The heart of Thunder Mountain
by Edfrid A. Bingham · English · Gutenberg #29697 · 539,735 chars · public domain (US)
The Project Gutenberg eBook of The heart of Thunder Mountain
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.
Title: The heart of Thunder Mountain
Author: Edfrid A. Bingham
Illustrator: Anton Otto Fischer
Release date: August 15, 2009 [eBook #29697]
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/29697
Credits: Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HEART OF THUNDER MOUNTAIN ***
Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
[Illustration: "He tried to shoot once more, into the very face of the
oncoming brute."--FRONTISPIECE. _See Page 245._]
THE HEART OF THUNDER MOUNTAIN
By EDFRID A. BINGHAM
With Frontispiece in Colors
By ANTON OTTO FISHER
A. L. BURT COMPANY
Publishers New York
Published by Arrangements with Little, Brown & Company
Copyright, 1916,
By Edfrid A. Bingham.
All rights reserved
Published, March, 1916
Reprinted, March, 1916 (twice)
July, 1916; August, 1916
April, 1917
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I The Forbidden Pasture 1
II The Road to Paradise 15
III Seth Huntington's Opportunity 26
IV The Highest Bidder 37
V "He Shall Tell Me!" 50
VI The Story of the Scar 60
VII The Way of a Maid With a Man 71
VIII The End of Her Stratagem 86
IX Hearts Insurgent 99
X Strictly Confidential 112
XI Avalanche 121
XII Sunnysides 133
XIII Hillyer's Dilemma 144
XIV Coals of Fire 155
XV The Valley of the Shadow 166
XVI Questions and Answers 176
XVII Interlude 186
XVIII The Challenge of the Brute 193
XIX Smythe's Last Budget 202
XX "The Trail Held True" 215
XXI In the Hollow of the Storm 228
XXII The Narrow Passage 238
XXIII The Miracle 252
XXIV Haig's Argument 264
XXV Diana 278
XXVI The Snow 288
XXVII The Voice in the Hurricane 302
XXVIII The Man Who Did Not Forget 316
XXIX Ghosts 330
XXX The Lamp Relighted 344
XXXI Sangre De Cristo 359
THE HEART OF THUNDER MOUNTAIN
CHAPTER I
THE FORBIDDEN PASTURE
She sat hunched up in the middle of the silent pasture, where the
tall, thin grass ran ripening before the breeze in waves the hue of
burnished bronze. Her cow pony grazed greedily a few yards away,
lifting his head now and then to gaze inquiringly at her, and then
returning to his gluttony with a satisfied snort, commendatory of this
long rest. The girl had removed her small sombrero to adjust the
masses of tawny hair that had become disordered in her morning ride;
and the breeze now played with it, and the sun sought out its glints
of gold. She was fair, of a curiously rich complexion with soft golden
tints beneath the skin, as if the rusty gold in her hair was just the
outcropping of what ran in solution in her veins. And there was a
certain air about her that contrasted strangely with the scene upon
which she now gazed intently, with her head bent forward, and her
hands clasped round her upthrust knees.
It was a little valley she had come upon by chance, snugly tucked away
among the hills. Below the bronze-colored slope there were lush
meadows of a brilliant green, and a shallow, swift stream that
flashed over black bowlders and white sand; beyond the meadows lay
more shining pastures rising to pale-green aspen groves and then to
dark-green pines; and above all these the foothills climbed swiftly to
the mountains, and the mountains more swiftly to the sky. There were
faint blue mists in the foothills, fainter violet shadows on the
distant fields, an icy whiteness on the peaks; and in the sky no more
than two small puffs of cloud like eiderdown adrift in the depths of
blue. What at first had seemed an utter silence laid upon that summer
landscape had now become, as she looked and listened, a silence full
of sound; of that indefinable humming undertone of nature maturing in
the sun; of insects busy at their harvest; of birds in the distance
calling; of grasses rustling in the breeze; of pines on the long ridge
droning like an organ in the Recessional.
Yes, it was very beautiful, she thought. And sweet. And peaceful. She
had come a long way--halfway across the great continent--to find that
peace. But why should there be a touch of sadness in all that beauty?
And why should there be need to search for her handkerchief to press
against her eyes? For the first time since she had come to Paradise
Park she felt a little lonely, a little doubtful about the wisdom of
her brave revolt.
She sank back at last, and lay curled up in the grass with her head
pillowed on one bent arm. There, to her half-closed eyes, the grass
seemed like a fairy forest, soon peopled by her fancy, the fancy of a
girl who still retained the quick imagination of a child. An Indian
paintbrush flamed at her with barbaric passion; nodding harebells
tinkled purple melodies; and a Mariposa lily with a violet eye seemed
like a knight in white armor, bowing himself into her outstretched
hand. Her eyelids drooped more and more. The music of the pines and
the murmur of the pasture blended in a faint and fading lullaby....
* * * * *
Tuesday's shrill neigh awakened her. She sat up shivering, for the
warm air was underlaid with cold; and quivering, for the alarm had
fallen pat upon the climax of her dream. She rubbed her eyes, a little
blinded by the sunlight, and saw that Tuesday stood with head high and
nostrils distended, gazing past her toward the upper end of the
pasture. She was not surprised, being yet under the spell of her
dream-fairyland, to see a horseman galloping straight toward her. If
not the white knight, then--For some seconds she stared, awakening
slowly; and smiled at length at her childish fancy. It was only a
cowboy, doubtless, riding upon his own prosaic business. And yet--She
became gradually aware of something unusual, something disquieting in
the manner of the man's approach. The horse was leaping under the
spurs; the rider sat upright and alert in the saddle; and suddenly, as
she watched him, the man's hand went to his hip, and there was a gleam
of metal in the sun.
She was not afraid. Seth Huntington had assured her there was nothing
to be feared in Paradise Park. But for all that, it was not without
uneasiness that she hastily arranged the meager folds of her divided
skirt, and passed her hands quickly over the still disordered masses
of her hair. And then he was fairly upon her, reining up with a jerk
that brought the sweating pony back upon its haunches.
There was an angry glitter in the man's dark eyes, his face was black
with passion, and the bright object she had seen flashing in his hand
was the twin brother of Huntington's six-shooter. He was roughly, even
meanly, dressed. His coarse blue flannel shirt was unbuttoned at the
throat; his soiled brown corduroy trousers were thrust unevenly into
dusty and wrinkled boot tops; his old, gray hat was slouched over one
side of his forehead, shading his eyes. But the face beneath that
faded and disreputable hat, as Marion saw with a slight thrill of
curiosity, belonged to no ranch hand or cow-puncher. Whoever he might
be, and whatever he might be doing there scowling at her, she felt at
once that he was as foreign as herself to that neighborhood. But there
was no time at that moment to analyze her feeling, to formulate her
thought. And her next impression, following very swiftly, was one of
vague antagonism. She felt that she was going to hate him.
"What new trick is this?" he demanded angrily, when he had looked from
the girl to her pony, and at her again, with unconcealed suspicion.
For a moment she was undecided whether to answer him sharply or to
rebuke his incivility with silence.
"I don't know!" she replied at last, by way of compromise between her
two impulses, with a half-playful emphasis on the "I," accompanied by
a very solemn, shaking of the head and a very innocent widening of the
eyes.
There was a pause while he searched her face with a distrustful
scrutiny.
"You're not just the person I was looking for," he said finally, with
a touch of irony.
"How fortunate!" she replied, in a tone that was like a mocking echo
of his own.
Her eyes met his unflinchingly, a little impudently, telling him
nothing; then they slowly fell, and rested on the revolver in his
hand. With a shrug he thrust the weapon into its holster.
"Thank you!" she said sweetly. "You really won't need it."
He jerked his head impatiently.
"How did you get in here?" he demanded, quite as roughly as before.
There was no reason in the world why she should not have answered him
simply and directly; but she did not. She was exasperated, not so much
by his words as by his manner, and not so much by his manner even as
by something provocative in the man himself. He was rude, but it was
not his rudeness that most annoyed her. She scarcely knew what it
was,--perhaps a certain indifference, a certain cold contempt that she
detected underlying all his anger, a certain icy and impenetrable
reserve that, for all his hot words, and for all his lowering looks,
she resented most as being in some way personal to her. And instantly
the minx in her rose up for mischief.
"By aeroplane, of course!" she said tartly.
It was a silly speech, and she regretted it almost before it had left
her lips.
A faint flush came into the enemy's face.
"Spoken like a woman!" he retorted. "Always tragic over little things
and flippant over big ones."
That brought the color up into her face. But she was not subdued; for
the cat in woman also has nine lives--at least.
"There's my horse," she said, with a toss of her head. "You saw him."
"True! But cow ponies don't easily jump four-wire fences."
"Why should they when the fences are down?"
"Good! We arrive by the devious ways that women love. Perhaps you'll
give me the answer now that you should have given in the first place.
_How did you get in here?_"
She bit her lip, reflected a moment, and attempted a flank movement.
"My name is Marion Gaylord."
"I knew that."
"But you have never seen me before!"
"No. But that's one of Huntington's horses, and Miss Gaylord is a
guest at his house. You see, I am more courteous than you after all. I
answer your questions."
"Perhaps I'll answer yours when I know what right you have to ask
them."
A light began to dawn upon him.
"Do you mean--you don't know where you are?"
"No."
He gave her a long, searching look before he spoke again.
"My name is Philip Haig," he said, leaning forward with a curious
smile.
The result was all that he could have wished for. Until that moment
she had remained seated, firm in her determination not to be
disturbed by him. But now she rose slowly to her feet, her face
reddening, her lips parted, a frightened look in her eyes. The shoe
was on the other foot, with a vengeance.
He saw all this, and without compunction, seized his advantage.
With a grim smile he threw the reins over the pony's head, swung
himself out of the saddle, and stepped toward her. As he came on he
removed his dilapidated hat with a gesture that made her forget it
was dilapidated,--a mocking, insolent gesture though it was. In
spite of her embarrassment she let none of his features escape her
quickening interest. She saw that he was tall, erect, alert; handsome
in some strange and half-repellent way, with his pale dark face,
rather long in contour, and with his black, curly hair matted on
the broad forehead. But she almost recoiled when, on his drawing
nearer, she saw for the first time--it had been hidden by the shadow
of his slouched hat--an ugly scar that ran from the outer corner of
his left eye down to the jawbone below the ear. It gave to one
side of his face a singularly sinister expression that vanished when
he turned and disclosed a profile that was not without nobility
and charm.
Then suddenly her mystification was complete. Their eyes met, not as
before, but very near, so close had he come to her, still smiling. And
instantly, instinctively, she lowered hers; for she felt as if she had
been caught peering through a window at something she had no right to
see. Yet the next instant she was looking again, half-guiltily, but
irresistibly drawn. The eyes were of a curious color,--smoky black, or
dark gray-blue, or somber purple,--liquid and deep like a woman's,
but with a steady, dull glow in their depths that was unlike anything
she had ever seen or imagined. What was it that burned there?
Suffering? Hunger? Evil? Sorrow? Shame? It gave her something to think
about for many a day and night. Meanwhile--
"I see you have heard of me," he said mockingly.
She had no reply. She was realizing slowly that she had trespassed,
that she had perhaps seriously compromised her cousin, and, most
humiliating of all, that she had assumed quite the wrong attitude
toward the man.
"You really didn't know you were on my land?" he demanded, with a
little less offensiveness in his tone.
"No," she answered weakly.
"And Huntington didn't send you here?"
"No."
"I believe you, of course. But it's rather queer. How did you
happen--if you don't mind--"
She did not mind in the least--was eager, indeed, to explain her
presence there.
"I'm just learning to ride," she began impulsively.
"This was my first venture off the valley road, and I--"
"And you came straight to me!" he exclaimed, chuckling.
At that a strange thing happened. He had meant only that she, the
guest and cousin of Seth Huntington, his bitter foe, had blundered
straight into the camp of the enemy; and that was a rare joke on
Huntington. But she was a girl; her little adventure was already rosy
with romance; and the effect of his careless speech was as if he had
looked into her heart, and read aloud for her something she had not
known was there. To his surprise and wonder the girl's fair face
turned red to the roots of her tawny hair, and a look of helpless
confusion came into the clear, blue eyes that until now, for all her
embarrassment, had frankly met his own. She looked suddenly away from
him.
"You make me ashamed," she said at length, stealing a look at him.
"If you know anything about my difficulty with Huntington," he began,
"you'll understand that--"
"I do. I do understand!" she interrupted eagerly. "I don't know much
about it--the trouble. They haven't told me. I've only overheard some
talk--and I didn't ask. I rode down the valley this morning trying to
do it like a cowboy. And there was a branch road--and then the break
in the fence--and before I knew it I'd fallen asleep. That's
all--except--" She shot a half-mischievous glance at him "--you
spoiled a very beautiful dream."
But this was all lost upon him. His face was clouding again.
"Where is it--the break in the fence?"
Chagrined at the failure of her bit of coquetry, she merely pointed in
the direction whence she had come.
"Thank you!" he said. "At last!"
With that he went swiftly to his pony, mounted, and started to ride
away. But suddenly he reined up again, whirled his horse savagely
around, and faced Marion with the sunlight full upon the scarred side
of his face, now ugly with menace.
"If that fence has been cut," he said, in a hard and level tone, "it's
been cut by Huntington or his men. You tell him for me, please--and
you'll be doing _him_ a favor not to forget it--tell him that he's a
fool to anger me. I've been very patient in this business, but I don't
claim patience as one of my virtues. Do you hear? Tell him he's a fool
to anger me!"
She watched him gallop to the gap in the barb-wire fence; she watched
him dismount to examine the severed wires; she watched him leap on his
horse again, and ride furiously down the road until he was lost to
view below the dip in the slope toward the valley. And still for some
minutes she stood staring at the place where he had disappeared. Then,
left alone with her pent-up emotions, she no longer resisted them.
Tears of vexation started in her eyes; chagrin, resentment, anger
swept over her in turn. She dug the heel of one small boot into the
unoffending soil--his soil--and thrust her clenched hands down at her
side.
"Oh! Oh! Oh!" she cried, over and over again, striding forward and
back across some yards of pasture, trampling lilies and harebells
under her heedless feet, turning her flaming face at intervals toward
the spot in the smiling landscape that had last held the figure of
Philip Haig.
The shame of it! She had never--never--never been treated so
outrageously. It was unendurable--and she had endured it! She flung
herself down on the ground and wept.
* * * * *
Marion was now facing life alone. Her nearest remaining relative was
her cousin, Claire Huntington. Her mother--a Southern girl who might
have stepped out of a panel by Fragonard, so fine and soft and
Old-World-like was her beauty--had died when she was still a child.
Her father, Doctor Gaylord, was the antithesis of the sprite-like
creature he had married,--a big, athletic, outdoor sort of man, with
truly violent red hair and beard, whose favorite expression about
himself had been that a very capable pirate had been sacrificed to
make a tolerable physician. But he had prospered in his profession;
and then had died with amazing suddenness, leaving his estate in an
almost hopeless mess.
Robert Hillyer had tackled the problem,--Robert, the alert, the
busy, the supremely confident, the typical money-getter of the
money-worshipping metropolis. He had long been deeply in love with
Marion, but he had not made great headway in his suit, despite the
advantage of Doctor Gaylord's approval. Now, having saved enough out
of the estate (for so he said, though he never told Marion the
details of that miracle) to provide her with an income barely
sufficient to keep her in comfort but not in the luxury to which she
had been accustomed, he plainly expected his reward. And this was to
Marion an intolerable situation. She did not love Robert. She liked
him, admired him, trusted him; no more. Knowing her father's wishes,
she saw the way marked straight before her; for Robert already had
wealth, and could and would give her all the material things she
desired. Time and again she was on the point of yielding, but
something checked her, held her back, as if a voice had whispered
in her ear, and strong arms had seized her. She grew restless,
discontented, melancholy. And suddenly, on a moment's inspiration, the
strangest impulse she had ever known, she had revolted and fled from
the scene of her unhappiness, telling Robert (by letter) only that
she must have time to think, and that for six months he must leave
her to herself. She had fled to Claire, that cousin on her father's
side, who some years before, to the wonder and chagrin of many
Gaylords east and west,--to all except the Viking physician, who
had rejoiced in her spirit,--had eloped with a cowboy, since turned
successful cattleman, whom she had met at the Denver Carnival. Ten
days now had Marion been in Paradise Park, rejoicing in her
freedom, rejoicing in the half-wild life, rejoicing in the tonic
air and the tonic beauty of this Rocky Mountain valley, shut in,
isolated, and so aptly named. And only to-day had there come any
emotions that disturbed her peace.
* * * * *
When she looked up again her eyes were sharply arrested by a scene
that seemed curiously to picture her own mood. Far up at the head
of the valley a cloud that was scarcely heavier than a mist came
stealing out of a gulch to take its shining way along the range of
mountains. Dropping in its flight a shower as light as a bridal veil,
it sped glistening across the face of mountain after mountain,
softening the stark grays and reds, while above it the peaks gleamed
white. On and on it came until at last it arrived at the mouth of a
deep, dark gorge in the side of a mountain that, in its strange and
forbidding aspect, differed notably from all the others in the
majestic range. There it paused as if arrested by some stern command,
hung for a moment in palpable agitation, and was swiftly swallowed
up in the gorge. And again she had a vague and uneasy feeling, as
she had when first she saw it, that Thunder Mountain,--but she could
not fit that feeling into thought, could find no words to frame it.
Yet she was fascinated.
It was half-hidden now in surging, black storm-clouds, while all the
sharp and snow-clad peaks around it glittered in the sun. Even in
those rare moments when it was freed from clouds and mists it stood
alone in its peculiar grandeur. Unlike all the others it wore no
diadem of snow. Some terrible convulsion of nature, some cataclysm at
its birth or in the fiery days of its youth, had left it bald-headed,
ugly, and deformed. But for that catastrophe it would have been far
loftier than any of its fellows; and even now the hunchback towered
among them, its flat head level with their pointed peaks, the most
conspicuous figure in the imposing pageant raised against the western
sky.
And its deformity was not the whole of its misfortune. It bore the
brunt of every tempest that broke upon that massive barrier of
mountains. Its granite head was the very breeding-place of storms. The
peaks around it had their days of calm, but Thunder Mountain never. An
hour or two perhaps--no more. It knew no peace. The elements were, and
are now, and forever will be quarreling upon its worn and battered
head; lightning and rain and snow and wind are forever hammering and
beating it turn by turn. It is the Quasimodo and the Lear and the Gray
Friar of mountains, all in one. And if, on some still and perfect day,
its tonsured head emerges from the clouds, the watcher in the Park has
but to turn his head a moment, and look again, and lo! it wears its
gray cowl as before, and stoops growling and grumbling under its
endless punishment.
Suddenly, as Marion looked, the silence was rudely shattered. Roll on
roll of thunder swept across the valley, crashed against the hills,
rebounded from wall to wall of mountains, until all the Park was
filled with the sullen bellowing. And then, amid all the tumult,
Marion heard something more,--a voice that mingled with the voice of
the mountain, and thrilled her while it filled her with a singular
disquietude. She had dismissed Haig from her thoughts. She was sure of
that. And yet through all the uproar, and in the tense silence that
ensued, she heard his taunting voice:
"And you came straight to me!"
CHAPTER II
THE ROAD TO PARADISE
The gap in the fence remained exactly as it had been when it invited
her to adventure. But now she halted there, dismounted, and picked up
the end of a wire that lay trailing on the ground. With new-found
interest she examined the fracture, and stared at it in wonder.
Dropping it, and kneeling excitedly in the grass, she searched
another, and still another wire, and with the same result. Even to her
unpractised eye the facts were plain: the four wires had not been
broken; they had been cleanly cut, and very recently, as shown by the
absence of rust on the severed ends. By whom? And why? Seth
Huntington, Haig had said. Impossible! Absurd! True, she had heard
Seth denouncing him; Claire also; and without knowing the cause of the
feud, or caring, she had learned that Huntington and Haig were
bitterly at odds about something,--cattle, she thought, or was it
land? But that Seth could have stooped to the low trick implied in
these cut wires! And yet--
She looked down the half-made road by which Haig had disappeared. It
was quite empty now, save for Tuesday and herself. Nor was there sight
of man or beast in all the valley. Haig's cattle, like Seth's and the
other ranchmen's, were grazing in the summer pastures, no doubt in
little shut-in valleys far up among the pines yonder, where the
violet mists were deepening.
She mounted her horse again, and rode slowly up the hill. But just
where the road entered the woods at the summit of the ridge she
stopped once more, and turned for a last look at her lost valley. Her
gaze swept it lovingly from where, at her left, the long ridge shut
off the view, to where, far at her right, the valley narrowed into a
pine-screened gulch; and back again almost to the spot where the road
dipped and disappeared. There her eyes were suddenly caught by
something she had not seen before,--a thin spiral of blue smoke that
mounted slowly until it was struck and dissipated by the breeze from
across the ridge. Haig's ranchhouse, surely, nestling below the hill!
The house would be visible, doubtless, from the place where Haig had
vanished from her sight. What would it be like? she wondered.
The next instant she had pulled her pony half-around toward the
valley. But Tuesday turned his head, and looked at her; and she felt
the blood rushing into her face.
"Go on, Tuesday!" she cried, jerking him back into the road. "What are
you doing?"
She rode on into the pines, embarrassed beyond all belief.
