FATE, THE SATIRIST
Four months drifted by. The will of Colonel William Landor had been read
and executed. According to its provisions the home ranch with one-tenth
of the herd, divided impartially as they filed past the executor, were
left to Mary Landor; in event of her death to descend to "an only
nephew, Clayton Craig by name." A second fraction of the great herd, a
tenth of the remainder, selected in the same manner, reverted at once
"unqualifiedly and with full title to hold or to sell to the
aforementioned sole blood relative, Clayton Craig." All of the estate
not previously mentioned, the second ranch whereon How Landor had
builded, various chattels enumerated, a small sum of money in a city
bank, and the balance of the herd, whose number the testator himself
could not give with certainty, were willed likewise unqualifiedly to "my
adopted daughter, Elizabeth Landor." That was all. A single sheet of
greasy note paper, a collection of pedantic antiquated phrases, penned
laboriously with the scrawling hand of one unused to writing; but
incontrovertible in its laconic directness. Save these three no other
names were mentioned. So far as the Indian Ma-wa-cha-sa, commonly called
How Landor, was concerned he might never have existed. In a hundred
words the labour was complete; and at its end, before the single sheet
was covered, sprawling, characteristic, was the last signature of him
who at the time was the biggest cattleman west of the river: William
Landor of the Buffalo Butte.
Craig himself did not appear, either at the reading or the execution.
Instead a dapper city attorney with a sarcastic tongue and an isolated
manner was present to conserve his interests; and, satisfied on that
score, and ere the supply of Havanas in a beautifully embossed leather
case was exhausted, in fact, to quote his own words, "as quickly as a
kind Providence would permit," he vanished into the unknown from whence
he came. Following, on the next train, came a big-voiced, red-bearded
Irishman who proclaimed himself the new foreman and immediately took
possession. Simultaneously there disappeared from the scene the Buffalo
Butte ranch and the brand by which it had been known; and in its place
upon the flank of every live thing controlled, stared forth a C locked
to a C (C-C): the heraldry of the new master, Clayton Craig.
Likewise the long-planned wedding journey had taken place and become a
memory. Into the silent places they went, this new-made man and
wife--and no one was present at the departure to bid them adieu. Back
from the land of nothingness they came--and again no one was at hand to
welcome their return. In but one respect did the accomplishment of that
plan alter from the prearranged; and that one item was the consideration
of time. They did not stay away until winter, as the girl had announced.
Starting in November, they did not complete the month. Nor did they stay
for more than a day in any one spot. Like the curse of the Wandering
Jew, a newborn restlessness in the girl kept calling "On, on." Battle
against it as she might, she was powerless under its dominance. She knew
not from whence had come the change, nor why; but that in the last weeks
she had altered fundamentally, unbelievably, she could not question. The
very first night out, ere they had slept, she had begun to talk of
change on the morrow. The next day it was the same--and the next. When
they were moving the morbid restlessness gradually wore away; for the
time being she became her old careless-happy self; and in sympathy her
companion opened as a flower to the sun. Then would come a pause; and
the morbid, dogging spirit of unrest would close upon her anew. Thus day
by day passed until a week had gone by. Then one morning when camp was
struck, instead of advancing farther, the man had faced back the way
they had come. He made no comment, nor did she. Neither then nor in days
that followed did he once allude to the reason that had caused the
change of plan. When the girl was gay, he was gay likewise. When she
lapsed listlessly into the slough of silence and despond, he went on
precisely as though unconscious of a change. His acting, for acting it
was, even the girl could not but realise at that time, was masterly.
What he was thinking no human being ever knew, no human being could ever
know; for he never gave the semblance of a hint. Probably not since man
and woman began under the sanction of law and of clergy to mate, had
there been such a honeymoon. Probably never will there be such another.
That the whole expedition was a piteous, dreary failure neither could
have doubted ere the first week dragged by. That the marriage journey
which it ushered in was to be a failure likewise, neither could have
questioned, ere the second week, which brought them home, had passed.
The Garden of Eden was there, there as certainly in its frost-brown
sun-blessed perfection as though spread luxuriously within the tropics.
