Part 5

"Sing, then," commanded Hobby. He brought the guitars and gave one to each girl.

The coals glowed on the hearth; side by side, the fair head and the brown bent at the task of tuning. That laughing circle was scattered long ago and it was written that never again should all those friendly faces gather by any hearthfire--never again. It has happened so many, many times; even to you and to me, so many, many times! But we learn nothing; we are still bitter, and hard, and unkind--with kindness so cheap and so priceless--as if there was no such thing as loss or change or death.

And because of some hours of your own, it is hoped you will not smile at the songs of that lost happy hour. They were old-fashioned songs; indeed, it is feared they might almost be called Victorian. Their bourgeois simplicity carried no suggestive double meaning.

"When other lips and other hearts"--that was what they sang, brown Lyn and white Edith. Kirkconnel Lea they sang, and Jeanie Morrison, and Rosamond:

_Rose o' the world, what man would wed When he might dream of your face instead?_

Folly? Perhaps. Perhaps, too, in a world where we can but love and where we must lose, it may be no unwisdom if only love and loss seem worth the singing.

The swift hour passed. The last song, even as the first, was poignant with the happy sadness of youth:

_When my heart is sad and troubled, Then my quivering lips shall say,_ "_Oh! by and by you will forget me, By and by when far away!_"

Good-bys were said at last; Forbes and See put foot to stirrup and rode jingling into the white moonlight; the others stood silent on the porch and watched them go. A hundred yards down the road, Adam Forbes drew rein. A guitar throbbed low behind them.

"Hark," he said.

Edith Harkey stood in the shaft of golden light from the doorway; she bore herself like the Winged Victory; her voice thrilled across the quiet of the moonlit night:

"_Never the nightingale, Oh, my dear! Never again the lark Thou wilt hear; Though dusk and the morning still_

"_Tap at thy window-sill, Though ever love call and call Thou wilt not hear at all, My dear, my dear!_"

The sad notes melted into the sweet pagan heartbreak of the enchanted night. They turned to go.

"A fine girl," said Adam Forbes. "The only girl! To-morrow--"

He fell silent; again in his heart that parting cadence knelled with keen and intolerable sorrow. The roots of his hair prickled, ants crawled on his spine. So tingles the pulsing blood, perhaps, when a man is fey, when the kisses of his mouth are numbered.

Edith went home to the big lonely house, but Lyn Dyer and Hobby Lull lingered by the low fire. Mr. Lull assumed a dignified pose before the fireplace, feet well apart and his hands clasped behind his back. He regarded Miss Dyer with a twinkling eye.

"Have you anything to say to the court before sentence is pronounced?" he inquired with lofty judicial calm.

Miss Dyer avoided his glance. She stood drooping before him; she looked to one side at the floor; she looked to the other side at the floor. The toe of her little shoe poked and twisted at a knot in the floor.

"Extenuating circumstances?" she suggested hopefully.

"Name them to the court."

"The--the moon, I guess." The inquisitive shoe traced crosses and circles upon the knot in the flooring. "And Charlie See," she added desperately. "Charlie has such eloquent eyes, Hobby--don't you think?"

She raised her little curly head for a tentative peep at the court; her own eyes were shining with mischief. The court unclasped its hands.

"I ought to shake you," declared Hobby. But he did not shake her at all.

"You're the only young man in Garfield who wears his face clean-shaven," remarked Lyn reflectively, a little later. "Charlie would look much better without a mustache, I think."

He pushed her away and tipped up her chin with a gentle hand so that he could look into her eyes. "Little brown lady with curly eyes and laughing hair--are you quite fair to Charlie See?"

"No," said Lyn contritely, "I'm not. I suppose we ought to tell him."

"We ought to tell everybody. So far as I am concerned, I would enjoy being a sandwich man placarded in big letters: 'Property of Miss Lyn Dyer.'"

"Why, Hobbiest--I thought it was rather nice that we had such a great big secret all our own. But you're right--I see that now. I should have met him at the door, I suppose, and said, 'You are merely wasting your time, Mr. See. I will never desert my Wilkins!' Only that might have been a little awkward, in a way, because, you see, 'Nobody asked you to,' he said--or might have said."

"He never told you, then?"

"Not a word."

"But you knew?"

