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The day came when it seemed safe for Haig to stand and to move a little about the cave. He had fashioned slowly a pair of rude crutches, if they could be so called,––two pine limbs trimmed down with his pocketknife, with their natural forks left to fit under his arms. Marion protested that he was attempting this feat much too soon, but she was compelled to watch him in an agony of suspense lest he should fall on the hard floor of the cave, or rest his weight on the injured leg, and so undo all that had cost them so much of care and labor. But caution restrained him; for he was aware of the danger, though he was also half-mad with impatience to be a man once more. Venturing only a few tentative steps at first, he steadily accustomed himself to movement with the aid of the awkward crutches, and in a few days was able to take up some of the work of their wretched habitation. Marion saw that this pleased him immensely, almost as if he had been a boy entrusted with a man’s responsibility; and once, too, she saw him stand a long time before the row of notches on the wall, and thought his figure straightened, and a flush came into his pale cheek.
And then, in the sixth week of their imprisonment, Marion fell ill. She had caught a cold, which was not the first by any means, but much more severe than its predecessors. With watery eyes and red noses and distressing coughs they had become familiar, but this was plainly a more serious matter. For three days more she dragged herself about, trying to conceal her state from him and from herself, but crying softly when he did not see her.
One morning, as the dawn crept into the cavern, she308tried as usual to rise from her hard bed, and fell back with a stifled moan. Haig heard her, and raised his head quickly, struck by an unaccustomed note in her low cry.
“What is it, Marion?” he asked in alarm.
“It’s no use, dear!” she whispered. “I can’t get up.”
For a moment he lay stricken, incapable of thought. Not that the event was unexpected. He had been reckoning on that; he had seen her steadily failing, and knew that she could not go on indefinitely under such privations. And yet, when it came, it was appalling. The grayness of the cave settled down upon him like a pall. Once he would have been indifferent to it, resigned to the knowledge that it was inevitable. But now he had come, if not to share her hope, at least to sympathize with it, and to wish ardently for her sake that her faith might be justified. And it seemed a pitiable thing that she should have been deceived, an intolerable thing that she should die there so uselessly,––for him.
He moved over to her, and placed his hand on her forehead. It was burning hot.
“Water, please!” she gasped.
He hobbled to the entrance, and brought a cupful of snow, and melted it over the fire. She drank the water greedily, and begged for more. But he told her gently that she must wait a little while. Then he sat thinking. What should be done with fever? It would probably be pneumonia, or something as fatal. And it would take her as the north wind takes the drooping petals of a rose.
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He bent over her, and tried to soothe her with such futile words as came. The look she gave him went straight into deep, dark cells of his being that he thought had been closed and sealed forever. She begged him to eat; he must cook his own breakfast. Oh, but he must eat, or he should not be able to help her, she said. She would be quite well in a day or two; she was sure of that; and he must not get sick too. After he had been so patient and so good to her!
Haig turned away with a groan, and tried to obey her. But eat? Eat that repulsive food that he had choked down these many days only to please her, only to subscribe to her foolish faith? He could not! But presently she raised her head, and saw that he was not eating, and chided him. Whereupon he swallowed some morsels of the venison, and assured her that he had eaten heartily.
All that day she lay there, her face flushed, her eyes gleaming with a brightness that was more than the brightness of her indomitable spirit. When she smiled up at him he turned his face away that she might not see what he knew was written on it. And then he realized how much that smile had come to mean to him––how all unawares he had come to covet and to prize it––how he had half-consciously of late resorted to unexpected words and gestures to coax it to her lips.
There was no sleep for either of them that night. The next day Marion grew steadily worse, and toward evening she became delirious. And there was no concealment in this delirium as there had been in his. All that he had not seen and heard and guessed before was now wholly revealed to him. He was permitted to310see deep into the pure soul of the girl, into her very heart that was brimming over with love for him. His name came riding on every breath. It was Philip, Philip, Philip! And bit by bit, and fragment by fragment, he heard all the pitiful story of her love, of her petty stratagems, of the wicked little plot she had made, of the traps from which he had extricated himself, of the pretended sprain in her ankle, of her watching and waiting, of the anguish he had caused her, of her solitary communion with the stars on Mount Avalanche, of her dismissal of Hillyer, of her faith in the love that should not be denied and unrequited, of her prayers for a miracle that should bring him to her at last.
He looked down at the poor, small foot in its ragged shoe; yes, that was the foot that was “sprained.” And how it had trudged, and dragged itself along for him, when every bone and muscle of her body ached! He looked at her hands, thin even in their swollenness, raw and bleeding, hard as a laborer’s on the palms. How they had toiled and bled for him! For him! And what about him? What about Philip Haig?
