CHAPTER III
He turned the horses about and took charge of her just as if he were accustomed to managing stray ladies in the wilderness every day of his life and understood the situation perfectly; and Margaret settled wearily into her saddle and looked about her with content.
Suddenly, again, the wide wonder of the night possessed her.
Involuntarily she breathed a soft little exclamation of awe and delight.
Her companion turned to her questioningly:
"Does it always seem so big here--so--limitless?" she asked in explanation. "It is so far to everywhere it takes one"s breath away, and yet the stars hang close, like a protection. It gives one the feeling of being alone in the great universe with G.o.d. Does it always seem so out here?"
He looked at her curiously, her pure profile turned up to the wide dome of luminous blue above. His voice was strangely low and wondering as he answered, after a moment"s silence:
"No, it is not always so," he said. "I have seen it when it was more like being alone in the great universe with the devil."
There was a tremendous earnestness in his tone that the girl felt meant more than was on the surface. She turned to look at the fine young face beside her. In the starlight she could not make out the bitter hardness of lines that were beginning to be carved about his sensitive mouth. But there was so much sadness in his voice that her heart went out to him in pity.
"Oh," she said, gently, "it would be awful that way. Yes, I can understand. I felt so, a little, while that terrible man was with me."
And she shuddered again at the remembrance.
Again he gave her that curious look. "There are worse things than Pop Wallis out here," he said, gravely. "But I"ll grant you there"s some cla.s.s to the skies. It"s a case of "Where every prospect pleases and only man is vile."" And with the words his tone grew almost flippant. It hurt her sensitive nature, and without knowing it she half drew away a little farther from him and murmured, sadly:
"Oh!" as if he had cla.s.sed himself with the "man" he had been describing. Instantly he felt her withdrawal and grew grave again, as if he would atone.
"Wait till you see this sky at the dawn," he said. "It will burn red fire off there in the east like a hearth in a palace, and all this dome will glow like a great pink jewel set in gold. If you want a cla.s.sy sky, there you have it! Nothing like it in the East!"
There was a strange mingling of culture and roughness in his speech. The girl could not make him out; yet there had been a palpitating earnestness in his description that showed he had felt the dawn in his very soul.
"You are--a--poet, perhaps?" she asked, half shyly. "Or an artist?" she hazarded.
He laughed roughly and seemed embarra.s.sed. "No, I"m just a--b.u.m! A sort of roughneck out of a job."
She was silent, watching him against the starlight, a kind of embarra.s.sment upon her after his last remark. "You--have been here long?" she asked, at last.
"Three years." He said it almost curtly and turned his head away, as if there were something in his face he would hide.
She knew there was something unhappy in his life. Unconsciously her tone took on a sympathetic sound. "And do you get homesick and want to go back, ever?" she asked.
His tone was fairly savage now. "No!"
The silence which followed became almost oppressive before the Boy finally turned and in his kindly tone began to question her about the happenings which had stranded her in the desert alone at night.
So she came to tell him briefly and frankly about herself, as he questioned--how she came to be in Arizona all alone.
"My father is a minister in a small town in New York State. When I finished college I had to do something, and I had an offer of this Ashland school through a friend of ours who had a brother out here.
Father and mother would rather have kept me nearer home, of course, but everybody says the best opportunities are in the West, and this was a good opening, so they finally consented. They would send post-haste for me to come back if they knew what a mess I have made of things right at the start--getting out of the train in the desert."
"But you"re not discouraged?" said her companion, half wonderingly.
"Some nerve you have with you. I guess you"ll manage to hit it off in Ashland. It"s the limit as far as discipline is concerned, I understand, but I guess you"ll put one over on them. I"ll bank on you after to-night, sure thing!"
She turned a laughing face toward him. "Thank you!" she said. "But I don"t see how you know all that. I"m sure I didn"t do anything particularly nervy. There wasn"t anything else to do but what I did, if I"d tried."
"Most girls would have fainted and screamed, and fainted again when they were rescued," stated the Boy, out of a vast experience.
"I never fainted in my life," said Margaret Earle, with disdain. "I don"t think I should care to faint out in the vast universe like this.
It would be rather inopportune, I should think."
Then, because she suddenly realized that she was growing very chummy with this stranger in the dark, she asked the first question that came into her head.
"What was your college?"
That he had not been to college never entered her head. There was something in his speech and manner that made it a foregone conclusion.
