Hardin’s head lost its shamed droop. Some one knew what he had done. Gerty had known, too, but she was ashamed of him. To her, he had failed.
“Don’t covet all the parts, Hardin. You started it, you and Estrada. He’s had less fun out of it, even, than you. I know that you sacrificed your position to get the thing pulled through. It was a grand thing to do, better than putting the harness on the river. I’m proud to know you.”
The stormy blood began its normal flow. He could look at the river, now, not ashamed. A few minutes later, he remembered to ask, “What do you mean by my part?”
“Your ego, Hardin. Our ego. It tells us in our youth to do everything, that all the parts are calling for us. But one man can’t fill more than one part. Then it’s time to get off the stage. Make room for the young men; they’re waiting for their chance. Why, Hardin, you don’t have to write your name all over this desert! It’s here! The world may mention Marshall, or Rickard when they speak of the Colorado, but there’s not a man in this valley, nor one who comes after, who’ll fail to take off his hat to Tom Hardin!”
Hardin stopped with a jerk. “Do you think that’s true?”
A steady smile, paternal in its sweetness, answered him. “I know it’s true. But what difference does that make? You know. You are on good terms with yourself. That’s all we ought to want. It’s a fact. Creep down cheerfully.”
The two men struck homeward. The chill that precedes the desert dawn was in the air.
“I yearned for completeness, too,” mused Brandon. “We’re made that way. I thought that that was what life was. A complete thing. We begin to believe in that when we are tugging at our mother’s skirts. When we grow older, we fight for it. Not until we reach our apex, not until we begin to think about death, do we discover that there is no such thing as individual completion. Did you ever hear of a rounded life, or a complete one? We live too long, Hardin, or die too soon. It’s creeping paralysis, or an accident in the street. We never finish anything, even ourselves! We were never intended to, that’s my philosophy. Our ego blinds us to that. We can only help the scheme along.”
“Go on talking,” said Hardin. Brandon had thrown him back to his own centrifugal and nebulous thought.
He was trudging now, his step grown weary, in the direction of the encampment. He could see in the distance his deserted tent. But his mood had softened. The stream of his shackling connoted his success, as this man had said. The valley beyond, yielding its harvest of happy homes, that had he done. Perhaps, after all, he had not altogether failed. And, at last, he looked up at the stars.