Monsieur of the Rainbow (McCall's Magazine)/Part 3
Illustration: Mara Thail, Opening The Letter, Felt A Thrill Of True Joy
Readers are comparing this novel of Miss
Roe's to “The Keeper of the Bees,” that
great work of the beloved Gene Stratton-
Porter which was also first given to the
world through the pages of McCall's. Like
Mrs. Porter's magnificent novel, this is a
story of a returned soldier blended with a
moving, poignant love theme. You will be
the poorer, spiritually, if you miss a single
installment of this engrossing narrative
of a soul's redemption
MONSIEUR of the Rainbow—“Monsieur” because of his noble French lineage, “of the Rainbow” because the old man had no choice but to follow his luck—had again lost himself to the highroad. And in the heights of the mountains of southern California two men sought a suitable location for the newest of Supercraft's feature films. This was the film in which Justin Sellard was co-starring the beauteous Mara Thail and the dark and sinister Spaniard, Marculo Ensalez. But more than a location was found by the two scouts: they came upon a mountain fastness which hid from the world a war-wracked soul and its faithful negro companion. And more, they saw and coveted a marvelous horse, the wild Palermino which had been tamed by the soul-sick veteran.
THE eastern side of the basin was blue with shadow, the coves and serried gulches deepening to black. Justin Sellard, standing with palm on elbow, chin in hand, looked at it all with contemplative eyes, lips tender with appreciation..
“I have something to talk about, Mr. Sellard,” drawled the handsome actor, Marculo Ensalez, “at your convenience.”
“What?”
“A perfect pippin of a horse I saw out yonder yesterday.”
“Wild horse?”
“There was a man with him.'
“Eh? I thought this was a wilderness!”
“I saw a man and a horse, a powerful super-horse!” The director shrugged and turned away toward the more enticing interest of the table.
“I'm fed up on super-horses,” he said, “that last black super in Arizona cost me seven thousand dollars damages, not to mention the best rider I ever saw hop a saddle. Good morning Miss Thail, I do not ask how you slept.” He laid his hand affectionately on the girl's shoulder. Mara Thail hastened to don her make-up tint and Sellard stood for a moment giving some brief directions to several camera men. And in a little pause that fell for a moment a strange voice cut clear in the still air.
“To what,” it said in the thin, high note of anger at the breaking-point, do I owe this intrusion?” The men whirled instantly. At the corner of the nearest tent a man stood regarding them from flaming eyes. A man whose face was white as chalk, a deadly face of hatred and rage. One shoulder sloped a very little below its mate. And behind him stood a little black negro, more grotesque than his master, balancing on his wooden leg. At the first surprised look at these two strangers Marculo Ensalez threw back his head and laughed. It was the mistake of his life, could he have known. But Justin Sellard did not laugh. He saw the white fury of the man's face, recognized its earnestness. Also he saw the worn army clothes. Quietly he came forward.
“Intrusion?” he said in calm voice, “I did not mean it as such!”
“No? Does the world enter a man's dooryard and sit en his front steps unconsciously?”
“We meant, and mean, no harm. We are taking scenes for a motion picture, and, searching for new and rugged location, one of my scouts found this lovely spot. It is ideal.”
“But mine!” snapped the stranger like a broken wire.
Mr. Sellard smiled in a disarming manner. “Then we transgress and apologise. Do you object to our taking our pictures here?”
A few short years ago the man in the army shirt would have met the courteous words with outstretched hand and eager smile. Now the despairing rage which smouldered always in him flamed senselessly. “Surest thing you know,” he said sullenly; “this is my universe, and I intend to keep it. I will take it kindly if you will leave at once.”
“Chief,” said Ensalez belligerently, “there is no law against photographing the open country. Are you going to let a couple of cripples drive us out before we get our stuff?”
For the first time the ex-soldier turned his flashing glance full upon the actor.
“Marc,” said Sellard thinly, “control yourself.”
Behind his master the small black negro shuffled close. The long arms drew up, the wiry shoulders hunched. He crouched with head out-thrust, presenting a startling semblance to an ape aroused. And just then an apparition of unspeakable beauty came round the tent's corner.
“Why—what—!” cried Mara Thail sharply, the glittering rain of her raiment swishing at her sandalled feet with the sudden halt.
Slowly the ex-soldier turned and looked at her. Regal in her gorgeous trappings, glowing with color, shining with youth and health, this woman was enough to stop the average heart for an enchanted second. Now as she gazed at the stranger with her wide dark eyes, sober and serious, she seemed a creature from another sphere set down in the virgin wilderness. The man stared at her frankly. For an odd, electric space the world narrowed down to these two strangers, gazing for the first time into each others' eyes. The woman was first to recover herself, to move on her sandalled feet, to put a hand to the jewelled bands that ringed her head. The man turned at the movement, looked at Sellard.
“For her sake,” he said deliberately, “you're free. The road, the basin, the hills, use them as you wish.”
And without another word or glance he turned sharply to swing away. He had forgotten himself! The slow foot caught him unaware and all but threw him headlong to the earth
“Steady, Sir,” said the black man, patiently, “'old hup a bit. Right-o,—for'ard.”
“A Jamaica nigger, as I live!” said Marc Ensalez, “black as ebony, but English to his boot toes! Toe, I should say, to be entirely correct.”
Sarghan heard and turned a black face back across a shoulder. The whites of the eyes were two grotesque half-moons. Justin Sellard could not have told why, but somehow he felt a sinister suggestion.
“I thank you, personally,” he said gravely; “we will not abuse the privilege.”
