The Emigrant Trail Part 7

"David!" she screamed, but he did not hear, and then louder: "Daddy John, quick, the whip, he's dropped it."

The old man came running round the back of the wagon, quick and eager as a gnome. He s.n.a.t.c.hed up the whip and let the lash curl outward with a hissing rush. It flashed like the flickering dart of a snake's tongue, struck, and the horses sprang forward. It curled again, hung suspended for the fraction of a moment, then licked along the sweating flanks, and horses and mules, bowed in a supreme effort, wrenched the wagon upward. Susan slid from her perch, feeling a sudden apathy, not only as from a tension snapped, but as the result of a backwash of disillusion. David was no longer the proud conqueror, the driver of man and brute. The tide of pride had ebbed.

Later, when the camp was pitched and she was building the fire, he came to offer her some wood which was scarce on this side of the river. He knelt to help her, and, his face close to hers, she said in a low voice:

"Why did you throw the whip down?"

He reddened consciously and looked quickly at her, a look that was apprehensive as if ready to meet an accusation.

"I saw you do it," she said, expecting a denial.

"Yes, I did it," he answered. "I wasn't going to say I didn't."

"Why did you?" she repeated.

"I can't beat a dumb brute when it's doing its best," he said, looking away from her, shy and ashamed.

"But the wagon would have gone down to the bottom of the hill. It was going."

"What would that have mattered? We could have taken some of the things out and carried them up afterwards. When a horse does his best for you, what's the sense of beating the life out of him when the load's too heavy. I can't do that."

"Was that why you threw it down?"

He nodded.

"You'd rather have carried the things up?"

"Yes."

She laid the sticks one on the other without replying and he said with a touch of pleading in his tone:

"You understand that, don't you?"

She answered quickly:

"Oh, of course, perfectly."

But nevertheless she did not quite. Daddy John's action was the one she really did understand, and she even understood why Leff swore so violently.

CHAPTER VIII

It was Sunday again and they lay encamped near the Little Blue. The country was changing, the trees growing thin and scattered and sandy areas were cropping up through the trail. At night they unfolded the maps and holding them to the firelight measured the distance to the valley of the Platte. Once there the first stage of the journey would be over. When they started from Independence the Platte had shone to the eyes of their imaginations as a threadlike streak almost as far away as California. Now they would soon be there. At sunset they stood on eminences and pointed in its direction, let their mental vision conjure up Grand Island and sweep forward to the buffalo-darkened plains and the river sunk in its league-wide bottom, even peered still further and saw Fort Laramie, a faint, white dot against the cloudy peaks of mountains.

The afternoon was hot and the camp drowsed. Susan moving away from it was the one point of animation in the encircling quietude. She was not in spirit with its lethargy, stepping rapidly in a stirring of light skirts, her hat held by one string, fanning back and forth from her hanging hand. Her goal was a spring hidden in a small arroyo that made a twisted crease in the land's level face. It was a little dell in which the beauty they were leaving had taken a last stand, decked the ground with a pied growth of flowers, spread a checkered roof of boughs against the sun. From a shelf on one side the spring bubbled, clear as gla.s.s, its waters caught and held quivering in a natural basin of rock.

As she slipped over the margin, the scents imprisoned in the sheltered depths rose to meet her, a sweet, cool tide of fragrance into which she sank. After the glaring heat above it was like stepping into a perfumed bath. She lay by the spring, her hands clasped behind her head, looking up at the trees. The segments of sky between the boughs were as blue as a turquoise and in this thick intense color the little leaves seemed as if inlaid. Then a breeze came and the bits of inlaying shook loose and trembled into silvery confusion. Small secretive noises came from them as if minute confidences were pa.s.sing from bough to bough, and through their murmurous undertone the drip of the spring fell with a thin, musical tinkle.

Nature was dreaming and Susan dreamed with it. But her dreaming had a certain definiteness, a distinct thought sustained its diffused content. She was not self-consciously thinking of her lovers, not congratulating herself on their acquirement, but the consciousness that she had achieved them lay graciously round her heart, gave the soft satisfaction to her musings that comes to one who has accomplished a duty. With all modesty she felt the gratification of the being who approaches his Destiny. She had advanced a step in her journey as a woman.

A hail from the bank above broke upon her reverie, but when she saw it was David, she sat up smiling. That he should find out her hiding place without word or sign from her was an action right and fitting.

It was a move in the prehistoric game of flight and pursuit, in which they had engaged without comprehension and with the intense earnestness of children at their play. David dropped down beside her, a spray of wild roses in his hand, and began at once to chide her for thus stealing away. Did she not remember they were in the country of the p.a.w.nees, the greatest thieves on the plains? It was not safe to stray alone from the camp.

Susan smiled:

"The p.a.w.nees steal horses, but I never heard anyone say they stole girls."

"They steal anything they can get," said the simple young man.

"Oh, David,"--now she was laughing--"so they might steal me if they couldn't get a horse, or a blanket, or a side of bacon! Next time I go wandering I'll take the bacon with me and then I'll be perfectly safe."

"Your father wouldn't like it. I've heard him tell you not to go off this way alone."

"Well, who could I take? I don't like to ask father to go out into the sun and Daddy John was asleep, and Leff--I didn't see Leff anywhere."

"I was there," he said, dropping his eyes.

"You were under the wagon reading Byron. I wouldn't for the world take you away from Byron."

She looked at him with a candid smile, her eyes above it dancing with delighted relish in her teasing.

"I would have come in a minute," he said low, sweeping the surface of the spring with the spray of roses. Susan's look dwelt on him, gently thoughtful in its expression in case he should look up and catch it.

"Leave Byron," she said, "leave the Isles of Greece where that lady, whose name I've forgotten, 'loved and sung,' and walk in the sun with me just because I wanted to see this spring! Oh, David, I would never ask it of you."

"You know I would have loved to do it."

"You would have been polite enough to do it. You're always polite."

"I would have done it because I wanted to," said the victim with the note of exasperation in his voice.

She stretched her hand forward and very gently took the branch of roses from him.

"Don't tell stories," she said in the cajoling voice used to children.

"This is Sunday."

"I never tell stories," he answered, goaded to open irritation, "on Sunday or any other day. You know I would have liked to come with you and Byron could have--have----"

"What?" the branch upright in her hand.

"Gone to the devil!"

"David!" in horror, "I never thought _you'd_ talk that way."

She gave the branch a shake and a shower of drops fell on him.