"Yes," said Lyn. "I knew." She twisted a button on his coat and spoke with a little wistful catch in her voice. "I do like him, Hobby--I can't help it. Only so much." She indicated how much on the nail of a small finger. "Just a little teeny bit. But that little bit is--"

"Strictly plutonic?"

"Yes," she said in a small meek voice. "How did you know? He makes me like him, Hobbiest. It--it scares me sometimes."

"Pretty cool, I'll say, for a girl that has only been engaged a week, if you should happen to ask me."

"Oh, but that's not the same thing--not the same thing at all! You couldn't keep me from liking you, not if you tried ever so hard. That is all settled. But Charlie makes me like him. You see, he is such a real people; I feel like the Griffin did about the Minor Cañon: 'He was brave and good and honest, and I think I should have relished him.'"

Hobby held her at arm's length and regarded her quizzically. "So young, and yet so tender?"

"'So young, my lord, and true.'"

"Well," said Hobby resignedly, "I suppose we'll have to quarrel, of course. They all do. But I don't know how to go about it. What do I say next?"

"I might as well tell you the worst, angelest pieface. You ought to know what a shocking horrid little creature your brown girl really is. You won't ever tell--honest-to-goodness, cross-your-heart-and-hope-to-die?"

"Never."

"Say it, then."

"Honest-to-goodness, cross-my-heart-and-hope-to-die."

She buried her face on his breast. "I dreamed about him last night, Hobby. Wasn't that queer? I hadn't thought of him before for months--weeks, anyhow."

"A week, maybe?" suggested Hobby.

"Oh, more than that! Two weeks, at the very least. I--I hate to tell you," she whispered. "I--I dreamed I liked him almost as much as I do you!"

"Why, you brazen little bigamist!"

"Yes, I am--I mean, ain't I?" she assented complacently, for his arms belied his words. "But that's not the worst, Hobbiest--that's not nearly the dreadfulest. When I woke up I--I wrote some--some verses about my dream. Are you awfully angry? We'll burn them together after you read them."

"Woman, produce those verses! I will take charge of them as 'Exhibit A.'"

"And then you'll beat me, please?"

"Oh, no," said Hobby magnanimously. "That's nothing! Pish, tush! Why, Linoleum, I feel that way about lots of girls. Molly Sullivan, now--"

"Hobby!"

"I always like to dream of Molly. One of the best companions to take along in a dream--"

"Only-est! Please don't!"

"Well, then," said Hobby, "I won't--on one condition. It is to be distinctly understood under no circumstances are you ever to call me Charlie. I won't stand for it. Dig up your accursed doggerel!"

This is what Hobby Lull read aloud, with exaggerated fervor, while Lyn huddled by the dying fire and hid her burning face in her hands:

_Last night I kissed you as you slept, For all night long I dreamed of you; Lower and low the hearth fire crept, The embers glowed and dimmed; we two Heard the wind rave at bolt and door With all the world shut out and fast, Doubted, hoped, questioned, feared no more, And all we sought was ours at last._

_I do not love you, dear. I never loved you, Grudged what I gave, a wayward tenderness; Yet in my dream I wooed you with white arms And lingering soft caress. Now for all years to come I must remember, When fires burn dim and low, This false dear dream of mine, that stolen hour-- Your face of long ago._

_I shall awaken in some midnight lonely, I shall remember you as one apart, How for one hour of dream I loved you only And held you in my heart. And you, through all the years since first you met me Still let my memory gleam; Oh, my old lover! Do not quite forget me! I loved you--in my dream!_

Hobby cleared his throat impressively, tapped his table with the paper, and assumed measured judicial accents.

"This incriminating document proves--hah--hum--"

"To the satisfaction of the court," prompted Lyn in a muffled voice.

"To the satisfaction of the court--I thank you! To the very great satisfaction of the court, this document, together with the barefaced manner in which you have brought this evidence to the cognizance of this court--it proves, little Lady Lyn, that you are compact all of loyalty and clean honor--and the sentence of this court is, Imprisonment for life!"

He held out his arms, and the culprit crept gladly to prison.

VI

"Then there was a star danc'd, and under that was I born." --_Much Ado About Nothing._

Cole Ralston rose up in a red windy dawn; he cupped his hands to his mouth and called out lustily: "Beds!"