THE special scenes for “Kings of the Khyber” went forward splendidly. They saw no more of their strange landlord, and though they knew his cabin must be somewhere to the south they kept strictly to their own side, since Sellard had so requested. Only two people were occupied to any great extent with thoughts apart from the production; Marculo Ensalez, watching the eastern slope for a sight of Palermino moving like a spot of gold, and Mara Thail who had not forgotten the soul she had seen behind the bitter gaze of hard grey eyes.
The owner of those eyes himself was plunged in a sort of savage lethargy from which nothing could rouse him, neither the blandishments of the squirrels nor Sarghan's untiring foolishness. He lay all day in the shade of the trees that flanked the cabin, his head on his arms, and Sarghan could not tell whether or not he slept. He kept jealously to his own place, not even venturing so far as the garden to see how the pole beans flourished. And one there was who missed him, Palermino, stamping his striped white hoofs and scanning with suspicious eyes the basin where such strange creatures circled and where terrifying fires burned by night. But the man himself, so slowly struggling back to normalcy, had sunk once more beneath the bitter tide of physical humiliation. He had heard himself and his Jamaica nigger called cripples. In the same second he had beheld womanhood at its peak of perfection. The awful gulf between the points of contrast was an appalling thing, a black abyss which there was no bridging, would never be. He had thought himself impervious to this particular barb of life, the thought of love and woman. Now he found himself more hopelessly hurt by it than all the rest.
Five days passed and the motion picture people were on the eve of departure, having “shot” all the available scenery and finished their sequence. It had been a wondrous day. The ex-soldier sat on the bench beside his door looking across the illimitable distance above the roof of forests far down below He smoked and frowned, his elbows on his knees, his chin in one cupped hand. And so it was that a stranger, stepping softly, stood for a long time at the cabin's western corner unobserved. But presently, yielding to that strange influence of eyes upon him, the ex-soldier stirred and moved, took the pipe from his lips and looked across his shoulder. Flushing painfully he rose.
“I beg your pardon!” he said.
Mara Thail, slim and modern in her de luxe outing clothes, came forward, hand outstretched.
“It is I who should do so,” she said, “for you want none of us, and with reason. But I could not go and leave you thinking hard of us, of all of us together. I had to come over for a little visit.”
“I am honored beyond all words.”
Mara Thail looked at him and smiled. When this woman smiled the beholder scaled ecstatic heights, or plumbed abysmal depths, according to his nature. The man with the haggard eyes felt the ground of human hope slide out from under him.
“Do you like my country?” he asked abruptly.
“Yes,” she nodded. “I am a hill-woman. I have been happy here and I shall go back to the slow warm autumn of the Southland, as they call Los Angeles, with better heart for work. You have given me something to take away with me.”
She sat quietly, tapping her glove against the top of her trim boot, looking out through the Rip.
“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 and straightened. Haltingly, with many pauses, he spoke of those awful days, and the woman followed, speaking with a concise clarity which seemed to cover the whole great tragedy.
“It was a frightful mistake of humanity,” she said at last as the veils of twilight deepened out across the top of the forest below.
“I do not think of the past unless I cannot help it,” she continued. “I look only for the good, happy thing. Life is too terribly short for anything else.” The man's mouth curved in the habitual look of bitterness.
“To those who came through—whole,” he said.
Mara Thail had been waiting for that. In the great kindness of her deep and tender heart she had ached with pity for this maimed creature.
“To every one,” she said gently, “there is still the fertile ground of the soul. What's done is done.”
“I must be going now,” she said, “we leave tomorrow and will make an early start.” She smiled into his eyes, her own soft and sweet and beautiful as sunset on her own wild alien hills. In another moment she was walking away around the cabin's corner, and the man stood dumbly watching. With a sudden stifled cry he made to go after her, caught her in the grove.
“Why,” he said desperately, “I don't even know your name!”
“Mara Thail,” she answered, “and yours—?”
“I am David John Buchannan.”
“Good-bye, David John,” she said.
Then she was gone into the twilight.
WITH a spangled scarf about her shoulders Mara Thail stood near the stone wall that edged a parapet and looked down on the magic world below. A soft world of shadows in all degrees of pale amethyst on the jumbling hill tops, of rosy grey a little deeper down, and of velvet black where the levels lay hidden in night And spread afar on this table of dusk lay the trailing fabrics that were the lights of Hollywood, of Los Angeles, of Pasadena and of Sierra Madre. Marculo Ensalez stood close, his shoulder touching hers.
“Wonderful spot,” he said musingly there, “isn't another like it in the world. Its sunlight, its blooming groves of citrus, its shining roads and smiling seas, all designed for man's delight.”
Miss Thail glanced at him under dreamy lids. It was such moments as these which enchanted her with him, which seemed to belie the habitual cynicism of his manner. At these glimpses of a rare depth in him she found herself justifying his coldness which was usually so apparent and denying the cruelty of the curved lips, the thin nostrils. And yet there was a fire in him, a terrible fire. She had seen it flame once or twice in her knowledge of him. She sometime questioned herself about this tendency to excuse and justify him. Why should she do so? Was it because she understood him more than the rest, that she saw the youth of his soul, and within her the potential motherhood yearned above all? At any rate he was the most beautiful person she knew; but Mara Thail was not a devotee to beauty to the detriment of calm judgment The shoulder touching hers moved ever so slightly, but with that little change the man himself came closer into her consciousness.
“How long?” he said half whispering, “how long are you going to hold me captive, tied to our chariot wheels? You Know that the heart of me drags in the dust!”
In spite of herself the woman thrilled.
“Foolish!” she said, “don't be theatrical. We get enough of that in the daily grind.”
Ensalez flung an about her, pulled her head against his breast. She felt his lips burn on her cheek, the bone beneath the flesh cried out against their pressure. This was fire again, maddening, tinged with brutality.
