The Way of a Man

by Emerson Hough

  CHAPTER XXXI

  THE BETROTHAL

  Strength came to us as we had need, and gradually even the weaker of ustwo became able to complete the day's journey without the exhaustion itat first had cost her. Summer was now upon us, and the heat at middaywas intense, although the nights, as usual, were cold. Deprived of allpack animals, except our dog, we were perforce reduced to the lightestof gear, and discomfort was our continual lot. Food, however, we couldstill secure, abundant meat, and sometimes the roots of plants which Idug up and tested, though I scarce knew what they were.

  We moved steadily on toward the west and northwest, but although wecrossed many old Indian trails, we saw no more of these travelers of thePlains. At that time the country which we were traversing had no whitepopulation, although the valley of the Platte had long been part of adusty transcontinental highway. It was on this highway that the savageswere that summer hanging, and even had we been certain of its exactlocation, I should have feared to enter the Platte valley, lest weshould meet red men rather than white.

  At times we lost the buffalo for days, more especially as we approachedthe foothills of the mountains, and although antelope became morenumerous there, they were far more difficult to kill, and apt to cost usmore of our precious ammunition. I planned to myself that if we did notpresently escape I would see what might be done toward making a bow andarrows for use on small game, which we could not afford to purchase atthe cost of precious powder and ball.

  I was glad, therefore, when we saw the first timber of the foothills;still gladder, for many reasons, when I found that we were entering thewinding course of a flattened, broken stream, which presently ran backinto a shingly valley, hedged in by ranks of noble mountains, snow whiteon their peaks. Here life should prove easier to us for the time, thecountry offering abundant shelter and fuel, perhaps game, and certainlychange from the monotony of the Plains.

  Here, I said to myself, our westward journey must end. It would bebootless to pass beyond Laramie into the mountains, and our next course,I thought, must be toward the south. I did not know that we were thenperhaps a hundred miles or more northwest of Laramie, deep in a mountainrange far north of the transcontinental trail. For the time, however, itseemed wise to tarry here for rest and recruiting. I threw down thepack. "Now," said I to her, "we rest."

  "Yes," she replied, turning her face to the south, "Laramie is that waynow. If we stop here my father will come and find us. But then, howcould he find us, little as we are, in this big country? Our trail wouldnot be different from that of Indians, even if they found it freshenough to read. Suppose they _never_ found us!"

  "Then," said I, "we should have to live here, forever and ever."

  She looked at me curiously. "Could we?" she asked.

  "Until I was too old to hunt, you too weak to sew the robes or cook thefood."

  "What would happen then?"

  "We would die," said I. "The world would end, would have to begin allover again and wait twice ten million years until man again was evolvedfrom the amoeba, the reptile, the ape. When we died, this dog here wouldbe the only hope of the world."

  She looked at the eternal hills in their snow, and made no answer.Presently we turned to our duties about the camp.

  It was understood that we should stay here for at least two days, tomend our clothing and prepare food for the southern journey. I have saidI was not happy at the thought of turning toward that world which I hadmissed so little. Could the wild freedom of this life have worked asimilar spell on her? The next day she came to me as I sat by our meagerfireside. Without leading of mine she began a manner of speech until nowforeign to her.

  "What is marriage, John Cowles?" she asked of me, abruptly, with nopreface.

  "It is the Plan," I answered, apathetically. She pondered for a time.

  "Are we, then, only creatures, puppets, toys?"

  "Yes," I said to her. "A man is a toy. Love was born before man wascreated, before animals or plants. Atom, ran to atom, seeking. It waslove." She pondered yet a while.

  "And what is it, then, John Cowles, that women call 'wrong'?"

  "Very often what is right," I said to her, apathetically. "When two lovethe crime is that they shall not wed. When they do not love, the crimeis when they do wed."

  "But without marriage," she hesitated, "the home--"

  "It is the old question," I said. "The home is built on woman's virtue;but virtue is not the same where there is no tome, no property, wherethere is no society--it is an artificial thing, born of compromise, andgrown stronger by custom of the ages of property-owning man."

  I saw a horror come across her eyes.

  "What do you say to me, John Cowles? That what a woman prizes is notright, is not good? No, that I shall _not_ think!" She drew apart fromme.

  "Because you think just as you do, I love you," I said.

  "Yet you say so many things. I have taken life as it came, just as othergirls do, not thinking. It is not nice, it is not _clean_, that girlsshould study over these things. That is not right."

  "No, that is not right," said I, dully.

  "Then tell me, what is marriage--that one thing a girl dreams of all herlife. Is it of the church?"

