Burning Daylight

by Jack London

  CHAPTER XII

  Throughout the week Daylight found himself almost as much interested inBob as in Dede; and, not being in the thick of any big deals, he wasprobably more interested in both of them than in the business game.Bob's trick of whirling was of especial moment to him. How to overcomeit,--that was the thing. Suppose he did meet with Dede out in thehills; and suppose, by some lucky stroke of fate, he should manage tobe riding alongside of her; then that whirl of Bob's would be mostdisconcerting and embarrassing. He was not particularly anxious forher to see him thrown forward on Bob's neck. On the other hand,suddenly to leave her and go dashing down the back-track, plying quirtand spurs, wouldn't do, either.

  What was wanted was a method wherewith to prevent that lightning whirl.He must stop the animal before it got around. The reins would not dothis. Neither would the spurs. Remained the quirt.

  But how to accomplish it? Absent-minded moments were many that week,when, sitting in his office chair, in fancy he was astride thewonderful chestnut sorrel and trying to prevent an anticipated whirl.One such moment, toward the end of the week, occurred in the middle ofa conference with Hegan. Hegan, elaborating a new and dazzling legalvision, became aware that Daylight was not listening. His eyes hadgone lack-lustre, and he, too, was seeing with inner vision.

  "Got it" he cried suddenly. "Hegan, congratulate me. It's as simpleas rolling off a log. All I've got to do is hit him on the nose, andhit him hard."

  Then he explained to the startled Hegan, and became a good listeneragain, though he could not refrain now and again from making audiblechuckles of satisfaction and delight. That was the scheme. Bob alwayswhirled to the right. Very well. He would double the quirt in hishand and, the instant of the whirl, that doubled quirt would rap Bob onthe nose. The horse didn't live, after it had once learned the lesson,that would whirl in the face of the doubled quirt.

  More keenly than ever, during that week in the office did Daylightrealize that he had no social, nor even human contacts with Dede. Thesituation was such that he could not ask her the simple questionwhether or not she was going riding next Sunday. It was a hardship of anew sort, this being the employer of a pretty girl. He looked at heroften, when the routine work of the day was going on, the question hecould not ask her tickling at the founts of speech--Was she goingriding next Sunday? And as he looked, he wondered how old she was, andwhat love passages she had had, must have had, with those collegewhippersnappers with whom, according to Morrison, she herded anddanced. His mind was very full of her, those six days between theSundays, and one thing he came to know thoroughly well; he wanted her.And so much did he want her that his old timidity of the apron-stringwas put to rout. He, who had run away from women most of his life, hadnow grown so courageous as to pursue. Some Sunday, sooner or later, hewould meet her outside the office, somewhere in the hills, and then, ifthey did not get acquainted, it would be because she did not care toget acquainted.

  Thus he found another card in the hand the mad god had dealt him.

  How important that card was to become he did not dream, yet he decidedthat it was a pretty good card. In turn, he doubted. Maybe it was atrick of Luck to bring calamity and disaster upon him. Suppose Dedewouldn't have him, and suppose he went on loving her more and more,harder and harder? All his old generalized terrors of love revived.He remembered the disastrous love affairs of men and women he had knownin the past. There was Bertha Doolittle, old Doolittle's daughter, whohad been madly in love with Dartworthy, the rich Bonanza fractionowner; and Dartworthy, in turn, not loving Bertha at all, but madlyloving Colonel Walthstone's wife and eloping down the Yukon with her;and Colonel Walthstone himself, madly loving his own wife and lightingout in pursuit of the fleeing couple. And what had been the outcome?Certainly Bertha's love had been unfortunate and tragic, and so had thelove of the other three. Down below Minook, Colonel Walthstone andDartworthy had fought it out. Dartworthy had been killed. A bulletthrough the Colonel's lungs had so weakened him that he died ofpneumonia the following spring. And the Colonel's wife had no one leftalive on earth to love.

  And then there was Freda, drowning herself in the running mush-icebecause of some man on the other side of the world, and hating him,Daylight, because he had happened along and pulled her out of themush-ice and back to life. And the Virgin.... The old memoriesfrightened him. If this love-germ gripped him good and hard, and ifDede wouldn't have him, it might be almost as bad as being gouged outof all he had by Dowsett, Letton, and Guggenhammer. Had his nascentdesire for Dede been less, he might well have been frightened out ofall thought of her. As it was, he found consolation in the thoughtthat some love affairs did come out right. And for all he knew, maybeLuck had stacked the cards for him to win. Some men were born lucky,lived lucky all their days, and died lucky. Perhaps, too, he was sucha man, a born luck-pup who could not lose.

  Sunday came, and Bob, out in the Piedmont hills, behaved like an angel.His goodness, at times, was of the spirited prancing order, butotherwise he was a lamb. Daylight, with doubled quirt ready in hisright hand, ached for a whirl, just one whirl, which Bob, with anexcellence of conduct that was tantalizing, refused to perform. But noDede did Daylight encounter. He vainly circled about among the hillroads and in the afternoon took the steep grade over the divide of thesecond range and dropped into Maraga Valley. Just after passing thefoot of the descent, he heard the hoof beats of a cantering horse. Itwas from ahead and coming toward him. What if it were Dede? He turnedBob around and started to return at a walk. If it were Dede, he wasborn to luck, he decided; for the meeting couldn't have occurred underbetter circumstances. Here they were, both going in the samedirection, and the canter would bring her up to him just where thestiff grade would compel a walk. There would be nothing else for herto do than ride with him to the top of the divide; and, once there, theequally stiff descent on the other side would compel more walking.

