Book: The Freebooters of the Wilderness

A >> Agnes C. Laut >> The Freebooters of the Wilderness




Wayland could not answer. His eyes had filled. He rode with his hand
on the pommel of the saddle. Her words had fallen like whiplashes. It
was true. You could not cut out and disconnect with life. He had
dreamed of this last ride as a sort of mid-heaven ecstasy; and behold,
instead of love's dream, the lifting kick to a limp spine. If only
one's friends would oftener give us that lifting kick instead of the
softening sympathy! If only they would brace our back bone instead of
our wish bone!

Then, she turned to him with a sudden tenderness: "What a beast I am to
speak so to you when you've just had the blow of public dismissal on
top of five years' continuous grilling," and he saw that the flame in
her cheeks, in her eyes, was not anger but a gust of passionate love.

"I can't thank you Eleanor," he said. "This is beyond thanks."

"And your old editor man was so funny about it," she went on. "You
know Dick, I think he had really come round to the hotel to have a
consolation drink with you; and he almost let it out; but just at the
last moment he changed the word and said he'd come 'to shake' with you
on being dismissed together."

"When do you leave?" asked Wayland dully.

"I don't leave! I haven't the slightest intention of ever leaving this
Valley! Why, Dick, would you have me exchange this splendid big free
new life where men and women do things, for a parish existence--working
slippers for a curate and talking dress, Dick--dress like the Colonel's
wife, and chronicling what Shakespeare calls 'small beer'? I don't
intend ever to leave the Valley! Tennyson sung of 'the federation of
the world,' Dick! You and I are seeing it in the making! Think of the
fun of my staying and seeing it and having a finger in the making, just
a little quiet finger that nobody knows about but you and me! United
States of the World, Dick; and you are going after the Man Higher Up
just as you went after those blackguards into the Desert." She laughed
joyously, joyous as a child, swinging out her arms to the sweep of the
roaring Forest wind. "Don't look shocked. I'll not stay on alone at
the Ranch House for the Rookery to talk about! I'll insist on the
foreman marrying an aged house keeper for me; or I'll move over to the
Mission School; or--Oh, I'll plan out something; but I am not going to
leave the West."

Wayland suddenly wheeled his horse across her way and faced her. "So
you've been trouncing the hide off my back for an hour or more to make
me believe all this doesn't mean renunciation? They splashed their
filthy hogwash on your skirts to foil me; and _that_ was nothing! The
fight was to go on just the same. I was not to stop because of any
injury that came to you. Then, they assassinated your father; and you
know as well as I do he was shot down by that drunken Shanty Town sot
in mistake for me; but the fight is to go on just the same. _That_,
too, is nothing if the cause be won. Now, you take a slice of your
fortune and slam it into the cause, backing me; and you renounce
everything that gives meaning to life for a woman, pretending that
renunciation is a privilege--"

"It is," interrupted Eleanor, "if it weaves the thing worth while into
the warp and woof of your life so it can never be anything but a part
of you! Turn your broncho round here and ride along side of me. Look
at our Mountain ahead! It isn't a Cross: it's a Crown! Do you think
I'm going to push a crown away from myself for the sake of having a lot
of flunkeys in a land I don't know bending themselves in their middle
at me all my life?" She laughed joyously, flinging her arms wide to
the drive and toss of the rolling wind tunneling up the trail on their
backs. She had pulled off her hat and the wind tossed forward her hair
in a frame of curls round an enamel miniature that always haunted
Wayland. "I love it," she said, "the harder it blows, the harder I
want to ride! You remember that night coming down the Ridge in the
storm? It was like Love and Life! And smell the air, Dick! It has
all the sunbeams of the summer imprisoned, done up in balsam fir and
balm of gilead and spices! Exchange _this_ life in the open, here, in
the very thick of things doing, for that ancient tapestry plush
upholstery blue-book existence?"

"I can't ask you, Eleanor! I haven't a thing on earth to offer but a
broken reputation and a lot of plans in the ditch! I ought never to
have let you know I loved you! I ought never to have let you care for
me! You know what you think and you know what I think of a man who
lets a woman give all. He isn't worthy of her. You know you have
never been out of my thoughts day or night since I met you, dear! I
couldn't have come through that Desert thing alive without you; and
I'll hold you in my heart every day of my life till I die." He had
taken off his hat and kicked the stirrups free and was riding with
loose rein.

