The Chalice Of Courage: A Romance of Colorado

"Under shelter, then," said the man. "You are very tired and very sleepy, but there is something to be done. You must take off those wet clothes at once, you must have something to eat, and I must have a look at that foot, and then you can have your sleep out."

The girl stared at him; his program, if a radical one under the circumstances, was nevertheless a rational one, indeed the only one. How was it to be carried out? The man easily divined her thoughts.

"There is another room in this house, a store room, I cook in there," he said. "I am going in there now to get you something to eat, meanwhile you must undress yourself and go to bed."

He went to a rude set of box-like shelves draped with a curtain, apparently his own handiwork, against the wall, and brought from it a long and somewhat shapeless woolen gown.

"You can wear this to sleep in," he continued. "First of all, though, I am going to have a look at that foot."

He bent down to where her wounded foot lay extended on the bed.

"Wait!" said the girl, lifting herself on her arm and as she did so he lifted his head and answered her direct gaze with his own. "I am a woman, absolutely alone, entirely at your mercy, you are stronger than I, I have no choice but to do what you bid me. And in addition to the natural weakness of my sex I am the more helpless from this foot. What do you intend to do with me? How do you mean to treat me?"

It was a bold, a splendid question and it evoked the answer it merited.

"As God is my judge," said the man quietly, "just as you ought to be treated, as I would want another to treat my mother, or my sister, or my wife—" she noticed how curiously his lips suddenly tightened at that word—"if I had one. I never harmed a woman in my life," he continued more earnestly, "only one, that is," he corrected himself, and once again she marked that peculiar contraction of the lips. "And I could not help that," he added.

"I trust you," said the girl at last after gazing at him long and hard as if to search out the secrets of his very soul. "You have saved my life and things dearer will be safe with you. I have to trust you."

"I hope," came the quick comment, "that it is not only for that. I don't want to be trusted upon compulsion."

"You must have fought terribly for my life in the flood," was the answer. "I can remember what it was now, and you carried me over the rocks and the mountains without faltering. Only a man could do what you have done. I trust you anyway."

"Thank you," said the man briefly as he bent over the injured foot again.

The boot laced up the front, the short skirt left all plainly visible. With deft fingers he undid the sodden knot and unlaced it, then stood hesitatingly for a moment.

"I don't like to cut your only pair of shoes," he said as he made a slight motion to draw it off, and then observing the spasm of pain, he stopped. "Needs must," he continued, taking out his knife and slitting the leather.

He did it very carefully so as not to ruin the boot beyond repair, and finally succeeded in getting it off without giving her too much pain. And she was not so tired or so miserable as to be unaware of his gentleness. His manner, matter-of-fact, business-like, if he had been a doctor one would have called it professional, distinctly pleased her in this trying and unusual position. Her stocking was stained with blood. The man rose to his feet, took from a rude home-made chair a light Mexican blanket and laid it considerately across the girl.

"Now if you can manage to get off your stocking, yourself, I will see what can be done," he said turning away.

It was the work of a few seconds for her to comply with his request. Hanging the wet stocking carefully over a chair back, he drew back the blanket a little and carefully inspected the poor little foot. He saw at once that it was not an ordinary sprained ankle, but it seemed to him that her foot had been caught between two tossing logs, and had been badly bruised. It was very painful, but would not take so long to heal as a sprain. The little foot, normally so white, was now black and blue and the skin had been roughly torn and broken. He brought a basin of cold water and a towel and washed off the blood, the girl fighting down the pain and successfully stifling any outcry.

"Now," he said, "you must put on this gown and get into bed. By the time you are ready for it I will have some broth for you and then we will bandage that foot. I shall not come in here for some time, you will be quite alone and safe."

He turned and left the room, shutting the door after him as he went out. For a second time that day Enid Maitland undressed herself and this time nervously and in great haste. She was almost too excited and apprehensive to recall the painful circumstances attendant upon her first disrobing. She said she trusted the man absolutely, yet she would not have been human if she had not looked most anxiously toward that closed door. He made plenty of noise in the other room, bustling about as if to reassure her.

She could not rest the weight of her body on her left foot and getting rid of her wet clothes was a somewhat slow process in spite of her hurry, made more so by her extreme nervousness. The gown he gave her was far too big for her, but soft and warm and exquisitely clean. It draped her slight figure completely. Leaving her sodden garments where they had fallen, for she was not equal to anything else, she wrapped herself in the folds of the big gown and managed to get into bed. For all its rude appearance it was a very comfortable sleeping place, there were springs and a good mattress. The unbleached sheets were clean; although they had been rough dried, there was a delicious sense of comfort and rest in her position. She had scarcely composed herself when he knocked loudly upon her door.

"May I come in?" he asked.

When she bade him enter she saw he had in his hand a saucepan full of some steaming broth. She wondered how he had made it in such a hurry, but after he poured it into a granite ware cup and offered it to her, she took it without question. It was thick, warming and nourishing. He stood by her and insisted that she take more and more. Finally she rebelled.

"Well, perhaps that will do for to-night," he said, "now let's have a look at your foot."

She observed that he had laid on the table a long roll of white cloth; she could not know that he had torn up one of his sheets to make bandages, but so it was. He took the little foot tenderly in his hands.

"I am going to hurt you," he said, "I am going to find out if there is anything more than a bruise, any bones broken."

There was no denying that he did pain her exquisitely.

"I can't help it," he said as she cried aloud. "I have got to see what's the matter, I am almost through now."

"Go on, I can bear it," she said faintly. "I feel so much better anyway now that I am dry and warm."

"So far as I can determine," said the man at last, "it is only a bad ugly bruise; the skin is torn, it has been battered, but it is neither sprained nor broken and I don't think it is going to be very serious. Now I am going to bathe it in the hottest water you can bear, and then I will bandage it and let you go to sleep."

