Chapter 16

ACCIDENTS WILL HAPPEN

In itself that decision of Garry's to remain a little longer at Thirty-Mile was scarcely significant enough to be called sensational, and yet it proved to be the first of a series of events which, growing more and more sensational as they progressed, finally resulted in the hour for which Steve was biding his time.

Garry entered upon his new duties the following morning in a spirit anything but reassuring to his companion. Up to that time he had made his own industry the butt of much good-natured ridicule, viewing it apparently as a sort of vacation novelty amusing enough while the novelty lasted. But he went from task to task that next day in a methodical, dogged fashion that was farthest of all from amiability. Two or three times Steve, trying to spare him needless effort, attempting to show him how to favor blistered hands and aching back, met with rebuffs so curt that he learned to keep his advice to himself. He knew what end Garry was working to achieve; he would have allowed himself to smile over the thought that the other man would be tired enough, before night came, without trying to make that work any harder, only he did not dare venture that smile.

Times without number there were when Garry's monumental fit of sulks bordered close on the ridiculous, but the needed triviality which would have precipitated the whole fabric to a terra-firma of absurdity failed to materialize. He cursed the rain, cursed it with his fluent precision which already had earned Fat Joe's admiring comment. He complained, querulously, like a half-aged boy, over the treacherous footing which the flooded alder brakes afforded. And once when he had felled a tree and narrowly missed being pinned beneath it, in spite of Steve's quick leap that dragged him aside, he plunged into an incisive diatribe concerning the perversity of inanimate things--a short discussion in many-syllabled words which would have awakened Steve's admiration by its very brilliance, had he not already been fully concerned with the light of triumph which had flared and then died out in Garry's eyes when the hemlock only grazed him.

Now and again Steve saw his lips move and then crook in cynical amusement, and knew that Garry was talking to himself and finding such communion most absorbing. But he waited, outwardly patient at least, nor tried to hurry the issue. He knew the woods; he knew what the silence and solitude could do. For no man endures mutely the spell of the wilderness. He talks, or he goes mad. Put two men on a two-months trail and, be they the worst of enemies, they will still find a topic which each may approach. Trap them for a winter in a snow-buttressed valley where no other man can penetrate and they will have bared jealous secrets before spring sets them free to go again their roads of doubled hatred. And when dusk came--dusk and a fatigue which made it difficult to drag one foot after the other on the homeward journey--Garry had reached the point where he had to speak his thoughts aloud.

The woods were new to that paler, slighter man. He had to talk, but his beginning was circuitous. He had been gazing down at his rain-soaked length, grotesquely thin in the flapping garments borrowed from Steve's wardrobe, to look up at last and smile, wryly.

"I was just thinking," he began. "I was just thinking if they could only see me now--the crowd down at Morrison for instance. They used to gibe me. They called me the immaculate Garry, once. Aren't you a lot heavier than you look?"

Plodding along beside him Steve nodded as though the whole day had been common with just such conversation.

"No. Those clothes were built with an eye to largeness of movement which scarcely insured shape or draping, even upon me."

It was irrelevant, but it was a beginning. And the reference to the crowd at Morrison made Garry's next remark clear.

"Wouldn't it jolt them, if they could see me? I thought of it this morning when I was walking a log without so much as a waver. That phrase relative to walking a chalk-line is weak and inadequate, after a man has tried to work his way along a peeled hemlock. If anyone wants to measure sobriety by word of mouth, there's his standard. It involves the last degree in sure-footedness."

Again Steve bowed his head, but not so immediately this time. For already he realized that this was not to be the opportunity for which he was waiting. And the other man was quick to catch that uncertainty.

"The other evening----" he laughed unpleasantly--"that night when you came back to camp in time to hear of Joe's proposed novelistic effort, I think I mentioned it to you. I'm not sure. But whether I did or not, it was, no doubt, scarcely introduced in the spirit in which I should ask it now. . . . I suppose they have given you a fairly thorough report of my--career, since we were knights bold and ladies fair, haven't they?"

Without waiting for a reply he answered the question himself.

