Chapter V: Introduction: I (4)

Don Hermanos showed the bull-fighter the other great halls of the Alcazar, but Jose was not half as interested as before. He was continually looking elsewhere through the open portals and gates, through the openings of the narrow alleys and subterranean halls.

“This used to be the great dancing hall of the sultan. This is the dais upon which the _bayaderes_ danced. And, further, on the other side, upon this black-veined marble block, many a beautiful slave has lost her head if she had been unfaithful to the sultan, or if such was his pleasure.”

But the bull-fighter was not much interested. He suddenly pulled out his heavy gold watch from his pocket, and announced that he had to be on his way to the ring, but that he would return frequently and see at his leisure the wonders and the beauties of the Alcazar, adding, “Of which your daughter Maria is the most beautiful.”

Don Hermanos bowed profoundly. True, he had known Jose when he was the ragged scamp of the Triana, but a bull-fighter is a high personage, and what such a man said about his daughter was not to be disdained.

On the way out, Don Jose asked whether he could not get a drink of water, of which he was in need. Don Hermanos knew that it was a pretext to stop at the house for a few moments. Don Hermanos’s wife received the young bull-fighter, bowing profoundly, patting him, admiring him, wishing him good luck, asking him how his mother was and how his sisters were. But the beautiful Maria was not around.

Jose listened carefully, while the old woman spoke to him and while the men stood about him in admiration, to hear some one breathing behind the curtain that separated the room in two. He listened for a sound behind the door at the top of the stairs that led to the upper rooms from the middle of the lower one. And then his eyes saddened, and he was ready to go, when the Doña Hermanos told him:

“But the water you have asked for, Don Jose? The glass of water is on the table. Have you forgotten you were thirsty?”

He laughed loudly as he stood up and drank the glass.

“Indeed, I have forgotten,” he said.

And then the keepers looked at one another and smiled as they preceded Jose outside, each one patting him familiarly on the shoulder.

“Are they good bulls, the ones you are fighting today, big and fierce?”

“Wonderful animals,” Don Jose answered, “Miuras.”

“Miuras!” they all repeated aloud, with eyes wide open, saying to one another: “Do you hear? Miuras today in the bull-ring of Seville!”

And in the glances they exchanged with one another was all the lore of the bull-ring; for the bulls bred by Count Miura were reputed to be the fiercest of all, having killed many a great matador who had appeared with them in the ring. And it seemed to Don Jose that at that moment he heard from behind the latticed window overhead a deep gasp. His chest broadened, and his heart rose higher as he walked out of the gate, marching with the same rhythm he used coming out from the big door that led into the arena, while music played the matador tune.

III

An hour later Maria was sitting on the marble bench in the garden of the sultana, and had a vision of an immense arena divided in half by a strong shadow, with tiers of stone seats and balconies covered with shawls of a hundred gay colors, and the queen herself sitting in the king’s balcony. A black bull was in the middle of the arena, with head bent low, snorting and bellowing, pawing the sand under him. Don Jose with a red _capa_ hiding the red-hilted spade underneath, was facing the brute.

A moment later her father and the other keepers were attracted to her by a terrific shriek. She was hiding her face in her hands and yelling: “The bull! The bull!” when they neared her.

“That child of yours does not seem to be well,” said a keeper to Don Hermanos after Maria had been led weeping to her home.

But Don Hermanos smiled. He knew what the trouble was. A great matador as a son-in-law was a pleasant prospect for his daughter.

Maria drank a glass of water which was given her by her mother, and seemed to have regained her composure immediately. She went to the mirror to fix her hair, and having looked at herself carefully, she proceeded to dress to go out. She asked her mother to accompany her. No self-respecting Sevillana would ever go out alone. Maria had till then, considering herself a child, always gone about alone. Her mother smiled as she answered:

“Give me time to get ready!”

It took the mother a full hour to get herself ready. On going out into the populated street, cool now because the sun was no longer shedding its straight rays, the two women heard the cry of the barefoot boys in rags selling papers. Don Jose had been wounded severely by the first bull he had fought.

“Quick, Mother!” Maria begged, and dragging the old woman by the hand she began to run in the direction of her old home in the Triana, where she was certain Don Jose would be brought to his mother.

But on arriving there they were told that the Gitanas had moved out from the “Casa” to a more comfortable home, now that Jose was earning so much money. And when the former neighbors heard about the accident that had happened, they left their cooking-pots, and the children left their play in the mud, and howling and running they followed the two women to the home of the matador.

Jose’s face was white from the loss of blood. He was lying stretched out on a white bed. A number of friends and the priest and a doctor crowded the room.

“Will he die?” Maria screamed, looking up at the physician.

The man shook his head and put a finger to his mouth.

“No noise, please.”

And then Jose opened his eyes and saw Maria; and his faint lips murmured her name.

Jose did get better; he had not been wounded in any vital part of his body. He was only weak because of the blood he had lost before they had succeeded in driving away the bull that had gored him. Daily, Maria and her mother would come to sit at his bedside and care for him. When the wounds in his upper thighs had healed, it was upon Maria’s shoulder that he first left the bed to sun himself on the balcony. And with that marvelous recuperating power of youth he was able before the summer to appear again in the ring.

