Monsieur of the Rainbow (McCall's Magazine)/Part 2
MISTER GOOD HEART they called him. And also Monsieur of the Rainbow because, in spite of occasional insobriety, he always found rainbows in the most improbable misty places. True, he was a Beggar of Life—but the nobility of his old French family shone through his rags and his age. Out of his love for the old fellow, the Gasoline Guy (alias Hudson Brown) had rescued him from a too one-sided encounter and carried him, for no particular reason, back to the “location” camp of the Supercraft Pictures Corporation. Here it was that he met the “Marvelous Mara” Thail, Supercraft's star, for whom Brown was acting as chauffeur.
HELLO, Brown,” she said, “did you get the lip-stick?”
“Yes, Madame,” said the boy respectfully and took from a pocket an infinitesimal packet. With quick fingers she tore it open, scrutinized its contents, applied a touch of the dull orange paste to the back of one white hand.
“Fine!” she said with satisfaction, “it is the exact shade I wanted. You're a wonder! you never fail me.”
“I hope I never shall,” he replied gravely. The woman cast a swift glance at him, nodded and turned away.
As he walked briskly back, Hillis, a camera-man, accosted him. “Where you been all day, Huddy?” he asked.
“Frisco,” said Brown briefly.
“Good night! Three hundred and eighteen miles! What'd you go after—three drops of attar of roses?”
The other laughed and slapped the speaker's shoulder. He did not tell him it was very nearly as bad as that. Instead he went to Monsieur who was performing his ablutions in the tent.
A deep-toned gong was ringing. “That's eats, Monsieur,” he said; “let me have a look at that glass, for I'm hollow to my toes.”
Bending a bit before the small mirror hung to the pole he swept a comb through his thick locks, washed his hands hurriedly and was ready. Not so Monsieur Bon Coeur. His silver locks were irreproachable, so was the small Vandyke, for he, too, carried a comb, somewhat irregular as to teeth, but adequate, and he had taken from the opened roll another shirt and put it on. This was none too good itself, being out at both elbows and having lost the collar which once adorned it, but it was of a somewhat better quality of cotton and it had been freshly washed and dried upon a wayside bush beside the Sacramento.
Now he took the long-tailed coat that aired its tatters on a peg beside the flap and shook it gingerly. This garment did not admit of any save the tenderest care, since it was prone to give at the seams, but it was precious to its owner. Pinched at the waist, padded on the narrow shoulders, fastened low beneath the flaring lapels, it spoke of fashion in every line, of fashion as Monsieur remembered it decades ago, in France.
He needed but a wide-pegged trousers of a soft dove grey, a tapering flat-topped hat, to see himself as he had been in those far-off days.
Monsieur loved his coat. He did not like to think of the manner in which it had come into his possession—from the straw shoulders of a scare-crow in a Kansas corn-field. Now he put it on, fastened its buttons, long since frankly bare of cloth above their metal, brushed its front with light fingers, pulled above the edge of its musty left-breast pocket the two points of the sun-bleached handkerchief which he always carried.
“Lead on, M'sieur,” he said gaily; “ze odor of ze eats 1s mos' delectable.”
At the northern side of the tent-town a long canvas establishment was open to the summer night, its whole side wall rolled to the top. Down its center long tables steamed with food, attendants passed deftly about, the murmur of carefree voices filled the silent world as all the denizens of this odd colony gathered in. Electric lights were everywhere, supplied by the efficient wheeled dynamos that traveled wherever the city went.
Monsieur Bon Coeur, following his guide, was one with it all. He sat down at the laden table of uncovered pine between the boy and a nabob in glaring crimson satin, and his good eye beamed upon the scene. He saw the lords of the conclave at a smaller table a little way apart, three men of keen sharp faces, clad in silk shirts and the inevitable riding breeches and puttees, talking eagerly and continuously of the day's work. He saw, too, several women join them, women so beautiful that Monsieur forgot to eat while he contemplated them.
It was not until Mara Thail's sparkling dark glance, roving over the colorful gathering, fell directly upon him that he was recalled to himself. A deep flush stained his lean old cheeks. He, Monsieur Bon Coeur, had done an unpardonable thing! He had stared at a lady! He dropped his eye to his porcelain plate, and the food that he had welcomed so eagerly all but choked him in his confusion. Mara Thail saw the flush, the shamefacedness. Her careless glance rested on the grotesque little old figure, became less careless, sobered and fell to studying it. After a long time Monsieur ventured to look up again, only to return to the depths. He had been observed! The beautiful lady was “wise” to him, knew him to be fallen from that perfect breeding which had once been his. The rest of the meal was savorless. He pecked at it.
