Through the Night
On into the night went the Captain, bearing VB. Over the gate the
bridle-rein drew against his neck and the big beast swung to the right,
following the road southward, on down the gulch, on toward Ranger--a
fierceness in his rider's heart that was suicidal.
All the bitterness VB had endured, from the stinging torrent his father
turned upon him back in New York to the flat realization that to let
himself love Gail Thorpe might bring him into worse hells, surged up
into his throat and mingled with the craving there. It seeped through
into his mind, perverted his thoughts, stamped down the optimism that
had held him up, shattered what remnants of faith still remained.
"Faster, Captain!" he cried. "Faster!"
And the stallion responded, scudding through the blue moonlight with a
speed that seemed beyond the power of flesh to attain. He shook his
fine head and stretched out the long nose as though the very act of
thrusting it farther would give more impetus to his thundering hoofs.
VB sat erect in the saddle, a fierce delight aroused by the speed
running through his veins like fire--and, reaching to his throat,
adding to the scorching. He swung his right hand rhythmically, keeping
time to the steady roll of the stallion's feet. The wind tore at him,
vibrating his hat brim, whipping the long muffler out from his neck,
and he shook his head against it.
He was free at last! Free after those months of doubt, of foolish
fighting! He was answering the call that came from the depths of his
true self--that hidden self--the call of flesh that needs aid! He cared
not for the morrow, for the stretching future. His one thought was on
the now--on the rankling, eating, festering moment that needed only one
thing to be wiped out forever.
And always, in the back of his mind, was the picture of Gail Thorpe as
she had turned from him that afternoon. It loomed large and larger as
he tore on to the south through the solitude, ripping his way through
the cool murk.
"I won't put my mark on her!" he cried, and whipped the Captain's
flanks with his heavy hat, the thought setting his heart flaming. "I
won't!" he cried. And again, "I won't!"
He was riding down into his particular depths so to stultify himself
that it would be impossible to risk that woman's happiness against the
chance that some time, some day, he would go down, loving her, making
her know he loved her, but fighting without gain. That, surely, is one
sort of love, faulty though the engendering spirit may be.
The whipping with the hat sent the horse on to still greater endeavor.
A slight weariness commenced to show in the ducking of his head with
every stride, but he did not slacken his pace. His ears were still set
stiffly forward, flipping back, one after the other, for word from his
rider; the spurn of his feet was still sharp and clear and unfaltering;
the spirit in that rippling, dripping body still ran high.
And closing his eyes, drinking the night air through his mouth in great
gulps, VB let the animal carry him on and on,--yet backward, back into
the face of all that fighting he had summoned, doubling on his own
tracks, slipping so easily down the way he had blazed upward with awful
sacrifice and hardship.
An hour--two--nine--eleven--the Captain might have been running so a
week, and VB would not have known. His mind was not on time, not on his
horse. He had ceased to think beyond the recognition of a craving, a
craving that he did not fight but encouraged, nursed, teased--for it
was going to be satisfied!
The stallion's pace began to slacken. He wearied. The bellows lungs,
the heart of steel, the legs of tireless sinew began to feel the strain
of that long run. The run waned to a gallop, and the gallop to a trot.
There his breathing becoming easier, he blew loudly from his nostrils
as though to distend them farther and make way for the air he must have.
VB realized this dully but his heeding of that devilish inner call had
taken him so far from his more tender self, from his instinctive desire
to love and understand, that he did not follow out his comprehension.
"Go it, boy!" he muttered. "It's all I'll ask of you--just this one
run."
And the Captain, dropping an ear back for the word, leaned to the task,
resuming the steady, space-eating gallop mile after mile. All the way
into Ranger they held that pace. In the last mile the stallion stumbled
twice, but after both breaks in his stride ran on more swiftly for many
yards, as though to make up to his master for the jolting the half
falls gave him. He was a bit unsteady on those feet as he took the turn
and dropped down the low bank into the river. They forded it in a
shimmer of silver as the horse's legs threw out the black water to be
frozen and burnished by the light of the moon. The stallion toiled up
the far bank at a lagging trot, and on the flat VB pulled the panting
animal down to a walk.
Oh, VB, it was not too late then, had you only realized it! Your ideal
was still there, more exemplary than ever before, but you could not
recognize it through those eyes which saw only the red of a wrecking
passion! You had drained to the last ounce of reserve the strength of
that spirit you had so emulated, which had been as a shining light, an
unfaltering candle in the darkness. It was stripped bare before you as
that splendid animal gulped between breaths. Could you have but seen!
Could something only have _made_ you see! But it was not to be.
VB had forgotten the Captain. In the face of his wretched weakening the
stallion became merely a conveyance, a convenience, a means for
stifling the neurotic excitement within him. He forgot that this thing
he rode represented his only achievement--an achievement such as few
men ever boast.