"Of course they have," he exclaimed, "because I recognized your fine hand in Joe's attitude toward me, the very minute I waked up, back a week or so ago, the morning after I'd done my Phil Sheridan stunt from Allison's to your shack. But do you mind telling me what your own opinion is?"

Stephen O'Mara knew they were not going to get far if they followed that lead. There was a challenge in Garry's voice which too closely resembled a snarl.

"Why--no." The pre-occupied note was uppermost in his answer. "I'd not mind at all."

But he offered no more than that.

"Nor the reason why you've been so insistent that I stay on up here?"

"Why not? I've not forgotten my manners, even though I've lived some months in the back-brush!"

No attempt at levity, however, could parry the other's deliberate insolence. Garry worked nearer to what had lain all day behind his bad silence.

"A man is wasting his time trying to reform another man," he vouchsafed, "if that other man has no desire for reformation."

"That is very, very true," Steve agreed with even gravity.

"Unless that man has the desire within himself, he need never waste his time even hoping to come back!"

"I'm forced to admit that there is no room for argument in that, either," said Steve. "Only it has to be more than a desire. It must have become determination."

He hesitated, and the whimsical note crept in and dulled the threatened edge of hardness in his voice.

"I know of a case in point, that happened right here in these woods. One of the finest sportsmen who ever hunted or fished over this country had a favorite guide--Long John LeClaire was his name. In fact, he never went into camp without him, for upward of a score of years, and he claimed there never was a better cook, between here and the border. But Long John had one bad failing. As long as one kept to the timber with him it was plain sailing, but strike a town and it meant a week's delay in sobering that guide up. Town and a spree were synonymous in Long John's mind; and after trying both mental and physical suasion the sportsman I mentioned finally hit upon another plan. He persuaded Long John to take the 'cure'; more than that, he put him on a train himself and saw him off. But there was nothing enthusiastic about John's departure. You see, way down deep in his heart, he was just a little afraid this proposed treatment would be successful.

"He went, but his going was reluctant. And then, a month later he came back again, and, oh, what a difference there was in his return! It took the conductor and two train-men to put him off at the station; they were considerably marked up in the operation. Once safely landed on the platform, however, Long John spread out his feet to steady his wavering body and waved a hand in hearty greeting to the crowd which had assembled to welcome him home. His hat was gone; he had a discolored eye, but the reluctance was gone from his carriage. And he made a speech which for expressive briefness surpasses anything I've ever heard, before or since:

"'There!' he declared his triumph. 'There! And now I guess I've showed 'em no sanatorium could ever cure me!'"

But Garry did not laugh. His smile was mirthlessly sardonic.

"Then why the devil have you tried to keep me up here?"

Any man might well have objected to the manner of that question; many men would have spoken too hastily, forgetting that there are worse ills than those of the body. But Steve was not ready to hit back yet. He was thinking of Miriam Burrell; he lied with skillful smoothness.

"I told you last night," he said. "I need men. And then, too, it's a long time since I've seen you. I've not made so many friends, you know, Garry."

Garrett Devereau would have stopped there, dripping as he was, in the middle of the timber, had not Steve held to his stride. And he must have caught a momentary glimpse of that self which he was exhibiting to his companion, for his next words were a little mollified.

"Perspective is an excellent thing," he murmured. "It's been said before, but I'm repeating it. It's not only illuminating in just the matter of view, but it unsettles one's sense of values, doesn't it? I mean the Bignesses and Smallnesses of things--and creatures. When I went away, or rather when you did, back I don't remember how many years, you were tugging at the bit to be up and at things. That used to perplex me, although you may not have known it; I never really caught your angle or viewpoint. But now that you are in the thick of it I'm puzzled to know whether you find it--well, sufficient in itself."

O'Mara laughed softly over his shoulder.

"Sufficient!" he echoed. "Wouldn't you, if you were fact [Transcriber's note: face?] to face every day with some problem or other that had you stumped? Wouldn't you, if you were playing a game that shifted so rapidly from point to point that it kept you dodging and ducking and swearing to hold your feet?"

Garry drew a deep breath.