In a few minutes she had emerged again from the woods, descended the
hill, and regained the main-traveled road along the Brightwater.
Still she rode slowly, forgetting that she had learned at last to
ride like a cowboy. She was reluctant to return to Huntington's,
reluctant to relate her experiences as she had always related them
until to-day. Haig had sent a warning to Huntington. It was her
duty to deliver it. But how could she tell just so much and no more?
There would be questions. She would be cross-examined, kindly enough
but relentlessly. And in some strange way this meeting had become a
private matter; Haig's warning was inextricably mixed with other
things that did not concern Huntington. Just what these were, and why
they were so very private, she could not quite explain to herself;
and for the moment she did not try. They were things to be thought
about later, when she could think more clearly. She knew only that
she should never be able to endure either the banter or the
disapproval of Huntington. What did Claire see in him anyhow,--the
soft and sensitive Claire, with her blue eyes and her pretty face
always upturned so trustfully to him? For the first time she realized
that she had distrusted Seth from the beginning.
In the midst of these confused and disconcerting thoughts, she became
aware that she was no longer alone in the highway. Slowly as she rode,
she was steadily overtaking a group of horsemen that appeared to be in
difficulties. At intervals there was a commotion in the group, and
clouds of dust from time to time concealed it from her sight. She
reined up Tuesday, and hesitated, having had her fill of adventure for
one day. Then, as the men seemed to be quite oblivious to her
presence, and deeply absorbed in their own affair, curiosity drew her
onward; and all her scruples were forgotten when she had ridden near
enough to see the cause of the disturbance.
Three men on cow ponies were leading, driving, and avoiding a fourth
horse, which was not a cow pony by any possible extension of the
word. This horse, which wore neither saddle nor bridle, but only a
rope around his neck, maintained an almost uninterrupted struggle with
his guards. At the first near glimpse she caught of him through the
dust, Marion uttered an exclamation of surprise and admiration. He was
larger than the ponies ridden by the men, larger than any cow pony,
yet not a big horse measured by any standard with which she was
familiar. His lines were like those of a thoroughbred, and in his
movements, for all his fury, there was a lightness, a daintiness, an
eloquence that suggested nothing so much as the airy grace of a young
girl skipping and dancing across a playground.
But it was his color especially that drew the cry from Marion's lips.
This was pale yellow, not the cream color of the familiar buckskin
breed, but something golden; of a brilliant luster like gold leaf, but
softer; rather like cloth-of-gold, with a living, quivering sheen. All
the horse's body was of this uniform, strange tint, but his mane and
tail were a dull, tawny yellow deepening at the extremities into the
hue of rusty gold. Though his hide was streaked with the sweat of his
rebellion, and caked in places with the dust of the long road he had
come, and welted by the whips of his tormentors, the color and the
gloss shone out as undimmed as his proud spirit was undaunted by the
hard knocks of his captivity.
The three men clearly were hard pressed. Their faces were coated thick
with dust; their eyes were red-rimmed, bulging, and bloodshot; their
movements were heavy with fatigue. Scarcely a sound escaped their lips
as they watched for every fresh manoeuver of their prisoner, and
fought doggedly to gain a yard or two along the road. In the silence
and intensity of the struggle there was something savage, elemental,
and incomparable, heightened by the extraordinary beauty of the animal
and the uncouth appearance of the men. Between them, the captive and
his captors, Marion's sympathy was about equally divided. At every
gallant sally made by the horse her heart leaped, and she hoped
instinctively that he would go free. But then, the next instant, she
was thrilled by the bold and shrewd counter-play of the cow-punchers
that blocked the horse's strategy.
Marion had scarcely comprehended all this, and imperfectly, when a
terrifying thing occurred. The golden horse seemed to have paused and
gathered all his forces for an effort that should make his best
previous performance look like the silly antics of a colt. Suddenly,
and without any warning manoeuver, he charged the full length of his
rope straight at the man who held it coiled in his hand, with the end
looped around the horn of his saddle. At the final bound, he reared as
if to fall upon the cowboy and mangle him with his forefeet. But
instead of finishing this attack, he whirled on his hind legs with
incredible swiftness; and before the man could gather up the slack of
the rope, or brace himself for the shock, the wild horse dashed across
the road with all the strength and fury there was in him.
Marion screamed, and closed her eyes. There were dreadful sounds of
falling bodies, of bodies dragged on the ground, with grunts and
groans and smothered cries. Then silence. When she dared to look she
could see at first only a welter of men and horses half-hidden by the
dust. Near her lay the gold horse with his head twisted backward by
the taut rope, which choked him until his eyes bulged, and foam
dripped from his lips. The man who had held the lariat lay half under
his fallen pony, whose efforts to rise were checked by the tightened
rope still tied to the saddlebow. The two other men were on their
feet, one clutching the straightened halter, the second deftly
slipping a lariat around the prisoner's pawing hind legs.
It was all over in a minute. The taut rope was cut near the saddle of
the fallen pony, which then scrambled to its feet; the leader rose,
shook himself, and proceeded phlegmatically to adjust the turned
saddle, and to climb stiffly into it; the leading-rope was passed to
him again, the second lariat was loosed from the outlaw's feet,
permitting him to rise; the other men remounted; and the procession
moved on again in silence, scarcely a word having been spoken from the
time the horse made his mad charge for liberty. And now he seemed to
have had enough of the conflict, for he stepped forward obediently
and, Marion fancied, as demurely as a child that has finished a
naughty tantrum.
Then at last there was speech. One of the men had dropped back a few
paces to be in the rear of the prisoner. He sat heavily in the saddle,
leaning forward as if he would fall on the pony's neck. But his eyes
never left the golden horse, and when he spoke it was not to the girl,
who had ridden close up to his side, but to himself, in a kind of
hoarse and guttural soliloquy.
"But he ain't done. He's foolin'," the man said again and again, as if
he had started the words and could not stop them. "He ain't done. He's
foolin'."
Marion looked at him curiously. He was the typical cow-puncher, in
blue flannel shirt and leather chaps, with the inevitable revolver
hanging loosely at his hip, and a long quirt suspended from his right
wrist. The dust on his face was stained with blood that had flowed
from a raw bruise on his temple, and Marion now noticed that his left
arm hung limp at his side.
"You're hurt!" she said softly.
The man turned, and stared at her blankly, and she saw that his face
was distorted into a set expression of pain.
"Arm busted," he said, after a moment, as if surprised by her
question; and then renewed his watch.
"How did it happen?" she asked.
"Throwed me."
"You don't mean you tried to ride him!"
"Jerked me. Th' man ain't born't c'n ride 'im."
"You were leading him?"
"No, just thought I was," he said grimly. "He drug me."
"When was that?"
"This morning--about seven miles back."
"Where did he come from?"
"San Luis."
"Where is that, please?"
"Over yander," he answered, nodding toward the western mountains.
Marion stared.
"You haven't brought him over the mountains!"
"'Round by Pinto Pass, an' up through the canyon."
"I've never seen a horse like that before," she said, after a brief
silence.
"Nor anybody else has," he replied, with a note of pride.
"But he's no cow pony--surely."
"You ain't never heard o' Sunnysides?"
"No."
He looked at her curiously.
"Of course not," he said apologetically. "You're f'm the city. East,
maybe?"
"Yes, I'm from New York."
"Then it's natch'ral. Everybody in these parts has heard o'
Sunnysides, though it's not many that's seen him."
"Please tell me about him."
The man's eyes brightened a little.
"He's got some strange blood in him," he began. "Nobody knows what it
is, but th' ain't another one o' that color, nor his devil spirit, in
the whole bunch. The rest of 'em's just ordinary wild horses runnin'
up an' down the sandhills of the San Luis. There's people't say he's a
ghost horse. Fact! An' they say't he'll never stay caught. I don't
know. It's certain't he's been caught three times,--not countin' the
times cow-punchers an' others has thought they'd caught him, but
hadn't. The first time he was caught actual he broke out o' the
strongest corral in the San Luis--at night--an' nobody sees hide nor
hair of 'im--not so much as a flicker o' yellow in the moonlight. An'
back he was, headin' the herd again.
"Nex' time Thad Brinker ropes him. Thad's the topnotch cow-puncher
between the Black Hills an' the Rio Grande, an' he comes all the way
f'm Dakoty when he hears the yarn about Sunnysides. Thad gits
fourteen men to help him round up the bunch, an' then he ropes the
gold feller after a fight that's talked about yit in the San Luis. He
ropes him. An' then what does Brinker do?"
He looked at Marion as if he dared her to make as many guesses as she
wished. She shook her head.
"You ain't the only one that'd never hit it," he went on with
satisfaction. "Thad ropes him, an' while they lay there restin',
Sunnysides all tied up so he can't move, an' Brinker rubbin' some
bumps he'd come by in the fracas, just then the red comes up onto
Sangre de Cristo. Brinker sees it--Ever seen the sunset color on
Sangre de Cristo? No? That's a pity, Miss. Indeed, that's a pity. But
you're f'm Noo York, you said."
He paused again, and Marion began to realize the full degree of her
provinciality and ignorance. She was from New York. What a pity!
"Well," said the cowboy, as if resolved to do the best he could in the
circumstances, "sometimes--maybe three or four times a year--it's
weird. It's religious. The white peaks turn red as blood--that's why
they're called Sangre de Cristo. It's Spanish for Blood of Christ. It
makes you feel queer-like"--He paused a moment thoughtfully, watching
the golden horse as it stepped quietly, lightly, with head high, just
ahead of them. "The red comes onto Sangre de Cristo, an' Brinker sees
it. He looks at the blood on the peaks, an' then at the gold horse
lyin' there all torn an' dirty, an' this is what Brinker does, an'
maybe he couldn't help it. He ups an' cuts the ropes, an' Sunnysides's
off to his waitin' bunch, an' they all go snortin' down the valley."
There was a touch of awe in the man's voice, and Marion felt a little
of it too. She looked toward the serrated barrier of mountains, in the
very middle of which stood old Thunder under his pall of cloud. Beyond
lay San Luis--Sangre de Cristo--and what romance! Would she ever--Her
eyes rested for a moment on the black pile that now, as always,
fascinated and yet disturbed her.
"And you?" she said at length, turning to the cowboy.
"There wasn't no red sunset this time," the man answered, with a grim
smile. "But we ain't slep' since," he added, with a return of
weariness.
"You caught him?" she asked admiringly.
"Us three."
"But what are you doing with him here?"
"He's sold, if we c'n find the man't offered a thousand for him a year
ago."
"Who was he?"
But she knew already. Some swift flash of intuition told her there was
but one man in Paradise Park who--
"His name's Haig, an' he's--"
"Philip Haig!" she murmured.
"You know him?"
"Yes--no. That is, I've heard of him."
It was on her lips,--the explanation that the men had passed the
branch road leading to Haig's ranch, that they were now riding away
from it. But she hesitated. And why? She did not know then; but an
hour later she would be reproaching herself bitterly for that moment's
indecision. The words were almost spoken, but something checked them;
and before she could make up her mind to follow her first natural
impulse it was too late.
The leader of the party turned in his saddle, and called to the man at
Marion's side, who rode quickly forward and joined his companions.
There was a conversation inaudible to her ears, and while she still
pondered over her inexplicable hesitation the cowboys and the golden
horse, followed by Marion, approached the group of squat, unpainted
houses that bore without apology the name of Paradise.
CHAPTER III
SETH HUNTINGTON'S OPPORTUNITY
It was Thursday, the one day of the week when Paradise needed no
apologist. For on Thursdays the stage arrived from Tellurium, bringing
the mail and, now and then, a passenger, and always a whiff of the
outside world. No resident of Paradise Park would willingly have
missed the arrival of the stage; and on this occasion fully two-thirds
of the male population, with nine-tenths of the female, had already
assembled. But the stage was not due for an hour or more. The women
bargained and gossiped in Thompson's store; the men, most of them,
were gathered around a stiff game of freeze-out in the Square Deal
Saloon; and only the score or more of saddle horses hitched in front
of the store, and the dozen or so of buckboards and road wagons parked
in the rear of it, showed that Paradise was in its weekly state of
mild and patient expectancy.
So the three cow-punchers, the yellow horse, and Marion rode into
Paradise without being seen or heard, and halted in front of the
post-office.
"Hal-lo! Hallo!" sang out the leader of the cowboys. And then, with
the petulance of one that is "all in": "Is this a dam' graveyard?"
A thin man in his shirt sleeves, with a whisky glass in one hand and a
towel in the other, came to the door of the Square Deal Saloon. His
pallid face had the look of settled weariness that is characteristic
of keepers of such oases. Slavin had never, within the recollection of
the oldest frequenter of his establishment, betrayed the slightest
interest in anything. If there was a certain change in his expression
as he looked out between narrowed eyelids into the garish sunlight it
was one indicative of mild resentment at having been disturbed in his
methodic occupation behind the bar. He saw with neither interest nor
anticipation the three strangers, who ought to have had enough sense
to dismount and walk in if they wanted anything.
"Well," he began in a drawling and sarcastic tone, "what--"
It probably would have been a cautious and covered insult to the
presumed intelligence of the strangers, if he had finished the
question. But it died away on his thin lips. His fishy, blue eyes had
caught at last the gleam of Sunnysides, half in eclipse behind the
dull-hued cow ponies. For a few seconds he stared, while his mouth
stood open, and his features slowly responded to the first emotion he
had felt in years.
"Hell's bobcats!" he yelled.
The glass slipped from his hand, and fell tinkling in pieces on the
floor as he lunged out into the road.
In the saloon there was a moment of tense silence as the men there
slowly realized that a phenomenon had occurred. Slavin was excited!
The silence was followed by a hubbub of raised voices and a racket of
overturned chairs and the scrape and thud of boots on the sanded
floor. At that instant a woman in a pink calico dress, drawn by
Slavin's yell, came to the door of Thompson's, and promptly screeched.
The poker game was never finished; Thompson's trade was ruined for
the day; and the strange group in the roadway became the center of a
jostling, uproarious crowd of men and women, who alternately bombarded
the three cow-punchers with questions and stared at Sunnysides in
silent wonder. But they were careful to maintain a respectful distance
between themselves and the formidable captive, though he stood
motionless amid all the uproar, like a golden statue of a horse, with
his head raised proudly, his yellow-black eyes flashing defiance and
suspicion, and his lustrous hide gleaming in the sun.
Marion's enjoyment of this exciting scene was tinged with a vague
uneasiness. She had watched the men come tumbling out of the Square
Deal Saloon and the women swarming from Thompson's store, and had felt
a curious relief at seeing neither Seth nor Claire among them.
Though she could not have given any reason for her satisfaction,
their absence, and Seth's especially, seemed to her a piece of rare
good fortune. Haig's warning--"Tell him he's a fool to anger
me!"--was still echoing at the back of her brain; her recent act
of incomprehensible errancy still troubled and perplexed her; and
try as she would, she was unable to suppress the feeling that she had
become inextricably entangled in the feud between Haig and Huntington.
She was not yet ready to face Huntington. Thank Heaven, he was not
there!
But at the very instant of her self-congratulation, and when she was
just turning her attention again to the hubbub around the golden
outlaw, her eye was suddenly caught, across the heads of the crowd, by
a figure that caused her to stiffen in the saddle.
"Seth!" she gasped.
He came striding rapidly from the direction of the blacksmith's, the
most distant of the group of buildings,--a large and heavy but
well-built man, whose black, short-cropped beard and bushy,
overhanging eyebrows gave him a somewhat truculent expression, which
was heightened by his rough and domineering demeanor. He was better
dressed, or more carefully at least, than any of the other men. He
wore a coat and trousers of dark-brown corduroy, a light-gray flannel
shirt with a flowing black tie, and a wide-brimmed Stetson hat. His
belt, under the unbuttoned coat, was of elaborately stamped leather,
with a pocket at one side from which a heavy, gold watch chain was
looped to a silver ring, and with an ornate holster at the other where
the black butt of a revolver was visible as he moved.
He shouldered his way through the crowd in the heedless manner of most
bulky men, who seldom realize how much space they take that properly
belongs to others. At six feet from the golden horse he halted, and
surveyed him with shining eyes.
"Sunnysides, eh?" he said, turning toward the nearest of the
strangers.
"The's only one," replied the cow-puncher.
"Who caught him this time?"
"Us three. That's Jim Raley, with the busted arm. That other is Jud
Smith, My name's Larkin. We belong to the X bar O outfit on Lost
Soldier Creek."
"Second outfit below Forty-Mile," said Huntington, familiarly.
"Right!"
"Sanders still foreman?"
"Yes."
"Then what are you doing with that horse up here?"
The cow-puncher grinned.
"I ketch your meanin'," he replied. "It's like this. Sanders chased
Sunnysides three seasons, an' thought he'd roped him. But all he gits
's a cracked leg, an' not a yeller hair of the slippery beast. Then us
three takes on the job--not presumin' to be better'n Sanders, but
hopin' for luck. It comes our way, an' there you are. We offer him to
Sanders--for a price, natch'rally--but he says he don't believe in
ghosts, an' we c'n go to hell with him."
"You must have missed the road. This is Paradise," said Huntington.
The crowd roared its appreciation.
"The' ain't much in names," observed Larkin testily.
The crowd laughed again, though, of course, less heartily.
"Well, Heaven or Hell," said Huntington, "is the horse for sale?"
"He is--if he ain't sold already."
"How's that?"
"We're offered a price for him--if it still holds good. That's why
we've come to Paradise--an' no other reason, believe me!"
"How much?"
"Thousand."
There was a stir in the crowd.
"That's some price for a bronco," said Huntington, with an assumed
indifference.
"It sure is--if you're talkin' about a _bronco_," retorted the
cow-puncher.
There was a brief silence, in which all eyes were turned again upon
the golden horse, standing motionless but alert, as if keenly alive to
all that passed. The common ponies around him stamped, and champed
their bits, and moved restlessly in their places, but Sunnysides
remained calm and observant, with all the dignity and contempt of a
captive patrician in a crowd of yokels.
Marion saw admiration and desire growing in Seth's eyes, and knew that
her foreboding had not been without reason.
"And who's paying a thousand dollars for him?" asked Huntington.
"Haig's his name, Philip Haig," answered Larkin. "Know him?"
If Larkin had been a little nettled by the levity of the Paradisians
he now had his revenge, though much to his surprise, in the
extraordinary effect produced by his simple announcement. The smiles
faded from the faces assembled around him; significant glances were
exchanged; and there followed a silence so deep that the murmur of the
Brightwater could be heard quite clearly across the meadows. Then
there was a rustling movement in the crowd, and every face, as if by a
common impulse, or at a given signal, was turned toward Huntington.
Marion was not sure of the feelings of the others, but there could be
no mistake in what she read in Huntington's black countenance. She was
not only frightened, but surprised and pained. For all his coarseness
and crudity, she had until to-day believed him to be innately gentle,
with only a rough and ungracious exterior. She had seen him always
tender with Claire, whom undoubtedly he loved with all the best there
was in him. But now she perceived the other side of his character,
which she had indeed divined at first, but which she had firmly, on
account of Claire, refused to acknowledge. An unworthy passion glowed
in his eyes; his features were distorted by an expression of mingled
cunning and hate; and his head somehow seemed to sink lower between
his shoulders as he leaned slightly forward, studying the face of the
cow-puncher. Then swiftly he took himself in hand, and masked his
passions under an air of careless badinage that was, for the moment,
suited to his purpose.
"But I don't just understand," he drawled insinuatingly. "Haig hasn't
been away from the Park lately--unless he's gone an' come by night."
A snicker or two, and one loud guffaw rewarded him for this insult to
his absent foe. But Marion felt the color rising to her cheeks.
"It's a year ago he's seen him, 'way off, shinin' in the sun,"
explained Larkin. "He stops at the X bar O, an' says he'll give a
thousand for him."
"So that's all you've got to go on, is it?" sneered Huntington.
"Yes," answered Larkin uneasily.
"An' you think he'll make good, do you?"
"If a man's word ain't good he don't stay in this country long, does
he?"
"That's right--he won't stay long!" replied Huntington, with a savage
laugh.
"You mean to say--" queried Larkin pointedly, leaning across the neck
of his pony, and looking keenly into Huntington's eyes.
"Nothing," answered Huntington, lifting his huge shoulders.
"That's sayin' a lot an' sayin' nothing," retorted Larkin.
"You'll know more when you try to collect that thousand."
"All right," responded Larkin, gathering up the reins as if to
terminate the interview. "Where's his place--if it ain't a secret?"
"It's over beyond that ridge," said Huntington, pointing toward the
west. "You go back about three miles the way you came, an' there's a
branch road--"
"Hell!" snorted the cowboy whose arm hung limp at his side.
The three men exchanged glances. They were very weary; they had used
almost the last of their powers to bring the outlaw this far; and they
were plainly reluctant to undertake another tussle with the tireless
animal, now ready, without doubt, to renew his struggle for liberty.
Huntington watched them narrowly.
"I'm all in!" grumbled Raley.
"You look it," said Huntington. Then he added lightly: "Still, you
ought to fetch up at Haig's place before morning."
Marion felt disgust and resentment rising in her at this misrepresentation
of the distance to Haig's ranch. Whatever Haig had done, this was
cowardly and unfair. She looked eagerly at the other men, expecting to
hear some one correct the gross exaggeration. But the faces were all
blank, and no one spoke.
