The Heart of Thunder Mountain

“All in good time, Huntington,” he said, with a smile. “Your actions certainly justified everything I said. What have you to say about your scheme to take my horse?”

Huntington groped in vain for one of the crushing retorts that he had valiantly prepared for this meeting. Then he caught Marion’s eye again.

“That was a mistake,” he said. “But I’m no thief and no liar.”

“I grant you’re honest enough, Huntington, when you stop to think. As for Sunnysides, he’s settled that business for himself. And if you’ll give me a straightforward answer on one more point, I’ll acquit you of being a liar.”

“What’s that?”

“You killed my bull, didn’t you?”

“Yes, I did! But it was a question of yours or mine. They were fighting, and mine was getting the worst of it.”

“And it never occurred to you to let the best one win?”

“No. I was angry. It was the day that–” He caught himself, and looked in fresh alarm at Marion.

“The day that–” Haig prompted.

“No matter. I was angry. I’ll pay you what the bull was worth.”

“No. Settle that with Thursby. Is there anything more?”

“Nothing except the cause of the whole trouble. You took more than your share.”

“We might talk all day and all night about that, and come to no understanding. But I’ll tell you what I’ve done. I’ve suggested to Thursby that he and you and the rest of them go into a pool. There’s enough pasture for all of you if–”

“That’s an idea!” cried Huntington. “What does Thursby say?”

“He’s willing. He doesn’t like trouble as I–did. He’ll even sell off some of his stock.”

Huntington was silent a moment, looking doubtfully at Haig. Then the best of him rose to the occasion.

“I told Thursby that–I hadn’t anything to take back, but that–you’re a man, for all of it And if you–Damn it! There’s my hand.”

“Done!” said Haig heartily.

“Oh!” cried Claire, breaking away from the mantel, to which she clung through all the interview, trembling between hope and fear. She stepped up to Haig, her eyes shining through tears.

“Mine too!” she said, offering her hand to him.

But when it was all finished there was another awkward interval of silence. For years of controversy and enmity are not so quickly resolved into perfect peace. It was Haig who brought back a certain ease to them.

“Would you mind, Mrs. Huntington, if I asked Miss Gaylord to go for a drive with me?”

“Indeed, no!”

“And if she took dinner with me? I’ll bring her back early.”

“If Marion thinks–”

But Marion, who had stood silent and anxious until then, did not reply to Claire’s glance of inquiry. She heard the last words as if in a dream. But dreams were coming true these days; miracle followed miracle. With a stifled cry she ran past them, and into her room. There she sank down on the edge of the bed, and crossed her hands over her breast, and stared at vacancy, her face burning, a mist before her eyes. Weakness overcame her for a moment. Then she leaped to her feet, dressed quickly for the drive, and went out befurred and radiant to put her arms around Claire and kiss her.

“You’ll be welcome, Haig, if you want to–to come in any time,” Huntington was saying awkwardly.

“I will!” replied Haig.

Then Philip and Marion were gone, and Seth and Claire stood staring at the door.

“Oh, I’m so happy, Seth!” cried Claire at last, holding up her arms to him.

“Umph!” said Huntington, submitting to her ecstatic endearments.

The Park glittered in its robe of white; the sun shone with cold brilliancy out of a steel-blue sky; the air was still and sparkling, stinging their cheeks into a glow as they sped down the valley. Under the runners of the sleigh the dry snow sang and crackled, and flew up in a fine shower like dust of diamonds beneath the swift feet of the sorrels.

Haig gave Marion no chance to say a word while the sleigh went swinging and bounding down the road, and the fields slipped past them in a dazzling succession. When he was not leaning forward to urge the sorrels to greater speed he was talking rapidly. He told her of the scenes at the stable and the cottage on his return, elaborating the description until Marion’s laughter rang above the sounds of their swift traveling. He was talking to keep up his courage, and to postpone the speech that was in his heart and that now, after all, when the time had come, filled him with doubts and fears, and seemed to him the boldest thing he had ever set himself to do. For the first time in ten years he was afraid, and doubtful of himself.

The door of the cottage was thrown open by Slim Jim, in his newest and brightest costume of blue silk. Marion smiled at him as she passed, for she could not trust herself to speak; and then she was in that room whence she had gone one day in utter dejection, praying for a miracle. She stood for a few seconds looking around her, recognizing all the familiar objects: the bed where Haig had undergone his agonies, the table where the medicines had stood, the window and a glimpse of the slope outside, now white instead of yellowing green. There was a roaring fire, and tea things stood on the table.

Silence enveloped them while Philip helped her with her wraps, and saw her seated in an armchair before the fire. Despite the color that the cold drive had brought into her cheeks, her features were still pinched and pale. Many weeks would be required, a summer perhaps, to restore her to what she had been before her terrible experience. And yet she seemed to him more beautiful than ever. Watching her furtively and anxiously, he endured a raging conflict of emotions, recalling with a poignant feeling of shame all that he had said to her in that room and elsewhere, in return for what she had done for him. An impulse seized him to rush to the door and lock it, to turn on her savagely, forbidding her to leave him as he had forbidden her to come to him. For all the proofs he had had of her love and devotion seemed inadequate to quiet the doubts he now confessed. He found speech strangely difficult; he went out of the room twice to give quite unnecessary instructions to Jim; and returned to busy himself arranging things in the room that obviously needed no arranging.

