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+Project Gutenberg's The Heart of Thunder Mountain, by Edfrid A. Bingham
+
+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: The Heart of Thunder Mountain
+
+Author: Edfrid A. Bingham
+
+Illustrator: Anton Otto Fisher
+
+Release Date: August 15, 2009 [EBook #29697]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HEART OF THUNDER MOUNTAIN ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: "He tried to shoot once more, into the very face of the
+oncoming brute."--FRONTISPIECE. _See Page 245._]
+
+
+
+
+THE HEART OF THUNDER MOUNTAIN
+
+By EDFRID A. BINGHAM
+
+With Frontispiece in Colors
+
+By ANTON OTTO FISHER
+
+A. L. BURT COMPANY
+
+Publishers New York
+
+Published by Arrangements with Little, Brown & Company
+
+
+
+
+Copyright, 1916,
+
+By Edfrid A. Bingham.
+
+All rights reserved
+
+Published, March, 1916
+
+Reprinted, March, 1916 (twice)
+
+July, 1916; August, 1916
+
+April, 1917
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+  CHAPTER                                                         PAGE
+        I The Forbidden Pasture                                      1
+       II The Road to Paradise                                      15
+      III Seth Huntington's Opportunity                             26
+       IV The Highest Bidder                                        37
+        V "He Shall Tell Me!"                                       50
+       VI The Story of the Scar                                     60
+      VII The Way of a Maid With a Man                              71
+     VIII The End of Her Stratagem                                  86
+       IX Hearts Insurgent                                          99
+        X Strictly Confidential                                    112
+       XI Avalanche                                                121
+      XII Sunnysides                                               133
+     XIII Hillyer's Dilemma                                        144
+      XIV Coals of Fire                                            155
+       XV The Valley of the Shadow                                 166
+      XVI Questions and Answers                                    176
+     XVII Interlude                                                186
+    XVIII The Challenge of the Brute                               193
+      XIX Smythe's Last Budget                                     202
+       XX "The Trail Held True"                                    215
+      XXI In the Hollow of the Storm                               228
+     XXII The Narrow Passage                                       238
+    XXIII The Miracle                                              252
+     XXIV Haig's Argument                                          264
+      XXV Diana                                                    278
+     XXVI The Snow                                                 288
+    XXVII The Voice in the Hurricane                               302
+   XXVIII The Man Who Did Not Forget                               316
+     XXIX Ghosts                                                   330
+      XXX The Lamp Relighted                                       344
+     XXXI Sangre De Cristo                                         359
+
+
+
+
+THE HEART OF THUNDER MOUNTAIN
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE FORBIDDEN PASTURE
+
+
+She sat hunched up in the middle of the silent pasture, where the
+tall, thin grass ran ripening before the breeze in waves the hue of
+burnished bronze. Her cow pony grazed greedily a few yards away,
+lifting his head now and then to gaze inquiringly at her, and then
+returning to his gluttony with a satisfied snort, commendatory of this
+long rest. The girl had removed her small sombrero to adjust the
+masses of tawny hair that had become disordered in her morning ride;
+and the breeze now played with it, and the sun sought out its glints
+of gold. She was fair, of a curiously rich complexion with soft golden
+tints beneath the skin, as if the rusty gold in her hair was just the
+outcropping of what ran in solution in her veins. And there was a
+certain air about her that contrasted strangely with the scene upon
+which she now gazed intently, with her head bent forward, and her
+hands clasped round her upthrust knees.
+
+It was a little valley she had come upon by chance, snugly tucked away
+among the hills. Below the bronze-colored slope there were lush
+meadows of a brilliant green, and a shallow, swift stream that
+flashed over black bowlders and white sand; beyond the meadows lay
+more shining pastures rising to pale-green aspen groves and then to
+dark-green pines; and above all these the foothills climbed swiftly to
+the mountains, and the mountains more swiftly to the sky. There were
+faint blue mists in the foothills, fainter violet shadows on the
+distant fields, an icy whiteness on the peaks; and in the sky no more
+than two small puffs of cloud like eiderdown adrift in the depths of
+blue. What at first had seemed an utter silence laid upon that summer
+landscape had now become, as she looked and listened, a silence full
+of sound; of that indefinable humming undertone of nature maturing in
+the sun; of insects busy at their harvest; of birds in the distance
+calling; of grasses rustling in the breeze; of pines on the long ridge
+droning like an organ in the Recessional.
+
+Yes, it was very beautiful, she thought. And sweet. And peaceful. She
+had come a long way--halfway across the great continent--to find that
+peace. But why should there be a touch of sadness in all that beauty?
+And why should there be need to search for her handkerchief to press
+against her eyes? For the first time since she had come to Paradise
+Park she felt a little lonely, a little doubtful about the wisdom of
+her brave revolt.
+
+She sank back at last, and lay curled up in the grass with her head
+pillowed on one bent arm. There, to her half-closed eyes, the grass
+seemed like a fairy forest, soon peopled by her fancy, the fancy of a
+girl who still retained the quick imagination of a child. An Indian
+paintbrush flamed at her with barbaric passion; nodding harebells
+tinkled purple melodies; and a Mariposa lily with a violet eye seemed
+like a knight in white armor, bowing himself into her outstretched
+hand. Her eyelids drooped more and more. The music of the pines and
+the murmur of the pasture blended in a faint and fading lullaby....
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+Tuesday's shrill neigh awakened her. She sat up shivering, for the
+warm air was underlaid with cold; and quivering, for the alarm had
+fallen pat upon the climax of her dream. She rubbed her eyes, a little
+blinded by the sunlight, and saw that Tuesday stood with head high and
+nostrils distended, gazing past her toward the upper end of the
+pasture. She was not surprised, being yet under the spell of her
+dream-fairyland, to see a horseman galloping straight toward her. If
+not the white knight, then--For some seconds she stared, awakening
+slowly; and smiled at length at her childish fancy. It was only a
+cowboy, doubtless, riding upon his own prosaic business. And yet--She
+became gradually aware of something unusual, something disquieting in
+the manner of the man's approach. The horse was leaping under the
+spurs; the rider sat upright and alert in the saddle; and suddenly, as
+she watched him, the man's hand went to his hip, and there was a gleam
+of metal in the sun.
+
+She was not afraid. Seth Huntington had assured her there was nothing
+to be feared in Paradise Park. But for all that, it was not without
+uneasiness that she hastily arranged the meager folds of her divided
+skirt, and passed her hands quickly over the still disordered masses
+of her hair. And then he was fairly upon her, reining up with a jerk
+that brought the sweating pony back upon its haunches.
+
+There was an angry glitter in the man's dark eyes, his face was black
+with passion, and the bright object she had seen flashing in his hand
+was the twin brother of Huntington's six-shooter. He was roughly, even
+meanly, dressed. His coarse blue flannel shirt was unbuttoned at the
+throat; his soiled brown corduroy trousers were thrust unevenly into
+dusty and wrinkled boot tops; his old, gray hat was slouched over one
+side of his forehead, shading his eyes. But the face beneath that
+faded and disreputable hat, as Marion saw with a slight thrill of
+curiosity, belonged to no ranch hand or cow-puncher. Whoever he might
+be, and whatever he might be doing there scowling at her, she felt at
+once that he was as foreign as herself to that neighborhood. But there
+was no time at that moment to analyze her feeling, to formulate her
+thought. And her next impression, following very swiftly, was one of
+vague antagonism. She felt that she was going to hate him.
+
+"What new trick is this?" he demanded angrily, when he had looked from
+the girl to her pony, and at her again, with unconcealed suspicion.
+
+For a moment she was undecided whether to answer him sharply or to
+rebuke his incivility with silence.
+
+"I don't know!" she replied at last, by way of compromise between her
+two impulses, with a half-playful emphasis on the "I," accompanied by
+a very solemn, shaking of the head and a very innocent widening of the
+eyes.
+
+There was a pause while he searched her face with a distrustful
+scrutiny.
+
+"You're not just the person I was looking for," he said finally, with
+a touch of irony.
+
+"How fortunate!" she replied, in a tone that was like a mocking echo
+of his own.
+
+Her eyes met his unflinchingly, a little impudently, telling him
+nothing; then they slowly fell, and rested on the revolver in his
+hand. With a shrug he thrust the weapon into its holster.
+
+"Thank you!" she said sweetly. "You really won't need it."
+
+He jerked his head impatiently.
+
+"How did you get in here?" he demanded, quite as roughly as before.
+
+There was no reason in the world why she should not have answered him
+simply and directly; but she did not. She was exasperated, not so much
+by his words as by his manner, and not so much by his manner even as
+by something provocative in the man himself. He was rude, but it was
+not his rudeness that most annoyed her. She scarcely knew what it
+was,--perhaps a certain indifference, a certain cold contempt that she
+detected underlying all his anger, a certain icy and impenetrable
+reserve that, for all his hot words, and for all his lowering looks,
+she resented most as being in some way personal to her. And instantly
+the minx in her rose up for mischief.
+
+"By aeroplane, of course!" she said tartly.
+
+It was a silly speech, and she regretted it almost before it had left
+her lips.
+
+A faint flush came into the enemy's face.
+
+"Spoken like a woman!" he retorted. "Always tragic over little things
+and flippant over big ones."
+
+That brought the color up into her face. But she was not subdued; for
+the cat in woman also has nine lives--at least.
+
+"There's my horse," she said, with a toss of her head. "You saw him."
+
+"True! But cow ponies don't easily jump four-wire fences."
+
+"Why should they when the fences are down?"
+
+"Good! We arrive by the devious ways that women love. Perhaps you'll
+give me the answer now that you should have given in the first place.
+_How did you get in here?_"
+
+She bit her lip, reflected a moment, and attempted a flank movement.
+
+"My name is Marion Gaylord."
+
+"I knew that."
+
+"But you have never seen me before!"
+
+"No. But that's one of Huntington's horses, and Miss Gaylord is a
+guest at his house. You see, I am more courteous than you after all. I
+answer your questions."
+
+"Perhaps I'll answer yours when I know what right you have to ask
+them."
+
+A light began to dawn upon him.
+
+"Do you mean--you don't know where you are?"
+
+"No."
+
+He gave her a long, searching look before he spoke again.
+
+"My name is Philip Haig," he said, leaning forward with a curious
+smile.
+
+The result was all that he could have wished for. Until that moment
+she had remained seated, firm in her determination not to be
+disturbed by him. But now she rose slowly to her feet, her face
+reddening, her lips parted, a frightened look in her eyes. The shoe
+was on the other foot, with a vengeance.
+
+He saw all this, and without compunction, seized his advantage.
+With a grim smile he threw the reins over the pony's head, swung
+himself out of the saddle, and stepped toward her. As he came on he
+removed his dilapidated hat with a gesture that made her forget it
+was dilapidated,--a mocking, insolent gesture though it was. In
+spite of her embarrassment she let none of his features escape her
+quickening interest. She saw that he was tall, erect, alert; handsome
+in some strange and half-repellent way, with his pale dark face,
+rather long in contour, and with his black, curly hair matted on
+the broad forehead. But she almost recoiled when, on his drawing
+nearer, she saw for the first time--it had been hidden by the shadow
+of his slouched hat--an ugly scar that ran from the outer corner of
+his left eye down to the jawbone below the ear. It gave to one
+side of his face a singularly sinister expression that vanished when
+he turned and disclosed a profile that was not without nobility
+and charm.
+
+Then suddenly her mystification was complete. Their eyes met, not as
+before, but very near, so close had he come to her, still smiling. And
+instantly, instinctively, she lowered hers; for she felt as if she had
+been caught peering through a window at something she had no right to
+see. Yet the next instant she was looking again, half-guiltily, but
+irresistibly drawn. The eyes were of a curious color,--smoky black, or
+dark gray-blue, or somber purple,--liquid and deep like a woman's,
+but with a steady, dull glow in their depths that was unlike anything
+she had ever seen or imagined. What was it that burned there?
+Suffering? Hunger? Evil? Sorrow? Shame? It gave her something to think
+about for many a day and night. Meanwhile--
+
+"I see you have heard of me," he said mockingly.
+
+She had no reply. She was realizing slowly that she had trespassed,
+that she had perhaps seriously compromised her cousin, and, most
+humiliating of all, that she had assumed quite the wrong attitude
+toward the man.
+
+"You really didn't know you were on my land?" he demanded, with a
+little less offensiveness in his tone.
+
+"No," she answered weakly.
+
+"And Huntington didn't send you here?"
+
+"No."
+
+"I believe you, of course. But it's rather queer. How did you
+happen--if you don't mind--"
+
+She did not mind in the least--was eager, indeed, to explain her
+presence there.
+
+"I'm just learning to ride," she began impulsively.
+
+"This was my first venture off the valley road, and I--"
+
+"And you came straight to me!" he exclaimed, chuckling.
+
+At that a strange thing happened. He had meant only that she, the
+guest and cousin of Seth Huntington, his bitter foe, had blundered
+straight into the camp of the enemy; and that was a rare joke on
+Huntington. But she was a girl; her little adventure was already rosy
+with romance; and the effect of his careless speech was as if he had
+looked into her heart, and read aloud for her something she had not
+known was there. To his surprise and wonder the girl's fair face
+turned red to the roots of her tawny hair, and a look of helpless
+confusion came into the clear, blue eyes that until now, for all her
+embarrassment, had frankly met his own. She looked suddenly away from
+him.
+
+"You make me ashamed," she said at length, stealing a look at him.
+
+"If you know anything about my difficulty with Huntington," he began,
+"you'll understand that--"
+
+"I do. I do understand!" she interrupted eagerly. "I don't know much
+about it--the trouble. They haven't told me. I've only overheard some
+talk--and I didn't ask. I rode down the valley this morning trying to
+do it like a cowboy. And there was a branch road--and then the break
+in the fence--and before I knew it I'd fallen asleep. That's
+all--except--" She shot a half-mischievous glance at him "--you
+spoiled a very beautiful dream."
+
+But this was all lost upon him. His face was clouding again.
+
+"Where is it--the break in the fence?"
+
+Chagrined at the failure of her bit of coquetry, she merely pointed in
+the direction whence she had come.
+
+"Thank you!" he said. "At last!"
+
+With that he went swiftly to his pony, mounted, and started to ride
+away. But suddenly he reined up again, whirled his horse savagely
+around, and faced Marion with the sunlight full upon the scarred side
+of his face, now ugly with menace.
+
+"If that fence has been cut," he said, in a hard and level tone, "it's
+been cut by Huntington or his men. You tell him for me, please--and
+you'll be doing _him_ a favor not to forget it--tell him that he's a
+fool to anger me. I've been very patient in this business, but I don't
+claim patience as one of my virtues. Do you hear? Tell him he's a fool
+to anger me!"
+
+She watched him gallop to the gap in the barb-wire fence; she watched
+him dismount to examine the severed wires; she watched him leap on his
+horse again, and ride furiously down the road until he was lost to
+view below the dip in the slope toward the valley. And still for some
+minutes she stood staring at the place where he had disappeared. Then,
+left alone with her pent-up emotions, she no longer resisted them.
+Tears of vexation started in her eyes; chagrin, resentment, anger
+swept over her in turn. She dug the heel of one small boot into the
+unoffending soil--his soil--and thrust her clenched hands down at her
+side.
+
+"Oh! Oh! Oh!" she cried, over and over again, striding forward and
+back across some yards of pasture, trampling lilies and harebells
+under her heedless feet, turning her flaming face at intervals toward
+the spot in the smiling landscape that had last held the figure of
+Philip Haig.
+
+The shame of it! She had never--never--never been treated so
+outrageously. It was unendurable--and she had endured it! She flung
+herself down on the ground and wept.
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+Marion was now facing life alone. Her nearest remaining relative was
+her cousin, Claire Huntington. Her mother--a Southern girl who might
+have stepped out of a panel by Fragonard, so fine and soft and
+Old-World-like was her beauty--had died when she was still a child.
+Her father, Doctor Gaylord, was the antithesis of the sprite-like
+creature he had married,--a big, athletic, outdoor sort of man, with
+truly violent red hair and beard, whose favorite expression about
+himself had been that a very capable pirate had been sacrificed to
+make a tolerable physician. But he had prospered in his profession;
+and then had died with amazing suddenness, leaving his estate in an
+almost hopeless mess.
+
+Robert Hillyer had tackled the problem,--Robert, the alert, the
+busy, the supremely confident, the typical money-getter of the
+money-worshipping metropolis. He had long been deeply in love with
+Marion, but he had not made great headway in his suit, despite the
+advantage of Doctor Gaylord's approval. Now, having saved enough out
+of the estate (for so he said, though he never told Marion the
+details of that miracle) to provide her with an income barely
+sufficient to keep her in comfort but not in the luxury to which she
+had been accustomed, he plainly expected his reward. And this was to
+Marion an intolerable situation. She did not love Robert. She liked
+him, admired him, trusted him; no more. Knowing her father's wishes,
+she saw the way marked straight before her; for Robert already had
+wealth, and could and would give her all the material things she
+desired. Time and again she was on the point of yielding, but
+something checked her, held her back, as if a voice had whispered
+in her ear, and strong arms had seized her. She grew restless,
+discontented, melancholy. And suddenly, on a moment's inspiration, the
+strangest impulse she had ever known, she had revolted and fled from
+the scene of her unhappiness, telling Robert (by letter) only that
+she must have time to think, and that for six months he must leave
+her to herself. She had fled to Claire, that cousin on her father's
+side, who some years before, to the wonder and chagrin of many
+Gaylords east and west,--to all except the Viking physician, who
+had rejoiced in her spirit,--had eloped with a cowboy, since turned
+successful cattleman, whom she had met at the Denver Carnival. Ten
+days now had Marion been in Paradise Park, rejoicing in her
+freedom, rejoicing in the half-wild life, rejoicing in the tonic
+air and the tonic beauty of this Rocky Mountain valley, shut in,
+isolated, and so aptly named. And only to-day had there come any
+emotions that disturbed her peace.
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+When she looked up again her eyes were sharply arrested by a scene
+that seemed curiously to picture her own mood. Far up at the head
+of the valley a cloud that was scarcely heavier than a mist came
+stealing out of a gulch to take its shining way along the range of
+mountains. Dropping in its flight a shower as light as a bridal veil,
+it sped glistening across the face of mountain after mountain,
+softening the stark grays and reds, while above it the peaks gleamed
+white. On and on it came until at last it arrived at the mouth of a
+deep, dark gorge in the side of a mountain that, in its strange and
+forbidding aspect, differed notably from all the others in the
+majestic range. There it paused as if arrested by some stern command,
+hung for a moment in palpable agitation, and was swiftly swallowed
+up in the gorge. And again she had a vague and uneasy feeling, as
+she had when first she saw it, that Thunder Mountain,--but she could
+not fit that feeling into thought, could find no words to frame it.
+Yet she was fascinated.
+
+It was half-hidden now in surging, black storm-clouds, while all the
+sharp and snow-clad peaks around it glittered in the sun. Even in
+those rare moments when it was freed from clouds and mists it stood
+alone in its peculiar grandeur. Unlike all the others it wore no
+diadem of snow. Some terrible convulsion of nature, some cataclysm at
+its birth or in the fiery days of its youth, had left it bald-headed,
+ugly, and deformed. But for that catastrophe it would have been far
+loftier than any of its fellows; and even now the hunchback towered
+among them, its flat head level with their pointed peaks, the most
+conspicuous figure in the imposing pageant raised against the western
+sky.
+
+And its deformity was not the whole of its misfortune. It bore the
+brunt of every tempest that broke upon that massive barrier of
+mountains. Its granite head was the very breeding-place of storms. The
+peaks around it had their days of calm, but Thunder Mountain never. An
+hour or two perhaps--no more. It knew no peace. The elements were, and
+are now, and forever will be quarreling upon its worn and battered
+head; lightning and rain and snow and wind are forever hammering and
+beating it turn by turn. It is the Quasimodo and the Lear and the Gray
+Friar of mountains, all in one. And if, on some still and perfect day,
+its tonsured head emerges from the clouds, the watcher in the Park has
+but to turn his head a moment, and look again, and lo! it wears its
+gray cowl as before, and stoops growling and grumbling under its
+endless punishment.
+
+Suddenly, as Marion looked, the silence was rudely shattered. Roll on
+roll of thunder swept across the valley, crashed against the hills,
+rebounded from wall to wall of mountains, until all the Park was
+filled with the sullen bellowing. And then, amid all the tumult,
+Marion heard something more,--a voice that mingled with the voice of
+the mountain, and thrilled her while it filled her with a singular
+disquietude. She had dismissed Haig from her thoughts. She was sure of
+that. And yet through all the uproar, and in the tense silence that
+ensued, she heard his taunting voice:
+
+"And you came straight to me!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE ROAD TO PARADISE
+
+
+The gap in the fence remained exactly as it had been when it invited
+her to adventure. But now she halted there, dismounted, and picked up
+the end of a wire that lay trailing on the ground. With new-found
+interest she examined the fracture, and stared at it in wonder.
+Dropping it, and kneeling excitedly in the grass, she searched
+another, and still another wire, and with the same result. Even to her
+unpractised eye the facts were plain: the four wires had not been
+broken; they had been cleanly cut, and very recently, as shown by the
+absence of rust on the severed ends. By whom? And why? Seth
+Huntington, Haig had said. Impossible! Absurd! True, she had heard
+Seth denouncing him; Claire also; and without knowing the cause of the
+feud, or caring, she had learned that Huntington and Haig were
+bitterly at odds about something,--cattle, she thought, or was it
+land? But that Seth could have stooped to the low trick implied in
+these cut wires! And yet--
+
+She looked down the half-made road by which Haig had disappeared. It
+was quite empty now, save for Tuesday and herself. Nor was there sight
+of man or beast in all the valley. Haig's cattle, like Seth's and the
+other ranchmen's, were grazing in the summer pastures, no doubt in
+little shut-in valleys far up among the pines yonder, where the
+violet mists were deepening.
+
+She mounted her horse again, and rode slowly up the hill. But just
+where the road entered the woods at the summit of the ridge she
+stopped once more, and turned for a last look at her lost valley. Her
+gaze swept it lovingly from where, at her left, the long ridge shut
+off the view, to where, far at her right, the valley narrowed into a
+pine-screened gulch; and back again almost to the spot where the road
+dipped and disappeared. There her eyes were suddenly caught by
+something she had not seen before,--a thin spiral of blue smoke that
+mounted slowly until it was struck and dissipated by the breeze from
+across the ridge. Haig's ranchhouse, surely, nestling below the hill!
+The house would be visible, doubtless, from the place where Haig had
+vanished from her sight. What would it be like? she wondered.
+
+The next instant she had pulled her pony half-around toward the
+valley. But Tuesday turned his head, and looked at her; and she felt
+the blood rushing into her face.
+
+"Go on, Tuesday!" she cried, jerking him back into the road. "What are
+you doing?"
+
+She rode on into the pines, embarrassed beyond all belief.
+
+In a few minutes she had emerged again from the woods, descended the
+hill, and regained the main-traveled road along the Brightwater.
+Still she rode slowly, forgetting that she had learned at last to
+ride like a cowboy. She was reluctant to return to Huntington's,
+reluctant to relate her experiences as she had always related them
+until to-day. Haig had sent a warning to Huntington. It was her
+duty to deliver it. But how could she tell just so much and no more?
+There would be questions. She would be cross-examined, kindly enough
+but relentlessly. And in some strange way this meeting had become a
+private matter; Haig's warning was inextricably mixed with other
+things that did not concern Huntington. Just what these were, and why
+they were so very private, she could not quite explain to herself;
+and for the moment she did not try. They were things to be thought
+about later, when she could think more clearly. She knew only that
+she should never be able to endure either the banter or the
+disapproval of Huntington. What did Claire see in him anyhow,--the
+soft and sensitive Claire, with her blue eyes and her pretty face
+always upturned so trustfully to him? For the first time she realized
+that she had distrusted Seth from the beginning.
+
+In the midst of these confused and disconcerting thoughts, she became
+aware that she was no longer alone in the highway. Slowly as she rode,
+she was steadily overtaking a group of horsemen that appeared to be in
+difficulties. At intervals there was a commotion in the group, and
+clouds of dust from time to time concealed it from her sight. She
+reined up Tuesday, and hesitated, having had her fill of adventure for
+one day. Then, as the men seemed to be quite oblivious to her
+presence, and deeply absorbed in their own affair, curiosity drew her
+onward; and all her scruples were forgotten when she had ridden near
+enough to see the cause of the disturbance.
+
+Three men on cow ponies were leading, driving, and avoiding a fourth
+horse, which was not a cow pony by any possible extension of the
+word. This horse, which wore neither saddle nor bridle, but only a
+rope around his neck, maintained an almost uninterrupted struggle with
+his guards. At the first near glimpse she caught of him through the
+dust, Marion uttered an exclamation of surprise and admiration. He was
+larger than the ponies ridden by the men, larger than any cow pony,
+yet not a big horse measured by any standard with which she was
+familiar. His lines were like those of a thoroughbred, and in his
+movements, for all his fury, there was a lightness, a daintiness, an
+eloquence that suggested nothing so much as the airy grace of a young
+girl skipping and dancing across a playground.
+
+But it was his color especially that drew the cry from Marion's lips.
+This was pale yellow, not the cream color of the familiar buckskin
+breed, but something golden; of a brilliant luster like gold leaf, but
+softer; rather like cloth-of-gold, with a living, quivering sheen. All
+the horse's body was of this uniform, strange tint, but his mane and
+tail were a dull, tawny yellow deepening at the extremities into the
+hue of rusty gold. Though his hide was streaked with the sweat of his
+rebellion, and caked in places with the dust of the long road he had
+come, and welted by the whips of his tormentors, the color and the
+gloss shone out as undimmed as his proud spirit was undaunted by the
+hard knocks of his captivity.
+
+The three men clearly were hard pressed. Their faces were coated thick
+with dust; their eyes were red-rimmed, bulging, and bloodshot; their
+movements were heavy with fatigue. Scarcely a sound escaped their lips
+as they watched for every fresh manoeuver of their prisoner, and
+fought doggedly to gain a yard or two along the road. In the silence
+and intensity of the struggle there was something savage, elemental,
+and incomparable, heightened by the extraordinary beauty of the animal
+and the uncouth appearance of the men. Between them, the captive and
+his captors, Marion's sympathy was about equally divided. At every
+gallant sally made by the horse her heart leaped, and she hoped
+instinctively that he would go free. But then, the next instant, she
+was thrilled by the bold and shrewd counter-play of the cow-punchers
+that blocked the horse's strategy.
+
+Marion had scarcely comprehended all this, and imperfectly, when a
+terrifying thing occurred. The golden horse seemed to have paused and
+gathered all his forces for an effort that should make his best
+previous performance look like the silly antics of a colt. Suddenly,
+and without any warning manoeuver, he charged the full length of his
+rope straight at the man who held it coiled in his hand, with the end
+looped around the horn of his saddle. At the final bound, he reared as
+if to fall upon the cowboy and mangle him with his forefeet. But
+instead of finishing this attack, he whirled on his hind legs with
+incredible swiftness; and before the man could gather up the slack of
+the rope, or brace himself for the shock, the wild horse dashed across
+the road with all the strength and fury there was in him.
+
+Marion screamed, and closed her eyes. There were dreadful sounds of
+falling bodies, of bodies dragged on the ground, with grunts and
+groans and smothered cries. Then silence. When she dared to look she
+could see at first only a welter of men and horses half-hidden by the
+dust. Near her lay the gold horse with his head twisted backward by
+the taut rope, which choked him until his eyes bulged, and foam
+dripped from his lips. The man who had held the lariat lay half under
+his fallen pony, whose efforts to rise were checked by the tightened
+rope still tied to the saddlebow. The two other men were on their
+feet, one clutching the straightened halter, the second deftly
+slipping a lariat around the prisoner's pawing hind legs.
+
+It was all over in a minute. The taut rope was cut near the saddle of
+the fallen pony, which then scrambled to its feet; the leader rose,
+shook himself, and proceeded phlegmatically to adjust the turned
+saddle, and to climb stiffly into it; the leading-rope was passed to
+him again, the second lariat was loosed from the outlaw's feet,
+permitting him to rise; the other men remounted; and the procession
+moved on again in silence, scarcely a word having been spoken from the
+time the horse made his mad charge for liberty. And now he seemed to
+have had enough of the conflict, for he stepped forward obediently
+and, Marion fancied, as demurely as a child that has finished a
+naughty tantrum.
+
+Then at last there was speech. One of the men had dropped back a few
+paces to be in the rear of the prisoner. He sat heavily in the saddle,
+leaning forward as if he would fall on the pony's neck. But his eyes
+never left the golden horse, and when he spoke it was not to the girl,
+who had ridden close up to his side, but to himself, in a kind of
+hoarse and guttural soliloquy.
+
+"But he ain't done. He's foolin'," the man said again and again, as if
+he had started the words and could not stop them. "He ain't done. He's
+foolin'."
+
+Marion looked at him curiously. He was the typical cow-puncher, in
+blue flannel shirt and leather chaps, with the inevitable revolver
+hanging loosely at his hip, and a long quirt suspended from his right
+wrist. The dust on his face was stained with blood that had flowed
+from a raw bruise on his temple, and Marion now noticed that his left
+arm hung limp at his side.
+
+"You're hurt!" she said softly.
+
+The man turned, and stared at her blankly, and she saw that his face
+was distorted into a set expression of pain.
+
+"Arm busted," he said, after a moment, as if surprised by her
+question; and then renewed his watch.
+
+"How did it happen?" she asked.
+
+"Throwed me."
+
+"You don't mean you tried to ride him!"
+
+"Jerked me. Th' man ain't born't c'n ride 'im."
+
+"You were leading him?"
+
+"No, just thought I was," he said grimly. "He drug me."
+
+"When was that?"
+
+"This morning--about seven miles back."
+
+"Where did he come from?"
+
+"San Luis."
+
+"Where is that, please?"
+
+"Over yander," he answered, nodding toward the western mountains.
+
+Marion stared.
+
+"You haven't brought him over the mountains!"
+
+"'Round by Pinto Pass, an' up through the canyon."
+
+"I've never seen a horse like that before," she said, after a brief
+silence.
+
+"Nor anybody else has," he replied, with a note of pride.
+
+"But he's no cow pony--surely."
+
+"You ain't never heard o' Sunnysides?"
+
+"No."
+
+He looked at her curiously.
+
+"Of course not," he said apologetically. "You're f'm the city. East,
+maybe?"
+
+"Yes, I'm from New York."
+
+"Then it's natch'ral. Everybody in these parts has heard o'
+Sunnysides, though it's not many that's seen him."
+
+"Please tell me about him."
+
+The man's eyes brightened a little.
+
+"He's got some strange blood in him," he began. "Nobody knows what it
+is, but th' ain't another one o' that color, nor his devil spirit, in
+the whole bunch. The rest of 'em's just ordinary wild horses runnin'
+up an' down the sandhills of the San Luis. There's people't say he's a
+ghost horse. Fact! An' they say't he'll never stay caught. I don't
+know. It's certain't he's been caught three times,--not countin' the
+times cow-punchers an' others has thought they'd caught him, but
+hadn't. The first time he was caught actual he broke out o' the
+strongest corral in the San Luis--at night--an' nobody sees hide nor
+hair of 'im--not so much as a flicker o' yellow in the moonlight. An'
+back he was, headin' the herd again.
+
+"Nex' time Thad Brinker ropes him. Thad's the topnotch cow-puncher
+between the Black Hills an' the Rio Grande, an' he comes all the way
+f'm Dakoty when he hears the yarn about Sunnysides. Thad gits
+fourteen men to help him round up the bunch, an' then he ropes the
+gold feller after a fight that's talked about yit in the San Luis. He
+ropes him. An' then what does Brinker do?"
+
+He looked at Marion as if he dared her to make as many guesses as she
+wished. She shook her head.
+
+"You ain't the only one that'd never hit it," he went on with
+satisfaction. "Thad ropes him, an' while they lay there restin',
+Sunnysides all tied up so he can't move, an' Brinker rubbin' some
+bumps he'd come by in the fracas, just then the red comes up onto
+Sangre de Cristo. Brinker sees it--Ever seen the sunset color on
+Sangre de Cristo? No? That's a pity, Miss. Indeed, that's a pity. But
+you're f'm Noo York, you said."
+
+He paused again, and Marion began to realize the full degree of her
+provinciality and ignorance. She was from New York. What a pity!
+
+"Well," said the cowboy, as if resolved to do the best he could in the
+circumstances, "sometimes--maybe three or four times a year--it's
+weird. It's religious. The white peaks turn red as blood--that's why
+they're called Sangre de Cristo. It's Spanish for Blood of Christ. It
+makes you feel queer-like"--He paused a moment thoughtfully, watching
+the golden horse as it stepped quietly, lightly, with head high, just
+ahead of them. "The red comes onto Sangre de Cristo, an' Brinker sees
+it. He looks at the blood on the peaks, an' then at the gold horse
+lyin' there all torn an' dirty, an' this is what Brinker does, an'
+maybe he couldn't help it. He ups an' cuts the ropes, an' Sunnysides's
+off to his waitin' bunch, an' they all go snortin' down the valley."
+
+There was a touch of awe in the man's voice, and Marion felt a little
+of it too. She looked toward the serrated barrier of mountains, in the
+very middle of which stood old Thunder under his pall of cloud. Beyond
+lay San Luis--Sangre de Cristo--and what romance! Would she ever--Her
+eyes rested for a moment on the black pile that now, as always,
+fascinated and yet disturbed her.
+
+"And you?" she said at length, turning to the cowboy.
+
+"There wasn't no red sunset this time," the man answered, with a grim
+smile. "But we ain't slep' since," he added, with a return of
+weariness.
+
+"You caught him?" she asked admiringly.
+
+"Us three."
+
+"But what are you doing with him here?"
+
+"He's sold, if we c'n find the man't offered a thousand for him a year
+ago."
+
+"Who was he?"
+
+But she knew already. Some swift flash of intuition told her there was
+but one man in Paradise Park who--
+
+"His name's Haig, an' he's--"
+
+"Philip Haig!" she murmured.
+
+"You know him?"
+
+"Yes--no. That is, I've heard of him."
+
+It was on her lips,--the explanation that the men had passed the
+branch road leading to Haig's ranch, that they were now riding away
+from it. But she hesitated. And why? She did not know then; but an
+hour later she would be reproaching herself bitterly for that moment's
+indecision. The words were almost spoken, but something checked them;
+and before she could make up her mind to follow her first natural
+impulse it was too late.
+
+The leader of the party turned in his saddle, and called to the man at
+Marion's side, who rode quickly forward and joined his companions.
+There was a conversation inaudible to her ears, and while she still
+pondered over her inexplicable hesitation the cowboys and the golden
+horse, followed by Marion, approached the group of squat, unpainted
+houses that bore without apology the name of Paradise.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+SETH HUNTINGTON'S OPPORTUNITY
+
+
+It was Thursday, the one day of the week when Paradise needed no
+apologist. For on Thursdays the stage arrived from Tellurium, bringing
+the mail and, now and then, a passenger, and always a whiff of the
+outside world. No resident of Paradise Park would willingly have
+missed the arrival of the stage; and on this occasion fully two-thirds
+of the male population, with nine-tenths of the female, had already
+assembled. But the stage was not due for an hour or more. The women
+bargained and gossiped in Thompson's store; the men, most of them,
+were gathered around a stiff game of freeze-out in the Square Deal
+Saloon; and only the score or more of saddle horses hitched in front
+of the store, and the dozen or so of buckboards and road wagons parked
+in the rear of it, showed that Paradise was in its weekly state of
+mild and patient expectancy.
+
+So the three cow-punchers, the yellow horse, and Marion rode into
+Paradise without being seen or heard, and halted in front of the
+post-office.
+
+"Hal-lo! Hallo!" sang out the leader of the cowboys. And then, with
+the petulance of one that is "all in": "Is this a dam' graveyard?"
+
+A thin man in his shirt sleeves, with a whisky glass in one hand and a
+towel in the other, came to the door of the Square Deal Saloon. His
+pallid face had the look of settled weariness that is characteristic
+of keepers of such oases. Slavin had never, within the recollection of
+the oldest frequenter of his establishment, betrayed the slightest
+interest in anything. If there was a certain change in his expression
+as he looked out between narrowed eyelids into the garish sunlight it
+was one indicative of mild resentment at having been disturbed in his
+methodic occupation behind the bar. He saw with neither interest nor
+anticipation the three strangers, who ought to have had enough sense
+to dismount and walk in if they wanted anything.
+
+"Well," he began in a drawling and sarcastic tone, "what--"
+
+It probably would have been a cautious and covered insult to the
+presumed intelligence of the strangers, if he had finished the
+question. But it died away on his thin lips. His fishy, blue eyes had
+caught at last the gleam of Sunnysides, half in eclipse behind the
+dull-hued cow ponies. For a few seconds he stared, while his mouth
+stood open, and his features slowly responded to the first emotion he
+had felt in years.
+
+"Hell's bobcats!" he yelled.
+
+The glass slipped from his hand, and fell tinkling in pieces on the
+floor as he lunged out into the road.
+
+In the saloon there was a moment of tense silence as the men there
+slowly realized that a phenomenon had occurred. Slavin was excited!
+The silence was followed by a hubbub of raised voices and a racket of
+overturned chairs and the scrape and thud of boots on the sanded
+floor. At that instant a woman in a pink calico dress, drawn by
+Slavin's yell, came to the door of Thompson's, and promptly screeched.
+The poker game was never finished; Thompson's trade was ruined for
+the day; and the strange group in the roadway became the center of a
+jostling, uproarious crowd of men and women, who alternately bombarded
+the three cow-punchers with questions and stared at Sunnysides in
+silent wonder. But they were careful to maintain a respectful distance
+between themselves and the formidable captive, though he stood
+motionless amid all the uproar, like a golden statue of a horse, with
+his head raised proudly, his yellow-black eyes flashing defiance and
+suspicion, and his lustrous hide gleaming in the sun.
+
+Marion's enjoyment of this exciting scene was tinged with a vague
+uneasiness. She had watched the men come tumbling out of the Square
+Deal Saloon and the women swarming from Thompson's store, and had felt
+a curious relief at seeing neither Seth nor Claire among them.
+Though she could not have given any reason for her satisfaction,
+their absence, and Seth's especially, seemed to her a piece of rare
+good fortune. Haig's warning--"Tell him he's a fool to anger
+me!"--was still echoing at the back of her brain; her recent act
+of incomprehensible errancy still troubled and perplexed her; and
+try as she would, she was unable to suppress the feeling that she had
+become inextricably entangled in the feud between Haig and Huntington.
+She was not yet ready to face Huntington. Thank Heaven, he was not
+there!
+
+But at the very instant of her self-congratulation, and when she was
+just turning her attention again to the hubbub around the golden
+outlaw, her eye was suddenly caught, across the heads of the crowd, by
+a figure that caused her to stiffen in the saddle.
+
+"Seth!" she gasped.
+
+He came striding rapidly from the direction of the blacksmith's, the
+most distant of the group of buildings,--a large and heavy but
+well-built man, whose black, short-cropped beard and bushy,
+overhanging eyebrows gave him a somewhat truculent expression, which
+was heightened by his rough and domineering demeanor. He was better
+dressed, or more carefully at least, than any of the other men. He
+wore a coat and trousers of dark-brown corduroy, a light-gray flannel
+shirt with a flowing black tie, and a wide-brimmed Stetson hat. His
+belt, under the unbuttoned coat, was of elaborately stamped leather,
+with a pocket at one side from which a heavy, gold watch chain was
+looped to a silver ring, and with an ornate holster at the other where
+the black butt of a revolver was visible as he moved.
+
+He shouldered his way through the crowd in the heedless manner of most
+bulky men, who seldom realize how much space they take that properly
+belongs to others. At six feet from the golden horse he halted, and
+surveyed him with shining eyes.
+
+"Sunnysides, eh?" he said, turning toward the nearest of the
+strangers.
+
+"The's only one," replied the cow-puncher.
+
+"Who caught him this time?"
+
+"Us three. That's Jim Raley, with the busted arm. That other is Jud
+Smith, My name's Larkin. We belong to the X bar O outfit on Lost
+Soldier Creek."
+
+"Second outfit below Forty-Mile," said Huntington, familiarly.
+
+"Right!"
+
+"Sanders still foreman?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then what are you doing with that horse up here?"
+
+The cow-puncher grinned.
+
+"I ketch your meanin'," he replied. "It's like this. Sanders chased
+Sunnysides three seasons, an' thought he'd roped him. But all he gits
+'s a cracked leg, an' not a yeller hair of the slippery beast. Then us
+three takes on the job--not presumin' to be better'n Sanders, but
+hopin' for luck. It comes our way, an' there you are. We offer him to
+Sanders--for a price, natch'rally--but he says he don't believe in
+ghosts, an' we c'n go to hell with him."
+
+"You must have missed the road. This is Paradise," said Huntington.
+
+The crowd roared its appreciation.
+
+"The' ain't much in names," observed Larkin testily.
+
+The crowd laughed again, though, of course, less heartily.
+
+"Well, Heaven or Hell," said Huntington, "is the horse for sale?"
+
+"He is--if he ain't sold already."
+
+"How's that?"
+
+"We're offered a price for him--if it still holds good. That's why
+we've come to Paradise--an' no other reason, believe me!"
+
+"How much?"
+
+"Thousand."
+
+There was a stir in the crowd.
+
+"That's some price for a bronco," said Huntington, with an assumed
+indifference.
+
+"It sure is--if you're talkin' about a _bronco_," retorted the
+cow-puncher.
+
+There was a brief silence, in which all eyes were turned again upon
+the golden horse, standing motionless but alert, as if keenly alive to
+all that passed. The common ponies around him stamped, and champed
+their bits, and moved restlessly in their places, but Sunnysides
+remained calm and observant, with all the dignity and contempt of a
+captive patrician in a crowd of yokels.
+
+Marion saw admiration and desire growing in Seth's eyes, and knew that
+her foreboding had not been without reason.
+
+"And who's paying a thousand dollars for him?" asked Huntington.
+
+"Haig's his name, Philip Haig," answered Larkin. "Know him?"
+
+If Larkin had been a little nettled by the levity of the Paradisians
+he now had his revenge, though much to his surprise, in the
+extraordinary effect produced by his simple announcement. The smiles
+faded from the faces assembled around him; significant glances were
+exchanged; and there followed a silence so deep that the murmur of the
+Brightwater could be heard quite clearly across the meadows. Then
+there was a rustling movement in the crowd, and every face, as if by a
+common impulse, or at a given signal, was turned toward Huntington.
+
+Marion was not sure of the feelings of the others, but there could be
+no mistake in what she read in Huntington's black countenance. She was
+not only frightened, but surprised and pained. For all his coarseness
+and crudity, she had until to-day believed him to be innately gentle,
+with only a rough and ungracious exterior. She had seen him always
+tender with Claire, whom undoubtedly he loved with all the best there
+was in him. But now she perceived the other side of his character,
+which she had indeed divined at first, but which she had firmly, on
+account of Claire, refused to acknowledge. An unworthy passion glowed
+in his eyes; his features were distorted by an expression of mingled
+cunning and hate; and his head somehow seemed to sink lower between
+his shoulders as he leaned slightly forward, studying the face of the
+cow-puncher. Then swiftly he took himself in hand, and masked his
+passions under an air of careless badinage that was, for the moment,
+suited to his purpose.
+
+"But I don't just understand," he drawled insinuatingly. "Haig hasn't
+been away from the Park lately--unless he's gone an' come by night."
+
+A snicker or two, and one loud guffaw rewarded him for this insult to
+his absent foe. But Marion felt the color rising to her cheeks.
+
+"It's a year ago he's seen him, 'way off, shinin' in the sun,"
+explained Larkin. "He stops at the X bar O, an' says he'll give a
+thousand for him."
+
+"So that's all you've got to go on, is it?" sneered Huntington.
+
+"Yes," answered Larkin uneasily.
+
+"An' you think he'll make good, do you?"
+
+"If a man's word ain't good he don't stay in this country long, does
+he?"
+
+"That's right--he won't stay long!" replied Huntington, with a savage
+laugh.
+
+"You mean to say--" queried Larkin pointedly, leaning across the neck
+of his pony, and looking keenly into Huntington's eyes.
+
+"Nothing," answered Huntington, lifting his huge shoulders.
+
+"That's sayin' a lot an' sayin' nothing," retorted Larkin.
+
+"You'll know more when you try to collect that thousand."
+
+"All right," responded Larkin, gathering up the reins as if to
+terminate the interview. "Where's his place--if it ain't a secret?"
+
+"It's over beyond that ridge," said Huntington, pointing toward the
+west. "You go back about three miles the way you came, an' there's a
+branch road--"
+
+"Hell!" snorted the cowboy whose arm hung limp at his side.
+
+The three men exchanged glances. They were very weary; they had used
+almost the last of their powers to bring the outlaw this far; and they
+were plainly reluctant to undertake another tussle with the tireless
+animal, now ready, without doubt, to renew his struggle for liberty.
+
+Huntington watched them narrowly.
+
+"I'm all in!" grumbled Raley.
+
+"You look it," said Huntington. Then he added lightly: "Still, you
+ought to fetch up at Haig's place before morning."
+
+Marion felt disgust and resentment rising in her at this misrepresentation
+of the distance to Haig's ranch. Whatever Haig had done, this was
+cowardly and unfair. She looked eagerly at the other men, expecting to
+hear some one correct the gross exaggeration. But the faces were all
+blank, and no one spoke.
+
+Something like a groan escaped from the lips of the injured cowboy. He
+looked as if he might tumble from the saddle at any instant.
+
+"Sure we can!" said Larkin doggedly. "Come, men! Let's move on."
+
+"Well, good luck!" said Huntington carelessly. And then, as if on
+second thought: "But see here! You fellows look all right to me, and
+if Haig's changed his mind, or hasn't got the cash handy, bring the
+horse back here, and I'll talk business with you."
+
+"Talk business now!" Smith blurted out, averting his eyes from
+Larkin.
+
+"Very well. I'll give you five hundred for him--if you don't want to
+go any farther. He ain't worth it, but he's a kind of a curiosity,
+and--"
+
+"That ain't talkin' business worth a dam'!" cried Larkin. "Come along,
+men!"
+
+He turned his pony's head, and took a fresh grip on the halter that
+held the prisoner. Smith moved also, though slowly, but Raley did not
+budge.
+
+"I'm damned if I go any further!" he growled.
+
+Smith stopped, and looked uncertainly from Raley to Larkin, from
+Larkin to Huntington, who was studying him craftily.
+
+"The five hundred isn't wind," said Huntington sneeringly. "It's over
+there in Thompson's safe, if you want it."
+
+"We'll see Haig first," said Larkin, compressing his lips, and
+speaking more to his companions than to Huntington.
+
+Smith shifted uneasily in his saddle, while Raley avoided Larkin's
+eyes, and looked appealingly at Huntington. The ranchman, in his
+turn, took a sidelong glance, furtive and questioning, at the faces of
+his neighbors. The moment was critical, and much more was involved in
+the crisis than the possession of the golden outlaw. For a long time
+Huntington had assumed a certain leadership in the Park, but it had
+not always been unquestioned. His qualifications for leadership were
+not as apparent to all his neighbors as they were to himself, and
+there were some who even resented his pretensions. Nevertheless he
+had, in a way, succeeded; and he had been permitted to represent the
+entire valley as far as he liked in the war with Philip Haig. One and
+all, indeed, regarded Haig as an intruder; many of them had more than
+once threatened violence against him; and there was not among them one
+whom Haig, if he had wanted a defender, could have counted on. Yet,
+for all that, Huntington was practically alone in the depth of his
+hatred and the violence of his methods. If Haig had no friends in the
+Park, he had only a few, perhaps no more than two or three, inveterate
+enemies, of whom Huntington was the active representative.
+
+Huntington now saw in the faces of the men around him that they were
+doubtful of him, and that the time was opportune to turn their
+passivity into energetic support of his plans. Moreover, he had
+already "put his foot in it," had gone too far to withdraw without
+discredit. Having openly insulted the absent enemy, and having clearly
+revealed his intention to cheat him of this prize, to weaken now would
+be to abandon forever all hope of ascendency. For an instant he
+regretted what he had done, and cursed himself under his breath.
+Then, taking a new grip on himself, he returned to the attack.
+
+"Seven hundred and fifty, then!" he said with a swagger. "And it's
+cash, not words."
+
+There was a moment of suspense. The three men, who were moving slowly
+away, turned in their saddles. Not a muscle quivered, not a foot
+stirred in the expectant crowd. Marion felt that in another minute she
+would cry out, shrieking at Seth, shrieking the warning Haig had sent
+by her.
+
+"That's good enough, for me!" declared Raley, throwing the reins over
+his pony's head, and preparing painfully to dismount.
+
+"No, Jim!" cried Smith. "Let him say a thousand, an' I'm with you.
+'Tain't exactly on the square, but the's no use killin' ourselves
+for--"
+
+His speech was cut short by a shrill cry from a woman who stood on a
+horse block at the outer edge of the crowd.
+
+"Look! Look!" she called, pointing a finger toward the long white
+road.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE HIGHEST BIDDER
+
+
+Far up the road appeared a little cloud of dust with a black speck in
+its center.
+
+A murmur ran through the crowd; a name was passed from mouth to mouth;
+and the men nearest Huntington began to edge away instinctively,
+leaving a larger and larger space clear around him and the three
+cow-punchers.
+
+Marion too looked, and understood. She had not dismounted, but still
+sat her pony within ten feet of the outlaw, at the side of the
+roadway, in about the middle of which stood Huntington. With an effort
+she drew her eyes away from that ominous black spot in the distance,
+and turned toward Seth. A shiver ran through her body, but her cheeks
+burned, and there was a voice in her ears that shouted, "Tell him he's
+a fool to anger me!" For a moment she was on the point of rushing upon
+Seth, and shrieking that warning into his face. But now it was too
+late.
+
+Like all the others Huntington stood for a few seconds fascinated by
+that figure in the puff of dust. And for just those few seconds there
+was a certain unsteadiness in his attitude, irresolution in the black
+eyes beneath their bushy brows. But the blue-whiteness under the dark
+beard was not the pallor of fear, so called. Seth Huntington was as
+incapable of physical cowardice as he was of moral courage. He was not
+afraid of Philip Haig, but he was dreadfully afraid of being thought
+afraid of him. There was yet time to avoid a clash with Haig, to
+withdraw from an undertaking in which he knew he was wholly in the
+wrong. But he was not equal to that test of character. He would sooner
+tackle all the Haigs in Christendom than face the derision of his
+neighbors, whom he had assiduously taught to expect great things of
+him on the first occasion. Here was the occasion; he had seized it,
+blinded by passion; and there was no way for him now but to see it
+through. He straightened up, and faced the three cow-punchers.
+
+"All right!" he cried defiantly. "It's a thousand."
+
+But the three had heard the name murmured by the crowd, had seen the
+distant horseman. Larkin was plainly elated. Raley and Smith, as
+plainly abashed, looked this way and that, avoiding the eyes of their
+leader, and every other eye as well. Huntington, seeing the game about
+to slip from his hands, whirled on his heel and looked swiftly toward
+the store.
+
+"Thompson!" he yelled.
+
+"Here!" was the answer, as a small, gray-bearded man in shirt sleeves
+advanced a step or two from the door.
+
+"Fetch me that roll from your safe, will you?"
+
+"Right!"
+
+As Thompson disappeared within the store, Huntington turned again
+toward the cowboys.
+
+"A thousand dollars--cash!" he repeated.
+
+Larkin leaned forward on his horse, and looked at him shrewdly.
+
+"Seems to me it's not the horse you're after so much as him," he said,
+with a grin and a nod toward the road.
+
+"That's as may be," retorted Huntington. "Money talks."
+
+"An' it says mighty funny things sometimes," replied Larkin, who now
+made no concealment of his dislike of Huntington and his "game."
+
+"We'll see!" cried Huntington angrily. "How does twelve hundred sound
+to you two?"
+
+He looked steadily at Raley and Smith, who exchanged glances.
+
+"What's your awful hurry?" Larkin demanded, in a drawling tone, but
+with an anxious eye for the galloping figure now in plain view. "We'll
+give Haig a chance to bid--eh, men?"
+
+Smith shot an angry but uneasy look at the leader. Huntington saw it,
+and guessed that there was more than weariness and greed in the
+willingness of Smith and Raley to combine against Larkin. Probably, he
+thought, there had been differences of opinion, disputes even, on the
+road to Paradise. He turned impatiently toward the store.
+
+At that instant Thompson ran out, broke through the ring of men, and
+handed a roll of "yellowbacks" to Huntington, who hurriedly peeled off
+several of the bills, and thrust them at arm's length toward the
+wavering cow-punchers.
+
+"Haig talked about a thousand dollars!" he cried. "There's fifteen
+hundred. Do you want it?"
+
+For a moment it was heads or tails. Even Larkin eyed the money
+hungrily. Then his teeth clicked together, and he turned upon his
+partners, whose faces showed plainly the answer that was upon their
+lips.
+
+"An' what'll you say to _him_?" he demanded.
+
+"Eighteen hundred!" shouted Huntington.
+
+"That's good enough for me!" cried Raley. "Say it, Jud!"
+
+There was a distant thunder of hoofs as Haig's horse took the short
+bridge over the Brightwater. The crowd backed still farther away from
+Huntington, who was again fingering his roll of bills.
+
+"Two thousand!" he roared, shaking the handful of "yellowbacks" at the
+wavering Smith.
+
+Raley leaned from his saddle, and grabbed Smith's arm.
+
+"Quick, Jud!" he pleaded hotly. "Don't be a fool!"
+
+"All right! We'll take it!" answered Smith.
+
+"No!" said Larkin firmly, pulling his horse around between Huntington
+and the two partners.
+
+"Yes!" the two cried out together.
+
+Huntington stepped forward, and thrust both handfuls of bills almost
+into Larkin's face.
+
+"Name your price then!" he bellowed.
+
+Larkin looked at the money,--smelt it,--as he said afterwards, grimly
+confessing his weakness at the sight of more than he could save in
+years of riding the range and branding mavericks. If there had been
+ten seconds more--
+
+Haig galloped into the crowd, which gave him plenty of room, and
+reined up his pony just in front of the golden outlaw. For some
+instants he saw only the horse; and his eyes kindled. Then he faced
+the cowboys and Huntington.
+
+They were fixed in almost the very attitudes in which he had come upon
+them. Huntington's outstretched hands had indeed fallen to his side,
+but they still clutched the crumpled bills. Raley's blood-stained face
+was purple with anger and chagrin, while Smith's wore a sullen,
+hangdog look. As for Larkin, he met Haig's questioning scrutiny with a
+look of mingled triumph and guilt.
+
+"Well, why don't you go on?" asked Haig, with a smile.
+
+There was no response. The silence was again so complete that the
+music of the Brightwater was heard across the meadows.
+
+Haig slowly swept the crowd with an inquiring glance. All these men
+were hostile toward him, of course; but how far would they support
+Huntington? No matter! He swung himself suddenly out of the saddle,
+and addressed himself to the leader of the cowboys.
+
+"You're Larkin, aren't you?" he said.
+
+"Yes," answered the embarrassed cow-puncher.
+
+"And the others are Smith and--"
+
+"Raley," prompted Larkin.
+
+"And here, of course, is my good friend Huntington, looking like
+Fortune with both hands full."
+
+Several men in the crowd laughed, whereupon Huntington, who had
+evidently forgotten the money, made matters worse for himself by
+hastily and clumsily thrusting it into the pockets of his coat, while
+his face flushed angrily.
+
+"That's right, Cousin Seth," Haig said lightly. "You may need it."
+
+Marion, at these words, quivered with alarm. Was he going to tell
+Huntington, there in that crowd, of the incident in the pasture? His
+next speech, however, reassured her.
+
+"Now, Larkin," he said, "let's understand things. That's my horse,
+isn't it?"
+
+"That's what I've been sayin' some time back," answered Larkin, in a
+tone of relief.
+
+"And you, Smith?"
+
+"I suppose so," was the sullen reply.
+
+"And Raley?"
+
+"No, it ain't!" answered that one with a sudden flare-up of courage.
+
+"Then whose horse is it?"
+
+"It belongs to Larkin an' Smith an' me."
+
+"Of course. But why did you bring him to Paradise Park?"
+
+"To sell him."
+
+"To whom, please?"
+
+Raley, caught in the trap, looked appealingly toward Smith, but got no
+help from him.
+
+"To whom?" repeated Haig sharply.
+
+"To you--if you wanted him!" Raley blurted out at last.
+
+"If I wanted him!" retorted Haig ironically. "I bargained for him with
+you, didn't I?"
+
+"Yes," growled Raley.
+
+"And you went and caught him _for me_?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And you brought him to Paradise Park _for me_?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Very well. Don't be downhearted!" he said cheerfully. "A good name is
+more to be desired than great riches. Isn't that so, Cousin Seth?"
+
+The ranchman's face flamed.
+
+"If you've got anything to say to me, say it quick!" he jerked out.
+
+"I have several things to say to you, one at a time," replied Haig
+smoothly. "To begin with, these men told you the horse was mine,
+didn't they?"
+
+"No, they didn't. They said you'd offered a thousand dollars for
+him."
+
+Haig laughed.
+
+"All right, if that suits you better! They told you they had brought
+him here to deliver him to me for a thousand dollars, and you thought
+it would be a fine joke to buy him yourself. Is that it?"
+
+Huntington did not respond to this, but watched Haig narrowly, a
+little puzzled by his manner.
+
+"How much did he offer you?" Haig asked Larkin.
+
+"Two thousand dollars--and then he said name our price."
+
+Haig whistled.
+
+"Well, I'm damned if you haven't got some sporting blood in you!" he
+said, smiling at Huntington. "How much was in your roll?"
+
+Huntington's first impulse was to tell Haig that it was none of his
+business. But he was deceived by Haig's manner, having expected his
+enemy to fall upon him like a thunderbolt. His surprise was shared,
+indeed, by most of the men, who had expected gun-play on the jump.
+Only Marion, sitting still and watchful on her pony, was not misled.
+She felt that Haig was playing with Huntington, and biding his time.
+
+Huntington's vanity completed his self-delusion.
+
+"Four thousand, two hundred dollars" he replied boastfully, glancing
+around at his neighbors.
+
+"Whew!" uttered Haig, between pursed lips. Then to Larkin: "You were
+hard pressed, weren't you? But never mind, boys, I'll do better than I
+promised--and charge it up to Cousin Seth."
+
+Another laugh flickered around the crowd. It was evident that there
+was no great objection to seeing Huntington baited.
+
+"My name's Huntington!" he snorted. "What's this damned cousin
+business, anyhow?"
+
+Haig raised his eyebrows.
+
+"Does it annoy you?" he asked, in a tone of exaggerated politeness.
+
+Huntington merely glared. He was one of those self-made wits who enjoy
+their own jokes immensely but grumble at plucking barbed shafts out of
+their own skins. He began to wish for the thunderbolt.
+
+"But it's your own fault, you know," Haig added.
+
+"What in hell are you talking about?" Huntington growled.
+
+"I'm talking about your last visit to my ranch."
+
+"My last--What do you mean, damn you!" the ranchman thundered, his
+right hand moving to his belt.
+
+There was a hurried movement among those of the crowd who, absorbed in
+the dialogue, had half-consciously crept nearer. But Haig appeared to
+have noticed neither Huntington's motion nor the backing away of the
+spectators.
+
+"And wouldn't it have been reckless extravagance to pay good money for
+Sunnysides when you might just have come and taken him out of my
+corrals?"
+
+For a few seconds Huntington, as if he could scarce believe that he
+heard aright, was speechless with amazement and rage.
+
+"Say it, damn you!" he said chokingly. "What do you mean?"
+
+"Don't get so excited, or you may break a blood vessel, Cous--I beg
+your pardon, _Mister_ Huntington."
+
+"Say it!" roared the ranchman.
+
+Then Haig dropped his mask.
+
+"I will say it," he began in a voice that rang ominously. "I'll say it
+so that even you cannot fail to understand me. I mean that I'm tired
+of your threats and persecutions. I mean that you have harassed me and
+my men at every opportunity. I mean that you drove that bunch of my
+cattle off the cliff last September. I mean that within twenty-four
+hours another fence has been cut, and that you know who did it. I mean
+that your attempt to buy my horse was only another of the contemptible
+and cowardly tricks you have played on me. I mean, Huntington, that
+you are a bully, a liar and a thief!"
+
+Huntington's hand had slipped to the butt of his revolver at the
+beginning of this intolerable speech; but he had waited, as if
+fascinated, as if unable to move under the torrent of denunciation.
+Then to the onlookers it appeared that the bold young man, who had not
+yet made the slightest motion toward his own weapon, would be slain in
+his tracks. But Haig was as much the quicker in action as he was the
+nimbler in wit.
+
+The two revolvers cracked, it seemed, as one, but with very different
+results. Haig's battered old hat, lifted as if by a sudden gust of
+wind, slid from his head, and fell to the ground with a bullet hole
+through it. But Huntington threw up his hands, pitched forward, and
+fell in a heap in the dusty road.
+
+There was a single shrill, short-cut shriek as a woman near the door
+of the post-office slipped down in a faint; and then a chorus of
+quavering cries as other women clutched the arms of the men nearest
+them.
+
+Marion swayed in her saddle, her head drooping on her breast. A young
+cowboy darted from the crowd, and grabbed her as she fell. He started
+to lift and carry her away, but, with a desperate effort, she
+recovered, and stood erect, trying to thrust him from her. He held her
+nevertheless, supporting her with an arm under one of hers.
+
+Haig had quickly turned and faced the group of men at the left of the
+road.
+
+"Is there anybody else here that wants to buy my horse?" he demanded
+coolly.
+
+There was no response, no movement. He whirled, and confronted the
+silent row of men on the other side.
+
+"Is there anybody else here who thinks he can drive me out of Paradise
+Park?"
+
+Still no one replied; and Haig, with a shrug, thrust his revolver back
+in its holster.
+
+"Thompson!" he called out.
+
+"Here!" was the answer, in the same tone of readiness with which he
+had responded to Huntington. By keeping his mouth shut, and never
+taking sides in any of the occasional disagreements and disputes that
+enlivened the tedium of life in that community, Thompson had
+established a reputation for neutrality and trustworthiness, and was
+permitted to be everybody's friend.
+
+"Look after Huntington, please!" said Haig. "He's not badly
+hit--you'll find the bullet under the left shoulder blade. It'll do
+him good."
+
+Thompson and some others lifted Huntington, and carried him into the
+store; and at that moment the stage, its approach unnoticed, rattled
+up, and stopped with shrieking brakes and creaking harness. There was
+a sudden outbreak of speech on all sides, as if the tension had been
+relaxed by the recurrence of a familiar and orderly event. In the
+confusion Haig turned toward Sunnysides and the three cow-punchers.
+
+"Now, Larkin," he began briskly, "we'll finish this business, and
+then--"
+
+He stopped short, and stared.
+
+By the side of the golden horse stood Marion. Still shocked and
+bewildered, yet strangely thrilled, she had stretched out one
+trembling arm, and rested her hand on the neck of the wild creature,
+from which every other person in the crowd around--and she too in her
+right senses--had kept away, in full appreciation of his reputation.
+Whether it was that the outlaw had for the time given up all notion of
+resistance and hostility, or that he felt the difference between the
+girl's gentle touch and the rough handling he had undergone, he did
+not stir. But this docility, this understanding, was only a part of
+the sight that brought Haig to a standstill.
+
+He had left many things behind him, but there was one thing he had not
+been, able to destroy as he would have destroyed it, root and branch
+and flower. He would always have a weakness--he called it that--for
+beauty in whatever form it appeared to him. Sunsets and twilights, the
+shadows of trees in still waters, flowers and reeds, old ruins in the
+moonlight, sometimes even faces moved him until he was ashamed, and
+berated himself for a sentimental weakling. And now--
+
+The girl was tawny as a leopard. Her hair was almost exactly the color
+of the outlaw's dull yellow mane, but finer, of course, and softer;
+and her complexion--he wondered that he had not noticed it before--had
+a peculiar richness and brilliancy that seemed to reflect the luster
+of Sunnysides' golden hide. They stood there entrancing his artist-eye
+with their perfect harmony of line and color; and the last thin rays
+of the setting sun bathed horse and girl in a golden light--an
+atmosphere in which they glowed like one of Titian's mellowed
+canvases.
+
+"Don't move, please!" he exclaimed.
+
+But Marion did not hear, or did not heed. She dropped her hand, and
+glided toward him, while he watched her, curious and rapt. Perhaps it
+was because he saw her through that golden glow, perhaps because his
+nerves were a little unsteady in the reaction from the strain they had
+undergone, that she made a singular appeal to his imagination. He
+fancied that for all the fineness of her figure, the exquisite poise
+of her small head, the cameo-like delicacy of her face, there was
+something in her as wild, untamed, and elemental as the heart of
+Sunnysides.
+
+Thus she moved slowly past him, and passing gave him a long and steady
+look, with an unfathomable expression in her eyes,--an expression
+neither of anger nor of bitterness nor of disgust nor of anything he
+might have expected after all he had done that day. He turned, and
+watched her until she had disappeared in the crowd around the
+stagecoach; and with her went out the last rays of the sun.
+
+"Well, I'll be damned!" said Philip Haig.
+
+With a shake of his shoulders, as if to throw off some unwelcome
+weight upon them, he turned again to take up his business with the
+gaping cow-punchers.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+"HE SHALL TELL ME!"
+
+
+Doctor Wilson, arriving from Tellurium on the third day after the
+encounter at Paradise, found Huntington in a bad way, due not so much
+to the wound in his left shoulder as to the state of his mind. Haig's
+bullet was extracted without difficulty or serious complications, but
+Haig's words were encysted too deep for any probe. Huntington's
+self-love had been dealt a mortal blow; and somebody must pay for it.
+
+First of all it was Claire that paid; then Marion. He did not mean to
+be disagreeable to them, but never having cultivated self-restraint he
+had none of it now to ease the days of his convalescence. He filled
+the house with his clamor, and required as much attention as an ailing
+child. There were just two ways to keep him quiet. Claire soothed him
+when she sat at his bedside, with one of his huge "paws" held in her
+tiny hands; and Marion found, somewhat to her surprise, that Seth
+liked music. The piano was one of the wonders of the Huntington house,
+for pianos are not essential instruments in the equipment of cattle
+ranches, and this was the only one in all that region of cattledom.
+
+In music Seth's tastes were sentimental. "Lost Chords" and "Rosaries"
+subdued him almost to tears; and if Marion only brought him tuneful
+violets every morn he tried his best to be good. So when Claire was
+not on duty at the bedside Marion must needs be on duty at the
+piano,--an ordeal that Claire endured, of course, more patiently than
+Marion.
