The Candidate: A Political Romance
He took her unresisting hand in his, and again they walked side by side,
so close that the strong wind once more brushed the little ringlet
against his cheek.
It is a peculiarity of Grafton that the low swells around it, rolling
away towards the mountains, look just alike everywhere. One has to be a
resident, and an old-timer at that, to be able to tell one from another.
Harley and Sylvia, hand-in-hand, had little thought of such things as
these, nor were they anxious to reach Grafton quickly; yet the time when
they must be there would come, and Harley at last interrupted a
pleasanter occupation by exclaiming:
"Why, where is Grafton? We should have reached it long ago!"
Sylvia saw only the low swells, rolling away, one after the other; there
was no glimpse of a house, no smoke on the horizon to tell where the
village had hid itself so suddenly. Around them were the low ridges, and
afar the circle of blue mountains. Save for themselves, it seemed a lone
and desolate world. Sylvia became white; she knew their situation better
than Harley.
"We have lost the town! We mistook the direction!" she said.
"We can easily find it again; it must be there."
He pointed in the direction in which he thought Grafton lay, and
continued:
"It will merely make our walk back to town the longer, and that is what
I like."
But she, who had lived her life on the plains and in the mountains, was
not so sure. She knew that they had walked far, because not even the
smoke of Grafton could be seen now. Yet he was with her.
"Suppose we try that direction," she assented.
"And if it isn't right, we will try another; our train stays at Grafton
all day."
They walked on, saying to each other the little things that mean nothing
to others, but which lovers love, and Grafton yet lay hidden in its
place between the swells. The skies, changing now from a bright to a
steely gray, were unmarred by a single wisp of smoke.
Harley felt at last an uneasiness which increased gradually as they went
on; the country was provokingly monotonous, one swell was like another,
and the dips between were just the same; there were patches of brown
grass eaten down by cattle, but mostly the soil was bare; it seemed to
Harley, at that moment, a weary and ugly land, but it set off the star
in the midst of it--Sylvia--like a diamond in the dust. He looked up;
the mountains, before blue and distinct in the clear sky, were now gray
and vague.
"We must have walked fast and far," he said. "Look how that range of
mountains has moved away."
Sylvia looked, and her face whitened again.
"It is not distance, John," she said. "It is a mist. See, the clouds are
coming!"
The mountains moved farther away and became shadowy; the steel-gray of
the skies darkened; up from the southwest rolled ugly brown clouds;
there was a rush of chill air.
Harley understood all, and a shiver passed over him. But his fear was
for her, not for himself.
"It is going to snow," said Sylvia.
"And we are lost in this desert; it was I, too, who brought you here,"
said Harley.
She looked up into his eyes, and her face was not pale.
"We are together," she said.
He bent his head and kissed her, for the second time that day.
"You are the bravest woman in the world, Sylvia," he said. "Now we live
or die together, and we are not afraid."
"We are not afraid."
He put his arm around her waist, and she did not resist. Both expected
to die, and they felt that they belonged to each other for eternity. A
strange, spiritual exaltation possessed them; the world about them was
unreal now--they two were all that was real.
"The snow comes, dearest," she said.
Up from the southwest the ugly brown clouds were still rolling, and the
sky above them still darkened; the mountains were gone in the mist, the
chill wind strengthened and shrieked over the plain. Harley kept his arm
around Sylvia's waist, and drew her more closely to him that he might
shelter her.
"Let the snow come," he said.
Great white flakes, borne upon the edge of the wind, fell damp upon
their faces, and suddenly the air was filled with them as they came in
blinding clouds; the wind ceased to shriek and died, and the brown
clouds, now fused into one mass that covered all the heavens, opened and
let down the snow in unbroken volume.
"We must go on, sweetheart," said Harley, rousing himself. "To stand
here is death. We may find some kind of shelter if we go; there is none
in this place."
They walked on, their heads bent a little, as the snow was coming
straight down. They could not see twenty yards before them through the
white cloud, and Harley was scarcely conscious whether they climbed the
swells or descended into the dips between.
Sylvia covered her head with a small shawl that she wore. Harley wanted
to take off his coat and wrap it around her, but she would not let him.
"I am not cold," she said; "I think it is the walking that keeps me
warm."
It was partly that, but it was more the presence of Harley and the state
of spiritual exaltation in which they remained. Both took it as a matter
of course that they were to die in a few hours, but they had no fear of
this death, and it was not even worth while to talk or think of it.
Harley had spoken merely through habit and instinct of moving on lest
they die, and it was these same unconscious motives that made them
struggle, although they took no interest in their own efforts.
"We may come to a clump of trees," said Sylvia, "or to a hollow in a
rocky hill-side; that happens sometimes in this part of the Dakotas."
"Maybe we shall," said Harley, but he thought no more about it.
The wind rose again and swept over the plain with a shriek and a howl.
Columns and cones of snow were whirled past them and over them; wind and
snow together made it harder for them to keep their feet.
"If we don't find that hollow soon, we won't need it," said Harley.
"No," she said.
