Farallone helped the bride to her feet. "That's right," he said with a
kind of nursely playfulness, and he turned to the groom.
"Because I told you to help yourself," he said, "doesn't mean that I'm
not going to do the lion's share of everything. I am. I'm fit. You and
the writer man aren't. But you must do just a little more than you're
able, and that's all we'll ask of you. Everybody works this voyage
except the woman."
"I can work," said the bride.
"Rot!" said Farallone. "We'll ask you to walk ahead, like a kind of
north star. Only we'll tell you which way to turn. Do you see that
sugar-loaf? You head for that. Vamoose! We'll overhaul you."
The bride moved upon the desert alone, her face toward an easterly hill
that had given Farallone his figure of the sugar-loaf. She had no longer
the effect of a wilted flower, but walked with quick, considered steps.
What the groom carried and what I carried is of little moment. Our packs
united would not have made the half of the lumbersome weight that
Farallone swung upon his giant shoulders.
"Follow the woman," said he, and we began to march upon the
shoe-and-stocking track of the bride. Farallone, rolling like a ship (I
had many a look at him over my shoulder) brought up the rear. From time
to time he flung forward a phrase to us in explanation of his rebellious
attitude.
"I take command because I'm fit; you're not. I give the orders because I
can get 'em obeyed; you can't." And, again: "You don't know east from
west; I do."
All the morning he kept firing disagreeable and very personal remarks at
us. His proposition that we were not in any way fit for anything he
enlarged upon and illustrated. He flung the groom's unemployed ancestry
at him; he likened the groom to Rome at the time of the fall, which he
attributed to luxury; he informed me that only men who were unable to
work, or in any way help themselves, wrote books. "The woman's worth the
two of you," he said. "Her people were workers. See it in her stride.
She could milk a cow if she had one. If anything happens to me she'll
give the orders. Mark my words. She's got a head on her shoulders, she
has."
The bride halted suddenly in her tracks and, turning, faced the groom.
"Are you going to allow this man's insolence to run on forever?" she
said.
The groom frowned at her and shook his head covertly.
"Pooh," said the bride, and I think I heard her call him "_my
champion_," in a bitter whisper. She walked straight back to Farallone
and looked him fearlessly in the face.
"The bigger a man is, Mr. Farallone," she said, "and the stronger, the
more he ought to mind his manners. We are grateful to you for all you
have done, but if you cannot keep a civil tongue in your head, then the
sooner we part company the better."
For a full minute the fearless eyes snapped at Farallone, then, suddenly
abashed, softened, and turned away.
"There mustn't be any more mutiny," said Farallone. "But you've got
sand, you have. I could love a woman like you. How did you come to hitch
your wagon to little Nicodemus there? He's no star. You deserved a man.
You've got sand, and when your poor feet go back on you, as they will in
this swill (here he kicked the burning sand), I'll carry you. But if you
hadn't spoken up so pert, I wouldn't. Now you walk ahead and pretend
you're Christopher Columbus De Soto Peary leading a flock of sheep to
the Fountain of Eternal Youth.... Bear to the left of the sage-brush,
there's a tarantula under it...."
We went forward a few steps, when suddenly I heard Farallone's voice in
my ear. "Isn't she splendid?" he said, and at the same time he thumped
me so violently between the shoulders that I stumbled and fell. For a
moment all fear of the man left me on the wings of rage, and I was for
attacking him with my fists. But something in his steady eye brought me
to my senses.
"Why did you do that?" I meant to speak sharply, but I think I whined.
"Because," said Farallone, "when the woman spoke up to me you began to
brindle and act lion-like and bold. For a minute you looked
dangerous--for a little feller. So I patted your back, in a friendly
way--as a kind of reminder--a feeble reminder."
We had dropped behind the others. The groom had caught up with the
bride, and from his nervous, irritable gestures I gathered that the poor
soul was trying to explain and to ingratiate himself. But she walked on,
steadily averted, you might say, her head very high, her shoulders drawn
back. The groom, his eyes intent upon her averted face, kept stumbling
with his feet.
"Just look," said Farallone in a friendly voice. "Those whom God hath
joined together. What did the press say of it?"
"I don't remember," I said.
"You lie," said Farallone. "The press called it an ideal match. My God!"
he cried--and so loudly that the bride and the groom must have
heard--"think of being a woman like that and getting hitched to a little
bit of a fuss with a few fine feathers"; and with a kind of sing-song he
began to misquote and extemporize:
"Just for a handful of silver she left me,
Just for a yacht and a mansion of stone,
Just for a little fool nest of fine feathers
She wed Nicodemus and left me alone."
"But she'd never seen me," he went on, and mused for a moment. "Having
seen me--do you guess what she's saying to herself? She's saying: 'Thank
God I'm not too old to begin life over again,' or thinking it. Look at
him! Even you wouldn't have been such a joke. I've a mind to kick the
life out of him. One little kick with bare toes. Life? There's no life
in him--nothing but a jenny-wren."
The groom, who must have heard at least the half of Farallone's speech,
stopped suddenly and waited for us to come up. His face was red and
white--blotchy with rage and vindictiveness. When we were within ten
feet of him he suddenly drew a revolver and fired it point-blank at
Farallone. He had no time for a second shot. Farallone caught his wrist
and shook it till the revolver spun through the air and fell at a
distance. Then Farallone seated himself and, drawing the groom across
his knee, spanked him. Since the beginning of the world children have
been punished by spankings, and the event is memorable, if at all, as a
something rather comical and domestic. But to see a grown man spanked
for the crime of attempted murder is horrible. Farallone's fury got the
better of him, and the blows resounded in the desert. I grappled his
arm, and the recoil of it flung me head over heels. When Farallone had
finished, the groom could not stand. He rolled in the sands, moaning and
hiding his face.
The bride was white as paper; but she had no eye for the groom.
"Did he miss you?" she said.
"No," said Farallone, "he hit me--Nicodemus hit me."
"Where?" said the bride.
"In the arm."
Indeed, the left sleeve of Farallone's shirt was glittering with blood.
"I will bandage it for you," she said, "if you will tell me how."
Farallone ripped open the sleeve of his shirt.
"What shall I bandage it with?" asked the bride.
"Anything," said Farallone.
The bride turned her back on us, stooped, and we heard a sound of
tearing. When she had bandaged Farallone's wound (it was in the flesh
and the bullet had been extracted by its own impetus) she looked him
gravely in the face.
"What's the use of goading him?" she said gently.
"Look," said Farallone.
The groom was reaching for the fallen revolver.
"Drop it," bellowed Farallone.
The groom's hand, which had been on the point of grasping the revolver's
stock, jerked away. The bride walked to the revolver and picked it up.
She handed it to Farallone.
"Now," she said, "that all the power is with you, you will not go on
abusing it."
"_You_ carry it," said Farallone, "and any time _you_ think I ought to
be shot, why, you just shoot me. I won't say a word."
"Do you mean it?" said the bride.
"I cross my heart," said Farallone.
"I sha'n't forget," said the bride. She took the revolver and dropped it
into the pocket of her jacket.
"Vamoose!" said Farallone. And we resumed our march.