  "It is not of the church," I said.

  "Then it is the law."

  "It is not the law," I said.

  "Then what is it?" she asked. "John Cowles, tell me, what makes awedding between two who really and truly love. Can marriage be of buttwo?"

  "Yes," said I.

  "But there must be witnesses--there must be ceremony--else there is nomarriage," she went on. Her woman's brain clung to the safe, sane groovewhich alone can guide progress and civilization and society--that great,cruel, kind, imperative compromise of marriage, without which all theadvancement of the world would be as naught. I loved her for it. But forme, I say I had gone savage. I was at the beginning of all this, whereasit remained with her as she had left it.

  "Witnesses?" I said. "Look at those!" I pointed to the mountains."Marriages, many of them, have been made with no better witnesses thanthose."

  My heart stopped when I saw how far she had jumped to her next speech.

  "Then we two are all the people left in the world, John Cowles? When Iam old, will you cast me off? When another woman comes into this valley,when I am bent and old, and cannot see, will you cast me off, and, beingstronger than I am, will you go and leave me?"

  I could not speak at first. "We have talked too much," I said to herpresently. But now it was she who would not desist.

  "You see, with a woman it is for better, for worse--but with a man--"

  "With a Saxon man," I said, "it is also for better, for worse. It is onewoman."

  She sat and thought for a long time. "Suppose," she said, "that no oneever came."

  Now with swift remorse I could see that in her own courage she wasfeeling her way, haltingly, slowly, toward solution of problems whichmost women take ready solved from others. But, as I thank God, a filmyveil, softening, refining, always lay between her and reality. In herintentness she laid hold upon my arm, her two hands clasping.

  "Suppose two were here, a man and a woman, and he swore before thoseeternal witnesses that he would not go away any time until she was deadand laid away up in the trees, to dry away and blow off into the air,and go back--"

  "Into the flowers," I added, choking.

  "Yes, into the trees and the flowers--so that when she was dead and hewas dead, and they were both gone back into the flowers, they wouldstill know each other for ever and ever and never be ashamed--would thatbe a marriage before God, John Cowles?"

  What had I brought to this girl's creed of life, heretofore always sosweet and usual? I did not answer. She shook at my arm. "Tell me!" shesaid. But I would not tell her.

  "Suppose they did not come," she said once more. "It is true, they maynot find us. Suppose we two were to live here alone, all thiswinter--just as we are now--none of my people or yours near us. Could wego on?"

  "God! Wom
an, have you no mercy!"

  She sat and pondered for yet a time, as though seriously weighing somequestion in her mind.

  "But you have taught me to think, John Cowles. It is you who have begunmy thinking, so now I must think. I know we cannot tell what may happen.I ask you, 'John Cowles, if we were brought to that state which we bothknow might happen--if we were here all alone and no one came, and if youloved me--ah, then would you promise, forever and forever, to love metill death did us part--till I was gone back into the flowers? Iremember what they say at weddings. They cling one to the other,forsaking all others, till death do them part. Could you promise me--inthat way? Could you promise me, clean and solemn? Because, I would notpromise you unless it was solemn, and clean, and unless it was forever."

  Strange, indeed, these few days in the desert, which had so drawn apartthe veil of things and left us both ready to see so far. She had notseen so far as I, but, womanlike, had reasoned more quickly.

  As for me, it seemed that I saw into her heart. I dropped my hands frommy eyes and looked at her strangely, my own brain in a whirl, my logicgone. All I knew was that then or elsewhere, whether or not rescue evercame for us, whether we died now or later, there or anywhere in all theworld, I would, indeed, love her and her only, forsaking all othersuntil, indeed, we were gone back into the sky and flowers, until wewhispered again in the trees, one unto the other! Marriage or nomarriage, together or apart, in sickness or in health--so there came tome the stern conviction--love could knock no more at my heart, whereonce she had stood in her courage and her cleanness. Reverence, I say,was now the one thing left in my heart. Still we sat, and watched thesun shine on the distant white-topped peaks. I turned to her slowly atlength.

  "Ellen," I said, "do you indeed love me?"

  "How can I help it, John Cowles," she answered bravely. My heart stoppedshort, then raced on, bursting all control. It was long before I couldbe calm as she.

  "You have helped it very long," I said at last, quietly. "But now I mustknow--would you love me anywhere, in any circumstances, in spite of all?I love you because you are You, not because you are here. I must beloved in the same way, always."

  She looked at me now silently, and I leaned and kissed her full on themouth.