Over the Pass

by Frederick Palmer

  XXII

  "LUCK, JACK, LUCK!"

  Apprehensively he watched the end of the ribbon running under P.D.'shoofs for the sight of a horsewoman breaking free of the foothills. Themomentary fear which rode with him was that Mary might be returningearlier than usual. If they met on the road--why, the road was withoutimagination and, in keeping with her new attitude toward him, she mightpass him by with a nod. But at the top of the pass imagination would besupreme. There they had first met; there they had found their firstthought in common in the ozone which had meant life to them both.

  He did not look up at the sky changes. As he climbed the winding pathworn by moccasined feet before the Persians marched to Thermopylae, hismind was too occupied making pictures of its own in glowing anticipationto have any interest in outside pictures. This path was narrow. Here, atleast, she must pause; and she must listen. Every turn which showedanother empty stretch ahead sent his spirits soaring. Then he saw a ponywith an empty side-saddle on the shelf. A few steps more and he saw Mary.

  She was seated with the defile at her back, her hands clasped over herknee. In this position, as in every position which she naturally took,she had a pliant and personal grace. The welter of light of the low sunwas ablaze in her face. Her profile had a luminous wistfulness. Herlashes were half closed, at once retaining the vision of the panorama ather feet as a thing of atmospheric enjoyment and shutting it out from theintimacy of her thoughts. And more enveloping than the light was thesilence which held her in a spell as still as the rocks themselves,waiting on time's dispensation where time was nothing. Yet the softmovement of her bosom with her even breaths triumphed in a life supremeand palpitant over all that dead world.

  Thus he drank her in before the crunch of a stone under his heel warnedher of his presence and set her breaths going and coming in quick gustsas she wheeled around, half rising and then dropping back to a positionas still as before, with a trace of new dignity in her grace, while herstarkness of inquiry gradually changed to stoicism.

  "Mary, I came upon you very suddenly," he said.

  "Yes"--a bare, echoing monosyllable.

  He stepped to one side to let Firio and his little cavalcade pass. Allthe while she continued to look at him through the screen of herhalf-closed lashes in a way that set her repose and charm apart assomething precious and cold and baffling. Now he realized that he hadmade a breach in the barrier of their old relations only to find himselfin a garden whose flowers fell to ashes at his touch. He saw the lightthat enveloped her as an armor far less vulnerable than any wall, and thesplendor of her was growing in his eyes.

  Jag Ear's bells with their warm and merry notes became a faint tinklethat was lost in the depths of the defile. The two were alone on the spotwhere the Eternal Painter had introduced them so simply as Jack andMary, and where he, as the easy traveller, had listened to her plead forhis own life. It was his turn to plead. She was not to be won by fightingLeddys or tearing up pine-trees by their roots. That armor was without ajoint; a lance would bend like so much tin against its plates, and yetthere must be some alchemy that would make it melt as a mist before thesun. It was tenanted by a being all sentiency, which saw him through hervisor as a passer-by in a gallery. But one in armor does not fly frompassers-by as she had flown while he was climbing up the canyon wall withhis pine-tree branch.

  "I have learned now to look over any kind of a precipice without gettingdizzy," she announced, quietly.

  He was not the Jack who had come over the ledge in the energy of hispassion yesterday to find her gone. He had turned gentle and was smilingwith craved permission for a respite from her evident severity as hedropped to a half-lying posture near her. Overhead, the Eternal Painterwas throwing in the smoky purple of a false thunderhead, sweeping it awaywith the promise of a downpour, rolling in piles of silver clouds anddrawing them out into filmy fingers melting into a luminous blue.

  "One can never tire of this," he said, tentatively.

  "To me it is all!" she answered, in an absorption with the scene thatmade him as inconsequential as the rocks around her.

  "And you never long for cities, with their swift currents and busyeddies?" he asked.

  "Cities are life, the life of humanity, and I am human. I--" Theunfinished sentence sank into the silence of things inexpressible orwhich it was purposeless to express.

