THE USES OF THE MOON
When I turned about in the saddle I found that El Mahdi had passed both
of my companions who were stock still in the road a half-dozen paces
behind me. I pulled him up and called to them, "What mare's nest have
you found now?"
They replied that some horse had lately passed in a gallop. One could
tell by the long jumping and the deep, ploughing hoof-prints. "Come on,"
said I, "Woodford's devils haven't crossed. What do we care?"
"But it's mighty big jumpin'," answered the hunchback.
"Maybe," I responded laughing, "the cow that jumped over the moon took a
running start there."
"If she did," said Ump, "I'll just find out if any of the Hortons saw
her goin'." Then he shouted, "Hey, Danel, who crossed ahead of us?"
The long bulk of the ferryman loomed in the door. "It was Twiggs," he
answered.
I heard Jud cursing under his breath. Twiggs was the head groom of
Cynthia Carper, and when he ran a horse like that the devil was to pay.
I gripped the reins of El Mahdi's bridle until he began to rear.
"He must have been in a hurry," said Ump.
"'Pears like it," responded the boatman, turning back into his house.
"He lit out pretty brisk."
Ump shook the reins of his bridle and went by me in a gallop. The
Cardinal passed at my knee, and I followed, bending over to keep the
flying sand out of my eyes.
The moon was rising, a red wheel behind the shifting fog. And under its
soft light the world was a ghost land. We rode like phantoms, the
horses' feet striking noiselessly in the deep sand, except where we
threw the dead sycamore leaves. My body swung with the motions of the
horse, and Ump and Jud might have been a part of the thing that galloped
under their saddles.
The art of riding a horse cannot be learned in half a dozen lessons in
the academy on the avenue. It does not lie in the crook of the knee, or
the angle of the spine. It does not lie in the make of the saddle or the
multiplicity of snaffle reins, nor does it lie in the thirty-nine
articles of my lady's riding-master. But it is embraced in the grasp of
one law that may be stated in a line, and perhaps learned in a dozen
years,--be a part of the horse.
The mastery of an art--be it what you like--does but consist in the
comprehension of its basic law. The appreciation of this truth is
indispensable. It cannot avail to ape the manner of the initiate. I have
seen dapper youths booted and spurred, riding horses in the park, rising
to the trot and holding the ball of the foot just so on the iron of the
stirrup, and if the horse had bent his body they would have gone
sprawling into the bramble bushes. Yet these youngsters believed that
they were riding like her Majesty's cavalry, the ogled gallants of every
strolling lass.
I have seen begloved clubmen with an English accent worrying a good
horse that they understood about as well as a problem in mechanics or
any line of Horace. And I have seen my lady sitting a splendid mount,
with the reins caught properly in her fingers and her back as straight
as a whip-staff, and I would have wagered my life that every muscle in
her little body was as rigid as a rock, and her knee as numb as the
conscience of a therapeutist.
Look, if you please, at the mud-stained cavalryman who has lived his
days and his nights in the saddle; or the cattle drover who has never
had any home but this pigskin seat, and mark you what a part of the
horse he is. Hark back to these models when you are listening to the
vapourings of a riding-master lately expatriated from the stables of Sir
Henry. To ride well is to recreate the fabulous centaur of Thessaly.
We raced over the mile of sand road in fewer minutes than it takes to
write it down here. There was another factor, new come into the problem,
and we meant to follow it close. Expedition has not been too highly
sung. An esoteric novelist hath it that a pigmy is as good as a giant if
he arrive in time.
At the end of this mile, below Horton's Ferry, the road forks, and there
stands a white signboard with its arms crossed, proclaiming the ways to
the travelling stranger. The cattle Ward had bought were in two droves.
Four hundred were on the lands of Nicholas Marsh, perhaps three miles
farther down the Valley River, and the remaining two hundred a mile or
two south of the crossroads at David Westfall's.
Ump swung his horse around in the road at the forks. "Boys," he said,
"we'll have to divide up. I'll go over to old Westfall's, an' you bring
up the other cattle. I'll make King David help to the forks."
"What about Twiggs?" said I.
"To hell with Twiggs," said he. "If he gits in your way, throat him."
Then he clucked to the Bay Eagle and rode over the hill, his humped back
rising and falling with the gallop of the mare.