He leaned back from her, and closed his eyes. And suddenly it seemed as if something fell away from them, as if something that had bound and imprisoned and blinded him had been rudely shattered. In one terrible, torturing revelation he saw clearly what he had been, what he had done, what a miserable wreck he had made of life, what a pitiable, dwarfed, misshapen thing his soul had become in comparison with the soul of this girl whom he had despised. He saw that he had lived a life of almost untouched egoism, setting his own wrongs above all the other wrongs in the world,311counting his own griefs the greatest of all griefs, nursing his own tragedy as if it had been the first tragedy and the last. Bitterly, remorselessly he reviewed his selfishness, his hatred, his senseless rage, the heartlessness wrought by himself in a nature that had been, in the beginning, as pure, if not as precious and fine and beautiful, as hers.
And that was not all. He had taken woman for the special object of his hatred. He had made himself believe that all women were alike. Was there, then, only one kind of woman in a world filled with many kinds of men? Because he had been a fool, because he had been deceived by one woman, he had concluded, in his folly, that every woman was a vampire or a parasite,––“a rag and a bone and a hank of hair”!
And now there lay before him indeed (and the words took on a new and more terrible meaning) “a rag and a bone and a hank of hair.” Yes, this was all that was left of her. This was what he had made of the most joyous and most beautiful creature that had ever crossed his path; this was the best he could do for one who had had the misfortune to love him and the courage to tell him so. This was his work! His memory went back to that day before the post-office. How beautiful she was then, how strangely beautiful, coming out of that halo of light by the side of the golden outlaw. Something had stirred within him then, as it had stirred again and again: at Huntington’s when she reached for his revolver; in his cottage that last afternoon of her nursing. And he had repulsed it, put it down, and trampled on it, as if it had been an execrable thing instead of the very treasure he had been312seeking all his life without knowing what he sought. And now he recognized it for what it was––too late!
He bent nearer to her, listening.
“Philip! Philip!” she was saying, in tender, coaxing accents, with that quivering of her chin that had many times been almost irresistible.
Then came the final break-up of everything within him. He felt lifted as upon a flood, and a wild and passionate longing surged through all his being. He leaned swiftly over her, and clasped her in his arms, and pressed her hot cheek against his own. And then––it was unendurable; he felt one of her arms softly encircling his neck. There was just one gentle pressure, and then the arm fell to her side, and her head sank weakly away from him. He laid her back tenderly on her hard bed.
He sat up again, looking at her and listening. She rambled on in half-coherent speech. She had not heard him cry out her name; or if she had heard him it had been only a part of her fevered dreams. And this was the crowning bitterness: that he should want to speak to her, to tell her that he loved her, and she could not hear; that he was too late, and she would never know.
He leaped to his feet in a whirling tempest of rage. He stumbled to the mouth of the cave, and thrust himself half through the barricade, and looked out into the wilderness of snow, and stood shaking his fist at it, quivering with passion, and uttering the wildest imprecations upon the world, upon the outlaw, and upon himself. And gradually they centered upon himself alone; and he stood presently, as it were, naked before313God, with something like a prayer unspoken, a silent, voiceless petition rising from his tortured soul.
He became calm after that. A curious peace, it seemed, had flowed in upon him. Mechanically he renewed the fire, brought water and held it to Marion’s lips, and eased her position on the bed. Then he sat by her side to wait!
Well, this was the end. She would be going soon,––to-morrow, or the day after. He glanced toward the shelf where Marion’s rifle and his revolver lay. She would not be there now to snatch the weapon from his hand! But she would be waiting for him. And there came back to him the strange feeling he had experienced in his cottage––the pressure of her hand still warm on his own––her hand helping up and up and out of the Valley of the Shadow. And her hand would be stretched out for him––in the Beyond––
It must have been about the middle of the next forenoon––he had ceased to reckon time, and there were no more notches cut on the black wall of the cave––when Philip, sitting at Marion’s side, observed a curious, restless movement of her head. She had lain all morning in a stupor, very still, with only an occasional murmur from her dry lips. But now, moving her head from side to side, she tried to lift it, as if to listen.
“What is it, Marion?” asked Haig, leaning close to her.
“Listen!” she whispered.
He obeyed her, or pretended to, and turned an ear toward the mouth of the cavern. The wind was up314with its wailing and its snarls and shrieks. He heard it for a moment, then looked at her again.
“My poor girl! My poor Marion!” he said.
“Listen!” she repeated, with a touching emphasis, almost childish, almost petulant.
