Son of the Wind/Chapter 16
CHAPTER XVI
SON OF THE WIND
ALAS, for the superb moment! His high mood that had set him alone at the head of the world was broken. He was no longer driving men and mountains, and the unconscious forces of the earth like linked horses. He was being driven himself. He was running from something; yet, in fact, he was only hurrying toward the thing he wanted. All this opposition had been an absurdity, a nothing. He had gone through it head down. Would he never get past it? Never shake off the effect of it? He was already far on his way. He tried to look forward, to think of what was awaiting him, but persistently his thought rushed back to the scene behind him. It came to him at first not as a scene but with the memory of the nerves which still felt in their hot current the echoes of the women's voices, strained high in excitement. Those sensations of irritation, bewilderment and confoundment, that had rushed upon him then, instead of diminishing, were growing greater and more intent, stifling reason; and from under their cloud he felt intermittently the breath of a hotter feeling, a burning sense of injury—of cruel injustice. Through the thick eddy of emotions, fragments of vision—half memories—began to flash upon him. Certain looks of that girl's stuck in him; certain words rang in his mind like a clanging bell. The quick drawing back of lips on the teeth: "You can't!" flung at him like a gauntlet.
Can't? What did the woman think he was made for? His smoldering thoughts burst into flame. "You can't!" rapped out on him on the edge of success. The words were as little as a needle point, yet they denied him, and everything he was, and wanted. Why hadn't she fought him, heaped him with reproaches, given him something to contend with? But this infernal turning her back on him, and closing her eyes! She did not know him—she couldn't see him—she had never heard of him! He was suffering. Vanity proclaimed itself shrieking, but some spirit deeper in him wept,-the ego, the pervading possessing presence men call the soul which is for ever looking for itself in some form outside of itself, foredoomed to disenchantment. Where was the mind which had had no thought that was not for him? The face that had been like a rose, now white, now red? It was all an immense fraud practised, a soft looking surface that, at the first blow, rang iron.
Her face, as he had seen it last, rose clear in memory, bleak and white, locked lips, deaf ears, implacable eyes; a mind fixed with devouring pity upon itself. Hateful to think of! There was not an eyelash of hers, a glance, or an inch of her finger that he did not hate. Anything to make her turn again and look at him—if not with worship at least with fear. Any way of beating down that wall of stubbornness, even to breaking her with it, if only he could make her see what he meant. Words would never show. He might clamor at her with words for ever. The exploit was the thing that could speak. To appear before her with his adventure achieved, with the spoil in his hands. That would be the unanswerable argument. Everything was justified by accomplishment! He wanted it accomplished now—instantly. It was unendurable he could not turn on them this moment in his triumph. There was all the journey first, and the struggle—an hour, two hours, the afternoon, when a minute was too long for him. He rode headlong to the feet of the Sphinx, scaled her, reckless in his haste, risking his life on her cruel breast; and, descending on the other side, came under shadows of pines, heard the thin voice of the river, and began to run.
Presently the ford came into sight, and in the opening of the trees appeared the outline of a figure. It was Esmeralda Charley standing, shading his eyes with his hand, Carron came up to him panting. The surrounding, and the expectation it aroused in him were having their effect. Weariness, wrath, aching nerves, worn upon by suspense, wrung by the cruel twist circumstance had given him at the last, were beginning to disappear in a blaze of excitement. Abreast his man he stopped, drew out his watch mechanically and looked at it. Half-past two. "Well?" he asked, "how is it?"
"I can't drive him," said Esmeralda Charley.
The words dashed counter to Carron's thoughts. "What's that?" he said sharply. "What's the matter?"
"I don't know," the vaquero replied without emotion. "He won't drive—not like any I ever saw."
"You mean he doesn't move?"
"Oh, yes, he moves—but the way he thinks—like that, like that!" With his fingers he illustrated all directions.
Carron stared. He had never seen so much eloquence in the fellow. "Did you try him with the mares?"
"He doesn't follow."
