THE MAN AT THE EDGE OF THINGS.

I.

THE Commencement exercises were over. Nothing remained – except everything. In that bewildered frame of mind which accompanies the passing away of college days, and the beginning of a new heaven and a new earth, Dilling Brown had shown his aunt, Miss Elizabeth Brown, – his aunt who was also his guardian, – over the historic hills and around the campus, had introduced her to professors and told her yarns till she protested.

"You're just like one of those tiresome books of short stories, Dilling," she said. "Can't you be a little more consecutive? You chop up my emotions so!"

Dilling shook back his too abundant hair, – it was a perfect hay color, – and laughed with huge appreciation. Then he took his aunt over to drink tea with some friends while he went to look up a man.

The man, known to his associates as Tommy Letlow, was up in his room packing his best silk hat.

"You darned dude!" cried Brown.

"La la la la la la," was Letlow's lyric greeting. He spun round on one nimble heel and sparred at Brown.

"Shut up!" said Brown, reaching under his guard. "Where are you going, you sweep, when you leave these hacademic 'alls?"

Letlow looked glum. "I don't know," he admitted. "At least, my ticket reads to New York. Any one can go to New York."

Brown forced his little companion back into a chair.

"But I want to rest easy nights."

"Rest in peace, son."

"I can't, unless you tell me more. How are you going to stay in New York after you get there? Who've you got to look to – or after?"

"Just my bloomin' self."

"And you haven't a million left out of your patrimony, eh?"

"Patrimony! What a pretty word, Dil! Mighty pretty word, that. Begins with a p and sounds so pleasant. No, there aren't millions. But there was enough to buy a ticket to New York."

"Going to try a newspaper?"

"All fools walk the same road." Letlow got at his packing and his singing again.

"But my aunt says," broke in Brown, "that she wants you to come up home with us for a time. She wants you to help eat the fatted capon. We go up to New York, too, and take a two-hour run down Long Island, you know. Aunt lives in a rotten little town there, and raises boxwood. At least, that is the impression to be gathered from a casual glance at her front yard. Her object in life is to keep Nettie from breaking the china which my grandfather brought from Canton fifty years ago, when he was in the trade. Nettie is a careless young thing who has been in the family forty-three years. Come along and see Nettie and the china and the cat and the boxwood; it would give me more pleasure than anything I could think of. Aunt Betty's a brick, – you won't find many like her. She has only one weakness – and that's me. But we're the last of our kind, and very rare and precious, so we attach a good deal of importance to each other. Come on, Tommy. Do it, eh?"

"Of course I will, you beggar! Going to-night? Five sharp? I'll be there. Ladies' waiting room! All right, Dil, my duck. And please, Dil, give my compliments to your aunt."

So the three settled down in the old house beyond the boxwood, and the young men put in a good deal of time laughing about nothing in particular, and got themselves up in white flannel and played tennis afternoons with Anice Comstock and Dorcas Pilsbury, nice girls, whom Dilling had known since he knew anything. Aunt Betty sat in the shade of the elms with Mrs. Pilsbury, and there were lemonade and seed cakes served – and nothing else happened. No one did anything remarkable. The girls were quiet girls, who did not play tennis any too well, and who made their own frocks. They both thought the young men laughed too much, and wondered what they meant by their frivolous view of things. Miss Dorcas asked Tommy Letlow, one evening, if he had any religious convictions. Poor Tommy, who was very fair, with soft black curls on the top of his head and innocent deep blue eyes, looked like a little boy who has been scolded and is going to cry. But Miss Dorcas kept her eyes fixed on him, and he had to answer.

"Upon my soul, Miss Dorcas, I – really, Miss Dorcas, I can't say. I'd stick out the day's work, whatever it was, and keep alongside anybody who expected me to, you know, and I wouldn't be surprised at anything that might happen on – on either side of the grave, you know, Miss Dorcas. What I have seen of the world already has been so surprising and so – so incomprehensible, that there are no – no miracles, you understand, Miss Dorcas, in my estimation. Everything is a miracle, you see. Only it was some one else who said that, wasn't it?"

"It was Walt Whitman," said Miss Dorcas quite severely.

"Was it, Miss Dorcas? I'm glad to have quoted him, even if I didn't know I was doing it. It isn't my fault, you know, that I haven't been better taught than I have about – what you were speaking of, you know, a minute ago. If my mother had lived, I suppose I should have been different. But everybody is dead who took any interest in me, except Dil over there."

He looked quite wistful, and the girl rubbed the toe of her tennis shoe back and forth in the dust, with an air of wishing to say something comforting, but she only remarked: "Mr. Brown is a very pleasant young man," looking over to where Dilling and Miss Anice were tossing balls languidly about the tennis court, "but he seems to lack earnestness."

Tommy went for lemonade just then, – the maid was bringing it out to the table under the elms, – and so he attempted no answer. He wondered so much over the meaning of Miss Dorcas's complaint about the lack of earnestness in Dil and himself that he spilt half a dozen drops of the lemonade on that young lady's lilac-sprigged gown, with instant obliteration of the lilac sprigs. That evening he had a temporary hope that Dil, at least, had some latent earnestness in him, by which he might be justified to his gentle critics, for he heard him saying: –

"Well, aunt Betty, dear, I must get out of this. Tommy and I are going to seek our fortunes. We are going to walk down the road till we meet a man, and we are going to say, 'Please, good man, give us some straw, that we may build us a house.' And the good man" –

"Dil, what nonsense! Sit up, sir." Dil got off the sofa and placed himself with undue solemnity in one of his aunt's gothic-backed chairs. Tommy had fears that this earnestness was not yet of the quality to recommend itself to the young lady with the sprigged lawn. Miss Elizabeth Brown continued to address her nephew: "I want to say to you, Dilling, what I have not said before, – that I was mightily pleased with you Commencement Day. I was pleased with what you said, and with the way you bore yourself, and with the reports I got of you."

"Oh come, aunt Betty dear, this is too bad! What have I done to deserve this at your hands?"

"Don't laugh, Dil. If your father could have lived to hear and see you, my satisfaction would have been complete. Of course I am not going around crowing over you. This is all between ourselves and Mr. Letlow. Didn't you notice how offhand and deprecating I was, the other day? But in fact, Dil, and quite seriously, I was and am so pleased that it gives me grace to make a great sacrifice."

"You have never done anything else but make sacrifices."

"Many of the things you may have called by that name were refined forms of self-indulgence, my dear."

"Oh ho!" he laughed, with flattering irony.

"But now I am going to make a sacrifice. I'm going to give you what's coming to you out of the property, Dilling, and let you choose for yourself what you will do with it. I've got a little annuity fixed up for myself, and with the old home and the garden and all, I shall live like a queen, – a queen with economical tendencies. The over and above goes to you, and I have decided that it would better be yours now instead of several years from now. It's all arranged for, and Mr. Effingwell – our solicitor, Mr. Letlow – is coming in the morning. Mr. Letlow's presence in the library at ten o'clock would be a favor. There's the house and the plate and the mahogany and my laces to settle about. They may not mean much to you, Dilling, but some day you may have a wife who will appreciate them. Now, the worst of it is that the sum I can offer you is not sufficient to permit you to settle down among old friends in this part of the country and make any showing, but it is enough to take you away to some new – and probably disagreeable – part of the world, to accumulate experience and, I hope, property."

The young man murmured something inarticulate. His bold eyes were a trifle moist and his lips looked unnatural, as though he were trying to be superior to human emotion with very poor success. He was a strapping fellow, with shoulders a degree too high, a large head, a thick neck, and an obstinate chin; but his brow showed ideality and imagination, and his smile would have won a hangman to friendliness. His aunt went on: –

"I'm gratified, too, to see that you do not become sentimental over every girl you meet." Letlow, who sat apart, feeling rather remote from his kind, grinned at this. "It gives me confidence in you. Incidentally, it reminds me of certain air castles which I have been building in weak moments. I could not deny myself the pleasure of picturing a summer vacation with you down at Martha's Vineyard, or some place where we were sure to meet a lot of people we knew. I indulged in fancies of the pretty triumphs you would have, of a nature which it is not now necessary to enlarge upon, and how I should rejoice in the light of reflected popularity. I tried to persuade myself that this would be the best thing for you, and that I should be almost certain to run across some old friend who would help me to place you just right, – something in the wholesale line, you know, or something journalistic or scientific."

