Part 5

Today, Lucas--on his sleek little cow-horse, Topo--was riding along the river road leading to the rancho; but not today would he rope the old blaze-face. There were others to be broken. Halfway from the bridge he met little Nicolás, who worked for the señor, and passed him with a pleasant “Buenos dias!” without stopping. The boy had been his good amigo since the time he got him away from the maddened steer that would have gored him to death. There was nothing ’Colás would not do for his loved Lucas. But the older man cared not to stop and talk to him today, as was his custom; for he was gravely thinking of the little dead ’Stacia, and rode on. A hundred yards farther, and he heard the clatter of a horse’s hoofs behind him, and Nicolás calling:

“Lucas! Lucas!”

He turned the rein on Topo’s neck, and waited till the boy came. In the pleasant, warm October sunlight he waited, while Nicolás told him that which would always make him shiver and feel cold when afterward he should remember that half-hour in the stillness and sunshine of the river road. He waited, even after Nicolás (frightened at having dared to tell his friend) had gone.

The señor and Carmelita! It was the truth--Nicolás would not lie. The truth; for the boy had listened behind the high fence of weather-beaten boards, and had heard them talk together. He, and the little stream that gurgled and laughed all day, had heard how they--the señor and Carmelita--would go away to the north when the month should end. For many months they two had loved--the Señor Metcalf and the wife of Lucas; had loved before Lucas had made her his wife--ay! even before the little ’Stacia had come. And the little ’Stacia was the señor’s---- Ah, Lucas would not say it of the dead pobrecita! For she was his--Lucas’s--by right of his love for her. Poor little Anastacia! And but that the little one would have been a trouble to the Americano, they--the woman and the man--would have gone away together before; but he would not have it so. Now that the little one was no longer to trouble them, he would take the mother and go away to the new rancho he had just bought far over on the other side of the mountains.

“Go!”--said Lucas, when the boy had finished telling all he had overheard--“Go and tell the señor that I go now to the corral to ride the roan stallion. And--’Colás, give to me thy riata for today.”

* * * * *

Lucas had driven the horses into one of the corrals. Alone there he had lassoed the old blaze-face; and then had driven the others out. Unaided, he had tied the old stallion down. As he lay there viciously biting and trying to strike out with his hind feet, Lucas had fastened a halter on his head and had drawn a riata (sixty feet long, and strong as the thews of a lion) tight about him just back of the forelegs. Twice he had passed it about the heaving girth of the old roan, whose reeking body was muddy with sweat and the grime and dust of the corral. The knots were tied securely and well. The rope would not break. Had he not made it himself from the hide of an old toro? From jaw-piece to jaw-piece of the halter he drew his crimson silk handkerchief, bandaging the eyes that gleamed red under swollen and skinned lids. Then, cautiously, Lucas unbound the four hoofs that had been tied together. The horse did not attempt to move, though he was consumed by a rage against his captor that was fiendish--the fury of a wild beast that has never yet been conquered.

Lucas struck him across the ribs with the end of the rope he was holding. The big roan head was lifted from the ground a second and then let fall, as he squealed savagely. Again the rope made a hollow sound against the heaving sides. Again the maddened horse squealed. When the rope struck the third time, he gathered himself together uncertainly--hesitated--struggled an instant--staggered to his feet, and stood quivering in every muscle of his great body. His legs shook under him; and his head--with the bandaged eyes--moved from side to side unsteadily.

Then Lucas wound the halter-rope--which was heavy and a long one--around the center-post of the corral where they were standing.

As he finished, he heard someone singing; the voice coming nearer and nearer. A man’s voice it was, full and rich, caroling a love song, the sound mingling with that of clattering hoofs.

Lucas, stooping, picked up the riata belonging to Nicolás. He was carefully re-coiling it when Guy Metcalf, riding up to the enclosure, looked down into the corral.