Adam was there, Adam prepared to accept it as normally content as the
first man; but Eve was not satisfied. Within the garden the serpent had
shown his face and tempted her. For very, very long she would not admit
the fact even to herself, deluded herself by the belief that this
newborn discontent was but temporary; yet bald, unaltering as the
prairie itself, the truth stood forth. Thus they went, and thus they
returned. Thus again thereafter the days went monotonously by.
One bright spot, and one alone, appeared on their firmament; and that
was the opening of the new house. This was to be a surprise, a climax
boyishly reserved by its builder for their return. The man had
intentionally so arranged that the start should be from the old ranch,
and in consequence the girl had never seen either the new or its
furnishings, until the November day when the overloaded surrey drew up
in the dooryard, and the journey was complete. Pathetic, indescribable,
in the light of the past, in the memory of the solitary hours that
frontier nest represented, the moment must have been to the man when he
led the way to the entrance and turned the key. Yet he smiled as he
threw open the door; and, standing there, ere she entered, he kissed
her.
"It isn't much, but it was mine, Bess, and now it's yours," he said,
and, her hand in his, he crossed the threshold.
A moment the girl stood staring around her. Crude as everything was, and
cheap in aggregate, it spoke a testimony that was overwhelming. Never
before, not even that first night they had been alone, had the girl
realised as at this moment what she meant to this solitary, impassive
human. Never before until these mute things he had fashioned with his
own hands stood before her eyes did she realise fully his love. With the
knowledge now came a flood of repentance and of appreciation. Her arms
flew about his neck. Her wet face was hid.
"How you love me, man," she voiced. "How you love me!"
"Yes, Bess," said the other simply; and that was all.
For that day, and the next, and the next, the mood lasted, an awakening
the girl began to fancy permanent; then inevitably came the reaction.
The man took up his duties where he had laid them down: the supervision
of a herd scattered of necessity to the winds, the personal inspection
of a range that stretched away for miles. Soon after daylight, his lunch
for the day packed in the pouch he slung over his shoulder, he left
astride the mouse-coloured, saddleless broncho; not to return until dark
or later, tired and hungry, but ever smiling at the home-coming, ever
considerate. Thus the third night he returned to find the house dark and
the fire in the soft coal stove dead; to find this and the girl
stretched listless on the bed against the wall, staring wide-eyed into
the darkness.
"I was tired and resting, How," she had explained penitently, and gone
about the task of preparing supper; but the man was not deceived, and
that moment, if not before, he recognised the inevitable.
Yet even then he made no comment, nor altered in the minutest detail his
manner. If ever a human being played the game, it was How Landor. With a
blindness that was masterly, that was all but fatuous, he ignored the
obvious. His equanimity and patience were invulnerable. Silent by
nature, he grew fairly loquacious in an effort to be companionable.
Probably no white man alive would have done as he did, would have borne
what he did; perhaps it would have been better had he done differently;
but he was as he was. Day after day he endured the galling starched
linen and unaccustomed clothing, making long journeys to the distant
town to keep his wardrobe clean and replenished. Day after day he
polished his boots and struggled with his cravat. Puerile unqualifiedly
an observer would have characterised this repeated farce; but to one who
knew the tale in its entirety, it would have seemed very far from
humorous. All but sacrilege, it is to tell of this starved human's doing
at this time. The sublime and the ridiculous ever elbow so closely in
this life and jostled so continuously in those stormy hours of How
Landor's chastening. Suffice it to repeat that every second through it
all he played the game; played it with a smiling face, and the ghost of
a jest ever trembling on his lips. Played it from the moment he entered
his house until the moment he daily disappeared, astride the vixenish
undersized cayuse. Then when he was alone, when there were no human eyes
to observe, to pity perchance, then--But let it pass what he did then.
It is another tale and extraneous.
Thus drifted by the late fall and early winter. Bit by bit the days grew
shorter; and then as a pendulum vibrates, lengthened shade by shade. No
human being came their way, nor wild thing, save roving murderers on
pillage bent. Even the cowmen he employed, the old hands he and Bess had
both known for years, avoided him obviously, stubbornly. After the
execution of the will he had built them another ranch house at a
distance on the range, and there they congregated and clung. They
accepted his money and obeyed his orders unquestioningly; but further
than that--they were white and he was red. Howard, the one man with
whom he had been friendly, had grown restless and drifted on--whither no
one knew. Save for the Irish overseer and one other cowboy, the old
Buffalo Butte ranch was deserted. Locally, there neither was nor had
been any outward manifestation of hostility, nor even gossip. But the
olden times when the hospitable ranch house of Colonel William Landor
was the meeting point of ranchers within a radius of fifty miles were
gone. They did not persecute the new master or his white wife; they did
a subtler, crueller thing: they ignored them. To the Indian's face, when
by infrequent chance they met, they were affable, obliging. His
reputation had spread too far for them to appear otherwise; but, again,
they were white and he was red--and between them the chasm yawned.
