There was plenty for him to do and he threw himself into the doing of it with a feverish energy. Neglect and nature had gone far to restoring the ranch to the wilderness. Houses, barns, corrals, ditches—they called aloud for help. This response to duty and obligation was highly gratifying to Bill, who did not realize that it was a frantic effort to flee from the voices of the night. Hal never spoke of Wah-na-gi, but in the cool silences under the stars his imagination galloped to the Agency, and rode riot there, circling round and round that girlish figure, begging for news, begging for some word, pleading for some token that her love had not died in the night, uncovering pitfalls, digging them where they did not exist, building and tearing down, testing, arguing, threatening, fighting, inventing, inventing and suffering. Life has no tortures to compare with these figments that never happen, these phantom bridges we never cross, these deaths we never die. In the night given to peace, rest, and regeneration, our thoughts stampede like maddened cattle and rush to destruction or exhaustion, and all we can do is avoid their hurtling hoofs, ride herd on them, get them to "milling," round and round in endless circles until they come to rest in wide-eyed collapse. Mysterious phantoms of the night! In the clear day these cattle wander "in green pastures and beside still waters." The strain of it was telling on Hal as day followed day and exhausting night followed night. In action his momentum was fierce and irritable; in moments of repose his face looked drawn, and a world-weariness drooped in his limbs, and a pale light shone out of his blue eyes.
Even Bill began to notice that he never smiled, and in this connection Bill remarked to Joe: "And smilin' is one of the best things the kid does."
He smiled the day McCloud arrived as he put his two strong hands on the shoulders of the invalid's big frame, gave them a gentle pressure, as if afraid of crushing that frail habitation of the spirit, and bade the clergyman welcome to Red Butte Ranch. Then monotonous week followed monotonous week and the hidden fires smouldered on. One evening as the sun was going down he smiled again, but it was a peculiar smile; it got no higher than his lips, and the pale light of endurance in his eyes changed to a fierce flame. Chavanaugh had ridden in about sundown with a letter. It was hardly a letter, just a few words scribbled on a scrap of paper, not over a dozen words, but they were from Wah-na-gi.
CHAPTER XII
In a great city people live so close together there are no neighbors. Isolation is the freedom of the city; it's the city's one gift. Men guard it jealously, are ready to fight for it. It's the only safeguard against the crowding obligations of a common humanity. One is appalled at the suggestion of bringing home the sorrows of others, or letting them peek in at the window—these multitudinous sorrows, so painful, so sordid. We resent the noise in the cells overhead or the cells underneath, and we do not want to know that it is the cry of mortal anguish of those who are as alone as ourselves. It's only people who live apart, or meet each other on the road to Jericho, that are really neighbors. The units of a community that is shut off from the rest of the world huddle together, and gentleness and kindness are born in the solitudes. In the barren soil of common hardships flowers bloom. But the city has its advantages. The loneliness of a great city is as nothing to the isolation of one who is alone in a small community. Wah-na-gi was being made to feel very much alone. The teachers of the school with the exception of Wah-na-gi were white women and with one exception, women of a narrow horizon. They sympathized with her in her struggle not to go back, but there had always been condescension and toleration in their attitude toward her. That she was made much of by the Rev. John McCloud, that she was admired by the chief of police and others perhaps had not added to her popularity. Sometimes such things make a woman a suspicious character. When she was returned to the Agency she found gossip had been before her. Perhaps one may be pardoned for living in a city, to escape from the terrors of tattle. Calthorpe had been seen. His escape was known. That she had saved a man's life without being chaperoned on the occasion, that she remained with the young man at the ranch an indelicate time, that she had to be brought back by force, etc., etc.—the intervening details could be supplied by any one with half an imagination. To the white women on the Agency this was "just what one might expect from an Indian." The moral attitude is sometimes a curious one. The knowledge of what we would have done under certain conditions instead of making us forbearing, strange to say, only makes us more intolerant; but that knowledge makes us very certain of just what happened. The only person apparently within a hundred miles who hadn't heard about it was the victim herself. It was night when she reached the Agency and she went directly to the school. The teachers lived together in one of the adjoining buildings. The first thing that met her eyes was her few belongings huddled together on the veranda. The principal came out just as Wah-na-gi stopped to gaze at the unfriendly spectacle.
"We didn't know what your plans were, and thought you might be in a hurry——"
"I would have gone in the morning."
Something of the cruelty of their haste came even to the human logarithm, and she hurriedly offered to give up to the ex-teacher her room for the night.
Tears were streaming down Wah-na-gi's face and she had to wait a moment before replying. Then she said simply: "Thank you; no, I couldn't stay now," and she walked out of the yard, down the deserted street, and out onto the bench where Chapita had her farm and her log-cabin, some two miles from the Agency.
"I'm going back," she thought as she trudged the lonely two miles to the cheerless cabin on the desolate farm. "I'm going back in spite of myself; going back to the savage in me."