“Hello, Lucas! ‘Going to have some fun with the old roan,’ are you? Well, you’re the boy to ride him. ‘Haven’t got the saddle on yet, hey?’ Hold on a minute---- Soon as I tie, I’ll be with you!”

Lucas had not spoken, neither had he raised his head. He went to where little Topo was standing. Shaking the noose into place by a turn or two of the wrist, while the long loop dragged at his heels through the dust, he put his foot in the stirrup and swung himself into the saddle. He glanced at the gate--he ran the noose out yet a little more. Then he began to swing it slowly in easy, long sweeps above his head while he waited.

The gate opened and Metcalf came in. He turned and carefully fastened the gate behind him. He was a third of the way across the corral when their eyes met.

Then--with its serpent hiss of warning--the circling riata, snake-like, shot out, fastening its coils about him. And Topo, the little cow-horse trained to such work, wheeled at the touch of the spur as the turns of the rope fastened themselves about the horn of the saddle, and the man--furrowing the hoof-powdered dust of the corral--was dragged to the heels of the wild stallion. Lucas, glancing hastily at the face, earth-scraped and smeared and the full lips that were bleeding under their fringe of gold, saw that--though insensible for a moment from the quick jerk given the rope--the blue eyes of the man were opening. Lucas swung himself out of the saddle--leaving Topo to hold taut the riata. Then he began the work of binding the doomed Americano. When he had done, to the doubled rope of braided rawhide that was about the roan stallion, he made Carmelita’s lover fast with the riata he had taken from Nicolás. He removed it slowly from the man’s neck (the señor should not have his eyes closed too quickly to the valley through which he would pass!) and he put it about the body, under the arms. Lucas was lingering now over his work like one engaged in some pleasant occupation.

The halter-rope was then unknotted, and the turns unwound from the center-post. Next, he pulled the crimson handkerchief from the horse’s eyes--shouted--and shook his hat at him!

Maddened, terrified, and with the dragging thing at his heels, the four-footed fury fought man, and earth, and air about him like the very demon that he was till he came to the gate that Lucas had set wide for him, and he saw again the waves of sage and sand hills (little waves of sweet-scented sage) that rippled away to the mountains he knew. Out there was liberty; out there was the free life of old; and there he could get rid of the thing at his heels that--with all his kicking, and rearing, and plunging--still dragged at the end of the rope.

Out through the wide set gate he passed, mad with an awful rage, and as with the wings of the wind. On, and on he swept; marking a trail through the sand with his burden. Faster and faster, and growing dim to the sight of the man who stood grim and motionless at the gate of the corral. Away! away to those far-lying mountains that are breakers on the beach of blue skyland!

A SHEPHERD OF THE SILENT WASTES

“To be hung. To be hung by the neck until dead.”

Over and over I say it to myself as I sit here in my room in the hotel, trying to think connectedly of the events which have led to the culmination of this awful thing that, in so short a time, is to deprive me of life.

At eleven o’clock I am to die; to go out of the world of sunshine and azure seas, of hills and vales of living green, of the sweet breath of wild flowers and fruit bloom, of light and laughter and the music of Life, to----what? Where? How far does the Soul go? What follows that awful moment of final dissolution?

At eleven o’clock I shall know; for I must die. There is no hope, no help; though my hand has never been raised against mortal man or woman--never have I taken a human life.

At the stroke of the hour a great crowd will stand in the prison yard, and gape at the scaffold, and see the drop fall, and--fascinated and frowning--gaze with straining eyes at the Thing dangling at the end of a hempen rope. A Soul will go out into immeasurable space. A purple mark on my throat will tell the story of death by strangulation. Two bodies will lie stark and dead tonight--his and mine. His will be laid in the pine box that belongs to the dishonored dead; while mine will be housed in rosewood, and satin, and silver.

You do not understand?

Listen, let me tell you! Let me go back to the first time we ever met--he and I.

