The Forbidden Trail, Honoré Willsie [digital e reader TXT] 📗

get round on the other side of the fire!" exclaimed Roger.

It was the first time he had spoken in several hours and the sound of his own voice startled him. Peter trotted obediently around and stood opposite, head drooping as if in thought. Strangely small and gray he looked; strangely wise as if the same weathering of the centuries that had worn the mountain peaks into shapes of brooding significance had worn his little gray head into the semblance of Wise Patience, itself.

When Roger had finished his meal, and packed, he walked slowly up and down the river bank. But nowhere could he see a better place for crossing than at the spot where he had built his fire. Here a small island amid stream made the crossing seem possible. He found a cottonwood log to which he tied his food pack and canteen as well as his clothes which he took off and rolled up. He fastened Peter to a clump of arrow-weed, then waded out into the stream, pushing the log before him.

The water was very cold and the current much swifter than Roger had anticipated but he was an excellent swimmer and though the current carried him well down stream, he made a safe landing on the island with all his goods and chattels. Then he went back for Peter. He could not bear the thought of going on alone.

The lead rope was long. Roger pulled the reluctant Peter to the water's edge, plunged in and was swimming violently in the current before the rope stretched taut and he realized that Peter was braced, stiff-legged on the bank. Roger swam back and climbed out of the water.

"Come, Peter," he said gently. "I'll swim beside you so you needn't be afraid."

Peter moved his long ears back and forth.

"Come! Come! Don't make me beat you. Come, Peter."

Peter did not stir. Roger picked up a bit of driftwood and belaboured Peter's gray sides, but the beating might have been a sand flea hopping on him for all it appeared to move Peter.

"Darn you, Peter!" shouted Roger. "Have you quit me too? I tell you, you shall not! Come now, I'm too tired to argue."

He plunged once more into the water, once more swam into the current, whistling Peter's call as he did so. But to no avail. When he reached the bank this time he was angry. He roared at Peter and kicked at him with his bare toes. But he kicked him only once. Peter's ribs were strong and none too well covered.

Peter looked at Roger's thin white body and his brown angry face, moved his ears, breathed hard and snorted.

Roger roared again. "All right, sir! All right, sir! If you won't come with me, neither shall you go back to the Germans and their sympathizers. I'll fix you, young fellow!"

He led Peter up to a mesquite tree and with trembling fingers tied the little gray head as high as he could pull it.

"There," he said, "you can stay there till the buzzards get you" and without a backward glance he swam once more across to the island.

Here he dressed and lay for a time resting in the sand. The sun had sunk behind the ranges. The night shadows in the valley were cool. Partly because of this, partly from sheer nervous and physical exhaustion, Roger shivered. Finally when twilight had settled in the valley, he sat up and gazed across the river. It was too dark to see Peter. There was only the murmur of the river in all that barren solitude. Then suddenly Peter brayed. It was not the usual ridiculous hee haw of the burro but a strange blending of whinny and scream. Roger shuddered and told himself that he would keep Peter company just a little longer, then move on.

The desert night came on quickly and completely. The great desert stars had pricked out before the last light had left the mountain tops. An hour passed, then two. Roger was too weary to build a fire, too wretched to sleep. He sat huddled in the sand, his head against a great cottonwood log, his face toward the river. A dim red edge began to show over the ranges. It lifted into a crescent, then into a half circle. Suddenly the little valley was flooded with white light and the moon sailed free over the sliding river.

Roger stared eagerly toward the mesquite tree. Peter stood unmoving, his little gray head turned upward, his sturdy neck seeming unusually long and thin, stretched thus unnaturally. It seemed curious to Roger that the burro did not kick nor lunge. But Peter's patience, won by who knows what beaten and burdened ancestry, did not desert him. He did not tug at his rope but he brayed again, as if he were giving an eerie shriek of warning.

Roger bit his nails nervously, then hollowed out a bed in the sand and lying down tried to sleep. The stars glowed down on him quietly. From where he lay he could see Peter. The little gray head must be tired. How Felicia had loved the little burro. Used to wash his face and brush his foolish mane. Felicia! Little lost Felicia! Roger groaned and sat up.

His moment of reckoning had arrived, as it arrives once to every man.

First he thought of Felicia. He recalled that first day on the train when she had sat in his lap so long and he had felt the whisper of fate in their meeting. He came down through the desert days with her. How pitifully few there were of them, after all! And he lived them over, one by one. He recalled her loveliness, her childish curiosity, her love of his work. He thought of her affection and of her timidity, her shrinking fear of a rough word. And suddenly he groaned and said aloud:

"Thank God in His mercy that she didn't see me when I throttled Ernest!"

