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CHAPTER XVII
INTERLUDE

August ripened into September, and the Park underwent a subtle and fascinating change. In the meadows the hay lay in long windrows, golden green; on the slopes vermilion flowers succeeded blue; in the sunsets tender pinks yielded to burnt orange and vivid red. The nights had grown perceptibly colder, but the days were still warm and dry and radiant, though with a tang in the air that stirred the blood. And a thousand perfumes, known and unknown, distilled from meadow and field and forest, scented every vagrant breeze.

Marion was soon herself again, in body if not in mind. A few long nights of sleep, a few days in the saddle, and sufficient nourishment (for she had neglected herself at Haig’s, despite Jim’s solicitude) restored her physically to what she had been on the day of Haig’s accident. But she, too, had changed, and as subtly as the season.

“What’s come over Marion?” asked Huntington of Claire one day, after he had caught himself regarding her with the rapt interest of a discoverer.

Claire looked at him pityingly. She knew, but she was not going to tell him.

“Why?” she asked innocently.

“Well, I don’t exactly know,” he replied doubtfully. “She’s prettier than ever–but so are you. That isn’t it. She’s kind of–It’s no use. I don’t know.”

Claire laughed, and then became severe.

“That’s because she’s forgiven you,” she said.

“No, it isn’t!” he asseverated, not without embarrassment. “You can see for yourself that she’s different.”

“Very well!” she retorted maliciously. “Perhaps if you’d done such a noble thing as nursing Haig back to life you’d be different too.”

“I’d see him in–”

“Shame!” she cried. “You wouldn’t do anything of the kind. Your bark’s worse than your bite, sir. And besides, while I think of it, you really must stop saying ‘hell’ and ‘damn’ so much. The habit’s growing on you.”

Having no ready answer to that speech, he merely looked at her, perhaps a little guiltily, then bent down and kissed her, and hurried out of the house. He was, in truth, though he never would have had the courage to acknowledge it, even to Claire, ashamed of himself, and anxious too. His inflammable temper had rather out-flamed itself in its last-recorded performance, and he had begun to suspect that it had been responsible for some, though by no means all, of his troubles. The killing of Haig’s bull, he now realized, was a foolish and indefensible act, which could be traced easily to him because of the bull that was gored; and he must prepare to account to Haig for it. And so, knowing that he would again be in the wrong, as in the affair at the post-office, he was torn between accentuated bitterness toward Haig and growing discontent with himself. He would never be afraid of Haig, but he was becoming steadily more afraid of Marion. Whether it was that he had really developed intuition, which told him of Marion’s spiritual growth, or that he was in constant dread lest she make some new demand upon him in regard to Haig, he lived in much awe of her. She had once spoken, on a memorable occasion, of making peace between Haig and himself. It would be just like her, wouldn’t it, to try to bring them together? Well, let her try it! He would be the last man in Paradise Park. And so on, until he was once more almost satisfied with himself.

The faithful Smythe, meanwhile, brought Marion almost daily news of Philip. That he was rapidly recovering she heard with a ringing joy, which had its alloy of fear; for she knew that the day he felt himself to be in full possession of his powers he would attempt again to conquer Sunnysides. So from day to day her apprehension mounted until it became well-nigh insupportable. And her own helplessness maddened her. What could she do? Nothing! Nothing but wait, and pray God to protect him. Every night she prayed for him, and every morning, on her knees; and every hour the prayer was in her heart. She rode sometimes as far as the farther edge of the woods that crowned the ridge, and looked long at the little valley, and at the smoke rising in a thin spiral from the ranch house that she could not see. At the right of it would be the cottage, and at the left the barn, and the corral where Sunnysides bided his time. And then, having looked until she could endure no more, she would ride slowly home, to await the next coming of Smythe with news.

Once she went to the glade of the columbines. She did not feel any longer the antipathy she once felt to the spot that had, in one devastating moment, revealed to her the fatuity of her dreams. Now she was in search of the old hopes that she had once revelled in, while she gathered armloads of columbines, and imagined they were for Philip.

