THE JOURNEY WONDER
During those last days Ewing brushed only the airy slopes of illusion,
strive as he would to keep his feet to earth. Many were the tricks he
used to this end: vain tricks to forget the miracle of his going, of
going so soon, of going with her.
Ben Crider would not help him forget. When snatches of warning from
"Traps and Pitfalls" grew stale, Ben coined advice of a large and
general character.
"Want to be an artist, hey? Ask me? Go down to Durango--let that
professor learn you in ten lessons. Make yer five t' eight dollars a day
canvassin' fur enlargements. Gold frame throwed in. Yes, sir! Ask me?
Durango's fur enough. New York's too gosha-mighty fur!"
It was not possible to forget under the droppings of this counsel.
Wherefore his spirit tossed in tumult.
When Ben called him on the morning of the start it was still dark. He
lay a moment, his nerves tightening. This was the last time he would lie
in that bed--for how long? Well, on some unmarked night in the pregnant
future, lying there again, he would look back to this moment and tell
himself all the wonderful things that had come to him--tell his
ignorant, puzzled, excited self, who would, somehow, be waiting and
wondering there.
Juggling this conceit, he groped for matches and a candle. He could
hear the singing of the kettle in the outer room. Through the window he
saw a lantern swinging, and knew that Ben would be bringing around the
horses. It was a time to be cool, a time to gird himself.
He had breakfast on the table when Ben came in, and they ate by the
light of a smoky lamp, tacitly pretending that no miracle was afoot.
Saving the early hour, it was a scene they enacted whenever they drove
to Pagosa for supplies, up to the point when, the meal finished, they
carried two trunks from the studio out to the wagon. But they managed
this carelessly enough, with only a casual, indignant word or two about
the excessive weight of full trunks.
Only the faintest hint of light showed in the east as the chilled horses
stumbled awkwardly down the hill. A half hour they rode in a silence
broken but once, and then only by Ben's hoarse threat to "learn" the off
horse something needful but unspecified which it appeared not to know.
The light glowed from gray to rose and day was opened by the bark of a
frantic squirrel that ran half-way down a tree trunk, threatening
attack, in alarm for its store of spruce cones at the foot of the tree.
A crested jay at the same moment mocked them harshly from a higher
branch of the tree.
Ewing exhaled with gusto a breath of the warming, pine-spiced air.
"It's sunning up, Ben." Ben grunted unamiably.
A little distance ahead of them a doe and a half-grown fawn bounded
across the road.
"She seemed to be in a hurry," Ewing again ventured.
"She wanted t' git that child away from here, 'fore some one stuffed
its head full o' fool talk about goin' off to New York. Can't tell what
notions a young deer _might_ git." With this laborious surmise he shut
his jaws together with repellent grimness.
Their road now wound down a hill and out of the woods to join the valley
road.
"Yender's Beulah Pierce!" Ben snapped this out savagely. The wagon was
half a mile ahead. Pierce was driving, and in the rear seat were two
figures whom they knew to be Mrs. Laithe and her brother. As Ben had
pointedly ignored these Ewing did not refer to them.
They came to a gate in a wire fence that stretched interminably away on
either side, over brown, low-rolling hills. Pierce had left the gate
open for them, and Ewing got out to close it after they had passed
through.
"Larabie is building a lot of fence," he said, as they drove on. "At
this rate he'll have every school section in Hinsdale County wired in
pretty soon."
On this impersonal ground Ben seemed willing to meet him.
"Me? Know what I'm going to do if Wes' Larabie cuts off any more o' this
road with his barb wire? Stick a pair o' wire clippers in the whip
socket an' drive through. _That's_ all! You'd think he owned all
America, the way he makes people sidle along that fence till he gits
good an' ready to make a gate. Me? Make my own gates. Yes, sir! Wire
clippers!"
With this he was sufficiently cheered to insult vivaciously a couple of
dull, incurious Mexicans whom they presently passed, plodding behind a
laden burro train. To his opprobrious burst of weirdly entangled
Spanish and English he added the taunting bleat of a sheep and a
merrily malign gesture eloquent of throats to be slit--the throats of
unspeakable sheep herders. He observed with deep disgust that neither of
the threatened ones gave any sign of interest in their portended fate.
