  "It's been a great day—great." Orlando Guise leaned lazily on the neck of the broncho he was riding, peering between its ears, over the lonely prairie, to the sunset which was making beautiful the western sky. It was as though there was a golden fire behind vast hills of mauve and pink, purple and saffron; but the glow was so soft as to suggest a flame which did not burn; which only shed radiance, colour and an ethereal mist. All the width of land and life between was full of peace as far as eye could see. The plains were bountiful with golden harvest, and the activities of men were lost among the corn. Horses and cattle in the distance were as insects, and in the great concave sky stars still wan from the intolerant light of their master, the Sun, looked timidly out to see him burn his way down to the under-world. "Great—but it might have been greater!" added Orlando, gazing intently at the sunset. Yet, as he spoke, his eyes gazed at something infinitely farther away than the sunset-even to the goal of his desire. He was thinking that, great as the day had been, with all he had done and seen, it lacked a glimpse of the face he had not seen for a whole month. The voice, he had not heard it since it softly cried, "Oh, Orlando!" when the Chinaman crashed down the staircase with the tray of cherished porcelain, and had been maltreated by the owner of Tralee. How many times since then had those words rung in his ears! Louise had never called him by name save that once, and then it was the cry of a soul surprised, the wail of one who felt a heart-break coming on, the approach of merciless Fate. It was the companionship of trouble; it was the bird, pursued by a hawk, calling across the lonely valley to its mate. "Oh, Orlando!" He had waked in the morning with the words in his ears to make him face the day with hope and cheerfulness. It had sounded in his ears at night as he sat on the wide stoop watching the moon and listening to the night-birds, or vaguely heard his mother babbling things he did not hear. It is a memorable moment for a man when he hears for the first time his "little name," as the French call it, spoken by the woman he loves. It is as the sound of a bell in the distance, a familiar note with a new meaning, revealing new things of life in the panorama of the mind. By those two words Orlando knew what was in the mind of Louise. They were a prayer for protection and a cry for comradeship. When Louise first clasped hands with the Young Doctor on her arrival at Askatoon, the soft appeal of her fingers had made him understand that loneliness where she lived, and to bear which she sought help. But the "Oh, Orlando!" which was wrung from her, almost unknowingly, was the cry of one who, to loneliness, had added fear and tragedy. Yet behind the fear, tragedy and loneliness there was the revelation of a heart. A courtship is a long or a short ceremonial or convention, a make- believe, by which people pretend that they slowly come to know and love each other; but lovers know that each understands the other by one note or inflection of the voice, by one little act of tenderness. These, or one of these, tell the whole story, the everlasting truth by which men and women learn how good at its worst life is, or speak the lightning-lie by which the bones of a dead world are exposed to the disillusioned soul. This had been a great day, because, in it, physical being had joyously celebrated itself in a wild business of the hills; in air so fresh and sweet that it almost sparkled to the eye; in a sun that was hot, but did not punish; at a sport by which the earliest men in the earliest age of the world made life a rare sensation. The man who has not chased the wild pony in the hills with the lasso on his arm, riding, as they say in the West, "Hell for leather," down the steep hillside, over the rock and the rough land, balancing on his broncho with the dexterity of a bird or a baboon, has failed to find one of life's supreme pleasures. In the foothills, many miles away from Slow Down Ranch and Tralee, there lived a herd of wild ponies, and it had been the ambition of a dozen ranchmen and broncho-busters thereabouts to capture one or many. More than once Orlando had seen a little gray broncho, with legs like the wrists of a lady, with a tail like a comet, frisking among the rocks and the brushwood, or standing alert, moveless and alone upon some promontory, and he had made up his mind that if, and when, there came a day of broncho-busting, he would become a hunter of the little gray mare. When the news came that the ranchmen for miles around were preparing for the drive of the hills, he determined to take part in it, against the commands of the Young Doctor, who said that he would run risk in doing so, for, though his wound was healed, he should still avoid strain and fatigue. There is no fatigue like that of broncho-busting. It is not galloping on the turf; it is being shaken and tossed in a saddle which the knees can never grip, on the back of something gone mad—for the maddest, wisest, carefullest thing on earth is a