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Page 36
Miles Morgan, riding, drank in all the mysterious, wild beauty, as a man
at ease; as open to each fair impression as if he were not riding each
moment into deeper danger, as if his every sense were not on guard. On
through the shining moonlight and in the shadow of the hills he rode,
and, where he might, through the trees, and stopped to listen often, to
stare at the hill-tops, to question a heap of stones or a bush.
At last, when his leg-weary horse was beginning to stumble a bit, he
saw, as he came around a turn, Massacre Mountain's dark head rising in
front of him, only half a mile away. The spring trickled its low song,
as musical, as limpidly pure as if it had never run scarlet. The
picketed horse fell to browsing and Miles sighed restfully as he laid
his head on his saddle and fell instantly to sleep with the light of the
moon on his damp, fair hair. But he did not sleep long. Suddenly with a
start he awoke, and sat up sharply, and listened. He heard the horse
still munching grass near him, and made out the shadow of its bulk
against the sky; he heard the stream, softly falling and calling to the
waters where it was going. That was all. Strain his hearing as he might
he could hear nothing else in the still night. Yet there was something.
It might not be sound or sight, but there was a presence, a
something--he could not explain. He was alert in every nerve. Suddenly
the words of the hymn he had been singing in the afternoon flashed again
into his mind, and, with his cocked revolver in his hand, alone, on
guard, in the midnight of the savage wilderness, the words came that
were not even a whisper:
God shall charge His angel legions
Watch and ward o'er thee to keep;
Though thou walk through hostile regions,
Though in desert wilds thou sleep.
He gave a contented sigh and lay down. What was there to worry about? It
was just his case for which the hymn was written. "Desert wilds"--that
surely meant Massacre Mountain, and why should he not sleep here
quietly, and let the angels keep their watch and ward? He closed his
eyes with a smile. But sleep did not come, and soon his eyes were open
again, staring into blackness, thinking, thinking.
It was Sunday when he started out on this mission, and he fell to
remembering the Sunday nights at home--long, long ago they seemed now.
The family sang hymns after supper always; his mother played, and the
children stood around her--five of them, Miles and his brothers and
sisters. There was a little sister with brown hair about her shoulders,
who always stood by Miles, leaned against him, held his hand, looked up
at him with adoring eyes--he could see those uplifted eyes now, shining
through the darkness of this lonely place. He remembered the big,
home-like room; the crackling fire; the peaceful atmosphere of books and
pictures; the dumb things about its walls that were yet eloquent to him
of home and family; the sword that his great-grandfather had worn under
Washington; the old ivories that another great-grandfather, the Admiral,
had brought from China; the portraits of Morgans of half a dozen
generations which hung there; the magazine table, the books and books
and books. A pang of desperate homesickness suddenly shook him. He
wanted them--his own. Why should he, their best-beloved, throw away his
life--a life filled to the brim with hope and energy and high ideals--on
this futile quest? He knew quite as well as the General or the Colonel
that his ride was but a forlorn hope. As he lay there, longing so, in
the dangerous dark, he went about the library at home in his thought and
placed each familiar belonging where he had known it all his life. And
as he finished, his mother's head shone darkly golden by the piano; her
fingers swept over the keys; he heard all their voices, the dear
never-forgotten voices. Hark! They were singing his hymn--little Alice's
reedy note lifted above the others--"God shall charge His angel
legions--"
Now! He was on his feet with a spring, and his revolver pointed
steadily. This time there was no mistaking--something had rustled in the
bushes. There was but one thing for it to be--Indians. Without realizing
what he did, he spoke sharply.
"Who goes there?" he demanded, and out of the darkness a voice answered
quietly:
"A friend."
"A friend?" With a shock of relief the pistol dropped by his side, and
he stood tense, waiting. How might a friend be here, at midnight in this
desert? As the thought framed itself swiftly the leaves parted, and his
straining eyes saw the figure of a young man standing before him.
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