CHAPTER VPIERRE BECOMES ALARMED ABOUT HIS PROPERTY
The next time Holliwell came, he brought the books, and, finding Pierre at home, he sat with his host after supper and talked men’s talk of the country; of game, of ranching, a little gossip, stories of travel, humorous experiences, and Joan sat in her place, the books in her lap, looking and listening.
John Carver had used a phrase, “When you see her eyes lookin’ and lookin’ at another man—” and this phrase had stuck in Pierre’s sensitive and jealous memory. What Joan felt for Holliwell was a sort of ignorant and respectful tenderness, the excitement of an intelligent child first moved to a knowledge of its own intelligence; the gratitude of savage loneliness toward the beautiful feet of exploration. A consciousness of her clean mind, a consciousness of her young, untamed spirit, had come slowly to life in her since her talk with Holliwell. Joan was peculiarly a woman—that is, the passive and receptive being. Pierre had laid his hand on her heart and she had followed him; now this young parsonhad put a curious finger on her brain, it followed him. Her husband saw the admiration, the gratitude, the tender excitement in her frank eyes, and the poison seed sown by John Carver’s hand shot out roots and tiny, deadly branches.
But Joan and Holliwell were unaware. Pierre smoked rapidly, rolling cigarette after cigarette; he listened with a courteous air, he told stories in his soft, slow voice; once he went out to bring in a fresh log and, coming back on noiseless feet, saw Joan and her instructor bent over one of the books and Joan’s face was almost that of a stranger, so eager, so flushed, with sparkles in the usually still, gray eyes.
It was not till a week or two after this second visit from the clergyman that Pierre’s smouldering jealousy broke into flame. After clearing away the supper things with an absent air of eager expectation, Joan would dry her hands on her apron, and, taking down one of her books from their place in a shelf corner, she would draw her chair close to the lamp and begin to read, forgetful of Pierre. These had been the happiest hours for him; he would tell Joan about his day’s work, about his plans, about his past life; wonderful it was to him, after his loneliness, that she should be sitting there drinking in every word and lovinghim with her dumb, wild eyes. Now, there was no talk and no listening. Joan’s absorbed face was turned from him and bent over her book, her lips moved, she would stop and stare before her. After a long while, he would get up and go to bed, but she would stay with her books till a restless movement from him would make her aware of the lamplight shining wakefulness upon him through the chinks in the partition wall. Then she would get up reluctantly, sighing, and come to bed.
For ten evenings this went on, Pierre’s heart slowly heating itself, until, all at once, the flame leaped.
Joan had untied her apron and reached up for her book. Pierre had been waiting, hoping that of her free will she might prefer his company to the “parson feller’s”—for in his ignorance those books were jealously personified—but, without a glance in his direction, she had turned as usual to the shelf.
“You goin’ to read?” asked Pierre hoarsely. It was a painful effort to speak.
She turned with a childish look of astonishment. “Yes, Pierre.”
He stood up with one of his lithe, swift movements, all in one rippling piece. “By God, you’renot, though!” said he, strode over to her, snatched the volume from her, threw it back into its place, and pointed her to her chair.
“You set down an’ give heed to me fer a change, Joan Carver,” he said, his smoke-colored eyes smouldering. “I didn’t fetch you up here to read parsons’ books an’ waste oil. I fetched you up here—to—” He stopped, choked with a sudden, enormous hurt tenderness and sat down and fell to smoking and staring, hot-eyed, into the fire.
And Joan sat silent in her place, puzzled, wistful, wounded, her idle hands folded, looking at him for a while, then absently before her, and he knew that her mind was busy again with the preacher feller’s books. If he had known better how to explain his heart, if she had known how to show him the impersonal eagerness of her awakening mind—! But, savage and silent, they sat there, loving each other, hurt, but locked each into his own impenetrable life.
After that, Joan changed the hours of her study and neglected housework and sagebrush-grubbing, but, nonetheless, were Pierre’s evenings spoiled. Perfection of intercourse is the most perishable of all life’s commodities. Now, when he talked, he could not escape the consciousnessof having constrained his audience; she could not escape her knowledge of his jealousy, the remembrance of his mysterious outbreak, the irrepressible tug of the story she was reading. So it went on till snow came and they were shut in, man and wife, with only each other to watch, a tremendous test of good-fellowship. This searching intimacy came at a bad time, just after Holliwell’s third visit when he had brought a fresh supply of books.
“There’s poetry this time,” he said. “Get Pierre to read it aloud to you.”
The suggestion was met by a rude laugh from Pierre.
“I wouldn’t be wastin’ my time,” he jeered.