Letlow choked on some unknown substance, and the muscles of Dilling's face worked slightly. There was a break in the lady's voice as she continued: –

"But I know all that was cowardly, Dil, and that you'd want to face the issue – I mean the – the exigency. You're just like your father about that. He always felt moved to face a situation, particularly if it was very disagreeable. Now, you think the matter over, decide what you want to do, and go and do it." The tone became quite brisk and businesslike at this point.

"You'll go out and make discoveries, – countries and men and women, or a woman – and Heaven knows what of sorrow and joy. But as for me, there are no discoveries that I care to make in this world. I never did attach so much importance to knowledge as some do. There's only time to acquire an infinitesimal bit at the best, and it doesn't answer the questions a woman is really interested in, when you get it. No one is wise enough to answer the important questions. One must take everything that is really important on faith. I'm sending you away in faith, Dilling. I expect good things of you; not necessarily great things. Great things are disturbing and very pronounced, Dil. I don't care for you to be pronounced."

The young man laughed through a lump in his throat, lifted the slender old hand to his lips, and left the room. Letlow, who remained behind, wondered why he had not been fortunate enough to have some one incoherent over him. He arose, with his hands in his pockets, and walked up and down the floor once or twice. Then he stopped beside Miss Betty. The tears were rolling down her cheeks. He stood a moment regarding them, then stooped very tenderly and wiped them away. Miss Betty glanced up, and perceived the look in his face.

"My dear son!" she exclaimed, instinctively using the word he needed. He sank almost unconsciously on his knees. "God bless you and keep you in the ways of righteousness," she said, her hands on his head. Then he too went out of the room.

Miss Betty sat for several minutes, letting the tears fall without checking them. Then she arose and looked about the room as if she had never seen it before. She observed its quaint orderliness, its odd, beautiful old furnishings, its non-committal tones. She looked at herself, undersized, quaint and plain too, like her environment, as she was reflected in the gilt-framed mirror between the windows. She noted the thinness of her hair about the temples, saw the loose, yellow folds of flesh about the neck, smiled at the inconsistency of the pearls upon her hand, – they had been given her long ago by a man who went to India, and who, going once with a promise on his lips, never returned because of a tidal wave on some forgotten shore, – and then she wound the old clock, standing on a stool to do it, closed the windows, closed the door, lighted a candle, and blew out the lamps.

"I shall be more lonely than I have ever been before," she said to the clock.

She climbed the stairs slowly, very slowly, and halfway up she stopped. "It must be," she murmured, "that I have forgotten something, – the windows or the clock." So she went back, picking her way on the polished stairs. But she had neglected nothing, and she crept up the stairs again, scolding herself with impatient "tut tut tuts."

An hour later she lay in bed, still with wide-open eyes. The door of her room was pushed back softly, and she saw Dilling creeping in. She made a feint of sleeping. In another moment he was gone, and a soft perfume saluted her. She put out her hand, and there was a bunch of mignonette on her pillow.

"He has great perception," she commented to herself. "He understands women. When he makes up his mind to win a woman, he will win her. But I'm glad he doesn't fall in love with every foolish child he meets."

Up in Letlow's room the young men were debating the affairs of life gravely, and canvassing various occupations and chances for investment.

"Well, anyhow," said Dilling in conclusion, – a conclusion at which no conclusions had been reached, – "I'm glad I let dear aunt Bet take the lead. I've been fuming to be in the harness ever since we got home, and a good while before, for the matter of that. But I bethought me that the least I could do was to let aunt Betty enjoy the idea of having set me in motion. She likes authority, and I didn't want to deprive her of the exercise of the least particle of it, you see."

"I see, Dil. I see you're a shade too adroit. Now I should never think of that, – not in ten thousand years. If you ever start out to win a woman, Dil, you will win her all right enough." Which inference, it will be remembered, had once before been drawn under that roof, that evening.

"I hope so – devoutly! If I ever do see a woman I want, Tommy, Heaven have mercy on her. But why speak of women? You are better than many women, Tommy."

II.

"Coo-ee! Coo-ee! Coo-ee!"

Dilling Brown sent out the long, wavering sheep call in unaccustomed tones. He had ridden five days beside the sheep, and slept four nights in the midst of them. With him were two blond men, long-haired, blue-eyed, dressed in khaki ponchos, corduroy trousers, buff leather leggins, sombreros, and spurs, – above all, spurs. Each carried two pistols in his belt and a rifle slung across his saddle. Also there followed twelve good dogs and true, – shepherds every one. Finally came one sallow heathen, Li Lung, commissariat, driving the mules of the supply wagon.

They were bound for the Edge of Things where the free grass grew – past the ranches in the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas, past the leased land of the big sheep ranges, out to the "common" thoughtfully provided by the legislature of California.

"And now," asked the government, "what earthly objection can there be to free wool? Isn't it time we got over being provincial, we provincials? See, we give you a chance for clear profit. Go, my sons, and become very rich."

Dilling Brown was pleased at the suggestion, and adopted it. That was why he was driving with Big Hank – otherwise Henry Nettle – and Cross-Eyed Kit – otherwise Christopher Huggins – along the trackless waste of the Californian desert. He had entered upon his venture with intelligence, so he congratulated himself. He might have picked his sheep on the western slopes of the Sierras, but, hearing of a lot across the range, he preferred to take his chances with them, rather than run the risks attendant upon crossing the pass. The sheep were a good lot, all Cotswolds; a little thin and jaded from removal, but capable of being put in prime condition. So Cross-Eyed Kit opined; and when it came to a pronunciamento upon sheep from Cross-Eyed Kit, there were none to gainsay.

At the last ranch Brown was urged to stay overnight, and he consented.

"I'm eager to see what's before me," he said, "but not so eager that I'll not be glad to accept your hospitality."

Papin, the overseer at the Esmeralda ranch, – you can tell the Esmeralda sheep by two notches in the left ear, – smiled enigmatically, and looked Brown straight in the eyes.

"There's plenty of time," protested he.

"Time!" cried Brown, with the smile that won men's hearts. "There's nothing but time and sheep. That's all they have out in this country, isn't it?"

"And these." Papin passed the cigars. Brown fingered one and sniffed it. "Ah!" said he. "It is difficult to escape civilization."

"I'm glad you like the brand. We manage to make ourselves rather comfortable here. This ranch belongs to Leonard and Filbin of San Francisco. They're in everything pretty much, – mines and mills and sheep and what not. I've been managing for them for three years now, and we've eight thousand merinos out at grass, and a force of fifty men, first and last."

Dilling smoked and looked about him. The house was adobe, and it rambled over an unconscionable amount of ground. An array of fantastic cacti writhed and twisted about the little compound in front, and as they showed symmetry in their arrangement, it was safe to infer that this was some one's idea of a flower garden.

"It's the sort of a flower garden I should expect the devil to have," thought Dilling.

The overseer had his rooms on one side of the house, the office in the centre, and beyond the quarters for the men, between whom and the overseer, as the newcomer already fully appreciated, discipline and custom fixed a deep gulf. This amused him. That the wilderness should have an aristocracy and an etiquette he considered to be "worth the price of admission," as he had confided to one man. But the man had not laughed, and then Brown came to a realizing sense that it does not do to be amused at a country till you are out of it.

His present host was a tall, firmly knit American, with a hint of something French about him. Dilling admired the type, remembering what the men who belonged to it had done in America. It stood for much daring and adventure. The man had perception, too, – enough to persuade him to silence while his guest took cognizance of things about him. After a time a Chinaman appeared at the door, and with a single blow on a tiny tom-tom announced supper.

