The six months that had just passed had been months
of indecision and sadness for Shannon Burke. Constantly
moved by a conviction that she should leave the
vicinity of Ganado and the Penningtons, she was held
there by a force that she had not the power to overcome.
Never before since she had left her mother’s home in
the Middle West had she experienced the peace and content
and happiness that her little orchard on the highway
imparted to her life. The friendship of the Penningtons
had meant more to her than anything that had hitherto
entered her life; and to be near them, even if she saw
them but seldom, constituted a constant bulwark against
the assaults of her old enemy, which still occasionally
assailed the ramparts of her will.
After the departure of Custer she had conscientiously
observed what she considered to be his wishes as expressed
in his reference comparing her with the girl friend of
Cousin William, whom he had practically ordered out of
the house. She had as far as possible avoided Eva’s
society; and though contemplation of the cause of this
avoidance filled her with humiliation, and with a sense of
the injustice of all that it implied, she nevertheless
felt it a duty to the man she loved to respect his every
wish, however indirectly suggested.
That she might put herself in Eva’s way as seldom as
possible, Shannon had formed the habit of riding at those
hours at which the Penningtons were not accustomed to
ride. The habit of solitude grew upon her, and she
loved the loneliness of the hills. They never oppressed
her—she never feared them. They drew her to them
and soothed her as a mother might have done. There
she forgot her sorrows, and hope was stimulated to new
life.
Especially when the old craving seized her did she
long for the hills, and it was because of this that she
first rode at night—on a night of brilliant moonlight that
imparted to familiar scenes the weird beauties of a
strange world. The experience was unique. It assumed
the proportions of an adventure, and it lured her to other
similar excursions.
Even the Senator felt the spell of enchantment. He
stepped daintily with uppricked ears and arched neck,
peering nervously into the depth of each shadowy bush.
He leaped suddenly aside at the movement of a leaf, or
halted, trembling and snorting, at the moon-bathed outlines
of some jutting rock that he had passed a hundred
times, unmoved, by day.
The moonlight rides led Shannon to others on moonless
nights, so that she was often in the saddle when the
valley slept. She invariably followed the same trail on
these occasions, with the result that both she and the
Senator knew every foot of it so well that they had
traversed it beneath the blackness of heavy clouds, or
when low fogs obliterated all but the nearest objects.
Never, in the hills, could her mind dwell upon depressing
thoughts. Only cheerful reflections were her
companions of those hours of solitude. She thought of
the love that had come into her life, of the beauty
of it, and of all that it had done to make life more
worth the living; of the Penningtons and the example
of red-blooded cleanliness that they set—decency without
prudery; of her little orchard and the saving problems
it had brought to occupy her mind and hands; of her
horse and her horsemanship, two never-failing sources of
companionship and pleasure which the Penningtons had
taught her to love and enjoy.
On the morning after Custer’s return, Guy started
early for Los Angeles, while Custer—Shannon not having
joined them on their morning ride—resaddled the Apache
after breakfast and rode down to her bungalow. He
both longed to see her and dreaded the meeting; for, regardless
of Grace’s attitude and of the repulse she had
given him, his honor bound him to her. Loyalty to the girl
had been engendered by long years of association, during
which friendship had grown into love by so gradual a
process that it seemed to each of them that there had
never been a time when they had not loved. Such attachments,
formed in the heart of youth, hallowed by
time, and fortified by the pride and honor of inherited
chivalry, become a part of the characters of their possessors,
and as difficult to uproot as those other habits
of thought and action which differentiate one individual
from another.
Custer had realized, in that brief interview of the day
before, that Grace was not herself. What was the cause
of her change he could not guess, since he was entirely
unacquainted with the symptoms of narcotics. Even had
a suspicion of the truth entered his mind, he would have
discarded it as a vile slander upon the girl, as he had
rejected the involuntary suggestion that she might have
been drinking. His position was distressing for a man
to whom honor was a fetish, since he knew that he still
loved Grace, while at the same time realizing a still greater
love for Shannon.
She saw him coming and came down the driveway
to meet him, her face radiant with the joy of his return,
and with that expression of love that is always patent to
all but the object of its concern.
“Oh, Custer!” she cried. “I am so glad that you are
home again! It has seemed years and years, rather than
months, to all of us.”
“I am glad to be home, Shannon. I have missed you,
too. I have missed you all—everything—the hills, the
valley, every horse and cow and little pig, the clean air,
the smell of flowers and sage—all that is Ganado.”
“You like it better than the city?”
“I shall never long for the city again,” he said. “Cities
are wonderful, of course, with their great buildings, their
parks and boulevards, their fine residences, their lawns
and gardens. The things that men have accomplished
there fill a fellow with admiration; but how pitiful they
really are compared with the magnificence that is ours!”
He turned and pointed toward the mountains. “Just
think of those hills, Shannon, and the infinite, unthinkable
power that uplifted such mighty monuments. Think
of the countless ages that they have endured, and then
compare them with the puny efforts of man. Compare
the range of vision of the city dweller with ours. He
can see across the street, and to the top of some tall
building, which may look imposing; but place it beside
one of our hills, and see what becomes of it. Place it
in a ravine in the high Sierras, and you would have difficulty
in finding it; and you cannot even think of it in
connection with a mountain fifteen or twenty thousand
feet in height. And yet the city man patronizes us
country people, deploring the necessity that compels us
to pursue our circumscribed existence.”
“Pity him,” laughed Shannon. “He is as narrow as
his streets. His ideals can reach no higher than the pall
of smoke that hangs over the roofs of his buildings. I
am so glad, Custer, that you have given up the idea of
leaving the country for the city!”
“I never really intended to,” he replied. “I couldn’t
have left, on father’s account; but now I can remain on
my own as well as his, and with a greater degree of contentment.
You see that my recent experience was a
blessing in disguise.”
“I am glad if some good came out of it; but it was a
wicked injustice, and there were others as innocent as
you who suffered fully as much—Eva especially.”
“I know,” he said. “She has been very lonely since I
left, with Grace away, too; and they tell me that you
have constantly avoided them. Why? I cannot understand
it.”
He had dismounted and tied the Apache, and they
were walking toward the porch. She stopped, and turned
to look Custer squarely in the eyes.
“How could I have done otherwise?” she asked.
“I do not understand,” he replied.
She could not hold her eyes to his as she explained,
but looked down, her expression changing from happiness
to one of shame and sadness.
“You forget that girl, the friend of Cousin William?”
she asked.
“Oh, Shannon!” he cried, laying a hand impulsively
upon her arm. “I told you that I wouldn’t say that to
you. I didn’t want you to stay away. I have implicit
confidence in you.”
“No,” she contradicted him. “In your heart you
thought it, and perhaps you were right.”
“No,” he insisted. “Please don’t stay away—promise
me that you will not! You have hurt them all, and they
are all so fond of you!”
“I am sorry, Custer. I would not hurt them. I love
them all; but I thought I was doing the thing that you
wished. There was so much that you did not understand—that
you can never understand—and you were away
where you couldn’t know what was going on; so it seemed
disloyal to do the thing I thought you would rather I
didn’t do.”
“It’s all over now,” he said. “Let’s start over again,
forgetting all that has happened in the last six months
and a half.”
Again, as his hand lay upon her arm, he was seized
with an almost uncontrollable desire to crush her to
him. Two things deterred him—his loyalty to Grace, and
the belief that his love would be unwelcome to Shannon.