broncho, which itself was once a wild pony of the hills, and has been hunted down, thrown by the lasso, saddled, bridled and heart-broken all in an hour. When the broncho which was once a wild pony sets out on the chase after its own, there is nothing like it in the world; and so Orlando found. The veteran broncho-busters and ranchmen gave him no vociferous welcome as he appeared among them. Had it not been for the reputation which he already gained for courage, such as he had shown in the recent affair when he had driven off the men who were robbing Joel Mazarine, and also for an idea, steadily spreading, that he was masquerading, and that behind all, was a curly-headed, intrepid, out-door "white man," he would not have had what he called a great day. He could not throw the lasso as well as many another, but he could ride as well as any man that ever rode; and the broncho given him to ride that day was one sufficiently unreliable in character and sure-footed in travel to test him to the utmost. He had endured the test; he had even got his little gray mare, lassoing her like a veteran. He had helped to break her, and had sent her home from the improvised corral by one of his men. He had then parted from the others, who had dispersed to their various ranches with their prizes, and had ridden away on the broncho with which he had done such a good day's work. He had had the thrill of the hunter, riding like any wild Indian through the hills; he had had the throb of conquest in his veins; but while other men had shouted and happily blasphemed as they rode and captured, he had only giggled in excitement. As he looked now into the sunset, he was thinking of the little gray mare, with the legs like the wrists of a lady and the soft, bright, wild eye, which had fought and fought to resist subjection; but which, overpowered by the stronger will of man, had yielded like a lady, and had been ridden away to Slow Down Ranch, its bucking over for ever, captive and subdued. Orlando was picturing the little gray mare with Louise on its back. He had no right to think of Louise; yet there was never an hour in which he did not think of her. And Louise had no right to think of Orlando; yet, sleeping and waking, he was with her. Their homes were four miles apart, although, in one sense, they were a million miles apart by law and the convention which shuts a woman off from the love of men other than her husband; and yet in thought they were as near together always as though they had lain in the same cradle and grown up under the same rooftree. There was something about the gray pony, with the look of a captive in its eye, a wildness in subjection, like the girl at Tralee—the girl suddenly come to be woman, with her free soul born into understanding, yet who was as much a captive as though in prison, and guarded by a warder with a long beard, a carnivorous head, and boots greased with tallow. Since they had parted, the day after Li Choo had averted a domestic "scene" or tragedy, the search had gone on by the Mounted Police-"the Riders of the Plains"—for the men who had attempted to rob Mazarine, and to put Orlando out of action by a bullet. Suspicion had been directed against the McMahons, but Joel Mazarine had declared that it was not the McMahons who had attacked him, although they were masked. There was nothing strange in that, because, as the Inspector of the Riders said "That lot is too fly to do the job themselves; you bet they paid others to do it." Orlando had no wish to see the criminals caught or punished. Somehow, secretly, he looked upon the assault and his wound as a blessing. It had brought him near to his other self, his mate in the scheme of things. There was something almost pagan and primitive, something near to the very beginning of things in what these two felt for each other. It was as though they really belonged to a world of lovers that "lived before the god of Love was born." As Orlando sat watching the sunset, Louise's last words to him, "Oh, Orlando!" kept ringing in his ears. He thought of what had happened that very morning before he started for the hills. Soon after daybreak, Li Choo the Chinaman had come slip-slopping to him at Slow Down Ranch, and had said to him without any preliminaries, or any reason for his coming: "I bling Mlissy Mazaline what you like. She cly. What you want me do, I do. That Mazaline, gloddam! I gloddam Mazaline!" Orlando had no desire for intrigue, but Li Choo stood there waiting, and the devotion the Chinaman had shown made him tear a piece of paper from his pocket-book and write on it the one word "Always." He then folded the paper up until it was no bigger than a waistcoat button, and gave it to Li Choo. Also, he offered a five-dollar bill, which Li Choo refused to take. When he persisted, the Chinaman opened his loose blue jacket and showed a ten-dollar gold-piece on a string around his neck. "Mlissy Mazaline glive me that; it all plenty me," he said. "You want me come, I come. What you say do, I do. I say gloddam Mazaline!" That scene came to Orlando's mind now, and it agitated him as