Maria sat in a box with her mother watching the first appearance. And the cheering of the crowd as he bowed before the balcony of the queen was deafening. Maria, paler than usual, was not interested in the bull-fight as such. To her it was merely the man she loved who was now facing a formidable brute. It was her man that was in danger--in danger of that black bull, snorting and running wildly about the arena. She could not appreciate the cheers that came, round after round, as Don Jose with graceful fleetness avoided the charging animal by fooling him with the red _capa_ that he held in his hand. She could not understand why he did not use the spade and kill the brute. To her mind every bull was the same that had wounded the man she loved.

The crowd cheered and yelled in appreciation of their idol’s dangerous play. Suddenly there was a great silence. The _banderilleros_ had done their work and distanced themselves from the animal. The matador alone faced him now. He played and enraged the bull for a few minutes, then he poised himself with his spade for the final thrust. But when the bull made a movement, courage failed him, and he stepped aside. And the same crowd that had been cheering so wildly now began to hoot him. The other matadors sprang to his help and began to throw their red _capas_ over the bull. Don Jose shook his head sorrowfully without looking up, and waving his quadrilla aside, he again posed himself before the bull, trying to get him to lower his head. There was silence again. Maria’s heart stood still. And while the crowd was hooting again the matador, who had side-stepped for a second time, her own heart was glad, for he was there yet and alive. Her mother and the mother of the matador were pale with anger and shame. What had happened to Jose? The bugle gave a warning to the matador that he must be quick about his business. His time was up. And this time the matador did not side-step. His thrust was sure and deep, and the crowd cheered wildly, although when the ring had been cleared, the _afficianadoes_ were looking at one another and shaking their heads, as if saying, “The best days of the Gitana are over.” Never before in his short, but glorious, career had he been known to side-step a charging bull.

He did not do much better with the second animal. And it was only because they remembered how severely he had been wounded before that the crowd did not do the usual things on such occasions, throwing the hard cushions underneath them into the arena, and even empty bottles and stones. Even Jose’s mother looked coldly at her son when he returned home with her in the waiting carriage, for the papers were sure to report his lack of courage. Only Maria was happy. He had come out of the fight alive and he had killed the bulls.

The next few weeks took the matador out of the city to fight in other _pueblos_. It was understood that he was going to marry Maria as soon as he returned from the season’s activities. Left alone, Maria, now the acknowledged fiancée of Don Jose, again took possession of the Alcazar. But everything within it was now filled with Joses. Joses in silken garb. Joses in the center of bull-rings. Joses wounded, Joses side-stepping, and crowds upon tiers and tiers in a large circle. She tried to conjure again the old visions of sultanas and _bayaderes_ dancing in the great halls and in the gardens. And when they did appear, Don Jose was somewhere about them. And she would harshly order her vision figures to disappear, for they all looked at him so longingly. And they were all so much more beautiful than she was.

She would wait trembling with fear the afternoons she knew he had appeared in the distant bull-rings for a telegram that he sent her at the end of every _corrida_. He gave no details, only telling her that all was well and that he loved her. But in reality things were not as well with him as they had been before. There was great doubt whether he would ever be engaged again to fight in the bull-ring after that season. There was great dissatisfaction with his work. He still gave them great thrills in playing with the bull, but courage generally failed him when he faced the animal with spade in hand. He could not forget that he had been wounded. And he played longer with the animals than he should have done to avoid as long as possible the last moment. And again and again the warning bugle had sounded, the papers reported. Don Hermanos was far from being satisfied with his future son-in-law. Yet all Maria cared was that Jose was alive and untouched by the brutal beasts.

She rejoiced to the fullest of her soul when he returned. Only Don Hermanos was not satisfied to see him walk about in street clothes instead of the matador uniform, like the others of his profession. Every day after sundown Jose would come to the Alcazar, and Maria would show him the great halls and the gardens and tell him the legends of the place. She had found again the Alcazar now that he was near her. Speaking to him, all the old charm of the palace had returned. She was not even jealous of the sultanas she now conjured from the ceramic walls and from behind the balconies overhead.

As the day of her wedding approached, Don Jose spoke to her.

“How will you ever be able to live within the poor walls of your home after having lived here amid such great beauties?”

Maria laughed and laughed. Don Jose intended to leave Seville and go elsewhere. He had saved quite a goodly amount of money. He had premonitions about his being killed in the ring if he should continue to fight next season. An old sorceress had told him so also. He had different plans. He thought sheep-raising upon the Saragoza Hills pleased him best. He owned there quite a good stretch of land. And there was an old adobe house on top of the hill. He thought it was better to live in seclusion for the next year or so than being hooted and reviled in the bull-ring. Maria was willing to follow him anywhere.

And he told her: “When my feelings change, I will return to the ring.”

“Which I hope you will never do!” Maria exclaimed.

She had no desire to see her husband glorified by the multitude after he had been gored to death in the ring.

IV

It was a great affair, the wedding of Don Jose with Maria del Alcazar. All the retired and active matadors of Seville came to the wedding in their bespangled clothes, for they understood what the populace refused to understand. They knew what premonitions were and how they acted on a matador in the ring. It was easy to cheer and easier to hoot, but bulls carried death on the tips of their horns.