Ernest! The friend of his boyhood and his young manhood. Generous, sweet-tempered, easy going Ernest! How patiently he had endured Roger's temper! How loyally he had devoted himself to Roger's experiments. How utterly he had given himself to their friendship. Why had he betrayed Roger at the last? What had happened? Roger's brain seemed on fire as he turned over in his mind the events that had led to Tuesday's tragedy. Charley had come to him and had said:—

Well—no matter what she had said. Long before she had told him that his life failure was due to his selfish indifference to other people. He remembered that he had not believed her. But now the words seemed seared into his brain.

Roger took a long drink, then as methodically as he could he examined his own temperament. First, he tried to consider himself as if he were Ernest looking at Roger. What had Roger ever done for Ernest? He had been a constant spur to Ernest mentally, forcing him into new fields of research and experiment, but only after all, for Roger's own purposes, or Roger's own ideas. What return had Roger ever made for the exquisite hospitality of Ernest's home and the tenderness of Ernest's mother? None! None whatever! What return even in kindness had Roger ever made for Ernest's untiring efforts to promote the solar device. Once more Roger whispered huskily:

"None! None at all! Less than nothing!"

So Ernest must see him as a brain devoid of any human qualities save that of quick temper. Thank heaven, Felicia never had seen him angry but once! But Charley had seen every red hate that had swept him since he had come to the desert. What would he not give if this were not so! More than any one in the world, he suddenly thought, he wanted Charley's good opinion. And how must she see him? Impatient, ugly tempered, selfish,—excepting toward Felicia. Thank God, she had seen how he had loved that little child.

And so, here he was at thirty, a failure. It was better to acknowledge it now: to admit that the fault was his; to go on into some mining camp and lose himself than to drag on making a fool of himself at the Sun Plant. He would rest a little longer, then start on in the moonlight.

Once more Roger stretched himself out on his bed of sand. As he did so, Peter brayed again. Roger jumped to his feet, the cold sweat starting from his forehead. Felicia's little burro! What devil could have entered into him that he could treat a dumb brute so! He tore off his clothing and jumped into the water. It was not easy to breast the current, he was so tired. But he made the bank and staggering up to the mesquite tree, he untied Peter.

"There, old man," he said gently, "go back to your friends."

Then he turned to cross the river. He was carried far below his camp this time and for some minutes after he landed he lay naked and exhausted before he could urge himself back to the cottonwood log and climb into his clothing.

He was in a state now of utter despair. No grief, no anger can bring to the human mind the depth of suffering that self-loathing can. Roger lay with his forehead pillowed on his arm, for the first time in his life facing his own weaknesses. Just in the degree that his brain was clearer, his mind more honest, his nerves more highly strung than other men's, just in that degree did he suffer more.

Perhaps, after a time, he slipped into a half doze. But it seemed to him that the touch on his forehead was his mother's. No, it was Felicia's or was it Charley's? Again Charley and Felicia merged in his mind. Felicia was looking at him with adoring eyes. Thank God once more that she could never grow up to know the truth about him. But she had grown up and was stooping over him with a gentle hand on his forehead as if she understood him and forgave him a thousand times over.

It was Charley, of course, Charley with the great heart and the seeing mind. What an awful thing for him to have brought another failure to the valley! Charley had had a sad life. Perhaps she had had dreams of her own, before she merged her destiny with Dick's. Dick was a poor weakling. But Felicia's death had saved him. Dick was a man now. If Felicia had seen him attack Ernest, she would have run away to her death, just as she had for Dick's frenzy. Potentially, he was a murderer too. But now he was a failure and as far as his red devil was concerned, Felicia had died in vain.

Roger's heart seemed to stop beating with the horror of this thought. Try as he would he could not get away from the idea that potentially he shared Dick's guilt. And Felicia had been sacrificed in vain. Suddenly he clenched his fists. No, by heaven, this should not be!

Roger pulled himself to his knees beside the cottonwood log and lifted his ravished face to the stars.

"Listen, God!" he shouted. "It was not in vain! I'm going back! I'm going back to Felicia and Charley and prove myself a man. I don't know why Ernest did it. But that doesn't matter. I'm going back. Listen to me, God!"

Half kneeling, half crouching, with the sinking moon touching his burning eyes, his trembling lips, Roger watched the great compassionate desert stars as if waiting for an answer. And as he waited, the answer came. Roger whispered as if in reply.

"Yes! Yes! I love her! I love her! I love her! Oh, Charley, my darling! I'm coming back to you and show you that Felicia did not die in vain!"

Then he slipped down into the sand and fell asleep as deeply, as