She broke off panting, her breast rising and falling tumultuously. Her eyes were bright and hard, her tanned cheeks flushed.
“She’d drive a knife into a man sleeping and never turn a hair!” was Sheldon’s silent comment.
“I tell you to go!” she flung at him again. “Before I have you killed like the others. What do you want here? What is here that belongs to you? You are looking for gold. I know! That is what the others wanted. Do you want to die as they died?”
“Listen to me!” interrupted the man sharply. “I didn’t come here to hurt you. I didn’t come for gold. I came because I lost the trail.”
“Liar!” she cried out at him.
Silenced, he could but stand and stare at her. And slowly all sense of anger at her words died out of him and into his heart welled a great pity. For no longer did he wonder if she but played a part or was mad.
Again, through the brief silence, there came to him faintly the sound of something stirring within the cabin. He listened eagerly, hoping to guess what it was moving beyond the door she guarded so jealously. But the sound had come and gone and it was very still again.
Was there one person in there? Or were there two? Or more? Man or woman? Surely there was some one, surely there could not be two mad people here! Then why did the one in there hold back, letting her dispute entrance to the stranger? Why was there not another face to show at a crack of the door or at a window?
Questions, questions, and questions! And no one to answer them but a mad girl who said that she was Paula, daughter of King Midas! No; not even Paula to answer. For suddenly she had jerked the door open, slipped inside, and Sheldon heard the sound as of a heavy bar dropping into wooden sockets.
He was quite alone in the empty street of a town that had lived and died and been forgotten. And never in all his life had he been more uncertain what next to do.
Less for the breakfast without which he had left camp than realizing the wisdom to caching his blankets and provisions, Sheldon’s first step was back toward the spot where Buck grazed.
If those within the old cabin meant to seek to escape talking with him they would not stir forth immediately but would peer forth many times, cautiously, to make certain that in reality he was not watching from shelter of the grove. He could dispose of his pack, eat hastily and be again in front of the cabin within less than an hour.
He drew back swiftly, made sure with a glance over his shoulder that the door had remained shut, the shutters of the windows undisturbed, slipped through the fir grove and then broke into a trot, headed up the meadow.
Selecting some tinned goods hurriedly, he rolled everything else, blankets and all, in his canvas, found a hiding place which suited him in a tiny, rocky gorge, piled rocks on top of the cache, and returned for his horse. Buck he led deeper into the forest that lay upon the eastern rim of the valley and left there where there was pasture and water, hobbling him for fear of the long tie rope getting tangled about the bushes which grew under the trees.
When the pack-saddle had been tossed into a clump of these bushes he felt reasonably sure that his outfit was safe for the short time he expected to be away from it. Then, eating as he went, he turned back to the town which Paula, the daughter of Midas, called Johnny’s Luck.
As he came again into the abandoned street he examined each ruined cabin as he passed it, stopping for all that still stood, making his way to the door through more than one weed-grown yard, slipping in at door or window where the buildings were still upon the rim of being habitable.
Nor were his puzzles lessened at the signs everywhere that men, when they had given over these dwellings, had gone in wild haste. They had not taken fittings and furnishings with them, at least nothing cumbersome had gone out.
He could picture the exit from the homes that had been almost a frenzied rushing out of doors flung rudely open and left to gape stupidly after their departing masters. Yes, and mistresses. For it was written in dusty signs that women, too, had walked here and had fled as though from some dread menace.
But to a man knowing the vivid tales of the western country as Sheldon knew them here was a mystery which must soon grow clear as the memory of half-forgotten stories came back to him.
He saw rude chairs and tables standing idly under dust of many, many years’ accumulation; chairs which had been pushed back violently as men sprang to their feet, some overturned and left to sprawl awkwardly until, as time ran by, they fell apart and in due time came to disintegrate as all other things physical crumble in the world.
He saw pictures tacked to walls, knew that they had been cheap colored prints or newspaper illustrations; thick earthenware dishes and utensils of iron and tin upon more than one stone hearth, invariably the homes of spiders; cupboards where food had lain and rotted, discoloring the unpainted wood; a thousand little homely articles which in the ordinary course of house vacating would have been packed and taken away.
Johnny’s Luck had been a mining town; for no other conceivable reason would men have made a town here at all as long ago as Johnny’s Luck gave every evidence of having been builded. And its life had been that of many another village of the far-out land in the days of the early mining madness.
Rumor of gold, strong rumor of gold, had brought many men and some few women, most of the latter what the world calls bad, some few perhaps what God calls good, to answer the call and the lure.
They had been so sure that they had builded not mere shanties, but solid homes of logs; they had remained here for many months—and then, no doubt, the bottom had fallen out of Johnny’s Luck. The vein had pinched out; the gold was gone.
And then, so did Sheldon reconstruct the past from the dust-covered ruin about him, word had come to Johnny’s Luck of another strike out yonder somewhere, beyond the next ridge, perhaps; perhaps a hundred miles away. That word had come into camp mysteriously as word of gold always travels; men had whispered it to their “pardners” and in its own fashion the word had spread.
There had been that first attempt at stealing away by stealth as some few hoped to be miles from camp before every one knew. Others had seen; men in that day attributed but the one motive to hasty, stealthy departure.
The stealing away had turned into a mad rush. Some one, a nervous man or an excitable woman, had cried out the magic word, “Gold!” And then homes had been deserted with a speed which was like frenzy; a few precious belongings had been snatched up; chairs and even tables overturned, and down the long street of Johnny’s Luck they had gone, fighting for the place at the fore, the whole camp. And, for some reason, they had never come back. Perhaps they had come to learn that Johnny’s Luck was unlucky.
It was simple enough after all, he told himself as he came at length to the base of the knoll upon which stood the cabin into which the girl had gone. Like everything else in the world, simple enough when once one understood.
