CHAPTER XVII
TWENTIETH CENTURY
“And there that hulking Prejudice
Sat all across the road.
“I took my hat, I took my coat,
My load I settled fair,
I approached that awful incubus
With an absent-minded air —
And I walked directly through him
As if he wasn’t there!”
– An Obstacle:Charlotte Perkins Stetson.
Johnny Dines rode with a pleasant jingle down the shady street of Los Baños de Santa Eulalia del Norte. His saddle was new, carven, wrought with silver; his bridle shone as the sun, his spurs as bright stars; he shed music from his feet. Jeff saw him turn to Casa Escobar: apple blossoms made a fragrant lane for him. He paused at Jeff’s tree.
“Alto alli!” said Johnny. The words, as sharp command, can be managed in two brisk syllables. The sound is then: “Altwai!” It is a crisp and startling sound, and the sense of it in our idiom is: “Hands up!”
Jeff had been taking a late breakfast al fresco; he made glad room on his bench.
“Light, stranger, and look at your saddle! Pretty slick saddle, too. Guess your playmates must ’a’ went home talking to themselves last night.”
“They’re going to kill a maverick for you at Arcadia and give a barbecue,” said Johnny. The cult of nil admirari reaches its highest pitch of prosperity in the cow-countries, and Johnny knew that it was for him to broach tidings unasked.
“Oh, that reminds me – how’s old Lars Porsena?” said Jeff, now free to question.
“Him? He’s all right,” said Johnny casually. “Goin’ to marry one or more of the nurses. They’re holdin’ elimination contests now.”
“Say, Johnny, when you go back, I wish you’d tell him I didn’t do it. Cross my heart and hope to die if I did!”
“Oh, he knows it wasn’t you!” said Johnny.
Jeff shook his head doubtfully.
“Evidence was pretty strong – pretty strong! Who was it then?”
“Why, Lake himself – the old hog!”
“If Lake keeps on like this he’s going to have people down on him,” said Jeff. “Who did the holmesing – John Wesley?”
“Oh, John Wesley! John Wesley!” said Dines scornfully. “You think the sun rises and sets in old John Wesley Pringle. Naw; he didn’t get back till it was all over. I cannot tell a lie. I did it with my little hatchet!”
“Must have had it sharpened up!” said Jeff. “Tell it to me!”
“Why, there isn’t much to tell,” said Dines, suddenly modest. “Come to think of it, I had right considerable help. There was a young college chap – he first put it into my head that it wasn’t you.”
“That would be the devil?” said Jeff, ignoring the insult.
“Just so. Name’s White – and so’s he: Billy White, S. M. and G. P.”
“I don’t just remember them degrees,” said Jeff.
“Aw, keep still and you’ll hear more. They stand for Some Man and Good People. Well, as I was a-saying, Billy he seemed to think it wasn’t you. He stuck to it that Buttinski – that’s what he calls you – was in a garden just when the bank was robbed.”
Johnny contemplated the apple tree over his head. It was a wandering and sober glance, but a muscle twitched in his cheek, and he made no further explanation about the garden.
“And then I remembered about Nigger Babe throwin’ you off, and I began to think maybe you didn’t crack the safe after all. And there was some other things – little things – that made Billy and Jimmy Phillips – he was takin’ cards in the game too – made ’em think maybe it was Lake; but it wasn’t no proof – not to say proof. And there’s where I come in.”
“Well?” said Jeff, as Johnny paused.
“Simple enough, once you knowed how,” said Johnny modestly. “I’d been reading lots of them detective books – Sherlock Holmes and all them fellows. I got Billy to have his folks toll Lake’s sister away for the night, so she wouldn’t be scared. Then me and Billy and Jimmy Phillips and Monte, we broke in and blowed up Lake’s private safe. No trouble at all. Since the bank-robbin’ every one had been tellin’ round just how it ought to be done – crackin’ safes. Funny how a fellow picks up little scraps of useful knowledge like that – things you’d think he’d remember might come in handy most any time – and then forgets all about ’em. I wrote it down this time. Won’t forget it again.”
“Well?” said Jeff again.
“Oh, yes. And there was the nice money – all the notes and all of the gold he could tote.”
Jeff’s eye wandered to the new saddle.
