Over the Pass

by Frederick Palmer

  IV

  HE CARRIES THE MAIL

  When the suspense was over for Mary, the glare of the store lamp wentdancing in grotesque waves, and abruptly, uncannily, fell away into thedistant, swimming glow of a lantern suffused with fog. She swayed. Onlythe leg-rest kept her from slipping off the pony. Her first returningsense of her surroundings came with the sound of a voice, the samecareless, pleasant voice which she had heard at Galeria asking Pete Leddyif he were not overplaying his part.

  "You were right," said the voice. "It was the whistle that made himso angry."

  Indistinctly she associated a slowly-shaping figure with the voice andrealized that she had been away in the unknown for a second. Yes, it wasall very well to talk about Sir Walter being out of fashion, but she hadbeen near to fainting, and in none of the affectation of the hoop-skirtage, either. Had she done any foolish thing in expression of a weaknessthat she had never known before? Had she extended her hand for support?Had he caught her as she wobbled in the saddle? No. She was relieved tosee that he was not near enough for that.

  "By no stretch of ethics can you charge yourself with furtherresponsibility or fears," he continued. "Pete and I understand each otherperfectly, now."

  But in his jocularity ran something which was plain, if unspoken. It wasthat he would put an end to a disagreeable subject. His first words toher had provided a bridge--and burned it--from the bank of thedisagreeable to the bank of agreeable. Her own desire, with full masteryof her faculties coming swiftly, fell in with his. She wanted to blot outthat horror and scotch a sudden uprising of curiosity as to the exactnature of the gamble in death through which he had passed. It was enoughthat he was alive.

  The blurry figure became distinct, smiling with inquiry in a glance fromher to the stack of papers, magazines, and pamphlets which crowded hiscircling arms. He seemed to have emptied the post-office. There had notbeen any Pete Leddy; there had been no display of six-shooters. He hadgone in after the mail. Here he was ready to deliver it by the bushel,while he waited for orders. She had to laugh at his predicament as helowered his chin to steady a book on the top of the pile.

  "Oh, I meant to tell you that you were not to bring the second-classmatter!" she told him. "We always send a servant with a basket for that.You see what comes of having a father who is not only omnivorous, but hasa herbivorous capacity."

  He saw that the book had a row of Italian stamps across the wrapper.Unless that popular magazine stopped slipping, both the book and a heavyGerman pamphlet would go. He took two hasty steps toward her, in mockdistress of appeal.

  "I'll allow salvage if you act promptly!" he said.

  She lifted the tottering apex just in time to prevent its fall.

  "I'll take the book," she said. "Father has been waiting months forit. We can separate the letters and leave the rest in the store to besent for."

  "The railroad station is on the other side of the town, isn't it?" heasked.

  "Yes."

  "I shall camp nearby, so it will be no trouble to leave my burden at yourdoor as I pass."

  "He does have the gift of oiling the wheels in either, big or littlemoments," she thought, as she realized how simple and considerate hadbeen his course from the first. He was a stranger going on his way,stopping, however, to do her or any other traveller a favor _en route_.

  "Firio, we're ready to hear Jag Ear's bells!" he called.

  "_Si_!" answered Firio.

  All the while the Indian had kept in the shadow, away from the spray oflight from the store lamp, unaware of the rapid drama that had passedamong the boxes and barrels. He had observed nothing unusual in the younglady, whose outward manifestation of what she had, witnessed was theclosing of her eyes.

  It was out of the question that Jack should mount a horse when botharms were crowded with their burden. He walked beside Mary's stirrupleather in the attitude of that attendant on royalty who bears a crownon a cushion.

  "Little Rivers is a new town, isn't it?" he asked.

  "Yes, the Town Wonderful," she answered. "Father founded it."

  She spoke with an affection which ran as deep into the soil as youngroots after water. If on the pass she had seemed a part of the desert,of great, lonely distances and a far-flung carpet of dreams, here sheseemed to belong to books and gardens.

  "I wish I had time to look over the Town Wonderful in the morning, but mytrain goes very early, I believe."

  After his years of aimless travelling, to which he had so readilyconfessed, he had tied himself to a definite hour on a railroadschedule as something commanding and inviolable. Such inconsistencydid not surprise her. Had she not already learned to expectinconsistencies from him?

  "Oh, it is all simple and primitive, but it means a lot to us," she said.

  "What one's home and people mean to him is pretty well all of one's ownhuman drama," he returned, seriously.

  The peace of evening was in the air and the lights along the singlestreet were a gentle and persistent protest of human life against themighty stretch of the enveloping mantle of night. From the cottages ofthe ranchers came the sound of voices. The twang of a guitar quiveringstarward made medley with Jag Ear's bells.

