CHAPTER VIII

THE END OF HER STRATAGEM

For some minutes there was no speech, no sound except the swift beat of the horses' hoofs on the hard roadway, and the crisp crunching of wheels in the sand. Marion sat rigid, staring straight in front of her, yet seeing nothing. Dazed and benumbed, her thoughts were in a hopeless tangle, without beginnings, without ends. How she had bungled the whole thing! And she might have been so happy, there at his side.

Twilight was coming on in the serene, clear beauty of the mountains: the distant peaks glowed like great opals in the sundown hues; there was an indescribable sweetness in the air, something magical in the soft but cold night breeze that began to pour down upon the valley from the eternal snows.

Timidly, out of the corner of her eye, Marion glanced at Haig, and saw that he was gazing steadily at the changing colors on the distant range. But there was no beauty for her in that perfect panorama. The fire had gone out of her, and she was shivering. He must have felt her movement, for suddenly he leaned forward, lifted the edge of the heavy lap-robe that had lain neglected at their feet, and tucked it around her. She drew back with a quick intake of breath as his face was for an instant close to her own. A moment later he began to speak in a tone that surprised and encouraged her, so little did it resemble the tones he had employed before. It was as if nothing had happened, as if they had long been talking of things casual, impersonal to them both.

"It's different in the San Luis," he said. "There's red down there.

Nature's palette is a little short of red in this valley. Too much blue. Even nature sometimes gets a one-color obsession, like the painters. Here she's gone off on blue. It's the most dangerous color.

Darwin says it was the last color produced in nature's laboratory.

Ordinarily it's the least common in flowers and birds and insects.

Hearn--Have you read Lafcadio Hearn? No? But you ought to, that is, if you care for such things. He goes after blue--the misuse of it. He says it's the color most pleasureable to the eye in its purest intensity. But you mustn't dab it on. A blue house is a crime. Blue's overdone here too, blue sky, blue mists, blue shadows, blue lakes, blue flowers,--anemones, harebells, columbines and the rest. It's a relief to get into the reds of the San Luis--"

"Where Sunnysides came from!" interrupted Marion, eager despite her misery.

"Yes."

"Tell me about him, please!"

She wanted him to continue in that strain, and even Sunnysides was a less dangerous subject than--another.

"Well, about Sangre de Cristo first. That's a great range that stands up high and white along the east. Sangre de Cristo is Spanish for Blood of Christ. I can see those pious old rascal adventurers uncovering their blessed heads when they first glimpsed it. At sunset it takes the color--not always, not often, in fact, perhaps a dozen times a year. There are days and days when the range is only white and cold, days when it's black with storms, and days when it's dismal gray. Then there comes an evening when the sun goes down red behind the San Juan, and the snows on Sangre de Cristo run like blood. The whole world, for a few minutes, seems to halt and stand still in awe at that weird and mysterious spectacle--trainmen setting the brakes on squealing ore trains on Marshall Pa.s.s, and miners coming out of their tunnels above Creed all stop and look; Mexican sheep-herders in Conejos pause to cross themselves; ranchmen by their lonely corrals up and down the San Luis, and cowboys in the saddle on the open range--all spellbound. It gives you a strange feeling--something that goes back to the primitive instincts of mankind--something of reverence, something of wonder, something of fear--the fear that the first men had when they gazed on the phenomena they could not understand, and began to make their myths and their religions.

Primitive superst.i.tion, primitive terror will never quite down in us, no matter how wise and practical we become. There's always, in beauty--in sheer beauty something terrifying, as well as something sad. But--do I bore you with my dithyrambs?"

"No! No!" she exclaimed.

"The scene couldn't have been set better for that spectacle. There's a green strip along the river, then bare sagebrush flats, and beyond the flats are sand dunes where nothing grows but cactus and mesquite, and here and there some tufts of gra.s.s as tough and dry as wire. In summer the dunes are a parched and blistered inferno. In October they are raw gray desolation. I don't want to know what they are like in winter. The wind never ceases there. It builds the dunes into new shapes every day, and the sagebrush is always bent and lopsided and torn, and the colors are the gray and brown of the world's secret tragedy. But when the red sunset is on the dunes there's nothing I have ever seen so wild and pa.s.sionate and beautiful.

