33

The phone rang. It was Paula.

“Red Cloud, dear Red Cloud,” she said, “you are wrong. I think I love you more. But I need your help. To be sure, tell me what you told me a little while ago—you know—‘I love the woman, the one woman. After a dozen years of possession I love her quite madly, oh, so sweetly madly.’ Say it to me, Red Cloud.”

“I truly love the woman, the one woman,” Dick repeated. “After a dozen years of possession I love her quite madly, oh, so sweetly madly.”

There was a pause when he had finished.

“There is one little thing I almost forgot to tell you,” she said, very softly, very slowly, very clearly. “I love you. I have never loved you so much as right now. I have decided, once and for all.”

Dick got up and stretched, walked absently.

“I’ve a little song I want to sing to you, Paul,” he said, then chanted:

 

“For itself, for itself,

For itself, for itself,

Every soul for itself.

 

And please tell me, for yourself, for yourself, the same words.”

Her laughter delighted him.

“Red Cloud, I love you,” she said. “I have decided. I shall never have any man but you in all this world. Now be good, and let me dress. I’ll rush for lunch as it is. Then I’ll be ready for the hunt. I’ll take my rifle. It’s heavy enough for mountain lions.”

“You’ve made me very happy,” Dick said.

“Red Cloud, I love you more this minute.”

He was surprised, the next moment, that he did not feel happy. Rather, it seemed that her and Graham’s voices were singing the “Gypsy Trail.”

Had she played with Graham? Or had she played with him? He saw her again in the moonlight, clinging to Graham, drawing Graham’s lips down to hers.

Dick shook his head in bafflement, and glanced at his watch. At any rate, in ten minutes, in less than ten minutes, he will hold her in his arms and know.

He walked slowly to her, pausing to listen to the busy click of typewriters from the secretaries’ room. He stopped in the patio and gazed at the wild canaries bathing in the fountain.

Suddenly they startled into the air, the shot had come from Paula’s room. He dashed across the patio. “She beat me to it,” was his next thought. It was pulsing in his brain: “She beat me to it. She beat me to it.”

She lay, crumpled and quivering, in a hunting costume. The frightened maid was near.

His examination was quick. Paula breathed, although she was unconscious. The bullet had torn through. His ran to the telephone to call the doctor.

Graham rushed into the room and on to Paula.

“Doctor Robinson? Good,” Dick said over the phone. “Mrs. Forrest has a rifle-shot through lungs or heart or maybe both. Bring the needful for first aid.”

“Don’t touch her,” he said sharply to Graham. “It might make it worse.”

Dick turned to look at Paula. Graham, bending over her but not touching her, met his eyes.

“Forrest,” he began, “if you have done—”

But Dick hushed him.

“It can be discussed later,” Dick said shortly and bent over Paula. His examination was brief. He looked up at Graham with a shake of the head. “Evan, please, lift her gently and steadily—easy, easy.”

Dick turned to the maid.

“Now tell me how it happened.”

The Chinese girl shook her head and wrung her hands.

“Mrs. Forrest tell me to get spurs. I went quickly. I heard a gun. I came back quick. I ran.”

She pointed to Paula to show what she had found.

“But the gun?” Dick asked.

“Some trouble. Maybe the gun did not work. Mrs. Forrest was fixing the gun. She put the gun down. Then she tried to fix the gun once more. Then … gun went off.”

“I want to apologize, Forrest,” Graham said. “I found you here, and I thought you were here when it happened. It is probably an accident.’“

“Poor little kid,” Dick agreed. “And she was proud that she was never careless with guns.”

“I’ve looked at the rifle,” Graham said, “but I couldn’t find anything wrong with it.”

“And that’s how it happened. Whatever was wrong got right. That’s how it went off.”

Dick was surprised how well Paula had played the trick. That last singing of the “Gypsy Trail” was her farewell to Graham. It was the same with him. She had assured him that she would never have any man but him in all the world.

Dick walked away from Graham to the far end of the porch.

“Poor kid,” he muttered to himself with quivering lips. “Poor kid. She couldn’t decide between the two, and so she solved it this way.”

The noise of the racing machine drew him and Graham together, and together they entered the room to wait for the doctor.

“Please stay on, Evan,” Dick told him. “She liked you much, and if she opens her eyes she’ll be glad to see you.”

