Over Roberts' face flashed a momentary smile.

"I told you we were locked in that room together for an hour. He wasn't lying to me after that time had pa.s.sed, rest a.s.sured. Besides, I wasn't entirely helpless or surprised. I'd been out in that country myself and Evans wasn't the only man I had reporting. I'd been waiting for a chance of this kind from the day the first prospect developed at Goldfield. I knew it would come sometime--if I waited my chance."

"So you gambled--with every cent you had in the world."

"Yes. All life is a gamble. If I had lost I was only thirty-five and the earth is big. Besides, to all the world I was still 'old man' Roberts, not 'Darley.' There was yet plenty of time--if I lost."

"You went West that same evening, you say." The long lashes were all but touching now. "What then?"

"Yes, with Evans in the same Pullman section and Old Reliable in the express car forward. I had an idea in my head and followed it out. I felt as certain as I was of my own name that they'd have scouts out to wire ahead when Evans was coming; so it wouldn't be any use to get off at an obscure place. I also knew that the chances were I couldn't get a conveyance there at once for love or money; so Old Reliable was already--good and ready. Every tank was full. The tonneau was packed: ten gallons extra gas, five gallons of water, a week's rations--everything I could think of that we might need. We'd go through to the end of the line, all right, but if I could help it we shouldn't wait long after we got there. And we didn't."

This time the girl did not interrupt, either with comment or gesture; merely lay there listening.

"Ten minutes after we struck town we were away, under our own power. It was night, but we were away just the same. And that's where we got the lead,--a half hour's lead. They knew, all right, that we'd come, fancied they knew everything--but they hadn't planned on Old Reliable. It took them just that long to come to and make readjustment. Then the real fun began. There was no moon, and out on the desert the night was as dark as a pocket. We simply had to have a light even if it gave us away. Evans thought he knew the road; but, if there ever was one, before we'd gone ten miles we'd lost it. After that I drove by compa.s.s entirely--and instinct. But I couldn't go fast. I didn't dare to. For an hour and a half--the indicator showed we'd gone twenty-four miles--we had everything to ourselves, seemingly the entire world. We hadn't heard a sound or seen a live thing. Then, as we came up on a rise, Evans looked back and saw a light,--just one light, away, away back like a star. A few seconds afterward it disappeared and we made a couple more miles. We mounted a second rise and--this time Evans swore. He was with me by this time, body and soul, game to the finish; for the light wasn't starlike now by any means. It didn't even twinkle. It just simply rose up out of the ground, shone steady, vanished for a time, and rose up anew with the lay of the country. They were on our trail at last, they couldn't miss it. It was plain as a wagon road, and they were making two miles to our one. They must have had a good car; but anyway everything was with them. They could drive to the limit by our trail; but I couldn't, for I didn't know what was ahead. I let her out, though, and Evans watched. He didn't swear now, he just watched; and every time that light showed it was nearer. At last,--we'd made thirty-two miles by that time,--he saw two lights behind instead of one--and saw them red, I judge, for how he swore! It was then or never and I opened the throttle to the last notch and we flew over everything, through everything until--we stopped."

"You struck something?"

"Yes. I don't know what nor didn't stop to see. The transmission went, I knew that. The engine was still threshing and pounding when we took to our heels. We could hear it and see the two lights coming and we ran--Lord, how we ran! It seems humorous now, but it wasn't humorous then. There was a fortune at stake and a big one; for a claim belongs to the chap who puts up the monuments. We ran straight ahead into the night, until we couldn't run another foot; and then we walked, walked, ten miles if an inch, until the two lights of Old Reliable became one, and then went out of sight entirely. Then we lay down and panted and waited for daylight.... That's about all, I guess."

"They didn't follow you, then?" The girl was sitting up now, the brown eyes wide open.

"They couldn't. A hound might have done so, but a human being couldn't that night." Roberts dropped back to the gra.s.s, again avoiding the rift of light. "At daylight Evans got his bearings, and that day we found the claim, built our monuments, tacked up the notice and the rest. I learned afterwards there were six men in the machine behind; but I never saw any of them--until the day I left. They made me an offer then."

"And Old Reliable?"

Roberts hesitated, then he laughed oddly.

