of reason.
When she opened her eyes again she gave a littlegasping cry of relief. The black of the night had faded to gray. A dull, dark, opaque gray it was, but ghosts of the land already bulked massively through it; shrouded, vague shapes without line. And the spirit of her purpose quickened as she looked.
Slowly the mist lightened, still opaque but silver now, and presently she saw the murky face of a nearby rock and could trace the cedar that twisted outward from its summit. They were amazing shapes to her, so long had she seemed to live in the dark, and she named them over, wonderingly—"A tree, a rock—a rock, a tree!"
Again the question struck at her: "You want to do the hardest thing?"
"Imustdo the hardest thing—it only happens that I also wish to."
"Is there nothing harder than what you are doing?"
Again she shut her eyes and set her lips, but the voice came with merciless insistence.
"Whatwould be harder than dying?"
Then she threw back her head and challenged the voice.
"Living!To live would be harder." She made the confession without flinching, even with a laugh, and a weight dropped from her.
"Then you are not doing the hardest thing—not doing it—not doing the hardest thing!"
She coolly scanned the descending bed of a creek that the trail now crossed. The ravine widened below, and she saw that an ascent would be practicable farther down. It was time, then, to leave the trail. If the impossible should happen, if by some chance or trick of woodcraft they tracked her all the miles of her night-long ride, they must lose her here.
She turned Cooney down the shallow stream with a furtive smile of pride in her own craft. He splashed through the water, stumbling over the submerged bowlders, but always recovering himself, and picking a sure way over the creek bed.
The cool gray of the mist-steaming water reminded her that she was thirsty, but she would stop for nothing now. She knew herself for a coward at last, guilty of a cowardice hideously selfish. She had planned her act to be remote, secret, undiscoverable. But now she faced squarely the grief her loss would be to others.
But the sting would pass. And she had her own right—her own obligation to meet. She had killed—she had killed her love—and she could not live. There was service she might have performed through the years, but others would perform it now, quite as acceptably. A gnat dropping from the ephemeral human swarm could be nothing but a gnat the less. She no longer pretended to call it the hardest thing. "But it's the next hardest," she pleaded to herself. Her lips quivered, but she stilled the spasm with a gust of fierce resolving to be done with the thing quickly.
The shelving bank along which the stream had wound now fell away, and she could dimly make out a draw between two hills where she might ascend. She chose a place of broken stone and loose gravel for Cooney to clamber out, so that he might leave no sign even to a searcher who had come this far. Then, ascending the draw a little distance, she turned and sent him up the side of the lesser hill. The mist still shut her in, but she could make out that the woods were denser on this hill.
Cooney made his way through a growth of the thick,wet buck brush, then between white files of the quaking aspen, and at last into the heavier wooded forest where his feet slipped and slid on the yielding pine needles as he climbed. The hill lengthened before her in gradual ascents, broken by terraces, and the way was rough with bowlders and fallen trees and the clutching tangle of undergrowth. But the mist, receding before her, revealed aisles of the wood farther on that allured her. She would be thorough. Ahead of her were ruddy, yellow hints of the sun, striking down through the green arches of the forest.
At last she saw that she had reached the summit of the hill. "It is the place," she said, then reined in and dismounted by a clump of bushes. She found herself stiffened by the cold, and a sudden fear of failing force seized her. She stamped on the ground until she felt warmth in her feet again, and the stirred blood mounting through her. She drew a great breath and straightened her body with a consciousness of its strength and wealth of life. "It is the place," she repeated.
IN a dingy little bedroom of a dingy little hotel in one of the lesser avenues of New York Ewing sat waiting for his hour. He had sealed his letter to Mrs. Laithe with the feeling that this was the last intelligible word he could say to anyone. Henceforth he must be silent; refuse reasons. He must let them devise reasons for him. Any but the true reason would suffice.
When darkness came on he went out into the noisy street, mailing the letter as he passed through the hotel office. Then, by unfamiliar thoroughfares he made his way to Ninth Street and resumed his old vigil in front of Teevan's house.
There were lights in the house, both above and below. The thing was not, then, to be attempted at the moment. He walked for an hour through squalid streets to the west and came back to his post. The house was still alight. Teevan, apparently, was entertaining. He watched but a moment, then returned to his hotel and went to bed. He could be patient, and he must be thorough. Before extinguishing his light he made sure that he had not lost what was now his most important possession: a key to Teevan's door. Teevan had bestowed it on him the year before, in order that he might obtain books during the little man's absence from town. Ewing had forgotten the key until he set on his present mission; then he had perceived a use for it.
He fell asleep, despite the recurrent tumult of elevatedtrains outside his window; fell asleep thinking of Teevan. There was no bitterness in his heart toward the little man. It was only necessary that he die.
