Chapter V: Part I: Fortune (5)

“I have not thanked you enough for this!” She pointed coquettishly to a lovely pendant which she had admired in a window of the Rue de la Paix, and which Brainard had bought for her.

“That’s nothing—just to remember me by!”

“I do not need it for that!”

“Good night,” he said, “and good-by—it has been a great week!”

And that was all.

“‘Good night and good-by—it has been a great week!’” The Frenchwoman mimicked the young man’s words to herself. “_Ciel_, what manner of man can he be? Or have I grown so old?” And she answered herself with a sigh: “No, he’s only a poet, and he is in love with—an idea! Mélodie! Foolish poet!”

So that was the final judgment of Mme. Vernon.

But out in the gentle June night, under the dark Paris sky, the poet was sauntering beneath the dusky shadow of the Louvre, the music of the lines he had heard that evening floating through his brain. He drifted on past the empty courts of the old palace, toward the river, exalted by all that he had seen and felt during these last seven wonderful days. The spinning moments of his brief dream were too precious to waste in sleep. As he went, he talked aloud to himself.

“We ought to have something like it over there. It _could_ be done, too! Melody should do it for us, with a portion of all this loot that I am bringing back to her. She should give something to America to justify her name!”

If Mme. Vernon had heard these muttered words, she would doubtless have qualified her judgment of the young American by adding:

“He is a crazy poet!”

Indeed there was something scarcely rational in the young American’s enthusiasm, the glowing intoxication of spirit in which he enveloped Paris. That too had been preparing for him through all the vicissitudes of the past weeks,—by the sudden resolves to commit himself to the sick man’s purpose, the growth of will as he met each fresh complication, the physical and moral regeneration of the long trail into Mexico, above all by the sense of triumph gained in his encounter with the Berlin banker. The crust of his starved nature had broken, and at the magic touch of Paris there appeared the better spirit of the man,—fearless, enthusiastic, worshiping,—the spirit of the artist, as Mme. Vernon had said. Even in his quixotic renunciation, his determination to turn away from the happiness he had found, there was a glowing conviction that this was not the end. The spirit would survive. ’Twas, indeed, but the start, the preparation for another adventure, larger, more thrilling, that loomed before him, across the ocean. Paris also was but revelation and preparation; more was to come! . . .

The graceful lines of the Palace of the Louvre rose mysteriously into the night, and recalled to Brainard the pages of old Dumas, from whom he had learned to know France. Home of the past, of a great race, home of beauty and art and romance, it called to him, young barbarian that he was, cast by chance upon its shores!

Beneath the stone parapet on which he was leaning, a laden barge passed stealthily over the black surface of the river. He followed it up the quays, crossing the Pont Neuf, over which loomed the shadowy figure of the king on horseback, on toward Notre Dame. All was still and silent about the old cathedral as he paced under the shadows of the springing buttresses. At last, while he lingered on the point of the island, out of the east came a rosy light that touched the great gray towers of the cathedral. It was the misty dawn.

“To think,” he murmured prayerfully, “that I might have died without knowing all this!”

The old stone buildings along the winding river gradually emerged from the gray mist of the dawn and hung as if suspended, floating before his eyes. The thin branches of a tall poplar waved lightly above his head, dropping to him a yellow leaf. A _gendarme_ who was patrolling the quay looked interrogatively into the face of the young American, as if he were suspicious of his proximity to the river at that hour of the morning.

“_Beau temps_,” he observed amicably to the loiterer.

“What do you say?” Brainard asked, coming a long way down to earth.

The officer repeated his innocent remark about the weather.

“Yes, the _temps_ is all right,” the young man agreed. “Fine!”

Evidently another of those foolish Americans, star-gazing in the early dawn! The officer lingered near, cocking his eye on the stranger; but Brainard had started for his hotel, talking to himself as he walked.

“There’s a whole lot, Melody, I can never pay you for, even with two millions and a bunch of five-per-cent bonds! Where are you, Melody, in all this wide world?”