Something like a groan escaped from the lips of the injured cowboy. He
looked as if he might tumble from the saddle at any instant.
"Sure we can!" said Larkin doggedly. "Come, men! Let's move on."
"Well, good luck!" said Huntington carelessly. And then, as if on
second thought: "But see here! You fellows look all right to me, and
if Haig's changed his mind, or hasn't got the cash handy, bring the
horse back here, and I'll talk business with you."
"Talk business now!" Smith blurted out, averting his eyes from
Larkin.
"Very well. I'll give you five hundred for him--if you don't want to
go any farther. He ain't worth it, but he's a kind of a curiosity,
and--"
"That ain't talkin' business worth a dam'!" cried Larkin. "Come along,
men!"
He turned his pony's head, and took a fresh grip on the halter that
held the prisoner. Smith moved also, though slowly, but Raley did not
budge.
"I'm damned if I go any further!" he growled.
Smith stopped, and looked uncertainly from Raley to Larkin, from
Larkin to Huntington, who was studying him craftily.
"The five hundred isn't wind," said Huntington sneeringly. "It's over
there in Thompson's safe, if you want it."
"We'll see Haig first," said Larkin, compressing his lips, and
speaking more to his companions than to Huntington.
Smith shifted uneasily in his saddle, while Raley avoided Larkin's
eyes, and looked appealingly at Huntington. The ranchman, in his
turn, took a sidelong glance, furtive and questioning, at the faces of
his neighbors. The moment was critical, and much more was involved in
the crisis than the possession of the golden outlaw. For a long time
Huntington had assumed a certain leadership in the Park, but it had
not always been unquestioned. His qualifications for leadership were
not as apparent to all his neighbors as they were to himself, and
there were some who even resented his pretensions. Nevertheless he
had, in a way, succeeded; and he had been permitted to represent the
entire valley as far as he liked in the war with Philip Haig. One and
all, indeed, regarded Haig as an intruder; many of them had more than
once threatened violence against him; and there was not among them one
whom Haig, if he had wanted a defender, could have counted on. Yet,
for all that, Huntington was practically alone in the depth of his
hatred and the violence of his methods. If Haig had no friends in the
Park, he had only a few, perhaps no more than two or three, inveterate
enemies, of whom Huntington was the active representative.
Huntington now saw in the faces of the men around him that they were
doubtful of him, and that the time was opportune to turn their
passivity into energetic support of his plans. Moreover, he had
already "put his foot in it," had gone too far to withdraw without
discredit. Having openly insulted the absent enemy, and having clearly
revealed his intention to cheat him of this prize, to weaken now would
be to abandon forever all hope of ascendency. For an instant he
regretted what he had done, and cursed himself under his breath.
Then, taking a new grip on himself, he returned to the attack.
"Seven hundred and fifty, then!" he said with a swagger. "And it's
cash, not words."
There was a moment of suspense. The three men, who were moving slowly
away, turned in their saddles. Not a muscle quivered, not a foot
stirred in the expectant crowd. Marion felt that in another minute she
would cry out, shrieking at Seth, shrieking the warning Haig had sent
by her.
"That's good enough, for me!" declared Raley, throwing the reins over
his pony's head, and preparing painfully to dismount.
"No, Jim!" cried Smith. "Let him say a thousand, an' I'm with you.
'Tain't exactly on the square, but the's no use killin' ourselves
for--"
His speech was cut short by a shrill cry from a woman who stood on a
horse block at the outer edge of the crowd.
"Look! Look!" she called, pointing a finger toward the long white
road.
CHAPTER IV
THE HIGHEST BIDDER
Far up the road appeared a little cloud of dust with a black speck in
its center.
A murmur ran through the crowd; a name was passed from mouth to mouth;
and the men nearest Huntington began to edge away instinctively,
leaving a larger and larger space clear around him and the three
cow-punchers.
Marion too looked, and understood. She had not dismounted, but still
sat her pony within ten feet of the outlaw, at the side of the
roadway, in about the middle of which stood Huntington. With an effort
she drew her eyes away from that ominous black spot in the distance,
and turned toward Seth. A shiver ran through her body, but her cheeks
burned, and there was a voice in her ears that shouted, "Tell him he's
a fool to anger me!" For a moment she was on the point of rushing upon
Seth, and shrieking that warning into his face. But now it was too
late.
Like all the others Huntington stood for a few seconds fascinated by
that figure in the puff of dust. And for just those few seconds there
was a certain unsteadiness in his attitude, irresolution in the black
eyes beneath their bushy brows. But the blue-whiteness under the dark
beard was not the pallor of fear, so called. Seth Huntington was as
incapable of physical cowardice as he was of moral courage. He was not
afraid of Philip Haig, but he was dreadfully afraid of being thought
afraid of him. There was yet time to avoid a clash with Haig, to
withdraw from an undertaking in which he knew he was wholly in the
wrong. But he was not equal to that test of character. He would sooner
tackle all the Haigs in Christendom than face the derision of his
neighbors, whom he had assiduously taught to expect great things of
him on the first occasion. Here was the occasion; he had seized it,
blinded by passion; and there was no way for him now but to see it
through. He straightened up, and faced the three cow-punchers.
"All right!" he cried defiantly. "It's a thousand."
But the three had heard the name murmured by the crowd, had seen the
distant horseman. Larkin was plainly elated. Raley and Smith, as
plainly abashed, looked this way and that, avoiding the eyes of their
leader, and every other eye as well. Huntington, seeing the game about
to slip from his hands, whirled on his heel and looked swiftly toward
the store.
"Thompson!" he yelled.
"Here!" was the answer, as a small, gray-bearded man in shirt sleeves
advanced a step or two from the door.
"Fetch me that roll from your safe, will you?"
"Right!"
As Thompson disappeared within the store, Huntington turned again
toward the cowboys.
"A thousand dollars--cash!" he repeated.
Larkin leaned forward on his horse, and looked at him shrewdly.
"Seems to me it's not the horse you're after so much as him," he said,
with a grin and a nod toward the road.
"That's as may be," retorted Huntington. "Money talks."
"An' it says mighty funny things sometimes," replied Larkin, who now
made no concealment of his dislike of Huntington and his "game."
"We'll see!" cried Huntington angrily. "How does twelve hundred sound
to you two?"
He looked steadily at Raley and Smith, who exchanged glances.
"What's your awful hurry?" Larkin demanded, in a drawling tone, but
with an anxious eye for the galloping figure now in plain view. "We'll
give Haig a chance to bid--eh, men?"
Smith shot an angry but uneasy look at the leader. Huntington saw it,
and guessed that there was more than weariness and greed in the
willingness of Smith and Raley to combine against Larkin. Probably, he
thought, there had been differences of opinion, disputes even, on the
road to Paradise. He turned impatiently toward the store.
At that instant Thompson ran out, broke through the ring of men, and
handed a roll of "yellowbacks" to Huntington, who hurriedly peeled off
several of the bills, and thrust them at arm's length toward the
wavering cow-punchers.
"Haig talked about a thousand dollars!" he cried. "There's fifteen
hundred. Do you want it?"
For a moment it was heads or tails. Even Larkin eyed the money
hungrily. Then his teeth clicked together, and he turned upon his
partners, whose faces showed plainly the answer that was upon their
lips.
"An' what'll you say to _him_?" he demanded.
"Eighteen hundred!" shouted Huntington.
"That's good enough for me!" cried Raley. "Say it, Jud!"
There was a distant thunder of hoofs as Haig's horse took the short
bridge over the Brightwater. The crowd backed still farther away from
Huntington, who was again fingering his roll of bills.
"Two thousand!" he roared, shaking the handful of "yellowbacks" at the
wavering Smith.
Raley leaned from his saddle, and grabbed Smith's arm.
"Quick, Jud!" he pleaded hotly. "Don't be a fool!"
"All right! We'll take it!" answered Smith.
"No!" said Larkin firmly, pulling his horse around between Huntington
and the two partners.
"Yes!" the two cried out together.
Huntington stepped forward, and thrust both handfuls of bills almost
into Larkin's face.
"Name your price then!" he bellowed.
Larkin looked at the money,--smelt it,--as he said afterwards, grimly
confessing his weakness at the sight of more than he could save in
years of riding the range and branding mavericks. If there had been
ten seconds more--
Haig galloped into the crowd, which gave him plenty of room, and
reined up his pony just in front of the golden outlaw. For some
instants he saw only the horse; and his eyes kindled. Then he faced
the cowboys and Huntington.
They were fixed in almost the very attitudes in which he had come upon
them. Huntington's outstretched hands had indeed fallen to his side,
but they still clutched the crumpled bills. Raley's blood-stained face
was purple with anger and chagrin, while Smith's wore a sullen,
hangdog look. As for Larkin, he met Haig's questioning scrutiny with a
look of mingled triumph and guilt.
"Well, why don't you go on?" asked Haig, with a smile.
There was no response. The silence was again so complete that the
music of the Brightwater was heard across the meadows.
Haig slowly swept the crowd with an inquiring glance. All these men
were hostile toward him, of course; but how far would they support
Huntington? No matter! He swung himself suddenly out of the saddle,
and addressed himself to the leader of the cowboys.
"You're Larkin, aren't you?" he said.
"Yes," answered the embarrassed cow-puncher.
"And the others are Smith and--"
"Raley," prompted Larkin.
"And here, of course, is my good friend Huntington, looking like
Fortune with both hands full."
Several men in the crowd laughed, whereupon Huntington, who had
evidently forgotten the money, made matters worse for himself by
hastily and clumsily thrusting it into the pockets of his coat, while
his face flushed angrily.
"That's right, Cousin Seth," Haig said lightly. "You may need it."
Marion, at these words, quivered with alarm. Was he going to tell
Huntington, there in that crowd, of the incident in the pasture? His
next speech, however, reassured her.
"Now, Larkin," he said, "let's understand things. That's my horse,
isn't it?"
"That's what I've been sayin' some time back," answered Larkin, in a
tone of relief.
"And you, Smith?"
"I suppose so," was the sullen reply.
"And Raley?"
"No, it ain't!" answered that one with a sudden flare-up of courage.
"Then whose horse is it?"
"It belongs to Larkin an' Smith an' me."
"Of course. But why did you bring him to Paradise Park?"
"To sell him."
"To whom, please?"
Raley, caught in the trap, looked appealingly toward Smith, but got no
help from him.
"To whom?" repeated Haig sharply.
"To you--if you wanted him!" Raley blurted out at last.
"If I wanted him!" retorted Haig ironically. "I bargained for him with
you, didn't I?"
"Yes," growled Raley.
"And you went and caught him _for me_?"
"Yes."
"And you brought him to Paradise Park _for me_?"
"Yes."
"Very well. Don't be downhearted!" he said cheerfully. "A good name is
more to be desired than great riches. Isn't that so, Cousin Seth?"
The ranchman's face flamed.
"If you've got anything to say to me, say it quick!" he jerked out.
"I have several things to say to you, one at a time," replied Haig
smoothly. "To begin with, these men told you the horse was mine,
didn't they?"
"No, they didn't. They said you'd offered a thousand dollars for
him."
Haig laughed.
"All right, if that suits you better! They told you they had brought
him here to deliver him to me for a thousand dollars, and you thought
it would be a fine joke to buy him yourself. Is that it?"
Huntington did not respond to this, but watched Haig narrowly, a
little puzzled by his manner.
"How much did he offer you?" Haig asked Larkin.
"Two thousand dollars--and then he said name our price."
Haig whistled.
"Well, I'm damned if you haven't got some sporting blood in you!" he
said, smiling at Huntington. "How much was in your roll?"
Huntington's first impulse was to tell Haig that it was none of his
business. But he was deceived by Haig's manner, having expected his
enemy to fall upon him like a thunderbolt. His surprise was shared,
indeed, by most of the men, who had expected gun-play on the jump.
Only Marion, sitting still and watchful on her pony, was not misled.
She felt that Haig was playing with Huntington, and biding his time.
Huntington's vanity completed his self-delusion.
"Four thousand, two hundred dollars" he replied boastfully, glancing
around at his neighbors.
"Whew!" uttered Haig, between pursed lips. Then to Larkin: "You were
hard pressed, weren't you? But never mind, boys, I'll do better than I
promised--and charge it up to Cousin Seth."
Another laugh flickered around the crowd. It was evident that there
was no great objection to seeing Huntington baited.
"My name's Huntington!" he snorted. "What's this damned cousin
business, anyhow?"
Haig raised his eyebrows.
"Does it annoy you?" he asked, in a tone of exaggerated politeness.
Huntington merely glared. He was one of those self-made wits who enjoy
their own jokes immensely but grumble at plucking barbed shafts out of
their own skins. He began to wish for the thunderbolt.
"But it's your own fault, you know," Haig added.
"What in hell are you talking about?" Huntington growled.
"I'm talking about your last visit to my ranch."
"My last--What do you mean, damn you!" the ranchman thundered, his
right hand moving to his belt.
There was a hurried movement among those of the crowd who, absorbed in
the dialogue, had half-consciously crept nearer. But Haig appeared to
have noticed neither Huntington's motion nor the backing away of the
spectators.
"And wouldn't it have been reckless extravagance to pay good money for
Sunnysides when you might just have come and taken him out of my
corrals?"
For a few seconds Huntington, as if he could scarce believe that he
heard aright, was speechless with amazement and rage.
"Say it, damn you!" he said chokingly. "What do you mean?"
"Don't get so excited, or you may break a blood vessel, Cous--I beg
your pardon, _Mister_ Huntington."
"Say it!" roared the ranchman.
Then Haig dropped his mask.
"I will say it," he began in a voice that rang ominously. "I'll say it
so that even you cannot fail to understand me. I mean that I'm tired
of your threats and persecutions. I mean that you have harassed me and
my men at every opportunity. I mean that you drove that bunch of my
cattle off the cliff last September. I mean that within twenty-four
hours another fence has been cut, and that you know who did it. I mean
that your attempt to buy my horse was only another of the contemptible
and cowardly tricks you have played on me. I mean, Huntington, that
you are a bully, a liar and a thief!"
Huntington's hand had slipped to the butt of his revolver at the
beginning of this intolerable speech; but he had waited, as if
fascinated, as if unable to move under the torrent of denunciation.
Then to the onlookers it appeared that the bold young man, who had not
yet made the slightest motion toward his own weapon, would be slain in
his tracks. But Haig was as much the quicker in action as he was the
nimbler in wit.
The two revolvers cracked, it seemed, as one, but with very different
results. Haig's battered old hat, lifted as if by a sudden gust of
wind, slid from his head, and fell to the ground with a bullet hole
through it. But Huntington threw up his hands, pitched forward, and
fell in a heap in the dusty road.
There was a single shrill, short-cut shriek as a woman near the door
of the post-office slipped down in a faint; and then a chorus of
quavering cries as other women clutched the arms of the men nearest
them.
Marion swayed in her saddle, her head drooping on her breast. A young
cowboy darted from the crowd, and grabbed her as she fell. He started
to lift and carry her away, but, with a desperate effort, she
recovered, and stood erect, trying to thrust him from her. He held her
nevertheless, supporting her with an arm under one of hers.
Haig had quickly turned and faced the group of men at the left of the
road.
"Is there anybody else here that wants to buy my horse?" he demanded
coolly.
There was no response, no movement. He whirled, and confronted the
silent row of men on the other side.
"Is there anybody else here who thinks he can drive me out of Paradise
Park?"
Still no one replied; and Haig, with a shrug, thrust his revolver back
in its holster.
"Thompson!" he called out.
"Here!" was the answer, in the same tone of readiness with which he
had responded to Huntington. By keeping his mouth shut, and never
taking sides in any of the occasional disagreements and disputes that
enlivened the tedium of life in that community, Thompson had
established a reputation for neutrality and trustworthiness, and was
permitted to be everybody's friend.
"Look after Huntington, please!" said Haig. "He's not badly
hit--you'll find the bullet under the left shoulder blade. It'll do
him good."
Thompson and some others lifted Huntington, and carried him into the
store; and at that moment the stage, its approach unnoticed, rattled
up, and stopped with shrieking brakes and creaking harness. There was
a sudden outbreak of speech on all sides, as if the tension had been
relaxed by the recurrence of a familiar and orderly event. In the
confusion Haig turned toward Sunnysides and the three cow-punchers.
"Now, Larkin," he began briskly, "we'll finish this business, and
then--"
He stopped short, and stared.
By the side of the golden horse stood Marion. Still shocked and
bewildered, yet strangely thrilled, she had stretched out one
trembling arm, and rested her hand on the neck of the wild creature,
from which every other person in the crowd around--and she too in her
right senses--had kept away, in full appreciation of his reputation.
Whether it was that the outlaw had for the time given up all notion of
resistance and hostility, or that he felt the difference between the
girl's gentle touch and the rough handling he had undergone, he did
not stir. But this docility, this understanding, was only a part of
the sight that brought Haig to a standstill.
He had left many things behind him, but there was one thing he had not
been, able to destroy as he would have destroyed it, root and branch
and flower. He would always have a weakness--he called it that--for
beauty in whatever form it appeared to him. Sunsets and twilights, the
shadows of trees in still waters, flowers and reeds, old ruins in the
moonlight, sometimes even faces moved him until he was ashamed, and
berated himself for a sentimental weakling. And now--
The girl was tawny as a leopard. Her hair was almost exactly the color
of the outlaw's dull yellow mane, but finer, of course, and softer;
and her complexion--he wondered that he had not noticed it before--had
a peculiar richness and brilliancy that seemed to reflect the luster
of Sunnysides' golden hide. They stood there entrancing his artist-eye
with their perfect harmony of line and color; and the last thin rays
of the setting sun bathed horse and girl in a golden light--an
atmosphere in which they glowed like one of Titian's mellowed
canvases.
"Don't move, please!" he exclaimed.
But Marion did not hear, or did not heed. She dropped her hand, and
glided toward him, while he watched her, curious and rapt. Perhaps it
was because he saw her through that golden glow, perhaps because his
nerves were a little unsteady in the reaction from the strain they had
undergone, that she made a singular appeal to his imagination. He
fancied that for all the fineness of her figure, the exquisite poise
of her small head, the cameo-like delicacy of her face, there was
something in her as wild, untamed, and elemental as the heart of
Sunnysides.
Thus she moved slowly past him, and passing gave him a long and steady
look, with an unfathomable expression in her eyes,--an expression
neither of anger nor of bitterness nor of disgust nor of anything he
might have expected after all he had done that day. He turned, and
watched her until she had disappeared in the crowd around the
stagecoach; and with her went out the last rays of the sun.
"Well, I'll be damned!" said Philip Haig.
With a shake of his shoulders, as if to throw off some unwelcome
weight upon them, he turned again to take up his business with the
gaping cow-punchers.
CHAPTER V
"HE SHALL TELL ME!"
Doctor Wilson, arriving from Tellurium on the third day after the
encounter at Paradise, found Huntington in a bad way, due not so much
to the wound in his left shoulder as to the state of his mind. Haig's
bullet was extracted without difficulty or serious complications, but
Haig's words were encysted too deep for any probe. Huntington's
self-love had been dealt a mortal blow; and somebody must pay for it.
First of all it was Claire that paid; then Marion. He did not mean to
be disagreeable to them, but never having cultivated self-restraint he
had none of it now to ease the days of his convalescence. He filled
the house with his clamor, and required as much attention as an ailing
child. There were just two ways to keep him quiet. Claire soothed him
when she sat at his bedside, with one of his huge "paws" held in her
tiny hands; and Marion found, somewhat to her surprise, that Seth
liked music. The piano was one of the wonders of the Huntington house,
for pianos are not essential instruments in the equipment of cattle
ranches, and this was the only one in all that region of cattledom.
In music Seth's tastes were sentimental. "Lost Chords" and "Rosaries"
subdued him almost to tears; and if Marion only brought him tuneful
violets every morn he tried his best to be good. So when Claire was
not on duty at the bedside Marion must needs be on duty at the
piano,--an ordeal that Claire endured, of course, more patiently than
Marion.
Claire was almost comically unfit to be a ranchman's wife, and she too
had been a trial on occasions. She was small and delicate, but
vivacious, amiable, bright. Her blue eyes always had a childlike
wonder in them, and she was fond of wearing her fluffy, golden hair in
a girlish knot low on her neck, or even in a long, thick braid down
her back, with a blue ribbon bow at the end. She flitted about the
house like a butterfly, and yet she had managed somehow to make her
home the marvel of Paradise Park.
To begin with it was the ordinary, one-story, rambling house of pine,
with spruce-clad hills rising behind it, and a little stream,
rollicking down between it and the corrals. But a wide veranda had
been constructed on three sides of it, furnished with wicker chairs,
and half-screened with boxes of growing flowers. All around the house
flowers grew,--old-fashioned garden flowers, roses and geraniums; beds
of them everywhere, and blossoming shrubs along the stream.
The house contained, besides the kitchen and the bedrooms, just one
big room. This, with its low ceiling, unpainted timbers, and small
windows, was not unlike the hall of some old manor house. The floor
was covered with Navajo rugs in rich and barbaric colors; the walls
were draped with burlap in dull red dyes; and the windows were
curtained with chintz in bright yellows and reds. Above the windows
and doors hung many heads of deer and elk and mountain sheep, and
rifles on racks of horn. Between the two front windows stood the
upright piano, and near it a small bookcase filled with novels and
volumes of poetry. The big oak table at mealtime was made to look very
inviting with white napery and modest china and silver, and a bouquet
always in its center. At other times it was a library table, heaped
with books and magazines, and in the evening, when the kerosene lamps
were lighted, and the piñon was blazing in the great fireplace, the
room seemed as remote from Paradise Park as Claire herself.
