XXXVI
AROUND THE WATER-HOLE
Easy traveller had turned speedy traveller, on a schedule. Never had heand Firio ridden so fast as in pursuit of John Prather, who had eighthours' start of them on a two-days' journey. Jag Ear had to trot all thetime to keep up. Ounce by ounce he was drawing on his sinking fund of fatin a constitutional crisis.
"I keep his hoofs good. I keep his wind good. All right!" said Firio.
It was after midnight before the steady jingle of Jag Ear's orchestra hadany intermission. An hour for food and rest and the little party was offagain in the delicious cool of the night, toward a curtain pricked withstars which seemed to be drawn down over the edge of the world.
"What sort of horses had Prather and Nogales?" Jack asked. He must reachthe water-hole as soon as Prather; for it was not unlikely that Prathermight have fresh mounts waiting there to take him on to the nearestrailroad station in Mexico.
"Look good, but bad. Nogales no know horses!" Firio answered.
"And they rode in the heat of the day!" said Jack, confidently.
"_Si_! And we ride P.D. and Wrath of God!"
There were no sign-posts on this highway of desert space except themany-armed giant cacti, in their furrowed armor set with clusters ofneedles, like tawny auroras gleaming faintly; no trail on the hard earthunder foot, mottled with bunches of sagebrush and sprays of low-lyingcacti, all as still as the figures of an inlaid flooring in the violetsheen, with an occasional quick, irregular, shadowy movement when afrightened lizard or a gopher beat a precipitate retreat from theinvading thud of hoofs in this sanctuary of dust-dry life. And the courseof the hoofs was set midway between the looming masses of the mountainwalls of the valley.
Firio listened for songs from Senor Jack; he waited for stories fromSenor Jack; but none came. He, the untalkative one of the pair, theliving embodiment of a silent and happy companionship back and forth fromColorado to Chihuahua, liked to hear talk. Without it he was lonesome.If, by the criterion of a school examination, he never understood morethan half of what Jack said, yet, in the measure of spirit, he understoodeverything.
Now Jack was going mile after mile with nothing except occasional urgingwords to P.D. His close-cut hair well brushed back from his foreheadrevealed the sweep of his brow, lengthening his profile and adding to theeffect of his leanness. The moonlight on his face, which had lost itstan, gave him an aspect of subdued and patient serenity in keeping withthe surroundings. You would have said that he could ride on foreverwithout tiring, and that he could go over a precipice now without evenseeing any danger sign. He had never been like this in all Firio'smemory. The silence became unsupportable for once to Indian taciturnity.If Jack would not talk Firio would. Yes, he would ask a question, just tohear the sound of a voice.
"We go to fight?"
"No, Firio."
"Not to fight Prather?"
"No."
"To fight Leddy?"
"I hope not."
"Why we go? Why so--why so--" he had not the language to express thestrange, brooding inquiry of his mind.
"I go to save Little Rivers."
"_Si_!" said Firio, but as if this did not answer his question.
"I go to get the end of a story, Firio--my story!" continued Jack. "Ihave travelled long for the story and now I shall have it all fromJohn Prather."
"_Si, si_!" said Firio, as if all the knowledge in the world had flashedinto his head quicker than the hand of legerdemain could run the leavesof a pack of cards through its fingers. "And then?"
At last Firio had won a smile from the untanned face which could not bethe same to him until it was tanned.
"Then I shall plant seeds and keep the ground around them soft andthe weeds out of it; and I shall wear my heart on my sleeve and lay asiege--a siege in the open, without parallels or mines! A siege inthe open!"
Firio did not understand much about parallels or mines or, for thatmatter, about sieges; but he could see the smile fading from Jack's lipsand could comprehend that the future of which Jack was speaking was veryfar from another prospect, which was immediate and vivid in his mind.
"But you must fight Leddy! _Si, si_! You must fight Leddy first!"
"Then I must, I suppose," said Jack, absently. "All things in their turnand time."
"_Si_!" answered Firio. All things in their turn and time! This deserttruth was bred in him through his ancestry, no less than in the EternalPainter himself.
Again the silence of the morning darkness, with all the stars twinklingmore faintly and some slipping from their places in the curtain into thedeeper recesses of the broad band of night on the surface of the rollingball. The plodding hoofs kept up their regular beat of the march of theirlittle world of action in the presence of the Infinite; plodding,plodding on into the dawn which sent the last of the stars in flight,while the curtain melted away before blue distances swimming with light.Still bareheaded, Jack looked into the face of the sun which heaved abovean irregular roof of rocks. It blazed into the range on the other side ofthe valley. It slaked its thirst with the slight fall of dew as a great,red tongue would lick up crumbs. Sun and sky, cactus and sagebrush, rockand dry earth and sand, that was all. Nowhere in that stretch of basinthat seemed without end was there a sign of any other horseman or ofhuman life.
But at length, as they rode, their eyes saw what only eyes used to desertreaches could see, that the speck in the distance was not a cactus oreven two or three cacti in line, but something alive and moving.Perceptibly they were gaining on it, while it developed into two ridersand a pack animal in single file. Now Jack and Firio were coming into aregion of more stunted vegetation, and soon the two figures emerged intoa stretch of gray carpet on which they were as clearly silhouetted as awhite sail on a green sea.
"Very thick sand there--five or six miles of it. It make this thelong way," said Firio. "They call it the apron of hell to fools whoride at noon."
"And beyond that how many miles to the water-hole?"
"Five or six."
But Firio knew a way around where the going was good. It made adifference of two or three miles in distance against them, but two orthree times that in their favor in time and the strength taken out oftheir ponies.
"How long will Prather be in getting through the sand?" Jack asked.
Firio squinted at the objects of their pursuit for a while, as if hewanted to be exact.
"Almost as many hours as miles," he said.
Near the zenith now, the sun was a bulging furnace eye, piercing throughshirts into the flesh and sucking the very moisture of the veins. Asingle catspaw was all that the Eternal Painter had to offer over thatbasin shut in between the long, jagged teeth of the ranges biting intothe steel-blue of the sky. The savage, merciless hours of the desert dayapproached; the hours of reckoning for unknowing and unpreparedtravellers.
