Marjorie L. C. Pickthall

“ He flung two handfuls of sand in the air, and began to dance on the starved grass. He was small and slight, and he moved, in his wild fit, like an elf of the woods, a leaf in the wind. All the steps he ever knew he wove into a medley, beautiful because of the speed and grace of his little flinging body. Then, dancing fast and faster, he lost them, and there was nothing but young life leaping in the air, as the blood in the heart, the wave on the sea. “This is how the little faun dances,” he cried, shrilly. And in a moment Lucia had swept up her trailing skirts, and was dancing too. ”

“ It was all there in a bag—raw gold, pure gold, the food of joy. At the weight of it in his rough palm, Desmond chattered and chuckled with delight. He had sat there talking and laughing for hours, while the glow of the stove grew darker and the cold crept in. Little blots of snow from the snow-shoes, first melting, had turned again to dark ice on the floor; the red light clung to them until each little circle seemed to be one of blood. Outside the world trembled under the shafts of the bitter stars; but Desmond, with the very fuel of life in his hand, was warm. ”

“ Behind her the lights of Los Santos twinkled within the guarding water, and ahead the lonely light from the mines shone across the curve of the world. But as she went down the desert road her face was to the stars. Before her the clear dusk parted as in welcome, it closed behind her like a tender barrier to be passed no more. Above her was the infinite heaven and the hosts of it. Under her feet the sand that took all things, youth and strength and the works of all men’s hands, but might not wholly take love.
Old Juana was going at last to join the Rainmaker in a good place. ”

“ The wind roared through the trees like a flood of which the surf was snow.
“Do you think we’ll do it?” shouted Desmond again and Ohlsen answered:
“Ay t’ank so.”
In a little while the trees were a dark mass beneath them, and they were out on the bare heights, fighting with the wind for every foothold. Desmond staggered under it, but Ohlsen seemed untiring, climbing very close at his shoulder. The glare of the sun seared their eyes, but they had no heat of it. In all the vast upheaval of the hills, in all the stark space of the sky, there was no warmth, no life. ”

“ Had he taken it, or had Maisie given it to him?
Charron shrank and twisted as he had writhed away from the snow-slide. But no space could separate him from that doubt. It leapt full-armed to life. It came irresistibly as a tide, drowning every foothold of faith in a moment, washing away every barrier, laying waste the soul. He turned heavily in that aching stillness. He wanted to tear the bag from its cord, grind it into a little scrap of rubbish, and throw it into the deep—that was his first thought. He had let it fall again on Rainger’s breast; he laid a twitching, ice-cold hand on it ”

“ He had no thought that he would find his friend. For the mountain-side was swept as if a vast broom had passed down it. He crawled to the lip of the ledge where it over-hung the sheer abyss. He was sobbing as he looked over; for the hardships and sacrifice of those two iron years had bound him to Rainger, and Rainger to him, in a more than brotherly love. And there, not twenty feet beneath him, he saw Rainger’s body resting against a shattered balsam, draggled as if a tide had swept it, and motionless.
“Jack! Jack! can you hear? I’m coming to you, chum!” ”

“ Sometimes they would all go off together, a merry party, Uncle Will on his steady grey weight-carrier, Launce on a fat pony, Lucia on a brave old mare with a touch of the Arab. Then at the last mile Uncle Will would say, “Give her a gallop, Geoff,” and the two light-weights would flash away, the old mare running as smooth as a swallow, and Geoffrey a neck behind, bearing hard on Monseigneur’s bit—away and away, down the levels of silver sand to the far lights of Great House. Uncle Will always rode that last mile with Launce in silence. ”

“ A star flared and fell, staining the world with gold. Desmond had forgotten his gold. He had forgotten food and shelter, life and death. He could think of nothing but Lajeune’s brown throat with the scar across it. That throat, his own hands on each side of it, and an end for ever to the singing and the laughter.
He thought Lajeune was near at hand, laughing at him. He felt the trail, and searched. The dark face was everywhere, and the quick laughter; but silence was waiting.
Again he knelt and groped in the snow; but he could feel nothing firm and living. ”

