XVI
A CHANGE OF MIND
It was Sunday afternoon; or, to date it by an epochal event, the dayafter Jack's alfalfa crop had fallen before the mower. Mary was seated onthe bench under the avenue of umbrella-trees reading a thin edition ofMarcus Aurelius bound in flexible leather. Of late she had developed afondness for the more austere philosophers. Jack, whose mood was entirelyto the sonneteers, came softly singing down the avenue of palms andpresented himself before her in a romping spirit of interruption.
"O expert in floriculture!" he said, "the humble pupil acting as aCommittee of One has failed utterly to agree with himself as to the formof his new flowerbed. There must be a Committee of Two. Will you come?"
"Good! I am weary of Marcus. I can't help thinking that he too farantedates the Bordeaux mixture!" she answered, springing to her feet withpositive enthusiasm.
He rarely met positive enthusiasm in her and everything in him called forit at the moment. He found it so inspiring that the problem of the bedwas settled easily by his consent to all her suggestions--a too-readyconsent, she told herself.
"After all, it is your flower garden," she reminded him.
"No, every flower garden in Little Rivers is yours!" he declared.
The way he said this made her frown. She saw him taking a step on theother side of that barrier over which she mounted guard.
"Never make your hyperboles felonious!" she warned him. "Besides, ifyou are going to be a real Little Riversite you should have opinions ofyour own."
"I haven't any to-day--none except victory!" and he held out his palms,exhibiting their yellowish plates. "Look! Even corns on the joints!"
"Yes, they look quite real," she admitted, censoriously.
"Haven't I made good? Do you remember how you stood here on the very siteof my house and lectured me? I would not work! I would not--"
"You have worked a little--a little!" she said grudgingly, and showed himas much of the wondrous sparkle in her eyes as he could see out of thecorners between the lashes. She never allowed him to look into her eyesif she apprehended any attempt to cross the barrier. But she could seewell enough out of the corners to know that his glances had a kind ofhungry joy and a promise of some new demonstration in his attitude towardher. She must watch that barrier very shrewdly.
"Look at my hedge!" he went on. "It is knee-high already, and myumbrella-trees cast enough shade for anybody, if he will wrap himselfaround the trunk. But such things are ornamental. I have a more practicalappeal. Come on!"
His elation was insistent, superior to any prickling gibes of banter, asthey walked on the mealy earth between rows of young orange settings,and the sweet odor of drying alfalfa came to their nostrils, borne by avagrant breeze. He swept his hand toward the field in a gesture of pride,his shoulders thrown back in a deep breath of exultation.
"The callouses win!" And he exhibited them again.
But she refused even to glance at them this time.
"You seem to think callouses phenomenal. Most people in Little Riversaccept them as they do the noses on their faces."
"They certainly are phenomenal on me. So is my first crop! My first crop!I'll be up at dawn to stack it--and then I'm no longer a neophyte. I aman initiate! I'm a real rancher! A holiday is due! I celebrate!"
He was rhapsodic and he was serious, too. She was provokingly flippant asan antidote for Marcus Aurelius, whom she was still carrying in thelittle flexible leather volume.
"How celebrate?" she inquired. "By walking through the town with a wispof alfalfa in one hand and exhibiting the callouses on the other? or willyou be drawn on a float by Jag Ear--a float labeled, 'The Idler EnjoyingHis Own Reform?' We'll all turn out and cheer."
"Amusing, but not dignified and not to my taste. No! I shall celebrate bya terrific spree--a ride to the pass!"
He turned his face toward the range, earnest in its transfixion andsuffused with the spirit of restlessness and the call of the mighty rockmasses, gray in their great ribs and purple in their abysses. She feltthat same call as something fluid and electric running through the airfrom sky to earth, and set her lips in readiness for whatever folly hewas about to suggest.
"A ride to the pass and a view of the sunset from the very top!" hecried. He looked down at her quickly, and all the force of the call hehad transformed into a sunny, personal appeal, which made her avert herglance. "My day in the country--my holiday, if you will go with me! Willyou, and gaze out over that spot of green in the glare of the desert,knowing that a little of it is mine?"