“You call me foolish?” he cried, “take care you have no reason to call me mad!” Angered, Mara Thail drew away from him, wiped her cheek with the end of her spangled scarf.
“I do so now,” she said, “you, or any man, are mad to force me! If I had asked for that I'd have given it to you, I think, but to bruise my face! You revolt me, Marc.”
Instantly the man dropped on his knee beside her. He was a repentant boy, the youth of his humbled head pulling at her heart strings.
“Come on, get up,” she said, “we'll call it quits, my dear. I'm a thousand years your senior. Here, take a kiss for peace-offering.”
Illustration: “You Know,” He Said, “That The Heart Of Me Drags In The Dust!”
She kissed him lightly on the lips and the next moment Ensalez had leaped to his feet, folded her in his arms and kissed her with such passion from brow to throat and back again as left her gasping.
“I'll swear,” she said frowning when she had regained her breath, “I thought I understood you, but I don't.”
“No!” he shot out breathlessly, “I'll say you don't! Nobody does! And I get what I go after, Mara. Never forget that.”
“Old stuff,” she said coldly, “and now I think you'd best go home, my friend. I've had quite enough for one day.”
Ensalez bowed, turned on his heel and went. Long after his footsteps had died away through the patio and the silent house beyond, she leaned against the stucco wall in the purple dark and looked down at the lighted land below and tar away. For some inexplicable reason there had come into her mind the memory of that other twilight some weeks back, of the face of the man who laid his pipe on the cabin's ledge with hands that shook with some inner turmoil. She saw again the grave grey eyes, sick unto death with savage pride and loneliness. This man had been handsome once, she was sure of that. In those thrilling days of khaki, say, when the streets were full of marching feet. He had been straight then, of course. She could vision him swinging with the column, and his face would be transfigured. And in his face there was some strange kinship for her. She had felt it with that first long look. He was just a broken soldier, an empty frame he had said. In bitterness, a thwarted wreck an ambitions, hopes, desires and potentialities. A profound pity lay deep in her heart for him
That very night, high in his mountain basin, David John Buchannan looked at the same stars wheeling in the vault and the bitterness was rampant in him like a flood of aloe sap. Ever since he had looked upon Mara Thail in her glorious perfection he had felt the hopelessness of the struggle. He had looked too late upon the one woman in all the universe. Added to the bodily shame that ate him with every halting move there was the poignant ache of loss that was never gain.
It was two by the nickle clock on the cabin shelf when Sarghan, grotesque in white cotton pajamas, came softly to the door. “Buck,” he said plaintively. “H'i do wish you'd retire. H'i 'aven't 'ad a wink.”
The master rose, laid his cold pipe in its accustomed place on the window ledge and went indoors.
“Sarghan,” he said one day some two weeks later, “you'd better give Billy a heavy feed tonight. I think I'll ride down tomorrow. The smokes are pretty low in the old can, and the coffee's out you say?”
“Right-o, sir.”
So, before day, in the pale blue mountain dawn, the man with the slow foot rode down the canyon where the mysterious voices of the silence whispered between the crags, and snow waters trickled under foot. The slight slope of the shoulder was less apparent he rode with the straight back and graceful seat of the born horseman. For twelve miles his way led down this great pass that gave from the High Sierras to the plain. Eight miles farther down he came to the small town which was his trading post, his point of contact with the world he had forsaken.
The luxury of a hotel room appealed to him with a wistful memory, for he was weary too. He was also hungry but he shrank from the ordeal of entering a room where women dined, with his well-worn clothes and halting gait So he rested for a while, stretched on the clean trim bed, his hands under his head, a feeling of comfort pervading him. It had been long since he had experienced so certain a sense of sweetness, as if some good thing were about to happen to him. And so, presently he rose and made himself as neat as his garments would permit, descended to the modest dining-room where all were welcome after the fashion of a foothill town, and ate a meal in company with his kind. More than one woman in the place looked at his tragic face with guarded eyes of pity. Twilight passed while he was at his meal and the soft dark summer night lay over the earth like a blanket. A little way beyond, across the way, a local theatre flung its fan-fare of effulgence out upon the dusk. Fathers and mothers with innumerable off-spring, young men and maidens, a sprinkling of attendants, were gathering into its doors early as it was. Motion pictures—they had meant little to him. There had been a time in France when he had sat, hungry-hearted with the rank-and-file of his comrades, to watch them avidly. He had not cared for them since. Now, however, there was about them a subtle interest. He stood debating whether or not to go over.
For some time his gaze had been focused without conscious sight upon a figure standing before the easel-like bill-board which carried the evening's offering of play and players. This was an odd figure, a veritable caricature of a man, slight to the point of emaciation, and uncovered head shining like silver in the glaring light. He stood very erect, one hand palm up, holding a disreputable hat, the other occupied with a very small dog whose frazzly and apologetic tail stuck out behind. Other canines brought up the rear in solemn fashion, and between the bearing of the absurd group and its actual status there was a wide and laughable gap.
For the first time in months a smile pulled at the corners of David's unaccustomed lips and he shuffled from the cur to limp across the street. Close beside Monsieur Bon Coeur Buchannan stopped.
“Bo' jou',” he said—and to save his life he could not have told why he thus accosted a strange old tramp in the tongue he had learned in the trenches. The effect was galvanic. Monsieur whirled as on a pivot, so that his coat tails stood out from their wasp-waist-line and the puppy's feet waved wildly for balance.
“Amour de Dieu!” he cried. “Ze French!”
“I beg your pardon,” the other said gravely, “I don't know why I spoke to you.”
