Marion was not alone in her misery; but knowledge of this, had it by any chance come to her, would not have eased her heart, though it might indeed have hardened it a little against more suffering to come.

Toward bedtime of the eighth day after that encounter at the glade of the columbines, Philip Haig sat stiffly silent in his armchair, staring into the fire. His brow was dark with discontent, his cheeks had paled with the slow ebbing of the tide of passion that had swept over him. It had begun to rise, though he was not then aware of it, or barely aware of it, the day Marion had halted him in the road below his ranch house; it had reached its flood as he drove away from her and left the bouquet of columbines in her limp hands.

Who was this girl? And why had she come to torture him? To him she now appeared as the incarnation of his tragedy. In her the Past, from which he had fled to the far corners of the earth, hiding his trail in seas and deserts and in stagnant backwaters of humanity, had tracked him down at last. And all the grief and bitterness and hatred that he had beaten down, or thought he had beaten down, had returned to rend and tear him.

Two beings he had loved, and to them he had given, to each in a different way, all his heart and soul and mind: his father and––that other. She had come to him at his most susceptible age, when, devoted only to art, he knew nothing of the world––a green boy, the wise ones had called him. She had come to him with all the surprise and wonder of a revelation, a coronation, a fulfillment, a golden epiphany. He had attributed to her such spiritual perfections as should have gone with her beauty and her grace; worshipped her for all that she was not and all that he was himself. And she had deceived him, exploited him, plundered him,––and laughed at him when by chance, one tragic, intolerable night, he found her out. And the next morning, as if his cup were not already full, he had received a cablegram, in his attic studio in Paris, telling him that his father had killed himself in a moment of despair over financial difficulties. So he had killed his father with his excessive demands for money to squander on ’Tonite. To be sure, he did not know––had had no hint from home––had never guessed that his father was in trouble. Nevertheless he had killed him––rather, she had killed him. What a fool he had been! Never such another fool since God placed man and woman together in one world. Cursing himself and her, and in her cursing all her sex, he fled––he knew not where. So stunned and dazed he was that he never really came to himself, found himself, until one day he awoke in Hong Kong.

That was the beginning of the new life, if such it might be called. He became a wanderer, an adventurer, seeking always new faces, new places, new experiences, 135 trying always to forget, hoping always for a blessed knock on the head in some mad undertaking, for a thin knife in the back in some wild adventure. But in all his wanderings the one kind of adventure that he refused, the one excitement that he steadfastly shunned, was the one that, because of his very aloofness, and of something that women ever saw in his eyes, was offered to him the most freely, in every land beneath the sun.

Slim Jim entered, bringing whisky and hot water. Haig turned his head to look at him. Jim never changed, whatever his environment; he was always the Orient, the inscrutable East. And now, slipping in so stealthily, he seemed to bring with him an atmosphere, an odor, a call, and Haig, still looking at Jim, but scarcely seeing him, began to murmur lines that intoxicated him:

He stopped and sat suddenly erect.

“Jim!” he cried. “Do you remember the night we took old Kwang’s girl away from the river rats in Tien-Tsin?”

“Vellee well,” answered the Chinaman.

His face was expressionless; he concealed the joy that this mood of his master aroused in his thin breast. Jim did not like the Park, and only the recollection of one 136 day when he had stood tied to a capstan on a pirate junk, with a dozen fiends around him trying to make him tell something he did not know, and Haig had suddenly descended upon them like the foreign devil he was,––well, Jim took his gods where he found them, and from that day Haig had never been able to rid himself of this idolater.

“Tien-Tsin! Tien-Tsin!” Haig repeated, lingering covetously on the words. “But that was a fight, eh!”

“No likee!” replied Jim.

“No likee!” cried Haig. “Why, you hypocritical young ruffian, you! That was one of the happiest nights of your life. You’re always trying to make people think you’re asleep, or timid. I can see, right now, that long knife of yours slip under my arm, and catch the big fellow in the stomach. He just coughed once, and crumpled up at my feet. In the nick of time, too, Jim, and I let the next one have it. The rest of them took to their heels, and you with your long pigsticker after them. No likee! Jim, you’re a moon-faced old liar, and a disgrace to your ten thousand and seven ancestors.”

Jim’s smile was perfectly noncommittal. He was too wily to appear eager. Besides, he did not really like fighting, which made all the more trouble for somebody when he had to fight. But he was heartily sick of this cold and uneventful life in the Park. Better a thousand times the foolish adventures, the unnecessary battles, the restless wanderings of other days!

