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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of In the Carquinez Woods, by Bret Harte
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: In the Carquinez Woods
+
+Author: Bret Harte
+
+Release Date: May 16, 2006 [EBook #2310]
+Last Updated: March 4, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Donald Lainson
+
+
+
+
+
+IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS
+
+By Bret Harte
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+The sun was going down on the Carquinez Woods. The few shafts of
+sunlight that had pierced their pillared gloom were lost in unfathomable
+depths, or splintered their ineffectual lances on the enormous trunks
+of the redwoods. For a time the dull red of their vast columns, and the
+dull red of their cast-off bark which matted the echoless aisles, still
+seemed to hold a faint glow of the dying day. But even this soon passed.
+Light and color fled upwards. The dark interlaced treetops, that had all
+day made an impenetrable shade, broke into fire here and there; their
+lost spires glittered, faded, and went utterly out. A weird twilight
+that did not come from the outer world, but seemed born of the wood
+itself, slowly filled and possessed the aisles. The straight, tall,
+colossal trunks rose dimly like columns of upward smoke. The few fallen
+trees stretched their huge length into obscurity, and seemed to lie on
+shadowy trestles. The strange breath that filled these mysterious vaults
+had neither coldness nor moisture; a dry, fragrant dust arose from the
+noiseless foot that trod their bark-strewn floor; the aisles might have
+been tombs, the fallen trees enormous mummies; the silence the solitude
+of a forgotten past.
+
+And yet this silence was presently broken by a recurring sound like
+breathing, interrupted occasionally by inarticulate and stertorous
+gasps. It was not the quick, panting, listening breath of some stealthy
+feline or canine animal, but indicated a larger, slower, and more
+powerful organization, whose progress was less watchful and guarded, or
+as if a fragment of one of the fallen monsters had become animate.
+At times this life seemed to take visible form, but as vaguely, as
+misshapenly, as the phantom of a nightmare. Now it was a square object
+moving sideways, endways, with neither head nor tail and scarcely
+visible feet; then an arched bulk rolling against the trunks of the
+trees and recoiling again, or an upright cylindrical mass, but always
+oscillating and unsteady, and striking the trees on either hand. The
+frequent occurrence of the movement suggested the figures of some weird
+rhythmic dance to music heard by the shape alone. Suddenly it either
+became motionless or faded away.
+
+There was the frightened neighing of a horse, the sudden jingling of
+spurs, a shout and outcry, and the swift apparition of three dancing
+torches in one of the dark aisles; but so intense was the obscurity
+that they shed no light on surrounding objects, and seemed to advance
+of their own volition without human guidance, until they disappeared
+suddenly behind the interposing bulk of one of the largest trees. Beyond
+its eighty feet of circumference the light could not reach, and the
+gloom remained inscrutable. But the voices and jingling spurs were heard
+distinctly.
+
+“Blast the mare! She’s shied off that cursed trail again.”
+
+“Ye ain’t lost it again, hev ye?” growled a second voice.
+
+“That’s jist what I hev. And these blasted pine-knots don’t give light
+an inch beyond ‘em. D--d if I don’t think they make this cursed hole
+blacker.”
+
+There was a laugh--a woman’s laugh--hysterical, bitter, sarcastic,
+exasperating. The second speaker, without heeding it, went on:--
+
+“What in thunder skeert the hosses? Did you see or hear anything?”
+
+“Nothin’. The wood is like a graveyard.”
+
+The woman’s voice again broke into a hoarse, contemptuous laugh. The man
+resumed angrily:--
+
+“If you know anything, why in h-ll don’t you say so, instead of cackling
+like a d--d squaw there? P’raps you reckon you ken find the trail too.”
+
+“Take this rope off my wrist,” said the woman’s voice, “untie my hands,
+let me down, and I’ll find it.” She spoke quickly and with a Spanish
+accent.
+
+It was the men’s turn to laugh. “And give you a show to snatch that
+six-shooter and blow a hole through me, as you did to the Sheriff of
+Calaveras, eh? Not if this court understands itself,” said the first
+speaker dryly.
+
+“Go to the devil, then,” she said curtly.
+
+“Not before a lady,” responded the other. There was another laugh from
+the men, the spurs jingled again, the three torches reappeared from
+behind the tree, and then passed away in the darkness.
+
+For a time silence and immutability possessed the woods; the great
+trunks loomed upwards, their fallen brothers stretched their slow length
+into obscurity. The sound of breathing again became audible; the shape
+reappeared in the aisle, and recommenced its mystic dance. Presently
+it was lost in the shadow of the largest tree, and to the sound of
+breathing succeeded a grating and scratching of bark. Suddenly, as if
+riven by lightning, a flash broke from the center of the tree-trunk,
+lit up the woods, and a sharp report rang through it. After a pause
+the jingling of spurs and the dancing of torches were revived from the
+distance.
+
+“Hallo?”
+
+No answer.
+
+“Who fired that shot?”
+
+But there was no reply. A slight veil of smoke passed away to the right,
+there was the spice of gunpowder in the air, but nothing more.
+
+The torches came forward again, but this time it could be seen they were
+held in the hands of two men and a woman. The woman’s hands were tied
+at the wrist to the horse-hair reins of her mule, while a riata, passed
+around her waist and under the mule’s girth, was held by one of the men,
+who were both armed with rifles and revolvers. Their frightened horses
+curveted, and it was with difficulty they could be made to advance.
+
+“Ho! stranger, what are you shooting at?”
+
+The woman laughed and shrugged her shoulders. “Look yonder at the roots
+of the tree. You’re a d--d smart man for a sheriff, ain’t you?”
+
+The man uttered an exclamation and spurred his horse forward, but the
+animal reared in terror. He then sprang to the ground and approached the
+tree. The shape lay there, a scarcely distinguishable bulk.
+
+“A grizzly, by the living Jingo! Shot through the heart.”
+
+It was true. The strange shape lit up by the flaring torches seemed more
+vague, unearthly, and awkward in its dying throes, yet the small shut
+eyes, the feeble nose, the ponderous shoulders, and half-human foot
+armed with powerful claws were unmistakable. The men turned by a common
+impulse and peered into the remote recesses of the wood again.
+
+“Hi, Mister! come and pick up your game. Hallo there!”
+
+The challenge fell unheeded on the empty woods.
+
+“And yet,” said he whom the woman had called the sheriff, “he can’t be
+far off. It was a close shot, and the bear hez dropped in his tracks.
+Why, wot’s this sticking in his claws?”
+
+The two men bent over the animal. “Why, it’s sugar, brown sugar--look!”
+ There was no mistake. The huge beast’s fore paws and muzzle were
+streaked with the unromantic household provision, and heightened the
+absurd contrast of its incongruous members. The woman, apparently
+indifferent, had taken that opportunity to partly free one of her
+wrists.
+
+“If we hadn’t been cavorting round this yer spot for the last half
+hour, I’d swear there was a shanty not a hundred yards away,” said the
+sheriff.
+
+The other man, without replying, remounted his horse instantly.
+
+“If there is, and it’s inhabited by a gentleman that kin make centre
+shots like that in the dark, and don’t care to explain how, I reckon I
+won’t disturb him.”
+
+The sheriff was apparently of the same opinion, for he followed his
+companion’s example, and once more led the way. The spurs tinkled, the
+torches danced, and the cavalcade slowly reentered the gloom. In another
+moment it had disappeared.
+
+The wood sank again into repose, this time disturbed by neither shape
+nor sound. What lower forms of life might have crept close to its
+roots were hidden in the ferns, or passed with deadened tread over the
+bark-strewn floor. Towards morning a coolness like dew fell from above,
+with here and there a dropping twig or nut, or the crepitant awakening
+and stretching-out of cramped and weary branches. Later a dull, lurid
+dawn, not unlike the last evening’s sunset, filled the aisles. This
+faded again, and a clear gray light, in which every object stood out in
+sharp distinctness, took its place. Morning was waiting outside in all
+its brilliant, youthful coloring, but only entered as the matured and
+sobered day.
+
+Seen in that stronger light, the monstrous tree near which the dead bear
+lay revealed its age in its denuded and scarred trunk, and showed in
+its base a deep cavity, a foot or two from the ground, partly hidden by
+hanging strips of bark which had fallen across it. Suddenly one of these
+strips was pushed aside, and a young man leaped lightly down.
+
+But for the rifle he carried and some modern peculiarities of dress, he
+was of a grace so unusual and unconventional that he might have passed
+for a faun who was quitting his ancestral home. He stepped to the side
+of the bear with a light elastic movement that was as unlike customary
+progression as his face and figure were unlike the ordinary types
+of humanity. Even as he leaned upon his rifle, looking down at the
+prostrate animal, he unconsciously fell into an attitude that in any
+other mortal would have been a pose, but with him was the picturesque
+and unstudied relaxation of perfect symmetry.
+
+“Hallo, Mister!”
+
+He raised his head so carelessly and listlessly that he did not
+otherwise change his attitude. Stepping from behind the tree, the woman
+of the preceding night stood before him. Her hands were free except for
+a thong of the riata, which was still knotted around one wrist, the end
+of the thong having been torn or burnt away. Her eyes were bloodshot,
+and her hair hung over her shoulders in one long black braid.
+
+“I reckoned all along it was YOU who shot the bear,” she said; “at least
+some one hiding yer,” and she indicated the hollow tree with her hand.
+“It wasn’t no chance shot.” Observing that the young man, either from
+misconception or indifference, did not seem to comprehend her, she
+added, “We came by here, last night, a minute after you fired.”
+
+“Oh, that was YOU kicked up such a row, was it?” said the young man,
+with a shade of interest.
+
+“I reckon,” said the woman, nodding her head, “and them that was with
+me.”
+
+“And who are they?”
+
+“Sheriff Dunn, of Yolo, and his deputy.”
+
+“And where are they now?”
+
+“The deputy--in h-ll, I reckon; I don’t know about the sheriff.”
+
+“I see,” said the young man quietly; “and you?”
+
+“I--got away,” she said savagely. But she was taken with a sudden
+nervous shiver, which she at once repressed by tightly dragging her
+shawl over her shoulders and elbows, and folding her arms defiantly.
+
+“And you’re going?”
+
+“To follow the deputy, may be,” she said gloomily. “But come, I say,
+ain’t you going to treat? It’s cursed cold here.”
+
+“Wait a moment.” The young man was looking at her, with his arched brows
+slightly knit and a half smile of curiosity. “Ain’t you Teresa?”
+
+She was prepared for the question, but evidently was not certain whether
+she would reply defiantly or confidently. After an exhaustive scrutiny
+of his face she chose the latter, and said, “You can bet your life on
+it, Johnny.”
+
+“I don’t bet, and my name isn’t Johnny. Then you’re the woman who
+stabbed Dick Curson over at Lagrange’s?”
+
+She became defiant again.
+
+“That’s me, all the time. What are you going to do about it?”
+
+“Nothing. And you used to dance at the Alhambra?” She whisked the shawl
+from her shoulders, held it up like a scarf, and made one or two steps
+of the sembicuacua. There was not the least gayety, recklessness, or
+spontaneity in the action; it was simply mechanical bravado. It was so
+ineffective, even upon her own feelings, that her arms presently dropped
+to her side, and she coughed embarrassedly. “Where’s that whiskey,
+pardner?” she asked.
+
+The young man turned toward the tree he had just quitted, and
+without further words assisted her to mount to the cavity. It was an
+irregular-shaped vaulted chamber, pierced fifty feet above by a shaft or
+cylindrical opening in the decayed trunk, which was blackened by smoke,
+as if it had served the purpose of a chimney. In one corner lay a
+bearskin and blanket; at the side were two alcoves or indentations, one
+of which was evidently used as a table, and the other as a cupboard.
+In another hollow, near the entrance, lay a few small sacks of flour,
+coffee, and sugar, the sticky contents of the latter still strewing
+the floor. From this storehouse the young man drew a wicker flask of
+whiskey, and handed it, with a tin cup of water, to the woman. She waved
+the cup aside, placed the flask to her lips, and drank the undiluted
+spirit. Yet even this was evidently bravado, for the water started
+to her eyes, and she could not restrain the paroxysm of coughing that
+followed.
+
+“I reckon that’s the kind that kills at forty rods,” she said, with a
+hysterical laugh. “But I say, pardner, you look as if you were fixed
+here to stay,” and she stared ostentatiously around the chamber. But she
+had already taken in its minutest details, even to observing that the
+hanging strips of bark could be disposed so as to completely hide the
+entrance.
+
+“Well, yes,” he replied; “it wouldn’t be very easy to pull up the stakes
+and move the shanty further on.”
+
+Seeing that either from indifference or caution he had not accepted her
+meaning, she looked at him fixedly, and said,--
+
+“What is your little game?”
+
+“Eh?”
+
+“What are you hiding for--here, in this tree?”
+
+“But I’m not hiding.”
+
+“Then why didn’t you come out when they hailed you last night?”
+
+“Because I didn’t care to.”
+
+Teresa whistled incredulously. “All right--then if you’re not hiding,
+I’m going to.” As he did not reply, she went on: “If I can keep out of
+sight for a couple of weeks, this thing will blow over here, and I can
+get across into Yolo. I could get a fair show there, where the boys
+know me. Just now the trails are all watched, but no one would think of
+lookin’ here.”
+
+“Then how did you come to think of it?” he asked carelessly.
+
+“Because I knew that bear hadn’t gone far for that sugar; because I know
+he hadn’t stole it from a cache--it was too fresh, and we’d have seen
+the torn-up earth; because we had passed no camp; and because I knew
+there was no shanty here. And, besides,” she added in a low voice,
+“maybe I was huntin’ a hole myself to die in--and spotted it by
+instinct.”
+
+There was something in this suggestion of a hunted animal that, unlike
+anything she had previously said or suggested, was not exaggerated, and
+caused the young man to look at her again. She was standing under the
+chimney-like opening, and the light from above illuminated her head and
+shoulders. The pupils of her eyes had lost their feverish prominence,
+and were slightly suffused and softened as she gazed abstractedly before
+her. The only vestige of her previous excitement was in her left-hand
+fingers, which were incessantly twisting and turning a diamond ring upon
+her right hand, but without imparting the least animation to her rigid
+attitude. Suddenly, as if conscious of his scrutiny, she stepped aside
+out of the revealing light and by a swift feminine instinct raised her
+hand to her head as if to adjust her straggling hair. It was only for
+a moment, however, for, as if aware of the weakness, she struggled to
+resume her aggressive pose.
+
+“Well,” she said. “Speak up. Am I goin’ to stop here, or have I got to
+get up and get?”
+
+“You can stay,” said the young man quietly; “but as I’ve got my
+provisions and ammunition here, and haven’t any other place to go to
+just now, I suppose we’ll have to share it together.”
+
+She glanced at him under her eyelids, and a half-bitter,
+half-contemptuous smile passed across her face. “All right, old man,”
+ she said, holding out her hand, “it’s a go. We’ll start in housekeeping
+at once, if you like.”
+
+“I’ll have to come here once or twice a day,” he said, quite composedly,
+“to look after my things, and get something to eat; but I’ll be away
+most of the time, and what with camping out under the trees every night
+I reckon my share won’t incommode you.”
+
+She opened her black eyes upon him, at this original proposition. Then
+she looked down at her torn dress. “I suppose this style of thing ain’t
+very fancy, is it?” she said, with a forced laugh.
+
+“I think I know where to beg or borrow a change for you, if you can’t
+get any,” he replied simply.
+
+She stared at him again. “Are you a family man?”
+
+“No.”
+
+She was silent for a moment. “Well,” she said, “you can tell your girl
+I’m not particular about its being in the latest fashion.”
+
+There was a slight flush on his forehead as he turned toward the little
+cupboard, but no tremor in his voice as he went on: “You’ll find tea
+and coffee here, and, if you’re bored, there’s a book or two. You read,
+don’t you--I mean English?”
+
+She nodded, but cast a look of undisguised contempt upon the two worn,
+coverless novels he held out to her. “You haven’t got last week’s
+‘Sacramento Union,’ have you? I hear they have my case all in; only them
+lying reporters made it out against me all the time.”
+
+“I don’t see the papers,” he replied curtly.
+
+“They say there’s a picture of me in the ‘Police Gazette,’ taken in the
+act,” and she laughed.
+
+He looked a little abstracted, and turned as if to go. “I think you’ll
+do well to rest a while just now, and keep as close hid as possible
+until afternoon. The trail is a mile away at the nearest point, but
+some one might miss it and stray over here. You’re quite safe if you’re
+careful, and stand by the tree. You can build a fire here,” he stepped
+under the chimney-like opening, “without its being noticed. Even the
+smoke is lost and cannot be seen so high.”
+
+The light from above was falling on his head and shoulders, as it had on
+hers. She looked at him intently.
+
+“You travel a good deal on your figure, pardner, don’t you?” she said,
+with a certain admiration that was quite sexless in its quality; “but
+I don’t see how you pick up a living by it in the Carquinez Woods. So
+you’re going, are you? You might be more sociable. Good-by.”
+
+“Good-by!” He leaped from the opening.
+
+“I say pardner!”
+
+He turned a little impatiently. She had knelt down at the entrance, so
+as to be nearer his level, and was holding out her hand. But he did not
+notice it, and she quietly withdrew it.
+
+“If anybody dropped in and asked for you, what name will they say?”
+
+He smiled. “Don’t wait to hear.”
+
+“But suppose I wanted to sing out for you, what will I call you?”
+
+He hesitated. “Call me--Lo.”
+
+“Lo, the poor Indian?” *
+
+“Exactly.”
+
+     * The first word of Pope’s familiar apostrophe is humorously
+     used in the Far West as a distinguishing title for the
+     Indian.
+
+It suddenly occurred to the woman, Teresa, that in the young man’s
+height, supple, yet erect carriage, color, and singular gravity of
+demeanor there was a refined, aboriginal suggestion. He did not look
+like any Indian she had ever seen, but rather as a youthful chief might
+have looked. There was a further suggestion in his fringed buckskin
+shirt and moccasins; but before she could utter the half-sarcastic
+comment that rose to her lips he had glided noiselessly away, even as an
+Indian might have done.
+
+She readjusted the slips of hanging bark with feminine ingenuity,
+dispersing them so as to completely hide the entrance. Yet this did not
+darken the chamber, which seemed to draw a purer and more vigorous light
+through the soaring shaft that pierced the roof than that which came
+from the dim woodland aisles below. Nevertheless, she shivered, and
+drawing her shawl closely around her began to collect some half-burnt
+fragments of wood in the chimney to make a fire. But the preoccupation
+of her thoughts rendered this a tedious process, as she would from time
+to time stop in the middle of an action and fall into an attitude of
+rapt abstraction, with far-off eyes and rigid mouth. When she had at
+last succeeded in kindling a fire and raising a film of pale blue smoke,
+that seemed to fade and dissipate entirely before it reached the top of
+the chimney shaft, she crouched beside it, fixed her eyes on the darkest
+corner of the cavern, and became motionless.
+
+What did she see through that shadow?
+
+Nothing at first but a confused medley of figures and incidents of the
+preceding night; things to be put away and forgotten; things that
+would not have happened but for another thing--the thing before which
+everything faded! A ball-room; the sounds of music; the one man she
+had cared for insulting her with the flaunting ostentation of his
+unfaithfulness; herself despised, put aside, laughed at, or worse,
+jilted. And then the moment of delirium, when the light danced; the one
+wild act that lifted her, the despised one, above them all--made her
+the supreme figure, to be glanced at by frightened women, stared at by
+half-startled, half-admiring men! “Yes,” she laughed; but struck by the
+sound of her own voice, moved twice round the cavern nervously, and then
+dropped again into her old position.
+
+As they carried him away he had laughed at her--like a hound that he
+was; he who had praised her for her spirit, and incited her revenge
+against others; he who had taught her to strike when she was insulted;
+and it was only fit he should reap what he had sown. She was what he,
+what other men, had made her. And what was she now? What had she been
+once?
+
+She tried to recall her childhood: the man and woman who might have
+been her father and mother; who fought and wrangled over her precocious
+little life; abused or caressed her as she sided with either; and then
+left her with a circus troupe, where she first tasted the power of her
+courage, her beauty, and her recklessness. She remembered those flashes
+of triumph that left a fever in her veins--a fever that when it failed
+must be stimulated by dissipation, by anything, by everything that would
+keep her name a wonder in men’s mouths, an envious fear to women. She
+recalled her transfer to the strolling players; her cheap pleasures, and
+cheaper rivalries and hatred--but always Teresa! the daring Teresa! the
+reckless Teresa! audacious as a woman, invincible as a boy; dancing,
+flirting, fencing, shooting, swearing, drinking, smoking, fighting
+Teresa! “Oh, yes; she had been loved, perhaps--who knows?--but always
+feared. Why should she change now? Ha, he should see.”
+
+She had lashed herself in a frenzy, as was her wont, with gestures,
+ejaculations, oaths, adjurations, and passionate apostrophes, but with
+this strange and unexpected result. Heretofore she had always been
+sustained and kept up by an audience of some kind or quality, if only
+perhaps a humble companion; there had always been some one she could
+fascinate or horrify, and she could read her power mirrored in their
+eyes. Even the half-abstracted indifference of her strange host had been
+something. But she was alone now. Her words fell on apathetic solitude;
+she was acting to viewless space. She rushed to the opening, dashed the
+hanging bark aside, and leaped to the ground.
+
+She ran forward wildly a few steps, and stopped.
+
+“Hallo!” she cried. “Look, ‘tis I, Teresa!”
+
+The profound silence remained unbroken. Her shrillest tones were lost
+in an echoless space, even as the smoke of her fire had faded into pure
+ether. She stretched out her clenched fists as if to defy the pillared
+austerities of the vaults around her.
+
+“Come and take me if you dare!”
+
+The challenge was unheeded. If she had thrown herself violently against
+the nearest tree-trunk, she could not have been stricken more breathless
+than she was by the compact, embattled solitude that encompassed her.
+The hopelessness of impressing these cold and passive vaults with
+her selfish passion filled her with a vague fear. In her rage of the
+previous night she had not seen the wood in its profound immobility.
+Left alone with the majesty of those enormous columns, she trembled and
+turned faint. The silence of the hollow tree she had just quitted seemed
+to her less awful than the crushing presence of these mute and monstrous
+witnesses of her weakness. Like a wounded quail with lowered crest and
+trailing wing, she crept back to her hiding place.
+
+Even then the influence of the wood was still upon her. She picked up
+the novel she had contemptuously thrown aside, only to let it fall again
+in utter weariness. For a moment her feminine curiosity was excited
+by the discovery of an old book, in whose blank leaves were pressed a
+variety of flowers and woodland grasses. As she could not conceive
+that these had been kept for any but a sentimental purpose, she was
+disappointed to find that underneath each was a sentence in an unknown
+tongue, that even to her untutored eye did not appear to be the language
+of passion. Finally she rearranged the couch of skins and blankets, and,
+imparting to it in three clever shakes an entirely different character,
+lay down to pursue her reveries. But nature asserted herself, and ere
+she knew it she was asleep.
+
+So intense and prolonged had been her previous excitement that, the
+tension once relieved, she passed into a slumber of exhaustion so deep
+that she seemed scarce to breathe. High noon succeeded morning, the
+central shaft received a single ray of upper sunlight, the afternoon
+came and went, the shadows gathered below, the sunset fires began to eat
+their way through the groined roof, and she still slept. She slept even
+when the bark hangings of the chamber were put aside, and the young man
+reentered.
+
+He laid down a bundle he was carrying and softly approached the sleeper.
+For a moment he was startled from his indifference; she lay so still and
+motionless. But this was not all that struck him; the face before him
+was no longer the passionate, haggard visage that confronted him that
+morning; the feverish air, the burning color, the strained muscles of
+mouth and brow, and the staring eyes were gone; wiped away, perhaps, by
+the tears that still left their traces on cheek and dark eyelash. It
+was the face of a handsome woman of thirty, with even a suggestion of
+softness in the contour of the cheek and arching of her upper lip, no
+longer rigidly drawn down in anger, but relaxed by sleep on her white
+teeth.
+
+With the lithe, soft tread that was habitual to him, the young man moved
+about, examining the condition of the little chamber and its stock
+of provisions and necessaries, and withdrew presently, to reappear as
+noiselessly with a tin bucket of water. This done, he replenished the
+little pile of fuel with an armful of bark and pine cones, cast an
+approving glance about him, which included the sleeper, and silently
+departed.
+
+It was night when she awoke. She was surrounded by a profound darkness,
+except where the shaft-like opening made a nebulous mist in the corner
+of her wooden cavern. Providentially she struggled back to consciousness
+slowly, so that the solitude and silence came upon her gradually, with
+a growing realization of the events of the past twenty-four hours, but
+without a shock. She was alone here, but safe still, and every hour
+added to her chances of ultimate escape. She remembered to have seen a
+candle among the articles on the shelf, and she began to grope her way
+towards the matches. Suddenly she stopped. What was that panting?
+
+Was it her own breathing, quickened with a sudden nameless terror? or
+was there something outside? Her heart seemed to stop beating while
+she listened. Yes! it was a panting outside--a panting now increased,
+multiplied, redoubled, mixed with the sounds of rustling, tearing,
+craunching, and occasionally a quick, impatient snarl. She crept on
+her hands and knees to the opening and looked out. At first the ground
+seemed to be undulating between her and the opposite tree. But a second
+glance showed her the black and gray, bristling, tossing backs of
+tumbling beasts of prey, charging the carcass of the bear that lay at
+its roots, or contesting for the prize with gluttonous, choked breath,
+sidelong snarls, arched spines, and recurved tails. One of the boldest
+had leaped upon a buttressing root of her tree within a foot of the
+opening. The excitement, awe, and terror she had undergone culminated in
+one wild, maddened scream, that seemed to pierce even the cold depths of
+the forest, as she dropped on her face, with her hands clasped over her
+eyes in an agony of fear.
+
+Her scream was answered, after a pause, by a sudden volley of firebrands
+and sparks into the midst of the panting, crowding pack; a few smothered
+howls and snaps, and a sudden dispersion of the concourse. In another
+moment the young man, with a blazing brand in either hand, leaped upon
+the body of the bear.
+
+Teresa raised her head, uttered a hysterical cry, slid down the tree,
+flew wildly to his side, caught convulsively at his sleeve, and fell on
+her knees beside him.
+
+“Save me! save me!” she gasped, in a voice broken by terror. “Save me
+from those hideous creatures. No, no!” she implored, as he endeavored
+to lift her to her feet. “No--let me stay here close beside you. So,”
+ clutching the fringe of his leather hunting-shirt, and dragging herself
+on her knees nearer him--“so--don’t leave me, for God’s sake!”
+
+“They are gone,” he replied, gazing down curiously at her, as she wound
+the fringe around her hand to strengthen her hold; “they’re only a lot
+of cowardly coyotes and wolves, that dare not attack anything that lives
+and can move.”
+
+The young woman responded with a nervous shudder. “Yes, that’s it,” she
+whispered, in a broken voice; “it’s only the dead they want. Promise
+me--swear to me, if I’m caught, or hung, or shot, you won’t let me be
+left here to be torn and--ah! my God! what’s that?”
+
+She had thrown her arms around his knees, completely pinioning him to
+her frantic breast. Something like a smile of disdain passed across his
+face as he answered, “It’s nothing. They will not return. Get up!”
+
+Even in her terror she saw the change in his face. “I know, I know!”
+ she cried. “I’m frightened--but I cannot bear it any longer. Hear me!
+Listen! Listen--but don’t move! I didn’t mean to kill Curson--no! I
+swear to God, no! I didn’t mean to kill the sheriff--and I didn’t. I was
+only bragging--do you hear? I lied! I lied--don’t move, I swear to God I
+lied. I’ve made myself out worse than I was. I have. Only don’t leave
+me now--and if I die--and it’s not far off, may be--get me away from
+here--and from THEM. Swear it!”
+
+“All right,” said the young man, with a scarcely concealed movement of
+irritation. “But get up now, and go back to the cabin.”
+
+“No; not THERE alone.” Nevertheless, he quietly but firmly released
+himself.
+
+“I will stay here,” he replied. “I would have been nearer to you, but
+I thought it better for your safety that my camp-fire should be further
+off. But I can build it here, and that will keep the coyotes off.”
+
+“Let me stay with you--beside you,” she said imploringly.
+
+She looked so broken, crushed, and spiritless, so unlike the woman of
+the morning that, albeit with an ill grace, he tacitly consented, and
+turned away to bring his blankets. But in the next moment she was at his
+side, following him like a dog, silent and wistful, and even offering
+to carry his burden. When he had built the fire, for which she had
+collected the pine-cones and broken branches near them, he sat down,
+folded his arms, and leaned back against the tree in reserved and
+deliberate silence.
+
+Humble and submissive, she did not attempt to break in upon a reverie
+she could not help but feel had little kindliness to herself. As the
+fire snapped and sparkled, she pillowed her head upon a root, and lay
+still to watch it.
+
+It rose and fell, and dying away at times to a mere lurid glow, and
+again, agitated by some breath scarcely perceptible to them, quickening
+into a roaring flame. When only the embers remained, a dead silence
+filled the wood. Then the first breath of morning moved the tangled
+canopy above, and a dozen tiny sprays and needles detached from the
+interlocked boughs winged their soft way noiselessly to the earth. A few
+fell upon the prostrate woman like a gentle benediction, and she slept.
+But even then, the young man, looking down, saw that the slender fingers
+were still aimlessly but rigidly twisted in the leather fringe of his
+hunting-shirt.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+It was a peculiarity of the Carquinez Wood that it stood apart and
+distinct in its gigantic individuality. Even where the integrity of its
+own singular species was not entirely preserved, it admitted no inferior
+trees. Nor was there any diminishing fringe on its outskirts; the
+sentinels that guarded the few gateways of the dim trails were as
+monstrous as the serried ranks drawn up in the heart of the forest.
+Consequently, the red highway that skirted the eastern angle was bare
+and shadeless, until it slipped a league off into a watered valley and
+refreshed itself under lesser sycamores and willows. It was here the
+newly born city of Excelsior, still in its cradle, had, like an infant
+Hercules, strangled the serpentine North Fork of the American river,
+and turned its life current into the ditches and flumes of the Excelsior
+mines.
+
+Newest of the new houses that seemed to have accidentally formed its
+single, straggling street was the residence of the Rev. Winslow Wynn,
+not unfrequently known as “Father Wynn,” pastor of the First Baptist
+church. The “pastorage,” as it was cheerfully called, had the glaring
+distinction of being built of brick, and was, as had been wickedly
+pointed out by idle scoffers, the only “fireproof” structure in town.
+This sarcasm was not, however, supposed to be particularly distasteful
+to “Father Wynn,” who enjoyed the reputation of being “hail fellow, well
+met” with the rough mining element, who called them by their Christian
+names, had been known to drink at the bar of the Polka Saloon while
+engaged in the conversion of a prominent citizen, and was popularly said
+to have no “gospel starch” about him. Certain conscious outcasts and
+transgressors were touched at this apparent unbending of the spiritual
+authority. The rigid tenets of Father Wynn’s faith were lost in the
+supposed catholicity of his humanity. “A preacher that can jine a man
+when he’s histin’ liquor into him, without jawin’ about it, ought to be
+allowed to wrestle with sinners and splash about in as much cold water
+as he likes,” was the criticism of one of his converts. Nevertheless,
+it was true that Father Wynn was somewhat loud and intolerant in his
+tolerance. It was true that he was a little more rough, a little more
+frank, a little more hearty, a little more impulsive than his disciples.
+It was true that often the proclamation of his extreme liberality and
+brotherly equality partook somewhat of an apology. It is true that a few
+who might have been most benefited by this kind of gospel regarded
+him with a singular disdain. It is true that his liberality was of an
+ornamental, insinuating quality, accompanied with but little sacrifice;
+his acceptance of a collection taken up in a gambling saloon for the
+rebuilding of his church, destroyed by fire, gave him a popularity
+large enough, it must be confessed, to cover the sins of the gamblers
+themselves, but it was not proven that HE had ever organized any form
+of relief. But it was true that local history somehow accepted him as
+an exponent of mining Christianity, without the least reference to the
+opinions of the Christian miners themselves.
+
+The Rev. Mr. Wynn’s liberal habits and opinions were not, however,
+shared by his only daughter, a motherless young lady of eighteen.
+Nellie Wynn was in the eye of Excelsior an unapproachable divinity,
+as inaccessible and cold as her father was impulsive and familiar. An
+atmosphere of chaste and proud virginity made itself felt even in
+the starched integrity of her spotless skirts, in her neatly gloved
+finger-tips, in her clear amber eyes, in her imperious red lips, in her
+sensitive nostrils. Need it be said that the youth and middle age of
+Excelsior were madly, because apparently hopelessly, in love with her?
+For the rest, she had been expensively educated, was profoundly ignorant
+in two languages, with a trained misunderstanding of music and painting,
+and a natural and faultless taste in dress.
+
+The Rev. Mr. Wynn was engaged in a characteristic hearty parting with
+one of his latest converts, upon his own doorstep, with admirable
+al fresco effect. He had just clapped him on the shoulder. “Good-by,
+good-by, Charley, my boy, and keep in the right path; not up, or down,
+or round the gulch, you know--ha, ha!--but straight across lots to
+the shining gate.” He had raised his voice under the stimulus of a few
+admiring spectators, and backed his convert playfully against the wall.
+“You see! we’re goin’ in to win, you bet. Good-by! I’d ask you to step
+in and have a chat, but I’ve got my work to do, and so have you. The
+gospel mustn’t keep us from that, must it, Charley? Ha, ha!”
+
+The convert (who elsewhere was a profane expressman, and had become
+quite imbecile under Mr. Wynn’s active heartiness and brotherly
+horse-play before spectators) managed, however, to feebly stammer with a
+blush something about “Miss Nellie.”
+
+“Ah, Nellie. She, too, is at her tasks--trimming her lamp--you know,
+the parable of the wise virgins,” continued Father Wynn hastily,
+fearing that the convert might take the illustration literally. “There,
+there--good-by. Keep in the right path.” And with a parting shove he
+dismissed Charley and entered his own house.
+
+That “wise virgin,” Nellie, had evidently finished with the lamp, and
+was now going out to meet the bridegroom, as she was fully dressed and
+gloved, and had a pink parasol in her hand, as her father entered the
+sitting-room. His bluff heartiness seemed to fade away as he removed
+his soft, broad-brimmed hat and glanced across the too fresh-looking
+apartment. There was a smell of mortar still in the air, and a faint
+suggestion that at any moment green grass might appear between the
+interstices of the red-brick hearth. The room, yielding a little in the
+point of coldness, seemed to share Miss Nellie’s fresh virginity, and,
+barring the pink parasol, set her off as in a vestal’s cell.
+
+“I supposed you wouldn’t care to see Brace, the expressman, so I got
+rid of him at the door,” said her father, drawing one of the new chairs
+towards him slowly, and sitting down carefully, as if it were a hitherto
+untried experiment.
+
+Miss Nellie’s face took a tint of interest. “Then he doesn’t go with the
+coach to Indian Spring to-day?”
+
+“No; why?”
+
+“I thought of going over myself to get the Burnham girls to come to
+choir-meeting,” replied Miss Nellie carelessly, “and he might have been
+company.”
+
+“He’d go now, if he knew you were going,” said her father; “but it’s
+just as well he shouldn’t be needlessly encouraged. I rather think that
+Sheriff Dunn is a little jealous of him. By the way, the sheriff is
+much better. I called to cheer him up to-day” (Mr. Wynn had in fact
+tumultuously accelerated the sick man’s pulse), “and he talked of you,
+as usual. In fact, he said he had only two things to get well for. One
+was to catch and hang that woman Teresa, who shot him; the other--can’t
+you guess the other?” he added archly, with a faint suggestion of his
+other manner.
+
+Miss Nellie coldly could not.
+
+The Rev. Mr. Wynn’s archness vanished. “Don’t be a fool,” he said dryly.
+“He wants to marry you, and you know it.”
+
+“Most of the men here do,” responded Miss Nellie, without the least
+trace of coquetry. “Is the wedding or the hanging to take place first,
+or together, so he can officiate at both?”
+
+“His share in the Union Ditch is worth a hundred thousand dollars,”
+ continued her father; “and if he isn’t nominated for district judge this
+fall, he’s bound to go to the legislature, anyway. I don’t think a girl
+with your advantages and education can afford to throw away the chance
+of shining in Sacramento, San Francisco, or, in good time, perhaps even
+Washington.”
+
+Miss Nellie’s eyes did not reflect entire disapproval of this
+suggestion, although she replied with something of her father’s
+practical quality.
+
+“Mr. Dunn is not out of his bed yet, and they say Teresa’s got away to
+Arizona, so there isn’t any particular hurry.”
+
+“Perhaps not; but see here, Nellie, I’ve some important news for you.
+You know your young friend of the Carquinez Woods--Dorman, the botanist,
+eh? Well, Brace knows all about him. And what do you think he is?”
+
+Miss Nellie took upon herself a few extra degrees of cold, and didn’t
+know.
+
+“An Injin! Yes, an out-and-out Cherokee. You see he calls himself
+Dorman--Low Dorman. That’s only French for ‘Sleeping Water,’ his Injin
+name!--‘Low Dorman.’”
+
+“You mean ‘L’Eau Dormante,’” said Nellie.
+
+“That’s what I said. The chief called him ‘Sleeping Water’ when he was a
+boy, and one of them French Canadian trappers translated it into French
+when he brought him to California to school. But he’s an Injin, sure. No
+wonder he prefers to live in the woods.”
+
+“Well?” said Nellie.
+
+“Well,” echoed her father impatiently, “he’s an Injin, I tell you, and
+you can’t of course have anything to do with him. He mustn’t come here
+again.”
+
+“But you forget,” said Nellie imperturbably, “that it was you who
+invited him here, and were so much exercised over him. You remember
+you introduced him to the Bishop and those Eastern clergymen as a
+magnificent specimen of a young Californian. You forget what an occasion
+you made of his coming to church on Sunday, and how you made him come in
+his buckskin shirt and walk down the street with you after service!”
+
+“Yes, yes,” said the Rev. Mr. Wynn, hurriedly.
+
+“And,” continued Nellie carelessly, “how you made us sing out of the
+same book ‘Children of our Father’s Fold,’ and how you preached at him
+until he actually got a color!”
+
+“Yes,” said her father; “but it wasn’t known then he was an Injin, and
+they are frightfully unpopular with those Southwestern men among whom we
+labor. Indeed, I am quite convinced that when Brace said ‘the only good
+Indian was a dead one’ his expression, though extravagant, perhaps,
+really voiced the sentiments of the majority. It would be only kindness
+to the unfortunate creature to warn him from exposing himself to their
+rude but conscientious antagonism.”
+
+“Perhaps you’d better tell him, then, in your own popular way, which
+they all seem to understand so well,” responded the daughter. Mr. Wynn
+cast a quick glance at her, but there was no trace of irony in her
+face--nothing but a half-bored indifference as she walked toward the
+window.
+
+“I will go with you to the coach-office,” said her father, who generally
+gave these simple paternal duties the pronounced character of a public
+Christian example.
+
+“It’s hardly worth while,” replied Miss Nellie. “I’ve to stop at the
+Watsons’, at the foot of the hill, and ask after the baby; so I shall go
+on to the Crossing and pick up the coach when it passes. Good-by.”
+
+Nevertheless, as soon as Nellie had departed, the Rev. Mr. Wynn
+proceeded to the coach-office, and publicly grasping the hand of Yuba
+Bill, the driver, commended his daughter to his care in the name of the
+universal brotherhood of man and the Christian fraternity. Carried away
+by his heartiness, he forgot his previous caution, and confided to
+the expressman Miss Nellie’s regrets that she was not to have that
+gentleman’s company. The result was that Miss Nellie found the coach
+with its passengers awaiting her with uplifted hats and wreathed smiles
+at the Crossing, and the box seat (from which an unfortunate stranger,
+who had expensively paid for it, had been summarily ejected) at her
+service beside Yuba Bill, who had thrown away his cigar and donned a new
+pair of buckskin gloves to do her honor. But a more serious result to
+the young beauty was the effect of the Rev. Mr. Wynn’s confidences upon
+the impulsive heart of Jack Brace, the expressman. It has been already
+intimated that it was his “day off.” Unable to summarily reassume his
+usual functions beside the driver without some practical reason, and
+ashamed to go so palpably as a mere passenger, he was forced to let
+the coach proceed without him. Discomfited for the moment, he was not,
+however, beaten. He had lost the blissful journey by her side, which
+would have been his professional right, but--she was going to Indian
+Spring! could he not anticipate her there? Might they not meet in the
+most accidental manner? And what might not come from that meeting away
+from the prying eyes of their own town? Mr. Brace did not hesitate, but
+saddling his fleet Buckskin, by the time the stage-coach had passed the
+Crossing in the high-road he had mounted the hill and was dashing along
+the “cutoff” in the same direction, a full mile in advance. Arriving at
+Indian Spring, he left his horse at a Mexican posada on the confines of
+the settlement, and from the piled debris of a tunnel excavation awaited
+the slow arrival of the coach. On mature reflection he could give no
+reason why he had not boldly awaited it at the express office, except
+a certain bashful consciousness of his own folly, and a belief that it
+might be glaringly apparent to the bystanders. When the coach arrived
+and he had overcome this consciousness, it was too late. Yuba Bill had
+discharged his passengers for Indian Spring and driven away. Miss
+Nellie was in the settlement, but where? As time passed he became more
+desperate and bolder. He walked recklessly up and down the main street,
+glancing in at the open doors of shops, and even in the windows of
+private dwellings. It might have seemed a poor compliment to Miss
+Nellie, but it was an evidence of his complete preoccupation, when the
+sight of a female face at a window, even though it was plain or perhaps
+painted, caused his heart to bound, or the glancing of a skirt in the
+distance quickened his feet and his pulses. Had Jack contented himself
+with remaining at Excelsior he might have vaguely regretted, but as soon
+become as vaguely accustomed to, Miss Nellie’s absence. But it was not
+until his hitherto quiet and passive love took this first step of action
+that it fully declared itself. When he had made the tour of the town
+a dozen times unsuccessfully, he had perfectly made up his mind that
+marriage with Nellie or the speedy death of several people, including
+possibly himself, was the only alternative. He regretted he had not
+accompanied her; he regretted he had not demanded where she was going;
+he contemplated a course of future action that two hours ago would
+have filled him with bashful terror. There was clearly but one thing to
+do--to declare his passion the instant he met her, and return with her
+to Excelsior an accepted suitor, or not to return at all.
+
+Suddenly he was vexatiously conscious of hearing his name lazily called,
+and looking up found that he was on the outskirts of the town, and
+interrogated by two horsemen.
+
+“Got down to walk, and the coach got away from you, Jack, eh?”
+
+A little ashamed of his preoccupation, Brace stammered something about
+“collections.” He did not recognize the men, but his own face, name,
+and business were familiar to everybody for fifty miles along the
+stage-road.
+
+“Well, you can settle a bet for us, I reckon. Bill Dacre thar bet me
+five dollars and the drinks that a young gal we met at the edge of the
+Carquinez Woods, dressed in a long brown duster and half muffled up in a
+hood, was the daughter of Father Wynn of Excelsior. I did not get a fair
+look at her, but it stands to reason that a high-toned young lady like
+Nellie Wynn don’t go trap’sing along the wood like a Pike County tramp.
+I took the bet. May be you know if she’s here or in Excelsior?”
+
+Mr. Brace felt himself turning pale with eagerness and excitement. But
+the near prospect of seeing her presently gave him back his caution, and
+he answered truthfully that he had left her in Excelsior, and that in
+his two hours’ sojourn in Indian Spring he had not met her once. “But,”
+ he added, with a Californian’s reverence for the sanctity of a bet, “I
+reckon you’d better make it a stand-off for twenty-four hours, and I’ll
+find out and let you know.” Which, it is only fair to say, he honestly
+intended to do.
+
+With a hurried nod of parting, he continued in the direction of the
+Woods. When he had satisfied himself that the strangers had entered
+the settlement, and would not follow him for further explanation,
+he quickened his pace. In half an hour he passed between two of the
+gigantic sentinels that guarded the entrance to a trail. Here he paused
+to collect his thoughts. The Woods were vast in extent, the trail dim
+and uncertain--at times apparently breaking off, or intersecting another
+trail as faint as itself. Believing that Miss Nellie had diverged from
+the highway only as a momentary excursion into the shade, and that she
+would not dare to penetrate its more sombre and unknown recesses, he
+kept within sight of the skirting plain. By degrees the sedate influence
+of the silent vaults seemed to depress him. The ardor of the chase began
+to flag. Under the calm of their dim roof the fever of his veins began
+to subside; his pace slackened; he reasoned more deliberately. It was by
+no means probable that the young woman in a brown duster was Nellie;
+it was not her habitual traveling dress; it was not like her to walk
+unattended in the road; there was nothing in her tastes and habits to
+take her into this gloomy forest, allowing that she had even entered
+it; and on this absolute question of her identity the two witnesses were
+divided. He stopped irresolutely, and cast a last, long, half-despairing
+look around him. Hitherto he had given that part of the wood nearest the
+plain his greatest attention. His glance now sought its darker recesses.
+Suddenly he became breathless. Was it a beam of sunlight that had
+pierced the groined roof above, and now rested against the trunk of one
+of the dimmer, more secluded giants? No, it was moving; even as he gazed
+it slipped away, glanced against another tree, passed across one of the
+vaulted aisles, and then was lost again. Brief as was the glimpse, he
+was not mistaken--it was the figure of a woman.
+
+In another moment he was on her track, and soon had the satisfaction of
+seeing her reappear at a lesser distance. But the continual intervention
+of the massive trunks made the chase by no means an easy one, and as he
+could not keep her always in sight he was unable to follow or understand
+the one intelligent direction which she seemed to invariably keep.
+Nevertheless, he gained upon her breathlessly, and, thanks to the
+bark-strewn floor, noiselessly. He was near enough to distinguish and
+recognize the dress she wore, a pale yellow, that he had admired when he
+first saw her. It was Nellie, unmistakably; if it were she of the brown
+duster, she had discarded it, perhaps for greater freedom. He was near
+enough to call out now, but a sudden nervous timidity overcame him; his
+lips grew dry. What should he say to her? How account for his presence?
+“Miss Nellie, one moment!” he gasped. She darted forward and--vanished.
+
+At this moment he was not more than a dozen yards from her. He rushed
+to where she had been standing, but her disappearance was perfect and
+complete. He made a circuit of the group of trees within whose radius
+she had last appeared, but there was neither trace of her, nor a
+suggestion of her mode of escape. He called aloud to her; the vacant
+Woods let his helpless voice die in their unresponsive depths. He gazed
+into the air and down at the bark-strewn carpet at his feet. Like most
+of his vocation, he was sparing of speech, and epigrammatic after his
+fashion. Comprehending in one swift but despairing flash of intelligence
+the existence of some fateful power beyond his own weak endeavor, he
+accepted its logical result with characteristic grimness, threw his hat
+upon the ground, put his hands in his pockets, and said--
+
+“Well, I’m d--d!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+Out of compliment to Miss Nellie Wynn, Yuba Bill, on reaching Indian
+Spring, had made a slight detour to enable him to ostentatiously set
+down his fair passenger before the door of the Burnhams. When it had
+closed on the admiring eyes of the passengers and the coach had rattled
+away, Miss Nellie, without any undue haste or apparent change in
+her usual quiet demeanor, managed, however, to dispatch her business
+promptly, and, leaving an impression that she would call again before
+her return to Excelsior, parted from her friends and slipped away
+through a side street to the General Furnishing Store of Indian Spring.
+In passing this emporium, Miss Nellie’s quick eye had discovered a cheap
+brown linen duster hanging in its window. To purchase it, and put it
+over her delicate cambric dress, albeit with a shivering sense that she
+looked like a badly folded brown-paper parcel, did not take long. As she
+left the shop it was with mixed emotions of chagrin and security that
+she noticed that her passage through the settlement no longer turned
+the heads of its male inhabitants. She reached the outskirts of Indian
+Spring and the high-road at about the time Mr. Brace had begun his
+fruitless patrol of the main street. Far in the distance a faint
+olive-green table mountain seemed to rise abruptly from the plain.
+It was the Carquinez Woods. Gathering her spotless skirts beneath her
+extemporized brown domino, she set out briskly towards them.
+
+But her progress was scarcely free or exhilarating. She was not
+accustomed to walking in a country where “buggy-riding” was considered
+the only genteel young-lady-like mode of progression, and its regular
+provision the expected courtesy of mankind. Always fastidiously booted,
+her low-quartered shoes were charming to the eye, but hardly adapted
+to the dust and inequalities of the highroad. It was true that she had
+thought of buying a coarser pair at Indian Spring, but once face to face
+with their uncompromising ugliness, she had faltered and fled. The sun
+was unmistakably hot, but her parasol was too well known and offered
+too violent a contrast to the duster for practical use. Once she stopped
+with an exclamation of annoyance, hesitated, and looked back. In half
+an hour she had twice lost her shoe and her temper; a pink flush took
+possession of her cheeks, and her eyes were bright with suppressed rage.
+Dust began to form grimy circles around their orbits; with cat-like
+shivers she even felt it pervade the roots of her blond hair. Gradually
+her breath grew more rapid and hysterical, her smarting eyes became
+humid, and at last, encountering two observant horsemen in the road, she
+turned and fled, until, reaching the wood, she began to cry.
+
+Nevertheless she waited for the two horsemen to pass, to satisfy herself
+that she was not followed; then pushed on vaguely, until she reached a
+fallen tree, where, with a gesture of disgust, she tore off her hapless
+duster and flung it on the ground. She then sat down sobbing, but after
+a moment dried her eyes hurriedly and started to her feet. A few paces
+distant, erect, noiseless, with outstretched hand, the young solitary
+of the Carquinez Woods advanced towards her. His hand had almost touched
+hers, when he stopped.
+
+“What has happened?” he asked gravely.
+
+“Nothing,” she said, turning half away, and searching the ground with
+her eyes, as if she had lost something. “Only I must be going back now.”
+
+“You shall go back at once, if you wish it,” he said, flushing slightly.
+“But you have been crying; why?”
+
+Frank as Miss Nellie wished to be, she could not bring herself to
+say that her feet hurt her, and the dust and heat were ruining her
+complexion. It was therefore with a half-confident belief that
+her troubles were really of a moral quality that she answered,
+“Nothing--nothing, but--but--it’s wrong to come here.”
+
+“But you did not think it was wrong when you agreed to come, at our
+last meeting,” said the young man, with that persistent logic which
+exasperates the inconsequent feminine mind. “It cannot be any more wrong
+to-day.”
+
+“But it was not so far off,” murmured the young girl, without looking
+up.
+
+“Oh, the distance makes it more improper, then,” he said abstractedly;
+but after a moment’s contemplation of her half-averted face, he asked
+gravely, “Has anyone talked to you about me?”
+
+Ten minutes before, Nellie had been burning to unburthen herself of her
+father’s warning, but now she felt she would not. “I wish you wouldn’t
+call yourself Low,” she said at last.
+
+“But it’s my name,” he replied quietly.
+
+“Nonsense! It’s only a stupid translation of a stupid nickname. They
+might as well call you ‘Water’ at once.”
+
+“But you said you liked it.”
+
+“Well, so I do. But don’t you see--I--oh dear! you don’t understand.”
+
+Low did not reply, but turned his head with resigned gravity towards the
+deeper woods. Grasping the barrel of his rifle with his left hand, he
+threw his right arm across his left wrist and leaned slightly upon it
+with the habitual ease of a Western hunter--doubly picturesque in his
+own lithe, youthful symmetry. Miss Nellie looked at him from under her
+eyelids, and then half defiantly raised her head and her dark lashes.
+Gradually an almost magical change came over her features; her eyes grew
+larger and more and more yearning, until they seemed to draw and absorb
+in their liquid depths the figure of the young man before her; her cold
+face broke into an ecstasy of light and color; her humid lips parted
+in a bright, welcoming smile, until, with an irresistible impulse, she
+arose, and throwing back her head stretched towards him two hands full
+of vague and trembling passion.
+
+In another moment he had seized them, kissed them, and, as he drew her
+closer to his embrace, felt them tighten around his neck. “But what name
+do you wish to call me?” he asked, looking down into her eyes.
+
+Miss Nellie murmured something confidentially to the third button of his
+hunting shirt. “But that,” he replied, with a smile, “THAT wouldn’t be
+any more practical, and you wouldn’t want others to call me dar--” Her
+fingers loosened around his neck, she drew her head back, and a singular
+expression passed over her face, which to any calmer observer than
+a lover would have seemed, however, to indicate more curiosity than
+jealousy.
+
+“Who else DOES call you so?” she added earnestly. “How many, for
+instance?”
+
+Low’s reply was addressed not to her ear, but her lips. She did not
+avoid it, but added, “And do you kiss them all like that?” Taking him by
+the shoulders, she held him a little way from her, and gazed at him from
+head to foot. Then drawing him again to her embrace, she said, “I don’t
+care, at least no woman has kissed you like that.” Happy, dazzled, and
+embarrassed, he was beginning to stammer the truthful protestation that
+rose to his lips, but she stopped him: “No, don’t protest! say nothing!
+Let ME love YOU--that is all. It is enough.” He would have caught her
+in his arms again, but she drew back. “We are near the road,” she said
+quietly. “Come! You promised to show me where you camped. Let US make
+the most of our holiday. In an hour I must leave the woods.”
+
+“But I shall accompany you, dearest.”
+
+“No, I must go as I came--alone.”
+
+“But Nellie--”
+
+“I tell you no,” she said, with an almost harsh practical decision,
+incompatible with her previous abandonment. “We might be seen together.”
+
+“Well, suppose we are; we must be seen together eventually,” he
+remonstrated.
+
+The young girl made an involuntary gesture of impatient negation, but
+checked herself. “Don’t let us talk of that now. Come, while I am here
+under your own roof--” she pointed to the high interlaced boughs above
+them--“you must be hospitable. Show me your home; tell me, isn’t it a
+little gloomy sometimes?”
+
+“It never has been; I never thought it WOULD be until the moment you
+leave it to-day.”
+
+She pressed his hand briefly and in a half-perfunctory way, as if her
+vanity had accepted and dismissed the compliment. “Take me somewhere,”
+ she said inquisitively, “where you stay most; I do not seem to see you
+HERE,” she added, looking around her with a slight shiver. “It is so big
+and so high. Have you no place where you eat and rest and sleep?”
+
+“Except in the rainy season, I camp all over the place--at any spot
+where I may have been shooting or collecting.”
+
+“Collecting?” queried Nellie.
+
+“Yes; with the herbarium, you know.”
+
+“Yes,” said Nellie dubiously. “But you told me once--the first time we
+ever talked together,” she added, looking in his eyes--“something about
+your keeping your things like a squirrel in a tree. Could we not
+go there? Is there not room for us to sit and talk without being
+brow-beaten and looked down upon by these supercilious trees?”
+
+“It’s too far away,” said Low truthfully, but with a somewhat pronounced
+emphasis, “much too far for you just now; and it lies on another trail
+that enters the wood beyond. But come, I will show you a spring known
+only to myself, the wood ducks, and the squirrels. I discovered it the
+first day I saw you, and gave it your name. But you shall christen it
+yourself. It will be all yours, and yours alone, for it is so hidden and
+secluded that I defy any feet but my own or whoso shall keep step with
+mine to find it. Shall that foot be yours, Nellie?”
+
+Her face beamed with a bright assent. “It may be difficult to track it
+from here,” he said, “but stand where you are a moment, and don’t move,
+rustle, nor agitate the air in any way. The woods are still now.” He
+turned at right angles with the trail, moved a few paces into the ferns
+and underbrush, and then stopped with his finger on his lips. For an
+instant both remained motionless; then with his intent face bent forward
+and both arms extended, he began to sink slowly upon one knee and one
+side, inclining his body with a gentle, perfectly-graduated movement
+until his ear almost touched the ground. Nellie watched his graceful
+figure breathlessly, until, like a bow unbent, he stood suddenly erect
+again, and beckoned to her without changing the direction of his face.
+
+“What is it?” she asked eagerly.
+
+“All right; I have found it,” he continued, moving forward without
+turning his head.
+
+“But how? What did you kneel for?” He did not reply, but taking her hand
+in his continued to move slowly on through the underbrush, as if
+obeying some magnetic attraction. “How did you find it?” again asked
+the half-awed girl, her voice unconsciously falling to a whisper. Still
+silent, Low kept his rigid face and forward tread for twenty yards
+further; then he stopped and released the girl’s half-impatient hand.
+“How did you find it?” she repeated sharply.
+
+“With my ears and nose,” replied Low gravely.
+
+“With your nose?”
+
+“Yes; I smelt it.”
+
+Still fresh with the memory of his picturesque attitude, the young man’s
+reply seemed to involve something more irritating to her feelings than
+even that absurd anticlimax. She looked at him coldly and critically,
+and appeared to hesitate whether to proceed. “Is it far?” she asked.
+
+“Not more than ten minutes now, as I shall go.”
+
+“And you won’t have to smell your way again?”
+
+“No; it is quite plain now,” he answered seriously, the young girl’s
+sarcasm slipping harmlessly from his Indian stolidity. “Don’t you smell
+it yourself?”
+
+But Miss Nellie’s thin, cold nostrils refused to take that vulgar
+interest.
+
+“Nor hear it? Listen!”
+
+“You forget I suffer the misfortune of having been brought up under a
+roof,” she replied coldly.
+
+“That’s true,” repeated Low, in all seriousness; “it’s not your fault.
+But do you know, I sometimes think I am peculiarly sensitive to water; I
+feel it miles away. At night, though I may not see it or even know where
+it is, I am conscious of it. It is company to me when I am alone, and
+I seem to hear it in my dreams. There is no music as sweet to me as
+its song. When you sang with me that day in church, I seemed to hear it
+ripple in your voice. It says to me more than the birds do, more than
+the rarest plants I find. It seems to live with me and for me. It is my
+earliest recollection; I know it will be my last, for I shall die in its
+embrace. Do you think, Nellie,” he continued, stopping short and gazing
+earnestly in her face--“do you think that the chiefs knew this when they
+called me ‘Sleeping Water’?”
+
+To Miss Nellie’s several gifts I fear the gods had not added poetry. A
+slight knowledge of English verse of a select character, unfortunately,
+did not assist her in the interpretation of the young man’s speech, nor
+relieve her from the momentary feeling that he was at times deficient
+in intellect. She preferred, however, to take a personal view of the
+question, and expressed her sarcastic regret that she had not known
+before that she had been indebted to the great flume and ditch at
+Excelsior for the pleasure of his acquaintance. This pert remark
+occasioned some explanation, which ended in the girl’s accepting a kiss
+in lieu of more logical argument. Nevertheless, she was still conscious
+of an inward irritation--always distinct from her singular and perfectly
+material passion--which found vent as the difficulties of their
+undeviating progress through the underbrush increased. At last she lost
+her shoe again, and stopped short. “It’s a pity your Indian friends
+did not christen you ‘Wild Mustard’ or ‘Clover,’” she said satirically,
+“that you might have had some sympathies and longings for the open
+fields instead of these horrid jungles! I know we will not get back in
+time.”
+
+Unfortunately, Low accepted this speech literally and with his
+remorseless gravity. “If my name annoys you, I can get it changed by the
+legislature, you know, and I can find out what my father’s name was, and
+take that. My mother, who died in giving me birth, was the daughter of a
+chief.”
+
+“Then your mother was really an Indian?” said Nellie, “and you are--”
+ She stopped short.
+
+“But I told you all this the day we first met,” said Low, with grave
+astonishment. “Don’t you remember our long talk coming from church?”
+
+“No,” said Nellie coldly, “you didn’t tell me.” But she was obliged to
+drop her eyes before the unwavering, undeniable truthfulness of his.
+
+“You have forgotten,” he said calmly; “but it is only right you should
+have your own way in disposing of a name that I have cared little for;
+and as you’re to have a share of it--”
+
+“Yes, but it’s getting late, and if we are not going forward--”
+ interrupted the girl impatiently.
+
+“We ARE going forward,” said Low imperturbably; “but I wanted to tell
+you, as we were speaking on THAT subject” (Nellie looked at her watch),
+“I’ve been offered the place of botanist and naturalist in Professor
+Grant’s survey of Mount Shasta, and if I take it--why, when I come back,
+darling--well--”
+
+“But you’re not going just yet,” broke in Nellie, with a new expression
+in her face.
+
+“No.”
+
+“Then we need not talk of it now,” she said, with animation.
+
+Her sudden vivacity relieved him. “I see what’s the matter,” he said
+gently, looking down at her feet; “these little shoes were not made to
+keep step with a moccasin. We must try another way.” He stooped as if
+to secure the erring buskin, but suddenly lifted her like a child to his
+shoulder. “There,” he continued, placing her arm round his neck, “you
+are clear of the ferns and brambles now, and we can go on. Are you
+comfortable?” He looked up, read her answer in her burning eyes and
+the warm lips pressed to his forehead at the roots of his straight dark
+hair, and again moved onward as in a mesmeric dream. But he did not
+swerve from his direct course, and with a final dash through the
+undergrowth parted the leafy curtain before the spring.
+
+At first the young girl was dazzled by the strong light that came from a
+rent in the interwoven arches of the wood. The breach had been caused by
+the huge bulk of one of the great giants that had half fallen, and was
+lying at a steep angle against one of its mightiest brethren, having
+borne down a lesser tree in the arc of its downward path. Two of the
+roots, as large as younger trees, tossed their blackened and bare
+limbs high in the air. The spring--the insignificant cause of this vast
+disruption--gurgled, flashed, and sparkled at the base; the limpid baby
+fingers that had laid bare the foundations of that fallen column played
+with the still clinging rootlets, laved the fractured and twisted limbs,
+and, widening, filled with sleeping water the graves from which they had
+been torn.
+
+“It had been going on for years, down there,” said Low, pointing to a
+cavity from which the fresh water now slowly welled, “but it had been
+quickened by the rising of the subterranean springs and rivers which
+always occurs at a certain stage of the dry season. I remember that
+on that very night--for it happened a little after midnight, when all
+sounds are more audible--I was troubled and oppressed in my sleep by
+what you would call a nightmare; a feeling as if I was kept down by
+bonds and pinions that I longed to break. And then I heard a crash in
+this direction, and the first streak of morning brought me the sound and
+scent of water. Six months afterwards I chanced to find my way here, as
+I told you, and gave it your name. I did not dream that I should ever
+stand beside it with you, and have you christen it yourself.”
+
+He unloosened the cup from his flask, and filling it at the spring
+handed it to her. But the young girl leant over the pool, and pouring
+the water idly back said, “I’d rather put my feet in it. Mayn’t I?”
+
+“I don’t understand you,” he said wonderingly.
+
+“My feet are SO hot and dusty. The water looks deliciously cool. May I?”
+
+“Certainly.”
+
+He turned away as Nellie, with apparent unconsciousness, seated herself
+on the bank, and removed her shoes and stockings. When she had dabbled
+her feet a few moments in the pool, she said over her shoulder--
+
+“We can talk just as well, can’t we?”
+
+“Certainly.”
+
+“Well, then, why didn’t you come to church more often, and why didn’t
+you think of telling father that you were convicted of sin and wanted to
+be baptized?”
+
+“I don’t know,” hesitated the young man.
+
+“Well, you lost the chance of having father convert you, baptize you,
+and take you into full church fellowship.”
+
+“I never thought--” he began.
+
+“You never thought. Aren’t you a Christian?”
+
+“I suppose so.”
+
+“He supposes so! Have you no convictions--no profession?”
+
+“But, Nellie, I never thought that you--”
+
+“Never thought that I--what? Do you think that I could ever be anything
+to a man who did not believe in justification by faith, or in the
+covenant of church fellowship? Do you think father would let me?”
+
+In his eagerness to defend himself he stepped to her side. But seeing
+her little feet shining through the dark water, like outcroppings of
+delicately veined quartz, he stopped embarrassed. Miss Nellie, however,
+leaped to one foot, and, shaking the other over the pool, put her hand
+on his shoulder to steady herself. “You haven’t got a towel--or,” she
+said dubiously, looking at her small handkerchief, “anything to dry them
+on?”
+
+But Low did not, as she perhaps expected, offer his own handkerchief.
+
+“If you take a bath after our fashion,” he said gravely, “you must learn
+to dry yourself after our fashion.”
+
+Lifting her again lightly in his arms, he carried her a few steps to the
+sunny opening, and bade her bury her feet in the dried mosses and baked
+withered grasses that were bleaching in a hollow. The young girl uttered
+a cry of childish delight, as the soft ciliated fibres touched her
+sensitive skin.
+
+“It is healing, too,” continued Low; “a moccasin filled with it after a
+day on the trail makes you all right again.”
+
+But Miss Nellie seemed to be thinking of something else.
+
+“Is that the way the squaws bathe and dry themselves?”
+
+“I don’t know; you forget I was a boy when I left them.”
+
+“And you’re sure you never knew any?”
+
+“None.”
+
+The young girl seemed to derive some satisfaction in moving her feet
+up and down for several minutes among the grasses in the hollow; then,
+after a pause, said, “You are quite certain I am the first woman that
+ever touched this spring?”
+
+“Not only the first woman, but the first human being, except myself.”
+
+“How nice!”
+
+They had taken each other’s hands; seated side by side, they leaned
+against a curving elastic root that half supported, half encompassed,
+them. The girl’s capricious, fitful manner succumbed as before to the
+near contact of her companion. Looking into her eyes, Low fell into a
+sweet, selfish lover’s monologue, descriptive of his past and present
+feelings towards her, which she accepted with a heightened color, a
+slight exchange of sentiment, and a strange curiosity. The sun had
+painted their half-embraced silhouettes against the slanting tree-trunk,
+and began to decline unnoticed; the ripple of the water mingling with
+their whispers came as one sound to the listening ear; even their
+eloquent silences were as deep, and, I wot, perhaps as dangerous, as the
+darkened pool that filled so noiselessly a dozen yards away. So quiet
+were they that the tremor of invading wings once or twice shook the
+silence, or the quick scamper of frightened feet rustled the dead grass.
+But in the midst of a prolonged stillness the young man sprang up so
+suddenly that Nellie was still half clinging to his neck as he stood
+erect. “Hush!” he whispered; “some one is near!”
+
+He disengaged her anxious hands gently, leaped upon the slanting
+tree-trunk, and running half-way up its incline with the agility of a
+squirrel, stretched himself at full length upon it and listened.
+
+To the impatient, inexplicably startled girl, it seemed an age before he
+rejoined her.
+
+“You are safe,” he said; “he is going by the western trail towards
+Indian Spring.”
+
+“Who is HE?” she asked, biting her lips with a poorly restrained gesture
+of mortification and disappointment.
+
+“Some stranger,” replied Low.
+
+“As long as he wasn’t coming here, why did you give me such a fright?”
+ she said pettishly. “Are you nervous because a single wayfarer happens
+to stray here?”
+
+“It was no wayfarer, for he tried to keep near the trail,” said Low. “He
+was a stranger to the wood, for he lost his way every now and then. He
+was seeking or expecting some one, for he stopped frequently and waited
+or listened. He had not walked far, for he wore spurs that tinkled and
+caught in the brush; and yet he had not ridden here, for no horse’s
+hoofs passed the road since we have been here. He must have come from
+Indian Spring.”
+
+“And you heard all that when you listened just now?” asked Nellie, half
+disdainfully.
+
+Impervious to her incredulity Low turned his calm eyes on her face.
+“Certainly, I’ll bet my life on what I say. Tell me: do you know anybody
+in Indian Spring who would likely spy upon you?”
+
+The young girl was conscious of a certain ill-defined uneasiness, but
+answered, “No.”
+
+“Then it was not YOU he was seeking,” said Low thoughtfully. Miss Nellie
+had not time to notice the emphasis, for he added, “You must go at once,
+and lest you have been followed I will show you another way back to
+Indian Spring. It is longer, and you must hasten. Take your shoes and
+stockings with you until we are out of the bush.”
+
+He raised her again in his arms and strode once more out through the
+covert into the dim aisles of the wood. They spoke but little; she could
+not help feeling that some other discordant element, affecting him more
+strongly than it did her, had come between them, and was half perplexed
+and half frightened. At the end of ten minutes he seated her upon a
+fallen branch, and telling her he would return by the time she had
+resumed her shoes and stockings glided from her like a shadow. She would
+have uttered an indignant protest at being left alone, but he was gone
+ere she could detain him. For a moment she thought she hated him. But
+when she had mechanically shod herself once more, not without nervous
+shivers at every falling needle, he was at her side.
+
+“Do you know anyone who wears a frieze coat like that?” he asked,
+handing her a few torn shreds of wool affixed to a splinter of bark.
+
+Miss Nellie instantly recognized the material of a certain sporting
+coat worn by Mr. Jack Brace on festive occasions, but a strange yet
+infallible instinct that was part of her nature made her instantly
+disclaim all knowledge of it.
+
+“No,” she said.
+
+“Not anyone who scents himself with some doctor’s stuff like cologne?”
+ continued Low, with the disgust of keen olfactory sensibilities.
+
+Again Miss Nellie recognized the perfume with which the gallant
+expressman was wont to make redolent her little parlor, but again she
+avowed no knowledge of its possessor. “Well,” returned Low with some
+disappointment, “such a man has been here. Be on your guard. Let us go
+at once.”
+
+She required no urging to hasten her steps, but hurried breathlessly at
+his side. He had taken a new trail by which they left the wood at right
+angles with the highway, two miles away. Following an almost effaced
+mule track along a slight depression of the plain, deep enough, however,
+to hide them from view, he accompanied her, until, rising to the level
+again, she saw they were beginning to approach the highway and the
+distant roofs of Indian Spring. “Nobody meeting you now,” he
+whispered, “would suspect where you had been. Good night! until next
+week--remember.”
+
+They pressed each other’s hands, and standing on the slight ridge
+outlined against the paling sky, in full view of the highway, parting
+carelessly, as if they had been chance met travelers. But Nellie could
+not restrain a parting backward glance as she left the ridge. Low
+had descended to the deserted trail, and was running swiftly in the
+direction of the Carquinez Woods.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+Teresa awoke with a start. It was day already, but how far advanced the
+even, unchanging, soft twilight of the woods gave no indication.
+Her companion had vanished, and to her bewildered senses so had the
+camp-fire, even to its embers and ashes. Was she awake, or had she
+wandered away unconsciously in the night? One glance at the tree above
+her dissipated the fancy. There was the opening of her quaint retreat
+and the hanging strips of bark, and at the foot of the opposite tree
+lay the carcass of the bear. It had been skinned, and, as Teresa thought
+with an inward shiver, already looked half its former size.
+
+Not yet accustomed to the fact that a few steps in either direction
+around the circumference of those great trunks produced the sudden
+appearance or disappearance of any figure, Teresa uttered a slight
+scream as her young companion unexpectedly stepped to her side. “You
+see a change here,” he said; “the stamped-out ashes of the camp-fire lie
+under the brush,” and he pointed to some cleverly scattered boughs
+and strips of bark which completely effaced the traces of last night’s
+bivouac. “We can’t afford to call the attention of any packer or hunter
+who might straggle this way to this particular spot and this particular
+tree; the more naturally,” he added, “as they always prefer to camp over
+an old fire.” Accepting this explanation meekly, as partly a reproach
+for her caprice of the previous night, Teresa hung her head.
+
+“I’m very sorry,” she said, “but wouldn’t that,” pointing to the carcass
+of the bear, “have made them curious?”
+
+But Low’s logic was relentless.
+
+“By this time there would have been little left to excite curiosity, if
+you had been willing to leave those beasts to their work.”
+
+“I’m very sorry,” repeated the woman, her lips quivering.
+
+“They are the scavengers of the wood,” he continued in a lighter tone;
+“if you stay here you must try to use them to keep your house clean.”
+
+Teresa smiled nervously.
+
+“I mean that they shall finish their work to-night,” he added, “and I
+shall build another camp-fire for us a mile from here until they do.”
+
+But Teresa caught his sleeve.
+
+“No,” she said hurriedly, “don’t, please, for me. You must not take the
+trouble, nor the risk. Hear me; do, please. I can bear it, I WILL
+bear it--to-night. I would have borne it last night, but it was so
+strange--and”--she passed her hands over her forehead--“I think I must
+have been half mad. But I am not so foolish now.”
+
+She seemed so broken and despondent that he replied reassuringly:
+“Perhaps it would be better that I should find another hiding-place for
+you, until I can dispose of that carcass so that it will not draw dogs
+after the wolves, and men after THEM. Besides, your friend the sheriff
+will probably remember the bear when he remembers anything, and try to
+get on its track again.”
+
+“He’s a conceited fool,” broke in Teresa in a high voice, with a slight
+return of her old fury, “or he’d have guessed where that shot came from;
+and,” she added in a lower tone, looking down at her limp and nerveless
+fingers, “he wouldn’t have let a poor, weak, nervous wretch like me get
+away.”
+
+“But his deputy may put two and two together, and connect your escape
+with it.”
+
+Teresa’s eyes flashed. “It would be like the dog, just to save his
+pride, to swear it was an ambush of my friends, and that he was
+overpowered by numbers. Oh yes! I see it all!” she almost screamed,
+lashing herself into a rage at the bare contemplation of this diminution
+of her glory. “That’s the dirty lie he tells everywhere, and is telling
+now.”
+
+She stamped her feet and glanced savagely around, as if at any risk to
+proclaim the falsehood. Low turned his impassive, truthful face towards
+her.
+
+“Sheriff Dunn,” he began gravely, “is a politician, and a fool when he
+takes to the trail as a hunter of man or beast. But he is not a coward
+nor a liar. Your chances would be better if he were--if he laid your
+escape to an ambush of your friends, than if his pride held you alone
+responsible.”
+
+“If he’s such a good man, why do you hesitate?” she replied bitterly.
+“Why don’t you give me up at once, and do a service to one of your
+friends?”
+
+“I do not even know him,” returned Low opening his clear eyes upon her.
+“I’ve promised to hide you here, and I shall hide you as well from him
+as from anybody.”
+
+Teresa did not reply, but suddenly dropping down upon the ground
+buried her face in her hands and began to sob convulsively. Low turned
+impassively away, and putting aside the bark curtain climbed into the
+hollow tree. In a few moments he reappeared, laden with provisions and
+a few simple cooking utensils, and touched her lightly on the shoulder.
+She looked up timidly; the paroxysm had passed, but her lashes yet
+glittered.
+
+“Come,” he said, “come and get some breakfast. I find you have eaten
+nothing since you have been here--twenty-four hours.”
+
+“I didn’t know it,” she said, with a faint smile. Then seeing his
+burden, and possessed by a new and strange desire for some menial
+employment, she said hurriedly, “Let me carry something--do, please,”
+ and even tried to disencumber him.
+
+Half annoyed, Low at last yielded, and handing his rifle said, “There,
+then, take that; but be careful--it’s loaded!”
+
+A cruel blush burnt the woman’s face to the roots of her hair as she
+took the weapon hesitatingly in her hand.
+
+“No!” she stammered, hurriedly lifting her shame-suffused eyes to his;
+“no! no!”
+
+He turned away with an impatience which showed her how completely
+gratuitous had been her agitation and its significance, and said,
+“Well, then, give it back if you are afraid of it.” But she as suddenly
+declined to return it; and shouldering it deftly, took her place by his
+side. Silently they moved from the hollow tree together.
+
+During their walk she did not attempt to invade his taciturnity.
+Nevertheless she was as keenly alive and watchful of his every movement
+and gesture as if she had hung enchanted on his lips. The unerring
+way with which he pursued a viewless, undeviating path through those
+trackless woods, his quick reconnaissance of certain trees or openings,
+his mute inspection of some almost imperceptible footprint of bird or
+beast, his critical examination of certain plants which he plucked and
+deposited in his deerskin haversack, were not lost on the quick-witted
+woman. As they gradually changed the clear, unencumbered aisles of the
+central woods for a more tangled undergrowth, Teresa felt that subtle
+admiration which culminates in imitation, and simulating perfectly the
+step, tread, and easy swing of her companion, followed so accurately his
+lead that she won a gratified exclamation from him when their goal
+was reached--a broken, blackened shaft, splintered by long-forgotten
+lightning, in the centre of a tangled carpet of wood-clover.
+
+“I don’t wonder you distanced the deputy,” he said cheerfully, throwing
+down his burden, “if you can take the hunting-path like that. In a few
+days, if you stay here, I can venture to trust you alone for a little
+pasear when you are tired of the tree.”
+
+Teresa looked pleased, but busied herself with arrangements for the
+breakfast, while he gathered the fuel for the roaring fire which soon
+blazed beside the shattered tree.
+
+Teresa’s breakfast was a success. It was a revelation to the young
+nomad, whose ascetic habits and simple tastes were usually content with
+the most primitive forms of frontier cookery. It was at least a surprise
+to him to know that without extra trouble kneaded flour, water, and
+saleratus need not be essentially heavy; that coffee need not be boiled
+with sugar to the consistency of syrup; that even that rarest delicacy,
+small shreds of venison covered with ashes and broiled upon the end of
+a ramrod boldly thrust into the flames, would be better and even more
+expeditiously cooked upon burning coals. Moved in his practical nature,
+he was surprised to find this curious creature of disorganized nerves
+and useless impulses informed with an intelligence that did not preclude
+the welfare of humanity or the existence of a soul. He respected her
+for some minutes, until in the midst of a culinary triumph a big tear
+dropped and spluttered in the saucepan. But he forgave the irrelevancy
+by taking no notice of it, and by doing full justice to that particular
+dish.
+
+Nevertheless, he asked several questions based upon these recently
+discovered qualities. It appeared that in the old days of her wanderings
+with the circus troupe she had often been forced to undertake this
+nomadic housekeeping. But she “despised it,” had never done it since,
+and always had refused to do it for “him”--the personal pronoun
+referring, as Low understood, to her lover, Curson. Not caring to revive
+these memories further, Low briefly concluded: “I don’t know what you
+were, or what you may be, but from what I see of you you’ve got all the
+sabe of a frontierman’s wife.”
+
+She stopped and looked at him, and then with an impulse of imprudence
+that only half concealed a more serious vanity, asked, “Do you think I
+might have made a good squaw?”
+
+“I don’t know,” he replied quietly. “I never saw enough of them to
+know.”
+
+Teresa, confident from his clear eyes that he spoke the truth, but
+having nothing ready to follow this calm disposal of her curiosity,
+relapsed into silence.
+
+The meal finished, Teresa washed their scant table equipage in a little
+spring near the camp-fire; where, catching sight of her disordered dress
+and collar, she rapidly threw her shawl, after the national fashion,
+over her shoulder and pinned it quickly. Low cached the remaining
+provisions and the few cooking utensils under the dead embers and ashes,
+obliterating all superficial indication of their camp-fire as deftly and
+artistically as he had before.
+
+“There isn’t the ghost of a chance,” he said in explanation, “that
+anybody but you or I will set foot here before we come back to supper,
+but it’s well to be on guard. I’ll take you back to the cabin now,
+though I bet you could find your way there as well as I can.”
+
+On their way back Teresa ran ahead of her companion, and plucking a few
+tiny leaves from a hidden oasis in the bark-strewn trail brought them to
+him.
+
+“That’s the kind you’re looking for, isn’t it?” she said, half timidly.
+
+“It is,” responded Low, in gratified surprise; “but how did you know it?
+You’re not a botanist, are you?”
+
+“I reckon not,” said Teresa; “but you picked some when we came, and I
+noticed what they were.”
+
+Here was indeed another revelation. Low stopped and gazed at her with
+such frank, open, utterly unabashed curiosity that her black eyes fell
+before him.
+
+“And do you think,” he asked with logical deliberation, “that you could
+find any plant from another I should give you?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Or from a drawing of it”
+
+“Yes; perhaps even if you described it to me.”
+
+A half-confidential, half-fraternal silence followed.
+
+“I tell you what. I’ve got a book--”
+
+“I know it,” interrupted Teresa; “full of these things.”
+
+“Yes. Do you think you could--”
+
+“Of course I could,” broke in Teresa, again.
+
+“But you don’t know what I mean,” said the imperturbable Low.
+
+“Certainly I do. Why, find ‘em, and preserve all the different ones for
+you to write under--that’s it, isn’t it?”
+
+Low nodded his head, gratified but not entirely convinced that she had
+fully estimated the magnitude of the endeavor.
+
+“I suppose,” said Teresa, in the feminine postscriptum voice which it
+would seem entered even the philosophical calm of the aisles they were
+treading--“I suppose that SHE places great value on them?”
+
+Low had indeed heard Science personified before, nor was it at all
+impossible that the singular woman walking by his side had also. He
+said “Yes;” but added, in mental reference to the Linnean Society of San
+Francisco, that “THEY were rather particular about the rarer kinds.”
+
+Content as Teresa had been to believe in Low’s tender relations with
+some favored ONE of her sex, this frank confession of a plural devotion
+staggered her.
+
+“They?” she repeated.
+
+“Yes,” he continued calmly. “The Botanical Society I correspond with are
+more particular than the Government Survey.”
+
+“Then you are doing this for a society?” demanded Teresa, with a stare.
+
+“Certainly. I’m making a collection and classification of specimens. I
+intend--but what are you looking at?”
+
+Teresa had suddenly turned away. Putting his hand lightly on her
+shoulder, the young man brought her face to face him again.
+
+She was laughing.
+
+“I thought all the while it was for a girl,” she said; “and--” But
+here the mere effort of speech sent her off into an audible and genuine
+outburst of laughter. It was the first time he had seen her even smile
+other than bitterly. Characteristically unconscious of any humor in
+her error, he remained unembarrassed. But he could not help noticing
+a change in the expression of her face, her voice, and even her
+intonation. It seemed as if that fit of laughter had loosed the last
+ties that bound her to a self-imposed character, had swept away the last
+barrier between her and her healthier nature, had dispossessed a painful
+unreality, and relieved the morbid tension of a purely nervous attitude.
+The change in her utterance and the resumption of her softer Spanish
+accent seemed to have come with her confidences, and Low took leave
+of her before their sylvan cabin with a comrade’s heartiness, and a
+complete forgetfulness that her voice had ever irritated him.
+
+When he returned that afternoon he was startled to find the cabin empty.
+But instead of bearing any appearance of disturbance or hurried flight,
+the rude interior seemed to have magically assumed a decorous order
+and cleanliness unknown before. Fresh bark hid the inequalities of
+the floor. The skins and blankets were folded in the corners, the rude
+shelves were carefully arranged, even a few tall ferns and bright but
+quickly fading flowers were disposed around the blackened chimney. She
+had evidently availed herself of the change of clothing he had brought
+her, for her late garments were hanging from the hastily-devised wooden
+pegs driven in the wall. The young man gazed around him with mixed
+feelings of gratification and uneasiness. His presence had been
+dispossessed in a single hour; his ten years of lonely habitation had
+left no trace that this woman had not effaced with a deft move of her
+hand. More than that, it looked as if she had always occupied it; and
+it was with a singular conviction that even when she should occupy it no
+longer it would only revert to him as her dwelling that he dropped the
+bark shutters athwart the opening, and left it to follow her.
+
+To his quick ear, fine eye, and abnormal senses, this was easy enough.
+She had gone in the direction of this morning’s camp. Once or twice he
+paused with a half-gesture of recognition and a characteristic “Good!”
+ at the place where she had stopped, but was surprised to find that her
+main course had been as direct as his own. Deviating from this direct
+line with Indian precaution, he first made a circuit of the camp,
+and approached the shattered trunk from the opposite direction. He
+consequently came upon Teresa unawares. But the momentary astonishment
+and embarrassment were his alone.
+
+He scarcely recognized her. She was wearing the garments he had brought
+her the day before--a certain discarded gown of Miss Nellie Wynn, which
+he had hurriedly begged from her under the pretext of clothing the wife
+of a distressed overland emigrant then on the way to the mines. Although
+he had satisfied his conscience with the intention of confessing the
+pious fraud to her when Teresa was gone and safe from pursuit, it
+was not without a sense of remorse that he witnessed the sacrilegious
+transformation. The two women were nearly the same height and size; and
+although Teresa’s maturer figure accented the outlines more strongly, it
+was still becoming enough to increase his irritation.
+
+Of this becomingness she was doubtless unaware at the moment that he
+surprised her. She was conscious of having “a change,” and this had
+emboldened her to “do her hair” and otherwise compose herself. After
+their greeting she was the first to allude to the dress, regretting that
+it was not more of a rough disguise, and that, as she must now discard
+the national habit of wearing her shawl “manta” fashion over her head,
+she wanted a hat. “But you must not,” she said, “borrow any more dresses
+for me from your young woman. Buy them for me at some shop. They left me
+enough money for that.” Low gently put aside the few pieces of gold she
+had drawn from her pocket, and briefly reminded her of the suspicion
+such a purchase by him would produce. “That’s so,” she said, with a
+laugh. “Caramba! what a mule I’m becoming! Ah! wait a moment. I have it!
+Buy me a common felt hat--a man’s hat--as if for yourself, as a change
+to that animal,” pointing to the fox-tailed cap he wore summer and
+winter, “and I’ll show you a trick. I haven’t run a theatrical wardrobe
+for nothing.” Nor had she, for the hat thus procured, a few days later,
+became, by the aid of a silk handkerchief and a bluejay’s feather, a
+fascinating “pork pie.”
+
+Whatever cause of annoyance to Low still lingered in Teresa’s dress,
+it was soon forgotten in a palpable evidence of Teresa’s value as a
+botanical assistant. It appeared that during the afternoon she had not
+only duplicated his specimens, but had discoverd one or two rare
+plants as yet unclassified in the flora of the Carquinez Woods. He was
+delighted, and in turn, over the campfire, yielded up some details of
+his present life and some of his earlier recollections.
+
+“You don’t remember anything of your father?” she asked. “Did he ever
+try to seek you out?”
+
+“No! Why should he?” replied the imperturbable Low; “he was not a
+Cherokee.”
+
+“No, he was a beast,” responded Teresa promptly. “And your mother--do
+you remember her?”
+
+“No, I think she died.”
+
+“You THINK she died? Don’t you know?”
+
+“No!”
+
+“Then you’re another!” said Teresa. Notwithstanding this frankness, they
+shook hands for the night: Teresa nestling like a rabbit in a hollow by
+the side of the campfire; Low with his feet towards it, Indian-wise,
+and his head and shoulders pillowed on his haversack, only half
+distinguishable in the darkness beyond.
+
+With such trivial details three uneventful days slipped by. Their
+retreat was undisturbed, nor could Low detect, by the least evidence
+to his acute perceptive faculties, that any intruding feet had since
+crossed the belt of shade. The echoes of passing events at Indian Spring
+had recorded the escape of Teresa as occurring at a remote and purely
+imaginative distance, and her probable direction the county of Yolo.
+
+“Can you remember,” he one day asked her, “what time it was when you cut
+the riata and got away?”
+
+Teresa pressed her hands upon her eyes and temples.
+
+“About three, I reckon.”
+
+“And you were here at seven; you could have covered some ground in four
+hours?”
+
+“Perhaps--I don’t know,” she said, her voice taking up its old quality
+again. “Don’t ask me--I ran all the way.”
+
+Her face was quite pale as she removed her hands from her eyes, and her
+breath came as quickly as if she had just finished that race for life.
+
+“Then you think I am safe here?” she added, after a pause.
+
+“Perfectly--until they find you are NOT in Yolo. Then they’ll look here.
+And THAT’S the time for you to go THERE.” Teresa smiled timidly.
+
+“It will take them some time to search Yolo--unless,” she added, “you’re
+tired of me here.” The charming non sequitur did not, however, seem to
+strike the young man. “I’ve got time yet to find a few more plants for
+you,” she suggested.
+
+“Oh, certainly!”
+
+“And give you a few more lessons in cooking.”
+
+“Perhaps.”
+
+The conscientious and literal Low was beginning to doubt if she were
+really practical. How otherwise could she trifle with such a situation?
+
+It must be confessed that that day and the next she did trifle with it.
+She gave herself up to a grave and delicious languor that seemed to flow
+from shadow and silence and permeate her entire being. She passed hours
+in a thoughtful repose of mind and spirit that seemed to fall like balm
+from those steadfast guardians, and distill their gentle ether in her
+soul; or breathed into her listening ear immunity from the forgotten
+past, and security for the present. If there was no dream of the future
+in this calm, even recurrence of placid existence, so much the better.
+The simple details of each succeeding day, the quaint housekeeping, the
+brief companionship and coming and going of her young host--himself
+at best a crystallized personification of the sedate and hospitable
+woods--satisfied her feeble cravings. She no longer regretted the
+inferior position that her fears had obliged her to take the first night
+she came; she began to look up to this young man--so much younger than
+herself--without knowing what it meant; it was not until she found
+that this attitude did not detract from his picturesqueness that
+she discovered herself seeking for reasons to degrade him from this
+seductive eminence.
+
+A week had elapsed with little change. On two days he had been absent
+all day, returning only in time to sup in the hollow tree, which,
+thanks to the final removal of the dead bear from its vicinity, was now
+considered a safer retreat than the exposed camp-fire. On the first of
+these occasions she received him with some preoccupation, paying but
+little heed to the scant gossip he brought from Indian Spring, and
+retiring early under the plea of fatigue, that he might seek his own
+distant camp-fire, which, thanks to her stronger nerves and regained
+courage, she no longer required so near. On the second occasion, he
+found her writing a letter more or less blotted with her tears. When it
+was finished, she begged him to post it at Indian Spring, where in two
+days an answer would be returned, under cover, to him.
+
+“I hope you will be satisfied then,” she added.
+
+“Satisfied with what?” queried the young man.
+
+“You’ll see,” she replied, giving him her cold hand. “Good-night.”
+
+“But can’t you tell me now?” he remonstrated, retaining her hand.
+
+“Wait two days longer--it isn’t much,” was all she vouchsafed to answer.
+
+The two days passed. Their former confidence and good fellowship were
+fully restored when the morning came on which he was to bring the
+answer from the post-office at Indian Spring. He had talked again of
+his future, and had recorded his ambition to procure the appointment of
+naturalist to a Government Surveying Expedition. She had even jocularly
+proposed to dress herself in man’s attire and “enlist” as his assistant.
+
+“But you will be safe with your friends, I hope, by that time,”
+ responded Low.
+
+“Safe with my friends,” she repeated in a lower voice. “Safe with my
+friends--yes!” An awkward silence followed; Teresa broke it gayly: “But
+your girl, your sweetheart, my benefactor--will SHE let you go?”
+
+“I haven’t told her yet,” said Low, gravely, “but I don’t see why she
+should object.”
+
+“Object, indeed!” interrupted Teresa in a high voice and a sudden and
+utterly gratuitous indignation; “how should she? I’d like to see her do
+it!”
+
+She accompanied him some distance to the intersection of the trail,
+where they parted in good spirits. On the dusty plain without a gale
+was blowing that rocked the high tree-tops above her, but, tempered and
+subdued, entered the low aisles with a fluttering breath of morning and
+a sound like the cooing of doves. Never had the wood before shown so
+sweet a sense of security from the turmoil and tempest of the world
+beyond; never before had an intrusion from the outer life--even in
+the shape of a letter--seemed so wicked a desecration. Tempted by the
+solicitation of air and shade, she lingered, with Low’s herbarium slung
+on her shoulder.
+
+A strange sensation, like a shiver, suddenly passed across her nerves,
+and left them in a state of rigid tension. With every sense morbidly
+acute, with every faculty strained to its utmost, the subtle instincts
+of Low’s woodcraft transformed and possessed her. She knew it now! A
+new element was in the wood--a strange being--another life--another
+man approaching! She did not even raise her head to look about her, but
+darted with the precision and fleetness of an arrow in the direction
+of her tree. But her feet were arrested, her limbs paralzyed, her very
+existence suspended, by the sound of a voice:--
+
+“Teresa!”
+
+It was a voice that had rung in her ears for the last two years in all
+phases of intensity, passion, tenderness, and anger; a voice upon whose
+modulations, rude and unmusical though they were, her heart and soul had
+hung in transport or anguish. But it was a chime that had rung its last
+peal to her senses as she entered the Carquinez Woods, and for the last
+week had been as dead to her as a voice from the grave. It was the voice
+of her lover--Dick Curson!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+The wind was blowing towards the stranger, so that he was nearly upon
+her when Teresa first took the alarm. He was a man over six feet in
+height, strongly built, with a slight tendency to a roundness of bulk
+which suggested reserved rather than impeded energy. His thick beard
+and mustache were closely cropped around a small and handsome mouth that
+lisped except when he was excited, but always kept fellowship with his
+blue eyes in a perpetual smile of half-cynical good-humor. His dress was
+superior to that of the locality; his general expression that of a
+man of the world, albeit a world of San Francisco, Sacramento, and
+Murderer’s Bar. He advanced towards her with a laugh and an outstretched
+hand.
+
+“YOU here!” she gasped, drawing back.
+
+Apparently neither surprised nor mortified at this reception, he
+answered frankly, “Yeth. You didn’t expect me, I know. But Doloreth
+showed me the letter you wrote her, and--well--here I am, ready to help
+you, with two men and a thpare horthe waiting outside the woodth on the
+blind trail.”
+
+“You--YOU--here?” she only repeated.
+
+Curson shrugged his shoulders. “Yeth. Of courth you never expected
+to thee me again, and leatht of all HERE. I’ll admit that; I’ll thay
+I wouldn’t if I’d been in your plathe. I’ll go further, and thay you
+didn’t want to thee me again--anywhere. But it all cometh to the thame
+thing; here I am. I read the letter you wrote Doloreth. I read how you
+were hiding here, under Dunn’th very nothe, with his whole pothe out,
+cavorting round and barkin’ up the wrong tree. I made up my mind to
+come down here with a few nathty friends of mine and cut you out under
+Dunn’th nothe, and run you over into Yuba--that’th all.”
+
+“How dared she show you my letter--YOU of all men? How dared she ask
+YOUR help?” continued Teresa, fiercely.
+
+“But she didn’t athk my help,” he responded coolly. “D--d if I don’t
+think she jutht calculated I’d be glad to know you were being hunted
+down and thtarving, that I might put Dunn on your track.”
+
+“You lie!” said Teresa, furiously; “she was my friend. A better friend
+than those who professed--more,” she added, with a contemptuous drawing
+away of her skirt as if she feared Curson’s contamination.
+
+“All right. Thettle that with her when you go back,” continued Curson
+philosophically. “We can talk of that on the way. The thing now ith to
+get up and get out of thethe woods. Come!”
+
+Teresa’s only reply was a gesture of scorn.
+
+“I know all that,” continued Curson half soothingly, “but they’re
+waiting.”
+
+“Let them wait. I shall not go.”
+
+“What will you do?”
+
+“Stay here--till the wolves eat me.”
+
+“Teresa, listen. D--- it all--Teresa--Tita! see here,” he said with
+sudden energy. “I swear to God it’s all right. I’m willing to let
+by-gones be by-gones and take a new deal. You shall come back as if
+nothing had happened, and take your old place as before. I don’t mind
+doing the square thing, all round. If that’s what you mean, if that’s
+all that stands in the way, why, look upon the thing as settled. There,
+Tita, old girl, come.”
+
+Careless or oblivious of her stony silence and starting eyes, he
+attempted to take her hand. But she disengaged herself with a quick
+movement, drew back, and suddenly crouched like a wild animal about to
+spring. Curson folded his arms as she leaped to her feet; the little
+dagger she had drawn from her garter flashed menacingly in the air, but
+she stopped.
+
+The man before her remained erect, impassive, and silent; the great
+trees around and beyond her remained erect, impassive, and silent; there
+was no sound in the dim aisles but the quick panting of her mad passion,
+no movement in the calm, motionless shadow but the trembling of her
+uplifted steel. Her arm bent and slowly sank, her fingers relaxed, the
+knife fell from her hand.
+
+“That’th quite enough for a thow,” he said, with a return to his former
+cynical ease and a perceptible tone of relief in his voice. “It’th the
+thame old Theretha. Well, then, if you won’t go with me, go without me;
+take the led horthe and cut away. Dick Athley and Petereth will follow
+you over the county line. If you want thome money, there it ith.” He
+took a buckskin purse from his pocket. “If you won’t take it from me”--he
+hesitated as she made no reply--“Athley’th flush and ready to lend you
+thome.”
+
+She had not seemed to hear him, but had stooped in some embarrassment,
+picked up the knife and hastily hid it, then with averted face and
+nervous fingers was beginning to tear strips of loose bark from the
+nearest trunk.
+
+“Well, what do you thay?”
+
+“I don’t want any money, and I shall stay here.” She hesitated, looked
+around her, and then added, with an effort, “I suppose you meant well.
+Be it so! Let by-gones be by-gones. You said just now, ‘It’s the same
+old Teresa.’ So she is, and seeing she’s the same she’s better here than
+anywhere else.”
+
+There was enough bitterness in her tone to call for Curson’s
+half-perfunctory sympathy.
+
+“That be d--d,” he responded quickly. “Jutht thay you’ll come, Tita,
+and--”
+
+She stopped his half-spoken sentence with a negative gesture. “You don’t
+understand. I shall stay here.”
+
+“But even if they don’t theek you here, you can’t live here forever. The
+friend that you wrote about who wath tho good to you, you know, can’t
+keep you here alwayth; and are you thure you can alwayth trutht her?”
+
+“It isn’t a woman; it’s a man.” She stopped short, and colored to the
+line of her forehead. “Who said it was a woman?” she continued fiercely,
+as if to cover her confusion with a burst of gratuitous anger. “Is that
+another of your lies?”
+
+Curson’s lips, which for a moment had completely lost their smile, were
+now drawn together in a prolonged whistle. He gazed curiously at her
+gown, at her hat, at the bow of bright ribbon that tied her black hair,
+and said, “Ah!”
