II

They helped him on, and pointed out the dim line of telephone poles

which marked a road a mile beyond. He walked his horse onward, not

daring to trot, struck the dusty highway, rode on over an imperceptible

roll of the plains, and was alone on a vast bare earth, naked as when

born from the womb of time.

Plover swung up before him with melancholy cries. A soft haze rose from

the plains. They grew more vast, more endless. In the north, a white

cloud-mass piled itself up and up until it seemed as if it might topple

over upon the flat world beneath. He had never before looked at the

country except as real estate, never seen the plains, and a curious new

sense of the bigness of the earth oppressed him. He felt very small and

very mean. The humiliation of his spirits was a novel feeling and an

unpleasant one; he tried to hum it away:--

'Just wait till I strike Broadway

And watch me with the girls,

For I'm the man that invented it--

The hair that always curls.'

His harsh voice in the stillness was ridiculous,--even to him,--but when

he stopped singing, the silence flowed over him as a stream that had

been held back. The sky was enormous; he was only a speck on the vast

floor. As he plodded on and on and on through the dust, he began to grow

dizzy from the glare and the heat. He could not collect his thoughts for

business. A curious sense of weakened identity perplexed him, and his

head was full of drifting pictures--Waldron's face among them. That face

lingered. He saw him looking vaguely out of the car window--saying that

he couldn't stand up under it--that it was 'impossible.' He wondered if

it was a bluff, after all. The face faded away leaving a dull pity

behind it, a struggling remorse. Cargan shifted uneasily in his saddle,

and tried to think of business. But instead of business queer childish

ideas began floating in and out of his mind, accompanied by words

remembered from Sundays in his boyhood. He was alone with God. God saw

into his heart. A little nervous shiver ran over him, and when he

checked it with a laugh there followed a wave of superstitious emotion.

A low wave of the prairies had hidden from him a little house and barn

standing crudely new against the sky in the distance. Tiny figures were

moving behind the buildings, and a dust-cloud rose from the highway in

front. Cargan suddenly became conscious of his appearance--his serge

suit, his straw hat, his awkward seat in the saddle. The loneliness of

the plains had shaken his usual self-assurance.

'Maybe they'll think I stole this horse. Guess I'll go round,' he said

aloud. He jerked his steed from the road into the grass, and urged him

into a trot. Instantly he found himself beaten and jolted like a ship in

a tempest. He lost a stirrup, he slipped sidewise on the saddle; then in

a panicky fright he began to shout and saw at the bit. Frightened by the

voice and the thunder of hoofs, a chaparral cock darted from beneath the

horse's nose. It was enough to make the beast swerve, then toss his

head, and in a panic madder than his rider's, break into a run and dash

unrestrainably onward. Cargan, numb with fright, leaned over his neck

and wound his hands in the mane. The speed sickened him. The flat earth

swung beneath, the sky swam dizzily. He dared not pull on the reins; he

could only hold on grimly and shut his eyes. Once he slipped, and,

screaming, saw for an instant a blur of grass before he could pull

himself back to safety. And then the speed increased, the sweaty

shoulders labored beneath him, and his senses whirled.

He did not note how far they ran; but at last came a slower motion, a

gallop, and then a trot. Weak from exhaustion, he was bumped from the

saddle, and found himself clutching and kicking with both arms around

his horse's neck. Flinging himself outward, he rolled over on the soft

ground, and lay groaning on the prairie. The well-trained horse stopped

and began to graze; he too was quivering with fatigue, but his fright

was over. The sun was burning near the zenith. The world again was

empty, and this time there was no road.

Cargan was lost.

When he recovered a little, he caught the horse, and, too shaken to

mount him, limped on, leading him by the bridle, in what direction he

did not know. Pangs of hunger and faintness assailed him. The awful

loneliness chilled him through in spite of the blaze of heat and light.

He remembered stories of men who had wandered on the prairie, round and

round in an endless circle, until they had gone crazy and blown out

their brains. A profound pity for himself stirred him. Never had he so

felt the need of humanity, of human aid. He would have given a hundred

dollars to be walking up Main Street, with the boys calling to him from

Rooney's cigar store, and the world where it was yesterday.

