It, and Other Stories Part 21

"Not," said Farallone.

"I'll"--the groom's voice loudened--his eye sought an ally in mine. But I turned my face away and pretended that I had not seen or heard. There had been born in my breast suddenly a cold unreasoning fear of Farallone and of what he might do to us weaklings. I heard no more words and, venturing a look, saw that the groom was seating himself once more by the bride.

"If you sit on the other side of her," said Farallone, "you'll keep the sun off her head."

He turned his bold eyes on me and winked one of them. And I was so taken by surprise that I winked back and could have kicked myself for doing so.

II

Farallone helped the bride to her feet. "That's right," he said with a kind of nursely playfulness, and he turned to the groom.

"Because I told you to help yourself," he said, "doesn't mean that I'm not going to do the lion's share of everything. I am. I'm fit. You and the writer man aren't. But you must do just a little more than you're able, and that's all we'll ask of you. Everybody works this voyage except the woman."

"I can work," said the bride.

"Rot!" said Farallone. "We'll ask you to walk ahead, like a kind of north star. Only we'll tell you which way to turn. Do you see that sugar-loaf? You head for that. Vamoose! We'll overhaul you."

The bride moved upon the desert alone, her face toward an easterly hill that had given Farallone his figure of the sugar-loaf. She had no longer the effect of a wilted flower, but walked with quick, considered steps.

What the groom carried and what I carried is of little moment. Our packs united would not have made the half of the lumbersome weight that Farallone swung upon his giant shoulders.

"Follow the woman," said he, and we began to march upon the shoe-and-stocking track of the bride. Farallone, rolling like a ship (I had many a look at him over my shoulder) brought up the rear. From time to time he flung forward a phrase to us in explanation of his rebellious att.i.tude.

"I take command because I'm fit; you're not. I give the orders because I can get 'em obeyed; you can't." And, again: "You don't know east from west; I do."

All the morning he kept firing disagreeable and very personal remarks at us. His proposition that we were not in any way fit for anything he enlarged upon and ill.u.s.trated. He flung the groom's unemployed ancestry at him; he likened the groom to Rome at the time of the fall, which he attributed to luxury; he informed me that only men who were unable to work, or in any way help themselves, wrote books. "The woman's worth the two of you," he said. "Her people were workers. See it in her stride.

She could milk a cow if she had one. If anything happens to me she'll give the orders. Mark my words. She's got a head on her shoulders, she has."

The bride halted suddenly in her tracks and, turning, faced the groom.

"Are you going to allow this man's insolence to run on forever?" she said.

The groom frowned at her and shook his head covertly.

"Pooh," said the bride, and I think I heard her call him "_my champion_," in a bitter whisper. She walked straight back to Farallone and looked him fearlessly in the face.

"The bigger a man is, Mr. Farallone," she said, "and the stronger, the more he ought to mind his manners. We are grateful to you for all you have done, but if you cannot keep a civil tongue in your head, then the sooner we part company the better."

For a full minute the fearless eyes snapped at Farallone, then, suddenly abashed, softened, and turned away.

"There mustn't be any more mutiny," said Farallone. "But you've got sand, you have. I could love a woman like you. How did you come to hitch your wagon to little Nicodemus there? He's no star. You deserved a man.

You've got sand, and when your poor feet go back on you, as they will in this swill (here he kicked the burning sand), I'll carry you. But if you hadn't spoken up so pert, I wouldn't. Now you walk ahead and pretend you're Christopher Columbus De Soto Peary leading a flock of sheep to the Fountain of Eternal Youth.... Bear to the left of the sage-brush, there's a tarantula under it...."

We went forward a few steps, when suddenly I heard Farallone's voice in my ear. "Isn't she splendid?" he said, and at the same time he thumped me so violently between the shoulders that I stumbled and fell. For a moment all fear of the man left me on the wings of rage, and I was for attacking him with my fists. But something in his steady eye brought me to my senses.

"Why did you do that?" I meant to speak sharply, but I think I whined.

"Because," said Farallone, "when the woman spoke up to me you began to brindle and act lion-like and bold. For a minute you looked dangerous--for a little feller. So I patted your back, in a friendly way--as a kind of reminder--a feeble reminder."

We had dropped behind the others. The groom had caught up with the bride, and from his nervous, irritable gestures I gathered that the poor soul was trying to explain and to ingratiate himself. But she walked on, steadily averted, you might say, her head very high, her shoulders drawn back. The groom, his eyes intent upon her averted face, kept stumbling with his feet.

"Just look," said Farallone in a friendly voice. "Those whom G.o.d hath joined together. What did the press say of it?"

"I don't remember," I said.

"You lie," said Farallone. "The press called it an ideal match. My G.o.d!"

he cried--and so loudly that the bride and the groom must have heard--"think of being a woman like that and getting hitched to a little bit of a fuss with a few fine feathers"; and with a kind of sing-song he began to misquote and extemporize:

"Just for a handful of silver she left me, Just for a yacht and a mansion of stone, Just for a little fool nest of fine feathers She wed Nicodemus and left me alone."

"But she'd never seen me," he went on, and mused for a moment. "Having seen me--do you guess what she's saying to herself? She's saying: 'Thank G.o.d I'm not too old to begin life over again,' or thinking it. Look at him! Even you wouldn't have been such a joke. I've a mind to kick the life out of him. One little kick with bare toes. Life? There's no life in him--nothing but a jenny-wren."

The groom, who must have heard at least the half of Farallone's speech, stopped suddenly and waited for us to come up. His face was red and white--blotchy with rage and vindictiveness. When we were within ten feet of him he suddenly drew a revolver and fired it point-blank at Farallone. He had no time for a second shot. Farallone caught his wrist and shook it till the revolver spun through the air and fell at a distance. Then Farallone seated himself and, drawing the groom across his knee, spanked him. Since the beginning of the world children have been punished by spankings, and the event is memorable, if at all, as a something rather comical and domestic. But to see a grown man spanked for the crime of attempted murder is horrible. Farallone's fury got the better of him, and the blows resounded in the desert. I grappled his arm, and the recoil of it flung me head over heels. When Farallone had finished, the groom could not stand. He rolled in the sands, moaning and hiding his face.

The bride was white as paper; but she had no eye for the groom.

"Did he miss you?" she said.

"No," said Farallone, "he hit me--Nicodemus. .h.i.t me."

"Where?" said the bride.

"In the arm."

Indeed, the left sleeve of Farallone's shirt was glittering with blood.

"I will bandage it for you," she said, "if you will tell me how."

Farallone ripped open the sleeve of his shirt.

"What shall I bandage it with?" asked the bride.

"Anything," said Farallone.

The bride turned her back on us, stooped, and we heard a sound of tearing. When she had bandaged Farallone's wound (it was in the flesh and the bullet had been extracted by its own impetus) she looked him gravely in the face.

"What's the use of goading him?" she said gently.

"Look," said Farallone.

The groom was reaching for the fallen revolver.

"Drop it," bellowed Farallone.

The groom's hand, which had been on the point of grasping the revolver's stock, jerked away. The bride walked to the revolver and picked it up.

She handed it to Farallone.