Part 12

"I suppose you think I'm mad?" he said patiently, with the patience of physical weariness. McCloud did not look at him.

"It was a mad thing to do, Hal, my boy."

"You won't understand it, John; you couldn't."

"I thought it was agreed that you were to wait until I could determine whether the Government would let me adopt her; make her my ward, my child."

"It would have been too late. She sent me word: 'Will you come for me or must I kill myself?'"

"A momentary desperation is very far from the accomplishment of such an _act_ in a young and healthy child."

"I couldn't let it happen. I couldn't take the risk. And the thought of those claws of Appah's. Well, I couldn't see straight. I couldn't leave her to a fate like that! I couldn't!"

"You want her for yourself," said the elder man with the nearest approach to sarcasm of which he was capable.

"I don't deny it. I'm mad with love for her. That's the truth."

"You took her away by force. They'll take her back by force. It's a bad business, Hal, my boy. There is only one way you can keep her now."

"What's that?"

"Why, as your wife."

As Hal made no immediate response to this, the other turned and looked at him for the first time, as he added quietly: "You must have thought of that?"

"Yes, I've thought of it," said the boy brokenly as his hands clutched each other. Then he rose and walked away as if he would physically avoid that thought. "Yes, I've thought of it."

The clergyman's grave face grew graver. It wasn't often any one saw a stern look in those gentle eyes.

"You are not prepared to go as far as that?"

"Oh, you don't understand," groaned the boy; "I wish I could make her my wife. I wish I could!"

"And the mother of your children?"

"Yes, yes; I'd make her mine if I could--if I could!"

"Ah, I see," said the other with comprehension and with a dreary little smile.

"I have a wife in England." And the lad sank down on the remnants of a broken harrow.

McCloud looked at the bent figure sadly.

"You never told me."

"What was the use?"

McCloud shook his head over this world-old excuse of sinners. It is so much easier to let things drift, to avoid, to trust to events or the mistakes or acts of others. Hal wasn't the first to leave the unsolved problem with the vague, unexpressed, shadowy hope that he would come back to it and somehow find it solved, find the answer staring him in the face.

"And your wife?" probed the inquisitor. "What of her?"

"As to my wife, my conscience is clear, John--absolutely clear." This was said with such boyish frankness and ingenuousness as to bring an almost worldly smile to the face of John McCloud.

"Are _you_ a fair judge of that?"

"I try to be. I think I am. I married Edith because I loved the woman I thought she was. She never loved me. She married me because I was the most available man coming into a title. She was a beautiful woman. Perhaps my vanity was flattered. It was a bad beginning. I won't accuse her or excuse myself. Perhaps she would have been different, married to a different man, or to a man she loved. When I saw what a mess we'd made of it, I put up a fairly decent fight to make the best of it, but she wouldn't let me, or it wasn't possible. Anyway, our marriage ended in being degrading to us both. We were going to hell fast, both of us. I ought to have freed myself before I left England. I owed it to myself."

Though he made some effort to avoid it, this was said with some of the bitterness of the past.

"A divorce?"

The way John McCloud said this was a trumpet call to battle, and Hal accepted the challenge. He was at his best in a fight, but it wasn't ground of his choosing, and he felt at a disadvantage with an antagonist like John McCloud, for the boy knew he had no claims to being super-man.

"A divorce? Yes. Why not? You're a big man, John McCloud. You don't believe that God has joined all those whom the alderman, has joined, all those whom ambition, or pride, or avarice, or lust, or even honest mistakes have joined. You don't believe that the words of a church service sanctify marriage? Love makes marriage a sacrament, mutual love."

John McCloud in his strenuous life had gone up into some exceeding high mountains where he had communed with his own soul and with his God, and many, very many things which to the average clergyman seem fixed and absolute, because he has never been higher than the roof of his own church or an office building, seemed to McCloud small and mutable.

"My son," he said with kindly tolerance, "marriage is the most important voluntary act of a man's life, and divorce ought to be like death--inevitable."

"I have a right to be free," and Hal's voice vibrated with passion.