There was an occasional visitor at Huntington's in the period of his
convalescence, usually a ranchwife eager for another glimpse at
Claire's wonderful housekeeping, or a young cow-puncher drawn by the
attraction of two very pretty and unusual women in one house. But the
ranchmen themselves, with two or three exceptions, were content to be
solicitous at long range--an abstention that relieved and at the same
time troubled Huntington. He was not eager to talk with his neighbors
about that episode at the post-office, but their aloofness filled him
with uneasiness. Well, let them wait! They would hear from him again,
and so should Haig!
There was, among the visitors, one whose coming perceptibly lightened
the tedium of those days. Marion had the good fortune to see him in
time not to be taken by surprise. Seated on the veranda after an
exhausting recital for the benefit of Huntington, she perceived the
figure of a horseman--yes, it was a horseman--riding out of the pines
toward the corrals. She stared. He was so little and so lost between
his pony, which seemed extraordinarily big, and his sombrero, which
undoubtedly was enormous, that she remained for a moment dumb, and
then, choking with laughter, fled into the house.
"Look, Claire, look!" she cried, grabbing her cousin's arm.
Claire, dragged to the door, looked and giggled.
"Haven't you seen that before?" she asked.
"No! Never!" answered Marion, her hand upon her mouth.
"Of course. He's just arrived--for the season. He was here last year,
and the year before."
"And they let him?" demanded Marion, thinking of the irrepressible
cow-punchers.
"Oh, he's all right!" Claire assured her. "That is, after you get used
to him. The men had all sorts of fun with him the first summer he was
here. But he took all their fun good-naturedly, and showed them he had
pluck too. They began to like him. Everybody likes him, and so will
you."
"But in the name of--who is he?"
The little man had descended like a parachute from his pony, and was
now bobbing rapidly up the graveled walk.
"Smythe," explained Claire hurriedly. "But he's here now--I'll let him
tell you--he likes to talk."
At the foot of the steps he caught sight of the two women in the
doorway; removed his wonderful headgear with an eighteenth-century
gesture; ducked his head in a twentieth-century bow; and smiled.
Claire stepped quickly out on the veranda.
"Oh, Mr. Smythe!" she cried gaily. "I'm so glad to see you. Come in!"
He was an undersized young man, immaculately dressed in brown tweeds
and shining boots, a very high white collar and a sky-blue tie. The
sombrero swinging in his hand was quite new, ornamented with a broad
band of stamped leather, and it had the widest brim obtainable at the
shop in Denver where a specialty is made of equipping the tenderfoot
for life in the cattle country.
Smythe took Claire's proffered hand, and bent over it as if he had
thought of kissing it, but lacked the courage of his gallantry. Claire
introduced him to Marion, answered his questions about Seth, and then
fluttered away to the kitchen, where she had an angel cake in the oven
not to be entrusted to the cook.
"I arrived only yesterday, Miss Gaylord," Smythe chirped. "But I've
heard of you already."
"I don't know whether to thank you or not," answered Marion.
"Oh, if you please! What I heard made me very solicitous about
Huntington's health."
He smiled knowingly at her, and Marion loosed some of her pent-up
laughter. Truly, Smythe was going to be a treat! She studied him
stealthily while he chattered on. He wore a pointed beard of reddish
hue; his head was quite bald on top, and bulging at the brow; and the
contour of that head, with its polished dome, and the narrow face
tapering down to the pointed beard, was comically suggestive of a
carrot. But it was an intelligent, even intellectual countenance, and
his blue eyes were honest and bright. He might be laughed at, but he
could not be flouted, she thought.
"Then you've been here before, Mr. ----" she began, and hesitated.
"Smythe," he prompted her generously. "J. Hamerton Smythe. S-m-y-t-h-e.
I didn't change it from Smith, and I don't know what one of my
esteemed ancestors did. But I'm glad he did. It gives me a touch of
artificiality, don't you think? I fear being too natural."
Marion laughed, and that pleased him. She led the way to chairs near
an open window where a black and yellow butterfly hovered over a
honeysuckle blossom that had nodded its friendly way into the room.
"I'm from New York too," Smythe rattled on. "Columbia. Doing a little
tutoring and a little postgraduate work. This is my third summer in
the Park. Found it by chance. Wanted to go somewhere, and was tired of
the old places--Maine and Adirondacks and the rest. Looked at a map in
a railroad office, and there it was, sticking right out at me, the
first name I lighted on. In small type too--curious, wasn't it? Clerks
in office hadn't heard of it, but I started out to find it. Thought
I'd better get to Paradise when I could. And now I'm glad. I feel like
an old settler, and I believe the cow-punchers have ceased to regard
me as a tenderfoot. That's as flattering as a Ph.D."
"I'm afraid they laugh at me," said Marion.
"On the contrary. Believe me, these cowboys have taken to reading
poetry since you came."
"Please be natural, Mr. Smythe!"
"Fact! I'd hardly got my things unpacked before one of them was
riding over to ask me if I had a book about Lady Clara Vere de Vere.
It seems he'd heard the poem recited somewhere. I asked him why he
wanted it, but he looked so flustered that I let him off. Didn't have
a Tennyson with me, unfortunately, but I gave him my Byron, and I
think that will hold him for a while."
"Charming!" exclaimed Marion. "But what has all that to do with me?"
"He's the chap that grabbed you in his arms when you were falling from
your horse after that little business at Thompson's the other day."
Marion blushed, and then laughed.
"But how did you come to hear about that?" she demanded.
He chuckled.
"Oh, I hear everything!" he replied. "My friends say I've a nose for
news."
"Well, I shall be very careful what I say to you."
"Please, no!" he protested. "I'm a safety vault when it comes to
secrets."
She glanced quickly toward the door of Seth's bedroom, then toward the
kitchen, before she spoke.
"So you've heard all about that day at the post-office?" she said in a
low voice.
"Yes."
"Terrible!"
"But not unexpected."
"Why not unexpected?"
"Well," he replied, lowering his voice, and leaning nearer to Marion,
"I'm afraid Huntington was looking for it."
"You mean--he deserved it?"
"I won't say that. You see--I'm neutral, like Thompson. I like
Huntington, and I like Haig. I look at this fight without prejudice,
even though I've a reason to be prejudiced."
"In favor of--?"
"Huntington."
"Why, please?"
"Huntington accepts my friendship, after a fashion."
"But--the other?"
"Nothing doing!"
Marion stared at him, wondering.
"Fact!" he assured her, with a sheepish smile.
"But why?"
"Don't know. I'd like to, but he lives like a hermit. Latchstring
never hangs outside his door."
There was a certain evidence of feeling in Smythe's speech.
"You speak as if you--"
"As if I knew!" He took the words out of her mouth. "I do."
"How do you know?"
"I tried it."
"And then?"
"Kicked out!" he replied with a grimace.
Marion laughed in spite of her burning eagerness to hear more.
"Not exactly kicked," Smythe explained. "But I'd rather have been. He
was as polite as--he's a gentleman, you see, so he knew how to do it
without using his hands or his feet."
"But why?" insisted Marion.
"Why did I try? Curiosity. Simple, elemental, irresponsible
curiosity."
She laughed again at his frank confession.
"No, I mean why did he kick you out, as you call it?"
"That's what I want to know. And I will know, too. I tell you, Miss
Gaylord, I admire the man immensely. His secretiveness only makes me
like him the more, probably because I myself am so garrulous. Most
persons, though, cannot tolerate a man who minds his own business.
Those who have no reason to hate Haig dislike him because he does not
ask them to like him. His affairs are his own. Did you notice that
scar?"
"Yes," answered Marion, scarcely above a whisper.
"Well, you can build any sort of romance you like around that. He has
had his romance or tragedy or something, you may be sure. But he's no
ordinary man, whatever he may be doing in Paradise Park. I have heard
that he's surrounded with books and pictures in his cottage. He's got
a Chinaman for a valet, and an Indian for his man Friday, and their
mouths are as tight as his. What's more, he must be all right in the
main things, for his foreman and cowboys stick to him through thick
and thin, and say nothing. I tell you, Miss Gaylord, I'd like to be a
friend of his, if only he gave a--"
"A damn, I believe they say," she prompted demurely.
"By Jove!" he said with enthusiasm. "You are a--"
She held up a warning finger.
"We're going to be friends, you know," she said. "And friends
understand each other--without words."
"Done!" he agreed, reaching for her hand, and shaking it.
"But this mystery," she said. "Doesn't anybody know--"
"You know as much as all of us. Of course," he added banteringly,
"there's no denying a woman, when she starts. He might tell you!"
The speech startled her, and she blushed.
"Now, that's sheer impudence!" she retorted.
But he continued to look at her with a curious expression. How much
had he guessed? In her confusion an impulse seized her. She leaned
suddenly toward him, with flushed face and sparkling eyes.
"You dare me?" she demanded, her voice quivering.
"I dare you!" he answered gleefully.
"Well then, he shall tell me!"
"Good!" he exclaimed. "And I'll be around to take the kicks if he--"
"Oh, Cousin Seth!" cried Marion, leaping to her feet.
The bedroom door had opened, and Huntington came out, dressed in his
familiar corduroy suit, but with his left arm still bandaged to his
side, Smythe hastened forward to greet him.
CHAPTER VI
THE STORY OF THE SCAR
She was awakened by the shrill chatter of the magpies in the tall pine
near her window. Often she had resented their quarrelsome dialogue at
dawn, but now she slipped eagerly out of bed, and hurried to the
window. There had been rain in the night, but when she had pulled
apart the chintz curtains and opened the wooden shutters the air was
sweet and clean in her face, and the thin light showed the world
rising joyously to the day.
She dressed hastily in her oldest clothes, stole on tiptoe to the
kitchen for a biscuit and a glass of milk, found fishing tackle on the
veranda, and was soon running breathlessly past the corrals toward the
banks of the Brightwater. And all this was a deliberate deception. She
purposed to fish, of course--a little, to justify the clandestine
expedition; but what she really sought was solitude.
It was half in jest that she had said to Smythe, "He shall tell me!"
But in the night, by some strange alchemy, that jest had been
transmuted into a purpose of which she was still doubtful, if not
afraid. And yet to go forward seemed less difficult than to go back.
For she had let the days of Seth's recovery and convalescence slip by
without telling Claire of her experience in the Forbidden Pasture and
on the road to Paradise. The duel at the post-office, she argued,
surely had made it unnecessary to warn Huntington of Haig's anger. And
yet, as their guest, as Claire's cousin--But had they been quite fair
to her? They had not warned her of the hostility across the Ridge;
they had let her go blundering into the Forbidden Pasture; not that it
mattered so much, though it might have been worse--
Her thoughts were becoming very much confused. She had permitted a man
to treat her most offensively, and she had seen him shoot down another
without compunction; and that other was her cousin, in whose house she
was a guest. And yet she felt no resentment, no detestation, no
censure, no rebuke. Instead, here she was running away to think out a
plan whereby she might hear the whole story of the feud, and more,
from Haig himself.
The morning advanced in rose and pearl nuances. A hundred tantalizing
perfumes filled the air; field-spiders' webs sparkled in the dew like
silver gossamer; meadow larks rose at her feet, and wove delicate
patterns in the air with threads of melody. Who could think amid such
diverting beauty? She lifted her head, and went singing through the
meadows, knee-deep in the wet and clinging grass, and laughing when
the parted branches of the willows splashed her face and drenched her.
And then, at the first cast she made into a still, deep pool, where
the night loitered under the very eye of day, an imprudent trout took
the gray hackle fly, and made off with it. The splash, and the "zip"
of the tightening line through the water; and then the fight, and the
capture--Well, if they were going to rise like that--
The sun was high before she became aware that she was very hot and
tired and hungry. Her shoes were soaking wet, her skirts and stockings
splashed with mud; one shoulder was being sunburned where a twig had
caught and ripped her white flannel waist; and Seth's red silk
handkerchief around her neck was scarcely a deeper crimson than her
face.
"But I can't catch them all in one day!" she exclaimed reluctantly,
leaning wearily against a tree.
At that instant, under her very eyes, a trout leaped in the nearby
pool.
"Impudence!" she cried. "I'll just get you, and then quit."
But it was one pool too many; for at the second cast her hook caught
in the rough bark of a log that projected far out into the stream.
"Oh! Now I've done it!" she groaned.
Several smart tugs at the line, with a whipping of the rod to right
and left of the log, convinced her that the hook was too deeply
embedded to be released by any such operation. Sinking down on a heap
of driftwood on the bank, she gloomily contemplated the consequences
of her greed. There were two ways to go about it now,--to break the
line and leave the hook to its fate, or to crawl out on the log and
rescue it. The first was unsportsmanlike, the second was very likely
to be dangerous.
"Um-m-m!" she muttered, with a grimace. "It's not easy."
The log ran out, at a slight inclination upward, from the center of
the heap of driftwood, and its free end, where the hackle fly reposed
at a distance of fully twenty feet from the bank, was suspended barely
two feet above the middle of the pool. She leaned forward, and gazed
into its dark depths, which appeared to be scarcely stirred by the
current, though five yards away the stream was making a merry racket
over the shallows.
She stood up, and looked around her. Through the screen of willows and
cottonwoods on each sloping bank she saw the meadows lying green and
silent in the sun. There was no sound except the prattle of the
Brightwater and the murmur of the breeze in the foliage. She assured
herself that she was quite alone.
Next she folded and pinned up her skirt so that it hung just to her
knees, and after a final glance in all directions, stepped cautiously
out to the edge of the driftwood, knelt down on the fallen trunk, and
began to creep warily out toward the embedded hook. The log was round,
and none too large; her knees, protected only by thin stockings, were
bruised by the rough and partly-loosened bark; and she scarcely dared
to breathe lest she should lose her balance, and tumble into the
yawning pool. Once she incautiously looked down, and saw her image
waving dizzily on the slow-moving surface of the water.
"Oh!" she gasped, as she drew back her gaze, and dug her nails into
the log.
But for all her fears, and because of them, it was tremendously
exciting, and she became deeply absorbed in her task. Now clinging
close to the log in sudden panic, now laughing tremulously at her
trepidation, she forgot everything except her goal, and the inches by
which she was approaching it. She had arrived within two feet of the
hook, and was just about to reach a trembling hand to detach it, when
she received a shock that was near to ending her expedition in an
ignominious splash.
"Wait!" called out a voice, somewhere behind her. "I'll help you!"
The fright first nearly caused her to lose her grip on the log, and
then left her cold and shivering. After that a wave of heat swept over
her, and the blood tingled in her flushed and perspiring face.
Who was it? Philip Haig, by all the ill luck in the world? Who else
could have had the effrontery? She dared not turn to look, both in
fear of falling, and in shame at being caught in that absurd
predicament. What a sight! she thought. Her skirt was above her knees,
and one stocking, caught by a projection of bark, had slipped down to
her ankle. And that was not all!... With a desperate effort, she
lifted one hand from its hold on the log, and tried to adjust her
skirt; but the movement only unbalanced her. With a shriek she
flattened herself, and lay there panting and miserable.
"Wait!" the voice cried, more sharply than before. "No move--for
minute!"
She was arrested by the words. "No move for minute!" It was not the
voice of Philip Haig, but in that assurance there was only a doubtful
consolation. If not Haig--who? There was something oddly foreign in
that heavy, harsh, and yet not displeasing voice. A new fear presently
mingled with the others. It was a wild country after all; and she had
taken no note of the distance she had come, and little of her
surroundings. But she could only obey, and wait.
There came the sound of quick splashing in the water, and a few
seconds later a man's head and shoulders appeared in the stream at
her side. At sight of the strange, dark countenance suddenly upturned
to her, within a foot of her own, she almost fainted. It was a face
she had never seen before, solemn, stolid, with a copper-colored skin,
high cheek bones, and deep-set, black eyes in which there was no more
expression than there was on the thin, straight lips. She closed her
eyes.
But that was only for an instant, since nothing terrible was
happening. When she dared to look again the man was quietly releasing
the offending fly. He tossed it back in the direction of the bank,
then stood for a moment regarding her, still without the trace of an
expression on his dark face.
"Don't be 'fraid!" he said. "Hold still!"
She obeyed him, though his next move was one to have brought a scream
to her lips if she had not become incapable of utterance. Standing in
the water, which came almost up to his armpits, he had kept his arms
high above the surface of the pool. Now he stretched them out toward
her, clasped both her ankles with one huge hand, slipped the other
under her waist, and with what seemed incredible strength and
assurance, lifted her off the log. Then, without so much as wetting
the edge of her skirt, he bore her to the bank, and seated her gently
on the heap of driftwood from which she had ventured so bravely only a
little while before.
Should she weep, or laugh, or rage at him? Through eyes half-blinded
by tears, she searched his face; but he met her troubled and fiery
gaze with the most perfect calm. Then, after a moment, he deliberately
turned, and stood facing squarely away from her,--an act of stoicism
that at once removed her fears and completed her discomfiture. She
took the hint implied in his movement, and bent down, blushing
furiously, to pull up the fallen stocking, and let down her skirt.
When she sat erect again the man had not changed his position; and she
seized the opportunity to study him. His figure, though she had just
had proof of his strength, was lean almost to thinness, very straight,
and borne, she fancied, with a certain dignity and even majesty in its
erectness. The straight, black hair under the sombrero was touched
with gray. He was not young, past middle age perhaps; but she could
hazard no nearer guess at his age. No matter! Looking at him thus, she
began to feel her resentment falling away, as if every shaft from her
angry eyes had broken harmlessly on that serene and unoffending back.
Even her embarrassment began to seem inexcusable. The man had carried
her ashore in much the manner he would have used if she had been a
sack of oats to be saved from wetting.
"You are very strong!" Marion said at last.
He turned slowly toward her. His face was grave and expressionless,
but by no means dull; and his eyes were very black and bright.
"You--are--all--right--now?" he asked, ignoring her praise.
There was a curious slowness and lack of emphasis in his speech, with
a pause after each word, that gave a singular impressiveness to all he
said.
"But why did you do it?" she demanded.
"'Fraid you fall," was his simple answer.
"But I don't mind getting wet."
"Easy drown in little water," he said laconically.
She laughed at the idea of her drowning in a pool like that--she who
had battled triumphantly with the breakers at Atlantic City, Newport,
and Bar Harbor.
"But I can swim!" she assured him.
"I not know that," he replied, unmoved.
True. And she must have appeared to be greatly in need of assistance.
"Anyhow, I thank you!" she said sincerely. "But who am I thanking,
please?"
"Pete."
"Pete! Pete who?"
"Only Pete."
"But have you no other name?"
"Yes. Indian name."
And he rolled out a string of guttural syllables that sounded like
names of places in the Maine woods.
Indian name! Marion started; and in a flash she knew. Haig's man
Friday! Here was luck indeed.
"You are Mr. Haig's--" She hesitated.
"Friend," he said, completing her sentence.
Marion was again embarrassed. She did not know what to say next,
fearing to say the wrong thing, and so to throw away a golden
opportunity. In her search for the right lead, her eyes lighted on a
fishing basket that lay on the ground not far from her own.
"Oh!" she cried. "But it's strange I didn't hear or see you!"
"Indian not make noise."
"I should say not!" she retorted, laughing.
"Trout very smart," he added quietly.
"I've caught fourteen," she volunteered eagerly. "And you?"
For answer he fetched his creel, and opened it.
"Oh!" she cried, in envy and admiration, seeing that the creel was
almost full, and that not a fish in sight was as small as her largest
prize.
"I give you some," he said, glancing at her own basket.
"No! No!" she protested quickly. "I have plenty."
She showed him her catch, which was by no means insignificant.
Nevertheless Pete took three of his largest trout, and transferred
them to her basket, ignoring her protests.
"But they are for--him, aren't they?" she asked.
"Biggest you no see. At bottom."
That satisfied her, and she watched him silently while he found her
rod, and reeled in the offending fly.
"Brown fly better now," he said. "You ought see what trout eating
before you try catch big ones."
On this he drew a book of flies from his pocket, and replaced the gray
hackle with a brown one. She questioned him eagerly, following this
plain lead; and presently they were seated on the pile of driftwood,
while he told her about the native trout and the rainbow and the
California, of little brooks far up among the mountains where the
trout were small but of a delicious flavor, of the time for flies and
the time for worms, of famous catches he had made, of the way the
Indians fished before the white man showed them patent rods and reels.
By slow degrees Pete's iron features softened, and he smiled at her,
not with his lips, but with his eyes, which were the blackest, surely,
in the world.
But Marion was not diverted from the questions that were next her
heart. With all her woman's cunning of indirection, she brought the
talk around to Philip Haig. Did he fish? Sometimes. Did he hunt? Much,
when the deer came down from the heights with the first snows.
Then--she could resist no longer.
"It must have been terrible--the accident," she said, placing a finger
on her cheek.
He looked at her strangely, while she held her breath.
"That no accident," he said at last, after what seemed to her an
interminable interval of suspense.
"No accident?" she repeated, trying not to appear too eager.
"He call it accident, maybe. He say it is nothing. Pete say it is
much. It is big debt. Some day Pete pay."
