The captain who stayed with his ship when his children at his hearth wept for his return, the soldier in his trench for an ideal that few women, in their heart of hearts, can really understand, and this shepherd, willing to stand the test of fire to save his flocks were simply three of one breed. Nor did they greatly differ from the whole race of men from which they sprung. They were only obeying the immutable laws of their own beings. They could not break trust with themselves.
They didn’t know why. It was as blind faith as that which will make a mother—a woman useful to the earth—give her life to save her crying infant—not through love, not through a sense of duty, but just from the inexorable command of the soul. Common sense and the voice of reason go unheard: and only instinct, blind and cruel, remains. No human being would blame Hugh for leaving his flock to the terror of the flame. Yet he was a man, one of the Breed, and he had no power to disobey the promptings of his own spirit.
Yet out of her tearful eyes, Alice saw in Hugh’s stand the heaven-sent impulse that has brought the world up from the darkness. She understood old wars, the martyrdom of peoples. Vision had come to her, and throughout the world she saw men’s works and heard women’s tears. She could see the Viking, leaving the white arms of his woman and following western stars; the frontiersman, striking out from his beloved hearth to seek new dominions; the bloodstained paths of armies; the builder, stretching his bridges across roaring rivers and his railroads into uncharted lands. Through the long roll of the ages she saw the shepherd on the rugged hills, alone and wondering and full of thoughts, watching his sheep.
The man he had been—the waster and the egotist—was wholly gone now. Only the shepherd remained. Hugh saw himself as he really was—just a pawn by which Destiny works out vast and invisible schemes of its own. His life didn’t matter here. His love for this girl beside him pulled at his heart, but the laws within him could not be disobeyed. He was only the shepherd, and here—a milling, panic-stricken band—were his sheep.
“Way round,” he ordered the dog, and the girl helped him keep the control of the animals until he had started to turn them. And just for a moment he took her hands, two little, hard brown hands that were clasped about his heart.
“Goodbye, Alice,” he said quietly. “Don’t blame me for staying—and forgive me. All my life has been wasted, and now I’ve got a chance to pay the debt. You don’t know what it means—”
But yet she understood this personal reason too. His manhood was at the test; and even if he should fall, at last, victim to those hungry flames, his life would have been vindicated—beyond all the powers of Destiny to accuse him. He lifted her hands to his lips and kissed them again and again.
“Maybe there won’t be time to put my petitions to the queen,” he told her soberly. “But I want you to know what they were to be. I love you, Alice. Never doubt it—never forget it. And it’s my right—to tell you at last.”
“And I love you, Hugh,” she answered clearly. He heard her without exultation, rather only with a great and inward peace, as if this were his ordained fate, his destiny fulfilled. He swung toward her, their lips met. And she rode away toward the advancing wall of flame.
XXVI
Landy Fargo was not of a mind to have his plan go wrong, so he had given particular care to its details. He didn’t want to take even the slightest chance of failure. Not probabilities alone mattered at a time like this: he must consider the remotest possibilities also. And he had not forgotten the pass through the Dark Canyon.
“They may try to drive the sheep out that way,” he had said, “and if they get there before eight o’clock, they may make it. By eight at most, I should think, the fire’ll get into it—and then of course they’re blocked—penned in tight. And we don’t want to forget the phone line on the old Lost River road—we don’t want ’em to get to that and send for help until every pass is blocked. If they leave the sheep and try to ride out, they’ll take that way—and that’s why I don’t want you to fire it earlier in a special trip. I want you to puncture the horse and the man. You can do it—I’ve seen you shoot too many times to think you can’t. All you have to do is wait on the trail. The plan’s only half done if that tenderfoot gets out alive—and that’s the surest way to prevent it, and a way there won’t be no doubt about later. And if you want to spare the girl, all right—but keep her there until the pass is closed.”
Nothing could be plainer. José waited on the trail. The fire madness