Jag Ear's bells had a faint plaintiveness at intervals and again theirjingling was rapid and hysterical, as he tried to make up the distancelost through a lapse in effort. He had ceased altogether to wiggle thesliver of ear--the baton with which he conducted his orchestra--becausethis was clearly a waste of energy. P.D.'s steps still retained theirdogged persistence, but their regular beat was slower, like that of aclock that needs winding. His head hung low. Wrath of God was no more andno less melancholy than when he was rusticating in Jack's yard. It seemedas if his sad visage, so reliably and grandly sad, might still bemarching on toward the indeterminate line of the horizon when his legswere worn off his body.
"Firio, you brown son of the sun," said Jack, with a sudden display ofhis old-time trail imagery, "you prolix, garrulous Firio, you knew! Youhad the great equine trio ready, and look at the miles they have donesince sunset to prove it! You, P.D., favorite trooper of our householdcavalry! You, Wrath of God, don't be afraid to make an inward smile, foryour face will never tell on you! You, Jag Ear, beat a tattoo with thefragment of the gothic glory of burrohood, for we rest, to go on all thefaster when the heat of the day is past!"
"Have a nap, Firio," said Jack. "I will wake you when it is timeto start."
"And you--you no sleep?" asked Firio.
"I could not sleep to-day," Jack answered. "I don't feel as if I couldsleep until I've seen Prather and heard his story--my story--Firio!" Andhe lay with eyes half closed, staring at the steel blue overhead.
It was well after midday when they mounted for the remainder of thejourney. The Eternal Painter was shaking out the silvery cloud-mist ofhis beard across a background that had a softer, kindlier, deeper blue.The shadows of the ponies and their riders and Jag Ear and his pack nolonger lay under their bellies heavily, but were stretched out to oneside by the angle of the sun, in cheerful, jogging fraternity. Pratherand Nogales had again become only a speck.
"Do you think that they are out of the sand?" asked Jack.
"Very near," Firio answered.
"Their ponies had a whole night's rest--we must not forget that," saidJack; "and they must be in a hurry, for certainly Nogales had senseenough to rest over noon."
"_Quien sabe_!" answered Firio. "But we catch them--_si, si_!"
Leading the way, Firio turned toward the eastern range until he came to anarrow tongue of shale almost as hard to the hoofs as asphalt, that ranlike a shoal across that sea of sand. Rest had given the great equinetrio renewed life. P.D., reduced in rank to second place, could not thinkof allowing more than a foot between his muzzle and the tail of Wrath ofGod, who was bound to make up the time he had lost in pursuit of thehorizon. Another hypothesis of Jack's as to the cause of Wrath of God'smelancholy was that solemn Covenanter's inability to get any nearer tothe edge of the earth. Once he could poke his nose through the bluecurtain and see what was on the other side, the satisfaction of hiseternal curiosity might have made him a rollicking comedian. As for JagEar, his baton was once more conducting his orchestra in spirited tempo.He, who was nearest of all three in heart to Firio, might well have beensaying to himself: "I knew! I knew we were not going through the sand!Firio and I knew!"
So rapidly were they gaining that, when past the sand and they turnedback westward, it was only a question of half an hour or so to come upwith Prather and Nogales. Nogales had been riding ahead; but now Prather,after gazing over his shoulder for some time at his pursuers, took thelead. He was urging his horse as if he would avoid being overtaken.Evidently Nogales did not share that desire, for he let Prather go onalone. But Prather's horse was too tired after its effort in the sand andhe halted and waited until Nogales, at a slow walk, closed up the gapbetween them, when they proceeded at their old, weary gait.
As Jack and Firio came within hailing distance, both Prather and Nogalesglanced at them sharply; but no word was spoken on either side. Theabsence of any call between these isolated voyagers of the desert sea wasstrangely unlike the average desert meeting. Prather and Nogales did notlook back again, not even when Jack and Firio were very near. A neigh byP.D., a break into a trot by him and Wrath of God, and Firio was sayingto Nogales:
"You went right through the sand!"
"_Si_!" answered Pedro, with a grin.
Still Prather did not so much as turn his head to get a glimpse of Jack,nor did he offer any sign of knowledge of Jack's presence when Jackreined alongside him so close that their stirrup leathers were brushing.Prather was gazing at the desert exactly in front of him, the reinshanging loose, almost out of hand. His horse was about spent, if not onthe point of foundering. Jack was so near the mole on the cheek of thepeculiar paleness that never tans that by half extending his arm he mighthave touched it. After all, it was only a raised patch of blue, a blemishremovable by the slightest surgical operation which its owner must havepreferred to retain.
Firio and Nogales, also riding side by side, were also silent. There wasno sound except Jag Ear's bells, now sunk to a faint tinkle in keepingwith the slow progress of Prather's beaten horse. Looking at Prather'shands, Jack was thinking of another pair of hands amazingly like them. Inthe uncanniness of its proximity he was imagining how the profile wouldlook without the birthmark, and he found himself grateful for thesilence, which spoke so powerfully to him, in the time that it providedfor bringing his faculties under control.
"How do you do?" he said at last, pleasantly.
Probably the silence had been equally welcome to Prather in charting hisown course in the now unavoidable interview. He looked around slowly, andhe was smiling with a trace of the satire that Jack had seen in theelevator, but smiling watchfully in a way that covers the apprehension ofa keen glance. And he saw features that were calm and eyes that werestill as the sky.
"How do you do?" he answered; and paused as one who is about to slip apoint of steel home into a scabbard. "How do you do, brother?" headded, as if uttering a shibboleth that could protect him from anyphysical violence.
"Brother! Brother! Yes!" repeated Jack, with dry lips.