After college days were over, I left the Atlantic coast and all that Life there meant to me, and came out to the West of the sagebrush, and the whirlwinds, and the little horned toads. And there in the wide wastes where there is nothing but the immensity of space and the everlasting quiet of the desert, I went into business for myself. Business there? Oh, yes! for out there where men go mad or die, cattle and sheep may thrive. I, who loved Life and the association of bright minds, and everything that such companionship gives, invested all I had (and little enough it was!) in a business of which I knew nothing, except that those men who went there with a determination to stick to the work till success should find them, brought away bags full of gold--all they could carry--as they came back into the world they had known before their self-banishment.

So I, too, went there, and bought hundreds of sheep--bleating--blear-eyed, stupid creatures that they are! I, essentially a man of cities and of people, began a strange, new life there, becoming care-taker of the flocks myself.

A lonely life? Yes; but remember there was money to be made in sheep-raising in the gray wastes; and I was willing to forego, for a time, all that civilization could give. So I dulled my recollections of the old life and the things that were dear to me, and went to work with a will in caring for the dusty, bleating, aimlessly-moving sheep. I wanted to be rich. Not for the sake of riches, but to be independent of the toil of bread-winning. I longed with all my soul to have money, that I might gratify my old desires for travel away to the far ends of the earth. All my life I had dreamed of the day I was to turn my face to those old lands far away, which would be new lands to me. So I was glad to sacrifice myself for a few years in the monstrous stillness of the gray plains so that I might the sooner be free to go where I would.

Friends tried to dissuade me from the isolated life. They declared I was of a temperament that could not stand the strain of the awful quiet there--the eternal silence broken only by some lone coyote’s yelp, or the always “Baa! Baa!” of the sheep. They told me that men before my time had gone stark mad--that I, too, would lose my mind. I laughed at them, and went my way; yet, in truth, there was many a day through the long years I lived there, when I felt myself near to madness as I watched the slow-moving, dust-powdered woolly backs go drifting across the landscape as a gray fog drifts in from the sea. It seemed the desert was the emptier by reason of the sheep being there, for nothing else moved. Never a sign of life but the sheep; never a sound but the everlasting “Baa! Baa! Baa!” Oh! I tell you I was very near to madness then, and many another man in my place would have broken under the tension. But not I. I was strong because I was growing rich. I made money. I took it eastward to the sea, and watched the ships go out. It was a fine thing to see the great waste of waters move, as the desert waste never had. There was the sea, and beyond lay far lands! Still, I said to myself:

“No; not yet will I go. I will wait yet a little longer. I will wait until I hold so much gold in my hands that I need never return--need never again look upon the desert and its ways.”

So--though I watched the ships sail away to waiting lands beyond--the time was not yet ripe for me to go. Back to the money-making a little longer--back for a while to the stupid, staring-eyed sheep--then a final good-bye to the desert’s awful emptiness, and that never-ceasing sound that is worse than silence--the bleating of the flocks!

* * * * *

It was on one of these trips to the Atlantic coast that I saw, for the first time, him of the Half-a-Soul.

The hour was late afternoon of a hot mid-summer day. The sun was red as blood and seemed quadrupled in size where it hung on the horizon with its silent warning of another terrible day on the morrow. Block-pavements and cobbles radiated heat, and the sidewalks burned my feet painfully as I stepped on their scorching surfaces coming out of my friend Burnham’s office. The hot air stifled me, and I flinched at the dazzling light. Then I stepped in with the throng, and in a moment more was part of the great surging mass of heat-burdened humanity. Drifting with the pulsating stream, I was for the time listlessly indifferent to what might be coming except that I longed for the night, and for darkness. It might not, probably would not, bring any welcome cool breeze, but at least in the shadows of the night there would be a respite from the torturing white glare that was now reflected from every sun-absorbing brick, or square of granite or stone. I was drifting along the great current of Broadway life when----

* * * * *

There was a sudden clutching at my heart--a tension on the muscles that was an acute pain--a reeling of the brain--and I found myself gazing eagerly into two eyes that as eagerly gazed back into mine. Dark eyes they were, smoldering with evil passions and the light of all things that are bad. The eyes of a man I had never known--had never seen; yet between whom and myself I felt existed a kinship stronger than any tie that my life had hitherto admitted. For one instant I saw those strange black eyes, blazing and baleful, the densely black hair worn rather long, the silky mustache brushed up from the corners of the mouth, the gleam of the sharp white teeth under a lifted lip, the smooth heavy eyebrows slightly curving upward at the outer edges, giving the face the expression we give to the pictures we make of Satan. These I saw. Then he was lost in the crowd.

