After a time, she roused herself and began with enthusiasm: "Oh, Jim, I have had such a clear and lovely dream. I thought we were back at Cedar Mountain, riding again in the sagebrush, with the prairie wind blowing through our very souls."
She watched his face eagerly and saw the response she expected. It came in larger measure than she had looked for. "I felt as though I could do anything," she went on, "go anywhere or take any jump; and just as I was riding full tilt at the Yellowbank Canyon, you took me by the hand and held me back; then I awoke and you _did_ have my hand. Isn"t it queer the way dreams melt into reality?" She laughed happily and went on as if he were opposing the project: "Why not, Jim? You need a holiday; why shouldn"t we go and drink a long deep draught of life in the hills and sage? I know we"ll get a clearer vision of life from the top of Cedar Mountain than we can anywhere else."
"It seems too good to be true," he slowly answered, and his voice trembled. Less than half an hour ago he had prayed for this and suddenly the way seemed plain, if not yet open.
The winter and spring had gone, and the summer was dying. In all this time the Hartigans had carried their daily, hourly burden, without halt or change. Whatever of hardship there was, came in the form of thwarted plans, heart-cravings for things they felt they must give up. Jim made no mention of his disappointments and, so far as he could, he admitted his hunger neither to himself nor to Belle. It was merely a matter of form, applying for a month"s leave; this had been agreed on from the beginning. The largest difficulty was in the fact that they must go together--the head and the second head both away at once. But there were two good understudies ready trained--Skystein and Dr. Mary Mudd--with Mr. Hopkins as chairman to balance their powers. Michael Shay too, came to offer gruffly and huskily his help: "If I can do anything, like puttin" up cash, or fixin" anybody that"s workin" agin you, count on Mike." Then after a pause he added, a little wistfully: "I ain"t got many real friends, but I want to have them know I"m real, and I know the real thing when I find it."
A conference was finally held and the management of the Club was turned over to the chairman and his aides for a month. Jim and Belle were like children on leave from boarding school. They packed in wild hilarity and took the first train the schedule afforded for Cedar Mountain.
CHAPTER LX
The Gateway and the Mountain
August with its deadening heat was over; September, bright, sunny and tonic, was come to revive the world. Rank foliage was shaking off the summer dust, and a myriad noisy insects were strumming, chirping, fiddling, buzzing, screeping in the dense undergrowth. It was evening when they boarded the train for the West and took the trail that both had taken before, but never with such a background of events or such an eagerness for what was in the future. As the train roared through the fertile fields of Illinois, with their cornfields, their blackbirds and their myriads of cattle, red and white, the sun went down--a red beacon blaze, a bonfire welcome on their pathway just before the engine--a promise and a symbol.
It was near noon the next day when they reached the junction and took, the branch line for the north. The first prairie-dog town had set Jim ablaze with schoolboy eagerness; and when a coyote stood and gazed at the train, he rushed out on to the platform to give him the hunter"s yell.
"My, how sleek he looked! I wonder how those prairie dogs feel as they see him stalk around their town, like a policeman among the South Chicago kids!"
When a flock of prairie chickens flew before the train he called, "Look, look, Belle! See how they sail, just as they used to do!" As though the familiar sights of ten months before were forty years in the past.
They were in the hills now, and the winding train went more slowly.
Animal life was scarcer here, but the pine trees and the sombre peaks were all about. At five o"clock the train swung down the gorge with Cedar Mountain before it, and Jim cried in joy: "There"s our mountain; there"s our mountain!"
There was a crowd a.s.sembled at the station and as soon as Jim appeared a familiar voice shouted, "Here he is!" and, led by Shives, they gave a hearty cheer. All the world of Cedar Mountain seemed there. Pa Boyd and Ma Boyd came first to claim their own. Dr. Jebb and Dr. Carson forgot their religious differences in the good fellowship of the time, and when the inner circle had kissed Belle and manhandled Jim to the limit of custom, a quiet voice said: "Welcome back, Mr. Hartigan," and Charlie Bylow grasped the Preacher"s hand. "I brought my team so I could take care of your trunks." There was only one small trunk, but he took the check and would have resented any other man having hand or say in the matter.
That evening the meal was a "welcome home," for a dozen of the nearer friends were there to hear the chapters of their hero"s life. Jim was in fine feather and he told of their Chicago life as none other could have done, with jest and sly digs at himself and happy tributes to the one who had held his hand when comradeship meant the most.
A month of freedom, with youth, sounds like years. Many plans were offered to fill the time. An invitation came from Colonel and Mrs.
Waller to spend three days at Fort Ryan. In a delicately worded postscript was the sentence: "Blazing Star is well and will be glad to feel your weight again."
"Blazing Star and Cedar Mountain!" shouted Jim as Belle read the letter the next morning at breakfast. And then, much to Pa Boyd"s amus.e.m.e.nt he broke out in his l.u.s.ty baritone:
""Tis my ain countree, "Tis my ain countree!"
The fairest brightest land That the sun did ever see."
Midnight and the horse that had been Belle"s were waiting in the stable.
"Now, where shall we go? Up Cedar Mountain, to Fort Ryan, or where?"
asked Belle as they saddled their mounts. His answer was not what she expected. Cedar Mountain had ever been in his thought. "If only I could stand on Cedar Mountain!" had been his words so many times. And now, with Cedar Mountain close at hand, in sight, he said: "Let"s ride nowhere in particular--just through the sage."
They set off and veered away from Fort Ryan and any other place where men might cross their path. The prairie larks sang about them their lovely autumn song--the short, sweet call that sounds like: "_Hear me, hear me! I am the herald announcing the King._" Fluttering in the air and floating for a moment above the riders they carolled a wild and glorious serenade that has no possible rendition into human notation.