Up and down the Pacific coast, from tidewater some mountainous hundreds of miles inland, how many towns had grown up like Johnny’s Luck, almost in a night, only to be given over to the wild again, deserted and forgotten in another night. There are many, some still lifting vertical walls, some mere mounds of grass-grown earth where one may dig and find a child’s tin cup or a broken whisky bottle.
Simple enough when one understood, he pondered, staring at the closed door. But what explanation lay just here; this girl could not have been born when Johnny’s Luck flourished; whence had she come, and why?
It was broad morning, the sun rising clear above the last of the trees so that its light fell upon the two beds of red flowers. On the doorstep lay the bearskin as he had left it. From the rock and dirt chimney smoke rose. Coming closer to the house he heard now and then a sound of one walking within. He fancied that he heard a voice, hardly more than a whisper.
His purpose taken, he stood watching, waiting. If he had to stay here until some one came out, if he were forced to linger here all day, camp here to-night, he was not going away until the last question was answered.
“I’d be a brute to go off and leave her alone here,” he told himself stubbornly. “Or, perhaps, worse than alone. The poor little devil won’t know how to take care of herself; God knows what she’s up against as it is. Anyway, here I stay!”
The windows remained shuttered; the door stood unopened; the smoke from the chimney grew a faint gray line against the sky and was gone; it was death-still in the house. An hour passed and Sheldon, striding back and forth, on the watch for a possible attempt to slip away through a door which he had found at the rear, grew impatient.
Another hour, and never a sound. Such watching and waiting, with nothing discovered to reward his patience, was the death of what little patience was a part of John Sheldon’s makeup.
“I’ve waited long enough,” he muttered.
He strode straight between the beds of red flowers, up the three steps made of logs, and rapped at the door. The sounds died away, as all sounds seemed to do here, swallowed by the silence, echoless, as though killed by thick walls. So he knocked again, calling out:
“I’ve no habit of prying into other peoples’s business, but I am not used to being treated like a leper, either. Open the door or I shall batter it down.”
Hurried whispers within, then silence. He waited for a moment. Then swinging back his rifle he drove the butt mightily against the door, close to the latch. There was a little cry then, Paula’s voice he was sure, a cry of pure fear.
“Poor little thing,” he thought. “She thinks I’m going to kill her!”
But he struck again and the thick panel of the door, dry and old, cracked. Again, and Paula’s voice again, this time calling:
“Wait! Wait and I will come!”
“No,” he answered in flat stubbornness. “I’ll not wait. I am coming inside. Open the door.”
“You cannot! You must not! What is it that you want here? What have we that you would take away from us? Go back into the world outside. Go quick—before we kill you!”
He laughed savagely.
“You are not going to kill me. And we’ve talked nonsense long enough. I tell you I am not going to hurt you. Who is in there with you? Why doesn’t he talk?”
Whispers, quick, sharp, agitated. But no answer. Sheldon waited, grew suddenly angry and struck with all his might. The door cracked again; two long cracks showed running up and down. But the bar within held and the cracks gave no glimpse of the room’s interior. He struck once more.
“Wait!” Paula’s voice again, strangely quiet. “I am coming.”
He stepped back a little, standing just at the side of the door, his rifle clubbed and lifted. There was so little telling what next to expect here in a land which seemed to him a land of madness. He heard her at the door.
She was taking down the bar. He was sure of it. But why was she so long about it? And it seemed to him that in the simple process she made an unnecessary amount of noise. And she kept talking, rapidly now, her voice raised, her utterances almost incoherent as though she labored under some tremendous excitement:
“Don’t you see I am opening the door? But you must step back, down the steps. I’ll hear you going. I am afraid. You might reach out and seize me. Just a minute now, only a minute. I don’t hear you though. You must go down the steps. Then I will come out; then you can come in. I am hurrying—hurrying as fast as I can.”
It only whetted his suspicion. What was going on just ten feet from him, beyond that wall? There was no loophole through which an out-thrust gun barrel could menace him, he had seen to that. And, if a gun was thrust out as the door opened, he could strike first; he was ready. But if he went back down the steps—
Suddenly he knew. He heard a little scraping sound which, low as it was, rose above the sound of Paula’s young voice. It was at that other door at the back. Some one was there, opening it cautiously. The forest came down close to the house at the back.
He leaped down the steps and ran around the side of the house, of no mind to have them give him the slip this way.
“Hurry!” Paula had heard him, had guessed his purpose as he theirs, and was screaming, “Hurry! He is coming!”
The rear door, little used perhaps, had caught. But as Sheldon raced around the corner of the cabin the door was flung violently open and an astonishingly, wildly uncouth figure shot out, making strange, horrible sounds in his throat as he ran.
It was a man, so tall and gaunt that it seemed rather the caricature of a man. Clad in shirt and trousers, the flying feet were bare. The head was bare, and from it the hair, long and snow white, floated out behind him. The beard, long and unkempt, was as white as the hair of his head.
His eyes—Sheldon saw them looking for one brief moment straight into his own—were the burning, brilliant eyes of a madman. Had there been doubt in the case of the girl there was room for no doubt here. The man was only too clearly a maniac.
Just the one look into the terrible eyes was given to Sheldon. The man ran as Paula had run this morning, but with a greater, more frantic speed. Crying out strange, broken fragments of words he dashed into the trees. And Sheldon stopped.
Paula was still in the house. With little chance to overtake the man, with no wish to have them both escape him, Sheldon whirled and running with all the speed in him, came to the open door. It slammed in his face; Paula, too, had just reached it. But not yet had she had time to make it fast. He threw his weight against it; he could hear her panting and crying out in terror. The door flew open. He was in the house.