“That was a night!” said Haig, flinging himself back in his chair to gaze dreamily into the flames, while Jim, like a blue ghost, stole noiselessly away. And there, 137 in the glow of the dying fire, bright and alluring visions successively took shape: A red-and-yellow temple on a hill, to which a thousand steps led up from a lake the color of a blue heron’s breast; a junk with sails of purple creeping out of a morning mist as yellow as saffron; an island with a still lagoon in its center, and coconut palms alive with screaming parrots of every gorgeous hue; a sandy beach where jabbering natives dragged the flotsam of a wrecked steamer out of the breakers; a village on a high plateau, where a drum throbbed incessantly, and naked Indian children peered out from behind the huts; a skirmish line in khaki crawling up to the brow of a shell-swept hill; a dog-team yelping under the long lash of a half-breed Aleut, on a frozen river that sparkled in the sun; a sweating jungle where two bright spots glowed balefully in the gloom.

“God!” groaned Haig, as he sat erect at last, and reached for the glass, now cold. He tasted it, and set it back with a wry face.

“Damn Thursby!” he muttered. “Does he think I’m going to stay here forever, like a bear in a pit?”

He woke the next morning in an ugly humor, having slept little, and then only to dream such dreams as fed his discontent. He berated Jim because the biscuits were cold (which was not Jim’s fault), and because the coffee was hot (which was according to his orders). Trivial annoyances, most of them of his own making or imagining, multiplied on all sides, fomenting his irritability until, by the time he strode out of the cottage, his temper was at white heat. What might have happened to the patient, devoted men about the 138 stable and corrals is not difficult of conjecture, but they were saved by Sunnysides. Almost the first object that caught Haig’s eye was the yellow outlaw gleaming in the morning sunlight.

“Ah!” he exclaimed.

His inner turmoil of these last few days had banished all thought of the stallion of the San Luis. But now, his eyes gleamed as he quickened his steps toward the stable.

Farrish and Pete were at work among the stalls; Bill stood guard over Sunnysides; and the fourth man, Curly, was mending a saddle in the harness-room.

“Farrish!” Haig called out, striding into the stable. “We’ll tackle the yellow fellow this morning.”

Farrish and Pete turned, and looked at him curiously.

“All right!” answered Farrish; and then added doubtfully: “Now?”

“Yes. At once.”

Farrish, in a manner that showed a certain reluctance, put up the currycomb with which he had been grooming the sorrels, and started toward the rear door. But Pete stood still.

“You too, Pete!” said Haig, impatiently.

“I think you better not––to-day,” answered the Indian, in his slow way.

“Why?” snapped Haig.

Pete had seen the expression on Haig’s face, and did not like it. But he hesitated to utter what was in his mind.

“Why?” repeated Haig.

“I think you better wait,” was all that Pete could say.

“Hell!” cried Haig. “Get your lariat! And be quick about it!”

He had read Pete’s thought; his ill-humor had evidently shown itself in his face; but the caution only whetted his purpose. Throwing off his coat as he went, he passed through the rear door of the barn, and climbed into the outlaw’s corral, followed by Farrish, Curly, and Pete.

Sunnysides received them with suspicion. His head was high, his nostrils were dilated, his tail swished slowly, like a tiger’s. One forefoot was raised a little, resting on the toe, and the muscles of his shoulders quivered under the glossy hide. He had fully recovered from the effects of his rough treatment on the road, and his skin shone with a satin-like luster in the morning sun.

There was a moment’s pause, while Haig and the others looked at the horse, and he at them.

“Now then, Farrish! Pete!” commanded Haig.

And the battle began. Farrish and Pete turn by turn flung their lariats at the horse’s head and feet, but time after time he dodged, and ducked, and capered away from the whirling noose, or wriggled out of the coil as it tightened around him.

“He’s greased lightning!” ejaculated Bill, from his perch on the fence.

“He’s hell, that’s what he is!” retorted Curly, from a corner of the corral.

Farrish and Pete went silently on with their work. They knew that eventually, dance and squirm as he might, the horse would be caught in one or the other of the relentless loops. And so it proved. While Sunnysides 140 was side-stepping a throw by Farrish, Pete’s rope slipped snakily over his head, and tightened around the arched neck. With an artful lunge toward the Indian, and a lowering of his head, the horse struggled to throw off the coil. But it held.

Then followed a mad performance. The horse was over all the corral at once, it seemed: rearing, plunging, leaping, tossing his head, crashing into the fence with such fury that it barely stood up under his onslaughts. Bill was knocked off the fence backward on to his head; Curly, crowded into his corner, barely avoided a vicious kick; and Haig’s temper was not improved by the narrow escape he had from being crushed against a post.