This shaping of conviction into fact so nakedly, so coolly, made all thedesert and the sky swim before him in kaleidoscopic patches of blue andgray, shot with zigzag flashes. He half reeled in the saddle; his handsgripped the pommel to hold himself in place. It was as if a long strainof nervous tension had come to an end with a crack. Prather's smile tooka turn of deeper satisfaction. It was like John Wingfield, Sr.'s afterJack had left the library.
"This is the first time we have ever met to speak," said Prather, easily.
"Yes!" assented Jack, the gray settling back into desert and the blueinto sky and the zigzag flashes becoming only the brilliance of lateafternoon sunshine.
"Certainly it is time that we got acquainted, brother," said Prather.
"It is!" agreed Jack. "It is time that I knew your story!"
"Which you have hardly heard from your--I mean, our father!" The pausebetween the "your" and the "our" was made with an appreciativesignificance. "Well, you see, I was the brother who had the mole onhis cheek!"
"Yes--pitifully yes!" said Jack, with a kind of horror at the expressionof this face in his father's likeness, no less than at the words.
"Why, no! I've often thought of _you_ rather pitifully!" said Prather.
"You well might!" Jack answered, feelingly. "We may well share a commonpity for each other."
There was no sign that John Prather subscribed to the sentiment except ina certain quizzical turn of his lips, as he looked away.
"Yes, the story has been kept from me. I have come for it!" said Jack.
"That is raking out the skeletons. But why not rake out our skeletonstogether, you and I?" said Prather.
It was clear that he enjoyed the prospect as an opportunity forretributive enlightenment.
"To begin with, I have the rights of primogeniture in my favor," he said."I was born a day before you were, in the same city of New York. Mymother's name was not down in the telephone list as Mrs. Wingfield,however--I look at it all philosophically, you understand--and it wasjust that which made the difference between you and me, outside of thedifference of our natures. But I am proud of my birth on both sides, inmy own way. My mother was won without marriage and she was true tofather. A woman of real ability, my mother! She was well suited to beJohn Wingfield's wife; better, I think, in the practical world ofmaterialism than your mother. By a peculiar coincidence, unknown tofather, my mother called in Dr. Bennington. So you and I have a furtherbond, in that the same doctor brought us into the world."
"And my mother must have known this!" Jack exclaimed, in racking horror.
At last the cause of her exile was clear in all its grisly monstrousness;the source of the pain in her eyes in the portrait had been traced home.Again he saw her white and trembling when she ret
urned to the house inVersailles to find a visitor there; and now he realized the fulness ofher relief when the frail boy said that he did not like his father. Hertravels had spoken the restlessness of flight in search of oblivion tothe very fact of his paternity. The "I give! I give!" of the portrait wasthe giving of the infinity of her fine, sensitive being to him to makehim all hers. His feeling which had held him on the desert when he shouldhave gone home, that feeling of literal revulsion toward his inheritance,was a thing born in him which had grown under her caresses and hertraining. She had been living solely for him to that last moment when thebook dropped out of her hand; and the incarnation of that which hadkilled her was riding beside him now in the flesh. He felt a weaving ofhis muscles, a tightening of his nerves, as if waiting on the spark ofwill, and all the strength that he had built in the name of the store wasmadly tempted. But no! John Prather was not to blame, any more thanhimself. He would listen to John Prather, as justice listens to evidence,and endure his stare to the end.
"Yes, your mother knew," continued Prather. "My mother made a point ofhaving her know. That was part of my mother's own bitterness. That washer teaching to me from the first. She had no illusions. She knew theadvantages and the disadvantages of her position. She was and is one ofthe few persons in the world of whom my father is a little afraid."
"Then she still lives?" asked Jack sharply.
"Yes, she is in California," Prather returned. "She often referred to themole on my cheek as the symbol of my handicap in the world of convention.'But for the mole, Jack, you would have the store,' she often said. Itdelighted her that I had my father's face. As I grew older theresemblance became more marked. I could see that I pleased my father withmy practical ideas of life, which I developed when quite young. He saw toit that my mother and I lived well and that I went to a good school. Frommy books I drew the same lesson as from my peculiar inheritance; thelesson that my mother was always inculcating. 'A bank account,' she wouldrepeat, 'will erase even a mole patch on the cheek. It is the supremepower that will carry you anywhere, Jack. You must make money!'
"When father came to see her he would talk with a candor with which I amsure he never talked to your mother. He would tell of his successes,revealing the strategy and system by which they were won, finding herboth understanding and sympathetic. I became a little blade thatdelighted to get sharp against his big blade by asking him questions. Hedid not want me about the store, and this was one of the things in whichmy mother humored him. She knew just when to humor and just when tothreaten the play of the strong card which she always held.
"All the while her ambition was laying its plans. It was that I shouldhave the Wingfield store one day, myself. Out of school hours I wouldrange the other department stores. You see, I had not only inherited myfather's face more strikingly than you had, but also his talents. Ispent the summer vacations of my fourteenth and fifteenth years in astore. I won the attention of my superiors and promise of promotion. Iforesaw the day when I should so prove my ability that father would takeme into his own store, and then, gradually, I would make my place,secure, while you were idling about Europe. And in those days you werefrail and I was vigorous.
"There was no mistaking that father's sense of convention was the onething that stood between him and my desire. He feared the world's opinionif the truth became known, and deep down in heart he could never get overthe pride of having married into your mother's family. You had very goodblood on the maternal side, as they say, while my mother had begun in thecloak department and was self-made, like father. Again, I was so trulyhis son in every instinct that he may have been a little jealous of me.Father does not like to think that any other man was ever quite as greatas he is. I confess that is the way I feel, too. That is what life is,after all--it is yourself. Yes, I saw the store as mine--surely mine,with time!"
Prather's reins lay across the pommel of the saddle drawn taut by thedrooping head of his horse, which was barely dragging one foot afteranother. He gave Jack a glance of flashing resentment and then, in hisfirst impulse of real emotion, made a fist of one hand and drove itangrily into the palm of the other before continuing.
