All thought of Beasley Melford quickly became lost in feelings of a deeper and stronger nature as Buck passed out into the open. His was not a nature to dwell unnecessarily upon the clashings of every-day life. Such pinpricks were generally superficial, to be brushed aside and treated without undue consideration until such time as some resulting fester might gather and drastic action become necessary. The fester had not yet gathered, therefore he set his quarrel aside for the time when he could give it his undivided attention.
As he strode away the world seemed very wide to Buck. So wide, indeed, that he had no idea of its limits, nor any desire to seek them. He preferred that his eyes should dwell only upon those things which presented themselves before a plain, wholesome vision. He had no desire to peer into the tainted recesses of any other life than that which he had always known. And in his outlook was to be witnessed the careful guidance of his friend, the Padre. Nor was his capacity stunted thereby, nor his strong manhood. On the contrary, it left him with a great reserve of power to fight his little battle of the wilderness.
Yet surely such a nature as his should have been dangerously open to disaster. The guilelessness resulting from such a simplicity of life ought surely to have fittedhim for a headlong rush into the pitfalls which are ever awaiting the unwary. This might have been so in a man of less strength, less reckless purpose. Therein lay his greatest safeguard. His was the strength, the courage, the resource of a mind trained in the hard school of the battle for existence in the wilderness, where, without subtlety, without fear, he walked over whatever path life offered him, ready to meet every obstruction, every disaster, with invincible courage.
It was through this very attitude that his threat against Beasley Melford was not to be treated lightly. His comrades understood it. Beasley himself knew it. Buck had assured him that he would shoot him down like a dog if he offended against the unwritten laws of instinctive chivalry as he understood them, and he would do it without any compunction or fear of consequences.
A woman’s fame to him was something too sacred to be lightly treated, something quite above the mere consideration of life and death. The latter was an ethical proposition which afforded him, where a high principle was in the balance against it, no qualms whatsoever. It was the inevitable result of his harsh training in the life that was his. The hot, rich blood of strong manhood ran in his veins, but it was the hot blood tempered with honesty and courage, and without one single taint of meanness.
As he passed down the river bank, beyond which the racing waters flowed a veritable torrent, he saw the camp women moving about outside their huts. He saw them wringing out their rain-drenched garments. Thus he knew that the storm had served their miserable homes badly, and he felt sorry for them.
For the most part they were heavy, frowsy creatures,slatternly and uncouth. They came generally from the dregs of frontier cities, or were the sweepings of the open country, gleaned in the debauched moments of the men who protected them. Nor, as his eyes wandered in their direction, was it possible to help a comparison between them and the burden of delicate womanhood he held in his arms, a comparison which found them painfully wanting.
He passed on under the bold scrutiny of those feminine eyes, but they left him quite unconscious. His thoughts had drifted into a wonderful dreamland of his own, a dreamland such as he had never visited before, an unsuspected dreamland whose beauties could never again hold him as they did now.
The sparkling sunlight which had so swiftly followed in the wake of the storm, lapping up the moisture of the drenching earth with its fiery tongue, shed a radiance over the familiar landscape, so that it revealed new and unsuspected beauties to his wondering eyes. How came it that the world, his world, looked so fair? The distant hills, those hills which had always thrilled his heart with the sombre note of their magnificence, those hills which he had known since his earliest childhood, with their black, awe-inspiring forests, they were somehow different, so different.
He traced the purple ridges step by step till they became a blurred, gray monotony of tone fading away until it lost itself in the glittering white of the snowcaps. Everything he beheld in a new light. No longer did those hills represent the battle-ground where he and the Padre fought out their meagre existence. They had suddenly become one vast and beautiful garden where life became idyllic,where existence changed to one long joy. The torrents had shrunk to gentle streams, babbling their wonderful way through a fairy-land of scented gardens. The old forceful tearing of a course through the granite hearts of the hills was a thought of some long-forgotten age far back in the dim recesses of memory. The gloom of the darkling forests, too, had passed into the sunlit parks of delight. The rugged canyons had given place to verdant valleys of succulent pasture. The very snows themselves, those stupendous, changeless barriers, suggested nothing so much as the white plains of perfect life.
The old harsh lines of life had passed, and the sternness of the endless battle had given way to an unaccountable joy.
Every point that his delighted eyes dwelt upon was tinged with something of the beatitude that stirred his senses. Every step he took was something of an unreality. And every whispering sound in the scented world through which he was passing found an echo of music in his dreaming soul.
Contact with the yielding burden lying so passive in his strong arms filled him with a rapture such as he had never known. The thought of sex was still far from his mind, and only was the manhood in him yielding to the contact, and teaching him through the senses that which his upbringing had sternly denied him.
He gazed down upon the wonderful pale beauty of the girl’s face. He saw the rich parted lips between which shone the ivory of her perfect, even teeth. The hair, so rich and flowing, dancing with glittering beams of golden light, as, stirring beneath the breath of the mountains, it caught the reflection of a perfect sun.
How beautiful she was. How delicate. The wonderful, almost transparent skin. He could trace the tangle of small blue veins like a fairy web through which flowed the precious life that was hers. And her eyes—those great, full, round pupils hidden beneath the veil of her deeply-fringed lids! But he turned quickly from them, for he knew that the moment she awoke his dream must pass into a memory.
His gaze wandered to the swanlike roundness of her white throat, to the gaping shirt-waist, where the delicate lace and tiny ribbon peeped out at him. It was all so wonderful, so marvelous. And she was in his arms—she, this beautiful stranger. Yet somehow she did not seem like a stranger. To his inflamed fancy she seemed to have lain in his arms all his life, all her life. No, she was no stranger. He felt that she belonged to him, she was part of himself, his very life.
Still she slept on. He suddenly found himself moving with greater caution, and he knew he was dreading the moment when some foolish stumble of his should bring her back to that life which he feared yet longed to behold. He longed for the delight of watching the play of emotions upon her lovely features, to hear her speak and laugh, and to watch her smile. He feared, for he knew that with her waking those delicious moments would be lost to him forever.
So he dreamed on. In his inmost soul he knew he was dreaming, and, in his reckless fashion, he desired the dream to remain unending. He saw the old fur fort no longer the uncouth shelter of two lonely lives, but a home made beautiful by a presence such as he had never dreamed of, a presence that shed beauty upon all thatcame under the spell of its influence. He pictured the warmth of delight which must be the man’s who lived in such an atmosphere.
His muscles thrilled at the thought of what a man might do under such an inspiration. To what might he not aspire? To what heights might he not soar? Success must be his. No disaster could come—
The girl stirred in his arms. He distinctly felt the movement, and looked down into her face with sudden apprehension. But his anxiety was swiftly dispelled, and a tender smile at once replaced the look in his dark eyes. No, she had not yet awakened, and so he was content.
