Money is everything in Cairo, and Lord Frederick Chillingham of H. R. M.
Hussars was open in his admiration of the horsemanship of the newcomer as, a short half-hour afterward, Dougla.s.s, mounted on a superb barb, swept out into the square. How he obtained accouterments and that magnificent mount in so short a time is a mystery only known to the smiling factotums who bowed and sc.r.a.ped their enjoyment of one of the most princely _douceurs_ that had ever been lavished upon them.
"Cowboy, b"gad!" drawled the honorable Freddie knowingly to a fair-faced young English girl who was watching the rider with a degree of interest rather distasteful to the stalwart guardsman. "I wonder now where the beggar got that horse. Best looker I"ve seen in Egypt."
"Best lookers, you mean, Freddie," corrected the girl mischievously; "but how do you know he is a cowboy?"
"By the seat of him," tersely explained the blond giant. "Rides straight up, grips with his thighs, don"t know he"s got stirrups; and don"t need them, either. Those Yankees can ride no end!" he concluded grudgingly.
"This one seems to be in a rush!"
But once out on the tawny stretch that lay between him and his heart"s desire, Dougla.s.s checked the swallow-like flight of that wonderful blue-blood and paced more leisurely along in profound meditation. He was not at all sure of his reception. What was he going to say in pleading to his outraged queen? What G.o.d-given words would be vouchsafed him to offer in palliation? He groaned at thought of the hopelessness of it.
What had he deserved but her contemptuous scorn!
He licked his lips nervously and a cold sweat broke on his brow despite the stifling heat that beat up in shimmering waves against his face. He fumbled a moment in the bosom of his shirt, and prayed for the second time in many years:
"Oh! Mother, help me!"
Suddenly, to the trained far-seeing eyes sweeping that cheerless waste hungrily, appeared a faint speck of color on one of the sand dunes at the base of the Sphinx. With eyes fixed unwaveringly upon it he put the barb at full speed. What he would do, what he would say--all hesitation dropped away in his fierce desire to look into her eyes once more, to hear that sweet voice again, though it were only to send him hurtling down into the h.e.l.l of his deserts.
Grace Carter, sitting alone in the carriage, watched listlessly the rest of her party kodaking at a distance the immobile face of the Great Mystery. But she saw them as in a dream and ere long she was looking, with a heart as old and cold and dead as that of the grim Mistress of the Nile, as far and unseeingly into the west as the Sphinx stared into the east.
Before her fast-misting eyes blazed one line in Constance"s letter:
"For G.o.d"s sake, play with happiness no more!"
It would be easy to obey that prayer, she thought bitterly, for never more would happiness come anigh her. Afar in the desert a sand spout flared up, whirled along feverishly for a few minutes, and was gone. She watched it with a strange fascination and muttered brokenly:
"Just like his love, fierce, threatening, grand and evanescent. And yet I was to blame! Oh, why did I ever let him go?"
The tw.a.n.ging of some stringed instrument in one of the Bedouin black tents cl.u.s.tered about the base of the Sphinx woke a long-forgotten chord and she mechanically crooned the words of a song that once wailed a heart misery as great as hers:
""Could you come back to me, Dougla.s.s, Dougla.s.s, Back with the old-time smile that I knew?
I"d be so faithful and loving, Dougla.s.s!
Dougla.s.s, Dougla.s.s, tender and true!
"Could you come back with--""
Her voice broke and she buried her face in her hands, her form convulsed by a paroxysm of tears. Then to her numbed senses came vaguely another remembrance of the buried past, frantic hoof-beats. For a second she cowered as she had done on that awful day, then she turned with a sigh of relief to welcome, this time, the end of all things. Through her tear-blinded eyes she saw the blue stallion sweeping down upon her but she never flinched. G.o.d was going to be kind after all.
But even as the lean head ranged beside her, the foam splattering on her bosom as she involuntarily covered her eyes with her hands, from out of Chaos came a cry:
"Gracie, forgive--!"