But now she was running to the other door. The bar there was still in its place. Her hands lost no time now, but whipped it out, dropped it clattering to the bare floor, jerked the door open.
She was on the steps, outside when Sheldon’s arms closed about her. She screamed and tore at his arms as he swept her off of her feet. He marveled at the strength in her; he felt the muscles of her body against his and they were like iron. But he held her.
She struck at his face, beating at him with hard little fists. But he held her. And at that she had in her all the fierceness of a mountain cat. She was pantherine in her rage that flashed at him from her eyes, in the supple strength of her body, in all the fierceness which he had whipped to the surface.
Though she struggled, he brought her back into the cabin. He even managed to slam the door and, while he held her and she beat at him, to drop the bar back into place. He carried her across the room to a tumbled bunk there and threw her down upon it, standing between her and the rear door, still open.
Suddenly she was quite still. She lay there, her breast shaking to the rage and fear that shone in her eyes. She did not seek to move, but lay breathing deeply, watching him.
From somewhere far out in the woods there floated to them a strange cry billowing weirdly through the stillness.
Sheldon stepped across the room and picked up his rifle.
She stirred a very little; then lay still again. Pantherine! The word described her as no other word could do. Even in the little movement there was the litheness and grace that is so characteristic of the monster wild cats. Her eyes moved swiftly with every slightest move on his part.
She was like an animal a man has trapped, watching him narrowly, understanding something of his purpose, groping to read it all. When her eyes left him at all it was to travel in a flash to the door, to come back as swiftly. He still stood in the way. He was almost over her, so that he could be upon her before she was fairly on her feet.
Now the wild rise and fall of her breasts had lessened a little. She breathed more regularly, with now and then a long, lung-filling sigh. She lay with one arm flung above her head, the other at her side. He saw the red marks of his hands upon her wrists and frowned.
He had been as gentle as he could. But only unmerciful strength, not gentleness, could have quieted her. He thought how different she was from any girl in that outside world of which she spoke as a land of wickedness.
He, too, kept his eyes upon her, her and the open door. But he glanced about the room. The interior of the cabin was just what he could have imagined it to be. A few rough chairs, a table, some dishes, a fireplace with a littered hearth, a partition across the room with a bunk on each side.
He found that he was breathing as quickly as she was. His forehead was wet. As he looked down at her, resting, she seemed merely a slender, sun-browned slip of a girl. He marveled at the strength in that trim little body.
“I am sorry if I hurt you,” he said quietly when a few moments had passed in silence. “I didn’t want to hurt you. I don’t want to hurt you ever. Won’t you believe me?”
She made no answer, but continued to stare at him, a hint of a frown gathering her brows, her eyes dark with distrust. From the depths of his heart he pitied her. Would it not be better if he turned now and went out of the house, leaving her? If he went his way back over the mountains and into the “outside world,” carrying not even the tale to tell of her? Mad, born of a mad father, what hope lay in life for her?
“Little Paula,” he said gently, soothingly, as he might have spoken to a very little girl, “I am sorry for you. Very sorry, little Paula. I want to be your friend. Can’t you believe me?”
Troubled eyes, eyes filled with distrust and fear and emotions which blended and were too vague for him to grasp, answered him silently. He moved a step; her eyes, full of eagerness, turned to the open door.
“No,” he said steadily. “You can’t go yet. Pretty soon I am going to let you go; you and your father. And I will go away and not even tell that you are here. He is your father, isn’t he?”
“Yes,” she said dully.
“All I want now,” went on Sheldon, his voice as gentle as he could make it, “is for you to rest and stay with me until your father comes back.”
“He will never come back while you are here,” she said listlessly. “Never.”
“He’ll be away a deuced long, long time then,” he assured her grimly. “I’ll stay all year if I have to. What makes you think he won’t come back if I am here?”
“I know,” she answered decidedly.
She stopped there. He questioned her still further, but she was defiantly silent, so he drew a chair up and sat down, his rifle across his knees. She watched him curiously, losing not so much as his slightest gesture.
Perplexed, he brought out his pipe, scarcely conscious that he did so. It was his way to smoke at times of uncertainty when he sought to find a way out. He swept a match across his thigh, set it to the bowl of his pipe, drew at it deeply, and sent out a great cloud of smoke.
“You are a devil!” she screamed. “A devil!”
She had leaped to her feet, seeking to stoop under his arms as he sprang in front of her, wildly endeavoring to escape through the open door. But he caught her and carried her back to the bunk. She fought as she had fought before, striking at him, scratching, even trying to sink her teeth into his forearm.
“I’m not the one who is the devil!” he panted as at last he had thrust her back and stood over her again.
His pipe had fallen to the floor. He saw that her eyes were upon it now instead of on him. And the look in them was one of pure terror. She was afraid of a man’s pipe!
Suddenly he understood and his abrupt laughter, startling her, whipped her piercing look back to him. She drew away from him, crouching against the wall, ready to strike if he drew closer or to leap again toward the liberty he denied her. And Sheldon, even while he pitied her, laughed. He could not help it.
But in a little, heartily ashamed of himself, and yet grinning over his words, be said to her:
“You poor little thing, that isn’t any infernal apparatus! It’s just a pipe and the stuff in it isn’t brimstone, but merely Virginia tobacco. Everybody smokes outside—that is, pretty nearly all the men do,” he added hastily. “But I shouldn’t have smoked without asking your consent, in the first place, and I shouldn’t inflict that old pipe on any one if he did consent. But, honestly, Paula, there’s nothing satanic about it.”
“Liar!” she flung at him in scornful disbelief.
He picked up the pipe, knocked out the fire, and stuffed it back into his pocket.
“Look here,” he said quietly, his good-natured grin still in evidence at the corners of his mouth and in his eyes; “you’ve just made up your mind to hate me and call me names. It isn’t fair. Give me a chance, why don’t you? I’m not half as bad as you’re trying to make me out.”
