The six months that had just passed had been months of indecision and
sadness for Shannon Burke. Constantly moved by a conviction that she
should leave the vicinity of Ganado and the Penningtons, she was held
there by a force that she had not the power to overcome.
Never before since she had left her mother’s home in the Middle West
had she experienced the peace and content and happiness that her
little orchard on the highway imparted to her life. The friendship of
the Penningtons had meant more to her than anything that had hitherto
entered her life; and to be near them, even if she saw them but seldom,
constituted a constant bulwark against the assaults of her old enemy,
which still occasionally assailed the ramparts of her will.
After the departure of Custer she had conscientiously observed what she
considered to be his wishes as expressed in his reference comparing her
with the girl friend of Cousin William, whom he had practically ordered
out of the house. She had as far as possible avoided Eva’s society; and
though contemplation of the cause of this avoidance filled her with
humiliation, and with a sense of the injustice of all that it implied,
she nevertheless felt it a duty to the man she loved to respect his
every wish, however indirectly suggested.
That she might put herself in Eva’s way as seldom as possible, Shannon
had formed the habit of riding at those hours at which the Penningtons
were not accustomed to ride. The habit of solitude grew upon her, and
she loved the loneliness of the hills. They never oppressed her--she
never feared them. They drew her to them and soothed her as a mother
might have done. There she forgot her sorrows, and hope was stimulated
to new life.
Especially when the old craving seized her did she long for the hills,
and it was because of this that she first rode at night--on a night
of brilliant moonlight that imparted to familiar scenes the weird
beauties of a strange world. The experience was unique. It assumed
the proportions of an adventure, and it lured her to other similar
excursions.
Even the Senator felt the spell of enchantment. He stepped daintily
with uppricked ears and arched neck, peering nervously into the depth
of each shadowy bush. He leaped suddenly aside at the movement of a
leaf, or halted, trembling and snorting, at the moon-bathed outlines of
some jutting rock that he had passed a hundred times, unmoved, by day.
The moonlight rides led Shannon to others on moonless nights, so that
she was often in the saddle when the valley slept. She invariably
followed the same trail on these occasions, with the result that
both she and the Senator knew every foot of it so well that they had
traversed it beneath the blackness of heavy clouds, or when low fogs
obliterated all but the nearest objects.
Never, in the hills, could her mind dwell upon depressing thoughts.
Only cheerful reflections were her companions of those hours of
solitude. She thought of the love that had come into her life, of the
beauty of it, and of all that it had done to make life more worth the
living; of the Penningtons and the example of red-blooded cleanliness
that they set--decency without prudery; of her little orchard and the
saving problems it had brought to occupy her mind and hands; of her
horse and her horsemanship, two never-failing sources of companionship
and pleasure which the Penningtons had taught her to love and enjoy.
On the morning after Custer’s return, Guy started early for Los
Angeles, while Custer--Shannon not having joined them on their morning
ride--resaddled the Apache after breakfast and rode down to her
bungalow. He both longed to see her and dreaded the meeting; for,
regardless of Grace’s attitude and of the repulse she had given him,
his honor bound him to her. Loyalty to the girl had been engendered by
long years of association, during which friendship had grown into love
by so gradual a process that it seemed to each of them that there had
never been a time when they had not loved. Such attachments, formed in
the heart of youth, hallowed by time, and fortified by the pride and
honor of inherited chivalry, become a part of the characters of their
possessors, and as difficult to uproot as those other habits of thought
and action which differentiate one individual from another.
Custer had realized, in that brief interview of the day before, that
Grace was not herself. What was the cause of her change he could
not guess, since he was entirely unacquainted with the symptoms of
narcotics. Even had a suspicion of the truth entered his mind, he would
have discarded it as a vile slander upon the girl, as he had rejected
the involuntary suggestion that she might have been drinking. His
position was distressing for a man to whom honor was a fetish, since
he knew that he still loved Grace, while at the same time realizing a
still greater love for Shannon.
She saw him coming and came down the driveway to meet him, her face
radiant with the joy of his return, and with that expression of love
that is always patent to all but the object of its concern.
“Oh, Custer!” she cried. “I am so glad that you are home again! It has
seemed years and years, rather than months, to all of us.”
“I am glad to be home, Shannon. I have missed you, too. I have missed
you all--everything--the hills, the valley, every horse and cow and
little pig, the clean air, the smell of flowers and sage--all that is
Ganado.”
“You like it better than the city?”
“I shall never long for the city again,” he said. “Cities are
wonderful, of course, with their great buildings, their parks and
boulevards, their fine residences, their lawns and gardens. The things
that men have accomplished there fill a fellow with admiration; but how
pitiful they really are compared with the magnificence that is ours!”
He turned and pointed toward the mountains. “Just think of those hills,
Shannon, and the infinite, unthinkable power that uplifted such mighty
monuments. Think of the countless ages that they have endured, and then
compare them with the puny efforts of man. Compare the range of vision
of the city dweller with ours. He can see across the street, and to the
top of some tall building, which may look imposing; but place it beside
one of our hills, and see what becomes of it. Place it in a ravine in
the high Sierras, and you would have difficulty in finding it; and
you cannot even think of it in connection with a mountain fifteen or
twenty thousand feet in height. And yet the city man patronizes us
country people, deploring the necessity that compels us to pursue our
circumscribed existence.”
“Pity him,” laughed Shannon. “He is as narrow as his streets. His
ideals can reach no higher than the pall of smoke that hangs over the
roofs of his buildings. I am so glad, Custer, that you have given up
the idea of leaving the country for the city!”
“I never really intended to,” he replied. “I couldn’t have left, on
father’s account; but now I can remain on my own as well as his, and
with a greater degree of contentment. You see that my recent experience
was a blessing in disguise.”
“I am glad if some good came out of it; but it was a wicked injustice,
and there were others as innocent as you who suffered fully as
much--Eva especially.”
“I know,” he said. “She has been very lonely since I left, with Grace
away, too; and they tell me that you have constantly avoided them. Why?
I cannot understand it.”
He had dismounted and tied the Apache, and they were walking toward
the porch. She stopped, and turned to look Custer squarely in the eyes.
“How could I have done otherwise?” she asked.
“I do not understand,” he replied.
She could not hold her eyes to his as she explained, but looked down,
her expression changing from happiness to one of shame and sadness.
“You forget that girl, the friend of Cousin William?” she asked.
“Oh, Shannon!” he cried, laying a hand impulsively upon her arm. “I
told you that I wouldn’t say that to you. I didn’t want you to stay
away. I have implicit confidence in you.”
“No,” she contradicted him. “In your heart you thought it, and perhaps
you were right.”
“No,” he insisted. “Please don’t stay away--promise me that you will
not! You have hurt them all, and they are all so fond of you!”
“I am sorry, Custer. I would not hurt them. I love them all; but I
thought I was doing the thing that you wished. There was so much that
you did not understand--that you can never understand--and you were
away where you couldn’t know what was going on; so it seemed disloyal
to do the thing I thought you would rather I didn’t do.”
“It’s all over now,” he said. “Let’s start over again, forgetting all
that has happened in the last six months and a half.”
Again, as his hand lay upon her arm, he was seized with an almost
uncontrollable desire to crush her to him. Two things deterred him--his
loyalty to Grace, and the belief that his love would be unwelcome to
Shannon.