PAPA WOLF
October came in with a decided diminution of heat and with an accented
brilliancy in sky and sand. The work of getting the remainder of the
twenty-five acres into alfalfa went on rapidly. And in spite of the
money uncertainty, there was the lift of hopefulness and happiness in
the atmosphere of the ranch.
The alfalfa grew amazingly. One morning Elsa electrified the ranch by
announcing that the second field now in blossom was full of wild bees.
No one believed her. Every one decamped at once to the field. It was
quite true. Far and wide swept the burning barrens of the desert. But
close about corral and pumping plant crowded the unbelievable verdure of
alfalfa with the fringed green lines of cottonwoods on its borders
silhouetted against the sullen yellow sand. And wild bees, drunk with
rapturous surprise, buzzed thick in the heavy blossoms. Whence they came
no one could guess. Dick was willing to wager that there was nothing
else within a hundred miles on which a bee might feed.
It was early morning. Roger and Charley allowed the others to drift back
to their various occupations while they remained to watch the field.
Seated side by side on a rock heap, Roger's arm around Charley's
shoulders, they listened to the humming of the bees.
"If you weren't here, it would make me homesick," said Roger. "I can
shut my eyes and see the old Preble farm and my mother in her phlox bed,
calling to me to drive the bees away. I wonder if a fellow ever gets
over his heartache for his mother."
"Not the right kind of a fellow for the right kind of a mother," replied
Charley, lifting Roger's hand against her cheek. "The price we pay for
any kind of love is pain."
"I hope when yours and my time comes to go we can go together," said
Roger, "and that we won't have to start until our work is done. Queer
how life's values shift. When I came down here, the thing I wanted most
in life was to make a success of heat engineering. I thought it was
impossible for me to reach an equal degree of desire about anything
else. And now, while I want just as much as ever to go on with my
profession, successfully, I want a thousand times more to be your
husband and to be the right kind of a husband. I never have pipe-dreamed
much about marriage, though I've done my share of flirting in my day.
But for the first time in my life I realize that Bobby Burns knew what
human life is in its innermost essence when he said:
"'To make a happy fireside clime for wean and wife,
That's the true purpose and sublime, of human life!'"
Charley did not speak but she turned and looked into Roger's blue eyes
with her own bespeaking a depth of feeling that was beyond words. Roger,
looking at the splendid brow above the brown eyes, kissed it reverently
and then gazing at the beautiful curving mouth, he crushed his lips to
Charley's. Then again they sat watching the bees in the alfalfa.
Charley noted before Roger the sound of hoof beats and looking round,
beheld Hackett's two seated buckboard crawling slowly toward them.
"Who on earth now!" exclaimed Roger. "It can't be--yes, by Jove it is
Dean Erskine--and--and Mamma and Papa Wolf! Oh, Elsa and Dick are going
to have real trouble now!"
They hurried round to the corral, and shouted to the others so that the
whole ranch was present to welcome the travelers. Ernest was first,
lifting his mother bodily to the ground and kissing her a dozen times
before Elsa had a chance.
"Guess I can pull off a surprise party when I try!" he shouted. "Here,
Papa, this is Charley. Don't you remember the little roly-poly who used
to play in the swimming pool? And Dick--who tried to boss us."
"Come up to the house! I know you're half dead," said Charley, leading
the way as she spoke.
"I don't want to go into any house till I've seen the Plant," exclaimed
Dean Erskine, wiping the sand from his face.
"Not a Plant for me, but coffee and some shade and a little breeze,
maybe," cried Papa Wolf.
"Better have some breakfast first, Dean," suggested Roger. "There's a
long story goes with seeing the plant."
"There's a long story goes with a number of things here I would
suspect," grunted Papa Wolf, mounting the steps to the porch.
"Now, Papa, don't try to talk until you've eaten," called Mamma
anxiously, from Ernest's arm. "Oh, but children, this is very pleasant,"
as the party entered the living room. "How do you keep it so cool and
how have you endured this dreadful heat?"
"Heat!" laughed Elsa, "why, Mamma, this is our cool fall weather we're
having now. You should have been here in the good old summer time."
