Max Brand (23 page)

"I'm sorry this is such a mess for you; but if you can buck up for a
while it won't take long to finish the job."

She looked at him without understanding, which was what he least wanted
in the world. So he went on: "As a matter of fact, the worst of the job
hasn't come. You can do what you want with him right now. But
afterward—when you get him out of the valley the hard thing will be to
hold him."

"You're angry with poor David. What's he done now?"

"Angry with him? Of course not! I'm a little disgusted, that's all."

"Tell me why in words of one syllable, Ben."

"You're too fine a sort to have understood. And I can't very well
explain."

She allowed herself to be puzzled for a moment and then laughed.

"Please don't be mysterious. Tell me frankly."

"Very well. I think you can make David go out of the valley when we go.
But once we have him back in a town the trouble will begin. You
understand why he's so—fond of you, Ruth?"

"Let's not talk about it."

"Sorry to make you blush. But you see, it isn't because you're so
pretty, Ruth, but simply because you're a woman. The first he's ever
seen."

All her high coloring departed at once; a pale, sick face looked at
Connor.

"Don't say it," murmured the girl. "I thought last night just for a
moment—but I couldn't let myself think of it for an instant."

"I understand," said Connor gently. "You took all that highfaluting
poetry stuff to be the same thing. But, say, Ruth, I've heard a young
buck talk to a young squaw—before he married her. Just about the same
line of junk, eh? What makes me sick is that when we get him out in a
town he'll lose his head entirely when he sees a room full of girls.
We'll simply have to plant a contract on him and—then let him go!"

"Do you think it's only that?" she said again, faintly.

"I leave it to you. Use your reason, and figure it out for yourself. I
don't mean that you're in any danger. You know you're not as long as I'm
around!"

She thanked him with a wan smile.

"But how can I let him come near me—now?"

"It's a mess. I'm sorry about it. But once the deal goes through I'll
make this up to you if it takes me the rest of my life. You believe me?"

"I know you're true blue, Ben! And—I trust you."

He was a little disturbed to find that his pulse was decidedly quickened
by that simple speech.

"Besides, I want to thank you for letting me know this. I understand
everything about him now!"

In her heart of hearts she was hating David with all her might. For all
night long, in her dreams, she had been seeing again the gestures of
those strong brown hands, and the flash of his eyes, and hearing the
deep tremor of his voice. The newness of this primitive man and his ways
and words had been an intoxicant to her; because of his very difference
she was a little afraid, and now the warning of Connor chimed in
accurately with a premonition of her own. That adulation poured at the
feet of Ruth Manning had been a beautiful and marvelous thing; but flung
down simply in honor of her sex it became almost an insult. The memory
made her shudder. The ideal lover whom she had prefigured in some of her
waking dreams had always spoken with ardor—a holy ardor. From this
passion of the body she recoiled.

Something of all this Connor read in her face and in her thoughtful
silence, and he was profoundly contented. He had at once neutralized all
of David's eloquence and fortified his own position. It was both a blow
driven home and a counter. Not that he would admit a love for the girl;
he had merely progressed as far as jealousy. He told himself that his
only interest was in keeping her from an emotion which, once developed,
might throw her entirely on the side of David and ruin their joint
plans. He had refused to accompany the master of the Garden and the girl
on their ride through the valley because, as he told himself, he
"couldn't stand seeing another grown man make such an ass of himself" as
David did when he was talking with the girl.

He contented himself now with watching her face when David came back to
the patio, followed by Glani and the neat-stepping little mare, Tabari.
The forced smile with which she met the big man was a personal triumph
to the gambler.

"If you can win her under that handicap, David," he said softly to
himself, "you deserve her, and everything else you can get."

David helped her into the saddle on Tabari, and himself sprang onto the
pad upon Glani's back. They went out side by side.