They passed with scarce a lift of their heads.
"They're takin' supplies up to that sheep outfit o' Rankin's," grumbled
Ben. "Pierce an' some o' the others is talkin' about gettin' in a car
load o' saltpeter an' dopin' the range if Rankin lets his herd work down
any closeter--have it billed in as hardware or pianos, an' unload the
car at night. Serve him right fur bein' a sheep man. An' yet I knowed
Nels Rankin, five, six years ago, when there wa'n't a more respectable
cuss in the hull San Juan."
In passing the Pulcifer ranch they made talk about the hay-cutting, for
a reaper sent its locustlike click from a brown stretch of bottom land.
Pulcifer had a good stand of hay, they agreed, and probably he wouldn't
have such a big winter kill this year if he didn't act the fool and sell
off too much of it. You couldn't expect to bring cattle through fat on
cottonwood browse.
So they lamely gossiped the miles away in strained avoidance of the big
event. Only once did Ewing look back, while Ben was occupied with the
horses at a ford. The rocky wall at the verge of their lake was
intimately near, despite the miles they had come, and below it, through
a notch in the hills, he could see a spot of yellow--the new shake roof
on a shed they had built that summer near the cabin. Then his eyes were
ahead to where Pierce's wagon crawled up a hill.
Ben whipped up the horses and burst into song:
"One evening I was strolling through the city of the dead;
I viewed where all around me their peaceful forms were spread."
He took the thing at a quick, rollicking tempo, as one resolved to be
gay under difficulties.
When they drew up to the station platform at Pagosa, Ewing hurried to
greet Mrs. Laithe and her brother. Pierce busied himself with the
trunks, cautiously watching the man check them.
Ben Crider, after a long, fervent look at Ewing's back, caught his
breath, sniffled, strangled this, and stepped quickly into his wagon.
Pulling the horses quietly away from the platform he whipped them into a
sharp trot toward the town. Ewing ran back, shouting. Ben would not
turn, but he thrust one arm back and upward with a careless wave.
Ewing stared hard at the bent head, the eloquent back, longing for a
further sign, but none came. He was at the gateway of the world, a mist
before his eyes.
A moment later their little train rattled into a narrow canyon where its
shrill whistle, battered from wall to wall, made the place alive with
shrieking demons.
Having seen his charge to a seat in the one squalid car, Ewing went out
to brace himself on the rear platform. She who was doing this thing had
seemed a strange lady again; in her manner, as in her dress, more
formal. The dark-blue, close-fitting gown, the small toque of blue
velvet, the secretive veil, the newish gloves, instead of the old, worn
riding gauntlets, the glossy-toed black boots so different from those of
scarred tan he knew, all marked a change that heightened the pangs of
homesickness he already suffered.
With burning eyes and tightened throat he saw the floor of the canyon
rush away from him, and watched old Baldy's snow hood flashing
momentarily as the train twisted, now sinking below a quick-rushing wall
of rock, now showing over a clump of cedars. It was as if the old peak
had become sprightly at his going, and sought to bob curtsies to him.
At intervals the train came to a jangling halt. The little locomotive
would leave it and ramble inconsequently off into the big pine woods, to
return with screeches of triumph, dragging a car load of new-sawn boards
from the mill. Or it would puff away to a siding and come back
importantly with a car of excited sheep. At these halts Ewing would leap
to the ground to feel the San Juan earth under his feet.
At the junction where they were to take the through train he reflected
that nothing had really happened yet. He could turn back and be out of
the dream. The little train would return up the canyon presently. The
conductor would be indifferent to his presence. To the brakeman, whom he
knew, he could say, "Yes, I thought some of going to New York this
morning, but I changed my mind." He would be back at Pagosa by five and
find Ben at the post office or the "Happy Days" saloon. Then there would
be no more of that curious sickness--a kind of sickish wanting. Yet,
when the through train drew in, he hurried aboard.
