"No, not exactly," John Wingfield, Sr. confessed.

"I told you what his nature was; how it had drawn on the temperament of his mother. I told you that with candor, with a decently human humility appealing to his affections, everything was possible. And remember, he is strong, stronger than you, John Wingfield! There's a process of fate in him! John Wingfield, you--" The sentence ended abruptly, as if the doctor had dropped the receiver on the hooks with a crash.

Phantoms were closing in around John Wingfield, Sr.... His memory ranged back over the days of ardent youth, in the full tide of growing success, when to want a thing, human or material, meant to have it....

And in his time he had told a good many lies. The right lie, big and daring, at the right moment had won more than one victory. With John Prather out of the way, he had decided on an outright falsehood to his son. Why had he not compromised with Dr. Bennington's advice and tried part falsehood and part contrition? But no matter, no matter. He would go on; he was made of steel.

Again the tanned face and broad shoulders stood between him and the page. Jack was strong; yes, strong; and he was worth having. All the old desire of possession reappeared, in company with his hatred of defeat.

He was thinking of the bare spot on the wall in the drawing-room in place of the Velasquez. There would be an end of his saying: "The boy is the spit of the ancestor and just as good a fighter, too; only his abilities are turned into other channels more in keeping with the spirit of the age!" An end of: "Fine son you have there!" from men at the club who had given him only a pa.s.sing nod in the old days. For he was not displeased that the boy was liked, where he himself was not. The men whom he admired were those who had faced him with "No!" across the library desk; who had got the better of him, even if he did not admit it to himself. And the strength of his son, baffling to his cosmos, had won his admiration. No, he would not lose Jack's strength without an effort; he wanted it for his own. Perhaps something else, too, there in the loneliness of the office in the face of that bunch of roses was pulling him: the thrill that he had felt when he saw the moisture in Jack's eyes and felt the warmth of his grasp before Jack left the library.

And Jack and John Prather were speeding West to the same destination!

They would meet! What then? There was no use of trying to work in an office on Broadway when the forces which he had brought into being over twenty years ago were in danger of being unloosed out on the desert, with Jack riding free and the fingers of the ancestor-devil on the reins. John Wingfield, Sr. called in the general manager.

"You are in charge until I return," he said; and a few hours later he was in a private car, bound for Little Rivers.

PART III

HE FINDS HIS PLACE IN LIFE

x.x.xV

BACK TO LITTLE RIVERS

As with the gentle touch of a familiar hand, the ozone of high alt.i.tudes gradually and sweetly awakened Jack. The engine was puffing on an upgrade; the car creaked and leaned in taking a curve. Raising the shade of his berth he looked out on spectral ranges that seemed marching and tumbling through dim distances. With pillows doubled under his head he lay back, filling sight and mind with the indistinctness and s.p.a.cious mystery of the desert at night; recalling his thoughts with his last view of it over two months ago in the morning hours after leaving El Paso and seeing his future with it now, where then he had seen his future with the store.

"Think of old Burleigh raising oranges! I am sure that the trees will be well trimmed," he whispered. "Think of Mamie Devore in the thick of the great jelly compet.i.tion, while the weight of Joe Mathewson's shoulders starts a spade into the soil as if it were going right to the centre of the earth. Why, Joe is likely to get us into international difficulties by poking the ribs of a Chinese ancestor! Yes--if we don't lose our Little Rivers; and we must not lose it!"

The silvery face of the moon grew fainter with the coming of a ruddier light; the shadows of the mountains were being etched definitely on the plateaus that stretched out like vast floors under the developing glow of sunrise; and the full splendor of day had come, with its majestic spread of vision.

"When Joe sees that he will feel so strong he will want to get out and carry the Pullman," Jack thought. "But Mamie will not let him for fear that he will overdo!"

How slow the train seemed to travel! It was a snail compared to Jack's eagerness to arrive. He was inclined to think that P.D., Wrath of G.o.d, and Jag Ear were faster than through expresses. He kept inquiring of the conductor if they were on time, and the conductor kept repeating that they were. How near that flash of steel at a bend around a tongue of chaotic rock, stretching out into the desert sea, with its command to man to tunnel or accept a winding path for his iron horse! How long in coming to it in that rare air, with its deceit of distances! Landmark after landmark of peak or bold ridge took the angle of some recollected view of his five years' wanderings. It was already noon when he saw Galeria from the far end of the long basin that he had crossed, with the V as the compa.s.s of his bearings, on the ride that brought him to the top to meet Mary and Pete Leddy.