+
+Claire was almost comically unfit to be a ranchman's wife, and she too
+had been a trial on occasions. She was small and delicate, but
+vivacious, amiable, bright. Her blue eyes always had a childlike
+wonder in them, and she was fond of wearing her fluffy, golden hair in
+a girlish knot low on her neck, or even in a long, thick braid down
+her back, with a blue ribbon bow at the end. She flitted about the
+house like a butterfly, and yet she had managed somehow to make her
+home the marvel of Paradise Park.
+
+To begin with it was the ordinary, one-story, rambling house of pine,
+with spruce-clad hills rising behind it, and a little stream,
+rollicking down between it and the corrals. But a wide veranda had
+been constructed on three sides of it, furnished with wicker chairs,
+and half-screened with boxes of growing flowers. All around the house
+flowers grew,--old-fashioned garden flowers, roses and geraniums; beds
+of them everywhere, and blossoming shrubs along the stream.
+
+The house contained, besides the kitchen and the bedrooms, just one
+big room. This, with its low ceiling, unpainted timbers, and small
+windows, was not unlike the hall of some old manor house. The floor
+was covered with Navajo rugs in rich and barbaric colors; the walls
+were draped with burlap in dull red dyes; and the windows were
+curtained with chintz in bright yellows and reds. Above the windows
+and doors hung many heads of deer and elk and mountain sheep, and
+rifles on racks of horn. Between the two front windows stood the
+upright piano, and near it a small bookcase filled with novels and
+volumes of poetry. The big oak table at mealtime was made to look very
+inviting with white napery and modest china and silver, and a bouquet
+always in its center. At other times it was a library table, heaped
+with books and magazines, and in the evening, when the kerosene lamps
+were lighted, and the piñon was blazing in the great fireplace, the
+room seemed as remote from Paradise Park as Claire herself.
+
+There was an occasional visitor at Huntington's in the period of his
+convalescence, usually a ranchwife eager for another glimpse at
+Claire's wonderful housekeeping, or a young cow-puncher drawn by the
+attraction of two very pretty and unusual women in one house. But the
+ranchmen themselves, with two or three exceptions, were content to be
+solicitous at long range--an abstention that relieved and at the same
+time troubled Huntington. He was not eager to talk with his neighbors
+about that episode at the post-office, but their aloofness filled him
+with uneasiness. Well, let them wait! They would hear from him again,
+and so should Haig!
+
+There was, among the visitors, one whose coming perceptibly lightened
+the tedium of those days. Marion had the good fortune to see him in
+time not to be taken by surprise. Seated on the veranda after an
+exhausting recital for the benefit of Huntington, she perceived the
+figure of a horseman--yes, it was a horseman--riding out of the pines
+toward the corrals. She stared. He was so little and so lost between
+his pony, which seemed extraordinarily big, and his sombrero, which
+undoubtedly was enormous, that she remained for a moment dumb, and
+then, choking with laughter, fled into the house.
+
+"Look, Claire, look!" she cried, grabbing her cousin's arm.
+
+Claire, dragged to the door, looked and giggled.
+
+"Haven't you seen that before?" she asked.
+
+"No! Never!" answered Marion, her hand upon her mouth.
+
+"Of course. He's just arrived--for the season. He was here last year,
+and the year before."
+
+"And they let him?" demanded Marion, thinking of the irrepressible
+cow-punchers.
+
+"Oh, he's all right!" Claire assured her. "That is, after you get used
+to him. The men had all sorts of fun with him the first summer he was
+here. But he took all their fun good-naturedly, and showed them he had
+pluck too. They began to like him. Everybody likes him, and so will
+you."
+
+"But in the name of--who is he?"
+
+The little man had descended like a parachute from his pony, and was
+now bobbing rapidly up the graveled walk.
+
+"Smythe," explained Claire hurriedly. "But he's here now--I'll let him
+tell you--he likes to talk."
+
+At the foot of the steps he caught sight of the two women in the
+doorway; removed his wonderful headgear with an eighteenth-century
+gesture; ducked his head in a twentieth-century bow; and smiled.
+Claire stepped quickly out on the veranda.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Smythe!" she cried gaily. "I'm so glad to see you. Come in!"
+
+He was an undersized young man, immaculately dressed in brown tweeds
+and shining boots, a very high white collar and a sky-blue tie. The
+sombrero swinging in his hand was quite new, ornamented with a broad
+band of stamped leather, and it had the widest brim obtainable at the
+shop in Denver where a specialty is made of equipping the tenderfoot
+for life in the cattle country.
+
+Smythe took Claire's proffered hand, and bent over it as if he had
+thought of kissing it, but lacked the courage of his gallantry. Claire
+introduced him to Marion, answered his questions about Seth, and then
+fluttered away to the kitchen, where she had an angel cake in the oven
+not to be entrusted to the cook.
+
+"I arrived only yesterday, Miss Gaylord," Smythe chirped. "But I've
+heard of you already."
+
+"I don't know whether to thank you or not," answered Marion.
+
+"Oh, if you please! What I heard made me very solicitous about
+Huntington's health."
+
+He smiled knowingly at her, and Marion loosed some of her pent-up
+laughter. Truly, Smythe was going to be a treat! She studied him
+stealthily while he chattered on. He wore a pointed beard of reddish
+hue; his head was quite bald on top, and bulging at the brow; and the
+contour of that head, with its polished dome, and the narrow face
+tapering down to the pointed beard, was comically suggestive of a
+carrot. But it was an intelligent, even intellectual countenance, and
+his blue eyes were honest and bright. He might be laughed at, but he
+could not be flouted, she thought.
+
+"Then you've been here before, Mr. ----" she began, and hesitated.
+
+"Smythe," he prompted her generously. "J. Hamerton Smythe. S-m-y-t-h-e.
+I didn't change it from Smith, and I don't know what one of my
+esteemed ancestors did. But I'm glad he did. It gives me a touch of
+artificiality, don't you think? I fear being too natural."
+
+Marion laughed, and that pleased him. She led the way to chairs near
+an open window where a black and yellow butterfly hovered over a
+honeysuckle blossom that had nodded its friendly way into the room.
+
+"I'm from New York too," Smythe rattled on. "Columbia. Doing a little
+tutoring and a little postgraduate work. This is my third summer in
+the Park. Found it by chance. Wanted to go somewhere, and was tired of
+the old places--Maine and Adirondacks and the rest. Looked at a map in
+a railroad office, and there it was, sticking right out at me, the
+first name I lighted on. In small type too--curious, wasn't it? Clerks
+in office hadn't heard of it, but I started out to find it. Thought
+I'd better get to Paradise when I could. And now I'm glad. I feel like
+an old settler, and I believe the cow-punchers have ceased to regard
+me as a tenderfoot. That's as flattering as a Ph.D."
+
+"I'm afraid they laugh at me," said Marion.
+
+"On the contrary. Believe me, these cowboys have taken to reading
+poetry since you came."
+
+"Please be natural, Mr. Smythe!"
+
+"Fact! I'd hardly got my things unpacked before one of them was
+riding over to ask me if I had a book about Lady Clara Vere de Vere.
+It seems he'd heard the poem recited somewhere. I asked him why he
+wanted it, but he looked so flustered that I let him off. Didn't have
+a Tennyson with me, unfortunately, but I gave him my Byron, and I
+think that will hold him for a while."
+
+"Charming!" exclaimed Marion. "But what has all that to do with me?"
+
+"He's the chap that grabbed you in his arms when you were falling from
+your horse after that little business at Thompson's the other day."
+
+Marion blushed, and then laughed.
+
+"But how did you come to hear about that?" she demanded.
+
+He chuckled.
+
+"Oh, I hear everything!" he replied. "My friends say I've a nose for
+news."
+
+"Well, I shall be very careful what I say to you."
+
+"Please, no!" he protested. "I'm a safety vault when it comes to
+secrets."
+
+She glanced quickly toward the door of Seth's bedroom, then toward the
+kitchen, before she spoke.
+
+"So you've heard all about that day at the post-office?" she said in a
+low voice.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Terrible!"
+
+"But not unexpected."
+
+"Why not unexpected?"
+
+"Well," he replied, lowering his voice, and leaning nearer to Marion,
+"I'm afraid Huntington was looking for it."
+
+"You mean--he deserved it?"
+
+"I won't say that. You see--I'm neutral, like Thompson. I like
+Huntington, and I like Haig. I look at this fight without prejudice,
+even though I've a reason to be prejudiced."
+
+"In favor of--?"
+
+"Huntington."
+
+"Why, please?"
+
+"Huntington accepts my friendship, after a fashion."
+
+"But--the other?"
+
+"Nothing doing!"
+
+Marion stared at him, wondering.
+
+"Fact!" he assured her, with a sheepish smile.
+
+"But why?"
+
+"Don't know. I'd like to, but he lives like a hermit. Latchstring
+never hangs outside his door."
+
+There was a certain evidence of feeling in Smythe's speech.
+
+"You speak as if you--"
+
+"As if I knew!" He took the words out of her mouth. "I do."
+
+"How do you know?"
+
+"I tried it."
+
+"And then?"
+
+"Kicked out!" he replied with a grimace.
+
+Marion laughed in spite of her burning eagerness to hear more.
+
+"Not exactly kicked," Smythe explained. "But I'd rather have been. He
+was as polite as--he's a gentleman, you see, so he knew how to do it
+without using his hands or his feet."
+
+"But why?" insisted Marion.
+
+"Why did I try? Curiosity. Simple, elemental, irresponsible
+curiosity."
+
+She laughed again at his frank confession.
+
+"No, I mean why did he kick you out, as you call it?"
+
+"That's what I want to know. And I will know, too. I tell you, Miss
+Gaylord, I admire the man immensely. His secretiveness only makes me
+like him the more, probably because I myself am so garrulous. Most
+persons, though, cannot tolerate a man who minds his own business.
+Those who have no reason to hate Haig dislike him because he does not
+ask them to like him. His affairs are his own. Did you notice that
+scar?"
+
+"Yes," answered Marion, scarcely above a whisper.
+
+"Well, you can build any sort of romance you like around that. He has
+had his romance or tragedy or something, you may be sure. But he's no
+ordinary man, whatever he may be doing in Paradise Park. I have heard
+that he's surrounded with books and pictures in his cottage. He's got
+a Chinaman for a valet, and an Indian for his man Friday, and their
+mouths are as tight as his. What's more, he must be all right in the
+main things, for his foreman and cowboys stick to him through thick
+and thin, and say nothing. I tell you, Miss Gaylord, I'd like to be a
+friend of his, if only he gave a--"
+
+"A damn, I believe they say," she prompted demurely.
+
+"By Jove!" he said with enthusiasm. "You are a--"
+
+She held up a warning finger.
+
+"We're going to be friends, you know," she said. "And friends
+understand each other--without words."
+
+"Done!" he agreed, reaching for her hand, and shaking it.
+
+"But this mystery," she said. "Doesn't anybody know--"
+
+"You know as much as all of us. Of course," he added banteringly,
+"there's no denying a woman, when she starts. He might tell you!"
+
+The speech startled her, and she blushed.
+
+"Now, that's sheer impudence!" she retorted.
+
+But he continued to look at her with a curious expression. How much
+had he guessed? In her confusion an impulse seized her. She leaned
+suddenly toward him, with flushed face and sparkling eyes.
+
+"You dare me?" she demanded, her voice quivering.
+
+"I dare you!" he answered gleefully.
+
+"Well then, he shall tell me!"
+
+"Good!" he exclaimed. "And I'll be around to take the kicks if he--"
+
+"Oh, Cousin Seth!" cried Marion, leaping to her feet.
+
+The bedroom door had opened, and Huntington came out, dressed in his
+familiar corduroy suit, but with his left arm still bandaged to his
+side, Smythe hastened forward to greet him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE STORY OF THE SCAR
+
+
+She was awakened by the shrill chatter of the magpies in the tall pine
+near her window. Often she had resented their quarrelsome dialogue at
+dawn, but now she slipped eagerly out of bed, and hurried to the
+window. There had been rain in the night, but when she had pulled
+apart the chintz curtains and opened the wooden shutters the air was
+sweet and clean in her face, and the thin light showed the world
+rising joyously to the day.
+
+She dressed hastily in her oldest clothes, stole on tiptoe to the
+kitchen for a biscuit and a glass of milk, found fishing tackle on the
+veranda, and was soon running breathlessly past the corrals toward the
+banks of the Brightwater. And all this was a deliberate deception. She
+purposed to fish, of course--a little, to justify the clandestine
+expedition; but what she really sought was solitude.
+
+It was half in jest that she had said to Smythe, "He shall tell me!"
+But in the night, by some strange alchemy, that jest had been
+transmuted into a purpose of which she was still doubtful, if not
+afraid. And yet to go forward seemed less difficult than to go back.
+For she had let the days of Seth's recovery and convalescence slip by
+without telling Claire of her experience in the Forbidden Pasture and
+on the road to Paradise. The duel at the post-office, she argued,
+surely had made it unnecessary to warn Huntington of Haig's anger. And
+yet, as their guest, as Claire's cousin--But had they been quite fair
+to her? They had not warned her of the hostility across the Ridge;
+they had let her go blundering into the Forbidden Pasture; not that it
+mattered so much, though it might have been worse--
+
+Her thoughts were becoming very much confused. She had permitted a man
+to treat her most offensively, and she had seen him shoot down another
+without compunction; and that other was her cousin, in whose house she
+was a guest. And yet she felt no resentment, no detestation, no
+censure, no rebuke. Instead, here she was running away to think out a
+plan whereby she might hear the whole story of the feud, and more,
+from Haig himself.
+
+The morning advanced in rose and pearl nuances. A hundred tantalizing
+perfumes filled the air; field-spiders' webs sparkled in the dew like
+silver gossamer; meadow larks rose at her feet, and wove delicate
+patterns in the air with threads of melody. Who could think amid such
+diverting beauty? She lifted her head, and went singing through the
+meadows, knee-deep in the wet and clinging grass, and laughing when
+the parted branches of the willows splashed her face and drenched her.
+And then, at the first cast she made into a still, deep pool, where
+the night loitered under the very eye of day, an imprudent trout took
+the gray hackle fly, and made off with it. The splash, and the "zip"
+of the tightening line through the water; and then the fight, and the
+capture--Well, if they were going to rise like that--
+
+The sun was high before she became aware that she was very hot and
+tired and hungry. Her shoes were soaking wet, her skirts and stockings
+splashed with mud; one shoulder was being sunburned where a twig had
+caught and ripped her white flannel waist; and Seth's red silk
+handkerchief around her neck was scarcely a deeper crimson than her
+face.
+
+"But I can't catch them all in one day!" she exclaimed reluctantly,
+leaning wearily against a tree.
+
+At that instant, under her very eyes, a trout leaped in the nearby
+pool.
+
+"Impudence!" she cried. "I'll just get you, and then quit."
+
+But it was one pool too many; for at the second cast her hook caught
+in the rough bark of a log that projected far out into the stream.
+
+"Oh! Now I've done it!" she groaned.
+
+Several smart tugs at the line, with a whipping of the rod to right
+and left of the log, convinced her that the hook was too deeply
+embedded to be released by any such operation. Sinking down on a heap
+of driftwood on the bank, she gloomily contemplated the consequences
+of her greed. There were two ways to go about it now,--to break the
+line and leave the hook to its fate, or to crawl out on the log and
+rescue it. The first was unsportsmanlike, the second was very likely
+to be dangerous.
+
+"Um-m-m!" she muttered, with a grimace. "It's not easy."
+
+The log ran out, at a slight inclination upward, from the center of
+the heap of driftwood, and its free end, where the hackle fly reposed
+at a distance of fully twenty feet from the bank, was suspended barely
+two feet above the middle of the pool. She leaned forward, and gazed
+into its dark depths, which appeared to be scarcely stirred by the
+current, though five yards away the stream was making a merry racket
+over the shallows.
+
+She stood up, and looked around her. Through the screen of willows and
+cottonwoods on each sloping bank she saw the meadows lying green and
+silent in the sun. There was no sound except the prattle of the
+Brightwater and the murmur of the breeze in the foliage. She assured
+herself that she was quite alone.
+
+Next she folded and pinned up her skirt so that it hung just to her
+knees, and after a final glance in all directions, stepped cautiously
+out to the edge of the driftwood, knelt down on the fallen trunk, and
+began to creep warily out toward the embedded hook. The log was round,
+and none too large; her knees, protected only by thin stockings, were
+bruised by the rough and partly-loosened bark; and she scarcely dared
+to breathe lest she should lose her balance, and tumble into the
+yawning pool. Once she incautiously looked down, and saw her image
+waving dizzily on the slow-moving surface of the water.
+
+"Oh!" she gasped, as she drew back her gaze, and dug her nails into
+the log.
+
+But for all her fears, and because of them, it was tremendously
+exciting, and she became deeply absorbed in her task. Now clinging
+close to the log in sudden panic, now laughing tremulously at her
+trepidation, she forgot everything except her goal, and the inches by
+which she was approaching it. She had arrived within two feet of the
+hook, and was just about to reach a trembling hand to detach it, when
+she received a shock that was near to ending her expedition in an
+ignominious splash.
+
+"Wait!" called out a voice, somewhere behind her. "I'll help you!"
+
+The fright first nearly caused her to lose her grip on the log, and
+then left her cold and shivering. After that a wave of heat swept over
+her, and the blood tingled in her flushed and perspiring face.
+
+Who was it? Philip Haig, by all the ill luck in the world? Who else
+could have had the effrontery? She dared not turn to look, both in
+fear of falling, and in shame at being caught in that absurd
+predicament. What a sight! she thought. Her skirt was above her knees,
+and one stocking, caught by a projection of bark, had slipped down to
+her ankle. And that was not all!... With a desperate effort, she
+lifted one hand from its hold on the log, and tried to adjust her
+skirt; but the movement only unbalanced her. With a shriek she
+flattened herself, and lay there panting and miserable.
+
+"Wait!" the voice cried, more sharply than before. "No move--for
+minute!"
+
+She was arrested by the words. "No move for minute!" It was not the
+voice of Philip Haig, but in that assurance there was only a doubtful
+consolation. If not Haig--who? There was something oddly foreign in
+that heavy, harsh, and yet not displeasing voice. A new fear presently
+mingled with the others. It was a wild country after all; and she had
+taken no note of the distance she had come, and little of her
+surroundings. But she could only obey, and wait.
+
+There came the sound of quick splashing in the water, and a few
+seconds later a man's head and shoulders appeared in the stream at
+her side. At sight of the strange, dark countenance suddenly upturned
+to her, within a foot of her own, she almost fainted. It was a face
+she had never seen before, solemn, stolid, with a copper-colored skin,
+high cheek bones, and deep-set, black eyes in which there was no more
+expression than there was on the thin, straight lips. She closed her
+eyes.
+
+But that was only for an instant, since nothing terrible was
+happening. When she dared to look again the man was quietly releasing
+the offending fly. He tossed it back in the direction of the bank,
+then stood for a moment regarding her, still without the trace of an
+expression on his dark face.
+
+"Don't be 'fraid!" he said. "Hold still!"
+
+She obeyed him, though his next move was one to have brought a scream
+to her lips if she had not become incapable of utterance. Standing in
+the water, which came almost up to his armpits, he had kept his arms
+high above the surface of the pool. Now he stretched them out toward
+her, clasped both her ankles with one huge hand, slipped the other
+under her waist, and with what seemed incredible strength and
+assurance, lifted her off the log. Then, without so much as wetting
+the edge of her skirt, he bore her to the bank, and seated her gently
+on the heap of driftwood from which she had ventured so bravely only a
+little while before.
+
+Should she weep, or laugh, or rage at him? Through eyes half-blinded
+by tears, she searched his face; but he met her troubled and fiery
+gaze with the most perfect calm. Then, after a moment, he deliberately
+turned, and stood facing squarely away from her,--an act of stoicism
+that at once removed her fears and completed her discomfiture. She
+took the hint implied in his movement, and bent down, blushing
+furiously, to pull up the fallen stocking, and let down her skirt.
+
+When she sat erect again the man had not changed his position; and she
+seized the opportunity to study him. His figure, though she had just
+had proof of his strength, was lean almost to thinness, very straight,
+and borne, she fancied, with a certain dignity and even majesty in its
+erectness. The straight, black hair under the sombrero was touched
+with gray. He was not young, past middle age perhaps; but she could
+hazard no nearer guess at his age. No matter! Looking at him thus, she
+began to feel her resentment falling away, as if every shaft from her
+angry eyes had broken harmlessly on that serene and unoffending back.
+Even her embarrassment began to seem inexcusable. The man had carried
+her ashore in much the manner he would have used if she had been a
+sack of oats to be saved from wetting.
+
+"You are very strong!" Marion said at last.
+
+He turned slowly toward her. His face was grave and expressionless,
+but by no means dull; and his eyes were very black and bright.
+
+"You--are--all--right--now?" he asked, ignoring her praise.
+
+There was a curious slowness and lack of emphasis in his speech, with
+a pause after each word, that gave a singular impressiveness to all he
+said.
+
+"But why did you do it?" she demanded.
+
+"'Fraid you fall," was his simple answer.
+
+"But I don't mind getting wet."
+
+"Easy drown in little water," he said laconically.
+
+She laughed at the idea of her drowning in a pool like that--she who
+had battled triumphantly with the breakers at Atlantic City, Newport,
+and Bar Harbor.
+
+"But I can swim!" she assured him.
+
+"I not know that," he replied, unmoved.
+
+True. And she must have appeared to be greatly in need of assistance.
+
+"Anyhow, I thank you!" she said sincerely. "But who am I thanking,
+please?"
+
+"Pete."
+
+"Pete! Pete who?"
+
+"Only Pete."
+
+"But have you no other name?"
+
+"Yes. Indian name."
+
+And he rolled out a string of guttural syllables that sounded like
+names of places in the Maine woods.
+
+Indian name! Marion started; and in a flash she knew. Haig's man
+Friday! Here was luck indeed.
+
+"You are Mr. Haig's--" She hesitated.
+
+"Friend," he said, completing her sentence.
+
+Marion was again embarrassed. She did not know what to say next,
+fearing to say the wrong thing, and so to throw away a golden
+opportunity. In her search for the right lead, her eyes lighted on a
+fishing basket that lay on the ground not far from her own.
+
+"Oh!" she cried. "But it's strange I didn't hear or see you!"
+
+"Indian not make noise."
+
+"I should say not!" she retorted, laughing.
+
+"Trout very smart," he added quietly.
+
+"I've caught fourteen," she volunteered eagerly. "And you?"
+
+For answer he fetched his creel, and opened it.
+
+"Oh!" she cried, in envy and admiration, seeing that the creel was
+almost full, and that not a fish in sight was as small as her largest
+prize.
+
+"I give you some," he said, glancing at her own basket.
+
+"No! No!" she protested quickly. "I have plenty."
+
+She showed him her catch, which was by no means insignificant.
+Nevertheless Pete took three of his largest trout, and transferred
+them to her basket, ignoring her protests.
+
+"But they are for--him, aren't they?" she asked.
+
+"Biggest you no see. At bottom."
+
+That satisfied her, and she watched him silently while he found her
+rod, and reeled in the offending fly.
+
+"Brown fly better now," he said. "You ought see what trout eating
+before you try catch big ones."
+
+On this he drew a book of flies from his pocket, and replaced the gray
+hackle with a brown one. She questioned him eagerly, following this
+plain lead; and presently they were seated on the pile of driftwood,
+while he told her about the native trout and the rainbow and the
+California, of little brooks far up among the mountains where the
+trout were small but of a delicious flavor, of the time for flies and
+the time for worms, of famous catches he had made, of the way the
+Indians fished before the white man showed them patent rods and reels.
+By slow degrees Pete's iron features softened, and he smiled at her,
+not with his lips, but with his eyes, which were the blackest, surely,
+in the world.
+
+But Marion was not diverted from the questions that were next her
+heart. With all her woman's cunning of indirection, she brought the
+talk around to Philip Haig. Did he fish? Sometimes. Did he hunt? Much,
+when the deer came down from the heights with the first snows.
+Then--she could resist no longer.
+
+"It must have been terrible--the accident," she said, placing a finger
+on her cheek.
+
+He looked at her strangely, while she held her breath.
+
+"That no accident," he said at last, after what seemed to her an
+interminable interval of suspense.
+
+"No accident?" she repeated, trying not to appear too eager.
+
+"He call it accident, maybe. He say it is nothing. Pete say it is
+much. It is big debt. Some day Pete pay."
+
+There was deep silence for a moment. The stream gurgled and splashed;
+the breeze whispered through the cottonwoods; and over all, or under
+all, was the vague, insistent, seductive sound that the summer makes
+in the fulness of its power.
+
+Marion hesitated, quivering with eagerness and uncertainty. She was
+afraid to ask more, lest she should be shortly rebuffed, and lose her
+opportunity. But Pete was looking at her steadily. She felt a flush
+coming into her face again. Had he guessed--something--already in her
+manner, in her impulsive questions? More likely it was the charm that,
+for once unconsciously, she wielded--the elusive charm of woman that
+makes men want to tell, without the asking.
+
+"You like to hear?" Pete said; and her heart leaped.
+
+"Oh, please!"
+
+And she was keenly disappointed. She had expected something romantic,
+something ennobling and fine. And it was only a barroom brawl, though
+Philip was not in it until the end, to be sure! Five Mexican sheep
+herders against the lone Indian. Guns and knives in the reeking border
+saloon; and afterwards in the street; and the Indian almost done for,
+bleeding from a dozen wounds; and then a voice ringing out above the
+fracas: "No, I'm damned if you do! Five to one, and greasers at that!"
+And Philip Haig had jumped from his horse, and plunged into the mêlée,
+disdaining to draw his gun on greasers. Smash! Bang! went his fists,
+front and right and left.
+
+Pete had accounted for one Mexican, who would herd sheep no more on
+the plains of Conejos. The others fled. Then Haig, despite the
+knife-wound in his face, grabbed the Indian, and somehow lifted him up
+behind him on his horse.
+
+"Quick, Indian!" he cried. "This town's full of greasers. You've got
+no chance here."
+
+And then the long ride to Del Norte, with the Indian drooping on
+Haig's back; and a doctor of Haig's acquaintance, who sheltered and
+cured the silent savage. And Pete, convalescent, had come straight to
+Haig's ranch, and remained there, despite Haig's protests that he did
+not need another hand.
+
+"Pete stay until big debt is paid," said the Indian solemnly. And
+then, with a straight look into Marion's eyes, "You ought tell
+Huntington he is damn fool."
+
+Marion started. There it was again--the warning!
+
+"But why?" she managed to ask.
+
+"Haig is brave man. Brave man always good man. So--Huntington got no
+chance."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE WAY OF A MAID WITH A MAN
+
+
+She rode casually down the Brightwater, and casually up the
+Brightwater; she loitered at crossroads, and tarried at Thompson's
+store; and not one glimpse did she catch of Philip Haig. Then one
+morning she rose at dawn, as she had risen on the day of her fishing
+exploit, with a purpose. But this time she dressed with exceeding
+care, in a riding suit she had not yet worn in the Park. It was soft
+dove-gray in color, with a long coat that showed the fine lines of her
+figure and, when she rode, revealed snug-fitting breeches above the
+tops of the polished boots,--a very different costume from the black
+divided skirts and the short jacket in which she had galloped about
+the Park.
+
+Thus arrayed and resolute, she rode straight down the valley to the
+branch road that had once tempted her to adventure; straight up the
+hill; and straight through the woods until she halted once more in the
+shade of the outpost pine that stood beyond its clustered fellows like
+a sentinel above the valley. Her valley! She waited a moment,
+wondering if it welcomed her. There was the stream, still flashing in
+the sun, the meadows as brightly green as then, the grass of the
+pasture running in bronze waves before the breeze. From the heart of a
+wild rose a gorgeous red and brown butterfly flew out and fluttered
+over her head. Not a dozen yards below her a meadow lark, unseen,
+burst into sudden, thrilling song; and somewhere down the hill another
+took up the strain, then another and another, until the air was
+charged and quivering with melody, piercing sweet. She listened, her
+heart throbbing to the music, until the chorus died away in dripping
+cadences, and only a drowsy murmur came from the ripening fields to
+mingle with the low droning of the pine organ on the hill. Yes! Her
+valley welcomed her.
+
+She rode on down the hill, with only a quick and embarrassed glance
+into the Forbidden Pasture; and suddenly raised herself excitedly in
+the stirrups. There again was the spiral of blue smoke; then a chimney
+and a red roof; and finally the house itself, and barn and corrals,
+all tucked away against the foot of the hill. Dismounting, she led
+Tuesday back a few yards, and left him to feed along the roadside.
+Then she returned, and seated herself on a rock, half-hidden by a
+blackberry bush, to study the group of houses lying low and silent in
+the sun.
+
+There were more buildings than at Huntington's, but she saw no beds of
+flowers, no wide veranda screened with potted plants; a certain
+bareness and air of inhospitality, she thought. No tea and angel cake
+for visitors! Behind the ranch house were two cottages of unpainted
+pine, scorched to a yellow-brown by many a summer sun. One of them,
+doubtless, was the hermit's lodge. The barn, larger than Seth's, had a
+red roof, newly painted. And in one of the corrals--yes--the flash of
+a golden hide.
+
+"Sunnysides!" murmured Marion.
+
+Then her heart stood still. She had descried the figure of a man
+seated with his back against the bars of this corral. But it was not
+Philip Haig; Sunnysides' guard, no doubt, for he never left his post
+until relieved by another an hour or so later, when the dinner bell
+had been rung at the door of the ranch house.
+
+She had scarcely time to feel her disappointment before a man emerged
+from the stable leading a saddle horse. Another immediately followed,
+and this time there was no mistake. The second man was Philip Haig. He
+mounted quickly, and started off; then stopped to address a word or
+two, apparently, to the man at the stable door; and finally galloped
+past the ranch house and the cottages, and up the slope behind them
+toward the pines, across the valley from where she sat.
+
+"Oh!" cried Marion, in a tone of vexation and reproach.
+
+She watched him until he had disappeared among the trees; and tears
+started in her eyes. Would he always be riding away from her, behind
+the hills, the woods, a turn of the road? She sat a while in deep
+dejection; but not for long. Her spirit was too resilient for futile
+moping, and her purpose too firmly held to be abandoned on one
+reverse. She reflected that if he had gone he must as certainly
+return; and so, with a toss of her head, she presently arose, and
+fetched her raincoat and her luncheon from the saddle. The coat she
+spread out on the ground, seated herself on it with her back against
+the rock, and settled down to eat, and watch, and wait.
+
+Morning mounted hot and humming into noon, and noon dropped languidly
+into afternoon. The blazing sun centered his rays upon her; insects
+found and pestered her; discomfort cramped her limbs, and weariness
+weighted down her eyelids. Twice she dozed, and wakened with a start
+of fear lest she had slept her chance away. But each time she was
+reassured by a hurried survey of the group of buildings, where no one
+stirred, and there was no sign of Philip Haig. So the hours dragged
+their slow length along.
+
+It was late in the afternoon before her vigil was rewarded. Not from
+just the direction in which he had galloped away, but from farther up
+the valley, Haig reappeared. He rode as rapidly as before, straight to
+the door of the stable, reined up a moment there, and was off
+again,--this time down the valley on a white road that was visible to
+Marion until it curved behind the distant point of the ridge on which
+she sat.
+
+"Now where's he going?" she murmured, wrinkling her forehead as she
+saw him once more vanish from her sight.
+
+She did not know that road, but guessed that it joined the main
+highway somewhere far down the Brightwater. No matter! Here was her
+opportunity; for she saw, with quick appreciation, that she would now
+be able to place herself between him and the ranch buildings without
+showing herself to the men at the corrals. And then? She could not
+"hold him up" like a highwayman; and if she did not stop him he would
+raise his hat (perhaps), and ride past her without a word. And how was
+she to stop him? She had come there with a very definite purpose, but
+with no clear plan, trusting to the inspiration of the moment. And now
+the moment had arrived; but where was the inspiration? She had risen
+impulsively to her feet, and stood staring between narrowed eyelids,
+and beneath a puckered brow, at the white road, now quite empty again.
+Then suddenly--
+
+"Ah!" she gasped.
+
+And thereupon she blushed, and looked furtively around her, as if she
+had been caught in some doubtful, if not discreditable, act. But there
+was no time for moral subtleties. She staggered--for her legs were
+stiff from inaction--to her pony, replaced her raincoat behind the
+saddle, mounted in hot haste, and rode down the steep hill toward the
+houses. At a little distance from them the road she traveled joined
+the other. There she turned abruptly, and followed the unfamiliar road
+until she was safely out of sight of any chance observer at the barn,
+and yet not so far from the trail she had just left but that she could
+return to it if, by any chance, he should come back that way.
+
+Dismounting quickly at the chosen spot, she turned Tuesday until he
+stood squarely across the road. Then her nimble fingers flew at the
+cinches of the saddle.
+
+"There now!" she exclaimed, hot with excitement and exertion.
+
+She stepped back to view her handiwork, and laughed nervously. Next
+she drew a tiny mirror and a bit of chamois skin from her bosom, and
+swiftly removed some of the dust and moisture from her flushed face.
+Then her hair, always somewhat unruly, required a touch or two. That
+done, she smoothed down the gray coat over her slender hips, adjusted
+the gray silk tie at her throat, and waited.
+
+He came, in his habitual cloud of dust; pulled up his pony within ten
+feet of the obstruction; saw the saddle hanging at a dangerous angle
+over Tuesday's side; and accepted the obvious conclusion that Miss
+Marion Gaylord, looking very warm and embarrassed, but certainly very
+pretty in her confusion, had narrowly escaped a fall.
+
+"I think I'd better help you with that, Miss Gaylord," he said.
+
+"Thank you!" she said, with an appealing reluctance. "I can do it--I
+often saddle my own horse, and--"
+
+"I should judge that you had saddled him this time," he interrupted
+her to say, without the slightest trace of irony in his tone.
+
+She bit her lip, as she silently made way for him, and stood at
+Tuesday's head, stroking his neck with one small, gloved hand while
+Haig adjusted the blanket, fitted the saddle firmly, and tightened the
+double cinch. He was dressed in the nondescript costume he had worn at
+their first meeting. That same hat, uniquely insolent, soiled and limp
+and disreputable, was stuck on the back of his head, revealing a full,
+clean-moulded brow, over which, at one side, his thick black hair fell
+carelessly. His eyes were calm gray rather than stormy black to-day,
+but a gray that was singularly dark and deep and luminous. His manner
+was in the strangest contrast with the two different moods in which
+she had already seen him--as if the fires were out, as if all emotion
+and interest had been dissolved in listlessness. And she divined at
+once that her chance of success was small.
+
+"That will hold, I think," he said gravely; and started toward his
+horse.
+
+"It wasn't Tuesday's fault," she said eagerly.
+
+Haig paused, on one foot as it were, and looked over his shoulder.
+
+"It was fortunate for you that he's been well gentled," he said. "You
+should look to your cinches rather often when you ride these hills."
+
+("You should keep your feet dry, and come in when it rains," he might
+as well have said, she thought angrily.)
+
+"Yes, it was careless of me," she answered, trying to say it brightly,
+but really wanting to shriek.
+
+"It happens to everybody once in a while," he said.
+
+On that, he stepped to his pony, put a foot in the stirrup, and one
+hand on the saddle horn, and paused.
+
+She could easily have flopped down in the road, and wept. Once he had
+raged at her, once he had thrilled her with a look, and now he was
+simply dismissing her,--leaving her, as her father would have put it,
+"to stew in her own juice." She saw all her elaborate strategy, her
+long vigil on the hill, her struggle with the saddle, her appealing'
+glances--all, all about to go for nothing.
+
+"He might at least help me on my horse!" she thought, in bitter
+resentment.
+
+Perhaps tears blinded her. At any rate--and this was without pretence,
+and no part of her scheme--she did not see clearly what she was doing.
+It was nothing new to mount her pony from the level; she had done it a
+hundred times without mishap. But now, in her agitation, she stood
+somewhat too far away from Tuesday's shoulder; and the pony, as ponies
+will sometimes do, started forward the instant he felt the weight in
+the stirrup.
+
+"Look out!" cried Haig.
+
+It was too late. She missed the saddle; her right foot struck
+Tuesday's back, and slipped off; and she fell sprawling on the ground,
+with her left foot fast in the stirrup.
+
+"Whoa, Tuesday!" she cried shrilly as she fell.
+
+Luckily the horse did not take alarm and run, as a less reliable
+animal might have done, dragging the girl under his heels. He stopped
+in his tracks, and stood obediently, even turning his head as if to
+see what damage had been done. It was enough. Marion was uninjured,
+but badly frightened; and her humiliation was complete. She lay on her
+back, struggling vainly to extricate her foot from the stirrup. Her
+coat skirts had fallen back, and--Thank Heaven for the riding
+breeches, and not what she had worn under divided skirts!
+
+"Lie still!" yelled Haig, remembering what he had seen happen to men
+in such circumstances.
+
+In three leaps he was at her side. With a swift movement (and none too
+gentle), he wrenched her foot loose from the stirrup, and helped her
+to sit up, dazed and trembling and very white.
+
+"Your ankle--is it hurt?" he asked sharply.
+
+"I don't know," she said.
+
+And then the expected "inspiration of the moment" came.
+
+"A little," she added.
+
+And so it was done. Her foot had indeed been twisted slightly; she had
+truly, _truly_ felt a twinge of pain. At another time she would have
+thought no more about it, but now--The color rushed back into her
+cheeks; she fetched a smile that was half a grimace; and the game was
+on again.
+
+Haig reached a hand to her. She took it, and let him draw her to her
+feet.
+
+"Try the ankle--just a step!" he commanded.
+
+She rested her weight on her left foot.
+
+"Oh!" she cried out, and looked helplessly at Haig.
+
+A shadow, unmistakably of annoyance, passed over his face.
+
+"You're not going to faint, are you?" he asked, looking keenly at
+her.
+
+Her color always came and went easily, and now, a little frightened by
+her bold deception, she was pale again.
+
+"No--I think not," she said. ("At any rate not here," she might have
+added.)
+
+"Can you ride to the corrals?" was his next question.
+
+The look of annoyance was now fixed on his face, but it did not
+discourage her.
+
+"Yes, if--"
+
+She looked doubtfully at Tuesday. Thereupon, without a word, Haig led
+the horse close to her, but placed so that she was at Tuesday's right
+side instead of the left. Then, while she supported herself with one
+hand on his shoulder, he raised her right foot, and thrust it into the
+stirrup; and, with a hand under each of her arms, lifted her until she
+was able to throw the left foot over, and her body into the saddle.
+Once more Marion bit her lip. His action was as devoid of personal
+interest as Pete's had been when he carried her out of the pool; and
+she had not come to Philip Haig to be treated like a sack of oats!
+
+Haig mounted his pony, and rode up close beside her; and thus, in
+unbroken silence, they arrived at the door of the stable. There Haig
+dismounted quickly, stepped briskly around her horse, and almost
+before she was aware of his intention, lifted her out of the saddle,
+and set her on her feet--all very carefully and gently, but also very
+scrupulously, without an unnecessary pressure, without even a glance
+into her waiting eyes. What was the man made of? Why would he not look
+at her? Why did he not rage at her--if he could do nothing better?
+Well, the cat had at least seven lives left!
+
+She almost forgot to limp, but bethought herself in time, and gasped
+as he led her to an empty soap box at the side of the stable door.
+Having seated her there, he called out to the man on guard at
+Sunnysides' corral: "Where's Curly?"
+
+"Down by the crick," was the answer.
+
+"Bring him here! I'll watch the horse."
+
+Thereupon he took the man's place, and stood with his arms crossed on
+the top rail of the fence, his eyes fixed on the golden horse. And
+Marion felt a real pain at last,--a pang of jealousy. So he preferred
+to look at the horse, did he? If he had chanced at that instant to
+glance at her he would have seen a pair of blue eyes blazing with
+wrath.
+
+The two men came hurrying from the creek.
+
+"Here, Curly!" said Haig, resigning his post. "Miss Gaylord has hurt
+her ankle. I found her unseated down the road yonder." He paused, as
+if to let that be thoroughly understood. "I want you to hitch up the
+sorrels and drive her home."
+
+"Right!" responded Curly, going into the stable.
+
+Marion then did almost faint. She had not foreseen that manoeuver.
+
+"I'd rather not, please," she said, as sweetly as she could in her
+dismay.
+
+"Rather not what?" asked Haig, turning at last to her.
+
+"I'd rather rest a while--somewhere--" Her glance went past him in the
+direction of the cottage. "Then I can ride home--alone."
+
+"And tumble off in the road somewhere!" he retorted, with a touch of
+derision in his tone.
+
+"Oh, no!" she pleaded. "It's not as bad as that."
+
+"No matter! I can't allow you to take any chances," he insisted
+curtly.
+
+"Really, I need only a little rest," she persisted. "If I could lie
+down a few minutes--" her eyes again were turned toward the cottage.
+
+He saw what she meant, and frowned.
+
+"No!" he snapped. Then, checking himself, "I don't mean to be
+inhospitable, but you ought to know that's impossible."
+
+"You mean--Cousin Seth?"
+
+He shot a look at her that frightened her, but gratified her too. Was
+she rousing him at last?
+
+"Yes, if you like," he said, quietly enough. "I'm having a hard enough
+time with the fool without a woman being mixed up in the affair."
+
+"I don't understand," said Marion.
+
+"You don't understand!" he repeated. "Of course not. Women never
+understand--until afterwards. I'll make it plainer. I'm a bad man, as
+you have doubtless heard. What would Paradise Park say when it learned
+that you had been inveigled into my house?"
+
+She was silent a moment.
+
+"Well then, let me sit here and rest!" she insisted.
+
+"But why?" he demanded impatiently.
+
+She took her courage in both hands, and plunged.
+
+"I want to talk to you," she said eagerly. "I want to ask you if there
+is no way--"
+
+"Excuse me!" he broke in. "I don't want you to talk to me. If I
+did--"
+
+He stopped, with a shrug. Marion felt her face reddening, but she
+dissembled her embarrassment.
+
+"Oh!" she exclaimed. "You're not afraid of me, are you?"
+
+It was spoken archly, in her most playful, most kittenish manner, and
+so she was amazed to see his face distorted as if by some violent
+emotion. But he spoke with restraint, though in a tone that was hard
+and harsh.
+
+"Yes, I am afraid of you. The only thing in the world a man needs to
+fear is a woman."
+
+The first effect of this speech was to surprise and shock her. The
+next was to make her heart leap. Had she come near the secret, after
+all? Then, finally, something deep in the man's eyes roused in her a
+thrill of pity. In another minute she would have melted, in her
+compassion, and begged him humbly to pardon her. But at that instant
+Curly emerged from the barn, leading the sorrels; and the devil that
+lurks behind a woman's tongue spoke for her before she was aware of
+it.
+
+"So you'd rather one of your men took me to Cousin Seth!"
+
+It was scarcely out before she regretted it with all her heart. If
+there was a devil behind her tongue there was another back of the
+somber shadows in Haig's eyes. He flashed one comprehending look at
+her; his whole manner underwent a swift and terrifying change; he was
+again the Philip Haig of that day at the post office.
+
+"Great!" he exclaimed. "That will be the best joke of all. I'll drive
+you home myself, of course."
+
+For a moment Marion sat very still on the soap box, stunned, staring
+open-mouthed at Haig. What had she done? That mad speech! Then she
+leaped to her feet.
+
+"No! No!" she cried. "You shall not!"
+
+He smiled at her.
+
+"Shall not?" he repeated sardonically.
+
+"I mean--please not that!" she faltered.
+
+"Why not?" he demanded, almost gaily.
+
+"Oh, please! I didn't mean it that way."
+
+"Of course you didn't mean it! Women never do mean it--that way. And I
+suppose you didn't mean to let those men ride on to Paradise when they
+told you the horse was mine, did you?"
+
+"Oh!" cried Marion, almost in a scream. "How did you--know?"
+
+He laughed.
+
+"I happened to ask Larkin if he had met nobody on the road who could
+have directed him. He said there was no one but a 'purty girl.' That
+was you, wasn't it?"
+
+She was speechless.
+
+"And my warning to Huntington. Did you deliver that?"
+
+"No," she answered, scarcely above a whisper.
+
+"Of course not. That would have been too simple and honest and direct.
+You can't be honest and straightforward to save your lives. You live
+by deception, and boast about your love of truth. Your deepest craving
+is for violence, while you prate about your gentle influence over men.
+I haven't the least doubt in the world that Mrs. Huntington, for all
+her baby face, is back of all Huntington's violence--thinks she's a
+wonderful inspiration to him, with a special genius for the cattle
+business! And when she gets him killed--with your assistance--she'll
+flop down, and weep--and you too, both of you--and wail that you
+didn't mean it!"
+
+She recoiled from him, and leaned helplessly against the wall of the
+stable.
+
+"So you let the men ride on to Paradise," he went on with relentless
+mockery, "and you let Huntington plunge into that business when you
+knew, from me, exactly what it meant. And you rode over here to-day--I
+wonder, now, if your foot's really hurt, or if that also is some
+trick!"
+
+It was the merest chance shot. He had no suspicion that she had been
+shamming, for he had been too much annoyed by the whole incident to be
+critical of her demeanor. But the shot went home. The girl, without a
+word or cry, suddenly sank down on the box, with her face buried in
+her hands.
+
+There ensued a moment of tense silence. For all the bitterness that
+surged under his railing speech, Haig was not untouched by the sight
+of the girl, bent and cowering before him. But at the same time he was
+exasperated anew by the scene that was being enacted under the eyes of
+his two men.
+
+"Come!" he said presently, not without reluctant gentleness. "It's
+growing late. We must start at once."
+
+The words increased her terror. Through the hands that covered her
+eyes she could see Haig and Huntington--with revolvers drawn; and
+Claire's white face--She rose impulsively, dropping her hands from her
+hot and tear-stained cheeks. She would confess all to him, though it
+should betray the inmost secret of her heart; and would beseech him
+not to go--
+
+"Don't say it--here!" he commanded sharply, lowering his voice as he
+bent toward her. "They think there's something queer about all this.
+Come!"
+
+She obeyed him silently, her resolution vanishing before his
+authority. Besides, there was yet time, somewhere on the road.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE END OF HER STRATAGEM
+
+
+For some minutes there was no speech, no sound except the swift beat
+of the horses' hoofs on the hard roadway, and the crisp crunching of
+wheels in the sand. Marion sat rigid, staring straight in front of
+her, yet seeing nothing. Dazed and benumbed, her thoughts were in a
+hopeless tangle, without beginnings, without ends. How she had bungled
+the whole thing! And she might have been so happy, there at his side.
+
+Twilight was coming on in the serene, clear beauty of the mountains:
+the distant peaks glowed like great opals in the sundown hues; there
+was an indescribable sweetness in the air, something magical in the
+soft but cold night breeze that began to pour down upon the valley
+from the eternal snows.
+
+Timidly, out of the corner of her eye, Marion glanced at Haig, and saw
+that he was gazing steadily at the changing colors on the distant
+range. But there was no beauty for her in that perfect panorama. The
+fire had gone out of her, and she was shivering. He must have felt her
+movement, for suddenly he leaned forward, lifted the edge of the heavy
+lap-robe that had lain neglected at their feet, and tucked it around
+her. She drew back with a quick intake of breath as his face was for
+an instant close to her own. A moment later he began to speak in a
+tone that surprised and encouraged her, so little did it resemble the
+tones he had employed before. It was as if nothing had happened, as if
+they had long been talking of things casual, impersonal to them both.
+
+"It's different in the San Luis," he said. "There's red down there.
+Nature's palette is a little short of red in this valley. Too much
+blue. Even nature sometimes gets a one-color obsession, like the
+painters. Here she's gone off on blue. It's the most dangerous color.
+Darwin says it was the last color produced in nature's laboratory.
+Ordinarily it's the least common in flowers and birds and insects.
+Hearn--Have you read Lafcadio Hearn? No? But you ought to, that is, if
+you care for such things. He goes after blue--the misuse of it. He
+says it's the color most pleasureable to the eye in its purest
+intensity. But you mustn't dab it on. A blue house is a crime. Blue's
+overdone here too, blue sky, blue mists, blue shadows, blue lakes,
+blue flowers,--anemones, harebells, columbines and the rest. It's a
+relief to get into the reds of the San Luis--"
+
+"Where Sunnysides came from!" interrupted Marion, eager despite her
+misery.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Tell me about him, please!"
+
+She wanted him to continue in that strain, and even Sunnysides was a
+less dangerous subject than--another.
+
+"Well, about Sangre de Cristo first. That's a great range that stands
+up high and white along the east. Sangre de Cristo is Spanish for
+Blood of Christ. I can see those pious old rascal adventurers
+uncovering their blessed heads when they first glimpsed it. At sunset
+it takes the color--not always, not often, in fact, perhaps a dozen
+times a year. There are days and days when the range is only white and
+cold, days when it's black with storms, and days when it's dismal
+gray. Then there comes an evening when the sun goes down red behind
+the San Juan, and the snows on Sangre de Cristo run like blood. The
+whole world, for a few minutes, seems to halt and stand still in awe
+at that weird and mysterious spectacle--trainmen setting the brakes on
+squealing ore trains on Marshall Pass, and miners coming out of their
+tunnels above Creed all stop and look; Mexican sheep-herders in
+Conejos pause to cross themselves; ranchmen by their lonely corrals up
+and down the San Luis, and cowboys in the saddle on the open
+range--all spellbound. It gives you a strange feeling--something that
+goes back to the primitive instincts of mankind--something of
+reverence, something of wonder, something of fear--the fear that the
+first men had when they gazed on the phenomena they could not
+understand, and began to make their myths and their religions.
+Primitive superstition, primitive terror will never quite down in us,
+no matter how wise and practical we become. There's always, in
+beauty--in sheer beauty something terrifying, as well as something
+sad. But--do I bore you with my dithyrambs?"
+
+"No! No!" she exclaimed.
+
+"The scene couldn't have been set better for that spectacle. There's a
+green strip along the river, then bare sagebrush flats, and beyond the
+flats are sand dunes where nothing grows but cactus and mesquite, and
+here and there some tufts of grass as tough and dry as wire. In summer
+the dunes are a parched and blistered inferno. In October they are
+raw gray desolation. I don't want to know what they are like in
+winter. The wind never ceases there. It builds the dunes into new
+shapes every day, and the sagebrush is always bent and lopsided and
+torn, and the colors are the gray and brown of the world's secret
+tragedy. But when the red sunset is on the dunes there's nothing I
+have ever seen so wild and passionate and beautiful.
+
+"It was late in the autumn. I rode out of a deep arroya, and came,
+without warning, into all that weird and solemn glory. There was a
+cold gush of air from up the valley. Far in the north were purple
+patches on the flats, and violet shadows in the foothills. But the
+dunes were all vermilion, and I can't tell you what hue of red lay
+spread out deep and vivid on the Sangre de Cristo peaks,--a living,
+passionate, terrible blood-red. I'm not very devout, but I tell you
+candidly that I reined up my horse, took off my hat, and sat there
+gazing, with the queerest feelings, and saying, like the old
+Spaniards, 'Sangre de Cristo! Blood of Christ!'
+
+"Then something queer happened to me. You've seen a flash of sunlight
+reflected from a window, far off? Well, it wasn't like that, except in
+the sharpness of its effect. And I knew there was no house in all that
+waste of sand. It was just a flash, and was gone. I searched the
+horizon, and saw nothing but red dunes, and little puffs of sand
+kicked up by the rising wind. Must have been some trick of vision, I
+thought, and I looked away again toward the blood-red peaks. And there
+it was again, in the corner of my eye. But it was gone when I tried to
+fix it. I put spurs to my horse, and rode toward the dunes, and caught
+the flash again--just a bright yellow speck in the darkening
+vermilion. It came and went, and seemed then to have been lost
+completely. I was about convinced that the red sunset had gone to my
+head--that I was following something that existed only in my brain.
+
+"Then, as I loped up to the top of a dune--there he stood, on another
+dune, perhaps two hundred yards away. His golden hide reflected the
+red glow like polished metal, his mane flamed in the wind. You cannot
+possibly imagine the effect of it, in that unreal light, in that
+setting of desolation, with the crimson mountains behind him. He stood
+alone on the hill, with his head high, motionless as a statue. For as
+long as half a minute he let me look at him. Then he turned, and was
+gone like a flash of fire. I had just one more glimpse of him, flying
+over the dunes, and followed by a score or more of wild horses of all
+colors except his color, and none worth looking at. With him the red
+went out of the landscape, the peaks turned white, and I sat alone in
+the gray, raw twilight. But right there I made up my mind about one
+thing: I must have that horse. You know the rest."
+
+"But what do you mean to do with him?" asked Marion, vaguely
+troubled.
+
+"Ride him."
+
+"Don't!" she gasped.
+
+"Why not?" he demanded.
+
+"He'll kill you!"
+
+Haig laughed.
+
+"Oh, I think not!"
+
+"But what is the use?"
+
+"What's the use of anything?"
+
+"But it's--"
+
+"Mere folly, you think?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Now you don't mean that at all, Miss Gaylord. You know perfectly well
+that if I were doing it to please you--to win your admiration--you
+wouldn't call it folly."
+
+"You will please me--and win my admiration--if you don't do it.
+Please!"
+
+"But I don't want--You'll pardon me?--I don't want to win your
+admiration."
+
+What could she say to that? There was a moment of silence.
+
+"When?" she asked quietly.
+
+"I'm waiting for Farrish, my foreman. He's the only man I can
+absolutely depend upon. He's in Omaha. He'll be back next week."
+
+"And you won't begin without him?"
+
+"No."
+
+She had no choice but to be satisfied with a few days of grace.
+Moreover, something might happen before the return of Farrish; the
+outlaw might escape, or she might find another opportunity to plead
+with Haig, or--What was she thinking of? Something was going to
+happen that very evening; and she had almost forgotten it, in her
+absorption!
+
+She had meant to do, long before now, what he had prevented her doing
+at the stable,--to confess her deception, to plead for mercy, to beg
+him to go back. Failing in that, there was Tuesday trotting behind the
+trap; she could leap out, prove to Haig that her foot was uninjured,
+and insist upon riding home alone. But now the confession seemed ten
+times more difficult than it had seemed in the first flush of her
+resolution. They were far up the Brightwater by this time; a few
+minutes more would bring them to the branch road that led to
+Huntington's. Yet how could she tell him?
+
+"My foot doesn't hurt any more," she began, compromising with her
+resolution.
+
+"That's because you've been sitting still," he replied.
+
+"But it doesn't hurt when I move it. See!"
+
+She lifted the foot, and rested it on the dashboard, bending and
+twisting it.
+
+"By which you mean to tell me that I am to go back," he said.
+
+"Please!"
+
+"No!" he answered curtly.
+
+"It wasn't badly sprained at all," she persisted. "I was only--" She
+caught herself, with a shock. "I was only frightened, I think."
+
+"I don't believe you."
+
+"But it's the truth."
+
+"Then it was not the truth in the first place."
+
+There it was now, her best occasion to come out with it. But no; she
+could not.
+
+"It's not so bad as I feared," she stammered.
+
+"I trust not. A sprain is a bad business."
+
+"But you'll go back now!" she pleaded.
+
+"No."
+
+"Oh, why won't you?"
+
+"I've started."
+
+"That's not the reason!" she cried desperately.
+
+"True, there's another reason. That makes two."
+
+"What other reason?"
+
+"I want to ask Huntington about his health."
+
+The deviltry had come back into his voice; and just ahead of them she
+saw the fork of the road.
+
+"There's a third reason too, I'm afraid," she answered bitterly.
+
+"What's that, do you think?"
+
+"You want to punish me!"
+
+"Perhaps--a little."
+
+"Do you think that's--"
+
+"Noble? Manly? Kind? Generous?" he broke in.
+
+"Do you really think it's worth your while to punish me?" she asked
+with passionate irony.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"But why?"
+
+"Because I hope to be let alone hereafter."
+
+At that her anger rose.
+
+"Do you think that is the way a man should speak to a woman?"
+
+"It seems to be the only way to make a woman understand. And even
+then--"
+
+She felt that he shrugged his shoulders in the darkness.
+
+"Then I'm sorry for the women you have known!" she retorted.
+
+"That should make it all the easier for you to avoid any more
+accidents in my part of the Park," he answered unperturbed. "It's your
+own fault if I'm rude. I haven't forced my attentions upon you. If you
+feel that you've been mistreated, there's another reason--that makes
+four, doesn't it?--for my going to Huntington's. We'll be there in
+five minutes. You can tell him."
+
+She could find no answer to all this. Brutal as it was, she knew that
+she had deserved it. Her anger fell away, for she had found already
+that she could not be angry with him long; and now, even in her
+torment, she began to be sorry for him, wondering what he had passed
+through that had so hardened and embittered him.
+
+But the team had turned into the branch road; and she must act at
+once. There remained but one thing for her to do: to leap out of the
+trap, and refuse to go farther with him. On the thought, she measured
+the distance to the ground, the speed of the trotting sorrels. Perhaps
+she moved a little. Or had he actually read her thoughts? For
+suddenly, but very quietly, he laid a hand on her shoulder.
+
+"No!" he said. "You might really hurt yourself this time."
+
+She sank back in dismay, but with a thrill of admiration. What was
+this man, who knew her thoughts before she herself knew them, who
+mastered her--and despised her? She trembled, and was glad of the
+night that concealed her flushed face from him. As for her purpose,
+she was at the end of her resources. No confession, no plea would
+avail to shake his determination. She could do no more; and judgment
+was upon her--soon.
+
+"Hold the reins, please!" commanded Haig.
+
+He leaped out of the trap, opened the gate, and closed it when he had
+led the sorrels through. Then he climbed into the trap, and drove on.
+There was no moon. The ranch buildings lay huddled and indistinct in
+the dim starlight.
+
+At the sound of the hoofs and wheels a man emerged from the stable,
+bearing a lantern. He hurried up to them, stumbling sleepily, and
+peering at the figures vaguely seen in the gloom.
+
+"Here, Williams!" Haig said shortly. "Hold my team, will you! I'll be
+only a few minutes."
+
+The lantern fell from the man's hand, struck the ground with a
+clatter, and lay on its side, flaming and smoking.
+
+"Pick it up!" ordered Haig.
+
+The man obeyed, with the suddenness of a jack-in-the-box, and stood as
+if petrified.
+
+"Quick! The horses! They're no damned broncos!"
+
+Williams jumped to the bridles; and a gleam from the lantern showed
+Marion his face. His mouth was open, his eyes staring with incredulity
+and alarm. She was seized with a preposterous desire to laugh at that
+comical visage, made grotesque by the wavering light of the lantern
+that danced in the fellow's hand. She was on the verge of hysteria.
+
+Haig leaped out, and held up his arms for her, snapping his fingers
+impatiently. In almost complete inertia, yet with every nerve
+quivering, she let him help her to the ground, where he placed her arm
+in his, and started toward the ranch house.
+
+"Limp! Limp!" he whispered in her ear.
+
+She obeyed him mechanically. Everything seemed to have become very
+still and cold; feeling had frozen in her limbs; terror clutched at
+her icily out of the gloom. There were two lighted windows in front of
+her, two baleful yellow gleams, like the eyes of a monster of the
+night. At any instant the door would open, gulping her in.
+
+She choked down a cry. Her feet were like lead now, and she stumbled
+on the first of the half-dozen steps that led to the veranda. Haig
+pulled her up quickly, flung his right arm around her waist, and
+fairly carried her up the steps. At that moment, just as they stood on
+the level floor, the door was opened, and Huntington's huge body
+appeared in silhouette against the lamplight.
+
+"That you, Marion?" he called out, peering into the darkness. Then,
+almost instantly: "Somebody with you, Marion?"
+
+Haig answered for her.
+
+"Good evening, Cousin Seth!" he called out cheerily. "I just dropped
+in to ask about your health."
+
+For perhaps as long as it took him to catch his arrested breath,
+Huntington stood motionless. Then, with an oath, he bounded back into
+the room, and disappeared, as Marion dully realized, in the direction
+of his room, where his revolver hung on a rack. She felt the form
+beside her straighten out like a loosed spring; and the next instant
+she was borne swiftly forward into the light, into the house, into the
+scene she had pictured, the scene she herself had prepared. The arm
+that supported her was quickly withdrawn, and she was left standing at
+one side of the door, while Haig leaped away from her, and stood
+waiting at the other.
+
+Even as this was done, Huntington reappeared at the door of his
+bedroom. The revolver in his right hand moved slowly upward. In
+the kitchen doorway was Claire--a stricken thing in blue and
+gold--clinging to the doorpost, her lips parted, her eyes wide with
+terror. But Haig! Could anything have been more horrible than that
+smile? It was fearless, mocking, insolent. And his whole attitude
+matched it perfectly. He stood carelessly erect, with arms folded,
+disdaining Huntington's weapon. But not the slightest motion of his
+enemy--perhaps not even the thought before it--could have escaped
+him. Marion knew him; and she felt as certain as if it had already
+happened that if Seth lifted his revolver by so much as another
+inch he would be stretched out on the floor there as he had been on
+the ground at Paradise.
+
+All this she saw in an interval as brief as that between two clicks of
+the shutter of her kodak. Then the clock on the mantel began to
+strike. It was a friendly clock, with a musical, soft note. But now
+its stroke crashed upon the silence like a tolling bell. It seemed to
+have its part in that halted scene, as if all waited on its last
+solemn count. If she could only move, think, speak, before it
+finished!
+
+The next thing she knew she was in the middle of the room, directly
+between the two men, and speaking.
+
+"Wait, Seth!" she heard herself saying. "I did it. I brought him here
+to--to make peace with you."
+
+She ended on the clock's last note; and silence fell again.
+Huntington's jaw dropped; amazement was printed on his face, and
+incredulity. Marion walked quietly up to him, took the revolver from
+his hand, and left him standing in the doorway, his arms hanging loose
+at his side. She crossed the room to Haig, slowly, somewhat gropingly
+like a somnambulist, with a half-smiling, strange expression fixed on
+her chalk-white face. She stretched out her left hand to him, her
+right still clasping Seth's six-shooter. There was something
+magnetic, curiously compelling in her manner; for she said nothing,
+made no sound. Haig stared at her, the odious smile fading from his
+lips; his arms slowly fell apart, one hand in the direction of the
+revolver at his hip; and for a moment it seemed that he too would
+yield to her. But suddenly he threw back his head, and laughed.
+
+"By Jupiter!" he cried. "I didn't think it was in you. You almost got
+me too. Good night--all!"
+
+On that he turned on his heel, and vanished into the night. Marion
+heard him laughing still as his boots crunched on the gravel; heard
+his voice in brief and sharp command at the stable; heard the beat of
+the sorrels' hoofs on the road, and the fragment of a song wafted back
+to her,--something rollicking and insolent, in a foreign tongue. She
+stood listening until the sounds had died away in the night, and
+silence enveloped her. Then, just as Huntington leaped forward with a
+bellow of rage,--too late, as ever,--and Claire, with a shriek, rushed
+to throw herself between him and the door, Marion's head drooped
+forward, her knees gave way, and she fell senseless on the floor.
+
+Huntington's big revolver, slipping from her nerveless fingers as she
+fell, struck the Navajo rug with a muffled thump, bounced and rolled
+over, and settled down harmlessly on a patch of barbaric red.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+HEARTS INSURGENT
+
+
+Seth recovered his revolver, and lunged toward the door. But Claire
+was before him. She flung herself upon him, clutching the lapels of
+his coat.
+
+"Seth! Seth!" she shrieked. "What are you doing?"
+
+"I'll follow him!" he roared. "I'll follow him! I'll end the whole
+thing! I'll finish it, I tell you!"
+
+"No! No!" she wailed; and clung to him frantically.
+
+He was beside himself, almost incoherent, for the moment quite
+irresponsible. It is very likely that, but for Claire, he would have
+mounted a horse and pursued Haig to his ranch, with such consequences
+as anybody except himself could easily have foreseen. But he was not
+so far gone in frenzy as to hurt Claire, as he must have done in
+tearing himself loose from her. He stood a moment in tragic
+helplessness, grinding his teeth, and hurling muttered imprecations
+out into the night that covered Philip Haig. Then he looked down at
+the golden head pressed against his breast, and felt the frail body
+quivering; and some sense of what he was doing, or was about to do,
+reached his brain through the fumes of rage. There was yet a long
+struggle; for he was too ponderous for quick decisions, and at the
+same time too outright for successful equivocation. Defeat was always
+a staggering blow to him, since he had no art to mask it. And now,
+lacking the sagacity to swallow his mortification and to bide his
+time, he could only suffer, rending himself in lieu of another on whom
+to pour his fury.
+
+In the midst of this futile passion his roving eyes fell on
+Marion. She lay where she had fallen, in a dead faint, limp on the
+red-and-yellow rug. Seth stared at her a full minute, while an
+indefinable suspicion grew in the back of his brain. She had said,
+"I've brought him here to make peace with you." And Haig himself had
+given the lie to that speech! What did it all mean? By God, he would
+find out!
+
+"Come, Claire!" he said. "Attend to Marion!" And he began to loosen
+her fingers from his coat.
+
+But she only clutched it the tighter.
+
+"You'll go!" she cried.
+
+"No! Not to-night!"
+
+"You promise?"
+
+"Yes! Yes!" he growled.
+
+She looked steadily up at him, questioning, fearful, until he bent
+down and kissed her.
+
+"There!" he said, roughly and yet not ungently. "Now go to Marion!"
+
+They picked her up, and laid her on the couch at one side of the big
+room; and Claire unbuttoned her dress at the throat, and bathed her
+face and neck with cold water, while Seth rubbed and slapped her
+hands.
+
+Her first impulse, on opening her eyes and seeing Claire and Seth
+leaning over her, was to raise her head, and look toward the door. She
+saw only a patch of darkness, empty and still. Then she remembered how
+she had heard his mocking voice fade away in the night; and her eyes
+returned to Seth and Claire. Their faces told her what to expect: and
+she knew that they were right in demanding, as they would demand, the
+fullest explanation.
+
+"Water, please!" she murmured, moistening her dry lips with her
+tongue.
+
+She sat up, slowly emptied the glass that Claire placed in her
+trembling hand, then buttoned her collar over her bare throat, and
+began to pin up the locks of hair that had fallen about her face and
+neck. Her hands, she thought, were very thin and white. She had never
+fainted before, and was still a little frightened and surprised.
+
+"What does it all mean, Marion?" demanded Huntington.
+
+"Wait, Seth, can't you?" warned Claire. Then to Marion: "There's no
+hurry, dear. When you feel better."
+
+But her eyes denied her words. There was indeed no way out of it.
+Marion must speak, and without delay.
+
+"I'm cold," she said, shivering.
+
+"Of course!" cried Claire. "Come to the fire. And Seth! Close the
+door, please!"
+
+Huntington strode to the door, and slammed it shut. Then he returned
+to the chimney piece, and watched Marion as she leaned toward the
+blaze. He could barely restrain himself, waiting for her to begin.
+
+"I've been a silly fool, I suppose," she said presently, sitting erect
+again, and facing her cousins courageously. "It was all my fault. You
+mustn't blame him."
+
+An impatient exclamation by Huntington drew a warning glance from
+Claire.
