"He has named the date!" shouted the Doge. "He goes by to-morrow's train!

It will be a gala affair, almost an historical moment in the early history of this community. I am to make a speech presenting him with the freedom of the whole world. Between us we have hit on a proper modern symbol of the gift. He slips me his Pullman ticket and I formally offer it to him as the key to the hospitality of the seven seas, the two hemispheres, and the teeming cities that lie beyond the range. It will be great fun, with plenty of persiflage. And, Mary, they suggest that you write some verses--ridiculous verses, in keeping with the whole nonsensical business."

"You mean that I am to stand on the platform and read poetry dedicated to him?" she demanded.

"Poetry, Mary? You grow ambitious. Not poetry--foolish doggerel. Or someone will read it for you."

He had not failed to watch the play of her expression. She had received all his nonsense, announced in his best style of simulated forensic grandeur, with a certain unchanging serenity which was unamused: which was, indeed, barely interested.

"And someone else shall write it, for I don't think of any verses,"

she said, with a slight shrug of the shoulder. "Besides, I shall not be there."

"Not be there! People will remark your absence!"

"Will they?" she asked, thoughtfully, as if that had not occurred to her.

"No, they will be too occupied with the persiflage. I am going to ride out to the pa.s.s in the morning very early--before daybreak."

"But"--he was positively frolicsome as he caught her hands and waved them back and forth, while he rocked his shoulders--"when you are stubborn, Mary, have your way. I will make your excuses. And I to work now. It is the hour of the hoe," as he called all hours except those of darkness and the hot midday.

For Jasper Ewold was no idler in the affairs of his ranch or of the town.

Few city men were so busy. His everlasting talk was incidental, like the babbling of a brook which, however, keeps steadily flowing on; and the stored scholarship of his mind was supplemented by long evenings with no other relaxation but reading. Now as he went down the path he broke into song; and when the Doge sang it was something awful, excusable only by the sheer happiness that brought on the attack.

Mary had important sewing, which this morning she chose to do in her room rather than in her favorite spot in the garden. She closed the shutters on the sunny side and sat down by the window nearest the garden, peculiarly sensible of the soft light and cool s.p.a.ciousness of an inner world. The occasional buzz of a bee, the flutter of the leaves of the poplar, might have been the voice of the outer world in Southern Spain or Southern Italy, or anywhere else where the air is balmy.

And to-morrow! Out to Galeria in the fervor of a pilgrim to some shrine, with the easy movement of her pony and the rigid lines of the pa.s.s gradually drawing nearer and the sky ever distant! She would be mistress of her thoughts in all the silent glamour of morning on the desert. She would hear the train stop at the station, its heavy effort as it pulled out, and watch it winding over the flashing steel threads in a clamor of stridency and harshness, which grew fainter and fainter. And she would smile as it disappeared around a bend in the range. She would smile at him, at the incident, just as carelessly as he had smiled when he told of the dinosaur.

XIII

A JOURNEY ON CRUTCHES

The sun became benign in its afternoon slant. Little Rivers was beginning to move after its siesta, with the stretching of muscles that would grow more vigorous as evening approached and freshened life came into the air with the sprinkle of sunset brilliance.

To Jack the hour palpably brought a reminder of the misery of the moment when a thing long postponed must at last be performed. The softness of speculative fancy faded from his face. His lips tightened in a way that seemed to bring his chin into prominence in mastery of his being. As he called Firio, his voice unusually high-pitched, he did not look out at P.D. and Wrath of G.o.d and Jag Ear.

Firio came with the eagerness of one who is restless for action. He leaned on the windowsill, his elbows spread, his chin cupped in his hands, his Indian blankness of countenance enlivened by the glow of his eyes, as jewels enliven dull brown velvet.

"Firio, I have something to tell you."

"_Si_!"

There was a laboring of Jack's throat muscles, and then he forced out the truth in a few words.

"Firio," he said, "this is my trail end. I am going back to New York to-morrow."

"_Si_!" answered Firio, without a tremor of emotion; but his eyes glowed confidently, fixedly, into Jack's.

"There will be money for you, and--"

"_Si_!" said Firio mechanically, as if repeating the lines of a lesson.

Was this Indian boy prepared for the news? Or did he not care? Was he simply clay that served without feeling? The thought made Jack wince. He paused, and the dark eyes, as in a spell, kept staring into his.

"And you get P.D. and Wrath of G.o.d and Jag Ear and, yes, the big spurs and the chaps, too, to keep to remember me by."

Firio did not answer.

"You are not pleased? You--"

"_Si_! I will keep them for you. You will want them; you will come back to all this;" and suddenly Firio was galvanized into the life of a single gesture. He swept his arm toward the sky, indicating infinite distance.

"No, I shall never come back! I can't!" Jack said; and his face had set hard, as if it were a wall about to be driven at a wall. "I must go and I must stay."

"_Si_!" said Firio, resuming his impa.s.siveness, and slipped around the corner of the house.

"He does care!" Jack cried with a smile, which, however, was not the smile of gardens, of running brooks, and of song. "I am glad--glad!"

He picked up his crutches and went out to the three steeds of trail memory:

"And _you_ care--_you_ care!" he repeated to them.

He drew a lugubrious grimace in mockery at Wrath of G.o.d. He tickled the sliver of the donkey's ear, whereat Jag Ear wiggled the sliver in blissful unconsciousness that he had lost any of the ornamental equipment of his tribe.

"You are like most of us; we don't see our deformities, Jag Ear," Jack told him. "And if others were also blind to them, why, we should all be good-looking!"

His arm slipped around P.D.'s neck and he ran a finger up and down P.D.'s nose with a tickling caress.

"You old plodder!" he said. "You know a lot. It's good to have the love of any living thing that has been near me as long as you have."

This preposterous being was preposterously sentimental over a pair of ponies and an earless donkey. When Mrs. Galway, who had watched him from the window, came out on the porch she saw that he was on his way through the gate in the hedge to the street.

"Look here! Did the doctor say you might?" she called.

"No, my leg says it!" Jack answered, gaily. "Just a little walk!

Back soon."

It was his first enterprise in locomotion outside the limits of Jim Galway's yard since he had been wounded. He turned blissful traveller again. Having come to know the faces of the citizens, now he was to look into the faces of their habitations. The broad main street, with its rows of trees, narrowed with perspective until it became a gray spot of desert sand. Under the trees leisurely flowed those arteries of ranch and garden-life, the irrigation ditches. Continuity of line in the hedge-fences was evidently a munic.i.p.al requirement; but over the hedges individualism expressed itself freely, yet with a harmony which had been set by public fashion.

The houses were of cement in simple design. They had no architectural message except that of a background for ornamentation by the genius of the soil's productivity. They waited on vines to cover their sides and trees to cast shade across their doorways. One need not remain long to know the old families in this community, where the criterion of local aristocracy was the size of your plums or the number of crops of alfalfa you could grow in a year.

Already Jack felt at home. It was as if he were friends with a whole world, lacking the social distinctions which only begin when someone acquires sufficient worldly possessions to give exclusive, formal dinners. He knew every pa.s.ser-by well enough to address him or her by the Christian name. Women called to him from porches with a dozen invitations to visit gardens.

"Just a saunter, just a try-out before I take the train. Not going far,"

he always answered; yet there was something in his bearing that suggested a definite mission.

"We hate to lose you!" called Mrs. Smith.