"Wait ten minutes longer, Sam," said Papin. "I hear the men coming, and I want this gentleman to see them."

The Chinaman grinned, and held up the tom-tom knowingly for silence. Brown had been conscious for several seconds that something unusual was happening to his eardrum. Now he discovered that this persistent concussion was the even and rhythmical hammering of the plain by a body of advancing horse. The east was golden, catching its splendor from the burnished west, and out of the lesser glory rode the herders, four abreast on their broncos, without swerve.

"By Jove!" cried Brown, standing up, "that's fine!"

As the men came nearer the spectacle grew more imposing. The little beasts under the men flung their legs with a strange outreaching motion, and every animal went without a check, his nose groundward. The men were a trifle above the average height, and their hair, long and much cared for, floated in the breeze made by their riding. They looked very handsome, helped out as they were by the background of illumined space.

"Good boys! Good boys!" said Papin proudly. "They're quite a body of men, Mr. Brown, and easy to manage, though they have their peculiarities like the rest of us. A small guard of men does with the sheep at night, and most of the dogs stay with the herd, though some of them come home each night. And they're as anxious as the men to get their turn off."

The herders were running their horses into the corral, and Louis Papin took his guest out to the dining room. There was a good meal, well served, – a meal with salad and wine, – and under its influence the ranchman became sympathetic.

"It isn't just what I would choose for a young man," he said, speaking of Brown's venture, "but of course, now you're in for a spell of ranching, the only thing you can do is to get all you can out of the experience."

"What's the seamy side?"

"Oh, what you might expect: loneliness, and no women, and no news, and no coming and going of your kind. The sheep wear on you, after a time. They're not like cattle, – haven't got the movement nor the brains. You've seen the Sargasso Sea? No? Well, you've seen moving masses of seaweed. The sheep remind me of them at times, – a writhing, restless, half-alive, wholly unintelligent body. I don't know as the men feel that way about it. Besides, it's not so hard on them, – this life. They have good times together. It's different when a man's placed as I am. Some of the owners settle on their ranches and bring their families out. There's Venner, impresario for Stebbins of Los Angeles, who has his family with him. But I've no family to bring, so I make up my accounts, and look after the men, and ride about among the sheep, and attend to a thousand and one details. Sometimes the men get sick and have to be taken care of. Once in a while an epidemic of homesickness breaks out, and that's harder to deal with than the fever. Now and then they quarrel, but I keep out of their fights. And, on the whole, they regulate themselves very well."

So he rambled on cheerfully, giving Brown an idea of the life. Dilling ventured some confidences on his own account, and the older man received them almost in silence, regarding his guest with a look which, had he been in any sort of hard luck, Dilling would have interpreted as pitying. They went out to the quarters, later, passing down the long room where the men bunked, to the eating room. They were all smoking there together, and two Chinamen were clearing away the remains of the meal. Dilling stopped on the threshold, and looked about him with unfeigned enjoyment of a new scene.

The long low room, crowded with muscular fellows, blond almost to the last man of them, with streaming, delicate hair, faces the color of their saddles, and a manner born of breaking their horses, managing their sheep, and fearlessly looking the wilderness in the face, was a thing to see and to remember. The smile with which Dilling made visible record of his interest won, as it invariably did, friends for him at the minute. The men smiled back, and they frankly took cognizance of him, and liked the way he was "put up" and the bold and amiable eyes with which he returned their glances.

"Well," said Papin in a patriarchal tone, "I've quite a family, Mr. Brown."

Brown let out his characteristic roar of laughter at this, and the men found it infectious. So there was good feeling established.

"They are always pleased when my visitors talk with them," murmured Louis Papin under his breath to his guest. "It's a dull life they lead, poor boys, and a new story pleases them to the core."

Brown nodded, still keeping his eyes on the men.

"So these are what you cal shepherds!" he cried gayly. "I thought shepherds dressed in pink and white china, and always went with little blue and white shepherdesses, and played on reeds, like this," and he made a mimic piping with his lips, – a trick he had learned from an English boy. . .

"Go on!" shouted the men. "Go on! Give us some more music. You don't need no cornet. Keep 'er up."

"Not till I have seen the shepherdesses!" persisted Brown. "Where are the shepherdesses?"

The men chuckled, pleased as school-boys.

"Now, how t' dickens did the fellow know they were like children?" Papin was wondering to himself. "He's adroit – but I saw that from the first. He could manage anybody. He ought to be somewhere else, – not down here among the cactus. Poor cuss, it's a sorry fate for him. What a waste the girls must think it, – him among the cactus!" When he emerged from his reflections, Brown was singing Little Bo Peep according to a college version.

"That's positively the only song I know which refers to your – your profession," he bowed as the men applauded him.

"Goin' t' try ranchin' it, sir?" asked one of the men, respectful but curious.

Brown seated himself on the edge of the table, the better to look over his audience.

"I'll explain myself," he said frankly. "I'm just out of college, and in the soup. That's why I came here to raise sheep."

"That's right! Here's the place t' be under them circumstances."

"And if you're wanting some stories" –

"Put it thar, pard!"

"– why, the only sort of yarns I know are college yarns. And I can sing college songs. If you want those" – But there was wild encouragement with whistlings and caterwauls, and it was almost midnight when he left.

"You've made yourself solid," declared Papin, as he shook hands with his guest at the chamber door that night. "If you ever get in trouble, let my men know it, and they'll be with you."

As the men rolled in their bunks that night, laughing and repeating snatches of the ringing nonsensical songs that Brown had given them, they remarked with freedom, and sometimes with unnecessary emphasis, "That there coot's a gentleman. No up-in- the-balloon-boys about him. He's right on your own level, he is. He's the real thing!" All of which was an involved way of saying that Brown's manners were what they ought to be.

Breakfast was served at dawn at the Esmeralda, and the east was "blossomed in purple and red" when Brown stood before the door with his host, watching the men get up their ponies.

"How far do you intend to ride beyond this?" asked the manager.

"God knows," said Brown. "I ride till I come to grass which is no other man's, but mine by the courtesy of the state of California."

Papin called up a genial-looking fellow with saddle-bowed legs.

"Where is that empty adobe you were telling me of, the other day, Bob? The one young Cusack and his sister had."

"Going with the sheep, sir, it would be a day's ride east," responded the man, touching the edge of his sombrero, "and half a day's ride south. It can't be missed, for to reach it you turn at the chaparral beyond the Salita arroyo, and follow that due south."

"Can you remember that, Mr. Brown?" asked Papin, with a smile.

"Of course. It's a house that I might feel at liberty to occupy? It would save me a good deal of bother if I could."

"It's yours when you hang up your hat. Fred Cusack and his sister were there for a time."

"What made them leave?"

The herder started to speak, but Papin frowned and shook his head at him.

"Cusack lost his health," he said shortly. "That will do, Bob. Tell the boys to mount. I want Mr. Brown to see you ride off."

A minute later there was a sound that made the blood rush to Brown's face, – a long, wavering, fierce cry, the war cry of the Apaches. But it was not the Apaches who made it. It was forty long-locked men, riding four abreast into the incarnadined east; and they went madly, fast as equine legs could take them over the dusty plain, and as they went they yelled. Brown stood fascinated till the dust hid the men; and even then the wild, wavering cry came back.

"My powers!" said he, dropping into a chair and taking a cup of coffee from the smiling Chinaman, "it's good to be alive and to have seen that!"

Louis Papin looked at the boy and flushed a little. Then he glanced down half humorously at his own beard, and carefully drawing out a white hair from the midst of it, he laid it on the palm of his hand and regarded it sentimentally.

"It certainly is good to be young – as you are, Mr. Brown."

"Why, as you are, too, Mr. Papin! What can you mean, sir, by thinking yourself anything else but young?" He looked in unfeigned astonishment at the strong, firm, keen man before him.

"I have a malady," confessed Papin, "and it has aged me."

"Ah!"

"Shall I tell you the name of it?"