“Mr. Sellard,” said Mara Thail presently, “will you take a look at the little old man over there beside my chauffeur? Did you ever see anything quite so enchantingly quaint?” Justin Sellard, vital, physically fit, razor-keen and _bald-headed, turned his head and looked. Quite frankly he studied Monsieur.
He was used to doing this. That was why the Supercraft films were such finished works of art, such polished blends of part and character. After a still three minutes he nodded and turned back.
“You are quite right, Miss Thail,” he said, “he is just that—enchantingly quaint. He is a type, a foreign type. Thirty years ago there were many of him on the Champs Elysees. He has been sometime a French grandee, or I'm very much mistaken. He seems to have been slightly damaged, however.”
Then the speaker fell to discussing the “shooting” of the last sequence and the eager talk went on.
“I'll tell you that last long shot of the kafila coming down from the winding pass is a corker! The distance of the big gorge in the background is splendid—it fades away literally into the shadows of invisibility. The sense of farness is great. If only Hillis got that touch, the right angle. He had the proper station. Burnet and Carrol were a little off for it.”
“You may root for your long shots and scenery,” said the tall dark young man who sat at his left, “but I'm for the close-up of Miss Thail stabbing the Bedouin chief. Talk about tension! It's there.”
“You're right. But vast flights of vision have their value—an inestimable value. They take the tired and hampered two thirds of humanity from the flats and departmental stores away on a magic carper—like Doug's—and you can't tell me that they don't conserve humanity just by their momentary soothing, the rest they give over-strung nerves.”
Mara Thail smiled at him. “You are a good man, Mr. Sellard,”” she said.
“Only a lover of the race and the land that bore it,” he replied.
The younger man smiled a trifle cynically. “You're a wet blanket, Marculo,” said Miss Thail reprovingly, “a regular frost when people speak seriously.”
“For Heaven's sake!” cried the handsome boy “I never said a word!”
“You don't need to speak—you have a speaking smile.”
“That's what my fans all say,” he replied airily.
“Come, come, my children!” put in the director, “why spoil the evening to say nothing of your healthy young digestions?”
Over at the long table the driver, Brown, was listening to the thin thread of this conversation, running like a bright woof among the warp of sounds. He always listened when Mara Thail spoke. He looked with guarded eyes wherever she passed in her regal progress.
When the meal was finished he took Monsieur away to the tent, and sitting down before it in the veritable “turquoise twilight crisp and chill” of which their script, made from a famous poem, spoke, he gave him tobacco such as the old man had not touched for years, and they conversed in low voices of many and varied things that had happened long ago.
On the chauffeur's side they dealt with ambition, with modest hopes, with a “stake” saved up for business, with the future, as is ever the way of youth. On Monsieur's it was with the rambling and pointless reminiscences of a thousand tarts and stoppings—of how the salmon were running in the rivers of the north, the prospects of the apple crop tor fall, the everlasting differences of capital and labor.
Monsieur's views were painfully divided as to that. His friends were, for the most part, in the ranks of the latter, violent, long-haired agitators of jungle and dump-pile, and yet with the vision of the past, he saw the other side. And so they talked and smoked, Monsieur holding his cigar in a hand as fine as sculpture, the fingers spread and lifted just the merest trifle whenever he flicked the ash. They watched the scene below, and presently one and another of the company joined them, so that a small circle lounged about the tent door, and Monsieur Bon Coeur was among folk of affairs at last as one of them. There were no glances sent askance at him, no notice taken of his rags. “Buddy,” said a lean young man looking into the tent, “where'd you get the antiquated music-box? I haven't seen one like that since I was a kid.”
“It belongs to my friend, Monsieur Bon Coeur,” said the chauffeur gravely.
“Give us a tune, Mister,” said the youth, “won't you?”
“With ze greates' of pleasure,” said Monsieur as Brown and handed out the accordion. Tenderly Monsieur adjusted the strap. Softly he set his fingers to the ancient stops. He leaned back against the tent-pole the better to hold it on his fragile chest. And then, very faintly at first, like a wind sighing in humble grasses, the soul inside it stirred.