+
+“A poor man who has kept my secret,” she went on hurriedly--“a man as
+friendless and lonely as myself. Yes,” disregarding Curson’s cynical
+smile, “a man who has shared everything--”
+
+“Naturally,” suggested Curson.
+
+“And turned himself out of his only shelter to give me a roof and
+covering,” she continued mechanically, struggling with the new and
+horrible fancy that his words awakened.
+
+“And thlept every night at Indian Thpring to save your reputation,” said
+Curson. “Of courthe.”
+
+Teresa turned very white. Curson was prepared for an outburst of
+fury--perhaps even another attack. But the crushed and beaten woman only
+gazed at him with frightened and imploring eyes. “For God’s sake, Dick,
+don’t say that!”
+
+The amiable cynic was staggered. His good-humor and a certain chivalrous
+instinct he could not repress got the better of him. He shrugged his
+shoulders. “What I thay, and what you DO, Teretha, needn’t make us
+quarrel. I’ve no claim on you--I know it. Only--” a vivid sense of the
+ridiculous, powerful in men of his stamp, completed her victory--“only
+don’t thay anything about my coming down here to cut you out from
+the--the--THE SHERIFF.” He gave utterance to a short but unaffected
+laugh, made a slight grimace, and turned to go.
+
+Teresa did not join in his mirth. Awkward as it would have been if he
+had taken a severer view of the subject, she was mortified even amidst
+her fears and embarrassment at his levity. Just as she had become
+convinced that his jealousy had made her over-conscious, his apparent
+good-humored indifference gave that over-consciousness a guilty
+significance. Yet this was lost in her sudden alarm as her companion,
+looking up, uttered an exclamation, and placed his hand upon his
+revolver. With a sinking conviction that the climax had come, Teresa
+turned her eyes. From the dim aisles beyond, Low was approaching. The
+catastrophe seemed complete.
+
+She had barely time to utter an imploring whisper: “In the name of God,
+not a word to him.” But a change had already come over her companion. It
+was no longer a parley with a foolish woman; he had to deal with a man
+like himself. As Low’s dark face and picturesque figure came nearer, Mr.
+Curson’s proposed method of dealing with him was made audible.
+
+“Ith it a mulatto or a Thircuth, or both?” he asked, with affected
+anxiety.
+
+Low’s Indian phlegm was impervious to such assault. He turned to Teresa,
+without apparently noticing her companion. “I turned back,” he said
+quietly, “as soon as I knew there were strangers here; I thought you
+might need me.” She noticed for the first time that, in addition to his
+rifle, he carried a revolver and hunting knife in his belt.
+
+“Yeth,” returned Curson, with an ineffectual attempt to imitate Low’s
+phlegm; “but ath I didn’t happen to be a sthranger to this lady, perhaps
+it wathn’t nethethary, particularly ath I had two friends--”
+
+“Waiting at the edge of the wood with a led horse,” interrupted Low,
+without addressing him, but apparently continuing his explanation to
+Teresa. But she turned to Low with feverish anxiety.
+
+“That’s so--he is an old friend--” she gave a quick, imploring glance at
+Curson--“an old friend who came to help me away--he is very kind,” she
+stammered, turning alternately from the one to the other; “but I told
+him there was no hurry--at least to-day--that you--were--very good--too,
+and would hide me a little longer, until your plan--you know YOUR plan,”
+ she added, with a look of beseeching significance to Low--“could be
+tried.” And then, with a helpless conviction that her excuses, motives,
+and emotions were equally and perfectly transparent to both men, she
+stopped in a tremble.
+
+“Perhapth it ‘th jutht ath well, then, that the gentleman came thtraight
+here, and didn’t tackle my two friendth when he pathed them,” observed
+Curson, half sarcastically.
+
+“I have not passed your friends, nor have I been near them,” said Low,
+looking at him for the first time, with the same exasperating calm, “or
+perhaps I should not be HERE or they THERE. I knew that one man entered
+the wood a few moments ago, and that two men and four horses remained
+outside.”
+
+“That’s true,” said Teresa to Curson excitedly--“that’s true. He knows
+all. He can see without looking, hear without listening. He--he--” she
+stammered, colored, and stopped.
+
+The two men had faced each other. Curson, after his first good-natured
+impulse, had retained no wish to regain Teresa, whom he felt he no
+longer loved, and yet who, for that very reason perhaps, had awakened
+his chivalrous instincts. Low, equally on his side, was altogether
+unconscious of any feeling which might grow into a passion, and prevent
+him from letting her go with another if for her own safety. They were
+both men of a certain taste and refinement. Yet, in spite of all this,
+some vague instinct of the baser male animal remained with them, and
+they were moved to a mutually aggressive attitude in the presence of the
+female.
+
+One word more, and the opening chapter of a sylvan Iliad might have
+begun. But this modern Helen saw it coming, and arrested it with an
+inspiration of feminine genius. Without being observed, she disengaged
+her knife from her bosom and let it fall as if by accident. It struck
+the ground with the point of its keen blade, bounded and rolled between
+them. The two men started and looked at each other with a foolish air.
+Curson laughed.
+
+“I reckon she can take care of herthelf,” he said, extending his hand to
+Low. “I’m off. But if I’m wanted SHE’LL know where to find me.” Low took
+the proffered hand, but neither of the two men looked at Teresa. The
+reserve of antagonism once broken, a few words of caution, advice, and
+encouragement passed between them, in apparent obliviousness of her
+presence or her personal responsibility. As Curson at last nodded
+a farewell to her, Low insisted upon accompanying him as far as the
+horses, and in another moment she was again alone.
+
+She had saved a quarrel between them at the sacrifice of herself, for
+her vanity was still keen enough to feel that this exhibition of her
+old weakness had degraded her in their eyes, and, worse, had lost the
+respect her late restraint had won from Low. They had treated her like a
+child or a crazy woman, perhaps even now were exchanging criticisms
+upon her--perhaps pitying her! Yet she had prevented a quarrel, a fight;
+possibly the death of either one or the other of these men who despised
+her, for none better knew than she the trivial beginning and desperate
+end of these encounters. Would they--would Low ever realize it, and
+forgive her? Her small, dark hands went up to her eyes and she sank
+upon the ground. She looked through tear-veiled lashes upon the mute and
+giant witnesses of her deceit and passion, and tried to draw, from their
+immovable calm, strength and consolation as before. But even they seemed
+to stand apart, reserved and forbidding.
+
+When Low returned she hoped to gather from his eyes and manner what
+had passed between him and her former lover. But beyond a mere gentle
+abstraction at times he retained his usual calm. She was at last forced
+to allude to it herself with simulated recklessness.
+
+“I suppose I didn’t get a very good character from my last place?” she
+said, with a laugh.
+
+“I don’t understand you,” he replied, in evident sincerity.
+
+She bit her lip and was silent. But as they were returning home, she
+said gently, “I hope you were not angry with me for the lie I told
+when I spoke of ‘your plan.’ I could not give the real reason for
+not returning with--with--that man. But it’s not all a lie. I have a
+plan--if you haven’t. When you are ready to go to Sacramento to take
+your place, dress me as an Indian boy, paint my face, and let me go with
+you. You can leave me--there--you know.”
+
+“It’s not a bad idea,” he responded gravely. “We will see.”
+
+On the next day, and the next, the rencontre seemed to be forgotten.
+The herbarium was already filled with rare specimens. Teresa had even
+overcome her feminine repugnance to “bugs” and creeping things so far
+as to assist in his entomological collection. He had drawn from a sacred
+cache in the hollow of a tree the few worn text-books from which he had
+studied.
+
+“They seem very precious,” she said, with a smile.
+
+“Very,” he replied gravely. “There was one with plates that the ants ate
+up, and it will be six months before I can afford to buy another.”
+
+Teresa glanced hurriedly over his well-worn buckskin suit, at his calico
+shirt with its pattern almost obliterated by countless washings, and
+became thoughtful.
+
+“I suppose you couldn’t buy one at Indian Spring?” she said innocently.
+
+For once Low was startled out of his phlegm. “Indian Spring!” he
+ejaculated; “perhaps not even in San Francisco. These came from the
+States.”
+
+“How did you get them?” persisted Teresa.
+
+“I bought them for skins I got over the ridge.”
+
+“I didn’t mean that--but no matter. Then you mean to sell that bearskin,
+don’t you?” she added.
+
+Low had, in fact, already sold it, the proceeds having been invested in
+a gold ring for Miss Nellie, which she scrupulously did not wear except
+in his presence. In his singular truthfulness he would have frankly
+confessed it to Teresa, but the secret was not his own. He contented
+himself with saying that he had disposed of it at Indian Spring.
+
+Teresa started, and communicated unconsciously some of her nervousness
+to her companion. They gazed in each other’s eyes with a troubled
+expression.
+
+“Do you think it was wise to sell that particular skin, which might be
+identified?” she asked timidly.
+
+Low knitted his arched brows, but felt a strange sense of relief.
+“Perhaps not,” he said carelessly; “but it’s too late now to mend
+matters.”
+
+That afternoon she wrote several letters, and tore them up. One,
+however, she retained, and handed it to Low to post at Indian Spring,
+whither he was going. She called his attention to the superscription,
+being the same as the previous letter, and added, with affected gayety,
+“But if the answer isn’t as prompt, perhaps it will be pleasanter than
+the last.” Her quick feminine eye noticed a little excitement in his
+manner and a more studious attention to his dress. Only a few days
+before she would not have allowed this to pass without some mischievous
+allusion to his mysterious sweetheart; it troubled her greatly now to
+find that she could not bring herself to this household pleasantry, and
+that her lip trembled and her eye grew moist as he parted from her.
+
+The afternoon passed slowly; he had said he might not return to supper
+until late, nevertheless a strange restlessness took possession of
+her as the day wore on. She put aside her work, the darning of his
+stockings, and rambled aimlessly through the woods. She had wandered she
+knew not how far, when she was suddenly seized with the same vague sense
+of a foreign presence which she had felt before. Could it be Curson
+again, with a word of warning? No! she knew it was not he; so subtle
+had her sense become that she even fancied that she detected in the
+invisible aura projected by the unknown no significance or relation to
+herself or Low, and felt no fear. Nevertheless she deemed it wisest to
+seek the protection of her sylvan bower, and hurried swiftly thither.
+
+But not so quickly nor directly that she did not once or twice pause in
+her flight to examine the new-comer from behind a friendly trunk. He was
+a stranger--a young fellow with a brown mustache, wearing heavy Mexican
+spurs in his riding-boots, whose tinkling he apparently did not care to
+conceal. He had perceived her, and was evidently pursuing her, but
+so awkwardly and timidly that she eluded him with ease. When she had
+reached the security of the hollow tree and pulled the curtain of bark
+before the narrow opening, with her eye to the interstices, she waited
+his coming. He arrived breathlessly in the open space before the tree
+where the bear once lay; the dazed, bewildered, and half-awed expression
+of his face, as he glanced around him and through the openings of the
+forest aisles, brought a faint smile to her saddened face. At last he
+called in a half-embarrassed voice:--
+
+“Miss Nellie!”
+
+The smile faded from Teresa’s cheek. Who was “Miss Nellie?” She pressed
+her ear to the opening. “Miss Wynn!” the voice again called, but was
+lost in the echoless woods. Devoured with a new gratuitous curiosity, in
+another moment Teresa felt she would have disclosed herself at any risk,
+but the stranger rose and began to retrace his steps. Long after his
+tinkling spurs were lost in the distance, Teresa remained like a statue,
+staring at the place where he had stood. Then she suddenly turned like
+a mad woman, glanced down at the gown she was wearing, tore it from
+her back as if it had been a polluted garment, and stamped upon it in
+a convulsion of rage. And then, with her beautiful bare arms clasped
+together over her head, she threw herself upon her couch in a tempest of
+tears.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+When Miss Nellie reached the first mining extension of Indian Spring,
+which surrounded it like a fosse, she descended for one instant into one
+of its trenches, opened her parasol, removed her duster, hid it under a
+bowlder, and with a few shivers and cat-like strokes of her soft
+hands not only obliterated all material traces of the stolen cream of
+Carquinez Woods, but assumed a feline demureness quite inconsistent with
+any moral dereliction. Unfortunately, she forgot to remove at the same
+time a certain ring from her third finger, which she had put on with her
+duster and had worn at no other time. With this slight exception, the
+benignant fate which always protected that young person brought her
+in contact with the Burnham girls at one end of the main street as the
+returning coach to Excelsior entered the other, and enabled her to take
+leave of them before the coach office with a certain ostentation of
+parting which struck Mr. Jack Brace, who was lingering at the doorway,
+into a state of utter bewilderment.
+
+Here was Miss Nellie Wynn, the belle of Excelsior, calm, quiet,
+self-possessed, her chaste cambric skirts and dainty shoes as fresh as
+when she had left her father’s house; but where was the woman of the
+brown duster, and where the yellow-dressed apparition of the woods? He
+was feebly repeating to himself his mental adjuration of a few hours
+before when he caught her eye, and was taken with a blush and a fit
+of coughing. Could he have been such an egregious fool, and was it not
+plainly written on his embarrassed face for her to read?
+
+“Are we going down together?” asked Miss Nellie with an exceptionally
+gracious smile.
+
+There was neither affectation nor coquetry in this advance. The girl
+had no idea of Brace’s suspicion of her, nor did any uneasy desire to
+placate or deceive a possible rival of Low’s prompt her graciousness.
+She simply wished to shake off in this encounter the already stale
+excitement of the past two hours, as she had shaken the dust of the
+woods from her clothes. It was characteristic of her irresponsible
+nature and transient susceptibilities that she actually enjoyed
+the relief of change; more than that, I fear, she looked upon this
+infidelity to a past dubious pleasure as a moral principle. A mild, open
+flirtation with a recognized man like Brace, after her secret passionate
+tryst with a nameless nomad like Low, was an ethical equipoise that
+seemed proper to one of her religious education.
+
+Brace was only too happy to profit by Miss Nellie’s condescension; he at
+once secured the seat by her side, and spent the four hours and a half
+of their return journey to Excelsior in blissful but timid communion
+with her. If he did not dare to confess his past suspicions, he was
+equally afraid to venture upon the boldness he had premeditated a
+few hours before. He was therefore obliged to take a middle course of
+slightly egotistical narration of his own personal adventures, with
+which he beguiled the young girl’s ear. This he only departed from once,
+to describe to her a valuable grizzly bearskin which he had seen that
+day for sale at Indian Spring, with a view to divining her possible
+acceptance of it for a “buggy robe;” and once to comment upon a ring
+which she had inadvertently disclosed in pulling off her glove.
+
+“It’s only an old family keepsake,” she added, with easy mendacity; and
+affecting to recognize in Mr. Brace’s curiosity a not unnatural excuse
+for toying with her charming fingers, she hid them in chaste and
+virginal seclusion in her lap, until she could recover the ring and
+resume her glove.
+
+A week passed--a week of peculiar and desiccating heat for even those
+dry Sierra table-lands. The long days were filled with impalpable
+dust and acrid haze suspended in the motionless air; the nights were
+breathless and dewless; the cold wind which usually swept down from the
+snow line was laid to sleep over a dark monotonous level, whose horizon
+was pricked with the eating fires of burning forest crests. The lagging
+coach of Indian Spring drove up at Excelsior, and precipitated its
+passengers with an accompanying cloud of dust before the Excelsior
+Hotel. As they emerged from the coach, Mr. Brace, standing in the
+doorway, closely scanned their begrimed and almost unrecognizable faces.
+They were the usual type of travelers: a single professional man in
+dusty black, a few traders in tweeds and flannels, a sprinkling of
+miners in red and gray shirts, a Chinaman, a negro, and a Mexican packer
+or muleteer. This latter for a moment mingled with the crowd in the
+bar-room, and even penetrated the corridor and dining-room of the hotel,
+as if impelled by a certain semi-civilized curiosity, and then strolled
+with a lazy, dragging step--half impeded by the enormous leather
+leggings, chains, and spurs, peculiar to his class--down the main
+street. The darkness was gathering, but the muleteer indulged in the
+same childish scrutiny of the dimly lighted shops, magazines, and
+saloons, and even of the occasional groups of citizens at the street
+corners. Apparently young, as far as the outlines of his figure could
+be seen, he seemed to show even more than the usual concern of masculine
+Excelsior in the charms of womankind. The few female figures about
+at that hour, or visible at window or veranda, received his marked
+attention; he respectfully followed the two auburn-haired daughters of
+Deacon Johnson on their way to choir meeting to the door of the church.
+Not content with that act of discreet gallantry, after they had entered
+he managed to slip unperceived behind them.
+
+The memorial of the Excelsior gamblers’ generosity was a modern
+building, large and pretentious, for even Mr. Wynn’s popularity, and
+had been good-humoredly known, in the characteristic language of the
+generous donors, as one of the “biggest religious bluffs” on record. Its
+groined rafters, which were so new and spicy that they still suggested
+their native forest aisles, seldom covered more than a hundred devotees,
+and in the rambling choir, with its bare space for the future organ,
+the few choristers, gathered round a small harmonium, were lost in the
+deepening shadow of that summer evening. The muleteer remained hidden
+in the obscurity of the vestibule. After a few moments’ desultory
+conversation, in which it appeared that the unexpected absence of
+Miss Nellie Wynn, their leader, would prevent their practicing, the
+choristers withdrew. The stranger, who had listened eagerly, drew back
+in the darkness as they passed out, and remained for a few moments a
+vague and motionless figure in the silent church. Then coming cautiously
+to the window, the flapping broad-brimmed hat was put aside, and the
+faint light of the dying day shone in the black eyes of Teresa! Despite
+her face, darkened with dye and disfigured with dust, the matted hair
+piled and twisted around her head, the strange dress and boyish figure,
+one swift glance from under her raised lashes betrayed her identity.
+
+She turned aside mechanically into the first pew, picked up and opened a
+hymn-book. Her eyes became riveted on a name written on the title-page,
+“Nellie Wynn.” HER name, and HER book. The instinct that had guided her
+here was right; the slight gossip of her fellow-passengers was right;
+this was the clergyman’s daughter, whose praise filled all mouths. This
+was the unknown girl the stranger was seeking, but who in turn perhaps
+had been seeking Low--the girl who absorbed his fancy--the secret of
+his absences, his preoccupation, his coldness! This was the girl whom to
+see, perhaps in his arms, she was now periling her liberty and her life
+unknown to him! A slight odor, some faint perfume of its owner, came
+from the book; it was the same she had noticed in the dress Low had
+given her. She flung the volume to the ground, and, throwing her arms
+over the back of the pew before her, buried her face in her hands.
+
+In that light and attitude she might have seemed some rapt acolyte
+abandoned to self-communion. But whatever yearning her soul might have
+had for higher sympathy or deeper consolation, I fear that the spiritual
+Tabernacle of Excelsior and the Reverend Mr. Wynn did not meet that
+requirement. She only felt the dry, oven-like heat of that vast shell,
+empty of sentiment and beauty, hollow in its pretense and dreary in its
+desolation. She only saw in it a chief altar for the glorification of
+this girl who had absorbed even the pure worship of her companion, and
+converted and degraded his sublime paganism to her petty creed. With a
+woman’s withering contempt for her own art displayed in another woman,
+she thought how she herself could have touched him with the peace that
+the majesty of their woodland aisles--so unlike this pillared sham--had
+taught her own passionate heart, had she but dared. Mingling with this
+imperfect theology, she felt she could have proved to him also that
+a brunette and a woman of her experience was better than an immature
+blonde. She began to loathe herself for coming hither, and dreaded to
+meet his face. Here a sudden thought struck her. What if he had not come
+here? What if she had been mistaken? What if her rash interpretation
+of his absence from the wood that night was simple madness? What if
+he should return--if he had already returned? She rose to her feet,
+whitening yet joyful with the thought. She could return at once; what
+was the girl to her now? Yet there was time to satisfy herself if he
+were at HER house. She had been told where it was; she could find it in
+the dark; an open door or window would betray some sign or sound of
+the occupants. She rose, replaced her hat over her eyes, knotted her
+flaunting scarf around her throat, groped her way to the door, and
+glided into the outer darkness.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+It was quite dark when Mr. Jack Brace stopped before Father Wynn’s open
+door. The windows were also invitingly open to the wayfarer, as were
+the pastoral counsels of Father Wynn, delivered to some favored guest
+within, in a tone of voice loud enough for a pulpit. Jack Brace paused.
+The visitor was the convalescent sheriff, Jim Dunn, who had publicly
+commemorated his recovery by making his first call upon the father
+of his inamorata. The Reverend Mr. Wynn had been expatiating upon the
+unremitting heat of a possible precursor of forest fires, and exhibiting
+some catholic knowledge of the designs of a Deity in that regard, and
+what should be the policy of the Legislature, when Mr. Brace concluded
+to enter. Mr. Wynn and the wounded man, who occupied an arm-chair by
+the window, were the only occupants of the room. But in spite of the
+former’s ostentatious greeting, Brace could see that his visit was
+inopportune and unwelcome. The sheriff nodded a quick, impatient
+recognition, which, had it not been accompanied by an anathema on the
+heat, might have been taken as a personal insult. Neither spoke of
+Miss Nellie, although it was patent to Brace that they were momentarily
+expecting her. All of which went far to strengthen a certain wavering
+purpose in his mind.
+
+“Ah, ha! strong language, Mr. Dunn,” said Father Wynn, referring to the
+sheriff’s adjuration, “but ‘out of the fullness of the heart the mouth
+speaketh.’ Job, sir, cursed, we are told, and even expressed himself in
+vigorous Hebrew regarding his birthday. Ha, ha! I’m not opposed to that.
+When I have often wrestled with the spirit I confess I have sometimes
+said, ‘D--n you.’ Yes, sir, ‘D--n you.’”
+
+There was something so unutterably vile in the reverend gentleman’s
+utterance and emphasis of this oath that the two men, albeit both easy
+and facile blasphemers, felt shocked; as the purest of actresses is apt
+to overdo the rakishness of a gay Lothario, Father Wynn’s immaculate
+conception of an imprecation was something terrible. But he added, “The
+law ought to interfere with the reckless use of camp-fires in the woods
+in such weather by packers and prospectors.”
+
+“It isn’t so much the work of white men,” broke in Brace, “as it is
+of Greasers, Chinamen, and Diggers, especially Diggers. There’s that
+blasted Low, ranges the whole Carquinez Woods as if they were his. I
+reckon he ain’t particular just where he throws his matches.”
+
+“But he’s not a Digger; he’s a Cherokee, and only a half-breed at that,”
+ interpolated Wynn. “Unless,” he added, with the artful suggestion of the
+betrayed trust of a too credulous Christian, “he deceived me in this as
+in other things.”
+
+In what other things Low had deceived him he did not say; but, to the
+astonishment of both men, Dunn growled a dissent to Brace’s proposition.
+Either from some secret irritation with that possible rival, or
+impatience at the prolonged absence of Nellie, he had “had enough of
+that sort of hog-wash ladled out to him for genuine liquor.” As to the
+Carquinez Woods, he [Dunn] “didn’t know why Low hadn’t as much right
+there as if he’d grabbed it under a preemption law and didn’t live
+there.” With this hint at certain speculations of Father Wynn in public
+lands for a homestead, he added that “If they [Brace and Wynn] could
+bring him along any older American settler than an Indian, they
+might rake down his [Dunn’s] pile.” Unprepared for this turn in the
+conversation, Wynn hastened to explain that he did not refer to the pure
+aborigine, whose gradual extinction no one regretted more than himself,
+but to the mongrel, who inherited only the vices of civilization. “There
+should be a law, sir, against the mingling of races. There are men, sir,
+who violate the laws of the Most High by living with Indian women--squaw
+men, sir, as they are called.”
+
+Dunn rose with a face livid with weakness and passion. “Who dares say
+that? They are a d--d sight better than sneaking Northern Abolitionists,
+who married their daughters to buck niggers like--” But a spasm of pain
+withheld this Parthian shot at the politics of his two companions, and
+he sank back helplessly in his chair.
+
+An awkward silence ensued. The three men looked at each other in
+embarrassment and confusion. Dunn felt that he had given way to a
+gratuitous passion; Wynn had a vague presentiment that he had said
+something that imperiled his daughter’s prospects; and Brace was divided
+between an angry retort and the secret purpose already alluded to.
+
+“It’s all the blasted heat,” said Dunn, with a forced smile, pushing
+away the whisky which Wynn had ostentatiously placed before him.
+
+“Of course,” said Wynn hastily; “only it’s a pity Nellie ain’t here to
+give you her smelling-salts. She ought to be back now,” he added, no
+longer mindful of Brace’s presence; “the coach is over-due now, though I
+reckon the heat made Yuba Bill take it easy at the up grade.”
+
+“If you mean the coach from Indian Spring,” said Brace quietly, “it’s in
+already; but Miss Nellie didn’t come on it.”
+
+“May be she got out at the Crossing,” said Wynn cheerfully; “she
+sometimes does.”
+
+“She didn’t take the coach at Indian Spring,” returned Brace, “because
+I saw it leave, and passed it on Buckskin ten minutes ago, coming up the
+hills.”
+
+“She’s stopped over at Burnham’s,” said Wynn reflectively. Then, in
+response to the significant silence of his guests, he added, in a tone
+of chagrin which his forced heartiness could not disguise, “Well, boys,
+it’s a disappointment all round; but we must take the lesson as it
+comes. I’ll go over to the coach office and see if she’s sent any word.
+Make yourselves at home until I return.”
+
+When the door had closed behind him, Brace arose and took his hat as
+if to go. With his hand on the lock, he turned to his rival, who, half
+hidden in the gathering darkness, still seemed unable to comprehend his
+ill-luck.
+
+“If you’re waiting for that bald-headed fraud to come back with the
+truth about his daughter,” said Brace coolly, “you’d better send for
+your things and take up your lodgings here.”
+
+“What do you mean?” said Dunn sternly.
+
+“I mean that she’s not at the Burnhams’; I mean that he either does or
+does not know WHERE she is, and that in either case he is not likely to
+give you information. But I can.”
+
+“You can?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Then, where is she?”
+
+“In the Carquinez Woods, in the arms of the man you were just
+defending--Low, the half-breed.”
+
+The room had become so dark that from the road nothing could be
+distinguished. Only the momentary sound of struggling feet was heard.
+
+“Sit down,” said Brace’s voice, “and don’t be a fool. You’re too weak,
+and it ain’t a fair fight. Let go your hold. I’m not lying--I wish to
+God I was!”
+
+There was silence, and Brace resumed, “We’ve been rivals, I know. May be
+I thought my chance as good as yours. If what I say ain’t truth, we’ll
+stand as we stood before; and if you’re on the shoot, I’m your man when
+you like, where you like, or on sight if you choose. But I can’t bear to
+see another man played upon as I’ve been played upon--given dead away as
+I’ve been. It ain’t on the square.
+
+“There,” he continued, after a pause, “that’s right, now steady. Listen.
+A week ago that girl went down just like this to Indian Spring. It
+was given out, like this, that she went to the Burnhams’. I don’t mind
+saying, Dunn, that I went down myself, all on the square, thinking I
+might get a show to talk to her, just as YOU might have done, you know,
+if you had my chance. I didn’t come across her anywhere. But two men
+that I met thought they recognized her in a disguise going into the
+woods. Not suspecting anything, I went after her; saw her at a distance
+in the middle of the woods in another dress that I can swear to, and was
+just coming up to her when she vanished--went like a squirrel up a tree,
+or down like a gopher in the ground, but vanished.”
+
+“Is that all?” said Dunn’s voice. “And just because you were a d--d
+fool, or had taken a little too much whisky, you thought--”
+
+“Steady. That’s just what I said to myself,” interrupted Brace coolly,
+“particularly when I saw her that same afternoon in another dress,
+saying ‘Good-by’ to the Burnhams, as fresh as a rose and as cold as
+those snow-peaks. Only one thing--she had a ring on her finger she never
+wore before, and didn’t expect me to see.”
+
+“What if she did? She might have bought it. I reckon she hasn’t to
+consult you,” broke in Dunn’s voice sternly.
+
+“She didn’t buy it,” continued Brace quietly. “Low gave that Jew trader
+a bearskin in exchange for it, and presented it to her. I found that
+out two days afterwards. I found out that out of the whole afternoon she
+spent less than an hour with the Burnhams. I found out that she bought
+a duster like the disguise the two men saw her in. I found the yellow
+dress she wore that day hanging up in Low’s cabin--the place where I saw
+her go--THE RENDEZVOUS WHERE SHE MEETS HIM. Oh, you’re listenin’, are
+you? Stop! SIT DOWN!
+
+“I discovered it by accident,” continued the voice of Brace when all was
+again quiet; “it was hidden as only a squirrel or an Injin can hide when
+they improve upon nature. When I was satisfied that the girl had been
+in the woods, I was determined to find out where she vanished, and went
+there again. Prospecting around, I picked up at the foot of one of the
+biggest trees this yer old memorandum-book, with grasses and herbs stuck
+in it. I remembered that I’d heard old Wynn say that Low, like the d--d
+Digger that he was, collected these herbs; only he pretended it was for
+science. I reckoned the book was his and that he mightn’t be far away. I
+lay low and waited. Bimeby I saw a lizard running down the root. When he
+got sight of me he stopped.”
+
+“D--n the lizard! What’s that got to do with where she is now?”
+
+“Everything. That lizard had a piece of sugar in his mouth. Where did it
+come from? I made him drop it, and calculated he’d go back for more. He
+did. He scooted up that tree and slipped in under some hanging strips of
+bark. I shoved ‘em aside, and found an opening to the hollow where they
+do their housekeeping.”
+
+“But you didn’t see her there--and how do you know she is there now?”
+
+“I determined to make it sure. When she left to-day, I started an hour
+ahead of her, and hid myself at the edge of the woods. An hour after the
+coach arrived at Indian Spring, she came there in a brown duster and was
+joined by him. I’d have followed them, but the d--d hound has the ears
+of a squirrel, and though I was five hundred yards from him he was on
+his guard.”
+
+“Guard be blessed! Wasn’t you armed? Why didn’t you go for him?” said
+Dunn, furiously.
+
+“I reckoned I’d leave that for you,” said Brace coolly. “If he’d killed
+me, and if he’d even covered me with his rifle, he’d been sure to let
+daylight through me at double the distance. I shouldn’t have been any
+better off, nor you either. If I’d killed HIM, it would have been your
+duty as sheriff to put me in jail; and I reckon it wouldn’t have broken
+your heart, Jim Dunn, to have got rid of TWO rivals instead of one.
+Hullo! Where are you going?”
+
+“Going?” said Dunn hoarsely. “Going to the Carquinez Woods, by God! to
+kill him before her. I’LL risk it, if you daren’t. Let me succeed, and
+you can hang ME and take the girl yourself.”
+
+“Sit down, sit down. Don’t be a fool, Jim Dunn! You wouldn’t keep the
+saddle a hundred yards. Did I say I wouldn’t help you? No. If you’re
+willing, we’ll run the risk together, but it must be in my way. Hear me.
+I’ll drive you down there in a buggy before daylight, and we’ll surprise
+them in the cabin or as they leave the wood. But you must come as if
+to arrest him for some offense--say, as an escaped Digger from the
+Reservation, a dangerous tramp, a destroyer of public property in the
+forests, a suspected road agent, or anything to give you the right
+to hunt him. The exposure of him and Nellie, don’t you see, must be
+accidental. If he resists, kill him on the spot, and nobody’ll blame
+you; if he goes peaceably with you, and you once get him in Excelsior
+jail, when the story gets out that he’s taken the belle of Excelsior for
+his squaw, if you’d the angels for your posse you couldn’t keep the boys
+from hanging him to the first tree. What’s that?”
+
+He walked to the window, and looked out cautiously.
+
+“If it was the old man coming back and listening,” he said, after a
+pause, “it can’t he helped. He’ll hear it soon enough, if he don’t
+suspect something already.”
+
+“Look yer, Brace,” broke in Dunn hoarsely. “D--d if I understand you or
+you me. That dog Low has got to answer to ME, not to the LAW! I’ll take
+my risk of killing him, on sight and on the square. I don’t reckon to
+handicap myself with a warrant, and I am not going to draw him out with
+a lie. You hear me? That’s me all the time!”
+
+“Then you calkilate to go down thar,” said Brace contemptuously, “yell
+out for him and Nellie, and let him line you on a rest from the first
+tree as if you were a grizzly.”
+
+There was a pause. “What’s that you were saying just now about a
+bearskin he sold?” asked Dunn slowly, as if reflecting.
+
+“He exchanged a bearskin,” replied Brace, “with a single hole right over
+the heart. He’s a dead shot, I tell you.”
+
+“D--n his shooting,” said Dunn. “I’m not thinking of that. How long ago
+did he bring in that bearskin?”
+
+“About two weeks, I reckon. Why?”
+
+“Nothing! Look yer, Brace, you mean well--thar’s my hand. I’ll go down
+with you there, but not as the sheriff. I’m going there as Jim Dunn, and
+you can come along as a white man, to see things fixed on the square.
+Come!”
+
+Brace hesitated. “You’ll think better of my plan before you get there;
+but I’ve said I’d stand by you, and I will. Come, then. There’s no time
+to lose.”
+
+They passed out into the darkness together.
+
+“What are you waiting for?” said Dunn impatiently, as Brace, who was
+supporting him by the arm, suddenly halted at the corner of the house.
+
+“Some one was listening--did you not see him? Was it the old man?” asked
+Brace hurriedly.
+
+“Blast the old man! It was only one of them Mexican packers chock-full
+of whisky, and trying to hold up the house. What are you thinking of? We
+shall be late.”
+
+In spite of his weakness, the wounded man hurriedly urged Brace forward,
+until they reached the latter’s lodgings. To his surprise, the horse
+and buggy were already before the door.
+
+“Then you reckoned to go, any way?” said Dunn, with a searching look at
+his companion.
+
+“I calkilated SOMEBODY would go,” returned Brace, evasively, patting the
+impatient Buckskin; “but come in and take a drink before we leave.”
+
+Dunn started out of a momentary abstraction, put his hand on his hip,
+and mechanically entered the house. They had scarcely raised the glasses
+to their lips when a sudden rattle of wheels was heard in the street.
+Brace set down his glass and ran to the window.
+
+“It’s the mare bolted,” he said, with an oath. “We’ve kept her too long
+standing. Follow me,” and he dashed down the staircase into the street.
+Dunn followed with difficulty; when he reached the door he was already
+confronted by his breathless companion. “She’s gone off on a run, and
+I’ll swear there was a man in the buggy!” He stopped and examined the
+halter-strap, still fastened to the fence. “Cut! by God!”
+
+Dunn turned pale with passion. “Who’s got another horse and buggy?” he
+demanded.
+
+“The new blacksmith in Main Street; but we won’t get it by borrowing,”
+ said Brace.
+
+“How then?” asked Dunn savagely.
+
+“Seize it, as the sheriff of Yuba and his deputy, pursuing a confederate
+of the Injin Low--THE HORSE THIEF!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+The brief hour of darkness that preceded the dawn was that night
+intensified by a dense smoke, which, after blotting out horizon and sky,
+dropped a thick veil on the high road and the silent streets of Indian
+Spring. As the buggy containing Sheriff Dunn and Brace dashed through
+the obscurity, Brace suddenly turned to his companion.
+
+“Some one ahead!”
+
+The two men bent forward over the dashboard. Above the steady plunging
+of their own horse-hoofs they could hear the quicker irregular beat of
+other hoofs in the darkness before them.
+
+“It’s that horse thief!” said Dunn, in a savage whisper. “Bear to the
+right, and hand me the whip.”
+
+A dozen cuts of the cruel lash, and their maddened horse, bounding at
+each stroke, broke into a wild canter. The frail vehicle swayed from
+side to side at each spring of the elastic shafts. Steadying himself by
+one hand on the low rail, Dunn drew his revolver with the other. “Sing
+out to him to pull up, or we’ll fire. My voice is clean gone,” he added,
+in a husky whisper.
+
+They were so near that they could distinguish the bulk of a vehicle
+careering from side to side in the blackness ahead. Dunn deliberately
+raised his weapon. “Sing out!” he repeated impatiently. But Brace, who
+was still keeping in the shadow, suddenly grasped his companion’s arm.
+
+“Hush! It’s NOT Buckskin,” he whispered hurriedly.
+
+“Are you sure?”
+
+“DON’T YOU SEE WE’RE GAINING ON HIM?” replied the other contemptuously.
+Dunn grasped his companion’s hand and pressed it silently. Even in
+that supreme moment this horseman’s tribute to the fugitive Buckskin
+forestalled all baser considerations of pursuit and capture!
+
+In twenty seconds they were abreast of the stranger, crowding his horse
+and buggy nearly into the ditch; Brace keenly watchful, Dunn suppressed
+and pale. In half a minute they were leading him a length; and when
+their horse again settled down to his steady work, the stranger was
+already lost in the circling dust that followed them. But the victors
+seemed disappointed. The obscurity had completely hidden all but the
+vague outlines of the mysterious driver.
+
+“He’s not our game, anyway,” whispered Dunn. “Drive on.”
+
+“But if it was some friend of his,” suggested Brace uneasily, “what
+would you do?”
+
+“What I SAID I’d do,” responded Dunn savagely. “I don’t want five
+minutes to do it in, either; we’ll be half an hour ahead of that d--d
+fool, whoever he is. Look here; all you’ve got to do is to put me in the
+trail to that cabin. Stand back of me, out of gun-shot, alone, if you
+like, as my deputy, or with any number you can pick up as my posse.
+If he gets by me as Nellie’s lover, you may shoot him or take him as a
+horse thief, if you like.”
+
+“Then you won’t shoot him on sight?”
+
+“Not till I’ve had a word with him.”
+
+“But--”
+
+“I’ve chirped,” said the sheriff gravely. “Drive on.”
+
+For a few moments only the plunging hoofs and rattling wheels were
+heard. A dull, lurid glow began to define the horizon. They were silent
+until an abatement of the smoke, the vanishing of the gloomy horizon
+line, and a certain impenetrability in the darkness ahead showed them
+they were nearing the Carquinez Woods. But they were surprised on
+entering them to find the dim aisles alight with a faint mystic Aurora.
+The tops of the towering spires above them had caught the gleam of the
+distant forest fires, and reflected it as from a gilded dome.
+
+“It would be hot work if the Carquinez Woods should conclude to take a
+hand in this yer little game that’s going on over on the Divide yonder,”
+ said Brace, securing his horse and glancing at the spires overhead.
+“I reckon I’d rather take a back seat at Injin Spring when the show
+commences.”
+
+Dunn did not reply, but, buttoning his coat, placed one hand on his
+companion’s shoulder, and sullenly bade him “lead the way.” Advancing
+slowly and with difficulty the desperate man might have been taken for a
+peaceful invalid returning from an early morning stroll. His right hand
+was buried thoughtfully in the side pocket of his coat. Only Brace knew
+that it rested on the handle of his pistol.
+
+From time to time the latter stopped and consulted the faint trail with
+a minuteness that showed recent careful study. Suddenly he paused. “I
+made a blaze hereabouts to show where to leave the trail. There it is,”
+ he added, pointing to a slight notch cut in the trunk of an adjoining
+tree.
+
+“But we’ve just passed one,” said Dunn, “if that’s what you are looking
+after, a hundred yards back.”
+
+Brace uttered an oath, and ran back in the direction signified by his
+companion. Presently he returned with a smile of triumph.
+
+“They’ve suspected something. It’s a clever trick, but it won’t hold
+water. That blaze which was done to muddle you was cut with an axe; this
+which I made was done with a bowie-knife. It’s the real one. We’re not
+far off now. Come on.”
+
+They proceeded cautiously, at right angles with the “blazed” tree, for
+ten minutes more. The heat was oppressive; drops of perspiration rolled
+from the forehead of the sheriff, and at times, when he attempted to
+steady his uncertain limbs, his hands shrank from the heated, blistering
+bark he touched with ungloved palms.
+
+“Here we are,” said Brace, pausing at last. “Do you see that biggest
+tree, with the root stretching out halfway across to the opposite one?”
+
+“No, it’s further to the right and abreast of the dead brush,”
+ interrupted Dunn quickly, with a sudden revelation that this was the
+spot where he had found the dead bear in the night Teresa escaped.
+
+“That’s so,” responded Brace, in astonishment.
+
+“And the opening is on the other side, opposite the dead brush,” said
+Dunn.
+
+“Then you know it?” said Brace suspiciously.
+
+“I reckon!” responded Dunn, grimly. “That’s enough! Fall back!”
+
+To the surprise of his companion, he lifted his head erect, and with a
+strong, firm step walked directly to the tree. Reaching it, he planted
+himself squarely before the opening.
+
+“Halloo!” he said.
+
+There was no reply. A squirrel scampered away close to his feet. Brace,
+far in the distance, after an ineffectual attempt to distinguish his
+companion through the intervening trunks, took off his coat, leaned
+against a tree, and lit a cigar.
+
+“Come out of that cabin!” continued Dunn, in a clear, resonant voice.
+“Come out before I drag you out!”
+
+“All right, ‘Captain Scott.’ Don’t shoot, and I’ll come down,” said a
+voice as clear and as high as his own. The hanging strips of bark were
+dashed aside, and a woman leaped lightly to the ground.
+
+Dunn staggered back. “Teresa! by the Eternal!”
+
+It was Teresa! the old Teresa! Teresa, a hundred times more vicious,
+reckless, hysterical, extravagant, and outrageous than before. Teresa,
+staring with tooth and eye, sunburnt and embrowned, her hair hanging
+down her shoulders, and her shawl drawn tightly around her neck.
+
+“Teresa it is! the same old gal! Here we are again! Return of the
+favorite in her original character! For two weeks only! Houp la! Tshk!”
+ and, catching her yellow skirt with her fingers, she pirouetted before
+the astounded man, and ended in a pose. Recovering himself with an
+effort, Dunn dashed forward and seized her by the wrist.
+
+“Answer me, woman! Is that Low’s cabin?”
+
+“It is.”
+
+“Who occupies it besides?”
+
+“I do.”
+
+“And who else?”
+
+“Well,” drawled Teresa slowly, with an extravagant affectation of
+modesty, “nobody else but us, I reckon. Two’s company, you know, and
+three’s none.”
+
+“Stop! Will you swear that there isn’t a young girl, his--his
+sweetheart--concealed there with you?”
+
+The fire in Teresa’s eye was genuine as she answered steadily, “Well,
+it ain’t my style to put up with that sort of thing; at least, it wasn’t
+over at Yolo, and you know it, Jim Dunn, or I wouldn’t be here.”
+
+“Yes, yes,” said Dunn hurriedly. “But I’m a d--d fool, or worse, the
+fool of a fool. Tell me, Teresa, is this man Low your lover?”
+
+Teresa lowered her eyes as if in maidenly confusion. “Well, if I’d known
+that YOU had any feeling of your own about it--if you’d spoken sooner--”
+
+“Answer me, you devil!”
+
+“He is.”
+
+“And he has been with you here--yesterday--to-night?”
+
+“He has.”
+
+“Enough.” He laughed a weak, foolish laugh, and, turning pale, suddenly
+lapsed against a tree. He would have fallen, but with a quick instinct
+Teresa sprang to his side, and supported him gently to a root. The
+action over, they both looked astounded.
+
+“I reckon that wasn’t much like either you or me,” said Dunn slowly,
+“was it? But if you’d let me drop then you’d have stretched out the
+biggest fool in the Sierras.” He paused, and looked at her curiously.
+“What’s come over you; blessed if I seem to know you now.”
+
+She was very pale again, and quiet; that was all.
+
+“Teresa! d--n it, look here! When I was laid up yonder in Excelsior I
+said I wanted to get well for only two things. One was to hunt you down,
+the other to marry Nellie Wynn. When I came here I thought that last
+thing could never be. I came here expecting to find her here with Low,
+and kill him--perhaps kill her too. I never once thought of you; not
+once. You might have risen up before me--between me and him--and I’d
+have passed you by. And now that I find it’s all a mistake, and it was
+you, not her, I was looking for, why--”
+
+“Why,” she interrupted bitterly, “you’ll just take me, of course, to
+save your time and earn your salary. I’m ready.”
+
+“But I’M not, just yet,” he said faintly. “Help me up.”
+
+She mechanically assisted him to his feet.
+
+“Now stand where you are,” he added, “and don’t move beyond this tree
+till I return.”
+
+He straightened himself with an effort, clenched his fists until the
+nails were nearly buried in his palms, and strode with a firm, steady
+step in the direction he had come. In a few moments he returned and
+stood before her.
+
+“I’ve sent away my deputy--the man who brought me here, the fool who
+thought you were Nellie. He knows now he made a mistake. But who it was
+he mistook for Nellie he does not know, nor shall ever know, nor shall
+any living being know, other than myself. And when I leave the wood
+to-day I shall know it no longer. You are safe here as far as I am
+concerned, but I cannot screen you from others prying. Let Low take you
+away from here as soon as he can.”
+
+“Let him take me away? Ah, yes. For what?”
+
+“To save you,” said Dunn. “Look here, Teresa! Without knowing it, you
+lifted me out of hell just now, and because of the wrong I might have
+done her--for HER sake, I spare you and shirk my duty.”
+
+“For her sake!” gasped the woman--“for her sake! Oh, yes! Go on.”
+
+“Well,” said Dunn gloomily, “I reckon perhaps you’d as lieve left me in
+hell, for all the love you bear me. And may be you’ve grudge enough agin
+me still to wish I’d found her and him together.”
+
+“You think so?” she said, turning her head away.
+
+“There, d--n it! I didn’t mean to make you cry. May be you wouldn’t,
+then. Only tell that fellow to take you out of this, and not run away
+the next time he sees a man coming.”
+
+“He didn’t run,” said Teresa, with flashing eyes. “I--I--I sent him
+away,” she stammered. Then, suddenly turning with fury upon him, she
+broke out, “Run! Run from you! Ha, ha! You said just now I’d a grudge
+against you. Well, listen, Jim Dunn. I’d only to bring you in range of
+that young man’s rifle, and you’d have dropped in your tracks like--”
+
+“Like that bar, the other night,” said Dunn, with a short laugh. “So
+THAT was your little game?” He checked his laugh suddenly--a cloud
+passed over his face. “Look here, Teresa,” he said, with an assumption
+of carelessness that was as transparent as it was utterly incompatible
+with his frank, open selfishness. “What became of that bar? The
+skin--eh? That was worth something?”
+
+“Yes,” said Teresa quietly. “Low exchanged it and got a ring for me from
+that trader Isaacs. It was worth more, you bet. And the ring didn’t fit
+either--”
+
+“Yes,” interrupted Dunn, with an almost childish eagerness.
+
+“And I made him take it back, and get the value in money. I hear that
+Isaacs sold it again and made another profit; but that’s like those
+traders.” The disingenuous candor of Teresa’s manner was in exquisite
+contrast to Dunn. He rose and grasped her hand so heartily she was
+forced to turn her eyes away.
+
+“Good-by!” he said.
+
+“You look tired,” she murmured, with a sudden gentleness that surprised
+him; “let me go with you a part of the way.”
+
+“It isn’t safe for you just now,” he said, thinking of the possible
+consequences of the alarm Brace had raised.
+
+“Not the way YOU came,” she replied; “but one known only to myself.”
+
+He hesitated only a moment. “All right, then,” he said finally, “let
+us go at once. It’s suffocating here, and I seem to feel this dead bark
+crinkle under my feet.”
+
+She cast a rapid glance around her, and then seemed to sound with her
+eyes the far-off depths of the aisles, beginning to grow pale with the
+advancing day, but still holding a strange quiver of heat in the air.
+When she had finished her half-abstracted scrutiny of the distance, she
+cast one backward glance at her own cabin and stopped.
+
+“Will you wait a moment for me?” she asked gently.
+
+“Yes--but--no tricks, Teresa! It isn’t worth the time.”
+
+She looked him squarely in the eyes without a word.
+
+“Enough,” he said; “go!”
+
+She was absent for some moments. He was beginning to become uneasy, when
+she made her appearance again, clad in her old faded black dress. Her
+face was very pale, and her eyes were swollen, but she placed his hand
+on her shoulder, and bidding him not to fear to lean upon her, for she
+was quite strong, led the way.
+
+“You look more like yourself now, and yet--blast it all!--you don’t
+either,” said Dunn, looking down upon her. “You’ve changed in some way.
+What is it? Is it on account of that Injin? Couldn’t you have found a
+white man in his place?”
+
+“I reckon he’s neither worse nor better for that,” she replied bitterly;
+“and perhaps he wasn’t as particular in his taste as a white man might
+have been. But,” she added, with a sudden spasm of her old rage, “it’s
+a lie; he’s NOT an Indian, no more than I am. Not unless being born of
+a mother who scarcely knew him, of a father who never even saw him, and
+being brought up among white men and wild beasts--less cruel than they
+were--could make him one!”
+
+Dunn looked at her in surprise not unmixed with admiration. “If Nellie,”
+ he thought, “could but love ME like that!” But he only said:
+
+“For all that, he’s an Injin. Why, look at his name. It ain’t Low. It’s
+L’Eau Dormante, Sleeping Water, an Injin name.”
+
+“And what does that prove?” returned Teresa. “Only that Indians clap a
+nick-name on any stranger, white or red, who may camp with them. Why,
+even his own father, a white man, the wretch who begot him and abandoned
+him,--HE had an Indian name--Loup Noir.”
+
+“What name did you say?”
+
+“Le Loup Noir, the Black Wolf. I suppose you’d call him an Indian, too?
+Eh! What’s the matter? We’re walking too fast. Stop a moment and rest.
+There--there, lean on me!”
+
+She was none too soon; for, after holding him upright a moment, his
+limbs failed, and stooping gently she was obliged to support him half
+reclining against a tree.
+
+“Its the heat!” he said. “Give me some whisky from my flask. Never mind
+the water,” he added faintly, with a forced laugh, after he had taken a
+draught at the strong spirit. “Tell me more about the other water--the
+Sleeping Water--you know. How do you know all this about him and
+his--father?”
+
+“Partly from him and partly from Curson, who wrote to me about him,” she
+answered with some hesitation.
+
+But Dunn did not seem to notice this incongruity of correspondence with
+a former lover. “And HE told you?”
+
+“Yes; and I saw the name on an old memorandum book he has, which he says
+belonged to his father. It’s full of old accounts of some trading post
+on the frontier. It’s been missing for a day or two, but it will turn
+up. But I can swear I saw it.”
+
+Dunn attempted to rise to his feet. “Put your hand in my pocket,” he
+said in a hurried whisper. “No, there!--bring out a book. There, I
+haven’t looked at it yet. Is that it?” he added, handing her the book
+Brace had given him a few hours before.
+
+“Yes,” said Teresa, in surprise. “Where did you find it?”
+
+“Never mind! Now let me see it, quick. Open it, for my sight is failing.
+There--thank you--that’s all!”
+
+“Take more whisky,” said Teresa, with a strange anxiety creeping over
+her. “You are faint again.”
+
+“Wait! Listen, Teresa--lower--put your ear lower. Listen! I came near
+killing that chap Low to-day. Wouldn’t it have been ridiculous?”
+
+He tried to smile, but his head fell back. He had fainted.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+For the first time in her life Teresa lost her presence of mind in an
+emergency. She could only sit staring at the helpless man, scarcely
+conscious of his condition, her mind filled with a sudden prophetic
+intuition of the significance of his last words. In the light of
+that new revelation she looked into his pale, haggard face for some
+resemblance to Low, but in vain. Yet her swift feminine instinct met the
+objection. “It’s the mother’s blood that would show,” she murmured, “not
+this man’s.”
+
+Recovering herself, she began to chafe his hands and temples, and
+moistened his lips with the spirit. When his respiration returned with a
+faint color to his cheeks, she pressed his hands eagerly and leaned over
+him.
+
+“Are you sure?” she asked.
+
+“Of what?” he whispered faintly.
+
+“That Low is really your son?”
+
+“Who said so?” he asked, opening his round eyes upon her.
+
+“You did yourself, a moment ago,” she said quickly. “Don’t you
+remember?”
+
+“Did I?”
+
+“You did. Is it not so?”
+
+He smiled faintly. “I reckon.”
+
+She held her breath in expectation. But only the ludicrousness of the
+discovery seemed paramount to his weakened faculties. “Isn’t it just
+about the ridiculousest thing all round?” he said, with a feeble
+chuckle. “First YOU nearly kill me before you know I am Low’s father;
+then I’m just spoilin’ to kill him before I know he’s my son; then that
+god-forsaken fool Jack Brace mistakes you for Nellie and Nellie for you.
+Ain’t it just the biggest thing for the boys to get hold of? But we must
+keep it dark until after I marry Nellie, don’t you see? Then we’ll have
+a good time all round, and I’ll stand the drinks. Think of it, Teresha!
+You don’ no me, I do’ no you, nobody knowsh anybody elsh. I try kill
+Lo’. Lo’ wants kill Nellie. No thath no ri--’” but the potent liquor,
+overtaking his exhausted senses, thickened, impeded, and at last stopped
+his speech. His head slipped to her shoulder, and he became once more
+unconscious.
+
+Teresa breathed again. In that brief moment she had abandoned herself to
+a wild inspiration of hope which she could scarcely define. Not that it
+was entirely a wild inspiration; she tried to reason calmly. What if she
+revealed the truth to him? What if she told the wretched man before her
+that she had deceived him; that she had overheard his conversation with
+Brace; that she had stolen Brace’s horse to bring Low warning; that,
+failing to find Low in his accustomed haunts, or at the campfire, she
+had left a note for him pinned to the herbarium, imploring him to fly
+with his companion from the danger that was coming; and that, remaining
+on watch, she had seen them both--Brace and Dunn--approaching, and had
+prepared to meet them at the cabin? Would this miserable and
+maddened man understand her self-abnegation? Would he forgive Low and
+Nellie?--she did not ask for herself. Or would the revelation turn his
+brain, if it did not kill him outright? She looked at the sunken orbits
+of his eyes and hectic on his cheek, and shuddered.
+
+Why was this added to the agony she already suffered? She had been
+willing to stand between them with her life, her liberty, and even--the
+hot blood dyed her cheek at the thought--with the added shame of being
+thought the cast-off mistress of that man’s son. Yet all this she had
+taken upon herself in expiation of something--she knew not clearly what;
+no, for nothing--only for HIM. And yet this very situation offered
+her that gleam of hope which had thrilled her; a hope so wild in its
+improbability, so degrading in its possibility, that at first she knew
+not whether despair was not preferable to its shame. And yet was it
+unreasonable? She was no longer passionate; she would be calm and think
+it out fairly.
+
+She would go to Low at once. She would find him somewhere--and even if
+with that girl, what mattered?--and she would tell him all. When he knew
+that the life and death of his father lay in the scale, would he let his
+brief, foolish passion for Nellie stand in the way? Even if he were not
+influenced by filial affection or mere compassion, would his pride let
+him stoop to a rivalry with the man who had deserted his youth? Could
+he take Dunn’s promised bride, who must have coquetted with him to have
+brought him to this miserable plight? Was this like the calm, proud
+young god she knew? Yet she had an uneasy instinct that calm, proud
+young gods and goddesses did things like this, and felt the weakness of
+her reasoning flush her own conscious cheek.
+
+“Teresa!”
+
+She started. Dunn was awake, and was gazing at her curiously.
+
+“I was reckoning it was the only square thing for Low to stop this
+promiscuous picnicking here and marry you out and out.”
+
+“Marry me!” said Teresa in a voice that, with all her efforts, she could
+not make cynical.
+
+“Yes,” he repeated, “after I’ve married Nellie; tote you down to
+San Angeles, and there take my name like a man, and give it to you.
+Nobody’ll ask after TERESA, sure--you bet your life. And if they do,
+and he can’t stop their jaw, just you call on the old man. It’s mighty
+queer, ain’t it, Teresa, to think of your being my daughter-in-law?”
+
+It seemed here as if he was about to lapse again into unconsciousness
+over the purely ludicrous aspect of the subject, but he haply recovered
+his seriousness. “He’ll have as much money from me as he wants to go
+into business with. What’s his line of business, Teresa?” asked this
+prospective father-in-law, in a large, liberal way.
+
+“He is a botanist!” said Teresa, with a sudden childish animation that
+seemed to keep up the grim humor of the paternal suggestion; “and oh,
+he is too poor to buy books! I sent for one or two for him myself, the
+other day--” she hesitated--“it was all the money I had, but it wasn’t
+enough for him to go on with his studies.”
+
+Dunn looked at her sparkling eyes and glowing cheeks, and became
+thoughtful. “Curson must have been a d--d fool,” he said finally.
+
+Teresa remained silent. She was beginning to be impatient and uneasy,
+fearing some mischance that might delay her dreaded, yet longed-for
+meeting with Low. Yet she could not leave this sick and exhausted man,
+HIS FATHER, now bound to her by more than mere humanity.
+
+“Couldn’t you manage,” she said gently, “to lean on me a few
+steps further, until I could bring you to a cooler spot and nearer
+assistance?”
+
+He nodded. She lifted him almost like a child to his feet. A spasm of
+pain passed over his face. “How far is it?” he asked.
+
+“Not more than ten minutes,” she replied.
+
+“I can make a spurt for that time,” he said coolly, and began to walk
+slowly but steadily on. Only his face, which was white and set, and the
+convulsive grip of his hand on her arm betrayed the effort. At the
+end of ten minutes she stopped. They stood before the splintered,
+lightning-scarred shaft in the opening of the woods, where Low had built
+her first camp-fire. She carefully picked up the herbarium, but her
+quick eye had already detected in the distance, before she had allowed
+Dunn to enter the opening with her, that her note was gone. Low had been
+there before them; he had been warned, as his absence from the cabin
+showed; he would not return there. They were free from interruption--but
+where had he gone?
+
+The sick man drew a long breath of relief as she seated him in the
+clover-grown hollow where she had slept the second night of her stay.
+“It’s cooler than those cursed woods,” he said. “I suppose it’s because
+it’s a little like a grave. What are you going to do now?” he added, as
+she brought a cup of water and placed it at his side.
+
+“I am going to leave you here for a little while,” she said cheerfully,
+but with a pale face and nervous hands. “I’m going to leave you while I
+seek Low.”
+
+The sick man raised his head. “I’m good for a spurt, Teresa, like that
+I’ve just got through, but I don’t think I’m up to a family party.
+Couldn’t you issue cards later on?”
+
+“You don’t understand,” she said. “I’m going to get Low to send some one
+of your friends to you here. I don’t think he’ll begrudge leaving HER a
+moment for that,” she added to herself bitterly.
+
+“What’s that you’re saying?” he queried, with the nervous quickness of
+an invalid.
+
+“Nothing--but that I’m going now.” She turned her face aside to hide her
+moistened eyes. “Wish me good luck, won’t you?” she asked, half sadly,
+half pettishly.
+
+“Come here!”
+
+She came and bent over him. He suddenly raised his hands, and, drawing
+her face down to his own, kissed her forehead.
+
+“Give that to HIM,” he whispered, “from ME.”
+
+She turned and fled, happily for her sentiment, not hearing the feeble
+laugh that followed, as Dunn, in sheer imbecility, again referred to
+the extravagant ludicrousness of the situation. “It is about the biggest
+thing in the way of a sell all round,” he repeated, lying on his back,
+confidentially to the speck of smoke-obscured sky above him. He pictured
+himself repeating it, not to Nellie--her severe propriety might at last
+overlook the fact, but would not tolerate the joke--but to her father!
+It would be one of those characteristic Californian jokes Father Wynn
+would admire.
+
+To his exhaustion fever presently succeeded, and he began to grow
+restless. The heat too seemed to invade his retreat, and from time to
+time the little patch of blue sky was totally obscured by clouds of
+smoke. He amused himself with watching a lizard who was investigating a
+folded piece of paper, whose elasticity gave the little creature lively
+apprehensions of its vitality. At last he could stand the stillness of
+his retreat and his supine position no longer, and rolled himself out of
+the bed of leaves that Teresa had so carefully prepared for him. He rose
+to his feet stiff and sore, and, supporting himself by the nearest tree,
+moved a few steps from the dead ashes of the camp-fire. The movement
+frightened the lizard, who abandoned the paper and fled. With a
+satirical recollection of Brace and his “ridiculous” discovery through
+the medium of this animal, he stooped and picked up the paper. “Like as
+not,” he said to himself, with grim irony, “these yer lizards are in the
+discovery business. P’r’aps this may lead to another mystery,” and he
+began to unfold the paper with a smile. But the smile ceased as his eye
+suddenly caught his own name.
+
+A dozen lines were written in pencil on what seemed to be a blank leaf
+originally torn from some book. He trembled so that he was obliged to
+sit down to read these words:--
+
+
+“When you get this keep away from the woods. Dunn and another man are
+in deadly pursuit of you and your companion. I overheard their plan to
+surprise you in our cabin. DON’T GO THERE, and I will delay them and put
+them off the scent. Don’t mind me. God bless you, and if you never see
+me again think sometimes of
+
+“TERESA.”
+
+
+His trembling ceased; he did not start, but rose in an abstracted way,
+and made a few deliberate steps in the direction Teresa had gone. Even
+then he was so confused that he was obliged to refer to the paper again,
+but with so little effect that he could only repeat the last words,
+“think sometimes of Teresa.” He was conscious that this was not all; he
+had a full conviction of being deceived, and knew that he held the
+proof in his hand, but he could not formulate it beyond that sentence.
+“Teresa”--yes, he would think of her. She would explain it. And here she
+was returning.
+
+In that brief interval her face and manner had again changed. Her face
+was pale and quite breathless. She cast a swift glance at Dunn and the
+paper he mechanically held out, walked up to him, and tore it from his
+hand.
+
+“Well,” she said hoarsely, “what are you going to do about it?”
+
+He attempted to speak, but his voice failed him. Even then he was
+conscious that if he had spoken he would have only repeated, “think
+sometimes of Teresa.” He looked longingly but helplessly at the spot
+where she had thrown the paper, as if it had contained his unuttered
+words.
+
+“Yes,” she went on to herself, as if he was a mute, indifferent
+spectator--“yes, they’re gone. That ends it all. The game’s played out.
+Well!” suddenly turning upon him, “now you know it all. Your Nellie WAS
+here with him, and is with him now. Do you hear? Make the most of it;
+you’ve lost them--but here I am.”
+
+“Yes,” he said eagerly--“yes, Teresa.”
+
+She stopped, stared at him; then taking him by the hand led him like a
+child back to his couch. “Well,” she said, in half-savage explanation,
+“I told you the truth when I said the girl wasn’t at the cabin last
+night, and that I didn’t know her. What are you glowerin’ at? No! I
+haven’t lied to you, I swear to God, except in one thing. Did you know
+what that was? To save him I took upon me a shame I don’t deserve. I let
+you think I was his mistress. You think so now, don’t you? Well, before
+God to-day--and He may take me when He likes--I’m no more to him than a
+sister! I reckon your Nellie can’t say as much.”
+
+She turned away, and with the quick, impatient stride of some caged
+animal made the narrow circuit of the opening, stopping a moment
+mechanically before the sick man, and again, without looking at him,
+continuing her monotonous round. The heat had become excessive, but
+she held her shawl with both hands drawn tightly over her shoulders.
+Suddenly a wood-duck darted out of the covert blindly into the opening,
+struck against the blasted trunk, fell half stunned near her feet, and
+then, recovering, fluttered away. She had scarcely completed another
+circuit before the irruption was followed by a whirring bevy of quail, a
+flight of jays, and a sudden tumult of wings swept through the wood like
+a tornado. She turned inquiringly to Dunn, who had risen to his feet,
+but the next moment she caught convulsively at his wrist; a wolf had
+just dashed through the underbrush not a dozen yards away, and on either
+side of them they could hear the scamper and rustle of hurrying feet
+like the outburst of a summer shower. A cold wind arose from the
+opposite direction, as if to contest this wild exodus, but it was
+followed by a blast of sickening heat. Teresa sank at Dunn’s feet in an
+agony of terror.
+
+“Don’t let them touch me!” she gasped; “keep them off! Tell me, for
+God’s sake, what has happened!”
+
+He laid his hand firmly on her arm, and lifted her in his turn to
+her feet like a child. In that supreme moment of physical danger, his
+strength, reason, and manhood returned in their plenitude of power. He
+pointed coolly to the trail she had quitted, and said,
+
+“The Carquinez Woods are on fire!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+The nest of the tuneful Burnhams, although in the suburbs of Indian
+Spring, was not in ordinary weather and seasons hidden from the longing
+eyes of the youth of that settlement. That night, however, it was veiled
+in the smoke that encompassed the great highway leading to Excelsior.
+It is presumed that the Burnham brood had long since folded their
+wings, for there was no sign of life nor movement in the house as a
+rapidly-driven horse and buggy pulled up before it. Fortunately, the
+paternal Burnham was an early bird, in the habit of picking up the first
+stirring mining worm, and a resounding knock brought him half dressed
+to the street door. He was startled at seeing Father Wynn before him, a
+trifle flushed and abstracted.
+
+“Ah ha! up betimes, I see, and ready. No sluggards here--ha, ha!” he
+said heartily, slamming the door behind him, and by a series of pokes in
+the ribs genially backing his host into his own sitting-room. “I’m up,
+too, and am here to see Nellie. She’s here, eh--of course?” he added,
+darting a quick look at Burnham.
+
+But Mr. Burnham was one of those large, liberal Western husbands who
+classified his household under the general title of “woman folk,” for
+the integers of which he was not responsible. He hesitated, and then
+propounded over the balusters to the upper story the direct query--
+
+“You don’t happen to have Nellie Wynn up there, do ye?”
+
+There was an interval of inquiry proceeding from half a dozen reluctant
+throats, more or less cottony and muffled, in those various degrees
+of grievance and mental distress which indicate too early roused
+young womanhood. The eventual reply seemed to be affirmative, albeit
+accompanied with a suppressed giggle, as if the young lady had just been
+discovered as an answer to an amusing conundrum.
+
+“All right,” said Wynn, with an apparent accession of boisterous
+geniality. “Tell her I must see her, and I’ve only got a few minutes to
+spare. Tell her to slip on anything and come down; there’s no one here
+but myself, and I’ve shut the front door on Brother Burnham. Ha, ha!”
+ and suiting the action to the word, he actually bundled the admiring
+Brother Burnham out on his own doorstep. There was a light pattering on
+the staircase, and Nellie Wynn, pink with sleep, very tall, very slim,
+hastily draped in a white counterpane with a blue border and a general
+classic suggestion, slipped into the parlor. At the same moment her
+father shut the door behind her, placed one hand on the knob, and with
+the other seized her wrist.
+
+“Where were you yesterday?” he asked.
+
+Nellie looked at him, shrugged her shoulders, and said, “Here.”
+
+“You were in the Carquinez Woods with Low Dorman; you went there in
+disguise; you’ve met him there before. He is your clandestine lover; you
+have taken pledges of affection from him; you have--”
+
+“Stop!” she said.
+
+He stopped.
+
+“Did he tell you this?” she asked, with an expression of disdain.
+
+“No; I overheard it. Dunn and Brace were at the house waiting for you.
+When the coach did not bring you, I went to the office to inquire. As I
+left our door I thought I saw somebody listening at the parlor windows.
+It was only a drunken Mexican muleteer leaning against the house; but
+if HE heard nothing, I did. Nellie, I heard Brace tell Dunn that he had
+tracked you in your disguise to the woods--do you hear? that when you
+pretended to be here with the girls you were with Low--alone; that you
+wear a ring that Low got of a trader here; that there was a cabin in the
+woods--”
+
+“Stop!” she repeated.
+
+Wynn again paused.
+
+“And what did YOU do?” she asked.
+
+“I heard they were starting down there to surprise you and him together,
+and I harnessed up and got ahead of them in my buggy.”
+
+“And found me here,” she said, looking full into his eyes.
+
+He understood her and returned the look. He recognized the full
+importance of the culminating fact conveyed in her words, and was
+obliged to content himself with its logical and worldly significance. It
+was too late now to take her to task for mere filial disobedience; they
+must become allies.
+
+“Yes,” he said hurriedly; “but if you value your reputation, if you wish
+to silence both these men, answer me fully.”
+
+“Go on,” she said.
+
+“Did you go to the cabin in the woods yesterday?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“Did you ever go there with Low?”
+
+“No; I do not know even where it is.”
+
+Wynn felt that she was telling the truth. Nellie knew it; but as she
+would have been equally satisfied with an equally efficacious falsehood,
+her face remained unchanged.
+
+“And when did he leave you?”
+
+“At nine o’clock, here. He went to the hotel.”
+
+“He saved his life, then, for Dunn is on his way to the woods to kill
+him.”
+
+The jeopardy of her lover did not seem to affect the young girl with
+alarm, although her eyes betrayed some interest.
+
+“Then Dunn has gone to the woods?” she said thoughtfully.
+
+“He has,” replied Wynn.
+
+“Is that all?” she asked.
+
+“I want to know what you are going to do?”
+
+“I WAS going back to bed.”
+
+“This is no time for trifling, girl.”
+
+“I should think not,” she said, with a yawn; “it’s too early, or too
+late.”
+
+Wynn grasped her wrist more tightly. “Hear me! Put whatever face you
+like on this affair, you are compromised--and compromised with a man you
+can’t marry.”
+
+“I don’t know that I ever wanted to marry Low, if you mean him,” she
+said quietly.
+
+“And Dunn wouldn’t marry you now.”
+
+“I’m not so sure of that, either.”
+
+“Nellie,” said Wynn excitedly, “do you want to drive me mad? Have you
+nothing to say--nothing to suggest?”
+
+“Oh, you want me to help you, do you! Why didn’t you say that first?
+Well, go and bring Dunn here.”
+
+“Are you mad? The man has gone already in pursuit of your lover,
+believing you with him.”
+
+“Then he will the more readily come and talk with me without him. Will
+you take the invitation--yes or no?”
+
+“Yes, but--”
+
+“Enough. On your way there you will stop at the hotel and give Low a
+letter from me.”
+
+“Nellie!”
+
+“You shall read it, of course,” she said scornfully, “for it will be
+your text for the conversation you will have with him. Will you please
+take your hand from the lock and open the door?”
+
+Wynn mechanically opened the door. The young girl flew up-stairs. In a
+very few moments she returned with two notes: one contained a few lines
+of formal invitation to Dunn; the other read as follows:
+
+
+“DEAR MR. DORMAN,--My father will tell you how deeply I regret that our
+recent botanical excursions in the Carquinez Woods have been a source of
+serious misapprehensions to those who had a claim to my consideration,
+and that I shall be obliged to discontinue them for the future. At
+the same time he wishes me to express my gratitude for your valuable
+instruction and assistance in that pleasing study, even though
+approaching events may compel me to relinquish it for other duties.
+May I beg you to accept the inclosed ring as a slight recognition of my
+obligations to you?
+
+“Your grateful pupil,
+
+“NELLIE WYNN.”
+
+
+When he had finished reading the letter, she handed him a ring, which
+he took mechanically. He raised his eyes to hers with perfectly genuine
+admiration. “You’re a good girl, Nellie,” he said, and, in a moment
+of parental forgetfulness, unconsciously advanced his lips towards her
+cheek. But she drew back in time to recall him to a sense of that human
+weakness.
+
+“I suppose I’ll have time for a nap yet,” she said, as a gentle hint to
+her embarrassed parent. He nodded and turned towards the door.
+
+“If I were you,” she continued, repressing a yawn, “I’d manage to be
+seen on good terms with Low at the hotel; so perhaps you need not give
+the letter to him until the last thing. Good-by.”
+
+The sitting-room door opened and closed behind her as she slipped
+up-stairs, and her father, without the formality of leave-taking,
+quietly let himself out by the front door.
+
+When he drove into the high road again, however, an overlooked
+possibility threatened for a moment to indefinitely postpone his amiable
+intentions regarding Low. The hotel was at the further end of the
+settlement towards the Carquinez Woods, and as Wynn had nearly reached
+it he was recalled to himself by the sounds of hoofs and wheels rapidly
+approaching from the direction of the Excelsior turnpike. Wynn made no
+doubt it was the sheriff and Brace. To avoid recognition at that moment,
+he whipped up his horse, intending to keep the lead until he could turn
+into the first cross-road. But the coming travelers had the fleetest
+horse, and finding it impossible to distance them he drove close to the
+ditch, pulling up suddenly as the strange vehicle was abreast of him,
+and forcing them to pass him at full speed, with the result already
+chronicled. When they had vanished in the darkness, Mr. Wynn, with a
+heart overflowing with Christian thankfulness and universal benevolence,
+wheeled round, and drove back to the hotel he had already passed. To
+pull up at the veranda with a stentorian shout, to thump loudly at the
+deserted bar, to hilariously beat the panels of the landlord’s door,
+and commit a jocose assault and battery upon that half-dresssed and
+half-awakened man, was eminently characteristic of Wynn, and part of his
+amiable plans that morning.
+
+“Something to wash this wood smoke from my throat, Brother Carter, and
+about as much again to prop open your eyes,” he said, dragging Carter
+before the bar, “and glasses round for as many of the boys as are up
+and stirring after a hard-working Christian’s rest. How goes the honest
+publican’s trade, and who have we here?”
+
+“Thar’s Judge Robinson and two lawyers from Sacramento, Dick Curson over
+from Yolo,” said Carter, “and that ar young Injin yarb doctor from the
+Carquinez Woods. I reckon he’s jist up--I noticed a light under his door
+as I passed.”
+
+“He’s my man for a friendly chat before breakfast,” said Wynn. “You
+needn’t come up. I’ll find the way. I don’t want a light; I reckon my
+eyes ain’t as bright nor as young as his, but they’ll see almost as far
+in the dark--he! he!” And, nodding to Brother Carter, he strode
+along the passage, and with no other introduction than a playful and
+preliminary “Boo!” burst into one of the rooms. Low, who by the light
+of a single candle was bending over the plates of a large quarto, merely
+raised his eyes and looked at the intruder. The young man’s natural
+imperturbability, always exasperating to Wynn, seemed accented that
+morning by contrast with his own over-acted animation.
+
+“Ah ha!--wasting the midnight oil instead of imbibing the morning dews,”
+ said Father Wynn archly, illustrating his metaphor with a movement of
+his hand to his lips. “What have we here?”
+
+“An anonymous gift,” replied Low simply, recognizing the father of
+Nellie by rising from his chair. “It’s a volume I’ve longed to possess,
+but never could afford to buy. I cannot imagine who sent it to me.”
+
+Wynn was for a moment startled by the thought that this recipient of
+valuable gifts might have influential friends. But a glance at the bare
+room, which looked like a camp, and the strange, unconventional garb of
+its occupant, restored his former convictions. There might be a promise
+of intelligence, but scarcely of prosperity, in the figure before him.
+
+“Ah! We must not forget that we are watched over in the night season,”
+ he said, laying his hand on Low’s shoulder, with an illustration of
+celestial guardianship that would have been impious but for its palpable
+grotesqueness. “No, sir, we know not what a day may bring forth.”
+
+Unfortunately, Low’s practical mind did not go beyond a mere human
+interpretation. It was enough, however, to put a new light in his eye
+and a faint color in his cheek.
+
+“Could it have been Miss Nellie?” he asked, with half-boyish hesitation.
+
+Mr. Wynn was too much of a Christian not to bow before what appeared to
+him the purely providential interposition of this suggestion. Seizing
+it and Low at the same moment, he playfully forced him down again in his
+chair.
+
+“Ah, you rascal!” he said, with infinite archness; “that’s your game,
+is it? You want to trap poor Father Wynn. You want to make him say ‘No.’
+You want to tempt him to commit himself. No, sir!--never, sir!--no, no!”
+
+Firmly convinced that the present was Nellie’s, and that her father only
+good-humoredly guessed it, the young man’s simple, truthful nature was
+embarrassed. He longed to express his gratitude, but feared to betray
+the young girl’s trust. The Reverend Mr. Wynn speedily relieved his
+mind.
+
+“No,” he continued, bestriding a chair, and familiarly confronting Low
+over its back. “No, sir--no! And you want me to say ‘No,’ don’t you,
+regarding the little walks of Nellie and a certain young man in the
+Carquinez Woods?--ha, ha! You’d like me to say that I knew nothing
+of the botanizings, and the herb collectings, and the picknickings
+there--he, he!--you sly dog! Perhaps you’d like to tempt Father Wynn
+further, and make him swear he knows nothing of his daughter disguising
+herself in a duster and meeting another young man--isn’t it another
+young man?--all alone, eh? Perhaps you want poor old Father Wynn to say
+No. No, sir, nothing of the kind ever occurred. Ah, you young rascal!”
+
+Slightly troubled, in spite of Wynn’s hearty manner, Low, with his usual
+directness, however, said, “I do not want anyone to deny that I have
+seen Miss Nellie.”
+
+“Certainly, certainly,” said Wynn, abandoning his method, considerably
+disconcerted by Low’s simplicity, and a certain natural reserve that
+shook off his familiarity. “Certainly it’s a noble thing to be able to
+put your hand on your heart and say to the world, ‘Come on, all of you!
+Observe me; I have nothing to conceal. I walk with Miss Wynn in the
+woods as her instructor--her teacher, in fact. We cull a flower here and
+there; we pluck an herb fresh from the hands of the Creator. We look, so
+to speak, from Nature to Nature’s God.’ Yes, my young friend, we should
+be the first to repel the foul calumny that could misinterpret our most
+innocent actions.”
+
+“Calumny?” repeated Low, starting to his feet. “What calumny?”
+
+“My friend, my noble young friend, I recognize your indignation. I know
+your worth. When I said to Nellie, my only child, my perhaps too simple
+offspring--a mere wildflower like yourself--when I said to her, ‘Go,
+my child, walk in the woods with this young man, hand in hand. Let him
+instruct you from the humblest roots, for he has trodden in the ways of
+the Almighty. Gather wisdom from his lips, and knowledge from his simple
+woodman’s craft. Make, in fact, a collection not only of herbs, but of
+moral axioms and experience’--I knew I could trust you, and, trusting
+you, my young friend, I felt I could trust the world. Perhaps I was
+weak, foolish. But I thought only of her welfare. I even recall how that
+to preserve the purity of her garments, I bade her don a simple duster;
+that, to secure her from the trifling companionship of others, I
+bade her keep her own counsel, and seek you at seasons known but to
+yourselves.”
+
+“But . . . did Nellie . . . understand you?” interrupted Low hastily.
+
+“I see you read her simple nature. Understand me? No, not at first!
+Her maidenly instinct--perhaps her duty to another--took the alarm. I
+remember her words. ‘But what will Dunn say?’ she asked. ‘Will he not be
+jealous?’”
+
+“Dunn! jealous! I don’t understand,” said Low, fixing his eyes on Wynn.
+
+“That’s just what I said to Nellie. ‘Jealous!’ I said. ‘What, Dunn,
+your affianced husband, jealous of a mere friend--a teacher, a guide, a
+philosopher. It is impossible.’ Well, sir, she was right. He is jealous.
+And, more than that, he has imparted his jealousy to others! In other
+words, he has made a scandal!”
+
+Low’s eyes flashed. “Where is your daughter now?” he said sternly.
+
+“At present in bed, suffering from a nervous attack brought on by these
+unjust suspicions. She appreciates your anxiety, and, knowing that you
+could not see her, told me to give you this.” He handed Low the ring and
+the letter.
+
+The climax had been forced, and, it must be confessed, was by no means
+the one Mr. Wynn had fully arranged in his own inner consciousness.
+He had intended to take an ostentatious leave of Low in the bar-room,
+deliver the letter with archness, and escape before a possible
+explosion. He consequently backed towards the door for an emergency.
+But he was again at fault. That unaffected stoical fortitude in acute
+suffering, which was the one remaining pride and glory of Low’s race,
+was yet to be revealed to Wynn’s civilized eyes.
+
+The young man took the letter, and read it without changing a muscle,
+folded the ring in it, and dropped it into his haversack. Then he picked
+up his blanket, threw it over his shoulder, took his trusty rifle in his
+hand, and turned towards Wynn as if coldly surprised that he was still
+standing there.
+
+“Are you--are you--going?” stammered Wynn.
+
+“Are you NOT?” replied Low dryly, leaning on his rifle for a moment as
+if waiting for Wynn to precede him. The preacher looked at him a moment,
+mumbled something, and then shambled feebly and ineffectively down the
+staircase before Low, with a painful suggestion to the ordinary observer
+of being occasionally urged thereto by the moccasin of the young man
+behind him.
+
+On reaching the lower hall, however, he endeavored to create a diversion
+in his favor by dashing into the bar-room and clapping the occupants on
+the back with indiscriminate playfulness. But here again he seemed to be
+disappointed. To his great discomfiture, a large man not only returned
+his salutation with powerful levity, but with equal playfulness seized
+him in his arms, and after an ingenious simulation of depositing him
+in the horse-trough set him down in affected amazement. “Bleth’t if
+I didn’t think from the weight of your hand it wath my old friend,
+Thacramento Bill,” said Curson apologetically, with a wink at the
+bystanders. “That’th the way Bill alwayth uthed to tackle hith friendth,
+till he wath one day bounthed by a prithe-fighter in Frithco, whom he
+had mithtaken for a mithionary.” As Mr. Curson’s reputation was of a
+quality that made any form of apology from him instantly acceptable,
+the amused spectators made way for him as, recognizing Low, who was just
+leaving the hotel, he turned coolly from them and walked towards him.
+
+“Halloo!” he said, extending his hand. “You’re the man I’m waiting for.
+Did you get a book from the exthpreth offithe latht night?”
+
+“I did. Why?”
+
+“It’th all right. Ath I’m rethponthible for it, I only wanted to know.”
+
+“Did YOU send it?” asked Low, quickly fixing his eyes on his face.
+
+“Well, not exactly ME. But it’th not worth making a mythtery of it.
+Teretha gave me a commithion to buy it and thend it to you anonymouthly.
+That’th a woman’th nonthenth, for how could thee get a retheipt for it?”
+
+“Then it was HER present,” said Low gloomily.
+
+“Of courthe. It wathn’t mine, my boy. I’d have thent you a Tharp’th
+rifle in plathe of that muthle loader you carry, or thomething
+thenthible. But, I thay! what’th up? You look ath if you had been
+running all night.”
+
+Low grasped his hand. “Thank you,” he said hurriedly; “but it’s nothing.
+Only I must be back to the woods early. Good-by.”
+
+But Curson retained Low’s hand in his own powerful grip.
+
+“I’ll go with you a bit further,” he said. “In fact, I’ve got thomething
+to thay to you; only don’t be in thuch a hurry; the woodth can wait till
+you get there.” Quietly compelling Low to alter his own characteristic
+Indian stride to keep pace with his, he went on: “I don’t mind thaying
+I rather cottoned to you from the time you acted like a white man--no
+offenthe--to Teretha. She thayth you were left when a child lying
+round, jutht ath promithcuouthly ath she wath; and if I can do anything
+towardth putting you on the trail of your people, I’ll do it. I know
+thome of the voyageurth who traded with the Cherokeeth, and your
+father wath one-wathn’t he?” He glanced at Low’s utterly abstracted and
+immobile face. “I thay, you don’t theem to take a hand in thith game,
+pardner. What’th the row? Ith anything wrong over there?” and he pointed
+to the Carquinez Woods, which were just looming out of the morning
+horizon in the distance.
+
+Low stopped. The last words of his companion seemed to recall him to
+himself. He raised his eyes automatically to the woods and started.
+
+“There IS something wrong over there,” he said breathlessly. “Look!”
+
+“I thee nothing,” said Curson, beginning to doubt Low’s sanity; “nothing
+more than I thaw an hour ago.”
+
+“Look again. Don’t you see that smoke rising straight up? It isn’t blown
+over there from the Divide; it’s new smoke! The fire is in the woods!”
+
+“I reckon that’th so,” muttered Curson, shading his eyes with his hand.
+“But, hullo! wait a minute! We’ll get hortheth. I say!” he shouted,
+forgetting his lisp in his excitement--“stop!” But Low had already
+lowered his head and darted forward like an arrow.
+
+In a few moments he had left not only his companion but the last
+straggling houses of the outskirts far behind him, and had struck out in
+a long, swinging trot for the disused “cut-off.” Already he fancied he
+heard the note of clamor in Indian Spring, and thought he distinguished
+the sound of hurrying hoofs on the great highway. But the sunken trail
+hid it from his view. From the column of smoke now plainly visible
+in the growing morning light he tried to locate the scene of the
+conflagration. It was evidently not a fire advancing regularly from the
+outer skirt of the wood, communicated to it from the Divide; it was a
+local outburst near its centre. It was not in the direction of his cabin
+in the tree. There was no immediate danger to Teresa, unless fear drove
+her beyond the confines of the wood into the hands of those who might
+recognize her. The screaming of jays and ravens above his head quickened
+his speed, as it heralded the rapid advance of the flames; and the
+unexpected apparition of a bounding body, flattened and flying over
+the yellow plain, told him that even the secure retreat of the
+mountain wild-cat had been invaded. A sudden recollection of Teresa’s
+uncontrollable terror that first night smote him with remorse and
+redoubled his efforts. Alone in the track of these frantic and
+bewildered beasts, to what madness might she not be driven!
+
+The sharp crack of a rifle from the high road turned his course
+momentarily in that direction. The smoke was curling lazily over the
+heads of the party of men in the road, while the huge hulk of a grizzly
+was disappearing in the distance. A battue of the escaping animals had
+commenced! In the bitterness of his heart he caught at the horrible
+suggestion, and resolved to save her from them or die with her there.
+
+How fast he ran, or the time it took him to reach the woods, has never
+been known. Their outlines were already hidden when he entered them.
+To a sense less keen, a courage less desperate, and a purpose less
+unaltered than Low’s, the wood would have been impenetrable. The central
+fire was still confined to the lofty tree tops, but the downward rush of
+wind from time to time drove the smoke into the aisles in blinding and
+suffocating volumes. To simulate the creeping animals, and fall to the
+ground on hands and knees, feel his way through the underbrush when
+the smoke was densest, or take advantage of its momentary lifting, and
+without uncertainty, mistake, or hesitation glide from tree to tree in
+one undeviating course, was possible only to an experienced woodsman. To
+keep his reason and insight so clear as to be able in the midst of this
+bewildering confusion to shape that course so as to intersect the wild
+and unknown tract of an inexperienced, frightened wanderer belonged to
+Low, and Low alone. He was making his way against the wind towards
+the fire. He had reasoned that she was either in comparative safety to
+windward of it, or he should meet her being driven towards him by it,
+or find her succumbed and fainting at its feet. To do this he must
+penetrate the burning belt, and then pass under the blazing dome. He
+was already upon it; he could see the falling fire dropping like rain or
+blown like gorgeous blossoms of the conflagration across his path. The
+space was lit up brilliantly. The vast shafts of dull copper cast no
+shadow below, but there was no sign nor token of any human being. For a
+moment the young man was at fault. It was true this hidden heart of the
+forest bore no undergrowth; the cool matted carpet of the aisles seemed
+to quench the glowing fragments as they fell. Escape might be difficult,
+but not impossible, yet every moment was precious. He leaned against a
+tree, and sent his voice like a clarion before him: “Teresa!” There was
+no reply. He called again. A faint cry at his back from the trail he had
+just traversed made him turn. Only a few paces behind him, blinded and
+staggering, but following like a beaten and wounded animal, Teresa,
+halted, knelt, clasped her hands, and dumbly held them out before her.
+“Teresa!” he cried again, and sprang to her side.
+
+She caught him by the knees, and lifted her face imploringly to his.
+
+“Say that again!” she cried, passionately. “Tell me it was Teresa you
+called, and no other! You have come back for me! You would not let me
+die here alone!”
+
+He lifted her tenderly in his arms, and cast a rapid glance around
+him. It might have been his fancy, but there seemed a dull glow in the
+direction he had come.
+
+“You do not speak!” she said. “Tell me! You did not come here to seek
+her?”
+
+“Whom?” he said quickly.
+
+“Nellie!”
+
+With a sharp cry he let her slip to the ground. All the pent-up
+agony, rage, and mortification of the last hour broke from him in that
+inarticulate outburst. Then, catching her hands again, he dragged her to
+his level.
+
+“Hear me!” he cried, disregarding the whirling smoke and the fiery
+baptism that sprinkled them--“hear me! If you value your life, if you
+value your soul, and if you do not want me to cast you to the beasts
+like Jezebel of old, never--never take that accursed name again upon
+your lips. Seek her--HER? Yes! Seek her to tie her like a witch’s
+daughter of hell to that blazing tree!” He stopped. “Forgive me,” he
+said in a changed voice. “I’m mad, and forgetting myself and you. Come.”
+
+Without noticing the expression of half-savage delight that had passed
+across her face, he lifted her in his arms.
+
+“Which way are you going?” she asked, passing her hands vaguely across
+his breast, as if to reassure herself of his identity.
+
+“To our camp by the scarred tree,” he replied.
+
+“Not there, not there,” she said, hurriedly. “I was driven from there
+just now. I thought the fire began there until I came here.”
+
+Then it was as he feared. Obeying the same mysterious law that had
+launched this fatal fire like a thunderbolt from the burning mountain
+crest five miles away into the heart of the Carquinez Woods, it had
+again leaped a mile beyond, and was hemming them between two narrowing
+lines of fire. But Low was not daunted. Retracing his steps through
+the blinding smoke, he strode off at right angles to the trail near the
+point where he had entered the wood. It was the spot where he had first
+lifted Nellie in his arms to carry her to the hidden spring. If any
+recollection of it crossed his mind at that moment, it was only shown in
+his redoubled energy. He did not glide through the thick underbrush, as
+on that day, but seemed to take a savage pleasure in breaking through it
+with sheer brute force. Once Teresa insisted upon relieving him of
+the burden of her weight, but after a few steps she staggered blindly
+against him, and would fain have recourse once more to his strong arms.
+And so, alternately staggering, bending, crouching, or bounding and
+crashing on, but always in one direction, they burst through the jealous
+rampart, and came upon the sylvan haunt of the hidden spring. The
+great angle of the half-fallen tree acted as a harrier to the wind and
+drifting smoke, and the cool spring sparkled and bubbled in the almost
+translucent air. He laid her down beside the water, and bathed her
+face and hands. As he did so his quick eye caught sight of a woman’s
+handkerchief lying at the foot of the disrupted root. Dropping Teresa’s
+hand, he walked towards it, and with the toe of his moccasin gave it one
+vigorous kick into the ooze at the overflow of the spring. He turned to
+Teresa, but she evidently had not noticed the act.
+
+“Where are you?” she asked, with a smile.
+
+Something in her movement struck him! He came towards her, and bending
+down looked into her face. “Teresa! Good God!--look at me! What has
+happened?”
+
+She raised her eyes to his. There was a slight film across them; the
+lids were blackened; the beautiful lashes gone forever!
+
+“I see you a little now, I think,” she said, with a smile, passing her
+hands vaguely over his face. “It must have happened when he fainted, and
+I had to drag him through the blazing brush; both my hands were full,
+and I could not cover my eyes.”
+
+“Drag whom?” said Low, quickly.
+
+“Why, Dunn.”
+
+“Dunn! He here?” said Low, hoarsely.
+
+“Yes; didn’t you read the note I left on the herbarium? Didn’t you come
+to the camp-fire?” she asked hurriedly, clasping his hands. “Tell me
+quickly!”
+
+“No!”
+
+“Then you were not there--then you didn’t leave me to die?”
+
+“No! I swear it, Teresa!” the stoicism that had upheld his own agony
+breaking down before her strong emotion.
+
+“Thank God!” She threw her arms around him, and hid her aching eyes in
+his troubled breast.
+
+“Tell me all, Teresa,” he whispered in her listening ear. “Don’t move;
+stay there, and tell me all.”
+
+With her face buried in his bosom, as if speaking to his heart alone,
+she told him part, but not all. With her eyes filled with tears, but a
+smile on her lips, radiant with new-found happiness, she told him how
+she had overheard the plans of Dunn and Brace, how she had stolen their
+conveyance to warn him in time. But here she stopped, dreading to say
+a word that would shatter the hope she was building upon his sudden
+revulsion of feeling for Nellie. She could not bring herself to repeat
+their interview--that would come later, when they were safe and out of
+danger; now not even the secret of his birth must come between them with
+its distraction, to mar their perfect communion. She faltered that Dunn
+had fainted from weakness, and that she had dragged him out of danger.
+“He will never interfere with us--I mean,” she said softly, “with ME
+again. I can promise you that as well as if he had sworn it.”
+
+“Let him pass, now,” said Low; “that will come later on,” he added,
+unconsciously repeating her thought in a tone that made her heart sick.
+“But tell me, Teresa, why did you go to Excelsior?”
+
+She buried her head still deeper, as if to hide it. He felt her broken
+heart beat against his own; he was conscious of a depth of feeling her
+rival had never awakened in him. The possibility of Teresa loving him
+had never occurred to his simple nature. He bent his head and kissed
+her. She was frightened, and unloosed her clinging arms; but he retained
+her hand, and said, “We will leave this accursed place, and you shall
+go with me as you said you would; nor need you ever leave me, unless you
+wish it.”
+
+She could hear the beating of her own heart through his words; she
+longed to look at the eyes and lips that told her this, and read the
+meaning his voice alone could not entirely convey. For the first time
+she felt the loss of her sight. She did not know that it was, in this
+moment of happiness, the last blessing vouchsafed to her miserable life.
+
+A few moments of silence followed, broken only by the distant rumor of
+the conflagration and the crash of falling boughs.
+
+“It may be an hour yet,” he whispered, “before the fire has swept a path
+for us to the road below. We are safe here, unless some sudden current
+should draw the fire down upon us. You are not frightened?” She pressed
+his hand; she was thinking of the pale face of Dunn, lying in the
+secure retreat she had purchased for him at such a sacrifice. Yet
+the possibility of danger to him now for a moment marred her present
+happiness and security. “You think the fire will not go north of where
+you found me?” she asked softly.
+
+“I think not,” he said, “but I will reconnoitre. Stay where you are.”
+
+They pressed hands, and parted. He leaped upon the slanting trunk and
+ascended it rapidly. She waited in mute expectation.
+
+There was a sudden movement of the root on which she sat, a deafening
+crash, and she was thrown forward on her face.
+
+The vast bulk of the leaning tree, dislodged from its aerial support by
+the gradual sapping of the spring at its roots, or by the crumbling
+of the bark from the heat, had slipped, made a half revolution, and,
+falling, overbore the lesser trees in its path, and tore, in its
+resistless momentum, a broad opening to the underbrush.
+
+With a cry to Low, Teresa staggered to her feet. There was an interval
+of hideous silence, but no reply. She called again. There was a sudden
+deepening roar, the blast of a fiery furnace swept through the opening,
+a thousand luminous points around her burst into fire, and in an instant
+she was lost in a whirlwind of smoke and flame! From the onset of its
+fury to its culmination twenty minutes did not elapse; but in that
+interval a radius of two hundred yards around the hidden spring was
+swept of life and light and motion.
+
+For the rest of that day and part of the night a pall of smoke hung
+above the scene of desolation. It lifted only towards the morning, when
+the moon, rising high, picked out in black and silver the shrunken and
+silent columns of those roofless vaults, shorn of base and capital. It
+flickered on the still, overflowing pool of the hidden spring, and
+shone upon the white face of Low, who, with a rootlet of the fallen tree
+holding him down like an arm across his breast, seemed to be sleeping
+peacefully in the sleeping water.
+
+* * * * *
+
+Contemporaneous history touched him as briefly, but not as gently. “It
+is now definitely ascertained,” said “The Slumgullion Mirror,” “that
+Sheriff Dunn met his fate in the Carquinez Woods in the performance
+of his duty; that fearless man having received information of
+the concealment of a band of horse thieves in their recesses. The
+desperadoes are presumed to have escaped, as the only remains found are
+those of two wretched tramps, one of whom is said to have been a digger,
+who supported himself upon roots and herbs, and the other a degraded
+half-white woman. It is not unreasonable to suppose that the fire
+originated through their carelessness, although Father Wynn of the First
+Baptist Church, in his powerful discourse of last Sunday, pointed at the
+warning and lesson of such catastrophes. It may not be out of place
+here to say that the rumors regarding an engagement between the pastor’s
+accomplished daughter and the late lamented sheriff are utterly without
+foundation, as it has been an on dit for some time in all well-informed
+circles that the indefatigable Mr. Brace, of Wells, Fargo and Co.’s
+Express, will shortly lead the lady to the hymeneal altar.”
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of In the Carquinez Woods, by Bret Harte
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+<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
+
+<!DOCTYPE html
+   PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
+   "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd" >
+
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en">
+  <head>
+    <title>
+      In the Carquinez Woods, by Bret Harte
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
+
+    body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify}
+    P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; }
+    H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; }
+    hr  { width: 50%; text-align: center;}
+    .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; }
+    blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;}
+    .mynote    {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;}
+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+    .toc2      { margin-left: 20%;}
+    div.fig    { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; }
+    div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; }
+    .figleft   {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;}
+    .figright  {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;}
+    .pagenum   {display:inline; font-size: 70%; font-style:normal;
+               margin: 0; padding: 0; position: absolute; right: 1%;
+               text-align: right;}
+    pre        { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;}
+
+</style>
+  </head>
+  <body>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of In the Carquinez Woods, by Bret Harte
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: In the Carquinez Woods
+
+Author: Bret Harte
+
+Release Date: May 16, 2006 [EBook #2310]
+Last Updated: March 4, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Donald Lainson; David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      By Bret Harte
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <big><b>CONTENTS</b></big>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br />
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0001"> CHAPTER I. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0002"> CHAPTER II. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0003"> CHAPTER III. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0004"> CHAPTER IV </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0005"> CHAPTER V </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0006"> CHAPTER VI </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0007"> CHAPTER VII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0008"> CHAPTER VIII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0009"> CHAPTER IX </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0010"> CHAPTER X </a>
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0001" id="link2HCH0001">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a> <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER I.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The sun was going down on the Carquinez Woods. The few shafts of sunlight
+      that had pierced their pillared gloom were lost in unfathomable depths, or
+      splintered their ineffectual lances on the enormous trunks of the
+      redwoods. For a time the dull red of their vast columns, and the dull red
+      of their cast-off bark which matted the echoless aisles, still seemed to
+      hold a faint glow of the dying day. But even this soon passed. Light and
+      color fled upwards. The dark interlaced treetops, that had all day made an
+      impenetrable shade, broke into fire here and there; their lost spires
+      glittered, faded, and went utterly out. A weird twilight that did not come
+      from the outer world, but seemed born of the wood itself, slowly filled
+      and possessed the aisles. The straight, tall, colossal trunks rose dimly
+      like columns of upward smoke. The few fallen trees stretched their huge
+      length into obscurity, and seemed to lie on shadowy trestles. The strange
+      breath that filled these mysterious vaults had neither coldness nor
+      moisture; a dry, fragrant dust arose from the noiseless foot that trod
+      their bark-strewn floor; the aisles might have been tombs, the fallen
+      trees enormous mummies; the silence the solitude of a forgotten past.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And yet this silence was presently broken by a recurring sound like
+      breathing, interrupted occasionally by inarticulate and stertorous gasps.