"God forbid, if it was warmer than this yet. Papa, take off your coat,
and you too, Dean." Mamma lifted her dusty little black hat from a very
flushed forehead. "These boys look cool in their flannel shirts and you
so hot in your coats. And see what a nice fine place and a nice clock
and a--"
"Hold, Mamma! Hold! You needn't talk every minute," interrupted Papa
Wolf. "I promised to say nothing until we all have eaten. So now, enjoy
your breakfast."
But Papa and probably the Dean were the only persons who really enjoyed
the meal. Elsa was plainly rattled and Dick whose worn face recently had
looked much less haggard had settled again into lines of suffering.
Except in looking after the guests' comfort, he had nothing to say.
Charley and Roger were apprehensive as to the outcome of what was
plainly to be a family row. Ernest, who talked a great deal, seemed
excited and uneasy.
When the coffee pot had been emptied and pipes and cigars lighted, Dean
Erskine rose. He was small and thin and his Van Dyke beard was nearly
white but he still gave the impression of tremendous nervous energy.
"Now, I'm ready for the Plant, Roger," he said energetically.
"No! No! The Plant can wait!" protested Papa. "You know all about why we
have come, Dean, and I want you to stay and lend your good sense to the
interview."
"But my dear Wolf, it will be very unpleasant for me," exclaimed the
Dean.
"And for me!" added Roger.
"For you, Roger! Why you're the cause of all our troubles and the Dean
has backed you in all! Come now, don't be a coward. See it through! I
must take my two children back with me. That is settled."
"Is that what brought you down here, Papa?" inquired Elsa.
"Ernest's letter brought me down here. It's the only letter he has
written me since he left my roof. But it was most important."
"You see, it was this way," Ernest cleared his throat, nervously, but
his blue eyes were steady. "You told me not to communicate with you, but
I've written regularly to Mother. So, of course, it amounted to the same
thing. Naturally, I've tried not to write you about our worries. But
finally, I made up my mind, Papa, that you needed to learn one or two
things that I had learned down here. I knew there was no use in my
asking you to come, so I merely wrote you of Elsa's engagement."
Ernest turned to his sister and Dick, who sat side by side on the
living-room cot.
"I'm not going to apologize to you two. Mamma and Papa had to know
sometime or other. And I wanted Papa down here."
"You should have let me write, Ernest. I might have given myself a fair
show, I think." Dick's voice was bitter.
"I did you no harm in the long run, Dick, old man," said Ernest,
eagerly. "Just bear with me for a while."
"Ernie, you always were an old butter-in," cried Elsa angrily. "As if I
weren't perfectly capable of managing my own affairs. Now you've ruined
everything. Papa, I am going to marry Dick. Mamma, you will love him."
"Wait, Elsa, wait," exclaimed Ernest.
But Papa could not wait. "Marry a Preble!" he roared. "Marry a drunkard,
the son of a drunkard! Oh, don't try to hush me, Mamma! You know you're
just as anxious about the matter as I am. I had the Dean look Dick
Preble up. His record in college was that of a drunken rounder. His
father drank the old farm up, you remember that, Roger."
"I remember folks said so, but all I know and all I want to know about
Dick is what he is now. He's a new man and a mighty fine one."
"Impossible! His father--"
Dick jumped to his feet, but Charley spoke first. "Leave our father
absolutely out of this, Mr. Wolf, if you please. He's not here to defend
himself. Dick is."
"Impossible!" roared Papa Wolf.
Charley crossed the room swiftly and standing in all the dignity of her
good height and her quiet beauty, she looked down on Papa Wolf.
"I am telling you," she did not raise her voice, "not to include my
father or my mother in this conversation. My brother and I stand on our
own reputations and no one else's."
Papa Wolf swallowed two or three times. "But inheritance," he said
feebly.
"Nobody inherits the drink habit," returned Charley, disdainfully. "You
can inherit a weak will but not a habit. Dick drank because he thought
he was going to die and he went the pace, thinking like other fool men
that he was living life to the full, in that way. By the time he had
been cured of his illness, he had the drink appetite. But he's cured of
that now."