He kept closely to his room the next day, wishing not to be recognized by any of his acquaintances, and he was at his post early in the evening. This time the house was dark. Teevan was out, but he would return. So he paced back and forth through Ninth Street, going only so far as would let him keep the house in view. He felt no impatience. It was his last work, and he could bide the time when it might be well done. A little after midnight two men entered the street from Fifth Avenue, strolling leisurely in the warm June night, and ascended the steps of the Teevan house. Ewing felt a slight tingling of relief when he recognized Teevan, but then he saw the other take a key from his pocket, and he knew that this would be Teevan's son. They went in together, and the watcher left his post. He must have Teevan alone in the house.
He walked on with strange echoes from another time—from another world, it seemed, sounding in his ears. The sight of Teevan, the tones of his voice, faintly heard, seemed to awaken him from some dream in which he walked, awaken him to a time when the little man was his good friend. He felt a sudden nausea, but then he raised his eyes to the Bartell house opposite and was himself again. He crossed the street and stood a moment before the door, seeing his lady there, seeing her again as he had seen her that night in Teevan's grasp, striving with Teevan, weakly, but with the killing light in her eyes. The vision convinced him. The other time had been the time of dream. He had not been awake until now.
Again he slept and again he passed a day of waiting. That night there were no lights in the house, but also no returning master, though he waited until the night was far on. Yet he went to sleep in all patience, knowing he had only to wait.
On the fourth night there were lights again, but about ten o'clock he saw Teevan's two servants leave. He walked on, to avoid recognition by them. When he returned a man was leaving the house. He thought this might be Teevan, but when the figure had descended the steps and passed under the street lamp he saw it to be Teevan's son. Still he waited. He must be sure.
After half an hour the lights in the lower part of the house went out, save one that shone dimly through the fanlight over the door. A moment later two windows on the floor above leaped ruddily into view and he saw a shadow pass across them. This was Teevan's room, and Teevan was doubtless there, alone at last.
He did not cross the street directly, but walked east to the end of the block and came back on the other side. As he passed the Bartell house he opened and closed his hands tensely, recalling Ben's suggestion about a weapon. His bare hands were sufficing weapons.
He went up the steps and softly turned his key in the lock. The door yielded noiselessly to his push and he was in the hall. Unconsciously he took off his hat and was about to leave it, but then he smiled and replaced it firmly on his head. He stood listening a moment. There was no sound. Then, very slowly, taking each step with caution, he mounted the thickly carpeted stairs.
So intent was he on his purpose that he felt no anxiety, no excitement. As he halted at the head of the stairsto listen again, he thrilled only with the need for perfect silence, a thing he would have felt in the same degree if his quarry had been a deer in some green cover of the hills. Still without a sound he felt his way to the door of Teevan's room. The door was open and light from it glowed dimly into the hall. He paused within the shadow and peered into the room. He could see the desk but not the man who sat before it. Of him he could see only an arm and hand—writing at the moment. Presently the hand dropped its pen and took up a tall glass that stood near. The glass ascended and passed beyond the watcher's range of vision. The hand brought it back, empty, a moment later, and resumed the pen once more.
He took a step forward and brought the room into view. Teevan sat at the desk, his head bent and half turned away. Ewing coolly noted his position. He seemed smaller than ever, smaller and older. But now no time must be wasted.
Ewing stepped through the doorway with noiseless tread and took one long step toward the desk. Teevan turned his head and looked up. His eyes rested on Ewing, at first vacantly, his mind still busied with the matter of his writing. Ewing thrilled with a sudden alertness, his purpose growing in his eyes, his hands tensely closing and unclosing. Teevan started back from the desk, conscious now of the intruder's menace. Yet such was the cool fixedness of Ewing's gaze, the hypnotic tenseness of his crouch, that the little man made no sound; only stared as one under a spell, the pen still held in his poised hand.
Only when the crouching figure leaped toward him did his lips open. But then, what would have been acry of terror became a mere gurgling snarl, for Ewing's hands had met about his throat with unerring deftness. Teevan was half-raised from the chair, his head was forced back, and for an instant his eyes met Ewing's in full consciousness. Then his mouth opened wide, but not for speech, and his eyes rolled in the agony of that choking grip. Ewing felt the thing writhe in his clutch, then felt a sudden terrible relaxation, and his pressure ceased in unthinking response to this. He stood a moment, holding the limp form, then dropped it in the chair, feeling himself sicken at the sheer physical horror of what he was doing. There was no pity for Teevan—only for the animal that suffered. He had had to kill a dog once and his loathing of that deed was like this. Teevan's head lay over on his shoulder, his face distorted and purple, his eyes upturned and fixed in a hideous stare. The fine little hands hung limply down.