A week later the two newly married were in the Saragoza adobe. It was not much better than the home in which their people had lived in the Triana. Still, Maria thought it was very beautiful. The bare mud walls she decorated with her eyes, which reflected all the beauties they had absorbed. And through them she projected her dreams, the delicate traceries and colorings, and the mosaic and the stalactite of the ceilings. And she was happy. For there were no working-men tearing down and repairing and touching with brutal hands what was about her. And from the top of the hill the olive groves and vineyards and the tall cypress trees that stretched below her were even more beautiful than the gardens in which she had roamed. And the serpentining, snaking river below, shimmering with the blue of the sky in the sunlight, was like the limpid water pools and bathing places of the Alcazar. Indeed, it was more the Alcazar than anything else. And it was hers. No working-men, no visitors, disturbed her.

Jose was busy building sheds for the sheep. And evenings his powerful arms were delicately wrapped about her. He appreciated her love and was flattered that she could be so happy in such poor surroundings. And he wondered what there was in him that she, the most beautiful woman in the world, should be able to stay with him in so desolate a place, away from all the things she had been accustomed to. In his eyes she was not a poor girl, the daughter of a keeper, that he had married. She was Maria del Alcazar, the one raised in surroundings so beautiful there was none the like of them in the world. Evenings, when the work was done, the two lovers would face each other, sitting outside their hut.

And one evening Don Jose said:

“There never happened a better thing to me than to have been gored by a bull.”

To which Maria quietly answered, seizing the hands of the man near her:

“And yet I hate bulls.”

But the courage did not return to Don Jose. Month succeeded month. And after the long winter was over, the first winter they had passed together, he was approached to appear again in the ring. Refusing, he wondered whether the courage would ever return to him again. He hung his head when the man tried to convince him by saying:

“You, who have received the applause of thousands and thousands while so young, should now live in the company of sheep and mules on the top of a hill! You who have received thousands of _pesetas_ for one hour of work, and been glorified by the whole of Spain, should now work so hard with the hope of getting a pittance at the end of the year! And your wife, Don Jose. Don’t forget your wife.”

But Don Jose shook his head and answered:

“Not this year.”

And when the men who had come to engage him left his house, they said to each other: “Many a good matador has become better and more courageous to win the woman he loved, only to become a coward for fear of losing her.”

Maria was happy that he refused. She did not understand why every time these men returned Jose should be so sullen and dark. Oh, were they not happy there on top of the mountain? And were they not living in the most beautiful palace that man had ever built? If it was true the Alcazar had never been built, but had been conjured up by the wand of some great magician, an even greater magician had conjured the greater Alcazar she was living in now. She had always, she realized now, missed something when she had been living in the Alcazar of Seville. Now she knew what she had missed. There were only walls and ceilings. Even the phantoms she conjured were cold despite all the warm colors about them. But there on the Saragoza Hills she had realized and filled out her dream. Draperies, heavy silks came down, called by the magic of her love, and covered everything, and uncovered greater beauties on softer backgrounds.

But Jose walked about sullenly, muttering to himself:

“It was a bad day for me when that bull gored me. It was a bad day for me when that bull gored me.” He missed the applause, the cheering, the excitement. And yet he did not have the courage.

And one day, when he had returned from the village at the foot of the hill, instead of recalling as he had frequently done the beautiful days during which Maria had sat at his bedside, he spoke angrily to her, and she could recognize the smell of _aguardiente_, burning water, on his breath.

“It was because of you that I was gored by the bull! I was thinking of you instead of the beast before me! You are the cause of my misfortune!”

And suddenly, when she reëntered the hut, the walls appeared as they really were, dirty mud walls. The ceilings which she had enlarged and domed with her eyes, and beamed and wrought with mosaics, appeared to her as they really were, cracked, low, and ugly. The rickety bed which stood in the corner, which had been to her like the richest couch of the most beautiful sultana, was nothing but a squalid heap of rusty iron, rags, and mattresses. The low-burning lamp had lost its mystic quality. It was but an ill-smelling kerosene lamp. All the riches of the adobe were gone. It had been conjured by the magic wand of a sorcerer, and been dispelled by a few ugly words. And so she lay down and wept.

When she awoke in the morning, the squalor of her surroundings was even more appalling. The sheep, which had been so beautiful, were now ugly. And the mountain and the river and the olive groves and the vineyards were nothing but ugly, brown, crooked cripples scorching in the hot sun. It was worse than the Triana mud huts in which she had lived. And Jose himself, Jose himself, what a different man he was! An unwashed, unkempt, rag-clothed stranger, with a hard voice and an evil odor.

A few months later, another group of men came to induce Don Jose to appear again in the bull-ring. He assured them he would do so the following spring.

“But where is Doña Maria, his wife, of whose beauty we have heard so much? The woman we have seen could not have been she, for she looked so much older and anything but beautiful.” The men looked at one another outside.

Indeed, where was she?

For none of them realized that a single year could have changed a woman so much. She wandered about mute, listless. Her eyes were lusterless and her gaze vacant.

And he did get back his courage the following spring. And he again became the favorite of the people. There were pictures of him hanging in every store and every home from one end of Spain to the other. He was piling up great wealth and had furnished a beautiful apartment, more beautiful than he had ever expected to live in, with a profusion of silks and carpets and silver vases and copper urns. He thought Maria had been made unhappy by the poverty of her surroundings, the fool.

