Jimmie was coming down through the woods in triumph. All day he had
tramped and hunted over the crests of the hills and he was returning
with the spoil. His rifle was slung with just a little angle of
careless swagger across the crook of his arm and from the same arm
hung two pairs of fat partridges. He knew a great deal more now about
partridges than he had known that night, weeks ago, when two of them
had given him such a start.
He knew, in fact, a great deal more about many things than he had known
that night. And he was a vastly different man. He was still thin, but
it was not the pale thinness of before. He was lean and brown, his
frame was filling slowly but evenly, and his one care was the procuring
of food. For he had the perpetual hunger of the gaunt young animal
whose growing cells are ever demanding more and more building materials.
His step had none of the nervous hurry of those who tread city streets.
In his rough tramping boots he swung down through brush and over rocks
with a long, sure, loping stride which showed that he had forgotten
that he had such things as nerves, and though he was physically tired
his face shone with the zest of a boy in the game and of the hunter
hurrying to his mate with the kill.
As he came down behind the long sugar house he heard Augusta singing.
She sang a wonderfully sweet natural contralto, but Jimmie had learned
that she hardly ever sang except when she felt lonely--and he knew
that there must be times when she was indeed very lonesome, for this
was a life which might well have tested the constant cheerfulness of
a staid woman, while Augusta was indeed, in many things, only a highly
sensitive and impressionable child. He started to hurry, thinking of
the many long hours he left her alone in this lonesome place. But
the song arrested him--he had not heard it before--and he loitered a
little, not wishing to break in until he had heard it through.
She was singing:
"Gyp, Gyp, me little horse?"
"_Gyp-Gyp_, again sir."
"How many miles to Dublin?"
"Four score an' ten, sir."
"Gyp, Gyp, me little horse?"
"_Gyp-Gyp_, again sir."
"Can I get there by candle-light?"
"Troth an' back again, sir."
"Gallopy, gallopy, gallopy
"Trot!
"I sold my buttermilk every drop.
"_Ev-er-y_ drop."
It was a happy lilting little song that trotted merrily up and down
an easy range of sweet and saucy notes, and Jimmie could see "Me
Little Horse" dancing blithely along in front of a cart and answering
back his part of the dialogue. From the song he knew that Augusta was
not singing this time because she was lonely. She was happy. And it
followed, therefore, that she was busy at something that her heart
was proud of. Jimmie wondered if she had, perhaps, found some new
and wonderfully neater way of turning a patch on his clothes. This
he had found was one of Augusta's most thrilling and soul satisfying
achievements. But there was another sound that came hammering into
the song as he came nearer. It was a jerky, clicking, amateurish sort
of noise, but it was unmistakable. Jimmie's head went up and one ear
turned up into the air, listening with unbelief. But there came the
stroke of the little bell near the end of the line, and he plainly
heard the sound of the carriage being shifted.
"By the Poker of Moses!" said Jimmie to himself. "She's found a
typewriter growing under a toadstool somewhere, and she's at it. It
won't surprise me if she's got a couple of books written by now. I
_knew_ she'd get loose sometime."
Sure enough, as he came softly around the corner of the camp house in
which they were living, there sat Augusta in front of John McQuade's
table, and, strangest of all, she was working on Jimmie's own old
machine! The sight of that battered old machine brought Wardwell up
stock still with a lump in his throat, for he went back on the instant
to a black night, now long ago, when he had laid down such things as
work and ambition and courage, and thought that he was done with them
forever.
Augusta felt him standing there, though he had made no sound. She
turned, laughing.
"I didn't want you to catch me yet," she confessed. "But, I don't care.
I can do some whole lines without a mistake. And I just got pounding
away at that old song--my Daddy used to trot me on his foot to it--and
I was so happy that I didn't care whether you came or not."
"I'll smash the old fraud," said Jimmie looking with pretended savagery
at the machine that he loved, "if it makes you feel that way about me."
"Oh, I didn't mean that way at all! Of course I wanted you to come
every minute."
"But, how did the blamed thing get here?" Jimmie growled, still
hunting for a pretended grievance. "It wasn't in the wagon."
"It was! It was!" shouted Augusta jumping up in glee. "Remember how you
jeered at my hat box, the day we moved from the wagon into the house.
When I wouldn't let you touch it, or let you see me move it, you swore
that I had another man hidden in it. You said you'd get a divorce."
"But, honestly," she said, coming to lay her hand on his arm, "didn't
you miss it, sometimes? I think I've seen you walking around at times
and looking through your pockets."
Jimmie laughed. He remembered his nervous trick, when something was
wanting to him, of walking about and rummaging unconsciously through
one pocket after another.
"People that live in glass houses, shouldn't come home to roost--at
least not near you, Augusta. I'm getting afraid of you. You see through
me too completely."
