ON THE DIVIDE.
Had the man on the Divide noticed the approaching horseman it would have
been evident, even to one so unacquainted with the country as the
stranger, that the rider belonged to that land of riders. While still at
a distance too great for the eye to distinguish the details of fringed
leather chaps, soft shirt, short jumper, sombrero, spurs and riata, no
one could have mistaken the ease and grace of the cowboy who seemed so
literally a part of his horse. His seat in the saddle was so secure, so
easy, and his bearing so unaffected and natural, that every movement of
the powerful animal he rode expressed itself rhythmically in his own
lithe and sinewy body.
While the stranger sat wrapped in meditative thought, unheeding the
approach of the rider, the horseman, coming on with a long, swinging
lope, watched the motionless figure on the summit of the Divide with
careful interest. As he drew nearer the cowboy pulled his horse down to
a walk, and from under his broad hat brim regarded the stranger
intently. He was within a few yards of the point where the man sat when
the latter caught the sound of the horse's feet, and, with a quick,
startled look over his shoulder, sprang up and started as if to escape.
But it was too late, and, as though on second thought, he whirled about
with a half defiant air to face the intruder.
The horseman stopped. He had not missed the significance of that hurried
movement, and his right hand rested carelessly on his leather clad
thigh, while his grey eyes were fixed boldly, inquiringly, almost
challengingly, on the man he had so unintentionally surprised.
As he sat there on his horse, so alert, so ready, in his cowboy garb and
trappings, against the background of Granite Mountain, with all its
rugged, primeval strength, the rider made a striking picture of virile
manhood. Of some years less than thirty, he was, perhaps, neither as
tall nor as heavy as the stranger; but in spite of a certain boyish look
on his smooth-shaven, deeply-bronzed face, he bore himself with the
unmistakable air of a matured and self-reliant man. Every nerve and
fiber of him seemed alive with that vital energy which is the true
beauty and the glory of life.
The two men presented a striking contrast. Without question one was the
proud and finished product of our most advanced civilization. It was as
evident that the splendid manhood of the other had never been dwarfed by
the weakening atmosphere of an over-cultured, too conventional and too
complex environment. The stranger with his carefully tailored clothing
and his man-of-the-world face and bearing was as unlike this rider of
the unfenced lands as a daintily groomed thoroughbred from the
sheltered and guarded stables of fashion is unlike a wild, untamed
stallion from the hills and ranges about Granite Mountain. Yet, unlike
as they were, there was a something that marked them as kin. The man of
the ranges and the man of the cities were, deep beneath the surface of
their beings, as like as the spirited thoroughbred and the unbroken wild
horse. The cowboy was all that the stranger might have been. The
stranger was all that the cowboy, under like conditions, would have
been.
As they silently faced each other it seemed for a moment that each
instinctively recognized this kinship. Then into the dark eyes of the
stranger--as when he had watched the cowboy at the Burnt Ranch--there
came that look of wistful admiration and envy.
And at this, as if the man had somehow made himself known, the horseman
relaxed his attitude of tense readiness. The hand that had held the
bridle rein to command instant action of his horse, and the hand that
had rested so near the rider's hip, came together on the saddle horn in
careless ease, while a boyish smile of amusement broke over the young
man's face.
That smile brought a flash of resentment into the eyes of the other and
a flush of red darkened his untanned cheeks. A moment he stood; then
with an air of haughty rebuke he deliberately turned his back, and,
seating himself again, looked away over the landscape.
But the smiling cowboy did not move. For a moment as he regarded the
stranger his shoulders shook with silent, contemptuous laughter; then
his face became grave, and he looked a little ashamed. The minutes
passed, and still he sat there, quietly waiting.
Presently, as if yielding to the persistent, silent presence of the
horseman, and submitting reluctantly to the intrusion, the other turned,
and again the two who were so like and yet so unlike faced each other.
It was the stranger now who smiled. But it was a smile that caused the
cowboy to become on the instant kindly considerate. Perhaps he
remembered one of the Dean's favorite sayings: "Keep your eye on the man
who laughs when he's hurt."
"Good evening!" said the stranger doubtfully, but with a hint of
conscious superiority in his manner.
"Howdy!" returned the cowboy heartily, and in his deep voice was the
kindliness that made him so loved by all who knew him. "Been having some
trouble?"
"If I have, it is my own, sir," retorted the other coldly.
"Sure," returned the horseman gently, "and you're welcome to it. Every
man has all he needs of his own, I reckon. But I didn't mean it that
way; I meant your horse."
The stranger looked at him questioningly. "Beg pardon?" he said.
"What?"
"I do not understand."
"Your horse--where is your horse?"
"Oh, yes! Certainly--of course--my horse--how stupid of me!" The tone of
the man's answer was one of half apology, and he was smiling whimsically
now as if at his own predicament, as he continued. "I have no horse.
