A Master's Degree Part 15

I fought with death for that baby boy and I shall always carry the scars of that day. Bug was alone in a lonely little deserted dugout. Somebody had left him there to perish. He was on a low chair, the only furniture in the room, and on the earth floor between him and me were five of the ugliest rattlesnakes that ever coiled for a deadly blow. Little Bug held out his arms to me, and I'll never forget his baby face--and--I killed them all and carried him away. It was a dangerous, hard job, but the boy I saved has been the blessing of my life ever since. I could not have endured the days that followed without his need for care and his love and innocence. He's kept me good, Elinor. When I got back home with him my mother, who had been very sick, was dead, and our house had been robbed of every valuable by some thief--a wayside tragedy of western Kansas. That was the day the pitcher was stolen. A note was left warning me not to follow nor try to find out who had done the stealing, but I thought I knew anyhow. That's why I killed that bull snake the first day I came to Sunrise and that's why I must have looked like a bulldog to you, soft-sheltered Cambridge folks. Life has been mostly a fist fight for me, but Dr. Fenneben has taught me that there are other powers beside physical strength. That the knock-down game doesn't bring the real victory always. I hope I've learned a little here."

A little! Could this be the big awkward freshman of a September day gone by? Then college culture is surely worth the cost.

Elinor leaned forward, eagerly.

"Tell me about your father," she said.

"My father lost his life because he dared to tell the truth," Victor replied.

"Oh, glorious!" Elinor cried, earnestly.

"I have always loved my father's memory for his courage," Victor continued. "He was a believer in law enforcement and he was a terror to the bootleggers who carried whisky into our settlement. A man named Gresh was notorious for selling whisky to the claim holders. He gave it, Elinor, gave it, to a boy, a widow's son, made him drunk, robbed him, and left him to freeze to death in a blizzard. The boy lived long enough to tell my father who did it, and it was his testimony that helped to convict Gresh and start him to the penitentiary. He escaped from the sheriff on the way--and, so far as I know, there's one bad man still at large, a fugitive before the law. Whisky is the devil's own best tool, whether a man drinks it himself or gets other people to drink it."

"That's a bad name," Elinor said. "My grandfather adopted a boy named Gresh, who turned out bad. I think he was killed in a saloon row in Chicago. Did this Gresh ever trouble you again?"

Burleigh's face was grim as he answered:

"My father was waylaid and murdered with a club by this man. He escaped afterward into Indian Territory. He left his own name, Gresh, scrawled on a piece of paper pinned to my father's coat to show whose revenge was worked out. He was a volcano of human hate--that man Gresh. After my father's name was written--'The same club for every Burleigh who ever crosses my path.' I expect to cross his path some day, and if I ever lay my eyes on that fiend it will go hard with one of us." The yellow glow burned again in Victor Burleigh's eyes and his fists clinched involuntarily. They were silent a while, until the sweetness of the day and the joy of being together wooed them to happier thoughts. Then Elinor remembered her disordered hair and, throwing aside her hat, she deftly put it into place.

"Am I presentable for the supper at the Kickapoo Corral?" she asked, as she picked up her hat again.

"You suit me," Burleigh replied. "What are the Kickapoo requirements?"

"That Victor Burleigh shall be satisfied," she answered, roguishly.

"Really, that's right. Four girls offered to subst.i.tute for me in this penitential pilgrimage and write some long translations for me beside."

"Four, individually or collectively?" he asked.

"Either way," she answered.

"Why did n't you let them do it?

"Which way?"

"Either way," he replied.

"Would you rather have had the four either way, than me?" she questioned, with pretty vanity.

"Much rather." His voice was stern.

"Why?" She was stung by the answer.

The glen was all a dreamy gray-green ruggedness of shelving rock with mossy crevices and ferny nooks. The sunlight filtering through the young leaves fell about them in a shadow-flecked softness. There was a crooning song of some bird on its nest, the murmur of waters rippling down the stony shallows, and a beautiful girl in a dainty pink dress with her fingers just touching her fluffy ma.s.ses of hair.

"Why?"

With the question Elinor looked up and saw why. Saw in Victor Burleigh's golden-brown eyes a look she had never read in eyes before; saw the whole face, the rugged, manly face lighted with a man's overmastering love. And the joy of it thrilled her soul.