He heard the storm.
“Yes, Marion,” he said, humoring her.
“Can’t you hear it?” she pleaded. “Listen!”
It was the delirium again; she was hearing things that were not, except in her disordered mind. Perhaps––he had read somewhere that the dying, those of them that are pure at heart, sometimes hear the calling of the––
“Somebody’s––coming!” she cried in the thinnest, most childlike treble. Her face shone; she tried to sit up; she raised one hand feebly toward him.
“Please lie down, dear!” pleaded Haig, pressing her gently back.
She resisted him, smiling and frowning at the same time.
“Be––very––still. And––listen!” she persisted.
To please her, he sat erect, and listened. They were very still then, one of her hands between both of his. And the storm was raging. It was wilder, wilder. All the fury of Thunder Mountain seemed to be behind the wind that came shrieking and bellowing down the gulch.
The seconds passed, with dead silence in the cave, and that bedlam let loose outside.
Then suddenly Haig lifted his head. What was it? There seemed to have come––No, it was but a mocking voice of the hurricane, one of the myriad voices of that wintry inferno, mocking them with a half-human315cry. He looked sadly down at Marion, and saw that wondrous smile again upon her emaciated face. Oh, but this was maddening! Yet because she wished it, he listened again. And then, out of that tumult––very faint and far––
“My God! My God!” he shouted.
He leaped to his feet. He forgot his crutches. He flung himself across the floor of the cave in three reckless bounds, flung himself on the barrier of logs and limbs, clawing it like a maniac, or a wild beast, tore his way through it, and stood in the snow on the platform, calling into the storm, shrieking, bellowing, out-shrieking and out-bellowing the storm, swaying dizzily in the wind, and clutching at the air before him in a frenzy.
316CHAPTER XXVIIITHE MAN WHO DID NOT FORGET
Out of the tempest came the answering halloo; and Haig redoubled his outcries. Twice it came, whipped and broken by the wind; and then there was but the wind itself. Exhausted by his efforts, and sick of desperation and despair, Haig sank back weakly against the rock. Round and round him whirled the snow; across his face the wind cut him with savage lashes; in his ears there was nothing, nothing but the storm. Then, all grew black before him. After all, it had been an hallucination; he had been as mad as Marion in her delirium; he had peopled the storm with imaginary beings, had given the wind a voice it did not know. Crushed by disappointment, acknowledging the end, he was sinking down upon the snow-covered platform, when, suddenly––
“Hal-lo-o-o!”
It was nearer and louder than before. Haig straightened up, and again filled the tumultuous air with hoarse cries. Once more the voice came; and then out of the white chaos at the right of the cave, almost level with the platform, a dark form appeared, striding forward with a peculiar swinging motion, clumsily but sure.
Haig uttered one more call that dribbled into a sobbing cry.
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“All––right!” answered the figure, in a smothered tone.
Huge, hunchbacked and cumbersome, the figure shuffled up the slight slope between the level of the snow and the snowy platform, and halted. A mittened hand went up to its head, and brushed the snow from the face.
“Pete!” cried Haig.
He attempted to move forward, stumbled, lunged toward the Indian, and collapsed in his arms. Pete, holding him, looked around until he saw the opening of the cave, and fairly carried Haig inside. For a few seconds, seeing nothing in the sudden change from the dazzling whiteness of the snow to the dim red light of the cavern, Pete stood still. Then Haig stiffened, stood erect, and pushed the Indian from him.
“There! Look!” he gasped, pointing to where Marion lay, wild-eyed on the bed, wrapped in her blankets. Then he sank down on the floor, with his back against the wall, and gave himself up to dizziness and exhaustion.
Pete quickly removed his thick mittens, unstrapped the bundle that rested on his back, and took off the snowshoes that had caused his approach over the snow to appear so like a lumbering animal’s. Flinging all these on the floor, he went swiftly to Marion’s side, and knelt there.
“Sick?” he asked.
She did not answer, but stared at him, and smiled.
“Listen!” she whispered. “Somebody––coming!”
Pete stood up, and looked at Haig.
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“How long like this?” he asked.
“I forget. Three or four days.”
“You well?”
“Yes,” Haig answered weakly.
Pete came closer, and pointed to the leg that Haig kept thrust stiffly out before him.
“Broke?”
“Yes.”
“How long?”
“Six weeks.”