She looked her disbelief, offering no remark. She made no pretenses: she hated him, held him in high scorn, would have struck him down had she been able, would dodge out of the door and slip away into the forest if he gave her the chance.
But, sane or mad, there was one characteristic which she had in common with all other human beings. Even through her fear and distrust of him, always had her curiosity looked out nakedly. He sought to take advantage of this to make her listen to him, then to draw her out a little. So, speaking slowly and quietly, he began to tell her of his trip in, of having lost his trail, of many trifling incidents of the journey.
Then he spoke of Belle Fortune, of men and women there, of the sort of lives they led. And of the world beyond Belle Fortune, the world “outside.” Of Seattle and San Francisco, of the ships and ferryboats, of stores and theaters, of public gatherings, dances, picnics; of how women dressed and how men gambled—a thousand little colored bits of life with which he wished to interest her.
“Men are not bad out there,” he assured her. “Some are, of course; but most of them are not. They help one another often enough; they are friends and pardners, and a pretty good sort.”
He talked with her thusly for an hour. Through it she sat very still, her back against the wall, her knees drawn up between her clasped hands, her eyes steady upon his. What emotions, if any, he stirred in her breast, he could not guess. Her expression altered very little—never to show what she thought of him.
He felt rather hopeless, ready to give over in despair, when out of her calm and apparently unconcerned, uninterested quiet came the first swift, unexpected question. He was speaking carelessly of some friends in Vancouver with whom he had visited—the Grahams, who had the bulliest little team of twins you ever saw—”
“Tell me about them!” she interrupted eagerly.
Sheldon, in his surprise at hearing her speak at all, lost the thread of his story.
“The Grahams?” he asked. “Why, they—”
“No, the babies,” she said. “I have never seen a baby. Just little baby bears and squirrels.”
She stopped as abruptly as she had begun, her lips tight shut. But Sheldon had gropingly understood a wee bit of what lay in the girl’s heart, and hurried to answer, pretending not to see her return to her stubborn taciturnity.
“Well,” he told her, pleased so that his good-humored smile came back into his eyes, “they’re just the cutest little pair of rascals you ever saw. Bill and Bet, they call ’em. Just two years when I saw them last; walking around, you know, and looking on at life as though they knew all about it. And up to ’most anything. They are something like young bears, come to think about it! Just about as awkward, falling over everything. And roly-poly, fat as butterballs. Why, would you believe it—”
And so forth. Before he got through he made a fairly creditable story of it, combining in the Graham twins all the baby tricks he had ever seen, heard, or read of. He affected not to be watching her all the time, but none the less saw that there was at last a little sparkle of interest in her eyes.
“Poor little starved heart,” he thought. “Mad as she is, she is still woman enough to suffer for the want of little children about her.”
When he had done with the twins there was a long silence in the cabin. He had pretty well talked himself out, in the first place. And in the second, he wanted time to think. He couldn’t sit here and babble on this way indefinitely. Soon or late he must seek actively, rather than thus passively, for the solution to his problem.
Leaning back in his chair, his hands clasped behind his head, he smiled at her pleasantly. And he fancied that she was puzzled by him, that almost she was ready to wonder if all men were in truth the creatures of evil she so evidently had thought them. Was she almost ready to believe in him a little bit?
“Swallow some more fire,” said Paula suddenly.
“Eh?” muttered Sheldon.
“Yes,” she told him. “I won’t run this time.”
His lips twitching, he drew out his pipe and again lighted it. He saw that she was tremendously interested. The scratching of the match made her draw back as though from a threatened blow, but she caught herself and did not move again. He drew in a great mouthful of smoke and sent it out ceilingward. She watched that, too, interestedly.
“You see,” he informed her with a semblance of gravity as deep as her own, “I don’t swallow the fire. I just take in the smoke and send it out again.”
“Why do you do it?” she wanted to know. “Is it some sort of magic?”
“Bless you, no!” he chuckled. “It’s just for fun; a kind of habit, you know. A man smokes just as you’d eat ice-cream or candy, or something that was fun to eat. Just as— By glory!” He caught himself up. “I’ll bet you don’t know what candy is! Do you?”
She shook her head.
“Those little fire-sticks.” She kept him to the subject which now held her interest. “They are magic, though.”
He tossed a match to her.
“Light it,” he said. “You can do it. You poor little kid!”
But she drew away from it, shaking her head violently. And, taking a chance that he read her character in one particular, he called her “Coward!”
She flashed a look at him that was full of angry defiance, and reaching out quickly took up the match. He saw that her hand shook. But her determination did not. She scratched the match upon the wall, held it while it burned. And her eyes, while the embers fell to her lap, were dancing with excitement.
“Another!” she cried, like a child, in evident forgetfulness of her hostility. “Another!”
She lighted them one after the other. Over the second she laughed delightedly. It was the first time he had heard her laugh. He laughed with her, as delighted as she. She struck a full dozen before he stopped her, saying that matches were gold-precious on the trail and must be hoarded.
“Then let me swallow smoke!” she commanded.
The vision of this splendid young girl-animal smoking his black old pipe tickled his sense of humor, and it was difficult for him to explain seriously what in most likelihood would be the result to her.
“You’ve missed a lot of fun, little Paula,” he told her through the cloud of smoke, which seemed of far greater interest to her than were his words. “If you’ve actually lived here all your life, as I’m beginning to believe you have. Never saw a man smoke; never tasted ice-cream or candy; never saw a two-year-old baby toddling around from one mishap to another; never saw a street-car, or a boat, or a man who had had a shave! By golly,” growing enthusiastic over it, “never ate a strawberry shortcake or had a cup of coffee! Whew!”