The horse-breaker glanced at the corral. At the instant he looked no horses were in sight, but while he looked the chestnut mare broke from the trees and trotted across the inclosure whinnying with high head. She stood at the edge of the water looking over the stockade at the two men with an almost human air of being puzzled.
"I'll show you," the half-breed said.
Carron followed him across the ford, and through the trees. On every side were the signs of what he had carried out, the print of himself everywhere, from the footsteps on the ground, to the strong sides of the corral of which he had glimpses between branches. They turned sharply to the left, and coming into a little break in the timber stood at the gate and looked over it at what was within.
At this upper end of it were the few groups of pines that had helped to conceal the beginning of the canvas. Here, pressed in among the trunks of the trees, not lying on the ground, yet scarcely standing upright, he saw his captive.
He saw for a flash with that rare impartial eye which perceives the thing neither as it has been nor as hope expects it will presently be, but as it is in fact, in that moment. He saw Son of the Wind already marked by captivity, soiled with earth, stained with sweat, sick with defiance. He felt as a hunter who has taken an eagle. What had caught desire was the proud flight in the air. It was that the man had wanted to possess; and lo, fierce eyes and a heap of fury in a cage. There was a lost quality somewhere,—the quality that lures possession and eludes it. Yet, always there must be a loss; and even so, what a body! What a flow of muscles under the skin! What a threat in the immobility! His hopes shot up like fire. His eye, busy with outward things, thought something wrong in the prospect before him. He turned angrily to the half-breed. "Why didn't you drive him into the open as I told you, and put up that canvas in front of the trees? How do you think we can lasso him in that thicket?"
"I could not get him out. He would not move. I could not charge him in the trees."
"You never ought to have let him get in there in the first place."
"I could not drive him," the half-breed answered unmoved. "He ran at me, or he ran past me; and I had no one to help."
"Yes, you had. You had that fellow!"
"Oh, him!" The man lifted his shoulders a little. "He went away."
"Went away?"
"Yes, over there, into the trees, running. He went when the woman came."
"Oh!" Carron muttered. "Oh, yes, yes—yes, of course." He repeated vaguely. He looked at Esmeralda Charley hesitatingly as if he had suddenly forgotten what he was saying. He tried to gather his wits together and go on with it, but one thought stood large before him and blotted out everything else. A question was rising in his mind that had nothing to do with the business in hand, yet he felt in spite of himself it was on his lips. "What did she do?" he said.
The half-breed was holding a match to the end of his cigarette. "She came around here where we are standing now."
"Yes, of course, I know—but did she go inside? Did she try to get near him? Did she try to—to—" The man made a scornful negative motion of the head. "She stood like this." He stiffened himself and held himself incredibly still. "She looked at him as long as this"—he waved the match back and forth once in the air. "Then she mourned."
"Mourned?"
"Like women for the dead," Esmeralda Charley explained, throwing the match away. "She put her face there where your hand is now. She covered her head and mourned."
Carron stared a moment at that spot to which the half-breed pointed, the place where his hand lay on the rail; suddenly he let go as if the wood had burned him. "Stiffen that top timber," he said sharply. "It is weak." Some emotion that he couldn't account for took him by the throat, strangling him for a moment. "Where is the canvas?" he said, as soon as he could gather voice.
The half-breed pointed to where it lay, tossed to one side of the trail.
"Very well. Get me a blanket from camp—a red one if you can find it. Where's Jim?" He looked. behind him. He had not thought of the peon since he had left Raders', but here he was a yard from his heel, waiting. "Get the lassos up here right away. I want the ropes and the saddle, too. Jim can help you. Well, what are you standing there for?" He swung around, ready with a blow. "How are we to get through, do you think?"