"Why, if you please, Mr. Papin."

"It is a fatal thing. Eventually it causes ossification of the – of the heart."

"Eh?"

"Yes, there is such a thing. Or it causes softening of the brain. It is an inextinguishable ennui."

He spoke with such solemnity that Brown was forced to look sympathetic, though when he heard the nature of Papin's alleged disorder, he could with difficulty keep from smiling.

"But why have you not married, sir, and surrounded yourself with a family? Or brought some man out here to rough it with you? There are young fellows who would thank their stars for a chance to be with a man like you, and to get blooded to this life."

Papin smiled sadly. "I'm not so egotistical," he said, "as to suppose that I could console any one – any one – no matter what our relations might be, for the loss of the whole world."

His head dropped a little, and he and Brown sat in silence, drinking their coffee and smoking.

"It must be that he has had some confounded tragedy," thought Brown pityingly. "A woman, no doubt. Jove, but some men do get awfully cut up! May my day be long a-coming!"

An hour later, with his sheep, his men, and his dogs, he rode into the east. It was all a mist of dull golden dustiness, and the sky above was a pale and half-obscured blue. It was the air and the sky of the Californian desert in the dry season. Brown was to become very well acquainted with it.

"A day east to the chaparral," called Papin, "then half a day south to the adobe house, going at the pace the sheep set. Good-by, Brown, good-by and good luck."

"Good-by, sir. I'll not forget the savor of your bread and salt."

As he went out, riding slowly beside the trotting sheep, one of the dogs came up and leaped about him, barking.

"What is it, girl?" he said absently. "What do you want?" The dog had a benevolent face, with a pleasing breadth between the eyes, a delicate tapering of the nose, a well-rounded brow, and an arrow-shaped spot of white at the base of the brain. Her feet and belly were a bright tan. Brown scrutinized her for several seconds.

"Your face reminds me of aunt Betty's," he said aloud, and his soliloquy was the first token that he was amid the solitudes of earth and that his sub-consciousness appreciated it, – "though I don't know whether or not the dear old lady would feel complimented to hear me say so. But I'm going to name you Bet. Hear that? Bet! Bet! Yes, that's you, girl. Why, you're a pleasant creature. What is it that you want, anyway? You flirt, I believe you're trying to make up to me. You want to be my dog, eh? My favorite? Well, well, that's a good doggie. That's all right. So, so, Bet. That's what you want, is it?"

He had brought his pony to a stop to rub the dog's head; but when she had submitted to the caressing for a moment, she ran on to inform her friends, vociferously, of the event. Some of the dogs looked back curiously, but others went haughtily on, as if they would have nothing to do with toadies. Then Bet snapped at a ram, who, with his long fleece hanging about him, looked as benevolent as a patriarch; meaning to show by this exhibition of authority that she was the special dog of the master.

"This seems to be pretty good society that I'm moving in," thought Brown. "Here, Bet, come here!"

Bet fairly leaped with pride at this imperative summons, and came back to run along by his side.

Then the sheep got to wandering, and Bet's sharp bark aroused Brown once more to a sense of his duties. He flanked the restless body of animals, and, putting his hand to his mouth, recalled the stragglers.

"Coo-ee! Coo-ee! Coo-ee!"

III.

Within a week Dilling Brown was settled in his new home. At least, he had settled all save one room in it. The house was of adobe, built on three sides of a square. The open side of the square stood toward the west, and within the court was one stunted and dusty gum tree. A quarter of a mile to the east ran a belt of chaparral, composed of pine scrub, and most fatally a trap for the Cotswolds, whose long hair became easily entangled. To keep the sheep out of this snare was the task of dogs and men; and as the sheep could never learn a lesson, though they lived to be older than any crocodile of the Ganges, their shepherds had a hard time of it. Brown had too small a force, as a matter of fact, considering his twelve hundred sheep, but it was all he could afford, and he did a common herder's work himself to help make up the deficiency. The dogs proved to be as fine a pack as man could wish. Brown could stand upon a hillock and whistle, and in two seconds every soft canine eye would be turned in his direction. Then he had only to indicate by a gesture to the right or the left what sheep needed recalling, and they were recalled. If any dog was lax in his duty, Bet saw to his instant punishment.

It was evident that the house which Brown had taken possession of had been vacated suddenly. The furniture still stood in the rooms, though indeed it was such poor stuff that it would have been worth the while of no one to cart it back to civilization. But many personal effects remained which would certainly have been taken away, had not the occupants departed in haste and confusion which rendered them indifferent to their belongings.

The room which Dilling had left undisturbed, and into which he had put nothing of his own, was at the northwest corner of the house, and it was a bed-room. One window, sunk deep in the adobe wall, looked toward the north over miles upon miles of undulating, broad-leafed grass. On the window ledge was a dusty wicker workbasket, and in it thread and other accessories of such a convenience, including a thimble. It was a common little thimble of celluloid, worth, in the coin of the commonwealth, about three cents. Dilling tried it on his smallest finger, and it would not cap it. The narrow iron bed was thick with dust, and the young man stood before it several seconds trying to realize that it had once been dainty and fresh. There was a dressing table made of a packing box, draped, like the bed, with sheer white stuff; but the articles which once designated its use were gone, save a folding mirror which hung above it, suspended by a blue ribbon. A low chair stood before the table, and by the window was a rocker. Some rude but graceful jugs were on a shelf above the small fireplace, and it was evident that the former occupant of the room had experimented in elemental ceramics. There were no pictures. Two things more remained to suggest the personality of her who had used the room. One was a little riding glove which lay forlornly under the bed, and which Brown rescued from its plight, placing it on the dusty dressing table. The other was an inscription in rambling letters upon the wall above the fireplace. It was well done, – the lettering, – with a bold hand: –

"He, watching over Israel, slumbereth not nor sleeps."

"A curious thing for a young girl to write," mused Brown, regarding it; "but perhaps she needed to be reminded of that fact, out here. It might be easy to forget most things, I should think, – even the religion of one's fathers. I suppose she put it there for a sort of stationary sermon."

He sat down in the rocker, and looked across space – dusty green beneath, dusty blue above – to the place where the blue came down and touched the green all in a blur of dustiness.

"But I wonder," he reflected at the end of ten minutes, "if she was a young girl. And I wonder if it is possible that Papin could tell me."

The fourth day of his residence in his new home, Brown fastened the rear door of this room, so that no one could enter it. The other doorway led into the room which had obviously been used for a sitting room, and which Brown employed for the same purpose. There was no door in the opening, so he made a portiere of gunny sacking and hung it up. He regarded this with satisfaction for two evenings. Then it occurred to him that it was severely plain. So he took some dull red paint and smudged lizards on it, – conventionalized lizards.

"My uncle, but that looks decorative!" said Brown, with pride. "I fancy that would have pleased her immensely. She seems to have had a decided feeling for the picturesque." He smoked and regarded his work at leisure. "I really think she'd feel pleased, if she could see it," he remarked again.

He got some letters from home, a month later. There was a large package of them, with papers and magazines. Papin was responsible for this boon, for he had arranged to send mail across the desert in relays, each man forwarding it from his ranch to the next, till the outposts were reached. It was he who had thought to add to the list of the exiled the name of the man at the Edge of Things. The letters from aunt Betty were very beautiful to him, though full of half-concealed jealousy of his new interests, and a patient wonder why he could not manage to reach the mail at least every other day. She was well pleased, however, at the work he had chosen for himself, and she imagined soft green pastures with running brooks, and a pretty painted farmhouse with muslin curtains at the windows. Dilling got some grim amusement out of the idea. He was sitting on a bench in the court at the time, for it was noon, and by the side of the eastern wall was to be found the only inch of shade. The Chinaman had done the best he could to make the place clean, but the dust drifted in everywhere, and as Dilling looked about him, and then re-read his aunt's letters, and thought of the difference between the mental picture entertained by the dear lady and the sweltering and desolate reality, a wave of homesickness came along, and, being unexpected, it nearly swept him off his feet, figuratively speaking. He came very near doing something which he had not done since he was a boy, and to save himself he had to be violent. So he said: "Damn that gum tree!" And he darted a glance at it which carried yet more fervent maledictions. It was certainly a miserable gum tree, shriveled and begrimed with dust, and out of place in a land which endeavored conscientiously to devote itself to scrub pine and grass.

