ALONE--
"Buck! Buck!"
Faint and small, the cry was lost in the wilderness of silence. It
died out, a heart-broken moan of despair, fading to nothingness in the
still, desolate world.
Then came another sound. It was the crash of a falling tree. It was
louder, but it, too, could scarcely break the stillness, so silent was
the world, so desolate was it in the absence of all life.
Day had broken. The sky was brilliant with swift-speeding clouds of
fleecy white. The great sun had lifted well above the horizon, and
already its warming rays were thirstily drinking from a sodden,
rain-drenched earth.
The perfect calm of a summer morning reigned. Up above, high up, where
it was quite lost to the desolation below, a great wind was still
speeding on the fleecy storm-clouds, brushing them from its path and
replacing them with the frothing scud of a glorious day. But the air
had not yet regained its wonted freshness. The reek of charred timber
was everywhere. It poisoned the air, and held memory whence it would
willingly escape.
"Oh, Buck, speak to me! Open your eyes! Oh, my love, my dear, dear
love!"
The cry had grown in pitch. It was the cry of a woman whose whole soul
is yearning for the love which had been ruthlessly torn from her
bosom.
Again it died away in a sob of anguish, and all was still again. Not a
sound broke the appalling quiet. Not a leaf rustled, for the world
seemed shorn of all foliage. Not a sound came from the insect world,
for even the smallest, the most minute of such life seemed to have
fled, or been destroyed. There was neither the flutter of a wing, nor
the voice of the prowling carnivora, for even the winged denizens of
the mountains and the haunting scavengers had fled in terror from such
a wilderness of desolation.
"Buck, oh, my Buck! Speak, speak! He's dead! Oh, my God, he's dead!"
Louder the voice came, and now in its wail was a note of hysteria.
Fear had made harsh the velvet woman's tones. Fear, and a rising
resentment against the cruel sentence that had been passed upon her.
She crouched down, rocking herself amidst a low scrub upon which the
dead leaves still hung where the fires had scorched them. But the fire
had not actually passed over them. A wide spread of barren rock
intervened between the now skeleton woods and where the girl sat
huddled.
In front of her lay the figure of a man, disheveled and bleeding, and
scarcely recognizable for the staunch youth who had yielded himself to
the buffets of life that the woman he loved might be spared.
But Joan only saw the radiant young face she loved, the slim, graceful
figure so full of life and strength. He was hers. And--and death had
snatched him from her. Death had claimed him, when all that she could
ever long for seemed to be within her grasp. Death, ruthless, fierce,
hateful death had crushed out that life in its cruellest, most
merciless fashion.
She saw nothing of the ruin which lay about her. She had no thought of
anything else, she had no thought of those others. All she knew was
that her Buck, her brave Buck, lay before her--dead.
The girl suddenly turned her despairing eyes to the white heavens,
their deep blue depths turned to a wonderful violet of emotion. Her
wealth of golden hair hung loose about her shoulders, trailing about
her on the sodden earth, where it had fallen in the midst of the
disaster that had come upon her. Her rounded young figure was bent
like the figure of an aged woman, and the drawn lines of anguish on
her beautiful face gave her an age she did not possess.
"Oh, he is not dead!" she cried, in a vain appeal. "Tell me he is not
dead!" she cried, to the limitless space beyond the clouds. "He is all
I have, all I have in the world. Oh, God, have mercy upon me! Have
mercy!"
Her only reply was the stillness. The stillness as of death. She
raised her hands to her face. There were no tears. She was beyond that
poor comfort. Dry, hard sobs racked her body, and drove the rising
fever to her poor brain.
For long moments she remained thus.
Then, after a while, her sobs ceased and she became quite still. She
dropped her hands inertly from her face, and let them lie in her lap,
nerveless, helpless, while she gazed upon the well-loved features, so
pale under the grime and tanning of the skin.
She sat quite still for many minutes. It almost seemed as if the power
of reason had at last left her, so colorless was her look, so
unchanging was her vacant expression. But at last she stirred. And
with her movement a strange light grew in her eyes. It was a look
bordering upon the insane, yet it was full of resolve, a desperate
resolve. Her lips were tightly compressed, and she breathed hard.
She made no sound. There were no further lamentations. Slowly she
reached out one hand toward the beloved body. Nor was the movement a
caress. It passed across the tattered garments, through which the
painfully contused flesh peered hideously out at her. It moved with
definite purpose toward one of the gaping holsters upon the man's
waist-belt. Her hand came to a pause over the protruding butt of a
revolver. Just for a moment there was hesitation. Then it dropped upon
it and her fingers clasped the weapon firmly. She withdrew it, and in
a moment it rested in her lap.
She gazed down upon it with straining, hopeless eyes. It was as if she
were struggling to nerve herself for that one last act of cowardice
which the despairing find so hard to resist. Then, with a deep-drawn
sigh, she raised the weapon with its muzzle ominously pointing at her
bosom.
Again came a pause.
Then she closed her eyes, as though fearing to witness the passing of
the daylight from her life, and her forefinger moved to embrace the
trigger. It reached its object, and its pressure tightened.
But as it tightened, and the trigger even moved, she felt the warm
grip of a hand close over hers, and the pistol was turned from its
direction with a wrench.
Her startled eyes abruptly opened, and her grip upon the weapon
relaxed, while a cry broke from her ashen lips. She had left the gun
in Buck's hand, and his dark eyes were gazing into hers from his bed
amongst the crushed branches of the bush amidst which he was lying.
For long moments she stared at him almost without understanding. Then,
slowly, the color returned to her cheeks and lips, and great tears of
joy welled up into her loving eyes.
"Buck," she murmured, as the heavy tears slowly rolled down her
cheeks, and her bosom heaved with unspeakable joy. "My--my Buck."
For answer the man's eyes smiled. Her heaven had opened at last.