"That's what I've been trying to establish in my own mind," he faltered. "I've been thinking perhaps--but, pah!" He spat out a fragment of laughter as though it were bitter to his tongue. "I tried one job--I tried once! I ought to know better than to wonder even, now. And if a man can see no reason for living his life, it's his to quit, if he wants to!"

And then Steve abandoned his air of tolerance; he changed his style of play. The contempt in his retort could not have been more measured, even had it been other than a premeditated thing.

"Quit is the right word," he came back coolly. "I wasn't quite sure until now. You asked me if the others had told me what sort of man you had become. And if silence is affirmation, you had your answer. You inquired concerning my own opinion and I withheld it. Whatever it was doesn't matter now. Maybe I was guilty of bad judgment, but you have set me right."

Each word was tipped with scorn. Again, with deliberate intent, Stephen O'Mara lied.

"And I tell you now that had I been sure you wanted that hemlock to get you, I'd have left you where you stood. The world is all cluttered up with fools, as it is."

It came so quickly that Garry was not immediately aware of the attack. He smiled, covertly.

"Accidents will happen," he feigned a protest.

Abruptly the taller man wheeled, lids a-droop.

"--Fools, and quitters, too," he supplemented, levelly. "Quitters and men who show a streak of yellow that doesn't assay even a little bit of pure gold. A minute ago I gave you one reason for my attempt to keep you here. But I made a bad mistake there, too. It's men I need!"

He couldn't have straightened the other any more quickly had he swung and slapped his face. Garrett Devereau went paper white. They reached the edge of the heavier timber and came out upon the soggy sod of the clearing in the hush which followed that wickedly barbed speech. Steve always stopped there, whenever he came back to the cabin alone. He liked to look up at Joe's light, waiting in the window. And now, a pace or two in the lead, Garry turned back and stared widely into Steve's cold eyes. It had taken heat lightning to clear that brain which had been all day befogged.

"That was frank, and altogether plain," he said. "Joe took it upon himself to hire me, during your absence--the figure mentioned was eighteen a week. Now, quite as frankly, I am admitting his lack of authority."

Dusk comes quickly in the woods; twilight is only the briefest of pauses between daylight and dark. In the half-light as he stood there it would have been very easy to have mistaken Garry Devereau for the man whose clothes he wore. And while they waited, strained and tense, facing each other, a lone sapling between them and the eastern fringe of the clearing swung frantically earthward as if stricken by an invisible hand, and then thrashed upright again. A fragment of green bark flew aloft. They heard the deflected bullet go whining away. Then the tardy bark of a rifle.

It was instant-quick, and yet little quicker than the expression that sped over Garry's features. He turned and faced the thicket from which the report had come; he lifted his chin and opened his arms and laughed aloud. The second time that day Steve reached out and jerked him viciously from his feet. This time the bullet missed the sapling. They felt the air shock of its passage.

There was nothing deliberate nor premeditated in the outburst which Steve loosed upon the man who had gone to his knees beneath the grip of his hands.

"You fool!" he grated. "You crazy-brained madman!"

Garry rose and made as if to dust his knees.

"Poor work," he criticised, easily. "Too hurried--the first shot. There should have been no excuse for a second."

With angry roughness Steve thrust him back into the deeper shadow.

"Wait here!" he commanded.

But Garry was only a step behind him when, a moment later, the former leaned over the spot where that invisible marksman had stood. There were deep imprints in the forest mold--an empty shell upon the leaves. And by that time Steve had regained his grave composure.

"Some idiot of a hunter," he ventured quietly, when he had straightened from a glance at those marks. "One of those enthusiasts who shoot in haste at any rustle in the brush, and investigate at leisure."

Momentarily the intimacy which had existed in other days between them was restored. Garry's answer held no more of antagonism than had Steve's calm comment. He tried to follow the tracks that led into the deeper timber. It was too dark to follow far.

"This is a hunter in a hurry, then," he remarked. "Too much of a hurry, even, to investigate."

"Hungry, and late for supper," suggested Steve. "And we'll be late, ourselves, unless we travel along."

He faced about and started straight across the clearing, and he maintained the lead in spite of Garry's effort to supplant him. Before they reached the door of the cabin reserve that amounted to actual coolness once more cloaked them both. Only once did either of them offer to speak.

