He sat motionless and silent, calmly biding his time to express the disapproval which such childish behavior made inc.u.mbent upon him. Cold, hard anger like his can always wait; and waiting only makes it colder and harder; there is never heat enough in it to melt its merciless ice.

A sudden darkening of the sky sent her into the house at last, and even then she did not return to her proper place by his side. She did not even look at him, but spoke to the judge who was just leaving the great room to go to the cabin which he used as his bedroom and office. Ruth begged him not to start out, saying that the storm seemed so near that it might break before he could reach the cabin. But he went on with a smiling shake of his head, after a glance at the dark clouds which were gathering blackly on the other side of the river behind the spectral cottonwoods, now bare of leaves and ghostly white.

"Did David have to go through the big deadening, William?" she asked suddenly, speaking over her shoulder, without leaving her anxious post in the doorway, though the wind was whipping her skirts about her slender figure and loosing her long, black hair. "I wish he would come.

He should be back by this time. I am afraid--the great trees fall so in a storm. Father Orin and the doctor, too, often ride through there. And it is such a dangerous place when the wind blows. Oh!" with a cry of relief, "there's David now! Here he comes. David, David dear--I am so glad!"

She sprang down the steps and ran to meet the boy. The rush of the rising storm kept from hearing William Pressley's call for her to come back. He stood still for a moment, hesitating, and then, seeing that she flew on, he followed and overtook her just as she reached David, who was getting down from the pony and taking the empty bag from the saddle. The wind was now very violent, and the darkened air was thick with the dead leaves of the forest swirling into the river which was already lashed into waves and dashing against the sh.o.r.e. Waterfowl flew landward with frightened cries; a low, dark cloud was being drawn up the stream over the ashen face of the water--a strange, thick, terrible black curtain, shaken by the tempest and bordered by the lightning--pressed onward by the resistless powers of the air.

There was a lull just as William Pressley reached Ruth's side. It was one of those tense s.p.a.ces which are among the greatest terrors of a storm by reason of their suddenness, their stillness, and their suspense. He grasped her hand, and she clung to his as she would have clung to anything that she chanced to touch in her fright. He said rather sternly that she must come to the house at once, and she turned obediently, following the motion of his hand rather than the meaning of his words. He spoke to David also, without looking at the boy, but she was clinging to him and hiding her face on his arm whenever the lightning flashed, and did not notice what he had said until he repeated his words:--

"You have of course brought back the doeskin string."

Ruth suddenly lifted her face from his arm, loosed her grasp upon it and stood away from him. Yet in that first dazed instant she could not believe that she had heard aright. It was impossible for her, being what she was, to understand that he had never in all his life done anything more true to his nature, more thoroughly characteristic, than to ask this question at such a time. She forgot the lightning while she waited till he asked it for the third time. And then, straining her incredulous ears again, she heard the boy murmur something, and she saw him hurriedly and confusedly searching his pockets for the string.

"I can't find it," he stammered. "I must have dropped it when I poured out the wheat. I am so sorry--I will go to-morrow--"

"You will go now;" said William, calmly. "The string will be lost by to-morrow. And then," judicially, "you will remember a needed lesson better if you go at once."

"William!" burst out Ruth almost with a scream. "You can't mean what you say. Listen to the roar of the coming storm. It's almost here. Surely you don't know what you are saying. Send David through the deadening in the very teeth of a tempest like this, for a bit of string!"

"Come to the house, my dear. It is beginning to rain. I am afraid you will take cold. You, sir, will go back at once," turning to the boy.

"You know, of course, that the string itself is of no importance in this matter. It is absurd to speak of such a thing. But it is my duty to teach you, as far as I can, to perform yours. I tell you again to go at once. That is all I have to say, I believe, concerning this matter.

Come, Ruth, it is beginning to rain."

She shrunk away from his hand as if its touch horrified her. Her tears were falling faster than the heavy, isolated drops that fell on her bare head. But her courage was rising at need, as it always rose, and she was not too much blinded by tears to see that the boy was getting on the pony again. She ran to him and caught his sleeve, and turned upon William Pressley with the reckless fierceness of a gentle creature made daring in defence of what it loves.

"You are cruel," she said, speaking calmly, steadied by the very extremity of her excitement and distress. "You have no more heart than a stone. You feel nothing that does not touch yourself. You have always been unkind to David. But you shall not do this. I will prevent you--defy you. You shall not send him to his death for some narrow, tyrannical notion. He is like my brother. I love him as if he were. And I wouldn't allow you to treat a stranger so. It's inhuman! It shall not be!" panting, and clinging to the boy.