It was all in vain. He could not make it as beautiful as the Alcazar. It was squalid, poor, ugly, decrepit tinsel compared with the gold of the palace, and more so when compared with the gold of her dreams, which he had destroyed once forever.

When he had withdrawn from the ring rich and honored, she returned to her father’s home. And before she was thirty, when her father died, unable to leave the Alcazar, she sat outside its gates. Her face withered. The skin of her hands dried up like parchment. She still sits there, wrapped in rags, begging from the tourists.

But after sundown the Alcazar is hers.

FOOTNOTES:

[5] Copyright, 1925, by The Century Company.
Copyright, 1926, by Konrad Bercovici.

THE LAUGH[6]

By BELLA COHEN

(From _The Calendar of Modern Letters_)

Meyer lay on the bed, the covers drawn up over his mouth. His thin, long nose projected over the quilt seemed very long and wax-like; and his eyes were closed. His feet stuck out beyond the edge of the bed, for Meyer was a tall man, and illness seemed to have stretched him out.

Hannah, his wife, stood near the bed, looking down upon him sorrowfully, her fingers patching her mouth.

“A man who has never been sick in his life to fall so sick. And he only fifty years old--the best years,” she thought.

She turned from the bed and silently began to clean the rooms she and Meyer had lived in for the last eight years. Every now and then she stopped to look at the man in the bed.

“It seems so strange for him to be in the house with me and yet not say a word to me.” Hannah spoke to herself. “I don’t like that white sheet over the quilt.”

Hannah carefully placed the broom in the corner near the stove and pattered over to the wooden trunk where she kept her red shawl. A close, layer-like smell of moth balls and unaired clothing lifted itself sluggishly and receded. The red shawl was near the top. It had white stripes and was made of sheep’s fleece. Hannah had knitted and dyed the shawl when she was still young and wore a black plait down her back.

She placed the red shawl over the sick man’s feet, but they persisted in sticking out--their long, misshapen toes digging into each other with soles as hard as leather. They stood up stiffly perpendicular.

Hannah looked at them and a strange terror gripped her. Her Meyer was sick. Her Meyer was very sick! Desperately, she thought of the House. Perhaps she had better call Mrs. Brandt. Some one....

A knock sounded.

Hannah hurried to the door and opening it softly, looked up into the ruddy, round face of her sister Brahne.

“You!” she cried delightedly. For a moment, the sadness left her eyes. She was no longer alone--all alone--for now, if only for a few moments, she had her sister with her. Some one of her own blood.

“Yes, here I am!” And Brahne stepped into the room. Everything in it became dwarfed, for Brahne was large, large of feet, hands, head, mouth, teeth, and voice. By lifting her hand she could have flattened its palm on the ceiling as easily as she carried her twins on each hip.

The two looked at each other, for they had not seen each other for a year. Brahne had moved her bakery, her husband and children into a suburb, and Hannah, who could not ride in cars because it made her dizzy, did not visit her.

“Meyer is sick, very sick,” Hannah finally said. Her hand went up to her mouth again.

Brahne turned to the bed and looked at the man.

“He doesn’t seem so bad,” she decided. “What is it, a cold?”

“No, it’s something more. The doctor wouldn’t tell me. I think it’s his heart.”

“Heart! That’s how much you know about men.”

Brahne seated herself and discoursed in bellows.

“Men are children. They don’t know how to bear even a scratch on the finger. They get a little cold and right away they want to go to Coloraydo and get consumption. They want to be petted and fondled like a month-old baby. The more attention you give them the more they want. Many times I think to myself, why do they send men to fight in the wars when they are such weaklings!”

Hannah listened meekly, her hand on her mouth.

“Maybe that’s true what you say, Brahne,” she offered timidly, “but Meyer is now laying like this the third week. And, you know, he’s never been sick since we’ve been married.”

The tears formed in her eyes and dropped down her cheeks.

Brahne’s large, limpid eyes wandered from the sick man’s face to his feet. The red shawl threw a new light into her eyes.

Hannah wiped the tears away as she mumbled:

“God should spare him for me. If he should die----”

“Die!” scoffed Brahne, with difficulty shifting her eyes from the shawl to the man’s face. “People don’t die so fast.”

The sick man stirred and the cover moved down from his mouth. He was smiling.

Brahne rose from her chair and walked heavily to the bed. She beckoned her sister.

“See!” she said. “He’s not sick. He’s smiling. A man who sees Death doesn’t smile, hah Meyer?”

The sick man did not open his eyes nor move at all at the sound of his name. But the smile was still there.

“I could make him laugh!” Brahne wagered.

“Laugh!” her sister repeated, sadly. “What wouldn’t I give to hear him laugh again!”

Brahne looked at the red shawl, lips drawn in, one eye half shut.

“Well,” she said finally, “would you give me the red shawl if I made him laugh?”

Again the hand went up to the mouth, and Hannah considered. Brahne had always wanted that red shawl she knew.

She nodded.

“Yes,” she finally assented. “But you must make him laugh.”

Brahne leaned over the bed and tickled the soles of those stiff feet. A broad smile already stretched across her face.

“Hah, Meyer,” she called out, “don’t think you can fool me!”

Again she trailed her large, square fingers over the calloused feet. A slight trembling took hold of the man. His toes began to wriggle stiffly--creakingly.