"You mean you'd _like_ to be free; but your desire no longer involves yourself alone; it involves others, perhaps the unborn. You cannot trust to your own inclinations. Are you willing and are you able to take your feelings, emotions, desires to God, lay them bare before Him and ask _Him_ for the answer?"

"I don't think of God as a cruel and omnipotent _Don't_."

"That is the test, my lad."

"You're a queer man, John. Up where you are you can look into the next world, but it must be awfully cold up there. You mustn't ask me to live up to your standard. I couldn't do it. You're not like me, a man with passions."

"Oh, my boy, my dear boy," interrupted the other with amused patience; "you don't know what you are saying. I know what you are suffering. I have loved too, not so violently perhaps as you; perhaps as sincerely--at any rate with all my soul--and I ran away--ran away from happiness, because I would not inflict an invalid on the woman I loved, nor make her the mother of sickly children; and so for this world we said good-by, and I am here alone--alone--except for God."

Hal was very still. It meant a great deal to him that John McCloud had taken him behind the curtain. He realized that it was a supreme test of the other's affection, and he felt ashamed that he should have taken for granted so much that was childish in assumption and offensive in its condescension. In the presence of the other man's sorrows his own seemed dwarfed and commonplace. When his voice was steady he said: "Then you know; yes, you know." And McCloud understood what he would have liked to say but couldn't.

"Does Wah-na-gi know?" he asked relentlessly.

"No, I couldn't tell her; but I will."

Swiftly it passed through McCloud's thought: "Is this a house built upon sand? Would this lad run straight? Would he stand the test? Would he swerve under pressure? Or was he one of those infirm of purpose, who take cycles of infinity to develop into a man--God's man?"

"My boy," he said gently; "you must make a calm, relentless examination of your own soul. You must not forget that you are a white man. You have Indian blood in your veins, it is true, but you were born and bred a gentleman. Have you thought of that?"

"Gentleman?" said the boy bitterly. "I'm a half-breed. I've never been allowed to forget it."

It was the first time McCloud had ever heard him use the odious term, and the expression of his face, the tone of his voice, opened up a vision of a journey made tragic with the burden of the cross and the crown of thorns. He knew for the first time what this boy had suffered and it filled his soul with pity. But he saw in the bitter past only a sign and prophecy for the future. Here was the wound. The boy had bared it and placed in his hand the knife. He must use it.

"Then you know, no one better than you, that there is nothing more cruel in a cruel world than race prejudice."

"And nothing more cowardly," flashed back the quivering victim.

"I'm not speaking for myself. You knew that. You know I love this young woman. She is a fine soul--brave, patient, serene. To me she is a child of the living God. Theoretically we are all equal before the All-Father. Theoretically we are all His children; but we live in a world of prejudice and passion, of huge implacable ignorance of the simplest things of divine Love. Is it wise to arouse that ignorance, challenge its ferocity, live face to face with it, and force your wife and children to live face to face with it? Is it wise to subject them to commiseration and that odious sense of superiority which is one unending crucifixion? Do you want them to suffer as you have suffered?"

In his effort to hold up before this youth the eternal truth, to make him bow the stubborn neck under the yoke of duty, John McCloud was as implacable as Savonarola, and Hal lowered his head before the blast. The sick man shook off his limitations, forgot his weakness, rose up out of the trammels of the flesh and stood over the boy, the preacher, the priest, the prophet, aroused and potential, and all the pent-up passion of the saver of souls, the martyr, and fanatic, burst into flame.

"Race prejudice? It's the curse of the world," he cried. "In all ages men have been busy inventing reasons for being better than their fellow men. The Jews called themselves the 'Chosen People' in order to exterminate the un-chosen, and now the Russians persecute and murder the Jews. The Turks massacre the Armenians. The Germans would '_eliminate_' the Poles. The Anglo-Saxon is a mongrel who thinks his pure blood gives him the right to make the rest of the world buy the goods he can't sell at home. The amiable and enlightened Dr. Johnson once said of us: 'I am willing to love all mankind except _Americans_--I would burn and destroy them.' And we Americans, the most mixed of mixtures! We are proud of our enlightenment, and yet we call the Italian a 'dago,' the Mexican a 'greaser,' the Chinaman a 'chink.' We excuse our treatment of the Indian by inventing the phrase: 'The only good Indian is the dead Indian.' And recently we burned twenty churches and school-houses belonging to the negroes in order to teach them respect for law and order. It is nineteen hundred years since the Son of God brought 'peace on earth and good-will to men,' and still we have the gospel of Hate."