  Her voice suggested the tinkle of Jag Ear's bells floating away intospace. If a precipitate were taken from her forehead, in keeping withJack's suggestion to Dr. Bennington, it would have been mercury, which isso tangible to the eye and intangible to the touch. Press it and itbreaks into little globules, only to be shaken together in a coherentwhole. If there is joy or pain in the breaking, either one must beglittering and immeasurable.

  "But Little Rivers is best," she added after a time, speaking not to him,but devoutly to the oasis of green.

  In the crystal air Little Rivers seemed so near that one could touch theroofs of the houses with the fingertips of an extended arm, and yet sodiminutive in the spacious bosom of the plateau that it might be set inthe palm of the hand.

  Jack was as one afraid of his own power of speech. A misplaced word mightsend her away as oblivious of him as a globule of mercury rolling freefrom the grasp. Here was a Mary unfathomed of all his hazards of study,undreamed of in all his flights of fancy.

  "It is my last view," he began. "I have said all my good-bys in town. Iam going."

  Covertly, fearfully, he watched the effect of the news. At least nowshe would look around at him. He would no longer have to talk to aprofile and to the golden mist of the horizon about the greatest thingof his life. But there was no sign of surprise; not even an inclinationof her head.

  "Yes," she told the horizon; and after a little silence added: "The timehas come to play another part?"

  She asked the question of the horizon, without any trace of the oldbanter over the wall. She asked it in confirmation of a commonplace.

  "I know that you have always thought of me as playing a part. But I amnot my own master. I must go. I--"

  "Back to your millions!" She finished the sentence for him.

  "Then you--you knew! You knew!" But his exclamation of astonishment didnot move her to a glance in his direction or even a tremor.

  "Yes," she went on. "Father told me about your millions last night. Hehas known from the first who you were."

  "And he told no one else in Little Rivers? He never mentioned it to me oreven to you before!"

  "Why should he when you did not mention it yourself? His omission wasnatural delicacy, in keeping with your own attitude. Isn't it part of thecustom of Little Rivers that pasts melt into the desert? There is nostandard except the conduct of the present!"

  And all this speech was in a monotone of quiet explanation.

  "He did not even tell you until last night! Until after our meeting onthe other side of the pass! It is strange! strange!" he repeated in theinsistence of wonder.

  He saw the lashes part a little, then quiver and close as she liftedher gaze from the horizon rim to the vortex of the sun. Then shesmiled wearily.

  "He likes a joke," she said. "Probably he enjoyed his knowledge of yoursecret and wanted to see if I would guess the truth before you werethrough playing your part."

  "But the part was not a part!" he said, with the emphasis of firecreeping along a fuse. "It was real. I do not want to leave LittleRivers!"

  "Not in your present enthusiasm," she returned with a warning inflectionof literalness, when he would have welcomed satire, anger, or anyreprisal of words as something live and warm; something on which his mindcould lay definite hold.

  In her impersonal calm she was subjecting him to an exquisite torture. Hewas a man flayed past all endurance, flayed by a love that fed on therevelation of a mystery in her being superbly in control. The riot of allthe colors of the sky spoke from his eyes as he sprang to his feet. Hebecame as intense as in the supreme moment in the _arroyo_; as recklessas when he walked across the store toward a g
un-muzzle. Only hers werethis time the set, still features. His were lighted with all the strengthof him and all the faith of him.

  "A part!" he cried. "Yes, a part--a sovereign and true part which I shallever play! I was going that day we first met, going before the legate ofthe millions came to me. Why did I stay? Because I could not go when Isaw that you wanted to turn me out of the garden!"

  His quivering words were spoken to a profile of bronze, over whichflickered a smile as she answered with a prompting and disinterestedanalysis.

  "You said it was to make callouses on your hands. But that must have beenpersiflage. The truth is that you imagined a challenger. You wanted towin a victory!" she answered.

  "It was for you that I calloused my hands!"