"I'd even play tennis with those lemonade girls, and be glad to do it," thought poor Dilling, laughing at his own discomfiture.

Li Lung, he of the kitchen, put out his old ivory head to see what the gentleman meant by talking when there was no one with whom to speak. Then he nodded sagely, and made a cool drink with water and claret, and set it in the inner room, to coax the gentleman out of the sun.

But Dilling was a long, long way from discouragement. He thought he saw a bright future for himself. The sheep were prospering. The men with him proved to be faithful and to understand their business. The dogs were a good lot, and Bet was all that a friend could be. So, if time dragged a trifle, it did not matter. If the dawns were somewhat too vivid, the days too monotonous with their pale gold dustiness, the land breezes of the night a hint too oppressive, and the stars somewhat too silent and slow in their rising and setting, it was all an incident. He had come to secure for himself an independency, and in an ancient and honorable fashion, – a fashion that was ancient and honorable when David of the hills of Bethlehem was young. Dilling looked about him, made up his mind that he had done well, set his shoulders a degree nearer the square, and remarked to Bet that he was all right.

"Though I do wish, Bet," he said, "that the music of the spheres would make itself audible. I wouldn't care if they buzzed like sawmills, old doggie, so they broke up this silence. Bark, Bet, bark, – yap, you miserable girl! Make a noise, I say!" And Bet obediently insulted the moon with opprobrious remarks, as the blood-red planet showed her head above the chaparral.

Letlow wrote that he was doing a reporter's work on a New York daily, and making a fool of himself generally. He had an idea of going up to see aunt Betty before autumn was over. He promised to play tennis, too, for old time's sake. "Though I find," he supplemented, "that there are girls even in New York. There is, for example, one named" – But after all, it is not necessary to betray Letlow's secrets. Dilling got to thinking, of course, of the foolish days of the tennis court, and he wondered why he had laughed so much. No wonder Dorcas Pilsbury had asked Tommy if he had any religious convictions! "No doubt she'd think me serious enough now, if she could see me," he reflected. She was serious, and so was Anice Comstock, with her kind gray eyes. What a brisk frou-frou her skirts used to make when she ran about the tennis ground, and what cunning little feet she had, as they showed in her white tennis shoes! Anice Comstock was certainly much nicer than Dorcas Pilsbury. But there were many nice things back in "the rotten old town," – aunt Betty's fragrant tea at five of the afternoon, and aunt Betty pouring it, and smiling and chatting, and the piping of bluebirds without in the elms, and Sundays at the old church, and – and Anice Comstock. He fell into a reverie which lasted a long time, and at the conclusion of it he was conscious of a definite idea. It was that Anice Comstock would not have written, "He, watching over Israel, slumbereth not nor sleeps," in an adobe house in a sun- cursed desert. Not but that Anice was good enough to have written it. She was, indeed, a sort of angel, with starched drapery (Dilling could not get that frou-frou out of his memory); but she wasn't an angel with a knowledge of the desert, or what was needed for comfort in the desert, and that happened to be just the sort of woman that he was pleased to think about then.

It so chanced that Louis Papin came up, three weeks after this, to see how Brown was getting on. They spent two days together, and enjoyed themselves. Papin had his tattered Shakespeare with him, – but hasn't that been mentioned before? The rag of a book was always with him. The two read from that; and they smoked; and there is always poker wherever there is civilized man. But from first to last, Brown bided his chance. At last it came.

"The Cusacks were very obliging to leave this snug house for you, eh, Brown?"

"Very. I'd like to thank them. Do you know where they are?"

"No-o, – not exactly."

"And the girl, – was she young? Miss Cusack, I mean."

"Katherine Cusack? Oh yes, she was young, – quite young. A fine brave girl. Had the spirit of a man in her."

"That's your arrogance. It was probably the spirit of a woman, if it was brave."

"Very likely. She was beautiful, too, in a way; small, but strong, and exceedingly active, and always saying the unexpected thing. I saw her twice: once when she went past my place coming out here, and – when she came back."

"Why didn't you see her more?" questioned Brown, with something like asperity.

"Why, to tell the truth, man, I thought – I thought I'd better mind my own business. Not that I wanted to."

There were a hundred more questions that Brown meant to ask, but Papin got off on another lead, and Brown could not get him back again.

IV.

As the weeks went on, trailing along as slowly as wounded snakes, as the wool lengthened on the sheep, and the hair hung lower on the shoulders of the herders, and the peculiarities of every animal became known, and all the papers and magazines were read over and over again, the propriety of that sentence in the room behind the gunny sacking portière became more and more apparent.

When Dilling rode up from the sheep, sun-blinded, foul with dust and sweat, and weary from the saddle, he got into the way of going to that room before supper, because he derived a warm sense of companionship from the thought of the girl who had once been there, and from the atmosphere that still made of it an oasis in a barren land. The excellent and cleanly heathen had restored the muslins of the little northwest room to their native state, for which Dilling was disproportionately grateful; for now the room looked as if it might, at any hour, welcome its mistress. Dilling could look about, seem to salute an invisible presence, and then lift his eyes to the message on the wall, which, in the course of long and yet longer days, began to have the deepest of meanings for him, so that the soul of him, there in the wilderness, submitted itself and was at peace with its Maker.

Then the days for shearing came on, and actively hard work served as a diversion, besides which it aroused the young ranchman's drooping hope. The results of his deprivations and toil were almost apparent, he told himself. He would presently know the satisfaction that arises from accumulating herds. He would hold honestly acquired money in his hands, and the bitterness of the solitude would be partly compensated for. As, day by day, the shearlings multiplied in number, and the clad sheep grew fewer, this feeling of contentment increased. The long clipped wool was a goodly thing to behold, and Dilling felt a simple pride in it; and in the evenings he sang songs for the benefit of Bet and the kindly heathen in the kitchen. He had arranged for the transportation of the wool with Papin, who was sending it on to Philadelphia that year. So the supply wagon went back and forth between the Esmeralda Ranch and the Edge of Things, and the last time out Cross-Eyed Kit went with it, with instructions to go on to the foothills for provisions.

The next three weeks passed more quickly. Dilling had double work because Kit was away, and every other night he slept in the open with the dogs beside the sheep. Things appeared to be moving, and he grew loquacious with elation, and wrote voluminous letters which he intended to send to Letlow some time, using the leaves of his memorandum book for the purpose. Almost every day he made additions to another letter, – a very long one, – which he never intended to send to any one; but it was addressed to Miss Katherine Cusack.

"I reckon yeh never heard what happened t' young Cusack, who was here before yeh, sir?" asked Big Hank of Brown one morning, as they skirted the chaparral together, after driving back the stragglers.

"No, I don't know the particulars. I heard he lost his health."

"Went off his nut, sir, – clean off. It wuz queer, too, him havin' his sister with him, and enj'ying th' pleasures of society, s' t' speak. He worked pretty hard, I reckon, an' wuz out with th' sheep alone most of th' time, – he wuz short-handed, same ez you, sir. They say he got s' used t' keepin' his tongue in his head that he wouldn't speak even when he got th' chanct. Well, I'll be 'ternal damned if he didn't drop down 'long-side th' sheep, one day, an' take t' eatin' grass! His man found him thar, eatin' it, when he come out t' take th' watch. He didn't know what t' do, an' he rode back hell f'r blazes to th' ranch, an' his sister, she got on her pony, an' streaked out, – it was five miles she had to go. An' thar he was, a-eatin' grass! She got down by him, an' called him, an' petted him, an' cried over him, an' all he said was, 'Baa! baa!' One of th' men at th' Esmeralda tol' me."