It was the first rift in his courtesy. Holliwell looked up in sharp surprise. He saw a flash of the truth, a little wriggle of the green serpent in Pierre’s eyes before they fell. He flushed and glanced at Joan. She stood by the table in the circle of lamplight, looking over the new books, but in her eagerness there was less simplicity. She wore an almost timorous air, accepted his remarks in silence, shot doubtful looks at Pierre before she answered questions, was an entirely different Joan. Now Holliwell was angry and he stiffened toward his host and hostess, droppedall his talk about the books and smoked haughtily. He was young and over-sensitive, no more master of himself in this instance than Pierre and Joan. But before he left after supper, refusing a bed, though Pierre conquered his dislike sufficiently to urge it, Holliwell had a moment with Joan. It was very touching. He would tell about it afterwards, but, for a long time, he could not bear to remember it.
She tried to return his books, coming with her arms full of them and lifting up eyes that were almost tragic with renunciation.
“I can’t be takin’ the time to read them, Mr. Holliwell,” she said, that extraordinary, over-expressive voice of hers running an octave of regret; “an’ someway Pierre don’t like that I should spend my evenin’s on them. Seems like he thinks I was settin’ myself up to be knowin’ more than him.” She laughed ruefully. “Me—knowin’ more’n Pierre! It’s laughable. But anyways I don’t want him to be thinkin’ that. So take the books, please. I like them.” She paused. “I love them,” she said hungrily and, blinking, thrust them into his hands.
He put them down on the table. “You’re wrong, Joan,” he said quickly. “You mustn’t give in to such a foolish idea. You have rights ofyour own, a life of your own. Pierre mustn’t stand in the way of your learning. You mustn’t let him. I’ll speak to him.”
“Oh, no!” Some intuition warned her of the danger in his doing this.
“Well, then, keep your books and talk to Pierre about them. Try to persuade him to read aloud to you. I shan’t be back now till spring, but I want you to read this winter, read all the stuff that’s there. Come, Joan, to please me,” and he smiled coaxingly.
“I ain’t afeared of Pierre,” said Joan slowly. Her pride was stung by the suggestion. “I’ll keep the books.” She sighed. “Good-bye. When I see you in the spring, I’ll be a right learned school-marm.”
She held out her hand and he took and held it, pressing it in his own. He felt troubled about her, unwilling to leave her in the snowbound wilderness with that young savage of the smouldering eyes.
“Good-bye,” said Pierre behind him. His soft voice had a click.
Holliwell turned to him. “Good-bye, Landis. I shan’t see either of you till the spring. I wish you a good winter and I hope—” He broke off and held out his hand. “Well,” said he, “you’repretty far out of every one’s way here. Be good to each other.”
“Damn your interference!” said Pierre’s eyes, but he took the hand and even escorted Holliwell to his horse.
Snow came early and deep that winter. It fell for long, gray days and nights, and then it came in hurricanes of drift, wrapping the cabin in swirling white till only one window peered out and one gabled corner cocked itself above the crust. Pierre had cut and stacked his winter wood; he had sent his cows to a richer man’s ranch for winter feeding. There was very little for him to do. After he had brought in two buckets of water from the well and had cut, for the day’s consumption, a piece of meat from his elk hanging outside against the wall, he had only to sit and smoke, to read old magazines and papers, and to watch Joan. Then the poisonous roots of his jealousy struck deep. Always his brain, unaccustomed to physical idleness, was at work, falsely interpreting her wistful silence—she was thinking of the parson, hungry to read his books, longing for the open season and his coming again to the ranch.
In December a man came in on snowshoes bringing “the mail”—one letter for Pierre, acommunication which brought heat to his face. The Forest Service threatened him with a loss of land; it pointed to some flaw in his title; part of his property, the most valuable part, had not yet been surveyed.... Pierre looked up with set jaws, every fighting instinct sharpened to hold what was his own.
“I hev put in two years’ hard work on them acres,” he told his visitor, “an’ I’m not plannin’ to give them over to the first fool favored by the Service. My title is as clean as my hand. It’ll take more’n thievery an’ more’n spite to take it away from me.”
“You better go to Robinson,” advised the bearer of the letter; “can’t get after them fellers too soon. It’s a country where you can easy come by what you want, but where it ain’t so easy to hold on to it. If it ain’t yer land, it’s yer hosses; if it ain’t yer hosses, it’s yer wife.” He looked at Joan and laughed.
Pierre went white and dumb; the chance shot had inflamed his wound.
He strapped on his snowshoes and bade a grim good-bye to Joan, after the man had left. “Don’t you be wastin’ oil while I’m away,” he told her sharply, standing in the doorway, his head level with the steep wall of snow behind him, and hegave her a threatening look so that the tenderness in her heart was frozen.
After he had gone, “Pierre, say a real good-bye, say good-bye,” she whispered. Her face cramped and tears came.
She heard his steps lightly crunching across the hard, bright surface of the snow, they entered into the terrible frozen silence. Then she turned from the door, dried her eyes with her sleeve like a little village girl, and ran across the room to a certain shelf. Pierre would be gone a week. She would not waste oil, but she would read. It was with the appetite of a starved creature that she fell upon her books.