Esmeralda Charley ran on his errand, and Carron looked after him in a fury. Why, the fellow had hesitated. He had looked as if he found something strange. Strange, good lord! There was nothing strange about Carron. There was nothing strange about Carron's giving orders; but it was damnably strange that any one should hesitate to carry them out. Why, what were these for, but to do as he said? Or he, if in this case, he did not know what he was saying? His throat was dry. He took a swallow of water from his canteen, threw the bottle on the ground, and threw off hat and coat. He gathered up the canvas and the poles, and, staggering, carried them and flung them down inside the inclosure, at the edge of the trees. There was the half-breed coming back again, still with that expression on his face, a lurking question, a doubt. The second vaquero followed. The ropes and lassos were over his arms, across his shoulders, around his neck, more than enough for a hangman. Last into the inclosure, he slid the gates shut.
"Be ready with that stuff, to begin putting it up as soon as I get him out into the open," the horsebreaker said. He took the blanket from Esmeralda. Charley, and keeping close to the canvas wall, made a little circuit to the upper side of the inclosure. Here, with his back to the gate, he had the length of the corral before him, sloping a little to the water. It would have been an easy place down which to stampede an army, were it not for the trees directly in front. He dodged here and there, peering for an opening. The mares at the lower end of the corral moved nervously while he moved, but the stallion did not stir. That was strange. The slightest movement in the stockade was usually enough to set all the wild ones in a flicker of apprehension. Ah, at last he had what he had been looking for. From a certain angle the obscuring glimmer of trunks and branches fell away into a narrow open prospect, a sort of aisle through the trees. At the end of it he saw Son of the Wind standing, facing him, with head held low. That was a curious thing to see a creature of the tribes that fly at a shadow, aware of him and yet unmoved.
Carron whirled the blanket above his head, and charged with a shout. The horse stood for an uncanny minute when the man felt as if he were charging an image. There was only a rod between them when the animal wheeled and broke. He went with leaps across the open, toppling forward as if every bound would fling him, sullenly, with a strange reluctance, a fear of the open that was greater than his fear of the man. At the water's edge, he faced about, dazed to find himself there, to realize the covert of trees so far behind. Carron saw the white of the eyes, the white of the teeth, the sharp edge of hoofs, felt the threatened charge, and charged himself.
He heard the sounds behind him of the men driving the posts home. He ran back and forth with cries, keeping the scarlet folds flying above his head, keeping the creature in recoil, half backed into the water. Triumph was rising in him. Presently behind his back he heard the half-breed call. He knew what that meant. "All right," he shouted, but did not look behind him. Now that he had the creature in his power his instinct was strong to hold him there. Even with the barrier raised he did not mean to let his captive out of the corner, except by the way that he should determine. He made a feint to charge from the front, swerved before the horse could swerve and darted at him on the flank, setting him off toward the left plunging around the side of the corral. No need to drive him now. He was flying for his covert of trees, three legs playing the part of four, wallowing like a hulk in the trough of the sea, gathering himself when it seemed that he must be down; then, abreast the canvas, swerving with a snort of terror. Around he went, with head flung up at the barrier, through which or over which he could not see. No trees, no hiding-place left, only the high white blank circle around him, and rock underfoot. His pace grew slower. He ran in a smaller circle, and stopped.
"How about that? Eh?" Carron demanded, in an ecstasy of admiration for himself, triumphant before his doubters. "Here, Charley, drive those mares down here. We've got to get them out of the way. Open the gate, Jim—wait until they get close—now!"
The flap of canvas slipped back to let the chestnut and her companion through, and closed again. Esmeralda Charley stood looking at his employer silently. If there had ever been an expression on his face it was there now, a faint shadow of anxiety. "You going to break him to-morrow?" he inquired.
To-morrow? Was there such a thing as to-morrow? "I'm going to break him," Carron answered, "as soon as Jim gets inside the corral with the ropes."
"The second day you never break," the man insisted. "You break the third day. No snow before the third day. Why not break then?"
Carron didn't know why not, except that in the fierce immediacy of his expectations there was no future. He felt that time was not a thing outside of him, passing him. He held it in his hands. "I say to-day—you understand? I break when I please." He pulled his belt a little closer, and felt to make sure his spurs were tight. "Bring the ropes," he called over his shoulder, and walked a few steps farther toward Son of the Wind.