"How do you know?" asked Papa Wolf, belligerently.
"Because I know," replied Charley, shortly, returning to her chair,
while Dick and Elsa stared at her, astonishment and gratitude both
struggling in their faces.
"Well, do I want my daughter to marry a man who's been a bum, eh? Do you
think I, Karl Wolf--"
"Hold on, Mr. Wolf," interrupted Dick. "I never was a bum. Drink was my
failing. I've always, with Charley's help, paid my own way. I have a
real business down here now. Elsa loves the desert life and she loves
me. I can take care of her and make her happy, I know."
"You know, huh! Yet you remember Elsa's home. All its luxury?"
"Yes, I remember Elsa's home and I remember that Elsa and her mother
were high class, unpaid servants in that home."
Papa Wolf jumped to his feet. Ernest laid a hand on his arm.
"Wait now, Papa. You've got the top layer off your chest. Now I'm going
to tell you the inside story of what has happened in this desert in the
seven or eight months. Light your pipe, Papa. It's going to be a long
story."
"Pipe! Pipe! I will not light my pipe!"
"Why not? Nobody's married yet. You've got days and weeks if you wish to
argue about that and you'll be liking Dick better all the time you're
arguing. Now Elsa's marriage isn't the important matter you've to decide
down here, at all. Light your pipe. Papa dear! You always did give me
good advice, except about coming down here. Here, take a fresh box of
matches."
Papa Wolf, established once more, Ernest took a turn or two up and down
the room, coming finally to a stop before the empty fire place. Roger,
looking at his chum closely, realized suddenly that Ernest had aged in
the past few months. There were lines around his eyes and his lips.
Ernest looked from his father to his mother with a little smile.
"Roger and I, in spite of our thirty years, were unsophisticated kids
when we came into this country. I think we're grown up now. I think
we're pretty certain to go a straight and decent trail to the end. But
that I came mighty near to going a forbidden trail as Roger calls it, is
your fault, Papa--and yours, Dean Erskine."
He paused and although the Dean and Ernest's father looked at each other
in amazement, neither interrupted and the younger man went on.
"I never saw death until I came down here--I never knew love. I never
knew real work. But here I have learned all three. We have lived here
with an intensity as great as the heat. The--the primal passions have
shaken us, Papa--and burned us clean--You know some creeds speak of
Christ's hours between the Last Supper and His death as the passion of
the cross. Sometimes I feel as if I could call my months down here my
passion of the desert."
Again Ernest paused, and those who had lived with him through these
months of passion--passion of joy, of fear, of sorrow, of love, of
personal grief and of world pain, listened with astonishment that
jovial, easy-going Ernest should have felt as deeply as they.
"Mrs. von Minden died first. Roger and Dick found her dead up in a
remote canyon. She had thirsted to death. I wrote Elsa of her but not of
her death. That would have set you to worrying about me, Muetterchen. She
had the little black box with her that I wrote Elsa she had demanded
from her husband. Whether she found in it what she wanted no one will
ever know. But her death ended one of those strange, feverish life
dramas that this trackless desert is always turning up. Next they found
Von Minden, alone except for Peter. (You must meet Peter, Papa.) He
probably died of heart failure. We don't know how she got the box away
from him. Maybe she poisoned him. And next Felicia,--Felicia was exactly
as Charley was, Mamma, when she used to come to play with us in the
pool."
Ernest looked at Charley--"I've got to talk about her, Charley, to make
them understand."
Charley moistened her lips, but nodded and Dick put his hand over his
eyes.
"She was like Charley too in that she was the kind of a girl that decent
men instinctively love--not with one of these headlong, unreasoning
loves, you understand. But with the kind of a deep-seated adoration for
beauty and goodness and brain that gets a man where he lives and never
leaves him. That's the way I got to caring for Charley and that's the
way, in embryo, we all loved Felicia.
