"Good luck and God speed," she said without looking up; and she turned without once looking back, and walked up the slab steps of the rustic entrance to the ranch house.
Don't wait for Mr. Matthews and me. We are setting out on the Long Trail. It is the Long Trail this Nation will have to travel before Democracy arrives. It is the Trail of the Man behind the Thing; and we'll not quit till we get him. You remember what our old visitor said about "splitting the air to get somewhere." We are going to quit "sawing the air" and "split it to get somewhere." We are going to set out after the Man; the little codger first, as a foot print on the Long Trail to the lair of the Man Higher Up.
You cannot stab a lot of things to life as you did last night and the night before, and then expect them to lie quiet and be the same. You have sent me forth on the Long Trail, Eleanor; and I shall hunt the better because you have stabbed me alive and will never let me go to sleep again. I thank you; and yet, I can't thank you, mineAlder Liefest—look up and see what that means in old Saxon—Yours in Life and Death and Always and Out Beyond.
Dick.
I have ordered a wreath from Smelter City for Fordie. Find it hard to stop writing and go from you; but the darned old Mountain doesn't look the same; it's all draped out in such "dam-phool 'appiness" that I am glad in the shadow of Death.
Dick. (2nd)
Don't forget every day dawn and sunset, I come to renew the Seal. Ever study Algebra in college? Then look up what this means.
Dick. (nth)
And because she had graduated from girl to woman between sunset and daydawn of that Death Watch, she kissed the last signature, right in the midst of the German cook's dishes, set all higgeldy-piggeldy on the oilcloth top instead of the linen cover, owing to the distraction of the night's tragedy. It was his first love letter; and because it was his first, he did not know it was a love letter. He had written it on the pages of a field note book. On the reverse side, were figures of triangulations and scaled timbers, which Eleanor fingered lovingly because the dumb signs seemed to connect her life with his before—before what? Ask those who know!
The note was lying at her breakfast place when she came out from a sleepless night, a night that seemed to pass swinging between the gates of Life and the gates of Death, with phantoms on the trail between, of Love so terrible its glory blinded her, of Crime so dark its shadow obscured her faith in God. For hours, she had lain quivering to the consciousness of that moment when Life leaped up to meet and blend with Life in Love. For hours, she had lain quivering to the consciousness of Crime stalking satyr-faced amid the shadows of Life, Greed and Murder and Lust, hiding beneath suave words, behind conventionality, draped in all the broad phalacteries of law, ready to leap fanged at the throat of Innocence in a Land of Let-Alone; and she emerged from the conflict of these two forces no longer what would be called a Christian, no longer a Quiescent, no longer a Let Alone. She emerged knowing that Democracy must become a joke, and Christianity the laughing stock of the ages, unless Right could be made over into Might.
Then, she found the Ranger's note at her late breakfast—it was a shockingly late breakfast, it was after the noon hour—the note saying that he had set out on the Long Trail that the Nation must travel, the trail of the Man behind the Thing, the Man Higher Up. It was as it had been from the first with him, the meeting half-way of their thoughts from different beginnings; and she kissed the signature with a gesture that played havoc with the breakfast dishes and sent Calamity snivelling and muttering from the kitchen. The ignorant half-breed's knowledge of life among the miners of the Black Hills and the shingle men of the Bitter Boot saw-mills didn't admit explanations of love that kissed signatures and impelled tears.
And yet while revolution convulsed two souls you could have gone from end to end of the Valley that week or to every cabin on the Homestead Claim of the Ridge and not heard a living soul speak one word of the tragedy on the Rim Rocks. Were they moral cowards? I don't think so. Wasn't it more of that spirit of Let Alone? If you had mentioned the terrible episode to a casual settler, he would have given you a blank look and remarked "that he hadn't heard."
The story set down here, I could not myself have learned if a chance ramble over the foot hills of the Rim Rocks had not led one day to a solitary little grave, surrounded by a picket fence marked by the figure of a kneeling child carved in rough sand stone. As the guest of the Mission School, I made the mistake of asking the mother, herself, whose grave that was. Women, who are neither politicians nor politic, have a plain way of uttering harsh facts. She did not speak about the author of her boy's death in soft words, that little white haired mother. She used a term oftener heard in the purlieus of criminal courts. "To think," she exclaimed bitterly, "to think that Fordie, descended from generations of Williams who have pioneered and fought for and built up this country since ever the first Williams landed in Boston in 1666, was done to death by this murderer, this truckster, this political trickster, this outcast from the European gutters, this huckster of lazaretto morals and bawd houses, who is overturning our Nation with his oiled villainies and peddler ways! No, we have never taken Government aid and we never shall! I like to know that my Indian girls are safe." What more she added, I do not relate; for an angered mother has a way of uttering terrible truths.
To-day, if you visit that grave on the crest of the saddle back, you will find it flanked by two others, a man's on one side with the figure of a trader carved in sandstone by the Indians; on the other, old Calamity's with a plain granite slab; though I have heard strict people say her body ought not to have been laid there because of the vagrant character of her early life.
Indian boys from the school had shaped the coffin and carved the figure for the stone. A girlish teacher read the Church Services for the dead; and the children's voices rose a thin tremulous treble in the funeral hymn around the grave. Wild flowers covered the casket, pearl everlasting and the wind flower and the white Canada violet and the painter's brush vari-colored as a flame; and a wreath had come up from Smelter City.
Sights and sounds that have been a setting for sorrow, haunt the mind. After that day, Eleanor could never hear the hammer of the woodpecker, the lone cry of circling hawk, the whistling of the solitary mountain marmot, without hearing also the thin treble of the Indian pupils breaking and silencing on that funeral hymn till only the mother's voice sang clarion to the end. She heard the low melting trill of the blue bird and the wrangling rasp of the jay—true and counterfeit, peace and discord—had God put right and wrong in the world for the friction of the conflict between, to develop souls? Had one been set over against the other, like light and shadow, to train the spiritual eye to know?
Then, the Indian boys began to lower the casket. One young pall bearer faltered and slipped his hold; it was the little white haired mother's hand steadied the rope that lowered, and slowly lowered, out of sight for ever. Then one of the girl teachers dropped in a great bunch of mountain laurel. Eleanor succeeded in leading the mother away.
Were the amethyst portals still ajar to the infinite life; or did the shadow of the Cross, of the time-old ever-recurring crucifixion, darken the vista of a glad future? The Indian children filed in through the gate of the Mission school. At the gate, the mother looked up the Saddle back. She had no time for the pampered luxury of self conscious grief. She had directed the making of the coffin and the carving of the sandstone and had led the funeral hymn to the end; but now she looked back. Ashes of roses across the sky, creeping phantom shadows, and in her heart, the sombre presence of the after-desolation which neither faith nor fortitude casts out. She would go to sleep dull with the woe of it and dream depressed of its loneliness, to waken heavy with the memory. Then, by and by, would come the peace that the dead send, which is not forgetfulness. But now she looked back, looked back with the wrench that was the tearing of flesh and spirit asunder. Above the new-made grave, across those topaz sunset gates, stood the figure of the native woman, shawl thrown from her head reaving the long black hair; and from the hill crest came such a long low cry as might have been a ghost echo of all the age-old world sorrows. Eleanor felt the quick twitch on her arm. Without a word, without a tear, the boy's mother had fainted.