He went out and came back with a kettle of boiling water, with which he laved again and again, the poor, torn, battered little member. Never in her life had anything been so grateful as these repeated applications of hot water. After awhile he applied a healing lotion of some kind, then he took his long roll of bandage and wound it dexterously around her foot, not drawing it too close to prevent circulation, but just tight enough for support, then as he finished she drew it back beneath the cover.

"Now," said he, "there is nothing more I can do for you to-night, is there?"

"Nothing."

"I want you to go to sleep now, you will be perfectly safe here. I am going down the cañon to search—"

"No," said the girl apprehensively. "I dare not be left alone here; besides I know how dangerous it would be for you to try to descend the cañon in this rain. You have risked enough for me, you must wait until the morning. I shall feel better then."

"But think of the anxiety of your friends."

"I can't help it," was the nervous reply. "I am afraid to be left alone here at night."

Her voice trembled, he was fearful she would have a nervous breakdown.

"Very well," he said soothingly, "I will not leave you till the morning."

"Where will you stay?"

"I'll make a shakedown for myself in the store room," he answered. "I shall be right within call at any time."

It had grown dark outside by this time and the two in the log hut could barely see each other.

"I think I shall light the fire," continued the man; "it will be sort of company for you and it gets cold up here of nights at this season. I shouldn't wonder if this rain turned into snow. Besides, it will dry your clothes for you."

Then he went over to the fireplace, struck a match, touched it to the kindling under the huge logs already prepared, and in a moment a cheerful blaze was roaring up through the chimney. Then he picked up from the floor where she had cast them in a heap, her bedraggled garments. He straightened them out as best he could, hung them over the backs of chairs and the table which he drew as near to the fire as was safe. Having completed this unwonted task he turned to the woman who had watched him curiously and nervously the while.

"Is there anything more that I can do for you?"

"Nothing; you have been as kind and as gentle as you were strong and brave."

He threw his hand out with a deprecating gesture.

"Are you quite comfortable?"

"Yes."

"And your foot?"

"Seems very much better."

"Good night then, I will call you in the morning."

"Good night," said the girl gratefully, "and God bless you for a true and noble man."

CHAPTER XII

Few women had gone through such experiences mental and physical as had befallen her within the last few hours and lived to tell the story. Had it not been for the exhaustive strains of body and spirit to which she had been subjected, her mental faculties would have been on the alert and the strangeness of her unique position would have made her so nervous that she could not have slept.

For the time being, however, the physical demands upon her entity were paramount. She was dry, she was warm, she was fed, she was free from anxiety and she was absolutely unutterably weary. Her thoughts were vague, inchoate, unconcentrated. The fire wavered before her eyes, she closed them in a few moments and did not open them.

Without a thought, without a care, she fell asleep. Her repose was complete, not a dream even disturbed the profound slumber into which she sank. Pretty picture she made; her head thrown backward, her golden hair roughly dried and quickly plaited in long braids, one of which fell along the pillow while the other curled lovingly around her neck. Her face in the natural light would have looked pallid from what she had gone through, but the fire cast red glows upon it; the fitful light flickered across her countenance and sometimes the color wavered, it came and went as if in consciousness; and sometimes deep shadows unrelieved accentuated the paleness born of her sufferings.

There is no light that plays so many tricks with the imagination, or that so stimulates the fancy as the light of an open fire. In its sudden outbursts it sometimes seems to add life touches to the sleeping and the dead. Had there been any eye to see this girl, she would have made a delightful picture in the warm glow from the stone hearth. There were no eyes to look, however, save those which belonged to the man on the other side of the door.

On the hither side of that door in the room where the fire burned on the hearth, there was rest in the heart of the woman, on the farther side where the fire only burned in the heart of the man, there was tumult. Not outward and visible, but inward and spiritual, and yet there was no lack of apparent manifestation of the turmoil in the man's soul.

Albeit the room was smaller than the other, it was still of a good size. He walked nervously up and down from one end to the other as ceaselessly as a wild animal impatient of captivity stalks the narrow limits of his contracted cage. The even tenor of his life had suddenly been diverted. The ordinary sequence of his days had been abruptly changed. The privacy of five years, which he had hoped and dreamed might exist as long as he, had been rudely broken in upon. Humanity, which he had avoided, from which he had fled, which he had cast away forever, had found him. Abiit, excessit, evasit, erupit! And, lo, his departures were all in vain! The world, with all its grandeur and its insignificance, with all its powers and its weaknesses, with all its opportunities and its obligations, with all its joys and its sorrows, had knocked at his door; and that the knocking hand was that of a woman, but added to his perplexity and to his dismay.

He had cherished a dream that he could live to himself alone with but a memory to bear him company, and from that dream he had been thunderously awakened. Everything was changed. What had once been easy had now become impossible. He might send her away, but though he swore her to secrecy she would have to tell her story and something of his; the world would learn some of it and seek him out with insatiable curiosity to know the rest.

Eyes as keen as his would presently search and scrutinize the mountains where he had roamed alone. They would see what he had seen, find what he had found. Mankind, gold-lusting, would swarm and hive upon the hills and fight and love and breed and die.

He would of course move on, but where? And went he whithersoever he might, he would now of necessity carry with him another memory which would not dwell within his mind in harmony with the memory which until that day had been paramount there alone.

Slowly, laboriously, painfully, he had built his house upon the sand, and the winds had blown and the floods had come, not only in a literal but in a spiritual significance, and in one day that house had fallen. He stood amid the wrecked remains of it trying to recreate it, to endow once more with the fitted precision of the past the shapeless broken units of the fabric of his fond imagination.

Whiles he resented with fierce, savage, passionate intensity the interruption of this woman into his life. Whiles he throbbed with equal intensity and almost as much passion at the thought of her.

