Monsieur of the Rainbow (McCall's Magazine)/Part 4

by Vingie E. Roe

 

NOT only in the films did Marculo Ensalez pay suit to the lovely Mara Thail, but also in reality. And when the two, filming a picture in the high Sierras, came upon David John Buchannan, spiritually wrecked by the War, a little need was born in the heart of each. For Ensalez this need was one which darkly coveted the magnificent, wild Palermino, ethically Buchannan's stallion by virtue of his taming. But for Mara Thail the need was to reclaim the bitterly bleeding soul of the stallion's master.— And over the four, three humans and a horse, watched another. This was Monsieur Bon Coeur—Monsieur of the Rainbow—vagabond by necessity. The nobility of his old French family was evidenced by the kindly tolerance, the charity, that looked through his eyes and would not be denied.

WITH the first light fall of snow in the mountains the rainbow vanished and all the bitterness came back a hundred fold.

It was the irony of fate that the golden stallion went down the pass for the first time in his life, not under the loving hand and comforting voice of his liege lord, but in the night, with a rider before him and one behind. There was bewilderment in his half-wild brain and fear and senseless panic. He would have screamed to Heaven had it not been for the binding noose upon his nose. He had been trapped in the canyon's mouth itself, so easily and neatly, run off his levels in the dusk by strange horses and riders, that those riders chuckled at their sheer luck.

“Two thousand bucks!” grinned the young man whom Ensalez had called Banny, not sleek now but roughly clad, with a hat low on his eyes and the growth of a week's beard on his pink cheeks from the exigencies of his watching camp in Buchannan's hills.

“Two thousand bucks, and only two hundred out for Mex! Good work, old son, good work.”

Good work, thieves' work, hard, bullying, overbearing rich-man's work, paid for not alone by gold, but in agony of terror, in the wrench and quiver of grief, the ache of irremediable loss.

WHEN David Buchannan, calling on the familiar slants, searched the basin with anxious eyes, looking in the empty corral with its hospitably open gate and barley box, received no answer, saw no shining shape, he was mystified beyond expression. Palermino, always in some one of his haunts, was nowhere to be seen.

At first the man was merely anxious. A horse was a horse, a stallion a stallion. And yet this one was different from the general run of his kind. He had stagged alone, so far as Buchannan knew, a hermit, a recluse, seemingly content with his virgin paradise.

But when two days went by and then a third and Buchannan, scouring the hills, the basin, and deeply wooded gulches, had found only silence, his heart sank with a cold sense of premonition. He went then to the northwest rim where the pass came up to the basin—and need go no farther. Cutting down from the northeast and circling on the basin's floor a little way there lay the story plain as day, shod hoofs of a horse, a swift horse, judging by the length of its leaps, the lightness with which it touched the earth, and, ever inside the circle of this trail, the free hoofmarks of Palermino. Palermino, running this way and that, close to the canyon's mouth, darting in to escape this strange pursuer and caught like a rat in a trap between it and the other that waited in the cut. There had been a struggle there. With grim mouth and chalk-white face Buchannan read it, the web of hoofprints, shod and unshod, the new marks of steel on stone, even the long raking scratch on the sandstone wall of the pass itself where Palermino, mad with fright, had leaped straight up against it. There, too, was the place where he had fallen at the last, the depression in the soft earth of the canyon's narrow floor, the prints of booted heels all around it. On little stones here and there were bits of yellow hair, and once a smear of blood.

David John Buchannan straightened up, jerked at the sagging shoulder and swore a full mouthed oath.

Then he marched straight back across the meadow.

“Sarghan,” he said through set teeth, “I'm going amok. Get me Billy and be quick.”

HOW different the touches of the year upon the land. In the High Sierras the fall had brought its feather-like snow, soft and light,and cool. In the Southland the flowers bloomed, the sun shone and there was scarce a thought of winter. The great sweeping plumes of the pepper trees scented the warm air languidly; women walked on the streets without wraps. About the studios that cluster thick in Hollywood fleets of motor cars stood waiting, came in, deployed, or went away, laden with the strange personnel which makes up this land of faery. This activity was watched by many of the idly curious—and by one who was far from such. Day after day, first at one studio and then another, a man stood on the sidewalk and searched with smoldering eyes those who came and went. He was thin and he wore his hat low upon his brows, and his army clothes had given way to an ordinary blue serge suit. With the loss of his military appearance, something of the pathos of his hurt had disappeared. He was only a man who walked with a slight hesitation, whose mouth was set a bit too grimly. Day after day he came down along the flowery streets and patiently took up his vigil. Night after night this man haunted the theatres of Hollywood and Los Angeles, and once he took a trolley and went far out to a suburb to watch a film which featured Mara Thail.

David John Buchannan was beset by two hard, driving passions; love that was worse than hopeless, and a determination to find the man who had driven Palermino down the pass and to wring restitution from him if it was his last act of life. He was looking for the face of the sleek youth of the high-powered car. He did not connect him with Marculo Ensalez. So day after day went by without results, for the simple reason that Banny was far down on the Mexican border on location with the company, already busy with the great new picture starring Ensalez; and Banny was very busy himself since his was the sole care of the golden horse which he and Mex Corrillo had delivered to the actor, and for which he had received duly his two thousand dollars. Palermino, worn thin by fear and fret, the constant chafing of the spirit that was in him. Palermino, tamed to the great Spanish saddle with its carven conchas, its shining silver, tamed to the spur, the noose, the quirt. A changed Palermino, anxious, grieving, looking always back toward the north, searching the dim horizon for the peaks of hills.

So the master who loved him searched the eyes of men, and more days went by. Buchannan still carried the worn envelope, although he did not open it new. In his cheap room far out on the car-line the little empty frame swung on its standard beside his dresser-glass.