“I kept some of the yellow stuff as a souvenir – half a quart, or maybe a pint,” said Johnny. “I don’t want no reward for doin’ a good deed… And that’s all.”
“Lake is a long, ugly word,” said Jeff thoughtfully.
“Well, what do you say?” prompted Johnny.
“Oh, thank you, thank you!” said Jeff. “You showed marvelous penetration – marvelous! But say, Johnny, if the money hadn’t been there wouldn’t that have been awkward?”
“Oh, Billy was pretty sure Lake was the man. And we figured he hadn’t bothered to move it – you being the goat that way. What made you be a goat, Jeff? That whole performance was the most idiotic break I ever knew a grown-up man to get off. I knew you were not strictly accountable, but why didn’t you say, ‘Judge, your Honor, sir, at the time the bank was being robbed I was in a garden with a young lady, talking about the hereafter, the here and the heretofore?’”
“On the contrary, what made your Billy think it was Lake?”
Johnny told him, in detail.
“Pretty good article of plain thinking, wasn’t it?” he concluded. “Yet he mightn’t have got started on the right track at all if he hadn’t had the straight tip about your bein’ in a garden.” Johnny’s eye reverted to the apple tree. “Lake found your noseguard, you know, where you left it. I reckon maybe he saw you leave it there. – Say, Jeff! Lake’s grandfather must have been a white man. Anyhow, he’s got one decent drop of blood in him, from somewhere. For when we arrested him, he didn’t say a word about the garden. That was rather a good stunt, I think. Bully for Lake, just once!”
“Right you are! And, Mr. J. Dines, I’ve been thinking – ” Jeff began.
Johnny glanced at him anxiously.
“ – and I’ve about come to the conclusion that we’re some narrow contracted and bigoted on Rainbow. We don’t know it all. We ain’t the only pebble. From what I’ve seen of these Arcadia men they seem to be pretty good stuff – and like as not it’s just the same way all along the beach. There’s your Mr. White, and Griffith, and Gibson – did I tell you about Gibson?”
Johnny flashed a brilliant smile. His smiles always looked larger than they really were, because Johnny was a very small man.
“I saw Griffith and he gave me his version – several times. He’s real upset, Griffith… Last time he told me, he leaned up against my neck and wept because there was only ten commandments!”
“Didn’t see Gibson, did you? You know him?”
“Nope. Pappy picked him up – or he picked Pappy up, rather. Hasn’t been seen since. I guess Gibby, old boy, has gone to the wild bunch. He wouldn’t suspect you of bein’ innocent, and he dreamed he dwelt in marble walls, makin’ shoes for the state. So he gets cold feet and he just naturally evaporates – good night!”
“Yes – he said he was going to hike out, or something to that effect,” responded Jeff absently – the fact being that he was not thinking of Gibson, at all, but was pondering deeply upon Miss Ellinor Hoffman. Had she gone to New York according to the original plan? It did not seem probable. Her face stood out before him – bright, vivid, sparkling, as he had seen her last, in the court room of Arcadia. Good heavens! Was that only a week ago? Seven days? It seemed seven years! – No – she had not gone – at least, certainly not until she was sure that he, Jeff, had made good his escape. Then, perhaps, she might have gone. Perhaps her mother had made her go. Oh, well! – New York wasn’t far, as he had told her that first wonderful day on Rainbow Rim. What a marvelous day that was!
Jeff was suddenly struck with the thought that he had never seen Ellinor’s mother. Great Scott! She had a father, too! How annoying! He meditated upon this unpleasant theme for a space. Then, as if groping in a dark room, he had suddenly turned on the light, his thought changed to —What a girl! Ah, what a wonderful girl! Where is she?
Looking up, Jeff became once more aware of Johnny Dines, leg curled around the horn of the new saddle, elbow on knee, cheek on hand, contemplating his poor friend with benevolent pity. And then Jeff knew that he could make no queries of Johnny Dines.
Johnny spake soothingly.
“You are in North America. This is the Twentieth Century. Your name is Bransford. That round bright object is the sun. This direction is East. This way is called ‘up.’ This is a stream of water that you see. It is called the Rio River Grand Big. We are advertised by our loving friends. I cannot sing the old songs. There’s a reason. Two of a kind flock together. Never trump your pardner’s ace. It’s a wise child that dreads the fire. Wake up! Come out of it! Change cars!”