There was deep silence for a moment. The stream gurgled and splashed;
the breeze whispered through the cottonwoods; and over all, or under
all, was the vague, insistent, seductive sound that the summer makes
in the fulness of its power.
Marion hesitated, quivering with eagerness and uncertainty. She was
afraid to ask more, lest she should be shortly rebuffed, and lose her
opportunity. But Pete was looking at her steadily. She felt a flush
coming into her face again. Had he guessed--something--already in her
manner, in her impulsive questions? More likely it was the charm that,
for once unconsciously, she wielded--the elusive charm of woman that
makes men want to tell, without the asking.
"You like to hear?" Pete said; and her heart leaped.
"Oh, please!"
And she was keenly disappointed. She had expected something romantic,
something ennobling and fine. And it was only a barroom brawl, though
Philip was not in it until the end, to be sure! Five Mexican sheep
herders against the lone Indian. Guns and knives in the reeking border
saloon; and afterwards in the street; and the Indian almost done for,
bleeding from a dozen wounds; and then a voice ringing out above the
fracas: "No, I'm damned if you do! Five to one, and greasers at that!"
And Philip Haig had jumped from his horse, and plunged into the mêlée,
disdaining to draw his gun on greasers. Smash! Bang! went his fists,
front and right and left.
Pete had accounted for one Mexican, who would herd sheep no more on
the plains of Conejos. The others fled. Then Haig, despite the
knife-wound in his face, grabbed the Indian, and somehow lifted him up
behind him on his horse.
"Quick, Indian!" he cried. "This town's full of greasers. You've got
no chance here."
And then the long ride to Del Norte, with the Indian drooping on
Haig's back; and a doctor of Haig's acquaintance, who sheltered and
cured the silent savage. And Pete, convalescent, had come straight to
Haig's ranch, and remained there, despite Haig's protests that he did
not need another hand.
"Pete stay until big debt is paid," said the Indian solemnly. And
then, with a straight look into Marion's eyes, "You ought tell
Huntington he is damn fool."
Marion started. There it was again--the warning!
"But why?" she managed to ask.
"Haig is brave man. Brave man always good man. So--Huntington got no
chance."
CHAPTER VII
THE WAY OF A MAID WITH A MAN
She rode casually down the Brightwater, and casually up the
Brightwater; she loitered at crossroads, and tarried at Thompson's
store; and not one glimpse did she catch of Philip Haig. Then one
morning she rose at dawn, as she had risen on the day of her fishing
exploit, with a purpose. But this time she dressed with exceeding
care, in a riding suit she had not yet worn in the Park. It was soft
dove-gray in color, with a long coat that showed the fine lines of her
figure and, when she rode, revealed snug-fitting breeches above the
tops of the polished boots,--a very different costume from the black
divided skirts and the short jacket in which she had galloped about
the Park.
Thus arrayed and resolute, she rode straight down the valley to the
branch road that had once tempted her to adventure; straight up the
hill; and straight through the woods until she halted once more in the
shade of the outpost pine that stood beyond its clustered fellows like
a sentinel above the valley. Her valley! She waited a moment,
wondering if it welcomed her. There was the stream, still flashing in
the sun, the meadows as brightly green as then, the grass of the
pasture running in bronze waves before the breeze. From the heart of a
wild rose a gorgeous red and brown butterfly flew out and fluttered
over her head. Not a dozen yards below her a meadow lark, unseen,
burst into sudden, thrilling song; and somewhere down the hill another
took up the strain, then another and another, until the air was
charged and quivering with melody, piercing sweet. She listened, her
heart throbbing to the music, until the chorus died away in dripping
cadences, and only a drowsy murmur came from the ripening fields to
mingle with the low droning of the pine organ on the hill. Yes! Her
valley welcomed her.
She rode on down the hill, with only a quick and embarrassed glance
into the Forbidden Pasture; and suddenly raised herself excitedly in
the stirrups. There again was the spiral of blue smoke; then a chimney
and a red roof; and finally the house itself, and barn and corrals,
all tucked away against the foot of the hill. Dismounting, she led
Tuesday back a few yards, and left him to feed along the roadside.
Then she returned, and seated herself on a rock, half-hidden by a
blackberry bush, to study the group of houses lying low and silent in
the sun.
There were more buildings than at Huntington's, but she saw no beds of
flowers, no wide veranda screened with potted plants; a certain
bareness and air of inhospitality, she thought. No tea and angel cake
for visitors! Behind the ranch house were two cottages of unpainted
pine, scorched to a yellow-brown by many a summer sun. One of them,
doubtless, was the hermit's lodge. The barn, larger than Seth's, had a
red roof, newly painted. And in one of the corrals--yes--the flash of
a golden hide.
"Sunnysides!" murmured Marion.
Then her heart stood still. She had descried the figure of a man
seated with his back against the bars of this corral. But it was not
Philip Haig; Sunnysides' guard, no doubt, for he never left his post
until relieved by another an hour or so later, when the dinner bell
had been rung at the door of the ranch house.
She had scarcely time to feel her disappointment before a man emerged
from the stable leading a saddle horse. Another immediately followed,
and this time there was no mistake. The second man was Philip Haig. He
mounted quickly, and started off; then stopped to address a word or
two, apparently, to the man at the stable door; and finally galloped
past the ranch house and the cottages, and up the slope behind them
toward the pines, across the valley from where she sat.
"Oh!" cried Marion, in a tone of vexation and reproach.
She watched him until he had disappeared among the trees; and tears
started in her eyes. Would he always be riding away from her, behind
the hills, the woods, a turn of the road? She sat a while in deep
dejection; but not for long. Her spirit was too resilient for futile
moping, and her purpose too firmly held to be abandoned on one
reverse. She reflected that if he had gone he must as certainly
return; and so, with a toss of her head, she presently arose, and
fetched her raincoat and her luncheon from the saddle. The coat she
spread out on the ground, seated herself on it with her back against
the rock, and settled down to eat, and watch, and wait.
Morning mounted hot and humming into noon, and noon dropped languidly
into afternoon. The blazing sun centered his rays upon her; insects
found and pestered her; discomfort cramped her limbs, and weariness
weighted down her eyelids. Twice she dozed, and wakened with a start
of fear lest she had slept her chance away. But each time she was
reassured by a hurried survey of the group of buildings, where no one
stirred, and there was no sign of Philip Haig. So the hours dragged
their slow length along.
It was late in the afternoon before her vigil was rewarded. Not from
just the direction in which he had galloped away, but from farther up
the valley, Haig reappeared. He rode as rapidly as before, straight to
the door of the stable, reined up a moment there, and was off
again,--this time down the valley on a white road that was visible to
Marion until it curved behind the distant point of the ridge on which
she sat.
"Now where's he going?" she murmured, wrinkling her forehead as she
saw him once more vanish from her sight.
She did not know that road, but guessed that it joined the main
highway somewhere far down the Brightwater. No matter! Here was her
opportunity; for she saw, with quick appreciation, that she would now
be able to place herself between him and the ranch buildings without
showing herself to the men at the corrals. And then? She could not
"hold him up" like a highwayman; and if she did not stop him he would
raise his hat (perhaps), and ride past her without a word. And how was
she to stop him? She had come there with a very definite purpose, but
with no clear plan, trusting to the inspiration of the moment. And now
the moment had arrived; but where was the inspiration? She had risen
impulsively to her feet, and stood staring between narrowed eyelids,
and beneath a puckered brow, at the white road, now quite empty again.
Then suddenly--
"Ah!" she gasped.
And thereupon she blushed, and looked furtively around her, as if she
had been caught in some doubtful, if not discreditable, act. But there
was no time for moral subtleties. She staggered--for her legs were
stiff from inaction--to her pony, replaced her raincoat behind the
saddle, mounted in hot haste, and rode down the steep hill toward the
houses. At a little distance from them the road she traveled joined
the other. There she turned abruptly, and followed the unfamiliar road
until she was safely out of sight of any chance observer at the barn,
and yet not so far from the trail she had just left but that she could
return to it if, by any chance, he should come back that way.
Dismounting quickly at the chosen spot, she turned Tuesday until he
stood squarely across the road. Then her nimble fingers flew at the
cinches of the saddle.
"There now!" she exclaimed, hot with excitement and exertion.
She stepped back to view her handiwork, and laughed nervously. Next
she drew a tiny mirror and a bit of chamois skin from her bosom, and
swiftly removed some of the dust and moisture from her flushed face.
Then her hair, always somewhat unruly, required a touch or two. That
done, she smoothed down the gray coat over her slender hips, adjusted
the gray silk tie at her throat, and waited.
He came, in his habitual cloud of dust; pulled up his pony within ten
feet of the obstruction; saw the saddle hanging at a dangerous angle
over Tuesday's side; and accepted the obvious conclusion that Miss
Marion Gaylord, looking very warm and embarrassed, but certainly very
pretty in her confusion, had narrowly escaped a fall.
"I think I'd better help you with that, Miss Gaylord," he said.
"Thank you!" she said, with an appealing reluctance. "I can do it--I
often saddle my own horse, and--"
"I should judge that you had saddled him this time," he interrupted
her to say, without the slightest trace of irony in his tone.
She bit her lip, as she silently made way for him, and stood at
Tuesday's head, stroking his neck with one small, gloved hand while
Haig adjusted the blanket, fitted the saddle firmly, and tightened the
double cinch. He was dressed in the nondescript costume he had worn at
their first meeting. That same hat, uniquely insolent, soiled and limp
and disreputable, was stuck on the back of his head, revealing a full,
clean-moulded brow, over which, at one side, his thick black hair fell
carelessly. His eyes were calm gray rather than stormy black to-day,
but a gray that was singularly dark and deep and luminous. His manner
was in the strangest contrast with the two different moods in which
she had already seen him--as if the fires were out, as if all emotion
and interest had been dissolved in listlessness. And she divined at
once that her chance of success was small.
"That will hold, I think," he said gravely; and started toward his
horse.
"It wasn't Tuesday's fault," she said eagerly.
Haig paused, on one foot as it were, and looked over his shoulder.
"It was fortunate for you that he's been well gentled," he said. "You
should look to your cinches rather often when you ride these hills."
("You should keep your feet dry, and come in when it rains," he might
as well have said, she thought angrily.)
"Yes, it was careless of me," she answered, trying to say it brightly,
but really wanting to shriek.
"It happens to everybody once in a while," he said.
On that, he stepped to his pony, put a foot in the stirrup, and one
hand on the saddle horn, and paused.
She could easily have flopped down in the road, and wept. Once he had
raged at her, once he had thrilled her with a look, and now he was
simply dismissing her,--leaving her, as her father would have put it,
"to stew in her own juice." She saw all her elaborate strategy, her
long vigil on the hill, her struggle with the saddle, her appealing'
glances--all, all about to go for nothing.
"He might at least help me on my horse!" she thought, in bitter
resentment.
Perhaps tears blinded her. At any rate--and this was without pretence,
and no part of her scheme--she did not see clearly what she was doing.
It was nothing new to mount her pony from the level; she had done it a
hundred times without mishap. But now, in her agitation, she stood
somewhat too far away from Tuesday's shoulder; and the pony, as ponies
will sometimes do, started forward the instant he felt the weight in
the stirrup.
"Look out!" cried Haig.
It was too late. She missed the saddle; her right foot struck
Tuesday's back, and slipped off; and she fell sprawling on the ground,
with her left foot fast in the stirrup.
"Whoa, Tuesday!" she cried shrilly as she fell.
Luckily the horse did not take alarm and run, as a less reliable
animal might have done, dragging the girl under his heels. He stopped
in his tracks, and stood obediently, even turning his head as if to
see what damage had been done. It was enough. Marion was uninjured,
but badly frightened; and her humiliation was complete. She lay on her
back, struggling vainly to extricate her foot from the stirrup. Her
coat skirts had fallen back, and--Thank Heaven for the riding
breeches, and not what she had worn under divided skirts!
"Lie still!" yelled Haig, remembering what he had seen happen to men
in such circumstances.
In three leaps he was at her side. With a swift movement (and none too
gentle), he wrenched her foot loose from the stirrup, and helped her
to sit up, dazed and trembling and very white.
"Your ankle--is it hurt?" he asked sharply.
"I don't know," she said.
And then the expected "inspiration of the moment" came.
"A little," she added.
And so it was done. Her foot had indeed been twisted slightly; she had
truly, _truly_ felt a twinge of pain. At another time she would have
thought no more about it, but now--The color rushed back into her
cheeks; she fetched a smile that was half a grimace; and the game was
on again.
Haig reached a hand to her. She took it, and let him draw her to her
feet.
"Try the ankle--just a step!" he commanded.
She rested her weight on her left foot.
"Oh!" she cried out, and looked helplessly at Haig.
A shadow, unmistakably of annoyance, passed over his face.
"You're not going to faint, are you?" he asked, looking keenly at
her.
Her color always came and went easily, and now, a little frightened by
her bold deception, she was pale again.
"No--I think not," she said. ("At any rate not here," she might have
added.)
"Can you ride to the corrals?" was his next question.
The look of annoyance was now fixed on his face, but it did not
discourage her.
"Yes, if--"
She looked doubtfully at Tuesday. Thereupon, without a word, Haig led
the horse close to her, but placed so that she was at Tuesday's right
side instead of the left. Then, while she supported herself with one
hand on his shoulder, he raised her right foot, and thrust it into the
stirrup; and, with a hand under each of her arms, lifted her until she
was able to throw the left foot over, and her body into the saddle.
Once more Marion bit her lip. His action was as devoid of personal
interest as Pete's had been when he carried her out of the pool; and
she had not come to Philip Haig to be treated like a sack of oats!
Haig mounted his pony, and rode up close beside her; and thus, in
unbroken silence, they arrived at the door of the stable. There Haig
dismounted quickly, stepped briskly around her horse, and almost
before she was aware of his intention, lifted her out of the saddle,
and set her on her feet--all very carefully and gently, but also very
scrupulously, without an unnecessary pressure, without even a glance
into her waiting eyes. What was the man made of? Why would he not look
at her? Why did he not rage at her--if he could do nothing better?
Well, the cat had at least seven lives left!
She almost forgot to limp, but bethought herself in time, and gasped
as he led her to an empty soap box at the side of the stable door.
Having seated her there, he called out to the man on guard at
Sunnysides' corral: "Where's Curly?"
"Down by the crick," was the answer.
"Bring him here! I'll watch the horse."
Thereupon he took the man's place, and stood with his arms crossed on
the top rail of the fence, his eyes fixed on the golden horse. And
Marion felt a real pain at last,--a pang of jealousy. So he preferred
to look at the horse, did he? If he had chanced at that instant to
glance at her he would have seen a pair of blue eyes blazing with
wrath.
The two men came hurrying from the creek.
"Here, Curly!" said Haig, resigning his post. "Miss Gaylord has hurt
her ankle. I found her unseated down the road yonder." He paused, as
if to let that be thoroughly understood. "I want you to hitch up the
sorrels and drive her home."
"Right!" responded Curly, going into the stable.
Marion then did almost faint. She had not foreseen that manoeuver.
"I'd rather not, please," she said, as sweetly as she could in her
dismay.
"Rather not what?" asked Haig, turning at last to her.
"I'd rather rest a while--somewhere--" Her glance went past him in the
direction of the cottage. "Then I can ride home--alone."
"And tumble off in the road somewhere!" he retorted, with a touch of
derision in his tone.
"Oh, no!" she pleaded. "It's not as bad as that."
"No matter! I can't allow you to take any chances," he insisted
curtly.
"Really, I need only a little rest," she persisted. "If I could lie
down a few minutes--" her eyes again were turned toward the cottage.
He saw what she meant, and frowned.
"No!" he snapped. Then, checking himself, "I don't mean to be
inhospitable, but you ought to know that's impossible."
"You mean--Cousin Seth?"
He shot a look at her that frightened her, but gratified her too. Was
she rousing him at last?
"Yes, if you like," he said, quietly enough. "I'm having a hard enough
time with the fool without a woman being mixed up in the affair."
"I don't understand," said Marion.
"You don't understand!" he repeated. "Of course not. Women never
understand--until afterwards. I'll make it plainer. I'm a bad man, as
you have doubtless heard. What would Paradise Park say when it learned
that you had been inveigled into my house?"
She was silent a moment.
"Well then, let me sit here and rest!" she insisted.
"But why?" he demanded impatiently.
She took her courage in both hands, and plunged.
"I want to talk to you," she said eagerly. "I want to ask you if there
is no way--"
"Excuse me!" he broke in. "I don't want you to talk to me. If I
did--"
He stopped, with a shrug. Marion felt her face reddening, but she
dissembled her embarrassment.
"Oh!" she exclaimed. "You're not afraid of me, are you?"
It was spoken archly, in her most playful, most kittenish manner, and
so she was amazed to see his face distorted as if by some violent
emotion. But he spoke with restraint, though in a tone that was hard
and harsh.
"Yes, I am afraid of you. The only thing in the world a man needs to
fear is a woman."
The first effect of this speech was to surprise and shock her. The
next was to make her heart leap. Had she come near the secret, after
all? Then, finally, something deep in the man's eyes roused in her a
thrill of pity. In another minute she would have melted, in her
compassion, and begged him humbly to pardon her. But at that instant
Curly emerged from the barn, leading the sorrels; and the devil that
lurks behind a woman's tongue spoke for her before she was aware of
it.
"So you'd rather one of your men took me to Cousin Seth!"
It was scarcely out before she regretted it with all her heart. If
there was a devil behind her tongue there was another back of the
somber shadows in Haig's eyes. He flashed one comprehending look at
her; his whole manner underwent a swift and terrifying change; he was
again the Philip Haig of that day at the post office.
"Great!" he exclaimed. "That will be the best joke of all. I'll drive
you home myself, of course."
For a moment Marion sat very still on the soap box, stunned, staring
open-mouthed at Haig. What had she done? That mad speech! Then she
leaped to her feet.
"No! No!" she cried. "You shall not!"
He smiled at her.
"Shall not?" he repeated sardonically.
"I mean--please not that!" she faltered.
"Why not?" he demanded, almost gaily.
"Oh, please! I didn't mean it that way."
"Of course you didn't mean it! Women never do mean it--that way. And I
suppose you didn't mean to let those men ride on to Paradise when they
told you the horse was mine, did you?"
"Oh!" cried Marion, almost in a scream. "How did you--know?"
He laughed.
"I happened to ask Larkin if he had met nobody on the road who could
have directed him. He said there was no one but a 'purty girl.' That
was you, wasn't it?"
She was speechless.
"And my warning to Huntington. Did you deliver that?"
"No," she answered, scarcely above a whisper.
"Of course not. That would have been too simple and honest and direct.
You can't be honest and straightforward to save your lives. You live
by deception, and boast about your love of truth. Your deepest craving
is for violence, while you prate about your gentle influence over men.
I haven't the least doubt in the world that Mrs. Huntington, for all
her baby face, is back of all Huntington's violence--thinks she's a
wonderful inspiration to him, with a special genius for the cattle
business! And when she gets him killed--with your assistance--she'll
flop down, and weep--and you too, both of you--and wail that you
didn't mean it!"
She recoiled from him, and leaned helplessly against the wall of the
stable.
"So you let the men ride on to Paradise," he went on with relentless
mockery, "and you let Huntington plunge into that business when you
knew, from me, exactly what it meant. And you rode over here to-day--I
wonder, now, if your foot's really hurt, or if that also is some
trick!"
It was the merest chance shot. He had no suspicion that she had been
shamming, for he had been too much annoyed by the whole incident to be
critical of her demeanor. But the shot went home. The girl, without a
word or cry, suddenly sank down on the box, with her face buried in
her hands.
There ensued a moment of tense silence. For all the bitterness that
surged under his railing speech, Haig was not untouched by the sight
of the girl, bent and cowering before him. But at the same time he was
exasperated anew by the scene that was being enacted under the eyes of
his two men.
"Come!" he said presently, not without reluctant gentleness. "It's
growing late. We must start at once."
The words increased her terror. Through the hands that covered her
eyes she could see Haig and Huntington--with revolvers drawn; and
Claire's white face--She rose impulsively, dropping her hands from her
hot and tear-stained cheeks. She would confess all to him, though it
should betray the inmost secret of her heart; and would beseech him
not to go--
"Don't say it--here!" he commanded sharply, lowering his voice as he
bent toward her. "They think there's something queer about all this.
Come!"
She obeyed him silently, her resolution vanishing before his
authority. Besides, there was yet time, somewhere on the road.
CHAPTER VIII
THE END OF HER STRATAGEM
For some minutes there was no speech, no sound except the swift beat
of the horses' hoofs on the hard roadway, and the crisp crunching of
wheels in the sand. Marion sat rigid, staring straight in front of
her, yet seeing nothing. Dazed and benumbed, her thoughts were in a
hopeless tangle, without beginnings, without ends. How she had bungled
the whole thing! And she might have been so happy, there at his side.
Twilight was coming on in the serene, clear beauty of the mountains:
the distant peaks glowed like great opals in the sundown hues; there
was an indescribable sweetness in the air, something magical in the
soft but cold night breeze that began to pour down upon the valley
from the eternal snows.