CHAPTER VIPIERRE TAKES STEPS TO PRESERVE HIS PROPERTY
A log fell forward and Joan lifted her head. She had not come to an end of Isabella’s tragedy nor of her own memories, but something other than the falling log had startled her; a light, crunching step upon the snow.
She looked toward the window. For an instant the room was almost dark and the white night peered in at her, its gigantic snow-peaks pressing against the long, horizontal window panes, and in that instant she saw a face. The fire started up again, the white night dropped away, the face shone close a moment longer, then it too disappeared. Joan came to her feet with pounding pulses. It had been Pierre’s face, but at the same time, the face of a stranger. He had come back five days too soon and something terrible had happened. Surely his chancing to see her with her book would not make him look like that. Besides, she was not wasting oil. She had stood up, but at first she was incapable of moving forward. For the first time in her life she knew the paralysis of unreasoning fear. Then the dooropened and Pierre came in out of the crystal night.
“What brought you back so soon?” asked Joan.
“Too soon fer you, eh?” He strode over to the hearth where she had lain, took up the book, struck it with his hand as though it had been a hated face, and flung it into the fire. “I seen you through the window,” he said. “So you been happy readin’ while I been away?”
“I’ll get you supper. I’ll light the lamp,” Joan stammered.
Pierre’s face was pale, his black hair lay in wet streaks on his temples. He must have traveled at furious speed through the bitter cold to be in such a sweat. There was a mysterious, controlled disorder in his look and there arose from him the odor of strong drink. But he was steady and sure in all his movements and his eyes were deadly cool and reasonable—only it was the reasonableness of insanity, reasonableness based on the wildest premises of unreason.
“I don’t want no supper, nor no light,” he said. “Firelight’s enough fer you to read parsons’ books by, it’s enough fer me to do what I oughter done long afore to-night.”
She stood in the middle of the small, log-walledroom, arrested in the act of lighting a match, and stared at him with troubled eyes. She was no longer afraid. After all, strange as he looked, more strangely as he talked, he was her Pierre, her man. The confidence of her heart had not been seriously shaken by his coldness and his moods during this winter. There had been times of fierce, possessive tenderness. She was his own woman, his property; at this low counting did she rate herself. A sane man does no injury to his own possessions. And Pierre, of course, was sane. He was tired, angry, he had been drinking—her ignorance, her inexperience led her to put little emphasis on the effects of the poison sold at the town saloon. When he was warm and fed and rested, he would be quite himself again. She went about preparing a meal in spite of his words.
He did not seem to notice this. He had taken his eyes from her at last and was busy with the fire. She, too, busy and reassured by the familiar occupation, ceased to watch him. Her pulses were quiet now. She was even beginning to be glad of his return. Why had she been so frightened? Of course, after such a terrible journey alone in the bitter cold, he would look strange. Her father, when he came back smelling of liquor,had always been more than usually morose and unlike his every-day self. He would sit over the stove and tell her the story of his crime. They were horrible home-comings, horrible evenings, but the next morning they would seem like dreams. To-morrow this strangeness of Pierre’s would be mistlike and unreal.
“I seen your sin-buster in town,” said Pierre. He was squatting on his heels over the fire which he had built up to a great blaze and glow and he spoke in a queer sing-song tone through his teeth. “He asked after you real kind. He wanted to know how you was gettin’ on with the edication he’s ben handin’ out to you. I tell him that you was right satisfied with me an’ my ways an’ hed quit his books. I didn’t know as you was hevin’ such a good time durin’ my absence.”
Joan was cruelly hurt. His words seemed to fall heavily upon her heart. “I wasn’t hevin’ a good time. I was missin’ you, Pierre,” said she in a low tremolo of grieving music. “Them books, they seemed like they was all the company I hed.”
“You looked like you was missin’ me,” he sneered. “The sin-buster an’ I had words about you, Joan. Yes’m, he give me quite a line of preachin’ about you, Joan, as how you hedoughter develop yer own life in yer own way—along the lines laid out by him. I told him as how I knowed best what was right an’ fittin’ fer my own wife; as how, with a mother like your’n you needed watchin’ more’n learnin’; as how you belonged to me an’ not to him. An’, says he, ‘She don’t belong to any man, Pierre Landis,’ he said, ‘neither to you nor to me. She belongs to her own self.’ ‘I’ll see that she belongs to me,’ I said. ‘I’ll fix her so she’ll know it an’ every other feller will.’”
At that he turned from the fire and straightened to his feet.
