Max Brand (26 page)

"The colt's gone," said Connor in a savagely-controlled murmur to the
girl. "That devil has made up his mind. His pride is up now!"

Elijah, too, seemed to realize that he had thrown away his last chance.

He could only stretch out his hands with the tears streaming down his
wrinkled face and repeat in his broken voice: "Mercy, David, mercy for
Timeh and Juri and Elijah!"

But the face of David was iron.

"Look at Juri," he commanded. "She is flawless, strong, sound of hoof
and heart and limb. And that is because her sire and her mother before
her were well seen to. No narrow forehead has ever been allowed to come
into the breed of the Eden Grays. I have heard Paul condemn a colt
because the very ears were too long and flabby and the carriage of the
horse dull. The weak and the faulty have been gelded and sent from the
Garden or else killed. And therefore Juri to-day is stout and noble, and
Glani has a spirit of fire. It is not easy to do. But if I find a sin in
my own nature, do I not tear it out at a price of pain? And shall I
spare a colt when I do not spare myself? A law is a law and a fault is a
fault. Timeh must die!"

The extended arms of Elijah fell. Connor felt Ruth surge forward from
beside him, but he checked her strongly.

"No use!" he said. "You could change a very devil more easily than you
can change David now! He's too proud to change his mind."

"Oh," sobbed the girl softly, "I hate him! I hate him!"

"Let Timeh live until the morning," said David in the same calm voice.
"Let Juri be spared this night of grief and uneasiness. If it is done in
the morning she will be less anxious until the dark comes, and by that
time the edge of her sorrow shall be dulled."

"Whose hand," asked Elijah faintly—"whose hand must strike the blow?"

"Yesterday," said David, "you spoke to me a great deal of the laws of
the Garden and their breaking. Do you not know that law which says that
he from whose household the faulty mare foal has come must destroy it?
You know that law. Then let it not be said that Elijah, who so loves the
law, has shirked his lawful burden!"

At this final blow poor Elijah lifted his face.

"Lord God!" he said, "give me strength. It is more than I can bear!"

"Go!" commanded the master of the Garden.

Elijah turned slowly away. As if to show the way, Timeh galloped before
him.

David watched them go, and while his back was turned a fierce, soft
dialogue passed between Ruth Manning and Ben Connor.

"Are you a man?" she asked him, through her set teeth. "Are you going to
let that beautiful little thing die?"

"I'd rather see the cold-hearted fool die in place of Timeh. But what
can we do? Nothing. Just smile in his face."

"I hate him!" she exclaimed.

"If you hate him, then use him. Will you?"

"If I can make him follow me, tease him to come, make him think I love
him, I'll do it. I'd do anything to torture him."

"I told you he was a savage."

"You were right, Ben. A fiend—not a man! Oh, thank Heavens that I see
through him."

Anger gave her color and banished her tears. And when David turned he
found what seemed a picture of pleasure. It was infinitely grateful to
him. If he had searched and studied for the words he could not have
found anything to embitter her more than his first speech.

"And what do you think of the justice of David?" he asked, coming to
them.

She could not speak; luckily Connor stepped in and filled the gap of
awkward silence.

"A very fine thing to have done, Brother David," he said. "Do you know
what I thought of when I heard you talk?"

"Of what?" said David, composing his face to receive the compliment. At
that Ruth turned suddenly away, for she dared not trust her eyes, and
the hatred which burned in them.

"I thought of the old story of Abraham and Isaac. You were offering up
something as dear to you as a child, almost, to the law of the Garden of
Eden."

"It is true," said David complacently. "But when the flesh is diseased
it must be burned away."

He called to Ruth: "And you, Ruth?"

This childish seeking after compliments made her smile, and naturally he
misjudged the smile.

"I think with Benjamin," she said softly.

"Yet my ways in the Garden must seem strange to you," went on David,
expanding in the warmth of his own sense of virtue. "But you will grow
accustomed to them, I know."