"Then father went to Europe to bring you home. He had decided for theson of convention, the son of blood! Though self-made, he was for familyas against talent. Besides, it was a victory for him. At last you werehis. After your return there was a scene between mother and him, a cool,bitter argument. He defied her to play her last card. He said that youknew the truth and that she could at best only make a row. And he wantedus out of New York; the place for me was a new country. He would make usa handsome allowance. So my mother agreed to his terms and we went to thePacific coast. There I was to enter one of the colleges. My mother wantedme to have a college education, you see. The last meeting between fatherand me was very interesting, blade playing on blade. He really hated tolet me go, for by this time he knew how hopeless you were. He embraced meand said that I would get on, anyway. I told him that the only troublewas that while I was the real son, I had a mole on my cheek.
"The West was best. There we could claim the favor of convention, Mrs.Prather and her son. I matriculated at Stanford, but I saw nothing in itfor me. It was all dream stuff. Greek and Latin don't help in building afortune. They handicap you with the loss of time it takes to learn them,at least; and I meant to be worth a million before I was thirty. Now Iknow that I shall be worth two or three or four millions at thirty, ifall goes as I plan. So I cut college and broke for Goldfield. I ran astore and was a secret partner in a saloon that paid better than thestore. I was in the game morning, noon, and night; it beat marching toclass to recite Horace and fiddle with the binomial theorem, as it mustfor every man who counts for something in the world."
Throughout, Prather's tone, except for the one moment of anger, had beenthat of an even recital of facts by one who does not allow himself toconsider anything but facts in the judgment of his position. At times hegave Jack covert glances out of the tail of his eye and saw Jack's facewhite and drawn and his head lowered. Now Prather became the victim--sohe would have put it, no doubt--of another outburst of feeling.
"But it was not like having the store!" he said. "No, my heart was in thestore; and that morning when you saw me looking down from the gallery Iwas permitting myself to dream. I was thinking of what had come to you,the fairy prince of good fortune, who had no talent for your inheritance,and of what I might have done with it. I was thinking how I could win mento work for me"--and there he was smiling with the father's charm--"andof the millions to come if I could begin to build on the foundation thatfather had laid. I saw branches in Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia--a greatchain of stores all co-ordinated under my directing hand--I the master!"
He rubbed the palms of his hands together as he had over thescintillation of the jewelry counters. Though Jack had not looked around,his ear recognized that crisp sound of exultant power.
"Yes," Jack murmured thoughtfully, as if inviting Prather to go on withanything further he might have to say.
"All mine--mine!" Prather concluded, in a sort of hypnosis with hisown picture.
Jack still stared at the earth, his profile limned in gold and the sideof his face toward Prather in shadow. They were nearing the clump ofcotton-woods around the water-hole at the base of a tongue of the rangewhich ran out into the desert, and Firio rode up to whisper in Spanish:
"Senor Jack, see there! Horsemen!"
Jack raised his head with a returning sense of his surroundings to seesome mounted men, eight in all he counted, riding along the range trail ahalf mile nearer the water-hole than themselves. Their horses had thegait of exhaustion after a long, hard ride.
"You know who it is?" Firio whispered.
"Yes," Jack answered. "They had the better trail and have outridden us.All right, Firio!"
"Leddy--Pete Leddy and some of his men!" exclaimed Prather, shading hiseyes to watch the file of figures now passing under the cotton-woods. Itseemed to relieve him. "I suppose he came on my account,"
he added,nodding to Nogales.
"Yes," said Nogales, with a grin. He always either grinned or his facehad a half savage impassiveness.
"I wonder if Leddy thought I was in danger," and Prather gave Jack aknowing glance of satisfaction. "We shall all camp together," headded, smiling.
Jack did not answer for a moment. He was intent on the cotton-woods.Leddy and his companions appeared on the other side, the figures ofriders and horses bathed in the sunset glow. Then they disappeared as ifthe earth had swallowed them up.
"They are going on! They are not going to stop!" said Pratherapprehensively.
"There is a basin beyond the water-hole and the seepage makes a littlepasture," Jack explained. "You will see them back in a moment."
"Oh, yes!" said Prather, with a thrill in his voice; and again thepalms of his hands were making that refrain of delight. "But I havetold my story," he resumed. "Now may I ask you a question? Why have youcome back?"
Jack looked around frankly and dispassionately.
"To save Little Rivers from you! I understand that you have secured thewater rights."
"Well, then, I have!" declared Prather, confidently, "and I mean to havethe rights for the whole valley!" and he struck his fist into his palm."You see," he went on, with another flash of satire, "it is not exactlyfair that you should have the store and Little Rivers, too. I had heardof the possibilities here from my friend Leddy, who was also atGoldfield. A useful man in his place! He got his sixth notch there. WhenI came and looked around and saw that here was the opportunity I wanted,I wired father that in any fair division of territory everything west ofthe Mississippi belonged to me"--he was showing some bravado in his senseof security now, when he saw that Leddy and his men were returningthrough the cotton-woods to the water-hole--"and I should like to haveyou out of my way. I told him you were the picture of health, even if youdidn't have anything in your head, and if you were ever going to learnthe business it was time that you began. But father is always careful.Naturally he wanted to check off my report with another's; for he didn'twant you back if you were ill. So he sent Dr. Bennington out to getprofessional confirmation of my statement."
"And you told Jasper Ewold that you wanted the rights only to turn themover to the water users' association and then bring in capital to build adam, with everybody sharing alike in the prosperity that was to come."
"Yes, and Jasper Ewold was so simple! Well, what I told him wasstrategy--strategy of which I think father would approve. When you have abig object in view the end must justify the means. Look at the situation!Two hundred thousand acres of land waiting on water to be the mostfertile in the world! Why, when I rode up the valley the first time andsaw what could be done, I was amazed to think that such an opportunityshould be lying around loose. Little Rivers was so out of the way thatother promoters had overlooked it, and everybody had sort of taken it forgranted that Jasper Ewold and his water users' association really hadlegal possession. It was my chance. I thought big. That dam should bemine. I had the money I had made in Goldfield, but it was not enough formy purpose.
