Over the Pass

by Frederick Palmer

  III

  JACK RIDES IN COMPANY

  Let not the Grundy woman raise an eyebrow of deprecation at the informalintroduction of Jack and Mary, or we shall refute her with her ownprecepts, which make the steps to a throne the steps of the socialpyramid. If she wishes a sponsor, we name an impeccable majesty of thevery oldest dynasty of all, which is entirely without scandal. We remindher of the ancient rule that people who meet at court, vouched for byroyal favor, need no introduction.

  These two had met under the roof of the Eternal Painter. His palette issomewhere in the upper ether and his head in the interplanetary spaces.His heavy eyebrows twinkle with star-dust. Dodging occasional flyingmeteors, which harass him as flies harass a landscapist out of doors on ahot day, he is ever active, this mighty artist of the changing desertsky. So fickle his moods, so versatile his genius, so quick to creationhis fancy, that he never knows what his next composition will be till thesecond that it is begun.

  No earthly rival need be jealous of him. He will never clog thegalleries. He always paints on the same canvas, scraping off one pictureto make room for another. And you do not mind the loss of the old. Youlive for the new.

  His Majesty has no artistic memory. He is as young as he was the daythat he flung out his first tentative lunette after chaos. He is thepatron saint of all pilgrims from the city's struggle, where they foundno oases of rest. He melts "pasts" and family skeletons and hiddenstories of any kind whatsoever into the blue as a background with theabandoned preoccupation of his own brushwork. His lieges, who seekoblivion in the desert, need not worry about the water that will neverrun over the millwheel again, or dwell in prophecy on floods to come. Theomnipotence of the moment transports and soothes them.

  "Time is nothing!" says the Eternal Painter. "If you feel important,remember that man's hectic bustling makes but worm-work on the planet.Live and breathe joyfully and magnificently! Do not strain your eyes overembroidery! Come to my open gallery! And how do you like the way I setthose silver clouds a-tumbling? Do you know anything better under thedome of any church or capitol? Shall I bank them? Line them with purple?It is done! But no! Let us wipe it all out, change the tint of ourbackground, and start afresh!"

  With his eleven hundred million billionth sunset, or thereabouts, HisMajesty held a man and a woman who had met on the roof of the world inthrall. He was lurid at the outset, dipping his camel's hair in at theround furnace door sinking toward the hills, whose red vortex shottongues of flame into canyons and crevasses and drove out their lurkingshadows with the fire of its inquisition. The foliage of Little Riversbecame a grove of quivering leaves of gold, set on a vast beaten platterof gold. And the man and the woman, like all things else in thelandscape, were suffused in this still, Parnassian, penetratingbrilliancy, which ought to make even a miser feel that his hoarded eaglesand sovereigns are ephemeral dross.

  "I love it all--all the desert!" said Mary Ewold.

  "And I, too!"

  "I have for six years."

  "I for five."

  The sentences had struck clearly as answering chimes, impersonally, intheir preoccupied gazing.

  "It gave me life!" he added.

  "And it gave me life!"

  Then they looked at each other in mutual surprise and understanding; eachin wonder that the other had ever been anything but radiant ofout-of-doors health. That fleck on the lungs which brought a doctor'sorders had long ago been healed by the physician of the ozone they werebreathing.

  "And you remained," he said.

  "And you, also," she answered.

  Their own silence seemed to become a thing apart from the silence of theinfinite. It was as if both recognized a common thought that even theEternal Painter could not compel oblivion of the past to which they didnot return; of the faith of cities to which they had been bred. But it isone of the Eternal Painter's rules that no one of his subjects should askanother of his subjects why he stays on the desert. Jack was the first tospeak, and his voice returned to the casual key.

  "Usually I watch the sunset while we make camp," he said. "I am very lateto-night--late beyond all habit; and sunset and sunrise do make one acreature of habit out here. Firio and my little train will grow impatientwaiting for me."

  "You mean the Indian and the burro with the silver bells that came overthe pass some time before you?"

  Of course they belonged to him, she was thinking, even as she made theinquiry. This play cowboy, with his absurdly enormous silver spurs, wouldnaturally put bells on his burro.

  "Yes, I sent Firio with Wrath of God and Jag Ear on ahead and told him towait at the foot of the descent. Wrath of God will worry--he is of aworrying nature. I must be going."

  In view of the dinosaur nonsense she was already prepared for a varietyof inventional talk from him. As they started down from the pass insingle file, she leading, the sun sank behind the hills, leaving theEternal Painter, unhindered by a furnace glare in the centre of thecanvas, to paint with a thousand brushes in the radiant tints of theafterglow.

  "You don't like that one, O art critics!" we hear him saying. "Well, hereis another before you have adjusted your _pince-nez,_ and I will brush itaway before you have emitted your first Ah! I do not criticise. Ipaint--I paint for the love of it. I paint with the pigments of thefirmament and the imagination of the universe."

