THE BIG MAN'S RETURN
The night was bitter cold after a day of fierce heat. Three people
climbed the long winding trail from the plains beneath, slowly,
carefully, and silently. A huge mountaineer walked ahead, leading a
lean brown horse. Seated on the horse was a woman with long, pale
face, and deeply sunken dark eyes that looked out from under arched,
dark brows with a steady gaze that never wandered from some point just
ahead of her, not as if they perceived anything beyond, but more as if
they looked backward upon some terror.
Behind them on a sorrel horse--a horse slenderer and evidently of
better stock than the brown--rode another woman, also with dark eyes,
now heavy lidded from weariness, and pale skin, but younger and
stronger and more alert to the way they were taking. Her face was
built on different lines: a smooth, delicately modeled oval, wide at
the temples and level of brow, with heavy dark hair growing low over
the sides of the forehead, leaving the center high, and the arch of
the head perfect. Trailing along in the rear a small mule followed,
bearing a pack.
Sometimes the big man walking in front looked back and spoke a word of
encouragement, to which the younger of the two women replied in low
tones, as if the words were spoken under her breath.
"We'll stop and rest awhile now," he said at last, and led the horse
to one side, where a level space made it possible for them to dismount
and stretch themselves on the ground to give their weary limbs the
needed relaxation.
The younger woman slipped to the ground and led her horse forward to
where the elder sat rigidly stiff, declining to move.
"It is better we rest, mother. The kind man asks us."
"Non, Amalia, non. We go on. It is best that we not wait."
Then the daughter spoke rapidly in their own tongue, and the mother
bowed her head and allowed herself to be lifted from the saddle. Her
daughter then unrolled her blanket and, speaking still in her own
tongue, with difficulty persuaded her mother to lie down on the
mountain side, as they were directed, and the girl lay beside her,
covering her tenderly and pillowing her mother's head on her arm. The
big man led the animals farther on and sat down with his back against
a great rock, and waited.
They lay thus until the mother slept the sleep of exhaustion; then
Amalia rose cautiously, not to awaken her, and went over to him. Her
teeth chattered with the cold, and she drew a little shawl closer
across her chest.
"This is a very hard way--so warm in the day and so cold in the night.
It is not possible that I sleep. The cold drives me to move."
"You ought to have put part of that blanket over yourself. It's going
to be a long pull up the mountain, and you ought to sleep a little.
Walk about a bit to warm yourself and then try again to sleep."
"Yes. I try."
She turned docilely and walked back and forth, then very quietly crept
under the blanket beside her mother. He watched them a while, and when
he deemed she also must be sleeping, he removed his coat and gently
laid it over the girl. By that time darkness had settled heavily over
the mountain. The horses ceased browsing among the chaparral and lay
down, and the big man stretched himself for warmth close beside his
sorrel horse, on the stony ground. Thus in the stillness they all
slept; at last, over the mountain top the moon rose.
Higher and higher it crept up in the sky, and the stars waned before
its brilliant whiteness. The big man roused himself then, and looked
at the blanket under which the two women slept, and with a muttered
word of pity began gathering weeds and brush with which to build a
fire. It should be a very small fire, hidden by chaparral from the
plains below, and would be well stamped out and the charred place
covered with stones and brush when they left it. Soon he had steeped a
pot of coffee and fried some bacon, then he quickly put out his fire
and woke the two women. The younger sprang up, and, finding his coat
over her, took it to him and thanked him with rapid utterance.
"Oh, you are too kind. I am sorry you have deprive yourself of your
coat to put it over me. That is why I have been so warm."
The mother rose and shook out her skirt and glanced furtively about
her. "It is not the morning? It is the moon. That is well we go
early." She drank the coffee hurriedly and scarcely tasted the bacon
and hard biscuit. "It is no toilet we have here to make. So we go more
quickly. So is good."
"But you must eat the food, mother. You will be stronger for the long,
hard ride. You have not here to hurry. No one follows us here."
"Your father may be already by the camp, Amalia--to bring us
help--yes. But of those men 'rouge'--if they follow and rob us--"
The two women spoke English out of deference to the big man, and only
dropped into their own language or into fluent French when necessity
compelled them, or they thought themselves alone.
"Ah, but those red men, mother, they do not come here, so the kind man
told us, for now they are also kind. Sit here and eat the biscuit. I
will ask him."
She went over to where he stood by the animals, pouring a very little
water from the cans carried by the pack mule for each one. "They'll
have to hold out on this for the day, but they may only have half of
it now," he said.
"What shall I do?" Amalia looked with wide, distressed eyes in his
face. "She believes it yet, that my father lives and has gone to the
camp for help. She thinks we go to him,--to the camp. How can I tell
her? I cannot--I dare not."