Dismounting eagerly at the foot of the little hill, she plunged through the brush, and halted at the margin of the glade, stricken with the keenest disappointment. The columbines were gone; only a brave, pale blossom here and there lingered pathetically in a waste of dried and drooping stems. She stood staring at them a moment; then, with a cry, she threw herself down among them, and gave herself up to grief, letting the tears come in what flood they would, while her hand clutched one poor survivor of the summer glory.

Gone, then, like the summer, were all those dreams. And very soon must come the end of all. Barely two weeks remained to her in the Park,–barely two weeks in which the miracle that she awaited could be wrought. What miracle could move him when her love had failed? And yet–Once, in her desperation, she suggested to Claire and Seth that she should remain all winter in the Park; but they rose up together against any such scheme. It was absurd, they agreed. They would be delighted to have her with them as many summers as she might wish; and they were already counting on her return to them next June. But the Park in winter was no place for a woman, unless she had been long inured to such hardships as were involved in that hibernation. Claire had remained two winters there, it was true, but Seth had vowed that she should never miss the last stage again. Marion’s proposal only clinched the matter the more firmly; and it was eventually agreed that Claire should go with Marion to New York, where they would live very quietly, taking what pleasures their means would permit, until spring should bring them back to the mountains. And so, barring a miracle, she was at the end of her hopes.

Meanwhile, she had heard from Robert. He was nearly wild, he wrote. The big deal was going slowly–not badly, but with maddening delays. He was tempted to “chuck the whole business,” though it meant thousands, perhaps half a million. Yet how could he do that? He was working for her; and if he left Denver the deal would certainly fall through. But there was yet time; any day the stubborn partner might yield; and so on. Poor Robert! thought Marion. She imagined what Philip would have done if he had wanted her as Robert did. Would any deal, any prospect of millions, have kept him away from her? So she reasoned, forgetting entirely the other side of the case. Haig, if she could have asked him, would have told her: yes, that’s all very well, but the man would have to get those thousands or other thousands afterwards, just the same; a woman wants to have her cake and eat it too; and so much the worse for the man if he cannot dance attendance on her and make money for her at the same time!

She wrote to Robert that be must not think of leaving his business. Moreover, she would soon be in Denver, on her way back home.

In the late afternoon Haig leaned against Sunnysides’ corral, smoking his pipe and gazing fixedly at the golden outlaw. The air was very still, almost too still, as if nature had paused before a sudden and violent alteration of her mood. In the bright sky, a little hard even for September, there was no cloud, except on the western horizon, where dark vapors hovered over the bald head of Thunder Mountain. The scent of the harvest in the meadows blended with the odor of burning pine that came from the ranch house, where Flick built the fire for supper. On the hill the pines were still, but the brook babbled on, and there was an incessant low twittering of birds in the cottonwoods.

Haig had now fully recovered. He had taken to his horse again some days before, to ride a little the first day, and more the next, each day adding something to his exercise, until he felt the blood running warmly in his veins, and his muscles tightening at his will. Then he had hardened himself with every kind of labor around the ranch. For he was impatient to remove the stigma of doubt that Sunnysides had burned into his soul. He had told Marion that she was incapable of understanding why he must conquer Sunnysides. He was not sure that he understood it himself. But he knew that he must. Ever since that day when he had fled into the world he had fought to be master of himself; and his way of being master of himself was to be master of every man and every animal and every obstacle that appeared across his path,–that irresponsible, uncharted path that had neither beginning nor end, that led he knew not where nor cared. Every moment was a moment to itself, and every day was its own if he had done what he had set out to do. His one purpose in life was not to be beaten, never to fail, though he should throw away to-morrow what he had won to-day. So it was that to conquer Sunnysides was for the moment the one thing that counted, and he would have no rest until it was done.