"In the meantime, you understand we were all working like the very devil
to get the plant up and the alfalfa in. I wrote home of that. How
difficult the work here in the desert was is beyond description. And,
what made it more difficult, after the Smithsonian turned Roger down, he
got to working against time, and though he never said much, he gave an
atmosphere of desperate hurry and worry to the camp, that simply got us
all strung up to the breaking point. At intervals, too, he lost that
famous temper of his. These tempers upset Felicia terribly."
Roger filled his pipe with fingers that trembled a little. But Ernest
was staring out the door now, with eyes that saw nothing.
"Dick varied the monotony two or three times by getting drunk. He is an
ugly whelp when he's drunk. Once he knocked Charley down and Felicia saw
it and Roger and he mixed up over it and Elsa finally straightened it
out, and we let him out of Coventry. But the next time he got drunk,
Felicia, in her fright, ran away into the desert and was killed by a
rattler. Charley and Roger found her. It nearly killed us all. But it
cured Dick of drinking--that's one reason why I'm telling you. Don't
cry, Muetterchen."
"But you have Charley, Ernie! You have Charley!" sobbed his mother.
"No, I haven't Charley. Roger has Charley. None of us deserved her, but
Roger is nearer fit than the rest."
"Don't, Ernest!" pleaded Charley.
"I must, Charley. You'll see in a few moments what I'm getting at. Well,
Papa, in the meantime, there was no money and it looked as if there
would be no food. Roger's plant didn't work out as we'd planned. I wrote
home the difficulties even of hanging a door. You can picture Roger
trying to build a new engine out of wire and a string he had tramped ten
miles into the ranges to find and steal. The alfalfa was dying for lack
of water and there was no adequate pumping system even if we'd had
adequate water.
"It was at this point that I decided to go to Washington, Papa, and try
the Smithsonian. You would have been the one, naturally, for me to turn
to, but even if I'd had the inclination, which I hadn't, Roger
absolutely wouldn't stand for the suggestion. So I went to Washington,
all sort of strung up, you understand, and in bad mental trim because
of--of everything. And in Washington I got a good swift kick. So I went
to New York and spent the rest of Elsa's good money on Broadway. It
didn't take me very far but when I went broke, I looked up your friend
Werner. This is the point where you come in too, Dean Erskine.
"Now I had been brought up at home, naturally, to worship all things
German. I liked to think of myself not as an American but as a German.
At school, this home influence should have been counteracted if America
expects to make real citizens. But it wasn't. The High School taught us
German and no other modern language. In college, all things mental
centered on the German idea in the majority of the departments. And
your department was the worst of all, Dean. You are a Germanophile
yourself and you taught your students to be.
"So behold me, calling on Werner and finding that Werner among other
activities has been the head of an organized effort on the part of the
German government for twenty years to Germanize America--through
schools, churches, singing societies--oh, countless ways. And he was
deeply worried about our British sympathies. And he wanted my influence
in the college and elsewhere and he wanted Roger's big mechanical brain
for Germany and so he offered me fifty thousand dollars for the Sun
Plant and I took it."
"Fine! Wonderful!" exclaimed Papa Wolf.
"So I thought," said Ernest dryly, "but Roger and the others here
thought differently. In fact when Roger found out about Werner, he tried
to kill me, and then went away into the mountains with Peter for three
days."
"Oh, Ernie! Oh, Roger!" moaned Mamma Wolf.
Papa Wolf's lips tightened. "But why, Roger?" he demanded.
"Wait, Roger! I'm telling the story. Rog tried to kill me for selling
out secretly the idea that was bone of his bone. He tried to kill me
because I sold it to a government that has gone through Belgium like a
Hunnish horde, and because I claimed to admire it for that. Well, he
didn't kill me and I was very sore and decided to go to Germany to live.
Then Werner came down to settle details with Roger, and Roger told him
what was in the black box and made him give back the contract."
"The black box! What black box?" asked Dean Erskine.
"The Von Mindens' black box. When I brought back word that Werner wanted
it, Roger and Charley read the contents. It developed that Von Minden
was one of a group working for the German government with the idea of
making Arizona and New Mexico into German colonies. Gustav--you remember
my writing of Gustav--was Werner's spy, keeping Werner informed of our
every move and what he could about Von Minden."
