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Precipice, The

<h2>XXVI</h2> Karl Wander rode wearily up the hill on his black mare. Honora saw him coming and waved to him from the window. There was no one to put up his horse, and he drove her into the stables and fed her and spread her bed while Honora watched what he and she had laughingly termed "the outposts." For she believed she had need to be on guard, and she thanked heaven that all of the approaches to the house were in the open and that there was nothing nearer than the rather remote grove of piñon trees which could shelter any creeping enemy. Wander came on at last to the house, making his way deliberately and scorning, it would seem, all chance of attack. But Honora's ears fairly reverberated with the pistol shot which did not come; the explosion which was now so long delayed. She ran to open the door for him and to drag him into the friendly kitchen, where, in the absence of any domestic help, she had spread their evening meal. There was a look in his face which she had not seen there before--a look of quietude, of finality. "Well?" she asked. He flung his hat on a settle and sat down to loosen his leggings. "They've gone," he said, "bag and baggage." "The miners?" "Yes, left this afternoon--confiscated some trains and made the crews haul them out of town. They shook their fists at the mines and the works as if they had been the haunt of the devil. I couldn't bring myself to skulk. I rode Nell right down to the station and sat there till the last carload pulled out with the men and women standing together on the platform to curse me." "Karl! How could you? It's a marvel you weren't shot." "Too easy a mark, I reckon." "And Elena?" "Lifted on board by two rival suitors. She didn't even look at me." He drew a long breath. "I was guiltless in that, Honora. You've stood by through everything, and you've made a cult of believing in me, and I want you to know that, so far as Elena was concerned, you were right to do it. I may have been a fool--but not consciously--not consciously." "I know it. I believe you." A silence fell between them while Honora set the hot supper on the table and put the tea to draw. "It's very still," he said finally. "But the stillness here is nothing to what it is down where my village stood. I've made a frightful mess of things, Honora." "No," she said, "you built up; another has torn down. You must get more workmen. There may be a year or two of depression, but you're going to win out, Karl." "I've fought a good many fights first and last, Honora,--fights you know nothing about. Some of them have been with men, some with ideas, some of the worst ones with myself. It would be a long story and a strange one if I were to tell it all." "I dare say it would." "I suppose I must seem very strange to a civilized woman like you, or--or your friend, Kate Barrington." "You seem very like a brave man, Karl, and an interesting one." "But I'm tired, Honora,--extraordinarily tired. I don't feel like fighting. Quiet and rest are what I'm longing for, and I'm to begin all over again, it appears. I've got to struggle up again almost from the bottom." "Come to supper, Karl. Never mind all that. We have food and we have shelter. No doubt we shall sleep. Things like that deserve our gratitude. Accept these blessings. There are many who lack them." Suddenly he threw up his arms with a despairing gesture. "Oh, it isn't myself, Honora, that I'm grieving for! It's those hot-headed, misguided, wayward fellows of mine! They've left the homes I tried to help them win, they've followed a self-seeking, half-mad, wholly vicious agitator, and their lives, that I meant to have flow on so smoothly, will be troubled and wasted. I know so well what will happen! And then, their hate! It hangs over me like a cloud! I'm not supposed to be sensitive. I'm looked on as a swaggering, reckless, devil-may-care fellow with a pretty good heart and a mighty sure aim; but I tell you, cousin, among them, they've taken the life out of me." "It's your dark hour, Karl. You're standing the worst of it right now. To-morrow things will look better." "I couldn't ask a woman to come out here and stand amid this ruin with me, Honora. You know I couldn't. The only person who would be willing to share my present life with me would be some poor, devil-driven creature like Elena--come to think of it, even she wouldn't! She's off and away with a lover at each elbow!" "Here!" said Honora imperatively. She held a plate toward him laden with steaming food. He arose, took it, seated himself, and tried a mouthful, but he had to wash it down with water. "I'm too tired," he said. "Really, Honora, you'll have to forgive me." She got up then and lighted the lamp in his bedroom. "Thank you," he said. "Rest is what I need. It was odd they didn't shoot, wasn't it? I thought every moment that they would." "You surely didn't wish that they would, Karl?" "No." He paused for a moment at the door. "No--only everything appeared to be so futile. My bad deeds never turned on me as my good ones have done. It makes everything seem incoherent. What--what would a woman like Miss Barrington make of all that--of harm coming from good?" "I don't know," said Honora, rather sharply. "She hasn't written. I told her all the trouble we were in,--the danger and the distress,--but she hasn't written a word." "Why should she?" demanded Wander. "It's none of her concern. I suppose she thinks a fool is best left with his folly. Good-night, cousin. You're a good woman if ever there was one. What should I have done without you?" Honora smiled wanly. He seemed to have forgotten that it was she who would have fared poorly without him. She closed up the house for the night, looking out in the bright moonlight to see that all was quiet. For many days and nights she had been continually