All around, men roused up in the half darkness and took up the word, laughing, as they dressed: "Beds! Beds!"

The call meant that the wagon was to be moved to-day; that each man was to roll bedding and tarp to a hard and tight-roped cylinder, and was then to carry it to a stack by the bed wagon.

The cook bent over pots and pans, an active demon by a wind-blown fire; here already the bobtail ate their private breakfast, that they might depart in haste to relieve the last guard--now slowly moving the herd from the bed ground, half a mile away.

Cole moved over where Johnny Dines was making up his bed roll.

"Needn't hurry with that bed, Johnny," he said in an undertone. "You move the wagon to Preisser Lake this mornin'. Besides, you may want to hold something out of your bed. You're to slip away after dinner and edge over towards Hillsboro. Help Hiram bring his cattle back when he gets ready. Tell him we'll be round Aleman all this week, so he might better come back through MacCleod's Pass. I don't know within fifty mile where the John Cross wagon is."

Johnny nodded, abandoning his bed making. "_Bueno, señor!_" He took a pair of leather chaparejos from the bed, regarded them doubtfully and threw them back.

"Guess I won't take the chaps. Don't need them much except on the river work, in the mesquite; and they're so cussed, all-fired hot."

"Say, John, you won't need your mount, I reckon. Just take one horse. Lot of our runaway horses in the John Cross pasture. You can ride them--and take your pick for your mount when you come back. That's all. Road from Upham goes straight west through the mountains. Once you pass the summit you see your own country."

"Got you," said Johnny.

He went hotfoot to the wagon, grabbed a tin washbasin, held it under the water-barrel faucet and made a spluttering toilet--first man, since he had not rolled his bed.

The bobtail rode off at a laughing gallop. Daylight grew. The horse herd drew near with a soft drumming of trotting feet in the sand. Johnny rustled tools from the stacked tin plates and cups; he stabbed a mighty beefsteak with his iron fork; he added hot sour-dough biscuit, a big spoonful of hot canned corn; he poured himself a cup of hot black coffee, sat down on one of his own feet in the sand, and became a busy man.

Others joined that business. The last guard came in; the chattering circle round the fire grew with surprising swiftness. Each, as he finished, carried cup, plate and iron cutlery to the huge dishpan by the chuck box, turned his night horse loose, and strode off to the horse herd, making a noose in his rope. They made a circle round the big horse herd, a rope from each to each by way of a corral on three sides of it; night wrangler and day wrangler, mounted, holding down the fourth side. Grumbling dayherders caught their horses, saddled with miraculous swiftness and departed to take over the herd. The bobtail was back before the roping out of horses was completed. While the bobtail roped out their horses, Johnny and the two wranglers lured out the four big brown mules for the chuck wagon and the two small brown mules for the bed wagon, tied them to convenient soapweeds and hung a nose bag full of corn on each willing brown head. Last of all the horse wrangler caught his horse. The night wrangler was to ride the bed wagon, so he needed no horse.

The circle of men melted away from about the horse herd; there was a swift saddling, with occasional tumult of a bucking rebel; the horse herd grazed quietly away; the wranglers went to breakfast; even as they squatted cross-legged by the fire the last horse was saddled, the Bar Cross outfit was off to eastward to begin the day's drive, half a dozen horses pitching enthusiastically, cheered by ironical encouragement and advice bestowed on their riders. The sun would not be up for half an hour yet. Forty men had dressed, rolled their beds, eaten, roped out their day's horses in the half light from a dodging mob of four hundred head, saddled and started. Fifty minutes had passed since the first call of beds. The day herd was a mile away, grazing down the long road to Preisser Lake; at the chuck box the cook made a prodigious clatter of dish washing.

The Bar Cross had shipped the north drive of steers from Engle; the wagon had then wandered southward for sixty miles to Fort Selden, there to begin the south work in a series of long zigzags across the broad plain. This was the morrow after that day on which Charlie See had ridden to Garfield.

The wagon was halfway home to Engle now; camped on the central run-off of the desert drainage system, at the northmost of the chain of shallow wet-weather lakes--known as Red Lakes--lying east and south from Point of Rocks Hills. Elsewhere these had been considerable hills; ten or fifteen miles square of steepish sugar loaves, semi-independent, with wide straits of grassy plain winding between; but here, dumped down in the center of the plain, they seemed pathetically insignificant and paltry against the background of mighty hill, Timber Mountain black in the west, San Andreas gleaming monstrous against the rising sun.

