A Breath of Prairie and other stories Part 24

Concomitant with this thought the visionary shaded into the real, and there came the determination to act at once, this very afternoon, as soon as Ichabod had gone. He even felt a little relief at the decision. After all, it was so much simpler than if he had won, for then--then--He laughed gratingly at the thought. Cursed if he would have known what to have done, then!

The sound roused him and he looked at his watch. A minute had pa.s.sed, fourteen from the first and the flame still sputtered. Was it possible after all--after he had decided--that he was not to lose, that the decision was unnecessary? There was not in his mind the slightest feeling of personal elation at the prospect, but rather a sense of injury that such a scurvy trick should be foisted off upon him. It was like going to a funeral and being confronted, suddenly, with the grinning head of the supposed dead projecting through the coffin lid.

It was unseemly!

Only a minute more: a half now--yes, he would win. For the first time he felt that his forehead was wet, and he mopped his face with his handkerchief jerkily; then sank back in the chair, instinctively shooting forward his cuffs in motion habitual.

"Fifteen seconds." There could be no question now of the result; and the outside world, banished for the once, returned. The blacksmith was hammering again, the strokes two seconds apart, and the fancy seized the little man to finish counting by the ring of the anvil.

"Twelve, ten, eight," he counted slowly. "Six" was forming on the tip of the tongue when of a sudden the tiny flame veered far over toward the holder, sputtered and went out. For the first time in those interminable minutes, Arnold looked at his companion. Ichabod's face was within a foot of the table, and in line with the direction the flame had veered. Swift as thought the small man was on his feet, white anger in his face.

"You blew that candle!" he challenged.

Ichabod's head dropped into his hands. An awful horror of himself fell crus.h.i.+ngly upon him; an abhorrence of the selfishness that could have forgotten--what he forgot; and for so long,--almost irrevocably long.

Mingled with this feeling was a sudden thanksgiving for the boon of which he was unworthy; the memory at the eleventh hour, in time to do as he had done before his word was pa.s.sed. Arnold strode across the room, his breath coming fast, his eyes flas.h.i.+ng fire. He shook the tall man by the shoulder roughly.

"You blew that flame, I say!"

Ichabod looked up at the furious, dark face almost in surprise.

"Yes, I blew it," he corroborated absently.

"It would have burned longer."

"Perhaps--I don't know."

Arnold moved back a step and the old smile, mocking, maddening, spread over his face; tilting, perpendicular, the tips of the big moustaches.

"After all--" very slowly--"after all, then, you're a coward."

The tall man stood up; six-feet-two, long, bony, immovable: Ichabod himself again.

"You know that's a lie."

"You'll meet me again,--another way, then?"

"No, never!"

"I repeat, you're a cursed coward."

"I'd be a coward if I did meet you," quickly.

Something in Ichabod's voice caught the little man's ear and held him silent, as, for a long half-minute, the last time in their lives, the two men looked into each other's eyes.

"You'll perhaps explain." Arnold's voice was cold as death. "You have a reason?"

Ichabod walked slowly over to the window and leaned against the frame.

Standing there, the spring suns.h.i.+ne fell full upon his face, drawing clear the furrows at the angles of his eyes and the gray threads of his hair. He paused a moment, looking out over the broad prairie s.h.i.+mmering indistinctly in the heat, and the calm of it all took hold of him, shone in his face.

"I've a reason," very measuredly, "but it's not that I fear death, or you." He took up his hat and smoothed it absently. "In future I shall neither seek, nor avoid you. Do what you wish--and G.o.d judge us both."

Without a glance at the other man, he turned toward the door.

Arnold moved a step, as if to prevent him going.

"I repeat, it's my right to know why you refuse." His feet s.h.i.+fted uneasily upon the floor. "Is it because of another--Eleanor?"

Ichabod paused.

"Yes," very slowly. "It's because of Eleanor--_and_ another."

The tall man's hand was upon the k.n.o.b, but this time there was no interruption. An instant he hesitated; then absently, slowly, the door opened and closed. A moment later indistinct, descending steps sounded on the stairway.

Alone, Asa Arnold stood immovable, looking blindly at the closed door, listening until the tapping feet had pa.s.sed into silence. Then, in a motion indescribable, of pain and of abandon, he sank back into the single chair.

His dearest enemy would have pitied the little man at that moment!

CHAPTER VII--THE PRICE OF THE LEAP

In the chronology of the little town, day followed day, as monotonously as ticks the tall clock on the wall. Only in multiple they merged into the seasons which glided so smoothly, one into the other, that the change was unnoticed, until it had taken place.

Thus three months pa.s.sed by, and man's work for the year was nearly done. The face of the prairie had become one of many colors; eternal badge of civilization as opposed to Nature, who paints each season with its own hue. Beside the roadways great, rank sunflowers turned their glaring yellow faces to the light. In every direction stretched broad fields of flax; unequally ripening, their color scheme ranging from sky blue of blossoms to warm browns of maturity. Blotches of sod corn added here and there a dash of green to the picture. Surrounding all, a setting for all, the unbroken virgin prairie, mottled green and brown, stretched, smiling, harmonious, beneficent; a land of promise and of plenty for generations yet unborn.

All through the long, hot summer Asa Arnold had stayed in town, smoking a big pipe in front of the hotel of Hans Becher. Indolent, abnormally indolent, a stranger seeing him thus would have commented; but, save Hans the confiding, none other of the many interested observers were deceived. No man merely indolent sleeps neither by night nor by day; and it seemed the little man never slept. No man merely indolent sits wide-eyed hour after hour, gazing blankly at the earth beneath his feet--and uttering never a word. Brooding, not dreaming, was Asa Arnold; brooding over the eternal problem of right and wrong. And, as pa.s.sed the slow weeks, he moved back--back on the trail of civilization, back until Pa.s.sion and not Reason was the G.o.d enthroned; back until one thought alone was with him morning, noon, and night,--and that thought preponderant, overmastering, deadly hate.

Observant Curtis, the doctor, shrugged his shoulders.

"The old, old trail," he satirized.

It was to Bud Evans, the little agent, that he made the observation.

"Which has no ending," completed the latter.

The doctor shrugged afresh.

"That has one inevitable termination," he refuted.

"Which is--"

"Madness--sheer madness."

The agent was silent a moment.

"And the end of that?" he suggested.

Curtis pursed his lips.

"Tragedy, or a strait-jacket. The former, in this instance."