He put his hand into his pocket. He had seized his lunch from his pack hurriedly and at random. In his haste he had thought to pick out a can of beans and one of corn. He had eaten the beans, and had found that he had not brought the corn, but the one tin of peaches which he had brought with him from Belle Fortune.
Such things as peaches were luxuries; but Sheldon had known aforetime the hunger for sweets which will come to a man when he’s deep in the woods. He opened his knife, and under Paula’s bright eyes cut out a great circle in the tin top. He speared a half of a golden-yellow peach, and tasted it to reassure her. Then he gave her the can.
“Taste that,” he offered.
Paula tasted, a bit anxiously, taking out the peach with her finger-tips. There came into her expression something of utter surprise, then delight little short of ecstasy. And then—he marveled how daintily such an act could be performed—she licked the sirup from her fingers.
“Good?” he chuckled.
Paula smiled at him.
Smiled! The red lips parted prettily; the white teeth showed for a flashing instant. The smile warmed him, went dancing through his blood. It was a quick smile, quickly gone. The white teeth were busy with the second peach.
“They were nice,” said Paula. She had finished, and turned to him with a great sigh of satisfaction. Sheldon’s peaches were gone.
“I’ve got a slab of sweetened chocolate in my pack,” he told her, trying not to look surprised at the empty tin. “I’ll bring it to you. It’s like candy.”
“You are nice, too,” said Paula. “Are all bad men nice?”
Again Sheldon plunged into a long argument meant to convince her that he wasn’t a bad man at all. He rather overdid it, in fact, so that had Paula believed all he told her, she must have thought him an angel. But Paula didn’t believe.
“You tell me too many lies,” she said quietly when he had done.
He protested and went over the ground again. But in one thing he was greatly pleased; at last she talked with him. He felt that at least some little gain had been made. And he hoped that, in spite of her words, she held him in less horror than she had at first.
Once more he sought to draw her out, to get her to talk of herself, of her life, of her father.
“Have you really lived here all your life?” he asked casually.
“Yes,” she answered.
“And you know absolutely nothing of the world outside?”
“I know that all men there are bad. That they kill and steal and lie.”
“How do you know this?”
“My father has told me.”
“What does he know about it?”
“He knows everything. He is very wise. And once he lived there. Men were so wicked that he left them and came away to live here. He brought me with him. Once,” she informed him gravely, “I was a little baby like the twins. I grew up big, you know.”
“Not so dreadfully big,” he protested. “And you live here year in and year out?”
She nodded.
“But the winters? There must be a deuced lot of snow. How do you manage?”
“There is not too damn much snow in here,” she informed him. “The mountains all around are so high they stop much of it.”
“Young ladies in the world outside,” he remarked soberly, though with a twinkle in his eyes, “don’t say ‘damn.’”
“Don’t they?” asked Paula. “Why?”
“They call it a bad word,” he explained. “Maybe it is you, in here, who are bad—”
“Papa says damn,” she insisted. “He is not bad. He is good.”
“We’ll let it go, then. Don’t other men ever come here?”
“Not many. They never come to Johnny’s Luck.”
“Why?”
“Papa kills them.”
“Good Lord!” The coolness of her statement, the careless tone, shocked him.
“We see their camp-fire smoke sometimes a long way off.”
“That’s the way you came upon me first, on the other side of the mountain?”
She nodded.
“How was it, then, you came out, and not your amiable father? You don’t—don’t do the work sometimes, do you?”
“No. I don’t like to kill things.”
“And your father rather enjoys it?”
“N-no.” She hesitated. “But he must. For they are bad, and would hurt us and take away—”
“Take away what?” demanded Sheldon sharply.
But she shut her lips tight, and the suspicion came back into her eyes.
“Oh, well,” he said hastily, “it doesn’t matter. Only you can rest assured that I didn’t come to take anything away. Unless,” lightly, though with deep earnestness under the tone, “you will let me take you and your father back with me?”
The look of suspicion changed to sudden terror.
“No, no!” she cried. “We won’t go—”
“You’d see other women, and they’d be good to you,” he went on gently. “You’d see their babies, and you’d love them. You’d have girls of your own age to talk with. You’ve got to believe me, Paula. The world isn’t filled with wicked people. That’s all a mistake.”
He thought that she wanted to believe him. She looked for one brief instant hungry to believe. He pressed the point. But in the end she shook her head.
“Papa has told me,” she said when he had done. “Papa knows.”
The picture of that gaunt, wild-eyed, terribly uncouth man with brain on fire with madness was very clear in his mind. And how she trusted in him, how she believed in his wisdom. To Sheldon, here was the most piteous case of his experience. He wondered if the whole affair would end in his taking the girl in his arms by sheer brute strength and so carrying her out of this cursed place. Or, after all, would it be better, better for her, if he went away and left them?
“I don’t know what to do!” he muttered, speaking his thought.
A little sound at the door startled him. He turned swiftly, his hands tightening about his rifle.
A squirrel squatted on its haunches on the doorstep, its bright, round eyes fixed on him in unwinking steadiness. With quick flirt of bushy tail a second squirrel appeared from without. He leaped by his brother, landed fairly inside, saw Sheldon, and turned, chattering, and went scampering out. From the yard he, too, looked in curiously. There came the third, drawing near cautiously until he, too, sat up on the doorstep.
Paula called to them softly, so softly that Sheldon, at her side, barely heard the call. It came from low in her throat, and was strangely musical and soothing. She called again. The squirrels pricked up their ears.
At the third call one of them came through the doorway, hesitated, made a great circle around Sheldon so that the bushy tail brushed the wall, and with a quick little jump was on the bunk and under the girl’s arm. His brothers, emboldened, followed him. From Paula’s protecting arms they looked out at Sheldon with a suspicion not unlike that which had been so much in her own eyes.