"We ought to have looked out for that," explained one of the girl teachers from the school. "We ought to have left Calamity home. She has always done that since they took her child away."
"Had she a child?" asked Eleanor.
"Yes; and they took it away when she went insane."
Eleanor slept with the leaves of the field-book under her pillow that night; but she slept the heavy dreamless sleep of baffled hope.
If you think the Senator had had anything to do with the terrible events of the Rim Rocks, you are jumping to conclusions and must surely have failed to follow the activities of Mr. Bat Brydges the morning after the tragedy.
The first newspaper office that the handy man visited was owned by the Senator. That was easy. Bat went into the reporters' long room where the typewriters usually clicked. This morning they were silent. The men were out on their assignments. The news editor was taking a message over the telephone. Bat sat down on the table and waited. The news editor was thin-faced and nervous and alert and immaculately groomed. Bat was round-faced and sleepy-eyed—tortoise-shell eyes—and all that prevented his suit from looking positively slovenly was that his own ample avoirdupois filled every wrinkle.
The news editor adjusted his glasses to his nose and answered, "Yes,Yes," impatiently over the telephone.
"It's a parson," he explained with an irritable snap of his black eyes towards Bat.
Bat smiled sleepily. "Thinks you're hungering and thirsting for news of his flock, does he?"
"No, blank it," snapped the news editor.
"It's another kind of flock that's worrying us this morning."
Bat's smile faded to a sly haze in his sleepy eyes.
"What has the old boy got to say?"
"How do you know he is old?" snapped the news editor.
Bat didn't volunteer on that point.
"Ask him what his name is," suggested Brydges.
"What did you say the name was? Matthews—Matthews—is that it? Wait, please!" The news-editor put his hand over the mouth piece of the telephone.
"Know anything about him, Bat?"
"I should say I do! Choke it off! He's staying with Missionary Williams at the Indian School, and you know about how much love is lost between Williams and Moyese."
"But we can't possibly suppress this, Bat. It will be all over the country."
"Better see whose ox is gored," advised Brydges.
"But we've got to get this, Brydges! The stage driver's told one of my men, already! Every bar-room buffer in the country side will know it by night."
"Then you had better get it straight," advised Bat.
The news-man looked in space through eyes narrowed to an arrow. Bat watched sleepily. "If we choke this old chap's account off, can you give one to us?"
"Got it in my pocket! I've just come in on the stage!"
"I thought you came down in a motor with the Senator? Didn't he take the morning limited for Washington?"
"Well, the darn thing broke down so often it was bad as the stage.Anyway, I've got the story for you—"
"Senator O. K. it?" The news-man hung the telephone receiver up, still keeping his hand over the mouth piece.
"Lord, no!" Bat slid off the table, tore the sheets from his note book and handed the story of the Rim Rocks across to the editor.
"What do you take the Senator for? He knows nothing about it; but it's in his constituency, and I guess his own paper should see that the account which goes in is straight."
The news-editor hoisted his foot to the seat of a chair and stood racing his eyes through sheet after sheet of Brydges's copy. Bat lighted a cigar, put his hands in his pockets and pivoted on his heels. There was the squeak, squeak, squeak of a child's new boots coming up the first flight of stairs; and a squeak, squeak, squeak up the second flight of stairs; and a little girl, not twelve years old, resplendent in such tawdry finery as might have stepped out of an East End London pawn shop, presented herself framed in the doorway of the reporter's room. She plainly belonged to the immigrant section of Smelter City. The news-editor never took his eyes from Bat's copy. They were eyes made for drilling holes into the motives behind facts. Bat emitted a whistle that was a laugh.
"Hullo," he said. "I knew they were coming on younger every year; but I didn't know we had gone into the kindergarten business yet. You don't want a job? Now don't tell me you want a job?"
The little person lifted a pair of very sober eyes beneath the brim of some faded plush headgear.
"Is thus th' rha-porther's room?"
"Sure! you bet!" Bat wheeled on both heels. The little person looked at him very steadily and solemnly.
"A' wannt," she said in that mongrel dialect of German-American andCockney-English, "A wawnt an iteem."
"Sure," says Bat, "nothing easier."
"Wull thur be eny chaarge?"
"Not for ladies," says Bat, saluting, hand to hat, and grinning more sleepily than ever.
"Then, A wull guve it t' y': wull y' write it, sor?"
"Sure!" Bat squared himself to one of the reporters' high desks.
"Mestriss Leez-y O'Fannigan," dictated the little publicity agent.
"Miss O'Funny Girl," with a look to his fat cheeks as of a bag blown full of air.
"No Sor, O'Fan-ni-gan-"
"Perhaps," said Bat, "You'd like to know we're in the same boat, except that you're seeking exactly what I'm trying to avoid, Miss O'Finnigan?"
"Wull dance t' night—" continued the little publicity seeker.
"Will she dance in her copper-toe boots?" asks Bat.
"Wull dance at the H—— i-o-f lodge meetin' at—"
"That'll do, get her out of this," ordered the news-man. "It grows worse every day. Every damphool thinks the world is aching for an interview with himself, from the mining fakirs to the Shanty Town brats: it's seeped down to the kids. You go home, kid, and tell your mother to spank you special extra—"
They heard the fat little legs stumping down the stairs. "That kid belongs to Shanty Town. She dances for the bar room buffers now; she'll dance later, like you and me, Bat, for bigger bluffers. Freedom of the press! Damn it, I'm sick of the bunco game, Bat—"
"Draw it easy," drawled Bat. "If you're sick of it, it's dead easy to get out. I guess the kid is doing the same thing as you and me: 'Give us this day our daily bread.' How's the story? Will you give it a flare head?"
"Will there be any charge?" ironically repeated the news-man.
"Not for Moyese," smiled the handy man sleepily, "and say, if I were you, I'd do one of two things, get rid of my conscience or get a tonic for my nerves."
The telephone rang. The news-man ran to the receiver and a moment later slammed it back on the hook.
"Old frump, giving namby pamby talks on woman's influence in politics without votes." The news editor spat aimlessly.
Bat tapped the story of the Rim Rocks with his pencil. "Well," he asked.
"We'll give this flare."
The news man put heavy underscores in blue beneath the words TENTHOUSAND DOLLARS REWARD, BY THE VALLEY CATTLE ASSOCIATION FOR PROOF OFTHE PERPETRATORS OF LAST NIGHT'S VILE CRIME.
"We'll put this in red! God! The Senator is an artist! I like having to lick the hand that leashes me."
"And feeds you, eh?" added Bat.
