Chapter VI: Part II: Stories of the Wild Life (5)

Alfred turned back without another word, and putting the muzzle of his pistol against the pony's forehead just above the line of the eyes he pulled the trigger. With the body the two men improvised a breastwork across a little hummock. Just as they dropped behind it the Mexicans clattered up, riding bareback. Tom coolly reloaded his pistol.

The Mexicans, too, were dazzled from riding against the glow in the west, and halted a moment in a confused mass at the mouth of the ravine. The two cowboys within rose and shot rapidly. Three Mexicans and two ponies fell. The rest in wild confusion slipped rapidly to the right and left beyond the Americans' line of sight. Three armed with Winchesters made a long detour and dropped quietly into the sage-brush just beyond accurate pistol-range. There they lay concealed, watching. Then utter silence fell.

The rising moon shone full and square into the ravine, illuminating every inch of the ascent. A very poor shot could hardly miss in such a light and with such a background. The two cowmen realised this and settled down more comfortably behind their breastwork. Tom cautiously raised the pony's head with a little chunk of rock, thus making a loophole through which to keep tab on the enemy, after which he rolled on his belly and began whittling in the hard clay, for Tom had the carving habit--like many a younger boy. Alfred carefully extracted a short pipe from beneath his chaparajos, pushed down with his blunt forefinger the charge with which it was already loaded, and struck a match. He poised this for a moment above the bowl of the pipe.

"What's the row anyway?" he inquired, with pardonable curiosity.

"Now, it's jest fifteen mile to th' cut," said Tom, disregarding Alfred's question entirely, "an' of co'se they's goin' to send a posse down thar on th' keen jump. That'll take clost onto three hours in this light. Then they'll jest pot us a lot from on top."

Alfred puffed three times toward the moonlight, and looked as though the thing were sufficiently obvious without wasting so much breath over it.

"We've jest _got_ to git out!" concluded Tom, earnestly.

Alfred grunted.

"An' how are we goin' to do it?"

Alfred paused in the act of blowing a cloud.

"Because, if we makes a break, those Greasers jest nat'rally plugs us from behind th' minute we begins to climb."

Alfred condescended to nod. Tom suspended his whittling for a reply.

"Well," said Alfred, taking his pipe from his mouth--Tom contentedly took up whittling again--"there's only one way to do it, and that's to keep them so damn busy in front that they _can't_ plug us."

Tom looked perplexed.

"We just _got_ to take our chances on the climbing. Of course, there's bound to be th' risk of accident. But when I give th' word, _you mosey_, and if one of them pots you, it'll be because my six-shooter's empty."

"But you can't expec' t' shoot _an'_ climb!" objected Tom.

"Course not," replied Alfred, calmly. "Division of labour: you climb; I shoot."

A light dawned in Tom's eyes, and he shut his jaws with a snap.

"I guess not!" said he, quietly.

"Yo' laigs is longer," Alfred urged, in his gentle voice, "and yo'll get to Peterson's quicker;" and then he looked in Tom's eyes and changed his tone. "All right!" he said, in a business-like manner. "I'll toss you for it."

For reply, Tom fished out an old pack of cards.

"I tell you," he proposed, triumphantly, "I'll turn you fer it. First man that gits a jack in th' hand-out stays."

He began to manipulate the cards, lying cramped on his side, and in doing so dropped two or three. Alfred turned to pick them up. Tom deftly slipped the jack of diamonds to the bottom of the pack. He inserted in the centre those Alfred handed him, and began at once to deal.

"Thar's yore's," he said, laying out the four of clubs, "an' yere's mine," he concluded, producing the jack of diamonds. "Luck's ag'in me early in th' game," was his cheerful comment.

For a minute Alfred was silent, and a decided objection appeared in his eyes. Then his instinct of fair play in the game took the ascendant. He kicked off his chaps in the most business-like manner, unbuckled his six-shooter and gave it to Tom, and perched his hat on the end of his quirt, which he then raised slowly above the pony's side for the purpose of drawing the enemy's fire. He did these things quickly and without heroics, because he was a plainsman. Hardly had the bullets from three Winchesters spatted against the clay before he was up and climbing for dear life.

The Mexicans rushed to the opening from either side, fully expecting to be able either to take wing-shots at close range, or to climb so fast as to close in before the cowboys would have time to make a stand at the top. In this they shut off their most effective fire--that of the three men with the Winchesters--and, instead of getting wing-shots themselves, they received an enthusiastic battering from Tom at the range of six yards. Even a tenderfoot cannot over-shoot at six yards. What was left of the Mexicans disappeared quicker than they had come, and the three of the Winchesters scuttled back to cover like a spent covey of quail.

Tom then lit Alfred's pipe, and continued his excellent sculpture in the bed of hard clay. He knew nothing more would happen until the posse came. The game had passed out of his hands. It had become a race between a short-legged man on foot and a band of hard riders on the backs of very good horses. Viewing the matter dispassionately, Tom would not have cared to bet on the chances.