McCloud's fine eyes flamed and two bright scarlet spots burned in his cheeks.

"Perhaps," said Hal, rising under the torrent of the other's eloquence; "perhaps I can help show the world that mankind is superior to any race."

Swift as the swoop of the eagle came back: "Then you must be willing to be a martyr. Your Indian mother was a victim of this and your own life is shadowed by it. Are you going to repeat _her_ tragedy?" And he pointed to the rock that mutely stood before them and bore its silent witness to the sorrow of the broken heart that lay beneath it.

"God forbid!" ejaculated the boy, tears springing to his eyes as the figure of his mother loomed dimly out of childhood's memories. "God forbid! Poor little mother! I think the secret of her tragedy was that my father did not love his little Indian wife. I love Wah-na-gi."

The boy's sincerity was unmistakable. McCloud hurried on that he might not be swerved from his purpose.

"You love Wah-na-gi; yes, now; but what of the future? Do you dare look into the future? You are heir to a title and estates. You will eventually take up your obligations to an honored name and a glorious civilization."

Hal straightened up and showed fight. Hitherto McCloud had called to the lover, to his chivalry, to the potential father. It was an appeal he could not ignore, that lifted him up and swept him along with it. Now it was to his own interests. It was an anticlimax. The trained controversialist had made a mistake. Titles, estates, an honored name, civilization! The Shepherd of the sheep had put on the garments of the man of the world and they didn't fit. To the youth, in the throes of a mighty passion, they sounded hollow and empty. Hal had never discussed his past, his life, with any one. How was the preacher to know that he was walking among the graves of things already buried? Titles, estates, an honored name, civilization! It probably never occurred to Samson to pause over his duties to Philistine society, and to hesitate over the beauty of the temple where he was on exhibition. Hal started to rise, to throw off this incubus sought to be put upon him, to tear it to pieces; but the hated things had done something for him, taught him restraint, the capacity to measure the other man's point of view, and so he sat down again before he spoke and struggled to keep his voice even, though it vibrated with scorn.

"I hate the whole thing! Why should I be the victim of conditions which are no part of my consent or my will? I don't want the title! I don't want a place in their silly, rotten world. I couldn't live in it or be a part of it. I'll take the ranch and make my own way, and I claim the right to do it. I want my own life and the freedom to live it. I gave the best that was in me to civilization, and civilization kicked me out, robbed me of a career, made my home a hell, and so I say--to hell with civilization."

McCloud was surprised. He was an emotional man too, and he thrilled to the sweep of this violence. He would have liked to take the boy in his arms and cry: "Oh, Absalom, my son, my son!" Instead, he held him away, shifted his own ground, and sought the joints of the other's harness. Hal's allusion to his home seemed to offer an opening.

"This wife in London, this unhappy home--perhaps it is an appointed barrier!"

"Barriers are surmounted--swept away!"

Hal was standing now and he looked audacious and puissant. He looked the master of his own destiny. The man who had passed through the fire, whose proud hopes and ambitions lay in broken heaps where the car of destiny had passed, looked at him in admiration.

"Yes, barriers are swept away; but only by those who humbly and patiently kneel down before them. Perhaps Infinite Wisdom stays your hand, to keep you from bringing sorrow to this helpless Indian woman whom you love, and to her children."

"Never!" was the answer, in the pride and strength of youth, in the consciousness of capacity, in the joy of a child of battle, the offspring of warriors, who had sung their triumph under torture. It was a wide gulf that separated this fierce courage from the white-faced saint who had learned in patience and humility.

"It's a feeble-minded man who keeps picking at the irrevocable," was McCloud's reply, more to himself than to the savage before him. "Suppose some day you grew tired of all this and wanted to go back and be a part of the world of convention, of fashion and culture?"