“Thursby was good enough to go somewhere to-day, and let us have the cottage,” he managed to say at length. “Do you mind if we are quite alone?”

“Philip!” she responded reproachfully. “How you talk!”

“Then we’ll have tea.”

He called the Chinaman, who brought in the steaming teapot, the hot milk, and the buttered toast. Marion poured the tea in silence. They drank, too, almost in silence, and nibbled at the toast, forgetful that two days before, and for three dreadful months, tea and toast and milk, served on a table laid with white linen, would have seemed like a heavenly dispensation. Their very experience in the cave, which had broken down so many barriers between them, seemed to have reared a new one that neither understood. It was Marion who made a beginning to scale that barrier.

“You have made Claire very happy, Philip,” she said.

“That was easy,” he answered.

“But it was grand!”

“And you too–a little?” he ventured.

“You know that, Philip!” And then, a little mischievously: “Remember I tried to make peace between you once.”

“And a fine job you made of it!” he retorted.

Then they both laughed, and lapsed again into silence. But presently Haig arose, went to a cabinet standing against the wall, and brought back a faded photograph, which he handed to her.

“My father,” he said.

She saw a face that seemed a little sad, but the kindest of eyes, with a half serious twinkle in them.

“The dear man!” she exclaimed softly.

“We were great friends,” he said. “We used to take long walks together of a Sunday afternoon. He was a silent man, rather, and we did not talk much, but–shall I tell you one thing he used to say to me, often?”

“Yes, Philip.”

“I believed it then. But things happened to make me think that father was mistaken. For ten years I didn’t believe it at all.”

“What was it, Philip?”

“He used to say: ‘My boy, there’s only one thing in the world that’s worth while. And that is love.’”

“Why, that’s what Daddy always said, almost his very words!” she cried, her eyes filling.

“If I only knew–” he began.

But she could endure no more. She rose swiftly to her feet, her eyes devouring him, her arms stretched out.

“Marion!” he cried, and leaped to catch her, and folded her close, as he had clasped her in the cave. But now the arms that stole up around his neck did not fall away weakly as before, but tightened, and held him.

A long time they remained thus, in a silence broken only by the crackling of the flames, which they did not hear, and the wind rising outside the cottage, for which they did not care. At length he put his fingers under her chin, and raised her head so that he could look into her eyes.

“I believe it now!” he said.

“It’s true!” she answered, so low that he scarcely heard it.

“I love you!”

“I’ve loved you always!”

Then even in her joy the recollection of all that she had come through to this moment brought back that quivering of her chin, which had become only too familiar to him in days past. His head sank toward her, and their lips met.

After a while he led her back to her chair, and knelt down to look up at her. For there were other difficulties. He had nothing to give her, he said; neither riches nor family nor honor nor any future of which he could be assured. She stopped him, with a hand laid gently on his lips. He held it there, kissing it. How it had toiled and hurt for him, that little hand, still rough and scarred!

“Can you ever forgive me?” he pleaded.

“There’s nothing to forgive, Philip. You did not understand.”

“There! You’re treating me like a child again!” he protested, smiling contentedly.

“And once you scolded me dreadfully for that!”

“But you were right. I’ve been a child; for ten years I’ve been a child that thought it was a man.”

She did not reply to that, fearing to wound him. So another golden silence fell between them, while he held her hands, stroking the hard, cracked skin of them. After a while he brought a chair, and sat close by her side, and told her all that had been left untold,–about his boyhood, his ambitions, his ignorance and innocence, his work in Paris and the future it seemed to hold for him; and then the girl on the Seine boat, and what he saw one night in her apartment, and his despair; his father’s death, and the wanderings that followed; and how the shy and introspective boy had become in one day a man of violence and desperation, his heart full of hatred and bitterness.

“And so I thought, Marion, that you were all alike; not alike in all things, but the virtuous more dangerous than the vicious, because more calculating and cold. You even–I thought you were the most dangerous of all. I knew you were good, but I said your goodness was only another form of selfishness, that you had been reared in luxury, and taught to expect as your right many things you had never earned and never could earn or deserve. I said–Wait, dear–I said that the man who should marry you would be nothing but a beast of burden, a slave. It was so difficult to believe you could be content with–”

“With love!” she whispered.

“But can you?” he demanded, a ghost of the old incredulity rising in spite of all.

“I haven’t told you about Robert,” she said softly. “He has wealth, and will have much more. He loves me. He offered me all, to do with it as I wished. I’ve known him all my life–almost. He’s good too, poor Robert! But that day, after you’d told me that I must go back to New York at once, I–”

“Marion!” Haig cried.

“No, listen! I told him that day that I could never marry him. He couldn’t understand–like you, Philip. He thought–dear Robert!–he thought that money–I know it’s what they want most–so many women. But, Philip, dear heart! Don’t you know that if a woman really loves there’s nothing she won’t do–on her hands and knees–to the end of the world? And if she has love, what else is there–that matters?”

