“Yet you—escaped?”
“Si. The two had left me for dead in the kitchen, and the fire was almost upon me when I gained strength to rise and stagger out. Then, they were gone—gone like the wolves that sneak into the forest after they have slain the white heifer of the plains.”
Turning, Bull walked blindly to his horse and dropped his face on his arms, propped upon the saddle. While he stood, trembling in every limb, blind struggle filled his mind.
The Mercy of God? Pity of the Virgin? Indeed, where were they? Where, in a universe ruled by a just God, could one find justification for this horror? “The sins of the fathers shall be visited upon the children to the fourth generation,” says the old Law; but where in Mary Mills’s blameless ancestry, where in their long line of honest merchants and farmers, could one find the fault that demanded this terrible atonement? And she—who had given forth only kindness, charity, mercy, throughout her life? And Betty, spotless in her innocence as her new-born soul? Where could one find the fault which called for their desecration?
Not in these clear terms did Bull’s thought run. Blind anguish kept him straining as in the throes of a violent nausea. He did not think, he felt—felt the frightful injustice beyond the explanation of any doctrine; and, feeling, his whole being rose in revolt against it.
While he stood, face buried in his arms, there forced upon his consciousness a sound that rose above the woman’s sobbing—the dry murmur of the flames. Strange to say, it brought him a certain comfort. They were gone, that pleasant, wholesome woman, sweet child, gone forever beyond the blank wall that rises between the quick and the dead! Surely they were gone! Yet—the corruption of the tomb, mold of the grave, would never touch their flesh. Through the clean, white flames they had passed into the original elements; and, wild man of the plains that he was, born of free spaces, wide deserts, clean winds, he took comfort in the thought.
Next, intensifying, yet soothing his poignant anguish, there floated in upon him a vision of the soft beauty of that last night. Again he saw through the gloaming the infinite loneliness reflected in Mary Mills’s face. Again its dim whiteness turned toward him in the dusk. Like a timid dove he saw her hand come fluttering into his. Then—with deep thankfulness he realized it—now she would never know! never know how far he had fallen below his resolves.
Not for her, now, the pain of listening to his confession. His own did enter into his thoughts. All that he had suffered, was now suffering, was as naught. No anguish, physical or mental, could atone in his own sight for his fall. If he could have restored her and the child as they were yesterday, to go forward with a worthier man to happier destinies, he would have done it, then turned and gone on his own dark and solitary way. But that was impossible, and, being impossible, he hugged to his breast the thought—now she would never know!
From this his mind turned again in a dull way to the question, “Why?” He had no skill in the philosophy of words. The doctrine that evil is merely good out of place, that the ferocity which had brought this terrible thing to pass had origin under the power that set the stars in their courses, the suns on their ways, would never have appealed to him. His mind turned to a nearer cause, and found it in what clearer minds than his denounced as the slack policies of a government that had utterly failed in its duties to its own—the government that, with the purblindness of the mole, had intrigued with bandits, played fast and loose with the fates, crowned its follies by permitting a barbaric people to attempt the impossible task of guiding its own destinies.
Raising his head, he turned his face of dark despair to the northward. Then, with the truth of a simple vision that is not to be blinded by diplomatic sophistries, with power beyond the wildest raving, his stern nod placed the responsibility where he believed it belonged—across the Rio Grande.