"Great God! And then what did his sister do?"

"She had him lifted in th' saddle, an' she walked an' held him thar, all the way to th' house. Then she treated him fur fever, an' kep' coolin' things to his head. She thought it might h' bin th' sun. But 'twere more 'n sun. Then she took him in th' supply wagon back across th' trail, her Chinee a-drivin', and they say she went up to her ol' home in San Francisco. Howsome that may be, th' railroad authorities, they wouldn't let him in a passenger coach, an' she went off ridin' in th' baggage car, a-holdin' of his head an' comfortin' him. They said he never thanked her none. He jus' said, 'Baa! baa!' an' cried 'cause they wouldn't let him out t' th' grass."

"But where are they now?"

"I hain't heard, sir."

"Why have you never told me this story before, Hank?"

"Well, Mr. Papin, he give it out col' an' flat that you wa'n't to be tol'. But yer so steady now, sir, I know it don't cut no ice."

"No," said Brown, and he set spur to his pony and rode on.

But he was not able, either by day or by night, to banish the vision of the man who had dropped on all fours beside his sheep and given tongue with them.

Some time before Brown had tamed a pretty wether to run about the doorstep, and he and Bet made great friends of it, feeding it and teasing it, and teaching it to curl up nights on a bed of hay in the court. But now the little creature became offensive to him, and he resented its intimacy. When it came to him, where he sat smoking before his door evenings, and rubbed its head against his leg, he had trouble to keep from an outbreak of anger. In the grotesque twilight, when the cacti looked like hob-goblins, and Bet's eyes grew phosphorescent, and Lung crooned an awful song in a heathen tongue, Brown got fanciful, and it seemed as if Dickie Bird – the little wether – were inviting him to drop down on all fours with him and say "baa," as any sociable creature ought to do, looking at the matter, of course, from Dickie Bird's point of view. But, as a matter of fact, at this hour Dickie was on his bed, and only awoke to bleat now and then, out of the perfect contentment of his – stomach. Brown roared over his twilight nonsense the next morning, when the sun got up. The only trouble was that he came near laughing too long. It appeared as if, with a trifle of careless on the part of Brown, the laugh might become the master.

"Kit got back with the supply wagon and a few letters, but there was no word from Philadelphia among them.

"Pshaw!" said Dilling, "I'm no boy, to be so impatient over my first earnings."

Several weeks more passed, while a sort of dullness settled down upon the ranch. Even Bet seemed to think that things were not quite worth while. Then the mail came from Papin's, and with it a letter from Dilling's agent at Philadelphia. He regretted to inform Mr. Brown that his consignment had reached Philadelphia at a time when wool was selling at bottom prices, owing to the extensive introduction of foreign product, and also that there had been an unfortunate delay in the placing of the wool, thus causing considerable expense for storage. He had the honor, however, to remit to Mr. Brown the inclosed amount, as per check, and, in the hope of serving him on future occasions, to remain his very truly.

Dilling looked at the amount of the check, mentally deducted the sum he had paid for the freight, and then made a confidence to the wether, who was sweetly chewing at the doormat.

"Dickie Bird," said he, "I am exactly seventeen dollars and eighty-five cents out of pocket. Figures are a great thing, Dickie Bird, and by studying them you may learn a great many things which you would not learn if you did not study figures."

There was a good curry, that night, for supper, and some native claret which Kit had brought back with him, but Dilling could only make a pretense of eating. Moreover, he could not sleep except by fits, and then he awoke with a cold sweat breaking out over him, for he saw a man falling down beside his sheep and eating grass.

He had a determined aversion to taking any one into his confidence. Papin, of course, was in the same boat. But Papin was only the manager of the Esmeralda, and he had a rich firm behind him. The fluctuations of trade did not greatly disturb the serenity of his soul, and they in no way detracted from the pleasure to be derived from a perusal of the Pages of Shakespeare of Stratford. But aunt Betty and Letlow should not know. Besides, if Anice Comstock found it out, she would lay it to his frivolity. Snug, comfortable, unknowing lives they lived, those people back East! It would do them good to get out of their oiled grooves, and find how the world is made to move and how much pushing it takes to move it. The man at the Edge of Things was accumulating some bitterness. He incidentally tore up the letter he had written to Letlow, and he did not write to aunt Betty. But to the letter which he did not mean to send – which he never could send – he made passionate additions, and the woman who did not know him, but who knew so many of the sorrows that he knew, was made the recipient of all the secrets of his soul. But the drawback to that was that she did not know it.

Papin said there was hope for better fortune in the spring, and Dilling comforted himself with belief in this. He had no intention of weakening. He had the responsibility of the investment, and he meant to justify his judgment in his aunt's eyes. Moreover, he could think of nothing else to which he could turn his hand. So he strengthened himself with the inscription on the wall, daily augmented the size of the letter which would never be sent, and went about his tasks.

But all his resolution could not keep the dead heat of autumn from weighing on him like a curse, nor his eyes from aching at the distance about him, the absolute vacuity of outreaching space. A brawl of street ruffians would have been a desired drama, since it would have furnished a scene of action and an evidence of human passion. Even Kit and Hank got to wearing on each other; but they were old herders, and they knew the cause of their irritability, and so regarded it as impersonally as possible. Then the mild and meaningless winter came on, the winter of the Southern plain, and the rains fell. The men lit fires at night to fight the damp. Everything mildewed, cutlery, clothes, and books. The sheep were sullen and obstinate, and there was nothing, as Dilling had said to Louis Papin a few months before, but time and sheep.

And in the midst of all this a genuine sorrow came to Brown. Aunt Betty passed beyond the knowledge of the world, – the knowledge which she had not held in high esteem, – to make such discoveries as futurity holds. Letlow wrote about it, and how Anice Comstock and he had done all that Dilling would have done had he been there, and how Elder Urwin celebrated her virtues in an address three quarters of an hour long, and how she was laid with her fathers in the old cemetery.

"The beautiful old house is closed, and is waiting for you," Letlow wrote. "And Nettie bids me tell you that she will come back to care for it when you want her to do so. Meantime, she is living near, and is keeping an eye upon dear aunt Betty's treasures. It grieves me to say it, Dil, but you might have cheered her last days more than you did. She was forever sending poor old Nettie to the post office, and you know yourself how seldom she got what she wanted. As for me, you never write to me now. It is strange of you, Dil. Of course, if you do not want to have anything more to do with me, you may go to the devil. But I cannot think this is the case. Do not try to live without your old friends. They find it hard, believe me, to live without you."

After that, of course, poor Dilling wrote; and then to his other sorrows was added the pang of unavailing regret. It is a pang which almost every one must know, but it was new to Dilling, and it roweled him like a sharp spur. Dear aunt Betty! Was it possible she could have thought him ungrateful? He was only waiting to write till he could justify himself in her eyes. But she did not know, – she did not know. She waited for the letters that did not come, and suspected – what? In the loneliness of the rains, Dilling sent his soul in search for hers, praying for pardon. But he had no sense of forgiveness. The dead did not come back to comfort him.

By the time for the spring shearing his funds were almost exhausted, and he confided to his men that, unless he realized something on his wool, the experiment might be considered a failure.

It was just before the day set for the shearing that the Mexicans made their first raid on him and cut out two hundred sheep. The episode was singularly tame. It happened at night, and when Big Hank was on duty. The sheep were two miles to the south of the house, and the night was a clear and starlit one. Hank was awake and at his post, and he saw the whole thing, which was small enough satisfaction. He emptied the contents of his revolvers and his rifle, and he had a dead horse to show that he had been in action, but none of the Mexican bullets hit him. That was the only adventure of the year.

There was some profit from the wool that spring. "Just enough," Brown remarked to Papin, "to make me feel that it would be wrong to give up the business. I'll stick it out, Mr. Papin. I ought to be able to stand it, if you can."

"Why, there's some difference between your situation and mine, Brown. You know I saw a little of life before I came. I had my day. It happened to end for me rather suddenly, you know – and that's why I came."

