Part 4

Bayard Keith did not feel himself to be a hero. Such men as he are never vainglorious; and Keith had no thought of questioning Life’s way of spelling “duty” as he saw it written. He was being loyal for the sake of loyalty, a sacrifice for love’s own sake than which no man can make greater, for he knew that his martyrdom would be in forever being misjudged by the woman for whose dear sake it was done. He would be misjudged, of course, by Sidney Williston, and by all the world, for that matter; but for them he did not care. He was simply doing what he thought was right that he himself should do--for Kathryn Verrill’s sake. Her love had been denied him. Now he must even forfeit her respect. All for love’s sake. None must ever know why he had done this hideous thing. They must be made to think that he--like others--had yielded to a mad love for the bad, beautiful woman. In his very silence under condemnation lay security for Kathryn Verrill’s happiness. Only he himself would ever know how great would be his agony in bearing the load he had undertaken. Oh, if there might be some other way than this! If there could be but some still unthought-of means of escape whereby he could serve his dear lady, and yet be freed from yoking his life with a woman from whom his whole being would revolt. How would he be able through all the years to come--years upon years--to bear his life, with her?

As he walked past the darkened buildings he breathed heavily, each breath indrawn with a sibilant sound, like a badger at bay. Yet he had no thought of turning aside from his self-imposed immolation.

No one was astir in the lower town, save himself and the night watchman. Now and then he passed a dim light burning--here a low-turned burner in store or bank building; there the brighter glow of lamps behind the ground glass of some saloon door. Halfway up the long street leading to the upper town he heard the rumble of an incoming train. Was Number Two on time, after all? Was a pitying Fate taking matters away from him, and into its own hands? Was escape being offered him?

If he hurried--if he ran--he could reach the station in time, but--alone! There would be no time to go back for Gloria Howard. He almost yielded for a moment to the coward’s impulse to shrink from responsibility, but the thought of Kathryn Verrill, waiting by the eastern sea for a message to come from the man she loved, roused him to his better self. He resolutely slackened his pace till the minutes had gone by wherein he could have become a deserter; then he went on up to the station.

“No, that was a freight train that just pulled out,” said the telegraph operator. “Number Two will be here pretty soon, though. Less’n half an hour. She’s made up a little time now.”

Keith went to the office counter and began to write. It was not a long letter, but it told all there was to say:

“Sid: I have wired to your wife to come to you, and I have signed your name. By the time this reaches you she will be on her way here. It will be wiser, of course, for you to assume the sending of the message, and to give her the welcome she will expect. It will be wiser, too--if I may offer suggestions--to travel about with her for a while; to go away from this place, where she certainly would hear of your unfaithfulness should she remain. Then go back with her to your friends, and live out the balance of your life, in the old home, as you ought. I know you will feel I am not a fit one to preach, for I myself am going away tonight, taking Gloria Howard with me. I know, too, how you will look at what I am doing; but I have neither excuses nor explanations to offer.

Bayard Keith.”

That was all.

When he had sealed and directed it, he went to the livery stable and waked up Pete Dudley.

“See here, Pete,” he said, “I want you to do something for me.”

“Sure, Mr. Keith!” said Pete, rubbing his eyes.

“Here’s a letter for Mr. Williston out at our camp in Porcupine Gulch. I want you to take it to him, and take the buckboard, too.”

“All right, I’ll go in the morning.”

“No, no! Listen! Not till day after tomorrow. Wait, let me think---- You’d better wait a day longer----go the next day. Do you understand?”

“I guess I savvy. Not till Friday. Take the letter and the buckboard. Is that the racket?”

“Yes, that’s what I want, Pete. Here! Take them to him without fail on Friday. Good-night, Pete. Good bye!”

Keith walked back to the station and went in the waiting-room, where he sat down. His heart felt as heavy as lead. He had burned all his bridges behind him, and it made his soul sick to contemplate the long vista of the coming years.