"I don't believe a word of it! Not a word! It's all British influence,"
exclaimed Papa Wolf stoutly.
"You'll have to believe it, because it's true," returned Ernest. "Roger
was angry and threw Werner and Gustav out of the camp and made me choose
between him and Werner. I chose Roger, because the time had come in my
life when I'd got to make a tremendous decision. It's one you've got to
make, Papa, and so has the Dean. I wanted you to make it my way. That's
why I got you down here to see the things that I'd been up against."
"You don't intend to ask us to break our neutrality, surely, Ernest,"
protested Dean Erskine.
"I'll develop your job in just a moment, Dean. Papa, what I want is that
you repudiate Werner and all his works, and undertake to finance Roger's
project."
"My heavens, Ern!" cried Roger.
"Tut! Tut! Rog--you be quiet. Dean, your job is to sell the Plant to my
father, after you've both made your decision."
"I cannot understand your talking to me in this manner, Ernest,"
shouted Papa Wolf, pounding on the table till the belated breakfast
dishes rattled.
"I'll explain," said Ernest, imperturbably. "There's love of human
beings. There's love of work. There's love of country. They make up a
man's life. I had the first two and I thought that they were enough. But
lately, I've discovered differently and I think a good many people in
this country are finding out the same thing. I never gave the matter any
thought until the Werner episode. Then I began to examine this thing
called patriotism and I found that it was the very wellspring of a man's
usefulness as a citizen. Without it family pride is a travesty. Without
it, the impulse to build up sane and humane and lasting governments is
lacking. Without it, a man may be ever so learned, ever so rich, yet he
lacks any real place in community life. Patriotism is to a man's
community life what religion is to his moral life.
"Now I intend to lead a full, normal man's life. I want to love a
country, and I couldn't see, when I got down to brass tacks, why that
country should be Germany. This is the land that bred me and fed me.
Actually I'm a physical part of the soil of America. What do I care how
cultured Germany may or may not be? Here in America are the hills and
valleys, the rivers and mountains that I know and care for. Here is the
kind of government I like. Here is the place of my profession. I
wouldn't marry a German fraeulein for anything. A slangy, athletic,
bossy, saucy, well-educated American girl for mine! All the people that
I love are here in America. You folks and all the relatives are here.
Roger is here, Charley is here and up there on an American mountainside
lies little Felicia. Papa, I am an American, not a German."
Again there was full silence in the room. Then Dean Erskine cleared his
throat. "Ernest, I want to thank you very much. I, too, am an American."
Papa Wolf blew his nose and walked slowly out of the house. There was no
one in the room who had not been moved deeply by the something poignant
in Ernest's face, even though his voice was so sedulously casual. Before
any one else had opportunity to speak however, Papa Wolf was back.
"I don't believe a word about Werner," he said to Ernest. "But I am
surprised, Ernest, after your upbringing that you should have deceived
Roger as you did."
"But are you an American, Papa?" persisted Ernest.
"You numb-skull!" shouted his father. "I have been an American longer
than you have hairs to your head. It's my land, even if I am sentimental
about Germany."
Once more he marched out the door.
"Come, Dean, and see the Plant," said Roger. The Dean rose with alacrity
and bumped into Papa Wolf, who came in again shaking his head.
"I don't see, Ernie, how you could have treated Roger so. Of course, I
think he's crazy and all his works. But I've always loved him, though I
was and am very mad at him for bringing you down here. I don't see how
you could have done it."
"I thought I owed it to Germany and that it would help him. You forget
my German superman upbringing."
"I'll look at the Plant, of course," said Papa Wolf, "just to see what
you have wasted your life blood on. But not one cent of money, boys."
"I don't want your money, sir," exclaimed Roger, proudly.
"You don't eh! Then we're all satisfied," returned Ernest's father,
following the Dean out of the door.
The last place inspected was the engine house. Ernest made a simple
explanation of the machinery while the Dean went over the engine almost
as lovingly and keenly as Roger would have. Then Roger led the Dean back
to the porch for a talk.
"So this is the result of all your years of work, eh, Ernie?" said Papa
Wolf. "Do you mean to say that you made that machine out of your own
head?"
