Ironheart

It is not in youth to be long cast down for the troubles of a stranger, even one who has very greatly engaged the sympathy. In spite of Betty’s anxiety about the wounded man, her resilient spirits had sent her eagerly upon this adventure.

She would see Justin. He would approve her plans with enthusiasm. Together they would ski across the white wastes, they two alone in a vast world of mysterious stillness. The thin clear air of the high Rockies would carry their resonant voices like the chimes of bells. Silences would be significant, laughter the symbol of happy comradeship. For the first time they would come glowing through difficulties, perhaps dangers, conquered side by side. And at the end of the journey waited for them service, that which gave their joyous enterprise the value of an obligation.

And it was not at all like that—not a bit as she had day-dreamed it on the ride to Sweetwater Dam. The joy was struck dead in her heart. Miserably she realized that Justin could not understand. The ardent fire that burned in her soul seemed only mushy sentiment to him, on a par with the hysteria that made silly women send flowers to brutal murderers they did not know.

The bars were up between them. The hard look in his eyes meant anger. There would be no expression of it in temper. He was too self-contained for that. None the less it was anger. The reflection of it gleamed out from under her own dark lashes. She told herself she hated the narrowness in him that made him hold so rigidly to the well-ordered, the conventional thing. Why couldn’t he see that there was an imperative on her to live? Well, she would show him. Probably he thought that in every clash of will she ought to yield. He could learn his lesson just as well now as later.

She held her head high, but there was a leaden weight in her bosom that made her want to sob.

Often she had been proud of his tremendous driving power, the force that made of him a sixty-horse-power man. She resented it fiercely to-day. He was traveling just a little too fast for her, so that she could hardly keep up with him. But she would have fallen in her tracks rather than ask him to go slower.

Once the slither of his runners stopped. “Am I going too fast?” he asked coldly.

“Not at all,” she answered stubbornly.

He struck out again. They were climbing a long slope that ended in a fringe of timber. At the top he waited, watching her as she labored up heavily. The look he gave her when she reached him said, “I told you so.”

Before them lay a valley, beyond which was another crest of pines.

“How far now?” Betty asked, panting from the climb.

“Just beyond that ridge.”

“That all?” she said indifferently. “Thought it was a long way.”

“We’ll coast into the valley,” he replied curtly.

She watched him gliding into the dip of the slope. He was not an expert on runners as her father was, but he had learned the trick of the thing pretty well. It was in line with his thoroughness not to be a novice long at anything he set out to master.

Betty shot down after him, gathering impetus as she went. She was watching the path ahead, and it was not till she was close upon him that she saw Merrick had fallen. She swerved to the left, flinging out her arms to prevent herself from going down. Unsteadily she teetered for a moment, but righted herself with an effort and kept going till she reached the bottom.

Merrick was on his feet when she turned.

“Anything wrong?” she called.

“One of my skis broken.”

She went back to him. “How did it happen?”

“Dipped into a rock under the snow.” His voice was sullen. Like many men who do well whatever they undertake, he resented any mishap due to lack of his own skill. His sense of superiority would have been satisfied if the accident had befallen her instead of him.

Betty did not smile, but, nevertheless, she was maliciously pleased. It would bring him down a peg, anyhow.

“What’ll you do?” she asked.

“I suppose I can hobble along somehow. Perhaps I’d better take your skis and hurry on. I could borrow a pair at the cabin and come back for you. Yes, I think that would be better.”

She shook her head. “No, I’ll go on and send Mr. Black with a pair. I’d rather not wait here in the cold. I’ll not be long. You can keep moving.”

This did not suit Merrick at all. He did not want to be regarded as an incompetent who had bogged down in the snow. It hurt his pride that Betty should go on and send back help to him, especially when they felt criss-cross toward each other.

“I’d rather you didn’t,” he said. “You don’t know who is at the cabin. That tramp Cig may be there—or Prowers. They’re dangerous, both of them. Yesterday they tried to blow up the men working on the tunnel.”

“You can lend me your revolver, then, if you like. But I’m not afraid. Mr. Black wouldn’t let them hurt me even if they wanted to.”

“It’s not very cold. I’d be back in a little while. And, as you say, you could keep moving.”

“No, I’m going on,” she answered, and her quiet voice told him she had made up her mind.

He unbuckled his belt and handed it to her. “You’ll be safer with that .38,” he said. What he thought is not of record.

“Thanks.” Betty’s little smile, with its hint of sarcasm, suggested that there was not the least need of the revolver; if she wore it, the only reason was to humor his vanity and let him feel that he was protecting her.