Joan moved backward slowly to the door. He had made no threatening sign or movement, but her fear had come overwhelmingly upon her and every instinct urged her to flight. But before she touched the handle of the door, he flung himself with deadly, swift force and silence across the room and took her in his arms. With all her wonderful young strength, Joan could not break away from him. He dragged her back to the hearth, tied her elbows behind her with the scarf from his neck, that very scarf he had worn when the dawn had shed a wistful beauty upon him, waiting for her on a morning not so very long ago. Joan went weak.
“Pierre,” she cried pitifully, “what are you a-goin’ to do to me?”
He roped her to the heavy post of a set of shelves built against the wall. Then he stood away, breathing fast.
“Now whose gel are you, Joan Carver?” he asked her.
“You know I’m yours, Pierre,” she sobbed. “You got no need to tie me to make me say that.”
“I got to tie you to make you do more’n say it. I got to make sure you are it. Hell-fire won’t take the sureness out of me after this.”
She turned her head, all that she could turn.
He was bending over the fire, and when he straightened she saw that he held something in his hand ... a long bar of metal, white at the shaped end. At once her memory showed her a broad glow of sunset falling over Pierre at work. “There’ll be stock all over the country marked with them two bars,” he had said. “The Two-Bar Brand, don’t you fergit it!” She was not likely to forget it now.
She shut her eyes. He stepped close to her and jerked her blouse down from her shoulder. She writhed away from him, silent in her rage and fear and fighting dumbly. She made no appeal. At that moment her heart was so full of hatredthat it was hardened to pride. He lifted his brand and set it against the bare flesh of her shoulder.
Then terribly she screamed. Again, when he took the metal away, she screamed. Afterwards there was a dreadful silence.
Joan had not lost consciousness. Her healthy nerves stanchly received the anguish and the shock, nor did she make any further outcry. She pressed her forehead against the sharp edge of the shelf, she drove her nails into her hands, and at intervals she writhed from head to foot. Circles of pain spread from the deep burn on her shoulder, spread and shrank, to spread and shrink again. The bones of her shoulder and arm ached terribly; fire still seemed to be eating into her flesh. The air was full of the smell of scorched skin so that she tasted it herself. And hotter than her hurt her heart burned consuming its own tenderness and love and trust.
When this pain left her, when she was free of her bonds, no force nor fear would hold her to Pierre. She would leave him as she had left her father. She would go away. There was no place for her to go to, but what did that matter so long as she might escape from this horrible place and this infernal tormentor? She did not look about to see the actuality of Pierre’s silence. She thoughtthat he had dropped the brand and was sitting near the table with his face hidden. How long the stillness of pain and fury and horror lasted there was no one to reckon. It was most startlingly broken by a voice. “Who screamed for help?” it said, and at the same instant a draught of icy air smote Joan. The door had opened with suddenness and violence. With difficulty she mastered her pain and turned her head.
Pierre had staggered to his feet. Opposite him, framed against the open door filled with the wan whiteness of the snow, stood a spare, tall figure. The man wore his fur collar turned up about his chin and ears, his fur cap pulled down about his brow, a sharp aquiline nose stood out above frozen mustaches, keen and brilliant eyes searched the room. He carried his gun across his arm in readiness, and snuffed the air like a suspicious hound. Then he advanced a step toward Pierre.
“What devil’s work have you been at?” said he, his voice cutting the ear in its sharpness of astonished rage, and his hand slid down along the handle of his gun.
Pierre, watching him like a lynx, side-stepped, crouched, whipped out his gun, and fired. At almost the same second the other’s gun went off. Pierre dropped.
This time Joan’s nerves gave way and the room, with its smell of scorched flesh, of powder, and of frost, went out from her horrified senses. For a moment the stranger’s stern face and brilliant eyes made the approaching center of a great cloud of darkness, then it too went out.
CHAPTER VIITHE JUDGMENT OF GOD
The man who had entered with such violence upon so violent a scene, stood waiting till the smoke of Pierre’s discharge had cleared away, then, still holding his gun in readiness, he stepped across the room and bent over the fallen man.
“I’ve killed him!” he said, just above his breath, and added presently, “That was the judgment of God.” He looked about, taking in every detail of the scene, the branding iron that had burnt its mark deep into the boards where Pierre had thrown it down, the glowing fire heaped high and blazing dangerously in the small room, the woman bound and burnt, the white night outside the uncurtained window.
Afterwards he went over to the woman, who drooped in her bonds with head hanging backward over the wounded shoulder. He untied the silk scarf and the rope and carried her, still unconscious, into the bedroom where he laid her on the bed and bathed her face in water. Joan’s crown of hair had fallen about her neck and temples. Her bared throat and shoulder had thefirm smoothness of marble, her lifeless face, its pure, full lips fallen apart, its long lids closed, black-fringed and black-browed, owing little of its beauty to color or expression, was at no loss in this deathlike composure and whiteness. The man dealt gently with her as though she had been a child. He found clean rags which he soaked in oil and placed over her burn, then he drew the coarse clothing about her and resumed his bathing of her forehead.
