Part 33 (2/2)

He seemed the vanis.h.i.+ng point of these converging stripes, the object they were striving toward, the end they aimed for. Reaching him they ceased as though they had accomplished their purpose, led the woman's eyes to him as to a symbolical figure that piloted the train to succor.

With every hour weakness grew on the doctor, his words were fewer. By the ending of the first day, he lay silent looking out at the vista of bluffs and river, his eyes s.h.i.+ning in sunken orbits. As dusk fell Courant dropped back to the wagon and asked Daddy John if the mules could hold the pace all night. Susan heard the whispered conference, and in a moment was kneeling on the seat, her hand clutched like a spread starfish on the old man's shoulder.

Courant leaned from his saddle to catch the driver's ear with his lowered tones. ”With a forced march we can get there to-morrow afternoon. The animals can rest up and we can make him comfortable and maybe find a doctor.”

Her face, lifted to him, was like a transparent medium through which anxiety and hope that was almost pain, shone. She hung on his words and breathed back quick agreement. It would have been the same if he had suggested the impossible, if the angel of the Lord had appeared and barred the way with a flaming sword.

”Of course they can go all night. They must. We'll walk and ride by turns. That'll lighten the wagon. I'll go and get my horse,” and she was out and gone to the back of the train where David rode at the head of the pack animals.

The night was of a clear blue darkness, suffused with the misty light of stars. Looking back, Courant could see her upright slenderness topping the horse's black shape. When the road lay pale and unshaded behind her he could decipher the curves of her head and shoulders.

Then he turned to the trail in front, and her face, as it had been when he first saw her and as it was now, came back to his memory. Once, toward midnight, he drew up till they reached him, her horse's muzzle nosing soft against his pony's flank. He could see the gleam of her eyes, fastened on him, wide and anxious.

”Get into the wagon and ride,” he commanded.

”Why? He's no worse! He's sleeping.”

”I was thinking of you. This is too hard for you. It'll wear you out.”

”Oh, I'm all right,” she said with a slight movement of impatience.

”Don't worry about me. Go on.”

He returned to his post and she paced slowly on, keeping level with the wheels. It was very still, only the creaking of the wagon and the hoof beats on the dust. She kept her eyes on his receding shape, watched it disappear in dark turns, then emerge into faintly illumined stretches.

It moved steadily, without quickening of gait, a lonely shadow that they followed through the unknown to hope. Her glance hung to it, her ear strained for the thud of his pony's feet, sight and sound of him came to her like a promise of help. He was the one strong human thing in this place of remote skies and dumb unfeeling earth.

It was late afternoon when the Fort came in sight. A flicker of animation burst up in them as they saw the square of its long, low walls, crowning an eminence above the stream. The bottom lay wide at its feet, the river slipping bright through green meadows sprinkled with an army of cattle. In a vast, irregular circle, a wheel of life with the fort as its hub, spread an engirdling encampment. It was scattered over plain and bottom in dottings of white, here drawn close in cl.u.s.tering agglomerations, there detached in separate spatterings.

Coming nearer the white spots grew to wagon hoods and tent roofs, and among them, less easy to discern, were the pointed summits of the lodges with the bunched poles bristling through the top. The air was very still, and into it rose the straight threads of smoke from countless fires, aspiring upwards in slender blue lines to the bluer sky. They lifted and dispersed the smell of burning wood that comes to the wanderer with a message of home, a message that has lain in his blood since the first man struck fire and turned the dry heap of sticks to an altar to be forever fixed as the soul of his habitation.

They camped in the bottom withdrawn from the closer herding of tents.

It was a slow settling, as noiseless as might be, for two at least of their number knew that the doctor was dying. That afternoon Daddy John and Courant had seen the shadow of the great change. Whether Susan saw it they neither knew. She was full of a determined, cold energy, urging them at once to go among the camps and search for a doctor.

They went in different directions, leaving her sitting by her father's feet at the raised flap of the tent. Looking back through the gathering dusk Courant could see her, a dark shape, her body drooping in relaxed lines. He thought that she knew.

When they came back with the word that there was no doctor to be found, darkness was closing in. Night came with noises of men and the twinkling of innumerable lights. The sky, p.r.i.c.ked with stars, looked down on an earth alive with answering gleams, as though a segment of its spark-set s.h.i.+eld had fallen and lay beneath it, winking back messages in an aerial telegraphy. The fires leaped high or glowed in smoldering mounds, painting the sides of tents, the flanks of ruminating animals, the wheels of wagons, the faces of men and women.

Coolness, rest, peace brooded over the great bivouac, with the guardian shape of the Fort above it and the murmur of the river at its feet.

A lantern, standing on a box by the doctor's side, lit the tent.

Through the opening the light from the fire outside poured in, sending shadows scurrying up the canvas walls. Close within call David sat by it, his chin on his knees, his eyes staring at the tongues of flames as they licked the fresh wood. There was nothing now for him to do. He had cooked the supper, and then to ease the pain of his unclaimed sympathies, cleaned the pans, and from a neighboring camp brought a piece of deer meat for Susan. It was the only way he could serve her, and he sat disconsolately looking now at the meat on a tin plate, then toward the tent where she and Daddy John were talking. He could hear the murmur of their voices, see their silhouettes moving on the canvas, gigantic and grotesque. Presently she appeared in the opening, paused there for a last word, and then came toward him.

”He wants to speak to Daddy John for a moment,” she said and dropping on the ground beside him, stared at the fire.

David looked at her longingly, but he dared not intrude upon her somber abstraction. The voices in the tent rose and fell. Once at a louder phrase from Daddy John she turned her head quickly and listened, a sheaf of strained nerves. The voices dropped again, her eye came back to the light and touched the young man's face. It contained no recognition of him, but he leaped at the chance, making stammering proffer of such aid as he could give.

”I've got you some supper.”

He lifted the plate, but she shook her head.

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