“ The canoe sped more swiftly, but the four big canoes of Annoish-Haung were swifter yet. Kweetchel looked back. Before they had been like low black ducks. Now they were like eagles, and the foam about their high prows was like the white feathers of an eagle’s neck. Kweetchel groaned, bending over the paddle.
“Shall we leap in the sea together?” asked Kolite, child of the seas, laughing fiercely.
“I am a well-born man and my ears are pierced,” panted Kweetchel. “I will die fighting Annoish-Haung.”
There were islands in the sea. “If we hid among the small channels in the fog,” whispered Kolite. ”

“ It was the third week of the stormy season, and Loch was soaked in fever; the ju-ju war had tired him in body and soul. He looked at the sky, and as he looked the moon showed like a plunging white disk amid driving steam; he thought how often he had seen it so, above the northern lakes of his boyhood, when the first snow came down from the north and the wild-geese had flown south. But Huron’s cold surf was far from the station at Gondoko. And the glimmer of light shone only on the nameless uplands, the drenched scrub of the north ”

“ They set the sleeping faun on an old pedestal against the sea wall, among a struggling growth of rusty wallflowers and sea-lavender, under the windows of Launce’s room and the gun-room. The boy would waken in the moonlight and watch that other boy asleep in the gusts of the night. Sometimes the waves would cover the flat beach almost to the bounds of the garden; and then in the early morning Launce would go and clear the little faun of dried weed and sand, and the bitter salt crusting of the sea. ”

“ The thin “foreign note” curled instantly in a fluff of little flame, ended in a square of fragile gray edged with dying scarlet. Buck sat watching it quietly. Franca had cried out once, no time for more. Now he stood grunting and sweating like an animal, one hand pulling and fumbling at his belt.
“No good.” Buck shook his head. “No good. You wouldn’t be such a fool. . . . I am—now—the only living soul that knows.”
The only living soul . . . . Franca went out.
That night the native girl, with her lucky-bag and her rags of faithfully guarded print, crouching in darkness, saw a great light. ”

“ M’Cabe has shown him to me—just a glimpse—stout, bearded, with pale eyes, running round and round the island. M’Cabe thinks he must have chased him; he’d come out of his blank fits to fear the man would fall in and get the coat wet. ‘And how to dry it then,’ said M’Cabe, ‘I didn’t see.’ The other man never left off the coat; he clung to those mangy old fox-skins literally as you’d cling to life. You see him always, furred to his pale eyes, running clumsily among a white flutter of birds, and M’Cabe pursuing him, a man in a dream—a dream of warmth. ”

“ Then the great Buck, who was the South-west Wind, rose and came round the fire, and the stars in his antlers were like fish in a net. “You are swift, Brother,” he said to the Bear, “but you are not so swift as I. I will take Mit-kah home.” His voice was soft as running water when the rivers break free, and Mit-kah looked into his eyes, and the flame of Love that she carried in her hands was reflected in his eyes like two more stars.
“Go with the Wind, little Mit-kah,” said the Bear, drowsily. “He is swifter than I, but he does not love you so well. Do not forget me, little Mit-kah.” ”

“ Launce was that child, and that was the first word he had of Lucia Vasotti—her name, linked with “unsuitable.” It must have been blown to him on some wind of chance, because he was up in the dove-house at the time with three Ribston pippins and The Bride of Lammermoor. The flutter of homely wings was in his ears, the sharp fresh apple-scent on his lips, Lucia was maddening on the sunlit page before him, and “Lucia” was blown past him on the keen spring air. Until he died, that name was to him as the call of remembered music far away. ”

“ There remained only that great soaring wedge of immortal snow, that heaved above me into the blue. I had only to climb, to keep on working upward as long as my strength held. I knew it would not fail. My arms, outstretched against the face of the steep, and looking as weak as a fly’s legs, were yet long enough and strong enough to clasp the whole of that magnificent summit, and leave their mark upon it, and conquer it. What a thing humanity is! Oh, I’m talking nonsense, if you like, but I was a little mad at the time. If you’ve climbed, you know how it is! ”

