Part 39 (2/2)

Clarence Heyl. She breathed a sigh of relief. Clarence Heyl. He had helped her once, to-day. And now, for the second time, something that he had said long before came from its hiding place in her subconscious mind. She had said:

”Some days I feel I've got to walk out of the office, and down the street, without a hat, and on and on, walking and walking, and running and running till I come to the horizon.”

And Heyl had answered, in his quiet, rea.s.suring way: ”Some day that feeling will get too strong for you. When that time comes get on a train marked Denver. From there take another to Estes Park. That's the Rocky Mountains, where the horizon lives and has its being. Ask for Heyl's place. They'll hand you from one to the other. I may be there, but more likely I shan't. The key's in the mail box, tied to a string. You'll find a fire laid with fat pine knots. My books are there. The bedding's in the cedar chest. And the mountains will make you clean and whole again; and the pines...”

f.a.n.n.y went to the telephone. Trains for Denver. She found the road she wanted, and asked for information. She was on her own ground here. All her life she had had to find her own trains, check her own trunks, plan her journeys. Sometimes she had envied the cotton-wool women who had had all these things done for them, always.

One-half of her mind was working clearly and coolly. The other half was numb. There were things to be done. They would take a day. More than a day, but she would neglect most of them. She must notify the office.

There were tickets to be got. Reservations. Money at the bank. Packing.

When the maid came in at eleven f.a.n.n.y had suitcases and bags out, and her bedroom was strewn with shoes, skirts, coats.

Late Monday afternoon Fenger telephoned. She did not answer. There came a note from him, then a telegram. She did not read them. Tuesday found her on a train bound for Colorado. She remembered little of the first half of her journey. She had brought with her books and magazines, and she must have read hem, but her mind had evidently retained nothing of what she had read. She must have spent hours looking out of the window, for she remembered, long afterward, the endlessness and the monotony of the Kansas prairies. They soothed her. She was glad there were no bits of autumnal woodland, no tantalizing vistas, nothing to break the flat and boundless immensity of it. Here was something big, and bountiful, and real, and primal. Good Kansas dirt. Miles of it. Miles of it. She felt she would like to get out and tramp on it, hard.

”Pretty cold up there in Estes Park,” the conductor had said. ”Been snowing up in the mountains.”

She had arranged to stop in Denver only long enough to change trains.

A puffy little branch line was to take her from Denver to Loveland, and there, she had been told, one of the big mountain-road steam automobiles would take her up the mountains to her destination. For one as mentally alert as she normally was, the exact location of that destination was very hazy in her mind. Heyl's place. That was all. Ordinarily she would have found the thought ridiculous. But she concentrated on it now; clung to it.

At the first glimpse of the foot-hills f.a.n.n.y's listless gaze became interested. If you have ever traveled on the jerky, cleanly, meandering little road that runs between Denver and the Park you know that it winds, and curves, so that the mountains seem to leap about, friskily, first confronting you on one side of the car window, then disappearing and seeming to taunt you from the windows of the opposite side. f.a.n.n.y laughed aloud. The mountain steam-car was waiting at Loveland. There were few pa.s.sengers at this time of year. The driver was a great tanned giant, pongee colored from his hair to his puttees and boots. f.a.n.n.y was to learn, later, that in Estes Park the male tourist was likely to be puny, pallid, and unattractive when compared to the tall, slim, straight, khaki-clad youth, browned by the sun, and the wind, and the dust, who drives his steamer up and down the perilous mountain roads with more dexterity than the charioteering G.o.ds ever displayed on Olympus.

f.a.n.n.y got the seat beside this glorious person. The steamer was a huge vehicle, boasting five rows of seats, and looking very much like a small edition of the sightseeing cars one finds in tourist-infested cities.

”Heyl's place,” said f.a.n.n.y. Suppose it failed to work!

Said the blond G.o.d, ”Stopping at the Inn overnight, I s'pose.”

”Why--I don't know,” faltered f.a.n.n.y. ”Can't I go right on to--to--Heyl's place?”

”Can.” Mountain steamer men are not loquacious. ”Sure. Better not. You won't get to the Inn till dark. Better stay there over night, and go on up to Heyl's place in the morning.”

Then he leaned forward, clawed about expertly among what appeared to f.a.n.n.y's eyes to be a maze of handles, brakes, valves; and the great car glided smoothly off, without a b.u.mp, without a jar. f.a.n.n.y took a long breath.

There is no describing a mountain. One uses words, and they are futile.

And the Colorado Rockies, in October, when the aspens are turning! Well, aspens turn gold in October. People who have seen an aspen grove in October believe in fairies. And such people need no clumsy descriptive pa.s.sages to aid their fancies. You others who have not seen it?

There shall be no poor weaving together of words. There shall be no description of orange and mauve and flame-colored sunsets, no juggling with mists and clouds, and sunrises and purple mountains. Mountain dwellers and mountain lovers are a laconic tribe. They know the futility of words.

But the effect of the mountains on f.a.n.n.y Brandeis. That is within our province. In the first place, they made her hungry. That was the crisp, heady air. The mountain road, to one who has never traveled it, is a thing of delicious thrills and near-terror. A narrow, perilous ribbon of road, cut in the side of the rock itself; a road all horseshoe curves and hairpin twists. f.a.n.n.y found herself gasping. But that pa.s.sed after a time. Big Thompson canyon leaves no room for petty terror. And the pongee person was so competent, so quietly sure, so angularly graceful among his brakes and levers. f.a.n.n.y stole a side glance at him now and then. He looked straight ahead. When you drive a mountain steamer you do look straight ahead. A glance to the right or left is so likely to mean death, or at best a sousing in the Thompson that foams and rushes below.

f.a.n.n.y ventured a question. ”Do you know Mr. Heyl?”

”Heyl? Took him down day before yesterday.”

”Down?”

”To the village. He's gone back east.”

<script>