It was a nameless melody that Monsieur played, a forgotten air of another decade, another country, and it was sweet as lullabyes, or the sweet notes of a wedding march heard from afar. It stilled the low murmur of talk at the tent door, and that at the doors of other tents around and, changing now to a martial strain, in the unreal night, it led Monsieur away upon the soul's road of dreams.
He forgot his audience and all but the stars beginning to come out on the darkened sky. His face was lifted, the Vandyke beard pointed up at a sharp angle, the thin hands threading among the stops with expert touch.
Neither the player nor those who listened were conscious of the passing of time, knew that the sharp staccato calls of “Camera!” had ceased far down the lot where Miss Thail was posing for some “night shots.”
In fact the city itself was quieting to rest before Monsieur drew the last sobbing sigh from the little box and slid down from the heights
Hands clapped from the shadows all about. “Fine!” “Lovely!” “Give us more!” came cries from this side and that, and some one in the group turned a flashlight on the little old man beside the pole
Very quickly Monsieur rose to the occasion, literally and figuratively, his hand upon his heart, his long locks falling like a scant silver shower along his inclined cheeks.
“My frien's,” he said politely, “I have play' them all.”
“Oh, come on! One more!”
“Non!” said Monsieur, “I have no more—only zat one what mus' be keep for ze solemn theeng—ze Marseillaise.”
“Let us have it! Come on—be a sport!”
But Monsieur Bon Coeur shook his head. And then a sweet voice, clear and deep, a woman's voice, said from the farther dark: “Bravo! Keep it sacred, player. The soul of France.”
It was the lovely voice of the lovely woman whose beauty had spoiled Monsieur's appetite a few hours back, Mara Thail, passing from her last work of the strenuous day.
Instantly Monsieur executed a bow to which the other had been a mere hand-maiden, his old head bent low to earth, his right hand sweeping in a wide and graceful arc, his knees in their tatters stiff and close together. It was the obeisance of his youth, the humble tribute of a knight to beauty, of manhood to feminine purity and grace. It was a masterpiece of a forgotten art, and one man knew it so—Justin Sellard standing beside the star in the shadows
“Merci, Ma'amselle,” said Monsieur, suddenly tremulous, “ze soul wa't nevair die!”
As the man and woman passed on into the shadows, the director nodded his bare head.
“You were quite right, Miss Thail,” he said musing, “the old man is a character. I believe—I am certain—he would screen famously. His type is rather hard to find just now.”
THE group before the chauffeur's tent dissolved.
“Thanks for the concert, Mister,” said the lean youth. “Here's a little token of appreciation,” and he thrust into Monsieur's hand a goodly flask, curved to fit the wearer's hip and heavy with liquid fire. Then he was gone and the old man stood as if fixed to the spot. His ancient enemy reared its thousand heads within him, clutched him by the throat and brain and shook him to the foundations of his being.
He scarcely heard the voice of his young friend calling him to the cot that waited, the comfort of the tent. With slow steps he obeyed.
Long after Hudson Brown was dead asleep after the fashion of healthy youth, Monsieur Bon Coeur sat on the cot's edge, his head in his hands and the seductive flask lying heavy on his knees.
When the boy awoke in the dawn it was to find the tent empty save for himself, the other cot unruffled but for the small indented place where a slight form had sat, bent over in travail. The blanket roll was gone. So was the accordion.
Alack-a-day! Monsieur had lost the rainbow! The only rainbow which, for over half a lifetime, had hidden at its foot the magic pot!
IT was another day. A new day fresh from the hands of its Maker, a day as sweet as the morning of creation itself, soft, warm, drowsy.
It brooded over the Sacramento Valley and the dim blue hills that rimmed it. The smell of ripening wine-grapes per fumed the air, the hum of mowers came from the broad alfalfa fields.
Where the great river itself moved slow between its levees a fringe of trees leaned down to kiss its placid waters. Here and there a landing stood out along its edge, grey, weathered, blending admirably with the river's modest tones. Now and again the deep-throated whistles of river boats echoed in the stillness as these proud carriers of commerce came up from deep water. On a little narrow bar beneath the shelving bank, an infinitesimal and insignificant habitat had been set up—a tiny wheel of fire, a blanket-bed spread neatly, a shirt upon a bush. And the slender figure of a man who sat cross-legged on the sand, his silver head bent above the work that occupied his hands—Monsieur once more, after a lost week. Monsieur, busy with the pink face of a fine redwood shingle and the very good three-bladed knife which was his stock-in-trade.
