THE STAGE COACH. AT the very threshold of life Julian Grabo met with an Obstacle. It filled the doorway. He could not pass nor see beyond it. 66 "By Jove, what a nuisance!" he had cried when the doctor told him he had not more than six months to live. "But perhaps," said the physician, "if you'll go into the arid country, you '11 make the six months into a year." "I could put in a year excellently," mused Grabo. "I believe I'll go." He could hardly realize that he was in danger. He did not feel depleted nor weakened. He was full of excitable life, and interested in everything, men, women, animals, poetry, history, and possibilities. "You could put me anywhere and I'd amuse myself," he said to a friend. "I never yet complained about anything,not even my coffee. It seems such a waste of good nature for ME to go off!" His friends were incredulous, — the men swore and the women wept. But Grabo, who had once bellowed like a calf when his football team had been beaten by a rival college, now shed no tear. He sent out his farewell cards, packed up his portable possessions, and set off post haste for a sheep ranch in Colorado, which was kept by a young Englishman he had met on his travels. On the cars he tried to think things over, but his mind would not concentrate. All he could think of was Stevenson's epitaph, which the rails rattled off at a brisk tempo: Under the wide and starry sky, This be the verse you grave for me: Here he lies where he longed to be; Home is the sailor, home from the sea, And the hunter home from the hill. "But the real trouble with all that is," he said to the rails, "that this hunter has not yet been to the hill, nor this sailor to the sea." The rails kept up an idiot-iteration, however: Glad did I live and gladly die. He grew more and more dejected as he went westward. He resented the vigor of the engineer who stuck his grimy face out of the cab to nod to Grabo as he paced the platform; he was angry with the brunette young woman who was on her way to Los Angeles and expected to find it gay; he detested the hale old man who told stories in the smoking compartment. He grew bitter at the inequalities of fate. By degrees he reached despair, then abjection. He sank into a sodden reverie, forgot to eat, slept as if he were drugged, and awoke with a semi-prostration upon him. This made him exaggerate his symptoms. "It will not be even three months," his frightened spirit shrieked out to his trembling body. At Upper Mesa he was to take a stage coach, and he loathed the idea, for it meant that he was to have companions. And, truly enough, he found himself in intimate proximity intimate proximity to them. He would have liked to shut them out of his consciousness, but so far from being able to do that, he was forced into a minute yet distasteful observation of them. As a man doomed to die before sun down will watch the progress of a fly on the wall, or count the tiles on the floor of his cell, so Julian observed his companions, though they were to him as negligible as tiles or flies. There were five passengers within the coach and one outside with the driver. To begin with, there was Grabo, the doomed and unreconciled. Then there was an old man, a woman of forty, a woman of seventy-five, and a childgirl of seven. Outside were Tuttle Underwood, a miner, and Henry Victor, the owner and driver of the stage coach. These two men had introduced themselves to Grabo. Victor measured six feet three, and he handled the ribbons of his four-in-hand with happy nonchalance. The Rockies have a breed of their own, and Victor was a Rocky Mountain man. His hands, face, and beard were the color of well-seasoned sandstone, and he affected the same color in his clothes. Never did a human being fit more unobtrusively into a landscape. His voice had an agreeable monotone which accorded with the minor, undulating harmonies of wind, water, and trees which soughed in the cañons. If some over-musician, reflected Grabo, could find the keynote to the Rockies, that would be the keynote to Henry Victor, too. As for his four bays, they were mountain horses as surely as their driver was a mountain man, and no one of them was rendered in the least nervous by the fact that the rear wheels of the coach were flirting over the precipice as the vehicle flung around the buttressed rock. Underwood, the miner, was as lean as a coyote. His iron-gray hair was shaggy, his eyes in perfect focus, his hand good for the exigeant shot. He wore a dustcolored hat, a blue flannel shirt, a faded coat, trousers of the same sad fabric tucked in handsome boots, and he was belted and armed. He looked to Grabo as if he would probably live forever. As for the people within the coach, each one was alone. None had known any other member of the company till that hour. Even the child was alone, her only companion being an ugly doll. "You are my little girl," she was heard to babble. "Really and truly you are, though I have n't seen you since ever. You've been living away off with your grandmother for years 'n' years, and now you're coming home to your own mamma. You'd better look nice, or she won't like you, so there!" She found a bit of string in the bottom of the coach and tied it around the doll's neck. "There!" she said in satisfied accents, "now you've got a tag on, telling just who you are and where you're going, and there would n't be any sense in your getting lost. You just go up to anybody, man or woman, and show 'em that tag, and they'll