The Indian asked no more questions just then, but hastened to open his pack. First he found a bottle of whisky, and made Haig take a long drink. Pete believed in two remedies for all human ills. He had a brew of herbs that he had inherited from his tribal ancestors, his sole inheritance besides his iron body. This brew was good for fevers; and whisky was good for everything else. Having doctored Haig with the whisky, he now turned to Marion with the brew. From a flask he poured some of the dark brown liquid into a cup, let it come just to a boil among the embers of the fire, and when it had cooled a little placed it to Marion’s lips. It was bitter, and she tried to draw away from it, but Pete forced her gently to drain the cup.
Whatever the brew might be worth, the whisky certainly was efficacious. Haig sat erect, and began hurling questions at the Indian.
“How did you get in here––in God’s name?” was the first.
“Black Lake country.”
“But how did you get in there?”
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“Simpson’s Pass.”
Haig stared at him. He knew that to reach Simpson’s Pass the Indian must have gone far south below the canyon of the Big Bear, made a wide detour over the lower range, and ascended to the Pass around the shoulder of Big Bear Mountain. He had never heard of the Pass being crossed in winter, and it was almost unbelievable.
“But the snow!” he exclaimed.
Pete pointed to the snowshoes.
“But the Pass doesn’t let into the Black Lake country,” said Haig. “There’s another range of mountains.”
“Yes. I come over them.”
“How long did it take you?”
“I been four weeks. But most of time looking in forest down there.”
“But how did you find us?”
The Indian drew from his pocket a ragged and soiled piece of paper, and spread it out on the floor. It was a crude map, with Paradise Park outlined at one side, and at the other a labyrinth of lines and stars and crosses. The stars were peaks, the crosses were foothills, and the lines were creeks and valleys. Through the maze ran one heavier line that indicated the trail through the Black Lake country up to the cliff at the back of Thunder Mountain.
“Old Parker made it,” said Pete.
“Tell me all!” commanded Haig. “But wait!” He pointed to Marion.
Marion’s babbling had slowly subsided, and ceased. Pete rose and went to her noiselessly on his moccasined320feet; and after looking at her a moment stepped cautiously back.
“She quiet now. Sleep soon,” he said.
And it was so. The next time he slipped over to her, the girl’s eyes were closed, and soon she had sunk into a profound slumber from which she did not awake until late the next morning.
Meanwhile Pete took up his story. Smythe had delivered Marion’s message, and had told them what he feared. Claire’s knowledge of the state of Marion’s heart and mind enabled her to guess the worst, but Seth scouted the idea of her trying to reach the top of Thunder Mountain, or of Murray permitting her to try it. So two days were lost before the alarm was sounded by Murray, who, after two attempts to reach the top of the mountain, had given up and ridden to the Park for help.
The whole valley responded to the call, and the most desperate efforts were made to reach the plateau, but the storms that Haig and Marion had heard in their sheltered gulch were of such fury and continuity that the hardiest of the ranchmen were unable to prevail against them. Huntington, half-crazed by the thought of the two days he had allowed to be lost, had gone farther than any of the others, and had been rescued with difficulty by some of his neighbors, who found him lying senseless at the foot of the ascent to the Devil’s Chair, where the wind had hurled him back down the slope. Smythe was among those who saved him, for the little tutor had let the last stage go without him, and was one of the most reckless in the attacks on the mountain.
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All these efforts having failed, and the winter having fallen with exceptional suddenness and severity, even. Huntington was forced to accept the general opinion that nothing more could be done; that they could only wait for summer, when they could go to the mountain top and bring back Marion’s body––and doubtless Haig’s too. And so, said Huntington, the feud was ended.
One person alone in the Park refused to admit all this. Pete was forced indeed to admit it in theory, but he was resolved to prove it or disprove it on his own account. He had studied Thunder Mountain from the ridge above the ranch house all that day of Sunnysides’ escape, and the next. And he remembered now that a period of calm had followed the storm on that second day. If Haig or Marion, or both of them, had by chance reached the flat top in that interval, they might have crossed, and might be now somewhere in the forests on the other side.
He went to Parker, talked with him long about the character of the Black Lake country, induced him to draw the crude map, and then visited Seth and Claire. Seth shook his head gloomily, but Claire eagerly proceeded to assemble enough supplies to have loaded down a pack horse. There followed a pitifully comical struggle with her before her “first aid” was reduced to what Pete could carry in his canvas knapsack,––a small roll of underwear, needles and thread, bandages and a packet of household medicines in addition to Pete’s own selection of a strip of bacon, a dozen onions, two score of vegetable soup tablets, two cans of condensed milk, small quantities of coffee and tea, salt and pepper, two cakes of322soap and (especially insisted on by Pete) a plug of black tobacco and a pipe.