Suddenly he stopped, and stood very still. Then, slapping his thigh, he shouted into the dawn:

“Why, Monument! Monument, Arizona! That’s it! That’s what the old boy was trying to say at the very end, when he was too far gone to make himself clearly understood. He was trying to give me the address, of course!”

The _gendarme_, thinking there must be something wrong with a young man who acted in this fashion, followed Brainard to his hotel, whither, now that he had solved his puzzle, he went at a brisk pace.

XX

To get to that pin-prick on the map called Monument, Arizona, you drop off the railroad at Defiance, which is somewhere east of the water tank named Phantom, and then follow an old post road across the lofty plateau in the direction of the mountains to the southwest. After something more than twenty miles, the trail strikes a deeply sunk river bed that winds like a gigantic serpent over the desert toward the declining sun. In one of the coils of this dead river serpent lies what is left of the mining camp of Monument.

From the dusty trail over the alkali plain Brainard emerged one blazing July afternoon, saddle-sore after his unaccustomed exercise, and red-faced from the pitiless glare of the Arizona sun. As he climbed the rocky path on the farther side of the river bed, the sun was sinking in a gorgeous sky behind the wooden shacks of Monument.

The place had the desolate air of a mining camp that had been smothered before its boom had really come. The stack of a large smelter rose from a group of corrugated iron buildings at the further end. Beyond, on the summit of a curious detached mound, set quite apart from all other features of the landscape, there was a considerable mansion with tall pillars along its southern front. This, Brainard surmised, must have been the residence of the owner or the manager of the mine, and his present goal.

Apparently Monument had not enough life left to bestir itself, even on the arrival of a stranger. Brainard slid from his horse unobserved in front of the Waldorf Hotel, which was apparently the most pretentious hostelry in the town. Inside the Waldorf, a Chinaman was serving a customer with a meal of fried steak and liver-colored pie. The only other person in the establishment was a fat Irishwoman dozing in one corner of the large bar-room, to which the Chinaman referred the stranger, with a silent nod. The landlady—for such he took her to be—looked at Brainard stupidly, and to his request for a room merely dropped her head on her ample breast and resumed her nap.

Brainard turned back to the street, and there the only human being in sight was an old man sitting in front of a tiny cottage, which seemed more decent in appearance than the other residences of Monument. Brainard hailed him, and inquired if there was another hotel in Monument in which he might take refuge.

“There’s hotels enough,” the old citizen replied with placid irony, “but they ain’t doing business these days. I reckon you’ll have to put up with the Waldorf, stranger—it ain’t so worse!”

In reply to Brainard’s complaint that the landlady of the Waldorf would not take notice of his arrival, the old man remarked:

“I expect Katie’s just getting over her yesterday’s booze. She’ll come around after sundown. Come over and sit awhile. There ain’t any use of worryin’ yourself in this here country!”

He waved an arm slowly over the empty landscape.

“That’s a fact—Monument doesn’t seem greatly rushed with business,” Brainard observed, taking the proffered seat beside the old man. “What’s the matter with the place?”

“The matter is that nothing has been doing in this here camp for ’most ten years,” the miner replied, pointing to the smokeless smelter.

“Mine gave out?”

“Mine’s all right—they never really got into it. The money gave out!”

The old man explained, in his placid drawl, how Monument once had great hopes. Then there had been a dozen Waldorfs in full swing. The smelter had been built, and shafts sunk in the red-brown hills behind the town.

“The Melody Mine?”

“That’s what they called it, and it’s as good a mine as there ever was in Arizony—better ore than the El Verde ever had—more money in it than three El Verdes rolled into one, I say!”

“Gold?”

The old man spat contemptuously at a venturesome lizard.

“Gold! Hell, no—copper! High-grade ore.”

“What was the matter?”

“Them panic times came along, and the fellow that owned the Melody went broke. He went back to Frisco. I always expected him to ride into camp some day, when the panic was over, hitch down there at the Waldorf, and sing out, ‘Howdy, Steve!’ and things would begin to hum once more. But he never come back. Guess it’s likely he ain’t made good out in California.”

“Perhaps he’s dead now,” Brainard suggested.