  "Time will make them soft!"

  She was half teasing now, but teasing through the visor, not over thewall.

  "And if I sought victory I saw that I was being beaten while I made aprofession of you, not of gardening! Yes, of you! I could confess it toall the world and its ridicule!"

  "Jack, you are dramatic!"

  If she would only once look at him! If he could only speak into her eyes!If her breaths did not come and go so regularly!

  "Why did I take to the trail after Pedro Nogales struck at me with hisknife? Because I saw the look on your face when you saw that I had brokenhis arm. I had not meant to break his arm--yet I know that I might havedone worse but for you! I did not mean to kill Leddy--yet there wassomething in me which might have killed him but for you!"

  "I am glad to have prevented murder!" she answered almost harshly.

  A shadow of horror, as if in recollection of the scene in the _arroyo_and beside the hedge, passed over her face.

  "Yes, I understand! I understand!" he said. "And you must hear why thisterrible impulse rose in me."

  "I know."

  "You know? You know?" he repeated.

  "About the millions," she corrected herself, hastily. "Go on, Jack, ifyou wish!" Urgency crept into her tone, the urgency of wishing to havedone with a scene which she was bearing with the fortitude oftightened nerves.

  "It was the millions that sent me out here with a message, when I didnot much care about anything, and their message was: 'We do not want tosee you again if you are to be forever a weakling. Get strong, for ourpower is to the strong! Get strong, or do not come back!'"

  "Yes?"

  For the first time since he had begun his story she looked fairly at him.It was as if the armor had melted with sympathy and pity and she, in thepride of the poverty of Little Rivers, was armed with a Samaritankindliness. For a second only he saw her thus, before she looked away tothe horizon and he saw that she was again in armor.

  "And I craved strength! It was my one way to make good. I rode thesolitudes, following the seasons, getting strength. I rejoiced in the tanof my arm and the movement of my own muscles. I learned to love the feelof a rifle-stock against my shoulder, the touch of the trigger to myfinger's end. I would shoot at the cactus in the moonlight--oh, that isdifficult, shooting by moonlight!--and I gloried in my increasingaccuracy--I, the weakling of libraries and galleries and sunny verandasof tourist resorts! Afraid at first of a precipice's edge, I came toenjoy looking over into abysses and in spending a whole day climbing downinto their depths, while Firio waited in camp. And at times I would cryout: 'Millions, I am strong! I am not afraid of you! I am not afraid ofanything!' In the days when I knew I could never be acceptable as theirmaster I knew I was in no danger of ever having to face them. When I hadgrown strong, less than ever did I want to face them. I know not why, butI saw shadows; I looked into another kind of depths--mentaldepths--which held a message that I feared. So I procrastinated, stayingon in the air which had given me red blood. But that was cowardly, andthat day I came over the pass I was making my last ride in the kingdom ofirresponsibility. I was going home!

  "When you asked me not to face Leddy I simply had to refuse. I had justas soon as not that Leddy would shoot at me, because I wanted to see ifhe would. Yes, I was strong. I had conquered. And if Leddy hit me, why, Idid not have to go back to battle with the shadows--the obsession ofshadows which had grown in my mind as my strength grew. When I wassmiling in Leddy's muzzle, as they say I did, I was just smilingexultantly at the millions that had called me a weakling, and saying,like some boaster, 'Could you do this, millions?' I--I--well, Mary, I--Ihave told you what I never was quite able to tell myself before."

  "Thank you, Jack!" she answered, and all the particles of sunlight thatbathed her seemed to reflect her quiet gladness as something detached,permeating, and transcendent.