The opening was patent. She was beginning to nod her acquiescence when
Connor, in alarm, tapped on the table, once and again in swift
telegraphy: "No! No!"

The faint smile went out on her face.

"No," she said to David.

The master of the Garden turned a glance of impatience and suspicion
upon the gambler, but Connor carefully made his face a blank. He
continued to drum idly on the edge of the table, and the idle drumming
was spelling to the girl's quick ear: "Out!"

"You cannot stay?" murmured David.

She drank in his stunned expression. It was like music to her.

"Would you," she said, "be happy away from the Garden, and the horses
and your servants? No more am I happy away from my home."

"You are not happy with us?" muttered David. "You are not happy?"

"Could you be away from the Garden?"

"But that is different. The Garden was made by four wise men."

"By five wise men," said the girl. "For you are the fifth."

He was so blind that he did not perceive the irony.

"And therefore," he said, "the Garden is all that the heart should
desire. John and Matthew and Luke and Paul made it to fill that
purpose."

"But how do you know they succeeded? You have not seen the world beyond
the mountains."

"It is full of deceit, hard hearts, cruelty, and cunning."

"It is full of my dear friends, David!"

She thought of the colt and the mare and Elijah; and it became suddenly
easy to lure and deceive this implacable judge of others. She touched
the arm of the master lightly with her finger tips and smiled.

"Come with me, and see my world!"

"The law which the four made for me—I must not leave!"

"Was it wrong to let me enter?"

"You have made me happy," he argued slowly. "You have made me happier
than I was before. And surely I could not have been made happy by that
which is wrong. No, it was right to bring you into the valley. The
moment I looked at you I knew that it was right."

"Then, will it be wrong to go out with me? You need not stay! But see
what lies beyond the mountains before you judge it!"

He shook his head.

"Are you afraid? It will not harm you."

He flushed at that. And then began to walk up and down across the patio.
She saw Connor white with anxiety, but about Connor and his affairs she
had little concern at this moment. She felt only a cruel pleasure in her
control over this man, half savage and half child. Now he stopped
abruptly before her.

"If the world, after I see it, still displeases me, when I return, will
you come with me, Ruth? Will you come back to the Garden of Eden?"

In the distance Ben Connor was gesturing desperately to make her say
yes. But she could not resist a pause—a pause in which torment showed
on the face of David. And then, deliberately, she made her eyes
soften—made her lips smile.

"Yes, David, I will come back!"

He leaned a little toward her, then straightened with a shudder and
crossed the patio to the Room of Silence. Behind that door he
disappeared, and left Connor and the girl alone. The gambler threw down
his arms as if abandoning a burden.

"Why in the name of God did you let him leave you?" he groaned. "Why?
Why? Why?"

"He's going to come," asserted Ruth.

"Never in a thousand years. The fool will talk to his dummy god in
yonder and come out with one of his iced looks and talk about
'judgment'! Bah!"

"He'll come."

"What makes you think so?"

"Because—I know."

"You should have waited—to-morrow you could have done it, maybe, but
to-day is too soon."

"Listen to me, Ben. I know him. I know his childish, greedy mind. He
wants me just as much as he wants his own way. It's partly because I'm
new to him, being a woman. It's chiefly because I'm the first thing he's
ever met that won't do what he wants. He's going to try to stay with me
until he bends me." She flushed with angry excitement.

"It's playing with fire, Ruth. I know you're clever, but—"

"You don't know how clever, but I'm beginning to guess what I can do.
I've lost all feeling about that cruel barbarian, Ben. That poor little
harmless, pretty colt—oh, I want to make David Eden burn for that! And
I can do it. I'm going to wind him around my finger. I've thought of
ways while I stood looking at him just now. I know how I can smile at
him, and use my eyes, and woo him on, and pretend to be just about to
yield and come back with him—then grow cold the next minute and give
him his work to do over again. I'm going to make him crawl on his knees
in the dust. I'm going to make a fool of him before people. I'm going to
make him sign over his horses to us to keep them out of his vicious
power. And I can do it—I hate him so that I know I can make him really
love me. Oh, I know he doesn't really love me now. I know you're right
about him. He simply wants me as he'd want another horse. I'll change
him. I'll break him. When he's broken I'm going to laugh in his
face—and tell him—to remember Timeh!"