Just in front a little calf stumbled to its feet and ran toward them,

mooing piteously. It, too, was lost. Cargan stroked its nostrils, and a

sympathy for all suffering things flowed through his heart. He thought

with a shudder of Waldron, pacing somewhere like himself, alone, lost,

helpless, his pride gone. In his awakened imagination, he saw him

wandering nearer and nearer the fatal act. 'He'll shoot himself. I ought

to done something,' he whispered, with a sudden rush of unfamiliar

emotion; and all the sentiment in his nature heaved and struggled to the

light.

A cow lowed somewhere beyond them; his horse pricked up his ears, and

the calf ambled off in the direction of the sound. Cargan limped after

hurriedly, leading his horse. A hundred yards brought them to the edge

of a slight bowl in the plains, with a little moisture around which

pewees were flying, and his heart leaped to see beside it a tiny house

of unpainted boards. Wires stretched from one window, along the

depression which led westward, until they disappeared in the endless

horizon; and, as he paused to survey, a sharp bell rang.

'Hello, is that Annie?' came faintly across the silence.

He looked at his watch, and saw that it was only eleven. 'I'll talk to

Casey about Waldron,' he said guiltily. Relief for his escape, and still

more the hush of that enormous plain, the solemnity of the great and

shining sky, filled him with high and noble thoughts.

'Say, is Hamden near here?' he asked of a slim woman in a gingham dress

who appeared at the door.

She nodded.

'And say, can I use your telephone?'

She hesitated, looking him over, then motioned him incuriously to the

stool behind the pine table. Solitude seemed to have made her unready of

speech. He called Cargan & Casey, then waited, fidgeting. Silence

invaded the little kitchen. The clock ticked in a hush; the chickens

droned in whispers; the woman herself worked over the stove with slow

fingers, moving the kettles gently. Cargan & Casey were 'busy.' He fumed

for an instant, then gave his own home number.

'It's Jim,' he said, and heard his wife's carol of surprise. He could

see her tiptoeing at their telephone. 'I'm all right,' he shouted in

response to her eager words; and the thought of their little

sitting-room, and the kids playing behind her, warmed his blood. 'I got

run away with on the plains, but I'm all right--' Her frightened

ejaculation thrilled him with loving pride--'honest I am.' And then

suddenly a wave of generous emotion mounted to his head. 'Martha,' he

called quickly,--'tell Casey not to sell out Waldron--tell him right

away. I'll explain to-morrow.'

The connection roared and failed. He hung up the instrument. The quiet

room, the gently moving woman, the immensity without, rushed back on his

sight. Exhilarated, clear-hearted, looking heaven in the face, he asked

the necessary questions, mounted his horse, and pushed onward.

Hamden was already a blotch upon the horizon. 'Say, it's great to get

into a _big_ country,' he murmured, lifted his bare head to the free

air, and in a curious exaltation of mind rode on dreamily. He noticed

the flowers in the coarse grass, watched the wild doves flying with

their quick, strong wing-beats, and swung his eye joyfully around the

blue horizons that receded until one felt the curve and pitch of the

world.

The mood lasted until Cargan reached the first straggling houses of the

village street, so that he entered upon the rutty highway between dirt

sidewalks with regret, as one whose holiday was ending. He scarcely

noticed the loiterers who stared at him, or thought of his streaked

face, his trousers split at the knee, his hat lost on the wild ride.

But as he plodded onward the atmosphere of town had its effect. His eye

began to take note of the size of the shops glittering under their false

fronts, the new houses behind rows of stiff young trees, the number and

make of automobiles. His subconsciousness grasped the financial level of

Hamden, although his thoughts were still in the wide spaces of the

plains. A boy ran out from the side-walk to sell him a paper. He stuck

it in his side pocket, and suddenly began to feel like a man of this

world again.

'Say, sonny,' he called; 'who sells land in this burg?--Dubell--John

Dubell?--Thanks.'

He went more and more slowly.