“P’r’aps—but some other feller will work the mine, one of these days. Copper’s booming all over the world, you understand. I’m waiting for that day!”

The old man spat meditatively.

“What is that large house on the hill?” Brainard asked, pointing to the lonely mansion beyond the town.

“That’s where the old man lived—Krutzmacht’s house,” he replied. “He used to live there with his folks.”

“He had a family, then?” Brainard inquired quickly.

“Some said she warn’t really his wife—couldn’t be, because she had a husband where she came from, back East. I don’t know. I never asked him. Folks always talk, you understand. Well, she’s dead now. The old man left her here when he went away. She stayed on with the girl—”

“With what girl?”

“Her darter, stranger—not his, I guess. She was a scraggly little black-haired thing, more like a boy.”

Brainard smiled as his young man’s dream of a beautiful heroine, with aristocratic manners and gracious character, crumbled at the miner’s touch.

“She used to ride all over the place on her pony—she was a wild sort. Sometime after her mother died, she disappeared.”

“Where did she go?”

The old man shook his head slowly.

“Nobody could tell. One night, a month or more ago, she just rode off on the trail. I seed her going down there at a run on her pony, and she never came back. P’r’aps she was going to look for Krutzmacht. They caught the pony over by Phantom, but nothing has been heard of her since.”

“Melody—”

“Yes, that was her name, stranger!” the old miner said with a look of surprise. “Melody White! How did you come to know it?”

“I must have guessed it,” Brainard replied with a smile.

“The mine was named after her, or she after the mine; I don’t know which.”

Brainard stared out into the grim Arizona landscape, before which rose the deserted mansion. There was a Melody! He had never really doubted her existence, but this assurance of his conviction pleased him, even though she might not be all that his ardent fancy had imagined.

“And now the house is empty, same as the mine, and I dunno what will become of it all. Sold for taxes, I expect, if they can git any one to buy it!”

They strolled up the road in the direction of the house upon the hill. The austere dusk of the desert was settling over the dreary habitations of Monument. Far away along the horizon purple mountains lifted their heads in grandeur.

The house was so placed that it gave a large view of the horizon from the mountains to the distant rim of the desert and again to mountains. Close beneath, in wide folds, the river bed wound its serpent course westward into the dusk. Before the broad southern veranda there were signs of old flower beds, which had once been cherished with precious water brought in iron pipes from the river below. The great white pillars had peeled their one coat of paint, and underfoot the sun-dried boards rattled.

The scene was large and grand, but inhumanly empty—as empty as the great house itself. No wonder that the young girl, her mother dead, had fled from this parched desert and these bony mountains in search of the world of men and women, in search of life!

“Kind of lonesome here?” the miner observed.

“It’s like death!”

“But you get used of it, same as death. . . . She and her mother stayed here by themselves after the old man went, and I guess the girl had enough of it.”

“How old was she, do you think?”

The old miner wrinkled his brows thoughtfully.

“She must have been nigh on sixteen,” he said. “She warn’t quite ten when Krutzmacht left.”

This girl of “nigh on sixteen” had gone forth alone in search of the stepfather, who for long years had left her and her mother neglected here.

“Don’t you want to see the house? Krutzmacht fixed it up real elegant—carpets and mahogany stuff. Nothing like it in this country.”

The old man pressed against the warped door, which yielded after a slight resistance. An odor of warm, musty air from the empty dwelling filled the lofty hall, which was quite bare. The miner opened a door leading to a western room.

“They lived mostly in here,” he said.

On the floor was a thick Oriental rug, and there were several pieces of handsome furniture, especially a massive, old-fashioned mahogany writing desk and a large divan. On the divan lay a quirt and a woman’s cloak, as if they had been thrown there carelessly the day before.

The dust of the desert had already settled on the rug, the desk, the table, and the chairs. Nevertheless, the room presented a singularly living look, such as only the life of people with certain habits and education can impress upon an abiding place. Brainard felt as if he had entered a drawing-room whose mistress had left it in the care of neglectful servants.