+
+"Tell us just what happened, dear!" she urged gently.
+
+"I don't exactly know--I can't just understand how it happened,"
+Marion began. "I had an accident--in the road. My foot was hurt--my
+ankle was twisted--or I thought it was--and I was frightened."
+
+"An accident?" said Claire.
+
+"I was off my pony--the cinches were loose--and--when I tried to mount
+again--I slipped--somehow--and fell. He was just in time to help me,
+and--"
+
+"Where was that?" asked Huntington.
+
+"Just below his place. He was coming back--"
+
+"But what were you doing over there?" demanded Huntington.
+
+"Riding," she said calmly, perhaps a little defiantly.
+
+"Yes, I know that. But on his land?"
+
+"Did you ever tell me anything about that?" she retorted.
+
+"No, but--"
+
+"Then how was I to know?"
+
+"But you've heard--"
+
+"Yes, I heard some things at the post-office. You've told me
+nothing."
+
+Huntington's face reddened angrily.
+
+"Never mind that now!" cried Claire sharply, sending another warning
+look at Seth. "Go on, dear!"
+
+Marion went on, very carefully. With Claire alone she might have been
+more frank and confiding, but Seth's belligerent attitude had begun to
+stir resentment in her.
+
+"He thought I had a bad sprain. He was annoyed; he didn't take any
+pains to conceal that from me. But he lifted me into the saddle,
+and rode with me to his stable, and told one of his men to hitch
+up a team, and drive me home. That would have been--all right, and he
+had no intention--until--something I said--I must have been
+hysterical--something made him angry, and he--said he would drive me
+home himself."
+
+"And you let him!" cried Claire reproachfully.
+
+"No, I didn't _let_ him. He did it in spite of all I could do. I
+pleaded with him, I tried every way to stop him. Once I started to
+leap out of the trap. But he caught me. He laughed at me But he was
+very angry too; he scolded me dreadfully. Said I needed to be punished
+for--I don't know what. He hates women, and says we're always meddling
+in men's affairs. It served me right, of course. And please remember
+it was all my fault--truly!"
+
+"Did he say anything about making peace?" asked Claire.
+
+"No. That was all mine. I had to do something quickly. You know
+that."
+
+"But what did he say about me?" growled Huntington, who was far from
+satisfied, and still suspicious.
+
+"Not much. Oh, yes!" she added impulsively. "He said you and he could
+probably come to an understanding quickly enough if--"
+
+She paused, embarrassed.
+
+"If what?" demanded Huntington.
+
+"That was only because he dislikes women, I think. He said--if
+Claire--Mrs. Huntington, he said,--would let you alone."
+
+"I?" cried Claire. It was almost a scream of astonishment and
+indignation.
+
+"I'll show him!" shouted Huntington. "He'd better keep her name out of
+it, or I'll--"
+
+"I haven't done anything!" wailed Claire.
+
+"I'll make him pay for that!" bellowed Huntington, bringing his fist
+down on the mantel.
+
+"You mustn't blame him!" protested Marion hastily. "He was angry at
+me, and I don't think he's as bad as you think he is."
+
+"Marion!" cried Claire, her eyes widening with wonder.
+
+Then Marion had the misfortune to blush under Claire's curious gaze.
+She blushed, at first, merely because she had gone too far in her
+effort to clear Haig of responsibility for what had occurred that
+evening; and then the blood stormed into her cheeks as she encountered
+Claire's look, and attached a deeper meaning to it than it actually
+conveyed.
+
+Huntington leaned forward, and gazed suspiciously into Marion's
+crimsoned face.
+
+"Well, I'll be damned!" he broke out. "You'd think the girl was in
+love with this ruffian!"
+
+For an instant there was a silence much like the silence that follows
+a clap of thunder. Then Marion rose slowly to her feet, quivering, her
+eyes ablaze.
+
+"Ruffian?" she cried. "If there's any ruffian it's--"
+
+She caught herself. She was innately gentle and fastidious, and she
+could not, without shame, have forced her lips to say the things that
+she felt in her outraged heart. But she looked at him; and under that
+look Seth quailed and shrank. What had he said to evoke this luminous
+hatred? He had not meant--
+
+"And I think she's right, Seth Huntington!" exclaimed Claire, coming
+to Marion, and putting an arm, around her. "If there's any ruffian
+it's you, and I'm ashamed of you!"
+
+Huntington's jaw dropped, and he stared at them, his eyes bulging with
+astonishment. Then suddenly he turned, and bolted from the room. The
+door leading to the kitchen was flung shut behind him; then the outer
+door banged; and in a moment his heavy footsteps were heard on the
+veranda, where he strode to and fro in helpless rage and shame and
+wonder. He had a feeling of soreness over all his body, as if some one
+had roundly pummelled him; his face itched beneath his beard; he could
+not find a comfortable place for his hands. Well, he agreed with Haig
+about one thing: women were hell! And here was Claire siding with
+Marion against him; and calling him a ruffian! Was he a ruffian? What
+had he said to merit that? Couldn't they take a joke? But this
+casuistry did not go down, though he tried to hammer it down with many
+violent gestures. He began to have certain qualms that he recognized
+as premonitory signs of weakening; and he struggled to bolster up his
+anger. Damn Haig! If he had only finished him that day in the timber,
+when the others had wanted to! But this was a vain regret. There
+remained the present situation. Gradually his steps faltered. He
+stopped often to look vacantly at the stars. They had nothing to say
+to him. He felt very solitary, alone in the world.
+
+After a time the kitchen door was opened softly.
+
+"Seth!" came a whisper from that direction.
+
+"Well?" he answered uncertainly.
+
+"Aren't you cold?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Well, we are. The fire's going out."
+
+"Umph!"
+
+"Won't you please fetch some wood?"
+
+No reply. Claire slipped out, and crept up to him.
+
+"Come!" she commanded softly. "Do you want us to freeze?"
+
+Still no reply.
+
+"Oh, you do, do you?"
+
+"It's time you went to bed."
+
+"No, it isn't. We're not going to bed until you come in and beg
+Marion's pardon."
+
+"No, I'll be--"
+
+She tried to clap her hand over his mouth, but succeeded only in
+hitting his nose a smart tap, which was just as effective, since it
+checked him.
+
+"No swearing, either!" she went on. "You've been rude enough for one
+night, don't you think? I'll tell you my opinion of it later. She's
+going to be easy with you because she's sorry about it all. Come!"
+
+Huntington did not move, or answer her.
+
+"Do you want her to leave by the next stage--and have this all over
+the Park too--like Haig's visit? Come!"
+
+He groaned, but followed her. At the door of the living room he caught
+sight of Marion seated before the fireplace, where only embers glowed
+dull red.
+
+"I'll get some wood," he said quickly, glad of even a few minutes'
+grace.
+
+Fortune tossed him a small favor: the wood bin near the kitchen door
+was empty--almost. Another time that would have brought a storm down
+on the head of the unlucky stable hand whose duty it was to keep the
+bin filled. But now Seth rejoiced at having to go to the wood yard,
+and found it much too near.
+
+He re-entered the house with an armload of sticks, and placed them
+carefully on the embers; stirred up the glowing mass with a poker;
+readjusted the fresh wood; provoked the red coals once more; and at
+last, having exhausted the dilatory possibilities of the fire, stood
+up clumsily to face the ordeal.
+
+"Well, Marion," he began awkwardly, "I'm in for it, I reckon."
+
+She did not reply; she only looked at him. There were dark shadows
+around her eyes that heightened the pallor of her cheeks; but the eyes
+themselves were clear and piercing, and as cold now as they had been
+fiery before. For once in his life Huntington was conscious of his
+bulk; he felt conspicuous; and the wound in his shoulder, almost
+healed, began to itch and ache.--There were worse things than being
+shot.--If she would only turn those eyes away from him! And then it
+dawned upon him that she was waiting.
+
+"I beg your pardon, Marion!" he stammered. "I was ugly. I didn't
+really mean--I hope you'll forgive me."
+
+For a minute longer she let him stew in his kettle, then lifted him
+out scrupulously, at the end of a very long fork, and dropped him
+steaming, as if he had been a lump of unsavory fat.
+
+"Yes, I forgive you," she said, very, very distantly. "You probably
+weren't thinking."
+
+If that was forgiveness! But he did not know--even Claire did not know
+then--how deeply he had wounded Marion with his rude and accusing
+speech,--as if he had called a jeering crowd to look at the little
+flower that blooms but once, and very secretly, in a woman's heart.
+Forgive him? She never would forgive him for that blundering outburst,
+which was indeed the more unforgivable because he did not seriously
+mean, and certainly did not believe, the thing he said.
+
+"Thank you, Marion dear!" said Claire softly.
+
+At that Marion suddenly rushed to Claire, and knelt by her chair. She
+had her own faults to be forgiven.
+
+"I've been very foolish!" she cried. "I've caused you pain and
+humiliation. I'm sorry. Please forgive me!"
+
+So they cried it out in each other's arms, while Huntington rolled a
+cigarette, took one whiff of it, and tossed it into the fire. It
+required a stronger narcotic than tobacco to soothe his fevered
+spirits. After a while he whirled around and faced the two women.
+
+"See here, Marion!" he said. "It's all our fault for not telling you
+about Haig. But we didn't want to annoy you with our troubles, and we
+never imagined you'd stumble on to him. Do you know now what this is
+all about?"
+
+She spared him the answer that she had heard something on that point
+the day of the shooting.
+
+"No; that is, very little."
+
+"Well, it's just this: Before he came here we were all playing the
+game peacefully together. Each of us had just about enough land, with
+the cut hay and the winter pastures, to pull through the winter, and
+there was just enough free grazing up in the edges of the timber to
+keep the cattle going through the summer and early fall."
+
+"That was government land," explained Claire.
+
+"And open to all of us," added Seth. "We never had any dispute with
+the Englishman who owned Haig's ranch before him, and he got fair
+treatment, though he wasn't here much of the time to look after it. We
+heard he had some family trouble, and one day when he'd been gone a
+long time--"
+
+"That's four years now," interrupted Claire.
+
+"Yes. Haig showed up, and said the ranch was his. He started in
+straight off to hog the whole thing. Bought a thousand head of
+cattle--that made thirteen hundred head--almost as many as all the
+rest of us had put together. He turned the thirteen hundred into the
+open range, and hired men to keep them moving the right way for the
+good feed, and--"
+
+"He had a perfect right to do that, you see," Claire put in hastily.
+
+"Legal right, maybe," Huntington went on. "But he didn't have any real
+right to more than his share. We organized, bunched our cattle, and
+stayed with 'em. That way we were stronger than he, and soon had his
+cattle starving. Then he disappeared, and we didn't see anything of
+him for three weeks. And what do you suppose the damned skunk--"
+
+"Seth!" cried Claire warningly, with an anxious look at Marion.
+
+Marion merely shook her head.
+
+"Well, he fooled us. He went to Denver, got a lawyer on the job,
+looked up the records, found there'd been a mistake in the surveys,
+and came back to us with a government deed to almost half the forest
+reserve that we'd been using as free pasture. Then he ordered us off,
+and we went, with six Winchesters pointed at our fool backs. What do
+you think of that, Marion?"
+
+"But why?" asked Marion. "I mean what was his motive in all that? He
+isn't a cattleman. I mean--I don't think he cares enough--"
+
+She stopped, finding herself in dangerous waters.
+
+"Why? Because he's a--" Huntington checked himself. "Anyhow, he barely
+escaped a lynching that night. And if he only knew it, I'm the one
+that stopped it. I said we'd find some other way. But we haven't found
+it. We had to bring most of our stock down to the pastures we needed
+for winter, and in winter we had to buy hay at eighteen dollars a ton.
+And Haig had hay to sell. Three of our men were driven out of
+business. Tom Jenkins, being dead broke and discouraged, with a
+family, killed himself. I had to sell off a third of my cattle, and
+twenty head disappeared, and I never saw them again. And maybe you can
+understand now how I felt when I saw him this evening, standing there
+in my own house, grinning at me. God!"
+
+He turned, grabbed up the poker, and began jabbing viciously at the
+fire.
+
+Yes, Marion could understand that, but--She was not satisfied. There
+was something missing from Seth's narrative. Haig's accusations that
+day at the post-office--his missing cattle, and the cut wires at the
+Forbidden Pasture--And if all that Seth had said was true, which she
+doubted, the mystery was only deepened. She was sure that Haig was
+only playing a part, that he was not a cattleman by choice, and that
+his heart was not in the game, whatever it was. She wanted to ask
+questions, but refrained, lest she should again arouse Seth's
+suspicions. She would see Smythe.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL
+
+
+The next afternoon Huntington, with painful diffidence, yet anxious to
+come to some sort of terms with Marion, proposed that she should begin
+her shooting lessons. She acquiesced in a manner that relieved him
+immensely, for she, on her side, was sorely in need of distraction. So
+they were presently on the hillside behind the ranch house with the
+rifles,--Seth's Winchester and the little Savage he had bought for
+Claire, who, to his great disappointment, did not like guns, and never
+could be taught to see the sights with one eye closed. His delight,
+therefore, was unbounded when Marion took to the Savage with almost
+the quick adaptability of a man. True, her first shots went high and
+wild among the foliage, but she was fast getting the grip of the gun,
+and had actually once scraped the bark of the tree on which the target
+of white paper was tacked, when they were hailed by a cheerful voice
+demanding permission for an unarmed and perfectly harmless man to
+approach.
+
+"Smythe!" growled Huntington, resenting the interruption. Then aloud,
+as heartily as he could: "Hello, Smythe! You're quite safe."
+
+"What's going on here, anyhow?" asked Smythe.
+
+"Where are your boasted powers of observation?" retorted Marion.
+
+"It's more polite to ask."
+
+"In Paradise Park?" she queried, in a tone of mild surprise.
+
+Seth's face reddened as he stooped over a half-empty cartridge-box. He
+had congratulated himself too soon. But while Smythe and Marion
+exchanged more badinage he refilled the magazine of the Savage, and
+held it ready.
+
+"Will you have another try?" he asked.
+
+"Yes, please, if Mr. Smythe will only keep still. I know I can never
+hit anything if he talks."
+
+"I'm mum!" he answered.
+
+The first shot went wild. So, indeed, the second and third.
+
+"There! What did I tell you?" cried Marion petulantly.
+
+"But I didn't say a word!" protested Smythe.
+
+"What were you thinking, then?"
+
+"What a charming Diana--"
+
+"Don't think any more, please!"
+
+"But I can't stop thinking!"
+
+"In that case you'd better talk. You certainly talk enough without
+thinking."
+
+"Bull's-eye!" he cried joyously. "Now try again!"
+
+"I suppose I must learn not to be bothered."
+
+She pressed her lips together, and steadied herself resolutely. She
+would show him! The next shot cut a furrow in the bark of the pine;
+the second struck within two inches of the target; and the third
+pinked the edge of the paper itself.
+
+"That will do for this time," she said, in some elation, as she handed
+the gun to Huntington.
+
+"To-morrow you'll do better," he assured her. "And then we'll try it
+at longer range."
+
+He began to pick up the cartridge boxes and his own rifle.
+
+"You're not riding to-day?" said Smythe.
+
+"How did you guess it?" she demanded, laughing.
+
+"Oh, a truce! A truce!" he pleaded. "I mean, if you are not going for
+a ride, will you walk up the hill there?"
+
+He pointed toward the pines.
+
+"Why?"
+
+"To please me," he answered.
+
+But she caught a look in his eyes that decided her.
+
+"Certainly, if you are so easily pleased."
+
+"Oh, I'm a very Lazarus at the table of life!" he retorted gaily.
+"Every crumb comforts me."
+
+She laughed, and stepped away with him among the rocks, while
+Huntington, still swearing at Smythe for a meddling fool, strode down
+the hill.
+
+Marion surmised that Smythe had something to say to her. Had he heard
+already? Had the news of yesterday's comedy, that was so near a
+tragedy, already spread far and wide over the Park? But that was
+scarcely possible, since Haig's men would be silent, and Seth had kept
+Williams too busy all day for gossip.
+
+They climbed the rocky slope without more words, clambering over
+bowlders and fallen tree trunks, until they reached the summit of the
+hill, and flung themselves down, hot and panting, on a great flat rock
+that commanded a sweeping view of the Park. At one side more hills
+rose, small mountains in themselves, thickly wooded, with white peaks
+towering behind. On the other, the valley of the Brightwater lay green
+and bronze in the sun, with the white stream curling and curving among
+the meadows. Far across the valley, beyond the ridge that divided the
+Park in unequal halves--that fateful ridge!--the western range of
+mountains glittered, dazzling white.
+
+Marion's eyes at once sought out Thunder Mountain. What would it say
+to her to-day? Storm! Its top was half-hidden in a gray-black swirl of
+clouds, though the sun was bright on the snow-clad peaks around it.
+
+"What do you see?" asked Smythe, as soon as his lungs would consent to
+speech.
+
+"My mountain," she answered, without turning her head.
+
+"Which is that?"
+
+"Thunder Mountain."
+
+"Umph! You're welcome to it!"
+
+She was silent.
+
+"Why your mountain?" he asked presently.
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"But there must be a reason--or something."
+
+"That's just it--something. It's hideous, but it fascinates me. I
+can't help thinking that--"
+
+"That what?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+They laughed together.
+
+"It's got a bad reputation," said Smythe.
+
+"Perhaps that's the reason."
+
+Then she was embarrassed, thinking unexpectedly of another bad
+reputation in the Park.
+
+"Perhaps," he answered, smiling at the back of her head, where the
+tawny hair curved up adorably from the soft, white neck.
+
+"Tell me about it!" she said at length.
+
+"It's a death trap."
+
+"You mean--men have gone up there?"
+
+"Oh, yes!"
+
+"How?"
+
+"There's a trail, what's left of it. The Warpath, they call it."
+
+"The Warpath?"
+
+"Yes. It was first a war trail, when fighting tribes lived in these
+mountains. But even the Indians didn't use it often--only in
+midsummer. It's a trail over bare rocks, marked by stones set up at
+long intervals. The Indians didn't mark it. They had their own ways of
+knowing it. But after the Indians came trappers, hunters, prospectors,
+and some of them set up the stones. It would be a valuable short cut
+between the Park and the San Luis country, if it were safe. But it's
+not. I'm told that many lives have been lost on it. I can't find
+details except of one tragedy. Some ten years ago a party of English
+people, guests at the ranch that Haig now owns, went on a pleasure
+trip to Thunder Mountain. They meant to go only as far as timber line.
+It's not difficult as far as the foot of the scarp that lifts to the
+flat top you see yonder. It's done on horseback to that point--and
+across too, if you care to try it. But on top--that's another matter.
+It isn't the mountain itself that gets you. It's the storms. The
+English party ventured on top, and three of them never came back. The
+wind hurled them into a chasm, and their bodies were never recovered.
+That's enough for me, thank you!"
+
+"Has nobody in the Park ever been across?" Marion persisted.
+
+"Old Parker--Jim Parker's father--crossed it once, many years ago. But
+he came back another way, around by Tellurium. Young Parker has been
+as far as the Devil's Chair. That's the top of the notch where the
+wind sucks you into it--unless, by good chance, it blows you away from
+it."
+
+"And no one else?" Marion insisted, breathless.
+
+"One other man has gone to the Twin Sisters. That's halfway over."
+
+"Who was that?" she asked; as if she did not know.
+
+"He balked at the women, you see."
+
+Smythe chuckled.
+
+"The Twin Sisters," Smythe went on, "are two huge gray rocks, I'm
+told, vaguely resembling carved figures. The trail passes between
+them. There's no other possible way, and when the wind is blowing it
+shoots out between them like water from a fire-hose. Haig was caught
+just there by a storm. He came back fighting mad, and swore he'd cross
+Thunder Mountain yet, or die there. But that reminds me. I've got news
+for you."
+
+"News?" asked Marion, with a start.
+
+Her first thought was of Sunnysides. Had Haig decided not to wait for
+Farrish? But no! It would be something about yesterday's sensation.
+
+"It keeps well, I see," she said lightly.
+
+"I didn't want to excite you so soon after that long climb."
+
+"Thank you! If you think I can't stand it you just keep it to
+yourself--if you can!"
+
+"But I came expressly to tell you."
+
+"Then why don't you expressly tell me? Don't be exasperating, Mr.
+Smythe!"
+
+He grinned exultantly.
+
+"Well," he said, "I've been eavesdropping."
+
+"What?"
+
+"Not intentionally. Pure accident. But I didn't stick my fingers in my
+ears."
+
+"No, I can understand that."
+
+"Thanks. It was this way: I was fishing--for fish, really. Under a
+clump of willows, just where the road from Haig's joins the main
+valley road. You know?"
+
+"Yes, yes!"
+
+"Haig and another man, Higgins, it turned out to be--he's a Denver
+lawyer--with his family for an outing down at Cobalt Lake. It appeared
+he'd been up to see Haig partly on business and partly just for a
+friendly visit. They separated there, after a little conversation.
+
+"'It's strange you've never heard a word from him,' said Higgins.
+
+"'Four years,' answered Haig.
+
+"'He's probably off in South Africa somewhere.'
+
+"'Or India. It's a long trail be followed, no doubt.'
+
+"'You can only wait, I suppose,' Higgins said.
+
+"'Well, I've nothing else to do,' Haig replied, with a laugh." Smythe
+paused.
+
+"That's something to think about," he said musingly. "Who is this
+'he'? And why is Haig waiting for him? Well, that was all I heard
+about that. Higgins next asked Haig if he wouldn't please change his
+mind about riding down to see them.
+
+"'No,' Haig answered. 'I never go anywhere. I'm not very sociable, no
+longer a gregarious creature. Ask my neighbors about that!'
+
+"'Oh, hang your neighbors! This is different. We're not living here,
+and we can't pester you. But you see I got Hail Columbia from my wife
+for not bringing you to see her in Denver, and she's dead set on
+getting acquainted with you here. She says you're the most unselfish
+man in the world. I'd be jealous if--'
+
+"'Oh, come now!' protested Haig, laughing.
+
+"'It's true. So you'll drop this hermit business for once, won't you?
+It will give my wife much pleasure.'
+
+"There was a little silence.
+
+"'Well, have your own way,' said Haig at last 'I suppose a man's got
+to humor his lawyer, if he doesn't want to lose a plain case some day.
+But I warn you. I'm not very amusing, that is, I trust not.'
+
+"'Good!' cried Higgins. 'We'll not keep you long. The day after
+to-morrow, shall we say? Right! Now good-by! And don't let Huntington
+pot you--before you've seen Mrs. Higgins.'
+
+"They both laughed at that. Higgins drove off down the valley in his
+road wagon, and Haig galloped toward home. And then I found a trout
+had run away with my hook. Big fellow too, and clever as Satan.
+Scuttled away under a rock and worked loose before I could get after
+him. But it was a good day's fishing just the same, don't you think?"
+
+She did not reply at once; and Smythe discreetly busied himself
+tossing stones at an impertinent chipmunk that popped in and out among
+the rocks and fallen limbs.
+
+"Have you seen this Mrs. Higgins?" asked Marion suddenly.
+
+"No," Smythe answered gravely, though his eyes twinkled wickedly. "But
+Higgins is sixty at least, and I fancy his wife's too old to be--" A
+warning look checked him. "But really, Miss Gaylord, you ought not to
+jump down my throat after I've brought you such an interesting knot
+for your pretty hands to untie."
+
+She laughed at his lugubrious countenance, then stood up, and reached
+out a hand to him, letting him hold it for just a breath of time.
+
+"No, you're a good friend. I know it."
+
+"I'm not very deep," he said, with a touch of dejection. "Nobody ever
+takes me very seriously. But I hope you'll trust me!"
+
+"Indeed I will! But come! We must go back."
+
+So they went slipping and sliding down the hill, digging their heels
+into the ground, clinging to rocks and trees to check their swift
+descent, laughing at their wild plunges and gyrations. At the house,
+when they had rested a while on the veranda, Marion dismissed Smythe
+as quickly as she could without abruptness; and when he had gone she
+hastened to her room, and locked the door, and flung herself down on
+the bed, with her hands clasped behind her head, to stare up at the
+ceiling in a whirl of thoughts. There was a mystery! There was a
+motive behind Haig's conduct! "The most unselfish man in the world"
+And she repeated the words over and over again, and gathered them to
+her heart.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+AVALANCHE
+
+
+Huntington soon had his revenge on Marion, though, in his blindness,
+he never knew it. She and Claire, after an unusually protracted Small
+Talk the night before, arose late one morning to find the house
+topsy-turvy from masculine activity. On the veranda they discovered
+Seth cleaning rifles, surrounded by cartridge boxes, hunting knives,
+canvas bags and wrappings, rubber coats, leather straps, fishing
+tackle and what not.
+
+"In the name of goodness, Seth Huntington! What are you doing?"
+shrilled Claire.
+
+"Guess!" replied Huntington, with a rather heavy attempt at
+tantalizing.
+
+"Oh, I know! Camping. But you don't mean to-day?"
+
+"Sure!"
+
+"But why didn't you ask us?" demanded Claire. "Maybe we don't
+choose--"
+
+"But you do, though. I promised Marion that as soon as I--"
+
+He stopped, for even his habitually veiled eyes could not miss the
+look of consternation on Marion's face.
+
+"Why--I thought--" he began uncertainly. "Of course, if you don't want
+to go--"
+
+The oiled rag dropped from his hand. His descent from elation (he had
+planned a little surprise) to dejection and chagrin was a tumble that
+touched Marion's commiseration and disarmed her. She did not want to
+go camping; she did not want to leave the Park for even a day, an
+hour; she did not want to miss any opportunity to see Haig. More than
+ever now was she determined to solve his mystery. So Huntingdon's
+"surprise" was a greater shock to her than he, simple man, could
+possibly have foreseen or perceived. But even if she had not been
+moved by his rather ludicrous disappointment she would not have dared
+to refuse acquiescence in his programme. She had indeed expressed an
+ardent--oh, too ardent!--desire to go camping, and any explanation she
+could think of on the instant would have led her into regions where
+she could not trust herself.
+
+"Indeed, I want to go!" she cried quickly, though there was a big lump
+in her throat. "You took me by surprise, that's all."
+
+"I should say so!" said Claire. "Think you're smart, don't you? We
+might have been all dressed for it if you'd only told us. When do we
+start, Big Boss?"
+
+Huntington recovered his good spirits quickly, assured that he had
+succeeded after all.
+
+"I thought we'd ride to Ely's to-day, sleep there to-night, and make
+Mount Avalanche to-morrow evening."
+
+"Then we must hurry," said Claire. "Come, Marion."
+
+"How long--shall we be gone?" asked Marion, struggling to appear
+enthusiastic.
+
+"Four or five days, I suppose."
+
+Her heart sank. She could have cried with vexation. But she managed to
+conceal her real feelings in the bustle of preparation. There were
+provisions to be packed: cans and jars and bottles; bacon and ham and
+flour against the possible event of bad luck with the guns and rods;
+warm clothes and bedding; medicines and bandages. So fully occupied
+were her hands and brain with these details, and later with her first
+real experience with the mountain trails, that her heart must perforce
+keep its peace until some hour of solitude.
+
+Toward five o'clock of the second day they reached their destination,--a
+grassy shelf a little below timber line on Mount Avalanche. There, in
+some past age, an avalanche of titanic proportions had carried away
+part of the mountain itself; and they camped now on the top of the
+débris, long since concealed by a dense forest growth, as if nature had
+employed her utmost arts to hide the wound. Marion could not but yield a
+little to emotions of delight and wonder. On that high platform she
+stood above a marvelous mountain world, below another mountain world as
+marvelous. Behind her Avalanche reared sheer and sharp and white
+against the sky. On either side were snow-clad peaks. At her feet
+were forests in solid masses of green, now darkening in the
+twilight. And beyond, far, far beyond, the Park they had left lay
+bright under the sun's after-glow, with a background of range on range
+of mountains in their violet haze. On the shelf was forage for the
+horses; near at hand were moss and balsam for their beds; and at a
+little distance a rivulet, ice-cold, had shady pools where small
+trout awaited capture. And the air was like dry wine on the lips, with
+a tang of resin in the nostrils; and the woods sang a song that even
+Marion could not resist.
+
+Here they pitched two tents just large enough to cover the beds of
+balsam boughs and moss and blankets. In the three days they passed in
+camp Marion learned many things that were to be of incalculable value
+to her one day, though she never could have guessed that all this too,
+like the encounter in the Forbidden Pasture, had been ordered in the
+Beginning, details in the Scheme of Things. She learned surprising
+secrets of makeshift cookery; she learned the Indian's lesson of a
+very little fire; she learned the mountaineer's economy of matches and
+like precious articles. She fished in the small pools that lay hidden
+away in dark recesses of the forest, practised shooting with her
+rifle, and on the third day, in the timber below the camp, with Seth
+at her side, brought down her first deer.
+
+"I told you!" cried Huntington, delighted at the progress of his
+pupil.
+
+But her heart was not in all this; it was clamoring now to be heard,
+and would by no means be stilled. Each evening Marion walked apart
+from the others, to stand at the edge of the lofty platform, and watch
+her green and violet Elysium swallowed up in night. Each morning she
+searched for it through her field glasses to assure herself that it
+had not vanished in the dark. And when the last day of their outing
+came, the last evening, the last night, she could scarce contain her
+impatience. To-morrow they would start; and the day after--
+
+She could not sleep that night. Every twig and every needle of her
+pine mattress seemed to have conspired to torture her. She tossed
+about until she could no longer endure her bed; and in the middle of
+the night she crept out of the tent, and sat, wrapped in a blanket,
+before the smouldering embers of the fire. The hobbled horses grazed
+not far away; a night bird twitted solitarily in the brush; and from
+the depths of the forest came the scream of some savage creature out
+on its kill. Against the star-crowded sky the peaks stood up cold and
+impassive. What cared they? What did the world care? What did Philip
+care?
+
+For now she knew that she loved him. Yes, yes, she loved him! In her
+heart she had known it from the beginning, since that meeting in the
+Forbidden Pasture, had known it as one knows things without
+acknowledgment. Her mind had acknowledged only the hundred reasons why
+she should not, could not love him. He had repelled her; he had not
+veiled his meaning, had not concealed his antagonism; he had told her
+plainly, brutally almost, that he would not endure her presence, that
+she must avoid his side of the Park.
+
+Then she thought of Robert,--Robert, so devoted and so true. What was
+she doing: throwing away his love that was so unselfishly, so
+whole-heartedly laid at her feet? Had she been mad to flee from him?
+Yes, mad! Pride rose to support the fondness and the admiration she
+had felt for him. And so there ensued a struggle between the two fine
+spirits that dwelt in her,--the proud little lady of the Fragonard and
+the Viking with red hair.
+
+The Viking won. Had not her father said to her, in those long talks
+about her mother, that love is the only thing? And back she came, on
+swiftest wings of passion, to Philip; and she was glad. She knew now
+the meaning of her restlessness in the dark days in the unheeding
+city; she knew whose voice had called, whose arms had held her, though
+he was unaware. He needed her, though he did not know it. And she had
+come to him, without understanding. Somewhere she had read a fugitive
+bit of verse that had meant nothing then, and had been forgotten until
+now, when it suddenly sang across the years and the spaces like a call
+to courage:
+
+                         "The wild wind bloweth
+                         The cross of fire.
+                       The wild heart knoweth
+                         Its own desire."
+
+The wild heart knoweth its own desire! She rose to her feet with a
+singing and a resurrection of her heart. She scarcely knew that her
+limbs were stiff and that her body ached with cold. Her spirit was
+aroused. She could not go and take Philip as her father had taken the
+one he loved. But there were ways; when had a woman ever failed, in
+love, of finding them? She set herself to thinking, planning,
+scheming, while she walked swiftly to and fro before the tents. And
+presently she stopped her pacing, and looked curiously around her.
+There had come a subtle alteration in the aspect of the night. A
+shivering freshness had crept insensibly into the air. Leaves and
+grass and the very air appeared to be astir, though the silence and
+the darkness were as before. She looked up eagerly at the sky, and saw
+that the stars were pale. It was not yet the dawn; it was only the
+passing of the night. But the dawn was near. The dawn! The dawn!
+
+She did not wish Seth to find her there. He would ask questions,
+staring at her. She crept stealthily back into her tent, and lay
+there, shaking with cold, to wait for the noise that Huntington would
+make as he sought for live embers in the ashes of the fire.
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+Once out of the mountains and in the foothills, she rode far ahead of
+Seth and Claire, impatient at the slow progress necessitated by the
+difficulties of the pack horses. Late in the afternoon she found
+herself at a fork of the road with which she was familiar. A little
+way up the less-used of the two branches there was a glade where
+columbines grew in extraordinary profusion. She had gathered armloads
+of them there, and seemed scarcely to have touched the edge of that
+wild garden where nature had been seized with a prodigal impulse. And
+now, rather to be doing something than to await in irritation for Seth
+and Claire, she turned her pony's head and rode toward the glade. In
+five minutes she was fording a little stream, beyond which the road
+rose slightly to cross the shoulder of a hill, and dipped again to run
+in a sharp curve along the margin of the glade. She took the rise at a
+gallop, sped down the other slope, and at the curve of the road reined
+up her horse with a startled cry. She had come suddenly upon a team
+hitched at the side of the road,--the sorrels and the trap in which
+Philip Haig had driven her to Huntington's that terrible evening.
+
+For a moment she was bereft of thought and feeling. At that very
+instant she had been thinking of him; what instant was she not
+thinking of him? But the utterly unexpected encounter--for he was
+there somewhere, in the glade, no doubt--swept away all that courage
+she had found on Avalanche. She felt suddenly helpless, inert,
+afraid; and before she could regain her self-possession, call back her
+high resolve, the bushes at the roadside parted, and Philip stood
+before her. He bore a great bouquet of columbines, their stems wrapped
+in damp moss and leaves and tied securely with a string. At sight of
+her he halted; and that look of annoyance she had seen him wear in the
+road below his ranch house came again into his pale face. For some
+seconds they regarded each other in silence.
+
+"True," he said at length, with a smile that tortured her, "this is
+not my side of the Ridge. I am the trespasser, even though this is
+public domain. You have as much right here as I--more, since I said
+the Ridge was the dividing line. So--"
+
+He stepped quickly to her horse's side, pressed the great bunch of
+pale-blue flowers into her limp but obedient hands, lifted his
+battered hat, turned on his heel, walked directly to the trap, leaped
+into the seat, and drove swiftly away. She watched him dully until he
+was out of sight behind a bend in the road, among the trees; watched
+the spot where he had disappeared until it became a blur to her aching
+eyes. Then she looked slowly down at the flowers in her hands.
+Columbines! Frail, lovely things, the fairest product, she had
+thought, of nature's laboratory, reflecting the infinite, ineffable
+blue of God's skies, delicate as the flower that had bloomed with such
+wonderful, unexpected beauty in her own heart! How she could have
+treasured them, wept over them, hugged them to her breast, if he had
+given them to her in another way. Slowly her fingers relaxed. The
+flowers fell into the dust of the road. She stared down, at them a
+moment; and then, with a cry, leaped from her horse, picked them up
+eagerly, clasped them to her breast, buried her face in them, and
+watered them with her tears.
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+Seth said he guessed he would ride down to the post-office before
+supper; yesterday was mail day; might be something. Marion was glad of
+his departure, and to avoid Claire was not difficult, considering what
+baths, and changing of linen, and brushing of hair they required after
+their outing. Refreshed and rested, they had scarcely met before the
+new-lighted fire at twilight when Seth returned, stamping vigorously
+into the room.
+
+"You're the lucky one, Marion," he said.
+
+He fumbled in his pockets, and finally produced a letter. She took it,
+glanced at it, and let it fall into her lap. A great stillness seemed
+to have come upon the world. She appeared to be looking at Seth and
+Claire across great distances. She could hear her heart pounding in
+her bosom, like something that hammered for freedom. Ages seemed to
+have passed before she was able to rise slowly, to smile, to beg to be
+excused a moment. In her room she stood quite still, mechanically tore
+open the envelope, and read:
+
+  Dear Marion: You told me not to write, and I have obeyed till now.
+  Don't scold, please! You see I am in Denver. It's business.
+  Honest! A mining deal, just for a flyer. It may mean millions or
+  nothing. I am here for several days, possibly weeks. Won't you
+  _please_ let me run up to see you? Don't say no, Marion. I promise
+  to be good. I have an auto here, and they tell me the roads are
+  O. K. at this season. I'll come away the minute you tell me to. If
+  I can see you only for an hour it will make me very happy.
+
+                                                   Yours always,
+                                                           Robert.
+
+She read it twice, while the color slowly returned to her cheeks. Then
+the letter faded from her sight, and she saw a face that wore a cruel
+smile, and heard a voice that bade her begone. And suddenly a wave of
+resentment, of anger, swept over her. To have been scorned, flouted,
+humiliated by one to whom--And here was a man who wanted her as he
+wanted nothing else in the world, who would toil for her, die for her,
+who would treasure every word and smile she should consent to give
+him, whose one desire was to make her happy. What madness had come
+over her that she--she the Viking's daughter--Her eyes were drawn, she
+knew not how, to the columbines that she had carefully, tenderly
+arranged in a bowl on her dressing table. In a passion she rushed upon
+them, snatched them up dripping, bore them to the open window, and
+flung them with all her strength out upon the lawn. A moment she stood
+looking at them, her hands clutched upon her heaving breast, her whole
+body quivering with the storm that raged within her. Then she whirled
+around, flung herself down at her little writing table, and wrote:
+
+  Dear Robert: Yes, come. MARION.
+
+Her hand trembled now so that she could scarcely address the envelope,
+and seal it. But it was done at last. She rose, and paused a moment to
+collect herself. Her mouth was dry, her forehead was hot under the
+hand that she pressed upon it. Nervously she poured a glass of water
+from the crystal pitcher that stood on a little table by the window,
+and gulped it down. Her eyes, as she did so, fell again upon the
+bouquet of columbines lying forlorn, their tender faces half buried in
+the dry grass. A cry rose to her lips, but she forced it back, and
+with a tightening of her lips, turned and went rapidly out into the
+room where Seth and Claire awaited her.
+
+"What do you think?" she cried, in a voice that sounded strangely
+shrill and unmusical in her ears. "It's from Robert--Robert
+Hillyer--Papa's good friend--and mine. He wants to come up and see
+me--he's in Denver--on business. He wants to come up--he says--just
+for a day or two--do you mind--if I ask him?"
+
+"Of course, dear!" cried Claire, with enthusiasm.
+
+"Sure!" seconded Seth. "Tell him he's very welcome."
+
+"I knew you'd say that!" said Marion excitedly. "So--the letter--it's
+all ready. Can it go out--the stage goes to-morrow, doesn't it?"
+
+"Yes," replied Huntington. "I'll take it down in the morning--before
+you're up."
+
+"Please!"
+
+She stood a moment, smiling at them. Then her eyes wandered aimlessly
+around the room. She must do something quick, or she would go to
+pieces. She saw the piano, and fairly ran to it. Crash! went the
+chords. Rippling and tumbling on one another came the notes under her
+nervous fingers. Out of the jumble of unrelated sounds presently
+emerged a gay and sparkling melody; and then a gayer one; and after
+that a rollicking song from one of the latest musical comedies. There
+followed two of the sauciest, most irresponsible tunes that ever made
+a vaudeville success. She played with abandon, a kind of reckless
+fury, sitting erect, with her head flung back, an insouciant smile
+flickering about her lips, her lithe body swaying with the music. Then
+suddenly, in the midst of a tune, she stopped, arose, faced Seth and
+Claire with flaming cheeks and eyes unnaturally bright.
+
+"Great, Marion!" cried Seth, slapping his thigh. "Go on, please!"
+
+But Claire had seen what Huntington had not. She turned to him
+swiftly, with a quick command, as if she had suddenly remembered
+something.
+
+"I've clean forgot that pie, Seth. Go to the cave and bring me some
+apples. Quick, now!"
+
+He sensed something a little queer in that order, which would have
+been very natural and pleasing at any other time, but he did not stop
+to question. Claire waited until the door had closed behind him, then
+ran to Marion, with anxiety pictured in her face.
+
+"What is it, Marion?" she exclaimed.
+
+"Oh, Claire, Claire!" cried Marion, breaking. "I'm so--so--unhappy!"
+
+Then she flung herself into Claire's arms, weeping without restraint.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+SUNNYSIDES
+
+
+Marion was not alone in her misery; but knowledge of this, had it by
+any chance come to her, would not have eased her heart, though it
+might indeed have hardened it a little against more suffering to
+come.
+
+Toward bedtime of the eighth day after that encounter at the glade of
+the columbines, Philip Haig sat stiffly silent in his armchair,
+staring into the fire. His brow was dark with discontent, his cheeks
+had paled with the slow ebbing of the tide of passion that had swept
+over him. It had begun to rise, though he was not then aware of it, or
+barely aware of it, the day Marion had halted him in the road below
+his ranch house; it had reached its flood as he drove away from her
+and left the bouquet of columbines in her limp hands.
+
+Who was this girl? And why had she come to torture him? To him she now
+appeared as the incarnation of his tragedy. In her the Past, from
+which he had fled to the far corners of the earth, hiding his trail in
+seas and deserts and in stagnant backwaters of humanity, had tracked
+him down at last. And all the grief and bitterness and hatred that he
+had beaten down, or thought he had beaten down, had returned to rend
+and tear him.
+
+Two beings he had loved, and to them he had given, to each in a
+different way, all his heart and soul and mind: his father and--that
+other. She had come to him at his most susceptible age, when, devoted
+only to art, he knew nothing of the world--a green boy, the wise ones
+had called him. She had come to him with all the surprise and wonder
+of a revelation, a coronation, a fulfillment, a golden epiphany. He
+had attributed to her such spiritual perfections as should have
+gone with her beauty and her grace; worshipped her for all that she
+was not and all that he was himself. And she had deceived him,
+exploited him, plundered him,--and laughed at him when by chance, one
+tragic, intolerable night, he found her out. And the next morning,
+as if his cup were not already full, he had received a cablegram,
+in his attic studio in Paris, telling him that his father had killed
+himself in a moment of despair over financial difficulties. So he
+had killed his father with his excessive demands for money to
+squander on 'Tonite. To be sure, he did not know--had had no hint
+from home--had never guessed that his father was in trouble.
+Nevertheless he had killed him--rather, she had killed him. What a
+fool he had been! Never such another fool since God placed man and
+woman together in one world. Cursing himself and her, and in her
+cursing all her sex, he fled--he knew not where. So stunned and
+dazed he was that he never really came to himself, found himself,
+until one day he awoke in Hong Kong.
+
+That was the beginning of the new life, if such it might be called. He
+became a wanderer, an adventurer, seeking always new faces, new
+places, new experiences, trying always to forget, hoping always for a
+blessed knock on the head in some mad undertaking, for a thin knife in
+the back in some wild adventure. But in all his wanderings the one
+kind of adventure that he refused, the one excitement that he
+steadfastly shunned, was the one that, because of his very aloofness,
+and of something that women ever saw in his eyes, was offered to him
+the most freely, in every land beneath the sun.
+
+Slim Jim entered, bringing whisky and hot water. Haig turned his head
+to look at him. Jim never changed, whatever his environment; he was
+always the Orient, the inscrutable East. And now, slipping in so
+stealthily, he seemed to bring with him an atmosphere, an odor, a
+call, and Haig, still looking at Jim, but scarcely seeing him, began
+to murmur lines that intoxicated him:
+
+  "I know not where the white road runs, nor what the blue hills are,
+  But man can have the sun for friend, and for his guide a star;
+  And there's no end of voyaging when once the voice is heard,
+  For the river calls and the road calls, and--"
+
+He stopped and sat suddenly erect.
+
+"Jim!" he cried. "Do you remember the night we took old Kwang's girl
+away from the river rats in Tien-Tsin?"
+
+"Vellee well," answered the Chinaman.
+
+His face was expressionless; he concealed the joy that this mood of
+his master aroused in his thin breast. Jim did not like the Park, and
+only the recollection of one day when he had stood tied to a capstan
+on a pirate junk, with a dozen fiends around him trying to make him
+tell something he did not know, and Haig had suddenly descended upon
+them like the foreign devil he was,--well, Jim took his gods where he
+found them, and from that day Haig had never been able to rid himself
+of this idolater.
+
+"Tien-Tsin! Tien-Tsin!" Haig repeated, lingering covetously on the
+words. "But that was a fight, eh!"
+
+"No likee!" replied Jim.
+
+"No likee!" cried Haig. "Why, you hypocritical young ruffian, you!
+That was one of the happiest nights of your life. You're always trying
+to make people think you're asleep, or timid. I can see, right now,
+that long knife of yours slip under my arm, and catch the big fellow
+in the stomach. He just coughed once, and crumpled up at my feet. In
+the nick of time, too, Jim, and I let the next one have it. The rest
+of them took to their heels, and you with your long pigsticker after
+them. No likee! Jim, you're a moon-faced old liar, and a disgrace to
+your ten thousand and seven ancestors."
+
+Jim's smile was perfectly noncommittal. He was too wily to appear
+eager. Besides, he did not really like fighting, which made all the
+more trouble for somebody when he had to fight. But he was heartily
+sick of this cold and uneventful life in the Park. Better a thousand
+times the foolish adventures, the unnecessary battles, the restless
+wanderings of other days!
+
+"That was a night!" said Haig, flinging himself back in his chair to
+gaze dreamily into the flames, while Jim, like a blue ghost, stole
+noiselessly away. And there, in the glow of the dying fire, bright
+and alluring visions successively took shape: A red-and-yellow temple
+on a hill, to which a thousand steps led up from a lake the color of a
+blue heron's breast; a junk with sails of purple creeping out of a
+morning mist as yellow as saffron; an island with a still lagoon in
+its center, and coconut palms alive with screaming parrots of every
+gorgeous hue; a sandy beach where jabbering natives dragged the
+flotsam of a wrecked steamer out of the breakers; a village on a high
+plateau, where a drum throbbed incessantly, and naked Indian children
+peered out from behind the huts; a skirmish line in khaki crawling up
+to the brow of a shell-swept hill; a dog-team yelping under the long
+lash of a half-breed Aleut, on a frozen river that sparkled in the
+sun; a sweating jungle where two bright spots glowed balefully in the
+gloom.
+
+"God!" groaned Haig, as he sat erect at last, and reached for the
+glass, now cold. He tasted it, and set it back with a wry face.
+
+"Damn Thursby!" he muttered. "Does he think I'm going to stay here
+forever, like a bear in a pit?"
+
+He woke the next morning in an ugly humor, having slept little, and
+then only to dream such dreams as fed his discontent. He berated Jim
+because the biscuits were cold (which was not Jim's fault), and
+because the coffee was hot (which was according to his orders).
+Trivial annoyances, most of them of his own making or imagining,
+multiplied on all sides, fomenting his irritability until, by the time
+he strode out of the cottage, his temper was at white heat. What might
+have happened to the patient, devoted men about the stable and
+corrals is not difficult of conjecture, but they were saved by
+Sunnysides. Almost the first object that caught Haig's eye was the
+yellow outlaw gleaming in the morning sunlight.
+
+"Ah!" he exclaimed.
+
+His inner turmoil of these last few days had banished all thought of
+the stallion of the San Luis. But now, his eyes gleamed as he
+quickened his steps toward the stable.
+
+Farrish and Pete were at work among the stalls; Bill stood guard over
+Sunnysides; and the fourth man, Curly, was mending a saddle in the
+harness-room.
+
+"Farrish!" Haig called out, striding into the stable. "We'll tackle
+the yellow fellow this morning."
+
+Farrish and Pete turned, and looked at him curiously.
+
+"All right!" answered Farrish; and then added doubtfully: "Now?"
+
+"Yes. At once."
+
+Farrish, in a manner that showed a certain reluctance, put up the
+currycomb with which he had been grooming the sorrels, and started
+toward the rear door. But Pete stood still.
+
+"You too, Pete!" said Haig, impatiently.
+
+"I think you better not--to-day," answered the Indian, in his slow
+way.
+
+"Why?" snapped Haig.
+
+Pete had seen the expression on Haig's face, and did not like it. But
+he hesitated to utter what was in his mind.
+
+"Why?" repeated Haig.
+
+"I think you better wait," was all that Pete could say.
+
+"Hell!" cried Haig. "Get your lariat! And be quick about it!"
+
+He had read Pete's thought; his ill-humor had evidently shown itself
+in his face; but the caution only whetted his purpose. Throwing off
+his coat as he went, he passed through the rear door of the barn, and
+climbed into the outlaw's corral, followed by Farrish, Curly, and
+Pete.
+
+Sunnysides received them with suspicion. His head was high, his
+nostrils were dilated, his tail swished slowly, like a tiger's. One
+forefoot was raised a little, resting on the toe, and the muscles of
+his shoulders quivered under the glossy hide. He had fully recovered
+from the effects of his rough treatment on the road, and his skin
+shone with a satin-like luster in the morning sun.
+
+There was a moment's pause, while Haig and the others looked at the
+horse, and he at them.
+
+"Now then, Farrish! Pete!" commanded Haig.
+
+And the battle began. Farrish and Pete turn by turn flung their
+lariats at the horse's head and feet, but time after time he dodged,
+and ducked, and capered away from the whirling noose, or wriggled out
+of the coil as it tightened around him.
+
+"He's greased lightning!" ejaculated Bill, from his perch on the
+fence.
+
+"He's hell, that's what he is!" retorted Curly, from a corner of the
+corral.
+
+Farrish and Pete went silently on with their work. They knew that
+eventually, dance and squirm as he might, the horse would be caught in
+one or the other of the relentless loops. And so it proved. While
+Sunnysides was side-stepping a throw by Farrish, Pete's rope slipped
+snakily over his head, and tightened around the arched neck. With an
+artful lunge toward the Indian, and a lowering of his head, the horse
+struggled to throw off the coil. But it held.
+
+Then followed a mad performance. The horse was over all the corral at
+once, it seemed: rearing, plunging, leaping, tossing his head,
+crashing into the fence with such fury that it barely stood up under
+his onslaughts. Bill was knocked off the fence backward on to his
+head; Curly, crowded into his corner, barely avoided a vicious kick;
+and Haig's temper was not improved by the narrow escape he had from
+being crushed against a post.
+
+"Bill!" he yelled. "Get a rope!"
+
+The man ran into the barn, returned with a lariat, and joined the
+fray. Plainly chagrined, though unhurt by his fall, Bill took long
+chances to even up the score; and under the very hoofs of the
+infuriated animal, he made a throw that brought Sunnysides sprawling
+on the ground, his forefeet caught in Bill's noose. It was the work of
+a few seconds then for Farrish to secure the hind feet also; and the
+horse lay prostrate, panting and half-choked, but defiant still.
+
+Giving him no time to recover, and no more breath than he actually
+required, Haig and Curly forced the bit of a bridle into the outlaw's
+foaming mouth. Then the noose on his hind feet was cautiously removed,
+one forefoot was freed, and the horse was allowed to rise. The next
+proceeding appeared to be resented by Sunnysides even more than what
+he had already been subjected to. While Farrish and Pete held his
+head, Haig approached him cautiously with a saddle, and dropped it on
+his back. There was a lightning-like motion, and the saddle was tossed
+a dozen feet away, while the two men at the horse's head were jerked
+almost off their feet. Again and again the saddle was laid on his
+back, to remain there barely an instant. But at the fifth attempt, to
+the astonishment of all, Sunnysides stood still, as if, being an
+equine Napoleon, he had changed his plan of battle in the face of the
+enemy. Without further resistance, he permitted the saddle to be
+adjusted and cinched, permitted the men to lead him out of the corral
+into the larger one adjoining it, and permitted Haig to mount him and
+take the bridle reins in his hand.
+
+"I'll be damned!" said Curly. "You'd think--"
+
+"Shut up!" cried Farrish. "That's a bluff."
+
+"Now then!" ordered Haig, pointing to the rope that still held one
+forefoot.
+
+The rope was removed.
+
+"The other!"
+
+Pete and Farrish slipped off the lariat that remained noosed around
+the outlaw's neck, and stepped back.
+
+For some seconds there was no sound, no motion, no sign of any design
+on the part of Sunnysides. Then, with the swiftness and surprise of a
+flash of powder in the dark, a shocking thing occurred. Without a
+preliminary movement, either of lunging or bucking or leaping to one
+side, or any of the expected tactics, Sunnysides, with incredible
+suddenness, reared straight up into the air, threw himself over, and
+fell on his back, pinning Haig to the ground beneath him.
+
+Before any of the men could move, the horse rolled over sprawling,
+scrambled to his feet, and charged at the fence. There was a crash
+and the sound of splintering wood. The top plank fell, broken in two
+jagged pieces, and the horse's forefeet were over the second plank.
+But before he could leap again, Curley had caught the bridle rein, and
+swung the outlaw's head around, holding him there until Bill had
+leaned over the broken fence and roped the forelegs once more. After a
+moment of furious struggle, Sunnysides appeared to realize that it was
+useless; and thus the two men held him, with his forefeet still
+hanging outside the fence, while they turned their eyes toward Haig.
+
+Farrish and the Indian knelt at his side. He lay quite still,
+unconscious, and for a moment they thought him dead. Pete put his head
+down on Haig's breast, and listened. Then he rose to his feet.
+
+"Whisky!" he muttered, and ran toward the stable.
+
+In two minutes he was back, bearing a flask, which he uncorked as he
+ran. Forcing the mouth of it between Haig's lips, he let the scorching
+liquor trickle down the throat until the flask was half emptied. Then
+he poured some of the whisky in the palm of his hand, and rubbed it on
+Haig's face and bared breast and wrists, while Farrish, in his turn,
+ran to the stable and brought a lap robe, which he folded and placed
+under Haig's head.
+
+They waited helplessly, without speech. At the fence, Bill and Curley
+clung to their ropes. Sunnysides, his forefeet still projecting over
+the plank, and the saddle hanging lopsided from his back, had his head
+drawn back so far that he could see the group in the middle of the
+corral. His eyes were bloodshot, foam dripped from his mouth, the
+breath came whistling through his half-shut windpipe.
+
+But in the cottonwoods the birds sang undisturbed, and the pines far
+up the hill droned their old tune unchanged. From the ranch house came
+the rattle of tin pans, and the voice of the cook singing a song of
+the round-up.
+
+After a long time, Haig stirred. A moan came with the first deep
+breath; his eyes opened, staring up at the two faces above him; his
+lips moved, but at first no sound came from them. Pete leaned closer,
+and listened.
+
+"Did--he--get--away?" came in a whisper.
+
+"No," answered Pete. "He caught."
+
+A smile flickered on Haig's lips, and went out; and at the same time a
+tiny trickle of blood oozed out, and ran down through the dust on the
+white cheek. Pete and Farrish looked at each other; and when they
+turned to Haig again, his eyes were closed, and the pallor of his face
+had deepened to a bluish, ashen hue.
+
+Pete bent quickly to put his ear again to Haig's breast.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+HILLYER'S DILEMMA
+
+
+Hillyer's loyal heart was near to bursting with joy. In all the days
+of his eager courtship Marion had never seemed so close to him, so
+fairly within his grasp, as now. She had welcomed him with totally
+unexpected warmth, considering the many times she had rejected him,
+and considering, too, the letter he had received from her on her
+departure. Absence, he thought, had advanced his cause for him. A
+dozen times he was on the point of boldly violating the six months'
+embargo she had placed upon his pleadings; but as often as the fervent
+words rose to his lips fear froze them there, and he was silent.
+
+As for Marion, she was for the moment absorbed in a little plan that
+was not for Robert's knowledge. She was intent upon meeting Philip in
+Robert's company; she wanted to bow to him, and smile, and let him see
+that there was one man at least who prized her, if he did not. But the
+imp of perversity seemed to have come to abide permanently in the
+Park. Though Marion, in the first two days of Robert's visit, guided
+him, in the big automobile, everywhere except beyond the Ridge and to
+the glade of the columbines, she had never a glimpse of Philip. All
+this maddened her; and if Robert had but spoken, there were times
+when--But Robert did not speak.
+
+Near noon of the third day they met Smythe in the main valley road a
+mile or so below the post-office. At sight of him bobbing along toward
+them, almost lost between his horse and his sombrero, Marion's first
+impulse was to speed past him without stopping. She was not sure she
+could trust his discretion; for she had told Robert nothing about
+Philip Haig. But she did not wish to offend the faithful Smythe; and
+so, on second thought, she hurriedly acquainted Robert with the
+identity of the approaching figure, and warned him to control his
+inevitable mirth.
+
+"He is funny," she said, laughing in spite of herself, "but he can't
+help that. He's been very good to me, in his way."
+
+In the meantime Smythe's horse was deciding the matter on his own
+account. This was the first automobile the pony had ever seen, and he
+made up his mind promptly that he did not like it. He reared and
+bucked, bolting first to one side and the other of the road, and
+refused to consider Smythe's well-worded assurance that wise horses
+were really fond of automobiles, which were taking a great deal of
+work off their shoulders.
+
+Hillyer stopped the machine, and cut off the power. But the pony's
+suspicions had been thoroughly aroused, and the sudden silence seemed
+to him more portentous than even the noise of the motor. Smythe
+thereupon had his work cut out for him, but he would not compromise
+either by dismounting, or by turning and riding away. Slowly and
+patiently he urged the frightened pony toward the automobile until,
+after many setbacks and panics, he had brought him near enough for
+conversation.
+
+"There now, Peanuts!" he said to the prancing animal. "You see you
+were quite mistaken." Then, to Hillyer and Marion: "He's a little like
+myself. He doesn't really believe in ghosts, but he's dreadfully
+afraid of them."
+
+"I didn't know you were such an accomplished horseman," said Marion.
+
+"Didn't you? Well, you see--"
+
+At that instant the pony suffered a fresh access of alarm. He bounded
+suddenly sideways, and at the same time ducked as if he purposed to
+stand on his head, though what good that would have done only he knew.
+The movement threw Smythe over the pony's head, and flat on his back
+in the dust; and in a twinkling Peanuts was dashing up the road, with
+his tail in the air, and the stirrups flapping at his sides.
+
+For some seconds Smythe lay half-stunned; but before Marion and
+Hillyer, leaping from the automobile, were able to reach him, he sat
+up, and began to straighten out his crushed sombrero, eyeing it
+critically. He was covered with dust, and one end of his white collar,
+torn from the button, stuck out above his coat. But his aplomb was
+perfect.
+
+"As I was saying, when interrupted," he began, continuing to minister
+to the sombrero, "you see I am an accomplished horseman."
+
+Marion and Hillyer broke out in uncontrollable laughter. Then Hillyer
+hastened to assist Smythe to rise.
+
+"Not hurt, I hope?" said Robert.
+
+"Objectively, no. Subjectively, yes. Sartorially, a wreck."
+
+They laughed now without restraint, which seemed to please Smythe
+immensely. He proceeded to tuck the end of the torn collar back into
+its place, where it refused to stay; to brush his clothes; to adjust
+the abused sombrero in exactly the long-studied angle on his head.
+
+"I hope you'll forgive us for laughing," said Marion, "but--"
+
+"Say no more about it, please!" protested Smythe. "I'd rather make you
+laugh than weep--assuming that anybody would weep for me."
+
+"Oh, I'd have felt very badly if you'd been hurt," Marion assured him.
+"And you might have been, too."
+
+"No, a cropper like that's nothing. Peanuts isn't--" He paused just a
+second to look into Marion's eyes with an expression that arrested her
+attention sharply. "Peanuts isn't Sunnysides."
+
+"Sunnysides?" she cried out unguardedly.
+
+Smythe's eyes warned her, as he waited to give her time for
+self-control. He did not know how far Hillyer was in her confidence.
+
+"Is there news--about--Sunnysides?" she faltered, struggling
+desperately with herself.
+
+"Yes," he answered. Then he continued slowly, in as light a manner as
+possible, the while he held her with a concentrated gaze: "I'd been
+down the valley as far as the mouth of the canyon. Coming back, about
+two miles below where Haig's road joins this, I saw the sorrels in a
+cloud of dust. 'Hello!' I said. 'Something's up, or the sorrels
+wouldn't be driven like that.' In a minute or two I made out Bill
+Craven, one of Haig's men, leaning forward in the seat of a road
+wagon, and laying on the whip. 'If Haig saw that!' I thought. And so
+I--"
+
+"Go on, please!" said Marion shrilly.
+
+But Smythe was purposely deliberate; for he saw Hillyer looking at her
+curiously.
+
+"I wasn't going to let anybody abuse his horses if I could prevent it.
+Besides, how did I know but Craven was stealing the sorrels? I threw
+my pony straight across the road. Craven reined the sorrels up on
+their hind legs, almost on top of me.
+
+"'What in hell?' he yelled.
+
+"'That's what I want to know,' I answered.
+
+"'Can't you see I'm in a hurry, damn you?' he shouted angrily.
+
+"'That's exactly what I do see,' I replied. 'But Haig never whips
+those horses.'
+
+"'That's none of your business, and Haig ain't carin' much now,' he
+fired back at me. 'Get out o' my way, or I'll--'
+
+"'Now just keep cool!' I told him. 'What's the trouble?'
+
+"Craven snorted, but he told me, as the quickest way out of it. Haig
+had been hurt--trying to ride Sunnysides. He's--"
+
+"Hurt? How?" asked Marion; and Smythe was relieved to detect a new
+steadiness in her voice. She had passed the danger point.
+
+"The horse went over backwards, pinning him to the ground, with the
+saddle horn in his stomach. Craven's gone for the doctor."
+
+She gave him one long, searching look, as if to pluck out anything he
+might have been hiding from her. Then she turned swiftly toward the
+automobile.
+
+"Come, Robert! Quick!" she commanded.
+
+She climbed quickly into the machine, followed by Hillyer, who was
+puzzled and alarmed by what he had seen in Marion's face.
+
+"You too, Mr. Smythe. Hurry!" cried Marion.
+
+"But my horse?" objected Smythe.
+
+"He'll run home," answered Marion impatiently. "Come! We may need
+you."
+
+Smythe obeyed, and jumped into the tonneau, while Robert cranked up
+and threw in the clutch.
+
+"Fast!" cried Marion.
+
+Hillyer glanced at her. She was very white; her lips were pressed
+together, her eyes were fixed on the road ahead. The machine lurched
+under them.
+
+"Faster!" urged Marion, in another minute.
+
+The machine, with a kind of shudder, responded to Hillyer's hand, and
+shot out with fresh speed.
+
+Another brief silence.
+
+"The cut-out!" she ordered.
+
+Hillyer bent to the mechanism, and the engine, with the muffler off,
+roared and shrieked as it took the smooth white road, with every bar
+and rivet throbbing under the pressure. Only then did Marion turn, and
+motion to Smythe. He leaned forward, clinging to the back of her
+seat.
+
+"The doctor?" she shouted in his ear.
+
+"Craven had started for Tellurium," he yelled back. "Said he'd kill
+the sorrels. I told him there was a doctor at Lake Cobalt--Doctor
+Norris of Omaha--just arrived, with his family. 'You're not such a
+fool after all,' said Craven. (I'll talk with him about that later.)
+'Thanks!' I said, and pulled my horse out of the way. 'That saves two
+days.' He gave the horses the whip again, and I started for
+Huntington's to tell you--Watch out! There's the turn!" he shouted in
+Hillyer's ear.
+
+The wheels tore up the sand as the machine, with the power off but
+still going at more than half-speed under its momentum, skidded and
+scraped around the turn into Haig's road.
+
+"Now!" cried Marion.
+
+Again the automobile shivered, and plunged, and went clamoring like a
+mad thing up the little valley, the hills echoing back its roar. The
+white road leaped up at them, gulping them in. A red steer, astray
+from some pasture, crossed the road far ahead of them, and Marion
+closed her eyes as the machine, with a sickening swerve, missed it by
+inches. The next instant she was pointing to the group of buildings
+squatting under the hill; and then she was out of the automobile, and
+running to Farrish at the door of the barn. His face confirmed her
+worst fears.
+
+"Where is he?" she asked, with a swift look around.
+
+He pointed toward the larger of the two cottages. With Hillyer and
+Smythe silently following, she ran to the cottage, and through the
+open door. There she found herself in a bare, uncarpeted room,
+furnished only with two chairs and a table. On the table lay a faded
+and battered gray hat. For an instant her gaze rested on it, and a
+lump rose in her throat. But she resolutely turned away, tightening
+her lips.
+
+There were two inner doors, one of which, ajar, revealed a glimpse of
+brightly polished pans hanging on the wall. The other door was closed.
+After an instant of hesitation, she walked straight toward it.
+
+"Marion!" called Hillyer warningly.
+
+She did not heed him, but turned the knob, softly opened the door, and
+with Robert and Smythe at her heels, stepped into a dimly lighted room
+where the aroma of a pine log blazing in the fireplace mingled with
+the pungent odor of ammonia. Smythe was quick to observe, over
+Marion's shoulder, that the room was a sort of library and bedroom
+combined, carpeted in dark red, the walls papered in red also, and the
+windows curtained with heavy tapestry silk of the same rich hue. There
+were low bookcases on two sides of the room, with pictures above them;
+several marble statuettes on the bookcases; and a little jade Buddha
+beside a two-foot bronze god of terrifying aspect on the mantelpiece.
+In the middle of the apartment stood a solid library table, of which
+the cover was a curious strip of faded yellow silk embroidered with a
+dragon in green, a fragment of an old Chinese banner.
+
+At the left of the door, its head against the wall, was a brass bed in
+which a figure moved restlessly under the covers. Near the head of the
+bed, on the side nearest the door, stood the Indian, his stolid,
+bronzed face turned toward Marion as she entered. On the other side,
+holding one of Haig's hands, knelt Slim Jim in his blue silks, his
+yellowish face as expressionless as Pete's, except for an alert and
+questioning look in his eyes. There was no sound except the low
+crackling of the fire, and the rasp of heavy breathing, with sharp
+catches in it that spoke eloquently of pain.
+
+Marion stepped to Pete's side, and looked down into the face of Philip
+Haig. In the dim light it had the pallor of death, with the parted
+lips and the staring eyes of the dead, or the dying. But he breathed;
+and presently her steady, searching, pitying gaze brought his eyes to
+meet her own, and she saw that they were living eyes, though clouded
+and darkened with agony. Almost was she on her knees, weeping over
+him, regardless of those in the doorway watching her. And it was not
+their presence so much as the necessity for action that restrained and
+steadied her. She did not even speak his name; but after her one long
+look, she turned away, and with every outward sign of calm, removed
+her gloves and hat and coat, and placed them on a chair in a corner of
+the room. Then she beckoned to Pete, who followed her, with Smythe and
+Hillyer, into the bare outer room.
+
+"Close the door, please!" she commanded quietly.
+
+Smythe closed it.
+
+"Where is he hurt?" she asked the Indian.
+
+"Here." He laid a hand on his stomach.
+
+"Was he unconscious?"
+
+"Yes. Long time."
+
+"How long has he been like that--awake?"
+
+"Maybe two hours."
+
+"What have you done? What have you given him?"
