第39章 FIRST BLOOD(3)

It was not till mid-afternoon of the next day that Mott found time to join him and run over with him the details of such unfinished business as the office had taken up.The retiring manager was courtesy itself, nor did he feel any bitterness against his successor.Nevertheless, he came to the end of office hours with great relief.The day had been a very hard one, and it left him with a longing for solitude and the wide silent spaces of the open hills.He struck out in the direction which promised him the quickest opportunity to leave the town behind him.A good walker, he covered the miles rapidly, and under the physical satisfaction of the tramp the brain knots unraveled and smoothed themselves out.It was better so--better tolive his own life than the one into which he was being ground by the inexorable facts of his environment.He was a young man and ambitious, but his hopes were not selfish.At bottom he was an idealist, though a practical one.He had had to shut his eyes to many things which he deplored, had been driven to compromises which he despised.Essentially clean-handed, the soul of him had begun to wither at the contact of that which he saw about him and was so large a part of.

"I am not fit for it.That is the truth.Mott has no imagination, and property rights are the most sacred thing on earth to him.He will do better at it than I," he told himself, as he walked forward bareheaded into the great sunset glow that filled the saddle between two purple hills in front of him.

As he swung round a bend in the road a voice, clear and sweet.came to him through the light filtered air.

"Laska!"

young woman on horseback was before him.Her pony stood across the road, and she looked up a trail which ran down into it.The lifted poise of the head brought out its fine lines and the distinction with which it was set upon the well-molded throat column.Apparently she was calling to some companion on the trail who had not yet emerged into view.

At sound of his footsteps the rider's head turned.

"Good afternoon, Mr.Hobart," she said quietly, as coolly as if her heart had not suddenly begun to beat strangely fast.

"Good afternoon, Miss Balfour."

Each of them was acutely conscious of the barrier between them.Since the day when she had told him of her engagement they had not met, even casually, and this their first sight of each other was not without embarrassment.

"We have been to Lone Pine Cone," she said rather hurriedly, to bridge an impending silence.

He met this obvious statement with another as brilliant."I walked out from town.My horse is a little lame."But there was something she wanted to say to him, and the time for saying it, before the arrival of her companion, was short.She would notwaste it in commonplaces.

"I don't usually read the papers very closely, but this morning I read both the Herald and the Sun.Did you get my note?""Your note? No."

"I sent it by mail.I wanted you to know that your friends are proud of you.We know why you resigned.It is easy to read between the lines.""Thank you," he said simply."I knew you would know.""Even the Sun recognizes that it was because you are too good a man for the place.""Praise from the Sun has rarely shone my way," he said, with a touch of irony, for that paper was controlled by the Ridgway interest."In its approval I am happy."Her impulsive sympathy for this man whom she so greatly liked would not accept the rebuff imposed by this reticence.She stripped the gauntlet from her hand and offered it in congratulation.

He took it in his, a slight flush in his face.

"I have done nothing worthy of praise.One cannot ask less of a man than that he remain independent and honest.I couldn't do that and stay with the Consolidated, or, so it seemed to me.So I resigned.That is all there is to it.""It is enough.I don't know another man would have done it, would have had the courage to do it after his feet were set so securely in the way of success.The trouble with Americans is that they want too much success.They want it at too big a price.""I'm not likely ever to have too much of it," he laughed sardonically."Success in life and success in living aren't the same thing.It isbecause you have discovered this that you have sacrificed the less for the greater." She smiled, and added: "I didn't mean that to sound as preachy as it does.""I'm afraid you make too much of a small thing.My squeamishness has probably made me the laughing-stock of Mesa.""If so, that is to the discredit of Mesa," she insisted stanchly."But I don't think so.A great many people who couldn't have done it themselves will think more of you for having done it."Another pony, which had been slithering down the steep trail in the midst of a small rock slide, now brought its rider safely to a halt in the road.Virginia introduced them, and Hobart, remembered that he had heard Miss Balfour speak of a young woman whom she had met on the way out, a Miss Laska Lowe, who was coming to Mesa to teach domestic science in the public schools.There was something about the young teacher's looks that he liked, though she was of a very different type than Virginia.Not at all pretty in any accepted sense, she yet had a charm born of the vital honesty in her.She looked directly at one out of sincere gray eyes, wide- awake and fearless.As it happened, her friend had been telling her about Hobart, and she was interested in him from the first.For she was of that minority which lives not by bread alone, and she felt a glow of pride in the man who could do what the Sun had given this man credit for editorially.

They talked at haphazard for a few minutes before the young women cantered away.As Hobart trudged homeward he knew that in the eyes of these two women, at least, he had not been a fool.