As has been stated, Alfred was a small man and his legs were short--and not only short, but unused to exertion of any kind, for Alfred's daylight hours were spent on a horse. At the end of said legs were tight boots with high French heels, which most Easterners would have considered a silly affectation, but which all Westerners knew to be purposeful in the extreme--they kept his feet from slipping forward through the wide stirrups. In other respects, too, Alfred was handicapped. His shoulders were narrow and sloping and his chest was flat. Indoors and back East he would probably have been a consumptive; out here, he was merely short-winded.

So it happened that Alfred lost the race.

The wonder was not that he lost, but that he succeeded in finishing at Peterson's at all. He did it somehow, and even made a good effort to ride back with the rescuing party, but fell like a log when he tried to pick up his hat. So someone took off his boots, also, and put him to bed.

As to the rescuing party, it disbanded less than an hour later. Immediately afterward it reorganized into a hunting party--and its game was men. The hunt was a long one, and the game was bagged even unto the last, but that is neither here nor there.

Poor Tom was found stripped to the hide, and hacked to pieces. Mexicans are impulsive, especially after a few of them have been killed. His equipment had been stolen. The naked horse and the naked man, bathed in the light of a gray dawn, that was all--except that here and there fluttered bits of paper that had once been a pack of cards. The clay slab was carved deeply--a man can do much of that sort of thing with two hours to waste. Most of the decorative effects were arrows, or hearts, or brands, but in one corner were the words, "passing the love of woman," which was a little impressive after all, even though Tom had not meant them, being, as I said, only an ordinary battered Arizona cow-puncher incapable of the higher feelings.

How do I know he played the jack of diamonds on purpose? Why, I knew Tom, and that's enough.

V

THE SAVING GRACE

Once upon a time there was an editor of a magazine who had certain ideas concerning short stories. This is not wonderful, for editors have such ideas; and when they find a short story which corresponds, they accept it with joy and pay good sums for it. This particular editor believed that a short story should be realistic. "Let us have things as they _are_!" he was accustomed to cry to his best friend, or the printer's devil, or the office cat, whichever happened to be the handiest. "Life is great enough to say things for itself, without having to be helped out by the mawkish sentimentality of an idiot! Permit us to see actual people, living actual lives, in actual houses, and I should hope we have common-sense enough to draw our own morals!" He usually made these chaotic exclamations after reading through several pages of very neat manuscript in which the sentences were long and involved, and in which were employed polysyllabic adjectives of a poetic connotation. This editor liked short, crisp sentences. He wanted his adjectives served hot. He despised poetic connotation. Being only an editor, his name was Brown. If he had been a writer, he would have had three names, beginning with successive letters of the alphabet.

Now, one day, it happened that there appeared before this editor, Brown, a young man bearing a roll of manuscript. How he had gotten by the office boy Brown could not conceive, and rolled manuscript usually gave him spasms. The youth, however, presented a letter of introduction from Brown's best friend. He said he had a story to submit, and he said it with a certain appearance of breathlessness at the end of the sentence, which showed Brown that it was his first story. Brown frowned inwardly, and smiled outwardly. He begged the youth to take a seat. As all the seats were filled with unopened papers and unbound books, the youth said he preferred to stand.

Brown asked the youth questions, in a perfunctory manner, not because he cared to know anything about him, but because he liked the man who had written the letter. The youth's name proved to be Severne, and he was the most serious-minded youth who had ever stepped from college into writing. He spoke of ideals. Brown concluded that the youth's story probably dealt with the time of the Chaldaean astronomers, and contained a deep symbolical truth, couched in language of the school of Bulwer Lytton or Marie Corelli. So, after the youth had gone, he seized the roll of manuscript, for the purpose of glancing through it. If he had imagined the story of any merit, he would not have been in such haste; but as his best friend had introduced the writer, he thought he would like to get a disagreeable task over at once.

He glanced the story through. Then he read it carefully. Then he slammed it down hard on his desk--to the vast confusion of some hundreds of loose memoranda, which didn't matter much, anyway--and uttered a big, bad word. The sentences in the story were short and crisp. The adjectives were served very hot indeed. There was not a single bit of poetic connotation. It described life as it really was.

Brown, the editor, published the story, and paid a good price for it. Severne, the author, wrote more stories, and sold them to Brown. The two men got to be very good friends, and Severne heard exactly how Brown liked short stories and why, and how his, Severne's, stories were just that kind.

All this would have been quite an ideal condition of affairs, and an object-lesson to a harsh world and other editors, were it not that Severne was serious-minded. He had absolutely no sense of humour. Perspectives there were none for him, and due proportions did not exist. He took life hard. He looked upon himself gravely as a serious proposition, like the Nebular Hypothesis or Phonetic Reform. The immediate consequence was that, having achieved his success through realism, he placed realism on a pedestal and worshipped it as the only true (literary) god. Severne became a realist of realists. He ran it into the ground. He would not describe a single incident that he had not viewed from start to finish with his own eyes. He did not have much to do with feelings _direct_, but such as were necessary to his story he insisted on experiencing in his own person; otherwise the story remained unwritten. And as for emotions--such as anger, or religion, or fear--he would attempt none whose savour he had not tasted for himself. Unkind and envious rivals--not realists--insisted that once Severne had deliberately gotten very drunk on Bowery whiskey in order that he might describe the sensations of one of his minor characters in such a condition. Certain it is, he soon gained the reputation among the unintelligent of being a crazy individual, who paid people remarkably well to do strange and meaningless things for him. He was always experimenting on himself and others.