All these supplies Pete had saved untouched, living himself on game shot on the long journey. For nearly five weeks he had struggled against unbelievable hardships, fighting like primitive man against the fiercest enmity of nature; had searched the whole Black Lake country; and that day, slowly following the direction of the trail up through the narrowing gulch among the tree tops, the smell of smoke was brought to his nostrils on the wind, and he traced it along the foot of the cliff.
“But did you really expect to find us alive?” asked Haig.
“No.”
“Then why did you do all this?”
“All I could do. Indian never forgets.”
Thereupon he brought out Haig’s pipe and his own, and they smoked over it in silence, late into the night.
Marion awoke the next morning with another look in her eyes. Her fever was still high, but she was no longer delirious. Too feeble to ask questions, she only smiled, and took obediently the remainder of the potion that Pete poured from his flask and heated in the tin-cup among the embers. On her wakening again it was seen that the fever was broken. But life in her was only a tiny flame, at times the merest spark that every gust of wind through the cavern threatened to extinguish. Hour after hour Haig and the Indian watched it, the one in such anguish as the repentant murderer suffers as he kneels over the poor victim of his rage, the other in stolid resignation, seeing that perhaps he had come too late.
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But the spark was the bravest little spark in the world; and it did not go out. In time Pete dared to give Marion a little weakened milk; and then, when she responded to the milk, a few sips of soup that was scarcely thicker than water. And thus from day to day they nursed her back to some recognizable shadow of what she had been two months before.
There came an evening when they sat down to a veritable feast. Haig had stubbornly refused to taste any of the delicacies in Pete’s store, excepting salt and pepper. Besides, with seasoning, the venison was no longer quite repugnant to his palate; and he and the Indian did very well on that until the feast was spread. And it was a feast remembered. There was soup, to begin with, drunk from the two cups they now possessed; then a rabbit stew, seasoned withSALT AND PEPPER, and flavored with anONION; and black coffee (very black indeed, to be quite exact). Then Haig’s and Pete’s pipes were lighted; and the Indian must tell them again the story of the rescue; and let the wind howl its savagest!
“Poor Claire!” said Marion, with a tremulous little laugh, when Pete told her how the knapsack was packed.
And Haig looked across at her dizzily, as if the fumes of the strong tobacco had gone to his head.
Their situation was still miserable enough, but the Indian contrived to make it less unendurable. He knew some knacks of cookery that availed to make their venison and rabbit palatable; and the tea and coffee cheered them beyond all possibility of expression. No longer required to toil; with clean underwear; with324soap for her blackened face and hands, Marion recovered her strength, or much of it, with amazing swiftness. Pete made a rough coat and even a skirt for her of deerskin. The coat was of double thickness, and very warm indeed, and so she gave back to Haig the remnant of the leather coat she had been wearing, which was now needed to cover his ragged corduroy. Then came moccasins, and better crutches for Haig; and so they settled down with new courage for what they thought would be a long wait through the implacable winter.
Haig kept his secret, or supposed he was keeping it. Marion did not indeed remember how he had taken her in his arms in her delirium; rather, if there was a faint but insistent recollection of the embrace it was intangible and unreal. She had dreamed so often of that longed-for embrace that the reality was inseparable from the imagined. Nor was she aware of the revelation that had come to Haig, as if a dazzling light had broken through the walls of the cavern. But though he might keep his secret he could not conceal from her the change that had come over him, the tenderness and wonder and humility that had succeeded his hardness and scepticism and belligerency. She detected that alteration in every look he gave her, in every movement he made in waiting upon her, in every tone of his speech, though the words were the most commonplace. And in her great faith she was not surprised. But she was thrilled. The knowledge ran through her veins like a living fire, a better nourishment than food, a more potent cure than any medicine.
So the long days, not quite so long as they used to be,325marched on. Despite the skilful services of Pete they were still always cold, always hungry, always weary for want of sleep, and always dirty and unkempt. Then there came a day when Pete astonished them. He brought in from the forest certain small limbs of tough wood, and began to trim them and bend them into shapes that they were presently able to recognize. Snowshoes!
“You don’t mean––Can we do it?” cried Haig incredulously.
“Can’t stay here,” was Pete’s short reply.
True; they could not stay there; it was just what Haig had been thinking, or trying to avoid thinking. But how would Marion be able to endure that terrible journey over Simpson’s Pass? For her part she said nothing, but her eyes met Philip’s; she reached her hand to him, and he clasped it tightly.