The girl cuddled them, cooing to them, making those strange, soft sounds deep in her throat. She looked up at Sheldon with the second of her quick smiles. “They are Napoleon and Richard and Johnny Lee!” she told him brightly. “They are my little friends. Kiss me, Napoleon!”
And Napoleon obeyed.
It was high noon. Sheldon needed no glance at his watch to tell him that. He was hungry.
He went to the door, which had remained open all morning—left so in hope of the return of the mad man—and closed it. Paula’s eyes followed him intently. He made the door fast by putting its bar across it. A bit of wood from a pile of faggots by the fireplace he forced down tight between the bar and the door, jamming it so that if the girl sought to jerk it loose it would take time. He treated the bar of the front door similarly.
The clip of cartridges he slipped out of his rifle, dropping it into his pocket. He had thrown no cartridge into the barrel. Then he put the gun down, turned again toward Paula, and said smilingly:
“Turn about is fair play. I gave you a can of peaches; suppose that you treat me to the lunch?”
An instant ago she had been teasing Napoleon and showing no hint of distress. Suddenly now her lips were quivering; for the first time he saw the tears start into her eyes.
“Won’t you go away?” she asked pleadingly. “Please, please go away!”
“Why,” he said in astonishment, “what is the matter? Don’t you want to give me something to eat?”
“Oh,” she cried, even her voice shaking, “I’ll give you anything if you’ll only go away! You are bad, bad to keep me here like this; to drive papa away—”
“I didn’t drive him away. I don’t want him away. I am waiting for him to come back. That’s all I am waiting for!”
“But he won’t! While you are here he won’t come back. And, out there, he will die.”
“Die!” muttered Sheldon. “What’s the matter with him?”
Slowly the tears welled up and spilled over, running unchecked down her cheeks. Sheldon, little used to women, shifted uneasily, not knowing what to do, feeling that he should do something. Napoleon, wiser in matters of this sort, made his way to her shoulder and rubbed his soft body sympathetically against her cheek.
“Open the door,” begged Paula. “Be good to me and open the door. Let me go to him.”
“You would not know where to find him,” he protested.
“Oh, yes, I would! I would go to him, running.”
“He is sick?” he asked.
Other tears followed the first, unnoticed by the girl. Sheldon thought of the Graham twins: they cried that way some time, only more noisily. They kept their eyes open wide and looked at you, and the tears came until you wondered where they all came from.
“Two times,” she said, her voice trembling, “I have thought he was dead!” She shuddered. “I have seen dead things. Oh, it is terrible! This morning I thought he was dead! He did not answer when I talked with him. And he lay still; I could not feel him breathe. I ran out. I was frightened. I cried out aloud. You heard me and ran to kill me, and I ran here. And he was not dead! Oh, I was glad! But if you do not let me go to him now—he will die—I know he will die. And I will be all alone—and it gets so still sometimes that I can’t breathe. Please let me go! Please be good to me!”
She came to him hurriedly. Napoleon sprang down and chattered in a corner. She caught up Sheldon’s hand and held it, her eyes lifted to his pleadingly.
“Don’t be bad to me,” she murmured over and over. “Be good to me, and let me go to him.”
When Bill and Bet came to him this way he knew what to do with them. He picked them up, an arm about each one, and carried them about adventuring until their mama expostulated. And, surreptitiously now and then when no one was looking, he kissed their red, little, moist mouths.
“Please,” said Paula. “I shall not call you bad any more. I shall say you are good and love you. Please.”
“Hang it!” muttered John Sheldon.
“Please!” said Paula.
“You see—”
“Please!” said Paula. She laid her wet cheek against his hand. “Please!”
“Now look here, young lady,” he told her, flattering himself that he had achieved a remarkable dignity, and looking more awkward than John Sheldon had ever looked before; “I’ll compromise with you. You say you know where he is? All right. Sit down and we’ll eat, you and I. You will then show me the way, and we’ll go and find him and bring him back here. I haven’t hurt you, have I? I won’t hurt him. No,” as her lips shaped to another “please,” “I’m not going to let you go alone. We go together—or we stay right here. Which is it?”
Paula frowned. Then she wiped away the tears. Whether some deep feminine instinct had told her that they had almost served their purpose but were useless now will, perhaps, never be known. She went across the room to a rude cupboard, and brought from it a blackened pot containing a meat stew. Sheldon was hungry enough to dispense with the stew being warmed up. Merely to make conversation to divert her thoughts from her father’s danger, he said carelessly:
“You must have trouble getting your meat? You can’t have much ammunition.” He tasted the stew, and found it, although salt was noticeably wanted, savory and palatable. “What sort of meat is it?” he asked.
“Snakes!” said Paula.
Sheldon had swallowed just before putting the last question. Paula was given the joy of seeing his tanned cheeks pale a little. A look of horror came into his eyes. Then he caught an expression of lively malice in hers, malice and mirth commingled.
“Snakes and lizards,” said Paula. “We catch ’em in holes—”
“You little devil!” muttered the man under his breath. And to show her that he knew now that she was making fun of him, he went back to his stew. “Just the same, Miss Paula,” he told her threateningly, “if we ever do get to the outside I’ll take you to dinner some time, and I’ll order oysters and shrimps for you. And crab and lobster, by glory! I wonder what you’ll say at that?”
Paula didn’t know, didn’t have any opinion on the subject.
“They are fishes,” she hazarded the opinion with an uncertain show at certainty. “We eat fishes, too.”
He ate his scanty meal, insisting upon her coming to sit across the table from him. She watched him, but refused to eat. Plainly she was still deeply distressed. Her eyes were never still, going from him to the door, to the rifle on the floor by him, to the door again. But she made no further attempt at escape.