"Where should I turn for outside capital that would not demand amajority interest in the project? I concluded that it was time fatherdid something for me in return for giving up the store. Besides thiscall of justice I had another influence with him. I was sure that whenhe told my mother that you knew the truth he was making a statement thatsuited his purpose. I was sure that you knew nothing of my story andthat father did not want you to know it. I was ready to tell if he didnot meet my demands.
"Well, you know how he can talk when he wants to gain a point. I fancythat I talked as well as father when I showed him how that dam would payfor itself in five years in tolls and twenty per cent on the capitalafter that; when I showed him how a population ten times that of hisstore would have to take their water from me; when I showed him all theside issues of profit from town sites and the increase of values of thebig holdings which Leddy's men would take up for me. You ought to haveseen his eyes glow. He could not withstand his pride in me. 'You have thegift, the one gift!' he said. I told him yes, it was in the blood; and Istruck while the iron was hot. I got an outright sum from him; and hecould not resist a chance to share all that profit when capital was to behad in New York for three or four per cent. He went in as silent partner,as I was in the saloon at Goldfield; as a partner with a minorityinterest."
John Prather paused to laugh to himself over his victory, while themovement of palm on palm was rapid and prolonged.
"Our arrangement amounted to the commercial division of territory for thefamily, which I had suggested," he went on with appreciative irony. "Youand he were to have the east side of the Mississippi and I was to havethe west, and you were never to know my story. Publicly, father and Iwere strangers and quits, and we came to this agreement in the room of adown-town hotel.
"The day before I started West I simply had to have a look through thestore--the store that I loved and that I had to lose. Yes, the store isfar more to my taste than this rough western life. Naturally, as myexistence was to be kept a secret from you, when you followed me to theelevator and tried to get acquainted I couldn't have it."
"But as the elevator descended you pointed to the mole," said Jack.
"Did I? I suppose that was an involuntary, instinctive pleasantry. Theprevious evening father and I had had a farewell visit together. We wentinto the country."
"The night after the scene in the drawing-room!" Jack thought.
"I knew that father was worried because he had to make an effort to showthat he was not. Usually he can cover his worries perfectly. He said thathe might have a fight in order to keep you and that he very much wantedyou to stay. But he did not succeed," concluded Prather, fist drivinginto palm. "You came on the express after me."
"Because, fortunately, you went to the house to have a look at theancestor!"
"Yes," said Prather. "But I did not see you."
"However, I saw you from the landing and overheard what passed betweenyou and father!"
"No matter!" cried Prather harshly. "I am prepared for you!" He lookedtoward the water-hole significantly. "And the concession is mine! The damwill be mine!"
"The dam could be built and all the valley might bloom without so muchpower passing into the hands of one man," said Jack.
P.D. scenting the pasturage and feeling the pangs of thirst was startingforward at a smarter pace; but Jack held him back to the snail's crawl ofPrather's pony.
"Who would do it? Jasper Ewold? Jim Galway?" Prather demanded. "Whatthese men need is a leader. They don't realize what I am doing for them.Do they think I want to put in ten years out here for nothing? For everydollar that they make for me they are going to make one for themselves.That's the rule of prosperity. I am not robbing them. I am taking only myfair share in return for creative business genius. The fellows in LittleRivers who sulk and don't get on will have only themselves to thank."
"But they lose their independence," Jack was arguing quietly, as if hewould thrash out the subject. "There are other things than money inthis world."
"There's nothing much money won't do!" said Prather.
"It will not give one self-respect or courage or moral fibre; it will notbring the gift of poetry, music, or painting; or turn a lie into truth;or bring back virtue to a woman who has been defiled; or make the courageto face death calmly."
"It will do all I want!" Prather answered. "Father not having been trueto his agreement by keeping you in New York, why should I keep hissecret? He breaks faith; I break faith. It seems to me as if there wereno escaping the penalty of my birth. I no sooner arrive than I find thewhole town knows of your return; and not only that, but a wire comes fromfather saying that we had better not meet until he comes."
"Until he comes! Yes, go on!"
"Well, as you say, you are here to save Little Rivers and that meant aninterview with me, and--well," again the palms in their crisp movement,"before I started out I told Pete Leddy that if you came after me Ishoul
d look to him for protection, and it seems he is on time."
"Yes," said Jack, without looking at Prather. All the while he had keptwatch on the water-hole, and he received Prather's announcement stoicallyas a confirmation of his suspicions.
"So, if you will take my advice, brother, the best thing for you to do isto ride back before we reach the water-hole, unless you prefer Leddy'scompany. This time he will fight you in his way."
"My horse is tired and there is neither water nor feed for him exceptthere." Jack stated this quietly and stubbornly, as he nodded toward thecotton-woods. Then he looked around to Prather. Suddenly Prather foundhimself looking at a face that seemed to have only the form of that faceby the side of which he had been riding. It was as if another man hadtaken Jack's place in the saddle. The ancestor was rising in Jack.Prather saw an electric spark in Jack's eyes, the spark of the highvoltage that made his muscles weave and a flutter come in his cheeks."No, I am not going back until I have recovered the rights that you havetaken from Little Rivers!" he said.
Prather in sudden confusion realized that he had let his feelings go toosoon. They were not yet at the water-hole, and he was within easy reachof that hand working on the reins in a way that promised an outburst.
"You think of physical violence against me--your own flesh and blood!" hesaid defensively.
He saw Jack shudder in reaction and knew that he was safe for the moment.When Jack looked away at the water-hole Prather's fingers slipped to hisown six-shooter and rested there, twitching nervously; and in the rearFirio was watching both him and Nogales shrewdly.
From any outward sign now, Jack might have been starting on anotherjourney with quiet eagerness; a journey that might end at a precipice afew yards ahead or at the other side of the world. Of this alone youcould be sure from the resoluteness of his features, that he was goingstraight on; while Firio, in the telepathy of desert companionship,understood that he was missing no developing detail within the narrowrange of vision in front of P.D.'s nose. Trusting all to Jack, Firio wason wires, ready for a spring in any direction.
