After an uncertain age VB swam back from that mental vacuity to reality. He saw, first, that the Captain was beside him, standing there breathing loudly, eyes closed, sobbing low at every heave of his lungs.
A quavering moan made its way to the boy's throat and he moved over, reaching out groping arms for the stallion's lowered head.
"Captain!" he moaned. "Oh, boy—it was our last ride—I can never—ask you to carry me—again."
He hugged the face closer to his.
Then he heard a man's voice saying:
"Here, VB, take this—it'll brace you up!"
He turned his face slowly, for the strength that remained was far from certain. His wound was on fire, every nerve of his body laid bare. His will to do began and ended with wanting to hold that horse's head close. He was as a child, stripped of every effect that the experiences of his life could have had. He was weak, broken, unwittingly searching for a way back to strength.
He turned his head halfway and beheld the man stooping beside him who held in his hands a bottle, uncorked, and from it came a strong odor.
The boy dilated his nostrils and drew great breaths laden with the fumes of the stuff. A new life came into his eyes. They shone, they sparkled. Activity came to those bare nerves, and they raised their demands.
He opened his mouth and let the odor he inhaled play across that place in his throat. The smell went on out through his arteries, through his veins, along the nerves to the ends of his being, to the core of his soul! He was down, down in the depths, his very ego crying for the stimulant, for something to help it come back.
He coaxed along that yearning, let it rise to its fullest. Then he raised his eyes to meet the concerned gaze of the other man. And the man saw in those eyes a look that made him sway back, that made him open his lips in surprise.
"To hell with that stuff!" the boy screamed. "To hell with it! To hell—to hell!It belongs there! It—it killed the Captain!"
Tears came with the sobs, and strength to the arms that held the stallion's head; strength that surged through his entire body, stilling those nerves, throttling the crying of his throat. For VB had gone down to his test, his real ordeal, and had found himself not wanting.
Jed Avery sat alone. It was night, a moonlight night in Colorado, the whole world bathed in a cold radiance that conduces to dreams and fantasies.
But as he sat alone Jed's mind wove no light reveries. Far from it, indeed. He was sodden in spirit, weakened in nerve.
He rested his body on the edge of a chair seat and leaned far forward, elbows on his knees. His fingers twined continually, and on occasion one fist hammered the palm of the other hand.
"You old fool!" he whispered. "You old fool! Now, if he's gone—"
For twenty-four hours he had not dared frame the words.
He lifted his eyes to the window, and against the moonlight stood a bottle, its outlines distorted by incrustings of tallow. No candle was in its neck. There was only the bottle.
After a time the old man got up and paced the floor, three steps each way from the splotch of moonlight that came through the window. He had been walking that way for a night and a day—and now it was another night.
While it was daylight he had walked outside, eyes ever on the road, hoping, fearing. And no one had come! Now, as the night wore on and the boy did not return, Jed's condition bordered on distraction.
His pacing became faster and more fast. He lengthened the limits of his walk to those of the room, and finally in desperation jerked open the door to walk outside.
But he did not leave the threshold. Two figures, a man and a horse, coming up the road held him as though robbed of the will to move. He stood and stared, breathing irregularly. The man, who walked ahead, made his way slowly toward the gate. He was followed by the horse, followed as a dog might follow, for not so much as a strap was on the animal. The man's movements were painful, those of the horse deliberate.
Jed knew both those figures too well to be mistaken, even though his sight dimmed.
He wanted to cry out, but dared not. One question alone crowded to get past his teeth. The answer would mean supremest joy or sorrow. Fear of the latter held him mute.
The man unfastened the gate and let it swing open. "Come, boy," he said gently, and the big animal stepped inside.
With the same slow movements again, the man closed the bars.
Jed stood silent. A coyote high on the hills lifted his voice in a thin yapping, and the sound made Old VB shiver.
The boy came slowly toward the house. He saw Jed, but gave no sign, nor did the old man move. He stood there, eyes on the other in a misted stare, and VB stopped before him, putting a hand against the wall for support.
Then came the question, popping its way through unwilling, tight lips:
"Shall I light th' candle, Young VB?"
His voice was shrill, strained, vibrant with anxiety. But VB did not answer—merely lifted a hand to his hot head.
"VB, when you left last night th' candle dropped down into th' bottle an' went out. I didn't dare light a new one to-night—" His voice broke, and he paused a moment. "I didn't dare light it until I knowed. I've been settin' in th' dark here, thinkin' things—tryin' not to think dark things."
One hand went halfway to his mouth in fear as he waited for the other to answer. VB put a hand on Jed's shoulder, and the old man clamped his cold fingers over it desperately.
"Yes, Jed—light it," he said huskily. Then he raised his head and looked at the old man with a half smile. "Light it, Jed. Let it burn on and on, just for the sake of being bright. But we—we don't need it any more. Not for the old reason, Jed."
The cold hand twitched as it gripped the hot one.
"Not for the old reason, Jed," VB continued. "There's a bigger, better, truer light burning now. It won't slip into the bottle; it can't be blown out. It didn't waver when the true crisis came. It'll always burn; it won't slip down into the bottle. It's—it's the real thing."
