The Max Brand Megapack (316 page)

“A very fine thing to have done, Brother David,” he said. “Do you know what I thought of when I heard you talk?”

“Of what?” said David, composing his face to receive the compliment. At that Ruth turned suddenly away, for she dared not trust her eyes, and the hatred which burned in them.

“I thought of the old story of Abraham and Isaac. You were offering up something as dear to you as a child, almost, to the law of the Garden of Eden.”

“It is true,” said David complacently. “But when the flesh is diseased it must be burned away.”

He called to Ruth: “And you, Ruth?”

This childish seeking after compliments made her smile, and naturally he misjudged the smile.

“I think with Benjamin,” she said softly.

“Yet my ways in the Garden must seem strange to you,” went on David, expanding in the warmth of his own sense of virtue. “But you will grow accustomed to them, I know.”

The opening was patent. She was beginning to nod her acquiescence when Connor, in alarm, tapped on the table, once and again in swift telegraphy: “No! No!”

The faint smile went out on her face.

“No,” she said to David.

The master of the Garden turned a glance of impatience and suspicion upon the gambler, but Connor carefully made his face a blank. He continued to drum idly on the edge of the table, and the idle drumming was spelling to the girl’s quick ear: “Out!”

“You cannot stay?” murmured David.

She drank in his stunned expression. It was like music to her.

“Would you,” she said, “be happy away from the Garden, and the horses and your servants? No more am I happy away from my home.”

“You are not happy with us?” muttered David. “You are not happy?”

“Could you be away from the Garden?”

“But that is different. The Garden was made by four wise men.”

“By five wise men,” said the girl. “For you are the fifth.”

He was so blind that he did not perceive the irony.

“And therefore,” he said, “the Garden is all that the heart should desire. John and Matthew and Luke and Paul made it to fill that purpose.”

“But how do you know they succeeded? You have not seen the world beyond the mountains.”

“It is full of deceit, hard hearts, cruelty, and cunning.”

“It is full of my dear friends, David!”

She thought of the colt and the mare and Elijah; and it became suddenly easy to lure and deceive this implacable judge of others. She touched the arm of the master lightly with her finger tips and smiled.

“Come with me, and see my world!”

“The law which the four made for me—I must not leave!”

“Was it wrong to let me enter?”

“You have made me happy,” he argued slowly. “You have made me happier than I was before. And surely I could not have been made happy by that which is wrong. No, it was right to bring you into the valley. The moment I looked at you I knew that it was right.”

“Then, will it be wrong to go out with me? You need not stay! But see what lies beyond the mountains before you judge it!”

He shook his head.

“Are you afraid? It will not harm you.”

He flushed at that. And then began to walk up and down across the patio. She saw Connor white with anxiety, but about Connor and his affairs she had little concern at this moment. She felt only a cruel pleasure in her control over this man, half savage and half child. Now he stopped abruptly before her.

“If the world, after I see it, still displeases me, when I return, will you come with me, Ruth? Will you come back to the Garden of Eden?”

In the distance Ben Connor was gesturing desperately to make her say yes. But she could not resist a pause—a pause in which torment showed on the face of David. And then, deliberately, she made her eyes soften—made her lips smile.

“Yes, David, I will come back!”

He leaned a little toward her, then straightened with a shudder and crossed the patio to the Room of Silence. Behind that door he disappeared, and left Connor and the girl alone. The gambler threw down his arms as if abandoning a burden.

“Why in the name of God did you let him leave you?” he groaned. “Why? Why? Why?”

“He’s going to come,” asserted Ruth.

“Never in a thousand years. The fool will talk to his dummy god in yonder and come out with one of his iced looks and talk about ‘judgment’! Bah!”

“He’ll come.”

“What makes you think so?”

“Because—I know.”

“You should have waited—to-morrow you could have done it, maybe, but to-day is too soon.”

“Listen to me, Ben. I know him. I know his childish, greedy mind. He wants me just as much as he wants his own way. It’s partly because I’m new to him, being a woman. It’s chiefly because I’m the first thing he’s ever met that won’t do what he wants. He’s going to try to stay with me until he bends me.” She flushed with angry excitement.