Have you ever climbed a mountain early in the morning while it was yet dark and having gained some dominant crest stood staring at the far horizon, the empurpled east, while the "dawn came up like thunder?" Or, better still, have you ever stood within the cold dark recesses of some deep valley of river or pass and watched the clear light spread its bars athwart the heavens, like nebulous mighty pinions, along the light touched crest of a towering range until all of a sudden, with a leap almost of joy, the great sun blazed in the high horizon?

You might be born a child of the dark, and light might sear and burn your eyeballs accustomed to cooler, deeper shades, yet you could no more turn away from this glory, though you might hate it, than by mere effort of will you could cease to breathe the air. The shock that you might feel, the sudden surprise, is only faintly suggestive of the emotions in the breast of this man.

Once long ago the gentlest and tenderest of voices called from the dark to the light, the blind. And it is given to modern science and to modern skill sometimes to emulate that godlike achievement. Perhaps the surprise, the amazement, the bewilderment, of him who having been blind doth now see, if we can imagine it, not having been in the case ourselves, will be a better guide to the understanding of this man's emotion when this woman came suddenly into his lonely orbit. His eyes were opened although he would not know it. He fought down his new consciousness and would have none of it. Yet it was there. He loved her!

With what joy did Selkirk welcome the savage sharer of his solitude! Suppose she had been a woman of his own race; had she been old, withered, hideous, he must have loved her on the instant, much more if she were young and beautiful. The thing was inevitable. Such passions are born. God forbid that we should deny it. Even in the busy haunts of men where women are as plenty as blackberries, to use Falstaff's simile, and where a man may sometimes choose between a hundred, or a thousand, often such loves are born, forever.

A voice in the night, a face in the street, a whispered word, the touch of a hand, the answering throb of another heart—and behold! two walk together where before each walked alone. Sometimes the man or the woman who is born again of love knows it not, declines to admit it, refuses to recognize it. Some birth pain must awake the consciousness of the new life.

If those things are true and possible under every day conditions and to ordinary men and women, how much more to this solitary. He had seen this woman, white breasted like the foam, rising as the ancient goddess from the Paphian Sea. Over that recollection, as he was a gentleman and a Christian, he would fain draw a curtain, before it erect a wall. He must not dwell upon that fact, he would not linger over that moment. Yet he could not forget it.

Then he had seen her lying prone, yet unconsciously graceful in her abandonment, on the sward; he had caught a glimpse of her white face desperately up-tossed by the rolling water; he had looked into the unfathomable depths of her eyes at that moment when she had awakened in his arms after such a struggle as had taxed his manhood and almost broken his heart; he had carried her unconsciously, ghastly white with her pain-drawn face, stumbling desperately over the rocks in the beating rain to this his home. There he had held that poor, bruised slender little foot in his hand, gently, skillfully treating it, when he longed to press his lips passionately upon it. Last of all he had looked into her face warmed with the red light of the fire, searched her weary eyes almost like blue pools, in whose depths there yet lurked life and light, while her golden hair tinged crimson by the blaze lay on the white pillow—and he loved her. God pity him, fighting against fact and admission of it, yet how could he help it?

He had loved once before in his life with the fire of youth and spring, but it was not like this; he did not recognize this new passion in any light from the past, therefore he would not admit it, hence he did not understand it. But he saw and admitted and understood enough to know that the past was no longer the supreme subject in his life, that the present rose higher, bulked larger and hid more and more of his far-off horizon.

He felt like a knave and a traitor, as if he had been base, disloyal, false to his ideal, recreant to his remembrance. Was he indeed a true man? Did he have that rugged strength, that abiding faith, that eternal consciousness, that lasting affection beside which the rocky paths he often trod were things transient, perishable, evanescent? Was he a weakling that he fell at the first sight of another woman?

He stopped his ceaseless pace forward and backward, and stopped near that frail and futile door. She was there and there was none to prevent. His hand sought the latch.

What was he about to do? God forbid that a thought he could not freely share with humanity should enter his brain then. He held all women sacred, and so he had ever done, and this woman in her loveliness, in her helplessness, in her weakness, trebly appealed to him. But he would look upon her, he would fain see if she were there, if it were all not a dream, the creation of his disordered imagination.

Men had gone mad in hermitages in the mountains, they had been driven insane in lonely oases in vast deserts; and they had peopled their solitudes with men and women. Was this same working of a disordered brain too much turned upon itself and with too tremendous a pressure upon it producing an illusion? Was there in truth any woman there? He would raise the latch and open the door and look. Once more the hand went stealthily to the latch.

The woman slept quietly on. No thin barricade easily unlocked or easily broken protected her. Something intangible yet stronger than the thickest, the most rigid, bars of steel guarded her; something unseen, indescribable, but so unmistakable when it throbs in the breast that those who depend on it feel that their dependence is not in vain, watched over her.

Cherishing no evil thought, the man had power to gratify his desire which might yet bear a sinister construction should his action be observed. It was her privacy he was invading; she had trusted to him, she had said so, to his honor and that stood her in good stead. His honor! Not in five years had he heard the word or thought the thing, but he had not forgotten it. She had not appealed to an unreal thing. Upon a rock her trust was based. His hand left the latch, it fell gently, he drew back and turned away trembling, a conqueror who mastered himself. He was awake to the truth again.

What had he been about to do? Profane, uninvited, the sanctity of her chamber, violate the hospitality of his own house. Even with a proper motive imperil his self-respect, shatter her trust, endanger that honor which so suddenly became a part of him on demand. She would not probably know, she could never know unless she awoke. What of that? That ancient honor of his life and race rose like a mountain whose scarped face cannot be scaled.

He fell back with a swift turn, a feeling almost womanly—and more men perhaps if they lived in feminine isolation, as self-centered as women are so often by necessity, would be as feminine as their sisters—influenced him, overcame him. His hand went to his hunting shirt; nervously he tore it open, he grasped a bright object that hung against his breast; as he did so, the thought came to him that not before in five years had he been for a moment unconscious of the pressure of that locket over his heart, but now that this other had come, he had to seek for it to find it.