“Well, Meyer, how about a little laugh?” Brahne called cheerfully. Hannah stood over her husband, her hand almost hiding her mouth. Now and then she looked at her sister.

Brahne bent to her task with determined lips. She no longer smiled. She wanted that red shawl. This time she played on the soles as if she were playing the piano. Then she changed to a quick tattoo. A weak, little gurgle issued from the parted lips of the man, but his eyes did not open.

“Well, Meyer,” shouted Brahne. “You can do better than that!”

She tickled those stiff feet with the full vigour of her strong fingers. And, suddenly, the covers flew back and the red shawl dropped to the floor. A ringing laugh cut the silence of the room. The sick man laughed again and again like a hysterical girl, but his eyes never opened.

Brahne, her hands on her hips, joined in lustily, and even Hannah smiled tenderly and without sadness.

Suddenly the laugh broke into two and the man stiffened from head to toes. The lips drew themselves together slowly and painfully, and then they were still. The soul of Meyer had fled on the back of a laugh.

“Brahne!” Hannah screamed. “Brahne!”

“What’s the matter?”

But Hannah had already fallen on her knees beside the bed, moaning:

“He is dead! My husband is dead! My husband is dead!”

Brahne, big and powerful, looked down upon the dead man and the weeping woman with a puzzled look in her stupid eyes.

“But anyway I made him laugh,” she said. “The red shawl is mine.”

FOOTNOTES:

[6] Copyright, 1926, by Bella Cohen.

THE HANDS OF THE ENEMY[7]

By CHARLES CALDWELL DOBIE

(From _Harper’s Magazine_)

Within a hundred yards of the hill’s crest Walton Pringle’s pocket flash winked spasmodically and died. He paused a moment to catch his breath; the pull up from the creek bed had winded him and the sting of cold rain in his face added a further discomfort. If he hadn’t dawdled at Preston’s Flat, hoping for the rain to cease or abate, he would have made his objective before nightfall. But since he had elected to wait so long it would have been much better to continue there until next morning. As it was, he felt sure that he had strayed from the trail--a particularly unhappy thought to a man who could claim only a speaking acquaintance with the wilderness. And this too under the pall of a stormy night without the slightest ray of light to guide him. Well, the best he could do was to stumble on: it was far better to keep moving in circles than to resign himself to inactivity and chills.

He was glad now that he had been persuaded to take a pistol when he came away from Walden’s Glen. If he were lost, at least he could provide himself with game, and in the mountains one could never tell how long one might wander aimlessly along false paths once the proper trail was abandoned. At first this pistol business had seemed absurd: California was no longer a bandit country, and even if it were he had nothing worth stealing. A jack-knife, a pocket-flash, two bars of chocolate, and a sheaf of notes on “Itinerant and Rural Labor and Its Relation to Crime” were poor pickings for a hold-up man. His notes especially were valueless to any one save himself, and even their loss would not have been irreparable. He was still near enough to his investigations to have the material for his book clearly fixed in his mind and, once back at his desk in San Francisco, he would be able to recall every detail of the last two weeks spent among the economic nomads of the mountains. But in spite of all these obvious guarantees against violence, it appeared that there _were_ reasons for being forearmed.... It was Lem Thatcher, one of the oldtimers, who had put him straight on this point.

“Bandits be damned!” Thatcher had exclaimed. “But how about a stray bobcat? Or a crazy man? Or a lost trail?... A man who goes into the open with nuthin’ but a jack-knife and a couple o’ bars o’ chocolate is a fool.... Give a man a gun and you give him the next thing to a pardner.”

Under the depression of the moment he felt that his original stupidity lay not so much in failing to realize the needs of such a trip as in essaying the venture at all. Why hadn’t he been sensible and taken the stage as far as Rock Point and swung on from there to Marchel Duplin’s cabin? He had no time to waste, and had there been no other reason this alternative would have given him several additional hours with a man who, everybody conceded, knew more about sheep herding than any other within a hundred miles. He had talked to a Basque shepherd near Compton’s and to a Mexican herder just the other side of Willow Creek, attempting to get sidelights on their profession, but they had been taciturn and he without the proper moisture for limbering their tongues. Duplin, everybody conceded, was exceptionally garrulous for a sheep herder even when he had not the help of thin wine. It seemed expedient, then, to go to Duplin if he wished properly to complete the picture of rural economy whose drawing he contemplated. But for an untrained mountaineer--a tenderfoot, in fact--it was nothing save a whimsical extravagance to plunge along a fifteen-mile trail through forest and shifting granite when an easier course was open. Being valley bred he hadn’t expected rain in August, but if he had stopped to think he might have known that anything was climatically possible in the mountains.

Stumbling, crawling, cursing, somehow in spite of the blackness he felt himself making progress uphill. Presently his feet touched level ground. This in itself was reassuring. He raised his eyes in a desperate effort to pierce the gloom, took a few steps forward--and suddenly, miraculously, found himself in a clearing from which beckoned the friendly light of a cabin. With a smothered exclamation of joy he quickened his gait, almost running forward, and the next instant he had gained the window, instinctively stopping to peer within.