At the moment Ewing believed his task was done, but then he was dismayed by a gasping, indrawn breath and the convulsive shuddering of Teevan's chest. The little man was breathing again, though still unconscious. The dog had shown this same horrible tenacity. He must do the thing all over again. He bent over the figure, again fixing his grip nicely at the throat. He would make sure this time. Then nerving himself to exert the needed pressure, he turned his eyes away—he could not look at the face in its death agony—turned his eyes away and found himself staring stupidly at Alden Teevan, who stood inside the door. They gazed at each other a moment until Ewing had appraised the significance of this interruption. It meant only that he would be swiftly apprehended, for he knew thatAlden Teevan could not save his father. He had not changed his position, still bending over the little man, still fingering his throat. He was conscious of an increase in his purpose; this hint of opposition would enable him to kill Teevan with a better spirit. He spoke and his voice was only a little hoarse under the strain.
"I'm killing your father. I don't want to hurt you, but you mustn't try to stop me. If you do, by God! I'll kill both of you. If you keep away I'll go with you after I've done it. I promise that."
He turned again to the livid face beneath him. But the younger Teevan called sharply to him, though with only irritation in his voice:
"Stop! Don't be an ass! You're making an ass of yourself!"
Ewing only stared at him. The other came a step nearer in his eagerness.
"You'll be sorry if you don't listen to me. You're a fool, I tell you."
Ewing smiled confidently, bitterly, not relaxing his hold of the little man's throat.
"I'm not doing it for myself."
"All the more fool!"
"For some one who couldn't do it—who has reason to do it."
The other came nearer, clutching Ewing's sleeve with gentle persuasion and speaking with quick intensity.
"Ah, so that's it—she never told you! But you're a fool. She had no reason—she was merely trying to save you from the truth about your mother, and she has let you believe his lies about herself. What a rotten fool you were to think that contemptible little mucker could ever have been anything to her. He lied to you,do you hear me? Lied to you about her, and she let you believe it—a fool herself for doing that—so you wouldn't know the truth about your own mother."
Slowly Ewing unclasped his hands from the throat of Teevan and stood facing the son. Two phrases rang in his ears: "He lied to you about her—the truth about your mother." He put up a hand to loosen his collar. It seemed now as if he himself were being choked.
"The truth about my mother—whattruth about my mother?"
"Sit down there."
"Whattruth about my mother?"
"Come—get hold of yourself. The truth that your mother happened to be my mother."
Ewing passed a hand over his face, as if to awaken himself from some trance in which he had moved.
"Sit down there."
He felt for a chair now and sank awkwardly into it, repeating dazedly:
"My mother was your mother—" He could get no meaning from the words. The other answered sharply:
"Your mother married my father. She left him for your father when I was a baby. Do you understand that? Mrs. Laithe knew it. He knew it—" He pointed toward the limp but breathing figure in the chair—"and she was afraid he would tell you."
He tried to take it in.
"My mother—his wife? Ah—you—you are my brother."
"That's beside the point; but if it means anything to you, listen to me—try to understand."
Again and again he told the thing point by point, as simply as he could, while his listener stared curiouslyat him. The figure in the chair stirred, the head rolled, the breathing became quieter and more even, but neither gave any heed to this.
At last the incredible thing began to shape itself in Ewing's mind, but it was not until the very last, and then it came as a sudden blinding illumination. The man in the chair drew a long, shuddering breath and opened his eyes on them. Ewing at the same moment caught the full force of the little man's deceit. He had felt no anger toward Teevan before, but now rage grew within him as he remembered what the woman had suffered. He sprang toward Teevan, feeling no longer a specific desire to kill, but only a mad impulse to beat down and blindly destroy.
"You lied about her!" he cried, towering above the little man with clenched, threatening fists. If Teevan had retorted, had raised a hand, or betrayed anything but abject fear, shrinking in his chair, turning eyes of appeal to his son, Ewing would have vented his rage. But this died into mere loathing as he looked. Teevan was near to whimpering, in his fear. Ewing turned away with a gesture ofrepulsion.
"That's best, after all," remarked the son coolly.
"Doubtless he deserves kicking more than any unkicked man alive, but you'll be glad you didn't do it."
Ewing shot another look at Teevan, and then said, almost as if to himself.
"How wise my mother was!" He turned again to the little man with a sudden blaze of scorn.
"And you believed I could think less of her for leaving you—leaving you for aman!" Teevan merely closed his eyes and cautiously raised a hand to his neck.
"You'll be glad you let him off," repeated the son, "and so will she. She wouldn't have you——"
"Ah—she!" It was a cry of remembrance. "Why—she's—" He broke off, glowing with a strange illumination. "Why, I left her——"
A moment longer he stood, like a sleeper wakened, then rushed from the room.