"You might do well to vary your costume a little," Garry observed impersonally, "if your nimrod friend who hunts at dusk is going to persist in mistaking you for a deer."

He drank hard that night from the bottle which Fat Joe, in obedience to Steve's command, had left standing upon the shoulder-high shelf--drank first in a self-conscious fashion with a mumbled excuse to Joe that the rainfall had chilled him; then more and more openly, until he forgot that he had ever felt the need of an excuse. Not one of the three men had made a move to go to bed, and before midnight came around Garry's black fit of absorbtion had given way to another mood. Blithely he chafed Fat Joe one minute, blind to that one's sullen reception of his jocularity; the next moment he turned eyes that had long before lost their enmity in a glassier light of goodwill upon Steve, working over a drawing-board at the other end of the table, impatient yet elaborately approving of his industry. And when Steve finally laid aside his work, signifying with a sigh that he had finished, Garry rose and lifted a half-emptied glass and made him a rollicking toast.

"Here's to young Virtue's triumph, Steve," he chanted, "and damnation to the opposition! I may be leaving you--I'll be on my way back to town to-morrow at this time--but I'm leaving my moral support behind me."

Steve's reception of that flourish was in no way like what Fat Joe had expected. He smiled cordially--a little absently.

"Thanks, Garry," he said. "And I guess I'll be needing all the support I can find, both moral and otherwise, before spring comes. So you're not figuring on stopping off at Morrison? Planning on going straight through, eh?"

Garry made a gesture which was meant to embrace the whole chain of hills outside.

"Absolutely!" he emphasized. "This country is all right for those who were born to it--purple hills and purling brooks and silence brooding over all!--but it's too intense for your effete comrade. Too quiet--too easy to think! I'm going away from here just as fast as steam will haul me."

The other man stretched his arms and swung one foot negligently over the chair arm. His unqualified agreement brought sudden alarm to Joe's eyes.

"I suppose you're right," he drawled. "It does get on any man's nerves. Right this minute I'm as tired of it as I ever dare let myself get. I've sloughed around in the mud enough for one session."

Garry frowned, perplexed. His fast numbing brain refused to reconstruct clearly, and yet dimly he knew that this sentiment was not the one which he had heard a few hours before from Steve's lips.

"Too true," he was content to reply sadly. "Too true!"

"We've both earned a vacation." Steve's gentle smile never left his lips. "To-day I couldn't help but think that it was a shame to miss such perfect hunting weather as this. I wonder if I couldn't persuade you to postpone your going for just a day or two longer. I can show you some deer, Garry."

The frown upon the latter's forehead deepened with his effort at recollection. Then he brightened with happy satisfaction.

"Deer!" he chuckled, addressing himself to Joe. "Hunter took me for a deer, thinking I was Steve." He blinked, for the statement did not entirely please him. "Doesn't sound logical," he pondered, "but it's so. Fired twice and missed both shots. Poor work--very poor work indeed!"

Joe squared around, his perplexed scrutiny an accusation now. Steve had neglected to apprise him of that incident which had happened on the way home, and Joe had not heard the rifle reports. But O'Mara clung to the subject which he had introduced.

"That's the trouble with hunting right here in the front yard," he admitted. "There are too many gunners anxious to hear their rifles go off. We might swing over toward the west branch, though. As long as this rain holds on the leaves will be quiet as a carpet. You've never seen my own private shooting box, either, have you Garry?"

The questioned one tried hard to pay attention, but the attempt was no more than an indifferent success, for he was still grumbling to himself over that unknown marksman's lack of skill.

"Never knew you had one," he answered.

"My inheritance," laughed Steve. From his manner he might have been talking to a sober man. "And also the haunt of my boyhood days. It's the shack, you know, where I spent a good many years with Old Tom. It lies a half dozen miles through the woods from here. I've made it weather-tight and dry. I spend a day or so up there whenever I have a chance to get away. We're sure of a shot if we still-hunt over in that direction--sure of a tight roof and good beds, too. How does it appeal to you?"

Garry spilled over his glass and had to fill it again, with many apologies for his clumsiness, so ardent was his acceptance of the invitation. He rose and insisted upon shaking hands.