But Monsieur, looking close in his thin face, marvelled. To Monsieur's eager perceptions this face, thrust so sudden; upon his vision, was written plain in script of the soul, and it was tragic. A lean face, starved and bitter, pathetic as child's. It went at once to the tender heart beneath the ancient coat. Monsieur Bon Coeur shifted the hat, laid a fine hand on Buchannan's sleeve.
“I am compliment', M'sieu,” he said, “thees garment—it ees that khaki w'ich pour to my countree in her need—wich tell all France 'LaFayette, we are here'! I salute eet!”
And, puppy and all, the speaker suited the action to the word in such a genuflection as stopped the passers-by with wondering stares or amused laughter according to their natures. Embarrassed beyond words David Buchannan turned his back to the crowd, but swiftly as he could, he brought his heels together, raised his sagging shoulder and his right hand flashed to his hat-brim. He was once again a soldier as he answered that salute.
Monsieur's eyes were sparkling. Once more he heard the thud of feet beside the Arc de Triomphe.
“Ze grand worl', M'sieu,” he said happily, “ees so full of fine theengs! Those ver' fine theengs w'ich have to do wiz ze spirit—ze hero fighting for his colors—ze—ze woman who ees behin' ze colors—al-ways.” And, as if he could not help it, humbly, reverently, the old man swept his free hand toward the bill-board on its easel. Buchannan turned his head. The glorious face of Mara Thail in all its dusky beauty looked gravely at him from the poster. The thrill that shot through him from head to foot was so sharp, so actually painful, as to leave him with the weak, drained feeling of physical shock. Then he turned on his heel and went away as swiftly as was possible.
The eager blue eyes of the old man followed him, filled with acute distress. What had he said? Instantly the exciting joy was gone from the hour; Monsieur was in the depths. The face of the one woman in the universe had lost its domination. He, Monsieur Bon Coeur, had hurt a heart already burdened with an age-old grief! He turned sadly away to make his way to the town's outskirts.
It was a pity that he did not wait, for the man with the slow foot and the haggard eyes came back, bought a ticket at the window and went in. The picture was unfortunate, a tale of war, and Buchannan sat with wet brow and tight-shut hands throughout its performance. Only the face of the woman shining through it held him there. He saw her as a care-free girl, then as an anxious sweetheart, a heroine of the back-line, and finally as the courageous, calm wife who stood by till the bitter end.
When he left the theatre he was shaking in every nerve, sick to his foundations, but there was burning in him a fire which puzzled him. He walked in the night, frowning, and was conscious of the bitterest revolt against his fate that he had ever known. The eyes of Mara Thail, the lips of her, the oval contour of her face, these filled him with a physical hunger which he had thought conquered. The sweetness of her glance, the earnestness, the kindly understanding, these went down into his empty heart and filled it with spiritual longing. He had not known before how much alone he was. Nor how likely he was to be alone forever.
“Fool!” he muttered, “whining fool! Stand to your guns.”
HE was abroad early in the morning, making his purchases with the opening of the stores, seeing to his horse, getting ready for the back trail to his solitude. He did all this on foot, for he would not mount in the public eye. That was a careful process which galled him to the bone. So, with his saddle-bags on his shoulder, he went last to the post-office for the scant mail that was sometimes there, a letter from his sister back in Idaho, two copies of a monthly magazine, a catalogue of seeds. These he stowed away while the man at the window held one more letter for a re-survey.
“David John Buchannan,” he read, “that you? Usually comes under one initial, don't it?”
Buchannan nodded. The clerk laid down a square white envelope, thick and satiny, its superscription written in a firm clear hand, bold yet delicate, unmistakably a woman's. With the first swift glance at it the sharp thrill struck to his heart. The script blurred to his vision suddenly, his hands felt cold and damp. In a strange inner tumult he took it and walked out of the building. He knew as certainly as though he had read it that it came from the woman who had filled his thoughts to the exclusion of all else for a fortnight. He put it in the pocket of his shirt with trembling fingers, buttoned the flap securely and went directly to the stable. A tightness persisted in his throat.
Billy, tough little cow-horse, was fresh as the day. He took the road at a running walk and with no guidance from his master's hand turned to the east at the town's fringe. That master was the prey of two emotions, two desires. One was to snatch that missive from his pocket and devour its contents. The other was to tear it to ribbons unread. So he rode ahead into the blithe morning and did neither.
Where the streets gave way to the country road an automobile was parked by the way. It was a de luxe affair, long, low, high-powered. A young man stood by its running board, while another sat with his back to the road, his face buried in a newspaper. As David Buchannan came abreast of this equipage he cast a casual glance at it and rode on. Several rods beyond the youth hailed him, came sauntering toward him. There was a bold surety about him.
“Good morning,” he said, “fine large day.”
Buchannan nodded.
“Come down from the hills?” asked the other.
The man on the horse nodded again, coolly.
“Way up? Head of the canyon?”
“Yes.”
“Ah, round basin, sort of rugged kind of country?”
“Just what are you driving at?” asked Buchannan.
“Atta boy!” grinned the other, “get down to the moment! Be yourself. Circumlocution is wasted energy! Whatta mean is this. You've got something up there, unless I'm misinformed, that's valuable. Maybe more valuable than you dream. I represent a market.”
“Come through,” said Buchannan sharply, “what sort of market—for what?”
“Pictures,” said the boy briefly, “horses.”
“Horses? I have no horses, only this—.” The grey eyes under the tilted hat-brim narrowed.
“There's a yellow horse up there,” said the other, “which would go fairly fine in the films, owing to its color. What will you take for it?”
Buchannan sat back in his saddle.
“I'll take,” he said thinly, “a rifle to the first butt-in that comes up my pass!”