He stood on the rear platform and watched a horseman jogging over the
sandy plain to the west, picturing his ride from the junction to some
lonely ranch on a distant river bottom. He would have the week's mail in
a bag back of the saddle, and a stock of tobacco. He would reach the
place after dark, perhaps, from sheer _ennui_, shooting at a coyote or
two along the way. He knew that rider's life, the days of it and the
nights, and all of good or ill that might ever betake him. It was well,
he thought, to dare a bigger life, though he waved a friendly greeting
to the unconscious horseman, jogging at the head of his train of dust.
He flung a tender glance at the diminished junction, now a low, dull
blur on the level horizon, and went into the car.
For the moment the Pullman had no other occupant but himself and Mrs.
Laithe, and she was sleeping, he thought; but her eyes opened as he
would have passed her seat. She had replaced the toque with a brown cap
he knew, and as she smiled up at him she seemed again almost the
familiar godmother of his fairy tale. He passed on, however, after a
meaningless word or two and, sprawling in another section, surrendered
himself to the troubled pretentiousness of the Pullman school of
decoration.
He had left the lady grateful for his going. She was in no mood for that
artless lyric chant of youth in which he was so adept. Her brother that
morning had accused her of waning enthusiasm for her protege.
"I believe you're funking, Nell," he had said shrewdly. "You're
discovering that mountain slumming is different from the city kind."
But she had protested that no discerning person of ordinary humanity
could have done less for the prisoned youth. "Of course"--and she had
sighed--"he's a mere bundle of untried eagerness, and we're responsible,
in a way, for Heaven knows what, but we had to do it, didn't we?"
"Not 'we' had to! _You_ had to. It's all yours, Nell--the credit and the
glory and all the rest. I prefer to get up my own responsibilities, if
you don't mind."
"But you agreed with me--you _did_--you advised when I asked you--it's
perfectly plain--you said, 'Of course!'"--But the train moved off in the
midst of his laugh at this, and he had doffed his hat to her with a
mocking gesture of freehanded relinquishment.
Now, as she closed her eyes again, her memory dived for some fairy tale
or fragment of mythology in which an unsuspecting humanitarian rescued
an insignificant woods thing, only to have it change on the instant into
a creature troublesome in more ways than one. She was certain some
primitive fabulist had foreseen this complication, but her mind was
weary and shadowed, and the historic solution evaded her. "Mountain
slumming" was truly more exigent than the town sort.
But this reflection aroused a defensive sympathy. The vision of
Ewing as he had passed glowed before her shut eyes, the active,
square-shouldered, slender figure, garbed in a decently fitting
suit of gray (she was glad to remember that), the quick eyes, ardent
for life, the thinned, brown face, the usual buoyance held down to an
easy self-possession that was new to her, the wild, reliant expectancy
of a boy tempered all at once by some heritage of insight. Outwardly,
at least, he would fit his new life. So reflecting, she dozed on the
look of the man in his eyes, and dreamed that she feared this and fled.
But after mad flight through the windings of an interminable corridor
she awoke to look squarely into his eyes, to cower instinctively under
his touch on her arm. Her waking thought took the thread of the dream,
her flight had been vain: he was there, and his voice throbbed fatefully
within a secret chamber of her mind, even though his words rang little
of portent.
"We are coming to the supper station."
She hastened to freshen herself with cold water, and they were presently
eating a hasty meal at a crowded table. Then they were out side by side
to pace the platform briskly.
There was green about the station, where water had taught the desert to
relent, but beyond this oasis the sand sea stretched far and flat to
murky foothills. Above these they could see a range of sharp-peaked
mountains that still caught the sunlight, some crystal white with snow,
others muffled by clouds turned to iris-hued scarfs of filmiest gauze.
"El Dorado is beyond those hills," said the youth fervently.
"It looks accessible from here," she answered, "but----"
"You're warning me again. You're afraid I'll be discouraged by the
hills."
"Not discouraged, but there are resting places on the way. They hold the
bulk of the pilgrims, I fear."
"I shall go on; not even you could stop me."
She caught a glint in his fierce young eyes that she thought he must be
unconscious of.
"I? Oh, I shall spur you--if you need spurring."
"I know; I'm only beginning to realize how much I owe you; I mean to
repay you, though."
