"What at?" demanded Nora fiercely.

"At m-m-my air. I know it's funny, cut off, that way. But I c-c-can't help it. It's gone."

"I didn't," exclaimed Nora hotly, her face flushing. "Your ears is all right. I was laughin' at seein' you move 'em. I beg your pardon. I didn't know anybody could, that way, you know. I'm--I'm sorry."

A great light broke over Sam. A vast dam crashed free. His soul rushed forth in one mad wave.

"M-M-Miss M-M-Markley--Miss--Nory!" he exclaimed, whirling about and facing her, "d-d-d-do y-y-you l-l-like to s-s-see me work my airs?"

"Yes, it's funny," admitted Nora, on the point of another outbreak in spite of herself.

This amiability was an undreamed thing, yet Sam saw his advantage. He squared himself about, and, looking solemnly and earnestly in Nora's face, he pulled first his right and then his left ear forward until the members stood nearly at right angles to his head.

After all, the ludicrous is but the unexpected. Many laugh who see an old woman fall upon the slippery pavement. This new spectacle was the absolutely undreamed-of to Nora, who was no scientist. Her laughter was irrepressible. In a trice the precedents of years were gone. Nora felt the empire of her dignity slipping away, but none the less could not repress her mirth. And more than this; as she gazed into the honest, blue-eyed face before her she felt a lessening of her desire to retain her icy pedestal, and she struggled the less against her laughter. Indeed, with a sudden fright, she found her laughter growing nervous. She, the head waitress, was perturbed, alarmed!

Sam followed up his advantage royally. "I can work 'em both to onct!"

he exclaimed triumphantly. And did so. "There! They was a boy in our school onct that could work his airs one at a time, but I never did see no one else but me that could work 'em both to onct. Look a-here!" He waggled his ears ecstatically. The reserve of Nora oozed, waned, vanished.

Even, the sternest fibre must at length succ.u.mb under prolonged Herculean endeavour. No man may long continuously wag his ears, even alternately; therefore Sam perforce paused in time. Yet by that time--in what manner it occurred no one may know--Nora was seated on the chair next to him at the table. They were alone. Silence fell.

Nora's hand moved nervously among the spoons. Upon it dropped the mutilated one of Sam.

"Nory," said he, "I'd--I'd work 'em all my life--fer you!" And to Nora, who turned away her head now, not for the purpose of hiding a smile, this seemed always a perfectly fit and proper declaration of this man's regard.

"I know I'm no good," murmured Sam. "I'm a awful coward. I-I-I've l-l-loved you ever sence the fust time that I seen you, but I was such a coward, I--I couldn't--couldn't--"

"You're not!" cried Nora imperiously.

"Oh, yes, I am," said Sam.

"Look at them," said Nora, almost touching his crippled fingers.

"Don't I know?"

"Oh, that," said Sam, hiding the hand under the droop of the tablecloth. "Why, that? I got froze some, a-drivin'."

"Yes, and," said Nora accusingly, "how did you get froze? A-drivin'

'way down there, in the storm, after folks. No one else'd go."

"Why, yes. Cap Franklin, he went," said Sam. "That wasn't nothin'.

Why, o' _course_ we'd go."

"No one else wouldn't, though."

Sam wondered. "I was always too much a coward to say a word to you,"

he began. And then an awful doubt sat on his soul.

"Nory," he resumed solemnly, "did ever any feller say anything to you about my--I-I-I--well, my lovin' you?"

"I should say not!" said Nora. "I'd a' slapped his face, mighty quick!

What business--"

"Not never a single one?" said Sam, his face brightening.

"No, 'ndeed. Why, I'd like to know? Did you ever ask any one to!"

"I should say not!" said Sam, with the only lie he ever told, and one most admirable. "I should say not!" he repeated with emphasis, and in tones which carried conviction even to himself.

"You'd better not!" said Nora. "I wouldn't of had you if they had!"

Sam started. "What's that, Nory?" he said. "Say that ag'in! Did you say you wouldn't of _had_ me--you wouldn't _of_?" His hand found hers again.

"Yes," faltered Nora, seeing herself entrapped by her own speech.

"Then, Nory," said Sam firmly, casting a big arm about her waist, "if you wouldn't _of_ had me then, I reckon now you _do_." And neither from this subtlety nor from the st.u.r.dy arm did Nora seek evasion, though she tugged faintly at the fingers which held fast her waist.

"I don't care," she murmured vaguely. "There ain't no coward would of done it!" Whereat Sam, seeing himself a hero, wisely accepted fate and ceased to argue. The big arm tightened manfully, and into his blue eyes came the look of triumph.

"Nory," whispered he loyally, "I'll never work my airs ag'in for any woman in the world but you!"

CHAPTER x.x.xV

THE HILL OF DREAMS

Franklin found himself swept along with a tide of affairs other than of his own choosing. His grasp on the possibilities of the earliest days of this new civilization had been so full and shrewd that he needed now but to let others build the house whose foundation he had laid. This in effect has been the history of most men who have become wealthy, the sum of one man's efforts being in no great disparity actually superior to those of his fellow-man.