Beside the window a small piano stood open, with a piece of music on the rack. Some dead stalks of flowers drooped from a vase, and on the hearth lay a charred log. Among the spools and pieces of cloth on a worktable was a drawing board, to which was fastened a water-color sketch. A brush, carelessly dropped, had stained one corner of the sketch with a blotch of red. Brainard looked at the water color with some curiosity. It was a young girl’s attempt to seize the barbaric splendor of the arid plain outside of the window, fringed with ranges of savage mountains, lighted by the fire of the setting sun.

The two men went up the broad staircase with its white-painted handrail. Only one of the bedrooms had been recently occupied—the one in the southwestern corner, facing the winding river. There a dresser drawer was pulled out, as if it had been rifled by hasty hands.

“Seems as if they were really coming back agin!” the old miner remarked, feeling the personal touch of occupancy. “They allus kep’ to themselves. You see, they didn’t really belong,” he added, as if in explanation.

Brainard went back into the living room once more, and examined the water-color sketch. It seemed to him that this rough sketch was like a sign left for him. It breathed the passion and the longing of the girl hidden away in this lonely corner of the earth. He detached it gently from the board, and put it into his pocket. Then, with another glance around the deserted room, he followed his guide out upon the veranda.

While the old man busied himself carefully shutting up the place, Brainard leaned against one of the white pillars and stared into the gray evening that had stolen over the plain. She had gone—the mistress whom he had tried to serve so faithfully. She had disappeared into that vast, gray outer world, that the twilight was gradually covering.

All the way across the ocean and the land, and especially on the blazing trail over the alkali plain from Defiance, he had pictured to himself the woman he hoped to find at the end of his journey. He had imagined his interview with her, her emotions of surprise and delight, when he accounted for the fortune he was bringing her. At first she had been but a name, then an idea, and this idea had gradually assumed, in his imagination, the vivid sense of personality. But somehow, in all his speculation, he had never contemplated this! She lived, but she had just flitted forth—whither?

Suddenly it came over him that there was no clear next step. For the first time since he had obeyed Krutzmacht’s will and taken the train westward for San Francisco, his spirit was dampened, and in the gray evening a weight of depression fell upon him. For the moment he had no will, no plan. That which had held all his acts together and made them reasonable to himself had vanished.

Yet the girl had left behind her an impression—a sense of being some one, a person—which he had never had completely before. Somewhere in the universe there really was a young creature with the strange name of Melody White, to whom belonged sundry important properties now in his possession. It was clearly his business to find her if he could! . . .

The old miner came stamping over the loose boards of the veranda.

“The place will sure drop to pieces, like all the rest,” he observed, “if something ain’t done to it mighty quick.”

“Where do you suppose she went?” the young man asked abruptly.

“The girl? Goodness only knows. P’r’aps she went to her mother’s folks, or p’r’aps out to the coast after him—who can tell? ’Twould be like hunting for a young rabbit out there!” He nodded toward the gray plain.

By the time that Brainard reached the Waldorf, the landlady had roused herself, and she undertook to provide the traveler with food and room. After disposing of John Chinaman’s fried steak and liver-colored pie, he went forth again into Monument, seeking further information about the former occupants of the mansion beyond the town. But nothing was known of the two women except the vague rumor that the mother had come originally from “Louisiany way.” She had held herself apart from the little community, and most of the present inhabitants of the place, it seemed, were derelicts who had gathered there after the closing of the mine. All the vital population had taken the trail back to the railroad shortly after Krutzmacht’s disappearance from the scene.

“Faith, I knew the gurl,” admitted Kate, of the Waldorf. “A queer wan she was, too, ridin’ around by night and singin’ loud up there in the big, lonely house. When you heard her singin’ in the dark, it would frighten the heart in you!”

But more positive information the landlady did not possess. When Brainard went to his hot room for the night, he felt “lonesome,” as the miner had said—as if some one had missed an appointment with him here in the Arizona desert.

