The Emigrant Trail Part 32

They both laughed, a cheerful ba.s.s and a gay treble, sweeping out across the unquiet water.

"It's going to be the Golden Age," she said, in the joy of her respite pressing her lips on the hand she held. "A cottage covered with vines to the roof and you and I and Daddy John inside it."

"And David, don't forget David."

"Of course, David," she a.s.sented lightly, for David's occupancy was removed to a comfortable distance.

After supper she and David climbed to the top of the bank to see the sunset. The breeze had dropped, the dust devils died with it. The silence of evening lay like a cool hand on the heated earth. Dusk was softening the hard, bright colors, wiping out the sharpness of stretching shadows the baked reflection of sun on clay. The West blazed above the mountains, but the rest of the sky was a thick, pure blue. Against it to the South, a single peak rose, snow-enameled on a turquoise background.

Susan felt at peace with the moment and her own soul. She radiated the good humor of one who has faced peril and escaped. Having postponed the event that was to make her David's forever, she felt bound to offer recompense. Her conscience went through one of those processes by which the consciences of women seek ease through atonement, prompting them to actions of a baleful kindliness. Contrition made her tender to the man she did not love. The thought that she had been unfair added a cruel sweetness to her manner.

He lay on the edge of the bluff beside her, not saying much, for it was happiness to feel her within touch of his hand, amiable and gentle as she had been of late. It would have taken an eye shrewder than David's to have seen into the secret springs of her conduct. He only knew that she had been kinder, friendlier, less withdrawn into the sanctuary of her virgin coldness, round which in the beginning he had hovered. His heart was high, swelled by the promise of her beaming looks and ready smiles. At last, in this drama of slow winning she was drawing closer, shyly melting, her whims and perversities mellowing to the rich, sweet yielding of the ultimate surrender.

"We ought to be at Fort Bridger now in a few days," he said. "Courant says if all goes well we can make it by Thursday and of course he knows."

"Courant!" she exclaimed with the familiar note of scorn. "He knows a little of everything, doesn't he?"

"Why don't you like him, Missy? He's a fine man for the trail."

"Yes, I dare say he is. But that's not everything."

"Why don't you like him? Come, tell the truth."

They had spoken before of her dislike of Courant. She had revealed it more frankly to David than to anyone else. It was one of the subjects over which she could become animated in the weariest hour. She liked to talk to her betrothed about it, to impress it upon him, warming to an eloquence that allayed her own unrest.

"I don't know why I don't like him. You can't always tell why you like or dislike a person. It's just something that comes and you don't know why."

"But it seems so childish and unfair. I don't like my girl to be unfair. Has he ever done anything or said anything to you that offended you?"

She gave a petulant movement: "No, but he thinks so much of himself, and he's hard and has no feeling, and-- Oh, I don't know--it's just that I don't like him."

David laughed:

"It's all prejudice. You can't give any real reason."

"Of course I can't. Those things don't always have reasons. You're always asking for reasons and I never have any to give you."

"I'll have to teach you to have them."

She looked slantwise at him smiling. "I'm afraid that will be a great undertaking. I'm very stupid about learning things. You ask father and Daddy John what a terrible task it was getting me educated. The only person that didn't bother about it was this one"--she laid a finger on her chest-- "She never cared in the least."

"Well I'll begin a second education. When we get settled I'll teach you to reason."

"Begin now." She folded her hands demurely in her lap and lifting her head back laughed: "Here I am waiting to learn."

"No. We want more time. I'll wait till we're married."

Her laughter diminished to a smile that lay on her lips, looking stiff and uncomfortable below the fixity of her eyes.

"That's such a long way off," she said faintly.

"Not so very long."

"Oh, California's hundreds of miles away yet. And then when we get there we've got to find a place to settle, and till the land, and lay out the garden and build a house, quite a nice house; I don't want to live in a cabin. Father and I have just been talking about it. Why it's months and months off yet."

He did not answer. She had spoken this way to him before, wafting the subject away with evasive words. After a pause he said slowly: "Why need we wait so long?"

"We must. I'm not going to begin my married life the way the emigrant women do. I want to live decently and be comfortable."

He broke a sprig off a sage bush and began to pluck it apart. She had receded to her defenses and peeped nervously at him from behind them.

"Fort Bridger," he said, his eyes on the twig, "is a big place, a sort of rendezvous for all kinds of people."

She stared at him, her face alert with apprehension, ready to dart into her citadel and lower the drawbridge.

"Sometimes there are missionaries stopping there."

"Missionaries?" she exclaimed in a high key. "I hate missionaries!"

This was a surprising statement. David knew the doctor to be a supporter and believer in the Indian missions, and had often heard his daughter acquiesce in his opinions.

"Why do you hate them?"

"I don't know. There's another thing you want a reason for. It's getting cold up here--let's go down by the fire."

She gathered herself together to rise, but he turned quickly upon her, and his face, while it made her shrink, also arrested her. She had come to dread that expression, persuasion hardened into desperate pleading. It woke in her a shocked repugnance, as though something had been revealed to her that she had no right to see. She felt shame for him, that he must beg where a man should conquer and subdue.

"Wait a moment," he said. "Why can't one of those missionaries marry us there?"

She had scrambled to her knees, and s.n.a.t.c.hed at her skirt preparatory to the jump to her feet.

"No," she said vehemently. "No. What's the matter with you all talking about marriages and missionaries when we're in the middle of the wilds?"

"Susan," he cried, catching at her dress, "just listen a moment. I could take care of you then, take care of you properly. You'd be my own, to look after and work for. It's seemed to me lately you loved me enough. I wouldn't have suggested such a thing if you were as you were in the beginning. But you seem to care now. You seem as if--as if--it wouldn't be so hard for you to live with me and let me love you."

She jerked her skirt away and leaped to her feet crying again, "No, David, no. Not for a minute."

He rose too, very pale, the piece of sage in his hand shaking. They looked at each other, the yellow light clear on both faces. Hers was hard and combative, as if his suggestion had outraged her and she was ready to fight it. Its expression sent a shaft of terror to his soul, for with all his unselfishness he was selfish in his man's longing for her, hungered for her till his hunger had made him blind. Now in a flash of clairvoyance he saw truly, and feeling the joy of life slipping from him, faltered:

"Have I made a mistake? Don't you care?"

It was her opportunity, she was master of her fate. But her promise was still a thing that held, the moment had not come when she saw nothing but her own desire, and to gain it would have sacrificed all that stood between. His stricken look, his expression of nerving himself for a blow, pierced her, and her words rushed out in a burst of contrition.

"Of course, of course, I do. Don't doubt me. Don't. But-- Oh, David, don't torment me. Don't ask anything like that now. I can't, I can't. I'm not ready--not yet."

Her voice broke and she put her hand to her mouth to hide its trembling. Over it, her eyes, suddenly br.i.m.m.i.n.g with tears, looked imploringly into his.

It was a heart-tearing sight to the lover. He forgot himself and, without knowing what he did, opened his arms to inclose her in an embrace of pity and remorse.