This was ridiculous enough, but it would hardly have affected anyone but crusty old cranks who delight in talking about "young fools," were it not for the fact that Severne was in love. And that brings us to the point of our story.

Of course he was in love in a most serious-minded fashion. He did not get much fun out of it. He brooded most of the time over lovers' duties to each other and mankind. He had likewise an exalted conception of the sacred, holy, and lofty character of love itself. This is commendable, but handicaps a man seriously. Girls do not care for that kind of love as a steady thing. Far be it from me to insinuate that those quite angelic creatures ever actually want to be kissed; but if, by any purely _accidental_ chance, circumstances bring it about that, without their consent or suspicion, a brute of a man _might_ surprise them awfully--well, said brute does not gain much by not springing the surprise. Being adored on a pedestal is nice--in public. So you must see that Severne's status in ordinary circumstances would be precarious. Conceive his fearful despair at finding his heart irrevocably committed to a young lady as serious-minded as himself, equally lacking in humour, and devoted mind and soul to the romantic or idealistic school of fiction! They often discussed the point seriously and heatedly. Each tried conscientiously to convert the other. As usual, the attempt, after a dozen protracted interviews, ended in the girl's losing her temper. This made Severne angry. Girls are so unreasonable!

"What do you suppose I care how your foolish imaginary people brush their teeth and button their suspenders and black their boots? I know how old man Smith opposite does, and that is more than enough for me!" she cried.

"The insight into human nature expresses itself thus," he argued, gloomily.

"Rubbish!" she rejoined. "The idea of a man's wasting the talents heaven has given him in describing as minutely and accurately as he can all the nasty, little, petty occurrences of everyday life! It is sordid!"

"The beautiful shines through the dreariness, as it does in the real life people live," he objected, stubbornly.

"The beautiful is in the imagination," she cried, with some heat; "and the imagination is God-given; it is the only direct manifestation of the divine on earth. Without imagination no writing can have life."

As this bordered on sentiment, abhorred of realism, Severne muttered something that sounded like "fiddlesticks." They discussed the relation of imagination to literature on this latter basis. At the conclusion of the discussion, Miss Melville, for that was her name, delivered the following ultimatum:

"Well, I tell you right now, Robert Severne, that I'll never marry a man who has not more soul in him than that. I am very much disappointed in you. I had thought you possessed of more nobility of character!"

"Don't say that, Lucy," he begged, in genuine alarm. Serious-minded youths never know enough not to believe what a girl says.

"I will say that, and I mean it! I never want to see you again!"

"Does that mean that our engagement is broken?" he stammered, not daring to believe his ears.

"I should think, sir, that a stronger hint would be unnecessary."

He bowed his head miserably. "Isn't there anything I can do, Lucy? I don't want to be sent off like this. I _do_ love you!"

She considered. "Yes, there is," she said, after a moment. "You can write a romantic story and publish it in a magazine. Then, and not until then, will I forgive you."

She turned coldly, and began to examine a photograph on the mantelpiece. After an apparently interminable period, receiving no reply, she turned sharply.

"Well!" she demanded.

Now, in the interval, Severne had been engaged in building a hasty but interesting mental pose. He had recalled to mind numerous historical and fictitious instances in which the man has been tempted by the woman to depart from his heaven-born principles. In some of these instances, when the woman had tempted successfully, the man had dwelt thenceforth in misery and died in torment, amid the execrations of mankind. In others, having resisted the siren, he had glowed with a high and exalted happiness, and finally had ascended to upper regions between applauding ranks of angels--which was not realism in the least. Art, said Severne to himself, is an enduring truth. Human passions are misleading. Self-sacrifice is noble. He resolved on the spot to become a martyr to his art.

"I will never do it!" he answered, and stalked majestically from the room.

Severne took his trouble henceforward in a becomingly serious-minded manner. For many years he was about to live shrouded in gloom--a gloom in whose twilight could be dimly discerned the shattered wreck of his life. After a long period, from the _debris_ of said wreck, he would build the structure of a great literary work of art, which all mankind would look upon with awe, but which he, standing apart, would eye with indifference, all joy being stricken dead by his memories of the past. But that was in the future. Just now he was in the gloom business. So, being a wealthy youth, he decided to go far, far away. This was necessary in order that he might bury his grief.

He rather fancied battle-fields and carnage, but there were no wars. It would add to the picture if he could return bronzed and battle-scarred, but as that was impossible, he resolved to return bronzed, at any rate. So he bought a ticket to a small town in Wyoming. There he and his steamer-trunk boarded Thompson's stage, and journeyed to Placer Creek, where the two of them, he and the trunk, took up their quarters in a little board-ceiled room in the Prairie Dog Hotel.