"And you know I cleaned out your room at the last moment. I saved and
brought every last scrap of your book, even the things that you had
thrown away. If you're good, some day, when you've gotten thoroughly
sick and tired of chopping wood and hunting, and when I've had some
more practice, I'll let you have it all. And then you can start it
again, dictating to me. I'll never let you sit over a typewriter again.
I'm sure it was that sitting stooped over, and fretting, that made all
your trouble before."
At last Jimmie understood the whole significance of the scheme.
Augusta, serene and sure in her beautiful faith, had held the breaking
bridges of life for him, and, while he had been weakly content to drift
down into the depths of unhoping uselessness, she had looked calmly and
surely ahead and had already seen him safely across and moving up the
heights beyond.
Once he had loved Augusta as a big brother adores and guards a little
sister. Again, in another time, their positions had become reversed
and he had loved her and leaned upon her and taken strength from her,
almost as a child takes strength from a fondling mother. Now in the
light of the nobler, mating partnership that he began to understand, he
was conscious of another and more wonderful love.
His gun and his game slid quietly to the ground and he took her gently
into his arms with a new light of adoring tenderness in his eyes.
When they came, however, to putting Augusta's plans into actual
operation Jimmie had his misgivings. He knew himself. And he knew
that, with all of his ready tongue and his genial effrontery in
talking himself into and out of a situation, he was at bottom shy and
diffident. He had never been able to do good, sincere work with anybody
watching him. He had always loved to hug and hide his work until it
was actually in print. He had never in his life been guilty of reading
or even showing a manuscript to a friend. And he was shy now, even of
Augusta's quick sympathy and understanding.
What was worse, he found that his mind was sluggish and lazy. After the
months, in which he had thought only of rest and sleep and the feeding
of his body, he found it almost impossible to spur his mind up to the
point of nervous tension where he could create with any sequence. The
fires of his brain were banked and choked with the accumulations which
the greedy body was piling up for itself. He felt stupid, and yet he
found that he could not even get irritated with himself over the fact.
To please Augusta, he kept on trying, for he knew how she must have set
her heart on this plan of hers and he would have given everything that
was in him to make it a success. Never in his life had he tried so
hard and so consciously to write good lines. But the good lines would
not come, even though he sat for hours dictating painfully and slowly
while Augusta wrote. He knew that the work was not good, but he would
say nothing, secretly hoping that she would soon tire of the drudgery
and let him get at the machine, as he was now hungry to do, in his own
way.
Augusta did not tire. But in the end she pronounced fatal judgment. One
day in the middle of a long paragraph she dropped her hands from the
keyboard and looked Jimmie squarely in the eye.
"Nothing but the truth, Jimmie," she demanded, "do I get in your way?
This is not your good work."
"Had you noticed?" said Jimmie dryly.
"It is not bad," Augusta explained, springing loyally to the defence of
anything that Jimmie had done. "For anybody else it would be perfectly
all right. But it isn't just you, Jimmie. It's not just alive, you see.
It's--It's--"
"Wooden," said Jimmie shortly and without stress.
Much as she hated to, Augusta let the criticism stand. She threw the
cover over the machine without a word. That was the end of a dream
which Augusta had been hugging to her heart for months. Now Augusta,
as we know, was a high hearted, high handed little lady, and she
always knew that her way was right. Remembering this, we may arrive at
some idea of what it cost her to drop, without a whimper, even as she
dropped the cover over the machine, her dearest, deepest laid little
plan, and to say blithely:
"Come on for a run around the lake! Tomorrow you can have a pad and
pencil and sit on the back of your neck with your feet up in the window
and scribble your own way."
Wardwell knew the cost of it.
The next day was rainy and Jimmie was forced to sit about the house all
day. He was still near enough to his recent sickness to feel peevish
and irritable when it rained, he hated wind and rain. He grudgingly
envied Augusta for the carelessness with which she could run out into
the rain. He noticed that she made wholly unnecessary trips out to the
stable, away beyond the end of the sugar cabin, to see if Donahue was
all right. Donahue was perfectly all right, Jimmie was sure. He did not
see that lumps of sugar did the old fool any good, anyhow.
In short, Jimmie was working himself into a thorough stew of working
fever, ripping and tearing viciously at the work which he and Augusta
had been so faithfully laboring on, and incidentally scrapping down
some very good paragraphs which he knew, with a growl of satisfaction
for each one, would stand the test.
He did not know that Augusta was having a little cry every time she
went to the stable. Neither did he know that the lumps of sugar, which
he denounced as being wholly unsuited to Donahue's digestion, were
in reality the "thirty pieces of silver," with which, in Augusta's
imagination, Donahue was being betrayed. So Jimmie could not know that
Augusta, too, was developing a temperament. He was entirely unprepared
for its demonstration.