"Ruth!" gasped Connor.

He looked guiltily around, and when he was sure no one was within reach
of her voice, he glanced back with admiration.

"By the Lord, Ruth, who'd ever have guessed at all this fire in you?
Why, you're a wonder. And I think you can do it. If you can only get him
out of the infernal Garden. That's the sticking point! We make or break
in the next ten minutes!"

But he had hardly finished speaking before David of Eden came out of the
Room of Silence, and with the first glance at his face they knew that
the victory was theirs. David of Eden would come with them into the
world!

"I have heard the Voice," he said, "and it is just and proper for me to
go. In the morning, Ruth, we shall start!"

Night came as a blessing to Ruth, for the scenes of the early day had
exhausted her. At the very moment when David succumbed to her
domination, her own strength began to fail. As for Connor, it was
another story. The great dream which had come to him in far away Lukin,
when he watched the little gray gelding win the horse race, was now
verging toward a reality. The concrete accomplishment was at hand. Once
in the world it was easy to see that David would become clay, molded by
the touch of clever Ruth Manning, and then—it would be simply a matter
of collecting the millions as they rolled in.

But Ruth was tired. Only one thing sustained her, and that was the
burning eagerness to humble this proud and selfish David of Eden. When
she thought how many times she had been on the verge of open admiration
and sympathy with the man, she trembled and grew cold. But through the
fate of poor little Timeh, she thanked Heaven that her eyes had been
opened.

She went to her room shortly after dinner, and she slept heavily until
the first grayness of the morning. Once awake, in spite of the early
hour, she could not sleep again, so she dressed and went into the patio.
Connor was already there, pacing restlessly. He had been up all night,
he told her, turning over possibilities.

"It seems as though everything has worked out too much according to
schedule," he said. "There'll be a break. Something will happen and
smash everything!"

"Nothing will happen," she assured him calmly.

He took her hand in his hot fingers.

"Partner"—he began, and then stopped as though he feared to let himself
go on.

"Where is he?" she asked.

"On his mountain, waiting for the sun, I guess. He told the servants a
while ago that he was leaving to-day. Great excitement. They're all
chattering about it down in the servants' house."

"Is no one here?"

"Not a soul, I guess."

"Then—we're going into that Room of Silence!"

"Take that chance now? Never in the world! Why, Ruth, if he saw us in
there, or guessed we'd been there, he'd probably murder us both. You
know how gentle he is when he gets well started?"

"But how will he know? No one is here, and David won't be back from the
mountain for a long time if he waits for the sun."

"Just stop thinking about it, Ruth."

"I'll never stop as long as I live, unless I see it. I've dreamed
steadily about that room all night."

"Go alone, then, and I'll stay here."

She went resolutely across the patio, and Connor, following with an
exclamation, caught her arm roughly at the door.

"You aren't serious?"

"Deadly serious!"

The glitter of her dark eyes convinced him more than words.

"Then we'll go together. But make it short!"

They swept the patio with conscience-stricken glances, and then opened
the door. As they did so, the ugly face of Joseph appeared at the
entrance to the patio, looked and hastily was withdrawn.

"This is like a woman," muttered Connor, as they closed the door with
guilty softness behind them. "Risk her life for a secret that isn't
worth a tinker's damn!"

For the room was almost empty, and what was in it was the simplest of
the simple. There was a roughly made table in the center. Five chairs
stood about it. On the table was a book, and the seven articles made up
the entire furnishings. Connor was surprised to see tears in the eyes of
Ruth.

"Don't you see?" she murmured in reply to his exclamation. "The four
chairs for the four dead men when David sits down in his own place?"