Then the V was lost while the train wound around the range that formed one side of the basin's rim. The blaze of midday had pa.s.sed before it entered the reaches of the best valley yet in the judgment of a connoisseur in valleys; and under the Eternal Painter's canopy a spot of green quivered in the heat-rays of the horizon. His Majesty was in a dreamy mood. He was playing in delicate variations, tranquil and enchanting, of effects in gold and silver, now gossamery thin, now thick and rich.

"What is this thing crawling along on two silken threads and so afraid of the hills?" he was asking, sleepily. "Eh? No! Bring the easel to me, if you want a painting. I am not going to rise from my easy couch. There!

Fix that cushion so! I am a leisurely, lordly aristocrat. Palette? No, I will just shake my soft beard of fine mist back and forth across the sky, a spectrum for the sunrays. So! so! I see that this worm is a railroad train. Let it curl up in the shadow of a gorge and take a nap. I will wake it up by and by when I seize my brush and start a riot in the heavens that will make its rows of window-gla.s.s eyes stare."

"I am on this train and in a hurry!" Jack objected.

"Do I hear the faint echo of a human ego down there on the earth?"

demanded the Eternal Painter. "Who are you? One of the art critics?"

"One of Your Majesty's loving subjects, who has been away in a foreign kingdom and returns to your allegiance," Jack answered.

"So be it. I shall know if what you say is true when I gaze into your eyes at sunset."

"I am bringing you a Velasquez!" Jack added.

"Good! Put him where he can have a view out of the window of his first teacher at work in the studio of the universe."

The train crept on toward the hour of the Eternal Painter's riot and toward Little Rivers, while the patch of green was softly, impalpably growing, growing, until the crisscross breaks of the streets developed and Jack could identify the Doge's and other bungalows. He was on the platform of the car before the brakes ground on the wheels, leaning out to see a crowd at the station, which a minute later became a prospect of familiar, kindly, beaming faces. There was a roar of "h.e.l.lo, Jack!" in the heavy voices of men and the treble of children. Then he did not see the faces at all for a second; he saw only mist.

"Not tanned, Jack, but you'll brown up soon!"

"Gosh! But we've been lonesome without you!"

"Cure any case of sore eyes on record!"

Jack was too full of the glory of this unaffected welcome in answer to his telegram that he was coming to find words at first; but as he fairly dropped off the steps into the arms of Jim Galway and Dr. Patterson he shouted in a shaking voice:

"h.e.l.lo, everybody! h.e.l.lo, Little Rivers!"

He noted, while all were trying to grasp his hands at once, that the men had their six-shooters. A half-dozen were struggling to get his suit case. Not one of his friends was missing except the Doge and Mary.

"Let the patient have a little air!" protested Dr. Patterson, as some started in to shake hands a second time.

"Fellow-citizens, if there's anything in the direct primary I feel sure of the nomination!" said Jack drily.

"You're already elected!" shouted Bob Worther.

Around at the other side of the station Jack found Firio waiting his turn in patient isolation, with P.D., Wrath of G.o.d, and Jag Ear.

"_Si! si_!" called Firio triumphantly to all the sceptics who had told him that Jack would not return.

Jack took the little Indian by the shoulders and rocked him back and forth in delight, while Firio's eyes were burning coals of jubilation.

"You knew!" Jack exclaimed. "You were right! I have come back!"

"_Si, si_! I know!" repeated Firio.

"No stopping him from bringing the whole cavalcade to the station, either," said Jim Galway. "And he wouldn't join the rest of us out in front of the station. He was going to be his own reception committee and hold an overflow meeting all by himself!"

There was no disguising the fact that the equine trio of veterans remembered Jack. With P.D. and Jag Ear the demonstration was unrestrained; but however exultant Wrath of G.o.d might be in secret, he was of no mind to compromise his reputation for lugubriousness by any public display of emotional weakness.

"Wrath of G.o.d, I believe you were a cross-eyed Cromwellian soldier in your previous incarnation!" said Jack; "and as it is hard for a horse to be crosseyed, you could not retain the characteristic. Think of that!

Wouldn't a cross-eyed Cromwellian soldier strike fear to the heart of any loyalist? And Jag Ear, you're getting fat!"

"I keep his hoofs hard. When he fat he eat less on trail!" explained Firio, becoming almost voluble. "All ready for trail!" he hinted.

"Not now, Firio," said Jack. "And, Firio, there's a package at the station, a big, flat case. It came by express on the same train with me--the most precious package in the world. See that it is taken to the house."

"Si! You ride?" asked Firio, offering P.D.'s reins.