The horse stood canted forward as if overbalanced by the great weight of his chest, his feet spread, head hanging, muzzle touching the ground. The dust trembled with his breath. He was shorn of his beauty. He was no longer a thing of outline and undulation, but of mass, of weight, of thickness, of—yes, it was that—of power. Menace emanated from the motionless creature, promise of infinite capacity, and infinite resources of strength; strength that might be even beyond a man's power of direction. Had Carron admitted such a thing possible? No, he hadn't admitted, but the idea had caught him before he had foreseen it. There it was. Could a man mount and bridle the wind? A strange little thought touched him. Was he to die? He had never had such a thought in all his life. To die? Was that what Blanche had meant when she had said "You can't." Then of course he could not go back to her. That would be strange! There had never been a moment when he had not expected to go back to her. His brain had not been able to take in the idea of an end to what was between them, not even when she had screamed those wild things after him, not even when he had hated her. But to die! That was an end he could understand. He had seen other men die, backs or necks broken. He looked hard at the thought of himself in such case and found it didn't trouble him. It was a ghost beside the shining face of danger.
There was no difference in the casting of a lasso for the least of horses, or the greatest. The rope sang just so, like a long snake through the dust. The ankle it caught was as small as a woman's, but the body leaping and falling was a thing to remember. The sight stopped the breath with admiration. Both ropes, one from either side of the corral, stretched tight in a quivering line, straining out the forefoot and hindfoot, kept the creature prone; but a ripple passed continuously down the back; the shoulders heaved, the muscles on the neck s:velled as the head struggled to lift itself. Carron's brows were deep in a frown. He had watched with philosophic eyes many horses flung agonizing and terrified, but this was his darling, his one of all. He hated to see that beautiful body wrestling in the dust. "Just a moment, just a moment," he muttered. consolingly between his teeth, standing over while the vaqueros tightened the knots. Esmeralda Charley, with the saddle, hesitated, half holding it back.
"What are you waiting for?" Carron asked. The half-breed lifted his shoulders with a faint, resigned shrug. He clicked his teeth hard together as he pulled the cinches around the horse's shivering middle.
"Just a minute, just a minute!" It seemed to Carron that his brain had been repeating that for ever. Always the next minute. Now, at last, before he realized it, he was in that minute—the brief, flashing space of time which he had looked forward to for so long. He was seated in saddle. The horse's four legs were under him. He could feel, between his knees, the black sides of the horse expand trembling with a great breath. The creature seemed scarcely to stand, rather to poise for an instant between his struggle up from the earth and his leap into the air. Carron found himself borne. toward the clouds; felt the humped back, the heave and shake, a magnificent, negligent motion. Only half the strength of the horse went into it, so certain he was of getting rid of the weight. Then, the easy concussion when they touched earth again, as if alighting with wings, the young fetlocks yielding and springing, resilience running through the whole frame; then the stop, suspension of motion, as the astonished back realized itself still burdened. That was the amazing sensation for the rider—to feel the body shrink and try to shiver away from under him; then, with muscles stiffening, drawing together, drawing energy from an inexhaustible source, leap! He was carried upward again, mounting air.
No anticipated dreams, however high and mightily imagination had built, could approach the moment of the flaming fact. Nothing he had fancied was like the tremendous stretch and play of the muscles that contracted and extended themselves between his grasping knees; nothing like the sense of strength gathering, gathering itself, increasing doubly with every spent effort. Wonderful to feel that fountain of power beneath his power. Leap high as it would it only carried him higher. Yet, still for a few minutes it struggled by sheer strength, to leap out from under him. Abruptly all that altered, the aspiring for the clouds, the shaking force, the thundering. He was conscious of a change as sharp as if a human mind had conceived it. He felt himself carried sidewise lightly. He was swept. toward the side of the inclosure as if he were to be carried over it; then away to the other side; then, giddily, rapidly backward. Insane, unimagined movements took him here and there, softly, delicately, as if upon feathers; then suddenly, the excruciating twist and fling that meant to be rid of him.