They were coming to the edge of a depression of an old watercourse thatwound around past the cotton-woods to the ridge itself and included thebasin where Leddy and his followers had tethered their horses. But thispart of it was dry sand. The standing figures around the water-hole hadsunk down. Jack could see them as lumps in a row. A blade of flame fromthe setting sun fell on them, revealing the glint of rifle barrels.
"Firio! Quick--down! P.D., down!" Jack called, dismounting with a leap;and as though in answer to his warning came the singing of bullets abouttheir ears.
P.D. had been trained to sink on all fours at a word and he and Jacktogether dropped into the cover of the _arroyo_, below the desert line.When he looked around Firio was at his side, still holding the reins ofWrath of God. But Wrath of God's sturdy, plodding nature had littlefacility in learning tricks. A tiny stream of blood was flowing down hisforehead and he lay still. At last, all in loyal service, he had reachedthe horizon. His bony, homely, good old face seemed singularly peaceful,as if satisfied with the reward at his journey's end. Jag Ear wasstanding beside P.D. and Prather's burro next to him, both unharmed.Nogales's horse had also been killed, but its rider was safe. Prather wascrawling down the side of the _arroyo_ on his belly, digging his handsinto the dirt, his face white and contorted and his eyes shifting backand forth in ghastly incomprehension. His horse followed him and sankdown in final surrender to exhaustion.
By common impulse, Jack and Firio seized the rifles from Jag Ear's pack,while Nogales, a spectator, squatted beside Prather.
"What--what does it mean?" Prather gasped, spasmodically. "I--I--was itLeddy that fired on us?"
"Yes," said Jack over his shoulder, as he and Firio started up the bankof the _arroyo_ facing the water-hole. "No doubt of it."
"It was you they wanted--not me--not me! I--I--"
"I don't know. At all events, I do not mean they shall rush us!" Jackanswered, as he and Firio hugged the slope with their rifles resting ontop and only their heads showing above it.
"No! It couldn't be that they recognized me. They will let me by! Theyexpect me!"
"Yes, you belong on their side!" Jack called back.
"I will send out a flag of truce!" said Prather, brightening withthe thought. "You, Nogales, take my handkerchief and go and explainto Leddy!"
Nogales seemed agreeable to the suggestion. Indeed, he was veryexpeditious in starting. While Jack never took his eye off the sight ofhis barrel, Nogales walked across the gleaming interval between the twoparties waving Prather's handkerchief. Leddy rose on his knee watchfully,rifle in hand, while he spoke with Nogales. Then Nogales started backwith his head thrown up jubilantly, but stopped when he was withincalling distance and sang out, truculently:
"Leddy get you both! He get everything!"
He turned on his heel and soon was another lump around the water-hole.
"That makes nine, Firio!" said Jack.
He smiled in relief to be rid of Nogales; smiled in happy confidence, asif he were truly the ancestor's child.
"_Si_!" answered Firio, as if he had just as soon there were a regimentagainst them. He was happy beyond words. He patted his rifle barrel; hespread out his big red bandanna beside his elbow and on it nicelyarranged a couple of extra charges of cartridges.
Prather remained flat on the bottom of the _arroyo_, overwhelmed. It wassome time before he could speak.
"I--I don't understand! It isn't possible!" he said finally.
"Everything is possible with Leddy. It seems that there can be peacebetween him and me in this valley in only one way," Jack answered.
"But me! I suppose he found out that I--" Prather stopped withoutfinishing the sentence. "What am I to do?" he asked Jack in livid appeal.
"Why, it is three against nine, if you choose!" Jack answered. "You havea rifle, and it is for your life."
"My life!" Prather gasped, another wave of fear submerging him.
"Yes. We have no horses with which to make our escape and we should bewinged as soon as we exposed ourselves. Leddy means that we shall die ofthirst, or die fighting."
Through all this dialogue Jack had been speaking to the head that laybetween his eye and a target. As Prather reached up a trembling hand totake his rifle from the back of his burro one of the lumps around thewater-hole rose, possibly to change position. When it became thesilhouette of a kneeling man, Jack fired and the figure plunged forwardlike an automaton that had had its back broken.
"Eight!" whispered Firio.
"Duck!" Jack told him; for a response instantly came in a volley thatkicked up the dust around their heads.
But Jack's rifle lay in limp hands.
"Eight!" he repeated, dazedly. "And I shot to kill--to kill!"
His face blanched with horror at the thing that he had done. It seemed asif the strength had been struck out of him. He appeared ready to letdestiny overtake him rather than fire again. Then as in a flash, theancestor in him reappeared and in his features was written that veryprocess of fate which Dr. Bennington had said was in him. Again his handwas firm on the barrel and his eye riveted on the sight, as he drewhimself up until he lay even with the bank of the _arroyo_.
The volley from the cotton-woods had swept over Prather's head at theinstant that he had taken hold of his rifle. It dropped from his grasp.He burrowed in the sand under the pressure of that near and sinister rushof singing breaths.
"I can't! I can't!" he said helplessly.
He was leaden flesh, without the power to move. At his words Jack glancedback to see a dropped jaw and glassy, staring eyes.
"You are suffering!" exclaimed Jack. "Are you hit?"
"No!" Prather managed to say, and reached out for his rifle in clumsydesperation, as if he were feeling for it in the dark.
"Take your time!" said Jack encouragingly, as one would to a victim ofstage fright. "There isn't any danger for the moment, while advantage ofposition is with us--the sun over our
shoulders and in their faces."
The lumps around the water-hole grew smaller. Evidently, as a result ofthe lesson, they were creeping backward on their stomachs to a lessexposed position. Two had quite disappeared, or else the brilliant playof light had melted them into the golden carpet of reflected sunshine onwhich they rested. Directly, Jack saw two figures creeping over the rimof the pasturage basin.