Slowly she dropped her hands and stared incredulously. What was this wonder that had come to her in the moment of death? She tottered unsteadily, swaying to and fro like a wind-tossed leaf. As in a fog she saw him there with arms extended, waiting to carry her across the dark ford.
Then, by G.o.d"s mercy, her brain cleared and she knew.
At the Court of Europe"s greatest prince men strive with each other doing honor to the beautiful wife of the new American Amba.s.sador, Anselm Brevoort.
"As good as she is beautiful, G.o.d bless her!" was Frederick, Lord Chillingham"s enthusiastic eulogy one night when her name was mentioned at the United, and his comrades silently drank her health standing.
"As pure and as cold as the stars above, G.o.d bless her!" sighs the silver-haired Amba.s.sador, looking wistfully at her where she sits with her protege, little Eulalie Blount, in her lap, patiently explaining that the tail makes all the difference between O and Q.
"I love oo, Tonnie!" lisps the little tot kneeling by her little white bed. And the woman, clasping in her bosom a tiny satin bag containing a common yellow telegraph blank on which are written a few now undecipherable words, looks dry-eyed into the night and wonders.
In the marshal"s office at Gunnison, over their cigars and a big-bellied bottle, Red McVey and Ballard are looking reminiscently at a Mauser hanging on the wall.
"I reckon that were thu best jawb yuh evah done, Lew," says the cowboy with much conviction.
Ballard, dropping his eyes unaccountably, hesitates long over his selection of a fresh weed.
"What the h.e.l.l else was there to do?" he says gruffly. But the recording angel, looking kindly and indulgently at the honest face, smiles softly and forgets the pen in his hand.
For a long time the men smoke in a silence more eloquent than words.
Then Ballard shifts the threads in the loom.
"That"s a great kid that Ken"s got, I hear. Think I"ll take a pasear over there with you when you go back and look at his points."
"That kid!" says Red enthusiastically. "Say, Lew, hush! He"s thu biggest thing on thu range. Why, thu d.a.m.n leetle cuss actooly kin make fists already, an" he jes" nacherally pre-empts my ole hawg laig every time I goes there. Thu han"le is good to cut his teeths on, Ken says, an" he kin eat it cleah off if he wants. I m thinkin" o leavin my spah gun foh him to nibble on at odd times."
"An" Ken?"
There is a certain diffidence in the st.u.r.dy fellow"s voice. Red looking at him with a world of rea.s.surance in his laughing blue eyes, grins broadly.
"h.e.l.l!" he says succinctly. "Yuh go oveh theah and watch hes eyes follerin" of her. When a man gits through playin" thu goat he gin"rally feels some obligated to act sheep foh a spell, so"s to even up thu deal."
Over at the Circle D ranch a broad-shouldered man in flannel shirt and "fair leather" _chaparejos_ lies sprawled on the veranda beside a low-hung hammock in which is lying a brown-haired woman. Pressed to her lips is a spray of mountain heart"s-ease, and In her heart is the sweeter ease of mountains removed. The man is dusty and saddle-worn, but in his heart is a great Peace.
Tenderly he lays his lips on the hand shyly touching his bronzed cheek and the woman crimsons with pleasure. For a long time they lie in understanding silence, then the grave rich voice of the man says:
"Tell me, sweetheart, do you never long for the pleasant gayety, the diversions, the distractions of your old social world? Are you really happy and content here in this circ.u.mscribed little sphere?"
She slips quickly from the hammock to the floor beside him and draws his head up to her bosom.
"Do I ever long? Yes, sweetheart, I have wept with longing--for the hour of your daily return. I have sighed--for the coming of the dusk that would bring you home to baby and me! I have pined--for the music of the hoof-beats that would thrill me if they pa.s.sed over my grave."
From the little nursery comes the l.u.s.ty insistence of a child clamoring for his desires. Very gently she releases herself from his embrace. Then this Madonna of the Range goes proudly to the mothering of her first-born.
Old Abigail, hastening likewise to obey that imperious summons, smiles approvingly as the man, catching at the garment trailing above his face, lays his lips to its hem.
"I kinda reckon," she says softly to herself, "that Belshazzar has come back to stay!"