He staggered forward, and Jed caught him, sobbing like a woman, a happy woman.
They had the whole story over then by the light of a fresh candle.
When Jed started forward with a cry at the recital of the shooting VB pushed him off.
"It's only a flesh wound; it don't matter—much. Mrs. Worth dressed it, and I'm all right. It's the Captain I want to tell about—the Captain, Jed!"
And he told it all, in short, choking sentences, stripping his soul naked for the little rancher. He did not spare himself, not one lone lash. He ended, crushed and bleeding before the eyes of his friend. After a pause he straightened back in his chair, the new fire in his eyes, the fire the man at Worth's had seen when he offered drink.
"But I've got to make it up to the Captain now," he said with a wild little laugh. "I've got to go on. He gave me the chance. He took me into blackness, into the test I needed, and brought me back to light. I've got to be a man, Jed—a man—"
And throughout the night Jed Avery tended the wound and watched and muttered—with joy in his heart.
Morning came, with quieted nerves for VB. He lay in the bunk, weak, immobile.
Jed came in from tending the horses.
"He didn't bleed, did he, VB?"
"No."
"It ain't what you thought, sonny. It ain't bad. Give him a rest an' he'll be better'n ever. Why, he's out there now, head up, whisperin' for you! You can't break a spirit like his unless you tear his vitals out!"
VB smiled, and the smile swelled to a laugh.
"Oh, Jed, it makes me so happy! But it won't be as it was. I can never let him carry me again."
The old man turned on the boy a puzzled look.
"What you goin' to do with him, VB—turn him loose again?"
"Not that, Jed; he wouldn't be happy. He'll never carry me again, but perhaps—perhaps he could carry a light rider—a girl—a woman."
And from Jed: "Oh-o-o-o!"
An interval of silence.
"That is," muttered VB, "if she'll take him, and—"
"Would you want him away from you?" the old man insisted.
"Oh, I hope it won't be that, Jed! I hope not—but I want her to— You understand. Jed? You understand?"
The other nodded his head, a look of grave tenderness in the old eyes.
"Then—then, Jed, I'm all right. I can get along alone. Would you mind riding over and—asking her if she'd come—
"You see, Jed, I know now. I didn't before—I'm sure it's worth the candle—and there'll be no more darkness; no lasting night for her if—"
Jed walked slowly out into the other room and picked up his spurs. VB heard him strap them on, heard his boots stamp across the floor and stop.
"I'd go, VB, but it ain't necessary."
The boy raised his head, and to his ears came the bellow of a high-powered motor, the sound growing more distinct with each passing second.
"Lord, how that woman's drivin'!" Jed cried. "Lordy!" And he ran from the house.
The bellow of the motor rose to a sound like batteries of Gatlings in action; then came the wail of brakes.
With a pulsing thrill VB heard her voice upraised—with such a thrill that he did not catch the dread in her tone as she questioned Jed.
She came to him swiftly, eyes dimmed with tears, without words, and knelt by his bunk, hands clasped about his head. For many minutes they were so, VB gripping her fine, firm forearms. Then she raised her face high.
"And you wouldn't let me help?" she asked querulously.
He looked at her long and soberly, and took both her hands in his.
"It was the one place you couldn't help," he muttered. "It was that sort—my love, I mean. I had to know; had to know that I wouldn't put a hateful mark on you by loving. I had to know that. Don't you see?"
She moved closer and came between him and the sunshine that poured through the open door. The glorious light was caught by her hair and thrown, it seemed, to the veriest corners of the dingy little room.
"The light!" he cried.
She settled against him, her lips on his, and clung so. From outside came the shrilling call of the Captain. VB crushed her closer.
Up the flagged walk to the house of chill, white stone overlooking the North River went a messenger, and through the imposing front portal he handed a letter, hidden away in a sheaf of others. A modest-appearing letter; indeed, perhaps something less than modest; possibly humble, for its corners were crumpled and its edges frayed. Yet, of all the packages handed him, Daniel Lenox, alone at his breakfast, singled it out for the earliest attention.
And what he read was this:
Dear Father:
In my last letter—written ten years ago, it seems—I promised to tell you my whereabouts when I had achieved certain ends. I now write to tell you that I am at the Thorpe Ranch, one hundred and thirty miles northwest of Colt, Colorado, the nearest railroad point.
I can inform you of this now because I have won my fight against the thing which would have stripped me of my manhood. And I want to make clear the point that it was you, father, who showed me the way, who made me realize to what depths I had gone.
I am very humble, for I know the powers that rule men.
When I left New York there was little in me to interest you, but I am making bold enough to tell you of the greatest thing in my life. I have won the love of a good woman. We are to be married here the twentieth, and some day I will want to bring her East with me. I hope you will want to see her.
Your son,Danny.
While the hand of the big clock made a quarter circle the man sat inert in his chair; limp, weak in body, spirit, and mind, whipped by the bitterest lashes that human mind can conjure. Then he raised his chin from his breast and rested his head against the back of the chair, while his hands hung loose at his sides.