Beneath the flare heading followed a statement of facts (more or less) to the effect that in an altercation between the drovers of some outside cattlemen and the herders belonging to the MacDonald ranch, the sheep herd had been hustled—("I like your alliterations, Bat, it gives flavor of quality," commented the news-man with a snap of his black eyes,) too close to the edge of the Rim Rocks with the unintended and tragical result that several hundred sheep had been shoved over the battlements. ("What I like specially is what you don't give," commented the news-man.)
There was not a word about broken backs and slashed lambs and disemboweled ewes; nor of what had been found on the Upper Mesas. As a sort of addendum it was stated that a boy belonging to the Mission school had lost his life in the melee.
"Anyway, we're in style! Way to tell a thing now adays is to turn all around it, and not tell anything at all. Auto suggestion, eh, Bat?"
Bat's fat cheeks blew up in the explosion of a bursting paper bag. "You bet it's auto all right. If you'd heard the old man talking all the way down on the iniquity of the thing: he kept it going harder than the buzz wagon."
"Better inform a breathlessly eager public that he's gone toWashington?"
"Here, I've got that, too! He dictated that straight, 'for the express purpose of taking up the whole question of eliminating the grazing areas from the National Forests when it will be possible for the State authorities to protect the live stock interests,'" Bat handed across the second item.
"What in thunder have the National Forests to do with the Rim Rock massacre?" The newsman looked up through his glasses.
"And who in thunder is going to ask that?"
Bat tapped the last item sharply with his pencil. "They'll readthatand they'll read the other, and I'll bet dollars to doughnuts nine men out of ten will begin jawing and spouting and arguing that if there werenoNational Forests, there would be no Range Wars. If they draw a false impression, that's the public's look out. If we weren't dealing with damphools, we couldn't fool 'em."
"But it didn't happen on the National Forests."
"But it's only the tenth man who will stop to think that out. You put in one of those big middle page cartoons—National Forests with the Federal sign board, KEEP OFF, the sheep being massacred inside the sign board and the State sheriff unable to go in and stop it—"
"But you didn't say massacred! You said they accidently went over the edge."
"But it's only the tenth man will stop to think that. You run the cartoon, see?" said Bat, and, though he asked it as a question, if sounded final. The news-man went tearing back to the front editorial rooms. Bat went whistling down stairs, two steps at a bounce. At the half-way landing, he paused.
"Say," he yelled up, "you can use the same old cartoon; 'Keep Off theGrass,' you know."
"Eh?—right," crossly from the front room.
"And say?"
The news-man came out and leaned over the upper railing.
"Don't forget to take that tonic for your nerves."
The news-man told Bat to go any where he pleased; but it was all in the day's work with Mr. Bat Brydges. He didn't go. The handy man went straight across to the paper in opposition. The news-man went back to the front room and stood thinking. He didn't curse Bat nor emit fumes of the sulphurous place to which he had invited Brydges. He was contemplating what he called his "kids"; and he was figuring the next payment due on the Smelter City lots in which he had been speculating. Evidently, these were the news-man's tonic; for he at once did what he described as "bucking it" and called down the speaking tube for the press man to put on the old cartoon.
The opposition paper required more finesse on the part of the handy man. Bat strolled as if it were a matter of habit into the telegraph editor's room, where he lolled back in one of the two empty chairs. It was still early and the wires were silent. Bat laid one cigar at the editor's place and took a fresh one for himself.
"Hullo, Bat," bubbled the telegraph man, dashing from the composing room in his shirt sleeves, "We've just been having a yell of an argument about the elements of success." He seated himself and whipped out a match to light the cigar. Bat was clicking his cigar case open and shut. This editor was all nerves too. Nerves seemed to go with the job; but these nerves were not jangled. He leaned back in his swing chair with one boot against the desk. "What makes a man successful, anyway? It isn't ability. Your news-man across the way could buy our office out with brains; but gee whitaker, he's worse than a dose of bitters! Now take your Senator, he hasn't either the education or the brains of lots of our cub reporters, here!" He paused nibbling his cigar end. "Yet, he's successful. We aren't, except in a sort of doggon-hack-horse way. You're next to the old man, Bat, what do you say makes him successful?"
Bat clicked the cigar case shut and put it in his pocket.
"Two things: he's a specialist; he delivers the goods no other man can deliver; and he doesn't fool any time away by bucking into a buzz saw, fighting windmills and that sort of thing, way you fellows 'agin the Government' do."
The telegraph man removed his cigar.
"What do you mean by 'delivers the goods no other man can deliver'? Do you mean the pork barrel?"
"No," said Bat, "I don't, though the pork barrel is a d—ee—d essential part of the game. Here's what I mean; when you came to this Valley, there was nothing doing. We had mines; but we hadn't a smelter! Well, Senator got the coking coal for a smelting site and the big developers came in. Other men couldn't, wouldn't or didn't dare to do it! He did it. He delivered the goods and got the big fellows interested."
"He stole 'em, those coal lands. He jugged 'em thro' Land Office records with false entries." The telegraph man had lowered his voice.
"We don't call 'em stolen when it's been the making of the Valley."
"No, because the Smelter is a sacred cow mustn't be touched for the sake of the grease."
"Then, there was nothing doing in lumber; big fellows wouldn't come in and develop. Well, Moyese got 'em the timber tracts for a song. Other men couldn't, wouldn't or didn't dare. He delivered the goods—"
"The courage of the highwayman," commented the wire editor with a puff.
"We don't call it that when it helps the Valley," corrected the handy man.
"No, it's another sacred bovine; mustn't be touched for fear of the axle grease. See? I've got a list of 'em—public lands, through freights, water power, smelter, lumber deals," the telegraph man opened his table drawer and held out a scrawled list. "If you call that delivering the goods, I call it filling the barrel. What's the other factor for success?"
"Not bucking into a buzz saw. The world is mostly made of barkers and builders. You fellows spend all the time barking. Then you wonder there's nothing to show in the way of a building."
The telegraph wires began to click and the girl operator came in with some tissue sheets.
"Fight in Frisco—that goes," commented the telegraph editor dashing in the "ands" and "buts" and the punctuation. He stuck the slip on the printer's hook. "Wedding in Newport—"
"That goes," laughed the handy man, "There's no sacred cow about that."
The telegraph man wrote headings for the dispatches and stuck them on the hook for the printer's boy.
"Speaking of sacred cows, it isn't exactly cows, but it's in the stock line all right—what do you know about that business last night up on Rim Rocks? Stage driver has been blazing it all round town—"
"Stage driver's a liar," emphatically declared Brydges.
"Been trying to get the news for an hour; the wires are cut. Can't get 'em by phone. Think I'll send a man up to-night with a photographer."
"Oh, I wouldn't," drawled Bat sleepily. "It isn't worth it. I've just come down. Whole row's over. You can't get a dub in the Valley to open his mouth. Same old gag we've used for the last ten years, 'heavily armed band of masked men,' 'scene like a butcher's shambles,' and that guy of a sheriff 'scouring the hills for the miscreants.' I'll bet he's under his bed scared blue."