Theoretically, the Jornada was fifty miles wide here; in reality it was much wider; in seeming it was twice as wide. From Red Lakes as a center you looked up an interminable dazzle of slope to the San Andreas, up and up over a broken bench country to Timber Mountain, the black base of it high above the level of Point o' Rocks at its highest summit; and toward the north looked up and up and up again along a smoother and gentler slope ending in a blank nothingness, against which the eye strained vainly.

Johnny sipped another cup of coffee with the wranglers; he smoked a cigarette; he put on fresh clothing from his bed; he took his gun from his bed and buckled the belt loosely at his waist. His toilet completed, he rolled his bed. By this time the wranglers had breakfasted.

They piled the bed rolls high on the bed wagon and roped them tight for safe riding; they harnessed and hitched the two small mules. The night wrangler tied the reins to the dashboard and climbed to the top of the stacked bedding.

"You see that these mules get started, will you, Pat? I'm going to sleep. They'll tag along after the chuck wagon if you'll start 'em once," said the night wrangler. Discipline did not allow the night wrangler a name. He stretched out luxuriously, his broad hat over his face.

Johnny and Pat--Pat was the horse wrangler--hitched the four mules to the chuck wagon, after which Pat rounded up his scattered charges and drove them down to the lake for water.

All this time the red-head cook had been stowing away his housekeeping, exactly three times as fast as you would expect three men to do it. A good cook, a clean cook, swiftest of all cooks, Enriquez--also despot and holy terror as a side line. Henry was the human hangnail. It is a curious thing that all round-up cooks are cranks; a fact which favors reflection. If it be found that cooking and ferocity stand in the relation of cause to effect, a new light is thrown on an old question.

The last Dutch oven was stowed away, the lid of the chuck box snapped shut and locked. Johnny tossed the few remaining beds up to the cook.

"Do we fill the barrel here, Henry?"

"No. Dees water muddy. Preisser Lake she am deep and clean. De company ees buil' a dam dere, yes. Han' me dees lines. You Mag! Jake! Rattle yo' hocks!"

With creaking of harness and groaning of axle, the chuck wagon led off on a grass-grown road winding away to the northwest, a faint track used only by the round-up; travel kept to the old Santa Fé trail, to the west, beyond the railroad. Johnny started the other team. Unguided, the bed wagon jounced and bumped over grassy hummocks until it reached the old road and turned in contentedly at the tail of the chuck wagon. The sleeping wrangler mumbled, rolled precariously on his high lurching bed, and settled back to sleep.

Johnny laughed and rode ahead to help Pat. They drove the horses in a wide detour round the slow-grazing day herd. But the chuck wagon held the right of way over everything; when it came to pass the herd an hour or two later, it would be for the herd to swerve aside.

The sun was high and hot now; Preisser Hill, a thin long shadow, rose dim above the plain; Upham tower and tank loomed high and spectral, ahead and at the left.

"How do I get from Upham to the river, Pat? I'm new to this country."

"Wagon road due west to MacCleod's Pass."

"Can't see any pass from here."

"Naw. You slip into fold between the hills, and twist round like a figure three. Then you come to a big open park and MacCleod's Tank. Three draws run down from the park to the river. 'Pache cañon, the biggest, runs north to nowhere; Redgate, on the left, twists round to Garfield. Wagon road goes down Redgate. And Deadman Draw, in between, bears due west and heap down, short and sweet. Riding?"

"Yep. Hillsboro. The middle draw will be the one for me, then."

By ten o'clock they watered the horse herd at Preisser Lake; the wagons toiled far behind. Half a mile away they picked the camp site, with a little ridge for wind-break, soapweeds to tie night horses to, wood handy, and a nearby valley to be a bed ground for the herd; a valley wide, open, free from brush, gully or dog holes.

They dragged up a great pile of mesquite roots and built a fire; Pat went to watch his horses and Johnny returned to the lake. Henry drove the wagon into the lake, hub deep; Johnny stood on the hub and dipped buckets of water, which he handed up for the cook to pour into the barrel.

