A little farther on she breathed softly, "Poor dead Kitty—don't be afraid!"
CHAPTER VIII
THE JOURNEY WONDER
DURING those last days Ewing brushed only the airy slopes of illusion, strive as he would to keep his feet to earth. Many were the tricks he used to this end: vain tricks to forget the miracle of his going, of going so soon, of going with her.
Ben Crider would not help him forget. When snatches of warning from "Traps and Pitfalls" grew stale, Ben coined advice of a large and general character.
"Want to be an artist, hey? Ask me? Go down to Durango—let that professor learn you in ten lessons. Make yer five t' eight dollars a day canvassin' fur enlargements. Gold frame throwed in. Yes, sir! Ask me? Durango's fur enough. New York's too gosha-mighty fur!"
It was not possible to forget under the droppings of this counsel. Wherefore his spirit tossed in tumult.
When Ben called him on the morning of the start it was still dark. He lay a moment, his nerves tightening. This was the last time he would lie in that bed—for how long? Well, on some unmarked night in the pregnant future, lying there again, he would look back to this moment and tell himself all the wonderful things that had come to him—tell his ignorant, puzzled, excited self, who would, somehow, be waiting and wondering there.
Juggling this conceit, he groped for matches and a candle. He could hear the singing of the kettle in the outer room. Through the window he saw a lantern swinging, and knew that Ben would be bringing around the horses. It was a time to be cool, a time to gird himself.
He had breakfast on the table when Ben came in, and they ate by the light of a smoky lamp, tacitly pretending that no miracle was afoot. Saving the early hour, it was a scene they enacted whenever they drove to Pagosa for supplies, up to the point when, the meal finished, they carried two trunks from the studio out to the wagon. But they managed this carelessly enough, with only a casual, indignant word or two about the excessive weight of full trunks.