“I ought to kill you,” said Jeff. “Now giggle, you idiot, and make everybody hate you! – Wait till I say Adios to my old compadre and the rest of the Escobar gente and I’ll side you to El Paso.”
“Not I. Little Johnny, he’ll make San Elizario ferry by noon and Helm’s by dark. Thought maybe so you’d be going along.”
“Why, no,” said Jeff uneasily. “I guess maybe I’ll go up to El Paso and june around a spell.”
“Oh, well – just as you say! Such bein’ the case, I’ll be jogging.”
“Better wait till after dinner – I’ll square it with Don Francisco if … anything’s missing.”
“No – that makes too long a jaunt for this afternoon. Me for San Elizario. So long!”
But beyond the first acequia he turned and rode back.
“Funny thing, Jeff! Remember me telling you about a girl I saw on Mayhill, the day Nigger Babe throwed you off? Now, what was that girl’s name? – I’ve forgotten again. Oh, yes! – Hoffman – Miss Ellinor Hoffman. Well – she’s at Arcadia still. The mother lady was all for going back to New York – but, no, sir! Girl says she’s twenty-one, likes Arcadia, and she’s going to stay a spell. Leastwise, so I hear.”
“I will kill you!” said Jeff. “Here, wait till I saddle my nag and say good-by.”
Beyond San Elizario, as they climbed the Pass of All the Winds, the two friends halted to breathe their horses.
“Jeff,” said Johnny, rather soberly, “you can kick me after I say my little piece – I’ll think poorly of you if you don’t – but ain’t you making maybe a mistake? That girl, now – nice girl, and all that – but that girl’s got money, Jeff.”
“I hate a fool worse than a knave, any day in the week,” said Jeff: “and the man that would let money keep him from the only girl – why, Johnny, he’s so much more of a fool than the other fellow is a scoundrel – ”
“I get you!” said Johnny. “You mean that a submarine boat is better built for roping steers than a mogul engine is skilful at painting steeples, and you wonder if you can’t get a fresh horse somewhere and go on through to Arcadia to-night?”
“Something like that,” admitted Jeff. “Besides,” he added lightly, “while I’d like that girl just as well if I didn’t have a cent – why, as it happens, I’m pretty well fixed, myself. I’ve got money to throw at the little dicky-birds – all kinds of money. Got a fifty-one-per-cent interest in a copper mine over in Harqua Hala that’s been payin’ me all the way from ten to five thousand clear per each and every year for the last seven years, besides what I pay a lad for lookout to keep anybody but himself from stealing any of it. He’s been buyin’ real estate for me in Los Angeles lately.”
Johnny’s jaw dropped in unaffected amazement.
“All this while? Before you and Leo hit Rainbow?”
“Sure!” said Jeff.
“And you workin’ for forty a month and stealin’ your own beef? – then saving up and buying your little old brand along with Beebe and Leo and old Wes’, joggin’ along, workin’ like a yaller dog with fleas?”
“Why not? Wasn’t I having a heap of fun? Where can I see any better time than I had here, or find better friends? Money’s no good by itself. I haven’t drawn a dollar from Arizona since I left. It was fun to make the mine go round at first; but when it got so it’d work I looked for something else more amusing.”
“I should think you’d want to travel, anyhow.”
“Travel?” echoed Jeff. “Travel? Why, you damn fool, I’m here now!”
“Will you stay here, if you marry her, Jeff?”
“So you’ve no objection to make, if I’ve got a few dollars? That squares everything all right, does it? Not a yeep of protest from you now? See here, you everlasting fool! I’m just the same man I was fifteen minutes ago when you thought I didn’t have any money. If I’m fit for her now, I was then. If I wasn’t good enough then, I’m not good enough now.”
“But I wasn’t thinking of her – I was thinking of – how it would look.”
“Look? Who cares how it looks? Just a silly prejudice! ‘They say – what say they – let them say!’ Johnny, maybe I was just stringin’ you. If I was lying about the money – how about it then? Changed your mind again?”
“You wasn’t lyin’, was you?”
“Shan’t tell you! It doesn’t really make any difference, anyhow.”