+      It was not the quick, panting, listening breath of some stealthy feline or
+      canine animal, but indicated a larger, slower, and more powerful
+      organization, whose progress was less watchful and guarded, or as if a
+      fragment of one of the fallen monsters had become animate. At times this
+      life seemed to take visible form, but as vaguely, as misshapenly, as the
+      phantom of a nightmare. Now it was a square object moving sideways,
+      endways, with neither head nor tail and scarcely visible feet; then an
+      arched bulk rolling against the trunks of the trees and recoiling again,
+      or an upright cylindrical mass, but always oscillating and unsteady, and
+      striking the trees on either hand. The frequent occurrence of the movement
+      suggested the figures of some weird rhythmic dance to music heard by the
+      shape alone. Suddenly it either became motionless or faded away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was the frightened neighing of a horse, the sudden jingling of
+      spurs, a shout and outcry, and the swift apparition of three dancing
+      torches in one of the dark aisles; but so intense was the obscurity that
+      they shed no light on surrounding objects, and seemed to advance of their
+      own volition without human guidance, until they disappeared suddenly
+      behind the interposing bulk of one of the largest trees. Beyond its eighty
+      feet of circumference the light could not reach, and the gloom remained
+      inscrutable. But the voices and jingling spurs were heard distinctly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Blast the mare! She's shied off that cursed trail again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ye ain't lost it again, hev ye?&rdquo; growled a second voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's jist what I hev. And these blasted pine-knots don't give light an
+      inch beyond 'em. D&mdash;d if I don't think they make this cursed hole
+      blacker.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a laugh&mdash;a woman's laugh&mdash;hysterical, bitter,
+      sarcastic, exasperating. The second speaker, without heeding it, went on:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What in thunder skeert the hosses? Did you see or hear anything?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothin'. The wood is like a graveyard.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The woman's voice again broke into a hoarse, contemptuous laugh. The man
+      resumed angrily:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you know anything, why in h-ll don't you say so, instead of cackling
+      like a d&mdash;d squaw there? P'raps you reckon you ken find the trail
+      too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take this rope off my wrist,&rdquo; said the woman's voice, &ldquo;untie my hands,
+      let me down, and I'll find it.&rdquo; She spoke quickly and with a Spanish
+      accent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the men's turn to laugh. &ldquo;And give you a show to snatch that
+      six-shooter and blow a hole through me, as you did to the Sheriff of
+      Calaveras, eh? Not if this court understands itself,&rdquo; said the first
+      speaker dryly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go to the devil, then,&rdquo; she said curtly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not before a lady,&rdquo; responded the other. There was another laugh from the
+      men, the spurs jingled again, the three torches reappeared from behind the
+      tree, and then passed away in the darkness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a time silence and immutability possessed the woods; the great trunks
+      loomed upwards, their fallen brothers stretched their slow length into
+      obscurity. The sound of breathing again became audible; the shape
+      reappeared in the aisle, and recommenced its mystic dance. Presently it
+      was lost in the shadow of the largest tree, and to the sound of breathing
+      succeeded a grating and scratching of bark. Suddenly, as if riven by
+      lightning, a flash broke from the center of the tree-trunk, lit up the
+      woods, and a sharp report rang through it. After a pause the jingling of
+      spurs and the dancing of torches were revived from the distance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hallo?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      No answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who fired that shot?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But there was no reply. A slight veil of smoke passed away to the right,
+      there was the spice of gunpowder in the air, but nothing more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The torches came forward again, but this time it could be seen they were
+      held in the hands of two men and a woman. The woman's hands were tied at
+      the wrist to the horse-hair reins of her mule, while a riata, passed
+      around her waist and under the mule's girth, was held by one of the men,
+      who were both armed with rifles and revolvers. Their frightened horses
+      curveted, and it was with difficulty they could be made to advance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ho! stranger, what are you shooting at?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The woman laughed and shrugged her shoulders. &ldquo;Look yonder at the roots of
+      the tree. You're a d&mdash;d smart man for a sheriff, ain't you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The man uttered an exclamation and spurred his horse forward, but the
+      animal reared in terror. He then sprang to the ground and approached the
+      tree. The shape lay there, a scarcely distinguishable bulk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A grizzly, by the living Jingo! Shot through the heart.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was true. The strange shape lit up by the flaring torches seemed more
+      vague, unearthly, and awkward in its dying throes, yet the small shut
+      eyes, the feeble nose, the ponderous shoulders, and half-human foot armed
+      with powerful claws were unmistakable. The men turned by a common impulse
+      and peered into the remote recesses of the wood again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hi, Mister! come and pick up your game. Hallo there!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The challenge fell unheeded on the empty woods.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And yet,&rdquo; said he whom the woman had called the sheriff, &ldquo;he can't be far
+      off. It was a close shot, and the bear hez dropped in his tracks. Why,
+      wot's this sticking in his claws?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The two men bent over the animal. &ldquo;Why, it's sugar, brown sugar&mdash;look!&rdquo;
+       There was no mistake. The huge beast's fore paws and muzzle were streaked
+      with the unromantic household provision, and heightened the absurd
+      contrast of its incongruous members. The woman, apparently indifferent,
+      had taken that opportunity to partly free one of her wrists.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If we hadn't been cavorting round this yer spot for the last half hour,
+      I'd swear there was a shanty not a hundred yards away,&rdquo; said the sheriff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The other man, without replying, remounted his horse instantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If there is, and it's inhabited by a gentleman that kin make centre shots
+      like that in the dark, and don't care to explain how, I reckon I won't
+      disturb him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The sheriff was apparently of the same opinion, for he followed his
+      companion's example, and once more led the way. The spurs tinkled, the
+      torches danced, and the cavalcade slowly reentered the gloom. In another
+      moment it had disappeared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The wood sank again into repose, this time disturbed by neither shape nor
+      sound. What lower forms of life might have crept close to its roots were
+      hidden in the ferns, or passed with deadened tread over the bark-strewn
+      floor. Towards morning a coolness like dew fell from above, with here and
+      there a dropping twig or nut, or the crepitant awakening and
+      stretching-out of cramped and weary branches. Later a dull, lurid dawn,
+      not unlike the last evening's sunset, filled the aisles. This faded again,
+      and a clear gray light, in which every object stood out in sharp
+      distinctness, took its place. Morning was waiting outside in all its
+      brilliant, youthful coloring, but only entered as the matured and sobered
+      day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Seen in that stronger light, the monstrous tree near which the dead bear
+      lay revealed its age in its denuded and scarred trunk, and showed in its
+      base a deep cavity, a foot or two from the ground, partly hidden by
+      hanging strips of bark which had fallen across it. Suddenly one of these
+      strips was pushed aside, and a young man leaped lightly down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But for the rifle he carried and some modern peculiarities of dress, he
+      was of a grace so unusual and unconventional that he might have passed for
+      a faun who was quitting his ancestral home. He stepped to the side of the
+      bear with a light elastic movement that was as unlike customary
+      progression as his face and figure were unlike the ordinary types of
+      humanity. Even as he leaned upon his rifle, looking down at the prostrate
+      animal, he unconsciously fell into an attitude that in any other mortal
+      would have been a pose, but with him was the picturesque and unstudied
+      relaxation of perfect symmetry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hallo, Mister!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He raised his head so carelessly and listlessly that he did not otherwise
+      change his attitude. Stepping from behind the tree, the woman of the
+      preceding night stood before him. Her hands were free except for a thong
+      of the riata, which was still knotted around one wrist, the end of the
+      thong having been torn or burnt away. Her eyes were bloodshot, and her
+      hair hung over her shoulders in one long black braid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I reckoned all along it was YOU who shot the bear,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;at least
+      some one hiding yer,&rdquo; and she indicated the hollow tree with her hand. &ldquo;It
+      wasn't no chance shot.&rdquo; Observing that the young man, either from
+      misconception or indifference, did not seem to comprehend her, she added,
+      &ldquo;We came by here, last night, a minute after you fired.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, that was YOU kicked up such a row, was it?&rdquo; said the young man, with
+      a shade of interest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I reckon,&rdquo; said the woman, nodding her head, &ldquo;and them that was with me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And who are they?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sheriff Dunn, of Yolo, and his deputy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And where are they now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The deputy&mdash;in h-ll, I reckon; I don't know about the sheriff.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see,&rdquo; said the young man quietly; &ldquo;and you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&mdash;got away,&rdquo; she said savagely. But she was taken with a sudden
+      nervous shiver, which she at once repressed by tightly dragging her shawl
+      over her shoulders and elbows, and folding her arms defiantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you're going?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To follow the deputy, may be,&rdquo; she said gloomily. &ldquo;But come, I say, ain't
+      you going to treat? It's cursed cold here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wait a moment.&rdquo; The young man was looking at her, with his arched brows
+      slightly knit and a half smile of curiosity. &ldquo;Ain't you Teresa?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was prepared for the question, but evidently was not certain whether
+      she would reply defiantly or confidently. After an exhaustive scrutiny of
+      his face she chose the latter, and said, &ldquo;You can bet your life on it,
+      Johnny.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't bet, and my name isn't Johnny. Then you're the woman who stabbed
+      Dick Curson over at Lagrange's?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She became defiant again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's me, all the time. What are you going to do about it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing. And you used to dance at the Alhambra?&rdquo; She whisked the shawl
+      from her shoulders, held it up like a scarf, and made one or two steps of
+      the sembicuacua. There was not the least gayety, recklessness, or
+      spontaneity in the action; it was simply mechanical bravado. It was so
+      ineffective, even upon her own feelings, that her arms presently dropped
+      to her side, and she coughed embarrassedly. &ldquo;Where's that whiskey,
+      pardner?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The young man turned toward the tree he had just quitted, and without
+      further words assisted her to mount to the cavity. It was an
+      irregular-shaped vaulted chamber, pierced fifty feet above by a shaft or
+      cylindrical opening in the decayed trunk, which was blackened by smoke, as
+      if it had served the purpose of a chimney. In one corner lay a bearskin
+      and blanket; at the side were two alcoves or indentations, one of which
+      was evidently used as a table, and the other as a cupboard. In another
+      hollow, near the entrance, lay a few small sacks of flour, coffee, and
+      sugar, the sticky contents of the latter still strewing the floor. From
+      this storehouse the young man drew a wicker flask of whiskey, and handed
+      it, with a tin cup of water, to the woman. She waved the cup aside, placed
+      the flask to her lips, and drank the undiluted spirit. Yet even this was
+      evidently bravado, for the water started to her eyes, and she could not
+      restrain the paroxysm of coughing that followed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I reckon that's the kind that kills at forty rods,&rdquo; she said, with a
+      hysterical laugh. &ldquo;But I say, pardner, you look as if you were fixed here
+      to stay,&rdquo; and she stared ostentatiously around the chamber. But she had
+      already taken in its minutest details, even to observing that the hanging
+      strips of bark could be disposed so as to completely hide the entrance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, yes,&rdquo; he replied; &ldquo;it wouldn't be very easy to pull up the stakes
+      and move the shanty further on.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Seeing that either from indifference or caution he had not accepted her
+      meaning, she looked at him fixedly, and said,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is your little game?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Eh?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What are you hiding for&mdash;here, in this tree?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I'm not hiding.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then why didn't you come out when they hailed you last night?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because I didn't care to.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Teresa whistled incredulously. &ldquo;All right&mdash;then if you're not hiding,
+      I'm going to.&rdquo; As he did not reply, she went on: &ldquo;If I can keep out of
+      sight for a couple of weeks, this thing will blow over here, and I can get
+      across into Yolo. I could get a fair show there, where the boys know me.
+      Just now the trails are all watched, but no one would think of lookin'
+      here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then how did you come to think of it?&rdquo; he asked carelessly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because I knew that bear hadn't gone far for that sugar; because I know
+      he hadn't stole it from a cache&mdash;it was too fresh, and we'd have seen
+      the torn-up earth; because we had passed no camp; and because I knew there
+      was no shanty here. And, besides,&rdquo; she added in a low voice, &ldquo;maybe I was
+      huntin' a hole myself to die in&mdash;and spotted it by instinct.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was something in this suggestion of a hunted animal that, unlike
+      anything she had previously said or suggested, was not exaggerated, and
+      caused the young man to look at her again. She was standing under the
+      chimney-like opening, and the light from above illuminated her head and
+      shoulders. The pupils of her eyes had lost their feverish prominence, and
+      were slightly suffused and softened as she gazed abstractedly before her.
+      The only vestige of her previous excitement was in her left-hand fingers,
+      which were incessantly twisting and turning a diamond ring upon her right
+      hand, but without imparting the least animation to her rigid attitude.
+      Suddenly, as if conscious of his scrutiny, she stepped aside out of the
+      revealing light and by a swift feminine instinct raised her hand to her
+      head as if to adjust her straggling hair. It was only for a moment,
+      however, for, as if aware of the weakness, she struggled to resume her
+      aggressive pose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Speak up. Am I goin' to stop here, or have I got to get
+      up and get?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can stay,&rdquo; said the young man quietly; &ldquo;but as I've got my provisions
+      and ammunition here, and haven't any other place to go to just now, I
+      suppose we'll have to share it together.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She glanced at him under her eyelids, and a half-bitter, half-contemptuous
+      smile passed across her face. &ldquo;All right, old man,&rdquo; she said, holding out
+      her hand, &ldquo;it's a go. We'll start in housekeeping at once, if you like.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll have to come here once or twice a day,&rdquo; he said, quite composedly,
+      &ldquo;to look after my things, and get something to eat; but I'll be away most
+      of the time, and what with camping out under the trees every night I
+      reckon my share won't incommode you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She opened her black eyes upon him, at this original proposition. Then she
+      looked down at her torn dress. &ldquo;I suppose this style of thing ain't very
+      fancy, is it?&rdquo; she said, with a forced laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think I know where to beg or borrow a change for you, if you can't get
+      any,&rdquo; he replied simply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She stared at him again. &ldquo;Are you a family man?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was silent for a moment. &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;you can tell your girl I'm
+      not particular about its being in the latest fashion.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a slight flush on his forehead as he turned toward the little
+      cupboard, but no tremor in his voice as he went on: &ldquo;You'll find tea and
+      coffee here, and, if you're bored, there's a book or two. You read, don't
+      you&mdash;I mean English?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She nodded, but cast a look of undisguised contempt upon the two worn,
+      coverless novels he held out to her. &ldquo;You haven't got last week's
+      'Sacramento Union,' have you? I hear they have my case all in; only them
+      lying reporters made it out against me all the time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't see the papers,&rdquo; he replied curtly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They say there's a picture of me in the 'Police Gazette,' taken in the
+      act,&rdquo; and she laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked a little abstracted, and turned as if to go. &ldquo;I think you'll do
+      well to rest a while just now, and keep as close hid as possible until
+      afternoon. The trail is a mile away at the nearest point, but some one
+      might miss it and stray over here. You're quite safe if you're careful,
+      and stand by the tree. You can build a fire here,&rdquo; he stepped under the
+      chimney-like opening, &ldquo;without its being noticed. Even the smoke is lost
+      and cannot be seen so high.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The light from above was falling on his head and shoulders, as it had on
+      hers. She looked at him intently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You travel a good deal on your figure, pardner, don't you?&rdquo; she said,
+      with a certain admiration that was quite sexless in its quality; &ldquo;but I
+      don't see how you pick up a living by it in the Carquinez Woods. So you're
+      going, are you? You might be more sociable. Good-by.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-by!&rdquo; He leaped from the opening.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I say pardner!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned a little impatiently. She had knelt down at the entrance, so as
+      to be nearer his level, and was holding out her hand. But he did not
+      notice it, and she quietly withdrew it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If anybody dropped in and asked for you, what name will they say?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He smiled. &ldquo;Don't wait to hear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But suppose I wanted to sing out for you, what will I call you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He hesitated. &ldquo;Call me&mdash;Lo.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lo, the poor Indian?&rdquo; *
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Exactly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * The first word of Pope's familiar apostrophe is humorously
+     used in the Far West as a distinguishing title for the
+     Indian.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      It suddenly occurred to the woman, Teresa, that in the young man's height,
+      supple, yet erect carriage, color, and singular gravity of demeanor there
+      was a refined, aboriginal suggestion. He did not look like any Indian she
+      had ever seen, but rather as a youthful chief might have looked. There was
+      a further suggestion in his fringed buckskin shirt and moccasins; but
+      before she could utter the half-sarcastic comment that rose to her lips he
+      had glided noiselessly away, even as an Indian might have done.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She readjusted the slips of hanging bark with feminine ingenuity,
+      dispersing them so as to completely hide the entrance. Yet this did not
+      darken the chamber, which seemed to draw a purer and more vigorous light
+      through the soaring shaft that pierced the roof than that which came from
+      the dim woodland aisles below. Nevertheless, she shivered, and drawing her
+      shawl closely around her began to collect some half-burnt fragments of
+      wood in the chimney to make a fire. But the preoccupation of her thoughts
+      rendered this a tedious process, as she would from time to time stop in
+      the middle of an action and fall into an attitude of rapt abstraction,
+      with far-off eyes and rigid mouth. When she had at last succeeded in
+      kindling a fire and raising a film of pale blue smoke, that seemed to fade
+      and dissipate entirely before it reached the top of the chimney shaft, she
+      crouched beside it, fixed her eyes on the darkest corner of the cavern,
+      and became motionless.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What did she see through that shadow?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nothing at first but a confused medley of figures and incidents of the
+      preceding night; things to be put away and forgotten; things that would
+      not have happened but for another thing&mdash;the thing before which
+      everything faded! A ball-room; the sounds of music; the one man she had
+      cared for insulting her with the flaunting ostentation of his
+      unfaithfulness; herself despised, put aside, laughed at, or worse, jilted.
+      And then the moment of delirium, when the light danced; the one wild act
+      that lifted her, the despised one, above them all&mdash;made her the
+      supreme figure, to be glanced at by frightened women, stared at by
+      half-startled, half-admiring men! &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she laughed; but struck by the
+      sound of her own voice, moved twice round the cavern nervously, and then
+      dropped again into her old position.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As they carried him away he had laughed at her&mdash;like a hound that he
+      was; he who had praised her for her spirit, and incited her revenge
+      against others; he who had taught her to strike when she was insulted; and
+      it was only fit he should reap what he had sown. She was what he, what
+      other men, had made her. And what was she now? What had she been once?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She tried to recall her childhood: the man and woman who might have been
+      her father and mother; who fought and wrangled over her precocious little
+      life; abused or caressed her as she sided with either; and then left her
+      with a circus troupe, where she first tasted the power of her courage, her
+      beauty, and her recklessness. She remembered those flashes of triumph that
+      left a fever in her veins&mdash;a fever that when it failed must be
+      stimulated by dissipation, by anything, by everything that would keep her
+      name a wonder in men's mouths, an envious fear to women. She recalled her
+      transfer to the strolling players; her cheap pleasures, and cheaper
+      rivalries and hatred&mdash;but always Teresa! the daring Teresa! the
+      reckless Teresa! audacious as a woman, invincible as a boy; dancing,
+      flirting, fencing, shooting, swearing, drinking, smoking, fighting Teresa!
+      &ldquo;Oh, yes; she had been loved, perhaps&mdash;who knows?&mdash;but always
+      feared. Why should she change now? Ha, he should see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She had lashed herself in a frenzy, as was her wont, with gestures,
+      ejaculations, oaths, adjurations, and passionate apostrophes, but with
+      this strange and unexpected result. Heretofore she had always been
+      sustained and kept up by an audience of some kind or quality, if only
+      perhaps a humble companion; there had always been some one she could
+      fascinate or horrify, and she could read her power mirrored in their eyes.
+      Even the half-abstracted indifference of her strange host had been
+      something. But she was alone now. Her words fell on apathetic solitude;
+      she was acting to viewless space. She rushed to the opening, dashed the
+      hanging bark aside, and leaped to the ground.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She ran forward wildly a few steps, and stopped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hallo!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;Look, 'tis I, Teresa!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The profound silence remained unbroken. Her shrillest tones were lost in
+      an echoless space, even as the smoke of her fire had faded into pure
+      ether. She stretched out her clenched fists as if to defy the pillared
+      austerities of the vaults around her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come and take me if you dare!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The challenge was unheeded. If she had thrown herself violently against
+      the nearest tree-trunk, she could not have been stricken more breathless
+      than she was by the compact, embattled solitude that encompassed her. The
+      hopelessness of impressing these cold and passive vaults with her selfish
+      passion filled her with a vague fear. In her rage of the previous night
+      she had not seen the wood in its profound immobility. Left alone with the
+      majesty of those enormous columns, she trembled and turned faint. The
+      silence of the hollow tree she had just quitted seemed to her less awful
+      than the crushing presence of these mute and monstrous witnesses of her
+      weakness. Like a wounded quail with lowered crest and trailing wing, she
+      crept back to her hiding place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Even then the influence of the wood was still upon her. She picked up the
+      novel she had contemptuously thrown aside, only to let it fall again in
+      utter weariness. For a moment her feminine curiosity was excited by the
+      discovery of an old book, in whose blank leaves were pressed a variety of
+      flowers and woodland grasses. As she could not conceive that these had
+      been kept for any but a sentimental purpose, she was disappointed to find
+      that underneath each was a sentence in an unknown tongue, that even to her
+      untutored eye did not appear to be the language of passion. Finally she
+      rearranged the couch of skins and blankets, and, imparting to it in three
+      clever shakes an entirely different character, lay down to pursue her
+      reveries. But nature asserted herself, and ere she knew it she was asleep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So intense and prolonged had been her previous excitement that, the
+      tension once relieved, she passed into a slumber of exhaustion so deep
+      that she seemed scarce to breathe. High noon succeeded morning, the
+      central shaft received a single ray of upper sunlight, the afternoon came
+      and went, the shadows gathered below, the sunset fires began to eat their
+      way through the groined roof, and she still slept. She slept even when the
+      bark hangings of the chamber were put aside, and the young man reentered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He laid down a bundle he was carrying and softly approached the sleeper.
+      For a moment he was startled from his indifference; she lay so still and
+      motionless. But this was not all that struck him; the face before him was
+      no longer the passionate, haggard visage that confronted him that morning;
+      the feverish air, the burning color, the strained muscles of mouth and
+      brow, and the staring eyes were gone; wiped away, perhaps, by the tears
+      that still left their traces on cheek and dark eyelash. It was the face of
+      a handsome woman of thirty, with even a suggestion of softness in the
+      contour of the cheek and arching of her upper lip, no longer rigidly drawn
+      down in anger, but relaxed by sleep on her white teeth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With the lithe, soft tread that was habitual to him, the young man moved
+      about, examining the condition of the little chamber and its stock of
+      provisions and necessaries, and withdrew presently, to reappear as
+      noiselessly with a tin bucket of water. This done, he replenished the
+      little pile of fuel with an armful of bark and pine cones, cast an
+      approving glance about him, which included the sleeper, and silently
+      departed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was night when she awoke. She was surrounded by a profound darkness,
+      except where the shaft-like opening made a nebulous mist in the corner of
+      her wooden cavern. Providentially she struggled back to consciousness
+      slowly, so that the solitude and silence came upon her gradually, with a
+      growing realization of the events of the past twenty-four hours, but
+      without a shock. She was alone here, but safe still, and every hour added
+      to her chances of ultimate escape. She remembered to have seen a candle
+      among the articles on the shelf, and she began to grope her way towards
+      the matches. Suddenly she stopped. What was that panting?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Was it her own breathing, quickened with a sudden nameless terror? or was
+      there something outside? Her heart seemed to stop beating while she
+      listened. Yes! it was a panting outside&mdash;a panting now increased,
+      multiplied, redoubled, mixed with the sounds of rustling, tearing,
+      craunching, and occasionally a quick, impatient snarl. She crept on her
+      hands and knees to the opening and looked out. At first the ground seemed
+      to be undulating between her and the opposite tree. But a second glance
+      showed her the black and gray, bristling, tossing backs of tumbling beasts
+      of prey, charging the carcass of the bear that lay at its roots, or
+      contesting for the prize with gluttonous, choked breath, sidelong snarls,
+      arched spines, and recurved tails. One of the boldest had leaped upon a
+      buttressing root of her tree within a foot of the opening. The excitement,
+      awe, and terror she had undergone culminated in one wild, maddened scream,
+      that seemed to pierce even the cold depths of the forest, as she dropped
+      on her face, with her hands clasped over her eyes in an agony of fear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her scream was answered, after a pause, by a sudden volley of firebrands
+      and sparks into the midst of the panting, crowding pack; a few smothered
+      howls and snaps, and a sudden dispersion of the concourse. In another
+      moment the young man, with a blazing brand in either hand, leaped upon the
+      body of the bear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Teresa raised her head, uttered a hysterical cry, slid down the tree, flew
+      wildly to his side, caught convulsively at his sleeve, and fell on her
+      knees beside him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Save me! save me!&rdquo; she gasped, in a voice broken by terror. &ldquo;Save me from
+      those hideous creatures. No, no!&rdquo; she implored, as he endeavored to lift
+      her to her feet. &ldquo;No&mdash;let me stay here close beside you. So,&rdquo;
+       clutching the fringe of his leather hunting-shirt, and dragging herself on
+      her knees nearer him&mdash;&ldquo;so&mdash;don't leave me, for God's sake!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They are gone,&rdquo; he replied, gazing down curiously at her, as she wound
+      the fringe around her hand to strengthen her hold; &ldquo;they're only a lot of
+      cowardly coyotes and wolves, that dare not attack anything that lives and
+      can move.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The young woman responded with a nervous shudder. &ldquo;Yes, that's it,&rdquo; she
+      whispered, in a broken voice; &ldquo;it's only the dead they want. Promise me&mdash;swear
+      to me, if I'm caught, or hung, or shot, you won't let me be left here to
+      be torn and&mdash;ah! my God! what's that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She had thrown her arms around his knees, completely pinioning him to her
+      frantic breast. Something like a smile of disdain passed across his face
+      as he answered, &ldquo;It's nothing. They will not return. Get up!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Even in her terror she saw the change in his face. &ldquo;I know, I know!&rdquo; she
+      cried. &ldquo;I'm frightened&mdash;but I cannot bear it any longer. Hear me!
+      Listen! Listen&mdash;but don't move! I didn't mean to kill Curson&mdash;no!
+      I swear to God, no! I didn't mean to kill the sheriff&mdash;and I didn't.
+      I was only bragging&mdash;do you hear? I lied! I lied&mdash;don't move, I
+      swear to God I lied. I've made myself out worse than I was. I have. Only
+      don't leave me now&mdash;and if I die&mdash;and it's not far off, may be&mdash;get
+      me away from here&mdash;and from THEM. Swear it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right,&rdquo; said the young man, with a scarcely concealed movement of
+      irritation. &ldquo;But get up now, and go back to the cabin.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; not THERE alone.&rdquo; Nevertheless, he quietly but firmly released
+      himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will stay here,&rdquo; he replied. &ldquo;I would have been nearer to you, but I
+      thought it better for your safety that my camp-fire should be further off.
+      But I can build it here, and that will keep the coyotes off.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let me stay with you&mdash;beside you,&rdquo; she said imploringly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked so broken, crushed, and spiritless, so unlike the woman of the
+      morning that, albeit with an ill grace, he tacitly consented, and turned
+      away to bring his blankets. But in the next moment she was at his side,
+      following him like a dog, silent and wistful, and even offering to carry
+      his burden. When he had built the fire, for which she had collected the
+      pine-cones and broken branches near them, he sat down, folded his arms,
+      and leaned back against the tree in reserved and deliberate silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Humble and submissive, she did not attempt to break in upon a reverie she
+      could not help but feel had little kindliness to herself. As the fire
+      snapped and sparkled, she pillowed her head upon a root, and lay still to
+      watch it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It rose and fell, and dying away at times to a mere lurid glow, and again,
+      agitated by some breath scarcely perceptible to them, quickening into a
+      roaring flame. When only the embers remained, a dead silence filled the
+      wood. Then the first breath of morning moved the tangled canopy above, and
+      a dozen tiny sprays and needles detached from the interlocked boughs
+      winged their soft way noiselessly to the earth. A few fell upon the
+      prostrate woman like a gentle benediction, and she slept. But even then,
+      the young man, looking down, saw that the slender fingers were still
+      aimlessly but rigidly twisted in the leather fringe of his hunting-shirt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0002" id="link2HCH0002">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER II.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      It was a peculiarity of the Carquinez Wood that it stood apart and
+      distinct in its gigantic individuality. Even where the integrity of its
+      own singular species was not entirely preserved, it admitted no inferior
+      trees. Nor was there any diminishing fringe on its outskirts; the
+      sentinels that guarded the few gateways of the dim trails were as
+      monstrous as the serried ranks drawn up in the heart of the forest.
+      Consequently, the red highway that skirted the eastern angle was bare and
+      shadeless, until it slipped a league off into a watered valley and
+      refreshed itself under lesser sycamores and willows. It was here the newly
+      born city of Excelsior, still in its cradle, had, like an infant Hercules,
+      strangled the serpentine North Fork of the American river, and turned its
+      life current into the ditches and flumes of the Excelsior mines.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Newest of the new houses that seemed to have accidentally formed its
+      single, straggling street was the residence of the Rev. Winslow Wynn, not
+      unfrequently known as &ldquo;Father Wynn,&rdquo; pastor of the First Baptist church.
+      The &ldquo;pastorage,&rdquo; as it was cheerfully called, had the glaring distinction
+      of being built of brick, and was, as had been wickedly pointed out by idle
+      scoffers, the only &ldquo;fireproof&rdquo; structure in town. This sarcasm was not,
+      however, supposed to be particularly distasteful to &ldquo;Father Wynn,&rdquo; who
+      enjoyed the reputation of being &ldquo;hail fellow, well met&rdquo; with the rough
+      mining element, who called them by their Christian names, had been known
+      to drink at the bar of the Polka Saloon while engaged in the conversion of
+      a prominent citizen, and was popularly said to have no &ldquo;gospel starch&rdquo;
+       about him. Certain conscious outcasts and transgressors were touched at
+      this apparent unbending of the spiritual authority. The rigid tenets of
+      Father Wynn's faith were lost in the supposed catholicity of his humanity.
+      &ldquo;A preacher that can jine a man when he's histin' liquor into him, without
+      jawin' about it, ought to be allowed to wrestle with sinners and splash
+      about in as much cold water as he likes,&rdquo; was the criticism of one of his
+      converts. Nevertheless, it was true that Father Wynn was somewhat loud and
+      intolerant in his tolerance. It was true that he was a little more rough,
+      a little more frank, a little more hearty, a little more impulsive than
+      his disciples. It was true that often the proclamation of his extreme
+      liberality and brotherly equality partook somewhat of an apology. It is
+      true that a few who might have been most benefited by this kind of gospel
+      regarded him with a singular disdain. It is true that his liberality was
+      of an ornamental, insinuating quality, accompanied with but little
+      sacrifice; his acceptance of a collection taken up in a gambling saloon
+      for the rebuilding of his church, destroyed by fire, gave him a popularity
+      large enough, it must be confessed, to cover the sins of the gamblers
+      themselves, but it was not proven that HE had ever organized any form of
+      relief. But it was true that local history somehow accepted him as an
+      exponent of mining Christianity, without the least reference to the
+      opinions of the Christian miners themselves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Rev. Mr. Wynn's liberal habits and opinions were not, however, shared
+      by his only daughter, a motherless young lady of eighteen. Nellie Wynn was
+      in the eye of Excelsior an unapproachable divinity, as inaccessible and
+      cold as her father was impulsive and familiar. An atmosphere of chaste and
+      proud virginity made itself felt even in the starched integrity of her
+      spotless skirts, in her neatly gloved finger-tips, in her clear amber
+      eyes, in her imperious red lips, in her sensitive nostrils. Need it be
+      said that the youth and middle age of Excelsior were madly, because
+      apparently hopelessly, in love with her? For the rest, she had been
+      expensively educated, was profoundly ignorant in two languages, with a
+      trained misunderstanding of music and painting, and a natural and
+      faultless taste in dress.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Rev. Mr. Wynn was engaged in a characteristic hearty parting with one
+      of his latest converts, upon his own doorstep, with admirable al fresco
+      effect. He had just clapped him on the shoulder. &ldquo;Good-by, good-by,
+      Charley, my boy, and keep in the right path; not up, or down, or round the
+      gulch, you know&mdash;ha, ha!&mdash;but straight across lots to the
+      shining gate.&rdquo; He had raised his voice under the stimulus of a few
+      admiring spectators, and backed his convert playfully against the wall.
+      &ldquo;You see! we're goin' in to win, you bet. Good-by! I'd ask you to step in
+      and have a chat, but I've got my work to do, and so have you. The gospel
+      mustn't keep us from that, must it, Charley? Ha, ha!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The convert (who elsewhere was a profane expressman, and had become quite
+      imbecile under Mr. Wynn's active heartiness and brotherly horse-play
+      before spectators) managed, however, to feebly stammer with a blush
+      something about &ldquo;Miss Nellie.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, Nellie. She, too, is at her tasks&mdash;trimming her lamp&mdash;you
+      know, the parable of the wise virgins,&rdquo; continued Father Wynn hastily,
+      fearing that the convert might take the illustration literally. &ldquo;There,
+      there&mdash;good-by. Keep in the right path.&rdquo; And with a parting shove he
+      dismissed Charley and entered his own house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That &ldquo;wise virgin,&rdquo; Nellie, had evidently finished with the lamp, and was
+      now going out to meet the bridegroom, as she was fully dressed and gloved,
+      and had a pink parasol in her hand, as her father entered the
+      sitting-room. His bluff heartiness seemed to fade away as he removed his
+      soft, broad-brimmed hat and glanced across the too fresh-looking
+      apartment. There was a smell of mortar still in the air, and a faint
+      suggestion that at any moment green grass might appear between the
+      interstices of the red-brick hearth. The room, yielding a little in the
+      point of coldness, seemed to share Miss Nellie's fresh virginity, and,
+      barring the pink parasol, set her off as in a vestal's cell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I supposed you wouldn't care to see Brace, the expressman, so I got rid
+      of him at the door,&rdquo; said her father, drawing one of the new chairs
+      towards him slowly, and sitting down carefully, as if it were a hitherto
+      untried experiment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Nellie's face took a tint of interest. &ldquo;Then he doesn't go with the
+      coach to Indian Spring to-day?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; why?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought of going over myself to get the Burnham girls to come to
+      choir-meeting,&rdquo; replied Miss Nellie carelessly, &ldquo;and he might have been
+      company.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He'd go now, if he knew you were going,&rdquo; said her father; &ldquo;but it's just
+      as well he shouldn't be needlessly encouraged. I rather think that Sheriff
+      Dunn is a little jealous of him. By the way, the sheriff is much better. I
+      called to cheer him up to-day&rdquo; (Mr. Wynn had in fact tumultuously
+      accelerated the sick man's pulse), &ldquo;and he talked of you, as usual. In
+      fact, he said he had only two things to get well for. One was to catch and
+      hang that woman Teresa, who shot him; the other&mdash;can't you guess the
+      other?&rdquo; he added archly, with a faint suggestion of his other manner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Nellie coldly could not.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Rev. Mr. Wynn's archness vanished. &ldquo;Don't be a fool,&rdquo; he said dryly.
+      &ldquo;He wants to marry you, and you know it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Most of the men here do,&rdquo; responded Miss Nellie, without the least trace
+      of coquetry. &ldquo;Is the wedding or the hanging to take place first, or
+      together, so he can officiate at both?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;His share in the Union Ditch is worth a hundred thousand dollars,&rdquo;
+       continued her father; &ldquo;and if he isn't nominated for district judge this
+      fall, he's bound to go to the legislature, anyway. I don't think a girl
+      with your advantages and education can afford to throw away the chance of
+      shining in Sacramento, San Francisco, or, in good time, perhaps even
+      Washington.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Nellie's eyes did not reflect entire disapproval of this suggestion,
+      although she replied with something of her father's practical quality.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Dunn is not out of his bed yet, and they say Teresa's got away to
+      Arizona, so there isn't any particular hurry.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps not; but see here, Nellie, I've some important news for you. You
+      know your young friend of the Carquinez Woods&mdash;Dorman, the botanist,
+      eh? Well, Brace knows all about him. And what do you think he is?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Nellie took upon herself a few extra degrees of cold, and didn't
+      know.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;An Injin! Yes, an out-and-out Cherokee. You see he calls himself Dorman&mdash;Low
+      Dorman. That's only French for 'Sleeping Water,' his Injin name!&mdash;'Low
+      Dorman.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mean 'L'Eau Dormante,'&rdquo; said Nellie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's what I said. The chief called him 'Sleeping Water' when he was a
+      boy, and one of them French Canadian trappers translated it into French
+      when he brought him to California to school. But he's an Injin, sure. No
+      wonder he prefers to live in the woods.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well?&rdquo; said Nellie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; echoed her father impatiently, &ldquo;he's an Injin, I tell you, and you
+      can't of course have anything to do with him. He mustn't come here again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you forget,&rdquo; said Nellie imperturbably, &ldquo;that it was you who invited
+      him here, and were so much exercised over him. You remember you introduced
+      him to the Bishop and those Eastern clergymen as a magnificent specimen of
+      a young Californian. You forget what an occasion you made of his coming to
+      church on Sunday, and how you made him come in his buckskin shirt and walk
+      down the street with you after service!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, yes,&rdquo; said the Rev. Mr. Wynn, hurriedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And,&rdquo; continued Nellie carelessly, &ldquo;how you made us sing out of the same
+      book 'Children of our Father's Fold,' and how you preached at him until he
+      actually got a color!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said her father; &ldquo;but it wasn't known then he was an Injin, and
+      they are frightfully unpopular with those Southwestern men among whom we
+      labor. Indeed, I am quite convinced that when Brace said 'the only good
+      Indian was a dead one' his expression, though extravagant, perhaps, really
+      voiced the sentiments of the majority. It would be only kindness to the
+      unfortunate creature to warn him from exposing himself to their rude but
+      conscientious antagonism.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps you'd better tell him, then, in your own popular way, which they
+      all seem to understand so well,&rdquo; responded the daughter. Mr. Wynn cast a
+      quick glance at her, but there was no trace of irony in her face&mdash;nothing
+      but a half-bored indifference as she walked toward the window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will go with you to the coach-office,&rdquo; said her father, who generally
+      gave these simple paternal duties the pronounced character of a public
+      Christian example.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's hardly worth while,&rdquo; replied Miss Nellie. &ldquo;I've to stop at the
+      Watsons', at the foot of the hill, and ask after the baby; so I shall go
+      on to the Crossing and pick up the coach when it passes. Good-by.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nevertheless, as soon as Nellie had departed, the Rev. Mr. Wynn proceeded
+      to the coach-office, and publicly grasping the hand of Yuba Bill, the
+      driver, commended his daughter to his care in the name of the universal
+      brotherhood of man and the Christian fraternity. Carried away by his
+      heartiness, he forgot his previous caution, and confided to the expressman
+      Miss Nellie's regrets that she was not to have that gentleman's company.
+      The result was that Miss Nellie found the coach with its passengers
+      awaiting her with uplifted hats and wreathed smiles at the Crossing, and
+      the box seat (from which an unfortunate stranger, who had expensively paid
+      for it, had been summarily ejected) at her service beside Yuba Bill, who
+      had thrown away his cigar and donned a new pair of buckskin gloves to do
+      her honor. But a more serious result to the young beauty was the effect of
+      the Rev. Mr. Wynn's confidences upon the impulsive heart of Jack Brace,
+      the expressman. It has been already intimated that it was his &ldquo;day off.&rdquo;
+       Unable to summarily reassume his usual functions beside the driver without
+      some practical reason, and ashamed to go so palpably as a mere passenger,
+      he was forced to let the coach proceed without him. Discomfited for the
+      moment, he was not, however, beaten. He had lost the blissful journey by
+      her side, which would have been his professional right, but&mdash;she was
+      going to Indian Spring! could he not anticipate her there? Might they not
+      meet in the most accidental manner? And what might not come from that
+      meeting away from the prying eyes of their own town? Mr. Brace did not
+      hesitate, but saddling his fleet Buckskin, by the time the stage-coach had
+      passed the Crossing in the high-road he had mounted the hill and was
+      dashing along the &ldquo;cutoff&rdquo; in the same direction, a full mile in advance.
+      Arriving at Indian Spring, he left his horse at a Mexican posada on the
+      confines of the settlement, and from the piled debris of a tunnel
+      excavation awaited the slow arrival of the coach. On mature reflection he
+      could give no reason why he had not boldly awaited it at the express
+      office, except a certain bashful consciousness of his own folly, and a
+      belief that it might be glaringly apparent to the bystanders. When the
+      coach arrived and he had overcome this consciousness, it was too late.
+      Yuba Bill had discharged his passengers for Indian Spring and driven away.
+      Miss Nellie was in the settlement, but where? As time passed he became
+      more desperate and bolder. He walked recklessly up and down the main
+      street, glancing in at the open doors of shops, and even in the windows of
+      private dwellings. It might have seemed a poor compliment to Miss Nellie,
+      but it was an evidence of his complete preoccupation, when the sight of a
+      female face at a window, even though it was plain or perhaps painted,
+      caused his heart to bound, or the glancing of a skirt in the distance
+      quickened his feet and his pulses. Had Jack contented himself with
+      remaining at Excelsior he might have vaguely regretted, but as soon become
+      as vaguely accustomed to, Miss Nellie's absence. But it was not until his
+      hitherto quiet and passive love took this first step of action that it
+      fully declared itself. When he had made the tour of the town a dozen times
+      unsuccessfully, he had perfectly made up his mind that marriage with
+      Nellie or the speedy death of several people, including possibly himself,
+      was the only alternative. He regretted he had not accompanied her; he
+      regretted he had not demanded where she was going; he contemplated a
+      course of future action that two hours ago would have filled him with
+      bashful terror. There was clearly but one thing to do&mdash;to declare his
+      passion the instant he met her, and return with her to Excelsior an
+      accepted suitor, or not to return at all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly he was vexatiously conscious of hearing his name lazily called,
+      and looking up found that he was on the outskirts of the town, and
+      interrogated by two horsemen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Got down to walk, and the coach got away from you, Jack, eh?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A little ashamed of his preoccupation, Brace stammered something about
+      &ldquo;collections.&rdquo; He did not recognize the men, but his own face, name, and
+      business were familiar to everybody for fifty miles along the stage-road.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you can settle a bet for us, I reckon. Bill Dacre thar bet me five
+      dollars and the drinks that a young gal we met at the edge of the
+      Carquinez Woods, dressed in a long brown duster and half muffled up in a
+      hood, was the daughter of Father Wynn of Excelsior. I did not get a fair
+      look at her, but it stands to reason that a high-toned young lady like
+      Nellie Wynn don't go trap'sing along the wood like a Pike County tramp. I
+      took the bet. May be you know if she's here or in Excelsior?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Brace felt himself turning pale with eagerness and excitement. But the
+      near prospect of seeing her presently gave him back his caution, and he
+      answered truthfully that he had left her in Excelsior, and that in his two
+      hours' sojourn in Indian Spring he had not met her once. &ldquo;But,&rdquo; he added,
+      with a Californian's reverence for the sanctity of a bet, &ldquo;I reckon you'd
+      better make it a stand-off for twenty-four hours, and I'll find out and
+      let you know.&rdquo; Which, it is only fair to say, he honestly intended to do.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With a hurried nod of parting, he continued in the direction of the Woods.
+      When he had satisfied himself that the strangers had entered the
+      settlement, and would not follow him for further explanation, he quickened
+      his pace. In half an hour he passed between two of the gigantic sentinels
+      that guarded the entrance to a trail. Here he paused to collect his
+      thoughts. The Woods were vast in extent, the trail dim and uncertain&mdash;at
+      times apparently breaking off, or intersecting another trail as faint as
+      itself. Believing that Miss Nellie had diverged from the highway only as a
+      momentary excursion into the shade, and that she would not dare to
+      penetrate its more sombre and unknown recesses, he kept within sight of
+      the skirting plain. By degrees the sedate influence of the silent vaults
+      seemed to depress him. The ardor of the chase began to flag. Under the
+      calm of their dim roof the fever of his veins began to subside; his pace
+      slackened; he reasoned more deliberately. It was by no means probable that
+      the young woman in a brown duster was Nellie; it was not her habitual
+      traveling dress; it was not like her to walk unattended in the road; there
+      was nothing in her tastes and habits to take her into this gloomy forest,
+      allowing that she had even entered it; and on this absolute question of
+      her identity the two witnesses were divided. He stopped irresolutely, and
+      cast a last, long, half-despairing look around him. Hitherto he had given
+      that part of the wood nearest the plain his greatest attention. His glance
+      now sought its darker recesses. Suddenly he became breathless. Was it a
+      beam of sunlight that had pierced the groined roof above, and now rested
+      against the trunk of one of the dimmer, more secluded giants? No, it was
+      moving; even as he gazed it slipped away, glanced against another tree,
+      passed across one of the vaulted aisles, and then was lost again. Brief as
+      was the glimpse, he was not mistaken&mdash;it was the figure of a woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In another moment he was on her track, and soon had the satisfaction of
+      seeing her reappear at a lesser distance. But the continual intervention
+      of the massive trunks made the chase by no means an easy one, and as he
+      could not keep her always in sight he was unable to follow or understand
+      the one intelligent direction which she seemed to invariably keep.
+      Nevertheless, he gained upon her breathlessly, and, thanks to the
+      bark-strewn floor, noiselessly. He was near enough to distinguish and
+      recognize the dress she wore, a pale yellow, that he had admired when he
+      first saw her. It was Nellie, unmistakably; if it were she of the brown
+      duster, she had discarded it, perhaps for greater freedom. He was near
+      enough to call out now, but a sudden nervous timidity overcame him; his
+      lips grew dry. What should he say to her? How account for his presence?
+      &ldquo;Miss Nellie, one moment!&rdquo; he gasped. She darted forward and&mdash;vanished.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this moment he was not more than a dozen yards from her. He rushed to
+      where she had been standing, but her disappearance was perfect and
+      complete. He made a circuit of the group of trees within whose radius she
+      had last appeared, but there was neither trace of her, nor a suggestion of
+      her mode of escape. He called aloud to her; the vacant Woods let his
+      helpless voice die in their unresponsive depths. He gazed into the air and
+      down at the bark-strewn carpet at his feet. Like most of his vocation, he
+      was sparing of speech, and epigrammatic after his fashion. Comprehending
+      in one swift but despairing flash of intelligence the existence of some
+      fateful power beyond his own weak endeavor, he accepted its logical result
+      with characteristic grimness, threw his hat upon the ground, put his hands
+      in his pockets, and said&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I'm d&mdash;d!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0003" id="link2HCH0003">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER III.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Out of compliment to Miss Nellie Wynn, Yuba Bill, on reaching Indian
+      Spring, had made a slight detour to enable him to ostentatiously set down
+      his fair passenger before the door of the Burnhams. When it had closed on
+      the admiring eyes of the passengers and the coach had rattled away, Miss
+      Nellie, without any undue haste or apparent change in her usual quiet
+      demeanor, managed, however, to dispatch her business promptly, and,
+      leaving an impression that she would call again before her return to
+      Excelsior, parted from her friends and slipped away through a side street
+      to the General Furnishing Store of Indian Spring. In passing this
+      emporium, Miss Nellie's quick eye had discovered a cheap brown linen
+      duster hanging in its window. To purchase it, and put it over her delicate
+      cambric dress, albeit with a shivering sense that she looked like a badly
+      folded brown-paper parcel, did not take long. As she left the shop it was
+      with mixed emotions of chagrin and security that she noticed that her
+      passage through the settlement no longer turned the heads of its male
+      inhabitants. She reached the outskirts of Indian Spring and the high-road
+      at about the time Mr. Brace had begun his fruitless patrol of the main
+      street. Far in the distance a faint olive-green table mountain seemed to
+      rise abruptly from the plain. It was the Carquinez Woods. Gathering her
+      spotless skirts beneath her extemporized brown domino, she set out briskly
+      towards them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But her progress was scarcely free or exhilarating. She was not accustomed
+      to walking in a country where &ldquo;buggy-riding&rdquo; was considered the only
+      genteel young-lady-like mode of progression, and its regular provision the
+      expected courtesy of mankind. Always fastidiously booted, her
+      low-quartered shoes were charming to the eye, but hardly adapted to the
+      dust and inequalities of the highroad. It was true that she had thought of
+      buying a coarser pair at Indian Spring, but once face to face with their
+      uncompromising ugliness, she had faltered and fled. The sun was
+      unmistakably hot, but her parasol was too well known and offered too
+      violent a contrast to the duster for practical use. Once she stopped with
+      an exclamation of annoyance, hesitated, and looked back. In half an hour
+      she had twice lost her shoe and her temper; a pink flush took possession
+      of her cheeks, and her eyes were bright with suppressed rage. Dust began
+      to form grimy circles around their orbits; with cat-like shivers she even
+      felt it pervade the roots of her blond hair. Gradually her breath grew
+      more rapid and hysterical, her smarting eyes became humid, and at last,
+      encountering two observant horsemen in the road, she turned and fled,
+      until, reaching the wood, she began to cry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nevertheless she waited for the two horsemen to pass, to satisfy herself
+      that she was not followed; then pushed on vaguely, until she reached a
+      fallen tree, where, with a gesture of disgust, she tore off her hapless
+      duster and flung it on the ground. She then sat down sobbing, but after a
+      moment dried her eyes hurriedly and started to her feet. A few paces
+      distant, erect, noiseless, with outstretched hand, the young solitary of
+      the Carquinez Woods advanced towards her. His hand had almost touched
+      hers, when he stopped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What has happened?&rdquo; he asked gravely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing,&rdquo; she said, turning half away, and searching the ground with her
+      eyes, as if she had lost something. &ldquo;Only I must be going back now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You shall go back at once, if you wish it,&rdquo; he said, flushing slightly.
+      &ldquo;But you have been crying; why?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Frank as Miss Nellie wished to be, she could not bring herself to say that
+      her feet hurt her, and the dust and heat were ruining her complexion. It
+      was therefore with a half-confident belief that her troubles were really
+      of a moral quality that she answered, &ldquo;Nothing&mdash;nothing, but&mdash;but&mdash;it's
+      wrong to come here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you did not think it was wrong when you agreed to come, at our last
+      meeting,&rdquo; said the young man, with that persistent logic which exasperates
+      the inconsequent feminine mind. &ldquo;It cannot be any more wrong to-day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But it was not so far off,&rdquo; murmured the young girl, without looking up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, the distance makes it more improper, then,&rdquo; he said abstractedly; but
+      after a moment's contemplation of her half-averted face, he asked gravely,
+      &ldquo;Has anyone talked to you about me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ten minutes before, Nellie had been burning to unburthen herself of her
+      father's warning, but now she felt she would not. &ldquo;I wish you wouldn't
+      call yourself Low,&rdquo; she said at last.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But it's my name,&rdquo; he replied quietly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nonsense! It's only a stupid translation of a stupid nickname. They might
+      as well call you 'Water' at once.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you said you liked it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, so I do. But don't you see&mdash;I&mdash;oh dear! you don't
+      understand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Low did not reply, but turned his head with resigned gravity towards the
+      deeper woods. Grasping the barrel of his rifle with his left hand, he
+      threw his right arm across his left wrist and leaned slightly upon it with
+      the habitual ease of a Western hunter&mdash;doubly picturesque in his own
+      lithe, youthful symmetry. Miss Nellie looked at him from under her
+      eyelids, and then half defiantly raised her head and her dark lashes.
+      Gradually an almost magical change came over her features; her eyes grew
+      larger and more and more yearning, until they seemed to draw and absorb in
+      their liquid depths the figure of the young man before her; her cold face
+      broke into an ecstasy of light and color; her humid lips parted in a
+      bright, welcoming smile, until, with an irresistible impulse, she arose,
+      and throwing back her head stretched towards him two hands full of vague
+      and trembling passion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In another moment he had seized them, kissed them, and, as he drew her
+      closer to his embrace, felt them tighten around his neck. &ldquo;But what name
+      do you wish to call me?&rdquo; he asked, looking down into her eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Nellie murmured something confidentially to the third button of his
+      hunting shirt. &ldquo;But that,&rdquo; he replied, with a smile, &ldquo;THAT wouldn't be any
+      more practical, and you wouldn't want others to call me dar&mdash;&rdquo; Her
+      fingers loosened around his neck, she drew her head back, and a singular
+      expression passed over her face, which to any calmer observer than a lover
+      would have seemed, however, to indicate more curiosity than jealousy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who else DOES call you so?&rdquo; she added earnestly. &ldquo;How many, for
+      instance?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Low's reply was addressed not to her ear, but her lips. She did not avoid
+      it, but added, &ldquo;And do you kiss them all like that?&rdquo; Taking him by the
+      shoulders, she held him a little way from her, and gazed at him from head
+      to foot. Then drawing him again to her embrace, she said, &ldquo;I don't care,
+      at least no woman has kissed you like that.&rdquo; Happy, dazzled, and
+      embarrassed, he was beginning to stammer the truthful protestation that
+      rose to his lips, but she stopped him: &ldquo;No, don't protest! say nothing!
+      Let ME love YOU&mdash;that is all. It is enough.&rdquo; He would have caught her
+      in his arms again, but she drew back. &ldquo;We are near the road,&rdquo; she said
+      quietly. &ldquo;Come! You promised to show me where you camped. Let US make the
+      most of our holiday. In an hour I must leave the woods.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I shall accompany you, dearest.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I must go as I came&mdash;alone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But Nellie&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I tell you no,&rdquo; she said, with an almost harsh practical decision,
+      incompatible with her previous abandonment. &ldquo;We might be seen together.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, suppose we are; we must be seen together eventually,&rdquo; he
+      remonstrated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The young girl made an involuntary gesture of impatient negation, but
+      checked herself. &ldquo;Don't let us talk of that now. Come, while I am here
+      under your own roof&mdash;&rdquo; she pointed to the high interlaced boughs
+      above them&mdash;&ldquo;you must be hospitable. Show me your home; tell me,
+      isn't it a little gloomy sometimes?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It never has been; I never thought it WOULD be until the moment you leave
+      it to-day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She pressed his hand briefly and in a half-perfunctory way, as if her
+      vanity had accepted and dismissed the compliment. &ldquo;Take me somewhere,&rdquo; she
+      said inquisitively, &ldquo;where you stay most; I do not seem to see you HERE,&rdquo;
+       she added, looking around her with a slight shiver. &ldquo;It is so big and so
+      high. Have you no place where you eat and rest and sleep?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Except in the rainy season, I camp all over the place&mdash;at any spot
+      where I may have been shooting or collecting.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Collecting?&rdquo; queried Nellie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; with the herbarium, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Nellie dubiously. &ldquo;But you told me once&mdash;the first time
+      we ever talked together,&rdquo; she added, looking in his eyes&mdash;&ldquo;something
+      about your keeping your things like a squirrel in a tree. Could we not go
+      there? Is there not room for us to sit and talk without being brow-beaten
+      and looked down upon by these supercilious trees?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's too far away,&rdquo; said Low truthfully, but with a somewhat pronounced
+      emphasis, &ldquo;much too far for you just now; and it lies on another trail
+      that enters the wood beyond. But come, I will show you a spring known only
+      to myself, the wood ducks, and the squirrels. I discovered it the first
+      day I saw you, and gave it your name. But you shall christen it yourself.
+      It will be all yours, and yours alone, for it is so hidden and secluded
+      that I defy any feet but my own or whoso shall keep step with mine to find
+      it. Shall that foot be yours, Nellie?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her face beamed with a bright assent. &ldquo;It may be difficult to track it
+      from here,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;but stand where you are a moment, and don't move,
+      rustle, nor agitate the air in any way. The woods are still now.&rdquo; He
+      turned at right angles with the trail, moved a few paces into the ferns
+      and underbrush, and then stopped with his finger on his lips. For an
+      instant both remained motionless; then with his intent face bent forward
+      and both arms extended, he began to sink slowly upon one knee and one
+      side, inclining his body with a gentle, perfectly-graduated movement until
+      his ear almost touched the ground. Nellie watched his graceful figure
+      breathlessly, until, like a bow unbent, he stood suddenly erect again, and
+      beckoned to her without changing the direction of his face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it?&rdquo; she asked eagerly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right; I have found it,&rdquo; he continued, moving forward without turning
+      his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But how? What did you kneel for?&rdquo; He did not reply, but taking her hand
+      in his continued to move slowly on through the underbrush, as if obeying
+      some magnetic attraction. &ldquo;How did you find it?&rdquo; again asked the half-awed
+      girl, her voice unconsciously falling to a whisper. Still silent, Low kept
+      his rigid face and forward tread for twenty yards further; then he stopped
+      and released the girl's half-impatient hand. &ldquo;How did you find it?&rdquo; she
+      repeated sharply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;With my ears and nose,&rdquo; replied Low gravely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;With your nose?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; I smelt it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Still fresh with the memory of his picturesque attitude, the young man's
+      reply seemed to involve something more irritating to her feelings than
+      even that absurd anticlimax. She looked at him coldly and critically, and
+      appeared to hesitate whether to proceed. &ldquo;Is it far?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not more than ten minutes now, as I shall go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you won't have to smell your way again?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; it is quite plain now,&rdquo; he answered seriously, the young girl's
+      sarcasm slipping harmlessly from his Indian stolidity. &ldquo;Don't you smell it
+      yourself?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Miss Nellie's thin, cold nostrils refused to take that vulgar
+      interest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nor hear it? Listen!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You forget I suffer the misfortune of having been brought up under a
+      roof,&rdquo; she replied coldly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's true,&rdquo; repeated Low, in all seriousness; &ldquo;it's not your fault. But
+      do you know, I sometimes think I am peculiarly sensitive to water; I feel
+      it miles away. At night, though I may not see it or even know where it is,
+      I am conscious of it. It is company to me when I am alone, and I seem to
+      hear it in my dreams. There is no music as sweet to me as its song. When
+      you sang with me that day in church, I seemed to hear it ripple in your
+      voice. It says to me more than the birds do, more than the rarest plants I
+      find. It seems to live with me and for me. It is my earliest recollection;
+      I know it will be my last, for I shall die in its embrace. Do you think,
+      Nellie,&rdquo; he continued, stopping short and gazing earnestly in her face&mdash;&ldquo;do
+      you think that the chiefs knew this when they called me 'Sleeping Water'?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      To Miss Nellie's several gifts I fear the gods had not added poetry. A
+      slight knowledge of English verse of a select character, unfortunately,
+      did not assist her in the interpretation of the young man's speech, nor
+      relieve her from the momentary feeling that he was at times deficient in
+      intellect. She preferred, however, to take a personal view of the
+      question, and expressed her sarcastic regret that she had not known before
+      that she had been indebted to the great flume and ditch at Excelsior for
+      the pleasure of his acquaintance. This pert remark occasioned some
+      explanation, which ended in the girl's accepting a kiss in lieu of more
+      logical argument. Nevertheless, she was still conscious of an inward
+      irritation&mdash;always distinct from her singular and perfectly material
+      passion&mdash;which found vent as the difficulties of their undeviating
+      progress through the underbrush increased. At last she lost her shoe
+      again, and stopped short. &ldquo;It's a pity your Indian friends did not
+      christen you 'Wild Mustard' or 'Clover,'&rdquo; she said satirically, &ldquo;that you
+      might have had some sympathies and longings for the open fields instead of
+      these horrid jungles! I know we will not get back in time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Unfortunately, Low accepted this speech literally and with his remorseless
+      gravity. &ldquo;If my name annoys you, I can get it changed by the legislature,
+      you know, and I can find out what my father's name was, and take that. My
+      mother, who died in giving me birth, was the daughter of a chief.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then your mother was really an Indian?&rdquo; said Nellie, &ldquo;and you are&mdash;&rdquo;
+       She stopped short.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I told you all this the day we first met,&rdquo; said Low, with grave
+      astonishment. &ldquo;Don't you remember our long talk coming from church?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Nellie coldly, &ldquo;you didn't tell me.&rdquo; But she was obliged to
+      drop her eyes before the unwavering, undeniable truthfulness of his.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have forgotten,&rdquo; he said calmly; &ldquo;but it is only right you should
+      have your own way in disposing of a name that I have cared little for; and
+      as you're to have a share of it&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, but it's getting late, and if we are not going forward&mdash;&rdquo;
+       interrupted the girl impatiently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We ARE going forward,&rdquo; said Low imperturbably; &ldquo;but I wanted to tell you,
+      as we were speaking on THAT subject&rdquo; (Nellie looked at her watch), &ldquo;I've
+      been offered the place of botanist and naturalist in Professor Grant's
+      survey of Mount Shasta, and if I take it&mdash;why, when I come back,
+      darling&mdash;well&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you're not going just yet,&rdquo; broke in Nellie, with a new expression in
+      her face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then we need not talk of it now,&rdquo; she said, with animation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her sudden vivacity relieved him. &ldquo;I see what's the matter,&rdquo; he said
+      gently, looking down at her feet; &ldquo;these little shoes were not made to
+      keep step with a moccasin. We must try another way.&rdquo; He stooped as if to
+      secure the erring buskin, but suddenly lifted her like a child to his
+      shoulder. &ldquo;There,&rdquo; he continued, placing her arm round his neck, &ldquo;you are
+      clear of the ferns and brambles now, and we can go on. Are you
+      comfortable?&rdquo; He looked up, read her answer in her burning eyes and the
+      warm lips pressed to his forehead at the roots of his straight dark hair,
+      and again moved onward as in a mesmeric dream. But he did not swerve from
+      his direct course, and with a final dash through the undergrowth parted
+      the leafy curtain before the spring.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At first the young girl was dazzled by the strong light that came from a
+      rent in the interwoven arches of the wood. The breach had been caused by
+      the huge bulk of one of the great giants that had half fallen, and was
+      lying at a steep angle against one of its mightiest brethren, having borne
+      down a lesser tree in the arc of its downward path. Two of the roots, as
+      large as younger trees, tossed their blackened and bare limbs high in the
+      air. The spring&mdash;the insignificant cause of this vast disruption&mdash;gurgled,
+      flashed, and sparkled at the base; the limpid baby fingers that had laid
+      bare the foundations of that fallen column played with the still clinging
+      rootlets, laved the fractured and twisted limbs, and, widening, filled
+      with sleeping water the graves from which they had been torn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It had been going on for years, down there,&rdquo; said Low, pointing to a
+      cavity from which the fresh water now slowly welled, &ldquo;but it had been
+      quickened by the rising of the subterranean springs and rivers which
+      always occurs at a certain stage of the dry season. I remember that on
+      that very night&mdash;for it happened a little after midnight, when all
+      sounds are more audible&mdash;I was troubled and oppressed in my sleep by
+      what you would call a nightmare; a feeling as if I was kept down by bonds
+      and pinions that I longed to break. And then I heard a crash in this
+      direction, and the first streak of morning brought me the sound and scent
+      of water. Six months afterwards I chanced to find my way here, as I told
+      you, and gave it your name. I did not dream that I should ever stand
+      beside it with you, and have you christen it yourself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He unloosened the cup from his flask, and filling it at the spring handed
+      it to her. But the young girl leant over the pool, and pouring the water
+      idly back said, &ldquo;I'd rather put my feet in it. Mayn't I?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't understand you,&rdquo; he said wonderingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My feet are SO hot and dusty. The water looks deliciously cool. May I?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned away as Nellie, with apparent unconsciousness, seated herself on
+      the bank, and removed her shoes and stockings. When she had dabbled her
+      feet a few moments in the pool, she said over her shoulder&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We can talk just as well, can't we?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, then, why didn't you come to church more often, and why didn't you
+      think of telling father that you were convicted of sin and wanted to be
+      baptized?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know,&rdquo; hesitated the young man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you lost the chance of having father convert you, baptize you, and
+      take you into full church fellowship.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I never thought&mdash;&rdquo; he began.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You never thought. Aren't you a Christian?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He supposes so! Have you no convictions&mdash;no profession?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, Nellie, I never thought that you&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never thought that I&mdash;what? Do you think that I could ever be
+      anything to a man who did not believe in justification by faith, or in the
+      covenant of church fellowship? Do you think father would let me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In his eagerness to defend himself he stepped to her side. But seeing her
+      little feet shining through the dark water, like outcroppings of
+      delicately veined quartz, he stopped embarrassed. Miss Nellie, however,
+      leaped to one foot, and, shaking the other over the pool, put her hand on
+      his shoulder to steady herself. &ldquo;You haven't got a towel&mdash;or,&rdquo; she
+      said dubiously, looking at her small handkerchief, &ldquo;anything to dry them
+      on?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Low did not, as she perhaps expected, offer his own handkerchief.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you take a bath after our fashion,&rdquo; he said gravely, &ldquo;you must learn
+      to dry yourself after our fashion.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lifting her again lightly in his arms, he carried her a few steps to the
+      sunny opening, and bade her bury her feet in the dried mosses and baked
+      withered grasses that were bleaching in a hollow. The young girl uttered a
+      cry of childish delight, as the soft ciliated fibres touched her sensitive
+      skin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is healing, too,&rdquo; continued Low; &ldquo;a moccasin filled with it after a
+      day on the trail makes you all right again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Miss Nellie seemed to be thinking of something else.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is that the way the squaws bathe and dry themselves?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know; you forget I was a boy when I left them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you're sure you never knew any?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;None.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The young girl seemed to derive some satisfaction in moving her feet up
+      and down for several minutes among the grasses in the hollow; then, after
+      a pause, said, &ldquo;You are quite certain I am the first woman that ever
+      touched this spring?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not only the first woman, but the first human being, except myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How nice!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They had taken each other's hands; seated side by side, they leaned
+      against a curving elastic root that half supported, half encompassed,
+      them. The girl's capricious, fitful manner succumbed as before to the near
+      contact of her companion. Looking into her eyes, Low fell into a sweet,
+      selfish lover's monologue, descriptive of his past and present feelings
+      towards her, which she accepted with a heightened color, a slight exchange
+      of sentiment, and a strange curiosity. The sun had painted their
+      half-embraced silhouettes against the slanting tree-trunk, and began to
+      decline unnoticed; the ripple of the water mingling with their whispers
+      came as one sound to the listening ear; even their eloquent silences were
+      as deep, and, I wot, perhaps as dangerous, as the darkened pool that
+      filled so noiselessly a dozen yards away. So quiet were they that the
+      tremor of invading wings once or twice shook the silence, or the quick
+      scamper of frightened feet rustled the dead grass. But in the midst of a
+      prolonged stillness the young man sprang up so suddenly that Nellie was
+      still half clinging to his neck as he stood erect. &ldquo;Hush!&rdquo; he whispered;
+      &ldquo;some one is near!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He disengaged her anxious hands gently, leaped upon the slanting
+      tree-trunk, and running half-way up its incline with the agility of a
+      squirrel, stretched himself at full length upon it and listened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To the impatient, inexplicably startled girl, it seemed an age before he
+      rejoined her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are safe,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;he is going by the western trail towards Indian
+      Spring.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who is HE?&rdquo; she asked, biting her lips with a poorly restrained gesture
+      of mortification and disappointment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Some stranger,&rdquo; replied Low.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As long as he wasn't coming here, why did you give me such a fright?&rdquo; she
+      said pettishly. &ldquo;Are you nervous because a single wayfarer happens to
+      stray here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was no wayfarer, for he tried to keep near the trail,&rdquo; said Low. &ldquo;He
+      was a stranger to the wood, for he lost his way every now and then. He was
+      seeking or expecting some one, for he stopped frequently and waited or
+      listened. He had not walked far, for he wore spurs that tinkled and caught
+      in the brush; and yet he had not ridden here, for no horse's hoofs passed
+      the road since we have been here. He must have come from Indian Spring.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you heard all that when you listened just now?&rdquo; asked Nellie, half
+      disdainfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Impervious to her incredulity Low turned his calm eyes on her face.
+      &ldquo;Certainly, I'll bet my life on what I say. Tell me: do you know anybody
+      in Indian Spring who would likely spy upon you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The young girl was conscious of a certain ill-defined uneasiness, but
+      answered, &ldquo;No.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then it was not YOU he was seeking,&rdquo; said Low thoughtfully. Miss Nellie
+      had not time to notice the emphasis, for he added, &ldquo;You must go at once,
+      and lest you have been followed I will show you another way back to Indian
+      Spring. It is longer, and you must hasten. Take your shoes and stockings
+      with you until we are out of the bush.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He raised her again in his arms and strode once more out through the
+      covert into the dim aisles of the wood. They spoke but little; she could
+      not help feeling that some other discordant element, affecting him more
+      strongly than it did her, had come between them, and was half perplexed
+      and half frightened. At the end of ten minutes he seated her upon a fallen
+      branch, and telling her he would return by the time she had resumed her
+      shoes and stockings glided from her like a shadow. She would have uttered
+      an indignant protest at being left alone, but he was gone ere she could
+      detain him. For a moment she thought she hated him. But when she had
+      mechanically shod herself once more, not without nervous shivers at every
+      falling needle, he was at her side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you know anyone who wears a frieze coat like that?&rdquo; he asked, handing
+      her a few torn shreds of wool affixed to a splinter of bark.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Nellie instantly recognized the material of a certain sporting coat
+      worn by Mr. Jack Brace on festive occasions, but a strange yet infallible
+      instinct that was part of her nature made her instantly disclaim all
+      knowledge of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not anyone who scents himself with some doctor's stuff like cologne?&rdquo;
+       continued Low, with the disgust of keen olfactory sensibilities.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again Miss Nellie recognized the perfume with which the gallant expressman
+      was wont to make redolent her little parlor, but again she avowed no
+      knowledge of its possessor. &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; returned Low with some disappointment,
+      &ldquo;such a man has been here. Be on your guard. Let us go at once.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She required no urging to hasten her steps, but hurried breathlessly at
+      his side. He had taken a new trail by which they left the wood at right
+      angles with the highway, two miles away. Following an almost effaced mule
+      track along a slight depression of the plain, deep enough, however, to
+      hide them from view, he accompanied her, until, rising to the level again,
+      she saw they were beginning to approach the highway and the distant roofs
+      of Indian Spring. &ldquo;Nobody meeting you now,&rdquo; he whispered, &ldquo;would suspect
+      where you had been. Good night! until next week&mdash;remember.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They pressed each other's hands, and standing on the slight ridge outlined
+      against the paling sky, in full view of the highway, parting carelessly,
+      as if they had been chance met travelers. But Nellie could not restrain a
+      parting backward glance as she left the ridge. Low had descended to the
+      deserted trail, and was running swiftly in the direction of the Carquinez
+      Woods.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0004" id="link2HCH0004">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IV
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Teresa awoke with a start. It was day already, but how far advanced the
+      even, unchanging, soft twilight of the woods gave no indication. Her
+      companion had vanished, and to her bewildered senses so had the camp-fire,
+      even to its embers and ashes. Was she awake, or had she wandered away
+      unconsciously in the night? One glance at the tree above her dissipated
+      the fancy. There was the opening of her quaint retreat and the hanging
+      strips of bark, and at the foot of the opposite tree lay the carcass of
+      the bear. It had been skinned, and, as Teresa thought with an inward
+      shiver, already looked half its former size.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Not yet accustomed to the fact that a few steps in either direction around
+      the circumference of those great trunks produced the sudden appearance or
+      disappearance of any figure, Teresa uttered a slight scream as her young
+      companion unexpectedly stepped to her side. &ldquo;You see a change here,&rdquo; he
+      said; &ldquo;the stamped-out ashes of the camp-fire lie under the brush,&rdquo; and he
+      pointed to some cleverly scattered boughs and strips of bark which
+      completely effaced the traces of last night's bivouac. &ldquo;We can't afford to
+      call the attention of any packer or hunter who might straggle this way to
+      this particular spot and this particular tree; the more naturally,&rdquo; he
+      added, &ldquo;as they always prefer to camp over an old fire.&rdquo; Accepting this
+      explanation meekly, as partly a reproach for her caprice of the previous
+      night, Teresa hung her head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm very sorry,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;but wouldn't that,&rdquo; pointing to the carcass
+      of the bear, &ldquo;have made them curious?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Low's logic was relentless.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By this time there would have been little left to excite curiosity, if
+      you had been willing to leave those beasts to their work.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm very sorry,&rdquo; repeated the woman, her lips quivering.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They are the scavengers of the wood,&rdquo; he continued in a lighter tone; &ldquo;if
+      you stay here you must try to use them to keep your house clean.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Teresa smiled nervously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I mean that they shall finish their work to-night,&rdquo; he added, &ldquo;and I
+      shall build another camp-fire for us a mile from here until they do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Teresa caught his sleeve.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; she said hurriedly, &ldquo;don't, please, for me. You must not take the
+      trouble, nor the risk. Hear me; do, please. I can bear it, I WILL bear it&mdash;to-night.
+      I would have borne it last night, but it was so strange&mdash;and&rdquo;&mdash;she
+      passed her hands over her forehead&mdash;&ldquo;I think I must have been half
+      mad. But I am not so foolish now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She seemed so broken and despondent that he replied reassuringly: &ldquo;Perhaps
+      it would be better that I should find another hiding-place for you, until
+      I can dispose of that carcass so that it will not draw dogs after the
+      wolves, and men after THEM. Besides, your friend the sheriff will probably
+      remember the bear when he remembers anything, and try to get on its track
+      again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's a conceited fool,&rdquo; broke in Teresa in a high voice, with a slight
+      return of her old fury, &ldquo;or he'd have guessed where that shot came from;
+      and,&rdquo; she added in a lower tone, looking down at her limp and nerveless
+      fingers, &ldquo;he wouldn't have let a poor, weak, nervous wretch like me get
+      away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But his deputy may put two and two together, and connect your escape with
+      it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Teresa's eyes flashed. &ldquo;It would be like the dog, just to save his pride,
+      to swear it was an ambush of my friends, and that he was overpowered by
+      numbers. Oh yes! I see it all!&rdquo; she almost screamed, lashing herself into
+      a rage at the bare contemplation of this diminution of her glory. &ldquo;That's
+      the dirty lie he tells everywhere, and is telling now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She stamped her feet and glanced savagely around, as if at any risk to
+      proclaim the falsehood. Low turned his impassive, truthful face towards
+      her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sheriff Dunn,&rdquo; he began gravely, &ldquo;is a politician, and a fool when he
+      takes to the trail as a hunter of man or beast. But he is not a coward nor
+      a liar. Your chances would be better if he were&mdash;if he laid your
+      escape to an ambush of your friends, than if his pride held you alone
+      responsible.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If he's such a good man, why do you hesitate?&rdquo; she replied bitterly. &ldquo;Why
+      don't you give me up at once, and do a service to one of your friends?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not even know him,&rdquo; returned Low opening his clear eyes upon her.
+      &ldquo;I've promised to hide you here, and I shall hide you as well from him as
+      from anybody.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Teresa did not reply, but suddenly dropping down upon the ground buried
+      her face in her hands and began to sob convulsively. Low turned
+      impassively away, and putting aside the bark curtain climbed into the
+      hollow tree. In a few moments he reappeared, laden with provisions and a
+      few simple cooking utensils, and touched her lightly on the shoulder. She
+      looked up timidly; the paroxysm had passed, but her lashes yet glittered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;come and get some breakfast. I find you have eaten
+      nothing since you have been here&mdash;twenty-four hours.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn't know it,&rdquo; she said, with a faint smile. Then seeing his burden,
+      and possessed by a new and strange desire for some menial employment, she
+      said hurriedly, &ldquo;Let me carry something&mdash;do, please,&rdquo; and even tried
+      to disencumber him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Half annoyed, Low at last yielded, and handing his rifle said, &ldquo;There,
+      then, take that; but be careful&mdash;it's loaded!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A cruel blush burnt the woman's face to the roots of her hair as she took
+      the weapon hesitatingly in her hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No!&rdquo; she stammered, hurriedly lifting her shame-suffused eyes to his;
+      &ldquo;no! no!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned away with an impatience which showed her how completely
+      gratuitous had been her agitation and its significance, and said, &ldquo;Well,
+      then, give it back if you are afraid of it.&rdquo; But she as suddenly declined
+      to return it; and shouldering it deftly, took her place by his side.
+      Silently they moved from the hollow tree together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      During their walk she did not attempt to invade his taciturnity.
+      Nevertheless she was as keenly alive and watchful of his every movement
+      and gesture as if she had hung enchanted on his lips. The unerring way
+      with which he pursued a viewless, undeviating path through those trackless
+      woods, his quick reconnaissance of certain trees or openings, his mute
+      inspection of some almost imperceptible footprint of bird or beast, his
+      critical examination of certain plants which he plucked and deposited in
+      his deerskin haversack, were not lost on the quick-witted woman. As they
+      gradually changed the clear, unencumbered aisles of the central woods for
+      a more tangled undergrowth, Teresa felt that subtle admiration which
+      culminates in imitation, and simulating perfectly the step, tread, and
+      easy swing of her companion, followed so accurately his lead that she won
+      a gratified exclamation from him when their goal was reached&mdash;a
+      broken, blackened shaft, splintered by long-forgotten lightning, in the
+      centre of a tangled carpet of wood-clover.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't wonder you distanced the deputy,&rdquo; he said cheerfully, throwing
+      down his burden, &ldquo;if you can take the hunting-path like that. In a few
+      days, if you stay here, I can venture to trust you alone for a little
+      pasear when you are tired of the tree.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Teresa looked pleased, but busied herself with arrangements for the
+      breakfast, while he gathered the fuel for the roaring fire which soon
+      blazed beside the shattered tree.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Teresa's breakfast was a success. It was a revelation to the young nomad,
+      whose ascetic habits and simple tastes were usually content with the most
+      primitive forms of frontier cookery. It was at least a surprise to him to
+      know that without extra trouble kneaded flour, water, and saleratus need
+      not be essentially heavy; that coffee need not be boiled with sugar to the
+      consistency of syrup; that even that rarest delicacy, small shreds of
+      venison covered with ashes and broiled upon the end of a ramrod boldly
+      thrust into the flames, would be better and even more expeditiously cooked
+      upon burning coals. Moved in his practical nature, he was surprised to
+      find this curious creature of disorganized nerves and useless impulses
+      informed with an intelligence that did not preclude the welfare of
+      humanity or the existence of a soul. He respected her for some minutes,
+      until in the midst of a culinary triumph a big tear dropped and spluttered
+      in the saucepan. But he forgave the irrelevancy by taking no notice of it,
+      and by doing full justice to that particular dish.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nevertheless, he asked several questions based upon these recently
+      discovered qualities. It appeared that in the old days of her wanderings
+      with the circus troupe she had often been forced to undertake this nomadic
+      housekeeping. But she &ldquo;despised it,&rdquo; had never done it since, and always
+      had refused to do it for &ldquo;him&rdquo;&mdash;the personal pronoun referring, as
+      Low understood, to her lover, Curson. Not caring to revive these memories
+      further, Low briefly concluded: &ldquo;I don't know what you were, or what you
+      may be, but from what I see of you you've got all the sabe of a
+      frontierman's wife.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She stopped and looked at him, and then with an impulse of imprudence that
+      only half concealed a more serious vanity, asked, &ldquo;Do you think I might
+      have made a good squaw?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know,&rdquo; he replied quietly. &ldquo;I never saw enough of them to know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Teresa, confident from his clear eyes that he spoke the truth, but having
+      nothing ready to follow this calm disposal of her curiosity, relapsed into
+      silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The meal finished, Teresa washed their scant table equipage in a little
+      spring near the camp-fire; where, catching sight of her disordered dress
+      and collar, she rapidly threw her shawl, after the national fashion, over
+      her shoulder and pinned it quickly. Low cached the remaining provisions
+      and the few cooking utensils under the dead embers and ashes, obliterating
+      all superficial indication of their camp-fire as deftly and artistically
+      as he had before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There isn't the ghost of a chance,&rdquo; he said in explanation, &ldquo;that anybody
+      but you or I will set foot here before we come back to supper, but it's
+      well to be on guard. I'll take you back to the cabin now, though I bet you
+      could find your way there as well as I can.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      On their way back Teresa ran ahead of her companion, and plucking a few
+      tiny leaves from a hidden oasis in the bark-strewn trail brought them to
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's the kind you're looking for, isn't it?&rdquo; she said, half timidly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is,&rdquo; responded Low, in gratified surprise; &ldquo;but how did you know it?
+      You're not a botanist, are you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I reckon not,&rdquo; said Teresa; &ldquo;but you picked some when we came, and I
+      noticed what they were.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Here was indeed another revelation. Low stopped and gazed at her with such
+      frank, open, utterly unabashed curiosity that her black eyes fell before
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And do you think,&rdquo; he asked with logical deliberation, &ldquo;that you could
+      find any plant from another I should give you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Or from a drawing of it&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; perhaps even if you described it to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A half-confidential, half-fraternal silence followed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I tell you what. I've got a book&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know it,&rdquo; interrupted Teresa; &ldquo;full of these things.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. Do you think you could&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course I could,&rdquo; broke in Teresa, again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you don't know what I mean,&rdquo; said the imperturbable Low.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly I do. Why, find 'em, and preserve all the different ones for
+      you to write under&mdash;that's it, isn't it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Low nodded his head, gratified but not entirely convinced that she had
+      fully estimated the magnitude of the endeavor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose,&rdquo; said Teresa, in the feminine postscriptum voice which it
+      would seem entered even the philosophical calm of the aisles they were
+      treading&mdash;&ldquo;I suppose that SHE places great value on them?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Low had indeed heard Science personified before, nor was it at all
+      impossible that the singular woman walking by his side had also. He said
+      &ldquo;Yes;&rdquo; but added, in mental reference to the Linnean Society of San
+      Francisco, that &ldquo;THEY were rather particular about the rarer kinds.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Content as Teresa had been to believe in Low's tender relations with some
+      favored ONE of her sex, this frank confession of a plural devotion
+      staggered her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They?&rdquo; she repeated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he continued calmly. &ldquo;The Botanical Society I correspond with are
+      more particular than the Government Survey.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you are doing this for a society?&rdquo; demanded Teresa, with a stare.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly. I'm making a collection and classification of specimens. I
+      intend&mdash;but what are you looking at?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Teresa had suddenly turned away. Putting his hand lightly on her shoulder,
+      the young man brought her face to face him again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was laughing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought all the while it was for a girl,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;and&mdash;&rdquo; But
+      here the mere effort of speech sent her off into an audible and genuine
+      outburst of laughter. It was the first time he had seen her even smile
+      other than bitterly. Characteristically unconscious of any humor in her
+      error, he remained unembarrassed. But he could not help noticing a change
+      in the expression of her face, her voice, and even her intonation. It
+      seemed as if that fit of laughter had loosed the last ties that bound her
+      to a self-imposed character, had swept away the last barrier between her
+      and her healthier nature, had dispossessed a painful unreality, and
+      relieved the morbid tension of a purely nervous attitude. The change in
+      her utterance and the resumption of her softer Spanish accent seemed to
+      have come with her confidences, and Low took leave of her before their
+      sylvan cabin with a comrade's heartiness, and a complete forgetfulness
+      that her voice had ever irritated him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he returned that afternoon he was startled to find the cabin empty.
+      But instead of bearing any appearance of disturbance or hurried flight,
+      the rude interior seemed to have magically assumed a decorous order and
+      cleanliness unknown before. Fresh bark hid the inequalities of the floor.
+      The skins and blankets were folded in the corners, the rude shelves were
+      carefully arranged, even a few tall ferns and bright but quickly fading
+      flowers were disposed around the blackened chimney. She had evidently
+      availed herself of the change of clothing he had brought her, for her late
+      garments were hanging from the hastily-devised wooden pegs driven in the
+      wall. The young man gazed around him with mixed feelings of gratification
+      and uneasiness. His presence had been dispossessed in a single hour; his
+      ten years of lonely habitation had left no trace that this woman had not
+      effaced with a deft move of her hand. More than that, it looked as if she
+      had always occupied it; and it was with a singular conviction that even
+      when she should occupy it no longer it would only revert to him as her
+      dwelling that he dropped the bark shutters athwart the opening, and left
+      it to follow her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To his quick ear, fine eye, and abnormal senses, this was easy enough. She
+      had gone in the direction of this morning's camp. Once or twice he paused
+      with a half-gesture of recognition and a characteristic &ldquo;Good!&rdquo; at the
+      place where she had stopped, but was surprised to find that her main
+      course had been as direct as his own. Deviating from this direct line with
+      Indian precaution, he first made a circuit of the camp, and approached the
+      shattered trunk from the opposite direction. He consequently came upon
+      Teresa unawares. But the momentary astonishment and embarrassment were his
+      alone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He scarcely recognized her. She was wearing the garments he had brought
+      her the day before&mdash;a certain discarded gown of Miss Nellie Wynn,
+      which he had hurriedly begged from her under the pretext of clothing the
+      wife of a distressed overland emigrant then on the way to the mines.
+      Although he had satisfied his conscience with the intention of confessing
+      the pious fraud to her when Teresa was gone and safe from pursuit, it was
+      not without a sense of remorse that he witnessed the sacrilegious
+      transformation. The two women were nearly the same height and size; and
+      although Teresa's maturer figure accented the outlines more strongly, it
+      was still becoming enough to increase his irritation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of this becomingness she was doubtless unaware at the moment that he
+      surprised her. She was conscious of having &ldquo;a change,&rdquo; and this had
+      emboldened her to &ldquo;do her hair&rdquo; and otherwise compose herself. After their
+      greeting she was the first to allude to the dress, regretting that it was
+      not more of a rough disguise, and that, as she must now discard the
+      national habit of wearing her shawl &ldquo;manta&rdquo; fashion over her head, she
+      wanted a hat. &ldquo;But you must not,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;borrow any more dresses for
+      me from your young woman. Buy them for me at some shop. They left me
+      enough money for that.&rdquo; Low gently put aside the few pieces of gold she
+      had drawn from her pocket, and briefly reminded her of the suspicion such
+      a purchase by him would produce. &ldquo;That's so,&rdquo; she said, with a laugh.
+      &ldquo;Caramba! what a mule I'm becoming! Ah! wait a moment. I have it! Buy me a
+      common felt hat&mdash;a man's hat&mdash;as if for yourself, as a change to
+      that animal,&rdquo; pointing to the fox-tailed cap he wore summer and winter,
+      &ldquo;and I'll show you a trick. I haven't run a theatrical wardrobe for
+      nothing.&rdquo; Nor had she, for the hat thus procured, a few days later,
+      became, by the aid of a silk handkerchief and a bluejay's feather, a
+      fascinating &ldquo;pork pie.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Whatever cause of annoyance to Low still lingered in Teresa's dress, it
+      was soon forgotten in a palpable evidence of Teresa's value as a botanical
+      assistant. It appeared that during the afternoon she had not only
+      duplicated his specimens, but had discoverd one or two rare plants as yet
+      unclassified in the flora of the Carquinez Woods. He was delighted, and in
+      turn, over the campfire, yielded up some details of his present life and
+      some of his earlier recollections.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don't remember anything of your father?&rdquo; she asked. &ldquo;Did he ever try
+      to seek you out?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No! Why should he?&rdquo; replied the imperturbable Low; &ldquo;he was not a
+      Cherokee.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, he was a beast,&rdquo; responded Teresa promptly. &ldquo;And your mother&mdash;do
+      you remember her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I think she died.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You THINK she died? Don't you know?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you're another!&rdquo; said Teresa. Notwithstanding this frankness, they
+      shook hands for the night: Teresa nestling like a rabbit in a hollow by
+      the side of the campfire; Low with his feet towards it, Indian-wise, and
+      his head and shoulders pillowed on his haversack, only half
+      distinguishable in the darkness beyond.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With such trivial details three uneventful days slipped by. Their retreat
+      was undisturbed, nor could Low detect, by the least evidence to his acute
+      perceptive faculties, that any intruding feet had since crossed the belt
+      of shade. The echoes of passing events at Indian Spring had recorded the
+      escape of Teresa as occurring at a remote and purely imaginative distance,
+      and her probable direction the county of Yolo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can you remember,&rdquo; he one day asked her, &ldquo;what time it was when you cut
+      the riata and got away?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Teresa pressed her hands upon her eyes and temples.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;About three, I reckon.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you were here at seven; you could have covered some ground in four
+      hours?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps&mdash;I don't know,&rdquo; she said, her voice taking up its old
+      quality again. &ldquo;Don't ask me&mdash;I ran all the way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her face was quite pale as she removed her hands from her eyes, and her
+      breath came as quickly as if she had just finished that race for life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you think I am safe here?&rdquo; she added, after a pause.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perfectly&mdash;until they find you are NOT in Yolo. Then they'll look
+      here. And THAT'S the time for you to go THERE.&rdquo; Teresa smiled timidly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It will take them some time to search Yolo&mdash;unless,&rdquo; she added,
+      &ldquo;you're tired of me here.&rdquo; The charming non sequitur did not, however,
+      seem to strike the young man. &ldquo;I've got time yet to find a few more plants
+      for you,&rdquo; she suggested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, certainly!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And give you a few more lessons in cooking.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The conscientious and literal Low was beginning to doubt if she were
+      really practical. How otherwise could she trifle with such a situation?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It must be confessed that that day and the next she did trifle with it.
+      She gave herself up to a grave and delicious languor that seemed to flow
+      from shadow and silence and permeate her entire being. She passed hours in
+      a thoughtful repose of mind and spirit that seemed to fall like balm from
+      those steadfast guardians, and distill their gentle ether in her soul; or
+      breathed into her listening ear immunity from the forgotten past, and
+      security for the present. If there was no dream of the future in this
+      calm, even recurrence of placid existence, so much the better. The simple
+      details of each succeeding day, the quaint housekeeping, the brief
+      companionship and coming and going of her young host&mdash;himself at best
+      a crystallized personification of the sedate and hospitable woods&mdash;satisfied
+      her feeble cravings. She no longer regretted the inferior position that
+      her fears had obliged her to take the first night she came; she began to
+      look up to this young man&mdash;so much younger than herself&mdash;without
+      knowing what it meant; it was not until she found that this attitude did
+      not detract from his picturesqueness that she discovered herself seeking
+      for reasons to degrade him from this seductive eminence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A week had elapsed with little change. On two days he had been absent all
+      day, returning only in time to sup in the hollow tree, which, thanks to
+      the final removal of the dead bear from its vicinity, was now considered a
+      safer retreat than the exposed camp-fire. On the first of these occasions
+      she received him with some preoccupation, paying but little heed to the
+      scant gossip he brought from Indian Spring, and retiring early under the
+      plea of fatigue, that he might seek his own distant camp-fire, which,
+      thanks to her stronger nerves and regained courage, she no longer required
+      so near. On the second occasion, he found her writing a letter more or
+      less blotted with her tears. When it was finished, she begged him to post
+      it at Indian Spring, where in two days an answer would be returned, under
+      cover, to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope you will be satisfied then,&rdquo; she added.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Satisfied with what?&rdquo; queried the young man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'll see,&rdquo; she replied, giving him her cold hand. &ldquo;Good-night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But can't you tell me now?&rdquo; he remonstrated, retaining her hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wait two days longer&mdash;it isn't much,&rdquo; was all she vouchsafed to
+      answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The two days passed. Their former confidence and good fellowship were
+      fully restored when the morning came on which he was to bring the answer
+      from the post-office at Indian Spring. He had talked again of his future,
+      and had recorded his ambition to procure the appointment of naturalist to
+      a Government Surveying Expedition. She had even jocularly proposed to
+      dress herself in man's attire and &ldquo;enlist&rdquo; as his assistant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you will be safe with your friends, I hope, by that time,&rdquo; responded
+      Low.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Safe with my friends,&rdquo; she repeated in a lower voice. &ldquo;Safe with my
+      friends&mdash;yes!&rdquo; An awkward silence followed; Teresa broke it gayly:
+      &ldquo;But your girl, your sweetheart, my benefactor&mdash;will SHE let you go?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I haven't told her yet,&rdquo; said Low, gravely, &ldquo;but I don't see why she
+      should object.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Object, indeed!&rdquo; interrupted Teresa in a high voice and a sudden and
+      utterly gratuitous indignation; &ldquo;how should she? I'd like to see her do
+      it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She accompanied him some distance to the intersection of the trail, where
+      they parted in good spirits. On the dusty plain without a gale was blowing
+      that rocked the high tree-tops above her, but, tempered and subdued,
+      entered the low aisles with a fluttering breath of morning and a sound
+      like the cooing of doves. Never had the wood before shown so sweet a sense
+      of security from the turmoil and tempest of the world beyond; never before
+      had an intrusion from the outer life&mdash;even in the shape of a letter&mdash;seemed
+      so wicked a desecration. Tempted by the solicitation of air and shade, she
+      lingered, with Low's herbarium slung on her shoulder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A strange sensation, like a shiver, suddenly passed across her nerves, and
+      left them in a state of rigid tension. With every sense morbidly acute,
+      with every faculty strained to its utmost, the subtle instincts of Low's
+      woodcraft transformed and possessed her. She knew it now! A new element
+      was in the wood&mdash;a strange being&mdash;another life&mdash;another man
+      approaching! She did not even raise her head to look about her, but darted
+      with the precision and fleetness of an arrow in the direction of her tree.
+      But her feet were arrested, her limbs paralzyed, her very existence
+      suspended, by the sound of a voice:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Teresa!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a voice that had rung in her ears for the last two years in all
+      phases of intensity, passion, tenderness, and anger; a voice upon whose
+      modulations, rude and unmusical though they were, her heart and soul had
+      hung in transport or anguish. But it was a chime that had rung its last
+      peal to her senses as she entered the Carquinez Woods, and for the last
+      week had been as dead to her as a voice from the grave. It was the voice
+      of her lover&mdash;Dick Curson!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0005" id="link2HCH0005">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER V
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The wind was blowing towards the stranger, so that he was nearly upon her
+      when Teresa first took the alarm. He was a man over six feet in height,
+      strongly built, with a slight tendency to a roundness of bulk which
+      suggested reserved rather than impeded energy. His thick beard and
+      mustache were closely cropped around a small and handsome mouth that
+      lisped except when he was excited, but always kept fellowship with his
+      blue eyes in a perpetual smile of half-cynical good-humor. His dress was
+      superior to that of the locality; his general expression that of a man of
+      the world, albeit a world of San Francisco, Sacramento, and Murderer's
+      Bar. He advanced towards her with a laugh and an outstretched hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;YOU here!&rdquo; she gasped, drawing back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Apparently neither surprised nor mortified at this reception, he answered
+      frankly, &ldquo;Yeth. You didn't expect me, I know. But Doloreth showed me the
+      letter you wrote her, and&mdash;well&mdash;here I am, ready to help you,
+      with two men and a thpare horthe waiting outside the woodth on the blind
+      trail.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&mdash;YOU&mdash;here?&rdquo; she only repeated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Curson shrugged his shoulders. &ldquo;Yeth. Of courth you never expected to thee
+      me again, and leatht of all HERE. I'll admit that; I'll thay I wouldn't if
+      I'd been in your plathe. I'll go further, and thay you didn't want to thee
+      me again&mdash;anywhere. But it all cometh to the thame thing; here I am.
