CHAPTER XXVIIIBy the Wayside
THE horses moved along together in friendly rivalry. Pedro gave way not an inch to his black friend. He displayed no sign of the fatigue of the double journey of the day before. There was no leanness about his flanks. There was no droop of his crested neck. The spirit of the thoroughbred was abounding. The powerful body was tireless.
Blanche had carried out her purpose. Early morning had found her on the trail again with her untiring horse. Her anxiety for her brother was something approaching weakness. There could be no peace of mind for her until she was assured of his safety, and he had learned all she had to tell him. So she had set out soon after sunrise, taking the trail of the Three-Way Creek in the hope of intercepting him on his way home.
She had discovered Jim at the water-hole on the creek that flowed through the heart of Dan Quinlan’s valley, where Molly had first met him. Her relief was intense. It was as though a great weight had been lifted from her shoulders. And as they rode on together down the valley on their way home she heard the story of Dan’s trouble, and eased her own anxiety by imparting to Jim the whole of the story which Lightning had told her.
Jim’s comment at the conclusion of her story was characteristic. The threat to himself, and to his enterprise in the Valley of Hope, did not seem to concern him at all. He brushed it aside as unworthy of serious consideration. But the story of McFardell’s treatment ofMolly, and of her apparent ill-health and grief, stirred him profoundly.
“You know, Sis, folks like us don’t have to worry for the thing the other feller’s doing,” he said, with a seriousness which hinted at the depth of feeling she had stirred. “It means nothing against you, and nothing against Larry. And as for the boys we’ve passed shelter to, we can get them all clear away before the worst McFardell can do could begin to hand us a nightmare. What’s left? There’s only the tug between me and him, and the thought of that makes me glad.”
Jim’s eyes searched ahead, where the forest broke, giving way to the grass flat which he remembered to have been the grazing-ground of Molly’s truant cows. And Blanche watched the cold, hard light take possession of them.
“No,” he went on. “It’s not our show that worries me a thing. It’s that little girl, with her eyes as innocent as a child’s. It’s the thing you tell me of her. It’s the thing that cur has done to her. Don’t you see, Sis? She’s her father’s daughter, the man who helped me when all help seemed impossible. But that’s not all. I want that little girl for myself. And I—I feel like making a break for her place right now.”
“What could you do, Jim?” Blanche asked anxiously.
She was troubled at the mood which she recognised lying behind the man’s manner. Jim shook his head.
“That’s the trouble,” he said almost moodily. “What could I do that would help her? You see, she loves that skunk. It seems queer, Sis. There’s just nothing I wouldn’t do to help her, and I’m helpless as a babe. Half the time it’s that way with things. The real opportunity to help is the rarest thing in our lives. Out of some sort of generous, fool impulse we jump in and act, and it’s only once in a century the thing a feller does that way is real help. Look at this, now. There’s that poor, lone girl.She’s grieving and sick. Money? It’s no sort of use to her. It’s unthinkable. She’s not looking for that help. Can I pass her back her man? Not a thing. And she’s sick in body and mind. Is there anything I could do, or say, that would heal those? It sets me crazy to think the way I’m fixed. Her father’s always in my mind. So are that kid’s pretty eyes, and her figure, that’s so like yours. Say, she’s a babe—a babe of these hills; and I can’t pass her the hand of comfort I’m yearning to.”
Blanche was closely observing, and she read the depths of emotion that were driving him so hard. His grief was all unconcealed. The sorrowful regret in his tone and words hurt her.
“But do you make it that he really has deserted her?” she asked, seeking the best she could find in the darkness of it all. “You don’t think he’s taken to the trail for the while, looking for you? It occurred to me it might be so. And when he was through he’d get back to her. For obvious reasons I couldn’t say that to either Molly or Lightning.”
Jim shook his head again.