His brain was working furiously, his nerves at full stretch to meet the brute's guile, his hands and his body ready to counteract, to check, to meet every danger as it sharpened. The abundant energy in him steamed out to the conflict. He was in the furnace of action, at play on the edge of life where love of living is keenest, his blood on fire with the joy of violent motion. All the world around him seemed in motion, the woods waved like a curtain; the canvas of the corral revolved slowly; dark spots floated against it. These were the vaqueros' faces. He had no fear of being unseated. Such fears were years behind him; but a fear he had not thought of before seized him now as the white sides of the inclosure rushed near him on this side, on that. The barrier, the work of his hands, which he had thought of as so strong and safe, appeared to him suddenly as terribly penetrable. It was in fact no barrier at all, but only a phantom, an appearance of a barrier between the horse and the forest. If the stallion charged it, wouldn't it break like a cobweb? Was this the end of all the brave adventure, to feel the prize slip from him and be lost in the hopeless, endless wilderness?
A perfect horror seized him. Why hadn't he thought of this before? How had he rushed so headlong into this position? Why hadn't the half-breed spoken of the danger, instead of staring dumb, with the saddle in his hands? Was he going crazy himself? How was there any danger? In five years no horse had ever tested the resistance of the walls. But a reply leaped, prompt and uncomfortable in his mind. Horses had never been broken in the canvas corral. They had been captured and hobbled here, but they had not been saddled here and mounted. They had never been driven here to the third degree of madness when they cease to see, cease to fear, welcome anything—a dead wall or a descending cliff—rather than endure the will which stays persistently above them.
It was no chance that threatened. It was certainty; it came always, inevitably, the last stage of the fight. Carron could feel the approach of it now, the loosing of the one great terror. Memories of former, lesser battles swam through his head; memories of being dashed against stockades of rails and stakes. The dread he had known then of the stout, resisting substance, the crash against it, the injury, the pain, was as nothing to his present dread of being flung against the canvas and feeling it yield like silk. At what moment would this wild birth of the wind stumble upon his freedom? He was courting it as a reckless man courts his death, unaware of how near he comes to it. He would have it now! This was the instant—this the charge that could not be stopped!
Carron felt himself carried, helpless and light, as a cork on the current. The white edge of the canvas raced for him. The forest behind it seemed to march upon him. He flung his weight back in the saddle, elbows came hard back, knees pressed and wrists pulled hard and steady sidewise. Black trees moved in procession along his sight, and swung away from it; and around came the rocky banks of the stream, and the breadth of the inclosure was before him. Beneath him the body of the horse quivered like a delicate machine suddenly stopped. It had felt the weight of man, the passive, stubborn endurance, but not the terrible assertion of power, the curb. That came a fresh, unfancied horror. The rider had not time to realize what had been done before he was swept headlong, across the clearing toward the high and ragged bank. The wall of the inclosure concealed it, but Carron knew well how it was there. He tried to remember how far down the wall extended to the silent, flowing water. The smell of wet moss and earth was in his nostrils, a memory as sharp as fact. He braced for the fall, felt himself lifted and whirled and refacing the arena of struggle. He had a dazed sense of amazement, an incredulous delight. Before his mind could embrace the possibility, that greater self of his had brought it about. It did not need that there should be walls to contain the frantic creature in the narrow circle. Carron alone held him there. It was a miracle, himself the god. A rush of triumph lifted him to the top wave. He found himself in control, seated again above the world, anticipating the first symptoms of submission.