"A personally conducted tour," he stammered gayly.

"A pilgrimage to the nest from which young genius first spread its wings, personally conducted by my friend, Mr. O'Mara." But his moods were growing more and more uncertain and changeable, now. He bent a baleful glance upon Fat Joe. "Is this--person going to accompany us," offensively he wanted to know.

Steve shook his head.

"Joe'll have to stay here and hold things down until we return," he explained.

Garry resumed his seat.

"Then I'll go," he stated. The baleful light was slow in leaving his eyes. And, after a rambling, muttered something to himself: "Too officious . . . wouldn't let me have but one drink every three hours . . . better we left him alone. He might shoot somebody, too--looks as though he might shoot and investigate at leisure."

With that he turned once more to thoughts of him who, firing from ambush, had left a trail of hob-nails to voice mutely the haste of his retreat. It had a fascination for him; his mind went back to it automatically, the only idea apparently upon which he found it possible to center his faculties. Now and then he referred to it aloud, in jumbled and meaningless ejaculations. Both men knew that he did not know what he was saying, and yet his reference to Fat Joe had left a hint of pain in the latter's eyes. It was still there when Joe arose, an hour later, and jerked his head toward Garry's quarters.

"If you need me, sing out," he said. "There's whiskey locked in the medicine chest--and I'll be sleeping light."

The words meant nothing to Garry, but he noted Joe's departure. Steve saw that his eyes were fixed, his lips crusted with fever, when he too came to his feet in a supreme effort, and steadied himself by the back of his chair.

"I've been most thoughtless, Steve," he apologized charmingly. It was the spirit of the old Garry talking through the flesh of the Garry he had become. "I've been unpardonably selfish. You must be tired; you have worked hard to-day."

In turn he made as if to cross to the door. Steve drew him back.

"Joe's taken your bed," he explained. "He's been an hour asleep by now. We'll be getting away at daybreak, and he always did hate to be waked an instant before his hour, so you'll have to occupy his bunk."

It took Garry a minute or two to assimilate that.

"Surely," he agreed. "Daybreak." Then, drearily, with no knowledge of what he was saying: "I wish I could go to sleep--I wish it was daybreak, now!"

Yet he was almost sober again when Steve shook him awake at four the next morning, his first inquiry concerning the state of the weather proving that he recalled their plans of the night before. But his politeness had given way to a pallid stubbornness that would not budge an inch until he had had a drink and filled a pair of flasks with all that the fresh bottle from the medicine chest contained. He refused breakfast with sickened finality; declined even the coffee which Steve tried to press upon him. When the latter handed him Joe's rifle and a handful of extra shells, however, his eagerness to be away showed in his eyes.

Steve did not like that gleam any more than he understood it, and he did not understand it at all. It went around him--through him--much as though Garry was peering cunningly at a far-off, bodiless something which the other man could not see. And throughout the whole morning Steve was conscious of it whenever they met after skirting a swamp, or slipped noiselessly over a hardwood knoll, to rejoin each other. The day was half gone before Steve realized that it was the telltale sign of a brain no longer sober, even though Garry's body continued to maintain an incredible steadiness.

Long after it seemed that eyes such as his had become must needs be sightless the latter went on picking his way carefully over rough bits of going; when he had reached a condition where he no longer heard the word or two which, now and then, Steve addressed to him, he still flattened his body and crouched at the expected nearness of game. It became an uncanny exhibition of mechanics after a while--a sleep-walking sort of thing which wore upon Steve's nerves until he was more than once at the point of taking possession of Joe's repeater. And yet it was Garry who jumped a spike-horn buck, just before nightfall. It was he who fired twice before Steve's rifle reached his shoulder. But they found only blood on the leaves when they hastened forward.

"You hit him!" Steve leaned over to examine those crimson stains. "You must have found him with both shots, judging from the way he's bleeding. He's gone into that cedar swamp; he won't travel far, and I hate to let him crawl in there, wounded like that, to die."

Indecisively he paused, not sure just what to do. In that moment of quiet Garry lifted a flask to his lips and finding it empty let it slip heedlessly to the ground.