And he lifted his reins and swung away at a lope that startled his horse to unaccustomed action. Presently he heard the long car roar, shift its gears and come sliding after him. It whirled around, swung across the road. The sleek youth was alone in it. Buchannan looked back. The man who had occupied it a moment before sat calmly on the low bank lost in his paper.
Illustration: “I Saw A Man On A Beautiful Horse, A Powerful, Super-Horse!”
“Look here,” said the boy swinging his shiny boot out the open door, “we know you don't own this yellow horse—that it's a wild horse—but we don't want any trouble with you, seeing it runs sometimes on your land. Therefore we make you a fair offer—offer to pay you for it, just as if you did own it—”
“Will you get out of my way?” said Buchannan grimly, “or must I make good?”
His right hand groped for the saddle-bag behind him. The other man reached for his gear-shift.
“As you please,” he said, airly; “but just remember that we offered you a square deal. What we go after we usually get.”
“Zat, M'sieu, ees a bare-faced threat!” said a gentle voice instinct with indignation, “an' I am, as you see, a witness. At your service, Monsieur!” And the speaker, rising like a ragged spectre from the willows by the road, bowed haughtily.
The boy in the car broke into a shout of laughter.
“Great Pete, Rip Van Winkle!” he cried, “what a witness you would make!” And though he did not know it, he spoke with profound prophesy.
Buchannan looked down at his friend of the sign-board. Blanket-roll, music-box, walking-stick and all, down to the sedate old collie, the shepherd mother and her pup, they were the same.
“Thanks, my friend,” he said.
The car shot away in a cloud of dust, stopped for a second to pick up the man beside the road, and was gone. Buchannan smiled a little grimly.
“We never know,” he said, “do we, what disaster waits round the next corner?”
“Nor what rainbows, M'sieu!” cried Monsieur brightly, “Nevair forget ze rainbows!”
Rainbows! There was one now in the pocket of the man in the saddle, resting on his heart like a pot of gold! A fair, bright promise, alluring as the bow beyond the rain, as tremulous, ephemeral, and uncertain. For the second time in twenty-four hours a smile pulled at his bitter lips because of this ridiculous little old vagabond with the airs of a courtier.
“Where are you going, friend? You and your—rainbows?” he asked whimsically.
Instantly Monsieur Bon Coeur flushed and straightened.
“To ze rainbow's foot,” he said with dignity.
“Forgive me,” Buchannan said.
“Gladly, M'sieu,” said the old man.
“It would seem that those who have all the world are never satisfied,” said Buchannan grimly.
“Like ze greedy child,” cried Monsieur indignantly, “have all—take all. Zis equine of ze yellow coat, M'sieu—it ees your own?”
“My only interest in a lonely world, a wild horse and mine only because I've tamed him. But in the code of the wilderness that constitutes possession.”
“I see. Quite plainly. An' ze young man of ze fresh demeanor he would have this horse?”
“For the pictures, yes. But he'll never get him.”
“Non! Nevair! We will fight to ze last ditch, M'sieu! Thees is nozzing less zan outrage!”
The Vandyke beard was quivering. Instantly, without a moment's hesitation, Monsieur had identified himself with the issue. The man before him needed hope, for he had lost it. Somewhere in the shuffle of life he had become separated from all desire to live. Monsieur knew that as truly as though the man had told him. He knew, too, that he would not live, save and except for the fact that he was too brave to die. He looked up anxiously.
“In case,” he said diffidently, “I could be of service, M'sieu? I heard ze boast, ze threat—”
Buchannan, thinking deeply, came out of his abstraction.
“Sure you did,” he said, “and some day you may be invaluable to me. Where could I find you?” It was an unfortunate request. A red flood came up under the delicate skin. For a moment the eager old eyes flickered. Then Monsieur Bon Coeur snapped his fingers airily, waved a hand grandiloquently at the universe at large.
“At ze rainbow's foot, M'sieu,” he said, “is my home address!”
David Buchannan flung back his head and laughed, true laughter that rang in the summer air. The unaccustomed sound shocked his own ears. He leaned down and put a firm hand on the thin old shoulder beneath its precious coat. “I know just where that is,” he said, grinning, “it's right in the middle of my cabin straight up in those hills! Will you come home with me?”
Could you beat it? Just could you! Here was Monsieur, aching for contact with this broken derelict, invited to his hearth-stone!
“If you will have ze kindness to wait one moment, M'sieu,” he said with dignity, “until I collect my belongings. I shall be ver' pleased to accept ziz unexpected hospitality.”
That was a strange journey with its oddly-assorted fellow-travelers, and it took the best part of two days, since Monsieur Bon Coeur would not listen to any ride-and-tie arrangement. They camped that night high in the pass where the widening walls gave room to a grassy glade. David John Buchannan slept heavily, but through that slumber, deep as it was, he was vaguely conscious of a lump beneath his breast, his right hand clutched tight upon the pocket which held the envelope. For three days David Buchannan carried that missive, unopened. Fierce emotions whipped him. This woman with the unspeakable beauty, the deep eyes of passion and understanding—what could she possibly have to say to him, the maimed by-stander at the game of life? Pity, perhaps. Yes, that was it. And he wanted none of it. There could be no other point of contact between them.
So he decided to destroy the letter and think no more about it; he even took it in sacriligious hands and raised the lid of Sarghan's small stove but put it jealously away again, aghast at himself.
And then came the day when he faced the issue and marched across the basin to sit on his accustomed stump. He opened it with fingers that shook a bit despite himself and gazed at its few lines with dilated eyes.
“David John,” it said abruptly, “the earth is dry down here. There has been little rain and all the rounded slopes of this gentle country are brown with drouth. I think often of your green hills, singing with their waters. Also I think of you and the look of your eyes, which is never the look of a soldier's eyes. * * The war is done, I hear you say. No, it isn't; not for you. You are in the trenches yet and are likely to be for many weary years; and you are all but swamped by the enemy coming over the top. Forgive me for saying this—it is unpardonable presumption—but I cannot see a soldier lie down on his job. Bite on the bullet, David John. There's another ounce of fight left in you—shell it out.