Illustration: “YOU WERE IN FRANCE,” SHE SAID AGAIN. PRESENTLY, “SO WAS I.” “YOU?” CRIED THE MAN. “YOU, IN THAT GOD-FORSAKEN MESS!” “TWO YEARS. BASE HOSPITAL, BACK OF YPRES. ON THE SOMME, TOO. I CAME FROM THERE TO AMERICA.”
THE MAN ON THE BENCH STIRRED.
One would recognize him instantly, though there was in him a decided and pitiful change. The cheeks above the Vandyke beard were thinner, the temples more hollow, the fragile shoulders drooped as if beneath a burden.
But the eyes! The blue eyes that were always full of hope, eager, looking for rainbows! They were tragic as lost light, sunk in their sockets, and they seemed half again as large. The blue-veined hands, deft about their work, trembled when they were not touching anything.
The old lips, a little loose about the corners, trembled too at times, for Monsieur's sin was eating once more at the marrow of his bones—eating and rankling into his soul.
For three days he had camped by the lulling bosom of the river, and he had worked unceasingly. The pictures were coming out on the faces of the shingles, all alike, a pattern of the river winding up, the drifting summer clouds above, the graceful trees and the side-wheel steamer, San Pablo Queen, walking proudly up the middle.
They were fine pictures, clear and delicate, their darker and lighter shadows cleverly etched by the knife-point. Four of them were finished and laid carefully away. Monsieur, working on the fifth, thought of the flats of Suisun Bay where grew the thin, tough grasses whereof he would make their cords.
Then he would cross on the Six Minute Ferry—there were many ways whereby one, financially embarrassed, might accomplish this feat—and coming finally to the great City at the Golden Gate, he would sell them on its streets. Monsieur loved the streets of San Francisco, swift, colorful streets with their moiling crowds.
As the old man mused, wistfully and sadly, a stranger stood on the bank above and looked interestedly down at him.
This was a woman, young and very handsome after the fashion of her race. Her braided hair was black as ink and so were the eyes beneath their long lashes. Her cheeks were scarlet as tame poppies, her mouth sensuously red above its pearly teeth. She wore a bright kerchief bound round her head, and over her black jacket and yellow waist a rain of beads and bangles shed a tawdry glitter. Her skirts were wide and ruffled, over many petticoats, so that they swayed and billowed with every movement. Her alert and calculating glance was fixed on the exquisite carving in Monsieur's hands, and presently she bent forward, hands on hips, and spoke. “Old man,” she said, “let the gipsy tell your future?”
Startled, Monsieur looked up, rose to his feet and bowed. To any woman Monsieur must make obeisance, be she queen or washerwoman.
“Gladly, Madame,” he said politely, “only I have not ze where-wiz-all.”
“I'll take that,” she said, pointing to the shingle.
Doubtfully the old man regarded her. The shingle meant a dollar. Also it meant a deal of work. And that Monsieur's future was all behind him none knew so well as he. But the gipsy woman drew back from the bank's edge, disappeared for a moment or so, and came climbing down to the head of the bar a little farther back. She came swinging jauntily forward, her hands still on her voluptuous hips, and smiled with all the wheedling power of eyes and teeth. “It's little enough,” she grumbled, “to take for the reading of a fortune, but times are hard and the gipsies are poor folk. Give me your hand.”
She reached and captured Monsieur's hand, held it firmly palm up, squinting her handsome eyes.
“U'm, h'm,” she muttered, “long life—and talents—many talents. They show here—and here—and here—engines and steels, mechanics. A glorious start—riches—high estate—treat castles in a fair land.”
She paused a moment and Monsieur winced.
Illustration: IT WAS A NAMELESS MELODY THAT MONSIEUR PLAYED, A FORGOTTEN AIR OF ANOTHER DECADE, ANOTHER COUNTRY. IT STILLED THE LOW MURMUR OF TALK AT THE TENT DOOR, AND, CHANGING NOW TO A MARTIAL STRAIN, IT LED MONSIEUR AWAY UPON THE SOUL'S ROAD OF DREAMS.
“There is a blank space here,” the girl went on soberly “a long dark time where there has been—nothing.”
Monsieur could not bear it. Her insight was like a sharp pain.
“I beg of Ma'amselle—” he said piteously, “I present ze small token—take it! Take it now!”