It was a cool day for that season, and the moment the north wind struck
them David shouted softly and sent Glani at a rushing gallop straight
into the teeth of the wind. Tabari followed at a pace which Ruth, expert
horse-woman though she was, had never dreamed of. For the first time she
had that impression of which Ben Connor had spoken to her of the horse
pouring itself over the road without strain and without jar of smashing
hoofs.

Ruth let Tabari extend herself, until the mare was racing with ears flat
against her neck. She had even an impression that Glani, burdened by the
great weight of David, was being left behind, but when she glanced to
the side she saw that the master half a length back, was keeping a
strong pull on the stallion, and Glani went smoothly, easily, with
enormous strides, and fretting at the restraint.

She gained two things from that glance. The first was a sense of
impatience because the stallion kept up so easily; in the second place,
the same wind which drove the long hair of David straight back blew all
suspicious thoughts out of her mind. She drew Tabari back to a hand
gallop and then to a walk with her eyes dimmed by the wind of the ride
and the blood tingling in her cheeks.

"It was like having wings," she cried happily as David let the stallion
come up abreast.

"Tabari is sturdy, but she lacks speed," said the dispassionate master.
"When she was a foal of six months and was brought to me for judgment, I
thought twice, because her legs were short. However, it is well that she
was allowed to live and breed."

"Allowed to live?" murmured Ruth Manning.

"To keep the line of the gray horse perfect," said David, "they must be
watched with a jealous eye, and those which are weak must not live. The
mares are killed and the stallions gelded and sold."

"And can you judge the little colts?"

Her voice was too low for David to catch a sense of pain and anger in
it.

"It must be done. It is a duty. To-day is the sixth month of Timeh, the
daughter of Juri. You shall witness the judging. Elijah is the master."

His face hardened at the name of Elijah, and the girl caught her breath.
But before she could speak they broke out of a grove and came in view of
a wide meadow across which four yoked cattle drew a harrow, smoothing
the plow furrows to an even, black surface.

It carried the girl far back; it was like opening an ancient book of
still more ancient tales; the musty smell completes the illusion. The
cattle plodding slowly on, seeming to rest at every step, filled in the
picture of which the primitive David Eden was the central figure.

"Yokes," she cried. "I've never seen them before!"

"For some work we use the horses, but the jerking of the harrow ruins
their shoulders. Besides, we may need the cattle for a new journey."

"A journey? With those?"

"That was how the four came into the Garden. And I am enjoined to have
the strong wagons always ready and the ox teams always complete in case
it becomes necessary to leave this valley and go elsewhere. Of course,
that may never be."

He brought Glani to a halt. They had left the sight of the meadow,
though they could still hear the snorting of the oxen at their labor, a
distant sound. Here, on one side of the road, the forest tumbled back
from a swale of ground across which a tiny stream leaped and flashed
with crooked speed, and the ground seemed littered with bright gold, so
closely were the yellow wild flowers packed.

"Two days ago," said David, "they were only buds. See them now!"

He slipped from his horse and, stooping, rose again in a moment with his
hands full of the yellow blossoms.

"They have a fragrance that makes them seem far away," he said. "See!"

He tossed the flowers at her; the wind caught them and spangled her hair
and her clothes with them, and she breathed a rare perfume. David fell
to clapping his hands and laughing like a child at the picture she made.
She had never liked him so well as she did at this moment. She had never
pitied him as she did now; she was not wise enough to shrink from that
emotion.

"It was made for you—this place."

And before she could move to defend herself he had raised her strongly,
lightly from the saddle, and placed her on the knoll in the thickest of
the flowers. He stood back to view his work, nodding his satisfaction,
and she, looking up at him, felt the old sense of helplessness sweep
over her. Every now and then David Eden overwhelmed her like an
inescapable destiny; there was something foredoomed about the valley and
about him.

"I knew you would look like this," he was saying. "How do men make a
jewel seem more beautiful? They set it in gold! And so with you, Ruth.
Your hair against the gold is darker and richer and more like piles and
coils of shadow. Your face against the gold is the transparent white,
with a bloom in it. Your hands are half lost in the softness of that
gold. And to think that is a picture you can never see! But I forget."