Twilight settled down upon the valley. Haig’s pipe went out, and still he stood gazing at Sunnysides. In the dusk the horse glowed like a living jewel that holds the light when the sun has gone. Night fell, and the golden hide became a shimmer in the dark, as the outlaw moved restlessly to and fro in his prison. Then, of a sudden, with the unexpectedness and unreason of a dog’s wolf-howl at the rising moon, there rose from the gloom of the corral a shrill, wild neigh that shattered the peaceful silence of the night.

Haig left the fence, and walked swiftly to the barn.

“Farrish!” he said shortly. “We’ll break Sunnysides to-morrow. Tell Pete and Curly not to ride away in the morning. The cattle can wait.”

CHAPTER XVIII
THE CHALLENGE OF THE BRUTE

There had been yellow, mellow weather for weeks on weeks, but this day dawned hard and cold. Some projected rancor of the winter was in the air. Westward the peaks were blanketed with thick gray clouds, while eastward a sullen redness showed where the sun strove to rise on an angry world. The wind was the kind that scrapes raw the nerves, buffeting man and beast with cross-currents and unexpected blasts, howling and shrieking around chimneys and gables, covering everything with dust and sand.

Haig awoke to hear the wind tearing at the shutters and the roof, the pines on the hillside thundering like surf, the hills reverberating with the maddest trumpetings. He lay a moment listening; his pulse quickened, at the sound of all that tumult; and he leaped from his bed calling loudly for Slim Jim. It was a day for battle. The very elements were up and at it, as if all nature had enlisted in the struggle between man and brute.

For all his eagerness, he ate his breakfast leisurely, resolved to make no such error as he had made before. There should be no mad haste and no anger; no working on an empty stomach, on nerves drawn taut. Bacon and eggs and buckwheat cakes, with coffee and a single pipe, occupied an hour or more; and then, feeling fit for anything, he set out for the corrals.

He did not scruple this time to take every precaution known to the experts of the corrals. Bill was mounted on the wisest horse in the stables, with a lariat ready against the event of Sunnysides trying the fence again. Then Haig directed Farrish, Curly, and Pete to rope and saddle the outlaw, saving himself for the supreme struggle. But to their astonishment there was none of the difficulties in the preliminaries that they encountered on the previous occasion; only two or three vicious movements, no more.

“Foxy, ain’t you?” said Farrish to the outlaw, when the saddle was on. “Savin’ yourself, are you, you yellow devil?”

The horse was led as before into the larger corral. He stepped nimbly, obediently, as if resistance were the farthest thing from his thoughts, even when Haig, his arch-enemy, walked up to him, grasped the bridle, and looked steadily into his eyes. For a moment all stood still, as the challenge passed between man and brute. Then Haig tested the cinches of the saddle, looked carefully around him, and disposed the men with a final word to each.

“Now then! Off with it!”

Farrish removed the last rope, and then only the bridle rein in Haig’s hand, and the fence yonder, stoutly repaired since the last battle, remained between Sunnysides and the sandhills of the San Luis. True, only a fence and a guard had held him all these weeks of his captivity, but that fence had been built up, on his arrival, two planks higher than the one in which he now found himself again, and from which he had all but escaped at the first opportunity.

Haig put his feet cautiously into the stirrup, and sprang into the saddle. He was prepared for a repetition of the trick that had almost cost him his life, and ready to swing himself out of the saddle if Sunnysides should go over backward again. But the horse was indeed “foxy”; one would have said that he knew his man, and would waste no time or energy on manœuvers that his enemy had discounted. For some seconds he stood quite motionless, while Haig settled firmly in his seat, and gripped the bridle rein expectantly. At length the horse lifted and turned his head, and looked, as it appeared, toward the western mountains, half hidden in the gray swirl of clouds.

“Yes, over there’s the San Luis,” muttered Haig. “But it’s a long way, and you’re not going.”

Farrish grinned. But Pete stood like a wooden Indian, so still and intent was he, with his black eyes fixed on the outlaw. Curly loosened the coils of the lariat in his hands. In a corner of the corral Bill, mounted and watchful, held his rope ready for a throw.