Thus passed the months. Winter, dead and relentless, held its sway. It
was a normal winter; but ever in this unprotected land the period was
one of inevitable decimation, of a weeding out of the unfit. Here and
there upon the range, dark against the now background of universal
white, stared forth the carcass of a weakling. Over it for a few nights
the coyotes and grey wolves howled and fought; then would come a fresh
layer of white, and the spot where it had been would merge once more
into the universal colour scheme. Even the prairie chickens vanished,
migrated to southern lands where corn was king. No more at daylight or
at dusk could one hear the whistle of their passing wings, or the
booming of their rallying call. Magnificent in any season, this
impression of the wild was even more pronounced now. The thought of God
is synonymous with immensity; and so being, Deity was here eternally
manifest, ubiquitous. The human mind could not conceive a more infinite
bigness than this gleaming frost-bound waste stretched to the horizon
beneath the blazing winter sun. Magnificent it was beyond the power of
words to describe; but lonely, lonely. Within the tiny cottage, the
girl, Bess, drew the curtains tight over the single window and for days
at a time did not glance without.
Then at last, for to all things there is an end, came spring. Long
before it arrived the Indian knew it was coming, read incontestably its
advance signs. No longer, as the mouse-coloured cayuse bore him over the
range, was there the mellow crunch of snow underfoot. Instead the sound
was crisp and sharp: the crackling of ice where the snow had melted and
frozen again. Distinct upon the record of the bleak prairie page
appeared another sign infallible. Here and there, singly and _en masse_,
wherever the herds had grazed, appeared oblong brown blots the size of
an animal's body. The cattle were becoming weak under the influence of
prolonged winter, and lay down frequently to rest, their warm bodies
branding the evidence with melted snow. The jack rabbits, ubiquitous on
the ranges, that sprang daily almost from beneath the pony's feet, were
changing their winter's dress, were becoming darker; almost as though
soiled by a muddy hand. Here and there on the high places the sparkling
white was giving way to a dull, lustreless brown. Gradually, day by day,
as though they were a pestilence, they expanded, augmented until they,
and not the white, became the dominant tone. The sun was high in the sky
now. At noontime the man's shadow was short, scarcely extended back of
his pony's feet. Mid-afternoons, in the low places when he passed
through, there was a spattering of snow water collected in tiny puddles.
After that there was no need of signs. Realities were everywhere. Dips
in the rolling land, mere dry runs save at this season, became creeks;
flushed to their capacity and beyond, sang softly all the day long. Not
only the high spots, but even the north slopes lost their white
blankets, surrendered to the conquering brown. Migratory life, long
absent, returned to its own. Prairie kites soared far overhead on
motionless wings. Meadow larks, cheeriest of heralds, practised their
five-toned lay. Here and there, to the north of prairie boulders,
appeared tufts of green; tufts that, like the preceding brown, grew and
grew and grew until they dominated the whole landscape. Then at last,
the climax, the _finale_ of the play, came life, animal and vegetable,
with a rush. Again at daylight and at dusk swarms of black dots on
whistling wings floated here and there, descended to earth; and,
following, indefinite as to location, weird, lonely, boomed forth in
their mating songs. Transient, shallow, miniature lakes swarmed with
their new-come denizens. Last of all, final assurance of a new season's
advent, by day and by night, swelling, diminishing, unfailingly musical
as distant chiming bells, came the sound of all most typical of prairie
and of spring. From high overhead in the blue it came, often so high
that the eye could not distinguish its makers; yet alway distinctive,
alway hauntingly mysterious. "Honk! honk! honk!" sounded and echoed and
re-echoed that heraldry over the awakened land. "Honk! honk! honk!" it
repeated; and listening humans smiled and commented unnecessarily each
to the other: "Spring is not coming. It is here."