His lips moved. "Hope—you will want to see her," he repeated in a whisper.
A pause, and again words:
"He wouldn't even ask me—wouldn't dream I wanted to—be there!"
An old man, you would have said, old and broken. The snap, the precision that had been his outstanding characteristic, was gone. But not for long. The change came before the whispering had well died; the lines of purpose, of decision, returned to his face, his arms ceased to hang limp, the look in the eyes—none the less warm—became definite, focused.
Suddenly Daniel Lenox sat erect and raised the letter to the light once more.
"The twentieth!" he muttered. "And this is—"
Another train fumed at the distances, left cities behind, and crawled on across prairies to mountain ranges. As it progressed, dispatchers, one after another, sat farther forward in their chairs and the alert keenness of their expression grew a trifle sharper. For the Lenox Special, New York to Colt, Colorado, invited disaster with every mile of its frantic rush across country. Freights, passenger trains, even the widely advertised limiteds, edged off the tracks to let it shriek on unhampered.
In the swaying private car sat the man who had caused all this disarray of otherwise neat schedules. At regular, short intervals his hand traveled to watch-pocket and his blue eyes scrutinized the dial of his timepiece as though to detect a lie in the sharp, frank characters. In the other hand, much of the time, were held sheets of limp paper. They had been folded and smoothed out again so many times and, though he was an old man and one who thought mostly in figures, fondled so much, that the ink on them was all but obliterated in places.
He read and reread what was written there as the train tore over the miles, and as he read the great warmth came back to his eyes. With it, at times, a fear came. When fear was there, he tugged at his watch again.
Up grades, through cañons, the special roared its way. At every stop telegrams zitted ahead, and hours before the train was due an automobile waited by the depot platform at Colt.
Daniel Lenox heeded not the enthusiastic train-men who held watches and calculated the broken record as brakes screamed down and the race by rail ended. Bag in hand, he strode across the cinder platform and entered the waiting automobile, without a single glance for the group that looked at him wonderingly.
"You know the way to the Thorpe Ranch?" he asked the driver of the car.
"Like a book!"
"Can you drive all night?"
"I can."
"Good! We must be there as early to-morrow as possible."
And ten minutes before noon the next day the heavy-eyed driver threw out his clutch and slowed the car to a stop before the S Bar S ranch house. Saddled horses were there, a score of them standing with bridle reins down. Sounds of lifted voices came from the house, quickly lulled as an exclamation turned attention on the arrival.
From the ample door came a figure—tall and lean, well poised, shoulders square, feet firm on the ground. Pale, true, but surely returning strength was evidenced in his very bearing. VB's lips moved. His father, halfway to him, stopped.
"Dad!"
"Am I on time?" queried the older man.
"Dad!"
With a cry the boy was up on him, grasping both hands in his.
"I didn't—dare hope you'd want—Dad, it makes me so—"
The other looked almost fiercely into the boy's face, clinging to the hands that clutched his, shaking them tremblingly now and then. The penetrating blue eyes searched out every line in the boy's countenance, and the look in them grew to be such as VB had never seen before.
"Did you think I'd stay back there in New York and let you do all this alone? Did you think I wouldn't come on, in time if I could, and tell you how ashamed I am to have ever doubted you, my own blood, how mean a thing was that which I thought was faith?"
His gaze went from VB to Gail, coming toward him clad all in simple white, flushing slightly as she extended her hand. He turned to her, took the hand, and looked deep into her big eyes. He tried to speak, but words would not come and he shook his head to drive back the choking emotion.
"Bless you!" he finally muttered. "Bless you both. You're a man—Danny. And you—"
His voice failed again and he could only remain mute, stroking the girl's hand.
Then Jed came up and greeted the newcomer silently, a bit grimly, as though he had just forgiven him something.
"Come over here, you three," said VB, and led them over to where two horses stood together. One was the bay the boy had ridden that afternoon he charged down the ridge to make the great stallion his, and beside him, towering, head up, alert, regally self-conscious, stood the Captain. The bay bore VB's saddle. On the Captain's back perched one of smaller tree, silver mounted and hand tooled, with stirrups that were much too short for a man.
They looked the great horse over silently, moving about him slowly, and Danny pointed out his fine physical qualities to his father. A rattling of wheels attracted them and they looked up to see a team of free-stepping horses swing toward them, drawing a light buckboard. The vehicle stopped and from it stepped a man in the clothing of a clergyman.
"He's here, VB," Jed muttered. "To be sure, an' he's got his rope down, too. Th' iron's hot; th' corral gate's open and he's goin' to head you in. 'T ain't often you see such a pair of high-strung critters goin' in so plumb docile, Mister Lenox!"
And from the corner of his eye he saw the man beside him wipe his hand across his cheek, as though to brush something away.
The Captain pawed the ground sharply. Then he lifted his head high, drew a great breath, and peered steadily off toward the distant ridges, eagerly, confidently, as though he knew that much waited—out yonder.