But the incident had brought him realization. His arms were stiff and cramped, and he must rest them. Strong man that he was he had been wholly unaware of the distance he had carried her.
He gently laid her upon the grass and looked about him. Then it was that wonder crept into his eyes. He was at the ford of the creek, more than two miles from the camp, and on the hither bank, where the road entered the water, a spring cart lay overturned and broken, with the team of horses lying head down, buried beneath the turbulent waters as they raced on down with the flood.
Now he understood the full meaning of her presence in the camp. His quick eyes took in every detail, and at once her coming was explained. He turned back in the direction whence he had come, and his mind flew to the distance of the ford from the camp. She had bravely faced a struggle over two miles of a trail quite unknown to her when the worst storm he had ever known was at its height. His eyes came back to the face of the unconscious girl in even greater admiration.
“Not only beautiful but——”
He turned away to the wreck, for there were still things he wished to know. And as he glanced about him he became more fully aware of the havoc of the storm. Even in the brilliant sunshine the whole prospect looked woefully jaded. Everywhere the signs told their pitiful tale. All along the river bank the torn and shattered pines drooped dismally. Even as he stood there great tree trunks and limbs of trees were washed down on the flood before his eyes. The banks were still pouring with the drainings of the hills and adding their quota to the swelling torrent.
But the overturned spring cart held most interest just now, and he moved over to it. The vehicle was a complete wreck, so complete, indeed, that he wondered how the girl had escaped without injury. Two trunks lay near by, evidently thrown out by the force of the upset, and it pleased him to think that they had been saved to their owner. He examined them closely. Yes, the contents were probably untouched by the water. But what was this? The initials on the lid were “J. S.” The girl’s name was Rest. At least so Mrs. Ransford had stated. He wondered. Then his wonder passed. These were very likely trunks borrowed for the journey. He remembered that the Padre had a leather grip with other initials than his own upon it.
Where was the teamster? He looked out at the racing waters, and the question answered itself. Then he turned quickly to the girl. Poor soul, he thought, her coming to the farm had been one series of disasters. So, with an added tenderness, he stooped and lifted her gently in his arms and proceeded on his way.
At last he came to the farm, which only that morning he had so eagerly avoided. And his feelings were not at all unpleasant as he saw again the familiar buildings. The rambling house he had known so long inspired him with a fresh joy at the thought of its new occupant. He remembered how it had grown from a log cabin, just such as the huts of the gold-seekers, and how, with joy and pride, he and the Padre had added to it and reconstructed as the years went by. He remembered the time when he had planted the first wild cucumber, which afterward became an annual function and never failed to cover the deep veranda with each passing year. There, too, was the cabbage patch crowded with a wealth of vegetables. And he remembered how careful he had been to select a southern aspect for it. The small barns, the hog-pens, where he could even now hear the grunting swine grumbling their hours away. The corrals, two, across the creek, reached by a log bridge of their own construction. Then, close by stood the nearly empty hay corrals, waiting for this year’s crop. No, the sight of these things had no regrets for him now. It was a pleasant thought that it was all so orderly and flourishing, since this girl was its future mistress.
He reached the veranda before his approach was realized by the farm-wife within. Then, as his footsteps resounded on the rough surface of the flooring of split logs, Mrs. Ransford came bustling out of the parlor door.
“Sakes on me!” she cried, as she beheld the burden in her visitor’s arms. “If it ain’t Miss Rest all dead an’ done!” Her red hands went up in the air with such a comical tragedy, and her big eyes performed such a wide revolution in their fat, sunburnt setting that Buck half-fearedan utter collapse. So he hurriedly sought to reassure her, and offered a smiling encouragement.
“I allow she’s mostly done, but I guess she’s not dead,” he said quickly.
The old woman heaved a tragic sigh.
“My! but you made me turn right over, as the sayin’ is. You should ha’ bin more careful, an’ me with my heart too, an’ all. The doctor told me as I was never to have no shock to speak of. They might set up hem—hemoritch or suthin’ o’ the heart, what might bring on sing—sing—I know it was suthin’ to do with singin’, which means I’d never live to see another storm like we just had, not if it sure come on this minit——”
“I’m real sorry, ma’m,” said Buck, smiling quietly at the old woman’s volubility, but deliberately cutting it short. “I mean about the shock racket. Y’ see she needs fixin’ right, an’ I guess it’s up to you to git busy, while I go an’ haul her trunks up from the creek.”
Again the woman’s eyes opened and rolled.
“What they doin’ in the creek?” she demanded with sudden heat. “Who put ’em ther’? Some scallawag, I’ll gamble. An’ you standin’ by seein’ it done, as you might say. I never did see sech a place, nor sech folk. To think o’ that pore gal a-settin’ watchin’ her trunks bein’ pushed into the creek by a lot o’ loafin’ bums o’ miners, an’ no one honest enough, nor man enough to raise a hand to—to——”
“With respec’, ma’m, you’re talkin’ a heap o’ foolishness,” cried Buck impatiently, his anxiety for the girl overcoming his deference for the other’s sex. “If you’ll show me the lady’s room I’ll carry her right into it an’ set her on her bed, an’——”
“Mercy alive, what’s the world a-comin’ to!” cried the indignant farm-wife. “Me let the likes o’ you into the gal’s bedroom! You? Guess you need seein’ to by the State, as the sayin’ is. I never heard the like of it. Never. An’ she jest a slip of a young gal, too, an’ all.”
But Buck’s patience was quite exhausted, and, without a moment’s hesitation, he brushed the well-meaning but voluble woman aside and carried the girl into the house. He needed no guidance here. He knew which was the best bedroom and walked straight into it. There he laid the girl upon an old chintz-covered settee, so that her wet clothes might be removed before she was placed into the neat white bed waiting for her. And the clacking tongue of Ma Ransford pursued his every movement.
“It’s an insult,” she cried angrily. “An insult to me an’ mine, as you might say. Me, who’s raised two daughters an’ one son, all of ’em dead, more’s the pity. First you drown the gal an’ her baggage, an’ then you git carryin’ her around, an’ walkin’ into her virgin bedroom without no by your leave, nor nuthin’.”
But Buck quite ignored her protests. He felt it was useless to explain. So he turned back and gave his final instructions from the doorway.
“You jest get her right to bed, ma’m, an’ dose her,” he said amiably. “I’d guess you best give her hot flannels an’ poultices an’ things while I go fetch her trunks. After that I’ll send off to Bay Creek fer the doctor. He ain’t much, but he’s better than the hoss doctor fer womenfolk. Guess I’ll git back right away.”