"Who did it?"
"Same old gang of outside grazers, drovers who skipped the State line.I succeeded in getting their names after a good deal of trouble."
"You did, did you? Then give us a stick about it, will you? Date it special at the Rim Rocks! Trouble is, if I do send a man up, business office will kick at the expense account; for there's nothing in it; and that kind of news hurts the Valley."
So Mr. Bat Brydges wrote forty lines of two paragraphs in which he warned the public that this sort of thing had to stop; the West would not stand for interference from outside cattlemen who were trying to wrest the range away from local grazers. There followed the names of six men concerned in the Rim Rock fray. Whose names they were, neither Bat nor anyone else knew. Also Mr. Sheriff Flood was not described as "a guy" nor pictured as reposing under his bed. He might have been a walking arsenal of defence for the Valley. According to Mr. Bat Brydges, Sheriff Flood was busy on the case and had wired the authorities of the adjoining States to be on the look out for the guilty parties. There followed a description of the guilty parties photographed accurately from Mr. Bat Brydges's retina.
The third newspaper office was the least easy for the handy man's tactics. The editor was an independent of the fiery order. Bat avoided the editor and tackled a young reporter at the noon hour.
"What do you say to a spin in the 40 h. p. to-night?" he asked.
"What's on?"
The youth was reading an ink-smudged galley proof.
Bat sat down on the desk where he could read over the other's shoulder. The proof reeked of "gore" and "shambles" and "heavily armed masked men" and rifle shots thick as hail stones with a sheriff careening over the Mesas at break neck speed slathered with zeal for law.
"What reforms are you jollying along now?" asked Bat.
"We'll jolly you fellows when this comes out."
"I've always said if I were his Satanic Majesty and wished to defeat the goody-goodies, I wouldn't bother fighting 'em! I'd take an afternoon nap and let them buck themselves by their lies and bickerings."
The youth ran his eye down the galley proof.
"Who filled you up with this dope?" Brydges lowered his voice to an altogether amused and very confidential key.
"What's the matter with it?"
"Matter? There's nothing right about it."
"Goes all the same. Got snap! It's good stuff."
"Stuffing, you mean," corrected the handy man. "Say, where ever did you get it? Talk of stuff? Somebody has mistaken you for a spring chicken."
"Got it straight. It's all right! Fellow from the English colony—"
"English Colony? Those Rookeries—Mother Carey's chickens. Do you know what that Rookery gang is? A lot of gambling toughs, remittance doughheads—"
"That doesn't spoil a ripping good story! I'm going to wire a column to Chicago."
"No, you're not," contradicted Brydges. "That kind of thing hurts the State more than ten thousand dollars will advertise it. You go over your advertising columns my boy—"
"All right! It's up to you?"
Bat whistled and swung the galley proofs between his knees.
"Doesn't matter what you say out here. Everybody knows your rag sheet will contradict to-morrow what you say to-day in headings red and long as a lead pencil. You'll contradict in a little hidden paragraph tucked away among the ads., and I guess we know which are the ads. out here; but, if you want any more dope on inside stuff, don't you send that East! You have applied for a job on our paper twice. If you want one, don't you send that East! What do they pay you, anyway?"
The youth paused to estimate; and youth's hopes are ever high.
"That's worth a hundred to me!"
"No, you don't! They pay you six and ten and sometimes two, but it's worth a hundred if you keep it out, nice crisp little bills, my boy. Call for you to-night at five; but don't you play that story up."
It was then and there Bat showed himself a past master. He sauntered out of the office humming.
"Say, Brydges," called the youth, "what's wrong with this account, anyway?"
"All wrong," reiterated Brydges stepping back. "Wasn't a man lost his life. Wasn't a man on the Range at the time, only a kid got in the way of a stampede! Here, I'll give it to you straight! I've just come down from the Valley! You tell what happened down in Mesa and Garfield counties ten years ago, and up in Wyoming last spring! Give it to the other States. Don't give your own State a black eye! Come on out and have something with me, and I'll fix you up as we feed."
So when the Independent's fiery columns came out with red scare heads and gory recital full of reference to "something rotten in the State of Denmark" and "damnable rascality," there was only one emasculated innocuous column given to the local event, but seven columns were steeped with the bloody details of sheep massacres and stock raids and Range Wars in other states in "the good old gun-toting days."
Bat's last act that day was to send a telegram care of the East-bound Limited to Senator Moyese. It read, "All local papers out highly gratulatory references your efforts to punish guilty parties."
In the half light of mist and dawn, the Ranger ascended the Ridge trail.
Life was at flood-tide. Thought focussed to one point of consciousness set on fire of its own rays. He walked as one unseeing, unhearing, hardened to singleness of purpose, heedless of the steepness of the climb, of his blood leaping like a mountain cataract, of his muscles moving with the ease of piston rods; heedless of all but the warmth of the glow enveloping his outer body from the flame burning within.
He did not follow the zig-zag Ridge trail but clambered straight up the face of the slope, following pretty much the short cut-off they had taken the night before. He came to the crag where the spruce logs spanned the tinkling water course. There was a gossamer scarf of cloud hanging among the mosses of the trees. The peak came out opal fire above belts of clouds. The sage-green moss spanning the spruces turned to a jewel-dropped thing in a sun-bathed rain-washed world of flawless clouds and jubilant waters. He drew a deep breath. The air was tonic of imprisoned sunlight and resinous healing. Was each day's birth the dawn to new being?
It was here he had met her the night before. Waves of consciousness, tender delirious consciousness, flooded and surprised him. He had asked for a seal of memory. He knew now it would never be a memory: it would be consciousness, ever-living, ever present; a compulsion not to be controlled because it was not his own; and never to be quenched because it burned within. If he had been a weakling, the seal would have been a seal to self; but because an elemental war for right was winnowing the self out of him, he knew it was a seal to service.
Day-dawn marked the creation of a new world; and That had opened the doors for him to a life that no telling could have revealed. Would it be the same with the Nation? Would this struggle open the doors to a new life; or would the powers that stood for law and right go on marking time inside the firing line, while the powers that stood for wrong and outrage held their course rampant, unchecked; straining the law not to protect right but to extend wrong; perverting the courts; stealing where they chose to steal; killing where they chose to kill; deluging the land with anarchy by sweeping away law, just as surely as the removal of the sluice gates would set loose flood waters?
He ascended the rest of the dripping Ridge trail in a swing that was almost a run.
Below the Ranger cabin on the Homestead Slope stood the large oblong canvas bunk house of the road gang employed by the Forest Service.
"Hi—fellows," shouted Wayland, shaking the tent flap. "All hands up!" And he ordered the foreman to send the road gang to skin and burn and bury what lay at the foot of the battlements. As the Rim Rocks lay a few feet outside the bounds of the National Forests, it will be seen that Waylandhad stopped marking time behind the law and gone out beyond the firing line. If it isn't clear to you how the Ranger was exceeding the authority of the law, then read the Senator's speeches about "the Forest and Land Service men going outside their jurisdiction employing Government men to do work which was not Government Service at all."