CHAPTER XVIII
AT THE RAINBOW’S END
“Helen’s lips are drifting dust;
Ilion is consumed with rust;
All the galleons of Greece
Drink the ocean’s dreamless peace;
Lost was Solomon’s purple show
Restless centuries ago;
Stately empires wax and wane —
Babylon, Barbary and Spain —
Only one thing, undefaced,
Lasts, though all the worlds lie waste
And the heavens are overturned,
– Dear, how long ago we learned!”
– Frederick Lawrence Knowles.
Starlit and moonlight leagues, the slow, fresh dawn; in the cool of the morning, Bransford came to the crest of the ground-swell known as Frenchman’s Ridge, and saw low-lying Arcadia dim against the north, a toy town huddling close to the shelter of Rainbow Range; he splashed through the shallow waters of Alamo, failing to a trickle before it sank in the desert sands; and so came at last to the moat of Arcadia. With what joyous and eager-choking heart-beat you may well guess: not the needlessness of those swift pulses or of that joy. For Ellinor was not there. With Mrs. Hoffman, she had gone to visit the Sutherlands at Rainbow’s End. And Jeff could not go on. Arcadia rose to greet him in impromptu Roman holiday.
Poor Bransford has never known clearly what chanced on that awful day. There is a jumbled, whirling memory of endless kaleidoscopic troops of joyful Arcadians: Billy White, Monte, Jimmy, Clarke, the grim-smiling sheriff, the judge. It was dimly borne upon him by one or both of the two last, that there were yet certain formalities to be observed in the matter of his escape from custody of the Law and of the horse he had borrowed from the court house square. Indeed, it seemed to Jeff, in a hazy afterthought, that perhaps the sheriff had arrested him again. If so, it had slipped Jeff’s mind, swallowed up in a gruesome horror of congratulations, hand-shakings, back-slappings, badinage and questions; heaped on a hero heartsick, dazed and dumb. Pleading weariness, he tore himself away at last, almost by violence, and flung himself down in a darkened bedroom of the Arcadian Atalanta.
One thing was clear. Headlight was there, Aforesaid Smith, Madison: but his nearest friends, Pringle, Beebe and Ballinger, though they had hasted back to Arcadia to fight Jeff’s battles, were ostentatiously absent from his hollow and hateful triumph: Johnny Dines had pointedly refused to share his night ride from Helm’s: and Jeff knew why, sadly enough. The gods take pay for the goods they give: and now that goodly fellowship was broken. The thought clung fast: it haunted his tossing and troubled slumbers, where Ellinor came through a sunset glow, swift-footed to meet him: where his friends rode slow and silent into the glimmering dusk, smaller and smaller, black against the sky.
The Sutherland place made an outer corner of Rainbow’s End, bowered about by a double row of close and interlaced cottonwoods on two sides, by vigorous orchards on the other two.
The house had once been a one-storied adobe, heroically proportioned, thick-walled, cool against summer, warm in what went by the name of winter. The old-time princely hospitality was unchanged, but Sutherland had bought lots in Arcadia of early days; and now, the old gray walls of the house were smooth with creamy stucco, wrought of gypsum from the White Sands; the windows were widened and there was a superimposed story, overhanging, wide and low. The gables were double-windowed, shingled and stained nut-brown, the gently sloping roof shingled, dormered and soft green: the overflow projecting to broad verandas on either side, very like an umbrella: a bungalow with two birthdays – 1866: 1896.
Miss Ellinor Hoffman had deserted veranda, rocking-chair and hammock. With a sewing basket beside her, she sat on a pine bench under a cottonwood of 1867, ostensibly basting together a kimono tinted like a dripping sea shell, and faced with peach-blossom.
The work went slowly. Her seat was at the desert corner of the homestead which was itself the desert outpost of a desert town: and her blood stirred to these splendid horizons. The mysterious desert scoffed and questioned, drew her with promise of strange joys and strange griefs. The iron-hard mountains beckoned and challenged from afar, wove her their spells of wavering lights and shadows; the misty warp and woof of them shifting to swift fantastic hues of trembling rose and blue and violet, half-veiling, half-revealing, steeps unguessed and dreamed-of sheltered valleys – and all the myriad-voice of moaning waste and world-rimming hill cried “Come!”