William Pressley stared at her as if he thought she had suddenly lost her senses. Could this be Ruth speaking like that--and to himself?

Instinctively he threw into his voice the whole weight of his heavy, cold rage, which had never yet failed to crush all life and spirit out of her most fiery resistance.

"This is truly shocking. I scarcely know what to say. I am merely trying to do my unpleasant duty in a perfectly simple matter. If I didn't try to do it, I should always think less well of myself--"

"Think less well of yourself!" she cried. "Nothing in the world could ever make you do that! Nothing! Whatever you think and say and do is always right; whatever anybody else thinks or says or does is always wrong. I have given up in almost everything because I loved peace more than my own way, and because I am not often sure that I know best. But I will not give up in this!" shrinking and quivering at a peal of thunder, but clinging closer to the boy's arm.

William Pressley came nearer and laid his hand on her shoulder.

"Come to the house, my dear," he said quietly. "It is beginning to rain harder. You will certainly take cold. Come at once. When you have time to think, you will see how childish and foolish all this is. We will say no more about it. You, sir, know what is right for you to do. You know as well as I do what the judge's positive orders were. You have disregarded them--"

"But uncle Robert never meant anything like this," she said. "He is kind and tender-hearted. I will call him. He would not--"

The boy had turned proudly and silently, meaning to get back in the saddle, but she would not loose her hold on his arm. And then came the first furious blast of the tempest, and the greatest trees--the mightiest giants of the ancient forest--bent and crouched before it, bracing themselves for the fierce conflict with the elements in which they must gain or lose centuries of life. The rain now began to fall heavily, and William abruptly told the boy to come in the house till the storm was over. In yielding thus far, he was not influenced by Ruth's threat to appeal to his uncle. He had scarcely heard what she said, and he was never in awe of the judge's opinion, and never looked for opposition from any source, because he could not antic.i.p.ate an opinion different from his own. He merely dropped the argument for the moment because he saw the urgent necessity of bringing an undignified scene to a speedy close, and could not see any other or better way of doing it.

When they had gone indoors and had gathered around the fire, so that their damp clothes might dry, he was by far the most composed of the three. The boy was deeply agitated and suffering as only the supersensitive can suffer from harshness, whether merited or not. Ruth was still quivering with excitement and distress, and very soon her tender conscience also was aching. She could not recall very distinctly all that she had said, but she knew how bitter her words must have been, and was already wondering how she ever could have uttered them. How they came in her mind and heart she could not comprehend. She had always thought William a good man, and worthy of all respect, and she now felt that there had been much truth in what he had said. David was a dreamer, poor boy, and it would be well if he could be taught to remember, to be practical and useful like other people. She still could not think it right for him to have been forced to go back through the storm to correct an error; but she now thought that William had not really intended to send him. It seemed suddenly plain that William's sole intention must have been to impress him with the necessity of doing what he was told to do. She had scolded the boy herself about that very thing many a time. The fault was hers, she had been too hasty, too excitable, too impetuous. Ah, yes, that was always her fault! She looked at William with everything that she thought and felt clearly to be seen on her transparent face. But a ray of comfort shone through the cloud which darkened her spirits. Surely this and everything else would be well when she had told him how sorry she was, and how plainly she saw her mistake.

They had been such good friends as far back as she could remember; the bond between them had been such a close and strong one that it certainly could not be broken or even strained by a few hasty, pa.s.sionate words, repented at once. Her lovely eyes were already seeking his face and silently appealing to this old and faithful affection.