Hal had no argument to make to this, but it had no appeal, no meaning. He only made a gesture of negation and impatience.

"Oh, my boy," said McCloud helplessly; "you're a rebel."

"Well, America was made by rebels," said the other with a triumphant smile.

The minister put his hands on the boy's shoulders and looked into his eyes as David might have done to his wayward son.

"Well, God bless you for a fine, glorious, dangerous rebel."

The sun was up, a new day was born, all things seemed possible as Big Bill hove into sight.

"Say, Boss," he drawled; "McShay's out here with the toughest looking gang of ruffians----"

"Let 'em in, Bill," cried Hal joyously, his eyes dancing with the excitement of his conflict with McCloud.

"Turn 'em loose on the ranch?" said the foreman doubtfully. "That outfit? Gee whiz!"

"May need 'em, Bill."

"Most worse'n Injins," grumbled the old man as he went away, doubt, hesitation, protest in the stoop and shrug of his huge bulk.

Bill's advent had brought them both back to earth, to the business in hand.

McCloud spoke first.

"If they would let you keep this woman you could not. You are too near to her. You must go away."

"Now?" said the radiant rebel; "when she has come to me? When she is mine? Mine?"

"You must go away," said the other, relentless as Fate.

"She's mine. I'll take her and hold her against the world."

"No, you'll hold her against _yourself_."

Hal sank feebly down on the bench and clasped his hands in a helpless way.

"I can't. I can't give her up! I can't."

McCloud came to him and put his hand on him.

"Hal, my son," he said affectionately; "I've sometimes wondered why I had to give up my work and come out here to die. Perhaps it was to be your living conscience. To this woman you seem divinely appointed, like the Moquitch Mountains. I've seen her soul go out of herself and stand expectant before you with outstretched arms. Her temperament, her environment, the very strength and weakness of her character put her in your hands. You know that without stopping to question or think she has laid herself at your feet. Are you going to listen to the passion that desires, that demands, that takes, or is your soul going to rise up within you crowned and glorified?"

Hal buried his face in his hands and groaned. He looked about for some way of escape, but there stood the weak sick man, inevitable and unanswerable. He felt bewildered but resentful. Why shouldn't he be happy? Why should he be expected to give up his one chance, the only chance he had ever had, would ever have?

"We'll go away into the mountains," he exclaimed, "away from your artificial rules and regulations! We'll go away."

"You can't go where obligation will not meet you."

"Why should I let _you_ decide for me what my obligations are?" he said rudely, fiercely.

"Now you're a savage, but you've got white blood in your veins, blood that has bowed the knee to duty, bowed the back to burdens, bowed the head to God. Now I thank heaven you're a half-breed. You couldn't go back to the blanket savage if you wanted to. You've got to live up to your higher self. You have assumed obligations to these two women. You can't avoid the consequences. The heart of this Indian woman has gone out to you because you are part of a social order to which she aspires, that represents to her her better self. You can't drag her down and back to the blanket Indian. She would hate you. If you are brutal I must say brutal things to you. You can't force her to apologize to her children, to tell them they have no standing before the law and before society; that they face the inevitable social order with an inevitable stain. You can't flee from obligation. No man liveth to himself nor for himself. And this other woman--you have in the past assumed obligations to her. They have become irksome. You say you have a right to be free. Well, then, you must prove it. I don't believe in divorce, but that is a matter between a man and his Maker. Happiness, permanent happiness, is worth fighting for, worth waiting for. If you stay here you will steal it and pay the penalty of the thief, a penalty that will fall heaviest upon those you love best in the world. Again I say, you couldn't keep this woman if they would let you. She must go away or you must."

McCloud looked at the lad, silent but unconvinced, and then he lifted up his heart in secret prayer that God would keep this soul unspoiled.

*CHAPTER XV*

"Howd'y, Parson! Hello, boy!"