"It was late in the autumn. I rode out of a deep arroya, and came, without warning, into all that weird and solemn glory. There was a cold gush of air from up the valley. Far in the north were purple patches on the flats, and violet shadows in the foothills. But the dunes were all vermilion, and I can't tell you what hue of red lay spread out deep and vivid on the Sangre de Cristo peaks,--a living, pa.s.sionate, terrible blood-red. I'm not very devout, but I tell you candidly that I reined up my horse, took off my hat, and sat there gazing, with the queerest feelings, and saying, like the old Spaniards, 'Sangre de Cristo! Blood of Christ!'

"Then something queer happened to me. You've seen a flash of sunlight reflected from a window, far off? Well, it wasn't like that, except in the sharpness of its effect. And I knew there was no house in all that waste of sand. It was just a flash, and was gone. I searched the horizon, and saw nothing but red dunes, and little puffs of sand kicked up by the rising wind. Must have been some trick of vision, I thought, and I looked away again toward the blood-red peaks. And there it was again, in the corner of my eye. But it was gone when I tried to fix it. I put spurs to my horse, and rode toward the dunes, and caught the flash again--just a bright yellow speck in the darkening vermilion. It came and went, and seemed then to have been lost completely. I was about convinced that the red sunset had gone to my head--that I was following something that existed only in my brain.

"Then, as I loped up to the top of a dune--there he stood, on another dune, perhaps two hundred yards away. His golden hide reflected the red glow like polished metal, his mane flamed in the wind. You cannot possibly imagine the effect of it, in that unreal light, in that setting of desolation, with the crimson mountains behind him. He stood alone on the hill, with his head high, motionless as a statue. For as long as half a minute he let me look at him. Then he turned, and was gone like a flash of fire. I had just one more glimpse of him, flying over the dunes, and followed by a score or more of wild horses of all colors except his color, and none worth looking at. With him the red went out of the landscape, the peaks turned white, and I sat alone in the gray, raw twilight. But right there I made up my mind about one thing: I must have that horse. You know the rest."

"But what do you mean to do with him?" asked Marion, vaguely troubled.

"Ride him."

"Don't!" she gasped.

"Why not?" he demanded.

"He'll kill you!"

Haig laughed.

"Oh, I think not!"

"But what is the use?"

"What's the use of anything?"

"But it's--"

"Mere folly, you think?"

"Yes."

"Now you don't mean that at all, Miss g.a.y.l.o.r.d. You know perfectly well that if I were doing it to please you--to win your admiration--you wouldn't call it folly."

"You will please me--and win my admiration--if you don't do it.

Please!"

"But I don't want--You'll pardon me?--I don't want to win your admiration."

What could she say to that? There was a moment of silence.

"When?" she asked quietly.

"I'm waiting for Farrish, my foreman. He's the only man I can absolutely depend upon. He's in Omaha. He'll be back next week."

"And you won't begin without him?"

"No."

She had no choice but to be satisfied with a few days of grace.

Moreover, something might happen before the return of Farrish; the outlaw might escape, or she might find another opportunity to plead with Haig, or--What was she thinking of? Something was going to happen that very evening; and she had almost forgotten it, in her absorption!

She had meant to do, long before now, what he had prevented her doing at the stable,--to confess her deception, to plead for mercy, to beg him to go back. Failing in that, there was Tuesday trotting behind the trap; she could leap out, prove to Haig that her foot was uninjured, and insist upon riding home alone. But now the confession seemed ten times more difficult than it had seemed in the first flush of her resolution. They were far up the Bright.w.a.ter by this time; a few minutes more would bring them to the branch road that led to Huntington's. Yet how could she tell him?

"My foot doesn't hurt any more," she began, compromising with her resolution.

"That's because you've been sitting still," he replied.

"But it doesn't hurt when I move it. See!"

She lifted the foot, and rested it on the dashboard, bending and twisting it.

"By which you mean to tell me that I am to go back," he said.

"Please!"