the incident itself had not stirred him when it happened. The broncho he was riding, as though the disturbance in Orlando's breast had passed into its own wilful body, suddenly became restless to be off, and as Orlando gave no encouragement, showed signs of bucking. At that moment Orlando saw in the distance, far north of both Tralee and Slow Down Ranch, a horse, ridden by a woman, galloping on the prairie. Presently as he watched the headlong gallop, the horse came down and the rider was thrown. He watched intently for a moment, and then he saw that the woman did not move, but lay still beside the fallen horse. He dug his heels into the broncho's side, and although it had done its day's work, it reached out upon the trail as though fresh from the corral. It bucked malevolently as it went, but it went. It was apparent that no one else had seen the accident. Orlando had been at a point of vantage on a lonely rise about eighty feet above the level of the prairie. Where horse and rider lay was a good two miles, but within seven minutes he had reached the spot. Flinging the bridle over the broncho's neck, he dismounted. As he did so, a cry broke from him. It was, as it were, an answer to the "Oh, Orlando!" which had been ringing in his ears. There, lying upon the ground beside the horse, with its broken leg caught in a gopher's hole, was Louise. Orlando's ruddy face turned white; something seemed to blind him for an instant, and then he was on his knees beside her, lifting up her head, feeling her heart. Presently the colour came back to his face with a rush. Her heart was beating; her pulse trembled under his fingers; she was only unconscious. But was there other injury? Was arm or leg broken? He called to her. Then with an exclamation of self-reproach, he laid her down again on the ground, ran to his broncho; caught the water- bottle from the saddle, lifted her head, and poured some water between the white lips. Presently her eyes opened, and she stared confusedly at Orlando, unable to realize what had happened. Then memory came back, and with it her very life-blood seemed to flow like water through the opening gates of a flume, with all the weight of the river behind. As her face flooded, she shivered with emotion. She was resting against his knee; her head was upon his arm; his face was very near; and there was that in his eyes which told a story that any woman, loving, would be thrilled at seeing. What restrained him from clasping her to his breast? What kept her arms by her side? The sun was gone, leaving only a glimmer behind; the swift twilight of the prairie was drawing down. Warm currents of air were passing like waves of a sea of breath over the wide plains; the stars were softly stinging the sky, and a bright moon was asserting itself in the growing dusk. Here they were who, without words or acts, had been to each other what Adam and Eve were in the Garden, without furtiveness, and guiltless of secret acts which poison Love. What restrained them was native, childlike camaraderie, intense, unusual and strange. The world would call them romancists, if they believed that this restraint could be. But there was something more. With all their frank childlikeness, there was also a shyness, a reserve, which would not have been, if either had ever eaten of the Fruit of Understanding until they met each other for the first time. "Are you—are you hurt?" he asked, his voice calmer than his spirit, his heart beating terribly hard. "I'm all right," she answered. "I fell soft. You see, I'm very light." "No bones broken? Are you sure?" he asked solicitously. She sat erect, drawing away from his arms and the support of his knee." Don't you see my legs and arms are all right! Help me up, please," she added, and stretched out a hand. Then, all at once, she saw the horse lying near. Again she shivered, and her hand was thrown out in a gesture of pain. "Oh, see-see!" she cried. "His leg is broken." She loved animals far more than human beings. There were good reasons for it. She had fared hard in life at the hands of men and women, because the only ones with whom, in her seclusion, she had had to do, had sacrificed her, all save one-the man beside her. Animal life had something in it akin to her own voiceless being. Her spirit had never been vocal until Orlando came. "Oh, how wicked I've been!" she cried. . . . "I couldn't bear it any longer. He wouldn't let me ride alone, go anywhere alone. I had to do it. I'd never ridden this horse before. My own mare wasn't fit. "See-see. It's my ankle that ought to be broken, not his." Orlando got to his feet. "Look the other way," he said. "Turn round, please. I'll put him out of pain. He bolted with you, and he'd have killed you, if he could; but that doesn't matter. He can't be saved. Turn round, don't look this way." She had been commanded to do things all her life, first by her mother, tyrant-hearted and selfish, and then by her husband, an overlord, with a savage soul; and she had obeyed always, because she always seemed to be in the grasp of something against which no pressure could