The Garden of Eden Part 40

"Please don't be mysterious. Tell me frankly."

"Very well. I think you can make David go out of the valley when we go.

But once we have him back in a town the trouble will begin. You understand why he's so--fond of you, Ruth?"

"Let's not talk about it."

"Sorry to make you blush. But you see, it isn't because you're so pretty, Ruth, but simply because you're a woman. The first he's ever seen."

All her high coloring departed at once; a pale, sick face looked at Connor.

"Don't say it," murmured the girl. "I thought last night just for a moment--but I couldn't let myself think of it for an instant."

"I understand," said Connor gently. "You took all that highfaluting poetry stuff to be the same thing. But, say, Ruth, I've heard a young buck talk to a young squaw--before he married her. Just about the same line of junk, eh? What makes me sick is that when we get him out in a town he'll lose his head entirely when he sees a room full of girls.

We'll simply have to plant a contract on him and--then let him go!"

"Do you think it's only that?" she said again, faintly.

"I leave it to you. Use your reason, and figure it out for yourself. I don't mean that you're in any danger. You know you're not as long as I'm around!"

She thanked him with a wan smile.

"But how can I let him come near me--now?"

"It's a mess. I'm sorry about it. But once the deal goes through I'll make this up to you if it takes me the rest of my life. You believe me?"

"I know you're true blue, Ben! And--I trust you."

He was a little disturbed to find that his pulse was decidedly quickened by that simple speech.

"Besides, I want to thank you for letting me know this. I understand everything about him now!"

In her heart of hearts she was hating David with all her might. For all night long, in her dreams, she had been seeing again the gestures of those strong brown hands, and the flash of his eyes, and hearing the deep tremor of his voice. The newness of this primitive man and his ways and words had been an intoxicant to her; because of his very difference she was a little afraid, and now the warning of Connor chimed in accurately with a premonition of her own. That adulation poured at the feet of Ruth Manning had been a beautiful and marvelous thing; but flung down simply in honor of her s.e.x it became almost an insult. The memory made her shudder. The ideal lover whom she had prefigured in some of her waking dreams had always spoken with ardor--a holy ardor. From this pa.s.sion of the body she recoiled.

Something of all this Connor read in her face and in her thoughtful silence, and he was profoundly contented. He had at once neutralized all of David's eloquence and fortified his own position. It was both a blow driven home and a counter. Not that he would admit a love for the girl; he had merely progressed as far as jealousy. He told himself that his only interest was in keeping her from an emotion which, once developed, might throw her entirely on the side of David and ruin their joint plans. He had refused to accompany the master of the Garden and the girl on their ride through the valley because, as he told himself, he "couldn't stand seeing another grown man make such an a.s.s of himself" as David did when he was talking with the girl.

He contented himself now with watching her face when David came back to the patio, followed by Glani and the neat-stepping little mare, Tabari.

The forced smile with which she met the big man was a personal triumph to the gambler.

"If you can win her under that handicap, David," he said softly to himself, "you deserve her, and everything else you can get."

David helped her into the saddle on Tabari, and himself sprang onto the pad upon Glani's back. They went out side by side.

It was a cool day for that season, and the moment the north wind struck them David shouted softly and sent Glani at a rushing gallop straight into the teeth of the wind. Tabari followed at a pace which Ruth, expert horse-woman though she was, had never dreamed of. For the first time she had that impression of which Ben Connor had spoken to her of the horse pouring itself over the road without strain and without jar of smashing hoofs.

Ruth let Tabari extend herself, until the mare was racing with ears flat against her neck. She had even an impression that Glani, burdened by the great weight of David, was being left behind, but when she glanced to the side she saw that the master half a length back, was keeping a strong pull on the stallion, and Glani went smoothly, easily, with enormous strides, and fretting at the restraint.

She gained two things from that glance. The first was a sense of impatience because the stallion kept up so easily; in the second place, the same wind which drove the long hair of David straight back blew all suspicious thoughts out of her mind. She drew Tabari back to a hand gallop and then to a walk with her eyes dimmed by the wind of the ride and the blood tingling in her cheeks.

"It was like having wings," she cried happily as David let the stallion come up abreast.

"Tabari is st.u.r.dy, but she lacks speed," said the dispa.s.sionate master.

"When she was a foal of six months and was brought to me for judgment, I thought twice, because her legs were short. However, it is well that she was allowed to live and breed."

"Allowed to live?" murmured Ruth Manning.

"To keep the line of the gray horse perfect," said David, "they must be watched with a jealous eye, and those which are weak must not live. The mares are killed and the stallions gelded and sold."

"And can you judge the little colts?"

Her voice was too low for David to catch a sense of pain and anger in it.

"It must be done. It is a duty. To-day is the sixth month of Timeh, the daughter of Juri. You shall witness the judging. Elijah is the master."

His face hardened at the name of Elijah, and the girl caught her breath.

But before she could speak they broke out of a grove and came in view of a wide meadow across which four yoked cattle drew a harrow, smoothing the plow furrows to an even, black surface.

It carried the girl far back; it was like opening an ancient book of still more ancient tales; the musty smell completes the illusion. The cattle plodding slowly on, seeming to rest at every step, filled in the picture of which the primitive David Eden was the central figure.

"Yokes," she cried. "I've never seen them before!"

"For some work we use the horses, but the jerking of the harrow ruins their shoulders. Besides, we may need the cattle for a new journey."

"A journey? With those?"

"That was how the four came into the Garden. And I am enjoined to have the strong wagons always ready and the ox teams always complete in case it becomes necessary to leave this valley and go elsewhere. Of course, that may never be."

_CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT_

He brought Glani to a halt. They had left the sight of the meadow, though they could still hear the snorting of the oxen at their labor, a distant sound. Here, on one side of the road, the forest tumbled back from a swale of ground across which a tiny stream leaped and flashed with crooked speed, and the ground seemed littered with bright gold, so closely were the yellow wild flowers packed.

"Two days ago," said David, "they were only buds. See them now!"

He slipped from his horse and, stooping, rose again in a moment with his hands full of the yellow blossoms.

"They have a fragrance that makes them seem far away," he said. "See!"

He tossed the flowers at her; the wind caught them and spangled her hair and her clothes with them, and she breathed a rare perfume. David fell to clapping his hands and laughing like a child at the picture she made.

She had never liked him so well as she did at this moment. She had never pitied him as she did now; she was not wise enough to shrink from that emotion.

"It was made for you--this place."

And before she could move to defend herself he had raised her strongly, lightly from the saddle, and placed her on the knoll in the thickest of the flowers. He stood back to view his work, nodding his satisfaction, and she, looking up at him, felt the old sense of helplessness sweep over her. Every now and then David Eden overwhelmed her like an inescapable destiny; there was something foredoomed about the valley and about him.

"I knew you would look like this," he was saying. "How do men make a jewel seem more beautiful? They set it in gold! And so with you, Ruth.

Your hair against the gold is darker and richer and more like piles and coils of shadow. Your face against the gold is the transparent white, with a bloom in it. Your hands are half lost in the softness of that gold. And to think that is a picture you can never see! But I forget."