The more he thought about the description the old miner had given him, the date of her final departure, the more he became convinced that he had seen this elusive Melody that night at Phantom when he had dropped from the Santa Fé train and practically thrown himself upon the girl’s good nature to guide him into safety. He was so preoccupied with his own danger at the time, and the loss of his precious bag, that he had not given much thought to the girl, had not even remembered the talk about Krutzmacht’s mining venture in Arizona until later. So he had passed her in the dark almost at the start of his adventure—the one whom now he was seeking in a circle!

Even then, in all probability, she had planned her flight,—he remembered how evasive she had been in reply to his blunt questions,—and she had left not long afterwards, within a few days, as far as he could make out. Yes, that must be Melody White,—the girl “nigh on sixteen,” the shy little girl with the appealing Southern accent, who had seemed to him so lonely sitting her yellow pony among the cactus as the night fell on the desert. His imagination fastened strongly on this belief, for it gave him fresh courage and purpose. If she were a being of flesh and blood four weeks before, she must be somewhere now. It was his business to find her. Probably she had gone first to San Francisco in search of Krutzmacht; but when she had learned of his death, where had she gone? At any rate California was the place from which to start the long trail.

And a long trail, indeed, it might prove—the search for a wild young girl on her first journey into the wide world.

XXI

In the morning, when he descended to the bar-room of the Waldorf in search of nourishment, the old miner greeted him.

“I thought,” he said suggestively, “maybe you’d like to see the mine. The Limited don’t reach Defiance until evenin’. The mine ain’t but a little ways out from here. You might be interested in lookin’ it over.”

“All right!” Brainard exclaimed. “Let’s see the mine.” He had been so much preoccupied with Melody, the girl, that he had altogether forgotten about Krutzmacht’s interest in the Melody mine. “How far is it?” he asked.

“About three miles back in the hills. The old man was building a trolley from the mine to the smelter here beside the river.”

The miner pointed out the rusty rails and bleached sleepers of the trolley road as their horses picked the way over the rough ground up to the opening of the main shaft of the mine.

“Defiance lies off there,” the miner said, pointing to the blue horizon, “twenty-five miles in a straight line north. He meant to run a railroad right across the sagebrush. It’s down grade all the way, so the cars could go out by gravity. They reckoned on gettin’ power for the trolley from the river, by damming it above the smelter.”

“It was to be developed on a big scale!” Brainard exclaimed, impressed by the scope of Krutzmacht’s plans.

“You bet!” the miner agreed. “It ain’t no use to do things in a small way in this country. Krutzmacht knew that.”

Brainard scanned the steep, savage mountains above the shaft. They were devoid of all vegetation on the lower slopes, dull brown in color, with their flanks seamed by little gullies. Behind, the higher peaks lifted their heads in broken lines of serrated edges; and in the far distance, glittering in the cloudless sky, were snowy tips of dazzling white.

The miner picked up a piece of purplish ore from the pile heaped high about the mouth of the shaft.

“Look at that!” he said admiringly. “There’s enough ore of that sort right under our feet to pay almost to tote it out to Defiance. And they had just scratched the surface, here and there. The old man didn’t reckon to begin mining until he had things fixed right.”

They descended from the ore pile and proceeded to the entrance of the main shaft. It was cluttered with timber and abandoned machinery, some of which had never been installed. They spent a couple of hours examining the mine, stumbling about the dark tunnels by the light of a candle which the old miner had brought, looking at the ore bodies already exposed, ready to be worked.

When at last they emerged into the dazzling sunlight, and were resting, Brainard remarked wonderingly:

“It’s queer that a man like Krutzmacht should have abandoned a large property such as this, when he had gone so far with it.”

“He hain’t abandoned it, I tell you. He paid the taxes up to last year. It takes an awful sight of money, stranger, to develop a big mine so far from the railroad. Krutzmacht’s pile wasn’t big enough, and he wasn’t the kind who’d take anybody in with him. All or nothing for him—that was his way. So he went back to California to get his stake. If he’s alive still, he’ll be coming in here some day ready to work this bonanza!”

“I am afraid that will never be,” Brainard said slowly. “Krutzmacht died in New York two months ago.”

The miner stared in astonishment, exclaiming at last:

“Well, well! So the old man died before he made good!” Brainard nodded. “Maybe you are looking at the property for yourself?”

