The Perfect Host Read Online Free PDF Page B

flames. The living flame was the symbol of her competence here in the hills. Its vitality was the product of her own hands. She was its master.
    Abruptly she bent, scattered it, kicked earth over its coals, turned the heavy, glowing chunk face downward in the ground and palmed earth around it. Then she marched off, leaving behind her, already forgotten, the dwindling smoke of her indecision.
    By evening she had crossed the range through a high pass, and was descending the westward slope. Twice she had seen people, and both times she had kept herself hidden. She was determined to live with people, but she wished to choose her own point of entrance. The first she saw was a young man in what she considered a bewildering amount of clothing—rough shoes, heavy socks, breeches and a flannel shirt, and over all a knapsack and a bandolier. She gained on him, keeping to the rocks in the pass, and was about to call when he stopped, aimed his rifle at some movement on the hillside, and fired. The roar of the gun caught Quietly completely by surprise, and she dropped behind a boulder, rocking back and forth, with her hands over her ears. She had heard guns before, but never this close. She peered out after a moment; he was staring fixedly across the cut, withhis gun resting on his left forearm. He raised it abruptly and fired twice more, waited, shrugged, and then trudged off. Quietly sat watching him in utter amazement and disgust. Far off on the hillside she could discern the jerky motions of a rock-squirrel kicking and kicking its life away. The man had hit it with his first bullet, and had fired again as it writhed there. It was wanton; it was useless. Quietly felt no particular pity for the animal; she was not a sentimentalist, and had a scale of values for the lower orders. What offended her was the waste of a life, of powder, even of skill—the skill of the man himself and that of the precision workers who had made his weapon. He had not wanted the creature for fur or flesh, but had as his only apparent desire an affirmation of the evident fact that he was bigger and stronger and more intelligent than a chipmunk. Enter civilization she would, but not in the company of this pervert.
    Her second encounter was just over the crest of the mountain. There was a well-beaten trail following the ridge, and near the point at which she encountered it was a shelter made of logs, and roofed startlingly with asphalt shingle. There were neat piles of wood stacked beside it, and from it came the rhythmic sound of a voice—a light, full voice, chanting in a near-monotone. Quietly drew closer, stopped near the open window with one hand on the logs, and listened:
    “One moment in Annihilation’s Waste
,
    One moment, of the Well of Life to taste—
    The Stars are setting and the Caravan
    Starts for the Dawn of Nothing—OH! make haste!”
    The “OH!” emerged as an explosive squeak. Quietly started and pursed her lips. What
was
this?
    “How long, how long, in definite Pursuit
    Of This and That endeavor and dispute?…
    (and here the voice rang with something between a toll and a tinkle)
     … Better be merry with the fruitful Grape
    Than sadder after none, or bitter, Fruit.”
    Slowly, Quietly leaned to the window and with one eye peered inside.
    A thin young man with a pot-belly, dressed in shorts which emphasized his bony knees, strode back and forth within the shelter, holding in front of him a battered book with a rococo cover done in gray and tarnished gold. His face was pink, his nose was peeling, and the backs of his legs were fish-belly white.
    On the earthen floor by the far wall crouched a girl of about Quietly’s age, with coarse hair, spectacles, bad teeth and an adoring expression. “Oh, Carstairs,” she cooed, as the young man stopped to blow his nose on a khaki handkerchief, “You read gorgeously—just
gorgeously!
Anyone can tell—” and here her voice became a whisper—“that you’ve really
lived!
”
    Quietly