He turned the horses about and took charge of her just as if he were
accustomed to managing stray ladies in the wilderness every day of his
life and understood the situation perfectly; and Margaret settled
wearily into her saddle and looked about her with content.
Suddenly, again, the wide wonder of the night possessed her.
Involuntarily she breathed a soft little exclamation of awe and delight.
Her companion turned to her questioningly:
"Does it always seem so big here--so--limitless?" she asked in
explanation. "It is so far to everywhere it takes one's breath away, and
yet the stars hang close, like a protection. It gives one the feeling of
being alone in the great universe with God. Does it always seem so out
here?"
He looked at her curiously, her pure profile turned up to the wide dome
of luminous blue above. His voice was strangely low and wondering as he
answered, after a moment's silence:
"No, it is not always so," he said. "I have seen it when it was more
like being alone in the great universe with the devil."
There was a tremendous earnestness in his tone that the girl felt meant
more than was on the surface. She turned to look at the fine young face
beside her. In the starlight she could not make out the bitter hardness
of lines that were beginning to be carved about his sensitive mouth. But
there was so much sadness in his voice that her heart went out to him in
pity.
"Oh," she said, gently, "it would be awful that way. Yes, I can
understand. I felt so, a little, while that terrible man was with me."
And she shuddered again at the remembrance.
Again he gave her that curious look. "There are worse things than Pop
Wallis out here," he said, gravely. "But I'll grant you there's some
class to the skies. It's a case of 'Where every prospect pleases and
only man is vile.'" And with the words his tone grew almost flippant. It
hurt her sensitive nature, and without knowing it she half drew away a
little farther from him and murmured, sadly:
"Oh!" as if he had classed himself with the "man" he had been
describing. Instantly he felt her withdrawal and grew grave again, as if
he would atone.
"Wait till you see this sky at the dawn," he said. "It will burn red
fire off there in the east like a hearth in a palace, and all this dome
will glow like a great pink jewel set in gold. If you want a classy sky,
there you have it! Nothing like it in the East!"
There was a strange mingling of culture and roughness in his speech. The
girl could not make him out; yet there had been a palpitating
earnestness in his description that showed he had felt the dawn in his
very soul.
"You are--a--poet, perhaps?" she asked, half shyly. "Or an artist?" she
hazarded.
He laughed roughly and seemed embarrassed. "No, I'm just a--bum! A sort
of roughneck out of a job."
She was silent, watching him against the starlight, a kind of
embarrassment upon her after his last remark. "You--have been here
long?" she asked, at last.
"Three years." He said it almost curtly and turned his head away, as if
there were something in his face he would hide.
She knew there was something unhappy in his life. Unconsciously her tone
took on a sympathetic sound. "And do you get homesick and want to go
back, ever?" she asked.
His tone was fairly savage now. "No!"
The silence which followed became almost oppressive before the Boy
finally turned and in his kindly tone began to question her about the
happenings which had stranded her in the desert alone at night.
So she came to tell him briefly and frankly about herself, as he
questioned--how she came to be in Arizona all alone.
"My father is a minister in a small town in New York State. When I
finished college I had to do something, and I had an offer of this
Ashland school through a friend of ours who had a brother out here.
Father and mother would rather have kept me nearer home, of course, but
everybody says the best opportunities are in the West, and this was a
good opening, so they finally consented. They would send post-haste for
me to come back if they knew what a mess I have made of things right at
the start--getting out of the train in the desert."
"But you're not discouraged?" said her companion, half wonderingly.
"Some nerve you have with you. I guess you'll manage to hit it off in
Ashland. It's the limit as far as discipline is concerned, I understand,
but I guess you'll put one over on them. I'll bank on you after
to-night, sure thing!"
She turned a laughing face toward him. "Thank you!" she said. "But I
don't see how you know all that. I'm sure I didn't do anything
particularly nervy. There wasn't anything else to do but what I did, if
I'd tried."
"Most girls would have fainted and screamed, and fainted again when they
were rescued," stated the Boy, out of a vast experience.
"I never fainted in my life," said Margaret Earle, with disdain. "I
don't think I should care to faint out in the vast universe like this.
It would be rather inopportune, I should think."
Then, because she suddenly realized that she was growing very chummy
with this stranger in the dark, she asked the first question that came
into her head.
"What was your college?"
That he had not been to college never entered her head. There was
something in his speech and manner that made it a foregone conclusion.