"So, that's it!" he said to Firio.
Firio nodded his understanding of Leddy's plan to take them in flankunder cover of the _arroyo_.
"We shall have to respond in kind!" said Jack.
He left his hat where his head had been and began crawling along the sideof the _arroyo_, but paused to call to Prather, who, now that no bulletswere flying, was trying the mechanism of his rifle with a somewhatsteadier hand:
"Prather, if you could manage to get up there beside Firio and join himin pouring out a magazine full at the right moment, it would help! Ifnot, put your hat up there beside mine. You can do that without exposingyourself."
Jack's tone was that of one who urges a tired man to take a few moresteps, or an invalid without any appetite to try another sup of broth. Ithad no hint of irony.
"No matter," said Firio. "Leddy know he can't fight. Leddy know there isonly two of us!" His tone was without satire, but its sting was sharperthan satire; that of an Indian shrug over a negligible quantity. Itstarted Prather on all fours laboriously toward him.
"I am going to the turn in the _arroyo_ that commands the next turn,"Jack explained. "When I whistle you empty your magazines. Keep your headsdown and fire fast, no matter if not accurately, so as to disturb theiraim at me!"
"_Si_!" said Firio. "I know!" No one could deny that he was having a verygood time making war in the company of Senor Jack. "Yes, Mister Prather,"he added, when, after toiling painfully on his belly for the few feet hehad to go, Prather lay with his stark face near Firio's; a face strangelylike that of John Wingfield, Sr. when he saw Jasper Ewold from thedrawing-room doorway. "For your life, Mister Prather! _Si_! Up a littlemore! Chin high as mine, so! Eye on sight, so!"
Prather obeyed in an abyssmal sort of shame which, for the time being,conquered his fear, though not his palsy; for his rifle barrel trembledon its rest.
Meanwhile, Jack had crept to the bend in the _arroyo_. He was listening.It would not do to show his head as a warning of his presence. Faintly heheard men moving in the sand, moving slowly and cautiously. At the momenthe chose as the right one, with rifle cocked and finger on trigger, hegave his signal. Then he sprang to the top of the bank, fully exposed tothe marksmen at the water-hole. For no half measure would do. He musthave a full view of the bottom of the next bend. There he saw twocrawling figures. He fired twice and dropped down with three or fourstinging whispers in his ears and a second volley overhead as he wasunder cover. Again he sprang up over the bank in the temptation to seethe result of his aim. One of the would-be flankers lay prostrate andstill, face downward. The other was disappearing beyond the second bend.
"Seven, now!" he thought miserably, in comprehension of the wholebusiness as ridicule in human savagery. "They won't trouble us againimmediately. They will wait on darkness and thirst," he concluded; andcalled, as he turned back, to Firio: "It worked like a charm, O son ofthe sun! They could not fire at all straight with your bullets flyingabout their heads, disturbing their--" His speech ended at sight ofPrather, half rolling, half tumbling down the slope, his hands over hisface, while he uttered a prolonged moan.
"Bullet hit a rock under sand!" said Firio, as Jack hastened to assistPrather, who had come to a halt at the very bottom of the _arroyo_ andlay gasping on his side. Jack took hold of Prather's wrists to draw hishands away from the wound.
"My God! Out here, like a rat in a trap!" Prather groaned. "When I haveall life before me! In sight of millions and power--a rat in a trap outon this damnable desert, as if I were of no more account than a rancher!"
"Let me see!" said Jack; for Prather was holding his hands tight againsthis face, as if he feared that all the blood in his body would pour outif he removed them. "Let me see! Maybe it is not so bad!"
Prather let his hands drop and the right one which was over the cheekwith the mole was splashed red between the fingers. On the cheek was araw spot, from which ran a slight trickle. The mole had gone. A splinterof rock, or perhaps a bullet, with its jacket split, ricochetingsidewise, had torn it clean from the flesh.
"Not at all dangerous!" said Jack.
"No?" exclaimed Prather, in utter relief.
"It will heal in a fortnight!"
A small medicine case was among the regular supplies that were alwayspacked on that omnibus of a burro, Jag Ear. While Jack was bandaging thewound, Firio, who kept watch, had no news to report.
"Nothing matters! They will get us, anyway!" Prather moaned. The shock ofbeing hit had quite finished any pretence at concealing his mortal fearof the outcome.
"Oh, I wouldn't say that! We already have them down to seven!" said Jackencouragingly, as he made a pillow of a blanket and bade Prather resthis head on it.
But he knew well that they were a seven who had learned wisdom from thefate of their comrades. From Nogales, Leddy must have heard of the lossof two horses. At best, but one of the beleaguered three had any means ofescape. Leddy could well afford to curb his impatience as he campedcomfortably by the water-hole, while his own horses grazed.
The sun was still above the western ridge in the effulgence of its adieufor the day. Jack was on his knee, with the broad, level glare full onhim, looking at Prather, who was in the shadow; and his reflections weremixed with that pity which one feels toward another who is lame or blindor suffers for the want of any sense or faculty that is born to theaverage human being. For a man of true courage rarely sees a coward asanything but a man ailing; he is grateful for nature's kindness tohimself. And the spark of John Wingfield, Knight, skipping generationsbefore it settled on a descendant, had not chosen John Prather for itsfavor. The ancestor was all Jack's.
Prather, in his agony of mind, had moments of wondering envy as hewatched Jack's changing expression. He could see that Jack, in entiredetachment from his problem of fighting Leddy, was thinking soberly inthe silence of the desert, unconscious in his absorption of the presenceof any other human being. Suddenly his eyes opened wide in theluminousness of a happy discovery; his lips turned a smile of supremesatisfaction, and his face seemed to be giving back the light of the sun.
"It's all right!" he said. "Yes, everything is going to be all right!"
"How?" asked Prather wistfully, feeling the infection of the confidentring of Jack's tone.
"There is one horse left," said Jack. "He is in better condition thanLeddy imagines. When darkness comes you can get away with him and bymorning he will have brought you to water at Las Cascadas, halfway on therange trail. Then you will be quite safe."
