THE BLIND SEE
To those waiting for the threatened attack upon the power dam, the mere
torment of continued inaction became intolerable, but as to material
danger, nothing definite came. The keen-eyed young soldiers on their
beat night after night, day after day, caught no sight or sound of any
lurking enemy, and began to feel resentment at the arduous hours asked
of them. Once in a while one trooper would say to another that he saw
no sense in people getting scared at nothing out in No Man's Land. The
laborers of the camp were more or less incurious. They did their
allotted hours of labor each day, passed at night to the bunk house,
and fell into a snake-like torpor. Life seemed quiet and innocuous.
Liquor was prohibited. The régime was military. Soon after the bugle
had sounded Retreat each evening the raw little settlement became
silent, save for the unending requiem to hope which the great waters
chafing through the turbines continually moaned. It was apparently a
place of peace.
Doctor Barnes felt reasonably sure that the attack, if any, would come
through the valley at the lower dam, for that would be the only
practical entry point of the marauders marooned somewhere back in the
hills. The trail between these two dams lay almost wholly above the
rocky river bed. It would have been difficult if not impossible to
patrol the bed of the river itself, for close to the water's edge there
were places where no foothold could have been obtained even now, low as
the water was. Therefore it seemed most needful to watch the main
wagon trail along the canyon shelf.
It was sun-fall of the third day after Doctor Barnes had left Mary Gage
for her long wait in the dark. The men had finished their work about
the great dam, and were on their way to their quarters. Sim Gage,
scout, beginning his night's work and having ended his own attempt at
sleep during the daytime, was passing, hatted and belted, rifle in
hand, to the barracks, where he was to speak with the lieutenant in
charge. The two men of the color guard stood at the foot of the great
staff, dressed out of a tall mountain spruce, at whose top fluttered
the flag of this republic. The shrilling of the bugle's beautiful
salute to the flag was ringing far and near along the canyon walls.
The flag began to drop, slowly, into the arms of the waiting man who
had given oath of his life to protect it always, and to keep it still
full high advanced. It must never touch the earth at all, but remain a
creature of the air--that is the tradition of our Army and all the
Army's proud color guards.
Sim Gage stopped now, as every man in that encampment, soldier or
laborer, had been trained punctiliously to do, at the evening gun. He
stood at attention, like these others; for Sim Gage was a soldier, or
thought he was. His eyes were fixed on this strange thing, this
creature called the Flag. A strange, fierce jealousy arose in his
heart for it, a savage love, as though it were a thing that belonged to
him. His chest heaved now in the feeling that he was identified with
this guard, waiting for the colors to come to rest and shelter after
the day of duty. It stirred him in a way which he did not understand.
A simple, unintelligent man, of no great shrewdness, though free of any
maudlin sentiment, he stood fast in the mid-street and saluted the
flag, not because he was obliged to do so, but because he passionately
craved to do so.
He turned to meet Annie Squires, who was hurrying away from her own
quarters. She held in her hand a letter which she waved at him as she
approach.
"Look-it here!" she exclaimed. "Look what I found. Where's the Doc?
I want to see him right away."
"He's like enough down at the lower dam by now," said Sim.
"Well, he'd ought to see this."
"What is it?" asked Sim, looking at it questioningly. "Who's it to?"
"Who's it to?" said Annie Squires. "Why, it's to Charlie Dorenwald,
that's who it's to!"
"What? That feller that was up there--one you said you knew before you
come out here?"
"Yes. But how does this Waldhorn chump in there know anything about
Charlie Dorenwald? That's what I want to know."
"What chump? Mr. Waldhorn?"
"I found this in his desk. Well, I wasn't rummaging in his desk, but I
had to slick things up, and saw it. I only run on it by accident."
"What's in it?" said Sim Gage.
"Well, now," said Annie, naïvely, "I only just steamed it a little. It
rolled open easy with a pen-holder."
"Huh. What you find in it?"
"Why, nothing but nonsense, that's what I found. Listen here. 'Price
wheat next year two-nineteen sharp signal general satisfaction.' Now,
what does that mean? That's foolishness. That man's a nut! I bet he
gets alone up in here and smokes hop, that's what he does, all by
himself. No one but a dope fiend would pull stuff like that.
"But still," she added, a finger at chin, "what bothers me is, how does
Charlie know Waldhorn? Unless----"
"Unless what?" asked Sim Gage, his brows suddenly contracting.
"Unless they're both in on this deal! What do you suppose the Doc
thinks? What makes him keep this Waldhorn close as he does? Is he a
prisoner?"
"No, I reckon not. We all just got orders to shoot him if he tries to
get away. I think Doc's holding him until he gets word in from
outside. Things seems to me to move mighty slow."
"Well, this letter's addressed to Charlie Dorenwald, and anything
that's got Charlie Dorenwald's name on it is crooked, and you can
gamble on that. Can't you find the Doc?"
As it happened, Doctor Barnes had not yet left his quarters for his
nightly trip to the lower canyon. He had been trying to sleep. He
rose now, full-clad and all awake, when he caught sight of Sim Gage's
face at his door.