She gave a moaning sigh, her face contracted woefully, and she opened her eyes. The man looked into them as a curious child might look into an opened door.
“Did you see what happened?” he asked her when she had come fully to herself.
“Yes,” Joan whispered, her lips shaking.
“I’ve killed the brute.”
Her face became a classic mask of tragedy, the drawn brows, horrified eyes, and widened mouth.
“Pierre? Killed?” Her voice, hardly more than a whisper, filled the house with its agony.
“Are you sorry?” demanded her rescuer sternly. “Was he in the habit of tying you up or was this—branding—a special diversion?”
Joan turned her face away, writhed from headto foot, put up her two hands between him and her agonizing memories.
The man rose and left her, going softly into the next room. There he stood in a tense attitude of thought, sat down presently with his long, narrow jaw in his hands and stared fixedly at Pierre. He was evidently trying to fight down the shock of the spectacle, grimly telling himself to become used to the fact that here lay the body of a man that he had killed. In a short time he seemed to be successful, his face grew calm. He looked away from Pierre and turned his mind to the woman.
“She can’t stay here,” he said presently, in the tone of a man who has fallen into the habit of talking aloud to himself. He looked about in a hesitant, doubtful fashion. “God!” he said abruptly and snapped his fingers and thumb. He looked angry. Again he bent over Pierre, examined him with thoroughness and science, his face becoming more and more calm. At the end he rose and with an air of authority he went in again to Joan. She lay with her face turned to the wall.
“It is impossible for you to stay here,” said he in a voice of command. “You are not fit to take care of yourself, and I can’t stay and take care of you. You must come with me. I think youcan manage that. Your husband—if he is your husband—is dead. It may or may not be a matter for sorrow to you, but I should say that it ought not to be anything but a merciful release. Women are queer creatures, though.... However, whether you are in grief or in rejoicing, you can’t stay here. By to-morrow or next day you’ll need more nursing than you do now. I don’t want to take you to a neighbor, even if there was one near enough, but I’ll take you with me. Will you get ready now?”
His sure, even, commanding voice evidently had a hypnotizing effect upon the dazed girl. Slowly, wincing, she stood up, and with his help gathered together some of her belongings which he put in the pack he carried on his shoulders. She wrapped herself in her warmest outdoor clothing. He then put his hand upon her arm and drew her toward the door of that outer room. She followed him blindly with no will of her own, but, as he stopped to strap on his snowshoes, her face lightened with pain, and she made as if to run to Pierre’s body. He stood before her, “Don’t touch him,” said he, and, turning himself, he glanced back at Pierre. In that glance he saw one of the lean, brown hands stir. His face became suddenly suffused, even his eyes grew shot withblood. Standing carefully so as to obstruct her view, he caught at the corner of an elk hide and threw it over Pierre. Then he went to Joan, who stared at him, white and shaking. He put his arm around her and drew her out, shutting the door of her home and leaning against it.
“You can’t go back,” said he gently and reasonably. “The man tried to kill you. You can’t go back. Surely you meant to go away.”
“Yes,” said Joan, “yes. I did mean to go away. But—but it’s Pierre.”
He bent and began to strap on her snowshoes. There was a fighting brilliance in his eyes and a strange look of hurry about him that had its effect on Joan. “It’s Pierre no longer,” said he. “What can you do for him? What can he do for you? Be sensible, child. Come. Don’t waste time. There will be snow to-day.”
In fact it was to-day. The moon had set and a gray dawn possessed the world. It was not nearly so cold and the great range had vanished in a bank of gray-black clouds moving steadily northward under a damp wind. Joan looked at this one living creature with wide, fever-brightened eyes.
“Come,” said the man impatiently.
Joan bent her head and followed him across the snow.
CHAPTER VIIIDELIRIUM
It is not the people that have led still and uneventful lives who are best prepared for emergencies. They are not trained to face crises, to make prompt and just decisions. Joan had made but two such resolutions in her life; the first when she had followed Pierre, the second when she had kept Holliwell’s books in defiance of her husband’s jealousy. The leaving her father had been the result of long and painful thought. Now, in a few hours, events had crashed about her so that her whole life, outer and inner, had been shattered. Beyond the pain and fever of her wound there was an utter confusion of her faculties. Before she fainted she had, indeed, made a distinct resolve to leave Pierre. It was this purpose, working subconsciously on her will, as much as the urgent pressure of the stranger, that took her past Pierre’s body out into the dawn and sent her on that rash journey of hers in the footsteps of an unknown man. This being seemed to her then hardly human. Mysteriously he had stepped in out of the night, mysteriously he hadcondemned Pierre, and in self-defense, for Joan had seen Pierre draw his gun and fire, he had killed her husband. Now, just as mysteriously, as inevitably it seemed to her, he took command of her life. She was a passive, shipwrecked thing—a derelict. She had little thought and no care for her life.
