He mounted his horse again and rode on, his heart light as a feather, and on his lips the words of a half-forgotten old song.
CHAPTER VIII
Gard had not been wrong in his reading of the mirage. It was Helen whose presentment that marvel of the desert had set like a bow of promise in the sky. A mood of restlessness had sent the girl forth seeking refuge in the sunlit candor of the plain from the fear that was upon her, of hidden chambers in her own soul, which she shrank from entering.
She was very quiet. From time to time Dickens, the pony, turned to nip playfully first one then the other of her hooded stirrups, inviting her to a frolic. Once, when a parcel of gaunt Indian dogs went vociferating along a stretch of mesa, within sight and hearing, he broke into a sympathetic scamper, Patsy joining him ecstatically. The rise from a walk to a run was sudden and unexpected, but the girl adapted herself to it indifferently, with the instinctive adjustment of perfect horsemanship.
The pony ran gallantly for a little distance, waiting all the while, expectantly, for the thrill of answering pleasure in motion that failed to come along the rein. One inquiring eye rolled back at his mistress, one fine, pointed ear slanted to catch her least word of command, but Helen was far away and he watched and listened in vain for some hint that she realized his coaxing. Dickens could not understand it. He stretched his graceful neck as he ran, still seeking that answering touch of the bit. Helen’s ready hand gave lightly to his thrust, her muscles responding with trained certainty to his every movement, but Dickens wanted her conscious attention. When that was not forthcoming his pace slackened under the retarding weight of her laden spirit. He drooped his head and went half-heartedly, following Patsy, whose vagabond whim had led him from the road.
A feeling of oppression was on the girl. Not even the cleansing touch of the north-west wind, blowing from the far mountains, seemed potent to ease it. Somehow, the desert solitude had grown all at once more complex than ever the busy, active city life had been. The well-loved plain lay all about her as of old, fraught with all its remembered delight, yet imminent with a new mystery. Some message, luring yet baffling, quivered through it. The far blue hills, the golden-roseate sky, the shimmering, wind-stirred air, breathed of life; but the grim waste, yellow, seared, ancient, the scant, spectral trees, the uncouth cacti, warned, rather, to thoughts of death; and something deep within her was subtly aware of another summons still, which her soul half shrank from heeding, half yearned to understand.
She drew rein presently, as she realized that they were off the trail. At the base of a mass of rock Patsy was scratching frantically at a hole in the earth where a burrowing owl had just disappeared. A carrion crow, disturbed in its tentative investigation of something that lay on the ground, rose complainingly and flapped itself darkly away.
Looking about her Helen came to slow realization of the spot. There were the rocks round which she had come that marvelous morning. Here Gard had lain, Patsy just where she and Dickens stood. Yonder slender thread of pearly vertebra that the raven had been turning over was all that was left of the menace that had lifted itself just there that day.
Second by second she went over the scene, seeing again the spell-bound dog, the flat-headed, venomous snake, the prostrate man, with his serene gaze, his dark eyes telegraphing reassurance to her from the heart of his own deadly peril.
“Oh,” she shuddered, feeling again the sense of horror and faintness that had been hers on that morning, “What if no one had come! What if I could not have saved him!”