9 The Best of All

Arthur reverted at once to a primitive cowboy condition. He had acquired the habit of doing whatever he undertook to do with intense vigor and concentration. Now there was no cowboy among those who were always cowboys who could ride longer or faster than he or undertake more daring deeds, and he was the master spirit here just as he had been the master spirit on a far greater stage. Life on the vast ranch rose out of its monotonous groove.

Arthur enjoyed every day of it with the intensity that he put in all things. The color came back to his cheeks although it was a brown now, made by the sun and wind of the desert, the soft muscles hardened again, New York and its fever floated far away. He was in the saddle all day and at night he slept a dreamless sleep, often on the plain with the same saddle for a pillow. Two or three times he went up into the mountains to hunt bear and deer, and on his return from the last trip of this kind he and his three comrades rode into a tiny village in the foothills just coming into fame because of a new and wonderful mineral spring. The place looked so attractive in its fresh, green valley, watered by a mountain stream that later on lost itself in the desert that Cathcart decided to stay there for the day. He went to the little hotel where he enjoyed the luxury of a bath and shave, but when he strolled out in the sunshine he was still in his cowboy costume with the usual finishing touches of sombrero and leggings.

He wandered up the valley toward the gorge, from which the stream shot in a torrent, silver on the pebbles and foam on the rocks. A little turning shut the town from view and before him was all the sublimity of the mountains and the wilderness. The narrow but rich valley had a carpet of green, the foothills beyond were shaggy with dark pine, and beyond these rose the peaks, forever white and silent.

Cathcart lay down on the grass and gazed up at the massive barrier that would always defend the wilderness, and in the silence and loneliness he felt a great peace. His mind traveled back over the last two or three years, and when he reflected on the great change made in himself he felt that he had cause to give thanks.

He looked about idly, not seeking anything with his eyes, but he did not wish any other living being to come into his Eden. It was one of those periods when he wished to be alone, and when he saw a flutter of white through the trees, he rose displeased. It was a woman’s skirt, lifted a little by a wanton wind, and presently he saw the figure of the woman as she walked slowly on. Her face was hidden from him by a great parasol that she carried, white like her dress, and as she was not moving toward him he reflected that she would probably be out of sight in another minute or two. Then he could return to his silence and his peace.

The Tribune, as he had been often called, sat down on the grass again, but in another moment he raised his head with sudden motion. Then he sprang to his feet and gazed eagerly, while the color rushed into his face. He had seen something familiar in the white and distant figure, and the blood was pounding in his ears.

Cathcart knew from the first that he was not mistaken. It was she! Lucy! there in the mountains close to him, and the habit of decision that he had learned served him well now. It came over him in a rush, all that she was to him, his long repression, and the intensity with which his heart longed for her. There are many men who never love any woman save one. Their hearts tell them it is she, the first time she comes, and their love never varies. Cathcart was of this kind. He had loved Lucy Howe when he met her in the snow and he would love her always.

He walked rapidly after her and she heard his approaching footsteps on the soft turf. Something warned her, too, and she knew it was he. She walked more slowly, and the white parasol no longer hid her face.

Cathcart, after his bold approach, hesitated when a little distance from her, and was seized with fear. She looked so calm, so white, so virginal, that she was a check to his abrupt courage. It did not occur to him then to wonder why she was there in that little rock at the base of the mountains. There was nothing primitive about her; the white dress that looked so simple he knew had been made in New York; the broad white hat and the white parasol came from the same place; all was a perfect harmony of fit and color—she was educated and civilized to the last degree, and she was, therefore, all the more attractive and lovely. Yet she seemed to form a part of this scheme of mountain and wilderness, its chief decoration.

Cathcart, for the first time in his life was afraid, really afraid. He, the bold Tribune, who had so often faced hostile audiences, trembled. She looked so white, so unapproachable, so surpassingly fair, and he remembered that he had been her father’s enemy. He became, for the moment, just an ordinary timid young man who wishes to but does not.

After a minute or so of very slow walking the white parasol was lifted again with rather a haughty jerk, and she went on toward the gorge at an increased pace. Arthur’s courage came back at the prospect of losing sight of her, and he ceased to tremble. He, too, walked swiftly now, and she heard his foot falls on the soft turf almost beside her, but she did not turn.

