SUNNYSIDES
Marion was not alone in her misery; but knowledge of this, had it by
any chance come to her, would not have eased her heart, though it
might indeed have hardened it a little against more suffering to
come.
Toward bedtime of the eighth day after that encounter at the glade of
the columbines, Philip Haig sat stiffly silent in his armchair,
staring into the fire. His brow was dark with discontent, his cheeks
had paled with the slow ebbing of the tide of passion that had swept
over him. It had begun to rise, though he was not then aware of it, or
barely aware of it, the day Marion had halted him in the road below
his ranch house; it had reached its flood as he drove away from her
and left the bouquet of columbines in her limp hands.
Who was this girl? And why had she come to torture him? To him she now
appeared as the incarnation of his tragedy. In her the Past, from
which he had fled to the far corners of the earth, hiding his trail in
seas and deserts and in stagnant backwaters of humanity, had tracked
him down at last. And all the grief and bitterness and hatred that he
had beaten down, or thought he had beaten down, had returned to rend
and tear him.
Two beings he had loved, and to them he had given, to each in a
different way, all his heart and soul and mind: his father and--that
other. She had come to him at his most susceptible age, when, devoted
only to art, he knew nothing of the world--a green boy, the wise ones
had called him. She had come to him with all the surprise and wonder
of a revelation, a coronation, a fulfillment, a golden epiphany. He
had attributed to her such spiritual perfections as should have
gone with her beauty and her grace; worshipped her for all that she
was not and all that he was himself. And she had deceived him,
exploited him, plundered him,--and laughed at him when by chance, one
tragic, intolerable night, he found her out. And the next morning,
as if his cup were not already full, he had received a cablegram,
in his attic studio in Paris, telling him that his father had killed
himself in a moment of despair over financial difficulties. So he
had killed his father with his excessive demands for money to
squander on 'Tonite. To be sure, he did not know--had had no hint
from home--had never guessed that his father was in trouble.
Nevertheless he had killed him--rather, she had killed him. What a
fool he had been! Never such another fool since God placed man and
woman together in one world. Cursing himself and her, and in her
cursing all her sex, he fled--he knew not where. So stunned and
dazed he was that he never really came to himself, found himself,
until one day he awoke in Hong Kong.
That was the beginning of the new life, if such it might be called. He
became a wanderer, an adventurer, seeking always new faces, new
places, new experiences, trying always to forget, hoping always for a
blessed knock on the head in some mad undertaking, for a thin knife in
the back in some wild adventure. But in all his wanderings the one
kind of adventure that he refused, the one excitement that he
steadfastly shunned, was the one that, because of his very aloofness,
and of something that women ever saw in his eyes, was offered to him
the most freely, in every land beneath the sun.
Slim Jim entered, bringing whisky and hot water. Haig turned his head
to look at him. Jim never changed, whatever his environment; he was
always the Orient, the inscrutable East. And now, slipping in so
stealthily, he seemed to bring with him an atmosphere, an odor, a
call, and Haig, still looking at Jim, but scarcely seeing him, began
to murmur lines that intoxicated him:
"I know not where the white road runs, nor what the blue hills are,
But man can have the sun for friend, and for his guide a star;
And there's no end of voyaging when once the voice is heard,
For the river calls and the road calls, and--"
He stopped and sat suddenly erect.
"Jim!" he cried. "Do you remember the night we took old Kwang's girl
away from the river rats in Tien-Tsin?"
"Vellee well," answered the Chinaman.
His face was expressionless; he concealed the joy that this mood of
his master aroused in his thin breast. Jim did not like the Park, and
only the recollection of one day when he had stood tied to a capstan
on a pirate junk, with a dozen fiends around him trying to make him
tell something he did not know, and Haig had suddenly descended upon
them like the foreign devil he was,--well, Jim took his gods where he
found them, and from that day Haig had never been able to rid himself
of this idolater.
"Tien-Tsin! Tien-Tsin!" Haig repeated, lingering covetously on the
words. "But that was a fight, eh!"
"No likee!" replied Jim.
"No likee!" cried Haig. "Why, you hypocritical young ruffian, you!
That was one of the happiest nights of your life. You're always trying
to make people think you're asleep, or timid. I can see, right now,
that long knife of yours slip under my arm, and catch the big fellow
in the stomach. He just coughed once, and crumpled up at my feet. In
the nick of time, too, Jim, and I let the next one have it. The rest
of them took to their heels, and you with your long pigsticker after
them. No likee! Jim, you're a moon-faced old liar, and a disgrace to
your ten thousand and seven ancestors."
Jim's smile was perfectly noncommittal. He was too wily to appear
eager. Besides, he did not really like fighting, which made all the
more trouble for somebody when he had to fight. But he was heartily
sick of this cold and uneventful life in the Park. Better a thousand
times the foolish adventures, the unnecessary battles, the restless
wanderings of other days!
