The Master-Knot of Human Fate Part 6

IX

I pity the man who can travel from Dan to Beersheba and cry, "'Tis all barren."

STERNE.

They traveled a due west course, crossing the two ranges, wending their way through dim defiles and along precipitous canons, until they saw the sea. Here its mood was summer-like. Even in the short time that had elapsed it had worn itself a broad, smooth beach, and wide tracts of land between the sand and the base of the mountains proved that the earth had been thrown up, or that the water had receded. They had not looked upon the ocean before for many months.

They picketed the burros on the rank, salt gra.s.s, and built their camp-fire early, and while Robin set the potatoes baking, and began her supper preparations, Adam went scouting along the coast. In less than half an hour he came back with a quant.i.ty of clams which he threw down before her as proudly as if they had been foreign battle-flags.

She gave a little feminine shriek of delight.

"Now I know why we brought that inconvenient iron pot," she said; "bring it here, please."

Adam brought it, and watched her slice up onions and potatoes and stir in the various ingredients.

"It is going to be the best chowder you ever tasted," she said, "even if we haven't any bacon. When you write the veracious tale of our adventures, Adam, don't put in how many things we ate."

"They might think it a voracious tale if I did," he answered, dropping some more b.u.t.ter into his mealy potato. "Do you remember how the Swiss Family were always worrying for fear they wouldn't have enough to eat?"

"Yes, and how they went out and killed an elephant for breakfast, and a herd of wild pigs for dinner, and had a buffalo apiece for supper.

And don't you remember how, when the boa constrictor killed one of their zebras, little Fritz asked pathetically if boas were good to eat?"

They laughed over their supper, and then having made sure that they were out of reach of the tide, and the fire would keep, and the rifle was close at Adam's elbow, they spread their blankets and said "good night." It had been an exciting day.

It was past midnight, and the moon was waning when Adam was wakened by La.s.sie's cold muzzle against his face. He sat up and called to Robin.

There was no answer, and her blankets lay tossed on the other side of the fire. He started up and listened. At first he heard only the sound of the sea; then there came mingled with it the clear notes of her glorious voice. Holding La.s.sie in check he went down to the beach.

Robin stood well out on the s.h.i.+mmering sand, the waves lapping softly almost at her feet, and he heard the plaintive music, and caught the words,--

"Oh, for the wings, for the wings of a dove, Far away, far away, would I fly, and be, and be at rest."

Her voice quivered when she came to the words, "In the wilderness build me a nest," but she sang on, and Adam recalled the words of hymn after hymn, anthem after anthem, for she sang nothing else. He heard the bitter cry of the De Profundis, Handel's triumphant "I know that my Redeemer liveth," and then she began, "He watching over Israel slumbers not nor sleeps."

His eyes filled, and he saw the tents of his regiment. She had written by every mail, and across her letters, at the top or bottom, she had put those five bars from "Elijah." Though he did not believe it, for he had not the early Hebrew ability to see Israel in his own race, and the to be spoiled Philistine in every Filipino, it had comforted him in that sickening campaign. Surely, surely if he, an American "non-com," had spared a Filipino now and then, He watching over Israel had not been less merciful.

Her voice died away; it was the first time she had sung that year, though she was a very perfectly trained musician. Indeed in the old days, Adam had first sought her acquaintance because of her music.

Adam returned to the camp; he knew instinctively that she preferred to keep this to herself. He was lying quite still when she came back, and controlled every muscle when she bent over him. She regarded him intently for a moment, then went to her blankets with a heavy sigh that Adam knew was for him. She had sung out her own sorrows.

Their vigils seemed to do them both good, for they shook off their melancholy tendencies, and before the end of the first week their tour was beginning to be thoroughly enjoyable. They did not find cocoanuts and bananas, but they did find plenty of strawberries, and long, p.r.i.c.kly vines that would be covered with raspberries, and wild grapes and choke-cherries and currants, which they planned to transplant, for though the Western coast was more beautiful, and in some respects more convenient than their hedged in valley, they preferred the valley.

Already it had come to mean home.

They traveled about fifty miles southward, to the end of the island, making desultory trips up into the mountains to see if anywhere, on land or sea, there was a friendly wreath of smoke, and every night their watch-fire glowed from the highest peak in their vicinity. The island narrowed to a single range, detached peaks rising here and there from the sea. As they rounded the southernmost point, Adam said, "We ought to name it; that remarkable Swiss family always named places."

Robin looked at the bare, stone walls rising sheer above the waves three hundred feet, and her lip curled.

"Let us call it the Cape of Good Hope," she said.

"In the name of wonder, why?" asked Adam, and she answered, "Because we are past it," and then would have given anything to have recalled the bitter words.