He guided the stallion to a half-wrecked log house south of the road,
dismounted, and stood a moment before the shack, his glittering eyes on
the squares of light yonder under the rising hill. He heard a faint
tinkling from the place, and a voice raised in laughter.
As he watched, a mounted man passed between him and the yellow glare.
In a moment he saw the man enter the saloon door.
"Come, boy," he muttered, moving cautiously through the opening into
the place. "You'll be warm in here. You'll cool off slowly."
Then, in a burst of hysterical passion, he threw his arms about the
stallion's head and drew it to him fiercely.
"Oh, I won't be gone long, Captain!" he promised. "Not long--just a
little while. It's not the worst, Captain! I'm not weakening!"
Drunk with the indulgence of his nervous weakness, he lied glibly,
knowing he lied, without object--just to lie, to pervert life. And as
the Captain's quick, hot breath penetrated his garments, VB drew the
head still tighter.
"You're all I've got, Captain," he muttered, now in a trembling calm.
"You'll wait. I know that. I know what you will do better than I know
anything else in the world--better than I know what--what _I'll_ do!
Wait for me, boy--wait right here!"
His voice broke on the last word as he stumbled through the door and
set off toward the building against the hill. He did not hear the
Captain turn, walk as far as the door of the shack, and peer after him
anxiously. Nor did he see the figure of a man halted in the road,
watching him go across the flat, chaps flapping, brushing through the
sage noisily.
VB halted in the path of light, swaying the merest trifle from side to
side as he pulled his chap belt in another hole and tried to still the
twitching of his hands, the weakening of his knees.
The tinkling he had heard became clear. He could see now. A Mexican
squatted on his spurs, back against the wall, and twanged a fandango on
a battered guitar. His hat was far back over his head, cigarette
glowing in the corner of his mouth, gay blue muffler loose on his
shoulders. He hummed to the music, his voice rising now and then to
float out into the night above the other sounds from the one room.
The bar of rough boards, top covered with red oilcloth, stretched along
one side. Black bottles flashed their high lights from a shelf behind
it, above which hung an array of antlers. The bartender, broad Stetson
shading his face, talked loudly, his hands wide apart on the bar and
bearing much of his weight. Now and then he dropped his head to spit
between his forearms.
Three men in chaps lounged before the bar, talking. One, the tallest,
talked with his head flung back and gestures that were a trifle too
loose. The shortest looked into his face with a ceaseless, senseless
smile, and giggled whenever the voice rose high or the gestures became
unusually wild. The third, elbows on the oilcloth, head on his fists,
neither joined in nor appeared to heed the conversation.
Back in the room stood two tables, both covered with green cloth. One
was unused; the other accommodated four men. Each of the quartet wore a
hat drawn low over his face; each held cards. They seldom spoke; when
they did, their voices were low. VB saw only their lips move. Their
motions were like the words--few and abrupt. When chips were counted it
was with expertness; when they were shoved to the center of the table
it was with finality.
Near them, tilted against the wall in a wire-trussed chair, sat a
sleeping man, hat on the floor.
Two swinging oil lamps lighted the smoke-fogged air of the place, and
their glow seemed to be diffused by it, idealizing everything,
softening it--
Everything except the high lights from the bottles on the shelf. Those
were stabs of searing brightness; they hurt VB's eyeballs.
His gaze traveled back to the Mexican. The melody had drifted from the
fandango into a swinging waltz song popular in the cities four years
before. He whistled the air through his teeth. The cigarette was still
between his lips. The face brought vague recollections to VB. Then he
remembered that this was Julio, the Mexican who ran with Rhues. He
belonged to Rhues, they had told him, body and soul.
Thought of Rhues sent VB's right hand to his left side, up under the
arm. He squeezed the gun that nestled there.
Of a sudden, nausea came to the man who looked in. It was not caused by
fear of Rhues--of the possibility of an encounter. The poignant fumes
that came from the open door stirred it, and the sickness was that of a
man who sees his great prize melt away.
For the moment VB wanted to rebel. He tore his eyes from those
glittering bottles; tried to stop his breathing that treacherous
nostrils might not inhale those odors.
But it was useless--his feet would not carry him away. He knew he must
move, move soon, and though he now cried out in his heart against it he
knew which way his feet would carry him.
He half turned his body and looked back toward the shack where the
Captain waited, and a tightening came in his throat to mingle with the
rapaciousness there.
"Just a little while, Captain," he whispered, feeling childishly that
the horse would hear the words and understand. "Just a little
while--I'm just--just going to take a little hand in the card game."
And as the Mexican finished his waltz with a rip of the thumb clear
across the six strings of his instrument, Young VB put a foot on the
threshold of the saloon and slowly drew himself to his full height in
the doorway. Framed by darkness he stood there, thumbs in his belt,
mouth in a grim line, hat down to hide the pallor of his cheeks, the
torment in his eyes; his shoulders were braced back in resolution, but
his knees, inside his generous chaps, trembled.