The man dragged it out, held it in his hand and opened it. He held it so tightly that it almost gave beneath the strong grasp of his strong hand. From a near-by box he drew another object with his other hand; he took the two to the light, the soft light of the candle upon the table, and stared from one to the other with eyes brimming.

Like crystal gazers he saw other things than those presented to the casual vision, he heard other sounds than the beat of the rain upon the roof, the roar of the wind down the cañon. A voice that he had sworn he would never forget, but which, God forgive him, had not now the clearness that it might have had yesterday, whispered awful words to him.

Anon he looked into another face, red too, but with no hue from the hearth or leaping flame, but red with the blood of ghastly wounds. He heard again that report, the roar louder and more terrible than any peal of thunder that rived the clouds above his head and made the mountains quake and tremble. He was conscious again of the awful stillness of death that supervened. He dropped on his knees, buried his face in his hands where they rested on picture and locket on the rude table.

Ah, the past died hard; for a moment he was the lover of old—remorse, passionate expiation, solitude—he and the dead together—the world and the living forgot! He would not be false, he would be true; there was no power in any feeble woman's tender hand to drive him off his course, to shake his purpose, to make him a new, another man. O, Vanitas, Vanitatum!

On the other side of the door the unconscious woman slept quietly on. The red fire light died away, the glowing coals sank into gray ash. Within the smaller room the cold dawn stealing through the unshaded window looked upon a field of battle—deaths, wounds, triumphs, defeats—portrayed upon one poor human face, upturned as sometimes victors and vanquished alike upturn stark faces from the field to the God above who may pity but who has not intervened.

So Jacob may have looked after that awful night when he wrestled until the day broke with the angel and would not let him go until he blessed him, walking, forever after, with halting step as memorial but with his blessing earned. Hath, this man blessing won or not? And must he pay for it if he hath achieved it?

And all the while the woman slept quietly on upon the other side of that door.

CHAPTER XIII

The clouds had emptied themselves during the night and the wind had at last died away toward morning and now there was a great calm abroad in the land. The sunlight was dazzling. Outside, where the untempered rays beat full upon the crests of the mountains, it was doubtless warm, but within the cabin it was chilly—the fire had long since burned completely away and he had not entered the room to replenish it. Yet Enid Maitland had lain snug and warm under her blankets. She presently tested her wounded foot by moving it gently and discovered agreeably that it was much less painful than she had anticipated. The treatment of the night before had been very successful.

She did not get up immediately, but the coldness of the room struck her so soon as she got out of bed. Upon her first awakening she was hardly conscious of her situation; her sleep had been too long and too heavy and her awakening too gradual for any sudden appreciation of the new condition. It was not until she had stared around the walls of the rude cabin for some time that she realized where she was and what had happened. When she did so she arose at once.

Her first impulse was to call. Never in her life had she felt such death-like stillness. Even in the camp almost always there had been a whisper of breeze through the pine trees, or the chatter of water over the rocks. But here there were no pine trees and no sound of rushing brook came to her. It was almost painful. She was keen to dress and go out of the house. She stood upon the rude puncheon floor on one foot scarcely able yet to bear even the lightest pressure upon the other. There were her clothes on chairs and tables before the fireplace. Such had been the heat thrown out by that huge blaze that a brief inspection convinced her that everything was thoroughly dry. Dry or wet she must needs put them on since they were all she had. She noticed that there were no locks on the doors and she realized that the only protection she had was the sense of decency and the honor of the man. That she had been allowed her sleep unmolested made her the more confident on that account.

She dressed hastily, although it was the work of some difficulty in view of her wounded foot and of the stiff condition of her rough dried apparel. Presently she was completely clothed save for that disabled foot. With the big clumsy bandages upon it she could not draw her stocking over it and even if she succeeded in that she could in no way make shift to put on her boot.

The situation was awkward, the predicament annoying; she was wearing bloomers and a short skirt for her mountain climbing and she did not know quite what to do. She thought of tearing up one of the rough unbleached sheets and wrapping it around her leg, but she hesitated as to that. It was very trying. Otherwise she would have opened the door and stepped out into the open air, now she felt herself virtually a prisoner.

She had been thankful that no one had disturbed her, but now she wished for the man. In her helplessness she thought of his resourcefulness with eagerness. The man however did not appear and there was nothing for her to do but to wait for him. Taking one of the blankets from the bed, she sat down and drew it across her knees and took stock of the room.

The cabin was built of logs, the room was large, perhaps twelve by twenty feet, with one side completely taken up by the stone fireplace; there were two windows, one on either side of the outer door which opened toward the southwest. The walls were unplastered save in the chinks between the rough hewn logs of which it was made. Over the fireplace and around on one side ran a rude shelf covered with books. She had no opportunity to examine them, although later she would become familiar with every one of them.

Into the walls on the other side were driven wooden pegs; from some of them hung a pair of snow shoes, a heavy Winchester rifle, fishing tackle and other necessary wilderness paraphernalia. On the puncheon floor wolf and bear skins were spread. In one corner against the wall again were piled several splendid pairs of horns from the mountain sheep.

The furniture consisted of the single bed or berth in which she had slept, built against the wall in one of the corners, a rude table on which were writing materials and some books. A row of curtained shelves, evidently made of small boxes and surmounted by a mirror, occupied another space. There were two or three chairs, the handiwork of the owner, comfortable enough in spite of their rude construction. On some other pegs hung a slicker and a sou'wester, a fur overcoat, a fur cap and other rough clothes; a pair of heavy boots stood by the fireplace. On another shelf there were a number of scientific instruments the nature of which she could not determine, although she could see that they were all in a beautiful state of preservation.