Still Sunnysides did not move. But his tail swished with the slow and menacing movement of a tiger’s, and there was just a quiver of muscles under his golden hide.

“Watch out!” called Pete.

And then it came. The horse bounded into the air, and came down stiff-legged, with a jolt that Haig felt in every bone. Then he leaped sideways half a dozen feet, and Haig was flung far over, hanging perilously in the saddle. With almost one motion the horse was in the air again, to come down with the same frightful, jarring shock. Instantly thereupon he lunged forward, stopped short, ducked his head, and narrowly missed hurling Haig like a stone from a catapult.

All these tactics were repeated with variations; and then, of a sudden, as if he thought Haig had forgotten his experience by this time, he reared, and with the same lightning swiftness as before, went over backward on the ground. But Haig was too quick for him. He swung himself to one side, released his right foot from the stirrup, and rolled away from beneath the horse as they came down with a crash. At the same instant Pete and Curly rushed in, and the horse leaped to his feet only to be brought down again with two ropes on his legs.

Haig, dusty but uninjured, was on his feet in a jiffy, and leaning over the thwarted outlaw.

“You didn’t really think you could do it again, did you?” he said.

“But he’s a hellyun, though, ain’t he!” ejaculated Curly, bracing himself on his rope.

The horse was allowed to rise; Haig climbed cautiously into the saddle once more; and the same tense silence as the first ensued, while Sunnysides waited, as if for inspiration.

Then it was on as before, but with accentuated fury. The horse, for his opening demonstration, bucked with his back curved like a steel bow. Haig was almost propelled into the air, but hung on desperately; and as the outlaw came down on stiffened legs Haig jabbed the spurs viciously into his flanks. For Sunnysides had been too calculating in his measures; it was desirable to stir him up, to anger him, to torment him until he should wear himself out with his furious struggles.

The spurs did it. In an instant Sunnysides was a demon. All that he had done was like the antics of a colt compared with what followed. No eye in the corral could follow and record all his movements. He was in every part of the enclosure at once, it seemed. There were instants, too, when he appeared to have disassociated himself from the earth, and to have taken to the air as his element. And then the earth rang again with the clatter of his hoofs; his four legs became a hundred, and then were four again, pounding like piledrivers, like steel drills. He flung himself against the fence until it swayed and creaked, and Haig’s legs were bruised by the violent contact. Clouds of dust rose and hung above the enclosure, and settled on the outlaw’s wet shoulders, on Haig’s sweating face, in his eyes and nostrils, and in his throat until he was fairly choking. But though half-blinded, dizzy, and aching in all his body, Haig hung on, and dug the spurs ceaselessly into the horse’s flanks.

“God! He’s got him!” cried Farrish.

“Your game’s up!” yelled Curly tauntingly, dancing with joy in his corner of the corral.

But the game was not up. Curly’s words were barely out of his mouth when something went wrong with Haig. Just what happened none could be quite sure of, then or afterward; but in the midst of Sunnysides’ plungings, there came a windmill kind of movement, rather like the whirling of a dervish, out of which the horse lunged swiftly forward, and halted violently, with his head down, and his forelegs stiff before him. It was apparently an elaboration of one of the commonest tricks of all; and if Haig could have stuck to the saddle then he probably would have won. But he was thrown. He went sprawling over the horse’s lowered head, and struck the ground on his head and shoulders, and lay still.

What followed was more marvelous even than the unseating of Haig with the shout of victory already rising to his lips. There came a snort that ended in a scream; and then a flash of yellow through the dust. Bill Craven, on his horse at one side of the corral, saw it coming straight toward him, and tried to whirl his noose. Too late. The outlaw was upon him; his own pony, rearing, was caught unbalanced; and Bill himself instinctively leaned backward in the saddle. There was a terrific impact; the pony was struck squarely on the left fore-quarter; and horse and rider went down together in a heap against the fence. Then over them went the outlaw, trampling them as he leaped and clambered, taking the top plank with him as he landed outside the corral on his head and knees. In an instant he was up; in another, or the same instant, he was off, with his head down, and belly to earth, with the speed of a race-horse and the frenzy of a wild thing set free.