"Two shots," he muttered darkly. "Two, where one should have been enough."

That echo of the night before helped the other man to decide.

"This strip of dark timber runs straight west to the river--are you listening, Garry?" he asked. "Straight to the river--it's only a scant mile--and you'll find the cabin on the rise of ground in a clump of balsams, three or four rods to the right. I'm going to take your gun--you look fagged out. You skirt around the edge of the bad going and I'll drive straight through. It may be only a scratch, after all, although it doesn't seem possible, with all this blood. I'll take your gun and, now, are you sure you can make it--sure you won't get turned around? It'll be dark in half an hour, you know."

Garry gave up his rifle without a sign of demur. His eyes were burning with some sort of feverish anticipation, but his answer was clear enough.

"I'll wait for you at the river," he said, and he started forthwith toward the west.

Steve watched him out of sight before he turned to take up, irresolutely, the trail that zig-zagged into the cedar brake. But once he had started he went ahead rapidly, jumping the wounded buck within five minutes and giving him no time to lie down again. And after he had covered a quarter of a mile Steve saw that it was much as he had told Garry it might be; it was a flesh wound that bled profusely and that was all. For the deer, holding to a direct line down the middle of the swamp, continued to travel strongly. Steve had all but reached the river-edge where they were to stop for the night, before he detected a stirring in the bushes ahead of him and his ear caught the crackle of a dry branch.

Instantly he forgot everything save the quarry he was running down; forgot Garry and the strange persistence with which the latter had gone back, after twelve hours, to quote himself word for word. With rifle poised he edged forward a step and halted; he stooped and laid Garry's gun at the foot of a tree and went on again. Once he made out a movement behind a nearer tangle and saw the branches shake before a heavy body that was forcing slowly through them. His own rifle came up; his finger was on the trigger when he thought better of it. Old Tom, more than a half-score of years before, had switched him well, not so very far from that very spot, because he had not made certain first of the target at which he was firing.

There was an open patch to the left. If the buck held to that quarter he would have to cross that clear. Rock-steady the muzzle came down and covered the first indistinct brown bulk which entered the notch of the sights. And then, with an oath, Steve let the gun slip to the ground at his feet and stood shaking, checks gone white. Garret Devereau, wearing an old tan canvas coat which he had unearthed in the cabin peered slyly around a bush which he had been stirring gently with one hand.

"Go ahead 'n' shoot," he ordered aggrievedly. "Hunter'sh alwaysh shoot at rush'le in the dark. Good joke on hunter'sh--good joke on my good frien', Misther O'Mara! Think'sh's got deer until he inves'gates at leisure. Best joke of all'sh on myself."

The muscles which all day had been a marvel of firmness beneath him gave way altogether. Without a sound he pitched forward upon his face. A second later Steve reached his side, but the horror had not faded from his own eyes after he had picked that prostrate figure up and carried it into the clay-clinked shack. His memory played him an odd trick during that moment. A vivid picture came back to him of the grave-faced boy he had been, struggling to steady Old Tom's helpless feet up that same rise.

Garry was limp and blue and pulseless when Steve stretched him out, inside. The second flask stood there where Garry had left it, upon a table, and while he was loosening the latter's clothing Steve shook it, experimentally, and found it empty. He swung it aloft and drove it through a window. The crash of shivered glass made the other stir. He opened his eyes and stared vacantly up into his friend's face.

"Steve," he moaned. "Steve, I'm cold!"

And that was the burden of the complaints which he lifted, time and again, throughout the first part of the night. Even after Steve had wrapped him in everything which the bare room afforded he still continued to whimper like a sick boy. But his body held strong. Just as, all day, it had been his brain which had shown the effects of the alcohol which he had consumed, so now, all night, it was his brain which suffered most. Again and again he called aloud a woman's name, in a voice which Stephen O'Mara had never before heard from his lips. In inconceivable tenderness he whispered it--the name of Mary Graves--only to cry aloud, "Steve--Steve," in accents of heartbreak the next.