We slapped the reins on our horses' necks and passed on to the north,
the horses nose to nose, and my stirrup leather brushing the giant's
knee at every jump of El Mahdi. The huge Cardinal galloped in the
moonlight like some splendid machine of bronze, never a misstep, never a
false estimate, never the difference of a finger's length in the long,
even jumps. It might have been the one-eyed Agib riding his mighty horse
of brass, except that no son of a decadent Sultan ever carried the bulk
of Orange Jud. And the eccentric El Mahdi! There was no cause for
fault-finding on this night. He galloped low and easily, gathering his
grey legs as gracefully as his splendid, nervous mother. I watched his
mane fluttering in the stiff breeze, his slim ears thrust forward, the
moon shining on his steel-blue hide. For once he seemed in sympathy with
what I was about. Seemed, I write it, for it must have been a mistaken
fancy. This splendid, indifferent rascal shared the sensations of no
living man. Long and long ago he had sounded life and found it hollow.
Still, as if he were a woman, I loved him for this accursed
indifference. Was it because his emotions were so hopelessly
inaccessible, or because he saw through the illusion we were chasing; or
because--because--who knows what it was? We have no litmus-paper test
for the charm of genius.
Under us the dry leaves crackled like twigs snapping in a fire, and the
flying sand cut the bushes along the roadway like a storm of whizzing
hailstones. In the wide water of the Valley River the moon flitted, and
we led her a lively race. When I was little I had a theory about this
moon. The old folks were all wrong about its uses. Lighting the night
was a piece of incidental business. It was there primarily as a door
into and out of the world. Through it we came, carried down from the
hill-tops on the backs of the crooked men and handed over to the old
black mammy who unwrapped us trembling by the firelight. Then we
squalled lustily, and they said "A child is born."
When a man died, as we have a way of saying, he did but go back with
these same crooked men through the golden door of the world. Had I not
seen the moon standing with its rim on the eastern ridge of the Seely
Hill when they found old Jerry Lance lying stone-dead in his house? And
had I not predicted with an air of mysterious knowledge that Jourdan
would recover when Red Mike threw him? The sky was moonless and he could
not get out if he wished.
Besides there was a lot of mystery about this getting into the world.
Often when I was little, I had questioned the elders closely about it,
and their replies were vague, clothed in subtle and bedizzened
generalities. They did not know, that was clear, and since they were so
abominably evasive I was resolved to keep the truth locked in my own
bosom and let them find out about it the best way they could. Once, in a
burst of confidence I broached the subject to old Liza and explained my
theory. She listened with a grave face and said that I had doubtless
discovered the real truth of the matter, and I ought to explain it to a
waiting world. But I took a different view, swore her to secrecy, and
rode away on a peeled gum-stick horse named Alhambra, the Son of the
Wind.
While the horses ran, I speculated on the possible mission of Twiggs,
but I could find no light, except that, of course, it augured no good to
us. I think Jud was turning the same problem, for once in a while I
could hear him curse, and the name of Twiggs flitted among the
anathemas. We had hoped for a truce of trouble until we came up to
Woodford beyond the Valley River. But here was a minion of Cynthia
riding the country like Paul Revere. My mind ran back to the saucy miss
on the ridge of Thornberg's Hill, and her enigmatic advice, blurted out
in a moment of pique. This Twiggs was colder baggage. But, Lord love me!
how they both ran their horses!
Three miles soon slip under a horse's foot, and almost before we knew it
we were travelling up to Nicholas Marsh's gate. Jud lifted the wooden
latch and we rode down to the house. Ward said that Nicholas Marsh was
the straightest man in all the cattle business, scrupulously clean in
every detail of his trades. Many a year Ward bought his cattle without
looking at a bullock of them. If Marsh said "Good tops and middlin'
tails," the good ones of his drove were always first class and the bad
ones rather above the ordinary. The name of Marsh was good in the Hills,
and his word was good. I doubt me if a man can leave behind him a better
fame than that.
The big house sat on a little knoll among the maples, overlooking the
Valley River. The house was of grey stone, built by his father, and
stood surrounded by a porch, swept by the maple branches and littered
with saddles, saddle blankets, long rope halters, bridles, salt sacks,
heavy leather hobbles, and all the work-a-day gear of a cattle grazier.
There was a certain air of strangeness in the way we were met at
Nicholas Marsh's house. I do not mean inhospitality, rather the reverse,
with a tinge of embarrassment, as of one entertaining the awkward guest.