His face grew dark.

"Here I have stumbled again, and yet I started with strong vows and
resolves. My brother Benjamin warned me!"

It shocked her for a reason she could not analyze to hear the big man
call Connor his brother. Connor, the gambler, the schemer! And here was
David Eden with the green of the trees behind, his feet in the golden
wild flowers, and the blue sky behind his head. Brother to Ben Connor?

"And how did he warn you?" she asked.

"That I must not talk to you of yourself, because, he said, it shames
you. Is that true?"

"I suppose it is," she murmured. Yet she was a little indignant because
Connor had presumed to interfere. She knew he could only have done it to
save her from embarrassment, but she rebelled at the thought of Connor
as her conversational guardian.

Put a guard over David of Eden, and what would he be? Just like a score
of callow youths whom she had known, scattering foolish commonplaces,
trying to make their dull eyes tell her flattering things which they had
not brains enough to put into words.

"I am sorry," said David, sighing. "It is hard to stand here and see
you, and not talk of what I see. When the sun rises the birds sing in
the trees; when I see you words come up to my teeth."

He made a grimace. "Well, I'll shut them in. Have I been very wrong in
my talk to you?"

"I think you haven't talked to many women," said Ruth. "And—most men do
not talk as you do."

"Most men are fools," answered the egoist. "What I say to you is the
truth, but if the truth offends you I shall talk of other things."

He threw himself on the ground sullenly. "Of what shall I talk?"

"Of nothing, perhaps. Listen!"

For the great quiet of the valley was falling on her, and the distances
over which her eyes reached filled her with the delightful sense of
silence. There were deep blue mountains piled against the paler sky;
down the slope and through the trees the river was untarnished, solid,
silver; in the boughs behind her the wind whispered and then stopped to
listen likewise. There was a faint ache in her heart at the thought that
she had not known such things all her life. She knew then what gave the
face of David of Eden its solemnity. She leaned a little toward him.
"Now tell me about yourself. What you have done."

"Of anything but that."

"Why not?"

"No more than I want you to tell me about yourself and what you have
done. What you feel, what you think from time to time, I wish to know; I
am very happy to know. I fit in those bits of you to the picture I have
made."

Once more the egoist was talking!

"But to have you tell me of what you have done—that is not pleasant. I
do not wish to know that you have talked to other men and smiled on
them. I do not wish to know of a single happy day you spent before you
came to the Garden of Eden. But I shall tell you of the four men who are
my masters if you wish."

"Tell me of them if you will."

"Very well. John was the beginning. He died before I came. Of the others
Matthew was my chief friend. He was very old and thin. His wrist was
smaller than yours, almost. His hair was a white mist. In the evening
there seemed to be a pale moonshine around his face.

"He was very small and old—so old that sometimes I thought he would dry
up or dissolve and disappear. Toward the last, before God called him,
Matthew grew weak, and his voice was faint, yet it was never sharp or
shaken. Also, until the very end his eyes were young, for his heart was
young.

"That was Matthew. He was like you. He liked the silence. 'Listen,' he
would say. 'The great stillness is the voice; God is speaking.' Then he
would raise one thin finger and we caught our breath and listened.

"Do you see him?"

"I see him, and I wish that I had known him."

"Of the others, Luke was taller than I. He had yellow hair as long and
as coarse as the mane of a yellow horse. When he rode around the lake we
could hear him coming for a great distance by his singing, for his voice
was as strong as the neigh of Glani. I have only to close my eyes, and I
can hear that singing of Luke from beside the lake. Ah, he was a huge
man! The horses sweated under him.

"His beard was long; it came to the middle of his belly; it had a great
blunt square end. Once I angered him. I crept to him when he slept—I
was a small boy then—and I trimmed the beard down to a point.