Really, you know, I wouldn't know what to do with one if I had it."
"You don't mean to say that you drifted all the way out here from
Prescott on foot!" exclaimed the astonished cowboy.
The man on the ground looked up at the horseman, and in a droll tone
that made the rider his friend, said, while he stretched his long legs
painfully: "I like to walk. You see I--ah--fancied it would be good for
me, don't you know."
The cowboy laughingly considered--trying, as he said afterward, to
figure it out. It was clear that this tall stranger was not in search of
health, nor did he show any of the distinguishing marks of the tourist.
He certainly appeared to be a man of means. He could not be looking for
work. He did not seem a suspicious character--quite the contrary--and
yet--there was that significant hurried movement as if to escape when
the horseman had surprised him. The etiquette of the country forbade a
direct question, but--
"Yes," he agreed thoughtfully, "walking comes in handy sometimes. I
don't take to it much myself, though." Then he added shrewdly, "You were
at the celebration, I reckon."
The stranger's voice betrayed quick enthusiasm, but that odd wistfulness
crept into his eyes again and he seemed to lose a little of his poise.
"Indeed I was," he said. "I never saw anything to compare with it. I've
seen all kinds of athletic sports and contests and exhibitions, with
circus performances and riding, and that sort of thing, you know, and
I've read about such things, of course, but"--and his voice grew
thoughtful--"that men ever actually did them--and all in the day's
work, as you may say--I--I never dreamed that there _were_ men like that
in these days."
The cowboy shifted his weight uneasily in the saddle, while he regarded
the man on the ground curiously. "She was sure a humdinger of a
celebration," he admitted, "but as for the show part I've seen things
happen when nobody was thinking anything about it that would make those
stunts at Prescott look funny. The horse racing was pretty good,
though," he finished, with suggestive emphasis.
The other did not miss the point of the suggestion. "I didn't bet on
anything," he laughed.
"It's funny nobody picked you up on the road out here," the cowboy next
offered pointedly. "The folks started home early this morning--and Jim
Reid and his family passed me about an hour ago--they were in an
automobile. The Simmons stage must have caught up with you somewhere."
The stranger's face flushed, and he seemed trying to find some answer.
The cowboy watched him curiously; then in a musing tone added the
suggestion, "Some lonesome up here on foot."
"But there are times, you know," returned the other desperately, "when a
man prefers to be alone."
The cowboy straightened in his saddle and lifted his reins. "Thanks," he
said dryly, "I reckon I'd better be moving."
But the other spoke quickly. "I beg your pardon, Mr. Acton, I did not
mean that for you."
The horseman dropped his hands again to the saddle horn, and resumed his
lounging posture, thus tacitly accepting the apology. "You have the
advantage of me," he said.
The stranger laughed. "Everyone knows that 'Wild Horse Phil' of the
Cross-Triangle Ranch won the bronco-riding championship yesterday. I saw
you ride."
Philip Acton's face showed boyish embarrassment.
The other continued, with his strange enthusiasm. "It was great
work--wonderful! I never saw anything like it."
There was no mistaking the genuineness of his admiration, nor could he
hide that wistful look in his eyes.
"Shucks!" said the cowboy uneasily. "I could pick a dozen of the boys in
that outfit who can ride all around me. It was just my luck, that's
all--I happened to draw an easy one."
"Easy!" ejaculated the stranger, seeing again in his mind the fighting,
plunging, maddened, outlawed brute that this boy-faced man had mastered.
"And I suppose catching and throwing those steers was easy, too?"
The cowboy was plainly wondering at the man's peculiar enthusiasm for
these most commonplace things. "The roping? Why, that was no more than
we're doing all the time."
"I don't mean the roping," returned the other, "I mean when you rode up
beside one of those steers that was running at full speed, and caught
him by the horns with your bare hands, and jumped from your saddle, and
threw the beast over you, and then lay there with his horns pinning you
down! You aren't doing that all the time, are you? You don't mean to
tell me that such things as that are a part of your everyday work!"
"Oh, the bull doggin'! Why, no," admitted Phil, with an embarrassed
laugh, "that was just fun, you know."
The stranger stared at him, speechless. Fun! In the name of all that is
most modern in civilization, what manner of men were these who did such
things in fun! If this was their recreation, what must their work be!
"Do you mind my asking," he said wistfully, "how you learned to do such
things?"
"Why, I don't know--we just do them, I reckon."
"And could anyone learn to ride as you ride, do you think?" The question
came with marked eagerness.
"I don't see why not," answered the cowboy honestly.
The stranger shook his head doubtfully and looked away over the wild
land where the shadows of the late afternoon were lengthening.
"Where are you going to stop to-night?" Phil Acton asked suddenly.
The stranger did not take his eyes from the view that seemed to hold for
him such peculiar interest. "Really," he answered indifferently, "I had
not thought of that."
