Trailin'! Part 53

"My G.o.d!" he murmured, shaken deep with wonder. "What's he made of?"

"Steel and fire--that's all."

"Listen, Sally, forget what I've done, and--"

"Would you drop his trail, Steve?"

He cursed through his set teeth.

"If that's it--no. It's him or me, and I'm sure to beat him out.

Afterwards you'll forget him."

"Try me."

"Girls have said that before. I'll wait. There ain't no one but you for me--d.a.m.n you--I know that. I'll get him first, and then I'll wait."

"Ten like you couldn't get him."

"I've six men behind me."

She was still defiant, but her colour changed.

"Six, Sally, and he's out here among the hills, not knowing his right from his left. I ask you: has he got a chance?"

She answered: "No; not one."

He turned on his heel, beckoned to Kilrain, who had stood moveless through the strange dialogue, and went out into the night.

As they mounted he said: "We're going straight for the place where I told Butch Conklin I'd meet him. Then the bunch of us will come back."

"Why waste time?"

"Because he's sure to come back. Shorty, after a feller has seen Sally smile--the way she can smile--he couldn't keep away. I _know_!"

They rode off at a slow trot, like men who have resigned themselves to a long journey, and Sally watched them from the door. She sat down, crosslegged, before the fire, and stirred the embers, and strove to think.

But she was not equipped for thinking, all her life had been merely action, action, action, and now, as she strove to build out some logical sequence and find her destiny in it, she failed miserably, and fell back upon herself. She was one of those single-minded people who give themselves up to emotion rarely, but when they do their whole body, their whole soul burns in the flame.

Into her mind came a phrase she had heard in her childhood. On the outskirts of Eldara there was a little shack owned by a Mexican--Jose, he was called, and nothing else, "Greaser" Jose. One night an alarm of fire was given in Eldara, and the whole populace turned out to enjoy the sight; it was a festival occasion, in a way. It was the house of Greaser Jose.

The cowpunchers manned a bucket line, but the source of water was far away, the line too long, and the flames gained faster than they could be quenched. All through the work of fire-fighting Greaser Jose was everywhere about the house, flinging buckets of water through the windows into the red furnace within; his wife and the two children stood stupidly, staring, dumb. But in the end, when the fire was towering above the roof of the house, roaring and crackling, the Mexican suddenly raised a long arm and called to the bucket line, "It is done. Senors, I thank you."

Then he had folded his arms and repeated in a monotone, over and over again: "_Todo es perdo; todo es perdo_!"

His wife came to him, frantic, wailing, and threw her arms around his neck. He merely repeated with heavy monotony: "_Todo es perdo; todo es perdo_!"

The phrase clung in the mind of the girl; and she rose at last and went back to her bunk, repeating: "_Todo es perdo; todo es perdo! All is lost; all is lost_!"

No tears were in her eyes; they were wide and solemn, looking up to the shadows of the ceiling, and so she went to sleep with the solemn Spanish phrase echoing through her whole being: "_Todo es perdo_!"

She woke with the smell of frying bacon pungent in her nostrils.

CHAPTER x.x.xVIII

BACON

The savour of roasting chicken, that first delicious burst of aroma when the oven door is opened, would tempt an angel from heaven down to the lowly earth. A Southerner declares that his nostrils can detect at a prodigious distance the cooking of "possum and taters." A Kanaka has a cosmopolitan appet.i.te, but the fragrance which moves him most nearly is the scent of fish baking in Ti leaves. A Frenchman waits unmoved until the perfume of some rich lamb ragout, an air laden with spices, is wafted toward him.

Every man and every nation has a special dish, in general; there is only one whose appeal is universal. It is not for any cla.s.s or nation; it is primarily for "the hungry man," no matter what has given him an appet.i.te. It may be that he has pushed a pen all day, or reckoned up vast columns, or wielded a sledge-hammer, or ridden a wild horse from morning to night; but the savour of peculiar excellence to the nostrils of this universal hungry man is the smell of frying bacon.

A keen appet.i.te is even stronger than sorrow, and when Sally Fortune awoke with that strong perfume in her nostrils, she sat straight up among the blankets, startled as the cavalry horse by the sound of the trumpet. What she saw was Anthony Bard kneeling by the coals of the fire over which steamed a coffee-pot on one side and a pan of crisping bacon on the other.

The vision shook her so that she rubbed her eyes and stared again to make sure. It did not seem possible that she had actually wakened during the night and found him gone, and with this reality before her she was strongly tempted to believe that the coming of Nash was only a vivid dream.

"Morning, Anthony."

He turned his head quickly and smiled to her.

"h.e.l.lo, Sally."

He was back at once, turning the bacon, which was done on the first side. Seeing that his back was turned, she dressed quickly.

"How'd you sleep?"

"Well."

"Where?"

He turned more slowly this time.

"You woke up in the middle of the night?"

"Yes."

"What wakened you?"

"Nash and Kilrain."

He sighed: "I wish I'd been here."

She answered: "I'll wash up; we'll eat; and then off on the trail. I've an idea that the two will be back, and they'll have more men behind them."

After a little her voice called from the outside: "Anthony, have you had a look at the morning?"

He came obediently to the doorway. The sun had not yet risen, but the fresh, rose-coloured light already swept around the horizon throwing the hills in sharp relief and flushing, faraway, the pure snows of the Little Brothers. And so blinding was the sheen of the lake that it seemed at first as though the sun were about to break from the waters, for there all the radiance of the sunrise was reflected, concentrated.