Three weeks after Pete’s arrival he began gradually to inure Haig and Marion to living and moving in the snow. He taught them to walk on snowshoes, to climb steep slopes on them, to pick their way among the trees. There were countless falls in deep drifts, and headlong plunges, and ungraceful wallowings in the snow. But they knew their lives depended on these labors, and they were even able to laugh at some of their awkward performances. These exercises were, moreover, very good for them. Ill-nourished though they were, the natural color crept back into their cheeks, the blood flowed briskly again, through their chilled veins, their muscles were strengthened by their struggles with the winds and the snow that still came on with unremitted vigor. Then Pete went a step farther in the preparations for the crucial test. Not only must they spend the greater326part of the day outside the cave, but they must sleep, or try to sleep, a few hours every night in the snow, wrapped in their blankets, in holes scooped out under the lee of a snowbank, while the Indian stood guard nearby.
It was near the end of December when Pete thought his charges had become sufficiently hardened to undertake the long journey. The weather, if it had not moderated (it would not begin to moderate there until long after spring had brought out the flowers in the distant Park), had settled a little after its first fury. The storms came with less frequency, and the snow had assumed a certain stability with the steadily added weight. Both Marion and Haig bad mastered their snowshoes, and were able to travel slowly after Pete. Moreover, all the delicacies that Pete had brought had been consumed, despite their most careful husbanding, and even the meager supply of salt and pepper would soon be exhausted, leaving only the unseasoned venison of odious memory.
The night before the day set for their departure, Pete broiled strips of venison sufficient for a week or more, and stowed them in his knapsack. At dawn they were up, and eagerly making the final preparations. Haig and Marion, in their impatience, would have eaten nothing, but the Indian, true to his tribal habit of filling the stomach before a march, insisted that breakfast should be a methodical and leisurely business. From some recess he drew the last soup tablet, the last onion, and the last of the ground coffee, which he had clandestinely saved against this great event. The feast with which they had celebrated Marion’s recovery was327now repeated in celebration of their farewell to the cave,––the soup, the rabbit stew and the black coffee.
Then, when Pete had fastened their snowshoes securely on their moccasined feet, and had gone out to trample down the fresh snow on the platform before the cave, Haig and Marion stood together for a last look upon the scene of their sufferings. They looked at the dying fire, at the flattened beds of boughs, at the long row of notches on the wall, at the crutches lying among the firewood, at crumpled and ragged boots and bits of worn-out clothing.
“Good-by––you!” cried Marion, laughing tremulously, very near to tears.
“Yes, good-by!” said Haig.
That cave––what had it not meant for him! There was his Valley of the Shadow, into which he had again descended to seek and find the better part of him that he had left there long ago.
“Go on out, please!” he said presently. “I’ll come in a minute.”
She looked at him curiously, but obeyed. Haig waited till she had gone, and then shuffled clumsily on his snowshoes across the floor to where, beyond the fire, lay one of Marion’s boots. It was a torn and misshapen thing, the sole worn through, the leather curled up from the open toe. He picked it up hastily, and with a swift glance at the mouth of the cavern, thrust it into an inside pocket of his leather coat.
It was a wonderful, thrilling, terrifying journey, filled with hardships and perils. Caution and sheer toil of travel held them to slow progress. They went328through vast forests, among the very tops of the tall pines; they climbed wide, bare slopes where the winds had almost stripped the snow from the gaunt rocks; they descended into sheltered valleys where the deer went scurrying at their approach; they crossed deep gulches packed half-full of blown and drifted snow; they passed close to the edges of precipices where a false step would have sent them whirling down into white abysses spiked with pines. Storms overtook them, and forced them to remain many hours in such shelter as they could find. Sometimes they slept under overhanging rocks with a fire blazing at their feet, but more often the night was spent in burrows dug in the snow. Their supply of venison ran out, and a day was lost while Pete hunted and killed a deer, and cooked strips of its flesh, to be seasoned with the very last of their salt and pepper, and kept in his knapsack. But even Marion did not lose courage or once falter, though many times her heart was in her mouth and a cold sweat on her forehead as they passed some formidable and terrifying obstacle.
At length, on a bright and glittering day, when it seemed the storms had finally abandoned their enmity, they climbed slowly up the long slopes to Simpson’s Pass, and stood at noon high above a wide and wonderful world of snow, with white mountains succeeding one another, range on range, as far as their eyes could reach before them and behind. And that afternoon, as they toiled around the shoulder of Big Bear Mountain, they stopped and gazed,––Marion with tears streaming down her cheeks, and Haig with his hands clenched tightly at his sides. For there, still far away below them, but329therebeyond all mistake, lay Paradise Park, very white and still and glittering in the sun; and off at the right was Thunder Mountain, squatting among the silver peaks, its sullen head half hidden by gray-black clouds.
