Lassiter

“ From what the agent could gather, Birdsong believed that the abyss and the mysterious light were created by the Supreme Being for the single and particular purpose of rebuking his ungainly antics.
Such vast and unconscious egotism amazed Lassiter. He tried to show the colporteur the infinite disparity between a man's ephemeral tenure of life and the ageless foundations of the earth. ”

“ If the priests knew, they retained their knowledge; and as for old Prymoxl and other ordinary Indians, they were in as hopeless a welter of theological explanation as Birdsong.
And Lassiter's own brain had come to a complete balk; yet he had a profound feeling that it was because he had no human contact by which he could orientate himself. He felt, in his heart, if he had just an ordinary man-on-the-street, picked up off of Broadway, a man who would think straight, whose brain did not skid at once into absurdities—he would solve it. ”

“ Lassiter was already turning away. What argument could be brought to bear on a man whose profoundest conviction was that the whole universe and all the ramifications of life that had gone before were but the supers that made ready for his triumphal entrance on the stage of Motobatl!
As Lassiter turned away, Birdsong called,
“If you don't believe a match is a miracle, Mr. Lassiter, try making one.” ”

“ Lassiter looked at him. Such remorse was written even in his hard-lined face that the agent was moved to express a doubt whether such an acrobatic performance was a dance.
Birdsong shook his head gloomily.
“I know you mean well, Brother Lassiter, but the devil is using your tongue to lead me to destruction—The devil is right here, watching us this minute—he's here! Right now! Just as shore as when he choked Chombo Meone's mule!”
The colporteur's gesture, the look of the huge, igneous pass, and the memory of Chombo's tale, all helped produce an illusion of some veritable malign presence. ”

“ Lassiter was moved to smile, but his smile flickered out in the aura of Birdsong's death.
“It really helps prove those things, señor," proceeded the priest gravely. “Belief in the Sun is the truth for my people; without it they could not exist.”
Lassiter leaned against the pilaster musing and presently said:
“I dare say that's right. Religious truth is any theory with sufficient coherence to satisfy man's inquisitiveness, and yet at the same time offer him sufficient inducement to bear the ills of life.” ”

“ Dropping his work, he dashed back along the terrace. Upon breaking through a clump of aspens he saw the dark form of a man in the camp. Cold, then hot, Venters burst into frenzied speed to reach his guns. He was cursing himself for a thoughtless fool when the man's tall form became familiar, and he recognized Lassiter. Then the reversal of emotions changed his run to a walk; he tried to call out, but his voice refused to carry; when he reached camp there was Lassiter staring at the white-faced girl. ”

“ Lassiter was too sensitive not to catch the bleakness of soul among a people who could evolve such a dance. That bleakness was written not only in Birdsong's steps and furious leaps and jerks, but it was in the rigid staring face which he maintained throughout the performance. ”

“ The word “deserting” annoyed the New Yorker. It seemed ill-chosen and unnecessarily harsh.
“I don't think it wise to go on.”
“The wisdom of men is foolishness with God, Brother Lassiter.”
“I don't mind saying your plan looks like bally foolishness to me—relaying a lot of Bibles into Brazil—— It's mad!”
The colporteur's hard-molded face betrayed neither pique nor regret. Lassiter felt uncomfortable under the stare of his wide-open black eyes. After a moment he arose, walked over to his clothes pack and got out a package of letters. ”

“ Had Lassiter been a younger man, he would have rushed to the assistance of assaulted beauty, but he was wise. He watched the love fight with the amused tolerance of a bachelor of thirty-nine. The grand passion often takes the form of blows and resisted kisses. The result of these hostilities would be another tree commandeered for housekeeping in Motobatl— At that instant Lassiter saw the girl was Tilita.
The promoter leaped to his feet with a kind of spasm in his chest. ”

“ Lassiter looked around impatiently at the question. Birdsong continued:
“The only sure thing in life is death, Brother Lassiter. All of us has got to die. Your time may come before morning; hadn't you better get ready to meet your Maker?”
It annoyed Lassiter to have Birdsong talking of death. Death, whose black robes he had brushed half an hour ago, had again withdrawn itself to a respectful distance. In his heart, Lassiter felt that death would show a certain consideration for the worth and consequence of Charles Lassiter. Death would come at the end of a long and useful life. ”