The Eastern coast was wilder and more picturesque, but the traveling was correspondingly slower. Something in the formation of the coast caused a terrific surf, and at many places there was scarcely any beach, and they found themselves compelled to climb along trails that made even the burros dizzy.

When they had been absent ten days, Robin said, "I begin to feel like a grandmother; no, I don't mean that I feel so old, but that I begin to long to see the chicken and cat-children, and the new calf, and--everything."

Adam laughed, "I have been thinking we ought to hurry; that place of ours is growing so entrancingly lovely in memory that last night I dreamt that I dwelt in marble halls!"

They were not to reach home without at least one adventure, however. A day or so later, as they toiled up a painfully steep ascent, La.s.sie sounded the note of alarm, and catching up the rifle, Adam ran ahead.

As he rounded a point in the rocks, he came upon a Rocky Mountain goat engaged in combat with a cinnamon bear. The bear was hardly more than a cub, and was carrying off one of the kids. The goat, horns down, was fighting viciously, though weak from loss of blood.

It would be interesting to know what one wild animal thinks when another wild animal, from its point of view, comes to the rescue. Adam carried a lariat over one arm. In an instant it flew through the air, dropping over Bruin's shoulders. He released the kid, and tumbled backward over the cliff, as much with surprise as by the force of the jerk on the rope, taking that treasured article with him.

It took some time to capture the wounded animals, bind up their hurts, and get them down the pathway leading to the beach. For there was a beach, the best one they had found on the Eastern coast, and as they put the goat and her kids down in the gra.s.s, Adam said tentatively, "If you are not afraid, I can go home and get the horses and the sleds. It isn't a great way, and I believe I can be back in three hours,--I'm sure I can if the beach goes as close to our park as I think."

Robin acquiesced, and as soon as he was gone began gathering driftwood. When she had quite a little heap she made a fire with the coals they carried in the pot. It is doubtless more romantic to build a fire by striking flint rocks together, but a pot of coals has its uses in a matchless universe. Then she found a long, stout club, and put one end in the fire, where it smouldered sullenly.

"There now," she said conclusively, "if my bear acquaintance calls, I will present him with 'the red flower.' I didn't learn the 'Jungle Books' by heart for nothing."

Meanwhile Adam was striding over the beach at a rate that brought him to the little cove and the high wall of rocks that shut them in on the south in a little over an hour. Two of the pups had gone with him, and they raced on ahead, as he came in sight of the house. Everything seemed to have an air of welcome, and the horses whinnied joyfully when he called them from the gateway.

The pathetic placard was still there, and he crumpled it in his hand, and went in and opened the windows. He milked one of the cows, and gathering some green stuff in the garden started back with the team and the sleds. Once down the steep decline, and over the rocks at the south, they went on rapidly.

Although he had wasted no time, it was past one o'clock when he saw her familiar figure afar off. She hurried to meet him. They had not been separated so long before that year, and realized the unconscious strain in the sudden revulsion. They said nothing of this, however, though they clasped hands for a moment. Then Robin spoke to the horses, and stroked their necks, as they bent their heads and rubbed against her affectionately.

She had spread their table on a broad, flat rock, but before they had their own meal, she warmed some of the milk, and they gave the kids their first lesson in drinking out of a bucket. Afterward it took but a few moments to strike camp. The burros were already packed, and the goat with her kids, all hobbled, were placed in the sled, and the cavalcade started on its way.

X

Cling to thy home! If there the meanest shed Yield thee a hearth and a shelter for thy head, And some poor plot, with vegetables stored, Be all that Heaven allots thee for thy board, Unsavory bread, and herbs that scatter'd grow Wild on the river-brink, or mountain-brow; Yet e'en this cheerless mansion shall provide More heart's repose than all the world beside.

LEONIDAS.

"Do you know, Adam," said Robin, when they had walked a mile in silence, "do you know that you are a fraud?"

"Well, yes," he responded, "but I didn't know you knew it. Is the discovery recent?"

"Never mind about dates, but tell me why you didn't use the rifle instead of the lariat? What did you take it for?"

"I took it for your peace of mind. I didn't use it for several good and substantial and sentimental reasons. To reverse them, this last year I have grown to understand your horror of killing things. We have done very well without sacrificing any of our dependents; in fact, it would seem like murder to slaughter the animals about us. And it's such a little world it seems a pity to kill off any of its inhabitants. To tell the truth, I hope the bear got away all right.

This is maudlin, I know, but I don't want my hand first to bring death on all there is left of earth. Incidentally,--there are no cartridges."

He stopped the horses, while Robin readjusted the kids to make them more comfortable, and took the lame one in her arms, then they moved on.