Mara Thail.”
All but swamped! Yes, he was. The sheet in his fingers shook with their shaking. He gazed somberly at the green slope before him and was not conscious of the shining shape which starred it, did not see the tossing head in its cloud of creamy mane. Palermino, watching his idol with wide dark eyes, was astonished at its silence. It was only when the wild horse stamped with a striped white hoof and neighed shrilly that David Buchannan shook himself literally and came back to the present. He thrust the letter back in the pocket and slid off the stump.
It had not been pity after all! It had been an order, stern and sharp. Thank God! It had not been pity.
A strange feeling of exultation swelled his throat. With some inner flash he saw a bridge spanning a rugged gorge. What that vision of achievement could have to do with Mara Thail's command he could not have said; yet it was there. A slow surge of something very like hope went through him painfully. He flung up a hand, snapped his fingers.
“You yellow nuisance!” he said, “come here!”
And there came into his handling of the horse today a new touch, a firmer confidence. Twice he slapped the shining hide with resounding blows, pushed the nuzzling head with playful roughness.
Palermino squealed and strutted and for once David Buchannan laughed at his antics outright, and when he marched away across the meadow the golden stallion came with him far out, obedient to the hand upon his mane.
MONSIEUR,” said Buchannan that night as he smoked in the matchless twilight, “what are the signs of a soul's defeat?”
Sitting primly in the same chair where Mara Thail had sat in another twilight, he put his fine hands on his ragged knees, considering. The long white hair was immaculately dressed. The Vandyke beard was neat as care could make it. He wore the shirt with the only slightly frayed cuffs, the smaller holes at elbows, the missing collar.
“Signs of ze soul's defeat, M'sieu?” he repeated, “I would say—after ze mature contemplation—I would say there ees only one—la Mort.”
“Eh?” said the younger man.
“La Mort,” said Monsieur firmly. “No living soul defeated so long as zere comes another day. Only death can end ze fight, M'sieu.”
Buchannan frowned in the shadows. So! Only death could end the fight!
Monsieur, hands on knees, peered earnestly at his companion. His old blue eyes were alive with the hope that sprang eternal in him.
“In Denver I know a man,” he said earnestly, “wizout his legs. He ees ze owner of five news-stands. Een his employ are seven men wis all their members. An' he ees ze beeg boss, M'sieu, wizout ze doubt. He wears a medal on hees breast.—And there ees a woman, too, who stood by, an' still stands by; she loves him.”
Buchannan stirred on his bench.
“I didn't think they made that kind these days,” he said.
“Today an' while ze worl' stands, M'sieu!” cried Monsieur eagerly, “ze heart of woman ees as ze sea—forever ze same.”
Unconsciously the old man was pleading the cause of the face upon the billboard, the marvelous woman he had seen shining like the Queen of Sheba in the mimic city. David John Buchannan felt this unerringly, and frowned in the darkness. A ragged old hobo and a—cripple! Fools! Idiots! Suddenly he flung back his head and laughed, wild laughter that startled Monsieur like a dash of icy water.
“Ho!” he laughed, “the comedy of fools! The great burlesque of life! How rich it is!”
Buchannan rose and flung away around the cabin, muttering. Until two of the night he sat with his back beside a pine tree on the far hills' skirts, his arms folded on his knees, his face upon them. What were they doing to him? The old tramp with his shining hope, his eager faith in life and its beauty, and Sarghan with his dog-like love, and Mara Thail, the actress, with her firm command? Why could they not have left him alone? He had troubled no one.
And the woman—when he thought of her the despair within him was wine of Gehenna. He all but hated her—and taking the envelope from his shirt pocket he laid it beneath his forehead where the sweat stood cool in the night.
He was trembling with the facing of a possibility which he dreaded—the possibility of once more plunging forward in the fight for normalcy. For—she had said there was another ounce of fight in him. * * Monsieur said that the only end of it is death. * * Six years back he would have said so, too. Now
********
Mara Thail, resting in her specially appointed paradise above the Pasadena hills, got no answer to her little kindly note. More than once she thought of it and the haggard eyes of the man who had inspired it. She did not resent his silence, his ignoring of her effort. So deep and simple was her human heart that she seemed to know full well the why and wherefore. And she did not forget those eyes. They were sick eyes, misunderstanding, agonized.
To Marculo Ensalez she did not speak of him, nor of anything that touched upon the personal between herself and the screen idol. The tenderness which she had felt for Ensalez had received a set-back with the quarrel between them. Yet he came as was his wont, his dark eyes always burning with the fire that smoldered in him. In another month he would be once again at work, and Mara would not be with him. Therefore he made hay while the sun shone, and he was subtly clever in his harvesting. He who was such a bold lover for the delectation of the public became humble in his hours alone with her; but Mara Thail distrusted him.
She could have reached out her hand and had any man it chanced to touch. But she had seen so deep into the ghastly vortex of life that there was in her a grave sense of values. She who had so much was not easily dazzled. Neither was she ashamed of her interest in the man of the high meadow with his homestead, his fifty cows, his dragging foot and his army clothes.
Monsieur Bon Coeur she had forgotten completely. David John Buchannan she did not forget. And so there passed a few weeks when all things were quiescent. The woman rested and drove about in her limousines. Ensalez came back from somewhere.