Timidly, out of the corner of her eye, Marion glanced at Haig, and saw
that he was gazing steadily at the changing colors on the distant
range. But there was no beauty for her in that perfect panorama. The
fire had gone out of her, and she was shivering. He must have felt her
movement, for suddenly he leaned forward, lifted the edge of the heavy
lap-robe that had lain neglected at their feet, and tucked it around
her. She drew back with a quick intake of breath as his face was for
an instant close to her own. A moment later he began to speak in a
tone that surprised and encouraged her, so little did it resemble the
tones he had employed before. It was as if nothing had happened, as if
they had long been talking of things casual, impersonal to them both.
"It's different in the San Luis," he said. "There's red down there.
Nature's palette is a little short of red in this valley. Too much
blue. Even nature sometimes gets a one-color obsession, like the
painters. Here she's gone off on blue. It's the most dangerous color.
Darwin says it was the last color produced in nature's laboratory.
Ordinarily it's the least common in flowers and birds and insects.
Hearn--Have you read Lafcadio Hearn? No? But you ought to, that is, if
you care for such things. He goes after blue--the misuse of it. He
says it's the color most pleasureable to the eye in its purest
intensity. But you mustn't dab it on. A blue house is a crime. Blue's
overdone here too, blue sky, blue mists, blue shadows, blue lakes,
blue flowers,--anemones, harebells, columbines and the rest. It's a
relief to get into the reds of the San Luis--"
"Where Sunnysides came from!" interrupted Marion, eager despite her
misery.
"Yes."
"Tell me about him, please!"
She wanted him to continue in that strain, and even Sunnysides was a
less dangerous subject than--another.
"Well, about Sangre de Cristo first. That's a great range that stands
up high and white along the east. Sangre de Cristo is Spanish for
Blood of Christ. I can see those pious old rascal adventurers
uncovering their blessed heads when they first glimpsed it. At sunset
it takes the color--not always, not often, in fact, perhaps a dozen
times a year. There are days and days when the range is only white and
cold, days when it's black with storms, and days when it's dismal
gray. Then there comes an evening when the sun goes down red behind
the San Juan, and the snows on Sangre de Cristo run like blood. The
whole world, for a few minutes, seems to halt and stand still in awe
at that weird and mysterious spectacle--trainmen setting the brakes on
squealing ore trains on Marshall Pass, and miners coming out of their
tunnels above Creed all stop and look; Mexican sheep-herders in
Conejos pause to cross themselves; ranchmen by their lonely corrals up
and down the San Luis, and cowboys in the saddle on the open
range--all spellbound. It gives you a strange feeling--something that
goes back to the primitive instincts of mankind--something of
reverence, something of wonder, something of fear--the fear that the
first men had when they gazed on the phenomena they could not
understand, and began to make their myths and their religions.
Primitive superstition, primitive terror will never quite down in us,
no matter how wise and practical we become. There's always, in
beauty--in sheer beauty something terrifying, as well as something
sad. But--do I bore you with my dithyrambs?"
"No! No!" she exclaimed.
"The scene couldn't have been set better for that spectacle. There's a
green strip along the river, then bare sagebrush flats, and beyond the
flats are sand dunes where nothing grows but cactus and mesquite, and
here and there some tufts of grass as tough and dry as wire. In summer
the dunes are a parched and blistered inferno. In October they are
raw gray desolation. I don't want to know what they are like in
winter. The wind never ceases there. It builds the dunes into new
shapes every day, and the sagebrush is always bent and lopsided and
torn, and the colors are the gray and brown of the world's secret
tragedy. But when the red sunset is on the dunes there's nothing I
have ever seen so wild and passionate and beautiful.
"It was late in the autumn. I rode out of a deep arroya, and came,
without warning, into all that weird and solemn glory. There was a
cold gush of air from up the valley. Far in the north were purple
patches on the flats, and violet shadows in the foothills. But the
dunes were all vermilion, and I can't tell you what hue of red lay
spread out deep and vivid on the Sangre de Cristo peaks,--a living,
passionate, terrible blood-red. I'm not very devout, but I tell you
candidly that I reined up my horse, took off my hat, and sat there
gazing, with the queerest feelings, and saying, like the old
Spaniards, 'Sangre de Cristo! Blood of Christ!'
"Then something queer happened to me. You've seen a flash of sunlight
reflected from a window, far off? Well, it wasn't like that, except in
the sharpness of its effect. And I knew there was no house in all that
waste of sand. It was just a flash, and was gone. I searched the
horizon, and saw nothing but red dunes, and little puffs of sand
kicked up by the rising wind. Must have been some trick of vision, I
thought, and I looked away again toward the blood-red peaks. And there
it was again, in the corner of my eye. But it was gone when I tried to
fix it. I put spurs to my horse, and rode toward the dunes, and caught
the flash again--just a bright yellow speck in the darkening
vermilion. It came and went, and seemed then to have been lost
completely. I was about convinced that the red sunset had gone to my
head--that I was following something that existed only in my brain.
"Then, as I loped up to the top of a dune--there he stood, on another
dune, perhaps two hundred yards away. His golden hide reflected the
red glow like polished metal, his mane flamed in the wind. You cannot
possibly imagine the effect of it, in that unreal light, in that
setting of desolation, with the crimson mountains behind him. He stood
alone on the hill, with his head high, motionless as a statue. For as
long as half a minute he let me look at him. Then he turned, and was
gone like a flash of fire. I had just one more glimpse of him, flying
over the dunes, and followed by a score or more of wild horses of all
colors except his color, and none worth looking at. With him the red
went out of the landscape, the peaks turned white, and I sat alone in
the gray, raw twilight. But right there I made up my mind about one
thing: I must have that horse. You know the rest."
"But what do you mean to do with him?" asked Marion, vaguely
troubled.
"Ride him."
"Don't!" she gasped.
"Why not?" he demanded.
"He'll kill you!"
Haig laughed.
"Oh, I think not!"
"But what is the use?"
"What's the use of anything?"
"But it's--"
"Mere folly, you think?"
"Yes."
"Now you don't mean that at all, Miss Gaylord. You know perfectly well
that if I were doing it to please you--to win your admiration--you
wouldn't call it folly."
"You will please me--and win my admiration--if you don't do it.
Please!"
"But I don't want--You'll pardon me?--I don't want to win your
admiration."
What could she say to that? There was a moment of silence.
"When?" she asked quietly.
"I'm waiting for Farrish, my foreman. He's the only man I can
absolutely depend upon. He's in Omaha. He'll be back next week."
"And you won't begin without him?"
"No."
She had no choice but to be satisfied with a few days of grace.
Moreover, something might happen before the return of Farrish; the
outlaw might escape, or she might find another opportunity to plead
with Haig, or--What was she thinking of? Something was going to
happen that very evening; and she had almost forgotten it, in her
absorption!
She had meant to do, long before now, what he had prevented her doing
at the stable,--to confess her deception, to plead for mercy, to beg
him to go back. Failing in that, there was Tuesday trotting behind the
trap; she could leap out, prove to Haig that her foot was uninjured,
and insist upon riding home alone. But now the confession seemed ten
times more difficult than it had seemed in the first flush of her
resolution. They were far up the Brightwater by this time; a few
minutes more would bring them to the branch road that led to
Huntington's. Yet how could she tell him?
"My foot doesn't hurt any more," she began, compromising with her
resolution.
"That's because you've been sitting still," he replied.
"But it doesn't hurt when I move it. See!"
She lifted the foot, and rested it on the dashboard, bending and
twisting it.
"By which you mean to tell me that I am to go back," he said.
"Please!"
"No!" he answered curtly.
"It wasn't badly sprained at all," she persisted. "I was only--" She
caught herself, with a shock. "I was only frightened, I think."
"I don't believe you."
"But it's the truth."
"Then it was not the truth in the first place."
There it was now, her best occasion to come out with it. But no; she
could not.
"It's not so bad as I feared," she stammered.
"I trust not. A sprain is a bad business."
"But you'll go back now!" she pleaded.
"No."
"Oh, why won't you?"
"I've started."
"That's not the reason!" she cried desperately.
"True, there's another reason. That makes two."
"What other reason?"
"I want to ask Huntington about his health."
The deviltry had come back into his voice; and just ahead of them she
saw the fork of the road.
"There's a third reason too, I'm afraid," she answered bitterly.
"What's that, do you think?"
"You want to punish me!"
"Perhaps--a little."
"Do you think that's--"
"Noble? Manly? Kind? Generous?" he broke in.
"Do you really think it's worth your while to punish me?" she asked
with passionate irony.
"Yes."
"But why?"
"Because I hope to be let alone hereafter."
At that her anger rose.
"Do you think that is the way a man should speak to a woman?"
"It seems to be the only way to make a woman understand. And even
then--"
She felt that he shrugged his shoulders in the darkness.
"Then I'm sorry for the women you have known!" she retorted.
"That should make it all the easier for you to avoid any more
accidents in my part of the Park," he answered unperturbed. "It's your
own fault if I'm rude. I haven't forced my attentions upon you. If you
feel that you've been mistreated, there's another reason--that makes
four, doesn't it?--for my going to Huntington's. We'll be there in
five minutes. You can tell him."
She could find no answer to all this. Brutal as it was, she knew that
she had deserved it. Her anger fell away, for she had found already
that she could not be angry with him long; and now, even in her
torment, she began to be sorry for him, wondering what he had passed
through that had so hardened and embittered him.
But the team had turned into the branch road; and she must act at
once. There remained but one thing for her to do: to leap out of the
trap, and refuse to go farther with him. On the thought, she measured
the distance to the ground, the speed of the trotting sorrels. Perhaps
she moved a little. Or had he actually read her thoughts? For
suddenly, but very quietly, he laid a hand on her shoulder.
"No!" he said. "You might really hurt yourself this time."
She sank back in dismay, but with a thrill of admiration. What was
this man, who knew her thoughts before she herself knew them, who
mastered her--and despised her? She trembled, and was glad of the
night that concealed her flushed face from him. As for her purpose,
she was at the end of her resources. No confession, no plea would
avail to shake his determination. She could do no more; and judgment
was upon her--soon.
"Hold the reins, please!" commanded Haig.
He leaped out of the trap, opened the gate, and closed it when he had
led the sorrels through. Then he climbed into the trap, and drove on.
There was no moon. The ranch buildings lay huddled and indistinct in
the dim starlight.
At the sound of the hoofs and wheels a man emerged from the stable,
bearing a lantern. He hurried up to them, stumbling sleepily, and
peering at the figures vaguely seen in the gloom.
"Here, Williams!" Haig said shortly. "Hold my team, will you! I'll be
only a few minutes."
The lantern fell from the man's hand, struck the ground with a
clatter, and lay on its side, flaming and smoking.
"Pick it up!" ordered Haig.
The man obeyed, with the suddenness of a jack-in-the-box, and stood as
if petrified.
"Quick! The horses! They're no damned broncos!"
Williams jumped to the bridles; and a gleam from the lantern showed
Marion his face. His mouth was open, his eyes staring with incredulity
and alarm. She was seized with a preposterous desire to laugh at that
comical visage, made grotesque by the wavering light of the lantern
that danced in the fellow's hand. She was on the verge of hysteria.
Haig leaped out, and held up his arms for her, snapping his fingers
impatiently. In almost complete inertia, yet with every nerve
quivering, she let him help her to the ground, where he placed her arm
in his, and started toward the ranch house.
"Limp! Limp!" he whispered in her ear.
She obeyed him mechanically. Everything seemed to have become very
still and cold; feeling had frozen in her limbs; terror clutched at
her icily out of the gloom. There were two lighted windows in front of
her, two baleful yellow gleams, like the eyes of a monster of the
night. At any instant the door would open, gulping her in.
She choked down a cry. Her feet were like lead now, and she stumbled
on the first of the half-dozen steps that led to the veranda. Haig
pulled her up quickly, flung his right arm around her waist, and
fairly carried her up the steps. At that moment, just as they stood on
the level floor, the door was opened, and Huntington's huge body
appeared in silhouette against the lamplight.
"That you, Marion?" he called out, peering into the darkness. Then,
almost instantly: "Somebody with you, Marion?"
Haig answered for her.
"Good evening, Cousin Seth!" he called out cheerily. "I just dropped
in to ask about your health."
For perhaps as long as it took him to catch his arrested breath,
Huntington stood motionless. Then, with an oath, he bounded back into
the room, and disappeared, as Marion dully realized, in the direction
of his room, where his revolver hung on a rack. She felt the form
beside her straighten out like a loosed spring; and the next instant
she was borne swiftly forward into the light, into the house, into the
scene she had pictured, the scene she herself had prepared. The arm
that supported her was quickly withdrawn, and she was left standing at
one side of the door, while Haig leaped away from her, and stood
waiting at the other.
Even as this was done, Huntington reappeared at the door of his
bedroom. The revolver in his right hand moved slowly upward. In
the kitchen doorway was Claire--a stricken thing in blue and
gold--clinging to the doorpost, her lips parted, her eyes wide with
terror. But Haig! Could anything have been more horrible than that
smile? It was fearless, mocking, insolent. And his whole attitude
matched it perfectly. He stood carelessly erect, with arms folded,
disdaining Huntington's weapon. But not the slightest motion of his
enemy--perhaps not even the thought before it--could have escaped
him. Marion knew him; and she felt as certain as if it had already
happened that if Seth lifted his revolver by so much as another
inch he would be stretched out on the floor there as he had been on
the ground at Paradise.
All this she saw in an interval as brief as that between two clicks of
the shutter of her kodak. Then the clock on the mantel began to
strike. It was a friendly clock, with a musical, soft note. But now
its stroke crashed upon the silence like a tolling bell. It seemed to
have its part in that halted scene, as if all waited on its last
solemn count. If she could only move, think, speak, before it
finished!
The next thing she knew she was in the middle of the room, directly
between the two men, and speaking.
"Wait, Seth!" she heard herself saying. "I did it. I brought him here
to--to make peace with you."
She ended on the clock's last note; and silence fell again.
Huntington's jaw dropped; amazement was printed on his face, and
incredulity. Marion walked quietly up to him, took the revolver from
his hand, and left him standing in the doorway, his arms hanging loose
at his side. She crossed the room to Haig, slowly, somewhat gropingly
like a somnambulist, with a half-smiling, strange expression fixed on
her chalk-white face. She stretched out her left hand to him, her
right still clasping Seth's six-shooter. There was something
magnetic, curiously compelling in her manner; for she said nothing,
made no sound. Haig stared at her, the odious smile fading from his
lips; his arms slowly fell apart, one hand in the direction of the
revolver at his hip; and for a moment it seemed that he too would
yield to her. But suddenly he threw back his head, and laughed.
"By Jupiter!" he cried. "I didn't think it was in you. You almost got
me too. Good night--all!"
On that he turned on his heel, and vanished into the night. Marion
heard him laughing still as his boots crunched on the gravel; heard
his voice in brief and sharp command at the stable; heard the beat of
the sorrels' hoofs on the road, and the fragment of a song wafted back
to her,--something rollicking and insolent, in a foreign tongue. She
stood listening until the sounds had died away in the night, and
silence enveloped her. Then, just as Huntington leaped forward with a
bellow of rage,--too late, as ever,--and Claire, with a shriek, rushed
to throw herself between him and the door, Marion's head drooped
forward, her knees gave way, and she fell senseless on the floor.
Huntington's big revolver, slipping from her nerveless fingers as she
fell, struck the Navajo rug with a muffled thump, bounced and rolled
over, and settled down harmlessly on a patch of barbaric red.
CHAPTER IX
HEARTS INSURGENT
Seth recovered his revolver, and lunged toward the door. But Claire
was before him. She flung herself upon him, clutching the lapels of
his coat.
"Seth! Seth!" she shrieked. "What are you doing?"
"I'll follow him!" he roared. "I'll follow him! I'll end the whole
thing! I'll finish it, I tell you!"
"No! No!" she wailed; and clung to him frantically.
He was beside himself, almost incoherent, for the moment quite
irresponsible. It is very likely that, but for Claire, he would have
mounted a horse and pursued Haig to his ranch, with such consequences
as anybody except himself could easily have foreseen. But he was not
so far gone in frenzy as to hurt Claire, as he must have done in
tearing himself loose from her. He stood a moment in tragic
helplessness, grinding his teeth, and hurling muttered imprecations
out into the night that covered Philip Haig. Then he looked down at
the golden head pressed against his breast, and felt the frail body
quivering; and some sense of what he was doing, or was about to do,
reached his brain through the fumes of rage. There was yet a long
struggle; for he was too ponderous for quick decisions, and at the
same time too outright for successful equivocation. Defeat was always
a staggering blow to him, since he had no art to mask it. And now,
lacking the sagacity to swallow his mortification and to bide his
time, he could only suffer, rending himself in lieu of another on whom
to pour his fury.
In the midst of this futile passion his roving eyes fell on
Marion. She lay where she had fallen, in a dead faint, limp on the
red-and-yellow rug. Seth stared at her a full minute, while an
indefinable suspicion grew in the back of his brain. She had said,
"I've brought him here to make peace with you." And Haig himself had
given the lie to that speech! What did it all mean? By God, he would
find out!
"Come, Claire!" he said. "Attend to Marion!" And he began to loosen
her fingers from his coat.
But she only clutched it the tighter.
"You'll go!" she cried.
"No! Not to-night!"
"You promise?"
"Yes! Yes!" he growled.
She looked steadily up at him, questioning, fearful, until he bent
down and kissed her.
"There!" he said, roughly and yet not ungently. "Now go to Marion!"
They picked her up, and laid her on the couch at one side of the big
room; and Claire unbuttoned her dress at the throat, and bathed her
face and neck with cold water, while Seth rubbed and slapped her
hands.
Her first impulse, on opening her eyes and seeing Claire and Seth
leaning over her, was to raise her head, and look toward the door. She
saw only a patch of darkness, empty and still. Then she remembered how
she had heard his mocking voice fade away in the night; and her eyes
returned to Seth and Claire. Their faces told her what to expect: and
she knew that they were right in demanding, as they would demand, the
fullest explanation.
"Water, please!" she murmured, moistening her dry lips with her
tongue.
She sat up, slowly emptied the glass that Claire placed in her
trembling hand, then buttoned her collar over her bare throat, and
began to pin up the locks of hair that had fallen about her face and
neck. Her hands, she thought, were very thin and white. She had never
fainted before, and was still a little frightened and surprised.
"What does it all mean, Marion?" demanded Huntington.
"Wait, Seth, can't you?" warned Claire. Then to Marion: "There's no
hurry, dear. When you feel better."
But her eyes denied her words. There was indeed no way out of it.
Marion must speak, and without delay.
"I'm cold," she said, shivering.
"Of course!" cried Claire. "Come to the fire. And Seth! Close the
door, please!"
Huntington strode to the door, and slammed it shut. Then he returned
to the chimney piece, and watched Marion as she leaned toward the
blaze. He could barely restrain himself, waiting for her to begin.
"I've been a silly fool, I suppose," she said presently, sitting erect
again, and facing her cousins courageously. "It was all my fault. You
mustn't blame him."
An impatient exclamation by Huntington drew a warning glance from
Claire.
"Tell us just what happened, dear!" she urged gently.
"I don't exactly know--I can't just understand how it happened,"
Marion began. "I had an accident--in the road. My foot was hurt--my
ankle was twisted--or I thought it was--and I was frightened."
"An accident?" said Claire.
"I was off my pony--the cinches were loose--and--when I tried to mount
again--I slipped--somehow--and fell. He was just in time to help me,
and--"
"Where was that?" asked Huntington.
"Just below his place. He was coming back--"
"But what were you doing over there?" demanded Huntington.
"Riding," she said calmly, perhaps a little defiantly.
"Yes, I know that. But on his land?"
"Did you ever tell me anything about that?" she retorted.
"No, but--"
"Then how was I to know?"
"But you've heard--"
"Yes, I heard some things at the post-office. You've told me
nothing."
Huntington's face reddened angrily.
"Never mind that now!" cried Claire sharply, sending another warning
look at Seth. "Go on, dear!"
Marion went on, very carefully. With Claire alone she might have been
more frank and confiding, but Seth's belligerent attitude had begun to
stir resentment in her.
"He thought I had a bad sprain. He was annoyed; he didn't take any
pains to conceal that from me. But he lifted me into the saddle,
and rode with me to his stable, and told one of his men to hitch
up a team, and drive me home. That would have been--all right, and he
had no intention--until--something I said--I must have been
hysterical--something made him angry, and he--said he would drive me
home himself."
"And you let him!" cried Claire reproachfully.
"No, I didn't _let_ him. He did it in spite of all I could do. I
pleaded with him, I tried every way to stop him. Once I started to
leap out of the trap. But he caught me. He laughed at me But he was
very angry too; he scolded me dreadfully. Said I needed to be punished
for--I don't know what. He hates women, and says we're always meddling
in men's affairs. It served me right, of course. And please remember
it was all my fault--truly!"
"Did he say anything about making peace?" asked Claire.
"No. That was all mine. I had to do something quickly. You know
that."
"But what did he say about me?" growled Huntington, who was far from
satisfied, and still suspicious.
"Not much. Oh, yes!" she added impulsively. "He said you and he could
probably come to an understanding quickly enough if--"
She paused, embarrassed.
"If what?" demanded Huntington.
"That was only because he dislikes women, I think. He said--if
Claire--Mrs. Huntington, he said,--would let you alone."
"I?" cried Claire. It was almost a scream of astonishment and
indignation.