  The two did not talk of that sky which held their averted glances, whileknowing hoofs that bore their weight kept the path. For how can you talkof the desert sky except in the banality of exclamations? It is _lesemajeste_ to the Eternal Painter to attempt description.

  At times she looked back and their eyes met in understanding, as truesubjects of His Majesty, and then they looked skyward to see what changesthe Master's witchery had wrought. In supreme intoxication of thesenses, breathing that dry air which was like cool wine coming in longsips to the palate, they rode down the winding trail, till, after asurpassing outburst, the Eternal Painter dropped his brush for the night.

  It was dusk. Shadows returned to the crevasses. Free of the magic of thesky, with the curtains of night drawing in, the mighty savagery of thebare mountains in their disdain of man and imagination reasserted itself.It dropped Mary Ewold from the azure to the reality of Pete Leddy. Shewas seeing, the smoking end of a revolver and a body lying in a pool ofblood; and there, behind her, rode this smiling stranger, proceeding sogenially and carelessly to the fate which she had provided for him.

  With the last turn, which brought them level with the plain, they cameupon an Indian, a baggage burro, and a riding-pony. The Indian sprang up,grinning: his welcome and doffing a Mexican steeple-hat.

  "I must introduce you all around," Jack told Mary.

  She observed in his manner something new!--a positive enthusiasm for histhree retainers, which included a certain well-relished vanity in theirloyalty and character.

  "Firio has Sancho Panza beaten to a frazzle," Jack said. "Sancho was fatand unresourceful; even stupid. Fancy him broiling a quail on a spit!Fancy what a lot of trouble Firio could have saved Don Quixote de laMancha! Why, confound it, he would have spoiled the story!"

  Firio was a solid grain, to take Jack's view, winnowed out of bushels ofaboriginal chaff; an Indian, all Indian, without any strain of Spanishblood in the primitive southern strain.

  "And Firio rides Wrath of God," Jack continued, nodding to a pony with alow-hung head and pendant lip, whose lugubrious expression wasexaggerated by a scar. "He looks it, don't you think?--always miserable,whether his nose is in the oats or we run out of water. He is our sadphilosopher, who has just as dependable a gait as P.D. I have manytheories about the psychology of his ego. Sometimes I explain it by adesire both to escape and to pursue unhappiness, which amounts to asolemn kind of perpetual motion. But he has a positively sweet nature.There is no more malice in his professional mournfulness than in thecheerful humor of Jag Ear."

  "It is plain to see which is Jag Ear," she observed, "and how he earnedhis name."

  Every time a burro gets into t
he corn, an Indian master cuts off a bitof long, furry ear as a lesson. Before Jag Ear passed into kindlierhands he had been clipped closer than a Boston terrier. Only a singleupstanding fragment remained in token of a graded education which hadavailed him nothing.

  "There's no curtailing Jag Ear's curiosity," said Jack. "To him,everything is worth trying. That is why he is a born traveller. Hehas been with me from Colorado to Chihuahua, on all my wanderingsback and forth."

  While he spoke, Firio mounted Wrath of God and, with Jag Ear's bellsjingling, the supply division set out on the road. Jack and Maryfollowed, this time riding side by side, pony nose to pony nose, in anintimacy of association impossible in the narrow mountain trail. It wasan intimacy signalized by silence. There was an end to the mightytransports of the heights; the wells of whimsicality had dried up. Theweight of the silence seemed balancing on a brittle thread. All theafternoon's events aligned themselves in a colossal satire. In the halflight Jack became a gaunt and lonely figure that ought to be confined insome Utopian kindergarten.

  Mary could feel her temples beating with the fear of what was waiting forhim in Little Rivers, now a dark mass on the levels, just dark, withoutcolor or any attraction except the mystery that goes with the shroud ofnight. She knew how he would laugh at her fears; for she guessed that hewas unafraid of anything in the world which, however, was no protectionfrom Pete Leddy's six-shooter.

  "I--I have a right to know--won't you tell me how you are going to defendyourself against Pete Leddy?" she demanded, in a sudden outburst.

  "I hadn't thought of that. Certainly, I shall leave it to Pete himself toopen hostilities. I hadn't thought of it because I have been too busythinking out how I was going to break a piece of news to Firio. I havebeen an awful coward about it, putting it off and putting it off. I hadplanned to do it on my birthday two weeks ago, and then he gave me thesebig silver spurs--spent a whole month's wages on them, think of that! Ibought this cowboy regalia to go with them. You can't imagine how thatpleased him. It certainly was great fun."

  Mary could only shake her head hopelessly.

