Part 7

"I mustn't do this. You didn't ask me. And you didn't pay me. And I'm only giving you a lesson, anyway. Now just watch and listen." She mixed the cards all up together and began pulling out combinations at random, reading them in hasty rhymes as she showed them to Augusta.

"Back to back says speedy meeting--Three eights, change of states--Two jacks and a king, a constable bring--Two kings and a jack, an old friend back--" And so on through twenty flying combinations, while Augusta watched the quick brown fingers and listened to the broken rhyming, fascinated, yet feeling that she would very much rather not touch the cards at all. She knew, of course, that she would never think of using them in the way the gypsy girl had suggested. Nevertheless, she was afraid of them. She was sharply conscious that the girl had stopped telling what she saw in the reading because she had thought that she saw something unpleasant, and something connected with Jimmie.

Augusta knew that she could never believe in any of this. It was just the patter of a trade. The combinations suggested the rhymes that went with them. That was all. But, just the same, and although she was very grateful for the help that the girl had given her, Augusta was wishing that Mary Donahue would take her cards and go home.

"Now shuffle the cards and see it for yourself," Mary Donahue wheedled. "You've got it in you--I can see it in your eyes. And when you have that, you can see things even if you don't know the names of the cards. And if you haven't got it, you could study them all your life--I've known people that did--and never know boo."

Augusta took the cards with evident reluctance, but began to shuffle them with an ease and sureness that caught Wardwell's attention instantly. He remembered that Rose Wilding had had an unexplained horror of cards. She had never permitted even the most innocent game of cards in her house. It had been a difficult and, at times, an irksome restriction. He knew that more than once she had lost good boarders on account of it. But Rose Wilding had persisted in her strong way, with few words, giving neither excuse nor explanation. So he was fairly certain that Augusta had never before held in her hands a pack of cards.

Now he watched with sharp interest Augusta's deft, natural handling of the cards, and, somehow, he did not like it.

With a feeling of growing excitement Augusta laid out the piles as she had seen the other girl do, and without wishing to do so found herself naming over the piles as she went around. She had not thought that she would remember how they ran. But she found that she could not forget if she tried. And it seemed that she did not want to try.

Augusta turned up the first of the piles and looked blankly at them. Her hands were cool and firm, but she felt herself trembling inwardly with a queer, creeping surge of blood. And she drew a quick breath of relief when she saw that the cards meant nothing to her. They were just a jumble of red and black and white, just pictures and spots. She wondered at herself for being excited about it.

"Don't try to read anything from them," the gypsy voice at her ear commanded. "Just don't think of anything, and just keep staring steady and steady until your eyes cross."

Wardwell, watching, felt an irritated impulse to interfere. He hated to see Augusta's delicately sensitized mind submitted to these gypsy tricks. But, man-like, he was afraid of appearing ridiculous if he made any kind of a fuss. For, after all, it was only a little bit of fooling.

Augusta sat limp and stared indifferently down at the cards as she had been told to do. Her eyes fell out of focus and she continued to stare while the spots and pictures moved about in a soothing, restful sort of blur that lured her mind farther and farther away from the grip of conscious thought.

Without any wish to do so, and without any thought, she began to speak.

"_To my house_: there is laughter and fear, coming together and in pairs. I must never, never share my house with any third one. There is water laughing by it all the day long in the sunshine, and a bleak wind whistling past in the night.

"_To myself_: I am starting upon a long, long journey. I shall not rest and my feet will be hurrying always, always. For the end of my journey is hidden in the heart of The Hills of Desire.

"_To the one I love best_: there is a dark woman, tall and straight, and--"

A quick, visible tremor ran over her, and as though it had touched a spring in her body she sprang into the air like a wounded animal. As she came to her feet, groping and tottering, her head cleared and she saw Wardwell and ran to him.

"What was it, dear?" he said soothingly, petting her head as she hid her face against his breast. "Don't think of it, darling. We both know that it's nothing but nonsense. We won't tell our fortunes, sweetheart. We'll just live them."