WHEN she again felt sure of her strength she began to unsaddle Cooney. The cinches bothered her stiffened fingers, but she had them worked loose at last, and lifted the heavy saddle off, smiling grimly at her own strength. When she took off the blanket she warmed her hands a moment in its heat. Then she stripped off the bridle, and the little horse, after a moment's mouthing to rest his jaws from the bit, fell to grazing. As he seemed inclined to stay by her, she broke a switch from one of the nearby bushes and cut him sharply. Even after this he galloped off but a little way, with astonished, resentful shakings of his head. She had wanted him to be on his way back over the miles he had come before the thing was done.
She glanced shrewdly about her. She was far away from the cabin, a night's ride at Cooney's best trail pace, and in a region rough and untraveled, except as an occasional way to the lower valleys. There were no trails about her, no dead camp fires, no trees rimmed by the axe or scarred by a "blaze." There was life enough of a sort; jays called harshly, and squirrels barked their alarm; and half a dozen grouse eyed her from a few yards' distance, with a sort of half-timid stupidity. But there was no life to touch hers. She walked about the chosen thicket, admiring its denseness, not notablein any way, but casual, improbable to the searching eye.
"The hardest thing!" It was satire now, and she murmured it as such, done with all fighting. It was good to anticipate the thing, the restfulness of extinction—or not, as that might be. That was no matter. She was beaten in this life. It was good to know that in a moment she would feel as little as Randall Teevan—or as much. She unconsciously drew herself up at the thought of facing that withered fop.
She rejoiced in the warming air. She would take a long breath of it, and then the triumphant exit. She stepped a few paces forward to peer about a low-growing spruce that had shaded her. She had a last fancy for following the echo of her shot to the farther valley wall.
As she lifted the curtain boughs the sun dazzled her. She would see its golden points, she thought, when she shut her eyes in the thicket. She shut them quickly now, to prove this, and saw the myriad dancing lights.
As she opened her eyes again and turned to draw back into the wood there was imprinted curiously on her recovering vision a silhouette of the lake cabin. She shut them quickly again, dreading memories she was forever done with, and laughing in the certainty that the cabin was miles away. Then she looked again, blinking dazedly in the sunlight, and the cabin loomed before her across the clearing.
As she stared desperately, her mind roused to frantic denials, her eyes straining to banish this monstrous figment, the door of the cabin opened and Ewing came out. She sprang forward with an impulse to shatter the illusion by some quick movement. But her eyes still beheld him, bareheaded, turning his face up to thesun. He stretched his arms and drew deep breaths. He had never seemed so tall. His look had a kind of triumph in it.
She swayed under the shock of the thing, feeling herself grow faint. Cooney had betrayed her. Some time in the night, at one of those confusing bends in the trail, he had turned. He had brought her home.
Ewing's head had turned as she moved; his eyes were on her. She saw the rapt gladness in his face and beheld him approach her across the clearing. She managed another step or two and gained the support of a felled tree. As Ewing came up she essayed a little smile of nonchalance.
"Cooney—" she begun. The word came itself, but she felt easier under the sound of her own voice and went on—"Cooney came with me. I didn't go at all. I rode—but you see—" She beamed on him with explanatory embarrassment—"I took an early morning ride—it was so pleasant—and I thought I was lost—indeed I did, and I took off his saddle. I left it right there—" She pointed with the literal exactness of a child in its narrative of adventure—"right there behind that tree, and then I found I was—found I was closer to home than I thought."
He had not seemed to hear her, but stood looking narrowly, as if she were still far away. Gradually his eyes widened, as if he were drawing her close to him. He took a step toward her, with arms half raised.
"I'm so ashamed—" he muttered; "but you—you let me think that."
His voice brought her to sudden agonized alarm. The blood ebbed from her face and she almost staggered toward him.
"Did you do it—dothat?" she whispered, ready to fall.
"No; I found out in time. I found out everything—everything you didn't tell me." He was shaken with longing, yet shamed into restraint before her.
"I'm so ashamed—I came as soon as I could to tell you. I rode all night to be here, to tell you as soon as I could."
"You didn't do it—you didn't do it?" she insisted pitifully.
"I stopped in time." She muttered this over and over, and at last the truth struggled into her chilled brain.
"You dear, dear fool!" she said with a little sobbing laugh.
Again his arms were half raised to her, but she turned swiftly and ran to Cooney, who had fallen to grazing a little way off, throwing her arms about his neck and weeping out incoherent words of endearment.
Ewing gathered his strength, like a wrestler who has been pressed to the ground, but lifts himself with infinite effort, and went resolutely toward her. Gently he unclasped her arms from Cooney's neck.