The White Bead

by Edwin Balmer

 

The WHITE BEAD

By Edwin Balmer

BETWEEN the coast and safety—if the Americans in flight gained the sea in time to catch the cruiser sent down to take off refugees—lay but a single spur of the Sierra Madres. North and south the mountains of this spur lay, with the shining gold and silver sanded stream of the Oxactl dashing down the gorge.

They were seven Americans whom the sudden spread of the Mexican insurrection had surprised at the Gifford Hacienda on the rich coffee-bearing, cattle-grazing plateau at the headsprings of the Oxactl. Politically, commercially, or socially, each member of the party was of importance in the States north of the border—of such importance that for more than a week American papers had been running columns of speculation each morning as to the party's safety. Influential journals clamored openly for intervention, if any of the party were killed, proclaiming that it would be proof that the Mexican Government was without power to protect foreigners.

However, the party was still intact after the fourth day of its flight, and had halted toward evening before the northern defile into the final valley. There was short, stubborn, gray Ogden Gifford, still as scornful of personal danger as when, to humor his guests, he had set out for the coast; his gentle little wife, still striving to share his scorn; his guests, white-haired Stanley Davison, still carefully cheerful, and his frail, beautiful wife; their youngest daughter Alice, just twenty-four, blue-eyed, dark-haired, straight-nosed, lithe, alert, yet without encounter with real fear. Because she was there young Kirk Prentiss, the tall, fair-haired, hatless man sitting easily in the Mexican saddle on the roan horse on her right, was there; and halted upon her left was Jim Reilly, older than Kirk in his weariness, heavier, awkward in his high-horned saddle.

NUMERICALLY, four others were to be counted in the party—Mexican Federal troopers—but as the horses stopped before turning to defile into the valley ahead, Alice did not even look to the escort to reconnoiter. She reached for Prentiss's bridle as he dismounted. Reilly also immediately got down.

The girl contrasted the two as they walked ahead on the trail together. In the secure, park-paved country place upon the shore of the lake north of Chicago, where the three lived, she had been brought up to believe that since the two had graduated in the same class from college, eight years before, Jim had made himself the more worthy. Kirk, swinging and buoyant as he walked up the rough trail, was supposed largely to have wasted those years in achievement that had gained him only prize cups, a place in English and American sporting journals, notoriety for nerve throughout two continents. He was trained to respond, without a fraction of a second's conscious thought; to swing a racing motor car back into the road after throwing a tire at a turn; to roll away before the charging ponies were upon him when he was thrown at polo; to right, automatically, a banking monoplane after the engine had burst a cylinder. Jim, lagging and short-breathed, as they climbed the slopes above the trail, had spent his time supposedly far better—eight hours a day at his desk, with squash or rackets occasionally at the University Club in the afternoon in winter—golf or tennis on Saturdays in summer. She understood that at his direction, from his desk in the Loop, trains carried food from farm to city, from city to ship, and spread provisions to all the ports of the world, where other trains, caravans, and burden bearers spread it again. Commercially, she knew, he commanded many thousands of men, but here no one of the Mexicans looked to him instinctively as the leader—no one, even, of the four older people who at home told her he was most to be admired.

The two young men disappeared in the bush above the trail. Impulsively Alice dismounted and gave her bridle and Kirk's to a Mexican and followed.

As she passed the turn in the trail the roar of falling waters was explained. Directly below the Oxactl rushed to a precipice and fell over, striking the spray from the big bowlders protruding from the shelf of rock. From its basin at the bottom the river widened and went more slowly between broadening, more gentle banks, dotted with adobe huts and crops in cultivation. But behind these plots on both sides of the river the Sierras rose stark, sheer, pathless.

Only directly ahead, where, twenty miles to the south, the valley narrowed into a mountain path again above the gorge, was there a possible way out.

AND the day was fading fast. The shadow of the western range was flung in a sharp, purple line, already high on the flank of the gray mountains on the east side. The west dip of the valley in the shadow was in twilight; the yellow flicker of the evening flame from the little adobe huts in that shadow showed brightly. There was clearly no possibility of passing through the valley before dark.

Alice saw Kirk and Jim, now just ahead, considering this. She saw, as she expected, Jim hesitant, uncertain, nervous, as he glanced fearfully from side to side. Kirk was, as always, confident, at ease, his voice even. He turned, smiling, as she came up.