It came unexpectedly, with a dead pause in the middle of the corral. It was too complete. He suspected. He tightened the grip of his knees. At the same time he heard a voice calling faintly. One of those dark, dancing sparks was giving tongue. He recognized Esmeralda Charley's voice, no word distinguished, only the quality of sound, the piercing quality of warning. Then the strange sensation. Some large thumb and finger of fate seemed to have seized him. He was tossed up and down, now in air, now upon solid ground again, with a grinding shock driving along his spine into his head. After a little his head seemed disassociated from his body, and white stars floated before his eyes. He was not struggling, he was not controlling, he was holding to something, and still he saw the pommel of the saddle jumping beneath his eyes, and a flying rag of the mane. Then he seemed to be no longer upon the horse, but upon a tower, that, for a moment, held itself straight up in the air, then tottered and leaned backward. He was clinging to the under side of it, helpless, spurring. He heard repeated shouts. He had no thought of past or future, or of anything, but that his hands still held to something solid and living, and would hold to that. Yet all rules and laws seemed reversed. He saw the sky where the trees should have been. The curb that should have been tight flew loose against his face. Dark like a shadow came over him. His knees loosened as the mass descended upon him. His hands opened, and, closing, grasped air.
Gradually he became conscious of dull pain, increasing with return of light. His cheek was resting on flinty substance. He half unclosed his eyes and saw a white level stretching from where he lay. A swarm of confused memories rose in his mind. He thought he was lying on the rock above the quicksand. He moved his head, and opened his eyes wider, expecting to see the Sphinx's face. He saw at short distance a tumult of dust from the heart of which came sounds like blows. Then a head like a black snake's rose out of the cloud. He saw the ears laid flat, the nostrils expanded thin, the line of the frontal bone showing keen. It had been less pitiful without that look of fury, less terrible without the look of despair. Then a sound shrill and appalling, a voice without articulate words crying on the heavens to witness man. Then the head disappeared. Still the cloud of dust, and, out of it, four feet kicking frantically, struggling with an enemy, invisible, more overpowering than man. Then only a cloud of dust.
Lifted up on his hands, Carron watched this turn and drift like a curtain. There was not the smallest movement behind it now—not a sound. He wondered at the stillness. For so long his ears had been. full of the clamor of sounds, his eyes reporting pictures of rapid motion. His brain, his intuition laboring against odds of cunning and strength. Now everything was quiet, harmless. He could have lain where he was for ever and been untouched. The curtain was drifting lower and growing thinner, and through it he began to see the outline of a black lump.
He sat up. The sharpness of the action made him dizzy, and sent pains darting through him. He groaned—not for his own body's sake. A hand came under his head as though he had been ill. Yet he wasn't ill. He was certain of that. He only felt as though he had been pitched down from one world to another. He took the flask presented to his lips and swallowed what was in it, and waited for nerve and strength. But the reaction was faint. His feet were like lead, his veins were cold. He crawled painfully on hands and knees across the intervening space. His eyes were fixed on the outline which was becoming sharper. Then the veil altogether disappeared. In fact he had entered it, and the thing it had concealed had become strange and plain. It was stretched out upon earth, the four feet extended toward him. They looked large and heavy, and he could see the hollow inside the hoofs. The legs were thin. The curve of the barrel stood high off the ground. He laid his hand on it. It was warm and soft, and singularly still. He lifted himself to his knees, and saw what the body had hidden —the sunk neck and the head. A film was upon the eye, and flowing from somewhere a fine stream of blood.
An ugly thing! A bad thing for her to see! The thought of Blanche sprang live and clear out of the blank of his mind. There was nothing to account for the sudden vision, unless it were that sound he seemed to be hearing, very faint, like something heard in a dream—the sound of some one weeping. A flurry of fear went over him. She must not see it. She had seen it at the wrong time before, and if she saw it again as it was now—No, no, better wait until he had it as he meant to have it! His thought flowed. All his fiery determinations drooped, and stopped. He knelt staring. The thing in front of him had not stirred. It looked more inert than the earth it rested on. Yet there was a strange evanescence about it, like a shadow which wanes constantly, imperceptibly. Could all that pulse, and power of motion escape by such a narrow path as the thin, dark stream which flowed, and flowed, and settled in a pool in a depression of the rock, and there slowly, imperceptibly, began to sink out of sight? No way of making the strewn limbs gather themselves and stand upright! No way of wrenching victory from them! The back that had carried him, the neck that had been hot, the feet that had been light, now heavy, stiff,, motionless, triumphed over him. They had got beyond reach of woman to release or man to bind. They were down for ever. There was no more to be done.