+      I read the letter you wrote Doloreth. I read how you were hiding here,
+      under Dunn'th very nothe, with his whole pothe out, cavorting round and
+      barkin' up the wrong tree. I made up my mind to come down here with a few
+      nathty friends of mine and cut you out under Dunn'th nothe, and run you
+      over into Yuba&mdash;that'th all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How dared she show you my letter&mdash;YOU of all men? How dared she ask
+      YOUR help?&rdquo; continued Teresa, fiercely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But she didn't athk my help,&rdquo; he responded coolly. &ldquo;D&mdash;d if I don't
+      think she jutht calculated I'd be glad to know you were being hunted down
+      and thtarving, that I might put Dunn on your track.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You lie!&rdquo; said Teresa, furiously; &ldquo;she was my friend. A better friend
+      than those who professed&mdash;more,&rdquo; she added, with a contemptuous
+      drawing away of her skirt as if she feared Curson's contamination.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right. Thettle that with her when you go back,&rdquo; continued Curson
+      philosophically. &ldquo;We can talk of that on the way. The thing now ith to get
+      up and get out of thethe woods. Come!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Teresa's only reply was a gesture of scorn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know all that,&rdquo; continued Curson half soothingly, &ldquo;but they're
+      waiting.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let them wait. I shall not go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What will you do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stay here&mdash;till the wolves eat me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Teresa, listen. D&mdash;- it all&mdash;Teresa&mdash;Tita! see here,&rdquo; he
+      said with sudden energy. &ldquo;I swear to God it's all right. I'm willing to
+      let by-gones be by-gones and take a new deal. You shall come back as if
+      nothing had happened, and take your old place as before. I don't mind
+      doing the square thing, all round. If that's what you mean, if that's all
+      that stands in the way, why, look upon the thing as settled. There, Tita,
+      old girl, come.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Careless or oblivious of her stony silence and starting eyes, he attempted
+      to take her hand. But she disengaged herself with a quick movement, drew
+      back, and suddenly crouched like a wild animal about to spring. Curson
+      folded his arms as she leaped to her feet; the little dagger she had drawn
+      from her garter flashed menacingly in the air, but she stopped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The man before her remained erect, impassive, and silent; the great trees
+      around and beyond her remained erect, impassive, and silent; there was no
+      sound in the dim aisles but the quick panting of her mad passion, no
+      movement in the calm, motionless shadow but the trembling of her uplifted
+      steel. Her arm bent and slowly sank, her fingers relaxed, the knife fell
+      from her hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That'th quite enough for a thow,&rdquo; he said, with a return to his former
+      cynical ease and a perceptible tone of relief in his voice. &ldquo;It'th the
+      thame old Theretha. Well, then, if you won't go with me, go without me;
+      take the led horthe and cut away. Dick Athley and Petereth will follow you
+      over the county line. If you want thome money, there it ith.&rdquo; He took a
+      buckskin purse from his pocket. &ldquo;If you won't take it from me&rdquo;&mdash;he
+      hesitated as she made no reply&mdash;&ldquo;Athley'th flush and ready to lend
+      you thome.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She had not seemed to hear him, but had stooped in some embarrassment,
+      picked up the knife and hastily hid it, then with averted face and nervous
+      fingers was beginning to tear strips of loose bark from the nearest trunk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, what do you thay?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't want any money, and I shall stay here.&rdquo; She hesitated, looked
+      around her, and then added, with an effort, &ldquo;I suppose you meant well. Be
+      it so! Let by-gones be by-gones. You said just now, 'It's the same old
+      Teresa.' So she is, and seeing she's the same she's better here than
+      anywhere else.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was enough bitterness in her tone to call for Curson's
+      half-perfunctory sympathy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That be d&mdash;d,&rdquo; he responded quickly. &ldquo;Jutht thay you'll come, Tita,
+      and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She stopped his half-spoken sentence with a negative gesture. &ldquo;You don't
+      understand. I shall stay here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But even if they don't theek you here, you can't live here forever. The
+      friend that you wrote about who wath tho good to you, you know, can't keep
+      you here alwayth; and are you thure you can alwayth trutht her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It isn't a woman; it's a man.&rdquo; She stopped short, and colored to the line
+      of her forehead. &ldquo;Who said it was a woman?&rdquo; she continued fiercely, as if
+      to cover her confusion with a burst of gratuitous anger. &ldquo;Is that another
+      of your lies?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Curson's lips, which for a moment had completely lost their smile, were
+      now drawn together in a prolonged whistle. He gazed curiously at her gown,
+      at her hat, at the bow of bright ribbon that tied her black hair, and
+      said, &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A poor man who has kept my secret,&rdquo; she went on hurriedly&mdash;&ldquo;a man as
+      friendless and lonely as myself. Yes,&rdquo; disregarding Curson's cynical
+      smile, &ldquo;a man who has shared everything&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Naturally,&rdquo; suggested Curson.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And turned himself out of his only shelter to give me a roof and
+      covering,&rdquo; she continued mechanically, struggling with the new and
+      horrible fancy that his words awakened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And thlept every night at Indian Thpring to save your reputation,&rdquo; said
+      Curson. &ldquo;Of courthe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Teresa turned very white. Curson was prepared for an outburst of fury&mdash;perhaps
+      even another attack. But the crushed and beaten woman only gazed at him
+      with frightened and imploring eyes. &ldquo;For God's sake, Dick, don't say
+      that!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The amiable cynic was staggered. His good-humor and a certain chivalrous
+      instinct he could not repress got the better of him. He shrugged his
+      shoulders. &ldquo;What I thay, and what you DO, Teretha, needn't make us
+      quarrel. I've no claim on you&mdash;I know it. Only&mdash;&rdquo; a vivid sense
+      of the ridiculous, powerful in men of his stamp, completed her victory&mdash;&ldquo;only
+      don't thay anything about my coming down here to cut you out from the&mdash;the&mdash;THE
+      SHERIFF.&rdquo; He gave utterance to a short but unaffected laugh, made a slight
+      grimace, and turned to go.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Teresa did not join in his mirth. Awkward as it would have been if he had
+      taken a severer view of the subject, she was mortified even amidst her
+      fears and embarrassment at his levity. Just as she had become convinced
+      that his jealousy had made her over-conscious, his apparent good-humored
+      indifference gave that over-consciousness a guilty significance. Yet this
+      was lost in her sudden alarm as her companion, looking up, uttered an
+      exclamation, and placed his hand upon his revolver. With a sinking
+      conviction that the climax had come, Teresa turned her eyes. From the dim
+      aisles beyond, Low was approaching. The catastrophe seemed complete.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had barely time to utter an imploring whisper: &ldquo;In the name of God,
+      not a word to him.&rdquo; But a change had already come over her companion. It
+      was no longer a parley with a foolish woman; he had to deal with a man
+      like himself. As Low's dark face and picturesque figure came nearer, Mr.
+      Curson's proposed method of dealing with him was made audible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ith it a mulatto or a Thircuth, or both?&rdquo; he asked, with affected
+      anxiety.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Low's Indian phlegm was impervious to such assault. He turned to Teresa,
+      without apparently noticing her companion. &ldquo;I turned back,&rdquo; he said
+      quietly, &ldquo;as soon as I knew there were strangers here; I thought you might
+      need me.&rdquo; She noticed for the first time that, in addition to his rifle,
+      he carried a revolver and hunting knife in his belt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yeth,&rdquo; returned Curson, with an ineffectual attempt to imitate Low's
+      phlegm; &ldquo;but ath I didn't happen to be a sthranger to this lady, perhaps
+      it wathn't nethethary, particularly ath I had two friends&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Waiting at the edge of the wood with a led horse,&rdquo; interrupted Low,
+      without addressing him, but apparently continuing his explanation to
+      Teresa. But she turned to Low with feverish anxiety.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's so&mdash;he is an old friend&mdash;&rdquo; she gave a quick, imploring
+      glance at Curson&mdash;&ldquo;an old friend who came to help me away&mdash;he is
+      very kind,&rdquo; she stammered, turning alternately from the one to the other;
+      &ldquo;but I told him there was no hurry&mdash;at least to-day&mdash;that you&mdash;were&mdash;very
+      good&mdash;too, and would hide me a little longer, until your plan&mdash;you
+      know YOUR plan,&rdquo; she added, with a look of beseeching significance to Low&mdash;&ldquo;could
+      be tried.&rdquo; And then, with a helpless conviction that her excuses, motives,
+      and emotions were equally and perfectly transparent to both men, she
+      stopped in a tremble.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhapth it 'th jutht ath well, then, that the gentleman came thtraight
+      here, and didn't tackle my two friendth when he pathed them,&rdquo; observed
+      Curson, half sarcastically.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have not passed your friends, nor have I been near them,&rdquo; said Low,
+      looking at him for the first time, with the same exasperating calm, &ldquo;or
+      perhaps I should not be HERE or they THERE. I knew that one man entered
+      the wood a few moments ago, and that two men and four horses remained
+      outside.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's true,&rdquo; said Teresa to Curson excitedly&mdash;&ldquo;that's true. He
+      knows all. He can see without looking, hear without listening. He&mdash;he&mdash;&rdquo;
+       she stammered, colored, and stopped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The two men had faced each other. Curson, after his first good-natured
+      impulse, had retained no wish to regain Teresa, whom he felt he no longer
+      loved, and yet who, for that very reason perhaps, had awakened his
+      chivalrous instincts. Low, equally on his side, was altogether unconscious
+      of any feeling which might grow into a passion, and prevent him from
+      letting her go with another if for her own safety. They were both men of a
+      certain taste and refinement. Yet, in spite of all this, some vague
+      instinct of the baser male animal remained with them, and they were moved
+      to a mutually aggressive attitude in the presence of the female.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One word more, and the opening chapter of a sylvan Iliad might have begun.
+      But this modern Helen saw it coming, and arrested it with an inspiration
+      of feminine genius. Without being observed, she disengaged her knife from
+      her bosom and let it fall as if by accident. It struck the ground with the
+      point of its keen blade, bounded and rolled between them. The two men
+      started and looked at each other with a foolish air. Curson laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I reckon she can take care of herthelf,&rdquo; he said, extending his hand to
+      Low. &ldquo;I'm off. But if I'm wanted SHE'LL know where to find me.&rdquo; Low took
+      the proffered hand, but neither of the two men looked at Teresa. The
+      reserve of antagonism once broken, a few words of caution, advice, and
+      encouragement passed between them, in apparent obliviousness of her
+      presence or her personal responsibility. As Curson at last nodded a
+      farewell to her, Low insisted upon accompanying him as far as the horses,
+      and in another moment she was again alone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had saved a quarrel between them at the sacrifice of herself, for her
+      vanity was still keen enough to feel that this exhibition of her old
+      weakness had degraded her in their eyes, and, worse, had lost the respect
+      her late restraint had won from Low. They had treated her like a child or
+      a crazy woman, perhaps even now were exchanging criticisms upon her&mdash;perhaps
+      pitying her! Yet she had prevented a quarrel, a fight; possibly the death
+      of either one or the other of these men who despised her, for none better
+      knew than she the trivial beginning and desperate end of these encounters.
+      Would they&mdash;would Low ever realize it, and forgive her? Her small,
+      dark hands went up to her eyes and she sank upon the ground. She looked
+      through tear-veiled lashes upon the mute and giant witnesses of her deceit
+      and passion, and tried to draw, from their immovable calm, strength and
+      consolation as before. But even they seemed to stand apart, reserved and
+      forbidding.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Low returned she hoped to gather from his eyes and manner what had
+      passed between him and her former lover. But beyond a mere gentle
+      abstraction at times he retained his usual calm. She was at last forced to
+      allude to it herself with simulated recklessness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose I didn't get a very good character from my last place?&rdquo; she
+      said, with a laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't understand you,&rdquo; he replied, in evident sincerity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She bit her lip and was silent. But as they were returning home, she said
+      gently, &ldquo;I hope you were not angry with me for the lie I told when I spoke
+      of 'your plan.' I could not give the real reason for not returning with&mdash;with&mdash;that
+      man. But it's not all a lie. I have a plan&mdash;if you haven't. When you
+      are ready to go to Sacramento to take your place, dress me as an Indian
+      boy, paint my face, and let me go with you. You can leave me&mdash;there&mdash;you
+      know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's not a bad idea,&rdquo; he responded gravely. &ldquo;We will see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      On the next day, and the next, the rencontre seemed to be forgotten. The
+      herbarium was already filled with rare specimens. Teresa had even overcome
+      her feminine repugnance to &ldquo;bugs&rdquo; and creeping things so far as to assist
+      in his entomological collection. He had drawn from a sacred cache in the
+      hollow of a tree the few worn text-books from which he had studied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They seem very precious,&rdquo; she said, with a smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very,&rdquo; he replied gravely. &ldquo;There was one with plates that the ants ate
+      up, and it will be six months before I can afford to buy another.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Teresa glanced hurriedly over his well-worn buckskin suit, at his calico
+      shirt with its pattern almost obliterated by countless washings, and
+      became thoughtful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose you couldn't buy one at Indian Spring?&rdquo; she said innocently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For once Low was startled out of his phlegm. &ldquo;Indian Spring!&rdquo; he
+      ejaculated; &ldquo;perhaps not even in San Francisco. These came from the
+      States.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How did you get them?&rdquo; persisted Teresa.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I bought them for skins I got over the ridge.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn't mean that&mdash;but no matter. Then you mean to sell that
+      bearskin, don't you?&rdquo; she added.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Low had, in fact, already sold it, the proceeds having been invested in a
+      gold ring for Miss Nellie, which she scrupulously did not wear except in
+      his presence. In his singular truthfulness he would have frankly confessed
+      it to Teresa, but the secret was not his own. He contented himself with
+      saying that he had disposed of it at Indian Spring.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Teresa started, and communicated unconsciously some of her nervousness to
+      her companion. They gazed in each other's eyes with a troubled expression.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you think it was wise to sell that particular skin, which might be
+      identified?&rdquo; she asked timidly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Low knitted his arched brows, but felt a strange sense of relief. &ldquo;Perhaps
+      not,&rdquo; he said carelessly; &ldquo;but it's too late now to mend matters.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      That afternoon she wrote several letters, and tore them up. One, however,
+      she retained, and handed it to Low to post at Indian Spring, whither he
+      was going. She called his attention to the superscription, being the same
+      as the previous letter, and added, with affected gayety, &ldquo;But if the
+      answer isn't as prompt, perhaps it will be pleasanter than the last.&rdquo; Her
+      quick feminine eye noticed a little excitement in his manner and a more
+      studious attention to his dress. Only a few days before she would not have
+      allowed this to pass without some mischievous allusion to his mysterious
+      sweetheart; it troubled her greatly now to find that she could not bring
+      herself to this household pleasantry, and that her lip trembled and her
+      eye grew moist as he parted from her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The afternoon passed slowly; he had said he might not return to supper
+      until late, nevertheless a strange restlessness took possession of her as
+      the day wore on. She put aside her work, the darning of his stockings, and
+      rambled aimlessly through the woods. She had wandered she knew not how
+      far, when she was suddenly seized with the same vague sense of a foreign
+      presence which she had felt before. Could it be Curson again, with a word
+      of warning? No! she knew it was not he; so subtle had her sense become
+      that she even fancied that she detected in the invisible aura projected by
+      the unknown no significance or relation to herself or Low, and felt no
+      fear. Nevertheless she deemed it wisest to seek the protection of her
+      sylvan bower, and hurried swiftly thither.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But not so quickly nor directly that she did not once or twice pause in
+      her flight to examine the new-comer from behind a friendly trunk. He was a
+      stranger&mdash;a young fellow with a brown mustache, wearing heavy Mexican
+      spurs in his riding-boots, whose tinkling he apparently did not care to
+      conceal. He had perceived her, and was evidently pursuing her, but so
+      awkwardly and timidly that she eluded him with ease. When she had reached
+      the security of the hollow tree and pulled the curtain of bark before the
+      narrow opening, with her eye to the interstices, she waited his coming. He
+      arrived breathlessly in the open space before the tree where the bear once
+      lay; the dazed, bewildered, and half-awed expression of his face, as he
+      glanced around him and through the openings of the forest aisles, brought
+      a faint smile to her saddened face. At last he called in a
+      half-embarrassed voice:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Miss Nellie!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The smile faded from Teresa's cheek. Who was &ldquo;Miss Nellie?&rdquo; She pressed
+      her ear to the opening. &ldquo;Miss Wynn!&rdquo; the voice again called, but was lost
+      in the echoless woods. Devoured with a new gratuitous curiosity, in
+      another moment Teresa felt she would have disclosed herself at any risk,
+      but the stranger rose and began to retrace his steps. Long after his
+      tinkling spurs were lost in the distance, Teresa remained like a statue,
+      staring at the place where he had stood. Then she suddenly turned like a
+      mad woman, glanced down at the gown she was wearing, tore it from her back
+      as if it had been a polluted garment, and stamped upon it in a convulsion
+      of rage. And then, with her beautiful bare arms clasped together over her
+      head, she threw herself upon her couch in a tempest of tears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0006" id="link2HCH0006">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VI
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      When Miss Nellie reached the first mining extension of Indian Spring,
+      which surrounded it like a fosse, she descended for one instant into one
+      of its trenches, opened her parasol, removed her duster, hid it under a
+      bowlder, and with a few shivers and cat-like strokes of her soft hands not
+      only obliterated all material traces of the stolen cream of Carquinez
+      Woods, but assumed a feline demureness quite inconsistent with any moral
+      dereliction. Unfortunately, she forgot to remove at the same time a
+      certain ring from her third finger, which she had put on with her duster
+      and had worn at no other time. With this slight exception, the benignant
+      fate which always protected that young person brought her in contact with
+      the Burnham girls at one end of the main street as the returning coach to
+      Excelsior entered the other, and enabled her to take leave of them before
+      the coach office with a certain ostentation of parting which struck Mr.
+      Jack Brace, who was lingering at the doorway, into a state of utter
+      bewilderment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here was Miss Nellie Wynn, the belle of Excelsior, calm, quiet,
+      self-possessed, her chaste cambric skirts and dainty shoes as fresh as
+      when she had left her father's house; but where was the woman of the brown
+      duster, and where the yellow-dressed apparition of the woods? He was
+      feebly repeating to himself his mental adjuration of a few hours before
+      when he caught her eye, and was taken with a blush and a fit of coughing.
+      Could he have been such an egregious fool, and was it not plainly written
+      on his embarrassed face for her to read?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are we going down together?&rdquo; asked Miss Nellie with an exceptionally
+      gracious smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was neither affectation nor coquetry in this advance. The girl had
+      no idea of Brace's suspicion of her, nor did any uneasy desire to placate
+      or deceive a possible rival of Low's prompt her graciousness. She simply
+      wished to shake off in this encounter the already stale excitement of the
+      past two hours, as she had shaken the dust of the woods from her clothes.
+      It was characteristic of her irresponsible nature and transient
+      susceptibilities that she actually enjoyed the relief of change; more than
+      that, I fear, she looked upon this infidelity to a past dubious pleasure
+      as a moral principle. A mild, open flirtation with a recognized man like
+      Brace, after her secret passionate tryst with a nameless nomad like Low,
+      was an ethical equipoise that seemed proper to one of her religious
+      education.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Brace was only too happy to profit by Miss Nellie's condescension; he at
+      once secured the seat by her side, and spent the four hours and a half of
+      their return journey to Excelsior in blissful but timid communion with
+      her. If he did not dare to confess his past suspicions, he was equally
+      afraid to venture upon the boldness he had premeditated a few hours
+      before. He was therefore obliged to take a middle course of slightly
+      egotistical narration of his own personal adventures, with which he
+      beguiled the young girl's ear. This he only departed from once, to
+      describe to her a valuable grizzly bearskin which he had seen that day for
+      sale at Indian Spring, with a view to divining her possible acceptance of
+      it for a &ldquo;buggy robe;&rdquo; and once to comment upon a ring which she had
+      inadvertently disclosed in pulling off her glove.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's only an old family keepsake,&rdquo; she added, with easy mendacity; and
+      affecting to recognize in Mr. Brace's curiosity a not unnatural excuse for
+      toying with her charming fingers, she hid them in chaste and virginal
+      seclusion in her lap, until she could recover the ring and resume her
+      glove.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A week passed&mdash;a week of peculiar and desiccating heat for even those
+      dry Sierra table-lands. The long days were filled with impalpable dust and
+      acrid haze suspended in the motionless air; the nights were breathless and
+      dewless; the cold wind which usually swept down from the snow line was
+      laid to sleep over a dark monotonous level, whose horizon was pricked with
+      the eating fires of burning forest crests. The lagging coach of Indian
+      Spring drove up at Excelsior, and precipitated its passengers with an
+      accompanying cloud of dust before the Excelsior Hotel. As they emerged
+      from the coach, Mr. Brace, standing in the doorway, closely scanned their
+      begrimed and almost unrecognizable faces. They were the usual type of
+      travelers: a single professional man in dusty black, a few traders in
+      tweeds and flannels, a sprinkling of miners in red and gray shirts, a
+      Chinaman, a negro, and a Mexican packer or muleteer. This latter for a
+      moment mingled with the crowd in the bar-room, and even penetrated the
+      corridor and dining-room of the hotel, as if impelled by a certain
+      semi-civilized curiosity, and then strolled with a lazy, dragging step&mdash;half
+      impeded by the enormous leather leggings, chains, and spurs, peculiar to
+      his class&mdash;down the main street. The darkness was gathering, but the
+      muleteer indulged in the same childish scrutiny of the dimly lighted
+      shops, magazines, and saloons, and even of the occasional groups of
+      citizens at the street corners. Apparently young, as far as the outlines
+      of his figure could be seen, he seemed to show even more than the usual
+      concern of masculine Excelsior in the charms of womankind. The few female
+      figures about at that hour, or visible at window or veranda, received his
+      marked attention; he respectfully followed the two auburn-haired daughters
+      of Deacon Johnson on their way to choir meeting to the door of the church.
+      Not content with that act of discreet gallantry, after they had entered he
+      managed to slip unperceived behind them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The memorial of the Excelsior gamblers' generosity was a modern building,
+      large and pretentious, for even Mr. Wynn's popularity, and had been
+      good-humoredly known, in the characteristic language of the generous
+      donors, as one of the &ldquo;biggest religious bluffs&rdquo; on record. Its groined
+      rafters, which were so new and spicy that they still suggested their
+      native forest aisles, seldom covered more than a hundred devotees, and in
+      the rambling choir, with its bare space for the future organ, the few
+      choristers, gathered round a small harmonium, were lost in the deepening
+      shadow of that summer evening. The muleteer remained hidden in the
+      obscurity of the vestibule. After a few moments' desultory conversation,
+      in which it appeared that the unexpected absence of Miss Nellie Wynn,
+      their leader, would prevent their practicing, the choristers withdrew. The
+      stranger, who had listened eagerly, drew back in the darkness as they
+      passed out, and remained for a few moments a vague and motionless figure
+      in the silent church. Then coming cautiously to the window, the flapping
+      broad-brimmed hat was put aside, and the faint light of the dying day
+      shone in the black eyes of Teresa! Despite her face, darkened with dye and
+      disfigured with dust, the matted hair piled and twisted around her head,
+      the strange dress and boyish figure, one swift glance from under her
+      raised lashes betrayed her identity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She turned aside mechanically into the first pew, picked up and opened a
+      hymn-book. Her eyes became riveted on a name written on the title-page,
+      &ldquo;Nellie Wynn.&rdquo; HER name, and HER book. The instinct that had guided her
+      here was right; the slight gossip of her fellow-passengers was right; this
+      was the clergyman's daughter, whose praise filled all mouths. This was the
+      unknown girl the stranger was seeking, but who in turn perhaps had been
+      seeking Low&mdash;the girl who absorbed his fancy&mdash;the secret of his
+      absences, his preoccupation, his coldness! This was the girl whom to see,
+      perhaps in his arms, she was now periling her liberty and her life unknown
+      to him! A slight odor, some faint perfume of its owner, came from the
+      book; it was the same she had noticed in the dress Low had given her. She
+      flung the volume to the ground, and, throwing her arms over the back of
+      the pew before her, buried her face in her hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In that light and attitude she might have seemed some rapt acolyte
+      abandoned to self-communion. But whatever yearning her soul might have had
+      for higher sympathy or deeper consolation, I fear that the spiritual
+      Tabernacle of Excelsior and the Reverend Mr. Wynn did not meet that
+      requirement. She only felt the dry, oven-like heat of that vast shell,
+      empty of sentiment and beauty, hollow in its pretense and dreary in its
+      desolation. She only saw in it a chief altar for the glorification of this
+      girl who had absorbed even the pure worship of her companion, and
+      converted and degraded his sublime paganism to her petty creed. With a
+      woman's withering contempt for her own art displayed in another woman, she
+      thought how she herself could have touched him with the peace that the
+      majesty of their woodland aisles&mdash;so unlike this pillared sham&mdash;had
+      taught her own passionate heart, had she but dared. Mingling with this
+      imperfect theology, she felt she could have proved to him also that a
+      brunette and a woman of her experience was better than an immature blonde.
+      She began to loathe herself for coming hither, and dreaded to meet his
+      face. Here a sudden thought struck her. What if he had not come here? What
+      if she had been mistaken? What if her rash interpretation of his absence
+      from the wood that night was simple madness? What if he should return&mdash;if
+      he had already returned? She rose to her feet, whitening yet joyful with
+      the thought. She could return at once; what was the girl to her now? Yet
+      there was time to satisfy herself if he were at HER house. She had been
+      told where it was; she could find it in the dark; an open door or window
+      would betray some sign or sound of the occupants. She rose, replaced her
+      hat over her eyes, knotted her flaunting scarf around her throat, groped
+      her way to the door, and glided into the outer darkness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0007" id="link2HCH0007">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      It was quite dark when Mr. Jack Brace stopped before Father Wynn's open
+      door. The windows were also invitingly open to the wayfarer, as were the
+      pastoral counsels of Father Wynn, delivered to some favored guest within,
+      in a tone of voice loud enough for a pulpit. Jack Brace paused. The
+      visitor was the convalescent sheriff, Jim Dunn, who had publicly
+      commemorated his recovery by making his first call upon the father of his
+      inamorata. The Reverend Mr. Wynn had been expatiating upon the unremitting
+      heat of a possible precursor of forest fires, and exhibiting some catholic
+      knowledge of the designs of a Deity in that regard, and what should be the
+      policy of the Legislature, when Mr. Brace concluded to enter. Mr. Wynn and
+      the wounded man, who occupied an arm-chair by the window, were the only
+      occupants of the room. But in spite of the former's ostentatious greeting,
+      Brace could see that his visit was inopportune and unwelcome. The sheriff
+      nodded a quick, impatient recognition, which, had it not been accompanied
+      by an anathema on the heat, might have been taken as a personal insult.
+      Neither spoke of Miss Nellie, although it was patent to Brace that they
+      were momentarily expecting her. All of which went far to strengthen a
+      certain wavering purpose in his mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, ha! strong language, Mr. Dunn,&rdquo; said Father Wynn, referring to the
+      sheriff's adjuration, &ldquo;but 'out of the fullness of the heart the mouth
+      speaketh.' Job, sir, cursed, we are told, and even expressed himself in
+      vigorous Hebrew regarding his birthday. Ha, ha! I'm not opposed to that.
+      When I have often wrestled with the spirit I confess I have sometimes
+      said, 'D&mdash;n you.' Yes, sir, 'D&mdash;n you.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was something so unutterably vile in the reverend gentleman's
+      utterance and emphasis of this oath that the two men, albeit both easy and
+      facile blasphemers, felt shocked; as the purest of actresses is apt to
+      overdo the rakishness of a gay Lothario, Father Wynn's immaculate
+      conception of an imprecation was something terrible. But he added, &ldquo;The
+      law ought to interfere with the reckless use of camp-fires in the woods in
+      such weather by packers and prospectors.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It isn't so much the work of white men,&rdquo; broke in Brace, &ldquo;as it is of
+      Greasers, Chinamen, and Diggers, especially Diggers. There's that blasted
+      Low, ranges the whole Carquinez Woods as if they were his. I reckon he
+      ain't particular just where he throws his matches.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But he's not a Digger; he's a Cherokee, and only a half-breed at that,&rdquo;
+       interpolated Wynn. &ldquo;Unless,&rdquo; he added, with the artful suggestion of the
+      betrayed trust of a too credulous Christian, &ldquo;he deceived me in this as in
+      other things.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In what other things Low had deceived him he did not say; but, to the
+      astonishment of both men, Dunn growled a dissent to Brace's proposition.
+      Either from some secret irritation with that possible rival, or impatience
+      at the prolonged absence of Nellie, he had &ldquo;had enough of that sort of
+      hog-wash ladled out to him for genuine liquor.&rdquo; As to the Carquinez Woods,
+      he [Dunn] &ldquo;didn't know why Low hadn't as much right there as if he'd
+      grabbed it under a preemption law and didn't live there.&rdquo; With this hint
+      at certain speculations of Father Wynn in public lands for a homestead, he
+      added that &ldquo;If they [Brace and Wynn] could bring him along any older
+      American settler than an Indian, they might rake down his [Dunn's] pile.&rdquo;
+       Unprepared for this turn in the conversation, Wynn hastened to explain
+      that he did not refer to the pure aborigine, whose gradual extinction no
+      one regretted more than himself, but to the mongrel, who inherited only
+      the vices of civilization. &ldquo;There should be a law, sir, against the
+      mingling of races. There are men, sir, who violate the laws of the Most
+      High by living with Indian women&mdash;squaw men, sir, as they are
+      called.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dunn rose with a face livid with weakness and passion. &ldquo;Who dares say
+      that? They are a d&mdash;d sight better than sneaking Northern
+      Abolitionists, who married their daughters to buck niggers like&mdash;&rdquo;
+       But a spasm of pain withheld this Parthian shot at the politics of his two
+      companions, and he sank back helplessly in his chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An awkward silence ensued. The three men looked at each other in
+      embarrassment and confusion. Dunn felt that he had given way to a
+      gratuitous passion; Wynn had a vague presentiment that he had said
+      something that imperiled his daughter's prospects; and Brace was divided
+      between an angry retort and the secret purpose already alluded to.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's all the blasted heat,&rdquo; said Dunn, with a forced smile, pushing away
+      the whisky which Wynn had ostentatiously placed before him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course,&rdquo; said Wynn hastily; &ldquo;only it's a pity Nellie ain't here to
+      give you her smelling-salts. She ought to be back now,&rdquo; he added, no
+      longer mindful of Brace's presence; &ldquo;the coach is over-due now, though I
+      reckon the heat made Yuba Bill take it easy at the up grade.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you mean the coach from Indian Spring,&rdquo; said Brace quietly, &ldquo;it's in
+      already; but Miss Nellie didn't come on it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;May be she got out at the Crossing,&rdquo; said Wynn cheerfully; &ldquo;she sometimes
+      does.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She didn't take the coach at Indian Spring,&rdquo; returned Brace, &ldquo;because I
+      saw it leave, and passed it on Buckskin ten minutes ago, coming up the
+      hills.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She's stopped over at Burnham's,&rdquo; said Wynn reflectively. Then, in
+      response to the significant silence of his guests, he added, in a tone of
+      chagrin which his forced heartiness could not disguise, &ldquo;Well, boys, it's
+      a disappointment all round; but we must take the lesson as it comes. I'll
+      go over to the coach office and see if she's sent any word. Make
+      yourselves at home until I return.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When the door had closed behind him, Brace arose and took his hat as if to
+      go. With his hand on the lock, he turned to his rival, who, half hidden in
+      the gathering darkness, still seemed unable to comprehend his ill-luck.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you're waiting for that bald-headed fraud to come back with the truth
+      about his daughter,&rdquo; said Brace coolly, &ldquo;you'd better send for your things
+      and take up your lodgings here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean?&rdquo; said Dunn sternly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I mean that she's not at the Burnhams'; I mean that he either does or
+      does not know WHERE she is, and that in either case he is not likely to
+      give you information. But I can.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then, where is she?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In the Carquinez Woods, in the arms of the man you were just defending&mdash;Low,
+      the half-breed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The room had become so dark that from the road nothing could be
+      distinguished. Only the momentary sound of struggling feet was heard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sit down,&rdquo; said Brace's voice, &ldquo;and don't be a fool. You're too weak, and
+      it ain't a fair fight. Let go your hold. I'm not lying&mdash;I wish to God
+      I was!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was silence, and Brace resumed, &ldquo;We've been rivals, I know. May be I
+      thought my chance as good as yours. If what I say ain't truth, we'll stand
+      as we stood before; and if you're on the shoot, I'm your man when you
+      like, where you like, or on sight if you choose. But I can't bear to see
+      another man played upon as I've been played upon&mdash;given dead away as
+      I've been. It ain't on the square.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There,&rdquo; he continued, after a pause, &ldquo;that's right, now steady. Listen. A
+      week ago that girl went down just like this to Indian Spring. It was given
+      out, like this, that she went to the Burnhams'. I don't mind saying, Dunn,
+      that I went down myself, all on the square, thinking I might get a show to
+      talk to her, just as YOU might have done, you know, if you had my chance.
+      I didn't come across her anywhere. But two men that I met thought they
+      recognized her in a disguise going into the woods. Not suspecting
+      anything, I went after her; saw her at a distance in the middle of the
+      woods in another dress that I can swear to, and was just coming up to her
+      when she vanished&mdash;went like a squirrel up a tree, or down like a
+      gopher in the ground, but vanished.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is that all?&rdquo; said Dunn's voice. &ldquo;And just because you were a d&mdash;d
+      fool, or had taken a little too much whisky, you thought&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Steady. That's just what I said to myself,&rdquo; interrupted Brace coolly,
+      &ldquo;particularly when I saw her that same afternoon in another dress, saying
+      'Good-by' to the Burnhams, as fresh as a rose and as cold as those
+      snow-peaks. Only one thing&mdash;she had a ring on her finger she never
+      wore before, and didn't expect me to see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What if she did? She might have bought it. I reckon she hasn't to consult
+      you,&rdquo; broke in Dunn's voice sternly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She didn't buy it,&rdquo; continued Brace quietly. &ldquo;Low gave that Jew trader a
+      bearskin in exchange for it, and presented it to her. I found that out two
+      days afterwards. I found out that out of the whole afternoon she spent
+      less than an hour with the Burnhams. I found out that she bought a duster
+      like the disguise the two men saw her in. I found the yellow dress she
+      wore that day hanging up in Low's cabin&mdash;the place where I saw her go&mdash;THE
+      RENDEZVOUS WHERE SHE MEETS HIM. Oh, you're listenin', are you? Stop! SIT
+      DOWN!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I discovered it by accident,&rdquo; continued the voice of Brace when all was
+      again quiet; &ldquo;it was hidden as only a squirrel or an Injin can hide when
+      they improve upon nature. When I was satisfied that the girl had been in
+      the woods, I was determined to find out where she vanished, and went there
+      again. Prospecting around, I picked up at the foot of one of the biggest
+      trees this yer old memorandum-book, with grasses and herbs stuck in it. I
+      remembered that I'd heard old Wynn say that Low, like the d&mdash;d Digger
+      that he was, collected these herbs; only he pretended it was for science.
+      I reckoned the book was his and that he mightn't be far away. I lay low
+      and waited. Bimeby I saw a lizard running down the root. When he got sight
+      of me he stopped.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;D&mdash;n the lizard! What's that got to do with where she is now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Everything. That lizard had a piece of sugar in his mouth. Where did it
+      come from? I made him drop it, and calculated he'd go back for more. He
+      did. He scooted up that tree and slipped in under some hanging strips of
+      bark. I shoved 'em aside, and found an opening to the hollow where they do
+      their housekeeping.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you didn't see her there&mdash;and how do you know she is there now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I determined to make it sure. When she left to-day, I started an hour
+      ahead of her, and hid myself at the edge of the woods. An hour after the
+      coach arrived at Indian Spring, she came there in a brown duster and was
+      joined by him. I'd have followed them, but the d&mdash;d hound has the
+      ears of a squirrel, and though I was five hundred yards from him he was on
+      his guard.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Guard be blessed! Wasn't you armed? Why didn't you go for him?&rdquo; said
+      Dunn, furiously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I reckoned I'd leave that for you,&rdquo; said Brace coolly. &ldquo;If he'd killed
+      me, and if he'd even covered me with his rifle, he'd been sure to let
+      daylight through me at double the distance. I shouldn't have been any
+      better off, nor you either. If I'd killed HIM, it would have been your
+      duty as sheriff to put me in jail; and I reckon it wouldn't have broken
+      your heart, Jim Dunn, to have got rid of TWO rivals instead of one. Hullo!
+      Where are you going?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Going?&rdquo; said Dunn hoarsely. &ldquo;Going to the Carquinez Woods, by God! to
+      kill him before her. I'LL risk it, if you daren't. Let me succeed, and you
+      can hang ME and take the girl yourself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sit down, sit down. Don't be a fool, Jim Dunn! You wouldn't keep the
+      saddle a hundred yards. Did I say I wouldn't help you? No. If you're
+      willing, we'll run the risk together, but it must be in my way. Hear me.
+      I'll drive you down there in a buggy before daylight, and we'll surprise
+      them in the cabin or as they leave the wood. But you must come as if to
+      arrest him for some offense&mdash;say, as an escaped Digger from the
+      Reservation, a dangerous tramp, a destroyer of public property in the
+      forests, a suspected road agent, or anything to give you the right to hunt
+      him. The exposure of him and Nellie, don't you see, must be accidental. If
+      he resists, kill him on the spot, and nobody'll blame you; if he goes
+      peaceably with you, and you once get him in Excelsior jail, when the story
+      gets out that he's taken the belle of Excelsior for his squaw, if you'd
+      the angels for your posse you couldn't keep the boys from hanging him to
+      the first tree. What's that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He walked to the window, and looked out cautiously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If it was the old man coming back and listening,&rdquo; he said, after a pause,
+      &ldquo;it can't he helped. He'll hear it soon enough, if he don't suspect
+      something already.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look yer, Brace,&rdquo; broke in Dunn hoarsely. &ldquo;D&mdash;d if I understand you
+      or you me. That dog Low has got to answer to ME, not to the LAW! I'll take
+      my risk of killing him, on sight and on the square. I don't reckon to
+      handicap myself with a warrant, and I am not going to draw him out with a
+      lie. You hear me? That's me all the time!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you calkilate to go down thar,&rdquo; said Brace contemptuously, &ldquo;yell out
+      for him and Nellie, and let him line you on a rest from the first tree as
+      if you were a grizzly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a pause. &ldquo;What's that you were saying just now about a bearskin
+      he sold?&rdquo; asked Dunn slowly, as if reflecting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He exchanged a bearskin,&rdquo; replied Brace, &ldquo;with a single hole right over
+      the heart. He's a dead shot, I tell you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;D&mdash;n his shooting,&rdquo; said Dunn. &ldquo;I'm not thinking of that. How long
+      ago did he bring in that bearskin?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;About two weeks, I reckon. Why?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing! Look yer, Brace, you mean well&mdash;thar's my hand. I'll go
+      down with you there, but not as the sheriff. I'm going there as Jim Dunn,
+      and you can come along as a white man, to see things fixed on the square.
+      Come!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Brace hesitated. &ldquo;You'll think better of my plan before you get there; but
+      I've said I'd stand by you, and I will. Come, then. There's no time to
+      lose.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They passed out into the darkness together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What are you waiting for?&rdquo; said Dunn impatiently, as Brace, who was
+      supporting him by the arm, suddenly halted at the corner of the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Some one was listening&mdash;did you not see him? Was it the old man?&rdquo;
+       asked Brace hurriedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Blast the old man! It was only one of them Mexican packers chock-full of
+      whisky, and trying to hold up the house. What are you thinking of? We
+      shall be late.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In spite of his weakness, the wounded man hurriedly urged Brace forward,
+      until they reached the latter's lodgings. To his surprise, the horse and
+      buggy were already before the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you reckoned to go, any way?&rdquo; said Dunn, with a searching look at
+      his companion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I calkilated SOMEBODY would go,&rdquo; returned Brace, evasively, patting the
+      impatient Buckskin; &ldquo;but come in and take a drink before we leave.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dunn started out of a momentary abstraction, put his hand on his hip, and
+      mechanically entered the house. They had scarcely raised the glasses to
+      their lips when a sudden rattle of wheels was heard in the street. Brace
+      set down his glass and ran to the window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's the mare bolted,&rdquo; he said, with an oath. &ldquo;We've kept her too long
+      standing. Follow me,&rdquo; and he dashed down the staircase into the street.
+      Dunn followed with difficulty; when he reached the door he was already
+      confronted by his breathless companion. &ldquo;She's gone off on a run, and I'll
+      swear there was a man in the buggy!&rdquo; He stopped and examined the
+      halter-strap, still fastened to the fence. &ldquo;Cut! by God!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dunn turned pale with passion. &ldquo;Who's got another horse and buggy?&rdquo; he
+      demanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The new blacksmith in Main Street; but we won't get it by borrowing,&rdquo;
+       said Brace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How then?&rdquo; asked Dunn savagely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Seize it, as the sheriff of Yuba and his deputy, pursuing a confederate
+      of the Injin Low&mdash;THE HORSE THIEF!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0008" id="link2HCH0008">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VIII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The brief hour of darkness that preceded the dawn was that night
+      intensified by a dense smoke, which, after blotting out horizon and sky,
+      dropped a thick veil on the high road and the silent streets of Indian
+      Spring. As the buggy containing Sheriff Dunn and Brace dashed through the
+      obscurity, Brace suddenly turned to his companion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Some one ahead!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The two men bent forward over the dashboard. Above the steady plunging of
+      their own horse-hoofs they could hear the quicker irregular beat of other
+      hoofs in the darkness before them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's that horse thief!&rdquo; said Dunn, in a savage whisper. &ldquo;Bear to the
+      right, and hand me the whip.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A dozen cuts of the cruel lash, and their maddened horse, bounding at each
+      stroke, broke into a wild canter. The frail vehicle swayed from side to
+      side at each spring of the elastic shafts. Steadying himself by one hand
+      on the low rail, Dunn drew his revolver with the other. &ldquo;Sing out to him
+      to pull up, or we'll fire. My voice is clean gone,&rdquo; he added, in a husky
+      whisper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were so near that they could distinguish the bulk of a vehicle
+      careering from side to side in the blackness ahead. Dunn deliberately
+      raised his weapon. &ldquo;Sing out!&rdquo; he repeated impatiently. But Brace, who was
+      still keeping in the shadow, suddenly grasped his companion's arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hush! It's NOT Buckskin,&rdquo; he whispered hurriedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you sure?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;DON'T YOU SEE WE'RE GAINING ON HIM?&rdquo; replied the other contemptuously.
+      Dunn grasped his companion's hand and pressed it silently. Even in that
+      supreme moment this horseman's tribute to the fugitive Buckskin
+      forestalled all baser considerations of pursuit and capture!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In twenty seconds they were abreast of the stranger, crowding his horse
+      and buggy nearly into the ditch; Brace keenly watchful, Dunn suppressed
+      and pale. In half a minute they were leading him a length; and when their
+      horse again settled down to his steady work, the stranger was already lost
+      in the circling dust that followed them. But the victors seemed
+      disappointed. The obscurity had completely hidden all but the vague
+      outlines of the mysterious driver.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's not our game, anyway,&rdquo; whispered Dunn. &ldquo;Drive on.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But if it was some friend of his,&rdquo; suggested Brace uneasily, &ldquo;what would
+      you do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What I SAID I'd do,&rdquo; responded Dunn savagely. &ldquo;I don't want five minutes
+      to do it in, either; we'll be half an hour ahead of that d&mdash;d fool,
+      whoever he is. Look here; all you've got to do is to put me in the trail
+      to that cabin. Stand back of me, out of gun-shot, alone, if you like, as
+      my deputy, or with any number you can pick up as my posse. If he gets by
+      me as Nellie's lover, you may shoot him or take him as a horse thief, if
+      you like.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you won't shoot him on sight?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not till I've had a word with him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've chirped,&rdquo; said the sheriff gravely. &ldquo;Drive on.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For a few moments only the plunging hoofs and rattling wheels were heard.
+      A dull, lurid glow began to define the horizon. They were silent until an
+      abatement of the smoke, the vanishing of the gloomy horizon line, and a
+      certain impenetrability in the darkness ahead showed them they were
+      nearing the Carquinez Woods. But they were surprised on entering them to
+      find the dim aisles alight with a faint mystic Aurora. The tops of the
+      towering spires above them had caught the gleam of the distant forest
+      fires, and reflected it as from a gilded dome.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It would be hot work if the Carquinez Woods should conclude to take a
+      hand in this yer little game that's going on over on the Divide yonder,&rdquo;
+       said Brace, securing his horse and glancing at the spires overhead. &ldquo;I
+      reckon I'd rather take a back seat at Injin Spring when the show
+      commences.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dunn did not reply, but, buttoning his coat, placed one hand on his
+      companion's shoulder, and sullenly bade him &ldquo;lead the way.&rdquo; Advancing
+      slowly and with difficulty the desperate man might have been taken for a
+      peaceful invalid returning from an early morning stroll. His right hand
+      was buried thoughtfully in the side pocket of his coat. Only Brace knew
+      that it rested on the handle of his pistol.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From time to time the latter stopped and consulted the faint trail with a
+      minuteness that showed recent careful study. Suddenly he paused. &ldquo;I made a
+      blaze hereabouts to show where to leave the trail. There it is,&rdquo; he added,
+      pointing to a slight notch cut in the trunk of an adjoining tree.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But we've just passed one,&rdquo; said Dunn, &ldquo;if that's what you are looking
+      after, a hundred yards back.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Brace uttered an oath, and ran back in the direction signified by his
+      companion. Presently he returned with a smile of triumph.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They've suspected something. It's a clever trick, but it won't hold
+      water. That blaze which was done to muddle you was cut with an axe; this
+      which I made was done with a bowie-knife. It's the real one. We're not far
+      off now. Come on.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They proceeded cautiously, at right angles with the &ldquo;blazed&rdquo; tree, for ten
+      minutes more. The heat was oppressive; drops of perspiration rolled from
+      the forehead of the sheriff, and at times, when he attempted to steady his
+      uncertain limbs, his hands shrank from the heated, blistering bark he
+      touched with ungloved palms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here we are,&rdquo; said Brace, pausing at last. &ldquo;Do you see that biggest tree,
+      with the root stretching out halfway across to the opposite one?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, it's further to the right and abreast of the dead brush,&rdquo; interrupted
+      Dunn quickly, with a sudden revelation that this was the spot where he had
+      found the dead bear in the night Teresa escaped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's so,&rdquo; responded Brace, in astonishment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And the opening is on the other side, opposite the dead brush,&rdquo; said
+      Dunn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you know it?&rdquo; said Brace suspiciously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I reckon!&rdquo; responded Dunn, grimly. &ldquo;That's enough! Fall back!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      To the surprise of his companion, he lifted his head erect, and with a
+      strong, firm step walked directly to the tree. Reaching it, he planted
+      himself squarely before the opening.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Halloo!&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was no reply. A squirrel scampered away close to his feet. Brace,
+      far in the distance, after an ineffectual attempt to distinguish his
+      companion through the intervening trunks, took off his coat, leaned
+      against a tree, and lit a cigar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come out of that cabin!&rdquo; continued Dunn, in a clear, resonant voice.
+      &ldquo;Come out before I drag you out!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right, 'Captain Scott.' Don't shoot, and I'll come down,&rdquo; said a
+      voice as clear and as high as his own. The hanging strips of bark were
+      dashed aside, and a woman leaped lightly to the ground.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dunn staggered back. &ldquo;Teresa! by the Eternal!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was Teresa! the old Teresa! Teresa, a hundred times more vicious,
+      reckless, hysterical, extravagant, and outrageous than before. Teresa,
+      staring with tooth and eye, sunburnt and embrowned, her hair hanging down
+      her shoulders, and her shawl drawn tightly around her neck.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Teresa it is! the same old gal! Here we are again! Return of the favorite
+      in her original character! For two weeks only! Houp la! Tshk!&rdquo; and,
+      catching her yellow skirt with her fingers, she pirouetted before the
+      astounded man, and ended in a pose. Recovering himself with an effort,
+      Dunn dashed forward and seized her by the wrist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Answer me, woman! Is that Low's cabin?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who occupies it besides?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And who else?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; drawled Teresa slowly, with an extravagant affectation of modesty,
+      &ldquo;nobody else but us, I reckon. Two's company, you know, and three's none.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stop! Will you swear that there isn't a young girl, his&mdash;his
+      sweetheart&mdash;concealed there with you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The fire in Teresa's eye was genuine as she answered steadily, &ldquo;Well, it
+      ain't my style to put up with that sort of thing; at least, it wasn't over
+      at Yolo, and you know it, Jim Dunn, or I wouldn't be here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, yes,&rdquo; said Dunn hurriedly. &ldquo;But I'm a d&mdash;d fool, or worse, the
+      fool of a fool. Tell me, Teresa, is this man Low your lover?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Teresa lowered her eyes as if in maidenly confusion. &ldquo;Well, if I'd known
+      that YOU had any feeling of your own about it&mdash;if you'd spoken sooner&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Answer me, you devil!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And he has been with you here&mdash;yesterday&mdash;to-night?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Enough.&rdquo; He laughed a weak, foolish laugh, and, turning pale, suddenly
+      lapsed against a tree. He would have fallen, but with a quick instinct
+      Teresa sprang to his side, and supported him gently to a root. The action
+      over, they both looked astounded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I reckon that wasn't much like either you or me,&rdquo; said Dunn slowly, &ldquo;was
+      it? But if you'd let me drop then you'd have stretched out the biggest
+      fool in the Sierras.&rdquo; He paused, and looked at her curiously. &ldquo;What's come
+      over you; blessed if I seem to know you now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was very pale again, and quiet; that was all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Teresa! d&mdash;n it, look here! When I was laid up yonder in Excelsior I
+      said I wanted to get well for only two things. One was to hunt you down,
+      the other to marry Nellie Wynn. When I came here I thought that last thing
+      could never be. I came here expecting to find her here with Low, and kill
+      him&mdash;perhaps kill her too. I never once thought of you; not once. You
+      might have risen up before me&mdash;between me and him&mdash;and I'd have
+      passed you by. And now that I find it's all a mistake, and it was you, not
+      her, I was looking for, why&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why,&rdquo; she interrupted bitterly, &ldquo;you'll just take me, of course, to save
+      your time and earn your salary. I'm ready.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I'M not, just yet,&rdquo; he said faintly. &ldquo;Help me up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She mechanically assisted him to his feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now stand where you are,&rdquo; he added, &ldquo;and don't move beyond this tree till
+      I return.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He straightened himself with an effort, clenched his fists until the nails
+      were nearly buried in his palms, and strode with a firm, steady step in
+      the direction he had come. In a few moments he returned and stood before
+      her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've sent away my deputy&mdash;the man who brought me here, the fool who
+      thought you were Nellie. He knows now he made a mistake. But who it was he
+      mistook for Nellie he does not know, nor shall ever know, nor shall any
+      living being know, other than myself. And when I leave the wood to-day I
+      shall know it no longer. You are safe here as far as I am concerned, but I
+      cannot screen you from others prying. Let Low take you away from here as
+      soon as he can.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let him take me away? Ah, yes. For what?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To save you,&rdquo; said Dunn. &ldquo;Look here, Teresa! Without knowing it, you
+      lifted me out of hell just now, and because of the wrong I might have done
+      her&mdash;for HER sake, I spare you and shirk my duty.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For her sake!&rdquo; gasped the woman&mdash;&ldquo;for her sake! Oh, yes! Go on.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Dunn gloomily, &ldquo;I reckon perhaps you'd as lieve left me in
+      hell, for all the love you bear me. And may be you've grudge enough agin
+      me still to wish I'd found her and him together.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You think so?&rdquo; she said, turning her head away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There, d&mdash;n it! I didn't mean to make you cry. May be you wouldn't,
+      then. Only tell that fellow to take you out of this, and not run away the
+      next time he sees a man coming.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He didn't run,&rdquo; said Teresa, with flashing eyes. &ldquo;I&mdash;I&mdash;I sent
+      him away,&rdquo; she stammered. Then, suddenly turning with fury upon him, she
+      broke out, &ldquo;Run! Run from you! Ha, ha! You said just now I'd a grudge
+      against you. Well, listen, Jim Dunn. I'd only to bring you in range of
+      that young man's rifle, and you'd have dropped in your tracks like&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Like that bar, the other night,&rdquo; said Dunn, with a short laugh. &ldquo;So THAT
+      was your little game?&rdquo; He checked his laugh suddenly&mdash;a cloud passed
+      over his face. &ldquo;Look here, Teresa,&rdquo; he said, with an assumption of
+      carelessness that was as transparent as it was utterly incompatible with
+      his frank, open selfishness. &ldquo;What became of that bar? The skin&mdash;eh?
+      That was worth something?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Teresa quietly. &ldquo;Low exchanged it and got a ring for me from
+      that trader Isaacs. It was worth more, you bet. And the ring didn't fit
+      either&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; interrupted Dunn, with an almost childish eagerness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I made him take it back, and get the value in money. I hear that
+      Isaacs sold it again and made another profit; but that's like those
+      traders.&rdquo; The disingenuous candor of Teresa's manner was in exquisite
+      contrast to Dunn. He rose and grasped her hand so heartily she was forced
+      to turn her eyes away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-by!&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You look tired,&rdquo; she murmured, with a sudden gentleness that surprised
+      him; &ldquo;let me go with you a part of the way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It isn't safe for you just now,&rdquo; he said, thinking of the possible
+      consequences of the alarm Brace had raised.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not the way YOU came,&rdquo; she replied; &ldquo;but one known only to myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He hesitated only a moment. &ldquo;All right, then,&rdquo; he said finally, &ldquo;let us go
+      at once. It's suffocating here, and I seem to feel this dead bark crinkle
+      under my feet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She cast a rapid glance around her, and then seemed to sound with her eyes
+      the far-off depths of the aisles, beginning to grow pale with the
+      advancing day, but still holding a strange quiver of heat in the air. When
+      she had finished her half-abstracted scrutiny of the distance, she cast
+      one backward glance at her own cabin and stopped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you wait a moment for me?&rdquo; she asked gently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes&mdash;but&mdash;no tricks, Teresa! It isn't worth the time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked him squarely in the eyes without a word.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Enough,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;go!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was absent for some moments. He was beginning to become uneasy, when
+      she made her appearance again, clad in her old faded black dress. Her face
+      was very pale, and her eyes were swollen, but she placed his hand on her
+      shoulder, and bidding him not to fear to lean upon her, for she was quite
+      strong, led the way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You look more like yourself now, and yet&mdash;blast it all!&mdash;you
+      don't either,&rdquo; said Dunn, looking down upon her. &ldquo;You've changed in some
+      way. What is it? Is it on account of that Injin? Couldn't you have found a
+      white man in his place?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I reckon he's neither worse nor better for that,&rdquo; she replied bitterly;
+      &ldquo;and perhaps he wasn't as particular in his taste as a white man might
+      have been. But,&rdquo; she added, with a sudden spasm of her old rage, &ldquo;it's a
+      lie; he's NOT an Indian, no more than I am. Not unless being born of a
+      mother who scarcely knew him, of a father who never even saw him, and
+      being brought up among white men and wild beasts&mdash;less cruel than
+      they were&mdash;could make him one!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dunn looked at her in surprise not unmixed with admiration. &ldquo;If Nellie,&rdquo;
+       he thought, &ldquo;could but love ME like that!&rdquo; But he only said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For all that, he's an Injin. Why, look at his name. It ain't Low. It's
+      L'Eau Dormante, Sleeping Water, an Injin name.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what does that prove?&rdquo; returned Teresa. &ldquo;Only that Indians clap a
+      nick-name on any stranger, white or red, who may camp with them. Why, even
+      his own father, a white man, the wretch who begot him and abandoned him,&mdash;HE
+      had an Indian name&mdash;Loup Noir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What name did you say?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Le Loup Noir, the Black Wolf. I suppose you'd call him an Indian, too?
+      Eh! What's the matter? We're walking too fast. Stop a moment and rest.
+      There&mdash;there, lean on me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was none too soon; for, after holding him upright a moment, his limbs
+      failed, and stooping gently she was obliged to support him half reclining
+      against a tree.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Its the heat!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Give me some whisky from my flask. Never mind
+      the water,&rdquo; he added faintly, with a forced laugh, after he had taken a
+      draught at the strong spirit. &ldquo;Tell me more about the other water&mdash;the
+      Sleeping Water&mdash;you know. How do you know all this about him and his&mdash;father?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Partly from him and partly from Curson, who wrote to me about him,&rdquo; she
+      answered with some hesitation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Dunn did not seem to notice this incongruity of correspondence with a
+      former lover. &ldquo;And HE told you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; and I saw the name on an old memorandum book he has, which he says
+      belonged to his father. It's full of old accounts of some trading post on
+      the frontier. It's been missing for a day or two, but it will turn up. But
+      I can swear I saw it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dunn attempted to rise to his feet. &ldquo;Put your hand in my pocket,&rdquo; he said
+      in a hurried whisper. &ldquo;No, there!&mdash;bring out a book. There, I haven't
+      looked at it yet. Is that it?&rdquo; he added, handing her the book Brace had
+      given him a few hours before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Teresa, in surprise. &ldquo;Where did you find it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never mind! Now let me see it, quick. Open it, for my sight is failing.
+      There&mdash;thank you&mdash;that's all!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take more whisky,&rdquo; said Teresa, with a strange anxiety creeping over her.
+      &ldquo;You are faint again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wait! Listen, Teresa&mdash;lower&mdash;put your ear lower. Listen! I came
+      near killing that chap Low to-day. Wouldn't it have been ridiculous?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He tried to smile, but his head fell back. He had fainted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0009" id="link2HCH0009">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IX
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      For the first time in her life Teresa lost her presence of mind in an
+      emergency. She could only sit staring at the helpless man, scarcely
+      conscious of his condition, her mind filled with a sudden prophetic
+      intuition of the significance of his last words. In the light of that new
+      revelation she looked into his pale, haggard face for some resemblance to
+      Low, but in vain. Yet her swift feminine instinct met the objection. &ldquo;It's
+      the mother's blood that would show,&rdquo; she murmured, &ldquo;not this man's.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Recovering herself, she began to chafe his hands and temples, and
+      moistened his lips with the spirit. When his respiration returned with a
+      faint color to his cheeks, she pressed his hands eagerly and leaned over
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you sure?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of what?&rdquo; he whispered faintly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That Low is really your son?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who said so?&rdquo; he asked, opening his round eyes upon her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You did yourself, a moment ago,&rdquo; she said quickly. &ldquo;Don't you remember?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did I?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You did. Is it not so?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He smiled faintly. &ldquo;I reckon.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She held her breath in expectation. But only the ludicrousness of the
+      discovery seemed paramount to his weakened faculties. &ldquo;Isn't it just about
+      the ridiculousest thing all round?&rdquo; he said, with a feeble chuckle. &ldquo;First
+      YOU nearly kill me before you know I am Low's father; then I'm just
+      spoilin' to kill him before I know he's my son; then that god-forsaken
+      fool Jack Brace mistakes you for Nellie and Nellie for you. Ain't it just
+      the biggest thing for the boys to get hold of? But we must keep it dark
+      until after I marry Nellie, don't you see? Then we'll have a good time all
+      round, and I'll stand the drinks. Think of it, Teresha! You don' no me, I
+      do' no you, nobody knowsh anybody elsh. I try kill Lo'. Lo' wants kill
+      Nellie. No thath no ri&mdash;'&rdquo; but the potent liquor, overtaking his
+      exhausted senses, thickened, impeded, and at last stopped his speech. His
+      head slipped to her shoulder, and he became once more unconscious.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Teresa breathed again. In that brief moment she had abandoned herself to a
+      wild inspiration of hope which she could scarcely define. Not that it was
+      entirely a wild inspiration; she tried to reason calmly. What if she
+      revealed the truth to him? What if she told the wretched man before her
+      that she had deceived him; that she had overheard his conversation with
+      Brace; that she had stolen Brace's horse to bring Low warning; that,
+      failing to find Low in his accustomed haunts, or at the campfire, she had
+      left a note for him pinned to the herbarium, imploring him to fly with his
+      companion from the danger that was coming; and that, remaining on watch,
+      she had seen them both&mdash;Brace and Dunn&mdash;approaching, and had
+      prepared to meet them at the cabin? Would this miserable and maddened man
+      understand her self-abnegation? Would he forgive Low and Nellie?&mdash;she
+      did not ask for herself. Or would the revelation turn his brain, if it did
+      not kill him outright? She looked at the sunken orbits of his eyes and
+      hectic on his cheek, and shuddered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Why was this added to the agony she already suffered? She had been willing
+      to stand between them with her life, her liberty, and even&mdash;the hot
+      blood dyed her cheek at the thought&mdash;with the added shame of being
+      thought the cast-off mistress of that man's son. Yet all this she had
+      taken upon herself in expiation of something&mdash;she knew not clearly
+      what; no, for nothing&mdash;only for HIM. And yet this very situation
+      offered her that gleam of hope which had thrilled her; a hope so wild in
+      its improbability, so degrading in its possibility, that at first she knew
+      not whether despair was not preferable to its shame. And yet was it
+      unreasonable? She was no longer passionate; she would be calm and think it
+      out fairly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She would go to Low at once. She would find him somewhere&mdash;and even
+      if with that girl, what mattered?&mdash;and she would tell him all. When
+      he knew that the life and death of his father lay in the scale, would he
+      let his brief, foolish passion for Nellie stand in the way? Even if he
+      were not influenced by filial affection or mere compassion, would his
+      pride let him stoop to a rivalry with the man who had deserted his youth?
+      Could he take Dunn's promised bride, who must have coquetted with him to
+      have brought him to this miserable plight? Was this like the calm, proud
+      young god she knew? Yet she had an uneasy instinct that calm, proud young
+      gods and goddesses did things like this, and felt the weakness of her
+      reasoning flush her own conscious cheek.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Teresa!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She started. Dunn was awake, and was gazing at her curiously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was reckoning it was the only square thing for Low to stop this
+      promiscuous picnicking here and marry you out and out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Marry me!&rdquo; said Teresa in a voice that, with all her efforts, she could
+      not make cynical.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he repeated, &ldquo;after I've married Nellie; tote you down to San
+      Angeles, and there take my name like a man, and give it to you. Nobody'll
+      ask after TERESA, sure&mdash;you bet your life. And if they do, and he
+      can't stop their jaw, just you call on the old man. It's mighty queer,
+      ain't it, Teresa, to think of your being my daughter-in-law?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It seemed here as if he was about to lapse again into unconsciousness over
+      the purely ludicrous aspect of the subject, but he haply recovered his
+      seriousness. &ldquo;He'll have as much money from me as he wants to go into
+      business with. What's his line of business, Teresa?&rdquo; asked this
+      prospective father-in-law, in a large, liberal way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is a botanist!&rdquo; said Teresa, with a sudden childish animation that
+      seemed to keep up the grim humor of the paternal suggestion; &ldquo;and oh, he
+      is too poor to buy books! I sent for one or two for him myself, the other
+      day&mdash;&rdquo; she hesitated&mdash;&ldquo;it was all the money I had, but it wasn't
+      enough for him to go on with his studies.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dunn looked at her sparkling eyes and glowing cheeks, and became
+      thoughtful. &ldquo;Curson must have been a d&mdash;d fool,&rdquo; he said finally.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Teresa remained silent. She was beginning to be impatient and uneasy,
+      fearing some mischance that might delay her dreaded, yet longed-for
+      meeting with Low. Yet she could not leave this sick and exhausted man, HIS
+      FATHER, now bound to her by more than mere humanity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Couldn't you manage,&rdquo; she said gently, &ldquo;to lean on me a few steps
+      further, until I could bring you to a cooler spot and nearer assistance?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He nodded. She lifted him almost like a child to his feet. A spasm of pain
+      passed over his face. &ldquo;How far is it?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not more than ten minutes,&rdquo; she replied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can make a spurt for that time,&rdquo; he said coolly, and began to walk
+      slowly but steadily on. Only his face, which was white and set, and the
+      convulsive grip of his hand on her arm betrayed the effort. At the end of
+      ten minutes she stopped. They stood before the splintered,
+      lightning-scarred shaft in the opening of the woods, where Low had built
+      her first camp-fire. She carefully picked up the herbarium, but her quick
+      eye had already detected in the distance, before she had allowed Dunn to
+      enter the opening with her, that her note was gone. Low had been there
+      before them; he had been warned, as his absence from the cabin showed; he
+      would not return there. They were free from interruption&mdash;but where
+      had he gone?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sick man drew a long breath of relief as she seated him in the
+      clover-grown hollow where she had slept the second night of her stay.
+      &ldquo;It's cooler than those cursed woods,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I suppose it's because
+      it's a little like a grave. What are you going to do now?&rdquo; he added, as
+      she brought a cup of water and placed it at his side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am going to leave you here for a little while,&rdquo; she said cheerfully,
+      but with a pale face and nervous hands. &ldquo;I'm going to leave you while I
+      seek Low.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The sick man raised his head. &ldquo;I'm good for a spurt, Teresa, like that
+      I've just got through, but I don't think I'm up to a family party.
+      Couldn't you issue cards later on?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don't understand,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I'm going to get Low to send some one
+      of your friends to you here. I don't think he'll begrudge leaving HER a
+      moment for that,&rdquo; she added to herself bitterly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's that you're saying?&rdquo; he queried, with the nervous quickness of an
+      invalid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing&mdash;but that I'm going now.&rdquo; She turned her face aside to hide
+      her moistened eyes. &ldquo;Wish me good luck, won't you?&rdquo; she asked, half sadly,
+      half pettishly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come here!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She came and bent over him. He suddenly raised his hands, and, drawing her
+      face down to his own, kissed her forehead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Give that to HIM,&rdquo; he whispered, &ldquo;from ME.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She turned and fled, happily for her sentiment, not hearing the feeble
+      laugh that followed, as Dunn, in sheer imbecility, again referred to the
+      extravagant ludicrousness of the situation. &ldquo;It is about the biggest thing
+      in the way of a sell all round,&rdquo; he repeated, lying on his back,
+      confidentially to the speck of smoke-obscured sky above him. He pictured
+      himself repeating it, not to Nellie&mdash;her severe propriety might at
+      last overlook the fact, but would not tolerate the joke&mdash;but to her
+      father! It would be one of those characteristic Californian jokes Father
+      Wynn would admire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To his exhaustion fever presently succeeded, and he began to grow
+      restless. The heat too seemed to invade his retreat, and from time to time
+      the little patch of blue sky was totally obscured by clouds of smoke. He
+      amused himself with watching a lizard who was investigating a folded piece
+      of paper, whose elasticity gave the little creature lively apprehensions
+      of its vitality. At last he could stand the stillness of his retreat and
+      his supine position no longer, and rolled himself out of the bed of leaves
+      that Teresa had so carefully prepared for him. He rose to his feet stiff
+      and sore, and, supporting himself by the nearest tree, moved a few steps
+      from the dead ashes of the camp-fire. The movement frightened the lizard,
+      who abandoned the paper and fled. With a satirical recollection of Brace
+      and his &ldquo;ridiculous&rdquo; discovery through the medium of this animal, he
+      stooped and picked up the paper. &ldquo;Like as not,&rdquo; he said to himself, with
+      grim irony, &ldquo;these yer lizards are in the discovery business. P'r'aps this
+      may lead to another mystery,&rdquo; and he began to unfold the paper with a
+      smile. But the smile ceased as his eye suddenly caught his own name.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A dozen lines were written in pencil on what seemed to be a blank leaf
+      originally torn from some book. He trembled so that he was obliged to sit
+      down to read these words:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When you get this keep away from the woods. Dunn and another man are in
+      deadly pursuit of you and your companion. I overheard their plan to
+      surprise you in our cabin. DON'T GO THERE, and I will delay them and put
+      them off the scent. Don't mind me. God bless you, and if you never see me
+      again think sometimes of
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;TERESA.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His trembling ceased; he did not start, but rose in an abstracted way, and
+      made a few deliberate steps in the direction Teresa had gone. Even then he
+      was so confused that he was obliged to refer to the paper again, but with
+      so little effect that he could only repeat the last words, &ldquo;think
+      sometimes of Teresa.&rdquo; He was conscious that this was not all; he had a
+      full conviction of being deceived, and knew that he held the proof in his
+      hand, but he could not formulate it beyond that sentence. &ldquo;Teresa&rdquo;&mdash;yes,
+      he would think of her. She would explain it. And here she was returning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In that brief interval her face and manner had again changed. Her face was
+      pale and quite breathless. She cast a swift glance at Dunn and the paper
+      he mechanically held out, walked up to him, and tore it from his hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; she said hoarsely, &ldquo;what are you going to do about it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He attempted to speak, but his voice failed him. Even then he was
+      conscious that if he had spoken he would have only repeated, &ldquo;think
+      sometimes of Teresa.&rdquo; He looked longingly but helplessly at the spot where
+      she had thrown the paper, as if it had contained his unuttered words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she went on to herself, as if he was a mute, indifferent spectator&mdash;&ldquo;yes,
+      they're gone. That ends it all. The game's played out. Well!&rdquo; suddenly
+      turning upon him, &ldquo;now you know it all. Your Nellie WAS here with him, and
+      is with him now. Do you hear? Make the most of it; you've lost them&mdash;but
+      here I am.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he said eagerly&mdash;&ldquo;yes, Teresa.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She stopped, stared at him; then taking him by the hand led him like a
+      child back to his couch. &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; she said, in half-savage explanation, &ldquo;I
+      told you the truth when I said the girl wasn't at the cabin last night,
+      and that I didn't know her. What are you glowerin' at? No! I haven't lied
+      to you, I swear to God, except in one thing. Did you know what that was?
+      To save him I took upon me a shame I don't deserve. I let you think I was
+      his mistress. You think so now, don't you? Well, before God to-day&mdash;and
+      He may take me when He likes&mdash;I'm no more to him than a sister! I
+      reckon your Nellie can't say as much.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She turned away, and with the quick, impatient stride of some caged animal
+      made the narrow circuit of the opening, stopping a moment mechanically
+      before the sick man, and again, without looking at him, continuing her
+      monotonous round. The heat had become excessive, but she held her shawl
+      with both hands drawn tightly over her shoulders. Suddenly a wood-duck
+      darted out of the covert blindly into the opening, struck against the
+      blasted trunk, fell half stunned near her feet, and then, recovering,
+      fluttered away. She had scarcely completed another circuit before the
+      irruption was followed by a whirring bevy of quail, a flight of jays, and
+      a sudden tumult of wings swept through the wood like a tornado. She turned
+      inquiringly to Dunn, who had risen to his feet, but the next moment she
+      caught convulsively at his wrist; a wolf had just dashed through the
+      underbrush not a dozen yards away, and on either side of them they could
+      hear the scamper and rustle of hurrying feet like the outburst of a summer
+      shower. A cold wind arose from the opposite direction, as if to contest
+      this wild exodus, but it was followed by a blast of sickening heat. Teresa
+      sank at Dunn's feet in an agony of terror.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't let them touch me!&rdquo; she gasped; &ldquo;keep them off! Tell me, for God's
+      sake, what has happened!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He laid his hand firmly on her arm, and lifted her in his turn to her feet
+      like a child. In that supreme moment of physical danger, his strength,
+      reason, and manhood returned in their plenitude of power. He pointed
+      coolly to the trail she had quitted, and said,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Carquinez Woods are on fire!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0010" id="link2HCH0010">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER X
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The nest of the tuneful Burnhams, although in the suburbs of Indian
+      Spring, was not in ordinary weather and seasons hidden from the longing
+      eyes of the youth of that settlement. That night, however, it was veiled
+      in the smoke that encompassed the great highway leading to Excelsior. It
+      is presumed that the Burnham brood had long since folded their wings, for
+      there was no sign of life nor movement in the house as a rapidly-driven
+      horse and buggy pulled up before it. Fortunately, the paternal Burnham was
+      an early bird, in the habit of picking up the first stirring mining worm,
+      and a resounding knock brought him half dressed to the street door. He was
+      startled at seeing Father Wynn before him, a trifle flushed and
+      abstracted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah ha! up betimes, I see, and ready. No sluggards here&mdash;ha, ha!&rdquo; he
+      said heartily, slamming the door behind him, and by a series of pokes in
+      the ribs genially backing his host into his own sitting-room. &ldquo;I'm up,
+      too, and am here to see Nellie. She's here, eh&mdash;of course?&rdquo; he added,
+      darting a quick look at Burnham.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Mr. Burnham was one of those large, liberal Western husbands who
+      classified his household under the general title of &ldquo;woman folk,&rdquo; for the
+      integers of which he was not responsible. He hesitated, and then
+      propounded over the balusters to the upper story the direct query&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don't happen to have Nellie Wynn up there, do ye?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was an interval of inquiry proceeding from half a dozen reluctant
+      throats, more or less cottony and muffled, in those various degrees of
+      grievance and mental distress which indicate too early roused young
+      womanhood. The eventual reply seemed to be affirmative, albeit accompanied
+      with a suppressed giggle, as if the young lady had just been discovered as
+      an answer to an amusing conundrum.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right,&rdquo; said Wynn, with an apparent accession of boisterous
+      geniality. &ldquo;Tell her I must see her, and I've only got a few minutes to
+      spare. Tell her to slip on anything and come down; there's no one here but
+      myself, and I've shut the front door on Brother Burnham. Ha, ha!&rdquo; and
+      suiting the action to the word, he actually bundled the admiring Brother
+      Burnham out on his own doorstep. There was a light pattering on the
+      staircase, and Nellie Wynn, pink with sleep, very tall, very slim, hastily
+      draped in a white counterpane with a blue border and a general classic
+      suggestion, slipped into the parlor. At the same moment her father shut
+      the door behind her, placed one hand on the knob, and with the other
+      seized her wrist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where were you yesterday?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nellie looked at him, shrugged her shoulders, and said, &ldquo;Here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You were in the Carquinez Woods with Low Dorman; you went there in
+      disguise; you've met him there before. He is your clandestine lover; you
+      have taken pledges of affection from him; you have&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stop!&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stopped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did he tell you this?&rdquo; she asked, with an expression of disdain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; I overheard it. Dunn and Brace were at the house waiting for you.
+      When the coach did not bring you, I went to the office to inquire. As I
+      left our door I thought I saw somebody listening at the parlor windows. It
+      was only a drunken Mexican muleteer leaning against the house; but if HE
+      heard nothing, I did. Nellie, I heard Brace tell Dunn that he had tracked
+      you in your disguise to the woods&mdash;do you hear? that when you
+      pretended to be here with the girls you were with Low&mdash;alone; that
+      you wear a ring that Low got of a trader here; that there was a cabin in
+      the woods&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stop!&rdquo; she repeated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wynn again paused.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what did YOU do?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I heard they were starting down there to surprise you and him together,
+      and I harnessed up and got ahead of them in my buggy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And found me here,&rdquo; she said, looking full into his eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He understood her and returned the look. He recognized the full importance
+      of the culminating fact conveyed in her words, and was obliged to content
+      himself with its logical and worldly significance. It was too late now to
+      take her to task for mere filial disobedience; they must become allies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he said hurriedly; &ldquo;but if you value your reputation, if you wish
+      to silence both these men, answer me fully.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go on,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you go to the cabin in the woods yesterday?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you ever go there with Low?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; I do not know even where it is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Wynn felt that she was telling the truth. Nellie knew it; but as she would
+      have been equally satisfied with an equally efficacious falsehood, her
+      face remained unchanged.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And when did he leave you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At nine o'clock, here. He went to the hotel.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He saved his life, then, for Dunn is on his way to the woods to kill
+      him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The jeopardy of her lover did not seem to affect the young girl with
+      alarm, although her eyes betrayed some interest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then Dunn has gone to the woods?&rdquo; she said thoughtfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has,&rdquo; replied Wynn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is that all?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want to know what you are going to do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I WAS going back to bed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is no time for trifling, girl.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should think not,&rdquo; she said, with a yawn; &ldquo;it's too early, or too
+      late.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Wynn grasped her wrist more tightly. &ldquo;Hear me! Put whatever face you like
+      on this affair, you are compromised&mdash;and compromised with a man you
+      can't marry.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know that I ever wanted to marry Low, if you mean him,&rdquo; she said
+      quietly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And Dunn wouldn't marry you now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm not so sure of that, either.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nellie,&rdquo; said Wynn excitedly, &ldquo;do you want to drive me mad? Have you
+      nothing to say&mdash;nothing to suggest?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, you want me to help you, do you! Why didn't you say that first? Well,
+      go and bring Dunn here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you mad? The man has gone already in pursuit of your lover, believing
+      you with him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then he will the more readily come and talk with me without him. Will you
+      take the invitation&mdash;yes or no?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, but&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Enough. On your way there you will stop at the hotel and give Low a
+      letter from me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nellie!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You shall read it, of course,&rdquo; she said scornfully, &ldquo;for it will be your
+      text for the conversation you will have with him. Will you please take
+      your hand from the lock and open the door?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Wynn mechanically opened the door. The young girl flew up-stairs. In a
+      very few moments she returned with two notes: one contained a few lines of
+      formal invitation to Dunn; the other read as follows:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;DEAR MR. DORMAN,&mdash;My father will tell you how deeply I regret that
+      our recent botanical excursions in the Carquinez Woods have been a source
+      of serious misapprehensions to those who had a claim to my consideration,
+      and that I shall be obliged to discontinue them for the future. At the
+      same time he wishes me to express my gratitude for your valuable
+      instruction and assistance in that pleasing study, even though approaching
+      events may compel me to relinquish it for other duties. May I beg you to
+      accept the inclosed ring as a slight recognition of my obligations to you?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your grateful pupil,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;NELLIE WYNN.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When he had finished reading the letter, she handed him a ring, which he
+      took mechanically. He raised his eyes to hers with perfectly genuine
+      admiration. &ldquo;You're a good girl, Nellie,&rdquo; he said, and, in a moment of
+      parental forgetfulness, unconsciously advanced his lips towards her cheek.
+      But she drew back in time to recall him to a sense of that human weakness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose I'll have time for a nap yet,&rdquo; she said, as a gentle hint to
+      her embarrassed parent. He nodded and turned towards the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I were you,&rdquo; she continued, repressing a yawn, &ldquo;I'd manage to be seen
+      on good terms with Low at the hotel; so perhaps you need not give the
+      letter to him until the last thing. Good-by.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The sitting-room door opened and closed behind her as she slipped
+      up-stairs, and her father, without the formality of leave-taking, quietly
+      let himself out by the front door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he drove into the high road again, however, an overlooked possibility
+      threatened for a moment to indefinitely postpone his amiable intentions
+      regarding Low. The hotel was at the further end of the settlement towards
+      the Carquinez Woods, and as Wynn had nearly reached it he was recalled to
+      himself by the sounds of hoofs and wheels rapidly approaching from the
+      direction of the Excelsior turnpike. Wynn made no doubt it was the sheriff
+      and Brace. To avoid recognition at that moment, he whipped up his horse,
+      intending to keep the lead until he could turn into the first cross-road.
+      But the coming travelers had the fleetest horse, and finding it impossible
+      to distance them he drove close to the ditch, pulling up suddenly as the
+      strange vehicle was abreast of him, and forcing them to pass him at full
+      speed, with the result already chronicled. When they had vanished in the
+      darkness, Mr. Wynn, with a heart overflowing with Christian thankfulness
+      and universal benevolence, wheeled round, and drove back to the hotel he
+      had already passed. To pull up at the veranda with a stentorian shout, to
+      thump loudly at the deserted bar, to hilariously beat the panels of the
+      landlord's door, and commit a jocose assault and battery upon that
+      half-dresssed and half-awakened man, was eminently characteristic of Wynn,
+      and part of his amiable plans that morning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Something to wash this wood smoke from my throat, Brother Carter, and
+      about as much again to prop open your eyes,&rdquo; he said, dragging Carter
+      before the bar, &ldquo;and glasses round for as many of the boys as are up and
+      stirring after a hard-working Christian's rest. How goes the honest
+      publican's trade, and who have we here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thar's Judge Robinson and two lawyers from Sacramento, Dick Curson over
+      from Yolo,&rdquo; said Carter, &ldquo;and that ar young Injin yarb doctor from the
+      Carquinez Woods. I reckon he's jist up&mdash;I noticed a light under his
+      door as I passed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's my man for a friendly chat before breakfast,&rdquo; said Wynn. &ldquo;You
+      needn't come up. I'll find the way. I don't want a light; I reckon my eyes
+      ain't as bright nor as young as his, but they'll see almost as far in the
+      dark&mdash;he! he!&rdquo; And, nodding to Brother Carter, he strode along the
+      passage, and with no other introduction than a playful and preliminary
+      &ldquo;Boo!&rdquo; burst into one of the rooms. Low, who by the light of a single
+      candle was bending over the plates of a large quarto, merely raised his
+      eyes and looked at the intruder. The young man's natural imperturbability,
+      always exasperating to Wynn, seemed accented that morning by contrast with
+      his own over-acted animation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah ha!&mdash;wasting the midnight oil instead of imbibing the morning
+      dews,&rdquo; said Father Wynn archly, illustrating his metaphor with a movement
+      of his hand to his lips. &ldquo;What have we here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;An anonymous gift,&rdquo; replied Low simply, recognizing the father of Nellie
+      by rising from his chair. &ldquo;It's a volume I've longed to possess, but never
+      could afford to buy. I cannot imagine who sent it to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Wynn was for a moment startled by the thought that this recipient of
+      valuable gifts might have influential friends. But a glance at the bare
+      room, which looked like a camp, and the strange, unconventional garb of
+      its occupant, restored his former convictions. There might be a promise of
+      intelligence, but scarcely of prosperity, in the figure before him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! We must not forget that we are watched over in the night season,&rdquo; he
+      said, laying his hand on Low's shoulder, with an illustration of celestial
+      guardianship that would have been impious but for its palpable
+      grotesqueness. &ldquo;No, sir, we know not what a day may bring forth.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Unfortunately, Low's practical mind did not go beyond a mere human
+      interpretation. It was enough, however, to put a new light in his eye and
+      a faint color in his cheek.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Could it have been Miss Nellie?&rdquo; he asked, with half-boyish hesitation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Wynn was too much of a Christian not to bow before what appeared to
+      him the purely providential interposition of this suggestion. Seizing it
+      and Low at the same moment, he playfully forced him down again in his
+      chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, you rascal!&rdquo; he said, with infinite archness; &ldquo;that's your game, is
+      it? You want to trap poor Father Wynn. You want to make him say 'No.' You
+      want to tempt him to commit himself. No, sir!&mdash;never, sir!&mdash;no,
+      no!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Firmly convinced that the present was Nellie's, and that her father only
+      good-humoredly guessed it, the young man's simple, truthful nature was
+      embarrassed. He longed to express his gratitude, but feared to betray the
+      young girl's trust. The Reverend Mr. Wynn speedily relieved his mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; he continued, bestriding a chair, and familiarly confronting Low
+      over its back. &ldquo;No, sir&mdash;no! And you want me to say 'No,' don't you,
+      regarding the little walks of Nellie and a certain young man in the
+      Carquinez Woods?&mdash;ha, ha! You'd like me to say that I knew nothing of
+      the botanizings, and the herb collectings, and the picknickings there&mdash;he,
+      he!&mdash;you sly dog! Perhaps you'd like to tempt Father Wynn further,
+      and make him swear he knows nothing of his daughter disguising herself in
+      a duster and meeting another young man&mdash;isn't it another young man?&mdash;all
+      alone, eh? Perhaps you want poor old Father Wynn to say No. No, sir,
+      nothing of the kind ever occurred. Ah, you young rascal!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Slightly troubled, in spite of Wynn's hearty manner, Low, with his usual
+      directness, however, said, &ldquo;I do not want anyone to deny that I have seen
+      Miss Nellie.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly, certainly,&rdquo; said Wynn, abandoning his method, considerably
+      disconcerted by Low's simplicity, and a certain natural reserve that shook
+      off his familiarity. &ldquo;Certainly it's a noble thing to be able to put your
+      hand on your heart and say to the world, 'Come on, all of you! Observe me;
+      I have nothing to conceal. I walk with Miss Wynn in the woods as her
+      instructor&mdash;her teacher, in fact. We cull a flower here and there; we
+      pluck an herb fresh from the hands of the Creator. We look, so to speak,
+      from Nature to Nature's God.' Yes, my young friend, we should be the first
+      to repel the foul calumny that could misinterpret our most innocent
+      actions.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Calumny?&rdquo; repeated Low, starting to his feet. &ldquo;What calumny?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My friend, my noble young friend, I recognize your indignation. I know
+      your worth. When I said to Nellie, my only child, my perhaps too simple
+      offspring&mdash;a mere wildflower like yourself&mdash;when I said to her,
+      'Go, my child, walk in the woods with this young man, hand in hand. Let
+      him instruct you from the humblest roots, for he has trodden in the ways
+      of the Almighty. Gather wisdom from his lips, and knowledge from his
+      simple woodman's craft. Make, in fact, a collection not only of herbs, but
+      of moral axioms and experience'&mdash;I knew I could trust you, and,
+      trusting you, my young friend, I felt I could trust the world. Perhaps I
+      was weak, foolish. But I thought only of her welfare. I even recall how
+      that to preserve the purity of her garments, I bade her don a simple
+      duster; that, to secure her from the trifling companionship of others, I
+      bade her keep her own counsel, and seek you at seasons known but to
+      yourselves.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But . . . did Nellie . . . understand you?&rdquo; interrupted Low hastily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see you read her simple nature. Understand me? No, not at first! Her
+      maidenly instinct&mdash;perhaps her duty to another&mdash;took the alarm.
+      I remember her words. 'But what will Dunn say?' she asked. 'Will he not be
+      jealous?'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dunn! jealous! I don't understand,&rdquo; said Low, fixing his eyes on Wynn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's just what I said to Nellie. 'Jealous!' I said. 'What, Dunn, your
+      affianced husband, jealous of a mere friend&mdash;a teacher, a guide, a
+      philosopher. It is impossible.' Well, sir, she was right. He is jealous.
+      And, more than that, he has imparted his jealousy to others! In other
+      words, he has made a scandal!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Low's eyes flashed. &ldquo;Where is your daughter now?&rdquo; he said sternly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At present in bed, suffering from a nervous attack brought on by these
+      unjust suspicions. She appreciates your anxiety, and, knowing that you
+      could not see her, told me to give you this.&rdquo; He handed Low the ring and
+      the letter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The climax had been forced, and, it must be confessed, was by no means the
+      one Mr. Wynn had fully arranged in his own inner consciousness. He had
+      intended to take an ostentatious leave of Low in the bar-room, deliver the
+      letter with archness, and escape before a possible explosion. He
+      consequently backed towards the door for an emergency. But he was again at
+      fault. That unaffected stoical fortitude in acute suffering, which was the
+      one remaining pride and glory of Low's race, was yet to be revealed to
+      Wynn's civilized eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The young man took the letter, and read it without changing a muscle,
+      folded the ring in it, and dropped it into his haversack. Then he picked
+      up his blanket, threw it over his shoulder, took his trusty rifle in his
+      hand, and turned towards Wynn as if coldly surprised that he was still
+      standing there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you&mdash;are you&mdash;going?&rdquo; stammered Wynn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you NOT?&rdquo; replied Low dryly, leaning on his rifle for a moment as if
+      waiting for Wynn to precede him. The preacher looked at him a moment,
+      mumbled something, and then shambled feebly and ineffectively down the
+      staircase before Low, with a painful suggestion to the ordinary observer
+      of being occasionally urged thereto by the moccasin of the young man
+      behind him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On reaching the lower hall, however, he endeavored to create a diversion
+      in his favor by dashing into the bar-room and clapping the occupants on
+      the back with indiscriminate playfulness. But here again he seemed to be
+      disappointed. To his great discomfiture, a large man not only returned his
+      salutation with powerful levity, but with equal playfulness seized him in
+      his arms, and after an ingenious simulation of depositing him in the
+      horse-trough set him down in affected amazement. &ldquo;Bleth't if I didn't
+      think from the weight of your hand it wath my old friend, Thacramento
+      Bill,&rdquo; said Curson apologetically, with a wink at the bystanders. &ldquo;That'th
+      the way Bill alwayth uthed to tackle hith friendth, till he wath one day
+      bounthed by a prithe-fighter in Frithco, whom he had mithtaken for a
+      mithionary.&rdquo; As Mr. Curson's reputation was of a quality that made any
+      form of apology from him instantly acceptable, the amused spectators made
+      way for him as, recognizing Low, who was just leaving the hotel, he turned
+      coolly from them and walked towards him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Halloo!&rdquo; he said, extending his hand. &ldquo;You're the man I'm waiting for.
+      Did you get a book from the exthpreth offithe latht night?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I did. Why?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It'th all right. Ath I'm rethponthible for it, I only wanted to know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did YOU send it?&rdquo; asked Low, quickly fixing his eyes on his face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, not exactly ME. But it'th not worth making a mythtery of it.
+      Teretha gave me a commithion to buy it and thend it to you anonymouthly.
+      That'th a woman'th nonthenth, for how could thee get a retheipt for it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then it was HER present,&rdquo; said Low gloomily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of courthe. It wathn't mine, my boy. I'd have thent you a Tharp'th rifle
+      in plathe of that muthle loader you carry, or thomething thenthible. But,
+      I thay! what'th up? You look ath if you had been running all night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Low grasped his hand. &ldquo;Thank you,&rdquo; he said hurriedly; &ldquo;but it's nothing.
+      Only I must be back to the woods early. Good-by.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Curson retained Low's hand in his own powerful grip.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll go with you a bit further,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;In fact, I've got thomething
+      to thay to you; only don't be in thuch a hurry; the woodth can wait till
+      you get there.&rdquo; Quietly compelling Low to alter his own characteristic
+      Indian stride to keep pace with his, he went on: &ldquo;I don't mind thaying I
+      rather cottoned to you from the time you acted like a white man&mdash;no
+      offenthe&mdash;to Teretha. She thayth you were left when a child lying
+      round, jutht ath promithcuouthly ath she wath; and if I can do anything
+      towardth putting you on the trail of your people, I'll do it. I know thome
+      of the voyageurth who traded with the Cherokeeth, and your father wath
+      one-wathn't he?&rdquo; He glanced at Low's utterly abstracted and immobile face.
+      &ldquo;I thay, you don't theem to take a hand in thith game, pardner. What'th
+      the row? Ith anything wrong over there?&rdquo; and he pointed to the Carquinez
+      Woods, which were just looming out of the morning horizon in the distance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Low stopped. The last words of his companion seemed to recall him to
+      himself. He raised his eyes automatically to the woods and started.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There IS something wrong over there,&rdquo; he said breathlessly. &ldquo;Look!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thee nothing,&rdquo; said Curson, beginning to doubt Low's sanity; &ldquo;nothing
+      more than I thaw an hour ago.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look again. Don't you see that smoke rising straight up? It isn't blown
+      over there from the Divide; it's new smoke! The fire is in the woods!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I reckon that'th so,&rdquo; muttered Curson, shading his eyes with his hand.
+      &ldquo;But, hullo! wait a minute! We'll get hortheth. I say!&rdquo; he shouted,
+      forgetting his lisp in his excitement&mdash;&ldquo;stop!&rdquo; But Low had already
+      lowered his head and darted forward like an arrow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a few moments he had left not only his companion but the last
+      straggling houses of the outskirts far behind him, and had struck out in a
+      long, swinging trot for the disused &ldquo;cut-off.&rdquo; Already he fancied he heard
+      the note of clamor in Indian Spring, and thought he distinguished the
+      sound of hurrying hoofs on the great highway. But the sunken trail hid it
+      from his view. From the column of smoke now plainly visible in the growing
+      morning light he tried to locate the scene of the conflagration. It was
+      evidently not a fire advancing regularly from the outer skirt of the wood,
+      communicated to it from the Divide; it was a local outburst near its
+      centre. It was not in the direction of his cabin in the tree. There was no
+      immediate danger to Teresa, unless fear drove her beyond the confines of
+      the wood into the hands of those who might recognize her. The screaming of
+      jays and ravens above his head quickened his speed, as it heralded the
+      rapid advance of the flames; and the unexpected apparition of a bounding
+      body, flattened and flying over the yellow plain, told him that even the
+      secure retreat of the mountain wild-cat had been invaded. A sudden
+      recollection of Teresa's uncontrollable terror that first night smote him
+      with remorse and redoubled his efforts. Alone in the track of these
+      frantic and bewildered beasts, to what madness might she not be driven!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sharp crack of a rifle from the high road turned his course
+      momentarily in that direction. The smoke was curling lazily over the heads
+      of the party of men in the road, while the huge hulk of a grizzly was
+      disappearing in the distance. A battue of the escaping animals had
+      commenced! In the bitterness of his heart he caught at the horrible
+      suggestion, and resolved to save her from them or die with her there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How fast he ran, or the time it took him to reach the woods, has never
+      been known. Their outlines were already hidden when he entered them. To a
+      sense less keen, a courage less desperate, and a purpose less unaltered
+      than Low's, the wood would have been impenetrable. The central fire was
+      still confined to the lofty tree tops, but the downward rush of wind from
+      time to time drove the smoke into the aisles in blinding and suffocating
+      volumes. To simulate the creeping animals, and fall to the ground on hands
+      and knees, feel his way through the underbrush when the smoke was densest,
+      or take advantage of its momentary lifting, and without uncertainty,
+      mistake, or hesitation glide from tree to tree in one undeviating course,
+      was possible only to an experienced woodsman. To keep his reason and
+      insight so clear as to be able in the midst of this bewildering confusion
+      to shape that course so as to intersect the wild and unknown tract of an
+      inexperienced, frightened wanderer belonged to Low, and Low alone. He was
+      making his way against the wind towards the fire. He had reasoned that she
+      was either in comparative safety to windward of it, or he should meet her
+      being driven towards him by it, or find her succumbed and fainting at its
+      feet. To do this he must penetrate the burning belt, and then pass under
+      the blazing dome. He was already upon it; he could see the falling fire
+      dropping like rain or blown like gorgeous blossoms of the conflagration
+      across his path. The space was lit up brilliantly. The vast shafts of dull
+      copper cast no shadow below, but there was no sign nor token of any human
+      being. For a moment the young man was at fault. It was true this hidden
+      heart of the forest bore no undergrowth; the cool matted carpet of the
+      aisles seemed to quench the glowing fragments as they fell. Escape might
+      be difficult, but not impossible, yet every moment was precious. He leaned
+      against a tree, and sent his voice like a clarion before him: &ldquo;Teresa!&rdquo;
+       There was no reply. He called again. A faint cry at his back from the
+      trail he had just traversed made him turn. Only a few paces behind him,
+      blinded and staggering, but following like a beaten and wounded animal,
+      Teresa, halted, knelt, clasped her hands, and dumbly held them out before
+      her. &ldquo;Teresa!&rdquo; he cried again, and sprang to her side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She caught him by the knees, and lifted her face imploringly to his.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say that again!&rdquo; she cried, passionately. &ldquo;Tell me it was Teresa you
+      called, and no other! You have come back for me! You would not let me die
+      here alone!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He lifted her tenderly in his arms, and cast a rapid glance around him. It
+      might have been his fancy, but there seemed a dull glow in the direction
+      he had come.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You do not speak!&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Tell me! You did not come here to seek
+      her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Whom?&rdquo; he said quickly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nellie!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With a sharp cry he let her slip to the ground. All the pent-up agony,
+      rage, and mortification of the last hour broke from him in that
+      inarticulate outburst. Then, catching her hands again, he dragged her to
+      his level.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hear me!&rdquo; he cried, disregarding the whirling smoke and the fiery baptism
+      that sprinkled them&mdash;&ldquo;hear me! If you value your life, if you value
+      your soul, and if you do not want me to cast you to the beasts like
+      Jezebel of old, never&mdash;never take that accursed name again upon your
+      lips. Seek her&mdash;HER? Yes! Seek her to tie her like a witch's daughter
+      of hell to that blazing tree!&rdquo; He stopped. &ldquo;Forgive me,&rdquo; he said in a
+      changed voice. &ldquo;I'm mad, and forgetting myself and you. Come.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Without noticing the expression of half-savage delight that had passed
+      across her face, he lifted her in his arms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Which way are you going?&rdquo; she asked, passing her hands vaguely across his
+      breast, as if to reassure herself of his identity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To our camp by the scarred tree,&rdquo; he replied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not there, not there,&rdquo; she said, hurriedly. &ldquo;I was driven from there just
+      now. I thought the fire began there until I came here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then it was as he feared. Obeying the same mysterious law that had
+      launched this fatal fire like a thunderbolt from the burning mountain
+      crest five miles away into the heart of the Carquinez Woods, it had again
+      leaped a mile beyond, and was hemming them between two narrowing lines of
+      fire. But Low was not daunted. Retracing his steps through the blinding
+      smoke, he strode off at right angles to the trail near the point where he
+      had entered the wood. It was the spot where he had first lifted Nellie in
+      his arms to carry her to the hidden spring. If any recollection of it
+      crossed his mind at that moment, it was only shown in his redoubled
+      energy. He did not glide through the thick underbrush, as on that day, but
+      seemed to take a savage pleasure in breaking through it with sheer brute
+      force. Once Teresa insisted upon relieving him of the burden of her
+      weight, but after a few steps she staggered blindly against him, and would
+      fain have recourse once more to his strong arms. And so, alternately
+      staggering, bending, crouching, or bounding and crashing on, but always in
+      one direction, they burst through the jealous rampart, and came upon the
+      sylvan haunt of the hidden spring. The great angle of the half-fallen tree
+      acted as a harrier to the wind and drifting smoke, and the cool spring
+      sparkled and bubbled in the almost translucent air. He laid her down
+      beside the water, and bathed her face and hands. As he did so his quick
+      eye caught sight of a woman's handkerchief lying at the foot of the
+      disrupted root. Dropping Teresa's hand, he walked towards it, and with the
+      toe of his moccasin gave it one vigorous kick into the ooze at the
+      overflow of the spring. He turned to Teresa, but she evidently had not
+      noticed the act.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where are you?&rdquo; she asked, with a smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Something in her movement struck him! He came towards her, and bending
+      down looked into her face. &ldquo;Teresa! Good God!&mdash;look at me! What has
+      happened?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She raised her eyes to his. There was a slight film across them; the lids
+      were blackened; the beautiful lashes gone forever!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see you a little now, I think,&rdquo; she said, with a smile, passing her
+      hands vaguely over his face. &ldquo;It must have happened when he fainted, and I
+      had to drag him through the blazing brush; both my hands were full, and I
+      could not cover my eyes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Drag whom?&rdquo; said Low, quickly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, Dunn.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dunn! He here?&rdquo; said Low, hoarsely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; didn't you read the note I left on the herbarium? Didn't you come to
+      the camp-fire?&rdquo; she asked hurriedly, clasping his hands. &ldquo;Tell me
+      quickly!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you were not there&mdash;then you didn't leave me to die?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No! I swear it, Teresa!&rdquo; the stoicism that had upheld his own agony
+      breaking down before her strong emotion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank God!&rdquo; She threw her arms around him, and hid her aching eyes in his
+      troubled breast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell me all, Teresa,&rdquo; he whispered in her listening ear. &ldquo;Don't move;
+      stay there, and tell me all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With her face buried in his bosom, as if speaking to his heart alone, she
+      told him part, but not all. With her eyes filled with tears, but a smile
+      on her lips, radiant with new-found happiness, she told him how she had
+      overheard the plans of Dunn and Brace, how she had stolen their conveyance
+      to warn him in time. But here she stopped, dreading to say a word that
+      would shatter the hope she was building upon his sudden revulsion of
+      feeling for Nellie. She could not bring herself to repeat their interview&mdash;that
+      would come later, when they were safe and out of danger; now not even the
+      secret of his birth must come between them with its distraction, to mar
+      their perfect communion. She faltered that Dunn had fainted from weakness,
+      and that she had dragged him out of danger. &ldquo;He will never interfere with
+      us&mdash;I mean,&rdquo; she said softly, &ldquo;with ME again. I can promise you that
+      as well as if he had sworn it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let him pass, now,&rdquo; said Low; &ldquo;that will come later on,&rdquo; he added,
+      unconsciously repeating her thought in a tone that made her heart sick.