But the gipsy shook her head. She was studying the palm in her fingers with alert and interested eyes, as if she verily believed what she saw there.
“Hold, old man,” she said, “the blank ends! There is something strange here. I see blood—and sorrow—and the shadow of a gibbet—and there are folk here with you—a woman and a man—and yet another man—and more. The great hand of the law is over you and them—and your path of life runs low into the Vale. It reaches almost the bottom—almost, I say. Not quite. At the last it lifts sharply—rises in a burst of light—of glory—of gold and honor.
“It is unbelievable, almost!” She bent down, scrutinizing earnestly the page of the lined old hand.
“There is honor, here, I say, a great deed of sacrifice, and love and gallantry. It is a strange hand for you to have, Old Man,” she said wonderingly, “a strange, strange fortune!”
She let go his hand and Monsieur held out the shingle with its river and its trees, its little landing and the steamboat going up. “I am ver' pleased, Ma'amselle,” he said sadly, “I give you ze price.”
The girl took it, turned away, looked back with wondering eyes, and climbed the bank to oblivion, so far as Monsieur was concerned. He was one dollar poorer—and the gipsy, climbing into a bright new automobile which waited with several others at the asphalt's edge where the River Road went up the Valley, tucked her prize away among a maze of duffle in the tonneau, spoke in her own tongue to the swarthy man beside her.
“It is worth a piece of gold, Seymund,” she said, “and I told the truth to its maker down by the water yonder. He is a nobleman in rags.”
LEFT to himself, his work taken suddenly from him, Monsieur Bon Coeur packed up his belongings and once more set out along the highway, going south. He saw no trace of gipsies.
He slept soundly on an abandoned porch and next day, having washed a thousand dishes in a lowly restaurant, he went across to the great City in state, paying his fare on the boat.
Ah, the City! Sitting like a queen upon her throne, her ample lap spilling with riches, smiling out across the world of waters to watch the sun go down!
Monsieur's heart thrilled as he stepped upon her streets. And, intoxicated with her light and joyousness, her murmuring, her eagerness and hurry, Monsieur's head came up a little higher. He began to swing his stick of eucalyptus. He was invigorated. There was still in his apologetic pocket the magnificent amount of forty-seven cents. For ten of them he knew where he could sleep in a humble bed. For fifteen more he could sup regally.
Therefore he was beginning to feel within himself the joy of life which was forever his. Once more le bon Dieu was visible behind the clouds of sin. The night was busy as the day. And more leisurely, too, for these folk were now on holiday. The great façades of theatres winked with inviting lights. Cafés and restaurants were crowded. The City revelled.
A thought struck Monsieur. He had come to sell his wares—the four fine pictures on the shingles with their braided strings and tassels. Why not now instead of tomorrow? What better time than this?
To think was to decide, to decide was to do, and presently the passers-by at Lotta's Fountain saw a little old man standing beside his bundles and offering for sale such rare and delicate handwork as caught their eyes upon the instant.
A woman in a fur coat stopped and looked and asked, “How much?”
“One dollair, Madame,” said Monsieur, bowing.
“Too much,” she said firmly; “sixty cents.”
“As Madame please,” he said.
So the woman counted out a little heap of change, shook it together in her hand, dropped it into Monsieur's palm, took the pink-faced slab of wood and went swiftly away. She was lost immediately to view.
Monsieur spread out his hand, stirred the dimes apart and counted them. There were five, and one nickle. Sighing, he dropped them into the one safe pocket which held the rest of his wealth, hung another shingle out upon his fingers.
The City was a wanton, a niggard and spendthrift. If she could cheat an old man out of pennies she could also fling the careless gold of largess.
When the last pink picture was mutely offering itself, a limousine went by in whose silver-and-plush interior there rode a scion of the modern young generation, a handsome youth, clad in evening coat and hat, a white silk kerchief muffling his neck.
“Stop!” he commanded the driver at sight of Monsieur and leaning out he waved him up grandiloquently.
“Mashterpiece!” he said profoundly, handling the redwood shingle, “marv'lous! How mush?” And at the naming of the modest price he was astounded.
“Prophet not 'out honor—own country,” he said sadly, whereby he gave pathetic evidence of an out-of-date knowledge.
And fishing in a silk-lined pocket he drew forth a coin which he dropped in Monsieur's palm. It was a small coin, not much larger than a dime, but is was of gold. Monsieur beholding, ran after the limousine a little way, but it went grandly on and he must needs keep his fortune.