The Ranger saddled his own broncho for himself and a horse belonging to one of his assistants for the old frontiersman, who must be some where on the upper Mesas. To each saddle he fastened a Service hatchet and a cased rifle. Then, he caught one of the mules of the road gang for the pack saddle. Going inside the cabin, he furbished together such provisions as his biscuit box shelves afforded, a sack containing half a ham, a quarter bag of flour, one tin of canned beans, a tobacco pouch filled with tea, another pouch with sugar on one side of the dividing leather and salt in the other. Then, he cinched a couple of cow-boy slickers over the pack saddle, and, in place of the green Service coat which he had left at the Mission, donned a leather jacket, took a last look to see if a water-proof match case were in the inside pocket, ran back to the cabin for a half-flask of brandy, and an extra hat, and with the other horse and the pack mule in front, he mounted his pony and set out for the Rim Rocks. It will be seen this was not the equipment of a man who intended to remain marking time.
Just for a second, he pondered which path to follow. It would take an hour to go down the Ridge trail, cross the Valley and ascend the terra-cotta road of the Rim Rocks. Couldn't he jump his horses over the gully that cut between the Holy Cross and the Upper Mesa? He headed his horse into the tangle of hemlock and larch, the mule trotting ahead snatching bites of dogwood and willow from the edge of the dripping trail, the Ranger riding as Westerners ride, glued to the leather, guiding by the loose neck rein instead of the bit, with a wave of his hand to keep the little mule in line.
A turn to the left through a thicket of devil's club brought him where the Ridge overlooked the River. Wayland reined up sharply. A pile of logs scaled and marked with the U. S. stamp lay where the slightest topple would send them over a natural chute into the River. He had not scaled those logs: neither had his assistants. There was no record of them on the books. Of course, he had heard the chop and slash at the settlers' cabins, but homesteaders don't farm on the edge of a vertical precipice unless they are a lumber company; and logs tossed over that precipice to the River were destined for only one market, Smelter City. Then he remembered giving a permit to a Swede settler of the Homestead Slope to take out windfall and dead tops for a little portable gasoline engine; but the permit didn't cover this area.
"Having stopped stealing half a million from the Bitter Boot, they've started their dummies in here." He looked at the gashed timber-slash as a thrifty man looks at wantonness and waste; it was a gaping wound in the forest side, old and young trees alike hacked down, the stumps of the big trees, not eighteen inches low as the regulations provided, but three and four and five feet high of waste to rot and gather fungus, the biggest of the giant spruce cut from a scaffolding nine feet from the ground, leaving wasted lumber enough to build a house.
"This was done when I was away on my last long patrol," reflected Wayland. The slash of brushwood and wasted tops lay higher than his horse's head. "A fine fire-trap for the fall drought," thought Wayland angrily. "One spark in that tinder pile in a high wind; and there would be no forests left on Holy Cross."
What did it mean, this open defiance, not of himself, (he was a mere cog in the big wheel; so was the entire Forest Service,) this open defiance of law; this open theft of Government property? Connected with the outrage of the Range War, and the Senator's advice for him to stop suing for restitution of the two-thousand acres of coal lands, and the handy-man's urgent arguments for him "to chuck the fight and come down to the Valley," the Ranger knew well enough what the pile of stolen logs stamped with a counterfeit Government hatchet meant; stamped, of course, by some poor ignorant dummy foreigner. The Ring were setting their hired tools on to the fight. And far away in the East—yes it was the East's business to see what went on in the West—were myriads of wage-earners forced to pay exorbitantly for coal and wood and lumber and house rent because of this wanton waste; this seizing fraudulently by the few of the property belonging to the many. If they had thrown down the challenge, assuredly he was taking it up! What would the people do about it, he wondered, when they came to know? Would any power on earth waken the people up to do something, and stop talking?A Roman ruler had fiddled while his imperial city burned. What was the many-headed ruler of the great republic doing, while enemies burned and cut and slashed and wasted in wantonness the property of the public for the enrichment of the Ring?
The Ranger touched his horse to a gallop and jumped all three animals through the criss-cross of wind-fall and slash, coming out on the edge of the rock chasm that cut the Upper Mesas off from the Holy Cross. The gully crumbled on the near side and shelved on the far, twenty feet deep and fifty wide, altogether not very jumpable, the Ranger thought. He zig-zagged in and out among the larches along the margin of the rock cut-way, noting "dead tops" ripe for the axe, pines where the squirrels had cached cone seed at the root, spruce logs gone to punk with alien seedlings coming up from the dead trunk, yellow ant-eaten wood-rot ripped open by some bear hunting the white eggs; noting, above all, the wonderful flame of the painter's brush, spikes with the tints of the rainbow, like Indian arrows dipped in blood, knee-deep, multi-colored, fiery, dyed in the very essence of sunglow, humming with bees and alive with butterflies, lives of a summer in the aeon of ages that the snow flakes had taken manufacturing soil out of granite, silt out of snow.
"The little snow flake gets there all right," reflected Wayland. "It takes time; but she carves out her little snow flake job all the same, and the rocks go down before her! Guess if we follow the law, we're hitched up with the stars all right."
He reined up and caught at a pine bough. A sight to hold the eye of any forester held his; the enormous trunk of a fallen giant, a dozen dwarfs growing from its punk, spanned the gully. Wayland slid off his horse. The great trunk lay destitute of lesser branches to the tip on the far side of the chasm like great characters that discard mannerisms.
The Ranger struck his Service axe into the trunk. The bark held firm, though he heard the ring of the dry-rot at the heart that had brought the old giant crashing down to become food for the scrubs and pigmies of the forest. Wayland picked out two spindly birches. Quick strokes brought them down. Walking out on the dead trunk, he threw a birch on each side as a guard rail, affording fence, not protection, to the wavering faith of a shy horse, "all a feeling of security to steady a giddy head," he reflected. He led the little pack mule; and the bronchos followed. A moment later, he was galloping through the larches and low juniper that fringed the Mesas above the Rim Rock trail, the mule huff-huffing to the fore snatching mouthfuls on the run. Then, with a lope, Wayland's broncho leaped out on the bare sage-grown Mesas, the mule with ears pointed, nose high, heading straight for the white canvas-top of a tented wagon.
For a moment, the light blinded Wayland's sight; for the sun had come up in an orange fan; and the sky was not blue: it shone the dazzling silver of mercury. Against the high rarefied air came in view the figure of a man, grotesquely exaggerated, head and shoulders first, then body, riding a heavy horse, saddleless, hatless, coatless, white of hair, heels pressed to his horse's flanks, bent far over the animal's neck as Indians ride, galloping for the Rim Rock trail, or a second jump from the battlements.