When a man tells a woman that he is down and out financially and dare
not ask her to marry him, do you think there is an end of it, dear
reader? Do you think a Silenus would hesitate and stickle and scruple
over a point of honor; though some of us have seen Silenus blunder into
a paradise which he promptly transformed into a sty? And do you think
the descendant of the Man of the Iron Hand thought anything less of her
lover for refusing to accept renunciation as his right? If Wayland
could have trusted himself to look at her, he would have seen that she
was riding with a whimsical smile. They came to a bend in the upward
climbing trail that overlooked the Valley and faced the opal shining
peak.

"There goes the buckboard," remarked Wayland.

"Dick," she said, "I'll write my lawyer about placing the loan in the
bank at once. You need not lose any time."

"But, I can't take that, Eleanor! I haven't any security on earth to
offer you."

"Oh, yes you have! I've thought all that out, too. You have the very
best security I ever want."

"What?" asked Wayland incredulously. "Do you mean you trust to my
honesty? Good intentions aren't usually a banking proposition--"

"You will do as security," she said.

Was it the old mountain talking again; or was it the break in her
voice? Their eyes met. He had slipped from his horse.

"Don't," she cried averting her eyes with a tremor in her voice. "I
couldn't bear This to be of Self! If I were a man, you'd shake hands
with me and call it a bargain. Look Dick! We're in the light of the
Cross! Shake hands with me! Is it a bargain?"

His hands closed over both of hers. There were tears in his eyes. He
did not break out with any of the wild terms that had clamored and
clamored for utterance these weeks past. He did not say any of the
things that men and women say at such times in books and plays. They
paused so, she on horseback, he standing at her side, on the crest of
the Ridge gazing down on the Valley in the light of the Cross.

"So my old Mountain is talking to you, too?" she said. "Do you
remember, Dick?"

"It's so God-blessed beautiful, Eleanor," he answered. "I can't thank
you! If I lived a thousand years, I couldn't live out my thanks. I
could only put up a bluff of trying."

"Dick the nth," she laughed whimsically, "Dick the nth for the United
States of the World."

Suddenly he looked up at her. The lashes did not veil quick enough.
He caught the veil wide open. He had thought he knew before. Now, he
knew that he had but touched the outer margin of her love, of the
wealth of her nature, of the reach and grasp of her spirit. She felt
the grip of the strong hands closed over hers.

"Mine alder-liefest," he whispered in the old clean unused phrase.

"Is it a bargain?"

"Bargain?" repeated Wayland.

Then, they both laughed. She had him at such an obvious disadvantage.
I do not intend to tell how far the afternoon shadows had stretched out
when Eleanor exclaimed with a jump; "Dick: the buckboard is out of
sight." I do not think either of them as lovers of horses ever offered
adequate reason for having ridden their bronchos such a hard pace up
grade the last ten miles that the ponies came down the Ridge to the
Valley road a lather of sweat.

"You are sure," he had asked as they came out of the evergreens, "that
you'll never regret?"

"Mr. Matthews intended to leave to-morrow, Dick. Do you think you
could persuade him to stay over a day?"


It was Mrs. Williams who sensed something unusual as the ponies came
down one of the by-paths from the Ridge.

"My dear, look at their faces! I do believe it has!" Then to Eleanor,
"Will you come in the rig? Are you tired?"

"I think I shall," said Eleanor.

"You've ridden y'r nags uncommon hard, Wayland," observed Matthews.

Eleanor had ascended to the back seat. Wayland had tied the bridle
rein of her horse to the rear and was riding abreast of the front seat.

"I wish you could make it convenient to put off your departure for a
day or two," began Wayland, very red.

"Eh? What's that?" cried Matthews; and when he looked to the back seat
Eleanor and the little gray haired lady in plain back mourning bonnet
were going on as fool-women will, and Williams was risking a fall out
leaning over the seat shaking hands with Wayland. Somebody was
flourishing a red cotton handkerchief; two for ten cents, they sell
them in Smelter City. It was Williams who put a check to what Eleanor
called a 'loadful of idiots.' "The wind is blowing towards the snow,"
he said; "but I don't like that column of smoke rising from the
Homestead slope in this high gale. That Irish sot went home roaring
drunk by the stage yesterday. What will you bet the fire didn't start
in the timber slash?"

Wayland gave only one look. "It isn't my job any more," he said, "but
I can't stand seeing _that_."

He was off at a gallop. They saw the sparks strike from the stones as
he turned up the Ridge Trail.


A week had passed. The fire had been put out with little damage except
from O'Finnigan's timber slash to the lake beneath the upper snows. A
new Ranger was in charge. As for O'Finnigan, like Calamity, he had
dropped as completely from the Valley's knowledge as if the earth had
swallowed him. The Valley, in fact, had given small thought to the mad
squaw or the drunken Irishman. The Valley had had other things to talk
about. There was the coming fall campaign, and Wayland's name as
reform candidate, and Wayland's quiet marriage to the daughter of the
dead sheep king. Eleanor and Wayland had gone round through the Pass
to the Lake Behind the Peak, where he had dreamed what form of
triangulation thoughts must take from the star in the water to the star
on the other side of the Holy Cross; where the little waves lipped and
lisped and laved the reeds; where they two could drink and drink unseen
of the joy of the waters of life before the opening of the political
battle.