Five dollars! And two dollars! And fifty-five cents! Added to the forty-seven already in the good pocket! He was rich beyond imagining.
With trembling hands Monsieur Bon Coeur picked up his blanket-roll, swung the accordion to place, stepped out in time to the tapping of the eucalyptus stick. He was bound for the Embarcadero and the windows of its second-hand emporiums, for the cheap bed in the “ten-cent-dump”—for the morrow and its thrill of rehabilitation!
Near the water-front a piteous distress began, insidiously, to crease the cheeks beside his mouth. The snakes were moving in the doorways. The smell and dimmer lights of this and that mysterious place were beginning to grasp at his consciousness. A little farther on there was the notorious dive of Greek Tony. Monsieur knew it well. Too well. The eight dollars and two cents were getting heavy in his pocket. A thin eagerness set up in his face. He hurried just the merest trifle. He had forgotten the hat and the second hand shoes, the thrill of tomorrow! Forgotten them as usual.
And then something happened—a trifling thing. A wagon came rattling over the cobbles of the dingy street. It was a light wagon, drawn by two horses, and it looked something like those wired-in vehicles which the Government uses to carry its mail to and from the depots. Through the meshes of its wire peered the anxious, fear-filled eyes of the innocents in truth. There were three of them—one a gentle fellow clad in soft rich tan with a ring of snowy fluff about his regal neck, while huddled in a corner a trembling mother stood guard over her half-starved little one. And all were bound for that little heard-of, but grimly present horror of our times, the City Pound.
He raised his hand to the starry heavens ind let it drop, a gesture of infinite sorrow and love—and falling it struck the good pocket and set jingling the magic which it held, the eight real dollars, not to mention the two pennies!
“M'sieus!” he shouted, “halt! Cease I pray you! See! Behol'! I have ze spondulix, ze pairfectly good hard rocks! Ze cash!” and he held out in a trembling hand his all.
“For these small creatures, M'sieu,” he went on eagerly, “I give it you! Only the little ones—wis a string to lead them—is all I ask!”
The dog-catcher was a progressive man.
He climbed down at once. One by one the doomed came back through the portal, and one by one Monsieur took them, standing in their midst as helpless as they.
“Get 'em out o' town, mind,” the official said warningly as he dropped Monsieur's fortune in his own capacious pocket, and then he was gone rattling away on the cobbles.
The weakling puppy Monsieur lifted tenderly and laid against his breast, to the terrible anxiety of the big-eyed mother, but the great collie, calm and fearless and wise, stalked at his side in confidence.
And so it was that Monsieur Bon Coeur set out through the night, hungry as these, or nearly so, once more penniless, but happy.
Where angels tip-toe timidly, the motion picture safari marches boldly in and takes possession.
At the camp beneath the cliff a bare-headed, tanned young man reported to Justin Sellard.
“We pretty near covered the Sierras, Mr. Sellard,” he said, “in search for the setting you asked us for, and I think we've got it. Perfectly amazing spot. Almost inaccessible. Will be a big job getting in, but it's new. We didn't cover the basin, but I rather think there's a cabin somewhere thereabout. Some old eccentric, possibly—maybe a be-whiskered ancient mariner of a prospector who thinks it's still 1849. That won't make any difference; you know the oil to lubricate whatever creaking cogs we find.”
“All right,” said Sellard; “we're nearly finished here, anyway. Two more days and I can send the surplus back and go up to this virgin paradise of yours.”
The spot of which the two men had spoken was just that.
High in the mounting fringes of the Sierra Nevadas it lay, safe from the world below, sweet with silence and sun light, a fair round spread of meadow level as a floor, green with foliage, rimmed with the grace of forests. The hills went up from it on all sides, clothed in conifers, articulate with waters, bathed with perfume of earth and leaf and flower. The canyon led into it from north and west. At the south escarpments edged it, broken by a narrow gap. On the east and north the great slants and lifting peaks offered unlimited range to the cattle which roamed there. And at the extreme southeast, hidden from the meadow by a grove of oaks, a cabin sat by the runnel of a spring
It was a tiny house, built from the timber of the hills themselves, and crudely put together, since it was the work of unskilled hands. That was apparent at a glance.