Wayland stood up in his stirrups and with hands trumpeted uttered a yell. The rider jerked his horse to a rear flounder, waved frantically, then split the air—
"Glory be to the powers—but—A'm glad to see you! A've headed them off from the South trail. We've got them, Wayland, the low dastard scoundrels! We've got them trapped like rats in a trap! They're in the Pass if you've a man in the Valley with spirit enough to get out with a gun!" He stopped for breath as the two horses floundered together.
"We haven't," answered Wayland.
"They jumped the gully! Man alive, y' ought t' seen them jump the gully! A slammed them right down into the bottom of it. A would to God 't had been to the bottomless pit. The same gentry A saw that night under your Ridge, saving his High Mightiness. The evil fellow wi' the sheep hide leggings, an' the one armed blackguard in the cow-boy slicker, an' the corduroy dandy wi' the red tie, an' four more of them same card-sharp gentry. A rode 'long the top of y'r gully an' poured six bullets after 'em! Man alive! A heard the fellow in the yellow slicker yell bloody murder when A fired! A'm hopin'—God forgive me—A've nipped him in the other arm an' brought him winged t' th' throne o' Grace! They followed the gully bed behind y'r Mountain, the white horse same as yon night under y'r Ridge, limpin', the one armed man rockin' in the saddle an' spittin' out blasphemous filth for th' others to wait. A've kept guard all night, yellin' an' howlin' like a vigilantee, knowin' they're not the gentry to run into the arms of them good old-time neck-tie com'tees; an' not dreamin' A hadn't another cartridge to my name!" The old man swabbed the sweat from his brow.
"A left m' coat and togs back at yon chuck wagon!" Wayland noticed he was riding stocking soled.
"I have an extra hat for you here." Wayland tossed the soft felt from the pocket of his leather coat.
"Oh, A saw 'em plain enough; same ill-lookin' six that y'r hell-kite laws hatch on a bad frontier! Make no mistake. Yon white vest is at the bottom o' this deviltry! Who is he, Wayland?"
Wayland related the visit of a white-vest to his Ridge cabin; and they trotted forward towards a sheep wagon.
"How did y' come up here?" asked the old frontiersman.
"Where did you get that horse?" retorted the Ranger.
"One of the chuck wagons' teams—"
"Herders all right?" asked Wayland. He knew what the answer must be; the same answer that had been disgracing the West these twenty years.
The old man jerked his horse to a dead stop, drew himself erect and looked straight at the Ranger.
"Wayland, man, is this Russia—or Hell? Is there another country in the world calls itself civilized would allow four herder men to be burned to death? Does the country know what is doing? Do you know what happened? Do you know that last wagon is left there only because the rains put out the fire? Y'll find the iron tires of the other wagons with skeletons of men chained to the wheels. A came up just as they were settin' aboot firin' the second wagon. They'd ripped all the flour bags open and loosed the horses. This one, A caught full pelther down the trail."
The old man shook his head.
They trotted their horses across the Mesas in silence towards the glaring white canvas wagon. Broken harness, half-burned spokes, the charred hub of a wheel, snapped whiffle-trees, the white dust of scattered flour littered the ground. A brown scorch of flame up the back of the tent above the remaining wagon marked where the rains had extinguished the fire. A smouldering ill-smelling ash heap told the fate of the other wagons.
"Hell-devilish work, hell-devilish work! Th' beasts of the field couldna' conceive such baseness, Wayland! 'Tis the work o' devils spawned by harpies! They say there is no devil to-day! Hoh!" The old man puffed the heresy from his pursed lips. "The beasts don't prey on their own 'cepting the rats that starve; but, man, there's no explanation of his self-destruction 'cepting the old fashioned one, Wayland. 'He was possessed by a devil.'"
The Ranger had dismounted and was prodding the ash-heap with his heavy boot sole. Then, he gave the embers a smart flap with his whip. The blackened hub of a wheel went circling out. Suddenly, Wayland turned away his face, white and nauseated, hardened to resolution granite as the rocks. Eyeless sockets of a skeleton face protruded from the ashes; and on the ground were stains which the rains had not washed out. It was then Wayland noticed the bloody thumb marks round the canvas front of the wagon seat where the driver had been dragged down.
For a little time neither man spoke. But, was it not the natural ending of brutality unleashed of law; of crime left alone by the good?
"To mutilate thousands of sheep was damnable enough," said Wayland; "but—this?"
The old frontiersman had picked up coat and boots flung aside the night before. He stood holding by his horse's mane looking down. "And this is a white man's land," he said. "To this have y' prostituted freedom bought by th' blood of saints an' martyrs? Not in th' heat o' passion, but for filthy gain, has a free people come to this?The heads o' kings fell on the bloody block for less crime in days not so soft spoken as these. Is y'r freedom, freedom to right or to wrong? Is it to send y'r Nation smash over the precipice? Wayland,is this Democracy?"
The Ranger did not answer for a moment.
"No," he said quietly, "it isn't Democracy any more than your Robber Barons were Monarchy! Don't you make that mistake; this is Anarchy, the Anarchy of unrestrained greed! You fought it in your plundering Scotch Robber Barons long ago! We have to fight it to-day in our plundering plutocrats!"
"Do you mean me to believe," the old frontiersman drew himself up to the full height of British superiority to everything outside the island of its own circumscribed knowledge, "do you mean me to believe that if any of these poor herders had escaped as witnesses, we'd not have been able to send these blackguard murderers to the gallows?"
The Ranger had signalled for some of the road gang to ascend from below the battlements to keep guard till the coroner could come. The little pack mule to the fore, Wayland and Matthews were picking the way slowly down the terra cotta trail of the Rim Rocks.
"It does not make the slightest difference in the world what you or I believe, Sir! The facts are unless you could offer a witness money enough to take him out the United States and to keep him for the rest of his life, he would develop a good-forgetter, or else the same old gag—'been blind folded,' 'didn't see,' and so on, and on, and on; you can't blame them! I'll bet if every one of the herders had escaped instead of festering there in the ash heap, they'd all be legging it out of the country far and fast as they could go."
The little mule came to a stand at a bend in the switch back; and the old evangelist sat ruminating silently on his broncho.
"Y' have a sheriff?"
Wayland laughed.
"He's like the Indian flies; a no-see-him. He'll ride over the hills for weeks and if he tumbles over the top of his prisoner, he can't find his man!"
The old Britisher looked doubtfully at Wayland, as much as to say, "I don't believe you."
"You're no temptin' me to take the law into our own hands?"
Again Wayland laughed.
"My dear sir, you don't understand! I don't want to drag you into this at all! For ten years,the powers that stand for law in this country have been marking time behind the firing line; while the other fellow got away with the goods. They have been marking time while Crime scored, and what you call the Devil kept tally."
The old man nodded his head approvingly.
"That's all true!"
"You ask me if I intend to break the law? No, Sir, I do not; butI do intend to carry the law out beyond the firing line. The thief strains the law to get away with the goods; I am going to strain the law to get them back. The murderer strains the law to protect his damned useless neck; I'm going to strain the law to break his neck. Unless," he added, "I break my own neck doing it."