"Let her think what satisfies her most. We can tell her as much as is
best for her to know, a little at a time, and there will be plenty of
time to do it in. We'll be snowed up on this mountain all winter." The
young woman did not reply, but stood perfectly still, gazing off into
the moonlit wilderness. "When people get locoed this way, the only
thing is to humor them and give them a chance to rest satisfied in
something--no matter what, much,--only so they are not hectored. No
mind can get well when it is being hectored."
"Hectored? That is to mean--tortured? Yes, I understand. It is that we
not suffer the mind to be tortured?"
"About that, yes."
"Thank you. I try to comfort her. But it is to lie to her? It is not a
sin, when it is for the healing?"
"I'm not authority on that, Miss, but I know lying's a blessing
sometimes."
"If I could make her see the marvelous beauty of this way we go, but
she will not look. Me, I can hardly breathe for the wonder--yet--I do
not forget my father is dead."
"I'm starting you off now, because it will not be so hard on either
you or the horses to travel by night, as long as it is light enough to
see the way. Then when the sun comes out hot, we can lie by a bit, as
we did yesterday."
"Then is no fear of the red men we met on the plains?"
"They're not likely to follow us up here--not at this season, and now
the railroad's going through, they're attracted by that."
"Do they never come to you, at your home?"
"Not often. They think I'm a sort of white 'medicine man'--kind of a
hoodoo, and leave me alone."
She looked at him with mystification in her eyes, but did not ask what
he meant, and returned to her mother.
"I have eaten. Now we go, is not?"
"Yes, mother. The kind man says we go on, and the red men will not
follow us."
"Good. I have afraid of the men 'rouge.' Your father knows not fear;
only I know it."
Soon they were mounted and traveling up the trail as before, the
little pack mule following in the rear. No breeze stirred to make the
frosty air bite more keenly, and the women rode in comparative
comfort, with their hands wrapped in their shawls to keep them warm.
They did not try to converse, or only uttered a word now and then in
their own tongue. Amalia's spirit was enrapt in the beauty around and
above and below her, so that she could not have spoken more than the
merest word for a reply had she tried.
The moonlight brought all the immediate surroundings into sharp
relief, and the distant hills in receding gradations seemed to be
created out of molten silver touched with palest gold. Above, the
vault of the heavens was almost black, and the stars were few, but
clear. Even the stones that impeded the horses' feet seemed to be made
of silver. The depths below them seemed as vast and black as the vault
above, except for the silver bath of light that touched the tops of
the gigantic trees at the bottom of the cañon around which they were
climbing.
The silence of this vastness was as fraught with mystery as the scene,
and was broken only by the scrambling of the horses over the stones
and their heavy breathing. Thus throughout the rest of the night they
wended steadily upward, only pausing now and then to allow the animals
to breathe, and then on. At last a thing occurred to break the
stillness and strike terror to Amalia's heart. It had occurred once
the day before when the silence was most profound. A piercing cry rent
the air, that began in a scream of terror and ended in a long-drawn
wail of despair.
Amalia slipped from her horse and stumbled over the rough ground to
her mother's side and poured forth a stream of words in her own
tongue, and clasped her arms about the rigid form that did not bend
toward her, but only sat staring into the white night as if her eye
perceived a sight from which she could not turn away.
"Look at me, mother. Oh, try to make her look at me!" The big man
lifted her from the horse, and she relaxed into trembling. "There, it
is gone now. Walk with me, mother;" and the two walked for a while,
holding hands, and Amalia talked unceasingly in low, soothing tones.
After a little time longer the moon paled and the stars disappeared,
and soon the sky became overspread with the changing coloring and the
splendor of dawn. Then the sun rose out of the glory, but still they
kept on their way until the heat began to overcome them. Then they
halted where some pines and high rocks made a shelter, but this time
the big man did not build a fire. He gave them a little coffee which
he had saved for them from what he had steeped during the night, and
they ate and rested, and the mother fell quickly into the sleep of
exhaustion, as before.
Thus during the middle of the day they rested, Amalia and the big man
sometimes sleeping and sometimes conversing quietly.
"I don't know why mother does this. I never knew her to until
yesterday. Father never used to let her look straight ahead of her as
she does now. She has always been very brave and strong. She has done
wonderful things--but I was not there. When troubles came on my
father, I was put in a convent--I know now it was to keep me from
harm. I did not know then why I was sent away from them, for my father
was not of the religion of the good sisters at the convent,--but now
I know--it was to save me."
"Why did troubles come on your father?"
"What he did I do not know, but I am very sure it was nothing wrong.
