"It seems too good to be true," he slowly answered, and his voice trembled. Less than half an hour ago he had prayed for this and suddenly the way seemed plain, if not yet open.
The winter and spring had gone, and the summer was dying. In all this time the Hartigans had carried their daily, hourly burden, without halt or change. Whatever of hardship there was, came in the form of thwarted plans, heart-cravings for things they felt they must give up. Jim made no mention of his disappointments and, so far as he could, he admitted his hunger neither to himself nor to Belle. It was merely a matter of form, applying for a month's leave; this had been agreed on from the beginning. The largest difficulty was in the fact that they must go together—the head and the second head both away at once. But there were two good understudies ready trained—Skystein and Dr. Mary Mudd—with Mr. Hopkins as chairman to balance their powers. Michael Shay too, came to offer gruffly and huskily his help: "If I can do anything, like puttin' up cash, or fixin' anybody that's workin' agin you, count on Mike." Then after a pause he added, a little wistfully: "I ain't got many real friends, but I want to have them know I'm real, and I know the real thing when I find it."
A conference was finally held and the management of the Club was turned over to the chairman and his aides for a month. Jim and Belle were like children on leave from boarding school. They packed in wild hilarity and took the first train the schedule afforded for Cedar Mountain.
CHAPTER LX
The Gateway and the Mountain
August with its deadening heat was over; September, bright, sunny and tonic, was come to revive the world. Rank foliage was shaking off the summer dust, and a myriad noisy insects were strumming, chirping, fiddling, buzzing, screeping in the dense undergrowth. It was evening when they boarded the train for the West and took the trail that both had taken before, but never with such a background of events or such an eagerness for what was in the future. As the train roared through the fertile fields of Illinois, with their cornfields, their blackbirds and their myriads of cattle, red and white, the sun went down—a red beacon blaze, a bonfire welcome on their pathway just before the engine—a promise and a symbol.
It was near noon the next day when they reached the junction and took, the branch line for the north. The first prairie-dog town had set Jim ablaze with schoolboy eagerness; and when a coyote stood and gazed at the train, he rushed out on to the platform to give him the hunter's yell.
"My, how sleek he looked! I wonder how those prairie dogs feel as they see him stalk around their town, like a policeman among the South Chicago kids!"
When a flock of prairie chickens flew before the train he called, "Look, look, Belle! See how they sail, just as they used to do!" As though the familiar sights of ten months before were forty years in the past.