“If you think that way, Sis, you don’t know men,” he said quietly. “But you don’t think that. I guess you think the way I’m thinking. You’re trying to find hope for that little kid, and there isn’t a cent’s worth that way. A boy can hate another good. He can yearn to avenge an injury all the time. But, even so, the girl that boy loves is first turn, surely. Certainly it would be in this case. Where’s the reason in not telling her the thing he’s doing? If he’s to spend months chasing me up, why not tell Molly, and save her grieving? Why quit his farm? Why sell it up? Why a mystery? He’s quit her. He’s quit her cold, Sis. He was crazy for her; she was crazy for him. Yet he quits her cold, without a quarrel, right after that dance. That boy needs gun-play.”
They rode on in silence. They had crossed the bluegrass flat. They had re-entered the woods. And now their way carried them into the mouth of the gorge of Three-Way Creek.
It was Blanche who finally broke the silence. It was as if her words were literally wrung from her.
“Oh, Jim, it’s just terrible,” she cried, in a storm of distress she could no longer hide. “I’ve been thinking, thinking. I can’t help it. Maybe it’s awful of me. But—but I believe—I know.”
The man glanced round sharply. There was a fierce, hot light in his usually smiling eyes. For an instant Blanche felt herself compelled as her horrified gaze met his. She felt he was reading through and through her, seeking the hideous thought that prompted her distress. Then he turned away, and his only response was a deliberate inclination of his head.
They had ridden miles up the gorge of Three-Way Creek. And then—and then, as they came in sight of the smiling waters of the lagoon-like pool which formed the headwaters of the creek, the whole of the tragedy was revealed.
Molly’s pinto mare, Rachel, was grazing peacefully on such rank grass as grew amidst the confusion of rocks. The little creature was saddled and bridled. But the saddle was empty, and the mare was free to stray as her mood inclined her.
It was Blanche who first beheld her and cried out. She flung out a pointing hand.
“Jim!” she cried. “Look! Molly’s mare! There! Ahead by the water. What is she——”
But her words were lost as her horse leapt forward. And Jim followed hard on her heels.
As she came to the edge of the lagoon Blanche flungherself out of the saddle. She had moved on searching amongst the boulders. There was no doubt in her mind, none whatever. Molly’s mare saddled and bridled as she was, had not strayed into the gorge. She had been ridden there. Molly must be there, too.
Jim was left to round up the mare.
Blanche’s discovery came quickly. There it was, huddled and still, lying under the lea of an up-standing rock, perilously adjacent to where the rippling surface of the lagoon lapped against the stone. She dropped upon her knees. She set her arms about the poor limp body, and raised it so that she could gaze into the ashen face of the girl she had come to love so deeply. It was Molly. It was Molly looking like death, and wholly unconscious.
What had happened? Why was Molly here at these headwaters, so far from her home? Had her pinto fallen with her? And what had she been doing here at the water’s edge?
Blanche glanced up at the sound of Jim’s approach over the stones.
“I’m not sure she isn’t—dead,” she said, in hushed tones.
“Not—dead!”
There was that in the man’s voice Blanche had never heard before. In a moment he was kneeling beside her, studying the death-like face. The eyes were half closed, and looked fixed and utterly lifeless. The lips were without colour. The gently swelling bosom was still—so ominously still.
“There’s a bruise, but no cut,” he said, indicating her forehead, and shaking his white head. “That wouldn’t have killed her. No.”
He picked up one of the girl’s limp arms. He raised it. Then he laid it down again with infinite gentleness. Again he shook his head.
“She’s not dead,” he said emphatically.
“No.”
Blanche’s reply came mechanically. She was struggling with the fear that possessed her. Then her courage seemed to return. She drew a deep breath, and relinquished the girl to the man’s support while she sat back on her heels.
“She’s badly crashed, anyway,” she said. “She’s been thrown or fallen from her pony. But—why here? Why at the edge of the water? What was she doing here, anyway? My!”
She watched Jim’s movements. He was gently stroking the broad white forehead, removing the loose hair which had fallen over it. He laid his finger-tips upon the girl’s temples. Then, very carefully, he endeavoured to raise an eyelid. After that he laid her gently back on the ground.
The next moment he was on his feet, and Blanche too, stood up. He stared about him at the dark scene which the sun was endeavouring to lighten. And for awhile he remained lost in thought.