+
+"Whisky."
+
+"Nothing else?"
+
+"Water. Ammonia on face and breast."
+
+"Was there blood?"
+
+"Yes. From mouth."
+
+She had another struggle then, and the tears started in spite of all
+that she could do. But she conquered them.
+
+"Much blood?"
+
+"No. Little, only at first."
+
+"Thank you, Pete." Then, turning to Hillyer: "I want you, Robert,
+please, to drive home, and tell Mrs. Huntington to make up a bundle of
+the things I shall need. Wait! A pencil and a bit of paper, please."
+
+For a moment he did not move to comply.
+
+"What are you going to do, Marion?" he asked, his voice shaking
+slightly with the effort of speaking calmly.
+
+"I'm going to nurse him," she replied, meeting his look without
+flinching.
+
+"But, Marion! I don't--"
+
+"Pencil and paper, Robert!" she said firmly.
+
+He tore a leaf from a notebook, and gave it to her with his pencil.
+
+"Thank you," she said; and seated herself at the table to write.
+
+But there was the dilapidated hat again--so stained and soiled, a
+crumpled, tragic, intimate thing--arresting her. How it had filled her
+dreams! How she had laughed at it, fondly, tenderly, as a mother
+smiles at the battered school hat of her boy! Once, she had fancied it
+hanging on the pink wall in her room, a trophy, with a ribbon tied
+around its sweated band. And now she wanted to grab it up, and hug it
+to her breast. But she only lifted it gently, and placed it a little
+farther away, on the other side of the table. Then she made her
+notes.
+
+"There, Robert!" she said, rising, and handing the list to him.
+"Claire will know where to find them."
+
+He took the paper mechanically, his eyes fixed on Marion.
+
+"Will you come down, to the car for a moment?" he asked.
+
+She saw the look, and softened under it. But she could not answer his
+questions then.
+
+"No," she said. "Later, if you wish it."
+
+For a moment he hesitated. But he could say no more in the presence of
+Smythe and Pete, though they were talking together at the other side
+of the room. So he moved slowly away, but was suddenly stopped by a
+cry from Marion.
+
+"Oh! Oh!" she exclaimed. "Why didn't somebody--why didn't I think of
+it before? The car? Run, Robert! Drive down the road toward the lake.
+You'll overtake the sorrels--or meet them. Bring the doctor in the
+car. Fast, please!"
+
+Hillyer, without another word, ran and leaped into the automobile, and
+was soon bringing the echoes out of the hills again. He sank low in
+the seat, and fixed his eyes on the road that stretched out blinding
+white in the sunlight.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+COALS OF FIRE
+
+
+Seth was oiling a pair of boots on the veranda, while Claire talked to
+him about Hillyer, who had pleased her immeasurably by his devotion to
+Marion, and even more, of course, by his generous compliments to
+herself. She was delicately calling Seth's attention to the pleasure,
+the profits, and the sanctity of politeness, when she caught sight of
+Hillyer's automobile emerging slowly and silently from the trees that
+concealed the road at a little distance from the corrals.
+
+"There he is now!" she exclaimed. And then, an instant later: "Why,
+he's alone!"
+
+She stood up excitedly, and Seth also, dropping a half-oiled boot on
+the floor.
+
+"What the devil?" ejaculated Huntington.
+
+So they stood, waiting and wondering, while Hillyer alighted from the
+automobile, and walked, with exasperating slowness--with reluctance,
+if they had but known it--up the graveled path among the flower beds.
+Something in the look of him caused Claire to clutch a post of the
+veranda for support.
+
+"Where's Marion?" she cried.
+
+"She's all right," replied Hillyer, as he mounted the steps. "That is,
+nothing has happened to her. But there's been an accident." He
+hesitated. "Who is this Philip Haig?"
+
+"Haig? What about Haig?" demanded Huntington.
+
+"He's been hurt. A horse threw him."
+
+"Sunnysides?" cried Huntington excitedly.
+
+"I believe so."
+
+"He will, will he?" chuckled Huntington. "That serves--"
+
+"But Marion?" interrupted Claire. "What about Marion?"
+
+Hillyer looked doubtfully from one to the other, in much embarrassment.
+What did they know? Or were they as ignorant as he of the situation
+that had been revealed to him as if by the flash of a thunderbolt? And
+how much should he disclose to them, in loyalty to Marion? But in his
+pocket was Marion's list.
+
+"She's there--with him," he said at length.
+
+"There? Where?" thundered Huntington.
+
+"At his house."
+
+They stood stock-still, staring at him.
+
+"She wishes Mrs. Huntington to make up a bundle of these things for me
+to take to her."
+
+He handed the list to Claire, who took it, and held it at arm's
+length, regarding it curiously, as if she had not understood.
+
+"You mean that--" she began, and stopped.
+
+"She says she's going to nurse him."
+
+"She's going to--what?" Claire's voice rose almost to a shriek.
+
+"Nurse him."
+
+"And you've left her there with that--"
+
+Huntington was going to say "ruffian," but was checked by a sudden
+recollection, as well as by the look that Hillyer flashed at him. For
+a moment the two men faced each other, the one with anger boiling up
+inside of him, the other struggling to put down the resentment aroused
+by Huntington's belligerent tone. Claire crushed the slip of paper in
+her hand, and watched them fearfully.
+
+"I judge from your manner," said Hillyer at length, when he had
+controlled himself, "that you dislike her being there as much as I do.
+But as I am all in the dark, I'll be greatly obliged to you if you
+will answer my question. Who is Philip Haig?"
+
+"That's what I'd like to know!" blurted out Huntington.
+
+Hillyer made a gesture of impatience.
+
+"But he's your neighbor," he said curtly.
+
+"And that's about all I know of him," Huntington replied, "except that
+we ought to have run him out of the Park long ago, and will do it yet,
+so help me God!"
+
+"Why?" asked Hillyer shortly.
+
+Then, as clearly as he could in his rage, Seth gave Hillyer a brief
+account of the events of the four years that Haig had been in the
+Park,--an account that satisfied Hillyer as little as it had satisfied
+Marion. He had meant, in the beginning, to ask how Marion had come to
+know Haig, and if they had been much together; but he now surmised
+that Huntington and his wife were as ignorant as himself of that
+acquaintanceship, or friendship, or whatever it was that could have
+made possible the astounding emotions he had seen on Marion's face.
+Hillyer's situation was difficult. If Marion had a secret he must
+guard it for her, whatever it might cost him. Yet now he needed help,
+and no one could help him but Huntington and his wife. And at the
+first words on the subject, Huntington had (more in the tone of his
+speech than the matter) shown him that little help could be expected
+in that quarter. Last of all, and not to be forgotten, he was the
+Huntingtons' guest.
+
+"How bad's he hurt?" asked Huntington.
+
+Hillyer shook his head dubiously.
+
+"It's impossible to say just yet. Doctor Norris fears that the
+pancreas is ruptured. In that case--" He shrugged his shoulders. "At
+any rate, the pancreas and the stomach are temporarily paralyzed by
+the blow of the saddle horn--the horse seems to have gone over
+backward on him. If he gets over the shock there's still the danger of
+inflammation. There ought to be ice packs. Cold water will have to do.
+They must be changed every minute. Doctor Norris told me--" He paused
+to look intently at Claire--"Doctor Norris told me that nothing but
+the most careful nursing can save him."
+
+"Let the Chinaman do it!" Huntington blurted out.
+
+Hillyer shook his head.
+
+"No. Norris says he will not trust him. You see, Haig's pleading for
+water must be denied. He can command the Chinaman, and that--Besides,
+all this is not to the point. Marion has made up her mind, and I
+assure you--Please get the things she asks for, Mrs. Huntington."
+
+"You don't mean you're going to take them!" shouted Huntington.
+
+"Certainly. She's asked for them."
+
+"And you're going to let her stay there--with him?"
+
+Hillyer smiled. Having abandoned all hope of assistance from
+Huntington, he was thinking of other measures, and was scarcely as
+attentive as he might have been to the increasing truculence of his
+host.
+
+"What would you do?" he asked quietly.
+
+"I'd bring her away!"
+
+"Would you care to go and try it?"
+
+This was a keener thrust than Hillyer had any intention of delivering,
+provoked though he was by Huntington's behavior; for Seth had not
+included in his narrative any reference to the affair at the
+post-office, or to Haig's visit to his house. Huntington's face became
+purple; and if he had been apoplectic in disposition he would surely
+have suffered a seizure in that moment of choking rage.
+
+"I'll go there right enough!" he bellowed. "I'll go, when I get ready.
+I'll go when he's able to stand up and take what's coming to him. As
+for her--you can take her things, and her trunks too, while you're
+about it."
+
+Hillyer gazed at him dumbfounded for just a breath of time. Then his
+own face flamed.
+
+"Quite right, Mr. Huntington!" he said, taking a step toward him. "I
+haven't seen much of Haig, but from what I've seen of you, I think his
+house can be no worse place for Miss Gaylord than yours. What's more,
+you're an--" He caught himself, whirled on his heel, and addressed
+Claire. "May I ask you, please, to pack Marion's trunks. I'll attend
+to mine."
+
+Claire had stood quite silent, with her blue eyes opening wider and
+wider, for the moment helpless, but trusting more to Hillyer's
+resources of diplomacy than to her husband's self-control. Now her
+face crimsoned with mortification, and she stood up with all the
+inches of her five foot two.
+
+"You'll do no such thing!" she cried, and one little heel came down on
+the floor with a jolt. "The idea! The very idea! Oh!"
+
+For a moment she stood poised, like a butterfly in a rage, if one can
+imagine it; then she tripped straight to Huntington, clasped the
+lapels of his coat, and drew herself up on tiptoes, trying to meet his
+eyes.
+
+"Aren't you ashamed of yourself?" she cried.
+
+"No, I'm not!" he growled.
+
+But he was, or at least was dimly conscious of his egregious
+misbehavior; for he looked neither at Hillyer nor his wife, and was
+red now where he had been purple.
+
+"But you are, though!" She turned her face toward Hillyer, without
+loosing her hold on Seth's coat. "Don't you mind him, Mr. Hillyer!
+He's just a big bear. And Haig has been a trial to us. Marion's my
+guest, and--" She looked up into Seth's beard again--"If you think
+you're going to send her away like this--"
+
+She stopped short, as on a sudden thought, and then, with a giggle,
+buried her face in his flannel shirt. And the next thing, as
+unexpected as her blue-eyed rage, she dropped her hands from his coat,
+stooped to catch up the hem of her skirt between thumb and forefinger
+of each hand, and began to pirouette around the room.
+
+"Oh, ho!" she exclaimed, laughing triumphantly, her little body
+swaying as she tripped, with low curtsies to Seth and Hillyer, who for
+the moment forget their animosity in wonder at this feminine
+diversion. "Beautiful! Gorgeous! Oh, splendid!"
+
+She stopped, at length, in front of Seth, dropped to one knee, bowed
+till her golden head almost touched the floor, and rose again to stand
+with her hands on her hips, her arms akimbo, her face flushed with
+excitement.
+
+"Seth Huntington!" she cried ecstatically. "Do you know what we're
+going to do?"
+
+He merely stared.
+
+"We're going to heap coals of fire on his head."
+
+"What do you mean?" demanded Huntington uneasily.
+
+"Marion's going to nurse Haig. There's no way any of us can stop her.
+She's our cousin and guest, and we've got to show it. If they want to
+talk, we'll give them something to talk about. _I'll go and nurse Haig
+too!_"
+
+Dead silence.
+
+"Ah!" cried Hillyer.
+
+"You'll not!" roared Huntington.
+
+"Watch me!" retorted Claire, turning swiftly, and running toward her
+bedroom. But halfway there she stopped. "No, don't watch me! You just
+go and look after the cattle. Leave this Mr. Haig to us, and he'll be
+the best friend you ever had before Marion and I get through with
+him."
+
+Hillyer, recovering from his amazement, stepped smiling to where she
+stood, and reached both his hands to her.
+
+"Mrs. Huntington," he said warmly. "You're a peach!"
+
+She laughed gaily, and put both her tiny hands in his, for just an
+instant.
+
+This was the last straw. Seth snorted like a baited animal, whirled
+around, bolted from the house, and ran blindly to the barn.
+
+"Saddle Nigger!" he yelled to Williams, who obeyed with stumbling
+alacrity, while Huntington strode up and down before the door.
+
+From the window of the ranch house Claire and Hillyer, silent, watched
+him until he had flung himself into the saddle, dug the spurs into the
+flanks of his favorite and now astonished black horse, and disappeared
+up the hill.
+
+"Where's he going?" asked Hillyer, suspicious that Huntington meant
+mischief.
+
+Claire drew back from the window with a sigh of relief.
+
+"He's going to--" She laughed softly, but with just a little tremor in
+her voice--"He's going to--look after the cattle."
+
+Hillyer saw that her blue eyes were moist.
+
+"He's the best man in the world, and--I love him," she said, looking
+at Hillyer with a soft appeal. "You believe that, don't you?"
+
+"Indeed I do, Mrs. Huntington," Hillyer answered heartily.
+
+"Then you must forgive him; he has such a temper!"
+
+"I'm sorry we had any misunderstanding," Hillyer was able to say
+sincerely. "I'll talk it over with him--later."
+
+"Please!" urged Claire.
+
+"But I must go now. Those things for Marion, please."
+
+"I'll have them ready in a minute. And I've only to slip on another
+dress, and--"
+
+"But you don't mean--You're not going?"
+
+"Of course I am!" she answered, with a look of surprise.
+
+"I think you'd better not," he said quietly.
+
+"But why?"
+
+"Now think a minute, Mrs. Huntington. Your husband objects to your
+going. It will not only anger him more, but it will hurt him. Isn't
+that so?"
+
+"Yes," she admitted reluctantly.
+
+Her coals of fire had kindled her imagination. Such a romantic idea!
+There would be such talk, such a sensation!
+
+"It would be another matter if there were anything you could do,"
+Hillyer went on. "But there isn't. And I know very well that Marion
+would send you back if you did go."
+
+That was true enough, on reflection; but it was a disappointment!
+
+"But Marion! There alone!" she said, making her last stand.
+
+"I shall be there," replied Hillyer. "The Chinaman's going to fix a
+bed for me. I'll look after Marion."
+
+So she yielded, and was glad of it when she had time to think it over.
+She gave Hillyer the bundle for Marion, and watched him go, waving a
+good-by from the veranda. Then she hastened to the kitchen to make
+apple dumplings for supper. If there was one thing that could always
+be counted on to soothe Seth it was apple dumplings.
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+Meanwhile it was indeed a black day for Huntington. Fate was against
+him. Tearing himself, mangled in spirit, out of one trap, he rode
+blindly into another. Far up in the hills, riding savagely, he knew
+not where, nor cared, vowing dark vengeance on Haig, his attention was
+drawn at last by the weird and ominous bellowing of cattle. Following
+the sound, he came to a little hollow where a hundred or more cattle
+were gathered, like the rapt spectators in an amphitheater, around two
+bulls engaged in mortal combat. One, as Seth quickly saw, was a red
+Hereford, his best thoroughbred; the other, a black Angus, and even
+more valuable, was Haig's. The red bull, bleeding from many wounds,
+was plainly being worsted in the encounter. With a roar of rage,
+Huntington drew his revolver, urged his unwilling horse down into the
+arena where the turf was torn up for many yards around the combatants,
+circled about until he could take sure aim, and emptied every chamber
+of the gun into the head and neck of the Angus. The bull sank to the
+ground, head first, in a lumbering mass that kicked once or twice,
+shivered, and lay still.
+
+But the Hereford, red-eyed with blood and fury, turned on Huntington,
+and drove him, barely escaping being gored, into the thick timber. In
+a place of safety Huntington jerked his horse around, and sat limp in
+the saddle, staring down at the scene of his final humiliation.
+
+"That's it! That's it!" he bellowed. "Even my own bull turns on me.
+Haw! Haw!" His hollow, hoarse, and unmirthful laughter echoed among
+the pines. "Great joke! Haig will like that. And the rest of them.
+Hell!"
+
+But Haig! And the Angus! Well, there'd got to be a show-down anyhow
+pretty soon. He dismounted, and seated himself on a fallen tree trunk,
+and gave himself up to reflections upon which it is only the most
+obvious kindness and discretion to draw the curtain.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW
+
+
+The days dragged by under the burdens of doubt and torture, and out of
+the Valley of the Shadow came Philip Haig, with some new and
+disquieting thoughts to occupy him in his convalescence. Toiling up
+out of the darkness, where foul fiends seemed to have torn and mangled
+his body with their fiery claws, his fingers were still warm from the
+pressure of a soft, guiding hand; there was a haunting memory of
+kisses on his forehead, of a cheek laid close to his; and he could
+still hear the gentle but commanding voice that told him to be
+patient--to be still--that life was coming back to him.
+
+Life! As if he cared for life! Had he not spent years on years in
+seeking what just now had been in his very grasp, only to be withdrawn
+by two caressing hands? And Doctor Morris, on the day of his final
+visit, had left him no possibility of misunderstanding.
+
+"Miss Gaylord has saved your life," he said. "I could do little. It
+was her nursing that pulled you through."
+
+He wanted much to tell the doctor just how much value he placed on
+that life. But to what purpose? Doctors lived in their own peculiar
+atmosphere of conceit and self-deception, crowing like a hen over a
+new-laid egg whenever they chanced to bring back a soul to the
+miseries from which it had struggled to escape. It would be a waste of
+words, for Norris would never understand. Would Marion? Cold terror
+seized him at the thought of the coming, the inevitable scene with
+her. She, he realized vaguely, was different from--from all the others
+he had ever seen and looked down upon from his safe heights of cynical
+hatred and contempt. She was not selfish or mercenary--not consciously
+selfish or mercenary. And she was not vile. But she was all the more
+dangerous because her heart was pure. She was too high-bred, too fine,
+to demand payment of his debt; but her very reticence and delicacy, he
+foresaw, would make his repudiation of that debt--that factitious
+debt--more difficult. Twice or thrice, as he struggled with his
+problem, he was conscious of a curious, disturbing thrill. She loved
+him. There had been a time, long, long ago--But now he was a man; he
+had learned his lesson; and he knew that the chains would be no less
+hateful because they were made of gold.
+
+There came a day when he sat, wrapped in blankets, in an armchair near
+the window, where he could see the grass waving in the sunlight on the
+slope above the cottage, and the pines bending in the breeze high up
+the hill. Marion, near him, her hands folded in her lap, looked
+sometimes out of the window but more often at him, though his eyes
+avoided hers. She was scarcely less pale than he, and very tired and
+worn. Despite Hillyer's protestations she had slept little in the ten
+days of Philip's peril; for she would trust no one but herself to do
+with iron determination exactly what the doctor had commanded.
+Philip's pitiable pleading for water in his semi-delirium her love
+alone was strong enough to resist. But this was the last day of her
+watch over him. In an hour she must go. She had frankly asked Robert
+to let her have this last afternoon alone with Philip; and had
+promised him that he should then have the answer to every question
+that he had loyally put aside for her.
+
+They sat a long time silent, while the shadow of the cottage
+lengthened on the grass.
+
+"It wasn't worth it, Miss Gaylord," Haig said at length.
+
+"I--I don't understand," she faltered.
+
+"Doctor Norris tells me that you saved my life."
+
+"I'm glad if he thinks I helped a little," she answered, trying to
+smile.
+
+"He left me no room for doubt. Very plain-spoken is Doctor Norris."
+
+"I'm afraid he exaggerated," she protested gently.
+
+"No."
+
+"But Jim--"
+
+"Jim's all right in his way, but he couldn't have done it."
+
+"I am paid," she said simply.
+
+"Paid?"
+
+"Yes. Knowing that you live."
+
+"No. You think you mean that, perhaps, but you don't."
+
+"I don't mean what?" she asked in surprise.
+
+"You don't mean that you are paid."
+
+She turned away, and looked out the window, her heart throbbing.
+
+"I must tell you something, Miss Gaylord," he went on resolutely. "I'm
+not grateful."
+
+"Not grateful?"
+
+"I mean, I'm not glad to owe my life to you."
+
+"But I haven't asked--"
+
+"No. Not directly." He hesitated a moment. "It's like this: If a man
+had saved my life, I could pay him. There would be a clasp of the
+hand, and a look from man to man. Or I should save his life in turn,
+or do him some service. Or--there are other ways. There's Pete's way
+and Jim's way--of paying. But I can't pay you in any of the ways I
+could pay a man. And I can't pay in the only way a woman knows."
+
+"Don't," she cried. "Don't, please!"
+
+She was right, he thought. He was doing it brutally. He must try
+another method. There followed a long silence, while he tried to frame
+a speech that would tell her, and would not hurt too much; for now,
+strangely, he found himself reluctant to give her pain, even to put
+himself in a false light before her--to be misunderstood. At last he
+leaned toward her--forced her to meet his gaze.
+
+"Could you--if you had ever loved one man with all your heart
+and soul--held him as dear to you as life--dearer than life
+itself--without whom life would be impossible--could you ever
+love another?"
+
+For all her anguish she was able to detect the trap that he had set
+for her. "Yes" would cheapen the quality and deny the finality of her
+love for him; "no" would be an acceptance of the doom and tragedy she
+saw shadowing his eyes. She did not answer.
+
+"You see, you dare not answer that," he went on. "I suppose I ought to
+tell you the story. But I won't. It's long, and not a pretty story at
+all. But this much I will tell you. I gave one woman all I had to
+give. She threw it away--and laughed at me. I have nothing more."
+
+She took it very bravely and very quietly, as it seemed to him. He
+felt a certain admiration. There was good blood in the girl. Her
+father must have been worth knowing. His thoughts would have taken a
+different direction--would have been nothing so complacent if he had
+known just what she was thinking. His speech, terrifying at first, had
+actually renewed a hope that had fallen very low. She did not believe
+a word of what he had said, that is, of his having nothing more to
+give. Whenever did woman believe any such thing as that, no matter how
+solemnly, on what stoutest oaths, with what tragic air a man has told
+it to her? Love is not love that doubts its own compelling power. And
+Marion, gazing fondly at Philip now, felt somewhat as a mother feels
+who smilingly indulges some childhood tragedy of her boy, knowing that
+it will pass as the cloud upon an April sky. If this was the worst he
+had to say to her--
+
+But it was not the worst. Philip felt an intense relief to see her
+accept the situation with such unexpected calm. He admired her
+consciously now,--for her intelligence. He began to think that he
+might almost take her hand, and thank her, as he would thank a man for
+doing him a service, however mistakenly. But something held him back
+from that folly. He wondered a little at her silence, and it was by
+way of breaking it before it should become embarrassing that he
+searched for something safe and commonplace to say to her.
+
+"It was my own fault, you know, that I was injured."
+
+"Why your own fault?"
+
+"I was in a bad humor. I lost my self-control. And I got what I
+deserved."
+
+He thought she would ask him why he had been in a bad humor, and he
+purposed to say that he was raging in discontent, longing for the
+white road again. It would be safe enough now, no doubt, to tell her
+in this fashion that if ever she should come to the Park again she
+would not find him there. But his words had suggested something
+entirely different to her mind.
+
+"What are you going to do with him?" she asked, in sudden vague
+anxiety.
+
+"Do with him?"
+
+"Yes--Sunnysides? I wish you'd please sell him."
+
+"Sell him? Sell Sunnysides?" His voice betrayed his astonishment.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"But I haven't ridden him yet."
+
+"You don't mean--" Her voice failed.
+
+"That I'm going to ride him? Just as soon as I get well."
+
+For some seconds she sat dazed. It was so utterly unexpected. The
+thought had not once occurred to her that he would try again what had
+all but cost him his life. It is at some such point as this that man's
+and woman's natures make one of their many departures from the
+parallel. To Haig the taming of Sunnysides now meant everything; to
+Marion it seemed a useless, a worse than useless risk, a wicked waste.
+What had been the worth, then, of all her labor of love, if it was to
+be thrown away? He would be killed the next time. And in the horror
+with which she foresaw that tragic end of all that she had planned and
+builded, her courage and confidence fell away from her, and left her
+weak and helpless. She uttered a thin, little cry, and slipped to the
+floor on her knees, clasping his emaciated hand that lay on an arm of
+the chair.
+
+"No! No!" she cried frantically. "Please, Philip! Please promise me
+you won't do that!"
+
+Then she broke down completely, her head drooped, and she sank down in
+a heap, with her face between her hands.
+
+Haig was stunned. He had blundered again. Fool, not to have let her go
+away from him in silence, in calm! He looked down at that crumpled
+figure, at the mass of tawny hair, with the red-gold lights in it, the
+enticing soft whiteness of her neck where the hair curved cleanly
+upward, the graceful slope of the shoulders that now shook with sobs.
+And something stirred in him, something deep, too deep to be reached
+and overpowered. It grew until it sang through all his being, a
+feeling such as he had never known before. She was fine and beautiful;
+she was a thing to be desired; and he had only to reach out, and take
+her for his own. Before he was aware of it, he had stretched out his
+hand until it almost touched her hair. Then from across the years a
+mocking voice rang out shrill and cold and cruel: "Now don't you go
+mussing up my apartment, Pipo!"
+
+He drew back his hand with a jerk, and clutched the chair; and sat
+bolt upright, while every nerve rang with the alarm.
+
+Minutes passed. The sobs gradually subsided; the figure on the floor
+slowly ceased its convulsive movements; and again a deep silence
+enveloped the room. Out on the brown-green slope the sun's rays were
+slanting low, the shadow of the cottage climbed the hill.
+
+Well, Haig thought, he had bungled the business after all. That was
+what came of trying to do it nicely, with delicacy. Hard words were
+the kindest in the end, because the quickest understood.
+
+She had not yet lifted her head when he turned to look at her again;
+and that made it easier.
+
+"I can't leave the ranch--just now," he said slowly. "If I could, I
+would. So I think--I think you ought to go back home--to New York, I
+mean--at once."
+
+She did not answer. And it was only after another silence that she
+looked up at him, and he saw that her eyes were still filled with
+tears, and there was a curious little puckering of her chin.
+
+"You said you wished you could repay me," she said. "Do you?"
+
+"Yes," he answered, wondering. "But I told you--"
+
+"But there is a way!"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Promise me you will not ride Sunnysides."
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"No. I can't promise that."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"That's one of the things you couldn't possibly understand."
+
+"But it's such a little thing!"
+
+"If I gave you that, I should indeed have nothing left. You would have
+all."
+
+It was true that she could not in the least understand. But she knew
+she could not move him.
+
+"Then promise me," she pleaded, "that you'll not try it until you are
+quite, quite well!"
+
+"Oh. I promise you that!" he replied, with a grim smile.
+
+"Thank you--Philip!"
+
+Presently she arose, and looked down at him with a long, lingering
+gaze that seemed to be searching for something in his features.
+
+"You'll take just what Jim gives you?" she asked anxiously.
+
+"Of course."
+
+"And not try to--boss him about the medicines and the food?"
+
+"I promise to obey orders."
+
+"And you'll be very careful?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+She moved slowly toward the door. But halfway there she stopped, and
+turned to look at him again. How could she leave him now? She
+couldn't! She couldn't! He was gazing away from her, out through the
+window. Wasn't he going to say a word to her--of farewell? She came
+back unsteadily, and stood behind his chair, her hands stretched out
+above his head. Then suddenly, impulsively, not touching him with her
+hands, she leaned down, and kissed his forehead.
+
+"Good-by!" she said, her voice breaking.
+
+"Good-by!" he answered gently, but without turning his head.
+
+He heard the door opened and closed, very softly. After that he sat a
+long time in silence. Well, she was gone! It had been a trying
+afternoon, and he was glad to have it ended. And yet the room seemed
+to be extraordinarily empty, as it had never been before his illness.
+The stillness rather oppressed him. Damn it all, sickness did strange
+things to a man! Took a lot out of him! He straightened himself in his
+chair.
+
+Presently Jim entered.
+
+"Well, Jim!" said Haig. "Here we are again, eh? I'm hungry."
+
+"You eat, she come back," Jim answered shrewdly.
+
+Haig looked at him sharply, but the Chinaman's face was like a paper
+mask.
+
+"Shut up!" he cried savagely.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
+
+
+Hillyer was waiting for her at the barn when she came at last, with a
+smile that eased his anxiety, if only in an inconsiderable degree. But
+he saw, as he took her handbag and bundle, and placed them in the
+automobile, that she had been crying. This gladdened while it angered
+him, and he was lost among the many interpretations that might be put
+upon those signs of distress. Had she come to the end of her
+infatuation? Had she been subjected to insults as the reward of her
+service? He dared not ask her such questions--not yet; but he was
+resolved (and there were material reasons, too, for that decision) to
+have his own case settled, one way or another, at once.
+
+Neither of them spoke more than a conventional word or two until
+Hillyer, after full speed down Haig's road to the junction, slowed up
+on the main highway along the Brightwater. It was the serenest of
+summer evenings, very still and fragrant, with a touch of autumn in
+the air. The eastern sky was filled with pale golds and pinks, and the
+foothills were warm with purples. Marion's face was averted from
+Hillyer, and her eyes were fixed, not on the soft alternations of
+color in the sky, but on Thunder Mountain, where the only clouds to be
+seen in all the expanse of blue lay low upon its uncompromising head.
+
+"Marion!" said Hillyer, at length.
+
+She did not miss the note in his voice that exposed his intention, but
+long preparation for this moment enabled her to face him calmly.
+
+"Yes, I know, Robert," she said. "You have much to say to me."
+
+"I'm going to-morrow," he began abruptly. "Will you go with me?"
+
+"To-morrow? Go with you?" she repeated, with a little start of
+surprise.
+
+"Yes. Will you go with me?"
+
+"But I don't understand, Robert."
+
+"I must be in Denver the day after to-morrow."
+
+"I--I didn't know your time was so short. I'm afraid--I've spoiled
+your visit."
+
+"That doesn't matter, Marion, if you'll go back with me."
+
+"But I can't--just yet."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"I'm not ready. I haven't half finished my visit with Claire."
+
+She was, after all, somewhat confused, for she had not expected him to
+approach the subject in just this way.
+
+"But the summer is almost gone. It's near the end of August,"
+persisted Hillyer.
+
+"There's another month of good weather. And September, Claire says, is
+the most beautiful of all."
+
+"That may be, unless Huntington's right. He told me only yesterday
+that it's going to be an early winter. There's come a chill in the air
+even since I've been here."
+
+"Nonsense!" she replied, recovering her composure. "I'll go out with
+the last stage."
+
+"And get caught in an avalanche or something!"
+
+"I suppose Seth does want to get rid of me!" she said, with a faint
+laugh.
+
+"That's not it at all."
+
+"Well, I'm not afraid."
+
+"But suppose you stay too late, and get caught. You'd have to remain
+here all winter. The Park, Huntington says, is as tight as a jail
+after the snows come."
+
+"Claire stays here through the winter sometimes."
+
+He felt a fresh alarm, and showed it. It would be just like her! he
+thought.
+
+"See here, Marion!" he said, plunging at last. "I've obeyed your order
+not to say anything about--the future. I meant not to say anything
+until the time was up. But you must see I can't keep silent now,
+after--what's happened. You must know I can't go away and leave you
+without knowing what--it all means. You said you'd tell me as soon as
+you'd finished nursing--him. No, wait, please! Let me say it at once.
+You know I love you. I want you to marry me. I need you, Marion.
+There's never been an hour, a minute that I haven't thought of you. I
+can't work--I can't do anything without you. I love you more than--"
+
+"Stop, Robert!" she cried. "You're making it harder for both of us."
+
+"Harder--for--both of us?" he repeated slowly.
+
+"Yes."
+
+There was a moment's silence. Hillyer, while he spoke, had
+half-consciously stopped the automobile, which stood now, humming
+softly, in the middle of the road that stretched white and empty ahead
+of them and behind them. The night breeze had risen, blowing cold from
+the snows, and the shadows were creeping down into the valley, as if
+they came from dark caverns in the hills.
+
+"Robert," she said sadly. "It's no use. I must tell you. I--I can't
+marry you."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"You make me say it!" she cried. "Well, Robert, I--I don't love you."
+
+"I'm not asking you to love me!" he rejoined, almost savagely. "I only
+ask you--"
+
+"Listen!" she interrupted, placing a hand on his arm. "That's not
+all."
+
+"You mean--"
+
+She stopped him with a pressure on his arm.
+
+"Once, not knowing, I almost consented," she went on. "But something
+checked me--held me back. You remember how restless I was--how
+troubled. You would have laughed at me if I had told you. But
+something seemed to be calling me--a voice from a long distance. I
+laughed at myself for a foolish girl--at first. I said it was nerves,
+and I fought against it. And it was then that I came nearest to saying
+yes to you, thinking that I was indeed foolish in holding back. I
+liked you. I've always liked you, Robert. You'd been such a splendid
+friend, and I was grateful. I wanted to repay you--"
+
+She stopped suddenly, and a flush mounted swiftly into her pale
+cheeks. Repay! The word recalled sharply to her, acutely and
+painfully, all that Haig had said about paying her. Were they, then,
+in the same dreadful situation, she and Haig, with debts they could
+never pay? For the first time some sense of the terrible finality of
+his decision struck in upon her secret hopes.
+
+"Don't talk of that!" Robert was saying, seizing the moment of
+silence. "I never--"
+
+"But always, when I was about to yield--I couldn't. I didn't know why
+then. But now I do."
+
+"You mean--Haig?" he asked hoarsely.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You don't--" He could not bring himself to speak the word.
+
+"Yes, Robert. I love him."
+
+It took all the courage she possessed. But she owed it to him and to
+herself.
+
+"I don't believe it!" he blurted out. "I won't believe it! You are not
+yourself, Marion. You are worn out. You have been fascinated. He's
+strange--different--new to you. It's your imagination, not your heart,
+that's been--won. He's led you on by--"
+
+"No!" she broke in. "You're quite wrong. It's not his fault at all. He
+doesn't love me."
+
+"Of course not. I know that kind of fellow. You didn't need to leave
+New York to find plenty like him. He only wants to--"
+
+"Robert!" she cried warningly.
+
+"Then what--"
+
+"He hates me, I think," she replied sadly.
+
+"Then why in the world do you--" He was floundering. "What do you know
+about him, anyhow? Who is he? Where did he come from?"
+
+That sounded so much like Seth Huntington that she smiled, thinking of
+the picture that he must have drawn for Hillyer.
+
+"I know very little about him," she replied quietly. "But I know that
+Cousin Seth is mistaken."
+
+"But how do you know he hates you?"
+
+"He made that clear in the beginning--not me alone, but all women. He
+shunned me. He told me twice that I must not speak to him again. And
+this afternoon, while you waited for me--" Her voice broke, with a
+laugh that was half a sob. "He--finished it."
+
+"He was rude to you!" he cried. "I'll make him--"
+
+She put her hand quickly on his arm.
+
+"No. He was very gentle--and kind."
+
+"What did he say?" Hillyer demanded, almost imperatively.
+
+"He said that--he couldn't leave the ranch just now, so I'd better go
+back to New York--at once."
+
+"He did, did he?" cried Hillyer angrily, his chivalry for the moment
+dominant. But then he saw suddenly another meaning, for him, in the
+brutal ultimatum; and his face brightened. "That settles it, doesn't
+it?" he exclaimed eagerly.
+
+"Settles what?"
+
+"Why, you'll go with me!"
+
+"No."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"I told you I'm not ready yet."
+
+There was a silence while Hillyer, buoyed up with new hope, made some
+hurried calculations.
+
+"Then listen, Marion!" he said. "I'll go to Denver, and come back in a
+week or ten days. I'll arrange things so that I can stay here
+until--"
+
+"Oh, Robert! You won't understand."
+
+He stared at her blankly.
+
+"You're making it so hard for me!" she cried pathetically. "I've told
+you already that I cannot marry you."
+
+"But why! Why!" he persisted.
+
+"Because I haven't myself--I've nothing to give."
+
+"But how can you love him after he has--"
+
+"Told me he does not love me?" she said, taking the words from him.
+"Then how can you love me when I have said the same thing to you?"
+
+He struggled desperately, in deep water.
+
+"It's different, Marion. You don't hate me--I think. You say you like
+me. That's enough now--to start with. It's all I ask. I'll try to make
+you happy, and I'll wait for love. You shall have all the things in
+the world you want. I'm making scads of money. Everything I touch just
+rolls up into bank notes. I want you to come and spend all that money
+for me. Remember, Marion, your father wished it. If he were here
+now--"
+
+"Yes!" she put in with sudden fire. "If he were here now do you know
+what he would say to me?"
+
+He felt that he had blundered, and made no reply.
+
+"He would say to me--Oh, I can hear him now! He would say: 'Follow
+your heart, daughter. Love's the only thing in the world that really
+counts.'"
+
+She smiled triumphantly, but wistfully. And Hillyer was still silent.
+
+"Daddy wasn't very good at quoting Scripture," she went on musingly,
+"but he used to say: 'Better a dinner of herbs where love is than a
+stalled ox and hatred therewith.'"
+
+"But there isn't any hatred therewith!" cried Hillyer desperately. "I
+love you, Marion, and if you don't love me--you don't hate me. So
+there's more than half of it, and--can't we trust the future a little
+bit?"
+
+"No."
+
+"But what are you going to do?" he asked, shifting his line of
+attack.
+
+"I don't know," she replied, with a helpless gesture.
+
+"You can't go back to New York without money enough to take your
+proper place in the world. Of course, if you'll let me, I'll--"
+
+"Robert!" she interrupted sharply.
+
+"Well, I mean it just the same!" he replied stoutly. "I've got to
+take care of you, and if you won't--See here, Marion! I simply
+refuse to be turned down this way. I'll not take your stubborn, whimsy
+little 'no' for my answer. You're on my hands, thank God! whether you
+like it or not. Maybe you won't love me. Maybe you won't marry me.
+We'll see about that! But I'm going to look after you--I'm going to
+take care of you, just the same--and you can just stop tightening
+those lips--they're not as red as they ought to be--and you can make
+up your mind that you can boss me so far and no farther."
+
+Marion smiled at him indulgently, but gratefully, and even a little
+proudly; for she had been very proud of him in the days when only
+friendship was spoken of. She did not in the least resent his speech;
+but neither did she answer him.
+
+"It's getting late, Robert," she said, shivering a little.
+
+"So it is," he replied. "And you've no warm wrap for the night air."
+
+He drew the lap-robe around her, and started the automobile. Through
+the gathering night they drove, almost without speaking, to
+Huntington's, where the best supper that Claire could contrive from
+the limited stores at her disposal awaited the prodigal. There was
+naturally some constraint at table. Huntington had made his peace with
+Hillyer, having apologized humbly, and expatiated on the cause of his
+wrath. But he did not know how he stood with Marion, who had been a
+long time in the camp of the enemy, and who doubtless knew too of his
+speech about her trunks. He had not dared to ask Hillyer whether he
+had related that incident to her, and he felt the need of extreme
+discretion until he should discover what kind of a rod she had in
+pickle for him, or, at any rate, until the time should be propitious
+to tell her that he was sorry for his conduct. Marion was tired, and
+disinclined to talk, while Hillyer, on his side, had his mind fully
+occupied, between his deal in mines and his deal in love, in both of
+which he had encountered unexpected difficulties. Only Claire was gay
+and untroubled, and she accepted eagerly the task of saving the party
+from awkward silences. For once in many moons she was allowed to talk
+unchecked, and she made the most of her opportunity.
+
+After supper, Marion announced her purpose to go to bed at once. She
+was sure, she declared, that she could sleep "around the clock."
+
+"I'll be off before you're up, then," said Hillyer.
+
+"You must go to-morrow?" asked Claire.
+
+"Absolutely. It means thousands."
+
+"Then we'll sit on the veranda a few minutes," said Marion. "Not long,
+though. I'm dreadfully sleepy."
+
+It was not long. They found they had little to say to each other,
+since the one subject of which both were thinking, each from a
+different point of view, was tacitly barred. And Hillyer soon saw that
+Marion was sorely in need of rest.
+
+"Go to bed now, dear girl!" he said presently. "And please take good
+care of yourself. I want to see the color back in your cheeks when I
+return."
+
+"I will, Robert," she answered. "I'll be quite all right in a day or
+two."
+
+"And you--don't really think of staying here all winter?" he ventured
+to ask diffidently.
+
+"No," she replied. "That's hardly possible."
+
+"Then good-by--until you hear my horn in the road down yonder."
+
+"Good-by, Robert, and good luck!"
+
+She gave him both her hands, for a moment, with a tenderness that
+lingered with him far on his way.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+INTERLUDE
+
+
+August ripened into September, and the Park underwent a subtle and
+fascinating change. In the meadows the hay lay in long windrows,
+golden green; on the slopes vermilion flowers succeeded blue; in the
+sunsets tender pinks yielded to burnt orange and vivid red. The nights
+had grown perceptibly colder, but the days were still warm and dry and
+radiant, though with a tang in the air that stirred the blood. And a
+thousand perfumes, known and unknown, distilled from meadow and field
+and forest, scented every vagrant breeze.
+
+Marion was soon herself again, in body if not in mind. A few long
+nights of sleep, a few days in the saddle, and sufficient nourishment
+(for she had neglected herself at Haig's, despite Jim's solicitude)
+restored her physically to what she had been on the day of Haig's
+accident. But she, too, had changed, and as subtly as the season.
+
+"What's come over Marion?" asked Huntington of Claire one day, after
+he had caught himself regarding her with the rapt interest of a
+discoverer.
+
+Claire looked at him pityingly. She knew, but she was not going to
+tell him.
+
+"Why?" she asked innocently.
+
+"Well, I don't exactly know," he replied doubtfully. "She's prettier
+than ever--but so are you. That isn't it. She's kind of--It's no use.
+I don't know."
+
+Claire laughed, and then became severe.
+
+"That's because she's forgiven you," she said.
+
+"No, it isn't!" he asseverated, not without embarrassment. "You can
+see for yourself that she's different."
+
+"Very well!" she retorted maliciously. "Perhaps if you'd done such a
+noble thing as nursing Haig back to life you'd be different too."
+
+"I'd see him in--"
+
+"Shame!" she cried. "You wouldn't do anything of the kind. Your bark's
+worse than your bite, sir. And besides, while I think of it, you
+really must stop saying 'hell' and 'damn' so much. The habit's growing
+on you."
+
+Having no ready answer to that speech, he merely looked at her,
+perhaps a little guiltily, then bent down and kissed her, and hurried
+out of the house. He was, in truth, though he never would have had the
+courage to acknowledge it, even to Claire, ashamed of himself, and
+anxious too. His inflammable temper had rather out-flamed itself in
+its last-recorded performance, and he had begun to suspect that it had
+been responsible for some, though by no means all, of his troubles.
+The killing of Haig's bull, he now realized, was a foolish and
+indefensible act, which could be traced easily to him because of the
+bull that was gored; and he must prepare to account to Haig for it.
+And so, knowing that he would again be in the wrong, as in the affair
+at the post-office, he was torn between accentuated bitterness toward
+Haig and growing discontent with himself. He would never be afraid of
+Haig, but he was becoming steadily more afraid of Marion. Whether it
+was that he had really developed intuition, which told him of Marion's
+spiritual growth, or that he was in constant dread lest she make some
+new demand upon him in regard to Haig, he lived in much awe of her.
+She had once spoken, on a memorable occasion, of making peace between
+Haig and himself. It would be just like her, wouldn't it, to try to
+bring them together? Well, let her try it! He would be the last man in
+Paradise Park. And so on, until he was once more almost satisfied with
+himself.
+
+The faithful Smythe, meanwhile, brought Marion almost daily news of
+Philip. That he was rapidly recovering she heard with a ringing joy,
+which had its alloy of fear; for she knew that the day he felt himself
+to be in full possession of his powers he would attempt again to
+conquer Sunnysides. So from day to day her apprehension mounted until
+it became well-nigh insupportable. And her own helplessness maddened
+her. What could she do? Nothing! Nothing but wait, and pray God to
+protect him. Every night she prayed for him, and every morning, on her
+knees; and every hour the prayer was in her heart. She rode sometimes
+as far as the farther edge of the woods that crowned the ridge, and
+looked long at the little valley, and at the smoke rising in a thin
+spiral from the ranch house that she could not see. At the right of it
+would be the cottage, and at the left the barn, and the corral where
+Sunnysides bided his time. And then, having looked until she could
+endure no more, she would ride slowly home, to await the next coming
+of Smythe with news.
+
+Once she went to the glade of the columbines. She did not feel any
+longer the antipathy she once felt to the spot that had, in one
+devastating moment, revealed to her the fatuity of her dreams. Now she
+was in search of the old hopes that she had once revelled in, while
+she gathered armloads of columbines, and imagined they were for
+Philip.
+
+Dismounting eagerly at the foot of the little hill, she plunged
+through the brush, and halted at the margin of the glade, stricken
+with the keenest disappointment. The columbines were gone; only a
+brave, pale blossom here and there lingered pathetically in a waste of
+dried and drooping stems. She stood staring at them a moment; then,
+with a cry, she threw herself down among them, and gave herself up to
+grief, letting the tears come in what flood they would, while her hand
+clutched one poor survivor of the summer glory.
+
+Gone, then, like the summer, were all those dreams. And very soon must
+come the end of all. Barely two weeks remained to her in the
+Park,--barely two weeks in which the miracle that she awaited could be
+wrought. What miracle could move him when her love had failed? And
+yet--Once, in her desperation, she suggested to Claire and Seth that
+she should remain all winter in the Park; but they rose up together
+against any such scheme. It was absurd, they agreed. They would be
+delighted to have her with them as many summers as she might wish; and
+they were already counting on her return to them next June. But the
+Park in winter was no place for a woman, unless she had been long
+inured to such hardships as were involved in that hibernation. Claire
+had remained two winters there, it was true, but Seth had vowed that
+she should never miss the last stage again. Marion's proposal only
+clinched the matter the more firmly; and it was eventually agreed that
+Claire should go with Marion to New York, where they would live very
+quietly, taking what pleasures their means would permit, until spring
+should bring them back to the mountains. And so, barring a miracle,
+she was at the end of her hopes.
+
+Meanwhile, she had heard from Robert. He was nearly wild, he wrote.
+The big deal was going slowly--not badly, but with maddening delays.
+He was tempted to "chuck the whole business," though it meant
+thousands, perhaps half a million. Yet how could he do that? He was
+working for her; and if he left Denver the deal would certainly fall
+through. But there was yet time; any day the stubborn partner might
+yield; and so on. Poor Robert! thought Marion. She imagined what
+Philip would have done if he had wanted her as Robert did. Would any
+deal, any prospect of millions, have kept him away from her? So she
+reasoned, forgetting entirely the other side of the case. Haig, if she
+could have asked him, would have told her: yes, that's all very well,
+but the man would have to get those thousands or other thousands
+afterwards, just the same; a woman wants to have her cake and eat it
+too; and so much the worse for the man if he cannot dance attendance
+on her and make money for her at the same time!
+
+She wrote to Robert that be must not think of leaving his business.
+Moreover, she would soon be in Denver, on her way back home.
+
+In the late afternoon Haig leaned against Sunnysides' corral, smoking
+his pipe and gazing fixedly at the golden outlaw. The air was very
+still, almost too still, as if nature had paused before a sudden
+and violent alteration of her mood. In the bright sky, a little
+hard even for September, there was no cloud, except on the western
+horizon, where dark vapors hovered over the bald head of Thunder
+Mountain. The scent of the harvest in the meadows blended with the
+odor of burning pine that came from the ranch house, where Flick built
+the fire for supper. On the hill the pines were still, but the brook
+babbled on, and there was an incessant low twittering of birds in
+the cottonwoods.
+
+Haig had now fully recovered. He had taken to his horse again some
+days before, to ride a little the first day, and more the next, each
+day adding something to his exercise, until he felt the blood running
+warmly in his veins, and his muscles tightening at his will. Then he
+had hardened himself with every kind of labor around the ranch. For he
+was impatient to remove the stigma of doubt that Sunnysides had burned
+into his soul. He had told Marion that she was incapable of
+understanding why he must conquer Sunnysides. He was not sure that he
+understood it himself. But he knew that he must. Ever since that day
+when he had fled into the world he had fought to be master of himself;
+and his way of being master of himself was to be master of every man
+and every animal and every obstacle that appeared across his
+path,--that irresponsible, uncharted path that had neither beginning
+nor end, that led he knew not where nor cared. Every moment was a
+moment to itself, and every day was its own if he had done what he
+had set out to do. His one purpose in life was not to be beaten, never
+to fail, though he should throw away to-morrow what he had won to-day.
+So it was that to conquer Sunnysides was for the moment the one thing
+that counted, and he would have no rest until it was done.
+
+Twilight settled down upon the valley. Haig's pipe went out, and still
+he stood gazing at Sunnysides. In the dusk the horse glowed like a
+living jewel that holds the light when the sun has gone. Night fell,
+and the golden hide became a shimmer in the dark, as the outlaw moved
+restlessly to and fro in his prison. Then, of a sudden, with the
+unexpectedness and unreason of a dog's wolf-howl at the rising moon,
+there rose from the gloom of the corral a shrill, wild neigh that
+shattered the peaceful silence of the night.
+
+Haig left the fence, and walked swiftly to the barn.
+
+"Farrish!" he said shortly. "We'll break Sunnysides to-morrow. Tell
+Pete and Curly not to ride away in the morning. The cattle can wait."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+THE CHALLENGE OF THE BRUTE
+
+
+There had been yellow, mellow weather for weeks on weeks, but this day
+dawned hard and cold. Some projected rancor of the winter was in the
+air. Westward the peaks were blanketed with thick gray clouds, while
+eastward a sullen redness showed where the sun strove to rise on an
+angry world. The wind was the kind that scrapes raw the nerves,
+buffeting man and beast with cross-currents and unexpected blasts,
+howling and shrieking around chimneys and gables, covering everything
+with dust and sand.
+
+Haig awoke to hear the wind tearing at the shutters and the roof, the
+pines on the hillside thundering like surf, the hills reverberating
+with the maddest trumpetings. He lay a moment listening; his pulse
+quickened, at the sound of all that tumult; and he leaped from his bed
+calling loudly for Slim Jim. It was a day for battle. The very
+elements were up and at it, as if all nature had enlisted in the
+struggle between man and brute.
+
+For all his eagerness, he ate his breakfast leisurely, resolved to
+make no such error as he had made before. There should be no mad haste
+and no anger; no working on an empty stomach, on nerves drawn taut.
+Bacon and eggs and buckwheat cakes, with coffee and a single pipe,
+occupied an hour or more; and then, feeling fit for anything, he set
+out for the corrals.
+
+He did not scruple this time to take every precaution known to the
+experts of the corrals. Bill was mounted on the wisest horse in the
+stables, with a lariat ready against the event of Sunnysides trying
+the fence again. Then Haig directed Farrish, Curly, and Pete to rope
+and saddle the outlaw, saving himself for the supreme struggle. But to
+their astonishment there was none of the difficulties in the
+preliminaries that they encountered on the previous occasion; only two
+or three vicious movements, no more.
+
+"Foxy, ain't you?" said Farrish to the outlaw, when the saddle was on.
+"Savin' yourself, are you, you yellow devil?"
+
+The horse was led as before into the larger corral. He stepped nimbly,
+obediently, as if resistance were the farthest thing from his
+thoughts, even when Haig, his arch-enemy, walked up to him, grasped
+the bridle, and looked steadily into his eyes. For a moment all stood
+still, as the challenge passed between man and brute. Then Haig tested
+the cinches of the saddle, looked carefully around him, and disposed
+the men with a final word to each.
+
+"Now then! Off with it!"
+
+Farrish removed the last rope, and then only the bridle rein in Haig's
+hand, and the fence yonder, stoutly repaired since the last battle,
+remained between Sunnysides and the sandhills of the San Luis. True,
+only a fence and a guard had held him all these weeks of his
+captivity, but that fence had been built up, on his arrival, two
+planks higher than the one in which he now found himself again, and
+from which he had all but escaped at the first opportunity.
+
+Haig put his feet cautiously into the stirrup, and sprang into the
+saddle. He was prepared for a repetition of the trick that had almost
+cost him his life, and ready to swing himself out of the saddle if
+Sunnysides should go over backward again. But the horse was indeed
+"foxy"; one would have said that he knew his man, and would waste no
+time or energy on manoeuvers that his enemy had discounted. For some
+seconds he stood quite motionless, while Haig settled firmly in his
+seat, and gripped the bridle rein expectantly. At length the horse
+lifted and turned his head, and looked, as it appeared, toward the
+western mountains, half hidden in the gray swirl of clouds.
+
+"Yes, over there's the San Luis," muttered Haig. "But it's a long way,
+and you're not going."
+
+Farrish grinned. But Pete stood like a wooden Indian, so still and
+intent was he, with his black eyes fixed on the outlaw. Curly loosened
+the coils of the lariat in his hands. In a corner of the corral Bill,
+mounted and watchful, held his rope ready for a throw.
+
+Still Sunnysides did not move. But his tail swished with the slow and
+menacing movement of a tiger's, and there was just a quiver of muscles
+under his golden hide.
+
+"Watch out!" called Pete.
+
+And then it came. The horse bounded into the air, and came down
+stiff-legged, with a jolt that Haig felt in every bone. Then he leaped
+sideways half a dozen feet, and Haig was flung far over, hanging
+perilously in the saddle. With almost one motion the horse was in the
+air again, to come down with the same frightful, jarring shock.
+Instantly thereupon he lunged forward, stopped short, ducked his head,
+and narrowly missed hurling Haig like a stone from a catapult.
+
+All these tactics were repeated with variations; and then, of a
+sudden, as if he thought Haig had forgotten his experience by this
+time, he reared, and with the same lightning swiftness as before, went
+over backward on the ground. But Haig was too quick for him. He swung
+himself to one side, released his right foot from the stirrup, and
+rolled away from beneath the horse as they came down with a crash. At
+the same instant Pete and Curly rushed in, and the horse leaped to his
+feet only to be brought down again with two ropes on his legs.
+
+Haig, dusty but uninjured, was on his feet in a jiffy, and leaning
+over the thwarted outlaw.
+
+"You didn't really think you could do it again, did you?" he said.
+
+"But he's a hellyun, though, ain't he!" ejaculated Curly, bracing
+himself on his rope.
+
+The horse was allowed to rise; Haig climbed cautiously into the saddle
+once more; and the same tense silence as the first ensued, while
+Sunnysides waited, as if for inspiration.
+
+Then it was on as before, but with accentuated fury. The horse, for
+his opening demonstration, bucked with his back curved like a steel
+bow. Haig was almost propelled into the air, but hung on desperately;
+and as the outlaw came down on stiffened legs Haig jabbed the spurs
+viciously into his flanks. For Sunnysides had been too calculating in
+his measures; it was desirable to stir him up, to anger him, to
+torment him until he should wear himself out with his furious
+struggles.
+
+The spurs did it. In an instant Sunnysides was a demon. All that he
+had done was like the antics of a colt compared with what followed. No
+eye in the corral could follow and record all his movements. He was in
+every part of the enclosure at once, it seemed. There were instants,
+too, when he appeared to have disassociated himself from the earth,
+and to have taken to the air as his element. And then the earth rang
+again with the clatter of his hoofs; his four legs became a hundred,
+and then were four again, pounding like piledrivers, like steel
+drills. He flung himself against the fence until it swayed and
+creaked, and Haig's legs were bruised by the violent contact. Clouds
+of dust rose and hung above the enclosure, and settled on the outlaw's
+wet shoulders, on Haig's sweating face, in his eyes and nostrils, and
+in his throat until he was fairly choking. But though half-blinded,
+dizzy, and aching in all his body, Haig hung on, and dug the spurs
+ceaselessly into the horse's flanks.
+
+"God! He's got him!" cried Farrish.
+
+"Your game's up!" yelled Curly tauntingly, dancing with joy in his
+corner of the corral.
+
+But the game was not up. Curly's words were barely out of his mouth
+when something went wrong with Haig. Just what happened none could be
+quite sure of, then or afterward; but in the midst of Sunnysides'
+plungings, there came a windmill kind of movement, rather like the
+whirling of a dervish, out of which the horse lunged swiftly forward,
+and halted violently, with his head down, and his forelegs stiff
+before him. It was apparently an elaboration of one of the commonest
+tricks of all; and if Haig could have stuck to the saddle then he
+probably would have won. But he was thrown. He went sprawling over the
+horse's lowered head, and struck the ground on his head and shoulders,
+and lay still.
+
+What followed was more marvelous even than the unseating of Haig with
+the shout of victory already rising to his lips. There came a
+snort that ended in a scream; and then a flash of yellow through the
+dust. Bill Craven, on his horse at one side of the corral, saw it
+coming straight toward him, and tried to whirl his noose. Too late.
+The outlaw was upon him; his own pony, rearing, was caught unbalanced;
+and Bill himself instinctively leaned backward in the saddle.
+There was a terrific impact; the pony was struck squarely on the left
+fore-quarter; and horse and rider went down together in a heap against
+the fence. Then over them went the outlaw, trampling them as he
+leaped and clambered, taking the top plank with him as he landed
+outside the corral on his head and knees. In an instant he was up; in
+another, or the same instant, he was off, with his head down, and
+belly to earth, with the speed of a race-horse and the frenzy of a
+wild thing set free.
+
+Haig was only slightly stunned by the fall. He heard, though he did
+not see, the escape of Sunnysides; and for one black moment all in the
+present was blotted out. But that was only the dizziness, and the
+reeling pain in his head; and there was the sky filled with
+gray-black, contending clouds; and Pete was leaning over him.
+
+"Hurt?" asked the Indian.
+
+"No."
+
+He reached up one hand, and Pete helped him to his feet. Swaying a
+little, he looked around the corral. Farrish was on the outside,
+gazing down the road where Sunnysides was now almost out of sight, a
+mere yellow spot in a cloud of dust. Curly was jerking Craven's horse
+to its feet.
+
+"What's the matter there?" called Haig.
+
+"Bill's hurt!" answered Curly.
+
+With Pete at his side, not yet assured that all was well with him,
+Haig walked unsteadily to where Bill lay against the fence.
+
+"What is it, Craven?" he asked.
+
+"Leg broke. My horse fell on me," Bill answered weakly. He had,
+besides, a gash in the left side of his head, from which the blood
+flowed down his face.
+
+"Into the barn with him!" Haig ordered quietly.
+
+They placed him on a cot, and Pete gave him a long pull at his
+ever-ready flask.
+
+"I'm sorry, Bill!" said Haig, looking down at him.
+
+"It's my own fault," replied Craven. "An' it serves me damned right
+for lettin' him get by me."
+
+Haig smiled grimly, then turned to the other men with orders. He was
+ominously quiet; even the dullest of them, the slow-witted Curly, saw
+and wondered at the unusual calm that showed on his face and in his
+accents.
+
+"Now then, business!" he said, with swift decision. "You'll take the
+sorrels, Curly, and drive to Tellurium for the doctor. Don't be afraid
+to drive them; I'll not be on your back for that. Pete, go to the
+cottage, and bring my gun. Jim knows where it is. Farrish--where's
+Farrish?"
+
+"Here!"
+
+He came leading two ponies from their stalls.
+
+"What are you doing, Farrish?"
+
+"I supposed we'd better find out where he's gone, and see if--"
+
+"There's no doubt where he's headed for, is there?" Haig interrupted.
+"And who's going to stop him? No, saddle Trixy!"
+
+"But you're not going alone?" said Farrish.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"But--"
+
+"Bill's knocked out. Curly's off as soon as he can start for
+Tellurium. That leaves you and Pete to look after the ranch. I may be
+gone some time."
+
+"But you can't rope him alone!" protested Farrish.
+
+"I don't expect to. There isn't a horse in the Park that could
+overtake him. He'll make for the San Luis, of course. I'll get help
+there. Now then, Farrish, you're in charge of the ranch. If anything
+should happen to me, Jim knows where all my papers are. That's all."
+
+Farrish hastened to saddle Trixy, coiling a rope at the saddle horn,
+and strapping a slicker behind the saddle. At this moment came Pete
+from the cottage, bringing the revolver and cartridge belt, which Haig
+buckled on while Farrish led Trixy out in front of the stable.
+
+There was a word or two more to Farrish, about the cattle and the hay,
+and Haig swung himself into the saddle.
+
+"Wait!" cried Pete, running out of the stable.
+
+He handed a flask of whisky to Haig, who took it, smiling, and thrust
+it into a pocket of his coat.
+
+"Sure cure for everything, eh, Pete?"
+
+But he reached down, and clasped Pete's hand.
+
+"You will be cold, maybe," said the Indian simply.
+
+"All right, men!" said Haig. "You'll take good care of Craven, of
+course. And you'll use your best judgment about everything, Farrish.
+I'm not coming back without Sunnysides."
+
+He put spurs to the little bay mare, and dashed away. Pete and Farrish
+stood watching him until he had turned the point of the ridge.
+
+"Hell!" said Farrish.
+
+In the cottage door stood a figure in blue silks, intently gazing
+after the disappearing horseman.
+
+"He catchum, allee light!" murmured Slim Jim.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+SMYTHE'S LAST BUDGET
+
+
+Seth had heard at the post-office that the deer were coming down
+unusually early from their summer haunts high in the mountains. A fine
+herd had been seen just above Bratner's, and Seth proposed to Marion
+that she should have a try at them. They would start early in the
+morning, stop the night at Bratner's, and be back home late the second
+evening. Marion reluctantly consented, and before going to bed that
+night she laid out woolen underwear, her stoutest riding costume, with
+divided skirts and knickerbockers and tan boots lacing almost to her
+knees. She did not want to go, but, as more than once before, she
+yielded to Seth's insistence rather than attempt an explanation.
+
+That night, however, summer departed from the Park. A dry storm
+descended on the valley, and Marion lay awake while the wind howled
+around the corners of the ranch house, of which every timber seemed to
+be crying out in agony. She knew that high among the rocks the storm
+was smashing about in fury, and even in its sheltered hollow the house
+was hammered as if the elements were bent upon its annihilation. When
+each prodigious outcry had spent itself and died away there was still
+the moaning and fretting and troubled whimpering that reminded her of
+the plaints of an invalid pleading for help between paroxysms of pain.
+She was strangely depressed by it, unaccountably distressed, and was
+glad when the first faint whitening of the window curtains told her of
+the dawn. She arose and dressed--after a moment's hesitation--in the
+costume she had prepared the night before. Seth surely would not
+insist on the shooting trip in such weather, she thought, but it would
+please him to see her dressed for it. Besides, the temperature of her
+room reminded her that she would need warm clothes if she went out
+anywhere on such a day.
+
+"Good, Marion!" cried Seth sure enough, when he saw her at the
+breakfast table. "Glad you're not discouraged by a little wind."
+
+"But--you don't mean to go on a day like this?"
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"The wind, and--we'll get soaking wet."
+
+"No, it's only a wind storm, and this is the tail end of it. The
+sun'll be out in a couple of hours. We needn't start in a hurry. We'll
+leave the horses as they are--they're all ready, bundles and the
+rest--until we see."
+
+Seth's optimism annoyed her, but she felt encouraged when, after
+breakfast, she stepped out on the veranda and met the cold and
+quarrelsome day. A rough blast struck her in the face; she saw a
+ragged drift of clouds torn by the wind; and the whole landscape
+seemed to have undergone a melancholy change. Dispirited beyond
+measure, despite the one satisfaction that the weather gave, she
+re-entered the house, and sank uneasily into an armchair by the fire.
+
+But Seth's prediction was justified. Toward ten o'clock the wind
+ceased, and patches of blue began to show in the blanket of gray.
+Claire shared Marion's disinclination to go shooting on such a day (or
+any other kind of a day, for her part!), and they stood at the window
+actually deploring the blue rents in the clouds, when Marion uttered a
+sharp exclamation of surprise.
+
+"Smythe!" she gasped.
+
+"On a day like this!" cried Claire.
+
+He had dismounted quickly, and was walking toward the house; and as he
+neared the steps Marion saw in his face what caused her to press her
+hand on her bosom to still her heart. Something had happened! And she
+had known it all the time--had known it even in her sleep!
+
+Claire ran to the door and opened it.
+
+"Well, Mr. Smythe!" she cried. "You're just in time to cheer us up.
+We're deep in the mulligrubs."
+
+He entered smiling, removing his sombrero with his customary flourish.
+But as he advanced he shot a swift, keen look at Marion.
+
+"Something's happened!" she repeated to herself.
+
+But she came forward with a smile, and shook hands with Smythe,
+searching his face. And he was warning her again. She could have
+shrieked with impatience and anxiety, but she held herself, and
+waited.
+
+"A terrible night, wasn't it?" said Claire, giving Smythe a chair.
+
+"Terrific!" replied he. "You know the big pine that hung over the road
+just this side of Toumine's? Well, it's down, right across the road. I
+had to ride around it, up among the underbrush."
+
+"I didn't sleep at all, and I'm used to winds, too," said Claire.
+
+"It got me up at daylight," Smythe went on. "It didn't look like much
+of a day for riding, but I got nervous sitting around listening to my
+good landlady--one of the young Martins is threatened with something
+or other--and started out to see how the landscape had been changed.
+There are trees down everywhere, and--" He paused. "What are you doing
+this morning, Miss Gaylord?" he asked, very casually.
+
+She had been silent, watching him.
+
+"We were going shooting, but we've been waiting to see if the weather
+would change."
+
+"Then you haven't been out?"
+
+"Only on the veranda for a minute."
+
+"Let's take a brisk walk, then. It'll do you good--warm you up a
+little."
+
+"Yes," she said weakly.
+
+She went to her room for her hat, and pinning it on before the mirror,
+started at sight of her face, which had grown very white. She was
+almost incapable of thought. The hatpin slipped from her cold fingers,
+and fell to the floor. She stared at it strangely before stooping to
+pick it up. How could she bear to hear what Smythe had come to tell
+her! But it was good of him to wait until he could tell her alone.
+
+"Will you go too, Mrs. Huntington?" Smythe said, as Marion emerged
+from her room.
+
+Claire looked at Marion, and wondered at the whiteness of her face,
+and the haunted look in her eyes. Nothing had been said, but she saw
+there was something.
+
+"No, thank you!" she said promptly. "The house suits me this
+morning."
+
+Smythe and Marion walked up the hill toward the tree where Marion had
+practised shooting. Until they reached it neither spoke.
+
+"Well?" said Marion, turning suddenly on him.
+
+"Sunnysides has got away."
+
+"And he?" she cried.
+
+"Thrown, but not hurt."
+
+She stared at him a moment, dazed. Then she threw back her head, and
+clasped her hands on her breast.
+
+"Oh!" she murmured. "But how you frightened me!"
+
+Smythe looked at her silently; and presently, when she lowered her
+eyes, she saw that his face was very grave. But Haig was unhurt, and
+Sunnysides had escaped. She had prayed for just that.
+
+"What is it?" she cried, leaning forward to clutch his arm.
+
+"He's following."
+
+"Following?"
+
+"Yes. Alone."
+
+"Where?"
+
+"Yonder."
+
+He pointed to the west.
+
+"To the San Luis?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"The way they brought him here?"