+      &ldquo;But tell me, Teresa, why did you go to Excelsior?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She buried her head still deeper, as if to hide it. He felt her broken
+      heart beat against his own; he was conscious of a depth of feeling her
+      rival had never awakened in him. The possibility of Teresa loving him had
+      never occurred to his simple nature. He bent his head and kissed her. She
+      was frightened, and unloosed her clinging arms; but he retained her hand,
+      and said, &ldquo;We will leave this accursed place, and you shall go with me as
+      you said you would; nor need you ever leave me, unless you wish it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She could hear the beating of her own heart through his words; she longed
+      to look at the eyes and lips that told her this, and read the meaning his
+      voice alone could not entirely convey. For the first time she felt the
+      loss of her sight. She did not know that it was, in this moment of
+      happiness, the last blessing vouchsafed to her miserable life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A few moments of silence followed, broken only by the distant rumor of the
+      conflagration and the crash of falling boughs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It may be an hour yet,&rdquo; he whispered, &ldquo;before the fire has swept a path
+      for us to the road below. We are safe here, unless some sudden current
+      should draw the fire down upon us. You are not frightened?&rdquo; She pressed
+      his hand; she was thinking of the pale face of Dunn, lying in the secure
+      retreat she had purchased for him at such a sacrifice. Yet the possibility
+      of danger to him now for a moment marred her present happiness and
+      security. &ldquo;You think the fire will not go north of where you found me?&rdquo;
+       she asked softly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think not,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;but I will reconnoitre. Stay where you are.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They pressed hands, and parted. He leaped upon the slanting trunk and
+      ascended it rapidly. She waited in mute expectation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a sudden movement of the root on which she sat, a deafening
+      crash, and she was thrown forward on her face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The vast bulk of the leaning tree, dislodged from its aerial support by
+      the gradual sapping of the spring at its roots, or by the crumbling of the
+      bark from the heat, had slipped, made a half revolution, and, falling,
+      overbore the lesser trees in its path, and tore, in its resistless
+      momentum, a broad opening to the underbrush.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With a cry to Low, Teresa staggered to her feet. There was an interval of
+      hideous silence, but no reply. She called again. There was a sudden
+      deepening roar, the blast of a fiery furnace swept through the opening, a
+      thousand luminous points around her burst into fire, and in an instant she
+      was lost in a whirlwind of smoke and flame! From the onset of its fury to
+      its culmination twenty minutes did not elapse; but in that interval a
+      radius of two hundred yards around the hidden spring was swept of life and
+      light and motion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For the rest of that day and part of the night a pall of smoke hung above
+      the scene of desolation. It lifted only towards the morning, when the
+      moon, rising high, picked out in black and silver the shrunken and silent
+      columns of those roofless vaults, shorn of base and capital. It flickered
+      on the still, overflowing pool of the hidden spring, and shone upon the
+      white face of Low, who, with a rootlet of the fallen tree holding him down
+      like an arm across his breast, seemed to be sleeping peacefully in the
+      sleeping water.
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      Contemporaneous history touched him as briefly, but not as gently. &ldquo;It is
+      now definitely ascertained,&rdquo; said &ldquo;The Slumgullion Mirror,&rdquo; &ldquo;that Sheriff
+      Dunn met his fate in the Carquinez Woods in the performance of his duty;
+      that fearless man having received information of the concealment of a band
+      of horse thieves in their recesses. The desperadoes are presumed to have
+      escaped, as the only remains found are those of two wretched tramps, one
+      of whom is said to have been a digger, who supported himself upon roots
+      and herbs, and the other a degraded half-white woman. It is not
+      unreasonable to suppose that the fire originated through their
+      carelessness, although Father Wynn of the First Baptist Church, in his
+      powerful discourse of last Sunday, pointed at the warning and lesson of
+      such catastrophes. It may not be out of place here to say that the rumors
+      regarding an engagement between the pastor's accomplished daughter and the
+      late lamented sheriff are utterly without foundation, as it has been an on
+      dit for some time in all well-informed circles that the indefatigable Mr.
+      Brace, of Wells, Fargo and Co.'s Express, will shortly lead the lady to
+      the hymeneal altar.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of In the Carquinez Woods, by Bret Harte
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: In the Carquinez Woods
+
+Author: Bret Harte
+
+Release Date: May 16, 2006 [EBook #2310]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Donald Lainson
+
+
+
+
+
+IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS
+
+By Bret Harte
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+The sun was going down on the Carquinez Woods. The few shafts of
+sunlight that had pierced their pillared gloom were lost in unfathomable
+depths, or splintered their ineffectual lances on the enormous trunks
+of the redwoods. For a time the dull red of their vast columns, and the
+dull red of their cast-off bark which matted the echoless aisles, still
+seemed to hold a faint glow of the dying day. But even this soon passed.
+Light and color fled upwards. The dark interlaced treetops, that had all
+day made an impenetrable shade, broke into fire here and there; their
+lost spires glittered, faded, and went utterly out. A weird twilight
+that did not come from the outer world, but seemed born of the wood
+itself, slowly filled and possessed the aisles. The straight, tall,
+colossal trunks rose dimly like columns of upward smoke. The few fallen
+trees stretched their huge length into obscurity, and seemed to lie on
+shadowy trestles. The strange breath that filled these mysterious vaults
+had neither coldness nor moisture; a dry, fragrant dust arose from the
+noiseless foot that trod their bark-strewn floor; the aisles might have
+been tombs, the fallen trees enormous mummies; the silence the solitude
+of a forgotten past.
+
+And yet this silence was presently broken by a recurring sound like
+breathing, interrupted occasionally by inarticulate and stertorous
+gasps. It was not the quick, panting, listening breath of some stealthy
+feline or canine animal, but indicated a larger, slower, and more
+powerful organization, whose progress was less watchful and guarded, or
+as if a fragment of one of the fallen monsters had become animate.
+At times this life seemed to take visible form, but as vaguely, as
+misshapenly, as the phantom of a nightmare. Now it was a square object
+moving sideways, endways, with neither head nor tail and scarcely
+visible feet; then an arched bulk rolling against the trunks of the
+trees and recoiling again, or an upright cylindrical mass, but always
+oscillating and unsteady, and striking the trees on either hand. The
+frequent occurrence of the movement suggested the figures of some weird
+rhythmic dance to music heard by the shape alone. Suddenly it either
+became motionless or faded away.
+
+There was the frightened neighing of a horse, the sudden jingling of
+spurs, a shout and outcry, and the swift apparition of three dancing
+torches in one of the dark aisles; but so intense was the obscurity
+that they shed no light on surrounding objects, and seemed to advance
+of their own volition without human guidance, until they disappeared
+suddenly behind the interposing bulk of one of the largest trees. Beyond
+its eighty feet of circumference the light could not reach, and the
+gloom remained inscrutable. But the voices and jingling spurs were heard
+distinctly.
+
+"Blast the mare! She's shied off that cursed trail again."
+
+"Ye ain't lost it again, hev ye?" growled a second voice.
+
+"That's jist what I hev. And these blasted pine-knots don't give light
+an inch beyond 'em. D--d if I don't think they make this cursed hole
+blacker."
+
+There was a laugh--a woman's laugh--hysterical, bitter, sarcastic,
+exasperating. The second speaker, without heeding it, went on:--
+
+"What in thunder skeert the hosses? Did you see or hear anything?"
+
+"Nothin'. The wood is like a graveyard."
+
+The woman's voice again broke into a hoarse, contemptuous laugh. The man
+resumed angrily:--
+
+"If you know anything, why in h-ll don't you say so, instead of cackling
+like a d--d squaw there? P'raps you reckon you ken find the trail too."
+
+"Take this rope off my wrist," said the woman's voice, "untie my hands,
+let me down, and I'll find it." She spoke quickly and with a Spanish
+accent.
+
+It was the men's turn to laugh. "And give you a show to snatch that
+six-shooter and blow a hole through me, as you did to the Sheriff of
+Calaveras, eh? Not if this court understands itself," said the first
+speaker dryly.
+
+"Go to the devil, then," she said curtly.
+
+"Not before a lady," responded the other. There was another laugh from
+the men, the spurs jingled again, the three torches reappeared from
+behind the tree, and then passed away in the darkness.
+
+For a time silence and immutability possessed the woods; the great
+trunks loomed upwards, their fallen brothers stretched their slow length
+into obscurity. The sound of breathing again became audible; the shape
+reappeared in the aisle, and recommenced its mystic dance. Presently
+it was lost in the shadow of the largest tree, and to the sound of
+breathing succeeded a grating and scratching of bark. Suddenly, as if
+riven by lightning, a flash broke from the center of the tree-trunk,
+lit up the woods, and a sharp report rang through it. After a pause
+the jingling of spurs and the dancing of torches were revived from the
+distance.
+
+"Hallo?"
+
+No answer.
+
+"Who fired that shot?"
+
+But there was no reply. A slight veil of smoke passed away to the right,
+there was the spice of gunpowder in the air, but nothing more.
+
+The torches came forward again, but this time it could be seen they were
+held in the hands of two men and a woman. The woman's hands were tied
+at the wrist to the horse-hair reins of her mule, while a riata, passed
+around her waist and under the mule's girth, was held by one of the men,
+who were both armed with rifles and revolvers. Their frightened horses
+curveted, and it was with difficulty they could be made to advance.
+
+"Ho! stranger, what are you shooting at?"
+
+The woman laughed and shrugged her shoulders. "Look yonder at the roots
+of the tree. You're a d--d smart man for a sheriff, ain't you?"
+
+The man uttered an exclamation and spurred his horse forward, but the
+animal reared in terror. He then sprang to the ground and approached the
+tree. The shape lay there, a scarcely distinguishable bulk.
+
+"A grizzly, by the living Jingo! Shot through the heart."
+
+It was true. The strange shape lit up by the flaring torches seemed more
+vague, unearthly, and awkward in its dying throes, yet the small shut
+eyes, the feeble nose, the ponderous shoulders, and half-human foot
+armed with powerful claws were unmistakable. The men turned by a common
+impulse and peered into the remote recesses of the wood again.
+
+"Hi, Mister! come and pick up your game. Hallo there!"
+
+The challenge fell unheeded on the empty woods.
+
+"And yet," said he whom the woman had called the sheriff, "he can't be
+far off. It was a close shot, and the bear hez dropped in his tracks.
+Why, wot's this sticking in his claws?"
+
+The two men bent over the animal. "Why, it's sugar, brown sugar--look!"
+There was no mistake. The huge beast's fore paws and muzzle were
+streaked with the unromantic household provision, and heightened the
+absurd contrast of its incongruous members. The woman, apparently
+indifferent, had taken that opportunity to partly free one of her
+wrists.
+
+"If we hadn't been cavorting round this yer spot for the last half
+hour, I'd swear there was a shanty not a hundred yards away," said the
+sheriff.
+
+The other man, without replying, remounted his horse instantly.
+
+"If there is, and it's inhabited by a gentleman that kin make centre
+shots like that in the dark, and don't care to explain how, I reckon I
+won't disturb him."
+
+The sheriff was apparently of the same opinion, for he followed his
+companion's example, and once more led the way. The spurs tinkled, the
+torches danced, and the cavalcade slowly reentered the gloom. In another
+moment it had disappeared.
+
+The wood sank again into repose, this time disturbed by neither shape
+nor sound. What lower forms of life might have crept close to its
+roots were hidden in the ferns, or passed with deadened tread over the
+bark-strewn floor. Towards morning a coolness like dew fell from above,
+with here and there a dropping twig or nut, or the crepitant awakening
+and stretching-out of cramped and weary branches. Later a dull, lurid
+dawn, not unlike the last evening's sunset, filled the aisles. This
+faded again, and a clear gray light, in which every object stood out in
+sharp distinctness, took its place. Morning was waiting outside in all
+its brilliant, youthful coloring, but only entered as the matured and
+sobered day.
+
+Seen in that stronger light, the monstrous tree near which the dead bear
+lay revealed its age in its denuded and scarred trunk, and showed in
+its base a deep cavity, a foot or two from the ground, partly hidden by
+hanging strips of bark which had fallen across it. Suddenly one of these
+strips was pushed aside, and a young man leaped lightly down.
+
+But for the rifle he carried and some modern peculiarities of dress, he
+was of a grace so unusual and unconventional that he might have passed
+for a faun who was quitting his ancestral home. He stepped to the side
+of the bear with a light elastic movement that was as unlike customary
+progression as his face and figure were unlike the ordinary types
+of humanity. Even as he leaned upon his rifle, looking down at the
+prostrate animal, he unconsciously fell into an attitude that in any
+other mortal would have been a pose, but with him was the picturesque
+and unstudied relaxation of perfect symmetry.
+
+"Hallo, Mister!"
+
+He raised his head so carelessly and listlessly that he did not
+otherwise change his attitude. Stepping from behind the tree, the woman
+of the preceding night stood before him. Her hands were free except for
+a thong of the riata, which was still knotted around one wrist, the end
+of the thong having been torn or burnt away. Her eyes were bloodshot,
+and her hair hung over her shoulders in one long black braid.
+
+"I reckoned all along it was YOU who shot the bear," she said; "at least
+some one hiding yer," and she indicated the hollow tree with her hand.
+"It wasn't no chance shot." Observing that the young man, either from
+misconception or indifference, did not seem to comprehend her, she
+added, "We came by here, last night, a minute after you fired."
+
+"Oh, that was YOU kicked up such a row, was it?" said the young man,
+with a shade of interest.
+
+"I reckon," said the woman, nodding her head, "and them that was with
+me."
+
+"And who are they?"
+
+"Sheriff Dunn, of Yolo, and his deputy."
+
+"And where are they now?"
+
+"The deputy--in h-ll, I reckon; I don't know about the sheriff."
+
+"I see," said the young man quietly; "and you?"
+
+"I--got away," she said savagely. But she was taken with a sudden
+nervous shiver, which she at once repressed by tightly dragging her
+shawl over her shoulders and elbows, and folding her arms defiantly.
+
+"And you're going?"
+
+"To follow the deputy, may be," she said gloomily. "But come, I say,
+ain't you going to treat? It's cursed cold here."
+
+"Wait a moment." The young man was looking at her, with his arched brows
+slightly knit and a half smile of curiosity. "Ain't you Teresa?"
+
+She was prepared for the question, but evidently was not certain whether
+she would reply defiantly or confidently. After an exhaustive scrutiny
+of his face she chose the latter, and said, "You can bet your life on
+it, Johnny."
+
+"I don't bet, and my name isn't Johnny. Then you're the woman who
+stabbed Dick Curson over at Lagrange's?"
+
+She became defiant again.
+
+"That's me, all the time. What are you going to do about it?"
+
+"Nothing. And you used to dance at the Alhambra?" She whisked the shawl
+from her shoulders, held it up like a scarf, and made one or two steps
+of the sembicuacua. There was not the least gayety, recklessness, or
+spontaneity in the action; it was simply mechanical bravado. It was so
+ineffective, even upon her own feelings, that her arms presently dropped
+to her side, and she coughed embarrassedly. "Where's that whiskey,
+pardner?" she asked.
+
+The young man turned toward the tree he had just quitted, and
+without further words assisted her to mount to the cavity. It was an
+irregular-shaped vaulted chamber, pierced fifty feet above by a shaft or
+cylindrical opening in the decayed trunk, which was blackened by smoke,
+as if it had served the purpose of a chimney. In one corner lay a
+bearskin and blanket; at the side were two alcoves or indentations, one
+of which was evidently used as a table, and the other as a cupboard.
+In another hollow, near the entrance, lay a few small sacks of flour,
+coffee, and sugar, the sticky contents of the latter still strewing
+the floor. From this storehouse the young man drew a wicker flask of
+whiskey, and handed it, with a tin cup of water, to the woman. She waved
+the cup aside, placed the flask to her lips, and drank the undiluted
+spirit. Yet even this was evidently bravado, for the water started
+to her eyes, and she could not restrain the paroxysm of coughing that
+followed.
+
+"I reckon that's the kind that kills at forty rods," she said, with a
+hysterical laugh. "But I say, pardner, you look as if you were fixed
+here to stay," and she stared ostentatiously around the chamber. But she
+had already taken in its minutest details, even to observing that the
+hanging strips of bark could be disposed so as to completely hide the
+entrance.
+
+"Well, yes," he replied; "it wouldn't be very easy to pull up the stakes
+and move the shanty further on."
+
+Seeing that either from indifference or caution he had not accepted her
+meaning, she looked at him fixedly, and said,--
+
+"What is your little game?"
+
+"Eh?"
+
+"What are you hiding for--here, in this tree?"
+
+"But I'm not hiding."
+
+"Then why didn't you come out when they hailed you last night?"
+
+"Because I didn't care to."
+
+Teresa whistled incredulously. "All right--then if you're not hiding,
+I'm going to." As he did not reply, she went on: "If I can keep out of
+sight for a couple of weeks, this thing will blow over here, and I can
+get across into Yolo. I could get a fair show there, where the boys
+know me. Just now the trails are all watched, but no one would think of
+lookin' here."
+
+"Then how did you come to think of it?" he asked carelessly.
+
+"Because I knew that bear hadn't gone far for that sugar; because I know
+he hadn't stole it from a cache--it was too fresh, and we'd have seen
+the torn-up earth; because we had passed no camp; and because I knew
+there was no shanty here. And, besides," she added in a low voice,
+"maybe I was huntin' a hole myself to die in--and spotted it by
+instinct."
+
+There was something in this suggestion of a hunted animal that, unlike
+anything she had previously said or suggested, was not exaggerated, and
+caused the young man to look at her again. She was standing under the
+chimney-like opening, and the light from above illuminated her head and
+shoulders. The pupils of her eyes had lost their feverish prominence,
+and were slightly suffused and softened as she gazed abstractedly before
+her. The only vestige of her previous excitement was in her left-hand
+fingers, which were incessantly twisting and turning a diamond ring upon
+her right hand, but without imparting the least animation to her rigid
+attitude. Suddenly, as if conscious of his scrutiny, she stepped aside
+out of the revealing light and by a swift feminine instinct raised her
+hand to her head as if to adjust her straggling hair. It was only for
+a moment, however, for, as if aware of the weakness, she struggled to
+resume her aggressive pose.
+
+"Well," she said. "Speak up. Am I goin' to stop here, or have I got to
+get up and get?"
+
+"You can stay," said the young man quietly; "but as I've got my
+provisions and ammunition here, and haven't any other place to go to
+just now, I suppose we'll have to share it together."
+
+She glanced at him under her eyelids, and a half-bitter,
+half-contemptuous smile passed across her face. "All right, old man,"
+she said, holding out her hand, "it's a go. We'll start in housekeeping
+at once, if you like."
+
+"I'll have to come here once or twice a day," he said, quite composedly,
+"to look after my things, and get something to eat; but I'll be away
+most of the time, and what with camping out under the trees every night
+I reckon my share won't incommode you."
+
+She opened her black eyes upon him, at this original proposition. Then
+she looked down at her torn dress. "I suppose this style of thing ain't
+very fancy, is it?" she said, with a forced laugh.
+
+"I think I know where to beg or borrow a change for you, if you can't
+get any," he replied simply.
+
+She stared at him again. "Are you a family man?"
+
+"No."
+
+She was silent for a moment. "Well," she said, "you can tell your girl
+I'm not particular about its being in the latest fashion."
+
+There was a slight flush on his forehead as he turned toward the little
+cupboard, but no tremor in his voice as he went on: "You'll find tea
+and coffee here, and, if you're bored, there's a book or two. You read,
+don't you--I mean English?"
+
+She nodded, but cast a look of undisguised contempt upon the two worn,
+coverless novels he held out to her. "You haven't got last week's
+'Sacramento Union,' have you? I hear they have my case all in; only them
+lying reporters made it out against me all the time."
+
+"I don't see the papers," he replied curtly.
+
+"They say there's a picture of me in the 'Police Gazette,' taken in the
+act," and she laughed.
+
+He looked a little abstracted, and turned as if to go. "I think you'll
+do well to rest a while just now, and keep as close hid as possible
+until afternoon. The trail is a mile away at the nearest point, but
+some one might miss it and stray over here. You're quite safe if you're
+careful, and stand by the tree. You can build a fire here," he stepped
+under the chimney-like opening, "without its being noticed. Even the
+smoke is lost and cannot be seen so high."
+
+The light from above was falling on his head and shoulders, as it had on
+hers. She looked at him intently.
+
+"You travel a good deal on your figure, pardner, don't you?" she said,
+with a certain admiration that was quite sexless in its quality; "but
+I don't see how you pick up a living by it in the Carquinez Woods. So
+you're going, are you? You might be more sociable. Good-by."
+
+"Good-by!" He leaped from the opening.
+
+"I say pardner!"
+
+He turned a little impatiently. She had knelt down at the entrance, so
+as to be nearer his level, and was holding out her hand. But he did not
+notice it, and she quietly withdrew it.
+
+"If anybody dropped in and asked for you, what name will they say?"
+
+He smiled. "Don't wait to hear."
+
+"But suppose I wanted to sing out for you, what will I call you?"
+
+He hesitated. "Call me--Lo."
+
+"Lo, the poor Indian?"*
+
+"Exactly."
+
+     * The first word of Pope's familiar apostrophe is humorously
+     used in the Far West as a distinguishing title for the
+     Indian.
+
+It suddenly occurred to the woman, Teresa, that in the young man's
+height, supple, yet erect carriage, color, and singular gravity of
+demeanor there was a refined, aboriginal suggestion. He did not look
+like any Indian she had ever seen, but rather as a youthful chief might
+have looked. There was a further suggestion in his fringed buckskin
+shirt and moccasins; but before she could utter the half-sarcastic
+comment that rose to her lips he had glided noiselessly away, even as an
+Indian might have done.
+
+She readjusted the slips of hanging bark with feminine ingenuity,
+dispersing them so as to completely hide the entrance. Yet this did not
+darken the chamber, which seemed to draw a purer and more vigorous light
+through the soaring shaft that pierced the roof than that which came
+from the dim woodland aisles below. Nevertheless, she shivered, and
+drawing her shawl closely around her began to collect some half-burnt
+fragments of wood in the chimney to make a fire. But the preoccupation
+of her thoughts rendered this a tedious process, as she would from time
+to time stop in the middle of an action and fall into an attitude of
+rapt abstraction, with far-off eyes and rigid mouth. When she had at
+last succeeded in kindling a fire and raising a film of pale blue smoke,
+that seemed to fade and dissipate entirely before it reached the top of
+the chimney shaft, she crouched beside it, fixed her eyes on the darkest
+corner of the cavern, and became motionless.
+
+What did she see through that shadow?
+
+Nothing at first but a confused medley of figures and incidents of the
+preceding night; things to be put away and forgotten; things that
+would not have happened but for another thing--the thing before which
+everything faded! A ball-room; the sounds of music; the one man she
+had cared for insulting her with the flaunting ostentation of his
+unfaithfulness; herself despised, put aside, laughed at, or worse,
+jilted. And then the moment of delirium, when the light danced; the one
+wild act that lifted her, the despised one, above them all--made her
+the supreme figure, to be glanced at by frightened women, stared at by
+half-startled, half-admiring men! "Yes," she laughed; but struck by the
+sound of her own voice, moved twice round the cavern nervously, and then
+dropped again into her old position.
+
+As they carried him away he had laughed at her--like a hound that he
+was; he who had praised her for her spirit, and incited her revenge
+against others; he who had taught her to strike when she was insulted;
+and it was only fit he should reap what he had sown. She was what he,
+what other men, had made her. And what was she now? What had she been
+once?
+
+She tried to recall her childhood: the man and woman who might have
+been her father and mother; who fought and wrangled over her precocious
+little life; abused or caressed her as she sided with either; and then
+left her with a circus troupe, where she first tasted the power of her
+courage, her beauty, and her recklessness. She remembered those flashes
+of triumph that left a fever in her veins--a fever that when it failed
+must be stimulated by dissipation, by anything, by everything that would
+keep her name a wonder in men's mouths, an envious fear to women. She
+recalled her transfer to the strolling players; her cheap pleasures, and
+cheaper rivalries and hatred--but always Teresa! the daring Teresa! the
+reckless Teresa! audacious as a woman, invincible as a boy; dancing,
+flirting, fencing, shooting, swearing, drinking, smoking, fighting
+Teresa! "Oh, yes; she had been loved, perhaps--who knows?--but always
+feared. Why should she change now? Ha, he should see."
+
+She had lashed herself in a frenzy, as was her wont, with gestures,
+ejaculations, oaths, adjurations, and passionate apostrophes, but with
+this strange and unexpected result. Heretofore she had always been
+sustained and kept up by an audience of some kind or quality, if only
+perhaps a humble companion; there had always been some one she could
+fascinate or horrify, and she could read her power mirrored in their
+eyes. Even the half-abstracted indifference of her strange host had been
+something. But she was alone now. Her words fell on apathetic solitude;
+she was acting to viewless space. She rushed to the opening, dashed the
+hanging bark aside, and leaped to the ground.
+
+She ran forward wildly a few steps, and stopped.
+
+"Hallo!" she cried. "Look, 'tis I, Teresa!"
+
+The profound silence remained unbroken. Her shrillest tones were lost
+in an echoless space, even as the smoke of her fire had faded into pure
+ether. She stretched out her clenched fists as if to defy the pillared
+austerities of the vaults around her.
+
+"Come and take me if you dare!"
+
+The challenge was unheeded. If she had thrown herself violently against
+the nearest tree-trunk, she could not have been stricken more breathless
+than she was by the compact, embattled solitude that encompassed her.
+The hopelessness of impressing these cold and passive vaults with
+her selfish passion filled her with a vague fear. In her rage of the
+previous night she had not seen the wood in its profound immobility.
+Left alone with the majesty of those enormous columns, she trembled and
+turned faint. The silence of the hollow tree she had just quitted seemed
+to her less awful than the crushing presence of these mute and monstrous
+witnesses of her weakness. Like a wounded quail with lowered crest and
+trailing wing, she crept back to her hiding place.
+
+Even then the influence of the wood was still upon her. She picked up
+the novel she had contemptuously thrown aside, only to let it fall again
+in utter weariness. For a moment her feminine curiosity was excited
+by the discovery of an old book, in whose blank leaves were pressed a
+variety of flowers and woodland grasses. As she could not conceive
+that these had been kept for any but a sentimental purpose, she was
+disappointed to find that underneath each was a sentence in an unknown
+tongue, that even to her untutored eye did not appear to be the language
+of passion. Finally she rearranged the couch of skins and blankets, and,
+imparting to it in three clever shakes an entirely different character,
+lay down to pursue her reveries. But nature asserted herself, and ere
+she knew it she was asleep.
+
+So intense and prolonged had been her previous excitement that, the
+tension once relieved, she passed into a slumber of exhaustion so deep
+that she seemed scarce to breathe. High noon succeeded morning, the
+central shaft received a single ray of upper sunlight, the afternoon
+came and went, the shadows gathered below, the sunset fires began to eat
+their way through the groined roof, and she still slept. She slept even
+when the bark hangings of the chamber were put aside, and the young man
+reentered.
+
+He laid down a bundle he was carrying and softly approached the sleeper.
+For a moment he was startled from his indifference; she lay so still and
+motionless. But this was not all that struck him; the face before him
+was no longer the passionate, haggard visage that confronted him that
+morning; the feverish air, the burning color, the strained muscles of
+mouth and brow, and the staring eyes were gone; wiped away, perhaps, by
+the tears that still left their traces on cheek and dark eyelash. It
+was the face of a handsome woman of thirty, with even a suggestion of
+softness in the contour of the cheek and arching of her upper lip, no
+longer rigidly drawn down in anger, but relaxed by sleep on her white
+teeth.
+
+With the lithe, soft tread that was habitual to him, the young man moved
+about, examining the condition of the little chamber and its stock
+of provisions and necessaries, and withdrew presently, to reappear as
+noiselessly with a tin bucket of water. This done, he replenished the
+little pile of fuel with an armful of bark and pine cones, cast an
+approving glance about him, which included the sleeper, and silently
+departed.
+
+It was night when she awoke. She was surrounded by a profound darkness,
+except where the shaft-like opening made a nebulous mist in the corner
+of her wooden cavern. Providentially she struggled back to consciousness
+slowly, so that the solitude and silence came upon her gradually, with
+a growing realization of the events of the past twenty-four hours, but
+without a shock. She was alone here, but safe still, and every hour
+added to her chances of ultimate escape. She remembered to have seen a
+candle among the articles on the shelf, and she began to grope her way
+towards the matches. Suddenly she stopped. What was that panting?
+
+Was it her own breathing, quickened with a sudden nameless terror? or
+was there something outside? Her heart seemed to stop beating while
+she listened. Yes! it was a panting outside--a panting now increased,
+multiplied, redoubled, mixed with the sounds of rustling, tearing,
+craunching, and occasionally a quick, impatient snarl. She crept on
+her hands and knees to the opening and looked out. At first the ground
+seemed to be undulating between her and the opposite tree. But a second
+glance showed her the black and gray, bristling, tossing backs of
+tumbling beasts of prey, charging the carcass of the bear that lay at
+its roots, or contesting for the prize with gluttonous, choked breath,
+sidelong snarls, arched spines, and recurved tails. One of the boldest
+had leaped upon a buttressing root of her tree within a foot of the
+opening. The excitement, awe, and terror she had undergone culminated in
+one wild, maddened scream, that seemed to pierce even the cold depths of
+the forest, as she dropped on her face, with her hands clasped over her
+eyes in an agony of fear.
+
+Her scream was answered, after a pause, by a sudden volley of firebrands
+and sparks into the midst of the panting, crowding pack; a few smothered
+howls and snaps, and a sudden dispersion of the concourse. In another
+moment the young man, with a blazing brand in either hand, leaped upon
+the body of the bear.
+
+Teresa raised her head, uttered a hysterical cry, slid down the tree,
+flew wildly to his side, caught convulsively at his sleeve, and fell on
+her knees beside him.
+
+"Save me! save me!" she gasped, in a voice broken by terror. "Save me
+from those hideous creatures. No, no!" she implored, as he endeavored
+to lift her to her feet. "No--let me stay here close beside you. So,"
+clutching the fringe of his leather hunting-shirt, and dragging herself
+on her knees nearer him--"so--don't leave me, for God's sake!"
+
+"They are gone," he replied, gazing down curiously at her, as she wound
+the fringe around her hand to strengthen her hold; "they're only a lot
+of cowardly coyotes and wolves, that dare not attack anything that lives
+and can move."
+
+The young woman responded with a nervous shudder. "Yes, that's it," she
+whispered, in a broken voice; "it's only the dead they want. Promise
+me--swear to me, if I'm caught, or hung, or shot, you won't let me be
+left here to be torn and--ah! my God! what's that?"
+
+She had thrown her arms around his knees, completely pinioning him to
+her frantic breast. Something like a smile of disdain passed across his
+face as he answered, "It's nothing. They will not return. Get up!"
+
+Even in her terror she saw the change in his face. "I know, I know!"
+she cried. "I'm frightened--but I cannot bear it any longer. Hear me!
+Listen! Listen--but don't move! I didn't mean to kill Curson--no! I
+swear to God, no! I didn't mean to kill the sheriff--and I didn't. I was
+only bragging--do you hear? I lied! I lied--don't move, I swear to God I
+lied. I've made myself out worse than I was. I have. Only don't leave
+me now--and if I die--and it's not far off, may be--get me away from
+here--and from THEM. Swear it!"
+
+"All right," said the young man, with a scarcely concealed movement of
+irritation. "But get up now, and go back to the cabin."
+
+"No; not THERE alone." Nevertheless, he quietly but firmly released
+himself.
+
+"I will stay here," he replied. "I would have been nearer to you, but
+I thought it better for your safety that my camp-fire should be further
+off. But I can build it here, and that will keep the coyotes off."
+
+"Let me stay with you--beside you," she said imploringly.
+
+She looked so broken, crushed, and spiritless, so unlike the woman of
+the morning that, albeit with an ill grace, he tacitly consented, and
+turned away to bring his blankets. But in the next moment she was at his
+side, following him like a dog, silent and wistful, and even offering
+to carry his burden. When he had built the fire, for which she had
+collected the pine-cones and broken branches near them, he sat down,
+folded his arms, and leaned back against the tree in reserved and
+deliberate silence.
+
+Humble and submissive, she did not attempt to break in upon a reverie
+she could not help but feel had little kindliness to herself. As the
+fire snapped and sparkled, she pillowed her head upon a root, and lay
+still to watch it.
+
+It rose and fell, and dying away at times to a mere lurid glow, and
+again, agitated by some breath scarcely perceptible to them, quickening
+into a roaring flame. When only the embers remained, a dead silence
+filled the wood. Then the first breath of morning moved the tangled
+canopy above, and a dozen tiny sprays and needles detached from the
+interlocked boughs winged their soft way noiselessly to the earth. A few
+fell upon the prostrate woman like a gentle benediction, and she slept.
+But even then, the young man, looking down, saw that the slender fingers
+were still aimlessly but rigidly twisted in the leather fringe of his
+hunting-shirt.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+It was a peculiarity of the Carquinez Wood that it stood apart and
+distinct in its gigantic individuality. Even where the integrity of its
+own singular species was not entirely preserved, it admitted no inferior
+trees. Nor was there any diminishing fringe on its outskirts; the
+sentinels that guarded the few gateways of the dim trails were as
+monstrous as the serried ranks drawn up in the heart of the forest.
+Consequently, the red highway that skirted the eastern angle was bare
+and shadeless, until it slipped a league off into a watered valley and
+refreshed itself under lesser sycamores and willows. It was here the
+newly born city of Excelsior, still in its cradle, had, like an infant
+Hercules, strangled the serpentine North Fork of the American river,
+and turned its life current into the ditches and flumes of the Excelsior
+mines.
+
+Newest of the new houses that seemed to have accidentally formed its
+single, straggling street was the residence of the Rev. Winslow Wynn,
+not unfrequently known as "Father Wynn," pastor of the First Baptist
+church. The "pastorage," as it was cheerfully called, had the glaring
+distinction of being built of brick, and was, as had been wickedly
+pointed out by idle scoffers, the only "fireproof" structure in town.
+This sarcasm was not, however, supposed to be particularly distasteful
+to "Father Wynn," who enjoyed the reputation of being "hail fellow, well
+met" with the rough mining element, who called them by their Christian
+names, had been known to drink at the bar of the Polka Saloon while
+engaged in the conversion of a prominent citizen, and was popularly said
+to have no "gospel starch" about him. Certain conscious outcasts and
+transgressors were touched at this apparent unbending of the spiritual
+authority. The rigid tenets of Father Wynn's faith were lost in the
+supposed catholicity of his humanity. "A preacher that can jine a man
+when he's histin' liquor into him, without jawin' about it, ought to be
+allowed to wrestle with sinners and splash about in as much cold water
+as he likes," was the criticism of one of his converts. Nevertheless,
+it was true that Father Wynn was somewhat loud and intolerant in his
+tolerance. It was true that he was a little more rough, a little more
+frank, a little more hearty, a little more impulsive than his disciples.
+It was true that often the proclamation of his extreme liberality and
+brotherly equality partook somewhat of an apology. It is true that a few
+who might have been most benefited by this kind of gospel regarded
+him with a singular disdain. It is true that his liberality was of an
+ornamental, insinuating quality, accompanied with but little sacrifice;
+his acceptance of a collection taken up in a gambling saloon for the
+rebuilding of his church, destroyed by fire, gave him a popularity
+large enough, it must be confessed, to cover the sins of the gamblers
+themselves, but it was not proven that HE had ever organized any form
+of relief. But it was true that local history somehow accepted him as
+an exponent of mining Christianity, without the least reference to the
+opinions of the Christian miners themselves.
+
+The Rev. Mr. Wynn's liberal habits and opinions were not, however,
+shared by his only daughter, a motherless young lady of eighteen.
+Nellie Wynn was in the eye of Excelsior an unapproachable divinity,
+as inaccessible and cold as her father was impulsive and familiar. An
+atmosphere of chaste and proud virginity made itself felt even in
+the starched integrity of her spotless skirts, in her neatly gloved
+finger-tips, in her clear amber eyes, in her imperious red lips, in her
+sensitive nostrils. Need it be said that the youth and middle age of
+Excelsior were madly, because apparently hopelessly, in love with her?
+For the rest, she had been expensively educated, was profoundly ignorant
+in two languages, with a trained misunderstanding of music and painting,
+and a natural and faultless taste in dress.
+
+The Rev. Mr. Wynn was engaged in a characteristic hearty parting with
+one of his latest converts, upon his own doorstep, with admirable
+al fresco effect. He had just clapped him on the shoulder. "Good-by,
+good-by, Charley, my boy, and keep in the right path; not up, or down,
+or round the gulch, you know--ha, ha!--but straight across lots to
+the shining gate." He had raised his voice under the stimulus of a few
+admiring spectators, and backed his convert playfully against the wall.
+"You see! we're goin' in to win, you bet. Good-by! I'd ask you to step
+in and have a chat, but I've got my work to do, and so have you. The
+gospel mustn't keep us from that, must it, Charley? Ha, ha!"
+
+The convert (who elsewhere was a profane expressman, and had become
+quite imbecile under Mr. Wynn's active heartiness and brotherly
+horse-play before spectators) managed, however, to feebly stammer with a
+blush something about "Miss Nellie."
+
+"Ah, Nellie. She, too, is at her tasks--trimming her lamp--you know,
+the parable of the wise virgins," continued Father Wynn hastily,
+fearing that the convert might take the illustration literally. "There,
+there--good-by. Keep in the right path." And with a parting shove he
+dismissed Charley and entered his own house.
+
+That "wise virgin," Nellie, had evidently finished with the lamp, and
+was now going out to meet the bridegroom, as she was fully dressed and
+gloved, and had a pink parasol in her hand, as her father entered the
+sitting-room. His bluff heartiness seemed to fade away as he removed
+his soft, broad-brimmed hat and glanced across the too fresh-looking
+apartment. There was a smell of mortar still in the air, and a faint
+suggestion that at any moment green grass might appear between the
+interstices of the red-brick hearth. The room, yielding a little in the
+point of coldness, seemed to share Miss Nellie's fresh virginity, and,
+barring the pink parasol, set her off as in a vestal's cell.
+
+"I supposed you wouldn't care to see Brace, the expressman, so I got
+rid of him at the door," said her father, drawing one of the new chairs
+towards him slowly, and sitting down carefully, as if it were a hitherto
+untried experiment.
+
+Miss Nellie's face took a tint of interest. "Then he doesn't go with the
+coach to Indian Spring to-day?"
+
+"No; why?"
+
+"I thought of going over myself to get the Burnham girls to come to
+choir-meeting," replied Miss Nellie carelessly, "and he might have been
+company."
+
+"He'd go now, if he knew you were going," said her father; "but it's
+just as well he shouldn't be needlessly encouraged. I rather think that
+Sheriff Dunn is a little jealous of him. By the way, the sheriff is
+much better. I called to cheer him up to-day" (Mr. Wynn had in fact
+tumultuously accelerated the sick man's pulse), "and he talked of you,
+as usual. In fact, he said he had only two things to get well for. One
+was to catch and hang that woman Teresa, who shot him; the other--can't
+you guess the other?" he added archly, with a faint suggestion of his
+other manner.
+
+Miss Nellie coldly could not.
+
+The Rev. Mr. Wynn's archness vanished. "Don't be a fool," he said dryly.
+"He wants to marry you, and you know it."
+
+"Most of the men here do," responded Miss Nellie, without the least
+trace of coquetry. "Is the wedding or the hanging to take place first,
+or together, so he can officiate at both?"
+
+"His share in the Union Ditch is worth a hundred thousand dollars,"
+continued her father; "and if he isn't nominated for district judge this
+fall, he's bound to go to the legislature, anyway. I don't think a girl
+with your advantages and education can afford to throw away the chance
+of shining in Sacramento, San Francisco, or, in good time, perhaps even
+Washington."
+
+Miss Nellie's eyes did not reflect entire disapproval of this
+suggestion, although she replied with something of her father's
+practical quality.
+
+"Mr. Dunn is not out of his bed yet, and they say Teresa's got away to
+Arizona, so there isn't any particular hurry."
+
+"Perhaps not; but see here, Nellie, I've some important news for you.
+You know your young friend of the Carquinez Woods--Dorman, the botanist,
+eh? Well, Brace knows all about him. And what do you think he is?"
+
+Miss Nellie took upon herself a few extra degrees of cold, and didn't
+know.
+
+"An Injin! Yes, an out-and-out Cherokee. You see he calls himself
+Dorman--Low Dorman. That's only French for 'Sleeping Water,' his Injin
+name!--'Low Dorman.'"
+
+"You mean 'L'Eau Dormante,'" said Nellie.
+
+"That's what I said. The chief called him 'Sleeping Water' when he was a
+boy, and one of them French Canadian trappers translated it into French
+when he brought him to California to school. But he's an Injin, sure. No
+wonder he prefers to live in the woods."
+
+"Well?" said Nellie.
+
+"Well," echoed her father impatiently, "he's an Injin, I tell you, and
+you can't of course have anything to do with him. He mustn't come here
+again."
+
+"But you forget," said Nellie imperturbably, "that it was you who
+invited him here, and were so much exercised over him. You remember
+you introduced him to the Bishop and those Eastern clergymen as a
+magnificent specimen of a young Californian. You forget what an occasion
+you made of his coming to church on Sunday, and how you made him come in
+his buckskin shirt and walk down the street with you after service!"
+
+"Yes, yes," said the Rev. Mr. Wynn, hurriedly.
+
+"And," continued Nellie carelessly, "how you made us sing out of the
+same book 'Children of our Father's Fold,' and how you preached at him
+until he actually got a color!"
+
+"Yes," said her father; "but it wasn't known then he was an Injin, and
+they are frightfully unpopular with those Southwestern men among whom we
+labor. Indeed, I am quite convinced that when Brace said 'the only good
+Indian was a dead one' his expression, though extravagant, perhaps,
+really voiced the sentiments of the majority. It would be only kindness
+to the unfortunate creature to warn him from exposing himself to their
+rude but conscientious antagonism."
+
+"Perhaps you'd better tell him, then, in your own popular way, which
+they all seem to understand so well," responded the daughter. Mr. Wynn
+cast a quick glance at her, but there was no trace of irony in her
+face--nothing but a half-bored indifference as she walked toward the
+window.
+
+"I will go with you to the coach-office," said her father, who generally
+gave these simple paternal duties the pronounced character of a public
+Christian example.
+
+"It's hardly worth while," replied Miss Nellie. "I've to stop at the
+Watsons', at the foot of the hill, and ask after the baby; so I shall go
+on to the Crossing and pick up the coach when it passes. Good-by."
+
+Nevertheless, as soon as Nellie had departed, the Rev. Mr. Wynn
+proceeded to the coach-office, and publicly grasping the hand of Yuba
+Bill, the driver, commended his daughter to his care in the name of the
+universal brotherhood of man and the Christian fraternity. Carried away
+by his heartiness, he forgot his previous caution, and confided to
+the expressman Miss Nellie's regrets that she was not to have that
+gentleman's company. The result was that Miss Nellie found the coach
+with its passengers awaiting her with uplifted hats and wreathed smiles
+at the Crossing, and the box seat (from which an unfortunate stranger,
+who had expensively paid for it, had been summarily ejected) at her
+service beside Yuba Bill, who had thrown away his cigar and donned a new
+pair of buckskin gloves to do her honor. But a more serious result to
+the young beauty was the effect of the Rev. Mr. Wynn's confidences upon
+the impulsive heart of Jack Brace, the expressman. It has been already
+intimated that it was his "day off." Unable to summarily reassume his
+usual functions beside the driver without some practical reason, and
+ashamed to go so palpably as a mere passenger, he was forced to let
+the coach proceed without him. Discomfited for the moment, he was not,
+however, beaten. He had lost the blissful journey by her side, which
+would have been his professional right, but--she was going to Indian
+Spring! could he not anticipate her there? Might they not meet in the
+most accidental manner? And what might not come from that meeting away
+from the prying eyes of their own town? Mr. Brace did not hesitate, but
+saddling his fleet Buckskin, by the time the stage-coach had passed the
+Crossing in the high-road he had mounted the hill and was dashing along
+the "cutoff" in the same direction, a full mile in advance. Arriving at
+Indian Spring, he left his horse at a Mexican posada on the confines of
+the settlement, and from the piled debris of a tunnel excavation awaited
+the slow arrival of the coach. On mature reflection he could give no
+reason why he had not boldly awaited it at the express office, except
+a certain bashful consciousness of his own folly, and a belief that it
+might be glaringly apparent to the bystanders. When the coach arrived
+and he had overcome this consciousness, it was too late. Yuba Bill had
+discharged his passengers for Indian Spring and driven away. Miss
+Nellie was in the settlement, but where? As time passed he became more
+desperate and bolder. He walked recklessly up and down the main street,
+glancing in at the open doors of shops, and even in the windows of
+private dwellings. It might have seemed a poor compliment to Miss
+Nellie, but it was an evidence of his complete preoccupation, when the
+sight of a female face at a window, even though it was plain or perhaps
+painted, caused his heart to bound, or the glancing of a skirt in the
+distance quickened his feet and his pulses. Had Jack contented himself
+with remaining at Excelsior he might have vaguely regretted, but as soon
+become as vaguely accustomed to, Miss Nellie's absence. But it was not
+until his hitherto quiet and passive love took this first step of action
+that it fully declared itself. When he had made the tour of the town
+a dozen times unsuccessfully, he had perfectly made up his mind that
+marriage with Nellie or the speedy death of several people, including
+possibly himself, was the only alternative. He regretted he had not
+accompanied her; he regretted he had not demanded where she was going;
+he contemplated a course of future action that two hours ago would
+have filled him with bashful terror. There was clearly but one thing to
+do--to declare his passion the instant he met her, and return with her
+to Excelsior an accepted suitor, or not to return at all.
+
+Suddenly he was vexatiously conscious of hearing his name lazily called,
+and looking up found that he was on the outskirts of the town, and
+interrogated by two horsemen.
+
+"Got down to walk, and the coach got away from you, Jack, eh?"
+
+A little ashamed of his preoccupation, Brace stammered something about
+"collections." He did not recognize the men, but his own face, name,
+and business were familiar to everybody for fifty miles along the
+stage-road.
+
+"Well, you can settle a bet for us, I reckon. Bill Dacre thar bet me
+five dollars and the drinks that a young gal we met at the edge of the
+Carquinez Woods, dressed in a long brown duster and half muffled up in a
+hood, was the daughter of Father Wynn of Excelsior. I did not get a fair
+look at her, but it stands to reason that a high-toned young lady like
+Nellie Wynn don't go trap'sing along the wood like a Pike County tramp.
+I took the bet. May be you know if she's here or in Excelsior?"
+
+Mr. Brace felt himself turning pale with eagerness and excitement. But
+the near prospect of seeing her presently gave him back his caution, and
+he answered truthfully that he had left her in Excelsior, and that in
+his two hours' sojourn in Indian Spring he had not met her once. "But,"
+he added, with a Californian's reverence for the sanctity of a bet, "I
+reckon you'd better make it a stand-off for twenty-four hours, and I'll
+find out and let you know." Which, it is only fair to say, he honestly
+intended to do.
+
+With a hurried nod of parting, he continued in the direction of the
+Woods. When he had satisfied himself that the strangers had entered
+the settlement, and would not follow him for further explanation,
+he quickened his pace. In half an hour he passed between two of the
+gigantic sentinels that guarded the entrance to a trail. Here he paused
+to collect his thoughts. The Woods were vast in extent, the trail dim
+and uncertain--at times apparently breaking off, or intersecting another
+trail as faint as itself. Believing that Miss Nellie had diverged from
+the highway only as a momentary excursion into the shade, and that she
+would not dare to penetrate its more sombre and unknown recesses, he
+kept within sight of the skirting plain. By degrees the sedate influence
+of the silent vaults seemed to depress him. The ardor of the chase began
+to flag. Under the calm of their dim roof the fever of his veins began
+to subside; his pace slackened; he reasoned more deliberately. It was by
+no means probable that the young woman in a brown duster was Nellie;
+it was not her habitual traveling dress; it was not like her to walk
+unattended in the road; there was nothing in her tastes and habits to
+take her into this gloomy forest, allowing that she had even entered
+it; and on this absolute question of her identity the two witnesses were
+divided. He stopped irresolutely, and cast a last, long, half-despairing
+look around him. Hitherto he had given that part of the wood nearest the
+plain his greatest attention. His glance now sought its darker recesses.
+Suddenly he became breathless. Was it a beam of sunlight that had
+pierced the groined roof above, and now rested against the trunk of one
+of the dimmer, more secluded giants? No, it was moving; even as he gazed
+it slipped away, glanced against another tree, passed across one of the
+vaulted aisles, and then was lost again. Brief as was the glimpse, he
+was not mistaken--it was the figure of a woman.
+
+In another moment he was on her track, and soon had the satisfaction of
+seeing her reappear at a lesser distance. But the continual intervention
+of the massive trunks made the chase by no means an easy one, and as he
+could not keep her always in sight he was unable to follow or understand
+the one intelligent direction which she seemed to invariably keep.
+Nevertheless, he gained upon her breathlessly, and, thanks to the
+bark-strewn floor, noiselessly. He was near enough to distinguish and
+recognize the dress she wore, a pale yellow, that he had admired when he
+first saw her. It was Nellie, unmistakably; if it were she of the brown
+duster, she had discarded it, perhaps for greater freedom. He was near
+enough to call out now, but a sudden nervous timidity overcame him; his
+lips grew dry. What should he say to her? How account for his presence?
+"Miss Nellie, one moment!" he gasped. She darted forward and--vanished.
+
+At this moment he was not more than a dozen yards from her. He rushed
+to where she had been standing, but her disappearance was perfect and
+complete. He made a circuit of the group of trees within whose radius
+she had last appeared, but there was neither trace of her, nor a
+suggestion of her mode of escape. He called aloud to her; the vacant
+Woods let his helpless voice die in their unresponsive depths. He gazed
+into the air and down at the bark-strewn carpet at his feet. Like most
+of his vocation, he was sparing of speech, and epigrammatic after his
+fashion. Comprehending in one swift but despairing flash of intelligence
+the existence of some fateful power beyond his own weak endeavor, he
+accepted its logical result with characteristic grimness, threw his hat
+upon the ground, put his hands in his pockets, and said--
+
+"Well, I'm d--d!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+Out of compliment to Miss Nellie Wynn, Yuba Bill, on reaching Indian
+Spring, had made a slight detour to enable him to ostentatiously set
+down his fair passenger before the door of the Burnhams. When it had
+closed on the admiring eyes of the passengers and the coach had rattled
+away, Miss Nellie, without any undue haste or apparent change in
+her usual quiet demeanor, managed, however, to dispatch her business
+promptly, and, leaving an impression that she would call again before
+her return to Excelsior, parted from her friends and slipped away
+through a side street to the General Furnishing Store of Indian Spring.
+In passing this emporium, Miss Nellie's quick eye had discovered a cheap
+brown linen duster hanging in its window. To purchase it, and put it
+over her delicate cambric dress, albeit with a shivering sense that she
+looked like a badly folded brown-paper parcel, did not take long. As she
+left the shop it was with mixed emotions of chagrin and security that
+she noticed that her passage through the settlement no longer turned
+the heads of its male inhabitants. She reached the outskirts of Indian
+Spring and the high-road at about the time Mr. Brace had begun his
+fruitless patrol of the main street. Far in the distance a faint
+olive-green table mountain seemed to rise abruptly from the plain.
+It was the Carquinez Woods. Gathering her spotless skirts beneath her
+extemporized brown domino, she set out briskly towards them.
+
+But her progress was scarcely free or exhilarating. She was not
+accustomed to walking in a country where "buggy-riding" was considered
+the only genteel young-lady-like mode of progression, and its regular
+provision the expected courtesy of mankind. Always fastidiously booted,
+her low-quartered shoes were charming to the eye, but hardly adapted
+to the dust and inequalities of the highroad. It was true that she had
+thought of buying a coarser pair at Indian Spring, but once face to face
+with their uncompromising ugliness, she had faltered and fled. The sun
+was unmistakably hot, but her parasol was too well known and offered
+too violent a contrast to the duster for practical use. Once she stopped
+with an exclamation of annoyance, hesitated, and looked back. In half
+an hour she had twice lost her shoe and her temper; a pink flush took
+possession of her cheeks, and her eyes were bright with suppressed rage.
+Dust began to form grimy circles around their orbits; with cat-like
+shivers she even felt it pervade the roots of her blond hair. Gradually
+her breath grew more rapid and hysterical, her smarting eyes became
+humid, and at last, encountering two observant horsemen in the road, she
+turned and fled, until, reaching the wood, she began to cry.
+
+Nevertheless she waited for the two horsemen to pass, to satisfy herself
+that she was not followed; then pushed on vaguely, until she reached a
+fallen tree, where, with a gesture of disgust, she tore off her hapless
+duster and flung it on the ground. She then sat down sobbing, but after
+a moment dried her eyes hurriedly and started to her feet. A few paces
+distant, erect, noiseless, with outstretched hand, the young solitary
+of the Carquinez Woods advanced towards her. His hand had almost touched
+hers, when he stopped.
+
+"What has happened?" he asked gravely.
+
+"Nothing," she said, turning half away, and searching the ground with
+her eyes, as if she had lost something. "Only I must be going back now."
+
+"You shall go back at once, if you wish it," he said, flushing slightly.
+"But you have been crying; why?"
+
+Frank as Miss Nellie wished to be, she could not bring herself to
+say that her feet hurt her, and the dust and heat were ruining her
+complexion. It was therefore with a half-confident belief that
+her troubles were really of a moral quality that she answered,
+"Nothing--nothing, but--but--it's wrong to come here."
+
+"But you did not think it was wrong when you agreed to come, at our
+last meeting," said the young man, with that persistent logic which
+exasperates the inconsequent feminine mind. "It cannot be any more wrong
+to-day."
+
+"But it was not so far off," murmured the young girl, without looking
+up.
+
+"Oh, the distance makes it more improper, then," he said abstractedly;
+but after a moment's contemplation of her half-averted face, he asked
+gravely, "Has anyone talked to you about me?"
+
+Ten minutes before, Nellie had been burning to unburthen herself of her
+father's warning, but now she felt she would not. "I wish you wouldn't
+call yourself Low," she said at last.
+
+"But it's my name," he replied quietly.
+
+"Nonsense! It's only a stupid translation of a stupid nickname. They
+might as well call you 'Water' at once."
+
+"But you said you liked it."
+
+"Well, so I do. But don't you see--I--oh dear! you don't understand."
+
+Low did not reply, but turned his head with resigned gravity towards the
+deeper woods. Grasping the barrel of his rifle with his left hand, he
+threw his right arm across his left wrist and leaned slightly upon it
+with the habitual ease of a Western hunter--doubly picturesque in his
+own lithe, youthful symmetry. Miss Nellie looked at him from under her
+eyelids, and then half defiantly raised her head and her dark lashes.
+Gradually an almost magical change came over her features; her eyes grew
+larger and more and more yearning, until they seemed to draw and absorb
+in their liquid depths the figure of the young man before her; her cold
+face broke into an ecstasy of light and color; her humid lips parted
+in a bright, welcoming smile, until, with an irresistible impulse, she
+arose, and throwing back her head stretched towards him two hands full
+of vague and trembling passion.
+
+In another moment he had seized them, kissed them, and, as he drew her
+closer to his embrace, felt them tighten around his neck. "But what name
+do you wish to call me?" he asked, looking down into her eyes.
+
+Miss Nellie murmured something confidentially to the third button of his
+hunting shirt. "But that," he replied, with a smile, "THAT wouldn't be
+any more practical, and you wouldn't want others to call me dar--" Her
+fingers loosened around his neck, she drew her head back, and a singular
+expression passed over her face, which to any calmer observer than
+a lover would have seemed, however, to indicate more curiosity than
+jealousy.
+
+"Who else DOES call you so?" she added earnestly. "How many, for
+instance?"
+
+Low's reply was addressed not to her ear, but her lips. She did not
+avoid it, but added, "And do you kiss them all like that?" Taking him by
+the shoulders, she held him a little way from her, and gazed at him from
+head to foot. Then drawing him again to her embrace, she said, "I don't
+care, at least no woman has kissed you like that." Happy, dazzled, and
+embarrassed, he was beginning to stammer the truthful protestation that
+rose to his lips, but she stopped him: "No, don't protest! say nothing!
+Let ME love YOU--that is all. It is enough." He would have caught her
+in his arms again, but she drew back. "We are near the road," she said
+quietly. "Come! You promised to show me where you camped. Let US make
+the most of our holiday. In an hour I must leave the woods."
+
+"But I shall accompany you, dearest."
+
+"No, I must go as I came--alone."
+
+"But Nellie--"
+
+"I tell you no," she said, with an almost harsh practical decision,
+incompatible with her previous abandonment. "We might be seen together."
+
+"Well, suppose we are; we must be seen together eventually," he
+remonstrated.
+
+The young girl made an involuntary gesture of impatient negation, but
+checked herself. "Don't let us talk of that now. Come, while I am here
+under your own roof--" she pointed to the high interlaced boughs above
+them--"you must be hospitable. Show me your home; tell me, isn't it a
+little gloomy sometimes?"
+
+"It never has been; I never thought it WOULD be until the moment you
+leave it to-day."
+
+She pressed his hand briefly and in a half-perfunctory way, as if her
+vanity had accepted and dismissed the compliment. "Take me somewhere,"
+she said inquisitively, "where you stay most; I do not seem to see you
+HERE," she added, looking around her with a slight shiver. "It is so big
+and so high. Have you no place where you eat and rest and sleep?"
+
+"Except in the rainy season, I camp all over the place--at any spot
+where I may have been shooting or collecting."
+
+"Collecting?" queried Nellie.
+
+"Yes; with the herbarium, you know."
+
+"Yes," said Nellie dubiously. "But you told me once--the first time we
+ever talked together," she added, looking in his eyes--"something about
+your keeping your things like a squirrel in a tree. Could we not
+go there? Is there not room for us to sit and talk without being
+brow-beaten and looked down upon by these supercilious trees?"
+
+"It's too far away," said Low truthfully, but with a somewhat pronounced
+emphasis, "much too far for you just now; and it lies on another trail
+that enters the wood beyond. But come, I will show you a spring known
+only to myself, the wood ducks, and the squirrels. I discovered it the
+first day I saw you, and gave it your name. But you shall christen it
+yourself. It will be all yours, and yours alone, for it is so hidden and
+secluded that I defy any feet but my own or whoso shall keep step with
+mine to find it. Shall that foot be yours, Nellie?"
+
+Her face beamed with a bright assent. "It may be difficult to track it
+from here," he said, "but stand where you are a moment, and don't move,
+rustle, nor agitate the air in any way. The woods are still now." He
+turned at right angles with the trail, moved a few paces into the ferns
+and underbrush, and then stopped with his finger on his lips. For an
+instant both remained motionless; then with his intent face bent forward
+and both arms extended, he began to sink slowly upon one knee and one
+side, inclining his body with a gentle, perfectly-graduated movement
+until his ear almost touched the ground. Nellie watched his graceful
+figure breathlessly, until, like a bow unbent, he stood suddenly erect
+again, and beckoned to her without changing the direction of his face.
+
+"What is it?" she asked eagerly.
+
+"All right; I have found it," he continued, moving forward without
+turning his head.
+
+"But how? What did you kneel for?" He did not reply, but taking her hand
+in his continued to move slowly on through the underbrush, as if
+obeying some magnetic attraction. "How did you find it?" again asked
+the half-awed girl, her voice unconsciously falling to a whisper. Still
+silent, Low kept his rigid face and forward tread for twenty yards
+further; then he stopped and released the girl's half-impatient hand.
+"How did you find it?" she repeated sharply.
+
+"With my ears and nose," replied Low gravely.
+
+"With your nose?"
+
+"Yes; I smelt it."
+
+Still fresh with the memory of his picturesque attitude, the young man's
+reply seemed to involve something more irritating to her feelings than
+even that absurd anticlimax. She looked at him coldly and critically,
+and appeared to hesitate whether to proceed. "Is it far?" she asked.
+
+"Not more than ten minutes now, as I shall go."
+
+"And you won't have to smell your way again?"
+
+"No; it is quite plain now," he answered seriously, the young girl's
+sarcasm slipping harmlessly from his Indian stolidity. "Don't you smell
+it yourself?"
+
+But Miss Nellie's thin, cold nostrils refused to take that vulgar
+interest.
+
+"Nor hear it? Listen!"
+
+"You forget I suffer the misfortune of having been brought up under a
+roof," she replied coldly.
+
+"That's true," repeated Low, in all seriousness; "it's not your fault.
+But do you know, I sometimes think I am peculiarly sensitive to water; I
+feel it miles away. At night, though I may not see it or even know where
+it is, I am conscious of it. It is company to me when I am alone, and
+I seem to hear it in my dreams. There is no music as sweet to me as
+its song. When you sang with me that day in church, I seemed to hear it
+ripple in your voice. It says to me more than the birds do, more than
+the rarest plants I find. It seems to live with me and for me. It is my
+earliest recollection; I know it will be my last, for I shall die in its
+embrace. Do you think, Nellie," he continued, stopping short and gazing
+earnestly in her face--"do you think that the chiefs knew this when they
+called me 'Sleeping Water'?"
+
+To Miss Nellie's several gifts I fear the gods had not added poetry. A
+slight knowledge of English verse of a select character, unfortunately,
+did not assist her in the interpretation of the young man's speech, nor
+relieve her from the momentary feeling that he was at times deficient
+in intellect. She preferred, however, to take a personal view of the
+question, and expressed her sarcastic regret that she had not known
+before that she had been indebted to the great flume and ditch at
+Excelsior for the pleasure of his acquaintance. This pert remark
+occasioned some explanation, which ended in the girl's accepting a kiss
+in lieu of more logical argument. Nevertheless, she was still conscious
+of an inward irritation--always distinct from her singular and perfectly
+material passion--which found vent as the difficulties of their
+undeviating progress through the underbrush increased. At last she lost
+her shoe again, and stopped short. "It's a pity your Indian friends
+did not christen you 'Wild Mustard' or 'Clover,'" she said satirically,
+"that you might have had some sympathies and longings for the open
+fields instead of these horrid jungles! I know we will not get back in
+time."
+
+Unfortunately, Low accepted this speech literally and with his
+remorseless gravity. "If my name annoys you, I can get it changed by the
+legislature, you know, and I can find out what my father's name was, and
+take that. My mother, who died in giving me birth, was the daughter of a
+chief."
+
+"Then your mother was really an Indian?" said Nellie, "and you are--"
+She stopped short.
+
+"But I told you all this the day we first met," said Low, with grave
+astonishment. "Don't you remember our long talk coming from church?"
+
+"No," said Nellie coldly, "you didn't tell me." But she was obliged to
+drop her eyes before the unwavering, undeniable truthfulness of his.
+
+"You have forgotten," he said calmly; "but it is only right you should
+have your own way in disposing of a name that I have cared little for;
+and as you're to have a share of it--"
+
+"Yes, but it's getting late, and if we are not going forward--"
+interrupted the girl impatiently.
+
+"We ARE going forward," said Low imperturbably; "but I wanted to tell
+you, as we were speaking on THAT subject" (Nellie looked at her watch),
+"I've been offered the place of botanist and naturalist in Professor
+Grant's survey of Mount Shasta, and if I take it--why, when I come back,
+darling--well--"
+
+"But you're not going just yet," broke in Nellie, with a new expression
+in her face.
+
+"No."
+
+"Then we need not talk of it now," she said, with animation.
+
+Her sudden vivacity relieved him. "I see what's the matter," he said
+gently, looking down at her feet; "these little shoes were not made to
+keep step with a moccasin. We must try another way." He stooped as if
+to secure the erring buskin, but suddenly lifted her like a child to his
+shoulder. "There," he continued, placing her arm round his neck, "you
+are clear of the ferns and brambles now, and we can go on. Are you
+comfortable?" He looked up, read her answer in her burning eyes and
+the warm lips pressed to his forehead at the roots of his straight dark
+hair, and again moved onward as in a mesmeric dream. But he did not
+swerve from his direct course, and with a final dash through the
+undergrowth parted the leafy curtain before the spring.
+
+At first the young girl was dazzled by the strong light that came from a
+rent in the interwoven arches of the wood. The breach had been caused by
+the huge bulk of one of the great giants that had half fallen, and was
+lying at a steep angle against one of its mightiest brethren, having
+borne down a lesser tree in the arc of its downward path. Two of the
+roots, as large as younger trees, tossed their blackened and bare
+limbs high in the air. The spring--the insignificant cause of this vast
+disruption--gurgled, flashed, and sparkled at the base; the limpid baby
+fingers that had laid bare the foundations of that fallen column played
+with the still clinging rootlets, laved the fractured and twisted limbs,
+and, widening, filled with sleeping water the graves from which they had
+been torn.
+
+"It had been going on for years, down there," said Low, pointing to a
+cavity from which the fresh water now slowly welled, "but it had been
+quickened by the rising of the subterranean springs and rivers which
+always occurs at a certain stage of the dry season. I remember that
+on that very night--for it happened a little after midnight, when all
+sounds are more audible--I was troubled and oppressed in my sleep by
+what you would call a nightmare; a feeling as if I was kept down by
+bonds and pinions that I longed to break. And then I heard a crash in
+this direction, and the first streak of morning brought me the sound and
+scent of water. Six months afterwards I chanced to find my way here, as
+I told you, and gave it your name. I did not dream that I should ever
+stand beside it with you, and have you christen it yourself."
+
+He unloosened the cup from his flask, and filling it at the spring
+handed it to her. But the young girl leant over the pool, and pouring
+the water idly back said, "I'd rather put my feet in it. Mayn't I?"
+
+"I don't understand you," he said wonderingly.
+
+"My feet are SO hot and dusty. The water looks deliciously cool. May I?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+He turned away as Nellie, with apparent unconsciousness, seated herself
+on the bank, and removed her shoes and stockings. When she had dabbled
+her feet a few moments in the pool, she said over her shoulder--
+
+"We can talk just as well, can't we?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"Well, then, why didn't you come to church more often, and why didn't
+you think of telling father that you were convicted of sin and wanted to
+be baptized?"
+
+"I don't know," hesitated the young man.
+
+"Well, you lost the chance of having father convert you, baptize you,
+and take you into full church fellowship."
+
+"I never thought--" he began.
+
+"You never thought. Aren't you a Christian?"
+
+"I suppose so."
+
+"He supposes so! Have you no convictions--no profession?"
+
+"But, Nellie, I never thought that you--"
+
+"Never thought that I--what? Do you think that I could ever be anything
+to a man who did not believe in justification by faith, or in the
+covenant of church fellowship? Do you think father would let me?"
+
+In his eagerness to defend himself he stepped to her side. But seeing
+her little feet shining through the dark water, like outcroppings of
+delicately veined quartz, he stopped embarrassed. Miss Nellie, however,
+leaped to one foot, and, shaking the other over the pool, put her hand
+on his shoulder to steady herself. "You haven't got a towel--or," she
+said dubiously, looking at her small handkerchief, "anything to dry them
+on?"
+
+But Low did not, as she perhaps expected, offer his own handkerchief.
+
+"If you take a bath after our fashion," he said gravely, "you must learn
+to dry yourself after our fashion."
+
+Lifting her again lightly in his arms, he carried her a few steps to the
+sunny opening, and bade her bury her feet in the dried mosses and baked
+withered grasses that were bleaching in a hollow. The young girl uttered
+a cry of childish delight, as the soft ciliated fibres touched her
+sensitive skin.
+
+"It is healing, too," continued Low; "a moccasin filled with it after a
+day on the trail makes you all right again."
+
+But Miss Nellie seemed to be thinking of something else.
+
+"Is that the way the squaws bathe and dry themselves?"
+
+"I don't know; you forget I was a boy when I left them."
+
+"And you're sure you never knew any?"
+
+"None."
+
+The young girl seemed to derive some satisfaction in moving her feet
+up and down for several minutes among the grasses in the hollow; then,
+after a pause, said, "You are quite certain I am the first woman that
+ever touched this spring?"
+
+"Not only the first woman, but the first human being, except myself."
+
+"How nice!"
+
+They had taken each other's hands; seated side by side, they leaned
+against a curving elastic root that half supported, half encompassed,
+them. The girl's capricious, fitful manner succumbed as before to the
+near contact of her companion. Looking into her eyes, Low fell into a
+sweet, selfish lover's monologue, descriptive of his past and present
+feelings towards her, which she accepted with a heightened color, a
+slight exchange of sentiment, and a strange curiosity. The sun had
+painted their half-embraced silhouettes against the slanting tree-trunk,
+and began to decline unnoticed; the ripple of the water mingling with
+their whispers came as one sound to the listening ear; even their
+eloquent silences were as deep, and, I wot, perhaps as dangerous, as the
+darkened pool that filled so noiselessly a dozen yards away. So quiet
+were they that the tremor of invading wings once or twice shook the
+silence, or the quick scamper of frightened feet rustled the dead grass.
+But in the midst of a prolonged stillness the young man sprang up so
+suddenly that Nellie was still half clinging to his neck as he stood
+erect. "Hush!" he whispered; "some one is near!"
+
+He disengaged her anxious hands gently, leaped upon the slanting
+tree-trunk, and running half-way up its incline with the agility of a
+squirrel, stretched himself at full length upon it and listened.
+
+To the impatient, inexplicably startled girl, it seemed an age before he
+rejoined her.
+
+"You are safe," he said; "he is going by the western trail towards
+Indian Spring."
+
+"Who is HE?" she asked, biting her lips with a poorly restrained gesture
+of mortification and disappointment.
+
+"Some stranger," replied Low.
+
+"As long as he wasn't coming here, why did you give me such a fright?"
+she said pettishly. "Are you nervous because a single wayfarer happens
+to stray here?"
+
+"It was no wayfarer, for he tried to keep near the trail," said Low. "He
+was a stranger to the wood, for he lost his way every now and then. He
+was seeking or expecting some one, for he stopped frequently and waited
+or listened. He had not walked far, for he wore spurs that tinkled and
+caught in the brush; and yet he had not ridden here, for no horse's
+hoofs passed the road since we have been here. He must have come from
+Indian Spring."
+
+"And you heard all that when you listened just now?" asked Nellie, half
+disdainfully.
+
+Impervious to her incredulity Low turned his calm eyes on her face.
+"Certainly, I'll bet my life on what I say. Tell me: do you know anybody
+in Indian Spring who would likely spy upon you?"
+
+The young girl was conscious of a certain ill-defined uneasiness, but
+answered, "No."
+
+"Then it was not YOU he was seeking," said Low thoughtfully. Miss Nellie
+had not time to notice the emphasis, for he added, "You must go at once,
+and lest you have been followed I will show you another way back to
+Indian Spring. It is longer, and you must hasten. Take your shoes and
+stockings with you until we are out of the bush."
+
+He raised her again in his arms and strode once more out through the
+covert into the dim aisles of the wood. They spoke but little; she could
+not help feeling that some other discordant element, affecting him more
+strongly than it did her, had come between them, and was half perplexed
+and half frightened. At the end of ten minutes he seated her upon a
+fallen branch, and telling her he would return by the time she had
+resumed her shoes and stockings glided from her like a shadow. She would
+have uttered an indignant protest at being left alone, but he was gone
+ere she could detain him. For a moment she thought she hated him. But
+when she had mechanically shod herself once more, not without nervous
+shivers at every falling needle, he was at her side.
+
+"Do you know anyone who wears a frieze coat like that?" he asked,
+handing her a few torn shreds of wool affixed to a splinter of bark.
+
+Miss Nellie instantly recognized the material of a certain sporting
+coat worn by Mr. Jack Brace on festive occasions, but a strange yet
+infallible instinct that was part of her nature made her instantly
+disclaim all knowledge of it.
+
+"No," she said.
+
+"Not anyone who scents himself with some doctor's stuff like cologne?"
+continued Low, with the disgust of keen olfactory sensibilities.
+
+Again Miss Nellie recognized the perfume with which the gallant
+expressman was wont to make redolent her little parlor, but again she
+avowed no knowledge of its possessor. "Well," returned Low with some
+disappointment, "such a man has been here. Be on your guard. Let us go
+at once."
+
+She required no urging to hasten her steps, but hurried breathlessly at
+his side. He had taken a new trail by which they left the wood at right
+angles with the highway, two miles away. Following an almost effaced
+mule track along a slight depression of the plain, deep enough, however,
+to hide them from view, he accompanied her, until, rising to the level
+again, she saw they were beginning to approach the highway and the
+distant roofs of Indian Spring. "Nobody meeting you now," he
+whispered, "would suspect where you had been. Good night! until next
+week--remember."
+
+They pressed each other's hands, and standing on the slight ridge
+outlined against the paling sky, in full view of the highway, parting
+carelessly, as if they had been chance met travelers. But Nellie could
+not restrain a parting backward glance as she left the ridge. Low
+had descended to the deserted trail, and was running swiftly in the
+direction of the Carquinez Woods.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+Teresa awoke with a start. It was day already, but how far advanced the
+even, unchanging, soft twilight of the woods gave no indication.
+Her companion had vanished, and to her bewildered senses so had the
+camp-fire, even to its embers and ashes. Was she awake, or had she
+wandered away unconsciously in the night? One glance at the tree above
+her dissipated the fancy. There was the opening of her quaint retreat
+and the hanging strips of bark, and at the foot of the opposite tree
+lay the carcass of the bear. It had been skinned, and, as Teresa thought
+with an inward shiver, already looked half its former size.
+
+Not yet accustomed to the fact that a few steps in either direction
+around the circumference of those great trunks produced the sudden
+appearance or disappearance of any figure, Teresa uttered a slight
+scream as her young companion unexpectedly stepped to her side. "You
+see a change here," he said; "the stamped-out ashes of the camp-fire lie
+under the brush," and he pointed to some cleverly scattered boughs
+and strips of bark which completely effaced the traces of last night's
+bivouac. "We can't afford to call the attention of any packer or hunter
+who might straggle this way to this particular spot and this particular
+tree; the more naturally," he added, "as they always prefer to camp over
+an old fire." Accepting this explanation meekly, as partly a reproach
+for her caprice of the previous night, Teresa hung her head.
+
+"I'm very sorry," she said, "but wouldn't that," pointing to the carcass
+of the bear, "have made them curious?"
+
+But Low's logic was relentless.
+
+"By this time there would have been little left to excite curiosity, if
+you had been willing to leave those beasts to their work."
+
+"I'm very sorry," repeated the woman, her lips quivering.
+
+"They are the scavengers of the wood," he continued in a lighter tone;
+"if you stay here you must try to use them to keep your house clean."
+
+Teresa smiled nervously.
+
+"I mean that they shall finish their work to-night," he added, "and I
+shall build another camp-fire for us a mile from here until they do."
+
+But Teresa caught his sleeve.
+
+"No," she said hurriedly, "don't, please, for me. You must not take the
+trouble, nor the risk. Hear me; do, please. I can bear it, I WILL
+bear it--to-night. I would have borne it last night, but it was so
+strange--and"--she passed her hands over her forehead--"I think I must
+have been half mad. But I am not so foolish now."
+
+She seemed so broken and despondent that he replied reassuringly:
+"Perhaps it would be better that I should find another hiding-place for
+you, until I can dispose of that carcass so that it will not draw dogs
+after the wolves, and men after THEM. Besides, your friend the sheriff
+will probably remember the bear when he remembers anything, and try to
+get on its track again."
+
+"He's a conceited fool," broke in Teresa in a high voice, with a slight
+return of her old fury, "or he'd have guessed where that shot came from;
+and," she added in a lower tone, looking down at her limp and nerveless
+fingers, "he wouldn't have let a poor, weak, nervous wretch like me get
+away."
+
+"But his deputy may put two and two together, and connect your escape
+with it."
+
+Teresa's eyes flashed. "It would be like the dog, just to save his
+pride, to swear it was an ambush of my friends, and that he was
+overpowered by numbers. Oh yes! I see it all!" she almost screamed,
+lashing herself into a rage at the bare contemplation of this diminution
+of her glory. "That's the dirty lie he tells everywhere, and is telling
+now."
+
+She stamped her feet and glanced savagely around, as if at any risk to
+proclaim the falsehood. Low turned his impassive, truthful face towards
+her.
+
+"Sheriff Dunn," he began gravely, "is a politician, and a fool when he
+takes to the trail as a hunter of man or beast. But he is not a coward
+nor a liar. Your chances would be better if he were--if he laid your
+escape to an ambush of your friends, than if his pride held you alone
+responsible."
+
+"If he's such a good man, why do you hesitate?" she replied bitterly.
+"Why don't you give me up at once, and do a service to one of your
+friends?"
+
+"I do not even know him," returned Low opening his clear eyes upon her.
+"I've promised to hide you here, and I shall hide you as well from him
+as from anybody."
+
+Teresa did not reply, but suddenly dropping down upon the ground
+buried her face in her hands and began to sob convulsively. Low turned
+impassively away, and putting aside the bark curtain climbed into the
+hollow tree. In a few moments he reappeared, laden with provisions and
+a few simple cooking utensils, and touched her lightly on the shoulder.
+She looked up timidly; the paroxysm had passed, but her lashes yet
+glittered.
+
+"Come," he said, "come and get some breakfast. I find you have eaten
+nothing since you have been here--twenty-four hours."
+
+"I didn't know it," she said, with a faint smile. Then seeing his
+burden, and possessed by a new and strange desire for some menial
+employment, she said hurriedly, "Let me carry something--do, please,"
+and even tried to disencumber him.
+
+Half annoyed, Low at last yielded, and handing his rifle said, "There,
+then, take that; but be careful--it's loaded!"
+
+A cruel blush burnt the woman's face to the roots of her hair as she
+took the weapon hesitatingly in her hand.
+
+"No!" she stammered, hurriedly lifting her shame-suffused eyes to his;
+"no! no!"
+
+He turned away with an impatience which showed her how completely
+gratuitous had been her agitation and its significance, and said,
+"Well, then, give it back if you are afraid of it." But she as suddenly
+declined to return it; and shouldering it deftly, took her place by his
+side. Silently they moved from the hollow tree together.
+
+During their walk she did not attempt to invade his taciturnity.
+Nevertheless she was as keenly alive and watchful of his every movement
+and gesture as if she had hung enchanted on his lips. The unerring
+way with which he pursued a viewless, undeviating path through those
+trackless woods, his quick reconnaissance of certain trees or openings,
+his mute inspection of some almost imperceptible footprint of bird or
+beast, his critical examination of certain plants which he plucked and
+deposited in his deerskin haversack, were not lost on the quick-witted
+woman. As they gradually changed the clear, unencumbered aisles of the
+central woods for a more tangled undergrowth, Teresa felt that subtle
+admiration which culminates in imitation, and simulating perfectly the
+step, tread, and easy swing of her companion, followed so accurately his
+lead that she won a gratified exclamation from him when their goal
+was reached--a broken, blackened shaft, splintered by long-forgotten
+lightning, in the centre of a tangled carpet of wood-clover.
+
+"I don't wonder you distanced the deputy," he said cheerfully, throwing
+down his burden, "if you can take the hunting-path like that. In a few
+days, if you stay here, I can venture to trust you alone for a little
+pasear when you are tired of the tree."
+
+Teresa looked pleased, but busied herself with arrangements for the
+breakfast, while he gathered the fuel for the roaring fire which soon
+blazed beside the shattered tree.
+
+Teresa's breakfast was a success. It was a revelation to the young
+nomad, whose ascetic habits and simple tastes were usually content with
+the most primitive forms of frontier cookery. It was at least a surprise
+to him to know that without extra trouble kneaded flour, water, and
+saleratus need not be essentially heavy; that coffee need not be boiled
+with sugar to the consistency of syrup; that even that rarest delicacy,
+small shreds of venison covered with ashes and broiled upon the end of
+a ramrod boldly thrust into the flames, would be better and even more
+expeditiously cooked upon burning coals. Moved in his practical nature,
+he was surprised to find this curious creature of disorganized nerves
+and useless impulses informed with an intelligence that did not preclude
+the welfare of humanity or the existence of a soul. He respected her
+for some minutes, until in the midst of a culinary triumph a big tear
+dropped and spluttered in the saucepan. But he forgave the irrelevancy
+by taking no notice of it, and by doing full justice to that particular
+dish.
+
+Nevertheless, he asked several questions based upon these recently
+discovered qualities. It appeared that in the old days of her wanderings
+with the circus troupe she had often been forced to undertake this
+nomadic housekeeping. But she "despised it," had never done it since,
+and always had refused to do it for "him"--the personal pronoun
+referring, as Low understood, to her lover, Curson. Not caring to revive
+these memories further, Low briefly concluded: "I don't know what you
+were, or what you may be, but from what I see of you you've got all the
+sabe of a frontierman's wife."
+
+She stopped and looked at him, and then with an impulse of imprudence
+that only half concealed a more serious vanity, asked, "Do you think I
+might have made a good squaw?"
+
+"I don't know," he replied quietly. "I never saw enough of them to
+know."
+
+Teresa, confident from his clear eyes that he spoke the truth, but
+having nothing ready to follow this calm disposal of her curiosity,
+relapsed into silence.
+
+The meal finished, Teresa washed their scant table equipage in a little
+spring near the camp-fire; where, catching sight of her disordered dress
+and collar, she rapidly threw her shawl, after the national fashion,
+over her shoulder and pinned it quickly. Low cached the remaining
+provisions and the few cooking utensils under the dead embers and ashes,
+obliterating all superficial indication of their camp-fire as deftly and
+artistically as he had before.
+
+"There isn't the ghost of a chance," he said in explanation, "that
+anybody but you or I will set foot here before we come back to supper,
+but it's well to be on guard. I'll take you back to the cabin now,
+though I bet you could find your way there as well as I can."
+
+On their way back Teresa ran ahead of her companion, and plucking a few
+tiny leaves from a hidden oasis in the bark-strewn trail brought them to
+him.
+
+"That's the kind you're looking for, isn't it?" she said, half timidly.
+
+"It is," responded Low, in gratified surprise; "but how did you know it?
+You're not a botanist, are you?"
+
+"I reckon not," said Teresa; "but you picked some when we came, and I
+noticed what they were."
+
+Here was indeed another revelation. Low stopped and gazed at her with
+such frank, open, utterly unabashed curiosity that her black eyes fell
+before him.
+
+"And do you think," he asked with logical deliberation, "that you could
+find any plant from another I should give you?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Or from a drawing of it"
+
+"Yes; perhaps even if you described it to me."
+
+A half-confidential, half-fraternal silence followed.
+
+"I tell you what. I've got a book--"
+
+"I know it," interrupted Teresa; "full of these things."
+
+"Yes. Do you think you could--"
+
+"Of course I could," broke in Teresa, again.
+
+"But you don't know what I mean," said the imperturbable Low.
+
+"Certainly I do. Why, find 'em, and preserve all the different ones for
+you to write under--that's it, isn't it?"
+
+Low nodded his head, gratified but not entirely convinced that she had
+fully estimated the magnitude of the endeavor.
+
+"I suppose," said Teresa, in the feminine postscriptum voice which it
+would seem entered even the philosophical calm of the aisles they were
+treading--"I suppose that SHE places great value on them?"
+
+Low had indeed heard Science personified before, nor was it at all
+impossible that the singular woman walking by his side had also. He
+said "Yes;" but added, in mental reference to the Linnean Society of San
+Francisco, that "THEY were rather particular about the rarer kinds."
+
+Content as Teresa had been to believe in Low's tender relations with
+some favored ONE of her sex, this frank confession of a plural devotion
+staggered her.
+
+"They?" she repeated.
+
+"Yes," he continued calmly. "The Botanical Society I correspond with are
+more particular than the Government Survey."
+
+"Then you are doing this for a society?" demanded Teresa, with a stare.
+
+"Certainly. I'm making a collection and classification of specimens. I
+intend--but what are you looking at?"
+
+Teresa had suddenly turned away. Putting his hand lightly on her
+shoulder, the young man brought her face to face him again.
+
+She was laughing.
+
+"I thought all the while it was for a girl," she said; "and--" But
+here the mere effort of speech sent her off into an audible and genuine
+outburst of laughter. It was the first time he had seen her even smile
+other than bitterly. Characteristically unconscious of any humor in
+her error, he remained unembarrassed. But he could not help noticing
+a change in the expression of her face, her voice, and even her
+intonation. It seemed as if that fit of laughter had loosed the last
+ties that bound her to a self-imposed character, had swept away the last
+barrier between her and her healthier nature, had dispossessed a painful
+unreality, and relieved the morbid tension of a purely nervous attitude.
+The change in her utterance and the resumption of her softer Spanish
+accent seemed to have come with her confidences, and Low took leave
+of her before their sylvan cabin with a comrade's heartiness, and a
+complete forgetfulness that her voice had ever irritated him.
+
+When he returned that afternoon he was startled to find the cabin empty.
+But instead of bearing any appearance of disturbance or hurried flight,
+the rude interior seemed to have magically assumed a decorous order
+and cleanliness unknown before. Fresh bark hid the inequalities of
+the floor. The skins and blankets were folded in the corners, the rude
+shelves were carefully arranged, even a few tall ferns and bright but
+quickly fading flowers were disposed around the blackened chimney. She
+had evidently availed herself of the change of clothing he had brought
+her, for her late garments were hanging from the hastily-devised wooden
+pegs driven in the wall. The young man gazed around him with mixed
+feelings of gratification and uneasiness. His presence had been
+dispossessed in a single hour; his ten years of lonely habitation had
+left no trace that this woman had not effaced with a deft move of her
+hand. More than that, it looked as if she had always occupied it; and
+it was with a singular conviction that even when she should occupy it no
+longer it would only revert to him as her dwelling that he dropped the
+bark shutters athwart the opening, and left it to follow her.
+
+To his quick ear, fine eye, and abnormal senses, this was easy enough.
+She had gone in the direction of this morning's camp. Once or twice he
+paused with a half-gesture of recognition and a characteristic "Good!"
+at the place where she had stopped, but was surprised to find that her
+main course had been as direct as his own. Deviating from this direct
+line with Indian precaution, he first made a circuit of the camp,
+and approached the shattered trunk from the opposite direction. He
+consequently came upon Teresa unawares. But the momentary astonishment
+and embarrassment were his alone.
+
+He scarcely recognized her. She was wearing the garments he had brought
+her the day before--a certain discarded gown of Miss Nellie Wynn, which
+he had hurriedly begged from her under the pretext of clothing the wife
+of a distressed overland emigrant then on the way to the mines. Although
+he had satisfied his conscience with the intention of confessing the
+pious fraud to her when Teresa was gone and safe from pursuit, it
+was not without a sense of remorse that he witnessed the sacrilegious
+transformation. The two women were nearly the same height and size; and
+although Teresa's maturer figure accented the outlines more strongly, it
+was still becoming enough to increase his irritation.
+
+Of this becomingness she was doubtless unaware at the moment that he
+surprised her. She was conscious of having "a change," and this had
+emboldened her to "do her hair" and otherwise compose herself. After
+their greeting she was the first to allude to the dress, regretting that
+it was not more of a rough disguise, and that, as she must now discard
+the national habit of wearing her shawl "manta" fashion over her head,
+she wanted a hat. "But you must not," she said, "borrow any more dresses
+for me from your young woman. Buy them for me at some shop. They left me
+enough money for that." Low gently put aside the few pieces of gold she
+had drawn from her pocket, and briefly reminded her of the suspicion
+such a purchase by him would produce. "That's so," she said, with a
+laugh. "Caramba! what a mule I'm becoming! Ah! wait a moment. I have it!
+Buy me a common felt hat--a man's hat--as if for yourself, as a change
+to that animal," pointing to the fox-tailed cap he wore summer and
+winter, "and I'll show you a trick. I haven't run a theatrical wardrobe
+for nothing." Nor had she, for the hat thus procured, a few days later,
+became, by the aid of a silk handkerchief and a bluejay's feather, a
+fascinating "pork pie."
+
+Whatever cause of annoyance to Low still lingered in Teresa's dress,
+it was soon forgotten in a palpable evidence of Teresa's value as a
+botanical assistant. It appeared that during the afternoon she had not
+only duplicated his specimens, but had discoverd one or two rare
+plants as yet unclassified in the flora of the Carquinez Woods. He was
+delighted, and in turn, over the campfire, yielded up some details of
+his present life and some of his earlier recollections.
+
+"You don't remember anything of your father?" she asked. "Did he ever
+try to seek you out?"
+
+"No! Why should he?" replied the imperturbable Low; "he was not a
+Cherokee."
+
+"No, he was a beast," responded Teresa promptly. "And your mother--do
+you remember her?"
+
+"No, I think she died."
+
+"You THINK she died? Don't you know?"
+
+"No!"
+
+"Then you're another!" said Teresa. Notwithstanding this frankness, they
+shook hands for the night: Teresa nestling like a rabbit in a hollow by
+the side of the campfire; Low with his feet towards it, Indian-wise,
+and his head and shoulders pillowed on his haversack, only half
+distinguishable in the darkness beyond.
+
+With such trivial details three uneventful days slipped by. Their
+retreat was undisturbed, nor could Low detect, by the least evidence
+to his acute perceptive faculties, that any intruding feet had since
+crossed the belt of shade. The echoes of passing events at Indian Spring
+had recorded the escape of Teresa as occurring at a remote and purely
+imaginative distance, and her probable direction the county of Yolo.
+
+"Can you remember," he one day asked her, "what time it was when you cut
+the riata and got away?"
+
+Teresa pressed her hands upon her eyes and temples.
+
+"About three, I reckon."
+
+"And you were here at seven; you could have covered some ground in four
+hours?"
+
+"Perhaps--I don't know," she said, her voice taking up its old quality
+again. "Don't ask me--I ran all the way."
+
+Her face was quite pale as she removed her hands from her eyes, and her
+breath came as quickly as if she had just finished that race for life.
+
+"Then you think I am safe here?" she added, after a pause.
+
+"Perfectly--until they find you are NOT in Yolo. Then they'll look here.
+And THAT'S the time for you to go THERE." Teresa smiled timidly.
+
+"It will take them some time to search Yolo--unless," she added, "you're
+tired of me here." The charming non sequitur did not, however, seem to
+strike the young man. "I've got time yet to find a few more plants for
+you," she suggested.
+
+"Oh, certainly!"
+
+"And give you a few more lessons in cooking."
+
+"Perhaps."
+
+The conscientious and literal Low was beginning to doubt if she were
+really practical. How otherwise could she trifle with such a situation?
+
+It must be confessed that that day and the next she did trifle with it.
+She gave herself up to a grave and delicious languor that seemed to flow
+from shadow and silence and permeate her entire being. She passed hours
+in a thoughtful repose of mind and spirit that seemed to fall like balm
+from those steadfast guardians, and distill their gentle ether in her
+soul; or breathed into her listening ear immunity from the forgotten
+past, and security for the present. If there was no dream of the future
+in this calm, even recurrence of placid existence, so much the better.
+The simple details of each succeeding day, the quaint housekeeping, the
+brief companionship and coming and going of her young host--himself
+at best a crystallized personification of the sedate and hospitable
+woods--satisfied her feeble cravings. She no longer regretted the
+inferior position that her fears had obliged her to take the first night
+she came; she began to look up to this young man--so much younger than
+herself--without knowing what it meant; it was not until she found
+that this attitude did not detract from his picturesqueness that
+she discovered herself seeking for reasons to degrade him from this
+seductive eminence.
+
+A week had elapsed with little change. On two days he had been absent
+all day, returning only in time to sup in the hollow tree, which,
+thanks to the final removal of the dead bear from its vicinity, was now
+considered a safer retreat than the exposed camp-fire. On the first of
+these occasions she received him with some preoccupation, paying but
+little heed to the scant gossip he brought from Indian Spring, and
+retiring early under the plea of fatigue, that he might seek his own
+distant camp-fire, which, thanks to her stronger nerves and regained
+courage, she no longer required so near. On the second occasion, he
+found her writing a letter more or less blotted with her tears. When it
+was finished, she begged him to post it at Indian Spring, where in two
+days an answer would be returned, under cover, to him.
+
+"I hope you will be satisfied then," she added.
+
+"Satisfied with what?" queried the young man.
+
+"You'll see," she replied, giving him her cold hand. "Good-night."
+
+"But can't you tell me now?" he remonstrated, retaining her hand.
+
+"Wait two days longer--it isn't much," was all she vouchsafed to answer.
+
+The two days passed. Their former confidence and good fellowship were
+fully restored when the morning came on which he was to bring the
+answer from the post-office at Indian Spring. He had talked again of
+his future, and had recorded his ambition to procure the appointment of
+naturalist to a Government Surveying Expedition. She had even jocularly
+proposed to dress herself in man's attire and "enlist" as his assistant.
+
+"But you will be safe with your friends, I hope, by that time,"
+responded Low.
+
+"Safe with my friends," she repeated in a lower voice. "Safe with my
+friends--yes!" An awkward silence followed; Teresa broke it gayly: "But
+your girl, your sweetheart, my benefactor--will SHE let you go?"
+
+"I haven't told her yet," said Low, gravely, "but I don't see why she
+should object."
+
+"Object, indeed!" interrupted Teresa in a high voice and a sudden and
+utterly gratuitous indignation; "how should she? I'd like to see her do
+it!"
+
+She accompanied him some distance to the intersection of the trail,
+where they parted in good spirits. On the dusty plain without a gale
+was blowing that rocked the high tree-tops above her, but, tempered and
+subdued, entered the low aisles with a fluttering breath of morning and
+a sound like the cooing of doves. Never had the wood before shown so
+sweet a sense of security from the turmoil and tempest of the world
+beyond; never before had an intrusion from the outer life--even in
+the shape of a letter--seemed so wicked a desecration. Tempted by the
+solicitation of air and shade, she lingered, with Low's herbarium slung
+on her shoulder.
+
+A strange sensation, like a shiver, suddenly passed across her nerves,
+and left them in a state of rigid tension. With every sense morbidly
+acute, with every faculty strained to its utmost, the subtle instincts
+of Low's woodcraft transformed and possessed her. She knew it now! A
+new element was in the wood--a strange being--another life--another
+man approaching! She did not even raise her head to look about her, but
+darted with the precision and fleetness of an arrow in the direction
+of her tree. But her feet were arrested, her limbs paralzyed, her very
+existence suspended, by the sound of a voice:--
+
+"Teresa!"
+
+It was a voice that had rung in her ears for the last two years in all
+phases of intensity, passion, tenderness, and anger; a voice upon whose
+modulations, rude and unmusical though they were, her heart and soul had
+hung in transport or anguish. But it was a chime that had rung its last
+peal to her senses as she entered the Carquinez Woods, and for the last
+week had been as dead to her as a voice from the grave. It was the voice
+of her lover--Dick Curson!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+The wind was blowing towards the stranger, so that he was nearly upon
+her when Teresa first took the alarm. He was a man over six feet in
+height, strongly built, with a slight tendency to a roundness of bulk
+which suggested reserved rather than impeded energy. His thick beard
+and mustache were closely cropped around a small and handsome mouth that
+lisped except when he was excited, but always kept fellowship with his
+blue eyes in a perpetual smile of half-cynical good-humor. His dress was
+superior to that of the locality; his general expression that of a
+man of the world, albeit a world of San Francisco, Sacramento, and
+Murderer's Bar. He advanced towards her with a laugh and an outstretched
+hand.
+
+"YOU here!" she gasped, drawing back.
+
+Apparently neither surprised nor mortified at this reception, he
+answered frankly, "Yeth. You didn't expect me, I know. But Doloreth
+showed me the letter you wrote her, and--well--here I am, ready to help
+you, with two men and a thpare horthe waiting outside the woodth on the
+blind trail."
+
+"You--YOU--here?" she only repeated.
+
+Curson shrugged his shoulders. "Yeth. Of courth you never expected
+to thee me again, and leatht of all HERE. I'll admit that; I'll thay
+I wouldn't if I'd been in your plathe. I'll go further, and thay you
+didn't want to thee me again--anywhere. But it all cometh to the thame
+thing; here I am. I read the letter you wrote Doloreth. I read how you
+were hiding here, under Dunn'th very nothe, with his whole pothe out,
+cavorting round and barkin' up the wrong tree. I made up my mind to
+come down here with a few nathty friends of mine and cut you out under
+Dunn'th nothe, and run you over into Yuba--that'th all."
+
+"How dared she show you my letter--YOU of all men? How dared she ask
+YOUR help?" continued Teresa, fiercely.
+
+"But she didn't athk my help," he responded coolly. "D--d if I don't
+think she jutht calculated I'd be glad to know you were being hunted
+down and thtarving, that I might put Dunn on your track."
+
+"You lie!" said Teresa, furiously; "she was my friend. A better friend
+than those who professed--more," she added, with a contemptuous drawing
+away of her skirt as if she feared Curson's contamination.
+
+"All right. Thettle that with her when you go back," continued Curson
+philosophically. "We can talk of that on the way. The thing now ith to
+get up and get out of thethe woods. Come!"
+
+Teresa's only reply was a gesture of scorn.
+
+"I know all that," continued Curson half soothingly, "but they're
+waiting."
+
+"Let them wait. I shall not go."
