_ CHAPTER XXXI. THE BLIND SEE
To those waiting for the threatened attack upon the power dam, the mere torment of continued inaction became intolerable, but as to material danger, nothing definite came. The keen-eyed young soldiers on their beat night after night, day after day, caught no sight or sound of any lurking enemy, and began to feel resentment at the arduous hours asked of them. Once in a while one trooper would say to another that he saw no sense in people getting scared at nothing out in No Man's Land. The laborers of the camp were more or less incurious. They did their allotted hours of labor each day, passed at night to the bunk house, and fell into a snake-like torpor. Life seemed quiet and innocuous. Liquor was prohibited. The regime was military. Soon after the bugle had sounded Retreat each evening the raw little settlement became silent, save for the unending requiem to hope which the great waters chafing through the turbines continually moaned. It was apparently a place of peace.
Doctor Barnes felt reasonably sure that the attack, if any, would come through the valley at the lower dam, for that would be the only practical entry point of the marauders marooned somewhere back in the hills. The trail between these two dams lay almost wholly above the rocky river bed. It would have been difficult if not impossible to patrol the bed of the river itself, for close to the water's edge there were places where no foothold could have been obtained even now, low as the water was. Therefore it seemed most needful to watch the main wagon trail along the canyon shelf.
It was sun-fall of the third day after Doctor Barnes had left Mary Gage for her long wait in the dark. The men had finished their work about the great dam, and were on their way to their quarters. Sim Gage, scout, beginning his night's work and having ended his own attempt at sleep during the daytime, was passing, hatted and belted, rifle in hand, to the barracks, where he was to speak with the lieutenant in charge. The two men of the color guard stood at the foot of the great staff, dressed out of a tall mountain spruce, at whose top fluttered the flag of this republic. The shrilling of the bugle's beautiful salute to the flag was ringing far and near along the canyon walls. The flag began to drop, slowly, into the arms of the waiting man who had given oath of his life to protect it always, and to keep it still full high advanced. It must never touch the earth at all, but remain a creature of the air--that is the tradition of our Army and all the Army's proud color guards.
Sim Gage stopped now, as every man in that encampment, soldier or laborer, had been trained punctiliously to do, at the evening gun. He stood at attention, like these others; for Sim Gage was a soldier, or thought he was. His eyes were fixed on this strange thing, this creature called the Flag. A strange, fierce jealousy arose in his heart for it, a savage love, as though it were a thing that belonged to him. His chest heaved now in the feeling that he was identified with this guard, waiting for the colors to come to rest and shelter after the day of duty. It stirred him in a way which he did not understand. A simple, unintelligent man, of no great shrewdness, though free of any maudlin sentiment, he stood fast in the mid-street and saluted the flag, not because he was obliged to do so, but because he passionately craved to do so.
He turned to meet Annie Squires, who was hurrying away from her own quarters. She held in her hand a letter which she waved at him as she approach.
"Look-it here!" she exclaimed. "Look what I found. Where's the Doc? I want to see him right away."
"He's like enough down at the lower dam by now," said Sim.
"Well, he'd ought to see this."
"What is it?" asked Sim, looking at it questioningly. "Who's it to?"
"Who's it to?" said Annie Squires. "Why, it's to Charlie Dorenwald, that's who it's to!"
"What? That feller that was up there--one you said you knew before you come out here?"
"Yes. But how does this Waldhorn chump in there know anything about Charlie Dorenwald? That's what I want to know."
"What chump? Mr. Waldhorn?"
"I found this in his desk. Well, I wasn't rummaging in his desk, but I had to slick things up, and saw it. I only run on it by accident."
"What's in it?" said Sim Gage.
"Well, now," said Annie, naively, "I only just steamed it a little. It rolled open easy with a pen-holder."
"Huh. What you find in it?"
"Why, nothing but nonsense, that's what I found. Listen here. 'Price wheat next year two-nineteen sharp signal general satisfaction.' Now, what does that mean? That's foolishness. That man's a nut! I bet he gets alone up in here and smokes hop, that's what he does, all by himself. No one but a dope fiend would pull stuff like that.
"But still," she added, a finger at chin, "what bothers me is, how does Charlie know Waldhorn? Unless----"
"Unless what?" asked Sim Gage, his brows suddenly contracting.
"Unless they're both in on this deal! What do you suppose the Doc thinks? What makes him keep this Waldhorn close as he does? Is he a prisoner?"
"No, I reckon not. We all just got orders to shoot him if he tries to get away. I think Doc's holding him until he gets word in from outside. Things seems to me to move mighty slow."
"Well, this letter's addressed to Charlie Dorenwald, and anything that's got Charlie Dorenwald's name on it is crooked, and you can gamble on that. Can't you find the Doc?"
As it happened, Doctor Barnes had not yet left his quarters for his nightly trip to the lower canyon. He had been trying to sleep. He rose now, full-clad and all awake, when he caught sight of Sim Gage's face at his door.
