The Emigrant Trail Part 12

There was no talk between them till they reached the horses. In the darkness of the cleft, hidden from the searching radiance, he drew her to him, pressing her head with a trembling hand against his heart. She endured it patiently but was glad when he let her go and she was in the saddle, a place where she felt more at home than in a man's arms with her face crushed against his shirt, turning to avoid its rough texture and uncomfortably conscious of the hardness of his lean breast. She decided not to speak to him again, for she was afraid he might break forth into those protestations of love that so embarra.s.sed her.

At the camp Daddy John was up, sitting by the fire, waiting for them.

Of this, too, she was glad. Good-bys between lovers, even if only to be separated by a night, were apt to contain more of that distressful talk. She called a quick "Good night" to him, and then dove into her tent and sat down on the blankets. The firelight shone a nebulous blotch through the canvas and she stared at it, trying to concentrate her thoughts and realize that the great event had happened.

"I'm engaged," she kept saying to herself, and waited for the rapture, which, even if belated, ought surely to come. But it did not. The words obstinately refused to convey any meaning, brought nothing to her but a mortifying sensation of being inadequate to a crisis. She heard David's voice exchanging a low good night with the old man, and she hearkened anxiously, still hopeful of the thrill. But again there was none, and she could only gaze at the blurred blot of light and whisper "I'm engaged to be married," and wonder what was the matter with her that she should feel just the same as she did before.

CHAPTER IV

The dawn was gray when Susan woke the next morning. It was cold and she cowered under her blankets, watching the walls of the tent grow light, and the splinter between the flaps turn from white to yellow.

She came to consciousness quickly, waking to an unaccustomed depression.

At first it had no central point of cause, but was reasonless and all-permeating like the depression that comes from an unlocated physical ill. Her body lay limp under the blankets as her mind lay limp under the unfamiliar cloud. Then the memory of last night took form, her gloom suddenly concentrated on a reason, and she sunk beneath it, staring fixedly at the crack of growing light. When she heard the camp stirring and sat up, her heart felt so heavy that she pressed on it with her finger tips as if half expecting they might encounter a strange, new hardness through the soft envelope of her body.

She did not know that this lowering of her crest, hitherto held so high and carried so proudly, was the first move of her surrender. Her liberty was over, she was almost in the snare. The strong feminine principle in her impelled her like an inexorable fate toward marriage and the man. The children that were to be, urged her toward their creator. And the unconquered maidenhood that was still hers, recoiled with trembling reluctance from its demanded death. Love had not yet come to lead her into a new and wonderful world. She only felt the sense of strangeness and fear, of leaving the familiar ways to enter new ones that led through shadows to the unknown.

When she rode out beside her father in the red splendors of the morning, a new gravity marked her. Already the first suggestion of the woman--like the first breath of the season's change--was on her face.

The humility of the great abdication was in her eyes.

David left them together and rode away to the bluffs. She followed his figure with a clouded glance as she told her father her news. Her depression lessened when he turned upon her with a radiant face.

"If you had searched the world over you couldn't have found a man to please me better. Seeing David this way, day by day, I've come to know him through and through and he's true, straight down to the core."

"Of course he is," she answered, tilting her chin with the old sauciness that this morning looked a little forlorn. "I wouldn't have liked him if he hadn't been."

"Oh, Missy, you're such a wise little woman."

She glanced at him quickly, recognizing the tone, and to-day, with her new heavy heart, dreading it.

"Now, father, don't laugh at me. This is all very serious."

"Serious! It's the most serious thing that ever happened in the world, in our world. And if I was smiling--I'll lay a wager I wasn't laughing--it was because I'm so happy. You don't know what this means to me. I've wanted it so much that I've been afraid it wasn't coming off. And then I thought it must, for it's my girl's happiness and David's and back of theirs mine."

"Well, then, if you're happy, I'm happy."