“Bill!” he yelled. “Get a rope!”

The man ran into the barn, returned with a lariat, and joined the fray. Plainly chagrined, though unhurt by his fall, Bill took long chances to even up the score; and under the very hoofs of the infuriated animal, he made a throw that brought Sunnysides sprawling on the ground, his forefeet caught in Bill’s noose. It was the work of a few seconds then for Farrish to secure the hind feet also; and the horse lay prostrate, panting and half-choked, but defiant still.

Giving him no time to recover, and no more breath than he actually required, Haig and Curly forced the bit of a bridle into the outlaw’s foaming mouth. Then the noose on his hind feet was cautiously removed, one forefoot was freed, and the horse was allowed to rise. The next proceeding appeared to be resented by Sunnysides even more than what he had already been subjected to. While Farrish and Pete held his head, Haig approached him cautiously with a saddle, and dropped it 141 on his back. There was a lightning-like motion, and the saddle was tossed a dozen feet away, while the two men at the horse’s head were jerked almost off their feet. Again and again the saddle was laid on his back, to remain there barely an instant. But at the fifth attempt, to the astonishment of all, Sunnysides stood still, as if, being an equine Napoleon, he had changed his plan of battle in the face of the enemy. Without further resistance, he permitted the saddle to be adjusted and cinched, permitted the men to lead him out of the corral into the larger one adjoining it, and permitted Haig to mount him and take the bridle reins in his hand.

“I’ll be damned!” said Curly. “You’d think––”

“Shut up!” cried Farrish. “That’s a bluff.”

“Now then!” ordered Haig, pointing to the rope that still held one forefoot.

The rope was removed.

“The other!”

Pete and Farrish slipped off the lariat that remained noosed around the outlaw’s neck, and stepped back.

For some seconds there was no sound, no motion, no sign of any design on the part of Sunnysides. Then, with the swiftness and surprise of a flash of powder in the dark, a shocking thing occurred. Without a preliminary movement, either of lunging or bucking or leaping to one side, or any of the expected tactics, Sunnysides, with incredible suddenness, reared straight up into the air, threw himself over, and fell on his back, pinning Haig to the ground beneath him.

Before any of the men could move, the horse rolled over sprawling, scrambled to his feet, and charged at 142 the fence. There was a crash and the sound of splintering wood. The top plank fell, broken in two jagged pieces, and the horse’s forefeet were over the second plank. But before he could leap again, Curley had caught the bridle rein, and swung the outlaw’s head around, holding him there until Bill had leaned over the broken fence and roped the forelegs once more. After a moment of furious struggle, Sunnysides appeared to realize that it was useless; and thus the two men held him, with his forefeet still hanging outside the fence, while they turned their eyes toward Haig.

Farrish and the Indian knelt at his side. He lay quite still, unconscious, and for a moment they thought him dead. Pete put his head down on Haig’s breast, and listened. Then he rose to his feet.

“Whisky!” he muttered, and ran toward the stable.

In two minutes he was back, bearing a flask, which he uncorked as he ran. Forcing the mouth of it between Haig’s lips, he let the scorching liquor trickle down the throat until the flask was half emptied. Then he poured some of the whisky in the palm of his hand, and rubbed it on Haig’s face and bared breast and wrists, while Farrish, in his turn, ran to the stable and brought a lap robe, which he folded and placed under Haig’s head.

They waited helplessly, without speech. At the fence, Bill and Curley clung to their ropes. Sunnysides, his forefeet still projecting over the plank, and the saddle hanging lopsided from his back, had his head drawn back so far that he could see the group in the middle of the corral. His eyes were bloodshot, foam dripped from his mouth, the breath came whistling through his half-shut windpipe.

But in the cottonwoods the birds sang undisturbed, and the pines far up the hill droned their old tune unchanged. From the ranch house came the rattle of tin pans, and the voice of the cook singing a song of the round-up.

After a long time, Haig stirred. A moan came with the first deep breath; his eyes opened, staring up at the two faces above him; his lips moved, but at first no sound came from them. Pete leaned closer, and listened.

“Did––he––get––away?” came in a whisper.

“No,” answered Pete. “He caught.”

A smile flickered on Haig’s lips, and went out; and at the same time a tiny trickle of blood oozed out, and ran down through the dust on the white cheek. Pete and Farrish looked at each other; and when they turned to Haig again, his eyes were closed, and the pallor of his face had deepened to a bluish, ashen hue.

Pete bent quickly to put his ear again to Haig’s breast.