"What's up?" he said.
"This here," said Sim, "is a letter that Annie brung me out of the
house where them two is living. She says she found it in there. We
can't make nothing out of it. Seems like this Waldhorn here had
something to say to Charlie Dorenwald. Annie says it's the same
Dorenwald that was up above, at the ranch, the one Wid didn't get.
Well, how come him and Waldhorn to know each other, that's what I want
to know. So does Annie."
"What I want to know, too!" said Doctor Barnes, reaching out his hand.
"Annie says it's plumb nutty, the stuff in it," commented Sim. The
other looked at him quizzically.
"She read it then?"
He read it now, himself, and stood stiff and straight at reading.
"This is a cypher--code stuff! They know what it means, and we don't.
'Two-nineteen sharp'--I wonder what that means! This is the nineteenth
day of the month, isn't it? 'Signal general satisfaction'--Lord! I'd
give anything for a good night's sleep. Gage, go on over and tell all
the men to keep full dressed, and with equipment handy all night long.
I don't have any clear guess what this is all about, but we can't take
any chances."
"Wid, he thinks them fellers ain't coming down here a-tall," said Sim
confidentially.
"He doesn't know anything more about it than I do or you do," said
Doctor Barnes somewhat testily. "You go and tell Annie to shut that
desk up, and see that she keeps it shut. I'm coming over to seal it
up."
Annie Squires meantime had hastened back to discuss these matters with
her patient in the hospital room. It only added more to the nervous
strain that already tormented Mary Gage.
"Annie, I'm scared!" she whispered. "Oh! if I could only take care of
myself. Tell me, Annie--I'll get well, won't I?"
"Sure thing, Kid--it's a cinch."
"Where is he?" Mary demanded after some hesitation.
"Who? Him?" Annie employed her usual fashion of indicating the
identity of Sim Gage.
"No, I mean Doctor Barnes."
"He'll be going down below pretty soon. He don't know anything more
than I do about what that fool stuff in the letter means."
"But say," she added after a time, "I been kind of looking around in
desks and places, you know--I have to red things up--and I run across
another thing, some more writing."
"You mustn't do these things, Annie! It may be private."
"Oh, no, it ain't. It's only some writing copied from a magazine, like
enough. It was on one of the desks in this house--just in there."
"Copied?--What is it?"
"I don't know. Poetry stuff--sounds mushy. I didn't know men would do
things like copying out poetry from magazines. Never heard of Mr.
Symonds--did you?"
"How can I tell, Annie?"
"I'll read it for you if you'll let me. It's dark, in here--I'll just
go outside the door and read it through the crack at you, so's the
light won't hurt you anyways."
And so, faintly, as from a detached intelligence, there came into Mary
Gage's darkened room, her darkened life, some words well-written,
ill-read, which it seemed to her she might have dreamed:
"As a perfume doth remain
In the folds where it hath lain,
So the thought of you, remaining
Deeply folded in my brain,
Will not leave me; all things leave me:
You remain.
"Other thoughts may come and go,
Other moments I may know
That shall waft me, in their going,
As a breath blown to and fro.
Fragrant memories; fragrant memories
Come and go.
"Only thoughts of you remain
In my heart where they have lain,
Perfumed thoughts of you, remaining,
A hid sweetness, in my brain.
Others leave me; all things leave me:
You remain."
"Read them over again!" said Mary Gage, sitting upon her couch. "Read
them again, Annie! I want to learn it all by heart."
And Annie, patient as ever, read the words over to her. The keen
senses of Mary Gage recorded them.
"I can say them now!" said she, as much to herself as to her friend.
And she did say them, over and over again.
"Annie," she cried, as she sat up suddenly. "I can't stand it any
more! I can see! I can see!"
She was tearing at the bandages about her head when Annie entered and
put down her hands, terrified at this disobedience of orders.
"Annie, I _know_ I can see! It was light--at the door there! I can
see. I can _see_!" She began to weep, trembling.
"Hush!" said Annie, frightened. "It ain't possible! It can't be true!
_What_ did you see?"
"Nothing!" said Mary Gage, half sobbing. "Just the light. Don't tell
him. Put back the bandage. But, oh, Annie, Annie, I can _see_!"
"You're talking foolish, Sis," said Annie, pinning the bandages all the
tighter about the piled brown hair of Mary Gage's head.
"But say now," she added after that was done, "if I was a girl and a
fellow felt that way about me--couldn't remember nobody but me that
way--why, me for him! Mushy--but times comes when a girl falls strong
for the mushy, huh?
"Now you lay down again and cover up your eyes and rest, or you'll
never be seeing things again, sure enough. I ain't going to read no
more of that strong-arm writing at all."
Mary Gage heard the door close, heard the footsteps of her friend
passing down the little hall. She was alone again. Her heart was
throbbing high.
What she first had seen was the soul of a man; a man's confession; his
recessional as well. Now she knew that he was indeed going away from
her life forever. Which had been more cruel, blindness or vision?