"I'll show him!" shouted Huntington. "He'd better keep her name out of
it, or I'll--"
"I haven't done anything!" wailed Claire.
"I'll make him pay for that!" bellowed Huntington, bringing his fist
down on the mantel.
"You mustn't blame him!" protested Marion hastily. "He was angry at
me, and I don't think he's as bad as you think he is."
"Marion!" cried Claire, her eyes widening with wonder.
Then Marion had the misfortune to blush under Claire's curious gaze.
She blushed, at first, merely because she had gone too far in her
effort to clear Haig of responsibility for what had occurred that
evening; and then the blood stormed into her cheeks as she encountered
Claire's look, and attached a deeper meaning to it than it actually
conveyed.
Huntington leaned forward, and gazed suspiciously into Marion's
crimsoned face.
"Well, I'll be damned!" he broke out. "You'd think the girl was in
love with this ruffian!"
For an instant there was a silence much like the silence that follows
a clap of thunder. Then Marion rose slowly to her feet, quivering, her
eyes ablaze.
"Ruffian?" she cried. "If there's any ruffian it's--"
She caught herself. She was innately gentle and fastidious, and she
could not, without shame, have forced her lips to say the things that
she felt in her outraged heart. But she looked at him; and under that
look Seth quailed and shrank. What had he said to evoke this luminous
hatred? He had not meant--
"And I think she's right, Seth Huntington!" exclaimed Claire, coming
to Marion, and putting an arm, around her. "If there's any ruffian
it's you, and I'm ashamed of you!"
Huntington's jaw dropped, and he stared at them, his eyes bulging with
astonishment. Then suddenly he turned, and bolted from the room. The
door leading to the kitchen was flung shut behind him; then the outer
door banged; and in a moment his heavy footsteps were heard on the
veranda, where he strode to and fro in helpless rage and shame and
wonder. He had a feeling of soreness over all his body, as if some one
had roundly pummelled him; his face itched beneath his beard; he could
not find a comfortable place for his hands. Well, he agreed with Haig
about one thing: women were hell! And here was Claire siding with
Marion against him; and calling him a ruffian! Was he a ruffian? What
had he said to merit that? Couldn't they take a joke? But this
casuistry did not go down, though he tried to hammer it down with many
violent gestures. He began to have certain qualms that he recognized
as premonitory signs of weakening; and he struggled to bolster up his
anger. Damn Haig! If he had only finished him that day in the timber,
when the others had wanted to! But this was a vain regret. There
remained the present situation. Gradually his steps faltered. He
stopped often to look vacantly at the stars. They had nothing to say
to him. He felt very solitary, alone in the world.
After a time the kitchen door was opened softly.
"Seth!" came a whisper from that direction.
"Well?" he answered uncertainly.
"Aren't you cold?"
"No."
"Well, we are. The fire's going out."
"Umph!"
"Won't you please fetch some wood?"
No reply. Claire slipped out, and crept up to him.
"Come!" she commanded softly. "Do you want us to freeze?"
Still no reply.
"Oh, you do, do you?"
"It's time you went to bed."
"No, it isn't. We're not going to bed until you come in and beg
Marion's pardon."
"No, I'll be--"
She tried to clap her hand over his mouth, but succeeded only in
hitting his nose a smart tap, which was just as effective, since it
checked him.
"No swearing, either!" she went on. "You've been rude enough for one
night, don't you think? I'll tell you my opinion of it later. She's
going to be easy with you because she's sorry about it all. Come!"
Huntington did not move, or answer her.
"Do you want her to leave by the next stage--and have this all over
the Park too--like Haig's visit? Come!"
He groaned, but followed her. At the door of the living room he caught
sight of Marion seated before the fireplace, where only embers glowed
dull red.
"I'll get some wood," he said quickly, glad of even a few minutes'
grace.
Fortune tossed him a small favor: the wood bin near the kitchen door
was empty--almost. Another time that would have brought a storm down
on the head of the unlucky stable hand whose duty it was to keep the
bin filled. But now Seth rejoiced at having to go to the wood yard,
and found it much too near.
He re-entered the house with an armload of sticks, and placed them
carefully on the embers; stirred up the glowing mass with a poker;
readjusted the fresh wood; provoked the red coals once more; and at
last, having exhausted the dilatory possibilities of the fire, stood
up clumsily to face the ordeal.
"Well, Marion," he began awkwardly, "I'm in for it, I reckon."
She did not reply; she only looked at him. There were dark shadows
around her eyes that heightened the pallor of her cheeks; but the eyes
themselves were clear and piercing, and as cold now as they had been
fiery before. For once in his life Huntington was conscious of his
bulk; he felt conspicuous; and the wound in his shoulder, almost
healed, began to itch and ache.--There were worse things than being
shot.--If she would only turn those eyes away from him! And then it
dawned upon him that she was waiting.
"I beg your pardon, Marion!" he stammered. "I was ugly. I didn't
really mean--I hope you'll forgive me."
For a minute longer she let him stew in his kettle, then lifted him
out scrupulously, at the end of a very long fork, and dropped him
steaming, as if he had been a lump of unsavory fat.
"Yes, I forgive you," she said, very, very distantly. "You probably
weren't thinking."
If that was forgiveness! But he did not know--even Claire did not know
then--how deeply he had wounded Marion with his rude and accusing
speech,--as if he had called a jeering crowd to look at the little
flower that blooms but once, and very secretly, in a woman's heart.
Forgive him? She never would forgive him for that blundering outburst,
which was indeed the more unforgivable because he did not seriously
mean, and certainly did not believe, the thing he said.
"Thank you, Marion dear!" said Claire softly.
At that Marion suddenly rushed to Claire, and knelt by her chair. She
had her own faults to be forgiven.
"I've been very foolish!" she cried. "I've caused you pain and
humiliation. I'm sorry. Please forgive me!"
So they cried it out in each other's arms, while Huntington rolled a
cigarette, took one whiff of it, and tossed it into the fire. It
required a stronger narcotic than tobacco to soothe his fevered
spirits. After a while he whirled around and faced the two women.
"See here, Marion!" he said. "It's all our fault for not telling you
about Haig. But we didn't want to annoy you with our troubles, and we
never imagined you'd stumble on to him. Do you know now what this is
all about?"
She spared him the answer that she had heard something on that point
the day of the shooting.
"No; that is, very little."
"Well, it's just this: Before he came here we were all playing the
game peacefully together. Each of us had just about enough land, with
the cut hay and the winter pastures, to pull through the winter, and
there was just enough free grazing up in the edges of the timber to
keep the cattle going through the summer and early fall."
"That was government land," explained Claire.
"And open to all of us," added Seth. "We never had any dispute with
the Englishman who owned Haig's ranch before him, and he got fair
treatment, though he wasn't here much of the time to look after it. We
heard he had some family trouble, and one day when he'd been gone a
long time--"
"That's four years now," interrupted Claire.
"Yes. Haig showed up, and said the ranch was his. He started in
straight off to hog the whole thing. Bought a thousand head of
cattle--that made thirteen hundred head--almost as many as all the
rest of us had put together. He turned the thirteen hundred into the
open range, and hired men to keep them moving the right way for the
good feed, and--"
"He had a perfect right to do that, you see," Claire put in hastily.
"Legal right, maybe," Huntington went on. "But he didn't have any real
right to more than his share. We organized, bunched our cattle, and
stayed with 'em. That way we were stronger than he, and soon had his
cattle starving. Then he disappeared, and we didn't see anything of
him for three weeks. And what do you suppose the damned skunk--"
"Seth!" cried Claire warningly, with an anxious look at Marion.
Marion merely shook her head.
"Well, he fooled us. He went to Denver, got a lawyer on the job,
looked up the records, found there'd been a mistake in the surveys,
and came back to us with a government deed to almost half the forest
reserve that we'd been using as free pasture. Then he ordered us off,
and we went, with six Winchesters pointed at our fool backs. What do
you think of that, Marion?"
"But why?" asked Marion. "I mean what was his motive in all that? He
isn't a cattleman. I mean--I don't think he cares enough--"
She stopped, finding herself in dangerous waters.
"Why? Because he's a--" Huntington checked himself. "Anyhow, he barely
escaped a lynching that night. And if he only knew it, I'm the one
that stopped it. I said we'd find some other way. But we haven't found
it. We had to bring most of our stock down to the pastures we needed
for winter, and in winter we had to buy hay at eighteen dollars a ton.
And Haig had hay to sell. Three of our men were driven out of
business. Tom Jenkins, being dead broke and discouraged, with a
family, killed himself. I had to sell off a third of my cattle, and
twenty head disappeared, and I never saw them again. And maybe you can
understand now how I felt when I saw him this evening, standing there
in my own house, grinning at me. God!"
He turned, grabbed up the poker, and began jabbing viciously at the
fire.
Yes, Marion could understand that, but--She was not satisfied. There
was something missing from Seth's narrative. Haig's accusations that
day at the post-office--his missing cattle, and the cut wires at the
Forbidden Pasture--And if all that Seth had said was true, which she
doubted, the mystery was only deepened. She was sure that Haig was
only playing a part, that he was not a cattleman by choice, and that
his heart was not in the game, whatever it was. She wanted to ask
questions, but refrained, lest she should again arouse Seth's
suspicions. She would see Smythe.
CHAPTER X
STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL
The next afternoon Huntington, with painful diffidence, yet anxious to
come to some sort of terms with Marion, proposed that she should begin
her shooting lessons. She acquiesced in a manner that relieved him
immensely, for she, on her side, was sorely in need of distraction. So
they were presently on the hillside behind the ranch house with the
rifles,--Seth's Winchester and the little Savage he had bought for
Claire, who, to his great disappointment, did not like guns, and never
could be taught to see the sights with one eye closed. His delight,
therefore, was unbounded when Marion took to the Savage with almost
the quick adaptability of a man. True, her first shots went high and
wild among the foliage, but she was fast getting the grip of the gun,
and had actually once scraped the bark of the tree on which the target
of white paper was tacked, when they were hailed by a cheerful voice
demanding permission for an unarmed and perfectly harmless man to
approach.
"Smythe!" growled Huntington, resenting the interruption. Then aloud,
as heartily as he could: "Hello, Smythe! You're quite safe."
"What's going on here, anyhow?" asked Smythe.
"Where are your boasted powers of observation?" retorted Marion.
"It's more polite to ask."
"In Paradise Park?" she queried, in a tone of mild surprise.
Seth's face reddened as he stooped over a half-empty cartridge-box. He
had congratulated himself too soon. But while Smythe and Marion
exchanged more badinage he refilled the magazine of the Savage, and
held it ready.
"Will you have another try?" he asked.
"Yes, please, if Mr. Smythe will only keep still. I know I can never
hit anything if he talks."
"I'm mum!" he answered.
The first shot went wild. So, indeed, the second and third.
"There! What did I tell you?" cried Marion petulantly.
"But I didn't say a word!" protested Smythe.
"What were you thinking, then?"
"What a charming Diana--"
"Don't think any more, please!"
"But I can't stop thinking!"
"In that case you'd better talk. You certainly talk enough without
thinking."
"Bull's-eye!" he cried joyously. "Now try again!"
"I suppose I must learn not to be bothered."
She pressed her lips together, and steadied herself resolutely. She
would show him! The next shot cut a furrow in the bark of the pine;
the second struck within two inches of the target; and the third
pinked the edge of the paper itself.
"That will do for this time," she said, in some elation, as she handed
the gun to Huntington.
"To-morrow you'll do better," he assured her. "And then we'll try it
at longer range."
He began to pick up the cartridge boxes and his own rifle.
"You're not riding to-day?" said Smythe.
"How did you guess it?" she demanded, laughing.
"Oh, a truce! A truce!" he pleaded. "I mean, if you are not going for
a ride, will you walk up the hill there?"
He pointed toward the pines.
"Why?"
"To please me," he answered.
But she caught a look in his eyes that decided her.
"Certainly, if you are so easily pleased."
"Oh, I'm a very Lazarus at the table of life!" he retorted gaily.
"Every crumb comforts me."
She laughed, and stepped away with him among the rocks, while
Huntington, still swearing at Smythe for a meddling fool, strode down
the hill.
Marion surmised that Smythe had something to say to her. Had he heard
already? Had the news of yesterday's comedy, that was so near a
tragedy, already spread far and wide over the Park? But that was
scarcely possible, since Haig's men would be silent, and Seth had kept
Williams too busy all day for gossip.
They climbed the rocky slope without more words, clambering over
bowlders and fallen tree trunks, until they reached the summit of the
hill, and flung themselves down, hot and panting, on a great flat rock
that commanded a sweeping view of the Park. At one side more hills
rose, small mountains in themselves, thickly wooded, with white peaks
towering behind. On the other, the valley of the Brightwater lay green
and bronze in the sun, with the white stream curling and curving among
the meadows. Far across the valley, beyond the ridge that divided the
Park in unequal halves--that fateful ridge!--the western range of
mountains glittered, dazzling white.
Marion's eyes at once sought out Thunder Mountain. What would it say
to her to-day? Storm! Its top was half-hidden in a gray-black swirl of
clouds, though the sun was bright on the snow-clad peaks around it.
"What do you see?" asked Smythe, as soon as his lungs would consent to
speech.
"My mountain," she answered, without turning her head.
"Which is that?"
"Thunder Mountain."
"Umph! You're welcome to it!"
She was silent.
"Why your mountain?" he asked presently.
"I don't know."
"But there must be a reason--or something."
"That's just it--something. It's hideous, but it fascinates me. I
can't help thinking that--"
"That what?"
"I don't know."
They laughed together.
"It's got a bad reputation," said Smythe.
"Perhaps that's the reason."
Then she was embarrassed, thinking unexpectedly of another bad
reputation in the Park.
"Perhaps," he answered, smiling at the back of her head, where the
tawny hair curved up adorably from the soft, white neck.
"Tell me about it!" she said at length.
"It's a death trap."
"You mean--men have gone up there?"
"Oh, yes!"
"How?"
"There's a trail, what's left of it. The Warpath, they call it."
"The Warpath?"
"Yes. It was first a war trail, when fighting tribes lived in these
mountains. But even the Indians didn't use it often--only in
midsummer. It's a trail over bare rocks, marked by stones set up at
long intervals. The Indians didn't mark it. They had their own ways of
knowing it. But after the Indians came trappers, hunters, prospectors,
and some of them set up the stones. It would be a valuable short cut
between the Park and the San Luis country, if it were safe. But it's
not. I'm told that many lives have been lost on it. I can't find
details except of one tragedy. Some ten years ago a party of English
people, guests at the ranch that Haig now owns, went on a pleasure
trip to Thunder Mountain. They meant to go only as far as timber line.
It's not difficult as far as the foot of the scarp that lifts to the
flat top you see yonder. It's done on horseback to that point--and
across too, if you care to try it. But on top--that's another matter.
It isn't the mountain itself that gets you. It's the storms. The
English party ventured on top, and three of them never came back. The
wind hurled them into a chasm, and their bodies were never recovered.
That's enough for me, thank you!"
"Has nobody in the Park ever been across?" Marion persisted.
"Old Parker--Jim Parker's father--crossed it once, many years ago. But
he came back another way, around by Tellurium. Young Parker has been
as far as the Devil's Chair. That's the top of the notch where the
wind sucks you into it--unless, by good chance, it blows you away from
it."
"And no one else?" Marion insisted, breathless.
"One other man has gone to the Twin Sisters. That's halfway over."
"Who was that?" she asked; as if she did not know.
"He balked at the women, you see."
Smythe chuckled.
"The Twin Sisters," Smythe went on, "are two huge gray rocks, I'm
told, vaguely resembling carved figures. The trail passes between
them. There's no other possible way, and when the wind is blowing it
shoots out between them like water from a fire-hose. Haig was caught
just there by a storm. He came back fighting mad, and swore he'd cross
Thunder Mountain yet, or die there. But that reminds me. I've got news
for you."
"News?" asked Marion, with a start.
Her first thought was of Sunnysides. Had Haig decided not to wait for
Farrish? But no! It would be something about yesterday's sensation.
"It keeps well, I see," she said lightly.
"I didn't want to excite you so soon after that long climb."
"Thank you! If you think I can't stand it you just keep it to
yourself--if you can!"
"But I came expressly to tell you."
"Then why don't you expressly tell me? Don't be exasperating, Mr.
Smythe!"
He grinned exultantly.
"Well," he said, "I've been eavesdropping."
"What?"
"Not intentionally. Pure accident. But I didn't stick my fingers in my
ears."
"No, I can understand that."
"Thanks. It was this way: I was fishing--for fish, really. Under a
clump of willows, just where the road from Haig's joins the main
valley road. You know?"
"Yes, yes!"
"Haig and another man, Higgins, it turned out to be--he's a Denver
lawyer--with his family for an outing down at Cobalt Lake. It appeared
he'd been up to see Haig partly on business and partly just for a
friendly visit. They separated there, after a little conversation.
"'It's strange you've never heard a word from him,' said Higgins.
"'Four years,' answered Haig.
"'He's probably off in South Africa somewhere.'
"'Or India. It's a long trail be followed, no doubt.'
"'You can only wait, I suppose,' Higgins said.
"'Well, I've nothing else to do,' Haig replied, with a laugh." Smythe
paused.
"That's something to think about," he said musingly. "Who is this
'he'? And why is Haig waiting for him? Well, that was all I heard
about that. Higgins next asked Haig if he wouldn't please change his
mind about riding down to see them.
"'No,' Haig answered. 'I never go anywhere. I'm not very sociable, no
longer a gregarious creature. Ask my neighbors about that!'
"'Oh, hang your neighbors! This is different. We're not living here,
and we can't pester you. But you see I got Hail Columbia from my wife
for not bringing you to see her in Denver, and she's dead set on
getting acquainted with you here. She says you're the most unselfish
man in the world. I'd be jealous if--'
"'Oh, come now!' protested Haig, laughing.
"'It's true. So you'll drop this hermit business for once, won't you?
It will give my wife much pleasure.'
"There was a little silence.
"'Well, have your own way,' said Haig at last 'I suppose a man's got
to humor his lawyer, if he doesn't want to lose a plain case some day.
But I warn you. I'm not very amusing, that is, I trust not.'
"'Good!' cried Higgins. 'We'll not keep you long. The day after
to-morrow, shall we say? Right! Now good-by! And don't let Huntington
pot you--before you've seen Mrs. Higgins.'
"They both laughed at that. Higgins drove off down the valley in his
road wagon, and Haig galloped toward home. And then I found a trout
had run away with my hook. Big fellow too, and clever as Satan.
Scuttled away under a rock and worked loose before I could get after
him. But it was a good day's fishing just the same, don't you think?"
She did not reply at once; and Smythe discreetly busied himself
tossing stones at an impertinent chipmunk that popped in and out among
the rocks and fallen limbs.
"Have you seen this Mrs. Higgins?" asked Marion suddenly.
"No," Smythe answered gravely, though his eyes twinkled wickedly. "But
Higgins is sixty at least, and I fancy his wife's too old to be--" A
warning look checked him. "But really, Miss Gaylord, you ought not to
jump down my throat after I've brought you such an interesting knot
for your pretty hands to untie."
She laughed at his lugubrious countenance, then stood up, and reached
out a hand to him, letting him hold it for just a breath of time.
"No, you're a good friend. I know it."
"I'm not very deep," he said, with a touch of dejection. "Nobody ever
takes me very seriously. But I hope you'll trust me!"
"Indeed I will! But come! We must go back."
So they went slipping and sliding down the hill, digging their heels
into the ground, clinging to rocks and trees to check their swift
descent, laughing at their wild plunges and gyrations. At the house,
when they had rested a while on the veranda, Marion dismissed Smythe
as quickly as she could without abruptness; and when he had gone she
hastened to her room, and locked the door, and flung herself down on
the bed, with her hands clasped behind her head, to stare up at the
ceiling in a whirl of thoughts. There was a mystery! There was a
motive behind Haig's conduct! "The most unselfish man in the world"
And she repeated the words over and over again, and gathered them to
her heart.
CHAPTER XI
AVALANCHE
Huntington soon had his revenge on Marion, though, in his blindness,
he never knew it. She and Claire, after an unusually protracted Small
Talk the night before, arose late one morning to find the house
topsy-turvy from masculine activity. On the veranda they discovered
Seth cleaning rifles, surrounded by cartridge boxes, hunting knives,
canvas bags and wrappings, rubber coats, leather straps, fishing
tackle and what not.
"In the name of goodness, Seth Huntington! What are you doing?"
shrilled Claire.
"Guess!" replied Huntington, with a rather heavy attempt at
tantalizing.
"Oh, I know! Camping. But you don't mean to-day?"
"Sure!"
"But why didn't you ask us?" demanded Claire. "Maybe we don't
choose--"
"But you do, though. I promised Marion that as soon as I--"
He stopped, for even his habitually veiled eyes could not miss the
look of consternation on Marion's face.
"Why--I thought--" he began uncertainly. "Of course, if you don't want
to go--"
The oiled rag dropped from his hand. His descent from elation (he had
planned a little surprise) to dejection and chagrin was a tumble that
touched Marion's commiseration and disarmed her. She did not want to
go camping; she did not want to leave the Park for even a day, an
hour; she did not want to miss any opportunity to see Haig. More than
ever now was she determined to solve his mystery. So Huntingdon's
"surprise" was a greater shock to her than he, simple man, could
possibly have foreseen or perceived. But even if she had not been
moved by his rather ludicrous disappointment she would not have dared
to refuse acquiescence in his programme. She had indeed expressed an
ardent--oh, too ardent!--desire to go camping, and any explanation she
could think of on the instant would have led her into regions where
she could not trust herself.