The place was admirably adapted for glooming. It was a ramshackle affair of four streets and sixteen saloons. Some of the houses, and all of the saloons, had once been painted. In front were hitching-rails. To the hitching-rails, at all times of the day, were tied ponies patiently turning their tails to the Wyoming breezes. Wyoming breezes are always going somewhere at the rate of from thirty to sixty miles an hour. Beyond the town, in one direction, were some low mountains, well supplied with dark gorges, narrow canons, murmuring water-falls, dashing brooks, and precipitous descents. Beyond the town, in the other direction, lay a broad, rolling country, on which cattle and cowboys dwelt amid profanity and dust. Severne arose in a cold room, washed his face in hard water, and descended to breakfast. The breakfast could not have been better adapted to beginning a day of gloom. It started out with sticky oatmeal, and ended with clammy cakes, between which was much horror. After breakfast, he wandered in the dark gorges, narrow canons, _et cetera_, and contemplated with melancholy but approving interest his noble sacrifice and the wreck of his life. Thence he returned to town.

In town, various incomprehensible individuals with a misguided sense of humour did things to him, the reason of which he could not understand in the least, mainly because he had himself no sense of humour, misguided or otherwise. The things they did frightened and bewildered him. But he examined them gravely through his shortsighted spectacles, noting just how they were done, just how their perpetrators looked and acted, and just how he felt.

After some days his literary instincts perforce awoke. In spite of his gloom, he caught himself sifting and assorting and placing things in their relative values. In fine, he began to conceive a Western story. Shortly after, he cleaned his fountain pen, by inserting a thin card between the gold and the rubber feeder, and sat down to write. As he wrote he grew more and more pleased with the result. The sentences became crisper and crisper. The adjectives fairly sizzled. Poetic connotation faded as a mountain mist. And he remembered and described just how Alkali Ike spit through his mustache--which was disgusting, but real. It was his masterpiece. He wrote on excitedly. Never was such a short story!

But then there came a pause. He had successfully mounted his hero, and started him in full flight down the dark gorge or narrow canon--I forget which--pursued by the avenging band. There interposed here a frightful difficulty. He did not know how a man felt when pursued by an avenging band. He had never been pursued by an avenging band himself. What was he to do? To be sure, he could imagine with tolerable distinctness the sensations to be experienced in such a crisis. He could have put them on paper with every appearance of realism. But he had no touchstone by which to test their truth. He might be unconsciously false to his art, to which he had vowed allegiance at such cost! It would never do.

So, naturally, he did the obvious thing--that is to say, the obvious thing to a serious-minded writer with no sense of humour. He went forth and sought an acquaintance named Colorado Jim, and made to him a proposition. It took Severne just two hours and six drinks to persuade Colorado Jim. At the end of that time Colorado Jim, in his turn, went forth, shaking his head doubtfully, and emitting from time to time cavernous chuckles which bubbled up from his interior after the well-known manner of the "Old Faithful" geyser. He hunted out six partners of his own--"pards," he called them--to whom he spoke at length. The six pards stared at Colorado Jim in gasping silence for some time. Then the seven went into a committee of the whole. The decision of the committee was that the tenderfoot was undoubtedly crazy, harmless, and to be humoured--at a price. Besides, the humouring would be fun. After a number of drinks, Colorado Jim and the pards concluded that it would be _lots_ of fun!

Early the next morning, they rode out of town in the direction of the hills. At the entrance to the dark gorge--or deep canon--they met Severne, also mounted. After greetings, the latter distributed certain small articles.

"Now," said he, most gravely, "I will ride ahead about as far as that rock there, and when I get ready to start, I will wave my hand. You're to chase me just as you'd chase a real horse-thief, and I'll try to keep ahead of you. You keep shooting with the blank cartridges as fast as you can. Understand?"

They said they did. They did not. But it was fun.

Severne rode to the bowlder in the dark gorge--I am sure it was the dark gorge--and turned. The pards were lined up in eagerness for the start. They had made side bets as to who would get there first. He waved his hand, and struck spurs to his horse. The pursuit began.

The horse on which Severne was mounted was a good one. The way he climbed up through that dark gorge was a caution to thoroughbreds. Behind whooped the joyous seven, and the cracking of pistols was a delight to the ear. The outfit swept up the gulch like a whirlwind.

Severne became quite excited. The swift motion was exhilarating. He mentally noted at least a hundred and ten most realistic minor details. He felt that his money had not been wasted. And then he noticed that he was gradually drawing ahead of his pursuit. Better and better! He would not only experience pursuit, but he would achieve in his own person a genuine escape, for he knew that, whatever the mythical character of the bullets, the Westerners had a real enough intention of racing each other and him to the top of the ridge. He plied his quirt, and looked back. The pursuers were actually dropping behind. Even to his inexperienced eye their animals showed signs of distress.

At this place the narrow gulch divided. Severne turned to the left, as being more nearly level. Down from the right-hand bisection came the boys of the Triangle X outfit.

To the boys of the Triangle X outfit but one course was open. Here were Colorado Jim and the pards on foundered horses, pursuing a rapid individual who was escaping only too easily. Never desert a comrade. The Triangle X boys uttered whoops, and joined the game at speed. Not gaining as rapidly as they wished, they produced long revolvers--and began to shoot. It is a little difficult to hit anything from a running horse. Severne heard the reports, and congratulated himself on the realistic qualities of his little drama. Then suddenly his hat went spinning from his head. At the same instant a bullet ploughed through the leather on his pommel. Zip! zip! went other bullets past his ears. The boys of Triangle X outfit were beginning to get the range.

