Over the Pass | Page 5

his breath on my back--a hot, gun-powdery breath! It was awful, simply awful and horrible, too. And just as I had resigned myself to be his entrée, by great luck his big middle got wedged in the bottom of the V, and his scales scraped like the plates of a ship against a stone pier!"
To her disgust she was laughing again.
"If I went back now out of fear of Pete Leddy," he continued, "that dinosaur would know that I was such insignificant prey he would not even take the trouble to knock me down with a forepaw. He would swallow me alive and running! Think of that slimy slide down the red upholstery of his gullet, not to mention the misery of a total loss of my dignity and self-respect!"
He had spoken it all as if he believed it true. He made it seem almost true.
"I like nonsense as much as anybody," she began, "and I do not forget that you did me a great kindness."
"Which any stranger, any third person coming at the right moment might have done," he interrupted. "Sir Walter's age has passed."
"Yes, but Pete Leddy belongs still farther back. We may laugh at his ruffianly bravado, but no one may laugh at a forty-four calibre bullet! Think what you are going to make me pay for your kindness! I must pay with memory of the sound of a shot and the fall of a body there in the streets of Little Rivers--a nightmare for life! Oh, I beg of you, though it is fun for you to be killed, consider me! Don't go down into that valley! I beg of you, go back over the pass!"
There was no acting, no suspicion of a gesture. She stood quite still, while all the power of her eyes reflected the misery which she pictured for herself. The low pitch of her voice sounded its depths with that restraint which makes for the most poignant intensity. As she reached her climax he had come out of his languid pose. He was erect and rigid. She saw him as some person other than the one to whom she had begun her appeal. He was still smiling, but his smile was of a different sort. Instead of being the significant thing about him in expression of his casualness, it seemed the softening compensation for his stubbornness.
"I'd like to, but it is hardly in human nature for me to do that. I can't!" And he asked if he might bring up her pony.
"Yes," she consented.
She thought that the faint bow of courtesy with which he had accompanied the announcement of his decision he would have given, in common politeness, to anyone who pointed at the danger sign before he rode over the precipice.
"May I ride down with you, or shall I go ahead?" he inquired, after he had assisted her to mount.
"With me!" she answered, quickly. "You are safe while you are with me."
The decisive turn to her mobile lips and the faint wrinkles of a frown, coming and going in various heraldry, formed a vividly sentient and versatile expression of emotions while she watched his silhouette against the sky as he turned to get his own pony.
"Come, P.D.--come along!" he called.
In answer to his voice an equine face, peculiarly reflective of trail wisdom, bony and large, particularly over the eyes, slowly turned toward its master. P.D. was considering.
"Come along! The trail, P.D.!" And P.D. came, but with democratic independence, taking his time to get into motion. "He is never fast," Jack explained, "but once he has the motor going, he keeps at it all day. So I call him P.D. without the Q., as he is never quick."
"Pretty Damn, you mean!" she exclaimed, with a certain spontaneous pride of understanding. Then she flushed in confusion.
"Oh, thank you! It was so human of you to translate it out loud! It isn't profane. Look at him now. Don't you think it is a good name for him?" Jack asked, seriously.
"I do!"
She was laughing again, oblivious of the impending tragedy.

III
JACK RIDES IN COMPANY
Let not the Grundy woman raise an eyebrow of deprecation at the informal introduction of Jack and Mary, or we shall refute her with her own precepts, which make the steps to a throne the steps of the social pyramid. If she wishes a sponsor, we name an impeccable majesty of the very oldest dynasty of all, which is entirely without scandal. We remind her of the ancient rule that people who meet at court, vouched for by royal favor, need no introduction.
These two had met under the roof of the Eternal Painter. His palette is somewhere in the upper ether and his head in the interplanetary spaces. His heavy eyebrows twinkle with star-dust. Dodging occasional flying meteors, which harass him as flies