Augusta did not say anything. But after a little, feeling the security of Jimmie's arms about her, she turned and looked defiantly, resentfully at Mary Donahue who was unconcernedly picking up the cards and the board from the ground where Augusta's sudden move had scattered them. Then Augusta was aware of the gypsy veil about her head. She tore it off and threw it at the stooping girl.

She was instantly sorry and apologetic. She ran over and picking it up she handed it to Mary Donahue, who had pretended, very plausibly, not to notice.

Mary Donahue took it and wrapped up the bundle as she had brought it from the wagon. Then she went to put the bundle back where it belonged, at the same time announcing that she must be getting home.

With a final admonition to them not to poke holes in the roof of the wagon, she shook hands with Wardwell, kissed Augusta, and stepped away across the fields toward a trolley line that would take her to New York.

They never saw her again.

In the morning Jimmie saw Augusta struggling with the harness which Mary Donahue had so easily slung under the wagon. He was minded to let her wrestle with it for a while. For, with a sick man's querulousness he was sometimes irritated by the ease and capability with which Augusta got things done. It was a constant challenge to his own frequent periods of helplessness. But he could not be unkind. He came dutifully over to help her.

"We'll have to do this thing in the orthodox way, Augusta, or that horse will laugh himself to death at us."

"I know what goes on first," Augusta defended herself against his implications. "But I don't know the name of it."

"Never mind," said Jimmie. "Go over and get the horse by the mane. Talk to him. Divert his attention. I'm nervous while he watches me fooling about with his necktie and suspenders. What the deuce is his name, anyhow? In another minute I'll be calling him 'it,' like a baby."

"Why, Jimmie, I forgot to ask!" Augusta confessed blankly, feeling herself convicted of a serious neglect. "Whatever shall we do?"

"Christen him."

"But what good will that do? He won't know that it's his name."

"Tell him."

"But, how?"

"How did he find out his name in the first place?"

"I don't know--Oh yes," Augusta brightened, "You just shake the oats at him, or whatever it is for little horses, and you say Dan, Dan, or whatever it is. And that's his name!"

"But suppose it was Alice? Nonsense!" Jimmie argued contrarily. "He'd think it was the name of the oats. Just as if you said Bran, Bran! or Force, Force! or Shredded--"

"Now Jimmie, please stop. And be serious and think. You _know_ we've got to call him _something_. Why just think! If anyone should stop us and ask us what was our horse's name. And we'd have to say that we didn't know. And then they'd tell somebody else. And somebody else would stop us and ask us. And then we'd be stopped and suspected and arrested and maybe put in a jail somewhere."

"_I_ wouldn't," said Jimmie basely. "_I_ didn't steal the horse."

He stooped quickly as though he expected something to be thrown at his head. But as his eye caught something on the collar he straightened up exultantly.

"It's all right!" he exclaimed eagerly. "We're safe! Here's his name on the collar."

"Oh, on his collar! I didn't know they did that for horses. Let me see."

"There it is, plain as his nose."

"Donahue," Augusta read. "But that isn't _his_ name. That's his father's name--I mean, Mary's father's name--I mean, his owner's name."

"No," said Jimmie gravely. "I'm afraid you don't understand at all. You see, gypsies are that way. The oldest horse--You will admit that this is the oldest horse--the oldest horse is always called by the family name. You understand, it's just like in England. You know they never think of calling the son and heir by any boy's name. He is not Billie or Teddy or anything like that. He's simply called by the name of the house. He's Kingsmead, or Duncastle, or Ravenwood--So strong, you know, and effective."

"So," he waved his hand by way of introduction, "we have with us, 'Donahue.'"

Augusta crinkled up her little nose. She knew that Jimmie was quite capable of cooking up the whole explanation on the instant. But, as she had no way of convicting him just now, she accepted the introduction and called out sweetly to the horse who was grazing unconcernedly at the end of his tie-rope:

"Donahue!"

