Robert Welles Ritchie

“ Ten o’clock, and Bethell and I riding through the ghostly streets of Seoul in our curtained rickshas. Never did that old charnel house of dead grandeur appear so unworldly as on that night. Black gables of temples, the great bronze belly of the old bell, the mushroom growth of thatched housetops everywhere like fungus in a witches’ fen: all melting and blending into shadows—shadows! Not a soul stirring on the streets. Hardly a streak of light slipping through the clink of some unbarred door to make the streets seem real. Seoul at night is mournful enough ”

“ Riding by Benicia’s side in the starshine, the man began to feel the emanations of a mastering will which poured from her as the pungent prickles of ozone surround a high-power dynamo. Her consciousness was frozen into a mould of purpose, locked against any distractions. Benicia was alive only to the single resolve to free herself from the curse of the Red One. Man nor spirit could invade that preoccupation.
There under the steady-burning desert lamps the man of the cities began to feel again that spell of the infinite which had chained him the night of Don Padraic’s passing. ”

“ Seven riders turned off the main road to the unfenced east. They put their tough cow-ponies to that long, velvety gallop which the saddle beast of the West knows how to sustain over an unbelievable number of miles. Smash through the night! No road, no sign-post nor landmark except that distant black line where stars stopped and the heavier black began—the crest of the Little Medicine range. The night was vacant as ocean; not a tree to stand alone against the stars; scrub sage-brush so low that it as formless. ”

“ She was such a queer old bird, anyway. Gray-headed; no, her hair was a streaky gray—rusty like the collar mark on a white horse; pinched face regularly plastered with kalsomine bleach so that when she attempted a smile it cracked; wide mouth with lips frankly rouged; and eyes—— Well, the eyes didn’t fit the rest of that picturesque ruin. They were violet and sparkling and strangely youthful against the painted mask of cheek and hair. One would have said the old girl had dropped her youth overnight through some tragic decay of her charms, but the ghost of what had been still sat in her eyes. ”

“ Custom of years, instilled always through fear, and latterly, also, through an hysterical sort of affection for the strength of a strong man, had been dropped like a garment, and the mob, seeing its master falter, was ready to pull him down.
Porfirio Diaz in his age had been lulled out of his eternal vigilance by the flattery of sycophants, who cut his power from under him even while they glorified him with the tinsel and band-music of the Centennial celebration. The revolution of Madero, petty at first, grew to grave proportions. ”

“ Main Street was laid out at a conservative distance back. Each cross street running to the bluff’s brink frames at its easterly end a picture which could sell real estate in cities of far greater sophistication than Sacto: first the lazy, blue bend of the river down below; then the sweep of wheat fields and orchards up to the two great knuckles of Brown Buttes, sentinels of the foothills; and beyond, the blue battlements of the Sierra, with Mount Lassen a watchtower pinning them down forty miles due east of the town. ”

“ Even though you were a born Londoner you never could find this street without a guide nor, finding it, recognize a crooked cobble lane between palsied walls as Green Arbor Walk. For there is no green; there is no arbor. Just the leprous fronts of ancient houses ranged in two close-set ranks like battered dominoes whereof the windows are the spots. Behind the street is a wilderness of railroad yards and coal dumps. Before Green Arbor Walk, over beyond a battery of chimneypots, is the Thames, oily-black, flowing with a sucking noise of the tides. ”

“ The spirit of the wilderness moved him, even as the holy men of old. Big winds down from the mountains carried the voice of the Almighty. Signs and portents were spread against the canopy of the stars for his rapt eye. The play of lightning in the core of a storm answered his cry for guidance on his way. The desert's harshness tinctured the evangelist's theology. No denomination or established dogma bound him; his ordination had come direct from God, staying his hand in a moment of blood lust—for so he vaunted his conversion—and sending him on a mission of redemption. ”

“ Henri almost choked on his ale. He set the mug down, sputtering:
“Next Monday night you will be at the Miles house—of a surety?”
“Come, come, little rabbit! No more mystery between us!" Detournelles attempted to hide his impatience and curiosity under a smile. “What about this sapphire collar of Mrs. Miles?”
“Not a word—not a word!” The little jewel setter’s fine hands were fluttering excitedly. “Take me to the Master at once—to Maitre Raoul, whom you say you have seen, and whose face will be a benison for me. Only the Master can handle so great and so delicate a situation. Come, come! We go!” ”

“ Hardly an hour had torrential waters lashed the cinder wastes of Pinacate when the black pall over the heavens broke away and the sun came out to suck hungrily at pools in the rocks. There was a headiness of wine in the air, a smell of wet soil mingled with spicy emanations from greasewood and palo verde. The desert’s sparse growing things exulted in the breaking of long drought.
For a long time Grant and Benicia on their side of the gorge and Bim in his retreat opposite lay hidden, awaiting possible renewal of the attack which the storm had scattered. ”

“ Off a fogbound coast two little sensitive receivers next the outer skin of the ship on port and starboard pick up through the water the throb-throb of a submerged lighthouse bell and carry to a dial in front of the captain's eyes indication of its position. The swift antennæ of the wireless are ever shooting ahead, behind, feeling other giants in the ocean path, touching the shore at all times. With such a ship safety from the ocean's wiles is brought to as high perfection as the experience and ingenuity of marine engineers can achieve. ”

“ When the murders were accomplished the leader of the slayers signaled three to lay hold with him on the wagon-tongue, and they dragged the wheeled house over the embers of the camp-fire. Then from a near-by pile of chopped sage-wood they took fuel. Soon a great red smear stained the white sky of dawn. By its light the night-riders turned from slaughtering men to the slaughter of sheep. They rode into the bedded band, shooting right and left. Over the bounding backs of the stampeded creatures rifle flashes whipped like livid cords. The sheep fell, were piled up in a hodge-podge of carnage. ”

“ Four years now this lonesomeness of the wilderness had been hers, had grown to be the most intimate thing in life. It had stamped an indelible mark on her mind. Hilma Ring, at nineteen, lived solely within herself. She sought sympathy, communion in thought and understanding with no one. Her father was the only person who came near invading this hard barrier of self-sufficiency. Perhaps she loved him; Hilma did not know. More often than not she considered him merely a shrunken little man with a bad temper with whom she must work in order to live. ”