He looked back. To his horror he discovered that Colorado Jim and the pards had disappeared, and that their places had been taken by a number of maniacs on jumping little ponies. The maniacs were yelling "Yip! Yip! Yip!" and shooting at him. He could not understand it in the least; but the bullets were mighty convincing. He used his quirt and spurs.

If Severne really wished to experience the feelings of a man pursued, he attained his desire. It is not pleasant to be shot at. Severne entertained sensations of varied coherence, but one and all of a vividness which was of the greatest literary value. Only he was not in a mood to appreciate literary values. He attended strictly to business, which was to lift the excellent animal on which he was mounted as rapidly as possible over the ground. In this he attained a moderate success. Venturing a backward glance, after a few moments, he noted with pleasure that the distance between himself and the maniacs had sensibly increased. Then one of those zipping bullets passed between his body and his arm, cut off three heavy locks of the horse's mane, and entered the base of the poor animal's skull. Severne suddenly found himself in the road. The maniacs swept up at speed, reining in suddenly at the distance of three feet, in such a manner as to scatter much gravel over him. Severne sat up.

The maniacs, with commendable promptness, jerked Severne to his feet. Several more bent over his horse.

"Jess's I thought!" shouted one of these. "Jess's I thought! He's stole this cayuse. This is Hank Smith's bronc. I'd know him any-whar!"

"That's right! Bar O brand!" cried several.

Then men who held him yanked Severne here and there. "End of yore rope this trip! Steal hosses, will ye!" said they.

"I didn't steal the horse!" cried poor Severne; "I hired him from Smith."

A roar of laughter greeted this statement.

"Hired Colorado and the boys to chase you, too, didn't ye!" suggested one, with heavy sarcasm.

"Yes, I did," answered Severne, sincerely.

They laughed again. "Nerve!" said they.

Near the fallen horse several began discussing the affair. "I tell you I _know_ I done it!" argued one. "I ketched him between the sights, jest's fair as could be."

"G'wan, he flummuxed jest's _I_ cut loose!"

"Well, boys," called the leader, impatiently, "get along!"

A man came forward, and silently threw a loop about Severne's neck. In Wyoming they hang horse-thieves. Severne realised this, and told them all about everything. They listened to him, and laughed delightedly. Never had they hanged such a funny horse-thief. They appreciated his efforts to amuse them, and assured him often that he was a peach. When he paused, they encouraged him to say some more. At every new disclosure they chuckled with admiration, as though at a tremendous but splendid lie. Severne was getting more realistic experience in ten minutes than he had had in all his previous life; but realistic experience does not do one much good at the end of a rope on top of a Wyoming mountain. Then, after a little, they deftly threw the coil of rope over the limb of a tree, and hung him up, and left him. They did not shoot him full of holes, as is the usual custom. He had been a funny horse-thief, so in return they were lenient. Severne kicked. "Dancin' good," they observed, as they turned the corner.

Around the corner they met the frantic James. They cut Severne down, and worked over him for some time. Then they carried him down to Placer Creek, and worked over him a lot more. The Triangle X boys were distinctly aggrieved. They had applauded those splendid lies, and now they turned out not to be lies at all, but merely an extremely crazy sort of truth. They relieved their feelings by getting very drunk and shooting out the lights.

It took Severne a week to get over it. Ten days after that he returned East. He had finished a masterpiece. The flight down the canon was pictured so vividly that you could almost hear the crack of the pistols, and the hero's sentiments were so well described that in reading about them you became excited yourself. Severne read it three times, and he thought it as good the third time as the first. Then he copied it all out on the typewriter. This is the severest test a writer can give his work. The most sparkling tale loses its freshness when run through the machine, especially if the unfortunate author cannot make the thing go very fast. It seemed as good even after this ordeal.

"Behold," said he, congratulating himself, "this is the best story I ever wrote! Blamed if it isn't one of the best stories I ever _read_! Your romanticists claim that the realistic story has no charm, nor excitement, nor psychical thrill. This'll show them!"

So he hurried to deliver it to Brown. Then he posed industriously to himself, and tried hard to do some more glooming, but it was difficult work. Someway he felt his cause not hopeless. This masterpiece would go far to convince her that he was right after all.

Three days later he received a note from Brown asking him to call. He did so. The editor handed him back his story, more in sorrow than in anger, and spoke reprovingly about deserting one's principles. Brown was conscientious. He believed that the past counted nothing in face of the present. Severne pressed for an explanation. Then said Brown:

"Severne, I have used much of your stuff, and I have liked it. The sentences have been crisp. The adjectives have been served hot. You have eschewed poetic connotation. And, above all, you have shown men and life as they are. I am sorry to see that you have departed from that noble ideal."

"But," cried Severne, in expostulation, "do not these qualities appear in my story?"

"At first they do," responded Brown, "but later--ah!" He sighed.

"What do you mean?"