+
+"No. Sunnysides has taken the trail over Thunder Mountain."
+
+Her hand fell from his arm. She swayed, as if she would collapse.
+Smythe grabbed her, with an arm around her waist, and led her,
+unresisting and dumb, to a near rock, where he seated her gently, and
+stood watching her. He had been too abrupt, he thought; but how else
+could he have told her?
+
+She struggled bravely.
+
+"Tell me!" she said at length.
+
+He knew little about the event at the ranch. There had been a terrific
+struggle; Haig had almost conquered; then the outlaw had flung him
+over his head, trampled one of his men, breaking his leg, and leaped
+the fence to liberty.
+
+"But--Thunder Mountain?" cried Marion.
+
+"That's the strangest part of it," Smythe replied. "Even Haig refused
+at first to believe it. Nobody knows whether it was deliberate or
+accidental. It seems that 'Red' Davis, who works for Toumine, was
+taking a load of hay to Lake Cobalt. He'd stopped just beyond the
+junction of the main road and Haig's to fix the harness or something,
+when he heard a furious galloping in Haig's road. He looked--and
+Sunnysides must have been something worth seeing, as he came storming
+down on the boy, with red eyes and foaming lips, the bridle reins
+dangling at his knees, and the stirrups flying. 'Red' had never seen
+him, but he'd heard a lot, and he jumped behind the wagon as if the
+devil was after him. But the clatter of hoofs ceased suddenly, and the
+boy peered around the hay to see what had happened. There was
+Sunnysides, just at the junction, with his head high, snorting and
+sniffing, first in the direction of the wagon, and then the other way
+up the road. With a characteristic boyish burst of daring or deviltry,
+'Red' leaped out from his shelter, and yelled. The horse leaped into
+the air, let out a wild neigh, and bolted up the road toward the
+post-office.
+
+"'Red' watched him until he had disappeared, and then drove on. It
+must have been half an hour later that he heard more mad galloping
+behind him. He turned to look, and there came Haig, riding like all
+fury.
+
+"'Have you seen a horse?' he yelled as he reined up alongside the
+wagon.
+
+"'Well I just guess!' said the boy. 'Sunnysides. How did he--?'
+
+"'How was the saddle--loose or not?' asked Haig.
+
+"'No, it hadn't turned--if that's what--'
+
+"'Thank you!' replied Haig, starting on.
+
+"'Wait!' the boy shouted. 'He ain't gone that way!'
+
+"'What?'
+
+"'I say, he ain't gone that way.'
+
+"Haig stared at him suspiciously. Was the boy trying to trick him, in
+emulation of his elders? He was about to ride on, disdaining to heed
+him, when something in the boy's honest face struck his attention.
+
+"'Are you dreaming?' he cried.
+
+"'No, I ain't!' retorted Davis, deeply offended.
+
+"'Where did he go then?' demanded Haig.
+
+"'Yander,' answered 'Red.'
+
+"Haig was incredulous.
+
+"'It's the truth!' protested the boy. And then he told Haig what he
+had seen.
+
+"'But how in hell--' Haig began.
+
+"Then suddenly it came to him.
+
+"'Thunder Mountain!' he cried. Then, half to himself: 'The trail drops
+down from Thunder Mountain--somewhere--into the Black Lake country,
+and then--over the Sangre de Cristo is the San Luis. _But how does he
+know that?_'
+
+"'He knows a lot, he does!' said 'Red.'
+
+"Then Haig was off, flinging back 'Thank you!' at the boy. But he took
+the precaution to confirm 'Red's' story at the post-office. Thompson
+himself had seen Sunnysides, still going like the wind. Tom Banks came
+in a little later with news of the outlaw well up the road toward
+Norton's, and Haig after him. So there's no doubt the way they've
+gone. But it's a losing game if Sunnysides can keep up the speed he
+was hitting when he was last seen."
+
+"A losing game!" She, better than anybody else in the Park, knew what
+that meant. She rose slowly, and looked across the Park at Thunder
+Mountain, now lost among the clouds. No, not quite; for through a rift
+she was just able to make out the timber line on the mountain's
+jutting shoulder. Above that she knew the bleak rocks rose sheer to
+the bald head that was battered by tempests, seared by lightning,
+swept smooth by the winds that never ceased.
+
+So this was the message! This was what Thunder Mountain had said to
+her! This was the answer to her questions! Day after day she had
+studied it, when storms gathered on that frowning head, when vapors
+made a smudge there in the midst of the glittering assemblage of the
+peaks, and when, for a meager hour, once in a while, the summit stood
+clear in the sunshine, as if the tortured mountain, condemned to
+everlasting punishment, had been given a brief reprieve.
+
+Now, at last, she understood. Somewhere on that evil trail was Philip.
+He could never cross Thunder Mountain! Sunnysides might, perhaps; but
+he--he had tried, and failed. Others had tried, and--died for it. But
+he would try again; she knew how desperately he would throw himself
+upon that fatal head. And then? It was the end!
+
+But she must know. She could not stay there.
+
+She started down the hill, running; and Smythe followed her in
+amazement and alarm. He did not like that last look on her face.
+
+"Wait!" he called, in a voice that for once rang with authority.
+
+She stopped, and let him overtake her.
+
+"What are you doing?" he demanded.
+
+"I'm going to Murray's--for news," she answered.
+
+"No!" he cried. "That's madness."
+
+"It's necessary," she rejoined. "And there's no danger."
+
+"How do you know?"
+
+"I met Mrs. Murray once at the post-office. She talked to me about
+Murray's ranch--it's in a gulch just below timber line. She asked me
+to come and visit her--and I'm going."
+
+"Then I'll go with you!" retorted Smythe.
+
+She looked at him intently, and smiled in a way that puzzled and
+disturbed him. But before he could make any considerable effort to
+analyze it, the smile had fled, and he was following Marion helplessly
+down the hill.
+
+At the steps of the veranda she paused, and waited for him.
+
+"I'll be out in a minute," she said; and left him seating himself
+uneasily, his perplexity plainly showing in his face.
+
+Marion opened the door, and faltered on the threshold. Seth was there
+with Claire; and she must face them both.
+
+"Mr. Smythe wants me to go for a ride with him," she said, advancing
+smilingly. "We can start to-morrow on the shooting trip, can't we,
+Cousin Seth?"
+
+She had not often called him "Cousin Seth" of late; and he was
+delighted.
+
+"Well," he said reflectively, "I'd rather planned starting to-day, but
+if to-morrow suits you better it's all right, Marion. Go along with
+your young man!"
+
+Claire was studying her anxiously, and Marion hastened to disarm her.
+
+"Thank you, Seth!" she said. "You see, I'm not feeling quite myself
+this morning--such a night I had! A short ride will be about all I'm
+good for. I'll feel better to-morrow."
+
+"Well, then, dear," said Claire, "you'll not be gone long, will you?"
+
+"Don't worry!" was the evasive reply. "Mr. Smythe will take good care
+of me."
+
+On that she kissed Claire, nodded brightly to Huntington, and hurried
+away. Almost running in her eagerness, she led the way to the stable,
+where two horses stood saddled, with rifles in leather cases hanging
+from the saddlebows, and bundles strapped behind. Smythe started to
+remove the gun from Tuesday's saddle.
+
+"No, leave it there!" commanded Marion.
+
+"Certainly. But why?" asked Smythe.
+
+"I don't know," she replied. "It just occurred to me."
+
+"But the bundle? You won't need that."
+
+"No. But yes--leave it! It's not very big."
+
+Smythe looked at her keenly, and with a vague suspicion; but there was
+no confusion in her face or manner. She was, in fact, not thinking of
+the bundle or the gun; or if she thought of them--Such rigid
+instruments as words, worn blunt with usage and misuse, are quite
+inadequate to describe the faint and fugitive character of that
+thought,--the idea still in its inception, inchoate, embryo. She was
+going to Murray's for news of Philip Haig; and all beyond that purpose
+was--beyond.
+
+Smythe was not satisfied, but he could say no more; for Marion was
+already mounting Tuesday, and he could only follow.
+
+At the edge of the little wood below the ranch house Marion turned in
+the saddle, and saw Claire standing in the doorway. She waved her
+hand, and Claire waved hers in response; and then the trees came
+between them, as they had done a hundred times that summer. But now a
+lump rose in Marion's throat. Dear Claire! She had been so good to
+her!
+
+They emerged from the woods, and Marion spurred Tuesday to the gallop,
+and Smythe came galloping behind. For some distance down the valley
+she made a point of keeping well ahead of him, by this means avoiding
+conversation, for which she was not prepared. Her eyes continually
+sought the dark, gaunt mass of rock that was then, little by little,
+breaking through the reek on Thunder Mountain. Philip would be up
+there soon. He had--how many hours the start of her? She checked
+Tuesday's gait, and let Smythe come up beside her.
+
+"What time was it when he passed the post-office?" she asked.
+
+"About eight o'clock."
+
+And now it was almost noon! She spurred her pony on.
+
+They turned the corner at Thompson's, galloping, and caught a glimpse
+of Mrs. Thompson in the doorway, with a look of wonder on her face.
+Two miles beyond they swerved without lessening their speed into a
+less-traveled road that presently was winding in and out among the
+timber, which opened at the end of another mile, and showed them
+Norton's ranch in its sheltered valley among the foothills. It was
+from Norton's, or near it, that the last word had come of Haig and
+Sunnysides; so there was no need to stop for confirmation of their
+direction. The valley narrowed to a gulch, and the forest came down on
+either side, and the road ahead of them was swallowed up in shade.
+
+Here, as if at the entrance to some unknown (for she had never been
+past Norton's, in all her rides about the Park), her purpose required
+that Marion should rid herself of Smythe. Moreover, there was Claire
+to be thought of; and she did not want Huntington to be riding up the
+trail after her that night.
+
+"Now, Mr. Smythe," she said, reining up in the first shadow of the
+woods, "I've something for you to do for me."
+
+"What is it?" he asked in surprise.
+
+"I want you to leave me now, and take a message to Mrs. Huntington."
+
+"But I can't--leave you."
+
+"Yes, you must."
+
+"But you're not going on alone!"
+
+"I'm not afraid. I've got my rifle. Besides, I'll be at Murray's
+before dark, and there, as you know, I shall be in good hands. But
+Claire will worry unless she knows where I am."
+
+"She'll worry just the same."
+
+"No. She knows Mrs. Murray very well."
+
+"But----"
+
+"Good-by, Mr. Smythe!"
+
+She reached her hand to him, and he took it reluctantly.
+
+"It's all wrong, Miss Gaylord!" he protested. "I'm convinced that I'm
+acting like a fool. If anything happens to you, I'll----"
+
+"Nothing will happen to me. Good-by!"
+
+Smythe watched her until she was swallowed up by the woods; he looked
+at the pines piling up to the distant crests of the mountains, mass on
+mass, and solitude enfolding deeper solitude; he listened to the long,
+low, rolling murmur of the forest, sweet but menacing. Then, with the
+inward comment that he was several kinds of a blithering idiot, he
+turned and rode back toward the Park, evolving various interesting but
+futile theories to explain the fact that he, a man of undoubted
+intelligence, had always acted the part of the giddy fool in moments
+of emergency. And there was Huntington--another fool! He could foresee
+a pretty dialogue between them.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+"THE TRAIL HELD TRUE"
+
+
+The forest enveloped her, but she sheltered herself in its heart, and
+was glad of its soothing silence. The wind had died down to a rustling
+murmur in the highest foliage; through rifts in the dark-green canopy
+she caught glimpses of a cool blue sky; and there was a rooty
+sweetness in the air.
+
+Mile by mile the road, a mere track traveled by Murray's team at long
+intervals, grew rougher and more difficult. Soon it had abandoned the
+easy grades for the gulch, and climbed steep mountain sides, in a
+devious course through heavy timber, dropping to tumbling rivulets,
+climbing again to hang on the edges of high cliffs, dodging here and
+there among massive, outjutting rocks. Four hours she rode thus,
+mounting, ever mounting, with glimpses now and then of the forests
+massed green-black below, and glimpses even of the Park itself, around
+the shoulder of a hill,--a patch of green and violet bright with
+sunshine. And then, when weariness had begun to weigh upon her, and as
+the shadows of the forest turned to glooms, she saw with a thrill of
+expectation that the road dipped ahead of her into a little gulch that
+lay hidden away in a cleft of the mountains. She must surely be near
+her destination now; and sure enough, she was riding presently along
+the bank of a roaring stream; beyond her was a small meadow of a
+brilliant green, and at the far edge of it a log cabin, with friendly
+smoke curling from the chimney.
+
+But she was surprised and disappointed. She had expected, on reaching
+Murray's, to see the stark head of Thunder Mountain towering above it,
+near and sheer. It was nowhere visible; not even the silvery peaks,
+its neighbors, were to be seen; there were only forests heaped on
+forests to the sky line. The trail, then, must be longer than she
+thought; and she seemed to be no closer to him than when she had
+studied the bald head of the mountain through the clouds.
+
+She was welcomed by Mrs. Murray with cordiality, but in some surprise.
+A stout and jovial person, whose spirits appeared not to have been
+lowered in the least degree by the loneliness of her surroundings,
+Mrs. Murray was a helpful hostess to Marion, who was now in a state of
+deep dejection. A little boy and his smaller sister, both very dirty
+but rugged and red-cheeked, played in the open space before the cabin.
+The week's washing was on the line, and from behind it, at the sound
+of a horse's hoof beats, came Mrs. Murray, staring in amazement.
+Wonders on wonders in that solitude, where nothing ever happened!
+First a runaway horse of unheard-of color, saddled and bridled,
+dashing past the cabin, and almost trampling the children at their
+play; then Philip Haig, with his set face and burning eyes, making
+inquiries, and asking for a bite to eat; and then----
+
+"Well! If it ain't Miss Gaylord!" cried Mrs. Murray, as she rushed to
+greet her. "What in the world----"
+
+She paused on that, recalling suddenly what she had heard at
+Thompson's of Marion's nursing Haig back to life, and intuitively
+associating her appearance there with his. Marion saw the thought
+reflected in the woman's honest face, and knew that after all the
+happenings of the summer, and the gossip that had followed, her better
+course was to be frank with Mrs. Murray from the start. Besides she
+could not wait to ask her questions by any indirection.
+
+"Have you seen him?" she demanded eagerly.
+
+"Yes, he was here--about noontime. The look on his face!"
+
+She threw up her hands in a gesture that indicated the abandonment of
+all hope for such a man.
+
+"And Sunnysides?"
+
+"Long before him. The critter almost run over my two babies, playin'
+there before the door. Poor dears, scared almost out o' their skins!"
+
+"What did he say?"
+
+"Nothin'. That is, not much. About the horse first. My man told him it
+ain't no use tryin' to ketch him, an' it's foolish to try to cross
+Thunder Mountain. Murray's been here ten years, an' ain't gone much
+further'n the edge of it. Storms allus drove him back. An' what's the
+use, when he's got wife an' childer to look after? Of course
+Haig----"
+
+"What did he say then?"
+
+"He says he c'n cross if Sunnysides can, an' if they can't they'll
+fight it out up there. My man asks why he didn't go 'round a safe way
+an' wait for Sunnysides in the San Luis, if he thinks the horse's
+goin' back home. Haig says he'd made up his mind to cross Thunder
+Mountain some time, an' now's as good a time as any. But it's----" She
+was checked at last by the look of anguish on Marion's face. "But you
+just come in. It's supper time, almost, an' you must be right hungry.
+Murray'll be here soon, an' he'll put up your horse."
+
+In the cabin there was to be seen at first just one big room, with two
+beds at one end, a table surrounded by chairs in the middle, and a
+stove in the midst of kettles and pans and tubs at the other. But
+presently Marion noticed a kind of balcony above the beds, and she
+learned later that this was the "spare bedroom" in which she would be
+stowed away for the night.
+
+"He was hungry too," Mrs. Murray went on, being careful, however, to
+confine herself to the material side of the subject. "He ate some
+dinner, an' then, after we give up tryin' to stop him, Murray said
+he'd got to take somethin' with him to eat, an' some blankets. He
+hadn't a thing, mind you, an' didn't want to take nothin', but he did
+take a good-sized strip o' bacon and some bread--I'd just did the
+bakin'--an' a fryin'-pan an' matches an' a knife. Murray done 'em up
+in a pair o' blankets, an' stuck in a leather coat with sheepskin
+inside, an' hung a hatchet on his saddle. He'll need 'em--if he gits
+across into the Black Lake country, which's worse some ways than
+Thunder Mountain--forest't ain't never been touched, an' bad lands,
+an'----"
+
+Murray's entrance interrupted this speech, which was becoming painful
+to her guest, in spite of the good woman's resolution to say nothing
+discouraging. Murray, a bearded, rough fellow in whose face shone
+good nature and contentment with the living he made out of his cows
+and chickens and few head of stock feeding in the mountain meadows,
+received a whispered hint, and obediently talked of other things than
+Haig and the runaway. They supped on bacon and eggs, with bread and
+butter and milk; and an hour afterwards Marion was tucked away in a
+comfortable bed in that queer "spare bedroom" up against the eaves of
+the log cabin.
+
+Exhaustion soon brought her sleep. But in the middle of the night she
+was awakened by a storm that swept high over the ranch house, scarcely
+touching it in its sheltered hollow, but shrieking and wailing among
+the rocks and pines. She sat up in her bed to listen! Thunder
+Mountain! Before her eyes there rose, out of the dark of the cabin, a
+vision of Philip prone among the rocks of that terrible summit, struck
+down by the wind, or felled by a thunderbolt, drenched with rain, and
+perishing of cold. There came, above the howling of the wind, a
+deafening crash of thunder that rolled away in sullen bellowing. She
+buried her face among the pillows to shut out the frightful sound; and
+at length, when the tumult had died away to recur no more, she lay
+weeping softly until sleep came again to her relief. She did not wake
+again till morning.
+
+"How much farther up can I go?" asked Marion at breakfast.
+
+"You don't mean----" began Mrs. Murray in alarm.
+
+"No," replied Marion quickly. "I don't mean the top. But can't I ride
+near enough to see it?"
+
+"You c'n go to timber line safe enough," said Murray.
+
+"Yes, I've been that far, but you mustn't think o' goin' further,"
+added the woman, still suspicious. "I'll tell you what! Murray'll go
+with you."
+
+"By no means!" Marion protested. "It isn't necessary at all. I can
+follow trails well enough."
+
+"I wish you'd let Murray go with you. He'll be glad to show you----"
+
+"No. Thank you just the same, Mrs. Murray, but----"
+
+"And you'll not try to go past timber line?"
+
+"Don't worry about that, please! I know I could never go where men
+have failed. I've heard all about Thunder Mountain, and I just want to
+see it, near. Besides----"
+
+She did not finish, but turned quickly away. This sign of emotion was
+not hidden from Mrs. Murray, and it heightened her anxiety. Lord only
+knew what the girl'd try to do once she got out of their sight! But
+where the intellectual and argumentative Smythe had failed, what could
+be expected of these simple mountain folk, who for all their sturdy
+independence were not a little awed by the superior poise and
+distinction of their visitor? Moreover, Marion was at this moment
+entirely honest in her assurance that she intended to go no farther
+than timber line. If the idea that lay deep in the back of her mind
+had grown since its inception some hours before, it was yet formless
+and unrecognized; if her purpose now had her firmly gripped, she was
+as yet unconscious of it, obeying it subconsciously, while she told
+herself, as she told Mrs. Murray, that she wanted only to satisfy her
+aching heart by doing merely all that a girl could do. To make sure
+that Philip had not already failed--that he had not been thrown back
+from the very edge of the fatal crest--that he did not now lie
+somewhere on the last steep slope above timber line, where she might
+see and save him: this was the utmost of her design in setting out
+that morning against the protests of her hosts.
+
+Yielding at last, where she could avail no more, the ranchwife fixed
+up a simple luncheon of bread and butter and jam, which she tied in a
+little package at Marion's saddlebow. And then, with a final word of
+warning that she must stop at timber line, an' be back at the house
+'fore dark, or she, Mrs. Murray, would be wild, and he, Murray, would
+have to go searching for her, the good woman let her go, and waved a
+fat farewell to her until Marion was out of sight among the trees.
+
+Once more the forest enfolded her. Though the wagon road ended at
+Murray's, the trail was still for some distance plainly marked, and
+offered few difficulties. Even when it began to be less distinct she
+was not alarmed. Smythe had told her, and Murray had confirmed his
+description, that Thunder Mountain was not formidable as far as the
+foot of the final scarp. Seth had taught her something of the lore of
+trails, and she was confident that she would be able to find her way
+even if the underfoot marks should fail. There would be blazes on
+trees, and broken limbs and twigs, and many subtle signs that she now
+sought to marshal in her mind against a possible perplexity. With eyes
+alert, she rode slowly and resolutely on, ever higher and higher, hour
+after hour, most of the time through dense woods, but now and then
+across a rocky slope, or down into a shallow gulch, and out again. By
+imperceptible degrees the trail grew fainter; and once it failed her
+utterly, in a small open space in the woods.
+
+For a moment she was on the very point of panic; the forest seemed to
+be closing in on her with sudden malignity; and the terror of Thunder
+Mountain held her in its cold grip. But desperation called up her
+courage. She walked Tuesday in an ever-widening circle around the spot
+where she had lost the trail, with her heart almost still, and her
+eyes straining at every tree as it came within her vision. Where?
+Where? Would there be no more blazes, no more broken limbs, no more
+prints of hoofs on the mossy earth? Had she left the trail farther
+back than she had thought? And would she wander over all the vast
+bosom of the mountain until she fell from the saddle, and knew no
+more?
+
+It was a real peril, and one that might have had a tragic termination
+as easily as a happy one,--more easily, indeed, if she had lost her
+head. But something strong within her kept her senses keen; and
+suddenly she broke out in a cry of joy and triumph that went echoing
+down the forest aisles. There, on a patriarchal pine, though almost
+obliterated by time and weather, was the blaze in the bark that told
+her the trail ran at the base of that solid trunk. She halted Tuesday
+there--and faced a new difficulty: in her many circlings she had lost
+the general direction in which she had been riding. The trail was
+under her horse's hoofs; but which way should she go? There appeared
+to be no ascent the one way or the other, and no slope on either
+side.
+
+She solved the problem by following the trail regardless of direction
+until she was able to discover in the black mold the fresh print of a
+horse's hoof--an unshod hoof this was, and the print certainly no
+older than yesterday. Without serious misgivings now, she rode on, and
+in a few minutes the trail mounted again with a sharpness sufficient
+to remove the last of her doubts.
+
+Well, she was a woodsman now, and would fear no more. But she took the
+precaution to banish all thoughts excepting those necessary to the
+task in hand. The woods themselves offered countless temptations to
+distraction. They were alive. Grouse moved among the branches of the
+trees; small birds of a very silent habit fluttered across the trail;
+and once a deer slipped away through a dim and leafy avenue. In moist
+places flowers of tender hues still bloomed as if to shame the autumn
+browns of the underbrush. And then she emerged from the soft shades of
+the green woods into one of the most melancholy of mountain places, a
+great patch of burnt timber. For surely half an hour she rode through
+a veritable cemetery of pines, among multitudes of tall straight
+shafts from which the flames had licked the foliage and stripped the
+limbs, and from which the rains and snows and winds of winter had
+washed the charred bark until the boles stood white and ghastly,
+infinitely sad and still. No life was here, no flutter or call or hum
+of living creatures; and the silence was like a menace. She began to
+cast apprehensive glances around her, and was glad to the very core of
+her when the forest gradually greened again, and she was in the cool
+and friendly shade.
+
+Yet another terrifying experience awaited her,--not terrifying in the
+sense of any peril to herself so much as in its vivid suggestion of
+peril to Philip Haig. Without warning there came a prodigious crash of
+thunder; very near, it seemed. The whole earth rocked and shook, she
+fancied, under that smashing blow, and thereupon a savage bellowing
+filled the vault of heaven, and the forest quivered with the
+reverberations. Hard on the first blow fell another; and then the
+strokes descended in a swift and terrible succession, until there was
+one continuous and deafening roar like nothing she had ever heard or
+imagined. By this she knew that she was now close up under the
+frowning battlement of Thunder Mountain; and that a storm had burst
+upon that shelterless and unpitied head, with a malevolent timeliness
+befitting its ill repute. And somewhere in the midst of that
+destroying fury was Philip Haig!
+
+The blue tracery of sky was blotted out; the forest became dark as
+night; the tree tops heaved and thrashed about in the wind that rushed
+down the mountain side. On the heels of the wind came a drenching
+rain, and Marion took what refuge was offered close to the trunk of a
+huge pine, which shook and shivered as if it too had nerves that were
+unstrung by all this tumult.
+
+It passed, and the sky cleared with what to her seemed extraordinary
+swiftness. And when she rode out again to pick up the trail, the air
+was indescribably fresh and exhilarating, and the sun was soon
+filtering through the foliage upon her pathway.
+
+The trail grew more precipitous, its surroundings more rugged and
+wild. Rocks took the place of the soft, mossy soil, and the forest
+thinned and shrank. Where there had been monarchs in their majesty she
+rode now among stunted pines and dwarf oaks no higher than her head.
+And soon she was at timber line, where the beaten and disheartened
+trees grew downward, or curled along the earth like serpents, or
+spread out in fantastic, unnatural, and monstrous shapes.
+
+And there at last towered the bald head of Thunder Mountain. She could
+not see, of course, the flat top itself. Before her rose a precipitous
+slope, covered with loose stones and débris, and ending in a jagged
+line of rock against the sky, dull gray against the blue. Thin grass
+grew yet some distance up the slope; and then it was bare of
+vegetation, bare of soil, with a wavering faint line marking where
+life ended and death began.
+
+She halted near the last gnome-tree, and stared at the desolate slope
+and the forbidding sky line. This was the end of her journey; and she
+knew no more than she could have known back there in the Park. The
+mountain was still the sphinx, telling her nothing, though she had
+come to it at last after months of questioning, with one question on
+her lips. Where was Philip? Perhaps just yonder, just beyond that
+sharp-raised barrier. From that crest, no doubt, the whole expanse of
+the summit would be visible. And how could she go back alone, without
+being able to assure herself forever that she had done her best?
+
+She studied the slope. From where she stood to the gray sky line the
+distance was perhaps seven hundred feet. But the trail, which she
+could discern faintly marked among the loose and sliding stones,
+traveled five or six times that distance in its zigzag course.
+Fascinated, her eyes followed it in and out until its dim line
+vanished high up in the gray-brown uniformity of the steep ascent.
+From this she looked up eagerly at the sky. It was a clear steel-blue;
+the sun shone bright on the expanse of stone; a vigorous but not
+violent breeze came from around the distant curve of the slope. It
+seemed incredible, considering all that she had heard, and all that
+she had imagined. The mountain, she knew, had its brief and infrequent
+hours of quiet, but she had pictured it as terrifying even in its
+calm. Now it was formidable and mysterious, and she could not forget
+its menace; but it was not terrible. On top, perhaps----
+
+She urged Tuesday forward. The trail went far out to the right at an
+easy gradient, turned sharply, and came back to reach out as far to
+the left. It was more difficult than Marion had imagined, for the
+reason that the loose stones afforded an ill footing for the pony,
+which slipped and slid and stumbled, often going to his knees, and
+more than once barely avoiding a fall that would have sent horse and
+rider rolling down to be caught by the network of stunted trees. But
+Tuesday was sure of foot; and so, with muscles quivering under the
+strain, and his eyes bulging with anxiety and fear, he climbed up and
+up without disaster, while Marion leaned far forward in the saddle,
+her nerves on edge, her eyes alert, and her heart pounding wildly, as
+much from excitement as from its struggle with that high altitude.
+
+How long that climb endured she never knew; the actual minutes seemed
+to her as hours, their total an eternity. But at last, trembling and
+sweating, Tuesday stood on a narrow shelf of granite, with the long
+slope behind, and a wall of rock ahead. While the pony rested, Marion
+looked to left and right for the continuation of the trail. She could
+not see it, but knew there should be an opening somewhere in the wall
+that rose sheer some twenty-five or thirty feet above her head. Slowly
+riding along the platform, searching for a sign, the wall at her left,
+and the declivity at her right, she came to a place where the barrier
+curved inward, and was also hollowed out at its base, so that a
+shallow cave (speaking loosely) was formed, where some sort of shelter
+might have been found from a storm. This possibility flashed into
+Marion's mind, for she could not forget the mountain and its ways. She
+dismounted to look into the cave, and at two steps started forward
+with a cry.
+
+On the rocky floor was a small heap of ashes and charred ends of
+sticks. Kneeling quickly, she tore off a glove, and thrust her fingers
+into the ashes. They were warm! And near the ashes she discovered the
+rind of a thin slice of bacon, and a few crumbs of bread. Philip had
+passed Murray's soon after midday; he would have reached the cave,
+then, before night; and so he had slept there, and risen at dawn, and
+eaten his meagre breakfast, and ridden on.
+
+She leaped to her feet, ran out and mounted her pony, and rode forward
+along the platform, searching for the trail.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+IN THE HOLLOW OF THE STORM
+
+
+Haig arrived at timber line about an hour before nightfall. On the
+long trail he had considered thoroughly all the chances of his case,
+and was prepared to undergo delays and disappointments. He knew
+Thunder Mountain. Even without reckoning on storms (and the vapors
+were at that moment settling down on the frowning battlement), it were
+foolhardiness, or worse, to attempt the passage of the mountain in the
+night. Then he remembered the shallow cave that he had noticed on his
+previous visit to the summit; and his plans were made.
+
+He gathered an armful of dry sticks and shreds of bark, climbed the
+treacherous slope as Marion did some hours later, and settled himself
+in the half-shelter of the cave to await the morning. A rasher of
+bacon, a slice of bread, and a pipe of tobacco refreshed him; and he
+rolled himself in his blankets, and went to sleep. Like Marion in the
+"spare bedroom" far below, he was awakened in the night by the savage
+hammerings of the storm. The very rocks beneath him seemed to be
+jarred by that cannonade; the wind, howling around the cliff,
+threatened to drag him out of his cave; and the rain fell in torrents
+on the platform, almost flooding his stone bed. But he turned over in
+his blankets, and hoped the mountain would "keep it up" all night.
+Even Sunnysides would be halted by a storm like that.
+
+He arose at the first sign of dawn, hurried through his scant and
+salty breakfast, quenched his thirst with rain water scooped out of
+depressions in the rock, and started on. Knowing the trail at this
+point, he rode straight out along the platform, and came in half a
+minute to the spot where the wall of rock was broken down into a
+clutter of débris, in width some forty feet. Up through this litter of
+disintegrated granite the trail lurched with many twists and turns,
+and emerged at last upon one of the lower levels of the summit.
+
+Trixy was winded, and for a moment Haig rested her, while he surveyed
+the scene. And in the thrill of that moment, facing the undertaking in
+which he had once failed, he all but forgot Sunnysides. The wind was
+low, and scarcely more difficult to meet than a stiff blow in the
+Park; but aside from that he saw little encouraging in the prospect.
+Behind him, it was true, the forests and all the hills and valleys lay
+clear in the morning light, with just a thin mist clinging in the
+gulches; and around him on all sides but one the sharp peaks stood up
+shining white in the first rays of the sun. But in front of him gray
+vapors, not yet dense enough to be described as clouds, came swirling
+and tumbling toward him across the stone-littered surface of the flat.
+Unless the sun should dissipate those vapors--He shrugged his
+shoulders, and rode on.
+
+Almost fourteen thousand feet above the level of the sea, the bald
+head of Thunder Mountain, stripped as it has been of its ennobling
+peak, needs only three or four hundred feet to be as high as the
+snow-clad summits on each side. Seen from afar, that bare head
+appears to be as flat and smooth as a table, but in reality its entire
+area, roughly circular in outline, and something more than three miles
+in its largest diameter, is broken up into terraces, into slopes and
+hillocks, into hollows and mounds, all strewn with, bowlders and loose
+stones, with here and there uprearing rocks of fantastic and
+suggestive shapes. There is no life there,--no birds, no conies or
+chipmunks that inhabit most high places of these mountains; no
+flowers, no grass, no sign of vegetation; nothing but granite. The
+trail runs sometimes plainly across level reaches of loose stones,
+sometimes over long smooth surfaces of rock, sometimes in and out
+among wildernesses of shattered and tumbled fragments of the
+mountain's blasted head. At varying intervals, particularly in its
+more difficult stages, it is marked by small pyramids of stones, and
+by crosses cut crudely in the rock. Care must be taken not to miss one
+of these marks; for the trail, in avoiding inaccessible heaps of
+granite, goes in places perilously near the edge of the summit, which
+falls away in more than one known precipice a thousand feet to the
+unknown gulch below.
+
+The wind was cold, and Haig felt that its strength was steadily
+increasing, though it yet blew fitfully. He made the second level
+without mishap, but was brought to a momentary standstill there by the
+fiercer rush of wind on the higher terrace. It seemed strange, at
+first thought, that the wind had not blown away the vapors that now
+enveloped him; but he saw presently that it was not blowing across
+the mountain, but rather in a circular, whirlwind motion that
+gradually became more violent. The terrace he now crossed was as
+smooth as a floor, and he found his way only by means of the crosses
+carved in the rocks beneath his feet. Then the trail dropped
+suddenly into a shallow trough; mounted to another field of
+crumbled stones; and rose unevenly to a barrier that he remembered
+with a pang of chagrin. This was what at the first glance would have
+appeared to be a solid and insurmountable wall of rock, perhaps
+fifteen feet in height, and stretching away to the very edge of the
+plateau at his right, and to a wilderness of granite on the left.
+But directly ahead of him the wall was cleft, and there was a
+narrow pathway climbing up between two huge rocks that had been
+carved by the elements into shapes bearing a fanciful resemblance to
+human figures. These were the Twin Sisters.
+
+Here Haig had been caught by a storm that hurled him back defeated;
+and he had, moreover, narrowly escaped a worse thing than mere defeat;
+for the wind had carried him off the trail, and almost to the brink of
+the chasm that yawned some hundred yards away. Now, remembering that
+experience, he spurred Trixy forward to take the aperture in the wall
+before the wind should suddenly become insupportable; and this time he
+was more fortunate. The pony leaped and clambered up the slippery
+path, and at the exit was caught by a blast that hurled and pinned
+her, as if she had been no heavier than a butterfly, against the base
+of the righthand towering figure. For some seconds neither horse nor
+man was able to move from that fixed position, where the wind
+flattened them against the rock. Then it swerved sharply, flung them
+against the other Sister with such force that Haig's leg was stunned
+and bruised, and finally released them with a shriek that sounded like
+a cry of disappointed rage. Trixy plunged forward with a snort, and
+Haig saw that the trail was again plain across another field of
+scattered stones.
+
+Now, thrilled by this victory, he urged the pony onward at all
+possible speed toward the worst of all the perils of the mountain. The
+stone field was succeeded by a series of mounds and hollows, and this
+by a second slippery floor; and then he mounted the ridge that
+terminated in the Devil's Chair. Here was the highest point attained
+by the trail: a flat rock measuring perhaps twenty yards one way, and
+a little less the other, lifted high above the surrounding slopes, and
+having (hence its name) a huge back formed by the abrupt termination
+of the ridge. From the chair the rock dipped in a kind of hollow like
+a chute, worn smooth by the winds and rains; and everything that ever
+fell into that chute was swallowed by the chasm of unplumbed and
+unestimated depth. Sometimes the wind blew up through the chute across
+the Devil's Chair; sometimes it blew down through it into the chasm.
+It was blowing out when Parker reached the chair, and he was hurled
+back down, the slope three times before he acknowledged his defeat; it
+was blowing in when the three members of the English party were sucked
+down into the chasm.
+
+Haig could have cried aloud the joy that ran through him, when, having
+spurred Trixy up the steep ascent to a footing on the Devil's Chair,
+he found that almost a perfect calm reigned there, due to some sudden
+shift in the currents of the air.
+
+"Quick, Trixy! On!" he cried.
+
+The horse bounded across the platform, slid and stumbled down the
+other side, and was up again, leaping forward, and a little to the
+left, where there was firmer going over another field of stones. And
+now at length, to Haig's relief, the trail bent sharply in toward the
+middle of the plateau, and thus away from the peril of the chasms.
+
+But his elation was short-lived. If Thunder Mountain had admitted him
+between the Twin Sisters, and spared him at the Devil's Chair, it was
+only to hurl upon him its accumulated fury farther on. Engrossed in
+the endless difficulties of the trail, he had not observed the
+stealthy and insidious change that was taking place in the atmosphere
+until it had advanced far toward its climax. The un-looked for calm,
+so opportune, was but a pause before an outburst of elemental rage.
+The vapors lifted, and hung in still masses a few feet above the
+earth. Haig picked his way along in a strange, weird, yellowish light,
+in a stillness that was all the more impressive by contrast with the
+recent howling and hammering of the wind. There was not a faintest
+puff of air on his cheek, and not a sound except the click of Trixy's
+feet among the stones, and his own hurried breathing. All else seemed
+to have paused, expectant, waiting.
+
+It did not come as storms come in the valley, or on the plain, or
+among the hills; not even as they come in the mountains. It did not
+come from north, or east, or west, or south, or from any known
+horizon; it had no sensible direction; it was there. Out of the
+portentous hush (not into it) there came first a whisper, something
+low and malevolent; then a singular moaning sound, incomparably dismal
+and hollow and pervasive. Haig moved his head from side to side,
+endeavoring to trace it--before, behind, above--he knew not where. The
+moaning murmur grew, and still there was no perceptible movement in
+the air; it rose whining up, up, up the scale until at last it was a
+shrill, demoniacal shriek. And then, out of the darkening mists, it
+leaped upon him.
+
+In this whirling, wicked, wondrous thing there was no orderly and
+recognizable succession of phenomena, such as wind and lightning and
+rain. These came all in one swoop, all in one frightful blend. It was
+black, and it was bright. The lightning came not from the sky,
+discharging its bolts to earth; it was on the very surface of the
+plateau. It flamed and crackled on uplifted rocks; it ran hissing like
+fiery serpents among the scattered stones; it buzzed and exploded in
+the very face of Haig, and under the pony's belly. If he had been
+caught in a burning storehouse of fireworks--rockets, Roman candles,
+pinwheels, and all the ingenious products of the pyrotechnician--the
+experience might have been like this, only a thousand times less
+terrifying. He dodged and ducked, and threw up his hands to shield his
+face, expecting instantly that one of those exploding things would
+make an end of him.
+
+Then there were other horrors to be endured. The din became
+incessant. Simultaneous with the hiss and crackle and crack of the
+lightning there was a continuous deafening detonation in the air
+above him, crash on crash and roar on roar. The terrors of the
+first few seconds had been chiefly those felt and heard. But the
+wind had steadily increased in violence. It did not blow against him,
+bowling him over, but whirled around him with a speed that was every
+instant accelerated. He felt that he had no weight. He seemed
+about to be lifted into the vortex of the storm, to be flung far
+out into space.
+
+"Down, girl! Down!" he tried to shout.
+
+But there was no sound from his lips. He felt the pony stiffening
+under him, bracing herself stiff-legged on the stones; and he knew
+that she shared his fear. And all this time the rain beat down upon
+him, in lead-like sheets, with intermittent bombardments of
+hailstones. It occurred to him to wonder dully which would win--the
+wind that sought to whirl him up into the sky, or the rain that was
+for beating him to earth, or the lightning that would burn him to
+cinders. Then thought left him, and his last impression was of being
+torn limb from limb, and atom from atom, in excruciating pain.
+
+He was roused at length to the consciousness of having been lifted and
+hurled; and found himself prostrate on the ground, face downward, with
+the rain flooding him. Trixy lay at his side, flat like himself, her
+head stretched out among the stones. They seemed to lie in a vacuum,
+in the very hollow of the storm. Around them the clatter, the clang
+and the uproar were even more terrifying than before because they were
+now separated from these noises, no longer a part of them. All was
+blackness, shot through with fire. Haig was no more tortured in his
+body, except for the sense of being suffocated. He seemed to inhale
+raw ozone; the air fairly stank with the odors of decomposition; the
+saliva in his mouth had a peculiar pungent and disagreeable taste. He
+gasped and fought for breath.
+
+Such reason as was left to him told him that this was the end of all.
+At any instant something would flash out of that wall of blackness,
+and destroy him with a blow. His spirit rose exultantly to meet and
+welcome it; he rejoiced in such a death, slain by the elements, on the
+roof of the world, alone, unseen; it was a glorious exit, the finish
+he had sought for years on years, his heart's desire. Triumphant and
+defiant, he tried to roar back at the thunder, to outscream the wind,
+to face the lightning with undimmed eyes.
+
+There came a blinding flash, exceeding in brightness anything he had
+yet experienced. But with it, to his amazement, there emerged from the
+blackness a vision that brought life back to him with a shocking
+thrill. For there, not ten paces distant, was Sunnysides. Only for an
+instant; and then all was again obscure. He must have been mistaken.
+It was only a figment of fancy, a creation of his tortured brain, a
+phenomenon associated with his passing from life to death. And yet he
+waited, staring into the smothering void.
+
+Another flash of fire across the black--and Sunnysides! But now the
+lightning, as if directed by some intelligence, became again
+continuous, its flashes joined in one spouting flame. And in the very
+midst of it stood the outlaw in his familiar attitude, with one
+forefoot slightly raised, his head high, his nostrils distended, his
+dark eyes filled with fire. There had never been anything so bright
+and beautiful. His golden hide gleamed with planetary splendor, like
+the mythical horses of the sun. This was The Horse, the golden
+epiphany of the brute, the answer to all of Haig's fears and
+resolutions. And in the very hour of his exit--
+
+Rage rose again within him. Instinctively, for he was scarce capable
+of thought, he tried to reach his revolver. But his arms were leaden.
+His fingers touched the butt of the weapon, and stopped as if
+paralyzed. The horse wavered and danced before his eyes; there was a
+culminating detonation; he felt a terrific blow on his head. And he
+knew no more.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+THE NARROW PASSAGE
+
+
+Light came with unutterable mystery. Yet Haig lay for a moment
+waiting, mistrustful of the peace that encompassed him. Then he
+cautiously raised his head, and looked. Trixy stood near him, panting
+and wild-eyed. The whole surface of the plateau was glistening wet; a
+cold breeze poured over him, without violence; and the sky above him
+was as innocent and bright as a baby's smile.
+
+Where, then, was the storm? He moved his head painfully, and searched
+the horizon; and yonder, around the icy parapets of Silver Tip, with
+roll on roll of reverberations in its wake, the black storm was in
+full flight. His eyes followed it with a curious and exaggerated
+interest; for he had seen its birth, and tested its power, and it had
+given him a new experience.
+
+Presently he tried to rise, and found that his limbs were numb. His
+right arm ached to the tips of his fingers. His head swam, and he had
+difficulty in arranging his impressions in any sort of orderly
+succession, especially those in which Sunnysides participated.
+
+"I wonder how much of it really happened!" he mused.
+
+Unexpectedly his eyes lighted on his revolver, where it lay among the
+stones at his side. Ah! It had burned his fingers. He picked it up,
+and examined it curiously. But none of the cartridges had been
+exploded. The gun, then, had been knocked out of his hand before he
+could lift and aim it; and the storm had taunted him with Sunnysides,
+and cheated him. No matter! The game was not yet up.
+
+He struggled to his feet, and stretched himself, and pounded his
+chest, which ached from his heavy breathing. Then his eyes sought the
+trail ahead, scanning the level spaces and the heaped-up masses of
+granite; and an instant later a cry escaped his lips. For there,
+perhaps half a mile away, and mounting rapidly a gray ridge of rock,
+his body outlined against the blue sky, was Sunnysides. It had been no
+vision, then, no figment of his tortured brain. But where had the
+horse been all this time, to have been caught in the same storm with
+his pursuer, despite his half-hour start, his greater speed, and the
+night that came between them? True, there had been a storm in the
+night; that might have delayed, but it should not have kept him. True,
+too, he might have lost the trail, and wandered over the plateau; but
+Haig could not have missed him, if he had been anywhere in sight
+before the storm revealed him. No, nothing could explain it; and there
+remained only one hypothesis, which was untenable, preposterous and
+mad. And yet it fascinated and held him. He had once said jocularly
+that Sunnysides was not a real horse at all; that he was a demon--a
+spirit. Well, it was a real horse, right enough, that had crushed him,
+and thrown him again, and broken Bill Craven's leg, and fled; and that
+was a real horse yonder, outlined against the sky. If some devilish
+instinct in the brute, or some agent of Destiny, or mere fling of
+chance had held him on the plateau to tantalize and lead on his
+pursuer--
+
+"Dreaming again!" Haig muttered, with a wry smile, and yet with a
+vague uneasiness that he could not put down.
+
+But in another instant he had leaped to his horse, tested the cinches
+with trembling fingers, climbed stiffly into the saddle, and dug the
+spurs into Trixy's flanks. When he looked again toward the ridge, the
+outlaw had disappeared; but there was no ignis-fatuus trick in that;
+and the horse would be seen again when Haig too had topped the rise.
+For the trail was now leading him in a relatively straight line toward
+the exact spot where Sunnysides had vanished; and more assuring than
+all else, a very material and comforting proof that this was a real
+horse he followed, was the discovery he made halfway up the slope.
+There, among the stones, lay the outlaw's saddle. Clearly the runaway
+had only just now been able to shake it off, and its condition,
+bruised and cut and dirty, showed that Sunnysides had been put to some
+trouble to be rid of it, having doubtless rolled over and over on it
+in his efforts to be free. And there, too, was a plausible explanation
+of the fact that Sunnysides was not now far on the trail.
+
+From the top of the ridge, Haig saw the outlaw picking his way through
+a wilderness of rocks that had the grewsome aspect of a cemetery--the
+graveyard of the gods. Following through this depressing scene, he
+lost sight of Sunnysides, and on emerging upon another floor-like
+expanse of solid stone he received a surprise that caused him to rein
+up Trixy with a jerk. The quarry was nowhere in sight, though Haig's
+position gave him a sweeping view of the flat ahead of him, even to
+the edge of the summit, now scarcely three quarters of a mile away.
+There was no possibility that the horse could have traversed that
+distance in the time Haig was passing through the "cemetery;" neither
+was there any place on that part of the plateau where it could be
+concealed.
+
+The trail itself solved the mystery. It did not lead straight on, as
+Haig had imagined; and he experienced some difficulty in finding it on
+the smooth floor, from which the elements had all but obliterated the
+crosses made by the pioneers. Then his astonishment was great to find
+that it turned at a sharp angle to the left, dropped sheer over the
+edge of the flat rock, coiled down a slope littered with débris to
+another field of loose stones, and in a quarter of a mile brought up
+at the brink of a cliff. Sunnysides, then, had crossed the summit, and
+was descending to whatever lay below.
+
+In ten minutes Haig himself was at the margin of the chasm; for little
+wider than a chasm was that deep and narrow gulch, far up the side of
+Thunder Mountain, into which he now looked in wonderment and
+perplexity. A thousand feet or more below him lay a tiny patch of
+meadow of a brilliant green, with a thread of water sparkling through
+it, and on all sides, excepting that nearest him, black forests
+encompassed it, and mounted dense to the timber line save where, at
+his right, the stream ran down through its gorge. There, evidently,
+would go the trail also, dropping into the Black Lake country, of evil
+reputation.
+
+But where now was the trail? He dismounted, and leaned over the edge
+of the precipice; and there he discovered that he had missed the
+exact point of departure by some fifteen yards, and that at this
+distance to his left there was a break in the sharp brink, where the
+trail fell off precipitately to a heap of broken stone and sand. The
+cliff had been shattered in some convulsion of nature, or loosened and
+disintegrated by the elements, and enormous masses of it had fallen
+into the gulch. These masses appeared to be in a state of instability,
+and it was not clear to Haig, from where he lay, how a trail could
+ever have been picked out among those jutting rocks and slides of
+débris, or how, once found, it could have remained intact on that
+shifting foundation. Was it possible that any living thing had ever
+made its way down (much less _up_) that steep and treacherous rubble
+heap?
+
+He was studying it incredulously, when Sunnysides suddenly resolved
+all doubts. From behind a projecting rock the horse came out on one of
+the many rough ledges that had been formed by lateral cleavage of the
+cliff in its fall. Hesitating a moment there, he plunged down a short
+declivity, and landed sprawling on another shelf perhaps twenty feet
+lower down, and somewhat to the right of the first, where he once more
+vanished from Haig's sight.
+
+"All right!" cried Haig. "If you can do that we can. Eh, Trixy?"
+
+He mounted quickly, urged the reluctant mare to the break in the edge
+of the cliff, and forced her over. For some thirty feet the trail went
+down the face of the precipice, much like a fire escape on the wall of
+a tenement house, barely wide enough to accommodate horse and
+rider,--so narrow, indeed, that Haig's left leg was scraped and
+bruised by hard contact with the stone. At the bottom of this incline,
+his amazement was great at finding a solid platform of rock, on which,
+he was able easily to turn and go down another incline underneath the
+first. Plainly all this was not the result of accident; the hands of
+men had been busy here; and picks and shovels had supplemented the
+work of nature. But below the next platform there certainly had been a
+secondary slide of rock, for the trail was nowhere discernible, though
+it should evidently have slipped down, at a greater angle from the
+cliff than before, to a third turning point on a shelf some forty feet
+away to the left. Here the débris was loose and fine, and with a
+little urging Trixy was induced to take the descent, carrying
+quantities of sand and stones with her as she slid and sprawled safely
+to the next goal.
+
+Thus they went, sometimes finding the trail plain over solid rock and
+hard-packed débris, sometimes slipping and scrambling among stones and
+sand, but always drawing nearer and nearer in a zigzag course, now
+easy and then difficult, to the green vale below. There were moments
+when Trixy was on her knees, moments when she was on her haunches,
+moments when she stood swaying above the pit, and moments when all
+traces of the trail had vanished. But somewhere below was Sunnysides.
+
+Far down the declivity, so near the valley that Haig was able to look
+across into the tops of the tallest pines, they came to what appeared
+to be the last of the rocky ledges. Having for some minutes seen
+nothing of the outlaw, Haig supposed that the runaway had already
+reached the meadow, and was by now on the trail through the forest.
+But just as Trixy's shod hoofs struck the platform with a clatter,
+Haig caught sight of Sunnysides far out on the narrow shelf. He was
+trotting briskly along, for the shelf was smooth and level. But, on a
+sudden he stopped, stood a moment with his head thrust forward and
+down, and then turned cautiously around, his four feet bunched
+together on the narrow footing.
+
+"What's up now?" ejaculated Haig.
+
+And then he saw it. Twice before he had noted where a similar error
+might have been made, on other ledges farther up; and he himself had
+avoided them only by carefully studying the aspect of the declivity
+below him. Sunnysides had undoubtedly lost time through such mistakes;
+and now he was trapped. At the point where he stood, the shelf ended
+abruptly "in the air"; and between him and the exit at the other end
+of the platform was Haig. The trail had come down to about the middle
+of this platform, which was like an unrailed balcony, scarce three
+feet in width, with a high wall of rock on one side, and on the other
+a straight drop of twenty feet to a veritable chute of stones that
+terminated in a widespread litter of débris on the meadow.
+
+"Caught like a rat!" cried Haig. "I've got you now!"
+
+But what could he do with him? His rope was useless on that meager
+footing, where there was barely room for his horse to stand, much less
+for Haig to swing a noose. And worse: if Sunnysides was trapped, so
+was his enemy; for the horse was already, through fright or
+belligerency, moving slowly toward Haig. In a flash it was clear to
+Haig that the outlaw meant to have it out with him then and there; and
+that there would be no time to turn Trixy, and find the outlet into
+the valley.
+
+"It's too bad, but--"
+
+He drew his revolver, and waited. There was yet a chance, he thought,
+or hoped, that the horse would halt, and postpone the issue. He did
+not want to kill him; he had not come across Thunder Mountain to kill
+him; he had come to take him back to Paradise Park. And so he
+waited--fatally. The outlaw came slowly until half the space between
+him and Haig had been covered. Then, at a distance of perhaps a
+hundred feet, when no choice was left to him, Haig swung up his gun,
+and fired. At that very instant, Sunnysides uttered a savage cry, a
+shrill neigh ending in a scream; and, charged at the horse and rider
+in his path.
+
+Haig fired again, and missed; threw himself forward on Trixy's neck,
+jerked the pony's head in toward the wall, and fired again; and
+missed. He tried to shoot once more, into the very face of the
+oncoming brute, but too late. There was a vision of flaming black eyes
+and white teeth, in a yellow blur; and then a tremendous impact, a
+crash. Trixy was flung back on her haunches, with one hind leg over
+the edge of the shelf, Haig barely hanging in the saddle. The outlaw
+leaped back, and lunged again; thrust himself between Trixy and the
+wall; toppled pony and rider off into the void; and passed on, with a
+shriek of triumphant rage.
+
+Haig and Trixy turned in the air, struck the chute of stones and sand,
+and rolled over and over as they went down in a flying slide of
+débris. But Haig did not know that, for his head struck a stone at the
+first contact with the chute.
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+Sentience returned to him through mists of pain. He lay in a twisted
+heap on a patch of grass, surrounded by the scattered detritus of the
+cliff. At first he could not remember, and could not see. His head
+rang with pain, and his eyes were filled with dust, and with something
+wet. He managed presently to lift an arm and wipe his eyes with his
+hand; and saw dimly that the hand was covered with blood. His eyes
+then filled again; and he swept his sleeves across them and his
+forehead. That was better. Blinking, and wiping his face again and
+again, he looked dully around him until memory came back, and brought
+recognition of his plight.
+
+He tried to sit up, but sank down quickly with a groan. One leg was
+bent almost double under the other, and would not move. This fact
+struck him at first as very queer--an inexplicable phenomenon. Then he
+tried it again. His left leg moved at his will, and that encouraged
+him. His right hip and part of the thigh too moved, but the leg below
+lay loose and dead.
+
+The blood was in his eyes again. It exasperated him; he could do
+nothing unless he were able to see. He wiped his face again with his
+sleeve, then put his hand to his head, and winced a little as the
+fingers touched a gash just above the left temple, from which the
+blood still flowed. By turning his head he found that the blood ran
+down away from his eyes instead of into them. The new position also
+gave him a view of several things that held his attention.
+
+First there was the clutter of stones around him. Then his eyes swept
+upward to the ledge whence he had come rolling down--how far? He
+calculated the distance curiously. Eighty feet--a hundred, surely. How
+did he come to be still alive? he wondered. And Trixy! Where was she.
+
+Once more he tackled the problem of sitting up, and it became easier
+now in his full understanding of his condition. By ignoring the dead
+leg entirely, since it was of no further use to him, he contrived to
+raise himself with his hands on the ground behind him for support.
+Then with a jerk that brought a cry of pain, he sat erect, swaying but
+resolute. At this instant he heard a soft whinny behind him. Twisting
+himself around, he saw Trixy lying some twenty feet away, with her
+forelegs doubled up beneath her, and her head lifted and pointed
+toward him. He studied the little mare a moment.
+
+"Trixy! Get up!" he commanded suspiciously.
+
+She lifted her head higher, made a desperate effort to rise, sank
+back, and whinnied piteously.
+
+"So! Yours too, eh! Nice fix, Trixy!"
+
+He surveyed the scene. They were in a bright green meadow about two
+hundred yards in width and perhaps half a mile in length. Across the
+meadow from where he lay the black forest mounted toward the sky. At
+one end the vale narrowed into a mere ravine, which vanished upward in
+deep woods; at the other it widened to the forest, and by the way the
+pine-masses came down to this spot from both sides he knew that there
+the trail ran down the mountain toward the Black Lake country. The
+vale was very still under the bright blue sky; there was just a murmur
+in the forest; and no sound of birds came to his ears.
+
+"A beautiful site--for a graveyard!" he said aloud, and smiled.
+
+The blood still trickled into his eyes, and annoyed him greatly. It
+must be stopped, or he could do nothing that needed to be done. In an
+inside pocket of his coat he found a handkerchief, which he bound
+around his head, after he had wiped his face once more. The pain in
+his head had subsided to a dull throbbing, which did not matter.
+But--
+
+"God! I'm thirsty!" he muttered.
+
+He looked again across the meadow. The thread of water that he had
+seen from the top of the cliff was a considerable brook that ran
+silently through about the middle of the green. He measured the
+distance,--fifty or sixty yards, maybe seventy, or more. He could do
+it, by dragging himself along the ground, he thought. But was it worth
+the effort, and the pain? It would hurt him like the devil--that
+broken leg. Never did like pain; would probably howl; and that would
+not be nice, even with no creature but Trixy to hear him. No; he would
+stay where he was. Then suddenly he thought of Pete's whisky, and
+thrust his hand into his pocket, only to encounter fragments of
+glass.
+
+"That's a lesson," he thought grimly. "Never carry whisky in glass
+bottles."
+
+And now his roving eyes lighted once more on Trixy. No good letting
+her suffer. He would send her away first. On the thought, his hand
+went back to the holster at his hip; and stayed there, while his
+heart stood still, and a chill went over him, and thought ceased. The
+holster was empty.
+
+After a while he was able to think about it. One of two things would
+happen to him. There were, very probably, mountain lions in those
+forests. But they were not the worst thing he faced. To be eaten were
+perhaps preferable to dying little by little, of hunger and thirst. He
+had been near starvation, twice in his life; and once he had been
+thirsty,--that is to say, _thirsty_,--and God save him from dying of
+thirst! But wait! He hesitated; then held his breath; and in a total
+suspension of thought slowly reached his hand down into a side pocket
+of his trousers. And then he almost yelled aloud for joy. His
+pocketknife was there!
+
+Meanwhile--Trixy. It was cruel not to be able to end her suffering.
+What had become of the gun? It was in his hand when he toppled over
+the edge of the platform, and must have fallen with him. So it could
+not be far away, though perhaps buried out of sight. He began
+patiently to inspect every square foot of the ground around him, as
+far as he could trust his eyes to see clearly, separating the space
+into imaginary segments of a circle, and scrutinizing each of them
+until he had set apart every tuft of grass from every other tuft, and
+every stone from its neighbors. Minute after minute, with dogged
+perseverance, he kept himself at this exhausting task until the sweat
+was rolling down, his face, and his eyes burned deep in his head. Then
+suddenly something leaped inside of him,--some nerve that was quicker
+than thought in its response to vision.
+
+"Ah!"
+
+The gun lay against a stone, its muzzle upward, at a distance of about
+forty feet, beyond and somewhat to the left of Trixy. It would take
+some crawling; and that would hurt. But when he had fixed the gun's
+position in his mind, so that he might not miss it, he set his teeth
+together, and started.
+
+No great distance, after all, is forty feet. That is to say, no great
+distance after you've covered it. And the pain did not matter now. He
+lay on the ground again, flattened out, panting and gazing up at the
+blue sky. The sweat stood in big cold drops on his face; and he
+trembled as if stricken with ague. He could not shoot in that
+condition; he must rest, and wait. But the thirst was torture now.
+
+After a time, he turned himself half around in order to face Trixy,
+and rested his right elbow on the ground, with the gun up in the air.
+
+"Good-by, Trixy!" he said softly.
+
+But wait! How many shots left? He examined the revolver. Two! For an
+instant he was stricken again with dread. Then his left hand felt for
+the belt at his waist; and he laughed nervously. What a state he was
+in! There were cartridges to burn!
+
+The gun came slowly down to an aim, then waved in his hand as he
+pulled the trigger.
+
+"Hell!" he muttered.
+
+He tried again, pulling himself together, and gritting his teeth. The
+second report rang out, and echoed high among the rocks. The mare's
+head fell, her body quivered, one hind foot kicked out; and she was
+gone.
+
+Oh, yes! He could hit good horses! But not Sunnysides.
+
+He ejected the exploded cartridges, and filled the chambers with fresh
+ones; then lay back and rested again, the gun still clutched in his
+hand. And why did he wait? To get strength, for one thing. He wanted
+to sit up to do it, since he could not stand. And then--there was
+another trouble. Four times before he had tried to do it, and
+something had happened,--something different and utterly unexpected
+each time had checked him. It had not so much mattered then, because
+he could afford to wait. But now--
+
+He drew upon the last of his reserves of strength, and sat up--too
+suddenly. An excruciating pain shot through his injured leg, and
+radiated like flame through every nerve and tissue of his body. The
+revolver, half lifted, fell from his fingers. Swaying, he groped for
+it, clutched it again, and frantically raised it to his head. And when
+he felt the hard muzzle just above his ear, he pulled the trigger. And
+so the third report went ringing through the quiet valley, and Philip
+Haig sank backward on the greensward, and lay still.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+THE MIRACLE
+
+
+Between two storms, the peace that lay upon the seared and battered
+head of Thunder Mountain, like the peace that comes to a sufferer
+between paroxysms of pain, was of a kind unknown to lower levels. In
+all the range of natural phenomena, in all the gamut of sensation,
+there is nothing else at once so beautiful, inspiring, and appalling
+as utter silence; and nothing else so rare. To the sea, the desert,
+and the peak it is given in few and perfect hours; but neither to the
+desert nor to the sea is it given in such transcendency as to the
+peak. And on no peak could silence ever have seemed so like a miracle
+as on the flat top of Thunder Mountain between two storms.
+
+It were hazardous to say how far Marion was conscious of the
+beautiful, inspiring, and appalling nature of that silence. She was
+too deeply intent upon her purpose to be conscious of much besides the
+material difficulties in her path. She knew that on the gray-black
+surface of the mountain nothing stirred; that the winds were still;
+that no murmur of forest or ripple of water or soft pulsation of a
+living world was there. It was a dead place, dead these many ages; and
+all its associations in her mind were those of death and the living
+terror of death. But she was not afraid. True, she was beset by fears,
+but they only hovered over her, brushing her face with their black
+wings. True also, her eyes roved wide, as if at any instant something
+unknown and dreadful would come upon her out of that blue sky, from
+behind the next rock barrier, or up from the mountain's ugly heart
+itself. But these were superficial fears, and in her heart she was not
+afraid.
+
+From the moment that she emerged upon the first terrace, where Haig
+had stood some hours before, she knew that she would not go back until
+(and unless) she found him. That had been her purpose from the
+beginning, from the time she ran down the hill above Huntington's,
+with Smythe following in alarm; but it had been hidden from her until,
+in the exaltation that ensued upon the finding of the ashes of Haig's
+fire, she drove her pony up the last ascent, and knew that if the
+mountain had claimed Philip it must claim her too.
+
+But this thought was, in a sense, as superficial as her fears; for in
+her soul there lived a perfect faith. Through all her grief and
+jealousy and anger and despair she had never entirely lost the pure
+light of her star. She never doubted deeply that her love would
+triumph, even when reason told her that it had already failed; and the
+very words with which she had consented to leave the Park by the last
+stage were hollow, though they contained a prayer. She had prayed for
+a miracle; and the miracle had happened. Why should she be afraid?
+
+So she was not surprised when the Twin Sisters welcomed her without so
+much as a gentle puff of wind upon her cheek; when the Devil's Chair,
+though she held her breath at sight of what lay below, was scarce more
+difficult than the ridge in Paradise Park; and when the central
+waste, where the storm had leaped on Haig, held no evil in store for
+her. The only obstacles encountered were those presented by the trail
+itself; and these, as Smythe had told her, though by no means trivial,
+were not insurmountable to one with a clear eye and steady nerves. It
+was never the trail itself that was deadly; it was the wind that would
+blow her into a chasm, the mist that would decoy her from the path,
+and the storm that would beat her down among the stones. But there was
+no wind, no mist, no storm; and if that was not a miracle--
+
+Several times, to be sure, she missed the trail: once in the second
+field of loose stones, before she had become accustomed to the signs;
+once on a wide floor of solid rock, where Tuesday slipped and fell,
+and she rose a little stunned, and in a brief confusion; and once, the
+most alarming of all, when she was for half an hour lost in that
+granite wilderness that to Haig had suggested a cemetery of the gods.
+But faith sustained her, and her purpose stood in the stead of courage
+that might have faltered and even failed. The one moment when
+something like despair struck at her heart was that when she found the
+bruised and dirty saddle cast aside by the runaway, and thought at
+first that it was Philip's; and the one moment of real terror was that
+in which, on the summit of the last ridge, she looked back and saw
+that dark gray vapors were surging up out of the chasm below the
+Devil's Chair.
+
+It chanced that in following the trail from the sharp turn on the last
+rock floor to the brink of the cliff (the last pyramid stands some
+fifty yards back from it), Marion arrived at about the same distance
+to the left of the drop-off as Haig had brought up at the right of
+it. From this point even less of the meadow was visible than Haig had
+seen at the first view, and the mass of fallen and tumbled granite
+appeared even more formidable. Her immediate sensation was of tragic
+despair, as the evidence of her eyes for one instant overwhelmed her
+faith. But where was Philip? And Sunnysides?
+
+Then a suspicion flashed into her mind. Perhaps she had missed the
+trail,--the real trail. She could not have been mistaken in the signs;
+there was the last pyramid in plain view still from where she stood.
+But it was not unlikely that there was another trail from the sharp
+turn where she had been confused for a moment, another exit made
+necessary by the disruption of the cliff. She paused uncertainly,
+looking now at the great heap of stone below her,--a thousand feet of
+jagged rock and sliding sand,--and now back at the toilsome way she
+had come. And then her eyes were caught by something that held her
+spellbound with horror. Up to the rocky skyline from beyond the
+barrier she had lately crossed there swept a tumbling mist, as
+gray-black as the rock itself; and an instant after she felt a
+stinging blow of wind on her cheek, and heard a low whisper in the air
+around her.
+
+She was roused by a sound that brought her up rigid and alert in the
+saddle. What was that? A faint report, as of a gun--from somewhere.
+She listened, turning her head slowly and cautiously, and holding her
+breath. A long time, it seemed to her, she listened; and heard only
+that warning whisper of the wind across the flat. But there! Another!
+It came up faintly from below, expiring at the very edge of the
+precipice. She peered guardedly down into the chasm, and saw nothing
+but the vast pile of débris, and a bit of green meadow over against
+the edge of the black forest. But it was a gun! She began now to
+examine the edge of the cliff. To her left it fell sheer away hundreds
+of feet to the lower masses of fallen stone; and there was no trail on
+that side. Dismounting, she led her horse slowly along the brink at
+her right; and so came at length to the spot where the trail dropped
+to the first incline. It seemed incredible; but then, even as the word
+framed itself in her mind, her heart bounded up into her throat.
+There--there--under her eyes were hoofprints, the print of steel shoes
+in the sand; and they went down, down, down. And, as if to remove the
+last of doubt and hesitancy, there came wavering up from below a third
+thin report, a little more distinct than the others, and undeniable.
+
+She lifted her face toward the sky, and pressed her hands upon her
+breast.
+
+"God help us! God help us--both!" she murmured.
+
+Then she remounted Tuesday, and forced him over the edge of the
+cliff.
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+Haig lay on his back, his head against the stone by which he had
+recovered the coveted revolver. A handkerchief dyed red and blackened
+with powder stains lay against one cheek. His right hand still
+clutched the revolver.