“I didn’t know,” he answered, “and I couldn’t have believed it until–that day in the cave, when you fell ill.”

He told her then of the revelation that had come to him, and how he had taken her in his arms, in a fury of love and despair.

“But I thought it was a dream!” she murmured.

“No. I found you then–and myself–and thought it was too late!”

Later, across the table, when Slim Jim had brought in the after-dinner coffee, Haig looked at her gravely, and said:

“May I become very practical for a minute, Marion?”

“Yes, but not too practical.”

“Well, it’s like this: I’ve got–”

He paused to reach for her hand, to clasp it on the cloth.

“When, Marion?” he asked, leaning toward her.

“Oh, we must talk with Claire about that, mustn’t we?” she protested, blushing. Then softly: “She’s the only mother I’ve got, you see. And besides, there’s no–”

“No, not even a justice of the peace!” he said, laughing. “We might strap on our old snowshoes, and go to Tellurium.”

“The idea!”

“Well, listen. Do you know what I’ve been thinking?”

She shook her head.

“Paris.”

“Paris?” she repeated, a little startled, after all that he had revealed to her.

“Yes. I’ve got a little money in the bank in Tellurium, and I–”

“You needn’t be so proud of it!” she retorted. “So have I, in New York. So you needn’t think it’s your money I’m after, sir!”

They laughed, and then he had both her hands across the table.

“It isn’t much, I assure you,” he went on. “But it will do for a while in Paris. I mean–if you will go with me–to find my old master, or another. You know, Marion, he said to me many times: ‘You’re going to be a painter some day, mon petit; you’re going to do big things, if you’ll work, work, work.’ And so–”

“You’ll paint again!” she cried. “Oh, and I shall keep house for you! You may not believe it, but I’m a splendid cook. But I’ve got to have salt. You must earn enough to buy salt!”

“I’ll try.”

At that he rose, and went again to the cabinet from which he had brought the photograph, and returned with his hands behind his back.

“What do you suppose I’ve got for our mantelpiece–if we have such a thing in our attic?”

“What in the world, Philip?”

“Shut your eyes, please!”

She obeyed, and in the middle of the table he set down the tattered and grimy little boot that he had carried away from the cave.

“Now open!” he commanded.

“Oh!” she cried, staring at the eloquent memento.

Then she flung back her head, with a quick indrawing of her breath, and looked up at him through a bright mist that gathered in her eyes. And her face was radiant.

He went quickly to her, and leaned down to kiss her hair, her eyes, her lips; and her arms crept once more around his neck.

CHAPTER XXXI

SANGRE DE CRISTO

Late October in the San Luis, and the raw day near its close. Across the melancholy flats the north wind’s plaintive note rose at intervals into a wailing cry. The thin grasses bent before it, the sagebrush took on new and fantastic shapes, and danced like demons to the tune. In gray-brown desolation the sand dunes rolled away to the foothills, far and violet and dim. All was cold and bleak and forbidding, and the sun itself appeared to be retiring eagerly from a scene so dreary and disheartening.

Then came magic. Sangre de Cristo, sharp against the eastern sky, began to change its hue. A pink flush came into the gleaming white. It grew deeper, darker, more vivid; it spread, and ran in richer and richer tints along the range. Now it was rose, and now vermilion, and at last a deep and living scarlet, staining the snowy slopes, and flowing like new blood down the gulches and ravines. The foothills caught the color, and the violets became purple and then red; the sand dunes caught it, and their gray-browns were overlaid with crimson; the flats too caught it, and the sagebrush bending low, and the grass quivering in the wind were touched with some reflection of that far-reaching hue. From the green along the river the color swept, indefinable and dim at first, then by degrees intensified upon the flats, across the sand dunes, among the hills until at length it was passionate and deep and indescribable on the Sangre de Cristo peaks.

A cowboy, searching for lost mavericks, rode slowly to the top of a low sand dune, reined up his pony, and sat silent in the midst of this solemn spectacle. He was not emotional. He was looking for calves, and “sore” at not finding them, and hungry, and far from the X bar O; and night was coming on. But he sat still in his saddle, removed his flopping sombrero, and looked toward the east. Bareheaded, the wind stinging his cheek and flinging dry sand in his eyes, he gazed and wondered at the familiar but never negligible mystery of Sangre de Cristo.

But suddenly he rose in his stirrups, and shaded his eyes with his hand to make out what it was that had caught his vision in that flood of red among the dunes. Again it came, a flash of yellow in the red. It was there, and gone. And then it came and lingered, as if inviting him, like a jewel in the sand, or rather, like a challenge and a taunt.

“So you’re back, are you?” cried Larkin, of the X bar O. “Well, you c’n jest stay there. I’m done with you. You ain’t no horse at all, damn you! You’re a devil! But I wonder–”

Then Sunnysides was gone. At the same time the light paled on the distant peaks. The wind blew colder, and swept the color off the dunes. The flats darkened under the advancing shades of night. And Larkin, muttering, put spurs to his pony, and galloped away toward supper and bed.

THE END