Starlit and moonlight leagues, the slow, fresh dawn; in the cool of the morning, Bransford came to the crest of the ground-swell known as Frenchman’s Ridge, and saw low-lying Arcadia dim against the north, a toy town huddling close to the shelter of Rainbow Range; he splashed through the shallow waters of Alamo, failing to a trickle before it sank in the desert sands; and so came at last to the moat of Arcadia. With what joyous and eager-choking heart-beat you may well guess: not the needlessness of those swift pulses or of that joy. For Ellinor was not there. With Mrs. Hoffman, she had gone to visit the Sutherlands at Rainbow’s End. And Jeff could not go on. Arcadia rose to greet him in impromptu Roman holiday.

Poor Bransford has never known clearly what chanced on that awful day. There is a jumbled, whirling memory of endless kaleidoscopic troops of joyful Arcadians: Billy White, Monte, Jimmy, Clarke, the grim-smiling sheriff, the judge. It was dimly borne upon him by one or both of the two last, that there were yet certain formalities to be observed in the matter of his escape from custody of the Law and of the horse he had borrowed from the court house square. Indeed, it seemed to Jeff, in a hazy afterthought, that perhaps the sheriff had arrested him again. If so, it had slipped Jeff’s mind, swallowed up in a gruesome horror of congratulations, hand-shakings, back-slappings, badinage and questions; heaped on a hero heartsick, dazed and dumb. Pleading weariness, he tore himself away at last, almost by violence, and flung himself down in a darkened bedroom of the Arcadian Atalanta.

One thing was clear. Headlight was there, Aforesaid Smith, Madison: but his nearest friends, Pringle, Beebe and Ballinger, though they had hasted back to Arcadia to fight Jeff’s battles, were ostentatiously absent from his hollow and hateful triumph: Johnny Dines had pointedly refused to share his night ride from Helm’s: and Jeff knew why, sadly enough. The gods take pay for the goods they give: and now that goodly fellowship was broken. The thought clung fast: it haunted his tossing and troubled slumbers, where Ellinor came through a sunset glow, swift-footed to meet him: where his friends rode slow and silent into the glimmering dusk, smaller and smaller, black against the sky.

The Sutherland place made an outer corner of Rainbow’s End, bowered about by a double row of close and interlaced cottonwoods on two sides, by vigorous orchards on the other two.

The house had once been a one-storied adobe, heroically proportioned, thick-walled, cool against summer, warm in what went by the name of winter. The old-time princely hospitality was unchanged, but Sutherland had bought lots in Arcadia of early days; and now, the old gray walls of the house were smooth with creamy stucco, wrought of gypsum from the White Sands; the windows were widened and there was a superimposed story, overhanging, wide and low. The gables were double-windowed, shingled and stained nut-brown, the gently sloping roof shingled, dormered and soft green: the overflow projecting to broad verandas on either side, very like an umbrella: a bungalow with two birthdays—1866 : 1896.

Miss Ellinor Hoffman had deserted veranda, rocking-chair and hammock. With a sewing basket beside her, she sat on a pine bench under a cottonwood of 1867, ostensibly basting together a kimono tinted like a dripping sea shell, and faced with peach-blossom.

The work went slowly. Her seat was at the desert corner of the homestead which was itself the desert outpost of a desert town: and her blood stirred to these splendid horizons. The mysterious desert scoffed and questioned, drew her with promise of strange joys and strange griefs. The iron-hard mountains beckoned and challenged from afar, wove her their spells of wavering lights and shadows; the misty warp and woof of them shifting to swift fantastic hues of trembling rose and blue and violet, half-veiling, half-revealing, steeps unguessed and dreamed-of sheltered valleys—and all the myriad-voice of moaning waste and world-rimming hill cried “Come!”

Faint, fitful undertone of drowsy chords, far pealing of elfin bells; that was pulsing of busy acequias, tinkling of mimic waterfalls. The clean breath of the desert crooned by, bearing a grateful fragrance of apple-blossoms near; it rippled the deepest green of alfalfa to undulating sheen of purple and flashing gold.

The broad fields were dwarfed to play-garden prettiness by the vastness of overwhelming desert, to right, to left, before; whose nearer blotches of black and gray and brown faded, far off, to a nameless shimmer, its silent leagues dwindling to immeasurable blur, merging indistinguishable in the burning sunset.

“East by up,” overguarding the oasis, the colossal bulk of Rainbow walled out the world with grim-tiered cliffs, cleft only by the deep-gashed gates of Rainbow Pass, where the swift river broke through to the rich fields of Rainbow’s End, bringing fulfilment of the fabled pot of gold—or, unused, to shrink and fail and die in the thirsty sand.

Below, the whilom channel wandered forlorn—Rainbow no longer, but Lost River—to a disconsolate delta, waterless save as infrequent floods found turbulent way to the Sink, when wild horse and antelope revisited their old haunts for the tender green luxury of these brief, belated springs.

Incidentally, Miss Hoffman’s outpost commanded a good view of Arcadia road, winding white through the black tar-brush. Had she looked, she might have seen a slow horseman, tiny on the bare plain below the tar-brush, larger as he climbed the gentle slope along that white-winding road.

But she bent industrious to her work, smiling to herself, half-singing, half-humming a foolish and lilty little tune:

And here Miss Hoffman did an unaccountable thing. Wise Penelope unraveled by night the work she wove by day. Like her in this, Miss Ellinor Hoffman now placidly snipped and ripped the basting threads, unraveled them patiently, and set to work afresh.

Miss Hoffman was all in white, with a white middy blouse trimmed in scarlet, a scarlet ribbon in her dark hair: a fine-linked gold chain showed at her neck. A very pretty picture she made, cool and fresh against the deep shade and the green—but of course she did not know it. She held the shaping kimono at arm’s length, admiring the delicate color, and fell to work again.