  The canter came nearer, but he faced straight ahead until he heard thehorse behind check to a walk. Then he glanced over his shoulder. Itwas Dede. The recognition was quick, and, with her, accompanied bysurprise. What more natural thing than that, partly turning his horse,he should wait till she caught up with him; and that, when abreast theyshould continue abreast on up the grade? He could have sighed withrelief. The thing was accomplished, and so easily. Greetings had beenexchanged; here they were side by side and going in the same directionwith miles and miles ahead of them.

  He noted that her eye was first for the horse and next for him.

  "Oh, what a beauty" she had cried at sight of Bob. From the shininglight in her eyes, and the face filled with delight, he would scarcelyhave believed that it belonged to a young woman he had known in theoffice, the young woman with the controlled, subdued office face.

  "I didn't know you rode," was one of her first remarks. "I imaginedyou were wedded to get-there-quick machines."

  "I've just taken it up lately," was his answer. "Beginning to getstout; you know, and had to take it off somehow."

  She gave a quick sidewise glance that embraced him from head to heel,including seat and saddle, and said:--

  "But you've ridden before."

  She certainly had an eye for horses and things connected with horseswas his thought, as he replied:--

  "Not for many years. But I used to think I was a regular rip-snorterwhen I was a youngster up in Eastern Oregon, sneaking away from camp toride with the cattle and break cayuses and that sort of thing."

  Thus, and to his great relief, were they launched on a topic of mutualinterest. He told her about Bob's tricks, and of the whirl and hisscheme to overcome it; and she agreed that horses had to be handledwith a certain rational severity, no matter how much one loved them.There was her Mab, which she had for eight years and which she had hadbreak of stall-kicking. The process had been painful for Mab, but ithad cured her.

  "You've ridden a lot," Daylight said.

  "I really can't remember the first time I was on a horse,"
she toldhim. "I was born on a ranch, you know, and they couldn't keep me awayfrom the horses. I must have been born with the love for them. I hadmy first pony, all my own, when I was six. When I was eight I knew whatit was to be all day in the saddle along with Daddy. By the time I waseleven he was taking me on my first deer hunts. I'd be lost without ahorse. I hate indoors, and without Mab here I suppose I'd have beensick and dead long ago."

  "You like the country?" he queried, at the same moment catching hisfirst glimpse of a light in her eyes other than gray. "As much as Idetest the city," she answered. "But a woman can't earn a living inthe country. So I make the best of it--along with Mab."

  And thereat she told him more of her ranch life in the days before herfather died. And Daylight was hugely pleased with himself. They weregetting acquainted. The conversation had not lagged in the full halfhour they had been together.

  "We come pretty close from the same part of the country," he said. "Iwas raised in Eastern Oregon, and that's none so far from Siskiyou."

  The next moment he could have bitten out his tongue for her quickquestion was:--

  "How did you know I came from Siskiyou? I'm sure I never mentioned it."

  "I don't know," he floundered temporarily. "I heard somewhere that youwere from thereabouts."

  Wolf, sliding up at that moment, sleek-footed and like a shadow, causedher horse to shy and passed the awkwardness off, for they talkedAlaskan dogs until the conversation drifted back to horses. And horsesit was, all up the grade and down the other side.

  When she talked, he listened and followed her, and yet all the while hewas following his own thoughts and impressions as well. It was a nervything for her to do, this riding astride, and he didn't know, afterall, whether he liked it or not. His ideas of women were prone to beold-fashioned; they were the ones he had imbibed in the early-day,frontier life of his youth, when no woman was seen on anything but aside-saddle. He had grown up to the tacit fiction that women onhorseback were not bipeds. It came to him with a shock, this sight ofher so manlike in her saddle. But he had to confess that the sightlooked good to him just then.

  Two other immediate things about her struck him. First, there were thegolden spots in her eyes. Queer that he had never noticed them before.Perhaps the light in the office had not been right, and perhaps theycame and went. No; they were glows of color--a sort of diffused,golden light. Nor was it golden, either, but it was nearer that thanany color he knew. It certainly was not any shade of yellow. Alover's thoughts are ever colored, and it is to be doubted if any oneelse in the world would have called Dede's eyes golden. But Daylight'smood verged on the tender and melting, and he preferred to think ofthem as golden, and therefore they were golden.

  And then she was so natural. He had been prepared to find her a mostdifficult young woman to get acquainted with. Yet here it was provingso simple. There was nothing highfalutin about her company manners--itwas by this homely phrase that he differentiated this Dede on horsebackfrom the Dede with the office manners whom he had always known. Andyet, while he was delighted with the smoothness with which everythingwas going, and with the fact that they had found plenty to talk about,he was aware of an irk under it all. After all, this talk was emptyand idle. He was a man of action, and he wanted her, Dede Mason, thewoman; he wanted her to love him and to be loved by him; and he wantedall this glorious consummation then and there. Used to forcing issuesused to gripping men and things and bending them to his will, he felt,now, the same compulsive prod of mastery. He wanted to tell her that heloved her and that there was nothing else for her to do but marry him.And yet he did not obey the prod. Women were fluttery creatures, andhere mere mastery would prove a bungle. He remembered all his huntingguile, the long patience of shooting meat in famine when a hit or amiss meant life or death. Truly, though this girl did not yet meanquite that, nevertheless she meant much to him--more, now, than ever,as he rode beside her, glancing at her as often as he dared, she in hercorduroy riding-habit, so bravely manlike, yet so essentially andrevealingly woman, smiling, laughing, talking, her eyes sparkling, theflush of a day of sun and summer breeze warm in her cheeks.