But the irate farm-wife, her round eyes blazing, slammed the door in his face as she flung her final word after him.
“You’ll git back nuthin’,” she cried furiously. “Youlet me git you back here agin an’ you’ll sure find a sort o’ first-class hell runnin’ around, an’ you won’t need no hot flannels nor poultices to ke’p you from freezin’ stone cold.”
Then, with perfect calmness and astonishing skill, she flung herself to the task of caring for her mistress in that practical, feminine fashion which, though he may appreciate, no man has ever yet quite understood.
It was the morning following the great storm, a perfect day of cloudless sunshine, and the Padre and Buck were on their way from the fur fort to the camp. Their mission was to learn the decision of its inhabitants as to their abandonment of the valley; and in the Padre’s pocket was a large amount of money for distribution.
The elder man’s spirits were quietly buoyant. Nor did there seem to be much reason why they should be. But the Padre’s moods, even to his friends, were difficult to account for. Buck, on the contrary, seemed lost in a reverie which held him closely, and even tended to make his manner brusque.
But his friend, in the midst of his own cheerful feelings, would not allow this to disturb him. Besides, he was a far shrewder man than his simple manner suggested.
“It’s well to be doing, lad,” he said, after some considerable silence. “Makes you feel good. Makes you feel life’s worth a bigger price than we mostly set it at.”
His quiet eyes took the other in in a quick, sidelong glance. He saw that Buck was steadily, but unseeingly, contemplating the black slopes of Devil’s Hill, which now lay directly ahead.
“Guess you aren’t feeling so good, boy?” he went on after a moment’s thoughtful pause.
The direct challenge brought a slow smile to Buck’s face, and he answered with surprising energy—
“Good? Why, I’m feelin’ that good I don’t guess even—even Beasley could rile me this mornin’.”
The Padre nodded with a responsive smile.
“And Beasley can generally manage to rile you.”
“Yes, he’s got that way, surely,” laughed Buck frankly. “Y’ see he’s—he’s pretty mean.”
“I s’pose he is,” admitted the other. Then he turned his snow-white head and glanced down at the lean flanks of Cæsar as the horse walked easily beside his mare.
“And that boy, Kid, was out in all that storm on your Cæsar,” he went on, changing the subject quickly from the man whom he knew bore him an absurd animosity. “A pretty great horse, Cæsar. He’s looking none the worse for fetching that whisky either. Guess the boys’ll be getting over their drunk by now. And it’s probably done ’em a heap of good. You did right to encourage ’em. Maybe there’s folks would think differently. But then they don’t just understand, eh?”
“No.”
Buck had once more returned to his reverie, and the Padre smiled. He thought he understood. He had listened overnight to a full account of the arrival of the new owner of their farm, and had gleaned some details of her attractiveness and youth. He knew well enough how surely the isolated mountain life Buck lived must have left him open to strong impressions.
They set their horses at a canter down the long declining trail which ran straight into the valley above which Devil’s Hill reared its ugly head. And as they went the signs of the storm lay everywhere about them. Theirpath was strewn with débris. The havoc was stupendous. Tree trunks were lying about like scattered nine-pins. Riven trunks, split like match-wood by the lightning, stood beside the trail, gaunt and hopeless. Partially-severed limbs hung drooping, their weeping foliage appealing to the stricken world about them for a sympathy which none could give. Even the hard, sun-baked trail, hammered and beaten to an iron consistency under a hundred suns of summer, was scored with now dry water-courses nearly a foot deep. With all his knowledge and long experience of the mountains even the Padre was filled with awe at the memory of what he had witnessed.
“Makes you think, Buck, doesn’t it?” he said, pointing at a stately forest giant stretched prone along the edge of the trail, its proud head biting deeply into the earth, and its vast roots lifting twenty and more feet into the air. “I was out in the worst of it, too,” he went on thoughtfully. Then he smiled at the recollection of his puny affairs while the elements had waged their merciless war. “I was taking a golden fox out of a trap, ’way back there on the side of the third ridge. While I was doing it the first two crashes came. A hundred and more yards away two pines, big fellers, guess they were planted before the flood, were standing out solitary on a big rock overhanging the valley below. They were there when I first bent over the trap. When I stood up they were gone—rock and all. It made me think then. Guess it makes me think more now.”
“It surely was a storm,” agreed Buck absently.
They reached the open valley, and here the signs were less, so, taking advantage of the clearing, they set their horses at a fast gallop. Their way took them skirting thegreat slope of the hill-base, and every moment was bearing them on toward the old farm, for that way, some distance beyond, lay the ford which they must cross to reach the camp.
Neither seemed inclined for further talk. Buck was looking straight out ahead in the direction of the farm, and his preoccupation had given place to a smile of anticipation. The Padre was intent upon the black slopes of the hill. Farther along, the hill turned away toward the creek, and the trail bore to the left, passing on the hither side of a great bluff of woods which stretched right up to the very corrals of the farm. It was here, too, where the overhang of the suspended lake came into view, where Yellow Creek poured its swift, shallow torrent in the shadowed twilight of the single-walled tunnel and the gold-seekers held their operations in a vain quest of fortune.
They had just come abreast of this point and the Padre was observing the hill with that never-failing interest with which the scene always filled him. He believed there was nothing like it in all the world, and regarded it as a stupendous example of Nature’s engineering. But now, without warning, his interest leapt to a pitch of wonderment that set his nerves thrilling and filled his thoughtful eyes with an unaccustomed light of excitement. One arm shot out mechanically, pointing at the black rocks, and a deep sigh escaped him.
“Mackinaw!” he cried, pulling his horse almost on to its haunches. “Look at that!”
Buck swung round, while Cæsar followed the mare’s example so abruptly that his master was almost flung out of the saddle.
He, too, stared across in the direction indicated. And his whispered exclamation was an echo of the other’s astonishment.
“By the——!”
Then on the instant an almost unconscious movement, simultaneously executed, set their horses racing across the open in the direction of the suspended lake.
The powerful Cæsar, with his lighter burden, was the first to reach the spot. He drew up more than two hundred yards from where the domed roof forming the lake bed hung above the waters of the creek. He could approach no nearer, and his rider sat gazing in wonder at the spectacle of fallen rock and soil, and the shattered magnificence of the acres of crushed and broken pine woods which lay before him.
The whole face of the hill for hundreds and hundreds of feet along this side had been ruthlessly rent from its place and flung broadcast everywhere, and, in the chaos he beheld, Buck calculated that hundreds of thousands of tons of the blackened rock and subsoil had been dislodged by the tremendous fall.