help you on. Folks is always good to a child." This optimistic remark was followed by a sigh on the part of the child, and seemed to be more of a creed than a conviction. It created a mild sensation. The old man looked appealingly at the women. The old woman felt in her bag for treasures which she did not find. The woman of forty started up from a reverie, regarded the child in a puzzled and somewhat embarrassed fashion, and then seated herself by her. "I hope you 're not getting tired," she said. There was a minor cadence to the voice, which was rather deep and serious. "I don't think I'm tired," said the child, turning eyes of heavenly blue upon the woman, "but it 's dreadful when no one says a word!" "Oh, well, you see," said the woman apologetically, letting a smile creep into her rather bitter face, we don't know each other." 66 66 Except you and me,” cried the child, with a laugh which revealed two rows of minute and pearly teeth. "We got acquainted quick, did n't we?" "Very," said the woman with flattering gravity. "I've come a long way," continued the little one, "and my grandma cried when I left her. Here, read this!" She tugged at a string which ran about her neck, and drew out a tag. The woman read from it : "Margaret Samsom, Arline, Colorado." "That's my name and where I'm go ing," announced the child. Her penetrating treble reached the men on the front seat, and Underwood nudged Victor. "D'yeh hear that?" he whispered. "She's th' daughter of Red Mag!" They turned in their seats and regarded the child with curiosity and something akin to horror. She had a face as tender as a flower. Her blue eyes were beaming with excitement, brown ringlets clustered about her low, blue veined temples, her teeth were like little grains of rice, and her parted lips were exquisitely arched. As her soft glowing neck crept away between the clean ruffles of her gingham frock, it conveyed an idea of delicacy and loveliness of person. She beamed at the miner as he regarded her with frowning anxiety. "Peter's eye!" he said, and spat twice in the road. At intervals he ejaculated with disgust, "Red Mag!" And once he said, "The only decent thing for you to do, Hank, is to run this here stage over the gulch, and end it for her before she meets her mamma.'" "Have you a tag around your neck?" little Margaret asked of the bitter-faced woman. "Who-me?" piped the old woman. "No; I've always lived at Morgansport. That ain't a hilly place." tone. "Going to live out this-a-way?" "Well, yes, I bethought myself to," responded the old lady in a neighborly "My sister Marthy, that I've bin livin' with, is twenty years younger than me, and a very spry person. I got under foot. I could see it. She did n't like me fussin' about her kitchen, nur weedin' in the garden, and it seemed to her that I had to burn a most uncommon amount of wood to keep warm. I kin see as plain as anything how it struck Marthy. I did n't want her grudgin' me my days, and I took matters in my own hands, and lit right out for my son James's. I knew Jim would want me!" She put her head on one side, exhibiting that last form of coquetry · - that of a mother for a well-loved son. "Does your son live at Arline, ma'am?" inquired Victor. "Yes," she answered, smiling till her toothless gums were fully revealed. "James Farnam. Maybe you know him? He was always great for makin' friends." Grabo saw the men on the front seat exchange one swift and frightened look. "Now I will drive the blamed old stage over the rim!" swore Victor to Underwood. They smiled at each other "No, dear." "What am I going to call you when grimly. I want to speak to you?" "Mrs. Ellery-no, aunt Anna." "What's to pay?" wondered Grabo. The day wore on pleasantly enough. Grabo forgot himself a little. Or, rather, the mysticism which was his inheritance from a line of dreamers began to anæsthetize him. The vastness of the world about him, the endurability of those mountain ranges, the clarity of the sapphire heavens, the swing of the high sun, the obvious fret and fume of man's little life as indicated in the group there in the The horses were toiling up the slope. They were in the midst of a great gorge. The world about them was vast and dead, its fires burned out, its floods spent, its tumult stilled. As they climbed and up, the very old woman began to move her head from side to side curiously, and several times she put her hand to her throat. "There's a dreadful noise in my ears," coach, all reconciled him somewhat to she complained. up "Never bin up as high as this before, I reckon?" said Victor interrogatively. his grief. The old, old woman swayed feebly in her seat, yet still smiled on, thinking of "Jim." The little child grew fretful, and the bitter-faced woman comforted her with infinite tenderness. The two men on the front seat were telling tales to each other to pass away the time. Only the old man and Grabo sat silent. There seemed to be something hunted in the old man's face. "What's his trouble?" wondered Grabo, "and how long before oblivion will overtake him? The trouble with me is, I have no trouble. I'm in fit shape for life, and not attaining it." He remembered with sudden self-pity that he had not even kissed a woman as men kiss the women they love. This made him turn the eye of masculine appraisement on the bitter-faced person near him. He noticed that her eyes were gray, half-closed, as if from instinctive reserve of soul; that her lips were softly compressed, that they were