“ The promoter remained silent, abusing himself for ever going to Birdsong'S meeting. He might have known it would lead to some unpleasantness.
The colporteur walked on, studying the New Yorker with his expressionless eyes.
“Do you realize, Brother Lassiter, that you are an old man and she is a child? You are an older man than I am, Brother Lassiter.”
“Maybe I am in years,” agreed Lassiter with poor temper, “but what's age here in the tropics—a man's as old as he feels.” ”

“ The roaring of the water drowned every thought but the image. The bolsa swung up on the piled water and swung round and round with narrowing and increasing spin. Came a vast sucking in Lassiter's ears. The front of the bolsa tipped up crazily. Lassiter, in the stern, felt himself being drawn down backward. Water came squirting down on him through a hundred interstices of the top. It covered the spuming figure of the man with a swishing sound.
The promoter suddenly began struggling for air. He strove to pull himself up. ”

“ He might have been absent for years, proven by fire and steel, grown, like Lassiter, strong and cool and sure. His eyes—were they keener, more flashing than before?—met hers with clear, frank, warm regard, in which perplexity was not, nor discontent, nor pain.
"Look at me long as you like," he said, with a laugh. "I'm not much to look at. And Jane, neither you nor Lassiter can brag. You're paler than I ever saw you. Lassiter, here, he wears a bloody bandage under his hat. That reminds me. Some one took a flying shot at me down in the sage. It made Wrangle run some. . . . ”

“ Whether the acolyte were waiting for him or not, Lassiter did not know. The crooked little man took one of the bags and the two proceeded across the vast piazza that quivered in the heat.
The columns of the façade seemed to tremble. The hexagonal tufa blocks stung Lassiter's feet. The sun stuck a hot brand to the back of his neck. The piazza seemed endless. The hunchback piloted him to ward the southern side entrance.
Half-way across the piazza the Stendill agent peered back through the flame of sunshine. The distant figures had enlarged. They were almost to the net, and were running. ”

“ Never would she forget the effect upon Tull and his men when Venters shouted Lassiter's name. If she could not wholly control Lassiter, then what she could do might put off the fatal day.
One of her sage racers was a dark bay, and she called him Bells because of the way he struck his iron shoes on the stones. When Jerd led out this slender, beautifully built horse Lassiter suddenly became all eyes. A rider's love of a thoroughbred shone in them. Round and round Bells he walked, plainly weakening all the time in his determination not to take one of Jane's favorite racers. ”

“ Lassiter was in the midst of one of these ebullitions; he had just lifted Tilita in his arms when he glimpsed the figure of a man at some distance, half hidden behind a cow-tree.
The promoter eased his sweetheart to the ground, after the manner of dignified men when discovered in an unconventionality. He stood with one arm, consciously—one might almost say conscientiously—around her waist, because not to touch her at all would admit a fault.
The newcomer proved to be Nunes. Whether he had been spying or simply passing by, Lassiter could not be sure. ”

“ Lassiter wondered dully if any consciousness lay behind their slow-batting eyes. If they felt pain or discomfort or nothing.
The light died with the suddenness which the promoter had noted from the rim of the cliff. Then all the new ecclesiast could see were three dim figures kneeling in the gloom. As Lassiter marched out with the other priests, a curious fear assailed him. He was afraid that a rat might gnaw Tilita in the night. [2]
↑ The temple of the Sun in Motobatl was probably the most populous cenobite known to history. ”

“ This discovery brought back to his mind the idea that had been edging in when Birdsong's remark had interrupted. Was it possible some man had visited them during the night with a noiseless airplane? Did an unknown civilization exist in the hinterlands of the Andes that manufactured a silken cordage out of some unknown colloid?
The moment Lassiter hit on this theory, the various threads in this snarl of facts began to straighten. The killing of the mules, the selection of the spot, the light he had seen in the abyss, all became amenable to human motives. ”

“ Wait, Lassiter, please,” she said, and hurried within. Sending word to Jerd to saddle Black Star and fetch him to the court, she then went to her room and changed to the riding-clothes she always donned when going into the sage. In this male attire her mirror showed her a jaunty, handsome rider. If she expected some little need of admiration from Lassiter, she had no cause for disappointment. The gentle smile that she liked, which made of him another person, slowly overspread his face.
“If I didn’t take you for a boy!” he exclaimed. “It’s powerful queer what difference clothes make. ”

