Seven, she counted, and he, who had gazed on landscapes all his
life, for the first time learned what a “distance” was. After
that, and always, he looked upon the face of nature with a more
seeing eye, learning a delight of his own in surveying the
serried ranks of the upstanding ranges, and in slow contemplation
of the purple summer mists that haunted the languid creases of
the distant hills.
But through it all ran the golden thread of love. At first he
had been content just to ride with Dede and to be on comradely
terms with her; but the desire and the need for her increased.
The more he knew of her, the higher was his appraisal. Had she
been reserved and haughty with him, or been merely a giggling,
simpering creature of a woman, it would have been different.
Instead, she amazed him with her simplicity and wholesomeness,
with her great store of comradeliness. This latter was the
unexpected. He had never looked upon woman in that way. Woman,
the toy; woman, the harpy; woman, the necessary wife and mother
of the race’s offspring,–all this had been his expectation and
understanding of woman. But woman, the comrade and playfellow
and joyfellow–this was what Dede had surprised him in. And the
more she became worth while, the more ardently his love burned,
unconsciously shading his voice with caresses, and with equal
unconsciousness flaring up signal fires in his eyes. Nor was she
blind to it yet, like many women before her, she thought to play
with the pretty fire and escape the consequent conflagration.
“Winter will soon be coming on,” she said regretfully, and with
provocation, one day, “and then there won’t be any more riding.”
“But I must see you in the winter just the same,” he cried
hastily.
She shook her head.
“We have been very happy and all that,” she said, looking at him
with steady frankness. “I remember your foolish argument for
getting acquainted, too; but it won’t lead to anything; it can’t.
I know myself too well to be mistaken.”
Her face was serious, even solicitous with desire not to hurt,
and her eyes were unwavering, but in them was the light, golden
and glowing–the abyss of sex into which he was now unafraid to
gaze.
“I’ve been pretty good,” he declared. “I leave it to you if I
haven’t. It’s been pretty hard, too, I can tell you. You just
think it over. Not once have I said a word about love to you,
and me loving you all the time. That’s going some for a man
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that’s used to having his own way. I’m somewhat of a rusher when
it comes to travelling. I reckon I’d rush God Almighty if it
came to a race over the ice. And yet I didn’t rush you. I guess
this fact is an indication of how much I do love you. Of course
I want you to marry me. Have I said a word about it, though?
Nary a chirp, nary a flutter. I’ve been quiet and good, though
it’s almost made me sick at times, this keeping quiet. I haven’t
asked you to marry me. I’m not asking you now. Oh, not but what
you satisfy me. I sure know you’re the wife for me. But how
about myself ? Do you know me well enough know your own mind?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know, and I ain’t going to
take chances on it now. You’ve got to know for sure whether you
think you could get along with me or not, and I’m playing a slow
conservative game. I ain’t a-going to lose for overlooking my
hand.”
This was love-making of a sort beyond Dede’s experience. Nor had
she ever heard of anything like it. Furthermore, its lack of
ardor carried with it a shock which she could overcome only by
remembering the way his hand had trembled in the past, and by
remembering the passion she had seen that very day and every day
in his eyes, or heard in his voice. Then, too, she recollected
what he had said to her weeks before: “Maybe you don’t know what
patience is,” he had said, and thereat told her of shooting
squirrels with a big rifle the time he and Elijah Davis had
starved on the Stewart River.
“So you see,” he urged, “just for a square deal we’ve got to see
some more of each other this winter. Most likely your mind ain’t
made up yet–”
“But it is,” she interrupted. “I wouldn’t dare permit myself to
care for you. Happiness, for me, would not lie that way. I like
you, Mr. Harnish, and all that, but it can never be more than
that.”
“It’s because you don’t like my way of living,” he charged,
thinking in his own mind of the sensational joyrides and general
profligacy with which the newspapers had credited him–thinking
this, and wondering whether or not, in maiden modesty, she would
disclaim knowledge of it.
To his surprise, her answer was flat and uncompromising.
“No; I don’t.”
“I know I’ve been brash on some of those rides that got into the
papers,” he began his defense, “and that I’ve been travelling
with a lively crowd.”
“I don’t mean that,” she said, “though I know about it too, and
can’t say that I like it. But it is your life in general, your
business. There are women in the world who could marry a man
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like you and be happy, but I couldn’t. And the more I cared for
such a man, the more unhappy I should be. You see, my
unhappiness, in turn, would tend to make him unhappy. I should
make a mistake, and he would make an equal mistake, though his
would not be so hard on him because he would still have his
business.”
“Business!” Daylight gasped. “What’s wrong with my business? I
play fair and square. There’s nothing under hand about it, which
can’t be said of most businesses, whether of the big corporations
or of the cheating, lying, little corner-grocerymen. I play the
straight rules of the game, and I don’t have to lie or cheat or
break my word.”
Dede hailed with relief the change in the conversation and at the
same time the opportunity to speak her mind.
“In ancient Greece,” she began pedantically, “a man was judged a
good citizen who built houses, planted trees–” She did not
complete the quotation, but drew the conclusion hurriedly. “How
many houses have you built? How many trees have you planted?”
He shook his head noncommittally, for he had not grasped the
drift of the argument.
“Well,” she went on, “two winters ago you cornered coal–”
“Just locally,” he grinned reminiscently, “just locally. And I
took advantage of the car shortage and the strike in British
Columbia.”
“But you didn’t dig any of that coal yourself. Yet you forced it
up four dollars a ton and made a lot of money. That was your
business. You made the poor people pay more for their coal. You
played fair, as you said, but you put your hands down into all
their pockets and took their money away from them. I know. I
burn a grate fire in my sitting-room at Berkeley. And instead of
eleven dollars a ton for Rock Wells, I paid fifteen dollars that
winter. You robbed me of four dollars. I could stand it. But
there were thousands of the very poor who could not stand it.
You might call it legal gambling, but to me it was downright
robbery.”
Daylight was not abashed. This was no revelation to him. He
remembered the old woman who made wine in the Sonoma hills and
the millions like her who were made to be robbed.
“Now look here, Miss Mason, you’ve got me there slightly, I
grant. But you’ve seen me in business a long time now, and you
know I don’t make a practice of raiding the poor people. I go
after the big fellows. They’re my meat. They rob the poor, and
I rob them. That coal deal was an accident. I wasn’t after the
poor people in that, but after the big fellows, and I got them,
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167
too. The poor people happened to get in the way and got hurt,
that was all.
“Don’t you see,” he went on, “the whole game is a gamble.
Everybody gambles in one way or another. The farmer gambles
against the weather and the market on his crops. So does the
United States Steel Corporation. The business of lots of men is
straight robbery of the poor people. But I’ve never made that my
business. You know that. I’ve always gone after the robbers.”
“I missed my point,” she admitted. “Wait a minute.”
And for a space they rode in silence.
“I see it more clearly than I can state it, but it’s something