As the silent day slowly brightened through its glare of clouds, she plodded on, setting her snowshoes in the tracks her leader made. The pain in her shoulder steadily increased, more and more absorbed her consciousness. She saw little but the lean, resolute figure that went before her, turning back now and then with a look and a smile that were a compelling mixture of encouragement, pity, and command. She did not know that they were traveling north and west toward the wildest and most desolate country, that every time she set down her foot she set it down farther from humanity. She began soon to be a little light-headed and thought that she was following Pierre.
At noon they entered the woods, and her guide came beside her and led her through fallen timber and past pitfalls of soft snow. Suddenly, “I can’t go no more,” she sobbed, and stopped, swaying. At that he took her in his arms andcarried her a few hundred feet till they entered a cabin under the shelter of firs.
“It’s the ranger-station,” said he; “the ranger told me that I could make use of it on my way back. We can pass the night here.”
Joan knew that he had carried her across a strange room and put her on a strange bed. He took off her snowshoes, and she lay watching him light a fire in the cold, clean stove and cook a meal from supplies left by the owner of the house. She was trying now to remember who he was, what had happened, and why she was in such misery and pain. Sometimes she knew that he was her father and that she was at home in that wretched shack up Lone River, and an ineffable satisfaction would relax her cramped mind; sometimes, just as clearly, she knew that he was Pierre who had taken her away to some strange place, and, in this certainty, she was even more content. But always the horrible flame on her shoulder burnt her again to the confusion of half-consciousness. He wasn’t John Carver, he wasn’t Pierre. Who, in God’s name, was he? And why was she here alone with him? She could not frame a question; she had a fear that, if she began to speak, she would scream and rave, would tell impossible, secret, sacred things. So she heldherself to silence, to a savage watchfulness, to a battle with delirium.
The man brought her a cup of strong coffee and held up her head so that she could drink it, but it nauseated her and she thrust it weakly away, asking for cold water. After she had drunk this, her mind cleared for an instant and she tried to stand up.
“I must go back to Pierre now,” she said, looking about with wild but resolute eyes.
“Lie still,” said the stranger gently. “You’re not fit to stir. Trust me. It’s all right. You’re quite safe. Get rested and well, then you may go wherever you like. I want only to help you.”
The reassuring tone, the promising words coerced her and she dropped back. Presently, in spite of pain, she slept.
She woke and slept in fever for many hours, vaguely aware, at times, that she was traveling. She felt the motion of a sled under her and knew that she was lying on the warm hide of some freshly killed beast and that a blanket and a canvas covering protected her from a swirl of snow. Then she thought she heard a voice babbling queerly and saw a face quite terribly different from other human faces. The covering was taken from her, snowflakes touched her cheek,a lantern shone in her eyes, and she was lifted and carried into a warm, pleasant-smelling place from which were magically and completely banished all sound and bitterness of storm. She tried to see where she was, but her eyes looked on incredible colors and confusions, so she shut them and passively allowed herself to be handled by deft hands. She knew only that delicious coolness, cleanliness, and softness were given to her body, that the pain in her shoulder was soothed, that dreamlessly she slept.
CHAPTER IXDRIED ROSE-LEAVES
The house that Prosper Gael had built for himself and for the woman whom Joan came to think of as the “tall child,” stood in a cañon, a deep, secret fold of the hills, where a cliff stood behind it, and where the pine-needled ground descended before its door, under the far-flung, greenish-brown shade of fir boughs, to the lip of a green lake. Here the highest snow-peak toppled giddily down and reared giddily up from the crystal green to the ether blue, firs massed into the center of the double image. In January, the lake was a glare of snow, in which the big firs stood deep, their branches heavily weighted. Prosper had dug a tunnel from his door through a big drift which touched his eaves. It was curious to see Wen Ho come pattering out of this Northern cave, his yellow, Oriental face and slant eyes peering past the stalactite icicles as though they felt their own incongruity almost with a sort of terror. The interior of the five-room house gave just such an effect of bizarre and extravagant contrast; an effect, too, of luxury, though intruth it was furnished for the most part with stuffs and objects picked up at no very great expense in San Francisco shops. Nevertheless, there was nothing tawdry and, here and there, something really precious. Draperies on the walls, furniture made by Wen Ho and Prosper, lacquered in black and red, brass and copper, bright pewter, gay china, some fur rugs, a gorgeous Oriental lamp, bookcases with volumes of a sober richness, in fact the costliest and most laborious of imports to this wilderness, small-paned, horizontal windows curtained in some heavy green-gold stuff which slipped along the black lacquered pole on rings of jade; all these and a hundred other points of softly brilliant color gave to the living-room a rare and striking look, while the bedrooms were matted, daintily furnished, carefully appointed as for a bride. Much thought and trouble, much detailed labor, had gone to the making of this odd nest in a Wyoming cañon. Whatever one must think of Prosper Gael, it is difficult to shirk heartache on his account. A man of his temperament does not lightly undertake even a companioned isolation in a winter land. To picture what place of torment this well-appointed cabin was to him before he brought to it Joan, as a lonely man brings ina wounded bird to nurse and cherish, stretches the fancy on a rack of varied painfulness.