"No," said the younger man, "I didn't know, Mr. Papin."

"So you see it doesn't make very much difference to me where I am. I suppose Paris would seem as lonesome as the free grass country, eh, Brown?"

"I don't know, sir. I'd like to have an opportunity for comparison."

And then Papin read to him the things that Jaques said in the forest of Arden.

The summer came, hot as the mouth of the pit. Nothing happened. Oh yes, Bet had puppies, and brought them in, one at a time, for Dilling to see, and he made a bed for them in his waste- paper basket. And Cross-Eyed Kit had the fever, and Brown nursed him through it, and hired another man to substitute. When Kit got well, it was decided to keep the other man, and the bringing of a new personality into the company had a good effect, particularly as the new man could sing. Wool was looking up a little by fall, and Brown began once more to feel that there might be some return for the investment.

All the poetry of the life had gone for him by this time. He could have enjoyed adventure, he said to himself, even when accompanied by great hardship and danger, but this endless stretch of nothingness was as wearing as life in a mephitic dungeon. The wind of the morning could no longer elate him, nor the stars of the night speak to his soul. A nostalgia for his kind seized upon him, and he made up conversations, pretending that his chosen friends participated in them with him. One friend was there whom he had never seen, but he always gave her the best things to say; and when there was something peculiarly sensible and dull in the way of a remark, he accorded it to Anice Comstock. Letlow said some gay things, some irresistible things, and Brown roared over them; and then the Chinaman peeped in at the door, shaking his old ivory head, and slipping away like a rat. One day he ventured on some advice in that peculiar English which he affected, – an English picked up principally on the ranch, and converted into a liquescent lipogram.

"Mislie Blown," said he, as he served Dilling with some canned salmon, into which he had introduced a most un-christian quantity of red pepper, "loo go see Mislie Papin. It good fo' loo."

"Think I need it, Lung?" asked Brown wistfully.

"Loo need it. Go, Mislie Blown." He nodded his head an incalculable number of times, and he did not grin.

"Lung," said Brown slowly, "I believe you are serious, – and I am sure you are a kind creature. I think I'll go at once. You explain to the men," and, to Lung's unspeakable astonishment, he saddled on the minute and made off, Bet following.

So, that night, when the men rode up for supper, they found the "boss" off for a junket.

"It do him good," explained Lung.

Hank regarded his boots with a pensive expression. Suddenly he broke into a yell.

"Lung," he shouted, "you heathen, let's holler! Whoop 'er up, Kit! Dance, you devils! Hi, dance to this!" And he sang, in a terrible voice and a little off key, some words to a silly tune.

The Chinaman obeyed orders, – he was wise, and knew how to obey, – and now and then he broke into the song with a discordant croak.

"I feel better," said Hank, decorating his remark in a manner peculiar to himself. "It done me good. I had to do it or bust. I wish th' boss could h' bin in th' party."

"It done him good," supplemented Lung.

"It would, my friend, – it would. Now make th' cakes."

V.

The rain was over all the plain, and the night shut down dismally. Dilling had been trailing all day toward the Esmeralda Ranch, but as the darkness began to fall he was seized with a distaste for his visit. A sodden languor pervaded his soul. He marveled that the day had gone so soon, and that he was not at the end of his journey. But still, what did it matter? And why see Papin, anyway, – Papin, who had the "inextinguishable ennui," and who read Shakespeare and waited for time to roll by. Papin had actually learned to let it roll by without taking any of the responsibility. He had found out that it had been rolling before he was born; that he was, personally, an immaterial accident; and that the rolling would keep on after the worms had banqueted upon him. In short, Papin was too philosophic, though a fine fellow. Moreover, it was not to be forgotten that he had once performed a signal service for the listless wanderer there in the rain. He had told him the name of Katherine Cusack, a thing which had done more to mitigate the womanless solitude at the Edge of Things than any other event. If Papin had really known her well, it is not unlikely that Dilling would have had some motive for pushing on, but the subject was one which Papin had exhausted long since. So the pony was allowed to straggle at will, and it was midnight when the ranch was reached.

Lights shone from the windows of Papin's rooms.

"He sits late," said the wanderer. "He sits as late as I do. Perhaps for the same reason. He sits late to converse with shadows, – with shadows!" He shuddered a little, and dropped wearily from his pony. As he walked toward the door, he involuntarily glanced in through the window. Papin was not alone. A young man sat with him. The two were in earnest conversation. The cigars in their fingers had gone out. Dilling turned away sullenly.

"Papin is very well entertained," he said. "He hasn't the least need of me. It serves me right for coming. I'll kick that fool Lung some day." But Bet announced her arrival vociferously, and Papin threw open the door.

"By all that's mysterious," Brown heard him cry, "if here isn't his dog now!"

Dilling slunk back from the window, and had an instinct to run. Something about the shape of the head of the other man who sat within the room filled him with such a frantic longing, such a torment of memory of glad and foolish days, that he felt he could not speak to any one. But Bet led the party of investigation, and Papin discovered Brown skulking, and dragged him in to the light, where he stood blinking and looking away from the other men, like a child overcome with shyness. Papin and his companion, however, were using their eyes with purpose, and what they saw was a creature with haggard eyes and a drawn face. About him hung his soaking clothes, and his hair was long on his neck, and faded to something lighter than hay color by the sun of the desert.

"My soul!" half whispered Papin. "You're not a ghost, are you, Brown?"

The man whom Brown had seen through the window had gone deadly pale. The clustering black curls stood damp upon his forehead. His comely face was twitching with nervousness. Brown laughed rather foolishly in reply to Papin's question, and the guest came forward and put his arms about Brown's shoulders, and looked him in the face. Then he hugged him very hard, and Brown trembled. His eyes closed. A few drops of saliva trickled from his mouth.

"Is he going to faint?" whispered the guest to Papin.

The ranchman got some brandy, and poured it down Brown's throat. Then Dil found speech.

"I knew it was you, all the time, Tommy," he said, – "I knew it was you, you darned dude!"

He sank beside the table and buried his face in his arms. Tom Letlow dropped beside him, threw an arm over his heaving shoulders, and waited. Papin lit a cigar, picked up his tattered Shakespeare, and also waited. After a time Brown looked up.

"Don't lay it up against me," he pleaded. "I know I'm an ass, but I've just emerged from" –

There was a very long silence.

"Well, from what, Dil?"

"From – I can hardly tell you what – from a place peopled with shadows – who talked. I was afraid of you at first, because I could not tell whether you were one of the shadows or not."

"Close call," muttered Papin. Letlow gritted his teeth. Papin went to the quarters to send a man to look after the horse, and Letlow took Brown into his chamber for dry clothing. Half an hour later, the three men sat down together more calmly in Papin's comfortable sitting room. Brown looked about him with a smile of incredulity, something like that a man might wear who had just got accustomed to purgatorial flames, when he opened his eyes to behold paradise. Brown said something of the sort.

"I was getting used to it, you know, Tommy, – getting used to the Robinson Crusoe business, and to having a sore-eyed wether for my especial confidant. And now I suppose I'll be all upset again. But you will stay with me a little while, Tommy? You'll do that much for – for the advancement of the race, so to speak." His old trick of raillery returned at the mere sight of Letlow, and with each light-hearted word that he spoke something tight and terrible within his brain seemed to loosen into comfort.

"No, I won't," replied Letlow emphatically. "I don't want to know any more than I do about what you've gone through, old man. I've come to take you away with me."

"Oh, I can't leave, Tommy; the sheep" –

"Damn the sheep! Tell your men to divide the spoils anyway they please. Are you much in arrears?"

"Not at all, really; only for wages since last shearing, as is customary."

"Then let the men divide the spoils, as I said."

"I've told him the – situation, Mr. Brown. I hope you don't think it a liberty," Papin interposed.

Brown smiled, and the smile had a hint of the glory of other days, when the general gorgeousness of that smile was celebrated in a class song at college.