+
+He did not move, and she thought him dead. Then, through the blackness
+that enveloped her, she dully and slowly comprehended that his eyes
+were closed, not staring up at her. She knelt swiftly, and pressed her
+head to his breast; and then leaped to her feet with a wild outcry.
+
+Tuesday stood a few yards away, with tail outstretched and nostrils
+distended, gazing affrightedly at the body of Trixy lying in her
+wretched heap. Marion ran to the saddle, and tore at the thongs that
+held her bundle; jerked it loose, and bore it quickly to Haig's side;
+and in a few seconds had placed the mouth of her whisky flask between
+Haig's lips, and let a little of the liquid trickle down his throat.
+But there was no response, and she stood up again, looking for water.
+The brook that had seemed so far away from Haig was at no distance for
+her flying feet; and she was back on the run with her sombrero filled.
+Dashing the water into Philip's face, she was off again for more. With
+this she bathed his face and neck and wrists; and then set herself to
+slapping the palms of his hands with her own.
+
+Still there was no response. But when she pressed her head to his
+breast once more she was assured that she had not been mistaken; his
+heart was beating feebly--but beating. A second time she put the
+whisky flask to his lips; and returned to the limp hands, rubbing
+them, slapping them until her own burned and ached.
+
+Hours it seemed, and ages flowing away into eternity. The sky was
+darkening, and from the top of Thunder Mountain came a muffled roar
+that was echoed back and forth across the valley. She looked up at the
+towering cliff, and trembled. And then, with the last fading
+reverberation, there came another sound that brought her leaning down
+close to Philip's face. Was it a sigh, or only--
+
+"Philip! Philip! Philip!" she called, softly at first, then in a cry
+that rang across the meadow.
+
+At last a quiver went through the limp figure; the eyes were opened,
+only to be quickly closed again, as if the light had hurt them. She
+called to him again, in pleading accents. The eyelids fluttered, and
+he looked up into the face of the girl bending over him. It was a
+puzzled, uncomprehending look. And thereupon his lips moved.
+
+"Yes, Philip! What is it?"
+
+"I don't understand," he whispered.
+
+"It's Marion!" she cried. "Don't you know me?"
+
+"But--where?"
+
+"I don't know. Thunder Mountain."
+
+"Yes, I know that!" he said, with a note of impatience. "Sunnysides
+and--all that. But--you?"
+
+"I followed, and found you."
+
+A weak smile flickered on his lips. She saw that he did not believe
+her.
+
+"Look! Look!" she cried. "It's Marion. And yonder--is Tuesday."
+
+He moved his head a little, and stared at the pony still standing
+fascinated and terrified by the stillness of poor Trixy.
+
+"It's--impossible!" he muttered. "You couldn't--"
+
+He made an effort to look up at the cliff down, which he had come.
+
+"But it's quite true, Philip. I'm here."
+
+But she saw that he was still groping in the dark. He lifted his right
+hand, and touched his head, while the expression of perplexity grew
+rather than lessened on his face. She saw that there was not only a
+gash in the left temple, but a furrow on the right side of his head, a
+swollen red streak where the hair had been burned away. And the black
+stains on the handkerchief, and the revolver clutched in his hand.
+
+"Philip!" she said softly, reproachfully.
+
+"I don't understand!" he reiterated, and closed his eyes.
+
+She studied him, and the place where he lay, and the dead pony; the
+two wounds in his head, the bloody handkerchief--And it was only
+partly clear to her. He had fallen, and been hurt; but Philip, as she
+knew him, would have made nothing of that cut on his temple. Why,
+then, had he abandoned the pursuit, and tried to kill himself?
+
+A groan escaped him.
+
+"What is it, Philip?" she asked.
+
+"You're hurting me!" he answered, opening his eyes again.
+
+"Hurting you?" she exclaimed. "No! Where?"
+
+"My leg's broken."
+
+With a sharp cry she moved away from him, and saw that in her
+eagerness she had pressed against his right leg. For just a moment she
+was so concerned with the pain she had caused him that she did not
+realize the full significance of his answer. Then it came to her with
+a shock. She looked slowly around her: at the black forest on three
+sides of the little meadow; at the cliff on the other; at the terrible
+trail down which she had come, she scarce knew how; and at the storm
+clouds on Thunder Mountain.
+
+He saw the thought in her face.
+
+"You see, it's no use!" he said. "With a broken leg."
+
+She met his eyes with a clear and steady gaze; and smiled. And that
+look he could not read.
+
+"Now, then, Philip!" she said at length, rising quietly to her feet.
+"I'll go to work."
+
+"To work?" he repeated.
+
+"Of course!" she replied, with brave lightness. "There's a lot to do.
+First, there's your leg."
+
+"Yes, it's broken," he answered sardonically.
+
+"We'll mend it. And the cut on your head needs to be dressed. And I'm
+dreadfully hungry, and--"
+
+She stopped, and the smile fled from her face, and the strength ran
+from her limbs.
+
+"I told you. It's no use," said Haig.
+
+But she had one resource of courage of which he was unaware: her
+faith.
+
+"Well," she answered stoutly, "I've enough in my bundle for one meal
+anyhow. After that--who knows?"
+
+"Will you give me a drink of water, please?"
+
+She stooped quickly for her hat, the only vessel she had.
+
+"Look in the roll on my saddle," he said. "Murray put some things
+there."
+
+She glanced around uncertainly; then understood. The saddle was on
+Trixy still. But Trixy was dead, and she did not like the idea of
+touching her. She hesitated just the length of time required for an
+unpleasant smile to twist Haig's lips. She saw it, and her face
+flamed with shame. A fine start she was making! And it was only a dead
+horse! She walked resolutely to the prostrate body, hurriedly untied
+the roll of blankets, and returned running.
+
+"Oh! Oh! Oh!" she cried, as she unrolled the bundle. "A cup! A pan!
+And bacon and bread! And matches."
+
+"Murray," said Haig.
+
+"Yes, I know. Mrs. Murray told me, but I'd forgotten."
+
+She ran to the stream, and brought him a cupful of water; and another;
+and while he drank the second, she picked up his revolver, and carried
+it to a stone fully as far away as it had been when he crawled for it.
+He was on the point of calling her back, but thought better of it; to
+have done that would only have confirmed her suspicions.
+
+"Now then, sir!" she began. "Your leg."
+
+"What about it?"
+
+"We've got to set it."
+
+"That's absurd!"
+
+"Why is it absurd?"
+
+"You can't do it, in the first place."
+
+"But I can. I've seen my father do it."
+
+"It won't heal--in the fix we're in."
+
+"We'll do our best," she rejoined bravely.
+
+"Listen!" he said, with some sternness. "If it should knit, which I
+doubt, it will take six weeks or two months before I can use it. Do
+you know what will happen before two months--before one month--before
+two weeks, even?"
+
+She only looked at him questioningly.
+
+"Snow!" he said shortly.
+
+She could find no answer, unless it were an answer that she dared not
+give him--yet.
+
+"Well, then!" he said, with an air of finality. "You can't start
+to-night, of course. It's too late, and there's a storm going up there
+besides. But to-morrow morning--" He looked up at the cliff and
+frowned. "Perhaps Tuesday can make it. If he balks, you've got to do
+it on foot. The mountain let you pass once. Maybe it will spare you
+again. Maybe! God knows! But it's your only chance. I'm done for, and
+can't help you. It's sure death for you to stay here. It's sure death
+to try the trail into the Black Lake country. You have just one
+chance. You've got to take it to-morrow morning. And God help you for
+being such a fool!"
+
+She heard him through, and smiled; and he noted, for his own
+information, that this smile of hers was getting on his nerves. What
+did she mean by it? There was something very superior about it, though
+very gentle and indulgent; and a thing or two she had said to him
+before flashed back into his mind. Was she trying to mother him? The
+thought made him angry.
+
+"Well?" he demanded.
+
+"Of course I'll not go!" she said simply.
+
+"You will go!" he retorted wrathfully.
+
+She knelt quickly at his side, and took one of his hands between both
+her own.
+
+"Philip!" she said gently. "I know that--perhaps--it's a foolish
+question to ask. You mustn't call me silly. But--do you believe in
+miracles?"
+
+"Miracles be damned!" he blurted out. "I'll see--"
+
+She put her hand over his mouth.
+
+"Listen, Philip!" she went on. "I prayed for a miracle, and it has
+happened. Perhaps there'll be another; who knows? We'll wait and see.
+If nothing happens, why--Do you think I'm afraid?"
+
+He made no answer, and she needed none.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+HAIG'S ARGUMENT
+
+
+When she had unsaddled Tuesday, and left him grazing near the "camp,"
+Marion set out with Murray's hatchet and knife to cut splints for
+Haig's broken leg. Haig watched her run across the meadow, leap the
+brook, and hurry on to a grove of quaking aspens at the edge of the
+forest. Then he lay back to consider the logic of the situation, with
+the following result, which appeared to him unanswerable:
+
+First. The girl yonder had already saved his life once, and was doing
+her best, though against impossible odds, to save it again. Her motive
+was one that need not be dwelt upon in this fatal crisis. The fact
+remained that for him she was facing certain death, and he must do all
+in his power to save her. That was the starting point from which all
+reckonings must be made.
+
+Second. His own case was hopeless. Long before he should be able to
+move from where he lay, the valley would be buried in snow to half the
+height of those pines yonder. If she remained with him her case would
+be hopeless too. Death would be inevitable for both of them: death
+from starvation, from exposure, from cold. They had neither food, nor
+proper clothing, nor shelter of any kind. The hardiest mountaineer
+would not dream, of attempting to pass eight or nine months of winter
+in a place like that, even with his two arms and two legs free. He,
+with his broken leg, and she, a woman, would not survive an eighth or
+a ninth of that period.
+
+Third. The chances of rescue. There would be no search for him, he
+reflected with a grim smile. But for Marion, undoubtedly. To-morrow
+morning, Marion not having returned, Murray would start out to find
+her. There was not one chance in a thousand that, at this season,
+there would be such another day as the one now ending, and ending in
+storm. But suppose that Murray should make his way across the summit,
+and find them. Murray could do nothing for a man with a broken leg at
+the bottom of a gulch with a cliff on one side and miles on miles of
+mountain forest on the other sides. As for Marion, if she would not go
+at his, Haig's, command, she would certainly pay little heed to
+Murray. So Murray would accomplish nothing. However, it would not come
+to that. Murray would be driven back by the winds. He would ride down
+to the Park and give the alarm. Search parties would be formed, and
+they would assail the mountain. But fifty men would be no stronger
+than one man on Thunder Mountain. It was just possible that some of
+them might force their way across the flat between storms. But every
+day that possibility, such as it was, would grow less. It would be
+madness for the girl to wait. She had crossed the mountain once; she
+knew the way; and if the winds should permit rescuers to come to her
+they would permit her to go to them. It was her only chance, however
+desperate; to remain where she was meant certain death.
+
+Fourth. She would not, it was quite clear, stir from his side as long
+as he was alive. Therefore he must do quickly what he had tried to do
+before.
+
+The idea was so familiar to him by now that it required no contemplation.
+He raised his head, and looked toward the stone where his revolver lay;
+and then toward the aspen grove where Marion labored. His gaze rested
+on her for some minutes. It was too late for her to start to-night,
+even if there were no storm on the mountain. And if he did it now she
+would face a night of solitude and terror, perhaps would not live
+through it. He would wait till morning; and when she should have gone
+for wood, or water--
+
+She came back presently with an armload of small limbs she had hacked
+from the youngest trees. Her left hand bled where she had awkwardly
+struck it with the hatchet; and there were tears in her eyes, which
+she tried to conceal from him. He was sorry for her--and angry. It was
+not his fault; he had done all he could, even to brutality.
+
+"Did you tell Huntington, or his wife, what you were going to do?" was
+his first speech.
+
+"No. But I sent Mr. Smythe--he rode with me as far as Norton's--I sent
+him back with a message that I was going to stop the night at
+Murray's."
+
+"And the Murrays? What did you tell them?"
+
+"That I'd be back before night. But why do you ask?"
+
+"I'm thinking that Smythe is a fool, and Murray is a blockhead."
+
+"They did all they could to stop me," she answered quietly.
+
+She had begun to strip the bark and twigs from the green limbs; and he
+watched her crude efforts for a moment.
+
+"I think I might manage that part of it," he said at length. "You must
+build a fire."
+
+She started to obey him, but stopped short, and looked at him in
+sudden fear and suspicion.
+
+"No, you can trust me with the knife," he said. "I promise."
+
+She handed the limbs and the knife to him; and he saw that her hands
+trembled.
+
+"You'll find plenty of dead wood at the edge of the forest," he said.
+"Don't venture far among the trees."
+
+The shadows were deepening along the other side of the meadow, and he
+watched her a little anxiously while she made half a dozen trips for
+dry limbs and small chunks of half-rotted logs. And now she felt a
+curious thrill as she began to employ the knowledge she had gained on
+her camping expedition. She had never dreamed that it would be so
+useful to her! And she found new courage in thinking, while she
+worked, how all her life she had been undergoing preparation,
+training, education for this hour. She wished that she might run to
+Philip and tell him all this--and of her faith! But he would not
+understand her.
+
+Soon a fine fire was crackling on the grass, against one of the
+largest stones that had fallen from the cliff. Then she brought a
+small package from her bundle, and made a cup of hot chocolate for
+Haig and another for herself. This, with a small slice of bread for
+each of them, made their supper for that day; for such provisions as
+they possessed must be treasured scrupulously.
+
+Haig had by this time finished trimming the aspen sticks; and by the
+fading light of day and the red light of the fire they set to work to
+mend the broken leg. Between them they knew something of surgery: she
+by recollecting all that she had seen in her father's office, where
+she had more than once helped Doctor Gaylord with his needles and
+bandages; he by recalling experiences on battlefields, in lumber
+camps, and in various rough places of the world. She brought his
+blankets, and helped him to move until he lay flat on them, with his
+head propped against a stone. Then the leg was stripped, and the
+ordeal began.
+
+It was not the pain so much as the uselessness of it that exasperated
+Haig; and he was tempted to drive her away from him, and have no more
+of it. But this, he realized, would only have caused more arguments,
+and tears, and protestations, and perhaps the revelation of his
+purpose. So he endured it to satisfy and divert her.
+
+Luckily the fracture was a simple one; and with strips of linen for
+which Marion sacrificed some of her scanty supply of clothing, and the
+thin sticks of tough aspen wood, the leg was bound straight and firm.
+
+"If we only knew!" said Marion at last, leaning back to contemplate
+her work.
+
+"Knew what?" he asked between his teeth.
+
+"If it's right!"
+
+Between pain and rage he could not answer her; and thinking that he
+was near to a collapse, she ran for water and bathed his face, and
+gave him a little of the precious whisky that remained in her flask.
+After that he lay quiet, and she went to her preparations for the
+night.
+
+The vale now lay in deep blackness, impenetrable walls of it beyond
+the red circle of firelight. The cliff made a dim, dark line against
+the blue-black sky; the forest on the other side a ragged tracery. The
+stars were few, and far. A low breeze murmured among the pines, and
+swept softly, but very cold, across the meadow. Marion began to feel
+the chill; and having wrapped Philip's blanket tight around him, and
+spread over him the leather coat she had found in his bundle, she
+heaped more wood on the fire, and sat down before it, with her
+blankets around her, and her rifle at her side, to watch and wait.
+
+She was very tired, but she dared not lie down to sleep. A long time
+she sat there, glancing now and then at Haig, where he lay very still,
+and oftener out into the blackness. But drowsiness gradually overcame
+her, and her head sank forward on her uplifted knees.
+
+She was awakened by a terrifying cry that rang shivering across the
+valley. She started to her feet, and listened. It must have been a
+dream, she thought. No! There it was again--a cry that started low,
+like a child's peevish wail, and ended in a piercing scream. She
+grabbed up her rifle, and stood peering into the darkness.
+
+"Don't be afraid!" said the voice of Haig from the edge of the
+firelight. "It's only a bobcat. He'll not come near the fire."
+
+"Thank you--Philip!" she answered. Then, with a nervous laugh: "It did
+frighten me, though!"
+
+She stood a moment, still listening. But the cry came no more.
+
+"Aren't you sleeping?" she asked softly.
+
+"No."
+
+With trembling limbs, and eyes fixed on the darkness from whence had
+come the scream, she stepped cautiously to the pile of wood, and threw
+more limbs and bits of logs into the blaze. Then she seated herself
+again, resolved that she would not fall asleep. But presently she
+started to her feet in another panic at sight of a dark form moving in
+the blackness. But it was only Tuesday, coming nearer to the fire, as
+if he too had been alarmed by the wild beast's cry. She settled down
+once more to her vigil, her rifle across her lap.
+
+In spite of her resolution, her head sank to her knees again, and she
+was aroused at length by the cold. It bit through the blankets and
+clothing into the flesh of her limbs; sharp shivers ran up and down
+her back; and she was very miserable. Rising stiffly, she walked a
+while before the fire until she stumbled from weariness; then sat down
+again, and nodded, only to be waked by the frost gnawing at her flesh.
+Again and again she slept and woke in accentuated misery. But finally
+she saw, with unspeakable relief, that the stars were paling in their
+blue-black vault. She turned toward Thunder Mountain, and watched the
+dim line of the cliff sharpening against the whitening sky. Yet all
+was blackness in the gulch, and it seemed a long time before a soft
+gray light began to steal in upon the red light of the fire, and a new
+crispness came into the air. She waited until she could make out the
+forms of trees across the valley, shrouded in thin morning mist,
+before she threw the last few sticks of wood on the dying fire, and
+crept to the side of Haig, where she lay down close beside him, with
+her blankets wrapped around her. There she fell into a heavy sleep,
+and did not waken until the sun, rising above Thunder Mountain, shone
+warm in her face.
+
+For some seconds she lay luxuriating in the warmth that seemed
+incredible after that night of cold and terror. Then she moved softly,
+raised herself on one elbow, and looked at Philip. He slept. His face
+was haggard under his three days' growth of beard. She leaned over
+him, and pressed her lips ever so lightly to his forehead. He did not
+stir.
+
+Tuesday grazed a few yards away; the vale lay green and peaceful in
+the sunlight; and from the pine woods, where that hideous cry had
+lifted in the night, came now only the gentle murmur of the breeze in
+the massed foliage. By contrast with the chill horror of the night,
+the scene was positively exhilarating; and Marion rose to her work
+with hope throbbing through every vein, and courage singing along
+every nerve of her body.
+
+First she fetched wood to renew the fire, now only a heap of
+smouldering embers. That done, she went to make her toilet in the
+brook, with the soap and towel she had stowed in her bundle for the
+shooting trip. Poor Seth! she thought, with a momentary pang; he would
+not get the deer he wanted, after all. And by this thought was set in
+motion a little current of regrets that filled her mind until it was
+diverted by the stream. She had intended only to wash her face and
+hands, now grimy after her labors at the fire. But chance led her to
+a deep, still pool with a bottom of fine sand and a tiny shore of
+pebbles that seemed to have been designed for bathing. Temptation
+seized her, and on the very impulse, seeing that a clump of willows
+screened her from the camp, she eagerly undressed, and plunged into
+the water, uttering quick gasps at the cold contact, and short-clipped
+shrieks of pleasure.
+
+And so, behold a marvel! Three days ago, in the security and
+familiarity of the Park, where no hardships or perils threatened, and
+where she knew that Philip was safe in his cottage across the ridge,
+and that her own pink bedroom awaited her at night, so deep was she in
+dejection that nothing could have induced an outburst of mere physical
+enjoyment such as this. But now, while Philip lay on his blankets, a
+prisoner in that narrow vale, and death stood at her side uncovered
+and undisguised, her spirits rose as they had never risen since her
+confession, on Mount Avalanche, and if Haig had been listening he
+might have heard her low laughter across the meadow.
+
+Had she yet failed to realize her situation? Or was it that tragedy
+had put on its comic mask, and laughed at death? The truth is simple.
+Her faith had triumphed over what seemed to be insuperable obstacles;
+and she was with Philip, for better or for worse. A miracle had been
+wrought; and miracles are not meaningless, or idle, or without
+purpose. It was a feeling perhaps unknown to man, who is merely a
+reasoning creature, much given to material consideration of natural
+causes and effects, and so compelled by his limitations to grope in
+outer darkness. And it was not so much a feeling as an instinct, and
+not so much an instinct as a law, of which she was the involuntary
+instrument. Her purpose was so strong within her that there was no
+need of thought; and so she did not think.
+
+Leaping to the pebbly bank, she rubbed herself swiftly with the towel,
+and felt the glow of health rushing through her body, all pink and
+gleaming in the sun. Then she dressed, and combed her hair; rinsed and
+wrung out the towel, and hung it on the willow-limbs to dry; and
+started back toward the camp in the highest spirits, and eager for
+service. And then, at twenty paces, she was stricken cold and rigid by
+the sight that met her unsuspecting eyes.
+
+Haig had left his blankets, and was now dragging himself like a
+wounded animal along the earth. Already he had covered more than half
+the distance to the rock on which his revolver lay; and it seemed as
+if she would stand rooted there in helpless horror until he reached
+it. Then, with an incautious cry, she bounded forward. Haig heard her,
+and flung himself toward the stone with reckless determination. Where
+he had inches, Marion had yards to go; it was a race that might, in
+another age, have done credit to the ingenuity of a Roman emperor. If
+Philip was mad with pain and anger, Marion was frantic with fear and
+love. It seemed to her that the turf gripped her feet, that the wind
+in her face would strangle her, that her skirts were leaden sheets
+around her knees. And she barely resisted falling in a senseless heap
+when, at ten yards from the goal, she saw that she would be too late.
+
+He beat her to the rock by merely a few seconds; but he was fairly
+spent. His fingers bled where he had dug them into the sand; the sweat
+rolled down his face; and exhaustion bound him as with bands of iron.
+Yet he was able to reach for the gun, and clutch it; and with a final
+effort that seemed to tear the heart from his breast, he dragged the
+weapon under him, pressed the muzzle upward, pulled the trigger, at
+the very instant that Marion threw herself upon him.
+
+There was a muffled report, the fumes stung their eyes and nostrils,
+and for a moment both lay still. Then Marion felt a movement under
+her, and guessed that Haig was fumbling with the revolver. An
+indescribable energy seized her, something tigerish in its fury, and
+beyond her own proper powers, so that she flung him over on his back
+as if he had been a child in strength and size. With both hands she
+gripped the wrist below the clutched revolver, and while she held it
+away from his body she drew her own body over his, and threw herself
+on his extended arm, between his hand and his breast.
+
+There was a savage struggle still, the man affirming his right to die,
+and the woman denying it. But the issue could not be long in doubt;
+for Haig's strength was at the ebb, while Marion's flowed in from
+earth and air and sky, from the future and from the past. And she wore
+him down at last, until the revolver dropped from his grasp, his
+eyelids closed, his limbs relaxed, and he lay still. Waiting a moment
+for certainty, she cautiously loosened one of her hands from his
+wrist, and grabbed the revolver, and flung it with all her might.
+Then, seeing it land twenty feet away on the grass, she rolled away
+from him, and sat up panting, hollow-eyed, disheveled, and trembling
+on the verge of a collapse.
+
+For some seconds there was no sound but their labored breathing; and
+not until Haig opened his eyes and looked at her, with a hunted,
+baffled, and still defiant expression in their somber depths, did
+Marion break down. Then suddenly, after a premonitory quivering of her
+chin, she buried her face in her hands, and wept without more effort
+at restraint, in utter abandonment to her agony. Haig watched, at
+first in anger, and then in some confusion of emotions. Once before he
+had looked upon her thus bowed and shaken; and now as then he felt a
+strange upheaval, and an unfathomable sensation that had no likeness
+to anything he had ever before experienced. He wanted very much to
+speak to her, but could not trust himself; and after all, what was
+there to be said?
+
+It was she who rescued him from irresolution. She dropped her hands
+from her face, and cried out in a voice that was broken with sobbing:
+"Why, Philip, why did you do that?"
+
+"Why?" he asked, in something like amazement.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I've already told you why."
+
+"But--no--you haven't told me!"
+
+"It was to save you--for one thing."
+
+"To save me?"
+
+"I told you that your only chance is to go at once."
+
+"But I told you I wouldn't go!"
+
+"I know. That's the reason."
+
+"But--don't you know, Philip, that--don't you see that--if you killed
+yourself you'd--kill me too?"
+
+There should have been no necessity for these words. Perhaps any other
+man in the world, certainly most men of far less intelligence and less
+acuteness of feeling, would have known long ago just what she meant.
+He knew, indeed, that this girl loved him; but he did not believe that
+she or any other woman was capable of the sacrifice implied in her
+answer.
+
+"You mean that--you would have--" He hesitated.
+
+"Yes."
+
+There ensued a silence that fell like a mist between them, through
+which neither knew the way. She saw that he had begun, by ever so
+little, to understand; and she feared to say more lest a wrong word
+should overtake a right one. As for Haig, his incredulity persisted
+notwithstanding the unquestionable sincerity of her speech. He did not
+doubt that she contemplated, in this moment of emotion, the complete
+and final sacrifice. But he was quite convinced that she would take a
+different view of the situation when the test should come. She did not
+yet appreciate, he argued, the peril of their position; she had not
+realized the hazard of her adventure or she never would have
+undertaken it; and undoubtedly she still thought there would be a way
+out for them. Under such a delusion it was easy for her, he concluded,
+to talk about dying with him. But she was tragically in error. His
+eyes lifted to the cliff. She should have been up there on her return
+hours ago. Now it was too late again; for the clouds were black and
+ugly on the summit, and a distant roaring came to his ears; and he
+knew what was happening or in preparation in the middle of the flat.
+But he must find a way to send her up that trail at dawn the next day;
+and his gaze dropped to where the revolver lay just visible in the
+thin grass into which she had thrown it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+DIANA
+
+
+Still no speech came to either of them. After a while Marion rose
+silently, and went about her work. First, however, she sought the
+revolver in the grass, and carried it, with her rifle, to the clump of
+willows by the brook, where both weapons were safely beyond the
+present limits of Philip's powers. Then she returned to him with her
+towel, one end of it wetted and soaped.
+
+"May I, please?" she asked, smiling down at him.
+
+"If you wish," he answered.
+
+She knelt, and began to wash the grime from his face, to cleanse the
+wound on his head, and readjust the bandage. Then his hands, after
+another trip to the stream to rub out the soiled end of the towel; and
+she was still busy with one of them, when she started back with a cry.
+His coat had opened wider, and she saw that his shirt was stained with
+blood. She had forgotten the revolver-shot!
+
+"It's nothing," said Haig. "Only a flesh wound, I think."
+
+"But why didn't you tell me!" she cried, almost with anger in her
+alarm.
+
+"It doesn't matter, does it?"
+
+"Let me see it, quick!" she commanded.
+
+He looked at her a moment, then opened the front of his flannel shirt
+and of the undershirt, and disclosed a flesh wound where the bullet
+had cut a streak across his chest. Marion bent close, and touched it
+with her fingers.
+
+"Oh!" she sighed at last, in deep relief.
+
+Haig's reply was a laugh of which the irony did not escape her.
+
+"Philip!" she cried reproachfully.
+
+"Well, isn't it rather droll--and ludicrous, when you come to think of
+it? First, Sunnysides' punch in my stomach. And now, with my head cut
+open by a stone, and a broken leg, and two bullet-wounds--I've still
+got a splendid appetite. I ought to be on exhibition somewhere!"
+
+His sardonic humor hurt her worse than his anger; and she went quickly
+to the brook to cleanse the towel again. Returning presently, she
+washed the new wound, and bandaged it; then examined the splints on
+the broken leg to assure herself that, as nearly as she could
+determine, no serious damage had been done to it by his reckless
+crawl; and finally brought his blankets, and insisted on making a sort
+of bed for him. After that she cooked two slices of bacon, and on
+this, with a little bread, they made their first meal of the day. And
+this brought her to the next and most pressing problem.
+
+"Will you help me think, Philip?" she asked, when they had eaten.
+
+"About what?"
+
+"Food."
+
+"What's in the larder?"
+
+She smiled at his tone, in spite of her own seriousness.
+
+"Bacon--perhaps enough for three days, with the bread, if we don't eat
+much; and chocolate for four or five breakfasts. That's all."
+
+"And then?"
+
+"Are there deer in those forests, do you think?"
+
+"Very likely. This is an un-hunted country, I imagine."
+
+"Great!" she cried.
+
+"What do you propose to do? Whistle for them?"
+
+She could afford to smile at that.
+
+"Didn't you see my rifle?"
+
+"Just now--yes. What's it for?"
+
+"You'll see."
+
+"Diana of Thunder Mountain, eh? Well, I'm ready to admit you're some
+huntress. But deer! That's another thing."
+
+The color flooded her cheeks.
+
+"Cousin Seth taught me to shoot," she answered, turning her face away.
+"I killed a deer on Mount Avalanche."
+
+"But where did Cousin Seth learn to shoot? The last time he--"
+
+"Please, Philip!"
+
+"Well, when you've brought down your deer, what will you do with it?"
+
+The color deserted her face at that.
+
+"I watched him do it," she said, shuddering at the recollection.
+
+"But you can't do that alone."
+
+"I've got to," she replied simply. And then, on a sudden thought:
+"There should be grouse too, shouldn't there?"
+
+"Perhaps."
+
+"I learned to kill grouse with my rifle."
+
+He looked at her with a wicked grin. This time he had her!
+
+"How many cartridges have you?" he asked.
+
+She ran for her belt, and counted the cartridges.
+
+"Twenty-seven."
+
+"So. If you never miss, you'll get twenty-seven grouse. That would
+mean twenty-seven, meals. One meal a day, twenty-seven days. I'd still
+be on my back, our ammunition would be gone, and--"
+
+"Don't!" she cried, in tears. "I wasn't thinking."
+
+"Never mind!" he replied, almost gently. "But we'll deny ourselves the
+grouse."
+
+"Yes, it's got to be the deer. I'll begin now."
+
+"No, there's something else that must be done first."
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"We've got to move."
+
+"For shelter, you mean?"
+
+"Partly. But look there!"
+
+He pointed to the dead body of Trixy.
+
+"It will be easier--and perhaps even nicer--to move me than poor
+Trixy. See that big pine yonder--the one that stands out from the
+forest? Well, you and Tuesday must drag me there."
+
+"But how?"
+
+He explained his plan to her, and she set herself at once to executing
+it. And her spirits rose again; for she thought he had abandoned his
+desperate resolution. So, indeed, he had--for the moment. But he had
+deliberately beguiled her; their situation he knew to be quite
+unchanged in its inevitable termination, since a food supply would
+save them from starvation only to deliver them to the snow; and he
+must disarm her of suspicion in order to find a way to send her back
+on the trail. For he had reflected on the implication of tragic
+finality in the speech that had surprised and disturbed him; and he
+did not doubt that when the time should come, and she should find
+herself alone, her high resolve would prove to have been mere
+emotional exaggeration.
+
+Mounted on Tuesday, Marion attacked the boughs of a small pine with
+the hatchet until she had severed three large branches, to which she
+tied Haig's rope, and hauled them back to the camp. Of these branches
+Haig contrived a crude drag, on which he crawled, and lay flat; the
+free end of the rope was hitched to the horn of Tuesday's saddle; and
+the journey was begun. Twice the saddle slipped, and progress was
+interrupted while Marion tightened the cinches. Once the drag itself
+came to pieces, and Haig was left sprawling on the ground. But
+eventually, with no more serious injury to Haig than a bruised elbow,
+not counting his torn clothing, they reached the goal.
+
+There Marion made a wide bed against the exposed top roots of the
+tree, filling the spaces among the pine boughs with moss, and placing
+the two saddles at the head for pillows. Night had come before she had
+completed this labor, and gathered another supply of dead limbs and
+rotted logs, and cooked their meager supper. Then she wrapped Haig in
+his blankets, and rolled herself in her own, and lay down at his side.
+What with watching and replenishing the fire, and listening to
+night-cries heard or imagined, and waking from restless slumber
+chilled to the bone, she slept as little as on the preceding night,
+and was glad of the dawn, which came peacefully enough on the heels of
+a storm that raged on Thunder Mountain and sent a cold and beating
+rain upon the valley.
+
+This day brought its own bitter disappointment. After her bath in the
+clear pool among the willows, and their mere taste of bacon and bread
+in the name of breakfast, and a promise exacted from Haig, as a
+condition of her leaving him, that he would do nothing of which she
+would disapprove, she set out to get her deer. Rifle on shoulder, and
+eyes alert, she skirted the edge of the wood along the base of the
+cliff, through tall grasses of a golden green, among yellowing aspen
+groves, and under a fair blue sky. But presently she plunged into the
+thick of the forest, of which the trees towered to a height exceeding
+that of any she had ever seen before. In their tops the breeze was
+singing sonorously, but among their massive boles the silence was so
+tense that twigs cracking under her feet sounded like gun-shots
+echoing through the dim aisles.
+
+For some hours she wandered fruitlessly in that dark labyrinth, not
+only mindful of Philip's warning that she must not penetrate too deep
+into its depth, but fearful on her own account of an encounter with
+some such wild beast as that whose cry had terrified her. In time the
+hollow indifference of the woods began to weigh upon her spirits,
+which had been high and hopeful on her setting out. Worn out at last,
+she was just on the point of turning back toward the camp, defeated,
+when she came upon an open space, a lovely little glade, in which the
+grass grew rank and green, unripened by the sun. She started to cross
+it, but stopped suddenly, staring straight ahead. In the very middle
+of the lush and silent glade, a young doe rose swiftly to its feet,
+and looked at her. Marion stood and looked at the doe. Then there was
+a streak of pale yellow across the grass, the forest closed around it,
+and the doe was gone. Thereupon, Marion remembered her rifle, and saw
+with something like surprise, to begin with, that it was pointed
+foolishly toward the ground. She gazed at it a moment, then sat plump
+down on the mossy earth, and cried.
+
+"Oh, what a fool!" she groaned. "What a poor, silly little fool! I
+ought to starve, starve, starve!"
+
+And on the words the hunger that she had bravely kept back rose and
+punished her. To be hungry in a world of plenty, where she had only to
+reach out and help herself! To think of Philip, hungry too, and
+depending on her, on her boasted prowess! Humiliation scorched her
+like a flame. And this was Marion Gaylord!
+
+When she had recovered a little, she made directly for the open strip,
+having no more heart for her task, and nerving herself to confess the
+truth to Philip. Coming out upon the knoll through thick underbrush,
+she was startled by the leap of a rabbit from under her very feet; and
+before she was aware of what she was doing, she had thrown up her
+rifle, and fired. There was really no aim; the action was a gesture
+merely; and if she had tried to hit the rabbit she would have
+undoubtedly missed it clean. But the unlucky little beast, happening
+in the path of Marion's angry disgust, turned a somersault in the air,
+and fell dead.
+
+"Of course!" cried Marion. "Of course I can kill rabbits." Then
+mercilessly: "A rabbit a day for twenty-seven days--" And rage choked
+her.
+
+But she picked up her rabbit, and walked on. In half an hour she
+reached the camp, strode straight to the pine tree under which Haig
+lay, and held up before him the puny prize.
+
+"Now I know you're proud of me!" she exclaimed, while her face
+crimsoned.
+
+Haig smiled indulgently. It was a little better than he had expected.
+
+"Don't be downcast!" he said. "I didn't think you'd get a deer the
+first day. You didn't even see one, I suppose."
+
+"But I did, though! I had one right under my eyes, not thirty feet
+away. And what do you think I did?"
+
+"Stood and looked at it, of course. That's buck fever."
+
+"But it was only a tiny little doe!"
+
+"Doe fever then, which is probably worse, if I know anything about--"
+
+"That will do, Philip! You're laughing at me."
+
+"Not at all. You've brought home something to eat, and that's more
+than I can do. Bunny looks big and fat. He'll make a fine dinner, and
+leave something for to-morrow."
+
+"Thank you, Philip!" she said gratefully. "You make me feel as if I
+were not such a failure after all."
+
+"If you'll trust me with the knife," he said in a tone that took some
+of the edge off her satisfaction, "I'll clean him for you."
+
+She gave him the knife reluctantly, and did not leave his side until
+he had finished cleaning and cutting up the rabbit, when he handed the
+knife back to her with a gesture that made her blush again. Two things
+she did not know: that he had a knife in his pocket much better suited
+to his secret purpose; and that his purpose was a purpose no longer.
+But even he was not yet aware of this last.
+
+It was not the next day, but the third, when the rabbit had been eaten
+to the bone, and the pangs of hunger prodded her, that Marion restored
+herself in her own eyes. In the edge of the forest, not more than two
+miles from the camp, she detected a mere brown patch in the browning
+bush. This time she did not forget her rifle. The brown patch moved
+just as she pulled the trigger; but when she reached the spot, in a
+fever of anxiety, she fairly shrieked to the wilderness. For there in
+the grass, still jerking spasmodically in its death agony, lay a doe,
+a larger one than that she had seen in the glade. No more "one a day
+for twenty-seven days!"
+
+What followed haunted her dreams for many nights thereafter--a
+repulsive and sickening ordeal. She had seen Huntington do it, but
+then she had been able to turn her face away; and her hands--But
+necessity, responsibility, and pride, and perhaps some primitive
+instinct also, nerved her to the task. And she staggered back to camp,
+and stood before Philip, white and trembling, but triumphant.
+
+"Take a drink of whisky!" ordered Haig sharply.
+
+She obeyed him, gulping down the last of the precious contents of her
+flask.
+
+"It's down there--covered with leaves!" she gasped out at length.
+"Will anything--disturb it before I can--take Tuesday and the rope?"
+
+"Do you mean you've cleaned the whole deer?" he asked curiously.
+
+She nodded, still shuddering.
+
+"Well, you're a brick!" he said heartily. Then he added: "I thought
+perhaps a bobcat had stolen your--rabbit."
+
+She laughed with him, and then was off with Tuesday to bring her
+quarry home. She was not strong enough to lift and fasten the carcass
+on the horse's back; but the route was through clean grass along the
+cliff, and Tuesday made short work of that, with the deer dragged at
+the end of the rope.
+
+They had no salt, but there were a few rinds of bacon that Haig had
+told Marion to keep, and these were made to serve for seasoning. That
+venison, moreover, needed nothing to make it palatable; for they were
+ravenously hungry. Sprawled before the fire like savages, they feasted
+on a huge steak, broiled on two willow sticks, and well-browned on the
+outside at the start so that the tenderness was retained; and for an
+hour forgot. For so the stomach, at once the tyrant and the slave, has
+sometimes its hour of triumph, when heart and soul and brain are its
+willing captives, and the starkest fears and forebodings lose their
+sway, and death itself, though visible and near, has no power to
+ferment the grateful juices of the body.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+THE SNOW
+
+
+In the night they were awakened by a terrific outburst on the mountain
+top, surpassing all they had yet heard since their arrival in the
+valley. The forest roared under the onslaughts of the wind that swept
+down through the gorge as through a funnel. Protected though the camp
+was, in a measure, fierce gusts now and then assailed it, and later
+the rain came, almost in torrents, beating through the canopy of
+foliage, and half-flooding the bed.
+
+Marion, rising to renew the fire, felt that a sharp change had come in
+the atmosphere. It was colder than any night they had yet endured.
+Wrapped again in her blankets, she was unable to keep warm. Her feet,
+near the fire, were too hot, while her back and shoulders ached as if
+they had been packed in ice. Turn which way she would, on her back, on
+her side, or face downward, there was no relief from that acid cold.
+She did not complain, but cried softly, trying to hold back her sobs
+so that he should not hear her.
+
+"You're cold," he said, hearing her nevertheless.
+
+"A little--not very," she answered bravely.
+
+But he knew very well how keenly she was suffering. His injured leg
+pained him almost beyond endurance, as if the frost had been
+concentrated there. There was nothing he could say or do for her or
+for himself.
+
+Toward morning, the fury of the storm having abated, they slept a
+little, fitfully and uneasily, in the half-insensibility to suffering
+that complete exhaustion brings. But they were glad when the first
+gray light of morning stole in among the shadows and touched their
+eyelids. With one accord, as if in a common apprehension, and moved by
+a single fear, they raised their heads, and at the first glance about
+them, sat up staring.
+
+The meadow lay white under its first coverlet of snow, the trees were
+draped in their winter mantles, their very bed had its downy quilt of
+snowflakes that had sifted through the branches of the tree.
+
+"It's come," said Haig simply.
+
+"Yes," she answered, in a voice that echoed a tragic calm.
+
+"But it was due."
+
+"Seth kept saying we'd have a hard and early winter."
+
+"Huntington's not such a fool as he looks," retorted Haig drily, as he
+lay back to look up resignedly into the foliage, where white now
+mingled with the green.
+
+For some time there was no more speech. Marion arose, and went
+silently about her work. She heaped wood on the fire until the flames
+leaped high, and the heat began to drive out the settled chill from
+her limbs, and she could move again without dull pain. Then to the
+brook; but her baths in the pool were ended. She washed face and
+hands, and brought back the wet towel for Philip. And breakfast was
+eaten almost in silence, and without appetite; for the good venison
+that had so rejoiced them the night before had already lost its
+flavor.
+
+"Do you see the circles on the trees yonder, where the moss begins?"
+asked Haig at length.
+
+"Yes," Marion answered.
+
+"That's the snow line. It will lie thirty feet deep here."
+
+She had no answer to that. But she was thinking. There must be a way.
+She had no idea what it would be; but there must be some way out of
+it.
+
+When the camp had been cleaned up, and the pan and cup had been washed
+and put aside, and the fire replenished, she brought her rifle from
+its place behind the tree.
+
+"I'm going for a walk," she said.
+
+"Where?"
+
+"I don't know. Down along the cliff perhaps. I may see another deer."
+
+"Yes. You might as well. Deer meat will keep--longer than we--"
+
+He checked the unnecessary speech. She rewarded him with a smile and
+left him.
+
+And now he faced a curious situation within himself. He saw clearly,
+but strangely without sensation, that it was too late for Marion to
+attempt the passage of the mountain. Whatever chance she might have
+had before--and that was perhaps even less than the one in a thousand
+of which he had spoken--she had now no chance at all, supposing that
+he should force her to seek it by measures of desperation. And why had
+he delayed? He did not know. Had he weakened? Had his injuries taken
+something from his courage? He drew his treasured knife from his
+pocket, opened the largest of the three keen blades, and passed it
+slowly but lightly across his wrist. No; his hand was steady; he
+could do it without a tremor. He could have done it yesterday, the day
+before, or any day. Well, then; had he become sceptical of such a
+solution of his problem? Perhaps. Six times in his life he had
+attempted that solution, and always he had failed. And yet, what could
+have thwarted him when Marion was far away in the forest, and he lay
+quiet and undisturbed on his blankets, in full possession of his
+faculties?
+
+By such process of elimination he arrived at the final question: was
+it she? Was it this girl that now stayed his hand, in spite of all his
+logic and clear vision and resolution? This girl, with her foolish
+faith, and misplaced love, and futile talk of miracles? Was it written
+that they should die together--written in some volume of the book of
+life into which he had never looked? Or was she right? And would there
+be--
+
+He looked out again upon the gleaming whiteness of the meadow, at the
+snow line on the pines, at the remorseless mountain. He passed slowly
+in review again the chances of a rescue, the chances of their
+wintering in that (soon-to-be) snowbound valley, the chances of
+a--miracle. And he shook his head. The odds were beyond all reckoning;
+their fate was now as certain as if the cliff yonder, rent by another
+cataclysm, had tumbled down upon them while they slept. But he had
+known this in the very hour of his awakening to find her kneeling at
+his side; he had delayed giving her the one chance of escape. And so,
+was it because she had commanded him and he had unconsciously obeyed?
+
+It was mystery; it was enigma. He tried to think if he had erred in
+any way, if there was any fault to be attributed to him. No; he had
+dealt more than fairly with this girl; he had spoken frankly and
+brutally; he had never once consciously, by word or look, enticed her.
+Unconsciously, perhaps; but how could he ever have foreseen such
+consequences of the infatuation of which he had become slowly and
+incredulously informed? He would have gone raging out of the Park,
+between two suns (and Thursby be damned!), if he had ever dreamt of
+this tragic end of her midsummer madness.
+
+For two hours he lay thinking, torturing his brain for an explanation
+of this mystery, an understanding of this coil. And he was no nearer a
+solution than at the beginning, when his thoughts were interrupted by
+Marion. She came running out of the forest--not running, but fairly
+bounding, as if her feet were too light to rest on earth. Her face was
+flushed, her eyes danced with excitement. But then, seeing his grave
+and questioning face, she stopped short in front of him, suddenly
+embarrassed.
+
+"Well?" he asked gently.
+
+"Would--a cave do?"
+
+Her voice trembled between timidity and shortness of breath.
+
+"A cave?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"What kind of a cave?"
+
+"A big cave--really two caves joined together."
+
+"Where?"
+
+"In the cliff--down there."
+
+She pointed in the direction from which she had come at full speed.
+
+"How high above the level of the valley?"
+
+She stared at him, and was again embarrassed.
+
+"I forgot that!" she said, in deep chagrin. "But wait, please!" She
+looked around her. "I think--I know what you mean! It's higher up than
+the marks on the trees there, surely it is!"
+
+"Tell me about it!"
+
+"It's only a little way from here. There's a narrow, clear space all
+along between the forest and the cliff, where the grass grows high.
+But there's one place--I missed it before, when I was just looking for
+deer--where the cliff--How can I describe it? It sinks in, and there's
+a slope up to it, solid rock. And at the top of the slope I saw a
+black hole, and got off my pony to look in. The slope is easy to
+climb. Tuesday climbed it with me. The mouth of the cave is partly
+hidden by a rock that sticks out so that you can see the opening only
+from one side. The entrance is no bigger than the door of your stable.
+I was afraid at first, but--"
+
+"You thought of your miracle," he suggested, with a smile.
+
+"I knew something must be done, so I held my rifle ready, thinking it
+might be a wild beasts' den, and listened a minute, and went in.
+There's the big cave first, as large as the sitting-room and kitchen
+together at Cousin Seth's, and there's a smaller one at the side, with
+a narrow opening between them. The small one has an opening outside
+too, just big enough for me to squeeze through, and look out on the
+forest below."
+
+"Was it cold in there? Did the wind blow through?"
+
+"No, I think not. It seemed very dry and warm."
+
+He looked at her intently, and so strangely that she blushed again,
+she knew not why.
+
+"Who are you, anyhow?" he asked, in a curious tone.
+
+"I?"
+
+"Yes, you?"
+
+"I don't understand," she faltered in confusion.
+
+"No matter!" he said. "We'll try the cave."
+
+He had no faith in the experiment. Even with food and shelter, there
+was still the cold that would steadily sap their strength, and stretch
+them lifeless before half the winter should have passed. But she
+should have her way; it would divert her mind from the inevitable; and
+they would, at least, be doing all their best. The trip to the cave
+would be hell for him, in his condition, but all that would be, at its
+worst, soon ended.
+
+A whole day being needed for the removal, they ventured to wait until
+the following morning. Storms raged through all the night on Thunder
+Mountain, and they woke again in utter wretchedness to find another
+and heavier sheet of snow upon the meadow.
+
+But Marion was soon up and at work in eagerness and hope. The fire and
+the broiled venison renewed them; and even the snow offered something
+by way of compensation, for Haig's journey on the freshly constructed
+drag was smoother over the snow than it had been in the first instance
+over the stone-littered earth. The ascent to the opening of the cave
+was, however, another matter; and there was imminent danger of
+Tuesday's sliding backward on the slippery rock, and crushing Haig
+beneath him. Twice, indeed, such a fatal accident was narrowly
+averted, and a less sure-footed animal than Tuesday would have
+resolved all Haig's doubts in one swift catastrophe. But there was no
+alternative, and Haig at length lay safe enough, though racked and
+exhausted, at the mouth of the cave; and when he had rested he raised
+himself on his elbows and looked around him.
+
+The top of the slope was almost level, and made a kind of porch in
+front of their new abode, about thirty feet in length and of half that
+measurement in its greatest width. Haig calculated the height of the
+platform above the valley--fully forty feet. Below was the strip of
+grass, and then the forest towering high above them, protecting the
+cave, in some degree, from the winds that would come roaring down the
+gulch. At this height they should be able, in all probability, to defy
+the snows. With a sufficient store of food and fuel, and any kind of
+luck, there would have been--God! Was there a chance?
+
+With his back to the wall! He had always been at his best against long
+odds. None of the adventures of the ten years that he counted as his
+life had ever been for any kind of gain; and the finest of them had
+been those in which there were the most tight places. So this coming
+struggle with the elements, though it should be a trial not of valor
+but of endurance and resourcefulness, lacking swift action and a
+culmination in one stirring hour, would once have allured him like a
+splendid game. And even now, for one instant, while he sat there
+keenly counting the forces on one side and the other, the pride of
+battle lighted up his features, and for that instant he was himself
+again. But a cruel and timely twinge in his injured leg recalled him
+to realities. His back was not to the wall; it was flat on the
+ground. He could not walk, he could not stand; and for weeks to come
+he would continue to be as helpless as in that moment. To endure a
+siege of eight months in the cave its garrison must have huge stores
+of food and fuel; pine boughs and moss in lieu of bedding; solid
+barricades at the entrances; and countless makeshifts for the comforts
+that were denied. And before he should be able to stir it would be too
+late. No, it was an idle dream; a month would see the end of both of
+them. So he lay back again, and looked up vacantly into the cold, blue
+sky.
+
+But Marion, standing at one side and watching him, had seen that
+flicker of the fire within, and was grateful for it beyond all reason
+or belief. It was all she needed. Her hands were already raw and
+bleeding, but she would work them to the bone if he would only guide
+and advise and comfort her; and she knew now that she could trust him,
+since there was no longer any question whether she should go or stay.
+
+All that day was spent in bringing up fresh boughs and moss for their
+beds, and in making them against the wall of the cavern where draughts
+would be the least likely to sweep over them; in bestowing their
+meager belongings; in hanging the venison from sticks thrust into a
+crevice in the rock; in finding the best place for the fire that must
+never be allowed to go down, and in planning the storage of food and
+fuel.
+
+Marion had no pressing anxiety about food, now that she had brought in
+her first deer; but fuel was a different matter. To her own
+appreciation of the problem Haig, that evening after dinner, added
+some calculations that revealed it to her in its baldest aspects. The
+morning, too, disclosed another layer of snow upon the valley. The
+winter was coming on without pity, and each succeeding day would see
+its lines drawn a little closer round them. There was not an hour, not
+a moment to be lost.
+
+At dawn she began, with Tuesday and the rope, to haul dead limbs and
+logs, the largest she was able to handle, going far at first in order
+to leave the nearest supplies for the last harvesting in deep snow.
+Under Haig's instructions, she filled all the space in the caves that
+would not be actually needed for their living quarters. Then she built
+the logs into a square and solid pile on the platform at one side of
+the entrance. These were not logs in any formidable sense, being for
+the most part half-rotted fragments of tree trunks that had long been
+decaying in the mold. But they were dry now, after the summer, and
+they made excellent slow-burning fuel. The dead limbs she cut up into
+small sticks, and filled the interstices of the heap, and all the
+space between it and the wall of rock. And eventually the whole
+platform was covered, and the slope on each side, until there was no
+longer room for Tuesday to mount to it, and barely room for Marion
+herself.
+
+In the meantime, varying her exertions, she made several trips into
+the woods for deer. After many disappointments, she succeeded, before
+the snow became too deep for further expeditions, in bringing back to
+the cave a splendid buck and three young does. Haig made for her a
+rabbit snare, and taught her how to set it, and with this device she
+had the luck to add a dozen rabbits to their store. And all this time
+she was piling up every stick of wood that she could find space for,
+even making a great heap at the foot of the slope to be drawn upon
+before the snow should cover it.
+
+Always the snow fell, steadily, remorselessly. Every night it snowed,
+and every day more or less, with intervals of brilliant sunshine. The
+wind blew with increasing violence, tossing the snow into huge drifts
+upon the meadow, which Marion still saw sometimes in her wood
+gathering, and sifting it in level masses among the trees, and
+flinging it in great banks against the cliff. Up and up crept the
+drifts and banks and levels until there came a day when she could do
+no more.
+
+And that day it seemed that she could have done no more in any kind of
+weather, under any inspiration or necessity. The record of what she
+did is but a footnote to the page of what she suffered. Time after
+time she had sunk down in the snow and lain there exhausted until
+strength came to her again from somewhere, and then had risen
+_manfully_ to her work. For it was a man's work she did, with a
+courage as much greater than a man's as her strength was less. She was
+strong, for a woman; she had lived all her life much out of doors; and
+she had entered upon this ordeal in perfect health. But her
+willingness outsped her powers; and when the snow had spared her by
+driving her into the cave, she fairly staggered and groped and leaned
+against the wall, and knew that if she should now collapse she would
+never rise again. But even in that climax of her suffering, when for a
+moment she dared not move, in fear of toppling over on the floor, and
+could not keep back her sobs, there was an answer ready when Haig
+called to her across the cave.
+
+"What is it, Marion?" he asked softly.
+
+"Tuesday!" she answered chokingly.
+
+"What about Tuesday?"
+
+"He's a good horse."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"He never balked or--hesitated. He never threw me--but once, and that
+wasn't his fault. It was--"
+
+She stopped. And out of what black depths, and across what vistas of
+hope and despair and love and anguish, she looked back to that scene
+in the golden summer, in the Forbidden Pasture.
+
+"Yes, I remember," said Haig.
+
+Then she told him brokenly how she had just said farewell to Tuesday;
+how he stood at the foot of the slope, thin as a specter, belly-deep
+in snow, his nose lifted inquiringly toward her.
+
+"Good-by, Tuesday!" she cried; and fled stumbling up the slope, her
+hands on her ears to shut out his plaintive whinny.
+
+Haig watched her narrowly, and was not deceived. Through the first few
+days of Marion's struggles he had lain on his pallet in almost
+complete indifference, in full acceptance of the fate that awaited
+them; not callous to her sufferings, but resigned, as he thought, to
+endure what could not be prevented. Having resolved to humor her, he
+went from the extreme of resistance to the extreme of submission, and
+hardened his heart to endure what galled and humiliated and degraded
+him. Then anger seized him once more,--anger at Marion, anger at
+himself, anger at Thursby, anger at circumstances, chance and destiny:
+blinding and suffocating anger. To have been brought to this shameful
+state, to lie there watching a woman, a mere girl, perform these
+menial tasks for him--for him who had execrated and despised and
+scorned her sex--for him who had accepted such services grudgingly
+even from men--for him who had stalked around the world in defiant
+independence, indebted to no man and obligated to no woman: this was
+odious and intolerable. And it must be tolerated!
+
+Marion knew nothing of this fiery ordeal through which Haig came. Even
+in the fiercest and most maddening moment of his agony, when honor and
+pride and self-respect were being reduced to ashes, he did not fail to
+realize that to cry out, to rave or curse or denunciate, would only be
+to add something cowardly and contemptible to the sum of his disgrace.
+He did not even cast a stealthy glance toward his revolver, where it
+lay in a niche in the cavern wall, though Marion was out in the snow
+somewhere, and could not have stopped him if he had crawled to seize
+it. That, too, would have been an act of cowardice and of infamy; and
+something deep within him now continually spoke for her, and for
+whatever it was she stood for in this chaos that was the end of all.
+
+His fury slowly passed, and he had but emerged from its strangely
+purifying fire into a calm that was well-nigh as terrible, when she
+entered sobbing into the cave to tell him the pitiable little lie that
+all her visible distress was for a pony to whom she had said farewell.
+He saw her presently totter forward to put more fuel on the fire and
+begin to prepare their evening meal. With eyes from which the smoke of
+passion had now lifted, he saw what he had only vaguely seen before:
+that she was thin and haggard; that her pale face took on a hectic
+flush in the glow of the blazing pine; that her clothes were all in
+tatters, her riding-skirt slit in many places, her coat and flannel
+waist so worn, and torn that they barely covered her, and did indeed
+reveal one white shoulder through a gaping rent; that one dilapidated
+boot was quite out at toe; and that she was ill and faint and silent.
+
+"Marion!" he called to her.
+
+"Yes, Philip!" she answered, turning to look at him.
+
+"Come here, please!"
+
+She came and stood before him, unsteadily.
+
+"Let me see your hands!"
+
+She knelt, and held them out to him. Taking them in his own hands,
+which were then far softer and whiter than hers, he looked long at the
+raw and bleeding cracks, at the swollen joints, at the bruised and
+calloused fingers, at the nails (they were once so pink and polished)
+worn down to the quick, and at one nail that had been split back
+almost to its root.
+
+"They're not very pretty, are they?" she said, with a weak little
+laugh that ended in a quiver of her chin.
+
+He lifted the hands, the right one and then the left, and touched them
+with his lips. She was very weary and faint and miserable; and he had
+never done anything like that before; and so she drew back her hands,
+and buried her face in them, and sank sobbing on the floor.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+THE VOICE IN THE HURRICANE
+
+
+Their sufferings, as the days went crawling into weeks, attained a
+certain dead level of wretchedness. At that level, should nothing
+worse befall, they felt that they might exist through the eight months
+of their imprisonment; beyond that level lay deliverance by death. So
+they kept a painstaking account of time, and made a sort of solemn
+ceremony of that hour when, as night let down its black curtain before
+the entrance of the cavern, Marion cut another notch in the wall, and
+they clasped hands in a brave effort at good cheer, and said to each
+other, "One more! One more!"
+
+The cold had steadily increased until it was just barely endurable. By
+day it was possible to combat it in some measure, but at night they
+were stung and tortured by the frost that invaded the cave, and defied
+their meager clothing. If they tried lying closely side by side with
+their blankets spread over them, the cold crept under the coverings,
+and bit through their garments into their emaciated limbs. If they
+wrapped themselves tightly in the blankets, one pair to each, and lay
+near the fire, they were able to catch only a few fitful moments of
+sleep before the frost on one side and the heat on the other forced
+them to move.
+
+At inexorable intervals the fire must be replenished. Heavy with sleep
+that was not sleep, feeble from lack of nourishment, and stiff from
+cold, Marion would rise and stumble to the nearest heap of wood, and
+carefully lay two or three pieces on the dying embers. The fire itself
+was to Marion a source of continual dread; for not only did it consume
+their precious and unrenewable supply of wood with a terrifying
+voracity, but she was fairly obsessed by the fear that she might let
+it go out. In that event they might never waken, clutched by the cold
+in their sleep; or wakening, find that something had happened to the
+matches. There remained a good store of these in the box enfolded
+carefully in a bit of cloth and a strip of deerskin, and bestowed in a
+high niche of the cavern; but there was sometimes moisture in the
+night winds, and there could be no absolute assurance that the matches
+would ignite in an emergency.
+
+The winds blew irregularly, sometimes roaring through the cave, and
+filling it with a whirl of smoke and snow, and sometimes creeping
+along the floor with the malevolence and stealthiness of a serpent.
+Marion had blocked up the entrance with small logs and limbs, but the
+winds and draughts made scorn of this loose barrier. Her clothes were
+fast falling from her body. She essayed crude patchwork with strips of
+deerskin and pins of wood, but these efforts were rendered futile by
+wear and tear and the rotting of the cloth itself. She began to be
+embarrassed when her flesh showed through the rents in her garments;
+but Haig, with a mingling of frankness and tact that might indeed have
+been less easy in other circumstances, effectually helped her to
+banish all false modesty from a situation in which they were reduced
+to primitive habits and almost to primitive familiarities.
+
+She was less able to accustom herself to the dirt, from which there
+was no escape, but which irked her nevertheless more than all else.
+She was no longer able to keep clean in any sense of cleanliness
+associated with civilization. Washing with water melted from snow,
+without soap or towels, had only the effect, as it seemed to her, to
+fix the grime more deeply in her skin. And the hair that had been her
+pride had now no more the golden lights in its tawny masses, and was
+becoming dark and harsh and sheenless in spite of her most assiduous
+attention.
+
+"Don't worry!" said Haig one day, in a grim attempt at humor. "Just
+imagine you are a belle of the Eskimos."
+
+"Philip! How can you?" she cried.
+
+"Washing," he went on, "is only another error of civilization. I have
+seen whole tribes of most respectable aborigines that never bathed.
+And they seemed to be quite happy. It saves a lot of time. But that's
+another queer thing. The more time we need, the more we waste it on
+matters that are really unimportant. Like most of our attempts to
+improve on nature, it costs more than it's worth, and--"
+
+"That will do, Philip!" she protested. "I can forget I'm hungry,
+but--ugh! not this!"
+
+But she spoke too bravely about her hunger. Their food by this time
+had begun to pall. The good venison, of which they had eaten joyously
+at first, became tasteless and then disgusting. They had no salt. The
+bacon and the bread had long since been consumed, and the chocolate
+also. There was left nothing but the flesh of deer and rabbits. Marion
+stewed it, broiled it, baked it under hot ashes; and they even
+nibbled at it raw; but the time came when only the relentless pangs of
+hunger, the hunger of the animal, the sheer clamor of their stomachs
+could force them to eat the nauseating food. In consequence of this
+revulsion, they were always hungry; and sometimes, in spite of their
+resolution, they descended to torturing each other with talk of the
+good things there were in the world to eat.
+
+"Claire makes the most gorgeous apple dumplings!" said Marion on one
+of these occasions.
+
+"Apple dumplings? Ye-es," replied Haig judiciously. "But what about
+plain dumplings in chicken gravy?"
+
+"Fricassee!" cried Marion.
+
+"No. Maryland."
+
+"Still, Philip, if I had my choice it wouldn't be chicken at all."
+
+"What then?"
+
+"Potatoes. Big, baked potatoes, split open, you know, with butter and
+salt and paprika."
+
+"Or sweet potatoes swimming in butter."
+
+"And salad--lettuce and tomatoes and oil and vinegar."
+
+"And then pie. Think of blackberry pie!"
+
+"And jam. I do love jam spread on toast."
+
+"I'll tell you something," said Haig recklessly. "I could even eat
+sauerkraut!"
+
+Their worst craving was for salt. Marion could fairly taste the spray
+of the Atlantic on the bathing beaches. She dreamt of salt,--barrels
+of salt and oceans of salt and caves she had read of in which salt
+hung in glittering stalactites. And Haig too. He described a desert
+where salt had risen to the surface and gleamed in crystals in the
+sand. And once he had lived a long time on salt pork, which he had
+thought the most insufferable food. But now! The taste of it came back
+to him, and went tingling through every nerve.
+
+To free their minds from such tormenting memories, Haig went deep into
+his adventures, his wanderings, his search for excitements. He told
+her of strange lands and peoples, of the beautiful spots of the world,
+of battles and perils and escapes,--everything he had been through,
+with one exception. That--the story of Paris--was still a closed book
+to her. And similarly, there was one chapter of her life that she did
+not open to him. A certain delicacy, rendered more vital by their very
+situation, in which few delicacies could be maintained, restrained
+them from the uttermost self-revelation. The one subject that was not
+touched upon in the most intimate of their conversations was that
+dearest to Marion's heart and most incomprehensible to Haig's reason.
+Partly this avoidance was intuitive, and partly deliberate; where
+there was so much suffering that could not be escaped, they were
+scrupulous to inflict upon each other no unnecessary pain or
+embarrassment. Between a more common man and a less fastidious woman,
+placed in such propinquity, there would almost inevitably have been
+concessions and compromises but between these two there remained a
+barrier that might have been passed by Marion's unquestioning love,
+but never by Haig's inclinations, curbed as they had been through many
+years, and still reined in by his distrust.
+
+The day came when it seemed safe for Haig to stand and to move a
+little about the cave. He had fashioned slowly a pair of rude
+crutches, if they could be so called,--two pine limbs trimmed down
+with his pocketknife, with their natural forks left to fit under his
+arms. Marion protested that he was attempting this feat much too soon,
+but she was compelled to watch him in an agony of suspense lest he
+should fall on the hard floor of the cave, or rest his weight on the
+injured leg, and so undo all that had cost them so much of care and
+labor. But caution restrained him; for he was aware of the danger,
+though he was also half-mad with impatience to be a man once more.
+Venturing only a few tentative steps at first, he steadily accustomed
+himself to movement with the aid of the awkward crutches, and in a few
+days was able to take up some of the work of their wretched
+habitation. Marion saw that this pleased him immensely, almost as if
+he had been a boy entrusted with a man's responsibility; and once,
+too, she saw him stand a long time before the row of notches on the
+wall, and thought his figure straightened, and a flush came into his
+pale cheek.
+
+And then, in the sixth week of their imprisonment, Marion fell ill.
+She had caught a cold, which was not the first by any means, but much
+more severe than its predecessors. With watery eyes and red noses and
+distressing coughs they had become familiar, but this was plainly a
+more serious matter. For three days more she dragged herself about,
+trying to conceal her state from him and from herself, but crying
+softly when he did not see her.
+
+One morning, as the dawn crept into the cavern, she tried as usual to
+rise from her hard bed, and fell back with a stifled moan. Haig heard
+her, and raised his head quickly, struck by an unaccustomed note in
+her low cry.
+
+"What is it, Marion?" he asked in alarm.
+
+"It's no use, dear!" she whispered. "I can't get up."
+
+For a moment he lay stricken, incapable of thought. Not that the event
+was unexpected. He had been reckoning on that; he had seen her
+steadily failing, and knew that she could not go on indefinitely under
+such privations. And yet, when it came, it was appalling. The grayness
+of the cave settled down upon him like a pall. Once he would have been
+indifferent to it, resigned to the knowledge that it was inevitable.
+But now he had come, if not to share her hope, at least to sympathize
+with it, and to wish ardently for her sake that her faith might be
+justified. And it seemed a pitiable thing that she should have been
+deceived, an intolerable thing that she should die there so
+uselessly,--for him.
+
+He moved over to her, and placed his hand on her forehead. It was
+burning hot.
+
+"Water, please!" she gasped.
+
+He hobbled to the entrance, and brought a cupful of snow, and melted
+it over the fire. She drank the water greedily, and begged for more.
+But he told her gently that she must wait a little while. Then he sat
+thinking. What should be done with fever? It would probably be
+pneumonia, or something as fatal. And it would take her as the north
+wind takes the drooping petals of a rose.
+
+He bent over her, and tried to soothe her with such futile words as
+came. The look she gave him went straight into deep, dark cells of his
+being that he thought had been closed and sealed forever. She begged
+him to eat; he must cook his own breakfast. Oh, but he must eat, or he
+should not be able to help her, she said. She would be quite well in a
+day or two; she was sure of that; and he must not get sick too. After
+he had been so patient and so good to her!
+
+Haig turned away with a groan, and tried to obey her. But eat? Eat
+that repulsive food that he had choked down these many days only to
+please her, only to subscribe to her foolish faith? He could not! But
+presently she raised her head, and saw that he was not eating, and
+chided him. Whereupon he swallowed some morsels of the venison, and
+assured her that he had eaten heartily.