avail. She was being commanded now, but there was that in the voice which, while commanding her, made her long to do as she was bid. It was an obedience filled with passion, resigning itself to the will of a force which was all gentleness, but oh, so compelling! She buried her face in her hands, and presently Orlando had opened a vein in the chestnut's neck, and its life-blood slowly ebbed away. As he turned towards her again, Orlando was startled by a sudden action on the part of his broncho. Whether it was the smell of blood which frightened it, or death itself, which has its own terrors to animal life, or whether it was as though a naked, shivering animal soul passed by, the broncho started, shied and presently broke into a trot; then, before Orlando could reach it, into a gallop, and was away down the prairie in the direction of Slow Down Ranch. "That's queer," he said, and he gave a nervous little laugh. "It's the worst of luck, and—and we're twelve miles from Tralee," he added slowly. "It's terrible!" Louise said, her fingers twisting together in an effort at self-control. "Don't you see how terrible it is?" she asked, looking into Orlando's troubled face but cheerful eyes. "You couldn't walk that distance, of course," he remarked. She endeavoured to get to her feet, but seemed to give way. He reached out his hands. She took them, and he helped her up. His face was anxious. "Are you sure you're not hurt?" he asked. "There's nothing broken," she answered. "No bones, anyway. But I don't feel—" She swayed. He put an arm around her. "I don't feel as if I could walk even a mile," she continued. "It's shaken me so." "Or else you're hurt badly inside," he said apprehensively. "No, no, I'm sure not," she answered. "It's only the shock." "Can you walk a little?" he asked. "This poor horse—let's get away from it. There's a good place over there—see!" He pointed to a little rise in the ground where were a few stunted trees and some long grass and shrubs. "Can you walk?" "Oh, yes, I'm all right," she answered nervously. "I don't need your arm. I can walk by myself." "I think not—well, not yet, anyhow," he answered soothingly. "Please do as you're told. I'm keeping my arm around you for the present." Always in the past she had obeyed, when commanded by her mother or husband, with an apathy which had smothered her youth. Now her youth seemed to drink eagerly a cup of obedience—as though it were the wine of life itself. She even longed to obey the voice whispering in her soul from ever so far away: "Close—close to him! Home is in his arms." With all her unconscious revelation of herself, however, there was that in her which was pure maidenliness. For, married as she was, she had never in any real sense been a wife, or truly understood what wifedom meant, or heard in her heart the call of the cradle. She had been the victim of possession, which had meant no more to her than to be, as it were, subjected daily to the milder tortures of the Inquisition. Yet she knew and could realize to the full that a power which had her in control, which possessed her by the rights of the law, prevented her—and would prevent her by whatever torture was possible—from friendship, alliance, or whatever it might be, with Orlando. She knew the law: one wife to one husband; and the wife to look neither to the right nor to the left, to the east nor to the west, to the north nor to the south, but to remain, and be constant in remaining, the helpmeet, the housewife, the sole property of her husband, no matter what that husband might be— vinous, vicious, vagrant, vengeful or any other things, good or bad. "Why don't you look glad when you see me come in?" Joel Mazarine remarked to her suddenly the day before. "If you'd had some husbands, you might have reason for bein' the statue and the dummy you are. Am I a drunkard? Am I a thief? Am I a nighthawk? Do I go off lookin' for other women? Don't I keep the commandments? Ain't you got a home here as good as any in the land? Didn't I take you out of poverty, and make you head of all this, with people to wait on you and all the rest of it?" That was the way he had talked, and somehow she had not seemed able to bear it; and she had said to him, in unexpected revolt, that her tongue was her own, and what was in her mind was her own, even if her body wasn't. Then, in a fury, he had caught his riding-whip from the wall to lash her with it, just when Li Choo the Chinaman appeared with a message which he delivered at the appropriate moment, though he had had it to deliver for some time. It was to the effect that the Clerk of the Court in the neighbouring town of Waterway wished to see him at once on urgent business. The message had been left by a rancher in passing. As Li Choo delivered the word, he managed to put himself between Mazarine and his wife in such a way as to enrage the old man, who struck the Chinaman twice savagely across the shoulders with the whip, and then stamped out of the house, invoking God to punish the rebellious and the heathen, while Li Choo, shrinking still from the cruel blows, clucked in his