The diversion made by the appearance of McShay was a most welcome one to the youth who felt "baffled and beaten and blown about by the winds of the wilderness of doubt." Hal felt helpless in the hands of McCloud with his metaphysical verities, so fixed, unalterable, and unanswerable, but McShay carried with him something that was tangible and workable. Shadows fled before him. Subtleties disappeared before the sun of his genial optimism, or materialized in rain or snow or ice, assumed a form that could be reckoned with. The presence of the man of action was an enormous relief to Hal. McShay's intuitions were quick and he no longer spoke to the clergyman of his health, but he swept him with a searching glance and took his hand gently in his iron grip as he would have taken the hand of a woman.

"You sent me word you needed help," he said to Hal.

"Yes."

"Things is awful dull over our way; wouldn't like to miss anything. I brought over a few of the boys. It's Wah-na-gi; ain't it?"

McShay was adaptable. It was perhaps a large part of his success in life. He could be vulgar and common with the vulgar and common, or he could follow those who went up into the mountains and looked into a far country, and whether with those who grovelled or those who stood on the heights, each kind felt he was one of them, and there was no hypocrisy in this. He understood and sympathized with both. There was nothing offensive in the way he said:

"It's Wah-na-gi."

"How did you know it was Wah-na-gi?"

"Why, son," and a broad smile spread over the cowman's face, "everybody on the range knows you're sweet on Wah-na-gi. Presumably, too, you was not unaware that the amiable Ladd had threatened to shoot you on sight, and that the gentle Appah has promised himself your scalp as a Christmas present!"

"I knew I wasn't exactly popular at the Agency just now."

"And so you just went over and took her? Well, it was a fool thing to do; but it's kind of appealin,' Parson, it's appealin'. What was that young feller's name--none of your _Eastern_ tenderfeet--the young feller that come out of the West?"

"Rode out of the West?" corrected McCloud with a twinkle in his eye. "That hero was a Scotchman, Mike."

"Couldn't be, Parson; couldn't be. The Scotchman will risk his neck for religion or a pinch of change, but not for the ladies. No, I'll bet he was on the border, and mostly on our side. But this feller here!" and he put his hand on the shoulder of the boy with unmistakable liking; "an Englishman, too! Beats all, don't it? Anyway he loves a fight. Must have a dash of the Irish in him somewhere, even if it's the damn Protestant variety; savin' your presence, Parson. Sure, I took to him when he put it all over Ladd, and when I count a man my friend, I ain't over-nice as to his failin's. Say, it's too bad he's an Englishman, ain't it? He's saved by the Injin in him, I guess. That's the truth."

"We were just discussing race prejudice," said McCloud.

"Don't believe in it. Nuthin' to it," ejaculated the Irishman warmly.

"'A mon's a mon for a' that,' eh, McShay?" suggested the countryman of Burns with a smile.

"No use for narrer-minded prejudice, but the _English--excuse me_!" Mike's face and body united in a convulsion that was a three-volume exegesis of the traditional Irish point of view.

"Sure, it's a toss up," he continued. "The English rule Ireland. The Scotch rule England. The Irish rule America, and to hell with the rest of it--it ain't worth rulin'." The preacher laughed heartily. "You know, Hal, me boy," continued Mike, "the parson's human like the rest of us. He don't look like a duck as has swallowed a croquet ball just because a little language slips out now and then. For a gospel-foreman he's aces! Well, as I was sayin' when you interrupted me, we ain't come over to fight, we ain't a-looking fer a fight, but if there's goin' to be one, we'd hate to miss it. Does it look encouragin'?'

"I'm afraid there's going to be trouble over Wah-na-gi," sighed the preacher. "I have made a formal application to the Secretary of the Interior to adopt her, but----"

He did not say it, and Hal was grateful. Having expressed himself without reservation to the boy, he had the wisdom to know when to let the good seed alone. A worldly twinkle lit up McShay's eyes as he said:

"You've made formal application to the Secretary of the Interior. It's a noble move, Parson, and you'll hear from it about the time Wah-na-gi is somebody's great-grandmother, and in the meantime you don't suppose these amiable feller-citizens is goin' to sit down and twirl their thumbs."

"Any news from Washington, Mike?" asked Hal.