The Breaking Point - Page 117/275

But they assumed a certain lightness after that, each to cheer the

other. As when she asserted that she was sure she would always know the

moment he stopped thinking about her, and he stopped, with any number of

people about, and said: "That's simply terrible! Suppose, when we are married, my mind turns on

such a mundane thing as beefsteak and onions? Will you simply walk out

on me?"

He stood on the lowest step of the train until her figure was lost in

the darkness, and the porter expostulated. He was, that night, a little

drunk with love, and he did not read the note she had thrust into his

hand at the last moment until he was safely in his berth, his long

figure stretched diagonally to find the length it needed.

"Darling, darling Dick," she had written. "I wonder so often how you can

care for me, or what I have done to deserve you. And I cannot write how

I feel, just as I cannot say it. But, Dick dear, I have such a terrible

fear of losing you, and you are my life now. You will be careful and not

run any risks, won't you? And just remember this always. Wherever you

are and wherever I am, I am thinking of you and waiting for you."

He read it three times, until he knew it by heart, and he slept with it

in the pocket of his pajama coat.

Three days later he reached Norada, and registered at the Commercial

Hotel. The town itself conveyed nothing to him. He found it totally

unfamiliar, and for its part the town passed him by without a glance.

A new field had come in, twenty miles from the old one, and had brought

with it a fresh influx of prospectors, riggers, and lease buyers. The

hotel was crowded.

That was his first disappointment. He had been nursing the hope that

surroundings which he must once have known well would assist him in

finding himself. That was the theory, he knew. He stood at the window of

his hotel room, with its angular furniture and the Gideon Bible, and for

the first time he realized the difficulty of what he had set out to do.

Had he been able to take David into his confidence he would have had the

names of one or two men to go to, but as things were he had nothing.

The almost morbid shrinking he felt from exposing his condition was

increased, rather than diminished, in the new surroundings. He would,

of course, go to the ranch at Dry River, and begin his inquiries from

there, but not until now had he realized what that would mean; his

recognition by people he could not remember, the questions he could not

answer.