She was very close to him, and when she looked up he could see a smile
on her face.
"Death is not terrible," she said.
"Not with you."
The shriek of the wind had now become a moan like the moan of a desolate
world. They came to two or three dwarfed trees growing close to one an
other, but they gave no shelter, and, Harley being in dread lest
branches should be blown off and against Sylvia, they went on.
"What will they think has become of us?" said Sylvia.
But the only thought it brought into Harley's mind at that moment was
the interruption it would cause to the campaign. He was sorry for Jimmy
Grayson. He felt that the girl's step was growing less steady. Obviously
she was becoming weaker.
"Lean against me," he said; "I am strong enough for both."
She said nothing, but he felt her shoulder press more heavily against
him. He drew his hat-brim down that he might keep the whirling flakes
from his eyes, and staggered blindly forward. His knee struck against
something hard, and, putting out his hand, he touched stone and earth.
"Here is a hill," he said, without joy, and he uncovered his eyes again
to seek shelter. He did not find it there, but farther on, in another
hill, was a rocky alcove that in earlier days had been the den of some
wild animal. It was carpeted with old dead leaves, and it faced the
east, while the wind and the snow came from the southwest. It was only a
hollow, running back three or four feet, and one must crouch to enter;
but except near the door there was no snow in it, and the storm drove by
in vain.
"Here is our house, Sylvia," exclaimed Harley, with a strong ring in his
voice, and he drew her in. He raked up the old, musty, dead leaves in a
heap, and made her sit upon them. He was the man now, the masculine
animal who ruled, and she obeyed without protest.
"Hark to the storm! How the wind whistles!" he said.
Pyramids and columns of snow whirled by the mouth of their little
hollow, and they crouched close together. Out upon the plain the shriek
of the wind was weird and unearthly. Now and then some blast, fiercer
and more tortuous than the rest, drove a fringe of snow so far into the
hollow that it fell a wet skim across their faces.
Sylvia did not move or speak for a long time, and when Harley looked out
again the snow was thinner but the wind was still high, and it was
growing much colder. The blast lashed his face with a whip of ice.
He turned back in alarm, and took Sylvia's hand in his. It was cold, and
it seemed to him that the blood in it had ceased to run.
"Sylvia! Sylvia!" he cried in fear, and not knowing what else to say.
"What is the matter?"
"This, I think, is death," she replied, in sleepy content.
It was dark in the hollow, whether the darkness of coming night or the
darkness of the storm Harley did not know nor care. He could not see her
face, but he touched it; it, too, was cold.
He felt a pang of agony. When both expected to die he had neither fear
nor sorrow; now she was about to die alone and leave him!
"Sylvia! Sylvia!" he cried. "It is not death! You cannot go!"
He rubbed her hands violently, and even her cheeks. He called to her
over and over again, and she awoke from her numbing torpor.
"It was beginning to be like an easy sleep," she said.
"That is what we must fight," said Harley.
He brushed up all the leaves at the mouth of the hollow as a sort of
barrier, and he believed that it gave help. Then he sat down on a small
ledge of stone and leaned against the wall.
"Sylvia," he said, "I want you to live, and you cannot live if this cold
creeps into your body again. Sit here."
She hesitated, and in the darkness he did not see her blush.
"Why should you not? It may be our last day."
He drew her down upon his knees, then closer to him, and put his arms
around her. Presently he could feel her face against his, and it was
cold no longer. Neither spoke nor moved, but Harley could feel that she
was warm, and he could hear her soft, regular breathing. After a while
he stirred a little, and he found that she was asleep. Her hands and
face were still warm. He did not move again. She spoke once in her
sleep, and all that she said was his name.
Outside the plain was a vast sheet of snow, over which the cold wind
moaned, and out of the east the night was coming.
XXII
THE "KING'S" AWAKENING
When "King" Plummet left Harley and Sylvia on the plain, he strode
blindly forward, his heart filled with rage, grief, and self-accusation.
He said aloud: "William Plummer, you are fifty years old, and you have
made of yourself the damnedest fool in the whole Northwest!"
Hitherto he had always held the belief that if Harley were away she
would soon forget him and would be happy as his wife. Now he knew that
this could never come to pass, and the truth filled him with dismay.
He had ridden across country with no knowledge of Mr. Grayson's presence
in Grafton until he was very near the place; then, when he heard of it,
he was overwhelmed with a great desire to see these people and bid them
defiance. He was a man who fought his enemies, and he would show them
what he could do. So he rode into Grafton, and slipped quietly into a
saloon to get a tonic. He was a border man bred in border ways, and
usually liquor would have had no effect on him, but to-day it was fire
to a brain already on fire. All his grievances now became great
wrongs--he was an injured man whom the world persecuted; Grayson, for
whom he had done so much in political life, had betrayed him; the girl
whom he was going to marry had betrayed him, too, and this young
Eastern slip, Harley, was surely laughing at him.
These thoughts were intolerable to the "King," who had hitherto been
victorious always, and now his rage centred on Harley; he saw Harley