As he sat there, the coward hope that she--Gloria--might not come, shot up in his heart, trying to make of him a traitor. He said to himself: “If----if----” Presently he heard the train whistle. He got up and went to the door. He felt he was choking. Daylight was coming fast; day-dawn in the eastern sky. The town, rain-cleansed and freshened, would soon awake and lift its face to the greeting of another morn.

The ticket-office window was shoved up. It was nearing train time.

“Hello, Mr. Keith, going away?”

“Yes, I want a----” he hesitated.

“Where to?”

But Keith did not answer. A ticket? One, or two? If she should not come---- Was Fate----? What was he to do? But, no! Yet he hesitated, while the man at the window waited his reply. Two tickets, or only one? Or not any? Nay, but he must go; and there must be two.

Then the train thundered into the station, and almost at the same moment he heard, through the sound made by the clanging bell, the rustle of a woman’s rich garments. He turned. Gloria Howard stood there, beautiful and eager, panting from her hurried walk.

“Where to?” repeated the man at the window.

“San Francisco--two tickets,” said Keith.

“‘Two,’ did you say?” asked the man, looking up quickly at him and then glancing sideways at the radiant, laughing woman who had taken her place so confidently at Keith’s side.

Keith’s voice did not falter, nor did his eyes fall:

“Two.”

But the telegraph operator smiled to himself as he shoved the tickets across the window sill. To him, Keith was simply “Another one!” So, too, would the world judge him after he was gone.

* * * * *

Bayard Keith was no saint; but as he crossed to the cars in the waxing light of day-dawn, his countenance was transfigured by an indescribable look we do not expect to see--ever--on the face of mortal man.

“For her dear sake!” he whispered softly to himself, as he looked away to the reddening East--to the eastward where “she” was. “For the sake of the woman I love.”

And “greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”

IN NANNA’S PALM

It all happened years ago. Before there was any railroad; even before there were any overland stages crossing the plains. Only the emigrant teams winding slowly down the valley on the road stretching westward.

Some there were, though, that had worked their way back from the Western sea, to stop at those Nevada cañons where there was silver to be had for the delving.

The cañons were beautiful with dashing, dancing streams, and blossoming shrubbery, and thick-leafed trees; and there grew up in the midst of these, tiny towns that called themselves “cities,” where the miners lived who came in with the return tide from the West.

There in one of the busiest, prettiest mining camps on a great mountain’s side, in one of the stone cabins set at the left of the single long street, dwelt Tony and his cousin Bruno--Italians, both. Bruno worked in the mines; but Tony, owning an ox team, hauled loads for the miners to and from the other settlements. A dangerous calling it was in those days, because an Indian in ambush had ever to be watched for when a White Man came down from the cañons to travel alone through the valley.

Tony was willing, however, to take risks. Teaming brought him more money than anything else he could do; and the more he earned, the sooner he could go back to Nanna--to Nanna waiting for him away on the other side of the world.

He and Bruno both loved her--had loved her ever since the days when, long ago, in their childhood, they had played at being lovers down among the fishing boats drawn up on the beach of their beloved Italian home. Black-browed Bruno had then quarreled with him in jealous hatred time and again; but the little Nanna (who loved peace, and to whom both playfellows were dear) would kiss each and say:

“Come! Let us play that you are my twin brothers, and I your only sister!” And so harmony would be restored.

Thus it went on, and at last they were no longer little children, but men who love a woman as men may love. And Bruno’s parents came to the father and mother of Nanna and settled that their children should be man and wife; so in that way Bruno was made glad, and no longer jealous of Tony--poor Tony, who had not a single small coin that he could call his own. Yet it was Tony whom Nanna loved--Tony whose wife she wanted to be. But what can a young girl do when the one she loves is poor, and there is another whom her parents have chosen for her who has a little farm promised him by his father the day he shall bring home the wife they would have him marry? Nanna neither resisted nor rebelled; but only went to Tony who was as helpless as herself, and there against his breast wept her heart out.

