The Long Chance Part 42

Our story is told.

San Pasqual is still a frontier town--a little drearier, a little shabbier and more down at the heel than when we saw it first. There have been few changes--the few that have occurred having arrived unheralded and hence have remained undiscovered. For instance, it is not generally known that Mrs. Pennycook has lost control of her husband. Yet, such is the fact. She is still a great stickler for principle, but she trembles if her husband looks at her. It appears that Dan Pennycook's half-hearted accusation of Miss Pickett as the author of the anonymous note found on the body of Boras O'Rourke preyed on the spinster's mind, and when Bob McGraw started an investigation she could stand the strain no longer. She fled in terror to the Pennycook home and made certain demands upon Mrs. Pennycook; who took refuge in her well-known reputation for probity and principle and informed Miss Pickett that she was "actin' crazy like"; whereupon Miss Pickett sought Dan Pennycook and hysterically confessed to the authorship of that fatal anonymous note, alleging as extenuating circ.u.mstances that she had been aided and abetted therein by Mrs. Pennycook. To quote a commonplace saying, Mrs.

Pennycook had made the ball and Miss Pickett fired it. She begged Dan Pennycook to use his influence with Donna to have the investigation quashed, else would Miss Pickett make a public confession and disgrace the name of Pennycook.

Hence, when Mr. Pennycook appeared at the Hat Ranch and asked Donna to request her husband to forget about that anonymous letter, Donna guessed the honest fellow's distress and accordingly the matter was forgotten by everybody--except Dan Pennycook. He has not forgotten. He remembers every time he looks at Mr. Hennage's watch. He has never said anything to Mrs. Pennycook--which makes it all the harder for her--but contents himself with a queer look at the lady when she becomes "obstreperous like"--and that suffices. After all, she is the mother of his children, and G.o.d has blessed him with more heart than head.

Miss Pickett is no longer the postmistress; also she is no longer Miss Pickett, although in this respect she is not unlike a politician who has all the emoluments of office without the honors, or vice versa if you will. In her forty-third year she married the only man who ever asked her--and he was a youth of twenty-five who suspected Miss Pickett of a savings account. She resigned from the post-office to marry him, and San Pasqual took a night off to give her a charivari. Two weeks after the ceremony Miss Pickett's husband, despairing of the savings, jumped a south-bound freight and was seen no more. Her triumph over the acquisition of the "Mrs." was so shortlived, and the San Pasqualians found it so difficult to rid themselves of the habit of calling her Miss Pickett, that Miss Pickett she remains to this very day.

The Hat Ranch still stands in the desert below San Pasqual. Bob McGraw has secured t.i.tle to it, and safe within the old adobe walls Sam Singer and Soft Wind are rounding out their placid lives. Sam Singer is now one of the solid citizens of San Pasqual. He has succeeded to the hat business, and moreover he has money on deposit with Bob McGraw. It appears that Sam Singer, in accordance with Mr. Hennage's dying request, fell heir to the gambler's new gaiters. The first time he tried them on Sam detected a slight obstruction in the toe of the right gaiter.

He removed this obstruction and discovered that it was a piece of paper money. Like all Indians, Sam was suspicious of paper money, so he took it to Bob McGraw, who gave him a thousand dollars for it. Sam Singer was well pleased thereat. He considered he had driven an excellent bargain.

In the lonely sage-covered wind-swept cemetery at San Pasqual there rises a black granite monument, severely, plain, eminently befitting one who was not of the presuming kind. There is an epitaph on that monument which is worth recording here:

WHO SEEKS FOR HEAVEN ALONE TO SAVE HIS SOUL, MAY KEEP THE PATH BUT WILL NOT REACH THE GOAL; WHILE HE WHO WALKS IN LOVE MAY WANDER FAR YET G.o.d WILL BRING HIM WHERE THE BLESSED ARE.

BENEATH THIS STONE HARLEY P. HENNAGE RESTS FROM HIS WANDERINGS.

One day T. Morgan Carey dropped off the north-bound train at San Pasqual, and learning that he had two hours to waste while waiting for the stage to start up country, he was seized with a morbid desire to wander through San Pasqual's queer cemetery. The only monument in the cemetery attracted his attention, and presently he found himself standing at the foot of Mr. Hennage's grave, reading the epitaph.

It impressed him so greatly that he copied the verse in a little morocco-covered memorandum book.

"I wonder who was the genius that evolved that verse?" he muttered aloud, and to his great surprise a voice at his side answered him. It was a woman's voice.

"I do not know the author" she said, "but if you will read Henry Van d.y.k.e's book 'The Other Wise Man,' you will find that little verse on the fly-leaf. Perhaps Van d.y.k.e wrote it. I do not know."

T. Morgan Carey turned and lifted his hat. "Thank you, madam" he said.

"I was particularly interested. I had a slight acquaintance with Mr. Hennage, and it seemed to me that the lines were peculiarly appropriate."

"My husband and I thought so. And if you will pardon me for suggesting it, Mr. Carey, it would be--better if you would please leave the cemetery. An old enemy of yours, a Cahuilla Indian, comes here three times a week by my orders, to bring water for the blue gra.s.s on this grave. He is coming now."

"Thank you. And you are--"

"I am Donna Corblay."

Carey bowed and continued.

"Your husband told me once that he had some great plans afoot, and did me the honor to ask me to help him--" he paused, watching her wistfully--"and I want to know if you object to me as an a.s.sociate of your husband in his work."

Donna looked at him gravely. "I have neither bitterness nor revengeful feeling against you, Mr. Carey" she replied.

"I have suffered" he said, "but I haven't paid all of the price. Tell your husband that I want to help him. I have thought it over and I was coming to tell him myself. Tell him, please, that I would appreciate the privilege of being a minority stockholder in his enterprise and I will honor his sight drafts while I have a dollar left."

He lifted his hat and walked away, and Donna, gazing after him, realized that the past was dead and only the future remained. Carey's crime had been a sordid one, but with her broader vision Donna saw that the lives of the few must ever be counted as paltry sacrifices in the advancement of the race. Her father, her mother, Harley P. Hennage, Borax O'Bourke and the long, sad, barren years of her own girlhood had all been sacrifices to this man's insatiable greed and l.u.s.t for power, and now that the finish was reached she realized the truth of Bob McGraw's philosophy--that out of all great evils great good must come.

Truly selfishness, greed, revenge and inhumanity are but the burdens of a day; all that is small and weak and unworthy may not survive, while that which is great and good in a man must some day break its hobbles and sweep him on to the fulfillment of his destiny. She saw her husband and his one-time enemy toiling side by side in the great, hot, hungry heart of Inyo, preparing homes for the helpless and the oppressed--working out the destinies of their people; and she cried out with the happiness that was hers.

Ah, yes, they had all suffered, but now out of the dregs of their suffering the glad years would come bearing their precious burden of love and service. How puerile did the sacrifices of the past seem now--how terribly out of proportion to the great task that lay before them, with the sublime result already in sight! Surely there was only one quality in humankind that really mattered, softening suffering and despair and turning away wrath, and as Donna knelt by the grave of the man who had possessed that quality to such an extent that he had considered his life cheap as a means of expressing it, she prayed that her infant son might be endowed with the virtues and brains of his father and the wanderer who slept beneath the stone:

"Dear G.o.d, help me to raise a Man and teach him to be kind."

THE END