"Rot!" he grunted, jabbing his pencil through something he had just
written and beginning to write again furiously, meanwhile trying to sit
on his left shoulder blade in the chair with his feet piled up in the
window.
The room was small. The stove was smoking a little. It was only three
o'clock. There were, for Augusta, interminable hours to be gone through
before she could even pretend to busy herself with getting supper. And
a certain matter was working vividly upon her conscience.
"Shucks!" she remarked. "I could write a book myself with less fuss,
and not lose my temper about it, either."
"Of course, dear." Jimmie answered dutifully. He had not the remotest
idea of what she had said.
After an interval of alternate cutting and hurried, excited writing,
during which the room might have been moved out into the rain for
all Jimmie would have known or cared, so long as he was not forcibly
disturbed, it was slowly forced upon his attention that something was
going on in the room. He was aware while he worked that Augusta had
seated herself at the machine and was clicking away fitfully at it.
That fact in itself would not have been sufficient to draw his
attention. He might well have supposed that she was merely practicing,
to fill in a dull and rainy afternoon. But there was something dynamic
in the air about Augusta. She clicked nervously and tentatively at
intervals, and then hammered on viciously and desperately, as though
she feared that the thought would escape her before she had time to
nail it down in words.
Jimmie's jaw dropped and he sat staring at her in stupid amazement.
He could see the delicate lines of her figure drawn tense and sharp
like the body of some very beautiful animal straining before a leap.
He could see that her whole mind and heart were being thrown into the
words that she was driving down upon the paper, and it was not merely
his loyalty, his faith in everything that Augusta did, which told
him that what she was doing was fine. He knew that she was creating
something worthy, by the very power that he saw straining in her
effort. She was putting will and soul and a wonderful, untrammelled
native intelligence into it, and it could be nothing less than good.
He waited excitedly for the end of the page, to see what she would
do. Augusta was orderly above all other things. Jimmie was making
hasty bets with himself as to whether her little god of order would
prevail and make her take the paper out carefully and look at it before
starting another, as a sane person would do, or would she throw it down
and race on with another without looking at what she had done. If she
did the latter, then the fever had indeed taken her and she was lost.
He gave a mental whoop of sympathy as Augusta, coming with a bang
to the end of the sheet, fairly tore it from the machine and threw
it down without looking to see whether it fell on the table or the
floor. With the same motion of her swift hands she had swept down upon
another sheet of paper and without even waiting to straighten it had
jammed it into the machine and was banging away for dear life upon the
over-lapping sentence.
"Another good cook and honest citizen lost!" Jimmie groaned to himself.
"Once that fever has bitten her she won't care which side the fish
is burned on." Nevertheless, with the eagerness and adroitness of a
thieving cat, he stole across the floor and picked up the paper from
where it had fallen, without disturbing Augusta.
He read the page that Augusta had written, without comment of any kind.
Then with a sort of stupid solemnity he gathered up the pages at which
he himself had been scribbling and examined them gravely, as though his
reading of Augusta's page had put them in an entirely new light. He
laid down his own work on his knees and beside it he laid the page that
Augusta had written, and read wonderingly from one and from the other.
In his own work he had gone back to the point where he had left the
story months ago. He had not used a single one of the ideas which
he had so laboriously dictated to Augusta, but had struck into an
entirely new turn. Augusta could not have known what he was doing or
thinking today. Yet she had taken his idea just where he had left it
and she was carrying it through the very drift which he had just today
thought of.
He reached into an inner pocket for a fountain pen and examined it
carefully. Then he cleared his pad and began to write slowly and
precisely. He was not now inventing. He was a critic, a just judge, a
man having authority; in short, an editor. He took impartially, with
cold and fearless discrimination, from Augusta's paper and from his
own. And it was an astonishing fact that he was hardly obliged to
add even connectives. A paragraph of hers fitted in after one of his
so neatly that there was not a seam of divergence between. And there
were even sentences which he could begin in Augusta's words, and end
with his own. He was not now excited. He was working with the cool and
certain precision of the trained man who has his tools right and is
finding perfect materials ready to his hand.
He did not care where the materials came from. He had no compunction
that Augusta's thoughts were sacredly her own and that he had no right
to use them so. Neither, on the other hand, did he feel the smallest
resentment when he found himself bound to drop one of his own best
regarded lines and replace it with one from Augusta's. He cared for
nothing but what he saw was the excellence of the finished product.
When Augusta had finished her second sheet he rescued it from the floor
where it, too, had fallen disregarded, and went on with his editing.