throat. There was something in the sound which belonged to the abyss dividing the Eastern from the Western races. That night Louise had refused to go to bed; but at last, fearing physical force, had obeyed, and had lain with her face to the wall, close up to it, letting the cold plaster cool her hot palms, for now she burned with a fire which was consuming the debris of an old life—the fire of knowledge, for which she had to pay so heavily. "You couldn't walk even a little of the way to Tralee, could you?" asked "No, I couldn't walk it, I'm so shaken. I'm terribly weak; I tremble all over," she added, as she sat down upon a stone. "But if I don't—if I don't go back—oh, you know!" "Yes, I know," answered Orlando. "He's the sort that would horsewhip a woman." "He started to do it yesterday," she answered, "but Li Choo came in time, and he horsewhipped Li Choo instead." "I wouldn't myself be horsewhipping Chinamen much," said Orlando. Suddenly she got to her feet. "I won't stand it. I won't stand it any longer," she cried. "That is why to-day, although he told me I mustn't ride, I took that new chestnut, and saddled it and rode—I didn't care where I rode. I didn't care how fast the horse went. I didn't care what happened to me. And here I am, and—But oh, I do care what happens to me!" she added, her voice breaking. "I'm—I'm frightened of him—I'm frightened, in spite of myself. . . . He doesn't treat me right," she added. "And I'm terribly frightened." She raised her eyes to Orlando's face in the growing dusk—there is no twilight in that prairie land—and there was that in it which made her feel that she must not give way any further. In Orlando's veins was Southern sap, mixed with Northern blood; in Orlando's eyes was a sudden look belonging to that which defies the law. "Don't—don't look like that," she exclaimed. "Oh, Orlando!" Once more he heard her speak his name, and it was like salve to a wound. He put a hand upon himself. "I'll go to Tralee," he said, "if you don't mind waiting here alone." "I can't. I will not wait alone. If you go, then I'll go too somehow…. It's twelve miles. You couldn't get there till midnight, and you couldn't get back here with a wagon for another couple of hours from that. It would be daylight then. I can't stay here alone. I'm frightened, and I'm cold." "Wait a minute," said Orlando. He ran back to the dead horse, unloosed the saddle from its back, detached from it a rain-coat strapped to the pommel, and brought it to her. "This will keep you warm," he said. "It isn't cold to-night. You only feel cold because you're upset and nervous." "I'm frightened," she answered; "frightened of everything. Listen! Don't you hear something stirring—there!" She peered fearfully into the dusk behind them. "Probably," he answered. "There are lots of prairie dogs and things about. The more you listen, the more you hear on the prairie, especially at night." There was silence for a moment, and then he added: "My broncho'll steer straight for Slow Down Ranch, and that'll bring my men. You can be quite sure there'll be a search-party out from Tralee, too, at the first streak of dawn. You can't make the journey, so the only thing to be done is to wait here. That coat will keep you from getting cold, and I'll cut a lot of long grass and make you a bed here. Also, the grass is warm, and I'll cover you with it and with pine branches." "I can't lie down," she answered. "No, I can't; I'm afraid. It's all so strange, and to-morrow, he—" "There's nothing to be frightened about," he interrupted. "Nothing at all, Louise." It was the first time he had ever addressed her by name, and it made her shiver with a new feeling. It seemed to tell a long, long story without words. "You must do what I ask you to do—whatever I ask you to do," he repeated. "Will you?" "Yes, anything you ask me I'll do," she answered, and then added quickly, "For you won't ask me to do anything I don't want to do. That's the difference. You understand, Orlando." A few minutes later he had found a suitable place to make a kind of bed of grass for her, and had prepared it, with his knife, cutting the branches of small shrubs and grass and the scanty branches of the pine. When it was finished, he came to her and said: "It's all ready. Come and lie down, and I'll cover you up." She got to her feet slowly, for she was in pain greater than she knew, so absorbed was her mind in this new life suddenly enveloping her, and then she said in a low voice: "No, not yet; I can't yet. I want to sit here. I've never felt the night like this before. It's wonderful, and I'm not nearly so cold now. I know I oughtn't to be cold at all, in the middle of summer like this." She paused, and seemed lost in contemplation of the sky. After a moment she added: "I never knew I could feel so far away from all the world as I do tonight. But the sky seems so near, and the moon and the stars so friendly." "You haven't slept out of doors as I have hundreds of times," he answered. "The night and I are brothers; the stars are my little cousins; and the moon"—he giggled in his boyish way—"is