+
+All that day she lay there, her face flushed, her eyes gleaming with a
+brightness that was more than the brightness of her indomitable
+spirit. When she smiled up at him he turned his face away that she
+might not see what he knew was written on it. And then he realized how
+much that smile had come to mean to him--how all unawares he had come
+to covet and to prize it--how he had half-consciously of late resorted
+to unexpected words and gestures to coax it to her lips.
+
+There was no sleep for either of them that night. The next day Marion
+grew steadily worse, and toward evening she became delirious. And
+there was no concealment in this delirium as there had been in his.
+All that he had not seen and heard and guessed before was now wholly
+revealed to him. He was permitted to see deep into the pure soul of
+the girl, into her very heart that was brimming over with love for
+him. His name came riding on every breath. It was Philip, Philip,
+Philip! And bit by bit, and fragment by fragment, he heard all the
+pitiful story of her love, of her petty stratagems, of the wicked
+little plot she had made, of the traps from which he had extricated
+himself, of the pretended sprain in her ankle, of her watching and
+waiting, of the anguish he had caused her, of her solitary communion
+with the stars on Mount Avalanche, of her dismissal of Hillyer, of her
+faith in the love that should not be denied and unrequited, of her
+prayers for a miracle that should bring him to her at last.
+
+He looked down at the poor, small foot in its ragged shoe; yes, that
+was the foot that was "sprained." And how it had trudged, and dragged
+itself along for him, when every bone and muscle of her body ached! He
+looked at her hands, thin even in their swollenness, raw and bleeding,
+hard as a laborer's on the palms. How they had toiled and bled for
+him! For him! And what about him? What about Philip Haig?
+
+He leaned back from her, and closed his eyes. And suddenly it seemed
+as if something fell away from them, as if something that had bound
+and imprisoned and blinded him had been rudely shattered. In one
+terrible, torturing revelation he saw clearly what he had been, what
+he had done, what a miserable wreck he had made of life, what a
+pitiable, dwarfed, misshapen thing his soul had become in comparison
+with the soul of this girl whom he had despised. He saw that he had
+lived a life of almost untouched egoism, setting his own wrongs above
+all the other wrongs in the world, counting his own griefs the
+greatest of all griefs, nursing his own tragedy as if it had been the
+first tragedy and the last. Bitterly, remorselessly he reviewed his
+selfishness, his hatred, his senseless rage, the heartlessness wrought
+by himself in a nature that had been, in the beginning, as pure, if
+not as precious and fine and beautiful, as hers.
+
+And that was not all. He had taken woman for the special object of his
+hatred. He had made himself believe that all women were alike. Was
+there, then, only one kind of woman in a world filled with many kinds
+of men? Because he had been a fool, because he had been deceived by
+one woman, he had concluded, in his folly, that every woman was a
+vampire or a parasite,--"a rag and a bone and a hank of hair"!
+
+And now there lay before him indeed (and the words took on a new and
+more terrible meaning) "a rag and a bone and a hank of hair." Yes,
+this was all that was left of her. This was what he had made of the
+most joyous and most beautiful creature that had ever crossed his
+path; this was the best he could do for one who had had the misfortune
+to love him and the courage to tell him so. This was his work! His
+memory went back to that day before the post-office. How beautiful she
+was then, how strangely beautiful, coming out of that halo of light by
+the side of the golden outlaw. Something had stirred within him then,
+as it had stirred again and again: at Huntington's when she reached
+for his revolver; in his cottage that last afternoon of her nursing.
+And he had repulsed it, put it down, and trampled on it, as if it had
+been an execrable thing instead of the very treasure he had been
+seeking all his life without knowing what he sought. And now he
+recognized it for what it was--too late!
+
+He bent nearer to her, listening.
+
+"Philip! Philip!" she was saying, in tender, coaxing accents,
+with that quivering of her chin that had many times been almost
+irresistible.
+
+Then came the final break-up of everything within him. He felt lifted
+as upon a flood, and a wild and passionate longing surged through all
+his being. He leaned swiftly over her, and clasped her in his arms,
+and pressed her hot cheek against his own. And then--it was
+unendurable; he felt one of her arms softly encircling his neck. There
+was just one gentle pressure, and then the arm fell to her side, and
+her head sank weakly away from him. He laid her back tenderly on her
+hard bed.
+
+He sat up again, looking at her and listening. She rambled on in
+half-coherent speech. She had not heard him cry out her name; or if
+she had heard him it had been only a part of her fevered dreams. And
+this was the crowning bitterness: that he should want to speak to her,
+to tell her that he loved her, and she could not hear; that he was too
+late, and she would never know.
+
+He leaped to his feet in a whirling tempest of rage. He stumbled to
+the mouth of the cave, and thrust himself half through the barricade,
+and looked out into the wilderness of snow, and stood shaking his fist
+at it, quivering with passion, and uttering the wildest imprecations
+upon the world, upon the outlaw, and upon himself. And gradually they
+centered upon himself alone; and he stood presently, as it were, naked
+before God, with something like a prayer unspoken, a silent,
+voiceless petition rising from his tortured soul.
+
+He became calm after that. A curious peace, it seemed, had flowed in
+upon him. Mechanically he renewed the fire, brought water and held it
+to Marion's lips, and eased her position on the bed. Then he sat by
+her side to wait!
+
+Well, this was the end. She would be going soon,--to-morrow, or the
+day after. He glanced toward the shelf where Marion's rifle and his
+revolver lay. She would not be there now to snatch the weapon from his
+hand! But she would be waiting for him. And there came back to him the
+strange feeling he had experienced in his cottage--the pressure of her
+hand still warm on his own--her hand helping up and up and out of the
+Valley of the Shadow. And her hand would be stretched out for him--in
+the Beyond--
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+It must have been about the middle of the next forenoon--he had ceased
+to reckon time, and there were no more notches cut on the black wall
+of the cave--when Philip, sitting at Marion's side, observed a
+curious, restless movement of her head. She had lain all morning in a
+stupor, very still, with only an occasional murmur from her dry lips.
+But now, moving her head from side to side, she tried to lift it, as
+if to listen.
+
+"What is it, Marion?" asked Haig, leaning close to her.
+
+"Listen!" she whispered.
+
+He obeyed her, or pretended to, and turned an ear toward the mouth of
+the cavern. The wind was up with its wailing and its snarls and
+shrieks. He heard it for a moment, then looked at her again.
+
+"My poor girl! My poor Marion!" he said.
+
+"Listen!" she repeated, with a touching emphasis, almost childish,
+almost petulant.
+
+He heard the storm.
+
+"Yes, Marion," he said, humoring her.
+
+"Can't you hear it?" she pleaded. "Listen!"
+
+It was the delirium again; she was hearing things that were not,
+except in her disordered mind. Perhaps--he had read somewhere that the
+dying, those of them that are pure at heart, sometimes hear the
+calling of the--
+
+"Somebody's--coming!" she cried in the thinnest, most childlike
+treble. Her face shone; she tried to sit up; she raised one hand
+feebly toward him.
+
+"Please lie down, dear!" pleaded Haig, pressing her gently back.
+
+She resisted him, smiling and frowning at the same time.
+
+"Be--very--still. And--listen!" she persisted.
+
+To please her, he sat erect, and listened. They were very still then,
+one of her hands between both of his. And the storm was raging. It was
+wilder, wilder. All the fury of Thunder Mountain seemed to be behind
+the wind that came shrieking and bellowing down the gulch.
+
+The seconds passed, with dead silence in the cave, and that bedlam let
+loose outside.
+
+Then suddenly Haig lifted his head. What was it? There seemed to have
+come--No, it was but a mocking voice of the hurricane, one of the
+myriad voices of that wintry inferno, mocking them with a half-human
+cry. He looked sadly down at Marion, and saw that wondrous smile again
+upon her emaciated face. Oh, but this was maddening! Yet because she
+wished it, he listened again. And then, out of that tumult--very faint
+and far--
+
+"My God! My God!" he shouted.
+
+He leaped to his feet. He forgot his crutches. He flung himself across
+the floor of the cave in three reckless bounds, flung himself on the
+barrier of logs and limbs, clawing it like a maniac, or a wild beast,
+tore his way through it, and stood in the snow on the platform,
+calling into the storm, shrieking, bellowing, out-shrieking and
+out-bellowing the storm, swaying dizzily in the wind, and clutching at
+the air before him in a frenzy.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+THE MAN WHO DID NOT FORGET
+
+
+Out of the tempest came the answering halloo; and Haig redoubled his
+outcries. Twice it came, whipped and broken by the wind; and then
+there was but the wind itself. Exhausted by his efforts, and sick of
+desperation and despair, Haig sank back weakly against the rock.
+Round and round him whirled the snow; across his face the wind cut
+him with savage lashes; in his ears there was nothing, nothing but
+the storm. Then, all grew black before him. After all, it had been
+an hallucination; he had been as mad as Marion in her delirium; he
+had peopled the storm with imaginary beings, had given the wind a
+voice it did not know. Crushed by disappointment, acknowledging the
+end, he was sinking down upon the snow-covered platform, when,
+suddenly--
+
+"Hal-lo-o-o!"
+
+It was nearer and louder than before. Haig straightened up, and again
+filled the tumultuous air with hoarse cries. Once more the voice came;
+and then out of the white chaos at the right of the cave, almost level
+with the platform, a dark form appeared, striding forward with a
+peculiar swinging motion, clumsily but sure.
+
+Haig uttered one more call that dribbled into a sobbing cry.
+
+"All--right!" answered the figure, in a smothered tone.
+
+Huge, hunchbacked and cumbersome, the figure shuffled up the slight
+slope between the level of the snow and the snowy platform, and
+halted. A mittened hand went up to its head, and brushed the snow from
+the face.
+
+"Pete!" cried Haig.
+
+He attempted to move forward, stumbled, lunged toward the Indian, and
+collapsed in his arms. Pete, holding him, looked around until he saw
+the opening of the cave, and fairly carried Haig inside. For a few
+seconds, seeing nothing in the sudden change from the dazzling
+whiteness of the snow to the dim red light of the cavern, Pete stood
+still. Then Haig stiffened, stood erect, and pushed the Indian from
+him.
+
+"There! Look!" he gasped, pointing to where Marion lay, wild-eyed on
+the bed, wrapped in her blankets. Then he sank down on the floor, with
+his back against the wall, and gave himself up to dizziness and
+exhaustion.
+
+Pete quickly removed his thick mittens, unstrapped the bundle that
+rested on his back, and took off the snowshoes that had caused his
+approach over the snow to appear so like a lumbering animal's.
+Flinging all these on the floor, he went swiftly to Marion's side, and
+knelt there.
+
+"Sick?" he asked.
+
+She did not answer, but stared at him, and smiled.
+
+"Listen!" she whispered. "Somebody--coming!"
+
+Pete stood up, and looked at Haig.
+
+"How long like this?" he asked.
+
+"I forget. Three or four days."
+
+"You well?"
+
+"Yes," Haig answered weakly.
+
+Pete came closer, and pointed to the leg that Haig kept thrust stiffly
+out before him.
+
+"Broke?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"How long?"
+
+"Six weeks."
+
+The Indian asked no more questions just then, but hastened to open his
+pack. First he found a bottle of whisky, and made Haig take a long
+drink. Pete believed in two remedies for all human ills. He had a brew
+of herbs that he had inherited from his tribal ancestors, his sole
+inheritance besides his iron body. This brew was good for fevers; and
+whisky was good for everything else. Having doctored Haig with the
+whisky, he now turned to Marion with the brew. From a flask he poured
+some of the dark brown liquid into a cup, let it come just to a boil
+among the embers of the fire, and when it had cooled a little placed
+it to Marion's lips. It was bitter, and she tried to draw away from
+it, but Pete forced her gently to drain the cup.
+
+Whatever the brew might be worth, the whisky certainly was efficacious.
+Haig sat erect, and began hurling questions at the Indian.
+
+"How did you get in here--in God's name?" was the first.
+
+"Black Lake country."
+
+"But how did you get in there?"
+
+"Simpson's Pass."
+
+Haig stared at him. He knew that to reach Simpson's Pass the Indian
+must have gone far south below the canyon of the Big Bear, made a wide
+detour over the lower range, and ascended to the Pass around the
+shoulder of Big Bear Mountain. He had never heard of the Pass being
+crossed in winter, and it was almost unbelievable.
+
+"But the snow!" he exclaimed.
+
+Pete pointed to the snowshoes.
+
+"But the Pass doesn't let into the Black Lake country," said Haig.
+"There's another range of mountains."
+
+"Yes. I come over them."
+
+"How long did it take you?"
+
+"I been four weeks. But most of time looking in forest down there."
+
+"But how did you find us?"
+
+The Indian drew from his pocket a ragged and soiled piece of paper,
+and spread it out on the floor. It was a crude map, with Paradise Park
+outlined at one side, and at the other a labyrinth of lines and stars
+and crosses. The stars were peaks, the crosses were foothills, and the
+lines were creeks and valleys. Through the maze ran one heavier line
+that indicated the trail through the Black Lake country up to the
+cliff at the back of Thunder Mountain.
+
+"Old Parker made it," said Pete.
+
+"Tell me all!" commanded Haig. "But wait!" He pointed to Marion.
+
+Marion's babbling had slowly subsided, and ceased. Pete rose and went
+to her noiselessly on his moccasined feet; and after looking at her a
+moment stepped cautiously back.
+
+"She quiet now. Sleep soon," he said.
+
+And it was so. The next time he slipped over to her, the girl's eyes
+were closed, and soon she had sunk into a profound slumber from which
+she did not awake until late the next morning.
+
+Meanwhile Pete took up his story. Smythe had delivered Marion's
+message, and had told them what he feared. Claire's knowledge of the
+state of Marion's heart and mind enabled her to guess the worst, but
+Seth scouted the idea of her trying to reach the top of Thunder
+Mountain, or of Murray permitting her to try it. So two days were lost
+before the alarm was sounded by Murray, who, after two attempts to
+reach the top of the mountain, had given up and ridden to the Park for
+help.
+
+The whole valley responded to the call, and the most desperate efforts
+were made to reach the plateau, but the storms that Haig and Marion
+had heard in their sheltered gulch were of such fury and continuity
+that the hardiest of the ranchmen were unable to prevail against them.
+Huntington, half-crazed by the thought of the two days he had allowed
+to be lost, had gone farther than any of the others, and had been
+rescued with difficulty by some of his neighbors, who found him lying
+senseless at the foot of the ascent to the Devil's Chair, where the
+wind had hurled him back down the slope. Smythe was among those who
+saved him, for the little tutor had let the last stage go without him,
+and was one of the most reckless in the attacks on the mountain.
+
+All these efforts having failed, and the winter having fallen with
+exceptional suddenness and severity, even. Huntington was forced to
+accept the general opinion that nothing more could be done; that they
+could only wait for summer, when they could go to the mountain top and
+bring back Marion's body--and doubtless Haig's too. And so, said
+Huntington, the feud was ended.
+
+One person alone in the Park refused to admit all this. Pete was
+forced indeed to admit it in theory, but he was resolved to prove it
+or disprove it on his own account. He had studied Thunder Mountain
+from the ridge above the ranch house all that day of Sunnysides'
+escape, and the next. And he remembered now that a period of calm had
+followed the storm on that second day. If Haig or Marion, or both of
+them, had by chance reached the flat top in that interval, they might
+have crossed, and might be now somewhere in the forests on the other
+side.
+
+He went to Parker, talked with him long about the character of the
+Black Lake country, induced him to draw the crude map, and then
+visited Seth and Claire. Seth shook his head gloomily, but Claire
+eagerly proceeded to assemble enough supplies to have loaded down a
+pack horse. There followed a pitifully comical struggle with her
+before her "first aid" was reduced to what Pete could carry in his
+canvas knapsack,--a small roll of underwear, needles and thread,
+bandages and a packet of household medicines in addition to Pete's own
+selection of a strip of bacon, a dozen onions, two score of vegetable
+soup tablets, two cans of condensed milk, small quantities of coffee
+and tea, salt and pepper, two cakes of soap and (especially insisted
+on by Pete) a plug of black tobacco and a pipe.
+
+All these supplies Pete had saved untouched, living himself on game
+shot on the long journey. For nearly five weeks he had struggled
+against unbelievable hardships, fighting like primitive man against
+the fiercest enmity of nature; had searched the whole Black Lake
+country; and that day, slowly following the direction of the trail up
+through the narrowing gulch among the tree tops, the smell of smoke
+was brought to his nostrils on the wind, and he traced it along the
+foot of the cliff.
+
+"But did you really expect to find us alive?" asked Haig.
+
+"No."
+
+"Then why did you do all this?"
+
+"All I could do. Indian never forgets."
+
+Thereupon he brought out Haig's pipe and his own, and they smoked over
+it in silence, late into the night.
+
+Marion awoke the next morning with another look in her eyes. Her fever
+was still high, but she was no longer delirious. Too feeble to ask
+questions, she only smiled, and took obediently the remainder of the
+potion that Pete poured from his flask and heated in the tin-cup among
+the embers. On her wakening again it was seen that the fever was
+broken. But life in her was only a tiny flame, at times the merest
+spark that every gust of wind through the cavern threatened to
+extinguish. Hour after hour Haig and the Indian watched it, the one in
+such anguish as the repentant murderer suffers as he kneels over the
+poor victim of his rage, the other in stolid resignation, seeing that
+perhaps he had come too late.
+
+But the spark was the bravest little spark in the world; and it did
+not go out. In time Pete dared to give Marion a little weakened milk;
+and then, when she responded to the milk, a few sips of soup that was
+scarcely thicker than water. And thus from day to day they nursed her
+back to some recognizable shadow of what she had been two months
+before.
+
+There came an evening when they sat down to a veritable feast. Haig
+had stubbornly refused to taste any of the delicacies in Pete's store,
+excepting salt and pepper. Besides, with seasoning, the venison was no
+longer quite repugnant to his palate; and he and the Indian did very
+well on that until the feast was spread. And it was a feast
+remembered. There was soup, to begin with, drunk from the two cups
+they now possessed; then a rabbit stew, seasoned with SALT AND PEPPER,
+and flavored with an ONION; and black coffee (very black indeed, to be
+quite exact). Then Haig's and Pete's pipes were lighted; and the
+Indian must tell them again the story of the rescue; and let the wind
+howl its savagest!
+
+"Poor Claire!" said Marion, with a tremulous little laugh, when Pete
+told her how the knapsack was packed.
+
+And Haig looked across at her dizzily, as if the fumes of the strong
+tobacco had gone to his head.
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+Their situation was still miserable enough, but the Indian contrived
+to make it less unendurable. He knew some knacks of cookery that
+availed to make their venison and rabbit palatable; and the tea and
+coffee cheered them beyond all possibility of expression. No longer
+required to toil; with clean underwear; with soap for her blackened
+face and hands, Marion recovered her strength, or much of it, with
+amazing swiftness. Pete made a rough coat and even a skirt for her of
+deerskin. The coat was of double thickness, and very warm indeed, and
+so she gave back to Haig the remnant of the leather coat she had been
+wearing, which was now needed to cover his ragged corduroy. Then came
+moccasins, and better crutches for Haig; and so they settled down with
+new courage for what they thought would be a long wait through the
+implacable winter.
+
+Haig kept his secret, or supposed he was keeping it. Marion did not
+indeed remember how he had taken her in his arms in her delirium;
+rather, if there was a faint but insistent recollection of the embrace
+it was intangible and unreal. She had dreamed so often of that
+longed-for embrace that the reality was inseparable from the imagined.
+Nor was she aware of the revelation that had come to Haig, as if a
+dazzling light had broken through the walls of the cavern. But though
+he might keep his secret he could not conceal from her the change that
+had come over him, the tenderness and wonder and humility that had
+succeeded his hardness and scepticism and belligerency. She detected
+that alteration in every look he gave her, in every movement he made
+in waiting upon her, in every tone of his speech, though the words
+were the most commonplace. And in her great faith she was not
+surprised. But she was thrilled. The knowledge ran through her veins
+like a living fire, a better nourishment than food, a more potent cure
+than any medicine.
+
+So the long days, not quite so long as they used to be, marched on.
+Despite the skilful services of Pete they were still always cold,
+always hungry, always weary for want of sleep, and always dirty and
+unkempt. Then there came a day when Pete astonished them. He brought
+in from the forest certain small limbs of tough wood, and began to
+trim them and bend them into shapes that they were presently able to
+recognize. Snowshoes!
+
+"You don't mean--Can we do it?" cried Haig incredulously.
+
+"Can't stay here," was Pete's short reply.
+
+True; they could not stay there; it was just what Haig had been
+thinking, or trying to avoid thinking. But how would Marion be able to
+endure that terrible journey over Simpson's Pass? For her part she
+said nothing, but her eyes met Philip's; she reached her hand to him,
+and he clasped it tightly.
+
+Three weeks after Pete's arrival he began gradually to inure Haig and
+Marion to living and moving in the snow. He taught them to walk on
+snowshoes, to climb steep slopes on them, to pick their way among the
+trees. There were countless falls in deep drifts, and headlong
+plunges, and ungraceful wallowings in the snow. But they knew their
+lives depended on these labors, and they were even able to laugh at
+some of their awkward performances. These exercises were, moreover,
+very good for them. Ill-nourished though they were, the natural color
+crept back into their cheeks, the blood flowed briskly again, through
+their chilled veins, their muscles were strengthened by their
+struggles with the winds and the snow that still came on with
+unremitted vigor. Then Pete went a step farther in the preparations
+for the crucial test. Not only must they spend the greater part of
+the day outside the cave, but they must sleep, or try to sleep, a few
+hours every night in the snow, wrapped in their blankets, in holes
+scooped out under the lee of a snowbank, while the Indian stood guard
+nearby.
+
+It was near the end of December when Pete thought his charges had
+become sufficiently hardened to undertake the long journey. The
+weather, if it had not moderated (it would not begin to moderate there
+until long after spring had brought out the flowers in the distant
+Park), had settled a little after its first fury. The storms came with
+less frequency, and the snow had assumed a certain stability with the
+steadily added weight. Both Marion and Haig bad mastered their
+snowshoes, and were able to travel slowly after Pete. Moreover, all
+the delicacies that Pete had brought had been consumed, despite their
+most careful husbanding, and even the meager supply of salt and pepper
+would soon be exhausted, leaving only the unseasoned venison of odious
+memory.
+
+The night before the day set for their departure, Pete broiled strips
+of venison sufficient for a week or more, and stowed them in his
+knapsack. At dawn they were up, and eagerly making the final
+preparations. Haig and Marion, in their impatience, would have eaten
+nothing, but the Indian, true to his tribal habit of filling the
+stomach before a march, insisted that breakfast should be a methodical
+and leisurely business. From some recess he drew the last soup tablet,
+the last onion, and the last of the ground coffee, which he had
+clandestinely saved against this great event. The feast with which
+they had celebrated Marion's recovery was now repeated in celebration
+of their farewell to the cave,--the soup, the rabbit stew and the
+black coffee.
+
+Then, when Pete had fastened their snowshoes securely on their
+moccasined feet, and had gone out to trample down the fresh snow on
+the platform before the cave, Haig and Marion stood together for a
+last look upon the scene of their sufferings. They looked at the dying
+fire, at the flattened beds of boughs, at the long row of notches on
+the wall, at the crutches lying among the firewood, at crumpled and
+ragged boots and bits of worn-out clothing.
+
+"Good-by--you!" cried Marion, laughing tremulously, very near to
+tears.
+
+"Yes, good-by!" said Haig.
+
+That cave--what had it not meant for him! There was his Valley of the
+Shadow, into which he had again descended to seek and find the better
+part of him that he had left there long ago.
+
+"Go on out, please!" he said presently. "I'll come in a minute."
+
+She looked at him curiously, but obeyed. Haig waited till she had
+gone, and then shuffled clumsily on his snowshoes across the floor to
+where, beyond the fire, lay one of Marion's boots. It was a torn and
+misshapen thing, the sole worn through, the leather curled up from the
+open toe. He picked it up hastily, and with a swift glance at the
+mouth of the cavern, thrust it into an inside pocket of his leather
+coat.
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was a wonderful, thrilling, terrifying journey, filled with
+hardships and perils. Caution and sheer toil of travel held them to
+slow progress. They went through vast forests, among the very tops of
+the tall pines; they climbed wide, bare slopes where the winds had
+almost stripped the snow from the gaunt rocks; they descended into
+sheltered valleys where the deer went scurrying at their approach;
+they crossed deep gulches packed half-full of blown and drifted snow;
+they passed close to the edges of precipices where a false step would
+have sent them whirling down into white abysses spiked with pines.
+Storms overtook them, and forced them to remain many hours in such
+shelter as they could find. Sometimes they slept under overhanging
+rocks with a fire blazing at their feet, but more often the night was
+spent in burrows dug in the snow. Their supply of venison ran out, and
+a day was lost while Pete hunted and killed a deer, and cooked strips
+of its flesh, to be seasoned with the very last of their salt and
+pepper, and kept in his knapsack. But even Marion did not lose courage
+or once falter, though many times her heart was in her mouth and a
+cold sweat on her forehead as they passed some formidable and
+terrifying obstacle.
+
+At length, on a bright and glittering day, when it seemed the storms
+had finally abandoned their enmity, they climbed slowly up the long
+slopes to Simpson's Pass, and stood at noon high above a wide and
+wonderful world of snow, with white mountains succeeding one another,
+range on range, as far as their eyes could reach before them and
+behind. And that afternoon, as they toiled around the shoulder of Big
+Bear Mountain, they stopped and gazed,--Marion with tears streaming
+down her cheeks, and Haig with his hands clenched tightly at his
+sides. For there, still far away below them, but _there_ beyond all
+mistake, lay Paradise Park, very white and still and glittering in the
+sun; and off at the right was Thunder Mountain, squatting among the
+silver peaks, its sullen head half hidden by gray-black clouds.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+GHOSTS
+
+
+The lamp had not been lighted in the sitting-room at Huntington's, but
+the pitch log blazing in the great fireplace reddened the farthest
+corners of the room, and flushed the somber faces of Seth and Claire.
+Their habit, in these days of grief, was to sit the winter evenings
+through almost in silence, their self-reproaches long since spent,
+their hopes turned to ashes, which Claire alone tried sometimes to fan
+into a glow. They had eaten their supper before twilight, without
+speech, and then, as always, waited wearily for sleep.
+
+"It will be three months and two weeks to-morrow," she said, without
+looking away from the fire.
+
+"Yes," answered Huntington.
+
+"Isn't it possible she may have reached--"
+
+"It's no use, Claire, thinking such things."
+
+"But Pete! He hasn't come back, and maybe that means--"
+
+She did not even finish the sentence, which simply faded away on her
+lips, a useless and foolish conjecture.
+
+Another long silence followed. Seth's cigarette went out, and hung
+dead from his bearded lips, while he stared gloomily into the blaze.
+He sat with his back toward the front door. Claire, near a corner of
+the big stone chimney, leaned forward, her head inclined to one side,
+the cheek resting on her open hand, the elbow on her knee. Her eyes,
+which had been lifted from their long gazing at the fire at the moment
+she addressed her husband, were fixed on vacancy, looking past
+Huntington toward the door that led out upon the veranda, where the
+rising wind tossed little whirls of snow and dead leaves from the
+flower garden. She was torturing herself with a conjured vision of a
+wild, high place among snowbound rocks, in the midst of which a
+slender figure was slowly sinking down, and a white and stricken face
+was turned toward her. This was the vision that had become for her the
+settled picture of Marion's fate, a picture that was burned into her
+brain by many, many hours of imagining, day and night.
+
+The wind was howling around the ranch house, wailing among the gables,
+shrieking across the chimney top. It rattled at the door, as if to
+fling it open with sudden violence. And what was that? A footstep on
+the veranda? She shivered; it was only her shaken nerves again! Then
+came another rattle at the door. It moved. It _was_ flung open. And
+there was the figure of her dream, but strangely and fantastically
+clad; and with a face that glowed, and lips that were parted in a
+smile.
+
+For a moment Claire did not move. Then slowly she lifted her head; her
+eyes grew round and staring, her mouth opened. Seth caught the look;
+it was one he had seen many times before.
+
+"Claire!" he cried. "Stop that!"
+
+His voice, perhaps, served to break the spell. Claire leaped to her
+feet. And the next instant there was a voice from the doorway.
+
+"Hello!" said Marion cheerily, in a "good evening" kind of tone, as
+if she had returned from the post-office.
+
+Huntington bounded from his chair, and whirled around with an
+oath,--one oath surely that was forgiven him. But past him, with a
+scream dashed Claire.
+
+"Marion!" she shrieked.
+
+"Marion!" bellowed Seth.
+
+And then the two women were in each other's arms, and Seth grabbed one
+of Marion's hands, and the air was filled with hysterical cries and
+mighty, spluttered expletives. Then silence fell, while Claire and
+Marion wept without restraint, and Huntington searched for his
+handkerchief without finding it, and strode across the room and back,
+pounding one clenched hand into the palm of the other. But Marion
+presently tore herself out of Claire's embrace, and turned to grab an
+arm of Pete, who stood just outside the doorway, through which the
+wind unheeded was flinging snow and leaves into the room.
+
+"Here he is!" cried Marion. "He did it!"
+
+Claire promptly threw her arms around the Indian's neck, or as nearly
+around as she could reach, and stood on tiptoe to plant a kiss on his
+leathery cheek. Huntington too leaped on him, seizing his shoulder and
+hand, and dragging him farther into the room. Then he broke away, and
+ran for a bottle; and the two men clicked glasses and drank in
+silence. And two big chairs were drawn close to the fire for Pete and
+Marion; and while Claire sat crying softly, and Huntington, between
+"damns" and "hells," wiped his eyes with the back of his hand, and
+Pete sat impressive, Marion quickly narrated the chief incidents of
+her pursuit of Haig, their long imprisonment, and the rescue.
+
+"But Haig! Where's he?" asked Huntington.
+
+"He left us at the junction," answered Marion.
+
+On that a moment of silence fell. Something in Marion's face told even
+Huntington to keep still. But Claire, seeing it, was secretly,
+wickedly, triumphantly glad. A very practical thought, however, came
+to her in time to prevent embarrassment, and Seth was sent bustling
+into the kitchen to relight the fire in the range. The cook had gone
+to bed, but Claire would get supper for them; for Pete must stay, she
+insisted. But at this the Indian rose, and said he must go to Haig,
+who had told him to hurry back for supper with him in the cottage.
+
+"Well, then, Pete," said Huntington from the door of the kitchen,
+"you'll have another drink, anyhow. And you'll come up to-morrow to
+tell us how you found them, won't you?"
+
+Pete promised; the whisky was solemnly drunk again; and the three
+others followed him to the door.
+
+"But you must have a horse!" said Huntington.
+
+So he jumped past him, and ran to the stable, bellowing for Williams.
+
+"Now take off your coat, Marion!" cried Claire.
+
+"No. Not here," said Marion. "You'll see why."
+
+They waited before the blazing log for Huntington to return, whereupon
+he was sent to build a fire in Marion's room. When it was crackling
+finely, Marion, removed her deerskin coat and skirt. Claire stared at
+her, gasping; and then sank down on the bed in another fit of weeping.
+For Marion stood before her in rags and dirt.
+
+"Oh, but you should have seen me the day Pete came!" cried Marion,
+with a pathetic little laugh. "I've actually got some flesh on my
+bones now."
+
+Indescribable luxuries followed: a hot bath, wonderful clean garments,
+and Claire's happy fingers combing the tangles out of the tawny hair.
+
+"But I'll never be really and truly clean again, Claire!" cried Marion
+ruefully, holding out her hands.
+
+Claire clasped them tenderly, while Marion, on a sudden thought,
+related to her Haig's speech about baths; and they laughed together.
+
+"You've so many things to tell me," said Claire, with a curiosity she
+could not quite repress.
+
+"Yes," answered Marion, blushing.
+
+It was nearly midnight when they sat down to supper, but none of them
+cared for time. Marion was not sleepy. She and Haig and Pete had slept
+well in a deserted cabin the last night of their journey, before a
+huge fire, in circumstances positively pleasant in comparison with
+what they had passed through. But she was hungry. As she never
+expected to be really and truly clean again, she doubted that she
+should ever get enough to eat. Claire did the best she could on that
+score, and that was something. There was chicken with cream gravy; and
+potatoes, baked in their skins, and seasoned with butter and salt and
+paprika; and three kinds of jelly to be spread on buttered toast; and
+angel cake. In the midst of the feast there were steps on the veranda,
+and a knock on the door; and Curly appeared, bearing two bottles of
+champagne.
+
+"Mr. Haig says you're all to drink Pete's health, an' he ought to live
+to be a hundred," said Curly, grinning, and gazing in wonderment at
+Marion, whose exploit had caused her to assume somewhat the nature of
+a goddess in his simple mind.
+
+When the door had closed on Curly, Huntington stood for a moment
+awkwardly holding the bottles, an expression almost of consternation
+on his face. He had once made some remarks about Haig's champagne. But
+he had the sense not to act the part of a skeleton at the feast.
+Pete's health was drunk by all; and might he live to be a hundred!
+
+In another hour Marion was in bed, in a real bed, in her own pink
+room, between sweet, clean sheets, and warm again at last, but
+shivering in sheer excess of comfort, and crying a little perhaps from
+overwhelming joy. For she knew in her heart--something she could not
+yet tell even Claire.
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+Bill Craven was mending a bridle by the light of a smoky lantern in
+the stable, when he saw a ghost. It just opened the door, and walked
+in, and said, "How are you, Bill?" Craven fell backward off his stool,
+then leaped to his feet with a yell that caused a commotion among the
+barn swallows under the eaves, and brought Farrish and Curly tumbling
+down the ladder from the loft. Thereupon discipline, for which Haig
+had always been rather a stickler, suffered a bad half hour. They had
+given him up for lost; and had found on comparing experiences that
+each of them had many reasons for counting that loss his own. In the
+days following the attempts to rescue Miss Gaylord, these three had
+gone about the Park with chips on their shoulders, inviting any
+outspoken citizen to say to them anything that was not strictly
+proper and complimentary about Haig. So now, though the words were few
+after the first noisy demonstration, they were the kind of words that
+are worth hearing, from man to man.
+
+Haig and Bill Craven presently compared notes in the matter of
+"busted" legs. Bill's had mended much sooner than Haig's, which was
+quite easily understood, considering the great difference in their
+circumstances. Curly had "nigh killed" the sorrels, getting the doctor
+for Craven, but they were all right now. "Fat and sassy," Curly
+added.
+
+"I'll take some of that out of them, to-morrow," said Haig. "I'll want
+the sleigh, Farrish. Please look after it in the morning."
+
+Then, seeing their impatience, he told them of Sunnysides' final
+escape, and of all the events that followed--as much as was good for
+them to know.
+
+"But where's Pete?" asked Craven.
+
+"He went to Huntington's with Miss Gaylord. He'll be along soon."
+
+"Well, jest wait till we git our hands on that damned Indian!" cried
+Bill. "Eh, men?"
+
+It was evident that there would be a considerable disturbance in the
+barn on Pete's arrival.
+
+A few minutes later Haig had his surprise. On entering the cottage he
+first encountered Slim Jim in the outer room. Perhaps Jim's face
+turned a trifle yellower, perhaps his thin legs trembled a little
+under the sky-blue trousers; but that was about all, except the light
+that flickered an instant in his eyes.
+
+"Glad you back!" he said simply. "Want supper?"
+
+"Want supper! Why, you scrawny, evil-eyed heathen! Want supper! I want
+everything you've got to eat, and everything you haven't got, and
+don't you tell me there's 'vellee lil' either, or I'll break every
+bone in your body. And be quick about it too!"
+
+Jim hurried into the kitchen with so much of a departure from his
+oriental poise that the first pan he picked up fell to the floor with
+a clatter. That was the most eloquent testimonial he could have given,
+unless it was the supper that was ready for Haig in an hour--and no
+"velle lil" supper at that--to his participation in the general
+rejoicing.
+
+Haig, meanwhile, opened the inner door, stepped into the library-bedroom,
+and halted dead still on the threshold. At his entrance, a tall, thin
+young man, with a very pale face, rose like an automaton and stared at
+him. It was a question which of the two was the more amazed.
+
+"Thursby!" cried Haig, recovering the more quickly.
+
+"Haig!"
+
+"Where did you come from?"
+
+"From the other side of the world. And you?"
+
+"From the very bowels of the earth, man!"
+
+They walked slowly toward each other until they met, and clasped
+hands.
+
+"You found him?" asked Haig, searching the other's face.
+
+"In Singapore."
+
+"And then?"
+
+"He's dead."
+
+"And she?"
+
+"I've sent her back to her people in Devonshire."
+
+Haig gripped hard the hand that was still clasped in his own, and
+there was a moment of silence.
+
+"Well," said Haig, "we'll have a nip of whisky, and then--You've come
+back to take your ranch, of course."
+
+"I _came_ back for that, but I can't figure out that it's mine now."
+
+"How's that?" asked Haig, pouring out the drinks.
+
+"I left three hundred head of cattle, and now I learn there are
+thirteen hundred head, almost."
+
+"Don't let that worry you. I've sold enough of the increase to bring
+back all the money they cost me. So we're quits."
+
+"No."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Be sensible, Haig. First thing, why did you do it?"
+
+"For the fun of it, partly."
+
+"And after that?"
+
+"Well, your fine ranch here wasn't making much money, and I thought
+you'd need a good deal, perhaps, before you got through with
+your--affair."
+
+"And yet you say we're quits!"
+
+"I'm satisfied."
+
+"But I'm not. You'll take a half interest, and we'll go partners."
+
+"No."
+
+"I say yes," persisted Thursby. "But I'm forgetting to ask questions.
+How the devil did you get back?"
+
+"I will a tale unfold will harrow up thy bones--and the rest of it,"
+replied Haig, laughing. "But first: when did you arrive?"
+
+"By the last stage in."
+
+"And what have you told them--my pleasant neighbors?"
+
+"Nothing. But they have the impression that I came for the final
+payment on the ranch, and that I remained because you were lost in the
+mountains."
+
+"Good. Now, old man, I'll tell you how you can repay me in full for
+anything you may think I've done for you."
+
+"Go on!"
+
+"Are you ready to assume the responsibility for my acts? I mean in the
+matter of the land and cattle? The rest is still my affair."
+
+"Most certainly."
+
+"Well, then. I've very special reasons for needing peace with
+Huntington."
+
+Thursby looked at him curiously. This from Philip Haig!
+
+"And you want me to--"
+
+"Don't misunderstand me. I've gone up there before, and I'm going
+again to-morrow. But I want to give Huntington a chance. So if you'll
+go to his house to-morrow morning, and tell him that I've finished,
+that the ranch is not mine, and--"
+
+"But the ranch is yours--or half yours."
+
+"Never mind about that now. We'll talk it over later. Just tell
+Huntington that the ranch is not mine, and never has been, and--whatever
+else you like. Then say to him that if he still wants to fight me I'll
+meet him anywhere, and we'll settle it. In any event, you will tell
+him, I'm coming to his place to-morrow afternoon, and I'll have no
+gun."
+
+"I see."
+
+"And you'll do it?"
+
+"Of course. With all my heart."
+
+And he made a thorough job of it. He told them--Huntington, Claire and
+Marion--that he had been in great trouble. What that trouble was
+concerned nobody but himself, but it was enough to send him around the
+world, reckless of everything but the immediate object of his pursuit.
+Philip Haig, an old friend, had volunteered to look after his ranch
+for him, and to provide him with money when he needed it. So, if Haig
+had seemed too aggressive and selfish in his methods, all that he had
+done had been done in a spirit of--he might say a spirit that was
+almost quixotic. And having done all this, increasing Thursby's
+holdings of cattle four times, Haig refused to accept anything for his
+time and labor, and insisted that their account was closed.
+
+Marion had known nothing of all this, save for the hints she had
+received from Smythe, following the conversation overheard by him.
+Philip had told her nothing of it in recounting his adventures. With
+glistening eyes she looked from Claire to Huntington, where they sat
+open-mouthed, and was thrilled with pride and triumph. Claire at
+length turned, and looked at her, and smiled. As for Huntington, he
+was simply (as he explained afterwards, seeking to justify his ready
+acquiescence) flabbergasted.
+
+"This has been a very bitter business, Thursby," he said. "It's cost
+me a lot of cattle and money, and I'll not take back a thing I've said
+about Haig's grabbing everything in sight, and ruining his neighbors.
+But I will say, after what you've told me, that--damn it, Thursby! he
+is a man."
+
+"He's ready to fight with you or talk with you, as you wish."
+
+Huntingdon eyed him suspiciously.
+
+"Did Haig say that?" he demanded.
+
+"He certainly did."
+
+"Then tell him, if he's on the square, it'll be talk."
+
+Claire, ignoring Thursby's presence, ran and snuggled close to Seth,
+while he put his arm around her. But it was at Marion, _to_ Marion,
+that Seth looked, seeking the approval that he had never before been
+able to get from her. Their eyes met, and she nodded, smiling.
+
+"Very well!" said Thursby. "He's coming to see you this afternoon."
+
+"What?" cried Huntington.
+
+"He's coming this afternoon. And he wished me to say explicitly that
+he will have no gun."
+
+To Huntington this seemed almost incredible. He was heartily sick of
+the warfare, and glad of any way out of it that would not be too
+humiliating to himself. But Haig was coming to him; and this meant,
+surely, that something had occurred to his enemy that would make the
+event easy for himself, if not quite free from embarrassment. He
+looked again at Marion; and at last, seeing her radiant countenance,
+he understood that this was her achievement, that it was for her Haig
+would be coming unarmed to the house of his bitter foe that
+afternoon.
+
+"I'm ready," he said to Thursby, with an elation he was only partly
+able to conceal.
+
+Smythe was the next visitor, arriving in a state of such contrition
+that Marion pitied him. His jaunty air was gone. He was quite unable
+to respond to Marion's gentle jesting, seeing that her cheeks were
+still sunken and pale, that the body whose graces he had so much
+admired was now palpably thin under her loose clothing. He had blamed
+himself bitterly for the disaster that had overtaken her, and his
+sufferings had been real and lasting.
+
+"If I'd been half a man I'd never have let you go on alone that day,"
+he said after she had greeted him brightly, giving him both her
+hands.
+
+"Oh, indeed!" retorted Marion. "And what would you have done?"
+
+"Gone with you."
+
+"But I sent you back."
+
+"I was a fool!"
+
+"A fool to do as I told you, Mr. Smythe?" she demanded archly.
+
+"Yes. You didn't know what you were doing."
+
+"But I did know what I was doing."
+
+This come with such depth of feeling that he knew he would no longer
+be able to bring her news of Philip Haig.
+
+"Then I'm glad," he said simply.
+
+Presently she told him her story; but much was omitted, especially the
+keenest of her sufferings, since remorse still haunted Smythe's solemn
+eyes.
+
+"And what have you been doing?" she asked.
+
+"Trying to read and study, but it's been no use."
+
+"And you've lost a year in your career!"
+
+"That's nothing. I can make it up, if you've forgiven me." She gave
+him her hand again.
+
+"There's nothing to forgive!" she answered warmly. "You've been a good
+friend to me. I owe you--more than you know--more than I can tell
+you--now!"
+
+On that she rose hurriedly, and went to her room for--a handkerchief.
+It was quite ten minutes before she returned to finish their talk, and
+to tell him that he must come to see her often through the long months
+of winter that remained.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+THE LAMP RELIGHTED
+
+
+Marion, at the window, was the first to see him; and what she saw
+caused her to clutch at her throat to stifle a cry. He was not on
+horseback, though the roads were quite passable, but in a sleigh; and
+there was a jingle of sleigh bells on the frosty air. He had come with
+the sorrels--for her--at last!
+
+She opened the door for him, giving him her hand--was it possible?--a
+little shyly. Huntington, at Haig's entrance, rose from his chair
+before the fire; and Claire too, clinging to the chimney, scarce able
+to believe that there would not be such another scene as that of one
+evening long ago.
+
+Silence, a little awkward for all of them, followed Marion's greeting,
+while the two men stood looking at each other. Then Haig walked direct
+to Huntington, frankly smiling.
+
+"How are you, Huntington? And Mrs. Huntington?" he was saying
+quietly.
+
+"All well," replied Huntington, rather stiffly, meaning to be very
+reserved in this business.
+
+Claire inclined her head without speaking. Her blue eyes were round,
+her lips parted, and something of the old terror showed in her face,
+though she knew very well why Haig was there.
+
+"Thursby has told you?" asked Haig.
+
+"Yes," was Huntingdon's answer, still putting everything up to his
+enemy.
+
+"Well then, Huntington, since you'll deal with Thursby now, I thought
+we might as well ask each other a few questions, and give straight
+answers."
+
+"I'm ready," said Huntington gruffly.
+
+"Thank you. First, did you drive that bunch of cattle off the cliff?"
+
+"No. But did you scatter those twenty head of mine?"
+
+"No. Both mere accidents undoubtedly. Second, did you advise setting
+an ambush for me?"
+
+"No. That was--no matter who. I talked them out of it, and was sorry
+for it afterwards."
+
+"But you did say you'd drive me out of the Park."
+
+"Yes, and I'd have done it any way short of--"
+
+"Sending me out in a coffin! But we all lost our tempers, of course."
+
+"And with good reason on our side," retorted Huntington stoutly.
+
+"Perhaps. But I'll ask you to remember that everything I did was open
+and aboveboard. If any of your cattle strayed, if any of _your_ fences
+were cut, I had nothing to do with it."
+
+"I believe you--now, after what Thursby's told me."
+
+"Thank you. We make progress. But there are two things more. Who cut
+the fence of my winter pasture?"
+
+For a moment Huntington was silent, his face reddening.
+
+"I did that," he replied at length, half defiantly, but in great
+confusion.
+
+"But why? There was nothing to be gained by that. There were no cattle
+in the pasture or near it."
+
+Huntington hesitated, shifting his weight uneasily from his left foot
+to his right, and back again to the left. Then he looked at Marion,
+saw the appeal in her eyes, and plunged.
+
+"I wanted to make you angry."
+
+"To make me angry?"
+
+"To make you do something reckless."
+
+Haig studied him, and saw that he was dealing with a man who was in
+some respects, and for all his physical strength, a boy--a child. He
+felt his anger rising, but put it down resolutely.
+
+"That was very foolish, Huntington!" he said, with some sharpness. "It
+certainly made me furious, as you saw later at the post-office."
+
+"But you were wrong to call me a liar and a thief. And that's
+something you've got to--"
+
+"Got to what?" demanded Haig quickly.
+
+Huntington did not answer at once. Claire's face, already as pale as
+it could well be, became drawn and ashen, while Marion, seeing the
+danger, unconsciously took a step forward, as if to throw herself
+between the two men. For some tense seconds Huntington and Haig faced
+each other belligerently.
+
+"Got to what, Huntington?" repeated Haig. "There's nothing I've _got_
+to do."
+
+Huntington had not meant the "got" in the sense in which it was taken
+by Haig. He had begun to say, "You've got to admit that was pretty
+hard." But his unfortunate pause on the uncompleted sentence had
+justified Haig in putting the worst possible construction on the
+objectionable phrase. And now Huntington could not finish it as he had
+intended, without seeming to back down, or weaken. Nor could he afford
+to drop the mischievous word for another. In his desperation he took
+the boldest course, and made a more aggressive speech by far than any
+he had rehearsed for the occasion, and forgotten.
+
+"You've got to take that back!" he blurted out.
+
+It was Haig's turn now to ponder deeply. His first impulse was to tell
+Huntington to go to the devil, and thereupon to walk out of the house.
+But he had come there to make peace; and he bethought himself in time
+that to give way to anger would only be to allow Huntington the first
+victory he had ever had over him. Besides--he turned toward Marion,
+and saw her face distorted with apprehension. That decided the issue.
+
+"All in good time, Huntington," he said, with a smile. "Your actions
+certainly justified everything I said. What have you to say about your
+scheme to take my horse?"
+
+Huntington groped in vain for one of the crushing retorts that he had
+valiantly prepared for this meeting. Then he caught Marion's eye
+again.
+
+"That was a mistake," he said. "But I'm no thief and no liar."
+
+"I grant you're honest enough, Huntington, when you stop to think. As
+for Sunnysides, he's settled that business for himself. And if you'll
+give me a straightforward answer on one more point, I'll acquit you of
+being a liar."
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"You killed my bull, didn't you?"
+
+"Yes, I did! But it was a question of yours or mine. They were
+fighting, and mine was getting the worst of it."
+
+"And it never occurred to you to let the best one win?"
+
+"No. I was angry. It was the day that--" He caught himself, and looked
+in fresh alarm at Marion.
+
+"The day that--" Haig prompted.
+
+"No matter. I was angry. I'll pay you what the bull was worth."
+
+"No. Settle that with Thursby. Is there anything more?"
+
+"Nothing except the cause of the whole trouble. You took more than
+your share."
+
+"We might talk all day and all night about that, and come to no
+understanding. But I'll tell you what I've done. I've suggested to
+Thursby that he and you and the rest of them go into a pool. There's
+enough pasture for all of you if--"
+
+"That's an idea!" cried Huntington. "What does Thursby say?"
+
+"He's willing. He doesn't like trouble as I--did. He'll even sell off
+some of his stock."
+
+Huntington was silent a moment, looking doubtfully at Haig. Then the
+best of him rose to the occasion.
+
+"I told Thursby that--I hadn't anything to take back, but that--you're
+a man, for all of it And if you--Damn it! There's my hand."
+
+"Done!" said Haig heartily.
+
+"Oh!" cried Claire, breaking away from the mantel, to which she clung
+through all the interview, trembling between hope and fear. She
+stepped up to Haig, her eyes shining through tears.
+
+"Mine too!" she said, offering her hand to him.
+
+But when it was all finished there was another awkward interval of
+silence. For years of controversy and enmity are not so quickly
+resolved into perfect peace. It was Haig who brought back a certain
+ease to them.
+
+"Would you mind, Mrs. Huntington, if I asked Miss Gaylord to go for a
+drive with me?"
+
+"Indeed, no!"
+
+"And if she took dinner with me? I'll bring her back early."
+
+"If Marion thinks--"
+
+But Marion, who had stood silent and anxious until then, did not reply
+to Claire's glance of inquiry. She heard the last words as if in a
+dream. But dreams were coming true these days; miracle followed
+miracle. With a stifled cry she ran past them, and into her room.
+There she sank down on the edge of the bed, and crossed her hands over
+her breast, and stared at vacancy, her face burning, a mist before her
+eyes. Weakness overcame her for a moment. Then she leaped to her feet,
+dressed quickly for the drive, and went out befurred and radiant to
+put her arms around Claire and kiss her.
+
+"You'll be welcome, Haig, if you want to--to come in any time,"
+Huntington was saying awkwardly.
+
+"I will!" replied Haig.
+
+Then Philip and Marion were gone, and Seth and Claire stood staring at
+the door.
+
+"Oh, I'm so happy, Seth!" cried Claire at last, holding up her arms to
+him.
+
+"Umph!" said Huntington, submitting to her ecstatic endearments.
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Park glittered in its robe of white; the sun shone with cold
+brilliancy out of a steel-blue sky; the air was still and sparkling,
+stinging their cheeks into a glow as they sped down the valley. Under
+the runners of the sleigh the dry snow sang and crackled, and flew up
+in a fine shower like dust of diamonds beneath the swift feet of the
+sorrels.
+
+Haig gave Marion no chance to say a word while the sleigh went
+swinging and bounding down the road, and the fields slipped past them
+in a dazzling succession. When he was not leaning forward to urge the
+sorrels to greater speed he was talking rapidly. He told her of the
+scenes at the stable and the cottage on his return, elaborating the
+description until Marion's laughter rang above the sounds of their
+swift traveling. He was talking to keep up his courage, and to
+postpone the speech that was in his heart and that now, after all,
+when the time had come, filled him with doubts and fears, and seemed
+to him the boldest thing he had ever set himself to do. For the first
+time in ten years he was afraid, and doubtful of himself.
+
+The door of the cottage was thrown open by Slim Jim, in his newest and
+brightest costume of blue silk. Marion smiled at him as she passed,
+for she could not trust herself to speak; and then she was in that
+room whence she had gone one day in utter dejection, praying for a
+miracle. She stood for a few seconds looking around her, recognizing
+all the familiar objects: the bed where Haig had undergone his
+agonies, the table where the medicines had stood, the window and a
+glimpse of the slope outside, now white instead of yellowing green.
+There was a roaring fire, and tea things stood on the table.
+
+Silence enveloped them while Philip helped her with her wraps, and saw
+her seated in an armchair before the fire. Despite the color that the
+cold drive had brought into her cheeks, her features were still
+pinched and pale. Many weeks would be required, a summer perhaps, to
+restore her to what she had been before her terrible experience. And
+yet she seemed to him more beautiful than ever. Watching her furtively
+and anxiously, he endured a raging conflict of emotions, recalling
+with a poignant feeling of shame all that he had said to her in that
+room and elsewhere, in return for what she had done for him. An
+impulse seized him to rush to the door and lock it, to turn on her
+savagely, forbidding her to leave him as he had forbidden her to come
+to him. For all the proofs he had had of her love and devotion seemed
+inadequate to quiet the doubts he now confessed. He found speech
+strangely difficult; he went out of the room twice to give quite
+unnecessary instructions to Jim; and returned to busy himself
+arranging things in the room that obviously needed no arranging.
+
+"Thursby was good enough to go somewhere to-day, and let us have the
+cottage," he managed to say at length. "Do you mind if we are quite
+alone?"
+
+"Philip!" she responded reproachfully. "How you talk!"
+
+"Then we'll have tea."
+
+He called the Chinaman, who brought in the steaming teapot, the hot
+milk, and the buttered toast. Marion poured the tea in silence. They
+drank, too, almost in silence, and nibbled at the toast, forgetful
+that two days before, and for three dreadful months, tea and toast and
+milk, served on a table laid with white linen, would have seemed like
+a heavenly dispensation. Their very experience in the cave, which had
+broken down so many barriers between them, seemed to have reared a new
+one that neither understood. It was Marion who made a beginning to
+scale that barrier.
+
+"You have made Claire very happy, Philip," she said.
+
+"That was easy," he answered.
+
+"But it was grand!"
+
+"And you too--a little?" he ventured.
+
+"You know that, Philip!" And then, a little mischievously: "Remember I
+tried to make peace between you once."
+
+"And a fine job you made of it!" he retorted.
+
+Then they both laughed, and lapsed again into silence. But presently
+Haig arose, went to a cabinet standing against the wall, and brought
+back a faded photograph, which he handed to her.
+
+"My father," he said.
+
+She saw a face that seemed a little sad, but the kindest of eyes, with
+a half serious twinkle in them.
+
+"The dear man!" she exclaimed softly.
+
+"We were great friends," he said. "We used to take long walks together
+of a Sunday afternoon. He was a silent man, rather, and we did not
+talk much, but--shall I tell you one thing he used to say to me,
+often?"
+
+"Yes, Philip."
+
+"I believed it then. But things happened to make me think that father
+was mistaken. For ten years I didn't believe it at all."
+
+"What was it, Philip?"
+
+"He used to say: 'My boy, there's only one thing in the world that's
+worth while. And that is love.'"
+
+"Why, that's what Daddy always said, almost his very words!" she
+cried, her eyes filling.
+
+"If I only knew--" he began.
+
+But she could endure no more. She rose swiftly to her feet, her eyes
+devouring him, her arms stretched out.
+
+"Marion!" he cried, and leaped to catch her, and folded her close, as
+he had clasped her in the cave. But now the arms that stole up around
+his neck did not fall away weakly as before, but tightened, and held
+him.
+
+A long time they remained thus, in a silence broken only by the
+crackling of the flames, which they did not hear, and the wind rising
+outside the cottage, for which they did not care. At length he put his
+fingers under her chin, and raised her head so that he could look into
+her eyes.
+
+"I believe it now!" he said.
+
+"It's true!" she answered, so low that he scarcely heard it.
+
+"I love you!"
+
+"I've loved you always!"
+
+Then even in her joy the recollection of all that she had come through
+to this moment brought back that quivering of her chin, which had
+become only too familiar to him in days past. His head sank toward
+her, and their lips met.
+
+After a while he led her back to her chair, and knelt down to look up
+at her. For there were other difficulties. He had nothing to give her,
+he said; neither riches nor family nor honor nor any future of which
+he could be assured. She stopped him, with a hand laid gently on his
+lips. He held it there, kissing it. How it had toiled and hurt for
+him, that little hand, still rough and scarred!
+
+"Can you ever forgive me?" he pleaded.
+
+"There's nothing to forgive, Philip. You did not understand."
+
+"There! You're treating me like a child again!" he protested, smiling
+contentedly.
+
+"And once you scolded me dreadfully for that!"
+
+"But you were right. I've been a child; for ten years I've been a
+child that thought it was a man."
+
+She did not reply to that, fearing to wound him. So another golden
+silence fell between them, while he held her hands, stroking the hard,
+cracked skin of them. After a while he brought a chair, and sat close
+by her side, and told her all that had been left untold,--about his
+boyhood, his ambitions, his ignorance and innocence, his work in Paris
+and the future it seemed to hold for him; and then the girl on the
+Seine boat, and what he saw one night in her apartment, and his
+despair; his father's death, and the wanderings that followed; and
+how the shy and introspective boy had become in one day a man of
+violence and desperation, his heart full of hatred and bitterness.
+
+"And so I thought, Marion, that you were all alike; not alike in all
+things, but the virtuous more dangerous than the vicious, because more
+calculating and cold. You even--I thought you were the most dangerous
+of all. I knew you were good, but I said your goodness was only
+another form of selfishness, that you had been reared in luxury, and
+taught to expect as your right many things you had never earned and
+never could earn or deserve. I said--Wait, dear--I said that the man
+who should marry you would be nothing but a beast of burden, a slave.
+It was so difficult to believe you could be content with--"
+
+"With love!" she whispered.
+
+"But _can_ you?" he demanded, a ghost of the old incredulity rising in
+spite of all.
+
+"I haven't told you about Robert," she said softly. "He has wealth,
+and will have much more. He loves me. He offered me all, to do with it
+as I wished. I've known him all my life--almost. He's good too, poor
+Robert! But that day, after you'd told me that I must go back to New
+York at once, I--"
+
+"Marion!" Haig cried.
+
+"No, listen! I told him that day that I could never marry him. He
+couldn't understand--like you, Philip. He thought--dear Robert!--he
+thought that money--I know it's what they want most--so many women.
+But, Philip, dear heart! Don't you know that if a woman really loves
+there's nothing she won't do--on her hands and knees--to the end of
+the world? And if she has love, what else is there--that matters?"
+
+"I didn't know," he answered, "and I couldn't have believed it
+until--that day in the cave, when you fell ill."
+
+He told her then of the revelation that had come to him, and how he
+had taken her in his arms, in a fury of love and despair.
+
+"But I thought it was a dream!" she murmured.
+
+"No. I found you then--and myself--and thought it was too late!"
+
+Later, across the table, when Slim Jim had brought in the after-dinner
+coffee, Haig looked at her gravely, and said:
+
+"May I become very practical for a minute, Marion?"
+
+"Yes, but not too practical."
+
+"Well, it's like this: I've got--"
+
+He paused to reach for her hand, to clasp it on the cloth.
+
+"_When_, Marion?" he asked, leaning toward her.
+
+"Oh, we must talk with Claire about that, mustn't we?" she protested,
+blushing. Then softly: "She's the only mother I've got, you see. And
+besides, there's no--"
+
+"No, not even a justice of the peace!" he said, laughing. "We might
+strap on our old snowshoes, and go to Tellurium."
+
+"The idea!"
+
+"Well, listen. Do you know what I've been thinking?"
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"Paris."
+
+"Paris?" she repeated, a little startled, after all that he had
+revealed to her.
+
+"Yes. I've got a little money in the bank in Tellurium, and I--"
+
+"You needn't be so proud of it!" she retorted. "So have I, in New
+York. So you needn't think it's your money I'm after, sir!"
+
+They laughed, and then he had both her hands across the table.
+
+"It isn't much, I assure you," he went on. "But it will do for a while
+in Paris. I mean--if you will go with me--to find my old master, or
+another. You know, Marion, he said to me many times: 'You're going to
+be a painter some day, _mon petit_; you're going to do big things, if
+you'll work, work, work.' And so--"
+
+"You'll paint again!" she cried. "Oh, and I shall keep house for you!
+You may not believe it, but I'm a splendid cook. But I've got to have
+salt. You must earn enough to buy salt!"
+
+"I'll try."
+
+At that he rose, and went again to the cabinet from which he had
+brought the photograph, and returned with his hands behind his back.
+
+"What do you suppose I've got for our mantelpiece--if we have such a
+thing in our attic?"
+
+"What in the world, Philip?"
+
+"Shut your eyes, please!"
+
+She obeyed, and in the middle of the table he set down the tattered
+and grimy little boot that he had carried away from the cave.
+
+"Now open!" he commanded.
+
+"Oh!" she cried, staring at the eloquent memento.
+
+Then she flung back her head, with a quick indrawing of her breath,
+and looked up at him through a bright mist that gathered in her eyes.
+And her face was radiant.
+
+He went quickly to her, and leaned down to kiss her hair, her eyes,
+her lips; and her arms crept once more around his neck.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+SANGRE DE CRISTO
+
+
+Late October in the San Luis, and the raw day near its close. Across
+the melancholy flats the north wind's plaintive note rose at intervals
+into a wailing cry. The thin grasses bent before it, the sagebrush
+took on new and fantastic shapes, and danced like demons to the tune.
+In gray-brown desolation the sand dunes rolled away to the foothills,
+far and violet and dim. All was cold and bleak and forbidding, and the
+sun itself appeared to be retiring eagerly from a scene so dreary and
+disheartening.
+
+Then came magic. Sangre de Cristo, sharp against the eastern sky,
+began to change its hue. A pink flush came into the gleaming white. It
+grew deeper, darker, more vivid; it spread, and ran in richer and
+richer tints along the range. Now it was rose, and now vermilion, and
+at last a deep and living scarlet, staining the snowy slopes, and
+flowing like new blood down the gulches and ravines. The foothills
+caught the color, and the violets became purple and then red; the sand
+dunes caught it, and their gray-browns were overlaid with crimson; the
+flats too caught it, and the sagebrush bending low, and the grass
+quivering in the wind were touched with some reflection of that
+far-reaching hue. From the green along the river the color swept,
+indefinable and dim at first, then by degrees intensified upon the
+flats, across the sand dunes, among the hills until at length it was
+passionate and deep and indescribable on the Sangre de Cristo peaks.
+
+A cowboy, searching for lost mavericks, rode slowly to the top of a
+low sand dune, reined up his pony, and sat silent in the midst of this
+solemn spectacle. He was not emotional. He was looking for calves, and
+"sore" at not finding them, and hungry, and far from the X bar O; and
+night was coming on. But he sat still in his saddle, removed his
+flopping sombrero, and looked toward the east. Bareheaded, the wind
+stinging his cheek and flinging dry sand in his eyes, he gazed and
+wondered at the familiar but never negligible mystery of Sangre de
+Cristo.
+
+But suddenly he rose in his stirrups, and shaded his eyes with his
+hand to make out what it was that had caught his vision in that flood
+of red among the dunes. Again it came, a flash of yellow in the red.
+It was there, and gone. And then it came and lingered, as if inviting
+him, like a jewel in the sand, or rather, like a challenge and a
+taunt.
+
+"So you're back, are you?" cried Larkin, of the X bar O. "Well, you
+c'n jest stay there. I'm done with you. You ain't no horse at all,
+damn you! You're a devil! But I wonder--"
+
+Then Sunnysides was gone. At the same time the light paled on the
+distant peaks. The wind blew colder, and swept the color off the
+dunes. The flats darkened under the advancing shades of night. And
+Larkin, muttering, put spurs to his pony, and galloped away toward
+supper and bed.
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+POPULAR COPYRIGHT NOVELS
+
+AT MODERATE PRICES
+
+Ask your dealer for a complete list of A. L. Burt Company's Popular
+Copyright Fiction
+
+  Abner Daniel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Will N. Harben
+  Adventures of Gerard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A. Conan Doyle
+  Adventures of a Modest Man . . . . . . . . . . . . . . R. W. Chambers
+  Adventures of Sherlock Holmes  . . . . . . . . . . . . A. Conan Doyle
+  After House, The . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  Mary Roberts Rinehart
+  Ailsa Paige  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Robert W. Chambers
+  Alternative, The . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . George Barr McCutcheon
+  Alton of Somasco . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  Harold Bindloss
+  Amateur Gentleman, The . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jeffery Farnol
+  Andrew The Glad  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Maria Thompson Daviess
+  Ann Boyd . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Will N. Harben
+  Annals of Ann, The . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  Kate T. Sharber
+  Anna the Adventuress . . . . . . . . . . . . .  E. Phillips Oppenheim
+  Armchair at the Inn, The . . . . . . . . . . . . . F. Hopkinson Smith
+  Ariadne of Allan Water . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  Sidney McCall
+  At the Age of Eve  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  Kate T. Sharber
+  At the Mercy of Tiberius . . . . . . . . . . . . Augusta Evans Wilson
+  Auction Block, The . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  Rex Beach
+  Aunt Jane of Kentucky  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  Eliza C. Hall
+  Awakening of Helena Ritchie  . . . . . . . . . . . .  Margaret Deland
+  Bambi  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  Marjorie Benton Cooke
+  Bandbox, The . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Louis Joseph Vance
+  Barbara of the Snows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Harry Irving Green
+  Bar 20 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  Clarence E. Mulford
+  Bar 20 Days  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  Clarence E. Mulford
+  Barrier, The . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  Rex Beach
+  Beasts of Tarzan, The  . . . . . . . . . . . . . Edgar Rice Burroughs
+  Beechy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Bettina Von Hutten
+  Bella Donna  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Robert Hichens
+  Beloved Vagabond, The  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  Wm. J. Locke
+  Ben Blair  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Will Lillibridge
+  Beth Norvell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  Randall Parrish
+  Betrayal, The  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  E. Phillips Oppenheim
+  Better Man, The  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Cyrus Townsend Brady
+  Beulah (Ill. Ed) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Augusta J. Evans
+  Black Is White . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . George Barr McCutcheon
+  Blaze Derringer  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  Eugene P. Lyle, Jr.