She crossed the valley and climbed the ridge. From the farther side of it she looked down upon a log cabin of two rooms, a small stable, and a corral. They nestled in a draw at her feet, so close that a man could have thrown a stone almost to the fence. The hillside was rough with stones. With Justin’s mishap in mind, she felt her way down carefully.

Smoke poured out of the chimney and polluted the pure light air. No need of seeing the fire inside to know that the wood was resinous fir.

Betty knocked on the door.

It opened. Black stood on the threshold looking down at her in ludicrous amazement. She had taken off her coat and was carrying it. Against a background of white she bloomed vivid as a poinsettia in her old-rose sweater and jaunty tam. The cold crisp air had whipped the scarlet into her lips, the pink into her cheeks.

“What in—Mexico!” he exclaimed.

“How’s Mr. Hollister?”

“A mighty sick man. Howcome you here, miss?”

The sound of a querulous voice came from within. “Tell you I don’t want the stuff. How many times I got to say it?”

“I’ve come to nurse him. Billy brought us word. Father wasn’t home—nor Lon. So Mr. Merrick brought me.”

“Merrick,” he repeated.

“He’s over the hill, a ways back. Broke a ski. He’d like you to take him a pair. I’ll look after Mr. Hollister.”

As she followed the lank range rider into the cabin, she pulled off her gauntlets. Her cold fingers fumbled with the ski ties.

“Lemme do that,” Black said, and dropped on a knee to help.

“I guess you can do it quicker.” She looked at the patient and let her voice fall as she asked a question. “Is he delirious?”

“Crazy as a hydryphoby skunk.” He repeated what he had said before. “A mighty sick man, looks like.”

Betty looked into the hot, fevered face of the man tossing on the bed. From her medicine kit she took a thermometer. His fever was high. She prepared medicine and coaxed him to swallow it.

“Where is he wounded?” she asked.

“In the side.”

“Did you wash out the wound and bind it up?”

“Yes’m. I’ve took care of fellows shot up before.”

“Bleed much?”

“Right smart. Did you hear when Doc Rayburn was comin’?”

“He’s on the way.” She found cold water and bathed the burning face.

“Wisht he’d hustle along,” the range rider said uneasily.

“He won’t be long.” With a flare of anger she turned on Black. “Who shot him?”

“I dunno. He was shot through the window whilst he was ondressin’ for bed. We come together from the old Thorwaldson cabin a while before.”

“Did that Cig do it?”

“Might have, at that.” Black was putting on his webs. “Reckon I’ll drift back an’ pick up yore friend Merrick.”

“Yes,” she said absently. “It was that tramp Cig or Jake Prowers, one.”

“Yore guess is as good as mine,” he said, buttoning to the neck a leather coat.

“Can’t we have more light in here? It’s dark. If you’d draw back that window curtain—”

“Then Mr. Bushwhacker would get a chanct for another shot,” he said dryly. “No, I reckon we’ll leave the curtain where it’s at.”

Her big startled eyes held fascinated to his. “You don’t think they’d shoot him again now.”

“Mebbeso. My notion is better not give ’em a show to get at him. You keep the door closed. I’ll not be long. I see you got a gun.”

There was something significant in the way he said it. Her heart began to beat fast.

“You don’t think—?”

“No, I don’t. If I did, I’d stay right here. Not a chanct in a hundred. How far back’s yore friend?”

“Less than a mile.”

“Well, he’s likely been movin’ right along. When I reach the ridge, I’ll give him the high sign an’ leave the skis stickin’ up in the snow there.”

“Yes.” And, as he was leaving, “Don’t be long,” she begged.

“Don’t you be scared, miss. Them sidewinders don’t come out in the open an’ do their wolf-killin’. An’ I won’t be gone but a li’l’ while. If anything worries you, bang away with that .38 an’ I’ll come a-runnin’.”

He closed the door after him. From behind the curtain she watched him begin the ascent. Then she went back to her patient and bathed his hot hands. Betty echoed the wish of the range rider that the doctor would come. What could be keeping him? From the Diamond Bar K ranch to Wild Horse was only a few miles. He must have started before she did. It would not be long now.

In spite of a two days’ growth of beard, the young fellow on the bed looked very boyish. She gently brushed back the curls matted on the damp forehead. He was rambling again in desultory speech.

“A cup o’ cold water—cold lemonade. Happy days, she says. No trouble friendship won’t lighten, she says, with that game smile lighting up her face. Little thoroughbred.”

A warm wave of exultant emotion beat through her blood. It reached her face in a glow of delicate beauty that transformed her.

“You dear boy!” she cried softly, and her eyes were shining stars of tender light.