"We were wondering whether we better ride in," he said, taking upon himself Jim's hesitation, which he himself did not share.

"There is no sign of insurrectos in there," Jim admitted. "But—" he stopped.

"Correal certainly knows where we are," Kirk finished for him, naming the insurrecto leader of the province. "He's either going to keep on seeing that no one touches us, for fear of bringing on intervention, or if his side wants to start trouble over us, Correal can get us here as well as five miles farther on."

"Then let's go as far as we can," Alice decided.

She rode at the head, directly after Kirk, as they defiled into the valley. The four guards came last, with Jim. She dropped back as the road widened, riding beside her mother and father and the Giffords and Jim in turn. When the light was entirely gone, they had reached two little adobe huts, close together, a little above the trail. The inhabitants, cautiously, had fled, leaving their supper cooking. The women chose from the frijoles and corn-meal cakes frying to add to their rations from the saddlebags. As they ate, Alice noted Jim's plain relief that—as some one commented—it would be their last supper before reaching the ship. She looked at Kirk and met his eyes. She saw there, rather than relief, a regret over the ending of their adventure which she knew he would not express, for no one could comprehend it but she. There was no opportunity for him to speak to her alone. Immediately after supper the older people, exhausted, prepared to sleep in the larger hut. She was to share the clay floor with them. The other two went to watch and sleep with the Mexicans in the smaller hut.

ALICE lay down beside her mother, but stayed awake. The night remained quiet, the rare, cool air was still. She got up, and in her stocking feet—she had pulled off her boots—she stepped out the doorless doorway.

The flickers from the other little adobes up and down the valley had gone out. Night birds cried now and then. The horses stabled under a shed roof back from the road moved a hoof; sometimes it seemed that in the stillness the sound of the waterfall came from miles away; then it could be recognized as the rush of the river below the road.

The sky—a deep blue lane set with sharply shining stars—stretched raggedly above the gorge from north to south, the mountain tops defining it on either hand. The summits to the east kept back for a little longer the silver shimmer of the rising moon; but slowly the rays began to top that range and touch the highest rocks of the mountains overhead. Gradually, as the shadow of the sun had crept up the other side of the valley, the moon shimmer dropped lower on this.

Kirk was sitting alone before the smaller hut, on watch. Jim, therefore, was sleeping within to stand sentinel next. The Mexicans, apparently satisfied with the guard which was being kept, had given up all pretense of keeping it themselves. They, without intent of later wakefulness, were asleep within.

Alice came closer. Kirk turned and saw her. She stepped toward him. He looked about, smiled, and came to her. They met in between the two adobes, in the starlight only; the direct light of the moon was still far above. He touched her arm gently with his firm fingers. Her blood warmed and throbbed.

"I came out to be with you," she whispered.

"You make me afraid to have you."

"Afraid?"

He caught her close, but before the strength of his arm broke down her instinctive resistance he released her.

She returned to him. "Hold me," she begged. "I did not mean to stop you."

He grasped her wrists, but it was to hold her away.

"I have not spoken to you—I haven't asked you to marry me because it is not fair down here."

"Not fair?"

"You did not care more for me than for him"—he nodded back to the hut where Jim slept—"before we came down here?"

"I did not know myself. This had not happened," she pleaded.

"This? You mean we hadn't come into danger?"

"Yes, into danger."

"I knew that had influenced you," he said. "That was why I knew I must wait."

"To ask me to be your wife? Wait? Why?"

"Because we're going back where those things count most that made you care for him. Might you not do that again?"

"Care more for him than for you after this? Never!"

SHE struggled closer to him. He held her sternly. "You forget. You must remember. I've wasted my life racing speeding motors and aeroplanes which any eighteen-year-old boy can run as well. You told me that—with contempt—how many times?"

"Don't torment me. I only told you what they taught me to say. How could I see for myself? I say I only repeated what they said of you."

"Jim?"

"No, not he himself, but the others for him, who had no more nerve than he. They made me think it was nothing that you liked to take risks, because they didn't have the nerve for it themselves. They pretended that it was something higher to be like Jim, and not dare things for the sake of daring. But, Kirk, I tell you, this has made me know."