Illustration: A Limousine Like A Rolling Palace Drew In To The Curb So Close To Him That The Driver Touched Its Deep-Throated Horn To Make Him Move

And then, out of a clear sky as it were, ecstasy and pain fell upon him with a staggering force. A limousine like a rolling palace, pale blue as a robin's egg and upholstered within in blue-grey satin, drew in to the curb so close to him that the driver touched its deep-throated horn to make him move—and Buchannan looked at Mara Thail. Hudson Brown, immaculate and handsome in his driver's rig, held back the door and the woman stepped out. She was dressed in the last fine word of wealth and taste, beautiful as the best of her kind is beautiful, composed, sure of herself, lovely beyond description. Her white ungloved hand rested for a moment on the door's edge and it sparkled with priceless gems. As she turned to cross the pave her garments all but brushed the man in the cheap blue suit. Then she entered the door beyond, and David John Buchannan wet his dry lips that were ashy pale. She had not seen him, had not felt his presence, and the knowledge was wormwood to him. He walked away as quickly as was possible, but he held his shoulder firmly up, commanded his slow foot viciously. It was her word, he told himself sternly, that mattered, not the woman herself.

But he went the following week to the great theatre in the city which was showing, first-run, the wonderful new production, “Kings of the Khyber.” He saw her there, regal as an Eastern empress, glittering in barbaric beauty, peering from a swaying howdah, and his heart was hollow as the bottomless pit. He saw the magic of his own high meadow, ringed with its protecting hills, his slopes and slants, his pine trees and his pass. He closed his eyes and thought of the white hand on the car door, the same white hand which had caught bis own and held it for a bewildering moment that twilight in his cabin yard. He saw Ensalez, too beautiful to be real to a man's eyes, swagger through the picture; and he felt a slow anger surge in him at the sight of his arms about this woman, his lips pressed to hers with convincing passion.

As he went out into the glittering street of the lovely southern city he knew in his soul that he was done with following these pictures. The aching longing they engendered in him was eating him to ribbons and to no avail. No matter what heights of rehabilitation he achieved, what picture of earnest manhood he builded in his frame of life, they could be to Mara Thail only a passing source of satisfaction, a moment's kindly contemplation.

So he was done trailing shadows. Now he would think only of Palermino in the hands of his enemies, would bend every effort to his finding. And this was nearer than he dreamed. On the night of that decision Palermino stood with wide-spread legs in the rolling, thundering, bumping prison which had almost driven him insane with fear before, riding up from the Border in a private equine Pullman. In the train ahead Ensalez talked enthusiastically with Sellard about the good work done, the director nodding at intervals.

Buchannan meanwhile slept uneasily in his unlovely room. Out in her hills above Pasadena, Mara Thail, clad like a Sybarite in extravagant negligee, sat before her dressing table fingering the sketch of the pine tree with its double marks. This, and the one before it, was all that she had received as fruit of her sowing, yet she knew it for such. Her pleasure in the knowledge was wholly disproportionate. And north a bit along the endless ribbon of the great Sky Line Boulevard that rims the hills, two strange figures camped beside a dot of fire. Sarghan, wearied almost beyond endurance, sat hunched upon a stone, his black head on his folded arms, while Monsieur Bon Coeur cooked at the embers. Billy, found at the stable in the valley town, had been thrice indispensable on this odd journey, for he carried everything under Heaven, it would appear, that the wayfarers might need, even Sarghan himself a deal of the way. There were the blankets, the cooking pots, the half of the precious shakes since the rest had been sold on the way, not to mention a private pack of the negro's, and the accordion. Sometimes he carried, too, the youngest canine, a sprawling creature all legs and ears, for Billy the puppy had disgraced its mother by harking back to a nameless jumble of unrelated strains.

“My frien',” said Monsieur when the stew was done, “partake I entreat you. Food, eet ees strength to ze heart, fire in ze box of ze spiritual engine.”

“H'i 'aven't th' nerve, H'old Man,” said Sarghan plaintively. “Buck, w'en 'e's in th' dumps don't take proper care o' 'imself. Belike 'e ain't been eatin' regular.”

“Le Bon Dieu,” said Monsieur firmly “ees on ze job, nevair fear. We will find M'sieu. Oui, I, Monsieur Bon Coeur, know eet for ze fact. Somewhere among thees fairy theengs we will fin' him.”

The old man did not add aloud his thought, “Cherchez la femme.”

IT was two o'clock of an opulent afternoon. The sun was warm as summer. There was no wind and the long plumes of the pepper trees hung in languid grace. The smell of the asphalt was a pungent and not unpleasant aroma mingled with the breath of countless flowers. At a certain studio there was activity. Crowds of people stood about the entrances, gay with players' clothes, their faces ghastly with the pink and blue and green of pigment for the films. Across the street the man in the blue serge suit stood watching as he had watched for weeks, hands thrust idly in his pockets, eyes busy beneath his hat-brim. He had become a familiar figure, haunting the studios, but there were many such in Hollywood and none paid him attention.

He had been looking to the right where a group of Mexicans stood with picturesque serapes across their shoulders, and all but failed to turn his eyes when old Dame Fate crooked her erratic finger. The heavier rumble of a truck upon the pave caused him to glance to the left, and with a gasp he lurched from the curb. A wide gate was opened to the lot behind and the truck, a huge affair with high crate sides, was turning slowly in, and high above the sides, with big eyes strained and temples hollowed, under the creamy fluff of forelock, the head of a horse shone golden in the sun!

David John Buchannan ran across the street—ran like a normal human!—and flung himself against the gate which had slammed shut. Hoarsely he demanded entrance but the gate man shook his head. Trembling with passion, white and terribly excited, Buchannan ran to the main entrance ind burst into the office. The young Vanderbilt at the wicket eyed him with maddening coldness.