The old man had drawn down his brows. "A don't just like the sound of it; what's your plan?"
"To go out with a gun till I get them; the way your own Mounted Police do up in Canada!I'm going to quit monkeying with technicalities in the twilight zone . . . and go out . . . after the man."
The old Britisher sat thinking: "Wayland, if A was managing this thing, first thing A'd do would be blow such a blast on your local press, the authorities wouldhaveto sit up, then—A'd go after your sheriff if A had to tackle the coward by the scruff of his scurvy neck, A'd make him ashamed . . .not. . . to act."
"All right, Sir! Manage this thing . . . manage it just as you would behind your hide-bound British laws! We'll pass the Senator's ranch in ten minutes. You can telephone down to 'The Smelter City Herald.' I'll get something ready to eat while you telephone. Then, we'll go right along to the sheriff."
They kicked their ponies lightly into a trot and came to the Senator's k'raal before the noon hour. Two or three of the ranch hands loitered casually out to the road. All were in blue over-alls and shirt sleeves but one; and he was in knickerbockers.
"That's the foreman, ask him!"
"'Twould oblige me t' have the use of your telephone?"
The man in the knickerbockers tilted his hat at a rakish angle, stuck a tooth-pick in the corner of his mouth, put his thumbs in his jacket arm holes, shot Wayland a quick look of questioning, grinned at the old man and nodded towards a white pergola standing apart from the veranda of the ranch house.
"Find it there," he indicated, "drop a nickel—then, ring!"
"Did you see that look?" gritted the old Britisher between his teeth, as the fellow sauntered away with elaborate indifference.
"Yes, but looks don't go with a jury."
"Neck-tie was effective with the likes of him in my day!"
For the third time, Wayland uttered the same sardonic laugh. What was happening to the old Britisher to change his point of view?
"I'll go on down to the River and prepare grub."
What Wayland was thinking, he did not say; butwhatwas passing in the brain of the law-loving old Britisher that the rakish tilt of the hat, the insolent angle of the tooth-pick, the spread of a man's thumbs and feet—could break through hide-bound respect for law and elicit reference to the court of the old-time neck-tie?
At the River, the Ranger loosened the saddle girths and put a small kettle to boil above a fire of cottonwood chips and grass. Then he took out his note book and wrote the note to Eleanor which he gave to one of the road gang for Calamity. The note said: "We are setting out on the Long Trail . . . the Long Trail this Nation will have to travel before Democracy arrives . . . the trail of the Man behind the Thing . . . the Man Higher Up." How did the Ranger know what was going on up at the telephone in the pergola, where British respect for law was at one end of the wire and the handy man of the Valley at the other?
There was no bitterness in the quizzical smile with which he awaited the old man's return; for as he lay back on the ground watching the fire burn up, the letter brought again, not memory, but consciousness of that seal to service, he wondered half vaguely could she know, could she realize, did a womaneverrealize what her love meant to a man. She could surely never have given such full draughts of life, of wondrous new revealing consciousness, unless they were drinking together from the same perennial, ever-new, ever-surprising spring! . . . He did not hear the footsteps till the old man spoke—
"A somehow—didna' seem—to get—them clear! They answered; then—they didna' answer!Smelter City Herald—ye said? 'Twas strange—'twas vera strange—A got an answer plain asking my name—then central said 'ring off! ring off! can't get them, wire out of order'!"
This time, Wayland did not laugh. Had not the wires been out of order since first he began to ring the bells of his little insignificant place to a Nation's alarm?
They ate their bannocks—'Rocky Mountain dead shot' Westerners call the slap-jacks—in silence. While the old man still pondered mazed and dumb, the Ranger dabbled the cups and plates in the River and recinched the pack saddle, the little mule blowing out his sides and groaning to ease the girth, the bronchos wisely eating to the process of reharnessing. The Britisher's reverence for law dies hard. Wayland saw the wrestle and kept silent. A deep low boom rolled dully through the earth in smothered rumblings and tremblings like distant thunder.
"What's that, Wayland?"
"Only the snow slides loosened by the noon-thaw slithering down the Pass of Holy Cross;" and somehow, he could not but think of what she had said . . . the law of the snow flake sculpturing the rocks.
The horses cropped audibly over the grasses—waiting. The little mule looked back—also waiting. A whelming impulse, part of the spirit to drink of her inspiration, part of the flesh to drink of her touch—came over him to ride down to the ranch house, the MacDonald ranch house, to see her—just once before setting out on the Long Trail.
"Well," he said; "which way, Mr. Matthews?"
The old Britisher moved thoughtfully towards his broncho.
"We'll try y'r sheriff—at least, we'll try himfirst."
And again the Ranger laughed.
"Don't laugh, man! D' y' know what it means when men are driven outside the line of law?"
The horses waded in midstream and reached down drinking, champing on their bits.
"Well—what does it mean?"
He saw the blue of the mountain stream swirl and whirl and eddy over the sun-dyed pebbles, singing the law of the far mountain snows.
"God knows," answered the old man slowly. "It means disrupture. We slew our kings in olden times; but ye are a many headed king in this land! It means—perhaps, ye call it Anarchy to-day."
The yellow noon-day light sifted through the cottonwoods jewel-spangled on the crystal blue River. The Ranger always knew the character of the mountains from the River: silty and milky-blue from glaciers; crystal and green-blue from the snow. And they rode away up the Valley from the ranch houses towards the Pass, out beyond the bounds of the National Forests with the trees marked two notches and one blaze; gradually up the narrowing trail fringed by the shiny laurel bushes; with the mountains closing closer and the spiced balsam odor raining on the air a sifted gold dust of sunlight. At intervals, came the dull rumble of the snow slide, the far reverberation, the echo of the law of the snow flake rolling away the stone; the smash of the great law drama, the titans behind the mountains.
It was one of those frequent mountain formations where a Valley seems to terminate in a blank wall. You turn a buttress of rock, and you find the sheer wall opening before you in a trail that climbs to a notch on the sky line between forested flanks. The notch of blue is a Pass.
"Anyway, Mr. Matthews, we are splitting the air, now! We are doing more than sawing air."
They had put their horses to a sharp trot along the trail winding up the River. The water was gurgling over the polished pebbles with little leaps and glints of fire. Presently, the mountains had closed behind them. The River was tumbling with noisy rush in a succession of cascades, and the trail wound back from the rocky bank through circular flats or what were locally known as "bottoms."
"Sheriff live this way?" shouted Matthews; for the roar of the little stream filled the canyon.
"Has a ranch at the foot of the Pass."
"It won't be wasting time, anyway," said the old Britisher.
Again, Wayland smiled. If it wouldnotbe wasting time; then, they were already in pursuit of the outlaws. What was it in the insolent look of the Senator's ranch hand that had suddenly dashed the doughty Briton's reverence for the instrument of the law?