“Do I look like a miner? No, I came to Monument to find out if the old man left an heir.”

“I reckon the only folks he had was that girl and her mother, and one is dead and the other gone goodness knows where,” the old miner replied. “So the Melody mine don’t belong to nobody now!”

“It belongs to that girl, if we can find her.”

“It may be sold for taxes before that.”

“Then I’ll buy it in,” Brainard said promptly.

They ate the bread and bacon they had brought with them for lunch under a pine tree on a slope of the steep hill above the mine. The old miner shook his head from time to time, and muttered to himself over the strange dispensations of Providence that left a rich mine like the Melody abandoned. Brainard thought of the girl who had escaped him, and planned vaguely what his next steps should be.

“There’s an old crater up among them hills,” the miner vouchsafed, when the last slice of bacon and bread had disappeared, “and some sulfur springs. There’s another fortune, maybe, if you could get at the sulfur.”

“I’ll take a look at it,” Brainard said. “How do you go?”

And so, while the old man turned back to look after their horses, which they had left tethered far below, Brainard clambered on among the sharp peaks toward the snow beds that lay in drifts along the ragged edge of the mountains. He passed the circular depression of which the miner had spoken, and noticed the yellow crust upon the earth; but for a long time he kept on upward. He wanted to be alone, to think over a certain daring idea that had seized hold of him while the miner was showing him the neglected riches of the Melody mine. Perhaps the keen mountain air, blowing dry and fresh from the desert below, had its part in stirring his brain to unwonted excitement. Perhaps it was the reaction from his disappointment of the evening before in not finding his young mistress waiting to receive her fortune. However that might be, his idea kept teasing him, expanding all the time in reasonableness and urgency.

Why should he not take up Krutzmacht’s purpose—use part of the money he had obtained from the bankers in developing this great property? While he was prosecuting the search for the young girl, which he foresaw might take much time, might indeed end in failure, this work would give a new incentive, a new meaning to his long adventure.

“Give it all to Melody!” the old adventurer had whispered with his last breath. Yes, all to Melody in one form or another, as soon as possible. He would dive deeper than the letter of Krutzmacht’s word—he would do as the old man might have done himself, if his life had gone on. He would fulfill his inmost purposes.

He had humor enough to smile at his own daring. “One Edgar Brainard,” as he had described himself to Krutzmacht, unsuccessful playwright, scrub of the city streets, to run a mine! But why not? For that old self, that “one Edgar Brainard,” buffeted, discouraged human chip on the muddy surface of the stream of life, had completely disappeared, never again to exist, he earnestly hoped. These eventful weeks of vital living, constant and quick decision, of prompt, forceful execution, of vivid feeling and yet calm self-reliance, had made a totally other man of him—one whose possibility he had never suspected, but one whom he liked and respected an infinite deal more than that old, familiar “one Edgar Brainard.”

Thanks to Krutzmacht and the elusive Melody, he could never again become the timid, inefficient struggler earning his precarious crust of bread by humiliating tasks, dreaming futile dreams and putting them into equally futile words. He had tasted of life, action, power, and he found them sweet. He would not resign them! Thus Krutzmacht had bestowed on the chance stranger who had befriended him in his last need more than those millions he was leaving to Melody.

His rapid thoughts swept over these last weeks. Everything in them, it seemed, had prepared the way for this decision, had fitted him to dare, to take the responsibility. If it had confronted him a month before, when he and Melody had passed each other unknown, he would not have been ready; if it had come a fortnight before while he was in Paris, he would not have risen to the opportunity. It had come Now, at the fertile moment. . . . His thin, weak body had filled out, just as his harassed face had taken on firm lines of real manhood. He was no longer afraid of life, nor of any of its chances. He would act for this girl as he would act for himself; he would be her trustee, her faithful servant, and the guardian of her property until such time as it could be given into her hands. And the idle millions should set about their proper task of breeding more millions.

At this point in his thinking he gave a boyish whoop that even caught the ear of the old miner below and made him look up. Brainard waved his hat and laughed from the glorious fun of it all,—the risk and the joy of life,—living at last! . . .

