Over the Pass Part 29

You will go! That is enough! Why shouldn't we take the same train back?"

he went on enthusiastically. "I shall be coming through here in less than a week. You see, I am so near California that I simply had to steal a few days with my sister, who can't come East on account of her health. I have been so tied down to practice that I have not seen her for fifteen years.

That will give you time to arrange your affairs. How about it?"

"It would be delightful, but--" Jack was hesitating. "No, I will refuse.

You see, I rode horseback when I entered this valley for the first time and I should like to ride out in the way I came. Just sentiment!"

"Jack!" exclaimed the doctor.

He was casting about how to express his suspicion when something electric checked him--a current that began in Jack's measured glance. Jack was not mentioning that his word was being questioned, but something still and effective that came from far away out on the untrod desert was in the room. It fell on the nerves of the amba.s.sador from the court of complex civilization like a sudden hush on a city's traffic. Jack broke the silence by asking, in a tone of lively hospitality:

"You will join me at luncheon?"

"I should like to," answered the doctor, "but I can catch a train on the other trunk line that will give me a few more hours with my sister. And what shall I wire your father? Have you any suggestion?"

"Why, that he will be able to judge for himself in a few days how near cured I am."

"You will wire him the date of your arrival?"

"Yes."

"Jack," said the doctor at the door, "that remark of yours about the a.n.a.lysis of brain tissue and of thought put a truth very happily. Come and see me and let me know how you get on. Good-by!"

He took his departure thoughtfully, rather than with a sense of triumph over the success of a two-thousand-mile mission in the name of twenty millions.

XXI

"GOOD-BY, LITTLE RIVERS!"

It was the thing thrilling him with the ardor of a soldier preparing for a siege that sent Jack to the Ewolds' later in the morning. He had come determined to finish the speech that he had called up to Mary from the canyon. As he crossed the cement bridge, Ignacio appeared on the path and took his position there obdurately, instead of standing to one side with a nod, as usual, to let the caller pa.s.s.

"Senorita Ewold is not at home!" he announced, before Jack had spoken.

"Not even in the garden?"

"No, senor."

"But she will be back soon?"

"I do not think so."

Ignacio's face was as blank as a wall, but knowingly, authoritatively blank. His brown eyes glistened with cold a.s.surance. He seemed to have become the interpreter of a message in keeping with Mary's flight from the pa.s.s and her withdrawal from the porch when she had seen Jack approaching. Here was a new barrier which did not permit even banter across the crest. She must know that he was going, for the news of his approaching departure had already spread through the town. She had chosen not to see him again, even for a farewell.

For a little time he stood in thought, while Ignacio remained steadfast on the path, watchful, perhaps, for the devil in Senor Don't Care to appear. Suddenly Jack's features glowed with action; he took a step as if he would sweep by Ignacio on into the garden. But the impulse instantly pa.s.sed. He stopped, his face drawn as it had been when he fell limp against the hedge stricken by the horror of his seeming brutality to Pedro Nogales, and turned away into the street with a mask of smiles for the greetings and regrets of the friends whom he met.

Worth twenty millions or twenty cents, he was still Jack to Little Rivers; still the knight who had come over the range to vanquish Pete Leddy; still a fellow-rancher in the full freemasonry of calloused hands; still the joyous teller of stories. The thought of losing him set tendrils in the ranchers' hearts twitching in sympathy with tendrils in his own, which he found rooted very deep now that he must tear them out.

That afternoon at the appointed hour for his departure every man, woman, and child had a.s.sembled at the end of the main street, where it broke into the desert trail. The princ.i.p.al found an excuse for dismissing school an hour earlier than usual. That is, everyone was present except Mary. The Doge came, if a little late, to fulfil his function as chosen spokesman for all in bidding Jack G.o.dspeed on his journey.

"Senor Don't Care, you are a part of the history of Little Rivers!" he said, airily. "You have brought us something which we lacked in our singularly peaceful beginning. Without romance, sir, no community is complete. I have found you a felicitous disputant whom I shall miss; for you leave me to provide the arguments on both sides of a subject on the same evening. Our people have found you a neighbor of infinite resources of humor and cheer. We wish you a pleasant trail. We wish you warm sunshine when the weather is chill and shade when the weather is hot, and that you shall ever travel with a singing heart, while old age never overtakes the fancy of youth."

