Haney apologized, handsomely. "It's natural for the ould bedraggled eagle in the cage with a club on his wrist to dream of the circles he used to cut and the fish he set claw to. In them days I feared no man's weight, and no night or stream. 'Twas all joyous battle to me, and now, as I sit here on velvet with only to snap me fingers for anything I want, I look back at thim fierce old times with a sneaking kind o' wish to live 'em all over again. Bertie knows me weakness. I would talk forever did she lave me go on; but 'tis no blame to her—it was a cruel, bad, careless life."
"When I come West," said Moss, sincerely, "we'll go camping together, and every night by the fire we'll smoke and you can tell me all about your journeys. I assure you they are epic to me."
Dr. Brent, a little later, put in a private word to Bertie. "Now you're going back into the high country and you'll find it necessary to watch the Captain pretty closely. I suspect he'll find his heart thumping briskly when he reaches the Springs. He may stand that altitude all right, but don't let him go higher. He will be taking chances if he goes above six thousand feet. You'd better have Steel of Denver come down and examine him to see how he stands the first few days. I mention Steel because I know him—I've no doubt there are plenty of good men in the Springs."
"What'll I do if he's worse?"
"Bring him back here or go to sea level—only beware of high passes."
CHAPTER XXIV
THE HANEYS RETURN TO THE PEAKS
The forces that really move most men are the small, concrete, individual experiences of life. The death of a child is of more account to its parents than the fall of a republic. Napoleon did not forget Josephine in his Italian campaigns, and Grant, inflexible commander of a half-million men, never failed, even in the Wilderness, to remember the plain little woman whose fireside fortunes were so closely interwoven with his epoch-making wars.
As Ben Fordyce lost interest in the question of labor and capital and the political struggles of the state (because they were of less account than his own combat with the powers of darkness), so Bertha had little thought of the abstract, the sociologic, in her uneasiness—the strife was individual, the problems personal—and at last, weary of question, of doubt, she yielded once more to the protecting power which lay in Haney's gold and permitted herself to enjoy its use, its command of men. There was something like intoxication in this sense of supremacy, this freedom from ceaseless calculation, and to rise above the doubt in which she had been plunged was like suddenly acquiring wings.