"Make him tell y' of all that happened in th' Pass when A was with
him," Matthews had called as they rode away up the narrowing trail to
the jubilant shouting of the canyon waters, the little mule leading the
pack ponies.

Mrs. Williams stood on the upper piazza of the Mission School waving
and waving. The cottonwoods were raining down showers of gold; and the
pines were clicking their gypsy tambourines; and the golden torches of
countless yellow autumn flowers lighted the triumphal procession of the
year to its consummation. Against the opal crown of the Holy Cross
Mountain, the yellowed larches tossed flaming torches to the very sky.

"They seem to be riding away to a world of dreams," said the little
lady in black.


Mr. Bat Brydges and Senator Moyese walked slowly and reflectively past
the Range Cabin towards the charred burn and timber slash of
O'Finnigan's abandoned homestead.

"It's that damned rant the old fellow let off in the court room," said
Brydges.

"Rant doesn't win elections, Brydges! It has to be fought out! Sooner
we accept the challenge and put 'em to bed for good, the better! Money
talks, Brydges!"

"But that's just it, Senator! Money _does_ talk; and some body's money
has talked when the Independent sold out to Joe!"

"Fool and his money soon parted, Brydges! Only, in this case, I've a
suspicion it's a _Her_! Never fear a known enemy, Brydges! It's the
unknown factors you want to look out for! F'r instance, there is this
sot of a drunken Shanty Town Irishman? What's become of him? Did he
burn himself, when he set fire to the slash?"

They had paused opposite that fallen giant which bridged the Gully
where Wayland had laid the saplings to cross to the Rim Rocks.

"That's a fine one; the fire didn't bring that one down! Been cheesy
heart wood! Wonder who placed the saplings for a bridge? Think I'll
cross and go down to the ranch by the Rim Rocks, Brydges!"

"Then, excuse me, Mr. Senator! I go back _this_ way! Napoleon had
aversion to mice! I've an aversion to wire walking."

He saw Moyese, hands in pockets, stroll along the great log bridging
the Gully. Mid-way, he paused as if in contempt of Brydges' timidity.
"Bark gives a little," he said, pressing his whole weight up and down
flexibly.

"I wish you wouldn't do that, Senator," called Brydges. "Trunk looks
to me as if the fire had run through the punk!"

Even as he spoke, he saw it happen, Calamity glide on the far end of
the log, utter a maniacal laugh, throw her shawl to the winds and bound
forward.

"Go back, you she-devil! Look out, Senator! That log won't stand the
weight of two--"

There was the flash of a knife in her hand. Moyese had jumped from the
stabbing onslaught--when he lost his balance: the tree crunched, bent,
doubled like a jack knife, and plunged in a swirl of smoke and dust to
the bottom of the Gully. It had been burnt through to the green mossed
outer bark. When Brydges looked fearfully over the bank, the Indian
woman had crushed below the log; and Moyese lay very still, his face to
the sky, his left hand in his pocket, his right hand thrown out as if
to ward a blow, gashed and bloody, whether from rock or knife cut, one
could not tell.

I do not intend to repeat the "Smelter City Herald's" flare head
announcement of "the deplorable and tragical accident that cut short
one of the most promising political careers in the United States."
"Senator Moyese had long been accustomed to search the mountains in
autumn for seeds and roots of specimen flowers for his herbarium, of
which he had made a hobby. That reckless disregard of danger for which
he was famous, etc., etc." You'll find the salient features of it all
in "Who's Who." Pad that out with Mr. Bat Brydges' imagination and
devotion; and you will have an idea of the sorrow that convulsed the
"Smelter City Herald."

The opposition paper opined "He would hardly have retained the
confidence of the Valley had he lived;" and the "Independent"--our old
friend, the news editor--paid him the straight out from the shoulder
compliment, "that he had died as he had lived, an uncompromising game
fighter to the end."

What became of Mr. Bat Brydges? Bless you, my friend, do you need to
ask? He is shouting for Reform as loudly as his kind always shout when
the tide turns. What became of the scandal story? What becomes of any
scandal story? What becomes of the skunk's contribution to the gayety
of nations?--Buried in the memory of decent folks, long ago and
forgotten: in the memory of indecent folk, still hauled forth and
repeated and fondled under the tongue.

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