Long before morning came his pulse was steady--a little jumpy but reassuringly rhythmic. But the sunlight was two hours old upon the floor before the silent watcher saw the white lids flutter and then part with a gaze that was once more sane. Garry's smile had always been mocking; it was shamed and wistful now. The clearness with which he remembered was a miraculous thing.

"You see, Steve," he faltered. "You see now, don't you, that I'm not worth trying to save? Oh, you've tried hard; I knew how hard you were trying! That's why I did--what I did. I'm no good; there's no use, friend of mine. Why don't you let me go?"

Steve groped and found the hand groping for his. He nodded his head, bruskly, to hide his eyes. But his voice was not brusk.

"I almost shot you, Garry," he said, and there was a husky echo of horror in the words. "In another minute I'd have killed you. Right now I don't know just what kept me from firing."

"And I meant you to," Garry murmured almost inaudibly, "I planned that you should--started to plan last night. I--I've been hating you for twelve hours--hating you because you were making me ashamed to do the thing I wanted to do most."

He tried to rise and fell back, slack. But his voice was stronger with sudden, swelling bitterness.

"It wasn't for myself, Steve," he cried. "It wasn't for what I might get out of it, or--or what it might bring me, I used to scoff at whatever others considered big and fine and clean, but I played it straight, just the same. I played it as well as I knew how--straighter than you'd believe. I thought it would make her happier, because I tried that hard. And she . . . Steve, if I had been a woman--a woman like what I thought she was, little and clean and white--I couldn't have let a man like him so much as touch my little finger! And she--by God, she married him!"

The agonized voice broke there--the voice of a boy who had had to learn that it is woman and not women who is fastidious. Garry sat and swallowed, fighting for self-control. His eyes were numb, but Steve's had taken fire, for he knew that the hour for which he had been waiting had come at last.

"You've been trying to help me," Garry found his voice again, "you've been trying to throw me a line. And, for a day or two, I tried to catch it, Steve. But it isn't in me to try that hard, any more. Some men do things for what there is in it--the pecuniary reward, I mean; some men--you for instance--because their self respect won't let them stop, win or lose. But now and then there happens one who keeps on trying only because there is one other person, at least, who may be the gladder for his success. I don't expect you to understand; I know it will sound small and cowardly to you. . . . It's too lonesome living, Steve, when there's no one who cares whether you live or not!"

"That does not fit your case," Steve objected instantly, "when your danger or your safety keeps a woman watching, white-faced with terror through the night, for your return."

Garry propped himself upon one elbow, the better to see the speaker's countenance.

"My safety?" he repeated, blankly. "My return?" And then, wanly grateful: "You are not the sort of man who lies convincingly, Steve."

And then Stephen O'Mara let him have it--all the story which had lain so many days in his heart. There were times when Garry went even paler during the short recital; times when everything else was submerged by the incredulity that flooded his face. But before Steve had finished the last trace of doubt was gone. Before the end came Garry had bowed his head, this time in flushed, self-conscious wonder which transfigured him.

"Miriam Burrell!" he breathed. "Proud, intolerant----"

His head came up. The next instant he voiced the words which Steve most wanted to hear.

"You shouldn't have told me this," said he. "You had no right, unless----"

Steve laughed at him.

"God bless you, boy," he exclaimed. "I asked her if I might. Why, don't you understand that she meant to, herself, if I didn't? You see, she is--far, far braver than you are, Garry."

Garry lifted his hands and hid his face.

So quietly that his exit made no sound Steve slipped to his feet and passed outside. It had stopped raining; the hardwood ridges, touched by frost, were flaming streaks of color against the rainwashed evergreens, when he picked his way down to the river and found a dry stone for a seat. An hour and more he sat there, while his thoughts went back over the trail of the years--the trail which had led him from that cabin to a pair of violet eyes and lips that arched like a boy's.

Steve let his mind turn again, unreservedly, to his own problem that morning; he tried to face, sure-eyed, the road which still stretched ahead. He did not know that Garrett Devereau, the debonaire, the cynical, the world-weary and world-wise, had broken down and was sobbing noiselessly, as men sob, in the room which he had left--shaking with deep and terrible gasps that racked his very soul. But it was already daybreak; it was trail's-end now for Garry. It does make a difference if one knows that someone cares.