“ He likes you. He’ll love you, too. How can you resist him? Oh, Lassiter, but Bells can run! It’s nip and tuck between him and Wrangle, and only Black Star can beat him. He’s too spirited a horse for a woman. Take him. He’s yours.”
“I jest am weak where a hoss’s concerned,” said Lassiter. “I’ll take him, an’ I’ll take your orders, ma’am.”
“Well, I’m glad, but never mind the ma’am. Let it still be Jane.”
From that hour, it seemed, Lassiter was always in the saddle, riding early and late, and coincident with his part in Jane’s affairs the days assumed their old tranquillity. ”

“ The promoter felt profoundly weary, old, burned out.
He was turning south, with some vague intention of going back to his paddlewood and lying down, when he saw the bulk of Gogoma push out of the jungle toward the north. The high priest carried a basket on his great arm and Lassiter knew it held birds.
The Stendill agent was about to turn on away when the behemoth made a gesture asking him to wait. Lassiter walked over and leaned against one of the vast pilasters. The fat man waddled toward him with his breech clout entirely concealed in rolls of flesh. ”

“ By the time Lassiter saw the only possibility of romance in the Stendill offices lay among the girl stenographers, the size of his pay check had tethered him to his post. In point of fact, he never did marry a typist, slough his poetry and make another swallow's nest in the canons of New York. A certain Jack-a-Dreams mood, a shimmer of fancy, always floated between him and the comfortable commonplace of marriage.
The women in the office resented Lassiter's bachelorhood. The sex instinctively looks upon a man as a possible easement of life's roughnesses. ”

“ He ain’t no more Lassiter! He’s lost his nerve, he doesn’t look like the same feller. It’s village talk. Everybody knows it. He hasn’t thrown a gun, an’ he won’t!”
“Jud, I’ll bet he does,” replied Venters, earnestly. “Remember what I say. This Lassiter is something more than a gun-man. Jud, he’s big—he’s great!... I feel that in him. God help Tull and Dyer when Lassiter does go after them. For horses and riders and stone walls won’t save them.”
“Wal, hev it your way, Bern. I hope you’re right. Nat’rully I’ve been some sore on Lassiter fer gittin’ soft. ”

“ Suddenly he saw Balthasar was drawing his automatic. He grabbed the muleteer's elbow. During the pause, Nunes caught Lassiter's right. They came to a straining impasse. The promoter stared into Balthasar's bleeding face. Gradually the yellow man's pistol arm strained out. Lassiter flung all his failing force against it, but the muleteer's sweaty skin slipped through his hold. A panic siezed Lassiter.
He suddenly realized he would be killed. In three minutes he would have his brains blown out over a half-breed girl's kiss! ”

“ PRESENTLY into the promoter's self disgust crept the murmur of distant voices. They were just audible and for several minutes did not interrupt Lassiter's brooding. Indeed, this slight human touch somehow helped the agent to his first tenable theory. It was exceedingly simple. An underground tunnel led from temple to net. The priests had watched him from the window and had timed the thrusting out of the vicuna under his eyes to help mystify him. It was the simplest of ruses; worthy of an intelligence such as Jagala's. ”

“ There's no one with a right to question my actions." She turned smilingly to Venters. "You will come in, Bern, and Lassiter will come in. We'll eat and be merry while we may."
"I'm only wonderin' if Tull an' his men 'll raise a storm down in the village," said Lassiter, in his last weakening stand.
"Yes, he'll raise the storm—after he has prayed," replied Jane. "Come."
She led the way, with the bridle of Lassiter's horse over her arm. They entered a grove and walked down a wide path shaded by great low-branching cottonwoods. ”

“ Men like Lassiter and you have no home, no comfort, no rest, no place to lay your weary heads. Well! . . . Let us be patient. Tull's anger may cool, and time may help us. You might do some service to the village—who can tell? Suppose you discovered the long-unknown hiding-place of Oldring and his band, and told it to my riders? That would disarm Tull's ugly hints and put you in favor. For years my riders have trailed the tracks of stolen cattle. You know as well as I how dearly we've paid for our ranges in this wild country. ”