"You will forget it when we are all safe again."

"I'll never be safe anywhere except with you! How could I feel if I married him that he would never be afraid of his life before me? I thought it was nothing that he was afraid to race with you—that he didn't care to go up in your monoplane, but it isn't nothing to be afraid in a place like this. I love you. You can say you love me. You must say it now. You must—"

HIS lips swept the words from hers. He held her crushed against him. Still holding her with one arm, he slipped the other down over her hips and lifted her up. She lay in his arms limp, relaxed, happy, with need no longer to respond even to his kisses.

The moon rays striking down the mountain shone in their faces and suddenly recalled them. He kissed her once more and put her gently down. The moonlight had come down so that it illumined all the trail above the waterfall. The fall itself was a sheet of silver in the light. Lower stretches of the road also were now in view. As their eyes followed it along, descent by descent, a blotch appeared upon the gray dust—a moving blotch, with glints and reflections. And now there came—above the rush of the river—the thud of ridden horses. Nearer and quite steadily it came.

Kirk swept the girl up in his arms and carried her swiftly to her hut.

"Go in. Keep them quiet if any one wakes up."

She kissed him in acknowledgment as he put her down.

"I'll send the Mexicans to keep the horses quiet," he said.

She watched him from the doorway as he hurried off. He went into the other hut, and soon the four Mexicans started out and up to their horses. She saw Jim come to the door and stand beside Kirk, then both retreated within.

The horsemen were coming close. No one woke in the hut with Alice. She drew back so far that the moonlight did not reach her, but she was still able to see out the door.

The horsemen rode steadily up and on. They passed so close that their voices were clear as they spoke to each other and the glowing ends of their cigarettes were distinct under their broad hats. They were armed men, with saber and carbine, without uniforms—insurrectos. Perhaps twenty passed. All the command did not pass, however. Back upon the mountain side, above the waterfall, a fire blazed up. Figures moving about it obscured it momentarily.

A SINGLE rider returned from the direction in which the troop had gone. He stopped and dismounted in front of the hut. He was short, almost delicate in figure, with quick, alert movements. He wore for uniform a gentleman's riding suit, with sword and revolver. He took off his hat as he approached the smaller hut, and the moonlight showed good, clearly cut features, with short upper lip, mustached, and an imperial. His bearing was confident, assured. Alice recognized him from the pictures placarding him for an outlaw as Correal, the local revolutionary leader.

He strode directly to the other hut and entered. As discovery was now undoubted, Alice crept outside and down beside the door of the other house. The voices of the men within were indistinct. She made out that all three were in the conversation before she caught the sense of anything said. The revolutionist was doing most of the talking, in uncertain, Spanish-accented English. The words of the other two were interjections, questions, which by themselves told little. Then a sharp sentence—a few distinct words, perhaps more the tone of deprecation of the revolutionist leader—made her know what was being asked. The realization choked her and made her weak. Before she regained herself the conference was over. Correal was done. He was leaving the hut.

She cried to him as he passed her. He turned—suddenly saw her. He swept his hat in a salute and hastily went on. He leaped upon his horse and was gone.

Kirk, coming from the hut, seized her.

"You were here?"

"I saw him come. I came here. I heard what he asked."

Jim, following Kirk, stood beside her in silence, staring at her.

"You shan't accept it," she cried to Kirk.

"Hush!" he cautioned, reminding her by a jerk of his hand of those in the other hut.

He drew her hastily within. Jim followed, still dumb. The four Mexicans who had been sent to keep quiet the horses did not return. They never returned.

"Now how much did you hear?" Kirk demanded.

"Everything."

"Everything?"

"Everything after he said he had orders to attack us to-morrow morning."

"Then you heard—"

"That he offered to shoot one of you for the rest if you dropped back when he fired."

Kirk released her.

"Then you see there is no choice but to do it."

"No, no, not you!" She clung to him.

SHE turned in challenge to Jim. He wet his lips. "But he—the one who drops back—doesn't take any more upon himself than he's in for anyway," Jim said. "Correal's orders are to shoot down us—the men. Correal said he'd fire the first shot at us himself—high; then, if one dropped back, he'd yell to his men to shoot that one to make sure of him, and the rest of you get away. So the one who drops back doesn't take any more than is coming if he doesn't do it. He merely takes it alone for the rest."