We were evidently expected, and a steaming supper was laid for us. Yet,
when I sat at the table and Jud with his plate by the smouldering fire,
we were not entirely easy. Marsh walked through the room, backward and
forward, with his hands behind him, and a great lock of his iron-grey
hair throwing shadows across his face. Now and then he put some query
about the grass, or my brother's injury, or the condition of the road,
and then turned about on his heel. His fine open face wore traces of
annoyance. It was plain that there had been here some business not very
pleasing to this honourable man. When I told him we had come for the
cattle, the muscles of his jaw seemed to tighten. He stopped and looked
me squarely in the face.
"Well, Quiller," he said, with what seemed to me to be unnecessary
firmness, "I shall let you have them."
I heard Jud turn sharply in his chair.
"Let me have them? Is there any trouble about it?"
The man was clearly embarrassed. He bit his lip and twisted his neck
around in his collar. "No," he said, hesitating in his speech, "there
isn't any trouble. Still a man might demand the money at the scales. He
would have a right to do that."
My pulse jumped. So this was one of their plans, those devils. And we
had never a one of us dreamed of it. If the money were demanded at the
scales it would mean delay, and delay meant that Woodford would win.
So this was Twiggs's part in the ugly work. No wonder he ran his horse.
Trust a woman for jamming through the devil's business. Nothing but the
good fibre of this honourable man had saved us. But Westfall! He was
lighter stuff. How about Westfall?
I looked up sharply into the troubled face of the honest man.
"How about the other cattle," I faltered; "shall we get them?"
"Who went for them?" he asked.
"Ump," I replied; "he left us at the crossroads."
The man took his watch out of his pocket and studied for a moment.
"Yes," he said, "you will get them."
It was put like some confident opinion based upon the arrival of an
event.
"Mister Marsh," I said, "are you afraid of Ward? Isn't he good for the
money?"
"Don't worry about that, my boy," he answered, taking up the
candlestick, "I have said that you shall have the cattle, and you shall
have them. Let me see about a bed for you."
Then he went out, closing the door after him.
I turned to Jud, and he pointed his finger to a letter lying on the
mantelpiece. I arose and picked it up. It bore Cynthia's seal and was
open.
Let us forgive little Miss Pandora. Old Jupiter ought to have known
better. And the dimpled wife of Bluebeard! That forbidden door was so
tremendously alluring!
I think I should have pulled the letter out of its envelope had I not
feared that this man would return and find it in my fingers. I showed
the seal to Jud and replaced it on the mantelpiece.
He slapped his leg. "Twiggs brought that," he said, "an' he's gone on to
Westfall's. What does it say?"
"I didn't read it," I answered.
The man heaved his shoulders up almost to his ears. "Quiller," he said,
"you can't root, if you have a silk nose."
I think I should have fallen, but at this moment Nicholas Marsh came
back with his candle, and said we ought to sleep if we wished an early
start in the morning. I followed him up the bare stairway to my room on
the north side of the house. He placed the candlestick on the table,
promised to call me early, then bade me good-night and went away.
I watched his broad back disappear in the shadow of the hall. Then I
closed the door and latched it. Rigid honesty has its disadvantages.
Here was a man almost persuaded to insist upon a right that was valid
but unusual, and deeply worried because he had almost yielded to the
urging. It takes good men to see the fine shades of such a thing.
There was a broad window in this room, with the bare limbs of the maples
brushing against its casement. I looked out before I went to bed. Beyond
the Valley River, great smoky shadows cloaked the hills, gilded along
their borders by the rising moon; hills that sat muffled in the foldings
of their robes, waiting for the end,--waiting for man to play out the
game and quit, and the Great Manager to pull down his scenery.
I blew out the candle, and presently slept as one sleeps when he is
young. Sometime in the night I sat bolt upright in the good bed to
listen. I had heard,--or was I dreaming,--floating up from some far
distance, the last faint echo of that voice of Parson Peppers.
"An' the ravens they did feed him, fare ye well,
fare ye well."
I sprang out of bed and pressed my face against the window. There was no
sound in the world. Below, the Valley River lay like a plate of
burnished yellow metal. Under the enchanted moon it was the haunted
water of the fairy. No mortal went singing down its flood, surely,
unless he sailed in the ship that the tailors sewed together, or went
a-dreaming in that mystic barge rowed by the fifty daughters of Danaus.
I crept back under the woven coverlid. This was haunted country, and
Parson Peppers was doubtless snoring in a bed.