Idah Meacham Strobridge

“ Such men as he are never vainglorious; and Keith had no thought of questioning Life’s way of spelling “duty” as he saw it written. He was being loyal for the sake of loyalty, a sacrifice for love’s own sake than which no man can make greater, for he knew that his martyrdom would be in forever being misjudged by the woman for whose dear sake it was done. He would be misjudged, of course, by Sidney Williston, and by all the world, for that matter; but for them he did not care. He was simply doing what he thought was right that he himself should do—for Kathryn Verrill’s sake. ”

“ When day broke, though as yet no rain was falling, a storm was already gathering itself for the onslaught. Fine dust filled the air, and the wind was racing up the valley with the swiftness of a prairie fire, where, on the alkali flats, great breakers of white dust rose from the sea of dry storm that ran ahead of the rain. Dead branches of greasewood, tumble-weeds light as sea-spume on the waves of the wind, rabbit-brush wrenched from the roots—these (the drift-wood of desert seas) , were swept on and away! ”

“ Neither tree nor shrub, nor spear of grass showed green with the healthy color of plant-life. As far as the eye could reach was the monotonous gray of sagebrush, and greasewood, and sand. The muddy river, with its myriad curves, ran between abrupt banks of soft alkali ground, where now and then as it ate into the confining walls, portions would fall with a loud splash into the water. A hurrying, treacherous river—with its many silent eddies—it turned and twisted and doubled on itself a thousand times as it wound its way down the valley. ”

“ After college days were over, I left the Atlantic coast and all that Life there meant to me, and came out to the West of the sagebrush, and the whirlwinds, and the little horned toads. And there in the wide wastes where there is nothing but the immensity of space and the everlasting quiet of the desert, I went into business for myself. Business there? Oh, yes! for out there where men go mad or die, cattle and sheep may thrive. I, who loved Life and the association of bright minds, and everything that such companionship gives, invested all I had (and little enough it was!) ”

“ With the team gone, Williston would practically be a prisoner for several days. Keith had no hesitation in deciding which way his duty lay. It was thirty miles to the nearest town; to the telegraph; to Gloria Howard; to the railroad!
As he pulled the buckboard out of the shed and put the horses before it, the first raindrops began to fall. Big splashing drops they were, puncturing the parched dust as they beat down upon it. Flashes of lightning split the heavens, and each flash made the earth—for the instant—noon-bright. ”

“ So it was that the thing was settled; and Keith accepted his fate in silence.
An evil thing done? Perhaps. Evil, that good might come of it. And he himself to be the sole sufferer. He was removing this woman beyond Sidney Williston’s reach forever. When the weak, erring husband should find himself free once more from the toils which had held him, his love (if love it was) would return to the neglected wife; and she, dear, faithful, loving woman that she was, would never, thank heaven! guess his unfaithfulness.
Bayard Keith did not feel himself to be a hero. ”

“ Miss Glendower grew warm in her joy of him as she looked.
Then, somehow (as the “man killer” made another great upward leap) the pistol swinging from Mesquite’s belt was thrown from its holster, and—striking the cantle of the saddle as it fell—there was a sharp report, and a cloud-like puff (not from the dust raised by beating hoofs) , and a sound (not the terrible sounds made by a maddened horse) , and the boy swayed backward—backward—with the boyish smile chilled on his lips, and the wet, yellow curls blowing back from his white forehead that soon would grow yet whiter. ”

“ Martha Scott is one of those women whose commanding figure and magnificent coloring are always sufficient to attract the admiration of even the most indifferent. No doubt now in her maturity she is far more beautiful than when, nearly twenty years ago, she became Old Scott’s wife. A tall, unformed girl then, she gave no promise of her later beauty, except in the velvety softness of the great eyes that never seemed to take heed of anything in the world about her, and the great mass of shining hair that had the red-gold of a Western sunset in it. ”

“ Does she know only an existence which is but the compulsory working of a piece of human machinery? Has she never known what it is to feel hope, or joy, or love, in the way we feel it—never experienced one single stirring emotion in the whole round of her pitifully barren life? Is it possible that she has never realized the poverty of her existence?
Yet, she was a creature meant for Life. What a beautiful woman she is, too, with all that brilliance of coloring—that copper-hued hair, and those great, velvety eyes, lovely in spite of their apathetic stare. ”