  "Firio and Jag Ear and Wrath of God and old P.D. here--we've sort ofgrown used to one another's foolishness. Now I can't put it off anylonger, and I'd about as soon be murdered as tell him that I am goingEast in the morning."

  "You mean you are going to leave here for good?" She mistrusted herown hearing. She was dazzled by this sudden burst of light throughthe clouds.

  "Yes, by the first train. This is my last desert ride."

  Why had he not said so at first? It would not only have saved her fromworry, but from the humiliation of pleading with a stranger. Doubtless hehad enjoyed teasing her. But no matter. The affair need not last muchlonger, now. She told herself that, if necessary, she would mount guardover him for the remaining twelve hours of his stay. Once he was aboardthe Pullman he would be out of danger; her responsibility would be overand the whole affair would become a bizarre memory; an incident closed.

  "Back to New York," he said, as one who enters a fog without acompass. "Back to fight pleosaurs, dinosaurs, and all kinds ofmonsters," he added, with a cheeriness which rang with the first falsenote she had heard from him. "I don't care," he concluded, and brokeinto a Spanish air, whose beat ran with the trickling hoof-beats ofthe ponies in the sand.

  "That is it!" she thought. "That explains. He just does not care aboutanything."

  Ahead, the lamps were beginning to twinkle in the little settlement whichhad sent such a contrast in citizenship as Mary Ewold and Pete Leddy outto the pass. They were approaching a single, isolated building, from thedoor of which came a spray of light and the sound of men's voices.

  "That is Bill Lang's place," Mary explained. "He keeps a store, with abar in the rear. He also has the post-office, thanks to his politicalinfluence, and this is where I have to stop for the mail when I returnfrom the pass."

  She had not spoken with any sense of a hint which it was inevitable heshould accept.

  "Let me get it for you;" and before she had time to protest, he haddismounted, drawing rein at the edge of the wooden steps.

  She rode past where his pony was standing. When he entered the door, histallness and lean ease of posture silhouetted in the light, she couldlook in on the group of idling male gossips.

  "Don't!"

  It was a half cry from her, hardly audible in an intensity which she knewwas futile in the surge of her torturing self-incrimination. Why had shenot thought that it would be here that Pete Leddy was bound to wait foranyone coming in by the trail from Galeria? The loungers suddenly droppedto the cover of boxes and barrels, as a flicker of steel shot upward, andbehind the gleaming rim of a revolver muzzle held rigid was a brown handand Leddy's hard, unyielding face.

  What matter if the easy traveller could shoot? He was caught like a mancoming out of an alley. He had no chance to draw in turn. In the click ofa second-hand the thing would be over. Mary's eyes involuntarily closed,to avoid seeing the flash from the revolver. She listened for the report;for the fall of a body which should express the horror she had visualizedfor the hundredth time. A century seemed to pass and there was no soundexcept the beat of her heart, which ran in a cataract throb to hertemples; no sound except that and what seemed to be soft, regular stepson the bare floor of the store.

  "Coward!" she told herself, with the agony of her suspensebreaking. "He saved you from inexpressible humiliation and you areafraid even to look!"

  She opened her eyes, prepared for the worst. Had she gone out of herhead? Could she no longer trust her own eyesight? What she saw wasinconceivable. The startled faces of the loungers were rising frombehind the boxes and barrels. Pete Leddy's gun had dropped to his sideand his would-be victim had a hand on Pete's shoulder. Jack was talkingapparently in a kindly and reasoning tone, but she could not make outhis words.

  One man alone evidently had not taken cover. It was Jim Galway, arancher, who had been standing at the mail counter. To judge by hisexpression, what Jack was saying had his approval.

  With a nod to Leddy and then a nod to the others, as if in amicableconclusion of the affair, Jack wheeled around to the counter, disclosingLeddy's face wry with insupportable chagrin. His revolver was still inhis hand. In the swift impulse of one at bay who finds himself released,he brought it up. There was murder, murder from behind, in the catlikequickness of his movement; but Jim Galway was equally quick. He threw hiswhole weight toward Leddy in a catapult leap, as he grasped Leddy's wristand bore it down. Jack faced about in alert readiness. Seeing that Galwayhad the situation pat, he put up his hand in a kind of questioning,puzzled remonstrance; but Mary noticed that he was very erect. He spokeand Galway spoke in answer. Evidently he was asking that Leddy bereleased. To this Galway consented at length, but without drawing backuntil he had seen Leddy's gun safe in the holster.

  Then Leddy raised himself challengingly on tiptoes to Jack, who turned toGalway in the manner of one extending an invitation. On his part, Leddyturned to Ropey Smith, another of Little Rivers' ruffians. After this,Leddy went through the door at the rear; the loungers resumed their seatson the cracker barrels and gazed at one another with dropped jaws, whileBill Lang proceeded with his business as postmaster.