shapely and mournful. Her complexion was that of a woman who has lost anticipation, and in whose veins the blood moves wearily. A plume of gray hair showed above her brow in the midst of the brown. She was costumed with conspicuous neatness in black, and about her neck gear was just a touch of bright ness, as if, after long denial, she had awakened to the joys of decoration. "She's beginning over," mused Grabo. "She has seen a mirage on the desert, and she's making for it." Silence seemed to lie on Grabo like a spell. The fundamental silence of the abyss, of the vault, of the everlasting hills, had come up and seized him by the throat. It became a pain at last, for Grabo had always been loquacious till he met the Obstacle. He made up his mind to speak, and he turned to the old man. "Quite a break-up-coming away out here," said Grabo. “Yes, yes. " Well, I've been living with my son's wife. My son died three years ago, and Lucy set out to do her duty by me. It was hard for her — and harder for me! he gave a sardonic little twist to his lips, which were loose and pitiful and discouraged-looking. while ago I could see she was taking interest in a man down street, a good man, too. I sold some things I had. 'Lucy,' says I, 'I'm going to take myself off.'. says she. 6 How 'll you live, father?' 'There's my pension,' says I, and there's old Luke Bailey. He was in my regiment, you see, and he baches it out in Red Butte. He's often written urging me to come out.' — ' But father,' says Lucy, 'I always wanted to be with you in your last hours.' She was still thinking of her duty. That's Lucy's style. Lucy,' says I, 'spare yourself the pleasure. You're a good girl, and that's why I'm getting out of your way.'" His faded eyes watered, and he sat staring at the wall of rock beside which the coach was running. "There ain't nothing so satisfying as being out from under foot," observed Underwood, who had been listening. "It ain't just what I pictured for myself," said the old man. "I've had good homes, and a good wife and children, and responsibility in my community. They're all gone. Sometimes I think I never had them, - that it was a kind o' dream. Anyhow, now I'm going on to a new place. It took sixty-five years for my roots to strike in, and then I tore 'em up." "What's 's your name, sir?" asked Grabo respectfully. His heart warmed genially toward this man who had built up the structure of life and seen it tumble about his feet. "John Siller," responded the man, with a ring in his voice, as if the name had its significance. Grabo was sure it "You've walked a long road," said in his arms. She was no heavier than Grabo gently. "Eh? Oh yes! Walked a long road! Well, you'd think so if you'd walked it with me. The people that have passed they'd make a cityful! But walking a long road ain't the only thing, young man." He looked at Grabo with a penetrating glance. "He sees I'm doomed," thought the young man. "Walking a road, and not being driven along it, is the thing," said Anna Ellery. There was an accent of wrath and sorrow in her voice. "My idea is to walk it and set my own pace." a child, but repulsive with the repulsion of wasted flesh, sunken eyes, and inert limbs. Her cheeks began to puff out curiously, and her eyes to roll. The coach was, fortunately, at a small level semicircle of honest horizontal earth. The soil had washed down here, and piñon trees seven in number. · stood together in a confidential and frightened group. Grabo put the old soul there. Nay the soul, which may have been young or old, had escaped, but whether it was in the purple and solemn valley beneath them, or in the sweet clarity of daffodil sky above, no man ventured to surmise. All looked at the pitiful body, It had the gusto of a fresh declaration which, bereft of that which gave it its of independence. 66 Evidently," thought Grabo, "she found the path too narrow for two." It came lunch time, and being in a grove of pines, they all seated themselves on the ground and ate together. Mrs. Ellery made coffee; Grabo looked after the child, who was fastidious, and did not take well to the cold food. Mrs. Farnam, the old woman, could not eat at all, and the coffee she drank intoxicated her. "If it wa'n't for the thought of Jim," she gasped again and again, "I don't know how I could git up spirit to go on." "There ain't nothing to do, ma'am, but git on," said Victor cheerily. "You'll come out all right, ma'am." But as the afternoon wore on she became more and more distressed. Mrs. Ellery noted how the breath fluttered in the poor old throat. Grabo, who watched her with fascinated eyes, and who so strange was his mood — appeared to feel the winds of Destiny blowing continually upon this party of stragglers in search of happiness, saw a peculiar pallor spreading over her face. trifling significance, lay supine. There being neither prayers nor tears at hand, the bitter-faced woman, who had been supporting the dead woman, kissed her on the forehead. "Good-by, mother," she said gently. Grabo felt the tears leap to his eyes. "I did n't know women were SO sweet," he thought. "You heard her say she was goin' to Arline to visit her darlin' son, did n't yeh?" asked Underwood with emotion. Grabo nodded. "Well," said Underwood," she would n't hev seen him. He tried to knife Bill Upton in Garey's place three weeks back, and got shot between the eyes." "Dead?" asked Anna Ellery. "You bet, ma'am," said Underwood devoutly. "Poor mother!" said Anna Ellery |