Meanwhile he took this opportunity to examine the cabin more carefully than he had done so far. A broken bottle stood in a corner, serving as a vase for a handful of field flowers. Upon the walls were a number of pictures gleaned years ago from newspapers—one a view of the business section of a city, one a seascape, one a lady in a ball dress of about 1860 or 1870, one a couple of kittens.
Upon the wall on Paula’s side of the partition was a bulge, which was evidently the young woman’s wardrobe, covered over with a blanket hung from pegs. An ax with a crude handle lay on the floor. A long, heavy box served both as receptacle for odds and ends, and, covered with a plank, as a bench.
“Now,” said Sheldon, “shall we go and find your father?”
Paula did not hesitate, nor did she again seek to dissuade him from his purpose.
“Yes,” she said.
He went to the rear door and opened it.
“You must understand,” he told her, standing in the way so that she could not pass him, his rifle in his right hand, his left extended to her, “that I am not going to take any chances of losing you too. You can run faster than I can, and I don’t want you to prove it again. You must give me your hand.”
For an instant she drew away from him, the old distrustful look coming back.
“I would like to killyou!” she said in a way which made him believe that she meant what she said. Then she came to him and slipped her hand into his.
So they went out into the sunlight, side by side, Sheldon’s hand gripping Paula’s tightly.
“Which way?” he asked.
“This way.” She nodded toward the forest closing in about them at the east. That way the madman had gone. She seemed to feel no uncertainty, but walked on briskly, holding as far away from him as she could manage so that her arm stretched out almost horizontally from her shoulder.
So they went on for a hundred yards or so, through the great trees that stood like living columns all about them. Every nerve tense, Sheldon sought to watch her, trusting her as little as she him, and at the same time keep a lookout for her father.
One thing he had missed from the cabin which he had expected to find there. If the madman had killed those wanderers who incurred his kingly displeasure by venturing into his realm, then he must have taken their guns with their other belongings.
There had been no rifle leaning against the wall, no pistol to be seen. What had become of them? Certainly no adventuring prospector had ever come in here without, at the least, his side-arms. It was quite possible that the madman kept them secreted somewhere in the forest; that he had run for a rifle; that even now he was crouching behind a clump of bushes, his burning eyes peering over the sights.
At every little sound Sheldon turned this way or that sharply. There was so little calculating what a madman would do! But he must take his chances if he did not mean to turn tail and run out of the whole affair. And he told himself that it had been perhaps a matter of years since a stranger had brought fresh ammunition here; that the madman would have long ago exhausted his supply hunting.
They went in silence. Paula’s eyes showed a great preoccupation; Sheldon had little enough mind for talk. As the forest grew denser about them, and the undergrowth thickened, they came into a narrow path, well trodden. Now Paula, despite her evident distaste, was forced to walk close at his side, sometimes slipping a little behind him. He judged that they had gone a full mile before they came to a distinct forking of the trails.
“We go this way,” said Paula, indicating the trail leading off toward the right.
They turned as she directed. Sheldon felt a tremor run through the girl’s arm and looked at her inquiringly. But the emotion, however inspired, had passed. She came on, her hand lying relaxed in his, walking close at his side, passive.
Presently she said:
“We must watch for him now. We are near the place.”
On either hand were many small trees, here and there a fallen log, everywhere small shrubs which he did not recognize, thick with bright red berries. He watched Paula, watched even more for the madman. They came into a cleared space as wide as an ordinary room.
“Look yonder!” cried the girl sharply.
She had thrown up her left hand, pointing across his breast. He looked swiftly.
In an instant she was no longer passive. With all of that supple strength which he knew to lie in that beautiful body of hers, she had thrown herself against him, pushing at him. His weight was greater, so much greater than hers, that though taken unaware he was barely budged two paces.
But that was ample for the purpose of Paula. He heard a sharp crackling of dead branches and leaves, the ground gave way under his feet, and crashing through a flimsy covering of slender limbs and twigs he plunged downward, falling sheer.
He threw out his arm to save himself, his rifle was flung several feet away, Paula had jerked free, and with the breath jolted out of his body, he lay upon his back in a pit ten feet deep struggling to free himself of the branches which he had brought with him in his fall.
At last he stood up. He had strained an ankle in striking, he did not know for the moment whether or not he had broken his left arm. His hands and face were scratched, his body was sore, his face grew red to a towering rage.
Standing at the brink of the pit, stooping a little to look down at him, was Paula. He had never seen a look of greater, gladder triumph upon a human face.
“You are not very smart,” said Paula contemptuously, “to get caught in a trap like that. Bears are smarter!”
John Sheldon, for the first time on record, swore violently in the presence of a young woman. She did not appear in the least shocked; perhaps she was accustomed to occasional outbursts from her father. Rather, she looked delighted. In fact, she clapped her hands, and there came down to him, to swell his rage, her tinkling laughter.
“When I get out of this I’m going to spank you,” he growled, meaning every word of it. “Good and hard, too! Don’t you know you might have broken my neck?”
“You are not coming out,” dimpled Paula. “If you are very good I will feed you every day and bring you water.”
Sheldon answered her with an angry silence. There is no wrath like that which has in it something of self accusation; he might have expected something like this. Turning his back on her he sought the way out of the bear pit. Forthwith his anger, like a tube of quicksilver carried out into the hot sun, mounted to new heights while he did not.
The trap was cunningly made, must have required weeks in the excavation. At the bottom it was some ten feet wide; at the opening above his head perhaps not over eight feet. Thus its walls sloped in at the top, and he promptly saw the futility of trying to scramble out. He would have to use his sheath-knife; hack hand holds and dig places out for his feet, and at that he saw that he would have his work cut out for him.