“ By the well a woman stands, her eyes intently following a chance wayfarer who has turned into the Sherman road—in all the waste, the only moving thing.
How surely human beings take on themselves the reflection of their surroundings! Living in the dull solitude of this valley that woman’s life has become but a gray reflection of its never-ending sameness. As we look, we fall a-wondering. ”

“ Nearer and nearer—then it fell upon them in its malevolence, to catch them—to hold them in its uncanny clasp an instant—and then, releasing them, go madly racing off to the farther twilight, moaning in undertone as it went. Then heat lightning struck vividly at the horizon, and the air everywhere became surcharged with the electric current of a desert sand storm. They heard its roar coming up the valley. Audrey Glendower felt her nerves a-tingle. ”

“ The mind, incapable of instantly grasping the magnitude of what has happened, makes one to stand immovable and in silence.
Keith said nothing. His breathing was quite as regular as usual, and his grasp on the picture was firm—untrembling. Yet in that instant of time he had received the greatest shock of his life, and myriad thoughts were running through his brain with the swiftness of the waters in the mining sluice. He held the bit of pasteboard so long that Williston at last looked up at him inquiringly. ”

“ AN OLD SQUAW
SHE had been lying by the stone wall all day. And the sun was so hot that the blood beating in her ears sounded like the White Man’s fire-horse that had just pulled a freight train into the station, and was grunting and drinking down at the water tank a hundred yards away. It was getting all the water it wanted; why couldn’t she have all the water she wanted, too?
Today they had brought her the tomato can only half full. Such a little drink! And her mouth was so hot and dry! They were starving her to death—had been starving her for days and days. Oh, yes! ”

“ Yet, in spite of his manifest indifference to the charm of her large, splendid beauty—dazzling as the sun at noon-day—and that marked personality which all others who ever came within the circle of her presence seemed to feel, Keith knew he could have this woman’s love for the asking—the love of a woman who, ’twas said, won love from all, yet giving love to none. ”

“ The eyes of a man I had never known—had never seen; yet between whom and myself I felt existed a kinship stronger than any tie that my life had hitherto admitted. For one instant I saw those strange black eyes, blazing and baleful, the densely black hair worn rather long, the silky mustache brushed up from the corners of the mouth, the gleam of the sharp white teeth under a lifted lip, the smooth heavy eyebrows slightly curving upward at the outer edges, giving the face the expression we give to the pictures we make of Satan. ”

“ She was learning a grander, fuller sense of living since all that other world was shut away. So (companioned by her would-be lovers, Hume Sherwood and Elwyn Cadwallader, through a Summer of glad, free, full indrawn breaths) she rode the days away, while under the campaign hat she wore her face was being browned by the desert winds. Hot winds. But, oh, how she had learned to love their ardent touch! No sun was ever too hot, nor road too rough or long, to keep her back from this life in the open; and in the saddle [127] she had come to know the valleys and mountains as one born to them. ”

“ And when a man is bewitched by a man, brown-skinned or white, he is very apt to see charms where another cannot discover them.
Sophy, the siren, came into the camp, and with her coming fled peace. Poor Susan, unloved and deserted, sat apart and cried her heart out—as many a white woman has done before her, and since—when powerless to prevent, or right the wrong that was done her. So, bewitched and befooled, George gave himself up to the madness that was his undoing. ”

“ Therefore everyone was anxious when the thirteenth day came, yet not Tony. With few words (at such times such men do not say much) they selected a dozen from among the town’s bravest and best, and with heavy hearts set out on their journey that was to follow Tony’s trail till they should find him.
Down into the hot valley—a-quiver under the summer heat, over a road of powdered alkali, along the Humboldt’s banks—through mile after mile of sagebrush and greasewood—under the glaring, white sun, they rode two and two. And so riding they spoke seldom. ”

“ In her pretty, new clothes, with her really handsome face all aglow from sheer joy in the new life she was beginning, she looked twenty years younger, and attracted general attention because of her unusual eyes and her magnificently-colored hair.
She was radiant with happiness; and there was no apparent consciousness of wrong-doing. Baird always showed a gracious deference to all women, and to her he was devotion itself. The little attentions that will charm and captivate any woman—attentions to which she was so unused—fed her starved nature, and for the time satisfied without sating her. ”

