George Kibbe Turner

“ You stay here. Understand? You wait.”
Schmaar nodded—watched him disappear silently into the rustle of black rhododendrons, then followed silently to the mouth of the path into the thicket—stood alone in the moving shadows, and the incredible situation—with his own confused and shifting thoughts.
“Moonshine—the greatest power on earth, huh!” said Schmaar to himself glancing up into the sky, recalling the memory which had come to him out there the night before. ”

“ He had more and more the sense of laboring unreality which comes to any man whose powers are strained beyond their rightful use. And in addition, too, there was always, constantly growing now, that dizziness.
The path he was on was not of course upon the very edge, but near enough for John Schmaar to see perfectly the great fall beneath him—the still trees below, protected from the wind, the still moonlight on the brown stones: and out beyond, upon the river, where the wind struck again beyond the protection of the cliff, he could see a tiny turbulence in the water, in the wake of the moon. ”

“ THE sense of unreality, of physical apprehension, came back to John Schmaar. He felt again that twinge of fear which comes to men suddenly witnessing the incredible. It was intensified, a hundred times, from the night before. He was perhaps a murderer if this thing were true—about to be murdered, or murder in his turn, if he and this big enemy of his did not rescue this crazy girl from Lovers' Leap. Going to her death in a land made entirely out of her imagination! ”

“ John Schmaar, listening to him, felt the sense of apprehension of the unreal the unseen, the incredible sweep over him again like a rush of blood to the head of a man in anger. Here they were whispering, in this little thicket in the moonshine, stalking a woman—a soft indoor creature of laces and tulles and satins—through the night, with desperate chances of death for more than one hanging upon the outcome!
“We can't go out there,” the Westerner was saying, “—into the open. She'd see us. There's only one thing—I can think of.” ”

“ You're filled with the moonshine of the brute—the catchwords of brute strength and courage. Let anybody try to back you down, put you in a corner, call you a coward! How long could you stand for it, and keep still? You'd lose your mind and senses right away. I've watched you! And yet you know and I know there might be times when you'd be a thousand times better off just to lie low.
“Oh, no,” said the old man. Schmaar could see him still, getting up, brushing the cigar-ashes from his protruding vest. “It's irresistible. It drives us all. ”

“ We can't be all right at once in a fight,—both sides,—nor our tribal god who makes war with us. There can't be just one woman of the hundreds of millions in the world that is just right for you—and no other Any sensible man knows that.”
“Naturally,” Schmaar had said.
“Moonshine! Illusion! It's the greatest power in the world, bar none, and the wildest! And the great men, the really big men, are the ones who know its use—how to turn it to their advantage. Cæsar, Alexander, Napoleon—they were the great past masters in moonshine—in propaganda. ”

“ Just as the electricity is the thing there, not the wood and iron cars, so all there is to us human beings, after all, is just this other thing—this power of pure moonshine that's driving us!”
He got up and went out after that, looking neither to the right nor left, as was his wont.
“The old man's getting pretty old,” said the third man to John Schmaar as they sat there watching him. Schmaar thought so himself at the time. But since then, a number of times, that talk had kept coming back to him, as it did tonight.
“Moonshine, huh! The greatest power on earth!” ”

“ Schmaar said
“I mean moonshine,” said the old man in his dictatorial way. “It gives the idea better, the flavor!”
“Maybe you're right.” Schmaar answered him, listening, thinking how old and experienced he looked: the wisest old man in America, who had seen more, from the California gold-rush on, than perhaps anybody else in the country—a kind of old, hardened modern prophet in a skullcap.
“What do they run campaigns with in politics? What do they run wars with? What is it—the most important thing of all—that gets the human race born and raised and taken care of till it gets on its feet? ”

“ Nobody would ever say of John Schmaar that a thing like that stuff, that moonlight, could scare him, strangle him, beat him down, make his lungs and head burst open, until he did what he was after, in spite of all the women, all the moonlight in the world. ”