330CHAPTER XXIXGHOSTS
The lamp had not been lighted in the sitting-room at Huntington’s, but the pitch log blazing in the great fireplace reddened the farthest corners of the room, and flushed the somber faces of Seth and Claire. Their habit, in these days of grief, was to sit the winter evenings through almost in silence, their self-reproaches long since spent, their hopes turned to ashes, which Claire alone tried sometimes to fan into a glow. They had eaten their supper before twilight, without speech, and then, as always, waited wearily for sleep.
“It will be three months and two weeks to-morrow,” she said, without looking away from the fire.
“Yes,” answered Huntington.
“Isn’t it possible she may have reached––”
“It’s no use, Claire, thinking such things.”
“But Pete! He hasn’t come back, and maybe that means––”
She did not even finish the sentence, which simply faded away on her lips, a useless and foolish conjecture.
Another long silence followed. Seth’s cigarette went out, and hung dead from his bearded lips, while he stared gloomily into the blaze. He sat with his back toward the front door. Claire, near a corner of the big stone chimney, leaned forward, her head inclined to one side, the cheek resting on her open hand, the elbow on331her knee. Her eyes, which had been lifted from their long gazing at the fire at the moment she addressed her husband, were fixed on vacancy, looking past Huntington toward the door that led out upon the veranda, where the rising wind tossed little whirls of snow and dead leaves from the flower garden. She was torturing herself with a conjured vision of a wild, high place among snowbound rocks, in the midst of which a slender figure was slowly sinking down, and a white and stricken face was turned toward her. This was the vision that had become for her the settled picture of Marion’s fate, a picture that was burned into her brain by many, many hours of imagining, day and night.
The wind was howling around the ranch house, wailing among the gables, shrieking across the chimney top. It rattled at the door, as if to fling it open with sudden violence. And what was that? A footstep on the veranda? She shivered; it was only her shaken nerves again! Then came another rattle at the door. It moved. Itwasflung open. And there was the figure of her dream, but strangely and fantastically clad; and with a face that glowed, and lips that were parted in a smile.
For a moment Claire did not move. Then slowly she lifted her head; her eyes grew round and staring, her mouth opened. Seth caught the look; it was one he had seen many times before.
“Claire!” he cried. “Stop that!”
His voice, perhaps, served to break the spell. Claire leaped to her feet. And the next instant there was a voice from the doorway.
“Hello!” said Marion cheerily, in a “good evening”332kind of tone, as if she had returned from the post-office.
Huntington bounded from his chair, and whirled around with an oath,––one oath surely that was forgiven him. But past him, with a scream dashed Claire.
“Marion!” she shrieked.
“Marion!” bellowed Seth.
And then the two women were in each other’s arms, and Seth grabbed one of Marion’s hands, and the air was filled with hysterical cries and mighty, spluttered expletives. Then silence fell, while Claire and Marion wept without restraint, and Huntington searched for his handkerchief without finding it, and strode across the room and back, pounding one clenched hand into the palm of the other. But Marion presently tore herself out of Claire’s embrace, and turned to grab an arm of Pete, who stood just outside the doorway, through which the wind unheeded was flinging snow and leaves into the room.
“Here he is!” cried Marion. “He did it!”
Claire promptly threw her arms around the Indian’s neck, or as nearly around as she could reach, and stood on tiptoe to plant a kiss on his leathery cheek. Huntington too leaped on him, seizing his shoulder and hand, and dragging him farther into the room. Then he broke away, and ran for a bottle; and the two men clicked glasses and drank in silence. And two big chairs were drawn close to the fire for Pete and Marion; and while Claire sat crying softly, and Huntington, between “damns” and “hells,” wiped his eyes with the back of his hand, and Pete sat impressive, Marion quickly narrated the chief incidents of her pursuit of Haig, their long imprisonment, and the rescue.
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“But Haig! Where’s he?” asked Huntington.
“He left us at the junction,” answered Marion.
On that a moment of silence fell. Something in Marion’s face told even Huntington to keep still. But Claire, seeing it, was secretly, wickedly, triumphantly glad. A very practical thought, however, came to her in time to prevent embarrassment, and Seth was sent bustling into the kitchen to relight the fire in the range. The cook had gone to bed, but Claire would get supper for them; for Pete must stay, she insisted. But at this the Indian rose, and said he must go to Haig, who had told him to hurry back for supper with him in the cottage.
“Well, then, Pete,” said Huntington from the door of the kitchen, “you’ll have another drink, anyhow. And you’ll come up to-morrow to tell us how you found them, won’t you?”