“ The snow was thickening in the morning, and by noon a bitter wind arose, blowing in their faces and against the stream. Soon the canoe was smack-smack-smacking on the waves, and the snow was driving almost level. The continual pressure of wind and snow drugged their senses. They never heard the voice of the rapids until, rounding an abrupt bend, the ravelled water seemed to leap at them from under the very bow of the canoe.
There was only one thing to be done, and—“Let her go!” yelled Lemaire, crouching tense as a spring above the steering paddle. ”

“ Only the steady sound of running water, like the footfall of a sentry, stood between Los Santos and the eternal threat of the sand.
The road ran through the town and out into the desert. It paused at the mines, then went on and was lost in the coloured hills of the far distance. No rain fell on these hills, which were like great jewels worn brittle and thin with ceaseless wind and sun. If a man had business with the desert, he went by that road; sometimes he returned by it. Between the town and the mines, beside a tiny pool that dried to white dust in the heats, was Juana’s hut. ”

“ Launce turned redder than ever. “I’m sorry, Aunt Lucy. I heard godfather call you that, and Uncle Will laughed. I thought it was polite.” He hoped she would laugh too, and kiss him in a pleased way, as she did when he remembered to give her her English name of Lucy.
But she still looked at him strangely. “These little flowers are just as sweet,” she said with earnestness: “they are brave and poor, but they content the heart. Oh, yes they content the heart.”
“Not his,” persisted Launce; “he wants roses, Aunt Lucy, red roses with the sun on ’em.” ”

“ LUCK I There were four bunks in the shanty, and three of them were filled.
Ohlsen lay in one, a great bulk under the Hudson Bay Company blankets, breathing like a bull; in the next was Forbes, with eyes as quick as a mink’s, and now red rimmed from snow blindness, twinkling from time to time over his yellowish furs. Nearest the door was Lajeune, singing in his sleep. In one corner an old Indian cowered, as little regarded as the rags and skins in which he was hidden; and Desmond sat by the stove, drinking to his luck, fingering it and folding it. ”

“ As his voice ceased, the terrible silence closed in on them like iron, so that all the senses ached to its grip.
“Garry!”
“Yes, Kob?”
“Garry! . . . . My God! . . . . You don’t mean—”
“I’m a’most blind, Kob. It’s the sun and the new snow. I can make shift to see my feet—in a kind of red mist. No more. Is the hill there, Kob?”
The silence took them again, broken now by Kob, who screamed out like a woman.
“Oh God, oh God, we’re done! You blind, and me sick! We’ll die here. You’ll never get me to Fort Scarlett! Oh, why didn’t I stay at the shack, and die there?” ”

“ They were heavy and clumsy things, Garth’s pride, since he had made them himself. They would feed the stove well; but they were hard for a girl’s arm to chop, even though she struck true as a woodman, and Dorette’s hands were scorched from the door of the stove. As she toiled, her eyes ranged the cabin, calculating on this box, that shelf, the table. Her heart beat to every sound. As the wind rose higher, the bitter day was full of sounds. A dozen times she ran to the door, crying, “Garth!” A dozen times she saw nothing but the forest and a driven mist of snow, as fine and dry as dust. ”

“ The din and turmoil of the narrow ways rose and fell like the froth of the sea. The roofs were beginning to burn in a dozen places as Macartney, in rough-and-ready fashion, cleared out the slug-shooters. The red light of burning thatch danced in the fog and the thinning dark, and by this light Blake saw a score of white-wrapped figures leap from the reek and rush for the gate, shouting as they came.
“Steady, men, steady!”
“By the prophet’s beard!” cried the Haussa sergeant, flinging himself flat behind the camel, “these be no Wakonda, but ghazis of the far desert. Shoot well, O my children!” ”