After a hard gallop they rode in silence side by side, hand in hand, while Jim gazed across the plain or watched the fat, fumbling prairie dogs. But ever he turned his face and heart away from Cedar Mountain.
At first it had been to him but a mighty pile of rocks; then it had grown to be a spot beloved for its sacred memories. It had become a symbol of his highest hopes--the blessed things he held too good for words. He was riding now in the l.u.s.t of youthful force; he was dwelling not in the past; or the hopeful far-ahead; he was in the living _now_, and, high or low, his instinct bade him drink the cup that came.
As the sun went down, he drew rein and paused with Belle to gaze at the golden fringe that the cedars made on the mountain"s edge in the glow.
He knew it and loved it in every light--best of all, perhaps, in its morning mist, when the plains were yet gray and the rosy dawn was touching its gleaming sides. He was content as yet to look on it from afar. He would seek its pinnacle as he had done before, but something within him said: "No; not yet."
And the wise young person at his side kept silence; a little puzzled but content, and waiting, wisely waiting.
CHAPTER LXI
Clear Vision on the Mountain
Kind friends and hearty greetings awaited the Hartigans at the Fort.
Colonel Waller, Mrs. Waller, and the staff received them as long-lost son and daughter; and with the least delay by decency allowed they went to the stable to see Blazing Star, still Fort Ryan"s pride. The whinnied welcome and the soft-lipped fumbling after sugar were the outward tokens of his gladness at the meeting.
"He"s the same as ever, Jim," said the Colonel, "but we didn"t race last summer. Red Cloud came as usual, but asked for a handicap of six hundred yards, which meant that they had not got a speeder they could trust. We had trouble, too, with the Indian Bureau over the whole thing, so the affair was called off. As far as we know now, Blazing Star is the racer of the Plains, with Red Rover making a good second. He"s in his prime yet; he could still walk a stringer on a black night, and while you are here at the Fort he"s yours as much as you want to use him."
Jim"s cup was filled to overflowing.
Their midday meal over, a ride was in order; first around the Fort among the men--Captain Wayne, Osier Mike, Scout Al Rennie--then out over the sagebrush flat. "Here"s the old battle ground of the horses; here"s where you chased the coyote, and here"s where Blazing Star took you over the single stringer bridge on that black night." It was less than a year he had been away, and yet Jim felt like one who was coming back to the scenes of his boyhood, long gone by. His real boyhood in far-away Links was of another world. Fightin" Bill Kenna, Whiskey Mason, the Rev.
Obadiah Champ, the stable and the sawmills, his mother--they were dreams; even Chicago was less real than this; and he rode like a schoolboy and yelled whenever a jack rabbit jumped ahead of his horse and jerked its white tail in quick zigzags, exactly as its kind had done in the days when he lived in the saddle.
After dinner, by the log fire in the Colonel"s dining room, Mrs. Waller raised the question of their plans. "Now, children" (she loved to be maternal), "what do you want to do to-morrow?"
There was a time when Belle would have spoken first, but there had been a subtle, yet very real, change in their relationship. Jim was a child three years before, dependent almost entirely on her; now she was less his leader than she had been. She waited.
Gazing at the fire, his long legs straight out and crossed at the ankles, his hands clasped behind his head, he lounged luxuriously in a great arm chair. Without turning his gaze from the burning logs he began:
"If I could do exactly what I wished----"
"Which you may," interjected Mrs. Waller.
"I"d saddle Blazing Star and Red Rover at seven o"clock in the morning and ride with Belle and not come back till noon."
"Ha, ha!" laughed Mrs. Waller and the Colonel. "You children! You two little, little ones! Well, we must remember that Belle is still a bride and will be for another month, so we"ll bid you G.o.dspeed on the new wedding trip and have your breakfast ready at half past six."
Early hours are the rule in a fort at the front, so the young folk were not alone at breakfast. And when they rode away on their two splendid horses, many eyes followed with delight the n.o.ble beauty of the pair--so fitly mounted, so gladly young and strong.
"Now, where, Jim?" said Belle, as they left the gate and thundered over the bridge at a mettlesome lope. And as she asked, she remembered that that was the very question he used always to put to her.
"Belle" (he reined in Blazing Star), "I have been waiting till it seemed just right--waiting for the very time, so we could stand again at our shrine. Sometimes I think I know my way and the trail I ought to seek, and sometimes I am filled with doubt; but I know I shall have the clear vision if we stand again as we used to stand, above our world, beside the Spirit Rock, on the high peak of our mountain."
And then, in the soft sign language of the rein let loose, the ribs knee-nudged, they bade their horses go. Side by side they rode and swung like newly mated honkers in the spring--like two centaurs, feeling in themselves the power, the blood rush of their every bound. In less than half an hour they pa.s.sed the little town and were at the foot of Cedar Mountain. The horses would have gone up at speed, but the riders held them in, and the winding trail was slowly followed up.
The mountain jays flew round the pines before them as they climbed; an eagle swung in circles, watching keenly; while, close at hand, the squirrels dropped their cones to spring behind the trunks and chatter challenge.
At the half-way ledge they halted for a breathing. Belle looked keenly, gently into Jim"s eyes. She was not sure what she saw. She wondered what his thoughts were. The brightness of the morning, the joy of riding and being, the fullness of freedom--these were in glowing reflex on his face, but she had seen these before; yet never before had she seen his face so tense and radiant. Only once, perhaps, that time when he came home walking in the storm.