Part 4 (1/2)

There was a Biblical simplicity in their life. They had gone back to the era when man was a nomad, at night pitching his tent by the water hole, and sleeping on skins beside the fire. When the sun rose over the rim of the prairie the camp was astir. When the stars came out in the deep blue night they sat by the cone of embers, not saying much, for in the open, spoken words lose their force and the human creature becomes a silent animal.

Each day's march was a slow, dogged, progression, broken by fierce work at the fords. The dawn was the beautiful time when the dew was caught in frosted webs on the gra.s.s. The wings of the morning were theirs as they rode over the long green swells where the dog roses grew and the leaves of the sage palpitated to silver like a woman's body quivering to the brus.h.i.+ng of a beloved hand. Sometimes they walked, dipped into hollows where the wattled huts of the Indians edged a creek, noted the pa.s.sage of earlier trains in the cropped gra.s.s at the spring mouth and the circles of dead fires.

In the afternoons it grew hot. The train, deliberate and determined as a tortoise, moved through a s.h.i.+mmer of light. The drone of insect voices rose in a sleepy chorus and the men drowsed in the wagons. Even the buoyant life of the young girl seemed to feel the stupefying weight of the prairie's deep repose. She rode at a foot pace, her hat hanging by its strings to the pommel, her hair pushed back from her beaded forehead, not bothering about her curls now.

Then came the wild blaze of the sunset and the pitching of the camp, and after supper the rest by the fire with pipe smoke in the air, and overhead the blossoming of the stars.

They were wonderful stars, troops and troops of them, dust of myriad, unnumbered worlds, and the white lights of great, bold planets staring at ours. David wondered what it looked like from up there. Was it as large, or were we just a tiny, twinkling point too? From city streets the stars had always chilled him by their awful suggestion of worlds beyond worlds circling through gulfs of s.p.a.ce. But here in the primordial solitudes, under the solemn cope of the sky, the thought lost its terror. He seemed in harmony with the universe, part of it as was each speck of star dust. Without question or understanding he felt secure, convinced of his oneness with the great design, cradled in its infinite care.

One evening while thus dreaming he caught Susan's eye full of curious interest like a watching child's.

”What are you thinking of?” she asked.

”The stars,” he answered. ”They used to frighten me.”

She looked from him to the firmament as if to read a reason for his fear:

”Frighten you? Why?”

”There were so many of them, thousands and millions, wandering about up there. It was so awful to think of them, how they'd been swinging round forever and would keep on forever. And maybe there were people on some of them, and what it all was for.”

She continued to look up and then said indifferently:

”It doesn't seem to me to matter much.”

”It used to make me feel that nothing was any use. As if I was just a grain of dust.”

Her eyes came slowly down and rested on him in a musing gaze.

”A grain of dust. I never felt that way. I shouldn't think you'd like it, but I don't see why you were afraid.”

David felt uncomfortable. She was so exceedingly practical and direct that he had an unpleasant feeling she would set him down as a coward, who went about under the fear that a meteor might fall on him and strike him dead. He tried to explain:

”Not afraid actually, just sort of frozen by the idea of it all. It's so--immense, so--so crus.h.i.+ng and terrible.”

Her gaze continued, a questioning quality entering it. This gained in force by a slight tilting of her head to one side. David began to fear her next question. It might show that she regarded him not only as a coward but also as a fool.

”Perhaps you don't understand,” he hazarded timidly.

”I don't think I do,” she answered, then dropped her eyes and added after a moment of pondering, ”I can't remember ever being really afraid of anything.”

Had it been daylight she would have noticed that the young man colored.

He thought guiltily of certain haunting fears of his childhood, ghosts in the attic, a banshee of which he had once heard a fearsome story, a cow that had chased him on the farm. She unconsciously a.s.sisted him from this slough of shame by saying suddenly:

”Oh, yes, I can. I remember now. I'm afraid of mad dogs.”

It was not very comforting for, after all, everybody was afraid of mad dogs.

”And there was a reason for that,” she went on. ”I was frightened by a mad dog when I was a little girl eight years old. I was going out to spend some of my allowance. I got twenty cents a month and I had it all in pennies. And suddenly there was a great commotion in the street, everybody running and screaming and rus.h.i.+ng into doorways. I didn't know what was the matter but I was startled and dropped my pennies. And just as I stooped to pick them up I saw the dog coming toward me, tearing, with its tongue hanging out. And, would you believe it, I gathered up all those pennies before I ran and just had time to scramble over a fence.”

It was impossible not to laugh, especially with her laughter leading, her eyes narrowed to cracks through which light and humor sparkled at him.