"The ride down the canon," he explained. "The sentences are crisp and the adjectives hot. But, alas! there is much poetic connotation, and, so far from representing real life, it seems to me only the perperoid lucubrations of a disordered imagination."

"Why, that part is the most realistic in the whole thing!" cried the unhappy author, in distress.

"No," replied the editor, firmly, "it is not. It is not realism at all. Even if there were nothing objectionable about the incident, the man's feelings are frightfully overdrawn. No man ever was such an everlasting coward as you make out your hero! I should be glad to see something else of yours--but that, no!"

Somewhat damped, Severne took his manuscript home with him. There he re-read it. All his old enthusiasm returned. It was exactly true. Realism could have had no more accurate exposition of its principles. He cursed Brown, and inclosed stamps to the _Decade_. After a time he received a check and a flattering letter. Realism stood vindicated!

In due course the story appeared. During the interim Severne had found that his glooming was becoming altogether too realistic for his peace of mind. As time went on and he saw nothing of Lucy Melville, he began to realise that perhaps, after all, he was making a mistake somewhere. At certain recklessly immoral moments he even thought a very little of proving false to art. To such depths can the human soul descend!

The evening after the appearance of his story in the _Decade_, he was sitting in front of his open fire in very much that mood. The lamps had not been lighted. To him came Mortimer, his man. "A leddy to see you, sir; no name," he announced, solemnly.

Severne arose in some surprise. "Light the lamp, and show her up," he commanded, wondering who she could be.

At the sound of his voice, the visitor pushed into the room past Mortimer.

"Never mind the lamp," cried Lucy Melville. The faithful Mortimer left the room, and--officially--heard no more.

"Why, Lucy!" cried Severne.

In the dim light he could see that her cheeks were glowing with excitement. She crossed the room swiftly, and put her hands on his shoulders. "Bob," she said, gravely, with tears in her eyes, "I know I ought not to be here, but I just couldn't help it! After you were so noble! And it won't matter, for I'm going in just a minute."

Severne cast his mind back in review of his noble acts. "What is it, Lucy?" he inquired.

"As if you could ask!" she cried. "I never knew of a man's doing so tactful and graceful and _beautiful_ a thing in my life! And I don't care a bit, and I believe you were right, after all."

"Right about what?" he begged, getting more and more bewildered.

"About the realism, of course."

She looked up at him again, pointing out her chin in the most adorable fashion. Even serious-minded men have moments of lucidity. Severne had one now.

"Oh, no, you mustn't, Bob--dear!" she cried, blushing.

"But really, Bob," she went on, after a moment, "even if realism is all right, you must admit that your last story is the best thing you ever wrote."

"Why, yes, I do think so," he agreed, wondering what that had to do with it.

"I'm so glad you do. Do you know, Bob," she continued, happily, "I read it all through before I noticed whose it was. And I kept saying to myself, 'I _do_ wish Bob could see this story. I'm sure it would convince him that imagination is better than realism'; for really, Bob," she cried, with enthusiasm, "it is the best imaginative story I ever read. And when I got to the end, and saw the signature, and realised that you had deserted your literary principles just for my sake, and had actually gone to work and written such a _splendid_ imaginative story after all you had said; and then, too, when I realised what a delicate way you had taken to let me know--because, of course, I never read that magazine of Brown's--oh, Bob!" she concluded, quite out of breath.

Severne hesitated for almost a minute. He saw his duty plainly; he was serious-minded; he had no sense of humour. Then she looked up at him as before, pointing her chin out in the most adorable fashion.

"Oh, Bob! Again! I really don't think you ought to!"

And Art; oh, where was it?

VI

THE PROSPECTOR

In the old mining days out West the law of the survival of the fittest held good, and he who survived had to be very fit indeed. There were a number of ways of not surviving. One of them was to die. And there were a number of ways of being very fit; such as holding an accurate gun or an even temper, being blessed with industry or a vital-tearing ambition, knowing the game thoroughly or understanding the great American expedient of bluff. In any case the man who survived must see his end clearly through that end's means. Whether it were gold, poker, or life, he must cling to his purpose with a bulldog tenacity that no amount of distraction could loosen. Otherwise, as has been said, he died, or begged, or robbed, or became a tramp, or committed the suicide of horse-stealing, or just plain drifted back East broken--a shameful thing.

Why Peter lived on was patent enough to anyone. He was harmless, good-natured, and, in the estimation of hard-hewn men, just "queer" enough to be a little pathetic. Anyone who had once caught a fair look at his narrow, hatchet face with the surprised blue eyes and the loose-falling, sparse light hair; or had enjoyed his sweet, rare smile as he deprecatingly answered a remark before effacing himself; or had chanced on the fortune of asking him for some trifling favour to meet his eager and pleased rendering of it: none of these hypothetical individuals, and that meant about everyone who came in contact with Peter at all, could have imagined anybody, let alone themselves, harming a hair of his head. But how he continued to be a prospector remained a puzzle. The life is hard, full of privations, sown with difficulties, clamant for technical knowledge, exacting of physical strength, dependent on shrewdness and knowledge of the world. Peter had none of these, not even in the smallest degree. There was also, of course, the instinct. This Peter did possess. He could follow his leads of crumbling brown rock with that marvellous intuitive knowledge which is so important an element in the equipment of your true prospector. But it is only an element. By all the rules of the game Peter should have failed long since, should have "cashed in and quit" some five years back; and still he grubbed away cheerfully at divers mountains and many ranges. He had not succeeded; still, he had not failed.