By the time when Augusta's third and fourth sheets came from her
hurrying fingers he found that she was reaching far beyond the point to
which he had come in nearly a whole day's work. She was going, straight
and true, with far less words than he had found necessary, swiftly
towards the conclusion for which he had been merely groping. Now he was
really put to it to keep his pace with Augusta's flying thought, to
anticipate the hurrying turn of her fancy, to drive in with the thrust
of his own quick, excited words.
It was a crazy, disorderly method of work, but Jimmie knew that they
were both working on the very edge of inspiration and he knew that
it was all good. For two solid hours they worked madly, Augusta all
unconscious of the fact that she was taking part in a desperate race.
Finally Jimmie saw that she was trembling with fatigue and strain.
He went over quickly and swooped her up bodily into his arms and
carried her, protesting, over to his chair. When he had brought cold
water and bathed her forehead and eyes, for he knew how they must be
smarting and dancing with fever and strain, he said:
"Rest a little, dear; and then I am going to show you something."
"Have you been looking at what I did?" she asked quickly, seeing her
pages where he had laid them.
"I have, Augusta, and they're great. And on top of that I've taken the
most impudent liberty. But you shall be judge."
"Why? What have you been doing?"
"Well, read this first, will you please, dear," he evaded, giving her
the stuff that he himself had scribbled at all day.
"But, it's just like," she said, when half way through it. "I had no
idea what you were thinking of."
"I know you didn't," said Jimmie with a grin. "I didn't myself. Now
read your own."
She glanced eagerly over it, and for a moment Jimmie was sorry, sorry
that the will to write had come to her. For Augusta would be a terrible
critic upon herself. Immediately he saw the frown of the artist's
discontent with her work clouding her face. Augusta was too clever not
to see the raw and badly tooled places in her own work just as she
saw them in his work. And Jimmie thought of several men whom he knew,
fairly successful as writers, too, who never knew this discontent, who
could sit down and gloat over everything they wrote, fatuously thinking
it all good merely because it was theirs. Augusta had gone farther in
this afternoon than those men had progressed in years. He counted the
cost for her and knew what she would suffer from her own sensitive and
merciless judgment. Nevertheless, he knew, with a sort of helpless
fatalism, that he would not now try to stop her.
"Now," he said, handing her the finished product which he had made from
her work and his, "here is the impudence. It's for you to tear it up or
let it stand."
She took it without a question and began to read carefully, while
Jimmie stood by waiting for the verdict. He felt that Augusta had every
right to be hurt by his ruthlessly grabbing and mutilating to his own
purposes her first little heart-wrung work. But he soon saw from her
hurrying breath and shining eyes that he had not done wrong.
At the end, she jumped up and hugged him, crying:
"It's fine, Jimmie! And it's yours and mine! _Ours!_"
After a little Jimmie said:
"Yes, the spiteful relatives may say that it has its great uncle's red
hair and that they can't imagine where it gets its good looks from
anyway, but it's _ours_."
Augusta hid her face in the general region of Jimmie's vest pocket, and
when she finally looked up the change of subject was complete.
"I'll have to sell Donahue," she said quietly. And her face was set and
steady, as though she had been thinking of nothing but this decision.
Now here Jimmie failed. He should have been ready with argument,
balderdash, or discussion of some sort. He knew that Augusta would
rather sell her last pair of shoes than sell Donahue. But he was
curiously and fatally tongue-tied. He had never, since they had started
out upon the road, been able to speak of money with Augusta. He had not
at any time formed the slightest idea as to how much, or how little,
she might have on which to go through with this venture on which she
had staked everything. And he knew, a little guiltily, that it was
not altogether delicacy that kept him from asking out and facing the
details with her.
He was ashamedly conscious of a little lingering, subtle, unworthy
resentment of the way that he had been bundled into this thing without
being consulted. And, perhaps because he knew that it was altogether
wrong and base, he could not speak, but had gone on weakly leaving all
thought and worry upon Augusta. It would have been a simple matter, and
he knew it, to have asked her just how real was the need of money. But
he could not, or would not, do it.
When he did not answer, Augusta explained.
"We cannot afford to buy feed for him through the winter," she stated,
with a matter-of-fact coolness which did not at all deceive Jimmie.
"And neither he nor the wagon would be of any use to us in the deep
snow."
"But, isn't there some other way? Couldn't I rake up some old stories,
or something?"
"_No!_" And Augusta stamped her foot. "I wouldn't have you stop a
minute from the book now for anything in the world."
That was the end of the discussion.
That afternoon was the beginning of a new and bewildering life for the
two of them. Jimmie did honestly try to limit the amount of Augusta's
work. But he soon recognized the uselessness of the attempt. She
worked furiously when the work came to her, writing pages sometimes
while he sweated and growled over a few scratched lines. They were both
madly happy, asking nothing of life, or of the world; caring not a
thought for the success that might come to them.
