Under a low gray sky lay patches of autumn snow on dun grass withered brown.
I looked up to the red sun setting above the snowy clouded flanks of the Rocky Mountains, and Lonely Valley opened at my feet where shadows of evening groped from hill to hill.
There had been a snow-storm all last night, a thaw all day. Only a few streaks of snow lay on the turf-roofed cabin, the barn and stack, and the plowed fire-guard. The door of the cabin creaked, swinging on its hinge straps, and in the yard a little wolf sat watching that, afraid to venture nearer.
I found the stable empty, as well as the cabin. Shoved in a corner by the cabin stove was Don Ernesto's cradle, which I had made of a soap-box with barrel staves for its rockers. That cradle was covered with dust. Out in the yard I found a tiny grave-mound, and at its head a cross made of two lathes bound with a bit of tape. Pinned to the head of the cross there was an envelope scrawled with the words, "My hart, 21 Sept. 1890."
When I sat down beside that cradle, I heard from the sodden eaves outside the cabin a steady drip and splash of water beating out the time. Great swinging stars across the dial of night can measure all eternity without a sound, but these drops of water, thudding, splashing, insistent, peevishly beating time, endlessly beating time, remorselessly, horribly beating time, had driven a woman mad.
Yes, even when I crushed my ears with both hands, still I could feel these splashes throbbing out the time, measuring out the punishment of time, remorseless, passionless discipline of time, allaying medicine of time, whereby the Great Physician cures ailing, restive, quivering but eternal souls. For time is only force, vibrant like sea-waves on a coast, beating against the feet of the eternal. Why should the woman, made for eternity, be so rebuked, so maddened by mere time as to dash her fists against the logs of the wall until they were stained with blood. The pain of her bleeding fists had eased the mind's revolving agony.
Unable to endure the feel of the room, I went out, and on the sodden ground saw tracks, an hour old, perhaps more. A horse, prosperous, fresh and well shod, had come by the trail from Canada. A man with the chain spur straps worn only by the police had walked across from the stable to the cabin, had seen the dusty cradle, had visited the grave.
And how the woman would play up with such a part as that! She would be discovered kneeling beside the cradle—and make a fine pretense of finding gum-sticks to kindle the stove. There would be ostentatious concealment of bleeding hands under her apron, the mourner's covered hands to be found, to drive my comrade crazy, storming about the Blackguard's villainy while he took charge of her affairs, appointing himself a woman's champion. Then she would prate about marriage oaths, and put up arguments for him to contradict, excuses for me which he would trample on, and hesitation provoking him to use force, most violently tearing her away—all his own fault, of course, and quite against her wishes.
And then the supper, with Mistress Violet waiting on the man, unable to touch a bite of food herself except on the sly, while she was getting his coffee or cooking another batch of her slapjacks.
While she did stage business, taking off the wedding-ring to lay it on the dresser, her eyes would devour the scarlet of his coat, the tan of his neck, her ears would wait for the clink of a spur when he moved, the creak of his great belt. How women undervalue what is given, and die for the things denied them! When her time came, that woman would stage-manage her own death, and neglect her own funeral to carry on a flirtation with the devil.