Three times had he made his "strike." On the first of these three occasions he had gone in with two San Francisco men to develop the property. The San Francisco men had persuaded him to form a stock company of certain capitalisation. In two deals they had "frozen out" Peter completely, and reorganised on a basis which is paying them good dividends. Returning overwhelmed with sophistries and "explanations" from his expostulatory interview, Peter decided he knew more about quartz leads than about business and the disgorging of gains, so he went over into Idaho to try again. There he found the famous Antelope Gap lode. This time he determined to sell outright and have nothing more to do with the matter after the transfer of the property. He drew up the deeds, received a small amount down, and took notes for the balance. When the notes came due he could not collect them. The mine had been resold to third parties. Peter had no money to contest the affair; and probably would not have done so if he had. He knew too little--or too much--of law; but the instinct was his, so he moved one State farther east to Montana for his third trial. This resulted in the Eagle Ridge. And for the third time he was swindled by a persuasive man and a lying one-sided contract.

A sordid, silly enough little tale, is it not? but that is why men wondered at Peter's survival, marvelled at the recuperative force that made possible his fourth attempt, speculated with a certain awe over that cheerful disposition which had earned him, even in his adversity, the sobriquet of Happy Peter.

All of these phenomena, had they but known it, resulted from one simple cause. Peter's mental retrospect for a considerable space would have conjured up nothing but a succession of grand sweeps of mountains, singing pines, rare western skies, and the simplicity of a frontiersman's log-cabin; and yet to his inner vision over the border of that space lay a very different scene. It was the scene he saw the oftenest. Oftenest? he saw it always; across the mountains, through the pines, beyond the skies. As time went on, the vision simplified itself to Peter, as visions will. It came to have two phases, two elements, which visited him always together.

One of these was a house; the other a girl. The house was low, white-painted, with green blinds and a broad stoop. Its front yard was fragrant with lilacs, noisy with crickets, fluttering with butterflies of sulphur yellow. About it lay a stony, barren farm, but lovely with the glamour of home. The girl was not pretty, as we know girls; but she had straight steady eyes, a wide brow, smooth matronly bands of hair, and a wholesome, homely New England character, sweet, yet with a tang to give it a flavour, like the apples on the tree near the old-fashioned, long-armed well. Peter could gain no competence from the stony farm, no consent from the girl. It was to win both that he had come West.

In those days, around the western curve of the earth, every outlook borrowed the tints of sunset. Nothing but the length of the journey stood between a man and his fortune.

"I love you dearly, Peter," she had said, both hands on his shoulders, "and I do not care for the money. But I have seen too much of it here--too much of the unhappiness that comes from debt, from poverty. Misery does not love the company of those it loves. Go make your fortune, Peter, bravely, and come back to me."

"I will," replied Peter, soberly. "I will, God help me. But it may be long. I don't know; I have not the knack; I am stupid about people, about men."

She smiled, and leaned over to kiss his eyes. "People love you, Peter," she said, simply. "I love you, and I will wait. If it were fifty years, you will find me here ready when you come."

Peter knew this to be true. And so to the unpeopled rooms of the little old Vermont farmhouse Peter's gentle thoughts ever swarmed, like homing bees. In his vision of it the lilac-bush outside the window always smelled of spring; she always sat there beside the open sash, waiting--for him. What wonder that he survived when so many others went down? What wonder that he persevered? What wonder that his patient soul, comparing the eternity of love's happiness with the paltry years of love's waiting, saw nothing in the condition of affairs to ruffle its peaceful serenity? And yet to most the time would have seemed very, very long. Men may blunder against rich pockets or leads and wealthy say farewell to a day which they greeted as the poorest of the poor. So may men win fortunes on a turn of the wheat market. But the one is no more prospecting than the other is business. True prospecting has only the normal percentage of uncertainties, the usual alloy of luck to brighten its toil with the hope of the unexpected. A man must know his business to succeed. A bit of rock, a twist of ledge, a dip of country, an abundance or an absence of dikes--these and many others are the symbols with which the prospector builds the formula that spells gold. And after the formula is made, it must be proved. It is the proving that bends the back, tries the patience, strains to the utmost the man's inborn Instinct of the Metal. For that is the work of the steel and the fire, the water and the power of explosion. Until the proof is done to the Q.E.D., the man must draw for inspiration on his stock of faith. In the morning he sharpens his drills at a forge. In the afternoon he may, by the grace of labour, his Master, have accomplished a little round hole in the rock, which, being filled with powder and fired, will tear loose into a larger hole with debris. The debris must be removed by pick and shovel. After the hole has been sufficiently deepened, the debris must be loaded into a bucket, which must then be hauled to the surface of the ground and emptied. How long do you calculate the man will require to dig in this manner, fifty, a hundred feet? How long to sink one or two such shafts on each and every claim he has staked? How long to excavate the numerous lateral tunnels which the Proof demands?