And his rifle lay on the ground above! A sudden, disquieting vision was vividly outlined in his imagination. Suppose that the madman came now! He could stand above, and if he had nothing but stones to hurl down— The vision ended with a shudder as Sheldon remembered two bleached piles of bones.
Crouching, he leaped upward, seizing the pit’s edge. The soil crumbled, gave way. He slipped back. He heard Paula’s laughter, coolly taunting. He crouched, leaped again, furious as he found no hand hold. To try again would but be to make a fool of himself.
Among the broken branches about him he sought one strong enough to bear his weight. He stood it upright against the wall of the pit. With his knife in one hand driven into the bank, the other hand gripping the leaning branch, he sought to climb out. And then, from across the pit, at his back, Paula called sharply:
“Stop! I am going to shoot!”
He slipped back and turned toward her. She was on her knees, his rifle in her hands, the barrel looking unnaturally large as it described nervously erratic arcs and ellipses. But Paula’s eyes, looking very determined, threatened him along the sights.
With a feeling of devout thankfulness he remembered that he had taken out the clip of cartridges at the cabin. Then, with sudden sinking heart, he remembered also that before he opened the door to come out he had again slipped the clip in.
What he could not remember, to save him, was whether or not he had thrown a cartridge into the barrel!
“I’ve got one chance out of a thousand, and a cursed slim chance it is!” he told himself grimly. “She can’t miss me at this range if she tries!”
Here lay his one chance:Ifhe had not thrown a cartridge into the barrel, andifthe girl knew nothing of an automatic rifle, he might have time to get out yet before she discovered how to operate it.
These two “ifs” struck him at that moment as the tallest pair of ifs he had ever met.
He racked his brains for the answer to that one question: “Did I throw a load into the barrel?” One moment he was certain that he remembered doing so; the next he was as certain that he had not. He was very uncomfortable.
“I’ve got to shoot you!” Paula was crying. “I don’t want to, oh! I don’t want to shoot you. But you would kill us. You would kill papa and—I’m going to shoot!”
“For God’s sake shoot and get it over with, then!” muttered Sheldon. He didn’t think that he was a coward, but he knew that he was white as a ghost. And he didn’t even know that the gun was loaded!
The gun barrel wavered uncertainly. The girl’s finger was on the trigger that a very slight pressure would set off and it made him faint to see how that finger was shaking! Paula had one eye shut tight; the other peered wildly along the sights. One instant she was aiming at his stomach, the next at his knees.
Paula shut both eyes and pulled the trigger. After a century-long second in which there was no discharge, Sheldon laughed loudly if somewhat shakily. And, seeing his one chance now about to bring him his safety, he lost no more time in inactivity, but began again with knife and dead branch to try to make his way out.
Paula sprang to her feet, her cheeks that had been pale growing suddenly flushed, and with the gun at her shoulder, pulled again and again at the trigger. Sheldon managed to get half-way out, lifted his hand to grasp the brink—and slipped back again.
Then the girl, crying out angrily, threw down the gun, whirled, and disappeared in a flash. Sheldon struggled manfully to work his way out of his pit before she should be lost to him entirely in the woods. But when at last he was out, and had caught up his rifle, the still woods about him hid her, giving no sign which way she had gone.
In the wilderness which is the Sasnokee-keewan a man seeking to escape a pursuer need not have the slightest difficulty. This fact Sheldon was forced to admit immediately.
There were trackless forests where a fugitive could laugh at a score of hunters, rocky slopes over which he could run, leaving no sign of his passing, thickets in which he might lie in safety while a man who was looking for him went by so close that one might easily toss a stone to the other.
But for an hour Sheldon sought for Paula and her father, hoping that through some fortunate chance he might stumble upon them. He returned to the forking of the trails where the girl had directed him to the right. Now he took the other path, leading toward the northeast. But in a little while it branched and branched again, and there were no tracks in the grassy soil to help him.
He followed one trail after another, always coming back when there had been nothing to persuade him that he was not perhaps setting his back toward those he sought. And in the end he gave over his quest as hopeless and retraced his steps to Johnny’s Luck.
The back door was wide open as he had left it. He stepped inside, moving cautiously, realizing that one or both of them might have returned here before him. But there was no sign that either had done so. The other door was shut, the bar across it. The cabin’s interior had been in no way disturbed since he had been there last.
It seemed that there was nothing that he could do now. To be sure he might rifle their few belongings in an endeavor to learn who they were, so that if he was forced to go back alone to the “world outside,” he could see to give word of them to any relatives they might have. But he disliked the job; certainly he would resort to no such action until it had become evident that it was the only thing to do. He went out, closed the door after him, and turned his back upon Johnny’s Luck. For, while he had the opportunity, it would be well to look to Buck and to his pack.
His horse he found browsing leisurely in the grove where he had left him. The pack in the gulch had not been disturbed. Sheldon went to it for a fresh tin of tobacco; made into a little bundle enough food for a couple of meals, and with a thoughtful smile he slipped his one slab of chocolate into his pocket. Then, having moved Buck a little deeper into the grove, he turned again toward Johnny’s Luck. Soon or late the madman or the girl would come back to their cabin. While his patience lasted Sheldon would wait there for them.
This time, when he came again into the cabin, where still there was no sign that its owners had been there since he had left it, he closed the back door and flung the front one wide open. For if the madman and the girl came back, Sheldon preferred to have them come this way, so that he could see them in the clearing that had once been a street of Johnny’s Luck. Then, with nothing else to do, he strode back and forth in the rough room and smoked his pipe and stared about him.
So it was that at last one of the pictures upon the wall caught and held his attention. It was an old line-cut from a newspaper, held in place by little pegs through the corners. The man pictured might have been fifty or he might have been thirty; the artist had achieved a sketch of which neither he nor his subject need be proud. The thing which interested Sheldon was the printed legend under the drawing: