"You an" me sized up that proposition same like."
"We"re a slick pair," grunted MacGonigal sarcastically.
"That"s as may be--I"ve heerd folk say wuss ner that "bout you," said Jake. "But what I want ter know is this: S"pose some other low-down cuss gits busy, and stirs his gray matter thinkin" hard on things he saw in the newspaper, what"s ter be done?"
MacGonigal brought his big red face very near Jake"s olive-skinned one.
"If he"s on the ranch, bounce him; if he"s in Bison, let me know," he growled.
Meanwhile, the man whose interests they were planning to safeguard had looked up in anger when a shadow darkened the open window; but he started to his feet in sheer amazement when he saw Dacre and heard his voice.
"You?" he cried. "How in G.o.d"s name did _you_ get here?"
"You were in trouble, Power, and I count it a poor friendship that shirks a few days" journey when a chum is in distress."
Their hands met, and Power"s white face showed a wave of color. He was deeply stirred. For the moment he was an ordinary man, and subject to ordinary emotions.
"I had better be outspoken," continued Dacre. "I got in touch with Mr.
MacGonigal, and he informed me of your mother"s death; so I have hurried across America to be with you. Being rather afraid you might stop me en route, I requested MacGonigal not to tell you I was coming."
"But I regard your action as a most kindly one."
"Yes, now that I am here. For all that, old man, you might have wired very emphatic instructions on the point to Omaha yesterday."
"My dear fellow, you find me in a house of mourning. Won"t you sit down?
You must be tired. Can I get you anything?"
"My bones are stiff for want of exercise--that is all. Now, if you want to be a perfect host, have my traps sent to my room.... Don"t say you haven"t a spare bedroom!... Good! I"ll just open a bag, and get some tea--of course, you can"t possibly produce any decent tea--and your cook will boil a kettle, and after we have refreshed on the beverage that cheers while it does not inebriate, you will take me for a walk around this delightful ranch of yours. You see, I don"t mean to let you mope here by yourself. That is the last thing the dear lady who has been taken from you would wish. You will regard me as a beastly nuisance, but that cannot be helped."
The ghost of a smile twinkled in Power"s eyes. He was quite alive to his friend"s object in rattling along in this fashion; but it was an undeniable relief that he should be compelled to follow the lead given so cheerfully.
"To show that you are welcome I"ll even drink your strong tea," he said.
"Nor am I alone here, as you seem to imagine. There are three ladies in the house--Mrs. Moore and her daughters, Minnie and Margaret. Hand over your bohea to Mrs. Moore--she"ll dispense it properly, and appreciate it, too, I have little doubt."
In such wise was the black dog care partly lifted off Power"s shoulders.
He had yet to learn that the human vessel cannot contain more than its due measure of sorrow. When it is filled to the brim no additional grief can find lodgment. Misfortune carried to excess has made cowards brave and given fools wisdom, and Derry Power was neither coward nor fool.
Mrs. Moore was naturally surprised when the visitor was introduced; but she hailed his presence with obvious relief. MacGonigal and Jake were invited to join the tea-party--and, at any other time, the cowboy"s struggles with a tiny cup and saucer of delicate china, a microscopic teaspoon, and a roll of thin bread and b.u.t.ter would have caused a good deal of merriment. Mac, thanks to his training in the store, juggled easily with these implements, and there was an air almost of light-heartedness about the company before it broke up at Power"s suggestion that he and Dacre might smoke while surveying some part of the ranch.
Dacre showed his knowledge of human nature by leading his friend on to talk of his mother. That way, he was sure, lay the waters of healing.
While deploring the unhappy circ.u.mstances which attended Mrs. Power"s death, which Dr. Stearn put down to failure of the heart"s action, he swept aside her son"s bitter self-condemnation.
"Death," he said, "is the one element in human affairs which may not be estimated in that general way. If your mother"s heart was affected, she was far more likely to die of some sudden excitement than because of a not very poignant anxiety as to your prolonged absence from home. I suppose, in a sense, she knew where you were?"
"Yes. I--I deceived her with sufficient skill," came the morbid retort.
"Then you must school yourself to dwell on those long years of pleasant companionship in the past rather than this final parting, which you attribute to a cause that exists only in your imagination. I think Tennyson"s philosophy is at fault in the line:
"Sorrow"s crown of sorrow is remembering happier things."
I hold that Cowper peered more closely into the fiber and essence of humanity when he wrote:
"The path of sorrow, and that path alone, Leads to the land where sorrow is unknown; No traveler ever reached that blest abode Who found not thorns and briars in his road."
You were utterly unnerved and wretched when the news of your mother"s illness reached you. You magnified your personal responsibility out of all reasonable proportion. I can see no proof of other influence than the fixed course and final outcome of a disease difficult to detect and incapable of cure."
They were nearing the Gulch, Power having chosen that direction because of the uninterrupted view of the surrounding country they would secure from the top of the rising ground.
"I wish I might accept your comforting theory," he said, more composedly. "Somehow, I feel that I am to blame, or, if that is a crude expression, that I was made the instrument of some devilish act of retribution. However, I do not profess myself able to regard such a problem in a critical light today. You won"t think me heartless if I inquire into the conditions which led up to the telegram you sent me in New York? I was too dazed that morning to understand clearly what had happened. Did you actually speak to Nancy herself over the telephone?"