And besides this, from time to time the shaft must be elaborately timbered in order to prevent its caving in and burying work and workman together--a tedious job, requiring the skill alike of a woodsman, a carpenter, a sailor, and a joiner. The man must make his trips to town for supplies. He must cook his meals. He must meet his fellows occasionally, or lose the power of speech. The years slip by rapidly. He numbers his days by what he has accomplished; and it is little. He measures time by his trips to camp; and they are few. It is no small thing to make three discoveries--and lose them. It is a greater thing to find courage for a fourth attempt.

After the Eagle Ridge fiasco, Peter, as cheerful as ever, journeyed over into Wyoming to try his luck once more. He moved up into the hills, spent a month in looking about him, narrowed his localities to one gulch, and built himself a log cabin in which to live. Then he made his general survey. He went on foot up every gulch, even every little transverse wrinkle that lay tributary to his valley, to the shallow top of it filled with loose stones; he followed the sky-line of every ridge which bordered and limited these gulches; he seized frequent opportunities of making long diagonals down the slopes. Nothing escaped him. In time he knew the general appearance of every bit of drift or outcrop in his district. Then he sat down in his cabin and carefully considered the probabilities. If they had not happened to please him, he would have repeated the whole wearisome process in another valley; but as in this case they did, he proceeded to take the next step. In other words, he went over the same ground again with a sampling-pick and a bundle of canvas bags. Where his theories or experience advised, he broke off quantities of rock from the ledges, which he crushed and mixed in the half of an old blanket; dividing, and recrushing again and again, until an "average" was obtained in small compass. The "average" he took home, where he dumped it into a heavy iron mortar, over which he had suspended a pestle from a springy sapling. By alternately pulling down and letting up on the sapling he crushed the quartz fragments with the pestle into fine red and white sand. The sand he "panned out" for indications of free gold.

The ledges whose averages thus showed the colour, he marked on his map with a cross. Some leads which did not so exhibit gold, but whose other indications he considered promising, he exploited still further, penetrating to a layer below the surface by means of a charge or so of powder. Or perhaps he even spent several weeks in making an irregular hole like a well, from which he carried the broken rock in bags, climbing up a notched tree. Then he selected more samples. This is hard work.

Thus Peter came to know his country, and when he knew it thoroughly, when he had made all his numerous speculations as to horses, blowouts, and slips--then, and not until then, did he stake out his claims; then, and not until then, did he consider himself ready to _begin_ work.

He might be quite wrong in his calculations. In that case, it was all to do over again somewhere else. He had had this happen. Every prospector has. The claims which Peter selected were four in number. He started in without delay on the proof. Foot by foot the shafts descended through the red, the white, vein matter. One by one the spider arms of the tunnels felt out into the innermost crevices of the lode. Little by little Peter's table of statistics filled; here a pocket, there a streak, yon a clear ten feet of low-grade ore. The days, the months, even the years slipped by. Summers came and went with a flurry of thunder-showers that gathered about Harney, spread abroad in long bands of blackness, broke in a deluge of rain and hail and passed out to dissipate in the hot air of the prairies. Autumns, clear-eyed and sweet-breathed, faded wanly in the smoke of their forest fires. Winters sidled by with constant threat of arctic weather which somehow never came; powdering the hills with their snow; making bitter cold the shadows, and warm the silver-like sun. Another spring was at hand. Like all the rest, it coquetted with the season as a young girl with her lover; smiling with the brightness of a western sun; frowning with the fierceness of a sudden snow-squall, strangely out of place in contrast to the greenery of the mountain "parks"; creeping slowly up the gullies from the prairie in staccato notes of bursting buds; at last lifting its many voices in the old swelling song of delight over the birth of new loves and new desires among its creatures.

Like all the rest, did I say? No, not quite. To Peter this particular spring was a rare thing of beauty. Its gilding was a little brighter, its colours a little fresher, its skies a little deeper, its songs rang a little truer than ever the gilding or colours or skies or songs of any spring he had ever known. For he was satisfied. Steadily the value of the property had proved itself. One clear, cold day he collected all his drills and picks and sledges and brought them back to camp, where he stacked them behind the door. It was his way of signing Q.E.D. to the proof.

The doubtful spot on the _Jim Crow_ was not a blow-out, but a "horse." He had penetrated below it. The mines were rich beyond his dreams. Yet he sat there at his noon meal as cheerful, as unexcited, as content as ever. When one has waited so long, impatience sleeps soundly, arouses with the sluggishness of unbelief itself. Outside he saw the sun, for the first time in weeks, and heard the pines singing their endless song. Inside, his fire sparkled and crackled; his kettle purred like a fireside cat. Peter was tired; tired, but content. The dream was very near to him.

When he had finished his meal he got up and examined himself in his little square mirror. Then he did so again. Then he walked heavily back to his table and sat down and buried his face in his hands. When he had looked the first time he had seen a gray hair. When he had looked the second time he had discovered that there were many. With a sudden pang Peter realised that he was getting to be an old man. He took a picture from a pocket-case and looked at that. Was she getting to be an old woman?