"I only helped Roger," replied Ernest, "but it means a lot to me.
Father, this solar work of ours will be recorded in history as the
beginning of a new harnessing of energy."
The older man looked at his son with interest. "You should have taken
the trouble to explain all this to me, years ago, my son."
"I know it," replied Ernest. "Well, anyhow, I've done my bit down here.
When you go back I'll go back with you. I'm a teacher, not a pioneer."
Papa Wolf seized both of Ernest's hand. "No! Really! Ernest, you really
will go on with the professorship! Then I am satisfied. But we must not
let this work be in vain. This child of your mind, Ernest, it must be
recorded. It will help you in your professorship, eh?"
Ernest nodded. "It's really a great thing, father. Roger has a wonderful
mind."
"He's got a good mind, yes, but I'm asking you where would he have been
all these years without my boy? O Ernie! Ernie! You've taken ten years
off me! Now, you let me think. I'll sit and watch this engine of yours.
You go along about your work, Ernie." And Ernest, a tired look in his
eyes, went along as he was bidden.
It was dinner time before the tour of inspection was done. Mamma Wolf
spent the morning, after a nap, helping the girls to prepare a huge
dinner. She and Elsa wept a little on each other's necks, and Mamma Wolf
promised to take Dick to her heart and love him as another son. And
somehow Elsa put full faith in Ernest's bringing his father around.
No one talked business or politics at dinner. There were many details of
the camp life to be told and many stories of the Von Mindens that
invariably brought Papa Wolf to the verge of apoplexy with laughter.
Ernest never had been more charming than he was now. And by some magic
of his own, he drew Dick out to tell the story of his turquoise mining.
Like almost any story of desert endeavor it was full of drama, of quiet
heroism, and of weird humor. Papa and Mamma Wolf hung breathless on
every word of it.
"Himmel!" exclaimed Papa at the end, "if I were thirty years younger,
I'd like just such adventuring!" The others looked at one another and
smiled.
When the long dinner hour was over, Papa Wolf lighted his meerschaum.
"And now let's look at that engine again. You should come and see it,
Mamma. Run by sunshine and almost as silent as the sun and powerful like
it. Wonderful! Wonderful!"
"You've hardly looked at the alfalfa, Papa," said Ernest.
"Plenty of time for that. One thing at a time. Come along, Dean. If you
should explain that engine through to me two or three times more, I'll
understand it. Ernest and Roger, they never thought to take old Papa to
see the working model at the University. They thought because I was a
fool about the working drawings, I knew nothing. Come on, Dean! Come
along."
Seated on two up-ended boxes before the engine, the two gray headed men
spent the afternoon. The Dean could have been enticed away to examine
the alfalfa and the pumping system. But not Papa. He went out at
intervals to look at the absorber and to read the thermometer at the oil
storage pit, then back to the engine.
"And this is what Ernie has been working on for all these years. And I
never could get it through my old head."
"Ernest and Roger too," the Dean would suggest.
"Of course, Roger. But you know Ernest and his fine mind. Observe now,
Dean, out there the parching, cruel sun, that strikes and kills. Here
Ernest's magic, this silent machine that catches that sun and turns its
death kiss into life. And out there, where the honey bees buzz, the
magic made vital. My boy's brain did such miracles and I never knew it
until now. I even forbade him the house when he insisted on giving birth
to his idea."
The others drifted in and out and at last the supper hour came and once
more the clan gathered at the familiar table.
"Why, Papa, I haven't seen you with such appetite or with such spirits
since last Christmas," said Mamma.
"You haven't seen me with such cause. And how mad I was when I came--eh,
Mamma!"
"You know, Papa," said Ernest, "we never could have put over the Plant
if it hadn't been for the Prebles. I swear Charley has fed us and Dick
has guided us and had faith in us when it seemed as if the whole world
outside had turned us down."
"Is it so?" exclaimed Papa as if realizing that fact for the first time.