He lifted his head. So it was settled. His name was Donahue.

Jimmie glowed with virtuous triumph as he led "Donahue" over to the wagon, slung on the harness and backed him between the shafts.

But as Augusta finally climbed into the wagon she noticed a name painted on the front boxing under their seat. While Jimmie went through the wholly superlative business of guiding Donahue out to the open road--the horse would have done much better if let have his own head--Augusta wriggled skilfully back into the body of the wagon, to search for further proofs of Jimmie's duplicity. Evidently she found plenty of them, for when she got back into her place her face was red with exertion and suppressed anger. Jimmie gave his entire attention to the road ahead, driving ostentatiously with both hands as though he were in the finish of a crowded race--Donahue would not have left his sober, middle-of-the-road walk for anything less than a roaring motor truck.

Augusta broke out laughing hysterically. Jimmie preserved a dignified, inquiring silence, while Donahue almost broke into a trot.

"The wagon's name is Donahue!" Augusta wailed shrilly between peals of laughter. "Just like the first son in England! And the cook stove is named Donahue. And they call the skillet Donahue. And the name of your bunk is Donahue!"

"'Bunk?'" Jimmie queried dejectedly. "Was it all bunk? It sounded all right while I--"

"I don't mean slang. I mean the thing you slept on."

"I didn't sleep," said Jimmie, springing nimbly to a diversion of the attack. "I only touched the thing in three spots. And I've got corns in all three places."

"Well, you snored," said Augusta cruelly.

"Never!" Jimmie averred with solemn unction. "I never snore."

"Very good," Augusta agreed pleasantly. "I suppose you'll say it was Donahue."

"This comes of being married," Jimmie remarked warningly to the Hudson river. "Never before did any lady tell me to my blushing face that I snored like a horse."

So they bickered happily through the June morning, careless of where the end of the road might be, the feeling of dependence upon each other and of utter independence of all other things wrapping them together in a nearness that was so sweet and so friendly tender that it almost hurt.

And here at the end of their beautiful first day alone Wardwell sat watching his little lady furtively toss a pinch of the spilled salt over her shoulder. He knew the superstition about spilled salt. Augusta was taking no chances. But he was wondering--as he probably would continue to wonder during the length of his life--at how little he knew of the real thoughts that went on back of the beautiful blue eyes that looked out so open and unafraid at him and at all the world.

Was she a child that had not learned to know fear? Or was she a woman full grown, so wise in love and strength that she could look down all fear? He guessed that she was both of these things. For she threw salt over her shoulder. And she looked out of those deep blue eyes into the blood-red sunset on the opposite hills across the wide river, and he saw that there was in those eyes a light as brave and unafraid as fire itself. The light is never afraid of the darkness, for while the light lives there is no dark.

The day had been quite unseasonably hot and there were storm clouds piling up like boulders on the tops of the lower Catskills, away to the northwest. The river lay below them, dry-eyed, still, mistless, with a great, terrifying gash of red shot across its bosom where lay the path to the dying sun.

A breathless, heavy hush lay over the valley. Shutting their eyes to the motion of the distant boats, they could have believed that the world had suddenly died around them, leaving them alone and forgotten. There was not a sound, not a ripple of air, not even the whirring of a bat or the cheep of a bird. Wardwell, over sensitive and craving for the homely cheery noises of things moving, stirred uneasily.

But Augusta, child though she was of shut in city walls, had in her enough of the primitive to know that there was a physical cause for the hush that had fallen upon nature. She could feel a storm coming.

How would Jimmie stand it? She had thought of this when she was planning--if indeed she had really done any planning--to make this adventure. But it was a fact that she had thought only vaguely of warm rain beating harmlessly against the tight roof of the wagon, of falling dreamily off to sleep in the dark listening to the soft patter and drip of rain among the trees.