The unreality of the scene which met his eye gave Walton Pringle a feeling that he was either dreaming or gazing down on a stage set for a play; only sleep or the theater seemed capable of a picture so filled with melodrama. But in the theater one was never at once spectator and participant, and in sleep one did not have the tangible physical discomfort which he felt. He drew his rain-soaked body closer against the cabin, raising himself on his toes so that he might get a better view of the interior. A man stood hovering over a table lighted by an anæmic candle, and through his fingers dripped a slow trickle of silver. In a corner, uncannily outlined by a steady gleam of light, was a crucifix nailed to the wall and below it lay a couch piled with disordered bed clothing. On the floor, midway between table and couch, was sprawled the figure of a man--arms flung wide, his black-bearded face upturned--a startling inanimate thing that made Walton Pringle turn away with a shudder. The man at the table undoubtedly was a thief. Was he also a murderer?

For the second time that night Pringle was glad that he was provided with a pistol, and yet in spite of his preparedness he had a momentary misgiving, an indecision: to be secured against an unavoidable contingency was one thing; to push deliberately into trouble was quite another. Pringle was no coward, but he knew his limitations; he was not trained in any superlative skill with firearms. Was it discreet, then, to thrust oneself across the path of a desperate man?

He continued to gaze through the window with morbid fascination and uncertainty: the picture was too revealing--violence had been done, that was obvious; plunder was in process of accomplishment. A sudden disgust at his weak-kneed prudence stiffened his decision. At that moment the wind, flinging itself through the pine trees, sent a shower of twigs upon the cabin roof. The face at the table was lifted with a tragic sense of insecurity and fear; Pringle saw that it was the face of a young man, almost a boy. For a brief moment their eyes met; then without further ado Pringle crept swiftly to the door, hurling his body against it in anticipation of barred progress. The force of the impact carried him well into the room. The youth was on his feet and an exclamation halted on his thin, pallid lips. Pringle whipped out his gun.

Walton Pringle did not utter a word; he merely gazed questioningly at the youth, who began to whine.

“I didn’t do nuthin’, honest I didn’t.... I hope to die if----”

Pringle cut him short with an imperious gesture. The lad’s manner as well as his physique was filled with a shambling, retarded maturity. His face was curiously pale for one from a rural environment, and his hair that should have been vivid and red had been sunburnt to a vague straw color.

“Hand over your gun!” Pringle demanded.

The youth straightened himself with a flicker of confidence. “I ain’t got none!” he threw back.

Pringle searched him: he had told the truth. “Come then, give me a hand here!” he commanded, laying his own weapon on the table.

Together they lifted the inert body from the floor and placed it on the couch.

“He’s dead!” the youth ventured.

Pringle put his hand to the man’s heart. “So it seems,” he returned dryly.

The dead man was swarthy and beetle browed, with wiry blue-black hair and beard. He was undressed save for a suit of thick woolen underwear and his feet were encased in heavy knitted gray socks. An ugly gash clotted his brow and the ooze of blood trickling thickly from the wound was staining the bedclothes. A flash of intuition lighted up Pringle’s mental gropings.

“Is this Marchel Duplin’s cabin?”

The youth stared, then nodded.

“And is this Marchel Duplin?”

“Yes.”

Almost with the same movement Pringle and the youth turned away, the lad dropping into a chair before the table.

Pringle drew a bench from the wall and straddled it. “What’s your name?” he demanded.

“Sam--Sam Allen.”

“Where do you come from?”

“Down--down by Walden’s Glen.”

“Ah!... And what are you doing here?”

“Gettin’ out o’ the wet, mostly.”

Pringle pointed to the heap of coins on the table. “And making a little clean-up on the side, eh?... Well, what have you got to say for yourself?”

Sam Allen dropped his ineffectual blue eyes. “Nuthin’ much ... I come here to get outa the rain, like I said before. He was layin’ on the bed there, mutterin’ to hisself, and burning up with fever. I went up to him and I says, ‘Marchel, don’t yer know me?’ With that he grabs me by the throat. I never _did_ see anybody get such a stranglehold on a man.... I jest couldn’t pry him loose. He went down like a chunk o’ lead. And when his head struck the ground”--Sam Allen shuddered--“It was jest like a rotten watermelon went squash.... I didn’t dare look fer a minute, and when I did he was dead!”

“And then you proceeded to rob him, eh? Without even waiting to lift his dead body from the floor ... or seeing what you could do to help him?”

Sam Allen shook his head. “I know when a man’s dead ... and I don’t like to touch ’em, somehow--that is--not all by myself. It was different when you come. Besides, I’ve heerd tell that the law likes things left in a case like this--that it’s better not to touch nuthin’.”

Pringle could not forego a sneer; really, the youth was too ineffectual! “Nothing except money, I suppose!”

Sam Allen ignored the sarcasm; it is doubtful if it really made an impression. “It musta got kicked out from under his pillow in the scuffle.... Anyway, I seen it layin’ there on the floor, jest where his head struck, almost. Of course I was curious.” He turned a childishly eager face toward Pringle. “Do you know, he had nigh onto fifty dollars in that there bag.”

“Indeed!”

