The blur in the white sky caught his gaze and held it. His eyes mocked, his lips snarled.
"You damned greaser sneak!" he said. "Followed me fifty miles!" A flash of race hatred glinted his eyes. "I wouldn't let no damned greaser eagle get me, anyway!"
The pony had drunk its fill. Calumet returned the tin cup to the slicker and swung back into the saddle. Refreshed, the pony took the opposite slope with a rush, emerging from the river upon a high plateau studded with fir balsam and pine. Bringing the pony to a halt, Calumet turned in the saddle and looked somberly behind him.
For two days he had been fighting the desert, and now it lay in his rear, a mystic, dun-colored land of hot sandy waste and silence; brooding, menacing, holding out its threat of death—a vast natural basin breathing and pulsing with mystery, rimmed by remote mountains that seemed tenuous and thin behind the ever-changing misty films that spread from horizon to horizon.
The expression of Calumet's face was as hard and inscrutable as the desert itself; the latter's filmy haze did not more surely shut out the mysteries behind it than did Calumet's expression veil the emotions of his heart. He turned from the desert to face the plateau, from whose edge dropped a wide, tawny valley, luxuriant with bunch grass—a golden brown sweep that nestled between some hills, inviting, alluring. So sharp was the contrast between the desert and the valley, and so potent was its appeal to him, that the hard calm of his face threatened to soften. It was as though he had ridden out of a desolate, ages-old world where death mocked at life, into a new one in which life reigned supreme.
There was no change in Calumet's expression, however, though below him, spreading and dipping away into the interminable distance, slumbering in the glare of the afternoon sun, lay the land of his youth. He remembered it well and he sat for a long time looking at it, searching out familiar spots, reviving incidents with which those spots had been connected. During the days of his exile he had forgotten, but now it all came back to him; his brain was illumined and memories moved in it in orderly array—like a vast army passing in review. And he sat there on his pony, singling out the more important personages of the army—the officers, the guiding spirits of the invisible columns.
Five miles into the distance, at a point where the river doubled sharply, rose the roofs of several ranch buildings—his father's ranch, the Lazy Y. Upon the buildings Calumet's army of memories descended and he forgot the desert, the long ride, the bleak days of his exile, as he yielded to solemn introspection.
Yet, even now, the expression of his face did not change. A little longer he scanned the valley and then the army of memories marched out of his vision and he took up the reins and sent the pony forward. The little animal tossed its head impatiently, perhaps scenting food and companionship, but Calumet's heavy hand on the reins discouraged haste.
For Calumet was in no hurry. He had not yet worked out an explanation for the strange whim that had sent him home after an absence of thirteen years and he wanted time to study over it. His lips took on a satiric curl as he meditated, riding slowly down into the valley. It was inexplicable, mysterious, this notion of his to return to a father who had never taken any interest in him. He could not account for it. He had not been sent for, he had not sent word; he did not know why he had come. He had been in the Durango country when the mood had struck him, and without waiting to debate the wisdom of the move he had ridden in to headquarters, secured his time, and—well, here he was. He had pondered much in an effort to account for the whim, carefully considering all its phases, and he was still uncertain.
He knew he would receive no welcome; he knew he was not wanted. Had he felt a longing to revisit the old place? Perhaps it had been that. And yet, perhaps not, for he was here now, looking at it, living over the life of his youth, riding again through the long bunch grass, over the barren alkali flats, roaming again in the timber that fringed the river—going over it all again and nothing stirred in his heart—no pleasure, no joy, no satisfaction, no emotion whatever. If he felt any curiosity he was entirely unconscious of it; it was dormant if it existed at all. As he was able to consider her dispassionately he knew that he had not come to look at his mother's grave. She had been nothing to him, his heart did not beat a bit faster when he thought of her.
Then, why had he come? He did not know or care. Had he been a psychologist he might have attempted to frame reasons, building them from foundations of high-sounding phrases, but he was a materialist, and the science of mental phenomena had no place in his brain. Something had impelled him to come and here he was, and that was reason enough for him. And because he had no motive in coming he was taking his time. He figured on reaching the Lazy Y about dusk. He would see his father, perhaps quarrel with him, and then he would ride away, to return no more. Strange as it may seem, the prospect of a quarrel with his father brought him a thrill of joy, the first emotion he had felt since beginning his homeward journey.
When he reached the bottom of the valley he urged his pony on a little way, pulling it to a halt on the flat, rock-strewn top of an isolated excrescence of earth surrounded by a sea of sagebrush, dried bunch grass, and sand. Dismounting he stretched his legs to disperse the saddle weariness. He stifled a yawn, lazily plunged a hand into a pocket of his trousers, produced tobacco and paper and rolled a cigarette. Lighting it he puffed slowly and deeply at it, exhaling the smoke lingeringly through his nostrils. Then he sat down on a rock, leaned an elbow in the sand, pulled his hat brim well down over his eyes and with the cigarette held loosely between his lips, gave himself over to retrospection.
It all came to him, as he sat there on the rock, his gaze on the basking valley, his thoughts centered on that youth which had been an abiding nightmare. The question was: What influence had made him a hardened, embittered, merciless demon of a man whose passions threatened always to wash away the dam of his self-control? A man whose evil nature caused other men to shun him; a man who scoffed at virtue; who saw no good in anything?
Not once during his voluntary exile had he applied his mind to the subject in the hope of stumbling on a solution. To be sure, he had had a slight glimmering of the truth; he had realized in a sort of vague, general way that he had not been treated fairly at home, but he had not been able to provide a definite and final explanation, perhaps because he had never considered it necessary. But his return home, the review of the army of memories, had brought him a solution—the solution. And he saw its ruthless logic.
He was what his parents had made him. Without being able to think it out in scientific terms he was able to expound the why of like. It was one of the inexorable rules of heredity. To his parents he owed everything and nothing. He reflected on this paradox until it became perfectly clear to him. They—his parents—had given him life, and that was all. He owed them thanks for that, or he would have owed them thanks if he considered his life to be worth anything. But he owed them nothing because they had spoiled the life they had given him, had spoiled it by depriving him of everything he had a right to expect from them—love, sympathy, decent treatment. They had given him instead, blows, kicks, curses, hatred. Hatred!
Yes, they had hated him; they had told him that; he was convinced of it. The reason for their hatred had always been a mystery to him and, for all he cared, would remain a mystery.
When he was fifteen his mother died. On the day when the neighbors laid her away in a quiet spot at the edge of the wood near the far end of the corral fence, he stood beside her body as it lay in the rough pine box which some of them had knocked together, looking at her for the last time. He was neither glad or sorry; he felt no emotion whatever. When one of the neighbors spoke to him, asking him if he felt no grief, he cursed and stormed out of the house. Later, after the neighbors departed, his father came upon him in the stable and beat him unmercifully. He came, dry-eyed, through the ordeal, raging inwardly, but silent. And that night, after his father had gone to bed, he stole stealthily out of the house, threw a saddle and bridle on his favorite pony and rode away. Such had been his youth.
That had been thirteen years ago. He was twenty-eight now
