had remained inactive so long, and he was so out of practice in
maintaining an erect position, that he could scarcely stand.
He reeled back and forth, staggered, and clutched hold of Edith
with his bound hands for support.
“Sure, an’ it’s dizzy I am,” he laughed weakly.
A moment later he said, “An’ it’s glad I am that it’s over with.
That damn bunk would iv been the death iv me, I know.”
When Edith put his fur cap on his head and proceeded to pull the
flaps down over his ears, he laughed and said:
“What are you doin’ that for?”
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60
“It’s freezing cold outside”, she answered.
“An’ in tin minutes’ time what’ll matter a frozen ear or so to poor
Michael Dennin?” he asked.
She had nerved herself for the last culminating ordeal, and his
remark was like a blow to her self-possession. So far, everything
had seemed phantom-like, as in a dream, but the brutal truth of
what he had said shocked her eyes wide open to the reality of what
was taking place. Nor was her distress unnoticed by the Irishman.
“I’m sorry to be troublin’ you with me foolish spache,” he said
regretfully. “I mint nothin’ by it. ‘Tis a great day for Michael
Dennin, an’ he’s as gay as a lark.”
He broke out in a merry whistle, which quickly became lugubrious
and ceased.
“I’m wishin’ there was a priest,” he said wistfully; then added
swiftly, “But Michael Dennin’s too old a campaigner to miss the
luxuries when he hits the trail.”
He was so very weak and unused to walking that when the door opened
and he passed outside, the wind nearly carried him off his feet.
Edith and Hans walked on either side of him and supported him, the
while he cracked jokes and tried to keep them cheerful, breaking
off, once, long enough to arrange the forwarding of his share of
the gold to his mother in Ireland.
They climbed a slight hill and came out into an open space among
the trees. Here, circled solemnly about a barrel that stood on end
in the snow, were Negook and Hadikwan, and all the Siwashes down to
the babies and the dogs, come to see the way of the white man’s
law. Near by was an open grave which Hans had burned into the
frozen earth.
Dennin cast a practical eye over the preparations, noting the
grave, the barrel, the thickness of the rope, and the diameter of
the limb over which the rope was passed.
“Sure, an’ I couldn’t iv done better meself, Hans, if it’d been for
you.”
He laughed loudly at his own sally, but Hans’s face was frozen into
a sullen ghastliness that nothing less than the trump of doom could
have broken. Also, Hans was feeling very sick. He had not
realized the enormousness of the task of putting a fellow-man out
of the world. Edith, on the other hand, had realized; but the
realization did not make the task any easier. She was filled with
doubt as to whether she could hold herself together long enough to
finish it. She felt incessant impulses to scream, to shriek, to
collapse into the snow, to put her hands over her eyes and turn and
run blindly away, into the forest, anywhere, away. It was only by
a supreme effort of soul that she was able to keep upright and go
on and do what she had to do. And in the midst of it all she was
grateful to Dennin for the way he helped her.
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61
“Lind me a hand,” he said to Hans, with whose assistance he managed
to mount the barrel.
He bent over so that Edith could adjust the rope about his neck.
Then he stood upright while Hans drew the rope taut across the
overhead branch.
“Michael Dennin, have you anything to say?” Edith asked in a clear
voice that shook in spite of her.
Dennin shuffled his feet on the barrel, looked down bashfully like
a man making his maiden speech, and cleared his throat.
“I’m glad it’s over with,” he said. “You’ve treated me like a
Christian, an’ I’m thankin’ you hearty for your kindness.”
“Then may God receive you, a repentant sinner,” she said.
“Ay,” he answered, his deep voice as a response to her thin one,
“may God receive me, a repentant sinner.”
“Good-by, Michael,” she cried, and her voice sounded desperate.
She threw her weight against the barrel, but it did not overturn.
“Hans! Quick! Help me!” she cried faintly.
She could feel her last strength going, and the barrel resisted
her. Hans hurried to her, and the barrel went out from under
Michael Dennin.
She turned her back, thrusting her fingers into her ears. Then she
began to laugh, harshly, sharply, metallically; and Hans was
shocked as he had not been shocked through the whole tragedy.
Edith Nelson’s break-down had come. Even in her hysteria she knew
it, and she was glad that she had been able to hold up under the
strain until everything had been accomplished. She reeled toward
Hans.
“Take me to the cabin, Hans,” she managed to articulate.
“And let me rest,” she added. “Just let me rest, and rest, and
rest.”
With Hans’s arm around her, supporting her weight and directing her
helpless steps, she went off across the snow. But the Indians
remained solemnly to watch the working of the white man’s law that
compelled a man to dance upon the air.
BROWN WOLF
SHE had delayed, because of the dew-wet grass, in order to put on
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62
her overshoes, and when she emerged from the house found her
waiting husband absorbed in the wonder of a bursting almond-bud.
She sent a questing glance across the tall grass and in and out
among the orchard trees.
“Where’s Wolf?” she asked.
“He was here a moment ago.” Walt Irvine drew himself away with a
jerk from the metaphysics and poetry of the organic miracle of
blossom, and surveyed the landscape. “He was running a rabbit the
last I saw of him.”
“Wolf! Wolf! Here Wolf!” she called, as they left the clearing
and took the trail that led down through the waxen-belled manzanita
jungle to the county road.
Irvine thrust between his lips the little finger of each hand and
lent to her efforts a shrill whistling.
She covered her ears hastily and made a wry grimace.
“My! for a poet, delicately attuned and all the rest of it, you can
make unlovely noises. My ear-drums are pierced. You outwhistle –
”
“Orpheus.”
“I was about to say a street-arab,” she concluded severely.
“Poesy does not prevent one from being practical – at least it
doesn’t prevent ME. Mine is no futility of genius that can’t sell
gems to the magazines.”
He assumed a mock extravagance, and went on:
“I am no attic singer, no ballroom warbler. And why? Because I am
practical. Mine is no squalor of song that cannot transmute
itself, with proper exchange value, into a flower-crowned cottage,
a sweet mountain-meadow, a grove of red-woods, an orchard of
thirty-seven trees, one long row of blackberries and two short rows
of strawberries, to say nothing of a quarter of a mile of gurgling
brook. I am a beauty-merchant, a trader in song, and I pursue
utility, dear Madge. I sing a song, and thanks to the magazine
editors I transmute my song into a waft of the west wind sighing
through our redwoods, into a murmur of waters over mossy stones
that sings back to me another song than the one I sang and yet the
same song wonderfully – er – transmuted.”
“O that all your song-transmutations were as successful!” she
laughed.
“Name one that wasn’t.”
“Those two beautiful sonnets that you transmuted into the cow that
was accounted the worst milker in the township.”
“She was beautiful – ” he began,
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63
“But she didn’t give milk,” Madge interrupted.
“But she WAS beautiful, now, wasn’t she?” he insisted.
“And here’s where beauty and utility fall out,” was her reply.
“And there’s the Wolf!”
From the thicket-covered hillside came a crashing of underbrush,
and then, forty feet above them, on the edge of the sheer wall of
rock, appeared a wolf’s head and shoulders. His braced fore paws
dislodged a pebble, and with sharp-pricked ears and peering eyes he
watched the fall of the pebble till it struck at their feet. Then
he transferred his gaze and with open mouth laughed down at them.
“You Wolf, you!” and “You blessed Wolf!” the man and woman called
out to him.
The ears flattened back and down at the sound, and the head seemed
to snuggle under the caress of an invisible hand.
They watched him scramble backward into the thicket, then proceeded
on their way. Several minutes later, rounding a turn in the trail