"Your orange-trees are too young. It's so far away they will hardlyshow," she ventured, surveying the distance to the pass judicially.
"Will you?"
"Why, to me a ride to the pass is not a thing to be planned a daybeforehand," she said deliberately, still studiously observing Galeria."It is a matter of momentary inspiration. Make it a set engagement and itis but a plodding journey. I can best tell in the morning," sheconcluded. "And, by the way, I see you haven't yet tried grafting plumson the alfalfa stalks."
"No. I have learned better. It is not consistent. You see, you mowalfalfa and you pick plums."
This return to drollery, in keeping with the prescribed order of theirrelations, made her look up in candid amusement over the barrier whichfor a moment he had been endangering.
"Honestly, Jack, you do improve," she said, with mock encouragement. "Youseem to have mastered a number of the simple truths of age-oldagricultural experience."
"But will you? Will you ride to the pass?"
He had the question launched fairly into her eyes. She could not escapeit. He saw one bright flash, whether of real anger or simply vexation athis reversion to the theme he could not tell, and her lashes dropped;she ran the leaf edges of the austere Marcus back and forth in herfingers, thip-thip-thip. That was the only sound for some seconds, verylong seconds.
"As I've already tried to make clear to you, it's such a businesslikething to ride to the pass unless you have the inspiration," she remarkedthoughtfully to Marcus. "Perhaps I shall get the inspiration on the wayback to the house;" which was a signal that she was going. "And, by theway, Jack, to return to the object of my coming, if you have ideas ofyour own about flowers incorporate them; that is the way to develop yourfloricultural talent."
She turned away, but he followed. He was at her side and proceeding withher, his head bent toward her, boyishly, eagerly.
"You see, I have never been out to the pass," he remarked urgently.
"What! You--" she started in surprise and checked herself.
"Didn't I come by train?" he asked reprovingly.
"No!" she answered. Her eyes were level with the road, her voice was alittle unnatural. "No! You came over the pass, Jack."
It was the first time in the months of his citizenship of Little Riversthat she had ever hinted anything but belief in the fiction that they hadfirst met when he asked her to show him a parcel of land. She seemed tobe calling a truth out of the past and grappling with it, while her lipstightened and she drew in her chin.
"Then I did come over the pass," he agreed; and after a pause added:"But there was no Pete Leddy."
"Yes, oh, yes--there was a Pete Leddy!"
"But he will not be there this time!"
And now his voice, in a transport that seemed to touch the cloud heights,was neither like the voice of the easy traveller on the pass, nor thevoice of his sharp call to Leddy to disarm, nor the voice of thestoryteller. It had a new note, a note startling to her.
"We shall be on the pass without Leddy and smiling over Leddy andthanking him for his unwitting service in making me stop in LittleRivers," he concluded.
"Yes, he did that," she admitted stoically, as if it were some oppressivefact for which she could offer no thanks.
"I want to see our ponies with their bridles hanging loose! I want thegreat silence! I want company, with imagination speaking from the skyand reality speaking from the patch of green out on the sea of gray!Will you?"
Their steps ran rhythmically together. His look was eager inanticipation, while she kept on running the leaves of the austere Marcusthrough her fingers. Her lips were half open, as if about to speak, butwere without words; the thin, delicate nostrils trembled.
"Will you? Will you, because I kept the faith of callouses? Will you goforth and dream for a day? We'll tell fairy stories! We'll get a pole andprod the dinosaur through the narrow part of the pass and hear him roarhis awfullest. Will you?"
Her fingers paused in the pages as if they had found a helpful passage.The chin tilted upward resolutely and he had a full view of her eyes,dancing with challenging lights. She was augustly, gloriouslymischievous.
"Will you go in costume? Will you wear your spurs and the chaps and thesilk shirt?"
The question said that it was not a time to be serious. It sprinkled thecrest of the barrier with gleaming slivers of glass, which might givezest to words spoken across it, but would be most sharp to the touch.
"I will wear my spurs around my wrists, if you say, tie roses in thefringe of my chaps, bind my hat with a big red silk bandanna, and putstreamers on P.D.'s bits!"