He was gazing up at the western hillside, where the mouth of a great cavern yawned, and out of which a shallow stream cascaded down over a tatter of rocks to the lagoon below. It was the same on three sides. Towering hills surrounded a narrow amphitheatre, that was darkly forbidding by reason of the immensity of height that crowded it, and the pine woods which edged the lagoon. The waters reflected the gloomy scene, and the sun, slanting its blaze of light, transformed the clear depths into a mirror of dancing light.
The place appeared to be a sort of dead end. To any who knew nothing of the tunnel exit it literally was a dead end. There was no apparent outlet other than that which the flowing waters had made for themselves down the gorge. For the rest, a barrier stood up, shutting it off from the mountain heart beyond.
There were three streams, which, pouring down thehillsides, fed the lagoon, and subsequently the creek. There was one to the north, one coming down the southern hillside, and that which tumbled headlong out of the mouth of the cavern set so far up on the face of the western hills.
The whole place seemed to be a barrier designed by Nature in her most secret mood—a barrier which was the whole salvation of those who lived in the world of hills beyond it. But the passage was there. It was there through the yawning mouth of the cavern. And it was approached by a long inclined path set on a narrow ledge, which rose diagonally from the foot of the southern hill and made its devious way across its precipitous face.
At last Jim turned from his contemplation of the splashing water pouring from the cavern mouth. He glanced across at the three horses tethered at the edge of the surrounding forest. Blanche urged him.
“We need to act quick,” she said, her troubled eyes gazing down at the object of their pity. Then: “What—what are we to do?”
“Do? Do?”
A great light was shining in the man’s eyes. It was a smile of hope such as Blanche had never known in him. It was as though the tragedy they had discovered had furnished him with something he had never looked for, as though a great overwhelming desire of his had been suddenly fulfilled.
“She’s going right up the valley. That poor little kid isn’t dead. She’s just sick to death. Do? Why, she needs all the help we can hand her. It’s my chance. It’s the thing I’ve dreamed. I’m going to pay her father through her. And I’m going to pay with both hands.”
Jim Pryse’s purpose was carried out without regard toany consequences. His impulse was irresistible. Blanche had protested half-heartedly, but her protests had been swept aside. She had warned him of the danger to himself and to others in the thing he was about to do. And he had laughed. She had reminded him of Lightning, and Molly’s own home. And again he had only laughed. Then he had displayed that forethought for which Blanche had given him no credit.
His plan was simple, as his plans always were. He had thought out the whole thing at the express speed which was ever his way. His purpose alone mattered. All objections that might fairly be raised against it were only things to be ignored, and, in a few moments, the whole thing had been agreed between them. In the end Blanche gladly enough undertook her share in the work.
It was arranged that they should change horses, for two perfectly sound reasons. In the first place, Beelzebub was the fresher of the two, and he was high strung and nervous, and would be difficult when asked to carry that which looked so like a dead human body. So it was decided that Pedro, the infinitely more steady, should carry Molly and Jim up to the valley.
The change of saddles effected, Blanche assisted in lifting Molly across the front of Jim’s saddle. When Jim had mounted, and raised her into his arms, and, supporting her, had set off up the queer ledge path to the cavern mouth from which the sparkling waters cascaded, Blanche watched him, confident but anxious. She watched the graceful, docile sorrel plod its way up the familiar path. She saw it pause for a moment at the entrance to the tunnel, while Jim shifted his burden to a position of greater security. Then the beast stepped into the shallow flood, and splashing its way up the stream, became swallowed up by the darkness out of which the waters leapt.
With a sigh of relief she turned to Beelzebub andsprang into the saddle, to carry out her part in the arrangements. There were some twenty-odd miles of the gorge before she got back to Dan Quinlan’s valley, and after that a few more miles to the Marton farm. Her day had already been long, but she gave no thought to her own comfort. She was determined to do her utmost for Molly and for her brother.
Molly’s pinto was willing enough to be led back to its home, so she removed the little creature’s reins, hanging over the horn of her saddle, and, linking her arm through them, set off downstream in quest of Lightning and the farm.