“It’s playing with fire, Ruth. I know you’re clever, but—”

“You don’t know how clever, but I’m beginning to guess what I can do. I’ve lost all feeling about that cruel barbarian, Ben. That poor little harmless, pretty colt—oh, I want to make David Eden burn for that! And I can do it. I’m going to wind him around my finger. I’ve thought of ways while I stood looking at him just now. I know how I can smile at him, and use my eyes, and woo him on, and pretend to be just about to yield and come back with him—then grow cold the next minute and give him his work to do over again. I’m going to make him crawl on his knees in the dust. I’m going to make a fool of him before people. I’m going to make him sign over his horses to us to keep them out of his vicious power. And I can do it—I hate him so that I know I can make him really love me. Oh, I know he doesn’t really love me now. I know you’re right about him. He simply wants me as he’d want another horse. I’ll change him. I’ll break him. When he’s broken I’m going to laugh in his face—and tell him—to remember Timeh!”

“Ruth!” gasped Connor.

He looked guiltily around, and when he was sure no one was within reach of her voice, he glanced back with admiration.

“By the Lord, Ruth, who’d ever have guessed at all this fire in you? Why, you’re a wonder. And I think you can do it. If you can only get him out of the infernal Garden. That’s the sticking point! We make or break in the next ten minutes!”

But he had hardly finished speaking before David of Eden came out of the Room of Silence, and with the first glance at his face they knew that the victory was theirs. David of Eden would come with them into the world!

“I have heard the Voice,” he said, “and it is just and proper for me to go. In the morning, Ruth, we shall start!”

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Night came a
s a blessing to Ruth, for the scenes of the early day had exhausted her. At the very moment when David succumbed to her domination, her own strength began to fail. As for Connor, it was another story. The great dream which had come to him in far away Lukin, when he watched the little gray gelding win the horse race, was now verging toward a reality. The concrete accomplishment was at hand. Once in the world it was easy to see that David would become clay, molded by the touch of clever Ruth Manning, and then—it would be simply a matter of collecting the millions as they rolled in.

But Ruth was tired. Only one thing sustained her, and that was the burning eagerness to humble this proud and selfish David of Eden. When she thought how many times she had been on the verge of open admiration and sympathy with the man, she trembled and grew cold. But through the fate of poor little Timeh, she thanked Heaven that her eyes had been opened.

She went to her room shortly after dinner, and she slept heavily until the first grayness of the morning. Once awake, in spite of the early hour, she could not sleep again, so she dressed and went into the patio. Connor was already there, pacing restlessly. He had been up all night, he told her, turning over possibilities.

“It seems as though everything has worked out too much according to schedule,” he said. “There’ll be a break. Something will happen and smash everything!”

“Nothing will happen,” she assured him calmly.

He took her hand in his hot fingers.

“Partner”—he began, and then stopped as though he feared to let himself go on.

“Where is he?” she asked.

“On his mountain, waiting for the sun, I guess. He told the servants a while ago that he was leaving to-day. Great excitement. They’re all chattering about it down in the servants’ house.”

“Is no one here?”

“Not a soul, I guess.”

“Then—we’re going into that Room of Silence!”

“Take that chance now? Never in the world! Why, Ruth, if he saw us in there, or guessed we’d been there, he’d probably murder us both. You know how gentle he is when he gets well started?”

“But how will he know? No one is here, and David won’t be back from the mountain for a long time if he waits for the sun.”

“Just stop thinking about it, Ruth.”

“I’ll never stop as long as I live, unless I see it. I’ve dreamed steadily about that room all night.”

“Go alone, then, and I’ll stay here.”

She went resolutely across the patio, and Connor, following with an exclamation, caught her arm roughly at the door.

“You aren’t serious?”

“Deadly serious!”

The glitter of her dark eyes convinced him more than words.

“Then we’ll go together. But make it short!”