Pete promised; the whisky was solemnly drunk again; and the three others followed him to the door.
“But you must have a horse!” said Huntington.
So he jumped past him, and ran to the stable, bellowing for Williams.
“Now take off your coat, Marion!” cried Claire.
“No. Not here,” said Marion. “You’ll see why.”
They waited before the blazing log for Huntington to return, whereupon he was sent to build a fire in Marion’s room. When it was crackling finely, Marion, removed her deerskin coat and skirt. Claire stared at her, gasping; and then sank down on the bed in another fit of weeping. For Marion stood before her in rags and dirt.
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“Oh, but you should have seen me the day Pete came!” cried Marion, with a pathetic little laugh. “I’ve actually got some flesh on my bones now.”
Indescribable luxuries followed: a hot bath, wonderful clean garments, and Claire’s happy fingers combing the tangles out of the tawny hair.
“But I’ll never be really and truly clean again, Claire!” cried Marion ruefully, holding out her hands.
Claire clasped them tenderly, while Marion, on a sudden thought, related to her Haig’s speech about baths; and they laughed together.
“You’ve so many things to tell me,” said Claire, with a curiosity she could not quite repress.
“Yes,” answered Marion, blushing.
It was nearly midnight when they sat down to supper, but none of them cared for time. Marion was not sleepy. She and Haig and Pete had slept well in a deserted cabin the last night of their journey, before a huge fire, in circumstances positively pleasant in comparison with what they had passed through. But she was hungry. As she never expected to be really and truly clean again, she doubted that she should ever get enough to eat. Claire did the best she could on that score, and that was something. There was chicken with cream gravy; and potatoes, baked in their skins, and seasoned with butter and salt and paprika; and three kinds of jelly to be spread on buttered toast; and angel cake. In the midst of the feast there were steps on the veranda, and a knock on the door; and Curly appeared, bearing two bottles of champagne.
“Mr. Haig says you’re all to drink Pete’s health, an’ he ought to live to be a hundred,” said Curly, grinning,335and gazing in wonderment at Marion, whose exploit had caused her to assume somewhat the nature of a goddess in his simple mind.
When the door had closed on Curly, Huntington stood for a moment awkwardly holding the bottles, an expression almost of consternation on his face. He had once made some remarks about Haig’s champagne. But he had the sense not to act the part of a skeleton at the feast. Pete’s health was drunk by all; and might he live to be a hundred!
In another hour Marion was in bed, in a real bed, in her own pink room, between sweet, clean sheets, and warm again at last, but shivering in sheer excess of comfort, and crying a little perhaps from overwhelming joy. For she knew in her heart––something she could not yet tell even Claire.
Bill Craven was mending a bridle by the light of a smoky lantern in the stable, when he saw a ghost. It just opened the door, and walked in, and said, “How are you, Bill?” Craven fell backward off his stool, then leaped to his feet with a yell that caused a commotion among the barn swallows under the eaves, and brought Farrish and Curly tumbling down the ladder from the loft. Thereupon discipline, for which Haig had always been rather a stickler, suffered a bad half hour. They had given him up for lost; and had found on comparing experiences that each of them had many reasons for counting that loss his own. In the days following the attempts to rescue Miss Gaylord, these three had gone about the Park with chips on their shoulders, inviting any outspoken citizen to say to them anything that was336not strictly proper and complimentary about Haig. So now, though the words were few after the first noisy demonstration, they were the kind of words that are worth hearing, from man to man.
Haig and Bill Craven presently compared notes in the matter of “busted” legs. Bill’s had mended much sooner than Haig’s, which was quite easily understood, considering the great difference in their circumstances. Curly had “nigh killed” the sorrels, getting the doctor for Craven, but they were all right now. “Fat and sassy,” Curly added.
“I’ll take some of that out of them, to-morrow,” said Haig. “I’ll want the sleigh, Farrish. Please look after it in the morning.”
Then, seeing their impatience, he told them of Sunnysides’ final escape, and of all the events that followed––as much as was good for them to know.
“But where’s Pete?” asked Craven.
“He went to Huntington’s with Miss Gaylord. He’ll be along soon.”
“Well, jest wait till we git our hands on that damned Indian!” cried Bill. “Eh, men?”
It was evident that there would be a considerable disturbance in the barn on Pete’s arrival.
A few minutes later Haig had his surprise. On entering the cottage he first encountered Slim Jim in the outer room. Perhaps Jim’s face turned a trifle yellower, perhaps his thin legs trembled a little under the sky-blue trousers; but that was about all, except the light that flickered an instant in his eyes.
“Glad you back!” he said simply. “Want supper?”