on the outlook for lurking figures, but now she was inclined to believe that she had overestimated the animosity of the strikers. After all, try as they might, they could bring no accusations against the man who, hurt to the soul by their misunderstanding of him, was now laying his tired head upon his pillow. All was very still. The moonlight touched to silver the snow upon the mountains; the sound of the leaping river was like a distant flute; the wind was rising with long, wavelike sounds. Honora lingered in the doorway, looking and listening. Her heart was big with pity--pity for that disheartened man whose buoyancy and self-love had been so deeply wounded, pity for those wandering, angry, aimless men and women who might have rested secure in his guardianship; pity for all the hot, misguided hearts of men and women. Pity, too, for the man with the most impetuous heart of them all, who wandered in some foreign land with a woman whose beauty had been his lure and his undoing. Yes, she had been given grace in those days, when she seemed to stand face to face with death, to pity even David and Mary! She walked with a slow firm step up to her room, holding her head high. She had learned trust as well as compassion. She trusted Karl and the issue of his sorrow. She even trusted the issue of her own sorrow, which, a short time before, had seemed so shameful. She threw wide her great windows, and the wind and the moonlight filled her chamber. <hr style="width: 25%;"> Two days later Karl Wander and Honora Fulham rode together to the village, now dismantled and desolate. "I remember," said Karl, "what a boyish pride I took in the little town at first, Honora, to have built it, and had it called after me and all. Such silly fools as men are, trying to perpetuate themselves by such childish methods." "Perpetuation is an instinct with us," said Honora calmly, "Immortality is our greatest hope. I'm so thankful I have my children, Karl. They seem to carry one's personality on, you know, no matter how different they actually may be from one's self." "Oh, yes," said Karl, with a short sigh, "you're right there. You've a beautiful brace of babies, Honora. I believe I'll have to ask you to appoint me their guardian. I must have some share in them. It will give me a fresh reason for going on." "Are you a trifle short of reasons for going on, Karl?" Honora asked gently, averting her look so that she might not seem to be watching him. "Yes, I am," he admitted frankly. "Although, now that the worst of my chagrin is over at having failed so completely in the pet scheme of my life, I can feel my fighting blood getting up again. I'm going to make a success of the town of Wander yet, my cousin, and those three mines that lie there so silently are going to hum in the old way. You'll see a string of men pouring in and out of those gates yet, take my word for it. But as for me, I proceed henceforth on a humbler policy." "Humbler? Isn't it humble to be kind, Karl? That's what you were first and last--kind. You were forever thinking of the good of your people." "It was outrageously insolent of me to do it, my cousin. Who am I that I should try to run another man's affairs? How should I know what is best for him--isn't he the one to be the judge of that? patronage, patronage, that's what they can't stand--that's what natural overmen like myself with amiable dispositions try to impose on those we think inferior to ourselves. We can't seem to comprehend that the way to make them grow is to leave them alone." "Don't be bitter, Karl." "I'm not bitter, Honora. I'm rebuked. I'm literal. I'm instructed. I have brought you down here to talk the situation over with me. I can get men in plenty to advise me, but I want to know what you think about a number of things. Moreover, I want you to tell me what you imagine Miss Barrington would think about them." "Why don't you write and ask her?" asked Honora. She herself was hurt at not having heard from Kate. "I gave her notice that I wasn't going to write any more," said Karl sharply. "I couldn't have her counting on me when I wasn't sure that I was a man to be counted on." "Oh," cried Honora, enlightened. "That's the trouble, is it? But still, I should think she'd write to me. I told her of all you and I were going through together--" she broke off suddenly. Her words presented to her for the first time some hint of the idea she might have conveyed to Kate. She smiled upon her cousin beautifully, while he stared at her, puzzled at her unexpected radiance. "Kate loves him," she decided, looking at the man beside her with fresh appreciation of his power. She was the more conscious of it that she saw him now in his hour of defeat and perceived his hope and ingenuity, his courage and determination gathering together slowly but steadily for a fresh effort. "Dear old Kate," she mused. "Karl rebuffed her in his misery, and I misled her. If she hadn't cared she'd have written anyway. As it is--" But Karl was talking. "Now there's the matter of the company store," he was saying. "What would Miss Barrington think about the ethical objections to that?" Honora turned her attention to the matter in hand, and when, late that afternoon, the two rode their jaded horses home, a new campaign had been planned. Within a week Wander left for Denver. Honora heard nothing from him for a fortnight. Then a wire came. He was returning to Wander with five hundred men. "They're hoboes--pick-ups," he told Honora that night as the two sat together at supper. "Long-stake and short-stake men--down-and-outs--vagrants--drunkards, God knows what. I advertised for them. 'Previous character not called into question,' was what I said. 