MONSIEUR Bon Coeur made a hundred modest improvements in the cabin for its owner's comfort, and that owner had set himself a task. There was a different set to his lips, he held the drooping shoulder grimly up in line with its mate for hours each day. That the effort drew his face with strain was negligible. In a hidden glade close to Palermino's flowery spring he took up, slowly and carefully, the old drudgery of setting-up drill. It was drudgery now and no mistake, what with the slow foot that must be reckoned with. Patiently, hour by hour, he began the slow and painful process of salvaging his body. And with the whip of discipline he lifted his spiritual head, looked down the future.
They were right—they all were right—Sarghan, Monsieur, the woman with the tender eyes. What right had he, who had offered up his sacrifice, to refuse the ultimate mead exacted by that sacrifice? And the first thing to conquer was his bitterness. This was hard, but he was a fighter born. And so he began “shelling out” that last ounce.
Summer was going fast, especially in the High Sierras. The golden days were getting appreciably shorter. There was a hint of frost in the late nights. David Buchannan knew that before many weeks he must round up his cattle and drive them down through the canyon to the winter feeding grounds which he had arranged for in the great valley below. In this task he would have two wonderful allies, the white-ringed collie and the little shepherd mother who, since their advent in the basin, had proven Monsieur's wisdom in saving them from the pound. Together they had caught and killed the sly old coyote which had taken three of the new calves in the spring. The bounty money would go expressly for a sack of meal to feed them through the winter, which arrangement had delighted Monsieur beyond reason.
The negro disapproving at first with jealous selfishness, had accepted Monsieur with a better grace, since he found that something in the old man's simple philosophy did more for his master's state of mind than all his songs and his foolishness.
And by the stump beyond the meadow David John Buchannan had laid a master's hand on Palermino. The horse had become accustomed to a rope about his neck, the feel of a hackamore upon his regal nose, the weight across his back of Buchannan's saddle-bags. In the man's clearing mind a purpose was well formed. He meant to tame and ride this glorious free creature, to own him body and soul, to master his great strength, his marvelous speed, and that, he knew in his inmost soul, would be a man-size job, worthy of one with all his wits and vigor.
Day after day he spent at the hill's fringe, and farther and farther Palermino heard his whistled call and came trotting down in answer. The stallion was tractable and kind, ruled by love alone, and he took to rein and burden without fear. But the ultimate trial, when he should find upon his back a man who clung, would be a different matter. That Buchannan knew. He knew, too, the risk it would mean. But the risk was part of the game, a simple game that yet meant so much to him.
So the day came, in late September, when he went early from the cabin, his braided hackamore hung to his arm and the pocket of his shirt bulging with cubes of sugar.
Sarghan was busy at the wood-pile, singing as he worked at the winter's growing ricks, and Monsieur Bon Coeur whittling industriously at the long white panels of thin fir-wood on which his pictures were taking shape. There were a dozen of these pictures inspired by their surroundings. One day they would go marching down to the hectic city streets, framed exquisitely with the halves of tiny pine cones tacked to their edges. Monsieur hoped greatly from this stock-in-trade. A hat now, and shoes.
So Monsieur carved meticulously, lost in the dreams that never lost their lure through unfulfillment, believing in them still. The sun went up along the heavens in majesty. There was a sweet crisp coolness in the air. The sky was sapphire blue and a profound stillness hung upon the lofty world.
It was because of this very waiting silence that presently the sedate collie, lying at Monsieur's knee, pricked his short ears, turned his wise head, listening. After a little he rose and trotted away around the cabin. At the same moment Sarghan paused, his axe uplifted. For a keen space he stood, then dropped the tool and stumped after the dog. Monsieur, sensing something unusual, laid down his work and followed.
A play was being enacted in the amphitheatre of the basin spread out before them, a play that made Sarghan lift and shake his clinched fists in the face of the serene heavens.
Where the great green floor stretched widest a thing that was entirely mad and uncontrollable shot and circled this way and that, leaped in the golden light with a shaking of cream-colored plumes, twisted and spread-eagled, struck at the empty air, screamed to the peaks with wide opened mouth, while along its wild back a man lay crouched, his hands clutched in the cloud of mane, his feet clamped to its sides, his desperate face white as a moon in fog. Buchannan from his stump had dared the issue, and Palermino had gone mad with fright!
“Th' gun! Fetch me th' rifle, H'old Man!” whimpered Sarghan; “'urry!”
But Monsieur Bon Coeur, without a second's bewilderment, understood.
“Non!” he cried, “Nevaire! He ees once more a man! He fights for the mos' priceless theeng—hees soul alive!”
There was no sound in the suave day except the thunder of the sweeping hoofs which came and receded in waves as the horse shot hither and yon. Its golden hide was a spot of glory on the level green, the long pale fan of its tail swirled with its turnings, spread and whipped taut, and once more spread. The great head hung up like that of a swimmer drowning, sank down and shook from side to side. The man on its back clung like a leach. He was flat above the withers, his elbows bent, his back in a bow, and the head on his shoulders snapped this way and that like the cracker on a whip.
For an hour by the sun the Palermino fought. His mouth was open, his eyes were rimmed with red, and the whistle of his breath could be heard above his flailing hoofs. At its slowing end he stood over by the canyon's mouth, still and done. On him Buchannan hung like a rag, and his hands, loosing their cramped grip on the tangled mane, slid round the sweat drenched neck. His face was white as it would ever be in death, there was a blue line round his mouth, and tears that came in a flood dripped down the trembling shoulder.
Shaking in every limb, weak and spent to the last ounce in him, he rolled down to his feet and putting a hand on Palermino's hanging head, he began a march about the basin, for after his raging passion of effort, to let him stand would have been death. And the golden stallion, meek and panting, turned wearily after.