They never talked over the work that lay ahead. They did no concerted
planning. Each of them began a chapter in his or her own way, without
the slightest thought of how or where that chapter was to end. They
were independent of plans, these two; for out of their own lives they
had learned that the spinning wheel of truth takes no account of plans.
One could only start, and keep on to see what the next turning would
bring. So it was with the story that came turning swiftly out of their
imaginations. It ran its own way with each of them, rushing along
smoothly, stumbling, stopping, flashing on again.
Then at intervals Jimmie would stop and take just and unswerving
measure of what they had done. At the first, in building the finished
story out of the materials which they both had furnished, Jimmie had
tried to make Augusta sit in judgment with him, had tried to consult
with her as to what should go in and what should be left out. But
Augusta would have none of this office. Jimmie was trained in the
craft, and he must take the responsibility of selection and rejection.
That was the way she put it. And Jimmie answered:
"You're a bigger man than I am, Augusta. Without at least a howl, I
couldn't let William Shakespeare--and he's had time to learn some
things, if he's been reading the things the critics say about his
work--but I couldn't let even him maul my stuff the way I do yours."
"Well, _I_ wouldn't let William Shakespeare do it, either." And Jimmie
answered:
"Oh."
So Augusta copied, faithfully and without comment or question, the
story as Jimmie edited it.
In this time they were curiously detached and tolerant. They did not
demand so much of each other. And, though neither of them would have
admitted it, this was a relief. They were very far from being tired of
each other. But, it is humanly impossible for two normal, independent
willed people to live through the hours of every day and night for
months in the exclusive society of each other without feeling a strain.
Good nature, good sense, and even gentle, thoughtful love will fail
sometime. And two people are, after all, just two human beings.
Now, when the mind of each of them was busy during waking hours with
the doings of other people whom it was creating and trying to manage,
Jimmie and Augusta each found that the other was delightfully easy to
get along with. They came and went, worked or played, and Jimmie hunted
and Augusta fished, when Jimmie wanted to hunt and when Augusta wanted
to fish. Which arrangement they found to be immeasurably better, after
all, than the one in which each had been laboriously trying to do only
the things that the other wanted.
Jimmie had not forgotten that the problem of Donahue was before them.
Augusta had spoken of it only that once, but he knew that she felt
bound to sell the horse and that neither argument nor heart-break
would deter her from what she conceived to be duty. He had, however,
a hope--which he did not mention--that perhaps Augusta would not be
able to sell Donahue, for any amount that would be worth considering,
and that, finally, she would allow him to try to get some money out
of scraps of stories. He was sure that he could hatch up some fairly
good ones now. So he said nothing, and waited. For them, and for what
they had needed, Donahue was the ideal horse. There was none to equal
him. But as an article of commerce in the open and unprejudiced market
Jimmie did not believe that Donahue would bring very much money. It was
probable that most of the farmers in the hills had already more cattle
and horses than they cared to feed through the winter. And it did not
seem likely that any of them would pay a high price for the privilege
of feeding Donahue through five or six months of idleness.
Of course, he underestimated Augusta's perseverance and business force.
On a gray October morning when there was already a threat of snow
in the air Jimmie went rabbit hunting over the bowl of hills that
encircled their little lake. He took no lunch, for he intended to
be home before midday. But rabbits are not to be depended on in any
weather. Besides, Jimmie followed a fox for two useless, scrambling
hours. Therefore it was the middle of the short afternoon when Jimmie
came home. The one big bare room which was the house they lived in, and
which Augusta's warming, coloring personality alone had made into a
home, was cold and dreary even after the brown bleakness of the hills.
The fire must have been out for hours. Jimmie was tired and hungry, and
he missed Augusta discontentedly.
Where could she have gone for all this time? She would not be fishing.
It was too cold to sit holding a pole. Then where could she be, and why?
He lighted the fire and thought of cooking some bacon. But even the
warmth of the fire did not drive away his discontent about Augusta.
Suddenly he did not care for bacon. He put it back, and, just to prove
that he was miserable, he beat up a bowl of the hated milk and eggs and
forced himself to drink it.
He went out to the barn to see Donahue. The horse was not there.
Augusta must have hitched up and gone down to Jethniah Gamblin's for
provisions. Strange that she should not have told him. He had not
heard that they were needing things. He went around to the shed, for
confirmation of the obvious. Yes, the wagon was gone.
The utter desolation of the place fell upon him like a physical chill.
Everything that was his was gone. He felt depressed and deserted. And
there came upon him a cold foreboding that some day, through his own
fault, Augusta would go and leave him thus alone, his lips dry and
cracking with the caking ashes of dreams.
"Hills of Desire!" he growled, looking around in mockery at the bare
trees and the rocky, storm gashed hillsides.
