Part 41 (1/2)

Daddy John was coming through the sage, a jack rabbit held up in one hand.

”Here's your supper,” he cried jubilant. ”Ain't I told you I'd get it?”

She moved forward to meet him, walking slowly. When he saw her face, concern supplanted his triumph.

”We got to get you out of this,” he said. ”You're as peaked as one of them frontier women in sunbonnets,” and he tried to hook a compa.s.sionate hand in her arm. But she edged away from him, fearful that he would feel her trembling, and answered:

”It's the heat. It seems to draw the strength all out of me.”

”The rabbit'll put some of it back. I'll go and get things started.

You sit by David and rest up,” and he skurried away to the camp.

She went to David, lying now with opened eyes and hands clasped beneath his head. When her shadow fell across him he turned a brightened face on her.

”I'm better,” he said. ”If I could get some water I think I'd soon be all right.”

She stood looking down on him with a clouded, almost sullen, expression.

”Did you sleep long?” she asked for something to say.

”I don't know how long. A little while ago I woke up and looked for you, but you weren't anywhere round, so I just lay here and looked out across to the mountains and began to think of California. I haven't thought about it for a long while.”

She sat down by him and listened as he told her his thoughts. With a renewal of strength the old dreams had come back--the cabin by the river, the garden seeds to be planted, and now added to them was the gold they were to find. She hearkened with unresponsive apathy. The repugnance to this mutually shared future which had once made her recoil from it was a trivial thing to the abhorrence of it that was now hers. Dislikes had become loathings, a girl's whims, a woman's pa.s.sions. As David babbled on she kept her eyes averted, for she knew that in them her final withdrawal shone coldly. Her thoughts kept reverting to the scene in the cleft, and when she tore them from it and forced them back on him, her conscience awoke and gnawed. She could no more tell this man, returning to life and love of her, than she could kill him as he lay there defenseless and trusting.

At supper they measured out the water, half a cup for each. There still remained a few inches in the cask. This was to be h.o.a.rded against the next day. If Courant on his night journey could not strike the upper trail and a spring they would have to retrace their steps, and by this route, with the animals exhausted and their own strength diminished, the first water was a twelve hours' march off. Susan and Courant were silent, avoiding each other's eyes, torpid to the outward observation. But the old man was unusually garrulous, evidently attempting to raise their lowered spirits. He had much to say about California and the gold there, speculated on their chances of fortune, and then carried his speculations on to the joys of wealth and a future in which Susan was to say with the Biblical millionaire, ”Now soul take thine ease.” She rewarded him with a quick smile, then tipped her cup till the bottom faced the sky, and let the last drop run into her mouth.

The night was falling when Courant rode out. She pa.s.sed him as he was mounting, the canteen strapped to the back of his saddle. ”Good-by, and good luck,” she said in a low voice as she brushed by. His ”good-by” came back to her instilled with a new meaning. The reserve between them was gone. Separated as the poles, they had suddenly entered within the circle of an intimacy that had snapped round them and shut them in. Her surroundings fell into far perspective, losing their menace. She did not care where she was or how she fared. An indifference to all that had seemed unbearable, uplifted her. It was like an emergence from cramped confines to wide, inspiring s.p.a.ces. He and she were there--the rest was nothing.

Sitting beside David she could see the rider's figure grow small, as it receded across the plain. The night had come and the great level brooded solemn under the light of the first, serene stars. In the middle of the camp Daddy John's fire flared, the central point of illumination in a ring of fluctuant yellow. Touched and lost by its waverings the old man's figure came and went, absorbed in outer darkness, then revealed his arms extended round sheaves of brush.

David turned and lay on his side looking at her. Her knees were drawn up, her hands clasped round her ankles. With the ragged detail of her dress obscured, the line of her profile and throat sharp in clear silhouette against the saffron glow, she was like a statue carved in black marble. He could not see what her glance followed, only felt the consolation of her presence, the one thing to which he could turn and meet a human response.

He was feverish again, his thirst returned in an insatiable craving.

Moving restlessly he flung out a hand toward her and said querulously:

”How long will Low be gone?”

”Till the morning unless he finds water by the way.”

Silence fell on him and her eyes strained through the darkness for the last glimpse of the rider. He sighed deeply, the hot hand stirring till it lay spread, with separated fingers on the hem of her dress. He moved each finger, their brus.h.i.+ng on the cloth the only sound.

”Are you in pain?” she asked and shrunk before the coldness of her voice.

”No, but I am dying with thirst.”

She made no answer, resting in her graven quietness. The night had closed upon the rider's figure, but she watched where it had been.

Over a blackened peak a large star soared up like a bright eye spying on the waste. Suddenly the hand clinched and he struck down at the earth with it.

”I can't go without water till the morning.”