Beyond it on a little flat a garden grew in rich luxuriance—tall bean vines on their poles, rows of corn, and the low beds of vegetables between. There was a stable to match the cabin, where several horses might be housed and a cow beside. There were two corrals, made from long peeled saplings, and a saddle hung on peg against the barn.
This sylvan setting needed its human gods, and they were there—strange gods indeed!—a white man and a black, and both swung awry by the cruel hand of fate.
Where the garden stretched to the runnel's edge a negro worked with a hoe. He was little and black as ebony, and his face was not the usual face of the American negro of the South, but cast somewhat in a different mould. He moved continually on his one good leg, setting the wooden peg which answered for the other here and there to keep his ever-changing balance. But he could work, for the hoe flew at its task of turning the rich brown earth, and also he could sing, for the sweet deep tenor of his voice flowed through the silence like a tide of gold.
On the stone step of the cabin which faced the garden a white man sat mending a braided rope. He was young, scarce more than twenty-six or seven, and he was good to look at, or had been once upon a time.
The head bent over the riata was well shaped and covered with a shock of black hair which turned up at the ends. The face was thin, tanned by the sun and wind to a deep brown, and a mouth of sensitive cut was shut tightly above a prideful chin. The figure too was thin, thinner than it had a right to be, it seemed, from the build of the frame. As he sat there working one would have said he was normal and a bit above par as humanity goes. It was only when he laid down the rope and arose that one would have seen his mistake.
The man was not normal.
With the lift of his body to upright the left shoulder sank a full two inches—and one saw his eyes.
Grey eyes, filled with a smouldering flame, grave eyes sullen as hate. They were the one and only discord in the heavenly place, the only flaw.
With a little sidewise slur of motion the man went into the cabin.
From a covered can on a shelf he took a handful of sugar, wrapped it in a kerchief and put it in the pocket of his shirt. The shirt was well made and serviceable, with a certain natty trimness which suggested the days, not so far back, when its like thronged the city streets and begot all sorts of courtesies.
It was part of the uniform of the U. S. A., as were the hat he took down from its nail, the khaki trousers, the shoes upon his feet.
Thus equipped he limped out across the yard.
“I'm going over to the hills, Sarghan,” he called, “to get a sight of the Palermino.”
The little black negro straightened up, saluted primly. Then he fell to his work and the man, evidently the master, went around the house, through the grove and came out on the edge of the green basin. He left an erratic trail behind him in the rank grass, one that an Indian would have read at a glance, tall man, heavier on one side, eager foot tied to a lazy one.
On a stump the man sat down. He took off his army hat and ran his through the hair sweated on his forehead. He looked along the majestic slopes, and a different expression came into his eyes, a softness, a peace. It was as if a cooling hand had pressed upon a brow of pain.
Presently he put his fingers to his lips and sent a whistle keening in the silence. It was a peculiar call made of three notes and it said distinctly “Whee—yoo-weet,” snapping up at the end leaned forward and watched a spot high up where a little spring made a nest of grass and flowers for itself. Just above the spot something moved and shone in sun, something bright like a point of pale gold.
From time to time the man whistled and watched the lighted slope. And soon the moving point of gold resolved itself into shining curves and angles, the round beauty of a slender barrel, lean flanks above slim legs, the pale cascade of such a mane and tail as one reads about but seldom sees. At the end of half an hour the horse stood across the last small level at the hill's foot and looked at the man upon the stump, a horse without a mark on him, a pure Palermino, wide of nostril, fiery of eye, an aristocrat of the lonesome land, a creature of the free peaks and hidden meadows.
The man did not move.
“Hello, old scout!” he said; “we're getting educated, aren't we? The vices of civilisation, and so forth. Can't forget our new fleshpots, can we? Getting to be a toper all right.”
He fumbled at the pocket of his shirt and brought forth the kerchief with its lumps of sugar; then held out the bribe full in the sunlight.
“Come on,” he coaxed, “come on—come on. You know it's good. Atta boy!”
Stiff-legged, mincing, the Palermino came forward a little way and stopped. For two full months he had come to meet this human, and yet he had never trusted wholly.
Satisfied at last that there was nothing but his friend in all the meadow, he came mincing over the last short distance and reached far out for the sugar in the extended palm, so far that his knees buckled as his soft pink lips nibbled and pulled at the fingers which held the delectable sweet. The kerchief had been removed, for the touch of cloth would have sent the horse scurrying.