As was characteristic of the new man, having projected an idea, committed himself to a decision, his mind at once bent quickly to filling in the details of the pattern in action. He should go to-morrow across the mountains to look for his old friend Gunnison, to learn what more he could, if anything, about the girl’s sudden departure. Gunnison might also give him information of value concerning the mine. Then he should take the evening train for San Francisco, and there first of all he would look up the friendly reporter Farson, to enlist his aid in the search for the girl. In this he must exercise great caution, because San Francisco might not yet be a perfectly salubrious climate for him, nor did he wish to stir cupidinous desires in the breasts of possible claimants to Krutzmacht’s fortune. What he should do afterwards was not clear as yet, but he thought that Farson might be helpful in suggesting the best methods for prosecuting such a search as was before him. Hollinger, if he had returned to the States, might also be useful. He would willingly confide in the “fight-trust magnate.” In any case he should try to find the grizzled miner from Union,—just why, he could not say. But he felt that the old man who had searched fortune in the earth for thirty years might be useful in “handling the Melody proposition.” He would run across him either at the Palace in San Francisco or, if not there, could stop at Winnemucca on his way east and make the journey to Union. He had the man’s name written down somewhere. And then he must call for that trunk in Chicago, in which he hoped to find the title deeds to the mine and other interesting documents. There was much to be done, and to be done speedily. Yet he felt no haste, no nervous anxiety to be adoing. Time for thought was needed also. . . .

So he climbed on rapidly toward the glittering banks of snow until he reached a small plateau gleaming like a jeweled robe in the sunlight. Beneath him lay the little valley about the shaft, scarred by the ore pits with their abandoned rock piles. Far down, the old miner was leading the horses from the shed where they had been tied. Above beckoned the peaks, reaching into the steely heavens like naked icicles. A broad-winged bird circled majestically, tracing its dark shadow on the gleaming snow field, as with a brush.

Not a sound upon the earth nor in the sky! A broad, deep silence! The clear light, the lofty peaks pointing heavenward—nothing more, except his own beating heart!

The man stood there in the immense silence, his soul poised like the hawk above his petty world, surveying in one swift rush of thought that little self of his past, with its small ambitions and desires. Up to this level the road that Krutzmacht had opened for him had led.

He gazed steadily upward into the wonderful sea of blue sky, deeper than the blue depth of the Gulf Stream, above the snowy peaks, beyond the world, into his future. What he saw there was a vision of will, man’s will. He was all will—a vitalized mass of glorious energy to conceive, to create, to do!

He laughed in the cloudless amplitude of snow and blue heavens, laughed at the small self he had left behind, writing play pieces, making tiny scenes for a tiny stage. The world was the great stage upon which he would present his masterpiece! Krutzmacht had played on that stage, and Brainard had helped him to put up a rousing melodrama at the close. His own play thereon should be something different.

Krutzmacht’s will had made the fortune; his will should take it, if need be, reshape it, and speed it to some more perfect end than the old buccaneer of the West had ever dreamed of. Where Krutzmacht’s will had ended, his will would start.

There rose, too, a vision of art as he had felt it in Paris at dawn, beneath the towers of the old cathedral. And sweetly the two united in his fecund mind. He laughed softly in the joy of this vision, and his laugh tinkled strangely among the silent mountain peaks. Throwing up his head to the dazzling rampart of snow that broke the wavering azure lines of the heavens, he exclaimed:

“That, too, will come true! That will be! We’ll make life our stage, and write the play in life, as God writes upon the snows up here. That is creation!”

Brainard could see the old man below holding the horses by their bridles and shielding his eyes with his free hand, as he searched for his companion. And faintly, very thinly, through the valley came the old man’s hail.

Brainard gave a last, lingering look to the immensity above, beyond, around him—the place where his great idea had been born. Then he turned his steps downward, the light of distant thoughts in his eyes, a smile upon his lips which said:

“I have seen. Now to _do_!”

* * * * *

“You will meet me again before long,” he said to the old miner, when they parted. “And then we’ll make the Melody sing!”