It was as if she had struck him forcibly in his face, so sudden and sharp a silence ensued for a second. Then he answered, gruffly, "Yale,"
and plunged into an elaborate account of Arizona in its early ages, including a detailed description of the cliff-dwellers and their homes, which were still to be seen high in the rocks of the canons not many miles to the west of where they were riding.
Margaret was keen to hear it all, and asked many questions, declaring her intention of visiting those cliff-caves at her earliest opportunity.
It was so wonderful to her to be actually out here where were all sorts of queer things about which she had read and wondered. It did not occur to her, until the next day, to realize that her companion had of intention led her off the topic of himself and kept her from asking any more personal questions.
He told her of the petrified forest just over some low hills off to the left; acres and acres of agatized chips and trunks of great trees all turned to eternal stone, called by the Indians "Yeitso"s bones," after the great giant of that name whom an ancient Indian hero killed. He described the coloring of the brilliant days in Arizona, where you stand on the edge of some flat-topped mesa and look off through the clear air to mountains that seem quite near by, but are in reality more than two hundred miles away. He pictured the strange colors and lights of the place; ledges of rock, yellow, white and green, drab and maroon, and tumbled piles of red boulders, shadowy b.u.t.tes in the distance, serrated cliffs against the horizon, not blue, but rosy pink in the heated haze of the air, and perhaps a great, lonely eagle poised above the silent, brilliant waste.
He told it not in book language, with turn of phrase and smoothly flowing sentences, but in simple, frank words, as a boy might describe a picture to one he knew would appreciate it--for her sake, and not because he loved to put it into words; but in a new, stumbling way letting out the beauty that had somehow crept into his heart in spite of all the rough attempts to keep all gentle things out of his nature.
The girl, as she listened, marveled more and more what manner of youth this might be who had come to her out of the desert night.
She forgot her weariness as she listened, in the thrill of wonder over the new mysterious country to which she had come. She forgot that she was riding through the great darkness with an utter stranger, to a place she knew not, and to experiences most dubious. Her fears had fled and she was actually enjoying herself, and responding to the wonderful story of the place with soft-murmured exclamations of delight and wonder.
From time to time in the distance there sounded forth those awful blood-curdling howls of wild beasts that she had heard when she sat alone by the water-tank, and each time she heard a shudder pa.s.sed through her and instinctively she swerved a trifle toward her companion, then straightened up again and tried to seem not to notice. The Boy saw and watched her brave attempts at self-control with deep appreciation.
But suddenly, as they rode and talked, a dark form appeared across their way a little ahead, lithe and stealthy and furry, and two awful eyes like green lamps glared for an instant, then disappeared silently among the mesquite bushes.
She did not cry out nor start. Her very veins seemed frozen with horror, and she could not have spoken if she tried. It was all over in a second and the creature gone, so that she almost doubted her senses and wondered if she had seen aright. Then one hand went swiftly to her throat and she shrank toward her companion.
"There is nothing to fear," he said, rea.s.suringly, and laid a strong hand comfortingly across the neck of her horse. "The p.u.s.s.y-cat was as unwilling for our company as we for hers. Besides, look here!"--and he raised his hand and shot into the air. "She"ll not come near us now."
"I am not afraid!" said the girl, bravely. "At least, I don"t think I am--very! But it"s all so new and unexpected, you know. Do people around here always shoot in that--well--unpremeditated fashion?"
They laughed together.
"Excuse me," he said. "I didn"t realize the shot might startle you even more than the wildcat. It seems I"m not fit to have charge of a lady. I told you I was a roughneck."
"You"re taking care of me beautifully," said Margaret Earle, loyally, "and I"m glad to get used to shots if that"s the thing to be expected often."
Just then they came to the top of the low, rolling hill, and ahead in the darkness there gleamed a tiny, wizened light set in a blotch of blackness. Under the great white stars it burned a sickly red and seemed out of harmony with the night.
"There we are!" said the Boy, pointing toward it. "That"s the bunk-house. You needn"t be afraid. Pop Wallis "ll be snoring by this time, and we"ll come away before he"s about in the morning. He always sleeps late after he"s been off on a bout. He"s been gone three days, selling some cattle, and he"ll have a pretty good top on."
The girl caught her breath, gave one wistful look up at the wide, starry sky, a furtive glance at the strong face of her protector, and submitted to being lifted down to the ground.
Before her loomed the bunk-house, small and mean, built of logs, with only one window in which the flicker of the lanterns menaced, with unknown trials and possible perils for her to meet.