“Name?” he said insolently. “Business?”

“Buchannan,” he said. “I want to see e manager, or whoever's in authority.”

Appointment?”

“No.”

“Sorry,” and the important personage looked beyond him to the next suppliant.

“Look here,” said David John. “I've got to get into this place. Will you be good enough to be human a minute?”

The young man looked steadily beyond him. A red flush stained Buchannan's ashen face, and a hand that had once belonged to an athlete shot through the wicket and catching collar, shirt and tie, snatched the astonished face up over the small shelf to the opening. The hireling had presence of mind to slap a button in the wall beside him and in three seconds two husky youths had bulged through the door beside the window. With excellent team-work they laid hands on Buchannan and in shorter time than it takes in the telling he found himself on the sidewalk with an admonition to be on his way or there would be a call for officers.

The ex-soldier picked up his hat brushed it, set it on his dishevelled head and went, dazed and shaken. But the heart in him was hammering. He had found his own! That was the golden head of Palermino, or he was not himself. Early as possible next morning he was back, asking every one he thought likely to know how one might see the manager and finding little encouragement. There was another man at the wicket this time and he was of a different strain, listening to Buchannan's desperate plea to see some one in authority, looking him in the face with understanding.

“Just a minute,” he said and picking up a telephone he called into it, “Mr. Sellard, please.”

Buchannan cried out eagerly.

“The director! Tell him—tell him—the owner of the high meadow—where he made the Khyber picture—he'll remember——”

“Mr. Sellard,” repeated the man, “there's a man here demanding to see you—says to tell you he's the man of the high meadow where you made 'Kings of the Khyber'—yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

He pulled a wire and the door clicked open.

“Down he hall and to your right,” he said, “third door.”

With his head whirling Buchannan passed that way. He saw the door and knocked.

“Come in,” said Justin Sellard, rising. Buchannan stood on the threshold. He came forward with extended hand.

But the man with the blazing eyes did not take it.

“You came to my homestead,” said Buchannan, panting, “and I let you stay—because a woman asked it. You said 'we will not abuse the privilege.'”

Sellard nodded, withdrawing his hand.

“You got what you wanted—and you took all I had! All I cared for in the world! Betrayed my concession like ordinary thieves!”

Justin Sellard was a wise man, one who saw and felt all the myriad undercurrents of this piteous thing which we call life. He saw now savage hurt and unleashed rage, a dangerous combination. With grave tact he met the excited eyes.

“Sit down,” he said, “and let's get to the bottom of this. What have I taken? From where? and when?”

“A yellow stallion,” said Buchannan thickly, “from my very door-step, run off in the night down the pass, about a month ago.”

“You are wrong,” said the director gently, “I have done no such thing.”

“No? You deny it? I saw him go into your gate in a truck yesterday afternoon!”

“I beg you to believe me,” said Sellard, “when I say I know nothing about this, but that I shall sift it to the bottom. Now then, please be seated. You need a moment to get control of yourself. I owe you something in return for your courtesy in the matter of the location, but I am not a thief. Let me get that fact to you in the beginning.”

Buchannan sat down, wiping his forehead where his hat had pressed. He wet his dry lips. Sellard was thinking fast, and with a ray of light.

“The yellow horse yo saw must have been the new animal which Mr. Ensalez brought some time ago from Mexico for his new picture, now in progress. I believe he paid two thousand dollars for it. What makes you think it can be yours?”

Buchannan stirred impatiently.

“What makes you recognize the face of your wife, if you have one?” he asked wearily.

“I see,” said the director. He pressed a button. A trim young woman appeared at the inner door.

“Miss Ansell,” he said, “will you see if Mr. Ensalez is on the lot? If he is, please ask him to come in.”

At the look which flamed in the grey eyes he knew that he had committed one of his few blunders. He recalled the first and only meeting of these two men in that high meadow, and he recalled, too, with an ugly feeling of chill the words of Ensalez concerning a “perfect pippin of a horse.” A quick sense of coming disaster was in him as he heard the star's quick, prideful step in the corridor. Next moment Ensalez, booted, spurred, Spanish burnsides on his cheeks, a broad hat tilled on his ebon head, spangled jacket and wound red sash above his velvet trousers, stood laughing in the door.

“You want me, chief?” he asked in his insolently musical voice.

Illustration: Camped Beside A Dot Of Fire, Sarghan Sat Hunched Upon A Stone

David Buchannan rose and whirled to face him.

“I want you,” he said like the snap of a whip.

Utter astonishment wiped the laughter from the other's handsome face. For a blank moment he was too taken aback for speech, and Sellard, watching, hunched forward over his desk, was reading every expression, Then Ensalez' black eyes narrowed to bad slits and he shook his head.

“I'm afraid I can't accommodate you,” he said. “I'm ready to go out to the ranch, Mr. Sellard. If there's anything I can do—tomorrow—”

“Tomorrow won't do, Marc,” said the director firmly; “this gentleman wants to ask you some questions about the yellow stallion, and I want you to answer them.”

There was a note in Sellard's voice which made Ensalez look quickly at him. It also made his dark skin become darker with the flush of swift anger.

“If I don't choose?” he said with utmost insolence.

“If you value your future,” said the other quietly, “you will choose. Mr. Buchannan—”

“I saw my yellow stallion come on this lot in a truck—”

“I have no interest in you or your property,” broke in the star. “Why bother me?”

“That's my horse,” snarled Buchannan, “and Mr. Sellard says you claim to own him.”

“If you mean my yellow stallion, I do. I know nothing of yours.”