It was only when Bruno declared that he was going to America to make a great deal of money (saying that the farm was not enough--that when he and Nanna were married he wanted they should be rich) that a ray of hope shone for Tony.

“I, too, will go to America,” Tony whispered to Nanna, “and perhaps there I also may find a fortune. Then--when I come back--I may marry thee; may I not, little dear one?”

And for answer, the little Nanna lifted her arms to his neck and her lips to his own.

* * * * *

The night before the two men sailed away to the strange, far-off land, Nanna and Tony walked together under the oaks and ilexes.

“Thou wilt miss me, little one, but thou wilt be true, I know. I shall think of thee all the time--every hour. Thou wilt long for me, as I for thee. Thou wilt miss my kisses; is it not so? But I----! Ah, Nanna! Nanna! Here----” And bowing over her hand he pressed kiss after kiss in the upturned little brown palm, closing her fingers tightly upon them as he raised his head and smiled in her eyes.

“There! These I give thee, sweet one, so that when I am gone it shall be that thy Tony’s kisses are with thee, and are thine whenever thou wilt.”

All the morrow, when the ship had sailed away, Nanna lay on her cot up in the little whitewashed bedroom under the eaves, and with lips pressed close upon the palm that Tony’s lips had touched, sobbed her grief out, till she sank into exhausted slumber.

One year; two years; three, came and went. Tony off in America was making money, and soon he could go home and they would be married in spite of her parents or Bruno. The fourth year he wrote her how the sum had grown--it was almost enough. Then she began checking off the months ere he would return to her. Eighteen--sixteen--fourteen--now only twelve months more! A year, and Tony would be with her! Then half that year was gone. Six months, only, to wait! Happy little Nanna! And Tony was not less happy, away off there in his little stone cabin in the mountains, or hauling goods for the miners across the valley. His heart was so full of her that--almost--he forgot to think of the Indians when he was traveling along the road.

“Thou art a fool,” said Bruno to him over and over again. “Thou art a fool, indeed. It is more money--this hauling--yes! But some day--ping!--and it is the arrow of an Indian. Then what good is it, the money? Thou art a fool, I say. As for me, I will work here with the many in the mines.”

Bruno had just said this to him for the hundredth time, as Tony was yoking his oxen for the long journey up the wide valley to the North. And his answer had been as always, that the saints would protect him. Yet, should he not return the thirteenth day, then indeed might Bruno think all was not well with him, and could send some of the men from the mines to go to him. He was not afraid, though. Had not the saints protected him for nearly five years? He was soon to go back to Italy, and (he whispered to himself) to Nanna! So with a light heart, and a laugh on his lip, he went down the cañon beside the oxen, cracking his whip as he warbled a song he and Nanna had sung together when they had played by the boats and among the fishing nets in the long, long ago.

The wagon jolted and rattled on its way down the rocky road to the plain; and Tony’s big, beautiful St. Bernard dog, Bono, followed in the dust sent skyward by the heavy wheels as they came upon the softer earth of the lowlands.

* * * * *

Everyone was Tony’s friend in the little mining town. Therefore everyone was anxious when the thirteenth day came, yet not Tony. With few words (at such times such men do not say much) they selected a dozen from among the town’s bravest and best, and with heavy hearts set out on their journey that was to follow Tony’s trail till they should find him.

Down into the hot valley--a-quiver under the summer heat, over a road of powdered alkali, along the Humboldt’s banks--through mile after mile of sagebrush and greasewood--under the glaring, white sun, they rode two and two. And so riding they spoke seldom.

When they were nearing the place they knew Tony must have reached the third day out (now more than ten days gone) they saw outlined against the blue--high, high in the air--circling spots of black. Dark things that swept with a majesty of motion that was appalling. Round and round, in great curves half a mile wide, they swam through the ether, and dipped and tilted without so much as the quiver of a wing or other motion than that given by their marvelous self-poise; sailing through mid-air as only a vulture can.