So intent and preoccupied was she, that she did not hear the approaching horse.

“Good evening!”

“Oh!” Miss Hoffman jumped, dropping the long-suffering kimono. A horseman, with bared head, had reined up in the shaded road alongside. “How silly of me not to hear you coming! If you’re looking for Mr. Sutherland, he’s not here—Mr. David Sutherland, that is. But Mr. Henry Sutherland is here—or was awhile ago—maybe half an hour since. He was trying to get up a set of tennis. Perhaps they’re playing—over there on the other side of the house. And yet, if they were there, we’d hear them laughing—don’t you think?”

Mr. Bransford—for it was Mr. Bransford, and he was all dressed in clothes—waited with extreme patience for the conclusion of these feverish and hurried remarks.

“But I’m not looking for Sutherland. I’m looking for you!”

“Oh!” said Ellinor again. Then, after a long and deliberate survey, the light of recognition dawned slowly in her eyes. “Oh, I do know you, don’t I? To be sure I do! You’re Mr.——the gentleman I met on Rainbow Mountain, near Mayhill,—Mr.—ah yes—Bransford!”

“Why, so I am!” said Jeff, leaning on the saddle-horn. One half of Mr. Bransford wondered if he had not been making a fool of himself and taking a great deal for granted: the other half, though considerably alarmed, was not at all deceived.

Miss Ellinor did not actually put her finger in the corner of her mouth—she merely looked as if she had. “Ah!—Won’t you ... get down?” she said helplessly. “What a beautiful horse!”

“Why, yes—thank you—I believe I will.”

He left the beautiful horse to stand with dangling reins, and came over to the bench, silent and rather grim.

“Won’t you sit down?” said Ellinor politely. “Fine day, isn’t it?”

“It’s a wonderful day—a marvelous day—a stupendous day!” said this exasperated young man. “No, I guess it’s not worth while to sit down. I just wanted to find out where you lived. I asked you once before, you know, and you didn’t tell me.”

“Didn’t I? Oh, do sit down! You look so grumpy—tired, I mean.” Rather grudgingly, she swept the sewing basket from the bench to the grass.

Jeff’s eyes followed the action. He saw—if you call it seeing—the snipped threads on the grass, the yet unpicked bastings, white against the peach-pink facing; but he was a mere man, hardly-circumstanced, and these eloquent tidings were wasted upon his clumsy intellect: as had been the surprising good fortune of finding Miss Ellinor exactly where she was.

Nerving himself with memory of the Quaker Lady at the masquerade—if, indeed, that had ever really happened—Jeff took the offered seat.

The young lady matched two edges together, smoothed them, eyed the result critically, and plied a nimble needle. Then she turned clear and guileless eyes on her glooming seatmate.

“You look older, somehow, than I thought you were, now that I remember,” she observed, biting the thread. “You’ve been away, haven’t you?”

“Thought you were going away, yourself, so wild and fierce?” said Jeff, evading.—Been away, indeed!

Ellinor threaded her needle.

“Mamma was talking of going for a while,” she said tranquilly. “But I’m rather glad we didn’t. We’re having a splendid time here—and Mr. White’s going to take us to the White Sands next week. He’ll be down to-morrow—at least I think so. He’s fine! He took us to Mescalero early in the spring. And the young people here at Rainbow’s End are simply delightful. You must meet some of them. Listen! There they are now—I hear them. They are playing tennis. Come on up and I’ll introduce you. I can finish this thing any time.” She tossed the poor kimono into the basket.

“No,” said this unhappy young man, rising. “I believe I’ll go on back. Good-by, Miss Ell—Miss Hoffman. I wish you much happiness!”

“Why—surely you’re not going now? There are some nice girls here—they have heard so much of you, but they say they’ve never met you. Don’t you want——”

Jeff groaned, fumbling blindly at the bridle. “No, I wish I’d never seen a girl!”

“Why-y! That’s not very polite, is it?——Are—are you—mad to me?” said Ellinor in a meek little voice.

“Mad? No,” said Jeff bitterly. “I’m just coming to my senses. I’ve been dreaming. Now I’ve woke up!”

“Angry, I mean, of course. I just say it that way—‘are you mad to me’—sometimes—to be—to be—nice, Mr. Bransford!”

“You needn’t bother! Good-by!”

“But I’ll see you again——”

“Never!”

“——when you’re not so—cross?”

Jeff reached for his stirrup.

“Oh, well! If you’re going to be huffy! Never it is, then, by all means! No—wait! I must give you back your present.”

“I have never given you a present. Some other man, doubtless. You should keep a list!” said Jeff, with bitter and cutting scorn.

The girl turned half away from him and hid her face with trembling hands; her shoulders shook with emotion.

“Look the other way, sir! Turn your head! You shall have your present back and then if you’re so anxious to go—Go!”

“Miss Hoffman, I never gave you a present in my life,” Jeff protested.

“You did!” sobbed Ellinor. She turned upon him, stamping her foot. “You said, when you gave it to me, that you hoped it would bring me good luck. And you’ve forgotten! You’d better keep a list! Turn your head away, I tell you!” She sank down on the bench.

Confused, mazed, bewildered, Jeff obeyed her.

She sprang to her feet. She was laughing, blushing, glowing. In her hand was the little gold chain.

“Now, you may look. Hold out your hand, sir!”

Jeff’s mind was whirling; he held out his hand. She laid a little gold locket in his palm. It was warm, that little locket.

“I have never seen this locket before in my life!” gasped Jeff.

“Open it!”

He opened it. The little eohippus glared up at him.

“Ellinor!—Charley Gibson!”

“Tobe! Jeff!—Jamie!”

The little eohippus stared unwinking from the grass.

THE BEGINNING

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