But again Pringle’s sarcasm rebounded and fell flat. Apparently Sam Allen was not quick witted. He mistook irony for interest. Without further urging the youth began to tell about himself. His father had a hog ranch just this side of Walden’s Glen--a drab, filthy spot. This father kept drunk most of the time on a potent brand of moonshine which he himself distilled. The whole drudgery of the place had fallen on the boy. “Cows, I wouldn’t have minded so much--they ain’t dirty like pigs--leastways what they eat ain’t!” He breathed hard when he spoke and his clipped words took on descriptive vehemence. The whole atmosphere of the Allen ranch rose in a fetid mist before Walton Pringle: hog wallow, sour swill, obscene grunts and squealings, the beastly drunkenness of Allen senior. Since no mention was made of a woman’s presence, Pringle divined that there was none. Sam Allen had grown sick to death of it all and had run away: without money, provisions, or proper clothing--even lacking decent footgear--without plans. It was a pitiful story and yet it damned him superlatively; gave point to the situation in which he had been found. Listening to him Pringle lost the conviction that he was a premeditated murderer, but there seemed no reasonable doubt that he was an accidental one. It seemed he knew well the Duplin cabin; used to steal up there on rare occasions, when Marchel was out shepherding, to share the Frenchman’s dribbles of thin wine. He liked wine. One mouthful and your heart felt freer, more gay. Why, one could sing then--almost. At least Marchel Duplin could. Moonshine never gave a man a singing mood--only a nasty one. At this point Pringle could not forego a question: Did he know that Duplin had money?... Allen hesitated and Pringle had an impulse to warn him against answering; it didn’t seem fair to let the boy unwittingly incriminate himself. But before Pringle could caution him the youth blurted out the truth: he had heard something of it. Pringle felt his heart contract in a rush of pity: the whole situation was so obvious--a desperate, weak, perhaps degenerate boy rushing blindly toward freedom and disaster. Had Duplin’s wine jug been part of the youth’s hapless plan? Had he attempted to get the shepherd drunk before he despoiled him?

At all events he hadn’t managed skillfully and the Frenchman had put up a fight. The results spoke for themselves. Well, it all came back to heredity and environment. He’d have an interesting lot of notes to make on this case. No theorizing this time, but something at first hand, alive and palpitating. Quite suddenly he found his pity receding, submerged by his scientific desire for truth. The youth before him was like a moth pinned to the wall, before which the investigator lost all sentimental interest in his eagerness to measure the duration of the death agony. Now was the time to get data, before fear or caution stepped in to dam up Sam Allen’s naïve garrulity. Pringle was interested in the youth’s mother. But Sam Allen couldn’t remember much: Lizzie Evans, that had been her name--a girl who “worked out.” Yet the very economy of this picture was illuminating. Lizzie Evans, a girl who “worked out.” It was perfect! A girl who doubtless had been ruined, to use the phrase of unemancipated women. She probably had had just such a pinched, yellow, wistful face as the son she had borne to feed the hangman’s noose. Pringle had a fad for reconstructing the faces of mothers from the bolder outlines of their male offspring. He usually found the test successful even with the most rugged material; he had a feeling that in this case his imagination did not need to overleap any confines whatsoever to achieve its goal. Lizzie Allen, born Evans, had died: a futile, weak anæmic slip of a girl, stifled by the nauseous vapors of the hog pens. Not that Sam Allen put it so, but Pringle could read a shorthand of life almost as skillfully as a complete script. He swung the conversation back to Allen senior. The son embellished the portrait with a wealth of sinister details, finishing with a malicious little chuckle.

“An’ he’s deputy sheriff for the district, too, moonshinin’ an’ all.... Oh, I’ve seen him track fellars down an’ shoot ’em when they had the goods on him. Didn’t matter whether they was guilty or not.... I’ve seen him beat ’em, too--over the head--with the butt of a pistol--or anything else that came handy!”

Pringle turned his eyes to the inanimate figure on the bed. How completely everything was dovetailing! “_I’ve seen him beat ’em, too, over the head._” Precisely. For all the youth’s inadequacy he had absorbed some of the inhumanities from his sire.

* * * * *

A strange exalted cruelty began to stir in Walton Pringle, the cruelty of an animal on the scene of some furtive thing pitifully intent on escape. His mood must have communicated itself, for suddenly Sam Allen fell into a silence that no amount of prodding could shatter. Well, there could be little more that bore upon the particular issue. Pringle began to think of the most expedient move. He found himself shivering. Naturally, since he had been wet to the skin.... A rusty stove huddled itself just below one of the windows, sending its pipe crazily through a shattered pane. Pringle suggested a fire; dumbly the youth assented. Together they began to collect débris from the cabin floor: crumpled newspapers, empty cartons, a handful of pine cones. Soon a cheerful blaze crackled and roared. Even Sam Allen found its warmth agreeable, but its cheer did not serve to melt his sudden reticence.

Presently for lack of fuel the fire began to spend itself and its snap and roar sank to a faint hiss. The night too seemed to have grown miraculously silent. Pringle rose and threw open the cabin door. The rain had stopped, even the wind had fallen, and through a rent in the storm clouds far to the east a faint glow gave promise of a rising moon.

Pringle closed the door and went back to his place before the stove. The situation in which he found himself made him suddenly restive. It seemed as if he could not possibly wait until morning to settle the issue that must ultimately be settled.

