Part 38 (2/2)

It was so unlike him, his face was so changed and charged with a childish wretchedness, that she felt no check upon her sympathy. She knew it was not David that spoke, but a usurping spirit born of evil days. The other men p.r.i.c.ked their ears and listened, but she was indifferent to their watch, and tried again to take his hand, saying, pleadingly:

”Sit down. When I get your supper you'll be better. I'll have it ready in a few minutes.”

This time he threw her hand off with violence. His face, under its dust mask, flamed with the anger that had been acc.u.mulating through the day.

”Let me alone,” he cried, his voice strangled like a wrathful child's.

”I don't want anything to do with you. Eat your supper. When I'm ready I'll get mine without any help from you. Let me be.”

He turned from her, and moving over the blanket, stumbled on its folds.

The jar was the breaking touch to his overwrought nerves. He staggered, caught his breath with a hiccoughing gasp, and dropping his face into his hands burst into hysterical tears. Then in a sudden abandonment of misery he threw himself on the blanket, buried his head in his folded arms and rending sobs broke from him. For a moment they were absolutely still, staring at him in stupefied surprise. Daddy John, his neck craned round the blaze, surveyed him with bright, sharp eyes of unemotional query, then flopped the bacon pan on the embers, and said:

”He's all done.”

Courant advanced a step, looked down on him and threw a sidelong glance at Susan, bold with meaning. After her first moment of amazement, she moved to David's side, drew the edge of the blanket over him, touched his head with a light caress, and turned back to the fire. The plates and cups were lying there and she quietly set them out, her eye now and then straying for a needed object, her hand hanging in suspended search then dropping upon it, and noiselessly putting it in its place.

Unconsciously they maintained an awed silence, as if they were sitting by the dead. Daddy John turned the bacon with stealthy care, the sc.r.a.pe of his knife on the pan sounding a rude and unseemly intrusion.

Upon this scrupulously maintained quietude the man's weeping broke insistent, the stifled regular beat of sobs hammering on it as if determined to drive their complacency away and reduce them to the low ebb of misery in which he lay.

They had almost finished their meal when the sounds lessened, dwindling to spasmodic, staggering gasps with lengthening pauses that broke suddenly in a quivering intake of breath and a vibration of the rec.u.mbent frame. The hysterical paroxysm was over. He lay limp and turned his head on his arms, too exhausted to feel shame for the s.h.i.+ne of tears on his cheek. Susan took a plate of food and a coffee cup and stole toward him, the two men watching her under their eyelids. She knelt beside him and spoke very gently, ”Will you take this, David?

You'll feel stronger after you've eaten.”

”Put it down,” he said hoa.r.s.ely, without moving.

”Shall I give you the coffee?” She hung over him looking into his face. ”I can hold the cup and you can drink it.”

”By and by,” he muttered.

She bent lower and laid her hand on his hair.

”David, I'm so sorry,” she breathed.

Courant leaped to his feet and walked to where his horses stood. He struck one of them a blow on the flank that after the silence and the low tones of the girl's crooning voice sounded as violent as a pistol shot. They all started, even David lifted his head.

”What's the matter now?” said Daddy John, alert for any outbreak of man or beast.

But Courant made no answer, and moved away into the plain. It was some time before he came back, emerging from the darkness as noiselessly as he had gone. David had eaten his supper and was asleep, the girl sitting beyond him withdrawn from the fire glow. Daddy John was examining the sick horse, and Courant joined him, walking round the beast and listening to the old man's opinions as to its condition.

They were not encouraging. It seemed likely that David's carelessness would cost the train two valuable animals.

To the outward eye peace had again settled on the camp. The low conferrings of the two men, the dying snaps of the charred twigs, were the only sounds. The night brooded serene about the bivouac, the large stars showing clear now that the central glare had sunk to a red heap of ruin. Far away, on the hills, the sparks of Indian fires gleamed.

They had followed the train for days, watching it like the eyes of hungry animals, too timid to come nearer. But there was no cause for alarm, for the desert Indians were a feeble race, averse to bloodshed, thieves at their worst, descending upon the deserted camping grounds to carry away what the emigrants left.

Nevertheless, when the sound of hoof beats came from the trail both men made a quick s.n.a.t.c.h for their rifles, and Susan jumped to her feet with a cry of ”Some one's coming.” They could see nothing, the darkness hanging like a curtain across their vision. Courant, with his rifle in the hollow of his arm, moved toward the sounds, his hail reaching clear and deep into the night. An answer came in a man's voice, the hoof beats grew louder, and the reaching light defined approaching shapes.

Daddy John threw a bunch of sage on the fire, and in the rush of flame that flew along its branches, two mounted men were visible.

They dropped to the ground and came forward. ”From California to the States,” the foremost said to Susan, seeing a woman with fears to be allayed. He was tall and angular with a frank, copper-tanned face, overtopped by a wide spread of hat, and bearded to the eyes. He wore a loose hickory s.h.i.+rt and buckskin breeches tucked into long boots, already broken from the soles. The other was a small and comical figure with an upstanding crest of sunburned blond hair, tight curled and thick as a sheep's fleece. When he saw Susan he delayed his advance to put on a ragged army overcoat that hung to his heels, and evidently hid discrepancies in his costume not meet for a lady's eye.

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