While these two filled the barrel the grumbling night wrangler drove on to the fire; when the slow chuck wagon trundled up, the night-hawk had unharnessed his span of mules, spread his roll in the cool shade under the bed wagon, and was already asleep. The cook tossed down the odd beds, handed down to Johnny certain pots, pans, ovens; he jumped down--slap, snap, clatter, flash!--the ovens were on the fire, the chuck box open, flour in the bread pan; Henry was at his profession, mixing bread on the table made by the open lid of the chuck box, upheld by a hinged leg which fell into place as the lid tilted down.

Johnny unharnessed; he unrolled a tarp which wrapped a quarter of beef, and hung the beef on the big brake; he filled the ten-gallon coffee kettle and took it to the fire.

"Henry," he said cautiously, "can you let me have some cold bread and meat--enough for night and morning? I'm for Hillsboro. Goin' to make a dry camp beyond the river somewhere. Hillsboro's too far and Garfield not far enough. So I don't want to stay at the settlements to-night. I'll lay out and stake my horse, I reckon. Got to find the John Cross wagon to-morrow, and it'll take me all my time--so I don't want to wait for dinner."

"Humph!" With a single motion Henry flirted a shovelful of glowing coals from the fire; a second motion twisted a small meat oven into place over those coals. A big spoonful of lard followed. "Rustle a can and boil you some coffee. Open can tomatoes; pour 'em in a plate. Use can. Ground coffee in box--top shelf. I'll have bread done for you when coffee boils!"

While he spoke his hands were busy. He dragged from the chuck box a dishpan full of steaks, cut the night before. With a brisk slap he spread a mighty steak on the chuck box lid, sprinkled it with salt, swept it through the flour in his bread pan with precisely the wrist-twisting motion of a man stropping a razor, and spread the steak in the hissing lard.

"Cook you another bimeby for night," he grunted, and emptied his sour-dough sponge into the bread pan. A snappy cook, Henry; on occasion he had built dinner for thirty men in thirty minutes, by the watch, from the time the wagon stopped--bread, coffee, steak and fried potatoes--steak and potatoes made ready for cooking the night before, of course. Henry had not known he was being timed, either; he was that kind of a cook.

Johnny gave thanks and ate; he rolled a substantial lunch in a clean flour sack and tied it in his slicker behind the saddle. He rode to the horse herd; Pat rounded up the horses and Johnny snared his Twilight horse for the trip. Twilight was a _grullo_; that is to say, he was precisely the color of a Maltese cat--a sleek velvet slaty-blue; a graceful, half-wild creature, dainty muzzled, clean legged as a deer. Pat held Twilight by bit and bridle and made soothing statements to him while Johnny saddled. Johnny slid into the saddle, there was a brief hair-stirring session of bucking; then Twilight sneezed cheerfully and set off on a businesslike trot. Johnny waved good-by, and turned across the gray plain toward Upham. Looking back, he saw the van of the day herd just showing up, a blur in the southeast.

Six miles brought him to Upham--side track, section house, low station, windmill tower and tank; there was a deep well here. He crossed the old white scar of the Santa Fé trail, broad, deep worn, little used and half forgotten. A new and narrow road turned here at right angles to the old trail and led ruler-straight to the west. Johnny followed this climbing road, riding softly; bands of cattle stirred uneasily and made off to left or right in frantic run or shuffling trot. The road curved once only, close to the hills, to round the head of a rock-walled, deep, narrow gash, square and straight and sheer, reaching away toward Rincon, paralleling the course of the mountains. No soft water-washed curves marked that grim gash; here the earth crust had cracked and fallen apart; for twenty miles that gray crack made an impassable barrier; between here and the bare low hills was a No Man's Land.

Midway of the twisting pass Johnny came to a gate in a drift fence strung from bluff to bluff; here was a frontier of the Bar Cross country. He passed the outpost hills and came out to a rolling open park, a big square corral of cedar pickets, an earthen dam, a deep five-acre tank of water. About this tank two or three hundred head of cattle basked comfortably in the warm sun, most of them lying down. They were gentle cattle; Johnny rode slowly among them without stirring up excitement. "River cattle--nester cattle," said Johnny. There were many brands, few of which he had seen before, though he had heard of most of them.