"That is too enticing for refusal," she answered, playfully. "Iparticularly want to hear the dinosaur roar."
They had come to the opening of the Ewold hedge, and they paused toconsider arrangements. There was no one in sight on the street except JimGalway, who was approaching at some distance.
"Shall we start in the morning and have luncheon at the foot of therange?" suggested Jack.
She favored an early afternoon start; he argued for his point of view,and in their preoccupation with the passage of arms they did not noticePedro Nogales slipping along beside the hedge with soft steps, his handunder his jacket. A gleam out of the bosom of Pedro's jacket, a cry fromMary, and a knife flashed upward and drove toward Jack's neck.
Jack had seemed oblivious of his surroundings, his gaze centered on Mary.Yet he was able to duck backward so that the blade only slit open hisshirt as Pedro, with the misdirected force of his blow, lunged past itsobject. Mary saw that face which had been laughing into hers, which hadbeen so close to hers in its persistent smile of persuasion, struck whiteand rigid and a glint like that of the blade itself in the eyes. In abreath Jack had become another being of incarnate, unthinking physicalpower and swiftness. One hand seized Pedro's wrist, the other his upperarm, and Mary heard the metallic click of the knife as it struck theearth and the sickening sound of the bone of Pedro's forearm cracking.She saw Pedro's eyes bursting from their sockets in pain and fear; shesaw Jack's still profile of unyielding will and the set muscles of hisneck and the knitting muscles of his forearm driving Pedro over againstthe hedge, as if bent on breaking the Mexican's back in two, and shewaited in frozen apprehension to hear another bone crack, even expectingPedro's death cry.
"The devil is out of Senor Don't Care!" It was the voice of Ignacio, whohad come around the house in time to witness the scene.
"What fearful strength! You will kill him!" It was the voice of the Doge,from the porch.
"Yes, please stop!" Mary pleaded.
Suddenly, at the sound of her cry, Jack released his hold. The strongcolumn of his neck became apparently too weak to hold the weight of hishead. Inert, he fell against the hedge for support, his hands hanginglimp at his side, while he stared dazedly into space. It seemed then thatPedro might have picked up the knife and carried out his plan of murderwithout defence by the victim.
"Yes, yes, yes!" Jack repeated.
Pedro had not moved from the hollow in the hedge which the impress of hisbody had made. He was trembling, his lips had fallen away from histeeth, and he watched Jack in stricken horror, a beaten creature waitingon some judgment from which there was no appeal.
"We'll tell fairy stories"--Jack's soft tones of persuasion repeatedthemselves in Mary's ears in contrast to the effect of what she had justwitnessed. Her hand slipped along the crest of the hedge, as if tosteady herself.
"I'll change my mind about going to the pass, Jack," she said.
"Yes, Mary," he answered in a faint tone.
He looked around to see her back as she turned away from him; then, withan effort, he stepped free of the hedge.
"Come, we will go to the doctor!" he said to the Mexican.
He touched Pedro's shoulder softly and softly ran his hand down thesleeve in which the arm hung limp. Pedro had not moved; he still leanedagainst the hedge inanimate as a mannikin.
"Come! Your legs are not broken! You can walk!" said Jim Galway, who hadcome up in a hurry when he saw what was happening.
"Pedro, you will learn not to play with the devil in Senor Don't Care!"whispered Ignacio, while Mary had disappeared in the house and the Dogestood watching.
Jack had stroked Pedro's head while the bone was being set. He hadarranged for Pedro's care. And now he was in his own yard with Jag Earand the ponies, rubbing their muzzles alternately in silentimpartiality, his head bowed reflectively as Firio came around thecorner of the house. At first he half stared at Firio, then he surveyedthe steeds of his long journeyings in questioning uncertainty, and thenlooked back at Firio, smiling wanly.
"Firio," he said, "I feel that I am a pretty big coward. Firio, I am fullup--full to overflowing. My mind is stuffed with cobwebs. I--I must thinkthings out. I must have the solitudes."
"The trail!" prescribed Doctor Firio.
After Jack had given his ranch in charge to Galway, he rode away inthe dusk, not by the main street, but straight across the levelstoward the pass.