They swept and circled over a spot that was awful in its silence under the metallic brightness of the hot August sun. The men looked at each other; looked without speaking--for they understood. So without speech they rode on to the place where the warped irons from the burned wagon lay, and where a gaunt, nearly starved St. Bernard howled over something that had once been his master. He had guarded the dead man through ten hot days--through ten long nights. Bono’s wail sounded long and mournful through the narrow pass where the whistling arrows had found them. Tony had never been neglectful before, and the dog could not understand it.

Alas, poor Tony!

When Bruno went back to Italy that fall he told Nanna that Tony was dead. And Nanna who came of a race more or less stoical in time of stress did not cry out, but simply shut her sorrow up close in her heart where the others could not see. It had been their secret--hers and Tony’s--and they had guarded it well. Henceforth it would be hers alone. So she gave no sign except such as she might for an old playmate’s death.

By and by she married Bruno. What would you? Her father and mother wished it; Bruno loved her; he had money now to provide well for a wife; and there was the little farm that his parents would give him the day when he should bring home his bride. So, after the manner of her kind, she finally yielded to his wooing; and one day they were wed in the little church on the hill where they had both been christened when babies.

She bore him children, and was a good mother--a good wife. She lived to be an old woman, and her hair grew streaked with gray; yet to the last day of her life she had a way of falling asleep with the fingers of her left hand slipped under her cheek, and her lips touching the upturned palm.

It was her one disloyalty to Bruno.

And so it was they found her lying on that morning that she did not waken.

THE VENGEANCE OF LUCAS

The little adobe house stood flush with the street, halfway between the business houses and the residence portion of the town which turned its back on the sand and sage-covered hills that--breaking into gray waves--far off cast themselves on the beach of blue skyland in great breakers of snow-crested mountains.

At the side of the house was a dooryard--so small!--beaten hard and smooth as a floor, and without a tree or a bush. There was no grass even at the edge of the sturdy little stream that ran across the square enclosure, talking all day to the old-faced baby in its high chair under the shake-covered kitchen porch. All day the stream laughed and chattered noisily to the owl-eyed baby, and chuckled and gurgled as it hurried across the yard and burrowed under the weather-bleached boards of the high fence, to find its way along the edge of the street, and so on to the river a quarter of a mile below. But the wee woman-child, owl-eyed and never complaining, sat through the long sunshine hours without one smile on its little old face, and never heeding the stream.

As the days grew hotter, its little thin hands became thinner, and it ate less and less of the boiled arroz and papas the young mother sometimes brought when she came to dip water.

“Of a truth, there is no niña so good as my ’Stacia; she never, never cries! She is no trouble to me at all,” Carmelita would exclaim, and clap her hands at the baby. But the baby only grew rounder eyed as it stared unsmilingly at its mother’s pretty plumpness, and laughing red lips, and big black eyes, whenever she stopped to talk to the little one.

Carmelita--pretty, shallow-pated Carmelita--never stayed long with the tiny ’Stacia, for the baby was so good left alone; and there was always Anton or Luciano and Monico to drop in for a laugh with the young wife of stupid old Lucas; or Josefa coming in for a game of “coyote y gallos.”

It was Lucas who went out to the porch whenever he could spare the time from earning money that he might buy the needed arroz and papas, or the rose-colored dresses he liked to see her wear.

It was for Lucas she said her first word--the only word she had learned yet--“papa!” And she said it, he thought, as if she knew it was a love in no wise different from a father’s love that he gave her, poor little Anastacia, whose father--well, Lucas had never asked Carmelita to tell him. How could he? Poor child, let her keep her secret. Pobre Carmelita! Only sixteen and no mother. And could he--Lucas--see her beaten and abused by that old woman who took the labor of her hands and gave her nothing in return?--could he stand by when he saw the big welts and bruises, and not beg her to let him care for her and the niña?--such a little niña it was, too! Of a verity, he was no longer young; and there was his ugly pock-marked face, to say nothing of the scars the oso had given him that day when he, a youth, had sent his knife to the hilt in the bear that so nearly cost him his life. The scars were horrible to see--horrible! But Carmelita (so young--so pretty!) did not seem to mind; and when the priest came again they were married, so that Carmelita had a husband and the pobrecita a father.