Haig was only slightly stunned by the fall. He heard, though he did not see, the escape of Sunnysides; and for one black moment all in the present was blotted out. But that was only the dizziness, and the reeling pain in his head; and there was the sky filled with gray-black, contending clouds; and Pete was leaning over him.

“Hurt?” asked the Indian.

“No.”

He reached up one hand, and Pete helped him to his feet. Swaying a little, he looked around the corral. Farrish was on the outside, gazing down the road where Sunnysides was now almost out of sight, a mere yellow spot in a cloud of dust. Curly was jerking Craven’s horse to its feet.

“What’s the matter there?” called Haig.

“Bill’s hurt!” answered Curly.

With Pete at his side, not yet assured that all was well with him, Haig walked unsteadily to where Bill lay against the fence.

“What is it, Craven?” he asked.

“Leg broke. My horse fell on me,” Bill answered weakly. He had, besides, a gash in the left side of his head, from which the blood flowed down his face.

“Into the barn with him!” Haig ordered quietly.

They placed him on a cot, and Pete gave him a long pull at his ever-ready flask.

“I’m sorry, Bill!” said Haig, looking down at him.

“It’s my own fault,” replied Craven. “An’ it serves me damned right for lettin’ him get by me.”

Haig smiled grimly, then turned to the other men with orders. He was ominously quiet; even the dullest of them, the slow-witted Curly, saw and wondered at the unusual calm that showed on his face and in his accents.

“Now then, business!” he said, with swift decision. “You’ll take the sorrels, Curly, and drive to Tellurium for the doctor. Don’t be afraid to drive them; I’ll not be on your back for that. Pete, go to the cottage, and bring my gun. Jim knows where it is. Farrish–where’s Farrish?”

“Here!”

He came leading two ponies from their stalls.

“What are you doing, Farrish?”

“I supposed we’d better find out where he’s gone, and see if–”

“There’s no doubt where he’s headed for, is there?” Haig interrupted. “And who’s going to stop him? No, saddle Trixy!”

“But you’re not going alone?” said Farrish.

“Yes.”

“But–”

“Bill’s knocked out. Curly’s off as soon as he can start for Tellurium. That leaves you and Pete to look after the ranch. I may be gone some time.”

“But you can’t rope him alone!” protested Farrish.

“I don’t expect to. There isn’t a horse in the Park that could overtake him. He’ll make for the San Luis, of course. I’ll get help there. Now then, Farrish, you’re in charge of the ranch. If anything should happen to me, Jim knows where all my papers are. That’s all.”

Farrish hastened to saddle Trixy, coiling a rope at the saddle horn, and strapping a slicker behind the saddle. At this moment came Pete from the cottage, bringing the revolver and cartridge belt, which Haig buckled on while Farrish led Trixy out in front of the stable.

There was a word or two more to Farrish, about the cattle and the hay, and Haig swung himself into the saddle.

“Wait!” cried Pete, running out of the stable.

He handed a flask of whisky to Haig, who took it, smiling, and thrust it into a pocket of his coat.

“Sure cure for everything, eh, Pete?”

But he reached down, and clasped Pete’s hand.

“You will be cold, maybe,” said the Indian simply.

“All right, men!” said Haig. “You’ll take good care of Craven, of course. And you’ll use your best judgment about everything, Farrish. I’m not coming back without Sunnysides.”

He put spurs to the little bay mare, and dashed away. Pete and Farrish stood watching him until he had turned the point of the ridge.

“Hell!” said Farrish.

In the cottage door stood a figure in blue silks, intently gazing after the disappearing horseman.

“He catchum, allee light!” murmured Slim Jim.