I turned aimlessly away. I had told Marjie she was the light of my life: I did not understand the truth of the words until the light went out. Heavily, as I had staggered toward her mother's house on the night when I was sure Jean Pahusca had stolen her, I took my way now into the gathering shadows, slowly, to where I could hear the Neosho whispering and muttering in the deep gloom.
It comes sometimes to most of us, the wild notion that life, the gift of God alone, is a cheap thing not worth the keeping, and the impulse to fling it away uprears its ugly suggestion. Out in a square of light by the ford I saw Dave Mead standing, looking straight before him. The sorrows of the day were not all mine. I went to him, and we stood there silent together. At length we turned about in a purposeless way toward the open West Prairie. How many a summer evening we had wandered here! How often had our ponies come tramping home side by side, in the days when we brought the cows in late from the farthest draw! It seemed like another world now.
"Phil, you are very good to me. Don't pity me! I can't stand that." We never had a tenor in our choir with a voice so clear and rich as his.
"I don't pity you, Dave, I envy you." I spoke with an effort. "You have not lost, you have only begun a long journey. There is joy at the end of it."
"Oh, that is easy for you to say, who have everything to make you happy."
"I? Oh, Dave! I have not even a grave." The sudden sense of loss, driven back by the thought of another's sorrow, swept over me again. It was his turn now to forget himself.
"What is it, Phil? Have you and Marjie quarrelled? You never were meant for that, either of you. It can't be."
"No, Dave. I don't know what is wrong. I only wish--no, I don't. It is hard to be a man with the heart of a boy still, a foolish boy with foolish ideals of love and constancy. I can't talk to-night, Dave, only I envy you the sure possession, the eternal faith that will never be lost."
He pressed my hand in his left hand. His right arm had had only a limited usefulness since the night he tried to stop Jean Pahusca down by the mad floods of the Neosho. I have never seen him since we parted on the prairie that August evening. The next day he went to Red Range to stay for a short time. By the end of a week I had left Springvale, and we are to each other only boyhood memories now.