And such a father! How Lucas loved his little ’Stacia! How tender he was with her; how his heart warmed to the touch of her lips and hands! Why, he grew almost jealous of the red-breasted robin that came daily to sit by the edge of her plate and eat arroz with her! He begrudged the bird its touch of the little sticky hand covered with grains of rice which the robin pecked at so fearlessly. And when the sharp bill hurt the tender flesh, how she would scold! She was not his ’Stacia then at all--no, some other baby very different from the solemn little one he knew. There seemed something unearthly in it, and Lucas would feel a sinking of his heart and wish the bird would stay away. It never came when others were there. Only from the shelter of window or doorway did he and the others see the little bright bird-eyes watch--with head aslant--the big black ones; or hear the baby bird-talk between the two. Every day throughout the long, hot summer the robin came to eat from the niña’s plate of rice as she sat in her high chair under the curling shake awning; and all the while she grew more owl-eyed and thin. A good niña, she was, and so little trouble!

One day the robin did not come. That night, through the open windows of the front room, passers-by could see a table covered with a folded sheet. A very small table--it did not need to be large; but the bed had been taken out of the small, mean room to give space to those who came to look at the poor, little, pinched face under a square of pink mosquito bar. There were lighted candles at the head and feet. Moths, flying in and out of the wide open window, fluttered about the flames. The rose-colored dress had been exchanged for one that was white and stiffly starched. Above the wee gray face was a wreath of artificial orange blossoms, but the wasted baby-fingers had been closed upon some natural sprays of lovely white hyacinths. The cloying sweetness of the blossoms mingled with the odor of cigarette smoke coming from the farther corners of the room, and the smell of a flaring kerosene lamp which stood near the window. It flickered uncertainly in the breeze, and alternately lighted or threw into shadow the dark faces clustered about the doorway of the second room. Those who in curiosity lingered for a moment outside the little adobe house could hear voices speaking in the soft language of Spain.

To them who peered within with idle interest, it was “only some Mexican woman’s baby dead.” Tomorrow, in a little white-painted coffin, it would be born down the long street, past the saloons and shops where the idle and the curious would stare at the procession. Over the bridge across the now muddy river they would go to the unfenced graveyard on the bluff, and there the little dead mite of illegitimacy would be lowered into the dust from whence it came. Then each mourner in turn would cast a handful of earth into the open grave, and the clods would rattle dully on the coffin lid. (Ah, pobre, pobre Lucas!) Then they would come away, leaving Carmelita’s baby there underground.

Carmelita herself was now sitting apathetically by the coffin. She dully realized what tomorrow was to be; but she could not understand what this meant. She had cried a little at first, but now her eyes were dry. Still, she was sorry--it had been such a good little baby, and no trouble at all!

“A good niña, and never sick; such a good little ’Stacia!” she murmured. Carmelita felt very sorry for herself.

Outside, in the darkness of the summer night, Lucas sat on the kitchen porch leaning his head against the empty high chair of the pobrecita, and sobbed as if his heart would break.

* * * * *

That had happened in August. Through September, pretty Carmelita cried whenever she remembered what a good baby the little Anastacia had been. Then Josefa began coming to the house again to play “coyote y gallos” with her, so that she forgot to cry so often.

As for Lucas, he worked harder than ever. Though, to be sure, there were only two now to work for where there had been three. With Anton, and Luciano, and Monico, he had been running in wild horses from the mountains; and among others which had fallen to his share was an old blaze-face roan stallion, unmanageable and full of vicious temper. They had been put--these wild ones--in a little pasture on the other side of the river; a pasture in the rancho of Señor Metcalf, the Americano. And the señor, who laughed much and liked fun, had said he wanted to see the sport when Lucas should come to ride the old roan.