Where had I seen him before that these details should all seem so familiar? I knew (and my blood chilled as I confessed it to myself) that in all my life I had never seen or known him in the way I had seen and known others. And, more, I knew that we were linked by some strange, unknown, unnamed, unnatural tie. It was as though a hand gloved in steel had clutched my heart in a strangling grip as he moved past. I gasped for breath, staggered, caught myself, and--staggering again--fell forward on the pavement.

“Sunstroke,” they said. “Overcome by the heat.”

* * * * *

And then----

Long afterward I saw him again.

I was traveling in far lands. Going over from Stamboul to Pera I stood on the Galata bridge watching the great flood of living, pulsing human life--those people of many races.

There was a fresh breeze from the North that day, and it set dancing the caiques and barcas where they threaded their way among the big ferry-boats and ships of many strange sails, and all the craft of summer seas. There was a sparkle on the Bosphorus under the golden sunshine and a gleam on the Golden Horn. A violet-hued haze hung over the wide expanse, and through it one could see the repeated graces of mosque and minaret, the Seven Towers and the rounded whiteness of Santa Sophia. Higher, there was the green of laurel and lime, of rose-tree and shrubbery in profusion--terrace upon terrace--and now and again darker shadows made by the foliage of cypress or pine. All the morning I had reveled in Nature’s great color scheme; had feasted eye and sense on the amethyst, and emerald, and sapphire of water, and sky and shore. And then I went to the Galata bridge.

There I stood and watched that medley of races moving by. Arab and Ethiopian, Moslem and Jew; the garb of modern European civilization, and the flowing robes of the East; Kurds, Cossacks and Armenians; the gaudy red fez and the white turban of the Turk; dogs lean and sneaking-eyed; other eyes that looked out from under the folds of a yashmak. And always the babel of voices speaking many tongues. Greeks and Albanians; the flowing mantle of Bedouins and the Tartar in sheepskins. Ebbing and flowing--ebbing and flowing, the restless human tide at the great Gateway of the East.

As I stood looking and listening, there came again without warning that clutching at my heartstrings--that sharp pain in my left side--that same dizzying whirl of thoughts--that sickening fear of something (I knew not what) which I could not control; and out of the flowing tide of faces I saw one not a stranger--he whom I did not know. His eyes held mine again; and in that moment something seemed to tell me that he was my everlasting curse. Through him would come things dread and evil; from him there was no escape. I looked long--my eyes starting in their sockets. I gasped--caught at the air--and lost consciousness.

* * * * *

When I recovered myself I was sitting in a little café whither a young lad had assisted me. I gave him a few piasters and told him to leave me. He took them, said:

“Pek eyi!” and went away.

Left alone at the café table, after motioning the attendant also away, I sat and pondered. Where would this haunting dread end? The basilisk eyes I so loathed had borne me a message which I could not yet translate. Not yet. But he would pass me again some day, and once more his eyes would speak a message. What was it? Something evil, I knew. But what?

So I went away; went away from the Galata bridge; away from Pera and Stamboul.

* * * * *

And then----

Then from the deck of a dahabeeyeh on the Nile!

I was with the Burnhams. We were eight in the party. Lucille Burnham (Joe’s sister) and I were betrothed. Betrothed after months and months of playing at love, and the making and unmaking of lovers’ quarrels. Each had thought the other meant nothing more than what makes for an idler’s pastime, until drifting on the current of old Nilus we read the true love in each other’s heart, and the story (old as Egypt is old) was told over again there where it was told centuries before by men and women who loved in the land of the lotus.