"That was a night!" said Haig, flinging himself back in his chair to
gaze dreamily into the flames, while Jim, like a blue ghost, stole
noiselessly away. And there, in the glow of the dying fire, bright
and alluring visions successively took shape: A red-and-yellow temple
on a hill, to which a thousand steps led up from a lake the color of a
blue heron's breast; a junk with sails of purple creeping out of a
morning mist as yellow as saffron; an island with a still lagoon in
its center, and coconut palms alive with screaming parrots of every
gorgeous hue; a sandy beach where jabbering natives dragged the
flotsam of a wrecked steamer out of the breakers; a village on a high
plateau, where a drum throbbed incessantly, and naked Indian children
peered out from behind the huts; a skirmish line in khaki crawling up
to the brow of a shell-swept hill; a dog-team yelping under the long
lash of a half-breed Aleut, on a frozen river that sparkled in the
sun; a sweating jungle where two bright spots glowed balefully in the
gloom.
"God!" groaned Haig, as he sat erect at last, and reached for the
glass, now cold. He tasted it, and set it back with a wry face.
"Damn Thursby!" he muttered. "Does he think I'm going to stay here
forever, like a bear in a pit?"
He woke the next morning in an ugly humor, having slept little, and
then only to dream such dreams as fed his discontent. He berated Jim
because the biscuits were cold (which was not Jim's fault), and
because the coffee was hot (which was according to his orders).
Trivial annoyances, most of them of his own making or imagining,
multiplied on all sides, fomenting his irritability until, by the time
he strode out of the cottage, his temper was at white heat. What might
have happened to the patient, devoted men about the stable and
corrals is not difficult of conjecture, but they were saved by
Sunnysides. Almost the first object that caught Haig's eye was the
yellow outlaw gleaming in the morning sunlight.
"Ah!" he exclaimed.
His inner turmoil of these last few days had banished all thought of
the stallion of the San Luis. But now, his eyes gleamed as he
quickened his steps toward the stable.
Farrish and Pete were at work among the stalls; Bill stood guard over
Sunnysides; and the fourth man, Curly, was mending a saddle in the
harness-room.
"Farrish!" Haig called out, striding into the stable. "We'll tackle
the yellow fellow this morning."
Farrish and Pete turned, and looked at him curiously.
"All right!" answered Farrish; and then added doubtfully: "Now?"
"Yes. At once."
Farrish, in a manner that showed a certain reluctance, put up the
currycomb with which he had been grooming the sorrels, and started
toward the rear door. But Pete stood still.
"You too, Pete!" said Haig, impatiently.
"I think you better not--to-day," answered the Indian, in his slow
way.
"Why?" snapped Haig.
Pete had seen the expression on Haig's face, and did not like it. But
he hesitated to utter what was in his mind.
"Why?" repeated Haig.
"I think you better wait," was all that Pete could say.
"Hell!" cried Haig. "Get your lariat! And be quick about it!"
He had read Pete's thought; his ill-humor had evidently shown itself
in his face; but the caution only whetted his purpose. Throwing off
his coat as he went, he passed through the rear door of the barn, and
climbed into the outlaw's corral, followed by Farrish, Curly, and
Pete.
Sunnysides received them with suspicion. His head was high, his
nostrils were dilated, his tail swished slowly, like a tiger's. One
forefoot was raised a little, resting on the toe, and the muscles of
his shoulders quivered under the glossy hide. He had fully recovered
from the effects of his rough treatment on the road, and his skin
shone with a satin-like luster in the morning sun.
There was a moment's pause, while Haig and the others looked at the
horse, and he at them.
"Now then, Farrish! Pete!" commanded Haig.
And the battle began. Farrish and Pete turn by turn flung their
lariats at the horse's head and feet, but time after time he dodged,
and ducked, and capered away from the whirling noose, or wriggled out
of the coil as it tightened around him.
"He's greased lightning!" ejaculated Bill, from his perch on the
fence.
"He's hell, that's what he is!" retorted Curly, from a corner of the
corral.
Farrish and Pete went silently on with their work. They knew that
eventually, dance and squirm as he might, the horse would be caught in
one or the other of the relentless loops. And so it proved. While
Sunnysides was side-stepping a throw by Farrish, Pete's rope slipped
snakily over his head, and tightened around the arched neck. With an
artful lunge toward the Indian, and a lowering of his head, the horse
struggled to throw off the coil. But it held.
Then followed a mad performance. The horse was over all the corral at
once, it seemed: rearing, plunging, leaping, tossing his head,
crashing into the fence with such fury that it barely stood up under
his onslaughts. Bill was knocked off the fence backward on to his
head; Curly, crowded into his corner, barely avoided a vicious kick;
and Haig's temper was not improved by the narrow escape he had from
being crushed against a post.