It was as if she had struck him forcibly in his face, so sudden and
sharp a silence ensued for a second. Then he answered, gruffly, "Yale,"
and plunged into an elaborate account of Arizona in its early ages,
including a detailed description of the cliff-dwellers and their homes,
which were still to be seen high in the rocks of the cañons not many
miles to the west of where they were riding.
Margaret was keen to hear it all, and asked many questions, declaring
her intention of visiting those cliff-caves at her earliest opportunity.
It was so wonderful to her to be actually out here where were all sorts
of queer things about which she had read and wondered. It did not occur
to her, until the next day, to realize that her companion had of
intention led her off the topic of himself and kept her from asking any
more personal questions.
He told her of the petrified forest just over some low hills off to the
left; acres and acres of agatized chips and trunks of great trees all
turned to eternal stone, called by the Indians "Yeitso's bones," after
the great giant of that name whom an ancient Indian hero killed. He
described the coloring of the brilliant days in Arizona, where you stand
on the edge of some flat-topped mesa and look off through the clear air
to mountains that seem quite near by, but are in reality more than two
hundred miles away. He pictured the strange colors and lights of the
place; ledges of rock, yellow, white and green, drab and maroon, and
tumbled piles of red boulders, shadowy buttes in the distance, serrated
cliffs against the horizon, not blue, but rosy pink in the heated haze
of the air, and perhaps a great, lonely eagle poised above the silent,
brilliant waste.
He told it not in book language, with turn of phrase and smoothly
flowing sentences, but in simple, frank words, as a boy might describe a
picture to one he knew would appreciate it--for her sake, and not
because he loved to put it into words; but in a new, stumbling way
letting out the beauty that had somehow crept into his heart in spite of
all the rough attempts to keep all gentle things out of his nature.
The girl, as she listened, marveled more and more what manner of youth
this might be who had come to her out of the desert night.
She forgot her weariness as she listened, in the thrill of wonder over
the new mysterious country to which she had come. She forgot that she
was riding through the great darkness with an utter stranger, to a place
she knew not, and to experiences most dubious. Her fears had fled and
she was actually enjoying herself, and responding to the wonderful story
of the place with soft-murmured exclamations of delight and wonder.
From time to time in the distance there sounded forth those awful
blood-curdling howls of wild beasts that she had heard when she sat
alone by the water-tank, and each time she heard a shudder passed
through her and instinctively she swerved a trifle toward her companion,
then straightened up again and tried to seem not to notice. The Boy saw
and watched her brave attempts at self-control with deep appreciation.
But suddenly, as they rode and talked, a dark form appeared across their
way a little ahead, lithe and stealthy and furry, and two awful eyes
like green lamps glared for an instant, then disappeared silently among
the mesquite bushes.
She did not cry out nor start. Her very veins seemed frozen with horror,
and she could not have spoken if she tried. It was all over in a second
and the creature gone, so that she almost doubted her senses and
wondered if she had seen aright. Then one hand went swiftly to her
throat and she shrank toward her companion.
"There is nothing to fear," he said, reassuringly, and laid a strong
hand comfortingly across the neck of her horse. "The pussy-cat was as
unwilling for our company as we for hers. Besides, look here!"--and he
raised his hand and shot into the air. "She'll not come near us now."
"I am not afraid!" said the girl, bravely. "At least, I don't think I
am--very! But it's all so new and unexpected, you know. Do people around
here always shoot in that--well--unpremeditated fashion?"
They laughed together.
"Excuse me," he said. "I didn't realize the shot might startle you even
more than the wildcat. It seems I'm not fit to have charge of a lady. I
told you I was a roughneck."
"You're taking care of me beautifully," said Margaret Earle, loyally,
"and I'm glad to get used to shots if that's the thing to be expected
often."
Just then they came to the top of the low, rolling hill, and ahead in
the darkness there gleamed a tiny, wizened light set in a blotch of
blackness. Under the great white stars it burned a sickly red and seemed
out of harmony with the night.
"There we are!" said the Boy, pointing toward it. "That's the
bunk-house. You needn't be afraid. Pop Wallis 'll be snoring by this
time, and we'll come away before he's about in the morning. He always
sleeps late after he's been off on a bout. He's been gone three days,
selling some cattle, and he'll have a pretty good top on."
The girl caught her breath, gave one wistful look up at the wide, starry
sky, a furtive glance at the strong face of her protector, and
submitted to being lifted down to the ground.
Before her loomed the bunk-house, small and mean, built of logs, with
only one window in which the flicker of the lanterns menaced, with
unknown trials and possible perils for her to meet.