In my country sometimes men have to break the law to do right; my
mother has told me so. He was in prison a long time when I was living
in the convent, sheltered and cared for,--and mother--mother was
working all alone to get him out--all alone suffering."
"How could they keep you there if she had to work so hard?"
"My father had a friend. He was not of our country, and he was most
kind and good. I think he was of Scotland--or maybe of Ireland; I was
so little I do not know. He saved for my mother some of her money so
the government did not get it. I think my mother gave it to him,
once--before the trouble came. Maybe she knew it would come,--anyway,
so it was. I do not know if he was Irish, or of Scotland--but he must
have been a good man."
"Been? Is he dead?"
"Yes. It was of a fever he died. My mother told me. He gave us his
name, and to my father his papers to leave our country, for he knew he
would die, or my father never could have got out of the country. I
never saw him but once. When I saw you, I thought of him. He was grand
and good, as are you. My mother came for me at the convent in Paris,
and in the night we went to my father, and in the morning we went to
the great ship. We said McBride, and all was well. If we had said
Manovska when we took the ship, we would have been sent back and my
father would have been killed. In the prison we would have died. It
was hard to get on the ship, but when we got to this country, nobody
cared who got off."
"How long ago was that?"
"It was at the time of your great war we came. My mother wore the
dress of our peasant women, and I did the same."
"And were you quite safe in this country?"
"For a long time we lived very quietly, and we thought we were. But
after a time some one came, and father took him in, and then others
came, and went away again, and came again--I don't know why--they did
not tell me,--but this I know. Some one had a great enmity against my
father, and at last mother took me in the night to a strange place
where we knew no one, and then we went to another place--and to still
another. It was very wearisome."
"What was your father's business?"
"My father had no business. He was what you call a nobleman. He had
very much land, but he was generous and gave it nearly all away to his
poor people. My father was very learned and studied much. He made much
music--very beautiful--not for money--never for that. Only after we
came to this country did he so, to live. Once he played in a great
orchestra. It was then those men found him and came so often that he
had again to go away and hide. I think they brought him papers--very
important--to be sacredly guarded until a right time should come to
reveal them."
"And you have no knowledge why he was followed and persecuted?"
"I was so little at the beginning I do not know. If it was that in
his religion he was different,--or if he was trying to change in
the government the laws,--for we are not of Russia,--I know that when
he gave away his land, the other noblemen were very angry with him,
and at the court--where my father was sent by his people for
reasons--there was a prince,--I think it was about my mother he hated
my father so,--but for what--that I never heard. But he had my
father imprisoned, and there in the prison they--What was that
word,--hectored? Yes. In the prison they hectored him greatly--so
greatly that never more was he straight. It was very sad."
"I don't think we would say hectored, for that. I think we would say
tortured."
"Oh, yes. I see. To hector is of the mind, but torture is of the body.
It is that I mean--for they were very terrible to him. My mother was
there, and they made her look at it to bring him the more quickly to
tell for her sake what he would not for his own. I think when she
looks long before her at nothing, she is seeing again the tortures of
my father, and so she cries out in that terrible way. I think so."
"What were they trying to get out of him?"
Amalia looked up in his face with a puzzled expression for a moment.
"Get--out--of--him?" she asked.
"I mean, what did they want him to tell?"
"Ah, that I know not. It was never told. If they could find him, I
think they would try again to learn of him something which he only can
tell. I think if they could find my mother, they would now try to
learn from her what my father knew, but her lips are like the grave.
At that time he had told her nothing, but since then--when we were far
out in the wilderness--I do not know. I hope my mother will never be
found. Is it a very secret place to which we go?"
"I might call it that--yes. I've lived there for twenty years and no
white man has found me yet, until the young man, Harry King, was
pitched over the edge of eternity and only saved by a--well--a
chance--likely."
The young woman gazed at him wide-eyed, and drew in her breath. "You
saved him."
"If he obeyed me--I did."
"And all the twenty years were you alone?"
"I always had a horse."
"But for a companion--had you never one?"
"Never."
"Are you, too, a good man who has done a deed against the law of your
land?"
The big man looked off a moment, then down at her with a little smile
playing about his lips. "I never did a deed against the law of any
land that I know of, but as for the good part--that's another thing. I
may be fairly good as goodness goes."
"Goodnessgoes!" She repeated after him as if it were one word from
which she was trying to extract a meaning. "Was it then to flee from
the wicked world that you lived all the twenty years thus alone?"
"Hardly that, either. To tell the truth, it may be only a habit with
me."
"Will you forgive me that I asked? It was only that to me it has been
terrible to live always in hiding and fear. I love people, and desire
greatly to have kind people near me,--but of the world where my father
and mother lived, and at the court--and of the nobles, of all these I
am afraid."