There was an intimation of remoteness in his tone, as if he saw himself
removed from her, mounting solitary to his dream city, a free-necked,
well-weaponed pilgrim, sufficient unto himself. It was as if he had put
distance between them the moment he crossed the threshold of the world.
She drew a full breath. It came to her, as the upflashing of some
submerged memory, that all his frank adoration of her had been quite
impersonal. He had regarded her as a bit of line and color. It was
amazing to remember that he had made no effort to know her, save with
his eyes. She divined that she had stopped short of being human to him,
while he to her had been, more than anything else, a human creature of
freshness and surprises. Whatever difficulties might be in the way of an
easy friendliness between them, they would not be of his own making. She
was sure she felt a great relief.
Ewing awoke in the night at some jolting halt of the train, to feel an
exciting thrill of luxury as he stretched in his berth. Here was no
stumbling about in the dark to search for a lost trail; nor must he rise
in the chill dawn to worry a blaze from overnight embers, cook a
discouraging breakfast, catch horses, and lade unwilling beasts with
packs. Things would be done for him; and the trail was wide and level as
befits the approach to the world. He dozed royally off feeling that he
had bitten into the heart of his wonder at last.
The following day they sped through a land whose kind he knew, but after
another night he awoke to find their train breasting the brown waves of
a sea that rolled lazily to far horizons. No longer was there one of his
beloved mountain peaks to be a landmark: only an endless, curving
lowness, as of land that had once tried to lash itself into the fury of
mountain and crag, and then ceased all effort--to lie forever impotent
and sad.
He thought of Ben amid this disconsolate welter. Ben had beheld this
sight years ago, and had described it with aversion, as one relating a
topographical scandal. Ewing favored his companion with heartfelt
dispraise of this landscape, applauding the suggestion of a woman she
laughingly quoted that "there should be a tuck taken in the continent."
He was sure nothing would be lost by it.
The lady beguiled him over the inadequacies of Kansas by promising a
better land farther on. He gladly turned from the car window to watch
the pretty play of her mouth as she talked.
But the next day--they steamed out of St. Louis in the morning--he
scanned several hundred square miles of excellent farming land with
sheer dismay. From morning till night they ran through what, to Ewing,
was a dead, depressing flatness, a vast and clumsy jest of a
checkerboard, with cornfields for squares. The tiny groves of oak at
long intervals seemed only to satirize the monotony. The rolling plains
of the day before had been vivacious beside this flatness, and there had
been a certain mournful dignity in their solitude. But this endless
level lacked even solitude. To Ewing, indeed, the mystery of it lay in
its well-peopled towns. He wondered how men kept sane there. Mrs. Laithe
insisted that it was an important stretch of our country, that it fed
thousands and made useful objects in its tall-chimneyed factories
(things like wagons and watches and boots, she believed), and that it
ought not to be discountenanced. But he could feel nothing for it, save
an unconfessed pity that it would sleep that night in ignorance of his
glorious transit. He had never suspected there could be so many
thousands of people who took the world as a tame affair and slept
indifferent to young men with great things before them.
"If New York is like this," he said, with a flash of his old boyish
excitement, "what can I ever do without you?"
"But it isn't at all like this, and you'll do big things without me--or
with me, if I can help you."
"You will have to help me. Now that I've seen the beginning of the
world, I'm depending on you more than I thought I should when we
started."
"You will lose that."
"Will I? But it will be queer to see you as part of the world--no longer
the whole of it; to see how you stand out from the others. Perhaps the
rest of the world will be only a dingy background for you--you are all
color and life."
"You've made me feel like a lay figure," she laughed. Then, in a flash
of womanish curiosity, she ventured, "Have you ever thought me anything
but a shell of color?"
He stammered, blushing painfully.
"Oh, a real person--of course, certainly! A woman, yes--but when I think
of you as a woman, I'm scared, like those first times I saw you. I can't
help it. You may not believe it," he concluded with a burst of candor,
"but the truth is, I don't know women."
He was again embarrassed when she retorted, with her laugh:
"O youth! May you always know so much!"
"Well, to-morrow afternoon we shall be in New York," he said briskly,
when she had shut the deeps of her eyes from him. He had felt the need
to show that there were matters upon which he could speak with
understanding.