Justin Sellard was thinking rapidly, his sharp eyes narrowed, his fingertips beating a light tattoo on the desk before him.

“Where did you get this horse, Marc?” he asked

“Bought him, of course.”

“From whom?”

“A breeder from Calexico. Man named Hansen.”

“Could you produce him?”

“Surest thing you know!” said Ensalez with cocksure satisfaction, “And if you'd like I'll do so tomorrow.”

“Very well. Do so. If you'll be here tomorrow, Mr. Buchannan, at, say, two o'clock—”

“If you'll excuse me now,” cut in Ensalez; “I'm overdue.”

The director nodded and rose.

“We are both ready to start,” he said kindly to Buchannan, “and if you'll come tomorrow we'll be glad to investigate this.”

The younger man nodded in silence and followed Ensalez down the corridor. Such bitter hatred as he had not known was possible seethed in him. He wanted to put his clenched hands on the soft form ahead swinging so arrogantly away. He wanted to choke Ensalez into supine limpness. The other turned toward the lot and disappeared while he was shown out to the street.

Walking unsteadily he crossed the wide strip of asphalt. He stood helplessly on the curb nursing his sense of rage and frustration. His brooding eyes were fixed on the gate through which he had seen Palermino disappear. Somewhere behind those high walls the wild thing was caged. He shut his lips upon the groan of anger that arose within him. What plot would they spread before him—how was he, penniless and alone, to prove his rights? He was frowning, lost in his thoughts, his gaze unseeing.

Then suddenly, as things of moment are apt to happen, two things swam into the range of his abstracted vision. One was a huge motor car of robin's egg blue; the other was a golden horse gay with trappings. The one rolled up and stopped at the opposite curb, the other came trembling and halting through the big gate. In the heavy Spanish saddle on Palermino's back Ensalez sat with easy grace, his black hat with its rakish low crown pulled low over his eyes, his brilliant spangles flashing in the sun. The man on the curb leaned forward and his lips set tight. It was his beloved—in every line, every movement, every smallest characteristic. It was Palermino who trembled yonder among the unaccustomed crowd—but a changed Palermino indeed! Gone was the free stride, the airy grace, the fearlessness and the pride. In their place were nervousness and hesitation, distrust and bewilderment, and the hips behind the bravery of saddle and bespangled cloth were lean to a narrow slant. The man on his back turned him to the right and he went slowly up the street, halting, shivering, plainly racked with terror. The sight of him struck to Buchannan's heart.

With a muttered oath the man leaped out to the broad space of the street, put his fingers to his lips and the next instant a screaming whistle cut high above the noise of starting motors. It was sharp as a siren's wail and it held three notes, snapping up at the end like a whip.

“Whee—yoo—weet!” it shrilled, high and clear, “Whee—yoo—weet!”

Its effect was galvanic. Palermino, two hundred yards away, halting, starting, trembling, a creature beaten by circumstance, flung his head high as his neck would reach, stopped dead in his tracks. He stiffened in every limb, holding his breath. His eyes bulged from their sunken sockets. Straining, the poor beast listened. Ensalez drove a rowelled spur home to his flank, but he did not move a muscle.

Buchannan, his eyes flaming, filled his lungs with a great breath.

“Whee—yoo—weet!” called the keening notes once more.

With a scream that echoed in among the pepper trees Palermino rose whirling on his heels. He came down running, headed backwards, and Ensalez, half flung from his saddle rode clinging like a monkey. Justin Sellard, just ready to enter a car, stood with open mouth and dilated eyes. Inside the blue motor Mara Thail sat still, one hand reached forward and paused in its action.

In plain view of all, the man and the stallion met—met with upflung arms, with stiffened forefeet that scarred the warm pave in a long slide, with hoarse gutturals from the quivering nostrils that nuzzled the man so savagely as to push him stumbling backward. Buchannan was talking in a flow of jumbled words, and Palermino ran round and round him, yawing at him with his forefeet, mouthing him with open lips and teeth that pinched his flesh. The shaking whinnies never ceased a moment. The strained dark eyes were fiery with excitement.

Illustration: “TWO THOUSAND BUCKS!” GRINNED THE YOUNG WITH HIS HAT LOW ON HIS EYES AND THE GROWTH OF A WEEK'S BEARD ON HIS PINK CHEEKS FROM THE EXIGENCIES OF HIS WATCHING CAMP IN BUCHANAN'S HILLS

“TWO THOUSAND BUCKS AND WE NEED TAKE OUT ONLY TWO HUNDRED FOR MEX!”

Justin Sellard, stopped with his foot on the car's step, had one wild wish for a camera. This was the soul of the drama—reality and not make believe—the thing which always he was seeking to present to a callous world. Then his mouth straightened in a thin line. He thought grimly of Ensalez and his alibis. Ensalez, the man in the saddle, sawed helplessly at the silver mounted bit. Pale beneath his dusky skin, beside himself with anger, he raised his right arm with the heavy Spanish quirt and brought it down, flailing, viciously across the face of the man in the road. Buchannan had lost his hat and the bitter whip had full play. Lightning quick it rose and fell, and from brow to chin three raw red lines sprang out.

Then Buchannan flung himself up and caught Ensalez by his jacket's front, and together they fell under Palermino's feet. The astonished and silent crowd awoke and a lifting murmur of crying voices rose like bees humming. Justin Sellard hurried forward, but Mara Thail sat still and several different expressions played on her lovely face—contempt and understanding and a certain grim satisfaction. She had recognized the man of the high meadow.

A little farther down where the broad streets crossed each other, two strangers witnessed the sharp drama, two strangers who, in any place less cosmopolite than Hollywood, would have elicited smiles of astonished amusement. They had stood transfixed from the first spurt of the whistle and they waited the outcome with baited breath, one bent far forward, his black face ape-like in its effort to grasp the scene entire, the other erect and bristling in his grotesque rags. Beside them stood their beast of burden piled to high Heaven with battered traps; several canines, tied in a string for safety's sake, sat patiently down on their bushy tails.