"Indeed, I want to go!" she cried quickly, though there was a big lump
in her throat. "You took me by surprise, that's all."
"I should say so!" said Claire. "Think you're smart, don't you? We
might have been all dressed for it if you'd only told us. When do we
start, Big Boss?"
Huntington recovered his good spirits quickly, assured that he had
succeeded after all.
"I thought we'd ride to Ely's to-day, sleep there to-night, and make
Mount Avalanche to-morrow evening."
"Then we must hurry," said Claire. "Come, Marion."
"How long--shall we be gone?" asked Marion, struggling to appear
enthusiastic.
"Four or five days, I suppose."
Her heart sank. She could have cried with vexation. But she managed to
conceal her real feelings in the bustle of preparation. There were
provisions to be packed: cans and jars and bottles; bacon and ham and
flour against the possible event of bad luck with the guns and rods;
warm clothes and bedding; medicines and bandages. So fully occupied
were her hands and brain with these details, and later with her first
real experience with the mountain trails, that her heart must perforce
keep its peace until some hour of solitude.
Toward five o'clock of the second day they reached their destination,--a
grassy shelf a little below timber line on Mount Avalanche. There, in
some past age, an avalanche of titanic proportions had carried away
part of the mountain itself; and they camped now on the top of the
débris, long since concealed by a dense forest growth, as if nature had
employed her utmost arts to hide the wound. Marion could not but yield a
little to emotions of delight and wonder. On that high platform she
stood above a marvelous mountain world, below another mountain world as
marvelous. Behind her Avalanche reared sheer and sharp and white
against the sky. On either side were snow-clad peaks. At her feet
were forests in solid masses of green, now darkening in the
twilight. And beyond, far, far beyond, the Park they had left lay
bright under the sun's after-glow, with a background of range on range
of mountains in their violet haze. On the shelf was forage for the
horses; near at hand were moss and balsam for their beds; and at a
little distance a rivulet, ice-cold, had shady pools where small
trout awaited capture. And the air was like dry wine on the lips, with
a tang of resin in the nostrils; and the woods sang a song that even
Marion could not resist.
Here they pitched two tents just large enough to cover the beds of
balsam boughs and moss and blankets. In the three days they passed in
camp Marion learned many things that were to be of incalculable value
to her one day, though she never could have guessed that all this too,
like the encounter in the Forbidden Pasture, had been ordered in the
Beginning, details in the Scheme of Things. She learned surprising
secrets of makeshift cookery; she learned the Indian's lesson of a
very little fire; she learned the mountaineer's economy of matches and
like precious articles. She fished in the small pools that lay hidden
away in dark recesses of the forest, practised shooting with her
rifle, and on the third day, in the timber below the camp, with Seth
at her side, brought down her first deer.
"I told you!" cried Huntington, delighted at the progress of his
pupil.
But her heart was not in all this; it was clamoring now to be heard,
and would by no means be stilled. Each evening Marion walked apart
from the others, to stand at the edge of the lofty platform, and watch
her green and violet Elysium swallowed up in night. Each morning she
searched for it through her field glasses to assure herself that it
had not vanished in the dark. And when the last day of their outing
came, the last evening, the last night, she could scarce contain her
impatience. To-morrow they would start; and the day after--
She could not sleep that night. Every twig and every needle of her
pine mattress seemed to have conspired to torture her. She tossed
about until she could no longer endure her bed; and in the middle of
the night she crept out of the tent, and sat, wrapped in a blanket,
before the smouldering embers of the fire. The hobbled horses grazed
not far away; a night bird twitted solitarily in the brush; and from
the depths of the forest came the scream of some savage creature out
on its kill. Against the star-crowded sky the peaks stood up cold and
impassive. What cared they? What did the world care? What did Philip
care?
For now she knew that she loved him. Yes, yes, she loved him! In her
heart she had known it from the beginning, since that meeting in the
Forbidden Pasture, had known it as one knows things without
acknowledgment. Her mind had acknowledged only the hundred reasons why
she should not, could not love him. He had repelled her; he had not
veiled his meaning, had not concealed his antagonism; he had told her
plainly, brutally almost, that he would not endure her presence, that
she must avoid his side of the Park.
Then she thought of Robert,--Robert, so devoted and so true. What was
she doing: throwing away his love that was so unselfishly, so
whole-heartedly laid at her feet? Had she been mad to flee from him?
Yes, mad! Pride rose to support the fondness and the admiration she
had felt for him. And so there ensued a struggle between the two fine
spirits that dwelt in her,--the proud little lady of the Fragonard and
the Viking with red hair.
The Viking won. Had not her father said to her, in those long talks
about her mother, that love is the only thing? And back she came, on
swiftest wings of passion, to Philip; and she was glad. She knew now
the meaning of her restlessness in the dark days in the unheeding
city; she knew whose voice had called, whose arms had held her, though
he was unaware. He needed her, though he did not know it. And she had
come to him, without understanding. Somewhere she had read a fugitive
bit of verse that had meant nothing then, and had been forgotten until
now, when it suddenly sang across the years and the spaces like a call
to courage:
"The wild wind bloweth
The cross of fire.
The wild heart knoweth
Its own desire."
The wild heart knoweth its own desire! She rose to her feet with a
singing and a resurrection of her heart. She scarcely knew that her
limbs were stiff and that her body ached with cold. Her spirit was
aroused. She could not go and take Philip as her father had taken the
one he loved. But there were ways; when had a woman ever failed, in
love, of finding them? She set herself to thinking, planning,
scheming, while she walked swiftly to and fro before the tents. And
presently she stopped her pacing, and looked curiously around her.
There had come a subtle alteration in the aspect of the night. A
shivering freshness had crept insensibly into the air. Leaves and
grass and the very air appeared to be astir, though the silence and
the darkness were as before. She looked up eagerly at the sky, and saw
that the stars were pale. It was not yet the dawn; it was only the
passing of the night. But the dawn was near. The dawn! The dawn!
She did not wish Seth to find her there. He would ask questions,
staring at her. She crept stealthily back into her tent, and lay
there, shaking with cold, to wait for the noise that Huntington would
make as he sought for live embers in the ashes of the fire.
* * * * *
Once out of the mountains and in the foothills, she rode far ahead of
Seth and Claire, impatient at the slow progress necessitated by the
difficulties of the pack horses. Late in the afternoon she found
herself at a fork of the road with which she was familiar. A little
way up the less-used of the two branches there was a glade where
columbines grew in extraordinary profusion. She had gathered armloads
of them there, and seemed scarcely to have touched the edge of that
wild garden where nature had been seized with a prodigal impulse. And
now, rather to be doing something than to await in irritation for Seth
and Claire, she turned her pony's head and rode toward the glade. In
five minutes she was fording a little stream, beyond which the road
rose slightly to cross the shoulder of a hill, and dipped again to run
in a sharp curve along the margin of the glade. She took the rise at a
gallop, sped down the other slope, and at the curve of the road reined
up her horse with a startled cry. She had come suddenly upon a team
hitched at the side of the road,--the sorrels and the trap in which
Philip Haig had driven her to Huntington's that terrible evening.
For a moment she was bereft of thought and feeling. At that very
instant she had been thinking of him; what instant was she not
thinking of him? But the utterly unexpected encounter--for he was
there somewhere, in the glade, no doubt--swept away all that courage
she had found on Avalanche. She felt suddenly helpless, inert,
afraid; and before she could regain her self-possession, call back her
high resolve, the bushes at the roadside parted, and Philip stood
before her. He bore a great bouquet of columbines, their stems wrapped
in damp moss and leaves and tied securely with a string. At sight of
her he halted; and that look of annoyance she had seen him wear in the
road below his ranch house came again into his pale face. For some
seconds they regarded each other in silence.
"True," he said at length, with a smile that tortured her, "this is
not my side of the Ridge. I am the trespasser, even though this is
public domain. You have as much right here as I--more, since I said
the Ridge was the dividing line. So--"
He stepped quickly to her horse's side, pressed the great bunch of
pale-blue flowers into her limp but obedient hands, lifted his
battered hat, turned on his heel, walked directly to the trap, leaped
into the seat, and drove swiftly away. She watched him dully until he
was out of sight behind a bend in the road, among the trees; watched
the spot where he had disappeared until it became a blur to her aching
eyes. Then she looked slowly down at the flowers in her hands.
Columbines! Frail, lovely things, the fairest product, she had
thought, of nature's laboratory, reflecting the infinite, ineffable
blue of God's skies, delicate as the flower that had bloomed with such
wonderful, unexpected beauty in her own heart! How she could have
treasured them, wept over them, hugged them to her breast, if he had
given them to her in another way. Slowly her fingers relaxed. The
flowers fell into the dust of the road. She stared down, at them a
moment; and then, with a cry, leaped from her horse, picked them up
eagerly, clasped them to her breast, buried her face in them, and
watered them with her tears.
* * * * *
Seth said he guessed he would ride down to the post-office before
supper; yesterday was mail day; might be something. Marion was glad of
his departure, and to avoid Claire was not difficult, considering what
baths, and changing of linen, and brushing of hair they required after
their outing. Refreshed and rested, they had scarcely met before the
new-lighted fire at twilight when Seth returned, stamping vigorously
into the room.
"You're the lucky one, Marion," he said.
He fumbled in his pockets, and finally produced a letter. She took it,
glanced at it, and let it fall into her lap. A great stillness seemed
to have come upon the world. She appeared to be looking at Seth and
Claire across great distances. She could hear her heart pounding in
her bosom, like something that hammered for freedom. Ages seemed to
have passed before she was able to rise slowly, to smile, to beg to be
excused a moment. In her room she stood quite still, mechanically tore
open the envelope, and read:
Dear Marion: You told me not to write, and I have obeyed till now.
Don't scold, please! You see I am in Denver. It's business.
Honest! A mining deal, just for a flyer. It may mean millions or
nothing. I am here for several days, possibly weeks. Won't you
_please_ let me run up to see you? Don't say no, Marion. I promise
to be good. I have an auto here, and they tell me the roads are
O. K. at this season. I'll come away the minute you tell me to. If
I can see you only for an hour it will make me very happy.
Yours always,
Robert.
She read it twice, while the color slowly returned to her cheeks. Then
the letter faded from her sight, and she saw a face that wore a cruel
smile, and heard a voice that bade her begone. And suddenly a wave of
resentment, of anger, swept over her. To have been scorned, flouted,
humiliated by one to whom--And here was a man who wanted her as he
wanted nothing else in the world, who would toil for her, die for her,
who would treasure every word and smile she should consent to give
him, whose one desire was to make her happy. What madness had come
over her that she--she the Viking's daughter--Her eyes were drawn, she
knew not how, to the columbines that she had carefully, tenderly
arranged in a bowl on her dressing table. In a passion she rushed upon
them, snatched them up dripping, bore them to the open window, and
flung them with all her strength out upon the lawn. A moment she stood
looking at them, her hands clutched upon her heaving breast, her whole
body quivering with the storm that raged within her. Then she whirled
around, flung herself down at her little writing table, and wrote:
Dear Robert: Yes, come. MARION.
Her hand trembled now so that she could scarcely address the envelope,
and seal it. But it was done at last. She rose, and paused a moment to
collect herself. Her mouth was dry, her forehead was hot under the
hand that she pressed upon it. Nervously she poured a glass of water
from the crystal pitcher that stood on a little table by the window,
and gulped it down. Her eyes, as she did so, fell again upon the
bouquet of columbines lying forlorn, their tender faces half buried in
the dry grass. A cry rose to her lips, but she forced it back, and
with a tightening of her lips, turned and went rapidly out into the
room where Seth and Claire awaited her.
"What do you think?" she cried, in a voice that sounded strangely
shrill and unmusical in her ears. "It's from Robert--Robert
Hillyer--Papa's good friend--and mine. He wants to come up and see
me--he's in Denver--on business. He wants to come up--he says--just
for a day or two--do you mind--if I ask him?"
"Of course, dear!" cried Claire, with enthusiasm.
"Sure!" seconded Seth. "Tell him he's very welcome."
"I knew you'd say that!" said Marion excitedly. "So--the letter--it's
all ready. Can it go out--the stage goes to-morrow, doesn't it?"
"Yes," replied Huntington. "I'll take it down in the morning--before
you're up."
"Please!"
She stood a moment, smiling at them. Then her eyes wandered aimlessly
around the room. She must do something quick, or she would go to
pieces. She saw the piano, and fairly ran to it. Crash! went the
chords. Rippling and tumbling on one another came the notes under her
nervous fingers. Out of the jumble of unrelated sounds presently
emerged a gay and sparkling melody; and then a gayer one; and after
that a rollicking song from one of the latest musical comedies. There
followed two of the sauciest, most irresponsible tunes that ever made
a vaudeville success. She played with abandon, a kind of reckless
fury, sitting erect, with her head flung back, an insouciant smile
flickering about her lips, her lithe body swaying with the music. Then
suddenly, in the midst of a tune, she stopped, arose, faced Seth and
Claire with flaming cheeks and eyes unnaturally bright.
"Great, Marion!" cried Seth, slapping his thigh. "Go on, please!"
But Claire had seen what Huntington had not. She turned to him
swiftly, with a quick command, as if she had suddenly remembered
something.
"I've clean forgot that pie, Seth. Go to the cave and bring me some
apples. Quick, now!"
He sensed something a little queer in that order, which would have
been very natural and pleasing at any other time, but he did not stop
to question. Claire waited until the door had closed behind him, then
ran to Marion, with anxiety pictured in her face.
"What is it, Marion?" she exclaimed.
"Oh, Claire, Claire!" cried Marion, breaking. "I'm so--so--unhappy!"
Then she flung herself into Claire's arms, weeping without restraint.
CHAPTER XII
SUNNYSIDES
Marion was not alone in her misery; but knowledge of this, had it by
any chance come to her, would not have eased her heart, though it
might indeed have hardened it a little against more suffering to
come.
Toward bedtime of the eighth day after that encounter at the glade of
the columbines, Philip Haig sat stiffly silent in his armchair,
staring into the fire. His brow was dark with discontent, his cheeks
had paled with the slow ebbing of the tide of passion that had swept
over him. It had begun to rise, though he was not then aware of it, or
barely aware of it, the day Marion had halted him in the road below
his ranch house; it had reached its flood as he drove away from her
and left the bouquet of columbines in her limp hands.
Who was this girl? And why had she come to torture him? To him she now
appeared as the incarnation of his tragedy. In her the Past, from
which he had fled to the far corners of the earth, hiding his trail in
seas and deserts and in stagnant backwaters of humanity, had tracked
him down at last. And all the grief and bitterness and hatred that he
had beaten down, or thought he had beaten down, had returned to rend
and tear him.
Two beings he had loved, and to them he had given, to each in a
different way, all his heart and soul and mind: his father and--that
other. She had come to him at his most susceptible age, when, devoted
only to art, he knew nothing of the world--a green boy, the wise ones
had called him. She had come to him with all the surprise and wonder
of a revelation, a coronation, a fulfillment, a golden epiphany. He
had attributed to her such spiritual perfections as should have
gone with her beauty and her grace; worshipped her for all that she
was not and all that he was himself. And she had deceived him,
exploited him, plundered him,--and laughed at him when by chance, one
tragic, intolerable night, he found her out. And the next morning,
as if his cup were not already full, he had received a cablegram,
in his attic studio in Paris, telling him that his father had killed
himself in a moment of despair over financial difficulties. So he
had killed his father with his excessive demands for money to
squander on 'Tonite. To be sure, he did not know--had had no hint
from home--had never guessed that his father was in trouble.
Nevertheless he had killed him--rather, she had killed him. What a
fool he had been! Never such another fool since God placed man and
woman together in one world. Cursing himself and her, and in her
cursing all her sex, he fled--he knew not where. So stunned and
dazed he was that he never really came to himself, found himself,
until one day he awoke in Hong Kong.
That was the beginning of the new life, if such it might be called. He
became a wanderer, an adventurer, seeking always new faces, new
places, new experiences, trying always to forget, hoping always for a
blessed knock on the head in some mad undertaking, for a thin knife in
the back in some wild adventure. But in all his wanderings the one
kind of adventure that he refused, the one excitement that he
steadfastly shunned, was the one that, because of his very aloofness,
and of something that women ever saw in his eyes, was offered to him
the most freely, in every land beneath the sun.
Slim Jim entered, bringing whisky and hot water. Haig turned his head
to look at him. Jim never changed, whatever his environment; he was
always the Orient, the inscrutable East. And now, slipping in so
stealthily, he seemed to bring with him an atmosphere, an odor, a
call, and Haig, still looking at Jim, but scarcely seeing him, began
to murmur lines that intoxicated him:
"I know not where the white road runs, nor what the blue hills are,
But man can have the sun for friend, and for his guide a star;
And there's no end of voyaging when once the voice is heard,
For the river calls and the road calls, and--"
He stopped and sat suddenly erect.
"Jim!" he cried. "Do you remember the night we took old Kwang's girl
away from the river rats in Tien-Tsin?"
"Vellee well," answered the Chinaman.
His face was expressionless; he concealed the joy that this mood of
his master aroused in his thin breast. Jim did not like the Park, and
only the recollection of one day when he had stood tied to a capstan
on a pirate junk, with a dozen fiends around him trying to make him
tell something he did not know, and Haig had suddenly descended upon
them like the foreign devil he was,--well, Jim took his gods where he
found them, and from that day Haig had never been able to rid himself
of this idolater.
"Tien-Tsin! Tien-Tsin!" Haig repeated, lingering covetously on the
words. "But that was a fight, eh!"
"No likee!" replied Jim.
"No likee!" cried Haig. "Why, you hypocritical young ruffian, you!
That was one of the happiest nights of your life. You're always trying
to make people think you're asleep, or timid. I can see, right now,
that long knife of yours slip under my arm, and catch the big fellow
in the stomach. He just coughed once, and crumpled up at my feet. In
the nick of time, too, Jim, and I let the next one have it. The rest
of them took to their heels, and you with your long pigsticker after
them. No likee! Jim, you're a moon-faced old liar, and a disgrace to
your ten thousand and seven ancestors."
Jim's smile was perfectly noncommittal. He was too wily to appear
eager. Besides, he did not really like fighting, which made all the
more trouble for somebody when he had to fight. But he was heartily
sick of this cold and uneventful life in the Park. Better a thousand
times the foolish adventures, the unnecessary battles, the restless
wanderings of other days!
"That was a night!" said Haig, flinging himself back in his chair to
gaze dreamily into the flames, while Jim, like a blue ghost, stole
noiselessly away. And there, in the glow of the dying fire, bright
and alluring visions successively took shape: A red-and-yellow temple
on a hill, to which a thousand steps led up from a lake the color of a
blue heron's breast; a junk with sails of purple creeping out of a
morning mist as yellow as saffron; an island with a still lagoon in
its center, and coconut palms alive with screaming parrots of every
gorgeous hue; a sandy beach where jabbering natives dragged the
flotsam of a wrecked steamer out of the breakers; a village on a high
plateau, where a drum throbbed incessantly, and naked Indian children
peered out from behind the huts; a skirmish line in khaki crawling up
to the brow of a shell-swept hill; a dog-team yelping under the long
lash of a half-breed Aleut, on a frozen river that sparkled in the
sun; a sweating jungle where two bright spots glowed balefully in the
gloom.
"God!" groaned Haig, as he sat erect at last, and reached for the
glass, now cold. He tasted it, and set it back with a wry face.
"Damn Thursby!" he muttered. "Does he think I'm going to stay here
forever, like a bear in a pit?"
He woke the next morning in an ugly humor, having slept little, and
then only to dream such dreams as fed his discontent. He berated Jim
because the biscuits were cold (which was not Jim's fault), and
because the coffee was hot (which was according to his orders).
Trivial annoyances, most of them of his own making or imagining,
multiplied on all sides, fomenting his irritability until, by the time
he strode out of the cottage, his temper was at white heat. What might
have happened to the patient, devoted men about the stable and
corrals is not difficult of conjecture, but they were saved by
Sunnysides. Almost the first object that caught Haig's eye was the
yellow outlaw gleaming in the morning sunlight.
"Ah!" he exclaimed.
His inner turmoil of these last few days had banished all thought of
the stallion of the San Luis. But now, his eyes gleamed as he
quickened his steps toward the stable.
Farrish and Pete were at work among the stalls; Bill stood guard over
Sunnysides; and the fourth man, Curly, was mending a saddle in the
harness-room.
"Farrish!" Haig called out, striding into the stable. "We'll tackle
the yellow fellow this morning."
Farrish and Pete turned, and looked at him curiously.
"All right!" answered Farrish; and then added doubtfully: "Now?"
"Yes. At once."
Farrish, in a manner that showed a certain reluctance, put up the
currycomb with which he had been grooming the sorrels, and started
toward the rear door. But Pete stood still.
"You too, Pete!" said Haig, impatiently.
"I think you better not--to-day," answered the Indian, in his slow
way.
"Why?" snapped Haig.
Pete had seen the expression on Haig's face, and did not like it. But
he hesitated to utter what was in his mind.
"Why?" repeated Haig.
"I
Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/29697