Now she looked fearfully at Jimmie, and at the frail walls of their home. And she trembled as she thought of the security and comfort from which she had brought him to this, where she had but a bit of dripping canvas to put between him and exposure. Already in the process of mothering him she had come to think of him as a helpless child. And vague, terrifying memories played upon her, of things heard and imagined, of great trees crashing down in forests, of roaring winds and furious, driving rain beating down to death the little wild things of the woods. Now she realized, for the first time it seemed, that Jimmie's life hung perilously on the care that she could give him, that even a wetting, such as, for herself, she could laugh at, would perhaps cost him more than he could gain by days and days in the open.

With a determined shrug she threw off the impression and rising began to rattle the dishes.

"Jimmie," she said lightly "take the pail from under the wagon and go out to the spring for water. I've let the fire die down and now I'll have to build it up again, for nothing but boiling water will take the fat off these dishes."

"You should have camped near a hot water spring."

"There isn't any such thing."

"Sure there is; there's Arkansas Hot Springs--Why didn't you camp there?--And Virginia Hot Spring, and San Antone, and--"

"Take Donahue with you, if you must talk. He'll listen, if you give him a drink."

"Donahue," he said sadly as he unhooked the pail from under the wagon, "we be brothers in calumny. She blackens your character. She belittles my powers of charming converse. Let us retire to the unfrequented spring and there we shall mingle our bitter tears with the sweet waters."

Donahue saw the pail being taken from its place, knew that the pail was going where there was water, and followed without comment.

Mary Donahue had indicated for Augusta the spring and the camping place. A high wall of hill stood up above the road on the right and out of the hill came the spring. On the river side of the road a fringe of trees screened the little flat promontory in the centre of which the wagon stood. Occasionally the purring of a swiftly driven automobile on the hard road within a few yards of them told them that the world still ran its hustling way, but they were as effectually hidden and private as if they had been securely housed in the middle of some vast estate of their own. And when the dishes were washed and everything put in shape for the night, Augusta brought blankets and they sat perched out on the very edge of the cliff looking down to where the "Central" trains thundered along some two hundred feet directly below them, and out across the broad, dark expanse of the river.

The Albany boat came gliding up the silent path of the river, her tiered, warmly lighted decks looking like a series of summer porches, the steady, even motion of the boat giving to the watchers on the hill the pleasant feeling that she was standing and that they were being gently carried past her.

The searchlight from the boat playing along the hill bank caught the figures of the boy and girl struck out in enormous silhouettes above the rim of the cliff and a merry cheer came up from the boat.

"Go on and mind your own business," scolded Jimmie. "We are no mooning young couple. And we are no subject for flash-light pictures. We are sober married folks, with our home in the background and a respectable horse in the middle distance."

The flashlight held them for a moment and then swung off overhead and went to peer into the windows of a moving train on the "West Shore." The band on the now receding boat broke into an old fashioned waltz tune which, sweetened and mellowed by the distance and the echoing chording of the hills, came up to them with the softness of a gentle, kindly dream of forgotten people.

The breaking contour of the river soon hid the lights of the boat, and Jimmie and Augusta were left to the great, solemn thinking silences about them, and to themselves, very content.

In the stark blackness of the closed wagon, in the middle of the night, Augusta found herself standing on the floor. She did not know how, or why, she had gotten out of the little string hammock that was her bed. But now she was shocked into full wakefulness. The wagon seemed to be moving and she gave a little scream of terror as she thought of the cliff and the terrible broken fall to the tracks below.

But the roar of the wind and swish of driven rain drowned her scream and she realized that what she thought was movement was just the swaying of the wagon body on its springs.

Reassured, and recovering quickly from her first fright, she stood swaying in the middle of the floor, her hand clutching the wooden side of Jimmie's bunk. He was sleeping quietly, very quietly it seemed, and Augusta had to lean her ear down almost to his lips to catch the stir of his breathing.