Just for an instant the word “washout” flashed through his mind. But he dismissed it without further consideration. How could a washout sever such rock? Even he doubted the possibility of lightning causing such destruction. No, his thoughts flew to an earth disturbance of some sort. But then, what of the lake? He gazed up at where the rocky arch jutted out from the parent hill, and apprehension made him involuntarily move his horse aside. But his observation had killed the theory of an earth disturbance. Anything of that nature must have brought the lake down. For the dislodgment beganunder its very shadow, and had even further deepened the yawning cavern beneath its bed.
The Padre’s voice finally broke his reflections, and its tone suggested that he was far less awed, and, in consequence, his thoughts were far more practical.
“Their works are gone,” he said regretfully. “I’d say there’s not a sluice-box nor a conduit left. Maybe even their tools are lost. Poor devils!”
The man’s calm words had their effect. Buck at once responded to the practical suggestion.
“They don’t leave their tools,” he said. Then he pointed up at the lake. “Say, what if that had come down? What if the bowels o’ that hill had opened up an’ the water been turned loose? What o’ the camp? What o’ the women an’—the kiddies?”
His imagination had been stirred again. Again the Padre’s practice brought him back.
“You don’t need to worry that way, boy. It hasn’t fallen. Guess the earth don’t fancy turning her secrets loose all at once.”
Buck sighed.
“Yet I’d say the luck sure seems rotten enough.”
There was no answer, and presently the Padre pointed at the face of the hill.
“It was a washout,” he said with quiet assurance. “See that face? It’s softish soil. Some sort of gravelly stuff that the water got at. Sort of gravel seam in the heart of the rock.”
Buck followed the direction indicated and sat staring at it. Then slowly a curious look of hope crept into his eyes. It was the fanciful hope of the imaginative.
“Here,” he cried suddenly, “let’s get a peek at it.Maybe—maybe the luck ain’t as bad as we think.” And he laughed.
“What d’you mean?” asked the Padre sharply.
For answer he had to put up with a curt “Come on.” And the next moment he was following in Cæsar’s wake as he picked his way rapidly amongst the trees skirting the side of the wreckage. Their way lay inland from the creek, for Buck intended to reach the cliff face on the western side of the fall. It was difficult going, but, at the distance, safe enough. Not until they drew in toward the broken face of the hill would the danger really begin. There it was obvious enough to anybody. The cliff was dangerously overhanging at many points. Doubtless the saturation which had caused the fall had left many of those great projections sufficiently loose to dislodge at any moment.
Buck sought out what he considered to be the most available spot and drew his horse up. The rest must be done on foot. No horse could hope to struggle over such a chaotic path. At his suggestion both animals were tethered within the shelter of trees. At least the trees would afford some slight protection should any more of the cliff give way.
In less than a quarter of an hour they stood a hundred feet from the actual base of the cliff, and Buck turned to his friend.
“See that patch up there,” he said, pointing at a spread of reddish surface which seemed to be minutely studded with white specks. “Guess a peek at it won’t hurt. Seems to me it’s about ten or twelve feet up. Guess ther’ ain’t need for two of us climbin’ that way. You best wait right here, an’ I’ll git around again after a while.”
The Padre surveyed the patch, and his eyes twinkled.
“Ten or twelve feet?” he said doubtfully. “Twenty-five.”
“May be.”
“You think it’s——?”
Buck laughed lightly.
“Can’t say what it is—from here.”
The other sat down on an adjacent rock.
“Get right ahead. I’ll wait.”
Buck hurried away, and for some moments the Padre watched his slim figure, as, scrambling, stumbling, clinging, he made his way to where the real climb was to begin. Nor was it until he saw the tall figure halt under an overhanging rock, which seemed to jut right out over his head, and look up for the course he must take in the final climb, that Buck’s actual danger came home to the onlooker. He was very little more given to realizing personal danger than Buck himself, but now a sudden apprehension for the climber gripped him sharply.
He stirred uneasily as he saw the strong hands reach up and clutch the jutting facets. He even opened his mouth to offer a warning as he saw the heavily-booted feet mount to their first foothold. But he refrained. He realized it might be disconcerting. A few breathless moments passed as Buck mounted foot by foot. Then came the thing the Padre dreaded. The youngster’s hold broke, and a rock hurtled by him from under his hand and very nearly dislodged him altogether.
In an instant the Padre was on his feet with the useless intention of going to his aid, but, even as he stood up, his own feet shot from under him, and he fell back heavily upon the rock from which he had just risen.
With an impatient exclamation he looked down to discover the cause of his mishap. There it lay, a loose stone of yellowish hue. He stooped to remove it, and, in a moment, his irritation was forgotten. In a moment everything else was forgotten. Buck was forgotten. The peril of the hill. The cliff itself. For the moment he was lifted out of himself. Years had passed away, his years of life in those hills. And something of the romantic dreams of his early youth thrilled him once again.
He stood up bearing the cause of his mishap clasped in his two hands and stared down at it. Then, after a long while, he looked up at the climbing man. He stood there quite still, watching his movements with unseeing eyes. His interest was gone. The danger had somehow become nothing now. There was no longer any thought of the active figure moving up the face of the hill with cat-like clinging hands and feet. There was no longer thought for his success or failure.
Buck reached his goal. He examined the auriferous facet with close scrutiny and satisfaction. Then he began the descent, and in two minutes he stood once more beside the Padre.
“It’s high-grade quartz,” he cried jubilantly as he came up.
The Padre nodded, his mind on other things.
“I’d say the luck’s changed,” Buck went on, full of his own discovery and not noticing the other’s abstraction. He was enjoying the thought of the news he had to convey to the starving camp. “I’d say there’s gold in plenty hereabouts and the washout——”
The Padre suddenly thrust out his two hands whichwere still grasping the cause of his discomfiture. He thrust them out so that Buck could not possibly mistake the movement.
“There surely is—right here,” he said slowly.
Buck gasped. Then, with shining eyes, he took what the other was holding into his own two hands.
“Gold!” he cried as he looked down upon the dull yellow mass.
“And sixty ounces if there’s a pennyweight,” added the Padre exultantly. “You see I—I fell over it,” he explained, his quiet eyes twinkling.
Two hours later saw an extraordinary change at the foot of Devil’s Hill. The wonder of the “washout” had passed. Its awe was no longer upon the human mind. The men of the camp regarded it with no more thought than if the destruction had been caused by mere blasting operations. They were not interested in the power causing the wreck, but only in their own motives, their own greedy longings, their own lust for the banquet of gold outspread before their ravening eyes.