Yet Franklin cared little for mere riches, his ambition ceasing at that point where he might have independence, where he might be himself, and where he might work out unfettered the problems of his own individuality. Pursued by a prosperity which would not be denied, his properties growing up about him, his lands trebling in value within a year and his town property rising steadily in value, he sometimes smiled in very grimness as he thought of what this had once and so recently been, and how far beyond his own care the progress of his fortunes had run. At times he reflected upon this almost with regret, realizing strongly the temptation to plunge irrevocably into the battle of material things. This, he knew, meant a loosing, a letting go, a surrender of his inner and honourable dreams, an evasion of that beckoning hand and a forgetting of that summoning voice which bade him to labour agonizingly yet awhile toward other aims. The inner man, still exigent, now exhorted, now demanded, and always rebelled.

Franklin's face grew older. Not all who looked upon him understood, for to be _hors concours_ is to be accursed.

Something was left to be desired in the vigour and energy of Franklin's daily life, once a daily joy in virile effort and exertion. Still too much a man to pity himself, none the less he brooded. His hopes and dreams, he reflected, had once flowered so beautifully, had shown so fair for one brief summer day, and lay now so dead and shrivelled and undone! There was no comfort in these later days.

And then he thought yearningly of the forceful drama of the wild life which had shrunk so rapidly into the humdrum of the uneventful. At times he felt a wild yearning to follow this frontier--to follow till the West sunk into the sea, and even then to follow, until he came to some Fortunate Islands where such glorious days should die no more. He recalled the wild animals and the wild men he had known, and saw again the mocking face of the old wide plains, shifting and evading, even as the spirit of his own life evaded him, answering no questions directly, always beckoning, yet always with finger upon lip, forbidding speech.

Almost with exultation he joined in the savage resentment of this land laid under tribute, he joined in the pitiless scorn of the savage winter, he almost justified in his own soul the frosted pane and the hearth made cold, and the settlers' homes forever desolated.

Yet ever a chill struck Franklin's soul as he thought of the lost battle at the Halfway House. There was now gra.s.s grown upon the dusty trail that once led up to the low-eaved house. The green and gray of Nature were shrouding busily the two lonely graves of those who had fought the, frontier and been vanquished in that night of terror, when the old West claimed its own. The Halfway House of old was but a memory. It had served its purpose, had fulfilled its mission, and those who once ruled it now were gone. The wild herds and the wild men came there no longer, and there were neither hosts nor those needing hospitality. And Mary Ellen, the stately visitant of his sleeping or his waking dreams, no longer might be seen in person at the Halfway House. Recreant, defeated, but still refusing aid, she had gone back to her land of flowers. It was Franklin's one comfort that she had never known into whose hands had pa.s.sed--at a price far beyond their actual worth--the lands of the Halfway House, which had so rapidly built up for her a competency, which had cleared her of poverty, only to re-enforce her in her pride.

Under all the fantastic grimness, all the mysticism, all the discredited and riotous vagaries of his insubordinate soul, Franklin possessed a saving common sense; yet it was mere freakishness which led him to accept a vagrant impulse as the controlling motive at the crucial moment of his life. His nature was not more imaginative than comprehensive.

To a very few men Edward Franklin has admitted that he once dreamed of a hill topped by a little fire, whose smoke dipped and waved and caught him in its fold. In brief, he got into saddle, and journeyed to the Hill of Dreams.

The Hill of Dreams dominated the wide and level landscape over which it had looked out through hundreds of slow, unnoted years. From it once rose the signal smokes of the red men, and here it was that many a sentinel had stood in times long before a white face was ever seen upon the Plains. Here often was erected the praying lodge of the young aspirant for wisdom, who stood there and lifted up his hands, saying: "O sun! O air! O earth! O spirits, hear me pray! Give me aid, give me wisdom, so that I may know!"

Here on the Hill of Dreams, whence the eye might sweep to the fringed sand hills on the south, east to the river many miles away, and north and west almost to the swell of the cold steppes that lead up to the Rocky Range, the red men had sometimes come to lay their leaders when their day of hunting and of war was over. Thus the place came to have extraordinary and mysterious qualities ascribed to it, on which account, in times gone by, men who were restless, troubled, disturbed, dissatisfied, came thither to fast and pray. Here they builded their little fires, and here, night and day, they besought the sky, the sun, the firmament to send to them each his "dream," his unseen counsellor, which should speak to him out of its more than earthly wisdom.

When the young man was troubled and knew not which course he should pursue, he went up to this hill alone, and so laid hold upon Fate that it fain communed with him. He held up his hands at night to the stars, very far above him, and asked that they should witness him and be merciful, for that he was small and weak, and knew not why things should be as they were. He called upon the spirits of the great dead about him to witness the sincerity of his prayer. He placed offerings to the Dream People. He prayed to the sun as it rose, and besought it of its strength to strengthen him.

Sometimes when a young man had gone up alone from the village to this hill to pray, there were seen at night more forms than one walking upon the summit of the hill, and sometimes voices were heard. Then it was known that the young man had seen his "dream," and that they had held a council.