“Miss Howe.” said Cathcart desperately and pleadingly, “wait a moment please, won’t you? Don’t run away.”

She stopped at the sound of his voice, turned, and her face expressed the greatest surprise.

“Why, Mr. Cathcart?” she said. “You!”

“Yes,” he exclaimed. “It is I! And I did not dream that you were here!”

“Nor I you,” she said. She was the calmer one of the two.

He seized her free hand—the other held the parasol—in both of his, and he did not let it go. Slowly the color deepened in her face, and she uttered an embarrassed little laugh.

“Why,” she said irrelevantly, “you are a cowboy, a regular cowboy, sombrero, spurs, leggings, and all.”

He blushed and dropped her hand. He thought she was making fun of him.

“I forgot,” he said, looking down at himself ruefully. “I’ve been out hunting and I’ve not had a chance to put on city clothes.”

She smiled. She was quite calm again.

“I’m glad you haven’t,” she said. “Your garb becomes you. Tell me about yourself. When did you come here?”

“I had a partial collapse,” he said, “and the doctor sent me back to this fountain of health and strength. Lucky collapse! Blessed doctor! If it hadn’t been for them I shouldn’t have found you.”

Red came back into her cheeks and again she became irrelevant.

“You are a great man now,” she said. “I’ve followed your career.”

“I’m not a great man,” he replied. “I’ve been lucky enough to have some success and God has given me many friends.”

Then he was silent, and she, too, was without words as they walked on together. He was content that it should be so, because they were alone in their world, and there was none other to claim her. It seemed to him that the old sweet gravity had deepened and she was strong and self-reliant without having lost any of her girlish freshness and youth. He caught these impressions with stolen glances, while the great solemn mountains looked down upon the two and did not shake their white heads in denial.

“I was going to my favorite place under the big tree up there,” she said.

“We’ll go together.”

It was a huge tree with spreading roots, almost at the edge of the little river, just where it shot from the gorge with a roar and a flash of silver water, creamed now and then into foam at the edges. They sat down on a turfy seat between the roots and both looked down at the water and then up at the mountains.

“What a beautiful world!” said Cathcart.

“You like the wilderness?”

“Particularly with you in it.”

She was silent and looked intently at the rushing water. A glorious sunlight just then was gilding it with wonderful colors. Silver and gold and blue and then white flashed up from its mirrored depths. She looked up at the mountains. The peaks shone white against the golden glow of the sky. Arthur looked only at the water and he grew brave, as his purpose grew.

“I think a fate, a kindly fate has had charge of us,” he said. “Don’t you see any significance in it?”

She did not answer; he had not expected it, and he went on in the same slow, grave tone.

“Our meetings: the chance that continually brings us together. First in the snow and the storm in New York; I might have met any other of four million people, but it was you; then in the grove on Long Island, it was you who came; and here in the great wilderness of space, the same chance or kind fortune brings us together again.”

He paused and she was still silent. Now she gazed only at the water, never looking up at the mountains.

“I think, Lucy,” he said, at length, “that all this has a meaning. It means that we are to be together always. I love you. Won’t you marry me and prove to me that I am right?”

“Not to prove that you are right, but because I love you.”

“I think I loved you when I first saw you back there in the snow.”

She raised a rosy face and replied:

“I knew I loved you then.”

It was a long time before he remembered that she was the daughter of his enemy. He did not hate James Howe, but James Howe must hate him.

“Your father?” he said anxiously.

“He is here,” she replied gravely and without apprehension. “We came for the water. He will never be a great financier again, but he is a happier man, and he has made me a happier woman. It was a collapse, but the doctors say he will live for years, longer, perhaps, than he would have done had he been able to continue at work in the old way. You will find him greatly changed.”

When they walked back slowly through the green valley toward the little town he found how true were her words. James Howe was sitting placidly in an arm chair at the base of a tree that put thick boughs between him and the sun. His hair was white as snow, and it looked like the crown of a patriarch. The calm, benevolent face beneath continued the likeness. All the light of the blue eyes was kindly and the white hands lay peacefully across his knees.