He let his arms fall at his sides. The sound of the crying was nearer, but it wasn't Blanche's voice. A howl of fear was in it. It was odd that a man should be in fear, now that everything had come to an end. He got from his knees to his feet, and stood swaying while the horizon rushed to the middle of the sky, and the sky plunged down and seemed to swing in under his feet. He felt Esmeralda Charley's hands groping carefully over him. "Let me alone," he said dully, "I'm all right." He knew too well that this was true. He was all right, untouched, good for God knew how much long living! He saw other figures around him and wanted to escape from them. One stood in front of him. Carron pushed past him; the man clawed at his elbow, and clung to it. "What's the use of going back?" he stammered. "She won't look at us now! My God! She'll never look at me again!"
"Oh, go away!" Carron said gently. He had cursed the creature before, but now it did not seem worth doing. He shook him off and walked on. He felt the cold waters of the ford curl around his feet. He looked down at them, and saw them flowing—yet they seemed to him to be stagnant, dead. He knew himself to be in the shadow of pines, yet at the same time it appeared to him they were prone around his feet, shriveled to nothing, dead, leaving him pitilessly exposed under the heavens. Everything had a curious dual aspect, even himself. He was Carron, an indifferent Carron who had come to the end of his determinations and desires, Carron still. But there was this other person who was hurrying with such resolution on an errand he could not disclose.
He was a strange fellow. He went as if he had an appointment with himself. There was an oath to be fulfilled somewhere. Carron felt a little curious about it—a vague, mild curiosity, far on the outside. The heart that was pounding on his ribs must be this fellow's. There was nothing that could make Carron's heart beat like that. He wondered, if they went very far together, they might not become friends, and explain themselves, and understand each other. There was plenty of time for it—an endless amount of time, and nothing but that to put in it. Yet the second person was in haste, and, perforce, he was dragging Carron with him. Time was the solid thing to be walked on, space the chilly, intangible power that wrapped his face and shoulders, stirred his hair, and made him shiver. He had heard there was no end to either of these things, and just as he was becoming convinced of the truth of it, he saw it was a mistake. The end was a flight of steps.
He looked at them carefully. There was no doubt about them. At the top of them a white door was open. His possessing spirit that had brought him here had vanished. He felt very tired, but he continued to stand looking up, expectant, without knowing what he was waiting for. It was not for this woman who came and stared at him over the railing, and fled. He did not think he knew her. But it was for this other one who appeared as he had expected, from the open door. She came like a torch carried out upon the dark. Her appearance illuminated everything to him. He knew her, and where he was and what he was here for. She stood at the top step looking down at him.
"The horse is dead," he said. Her forehead was raised in wrinkles, and her mouth held tight, but she wasn't crying. She didn't believe him, perhaps. "It's dead," he repeated, and sat down on the lowest step and put his hands over his eyes. She came, stood close to him and touched him timidly.
"Never mind, never mind! It doesn't matter!" she said in a trembling voice.
He let his hands fall. "You don't understand," he explained very distinctly. "It's the horse—it isn't I. There's nothing wrong with me. I am all right." She began to sob. He felt her arms around his head, her cheek against his forehead and the hot rain of her tears. She said his name, and at first nothing but that over and over, as if it were he only who needed consolation. It did not matter to her, she passionately assured him, it did not matter at all to her that Son of the Wind was dead. She was glad, glad, glad that it was so!
He regarded her in dreary amazement. How could she lightly dismiss death, that final and terrible fact? She had never known it, perhaps, never grasped it, or caused it. What was it that looked so much worse to her? He had forgotten. It was not real things that moved her, but the thoughts she had about them. He did not understand what was going on in her mind, and he never would. But her shoulder was soft, and her eyes, red with weeping, and sad, were valiantly for him. He seemed to be among the pieces of something that had been his, something as frail and far away from life as one of her thoughts. He left it to her. It was for women to gather up the broken pieces, patiently to fit them together and find how to make the figure of Love; breathe in his lips, and wake the god from the dead ideal.
THE END