Buchannan did not sleep in the house that night. Instead he took a blanket and in what lone glade of the mountains he spent the hours of peaceful starlight he did not say. When he came in at dawn he led the wild horse with him, and Palermino was no longer wild. So the lone runner of the hills learned the taste of barley in a box, the meaning of a fence, although he was not a captive. The corral gate was open and he was allowed to go, but his master followed and the old play was kept in force. Sarghan was grimly opposed to this but, at Monsieur's behest, he kept his counsel.
OCTOBER came in. Frost in the Sierras touched the foliage with its magic fingers, so that great swathes shone in gold and crimson on the hills' skirts. On the pine tree by the mountain spring the man had a mark where his drooping shoulder touched and he kept jealous watch of it. His mouth was very tight what time he took his observations, for the mark had risen full three quarters of an inch. He felt, too, as if the slow foot had, in some mysterious fashion, become a bit less heavy. This he would scarcely admit, would build no hope upon it, but in his inner consciousness he knew it was so. He had a “hunch” about it. He still carried the envelope in his pocket, soiled and ragged. Each time the sneering bitterness attacked him he would lay a hand upon it. It was an order and he was “shelling out” the ounce. And he had made another trip to the valley, where at the little theatre he had seen once more the face of Mara Thail advertised for a coming film. It was strange what emotions gripped him with the sight of that pictured face, what a tightness came in his throat, what a sea of despair rolled in and threatened to engulf his new decision. He resolved sternly that he would think no more of the woman herself, but only of the effect her word might have upon his life.
A week later he was again in the town, was entering the lighted lobby with the careless crowd, and was trembling in every limb. He sat in breathless tension and when she moved before him in all her grace and beauty he found his hands clenched into fists, the sweat starting on his body.
That very night, looking from her parapet, the woman in the flesh was thinking of the broken soldier, wondering if he was making his good fight.
Justin Sellard, smoking in his bachelor apartments, was toying with a new idea for a film, a tender, wistful thing, different from the usual run, dealing with forgotten days in France, in another and more gallant generation. He wondered if he could make his public see the delicate appeal of character irrelevant of age, of beauty, or of jazz.
And Marculo Ensalez was talking earnestly with the sleek young man who had driven the long car across the path of—Buchannan that day outside the town in the northern valley.
“It might be risky,” he was saying, “just in the actual act, but later it would be a cinch. If you can put it over in the first place I'll attend to the rest—alibis, honest owners and all. I'm obsessed with the thought of the golden horse. What a knockout he'll be, under a Spanish saddle thick with silver! His pale mane and tail—they'll take the light like Lillian Gish's wonderful hair, silver white and misty! Standing against him, I'll come out sharp as black on white! Get the picture of him at the bull-fight. Lay your plans well, Banny; they'll be worth two thousand bucks to you flat if you put them over. And a good deal more to me.”
“Leave it to me,” said Banny confidently, “I know where Mex Contrillo is, and if he can't pull a horse deal, either tame or wild, I'll forfeit the little old two thou.”
DAVID BUCHANNAN began to make the long ride down the canyon more often than was needful, and each time he studied avidly the announcements of the picture world. Each time, too, he went to the post-office for the mail. He did this with a shame-faced feeling, and once, in his room at the hotel he drew, quite cleverly, a graceful sketch of a mountain slope, a pine tree and a man with a drooping shoulder making a mark upon it. This was all, but he put the sketch in an envelope, got a stamp from the clerk, addressed it to the name and place in the soiled missive in his pocket and dropped it, beyond recall, in the letter slot at the post-office.
And Mara Thail, opening the envelope two days later, felt a thrill of true joy in her woman's heart, for she read it exactly at the first glance.
She sent a prompt reply, and this was nothing more nor less than a little gilded frame, swinging on its stand, entirely empty. There was no word with it, but David John, getting it the next week, drew a deep breath and jerked his shoulder up in line.
So the days went by. Monsieur's shakes were finished, a bulky bundle, wrapped with brake-fern dry and soft.
“W'at you theenk, M'sieu?” he asked Buchannan anxiously, “would I be justified in asking, say, one dollar and ze one-half for each?”
“Monsieur,” replied the younger man most gravely, “you'll get two just as easy, and you'll be perfectly within your honest rights.”
Shades of prosperity!
And yet, if M'sieu Buchannan said so, they must be worth so magnificent a stipend. Hope, ever at the boiling point in Monsieur's heart, poured over the top. The hat, now, of a surety, and the shoes! Perhaps the pants! Glorious vision!
In late October Buchannan gathered his cows from the slopes. They were all there, along with almost as many calves. It made a sizeable herd and he wished fervently for help to make the drive, but the little shepherd-dog mother was like a flash of energy and craft, falling into the work like a veteran, and with the more quiet aid of the old collie, he worked them into the canyon's mouth and the rest was easy. He camped that night at the foot of the cliff. Next day he saw his worldly wealth safe in their winter pasture and for the first time the broken ambitions seemed to know a modest compensation.
He could eat his meals now in the dining-room of the small hotel at the regular hour without the burning sense of humiliation. He forgot for longer spaces his slow foot, walking on the pave. But was it so slow? The first time he knew for a certainty was on this occasion of the cattle drive, when, in stepping off the curb he found it swinging forward without the usual halt which heretofore had marked that act. That day his lips set straight and his face flushed so keenly as to be painful.
The following week he made another sketch of the pine tree with two marks upon it, the second a scarce perceptible fraction of space above the first. He meant to send it after its mate.
“Monsieur,” he said grinning, “I'm trailing a rainbow, though Heaven alone knows what lies at its foot.”
A little of Monsieur's hope was in his eyes these days, a new excitement which had to do with the intriguing plan which he had formed to ride Palermino down the canyon to the valley town.
[Continued in September Mccall's]