"I paid a parting visit there too. The remains weren't decent junk when the same six got through expressing their feelings that night."

CHAPTER V

FULFILMENT

An hour had pa.s.sed. As the afternoon sun sank lower the shadow blot beneath the big maple had lengthened and deepened. In consequence the annoying light-rift was no more. Overhead the leaves were vibrating, barely vibrating, with the first breath of breeze of evening born.

Otherwise there was no change; just the big red roadster and the man and the girl idling beside.

"Poverty, work, subservience," conversation had drifted where it would, at last had temporarily halted, with the calendar rolled back twenty years; "poverty, work, subservience," the man had paused there to laugh, the odd, repressed laugh that added an emphasis no mere words could express. "Yes; they're old friends of mine, very old friends, very. I'm not likely to forget the contrast they've made, ever, no matter what the future holds."

"You've not forgotten, then, what's past,--overlooked it? Isn't it better to forget, sometimes,--some things?"

"Forget?" The man was looking straight up into s.p.a.ce. "I wish I could forget, wish it from the bottom of my soul. It makes me--hard at times, and I don't want to be hard. But I can't ever. Memory is branded in too deeply."

The girl was picking a blade of gra.s.s to pieces, bit by bit.

"I'm disappointed. I fancied you could do anything you wished," she said low. "That's what has made me afraid of you sometimes."

The man did not stir.

"Are you afraid of me sometimes, really?" he asked.

"Yes, horribly--as much afraid as when we were coming out here to-day."

"I'm sorry, Elice, sorry for several reasons. Most of all because I love you."

It was the first word of the kind that had ever pa.s.sed between them. Yet neither showed surprise, nor did either change position. It was as though he had said that gravitation makes the apple fall, or that the earth was round, a thing they had both known for long, had become instinctively adjusted to.

"I knew that," said the girl gently, "and know too that you're sorry I am afraid. You can't help it. If it weren't true, though, you wouldn't be you."

The man looked at her gravely.

"You think it will always be that way?" he asked. "You'll always be afraid at times, I mean?"

"Yes. You're bigger than I am. I can't understand you, I never can wholly. I've given up hope. We're all afraid of things we can't completely understand."

Silently the man pa.s.sed his hand across his face, unconsciously; his arm fell lax at his side. As the girl had known, he did not follow the lead, would not follow it unless she directed the way.

"You said you fancied I could forget what's past," he said at last. "Did you honestly believe that?"

"Yes, or ignore it."

"Ignore it--or forget!" The fingers of the great hands twitched. "Some things one can't ignore or forget, girl. To do so would be superhuman.

You don't understand."

"No; you've never told me. You've suggested at times, merely suggested; nothing more."

"You'd like to know why--the reason? It would help you to understand?"

"Yes; I think it would help."

"It might even lead to making you--unafraid?"

A halt this time, then, "Yes, it might possibly do even that."

Again the man looked at her for long in silence, and again very gravely.

"I'll tell you, then," he said. "It isn't pleasant for me to tell nor for you to hear; but I'd like you to know why--if you can. They're all back, back, the things I'd like to forget and can't, a very long way. They date from the time I first knew anything."

The girl settled deeper into the soft coat, her eyes half closed.

"You told me once you couldn't remember your mother even," she suggested.

"No, nor my father, nor any other relatives, if I ever had any. I was simply stranded in Kansas City when it was new. I wasn't born there, though, but out West on a prairie ranch somewhere. The tradition is that my parents were hand-to-mouth theatrical people, who'd got the free home craze and tried to live out on the west Kansas desert, who were dried out and starved out until they went back on the road; and who then, of course, didn't want me. I don't know. Anyway, when my brain awoke I was there in Kansas City. As a youngster I had a dozen homes--and none. I was any one's property--and no one's. I did anything, accepted whatever Providence offered, to eat. Animals must live and I was no exception. The hand seemingly of every man and woman in the world was against me, and I conformed to the inevitable. Any one weaker than I was my prey, any one stronger my enemy. I learned to fight for my own, to run when it was wisest, to take hard knocks when I couldn't avoid them--and say nothing.

It was all in the game. I know this isn't pleasant to hear," he digressed.