Walden’s Glen lay a good fifteen miles to the east, but at least it was for the most part down grade. His exhaustion of the previous hour had been swallowed up in the absorbing shock of drama. He felt like making a decisive move and yet a certain pity for Sam Allen, shrinking visibly before his questioning gaze, made him resolve to give the youth a meager choice in the matter. He sauntered casually to the table. The candle was guttering to a feeble decline, and it threw out a flickering light that touched with spasmodic fire the coins lying in a disorderly heap where Sam Allen had abandoned them. Pringle ran his hand nervously through the silver pile.

“What do you think,” he asked abruptly, “shall we strike out for Walden’s Glen now, or wait till morning?”

Sam Allen gave a gasp. Then recovering himself, he returned with slow drawling defiance, “If you’re headed that way, suit yourself.... But I set out to leave Walden’s Glen and I don’t see no reason why I should go back.”

Pringle felt himself grow ominously cool. “I dare say you don’t. But, unfortunately for you, there _are_ reasons.... In a way I’m sorry I walked into this mess. But I did walk in and I can’t shirk my responsibility. There’s the law to reckon with, you know!”

Sam Allen’s lips began to tremble. “I tell you it was an accident. Don’t you believe me?”

“No.”

“And you mean to give me up--to--to--my father?”

_Deputy sheriff for the district!_ For a moment even Pringle trembled: the picture which the youth had drawn of his sire had been too vivid. And besides, the bare situation was pregnant with disaster.

“I’m afraid there’s no help for it,” Pringle returned, trying to check any show of emotion. Sam Allen crept nearer to the table like a whipped dog. Pringle was stirred to a profound pity. “Besides,” he went on more softly, “your father can’t really touch you. You’ll have all the law on your side.”

Even in his terror the youth could not check a sneer. “Much you know about it!” he cried passionately.

“But I’ll go with you--don’t you understand--every step of the way ... I mean, I’ll stand by you till everything’s put straight.” Pringle broke off suddenly. Sam Allen’s white face seemed to draw closer to the table and his two eyes were fixed craftily upon the gun which Pringle had neglected to restore to his hip pocket.

An intense nervous silence followed; Pringle made a swift movement toward the pistol, and the next moment the candle was violently extinguished.

* * * * *

Pringle stood momentarily inactive under the shock of surprise. The slam of the door roused him. He went stumbling through the gloom, knocking down impediments in his path until he gained the open. The moon was still hidden by the thick clouds in the east, but directly overhead a few stars showed dimly through thin vapors rising from the drenched hills.

Almost at once he realized the futility of pursuit. He knew nothing about the country, and besides, the greatest service he could render was to report the situation promptly. An aroused community would deal effectively with the murderer--he wouldn’t get very far with his lack of resources and wit.

Pringle went back into the cabin and lighted the candle, forcing the stub out of the candlestick to prolong its life. The pile of silver had been scattered about by the impact of stumbling fingers but it appeared otherwise intact; the pistol, however, had disappeared. Pringle laughed to himself, shrugging his shoulders. It was plain that he had much to learn about the custody of prisoners. Urged by the expediency of taking stock of all emphatic details connected with the situation, he raised the candle and swept the interior with its faint radiance. This was the first comprehensive view he had taken of the room. But there was really little of fresh significance: the cot on which lay the body of Marchel Duplin, the rusting stove, the table, the one chair, the bench; and over in a corner--back of the door when it swung open--a burlap curtain screening a shallow triangle. This last item was the only detail which had previously escaped him, partly because of its neutral color and partly because it hung in the shadow. A faint suspicion crossed him as he caught the movement of the curtain. He put the light down on the table. Could it be that the slammed door following on Allen’s apparent exit had been a clever ruse? He took a quick gliding step forward and thrust the curtain dramatically aside, almost expecting to find Sam Allen cowering behind it. But the space revealed nothing except a muddle of clothes and discarded boots, and a sharp current of air drifting through a wide crevice in the floor.

The reaction from the tenseness of expectation left him shivering. An impatience for the whole situation swept over him. He felt relieved that young Allen had fled, eluded him. It lifted an unpleasant duty from his shoulders and at the same time confirmed the youth’s guilt. He would have hated, now that he considered it, to be the instrument for turning an uncertain situation into an inevitable one. His testimony might have damned an innocent man--that he was now willing to concede. But Allen’s escape immeasurably cleared the issue: innocent people were never fearful. How many, _many_ times, in divers forms, had this truism been brought home to him!

Yet in spite of the emphatic case against young Allen, Pringle felt the necessity of having his own movements clear in his mind. He’d be questioned, naturally; that went without saying. Quite rapidly he recapitulated the events of the day: the start from Walden’s Glen at sunrise, the untoward rain at noon, his dawdling in the shelter of a redwood hollow against a sudden clearing; his resolve to push on when he saw no prospect of the storm’s abatement.... It all sounded so clear and simple. Once he explained his mission, any testimony he might give must gather added weight. And his credentials would render his testimony doubly valuable. His book on _Radical Movements in Relation to Post-war Problems_ would carry him past any reasonable skepticism, and then a B.A. from Yale and the prospects of a Ph.D. from Columbia ought to impress even a rural magistrate.

He decided to count the money and take it with him to Walden’s Glen. It wasn’t safe to leave it in the cabin, and besides, it had a significant bearing on the case. In a half hour, he figured, the moon would be fully risen and if the sky continued to clear he would have a brilliantly lighted path to travel back.