The mountain jays flew round the pines before them as they climbed; an eagle swung in circles, watching keenly; while, close at hand, the squirrels dropped their cones to spring behind the trunks and chatter challenge.
At the half-way ledge they halted for a breathing. Belle looked keenly, gently into Jim's eyes. She was not sure what she saw. She wondered what his thoughts were. The brightness of the morning, the joy of riding and being, the fullness of freedom—these were in glowing reflex on his face, but she had seen these before; yet never before had she seen his face so tense and radiant. Only once, perhaps, that time when he came home walking in the storm.
He smiled back at her, but said nothing. They rode again and in ten minutes came to the end of the horse trail. He leaped from the saddle, lifted her down, and tied the horses. With his strong hand under her arm, he made it easy for her to climb the last steep path. A hundred feet above, they reached the top, above the final trees, above the nearer peaks, above all other things about them except the tall, gray Spirit Rock. Below spread a great golden world; behind them a world of green. The little wooden town seemed at the mountain's foot—Fort Ryan almost in shouting hail, though it was six miles off; beyond, was the open sea of sage, with heaving hills for billows and greasewood streaks for foam.
Jim gazed in utter silence so long that she looked a little shyly at him. His face was radiant, his eye was glistening, but he spoke no words. The seat they had used a year before was there and he gently drew her toward it. Seated there as of old, he put his arm about her and held her to him. She whispered, "Make a fire." She had indeed interpreted his thought. He rose, lighted a little fire on the altar at the foot of the Spirit Rock, and the smoke rose up straight in the still air. It ascended from the earth mystery of the fire to be lost in the mystery of the above. How truly has it been the symbol of prayer since first man kindled fire and prayed.
Jim took his Bible from his pocket and read from the metrical Psalm CXXI:
I to the hills will lift mine eyes,
From whence doth come mine aid;
My safety cometh from the Lord
Who heaven and earth hath made.
"They always went up into the hills to pray, Belle, didn't they? The fathers of the faith never went down into the valley when they sought God's guidance. I don't know why, but I know that I don't feel the same, away down there on the plains as I do up here. I see things more clearly, I have more belief in Him and know He is near me.
"The clouds have been gathering in my mind pretty thick and dark; yes, darker the last half year, Belle. I began to doubt myself as I never did. Even when we were winning in our Chicago fight, I wondered whether I was doing right. I couldn't see clearly, Belle, and then my doubt grew stronger and even you could not understand; there was something within that told me to go back to Cedar Mountain. Ever since we got here I have been waiting for the moment when I could come to the mountain. From here, a mile above the sea, I know that I shall see the way of wisdom. I wonder if you know what that Rock means to me with that little thread of smoke going up?
"Belle, men called Bill Kenna a ruffian and a brute. I guess he was, too, but he had a brave, warm heart. His whole religion was to feed the hungry and honour his word as a man. That was about all he taught me; and he loved my mother—that's enough; it bit in deep. When I gave my word as a man on that wild night four years ago when I heard the call, I vowed that I would, from that time on, devote my strength to telling others what I had found and try to make them find it, too. That was my vow, Belle; I've tried to keep it. I gave up things out here because they seemed to come between. I may be doing right in the city slum work, but it is not what I set out to do; I am not keeping to the trail."
Poor Belle! The periods of vague unrest she had noted; that time of fervent prayer; the reasons she had urged upon him for returning to college, and the crisis in which she had forced him to give it up—all now came back to her in quick succession. She remembered the weakness that had so nearly ended all and how he had overmastered it—that craving for drink, so strong from inheritance and from the evil habits of his earliest manhood. Amid daily temptations of the Chicago life, it had not seemed to touch him even as temptation. The horses that he loved he had given up for principle. The surface plasticity he still showed was merely the velvet that concealed the rod of steel and why he seemed so weak she knew now, was that he was so young, so very immature, a man in stature, a little happy child at heart. And the sting of sudden iron hurt her soul.