“ Days and days of unblinking sunshine; and always the awful stillness of the plains. There had been weeks of it; and this day when they came down the broad wash that was the drain from the bordering mountain range, a thick heat lay on the land, making welcome the promised noon rest where the greasewood grew tall. All down the length of the now dry wash the brush was more than shoulder high—annually wetted as it was by the full spring creek.
When the greasewood grows so high it may easily hide a foe. ”

“ I was traveling in far lands. Going over from Stamboul to Pera I stood on the Galata bridge watching the great flood of living, pulsing human life—those people of many races.
[72] There was a fresh breeze from the North that day, and it set dancing the caiques and barcas where they threaded their way among the big ferry-boats and ships of many strange sails, and all the craft of summer seas. There was a sparkle on the Bosphorus under the golden sunshine and a gleam on the Golden Horn. ”

“ She could ride faster, run farther, dare more than other young squaws of the tribe. She had been stronger and suppler. Yet today she was dying here by the stone wall—put out of the camp by her children’s children to die.
She would die tomorrow; or next day, at latest. Perhaps tonight. She had thought she was to die last night when the lean coyote came and stood off from her, and watched with hungry eyes. All night he watched. Going away, and coming back. Coming and going all night. All night his little bright eyes shone like stars. ”

“ To have this assurance from the Judge before he knew of the wonderful story Sherwood had to tell of the secret of Crazy Dan’s tunnel, added to the joy of the young people who now felt they were beloved of the gods.
The Judge’s joy over the finding of the treasure box was even greater than Sherwood’s; for the older man had lived long enough to realize (as a younger generation could not) that this wealth would put many possibilities for happiness within their reach that otherwise might not be theirs. To them—the lovers in the rose-dawn of youth, with love so new—love itself seemed enough ”

“ Then I went to the jail to look at the face of the fiend who had killed her. I knew whom I should see behind the bars. It was he. And it was the seventh meeting.
His eyes bade me go and get him release.
“Go!” they said, “Call to your aid all the angels of your heaven, and the help of the demons who are one with me in hell, that you may save me from the gallows. My Soul is your Soul; if I die, you also must die with me. Keep the rope from me; for you are fighting for your own life. Go!” ”

“ There he was now!—crossing the bare and hard beaten square of gray earth that lay between the ranch house and the corrals. Though he was looking beyond the piazza to where the other boys were driving a “bunch” of bellowing, dust-stirring cattle into an enclosure, yet she felt it was she whom his eyes saw. He was coming straight toward the house—and her. She knew it. Miss Glendower knew many things, learned in the varied experience of her eight-and-twenty years. Her worldly wisdom was more—much more—than his would be at double his present age. Mesquite was twenty. ”

“ Doctor Jim was dead—had died many years before. And so she came to the one she cared for still—as even she had cared most for. For George she cared always; so she came and stood at his door. Many snows had come and gone since his blood had moved at her will; and now it was too late for her influence to weigh with him. He was old; and when he sat before the campfire and saw a woman’s face move to and fro in the the smoke wreaths, it was the face of the woman who best loved him, always—not the face of the one he had loved for a time—that he saw. ”

“ Austin drew his breath in sharply. Oh, merciful God! how long was this way of living to last? Why, he might live on thirty—forty—fifty years yet! Penniless, what was their future to be? To return to that [113] world which, through their past years, had surrounded them with all those things that make life worth living, would be to tempt a worse fate than awaited them here. The desolation which spread around them in the foothills of the bare, lonely mountains was as naught to the humiliation of returning to the peopled places where most would know them, yet few would choose to recognize. ”

“ At the stroke of the hour a great crowd will stand in the prison yard, and gape at the scaffold, and see the drop fall, and—fascinated and frowning—gaze with straining eyes at the Thing dangling at the end of a hempen rope. A Soul will go out into immeasurable space. A purple mark on my throat will tell the story of death by strangulation. Two bodies will lie stark and dead tonight—his and mine. ”