He got the axe and went at his woodpile, not with enthusiasm but with
hatred. He had some good sized limbs of trees which had been broken off
in a recent heavy storm, and it would have been less wasteful and far
more easy to have cut them into proper lengths with a saw. But that
would by no means have fitted the frame of his temper at that time. He
wanted to hack and hew and destroy. And the vicious, swinging axe spoke
his mind, while he grumblingly wondered what Augusta could be talking
to Jethniah Gamblin about all this time, anyway. And it was a wonder
that that bitter tongued old woman in the window had not put a stop to
it before now.
Several times he dropped the axe to go out through the fringe of trees
to watch for the wagon returning along the track that came up by the
brook. Finally when the early dusk was beginning to fall, he gave up
the pretense at the wood pile and went out and watched eagerly and
frankly for Augusta. Could anything have happened to her? In fact, he
would long ago have started down the track to meet her, but he knew
how Augusta hated even the appearance of being followed. She had made
a point of pride of her independence and her ability to take care of
herself and to do things in her own way, and he knew it would only
hurt her if he made any show of anxiety. So he waited, watching and
nervously pacing about along the edge of the trees.
When, at last, she did come into sight over a rise in the path Jimmie
could scarcely recognize her.
There was no wagon, nor did Donahue appear ambling along intent upon
his own thoughts. Instead, there was just the lonely figure of a little
girl, unbelievably little and pitifully alone in the dusk and the big
stretches of the darkening hills, trudging uncertainly along a twisting
path.
Jimmie could hardly persuade himself that it was really Augusta, for
the little figure walked heavily and was disguised with an ugly, oddly
hanging bundle that threw it out of all likeness to his Augusta with
her free swinging, high hearted step. Altogether there was a look of
defeat, of heartbreak about the little figure that caught Wardwell by
the throat. For he knew that it was Augusta. And he guessed at what she
had done and what she was feeling.
He halloed loudly to her and started running down the path to meet her.
Then Augusta, after she had waved in answer to his call, did an odd
thing. She dropped her pack, which had been slung front and back over
her shoulder, and went down from the path to the brook. From where he
ran Jimmie could not see her, but he knew what she was doing. She was
washing her face, to hide things.
She was back in the path and had taken up her pack when Jimmie reached
her.
"I sold Donahue," she announced. "I got a hundred dollars for him. Of
course, I had to _give_ the wagon away with him. But it would really
have been absurd of us to try to feed him through the winter when he
wouldn't be of any use to us at all."
Her voice was cool and so matter of fact that for the instant Jimmie
wondered. Was it possible that she did not care? That she really was
thinking of the money? He took the bag of bundles away from her and
stretching his arm about her they fell into step together. But, for the
first time within his memory, he felt Augusta stiffen away from him.
He was surprised and a little inclined to resent her coolness.
Unaccountably he found himself in a very bad temper and with no
possible excuse for it. If he spoke he felt certain that they would
quarrel and that he would be wholly and shamefully to blame. He did
not speak, but there was a muttering resentment of something stirring
up in him. It persisted, until he thought of Augusta as he had seen
her coming trudging out of the dusk like some deserted, forlorn little
squaw upon the trail. Then his natural insight came to him, and he
knew, as well as if he had walked with her, that Augusta had cried
bitterly all the way, and that she was now hardening herself against
his sympathy lest she should break down and let him see what her day's
work had cost her.
He understood now. And the thought of Augusta facing the dreary winter
here without her pet and friend made him feel very bitterly the having
to accept the sacrifice from her. Surely Augusta must know how he
appreciated the sacrifice. But he could not tell her. He could not say
a word, for all the time his mind was biting in upon itself and he was
mumbling, "Wouldn't it be nice now if I were to speak up and say just
what's the simple truth--'I'm awfully sorry, Augusta, but of course
you had to have the money to feed me all winter.' That _would_ sound
pretty, and comforting, wouldn't it!"
Because he was as ignorant of Augusta as all fairly good men will
always be of women, he did not know that Augusta wanted him to say
nothing of the kind. What she did want him to do was to take her
forcibly in his arms and _tell_ her that he understood all that it
meant to her. Like all men who think quickly and deeply he did not know
the value of the spoken word, to a woman. He did not know that, while
intuition and understanding are very well within certain limits, there
are certain things which to a woman are never true until she hears them
spoken in so many words.
They walked on in a silence that grew every moment more painful, until
Wardwell knew that he could bear it no longer. He must say something.
At random he said the very worst thing, naturally.
"I had no idea," he ventured, "that anybody would be wanting to buy
horses at this time of year."
"Nobody did want to buy. Mr. Gamblin was sorry for me, I guess, and
bought him, for speculation, he said. I'll feel obliged to give back
the money if he isn't able to sell him again."