“'It 'im!” muttered the negro deep in his throat. “'E 'it 'im!” and he raised his peg-leg to go.

But the other put a hand on his arm.

“Hold, my frien',” said Monsieur sadly. “What are we to aid him now? We would only be ze handicap. Only to make ze laugh on him among those so fine birds.”

So the two who loved him stood silent while John Buchannan took out his rage and hurt in the bare battle of his naked hands. He was like a fury of pent-up waters loosed at last, like a dynamo run wild without a governor, like flame in a wind. He fought for all he had lost forever, and gloried in the flesh beneath his fists. He took toll for that word “cripple!” flung at him in his basin, for the shame of contrast in his maimed body, for Palermino rifled from his haunts, and for the pictured kisses laid on the lips of Mara Thail. He did not know that the famous star herself sat watching with parted lips and something in her eyes which made them shine with unwonted light. He only knew that he was savagely elated, that once more he was a man. He felt this last with a deeper surge when clawing hands pulled him from his victim and, panting and disheveled, he gazed at him across a little space. He laughed aloud at the sight, at the grim realization that he had completely spoiled the work of the day on the picture and that of many days to come. Ensalez was a ruin, his handsome face pulped and bleeding.

Justin Sellard commandeered the crowd with his eyes and a group closed round them moving toward the gate. As they passed the limousine Mara Thail stepped out and laid a hand on Buchannan's shoulder. He looked up into her eyes, suddenly slumped from his exhilaration. Neither spoke save for the message of that deep look. Then he found himself inside the gate in the center of a surcharged group with Sellard's hand gripping his elbow and Palermino pushing him in the back.

We'll do a little investigating right now,” said the director thinly. “Ensalez, write a message for your horse-breeder and send it now. There's something to all this.”

MONSIEUR BON COEUR went back to the hills that rimmed the town. It was a tiresome journey, since Sarghan, unable to march, must needs ride; and it was twilight when they reached a spot where a tiny irrigation ditch offered water and the houses ceased. The old man was elated. For a month they had been coming, searching every town along the way, and now their quest was ended. Tomorrow—next day—soon—they would find their friend. They had seen him retrieve his own, had watched him enter the stronghold of his enemies; and Monsieur Bon Coeur whose eyes were eagle sharp, had seen none other than the only woman lay her hand upon his shoulder. Verily the world was good—le bon Dieu was present on the job. Therefore he set about making his small camp with a heart so light that it danced in his wizened breast.

But Sarghan was another matter. He sat humped above his food, brooding. All the songs had gone from him with the loss of his master. The alien land had lost its charm.

“H'old man,” he said, “did you notice 'ow that whip 'it 'im strite across 'is bloomin' face? The 'ound!”

The other nodded his white head, and taking the accordion upon his knees, he looked away into the great mauve vault of the southern heavens and began to play. The old collie sat beside him quietly, but the gangling pup whimpered beside its curled-up mother. Since he had seen that white hand upon Buchannan's shoulder, Monsieur Bon Coeur had visioned rainbows. For three days Monsieur haunted the spot where he had witnessed the battle, keeping in the background, though once he could barely restrain himself when he saw Brown-the-Chauffeur come out and drive away in the robin's-egg car. The Gasoline Guy and none other!

But watch as he would he caught no further glimpse of the man he had followed from the High Sierras. It was as if the studio had swallowed him entire. To Sarghan keeping camp in the foothills, he had little to report. Hope did not falter in him, however, and he gave of his living cheer to his companion.

Sarghan, sitting humped at the fire, sometimes looked at him with an odd contempt far back in his negroid eyes

YOU say you raised this animal from a colt?”

Sellard looked sharply at the man Hansen.

“Sure do,” he replied confidently. “Got th' strain from Chihuahua. Ain't none of its like this side th' Border.”

He was a short, swart man, unwashed and grizzly. Ensalez, recovering and deadly, stood near. So did Buchannan and a dozen others on the studio lot.

“Then why did the horse come at Mr. Buchannan's whistle, I'd like to know? That was an exhibition which would stand in the court of any sane man's mind without other proof. It stands in mine,” he added grimly, “and you'll have to take me to your ranch, Mr. Hansen, and show me your stables, your horses, your background. Our corporation can't be accused of anything like this and not come clean. We stand behind Mr. Ensalez, but we will see to the bottom. When can we start?”

The man Hansen cast a startled glance at the star. A strange look came in his face, a hint of collapse. Ensalez was thinking quickly.

“Why,” he said airily, “we'll start day after tomorrow if you wish, Mr. Sel—”

“Quick! Call that man, Mr. Sellard!” cried Buchannan pointing a tense finger.

The director looked.

“Banny!” he called

The sleek pink person in the puttees and silk shirt turned and came up.

“Yes, sir?”

“This man,” said Buchannan, “once stopped me on my way to my homestead and offered to buy my yellow horse. I refused and he told me to remember that he had offered me a square deal, that he usually got what he went after.”

Banny did not move a muscle of his careless body. He grinned good-naturedly at the group.

“What have we here?” he said pleasantly. “I never saw the fellow before, Mr. Sellard.”

Justin Sellard's keen eyes were very narrow.

“Can't you start for Calexico sooner than three days Marc?” he asked.

“No sir,” said the actor indifferently, “but I'll be glad to go then.”

“Very well. Until I have made this trip, and you with me, Mr. Buchannan,” said Sellard, “I shall withhold judgment.”

An hour later Ensalez cornered Banny.