+
+"What will you do?"
+
+"Stay here--till the wolves eat me."
+
+"Teresa, listen. D--- it all--Teresa--Tita! see here," he said with
+sudden energy. "I swear to God it's all right. I'm willing to let
+by-gones be by-gones and take a new deal. You shall come back as if
+nothing had happened, and take your old place as before. I don't mind
+doing the square thing, all round. If that's what you mean, if that's
+all that stands in the way, why, look upon the thing as settled. There,
+Tita, old girl, come."
+
+Careless or oblivious of her stony silence and starting eyes, he
+attempted to take her hand. But she disengaged herself with a quick
+movement, drew back, and suddenly crouched like a wild animal about to
+spring. Curson folded his arms as she leaped to her feet; the little
+dagger she had drawn from her garter flashed menacingly in the air, but
+she stopped.
+
+The man before her remained erect, impassive, and silent; the great
+trees around and beyond her remained erect, impassive, and silent; there
+was no sound in the dim aisles but the quick panting of her mad passion,
+no movement in the calm, motionless shadow but the trembling of her
+uplifted steel. Her arm bent and slowly sank, her fingers relaxed, the
+knife fell from her hand.
+
+"That'th quite enough for a thow," he said, with a return to his former
+cynical ease and a perceptible tone of relief in his voice. "It'th the
+thame old Theretha. Well, then, if you won't go with me, go without me;
+take the led horthe and cut away. Dick Athley and Petereth will follow
+you over the county line. If you want thome money, there it ith." He
+took a buckskin purse from his pocket. "If you won't take it from me"--he
+hesitated as she made no reply--"Athley'th flush and ready to lend you
+thome."
+
+She had not seemed to hear him, but had stooped in some embarrassment,
+picked up the knife and hastily hid it, then with averted face and
+nervous fingers was beginning to tear strips of loose bark from the
+nearest trunk.
+
+"Well, what do you thay?"
+
+"I don't want any money, and I shall stay here." She hesitated, looked
+around her, and then added, with an effort, "I suppose you meant well.
+Be it so! Let by-gones be by-gones. You said just now, 'It's the same
+old Teresa.' So she is, and seeing she's the same she's better here than
+anywhere else."
+
+There was enough bitterness in her tone to call for Curson's
+half-perfunctory sympathy.
+
+"That be d--d," he responded quickly. "Jutht thay you'll come, Tita,
+and--"
+
+She stopped his half-spoken sentence with a negative gesture. "You don't
+understand. I shall stay here."
+
+"But even if they don't theek you here, you can't live here forever. The
+friend that you wrote about who wath tho good to you, you know, can't
+keep you here alwayth; and are you thure you can alwayth trutht her?"
+
+"It isn't a woman; it's a man." She stopped short, and colored to the
+line of her forehead. "Who said it was a woman?" she continued fiercely,
+as if to cover her confusion with a burst of gratuitous anger. "Is that
+another of your lies?"
+
+Curson's lips, which for a moment had completely lost their smile, were
+now drawn together in a prolonged whistle. He gazed curiously at her
+gown, at her hat, at the bow of bright ribbon that tied her black hair,
+and said, "Ah!"
+
+"A poor man who has kept my secret," she went on hurriedly--"a man as
+friendless and lonely as myself. Yes," disregarding Curson's cynical
+smile, "a man who has shared everything--"
+
+"Naturally," suggested Curson.
+
+"And turned himself out of his only shelter to give me a roof and
+covering," she continued mechanically, struggling with the new and
+horrible fancy that his words awakened.
+
+"And thlept every night at Indian Thpring to save your reputation," said
+Curson. "Of courthe."
+
+Teresa turned very white. Curson was prepared for an outburst of
+fury--perhaps even another attack. But the crushed and beaten woman only
+gazed at him with frightened and imploring eyes. "For God's sake, Dick,
+don't say that!"
+
+The amiable cynic was staggered. His good-humor and a certain chivalrous
+instinct he could not repress got the better of him. He shrugged his
+shoulders. "What I thay, and what you DO, Teretha, needn't make us
+quarrel. I've no claim on you--I know it. Only--" a vivid sense of the
+ridiculous, powerful in men of his stamp, completed her victory--"only
+don't thay anything about my coming down here to cut you out from
+the--the--THE SHERIFF." He gave utterance to a short but unaffected
+laugh, made a slight grimace, and turned to go.
+
+Teresa did not join in his mirth. Awkward as it would have been if he
+had taken a severer view of the subject, she was mortified even amidst
+her fears and embarrassment at his levity. Just as she had become
+convinced that his jealousy had made her over-conscious, his apparent
+good-humored indifference gave that over-consciousness a guilty
+significance. Yet this was lost in her sudden alarm as her companion,
+looking up, uttered an exclamation, and placed his hand upon his
+revolver. With a sinking conviction that the climax had come, Teresa
+turned her eyes. From the dim aisles beyond, Low was approaching. The
+catastrophe seemed complete.
+
+She had barely time to utter an imploring whisper: "In the name of God,
+not a word to him." But a change had already come over her companion. It
+was no longer a parley with a foolish woman; he had to deal with a man
+like himself. As Low's dark face and picturesque figure came nearer, Mr.
+Curson's proposed method of dealing with him was made audible.
+
+"Ith it a mulatto or a Thircuth, or both?" he asked, with affected
+anxiety.
+
+Low's Indian phlegm was impervious to such assault. He turned to Teresa,
+without apparently noticing her companion. "I turned back," he said
+quietly, "as soon as I knew there were strangers here; I thought you
+might need me." She noticed for the first time that, in addition to his
+rifle, he carried a revolver and hunting knife in his belt.
+
+"Yeth," returned Curson, with an ineffectual attempt to imitate Low's
+phlegm; "but ath I didn't happen to be a sthranger to this lady, perhaps
+it wathn't nethethary, particularly ath I had two friends--"
+
+"Waiting at the edge of the wood with a led horse," interrupted Low,
+without addressing him, but apparently continuing his explanation to
+Teresa. But she turned to Low with feverish anxiety.
+
+"That's so--he is an old friend--" she gave a quick, imploring glance at
+Curson--"an old friend who came to help me away--he is very kind," she
+stammered, turning alternately from the one to the other; "but I told
+him there was no hurry--at least to-day--that you--were--very good--too,
+and would hide me a little longer, until your plan--you know YOUR plan,"
+she added, with a look of beseeching significance to Low--"could be
+tried." And then, with a helpless conviction that her excuses, motives,
+and emotions were equally and perfectly transparent to both men, she
+stopped in a tremble.
+
+"Perhapth it 'th jutht ath well, then, that the gentleman came thtraight
+here, and didn't tackle my two friendth when he pathed them," observed
+Curson, half sarcastically.
+
+"I have not passed your friends, nor have I been near them," said Low,
+looking at him for the first time, with the same exasperating calm, "or
+perhaps I should not be HERE or they THERE. I knew that one man entered
+the wood a few moments ago, and that two men and four horses remained
+outside."
+
+"That's true," said Teresa to Curson excitedly--"that's true. He knows
+all. He can see without looking, hear without listening. He--he--" she
+stammered, colored, and stopped.
+
+The two men had faced each other. Curson, after his first good-natured
+impulse, had retained no wish to regain Teresa, whom he felt he no
+longer loved, and yet who, for that very reason perhaps, had awakened
+his chivalrous instincts. Low, equally on his side, was altogether
+unconscious of any feeling which might grow into a passion, and prevent
+him from letting her go with another if for her own safety. They were
+both men of a certain taste and refinement. Yet, in spite of all this,
+some vague instinct of the baser male animal remained with them, and
+they were moved to a mutually aggressive attitude in the presence of the
+female.
+
+One word more, and the opening chapter of a sylvan Iliad might have
+begun. But this modern Helen saw it coming, and arrested it with an
+inspiration of feminine genius. Without being observed, she disengaged
+her knife from her bosom and let it fall as if by accident. It struck
+the ground with the point of its keen blade, bounded and rolled between
+them. The two men started and looked at each other with a foolish air.
+Curson laughed.
+
+"I reckon she can take care of herthelf," he said, extending his hand to
+Low. "I'm off. But if I'm wanted SHE'LL know where to find me." Low took
+the proffered hand, but neither of the two men looked at Teresa. The
+reserve of antagonism once broken, a few words of caution, advice, and
+encouragement passed between them, in apparent obliviousness of her
+presence or her personal responsibility. As Curson at last nodded
+a farewell to her, Low insisted upon accompanying him as far as the
+horses, and in another moment she was again alone.
+
+She had saved a quarrel between them at the sacrifice of herself, for
+her vanity was still keen enough to feel that this exhibition of her
+old weakness had degraded her in their eyes, and, worse, had lost the
+respect her late restraint had won from Low. They had treated her like a
+child or a crazy woman, perhaps even now were exchanging criticisms
+upon her--perhaps pitying her! Yet she had prevented a quarrel, a fight;
+possibly the death of either one or the other of these men who despised
+her, for none better knew than she the trivial beginning and desperate
+end of these encounters. Would they--would Low ever realize it, and
+forgive her? Her small, dark hands went up to her eyes and she sank
+upon the ground. She looked through tear-veiled lashes upon the mute and
+giant witnesses of her deceit and passion, and tried to draw, from their
+immovable calm, strength and consolation as before. But even they seemed
+to stand apart, reserved and forbidding.
+
+When Low returned she hoped to gather from his eyes and manner what
+had passed between him and her former lover. But beyond a mere gentle
+abstraction at times he retained his usual calm. She was at last forced
+to allude to it herself with simulated recklessness.
+
+"I suppose I didn't get a very good character from my last place?" she
+said, with a laugh.
+
+"I don't understand you," he replied, in evident sincerity.
+
+She bit her lip and was silent. But as they were returning home, she
+said gently, "I hope you were not angry with me for the lie I told
+when I spoke of 'your plan.' I could not give the real reason for
+not returning with--with--that man. But it's not all a lie. I have a
+plan--if you haven't. When you are ready to go to Sacramento to take
+your place, dress me as an Indian boy, paint my face, and let me go with
+you. You can leave me--there--you know."
+
+"It's not a bad idea," he responded gravely. "We will see."
+
+On the next day, and the next, the rencontre seemed to be forgotten.
+The herbarium was already filled with rare specimens. Teresa had even
+overcome her feminine repugnance to "bugs" and creeping things so far
+as to assist in his entomological collection. He had drawn from a sacred
+cache in the hollow of a tree the few worn text-books from which he had
+studied.
+
+"They seem very precious," she said, with a smile.
+
+"Very," he replied gravely. "There was one with plates that the ants ate
+up, and it will be six months before I can afford to buy another."
+
+Teresa glanced hurriedly over his well-worn buckskin suit, at his calico
+shirt with its pattern almost obliterated by countless washings, and
+became thoughtful.
+
+"I suppose you couldn't buy one at Indian Spring?" she said innocently.
+
+For once Low was startled out of his phlegm. "Indian Spring!" he
+ejaculated; "perhaps not even in San Francisco. These came from the
+States."
+
+"How did you get them?" persisted Teresa.
+
+"I bought them for skins I got over the ridge."
+
+"I didn't mean that--but no matter. Then you mean to sell that bearskin,
+don't you?" she added.
+
+Low had, in fact, already sold it, the proceeds having been invested in
+a gold ring for Miss Nellie, which she scrupulously did not wear except
+in his presence. In his singular truthfulness he would have frankly
+confessed it to Teresa, but the secret was not his own. He contented
+himself with saying that he had disposed of it at Indian Spring.
+
+Teresa started, and communicated unconsciously some of her nervousness
+to her companion. They gazed in each other's eyes with a troubled
+expression.
+
+"Do you think it was wise to sell that particular skin, which might be
+identified?" she asked timidly.
+
+Low knitted his arched brows, but felt a strange sense of relief.
+"Perhaps not," he said carelessly; "but it's too late now to mend
+matters."
+
+That afternoon she wrote several letters, and tore them up. One,
+however, she retained, and handed it to Low to post at Indian Spring,
+whither he was going. She called his attention to the superscription,
+being the same as the previous letter, and added, with affected gayety,
+"But if the answer isn't as prompt, perhaps it will be pleasanter than
+the last." Her quick feminine eye noticed a little excitement in his
+manner and a more studious attention to his dress. Only a few days
+before she would not have allowed this to pass without some mischievous
+allusion to his mysterious sweetheart; it troubled her greatly now to
+find that she could not bring herself to this household pleasantry, and
+that her lip trembled and her eye grew moist as he parted from her.
+
+The afternoon passed slowly; he had said he might not return to supper
+until late, nevertheless a strange restlessness took possession of
+her as the day wore on. She put aside her work, the darning of his
+stockings, and rambled aimlessly through the woods. She had wandered she
+knew not how far, when she was suddenly seized with the same vague sense
+of a foreign presence which she had felt before. Could it be Curson
+again, with a word of warning? No! she knew it was not he; so subtle
+had her sense become that she even fancied that she detected in the
+invisible aura projected by the unknown no significance or relation to
+herself or Low, and felt no fear. Nevertheless she deemed it wisest to
+seek the protection of her sylvan bower, and hurried swiftly thither.
+
+But not so quickly nor directly that she did not once or twice pause in
+her flight to examine the new-comer from behind a friendly trunk. He was
+a stranger--a young fellow with a brown mustache, wearing heavy Mexican
+spurs in his riding-boots, whose tinkling he apparently did not care to
+conceal. He had perceived her, and was evidently pursuing her, but
+so awkwardly and timidly that she eluded him with ease. When she had
+reached the security of the hollow tree and pulled the curtain of bark
+before the narrow opening, with her eye to the interstices, she waited
+his coming. He arrived breathlessly in the open space before the tree
+where the bear once lay; the dazed, bewildered, and half-awed expression
+of his face, as he glanced around him and through the openings of the
+forest aisles, brought a faint smile to her saddened face. At last he
+called in a half-embarrassed voice:--
+
+"Miss Nellie!"
+
+The smile faded from Teresa's cheek. Who was "Miss Nellie?" She pressed
+her ear to the opening. "Miss Wynn!" the voice again called, but was
+lost in the echoless woods. Devoured with a new gratuitous curiosity, in
+another moment Teresa felt she would have disclosed herself at any risk,
+but the stranger rose and began to retrace his steps. Long after his
+tinkling spurs were lost in the distance, Teresa remained like a statue,
+staring at the place where he had stood. Then she suddenly turned like
+a mad woman, glanced down at the gown she was wearing, tore it from
+her back as if it had been a polluted garment, and stamped upon it in
+a convulsion of rage. And then, with her beautiful bare arms clasped
+together over her head, she threw herself upon her couch in a tempest of
+tears.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+When Miss Nellie reached the first mining extension of Indian Spring,
+which surrounded it like a fosse, she descended for one instant into one
+of its trenches, opened her parasol, removed her duster, hid it under a
+bowlder, and with a few shivers and cat-like strokes of her soft
+hands not only obliterated all material traces of the stolen cream of
+Carquinez Woods, but assumed a feline demureness quite inconsistent with
+any moral dereliction. Unfortunately, she forgot to remove at the same
+time a certain ring from her third finger, which she had put on with her
+duster and had worn at no other time. With this slight exception, the
+benignant fate which always protected that young person brought her
+in contact with the Burnham girls at one end of the main street as the
+returning coach to Excelsior entered the other, and enabled her to take
+leave of them before the coach office with a certain ostentation of
+parting which struck Mr. Jack Brace, who was lingering at the doorway,
+into a state of utter bewilderment.
+
+Here was Miss Nellie Wynn, the belle of Excelsior, calm, quiet,
+self-possessed, her chaste cambric skirts and dainty shoes as fresh as
+when she had left her father's house; but where was the woman of the
+brown duster, and where the yellow-dressed apparition of the woods? He
+was feebly repeating to himself his mental adjuration of a few hours
+before when he caught her eye, and was taken with a blush and a fit
+of coughing. Could he have been such an egregious fool, and was it not
+plainly written on his embarrassed face for her to read?
+
+"Are we going down together?" asked Miss Nellie with an exceptionally
+gracious smile.
+
+There was neither affectation nor coquetry in this advance. The girl
+had no idea of Brace's suspicion of her, nor did any uneasy desire to
+placate or deceive a possible rival of Low's prompt her graciousness.
+She simply wished to shake off in this encounter the already stale
+excitement of the past two hours, as she had shaken the dust of the
+woods from her clothes. It was characteristic of her irresponsible
+nature and transient susceptibilities that she actually enjoyed
+the relief of change; more than that, I fear, she looked upon this
+infidelity to a past dubious pleasure as a moral principle. A mild, open
+flirtation with a recognized man like Brace, after her secret passionate
+tryst with a nameless nomad like Low, was an ethical equipoise that
+seemed proper to one of her religious education.
+
+Brace was only too happy to profit by Miss Nellie's condescension; he at
+once secured the seat by her side, and spent the four hours and a half
+of their return journey to Excelsior in blissful but timid communion
+with her. If he did not dare to confess his past suspicions, he was
+equally afraid to venture upon the boldness he had premeditated a
+few hours before. He was therefore obliged to take a middle course of
+slightly egotistical narration of his own personal adventures, with
+which he beguiled the young girl's ear. This he only departed from once,
+to describe to her a valuable grizzly bearskin which he had seen that
+day for sale at Indian Spring, with a view to divining her possible
+acceptance of it for a "buggy robe;" and once to comment upon a ring
+which she had inadvertently disclosed in pulling off her glove.
+
+"It's only an old family keepsake," she added, with easy mendacity; and
+affecting to recognize in Mr. Brace's curiosity a not unnatural excuse
+for toying with her charming fingers, she hid them in chaste and
+virginal seclusion in her lap, until she could recover the ring and
+resume her glove.
+
+A week passed--a week of peculiar and desiccating heat for even those
+dry Sierra table-lands. The long days were filled with impalpable
+dust and acrid haze suspended in the motionless air; the nights were
+breathless and dewless; the cold wind which usually swept down from the
+snow line was laid to sleep over a dark monotonous level, whose horizon
+was pricked with the eating fires of burning forest crests. The lagging
+coach of Indian Spring drove up at Excelsior, and precipitated its
+passengers with an accompanying cloud of dust before the Excelsior
+Hotel. As they emerged from the coach, Mr. Brace, standing in the
+doorway, closely scanned their begrimed and almost unrecognizable faces.
+They were the usual type of travelers: a single professional man in
+dusty black, a few traders in tweeds and flannels, a sprinkling of
+miners in red and gray shirts, a Chinaman, a negro, and a Mexican packer
+or muleteer. This latter for a moment mingled with the crowd in the
+bar-room, and even penetrated the corridor and dining-room of the hotel,
+as if impelled by a certain semi-civilized curiosity, and then strolled
+with a lazy, dragging step--half impeded by the enormous leather
+leggings, chains, and spurs, peculiar to his class--down the main
+street. The darkness was gathering, but the muleteer indulged in the
+same childish scrutiny of the dimly lighted shops, magazines, and
+saloons, and even of the occasional groups of citizens at the street
+corners. Apparently young, as far as the outlines of his figure could
+be seen, he seemed to show even more than the usual concern of masculine
+Excelsior in the charms of womankind. The few female figures about
+at that hour, or visible at window or veranda, received his marked
+attention; he respectfully followed the two auburn-haired daughters of
+Deacon Johnson on their way to choir meeting to the door of the church.
+Not content with that act of discreet gallantry, after they had entered
+he managed to slip unperceived behind them.
+
+The memorial of the Excelsior gamblers' generosity was a modern
+building, large and pretentious, for even Mr. Wynn's popularity, and
+had been good-humoredly known, in the characteristic language of the
+generous donors, as one of the "biggest religious bluffs" on record. Its
+groined rafters, which were so new and spicy that they still suggested
+their native forest aisles, seldom covered more than a hundred devotees,
+and in the rambling choir, with its bare space for the future organ,
+the few choristers, gathered round a small harmonium, were lost in the
+deepening shadow of that summer evening. The muleteer remained hidden
+in the obscurity of the vestibule. After a few moments' desultory
+conversation, in which it appeared that the unexpected absence of
+Miss Nellie Wynn, their leader, would prevent their practicing, the
+choristers withdrew. The stranger, who had listened eagerly, drew back
+in the darkness as they passed out, and remained for a few moments a
+vague and motionless figure in the silent church. Then coming cautiously
+to the window, the flapping broad-brimmed hat was put aside, and the
+faint light of the dying day shone in the black eyes of Teresa! Despite
+her face, darkened with dye and disfigured with dust, the matted hair
+piled and twisted around her head, the strange dress and boyish figure,
+one swift glance from under her raised lashes betrayed her identity.
+
+She turned aside mechanically into the first pew, picked up and opened a
+hymn-book. Her eyes became riveted on a name written on the title-page,
+"Nellie Wynn." HER name, and HER book. The instinct that had guided her
+here was right; the slight gossip of her fellow-passengers was right;
+this was the clergyman's daughter, whose praise filled all mouths. This
+was the unknown girl the stranger was seeking, but who in turn perhaps
+had been seeking Low--the girl who absorbed his fancy--the secret of
+his absences, his preoccupation, his coldness! This was the girl whom to
+see, perhaps in his arms, she was now periling her liberty and her life
+unknown to him! A slight odor, some faint perfume of its owner, came
+from the book; it was the same she had noticed in the dress Low had
+given her. She flung the volume to the ground, and, throwing her arms
+over the back of the pew before her, buried her face in her hands.
+
+In that light and attitude she might have seemed some rapt acolyte
+abandoned to self-communion. But whatever yearning her soul might have
+had for higher sympathy or deeper consolation, I fear that the spiritual
+Tabernacle of Excelsior and the Reverend Mr. Wynn did not meet that
+requirement. She only felt the dry, oven-like heat of that vast shell,
+empty of sentiment and beauty, hollow in its pretense and dreary in its
+desolation. She only saw in it a chief altar for the glorification of
+this girl who had absorbed even the pure worship of her companion, and
+converted and degraded his sublime paganism to her petty creed. With a
+woman's withering contempt for her own art displayed in another woman,
+she thought how she herself could have touched him with the peace that
+the majesty of their woodland aisles--so unlike this pillared sham--had
+taught her own passionate heart, had she but dared. Mingling with this
+imperfect theology, she felt she could have proved to him also that
+a brunette and a woman of her experience was better than an immature
+blonde. She began to loathe herself for coming hither, and dreaded to
+meet his face. Here a sudden thought struck her. What if he had not come
+here? What if she had been mistaken? What if her rash interpretation
+of his absence from the wood that night was simple madness? What if
+he should return--if he had already returned? She rose to her feet,
+whitening yet joyful with the thought. She could return at once; what
+was the girl to her now? Yet there was time to satisfy herself if he
+were at HER house. She had been told where it was; she could find it in
+the dark; an open door or window would betray some sign or sound of
+the occupants. She rose, replaced her hat over her eyes, knotted her
+flaunting scarf around her throat, groped her way to the door, and
+glided into the outer darkness.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+It was quite dark when Mr. Jack Brace stopped before Father Wynn's open
+door. The windows were also invitingly open to the wayfarer, as were
+the pastoral counsels of Father Wynn, delivered to some favored guest
+within, in a tone of voice loud enough for a pulpit. Jack Brace paused.
+The visitor was the convalescent sheriff, Jim Dunn, who had publicly
+commemorated his recovery by making his first call upon the father
+of his inamorata. The Reverend Mr. Wynn had been expatiating upon the
+unremitting heat of a possible precursor of forest fires, and exhibiting
+some catholic knowledge of the designs of a Deity in that regard, and
+what should be the policy of the Legislature, when Mr. Brace concluded
+to enter. Mr. Wynn and the wounded man, who occupied an arm-chair by
+the window, were the only occupants of the room. But in spite of the
+former's ostentatious greeting, Brace could see that his visit was
+inopportune and unwelcome. The sheriff nodded a quick, impatient
+recognition, which, had it not been accompanied by an anathema on the
+heat, might have been taken as a personal insult. Neither spoke of
+Miss Nellie, although it was patent to Brace that they were momentarily
+expecting her. All of which went far to strengthen a certain wavering
+purpose in his mind.
+
+"Ah, ha! strong language, Mr. Dunn," said Father Wynn, referring to the
+sheriff's adjuration, "but 'out of the fullness of the heart the mouth
+speaketh.' Job, sir, cursed, we are told, and even expressed himself in
+vigorous Hebrew regarding his birthday. Ha, ha! I'm not opposed to that.
+When I have often wrestled with the spirit I confess I have sometimes
+said, 'D--n you.' Yes, sir, 'D--n you.'"
+
+There was something so unutterably vile in the reverend gentleman's
+utterance and emphasis of this oath that the two men, albeit both easy
+and facile blasphemers, felt shocked; as the purest of actresses is apt
+to overdo the rakishness of a gay Lothario, Father Wynn's immaculate
+conception of an imprecation was something terrible. But he added, "The
+law ought to interfere with the reckless use of camp-fires in the woods
+in such weather by packers and prospectors."
+
+"It isn't so much the work of white men," broke in Brace, "as it is
+of Greasers, Chinamen, and Diggers, especially Diggers. There's that
+blasted Low, ranges the whole Carquinez Woods as if they were his. I
+reckon he ain't particular just where he throws his matches."
+
+"But he's not a Digger; he's a Cherokee, and only a half-breed at that,"
+interpolated Wynn. "Unless," he added, with the artful suggestion of the
+betrayed trust of a too credulous Christian, "he deceived me in this as
+in other things."
+
+In what other things Low had deceived him he did not say; but, to the
+astonishment of both men, Dunn growled a dissent to Brace's proposition.
+Either from some secret irritation with that possible rival, or
+impatience at the prolonged absence of Nellie, he had "had enough of
+that sort of hog-wash ladled out to him for genuine liquor." As to the
+Carquinez Woods, he [Dunn] "didn't know why Low hadn't as much right
+there as if he'd grabbed it under a preemption law and didn't live
+there." With this hint at certain speculations of Father Wynn in public
+lands for a homestead, he added that "If they [Brace and Wynn] could
+bring him along any older American settler than an Indian, they
+might rake down his [Dunn's] pile." Unprepared for this turn in the
+conversation, Wynn hastened to explain that he did not refer to the pure
+aborigine, whose gradual extinction no one regretted more than himself,
+but to the mongrel, who inherited only the vices of civilization. "There
+should be a law, sir, against the mingling of races. There are men, sir,
+who violate the laws of the Most High by living with Indian women--squaw
+men, sir, as they are called."
+
+Dunn rose with a face livid with weakness and passion. "Who dares say
+that? They are a d--d sight better than sneaking Northern Abolitionists,
+who married their daughters to buck niggers like--" But a spasm of pain
+withheld this Parthian shot at the politics of his two companions, and
+he sank back helplessly in his chair.
+
+An awkward silence ensued. The three men looked at each other in
+embarrassment and confusion. Dunn felt that he had given way to a
+gratuitous passion; Wynn had a vague presentiment that he had said
+something that imperiled his daughter's prospects; and Brace was divided
+between an angry retort and the secret purpose already alluded to.
+
+"It's all the blasted heat," said Dunn, with a forced smile, pushing
+away the whisky which Wynn had ostentatiously placed before him.
+
+"Of course," said Wynn hastily; "only it's a pity Nellie ain't here to
+give you her smelling-salts. She ought to be back now," he added, no
+longer mindful of Brace's presence; "the coach is over-due now, though I
+reckon the heat made Yuba Bill take it easy at the up grade."
+
+"If you mean the coach from Indian Spring," said Brace quietly, "it's in
+already; but Miss Nellie didn't come on it."
+
+"May be she got out at the Crossing," said Wynn cheerfully; "she
+sometimes does."
+
+"She didn't take the coach at Indian Spring," returned Brace, "because
+I saw it leave, and passed it on Buckskin ten minutes ago, coming up the
+hills."
+
+"She's stopped over at Burnham's," said Wynn reflectively. Then, in
+response to the significant silence of his guests, he added, in a tone
+of chagrin which his forced heartiness could not disguise, "Well, boys,
+it's a disappointment all round; but we must take the lesson as it
+comes. I'll go over to the coach office and see if she's sent any word.
+Make yourselves at home until I return."
+
+When the door had closed behind him, Brace arose and took his hat as
+if to go. With his hand on the lock, he turned to his rival, who, half
+hidden in the gathering darkness, still seemed unable to comprehend his
+ill-luck.
+
+"If you're waiting for that bald-headed fraud to come back with the
+truth about his daughter," said Brace coolly, "you'd better send for
+your things and take up your lodgings here."
+
+"What do you mean?" said Dunn sternly.
+
+"I mean that she's not at the Burnhams'; I mean that he either does or
+does not know WHERE she is, and that in either case he is not likely to
+give you information. But I can."
+
+"You can?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then, where is she?"
+
+"In the Carquinez Woods, in the arms of the man you were just
+defending--Low, the half-breed."
+
+The room had become so dark that from the road nothing could be
+distinguished. Only the momentary sound of struggling feet was heard.
+
+"Sit down," said Brace's voice, "and don't be a fool. You're too weak,
+and it ain't a fair fight. Let go your hold. I'm not lying--I wish to
+God I was!"
+
+There was silence, and Brace resumed, "We've been rivals, I know. May be
+I thought my chance as good as yours. If what I say ain't truth, we'll
+stand as we stood before; and if you're on the shoot, I'm your man when
+you like, where you like, or on sight if you choose. But I can't bear to
+see another man played upon as I've been played upon--given dead away as
+I've been. It ain't on the square.
+
+"There," he continued, after a pause, "that's right, now steady. Listen.
+A week ago that girl went down just like this to Indian Spring. It
+was given out, like this, that she went to the Burnhams'. I don't mind
+saying, Dunn, that I went down myself, all on the square, thinking I
+might get a show to talk to her, just as YOU might have done, you know,
+if you had my chance. I didn't come across her anywhere. But two men
+that I met thought they recognized her in a disguise going into the
+woods. Not suspecting anything, I went after her; saw her at a distance
+in the middle of the woods in another dress that I can swear to, and was
+just coming up to her when she vanished--went like a squirrel up a tree,
+or down like a gopher in the ground, but vanished."
+
+"Is that all?" said Dunn's voice. "And just because you were a d--d
+fool, or had taken a little too much whisky, you thought--"
+
+"Steady. That's just what I said to myself," interrupted Brace coolly,
+"particularly when I saw her that same afternoon in another dress,
+saying 'Good-by' to the Burnhams, as fresh as a rose and as cold as
+those snow-peaks. Only one thing--she had a ring on her finger she never
+wore before, and didn't expect me to see."
+
+"What if she did? She might have bought it. I reckon she hasn't to
+consult you," broke in Dunn's voice sternly.
+
+"She didn't buy it," continued Brace quietly. "Low gave that Jew trader
+a bearskin in exchange for it, and presented it to her. I found that
+out two days afterwards. I found out that out of the whole afternoon she
+spent less than an hour with the Burnhams. I found out that she bought
+a duster like the disguise the two men saw her in. I found the yellow
+dress she wore that day hanging up in Low's cabin--the place where I saw
+her go--THE RENDEZVOUS WHERE SHE MEETS HIM. Oh, you're listenin', are
+you? Stop! SIT DOWN!
+
+"I discovered it by accident," continued the voice of Brace when all was
+again quiet; "it was hidden as only a squirrel or an Injin can hide when
+they improve upon nature. When I was satisfied that the girl had been
+in the woods, I was determined to find out where she vanished, and went
+there again. Prospecting around, I picked up at the foot of one of the
+biggest trees this yer old memorandum-book, with grasses and herbs stuck
+in it. I remembered that I'd heard old Wynn say that Low, like the d--d
+Digger that he was, collected these herbs; only he pretended it was for
+science. I reckoned the book was his and that he mightn't be far away. I
+lay low and waited. Bimeby I saw a lizard running down the root. When he
+got sight of me he stopped."
+
+"D--n the lizard! What's that got to do with where she is now?"
+
+"Everything. That lizard had a piece of sugar in his mouth. Where did it
+come from? I made him drop it, and calculated he'd go back for more. He
+did. He scooted up that tree and slipped in under some hanging strips of
+bark. I shoved 'em aside, and found an opening to the hollow where they
+do their housekeeping."
+
+"But you didn't see her there--and how do you know she is there now?"
+
+"I determined to make it sure. When she left to-day, I started an hour
+ahead of her, and hid myself at the edge of the woods. An hour after the
+coach arrived at Indian Spring, she came there in a brown duster and was
+joined by him. I'd have followed them, but the d--d hound has the ears
+of a squirrel, and though I was five hundred yards from him he was on
+his guard."
+
+"Guard be blessed! Wasn't you armed? Why didn't you go for him?" said
+Dunn, furiously.
+
+"I reckoned I'd leave that for you," said Brace coolly. "If he'd killed
+me, and if he'd even covered me with his rifle, he'd been sure to let
+daylight through me at double the distance. I shouldn't have been any
+better off, nor you either. If I'd killed HIM, it would have been your
+duty as sheriff to put me in jail; and I reckon it wouldn't have broken
+your heart, Jim Dunn, to have got rid of TWO rivals instead of one.
+Hullo! Where are you going?"
+
+"Going?" said Dunn hoarsely. "Going to the Carquinez Woods, by God! to
+kill him before her. I'LL risk it, if you daren't. Let me succeed, and
+you can hang ME and take the girl yourself."
+
+"Sit down, sit down. Don't be a fool, Jim Dunn! You wouldn't keep the
+saddle a hundred yards. Did I say I wouldn't help you? No. If you're
+willing, we'll run the risk together, but it must be in my way. Hear me.
+I'll drive you down there in a buggy before daylight, and we'll surprise
+them in the cabin or as they leave the wood. But you must come as if
+to arrest him for some offense--say, as an escaped Digger from the
+Reservation, a dangerous tramp, a destroyer of public property in the
+forests, a suspected road agent, or anything to give you the right
+to hunt him. The exposure of him and Nellie, don't you see, must be
+accidental. If he resists, kill him on the spot, and nobody'll blame
+you; if he goes peaceably with you, and you once get him in Excelsior
+jail, when the story gets out that he's taken the belle of Excelsior for
+his squaw, if you'd the angels for your posse you couldn't keep the boys
+from hanging him to the first tree. What's that?"
+
+He walked to the window, and looked out cautiously.
+
+"If it was the old man coming back and listening," he said, after a
+pause, "it can't he helped. He'll hear it soon enough, if he don't
+suspect something already."
+
+"Look yer, Brace," broke in Dunn hoarsely. "D--d if I understand you or
+you me. That dog Low has got to answer to ME, not to the LAW! I'll take
+my risk of killing him, on sight and on the square. I don't reckon to
+handicap myself with a warrant, and I am not going to draw him out with
+a lie. You hear me? That's me all the time!"
+
+"Then you calkilate to go down thar," said Brace contemptuously, "yell
+out for him and Nellie, and let him line you on a rest from the first
+tree as if you were a grizzly."
+
+There was a pause. "What's that you were saying just now about a
+bearskin he sold?" asked Dunn slowly, as if reflecting.
+
+"He exchanged a bearskin," replied Brace, "with a single hole right over
+the heart. He's a dead shot, I tell you."
+
+"D--n his shooting," said Dunn. "I'm not thinking of that. How long ago
+did he bring in that bearskin?"
+
+"About two weeks, I reckon. Why?"
+
+"Nothing! Look yer, Brace, you mean well--thar's my hand. I'll go down
+with you there, but not as the sheriff. I'm going there as Jim Dunn, and
+you can come along as a white man, to see things fixed on the square.
+Come!"
+
+Brace hesitated. "You'll think better of my plan before you get there;
+but I've said I'd stand by you, and I will. Come, then. There's no time
+to lose."
+
+They passed out into the darkness together.
+
+"What are you waiting for?" said Dunn impatiently, as Brace, who was
+supporting him by the arm, suddenly halted at the corner of the house.
+
+"Some one was listening--did you not see him? Was it the old man?" asked
+Brace hurriedly.
+
+"Blast the old man! It was only one of them Mexican packers chock-full
+of whisky, and trying to hold up the house. What are you thinking of? We
+shall be late."
+
+In spite of his weakness, the wounded man hurriedly urged Brace forward,
+until they reached the latter's lodgings. To his surprise, the horse
+and buggy were already before the door.
+
+"Then you reckoned to go, any way?" said Dunn, with a searching look at
+his companion.
+
+"I calkilated SOMEBODY would go," returned Brace, evasively, patting the
+impatient Buckskin; "but come in and take a drink before we leave."
+
+Dunn started out of a momentary abstraction, put his hand on his hip,
+and mechanically entered the house. They had scarcely raised the glasses
+to their lips when a sudden rattle of wheels was heard in the street.
+Brace set down his glass and ran to the window.
+
+"It's the mare bolted," he said, with an oath. "We've kept her too long
+standing. Follow me," and he dashed down the staircase into the street.
+Dunn followed with difficulty; when he reached the door he was already
+confronted by his breathless companion. "She's gone off on a run, and
+I'll swear there was a man in the buggy!" He stopped and examined the
+halter-strap, still fastened to the fence. "Cut! by God!"
+
+Dunn turned pale with passion. "Who's got another horse and buggy?" he
+demanded.
+
+"The new blacksmith in Main Street; but we won't get it by borrowing,"
+said Brace.
+
+"How then?" asked Dunn savagely.
+
+"Seize it, as the sheriff of Yuba and his deputy, pursuing a confederate
+of the Injin Low--THE HORSE THIEF!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+The brief hour of darkness that preceded the dawn was that night
+intensified by a dense smoke, which, after blotting out horizon and sky,
+dropped a thick veil on the high road and the silent streets of Indian
+Spring. As the buggy containing Sheriff Dunn and Brace dashed through
+the obscurity, Brace suddenly turned to his companion.
+
+"Some one ahead!"
+
+The two men bent forward over the dashboard. Above the steady plunging
+of their own horse-hoofs they could hear the quicker irregular beat of
+other hoofs in the darkness before them.
+
+"It's that horse thief!" said Dunn, in a savage whisper. "Bear to the
+right, and hand me the whip."
+
+A dozen cuts of the cruel lash, and their maddened horse, bounding at
+each stroke, broke into a wild canter. The frail vehicle swayed from
+side to side at each spring of the elastic shafts. Steadying himself by
+one hand on the low rail, Dunn drew his revolver with the other. "Sing
+out to him to pull up, or we'll fire. My voice is clean gone," he added,
+in a husky whisper.
+
+They were so near that they could distinguish the bulk of a vehicle
+careering from side to side in the blackness ahead. Dunn deliberately
+raised his weapon. "Sing out!" he repeated impatiently. But Brace, who
+was still keeping in the shadow, suddenly grasped his companion's arm.
+
+"Hush! It's NOT Buckskin," he whispered hurriedly.
+
+"Are you sure?"
+
+"DON'T YOU SEE WE'RE GAINING ON HIM?" replied the other contemptuously.
+Dunn grasped his companion's hand and pressed it silently. Even in
+that supreme moment this horseman's tribute to the fugitive Buckskin
+forestalled all baser considerations of pursuit and capture!
+
+In twenty seconds they were abreast of the stranger, crowding his horse
+and buggy nearly into the ditch; Brace keenly watchful, Dunn suppressed
+and pale. In half a minute they were leading him a length; and when
+their horse again settled down to his steady work, the stranger was
+already lost in the circling dust that followed them. But the victors
+seemed disappointed. The obscurity had completely hidden all but the
+vague outlines of the mysterious driver.
+
+"He's not our game, anyway," whispered Dunn. "Drive on."
+
+"But if it was some friend of his," suggested Brace uneasily, "what
+would you do?"
+
+"What I SAID I'd do," responded Dunn savagely. "I don't want five
+minutes to do it in, either; we'll be half an hour ahead of that d--d
+fool, whoever he is. Look here; all you've got to do is to put me in the
+trail to that cabin. Stand back of me, out of gun-shot, alone, if you
+like, as my deputy, or with any number you can pick up as my posse.
+If he gets by me as Nellie's lover, you may shoot him or take him as a
+horse thief, if you like."
+
+"Then you won't shoot him on sight?"
+
+"Not till I've had a word with him."
+
+"But--"
+
+"I've chirped," said the sheriff gravely. "Drive on."
+
+For a few moments only the plunging hoofs and rattling wheels were
+heard. A dull, lurid glow began to define the horizon. They were silent
+until an abatement of the smoke, the vanishing of the gloomy horizon
+line, and a certain impenetrability in the darkness ahead showed them
+they were nearing the Carquinez Woods. But they were surprised on
+entering them to find the dim aisles alight with a faint mystic Aurora.
+The tops of the towering spires above them had caught the gleam of the
+distant forest fires, and reflected it as from a gilded dome.
+
+"It would be hot work if the Carquinez Woods should conclude to take a
+hand in this yer little game that's going on over on the Divide yonder,"
+said Brace, securing his horse and glancing at the spires overhead.
+"I reckon I'd rather take a back seat at Injin Spring when the show
+commences."
+
+Dunn did not reply, but, buttoning his coat, placed one hand on his
+companion's shoulder, and sullenly bade him "lead the way." Advancing
+slowly and with difficulty the desperate man might have been taken for a
+peaceful invalid returning from an early morning stroll. His right hand
+was buried thoughtfully in the side pocket of his coat. Only Brace knew
+that it rested on the handle of his pistol.
+
+From time to time the latter stopped and consulted the faint trail with
+a minuteness that showed recent careful study. Suddenly he paused. "I
+made a blaze hereabouts to show where to leave the trail. There it is,"
+he added, pointing to a slight notch cut in the trunk of an adjoining
+tree.
+
+"But we've just passed one," said Dunn, "if that's what you are looking
+after, a hundred yards back."
+
+Brace uttered an oath, and ran back in the direction signified by his
+companion. Presently he returned with a smile of triumph.
+
+"They've suspected something. It's a clever trick, but it won't hold
+water. That blaze which was done to muddle you was cut with an axe; this
+which I made was done with a bowie-knife. It's the real one. We're not
+far off now. Come on."
+
+They proceeded cautiously, at right angles with the "blazed" tree, for
+ten minutes more. The heat was oppressive; drops of perspiration rolled
+from the forehead of the sheriff, and at times, when he attempted to
+steady his uncertain limbs, his hands shrank from the heated, blistering
+bark he touched with ungloved palms.
+
+"Here we are," said Brace, pausing at last. "Do you see that biggest
+tree, with the root stretching out halfway across to the opposite one?"
+
+"No, it's further to the right and abreast of the dead brush,"
+interrupted Dunn quickly, with a sudden revelation that this was the
+spot where he had found the dead bear in the night Teresa escaped.
+
+"That's so," responded Brace, in astonishment.
+
+"And the opening is on the other side, opposite the dead brush," said
+Dunn.
+
+"Then you know it?" said Brace suspiciously.
+
+"I reckon!" responded Dunn, grimly. "That's enough! Fall back!"
+
+To the surprise of his companion, he lifted his head erect, and with a
+strong, firm step walked directly to the tree. Reaching it, he planted
+himself squarely before the opening.
+
+"Halloo!" he said.
+
+There was no reply. A squirrel scampered away close to his feet. Brace,
+far in the distance, after an ineffectual attempt to distinguish his
+companion through the intervening trunks, took off his coat, leaned
+against a tree, and lit a cigar.
+
+"Come out of that cabin!" continued Dunn, in a clear, resonant voice.
+"Come out before I drag you out!"
+
+"All right, 'Captain Scott.' Don't shoot, and I'll come down," said a
+voice as clear and as high as his own. The hanging strips of bark were
+dashed aside, and a woman leaped lightly to the ground.
+
+Dunn staggered back. "Teresa! by the Eternal!"
+
+It was Teresa! the old Teresa! Teresa, a hundred times more vicious,
+reckless, hysterical, extravagant, and outrageous than before. Teresa,
+staring with tooth and eye, sunburnt and embrowned, her hair hanging
+down her shoulders, and her shawl drawn tightly around her neck.
+
+"Teresa it is! the same old gal! Here we are again! Return of the
+favorite in her original character! For two weeks only! Houp la! Tshk!"
+and, catching her yellow skirt with her fingers, she pirouetted before
+the astounded man, and ended in a pose. Recovering himself with an
+effort, Dunn dashed forward and seized her by the wrist.
+
+"Answer me, woman! Is that Low's cabin?"
+
+"It is."
+
+"Who occupies it besides?"
+
+"I do."
+
+"And who else?"
+
+"Well," drawled Teresa slowly, with an extravagant affectation of
+modesty, "nobody else but us, I reckon. Two's company, you know, and
+three's none."
+
+"Stop! Will you swear that there isn't a young girl, his--his
+sweetheart--concealed there with you?"
+
+The fire in Teresa's eye was genuine as she answered steadily, "Well,
+it ain't my style to put up with that sort of thing; at least, it wasn't
+over at Yolo, and you know it, Jim Dunn, or I wouldn't be here."
+
+"Yes, yes," said Dunn hurriedly. "But I'm a d--d fool, or worse, the
+fool of a fool. Tell me, Teresa, is this man Low your lover?"
+
+Teresa lowered her eyes as if in maidenly confusion. "Well, if I'd known
+that YOU had any feeling of your own about it--if you'd spoken sooner--"
+
+"Answer me, you devil!"
+
+"He is."
+
+"And he has been with you here--yesterday--to-night?"
+
+"He has."
+
+"Enough." He laughed a weak, foolish laugh, and, turning pale, suddenly
+lapsed against a tree. He would have fallen, but with a quick instinct
+Teresa sprang to his side, and supported him gently to a root. The
+action over, they both looked astounded.
+
+"I reckon that wasn't much like either you or me," said Dunn slowly,
+"was it? But if you'd let me drop then you'd have stretched out the
+biggest fool in the Sierras." He paused, and looked at her curiously.
+"What's come over you; blessed if I seem to know you now."
+
+She was very pale again, and quiet; that was all.
+
+"Teresa! d--n it, look here! When I was laid up yonder in Excelsior I
+said I wanted to get well for only two things. One was to hunt you down,
+the other to marry Nellie Wynn. When I came here I thought that last
+thing could never be. I came here expecting to find her here with Low,
+and kill him--perhaps kill her too. I never once thought of you; not
+once. You might have risen up before me--between me and him--and I'd
+have passed you by. And now that I find it's all a mistake, and it was
+you, not her, I was looking for, why--"
+
+"Why," she interrupted bitterly, "you'll just take me, of course, to
+save your time and earn your salary. I'm ready."
+
+"But I'M not, just yet," he said faintly. "Help me up."
+
+She mechanically assisted him to his feet.
+
+"Now stand where you are," he added, "and don't move beyond this tree
+till I return."
+
+He straightened himself with an effort, clenched his fists until the
+nails were nearly buried in his palms, and strode with a firm, steady
+step in the direction he had come. In a few moments he returned and
+stood before her.
+
+"I've sent away my deputy--the man who brought me here, the fool who
+thought you were Nellie. He knows now he made a mistake. But who it was
+he mistook for Nellie he does not know, nor shall ever know, nor shall
+any living being know, other than myself. And when I leave the wood
+to-day I shall know it no longer. You are safe here as far as I am
+concerned, but I cannot screen you from others prying. Let Low take you
+away from here as soon as he can."
+
+"Let him take me away? Ah, yes. For what?"
+
+"To save you," said Dunn. "Look here, Teresa! Without knowing it, you
+lifted me out of hell just now, and because of the wrong I might have
+done her--for HER sake, I spare you and shirk my duty."
+
+"For her sake!" gasped the woman--"for her sake! Oh, yes! Go on."
+
+"Well," said Dunn gloomily, "I reckon perhaps you'd as lieve left me in
+hell, for all the love you bear me. And may be you've grudge enough agin
+me still to wish I'd found her and him together."
+
+"You think so?" she said, turning her head away.
+
+"There, d--n it! I didn't mean to make you cry. May be you wouldn't,
+then. Only tell that fellow to take you out of this, and not run away
+the next time he sees a man coming."
+
+"He didn't run," said Teresa, with flashing eyes. "I--I--I sent him
+away," she stammered. Then, suddenly turning with fury upon him, she
+broke out, "Run! Run from you! Ha, ha! You said just now I'd a grudge
+against you. Well, listen, Jim Dunn. I'd only to bring you in range of
+that young man's rifle, and you'd have dropped in your tracks like--"
+
+"Like that bar, the other night," said Dunn, with a short laugh. "So
+THAT was your little game?" He checked his laugh suddenly--a cloud
+passed over his face. "Look here, Teresa," he said, with an assumption
+of carelessness that was as transparent as it was utterly incompatible
+with his frank, open selfishness. "What became of that bar? The
+skin--eh? That was worth something?"
+
+"Yes," said Teresa quietly. "Low exchanged it and got a ring for me from
+that trader Isaacs. It was worth more, you bet. And the ring didn't fit
+either--"
+
+"Yes," interrupted Dunn, with an almost childish eagerness.
+
+"And I made him take it back, and get the value in money. I hear that
+Isaacs sold it again and made another profit; but that's like those
+traders." The disingenuous candor of Teresa's manner was in exquisite
+contrast to Dunn. He rose and grasped her hand so heartily she was
+forced to turn her eyes away.
+
+"Good-by!" he said.
+
+"You look tired," she murmured, with a sudden gentleness that surprised
+him; "let me go with you a part of the way."
+
+"It isn't safe for you just now," he said, thinking of the possible
+consequences of the alarm Brace had raised.
+
+"Not the way YOU came," she replied; "but one known only to myself."
+
+He hesitated only a moment. "All right, then," he said finally, "let
+us go at once. It's suffocating here, and I seem to feel this dead bark
+crinkle under my feet."
+
+She cast a rapid glance around her, and then seemed to sound with her
+eyes the far-off depths of the aisles, beginning to grow pale with the
+advancing day, but still holding a strange quiver of heat in the air.
+When she had finished her half-abstracted scrutiny of the distance, she
+cast one backward glance at her own cabin and stopped.
+
+"Will you wait a moment for me?" she asked gently.
+
+"Yes--but--no tricks, Teresa! It isn't worth the time."
+
+She looked him squarely in the eyes without a word.
+
+"Enough," he said; "go!"
+
+She was absent for some moments. He was beginning to become uneasy, when
+she made her appearance again, clad in her old faded black dress. Her
+face was very pale, and her eyes were swollen, but she placed his hand
+on her shoulder, and bidding him not to fear to lean upon her, for she
+was quite strong, led the way.
+
+"You look more like yourself now, and yet--blast it all!--you don't
+either," said Dunn, looking down upon her. "You've changed in some way.
+What is it? Is it on account of that Injin? Couldn't you have found a
+white man in his place?"
+
+"I reckon he's neither worse nor better for that," she replied bitterly;
+"and perhaps he wasn't as particular in his taste as a white man might
+have been. But," she added, with a sudden spasm of her old rage, "it's
+a lie; he's NOT an Indian, no more than I am. Not unless being born of
+a mother who scarcely knew him, of a father who never even saw him, and
+being brought up among white men and wild beasts--less cruel than they
+were--could make him one!"
+
+Dunn looked at her in surprise not unmixed with admiration. "If Nellie,"
+he thought, "could but love ME like that!" But he only said:
+
+"For all that, he's an Injin. Why, look at his name. It ain't Low. It's
+L'Eau Dormante, Sleeping Water, an Injin name."
+
+"And what does that prove?" returned Teresa. "Only that Indians clap a
+nick-name on any stranger, white or red, who may camp with them. Why,
+even his own father, a white man, the wretch who begot him and abandoned
+him,--HE had an Indian name--Loup Noir."
+
+"What name did you say?"
+
+"Le Loup Noir, the Black Wolf. I suppose you'd call him an Indian, too?
+Eh! What's the matter? We're walking too fast. Stop a moment and rest.
+There--there, lean on me!"
+
+She was none too soon; for, after holding him upright a moment, his
+limbs failed, and stooping gently she was obliged to support him half
+reclining against a tree.
+
+"Its the heat!" he said. "Give me some whisky from my flask. Never mind
+the water," he added faintly, with a forced laugh, after he had taken a
+draught at the strong spirit. "Tell me more about the other water--the
+Sleeping Water--you know. How do you know all this about him and
+his--father?"
+
+"Partly from him and partly from Curson, who wrote to me about him," she
+answered with some hesitation.
+
+But Dunn did not seem to notice this incongruity of correspondence with
+a former lover. "And HE told you?"
+
+"Yes; and I saw the name on an old memorandum book he has, which he says
+belonged to his father. It's full of old accounts of some trading post
+on the frontier. It's been missing for a day or two, but it will turn
+up. But I can swear I saw it."
+
+Dunn attempted to rise to his feet. "Put your hand in my pocket," he
+said in a hurried whisper. "No, there!--bring out a book. There, I
+haven't looked at it yet. Is that it?" he added, handing her the book
+Brace had given him a few hours before.
+
+"Yes," said Teresa, in surprise. "Where did you find it?"
+
+"Never mind! Now let me see it, quick. Open it, for my sight is failing.
+There--thank you--that's all!"
+
+"Take more whisky," said Teresa, with a strange anxiety creeping over
+her. "You are faint again."
+
+"Wait! Listen, Teresa--lower--put your ear lower. Listen! I came near
+killing that chap Low to-day. Wouldn't it have been ridiculous?"
+
+He tried to smile, but his head fell back. He had fainted.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+For the first time in her life Teresa lost her presence of mind in an
+emergency. She could only sit staring at the helpless man, scarcely
+conscious of his condition, her mind filled with a sudden prophetic
+intuition of the significance of his last words. In the light of
+that new revelation she looked into his pale, haggard face for some
+resemblance to Low, but in vain. Yet her swift feminine instinct met the
+objection. "It's the mother's blood that would show," she murmured, "not
+this man's."
+
+Recovering herself, she began to chafe his hands and temples, and
+moistened his lips with the spirit. When his respiration returned with a
+faint color to his cheeks, she pressed his hands eagerly and leaned over
+him.
+
+"Are you sure?" she asked.
+
+"Of what?" he whispered faintly.
+
+"That Low is really your son?"
+
+"Who said so?" he asked, opening his round eyes upon her.
+
+"You did yourself, a moment ago," she said quickly. "Don't you
+remember?"
+
+"Did I?"
+
+"You did. Is it not so?"
+
+He smiled faintly. "I reckon."
+
+She held her breath in expectation. But only the ludicrousness of the
+discovery seemed paramount to his weakened faculties. "Isn't it just
+about the ridiculousest thing all round?" he said, with a feeble
+chuckle. "First YOU nearly kill me before you know I am Low's father;
+then I'm just spoilin' to kill him before I know he's my son; then that
+god-forsaken fool Jack Brace mistakes you for Nellie and Nellie for you.
+Ain't it just the biggest thing for the boys to get hold of? But we must
+keep it dark until after I marry Nellie, don't you see? Then we'll have
+a good time all round, and I'll stand the drinks. Think of it, Teresha!
+You don' no me, I do' no you, nobody knowsh anybody elsh. I try kill
+Lo'. Lo' wants kill Nellie. No thath no ri--'" but the potent liquor,
+overtaking his exhausted senses, thickened, impeded, and at last stopped
+his speech. His head slipped to her shoulder, and he became once more
+unconscious.
+
+Teresa breathed again. In that brief moment she had abandoned herself to
+a wild inspiration of hope which she could scarcely define. Not that it
+was entirely a wild inspiration; she tried to reason calmly. What if she
+revealed the truth to him? What if she told the wretched man before her
+that she had deceived him; that she had overheard his conversation with
+Brace; that she had stolen Brace's horse to bring Low warning; that,
+failing to find Low in his accustomed haunts, or at the campfire, she
+had left a note for him pinned to the herbarium, imploring him to fly
+with his companion from the danger that was coming; and that, remaining
+on watch, she had seen them both--Brace and Dunn--approaching, and had
+prepared to meet them at the cabin? Would this miserable and
+maddened man understand her self-abnegation? Would he forgive Low and
+Nellie?--she did not ask for herself. Or would the revelation turn his
+brain, if it did not kill him outright? She looked at the sunken orbits
+of his eyes and hectic on his cheek, and shuddered.
+
+Why was this added to the agony she already suffered? She had been
+willing to stand between them with her life, her liberty, and even--the
+hot blood dyed her cheek at the thought--with the added shame of being
+thought the cast-off mistress of that man's son. Yet all this she had
+taken upon herself in expiation of something--she knew not clearly what;
+no, for nothing--only for HIM. And yet this very situation offered
+her that gleam of hope which had thrilled her; a hope so wild in its
+improbability, so degrading in its possibility, that at first she knew
+not whether despair was not preferable to its shame. And yet was it
+unreasonable? She was no longer passionate; she would be calm and think
+it out fairly.
+
+She would go to Low at once. She would find him somewhere--and even if
+with that girl, what mattered?--and she would tell him all. When he knew
+that the life and death of his father lay in the scale, would he let his
+brief, foolish passion for Nellie stand in the way? Even if he were not
+influenced by filial affection or mere compassion, would his pride let
+him stoop to a rivalry with the man who had deserted his youth? Could
+he take Dunn's promised bride, who must have coquetted with him to have
+brought him to this miserable plight? Was this like the calm, proud
+young god she knew? Yet she had an uneasy instinct that calm, proud
+young gods and goddesses did things like this, and felt the weakness of
+her reasoning flush her own conscious cheek.
+
+"Teresa!"
+
+She started. Dunn was awake, and was gazing at her curiously.
+
+"I was reckoning it was the only square thing for Low to stop this
+promiscuous picnicking here and marry you out and out."
+
+"Marry me!" said Teresa in a voice that, with all her efforts, she could
+not make cynical.
+
+"Yes," he repeated, "after I've married Nellie; tote you down to
+San Angeles, and there take my name like a man, and give it to you.
+Nobody'll ask after TERESA, sure--you bet your life. And if they do,
+and he can't stop their jaw, just you call on the old man. It's mighty
+queer, ain't it, Teresa, to think of your being my daughter-in-law?"
+
+It seemed here as if he was about to lapse again into unconsciousness
+over the purely ludicrous aspect of the subject, but he haply recovered
+his seriousness. "He'll have as much money from me as he wants to go
+into business with. What's his line of business, Teresa?" asked this
+prospective father-in-law, in a large, liberal way.
+
+"He is a botanist!" said Teresa, with a sudden childish animation that
+seemed to keep up the grim humor of the paternal suggestion; "and oh,
+he is too poor to buy books! I sent for one or two for him myself, the
+other day--" she hesitated--"it was all the money I had, but it wasn't
+enough for him to go on with his studies."
+
+Dunn looked at her sparkling eyes and glowing cheeks, and became
+thoughtful. "Curson must have been a d--d fool," he said finally.
+
+Teresa remained silent. She was beginning to be impatient and uneasy,
+fearing some mischance that might delay her dreaded, yet longed-for
+meeting with Low. Yet she could not leave this sick and exhausted man,
+HIS FATHER, now bound to her by more than mere humanity.
+
+"Couldn't you manage," she said gently, "to lean on me a few
+steps further, until I could bring you to a cooler spot and nearer
+assistance?"
+
+He nodded. She lifted him almost like a child to his feet. A spasm of
+pain passed over his face. "How far is it?" he asked.
+
+"Not more than ten minutes," she replied.
+
+"I can make a spurt for that time," he said coolly, and began to walk
+slowly but steadily on. Only his face, which was white and set, and the
+convulsive grip of his hand on her arm betrayed the effort. At the
+end of ten minutes she stopped. They stood before the splintered,
+lightning-scarred shaft in the opening of the woods, where Low had built
+her first camp-fire. She carefully picked up the herbarium, but her
+quick eye had already detected in the distance, before she had allowed
+Dunn to enter the opening with her, that her note was gone. Low had been
+there before them; he had been warned, as his absence from the cabin
+showed; he would not return there. They were free from interruption--but
+where had he gone?
+
+The sick man drew a long breath of relief as she seated him in the
+clover-grown hollow where she had slept the second night of her stay.
+"It's cooler than those cursed woods," he said. "I suppose it's because
+it's a little like a grave. What are you going to do now?" he added, as
+she brought a cup of water and placed it at his side.
+
+"I am going to leave you here for a little while," she said cheerfully,
+but with a pale face and nervous hands. "I'm going to leave you while I
+seek Low."
+
+The sick man raised his head. "I'm good for a spurt, Teresa, like that
+I've just got through, but I don't think I'm up to a family party.
+Couldn't you issue cards later on?"
+
+"You don't understand," she said. "I'm going to get Low to send some one
+of your friends to you here. I don't think he'll begrudge leaving HER a
+moment for that," she added to herself bitterly.
+
+"What's that you're saying?" he queried, with the nervous quickness of
+an invalid.
+
+"Nothing--but that I'm going now." She turned her face aside to hide her
+moistened eyes. "Wish me good luck, won't you?" she asked, half sadly,
+half pettishly.
+
+"Come here!"
+
+She came and bent over him. He suddenly raised his hands, and, drawing
+her face down to his own, kissed her forehead.
+
+"Give that to HIM," he whispered, "from ME."
+
+She turned and fled, happily for her sentiment, not hearing the feeble
+laugh that followed, as Dunn, in sheer imbecility, again referred to
+the extravagant ludicrousness of the situation. "It is about the biggest
+thing in the way of a sell all round," he repeated, lying on his back,
+confidentially to the speck of smoke-obscured sky above him. He pictured
+himself repeating it, not to Nellie--her severe propriety might at last
+overlook the fact, but would not tolerate the joke--but to her father!
+It would be one of those characteristic Californian jokes Father Wynn
+would admire.
+
+To his exhaustion fever presently succeeded, and he began to grow
+restless. The heat too seemed to invade his retreat, and from time to
+time the little patch of blue sky was totally obscured by clouds of
+smoke. He amused himself with watching a lizard who was investigating a
+folded piece of paper, whose elasticity gave the little creature lively
+apprehensions of its vitality. At last he could stand the stillness of
+his retreat and his supine position no longer, and rolled himself out of
+the bed of leaves that Teresa had so carefully prepared for him. He rose
+to his feet stiff and sore, and, supporting himself by the nearest tree,
+moved a few steps from the dead ashes of the camp-fire. The movement
+frightened the lizard, who abandoned the paper and fled. With a
+satirical recollection of Brace and his "ridiculous" discovery through
+the medium of this animal, he stooped and picked up the paper. "Like as
+not," he said to himself, with grim irony, "these yer lizards are in the
+discovery business. P'r'aps this may lead to another mystery," and he
+began to unfold the paper with a smile. But the smile ceased as his eye
+suddenly caught his own name.
+
+A dozen lines were written in pencil on what seemed to be a blank leaf
+originally torn from some book. He trembled so that he was obliged to
+sit down to read these words:--
+
+
+"When you get this keep away from the woods. Dunn and another man are
+in deadly pursuit of you and your companion. I overheard their plan to
+surprise you in our cabin. DON'T GO THERE, and I will delay them and put
+them off the scent. Don't mind me. God bless you, and if you never see
+me again think sometimes of
+
+"TERESA."
+
+
+His trembling ceased; he did not start, but rose in an abstracted way,
+and made a few deliberate steps in the direction Teresa had gone. Even
+then he was so confused that he was obliged to refer to the paper again,
+but with so little effect that he could only repeat the last words,
+"think sometimes of Teresa." He was conscious that this was not all; he
+had a full conviction of being deceived, and knew that he held the
+proof in his hand, but he could not formulate it beyond that sentence.
+"Teresa"--yes, he would think of her. She would explain it. And here she
+was returning.
+
+In that brief interval her face and manner had again changed. Her face
+was pale and quite breathless. She cast a swift glance at Dunn and the
+paper he mechanically held out, walked up to him, and tore it from his
+hand.
+
+"Well," she said hoarsely, "what are you going to do about it?"
+
+He attempted to speak, but his voice failed him. Even then he was
+conscious that if he had spoken he would have only repeated, "think
+sometimes of Teresa." He looked longingly but helplessly at the spot
+where she had thrown the paper, as if it had contained his unuttered
+words.
+
+"Yes," she went on to herself, as if he was a mute, indifferent
+spectator--"yes, they're gone. That ends it all. The game's played out.
+Well!" suddenly turning upon him, "now you know it all. Your Nellie WAS
+here with him, and is with him now. Do you hear? Make the most of it;
+you've lost them--but here I am."
+
+"Yes," he said eagerly--"yes, Teresa."
+
+She stopped, stared at him; then taking him by the hand led him like a
+child back to his couch. "Well," she said, in half-savage explanation,
+"I told you the truth when I said the girl wasn't at the cabin last
+night, and that I didn't know her. What are you glowerin' at? No! I
+haven't lied to you, I swear to God, except in one thing. Did you know
+what that was? To save him I took upon me a shame I don't deserve. I let
+you think I was his mistress. You think so now, don't you? Well, before
+God to-day--and He may take me when He likes--I'm no more to him than a
+sister! I reckon your Nellie can't say as much."
+
+She turned away, and with the quick, impatient stride of some caged
+animal made the narrow circuit of the opening, stopping a moment
+mechanically before the sick man, and again, without looking at him,
+continuing her monotonous round. The heat had become excessive, but
+she held her shawl with both hands drawn tightly over her shoulders.
+Suddenly a wood-duck darted out of the covert blindly into the opening,
+struck against the blasted trunk, fell half stunned near her feet, and
+then, recovering, fluttered away. She had scarcely completed another
+circuit before the irruption was followed by a whirring bevy of quail, a
+flight of jays, and a sudden tumult of wings swept through the wood like
+a tornado. She turned inquiringly to Dunn, who had risen to his feet,
+but the next moment she caught convulsively at his wrist; a wolf had
+just dashed through the underbrush not a dozen yards away, and on either
+side of them they could hear the scamper and rustle of hurrying feet
+like the outburst of a summer shower. A cold wind arose from the
+opposite direction, as if to contest this wild exodus, but it was
+followed by a blast of sickening heat. Teresa sank at Dunn's feet in an
+agony of terror.
+
+"Don't let them touch me!" she gasped; "keep them off! Tell me, for
+God's sake, what has happened!"
+
+He laid his hand firmly on her arm, and lifted her in his turn to
+her feet like a child. In that supreme moment of physical danger, his
+strength, reason, and manhood returned in their plenitude of power. He
+pointed coolly to the trail she had quitted, and said,
+
+"The Carquinez Woods are on fire!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+The nest of the tuneful Burnhams, although in the suburbs of Indian
+Spring, was not in ordinary weather and seasons hidden from the longing
+eyes of the youth of that settlement. That night, however, it was veiled
+in the smoke that encompassed the great highway leading to Excelsior.
+It is presumed that the Burnham brood had long since folded their
+wings, for there was no sign of life nor movement in the house as a
+rapidly-driven horse and buggy pulled up before it. Fortunately, the
+paternal Burnham was an early bird, in the habit of picking up the first
+stirring mining worm, and a resounding knock brought him half dressed
+to the street door. He was startled at seeing Father Wynn before him, a
+trifle flushed and abstracted.
+
+"Ah ha! up betimes, I see, and ready. No sluggards here--ha, ha!" he
+said heartily, slamming the door behind him, and by a series of pokes in
+the ribs genially backing his host into his own sitting-room. "I'm up,
+too, and am here to see Nellie. She's here, eh--of course?" he added,
+darting a quick look at Burnham.
+
+But Mr. Burnham was one of those large, liberal Western husbands who
+classified his household under the general title of "woman folk," for
+the integers of which he was not responsible. He hesitated, and then
+propounded over the balusters to the upper story the direct query--
+
+"You don't happen to have Nellie Wynn up there, do ye?"
+
+There was an interval of inquiry proceeding from half a dozen reluctant
+throats, more or less cottony and muffled, in those various degrees
+of grievance and mental distress which indicate too early roused
+young womanhood. The eventual reply seemed to be affirmative, albeit
+accompanied with a suppressed giggle, as if the young lady had just been
+discovered as an answer to an amusing conundrum.
+
+"All right," said Wynn, with an apparent accession of boisterous
+geniality. "Tell her I must see her, and I've only got a few minutes to
+spare. Tell her to slip on anything and come down; there's no one here
+but myself, and I've shut the front door on Brother Burnham. Ha, ha!"
+and suiting the action to the word, he actually bundled the admiring
+Brother Burnham out on his own doorstep. There was a light pattering on
+the staircase, and Nellie Wynn, pink with sleep, very tall, very slim,
+hastily draped in a white counterpane with a blue border and a general
+classic suggestion, slipped into the parlor. At the same moment her
+father shut the door behind her, placed one hand on the knob, and with
+the other seized her wrist.
+
+"Where were you yesterday?" he asked.
+
+Nellie looked at him, shrugged her shoulders, and said, "Here."
+
+"You were in the Carquinez Woods with Low Dorman; you went there in
+disguise; you've met him there before. He is your clandestine lover; you
+have taken pledges of affection from him; you have--"
+
+"Stop!" she said.
+
+He stopped.
+
+"Did he tell you this?" she asked, with an expression of disdain.
+
+"No; I overheard it. Dunn and Brace were at the house waiting for you.
+When the coach did not bring you, I went to the office to inquire. As I
+left our door I thought I saw somebody listening at the parlor windows.
+It was only a drunken Mexican muleteer leaning against the house; but
+if HE heard nothing, I did. Nellie, I heard Brace tell Dunn that he had
+tracked you in your disguise to the woods--do you hear? that when you
+pretended to be here with the girls you were with Low--alone; that you
+wear a ring that Low got of a trader here; that there was a cabin in the
+woods--"
+
+"Stop!" she repeated.
+
+Wynn again paused.
+
+"And what did YOU do?" she asked.
+
+"I heard they were starting down there to surprise you and him together,
+and I harnessed up and got ahead of them in my buggy."
+
+"And found me here," she said, looking full into his eyes.
+
+He understood her and returned the look. He recognized the full
+importance of the culminating fact conveyed in her words, and was
+obliged to content himself with its logical and worldly significance. It
+was too late now to take her to task for mere filial disobedience; they
+must become allies.
+
+"Yes," he said hurriedly; "but if you value your reputation, if you wish
+to silence both these men, answer me fully."
+
+"Go on," she said.
+
+"Did you go to the cabin in the woods yesterday?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Did you ever go there with Low?"
+
+"No; I do not know even where it is."
+
+Wynn felt that she was telling the truth. Nellie knew it; but as she
+would have been equally satisfied with an equally efficacious falsehood,
+her face remained unchanged.
+
+"And when did he leave you?"
+
+"At nine o'clock, here. He went to the hotel."
+
+"He saved his life, then, for Dunn is on his way to the woods to kill
+him."
+
+The jeopardy of her lover did not seem to affect the young girl with
+alarm, although her eyes betrayed some interest.
+
+"Then Dunn has gone to the woods?" she said thoughtfully.
+
+"He has," replied Wynn.
+
+"Is that all?" she asked.
+
+"I want to know what you are going to do?"
+
+"I WAS going back to bed."
+
+"This is no time for trifling, girl."
+
+"I should think not," she said, with a yawn; "it's too early, or too
+late."
+
+Wynn grasped her wrist more tightly. "Hear me! Put whatever face you
+like on this affair, you are compromised--and compromised with a man you
+can't marry."
+
+"I don't know that I ever wanted to marry Low, if you mean him," she
+said quietly.
+
+"And Dunn wouldn't marry you now."
+
+"I'm not so sure of that, either."
+
+"Nellie," said Wynn excitedly, "do you want to drive me mad? Have you
+nothing to say--nothing to suggest?"
+
+"Oh, you want me to help you, do you! Why didn't you say that first?
+Well, go and bring Dunn here."
+
+"Are you mad? The man has gone already in pursuit of your lover,
+believing you with him."
+
+"Then he will the more readily come and talk with me without him. Will
+you take the invitation--yes or no?"
+
+"Yes, but--"
+
+"Enough. On your way there you will stop at the hotel and give Low a
+letter from me."
+
+"Nellie!"
+
+"You shall read it, of course," she said scornfully, "for it will be
+your text for the conversation you will have with him. Will you please
+take your hand from the lock and open the door?"
+
+Wynn mechanically opened the door. The young girl flew up-stairs. In a
+very few moments she returned with two notes: one contained a few lines
+of formal invitation to Dunn; the other read as follows:
+
+
+"DEAR MR. DORMAN,--My father will tell you how deeply I regret that our
+recent botanical excursions in the Carquinez Woods have been a source of
+serious misapprehensions to those who had a claim to my consideration,
+and that I shall be obliged to discontinue them for the future. At
+the same time he wishes me to express my gratitude for your valuable
+instruction and assistance in that pleasing study, even though
+approaching events may compel me to relinquish it for other duties.
+May I beg you to accept the inclosed ring as a slight recognition of my
+obligations to you?
+
+"Your grateful pupil,
+
+"NELLIE WYNN."
+
+
+When he had finished reading the letter, she handed him a ring, which
+he took mechanically. He raised his eyes to hers with perfectly genuine
+admiration. "You're a good girl, Nellie," he said, and, in a moment
+of parental forgetfulness, unconsciously advanced his lips towards her
+cheek. But she drew back in time to recall him to a sense of that human
+weakness.
+
+"I suppose I'll have time for a nap yet," she said, as a gentle hint to
+her embarrassed parent. He nodded and turned towards the door.
+
+"If I were you," she continued, repressing a yawn, "I'd manage to be
+seen on good terms with Low at the hotel; so perhaps you need not give
+the letter to him until the last thing. Good-by."
+
+The sitting-room door opened and closed behind her as she slipped
+up-stairs, and her father, without the formality of leave-taking,
+quietly let himself out by the front door.
+
+When he drove into the high road again, however, an overlooked
+possibility threatened for a moment to indefinitely postpone his amiable
+intentions regarding Low. The hotel was at the further end of the
+settlement towards the Carquinez Woods, and as Wynn had nearly reached
+it he was recalled to himself by the sounds of hoofs and wheels rapidly
+approaching from the direction of the Excelsior turnpike. Wynn made no
+doubt it was the sheriff and Brace. To avoid recognition at that moment,
+he whipped up his horse, intending to keep the lead until he could turn
+into the first cross-road. But the coming travelers had the fleetest
+horse, and finding it impossible to distance them he drove close to the
+ditch, pulling up suddenly as the strange vehicle was abreast of him,
+and forcing them to pass him at full speed, with the result already
+chronicled. When they had vanished in the darkness, Mr. Wynn, with a
+heart overflowing with Christian thankfulness and universal benevolence,
+wheeled round, and drove back to the hotel he had already passed. To
+pull up at the veranda with a stentorian shout, to thump loudly at the
+deserted bar, to hilariously beat the panels of the landlord's door,
+and commit a jocose assault and battery upon that half-dresssed and
+half-awakened man, was eminently characteristic of Wynn, and part of his
+amiable plans that morning.
+
+"Something to wash this wood smoke from my throat, Brother Carter, and
+about as much again to prop open your eyes," he said, dragging Carter
+before the bar, "and glasses round for as many of the boys as are up
+and stirring after a hard-working Christian's rest. How goes the honest
+publican's trade, and who have we here?"
+
+"Thar's Judge Robinson and two lawyers from Sacramento, Dick Curson over
+from Yolo," said Carter, "and that ar young Injin yarb doctor from the
+Carquinez Woods. I reckon he's jist up--I noticed a light under his door
+as I passed."
+
+"He's my man for a friendly chat before breakfast," said Wynn. "You
+needn't come up. I'll find the way. I don't want a light; I reckon my
+eyes ain't as bright nor as young as his, but they'll see almost as far
+in the dark--he! he!" And, nodding to Brother Carter, he strode
+along the passage, and with no other introduction than a playful and
+preliminary "Boo!" burst into one of the rooms. Low, who by the light
+of a single candle was bending over the plates of a large quarto, merely
+raised his eyes and looked at the intruder. The young man's natural
+imperturbability, always exasperating to Wynn, seemed accented that
+morning by contrast with his own over-acted animation.
+
+"Ah ha!--wasting the midnight oil instead of imbibing the morning dews,"
+said Father Wynn archly, illustrating his metaphor with a movement of
+his hand to his lips. "What have we here?"
+
+"An anonymous gift," replied Low simply, recognizing the father of
+Nellie by rising from his chair. "It's a volume I've longed to possess,
+but never could afford to buy. I cannot imagine who sent it to me."
+
+Wynn was for a moment startled by the thought that this recipient of
+valuable gifts might have influential friends. But a glance at the bare
+room, which looked like a camp, and the strange, unconventional garb of
+its occupant, restored his former convictions. There might be a promise
+of intelligence, but scarcely of prosperity, in the figure before him.
+
+"Ah! We must not forget that we are watched over in the night season,"
+he said, laying his hand on Low's shoulder, with an illustration of
+celestial guardianship that would have been impious but for its palpable
+grotesqueness. "No, sir, we know not what a day may bring forth."
+
+Unfortunately, Low's practical mind did not go beyond a mere human
+interpretation. It was enough, however, to put a new light in his eye
+and a faint color in his cheek.
+
+"Could it have been Miss Nellie?" he asked, with half-boyish hesitation.
+
+Mr. Wynn was too much of a Christian not to bow before what appeared to
+him the purely providential interposition of this suggestion. Seizing
+it and Low at the same moment, he playfully forced him down again in his
+chair.
+
+"Ah, you rascal!" he said, with infinite archness; "that's your game,
+is it? You want to trap poor Father Wynn. You want to make him say 'No.'
+You want to tempt him to commit himself. No, sir!--never, sir!--no, no!"
+
+Firmly convinced that the present was Nellie's, and that her father only
+good-humoredly guessed it, the young man's simple, truthful nature was
+embarrassed. He longed to express his gratitude, but feared to betray
+the young girl's trust. The Reverend Mr. Wynn speedily relieved his
+mind.
+
+"No," he continued, bestriding a chair, and familiarly confronting Low
+over its back. "No, sir--no! And you want me to say 'No,' don't you,
+regarding the little walks of Nellie and a certain young man in the
+Carquinez Woods?--ha, ha! You'd like me to say that I knew nothing
+of the botanizings, and the herb collectings, and the picknickings
+there--he, he!--you sly dog! Perhaps you'd like to tempt Father Wynn
+further, and make him swear he knows nothing of his daughter disguising
+herself in a duster and meeting another young man--isn't it another
+young man?--all alone, eh? Perhaps you want poor old Father Wynn to say
+No. No, sir, nothing of the kind ever occurred. Ah, you young rascal!"
+
+Slightly troubled, in spite of Wynn's hearty manner, Low, with his usual
+directness, however, said, "I do not want anyone to deny that I have
+seen Miss Nellie."
+
+"Certainly, certainly," said Wynn, abandoning his method, considerably
+disconcerted by Low's simplicity, and a certain natural reserve that
+shook off his familiarity. "Certainly it's a noble thing to be able to
+put your hand on your heart and say to the world, 'Come on, all of you!
+Observe me; I have nothing to conceal. I walk with Miss Wynn in the
+woods as her instructor--her teacher, in fact. We cull a flower here and
+there; we pluck an herb fresh from the hands of the Creator. We look, so
+to speak, from Nature to Nature's God.' Yes, my young friend, we should
+be the first to repel the foul calumny that could misinterpret our most
+innocent actions."
+
+"Calumny?" repeated Low, starting to his feet. "What calumny?"
+
+"My friend, my noble young friend, I recognize your indignation. I know
+your worth. When I said to Nellie, my only child, my perhaps too simple
+offspring--a mere wildflower like yourself--when I said to her, 'Go,
+my child, walk in the woods with this young man, hand in hand. Let him
+instruct you from the humblest roots, for he has trodden in the ways of
+the Almighty. Gather wisdom from his lips, and knowledge from his simple
+woodman's craft. Make, in fact, a collection not only of herbs, but of
+moral axioms and experience'--I knew I could trust you, and, trusting
+you, my young friend, I felt I could trust the world. Perhaps I was
+weak, foolish. But I thought only of her welfare. I even recall how that
+to preserve the purity of her garments, I bade her don a simple duster;
+that, to secure her from the trifling companionship of others, I
+bade her keep her own counsel, and seek you at seasons known but to
+yourselves."
+
+"But . . . did Nellie . . . understand you?" interrupted Low hastily.
+
+"I see you read her simple nature. Understand me? No, not at first!
+Her maidenly instinct--perhaps her duty to another--took the alarm. I
+remember her words. 'But what will Dunn say?' she asked. 'Will he not be
+jealous?'"
+
+"Dunn! jealous! I don't understand," said Low, fixing his eyes on Wynn.
+
+"That's just what I said to Nellie. 'Jealous!' I said. 'What, Dunn,
+your affianced husband, jealous of a mere friend--a teacher, a guide, a
+philosopher. It is impossible.' Well, sir, she was right. He is jealous.
+And, more than that, he has imparted his jealousy to others! In other
+words, he has made a scandal!"
+
+Low's eyes flashed. "Where is your daughter now?" he said sternly.
+
+"At present in bed, suffering from a nervous attack brought on by these
+unjust suspicions. She appreciates your anxiety, and, knowing that you
+could not see her, told me to give you this." He handed Low the ring and
+the letter.
+
+The climax had been forced, and, it must be confessed, was by no means
+the one Mr. Wynn had fully arranged in his own inner consciousness.
+He had intended to take an ostentatious leave of Low in the bar-room,
+deliver the letter with archness, and escape before a possible
+explosion. He consequently backed towards the door for an emergency.
+But he was again at fault. That unaffected stoical fortitude in acute
+suffering, which was the one remaining pride and glory of Low's race,
+was yet to be revealed to Wynn's civilized eyes.
+
+The young man took the letter, and read it without changing a muscle,
+folded the ring in it, and dropped it into his haversack. Then he picked
+up his blanket, threw it over his shoulder, took his trusty rifle in his
+hand, and turned towards Wynn as if coldly surprised that he was still
+standing there.
+
+"Are you--are you--going?" stammered Wynn.
+
+"Are you NOT?" replied Low dryly, leaning on his rifle for a moment as
+if waiting for Wynn to precede him. The preacher looked at him a moment,
+mumbled something, and then shambled feebly and ineffectively down the
+staircase before Low, with a painful suggestion to the ordinary observer
+of being occasionally urged thereto by the moccasin of the young man
+behind him.
+
+On reaching the lower hall, however, he endeavored to create a diversion
+in his favor by dashing into the bar-room and clapping the occupants on
+the back with indiscriminate playfulness. But here again he seemed to be
+disappointed. To his great discomfiture, a large man not only returned
+his salutation with powerful levity, but with equal playfulness seized
+him in his arms, and after an ingenious simulation of depositing him
+in the horse-trough set him down in affected amazement. "Bleth't if
+I didn't think from the weight of your hand it wath my old friend,
+Thacramento Bill," said Curson apologetically, with a wink at the
+bystanders. "That'th the way Bill alwayth uthed to tackle hith friendth,
+till he wath one day bounthed by a prithe-fighter in Frithco, whom he
+had mithtaken for a mithionary." As Mr. Curson's reputation was of a
+quality that made any form of apology from him instantly acceptable,
+the amused spectators made way for him as, recognizing Low, who was just
+leaving the hotel, he turned coolly from them and walked towards him.
+
+"Halloo!" he said, extending his hand. "You're the man I'm waiting for.
+Did you get a book from the exthpreth offithe latht night?"
+
+"I did. Why?"
+
+"It'th all right. Ath I'm rethponthible for it, I only wanted to know."
+
+"Did YOU send it?" asked Low, quickly fixing his eyes on his face.
+
+"Well, not exactly ME. But it'th not worth making a mythtery of it.
+Teretha gave me a commithion to buy it and thend it to you anonymouthly.
+That'th a woman'th nonthenth, for how could thee get a retheipt for it?"
+
+"Then it was HER present," said Low gloomily.
+
+"Of courthe. It wathn't mine, my boy. I'd have thent you a Tharp'th
+rifle in plathe of that muthle loader you carry, or thomething
+thenthible. But, I thay! what'th up? You look ath if you had been
+running all night."
+
+Low grasped his hand. "Thank you," he said hurriedly; "but it's nothing.
+Only I must be back to the woods early. Good-by."
+
+But Curson retained Low's hand in his own powerful grip.
+
+"I'll go with you a bit further," he said. "In fact, I've got thomething
+to thay to you; only don't be in thuch a hurry; the woodth can wait till
+you get there." Quietly compelling Low to alter his own characteristic
+Indian stride to keep pace with his, he went on: "I don't mind thaying
+I rather cottoned to you from the time you acted like a white man--no
+offenthe--to Teretha. She thayth you were left when a child lying
+round, jutht ath promithcuouthly ath she wath; and if I can do anything
+towardth putting you on the trail of your people, I'll do it. I know
+thome of the voyageurth who traded with the Cherokeeth, and your
+father wath one-wathn't he?" He glanced at Low's utterly abstracted and
+immobile face. "I thay, you don't theem to take a hand in thith game,
+pardner. What'th the row? Ith anything wrong over there?" and he pointed
+to the Carquinez Woods, which were just looming out of the morning
+horizon in the distance.
+
+Low stopped. The last words of his companion seemed to recall him to
+himself. He raised his eyes automatically to the woods and started.
+
+"There IS something wrong over there," he said breathlessly. "Look!"
+
+"I thee nothing," said Curson, beginning to doubt Low's sanity; "nothing
+more than I thaw an hour ago."
+
+"Look again. Don't you see that smoke rising straight up? It isn't blown
+over there from the Divide; it's new smoke! The fire is in the woods!"
+
+"I reckon that'th so," muttered Curson, shading his eyes with his hand.
+"But, hullo! wait a minute! We'll get hortheth. I say!" he shouted,
+forgetting his lisp in his excitement--"stop!" But Low had already
+lowered his head and darted forward like an arrow.
+
+In a few moments he had left not only his companion but the last
+straggling houses of the outskirts far behind him, and had struck out in
+a long, swinging trot for the disused "cut-off." Already he fancied he
+heard the note of clamor in Indian Spring, and thought he distinguished
+the sound of hurrying hoofs on the great highway. But the sunken trail
+hid it from his view. From the column of smoke now plainly visible
+in the growing morning light he tried to locate the scene of the
+conflagration. It was evidently not a fire advancing regularly from the
+outer skirt of the wood, communicated to it from the Divide; it was a
+local outburst near its centre. It was not in the direction of his cabin
+in the tree. There was no immediate danger to Teresa, unless fear drove
+her beyond the confines of the wood into the hands of those who might
+recognize her. The screaming of jays and ravens above his head quickened
+his speed, as it heralded the rapid advance of the flames; and the
+unexpected apparition of a bounding body, flattened and flying over
+the yellow plain, told him that even the secure retreat of the
+mountain wild-cat had been invaded. A sudden recollection of Teresa's
+uncontrollable terror that first night smote him with remorse and
+redoubled his efforts. Alone in the track of these frantic and
+bewildered beasts, to what madness might she not be driven!
+
+The sharp crack of a rifle from the high road turned his course
+momentarily in that direction. The smoke was curling lazily over the
+heads of the party of men in the road, while the huge hulk of a grizzly
+was disappearing in the distance. A battue of the escaping animals had
+commenced! In the bitterness of his heart he caught at the horrible
+suggestion, and resolved to save her from them or die with her there.
+
+How fast he ran, or the time it took him to reach the woods, has never
+been known. Their outlines were already hidden when he entered them.
+To a sense less keen, a courage less desperate, and a purpose less
+unaltered than Low's, the wood would have been impenetrable. The central
+fire was still confined to the lofty tree tops, but the downward rush of
+wind from time to time drove the smoke into the aisles in blinding and
+suffocating volumes. To simulate the creeping animals, and fall to the
+ground on hands and knees, feel his way through the underbrush when
+the smoke was densest, or take advantage of its momentary lifting, and
+without uncertainty, mistake, or hesitation glide from tree to tree in
+one undeviating course, was possible only to an experienced woodsman. To
+keep his reason and insight so clear as to be able in the midst of this
+bewildering confusion to shape that course so as to intersect the wild
+and unknown tract of an inexperienced, frightened wanderer belonged to
+Low, and Low alone. He was making his way against the wind towards
+the fire. He had reasoned that she was either in comparative safety to
+windward of it, or he should meet her being driven towards him by it,
+or find her succumbed and fainting at its feet. To do this he must
+penetrate the burning belt, and then pass under the blazing dome. He
+was already upon it; he could see the falling fire dropping like rain or
+blown like gorgeous blossoms of the conflagration across his path. The
+space was lit up brilliantly. The vast shafts of dull copper cast no
+shadow below, but there was no sign nor token of any human being. For a
+moment the young man was at fault. It was true this hidden heart of the
+forest bore no undergrowth; the cool matted carpet of the aisles seemed
+to quench the glowing fragments as they fell. Escape might be difficult,
+but not impossible, yet every moment was precious. He leaned against a
+tree, and sent his voice like a clarion before him: "Teresa!" There was
+no reply. He called again. A faint cry at his back from the trail he had
+just traversed made him turn. Only a few paces behind him, blinded and
+staggering, but following like a beaten and wounded animal, Teresa,
+halted, knelt, clasped her hands, and dumbly held them out before her.
+"Teresa!" he cried again, and sprang to her side.
+
+She caught him by the knees, and lifted her face imploringly to his.
+
+"Say that again!" she cried, passionately. "Tell me it was Teresa you
+called, and no other! You have come back for me! You would not let me
+die here alone!"
+
+He lifted her tenderly in his arms, and cast a rapid glance around
+him. It might have been his fancy, but there seemed a dull glow in the
+direction he had come.
+
+"You do not speak!" she said. "Tell me! You did not come here to seek
+her?"
+
+"Whom?" he said quickly.
+
+"Nellie!"
+
+With a sharp cry he let her slip to the ground. All the pent-up
+agony, rage, and mortification of the last hour broke from him in that
+inarticulate outburst. Then, catching her hands again, he dragged her to
+his level.
+
+"Hear me!" he cried, disregarding the whirling smoke and the fiery
+baptism that sprinkled them--"hear me! If you value your life, if you
+value your soul, and if you do not want me to cast you to the beasts
+like Jezebel of old, never--never take that accursed name again upon
+your lips. Seek her--HER? Yes! Seek her to tie her like a witch's
+daughter of hell to that blazing tree!" He stopped. "Forgive me," he
+said in a changed voice. "I'm mad, and forgetting myself and you. Come."
+
+Without noticing the expression of half-savage delight that had passed
+across her face, he lifted her in his arms.
+
+"Which way are you going?" she asked, passing her hands vaguely across
+his breast, as if to reassure herself of his identity.
+
+"To our camp by the scarred tree," he replied.
+
+"Not there, not there," she said, hurriedly. "I was driven from there
+just now. I thought the fire began there until I came here."
+
+Then it was as he feared. Obeying the same mysterious law that had
+launched this fatal fire like a thunderbolt from the burning mountain
+crest five miles away into the heart of the Carquinez Woods, it had
+again leaped a mile beyond, and was hemming them between two narrowing
+lines of fire. But Low was not daunted. Retracing his steps through
+the blinding smoke, he strode off at right angles to the trail near the
+point where he had entered the wood. It was the spot where he had first
+lifted Nellie in his arms to carry her to the hidden spring. If any
+recollection of it crossed his mind at that moment, it was only shown in
+his redoubled energy. He did not glide through the thick underbrush, as
+on that day, but seemed to take a savage pleasure in breaking through it
+with sheer brute force. Once Teresa insisted upon relieving him of
+the burden of her weight, but after a few steps she staggered blindly
+against him, and would fain have recourse once more to his strong arms.
+And so, alternately staggering, bending, crouching, or bounding and
+crashing on, but always in one direction, they burst through the jealous
+rampart, and came upon the sylvan haunt of the hidden spring. The
+great angle of the half-fallen tree acted as a harrier to the wind and
+drifting smoke, and the cool spring sparkled and bubbled in the almost
+translucent air. He laid her down beside the water, and bathed her
+face and hands. As he did so his quick eye caught sight of a woman's
+handkerchief lying at the foot of the disrupted root. Dropping Teresa's
+hand, he walked towards it, and with the toe of his moccasin gave it one
+vigorous kick into the ooze at the overflow of the spring. He turned to
+Teresa, but she evidently had not noticed the act.
+
+"Where are you?" she asked, with a smile.
+
+Something in her movement struck him! He came towards her, and bending
+down looked into her face. "Teresa! Good God!--look at me! What has
+happened?"
+
+She raised her eyes to his. There was a slight film across them; the
+lids were blackened; the beautiful lashes gone forever!
+
+"I see you a little now, I think," she said, with a smile, passing her
+hands vaguely over his face. "It must have happened when he fainted, and
+I had to drag him through the blazing brush; both my hands were full,
+and I could not cover my eyes."
+
+"Drag whom?" said Low, quickly.
+
+"Why, Dunn."
+
+"Dunn! He here?" said Low, hoarsely.
+
+"Yes; didn't you read the note I left on the herbarium? Didn't you come
+to the camp-fire?" she asked hurriedly, clasping his hands. "Tell me
+quickly!"
+
+"No!"
+
+"Then you were not there--then you didn't leave me to die?"
+
+"No! I swear it, Teresa!" the stoicism that had upheld his own agony
+breaking down before her strong emotion.
+
+"Thank God!" She threw her arms around him, and hid her aching eyes in
+his troubled breast.
+
+"Tell me all, Teresa," he whispered in her listening ear. "Don't move;
+stay there, and tell me all."
+
+With her face buried in his bosom, as if speaking to his heart alone,
+she told him part, but not all. With her eyes filled with tears, but a
+smile on her lips, radiant with new-found happiness, she told him how
+she had overheard the plans of Dunn and Brace, how she had stolen their
+conveyance to warn him in time. But here she stopped, dreading to say
+a word that would shatter the hope she was building upon his sudden
+revulsion of feeling for Nellie. She could not bring herself to repeat
+their interview--that would come later, when they were safe and out of
+danger; now not even the secret of his birth must come between them with
+its distraction, to mar their perfect communion. She faltered that Dunn
+had fainted from weakness, and that she had dragged him out of danger.
+"He will never interfere with us--I mean," she said softly, "with ME
+again. I can promise you that as well as if he had sworn it."
+
+"Let him pass, now," said Low; "that will come later on," he added,
+unconsciously repeating her thought in a tone that made her heart sick.
+"But tell me, Teresa, why did you go to Excelsior?"
+
+She buried her head still deeper, as if to hide it. He felt her broken
+heart beat against his own; he was conscious of a depth of feeling her
+rival had never awakened in him. The possibility of Teresa loving him
+had never occurred to his simple nature. He bent his head and kissed
+her. She was frightened, and unloosed her clinging arms; but he retained
+her hand, and said, "We will leave this accursed place, and you shall
+go with me as you said you would; nor need you ever leave me, unless you
+wish it."
+
+She could hear the beating of her own heart through his words; she
+longed to look at the eyes and lips that told her this, and read the
+meaning his voice alone could not entirely convey. For the first time
+she felt the loss of her sight. She did not know that it was, in this
+moment of happiness, the last blessing vouchsafed to her miserable life.
+
+A few moments of silence followed, broken only by the distant rumor of
+the conflagration and the crash of falling boughs.
+
+"It may be an hour yet," he whispered, "before the fire has swept a path
+for us to the road below. We are safe here, unless some sudden current
+should draw the fire down upon us. You are not frightened?" She pressed
+his hand; she was thinking of the pale face of Dunn, lying in the
+secure retreat she had purchased for him at such a sacrifice. Yet
+the possibility of danger to him now for a moment marred her present
+happiness and security. "You think the fire will not go north of where
+you found me?" she asked softly.
+
+"I think not," he said, "but I will reconnoitre. Stay where you are."
+
+They pressed hands, and parted. He leaped upon the slanting trunk and
+ascended it rapidly. She waited in mute expectation.
+
+There was a sudden movement of the root on which she sat, a deafening
+crash, and she was thrown forward on her face.
+
+The vast bulk of the leaning tree, dislodged from its aerial support by
+the gradual sapping of the spring at its roots, or by the crumbling
+of the bark from the heat, had slipped, made a half revolution, and,
+falling, overbore the lesser trees in its path, and tore, in its
+resistless momentum, a broad opening to the underbrush.
+
+With a cry to Low, Teresa staggered to her feet. There was an interval
+of hideous silence, but no reply. She called again. There was a sudden
+deepening roar, the blast of a fiery furnace swept through the opening,
+a thousand luminous points around her burst into fire, and in an instant
+she was lost in a whirlwind of smoke and flame! From the onset of its
+fury to its culmination twenty minutes did not elapse; but in that
+interval a radius of two hundred yards around the hidden spring was
+swept of life and light and motion.
+
+For the rest of that day and part of the night a pall of smoke hung
+above the scene of desolation. It lifted only towards the morning, when
+the moon, rising high, picked out in black and silver the shrunken and
+silent columns of those roofless vaults, shorn of base and capital. It
+flickered on the still, overflowing pool of the hidden spring, and
+shone upon the white face of Low, who, with a rootlet of the fallen tree
+holding him down like an arm across his breast, seemed to be sleeping
+peacefully in the sleeping water.
+
+* * * * *
+
+Contemporaneous history touched him as briefly, but not as gently. "It
+is now definitely ascertained," said "The Slumgullion Mirror," "that
+Sheriff Dunn met his fate in the Carquinez Woods in the performance
+of his duty; that fearless man having received information of
+the concealment of a band of horse thieves in their recesses. The
+desperadoes are presumed to have escaped, as the only remains found are
+those of two wretched tramps, one of whom is said to have been a digger,
+who supported himself upon roots and herbs, and the other a degraded
+half-white woman. It is not unreasonable to suppose that the fire
+originated through their carelessness, although Father Wynn of the First
+Baptist Church, in his powerful discourse of last Sunday, pointed at the
+warning and lesson of such catastrophes. It may not be out of place
+here to say that the rumors regarding an engagement between the pastor's
+accomplished daughter and the late lamented sheriff are utterly without
+foundation, as it has been an on dit for some time in all well-informed
+circles that the indefatigable Mr. Brace, of Wells, Fargo and Co.'s
+Express, will shortly lead the lady to the hymeneal altar."