There was plenty of rude comfort in the room which was excessively mannish. In fact there was nothing anywhere which in any way spoke of the existence of woman—except a picture in a small rough wooden frame which stood on the table before which she sat down. The picture was of a handsome woman—naturally Enid Maitland saw that before anything else; she would not have been a woman if that had not engaged her attention more forcibly than any other fact in the room. She picked it up and studied it long and earnestly, quite unconscious of the reason for her interest, and yet a certain uneasy feeling might have warned her of what was toward in her bosom.

This young woman had not yet had time to get her bearings, she had not been able to realize all the circumstances of her adventure; so soon as she did so she would know that into her life a man had come and whatever the course of that life might be in the future, he would never again be out of it.

It was therefore with mingled and untranslatable emotions that she studied this picture. She marked with a certain resentment the bold beauty quite apparent despite the dim fading outlines of a photograph never very good. So far as she could discern the woman was dark haired and dark eyed—her direct antithesis! The casual viewer would have found little to find fault with in the presentment, but Enid Maitland's eyes were sharpened by—what, pray? At any rate she decided that the woman was of a rather coarse fiber, that in things finer and higher she would be found wanting. She was such a woman, so the girl reasoned acutely, as might inspire a passionate affection in a strong hearted, reckless youth, but whose charms being largely physical would pall in longer and more intimate association; a dangerous rival in a charge, but not so formidable in a steady campaign.

These thoughts were the result of long and earnest inspection and it was with some reluctance that the girl at last put the photograph aside and looked toward the door. She was hungry, ravenously so. She began to be a little alarmed and had just about made up her mind to rise and stumble out as she was, when she heard steps outside and a knock on the door.

"What is it?" she asked in response.

"May I come in?"

"Yes," was the quick answer.

The man opened the door, left it ajar and entered the room.

"Have you been awake long?" he began abruptly.

"Not very."

"I didn't disturb you because you needed sleep more than anything else. How do you feel?"

"Greatly refreshed, thank you."

"And hungry, I suppose?"

"Very."

"I will soon remedy that. Your foot?"

"It seems much better, but I—"

The girl hesitated, blushing. "I can't get my shoe on and—"

"Shall I have another look at it?"

"No, I don't believe it will be necessary. If I may have some of that liniment, or whatever it was you put on it, and more of that bandage, I think I can attend to it myself, but you see my stocking and my boot—"

The man nodded, he seemed to understand; he went to his cracker box chiffonier and drew from it a long coarse woolen stocking.

"That is the best that I can do for you," he said, extending it toward her somewhat diffidently.

"And that will do very nicely," said the girl. "It will cover the bandage and that is the main thing."

The man laid on the table by the side of the stocking another strip of bandage torn from the same sheet; as he did so he noticed the picture. He caught it up quickly, a dark flush spreading over his face, and holding it in his hand he turned abruptly away.

"I will go and cook you some breakfast while you get yourself ready. If you have not washed, you'll find a bucket of water and a basin and towel outside the door."

He went through the inner door as suddenly as he had come through the outer one. He was a man of few words and whatever of social grace he might once have possessed and in more favorable circumstances exhibited, was not noticeable now; the tenderness with which he had cared for her the night before had also vanished.

His bearing had been cool almost harsh and forbidding and his manner was as grim as his appearance. The conversation had been a brief one and her opportunity for inspection of him consequently limited, yet she had taken him in. She saw a tall splendid man, no longer very young, perhaps, but in the prime of life and vigor. His complexion was dark and burned browner by long exposure to sun and wind, winter and summer. In spite of the brown there was a certain color, a hue of health in his cheeks. His eyes were hazel, sometimes brown, sometimes gray, and sometimes blue, she afterward learned. A short thick closely cut beard and mustache covered the lower part of his face, disguising but not hiding the squareness of his jaw and the firmness, of his lips.

He had worn his cap when he entered and when he took it off she noticed that his dark hair was tinged with white. He was dressed in a leather hunting suit, somewhat the worse for wear, but fitting him in a way to give free play to all his muscles. His movements were swift, energetic and graceful; she did not wonder that he had so easily hurled the bear to one side and had managed to carry her—no light weight, indeed!—over what she dimly recognized must have been a horrible trail, which burdened as he was would have been impossible to a man of less splendid vigor than he.

The cabin was low ceiled and as she had sat looking up at him he had towered above her until he seemed to fill it. Naturally she had scrutinized his every action, as she had hung upon his every word. His swift and somewhat startled movement, his frowning as he had seized the picture on which she had gazed with such interest aroused the liveliest surprise and curiosity in her heart.

Who was this woman? Why was he so quick to remove the picture from her gaze? Thoughts rushed tumultuously through her brain, but she realized at once that she lacked time to indulge them. She could hear him moving about in the other room, she threw aside the blanket with which she had draped herself, changed the bandage on her foot, drew on the heavy woolen stocking which of course was miles too big for her, but which easily took in her foot and ankle encumbered as they were by the rude, heavy but effective wrapping. Thereafter she hobbled to the door and stood for a moment almost aghast at the splendor and magnificence before her.

He had built his cabin on a level shelf of rock perhaps fifty by a hundred feet in area. It was backed up against an overtowering cliff, otherwise the rock fell away in every direction. She divined that the descent from the shelf into the pocket or valley spread before her was sheer, except off to the right where a somewhat gentler acclivity of huge and broken boulders gave a practicable ascent—a sort of titantic stairs—to the place perched on the mountain side. The shelf was absolutely bare save for the cabin and a few huge boulders. There were a few sparse, stunted trees further up on the mountain side above; a few hundred feet beyond them, however, came the timber line, after which there was nothing but the naked rock.

Below several hundred feet lay a clear emerald pool, whose edges were bordered by pines where it was not dominated by high cliffs. Already the lakelet was rimmed with ice on the shaded side. This enchanting little body of water was fed by the melting snow from the crest and peaks, which in the clear pure sunshine and rarefied air of the mountains seemed to rise and confront her within a stone's throw of the place where she stood.