Every one of the familiar faces grouped around the fine, cultured old face of the Doge expressed the thoughts to which he had given form.

"May your arguments be as thick as fireflies, O Doge!" Jack answered, "everyone bearing a torch to illumine the outer darkness of ignorance!

May every happy thought I have for Little Rivers spring up in a date-tree wonderful! Then, before the year is out, you will have a forest of date-trees stretching from foothills to foothills, across the whole valley."

"And one more about the giant with the little voice and the dwarf with the big voice and the cat with the stripes down her back!" cried Belvy Smith, spokeswoman for the children. "Are they just going on forever having adventures and us never knowing about them?"

"No. I have been holding back the last story," Jack said. "Both the giant and the dwarf were getting old, as you all know, and they were pretty badly battered up from their continual warfare. Why, the scar which the giant got on his forehead in their last battle was so big that if the dwarf had had it there would have been no top left to his head. After the cat had lost that precious black tip to her tail she became more and more thoughtful. She made up her mind to retire and reform and have a permanent home. And you know what a gift she had for planning out things and how clever she was about getting her own way. Now she sat in a hedge corner thinking and thinking and looking at the stubby end of her tail, and suddenly she cried, 'Eureka!' And what do you think she did? She went to a paint shop and had her left ear painted yellow and her right ear painted green. So, now you can see her any day sunning herself on the steps of the cottage where the giant and the dwarf live in peace.

Whenever they have an inclination to quarrel she jumps between them and wiggles the yellow ear at the giant and the green ear at the dwarf, which fusses them both so that they promise to be good and rush off to get her a saucer of milk."

"A green ear and a yellow ear! What a funny looking cat she must be!"

exclaimed Belvy.

"So she says to herself between purrs," concluded Jack. "But she is a philosopher and knows that she would look still funnier if she had lost her ears as Jag Ear has. Good-by, children! Good-by, everybody! Good-by, Little Rivers!"

Jack gave P.D. a signal and the crowd broke into a cheer, which was punctuated by the music of Jag Ear's bells as his burrohood got in motion. The Doge, who had brought his horse, mounted.

"I will ride a little distance with you," he said.

He appeared like a man who had a great deal on his mind and yet was at a loss for words. There was the unprecedented situation of silence between the two exponents of persiflage in Little Rivers.

"I--" he began, and paused as if the subject were too big for him and it were better not to begin at all. Then he drew rein.

"Luck, Jack!" he said, simply, and there was something like pity in his tone.

"And Mary--you will say good-by to her and thank her!" said Jack.

"I think you may meet her," answered the Doge. "She went away early taking her luncheon, before she knew that you were going."

So Ignacio had been acting on his own authority! The thrill of the news singing in Jack's veins was too overwhelming for him to notice the challenge and apprehension in the Doge's glance. The Doge saw the glow of a thousand happy, eager thoughts in Jack's face. He hesitated again on the brink of speech, before, with a toss of his leonine head as if he were veritably leaving fate's affairs to fate, he turned to go; and Jack mechanically touched P.D.'s rein, while he gazed toward the pa.s.s. P.D.

had not gone many steps when Jack heard the same sonorous call that had greeted him that first night when he stopped before the door of the Ewolds; the call of a great, infectious fellowship between men:

"Luck, Sir Chaps! I defy you to wear your spurs up the Avenue! Give my love to that new Campanile in Babylon, the Metropolitan tower! Get it in the mist! Get it under the sun! Kiss your hand to golden Diana, huntress of Manhattan's winds! Say ahoy to old Farragut! And on gray days have a look for me at the new Sorollas in the Museum! Luck, Sir Chaps!"

"Good crops and a generous mail, O Doge!"

Jack rode fast, in the gladness of a hope this side of the pa.s.s and in the face of shadows on the other side which he did not attempt to define.

To Firio he seemed to have grown taller and older.

XXII

"LUCK, JACK, LUCK!"