“Get Mex on the wire,” he said swiftly. “Tell him to get to Rancho Gordo and have Purcell find a yellow stallion and a mare or two. Tell him the ranch-owner's name will be Hansen. Step on it.”

Banny threw up his fat hands in despair.

“Good night shirt!” he said. “All this in two days! Where under the canopy am I going to find another Palermino stallion and two mares!”

“I don't know,” snapped Ensalez, “or I'd tell you. It means five thousand to you this time,” he added meaningly.

The other drew a long breath.

“If they're this side of South America, I'll get 'em,” he said grimly.

IT was morning of that day-after-tomorrow. At the Supercraft Studios Justin Sellard waited impatiently. David Buchannan was with him and the man Hansen. The car waited to take them to the early train. Time was growing short and the director was restless. He was not accustomed to be kept waiting. Neither was it like Ensalez to be late. He was usually very punctual. Sellard drew out his watch. If the star did not arrive in ten minutes they might as well give up the morning train. It looked very much as if that was what Ensalez wanted and Sellard did not like the look of it.

They were standing on the gravelled space inside the lot and Buchannan was idly watching the scattered activity of the early day, when a door in the long, narrow, enriching building burst open and the young man Banny literally leaped down the two or three steps. He clutched a crumpled newspaper in his right hand and his pale blue eyes bulged prominently. His round pudgy face was sickly white, his flaccid lips ashen.

“Mr. Sellard!” he cried shrilly, “look there!”

He pulled the sheet apart with shaking hands and held it wide before his chief. With one flashing glance the director, and those with him, read its screaming scare-head in type four inches high.

ACTOR MURDERED! MARCULO ENSALEZ, FAMOUS SCREEN IDOL STABBED TO DEATH IN HIS BED!!

Sellard snatched the paper, his own eyes wide with horror.

For a moment a terrible silence gripped the group. Then it was broken by Banny's voice, cracking to a high falsetto.

“There's the man!” he screamed, “and here's the motive! Its true about the horse, Mr. Sellard, I stole it from the basin for Ensalez, Mex Carillo and myself. He gave me two thousand dollars—Hansen here's a paid alibi—ask him—and I've just got in this morning from a trip south to meet Mex and have him fix up the setting at a ranch at Calexico. It was all set to get by—but I saw this paper as I came in. This dirty whelp killed Ensalez, or I'm a liar! Grab him and I'll get the Station.”

He whirled on his heel and ran for the door.

Justin Sellard looked at the astonished face of David John Buchannan, then at the tell-tale one of Hansen.

“This is bad,” he said quietly, “very bad. We'll step inside and wait.”

As this story began with the chronology of a soul whose deathless love for all the world, whose divine and happy hope, were housed in the flesh of apologetic failure, so it must end with it. Our friend Monsieur, the little old man of the Vandyke beard, of the silken snow upon the head, of the eager eyes that were still so young and blue—Monsieur of the dog-eared volumes of philosophy, of the ragged coat with its irreproachable lines, of the blanket-roll, of the accordion and the eucalyptus stick—what of him?

Alas! Again alas—and also alack-a-day! Monsieur Bon Coeur had fallen upon evil times. It was winter in Los Angeles, soft, drowsy-eyed winter, wet with rain sometimes, or warm with sun, sweet as summer with the scent of blooming flowers. The opulent town was rich with spend-thrift tourists and Monsieur found ready sale for all the quaint and useless things which he carved with his fine knife. Many times there were two and three and even five dollars in his one good pocket and always part of these were rigidly spent for the ingredients of the “so splendid” stews which bubbled in the larger pot simmering on the coals in the two-man camp out where the hills began below the Sky-Line Boulevard.

Part—not all. Monsieur had a duty and he would not for all the world have been unfaithful to it. Therefore Sarghan had food for the pot and there was something for the little ones of the shaggy coats, while Billy fared well on the picket-rope.

But Monsieur had a grief that racked him. Remorse and sorrow and a new sense of failure ate him to the bone. He did not play the accordion any more and he voiced no more the certainty of rainbows. He had failed this year of the trip to the Eastern city where the heavily embossed envelope must long have waited for him. He did not think of the writer, nor of that dear land which homed her. Neither did he think at all of the young Comte de Bourvenaise. He could not. He was not fit. For the snares of the spirit had reached from all the doorways of Los Angeles' submerged quarter and had taken Monsieur, head-neck-and-heels. The ghosts of the gallant liquors which had begun with Monsieur's youth and deteriorated with his years mourned at his estate, sunk in the stuff which served him now.

Day by day Monsieur Bon Coeur struggled out of the foothill's skirts to perform his duty, and day by day it became a greater labor. The lines in the old face were graven deeper, the slender form was but a skeleton amid its rags. I grieve thus to present him to you, reader, because I love him; but it must be, since we must see him through.

Sometimes Sarghan, who had little care for him, or for anything upon the earth, would take him to task bitterly and Monsieur would look at him with piteous eyes. The fluttering rags were disgraceful now and the old man avoided all possible contact with the trim officers who stood for the law of the land. going about the more careless parts of the city. He lived for but two things—his ancient enemy and—the daily papers.

Ah! Those papers! They laid bare the very inmost soul of tragedy to the sordid public gaze! They had pictures on their front pages, pictures of a man walking between officers, or sitting in a crowded court-room, and even once looking straight out from a barred cell—a man with lips pressed tight together and grey eyes smouldering with fire. Monsieur Bon Coeur had followed that man to the mountains months before because he had felt in his heart that he was needed, that there was something he could do for him, that some way, he could give to his clouded life the beauty of the rainbow.