On one side of the lake in the valley or pocket beneath there was a little grassy clearing, and there this dweller in the wilderness had built a rude corral for the burros. On a rough bench by the side of the door she saw the primitive conveniences to which he had alluded. The water was delightfully soft and as it had stood exposed to the sun's direct rays for some time, although the air was exceedingly crisp and cold, it was tempered sufficiently to be merely cool and agreeable. She luxuriated in it for a few moments and while she had her face buried in the towel, rough, coarse, but clean, she heard a step. She looked up in time to see the man lay down upon the bench a small mirror and a clean comb. He said nothing as he did so and she had no opportunity to thank him before he was gone. The thoughtfulness of the act affected her strangely and she was very glad of a chance to unbraid her hair, comb it out and plait it again. She had not a hair pin left of course, and all she could do with it was to replait it and let it hang upon her shoulders; her coiffure would have looked very strange to civilization, but out there in the mountains, it was eminently appropriate.

Without noticing details the man felt the general effect as she limped back into the room toward the table. Her breakfast was ready for her; it was a coarse fare, bacon, a baked potato hard tack crisped before the fire, coffee black and strong, with sugar but no cream. The dishes matched the fare, too, yet she noticed that the fork was of silver and by her plate there was a napkin, rough dried but of fine linen. The man had just set the brimming smoking coffee pot on the table when she appeared.

"I am sorry I have no cream," he said, and then before she could make comment or reply, he turned and walked out of the door, his purpose evidently being not to embarrass her by his presence while she ate.

Enid Maitland had grown to relish the camp fare, bringing to it the appetite of good health and exertion. She had never eaten anything that tasted so good to her as that rude meal that morning, yet she would have enjoyed it better, she thought, if he had only shared it with her, if she had not been compelled to eat it alone. She hastened her meal on that account, determined as soon as she had finished her breakfast to seek the man and have some definite understanding with him.

And after all she reflected that she was better alone than in his presence, for there would come stealing into her thoughts the distressing episode of the morning before, try as she would to put it out of her mind. Well, she was a fairly sensible girl, the matter was passed, it could not be helped now, she would forget it as much as was possible. She would recur to it with mortification later on, but the present was so full of grave problems that there was not any room for the past.

CHAPTER XIV

"If you will tell me your name—"

"Maitland, Enid Maitland."

"Miss Maitland?"

The girl nodded.

"And where you came from, I will endeavor to find your party and see what can be done to restore you to them."

"We were camped down that cañon at a place where another brook, a large one, flows into it, several miles I should think below the place where—"

She was going to say "where you found me," but the thought of the way in which he had found her rushed over her again; and this time with his glance directly upon her, although it was as cold and dispassionate and indifferent as a man's look could well be, the recollection of the meeting to which she had been about to allude rushed over her with an accompanying wave of color which heightened her beauty as it covered her with shame.

She could not realize that beneath his mask of indifference so deliberately worn, the man was as agitated as she, not so much at the remembrance of anything that had transpired, but at the sight, the splendid picture, of the woman as she stood, there in the little cabin then. It seemed to him as if she gathered up in her own person all the radiance and light and beauty, all the purity and freshness and splendor of the morning, to shine and dazzle in his face. As she hesitated in confusion, perhaps comprehending its causes he helped out her lame and halting sentence.

"I know the cañon well," he said. "I think I know the place to which you refer; is it just about where the river makes an enormous bend upon itself?"

"Yes, that is it. In that clearing we have been camped for ten days. My uncle must be crazy with anxiety to know what has become of me and—"

The man interposed.

"I will go there directly," he said. "It is now half after ten. That place is about seven miles or more from here across the range, fifteen or twenty by the river; I shall be back by nightfall. The cabin is your own."

He turned away without another word.

"Wait," said the woman, "I am afraid to stay here."

She had been fearless enough before in these mountains but her recent experiences had somehow unsettled her nerves.

"There is nothing on earth to hurt you, I think," returned the man. "There isn't a human being, so far as I know, in these mountains."

"Except my uncle's party."

He nodded.

"But there might be another—bear," she added desperately, forcing herself.

"Not likely, and they wouldn't come here if there were any. That's the first grizzly I have seen in years," he went on unconcernedly, studiously looking away from her, not to add to her confusion at the remembrance of that awful episode which would obtrude itself on every occasion. "You can use a rifle or gun?"

She nodded; he stepped over to the wall and took down the Winchester which he handed her.

"This one is ready for service, and you will find a revolver on the shelf. There is only one possible way of access to this cabin, that's down those rock stairs; one man, one woman, a child even, with these weapons could hold it against an army."

"Couldn't I go with you?"

"On that foot?"

Enid pressed her wounded foot upon the ground; it was not so painful when resting, but she found she could not walk a step on it without great suffering.

"I might carry you part of the way," said the man. "I carried you last night, but it would be impossible, all of it."

"Promise me that you will be back by nightfall with Uncle Bob and—"

"I shall be back by nightfall, but I can't promise that I will bring anybody with me."

"You mean?"

"You saw what the cloud burst nearly did for you," was the quick answer. "If they did not get out of that pocket there is nothing left of them now."

"But they must have escaped," persisted the girl, fighting down her alarm at this blunt statement of possible peril. "Besides, Uncle Robert and most of the rest were climbing one of the peaks and—"

"They will be all right then, but if I am to find the place and tell them your story, I must go now."

He turned and without another word or a backward glance scrambled down the hill. The girl limped to the brink of the cliff over which he had plunged and stared after him. She watched him as long as she could see him until he was lost among the trees. If she had anybody else to depend upon she would certainly have felt differently toward him. When Uncle Robert and her Aunt and the children and old Kirkby and the rest surrounded her again she could hate that man in spite of all he had done for her, but now, as she stared after him determinedly making his way down the mountain and through the trees, it was with difficulty she could restrain herself from calling him back.