Faint, fitful undertone of drowsy chords, far pealing of elfin bells; that was pulsing of busy acequias, tinkling of mimic waterfalls. The clean breath of the desert crooned by, bearing a grateful fragrance of apple-blossoms near; it rippled the deepest green of alfalfa to undulating sheen of purple and flashing gold.
The broad fields were dwarfed to play-garden prettiness by the vastness of overwhelming desert, to right, to left, before; whose nearer blotches of black and gray and brown faded, far off, to a nameless shimmer, its silent leagues dwindling to immeasurable blur, merging indistinguishable in the burning sunset.
“East by up,” overguarding the oasis, the colossal bulk of Rainbow walled out the world with grim-tiered cliffs, cleft only by the deep-gashed gates of Rainbow Pass, where the swift river broke through to the rich fields of Rainbow’s End, bringing fulfilment of the fabled pot of gold – or, unused, to shrink and fail and die in the thirsty sand.
Below, the whilom channel wandered forlorn – Rainbow no longer, but Lost River – to a disconsolate delta, waterless save as infrequent floods found turbulent way to the Sink, when wild horse and antelope revisited their old haunts for the tender green luxury of these brief, belated springs.
Incidentally, Miss Hoffman’s outpost commanded a good view of Arcadia road, winding white through the black tar-brush. Had she looked, she might have seen a slow horseman, tiny on the bare plain below the tar-brush, larger as he climbed the gentle slope along that white-winding road.
But she bent industrious to her work, smiling to herself, half-singing, half-humming a foolish and lilty little tune:
“A tisket, a tasket – a green and yellow basket;
I wrote a letter to my love and on the road I lost it —
I crissed it, I crossed it – I locked it in a casket;
I missed it, I lost it – ”
And here Miss Hoffman did an unaccountable thing. Wise Penelope unraveled by night the work she wove by day. Like her in this, Miss Ellinor Hoffman now placidly snipped and ripped the basting threads, unraveled them patiently, and set to work afresh.
“Now, there’s no such thing as a Ginko tree;
There never was – though there ought to be.
And ’tis also true, though most absurd,
There’s no such thing as a Wallabye bird!”
Miss Hoffman was all in white, with a white middy blouse trimmed in scarlet, a scarlet ribbon in her dark hair: a fine-linked gold chain showed at her neck. A very pretty picture she made, cool and fresh against the deep shade and the green – but of course she did not know it. She held the shaping kimono at arm’s length, admiring the delicate color, and fell to work again.
“Oh, the jolly miller, he lives by himself!
As the wheel rolls around he gathers in his pelf,
A hand in the hopper and another in the bag —
As the wheel rolls around he calls out, ‘Grab!’”
So intent and preoccupied was she, that she did not hear the approaching horse.
“Good evening!”
“Oh!” Miss Hoffman jumped, dropping the long-suffering kimono. A horseman, with bared head, had reined up in the shaded road alongside. “How silly of me not to hear you coming! If you’re looking for Mr. Sutherland, he’s not here – Mr. David Sutherland, that is. But Mr. Henry Sutherland is here – or was awhile ago – maybe half an hour since. He was trying to get up a set of tennis. Perhaps they’re playing – over there on the other side of the house. And yet, if they were there, we’d hear them laughing – don’t you think?”
Mr. Bransford – for it was Mr. Bransford, and he was all dressed in clothes – waited with extreme patience for the conclusion of these feverish and hurried remarks.
“But I’m not looking for Sutherland. I’m looking for you!”
“Oh!” said Ellinor again. Then, after a long and deliberate survey, the light of recognition dawned slowly in her eyes. “Oh, I do know you, don’t I? To be sure I do! You’re Mr. – the gentleman I met on Rainbow Mountain, near Mayhill, – Mr. – ah yes – Bransford!”
“Why, so I am!” said Jeff, leaning on the saddle-horn. One half of Mr. Bransford wondered if he had not been making a fool of himself and taking a great deal for granted: the other half, though considerably alarmed, was not at all deceived.
Miss Ellinor did not actually put her finger in the corner of her mouth – she merely looked as if she had. “Ah! – Won’t you … get down?” she said helplessly. “What a beautiful horse!”