And Monsieur Bon Coeur had failed most pitifully. He had done nothing. He had even lost the rainbows himself! For David John Buchannan was on trial for his life, a stranger among strangers, with circumstantial evidence so strong against him that it seemed a waste of the State's time and money to finish the prosecution.

Sitting, sodden, in the friendly shelter of some flaring bill-board Monsieur wept forlornly. All the pity of the world ached in him. Tears dripped down his delicate nose upon the page spread in his trembling hands. He wiped them away with the kerchief which was not so sweetly washed and sun-dried as was it wont, so that he might see more clearly, Oui. Sure. There was his friend. Monsieur gazed hungrily at him. The thin face was presented straight to view. There was in it no guilt, no cringing. It was the face of a man who looked the world square in the eye. And yet—Ah, Dieu! The pity of it all! He was a poor man—and he had had a motive, and his despoiler was dead. The papers had made much of his gallant war record, of the medal given for valor on those far fields. They even spoke of Sarghan, his body servant, who had been separated from him some time back, of the lone homestead in the High Sierras.

And then they spoke of a woman's hand, unseen but suggested in the proceedings, of unlimited amounts of money poured out for his defence, of names high in the criminal annals that figured in his behalf, lawyers with brilliant achievements. So! The one woman! The woman of the mimic city!

The old man, so insignificant, so less than nothing, thought of her with bated breath. He felt that it was she, could be none other. He remembered her once again as she peered from the swaying howdah, gorgeous with gems. He saw her again as she sat at a table in a tent, caught again the glance of her dark eyes. He saw her in the bill-board before the tawdry theatre of the little up-state town. And he saw her on the step of the grand blue motor with her ringed white hand on the prisoner's shoulder. He thought of her with reverence, as if she, too, were removed from the commonplace by the tragedy which touched her. Always Monsieur had thought of Mara Thail reverently, the woman with the unspeakable beauty, the fame, the wealth, the kindliness.

M'sieu Buchannan loved her, that he knew without saying. No sane man in the height of his years could look upon her and not do so. He, Monsieur Bon Coeur, old and lost to all good, loved her. He nodded his white head with its hollowed temples. Yes, far away and rainbow fair, delicate, ethereal, he gave to her perfection its inalienable mead of worship. If only, now, David John Buchannan had been a normal man, if life had only set these two to walk together down the lighted way * * *

Behind the bill-board Monsieur wept afresh at the pity of the tragedy. It was now too late. Tomorrow, the paper said, the jury would receive its charge, and the end could be only one thing. He visioned the court-room, shuddering with horror. Not once in the long days of the trial had he gone near it. He could not. Once, shortly after Buchannan's arrest, he had gone timidly to the gaol and tried to see him, only to be turned contemptuously away, a ragged old tramp, a derelict.

But tomorrow—Oh, how Monsieur's heart ached for his friend and for the famous woman who was unseen behind the defense. Tomorrow * * *

He rose on trembling legs. He needed, very badly, something to brace him, to lift the fainting spirit in him. Jus' so. He would go down to Nick's Place. Then something gave him pause. This was a sound, a high, sustained note that seemed to come from all about him and yet more strongly from the serene blue winter heavens.

Monsieur Bon Coeur looked up. Over the rim of the bill-board, far up, a mere black speck of spread wings in the sky, an air-ship drifted across his range of vision.

Instantly Monsieur's soiled right hand flashed up in salute against his silver head. He stood stiffly, galvanized to gallantry by the common sight. Airships—and Flanders fields—and heroes. The Comte de Bourvenaise! The sky—it was the color of hope. Blue as a heron's wing. Blue as Monsieur's eyes. Unthinkably wide and fair—and the color of hope.

He watched the plane until it merged with infinitude, was lost, and still he held the old hat on his breast, looking up to the foot of the throne of God. And as he looked some of the dreary pain went out from him, something faint and sweet and familiar seemed to burgeon in him. Hope, never dying, deathless, fire-like, lifted once more its lovely head From somewhere close, borne on a vagrant wind, there came to him a breath of eucalyptus trees. Eucalyptus trees that grow so freely beside the California roads.

The aliens who gave their bodies so uncomplainingly to the service of man—who, maimed and broken, yet look ever up with the hope that is in them, lift their eager heads toward That which is God. Only the ragged beggars among trees, yet they have a certain dignity. They were like himself, Monsieur, who, less than the dust upon the roads, was yet one with immortality since he embodied hope. The tears had dried by now upon Monsieur's aged face, leaving grotesque traces. The lines of trouble and dissipation stood out in pitiless relief. But somehow, contemplating the proud galleon of the skies, the humble wayside growth, he seemed to stand a little straighter. There was coming back to him a trifle of his eagerness.

And then, suddenly, with this small forerunner of change, something burgeoned and bloomed upon the old man's lifted face, a flare, a glow, as if a great torch of the spirit were lighted within him.

“Merci, mon Dieu!” cried Monsieur Bon Coeur behind his bill-board. “Ze end! Ze peak! Ze croix de guerre of ze soul! W'at was eet ze Gypsy said? Blood—an' sorrow—an' a gibbet's shadow—a woman an' a man! Le Comte de Bourvenais, salut! I—even I, your kinsman—”

He clicked his ragged heels together, saluted stiffly toward the serene heavens, and, swaying just a trifle, marched away around the signboard—but not toward Nick's place.

IT was three o'clock in the afternoon. In that grim place, the court-room, the personnel of one more tragedy was assembled. The judge upon his bench, the jury in its box, lawyers, witnesses, reporters, the curious, the sympathetic, those who were interested—and these were very few—all were there.