The chill of the water laden air caught her lightly clad body and she shivered as her hands went groping over Jimmie's bedding to see that he was all covered and dry. The tugging of the wind at the canvas threatened her now, not with the fear that it might overturn the wagon or drive it over the cliff but that it might rip a hole somewhere and drench Jimmie.

Again she thought with trembling of the safe refuge of solid walls, of the friendly comfort of feeling that people were near at hand to help if there were need, and a wave of homesick loneliness, a sickening fear of destitution and homelessness, swept over her.

The storm driving high across the chasm of the river struck full and mercilessly at the wagon exposed on the tip of the cliff. Sheets of rain came whipping down the wind, tearing at the canvas and threatening every instant to strip it from the frames. The wind went snapping and howling by like some hungry, angry animal, defeated and driven off for the moment, but sure to come and threaten again. Peals of thunder rolled and reverberated against the rocks, coming every moment nearer and more terrifying as the centre of the storm swept down the river. Augusta straightened up and stood there, it seemed for hours, her eyes staring wide and fascinated, waiting for and cringing under each successive stroke of lighting as it came ripping down through the storm, lighting the black interior of the wagon with a ghastly glow. At last, when it seemed that if she faced another flash of the horrid light she must surely go mad, she sank down to her knees upon the cold floor and buried her eyes deep in the pillow beside Jimmie's head. She wanted to wake him, to creep into his arms and be held, for she was horribly frightened. But he was warm and safe as he was and she felt that she must not disturb him.

After a little she remembered that she must not do things like this. She must be sensible and get back into the warmth of her blankets. She was shivering and chattering with cold and fright. And she knew that she must take no risks of making herself ill. She rose obediently to the telling of her own good sense and went groping for her hammock. But she felt that she must look outside. If she could only once see the solid world outside and know with her eyes that it was standing still and unmoved while her own crazy shelter rocked and swayed she could feel safer.

She poked a little hole between the curtains at the back of the wagon, for the wind was driving dead at the front, and peeped out. A flash of lightning showed her Donahue, the mis-named, the sturdy, the patient, standing unmoved and uncomplaining in the lee of the wagon. Her heart gave a bound of pity and compunction. She had forgotten him entirely. She had not even thought of his being out there in the storm. He might have walked away, she thought, and found some shed or shelter for himself. Instead, he stood there, dumb and faithful. Impulsively she put her hand out into the rain towards him, and she was thrilled with a sudden feeling of comfort and help as she felt a cold wet nose come up and nuzzle in her palm.

She did not know that the love which came to her in that moment for the big, ungainly, faithful horse would one day spring the trap of life for her and Jimmie. But even if she had known, I think she would still have preferred to love him.

She crept contentedly back into bed. And although the wind howled and the rain lashed mercilessly and she watched nervously all through the night, yet she had none of the panic fear of her early fright. That figure of patient, dumb strength and dependableness standing out there in the storm had given her a courage that would not be easily shaken again.

Towards morning the wind went down, but the rain continued to fall in a steady drizzling mist that ushered in a gray, cold, depressing morning. To Augusta it seemed interminable hours before it was time to get up and feed Donahue. She thought seriously of making hot coffee for him, but gave up the idea, not because she was afraid of Jimmie's ridicule but because she was not sure that Donahue would understand.

Jimmie slept heavily and awoke feverish and coughing horribly. Augusta could think of nothing to do but to get away from this place. It would have seemed more reasonable to stay quiet at least until the rain stopped, for here standing still she could keep the wagon tight and dry inside. But she could not help feeling that they would be better anywhere than here. Besides, the commissariat was in trouble. When she opened the little chest in the side of the wagon she found that the four bottles of milk which she had bought the evening before for Jimmie's ration of today had all been curdled by the storm. That settled the matter. Jimmie could not have his breakfast until she had found a farmhouse or a country store where she could buy milk. They must move on in the rain.

She bundled out cheerily in rain coat and rubbers to assay the doubtful business of hitching the horse alone, for she would not think of letting Jimmie out in the rain.