The Padre watched these people his news had brought to the hill with tolerant, kindly eye. He saw them scattered like a small swarm of bees in the immensity of the ruin wrought by the storm. They had for the time forgotten him, they had forgotten everything in the wild moment of long-pent passions unloosed—the danger which overhung them, their past trials, their half-starved bodies, their recent sufferings. These things were thrust behind them, they were of the past. Their present was an insatiable hunger for finds such as had been thrust before their yearning eyes less than an hour ago.
He stood by and viewed the spectacle with a mind undisturbed, with a gentle philosophy inspired by an experience which he alone could appreciate. It was a wonderful sight. The effort, the haste, the almost insane intentness of these people seeking the yellow metal, the discoveryof which was the whole bounds of their horizon. He felt that it was good to see them. Good that these untamed passions should be allowed full sway. He felt that such as these were the advance guard of all human enterprise. Theirs was the effort, theirs the hardship, the risk; and after them would come the trained mind, perhaps the less honest mind, the mind which must harness the result of their haphazard efforts to the process of civilization’s evolution. He even fancied he saw something of the influence of this day’s work upon the future of that mountain world.
But there was regret too in his thought. It was regret at the impossibility of these pioneers ever enjoying the full fruits of their labors. They would enjoy them in their own way, at the moment, but such enjoyment was not adequate reward for their daring, their sacrifice, their hardihood. Well enough he knew that they were but the toilers in a weed-grown vineyard, and that it would fall to the lot of the skilled husbandman to be the man who reaped the harvest.
It was a picture that would remain long enough in his memory. The flaying picks rising and falling amongst the looser débris, the grinding scrape of the shovel, turning again and again the heavy red gravel. The shouts of hoarse voices hailing each other in jubilant tones, voices thrilling with a note of hope such as they had not known for weeks. He saw the hard muscles of sunburnt arms standing out rope-like with the terrific labor they were engaged in. And in the background of it all he saw the grim spectacle of the blackened hill, frowning down like some evil monster, watching the vermin life eating into a sore it was powerless to protect.
It was wonderful, the transformation of these things. And yet it was far less strange than his witness of the spectacle of the beaten, hopeless men he had helped so long up in the camp. He was glad.
He was glad, too, that even Buck had been caught in the fever of the moment. He saw him with the rest, with borrowed tools, working with a vigor and enthusiasm quite unsurpassed by the most ardent of the professional gold-seekers. Yet he knew how little the man was tainted with the disease of these others. He had no understanding whatever of the meaning of wealth. And the greed of gold had left him quite untouched. His was the virile, healthy enthusiasm for a quest for something which was hidden there in the wonderful auriferous soil, a quest that the heart of any live man is ever powerless to resist.
With him it would last till sundown, maybe, and after that the fever would pass from his veins. Then the claims of the life that had always been his would reassert themselves.
After a while the Padre’s thoughts drifted to the pressing considerations of the future. Several times he had heard the shouts of men who had turned a nugget up in the gravel. And at each such cry he had seen the rush of others, and the feverish manner in which they took possession of the spot where the lucky individual was working and hustled him out. It was in these rushes that he saw the danger lying ahead.
Hitherto these men had been accustomed to the slow process of washing “pay-dirt.” It was not only slow, but unemotional. It had not the power to stir the senses to a pitch of excitement like this veritable Tom Tiddler’s ground, pitchforked into their very laps by one of Nature’s freakish impulses.
With this thought came something very like regret at the apparent richness of the find. Something must be done, and done without delay, to regulate the situation. The place must be arranged in claims, and definite regulations must be laid down and enforced by a council of the majority. He felt instinctively that this would be the only way to avert a state of anarchy too appalling to contemplate. It would be an easy matter now, but a hopeless task to attempt later on. Yes, a big trouble lay in those rushes, which seemed harmless enough at present. And he knew that his must be the work of straightening out the threatened tangle.
But for the moment the fever must be allowed to run riot. It must work itself out with the physical effort of hard muscles. In the calm of rest after labor counsel might be offered and listened to. But not until then.
So that memorable day wore on to its close. The luck had come not in the petty find such as these men had looked for, but in proportions of prodigal generosity such as Nature sometimes loves to bestow upon those whom she has hit the hardest. She had called to her aid those strange powers of which she is mistress and hurled them headlong to do her bidding. She had bestowed her august consent, and lo, the earth was opened, and its wealth poured out at the very feet of those who had so long and so vainly sought it.
The new owner of the Padre’s farm had quite recovered from the effects of her disastrous journey. Youth and a sound constitution, and the overwhelming ministrations of Mrs. Ransford had done all that was needed to restore her.
She was sitting in an old, much-repaired rocking-chair, in what was obviously the farm’s “best” bedroom. Her trunks, faithfully recovered from the wreck of the cart by the only too willing Buck, stood open on the floor amidst a chaotic setting of their contents, while the old farm-wife herself stood over them, much in the attitude of a faithful and determined watch-dog.
The girl looked on indifferent to the confusion and to the damage being perpetrated before her very eyes. She was lost in thoughts of her own which had nothing to do with such fripperies as lawns, and silks, andsuèdes, or any other such feminine excitements. She was struggling with recollection, and endeavoring to conjure it. There was a blank in her life, a blank of some hours, which, try as she would, she could not fill in. It was a blank, as far as she could make out, which terminated in her arrival at the farmborne in the arms of some strange man.
Well might such a thought shut out considerations like the almost certain destruction of a mere wardrobe at thehands of her ignorant but well-meaning helper. It would have been exciting, too, but for her memory of the latter stages of her journey. They were still painful. There was still uncertainty as to what had happened to the teamster and the horses.
At last, however, she abandoned further attempt to solve the riddle unaided, and decided to question her housekeeper.
“Was it the same man who brought those trunks—I mean the same man who—brought me here?” she demanded sharply.
“It surely was,” replied Mrs. Ransford, desisting for a moment from her efforts to bestow a pile of dainty shoes into a night-dress case of elaborate drawn thread work. “An’ a nice mess he’s got things in. Jest look at ’em all tossed about, same as you might toss slap-jacks, as the sayin’ is. It’s a mercy of heaven, an’ no thanks to him, you’ve got a rag fit to wear. It surely ain’t fer me to say it, but it’s real lucky I’m here to put things right for you. Drat them shoes! I don’t guess I’ll ever git ’em all into this bag, miss—ma’m—I mean miss, mum.”
Something of the tragedy of her wardrobe became evident to the girl and she went to the rescue.
“I’m sorry, but they don’t go in there,” she said, feeling that an apology was due for her interference in such well-intended efforts. “That’s—you see, that’s my sleeping-suit case,” she added gently.
“Sleepin’-soot?” A pair of round, wondering eyes stared out through the old woman’s glasses.