"What's up?" he said.
"This here," said Sim, "is a letter that Annie brung me out of the house where them two is living. She says she found it in there. We can't make nothing out of it. Seems like this Waldhorn here had something to say to Charlie Dorenwald. Annie says it's the same Dorenwald that was up above, at the ranch, the one Wid didn't get. Well, how come him and Waldhorn to know each other, that's what I want to know. So does Annie."
"What I want to know, too!" said Doctor Barnes, reaching out his hand.
"Annie says it's plumb nutty, the stuff in it," commented Sim. The other looked at him quizzically.
"She read it then?"
He read it now, himself, and stood stiff and straight at reading. "This is a cypher--code stuff! They know what it means, and we don't. 'Two-nineteen sharp'--I wonder what that means! This is the nineteenth day of the month, isn't it? 'Signal general satisfaction'--Lord! I'd give anything for a good night's sleep. Gage, go on over and tell all the men to keep full dressed, and with equipment handy all night long. I don't have any clear guess what this is all about, but we can't take any chances."
"Wid, he thinks them fellers ain't coming down here a-tall," said Sim confidentially.
"He doesn't know anything more about it than I do or you do," said Doctor Barnes somewhat testily. "You go and tell Annie to shut that desk up, and see that she keeps it shut. I'm coming over to seal it up."
Annie Squires meantime had hastened back to discuss these matters with her patient in the hospital room. It only added more to the nervous strain that already tormented Mary Gage.
"Annie, I'm scared!" she whispered. "Oh! if I could only take care of myself. Tell me, Annie--I'll get well, won't I?"
"Sure thing, Kid--it's a cinch."
"Where is he?" Mary demanded after some hesitation.
"Who? Him?" Annie employed her usual fashion of indicating the identity of Sim Gage.
"No, I mean Doctor Barnes."
"He'll be going down below pretty soon. He don't know anything more than I do about what that fool stuff in the letter means."
"But say," she added after a time, "I been kind of looking around in desks and places, you know--I have to red things up--and I run across another thing, some more writing."
"You mustn't do these things, Annie! It may be private."
"Oh, no, it ain't. It's only some writing copied from a magazine, like enough. It was on one of the desks in this house--just in there."
"Copied?--What is it?"
"I don't know. Poetry stuff--sounds mushy. I didn't know men would do things like copying out poetry from magazines. Never heard of Mr. Symonds--did you?"
"How can I tell, Annie?"
"I'll read it for you if you'll let me. It's dark, in here--I'll just go outside the door and read it through the crack at you, so's the light won't hurt you anyways."
And so, faintly, as from a detached intelligence, there came into Mary Gage's darkened room, her darkened life, some words well-written, ill-read, which it seemed to her she might have dreamed:
"As a perfume doth remain
In the folds where it hath lain,
So the thought of you, remaining
Deeply folded in my brain,
Will not leave me; all things leave me:
You remain.
"Other thoughts may come and go,
Other moments I may know
That shall waft me, in their going,
As a breath blown to and fro.
Fragrant memories; fragrant memories
Come and go.
"Only thoughts of you remain
In my heart where they have lain,
Perfumed thoughts of you, remaining,
A hid sweetness, in my brain.
Others leave me; all things leave me:
You remain."
"Read them over again!" said Mary Gage, sitting upon her couch. "Read them again, Annie! I want to learn it all by heart."
And Annie, patient as ever, read the words over to her. The keen senses of Mary Gage recorded them.
"I can say them now!" said she, as much to herself as to her friend. And she did say them, over and over again.
"Annie," she cried, as she sat up suddenly. "I can't stand it any more! I can see! I can see!"
She was tearing at the bandages about her head when Annie entered and put down her hands, terrified at this disobedience of orders.
"Annie, I
know I can see! It was light--at the door there! I can see. I can
see!" She began to weep, trembling.
"Hush!" said Annie, frightened. "It ain't possible! It can't be true!
What did you see?"
"Nothing!" said Mary Gage, half sobbing. "Just the light. Don't tell him. Put back the bandage. But, oh, Annie, Annie, I can
see!"
"You're talking foolish, Sis," said Annie, pinning the bandages all the tighter about the piled brown hair of Mary Gage's head.
"But say now," she added after that was done, "if I was a girl and a fellow felt that way about me--couldn't remember nobody but me that way--why, me for him! Mushy--but times comes when a girl falls strong for the mushy, huh?
"Now you lay down again and cover up your eyes and rest, or you'll never be seeing things again, sure enough. I ain't going to read no more of that strong-arm writing at all."
Mary Gage heard the door close, heard the footsteps of her friend passing down the little hall. She was alone again. Her heart was throbbing high.
What she first had seen was the soul of a man; a man's confession; his recessional as well. Now she knew that he was indeed going away from her life forever. Which had been more cruel, blindness or vision? _