And so was the prisoner. David John Buchannan, pale from his months of imprisonment, clad in his cheap blue suit, sat at the bar of judgment. His thin face was thinner, but the grey eyes that lighted it burned very brightly. He seemed less mis-handled by fate than when we beheld him last. The droop of the left shoulder had all but disappeared. When he walked in and out of the court-room there was scarce a trace of hesitation to his stride. He had all but conquered in his bodily fight. Though he stood in the shadow of the scaffold he had not relaxed an inch in the pushing struggle. Never for one moment had he forgotten the word of Mara Thail, the touch of her hand upon his shoulder. From his cell he had made one last small sketch for her, a section of the tall barred door with a man standing against it and both of his shoulders were nearly on a line.

He stood, as he would have stood to face a firing squad. Day by torturous day he had held himself erect, patient under his travail, knowing that she sat beside Justin Sellard to the right and a little back, listening to the weary web that fastened the crime upon him. They had been faithful in attendance, these two. The woman—she best knew why. The man because he was just to the last reach of his nature, a lover of his race, and because he was not satisfied. He could not reconcile the face of this man with murder. There was an expression of regret upon his wise face.

“I'm afraid,” he whispered to Miss Thail, “that it's all over for our friend. It is not conclusive, but it's black enough to hang a dozen men. I'm—sorry.”

The woman did not answer. There was a strange depth of light in her eyes, a piteous glow, like the flare of death, and her lovely mouth was very white. The breath in her lungs was laboring, for the counsels had closed their last thundering onslaughts, the judge was looking down upon the papers before him, the jury waited for the charge.

The judge picked up a paper, cleared his throat.

“Gentlemen of the jury,” he said, “you have heard—”

“Hold, M'sieu!” cried a thinly ringing voice, a high voice which cut down along the silence like a blade.

A stir went over the room, a myriad of faces turned back across their shoulders. Astonished eyes widened. Down the broad aisle something was coming swiftly, something which walked with the pomp of pride, the tramp of victorious soldiery. Something ridiculous in its airy tatters, yet instinct with a grandeur which there was no gainsaying. An old man, thin to the point of emaciation, unspeakable in his poverty, marched among them gallantly. He was once more groomed and brushed with meticulous care. In the hollow of his prideful back, a trifle to the left, there hung a little shiny box, its frayed and faded bellows meekly folded. At the rail below the bench he stopped and executed such a bow as its recipient had never seen. Behind Mara Thail young Brown-the-Chauffeur half rose to his feet in the stress of his recognition.

“Why—that—” said Miss Thail, “Mr. Sellard—that is our quaint old man—the French grandee!”

And Justin Sellard nodded. The burning eyes of the prisoner were fixed on him in astonishment, but the stranger turned neither to right nor left. He raised his clear blue glance direct to the man upon the judge's bench.

“M'sieu,” said' Monsieur Bon Coeur simply, “I have come for ze confession.”

“You what?” asked the magistrate, leaning forward.

“Ze confession—ze telling of ze truth. I, Monsieur Bon Coeur, can no longer sleep. Ze heavens,” he waved a fine hand toward the dingy ceiling, “have one million eyes w'ich look into my heart an' say, 'Go, M'sieu,' an' 'Shall you be 'appy on ze open road while one dies for—for you' dark sin?'”

He spread both hands, palm down, in a calm gesture. He straightened his back a last prim trifle.

“I have come,” he said with dignity, “to tell you zat I, Monsieur Bon Coeur, am ze man you want. I, even I, killed thees Ensalez.”

Silence. Utter silence. Women, leaning forwards, drew in their breath with hissing gasps. Men stared wide-eyed. The judge, astounded, stared down at Monsieur.

The old man bowed elaborately. With a sudden sharp venom he spat upon the floor.

“He was ze beeg-head, M'sieur,” he said with an amazing change in the gentle voice, “he laugh at my garments, an' when I offair him ze carving of wood, he broke it with ze hand of cruel pride. I have hate for heem upon ze moment, an' I pay ze score!”

And so a great change took place in the tense court-room. The jury, about to be sent filing out, remained in their box. A burly officer took charge of the little old man in the fluttering rags. Scribes hastily rearranged papers. The judge spoke with his aides in bewildered whispers and reporters sweated in their eagerness to miss no sensational detail. David John Buchannan looked at Monsieur with hollow eyes of wonder, but Monsieur never glanced his way.

At the bar of justice Monsieur Bon Coeur was telling an amazing story, a story of unimagined hate. It disrupted the trial of the man about to be condemned on circumstantial evidence. It adjourned the court for the day. It sent the buzzing crowd away delighted with its sensationalism. And it caused Monsieur Bon Coeur for the first time in his long life to sit on a narrow bed in a prison cell and wait the dawn of another day. He sat bolt upright, his thin hands clasped on his knees, and there was a beatific expression in his old blue eyes. Far above his head a small barred window gave to the skies and he could see the stars. Steady stars they were, bright and beautiful, shining in deathless glory. A star—the soul of a French Ace—an old man in a prison cell on a charge of murder—three things of deathless glory.*

In another part of the great dark house of cells David John Buchannan paced endlessly, thinking, thinking, thinking.

Out at the Spanish mansion in the Pasadena hills Mara Thail stood in her favorite spot beside the parapet and looked down with strange and sombre eyes at the miles of lights below. Here beside her Marculo Ensalez had pled his love. And he was dead, gone from the face of the earth as grass vanisheth, all his burning, pulsing life done for Sincere sorrow saddened her. It was the sorrow of a tender heart for any human soul cut off. She was sometimes astonished to feel it so impersonal. But she was not impersonal in what she felt for that other, the grey-eyed prisoner who had stood up to his tragedy in silent strength and courage. All through her body tiny thrills of joy had run like streams of silver since she had seen the dramatic entrance upon the scene of the grotesque old man in the impossible clothes. Hope—where there had been breathless, unbelievable fear.

[Concluded in October McCall's]