But William's gaze did not meet hers. He was looking into the fire and seeing what had occurred with wholly different eyes. To him everything was altered, and nothing could ever make the relation between them what it had been. No tenderness of affection, no length of a.s.sociation, no faithfulness of service, could stand for an instant against a single one of the many blows that his morbid self-love had received. For self-love like his is an incurable disease of sensibility, a spreading canker which poisons the whole character, as an unsound spot in the flesh poisons the whole body. To those who have not come in close contact with this form of morbidity, it may seem impossible that William Pressley's love for Ruth, which had been real so far as it went, should have hardened into dislike almost as soon as the words that wounded it had left her lips. Yet that was precisely what had taken place, quite naturally and even inevitably. He had loved her as much as he was capable of loving, mainly because of the deep gratification which he found in her great esteem for himself. No one else had ever come so near granting his self-love all that it demanded. Her sweet presence, always looking up to him, had been like the perpetual swinging of a censer perpetually giving the fragrant incense that his vanity craved. And now all this was changed. The gentle acolyte was gone, the censer no longer swung, and instead there was a keen critic armed with words as hard as stones. No, there was nothing strange in the fact that, when William Pressley finally turned his gaze on Ruth, he looked at her as if she had been a stranger whom he had never seen before; an utter stranger, and one moreover whose presence was so utterly antagonistic to him that there was not the remotest possibility of any liking between them. But he said nothing, and gave no indication of what he felt. No feeling was ever strong enough to cause him to say or do an unconsidered thing. In this, as in all things, he waited to be sure that he was doing what would place himself in the best possible light. While he had never a moment's doubt of being wholly in the right, he thought it best to wait and consider his own appearance in the matter. And then, just at that time, political affairs were claiming his first attention, for that was a period of intense public stress.

XIV

A SPIRITUAL CENTAUR

The whole wilderness, the whole country, the whole heart of the nation, was now aflame over the coming conflict at Tippecanoe.

Father Orin, like every one else, was thinking of this, a day or so later, as he rode along the forest path. There was a heavy weight in his merciful breast as he looked across the river. Over there, beyond those spectral cottonwoods and on the banks of its tributary, the Wabash, the white and the red races were about to meet in a supreme struggle now close at hand. He had just been told that Joe Daviess had offered his sword, and the news had brought the public trouble home to his own heart, for he loved the man.

And thus it was that, seeing Tommy Dye riding toward him, he had only a grave word of greeting, without any of the merry banter that the adventurer had come to expect. He stopped, however, feeling that Tommy had something to say, but he listened in rather abstracted silence, till Tommy spoke of having been to see the Sisters in order to tell them good-by.

"For I am going to Tippecanoe, too. I leave to-night. The general can't go. It looks like the wound from that infernal duel with d.i.c.kinson never would get well. But I like to be where things are stirring, and I am going, anyhow. So is Joe Daviess."

"Yes, I know," said Father Orin, sadly. "Good men as well as bad must go, I suppose, if wars must be fought."

Tommy Dye looked hard at him for a moment, and taking off his hat, rubbed his red hair the wrong way till it stood on end. His stare gradually turned to a sort of sheepish embarra.s.sment before he spoke;--

"I'll swear some of the babies up yonder ain't much bigger than my fist!" he finally blurted out. "I took the Sisters the wad I won on the last chicken fight. 'Twasn't much, but there ain't any use taking it over the river for the red devils to get, if they get me--and maybe they will--for they say the Prophet is a fighter. If the Shawnees don't get me, I can make plenty more, so it's just as broad as it's long. Anyhow, the Sisters will know what to do with the wad. Say! I wish it had been bigger. They took me into the room where the youngsters stay," he said huskily, rubbing his head harder than ever. "They said--them real ladies said--that they would raise up the children to love me, and pray for me.

When I come away they cried--them real ladies--about me, old Tommy Dye, that ain't even a heretic."

"You are kind, my friend; you have a good heart, and you are generous,"

said Father Orin; "but I wish you could earn your money in another and a better way. Somehow it grates--"

"Now, look here!" cried Tommy Dye, bristling at once, and jamming his hat back on his red head. He was always cowed at the very sight of the gentle Sisters; but as man to man--even though one be a priest--he was up again at once, and quite ready to hold his own. "Every man to his own notion," he bl.u.s.tered and swaggered. "I've got mine and you've got yours. That's my way of making a living, and I dare anybody to say it ain't honest. Just let any man come out flat foot and tell me so, face to face. I play fair, and I bet as square as the next one. I take my chances the same as the other man. I may fight rough and tumble, but I always give warning, and I never gouge. If any man's got anything to say against my honesty or fairness, he's only got to come on and say it."

"Come, come!" said Father Orin, too sad to be amused at the outburst, as he might have been at another time. "I beg your pardon if I have offended you. I had no thought of doing that. But I wish I could induce you to think before you go into danger. All who go over yonder will not come back. The Shawnees have been getting ready for this test of strength for a long time. There is great danger. I beg you, my friend, to think. Will you come back with me to the chapel? Just for a little while. There is no one there, and we can have a quiet talk."