"So you stood by my boy, eh, Dick? Well, that's good! My boy has stood
by you and so will I. Now listen, boys. Why can't I do a little
adventuring, eh? Let's make this a thousand acre Plant. And the Dean
says that this engine will put every other low temperature, high speed
engine off the market. Why not build some and sell them, eh?"
"But Mr. Wolf," said Roger. "I haven't felt as if you ought to put money
in. If anything should go wrong and you should lose by it, I'd never
forgive myself."
Papa Wolf put his hand on Roger's knee. "Roger, I've known you since you
were born and I loved your father. He died a disappointed man. When I
think of the things Ernie said this morning I realize that perhaps if
I'd been a better patriot I wouldn't have let a man so valuable to the
community die a disappointed man. Now you're an even more valuable man
than your father was, and so is Ernest. Shall I wait for outsiders to do
for my son and your father's son? Or shall I help you organize so as to
develop this hot country for America? And again I did my only son an
unkindness in not understanding his work--almost a fatal unkindness.
Suppose he had left us for Germany. Shall I not make it up to him? And
lastly, my son treated you dishonorably. Shall he and I not together try
to make it up?"
Roger's tense face worked.
"Now, don't speak! I know how you feel," cried Papa. "Now I have more
than enough tucked away for Mamma and me. And I have two friends, one in
the brewery, one in the bank. We can organize a company. We have Dick's
ranch and the turquoise mine and Ernest's and your plant. We can get
plenty of money. I'll make all those Maennerchors come down here. We'll
irrigate this whole desert. We'll open up mines--we'll--"
He got up to pace the floor. "Why there's an empire here for Uncle Sam
that the Reclamation Service can't handle. We'll do it."
"Roger has talked of Asia Minor," said Dick, with twinkling eyes.
"Well, we'll tackle that later," replied Papa dreamily. "America is a
good field. Dean, are you coming in with us?"
"Thanks," returned the Dean. "But Ernest and I have another job,
fighting _furor Teutonicus_ up at the university. But I'll be on hand
for such advice as I can give."
"I think," Papa went on after a brisk nod, "we'll spend a month or so
down here, Mamma and I. Ernest, you can go on up and open the house and
we'll be back after Christmas. If all works well, I'll have to spend a
part of each year down here. Dick, can't you get those Indians you talk
of to build Mamma and Ernie and me a little house, near by? Then you
and Elsa can have this and Charley and Roger must build them a little
nest somewhere. And we all are fixed, see!"
There was a little pause, then Elsa ran across the room and threw
herself in her father's arms. "Oh, Papa! Papa! I never knew what a saint
you were until now."
Papa Wolf smoothed Elsa's hair tenderly. "I still think you are a fool,
Elschen. But if your mother and I are down here to watch closely--the
very first time, sir," he glared at Dick, "that I find--"
"You won't have to do anything, Mr. Wolf," said Dick. "I'll cut my
throat."
"Don't talk silly," exclaimed Papa. "Just try to be a good boy and we'll
help. Of course, I think Elsa is a fool but I thought Ernest was one and
now look!"
The Dean slipped out, unobserved and a moment later Charley whispered to
Roger,
"Let's get out and let Dick have his chance to clear everything up."
And so Roger and Charley found themselves alone, under the stars.
"I just can't realize it, at all, can you, Roger dearest?" asked
Charley.
Roger did not answer for a moment. They were standing beside the corral,
looking toward the shadowy mountainside where lay Felicia's grave.
"I wish I could believe she saw and knew everything," he said, brokenly.
Then as Charley said nothing, he turned and took her in his arms with a
sudden passion that found expression in hot kisses and half broken
sentences.
"Oh, Charley! Charley! After all I'm not a failure. I am--Darling, you
do love me, you are sure of that--! How beautiful you are! How
beautiful! You are as lovely as the desert. God, Charley, but I'm
happy!"
Charley, clinging to him speechlessly, finally raised her head, and
looked with Roger across the desert night of silence and blue, while the
rich sense of space, of mystery, of heaven very near and life's
bitternesses far away touched them both at once. And Peter, a wisp of
cat's claw hanging from his mouth, rubbed his patient head
affectionately against Roger's arm.
THE END