The silence was most oppressive, the loneliness was frightful; she had been alone before in these mountains, but from choice; now the fact that there was no escape from them made the sensation a very different one.

She sat down and brooded over her situation until she felt that if she did not do something and in some way divert her thoughts she would break down again. He had said that the cabin and its contents were hers. She resolved to inspect them more closely. She hobbled back into the great room and looked about her again. There was nothing that demanded careful scrutiny; she wasn't quite sure whether she was within the proprieties or not, but she seized the oldest and most worn of the volumes on the shelf. It was a text book on mining and metallurgy she observed, and opening it at the fly leaf, across the page she saw written in a firm vigorous masculine hand a name, "William Berkeley Newbold," and beneath these words, "Thayer Hall, Harvard," and a date some seven years back.

The owner of that book, whether the present possessor or not, had been a college man. Say that he had graduated at twenty-one or twenty-two, he would be twenty-eight or twenty-nine years old now, but if so, why that white hair? Perhaps though the book did not belong to the man of the cabin.

She turned to other books on the shelf. Many of them were technical books which she had sufficient general culture to realize could be only available to a man highly educated and a special student of mines and mining—a mining engineer, she decided, with a glance at those instruments and appliances of a scientific character plainly, but of whose actual use she was ignorant.

A rapid inspection of the other books confirmed her in the conclusion that the man of the mountains was indeed the owner of the collection. There were a few well worn volumes of poetry and essays. A Bible, Shakespeare, Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, Tennyson, Keats, a small dictionary, a compendious encyclopedia, just the books, she thought, smiling at her conceit, that a man of education and culture would want to have upon a desert island where his supply of literature would be limited.

The old ones were autographed as the first book she had looked in; others, newer editions to the little library if she could judge by their condition, were unsigned.

Into the corner cupboard and the drawers of course she did not look. There was nothing else in the room to attract her attention, save some piles of manuscript neatly arranged on one of the shelves, each one covered with a square of board and kept in place by pieces of glistening quartz. There were four of these piles and another half the size of the first four on the table. These of course she did not examine, further than to note that the writing was in the same bold free hand as the signature in the books. If she had been an expert she might have deduced much from the writing; as it was she fancied it was strong, direct, manly.

Having completed her inspection of this room, she opened the door and went into the other; it was smaller and less inviting. It had only one window and a door opening outside. There was a cook stove here and shelves with cooking utensils and granite ware, and more rude box receptacles on the walls which were filled with a bountiful and well selected store of canned goods and provisions of various kinds. This was evidently the kitchen, supply room, china closet. She saw no sign of a bed in it and wondered where and how the man had spent the night.

By rights her mind should have been filled with her uncle and his party and in their alarm she should have shared, but she was so extremely comfortable, except for her foot, which did not greatly trouble her so long as she kept it quiet, that she felt a certain degree of contentment not to say happiness. The Adventure was so romantic and thrilling—save for those awful moments in the pool—especially to the soul of a conventional woman who had been brought up in the most humdrum and stereotyped fashion of the earth's ways, and with never an opportunity for the development of the spirit of romance which all of us exhibit some time in our life and which thank God some of us never lose, that she found herself reveling in it.

She lost herself in pleasing imaginations of the tales of her adventures that she could tell when she got back to her uncle and when she got further back to staid old Philadelphia. How shocked everybody would be with it all there! Of course she resolved that she would never mention one episode of that terrible day, and she had somehow absolute confidence that this man, in spite of his grim, gruff taciturnity, who had shown himself so exceedingly considerate of her feelings would never mention it either.

She had so much food for thought, that not even in the late afternoon of the long day, could she force her mind to the printed pages of the book she had taken at random from the shelf which lay open before her, where she sat in the sun, her head covered by an old "Stetson" that she had ventured to appropriate. She had dragged a bear skin out on the rocks in the sun and sat curled up on it half reclining against a boulder watching the trail, the Winchester by her side. She had eaten so late a breakfast that she had made a rather frugal lunch out of whatever had taken her fancy in the store room, and she was waiting most anxiously now for the return of the man.

The season was late and the sun sank behind the peaks quite early in the afternoon, and it grew dark and chill long before the shadows fell upon the dwellers of the lowlands.

Enid drew the bear skin around her and waited with an ever growing apprehension. If she should be compelled to spend the night alone in that cabin, she felt that she could not endure it. She was never so glad of anything in her life as when she saw him suddenly break out of the woods and start up the steep trail, and for a moment her gladness was not tempered by the fact, which she was presently to realize with great dismay, that as he had gone, so he now returned, alone.

CHAPTER XV

Now whether that joy in his return was for him, personally or for him abstractly, he could not tell; whether she was glad that he had come back simply because he was a human being who would relieve her loneliness or whether she rejoiced to see him individually, was a matter not yet to be determined. He hoped the latter, he believed the former. At any rate he caught and held her outstretched hand in the warm clasp of both his own. Burning words of greeting rushed to his lips torrentially, what he said, however, was quite commonplace; as is so often the case, thought and outward speech did not correspond.

"It's too cold for you out here, you must go into the house at once," he declared masterfully and she obeyed with unwonted meekness.

The sun had set and the night air had grown suddenly chill. Still holding her hand they started toward the cabin a few rods away. Her wounded foot was of little support to her and the excitement had unnerved her; in spite of his hand she swayed; without a thought he caught her about the waist and half lifted, half led her to the door. It seemed as natural as it was inevitable for him to assist her in this way and in her weakness and bewilderment she suffered it without comment or resistance. Indeed there was such strength and power in his arm, she was so secure there, that she liked it. As for him his pulses were bounding at the contact; but for that matter even to look at her quickened his heart beat.

Entering the main room he led her gently to one of the chairs near the table and immediately thereafter lighted the fire which he had taken the precaution to lay before his departure. It had been dark in the cabin, but the fire soon filled it with glorious light. She watched him at his task and as he rose from the hearth questioned him.