A barb wire fence tacked to spindly cottonwood trees marked the line of an irregular homestead; and the Ranger swung into a gate extemporized from barb wire on two adjustable posts. Behind the gate, stood a log shack; on the windows, cheap lace curtains; behind the lace curtains, a vague movement of peeping faces and a querulous termagant voice: "I ain't a goin' to have you mixed up in no scrap; so there, Dan Flood!"
Wayland dismounted and knocked on the door with his riding stock. It opened on an anaemic sulphur face with blond hair screwed in curl papers over a full row of gold headlights where an enterprising dentist had engrafted as much of Klondike as possible.
"Sheriff Flood in?" the Ranger raised his hat.
"Oh, how j' do, Mr. Wayland." All the curl papers nodded like clover tops in the wind, while the coy brows arched, and an inviting smile played round the simpering headlights. "No, he ain't! Dan ain't in!" The curl papers nodded again and the gold teeth simpered again.
"Is he—home?" The word home came out with the force of a bullet.
"No, he ain't home! Mr. Flood ain't home! The sheriff was called 'way! Is there any message?"
Wayland stood back and watched the fray. The old man gazed full at the frowsy apparition in the doorway. If dagger looks could have stabbed her, the lady would have dropped dead stuck full of as many daggers as a cushion is of pins. The gold headlights suffered eclipse behind a pair of tightly perked lips; and one hand darted hold of the door knob.
"Yes," he said, looking fixedly at the deep V of ash-colored skin where the lady had turned back the neck of her pink wrapper in imitation of gowns seen in the Sunday supplement of "The Smelter City Herald." "There was murder done on the Rim Rocks last night! There's festering bodies lying on top of yon Mesas! 'Tis a job for the sheriff, not for an outsider—"
"Yes, Sir," said the gold headlights, "I think he's gone to see about it."
He had looked her slowly over again from the blondine hair and the ash-colored V of unclean skin and waistless slop of slattern wrapper to clock work stockings and high heeled slippers.
"A ha' ma doubts he's sprintin' fr' the back door this minute! Are ye the sheriff's—woman?" and oddly enough the lady didn't flush; but the faintest gloss came over the saffron skin—of what? It was the same nonchalant, wordless insolence that had played in the eyes of the man who had come out from the Senator's ranch.
"Yes, Sir, I'll deliver your message a' right," flickered the headlights reassuringly.
The old man stood stolidly and scorched the lady's eyes.
"How long since y'r sheriff thing set out? Did he break loose by the back door?"
"There ain't no back door," snapped the headlights; and the front door slammed in their faces. Wayland burst in a peal of laughter.
"'Tis no laughing matter! 'Tis bad enough t' depend on that broken reed of a dastard coward sheriff hidin' under the bed! A've a mind to go back an' have him oot; but that—pot ash pate—" what else the old man called her was more truthful than elegant for an expurgated age. They replaced the post of the barbed wire gate in its loop and mounted their horses.
"Well, Sir?" asked Wayland. "I don't wish to offend your British sense of law; but which way now?"
The old man left the reins hanging on the broncho's neck. The horses began cropping the grass. The Ranger was fumbling at his stirrup.
"A'm sore puzzled, Wayland! 'Tis not in the blood of a British born to gooutsidelaw. Y'r no thinkin' that; are y', Wayland?"
"I am saying nothing! The law protects them in their lawlessness. It doesn't protect us in our lawfulness. The American citizen is the law-maker. There is only one thing for an American citizen to do—get to work and enforce his laws—"
"Then—God's name, Wayland, go ahead and do it! Take the lead! A'll follow! This trail go behind the mountain?"
"Yes, it brings us round behind! They have the start of us by three hours; but they'll camp to-night somewhere along the Lake Behind the Peak. Beyond that, there are some mighty bad slides. These rains have loosened snows. They'll hardly cross the slides beyond the lake but by daylight. If we can reach the lake to-day, we'll have a chance at 'em."
"Wayland, A'm on the last lap ofmytrail! It doesn't matter what happens to me; but have you thought what might happen when we catch up on them? Those fellows are out to kill. We are out to arrest. Have you thought what that might mean at close quarters?"
"It's close quarters I'm seeking," said Wayland, "though it's hardly fair to drag you into the fight. All I want is a man as a witness who's got red blood that won't turn yellow. This Nation has been cowering behind the line of law, while the looters and skinners have disarmed our very firing line. It's time somebody risked his neck to reverse the order—"
"Git epp," said the old man roughly to his broncho.
The little pack mule took to the trail ears back at an easy lope; and the riders set off up the Pass at the rocking-chair trot of the plains-horseman. Gradually, the mountains crowded closer, in weather-stained rock walls, with a far whish as of wind or waters coming up from the canyon bottom; the sky overhead narrowing to a cleft of blue with the frayed pines and hemlocks hanging from the granite blocks, fragile as ferns against the sky. You looked back; the rocks had closed to a solid wall; you looked down; the river filling the canyon with a hollow hush had dwarfed to a glistening silver thread with the forest dwarfed banks of moss. It was a sombre world, all the more shadowy from that cleft of blue over head where an eagle circled with lonely cry.
The Pass was like the passage of birth and death from life to larger life. On the other side of the mountain lay the sun-bathed Valley and the Ridge with its silver cataracts and the opal peak with the glistening snow cross. This side, the Mountain in the Valley of the Shadow became giant beveled masonry, tier on tier, criss-crossed and scarred by the iced cataracts of a billion years—no sound but the raucous scream of the lone eagle, the hollow hush of the far River, the tinkling of the water-drip freezing as it fell. Then, where the cleft of blue smote the rocks with sunlight, the doors of the mountains would open again to larger life in another Valley.
The horses were no longer trotting. They were climbing and blowing and pausing where the trail of the Pass took sharp turns, back and forward, up and up, till the eagle was circling below. Both men had dismounted and were walking Indian file to the rear, Wayland carrying his own cased rifle. The trail was now running along the edge of an escarpment no wider than a saddle, sheer drop below, sheer wall above.
"How would they come out from the gully on this trail, Wayland? I have been watching for the tracks. They're not ahead of us."
"Gully ends in a blind wall above. As I make it, they'd push their nags up and come down on the Pass trail somewhere below the precipice ahead. We can take our time; I have been watching. There are no tracks ahead. The trail above is worse than this. Devil takes care of his own; or they would have broken their necks long ago coming back and forward. We'll let 'em go down to the lake first. They'll go into the trap. It's a lake mostly ice this time of the year. There's an old punt sometimes used by hunters. It'll take them an hour to cross with their horses. We'll let them camp at the lake. We could pot them there, if we had a sheriff worth his salt."
"'Tis a great trail, Wayland! Minds me of my days building bridges in the Rockies! 'Tisn't just a matter o' courage to follow these precipice trails: it's temperament! 'Tis something in the pit o' the stomach! A mind one of our best engineers; he could meet Chinese navvies with their knives out: couldn't cross one of the precipices to save his life without blinders like a horse: we had to blindfold him so he wouldn't know till he'd crossed. How deep do you call it here?"