On that night, snow was pouring itself down the narrow cañon in a crowded whirl of dry, clean flakes. Wen Ho, watchful, for his master was already a day or so beyond the promised date of his return, had started a fire on the hearth and spread a single cover on the table. He had drawn the green-and-gold curtains as though there had been anything but whirling whiteness to look in and stood warming himself with a rubbing of thin, dry hands before the open blaze. The real heat of the house, and it was almost unbearably hot, came from the stoves in kitchen and bedrooms, but this fire gave its quota of warmth and more than its quota of that beauty so necessary to Prosper Gael.
Wen Ho put his head from one side to the other and stopped rubbing his hands. He had heard the packing of snow under webs and runners. After listening a moment, he nodded to himself, like a figure in a pantomime, ran into the kitchen, did something to the stove, then lighted a lantern and pattered out along the tunnel dodging the icicle stalactites. Between the firs he stopped and held his lantern high so that it touched a moving radius of flakes to silver stars. Back of himthrough the open door streamed the glow of lamp and fire filling the icicles with blood and flushing the walls and the roof of the cave.
Down the cañon Prosper shouted, “Wen Ho! Wen Ho!”
The Chinaman plunged down the trail, packed below the new-fallen snow by frequent passage, and presently met the bent figure of his master pulling and breathing hard. Without speaking, Wen Ho laid hold of the sled rope and together the two men tugged up the last steep bit of the hill.
“Velly heavy load,” said Wen.
Prosper’s eyes, gleaming below the visor of his cap, smiled half-maliciously upon him. “It’s a deer killed out of season,” he said, “and other cattle—no maverick either—fairly marked by its owner. Lend me a hand and we’ll unload.”
Wen showed no astonishment. He removed the covering and peeped slantwise at the strange woman who stared at him unseeingly with large, bright eyes. She closed them, frowning faintly as though she protested against the intrusion of a Chinese face into her disturbed mental world.
The men took her up and carried her into the house, where they dressed her wound and laid her with all possible gentleness in one of the twobeds of stripped and lacquered pine that stood in the bedroom facing the lake. Afterwards they moved the other bed and Prosper went in to his meal.
He was too tired to eat. Soon he pushed his plate away, turned his chair to face the fire, and, slipping down to the middle of his spine, stuck out his lean, long legs, locked his hands back of his head, let his chin fall, and stared into the flames.
Wen Ho removed the dishes, glancing often at his master.
“You velly tired?” he questioned softly.
“It was something of a pull in the storm.”
“Velly small deer,” babbled the Chinaman, “velly big lady.”
Prosper smiled a queer smile that sucked in and down the corners of his mouth.
“She come after all?” asked Wen Ho.
Prosper’s smile disappeared; he opened his eyes and turned a wicked, gleaming look upon his man. What with the white face and drawn mouth the look was rather terrible. Wen Ho vanished with an increase of speed and silence.
Alone, Prosper twisted himself in his chair till his head rested on his arms. It was no relaxation of weariness or grief, but an attitude of cramped pain. His face, too, was cramped when, a motionlesshour later, he lifted it again. He got up then, broken with weariness, and went softly across the matted hall into the room where Joan slept, and he stood beside her bed.
A glow from the stove, and the light shining through the door, dimly illumined her. She was sleeping very quietly now; the flush of fever had left her face and it was clear of pain, quite simple and sad. Prosper looked at her and looked about the room as though he felt what he saw to be a dream. He put his hand on one long strand of Joan’s black hair.
“Poor child!” he said. “Good child!” And went out softly, shutting the door.
In the bedroom where Joan came again to altered consciousness of life, there stood a blue china jar of potpourri, rose-leaves dried and spiced till they stored all the richness of a Southern summer. Joan’s first question, strangely enough, was drawn from her by the persistence of this vague and pungent sweetness.
She was lying quietly with closed eyes, Prosper looking down at her, his finger on her even pulse, when, without opening her long lids, she asked, “What smells so good?”
Prosper started, drew away his fingers, thenanswered, smiling, “It’s a jar of dried rose-leaves. Wait a moment, I’ll let you hold it.”
He took the jar from the window sill and carried it to her.
She looked at it, took it in her hands, and when he removed the lid, she stirred the leaves curiously with her long forefinger.
“I never seen roses,” she said, and added, “What’s basil?”
Prosper was startled. For an instant all his suppositions as to Joan were disturbed. “Basil? Where did you ever hear of basil?”
