FullReads

O’Ryan got his cue, and came on to an outburst of applause which shook the walls. La Touche rose at him, among them Miss Molly Mackinder in the front row with the notables.

He did not see the back curtain, or Orion blazing in the ultramarine blue. According to the stage directions, he was to steal along the trees at the wings, and listen to the talk of the men at the fire plotting against him, who were presently to pretend good comradeship to his face. It was a vigorous melodrama, with some touches of true Western feeling. After listening for a moment, O’Ryan was to creep up the stage again toward the back curtain, giving a cue for his appearance.

When the hilarious applause at his entrance had somewhat subsided, the three took up their parable, but it was not the parable of the play. They used dialogue not in the original. It had a significance which the audience were not slow to appreciate, and went far to turn The Sunburst Trail at this point into a comedy-farce. When this new dialogue began, O’Ryan could scarcely trust his ears or realize what was happening.

“Ah, look,” said Dicky Fergus at the fire, “as fine a night as I ever saw in the West! The sky’s a picture. You could almost hand the stars down, they’re so near.”

“What’s that clump together on the right–what are they called in astronomy?” asked Constantine Jopp, with a leer.

“Orion is the name–a beauty, ain’t it?” answered Fergus.

“I’ve been watching Orion rise,” said the third–Holden was his name. “Many’s the time I’ve watched Orion rising. Orion’s the star for me. Say, he wipes ’em all out–right out. Watch him rising now.”

By a manipulation of the lights Orion moved up the back curtain slowly and blazed with light nearer the zenith. And La Touche had more than the worth of its money in this opening to the third act of the play. O’Ryan was a favorite, at whom La Touche loved to jeer, and the parable of the stars convulsed them.

At the first words O’Ryan put a hand on himself and tried to grasp the meaning of it all, but his entrance and the subsequent applause had confused him. Presently, however, he turned to the back curtain, as Orion moved slowly up the heavens, and found the key to the situation. He gasped. Then he listened to the dialogue, which had nothing to do with “The Sunburst Trail.”

“What did Orion do, and why does he rise? Has he got to rise? Why was the gent called Orion in them far-off days?” asked Holden.

“He did some hunting in his time–with a club,” Fergus replied. “He kept making hits, he did. Orion was a spoiler. When he took the field there was no room for the rest of the race. Why does he rise? Because it is a habit. They could always get a rise out of Orion. The Athens Eirenicon said that yeast might fail to rise, but touch the button and Orion would rise like a bird.”

At that instant the galaxy jerked up the back curtain again, and, when the audience could control itself, Constantine Jopp, grinning meanly, asked:

“Why does he wear the girdle?”

“It is not a girdle–it is a belt,” was Dicky Fergus’ reply. “The gods gave it to him because he was a favorite. There was a lady called Artemis–she was the last of them. But he went visiting with Eos, another lady of previous acquaintance, down at a place called Ortygia, and Artemis shot him dead with a shaft Apollo had given her; but she didn’t marry Apollo neither. She laid Orion out on the sky, with his glittering belt around him. And Orion keeps on rising.”

“Will he ever stop rising?” asked Holden.

Followed for the conspirators a disconcerting moment; for, when the laughter had subsided, a lazy voice came from the back of the hall, “He’ll stop long enough to play with Apollo a little, I guess.”