"Yes."
"Well?"
"Are you really feeling up to the strain of hearing what took place?"
Power stopped suddenly, caught his friend"s arm, and pointed to a small wooden structure erected in a singular position on the western side of the canyon.
"You have not forgotten the story I told you that last night in Newport?" he cried.
"No. I remember every word of it."
"Well, that little shack up there stands on the ledge where I rediscovered the lode after being nearly crushed to death. I crawled to within a few yards of this very spot; so resolved was I that no one should rob me of the price I was paid for Nancy. I am the same man now that I was then, Dacre--and in a very similar mood. Strain! I have been strained to the limit. I have thought of taking my own life; not from lack of capacity to endure further ills, but from sheer disgust at the cra.s.sness of things. At least, then, let me inquire into their meaning.
What did she say to you?"
Despite his unwillingness to add to the heavy load Power had to bear, Dacre was not altogether sorry to get an unpleasing task over and done with. But he felt his way carefully; since he, too, was groping in the dark to a certain extent.
"Your telegram did not take me wholly by surprise," he said. "I knew that Nancy--you don"t mind if I use her name in that way, do you? Well, then, I had heard of her return. Mrs. Van Ralten rang me up to say that Mr. Willard and his daughter had arrived by the steamer in the early morning. I think I took such astounding news calmly enough; but I have a suspicion that the good lady herself was a trifle worried, and was only too glad to have the chance of announcing the fact of her friend"s reappearance. She added that Nancy was ill, having been overcome by the terrific heat in New York, and I chimed in with the proper sentiments; though I have seldom been more bewildered than at that moment. Soon afterward your message came, and I began dimly to grasp the position. I seized the pretext of Mrs. Van Ralten"s statement to call up Nancy"s residence, and, by some sort of fortune, whether good or bad I can"t determine, she herself answered. I concocted a suitable excuse; but she solved the difficulty at once by saying that, as your friend, I ought to know the facts. She had resolved to leave you, "to put an end to a mad dream" was a phrase she used, and asked me to tell you that she adhered resolutely to the decision she had announced in a letter the previous day. She added that she was sailing in a steamer from Boston with her father that night, and hoped I would spread the impression that she had been ill, and needed a sea voyage. I can a.s.sure you, old chap, I was completely flabbergasted. Admiring her as I do, I would never have believed that she would act in that extraordinary manner had I not received the story from her own lips, if one may so describe a conversation by telephone. I was so horribly afraid lest some outsider in the hotel might overhear me that I dared not question her. The talk was studiously formal on her part, and I was so thoroughly cut up that I could not attempt to convey my impressions in your telegram. Moreover, as a diligent student of Shakespeare, was I not warned that
"Though it be honest, it is never good To bring bad news."
Certainly, I was not quite in the position of Cleopatra"s messenger, since I could only confirm a disaster already known to you; but I literally shrank from the obvious inferences. Then came MacGonigal"s revelation of events here. I simply couldn"t rest. After a miserable twenty-four hours of vacillation, I started for New York, calling at your hotel to make sure you had gone west. One thing more. A Chicago newspaper gave a list of pa.s.sengers sailing from Boston in a Red Star liner. In it were the names of Nancy and her father."
For an appreciable time after Dacre had concluded neither man spoke.
Then Power said quietly:
"Thus endeth the second lesson."
His companion was not one who indulged in plat.i.tudes. Some men, kind-hearted and pitying, would have reminded him that he was still young, that life was rich in promise, that time would heal, or, at any rate, sear, the ugliest wounds. But Dacre said none of these things. He merely asked if Power meant to tell him what really happened in the Adirondacks. A good talker, he was also a good listener. Power would recover, he was convinced. He was not the first man, nor would he be the last, to clasp a phantom and find it air. Meanwhile, outspoken confidence should provide an efficient safety-valve for emotions contained at too high a pressure.
Power yielded to this friendly urging, but not instantly. Indeed, he astonished the Englishman by his next utterance.
"Nearly four years ago," he said, looking back at the ranch "in that room where you found me today, I was reading "The Autocrat" to Nancy one night, and a certain pa.s.sage caught our attention. It ran somewhat like this: "I would have a woman as true as death. At the first lie which works from the heart outward, she should be tenderly chloroformed into a better world." Both of us laughed then, and now I know why we laughed. We were ignorant. Holmes, genial cynic that he was, understood women; he wrote a vital thing when he described the sort of lie that comes from the heart. I put trust in two women, and one of them has betrayed it. If I live another fifty years, I shall never understand why Nancy left me--never, never! I would as soon have thought of suspecting an angel from heaven of disloyalty as Nancy."
"Has she proved disloyal?"
"What else? I tried to find comfort in the belief that her father compelled her to accompany him by threatening to kill her if she refused. But, in these days, that sort of melodrama does not endure beyond its hour. She could have escaped him fifty times during the last six days. She could have appealed to you for help. Mary Van Ralten would at least have shielded her from murder. Yet, what are the facts? In a letter to me she pleaded duty as an excuse. She must have had some similar plea in her mind when she spoke to you. And she has gone to Europe--to rejoin Marten!"
He broke off with a gesture of disdain. He was in revolt. The statue which had glowed into life under the breath of his love was hardening into polished ivory again.