"But Kirk has no more obligation to be that one than you because he offers."

"Alice!" Kirk cried.

"Kirk, I'm not going to say you or he shouldn't take that chance—that certainty, I mean—it's not chance. I heard what Correal said. I saw his men go by. I can see if you don't accept they can murder you both and father and Mr. Gifford besides. And I'm not asking either father or Mr. Gifford to be in the choice with you, but you shall certainly take Jim in with you! You shan't do it yourself, just because you are willing to!"

"Of course not." Jim wet his lips again. "It is mine as much as his." He seemed to force himself on. "You needn't be afraid if I'm drawn; I won't fail, Kirk," he said.

"How shall we draw?" Kirk asked.

Alice looked about the hut swiftly before there could be any change in the plans. A Mexican earth jar with a neck large enough to admit a hand stood on the floor in the moonlight. She pounced upon it and emptied it of the dry meal it contained. Two large Mexican glass bead buttons, sewed on the sleeve of her riding habit, glinted at her. One was black, the other white. Kirk had bought them from a peddler at the hacienda and she had sewed them on. They were identical in size and shape, differing only in color. She tore them off and dropped them into the jar.

"One is black, one white," she recalled to Kirk. "You've no obligation to do it unless you draw the black one." She offered the jar first to him. He hesitated, then, looking at Reilly, took the jar from her.

"Thank you, Alice," he said. "We will draw after you are gone."

"No, here before me. I shan't let you do it unless you're drawn!"

"We will draw," Kirk quieted her.

He led her out, and, obeying him, she went up to the other hut.

THE old people were still asleep on the floor. No one of them stirred as she crept within, but she could not compose herself to lie down. The moon, hung high over the valley, silvering it all with its shimmering light, emphasized the rugged, impassable sheerness of the rocks on both sides—the impossibility of fighting a way out. There was no choice except whether one would be shot down for the others, or all four men together. As she looked down at the old men, sleeping beside their wives, she knew they could not be drawn into the hazard. Though it was for Kirk's life most of all that moment she cared—his hot, daring spirit which had overwhelmed her half an hour before—she knew she could not wish that he permit these old men to share his chance.

But was he sharing the chance, even with Jim? Why had he sent her away, unless in making pretense of Jim's drawing with him he himself planned to be drawn?

SHE left the hut and started back to the other. Still, suppose they had drawn, and drawn fairly, and Kirk had the black bead. Would she dare to know it? The certainty would be before her then—not the chance—the certainty of his death in the morning.

She watched the other hut and listened for signs to tell her of the fate decided without making her go nearer. She heard two voices, but she could make out up words and nothing from the tones. But finally Kirk came out and sat before the hut. Jim did not appear. Her heart bounded. Kirk would not be keeping the watch if he were drawn. She came forward. Kirk, rising as he saw her, signaled her for silence.

"Hush!" he whispered. "Jim—he's trying to sleep."

"Then you've drawn?" She seized him.

"Yes, we've drawn."

"And it was he—not you—he?"

"Hush!" he warned her again. "He's trying to sleep."

He drew her away from the door, but not before she, glancing in, saw Jim sitting up. That the lot had brought death for that one was lost in the flood of relief that it kept life—life—in this man so newly loved. But fear for him rushed as quickly back. She knew now he had drawn the white bead of safety and he would not tell her. Why? Because he knew Jim might not dare die. The mere drawing of glass beads from a jar could not change their characters, and as she reckoned with this she caught Kirk's hand frantically.

"Kirk, he must go back. You must let him do it. Don't let him think for a moment that you will go back to get their bullets if he doesn't, and he will have to."

Kirk stared away from her.

"Isn't it better for one to go back, even if he isn't drawn, than for four to be shot?"

"Hush!" she stopped him. "He can hear you."

Reilly came to the door, disheveled. "I did hear you," he said quickly. He looked at Kirk. "I won't force you to go back." He stood a moment, looking vacantly up the moonlit valley. He turned back to the others. "It's not midnight yet. But we can go on, can't we, Kirk?" he asked quietly.