"Oh, it was Gamblin, was it?" said Jimmie grumpily. He was not
concerned with Augusta's problem in ethics. He had somebody to blame
now, and he was furiously angry with Jethniah Gamblin. What business
had that old schemer to take Augusta at her word in that way?
They came to the house in silence and prepared and ate a meal that was
the most cheerless and dreary that these two had ever eaten together.
When it was over and the things were cleared away Jimmie settled into
his chair by the table lamp, took up pad and pencil and pretended to
believe that he was going to work.
Augusta busied herself for a little while, doing unnecessary things
about the fire, and then stole miserably away to the little curtained
corner where her hammock hung.
She had started out in the morning with the glow of sacrifice burning
clear and sweet in her heart. And now it was night, dark night. Her
sturdy friend, her faithful confidante was gone. She had basely sold
him because she was afraid he would eat too much. Men would pass him
from one hard hand to another, and he would be beaten for the sin of
being old. Meanwhile, she would save lumps of sugar and quarts of oats.
And Jimmie did not care.
The glow of her sacrifice was cold and dead and the ashes of it were in
her hair.
In the morning Jimmie awakened to the fact that he was alone in the
room. He had not heard Augusta go out. Or was it that she had just this
instant gone and that her going had stirred him out of deep sleep. He
dressed hastily, wondering at his excitement. She had run out to see
Donahue. She often did that the very first thing in the morning. But
there was no Donahue out there any more, he remembered. And he hurried
still more.
Although there was obviously no reason for her going to the empty
stable, he still expected to find her there. The door of the stable was
shut, but as he came nearer he heard the sound of singing. It was the
same little song that Augusta was singing that day when he came home
and found her practicing on the typewriter, but there was another sound
mingling with the song now. It was like nothing but the rythmic, rapid
tapping of little feet upon a bare floor. Could Augusta be in a mood
for singing and dancing after last night?
Jimmie turned cautious and stole away from the door of the stable,
around to the side where there were seams in the stable wall. He would
not have thought of spying upon Augusta. But he was worried now. There
was something almost hysterical in the sound of the merry little song
and the patter of the dancing feet. He knew that she had been deeply
hurt last night and that she had been too quiet about it. And there had
been a time when he was very much afraid of the effect upon her of any
strong suppressed emotion.
"Gyp, Gyp me little horse?
"_Gyp-Gyp_, again sir."--
The song broke freshly upon him as he gained a view of the interior of
the barn. To his eyes, blinking in the bright morning light, it was
almost dark within. But a single bar of strong sunlight from a little
window right over where Jimmie stood went in and fell directly upon the
little figure of his wife dancing in the middle of the floor.
The effect was as though she had thought of an audience and had staged
a spotlight on herself as she sang and danced. But Jimmie knew that she
had not thought of any such thing. Her little face was as white as a
hunted banshee's. Though her feet pattered lightly as summer raindrops
on a roof, yet there was pain in them; as though she danced upon the
grave of something dear to her. Her song was not loud, but the happy
little lilt in it was a lie. For, to Wardwell who partly understood and
partly guessed, it was nothing but a wail and a heart-break. And he was
dimly aware that he was not likely, either in this life or anywhere
else, to suffer anything more bitter than those moments standing there
watching and listening.
The dance broke off suddenly, not because it was finished but because
Augusta could no longer keep up the pretence.
She ran over to Donahue's stall and leaning her arms on the partition
she buried her face in them and began to cry wildly. But it was only
for a moment. Then she raised her head with a brave, challenging shake
and said steadily:
"That's all. That's the last, Donahue. Jimmie doesn't care. And I'll
never, never let him see how much I cared!"
Wardwell understood now, to the full.
He knew that he should go to her now and try to tell her how much he
did care. But just then something sneered within him and laughed at the
idea of his "going to her and mumbling about how much he cared, and yet
accepting her sacrifice all the time." No, he could not talk to her
about it. He must do something to show that he did care, that could not
mawkishly take this from her. He must get her pet back for her before
he could talk to her. He hurried back into the house and lighted the
fire.
When Augusta came in it was evident that she had again visited the
brook. She was clear eyed and smiling and her face gave no sign that it
had been swept by anything harsher than the sweet cool breath of the
morning.
"I was down by the brook," she said, truthfully, "and I saw your fire.
From the looks of the smoke, I thought you were trying to burn the
house."
"Where there's smoke there's fire. The more smoke the more fire," he
said cheerfully, opening a window to let out some of the smoke.
"It doesn't follow," Augusta argued.
"Besides, I'm going hunting."
"Again? Didn't you hunt all day yesterday?"
"No. I followed a fox. It wasn't hunting. It was gambling. But I've
got a system worked out to beat him. I figured it out during the night
that, at the rate he was going when I saw him last, he will in about
three quarters of an hour from now be just turning on his first lap
around the world. I shall be at the turn waiting for him."