"Yes! Yes!" Prather half rose, his breath coming fast, his eyes ravenous.
"And in return you will give Little Rivers back its water rights! Is thata bargain?" Jack asked.
"Give up my concession and all it means to me! Give it up absolutely--itsmillions!" objected Prather, in an uncontrollable impulse of greed.
"King Richard III, you remember," Jack declared, with a trace of his oldhumor breaking out over the new aspect of the situation, "said he wouldgive his kingdom for a horse. He could not get the horse and he lost bothhis kingdom and his life. If he had been able to make the trade he mighthave saved his life and perhaps--who knows?--have won another kingdom."
"I will save my life!" Prather concluded; but under his breath he addedbitterly: "And you get both the store and Little Rivers!" in theprehensile instinct which gains one thing only to covet another.
"You have the papers for the concession with you?" Jack asked.
"I--I--"
"Yes!" interposed Jack firmly.
"Yes!" Prather admitted.
"And you have pencil and paper to make some sort of transfer that will bethe first
legal step in undoing what you have done?"
"Yes."
While Prather was occupied with this, Jack found pencil and paper on hisown account and by the light of the sun's last rays and in the happinessof one who has brought a story to a good end, he wrote to his father:
"John Prather will tell you how he and I met out on the desert before youcame and of the long talk we had.
"You wanted a son who would go on building on the great foundation youhad laid. You have one. He said that you wanted to give him the store.The reason why you might not give it to him no longer exists. The mole isgone. Of course there will be a scar where the mole was. I, too, shallhave to carry a scar. But the means is in your power to go far towarderasing his, for his mother, Mrs. Prather, is still living.
"So everything is clear. Everything is coming out right. John Prather andI change places, as nature intended that we should. You need have noapprehensions on my account. Though I had not a cent in the world I couldmake my living out here--a very sweet thought, this, to me, with itspromise of something real and practical and worth while, at which I canmake good. I know that you are going to keep the bargain that Prather andI have made; and think of me as over the pass and very happy as I writethis, in the confidence that at last all accounts have been balanced andwe can both turn to a fresh page in the ledger. JACK."
When Jack, after he had received the transfer, gave the letter to Pratherto read, Prather was transfixed with incredulity.
"You mean this?" he gasped blankly, as his surprise became articulate.
"Yes. You have quite the better of King Richard--you gain both thekingdom and the horse."
"The store, yes, the store--mine! Mine--the store!" said Prather, in aslow, passionate monotone, his fingers trembling with the very triumph ofpossession as he thrust the letter into his pocket. "The store, yes, thestore!" he repeated, amazement mixed with exultation. "But--" his keen,practical mind was recovering its balance; he was on guard again. Betweenhim and the realization of his inheritance lay the shadow of the fear ofthe miles in the night. "But--there is no trick?" he hazarded insuspicion.
"No!"
Jack spoke in such a way that it removed the last doubt for Prather, whokneaded his palms together in a kind of frenzy, oblivious of all exceptthe moneyed prospect of the kingdom craved that had become a kingdom won.
"How long before I start?" he asked.
"As soon as the first darkness settles and before the moon rises."
"I shall need some food," Prather went on ingratiatingly. "And they saywounds bring on fever. Have you any water to drink on the way?"
"We will fix you up the best we can. I will divide what water remainsbetween you and P.D. He shall have his share now and you can drinkyours later."
The sun had set. The afterglow was fading, and in a few minutes, when thelight was quite out of the heavens, Jack announced that it was time forPrather to start.
"How shall I know the direction?" Prather asked.
"Trust P.D. He will find it," said Jack. He held the stirrup for Pratherto mount with the relief of freeing himself at last from the clingingtouch of the phantoms. "You are perfectly safe. In two days you will bemounting the steps of a Pullman on your way to New York."
"And you? What--what are you going to do?" Prather inquired hectically,with a momentary qualm of shame.
"Why, if Firio and I are to have water to make coffee for breakfast wemust take the water-hole!" Jack answered, as if this were a thing ofminor importance beside seeing Prather safely on his way. "Be sure not tooverwater P.D. after the night's ride, and don't overdo him on the finalstretch, and turn him over to Galway when you arrive. Home, P.D.! Home!"he concluded, striking that good soldier with the flat of his hand on thebuttocks. And P.D. trotted away into the night.
Jack listened to the hoof-beats on the soft earth dying away and thencrept up beside Firio on the bank and gazed into the black wall in thedirection of the cotton-woods. A slight glow in the basin, which must beLeddy's camp-fire, was the only sign of life in the neighborhood. Thesilence was profound. He had not spoken a word to Firio. With oneproblem forever solved, he was absorbed in another.
"Leddy drinks, eats, waits!" whispered Firio. "If we try to go theyhunt us down!"
"Yes," said Jack.
"And we not go, eh? We stay? We fight?"
"For water, Firio, yes! Two against seven!"
"_Si_!" Firio had no illusions about the situation. "_Si_!" he repeatedstoically.
"And, Firio--" Jack's hand slipped with a quick, gripping caress ontoFirio's shoulder. An inspiration had come to the mind of action, just asa line comes to a poet in a flash; as one must have come to the ancestormany times after he had gone into a tight place trusting to his wits andhis blade to bring him out. "And, Firio, we are going to change our base,as the army men say--and change it before the moon rises. Jag Ear, weshall have to leave you behind," he added, when they had dropped back tothe burro's side. "Just make yourself comfortable. Leddy surely wouldn'tthink of killing so valuable a member of the non-combatant class. We willcome for you, by and by. It will be all right!"
He gave the sliver of ear an affectionate corkscrew twist before he andFirio, taking all their ammunition, crawled along the bottom of the_arroyo_ and up the ridge where they settled down comfortably behind aledge commanding the water-hole at easy range.
"It's lucky we learned to shoot in the moonlight!" Jack whispered.
"_Si"!_ Firio answered, in perfect understanding.
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