"Now, what's the use of raking all that up again? We've gone over all that--and more than once--haven't we? You thought one way and I another, when we had it out the other day. And we've both got the same right now that we had then, to think as we like about something that neither of us knows the first blamed thing about, haven't we? Well, I think just the same now that I did then, and I reckon you do, too. I haven't seen any reason to change, have you? I haven't had any fresh news from up yonder"--pointing heavenward--"and I don't suppose you have either. So you see one of us is bound to be most d.a.m.nable mistaken--"

"Shut up," shouted Father Orin, "you unmannerly rascal! I have a great mind to jump down and pull you off that horse and give you a thrashing to teach you some respect for religion, and how to keep a civil tongue in your head. And you know I could do it, too!"

They looked fiercely at each other for a moment. Father Orin was of a fiery spirit, and all his goodness could not always subdue it. Tommy Dye was a ready and a good fighter, but he paused now, and silently regarded the priest. He looked at his large, st.u.r.dy form, at his brawny shoulders, at his deep chest and his long arms, remembering suddenly that he had seen him roll, with his own hands, the largest logs in the little chapel which no one else could move.

"I reckon you could," Tommy Dye finally conceded frankly.

Father Orin burst into his good-humored, chuckling laugh, and Tommy Dye grinned, but their faces sobered instantly. The pity of it touched and moved the priest through his sense of humor. The gambler was softened and ashamed, he hardly knew why. With one simultaneous impulse they sent their horses forward, and coming closer together clasped hands.

"G.o.d bless and guard you, my friend," said Father Orin. "You can't keep me from saying that, and you can't help my praying for your safety,"

trying to smile.

Tommy Dye found nothing more to say and, laughing very loud, he put spurs to his horse and galloped away through the darkening forest.

Father Orin and Toby stood still looking after him till he had pa.s.sed out of sight. And then they turned to go on their way. They went along in silence for a while, and at last Father Orin began the conversation with a heavy sigh. "Well, old man, there's another bad failure that we have got to set down in our book--you and me. That was another of the times when we didn't know what to do. That is to say, I didn't. I suppose you did--you always do. You never make mistakes and lose your temper like I do nearly every day. If I could do my part as well as you do yours, we wouldn't fail so often, would we, old man?"

Toby quickly turned his head with a friendly, encouraging whinny, as if he saw his co-worker's trouble and wanted to give him what comfort he could. He always seemed to know as well when his friend needed encouragement as when he required to be kept up to his duty. It is a wonderful, wonderful thing, this bond between the good rider and the good horse! It is so wonderfully close and strong; the closest and strongest binding the human being to his brute brother. It is infinitely more subtle too, than that which binds any other, even the kindest master to the most faithful dog; for the man and his horse are not merely master and servant, they are friends and even equals in a way.

Neither is nearly so complete or powerful without the other; but together--with body and spirit coming in living, throbbing contact--they form the mightiest force in flesh and blood. Along the marvellous electric currents of life there flashes from the man to the horse, intelligence, feeling, purpose, even thought perhaps, so that to the true horseman the centaur can never be wholly a fabulous creature.

One of the greatest things about this wonderful bond is that it reaches all cla.s.ses of riders and horses. Every good rider and every good horse may rely upon it, no matter which of the many roads through life they may travel together: all may trustingly rely upon it till one or both shall have breasted "Sleep's dreamy hill." The horse of the fox-hunter, of the race-rider, of the mounted soldier--every one of these n.o.ble beasts has the fullest understanding of his rider's calling, and gives it his completest sympathy with the greatest a.s.sistance in his power.

Who that has known the horse at his best can have failed to observe and recognize and be moved by this fact? We have all seen that the hunter hardly needs the touch of his rider's knee to be off like the wind and to go without urging from whip or spur on to the end of the chase; never flagging, no matter how long or hard it may be; never flinching at the deepest ditch nor fouling at the highest fence; straining every sinew to the last, for his rider's defeat is his own failure, his rider's success his own victory. And we have all seen the gallant response of the race-horse to every movement of his rider's body--a loyal gallantry that enn.o.bles even the merely mercenary; and the sight of these two--now one--flying toward the goal, always makes the heart beat faster and grow warm with its brave showing of this magical bond. And above all, we have seen the trooper's horse, which comes closer to him than the comrade fighting by his side; for it is to his horse more than to his sword that the soldier must owe any glory that he may hope to win; and when strength and courage can no longer serve, it is his horse that often gives his own body to shield his rider from death.