"I hope he shows a proper sense of his engagements," said Augusta
politely. "It would be annoying if he stopped for a drink or anything
on the way. But I wish you had timed the meeting to come off before you
filled the house quite so full of smoke. I like to smell the tang of
wood smoke. But I don't like to eat it."
They ate a hearty and a cheerful breakfast, and Jimmie prepared for
instant departure.
"I may be gone all day," he announced, "It'd be just like the scalawag
to fool me and go around the other way."
"It's probably a stray dog, anyway," she teased after him as he started
up the hill.
Jimmie went over the brow of the hill out of sight of the house. When
he was safe from observation he hid his gun securely in the hollow
hole of a tree, and, skirting away around the hills out of sight of
the sugar camp and the road, he made his way as fast as his legs could
carry him toward Jethniah Gamblin's place of business.
He found the United States post office closed and locked at nine
o'clock in the morning, and there was no one in sight. He banged and
rattled roughly at the door, for in the course of his morning's walk
he had worked up a grievance against Jethniah and by this time he was
blaming him for everything that had happened. There was a cautious
movement within the store and Jimmie saw a head appear near the window
from an ambuscade of flour sacks. The door was slowly opened, a matter
of inches, and Jimmie squeezed his way in.
"What kind of a--?" Jimmie began upon his argument. But Jethniah shut
and bolted the door and retreated to an inner citadel behind the
barricade of post office boxes.
"What's the idea?" Jimmie inquired. "Have you been tapping the postal
revenues, or is it merely the county sheriff that's coming for you."
But Mr. Gamblin had no heart for badinage. He sat down heavily and
groaned:
"Just like a post in the mud!"
Jimmie, looking around, saw that the door which led from the store into
Mr. Gamblin's living establishment was shut and barred. He guessed,
correctly, that the store was a fortress under close siege. There was
an old overcoat and a store blanket over the back of Jethniah's chair.
It was fairly deducible that Mr. Gamblin had spent the night in that
chair. The old man's face bore out the conclusion.
Wardwell suddenly found that his indignation at the old man over
yesterday's bargain had disappeared. He was convinced that the buying
of the horse from Augusta had brought down vengeance on Jethniah's
head, from "that bitter voiced old woman," as he recalled her.
Certainly Mr. Gamblin did look punished.
"I came down about the horse," he said, as Jethniah offered no
explanation of the situation. "I don't believe you were very keen on
the bargain, anyway. And the fact is that my wife misses the horse a
whole lot. Of course, a deal's a deal. But if I put it that my wife
didn't know how badly she was going to miss her pet, and if I offer you
ten dollars over what you paid for him I thought maybe you might let me
have the horse back."
Mr. Gamblin struggled to his feet and ejaculated:
"Damn ten dollars! But if you'll only take your cross-eyed,
knock-kneed, horn-swoggled shin plaster of a horse, and that calico
travellin' house of a wagon away where my wife'll never see them
again, why maybe I can get into my own house again!"
Jimmie laughed. He knew that the old man's anger was not really against
Donahue. It was probably the first chance he had had for a good many
hours to say a few words, and Wardwell sympathised with him.
Just then the door leading into the house was rattled violently. It was
plain that the old gentleman's raised voice had penetrated the door.
"Well," said Jimmie hastily, "I haven't got the money with me now, but
I think I can get it before night. And you'll let me have the horse?"
"Any whang-doodled thing you like!" said the old man devoutly, as he
reconnoitred towards the door and opened it for Wardwell. "Only get the
things away from here before I get violent!"
Wardwell started for the railroad station and telegraph office. It was
mid-afternoon before he had an answer to the wire which he sent. And it
was later still before the unwilling and suspicious operator grudgingly
counted out to him the money for which the message called. But before
dark he was back at Jethniah Gamblin's and had handed the latter his
money, out in the open yard where a certain unmentioned person might
see that this was a bona fide transaction.
Donahue clattered contentedly up the track along by the brook, while
Jimmie glowed with the triumph of achievement.
If he had known anything of women, he would have known that he had
that day committed the one sin which a woman never forgives a man. And
he would already have begun to tremble against the day when he would
inevitably be found out. But he did not know anything about women.
Augusta, worried and lonesome, had left the light burning in the house,
for it was now dark, and had wandered up toward the hill over which
Jimmie had gone in the morning. She heard the well remembered rattle of
the wagon coming up through the trees and came running down, wondering.
She met Donahue squarely in the light from the open door and rushed at
him with a little whimper of joy. The old horse reached his head down
over her shoulder and actually hugged her to him.
Wardwell came down from the wagon, and was kissed without questions.
The questions would come later.