“ No more impossible, or needing explanation, as he stood there listening, watching in this land of black and crooked shadows, than he himself. After all, what thing is stranger in the world—when you are alone, in absolute stillness, where you can hear your breathing and your heart beats in your ears—than you yourself, this thing that you can never leave behind, nor part from, nor understand, that goes on, beating like a watch for a few years, until finally it stops? ”

“ Cooked what up?”
“This act we're going through now,” said Schmaar. “This life-saving act. How the woman saves the man—the only way you can stage an equal fight between a man and woman—the American duel!” ”

“ Even then, at times he rose and looked out nervously, through the moonlight, toward Lovers' Leap.
CHAPTER VIII JOHN SCHMAAR woke up after a short sleep, with real daylight in his windows. He was glad to see it. It was like getting back to earth again, after a round trip to the moon.
“What goes up must come down,” he said to himself—including women's nerves, he meant.
“Give them a night's sleep,” he said to himself, “and it all looks different—in the morning! The wilder they are, the quicker it's all over.” Thus he agreed with many sound psychologists. ”

“ It scares me sometimes to see the whole world driven by it, ridden by it. I think sometimes that men are puppets, mechanical dolls, operated by it—like these electrical cars they've brought in the last few years, that look stranger to me than to you! ”

“ But not entirely—not to the full extent!”
“What is this thing?” said the Westerner, staring down into Schmaar's eyes, hurrying him faster and faster.
“You're good at acting—aren't you?” Schmaar said to him—getting a little mad to see him. “I'll tell you what it is. It's where the joke comes in—the life-saving act—the duel between the woman and the man. ”

“ And from that you go down to the most wonderful thing of all—the way year after year, one woman fools one man, and one man one woman, into the idea that neither can live without the other.”
Gladden looked up and saw the maid coming in—and let Schmaar drop back into his chair. “She's gone,” said the maid. “She isn't there in the room!”
“Oh, well,” Schmaar had said, “such stuff as that!”
“Don't fool yourself,” said the old man, looking at Schmaar with that look which saw all there was inside him. “We've all got our brand—our particular brand of moonshine that we're addicted to. ”

“ And when, that afternoon, a group of Schmaar's guests, men and women, were out on the cliff above the river in front of his place, and the Bannerman girl told again the story of the Indian maiden who had jumped over in the effort to save her lover,—and thus gave the place the name Lovers' Leap—Schmaar again showed his opinion by offering a thousand dollars to any modern woman who would make even the first partial descent. ”

“ It's just about as dangerous to you when you once start it; it will come back on you more than likely, the very thing you start—as it did with Cesar or Napoleon, almost any of them, destroying them in the end. ”

“ Gladden reached out his big hand. “I want that envelope!” he said.
“Sure thing!” said Schmaar, handing it to him
He ripped it open—read it aloud:
“'The loser will take the Lovers' Leap, as agreed!'
“What's this?” he almost yelled.
John Schmaar thought that the man's voice sounded queer. He almost believed now that he wasn't acting. And yet he knew he must be!
“You ought to know,” said Schmaar, watching him. “You and your American duel! You're some little planner!”
GLADDEN didn't answer. “Where is she now?” he called instead—like a lunatic. “Aileen?” ”

“ And she darted backward and between them in the line of Lovers' Leap.
THERE was perhaps an acre in the lawn—perhaps a little less. A perfectly open level plot, broken only by the summerhouse, beside which John Schmaar now stood. And along the border of it, curving with the contour, a footpath ran clear around, some six feet from the edge of the Palisades.
John Schmaar ran forward to head her off. He was a heavy man, not much used to running in recent years. She ran faster than he—he could not catch her. He cursed himself. He was only half a man. ”

“ They were talking, as you do sometimes late at night, of things you really think; and the old man got started finally.
“Do you know what the greatest thing in all the world is?” the man asked them, looking at the tip of his cigar in his big old wrinkled hand. “The greatest power?”
Schmaar could see him still—his rounded, heavy, meaty shoulders, the black round skullcap he wore to protect the top of his head, the long odd-shaped cigar he always smoked. The old man was getting pretty old. It was not many years afterward that he died.
“What is?” Schmaar had asked him.
“Moonshine!” ”