Over the Pass Part 4

"The railroad station is on the other side of the town, isn't it?" he asked.

"Yes."

"I shall camp nearby, so it will be no trouble to leave my burden at your door as I pa.s.s."

"He does have the gift of oiling the wheels in either, big or little moments," she thought, as she realized how simple and considerate had been his course from the first. He was a stranger going on his way, stopping, however, to do her or any other traveller a favor _en route_.

"Firio, we're ready to hear Jag Ear's bells!" he called.

"_Si_!" answered Firio.

All the while the Indian had kept in the shadow, away from the spray of light from the store lamp, unaware of the rapid drama that had pa.s.sed among the boxes and barrels. He had observed nothing unusual in the young lady, whose outward manifestation of what she had, witnessed was the closing of her eyes.

It was out of the question that Jack should mount a horse when both arms were crowded with their burden. He walked beside Mary's stirrup leather in the att.i.tude of that attendant on royalty who bears a crown on a cus.h.i.+on.

"Little Rivers is a new town, isn't it?" he asked.

"Yes, the Town Wonderful," she answered. "Father founded it."

She spoke with an affection which ran as deep into the soil as young roots after water. If on the pa.s.s she had seemed a part of the desert, of great, lonely distances and a far-flung carpet of dreams, here she seemed to belong to books and gardens.

"I wish I had time to look over the Town Wonderful in the morning, but my train goes very early, I believe."

After his years of aimless travelling, to which he had so readily confessed, he had tied himself to a definite hour on a railroad schedule as something commanding and inviolable. Such inconsistency did not surprise her. Had she not already learned to expect inconsistencies from him?

"Oh, it is all simple and primitive, but it means a lot to us," she said.

"What one's home and people mean to him is pretty well all of one's own human drama," he returned, seriously.

The peace of evening was in the air and the lights along the single street were a gentle and persistent protest of human life against the mighty stretch of the enveloping mantle of night. From the cottages of the ranchers came the sound of voices. The tw.a.n.g of a guitar quivering starward made medley with Jag Ear's bells.

Here, for a little distance, the trail, in its long reach on the desert, had taken on the dignity of the urban name of street. On either side, fronting the cottages, ran the slow waters of two irrigation ditches, gleaming where lamp-rays penetrated the darkness. The date of each rancher's settlement was fairly indicated by the size of the quick-growing umbrella and pepper-trees which had been planted for shade.

Thus all the ma.s.s of foliage rose like a mound of gentle slope toward the centre of the town, where Jack saw vaguely the outlines of a rambling bungalow, more s.p.a.cious if no more pretentious than its neighbors in its architecture. At a cement bridge over the ditch, leading to a broad veranda under the soft illumination of a big, wrought-iron lantern, Mary drew rein.

"This is home," she said; "and--and thank you!"

He could not see her face, which was in the shadow turned toward him, as he looked into the light of the lantern from the other side of her pony.

"And--thank you!"

It was as if she had been on the point of saying something else and could not get the form of any sentence except these two words. Was there anything further to say except "Thank you"? Anything but to repeat "Thank you"?

There he stood, this stranger so correctly introduced by the Eternal Painter, with his burden, waiting instructions in this moment of awkward diffidence. He looked at her and at the porch and at his bundle of mail in a quizzical appeal. Then she realized that, in a peculiar lapse of abstraction, she had forgotten about his enc.u.mberment.

Before she could speak there was a sonorous hail from the house; a hail in keeping with the generous bulk of its owner, who had come through the door. He was well past middle-age, with a thatch of gray hair half covering his high forehead. In one hand he held the book that he had been reading, and in the other a pair of big tortoise-sh.e.l.l gla.s.ses.

"Mary, you are late--and what have we here?"

He was beaming at Jack as he came across the bridge and he broke into hearty laughter as he viewed Jack's preoccupation with the second-cla.s.s matter.

"At last! At last we have rural free delivery in Little Rivers! We are the coming town! And your uniform, sir"--Jasper Ewold took in the cowboy outfit with a sweeping glance which warmed with the picturesque effect--"it's a great improvement on the regulation; fit for free delivery in Little Rivers, where n.o.body studies to be unconventional in any vanity of mistaking that for originality, but n.o.body need be conventional."

He took some of the cargo in his own hands. With the hearty breeze of his personality he fairly blew Jack onto the porch, where magazines and pamphlets were dropped indiscriminately in a pile on a rattan settee.

"You certainly have enough reading matter," said Jack. "And I must be getting on to camp."

For he had no invitation to stay from Mary and the conventional fact that he had to recognize is that a postman's call is not a social call.

As he turned to go he faced her coming across the bridge. An Indian servant, who seemed to have materialized out of the night, had taken charge of her pony.

"To camp! Never!" said Jasper Ewold. "Sir Knight, slip your lance in the ring of the castle walls--but having no lance and this being no castle, well, Sir Knight in _chaparejos_--that is to say, Sir Chaps--let me inform you"--here Jasper Ewold threw back his shoulders and tossed his mane of hair, his voice sinking to a serious ba.s.so profundo--"yes, inform you, sir, that there is one convention, a local rule, that no stranger crosses this threshold at dinner-time without staying to dinner." There was a resonance in his tone, a liveliness to his expression, that was infectious.

"But Firio and Jag Ear and Wrath of G.o.d wait for me," Jack said, entering with real enjoyment into the grandiose style.

"High sounding company, sir! Let me see them!" demanded Jasper Ewold.

Jack pointed to his cavalcade waiting in the half shadows, where the lamp-rays grew thin. Wrath of G.o.d's bony face was pointed lugubriously toward the door; Jag Ear was wiggling his fragment of ear.

"And Moses on the mountain-top says that you stay!" declared Jasper Ewold.

Jack looked at Mary. She had not spoken yet and he waited on her word.

"Please do!" she said. "Father wants someone to talk to."

"Yes, Sir Chaps, I shall talk; otherwise, why was man given a tongue in his head and ideas?"

Refusal was out of the question. Accordingly, Firio was sent on to make camp alone.

"Now, Sir Chaps, now, Mr.--" began Jasper Ewold, pausing blankly. "Why, Mary, you have not given me his city directory name!"

"Mr.--" and Mary blushed. She could only pa.s.s the, blame back to the Eternal Painter's oversight in their introduction.

"Jack Wingfield!" said Jack, on his own account.

"Jack Wingfield!" repeated Jasper Ewold, tasting the name.

A flicker of surprise followed by a flicker of drawn intensity ran over his features, and he studied Jack in a long glance, which he masked just in time to save it from being a stare. Jack was conscious of the scrutiny. He flushed slightly and waited for some word to explain it; but none came. Jasper Ewold's Olympian geniality returned in a spontaneous flood.

"Come inside, Jack Wingfield," he said. "Come inside, Sir Chaps--for that is how I shall call you."

The very drum-beat of hospitality was in his voice. It was a wonderful voice, deep and warm and musical; not to be forgotten.

V

A SMILE AND A SQUARE CHIN