"Now tell me," she began, "you found—"

"First your supper, and then the story," he answered, turning toward the door of the other room.

"No," pleaded the girl, "can't you see that nothing is of any importance to me but the story? Did you find the camp?"

"I found the place where it had been."

"Where it had been!"

"There wasn't a single vestige of it left. That whole pocket, I knew it well, had been swept clean by the flood."

"But Kirkby, and Mrs. Maitland and—"

"They weren't there."

"Did you search for them?"

"Certainly."

"But they can't have been drowned," she exclaimed piteously.

"Of course not," he began reassuringly. "Kirkby is a veteran of these mountains and—"

"But do you know him?" queried the girl in great surprise.

"I did once," said the man, flushing darkly at his admission. "I haven't seen him for five years."

So that was the measure of his isolation, thought the woman, keen for the slightest evidence as to her companion's history, of which, by the way, he meant to tell her nothing.

"Well?" she asked, breaking the pause.

"Kirkby would certainly see the cloudburst coming and he would take the people with him in the camp up on the hogback near it. It is far above the flood line, they would be quite safe there."

"And did you look for them there?"

"I did. The trail had been washed out, but I scrambled up and found undisputed evidence that my surmise was correct. I haven't a doubt that all who were in the camp were saved."

"Thank God for that," said the girl, greatly relieved and comforted by his reassuring words. "And my uncle, Mr. Robert Maitland, and the rest on the mountain, what do you think of them?"

"I am sure that they must have escaped too. I don't think any of them have suffered more than a thorough drenching in the downpour and that they are all safe and perhaps on their way to the settlements now."

"But they wouldn't go back without searching for me, would they?" cried the girl.

"Certainly not, I suppose they are searching for you now."

"Well then—"

"Wait," said the man. "You started down the cañon, you told everybody that you were going that way. They naturally searched in that direction; they hadn't the faintest idea that you were going up the river."

"No," admitted Enid, "that is true. I did not tell anyone. I didn't dream of going up the cañon when I started out in the morning; it was the result of a sudden impulse."

"God bless that—" burst out the man and then he checked himself, flushing again, darkly.

What had he been about to say? The question flashed into his own mind and into the woman's mind at the same time when she heard, the incompleted sentence; but she, too, checked the question that rose to her lips.

"This is the way I figure it," continued the man hurriedly to cover up his confusion. "They fancy themselves alone in these mountains, which save for me they are; they believe you to have gone down the cañon. Kirkby with Mrs. Maitland and the others waited on the ridge until Mr. Maitland and his party joined them. They couldn't have saved very much to eat or wear from the camp, they were miles from a settlement, they probably divided into two parties; the larger with the woman and children started for home, the second went down the cañon searching for your dead body!"

"And had it not been for you," cried the girl impulsively, "they had found it."

"God permitted me to be of service to you," answered the man simply. "I can follow their speculations exactly; up or down, they believed you to have been in the cañon when the storm broke, therefore there was only one place and one direction to search for you."

"And that was?"

"Down the cañon."

"What did you do then?"

"I went down the cañon myself. I think I saw evidences that someone had preceded me, too."

"Did you overtake them!"

"Certainly not; they traveled as rapidly as I, they must have started early in the morning and they had several hours the advantage of me."

"But they must have stopped somewhere for the night and—"

"Yes," answered the man. "If I had had only myself to consider, I should have pressed on through the night and overtaken them when they camped."

"Only yourself?"

"You made me promise to return here by nightfall. I don't know whether I should have obeyed you or not. I kept on as long as I dared and still leave myself time to get back to you by dark."

She had no idea of the desperate speed he had made to reach her while it was still daylight.

"If you hadn't come when you did, I should have died," cried the girl impetuously. "You did perfectly right. I don't think I am a coward, I hope not, I never was afraid before, but—"

"Don't apologize or explain to me, it's not necessary; I understand everything you feel. It was only because I had given you my word to be back by sunset that I left off following their trail. I was afraid that you might think me dead or that something had happened and—"

"I should, I did," admitted the girl. "It wasn't so bad during the day time, but when the sun went down and you did not come I began to imagine everything. I saw myself left alone here in these mountains, helpless, wounded, without a human being to speak to. I could not bear it."

"But I have been here alone for five years," said the man grimly.

"That's different. I don't know why you have chosen solitude, but I—"

"You are a woman," returned the other gently, "and you have suffered, that accounts for everything."

"Thank you," said Enid gratefully. "And I am so glad you came back to me."

"Back to you," reiterated the man and then he stopped. If he had allowed his heart to speak he would have said, back to you from the very ends of the world—"But I want you to believe that I honestly did not leave the trail until the ultimate moment," he added.

"I do believe it," she extended her hand to him. "You have been very good to me, I trust you absolutely."

And for the second time he took that graceful, dainty, aristocratic hand in his own larger, stronger, firmer grasp. His face flushed again; under other circumstances and in other days perhaps he might have kissed that hand; as it was he only held it for a moment and then gently released it.

"And you think they are searching for me?" she asked.

"I know it. I am sure of what I myself would do for one I love—I loved I mean, and they—"

"And they will find me?"

The man shook his head.

"I am afraid they will be convinced that you have gone down with the flood. Didn't you have a cap or—"

"Yes," said the woman, "and a sweater. The bear you shot covered the sweater with blood. I could not put it on again."

As she spoke she flushed a glorious crimson at the remembrance of that meeting, but the man was looking away with studied care. She thanked him in her heart for such generous and kindly consideration.

"They will have gone down the stream with the rest, and it's just possible that the searchers may find them, the body of the bear too. This river ends in a deep mountain lake and I think it is going to snow, it will be frozen hard to-morrow."

"And they will think me—there?"

"I am afraid so."

"And they won't come up here?"

"It is scarcely possible."

"Oh!" exclaimed the woman faintly at the dire possibility that she might not be found.