The girl pointed at the silk trousers and jacket lying just inside the nearest trunk, and the farm-wife picked them up gingerly, letting them unfold as she did so. Justfor one moment she inspected them, then she hurriedly let them drop back into the trunk as though they were some dangerous reptile, and, folding her arms, glared into the girl’s smiling face in comical reproach.
“You sure don’t wear them pants, miss—at night? Not reely?” she exclaimed in horrified tones.
The girl’s smile hardened.
“Why, yes. Lots of girls wear sleeping-suits nowadays.”
“You don’t say!”
The old woman pursed up her lips in strong disapproval. Then, with a disdainful sniff, she went on—
“Wot gals ain’t comin’ to I don’t know, I’m sure. Wot with silk next their skin an’ them draughty stockin’s, as you might say, things is gettin’ to a pretty pass. Say, I wouldn’t put myself into them pants, no, not if the President o’ the United States was to stand over me an’ wouldn’t let me put on nuthin’ else.”
The girl refrained from reply, but the obvious impossibility of the feat appealed to her sense of humor. However, the solution of her riddle was of prevailing interest, so she returned again to her questioning.
“Did he say how he found me?” she demanded. “Did he tell you any—any particulars of what happened to the cart, and—and the teamster?”
“No, ma’m—miss, beggin’ your pardin,—that he didn’t. I never see sech a fresh feller outside a noospaper office. An’ him the owner of this farm that was, but isn’t, as you might say. You take my word for it he’ll come to a bad end, he sure will. Wot with them wicked eyes of his, an’ that black, Dago-lookin’ hair. I never did see a feller who looked more like a scallawag than him. Makes meshiver to think of him a-carryin’ you in his two arms. Wher’ from sez I—an’ why?”
“Because I couldn’t walk, I expect,” the girl replied easily.
The farm-wife shook a fat, warning finger at her.
“Oh, ma’m—miss—that’s wot he says! You jest wait till you’ve got more experience o’ scallawags like him an’ you’ll sure know. Wot I sez is men’s that full o’ tricks wher’ females is to be deceived it ’ud take ’em a summer vacation sortin’ ’emselves out. Men is shockin’ scallawags,” she finished up, flinging the shoes pell-mell into the open trunk.
A further rescue of her property was necessary and the girl protested.
“Please don’t bother any more with those clothes,” she cried hurriedly. “I’ll see to them myself.” Then, as the woman proceeded to mop her perspiring brow with a pair of silk stockings, she sprang up and thrust a hand-towel toward her. “Use this; you’ll find it more absorbent than—er—silk.”
The old woman thanked her profusely, and made the exchange. And when the operation was completed the relieved girl returned to her seat and went on with her examination.
“What did you say his name was?”
“I didn’t say. An’ he didn’t tell me, neither. Fellers like him ain’t never ready with their names. Maybe he calls himself Moreton Kenyon. Y’ see he was the same as handed the farm over, an’ you tol’ me, back ther’ in Leeson Butte, you’d bo’t Moreton Kenyon’s farm. ‘Moreton Kenyon!’ Sort o’ high-soundin’ name for such a scallawag. I don’t never trust high-soundin’ names.They’re most like whitewash. You allus set that sort o’ stuff on hog-pens an’ sech, as you might say.”
“Perhaps he’s not as bad as you suspect,” the girl suggested kindly. “Lots of good people start by making a bad impression.”
“I don’t know what that means,” cried the other promptly. “But I do know what a scallawag is, an’ that’s him.”
It was useless to seek further information from such a source, so the girl abandoned the attempt, and dismissed the pig-headed housekeeper to her work, work which she felt she was far better suited to than such a delicate operation as the straightening out a wardrobe.
When Mrs. Ransford had taken her unwilling departure, not without several well-meaning protests, the girl bent her own energies to restoring order to her wardrobe. Nor was it an easy task. The masculine manner of the bedroom left much to be desired in those little depositories and cupboards, without which no woman can live in comfort. And during the process of disposing her belongings many mental notes were made for future alterations in the furnishings of her new abode.
It was not a bad room, however. The simplicity and cleanliness of it struck wholesomely upon her. Yes, in spite of what her lieutenant had said about him, Mr. Moreton Kenyon was certainly a man of some refinement. She had never heard that such neatness and cleanliness was the habit amongst small bachelor farmers in the outlands of the West. And this was the man who had carried her—where from?
Again she sat down in the rocker and gave herself up to the puzzlement of those hours of her unconsciousness.The last event that was clear in her mind was the struggle of the teamster to keep his horses head-on for the bank of the flooded river. She remembered the surging waters, she remembered that the bottom of the cart was awash, and that she sat with her feet lifted and resting on the side of the vehicle. She remembered that the horses were swimming before the driver’s flogging whip and blasphemous shoutings. All this was plain enough still. Then came the man’s order to herself. He warned her to get ready to jump, and she had been quick to realize the necessity. In spite of the horses’ wildest struggles the cart was being washed down-stream. Then had come his final shout. And she had jumped on the instant.
At this point of her recollections things became confused. She had a hazy memory of floundering in the water, also she remembered a heavy blow on the shoulder. Then some one seemed to seize hold of her. It must have been the teamster, though she did not remember seeing him in the water. How she got out was a mystery to her. Again it must have been the teamster. Then what of him? Mrs. Ransford had not spoken of him. Had he, too, escaped? or had he—she shuddered. For some moments her thoughts depressed her. The thought of a brave man’s life sacrificed for her was too terrible.
But after a while she continued in a lighter strain. It was at this point that the blank began. True, she seemed to have some dim recollection of a rough hut. It seemed to be made of logs. Then, too, she had a dreamy sort of cognizance of a number of men’s voices talking. Then—no, there was nothing more after that. Nothing until she awoke and found herself in bed, with a strange doctor standing over her.
It was all very puzzling, but—she turned toward the window as the afternoon sun fell athwart it and lit the plain interior of her new bedroom, searching the corners and the simple furnishings of the carpetless room.
From where she sat she could see the barns and corrals, and beyond them the heavy-hued pine woods. Then, away out far, far in the distance, the endless white snowcaps of the purpling hills. What a scene to her unaccustomed eyes. The breadth of it. The immensity.
She drew a deep breath and sat up.
She was dressed in a simple white shirt-waist and blue serge skirt, and her masses of red-gold hair were loosely coiled about her well-shaped head. The eager light of interest in her violet eyes lit her beautiful young face, lending it an animation which added a wonderful vitality to her natural beauty. The firm, rich lips were parted eagerly. The wide-open eyes, so deeply intelligent, shone with a lustre of delight there was no mistaking. Her rounded bosom rose and fell rapidly as the glad thought flew through her brain that this—this was her new home, where she was to forget the past and shut out all recollection of that evil shadow which had so long pursued her.