The contrast between the quiet old man sitting quietly in the shade and the great financier in the heart of the great city’s fevered money market made a deep and lasting impression upon Arthur’s mind.

He rose when he saw Cathcart coming with his daughter.

“You are welcome here. Mr. Cathcart,” he said, “we are friends now, if you choose.”

“I choose it above all—now,” replied Arthur, and his voice trembled, “when I am about to take your daughter from you.”

The old man looked at Arthur and then at Lucy. His eyes grew troubled but in a moment became quiet and peaceful again.

“Not so,” he replied, “because if you take her I go with her.”

“And we three are to live together always.” said Lucy, as she put her arms about her father’s neck and wept happy tears.

Then occurred a strange episode in the life of Arthur Cathcart, one for which only a few of his most intimate friends can account; it is only they who know the strength of his love for a woman. He dropped suddenly from the world and was not heard of again in a long time.

But it is the whole truth of the matter that Arthur was married and went on his honeymoon. He went to the ranch for his clothes, and he was so ardent, so devoted that Lucy consented, and they were married a week later in the little church in the little town. Then, leaving Mr. Howe there, they went up into the deeper mountains for a wonderful honeymoon.

Before going, Arthur, by telegraph, had obtained his uncle’s consent and blessing from New York. He also learned that the campaign in the city was making splendid progress. The Independents, with a mighty public opinion behind them, believed they were sure of victory. Worthington had been nominated without opposition for district attorney, and now they were looking around for a mayoralty candidate with the liberty of choice among a dozen good men.

“They won’t need me again this year,” said Arthur joyfully to himself, “and I’ll show the public also that I have no desire to dictate, even if I could do so.”

Then New York disappeared for a while from his scheme of life, and he and his bride dwelt in happiness among the great and solemn, the beautiful and kindly mountains. They saw the lights and shadows come and go in the dark pine forest, they saw the flash of silver and gold on the surface of the leaping water, and they saw a wonderful sun, all yellow and red fire, rise and set over the gleaming banks of snow far above. At night they would often sit close to each other by the crackling camp-fire and the two guides would lie down in silence before the coals. Nobody would speak, but all the while millions of stars twinkled kindly down at them from a sky of dusky blue.

The days passed, they grew to weeks, autumn deepened and touched the air with chill, but Arthur still had no desire to return to the world, and the mountains still held him and Lucy.

It was the middle of November and a worn man on a tired horse was riding slowly up a mountain path. The horse’s head drooped and the man was battered and stained by sun, wind and rain, but his eyes were keen and his face was alight with the zeal of the chase.

It was Collins, staff correspondent of the New York Standard and he had been riding through the mountains more than a week. The little town in the gorge below had been suddenly cut off from civilization by a great flood. A bridge had been washed out and the telegraph line broken. Collins reached the town, only after ten days’ waiting and hard riding across the desert, and then he found that the object of his chase was somewhere in the high mountains, nobody knew exactly where.

Collins stopped when he reached the crest of a ridge and uttered a joyful little cry. A thin blue column of smoke was rising above the dark green wall of the distant pine forest. “It must be the place,” he said.

The horse seemed to share his hope and went forward at a better pace. The path broadened and led into a valley wonderful in its beauty. It was like a bowl rimmed in by the pine forests on the slopes, and then the white peaks and ridges above. In the center shone among the trees silver glimpses of a little lake.

The spiral of smoke enlarged as Collins advanced, and he saw a white tent in the warmest little cove of the valley. Two people hearing the sound of the horse’s hoofs came forward, and Collins uttered a shout of joy when he saw them. He galloped to them and sprang from his horse to the ground.

“Mr. Cathcart,” he cried, “I’ve come all the way from New York to find you, and I’ve been hunting you a long time.”

“Why’” he asked.

“Because you were unanimously nominated for mayor by the Independents more than three weeks ago, and last Tuesday you were elected by a majority of two hundred thousand. Mr. Cathcart, your greatest work is before you.”

“That is true,” said Cathcart with all the solemnity that he felt.

Then he took Lucy’s hand in his and added:

“With God’s help I’ll do the best I can.”

▲