my maiden aunt. She's so prudish and so kind and friendly, as you say. She's like an aunt I had—Aunt Samantha. She was my father's sister. I used to love her to visit my mother. She always brought me things, and she gave them to me as if they were on silver dishes—like a ceremony. She was so prim, I used to call her Aunt Primrose. She made me feel as if I could do anything I liked and break any law I pleased. But all the time, like a saint in a stained-glass window, she always seemed to be saying, 'Yes, you'd like to, but you mustn't.' She was just like the moon. I'm well acquainted with the moon, and—" "Hush!" Louise interrupted. "Don't you hear something stirring—there, behind us?" He laughed. "Of course something's always 'stirring behind us' on the prairie, and things you can't hear at all in the day are almost loud at night. There are thousands of sounds that never get to your ears when the sun is busy, but when Aunt Primrose Moon is saying, 'Hush! Hush!' to the naughty children of this world, you can hear a whole new population at work, cracking away like mad. Say, ain't I letting myself go to- night?" he added, giggling again and sitting down beside her. "I'm going to give you just half an hour, and at the end of that half-hour you've got to go to sleep." "I can't—I can't," she said scarcely above a whisper. As though in response to an unspoken thought, he said casually: "I'm going to walk awhile when you've lain down, and then—" He pointed to a spot about twenty yards away. "Do you see the two big stones there? Well, when I've finished my walk and my talk with Aunty Primrose"—he laughed up at the moon—"I'm going to sit down there and snooze till daylight." He pointed again: "Right over there beside those two rocks. That's my bed. Do you see?" She did not reply at once, but a long sigh came from her lips. "You'll be cold," she said. "No, it's a hot night," he answered. "I'm too hot as it is." And he loosened his heavy red shirt at the throat. "If I've got to go to bed in half an hour," she said presently, "tell me more about your Aunt Samantha, and about yourself, and your home before you came out here, and what you did when you were a little boy—tell me everything about yourself." She was forgetting Tralee for the moment, and the man who raised his hand against her yesterday, and the life she had lived. Or was it only that she had grown young during these last two months, and the young can so easily forget! "You want to hear? You really want to hear?" he asked. "Say, it won't be a very interesting story. Better let me tell you about the broncho- busting today." "No, I want to hear about yourself." She looked intently at him for an instant, and then her eyes closed and the long lashes touched her cheek. There was something very wilful in her beauty, and her body too had delicate, melancholy lines strange in one so young. She was not conscious that, in her dreamy abstraction, she was leaning towards him. It was but an instant, though it seemed to him an interminable time, in which he fought the fierce desire to clasp her in his arms, and kiss the lips which, to his ears, said things more wonderful than he had ever dreamed of in his friendship with the night and the primrose moon. He knew, however, that if he did, she would not go back to Tralee to-morrow; that tomorrow she would defy the leviathan; and that tomorrow he would not have the courage to say the things he must say to the evil-hearted master of Tralee, who, he knew, would challenge them with ugly accusations. He must be able to look old Mazarine fearlessly in the face; he would not be the slave of opportunity. He was going to fight clean. She was here beside him in the warm loneliness of the northern world, and he was full-grown in body and brain, with all the human emotions alive in him; yet he would fight clean. Not for a half-hour, but for nearly an hour he told her what she wished to know, while she listened in a happy dream; and when at last she lay down, she refused his coverlet of dry grass, saying that she was quite warm. She declared that she did not even need the coat he had taken from the saddle of the dead horse, but he wrapped it around her, and, saying "Goodnight" almost brusquely, marched away in the light of the dying moon. The night wore on. At first Louise's ears were sensitive to every sound, and there were stirrings in the hillock by which she slept, but she comforted herself with the thought that they were the stirrings of lonely little waifs of nature like herself. Though she dared not let the thought take form, yet she feared, too, the sound of human footsteps. By and by, however, in the sweet quiet of the night and the somnolent light of the moon, sleep captured her. When at last Orlando's footsteps did crush the dry grass, the sound failed to reach her ears, for it was then not very far from daylight, and she had slept for several hours. Sleep had not touched Orlando's eyes when, sitting down by the stones which were to mark his resting-place, he waited for Louise to wake. |
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