Yes, this was the beginning of her new life. Joan Stanmore was dead, and out of the ashes had arisen Joan Rest, ready to face the world in a spirit of well-doing bachelorhood. Here, here in the wild mountain world, where men were few and apart from her old life, she could face the future with perfect confidence.
She breathed a deep sigh of contentment and lolled back in the rocker, dropping her eyes from the snow-crowned hills to the precious little farm that was all hers.Then, in an instant, she sat up again as the tall figure of a young man appeared round the corner of the barn.
For some moments she followed his movements wonderingly. He walked straight over to the hay corral with long, easy strides. There was none of the slouch of a man idling about him. His whole attitude was full of distinct purpose. She saw him enter the corral and mount the half-cut haystack, and proceed to cut deeper into it. A moment later he pitched the loose hay to the ground, and himself slid down on to it. Then, stooping, he gathered it in his arms and left the corral.
Now she saw his face for the first time. It was dark. Nor could she be certain that his coloring was due to sunburn. His eyes were dark, too, and his hair. He was a good-looking man, she decided, and quite young. But how tall. And what shoulders. She wondered who he was, and what he was doing on her farm.
Then, of a sudden, she remembered she had spoken of a hired man to Mrs. Ransford. Had she——?
Her reflections were cut short by the sudden appearance of the farm-wife from the house. The old woman trotted hastily across the yard toward the barn, her fat sides shaking as she waddled, and her short, stout arms violently gesticulating. Joan needed nothing more than the good woman’s back view to tell her that the dame was very angry, and that it was the stranger who had inspired her wrath. She waited, smiling, for thedénouement.
It came quickly. It came with the reappearance of the stranger round the corner of the barn. What a splendid specimen of a man, she thought, as she watched the expression of unruffled calm on his strong features. His shirt sleeves were rolled well up above his elbows, andeven at that distance she could see the deep furrows in his arms where the rope-like muscles stood out beneath the thin, almost delicate skin.
But her attention was quickly diverted by the clacking of the farm-wife’s tongue. She could hear it where she sat with the window tight shut. And though she could not hear the words it was plain enough from the violence of her gesticulations that she was rating the patient man soundly. So patent was it, so dreadful, that even in her keenest interest Joan found herself wondering if Mr. Ransford were dead, and hoping that, if he were, his decease had occurred in early youth.
Nor had the man made any attempt at response. She was sure of it, because she had watched his firm lips, and they had not moved. Perhaps he had found retort impossible. It was quite possible, for the other had not paused a moment in her tirade. What a flow. It was colossal, stupendous. Joan felt sorry for the man.
What a patience he had. Nor had his expression once altered. He merely displayed the thoughtful attention that one might bestow, listening to a brilliant conversationalist or an interesting story. It was too ridiculous, and Joan began to laugh.
Then the end came abruptly and without warning. Mrs. Ransford just swung about and trotted furiously back to the house. Her face was flaming, and her fat arms, flourishing like unlimber flails, were pointing every verbal threat she hurled over her shoulder at the spot where the man had stood. Yes, he had vanished again round the corner of the barn, and the poor woman’s best efforts were quite lost upon the warm summer air.
But her purpose was obvious, and Joan prepared herselffor a whirlwind visitation. Nor had she long to wait. There was a shuffling of feet out in the passage, and, the next moment, the door of her room was unceremoniously flung open and the indignant woman staggered in.
“Well, of all the impidence, of all the sass, of all the ignorant bums that ever I——!” She exploded, and stood panting under the strain of her furious emotions.
But Joan felt she really must assert herself. This sort of reign of terror must not go on.
“Don’t fluster yourself, Mrs. Ransford,” she said calmly. “I’ll see to the matter myself.”
But she might as well have attempted to stem the tide of the river that had wrecked her journey as stay the irate woman’s tongue.
“But it’s him!” she cried. “Him, that low-down scallawag that carried you in his arms an’ walked right into this yere bedroom an’ laid you on your own virgin bed without no by your leave nor nuthin’. Him, as saw your trunks drownded an’ you all mussed up with water, without raisin’ a hand to help, ’less it was to push you further under——”
But Joan was equal to no more. She pushed the well-meaning creature on one side and hurried out of the house, while the echoes of the other’s scathing indictment died down behind her.
Joan did not hesitate. It was not her way to hesitate about anything when her mind was made up. And just now she was determined to find out the real story of what had happened to her. She was interested. This man had carried her. He had brought her trunks up. And—yes, she liked the look of him.
But she felt it necessary to approach the matter withbecoming dignity. She was not given much to standing on her dignity, but she felt that in her association with the men of these parts she must harden herself to it. All friendships with men were banned. This she was quite decided upon. And she sighed as she passed round the angle of the barn.
Her sigh died at its birth, however, and she was brought to a short and terrified halt. Two prongs of a hayfork gleamed viciously within three inches of her horrified eyes, and, behind them, with eyes no less horrified, stood the dark-haired stranger.
The gleaming prongs of the fork were sharply withdrawn, and a pleasant voice greeted the girl.
“Guess that was a near thing,” it said half-warningly.
Joan had started back, but at the sound of the voice she quickly recovered herself.
“It was,” she agreed. Then as she looked into the smiling eyes of the stranger she began to laugh.
“Another inch an’ more an’ you’d sure have been all mussed up on that pile of barn litter,” he went on, joining in her laugh.
“I s’pose I should,” Joan nodded, her mirth promptly sobering to a broad smile.
She had almost forgotten her purpose so taken up was she in observing this “scallawag,” as Mrs. Ransford had called him. Nor did it take her impressionable nature more than a second to decide that her worthy housekeeper was something in the nature of a thoroughly stupid woman. She liked the look of him. She liked his easy manner. More than all she liked the confident look of his dark eyes and his sunburnt face, so full of strength.
“Hayforks are cussed things anyway,” the man said, flinging the implement aside as though it had offended him.
Joan watched him. She was wondering how best to approach the questions in her mind. Somehow they did not come as easily as she had anticipated. It was one thing to make up her mind beforehand, and another to put her decision into execution. He was certainly not the rough, uncouth man she had expected to find. True, his language was the language of the prairie, and his clothes, yes, they surely belonged to his surroundings, but there was none of the uncleanness about them she had anticipated.
It was his general manner, however, that affected her chiefly. How tall and strong he was, and the wonderful sunburn on his clean-cut face and massive arms! Then he had such an air of reserve. No, it was not easy.
Finally, she decided to temporize, and wait for an opening. And in that she knew in her heart she was yielding to weakness.
“My housekeeper tells me it was you who handed the farm over to her?” she said interrogatively.