'Must open up my mines. Come and work as long as you feel like it.' I haven't promised them anything and they haven't promised me anything, except that I give them wages for work. A few of them have women with them, but not more than one in twenty. I don't know what kind of a mess the town of Wander will be now, but at any rate, it's sticking to its old programme of 'open shop.' Any one who wants to take these fellows away from me is quite welcome to do it. No affection shall exist between them and me. There are no obligations on either side. But they seem a hearty, good-natured lot, and they said they liked my grit." Something that was wild and reckless in all of the Wanders flashed in Honora's usually quiet eyes. "A band of brigands," she laughed. "Really, Karl, I think you'll make a good chief for them. There's one thing certain, they'll never let you patronize them." "I shan't try," declared Karl. "They needn't look to me for benefits of any sort. I want miners." Honora chuckled pleasantly and looked at her cousin from the corner of her eye. She had her own ideas about his ability to maintain such detachment. He amused her a little later by telling her how he had formed a town government and he described the men he had appointed to office. "They take it seriously, too," he declared. "We have a ragamuffin government and regulations that would commend themselves to the most judicious. 'Pon my soul, Honora, though it's only play, I swear some of these fellows begin to take on little affectations of self-respect. We're going to have a council meeting to-morrow. You ought to come down." That gave Honora a cue. She was wanting something more to do than to look after the house, now that servants had again been secured. It occurred to her that it might be a good idea to call on the women down at Wander. She was under no error as to their character. Broken-down followers of weak men's fortunes,--some with the wedding ring and some without,--they nevertheless were there, flesh and blood, and possibly heart and soul. Not the ideal but the actual commended itself to her these days. Kate had taught her that lesson. So, quite simply, she went among them. "Call on me when you want anything," she said to them. "I'm a woman who has seen trouble, and I'd like to be of use to any of you if trouble should come your way. Anyhow, trouble or no trouble, let us be friends." In her simple dress, with her quiet, sad face and her deep eyes, she convinced them of sincerity as few women could have done. They bade her enter their doors and sit in their sloven homes amid the broken things the Italians had left behind them. "Why not start a furniture shop?" asked Honora. "We could find some men here who could make plain furniture. I'll see Mr. Wander about it." That was a simple enough plan, and she had no trouble in carrying it out. She got the women to cooperate with her in other ways. Among them they cleaned up the town, set out some gardens, and began spending their men's money for necessaries. "Do watch out," warned Karl; "you'll get to be a Lady Bountiful--" "And you a benevolent magnate--" "Damned if I will! Well, play with your hobo brides if you like, Honora, but don't look for gratitude or rectitude or any beatitude." "Not I," declared Honora. "I'm only amusing myself." They kept insisting to each other that they had no higher intention. They were hilarious over their failures and they persisted in taking even their successes humorously. At first the "short-stake men" drifted away, but presently they began to drift back again. They liked it at Wander,--liked being mildly and tolerantly controlled by men of their own sort,--men with some vested authority, however, and a reawakened perception of responsibility. Wander was their town--the hoboes' own city. It was one of the few places where something was expected of the hobo. Well, a hobo was a man, wasn't he? The point was provable. A number of Karl Wander's vagrants chose to prove that they were not reprobates. Those who had been "down and out" by their own will, or lack of it, as well as those whom misfortune had dogged, began to see in this wild village, in the heart of these rich and terrific mountains, that wonderful thing, "another chance." "Would Miss Barrington approve of us now?" Karl would sometimes ask Honora. "Why should she?" Honora would retort. "We're not in earnest. We're only fighting bankruptcy and ennui." "That's it," declared Karl. "By the way, I must scrape up some more capital somewhere, Honora. I've borrowed everything I could lay my hands on in Denver. Now I've written to some Chicago capitalists about my affairs and they show a disposition to help me out. They'll meet in Denver next week. Perhaps I shall bring them here. I've told them frankly what my position was. You see, if I can swing things for six months more, the tide will turn. Do you think my interesting rabble will stick to me?" "Don't count on them," said Honora. "Don't count on anybody or anything. But if you like to take your chance, do it. It's no more of a gamble than anything else a Colorado man is likely to invest in." "You don't think much of us Colorado men, do you, my cousin?" "I don't think you are quite civilized," she said. Then a twinge of memory twisted her face. "But I don't care for civilized men. I like glorious barbarians like you, Karl." "Men who are shot at from behind bushes, eh? If I ever have to hide in a cave, Honora, will you go with me?" "Yes, and load the guns." He flashed her a curious look; one which she could not quite interpret. Was he thinking that he would like her to keep beside him? For a second, with a thrill of something like fear, this occurred to her. Then by some mysterious process she read his mind, and she read it aright. He was really thinking how stirring a thing life would seem if he could hear words like that from the lips of Kate Barrington. <hr style="width: 35%;"> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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