Doctor Robinson made his examination. Then he shook his head.

“Nothing to be done,” he said. “It is a matter of hours, maybe of minutes. “She may possibly recover consciousness for a while.”

“Perhaps you can stimulate her, to a return of consciousness,” Dick said. “If you can, do so. And if the pain is too severe, you can ease her.”

When Paula trembled, her eyes focused first on Dick’s face, then on Graham’s, and her lips parted in a pitiful smile.

“I … I thought at first that I was dead,” she said.

But quickly another thought was in her mind. The question was if he knew it was no accident. He gave no sign.

“I … was … wrong,” she said. She spoke slowly, faintly, in evident pain. “I was always so careful, I’d never had an accident, and look what I’ve done.”

“What was it?” Dick said, sympathetically. “A jam?”

She nodded, and again her lips parted in the pitiful brave smile as she said whimsically: “Oh, Dick, how serious is it?” she asked. “Be honest, Red Cloud, you know me,” she added.

He shook his head.

“How long?” she queried.

“Not long,” came his answer.

“You mean …?” She glanced aside curiously at the doctor and back to Dick, who nodded.

“I have expected it from you, Red Cloud,” she murmured gratefully. “But does Doctor Robinson think like you?”

The doctor nodded.

“Thank you, doctor. And remember, I shall say when.”

“Is there much pain?” Dick queried.

Her eyes were wide and brave and dreadful, and her lips quivered for the moment when she replied, “Not much, but dreadful, quite dreadful. I don’t want to suffer. I’ll say when.”

Once more the smile on her lips announced a whimsey.

“Life is queer, most queer, isn’t it? And do you know, I want to go out with love-songs in my ears. You first, Evan, sing the ‘Gypsy Trail.’—Why, I was singing it with you less than an hour ago. Think of it! Do, Evan, please.”

Graham looked to Dick for permission, and Dick gave it with his eyes.

“Oh, and sing it robustly, gladly, madly, just as a Gypsy man who is in love,” she urged. “And stand back there, so, where I can see you.”

And while Graham sang the whole song:

 

“… The heart of a man to the heart of a maid,

Morning waits at the end of the world

and the world is all at our feet.”

 

Doctor Robinson noiselessly dissolved in a glass the medicine and filled his hypodermic.

When Graham had finished, Paula thanked him with her eyes, closed them, and lay still.

“And now, Red Cloud,” she said when she opened her eyes, “the song of Ai-kut, and of the Dew-Woman, the Lush-Woman. Stand where Evan did, so that I can see you well.”

And Dick chanted:

 

“I am Ai-kut, the first man. Ai-kut is the short for Adam, and my father and my mother were the coyote and the moon. And this is Yo-to-to-wi, my wife. Yo-to-to-wi is the short for Eve. She is the first woman. Me, I am Ai-kut. This is my dew of women. This is my honey-dew of women. Her father and her mother were the dawn and the summer east wind of the mountains…

Yo-to-to-wi is my honey-dew woman. Hear me! I am Ai-kut! Yo-to-to-wi is my quail-woman, my deer-woman, my lush-woman of all soft rain and fat soil. She was born of the thin starlight and the brittle dawn-light, in the morning of the world, and she is the one woman of all women to me…”

 

Again, with closed eyes, she lay silent for a while.

“I am ready, Dick,” she said faintly, with closed eyes. “Is the doctor ready? Come closer. Hold my hand.”

She turned her eyes to Graham, and Dick did not look.

Then she turned her face and eyes back to Dick, who knelt close to her, holding her hand.

With a pressure of her fingers on his, she drew his ear down to her lips.

“Red Cloud,” she whispered, “I love you more. And I am proud I belonged to you for such a long, long time.” Still closer she drew him with the pressure of her fingers. “I’m sorry there were no babies, Red Cloud.”

She eased him from her.

“Two good, good men. Good-bye, good men. Good-bye, Red Cloud.”

In the pause, they waited, while the doctor took the needle.

“Sleepy, sleepy,” she murmured. “I am ready, doctor. Hold me tight, Dick.”

Robinson, receiving the eye permission from Dick, easily and quickly thrust the needle through the skin.

“Sleepy, sleepy, sleepy,” she murmured drowsily.

She curved her arm on the pillow and nestled her head on it. After a long time, she sighed faintly, and passed away.

THE END