The Best Short Stories of 1915 | Page 7

when it is a case of self-preservation? No! Of course not. Did you ever hear of any one choosing to go along a dangerous road or to ford a dangerous river unless he had to--that is, any one of our class, any man of education or imagination? It's the greater fear of being thought afraid that makes us brave. Take a lawyer in a shipwreck--take myself! Don't you suppose he's frightened? Naturally he is, horribly frightened. It's his reason, his mind, that after a while gets the better of his poor pipe-stem legs and makes them keep pace with the sea-legs about them."
"It's condition," said Jarrick doggedly--"condition entirely. All has to do with your liver and digestion. I know; I fox-hunt, and when I was younger--yes, leave my waist alone!--I rode jumping races. When you're fit there isn't a horse alive that bothers you, or a fence, for that matter, or a bit of water."
"Ever try standing on a ship's deck, in the dark, knowing you're going to drown in about twenty minutes?" asked Hill.
Hardy leaned forward to strike a match for his cigarette. "I don't agree with you," he said.
"Well, but--" began Hill.
"Neither of you."
"Oh, of course, you're outside the argument. You lead an adventurous life. You keep in condition for danger. It isn't fair."
"No." Hardy lit his cigarette and inhaled a puff thoughtfully. "You don't understand. All you have to say does have some bearing upon things, but, when you get down to brass tacks, it's instinct--at the last gasp, it's instinct. You can't get away from it. Look at the difference between a thoroughbred and a cold-blooded horse! There you are! That's true. It's the fashion now to discount instinct, I know; well--but you can't get away from it. I've thought about the thing--a lot. Men are brave against their better reason, against their conscience. It's a mixed-up thing. It's confusing and--and sort of damnable," he concluded lamely.
"Sort of damnable!" ejaculated Hill wonderingly.
"Yes, damnable."
I experienced inspiration. "You've got a concrete instance back of that," I ventured.
Hardy removed his gaze from the ceiling. "Er--" he stammered. "Why, yes--yes. That's true."
"You'd better tell it," suggested Hill; "otherwise your argument is not very conclusive."
Hardy fumbled with the spoon of his empty coffee-cup. It was a curious gesture on the part of a man whose franknesses were as clean-cut as his silences. "Well--" he began. "I don't know. Perhaps. I did know a man, though, who saved another man's life when he didn't want to, when there was every excuse for him not to, when he had it all reasoned out that it was wrong, the very wrongest possible thing to do; and he saved him because he couldn't help it, saved him at the risk of his own life, too."
"He did!" murmured Hill incredulously.
"Go on!" I urged. I was aware that we were on the edge of a revelation.
Hardy looked down at the spoon in his hand, then up and into my eyes.
"It's such a queer place to tell it"--he smiled deprecatingly--"here, in this restaurant. It ought to be about a camp-fire, or something like that. Here it seems out of place, like the smell of bacon or sweating mules. Do you know Los Pinos? Well, you wouldn't. It was just a few shacks and a Mexican gambling-house when I saw it. Maybe it isn't there any more, at all. You know--those places! People build them and then go away, and in a year there isn't a thing, just desert again and shifting sand and maybe the little original old ranch by the one spring." He swept the table-cloth with his hand, as if sweeping something into oblivion, and his eyes sought again the spoon. "It's queer, that business. Men and women go out to lonely places and build houses, and for a while everything goes on in miniature, just as it does here--daily bread and hating and laughing--and then something happens, the gold gives out or the fields won't pay, and in no time nature is back again. It's a big fight. You lose track of it in crowded places." He raised his head and settled his arms comfortably on the table.
"I wasn't there for any particular purpose. I was on a holiday. I'd been on a big job up in Colorado and was rather done up, and, as there were some prospects in New Mexico I wanted to see, I hit south, drifting through Santa Fé and Silver City, until I found myself way down on the southern edge of Arizona. It was still hot down there--hot as blazes--it was about the first of September--and the rattlesnakes and the scorpions were still as active as crickets. I knew a chap that had a cattle outfit near the Mexican border, so I dropped in on him one day and