"Do you know why?"

He leaned toward her ever so little. And Elinor Wream, forgetful of the Wream family rank, forgetful of her tacit consent to Uncle Joshua's wishes, forgetful of Vincent Burgess and his heritage of culture, beautiful Elinor Wream, with her starry eyes, and cheeks of peach-blossom pink, put out her hands to Victor Burleigh, who took them eagerly.

"Let me hold them a minute," he said, softly. "There are sixty years to remember, but only one hour like this."

Then, forgetful of the world and the demands of the world, keeping her hands in his, he bent and kissed her, as from the foundation of the world it was his right to do. And Love's Young Dream, not bought with pain, as mother love is bought, nor wrought out with prayer and sacrificial service, as love for all humanity is won, came again on this April day to the little, rock-sheltered glen beside the bright waters of the Walnut, and briefly there rebuilt in rainbow hues the old, old paradise of joy for these two alone.

And into the new Eden came the new serpent also for to destroy. Before Elinor and Victor was the sunlit valley. Behind them was the cave's mouth with its shadowy gloom deepening back to dense darkness. And creeping stealthily through that blackness, like a serpent warming its venom and writhing slowly toward the light, a human form was slowly, stealthily crawling outward, with head upreared and cruel eyes alert.

The brutal face was void of pity, as if the conscience behind it had long been bound and gagged to human sympathy.

While Burleigh was speaking the caveman had reached the doorway and reared up just beside it in the shadow. Clutching a brutal-looking club in his hairy, rough hand, he stood listening to the story of the murder that had left Victor fatherless. The face of the listener made clear the need for guardian angels. One leap, one blow, and Victor Burleigh would carry only one more scar to his grave.

Suddenly a faint piping voice floated in upon the glen:

Little childwen pwessing near To the feet of Thwist, the Ting, Have you neiver doubt nor fear Or some twibute do you bwing?

And Bug Buler, flushed and splashed, and generally muddy and happy, came around the fallen ledges and debauched into the gra.s.sy sunshiny s.p.a.ce before the cavern. Only a tiny, tumbled-up, joyous child, with no power in his pudgy little arm; and Victor Burleigh, tall, muscular and agile.

Against this man of tremendous strength the caveman's club was lifted.

But with the sound of the child's voice and the sight of the innocent face the club fell harmless. A look of fright, deepening to a maniac's terror, seized the creature, and noiselessly and swiftly as a serpent would escape he crawled back into the darkness and burrowed deep from the eyes of men. So strength that day was ruled by weakness.

"I ist followed you, Vic," Bug said, clutching Vic's hand.

"This is n't a safe place to come, Bug. You must n't follow me here."

"Nen you must n't go into is n't safe places, so I won't follow. Little folks don't know," Bug said, with cunning gravity.

"He is right," Elinor said. "I think we'd better leave now."

They knew that henceforth this spot would be holy ground for them, but they did not dare to think further than that. They only wished that the moments would stay, that the sun would loiter slowly down the afternoon sky.

"I know a way out," Bug declared. Turn, "I'll show you."

Then, with a child's sense of direction, he led away from the cave out to where the deep ravine headed in a rough ma.s.s of broken rock.

"Tlimb up that and you're out," Bug declared.

They climbed up to the high level prairie that sweeps westward from the Walnut bluffs.

"Doodby, folks. I want to Botany wiv urn over there. I turn wiv Limpy out here."

Bug pointed to a group of students wandering about in search of dogtooth violets and other botanical plunder from Nature's springtime treasury.

Among the group was Bug's chum, the crippled student.

"Well, stay with them this time, you little wandering Jew," Vic admonished, nor dreamed how his guardian angel had come to him this day in the guise of this same little wanderer.

When Victor and Elinor had come at last to the west bluff above the Walnut River, the late afternoon was already casting long shadows across the gra.s.sy level of the old Kickapoo Corral. And again the camp fires were glowing where a Sorority "spread" was merrily in the making.

They must go down soon and join in the hilarity. But a golden half hour yet hung in the west--and the going down meant the going back to all that had been.