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of In the Carquinez Woods, by Bret Harte
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+Project Gutenberg Etext of In The Carquinez Woods, by Bret Harte
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+In the Carquinez Woods
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+
+
+IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS
+
+by Bret Harte
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+The sun was going down on the Carquinez Woods.  The few shafts of
+sunlight that had pierced their pillared gloom were lost in
+unfathomable depths, or splintered their ineffectual lances on
+the enormous trunks of the redwoods.  For a time the dull red of
+their vast columns, and the dull red of their cast-off bark which
+matted the echoless aisles, still seemed to hold a faint glow of
+the dying day.  But even this soon passed.  Light and color fled
+upwards.  The dark interlaced treetops, that had all day made an
+impenetrable shade, broke into fire here and there; their lost
+spires glittered, faded, and went utterly out.  A weird twilight
+that did not come from the outer world, but seemed born of the
+wood itself, slowly filled and possessed the aisles.  The
+straight, tall, colossal trunks rose dimly like columns of upward
+smoke.  The few fallen trees stretched their huge length into
+obscurity, and seemed to lie on shadowy trestles.  The strange
+breath that filled these mysterious vaults had neither coldness
+nor moisture; a dry, fragrant dust arose from the noiseless foot
+that trod their bark-strewn floor; the aisles might have been
+tombs, the fallen trees enormous mummies; the silence the
+solitude of a forgotten past.
+
+And yet this silence was presently broken by a recurring sound
+like breathing, interrupted occasionally by inarticulate and
+stertorous gasps.  It was not the quick, panting, listening
+breath of some stealthy feline or canine animal, but indicated a
+larger, slower, and more powerful organization, whose progress
+was less watchful and guarded, or as if a fragment of one of the
+fallen monsters had become animate.  At times this life seemed to
+take visible form, but as vaguely, as misshapenly, as the phantom
+of a nightmare.  Now it was a square object moving sideways,
+endways, with neither head nor tail and scarcely visible feet;
+then an arched bulk rolling against the trunks of the trees and
+recoiling again, or an upright cylindrical mass, but always
+oscillating and unsteady, and striking the trees on either hand.
+The frequent occurrence of the movement suggested the figures of
+some weird rhythmic dance to music heard by the shape alone.
+Suddenly it either became motionless or faded away.
+
+There was the frightened neighing of a horse, the sudden jingling
+of spurs, a shout and outcry, and the swift apparition of three
+dancing torches in one of the dark aisles; but so intense was the
+obscurity that they shed no light on surrounding objects, and
+seemed to advance of their own volition without human guidance,
+until they disappeared suddenly behind the interposing bulk of
+one of the largest trees.  Beyond its eighty feet of circumference
+the light could not reach, and the gloom remained inscrutable.
+But the voices and jingling spurs were heard distinctly.
+
+"Blast the mare!  She's shied off that cursed trail again."
+
+"Ye ain't lost it again, hev ye?" growled a second voice.
+
+"That's jist what I hev.  And these blasted pine-knots don't give
+light an inch beyond 'em.  D--d if I don't think they make this
+cursed hole blacker."
+
+There was a laugh--a woman's laugh--hysterical, bitter,
+sarcastic, exasperating.  The second speaker, without heeding it,
+went on:--
+
+"What in thunder skeert the hosses?  Did you see or hear
+anything?"
+
+"Nothin'.  The wood is like a graveyard."
+
+The woman's voice again broke into a hoarse, contemptuous laugh.
+The man resumed angrily:--
+
+"If you know anything, why in h-ll don't you say so, instead of
+cackling like a d--d squaw there?  P'raps you reckon you ken find
+the trail too."
+
+"Take this rope off my wrist," said the woman's voice, "untie my
+hands, let me down, and I'll find it."  She spoke quickly and
+with a Spanish accent.
+
+It was the men's turn to laugh.  "And give you a show to snatch
+that six-shooter and blow a hole through me, as you did to the
+Sheriff of Calaveras, eh?  Not if this court understands itself,"
+said the first speaker dryly.
+
+"Go to the devil, then," she said curtly.
+
+"Not before a lady," responded the other.  There was another
+laugh from the men, the spurs jingled again, the three torches
+reappeared from behind the tree, and then passed away in the
+darkness.
+
+For a time silence and immutability possessed the woods; the
+great trunks loomed upwards, their fallen brothers stretched
+their slow length into obscurity.  The sound of breathing again
+became audible; the shape reappeared in the aisle, and
+recommenced its mystic dance.  Presently it was lost in the
+shadow of the largest tree, and to the sound of breathing
+succeeded a grating and scratching of bark.  Suddenly, as if
+riven by lightning, a flash broke from the center of the tree-
+trunk, lit up the woods, and a sharp report rang through it.
+After a pause the jingling of spurs and the dancing of torches
+were revived from the distance.
+
+"Hallo?"
+
+No answer.
+
+"Who fired that shot?"
+
+But there was no reply.  A slight veil of smoke passed away to
+the right, there was the spice of gunpowder in the air, but
+nothing more.
+
+The torches came forward again, but this time it could be seen
+they were held in the hands of two men and a woman.  The woman's
+hands were tied at the wrist to the horse-hair reins of her mule,
+while a riata, passed around her waist and under the mule's
+girth, was held by one of the men, who were both armed with
+rifles and revolvers.  Their frightened horses curveted, and it
+was with difficulty they could be made to advance.
+
+"Ho! stranger, what are you shooting at?"
+
+The woman laughed and shrugged her shoulders.  "Look yonder at
+the roots of the tree.  You're a d--d smart man for a sheriff,
+ain't you?"
+
+The man uttered an exclamation and spurred his horse forward, but
+the animal reared in terror.  He then sprang to the ground and
+approached the tree.  The shape lay there, a scarcely
+distinguishable bulk.
+
+"A grizzly, by the living Jingo!  Shot through the heart."
+
+It was true.  The strange shape lit up by the flaring torches
+seemed more vague, unearthly, and awkward in its dying throes,
+yet the small shut eyes, the feeble nose, the ponderous
+shoulders, and half-human foot armed with powerful claws were
+unmistakable.  The men turned by a common impulse and peered into
+the remote recesses of the wood again.
+
+"Hi, Mister! come and pick up your game.  Hallo there!"
+
+The challenge fell unheeded on the empty woods.
+
+"And yet," said he whom the woman had called the sheriff, "he
+can't be far off.  It was a close shot, and the bear hez dropped
+in his tracks.  Why, wot's this sticking in his claws?"
+
+The two men bent over the animal.  "Why, it's sugar, brown sugar--
+look!"  There was no mistake.  The huge beast's fore paws and
+muzzle were streaked with the unromantic household provision, and
+heightened the absurd contrast of its incongruous members.  The
+woman, apparently indifferent, had taken that opportunity to
+partly free one of her wrists.
+
+"If we hadn't been cavorting round this yer spot for the last
+half hour, I'd swear there was a shanty not a hundred yards
+away," said the sheriff.
+
+The other man, without replying, remounted his horse instantly.
+
+"If there is, and it's inhabited by a gentleman that kin make
+centre shots like that in the dark, and don't care to explain
+how, I reckon I won't disturb him."
+
+The sheriff was apparently of the same opinion, for he followed
+his companion's example, and once more led the way.  The spurs
+tinkled, the torches danced, and the cavalcade slowly reentered
+the gloom.  In another moment it had disappeared.
+
+The wood sank again into repose, this time disturbed by neither
+shape nor sound.  What lower forms of life might have crept close
+to its roots were hidden in the ferns, or passed with deadened
+tread over the bark-strewn floor.  Towards morning a coolness
+like dew fell from above, with here and there a dropping twig or
+nut, or the crepitant awakening and stretching-out of cramped and
+weary branches.  Later a dull, lurid dawn, not unlike the last
+evening's sunset, filled the aisles.  This faded again, and a
+clear gray light, in which every object stood out in sharp
+distinctness, took its place.  Morning was waiting outside in all
+its brilliant, youthful coloring, but only entered as the matured
+and sobered day.
+
+Seen in that stronger light, the monstrous tree near which the
+dead bear lay revealed its age in its denuded and scarred trunk,
+and showed in its base a deep cavity, a foot or two from the
+ground, partly hidden by hanging strips of bark which had fallen
+across it.  Suddenly one of these strips was pushed aside, and a
+young man leaped lightly down.
+
+But for the rifle he carried and some modern peculiarities of
+dress, he was of a grace so unusual and unconventional that he
+might have passed for a faun who was quitting his ancestral home.
+He stepped to the side of the bear with a light elastic movement
+that was as unlike customary progression as his face and figure
+were unlike the ordinary types of humanity.  Even as he leaned
+upon his rifle, looking down at the prostrate animal, he
+unconsciously fell into an attitude that in any other mortal
+would have been a pose, but with him was the picturesque and
+unstudied relaxation of perfect symmetry.
+
+"Hallo, Mister!"
+
+He raised his head so carelessly and listlessly that he did not
+otherwise change his attitude.  Stepping from behind the tree,
+the woman of the preceding night stood before him.  Her hands
+were free except for a thong of the riata, which was still
+knotted around one wrist, the end of the thong having been torn
+or burnt away.  Her eyes were bloodshot, and her hair hung over
+her shoulders in one long black braid.
+
+"I reckoned all along it was YOU who shot the bear," she said;
+"at least some one hiding yer," and she indicated the hollow tree
+with her hand.  "It wasn't no chance shot."  Observing that the
+young man, either from misconception or indifference, did not
+seem to comprehend her, she added, "We came by here, last night,
+a minute after you fired."
+
+"Oh, that was YOU kicked up such a row, was it?" said the young
+man, with a shade of interest.
+
+"I reckon," said the woman, nodding her head, "and them that was
+with me."
+
+"And who are they?"
+
+"Sheriff Dunn, of Yolo, and his deputy."
+
+"And where are they now?"
+
+"The deputy--in h-ll, I reckon; I don't know about the sheriff."
+
+"I see," said the young man quietly; "and you?"
+
+"I--got away," she said savagely.  But she was taken with a
+sudden nervous shiver, which she at once repressed by tightly
+dragging her shawl over her shoulders and elbows, and folding her
+arms defiantly.
+
+"And you're going?"
+
+"To follow the deputy, may be," she said gloomily.  "But come, I
+say, ain't you going to treat?  It's cursed cold here."
+
+"Wait a moment."  The young man was looking at her, with his
+arched brows slightly knit and a half smile of curiosity.  "Ain't
+you Teresa?"
+
+She was prepared for the question, but evidently was not certain
+whether she would reply defiantly or confidently.  After an
+exhaustive scrutiny of his face she chose the latter, and said,
+"You can bet your life on it, Johnny."
+
+"I don't bet, and my name isn't Johnny.  Then you're the woman
+who stabbed Dick Curson over at Lagrange's?"
+
+She became defiant again.
+
+"That's me, all the time.  What are you going to do about it?"
+
+"Nothing.  And you used to dance at the Alhambra?"  She whisked
+the shawl from her shoulders, held it up like a scarf, and made
+one or two steps of the sembicuacua.  There was not the least
+gayety, recklessness, or spontaneity in the action; it was simply
+mechanical bravado.  It was so ineffective, even upon her own
+feelings, that her arms presently dropped to her side, and she
+coughed embarrassedly.  "Where's that whiskey, pardner?" she
+asked.
+
+The young man turned toward the tree he had just quitted, and
+without further words assisted her to mount to the cavity.  It
+was an irregular-shaped vaulted chamber, pierced fifty feet above
+by a shaft or cylindrical opening in the decayed trunk, which was
+blackened by smoke, as if it had served the purpose of a chimney.
+In one corner lay a bearskin and blanket; at the side were two
+alcoves or indentations, one of which was evidently used as a
+table, and the other as a cupboard.  In another hollow, near the
+entrance, lay a few small sacks of flour, coffee, and sugar, the
+sticky contents of the latter still strewing the floor.  From
+this storehouse the young man drew a wicker flask of whiskey, and
+handed it, with a tin cup of water, to the woman.  She waved the
+cup aside, placed the flask to her lips, and drank the undiluted
+spirit.  Yet even this was evidently bravado, for the water
+started to her eyes, and she could not restrain the paroxysm of
+coughing that followed.
+
+"I reckon that's the kind that kills at forty rods," she said,
+with a hysterical laugh.  "But I say, pardner, you look as if you
+were fixed here to stay," and she stared ostentatiously around
+the chamber.  But she had already taken in its minutest details,
+even to observing that the hanging strips of bark could be
+disposed so as to completely hide the entrance.
+
+"Well, yes," he replied; "it wouldn't be very easy to pull up the
+stakes and move the shanty further on."
+
+Seeing that either from indifference or caution he had not
+accepted her meaning, she looked at him fixedly, and said,--
+
+"What is your little game?"
+
+"Eh?"
+
+"What are you hiding for--here, in this tree?"
+
+"But I'm not hiding."
+
+"Then why didn't you come out when they hailed you last night?"
+
+"Because I didn't care to."
+
+Teresa whistled incredulously.  "All right--then if you're not
+hiding, I'm going to."  As he did not reply, she went on: "If I
+can keep out of sight for a couple of weeks, this thing will blow
+over here, and I can get across into Yolo.  I could get a fair
+show there, where the boys know me.  Just now the trails are all
+watched, but no one would think of lookin' here."
+
+"Then how did you come to think of it?" he asked carelessly.
+
+"Because I knew that bear hadn't gone far for that sugar; because
+I know he hadn't stole it from a cache--it was too fresh, and
+we'd have seen the torn-up earth; because we had passed no camp;
+and because I knew there was no shanty here.  And, besides," she
+added in a low voice, "maybe I was huntin' a hole myself to die
+in--and spotted it by instinct."
+
+There was something in this suggestion of a hunted animal that,
+unlike anything she had previously said or suggested, was not
+exaggerated, and caused the young man to look at her again.  She
+was standing under the chimney-like opening, and the light from
+above illuminated her head and shoulders.  The pupils of her eyes
+had lost their feverish prominence, and were slightly suffused
+and softened as she gazed abstractedly before her.  The only
+vestige of her previous excitement was in her left-hand fingers,
+which were incessantly twisting and turning a diamond ring upon
+her right hand, but without imparting the least animation to her
+rigid attitude.  Suddenly, as if conscious of his scrutiny, she
+stepped aside out of the revealing light and by a swift feminine
+instinct raised her hand to her head as if to adjust her straggling
+hair.  It was only for a moment, however, for, as if aware of the
+weakness, she struggled to resume her aggressive pose.
+
+"Well," she said.  "Speak up.  Am I goin' to stop here, or have I
+got to get up and get?"
+
+"You can stay," said the young man quietly; "but as I've got my
+provisions and ammunition here, and haven't any other place to go
+to just now, I suppose we'll have to share it together."
+
+She glanced at him under her eyelids, and a half-bitter, half-
+contemptuous smile passed across her face.  "All right, old man,"
+she said, holding out her hand, "it's a go.  We'll start in
+housekeeping at once, if you like."
+
+"I'll have to come here once or twice a day," he said, quite
+composedly, "to look after my things, and get something to eat;
+but I'll be away most of the time, and what with camping out
+under the trees every night I reckon my share won't incommode
+you."
+
+She opened her black eyes upon him, at this original proposition.
+Then she looked down at her torn dress.  "I suppose this style of
+thing ain't very fancy, is it?" she said, with a forced laugh.
+
+"I think I know where to beg or borrow a change for you, if you
+can't get any," he replied simply.
+
+She stared at him again.  "Are you a family man?"
+
+"No."
+
+She was silent for a moment.  "Well," she said, "you can tell
+your girl I'm not particular about its being in the latest
+fashion."
+
+There was a slight flush on his forehead as he turned toward the
+little cupboard, but no tremor in his voice as he went on:
+"You'll find tea and coffee here, and, if you're bored, there's a
+book or two.  You read, don't you--I mean English?"
+
+She nodded, but cast a look of undisguised contempt upon the two
+worn, coverless novels he held out to her.  "You haven't got last
+week's 'Sacramento Union,' have you?  I hear they have my case
+all in; only them lying reporters made it out against me all the
+time."
+
+"I don't see the papers," he replied curtly.
+
+"They say there's a picture of me in the 'Police Gazette,' taken
+in the act," and she laughed.
+
+He looked a little abstracted, and turned as if to go.  "I think
+you'll do well to rest a while just now, and keep as close hid as
+possible until afternoon.  The trail is a mile away at the
+nearest point, but some one might miss it and stray over here.
+You're quite safe if you're careful, and stand by the tree.  You
+can build a fire here," he stepped under the chimney-like
+opening, "without its being noticed.  Even the smoke is lost and
+cannot be seen so high."
+
+The light from above was falling on his head and shoulders, as it
+had on hers.  She looked at him intently.
+
+"You travel a good deal on your figure, pardner, don't you?" she
+said, with a certain admiration that was quite sexless in its
+quality; "but I don't see how you pick up a living by it in the
+Carquinez Woods.  So you're going, are you?  You might be more
+sociable.  Good-by."
+
+"Good-by!"  He leaped from the opening.
+
+"I say pardner!"
+
+He turned a little impatiently.  She had knelt down at the
+entrance, so as to be nearer his level, and was holding out her
+hand.  But he did not notice it, and she quietly withdrew it.
+
+"If anybody dropped in and asked for you, what name will they say?"
+
+He smiled.  "Don't wait to hear."
+
+"But suppose I wanted to sing out for you, what will I call you?"
+
+He hesitated.  "Call me--Lo."
+
+"Lo, the poor Indian?"*
+
+"Exactly."
+
+
+* The first word of Pope's familiar apostrophe is humorously used
+in the Far West as a distinguishing title for the Indian.
+
+
+It suddenly occurred to the woman, Teresa, that in the young
+man's height, supple, yet erect carriage, color, and singular
+gravity of demeanor there was a refined, aboriginal suggestion.
+He did not look like any Indian she had ever seen, but rather as
+a youthful chief might have looked.  There was a further
+suggestion in his fringed buckskin shirt and moccasins; but
+before she could utter the half-sarcastic comment that rose to
+her lips he had glided noiselessly away, even as an Indian might
+have done.
+
+She readjusted the slips of hanging bark with feminine ingenuity,
+dispersing them so as to completely hide the entrance.  Yet this
+did not darken the chamber, which seemed to draw a purer and more
+vigorous light through the soaring shaft that pierced the roof
+than that which came from the dim woodland aisles below.
+Nevertheless, she shivered, and drawing her shawl closely around
+her began to collect some half-burnt fragments of wood in the
+chimney to make a fire.  But the preoccupation of her thoughts
+rendered this a tedious process, as she would from time to time
+stop in the middle of an action and fall into an attitude of rapt
+abstraction, with far-off eyes and rigid mouth.  When she had at
+last succeeded in kindling a fire and raising a film of pale blue
+smoke, that seemed to fade and dissipate entirely before it
+reached the top of the chimney shaft, she crouched beside it,
+fixed her eyes on the darkest corner of the cavern, and became
+motionless.
+
+What did she see through that shadow?
+
+Nothing at first but a confused medley of figures and incidents
+of the preceding night; things to be put away and forgotten;
+things that would not have happened but for another thing--the
+thing before which everything faded!  A ball-room; the sounds of
+music; the one man she had cared for insulting her with the
+flaunting ostentation of his unfaithfulness; herself despised,
+put aside, laughed at, or worse, jilted.  And then the moment of
+delirium, when the light danced; the one wild act that lifted
+her, the despised one, above them all--made her the supreme
+figure, to be glanced at by frightened women, stared at by half-
+startled, half-admiring men!  "Yes," she laughed; but struck by
+the sound of her own voice, moved twice round the cavern
+nervously, and then dropped again into her old position.
+
+As they carried him away he had laughed at her--like a hound that
+he was; he who had praised her for her spirit, and incited her
+revenge against others; he who had taught her to strike when she
+was insulted; and it was only fit he should reap what he had
+sown.  She was what he, what other men, had made her.  And what
+was she now?  What had she been once?
+
+She tried to recall her childhood: the man and woman who might
+have been her father and mother; who fought and wrangled over her
+precocious little life; abused or caressed her as she sided with
+either; and then left her with a circus troupe, where she first
+tasted the power of her courage, her beauty, and her
+recklessness.  She remembered those flashes of triumph that left
+a fever in her veins--a fever that when it failed must be
+stimulated by dissipation, by anything, by everything that would
+keep her name a wonder in men's mouths, an envious fear to women.
+She recalled her transfer to the strolling players; her cheap
+pleasures, and cheaper rivalries and hatred--but always Teresa!
+the daring Teresa! the reckless Teresa! audacious as a woman,
+invincible as a boy; dancing, flirting, fencing, shooting,
+swearing, drinking, smoking, fighting Teresa!  "Oh, yes; she had
+been loved, perhaps--who knows?--but always feared.  Why should
+she change now?  Ha, he should see."
+
+She had lashed herself in a frenzy, as was her wont, with
+gestures, ejaculations, oaths, adjurations, and passionate
+apostrophes, but with this strange and unexpected result.
+Heretofore she had always been sustained and kept up by an
+audience of some kind or quality, if only perhaps a humble
+companion; there had always been some one she could fascinate or
+horrify, and she could read her power mirrored in their eyes.
+Even the half-abstracted indifference of her strange host had
+been something.  But she was alone now.  Her words fell on
+apathetic solitude; she was acting to viewless space.  She rushed
+to the opening, dashed the hanging bark aside, and leaped to the
+ground.
+
+She ran forward wildly a few steps, and stopped.
+
+"Hallo!" she cried.  "Look, 'tis I, Teresa!"
+
+The profound silence remained unbroken.  Her shrillest tones were
+lost in an echoless space, even as the smoke of her fire had
+faded into pure ether.  She stretched out her clenched fists as
+if to defy the pillared austerities of the vaults around her.
+
+"Come and take me if you dare!"
+
+The challenge was unheeded.  If she had thrown herself violently
+against the nearest tree-trunk, she could not have been stricken
+more breathless than she was by the compact, embattled solitude
+that encompassed her.  The hopelessness of impressing these cold
+and passive vaults with her selfish passion filled her with a
+vague fear.  In her rage of the previous night she had not seen
+the wood in its profound immobility.  Left alone with the majesty
+of those enormous columns, she trembled and turned faint.  The
+silence of the hollow tree she had just quitted seemed to her
+less awful than the crushing presence of these mute and monstrous
+witnesses of her weakness.  Like a wounded quail with lowered
+crest and trailing wing, she crept back to her hiding place.
+
+Even then the influence of the wood was still upon her.  She
+picked up the novel she had contemptuously thrown aside, only to
+let it fall again in utter weariness.  For a moment her feminine
+curiosity was excited by the discovery of an old book, in whose
+blank leaves were pressed a variety of flowers and woodland
+grasses.  As she could not conceive that these had been kept for
+any but a sentimental purpose, she was disappointed to find that
+underneath each was a sentence in an unknown tongue, that even to
+her untutored eye did not appear to be the language of passion.
+Finally she rearranged the couch of skins and blankets, and,
+imparting to it in three clever shakes an entirely different
+character, lay down to pursue her reveries.  But nature asserted
+herself, and ere she knew it she was asleep.
+
+So intense and prolonged had been her previous excitement that,
+the tension once relieved, she passed into a slumber of
+exhaustion so deep that she seemed scarce to breathe.  High noon
+succeeded morning, the central shaft received a single ray of
+upper sunlight, the afternoon came and went, the shadows gathered
+below, the sunset fires began to eat their way through the
+groined roof, and she still slept.  She slept even when the bark
+hangings of the chamber were put aside, and the young man
+reentered.
+
+He laid down a bundle he was carrying and softly approached the
+sleeper.  For a moment he was startled from his indifference; she
+lay so still and motionless.  But this was not all that struck
+him; the face before him was no longer the passionate, haggard
+visage that confronted him that morning; the feverish air, the
+burning color, the strained muscles of mouth and brow, and the
+staring eyes were gone; wiped away, perhaps, by the tears that
+still left their traces on cheek and dark eyelash.  It was the
+face of a handsome woman of thirty, with even a suggestion of
+softness in the contour of the cheek and arching of her upper
+lip, no longer rigidly drawn down in anger, but relaxed by sleep
+on her white teeth.
+
+With the lithe, soft tread that was habitual to him, the young
+man moved about, examining the condition of the little chamber
+and its stock of provisions and necessaries, and withdrew
+presently, to reappear as noiselessly with a tin bucket of water.
+This done, he replenished the little pile of fuel with an armful
+of bark and pine cones, cast an approving glance about him, which
+included the sleeper, and silently departed.
+
+It was night when she awoke.  She was surrounded by a profound
+darkness, except where the shaft-like opening made a nebulous
+mist in the corner of her wooden cavern.  Providentially she
+struggled back to consciousness slowly, so that the solitude and
+silence came upon her gradually, with a growing realization of
+the events of the past twenty-four hours, but without a shock.
+She was alone here, but safe still, and every hour added to her
+chances of ultimate escape.  She remembered to have seen a candle
+among the articles on the shelf, and she began to grope her way
+towards the matches.  Suddenly she stopped.  What was that panting?
+
+Was it her own breathing, quickened with a sudden nameless
+terror? or was there something outside?  Her heart seemed to stop
+beating while she listened.  Yes! it was a panting outside--a
+panting now increased, multiplied, redoubled, mixed with the
+sounds of rustling, tearing, craunching, and occasionally a
+quick, impatient snarl.  She crept on her hands and knees to the
+opening and looked out.  At first the ground seemed to be
+undulating between her and the opposite tree.  But a second
+glance showed her the black and gray, bristling, tossing backs of
+tumbling beasts of prey, charging the carcass of the bear that
+lay at its roots, or contesting for the prize with gluttonous,
+choked breath, sidelong snarls, arched spines, and recurved
+tails.  One of the boldest had leaped upon a buttressing root of
+her tree within a foot of the opening.  The excitement, awe, and
+terror she had undergone culminated in one wild, maddened scream,
+that seemed to pierce even the cold depths of the forest, as she
+dropped on her face, with her hands clasped over her eyes in an
+agony of fear.
+
+Her scream was answered, after a pause, by a sudden volley of
+firebrands and sparks into the midst of the panting, crowding
+pack; a few smothered howls and snaps, and a sudden dispersion of
+the concourse.  In another moment the young man, with a blazing
+brand in either hand, leaped upon the body of the bear.
+
+Teresa raised her head, uttered a hysterical cry, slid down the
+tree, flew wildly to his side, caught convulsively at his sleeve,
+and fell on her knees beside him.
+
+"Save me! save me!" she gasped, in a voice broken by terror.
+"Save me from those hideous creatures.  No, no!" she implored, as
+he endeavored to lift her to her feet.  "No--let me stay here
+close beside you.  So," clutching the fringe of his leather
+hunting-shirt, and dragging herself on her knees nearer him--
+"so--don't leave me, for God's sake!"
+
+"They are gone," he replied, gazing down curiously at her, as she
+wound the fringe around her hand to strengthen her hold; "they're
+only a lot of cowardly coyotes and wolves, that dare not attack
+anything that lives and can move."
+
+The young woman responded with a nervous shudder.  "Yes, that's
+it," she whispered, in a broken voice; "it's only the dead they
+want.  Promise me--swear to me, if I'm caught, or hung, or shot,
+you won't let me be left here to be torn and--ah! my God! what's
+that?"
+
+She had thrown her arms around his knees, completely pinioning
+him to her frantic breast.  Something like a smile of disdain
+passed across his face as he answered, "It's nothing.  They will
+not return.  Get up!"
+
+Even in her terror she saw the change in his face.  "I know, I
+know!" she cried.  "I'm frightened--but I cannot bear it any
+longer.  Hear me!  Listen!  Listen--but don't move!  I didn't
+mean to kill Curson--no! I swear to God, no!  I didn't mean to
+kill the sheriff--and I didn't.  I was only bragging--do you
+hear?  I lied!  I lied--don't move, I swear to God I lied.  I've
+made myself out worse than I was.  I have.  Only don't leave me
+now--and if I die--and it's not far off, may be--get me away from
+here--and from THEM.  Swear it!"
+
+"All right," said the young man, with a scarcely concealed
+movement of irritation.  "But get up now, and go back to the
+cabin."
+
+"No; not THERE alone."  Nevertheless, he quietly but firmly
+released himself.
+
+"I will stay here," he replied.  "I would have been nearer to
+you, but I thought it better for your safety that my camp-fire
+should be further off.  But I can build it here, and that will
+keep the coyotes off."
+
+"Let me stay with you--beside you," she said imploringly.
+
+She looked so broken, crushed, and spiritless, so unlike the
+woman of the morning that, albeit with an ill grace, he tacitly
+consented, and turned away to bring his blankets.  But in the
+next moment she was at his side, following him like a dog, silent
+and wistful, and even offering to carry his burden.  When he had
+built the fire, for which she had collected the pine-cones and
+broken branches near them, he sat down, folded his arms, and
+leaned back against the tree in reserved and deliberate silence.
+
+Humble and submissive, she did not attempt to break in upon a
+reverie she could not help but feel had little kindliness to
+herself.  As the fire snapped and sparkled, she pillowed her head
+upon a root, and lay still to watch it.
+
+It rose and fell, and dying away at times to a mere lurid glow,
+and again, agitated by some breath scarcely perceptible to them,
+quickening into a roaring flame.  When only the embers remained,
+a dead silence filled the wood.  Then the first breath of morning
+moved the tangled canopy above, and a dozen tiny sprays and
+needles detached from the interlocked boughs winged their soft
+way noiselessly to the earth.  A few fell upon the prostrate
+woman like a gentle benediction, and she slept.  But even then,
+the young man, looking down, saw that the slender fingers were
+still aimlessly but rigidly twisted in the leather fringe of his
+hunting-shirt.
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+It was a peculiarity of the Carquinez Wood that it stood apart
+and distinct in its gigantic individuality.  Even where the
+integrity of its own singular species was not entirely preserved,
+it admitted no inferior trees.  Nor was there any diminishing
+fringe on its outskirts; the sentinels that guarded the few
+gateways of the dim trails were as monstrous as the serried ranks
+drawn up in the heart of the forest.  Consequently, the red
+highway that skirted the eastern angle was bare and shadeless,
+until it slipped a league off into a watered valley and refreshed
+itself under lesser sycamores and willows.  It was here the newly
+born city of Excelsior, still in its cradle, had, like an infant
+Hercules, strangled the serpentine North Fork of the American
+river, and turned its life current into the ditches and flumes of
+the Excelsior mines.
+
+Newest of the new houses that seemed to have accidentally formed
+its single, straggling street was the residence of the Rev.
+Winslow Wynn, not unfrequently known as "Father Wynn," pastor of
+the First Baptist church.  The "pastorage," as it was cheerfully
+called, had the glaring distinction of being built of brick, and
+was, as had been wickedly pointed out by idle scoffers, the only
+"fireproof" structure in town.  This sarcasm was not, however,
+supposed to be particularly distasteful to "Father Wynn," who
+enjoyed the reputation of being "hail fellow, well met" with the
+rough mining element, who called them by their Christian names,
+had been known to drink at the bar of the Polka Saloon while
+engaged in the conversion of a prominent citizen, and was
+popularly said to have no "gospel starch" about him.  Certain
+conscious outcasts and transgressors were touched at this
+apparent unbending of the spiritual authority.  The rigid tenets
+of Father Wynn's faith were lost in the supposed catholicity of
+his humanity.  "A preacher that can jine a man when he's histin'
+liquor into him, without jawin' about it, ought to be allowed to
+wrestle with sinners and splash about in as much cold water as he
+likes," was the criticism of one of his converts.  Nevertheless,
+it was true that Father Wynn was somewhat loud and intolerant in
+his tolerance.  It was true that he was a little more rough, a
+little more frank, a little more hearty, a little more impulsive
+than his disciples.  It was true that often the proclamation of
+his extreme liberality and brotherly equality partook somewhat of
+an apology.  It is true that a few who might have been most
+benefited by this kind of gospel regarded him with a singular
+disdain.  It is true that his liberality was of an ornamental,
+insinuating quality, accompanied with but little sacrifice; his
+acceptance of a collection taken up in a gambling saloon for the
+rebuilding of his church, destroyed by fire, gave him a
+popularity large enough, it must be confessed, to cover the sins
+of the gamblers themselves, but it was not proven that HE had
+ever organized any form of relief.  But it was true that local
+history somehow accepted him as an exponent of mining
+Christianity, without the least reference to the opinions of the
+Christian miners themselves.
+
+The Rev. Mr. Wynn's liberal habits and opinions were not,
+however, shared by his only daughter, a motherless young lady of
+eighteen.  Nellie Wynn was in the eye of Excelsior an
+unapproachable divinity, as inaccessible and cold as her father
+was impulsive and familiar.  An atmosphere of chaste and proud
+virginity made itself felt even in the starched integrity of her
+spotless skirts, in her neatly gloved finger-tips, in her clear
+amber eyes, in her imperious red lips, in her sensitive nostrils.
+Need it be said that the youth and middle age of Excelsior were
+madly, because apparently hopelessly, in love with her?  For the
+rest, she had been expensively educated, was profoundly ignorant
+in two languages, with a trained misunderstanding of music and
+painting, and a natural and faultless taste in dress.
+
+The Rev. Mr. Wynn was engaged in a characteristic hearty parting
+with one of his latest converts, upon his own doorstep, with
+admirable al fresco effect.  He had just clapped him on the
+shoulder.  "Good-by, good-by, Charley, my boy, and keep in the
+right path; not up, or down, or round the gulch, you know--ha,
+ha!--but straight across lots to the shining gate."  He had
+raised his voice under the stimulus of a few admiring spectators,
+and backed his convert playfully against the wall.  "You see!
+we're goin' in to win, you bet.  Good-by!  I'd ask you to step in
+and have a chat, but I've got my work to do, and so have you.
+The gospel mustn't keep us from that, must it, Charley?  Ha, ha!"
+
+The convert (who elsewhere was a profane expressman, and had
+become quite imbecile under Mr. Wynn's active heartiness and
+brotherly horse-play before spectators) managed, however, to
+feebly stammer with a blush something about "Miss Nellie."
+
+"Ah, Nellie.  She, too, is at her tasks--trimming her lamp--you
+know, the parable of the wise virgins," continued Father Wynn
+hastily, fearing that the convert might take the illustration
+literally.  "There, there--good-by.  Keep in the right path."
+And with a parting shove he dismissed Charley and entered his own
+house.
+
+That "wise virgin," Nellie, had evidently finished with the lamp,
+and was now going out to meet the bridegroom, as she was fully
+dressed and gloved, and had a pink parasol in her hand, as her
+father entered the sitting-room.  His bluff heartiness seemed to
+fade away as he removed his soft, broad-brimmed hat and glanced
+across the too fresh-looking apartment.  There was a smell of
+mortar still in the air, and a faint suggestion that at any
+moment green grass might appear between the interstices of the
+red-brick hearth.  The room, yielding a little in the point of
+coldness, seemed to share Miss Nellie's fresh virginity, and,
+barring the pink parasol, set her off as in a vestal's cell.
+
+"I supposed you wouldn't care to see Brace, the expressman, so I
+got rid of him at the door," said her father, drawing one of the
+new chairs towards him slowly, and sitting down carefully, as if
+it were a hitherto untried experiment.
+
+Miss Nellie's face took a tint of interest.  "Then he doesn't go
+with the coach to Indian Spring to-day?"
+
+"No; why?"
+
+"I thought of going over myself to get the Burnham girls to come
+to choir-meeting," replied Miss Nellie carelessly, "and he might
+have been company."
+
+"He'd go now, if he knew you were going," said her father; "but
+it's just as well he shouldn't be needlessly encouraged.  I
+rather think that Sheriff Dunn is a little jealous of him.  By
+the way, the sheriff is much better.  I called to cheer him up
+to-day" (Mr. Wynn had in fact tumultuously accelerated the sick
+man's pulse), "and he talked of you, as usual.  In fact, he said
+he had only two things to get well for.  One was to catch and
+hang that woman Teresa, who shot him; the other--can't you guess
+the other?" he added archly, with a faint suggestion of his other
+manner.
+
+Miss Nellie coldly could not.
+
+The Rev. Mr. Wynn's archness vanished.  "Don't be a fool," he
+said dryly.  "He wants to marry you, and you know it."
+
+"Most of the men here do," responded Miss Nellie, without the
+least trace of coquetry.  "Is the wedding or the hanging to take
+place first, or together, so he can officiate at both?"
+
+"His share in the Union Ditch is worth a hundred thousand
+dollars," continued her father; "and if he isn't nominated for
+district judge this fall, he's bound to go to the legislature,
+anyway.  I don't think a girl with your advantages and education
+can afford to throw away the chance of shining in Sacramento, San
+Francisco, or, in good time, perhaps even Washington."
+
+Miss Nellie's eyes did not reflect entire disapproval of this
+suggestion, although she replied with something of her father's
+practical quality.
+
+"Mr. Dunn is not out of his bed yet, and they say Teresa's got
+away to Arizona, so there isn't any particular hurry."
+
+"Perhaps not; but see here, Nellie, I've some important news for
+you.  You know your young friend of the Carquinez Woods--Dorman,
+the botanist, eh?  Well, Brace knows all about him.  And what do
+you think he is?"
+
+Miss Nellie took upon herself a few extra degrees of cold, and
+didn't know.
+
+"An Injin!  Yes, an out-and-out Cherokee.  You see he calls
+himself Dorman--Low Dorman.  That's only French for 'Sleeping
+Water,' his Injin name!--'Low Dorman.'"
+
+"You mean 'L'Eau Dormante,'" said Nellie.
+
+"That's what I said.  The chief called him 'Sleeping Water' when
+he was a boy, and one of them French Canadian trappers translated
+it into French when he brought him to California to school.  But
+he's an Injin, sure.  No wonder he prefers to live in the woods."
+
+"Well?" said Nellie.
+
+"Well," echoed her father impatiently, "he's an Injin, I tell
+you, and you can't of course have anything to do with him.  He
+mustn't come here again."
+
+"But you forget," said Nellie imperturbably, "that it was you who
+invited him here, and were so much exercised over him.  You
+remember you introduced him to the Bishop and those Eastern
+clergymen as a magnificent specimen of a young Californian.  You
+forget what an occasion you made of his coming to church on
+Sunday, and how you made him come in his buckskin shirt and walk
+down the street with you after service!"
+
+"Yes, yes," said the Rev. Mr. Wynn, hurriedly.
+
+"And," continued Nellie carelessly, "how you made us sing out of
+the same book 'Children of our Father's Fold,' and how you
+preached at him until he actually got a color!"
+
+"Yes," said her father; "but it wasn't known then he was an
+Injin, and they are frightfully unpopular with those Southwestern
+men among whom we labor.  Indeed, I am quite convinced that when
+Brace said 'the only good Indian was a dead one' his expression,
+though extravagant, perhaps, really voiced the sentiments of the
+majority.  It would be only kindness to the unfortunate creature
+to warn him from exposing himself to their rude but conscientious
+antagonism."
+
+"Perhaps you'd better tell him, then, in your own popular way,
+which they all seem to understand so well," responded the
+daughter.  Mr. Wynn cast a quick glance at her, but there was no
+trace of irony in her face--nothing but a half-bored indifference
+as she walked toward the window.
+
+"I will go with you to the coach-office," said her father, who
+generally gave these simple paternal duties the pronounced
+character of a public Christian example.
+
+"It's hardly worth while," replied Miss Nellie.  "I've to stop at
+the Watsons', at the foot of the hill, and ask after the baby; so
+I shall go on to the Crossing and pick up the coach when it
+passes.  Good-by."
+
+Nevertheless, as soon as Nellie had departed, the Rev. Mr. Wynn
+proceeded to the coach-office, and publicly grasping the hand of
+Yuba Bill, the driver, commended his daughter to his care in the
+name of the universal brotherhood of man and the Christian
+fraternity.  Carried away by his heartiness, he forgot his
+previous caution, and confided to the expressman Miss Nellie's
+regrets that she was not to have that gentleman's company.  The
+result was that Miss Nellie found the coach with its passengers
+awaiting her with uplifted hats and wreathed smiles at the
+Crossing, and the box seat (from which an unfortunate stranger,
+who had expensively paid for it, had been summarily ejected) at
+her service beside Yuba Bill, who had thrown away his cigar and
+donned a new pair of buckskin gloves to do her honor.  But a more
+serious result to the young beauty was the effect of the Rev. Mr.
+Wynn's confidences upon the impulsive heart of Jack Brace, the
+expressman.  It has been already intimated that it was his "day
+off."  Unable to summarily reassume his usual functions beside
+the driver without some practical reason, and ashamed to go so
+palpably as a mere passenger, he was forced to let the coach
+proceed without him.  Discomfited for the moment, he was not,
+however, beaten.  He had lost the blissful journey by her side,
+which would have been his professional right, but--she was going
+to Indian Spring! could he not anticipate her there?  Might they
+not meet in the most accidental manner?  And what might not come
+from that meeting away from the prying eyes of their own town?
+Mr. Brace did not hesitate, but saddling his fleet Buckskin, by
+the time the stage-coach had passed the Crossing in the high-road
+he had mounted the hill and was dashing along the "cutoff" in the
+same direction, a full mile in advance.  Arriving at Indian
+Spring, he left his horse at a Mexican posada on the confines of
+the settlement, and from the piled debris of a tunnel excavation
+awaited the slow arrival of the coach.  On mature reflection he
+could give no reason why he had not boldly awaited it at the
+express office, except a certain bashful consciousness of his own
+folly, and a belief that it might be glaringly apparent to the
+bystanders.  When the coach arrived and he had overcome this
+consciousness, it was too late.  Yuba Bill had discharged his
+passengers for Indian Spring and driven away.  Miss Nellie was in
+the settlement, but where?  As time passed he became more
+desperate and bolder.  He walked recklessly up and down the main
+street, glancing in at the open doors of shops, and even in the
+windows of private dwellings.  It might have seemed a poor
+compliment to Miss Nellie, but it was an evidence of his complete
+preoccupation, when the sight of a female face at a window, even
+though it was plain or perhaps painted, caused his heart to
+bound, or the glancing of a skirt in the distance quickened his
+feet and his pulses.  Had Jack contented himself with remaining
+at Excelsior he might have vaguely regretted, but as soon become
+as vaguely accustomed to, Miss Nellie's absence.  But it was not
+until his hitherto quiet and passive love took this first step of
+action that it fully declared itself.  When he had made the tour
+of the town a dozen times unsuccessfully, he had perfectly made
+up his mind that marriage with Nellie or the speedy death of
+several people, including possibly himself, was the only
+alternative.  He regretted he had not accompanied her; he
+regretted he had not demanded where she was going; he
+contemplated a course of future action that two hours ago would
+have filled him with bashful terror.  There was clearly but one
+thing to do--to declare his passion the instant he met her, and
+return with her to Excelsior an accepted suitor, or not to return
+at all.
+
+Suddenly he was vexatiously conscious of hearing his name lazily
+called, and looking up found that he was on the outskirts of the
+town, and interrogated by two horsemen.
+
+"Got down to walk, and the coach got away from you, Jack, eh?"
+
+A little ashamed of his preoccupation, Brace stammered something
+about "collections."  He did not recognize the men, but his own
+face, name, and business were familiar to everybody for fifty
+miles along the stage-road.
+
+"Well, you can settle a bet for us, I reckon.  Bill Dacre thar
+bet me five dollars and the drinks that a young gal we met at the
+edge of the Carquinez Woods, dressed in a long brown duster and
+half muffled up in a hood, was the daughter of Father Wynn of
+Excelsior.  I did not get a fair look at her, but it stands to
+reason that a high-toned young lady like Nellie Wynn don't go
+trap'sing along the wood like a Pike County tramp.  I took the
+bet.  May be you know if she's here or in Excelsior?"
+
+Mr. Brace felt himself turning pale with eagerness and
+excitement.  But the near prospect of seeing her presently gave
+him back his caution, and he answered truthfully that he had left
+her in Excelsior, and that in his two hours' sojourn in Indian
+Spring he had not met her once.  "But," he added, with a
+Californian's reverence for the sanctity of a bet, "I reckon
+you'd better make it a stand-off for twenty-four hours, and I'll
+find out and let you know."  Which, it is only fair to say, he
+honestly intended to do.
+
+With a hurried nod of parting, he continued in the direction of
+the Woods.  When he had satisfied himself that the strangers had
+entered the settlement, and would not follow him for further
+explanation, he quickened his pace.  In half an hour he passed
+between two of the gigantic sentinels that guarded the entrance
+to a trail.  Here he paused to collect his thoughts.  The Woods
+were vast in extent, the trail dim and uncertain--at times
+apparently breaking off, or intersecting another trail as faint
+as itself.  Believing that Miss Nellie had diverged from the
+highway only as a momentary excursion into the shade, and that
+she would not dare to penetrate its more sombre and unknown
+recesses, he kept within sight of the skirting plain.  By degrees
+the sedate influence of the silent vaults seemed to depress him.
+The ardor of the chase began to flag.  Under the calm of their
+dim roof the fever of his veins began to subside; his pace
+slackened; he reasoned more deliberately.  It was by no means
+probable that the young woman in a brown duster was Nellie; it
+was not her habitual traveling dress; it was not like her to walk
+unattended in the road; there was nothing in her tastes and
+habits to take her into this gloomy forest, allowing that she had
+even entered it; and on this absolute question of her identity
+the two witnesses were divided.  He stopped irresolutely, and
+cast a last, long, half-despairing look around him.  Hitherto he
+had given that part of the wood nearest the plain his greatest
+attention.  His glance now sought its darker recesses.  Suddenly
+he became breathless.  Was it a beam of sunlight that had pierced
+the groined roof above, and now rested against the trunk of one
+of the dimmer, more secluded giants?  No, it was moving; even as
+he gazed it slipped away, glanced against another tree, passed
+across one of the vaulted aisles, and then was lost again.  Brief
+as was the glimpse, he was not mistaken--it was the figure of a
+woman.
+
+In another moment he was on her track, and soon had the
+satisfaction of seeing her reappear at a lesser distance.  But
+the continual intervention of the massive trunks made the chase
+by no means an easy one, and as he could not keep her always in
+sight he was unable to follow or understand the one intelligent
+direction which she seemed to invariably keep.  Nevertheless, he
+gained upon her breathlessly, and, thanks to the bark-strewn
+floor, noiselessly.  He was near enough to distinguish and
+recognize the dress she wore, a pale yellow, that he had admired
+when he first saw her.  It was Nellie, unmistakably; if it were
+she of the brown duster, she had discarded it, perhaps for
+greater freedom.  He was near enough to call out now, but a
+sudden nervous timidity overcame him; his lips grew dry.  What
+should he say to her?  How account for his presence?  "Miss
+Nellie, one moment!" he gasped.  She darted forward and--vanished.
+
+At this moment he was not more than a dozen yards from her.  He
+rushed to where she had been standing, but her disappearance was
+perfect and complete.  He made a circuit of the group of trees
+within whose radius she had last appeared, but there was neither
+trace of her, nor a suggestion of her mode of escape.  He called
+aloud to her; the vacant Woods let his helpless voice die in
+their unresponsive depths.  He gazed into the air and down at the
+bark-strewn carpet at his feet.  Like most of his vocation, he
+was sparing of speech, and epigrammatic after his fashion.
+Comprehending in one swift but despairing flash of intelligence
+the existence of some fateful power beyond his own weak endeavor,
+he accepted its logical result with characteristic grimness,
+threw his hat upon the ground, put his hands in his pockets, and
+said--
+
+"Well, I'm d--d!"
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+Out of compliment to Miss Nellie Wynn, Yuba Bill, on reaching
+Indian Spring, had made a slight detour to enable him to
+ostentatiously set down his fair passenger before the door of the
+Burnhams.  When it had closed on the admiring eyes of the
+passengers and the coach had rattled away, Miss Nellie, without
+any undue haste or apparent change in her usual quiet demeanor,
+managed, however, to dispatch her business promptly, and, leaving
+an impression that she would call again before her return to
+Excelsior, parted from her friends and slipped away through a
+side street to the General Furnishing Store of Indian Spring.  In
+passing this emporium, Miss Nellie's quick eye had discovered a
+cheap brown linen duster hanging in its window.  To purchase it,
+and put it over her delicate cambric dress, albeit with a
+shivering sense that she looked like a badly folded brown-paper
+parcel, did not take long.  As she left the shop it was with
+mixed emotions of chagrin and security that she noticed that her
+passage through the settlement no longer turned the heads of its
+male inhabitants.  She reached the outskirts of Indian Spring and
+the high-road at about the time Mr. Brace had begun his fruitless
+patrol of the main street.  Far in the distance a faint olive-
+green table mountain seemed to rise abruptly from the plain.  It
+was the Carquinez Woods.  Gathering her spotless skirts beneath
+her extemporized brown domino, she set out briskly towards them.
+
+But her progress was scarcely free or exhilarating.  She was not
+accustomed to walking in a country where "buggy-riding" was
+considered the only genteel young-lady-like mode of progression,
+and its regular provision the expected courtesy of mankind.
+Always fastidiously booted, her low-quartered shoes were charming
+to the eye, but hardly adapted to the dust and inequalities of
+the highroad.  It was true that she had thought of buying a
+coarser pair at Indian Spring, but once face to face with their
+uncompromising ugliness, she had faltered and fled.  The sun was
+unmistakably hot, but her parasol was too well known and offered
+too violent a contrast to the duster for practical use.  Once she
+stopped with an exclamation of annoyance, hesitated, and looked
+back.  In half an hour she had twice lost her shoe and her
+temper; a pink flush took possession of her cheeks, and her eyes
+were bright with suppressed rage.  Dust began to form grimy
+circles around their orbits; with cat-like shivers she even felt
+it pervade the roots of her blond hair.  Gradually her breath
+grew more rapid and hysterical, her smarting eyes became humid,
+and at last, encountering two observant horsemen in the road, she
+turned and fled, until, reaching the wood, she began to cry.
+
+Nevertheless she waited for the two horsemen to pass, to satisfy
+herself that she was not followed; then pushed on vaguely, until
+she reached a fallen tree, where, with a gesture of disgust, she
+tore off her hapless duster and flung it on the ground.  She then
+sat down sobbing, but after a moment dried her eyes hurriedly and
+started to her feet.  A few paces distant, erect, noiseless, with
+outstretched hand, the young solitary of the Carquinez Woods
+advanced towards her.  His hand had almost touched hers, when he
+stopped.
+
+"What has happened?" he asked gravely.
+
+"Nothing," she said, turning half away, and searching the ground
+with her eyes, as if she had lost something.  "Only I must be
+going back now."
+
+"You shall go back at once, if you wish it," he said, flushing
+slightly.  "But you have been crying; why?"
+
+Frank as Miss Nellie wished to be, she could not bring herself to
+say that her feet hurt her, and the dust and heat were ruining
+her complexion.  It was therefore with a half-confident belief
+that her troubles were really of a moral quality that she
+answered, "Nothing--nothing, but--but--it's wrong to come here."
+
+"But you did not think it was wrong when you agreed to come, at
+our last meeting," said the young man, with that persistent logic
+which exasperates the inconsequent feminine mind.  "It cannot be
+any more wrong to-day."
+
+"But it was not so far off," murmured the young girl, without
+looking up.
+
+"Oh, the distance makes it more improper, then," he said
+abstractedly; but after a moment's contemplation of her half-
+averted face, he asked gravely, "Has anyone talked to you about me?"
+
+Ten minutes before, Nellie had been burning to unburthen herself
+of her father's warning, but now she felt she would not.  "I wish
+you wouldn't call yourself Low," she said at last.
+
+"But it's my name," he replied quietly.
+
+"Nonsense!  It's only a stupid translation of a stupid nickname.
+They might as well call you 'Water' at once."
+
+"But you said you liked it."
+
+"Well, so I do.  But don't you see--I--oh dear! you don't
+understand."
+
+Low did not reply, but turned his head with resigned gravity
+towards the deeper woods.  Grasping the barrel of his rifle with
+his left hand, he threw his right arm across his left wrist and
+leaned slightly upon it with the habitual ease of a Western
+hunter--doubly picturesque in his own lithe, youthful symmetry.
+Miss Nellie looked at him from under her eyelids, and then half
+defiantly raised her head and her dark lashes.  Gradually an
+almost magical change came over her features; her eyes grew
+larger and more and more yearning, until they seemed to draw and
+absorb in their liquid depths the figure of the young man before
+her; her cold face broke into an ecstasy of light and color; her
+humid lips parted in a bright, welcoming smile, until, with an
+irresistible impulse, she arose, and throwing back her head
+stretched towards him two hands full of vague and trembling
+passion.
+
+In another moment he had seized them, kissed them, and, as he
+drew her closer to his embrace, felt them tighten around his
+neck.  "But what name do you wish to call me?" he asked, looking
+down into her eyes.
+
+Miss Nellie murmured something confidentially to the third button
+of his hunting shirt.  "But that," he replied, with a smile,
+"THAT wouldn't be any more practical, and you wouldn't want
+others to call me dar--"  Her fingers loosened around his neck,
+she drew her head back, and a singular expression passed over her
+face, which to any calmer observer than a lover would have
+seemed, however, to indicate more curiosity than jealousy.
+
+"Who else DOES call you so?" she added earnestly.  "How many, for
+instance?"
+
+Low's reply was addressed not to her ear, but her lips.  She did
+not avoid it, but added, "And do you kiss them all like that?"
+Taking him by the shoulders, she held him a little way from her,
+and gazed at him from head to foot.  Then drawing him again to
+her embrace, she said, "I don't care, at least no woman has
+kissed you like that."  Happy, dazzled, and embarrassed, he was
+beginning to stammer the truthful protestation that rose to his
+lips, but she stopped him: "No, don't protest! say nothing!  Let
+ME love YOU--that is all.  It is enough."  He would have caught
+her in his arms again, but she drew back.  "We are near the
+road," she said quietly.  "Come!  You promised to show me where
+you camped.  Let US make the most of our holiday.  In an hour I
+must leave the woods."
+
+"But I shall accompany you, dearest."
+
+"No, I must go as I came--alone."
+
+"But Nellie--"
+
+"I tell you no," she said, with an almost harsh practical
+decision, incompatible with her previous abandonment.  "We might
+be seen together."
+
+"Well, suppose we are; we must be seen together eventually," he
+remonstrated.
+
+The young girl made an involuntary gesture of impatient negation,
+but checked herself.  "Don't let us talk of that now.  Come,
+while I am here under your own roof--" she pointed to the high
+interlaced boughs above them--"you must be hospitable.  Show me
+your home; tell me, isn't it a little gloomy sometimes?"
+
+"It never has been; I never thought it WOULD be until the moment
+you leave it to-day."
+
+She pressed his hand briefly and in a half-perfunctory way, as if
+her vanity had accepted and dismissed the compliment.  "Take me
+somewhere," she said inquisitively, "where you stay most; I do
+not seem to see you HERE," she added, looking around her with a
+slight shiver.  "It is so big and so high.  Have you no place
+where you eat and rest and sleep?"
+
+"Except in the rainy season, I camp all over the place--at any
+spot where I may have been shooting or collecting."
+
+"Collecting?" queried Nellie.
+
+"Yes; with the herbarium, you know."
+
+"Yes," said Nellie dubiously.  "But you told me once--the first
+time we ever talked together," she added, looking in his eyes--
+"something about your keeping your things like a squirrel in a
+tree.  Could we not go there?  Is there not room for us to sit
+and talk without being brow-beaten and looked down upon by these
+supercilious trees?"
+
+"It's too far away," said Low truthfully, but with a somewhat
+pronounced emphasis, "much too far for you just now; and it lies
+on another trail that enters the wood beyond.  But come, I will
+show you a spring known only to myself, the wood ducks, and the
+squirrels.  I discovered it the first day I saw you, and gave it
+your name.  But you shall christen it yourself.  It will be all
+yours, and yours alone, for it is so hidden and secluded that I
+defy any feet but my own or whoso shall keep step with mine to
+find it.  Shall that foot be yours, Nellie?"
+
+Her face beamed with a bright assent.  "It may be difficult to
+track it from here," he said, "but stand where you are a moment,
+and don't move, rustle, nor agitate the air in any way.  The
+woods are still now."  He turned at right angles with the trail,
+moved a few paces into the ferns and underbrush, and then stopped
+with his finger on his lips.  For an instant both remained
+motionless; then with his intent face bent forward and both arms
+extended, he began to sink slowly upon one knee and one side,
+inclining his body with a gentle, perfectly-graduated movement
+until his ear almost touched the ground.  Nellie watched his
+graceful figure breathlessly, until, like a bow unbent, he stood
+suddenly erect again, and beckoned to her without changing the
+direction of his face.
+
+"What is it?" she asked eagerly.
+
+"All right; I have found it," he continued, moving forward
+without turning his head.
+
+"But how?  What did you kneel for?"  He did not reply, but taking
+her hand in his continued to move slowly on through the
+underbrush, as if obeying some magnetic attraction.  "How did you
+find it?" again asked the half-awed girl, her voice unconsciously
+falling to a whisper.  Still silent, Low kept his rigid face and
+forward tread for twenty yards further; then he stopped and
+released the girl's half-impatient hand.  "How did you find it?"
+she repeated sharply.
+
+"With my ears and nose," replied Low gravely.
+
+"With your nose?"
+
+"Yes; I smelt it."
+
+Still fresh with the memory of his picturesque attitude, the
+young man's reply seemed to involve something more irritating to
+her feelings than even that absurd anticlimax.  She looked at him
+coldly and critically, and appeared to hesitate whether to
+proceed.  "Is it far?" she asked.
+
+"Not more than ten minutes now, as I shall go."
+
+"And you won't have to smell your way again?"
+
+"No; it is quite plain now," he answered seriously, the young
+girl's sarcasm slipping harmlessly from his Indian stolidity.
+"Don't you smell it yourself?"
+
+But Miss Nellie's thin, cold nostrils refused to take that vulgar
+interest.
+
+"Nor hear it?  Listen!"
+
+"You forget I suffer the misfortune of having been brought up
+under a roof," she replied coldly.
+
+"That's true," repeated Low, in all seriousness; "it's not your
+fault.  But do you know, I sometimes think I am peculiarly
+sensitive to water; I feel it miles away.  At night, though I may
+not see it or even know where it is, I am conscious of it.  It is
+company to me when I am alone, and I seem to hear it in my
+dreams.  There is no music as sweet to me as its song.  When you
+sang with me that day in church, I seemed to hear it ripple in
+your voice.  It says to me more than the birds do, more than the
+rarest plants I find.  It seems to live with me and for me.  It
+is my earliest recollection; I know it will be my last, for I
+shall die in its embrace.  Do you think, Nellie," he continued,
+stopping short and gazing earnestly in her face--"do you think
+that the chiefs knew this when they called me 'Sleeping Water'?"
+
+To Miss Nellie's several gifts I fear the gods had not added
+poetry.  A slight knowledge of English verse of a select
+character, unfortunately, did not assist her in the
+interpretation of the young man's speech, nor relieve her from
+the momentary feeling that he was at times deficient in
+intellect.  She preferred, however, to take a personal view of
+the question, and expressed her sarcastic regret that she had not
+known before that she had been indebted to the great flume and
+ditch at Excelsior for the pleasure of his acquaintance.  This
+pert remark occasioned some explanation, which ended in the
+girl's accepting a kiss in lieu of more logical argument.
+Nevertheless, she was still conscious of an inward irritation--
+always distinct from her singular and perfectly material passion--
+which found vent as the difficulties of their undeviating
+progress through the underbrush increased.  At last she lost her
+shoe again, and stopped short.  "It's a pity your Indian friends
+did not christen you 'Wild Mustard' or 'Clover,'" she said
+satirically, "that you might have had some sympathies and
+longings for the open fields instead of these horrid jungles!  I
+know we will not get back in time."
+
+Unfortunately, Low accepted this speech literally and with his
+remorseless gravity.  "If my name annoys you, I can get it
+changed by the legislature, you know, and I can find out what my
+father's name was, and take that.  My mother, who died in giving
+me birth, was the daughter of a chief."
+
+"Then your mother was really an Indian?" said Nellie, "and you
+are--"  She stopped short.
+
+"But I told you all this the day we first met," said Low, with
+grave astonishment.  "Don't you remember our long talk coming
+from church?"
+
+"No," said Nellie coldly, "you didn't tell me."  But she was
+obliged to drop her eyes before the unwavering, undeniable
+truthfulness of his.
+
+"You have forgotten," he said calmly; "but it is only right you
+should have your own way in disposing of a name that I have cared
+little for; and as you're to have a share of it--"
+
+"Yes, but it's getting late, and if we are not going forward--"
+interrupted the girl impatiently.
+
+"We ARE going forward," said Low imperturbably; "but I wanted to
+tell you, as we were speaking on THAT subject" (Nellie looked at
+her watch), "I've been offered the place of botanist and
+naturalist in Professor Grant's survey of Mount Shasta, and if I
+take it--why, when I come back, darling--well--"
+
+"But you're not going just yet," broke in Nellie, with a new
+expression in her face.
+
+"No."
+
+"Then we need not talk of it now," she said, with animation.
+
+Her sudden vivacity relieved him.  "I see what's the matter," he
+said gently, looking down at her feet; "these little shoes were
+not made to keep step with a moccasin.  We must try another way."
+He stooped as if to secure the erring buskin, but suddenly lifted
+her like a child to his shoulder.  "There," he continued, placing
+her arm round his neck, "you are clear of the ferns and brambles
+now, and we can go on.  Are you comfortable?"  He looked up, read
+her answer in her burning eyes and the warm lips pressed to his
+forehead at the roots of his straight dark hair, and again moved
+onward as in a mesmeric dream.  But he did not swerve from his
+direct course, and with a final dash through the undergrowth
+parted the leafy curtain before the spring.
+
+At first the young girl was dazzled by the strong light that came
+from a rent in the interwoven arches of the wood.  The breach had
+been caused by the huge bulk of one of the great giants that had
+half fallen, and was lying at a steep angle against one of its
+mightiest brethren, having borne down a lesser tree in the arc of
+its downward path.  Two of the roots, as large as younger trees,
+tossed their blackened and bare limbs high in the air.  The
+spring--the insignificant cause of this vast disruption--gurgled,
+flashed, and sparkled at the base; the limpid baby fingers that
+had laid bare the foundations of that fallen column played with
+the still clinging rootlets, laved the fractured and twisted
+limbs, and, widening, filled with sleeping water the graves from
+which they had been torn.
+
+"It had been going on for years, down there," said Low, pointing
+to a cavity from which the fresh water now slowly welled, "but it
+had been quickened by the rising of the subterranean springs and
+rivers which always occurs at a certain stage of the dry season.
+I remember that on that very night--for it happened a little
+after midnight, when all sounds are more audible--I was troubled
+and oppressed in my sleep by what you would call a nightmare; a
+feeling as if I was kept down by bonds and pinions that I longed
+to break.  And then I heard a crash in this direction, and the
+first streak of morning brought me the sound and scent of water.
+Six months afterwards I chanced to find my way here, as I told
+you, and gave it your name.  I did not dream that I should ever
+stand beside it with you, and have you christen it yourself."
+
+He unloosened the cup from his flask, and filling it at the
+spring handed it to her.  But the young girl leant over the pool,
+and pouring the water idly back said, "I'd rather put my feet in
+it.  Mayn't I?"
+
+"I don't understand you," he said wonderingly.
+
+"My feet are SO hot and dusty.  The water looks deliciously cool.
+May I?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+He turned away as Nellie, with apparent unconsciousness, seated
+herself on the bank, and removed her shoes and stockings.  When
+she had dabbled her feet a few moments in the pool, she said over
+her shoulder--
+
+"We can talk just as well, can't we?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"Well, then, why didn't you come to church more often, and why
+didn't you think of telling father that you were convicted of sin
+and wanted to be baptized?"
+
+"I don't know," hesitated the young man.
+
+"Well, you lost the chance of having father convert you, baptize
+you, and take you into full church fellowship."
+
+"I never thought--" he began.
+
+"You never thought.  Aren't you a Christian?"
+
+"I suppose so."
+
+"He supposes so!  Have you no convictions--no profession?"
+
+"But, Nellie, I never thought that you--"
+
+"Never thought that I--what?  Do you think that I could ever be
+anything to a man who did not believe in justification by faith,
+or in the covenant of church fellowship?  Do you think father
+would let me?"
+
+In his eagerness to defend himself he stepped to her side.  But
+seeing her little feet shining through the dark water, like
+outcroppings of delicately veined quartz, he stopped embarrassed.
+Miss Nellie, however, leaped to one foot, and, shaking the other
+over the pool, put her hand on his shoulder to steady herself.
+"You haven't got a towel--or," she said dubiously, looking at her
+small handkerchief, "anything to dry them on?"
+
+But Low did not, as she perhaps expected, offer his own handkerchief.
+
+"If you take a bath after our fashion," he said gravely, "you
+must learn to dry yourself after our fashion."
+
+Lifting her again lightly in his arms, he carried her a few steps
+to the sunny opening, and bade her bury her feet in the dried
+mosses and baked withered grasses that were bleaching in a
+hollow.  The young girl uttered a cry of childish delight, as the
+soft ciliated fibres touched her sensitive skin.
+
+"It is healing, too," continued Low; "a moccasin filled with it
+after a day on the trail makes you all right again."
+
+But Miss Nellie seemed to be thinking of something else.
+
+"Is that the way the squaws bathe and dry themselves?"
+
+"I don't know; you forget I was a boy when I left them."
+
+"And you're sure you never knew any?"
+
+"None."
+
+The young girl seemed to derive some satisfaction in moving her
+feet up and down for several minutes among the grasses in the
+hollow; then, after a pause, said, "You are quite certain I am
+the first woman that ever touched this spring?"
+
+"Not only the first woman, but the first human being, except
+myself."
+
+"How nice!"
+
+They had taken each other's hands; seated side by side, they
+leaned against a curving elastic root that half supported, half
+encompassed, them.  The girl's capricious, fitful manner
+succumbed as before to the near contact of her companion.
+Looking into her eyes, Low fell into a sweet, selfish lover's
+monologue, descriptive of his past and present feelings towards
+her, which she accepted with a heightened color, a slight
+exchange of sentiment, and a strange curiosity.  The sun had
+painted their half-embraced silhouettes against the slanting
+tree-trunk, and began to decline unnoticed; the ripple of the
+water mingling with their whispers came as one sound to the
+listening ear; even their eloquent silences were as deep, and, I
+wot, perhaps as dangerous, as the darkened pool that filled so
+noiselessly a dozen yards away.  So quiet were they that the
+tremor of invading wings once or twice shook the silence, or the
+quick scamper of frightened feet rustled the dead grass.  But in
+the midst of a prolonged stillness the young man sprang up so
+suddenly that Nellie was still half clinging to his neck as he
+stood erect.  "Hush!" he whispered; "some one is near!"
+
+He disengaged her anxious hands gently, leaped upon the slanting
+tree-trunk, and running half-way up its incline with the agility
+of a squirrel, stretched himself at full length upon it and
+listened.
+
+To the impatient, inexplicably startled girl, it seemed an age
+before he rejoined her.
+
+"You are safe," he said; "he is going by the western trail
+towards Indian Spring."
+
+"Who is HE?" she asked, biting her lips with a poorly restrained
+gesture of mortification and disappointment.
+
+"Some stranger," replied Low.
+
+"As long as he wasn't coming here, why did you give me such a
+fright?" she said pettishly.  "Are you nervous because a single
+wayfarer happens to stray here?"
+
+"It was no wayfarer, for he tried to keep near the trail," said
+Low.  "He was a stranger to the wood, for he lost his way every
+now and then.  He was seeking or expecting some one, for he
+stopped frequently and waited or listened.  He had not walked
+far, for he wore spurs that tinkled and caught in the brush; and
+yet he had not ridden here, for no horse's hoofs passed the road
+since we have been here.  He must have come from Indian Spring."
+
+"And you heard all that when you listened just now?" asked Nellie,
+half disdainfully.
+
+Impervious to her incredulity Low turned his calm eyes on her
+face.  "Certainly, I'll bet my life on what I say.  Tell me: do
+you know anybody in Indian Spring who would likely spy upon you?"
+
+The young girl was conscious of a certain ill-defined uneasiness,
+but answered, "No."
+
+"Then it was not YOU he was seeking," said Low thoughtfully.
+Miss Nellie had not time to notice the emphasis, for he added,
+"You must go at once, and lest you have been followed I will show
+you another way back to Indian Spring.  It is longer, and you
+must hasten.  Take your shoes and stockings with you until we are
+out of the bush."
+
+He raised her again in his arms and strode once more out through
+the covert into the dim aisles of the wood.  They spoke but
+little; she could not help feeling that some other discordant
+element, affecting him more strongly than it did her, had come
+between them, and was half perplexed and half frightened.  At the
+end of ten minutes he seated her upon a fallen branch, and
+telling her he would return by the time she had resumed her shoes
+and stockings glided from her like a shadow.  She would have
+uttered an indignant protest at being left alone, but he was gone
+ere she could detain him.  For a moment she thought she hated
+him.  But when she had mechanically shod herself once more, not
+without nervous shivers at every falling needle, he was at her side.
+
+"Do you know anyone who wears a frieze coat like that?" he asked,
+handing her a few torn shreds of wool affixed to a splinter of bark.
+
+Miss Nellie instantly recognized the material of a certain
+sporting coat worn by Mr. Jack Brace on festive occasions, but a
+strange yet infallible instinct that was part of her nature made
+her instantly disclaim all knowledge of it.
+
+"No," she said.
+
+"Not anyone who scents himself with some doctor's stuff like
+cologne?" continued Low, with the disgust of keen olfactory
+sensibilities.
+
+Again Miss Nellie recognized the perfume with which the gallant
+expressman was wont to make redolent her little parlor, but again
+she avowed no knowledge of its possessor.  "Well," returned Low
+with some disappointment, "such a man has been here.  Be on your
+guard.  Let us go at once."
+
+She required no urging to hasten her steps, but hurried
+breathlessly at his side.  He had taken a new trail by which they
+left the wood at right angles with the highway, two miles away.
+Following an almost effaced mule track along a slight depression
+of the plain, deep enough, however, to hide them from view, he
+accompanied her, until, rising to the level again, she saw they
+were beginning to approach the highway and the distant roofs of
+Indian Spring.  "Nobody meeting you now," he whispered, "would
+suspect where you had been.  Good night! until next week--remember."
+
+They pressed each other's hands, and standing on the slight ridge
+outlined against the paling sky, in full view of the highway,
+parting carelessly, as if they had been chance met travelers.
+But Nellie could not restrain a parting backward glance as she
+left the ridge.  Low had descended to the deserted trail, and was
+running swiftly in the direction of the Carquinez Woods.
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+Teresa awoke with a start.  It was day already, but how far
+advanced the even, unchanging, soft twilight of the woods gave no
+indication.  Her companion had vanished, and to her bewildered
+senses so had the camp-fire, even to its embers and ashes.  Was
+she awake, or had she wandered away unconsciously in the night?
+One glance at the tree above her dissipated the fancy.  There was
+the opening of her quaint retreat and the hanging strips of bark,
+and at the foot of the opposite tree lay the carcass of the bear.
+It had been skinned, and, as Teresa thought with an inward
+shiver, already looked half its former size.
+
+Not yet accustomed to the fact that a few steps in either
+direction around the circumference of those great trunks produced
+the sudden appearance or disappearance of any figure, Teresa
+uttered a slight scream as her young companion unexpectedly
+stepped to her side.  "You see a change here," he said; "the
+stamped-out ashes of the camp-fire lie under the brush," and he
+pointed to some cleverly scattered boughs and strips of bark
+which completely effaced the traces of last night's bivouac.  "We
+can't afford to call the attention of any packer or hunter who
+might straggle this way to this particular spot and this
+particular tree; the more naturally," he added, "as they always
+prefer to camp over an old fire."  Accepting this explanation
+meekly, as partly a reproach for her caprice of the previous
+night, Teresa hung her head.
+
+"I'm very sorry," she said, "but wouldn't that," pointing to the
+carcass of the bear, "have made them curious?"
+
+But Low's logic was relentless.
+
+"By this time there would have been little left to excite curiosity,
+if you had been willing to leave those beasts to their work."
+
+"I'm very sorry," repeated the woman, her lips quivering.
+
+"They are the scavengers of the wood," he continued in a lighter
+tone; "if you stay here you must try to use them to keep your
+house clean."
+
+Teresa smiled nervously.
+
+"I mean that they shall finish their work to-night," he added,
+"and I shall build another camp-fire for us a mile from here
+until they do."
+
+But Teresa caught his sleeve.
+
+"No," she said hurriedly, "don't, please, for me.  You must not
+take the trouble, nor the risk.  Hear me; do, please.  I can bear
+it, I WILL bear it--to-night.  I would have borne it last night,
+but it was so strange--and"--she passed her hands over her
+forehead--"I think I must have been half mad.  But I am not so
+foolish now."
+
+She seemed so broken and despondent that he replied reassuringly:
+"Perhaps it would be better that I should find another hiding-
+place for you, until I can dispose of that carcass so that it
+will not draw dogs after the wolves, and men after THEM.
+Besides, your friend the sheriff will probably remember the bear
+when he remembers anything, and try to get on its track again."
+
+"He's a conceited fool," broke in Teresa in a high voice, with a
+slight return of her old fury, "or he'd have guessed where that
+shot came from; and," she added in a lower tone, looking down at
+her limp and nerveless fingers, "he wouldn't have let a poor,
+weak, nervous wretch like me get away."
+
+"But his deputy may put two and two together, and connect your
+escape with it."
+
+Teresa's eyes flashed.  "It would be like the dog, just to save
+his pride, to swear it was an ambush of my friends, and that he
+was overpowered by numbers.  Oh yes! I see it all!" she almost
+screamed, lashing herself into a rage at the bare contemplation
+of this diminution of her glory.  "That's the dirty lie he tells
+everywhere, and is telling now."
+
+She stamped her feet and glanced savagely around, as if at any
+risk to proclaim the falsehood.  Low turned his impassive,
+truthful face towards her.
+
+"Sheriff Dunn," he began gravely, "is a politician, and a fool
+when he takes to the trail as a hunter of man or beast.  But he
+is not a coward nor a liar.  Your chances would be better if he
+were--if he laid your escape to an ambush of your friends, than
+if his pride held you alone responsible."
+
+"If he's such a good man, why do you hesitate?" she replied
+bitterly.  "Why don't you give me up at once, and do a service to
+one of your friends?"
+
+"I do not even know him," returned Low opening his clear eyes
+upon her.  "I've promised to hide you here, and I shall hide you
+as well from him as from anybody."
+
+Teresa did not reply, but suddenly dropping down upon the ground
+buried her face in her hands and began to sob convulsively.  Low
+turned impassively away, and putting aside the bark curtain
+climbed into the hollow tree.  In a few moments he reappeared,
+laden with provisions and a few simple cooking utensils, and
+touched her lightly on the shoulder.  She looked up timidly; the
+paroxysm had passed, but her lashes yet glittered.
+
+"Come," he said, "come and get some breakfast.  I find you have
+eaten nothing since you have been here--twenty-four hours."
+
+"I didn't know it," she said, with a faint smile.  Then seeing
+his burden, and possessed by a new and strange desire for some
+menial employment, she said hurriedly, "Let me carry something--
+do, please," and even tried to disencumber him.
+
+Half annoyed, Low at last yielded, and handing his rifle said,
+"There, then, take that; but be careful--it's loaded!"
+
+A cruel blush burnt the woman's face to the roots of her hair as
+she took the weapon hesitatingly in her hand.
+
+"No!" she stammered, hurriedly lifting her shame-suffused eyes to
+his; "no! no!"
+
+He turned away with an impatience which showed her how completely
+gratuitous had been her agitation and its significance, and said,
+"Well, then, give it back if you are afraid of it."  But she as
+suddenly declined to return it; and shouldering it deftly, took
+her place by his side.  Silently they moved from the hollow tree
+together.
+
+During their walk she did not attempt to invade his taciturnity.
+Nevertheless she was as keenly alive and watchful of his every
+movement and gesture as if she had hung enchanted on his lips.
+The unerring way with which he pursued a viewless, undeviating
+path through those trackless woods, his quick reconnaissance of
+certain trees or openings, his mute inspection of some almost
+imperceptible footprint of bird or beast, his critical
+examination of certain plants which he plucked and deposited in
+his deerskin haversack, were not lost on the quick-witted woman.
+As they gradually changed the clear, unencumbered aisles of the
+central woods for a more tangled undergrowth, Teresa felt that
+subtle admiration which culminates in imitation, and simulating
+perfectly the step, tread, and easy swing of her companion,
+followed so accurately his lead that she won a gratified
+exclamation from him when their goal was reached--a broken,
+blackened shaft, splintered by long-forgotten lightning, in the
+centre of a tangled carpet of wood-clover.
+
+"I don't wonder you distanced the deputy," he said cheerfully,
+throwing down his burden, "if you can take the hunting-path like
+that.  In a few days, if you stay here, I can venture to trust
+you alone for a little pasear when you are tired of the tree."
+
+Teresa looked pleased, but busied herself with arrangements for
+the breakfast, while he gathered the fuel for the roaring fire
+which soon blazed beside the shattered tree.
+
+Teresa's breakfast was a success.  It was a revelation to the
+young nomad, whose ascetic habits and simple tastes were usually
+content with the most primitive forms of frontier cookery.  It
+was at least a surprise to him to know that without extra trouble
+kneaded flour, water, and saleratus need not be essentially
+heavy; that coffee need not be boiled with sugar to the
+consistency of syrup; that even that rarest delicacy, small
+shreds of venison covered with ashes and broiled upon the end of
+a ramrod boldly thrust into the flames, would be better and even
+more expeditiously cooked upon burning coals.  Moved in his
+practical nature, he was surprised to find this curious creature
+of disorganized nerves and useless impulses informed with an
+intelligence that did not preclude the welfare of humanity or the
+existence of a soul.  He respected her for some minutes, until in
+the midst of a culinary triumph a big tear dropped and spluttered
+in the saucepan.  But he forgave the irrelevancy by taking no
+notice of it, and by doing full justice to that particular dish.
+
+Nevertheless, he asked several questions based upon these
+recently discovered qualities.  It appeared that in the old days
+of her wanderings with the circus troupe she had often been
+forced to undertake this nomadic housekeeping.  But she "despised
+it," had never done it since, and always had refused to do it for
+"him"--the personal pronoun referring, as Low understood, to her
+lover, Curson.  Not caring to revive these memories further, Low
+briefly concluded: "I don't know what you were, or what you may
+be, but from what I see of you you've got all the sabe of a
+frontierman's wife."
+
+She stopped and looked at him, and then with an impulse of
+imprudence that only half concealed a more serious vanity, asked,
+"Do you think I might have made a good squaw?"
+
+"I don't know," he replied quietly.  "I never saw enough of them
+to know."
+
+Teresa, confident from his clear eyes that he spoke the truth,
+but having nothing ready to follow this calm disposal of her
+curiosity, relapsed into silence.
+
+The meal finished, Teresa washed their scant table equipage in a
+little spring near the camp-fire; where, catching sight of her
+disordered dress and collar, she rapidly threw her shawl, after
+the national fashion, over her shoulder and pinned it quickly.
+Low cached the remaining provisions and the few cooking utensils
+under the dead embers and ashes, obliterating all superficial
+indication of their camp-fire as deftly and artistically as he
+had before.
+
+"There isn't the ghost of a chance," he said in explanation,
+"that anybody but you or I will set foot here before we come back
+to supper, but it's well to be on guard.  I'll take you back to
+the cabin now, though I bet you could find your way there as well
+as I can."
+
+On their way back Teresa ran ahead of her companion, and plucking
+a few tiny leaves from a hidden oasis in the bark-strewn trail
+brought them to him.
+
+"That's the kind you're looking for, isn't it?" she said, half
+timidly.
+
+"It is," responded Low, in gratified surprise; "but how did you
+know it?  You're not a botanist, are you?"
+
+"I reckon not," said Teresa; "but you picked some when we came,
+and I noticed what they were."
+
+Here was indeed another revelation.  Low stopped and gazed at her
+with such frank, open, utterly unabashed curiosity that her black
+eyes fell before him.
+
+"And do you think," he asked with logical deliberation, "that you
+could find any plant from another I should give you?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Or from a drawing of it"
+
+"Yes; perhaps even if you described it to me."
+
+A half-confidential, half-fraternal silence followed.
+
+"I tell you what.  I've got a book--"
+
+"I know it," interrupted Teresa; "full of these things."
+
+"Yes.  Do you think you could--"
+
+"Of course I could," broke in Teresa, again.
+
+"But you don't know what I mean," said the imperturbable Low.
+
+"Certainly I do.  Why, find 'em, and preserve all the different
+ones for you to write under--that's it, isn't it?"
+
+Low nodded his head, gratified but not entirely convinced that
+she had fully estimated the magnitude of the endeavor.
+
+"I suppose," said Teresa, in the feminine postscriptum voice
+which it would seem entered even the philosophical calm of the
+aisles they were treading--"I suppose that SHE places great value
+on them?"
+
+Low had indeed heard Science personified before, nor was it at
+all impossible that the singular woman walking by his side had
+also.  He said "Yes;" but added, in mental reference to the
+Linnean Society of San Francisco, that "THEY were rather
+particular about the rarer kinds."
+
+Content as Teresa had been to believe in Low's tender relations
+with some favored ONE of her sex, this frank confession of a
+plural devotion staggered her.
+
+"They?" she repeated.
+
+"Yes," he continued calmly.  "The Botanical Society I correspond
+with are more particular than the Government Survey."
+
+"Then you are doing this for a society?" demanded Teresa, with a
+stare.
+
+"Certainly.  I'm making a collection and classification of
+specimens.  I intend--but what are you looking at?"
+
+Teresa had suddenly turned away.  Putting his hand lightly on her
+shoulder, the young man brought her face to face him again.
+
+She was laughing.
+
+"I thought all the while it was for a girl," she said; "and--"
+But here the mere effort of speech sent her off into an audible
+and genuine outburst of laughter.  It was the first time he had
+seen her even smile other than bitterly.  Characteristically
+unconscious of any humor in her error, he remained unembarrassed.
+But he could not help noticing a change in the expression of her
+face, her voice, and even her intonation.  It seemed as if that
+fit of laughter had loosed the last ties that bound her to a
+self-imposed character, had swept away the last barrier between
+her and her healthier nature, had dispossessed a painful
+unreality, and relieved the morbid tension of a purely nervous
+attitude.  The change in her utterance and the resumption of her
+softer Spanish accent seemed to have come with her confidences,
+and Low took leave of her before their sylvan cabin with a
+comrade's heartiness, and a complete forgetfulness that her voice
+had ever irritated him.
+
+When he returned that afternoon he was startled to find the cabin
+empty.  But instead of bearing any appearance of disturbance or
+hurried flight, the rude interior seemed to have magically
+assumed a decorous order and cleanliness unknown before.  Fresh
+bark hid the inequalities of the floor.  The skins and blankets
+were folded in the corners, the rude shelves were carefully
+arranged, even a few tall ferns and bright but quickly fading
+flowers were disposed around the blackened chimney.  She had
+evidently availed herself of the change of clothing he had
+brought her, for her late garments were hanging from the hastily-
+devised wooden pegs driven in the wall.  The young man gazed
+around him with mixed feelings of gratification and uneasiness.
+His presence had been dispossessed in a single hour; his ten
+years of lonely habitation had left no trace that this woman had
+not effaced with a deft move of her hand.  More than that, it
+looked as if she had always occupied it; and it was with a
+singular conviction that even when she should occupy it no longer
+it would only revert to him as her dwelling that he dropped the
+bark shutters athwart the opening, and left it to follow her.
+
+To his quick ear, fine eye, and abnormal senses, this was easy
+enough.  She had gone in the direction of this morning's camp.
+Once or twice he paused with a half-gesture of recognition and a
+characteristic "Good!" at the place where she had stopped, but
+was surprised to find that her main course had been as direct as
+his own.  Deviating from this direct line with Indian precaution,
+he first made a circuit of the camp, and approached the shattered
+trunk from the opposite direction.  He consequently came upon
+Teresa unawares.  But the momentary astonishment and
+embarrassment were his alone.
+
+He scarcely recognized her.  She was wearing the garments he had
+brought her the day before--a certain discarded gown of Miss
+Nellie Wynn, which he had hurriedly begged from her under the
+pretext of clothing the wife of a distressed overland emigrant
+then on the way to the mines.  Although he had satisfied his
+conscience with the intention of confessing the pious fraud to
+her when Teresa was gone and safe from pursuit, it was not
+without a sense of remorse that he witnessed the sacrilegious
+transformation.  The two women were nearly the same height and
+size; and although Teresa's maturer figure accented the outlines
+more strongly, it was still becoming enough to increase his
+irritation.
+
+Of this becomingness she was doubtless unaware at the moment that
+he surprised her.  She was conscious of having "a change," and
+this had emboldened her to "do her hair" and otherwise compose
+herself.  After their greeting she was the first to allude to the
+dress, regretting that it was not more of a rough disguise, and
+that, as she must now discard the national habit of wearing her
+shawl "manta" fashion over her head, she wanted a hat.  "But you
+must not," she said, "borrow any more dresses for me from your
+young woman.  Buy them for me at some shop.  They left me enough
+money for that."  Low gently put aside the few pieces of gold she
+had drawn from her pocket, and briefly reminded her of the
+suspicion such a purchase by him would produce.  "That's so," she
+said, with a laugh.  "Caramba! what a mule I'm becoming!  Ah!
+wait a moment.  I have it!  Buy me a common felt hat--a man's
+hat--as if for yourself, as a change to that animal," pointing to
+the fox-tailed cap he wore summer and winter, "and I'll show you
+a trick.  I haven't run a theatrical wardrobe for nothing."  Nor
+had she, for the hat thus procured, a few days later, became, by
+the aid of a silk handkerchief and a bluejay's feather, a
+fascinating "pork pie."
+
+Whatever cause of annoyance to Low still lingered in Teresa's
+dress, it was soon forgotten in a palpable evidence of Teresa's
+value as a botanical assistant.  It appeared that during the
+afternoon she had not only duplicated his specimens, but had
+discoverd one or two rare plants as yet unclassified in the flora
+of the Carquinez Woods.  He was delighted, and in turn, over the
+campfire, yielded up some details of his present life and some of
+his earlier recollections.
+
+"You don't remember anything of your father?" she asked.  "Did he
+ever try to seek you out?"
+
+"No!  Why should he?" replied the imperturbable Low; "he was not
+a Cherokee."
+
+"No, he was a beast," responded Teresa promptly.  "And your
+mother--do you remember her?"
+
+"No, I think she died."
+
+"You THINK she died?  Don't you know?"
+
+"No!"
+
+"Then you're another!" said Teresa.  Notwithstanding this
+frankness, they shook hands for the night: Teresa nestling like a
+rabbit in a hollow by the side of the campfire; Low with his feet
+towards it, Indian-wise, and his head and shoulders pillowed on
+his haversack, only half distinguishable in the darkness beyond.
+
+With such trivial details three uneventful days slipped by.
+Their retreat was undisturbed, nor could Low detect, by the least
+evidence to his acute perceptive faculties, that any intruding
+feet had since crossed the belt of shade.  The echoes of passing
+events at Indian Spring had recorded the escape of Teresa as
+occurring at a remote and purely imaginative distance, and her
+probable direction the county of Yolo.
+
+"Can you remember," he one day asked her, "what time it was when
+you cut the riata and got away?"
+
+Teresa pressed her hands upon her eyes and temples.
+
+"About three, I reckon."
+
+"And you were here at seven; you could have covered some ground
+in four hours?"
+
+"Perhaps--I don't know," she said, her voice taking up its old
+quality again.  "Don't ask me--I ran all the way."
+
+Her face was quite pale as she removed her hands from her eyes,
+and her breath came as quickly as if she had just finished that
+race for life.
+
+"Then you think I am safe here?" she added, after a pause.
+
+"Perfectly--until they find you are NOT in Yolo.  Then they'll
+look here.  And THAT'S the time for you to go THERE."  Teresa
+smiled timidly.
+
+"It will take them some time to search Yolo--unless," she added,
+"you're tired of me here."  The charming non sequitur did not,
+however, seem to strike the young man.  "I've got time yet to
+find a few more plants for you," she suggested.
+
+"Oh, certainly!"
+
+"And give you a few more lessons in cooking."
+
+"Perhaps."
+
+The conscientious and literal Low was beginning to doubt if she
+were really practical.  How otherwise could she trifle with such
+a situation?
+
+It must be confessed that that day and the next she did trifle
+with it.  She gave herself up to a grave and delicious languor
+that seemed to flow from shadow and silence and permeate her
+entire being.  She passed hours in a thoughtful repose of mind
+and spirit that seemed to fall like balm from those steadfast
+guardians, and distill their gentle ether in her soul; or
+breathed into her listening ear immunity from the forgotten past,
+and security for the present.  If there was no dream of the
+future in this calm, even recurrence of placid existence, so much
+the better.  The simple details of each succeeding day, the
+quaint housekeeping, the brief companionship and coming and going
+of her young host--himself at best a crystallized personification
+of the sedate and hospitable woods--satisfied her feeble
+cravings.  She no longer regretted the inferior position that her
+fears had obliged her to take the first night she came; she began
+to look up to this young man--so much younger than herself--
+without knowing what it meant; it was not until she found that
+this attitude did not detract from his picturesqueness that she
+discovered herself seeking for reasons to degrade him from this
+seductive eminence.
+
+A week had elapsed with little change.  On two days he had been
+absent all day, returning only in time to sup in the hollow tree,
+which, thanks to the final removal of the dead bear from its
+vicinity, was now considered a safer retreat than the exposed
+camp-fire.  On the first of these occasions she received him with
+some preoccupation, paying but little heed to the scant gossip he
+brought from Indian Spring, and retiring early under the plea of
+fatigue, that he might seek his own distant camp-fire, which,
+thanks to her stronger nerves and regained courage, she no longer
+required so near.  On the second occasion, he found her writing a
+letter more or less blotted with her tears.  When it was
+finished, she begged him to post it at Indian Spring, where in
+two days an answer would be returned, under cover, to him.
+
+"I hope you will be satisfied then," she added.
+
+"Satisfied with what?" queried the young man.
+
+"You'll see," she replied, giving him her cold hand.  "Good-night."
+
+"But can't you tell me now?" he remonstrated, retaining her hand.
+
+"Wait two days longer--it isn't much," was all she vouchsafed to
+answer.
+
+The two days passed.  Their former confidence and good fellowship
+were fully restored when the morning came on which he was to
+bring the answer from the post-office at Indian Spring.  He had
+talked again of his future, and had recorded his ambition to
+procure the appointment of naturalist to a Government Surveying
+Expedition.  She had even jocularly proposed to dress herself in
+man's attire and "enlist" as his assistant.
+
+"But you will be safe with your friends, I hope, by that time,"
+responded Low.
+
+"Safe with my friends," she repeated in a lower voice.  "Safe
+with my friends--yes!"  An awkward silence followed; Teresa broke
+it gayly: "But your girl, your sweetheart, my benefactor--will
+SHE let you go?"
+
+"I haven't told her yet," said Low, gravely, "but I don't see why
+she should object."
+
+"Object, indeed!" interrupted Teresa in a high voice and a sudden
+and utterly gratuitous indignation; "how should she?  I'd like to
+see her do it!"
+
+She accompanied him some distance to the intersection of the
+trail, where they parted in good spirits.  On the dusty plain
+without a gale was blowing that rocked the high tree-tops above
+her, but, tempered and subdued, entered the low aisles with a
+fluttering breath of morning and a sound like the cooing of
+doves.  Never had the wood before shown so sweet a sense of
+security from the turmoil and tempest of the world beyond; never
+before had an intrusion from the outer life--even in the shape of
+a letter--seemed so wicked a desecration.  Tempted by the
+solicitation of air and shade, she lingered, with Low's herbarium
+slung on her shoulder.
+
+A strange sensation, like a shiver, suddenly passed across her
+nerves, and left them in a state of rigid tension.  With every
+sense morbidly acute, with every faculty strained to its utmost,
+the subtle instincts of Low's woodcraft transformed and possessed
+her.  She knew it now!  A new element was in the wood--a strange
+being--another life--another man approaching!  She did not even
+raise her head to look about her, but darted with the precision
+and fleetness of an arrow in the direction of her tree.  But her
+feet were arrested, her limbs paralzyed, her very existence
+suspended, by the sound of a voice:--
+
+"Teresa!"
+
+It was a voice that had rung in her ears for the last two years
+in all phases of intensity, passion, tenderness, and anger; a
+voice upon whose modulations, rude and unmusical though they
+were, her heart and soul had hung in transport or anguish.  But
+it was a chime that had rung its last peal to her senses as she
+entered the Carquinez Woods, and for the last week had been as
+dead to her as a voice from the grave.  It was the voice of her
+lover--Dick Curson!
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+The wind was blowing towards the stranger, so that he was nearly
+upon her when Teresa first took the alarm.  He was a man over six
+feet in height, strongly built, with a slight tendency to a
+roundness of bulk which suggested reserved rather than impeded
+energy.  His thick beard and mustache were closely cropped around
+a small and handsome mouth that lisped except when he was
+excited, but always kept fellowship with his blue eyes in a
+perpetual smile of half-cynical good-humor.  His dress was
+superior to that of the locality; his general expression that of
+a man of the world, albeit a world of San Francisco, Sacramento,
+and Murderer's Bar.  He advanced towards her with a laugh and an
+outstretched hand.
+
+"YOU here!" she gasped, drawing back.
+
+Apparently neither surprised nor mortified at this reception, he
+answered frankly, "Yeth.  You didn't expect me, I know.  But
+Doloreth showed me the letter you wrote her, and--well--here I
+am, ready to help you, with two men and a thpare horthe waiting
+outside the woodth on the blind trail."
+
+"You--YOU--here?" she only repeated.
+
+Curson shrugged his shoulders.  "Yeth."  Of courth you never
+expected to thee me again, and leatht of all HERE.  I'll admit
+that; I'll thay I wouldn't if I'd been in your plathe.  I'll go
+further, and thay you didn't want to thee me again--anywhere.
+But it all cometh to the thame thing; here I am.  I read the
+letter you wrote Doloreth.  I read how you were hiding here,
+under Dunn'th very nothe, with his whole pothe out, cavorting
+round and barkin' up the wrong tree.  I made up my mind to come
+down here with a few nathty friends of mine and cut you out under
+Dunn'th nothe, and run you over into Yuba--that'th all."
+
+"How dared she show you my letter--YOU of all men?  How dared she
+ask YOUR help?" continued Teresa, fiercely.
+
+"But she didn't athk my help," he responded coolly.  "D--d if I
+don't think she jutht calculated I'd be glad to know you were
+being hunted down and thtarving, that I might put Dunn on your
+track."
+
+"You lie!" said Teresa, furiously; "she was my friend.  A better
+friend than those who professed--more," she added, with a
+contemptuous drawing away of her skirt as if she feared Curson's
+contamination.
+
+"All right.  Thettle that with her when you go back," continued
+Curson philosophically.  "We can talk of that on the way.  The
+thing now ith to get up and get out of thethe woods.  Come!"
+
+Teresa's only reply was a gesture of scorn.
+
+"I know all that," continued Curson half soothingly, "but they're
+waiting."
+
+"Let them wait.  I shall not go."
+
+"What will you do?"
+
+"Stay here--till the wolves eat me."
+
+"Teresa, listen.  D--- it all--Teresa--Tita! see here," he said
+with sudden energy.  "I swear to God it's all right.  I'm willing
+to let by-gones be by-gones and take a new deal.  You shall come
+back as if nothing had happened, and take your old place as
+before.  I don't mind doing the square thing, all round.  If
+that's what you mean, if that's all that stands in the way, why,
+look upon the thing as settled.  There, Tita, old girl, come."
+
+Careless or oblivious of her stony silence and starting eyes, he
+attempted to take her hand.  But she disengaged herself with a
+quick movement, drew back, and suddenly crouched like a wild
+animal about to spring.  Curson folded his arms as she leaped to
+her feet; the little dagger she had drawn from her garter flashed
+menacingly in the air, but she stopped.
+
+The man before her remained erect, impassive, and silent; the
+great trees around and beyond her remained erect, impassive, and
+silent; there was no sound in the dim aisles but the quick
+panting of her mad passion, no movement in the calm, motionless
+shadow but the trembling of her uplifted steel.  Her arm bent and
+slowly sank, her fingers relaxed, the knife fell from her hand.
+
+"That'th quite enough for a thow," he said, with a return to his
+former cynical ease and a perceptible tone of relief in his
+voice.  "It'th the thame old Theretha.  Well, then, if you won't
+go with me, go without me; take the led horthe and cut away.
+Dick Athley and Petereth will follow you over the county line.
+If you want thome money, there it ith."  He took a buckskin purse
+from his pocket.  "If you won't take it from me--he hesitated as
+she made no reply--"Athley'th flush and ready to lend you thome."
+
+She had not seemed to hear him, but had stooped in some
+embarrassment, picked up the knife and hastily hid it, then with
+averted face and nervous fingers was beginning to tear strips of
+loose bark from the nearest trunk.
+
+"Well, what do you thay?"
+
+"I don't want any money, and I shall stay here."  She hesitated,
+looked around her, and then added, with an effort, "I suppose you
+meant well.  Be it so!  Let by-gones be by-gones.  You said just
+now, 'It's the same old Teresa.'  So she is, and seeing she's the
+same she's better here than anywhere else."
+
+There was enough bitterness in her tone to call for Curson's
+half-perfunctory sympathy.
+
+"That be d--d," he responded quickly.  "Jutht thay you'll come,
+Tita, and--"
+
+She stopped his half-spoken sentence with a negative gesture.
+"You don't understand.  I shall stay here."
+
+"But even if they don't theek you here, you can't live here
+forever.  The friend that you wrote about who wath tho good to
+you, you know, can't keep you here alwayth; and are you thure you
+can alwayth trutht her?"