Joe and his wife, and the Merrills (brother and sister), Colonel Lamar and his pretty daughter, and my dear girl and I. What a happy, care-free party we were! My most precious dreams were coming true; and now I went up and down the earth’s highways as I willed.

Under the awning that day I was lying at Lucille’s feet, half-asleep, half-awake and wholly happy. I remember how, just there above Luxor, I noticed two women on the river bank, the dull-blue dress of the one, and the other carrying a water-skin to be filled. A boy, naked and brown-skinned, sprawled in the sand. Moving--slow moving with the current--we came drifting out of that vast land that is old as Time itself reckons age.

Then between my vision and the banks beginning the level which reached far and away to the hills beyond, came the shadow of a lateen sail not our own. A dahabeeyeh was slipping by, going against the current. I raised myself on my elbow, and there--unfathomable, dark as Erebus, and gazing out of deep sockets--were the eyes of a man who drew me to him with a power I was unable to resist; a power fearful as----

The thin, sneering lips seemed to whisper the word “Brother!” and “Brother----” I whispered back.

* * * * *

The sight of that face under the shadow of the lateen sail--like a shadow cast by a carrion bird where it slowly moves above you in the desert--coming as it did, in the midst of my days of love and new-found joy, left me unnerved and wrecked both mentally and physically.

“Come, come! this won’t do,” said Joe; “I am afraid you are going to have the fever!”

“It is nothing,” I declared, shrinking from his scrutiny, “I----I have these attacks sometimes.”

“Who is he? What is he?” I asked myself the question hourly. And there in the silence of those nights under the stars of the East, while we breathed the soft winds blowing across the sands the Pharaohs had trod, the answer came to me:

He was my other Half-Self--the twin half of my own Soul. This brother of mine--this being for whom I had a loathing deep and intense--was one in whom there lived an incomplete Soul (a half that was evil through and through) and mine was the other half. I was beginning now to understand. We had been sent into this world with but one Soul between us; and to me had been apportioned the good. But evil or good--good and evil--we were henceforth to be inseparable in our fate.

But always I cried out in my helpless, hopeless agony, “Yet why--why--why?” It is the cry of the Soul from the first day of creation.

I turned my back on the far East, and set my face towards America.

* * * * *

Then----

Then I started on a trip through California and old Mexico. My health was broken. My marriage with Lucille was postponed.

On the Nevada desert our train was side-tracked early one morning to allow the passing of the eastbound express which was late. A vast level plain stretched its weary way in every direction. Only the twin lines of steel and the dark-red section house showed that the White Man’s footsteps had ever found their way into the stillness of the dreary plains.

We had fifteen minutes to wait. I got out with others and walked up and down the wind-blown track, smoking my cigar and spinning pebbles, which I picked up from the road-bed, at a jack-rabbit in the sagebrush across the way. The wind made a mournful sound through the telegraph wires, but a wild canary sang sweetly from the top of a tall greasewood--sang as if to drown the wind’s dirge. Dull grays were about us; and we were hemmed in by mountains rugged, and rough, and dull gray, with here and there touches of dull reds and browns. On their very tops patches of snow lay, far--far up on the heights. Miles down the valley we could see the coming train. A few minutes later the conductor called to us “All aboard!” and I swung myself up on the steps of the last sleeping-car as we began to move slowly down toward the western end of the switch.

There was a roar and a clatter--a flash of faces at the windows--a rush of wind and dust whirled up by the whirling wheels--and, as the Eastern Express shot by, I saw (on the rear platform of the last car) him, between whom and myself a Soul was shared.

The conductor stepped up on the platform where I stood, and caught me by the arm as I reeled.

“The high altitude,” he said, “makes a good many folks get dizzy. You’d better go inside and sit down.”

* * * * *

Then again.