“Isabella and Lorenzo,” murmured Joan, and her eyes darkened with her memories.
Prosper found his heart beating faster than usual. “Who are you, you strange creature? I think it’s time you told me your name. Haven’t you any curiosity about me?”
“Yes,” said Joan; “I’ve thought a great deal about you.” She wrinkled her wide brows. “You must have been out after game, though ’t was out of season. And you must have heard me a-cryin’ out an’ come in. That was right courageous, stranger. I would surely like you to know why I come away with you,” she went on, wistful and weak, “but I don’t know as how I can make it plain to you.” She paused, turning theblue jar in her hand. “You’re very strange to me,” she said, “an’ yet, someways, you takin’ care of me so well an’ so—so awful kind—” her voice gave forth its tremolo of feeling—“seems like I knowed you better than any other person in the world.”
A flush came into his face.
“I wouldn’t like you to be thinkin’—” She stopped, a little breathless.
He took the jar, sat down on the bed, and laid a hand firmly over both of hers. “I ‘won’t be thinking’ anything,” he said, “only what you would like me to think. Listen—when a man finds a wounded bird out in the winter woods, he’ll bring it home to care for it. And he ‘won’t be thinking’ the worse of its helplessness and tameness. Of course I know—but tell me your name, please!”
“Joan Landis.”
At the name, given painfully, Joan drew a weighted breath, another, then, pushing herself up as though oppressed beyond endurance, she caught at Prosper’s arm, clenched her fingers upon it, and bent her black head in a terrible paroxysm of grief. It was like a tempest. Prosper thought of storm-driven, rain-wet trees wild in a wind ... of music, the prelude to “FliegendeHolländer.” Joan’s weeping bent and rocked her. He put his arm about her, tried to soothe her. At her cry of “Pierre! Pierre!” he whitened, but suddenly she broke from him and threw herself back amongst the pillows.
“’T was you that killed him,” she moaned. “What hev I to do with you?”
It was not the last time that bitter exclamation was to rise between them; more and more fiercely it came to wring his peace and hers. This time he bore it with a certain philosophy, calmed her patiently.
“How could I help it, Joan?” he pleaded. “You saw how it was?” As she grew quieter, he talked. “I heard you scream like a person being tortured to death—twice—a gruesome enough sound, let me tell you, to hear in the dead of a white, still night. I didn’t altogether want to break into your house. I’ve heard some ugly stories about men venturing to disturb the work of murderers. But, you see, Joan, I’ve a fear of myself. I’ve a cruel brain. I can use it on my own failures. I’ve been through some self-punishment—no! of course, you don’t understand all that.... Anyway, I came in, in great fear of my life, and saw what I saw—a woman tied up and devilishly tortured, a man gloating over herhelplessness. Naturally, before I spoke my mind, as a man was bound to speak it, under the pain and fury of such a spectacle, I got ready to defend myself. Your—Pierre”—there was a biting contempt in his tone—“saw my gesture, whipped out his gun, and fired. My shot was half a second later than his. I might more readily have lost my life than taken his. If he had lived, Joan, could you have forgiven him?”
“No,” sobbed Joan; “I think not.” She trembled. “He said terrible hard words to me. He didn’t love me like I loved him. He planned to put a brand on me so’s I c’d be his own like as if I was a beast belongin’ to him. Mr. Holliwell said right, I don’t belong to no man. I belong to my own self.”
The storm had passed into this troubled after-tossing of thought.
“Can you tell me about it all?” asked Prosper. “Would it help?”
“I couldn’t,” she moaned; “no, I couldn’t. Only—if I hadn’t ‘a’ left Pierre a-lyin’ there alone. A dog that had onct loved him wouldn’t ‘a’ done that.” She sat up again, white and wild. “That’s why I must go back. I must surely go. I must! Oh, I must!”
“Go back thirty miles through wet snow whenyou can’t walk across the room, Joan?” He smiled pityingly.
Her hands twisting in his, she stared past him, out through the window, where the still, sunny day shone blue through shadowy pine branches. Tears rolled down her face.
“Can’t you go back?” She turned the desolate, haunted eyes upon him. “Oh, can’t you?—to do some kindness to him? Can you ever stop a-thinkin’ of him lyin’ there?”
Prosper’s face was hard through its gentleness. “I’ve seen too many dead men, less deserving of death. But, hush!—you lie down and go to sleep. I’ll try to manage it. I’ll try to get back and show him some kindness, as you say. There! Will you be a good girl now?”
She fell back and her eyes shone their gratitude upon him. “Oh, you are good!” she said. “When I’m well—I’ll work for you!”
He shook his head, smiled, kissed her hand, and went out.
She was entirely exhausted by her emotion, so that all her memories fell away from her and left her in a peaceful blankness. She trusted Prosper’s word. With every fiber of her heart she trusted him, as simply, as singly, as foolishly as a child trusts God.