  "When Leddy challenged me I wanted to fight," he went on. "I wanted tosee how cool I, the weakling whom the millions scorned, could be inbattle. After Leddy's shot in the _arroyo_ I found that strength haddiscovered something else in me--something that had lain dormant inboyhood and had not awakened to any consciousness of itself in the fiveyears on the desert--something of which all my boyhood training made meno less afraid than of the shadows, born of the blood, born of the verystrength I had won. It seemed to run counter to books and gardens andpeace itself--a lawless, devil-like creature! Yes, I gloried in the factthat I could kill Leddy. It was an intoxication to hold a steady bead onhim. And you saw and felt that in me--yes, I tell you everything as a manmust when he comes to a woman offering himself, his all, with his angels,his devils, and his dreams!"

  He paused trembling, as before a judge. She turned quickly, with asudden, winsome vivacity, the glow of a great satisfaction in her eyesand smiling a comradeship which made her old attitude over the wall athing of dross and yet far more intimate. Her hand went out to meet his.

  "Jack, we have had good times together," she said. "We were nevermawkish; we were just good citizens of Little Rivers, weren't we? And,Jack, every mortal of us is partly what he is born and the rest is whathe can do to bend inheritance to his will. But we can never quitetransform our inheritance and if we stifle it, some day it will breakloose. The first thing is to face what seems born in us, and you havemade a good beginning."

  She gave his hands a nervous, earnest clasp and withdrew hers as sherose. So they stood facing each other, she in the panoply of good will,he with his heart on his sleeve. The swiftly changing pictures of theEternal Painter in his evening orgy seemed to fill the air with the musicof a symphony in its last measures, and her very breaths and smiles to bekeeping time with its irresistible movement toward the finale.

  "I must be starting back, Jack," she said.

  "And, Mary, I must learn how to master the millions. Oh, I have not thecourage of the little dwarf pine in the canyon! Mary, Mary, I callousedmy hands for you! I want to master the millions for you! I would give youthe freedom of Little Rivers and all the cities of the world!"

  "No, Jack! This is my side of the pass. I shall be very happy here."

  "Then I will stay in Little Rivers! I will leave the millions to theshadows! I will stay on ranch-making, fortune-making. Mary, I love you! Ilove you!"

  There was no staying the flame of his feeling. He seized her hands; hedrew her to him. But her hands were cold; they were shivering.

  "Jack! No, no! It is not in the blood!" she cried in the face of somemocking phantom, her calmness gone and her words rocking with the tumultof emotion.

  "In the blood, Mary? What do you mean? What do you know that I don'tknow? Do you know those shadows that I cannot understand better thanI?" he pleaded; and he was thinking of the Doge's look of pity andchallenge and of the meeting long ago in Florence as the hazy filamentsof a mystery.

  "No, I should not have said that. What do I know? Little--nothing thatwill help! I know what is in me, as I know what is in you. I am afraid ofmyself--afraid of you!"

  "Mary, I will fight all the shadows!" He drew her close to himresistlessly in his might.

  "Jack, you will not use your strength against me! Jack!"

  He saw her eyes in a mist of pain and reproach as he released her. Andnow she threw back her head; she wa
s smiling in the philosophy of gardennonsense as she cried:

  "Good-by, Jack! Luck against the dinosaur! Don't press him too hardwhen he is turning a sharp corner. Remember he has a long reach withhis old paleozoic tail. Luck!" with a laugh through her tears; a laughwith tremulous cheer in it and yet with the ring of a key in the lockof a gate.

  Unsteadily he bent over and taking her hands in his pressed hislips to them.

  "Yes, luck!" he repeated, and half staggering turned toward the defile.

  "Luck!" she called after him when he was out of sight. "Luck!" she calledto the silence of the pass.

  Three days with the trail and the Eternal Painter mocking him, when thesinging of Spanish verses that go click with the beat of horse-hoofs inthe sand sounded hollow as the refrain of vain memories, and from thesteps of a Pullman he had a final glimpse of Firio's mournful face, withits dark eyes shining in the light of the station lamp. Firio had in hishand a paper, a sort of will and testament given him at the last minute,which made him master in fee simple of the ranch where he had beenservant, with the provision that the Doge of Little Rivers might storehis overflow of books there forever.

  PART II

  HE FINDS HIMSELF