The gangway was being trundled off. Looking through the open doorway, Dick could see his father standing erect, his clothes rippling in the jet-wash. Around him the family stood waiting; there was Miss Molly, late as usual, with Edward in her arms; too bad, he had wanted to say good-bye to Eddie -- '; and the Rev. Dr. Hamper had turned up from" somewhere, and Dr. Scope, and Sim the stableboy ...
With the low sun gilding their faces, they all looked like strangers. It was as if there were a wall of colored glass beyond the doorway and they had all got on the wrong side.
Otto was looking questioningly down at him. Dick raised his hand; Otto turned, and the door closed. The sighing rush of the jet grew heavier; there was a whine and racket as the internal props cut in. Slowly and steadily, the dyne began to lift.
Looking now through the cabin window, Dick saw the ground drop away. The people grew foreshortened, their heads craned upward, hands went to brows. The landing field slipped aside. The lawn had a new, thick greenness as it opened out, spread itself like a carpet; now he could see all the familiar corners at once, as if by some unlawful and magical vision. There was the little strip of lawn between the house and the bridle path, with the old sundial and the bird-bath in the middle: how many long afternoons had not that sundial and birdbath bounded his universe! Looking down, he could see every familiar unevenness in the ground; it was like looking into the past, and he stared, fascinated and uneasy.
Now the rooftops of the house itself drew back; he could see the bluish sheen of the slates, drying under the sunlight, and the birds' nests in the gutters; he saw the soot-blackened mouths of the chimneys gaping to heaven, and the towers' empty heads. Now the house fell away, the earth opened out around it, and for a moment Buckhill lay spread nakedly below him: the, stables, the games courts, the glen, everything, all in its hidden proportion. Dwindling, dimming, it was a relief map, a model of a country he had dreamed about. Those tiny dots of color were people, standing on the lawn; he could not even guess which. Then even the dots winked out, the house was swallowed up, and there was nothing but the wooded hill, streaming with violet shadow, receding.
7
A little before six they were crossing the Allegheny Plateau south of the ancient city of Pittsburgh -- detouring, Dick judged, so as to stay out of sight of the great houses that clustered more thickly to northward. Once into the plain, they turned still more to the south, more than seemed sensible; but Dick let the matter go. He ate without appetite from the tray Padgett served him; he felt numbed and listless. The one burst of anger had been his last. The image of Cashel's falling body was still with him; he worried at it absently, as if it were an old sore tooth gone dead at the root.
Past the Mississippi the wild country began, thousands of square miles of nothing but grass, rippling in the wind like an endless yellow-green sea. It was hypnotic and disturbing; Dick found himself overwhelmed by the sheer brutal size of the world. From their height, the great plain had a perceptible curvature; clear and bright in the sun, it looked as if they could reach down and touch it; and yet he knew that those clustered black dots, almost invisible, must be men or animals ...
"Bison," said Padgett with interest, peering down through a pair of binoculars. "Quite a good-sized herd. And there's a hunting party -- Comanches, probably."
He passed the binoculars to Dick. Staring down at the suddenly magnified scene, he could see the dusty brown backs humping along like a living avalanche; flights of birds exploded ahead of them from the grass, and an occasional frantically tossing head of deer or antelope zigzagged away to either side. Behind them came the hunters, round black heads over the manes of the horses. Dick saw two or three rifles; the rest of the party were armed with bows. The bobbing forms were tiny and doll-like, unreal in their silence: for one moment Dick could almost imagine himself astride the plunging body, dust hot in his nostrils, the drumming of hooves in his bones ... then it was gone. The tiny figures raced backward, lost in another dimension.
The sun rose with torturous slowness; the morning seemed to take forever. Unused to sitting still so long, Dick felt his muscles beginning to cramp. Padgett sat placidly beside him, eyes bright with interest. He was too well trained to speak when not spoken to, but Dick could tell that the stream of informative comment was running along just the same in his neat gray head. If they passed over a ruined city, visible like a pale scar through the earth that had mounded it over, Padgett would know or conjecture which one it was, and could tell you who founded it, and many curious and edifying incidents hi its history. He knew the names of mountains and rivers, where the old state lines had run, which half-visible tracks were railroads, which highways.
"Padgett," said Dick, "do you think there's going to be a feud?"
The tutor looked at him gravely. "There was a similar case," he said, "I remember, in the Carolinas, some thirty or thirty-five years ago. One cousin was said to have drowned the other in Port Royal Sound; of course, the elder branch claimed it was an accident. The following year, there were three or four more deaths from duels between the two branches of the family, and I believe one man shot from ambush. The Columbia House Bretts, and the Pamlico Bretts. I don't suppose you ever heard of them; the male line is extinct, if I am correct." When Dick was silent, he added, "Of course, that was some time back, but I would say it could happen. Your family has a certain reputation for hot-headness."
Dick felt a flush warming his cheekbones; he almost welcomed it as a relief from the numbness. "I don't care what you think," he said. "I'd do the same thing again."
"Oh, well," said Padgett, unabashed, "it may very well have been the best thing you could have done. For the time being, at least; in the long run, no one can say."
Dick looked at him curiously. "How's that?"
"Reputation is everything in a place like Eagles. I imagine the rumors will be flying ahead of you; it isn't every youngster who comes to Eagles fresh from his first mankilling. And of course," while you're there, you'll be relatively safe from reprisals; however, at the same time, a young man with a reputation has to maintain it. On the whole," said Padgett, leaning back in his familiar summing-up attitude, "I'd say your chances have been widened, in both directions, by the duel ... Ah! There they are; aren't they beautiful?" He leaned forward again, gazing raptly out the window. "I've always wanted to live in the Rockies."
Floating toward them from the horizon, the first phalanx of mountains stood up bare-headed; not like Pennsylvania's gentle hills, they sprawled peaked and blue-violet, with patches of late snow on the upper slopes. Dick stared, fascinated. Closer, he could see the black parallel lines of burnt tree-trunks against a slope of bluish white snow, like stubble on a pale chin. Closer still, the mountains grew steeper and more desolate until they were flying through a high gorge between two ranges of cloud-veiled peaks. The river, serpentine down below, was a thin silver ribbon hi the softness of the green valley; the crags above were majestic, naked rock keen in the wind. And as they flew, at the head of the valley loomed the tallest peak of all, with a gleam and glitter of buildings at its summit.
There were striations of ivory and blue, knife-edges of brass, glints of jade green, saffron, cocoa brown. Level after level rose to cover the peak, like a many-colored hat on a giant's head, and at the top it blossomed into pure fantasy -- pinnacles, minarets, domes, and one incredible shape, a skeletal golden tower that disappeared in the turbulent clouds high overhead.