"Mr. Papin is so good a friend," he said, "that he can say anything he pleases about me. He once did me a tremendous service and never knew it. Pretty much all the happiness I have had since I left home has been connected with the service he did for me."

"What are you talking about?" cried the man with the tattered Shakespeare. His amazement was unfeigned.

"I said he didn't know," explained Brown. "Oh, Tommy, Tommy, what a wonder to see you? And your plans, – what are they?"

"To get you away from here."

"But furthermore?"

"Well, as to myself, I've got a mission from my paper to go up to the Klondike. I may say I've caught on very well, Dil. They like me all right, and I like the work. I've done some things out of the usual, and it's attracted attention. Excuse this infantile candor, but there's no one else to tell you, so I must; for of course I insist on your finding it out. I've contracted to go up to the Klondike, and after that I have a roving commission for an illustrated weekly, and I'm to go and see anything I like and tell what I think about it. Likewise I am to take pictures of it."

Brown's face spoke silent congratulations.

"Then I have an anchor to wind-ward. At least, that may not be the right metaphor, and, upon reflection, I don't think it is." He colored distinctly.

"Call it a sweetheart, and let it go at that," suggested Papin.

"All right," assented Letlow, "why not? Call it a sweetheart, for argument's sake."

"It's Anice Comstock!" cried Brown, his intuitions sharpened by his sufferings. "She's a nice girl, Tommy. I've thought of her a good deal at times, and of how her pretty summer gowns used to rustle about the tennis court, and of how sensible she was."

"Oh, we didn't half know her that summer, Dil! She was shy and not used to such fools as we were. So we couldn't bring out the best in her. But she's a lovely woman if ever there was one. And she's anxious about you, too, Dil, and so is Miss Pilsbury."

"That is kind of them both."

"You don't seem interested," Letlow said, smiling.

"I am very truly grateful, Tommy." He thought of the bulky letter in his pocket, which he did not mean to send, – which he never could send, – and smiled.

"This may be a good time to tell you that within the last ninety days it has transpired that aunt Betty was a richer woman than she knew herself to be. A lot of land to which she attached no importance has come to have a value. It's wanted for summer hotels and cottages and such iniquity. I have the proposals with me. That's a big part of my business here. You can close all that up, go back to the old house, revel in its refinement, and marry any girl you please – when you get your hair cut."

Brown sat and half drowsed over this suggestion. His eyes were narrowed like those of one accustomed to turning thought and speech within.

"I'll go if Mr. Papin will go with me," he declared at last.

"But the ranchman shook his head. "I have become wedded to my solitude," he said. "And I couldn't play tennis!" He looked so foreign to this occupation that the young men shouted with merriment.

Then Letlow went on. "I stopped in San Francisco on the way down, and fixed it up with a man there about the Klondike. He told me a volume. He's acquainted with the country, – he's been over the Skaguay once himself. He has a store at Juneau, and takes the supplies up there in his own vessel. Now he's put a house up for his family, and he's taking his wife and niece with him this trip. I've arranged conditionally for you too, Dil."

"I don't know that I have the appetite for adventure that I used to have," said Brown sadly. The Klondike did not appeal to him. He had a vision of a solitude as complete as that of the sun-baked desert, and more unkind. But then neither did the idea of returning to the East and the dull, formal old town appeal to him. He regarded his state of mind with disgust. He appeared to be inert. "I wonder if my springs are all broken," he thought, "and if I shall never go again."

"If it was for good and all," broke in Letlow, "I shouldn't care about the Klondike myself. But it's an experience, merely. After I'm through with that I may go to Hawaii. Things are looking up for us over there, you know. Oh! I'm out to see things now, Dil, and incidentally I want to find a way to make a fortune if I can. And I think I can. I can almost smell my ship a-coming in." He sniffed the air expectantly. "Then I'll send back for Anice – or go back for her."

"She's a nice girl," admitted Brown, still unenthusiastically. "I congratulate you, Tommy. How did you ever tame yourself sufficiently to win the approval of such a modest, honest, starchy, altogether desirable sort of girl? Everything will go just right when you have married her. Your world will run on oiled grooves forevermore."

Letlow took a photograph out of his pocket and laid it on the table. "Look," he said with pride.

Dilling beheld the goodly face of Anice Comstock. "My powers," he cried, "what a little lady! What a civilized Christian creature! I had forgotten that a woman could look like that. You are fortunate, Tommy!"

Papin came and looked over Brown's shoulder, and he sighed, and then swore softly – almost tenderly – under his breath.

"That's what we miss," said he.

"Doesn't that make you want to see Miss Pilsbury, Dil? She is sincerely concerned about you. You've known her always, and you have liked each other. Once she thought you weren't serious enough" –

"Ah! She'd have changed her mind if she could have seen me lately. But no, Tommy, it doesn't make me want to see her, because" – He did not finish the sentence, but left it raw-edged.

Papin suddenly strode to the table and pounded it with his fist. "Brown," he exclaimed, "you look as if you had a secret! You haven't got a sweetheart out there in the wilderness, have you? My heaven, Brown, if you've found a woman out there, you're" – Papin stopped because his guest did not laugh at all. On the contrary, he grew solemn. "I beg your pardon, Brown. I have said something stupid?"

"No, indeed – something perspicacious. I haven't found a woman out there, Mr. Papin, but – but I have found the soul of a woman."

The men stared and were uncomfortable. Men do not like confidences as a general thing.

The rain beat down harder than ever, and they could hear it pouring off the roof; but in spite of that, there was a lightening in the far east. The dawn was coming over the desert. No one encouraged Dilling, but he had made up his mind to go on. He drew the great folio from his pocket, and slowly unwrapped the silken oilcloth which enveloped it.

"I was afraid it would mildew," he explained.

"The soul of the woman, Dil?"

"No. The letter I wrote to the woman. I discovered traces of her out there in the solitude, in the silence, Tommy, – prehistoric traces, you may say. It has been the study of these which has kept my soul alive. It has been what I learned from her that has made it possible for me to endure what I have. Mr. Papin understands. I said, didn't I, that Mr. Papin had once done me a great service? It is true. The service was inestimable. He told me her name."

He pointed to the inscription on the outside of the package. Letlow stooped to read, and Papin peered over his shoulder.

"Katherine Cusack," half whispered Letlow, his eyes growing big, "Kath – Why, man of many marvels, that's the name of Captain Cusack's niece! That's the girl who is going to Alaska on the same boat with us! That's the – the" –

"Oh, you're fooling, Tommy! Please don't." Brown spoke like a teased boy.

"Fooling? I'm not such a donkey. It's she, I tell you. The captain said she needed a change, that she had recently buried her brother, and" –

"Oh, the poor devil is dead! Papin, you hear that? The bleating wretch is gone."

"Yes, he's dead. His sister stayed with him till the last. Captain Cusack told me all about it. Then I came on, hot-footed, for you."

"But I say, Tommy, it can't be, you know. There's some mistake."

"No mistake, Dil. We'll close up your affairs here" –

"Oh, that's easy. One of my men will take things off my hands for me. He's very trustworthy. I'll let them run things till I come back, share and share alike – Li Lung included. He's a good heathen. He told me to come over here to-night. I'll go back and pack."

He was thinking of the workbasket and the little glove, the clay jugs and the folding mirror. He would need them for an argument.

"And then it's the Klondike, Tommy! My uncle, there's the smell of adventure in it! What route shall you take, – the Dyea, the Chilcat? But that doesn't matter. Of course I may not go over the pass with you, eh? I may go into business in – in Juneau. As you say" (though indeed the bewildered Letlow had said nothing of the sort), "it would be no place for me back in the old town. Not without aunt Betty. Why, I couldn't keep that boxwood trimmed, – now, could I, Tommy? It's adventure I need. The Klondike's just the thing. As for the East, it can get along without me very well, can't it, Papin?"

"Very well indeed," said Papin, who knew.

Elia W. Peattie.

Atlantic Monthly, Sept. 1899, 84

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