"I should think you'd be thinking of it along about supper time, if
you've walked from town since morning."
The stranger looked up with sudden interest; but the cowboy fancied that
there was a touch of bitterness under the droll tone of his reply. "Do
you know, Mr. Acton, I have never been really hungry in my life. It
might be interesting to try it once, don't you think?"
Phil Acton laughed, as he returned, "It might be interesting, all right,
but I think I better tell you, just the same, that there's a ranch down
yonder in the timber. It's nothing but a goat ranch, but I reckon they
would take you in. It's too far to the Cross-Triangle for me to ask you
there. You can see the buildings, though, from here."
The stranger sprang up in quick interest. "You can? The Cross-Triangle
Ranch?"
"Sure," the cowboy smiled and pointed into the distance. "Those red
spots over there are the roofs. Jim Reid's place--the Pot-Hook-S--is
just this side of the meadows, and a little to the south. The old Acton
homestead--where I was born--is in that bunch of cottonwoods, across the
wash from the Cross-Triangle."
But strive as he might the stranger's eyes could discern no sign of
human habitation in those vast reaches that lay before him.
"If you are ever over that way, drop in," said Phil cordially. "Mr.
Baldwin will be glad to meet you."
"Do you really mean that?" questioned the other doubtfully.
"We don't say such things in this country if we don't mean them,
Stranger," was the cool retort.
"Of course, I beg your pardon, Mr. Acton," came the confused reply. "I
should like to see the ranch. I may--I will--That is, if I--" He stopped
as if not knowing how to finish, and with a gesture of hopelessness
turned away to stand silently looking back toward the town, while his
face was dark with painful memories, and his lips curved in that
mirthless, self-mocking smile.
And Philip Acton, seeing, felt suddenly that he had rudely intruded upon
the privacy of one who had sought the solitude of that lonely place to
hide the hurt of some bitter experience. A certain native gentleness
made the man of the ranges understand that this stranger was face to
face with some crisis in his life--that he was passing through one of
those trials through which a man must pass alone. Had it been possible
the cowboy would have apologized. But that would have been an added
unkindness. Lifting the reins and sitting erect in the saddle, he said
indifferently, "Well, I must be moving. I take a short cut here. So
long! Better make it on down to the goat ranch--it's not far."
He touched his horse with the spur and the animal sprang away.
"Good-bye!" called the stranger, and that wistful look was in his eyes
as the rider swung his horse aside from the road, plunged down the
mountain side, and dashed away through the brush and over the rocks with
reckless speed. With a low exclamation of wondering admiration, the man
climbed hastily to a higher point, and from there watched until horse
and rider, taking a steeper declivity without checking their breakneck
course, dropped from sight in a cloud of dust. The faint sound of the
sliding rocks and gravel dislodged by the flying feet died away; the
cloud of dust dissolved in the thin air. The stranger looked away into
the blue distance in another vain attempt to see the red spots that
marked the Cross-Triangle Ranch.
Slowly the man returned to his seat on the rock. The long shadows of
Granite Mountain crept out from the base of the cliffs farther and
farther over the country below. The blue of the distant hills changed to
mauve with deeper masses of purple in the shadows where the canyons are.
The lonely figure on the summit of the Divide did not move.
The sun hid itself behind the line of mountains, and the blue of the sky
in the west changed slowly to gold against which the peaks and domes and
points were silhouetted as if cut by a graver's tool, and the bold
cliffs and battlements of old Granite grew coldly gray in the gloom. As
the night came on and the details of its structure were lost, the
mountain, to the watching man on the Divide, assumed the appearance of a
mighty fortress--a fortress, he thought, to which a generation of men
might retreat from a civilization that threatened them with destruction;
and once more the man faced back the way he had come.
The far-away cities were already in the blaze of their own artificial
lights--lights valued not for their power to make men see, but for their
power to dazzle, attract and intoxicate--lights that permitted no kindly
dusk at eventide wherein a man might rest from his day's work--a quiet
hour; lights that revealed squalid shame and tinsel show--lights that
hid the stars. The man on the Divide lifted his face to the stars that
now in the wide-arched sky were gathering in such unnumbered multitudes
to keep their sentinel watch over the world below.
The cool evening wind came whispering over the lonely land, and all the
furred and winged creatures of the night stole from their dark hiding
places into the gloom which is the beginning of their day. A coyote
crept stealthily past in the dark and from the mountain side below came
the weird, ghostly call of its mate. An owl drifted by on silent wings.
Night birds chirped in the chaparral. A fox barked on the ridge above.
The shadowy form of a bat flitted here and there. From somewhere in the
distance a bull bellowed his deep-voiced challenge.
Suddenly the man on the summit of the Divide sprang to his feet and,
with a gesture that had he not been so alone might have seemed
affectedly dramatic, stretched out his arms in an attitude of wistful
longing while his lips moved as if, again and again, he whispered a
name.