With the first taste his downfall was complete, and in a moment he was tame as a rabbit, eating from the extended hand with so great a relish that long after the last grain was gone he licked palm and finger and wrist with his pink tongue, his big eyes drowsy with delight. And all the time the man was talking to him, and stroking the velvet nose.
For an hour these two friends visited. The man talked and coaxed and stroked the shining skin, fondled the beautiful neck that curved like a scimitar.
- * But far over at the northwest rim a man sat watching the scene through a powerful field glass and his handsome dark face was lighted with pleased astonishment. “Talk about your Arabians!” he said to his companion. “I have seen fine horses in my day, but I never saw such a lighted lump of flesh as that! It shines in circles, like pale gilt laid on faultlessly. And leg and neck, ears, nose, shoulder, flank and thigh! By George, Hillis, it's a superhorse. I wish Sellard had come up ahead with us; he'd buy it instanter, providing I didn't beat him to it.” The look that passed over his face with the words indicated a desire and decision as intense as sudden; and he lowered the glass and sat for a moment tapping it against the horn of his saddle. “I guess we'd better cast about for a camp-site,” he said after another long look through the glass. He had seen the lame man start back across the meadow, the Palermino turn to his hills again.
The man in the worn army clothes, the man whose lazy foot dragged at his eager one, had he only raised the hat brim tilted down across his eyes, might have seen the invasion of his Paradise, might have stopped at its inception the blight of trouble which was burgeoning up his lonely pass like some noxious mushroom. But instead he returned to the cabin where the fragrant scent of beans and bacon spread enticingly on the air and the sweet tenor voice of the one-legged negro told the still world round about that all was well with everything.
Sarghan, maimed and small, was an amazingly over-charged atom of optimism who got the most out of every situation and passed it on. He served the meal he had cooked on the uncovered pine table and he ate with his master. There was no line between these two. They had slept together in the mud of a front-line trench, had shared what precious food had been available, and once when the night was ablaze with the flare of grim fireworks, Sarghan, on his two goods legs then, had crawled through the horror of No Man's Land with the white boy on his back. They had fought and suffered through three red years, and these had cemented a savage love between them. So strong was this odd bond between the white man and the black that when the former sailed for home the negro begged to come along, thus exiling himself forever from the tropic land that bore him.
And it had been well that he had come. With the failing of his body under the shock of wounds the bitterness that attacked the mind of the other would have destroyed it had it not been for the never-ceasing ferment of Sarghan's happy hope.
“Hi 'opes you henjoyed your walk,” said Sarghan ladling bean soup
“I did. Palermino is a panacea. He makes me forget my uselessness. There will come a day when, worthless as I am, I'll mount him and ride in the hills. That will be achievement, something, at least, that a man might do.”
“Jolly well, Buck,” said Sarghan admiringly, “Hi approves.”
The negro went about the clearing of the simple table when the meal was done. The man took a book from the precious shelf and stretching himself in the cabin's shade fell to reading. So the night closed down and for a time these two smoked in silence, then knocked out their pipes and went to rest in the sweet-smelling bunks built along the cabin's wall and filled with dry pine-needles.
It was their last night of peace.
With the dawn Sarghan was up and singing at his work, the man he called “Sir” and “Buck” tidying the house, making ready for another empty day. There was still shadow in the grove of trees, though the sun was gilding all the western edge of the basin, and the still air was keen as a blade. So keen that Sarghan going to the spring in its runnel stopped with lifted head, exactly like a wild horse scenting danger.
The negro, too, had scented danger, the smell of alien smoke drifting from the wide space of the meadow beyond! He turned in his course to look out at the wide, green level. For a long time he looked as one who does not believe his eyes, looked at the tiny white tents gleaming near the canyon's mouth, the spirals of smoke, the picketed horses and the humans moving like ants among them all! With slow movements he retraced his steps.
“Buck,” said Sarghan, “Hi adwise great calmness. 'Old 'ard to yer self. There's a camp of strangers in th' meadow.”
If he had struck him the man could not have straightened quicker. With his wet hands dripping he lurched around the cabin, out through the grove. At its edge he stood dumbfounded. The blood poured up in his face, a dark and sinister tide of almost unbearable rage. Without a moment's hesitation he set out across the level, the slow foot jerking spasmodically. Sarghan, watching, lost no time in following and it was a strange and grotesque procession which bore down upon the intruders.
[Continued in August McCall's]