This time his smile was not bantering, only loving and tender. He did not dream that her spirit might not be as glad as his looking from the height of middle-age to a secured future. He had been a man of a single love, ignorant save of that one woman, and she so worshiped and wondered at that there had been no time to understand her. Insulated in the circle of his own experience he did not guess that to an unawakened girl the engagement morn might be dark with clouds.

"Love and youth," he said dreamily, "oh, Susan, it's so beautiful!

It's Eden come again when G.o.d walked in the garden. And it's so short.

_Eheu Fugaces_! You've just begun to realize how wonderful it is, just said to yourself 'This is life--this is what I was born for,' when it's over. And then you begin to understand, to look back, and see that it was not what you were born for. It was only the beginning that was to give you strength for the rest--the prairie all trees and flowers, with the sunlight and the breeze on the gra.s.s."

"It sounds like this journey, like the Emigrant Trail."

"That's what I was thinking. The beautiful start gives you courage for the mountains. The memory of it carries you over the rough places, gives you life in your heart when you come to the desert where it's all parched and bare. And you and your companion go on, fighting against the hardships, bound closer and closer by the struggle. You learn to give up, to think of the other one, and then you say, '_This_ is what I was born for,' and you know you're getting near the truth. To have some one to go through the fight for, to do the hard work for--that's the reality after the vision and the dream."

The doctor, thinking of the vanished years of his married life, and his daughter, of the unknown ones coming, were not looking at the subject from the same points of view.

"I don't think you make it sound very pleasant," she said, from returning waves of melancholy. "It's nothing but hardships and danger."

"California's at the end of it, dearie, and they say that's the most beautiful country in the world."

"It will be a strange country," she said wistfully, not thinking alone of California.

"Not for long."

"Do you think we'll ever feel at home in it?"

The question came in a faint voice. Why did California, once the goal of her dreams, now seem an alien land in which she always would be a stranger?

"We're bringing our home with us--carrying some of it on our backs like snails and the rest in our hearts like all pioneers. Soon it will cease being strange, when there are children in it. Where there's a camp fire and a blanket and a child, that's home, Missy."

He leaned toward her and laid his hand on hers as it rested on the pommel.

"You'll be so happy in it," he said softly.

A sudden surge of feeling, more poignant than anything she had yet felt, sent a p.r.i.c.king of tears to her eyes. She turned her face away, longing in sudden misery for some one to whom she could speak plainly, some one who once had felt as she did now. For the first time she wished that there was another woman in the train. Her instinct told her that men could not understand. Unable to bear her father's glad a.s.surance she said a hasty word about going back and telling Daddy John and wheeled her horse toward the prairie schooner behind them.

Daddy John welcomed her by pushing up against the roof prop and giving her two thirds of the driver's seat. With her hands clipped between her knees she eyed him sideways.

"What do you think's going to happen?" she said, trying to compose her spirits by teasing him.

"It's going to rain," he answered.

This was not helpful or suggestive of future sympathy, but at any rate, it was not emotional.

"Now, Daddy John, don't be silly. Would I get off my horse and climb up beside you to ask you about the weather?"

"I don't know what you'd do, Missy, you've got that wild out here on the plains--just like a little buffalo calf."

He glimpsed obliquely at her, his old face full of whimsical tenderness. She smiled bravely and he saw above the smile, her eyes, untouched by it. He instantly became grave.

"Well, what's goin' to happen?" he asked soberly.

"I'm going to be married."

He raised his eyebrows and gave a whistle.

"That is somethin'! And which is it?"

"What a question! David, of course. Who else could it be?"

"Well, he's the best," he spoke slowly, with considering phlegm. "He's a first-rate boy as far as he goes."

"I don't think that's a very nice way to speak of him. Can't you say something better?"

The old man looked over the mules' backs for a moment of inward cogitation. He was not surprised at the news but he was surprised at something in his Missy's manner, a lack of the joyfulness, that he, too, had thought an attribute of all intending brides.