"Yes, yes. I fancy you were." A grim look settled about his mouth,
although his eyes twinkled kindly. He marveled to think how trustingly
they accompanied him into this wilderness--but then--poor babes! What
else could they do? "You'll be safe from all the courts and nobles in
the world where I'm taking you."
"That is why my eyes do not weep for my father. He is now gone where
none can find him but God. It is very terrible that a good man should
always hide--hide and live in fear--always--even from his own kinsmen.
I understand some of the sorrows of the world."
"You'll forget it all up there."
"I will try if my mother recovers." She drew in her breath with a
little quivering catch.
"We'll wake her now, and start on. It won't do to waste daylight any
longer." Secretly he was afraid that they might be followed by
Indians, and was sorry he had made the fire in the night, but he
reasoned that he could never have brought them on without such
refreshment. Women are different from men. He could eat raw bacon and
hard-tack and go without coffee, when necessary, but to ask women to
do so was quite another thing.
For long hours now they traveled on, even after the moon had set, in
the darkness. It was just before the dawn, where the trail wound and
doubled on itself, that the sorrel horse was startled by a small
rolling stone that had been loosened on the trail above them.
Instantly the big man halted where they were.
"Are you brave enough to wait here a bit by your mother's horse while
I go on? That stone did not loosen itself. It may be nothing but some
little beast,--if it were a bear, the horses would have made a fuss."
He mounted the sorrel and went forward, leaving her standing on the
trail, holding the leading strap of her mother's horse, which tossed
its head and stepped about restlessly, trying to follow. She petted
and soothed the animal and talked in low tones to her mother. Then
with beating heart she listened. Two men's voices came down to
her--one, the big man's--and the other--yes, she had heard it before.
"It is 'Arry King, mother. Surely he has come down to meet us," she
said joyfully. She would have hurried on, but bethought herself she
would better wait as she had been directed. Soon the big man returned,
looking displeased and grim.
"Young chap couldn't wait. He gave me his promise, but he didn't keep
it."
"It was 'Arry King?" He made no reply, and they resumed their way as
before. "It was long to wait, and nothing to do," she pleaded,
divining his mood.
"I had good reasons, Miss. No matter. I sent him back. No need of him
here. We'll make it before morning now, and he will have the cabin
warm and hot coffee for us, if you can stand to go on for a goodish
long pull."
A goodish long pull it surely was, in the darkness, but the women bore
up with courage, and their guide led them safely. The horse Amalia
rode, being his own horse, knew the way well.
"Don't try to guide him; he'll take you quite safely," he called back
to her. "Let the reins hang." And in the dusk of early morning they
safely turned the curve where Harry King had fallen, never knowing the
danger.
Harry King, standing in the doorway of the cabin, with the firelight
bright behind him, saw them winding down the trail and hurried
forward. They were almost stupefied with fatigue. He lifted the mother
in his arms without a word and carried her into the cabin and laid her
in the bunk, which he had prepared to receive her. He greeted Amalia
with a quiet word as the big man led her in, and went out to the
horses, relieved them of their burdens, and led them away to the shed
by the spring. Soon the big man joined him, and began rubbing down the
animals.
"I will do this. You must rest," said Harry.
"I need none of your help," he said, not surlily, as the words might
sound, but colorlessly.
"I needed yours when I came here--or you saved me and brought me here,
and now whatever you wish I'll do, but for to-night you must take my
help. I'm not apologizing for what I did, because I thought it right,
but--"
"Peace, man, peace. I've lived a long time with no man to gainsay me.
I'll take what comes now and thank the Lord it's no worse. We'll leave
the cabin to the women, after I see that they have no fright about it,
and we'll sleep in the fodder. There have been worse beds."
"I have coffee on the hearth, hot, and corn dodgers--such as we used
to make in the army. I've made them often before."
"Turn the beasts free; there isn't room for them all in the shed, and
I'll go get a bite and join you soon."
So Harry King did not return to the cabin that night, much as he
desired to see Amalia again, but lay down on the fodder and tried to
sleep. His heart throbbed gladly at the thought of her safety. He had
not dared to inquire after her father. Although he had seen so little
of the big man he understood his mood, and having received such great
kindness at his hands, he was truly sorry at the invasion of his
peace. Undoubtedly he did not like to have a family, gathered from the
Lord only knew where, suddenly quartered on him for none knew how
long.
The cabin was only meant for a hermit of a man, and little suited to
women and their needs. A mixed household required more rooms. He tried
to think the matter through and to plan, but the effort brought
drowsiness, and before the big man returned he was asleep.