The man’s eyes began to twinkle again.
“Was that your—housekeeper?” he inquired.
“Yes—Mrs. Ransford.”
Joan felt even less at her ease confronted by those twinkling eyes.
“She’s a—bright woman.”
The man casually picked up a straw and began to chew it.
Joan saw that he was smiling broadly, and resented it. So she threw all the dignity she could summon into her next question.
“Then you must be Mr. Moreton Kenyon!” she said.
The man shook his head.
“Wrong. That’s the ‘Padre,’” he announced curtly.
Joan forgot her resentment in her surprise.
“The ‘Padre’! Why, I thought Mr. Kenyon was a farmer!”
The man nodded.
“So he is. You see folks call him Padre because he’s a real good feller,” he explained. Then he added: “He’s got white hair, too. A whole heap of it. That sort o’ clinched it.”
The dark eyes had become quite serious again. There was even a tender light in them as he searched the girl’s fair face. He was wondering what was yet to come. He was wondering how this interview was to bear on the future. In spite of his easy manner he dreaded lest the threats of Mrs. Ransford were about to be put into execution.
Joan accepted his explanation.
“I see,” she said. Then, after a pause: “Then who are you?”
“Me? Oh, I’m ‘Buck,’” he responded, with a short laugh.
“Buck—who?”
“Jest plain ‘Buck.’” Again came that short laugh.
“Mr. Kenyon’s son?”
The man shook his head, and Joan tried again.
“His nephew?”
Again came that definite shake. Joan persisted, but with growing impatience.
“Perhaps you’re—his partner?” she said, feeling that if he again shook his head she must inevitably shake him.
But she was spared a further trial. Buck had beenquick to realize her disappointment. Nor had he any desire to inspire her anger. On the contrary, his one thought was to please and help her.
“You see we’re not related. Ther’s nuthin’ between us but that he’s jest my great big friend,” he explained.
His reward came promptly in the girl’s sunny smile. And the sight of it quickened his pulses and set him longing to hold her again in his arms as he had done only yesterday. Somehow she had taken a place in his thoughts which left him feeling very helpless. He never remembered feeling helpless before. It was as though her coming into his life had robbed him of all his confidence. Yesterday he had found a woman almost in rags. Yesterday she was in trouble, and it had seemed the simplest thing in the world for him to take her in his arms and carry her to the home he knew to be hers. Now—now, all that confidence was gone. Now an indefinable barrier, but none the less real, had been raised between them. It was a barrier he felt powerless to break down. This beautiful girl, with her deep violet eyes and wonderful red-gold hair, clad in her trim costume of lawn and serge, seemed to him like a creature from an undreamed-of world, and as remote from him as if thousands of miles separated them. He sighed as Joan went on with her examination—
“I suppose you have come to fetch some of your big friend’s belongings?” she said pleasantly.
For answer Buck suddenly flung out a protecting arm.
“Say, you’re sure getting mussed with that dirty litter,” he said almost reproachfully. “See, your fixin’s are right agin it. Say——”
Joan laughed outright at his look of profound concern.
“That doesn’t matter a bit,” she exclaimed. “I must get used to being ‘mussed-up.’ You see, I’m a farmer—now.”
The other’s concern promptly vanished. He loved to hear her laugh.
“You never farmed any?” he asked.
“Never.” Joan shook her head in mock seriousness. “Isn’t it desperate of me? No, I’m straight from a city.”
Buck withdrew his gaze from her face and glanced out at the hills. But it was only for a moment. His eyes came back as though drawn by a magnet.
“Guess you’ll likely find it dull here—after a city,” he said at last. “Y’ see, it’s a heap quiet. It ain’t quiet to me, but then I’ve never been to a city—unless you call Leeson Butte a city. Some folks feel lonesome among these big hills.”
“I don’t think I shall feel lonesome,” Joan said quickly. “The peace and quiet of this big world is all I ask. I left the city to get away from—oh, from the bustle of it all! Yes, I want the rest and quiet of these hills more than anything else in the world.”
The passionate longing in her words left Buck wondering. But he nodded sympathetically.
“I’d say you’d get it right here,” he declared. Then he turned toward the great hills, and a subtle change seemed to come over his whole manner. His dark eyes wore a deep, far-away look in which shone a wonderfully tender affection. It was the face of a man who, perhaps for the first time, realizes the extent and depth of his love for the homeland which is his.
“It’s big—big,” he went on, half to himself. “It’s so big it sometimes makes me wonder. Look at ’em,” he cried, pointing out at the purpling distance, “rising step after step till it don’t seem they can ever git bigger. An’ between each step there’s a sort of world different from any other. Each one’s hidden all up, so pryin’ eyes can’t see into ’em. There’s life in those worlds, all sorts of life. An’ it’s jest fightin’, lovin’, dyin’, eatin’, sleepin’, same as everywhere else. There’s a big story in ’em somewhere—a great big story. An’ it’s all about the game of life goin’ on in there, jest the same as it does here, an’ anywher’. Yes, it’s a big story and hard to read for most of us. Guess we don’t ever finish readin’ it, anyway—until we die. Don’t guess they intended us to. Don’t guess it would be good for us to read it easy.”
He turned slowly from the scene that meant so much to him, and smiled into Joan’s astonished eyes.
“An’ you’re goin’ to git busy—readin’ that story?” he asked.
The startled girl found herself answering almost before she was aware of it.
“I—I hope to,” she said simply.
Then she suddenly realized her own smallness. She felt almost overpowered with the bigness of what the man’s words had shown her. It was wonderful to her the thought of this—this “scallawag.” The word flashed through her mind, and with it came an even fuller realization of Mrs. Ransford’s stupidity. The man’s thought was the poet’s insight into Nature’s wonderlands. He was speaking of that great mountain world as though it were a religion to him, as if it represented some treasured poetic ideal, or some lifelong, priceless friendship.
She saw his answering nod of sympathy, and sighed her relief. Just for one moment she had been afraid. She had been afraid of some sign of pity, even contempt. She felt her own weakness without that. Now she was glad, and went on with more confidence.
“I’m going to start from the very beginning,” she said, with something akin to enthusiasm. “I’m going to start here—right here, on my very own farm. Surely the rudiments must lie here—the rudiments that must be mastered before the greater task of reading that story is begun.” She turned toward the blue hills, where the summer clouds were wrapped about the glistening snowcaps. “Yes,” she cried, clasping her hands enthusiastically, “I want to learn it all—all.” Suddenly she turned back and looked at him with a wonderful, smiling simplicity. “Will you help me?” she said eagerly. “Perhaps—in odd moments? Will you help me with those—lessons?”