Kirk nodded. Jim went into the hut. After an instant Alice started back to wake up the older people. As she turned before she entered their hut, she saw Kirk take something from his pocket and fling it far down the gorge.

THE seven rode silently down the valley. The moon in the cloudless sky lighted all of the trail and made the path safe. Before the shadow of the mountains to the west reached over the gorge, the peaks on the east stood out, gray and distinct, before the pale spread of the dawn, and the road, rising from the river, climbed high up on the flank of the mountain, and turned into the defile out of the valley. Up and up it climbed, until, around the sharp bend, it ceased to ascend, and dropped away gradually, evenly, down to the coast. The way began to widen and descend gentle, smiling, green slopes, brightened further and further ahead, as the sun, striking over the mountain range in the rear, lit field after field, painted a white strip of shore to bound them, and then showed the sea, purple, blue, green, and now glinting, as the breakers, rolling in, caught the rays. And off the shore, an almond-shaped, neutral gray dot, lay a cruiser—the American warship waiting for refugees from the interior.

As they saw it, the seven riders so unconsciously quickened that the women called to each other that the horses had seen the ship and knew they were going toward it. But Alice, as the horses hastened, looked to the brush-covered sides of the mountain, still close commanding them on either side, and she noticed, as the others forged ahead, that Kirk and Jim let them pass, and directly on the right a rifle shot cracked out.

She tried to turn in her saddle, but some one, galloping up behind her, struck her horse and lashed him forward. She was flung upon his neck and clung, not to be thrown, so that she did not see who was the rider who passed. She made out only that he was passing the others, striking their horses as he reached them, and driving them in rout down the valley. But the other man stayed behind, for, following the single shot, a volley, a rippling, irregular cracking of rifles, ripped and ripped and ripped sharply, clearly, in the still air, and as she looked back, the horse lay dead, already motionless, in the middle of the trail—a bay horse—Jim's horse—under him his rider. And still at that heap came the rip of the rifles from the ambush on the side of the hill.

IN the little Mexican village on the shore, under care of the marines from the American cruiser, the six awaited the subsidence of the surf to go out to the ship.

Alice sat alone with Kirk. They could hear the clatter of the machine gun which the Federal forces had dragged up toward the mountain to attack the insurrecto position.

"It was right for you to let him do it," she was repeating. "Kirk, you have no reason to blame yourself! You shared the chance with him when you drew the beads. If you had done it, he certainly would not have blamed himself."

But Kirk gazed at her uneasily.

"What is it?" she demanded of him suddenly.

"You don't doubt that he was drawn?"

"Doubt? What do you mean?"

"Nothing. Only I want you to know—never to doubt it. If he hadn't dared to go back and I had to, of course I wouldn't want you to know beyond any possible question, but if we are going to live our lives together, you must know that."

He put his fingers in his pocket and drew forth a glass bead button—white. She stared down at it.

"What is that?" she asked.

"The white bead."

She caught her breath uncertainly: "I do not understand. You must have made some mistake! You must have another!"

"Another?"

She thrust her hand into his pocket and herself felt for it.

"You must have another. You must! Why, you must!"

The color left his face.

"Why? That is the bead, Alice, the one I drew."

She stopped her search.

"This the bead you drew?"

"Yes."

She gasped. "I see it—that it is white—but that's not the one. The white one I gave you was cracked! I wore it upon my sleeve. I sewed it on myself. The white one I gave you to draw with the black was cracked! This is not!"

He could not answer. She stared at him, waiting. He could not meet her gaze. The color left his face. She arose and left him.

THEY had been for an hour in the little village. A bead such as he had shown her could be had at any shop. What did the offering of this mean? Had Kirk drawn the black bead and then, confronted with the certainty of death—the certainty, not merely the chance then—failed before it? Their words at midnight, after the two men had drawn, came hack to her. Had he used her to force Jim—though having drawn the white bead—to go back and be shot?

Down from the hot, glaring hillside, where the Federal forces had engaged the insurgents all morning, a party came, bearing wounded. Before them rode a messenger with word to the marines that the American shot in the early morning was being brought down, as there was a chance for his life. As the marines set out with their surgeon, Alice rode ahead of them. They found her at Reilly's side, kissing his lips as he tried to speak the first words of his regained consciousness and holding tight within one hand a cracked white glass bead.