  Here, for a little distance, the trail, in its long reach on the desert,had taken on the dignity of the urban name of street. On either side,fronting the cottages, ran the slow waters of two irrigation ditches,gleaming where lamp-rays penetrated the darkness. The date of eachrancher's settlement was fairly indicated by the size of thequick-growing umbrella and pepper-trees which had been planted for shade.Thus all the mass of foliage rose like a mound of gentle slope toward thecentre of the town, where Jack saw vaguely the outlines of a ramblingbungalow, more spacious if no more pretentious than its neighbors in itsarchitecture. At a cement bridge over the ditch, leading to a broadveranda under the soft illumination of a big, wrought-iron lantern, Marydrew rein.

  "This is home," she said; "and--and thank you!"

  He could not see her face, which was in the shadow turned toward him, ashe looked into the light of the lantern from the other side of her pony.

  "And--thank you!"

  It was as if she had been on the point of saying something else andcould not get the form of any sentence except these two words. Was thereanything further to say except "Thank you"? Anything but to repeat"Thank you"?

  There he stood, this stranger so correctly introduced by the EternalPainter, with his burden, waiting instructions in this moment of awkwarddiffidence. He looked at her and at the porch and at his bundle of mailin a quizzical appeal. Then she realized that, in a peculiar lapse ofabstraction, she had forgotten about his encumberment.

  Before she could speak there was a sonorous hail from the house; a hailin keeping with the generous bulk of its owner, who had come through thedoor. He was well past middle-age, with a thatch of gray hair halfcovering his high forehead. In one hand he held the book that he had beenreading, and in the other a pair of big tortoise-shell glasses.

  "Mary, you are late--and what have we here?"

  He was beaming at Jack as he came across the bridge and he broke intohearty laughter as he viewed Jack's preoccupation with thesecond-class matter.

  "At last! At last we have rural free delivery in Little Rivers! We arethe coming town! And your uniform, sir"--Jasper Ewold took in the cowboyoutfit with a sweeping glance which warmed with the picturesqueeffect--"it's a great improvement on the regulation; fit for freedelivery in Little Rivers, where nobody studies to be unconventional inany vanity of mistaking that for originality, but nobody need beconventional."

  He took some of the cargo in his own hands. With the hearty breeze of hispersonality he fairly blew Jack onto the porch, where magazines andpamphlets were dropped indiscriminately in a pile on a rattan settee.

  "You certainly have enough reading matter," said Jack. "And I must begetting on to camp."

  For he had no invitation to stay from Mary and the conventional factthat he had to recognize is that a postman's call is not a social call.
As he turned to go he faced her coming across the bridge. An Indianservant, who seemed to have materialized out of the night, had takencharge of her pony.

  "To camp! Never!" said Jasper Ewold. "Sir Knight, slip your lance in thering of the castle walls--but having no lance and this being no castle,well, Sir Knight in _chaparejos_--that is to say, Sir Chaps--let meinform you"--here Jasper Ewold threw back his shoulders and tossed hismane of hair, his voice sinking to a serious basso profundo--"yes, informyou, sir, that there is one convention, a local rule, that no strangercrosses this threshold at dinner-time without staying to dinner." Therewas a resonance in his tone, a liveliness to his expression, that wasinfectious.

  "But Firio and Jag Ear and Wrath of God wait for me," Jack said, enteringwith real enjoyment into the grandiose style.

  "High sounding company, sir! Let me see them!" demanded Jasper Ewold.

  Jack pointed to his cavalcade waiting in the half shadows, where thelamp-rays grew thin. Wrath of God's bony face was pointed lugubriouslytoward the door; Jag Ear was wiggling his fragment of ear.

  "And Moses on the mountain-top says that you stay!" declaredJasper Ewold.

  Jack looked at Mary. She had not spoken yet and he waited on her word.

  "Please do!" she said. "Father wants someone to talk to."

  "Yes, Sir Chaps, I shall talk; otherwise, why was man given a tongue inhis head and ideas?"

  Refusal was out of the question. Accordingly, Firio was sent on to makecamp alone.

  "Now, Sir Chaps, now, Mr.--" began Jasper Ewold, pausing blankly. "Why,Mary, you have not given me his city directory name!"

  "Mr.--" and Mary blushed. She could only pass the, blame back to theEternal Painter's oversight in their introduction.

  "Jack Wingfield!" said Jack, on his own account.

  "Jack Wingfield!" repeated Jasper Ewold, tasting the name.

  A flicker of surprise followed by a flicker of drawn intensity ran overhis features, and he studied Jack in a long glance, which he masked justin time to save it from being a stare. Jack was conscious of thescrutiny. He flushed slightly and waited for some word to explain it;but none came. Jasper Ewold's Olympian geniality returned in aspontaneous flood.

  "Come inside, Jack Wingfield," he said. "Come inside, Sir Chaps--for thatis how I shall call you."

  The very drum-beat of hospitality was in his voice. It was a wonderfulvoice, deep and warm and musical; not to be forgotten.