“Why, yes – thank you – I believe I will.”
He left the beautiful horse to stand with dangling reins, and came over to the bench, silent and rather grim.
“Won’t you sit down?” said Ellinor politely. “Fine day, isn’t it?”
“It’s a wonderful day – a marvelous day – a stupendous day!” said this exasperated young man. “No, I guess it’s not worth while to sit down. I just wanted to find out where you lived. I asked you once before, you know, and you didn’t tell me.”
“Didn’t I? Oh, do sit down! You look so grumpy – tired, I mean.” Rather grudgingly, she swept the sewing basket from the bench to the grass.
Jeff’s eyes followed the action. He saw – if you call it seeing – the snipped threads on the grass, the yet unpicked bastings, white against the peach-pink facing; but he was a mere man, hardly-circumstanced, and these eloquent tidings were wasted upon his clumsy intellect: as had been the surprising good fortune of finding Miss Ellinor exactly where she was.
Nerving himself with memory of the Quaker Lady at the masquerade – if, indeed, that had ever really happened – Jeff took the offered seat.
The young lady matched two edges together, smoothed them, eyed the result critically, and plied a nimble needle. Then she turned clear and guileless eyes on her glooming seatmate.
“You look older, somehow, than I thought you were, now that I remember,” she observed, biting the thread. “You’ve been away, haven’t you?”
“Thought you were going away, yourself, so wild and fierce?” said Jeff, evading. —Been away, indeed!
Ellinor threaded her needle.
“Mamma was talking of going for a while,” she said tranquilly. “But I’m rather glad we didn’t. We’re having a splendid time here – and Mr. White’s going to take us to the White Sands next week. He’ll be down to-morrow – at least I think so. He’s fine! He took us to Mescalero early in the spring. And the young people here at Rainbow’s End are simply delightful. You must meet some of them. Listen! There they are now – I hear them. They are playing tennis. Come on up and I’ll introduce you. I can finish this thing any time.” She tossed the poor kimono into the basket.
“No,” said this unhappy young man, rising. “I believe I’ll go on back. Good-by, Miss Ell – Miss Hoffman. I wish you much happiness!”
“Why – surely you’re not going now? There are some nice girls here – they have heard so much of you, but they say they’ve never met you. Don’t you want – ”
Jeff groaned, fumbling blindly at the bridle. “No, I wish I’d never seen a girl!”
“Why-y! That’s not very polite, is it? – Are – are you – mad to me?” said Ellinor in a meek little voice.
“Mad? No,” said Jeff bitterly. “I’m just coming to my senses. I’ve been dreaming. Now I’ve woke up!”
“Angry, I mean, of course. I just say it that way – ‘are you mad to me’ – sometimes – to be – to be – nice, Mr. Bransford!”
“You needn’t bother! Good-by!”
“But I’ll see you again – ”
“Never!”
“ – when you’re not so – cross?”
Jeff reached for his stirrup.
“Oh, well! If you’re going to be huffy! Never it is, then, by all means! No – wait! I must give you back your present.”
“I have never given you a present. Some other man, doubtless. You should keep a list!” said Jeff, with bitter and cutting scorn.
The girl turned half away from him and hid her face with trembling hands; her shoulders shook with emotion.
“Look the other way, sir! Turn your head! You shall have your present back and then if you’re so anxious to go – Go!”
“Miss Hoffman, I never gave you a present in my life,” Jeff protested.
“You did!” sobbed Ellinor. She turned upon him, stamping her foot. “You said, when you gave it to me, that you hoped it would bring me good luck. And you’ve forgotten! You’d better keep a list! Turn your head away, I tell you!” She sank down on the bench.
Confused, mazed, bewildered, Jeff obeyed her.
She sprang to her feet. She was laughing, blushing, glowing. In her hand was the little gold chain.
“Now, you may look. Hold out your hand, sir!”
Jeff’s mind was whirling; he held out his hand. She laid a little gold locket in his palm. It was warm, that little locket.
“I have never seen this locket before in my life!” gasped Jeff.
“Open it!”
He opened it. The little eohippus glared up at him.
“Ellinor! —Charley Gibson!”
“Tobe! Jeff! —Jamie!”
The little eohippus stared unwinking from the grass.