They swept the patio with conscience-stricken glances, and then opened the door. As they did so, the ugly face of Joseph appeared at the entrance to the patio, looked and hastily was withdrawn.

“This is like a woman,” muttered Connor, as they closed the door with guilty softness behind them. “Risk her life for a secret that isn’t worth a tinker’s damn!”

For the room was almost empty, and what was in it was the simplest of the simple. There was a roughly made table in the center. Five chairs stood about it. On the table was a book, and the seven articles made up the entire furnishings. Connor was surprised to see tears in the eyes of Ruth.

“Don’t you see?” she murmured in reply to his exclamation. “The four chairs for the four dead men when David sits down in his own place?”

“Well, what of that?”

“What’s in the book?”

“Are you going to wait to see that?”

“Open the door a little, Ben, and then we can hear if any one comes near.”

He obeyed and came back, grumbling. “We can hear every one except David. That step of his wouldn’t break eggs.”

He found the girl already poring over the first page of the old book, on which there was writing in a delicate hand.

She read aloud: “The story of the Garden of Eden, who made it and why it was made. Told without error by Matthew.”

“Hot stuff!” chuckled Connor. “We got a little time before the sun comes up. But it’s getting red in the east. Let’s hear some more.”

There was nothing imposing about the book. It was a ledger with a half-leather binding such as storekeepers use for accounts. Time had yellowed the edges of the paper and the ink was dulled. She read:

“In the beginning there was a man whose name was John.”

“Sounds like the start of the Bible,” grinned Connor. “Shoot ahead and let’s get at the real dope.”

“Hush!”

Without raising her eyes, she brushed aside the hand of Connor which had fallen on the side of the ledger. Her own took its place, ready to turn the page.

“In the beginning there was a man whose name was John. The Lord looked upon John and saw his sins. He struck John therefor. First He took two daughters from John, but still the man was blind and did not read the writing of his Maker. And God struck down the eldest son of John, and John sorrowed, but did not understand. Thereat, all in a day, the Lord took from John his wife and his lands and his goods, which were many and rich.

“Then John looked about him, and lo! he was alone.

“In the streets his friends forgot him and saw not his passing. The sound of his own footfall was lonely in his house, and he was left alone with his sins.

“So he knew that it was the hand of God which struck him, and he heard a voice which said in the night to him: ‘O John, ye who have been too much with the world must leave it and go into the wilderness.’

“Then the heart of John smote him and he prayed God to send him not out alone, and God relented and told him to go forth and take with him three simple men.

“So John on the next morning called to his Negro, a slave who was all that remained in his hands.

“‘Abraham,’ he said, ‘you who were a slave are free.’

“Then he went into the road and walked all the day until his feet bled. He rested by the side of the road and one came who kneeled before him and washed his feet, and John saw that it was Abraham. And Abraham said: ‘I was born into your service and I can only die out of it.’

“They went on together until they came to three robbers fighting with one strong man, and John helped this man and drove away the robbers.

“Then the tall man began to laugh. ‘They would have robbed me because I was once rich,’ he said, ‘but another thief had already plundered me, and they have gotten only broken heads for their industry.’ Then John was sorry for the fortune that was stolen.

“‘Not I,’ said the tall man, ‘but I am sorry for the brother I lost with the money.’ Then he told them how his own brother had cheated him. ‘But,’ he said, ‘there is only one way to beat the devil, and that is to laugh at him.’

“Now John saw this was a good man, so he opened his heart to Luke, which was the name of him who had been robbed. Then Luke fell in with the two and went on with them.

“They came to a city filled with plague so that the dead were buried by the dying and the dog howled over his master in the street; the son fled from the father and the mother left her child. They found one man who tended the sick out of charity and the labor was too great for even his broad shoulders. He had a broad, ugly face, but in his eye was a clear fire.

“‘Brother, what is your name?’ said John, and the man answered that he was called Paul, and begged them for the sweet mercy of Christ to aid him in his labors.

“But John said: ‘Rise, Paul, and follow me.’