+
+"It isn't a woman; it's a man."  She stopped short, and colored
+to the line of her forehead.  "Who said it was a woman?" she
+continued fiercely, as if to cover her confusion with a burst of
+gratuitous anger.  "Is that another of your lies?"
+
+Curson's lips, which for a moment had completely lost their
+smile, were now drawn together in a prolonged whistle.  He gazed
+curiously at her gown, at her hat, at the bow of bright ribbon
+that tied her black hair, and said, "Ah!"
+
+"A poor man who has kept my secret," she went on hurriedly--"a
+man as friendless and lonely as myself.  Yes," disregarding
+Curson's cynical smile, "a man who has shared everything--"
+
+"Naturally," suggested Curson.
+
+"And turned himself out of his only shelter to give me a roof and
+covering," she continued mechanically, struggling with the new
+and horrible fancy that his words awakened.
+
+"And thlept every night at Indian Thpring to save your reputation,"
+said Curson.  "Of courthe."
+
+Teresa turned very white.  Curson was prepared for an outburst of
+fury--perhaps even another attack.  But the crushed and beaten
+woman only gazed at him with frightened and imploring eyes.  "For
+God's sake, Dick, don't say that!"
+
+The amiable cynic was staggered.  His good-humor and a certain
+chivalrous instinct he could not repress got the better of him.
+He shrugged his shoulders.  "What I thay, and what you DO,
+Teretha, needn't make us quarrel.  I've no claim on you--I know
+it.  Only--" a vivid sense of the ridiculous, powerful in men of
+his stamp, completed her victory--"only don't thay anything about
+my coming down here to cut you out from the--the--THE SHERIFF."
+He gave utterance to a short but unaffected laugh, made a slight
+grimace, and turned to go.
+
+Teresa did not join in his mirth.  Awkward as it would have been
+if he had taken a severer view of the subject, she was mortified
+even amidst her fears and embarrassment at his levity.  Just as
+she had become convinced that his jealousy had made her over-
+conscious, his apparent good-humored indifference gave that over-
+consciousness a guilty significance.  Yet this was lost in her
+sudden alarm as her companion, looking up, uttered an
+exclamation, and placed his hand upon his revolver.  With a
+sinking conviction that the climax had come, Teresa turned her
+eyes.  From the dim aisles beyond, Low was approaching.  The
+catastrophe seemed complete.
+
+She had barely time to utter an imploring whisper: "In the name
+of God, not a word to him."  But a change had already come over
+her companion.  It was no longer a parley with a foolish woman;
+he had to deal with a man like himself.  As Low's dark face and
+picturesque figure came nearer, Mr. Curson's proposed method of
+dealing with him was made audible.
+
+"Ith it a mulatto or a Thircuth, or both?" he asked, with
+affected anxiety.
+
+Low's Indian phlegm was impervious to such assault.  He turned to
+Teresa, without apparently noticing her companion.  "I turned
+back," he said quietly, "as soon as I knew there were strangers
+here; I thought you might need me."  She noticed for the first
+time that, in addition to his rifle, he carried a revolver and
+hunting knife in his belt.
+
+"Yeth," returned Curson, with an ineffectual attempt to imitate
+Low's phlegm; "but ath I didn't happen to be a sthranger to this
+lady, perhaps it wathn't nethethary, particularly ath I had two
+friends--"
+
+"Waiting at the edge of the wood with a led horse," interrupted
+Low, without addressing him, but apparently continuing his
+explanation to Teresa.  But she turned to Low with feverish
+anxiety.
+
+"That's so--he is an old friend--" she gave a quick, imploring
+glance at Curson--"an old friend who came to help me away--he is
+very kind," she stammered, turning alternately from the one to
+the other; "but I told him there was no hurry--at least to-day--
+that you--were--very good--too, and would hide me a little
+longer, until your plan--you know YOUR plan," she added, with a
+look of beseeching significance to Low--"could be tried."  And
+then, with a helpless conviction that her excuses, motives, and
+emotions were equally and perfectly transparent to both men, she
+stopped in a tremble.
+
+"Perhapth it 'th jutht ath well, then, that the gentleman came
+thtraight here, and didn't tackle my two friendth when he pathed
+them," observed Curson, half sarcastically.
+
+"I have not passed your friends, nor have I been near them," said
+Low, looking at him for the first time, with the same
+exasperating calm, "or perhaps I should not be HERE or they
+THERE.  I knew that one man entered the wood a few moments ago,
+and that two men and four horses remained outside."
+
+"That's true," said Teresa to Curson excitedly--"that's true.  He
+knows all.  He can see without looking, hear without listening.
+He--he--" she stammered, colored, and stopped.
+
+The two men had faced each other.  Curson, after his first good-
+natured impulse, had retained no wish to regain Teresa, whom he
+felt he no longer loved, and yet who, for that very reason
+perhaps, had awakened his chivalrous instincts.  Low, equally on
+his side, was altogether unconscious of any feeling which might
+grow into a passion, and prevent him from letting her go with
+another if for her own safety.  They were both men of a certain
+taste and refinement.  Yet, in spite of all this, some vague
+instinct of the baser male animal remained with them, and they
+were moved to a mutually aggressive attitude in the presence of
+the female.
+
+One word more, and the opening chapter of a sylvan Iliad might
+have begun.  But this modern Helen saw it coming, and arrested it
+with an inspiration of feminine genius.  Without being observed,
+she disengaged her knife from her bosom and let it fall as if by
+accident.  It struck the ground with the point of its keen blade,
+bounded and rolled between them.  The two men started and looked
+at each other with a foolish air.  Curson laughed.
+
+"I reckon she can take care of herthelf," he said, extending his
+hand to Low.  "I'm off.  But if I'm wanted SHE'LL know where to
+find me."  Low took the proffered hand, but neither of the two
+men looked at Teresa.  The reserve of antagonism once broken, a
+few words of caution, advice, and encouragement passed between
+them, in apparent obliviousness of her presence or her personal
+responsibility.  As Curson at last nodded a farewell to her, Low
+insisted upon accompanying him as far as the horses, and in
+another moment she was again alone.
+
+She had saved a quarrel between them at the sacrifice of herself,
+for her vanity was still keen enough to feel that this exhibition
+of her old weakness had degraded her in their eyes, and, worse,
+had lost the respect her late restraint had won from Low.  They
+had treated her like a child or a crazy woman, perhaps even now
+were exchanging criticisms upon her--perhaps pitying her!  Yet
+she had prevented a quarrel, a fight; possibly the death of
+either one or the other of these men who despised her, for none
+better knew than she the trivial beginning and desperate end of
+these encounters.  Would they--would Low ever realize it, and
+forgive her?  Her small, dark hands went up to her eyes and she
+sank upon the ground.  She looked through tear-veiled lashes upon
+the mute and giant witnesses of her deceit and passion, and tried
+to draw, from their immovable calm, strength and consolation as
+before.  But even they seemed to stand apart, reserved and forbidding.
+
+When Low returned she hoped to gather from his eyes and manner
+what had passed between him and her former lover.  But beyond a
+mere gentle abstraction at times he retained his usual calm.  She
+was at last forced to allude to it herself with simulated
+recklessness.
+
+"I suppose I didn't get a very good character from my last
+place?" she said, with a laugh.
+
+"I don't understand you," he replied, in evident sincerity.
+
+She bit her lip and was silent.  But as they were returning home,
+she said gently, "I hope you were not angry with me for the lie I
+told when I spoke of 'your plan.'  I could not give the real
+reason for not returning with--with--that man.  But it's not all
+a lie.  I have a plan--if you haven't.  When you are ready to go
+to Sacramento to take your place, dress me as an Indian boy,
+paint my face, and let me go with you.  You can leave me--there--
+you know."
+
+"It's not a bad idea," he responded gravely.  "We will see."
+
+On the next day, and the next, the rencontre seemed to be
+forgotten.  The herbarium was already filled with rare specimens.
+Teresa had even overcome her feminine repugnance to "bugs" and
+creeping things so far as to assist in his entomological
+collection.  He had drawn from a sacred cache in the hollow of a
+tree the few worn text-books from which he had studied.
+
+"They seem very precious," she said, with a smile.
+
+"Very," he replied gravely.  "There was one with plates that the
+ants ate up, and it will be six months before I can afford to buy
+another."
+
+Teresa glanced hurriedly over his well-worn buckskin suit, at his
+calico shirt with its pattern almost obliterated by countless
+washings, and became thoughtful.
+
+"I suppose you couldn't buy one at Indian Spring?" she said
+innocently.
+
+For once Low was startled out of his phlegm.  "Indian Spring!" he
+ejaculated; "perhaps not even in San Francisco.  These came from
+the States."
+
+"How did you get them?" persisted Teresa.
+
+"I bought them for skins I got over the ridge."
+
+"I didn't mean that--but no matter.  Then you mean to sell that
+bearskin, don't you?" she added.
+
+Low had, in fact, already sold it, the proceeds having been
+invested in a gold ring for Miss Nellie, which she scrupulously
+did not wear except in his presence.  In his singular
+truthfulness he would have frankly confessed it to Teresa, but
+the secret was not his own.  He contented himself with saying
+that he had disposed of it at Indian Spring.
+
+Teresa started, and communicated unconsciously some of her
+nervousness to her companion.  They gazed in each other's eyes
+with a troubled expression.
+
+"Do you think it was wise to sell that particular skin, which
+might be identified?" she asked timidly.
+
+Low knitted his arched brows, but felt a strange sense of relief.
+"Perhaps not," he said carelessly; "but it's too late now to mend
+matters."
+
+That afternoon she wrote several letters, and tore them up.  One,
+however, she retained, and handed it to Low to post at Indian
+Spring, whither he was going.  She called his attention to the
+superscription, being the same as the previous letter, and added,
+with affected gayety, "But if the answer isn't as prompt, perhaps
+it will be pleasanter than the last."  Her quick feminine eye
+noticed a little excitement in his manner and a more studious
+attention to his dress.  Only a few days before she would not
+have allowed this to pass without some mischievous allusion to
+his mysterious sweetheart; it troubled her greatly now to find
+that she could not bring herself to this household pleasantry,
+and that her lip trembled and her eye grew moist as he parted
+from her.
+
+The afternoon passed slowly; he had said he might not return to
+supper until late, nevertheless a strange restlessness took
+possession of her as the day wore on.  She put aside her work,
+the darning of his stockings, and rambled aimlessly through the
+woods.  She had wandered she knew not how far, when she was
+suddenly seized with the same vague sense of a foreign presence
+which she had felt before.  Could it be Curson again, with a word
+of warning?  No! she knew it was not he; so subtle had her sense
+become that she even fancied that she detected in the invisible
+aura projected by the unknown no significance or relation to
+herself or Low, and felt no fear.  Nevertheless she deemed it
+wisest to seek the protection of her sylvan bower, and hurried
+swiftly thither.
+
+But not so quickly nor directly that she did not once or twice
+pause in her flight to examine the new-comer from behind a
+friendly trunk.  He was a stranger--a young fellow with a brown
+mustache, wearing heavy Mexican spurs in his riding-boots, whose
+tinkling he apparently did not care to conceal.  He had perceived
+her, and was evidently pursuing her, but so awkwardly and timidly
+that she eluded him with ease.  When she had reached the security
+of the hollow tree and pulled the curtain of bark before the
+narrow opening, with her eye to the interstices, she waited his
+coming.  He arrived breathlessly in the open space before the
+tree where the bear once lay; the dazed, bewildered, and half-
+awed expression of his face, as he glanced around him and through
+the openings of the forest aisles, brought a faint smile to her
+saddened face.  At last he called in a half-embarrassed voice:--
+
+"Miss Nellie!"
+
+The smile faded from Teresa's cheek.  Who was "Miss Nellie?"  She
+pressed her ear to the opening.  "Miss Wynn!" the voice again
+called, but was lost in the echoless woods.  Devoured with a new
+gratuitous curiosity, in another moment Teresa felt she would
+have disclosed herself at any risk, but the stranger rose and
+began to retrace his steps.  Long after his tinkling spurs were
+lost in the distance, Teresa remained like a statue, staring at
+the place where he had stood.  Then she suddenly turned like a
+mad woman, glanced down at the gown she was wearing, tore it from
+her back as if it had been a polluted garment, and stamped upon
+it in a convulsion of rage.  And then, with her beautiful bare
+arms clasped together over her head, she threw herself upon her
+couch in a tempest of tears.
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+When Miss Nellie reached the first mining extension of Indian
+Spring, which surrounded it like a fosse, she descended for one
+instant into one of its trenches, opened her parasol, removed her
+duster, hid it under a bowlder, and with a few shivers and cat-
+like strokes of her soft hands not only obliterated all material
+traces of the stolen cream of Carquinez Woods, but assumed a
+feline demureness quite inconsistent with any moral dereliction.
+Unfortunately, she forgot to remove at the same time a certain
+ring from her third finger, which she had put on with her duster
+and had worn at no other time.  With this slight exception, the
+benignant fate which always protected that young person brought
+her in contact with the Burnham girls at one end of the main
+street as the returning coach to Excelsior entered the other, and
+enabled her to take leave of them before the coach office with a
+certain ostentation of parting which struck Mr. Jack Brace, who
+was lingering at the doorway, into a state of utter bewilderment.
+
+Here was Miss Nellie Wynn, the belle of Excelsior, calm, quiet,
+self-possessed, her chaste cambric skirts and dainty shoes as
+fresh as when she had left her father's house; but where was the
+woman of the brown duster, and where the yellow-dressed
+apparition of the woods?  He was feebly repeating to himself his
+mental adjuration of a few hours before when he caught her eye,
+and was taken with a blush and a fit of coughing.  Could he have
+been such an egregious fool, and was it not plainly written on
+his embarrassed face for her to read?
+
+"Are we going down together?" asked Miss Nellie with an
+exceptionally gracious smile.
+
+There was neither affectation nor coquetry in this advance.  The
+girl had no idea of Brace's suspicion of her, nor did any uneasy
+desire to placate or deceive a possible rival of Low's prompt her
+graciousness.  She simply wished to shake off in this encounter
+the already stale excitement of the past two hours, as she had
+shaken the dust of the woods from her clothes.  It was
+characteristic of her irresponsible nature and transient
+susceptibilities that she actually enjoyed the relief of change;
+more than that, I fear, she looked upon this infidelity to a past
+dubious pleasure as a moral principle.  A mild, open flirtation
+with a recognized man like Brace, after her secret passionate
+tryst with a nameless nomad like Low, was an ethical equipoise
+that seemed proper to one of her religious education.
+
+Brace was only too happy to profit by Miss Nellie's condescension;
+he at once secured the seat by her side, and spent the four hours
+and a half of their return journey to Excelsior in blissful but
+timid communion with her.  If he did not dare to confess his past
+suspicions, he was equally afraid to venture upon the boldness he
+had premeditated a few hours before.  He was therefore obliged to
+take a middle course of slightly egotistical narration of his own
+personal adventures, with which he beguiled the young girl's ear.
+This he only departed from once, to describe to her a valuable
+grizzly bearskin which he had seen that day for sale at Indian
+Spring, with a view to divining her possible acceptance of it
+for a "buggy robe;" and once to comment upon a ring which she
+had inadvertently disclosed in pulling off her glove.
+
+"It's only an old family keepsake," she added, with easy
+mendacity; and affecting to recognize in Mr. Brace's curiosity a
+not unnatural excuse for toying with her charming fingers, she
+hid them in chaste and virginal seclusion in her lap, until she
+could recover the ring and resume her glove.
+
+A week passed--a week of peculiar and desiccating heat for even
+those dry Sierra table-lands.  The long days were filled with
+impalpable dust and acrid haze suspended in the motionless air;
+the nights were breathless and dewless; the cold wind which
+usually swept down from the snow line was laid to sleep over a
+dark monotonous level, whose horizon was pricked with the eating
+fires of burning forest crests.  The lagging coach of Indian
+Spring drove up at Excelsior, and precipitated its passengers
+with an accompanying cloud of dust before the Excelsior Hotel.
+As they emerged from the coach, Mr. Brace, standing in the
+doorway, closely scanned their begrimed and almost unrecognizable
+faces.  They were the usual type of travelers: a single
+professional man in dusty black, a few traders in tweeds and
+flannels, a sprinkling of miners in red and gray shirts, a
+Chinaman, a negro, and a Mexican packer or muleteer.  This latter
+for a moment mingled with the crowd in the bar-room, and even
+penetrated the corridor and dining-room of the hotel, as if
+impelled by a certain semi-civilized curiosity, and then strolled
+with a lazy, dragging step--half impeded by the enormous leather
+leggings, chains, and spurs, peculiar to his class--down the main
+street.  The darkness was gathering, but the muleteer indulged in
+the same childish scrutiny of the dimly lighted shops, magazines,
+and saloons, and even of the occasional groups of citizens at the
+street corners.  Apparently young, as far as the outlines of his
+figure could be seen, he seemed to show even more than the usual
+concern of masculine Excelsior in the charms of womankind.  The
+few female figures about at that hour, or visible at window or
+veranda, received his marked attention; he respectfully followed
+the two auburn-haired daughters of Deacon Johnson on their way to
+choir meeting to the door of the church.  Not content with that
+act of discreet gallantry, after they had entered he managed to
+slip unperceived behind them.
+
+The memorial of the Excelsior gamblers' generosity was a modern
+building, large and pretentious, for even Mr. Wynn's popularity,
+and had been good-humoredly known, in the characteristic language
+of the generous donors, as one of the "biggest religious bluffs"
+on record.  Its groined rafters, which were so new and spicy that
+they still suggested their native forest aisles, seldom covered
+more than a hundred devotees, and in the rambling choir, with its
+bare space for the future organ, the few choristers, gathered
+round a small harmonium, were lost in the deepening shadow of
+that summer evening.  The muleteer remained hidden in the
+obscurity of the vestibule.  After a few moments' desultory
+conversation, in which it appeared that the unexpected absence of
+Miss Nellie Wynn, their leader, would prevent their practicing,
+the choristers withdrew.  The stranger, who had listened eagerly,
+drew back in the darkness as they passed out, and remained for a
+few moments a vague and motionless figure in the silent church.
+Then coming cautiously to the window, the flapping broad-brimmed
+hat was put aside, and the faint light of the dying day shone in
+the black eyes of Teresa!  Despite her face, darkened with dye
+and disfigured with dust, the matted hair piled and twisted
+around her head, the strange dress and boyish figure, one swift
+glance from under her raised lashes betrayed her identity.
+
+She turned aside mechanically into the first pew, picked up and
+opened a hymn-book.  Her eyes became riveted on a name written on
+the title-page, "Nellie Wynn."  HER name, and HER book.  The
+instinct that had guided her here was right; the slight gossip of
+her fellow-passengers was right; this was the clergyman's
+daughter, whose praise filled all mouths.  This was the unknown
+girl the stranger was seeking, but who in turn perhaps had been
+seeking Low--the girl who absorbed his fancy--the secret of his
+absences, his preoccupation, his coldness!  This was the girl
+whom to see, perhaps in his arms, she was now periling her
+liberty and her life unknown to him!  A slight odor, some faint
+perfume of its owner, came from the book; it was the same she had
+noticed in the dress Low had given her.  She flung the volume to
+the ground, and, throwing her arms over the back of the pew
+before her, buried her face in her hands.
+
+In that light and attitude she might have seemed some rapt
+acolyte abandoned to self-communion.  But whatever yearning her
+soul might have had for higher sympathy or deeper consolation, I
+fear that the spiritual Tabernacle of Excelsior and the Reverend
+Mr. Wynn did not meet that requirement.  She only felt the dry,
+oven-like heat of that vast shell, empty of sentiment and beauty,
+hollow in its pretense and dreary in its desolation.  She only
+saw in it a chief altar for the glorification of this girl who
+had absorbed even the pure worship of her companion, and
+converted and degraded his sublime paganism to her petty creed.
+With a woman's withering contempt for her own art displayed in
+another woman, she thought how she herself could have touched him
+with the peace that the majesty of their woodland aisles--so
+unlike this pillared sham--had taught her own passionate heart,
+had she but dared.  Mingling with this imperfect theology, she
+felt she could have proved to him also that a brunette and a
+woman of her experience was better than an immature blonde.  She
+began to loathe herself for coming hither, and dreaded to meet
+his face.  Here a sudden thought struck her.  What if he had not
+come here?  What if she had been mistaken?  What if her rash
+interpretation of his absence from the wood that night was simple
+madness?  What if he should return--if he had already returned?
+She rose to her feet, whitening yet joyful with the thought.  She
+could return at once; what was the girl to her now?  Yet there
+was time to satisfy herself if he were at HER house.  She had
+been told where it was; she could find it in the dark; an open
+door or window would betray some sign or sound of the occupants.
+She rose, replaced her hat over her eyes, knotted her flaunting
+scarf around her throat, groped her way to the door, and glided
+into the outer darkness.
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+It was quite dark when Mr. Jack Brace stopped before Father
+Wynn's open door.  The windows were also invitingly open to the
+wayfarer, as were the pastoral counsels of Father Wynn, delivered
+to some favored guest within, in a tone of voice loud enough for
+a pulpit.  Jack Brace paused.  The visitor was the convalescent
+sheriff, Jim Dunn, who had publicly commemorated his recovery by
+making his first call upon the father of his inamorata.  The
+Reverend Mr. Wynn had been expatiating upon the unremitting heat
+of a possible precursor of forest fires, and exhibiting some
+catholic knowledge of the designs of a Deity in that regard, and
+what should be the policy of the Legislature, when Mr. Brace
+concluded to enter.  Mr. Wynn and the wounded man, who occupied
+an arm-chair by the window, were the only occupants of the room.
+But in spite of the former's ostentatious greeting, Brace could
+see that his visit was inopportune and unwelcome.  The sheriff
+nodded a quick, impatient recognition, which, had it not been
+accompanied by an anathema on the heat, might have been taken as
+a personal insult.  Neither spoke of Miss Nellie, although it was
+patent to Brace that they were momentarily expecting her.  All of
+which went far to strengthen a certain wavering purpose in his
+mind.
+
+"Ah, ha! strong language, Mr. Dunn," said Father Wynn, referring
+to the sheriff's adjuration, "but 'out of the fullness of the
+heart the mouth speaketh.'  Job, sir, cursed, we are told, and
+even expressed himself in vigorous Hebrew regarding his birthday.
+Ha, ha!  I'm not opposed to that.  When I have often wrestled
+with the spirit I confess I have sometimes said, 'D--n you.'
+Yes, sir, 'D--n you.'"
+
+There was something so unutterably vile in the reverend
+gentleman's utterance and emphasis of this oath that the two men,
+albeit both easy and facile blasphemers, felt shocked; as the
+purest of actresses is apt to overdo the rakishness of a gay
+Lothario, Father Wynn's immaculate conception of an imprecation
+was something terrible.  But he added, "The law ought to
+interfere with the reckless use of camp-fires in the woods in
+such weather by packers and prospectors."
+
+"It isn't so much the work of white men," broke in Brace, "as it
+is of Greasers, Chinamen, and Diggers, especially Diggers.
+There's that blasted Low, ranges the whole Carquinez Woods as if
+they were his.  I reckon he ain't particular just where he throws
+his matches."
+
+"But he's not a Digger; he's a Cherokee, and only a half-breed at
+that," interpolated Wynn.  "Unless," he added, with the artful
+suggestion of the betrayed trust of a too credulous Christian,
+"he deceived me in this as in other things."
+
+In what other things Low had deceived him he did not say; but, to
+the astonishment of both men, Dunn growled a dissent to Brace's
+proposition.  Either from some secret irritation with that
+possible rival, or impatience at the prolonged absence of Nellie,
+he had "had enough of that sort of hog-wash ladled out to him for
+genuine liquor."  As to the Carquinez Woods, he [Dunn] "didn't
+know why Low hadn't as much right there as if he'd grabbed it
+under a preemption law and didn't live there."  With this hint at
+certain speculations of Father Wynn in public lands for a
+homestead, he added that "If they [Brace and Wynn] could bring
+him along any older American settler than an Indian, they might
+rake down his [Dunn's] pile."  Unprepared for this turn in the
+conversation, Wynn hastened to explain that he did not refer to
+the pure aborigine, whose gradual extinction no one regretted
+more than himself, but to the mongrel, who inherited only the
+vices of civilization.  "There should be a law, sir, against the
+mingling of races.  There are men, sir, who violate the laws of
+the Most High by living with Indian women--squaw men, sir, as
+they are called."
+
+Dunn rose with a face livid with weakness and passion.  "Who
+dares say that?  They are a d--d sight better than sneaking
+Northern Abolitionists, who married their daughters to buck
+niggers like--"  But a spasm of pain withheld this Parthian shot
+at the politics of his two companions, and he sank back
+helplessly in his chair.
+
+An awkward silence ensued.  The three men looked at each other in
+embarrassment and confusion.  Dunn felt that he had given way to
+a gratuitous passion; Wynn had a vague presentiment that he had
+said something that imperiled his daughter's prospects; and Brace
+was divided between an angry retort and the secret purpose
+already alluded to.
+
+"It's all the blasted heat," said Dunn, with a forced smile,
+pushing away the whisky which Wynn had ostentatiously placed
+before him.
+
+"Of course," said Wynn hastily; "only it's a pity Nellie ain't
+here to give you her smelling-salts.  She ought to be back now,"
+he added, no longer mindful of Brace's presence; "the coach is
+over-due now, though I reckon the heat made Yuba Bill take it
+easy at the up grade."
+
+"If you mean the coach from Indian Spring," said Brace quietly,
+"it's in already; but Miss Nellie didn't come on it."
+
+"May be she got out at the Crossing," said Wynn cheerfully; "she
+sometimes does."
+
+"She didn't take the coach at Indian Spring," returned Brace,
+"because I saw it leave, and passed it on Buckskin ten minutes
+ago, coming up the hills."
+
+"She's stopped over at Burnham's," said Wynn reflectively.  Then,
+in response to the significant silence of his guests, he added,
+in a tone of chagrin which his forced heartiness could not
+disguise, "Well, boys, it's a disappointment all round; but we
+must take the lesson as it comes.  I'll go over to the coach
+office and see if she's sent any word.  Make yourselves at home
+until I return."
+
+When the door had closed behind him, Brace arose and took his hat
+as if to go.  With his hand on the lock, he turned to his rival,
+who, half hidden in the gathering darkness, still seemed unable
+to comprehend his ill-luck.
+
+"If you're waiting for that bald-headed fraud to come back with
+the truth about his daughter," said Brace coolly, "you'd better
+send for your things and take up your lodgings here."
+
+"What do you mean?" said Dunn sternly.
+
+"I mean that she's not at the Burnhams'; I mean that he either
+does or does not know WHERE she is, and that in either case he is
+not likely to give you information.  But I can."
+
+"You can?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then, where is she?"
+
+"In the Carquinez Woods, in the arms of the man you were just
+defending--Low, the half-breed."
+
+The room had become so dark that from the road nothing could be
+distinguished.  Only the momentary sound of struggling feet was
+heard.
+
+"Sit down," said Brace's voice, "and don't be a fool.  You're too
+weak, and it ain't a fair fight.  Let go your hold.  I'm not
+lying--I wish to God I was!"
+
+There was silence, and Brace resumed, "We've been rivals, I know.
+May be I thought my chance as good as yours.  If what I say ain't
+truth, we'll stand as we stood before; and if you're on the
+shoot, I'm your man when you like, where you like, or on sight if
+you choose.  But I can't bear to see another man played upon as
+I've been played upon--given dead away as I've been.  It ain't on
+the square.
+
+"There," he continued, after a pause, "that's right, now steady.
+Listen.  A week ago that girl went down just like this to Indian
+Spring.  It was given out, like this, that she went to the
+Burnhams'.  I don't mind saying, Dunn, that I went down myself,
+all on the square, thinking I might get a show to talk to her,
+just as YOU might have done, you know, if you had my chance.  I
+didn't come across her anywhere.  But two men that I met thought
+they recognized her in a disguise going into the woods.  Not
+suspecting anything, I went after her; saw her at a distance in
+the middle of the woods in another dress that I can swear to, and
+was just coming up to her when she vanished--went like a squirrel
+up a tree, or down like a gopher in the ground, but vanished."
+
+"Is that all?" said Dunn's voice.  "And just because you were a
+d--d fool, or had taken a little too much whisky, you thought--"
+
+"Steady.  That's just what I said to myself," interrupted Brace
+coolly, "particularly when I saw her that same afternoon in
+another dress, saying 'Good-by' to the Burnhams, as fresh as a
+rose and as cold as those snow-peaks.  Only one thing--she had a
+ring on her finger she never wore before, and didn't expect me to
+see."
+
+"What if she did?  She might have bought it.  I reckon she hasn't
+to consult you," broke in Dunn's voice sternly.
+
+"She didn't buy it," continued Brace quietly.  "Low gave that Jew
+trader a bearskin in exchange for it, and presented it to her.  I
+found that out two days afterwards.  I found out that out of the
+whole afternoon she spent less than an hour with the Burnhams.  I
+found out that she bought a duster like the disguise the two men
+saw her in.  I found the yellow dress she wore that day hanging
+up in Low's cabin--the place where I saw her go--THE RENDEZVOUS
+WHERE SHE MEETS HIM.  Oh, you're listenin', are you?  Stop!  SIT
+DOWN!
+
+"I discovered it by accident," continued the voice of Brace when
+all was again quiet; "it was hidden as only a squirrel or an
+Injin can hide when they improve upon nature.  When I was
+satisfied that the girl had been in the woods, I was determined
+to find out where she vanished, and went there again.
+Prospecting around, I picked up at the foot of one of the biggest
+trees this yer old memorandum-book, with grasses and herbs stuck
+in it.  I remembered that I'd heard old Wynn say that Low, like
+the d--d Digger that he was, collected these herbs; only he
+pretended it was for science.  I reckoned the book was his and
+that he mightn't be far away.  I lay low and waited.  Bimeby I
+saw a lizard running down the root.  When he got sight of me he
+stopped."
+
+"D--n the lizard!  What's that got to do with where she is now?"
+
+"Everything.  That lizard had a piece of sugar in his mouth.
+Where did it come from?  I made him drop it, and calculated he'd
+go back for more.  He did.  He scooted up that tree and slipped
+in under some hanging strips of bark.  I shoved 'em aside, and
+found an opening to the hollow where they do their housekeeping."
+
+"But you didn't see her there--and how do you know she is there
+now?"
+
+"I determined to make it sure.  When she left to-day, I started
+an hour ahead of her, and hid myself at the edge of the woods.
+An hour after the coach arrived at Indian Spring, she came there
+in a brown duster and was joined by him.  I'd have followed them,
+but the d--d hound has the ears of a squirrel, and though I was
+five hundred yards from him he was on his guard."
+
+"Guard be blessed!  Wasn't you armed?  Why didn't you go for
+him?" said Dunn, furiously.
+
+"I reckoned I'd leave that for you," said Brace coolly.  "If he'd
+killed me, and if he'd even covered me with his rifle, he'd been
+sure to let daylight through me at double the distance.  I
+shouldn't have been any better off, nor you either.  If I'd
+killed HIM, it would have been your duty as sheriff to put me in
+jail; and I reckon it wouldn't have broken your heart, Jim Dunn,
+to have got rid of TWO rivals instead of one.  Hullo!  Where are
+you going?"
+
+"Going?" said Dunn hoarsely.  "Going to the Carquinez Woods, by
+God! to kill him before her.  I'LL risk it, if you daren't.  Let
+me succeed, and you can hang ME and take the girl yourself."
+
+"Sit down, sit down.  Don't be a fool, Jim Dunn!  You wouldn't
+keep the saddle a hundred yards.  Did I say I wouldn't help you?
+No.  If you're willing, we'll run the risk together, but it must
+be in my way.  Hear me.  I'll drive you down there in a buggy
+before daylight, and we'll surprise them in the cabin or as they
+leave the wood.  But you must come as if to arrest him for some
+offense--say, as an escaped Digger from the Reservation, a
+dangerous tramp, a destroyer of public property in the forests, a
+suspected road agent, or anything to give you the right to hunt
+him.  The exposure of him and Nellie, don't you see, must be
+accidental.  If he resists, kill him on the spot, and nobody'll
+blame you; if he goes peaceably with you, and you once get him in
+Excelsior jail, when the story gets out that he's taken the belle
+of Excelsior for his squaw, if you'd the angels for your posse
+you couldn't keep the boys from hanging him to the first tree.
+What's that?"
+
+He walked to the window, and looked out cautiously.
+
+"If it was the old man coming back and listening," he said, after
+a pause, "it can't he helped.  He'll hear it soon enough, if he
+don't suspect something already."
+
+"Look yer, Brace," broke in Dunn hoarsely.  "D--d if I understand
+you or you me.  That dog Low has got to answer to ME, not to the
+LAW!  I'll take my risk of killing him, on sight and on the
+square.  I don't reckon to handicap myself with a warrant, and I
+am not going to draw him out with a lie.  You hear me?  That's me
+all the time!"
+
+"Then you calkilate to go down thar," said Brace contemptuously,
+"yell out for him and Nellie, and let him line you on a rest from
+the first tree as if you were a grizzly."
+
+There was a pause.  "What's that you were saying just now about a
+bearskin he sold?" asked Dunn slowly, as if reflecting.
+
+"He exchanged a bearskin," replied Brace, "with a single hole
+right over the heart.  He's a dead shot, I tell you."
+
+"D--n his shooting," said Dunn.  "I'm not thinking of that.  How
+long ago did he bring in that bearskin?"
+
+"About two weeks, I reckon.  Why?"
+
+"Nothing!  Look yer, Brace, you mean well--thar's my hand.  I'll
+go down with you there, but not as the sheriff.  I'm going there
+as Jim Dunn, and you can come along as a white man, to see things
+fixed on the square.  Come!"
+
+Brace hesitated.  "You'll think better of my plan before you get
+there; but I've said I'd stand by you, and I will.  Come, then.
+There's no time to lose."
+
+They passed out into the darkness together.
+
+"What are you waiting for?" said Dunn impatiently, as Brace, who
+was supporting him by the arm, suddenly halted at the corner of
+the house.
+
+"Some one was listening--did you not see him?  Was it the old
+man?" asked Brace hurriedly.
+
+"Blast the old man!  It was only one of them Mexican packers
+chock-full of whisky, and trying to hold up the house.  What are
+you thinking of?  We shall be late."
+
+In spite of his weakness, the wounded man hurriedly urged Brace
+forward, until they reached the latter's lodgings .  To his
+surprise, the horse and buggy were already before the door.
+
+"Then you reckoned to go, any way?" said Dunn, with a searching
+look at his companion.
+
+"I calkilated SOMEBODY would go," returned Brace, evasively,
+patting the impatient Buckskin; "but come in and take a drink
+before we leave."
+
+Dunn started out of a momentary abstraction, put his hand on his
+hip, and mechanically entered the house.  They had scarcely
+raised the glasses to their lips when a sudden rattle of wheels
+was heard in the street.  Brace set down his glass and ran to the
+window.
+
+"It's the mare bolted," he said, with an oath.  "We've kept her
+too long standing.  Follow me," and he dashed down the staircase
+into the street.  Dunn followed with difficulty; when he reached
+the door he was already confronted by his breathless companion.
+"She's gone off on a run, and I'll swear there was a man in the
+buggy!"  He stopped and examined the halter-strap, still fastened
+to the fence.  "Cut! by God!"
+
+Dunn turned pale with passion.  "Who's got another horse and
+buggy?" he demanded.
+
+"The new blacksmith in Main Street; but we won't get it by
+borrowing," said Brace.
+
+"How then?" asked Dunn savagely.
+
+"Seize it, as the sheriff of Yuba and his deputy, pursuing a
+confederate of the Injin Low--THE HORSE THIEF!"
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+The brief hour of darkness that preceded the dawn was that night
+intensified by a dense smoke, which, after blotting out horizon
+and sky, dropped a thick veil on the high road and the silent
+streets of Indian Spring.  As the buggy containing Sheriff Dunn
+and Brace dashed through the obscurity, Brace suddenly turned to
+his companion.
+
+"Some one ahead!"
+
+The two men bent forward over the dashboard.  Above the steady
+plunging of their own horse-hoofs they could hear the quicker
+irregular beat of other hoofs in the darkness before them.
+
+"It's that horse thief!" said Dunn, in a savage whisper.  "Bear
+to the right, and hand me the whip."
+
+A dozen cuts of the cruel lash, and their maddened horse,
+bounding at each stroke, broke into a wild canter.  The frail
+vehicle swayed from side to side at each spring of the elastic
+shafts.  Steadying himself by one hand on the low rail, Dunn drew
+his revolver with the other.  "Sing out to him to pull up, or
+we'll fire.  My voice is clean gone," he added, in a husky whisper.
+
+They were so near that they could distinguish the bulk of a
+vehicle careering from side to side in the blackness ahead.  Dunn
+deliberately raised his weapon.  "Sing out!" he repeated
+impatiently.  But Brace, who was still keeping in the shadow,
+suddenly grasped his companion's arm.
+
+"Hush!  It's NOT Buckskin," he whispered hurriedly.
+
+"Are you sure?"
+
+"DON'T YOU SEE WE'RE GAINING ON HIM?" replied the other
+contemptuously.  Dunn grasped his companion's hand and pressed it
+silently.  Even in that supreme moment this horseman's tribute to
+the fugitive Buckskin forestalled all baser considerations of
+pursuit and capture!
+
+In twenty seconds they were abreast of the stranger, crowding his
+horse and buggy nearly into the ditch; Brace keenly watchful,
+Dunn suppressed and pale.  In half a minute they were leading him
+a length; and when their horse again settled down to his steady
+work, the stranger was already lost in the circling dust that
+followed them.  But the victors seemed disappointed.  The
+obscurity had completely hidden all but the vague outlines of the
+mysterious driver.
+
+"He's not our game, anyway," whispered Dunn.  "Drive on."
+
+"But if it was some friend of his," suggested Brace uneasily,
+"what would you do?"
+
+"What I SAID I'd do," responded Dunn savagely.  "I don't want
+five minutes to do it in, either; we'll be half an hour ahead of
+that d--d fool, whoever he is.  Look here; all you've got to do
+is to put me in the trail to that cabin.  Stand back of me, out
+of gun-shot, alone, if you like, as my deputy, or with any number
+you can pick up as my posse.  If he gets by me as Nellie's lover,
+you may shoot him or take him as a horse thief, if you like."
+
+"Then you won't shoot him on sight?"
+
+"Not till I've had a word with him."
+
+"But--"
+
+"I've chirped," said the sheriff gravely.  "Drive on."
+
+For a few moments only the plunging hoofs and rattling wheels
+were heard.  A dull, lurid glow began to define the horizon.
+They were silent until an abatement of the smoke, the vanishing
+of the gloomy horizon line, and a certain impenetrability in the
+darkness ahead showed them they were nearing the Carquinez Woods.
+But they were surprised on entering them to find the dim aisles
+alight with a faint mystic Aurora.  The tops of the towering
+spires above them had caught the gleam of the distant forest
+fires, and reflected it as from a gilded dome.
+
+"It would be hot work if the Carquinez Woods should conclude to
+take a hand in this yer little game that's going on over on the
+Divide yonder," said Brace, securing his horse and glancing at
+the spires overhead.  "I reckon I'd rather take a back seat at
+Injin Spring when the show commences."
+
+Dunn did not reply, but, buttoning his coat, placed one hand on
+his companion's shoulder, and sullenly bade him "lead the way."
+Advancing slowly and with difficulty the desperate man might have
+been taken for a peaceful invalid returning from an early morning
+stroll.  His right hand was buried thoughtfully in the side
+pocket of his coat.  Only Brace knew that it rested on the handle
+of his pistol.
+
+From time to time the latter stopped and consulted the faint
+trail with a minuteness that showed recent careful study.
+Suddenly he paused.  "I made a blaze hereabouts to show where to
+leave the trail.  There it is," he added, pointing to a slight
+notch cut in the trunk of an adjoining tree.
+
+"But we've just passed one," said Dunn, "if that's what you are
+looking after, a hundred yards back."
+
+Brace uttered an oath, and ran back in the direction signified by
+his companion.  Presently he returned with a smile of triumph.
+
+"They've suspected something.  It's a clever trick, but it won't
+hold water.  That blaze which was done to muddle you was cut with
+an axe; this which I made was done with a bowie-knife.  It's the
+real one.  We're not far off now.  Come on."
+
+They proceeded cautiously, at right angles with the "blazed"
+tree, for ten minutes more.  The heat was oppressive; drops of
+perspiration rolled from the forehead of the sheriff, and at
+times, when he attempted to steady his uncertain limbs, his hands
+shrank from the heated, blistering bark he touched with ungloved
+palms.
+
+"Here we are," said Brace, pausing at last.  "Do you see that
+biggest tree, with the root stretching out halfway across to the
+opposite one?"
+
+"No, it's further to the right and abreast of the dead brush,"
+interrupted Dunn quickly, with a sudden revelation that this was
+the spot where he had found the dead bear in the night Teresa
+escaped.
+
+"That's so," responded Brace, in astonishment.
+
+"And the opening is on the other side, opposite the dead brush,"
+said Dunn.
+
+"Then you know it?" said Brace suspiciously.
+
+"I reckon!" responded Dunn, grimly.  "That's enough!  Fall back!"
+
+To the surprise of his companion, he lifted his head erect, and
+with a strong, firm step walked directly to the tree.  Reaching
+it, he planted himself squarely before the opening.
+
+"Halloo!" he said.
+
+There was no reply.  A squirrel scampered away close to his feet.
+Brace, far in the distance, after an ineffectual attempt to
+distinguish his companion through the intervening trunks, took
+off his coat, leaned against a tree, and lit a cigar.
+
+"Come out of that cabin!" continued Dunn, in a clear, resonant
+voice.  "Come out before I drag you out!"
+
+"All right, 'Captain Scott.'  Don't shoot, and I'll come down,"
+said a voice as clear and as high as his own.  The hanging strips
+of bark were dashed aside, and a woman leaped lightly to the
+ground.
+
+Dunn staggered back.  "Teresa! by the Eternal!"
+
+It was Teresa! the old Teresa!  Teresa, a hundred times more
+vicious, reckless, hysterical, extravagant, and outrageous than
+before.  Teresa, staring with tooth and eye, sunburnt and
+embrowned, her hair hanging down her shoulders, and her shawl
+drawn tightly around her neck.
+
+"Teresa it is! the same old gal!  Here we are again!  Return of
+the favorite in her original character!  For two weeks only!
+Houp la!  Tshk!" and, catching her yellow skirt with her fingers,
+she pirouetted before the astounded man, and ended in a pose.
+Recovering himself with an effort, Dunn dashed forward and seized
+her by the wrist.
+
+"Answer me, woman!  Is that Low's cabin?"
+
+"It is."
+
+"Who occupies it besides?"
+
+"I do."
+
+"And who else?"
+
+"Well," drawled Teresa slowly, with an extravagant affectation of
+modesty, "nobody else but us, I reckon.  Two's company, you know,
+and three's none."
+
+"Stop!  Will you swear that there isn't a young girl, his--his
+sweetheart--concealed there with you?"
+
+The fire in Teresa's eye was genuine as she answered steadily,
+"Well, it ain't my style to put up with that sort of thing; at
+least, it wasn't over at Yolo, and you know it, Jim Dunn, or I
+wouldn't be here."
+
+"Yes, yes," said Dunn hurriedly.  "But I'm a d--d fool, or worse,
+the fool of a fool.  Tell me, Teresa, is this man Low your lover?"
+
+Teresa lowered her eyes as if in maidenly confusion.  "Well, if
+I'd known that YOU had any feeling of your own about it--if you'd
+spoken sooner--"
+
+"Answer me, you devil!"
+
+"He is."
+
+"And he has been with you here--yesterday--to-night?"
+
+"He has."
+
+"Enough."  He laughed a weak, foolish laugh, and, turning pale,
+suddenly lapsed against a tree.  He would have fallen, but with a
+quick instinct Teresa sprang to his side, and supported him
+gently to a root.  The action over, they both looked astounded.
+
+"I reckon that wasn't much like either you or me," said Dunn
+slowly, "was it?  But if you'd let me drop then you'd have
+stretched out the biggest fool in the Sierras."  He paused, and
+looked at her curiously.  "What's come over you; blessed if I
+seem to know you now."
+
+She was very pale again, and quiet; that was all.
+
+"Teresa!  d--n it, look here!  When I was laid up yonder in
+Excelsior I said I wanted to get well for only two things.  One
+was to hunt you down, the other to marry Nellie Wynn.  When I
+came here I thought that last thing could never be.  I came here
+expecting to find her here with Low, and kill him--perhaps kill
+her too.  I never once thought of you; not once.  You might have
+risen up before me--between me and him--and I'd have passed you
+by.  And now that I find it's all a mistake, and it was you, not
+her, I was looking for, why--"
+
+"Why," she interrupted bitterly, "you'll just take me, of course,
+to save your time and earn your salary.  I'm ready."
+
+"But I'M not, just yet," he said faintly.  "Help me up."
+
+She mechanically assisted him to his feet.
+
+"Now stand where you are," he added, "and don't move beyond this
+tree till I return."
+
+He straightened himself with an effort, clenched his fists until
+the nails were nearly buried in his palms, and strode with a
+firm, steady step in the direction he had come.  In a few moments
+he returned and stood before her.
+
+"I've sent away my deputy--the man who brought me here, the fool
+who thought you were Nellie.  He knows now he made a mistake.
+But who it was he mistook for Nellie he does not know, nor shall
+ever know, nor shall any living being know, other than myself.
+And when I leave the wood to-day I shall know it no longer.  You
+are safe here as far as I am concerned, but I cannot screen you
+from others prying.  Let Low take you away from here as soon as
+he can."
+
+"Let him take me away?  Ah, yes.  For what?"
+
+"To save you," said Dunn.  "Look here, Teresa!  Without knowing
+it, you lifted me out of hell just now, and because of the wrong
+I might have done her--for HER sake, I spare you and shirk my duty."
+
+"For her sake!" gasped the woman--"for her sake!  Oh, yes!  Go on."
+
+"Well," said Dunn gloomily, "I reckon perhaps you'd as lieve left
+me in hell, for all the love you bear me.  And may be you've
+grudge enough agin me still to wish I'd found her and him together."
+
+"You think so?" she said, turning her head away.
+
+"There, d--n it!  I didn't mean to make you cry.  May be you
+wouldn't, then.  Only tell that fellow to take you out of this,
+and not run away the next time he sees a man coming."
+
+"He didn't run," said Teresa, with flashing eyes.  "I--I--I sent
+him away," she stammered.  Then, suddenly turning with fury upon
+him, she broke out, "Run!  Run from you!  Ha, ha!  You said just
+now I'd a grudge against you.  Well, listen, Jim Dunn.  I'd only
+to bring you in range of that young man's rifle, and you'd have
+dropped in your tracks like--"
+
+"Like that bar, the other night," said Dunn, with a short laugh.
+"So THAT was your little game?"  He checked his laugh suddenly--a
+cloud passed over his face.  "Look here, Teresa," he said, with
+an assumption of carelessness that was as transparent as it was
+utterly incompatible with his frank, open selfishness.  "What
+became of that bar?  The skin--eh?  That was worth something?"
+
+"Yes," said Teresa quietly.  "Low exchanged it and got a ring for
+me from that trader Isaacs.  It was worth more, you bet.  And the
+ring didn't fit either--"
+
+"Yes," interrupted Dunn, with an almost childish eagerness.
+
+"And I made him take it back, and get the value in money.  I hear
+that Isaacs sold it again and made another profit; but that's
+like those traders."  The disingenuous candor of Teresa's manner
+was in exquisite contrast to Dunn.  He rose and grasped her hand
+so heartily she was forced to turn her eyes away.
+
+"Good-by!" he said.
+
+"You look tired," she murmured, with a sudden gentleness that
+surprised him; "let me go with you a part of the way."
+
+"It isn't safe for you just now," he said, thinking of the
+possible consequences of the alarm Brace had raised.
+
+"Not the way YOU came," she replied; "but one known only to
+myself."
+
+He hesitated only a moment.  "All right, then," he said finally,
+"let us go at once.  It's suffocating here, and I seem to feel
+this dead bark crinkle under my feet."
+
+She cast a rapid glance around her, and then seemed to sound with
+her eyes the far-off depths of the aisles, beginning to grow pale
+with the advancing day, but still holding a strange quiver of
+heat in the air.  When she had finished her half-abstracted
+scrutiny of the distance, she cast one backward glance at her own
+cabin and stopped.
+
+"Will you wait a moment for me?" she asked gently.
+
+"Yes--but--no tricks, Teresa!  It isn't worth the time."
+
+She looked him squarely in the eyes without a word.
+
+"Enough," he said; "go!"
+
+She was absent for some moments.  He was beginning to become
+uneasy, when she made her appearance again, clad in her old faded
+black dress.  Her face was very pale, and her eyes were swollen,
+but she placed his hand on her shoulder, and bidding him not to
+fear to lean upon her, for she was quite strong, led the way.
+
+"You look more like yourself now, and yet--blast it all!--you
+don't either," said Dunn, looking down upon her.  "You've changed
+in some way.  What is it?  Is it on account of that Injin?
+Couldn't you have found a white man in his place?"
+
+"I reckon he's neither worse nor better for that," she replied
+bitterly; "and perhaps he wasn't as particular in his taste as a
+white man might have been.  But," she added, with a sudden spasm
+of her old rage, "it's a lie; he's NOT an Indian, no more than I
+am.  Not unless being born of a mother who scarcely knew him, of
+a father who never even saw him, and being brought up among white
+men and wild beasts--less cruel than they were--could make him one!"
+
+Dunn looked at her in surprise not unmixed with admiration.  "If
+Nellie," he thought, "could but love ME like that!"  But he only
+said:
+
+"For all that, he's an Injin.  Why, look at his name.  It ain't
+Low.  It's L'Eau Dormante, Sleeping Water, an Injin name."
+
+"And what does that prove?" returned Teresa.  "Only that Indians
+clap a nick-name on any stranger, white or red, who may camp with
+them.  Why, even his own father, a white man, the wretch who
+begot him and abandoned him,--HE had an Indian name--Loup Noir."
+
+"What name did you say?"
+
+"Le Loup Noir, the Black Wolf.  I suppose you'd call him an
+Indian, too?  Eh!  What's the matter?  We're walking too fast.
+Stop a moment and rest.  There--there, lean on me!"
+
+She was none too soon; for, after holding him upright a moment,
+his limbs failed, and stooping gently she was obliged to support
+him half reclining against a tree.
+
+"Its the heat!" he said.  "Give me some whisky from my flask.
+Never mind the water," he added faintly, with a forced laugh,
+after he had taken a draught at the strong spirit.  "Tell me more
+about the other water--the Sleeping Water--you know.  How do you
+know all this about him and his--father?"
+
+"Partly from him and partly from Curson, who wrote to me about
+him," she answered with some hesitation.
+
+But Dunn did not seem to notice this incongruity of correspondence
+with a former lover.  "And HE told you?"
+
+"Yes; and I saw the name on an old memorandum book he has, which
+he says belonged to his father.  It's full of old accounts of
+some trading post on the frontier.  It's been missing for a day
+or two, but it will turn up.  But I can swear I saw it."
+
+Dunn attempted to rise to his feet.  "Put your hand in my
+pocket," he said in a hurried whisper.  "No, there!--bring out a
+book.  There, I haven't looked at it yet.  Is that it?" he added,
+handing her the book Brace had given him a few hours before.
+
+"Yes," said Teresa, in surprise.  "Where did you find it?"
+
+"Never mind!  Now let me see it, quick.  Open it, for my sight is
+failing.  There--thank you--that's all!"
+
+"Take more whisky," said Teresa, with a strange anxiety creeping
+over her.  "You are faint again."
+
+"Wait!  Listen, Teresa--lower--put your ear lower.  Listen!  I
+came near killing that chap Low to-day.  Wouldn't it have been
+ridiculous?"
+
+He tried to smile, but his head fell back.  He had fainted.
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+For the first time in her life Teresa lost her presence of mind
+in an emergency.  She could only sit staring at the helpless man,
+scarcely conscious of his condition, her mind filled with a
+sudden prophetic intuition of the significance of his last words.
+In the light of that new revelation she looked into his pale,
+haggard face for some resemblance to Low, but in vain.  Yet her
+swift feminine instinct met the objection.  "It's the mother's
+blood that would show," she murmured, "not this man's."
+
+Recovering herself, she began to chafe his hands and temples, and
+moistened his lips with the spirit.  When his respiration
+returned with a faint color to his cheeks, she pressed his hands
+eagerly and leaned over him.
+
+"Are you sure?" she asked.
+
+"Of what?" he whispered faintly.
+
+"That Low is really your son?"
+
+"Who said so?" he asked, opening his round eyes upon her.
+
+"You did yourself, a moment ago," she said quickly.  "Don't you
+remember?"
+
+"Did I?"
+
+"You did.  Is it not so?"
+
+He smiled faintly.  "I reckon."
+
+She held her breath in expectation.  But only the ludicrousness
+of the discovery seemed paramount to his weakened faculties.
+"Isn't it just about the ridiculousest thing all round?" he said,
+with a feeble chuckle.  "First YOU nearly kill me before you know
+I am Low's father; then I'm just spoilin' to kill him before I
+know he's my son; then that god-forsaken fool Jack Brace mistakes
+you for Nellie and Nellie for you.  Ain't it just the biggest
+thing for the boys to get hold of?  But we must keep it dark
+until after I marry Nellie, don't you see?  Then we'll have a
+good time all round, and I'll stand the drinks.  Think of it,
+Teresha!  You don' no me, I do' no you, nobody knowsh anybody
+elsh.  I try kill Lo'.  Lo' wants kill Nellie.  No thath no ri--'"
+but the potent liquor, overtaking his exhausted senses,
+thickened, impeded, and at last stopped his speech.  His head
+slipped to her shoulder, and he became once more unconscious.
+
+Teresa breathed again.  In that brief moment she had abandoned
+herself to a wild inspiration of hope which she could scarcely
+define.  Not that it was entirely a wild inspiration; she tried
+to reason calmly.  What if she revealed the truth to him?  What
+if she told the wretched man before her that she had deceived
+him; that she had overheard his conversation with Brace; that she
+had stolen Brace's horse to bring Low warning; that, failing to
+find Low in his accustomed haunts, or at the campfire, she had
+left a note for him pinned to the herbarium, imploring him to fly
+with his companion from the danger that was coming; and that,
+remaining on watch, she had seen them both--Brace and Dunn--
+approaching, and had prepared to meet them at the cabin?  Would
+this miserable and maddened man understand her self-abnegation?
+Would he forgive Low and Nellie?--she did not ask for herself.
+Or would the revelation turn his brain, if it did not kill him
+outright?  She looked at the sunken orbits of his eyes and hectic
+on his cheek, and shuddered.
+
+Why was this added to the agony she already suffered?  She had
+been willing to stand between them with her life, her liberty,
+and even--the hot blood dyed her cheek at the thought--with the
+added shame of being thought the cast-off mistress of that man's
+son.  Yet all this she had taken upon herself in expiation of
+something--she knew not clearly what; no, for nothing--only for
+HIM.  And yet this very situation offered her that gleam of hope
+which had thrilled her; a hope so wild in its improbability, so
+degrading in its possibility, that at first she knew not whether
+despair was not preferable to its shame.  And yet was it
+unreasonable?  She was no longer passionate; she would be calm
+and think it out fairly.
+
+She would go to Low at once.  She would find him somewhere--and
+even if with that girl, what mattered?--and she would tell him
+all.  When he knew that the life and death of his father lay in
+the scale, would he let his brief, foolish passion for Nellie
+stand in the way?  Even if he were not influenced by filial
+affection or mere compassion, would his pride let him stoop to a
+rivalry with the man who had deserted his youth?  Could he take
+Dunn's promised bride, who must have coquetted with him to have
+brought him to this miserable plight?  Was this like the calm,
+proud young god she knew?  Yet she had an uneasy instinct that
+calm, proud young gods and goddesses did things like this, and
+felt the weakness of her reasoning flush her own conscious cheek.
+
+"Teresa!"
+
+She started.  Dunn was awake, and was gazing at her curiously.
+
+"I was reckoning it was the only square thing for Low to stop
+this promiscuous picnicking here and marry you out and out."
+
+"Marry me!" said Teresa in a voice that, with all her efforts,
+she could not make cynical.
+
+"Yes," he repeated, "after I've married Nellie; tote you down to
+San Angeles, and there take my name like a man, and give it to
+you.  Nobody'll ask after TERESA, sure--you bet your life.  And
+if they do, and he can't stop their jaw, just you call on the old
+man.  It's mighty queer, ain't it, Teresa, to think of your being
+my daughter-in-law?"
+
+It seemed here as if he was about to lapse again into unconsciousness
+over the purely ludicrous aspect of the subject, but he haply
+recovered his seriousness.  "He'll have as much money from me as he
+wants to go into business with.  What's his line of business,
+Teresa?" asked this prospective father-in-law, in a large, liberal way.
+
+"He is a botanist!" said Teresa, with a sudden childish animation
+that seemed to keep up the grim humor of the paternal suggestion;
+"and oh, he is too poor to buy books!  I sent for one or two for
+him myself, the other day--" she hesitated--"it was all the money
+I had, but it wasn't enough for him to go on with his studies."
+
+Dunn looked at her sparkling eyes and glowing cheeks, and became
+thoughtful.  "Curson must have been a d--d fool," he said finally.
+
+Teresa remained silent.  She was beginning to be impatient and
+uneasy, fearing some mischance that might delay her dreaded, yet
+longed-for meeting with Low.  Yet she could not leave this sick
+and exhausted man, HIS FATHER, now bound to her by more than mere
+humanity.
+
+"Couldn't you manage," she said gently, "to lean on me a few
+steps further, until I could bring you to a cooler spot and
+nearer assistance?"
+
+He nodded.  She lifted him almost like a child to his feet.  A
+spasm of pain passed over his face.  "How far is it?" he asked.
+
+"Not more than ten minutes," she replied.
+
+"I can make a spurt for that time," he said coolly, and began to
+walk slowly but steadily on.  Only his face, which was white and
+set, and the convulsive grip of his hand on her arm betrayed the
+effort.  At the end of ten minutes she stopped.  They stood
+before the splintered, lightning-scarred shaft in the opening of
+the woods, where Low had built her first camp-fire.  She
+carefully picked up the herbarium, but her quick eye had already
+detected in the distance, before she had allowed Dunn to enter
+the opening with her, that her note was gone.  Low had been there
+before them; he had been warned, as his absence from the cabin
+showed; he would not return there.  They were free from
+interruption--but where had he gone?
+
+The sick man drew a long breath of relief as she seated him in
+the clover-grown hollow where she had slept the second night of
+her stay.  "It's cooler than those cursed woods," he said.  "I
+suppose it's because it's a little like a grave.  What are you
+going to do now?" he added, as she brought a cup of water and
+placed it at his side.
+
+"I am going to leave you here for a little while," she said
+cheerfully, but with a pale face and nervous hands.  "I'm going
+to leave you while I seek Low."
+
+The sick man raised his head.  "I'm good for a spurt, Teresa,
+like that I've just got through, but I don't think I'm up to a
+family party.  Couldn't you issue cards later on?"
+
+"You don't understand," she said.  "I'm going to get Low to send
+some one of your friends to you here.  I don't think he'll
+begrudge leaving HER a moment for that," she added to herself
+bitterly.
+
+"What's that you're saying?" he queried, with the nervous
+quickness of an invalid.
+
+"Nothing--but that I'm going now."  She turned her face aside to
+hide her moistened eyes.  "Wish me good luck, won't you?" she
+asked, half sadly, half pettishly.
+
+"Come here!"
+
+She came and bent over him.  He suddenly raised his hands, and,
+drawing her face down to his own, kissed her forehead.
+
+"Give that to HIM," he whispered, "from ME."
+
+She turned and fled, happily for her sentiment, not hearing the
+feeble laugh that followed, as Dunn, in sheer imbecility, again
+referred to the extravagant ludicrousness of the situation.  "It
+is about the biggest thing in the way of a sell all round," he
+repeated, lying on his back, confidentially to the speck of
+smoke-obscured sky above him.  He pictured himself repeating it,
+not to Nellie--her severe propriety might at last overlook the
+fact, but would not tolerate the joke--but to her father!  It
+would be one of those characteristic Californian jokes Father
+Wynn would admire.
+
+To his exhaustion fever presently succeeded, and he began to grow
+restless.  The heat too seemed to invade his retreat, and from
+time to time the little patch of blue sky was totally obscured by
+clouds of smoke.  He amused himself with watching a lizard who
+was investigating a folded piece of paper, whose elasticity gave
+the little creature lively apprehensions of its vitality.  At
+last he could stand the stillness of his retreat and his supine
+position no longer, and rolled himself out of the bed of leaves
+that Teresa had so carefully prepared for him.  He rose to his
+feet stiff and sore, and, supporting himself by the nearest tree,
+moved a few steps from the dead ashes of the camp-fire.  The
+movement frightened the lizard, who abandoned the paper and fled.
+With a satirical recollection of Brace and his "ridiculous"
+discovery through the medium of this animal, he stooped and
+picked up the paper.  "Like as not," he said to himself, with
+grim irony, "these yer lizards are in the discovery business.
+P'r'aps this may lead to another mystery," and he began to unfold
+the paper with a smile.  But the smile ceased as his eye suddenly
+caught his own name.
+
+A dozen lines were written in pencil on what seemed to be a blank
+leaf originally torn from some book.  He trembled so that he was
+obliged to sit down to read these words:--
+
+
+"When you get this keep away from the woods.  Dunn and another
+man are in deadly pursuit of you and your companion.  I overheard
+their plan to surprise you in our cabin.  DON'T GO THERE, and I
+will delay them and put them off the scent.  Don't mind me.  God
+bless you, and if you never see me again think sometimes of
+
+"TERESA."
+
+
+His trembling ceased; he did not start, but rose in an abstracted
+way, and made a few deliberate steps in the direction Teresa had
+gone.  Even then he was so confused that he was obliged to refer
+to the paper again, but with so little effect that he could only
+repeat the last words, "think sometimes of Teresa."  He was
+conscious that this was not all; he had a full conviction of
+being deceived, and knew that he held the proof in his hand, but
+he could not formulate it beyond that sentence.  "Teresa"--yes,
+he would think of her.  She would explain it.  And here she was
+returning.
+
+In that brief interval her face and manner had again changed.
+Her face was pale and quite breathless.  She cast a swift glance
+at Dunn and the paper he mechanically held out, walked up to him,
+and tore it from his hand.
+
+"Well," she said hoarsely, "what are you going to do about it?"
+
+He attempted to speak, but his voice failed him.  Even then he
+was conscious that if he had spoken he would have only repeated,
+"think sometimes of Teresa."  He looked longingly but helplessly
+at the spot where she had thrown the paper, as if it had
+contained his unuttered words.
+
+"Yes," she went on to herself, as if he was a mute, indifferent
+spectator--"yes, they're gone.  That ends it all.  The game's
+played out.  Well!" suddenly turning upon him, "now you know it
+all.  Your Nellie WAS here with him, and is with him now.  Do you
+hear?  Make the most of it; you've lost them--but here I am."
+
+"Yes," he said eagerly--"yes, Teresa."
+
+She stopped, stared at him; then taking him by the hand led him
+like a child back to his couch.  "Well," she said, in half-savage
+explanation, "I told you the truth when I said the girl wasn't at
+the cabin last night, and that I didn't know her.  What are you
+glowerin' at?  No!  I haven't lied to you, I swear to God, except
+in one thing.  Did you know what that was?  To save him I took
+upon me a shame I don't deserve.  I let you think I was his
+mistress.  You think so now, don't you?  Well, before God to-day--
+and He may take me when He likes--I'm no more to him than a
+sister!  I reckon your Nellie can't say as much."
+
+She turned away, and with the quick, impatient stride of some
+caged animal made the narrow circuit of the opening, stopping a
+moment mechanically before the sick man, and again, without
+looking at him, continuing her monotonous round.  The heat had
+become excessive, but she held her shawl with both hands drawn
+tightly over her shoulders.  Suddenly a wood-duck darted out of
+the covert blindly into the opening, struck against the blasted
+trunk, fell half stunned near her feet, and then, recovering,
+fluttered away.  She had scarcely completed another circuit
+before the irruption was followed by a whirring bevy of quail, a
+flight of jays, and a sudden tumult of wings swept through the
+wood like a tornado.  She turned inquiringly to Dunn, who had
+risen to his feet, but the next moment she caught convulsively at
+his wrist; a wolf had just dashed through the underbrush not a
+dozen yards away, and on either side of them they could hear the
+scamper and rustle of hurrying feet like the outburst of a summer
+shower.  A cold wind arose from the opposite direction, as if to
+contest this wild exodus, but it was followed by a blast of
+sickening heat.  Teresa sank at Dunn's feet in an agony of terror.
+
+"Don't let them touch me!" she gasped; "keep them off!  Tell me,
+for God's sake, what has happened!"
+
+He laid his hand firmly on her arm, and lifted her in his turn to
+her feet like a child.  In that supreme moment of physical
+danger, his strength, reason, and manhood returned in their
+plenitude of power.  He pointed coolly to the trail she had
+quitted, and said,
+
+"The Carquinez Woods are on fire!"
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+The nest of the tuneful Burnhams, although in the suburbs of
+Indian Spring, was not in ordinary weather and seasons hidden
+from the longing eyes of the youth of that settlement.  That
+night, however, it was veiled in the smoke that encompassed the
+great highway leading to Excelsior.  It is presumed that the
+Burnham brood had long since folded their wings, for there was no
+sign of life nor movement in the house as a rapidly-driven horse
+and buggy pulled up before it.  Fortunately, the paternal Burnham
+was an early bird, in the habit of picking up the first stirring
+mining worm, and a resounding knock brought him half dressed to
+the street door.  He was startled at seeing Father Wynn before
+him, a trifle flushed and abstracted.
+
+"Ah ha! up betimes, I see, and ready.  No sluggards here--ha,
+ha!" he said heartily, slamming the door behind him, and by a
+series of pokes in the ribs genially backing his host into his
+own sitting-room.  "I'm up, too, and am here to see Nellie.
+She's here, eh--of course?" he added, darting a quick look at
+Burnham.
+
+But Mr. Burnham was one of those large, liberal Western husbands
+who classified his household under the general title of "woman
+folk," for the integers of which he was not responsible.  He
+hesitated, and then propounded over the balusters to the upper
+story the direct query--
+
+"You don't happen to have Nellie Wynn up there, do ye?"
+
+There was an interval of inquiry proceeding from half a dozen
+reluctant throats, more or less cottony and muffled, in those
+various degrees of grievance and mental distress which indicate
+too early roused young womanhood.  The eventual reply seemed to
+be affirmative, albeit accompanied with a suppressed giggle, as
+if the young lady had just been discovered as an answer to an
+amusing conundrum.
+
+"All right," said Wynn, with an apparent accession of boisterous
+geniality.  "Tell her I must see her, and I've only got a few
+minutes to spare.  Tell her to slip on anything and come down;
+there's no one here but myself, and I've shut the front door on
+Brother Burnham.  Ha, ha!" and suiting the action to the word, he
+actually bundled the admiring Brother Burnham out on his own
+doorstep.  There was a light pattering on the staircase, and
+Nellie Wynn, pink with sleep, very tall, very slim, hastily
+draped in a white counterpane with a blue border and a general
+classic suggestion, slipped into the parlor.  At the same moment
+her father shut the door behind her, placed one hand on the knob,
+and with the other seized her wrist.
+
+"Where were you yesterday?" he asked.
+
+Nellie looked at him, shrugged her shoulders, and said, "Here."
+
+"You were in the Carquinez Woods with Low Dorman; you went there
+in disguise; you've met him there before.  He is your clandestine
+lover; you have taken pledges of affection from him; you have--"
+
+"Stop!" she said.
+
+He stopped.
+
+"Did he tell you this?" she asked, with an expression of disdain.
+
+"No; I overheard it.  Dunn and Brace were at the house waiting
+for you.  When the coach did not bring you, I went to the office
+to inquire.  As I left our door I thought I saw somebody
+listening at the parlor windows.  It was only a drunken Mexican
+muleteer leaning against the house; but if HE heard nothing, I
+did.  Nellie, I heard Brace tell Dunn that he had tracked you in
+your disguise to the woods--do you hear? that when you pretended
+to be here with the girls you were with Low--alone; that you wear
+a ring that Low got of a trader here; that there was a cabin in
+the woods--"
+
+"Stop!" she repeated.
+
+Wynn again paused.
+
+"And what did YOU do?" she asked.
+
+"I heard they were starting down there to surprise you and him
+together, and I harnessed up and got ahead of them in my buggy."
+
+"And found me here," she said, looking full into his eyes.
+
+He understood her and returned the look.  He recognized the full
+importance of the culminating fact conveyed in her words, and was
+obliged to content himself with its logical and worldly
+significance.  It was too late now to take her to task for mere
+filial disobedience; they must become allies.
+
+"Yes," he said hurriedly; "but if you value your reputation, if
+you wish to silence both these men, answer me fully."
+
+"Go on," she said.
+
+"Did you go to the cabin in the woods yesterday?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Did you ever go there with Low?"
+
+"No; I do not know even where it is."
+
+Wynn felt that she was telling the truth.  Nellie knew it; but as
+she would have been equally satisfied with an equally efficacious
+falsehood, her face remained unchanged.
+
+"And when did he leave you?"
+
+"At nine o'clock, here.  He went to the hotel."
+
+"He saved his life, then, for Dunn is on his way to the woods to
+kill him."
+
+The jeopardy of her lover did not seem to affect the young girl
+with alarm, although her eyes betrayed some interest.
+
+"Then Dunn has gone to the woods?" she said thoughtfully.
+
+"He has," replied Wynn.
+
+"Is that all?" she asked.
+
+"I want to know what you are going to do?"
+
+"I WAS going back to bed."
+
+"This is no time for trifling, girl."
+
+"I should think not," she said, with a yawn; "it's too early, or
+too late."
+
+Wynn grasped her wrist more tightly.  "Hear me!  Put whatever
+face you like on this affair, you are compromised--and compromised
+with a man you can't marry."
+
+"I don't know that I ever wanted to marry Low, if you mean him,"
+she said quietly.
+
+"And Dunn wouldn't marry you now."
+
+"I'm not so sure of that, either."
+
+"Nellie," said Wynn excitedly, "do you want to drive me mad?
+Have you nothing to say--nothing to suggest?"
+
+"Oh, you want me to help you, do you!  Why didn't you say that
+first?  Well, go and bring Dunn here."
+
+"Are you mad?  The man has gone already in pursuit of your lover,
+believing you with him."
+
+"Then he will the more readily come and talk with me without him.
+Will you take the invitation--yes or no?"
+
+"Yes, but--"
+
+"Enough.  On your way there you will stop at the hotel and give
+Low a letter from me."
+
+"Nellie!"
+
+"You shall read it, of course," she said scornfully, "for it will
+be your text for the conversation you will have with him.  Will
+you please take your hand from the lock and open the door?"
+
+Wynn mechanically opened the door.  The young girl flew up-
+stairs.  In a very few moments she returned with two notes: one
+contained a few lines of formal invitation to Dunn; the other
+read as follows:
+
+
+"DEAR MR. DORMAN,--My father will tell you how deeply I regret
+that our recent botanical excursions in the Carquinez Woods have
+been a source of serious misapprehensions to those who had a
+claim to my consideration, and that I shall be obliged to
+discontinue them for the future.  At the same time he wishes me
+to express my gratitude for your valuable instruction and
+assistance in that pleasing study, even though approaching events
+may compel me to relinquish it for other duties.  May I beg you
+to accept the inclosed ring as a slight recognition of my
+obligations to you?
+
+"Your grateful pupil,
+
+"NELLIE WYNN."
+
+
+When he had finished reading the letter, she handed him a ring,
+which he took mechanically.  He raised his eyes to hers with
+perfectly genuine admiration.  "You're a good girl, Nellie," he
+said, and, in a moment of parental forgetfulness, unconsciously
+advanced his lips towards her cheek.  But she drew back in time
+to recall him to a sense of that human weakness.
+
+"I suppose I'll have time for a nap yet," she said, as a gentle
+hint to her embarrassed parent.  He nodded and turned towards the
+door.
+
+"If I were you," she continued, repressing a yawn, "I'd manage to
+be seen on good terms with Low at the hotel; so perhaps you need
+not give the letter to him until the last thing.  Good-by."
+
+The sitting-room door opened and closed behind her as she slipped
+up-stairs, and her father, without the formality of leave-taking,
+quietly let himself out by the front door.
+
+When he drove into the high road again, however, an overlooked
+possibility threatened for a moment to indefinitely postpone his
+amiable intentions regarding Low.  The hotel was at the further
+end of the settlement towards the Carquinez Woods, and as Wynn
+had nearly reached it he was recalled to himself by the sounds of
+hoofs and wheels rapidly approaching from the direction of the
+Excelsior turnpike.  Wynn made no doubt it was the sheriff and
+Brace.  To avoid recognition at that moment, he whipped up his
+horse, intending to keep the lead until he could turn into the
+first cross-road.  But the coming travelers had the fleetest
+horse, and finding it impossible to distance them he drove close
+to the ditch, pulling up suddenly as the strange vehicle was
+abreast of him, and forcing them to pass him at full speed, with
+the result already chronicled.  When they had vanished in the
+darkness, Mr. Wynn, with a heart overflowing with Christian
+thankfulness and universal benevolence, wheeled round, and drove
+back to the hotel he had already passed.  To pull up at the
+veranda with a stentorian shout, to thump loudly at the deserted
+bar, to hilariously beat the panels of the landlord's door, and
+commit a jocose assault and battery upon that half-dresssed and
+half-awakened man, was eminently characteristic of Wynn, and part
+of his amiable plans that morning.
+
+"Something to wash this wood smoke from my throat, Brother
+Carter, and about as much again to prop open your eyes," he said,
+dragging Carter before the bar, "and glasses round for as many of
+the boys as are up and stirring after a hard-working Christian's
+rest.  How goes the honest publican's trade, and who have we here?"
+
+"Thar's Judge Robinson and two lawyers from Sacramento, Dick
+Curson over from Yolo," said Carter, "and that ar young Injin
+yarb doctor from the Carquinez Woods.  I reckon he's jist up--I
+noticed a light under his door as I passed."
+
+"He's my man for a friendly chat before breakfast," said Wynn.
+"You needn't come up.  I'll find the way.  I don't want a light;
+I reckon my eyes ain't as bright nor as young as his, but they'll
+see almost as far in the dark--he! he!"  And, nodding to Brother
+Carter, he strode along the passage, and with no other introduction
+than a playful and preliminary "Boo!" burst into one of the rooms.
+Low, who by the light of a single candle was bending over the plates
+of a large quarto, merely raised his eyes and looked at the intruder.
+The young man's natural imperturbability, always exasperating to
+Wynn, seemed accented that morning by contrast with his own
+over-acted animation.
+
+"Ah ha!--wasting the midnight oil instead of imbibing the morning
+dews," said Father Wynn archly, illustrating his metaphor with a
+movement of his hand to his lips.  "What have we here?"
+
+"An anonymous gift," replied Low simply, recognizing the father
+of Nellie by rising from his chair.  "It's a volume I've longed
+to possess, but never could afford to buy.  I cannot imagine who
+sent it to me."
+
+Wynn was for a moment startled by the thought that this recipient
+of valuable gifts might have influential friends.  But a glance
+at the bare room, which looked like a camp, and the strange,
+unconventional garb of its occupant, restored his former
+convictions.  There might be a promise of intelligence, but
+scarcely of prosperity, in the figure before him.
+
+"Ah!  We must not forget that we are watched over in the night
+season," he said, laying his hand on Low's shoulder, with an
+illustration of celestial guardianship that would have been
+impious but for its palpable grotesqueness.  "No, sir, we know
+not what a day may bring forth."
+
+Unfortunately, Low's practical mind did not go beyond a mere
+human interpretation.  It was enough, however, to put a new light
+in his eye and a faint color in his cheek.
+
+"Could it have been Miss Nellie?" he asked, with half-boyish
+hesitation.
+
+Mr. Wynn was too much of a Christian not to bow before what
+appeared to him the purely providential interposition of this
+suggestion.  Seizing it and Low at the same moment, he playfully
+forced him down again in his chair.
+
+"Ah, you rascal!" he said, with infinite archness; "that's your
+game, is it?  You want to trap poor Father Wynn.  You want to
+make him say 'No.'  You want to tempt him to commit himself.  No,
+sir!--never, sir!--no, no!"
+
+Firmly convinced that the present was Nellie's, and that her
+father only good-humoredly guessed it, the young man's simple,
+truthful nature was embarrassed.  He longed to express his
+gratitude, but feared to betray the young girl's trust.  The
+Reverend Mr. Wynn speedily relieved his mind.
+
+"No" he continued, bestriding a chair, and familiarly confronting
+Low over its back.  "No, sir--no!  And you want me to say 'No,'
+don't you, regarding the little walks of Nellie and a certain
+young man in the Carquinez Woods?--ha, ha!  You'd like me to say
+that I knew nothing of the botanizings, and the herb collectings,
+and the picknickings there--he, he!--you sly dog!  Perhaps you'd
+like to tempt Father Wynn further, and make him swear he knows
+nothing of his daughter disguising herself in a duster and
+meeting another young man--isn't it another young man?--all
+alone, eh?  Perhaps you want poor old Father Wynn to say No.  No,
+sir, nothing of the kind ever occurred.  Ah, you young rascal!"
+
+Slightly troubled, in spite of Wynn's hearty manner, Low, with
+his usual directness, however, said, "I do not want anyone to
+deny that I have seen Miss Nellie."
+
+"Certainly, certainly," said Wynn, abandoning his method,
+considerably disconcerted by Low's simplicity, and a certain
+natural reserve that shook off his familiarity.  "Certainly it's
+a noble thing to be able to put your hand on your heart and say
+to the world, 'Come on, all of you!  Observe me; I have nothing
+to conceal.  I walk with Miss Wynn in the woods as her
+instructor--her teacher, in fact.  We cull a flower here and
+there; we pluck an herb fresh from the hands of the Creator.  We
+look, so to speak, from Nature to Nature's God.'  Yes, my young
+friend, we should be the first to repel the foul calumny that
+could misinterpret our most innocent actions."
+
+"Calumny?" repeated Low, starting to his feet.  "What calumny?"
+
+"My friend, my noble young friend, I recognize your indignation.
+I know your worth.  When I said to Nellie, my only child, my
+perhaps too simple offspring--a mere wildflower like yourself--
+when I said to her, 'Go, my child, walk in the woods with this
+young man, hand in hand.  Let him instruct you from the humblest
+roots, for he has trodden in the ways of the Almighty.  Gather
+wisdom from his lips, and knowledge from his simple woodman's
+craft.  Make, in fact, a collection not only of herbs, but of
+moral axioms and experience'--I knew I could trust you, and,
+trusting you, my young friend, I felt I could trust the world.
+Perhaps I was weak, foolish.  But I thought only of her welfare.
+I even recall how that to preserve the purity of her garments, I
+bade her don a simple duster; that, to secure her from the
+trifling companionship of others, I bade her keep her own
+counsel, and seek you at seasons known but to yourselves."
+
+"But . . . did Nellie . . . understand you?" interrupted Low
+hastily.
+
+"I see you read her simple nature.  Understand me?  No, not at
+first!  Her maidenly instinct--perhaps her duty to another--took
+the alarm.  I remember her words.  'But what will Dunn say?' she
+asked.  'Will he not be jealous?'"
+
+"Dunn! jealous!  I don't understand," said Low, fixing his eyes
+on Wynn.
+
+"That's just what I said to Nellie.  'Jealous!' I said.  'What,
+Dunn, your affianced husband, jealous of a mere friend--a
+teacher, a guide, a philosopher.  It is impossible.'  Well, sir,
+she was right.  He is jealous.  And, more than that, he has
+imparted his jealousy to others!  In other words, he has made a
+scandal!"
+
+Low's eyes flashed.  "Where is your daughter now?" he said sternly.
+
+"At present in bed, suffering from a nervous attack brought on by
+these unjust suspicions.  She appreciates your anxiety, and,
+knowing that you could not see her, told me to give you this."
+He handed Low the ring and the letter.
+
+The climax had been forced, and, it must be confessed, was by no
+means the one Mr. Wynn had fully arranged in his own inner
+consciousness.  He had intended to take an ostentatious leave of
+Low in the bar-room, deliver the letter with archness, and escape
+before a possible explosion.  He consequently backed towards the
+door for an emergency.  But he was again at fault.  That
+unaffected stoical fortitude in acute suffering, which was the
+one remaining pride and glory of Low's race, was yet to be
+revealed to Wynn's civilized eyes.
+
+The young man took the letter, and read it without changing a
+muscle, folded the ring in it, and dropped it into his haversack.
+Then he picked up his blanket, threw it over his shoulder, took
+his trusty rifle in his hand, and turned towards Wynn as if
+coldly surprised that he was still standing there.
+
+"Are you--are you--going?" stammered Wynn.
+
+"Are you NOT?" replied Low dryly, leaning on his rifle for a
+moment as if waiting for Wynn to precede him.  The preacher
+looked at him a moment, mumbled something, and then shambled
+feebly and ineffectively down the staircase before Low, with a
+painful suggestion to the ordinary observer of being occasionally
+urged thereto by the moccasin of the young man behind him.
+
+On reaching the lower hall, however, he endeavored to create a
+diversion in his favor by dashing into the bar-room and clapping
+the occupants on the back with indiscriminate playfulness.  But
+here again he seemed to be disappointed.  To his great
+discomfiture, a large man not only returned his salutation with
+powerful levity, but with equal playfulness seized him in his
+arms, and after an ingenious simulation of depositing him in the
+horse-trough set him down in affected amazement.  "Bleth't if I
+didn't think from the weight of your hand it wath my old friend,
+Thacramento Bill," said Curson apologetically, with a wink at the
+bystanders.  "That'th the way Bill alwayth uthed to tackle hith
+friendth, till he wath one day bounthed by a prithe-fighter in
+Frithco, whom he had mithtaken for a mithionary."  As Mr.
+Curson's reputation was of a quality that made any form of
+apology from him instantly acceptable, the amused spectators made
+way for him as, recognizing Low, who was just leaving the hotel,
+he turned coolly from them and walked towards him.
+
+"Halloo!" he said, extending his hand.  "You're the man I'm
+waiting for.  Did you get a book from the exthpreth offithe latht
+night?"
+
+"I did.  Why?"
+
+"It'th all right.  Ath I'm rethponthible for it, I only wanted to
+know."
+
+"Did YOU send it?" asked Low, quickly fixing his eyes on his
+face.
+
+"Well, not exactly ME.  But it'th not worth making a mythtery of
+it.  Teretha gave me a commithion to buy it and thend it to you
+anonymouthly.  That'th a woman'th nonthenth, for how could thee
+get a retheipt for it?"
+
+"Then it was HER present," said Low gloomily.
+
+"Of courthe.  It wathn't mine, my boy.  I'd have thent you a
+Tharp'th rifle in plathe of that muthle loader you carry, or
+thomething thenthible.  But, I thay! what'th up?  You look ath if
+you had been running all night."
+
+Low grasped his hand.  "Thank you," he said hurriedly; "but it's
+nothing.  Only I must be back to the woods early.  Good-by."
+
+But Curson retained Low's hand in his own powerful grip.
+
+"I'll go with you a bit further," he said.  "In fact, I've got
+thomething to thay to you; only don't be in thuch a hurry; the
+woodth can wait till you get there."  Quietly compelling Low to
+alter his own characteristic Indian stride to keep pace with his,
+he went on: "I don't mind thaying I rather cottoned to you from
+the time you acted like a white man--no offenthe--to Teretha.
+She thayth you were left when a child lying round, jutht ath
+promithcuouthly ath she wath; and if I can do anything towardth
+putting you on the trail of your people, I'll do it.  I know
+thome of the voyageurth who traded with the Cherokeeth, and your
+father wath one-wathn't he?"  He glanced at Low's utterly
+abstracted and immobile face.  "I thay, you don't theem to take a
+hand in thith game, pardner.  What'th the row?  Ith anything
+wrong over there?" and he pointed to the Carquinez Woods, which
+were just looming out of the morning horizon in the distance.
+
+Low stopped.  The last words of his companion seemed to recall
+him to himself.  He raised his eyes automatically to the woods
+and started.
+
+"There IS something wrong over there," he said breathlessly.
+"Look!"
+
+"I thee nothing," said Curson, beginning to doubt Low's sanity;
+"nothing more than I thaw an hour ago."
+
+"Look again.  Don't you see that smoke rising straight up?  It
+isn't blown over there from the Divide; it's new smoke!  The fire
+is in the woods!"
+
+"I reckon that'th so," muttered Curson, shading his eyes with his
+hand.  "But, hullo! wait a minute!  We'll get hortheth.  I say!"
+he shouted, forgetting his lisp in his excitement--"stop!"  But
+Low had already lowered his head and darted forward like an arrow.
+
+In a few moments he had left not only his companion but the last
+straggling houses of the outskirts far behind him, and had struck
+out in a long, swinging trot for the disused "cut-off."  Already
+he fancied he heard the note of clamor in Indian Spring, and
+thought he distinguished the sound of hurrying hoofs on the great
+highway.  But the sunken trail hid it from his view.  From the
+column of smoke now plainly visible in the growing morning light
+he tried to locate the scene of the conflagration.  It was
+evidently not a fire advancing regularly from the outer skirt of
+the wood, communicated to it from the Divide; it was a local
+outburst near its centre.  It was not in the direction of his
+cabin in the tree.  There was no immediate danger to Teresa,
+unless fear drove her beyond the confines of the wood into the
+hands of those who might recognize her.  The screaming of jays
+and ravens above his head quickened his speed, as it heralded the
+rapid advance of the flames; and the unexpected apparition of a
+bounding body, flattened and flying over the yellow plain, told
+him that even the secure retreat of the mountain wild-cat had
+been invaded.  A sudden recollection of Teresa's uncontrollable
+terror that first night smote him with remorse and redoubled his
+efforts.  Alone in the track of these frantic and bewildered
+beasts, to what madness might she not be driven!
+
+The sharp crack of a rifle from the high road turned his course
+momentarily in that direction.  The smoke was curling lazily over
+the heads of the party of men in the road, while the huge hulk of
+a grizzly was disappearing in the distance.  A battue of the
+escaping animals had commenced!  In the bitterness of his heart
+he caught at the horrible suggestion, and resolved to save her
+from them or die with her there.
+
+How fast he ran, or the time it took him to reach the woods, has
+never been known.  Their outlines were already hidden when he
+entered them.  To a sense less keen, a courage less desperate,
+and a purpose less unaltered than Low's, the wood would have been
+impenetrable.  The central fire was still confined to the lofty
+tree tops, but the downward rush of wind from time to time drove
+the smoke into the aisles in blinding and suffocating volumes.
+To simulate the creeping animals, and fall to the ground on hands
+and knees, feel his way through the underbrush when the smoke was
+densest, or take advantage of its momentary lifting, and without
+uncertainty, mistake, or hesitation glide from tree to tree in
+one undeviating course, was possible only to an experienced
+woodsman.  To keep his reason and insight so clear as to be able
+in the midst of this bewildering confusion to shape that course
+so as to intersect the wild and unknown tract of an inexperienced,
+frightened wanderer belonged to Low, and Low alone.  He was making
+his way against the wind towards the fire.  He had reasoned that
+she was either in comparative safety to windward of it, or he
+should meet her being driven towards him by it, or find her
+succumbed and fainting at its feet.  To do this he must penetrate
+the burning belt, and then pass under the blazing dome.  He was
+already upon it; he could see the falling fire dropping like rain
+or blown like gorgeous blossoms of the conflagration across his
+path.  The space was lit up brilliantly.  The vast shafts of dull
+copper cast no shadow below, but there was no sign nor token of any
+human being.  For a moment the young man was at fault.  It was true
+this hidden heart of the forest bore no undergrowth; the cool matted
+carpet of the aisles seemed to quench the glowing fragments as they
+fell.  Escape might be difficult, but not impossible, yet every
+moment was precious.  He leaned against a tree, and sent his voice
+like a clarion before him: "Teresa!"  There was no reply.  He called
+again.  A faint cry at his back from the trail he had just traversed
+made him turn.  Only a few paces behind him, blinded and staggering,
+but following like a beaten and wounded animal, Teresa, halted,
+knelt, clasped her hands, and dumbly held them out before her.
+"Teresa!" he cried again, and sprang to her side.
+
+She caught him by the knees, and lifted her face imploringly to his.
+
+"Say that again!" she cried, passionately.  "Tell me it was
+Teresa you called, and no other!  You have come back for me!  You
+would not let me die here alone!"
+
+He lifted her tenderly in his arms, and cast a rapid glance
+around him.  It might have been his fancy, but there seemed a
+dull glow in the direction he had come.
+
+"You do not speak!" she said.  "Tell me!  You did not come here
+to seek her?"
+
+"Whom?" he said quickly.
+
+"Nellie!"
+
+With a sharp cry he let her slip to the ground.  All the pent-up
+agony, rage, and mortification of the last hour broke from him in
+that inarticulate outburst.  Then, catching her hands again, he
+dragged her to his level.
+
+"Hear me!" he cried, disregarding the whirling smoke and the
+fiery baptism that sprinkled them--"hear me!  If you value your
+life, if you value your soul, and if you do not want me to cast
+you to the beasts like Jezebel of old, never--never take that
+accursed name again upon your lips.  Seek her--HER?  Yes!  Seek
+her to tie her like a witch's daughter of hell to that blazing
+tree!"  He stopped.  "Forgive me," he said in a changed voice.
+"I'm mad, and forgetting myself and you.  Come."
+
+Without noticing the expression of half-savage delight that had
+passed across her face, he lifted her in his arms.
+
+"Which way are you going?" she asked, passing her hands vaguely
+across his breast, as if to reassure herself of his identity.
+
+"To our camp by the scarred tree," he replied.
+
+"Not there, not there," she said, hurriedly.  "I was driven from
+there just now.  I thought the fire began there until I came here."
+
+Then it was as he feared.  Obeying the same mysterious law that
+had launched this fatal fire like a thunderbolt from the burning
+mountain crest five miles away into the heart of the Carquinez
+Woods, it had again leaped a mile beyond, and was hemming them
+between two narrowing lines of fire.  But Low was not daunted.
+Retracing his steps through the blinding smoke, he strode off at
+right angles to the trail near the point where he had entered the
+wood.  It was the spot where he had first lifted Nellie in his
+arms to carry her to the hidden spring.  If any recollection of
+it crossed his mind at that moment, it was only shown in his
+redoubled energy.  He did not glide through the thick underbrush,
+as on that day, but seemed to take a savage pleasure in breaking
+through it with sheer brute force.  Once Teresa insisted upon
+relieving him of the burden of her weight, but after a few steps
+she staggered blindly against him, and would fain have recourse
+once more to his strong arms.  And so, alternately staggering,
+bending, crouching, or bounding and crashing on, but always in
+one direction, they burst through the jealous rampart, and came
+upon the sylvan haunt of the hidden spring.  The great angle of
+the half-fallen tree acted as a harrier to the wind and drifting
+smoke, and the cool spring sparkled and bubbled in the almost
+translucent air.  He laid her down beside the water, and bathed
+her face and hands.  As he did so his quick eye caught sight of a
+woman's handkerchief lying at the foot of the disrupted root.
+Dropping Teresa's hand, he walked towards it, and with the toe of
+his moccasin gave it one vigorous kick into the ooze at the
+overflow of the spring.  He turned to Teresa, but she evidently
+had not noticed the act.
+
+"Where are you?" she asked, with a smile.
+
+Something in her movement struck him!  He came towards her, and
+bending down looked into her face.  "Teresa!  Good God!--look at
+me!  What has happened?"
+
+She raised her eyes to his.  There was a slight film across them;
+the lids were blackened; the beautiful lashes gone forever!
+
+"I see you a little now, I think," she said, with a smile,
+passing her hands vaguely over his face.  "It must have happened
+when he fainted, and I had to drag him through the blazing brush;
+both my hands were full, and I could not cover my eyes."
+
+"Drag whom?" said Low, quickly.
+
+"Why, Dunn."
+
+"Dunn!  He here?" said Low, hoarsely.
+
+"Yes; didn't you read the note I left on the herbarium?  Didn't
+you come to the camp-fire?" she asked hurriedly, clasping his
+hands.  "Tell me quickly!"
+
+"No!"
+
+"Then you were not there--then you didn't leave me to die?"
+
+"No!  I swear it, Teresa!" the stoicism that had upheld his own
+agony breaking down before her strong emotion.
+
+"Thank God!"  She threw her arms around him, and hid her aching
+eyes in his troubled breast.
+
+"Tell me all, Teresa," he whispered in her listening ear.  "Don't
+move; stay there, and tell me all."
+
+With her face buried in his bosom, as if speaking to his heart
+alone, she told him part, but not all.  With her eyes filled with
+tears, but a smile on her lips, radiant with new-found happiness,
+she told him how she had overheard the plans of Dunn and Brace,
+how she had stolen their conveyance to warn him in time.  But
+here she stopped, dreading to say a word that would shatter the
+hope she was building upon his sudden revulsion of feeling for
+Nellie.  She could not bring herself to repeat their interview--
+that would come later, when they were safe and out of danger; now
+not even the secret of his birth must come between them with its
+distraction, to mar their perfect communion.  She faltered that
+Dunn had fainted from weakness, and that she had dragged him out
+of danger.  "He will never interfere with us--I mean," she said
+softly, "with ME again.  I can promise you that as well as if he
+had sworn it."
+
+"Let him pass, now," said Low; "that will come later on," he
+added, unconsciously repeating her thought in a tone that made
+her heart sick.  "But tell me, Teresa, why did you go to
+Excelsior?"
+
+She buried her head still deeper, as if to hide it.  He felt her
+broken heart beat against his own; he was conscious of a depth of
+feeling her rival had never awakened in him.  The possibility of
+Teresa loving him had never occurred to his simple nature.  He
+bent his head and kissed her.  She was frightened, and unloosed
+her clinging arms; but he retained her hand, and said, "We will
+leave this accursed place, and you shall go with me as you said
+you would; nor need you ever leave me, unless you wish it."
+
+She could hear the beating of her own heart through his words;
+she longed to look at the eyes and lips that told her this, and
+read the meaning his voice alone could not entirely convey.  For
+the first time she felt the loss of her sight.  She did not know
+that it was, in this moment of happiness, the last blessing
+vouchsafed to her miserable life.
+
+A few moments of silence followed, broken only by the distant
+rumor of the conflagration and the crash of falling boughs.
+
+"It may be an hour yet," he whispered, "before the fire has swept
+a path for us to the road below.  We are safe here, unless some
+sudden current should draw the fire down upon us.  You are not
+frightened?"  She pressed his hand; she was thinking of the pale
+face of Dunn, lying in the secure retreat she had purchased for
+him at such a sacrifice.  Yet the possibility of danger to him
+now for a moment marred her present happiness and security.  "You
+think the fire will not go north of where you found me?" she
+asked softly.
+
+"I think not," he said, "but I will reconnoitre.  Stay where you
+are."
+
+They pressed hands, and parted.  He leaped upon the slanting
+trunk and ascended it rapidly.  She waited in mute expectation.
+
+There was a sudden movement of the root on which she sat, a
+deafening crash, and she was thrown forward on her face.
+
+The vast bulk of the leaning tree, dislodged from its aerial
+support by the gradual sapping of the spring at its roots, or by
+the crumbling of the bark from the heat, had slipped, made a half
+revolution, and, falling, overbore the lesser trees in its path,
+and tore, in its resistless momentum, a broad opening to the
+underbrush.
+
+With a cry to Low, Teresa staggered to her feet.  There was an
+interval of hideous silence, but no reply.  She called again.
+There was a sudden deepening roar, the blast of a fiery furnace
+swept through the opening, a thousand luminous points around her
+burst into fire, and in an instant she was lost in a whirlwind of
+smoke and flame!  From the onset of its fury to its culmination
+twenty minutes did not elapse; but in that interval a radius of
+two hundred yards around the hidden spring was swept of life and
+light and motion.
+
+For the rest of that day and part of the night a pall of smoke
+hung above the scene of desolation.  It lifted only towards the
+morning, when the moon, rising high, picked out in black and
+silver the shrunken and silent columns of those roofless vaults,
+shorn of base and capital.  It flickered on the still,
+overflowing pool of the hidden spring, and shone upon the white
+face of Low, who, with a rootlet of the fallen tree holding him
+down like an arm across his breast, seemed to be sleeping
+peacefully in the sleeping water.
+
+       .      .      .      .      .      .      .
+
+Contemporaneous history touched him as briefly, but not as
+gently.  "It is now definitely ascertained," said "The
+Slumgullion Mirror," "that Sheriff Dunn met his fate in the
+Carquinez Woods in the performance of his duty; that fearless man
+having received information of the concealment of a band of horse
+thieves in their recesses.  The desperadoes are presumed to have
+escaped, as the only remains found are those of two wretched
+tramps, one of whom is said to have been a digger, who supported
+himself upon roots and herbs, and the other a degraded half-white
+woman.  It is not unreasonable to suppose that the fire
+originated through their carelessness, although Father Wynn of
+the First Baptist Church, in his powerful discourse of last
+Sunday, pointed at the warning and lesson of such catastrophes.
+It may not be out of place here to say that the rumors regarding
+an engagement between the pastor's accomplished daughter and the
+late lamented sheriff are utterly without foundation, as it has
+been an on dit for some time in all well-informed circles that
+the indefatigable Mr. Brace, of Wells, Fargo and Co.'s Express,
+will shortly lead the lady to the hymeneal altar."
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg Etext of In The Carquinez Woods, by Bret Harte
+
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