"Bill!" he yelled. "Get a rope!"
The man ran into the barn, returned with a lariat, and joined the
fray. Plainly chagrined, though unhurt by his fall, Bill took long
chances to even up the score; and under the very hoofs of the
infuriated animal, he made a throw that brought Sunnysides sprawling
on the ground, his forefeet caught in Bill's noose. It was the work of
a few seconds then for Farrish to secure the hind feet also; and the
horse lay prostrate, panting and half-choked, but defiant still.
Giving him no time to recover, and no more breath than he actually
required, Haig and Curly forced the bit of a bridle into the outlaw's
foaming mouth. Then the noose on his hind feet was cautiously removed,
one forefoot was freed, and the horse was allowed to rise. The next
proceeding appeared to be resented by Sunnysides even more than what
he had already been subjected to. While Farrish and Pete held his
head, Haig approached him cautiously with a saddle, and dropped it on
his back. There was a lightning-like motion, and the saddle was tossed
a dozen feet away, while the two men at the horse's head were jerked
almost off their feet. Again and again the saddle was laid on his
back, to remain there barely an instant. But at the fifth attempt, to
the astonishment of all, Sunnysides stood still, as if, being an
equine Napoleon, he had changed his plan of battle in the face of the
enemy. Without further resistance, he permitted the saddle to be
adjusted and cinched, permitted the men to lead him out of the corral
into the larger one adjoining it, and permitted Haig to mount him and
take the bridle reins in his hand.
"I'll be damned!" said Curly. "You'd think--"
"Shut up!" cried Farrish. "That's a bluff."
"Now then!" ordered Haig, pointing to the rope that still held one
forefoot.
The rope was removed.
"The other!"
Pete and Farrish slipped off the lariat that remained noosed around
the outlaw's neck, and stepped back.
For some seconds there was no sound, no motion, no sign of any design
on the part of Sunnysides. Then, with the swiftness and surprise of a
flash of powder in the dark, a shocking thing occurred. Without a
preliminary movement, either of lunging or bucking or leaping to one
side, or any of the expected tactics, Sunnysides, with incredible
suddenness, reared straight up into the air, threw himself over, and
fell on his back, pinning Haig to the ground beneath him.
Before any of the men could move, the horse rolled over sprawling,
scrambled to his feet, and charged at the fence. There was a crash
and the sound of splintering wood. The top plank fell, broken in two
jagged pieces, and the horse's forefeet were over the second plank.
But before he could leap again, Curley had caught the bridle rein, and
swung the outlaw's head around, holding him there until Bill had
leaned over the broken fence and roped the forelegs once more. After a
moment of furious struggle, Sunnysides appeared to realize that it was
useless; and thus the two men held him, with his forefeet still
hanging outside the fence, while they turned their eyes toward Haig.
Farrish and the Indian knelt at his side. He lay quite still,
unconscious, and for a moment they thought him dead. Pete put his head
down on Haig's breast, and listened. Then he rose to his feet.
"Whisky!" he muttered, and ran toward the stable.
In two minutes he was back, bearing a flask, which he uncorked as he
ran. Forcing the mouth of it between Haig's lips, he let the scorching
liquor trickle down the throat until the flask was half emptied. Then
he poured some of the whisky in the palm of his hand, and rubbed it on
Haig's face and bared breast and wrists, while Farrish, in his turn,
ran to the stable and brought a lap robe, which he folded and placed
under Haig's head.
They waited helplessly, without speech. At the fence, Bill and Curley
clung to their ropes. Sunnysides, his forefeet still projecting over
the plank, and the saddle hanging lopsided from his back, had his head
drawn back so far that he could see the group in the middle of the
corral. His eyes were bloodshot, foam dripped from his mouth, the
breath came whistling through his half-shut windpipe.
But in the cottonwoods the birds sang undisturbed, and the pines far
up the hill droned their old tune unchanged. From the ranch house came
the rattle of tin pans, and the voice of the cook singing a song of
the round-up.
After a long time, Haig stirred. A moan came with the first deep
breath; his eyes opened, staring up at the two faces above him; his
lips moved, but at first no sound came from them. Pete leaned closer,
and listened.
"Did--he--get--away?" came in a whisper.
"No," answered Pete. "He caught."
A smile flickered on Haig's lips, and went out; and at the same time a
tiny trickle of blood oozed out, and ran down through the dust on the
white cheek. Pete and Farrish looked at each other; and when they
turned to Haig again, his eyes were closed, and the pallor of his face
had deepened to a bluish, ashen hue.
Pete bent quickly to put his ear again to Haig's breast.