A drug-store, blazing with marble and onyx in the afternoon sun, made

Cargan's dry throat wrinkle with thirst. He pulled his horse toward that

side of the street. There was a row of customers along the soda-water

counter, and through the open windows came scraps of conversation: two

boys were teasing each other about a girl; a group of men were talking

auctions, options, prices, real estate. He drank their talk in greedily,

with a pang of homesickness and a rush of returning common sense.

Dismounting stiffly, he tied his horse, and stood for an instant on the

cement pavement, feeling his dirt and tatters, wondering if they would

throw him out for a bum. Then he slid inside the door, and ordered a

chocolate soda.

The clerk was reading the paper while he juggled the milk-shakes.

Cargan, carefully concealing his torn trousers, climbed a stool, and

began to look back upon the vagaries of the day with sullen wonder. He

brushed furtively at the caked dust on his legs, remembering, irritably,

the elegance of Waldron, whom he had saved. In the mirror of the soda

fountain he saw himself, torn, dirty, shrinking, and the sight filled

him with disgust and anger. He felt as ridiculous as when he had come

out with a glass too much from the Stoneham bar, and tripped over the

steps of the main entrance. 'Gimme a cigar,' he called to the boy at the

magazine counter; bit off the end, lit it, and began to think business.

The clerk, swirling a cataract of milk from glass to glass, revealed the

inner sheet of the paper propped before him. Cargan read beneath his arm

the full-page advertisement of a land sale--the land sale he had come

through all this tomfoolery to reach. His eyes bulged as he saw that

they were going to throw a thousand acres on the market. 'Good gosh,' he

gulped inwardly, 'what a chance!' It was a sure thing for the man with

the money.

The last of his fine sentiments evaporated. Except for Waldron he could

have scooped it all in; but now four hundred was all he dared

touch,--and perhaps not that. Raging against his softness back there on

the plains, which seemed a hardly recognizable world, he ground his

teeth, and coughed and choked over his soda. Soft-headed donkey! The

reaction was complete.

Suddenly a little thought no bigger than a minute rose in one corner of

his brain, and spread, and spread. He looked furtively at the clock over

the clerk's head, and saw that it was only half-past two. With guilty

deliberation he rose and walked slowly toward the door of the telephone

booth, keeping back from full consciousness just what he was about to

do. Then he slammed himself within, and shouted Casey's address to the

operator. As he waited, his wrath mounted. 'What in heck was the matter

with me anyway!' He smoked furiously in the stifling box.

'Go ahead,' said the operator,--and, at the word, 'Hey there, Casey,' he

yelled at the dim voice on the wires, 'I've gotta have five thousand

quick! Sell that Benningham Common--yes, Waldron's.' At the name his

anger broke loose. 'The old high-brow tried to bluff me. What!!--' The

connection failed and left him gasping.

'What! Sold it! He told you to!--No, I dunno anything about a court

decision. Up 15 points on a merger! Well what do you think--' He gulped

down the sudden reversal and felt for words. 'Say, tell him,--' he

licked his lips,--'tell him I'm sure glad I saved him. I'm sure glad.'

The wires roared again,--and Cargan, putting down the receiver grinned

shamefacedly into the dirty mirror. But gradually a sense of conscious

virtue began to trickle pleasantly through his veins. 'I'm sure glad,' he

repeated more vigorously; 'carryin' him to-day was what did it.' A

vision of Mrs. Waldron's happy face rose to bless him; the exhilaration

of the morning coursed back into his heart, with a comfortable feeling

of good business about it. He felt better and better. From somewhere a

saying floated into his head: 'Doing good unto others is the only

happiness.' 'By heck, that's true,' he commented aloud, and sat smoking

peacefully, his mind aglow with pleasant thoughts.

The bell whirred raucously. He saw that he had forgotten to replace the

receiver, and putting it to his ear caught Casey's voice again:--

'Say, Carg, Jim Smith's in the office, and won't leave till he's heard

from you. Montana Pacific's off two points more. Say, do you want to

carry _him_? He says he's done for if you sell him out.'

A fire of indignation rushed through Cargan. 'What d' you think I am--a

damned philanthropist?' he yelled. 'Sell out the old gambler! Sell him

out!' And he hung up.