+  Bob Hampton of Placer  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  Randall Parrish
+  Bob, Son of Battle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  Alfred Ollivant
+
+
+
+
+POPULAR COPYRIGHT NOVELS
+
+AT MODERATE PRICES
+
+Ask your dealer for a complete list of A. L. Burt Company's Popular
+Copyright Fiction
+
+  Brass Bowl, The . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  Louis Joseph Vance
+  Britton of the Seventh  . . . . . . . . . . . .  Cyrus Townsend Brady
+  Broad Highway, The  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  Jeffery Farnol
+  Bronze Bell, The  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  Louis Joseph Vance
+  Buck Peters, Ranchman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Clarence E. Mulford
+  Business of Life, The . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  Robert W. Chambers
+  Butterfly Man, The  . . . . . . . . . . . . .  George Barr McCutcheon
+  By Right of Purchase  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Harold Bindloss
+  Cabbages and Kings  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  O. Henry
+  Cab No. 44  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  R. F. Foster
+  Calling of Dan Matthews, The  . . . . . . . . . .  Harold Bell Wright
+  Cape Cod Stories  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Joseph C. Lincoln
+  Cap'n Eri . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Joseph C. Lincoln
+  Cap'n Warren's Wards  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Joseph C. Lincoln
+  Caravaners  . . . . . . . . Author of Elizabeth and Her German Garden
+  Cardigan  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  Robert W. Chambers
+  Carmen  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  (Geraldine Farrar Edition)
+  Carpet From Bagdad, The . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Harold MacGrath
+  Cash Intrigue, The  . . . . . . . . . . . . . George Randolph Chester
+  Castle by the Sea, The  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . H. B. M. Watson
+  Claw, The . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  Cynthia Stockley
+  C. O. D.  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  Natalie Sumner Lincoln
+  Colonial Free Lance, A  . . . . . . . . . . . . Chauncey O. Hotchkiss
+  Coming of the Law, The  . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  Chas. A. Seltzer
+  Conquest of Canaan, The . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  Booth Tarkington
+  Conspirators, The . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  Robert W. Chambers
+  Counsel for the Defense . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Leroy Scott
+  Crime Doctor, The . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . E. W. Hornung
+  Cry in the Wilderness, A  . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  Mary E. Waller
+  Cynthia of the Minute . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  Louis Joseph Vance
+  Dark Hollow, The  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  Anna Katharine Green
+  Dave's Daughter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  Patience Bevier Cole
+  Day of Days, The  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  Louis Joseph Vance
+  Day of the Dog, The . . . . . . . . . . . . .  George Barr McCutcheon
+  Depot Master, The . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Joseph C. Lincoln
+  Desired Woman, The  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  Will N. Harben
+  Destroying Angel, The . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  Louis Joseph Vance
+  Diamond Master, The . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  Jacques Futrelle
+  Dixie Hart  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  Will N. Harben
+  El Dorado . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  Baroness Orczy
+  Elusive Isabel  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  Jacques Futrelle
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Heart of Thunder Mountain, by Edfrid A. Bingham
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+<!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">
+<head>
+<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" />
+<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Heart of Thunder Mountain, by Edfrid A. Bingham.</title>
+
+<style type="text/css">
+    @media screen     {
+      hr.pb           {margin:30px 0; width:100%; border:none;border-top:thin dashed silver;}
+      .pagenum        {display: inline; font-size: x-small; text-align: right; text-indent: 0; position: absolute; right: 2%; padding: 1px 3px; font-style: normal; font-variant:normal; font-weight:normal; text-decoration: none; background-color: inherit; border:1px solid #eee;}
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+    p                 {margin-top: 0.5em; text-align: justify; margin-bottom: 0.5em;}
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+    blockquote        {display: block; margin: .75em 5%; font-size: 90%;}
+    h1                {font-size:1.4em;}
+    h1,h2,h3          {text-align:center; font-weight:normal;}
+    h2                {font-size:1.2em;}
+    h3                {font-size:1.0em;}
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+    p.tp              {font-size:1em; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0; text-align:center;}
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+    .caption          {font-size: 90%; text-align:center;}
+    .chsp             {margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em;}
+    .figcenter        {margin: 2em auto 2em auto; text-align: center; width: auto;}
+    .figtag           {height: 1px;}
+    .smcap            {font-variant: small-caps;}
+    .smcaplc          {text-transform: lowercase; font-variant: small-caps;}
+    a                 {text-decoration: none;}
+    hr.tb             {border: none; border-bottom:1px solid black; width: 33%; margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;}
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+    table             {margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; clear: both;}
+    td.chalgn         {text-align:right; margin-top:0; padding-right:1em;}
+</style>
+
+</head>
+<body>
+
+
+<pre>
+
+Project Gutenberg's The Heart of Thunder Mountain, by Edfrid A. Bingham
+
+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: The Heart of Thunder Mountain
+
+Author: Edfrid A. Bingham
+
+Illustrator: Anton Otto Fisher
+
+Release Date: August 15, 2009 [EBook #29697]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HEART OF THUNDER MOUNTAIN ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<div class='figtag'>
+<a name='linki_1' id='linki_1'></a>
+</div>
+<div class='figcenter'>
+<img src='images/illus-fpc.jpg' alt='' title='' width='319' height='498' /><br />
+<p class='caption'>
+&ldquo;He tried to shoot once more, into the very face<br />
+of the oncoming brute.&rdquo;&ndash;&ndash;FRONTISPIECE. <i>See Page 245.</i><br />
+</p>
+</div>
+<hr class='pb' />
+<p class='tp' style='margin-bottom:40px;font-size:2.2em;margin-top:40px;'>The Heart of<br />Thunder Mountain</p>
+<p class='tp' style='font-size:1.2em;margin-bottom:30px;'>By EDFRID A. BINGHAM</p>
+<div style='margin:40px auto; text-align:center;'>
+<img alt='emblem' src='images/illus-emb.png' />
+</div>
+<p class='tp' style='margin-bottom:40px;'>With Frontispiece in Colors<br />By ANTON OTTO FISHER</p>
+<p class='tp' style='font-size:1.4em;'>A. L. BURT COMPANY</p>
+<p class='tp' style='font-size:1.2em;margin-bottom:20px;'>Publishers&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;New York</p>
+<p class='tp' style='font-size:smaller;margin-bottom:40px;'>Published by Arrangements with <span class='smcap'>Little, Brown &amp; Company</span></p>
+<hr class='pb' />
+<div style='font-size:smaller'>
+<p class='tp' ><i>Copyright, 1916,</i></p>
+<p class='tp' style='font-variant:small-caps;'>By Edfrid A. Bingham.</p>
+<hr class='p5' />
+<p class='tp' style='font-style:italic;margin-bottom:40px;'><i>All rights reserved</i></p>
+<p class='tp' >Published, March, 1916<br />Reprinted, March, 1916 (twice)</p>
+<p class='tp' >July, 1916; August, 1916<br />April, 1917</p>
+</div>
+<hr class='pb' />
+<h3>CONTENTS</h3>
+<table border='0' cellpadding='2' cellspacing='0' summary='Contents' style='margin:1em auto;'>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'><span style='font-size:0.8em'>CHAPTER</span></td>
+  <td />
+  <td valign='top' align='right'><span style='font-size:0.8em'>PAGE</span></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>I</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>The Forbidden Pasture</span></td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#CHAPTER_I_THE_FORBIDDEN_PASTURE'>1</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>II</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>The Road to Paradise</span></td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#CHAPTER_II_THE_ROAD_TO_PARADISE'>15</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>III</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>Seth Huntington&rsquo;s Opportunity</span></td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#CHAPTER_III_SETH_HUNTINGTONS_OPPORTUNITY'>26</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>IV</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>The Highest Bidder</span></td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#CHAPTER_IV_THE_HIGHEST_BIDDER'>37</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>V</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>&ldquo;He Shall Tell Me!&rdquo;</span></td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#CHAPTER_V_HE_SHALL_TELL_ME'>50</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>VI</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>The Story of the Scar</span></td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#CHAPTER_VI_THE_STORY_OF_THE_SCAR'>60</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>VII</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>The Way of a Maid With a Man</span></td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#CHAPTER_VII_THE_WAY_OF_A_MAID_WITH_A_MAN'>71</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>VIII</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>The End of Her Stratagem</span></td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#CHAPTER_VIII_THE_END_OF_HER_STRATAGEM'>86</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>IX</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>Hearts Insurgent</span></td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#CHAPTER_IX_HEARTS_INSURGENT'>99</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>X</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>Strictly Confidential</span></td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#CHAPTER_X_STRICTLY_CONFIDENTIAL'>112</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>XI</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>Avalanche</span></td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#CHAPTER_XI_AVALANCHE'>121</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>XII</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>Sunnysides</span></td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#CHAPTER_XII_SUNNYSIDES'>133</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>XIII</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>Hillyer&rsquo;s Dilemma</span></td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#CHAPTER_XIII_HILLYERS_DILEMMA'>144</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>XIV</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>Coals of Fire</span></td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#CHAPTER_XIV_COALS_OF_FIRE'>155</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>XV</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>The Valley of the Shadow</span></td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#CHAPTER_XV_THE_VALLEY_OF_THE_SHADOW'>166</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>XVI</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>Questions and Answers</span></td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#CHAPTER_XVI_QUESTIONS_AND_ANSWERS'>176</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>XVII</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>Interlude</span></td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#CHAPTER_XVII_INTERLUDE'>186</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>XVIII</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>The Challenge of the Brute</span></td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#CHAPTER_XVIII_THE_CHALLENGE_OF_THE_BRUTE'>193</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>XIX</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>Smythe&rsquo;s Last Budget</span></td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#CHAPTER_XIX_SMYTHES_LAST_BUDGET'>202</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>XX</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>&ldquo;The Trail Held True&rdquo;</span></td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#CHAPTER_XX_THE_TRAIL_HELD_TRUE'>215</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>XXI</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>In the Hollow of the Storm</span></td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#CHAPTER_XXI_IN_THE_HOLLOW_OF_THE_STORM'>228</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>XXII</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>The Narrow Passage</span></td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#CHAPTER_XXII_THE_NARROW_PASSAGE'>238</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>XXIII</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>The Miracle</span></td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#CHAPTER_XXIII_THE_MIRACLE'>252</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>XXIV</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>Haig&rsquo;s Argument</span></td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#CHAPTER_XXIV_HAIGS_ARGUMENT'>264</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>XXV</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>Diana</span></td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#CHAPTER_XXV_DIANA'>278</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>XXVI</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>The Snow</span></td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#CHAPTER_XXVI_THE_SNOW'>288</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>XXVII</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>The Voice in the Hurricane</span></td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#CHAPTER_XXVII_THE_VOICE_IN_THE_HURRICANE'>302</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>XXVIII</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>The Man Who Did Not Forget</span></td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#CHAPTER_XXVIII_THE_MAN_WHO_DID_NOT_FORGET'>316</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>XXIX</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>Ghosts</span></td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#CHAPTER_XXIX_GHOSTS'>330</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>XXX</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>The Lamp Relighted</span></td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#CHAPTER_XXX_THE_LAMP_RELIGHTED'>344</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>XXXI</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>Sangre De Cristo</span></td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#CHAPTER_XXXI_SANGRE_DE_CRISTO'>359</a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+<hr class='pb' />
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_1' name='page_1'></a>1</span></div>
+<h1>THE HEART OF THUNDER MOUNTAIN</h1>
+<div class='chsp'>
+<a name='CHAPTER_I_THE_FORBIDDEN_PASTURE' id='CHAPTER_I_THE_FORBIDDEN_PASTURE'></a>
+<h2>CHAPTER I</h2>
+<h3>THE FORBIDDEN PASTURE</h3>
+</div>
+<p>She sat hunched up in the middle of the silent pasture,
+where the tall, thin grass ran ripening before
+the breeze in waves the hue of burnished bronze. Her
+cow pony grazed greedily a few yards away, lifting his
+head now and then to gaze inquiringly at her, and then
+returning to his gluttony with a satisfied snort, commendatory
+of this long rest. The girl had removed her
+small sombrero to adjust the masses of tawny hair that
+had become disordered in her morning ride; and the
+breeze now played with it, and the sun sought out its
+glints of gold. She was fair, of a curiously rich complexion
+with soft golden tints beneath the skin, as if the
+rusty gold in her hair was just the outcropping of what
+ran in solution in her veins. And there was a certain
+air about her that contrasted strangely with the scene
+upon which she now gazed intently, with her head bent
+forward, and her hands clasped round her upthrust
+knees.</p>
+<p>It was a little valley she had come upon by chance,
+snugly tucked away among the hills. Below the bronze-colored
+slope there were lush meadows of a brilliant
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_2' name='page_2'></a>2</span>
+green, and a shallow, swift stream that flashed over
+black bowlders and white sand; beyond the meadows lay
+more shining pastures rising to pale-green aspen groves
+and then to dark-green pines; and above all these the
+foothills climbed swiftly to the mountains, and the
+mountains more swiftly to the sky. There were faint
+blue mists in the foothills, fainter violet shadows on the
+distant fields, an icy whiteness on the peaks; and in the
+sky no more than two small puffs of cloud like eiderdown
+adrift in the depths of blue. What at first had
+seemed an utter silence laid upon that summer landscape
+had now become, as she looked and listened, a
+silence full of sound; of that indefinable humming
+undertone of nature maturing in the sun; of insects
+busy at their harvest; of birds in the distance calling;
+of grasses rustling in the breeze; of pines on the long
+ridge droning like an organ in the Recessional.</p>
+<p>Yes, it was very beautiful, she thought. And sweet.
+And peaceful. She had come a long way&ndash;&ndash;halfway
+across the great continent&ndash;&ndash;to find that peace. But
+why should there be a touch of sadness in all that
+beauty? And why should there be need to search for
+her handkerchief to press against her eyes? For the
+first time since she had come to Paradise Park she felt
+a little lonely, a little doubtful about the wisdom of her
+brave revolt.</p>
+<p>She sank back at last, and lay curled up in the grass
+with her head pillowed on one bent arm. There, to her
+half-closed eyes, the grass seemed like a fairy forest,
+soon peopled by her fancy, the fancy of a girl who still
+retained the quick imagination of a child. An Indian
+paintbrush flamed at her with barbaric passion; nodding
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_3' name='page_3'></a>3</span>
+harebells tinkled purple melodies; and a Mariposa lily
+with a violet eye seemed like a knight in white armor,
+bowing himself into her outstretched hand. Her eyelids
+drooped more and more. The music of the pines
+and the murmur of the pasture blended in a faint and
+fading lullaby....</p>
+<hr class='tb' />
+<p>Tuesday&rsquo;s shrill neigh awakened her. She sat up
+shivering, for the warm air was underlaid with cold;
+and quivering, for the alarm had fallen pat upon the
+climax of her dream. She rubbed her eyes, a little
+blinded by the sunlight, and saw that Tuesday stood
+with head high and nostrils distended, gazing past her
+toward the upper end of the pasture. She was not surprised,
+being yet under the spell of her dream-fairyland,
+to see a horseman galloping straight toward her. If not
+the white knight, then&ndash;&ndash;For some seconds she stared,
+awakening slowly; and smiled at length at her childish
+fancy. It was only a cowboy, doubtless, riding upon his
+own prosaic business. And yet&ndash;&ndash;She became gradually
+aware of something unusual, something disquieting
+in the manner of the man&rsquo;s approach. The horse was
+leaping under the spurs; the rider sat upright and alert
+in the saddle; and suddenly, as she watched him, the
+man&rsquo;s hand went to his hip, and there was a gleam of
+metal in the sun.</p>
+<p>She was not afraid. Seth Huntington had assured
+her there was nothing to be feared in Paradise Park.
+But for all that, it was not without uneasiness that she
+hastily arranged the meager folds of her divided skirt,
+and passed her hands quickly over the still disordered
+masses of her hair. And then he was fairly upon her,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_4' name='page_4'></a>4</span>
+reining up with a jerk that brought the sweating pony
+back upon its haunches.</p>
+<p>There was an angry glitter in the man&rsquo;s dark eyes, his
+face was black with passion, and the bright object she
+had seen flashing in his hand was the twin brother
+of Huntington&rsquo;s six-shooter. He was roughly, even
+meanly, dressed. His coarse blue flannel shirt was unbuttoned
+at the throat; his soiled brown corduroy
+trousers were thrust unevenly into dusty and wrinkled
+boot tops; his old, gray hat was slouched over one side
+of his forehead, shading his eyes. But the face beneath
+that faded and disreputable hat, as Marion saw with a
+slight thrill of curiosity, belonged to no ranch hand or
+cow-puncher. Whoever he might be, and whatever he
+might be doing there scowling at her, she felt at once
+that he was as foreign as herself to that neighborhood.
+But there was no time at that moment to analyze her
+feeling, to formulate her thought. And her next impression,
+following very swiftly, was one of vague antagonism.
+She felt that she was going to hate him.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What new trick is this?&rdquo; he demanded angrily,
+when he had looked from the girl to her pony, and at
+her again, with unconcealed suspicion.</p>
+<p>For a moment she was undecided whether to answer
+him sharply or to rebuke his incivility with silence.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know!&rdquo; she replied at last, by way of compromise
+between her two impulses, with a half-playful
+emphasis on the &ldquo;I,&rdquo; accompanied by a very solemn,
+shaking of the head and a very innocent widening of
+the eyes.</p>
+<p>There was a pause while he searched her face with a
+distrustful scrutiny.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_5' name='page_5'></a>5</span></div>
+<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;re not just the person I was looking for,&rdquo; he
+said finally, with a touch of irony.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;How fortunate!&rdquo; she replied, in a tone that was
+like a mocking echo of his own.</p>
+<p>Her eyes met his unflinchingly, a little impudently,
+telling him nothing; then they slowly fell, and rested on
+the revolver in his hand. With a shrug he thrust the
+weapon into its holster.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Thank you!&rdquo; she said sweetly. &ldquo;You really won&rsquo;t
+need it.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He jerked his head impatiently.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;How did you get in here?&rdquo; he demanded, quite as
+roughly as before.</p>
+<p>There was no reason in the world why she should not
+have answered him simply and directly; but she did not.
+She was exasperated, not so much by his words as by
+his manner, and not so much by his manner even as by
+something provocative in the man himself. He was
+rude, but it was not his rudeness that most annoyed her.
+She scarcely knew what it was,&ndash;&ndash;perhaps a certain indifference,
+a certain cold contempt that she detected
+underlying all his anger, a certain icy and impenetrable
+reserve that, for all his hot words, and for all his lowering
+looks, she resented most as being in some way
+personal to her. And instantly the minx in her rose up
+for mischief.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;By aeroplane, of course!&rdquo; she said tartly.</p>
+<p>It was a silly speech, and she regretted it almost before
+it had left her lips.</p>
+<p>A faint flush came into the enemy&rsquo;s face.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Spoken like a woman!&rdquo; he retorted. &ldquo;Always
+tragic over little things and flippant over big ones.&rdquo;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_6' name='page_6'></a>6</span></div>
+<p>That brought the color up into her face. But she was
+not subdued; for the cat in woman also has nine lives&ndash;&ndash;at
+least.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;There&rsquo;s my horse,&rdquo; she said, with a toss of her head.
+&ldquo;You saw him.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;True! But cow ponies don&rsquo;t easily jump four-wire
+fences.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Why should they when the fences are down?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Good! We arrive by the devious ways that women
+love. Perhaps you&rsquo;ll give me the answer now that you
+should have given in the first place. <i>How did you get
+in here?</i>&rdquo;</p>
+<p>She bit her lip, reflected a moment, and attempted a
+flank movement.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;My name is Marion Gaylord.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I knew that.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But you have never seen me before!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No. But that&rsquo;s one of Huntington&rsquo;s horses, and
+Miss Gaylord is a guest at his house. You see, I am
+more courteous than you after all. I answer your questions.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Perhaps I&rsquo;ll answer yours when I know what right
+you have to ask them.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>A light began to dawn upon him.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Do you mean&ndash;&ndash;you don&rsquo;t know where you are?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He gave her a long, searching look before he spoke
+again.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;My name is Philip Haig,&rdquo; he said, leaning forward
+with a curious smile.</p>
+<p>The result was all that he could have wished for.
+Until that moment she had remained seated, firm in her
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_7' name='page_7'></a>7</span>
+determination not to be disturbed by him. But now
+she rose slowly to her feet, her face reddening, her lips
+parted, a frightened look in her eyes. The shoe was on
+the other foot, with a vengeance.</p>
+<p>He saw all this, and without compunction, seized his
+advantage. With a grim smile he threw the reins over
+the pony&rsquo;s head, swung himself out of the saddle, and
+stepped toward her. As he came on he removed his
+dilapidated hat with a gesture that made her forget it
+was dilapidated,&ndash;&ndash;a mocking, insolent gesture though it
+was. In spite of her embarrassment she let none of his
+features escape her quickening interest. She saw that
+he was tall, erect, alert; handsome in some strange and
+half-repellent way, with his pale dark face, rather long
+in contour, and with his black, curly hair matted on the
+broad forehead. But she almost recoiled when, on his
+drawing nearer, she saw for the first time&ndash;&ndash;it had been
+hidden by the shadow of his slouched hat&ndash;&ndash;an ugly scar
+that ran from the outer corner of his left eye down to the
+jawbone below the ear. It gave to one side of his face a
+singularly sinister expression that vanished when he
+turned and disclosed a profile that was not without
+nobility and charm.</p>
+<p>Then suddenly her mystification was complete.
+Their eyes met, not as before, but very near, so close had
+he come to her, still smiling. And instantly, instinctively,
+she lowered hers; for she felt as if she had been
+caught peering through a window at something she had
+no right to see. Yet the next instant she was looking
+again, half-guiltily, but irresistibly drawn. The eyes
+were of a curious color,&ndash;&ndash;smoky black, or dark gray-blue,
+or somber purple,&ndash;&ndash;liquid and deep like a
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_8' name='page_8'></a>8</span>
+woman&rsquo;s, but with a steady, dull glow in their depths
+that was unlike anything she had ever seen or imagined.
+What was it that burned there? Suffering? Hunger?
+Evil? Sorrow? Shame? It gave her something to
+think about for many a day and night. Meanwhile&ndash;&ndash;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I see you have heard of me,&rdquo; he said mockingly.</p>
+<p>She had no reply. She was realizing slowly that she
+had trespassed, that she had perhaps seriously compromised
+her cousin, and, most humiliating of all, that she
+had assumed quite the wrong attitude toward the man.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You really didn&rsquo;t know you were on my land?&rdquo; he
+demanded, with a little less offensiveness in his tone.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No,&rdquo; she answered weakly.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And Huntington didn&rsquo;t send you here?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I believe you, of course. But it&rsquo;s rather queer.
+How did you happen&ndash;&ndash;if you don&rsquo;t mind&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>She did not mind in the least&ndash;&ndash;was eager, indeed, to
+explain her presence there.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m just learning to ride,&rdquo; she began impulsively.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;This was my first venture off the valley road, and
+I&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And you came straight to me!&rdquo; he exclaimed,
+chuckling.</p>
+<p>At that a strange thing happened. He had meant
+only that she, the guest and cousin of Seth Huntington,
+his bitter foe, had blundered straight into the camp of
+the enemy; and that was a rare joke on Huntington.
+But she was a girl; her little adventure was already rosy
+with romance; and the effect of his careless speech was
+as if he had looked into her heart, and read aloud for
+her something she had not known was there. To his
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_9' name='page_9'></a>9</span>
+surprise and wonder the girl&rsquo;s fair face turned red to the
+roots of her tawny hair, and a look of helpless confusion
+came into the clear, blue eyes that until now, for all
+her embarrassment, had frankly met his own. She
+looked suddenly away from him.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You make me ashamed,&rdquo; she said at length, stealing
+a look at him.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;If you know anything about my difficulty with
+Huntington,&rdquo; he began, &ldquo;you&rsquo;ll understand that&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I do. I do understand!&rdquo; she interrupted eagerly.
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know much about it&ndash;&ndash;the trouble. They
+haven&rsquo;t told me. I&rsquo;ve only overheard some talk&ndash;&ndash;and
+I didn&rsquo;t ask. I rode down the valley this morning trying
+to do it like a cowboy. And there was a branch road&ndash;&ndash;and
+then the break in the fence&ndash;&ndash;and before I knew
+it I&rsquo;d fallen asleep. That&rsquo;s all&ndash;&ndash;except&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo; She shot
+a half-mischievous glance at him &ldquo;&ndash;&ndash;you spoiled a very
+beautiful dream.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>But this was all lost upon him. His face was clouding
+again.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Where is it&ndash;&ndash;the break in the fence?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Chagrined at the failure of her bit of coquetry, she
+merely pointed in the direction whence she had come.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Thank you!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;At last!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>With that he went swiftly to his pony, mounted, and
+started to ride away. But suddenly he reined up again,
+whirled his horse savagely around, and faced Marion
+with the sunlight full upon the scarred side of his face,
+now ugly with menace.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;If that fence has been cut,&rdquo; he said, in a hard and
+level tone, &ldquo;it&rsquo;s been cut by Huntington or his men.
+You tell him for me, please&ndash;&ndash;and you&rsquo;ll be doing <i>him</i> a
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_10' name='page_10'></a>10</span>
+favor not to forget it&ndash;&ndash;tell him that he&rsquo;s a fool to anger
+me. I&rsquo;ve been very patient in this business, but I don&rsquo;t
+claim patience as one of my virtues. Do you hear?
+Tell him he&rsquo;s a fool to anger me!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>She watched him gallop to the gap in the barb-wire
+fence; she watched him dismount to examine the severed
+wires; she watched him leap on his horse again, and ride
+furiously down the road until he was lost to view below
+the dip in the slope toward the valley. And still for
+some minutes she stood staring at the place where he
+had disappeared. Then, left alone with her pent-up
+emotions, she no longer resisted them. Tears of vexation
+started in her eyes; chagrin, resentment, anger
+swept over her in turn. She dug the heel of one small
+boot into the unoffending soil&ndash;&ndash;his soil&ndash;&ndash;and thrust
+her clenched hands down at her side.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh! Oh! Oh!&rdquo; she cried, over and over again, striding
+forward and back across some yards of pasture,
+trampling lilies and harebells under her heedless feet,
+turning her flaming face at intervals toward the spot in
+the smiling landscape that had last held the figure of
+Philip Haig.</p>
+<p>The shame of it! She had never&ndash;&ndash;never&ndash;&ndash;never
+been treated so outrageously. It was unendurable&ndash;&ndash;and
+she had endured it! She flung herself down on
+the ground and wept.</p>
+<hr class='tb' />
+<p>Marion was now facing life alone. Her nearest
+remaining relative was her cousin, Claire Huntington.
+Her mother&ndash;&ndash;a Southern girl who might have stepped
+out of a panel by Fragonard, so fine and soft and Old-World-like
+was her beauty&ndash;&ndash;had died when she was
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_11' name='page_11'></a>11</span>
+still a child. Her father, Doctor Gaylord, was the
+antithesis of the sprite-like creature he had married,&ndash;&ndash;a
+big, athletic, outdoor sort of man, with truly violent red
+hair and beard, whose favorite expression about himself
+had been that a very capable pirate had been sacrificed
+to make a tolerable physician. But he had prospered
+in his profession; and then had died with amazing
+suddenness, leaving his estate in an almost hopeless
+mess.</p>
+<p>Robert Hillyer had tackled the problem,&ndash;&ndash;Robert,
+the alert, the busy, the supremely confident, the typical
+money-getter of the money-worshipping metropolis. He
+had long been deeply in love with Marion, but he had not
+made great headway in his suit, despite the advantage
+of Doctor Gaylord&rsquo;s approval. Now, having saved
+enough out of the estate (for so he said, though he never
+told Marion the details of that miracle) to provide her
+with an income barely sufficient to keep her in comfort
+but not in the luxury to which she had been accustomed,
+he plainly expected his reward. And this was to
+Marion an intolerable situation. She did not love Robert.
+She liked him, admired him, trusted him; no more.
+Knowing her father&rsquo;s wishes, she saw the way marked
+straight before her; for Robert already had wealth, and
+could and would give her all the material things she
+desired. Time and again she was on the point of yielding,
+but something checked her, held her back, as if a
+voice had whispered in her ear, and strong arms had
+seized her. She grew restless, discontented, melancholy.
+And suddenly, on a moment&rsquo;s inspiration, the
+strangest impulse she had ever known, she had revolted
+and fled from the scene of her unhappiness, telling
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_12' name='page_12'></a>12</span>
+Robert (by letter) only that she must have time to
+think, and that for six months he must leave her to
+herself. She had fled to Claire, that cousin on her
+father&rsquo;s side, who some years before, to the wonder and
+chagrin of many Gaylords east and west,&ndash;&ndash;to all except
+the Viking physician, who had rejoiced in her spirit,&ndash;&ndash;had
+eloped with a cowboy, since turned successful cattleman,
+whom she had met at the Denver Carnival. Ten
+days now had Marion been in Paradise Park, rejoicing
+in her freedom, rejoicing in the half-wild life, rejoicing
+in the tonic air and the tonic beauty of this Rocky Mountain
+valley, shut in, isolated, and so aptly named. And
+only to-day had there come any emotions that disturbed
+her peace.</p>
+<hr class='tb' />
+<p>When she looked up again her eyes were sharply
+arrested by a scene that seemed curiously to picture her
+own mood. Far up at the head of the valley a cloud that
+was scarcely heavier than a mist came stealing out of a
+gulch to take its shining way along the range of mountains.
+Dropping in its flight a shower as light as a
+bridal veil, it sped glistening across the face of mountain
+after mountain, softening the stark grays and reds, while
+above it the peaks gleamed white. On and on it came
+until at last it arrived at the mouth of a deep, dark gorge
+in the side of a mountain that, in its strange and forbidding
+aspect, differed notably from all the others in the
+majestic range. There it paused as if arrested by some
+stern command, hung for a moment in palpable agitation,
+and was swiftly swallowed up in the gorge. And
+again she had a vague and uneasy feeling, as she had
+when first she saw it, that Thunder Mountain,&ndash;&ndash;but
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_13' name='page_13'></a>13</span>
+she could not fit that feeling into thought, could find no
+words to frame it. Yet she was fascinated.</p>
+<p>It was half-hidden now in surging, black storm-clouds,
+while all the sharp and snow-clad peaks around it glittered
+in the sun. Even in those rare moments when it
+was freed from clouds and mists it stood alone in its
+peculiar grandeur. Unlike all the others it wore no
+diadem of snow. Some terrible convulsion of nature,
+some cataclysm at its birth or in the fiery days of its
+youth, had left it bald-headed, ugly, and deformed. But
+for that catastrophe it would have been far loftier than
+any of its fellows; and even now the hunchback towered
+among them, its flat head level with their pointed peaks,
+the most conspicuous figure in the imposing pageant
+raised against the western sky.</p>
+<p>And its deformity was not the whole of its misfortune.
+It bore the brunt of every tempest that broke upon that
+massive barrier of mountains. Its granite head was the
+very breeding-place of storms. The peaks around it had
+their days of calm, but Thunder Mountain never. An
+hour or two perhaps&ndash;&ndash;no more. It knew no peace.
+The elements were, and are now, and forever will be
+quarreling upon its worn and battered head; lightning
+and rain and snow and wind are forever hammering and
+beating it turn by turn. It is the Quasimodo and the
+Lear and the Gray Friar of mountains, all in one. And
+if, on some still and perfect day, its tonsured head
+emerges from the clouds, the watcher in the Park has
+but to turn his head a moment, and look again, and lo!
+it wears its gray cowl as before, and stoops growling and
+grumbling under its endless punishment.</p>
+<p>Suddenly, as Marion looked, the silence was rudely
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_14' name='page_14'></a>14</span>
+shattered. Roll on roll of thunder swept across the valley,
+crashed against the hills, rebounded from wall to
+wall of mountains, until all the Park was filled with the
+sullen bellowing. And then, amid all the tumult,
+Marion heard something more,&ndash;&ndash;a voice that mingled
+with the voice of the mountain, and thrilled her while it
+filled her with a singular disquietude. She had dismissed
+Haig from her thoughts. She was sure of that.
+And yet through all the uproar, and in the tense silence
+that ensued, she heard his taunting voice:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And you came straight to me!&rdquo;</p>
+<hr class='toprule' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_15' name='page_15'></a>15</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_II_THE_ROAD_TO_PARADISE' id='CHAPTER_II_THE_ROAD_TO_PARADISE'></a>
+<h2>CHAPTER II</h2>
+<h3>THE ROAD TO PARADISE</h3>
+</div>
+<p>The gap in the fence remained exactly as it had been
+when it invited her to adventure. But now she
+halted there, dismounted, and picked up the end of a
+wire that lay trailing on the ground. With new-found
+interest she examined the fracture, and stared at it in
+wonder. Dropping it, and kneeling excitedly in the
+grass, she searched another, and still another wire, and
+with the same result. Even to her unpractised eye the
+facts were plain: the four wires had not been broken;
+they had been cleanly cut, and very recently, as shown
+by the absence of rust on the severed ends. By whom?
+And why? Seth Huntington, Haig had said. Impossible!
+Absurd! True, she had heard Seth denouncing
+him; Claire also; and without knowing the cause of the
+feud, or caring, she had learned that Huntington and
+Haig were bitterly at odds about something,&ndash;&ndash;cattle, she
+thought, or was it land? But that Seth could have
+stooped to the low trick implied in these cut wires!
+And yet&ndash;&ndash;</p>
+<p>She looked down the half-made road by which Haig
+had disappeared. It was quite empty now, save for
+Tuesday and herself. Nor was there sight of man or
+beast in all the valley. Haig&rsquo;s cattle, like Seth&rsquo;s and
+the other ranchmen&rsquo;s, were grazing in the summer
+pastures, no doubt in little shut-in valleys far up among
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_16' name='page_16'></a>16</span>
+the pines yonder, where the violet mists were deepening.</p>
+<p>She mounted her horse again, and rode slowly up the
+hill. But just where the road entered the woods at the
+summit of the ridge she stopped once more, and turned
+for a last look at her lost valley. Her gaze swept it
+lovingly from where, at her left, the long ridge shut off
+the view, to where, far at her right, the valley narrowed
+into a pine-screened gulch; and back again almost to the
+spot where the road dipped and disappeared. There
+her eyes were suddenly caught by something she had not
+seen before,&ndash;&ndash;a thin spiral of blue smoke that mounted
+slowly until it was struck and dissipated by the breeze
+from across the ridge. Haig&rsquo;s ranchhouse, surely, nestling
+below the hill! The house would be visible,
+doubtless, from the place where Haig had vanished from
+her sight. What would it be like? she wondered.</p>
+<p>The next instant she had pulled her pony half-around
+toward the valley. But Tuesday turned his head, and
+looked at her; and she felt the blood rushing into her
+face.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Go on, Tuesday!&rdquo; she cried, jerking him back into
+the road. &ldquo;What are you doing?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>She rode on into the pines, embarrassed beyond all
+belief.</p>
+<p>In a few minutes she had emerged again from the
+woods, descended the hill, and regained the main-traveled
+road along the Brightwater. Still she rode
+slowly, forgetting that she had learned at last to ride
+like a cowboy. She was reluctant to return to Huntington&rsquo;s,
+reluctant to relate her experiences as she had
+always related them until to-day. Haig had sent a
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_17' name='page_17'></a>17</span>
+warning to Huntington. It was her duty to deliver it.
+But how could she tell just so much and no more?
+There would be questions. She would be cross-examined,
+kindly enough but relentlessly. And in some
+strange way this meeting had become a private matter;
+Haig&rsquo;s warning was inextricably mixed with other things
+that did not concern Huntington. Just what these
+were, and why they were so very private, she could not
+quite explain to herself; and for the moment she did not
+try. They were things to be thought about later, when
+she could think more clearly. She knew only that she
+should never be able to endure either the banter or the
+disapproval of Huntington. What did Claire see in
+him anyhow,&ndash;&ndash;the soft and sensitive Claire, with her
+blue eyes and her pretty face always upturned so trustfully
+to him? For the first time she realized that she
+had distrusted Seth from the beginning.</p>
+<p>In the midst of these confused and disconcerting
+thoughts, she became aware that she was no longer alone
+in the highway. Slowly as she rode, she was steadily
+overtaking a group of horsemen that appeared to be in
+difficulties. At intervals there was a commotion in the
+group, and clouds of dust from time to time concealed
+it from her sight. She reined up Tuesday, and hesitated,
+having had her fill of adventure for one day.
+Then, as the men seemed to be quite oblivious to her
+presence, and deeply absorbed in their own affair, curiosity
+drew her onward; and all her scruples were
+forgotten when she had ridden near enough to see the
+cause of the disturbance.</p>
+<p>Three men on cow ponies were leading, driving, and
+avoiding a fourth horse, which was not a cow pony by
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_18' name='page_18'></a>18</span>
+any possible extension of the word. This horse, which
+wore neither saddle nor bridle, but only a rope around
+his neck, maintained an almost uninterrupted struggle
+with his guards. At the first near glimpse she caught
+of him through the dust, Marion uttered an exclamation
+of surprise and admiration. He was larger than the
+ponies ridden by the men, larger than any cow pony,
+yet not a big horse measured by any standard with which
+she was familiar. His lines were like those of a thoroughbred,
+and in his movements, for all his fury, there
+was a lightness, a daintiness, an eloquence that suggested
+nothing so much as the airy grace of a young girl
+skipping and dancing across a playground.</p>
+<p>But it was his color especially that drew the cry from
+Marion&rsquo;s lips. This was pale yellow, not the cream color
+of the familiar buckskin breed, but something golden;
+of a brilliant luster like gold leaf, but softer; rather
+like cloth-of-gold, with a living, quivering sheen. All
+the horse&rsquo;s body was of this uniform, strange tint, but
+his mane and tail were a dull, tawny yellow deepening
+at the extremities into the hue of rusty gold. Though
+his hide was streaked with the sweat of his rebellion,
+and caked in places with the dust of the long road he
+had come, and welted by the whips of his tormentors,
+the color and the gloss shone out as undimmed as his
+proud spirit was undaunted by the hard knocks of his
+captivity.</p>
+<p>The three men clearly were hard pressed. Their
+faces were coated thick with dust; their eyes were red-rimmed,
+bulging, and bloodshot; their movements were
+heavy with fatigue. Scarcely a sound escaped their lips
+as they watched for every fresh man&oelig;uver of their
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_19' name='page_19'></a>19</span>
+prisoner, and fought doggedly to gain a yard or two
+along the road. In the silence and intensity of the
+struggle there was something savage, elemental, and
+incomparable, heightened by the extraordinary beauty
+of the animal and the uncouth appearance of the men.
+Between them, the captive and his captors, Marion&rsquo;s
+sympathy was about equally divided. At every gallant
+sally made by the horse her heart leaped, and she hoped
+instinctively that he would go free. But then, the next
+instant, she was thrilled by the bold and shrewd counter-play
+of the cow-punchers that blocked the horse&rsquo;s
+strategy.</p>
+<p>Marion had scarcely comprehended all this, and imperfectly,
+when a terrifying thing occurred. The
+golden horse seemed to have paused and gathered all
+his forces for an effort that should make his best
+previous performance look like the silly antics of a colt.
+Suddenly, and without any warning man&oelig;uver, he
+charged the full length of his rope straight at the man
+who held it coiled in his hand, with the end looped
+around the horn of his saddle. At the final bound, he
+reared as if to fall upon the cowboy and mangle him with
+his forefeet. But instead of finishing this attack, he
+whirled on his hind legs with incredible swiftness; and
+before the man could gather up the slack of the rope, or
+brace himself for the shock, the wild horse dashed across
+the road with all the strength and fury there was in him.</p>
+<p>Marion screamed, and closed her eyes. There were
+dreadful sounds of falling bodies, of bodies dragged on
+the ground, with grunts and groans and smothered
+cries. Then silence. When she dared to look she could
+see at first only a welter of men and horses half-hidden
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_20' name='page_20'></a>20</span>
+by the dust. Near her lay the gold horse with his head
+twisted backward by the taut rope, which choked him
+until his eyes bulged, and foam dripped from his lips.
+The man who had held the lariat lay half under his
+fallen pony, whose efforts to rise were checked by the
+tightened rope still tied to the saddlebow. The two
+other men were on their feet, one clutching the straightened
+halter, the second deftly slipping a lariat around
+the prisoner&rsquo;s pawing hind legs.</p>
+<p>It was all over in a minute. The taut rope was cut
+near the saddle of the fallen pony, which then scrambled
+to its feet; the leader rose, shook himself, and proceeded
+phlegmatically to adjust the turned saddle, and to climb
+stiffly into it; the leading-rope was passed to him again,
+the second lariat was loosed from the outlaw&rsquo;s feet,
+permitting him to rise; the other men remounted; and
+the procession moved on again in silence, scarcely a word
+having been spoken from the time the horse made his
+mad charge for liberty. And now he seemed to have
+had enough of the conflict, for he stepped forward
+obediently and, Marion fancied, as demurely as a child
+that has finished a naughty tantrum.</p>
+<p>Then at last there was speech. One of the men had
+dropped back a few paces to be in the rear of the
+prisoner. He sat heavily in the saddle, leaning forward
+as if he would fall on the pony&rsquo;s neck. But his eyes
+never left the golden horse, and when he spoke it was
+not to the girl, who had ridden close up to his side, but
+to himself, in a kind of hoarse and guttural soliloquy.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But he ain&rsquo;t done. He&rsquo;s foolin&rsquo;,&rdquo; the man said
+again and again, as if he had started the words and
+could not stop them. &ldquo;He ain&rsquo;t done. He&rsquo;s foolin&rsquo;.&rdquo;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_21' name='page_21'></a>21</span></div>
+<p>Marion looked at him curiously. He was the typical
+cow-puncher, in blue flannel shirt and leather chaps,
+with the inevitable revolver hanging loosely at his hip,
+and a long quirt suspended from his right wrist. The
+dust on his face was stained with blood that had flowed
+from a raw bruise on his temple, and Marion now noticed
+that his left arm hung limp at his side.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;re hurt!&rdquo; she said softly.</p>
+<p>The man turned, and stared at her blankly, and she
+saw that his face was distorted into a set expression of
+pain.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Arm busted,&rdquo; he said, after a moment, as if surprised
+by her question; and then renewed his watch.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;How did it happen?&rdquo; she asked.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Throwed me.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You don&rsquo;t mean you tried to ride him!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Jerked me. Th&rsquo; man ain&rsquo;t born&rsquo;t c&rsquo;n ride &rsquo;im.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You were leading him?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No, just thought I was,&rdquo; he said grimly. &ldquo;He
+drug me.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;When was that?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;This morning&ndash;&ndash;about seven miles back.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Where did he come from?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;San Luis.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Where is that, please?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Over yander,&rdquo; he answered, nodding toward the
+western mountains.</p>
+<p>Marion stared.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You haven&rsquo;t brought him over the mountains!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&rsquo;Round by Pinto Pass, an&rsquo; up through the canyon.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve never seen a horse like that before,&rdquo; she said,
+after a brief silence.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_22' name='page_22'></a>22</span></div>
+<p>&ldquo;Nor anybody else has,&rdquo; he replied, with a note of
+pride.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But he&rsquo;s no cow pony&ndash;&ndash;surely.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You ain&rsquo;t never heard o&rsquo; Sunnysides?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He looked at her curiously.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Of course not,&rdquo; he said apologetically. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re
+f&rsquo;m the city. East, maybe?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, I&rsquo;m from New York.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Then it&rsquo;s natch&rsquo;ral. Everybody in these parts has
+heard o&rsquo; Sunnysides, though it&rsquo;s not many that&rsquo;s seen
+him.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Please tell me about him.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The man&rsquo;s eyes brightened a little.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He&rsquo;s got some strange blood in him,&rdquo; he began.
+&ldquo;Nobody knows what it is, but th&rsquo; ain&rsquo;t another one o&rsquo;
+that color, nor his devil spirit, in the whole bunch. The
+rest of &rsquo;em&rsquo;s just ordinary wild horses runnin&rsquo; up an&rsquo;
+down the sandhills of the San Luis. There&rsquo;s people&rsquo;t
+say he&rsquo;s a ghost horse. Fact! An&rsquo; they say&rsquo;t he&rsquo;ll
+never stay caught. I don&rsquo;t know. It&rsquo;s certain&rsquo;t he&rsquo;s
+been caught three times,&ndash;&ndash;not countin&rsquo; the times cow-punchers
+an&rsquo; others has thought they&rsquo;d caught him, but
+hadn&rsquo;t. The first time he was caught actual he broke
+out o&rsquo; the strongest corral in the San Luis&ndash;&ndash;at night&ndash;&ndash;an&rsquo;
+nobody sees hide nor hair of &rsquo;im&ndash;&ndash;not so much as a
+flicker o&rsquo; yellow in the moonlight. An&rsquo; back he was,
+headin&rsquo; the herd again.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Nex&rsquo; time Thad Brinker ropes him. Thad&rsquo;s the
+topnotch cow-puncher between the Black Hills an&rsquo; the
+Rio Grande, an&rsquo; he comes all the way f&rsquo;m Dakoty when
+he hears the yarn about Sunnysides. Thad gits fourteen
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_23' name='page_23'></a>23</span>
+men to help him round up the bunch, an&rsquo; then he ropes
+the gold feller after a fight that&rsquo;s talked about yit in the
+San Luis. He ropes him. An&rsquo; then what does Brinker
+do?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He looked at Marion as if he dared her to make as
+many guesses as she wished. She shook her head.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You ain&rsquo;t the only one that&rsquo;d never hit it,&rdquo; he went
+on with satisfaction. &ldquo;Thad ropes him, an&rsquo; while they
+lay there restin&rsquo;, Sunnysides all tied up so he can&rsquo;t move,
+an&rsquo; Brinker rubbin&rsquo; some bumps he&rsquo;d come by in the
+fracas, just then the red comes up onto Sangre de
+Cristo. Brinker sees it&ndash;&ndash;Ever seen the sunset color
+on Sangre de Cristo? No? That&rsquo;s a pity, Miss. Indeed,
+that&rsquo;s a pity. But you&rsquo;re f&rsquo;m Noo York, you
+said.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He paused again, and Marion began to realize the full
+degree of her provinciality and ignorance. She was
+from New York. What a pity!</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said the cowboy, as if resolved to do the best
+he could in the circumstances, &ldquo;sometimes&ndash;&ndash;maybe
+three or four times a year&ndash;&ndash;it&rsquo;s weird. It&rsquo;s religious.
+The white peaks turn red as blood&ndash;&ndash;that&rsquo;s why they&rsquo;re
+called Sangre de Cristo. It&rsquo;s Spanish for Blood of
+Christ. It makes you feel queer-like&rdquo;&ndash;&ndash;He paused a
+moment thoughtfully, watching the golden horse as it
+stepped quietly, lightly, with head high, just ahead of
+them. &ldquo;The red comes onto Sangre de Cristo, an&rsquo;
+Brinker sees it. He looks at the blood on the peaks, an&rsquo;
+then at the gold horse lyin&rsquo; there all torn an&rsquo; dirty, an&rsquo;
+this is what Brinker does, an&rsquo; maybe he couldn&rsquo;t help it.
+He ups an&rsquo; cuts the ropes, an&rsquo; Sunnysides&rsquo;s off to his
+waitin&rsquo; bunch, an&rsquo; they all go snortin&rsquo; down the valley.&rdquo;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_24' name='page_24'></a>24</span></div>
+<p>There was a touch of awe in the man&rsquo;s voice, and
+Marion felt a little of it too. She looked toward the
+serrated barrier of mountains, in the very middle of
+which stood old Thunder under his pall of cloud. Beyond
+lay San Luis&ndash;&ndash;Sangre de Cristo&ndash;&ndash;and what
+romance! Would she ever&ndash;&ndash;Her eyes rested for a
+moment on the black pile that now, as always, fascinated
+and yet disturbed her.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And you?&rdquo; she said at length, turning to the cowboy.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;There wasn&rsquo;t no red sunset this time,&rdquo; the man
+answered, with a grim smile. &ldquo;But we ain&rsquo;t slep&rsquo;
+since,&rdquo; he added, with a return of weariness.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You caught him?&rdquo; she asked admiringly.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Us three.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But what are you doing with him here?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He&rsquo;s sold, if we c&rsquo;n find the man&rsquo;t offered a thousand
+for him a year ago.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Who was he?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>But she knew already. Some swift flash of intuition
+told her there was but one man in Paradise Park who&ndash;&ndash;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;His name&rsquo;s Haig, an&rsquo; he&rsquo;s&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Philip Haig!&rdquo; she murmured.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You know him?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes&ndash;&ndash;no. That is, I&rsquo;ve heard of him.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>It was on her lips,&ndash;&ndash;the explanation that the men
+had passed the branch road leading to Haig&rsquo;s ranch,
+that they were now riding away from it. But she hesitated.
+And why? She did not know then; but an hour
+later she would be reproaching herself bitterly for that
+moment&rsquo;s indecision. The words were almost spoken,
+but something checked them; and before she could make
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_25' name='page_25'></a>25</span>
+up her mind to follow her first natural impulse it was
+too late.</p>
+<p>The leader of the party turned in his saddle, and
+called to the man at Marion&rsquo;s side, who rode quickly
+forward and joined his companions. There was a conversation
+inaudible to her ears, and while she still
+pondered over her inexplicable hesitation the cowboys
+and the golden horse, followed by Marion, approached
+the group of squat, unpainted houses that bore without
+apology the name of Paradise.</p>
+<hr class='toprule' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_26' name='page_26'></a>26</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_III_SETH_HUNTINGTONS_OPPORTUNITY' id='CHAPTER_III_SETH_HUNTINGTONS_OPPORTUNITY'></a>
+<h2>CHAPTER III</h2>
+<h3>SETH HUNTINGTON&rsquo;S OPPORTUNITY</h3>
+</div>
+<p>It was Thursday, the one day of the week when Paradise
+needed no apologist. For on Thursdays the
+stage arrived from Tellurium, bringing the mail and,
+now and then, a passenger, and always a whiff of the
+outside world. No resident of Paradise Park would
+willingly have missed the arrival of the stage; and on
+this occasion fully two-thirds of the male population,
+with nine-tenths of the female, had already assembled.
+But the stage was not due for an hour or more. The
+women bargained and gossiped in Thompson&rsquo;s store;
+the men, most of them, were gathered around a stiff
+game of freeze-out in the Square Deal Saloon; and only
+the score or more of saddle horses hitched in front of the
+store, and the dozen or so of buckboards and road
+wagons parked in the rear of it, showed that Paradise
+was in its weekly state of mild and patient expectancy.</p>
+<p>So the three cow-punchers, the yellow horse, and
+Marion rode into Paradise without being seen or heard,
+and halted in front of the post-office.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Hal-lo! Hallo!&rdquo; sang out the leader of the cowboys.
+And then, with the petulance of one that is &ldquo;all in&rdquo;:
+&ldquo;Is this a dam&rsquo; graveyard?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>A thin man in his shirt sleeves, with a whisky glass
+in one hand and a towel in the other, came to the door
+of the Square Deal Saloon. His pallid face had the look
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_27' name='page_27'></a>27</span>
+of settled weariness that is characteristic of keepers of
+such oases. Slavin had never, within the recollection of
+the oldest frequenter of his establishment, betrayed the
+slightest interest in anything. If there was a certain
+change in his expression as he looked out between narrowed
+eyelids into the garish sunlight it was one indicative
+of mild resentment at having been disturbed in
+his methodic occupation behind the bar. He saw with
+neither interest nor anticipation the three strangers,
+who ought to have had enough sense to dismount and
+walk in if they wanted anything.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; he began in a drawling and sarcastic tone,
+&ldquo;what&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>It probably would have been a cautious and covered
+insult to the presumed intelligence of the strangers, if
+he had finished the question. But it died away on his
+thin lips. His fishy, blue eyes had caught at last the
+gleam of Sunnysides, half in eclipse behind the dull-hued
+cow ponies. For a few seconds he stared, while
+his mouth stood open, and his features slowly responded
+to the first emotion he had felt in years.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Hell&rsquo;s bobcats!&rdquo; he yelled.</p>
+<p>The glass slipped from his hand, and fell tinkling in
+pieces on the floor as he lunged out into the road.</p>
+<p>In the saloon there was a moment of tense silence
+as the men there slowly realized that a phenomenon
+had occurred. Slavin was excited! The silence was
+followed by a hubbub of raised voices and a racket of
+overturned chairs and the scrape and thud of boots on
+the sanded floor. At that instant a woman in a pink
+calico dress, drawn by Slavin&rsquo;s yell, came to the door of
+Thompson&rsquo;s, and promptly screeched. The poker game
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_28' name='page_28'></a>28</span>
+was never finished; Thompson&rsquo;s trade was ruined for the
+day; and the strange group in the roadway became the
+center of a jostling, uproarious crowd of men and
+women, who alternately bombarded the three cow-punchers
+with questions and stared at Sunnysides in
+silent wonder. But they were careful to maintain a
+respectful distance between themselves and the formidable
+captive, though he stood motionless amid all the
+uproar, like a golden statue of a horse, with his head
+raised proudly, his yellow-black eyes flashing defiance
+and suspicion, and his lustrous hide gleaming in the sun.</p>
+<p>Marion&rsquo;s enjoyment of this exciting scene was tinged
+with a vague uneasiness. She had watched the men
+come tumbling out of the Square Deal Saloon and the
+women swarming from Thompson&rsquo;s store, and had felt
+a curious relief at seeing neither Seth nor Claire among
+them. Though she could not have given any reason for
+her satisfaction, their absence, and Seth&rsquo;s especially,
+seemed to her a piece of rare good fortune. Haig&rsquo;s
+warning&ndash;&ndash;&ldquo;Tell him he&rsquo;s a fool to anger me!&rdquo;&ndash;&ndash;was
+still echoing at the back of her brain; her recent act of
+incomprehensible errancy still troubled and perplexed
+her; and try as she would, she was unable to suppress
+the feeling that she had become inextricably entangled
+in the feud between Haig and Huntington. She was
+not yet ready to face Huntington. Thank Heaven, he
+was not there!</p>
+<p>But at the very instant of her self-congratulation, and
+when she was just turning her attention again to the
+hubbub around the golden outlaw, her eye was suddenly
+caught, across the heads of the crowd, by a figure that
+caused her to stiffen in the saddle.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_29' name='page_29'></a>29</span></div>
+<p>&ldquo;Seth!&rdquo; she gasped.</p>
+<p>He came striding rapidly from the direction of the
+blacksmith&rsquo;s, the most distant of the group of buildings,&ndash;&ndash;a
+large and heavy but well-built man, whose black,
+short-cropped beard and bushy, overhanging eyebrows
+gave him a somewhat truculent expression, which was
+heightened by his rough and domineering demeanor.
+He was better dressed, or more carefully at least, than
+any of the other men. He wore a coat and trousers of
+dark-brown corduroy, a light-gray flannel shirt with a
+flowing black tie, and a wide-brimmed Stetson hat. His
+belt, under the unbuttoned coat, was of elaborately
+stamped leather, with a pocket at one side from which a
+heavy, gold watch chain was looped to a silver ring, and
+with an ornate holster at the other where the black butt
+of a revolver was visible as he moved.</p>
+<p>He shouldered his way through the crowd in the heedless
+manner of most bulky men, who seldom realize how
+much space they take that properly belongs to others.
+At six feet from the golden horse he halted, and surveyed
+him with shining eyes.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Sunnysides, eh?&rdquo; he said, turning toward the nearest
+of the strangers.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The&rsquo;s only one,&rdquo; replied the cow-puncher.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Who caught him this time?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Us three. That&rsquo;s Jim Raley, with the busted arm.
+That other is Jud Smith, My name&rsquo;s Larkin. We
+belong to the X bar O outfit on Lost Soldier Creek.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Second outfit below Forty-Mile,&rdquo; said Huntington,
+familiarly.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Right!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Sanders still foreman?&rdquo;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_30' name='page_30'></a>30</span></div>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Then what are you doing with that horse up here?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The cow-puncher grinned.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I ketch your meanin&rsquo;,&rdquo; he replied. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s like this.
+Sanders chased Sunnysides three seasons, an&rsquo; thought
+he&rsquo;d roped him. But all he gits &rsquo;s a cracked leg, an&rsquo;
+not a yeller hair of the slippery beast. Then us three
+takes on the job&ndash;&ndash;not presumin&rsquo; to be better&rsquo;n Sanders,
+but hopin&rsquo; for luck. It comes our way, an&rsquo; there
+you are. We offer him to Sanders&ndash;&ndash;for a price,
+natch&rsquo;rally&ndash;&ndash;but he says he don&rsquo;t believe in ghosts, an&rsquo;
+we c&rsquo;n go to hell with him.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You must have missed the road. This is Paradise,&rdquo;
+said Huntington.</p>
+<p>The crowd roared its appreciation.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The&rsquo; ain&rsquo;t much in names,&rdquo; observed Larkin testily.</p>
+<p>The crowd laughed again, though, of course, less
+heartily.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, Heaven or Hell,&rdquo; said Huntington, &ldquo;is the
+horse for sale?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He is&ndash;&ndash;if he ain&rsquo;t sold already.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;How&rsquo;s that?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;We&rsquo;re offered a price for him&ndash;&ndash;if it still holds
+good. That&rsquo;s why we&rsquo;ve come to Paradise&ndash;&ndash;an&rsquo; no
+other reason, believe me!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;How much?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Thousand.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>There was a stir in the crowd.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That&rsquo;s some price for a bronco,&rdquo; said Huntington,
+with an assumed indifference.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It sure is&ndash;&ndash;if you&rsquo;re talkin&rsquo; about a <i>bronco</i>,&rdquo; retorted
+the cow-puncher.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_31' name='page_31'></a>31</span></div>
+<p>There was a brief silence, in which all eyes were
+turned again upon the golden horse, standing motionless
+but alert, as if keenly alive to all that passed. The common
+ponies around him stamped, and champed their
+bits, and moved restlessly in their places, but Sunnysides
+remained calm and observant, with all the dignity and
+contempt of a captive patrician in a crowd of yokels.</p>
+<p>Marion saw admiration and desire growing in Seth&rsquo;s
+eyes, and knew that her foreboding had not been without
+reason.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And who&rsquo;s paying a thousand dollars for him?&rdquo;
+asked Huntington.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Haig&rsquo;s his name, Philip Haig,&rdquo; answered Larkin.
+&ldquo;Know him?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>If Larkin had been a little nettled by the levity of the
+Paradisians he now had his revenge, though much to his
+surprise, in the extraordinary effect produced by his
+simple announcement. The smiles faded from the faces
+assembled around him; significant glances were exchanged;
+and there followed a silence so deep that the
+murmur of the Brightwater could be heard quite clearly
+across the meadows. Then there was a rustling movement
+in the crowd, and every face, as if by a common
+impulse, or at a given signal, was turned toward Huntington.</p>
+<p>Marion was not sure of the feelings of the others, but
+there could be no mistake in what she read in Huntington&rsquo;s
+black countenance. She was not only frightened,
+but surprised and pained. For all his coarseness and
+crudity, she had until to-day believed him to be innately
+gentle, with only a rough and ungracious exterior. She
+had seen him always tender with Claire, whom undoubtedly
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_32' name='page_32'></a>32</span>
+he loved with all the best there was in him. But
+now she perceived the other side of his character, which
+she had indeed divined at first, but which she had firmly,
+on account of Claire, refused to acknowledge. An unworthy
+passion glowed in his eyes; his features were
+distorted by an expression of mingled cunning and hate;
+and his head somehow seemed to sink lower between his
+shoulders as he leaned slightly forward, studying the
+face of the cow-puncher. Then swiftly he took himself
+in hand, and masked his passions under an air of careless
+badinage that was, for the moment, suited to his
+purpose.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But I don&rsquo;t just understand,&rdquo; he drawled insinuatingly.
+&ldquo;Haig hasn&rsquo;t been away from the Park lately&ndash;&ndash;unless
+he&rsquo;s gone an&rsquo; come by night.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>A snicker or two, and one loud guffaw rewarded him
+for this insult to his absent foe. But Marion felt the
+color rising to her cheeks.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s a year ago he&rsquo;s seen him, &rsquo;way off, shinin&rsquo; in
+the sun,&rdquo; explained Larkin. &ldquo;He stops at the X bar O,
+an&rsquo; says he&rsquo;ll give a thousand for him.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;So that&rsquo;s all you&rsquo;ve got to go on, is it?&rdquo; sneered
+Huntington.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; answered Larkin uneasily.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;An&rsquo; you think he&rsquo;ll make good, do you?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;If a man&rsquo;s word ain&rsquo;t good he don&rsquo;t stay in this
+country long, does he?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That&rsquo;s right&ndash;&ndash;he won&rsquo;t stay long!&rdquo; replied Huntington,
+with a savage laugh.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You mean to say&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo; queried Larkin pointedly,
+leaning across the neck of his pony, and looking keenly
+into Huntington&rsquo;s eyes.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_33' name='page_33'></a>33</span></div>
+<p>&ldquo;Nothing,&rdquo; answered Huntington, lifting his huge
+shoulders.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That&rsquo;s sayin&rsquo; a lot an&rsquo; sayin&rsquo; nothing,&rdquo; retorted
+Larkin.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;ll know more when you try to collect that
+thousand.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;All right,&rdquo; responded Larkin, gathering up the reins
+as if to terminate the interview. &ldquo;Where&rsquo;s his place&ndash;&ndash;if
+it ain&rsquo;t a secret?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s over beyond that ridge,&rdquo; said Huntington,
+pointing toward the west. &ldquo;You go back about
+three miles the way you came, an&rsquo; there&rsquo;s a branch
+road&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Hell!&rdquo; snorted the cowboy whose arm hung limp
+at his side.</p>
+<p>The three men exchanged glances. They were very
+weary; they had used almost the last of their powers to
+bring the outlaw this far; and they were plainly reluctant
+to undertake another tussle with the tireless
+animal, now ready, without doubt, to renew his struggle
+for liberty.</p>
+<p>Huntington watched them narrowly.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m all in!&rdquo; grumbled Raley.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You look it,&rdquo; said Huntington. Then he added
+lightly: &ldquo;Still, you ought to fetch up at Haig&rsquo;s place
+before morning.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Marion felt disgust and resentment rising in her at
+this misrepresentation of the distance to Haig&rsquo;s ranch.
+Whatever Haig had done, this was cowardly and unfair.
+She looked eagerly at the other men, expecting to hear
+some one correct the gross exaggeration. But the faces
+were all blank, and no one spoke.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_34' name='page_34'></a>34</span></div>
+<p>Something like a groan escaped from the lips of the
+injured cowboy. He looked as if he might tumble from
+the saddle at any instant.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Sure we can!&rdquo; said Larkin doggedly. &ldquo;Come,
+men! Let&rsquo;s move on.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, good luck!&rdquo; said Huntington carelessly.
+And then, as if on second thought: &ldquo;But see here!
+You fellows look all right to me, and if Haig&rsquo;s changed
+his mind, or hasn&rsquo;t got the cash handy, bring the horse
+back here, and I&rsquo;ll talk business with you.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Talk business now!&rdquo; Smith blurted out, averting
+his eyes from Larkin.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Very well. I&rsquo;ll give you five hundred for him&ndash;&ndash;if
+you don&rsquo;t want to go any farther. He ain&rsquo;t worth it,
+but he&rsquo;s a kind of a curiosity, and&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That ain&rsquo;t talkin&rsquo; business worth a dam&rsquo;!&rdquo; cried
+Larkin. &ldquo;Come along, men!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He turned his pony&rsquo;s head, and took a fresh grip on
+the halter that held the prisoner. Smith moved also,
+though slowly, but Raley did not budge.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m damned if I go any further!&rdquo; he growled.</p>
+<p>Smith stopped, and looked uncertainly from Raley to
+Larkin, from Larkin to Huntington, who was studying
+him craftily.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The five hundred isn&rsquo;t wind,&rdquo; said Huntington
+sneeringly. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s over there in Thompson&rsquo;s safe, if
+you want it.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;We&rsquo;ll see Haig first,&rdquo; said Larkin, compressing his
+lips, and speaking more to his companions than to
+Huntington.</p>
+<p>Smith shifted uneasily in his saddle, while Raley
+avoided Larkin&rsquo;s eyes, and looked appealingly at Huntington.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_35' name='page_35'></a>35</span>
+The ranchman, in his turn, took a sidelong
+glance, furtive and questioning, at the faces of his
+neighbors. The moment was critical, and much more
+was involved in the crisis than the possession of the
+golden outlaw. For a long time Huntington had assumed
+a certain leadership in the Park, but it had not
+always been unquestioned. His qualifications for leadership
+were not as apparent to all his neighbors as they
+were to himself, and there were some who even resented
+his pretensions. Nevertheless he had, in a way, succeeded;
+and he had been permitted to represent the
+entire valley as far as he liked in the war with Philip
+Haig. One and all, indeed, regarded Haig as an
+intruder; many of them had more than once threatened
+violence against him; and there was not among them
+one whom Haig, if he had wanted a defender, could
+have counted on. Yet, for all that, Huntington was
+practically alone in the depth of his hatred and the violence
+of his methods. If Haig had no friends in the
+Park, he had only a few, perhaps no more than two or
+three, inveterate enemies, of whom Huntington was the
+active representative.</p>
+<p>Huntington now saw in the faces of the men around
+him that they were doubtful of him, and that the time
+was opportune to turn their passivity into energetic
+support of his plans. Moreover, he had already &ldquo;put
+his foot in it,&rdquo; had gone too far to withdraw without discredit.
+Having openly insulted the absent enemy, and
+having clearly revealed his intention to cheat him of this
+prize, to weaken now would be to abandon forever all
+hope of ascendency. For an instant he regretted what
+he had done, and cursed himself under his breath.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_36' name='page_36'></a>36</span>
+Then, taking a new grip on himself, he returned to the
+attack.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Seven hundred and fifty, then!&rdquo; he said with a
+swagger. &ldquo;And it&rsquo;s cash, not words.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>There was a moment of suspense. The three men,
+who were moving slowly away, turned in their saddles.
+Not a muscle quivered, not a foot stirred in the expectant
+crowd. Marion felt that in another minute she would
+cry out, shrieking at Seth, shrieking the warning Haig
+had sent by her.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That&rsquo;s good enough, for me!&rdquo; declared Raley, throwing
+the reins over his pony&rsquo;s head, and preparing painfully
+to dismount.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No, Jim!&rdquo; cried Smith. &ldquo;Let him say a thousand,
+an&rsquo; I&rsquo;m with you. &rsquo;Tain&rsquo;t exactly on the square, but
+the&rsquo;s no use killin&rsquo; ourselves for&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>His speech was cut short by a shrill cry from a woman
+who stood on a horse block at the outer edge of the
+crowd.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Look! Look!&rdquo; she called, pointing a finger toward
+the long white road.</p>
+<hr class='toprule' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_37' name='page_37'></a>37</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_IV_THE_HIGHEST_BIDDER' id='CHAPTER_IV_THE_HIGHEST_BIDDER'></a>
+<h2>CHAPTER IV</h2>
+<h3>THE HIGHEST BIDDER</h3>
+</div>
+<p>Far up the road appeared a little cloud of dust with
+a black speck in its center.</p>
+<p>A murmur ran through the crowd; a name was passed
+from mouth to mouth; and the men nearest Huntington
+began to edge away instinctively, leaving a larger and
+larger space clear around him and the three cow-punchers.</p>
+<p>Marion too looked, and understood. She had not dismounted,
+but still sat her pony within ten feet of the
+outlaw, at the side of the roadway, in about the middle
+of which stood Huntington. With an effort she drew
+her eyes away from that ominous black spot in the distance,
+and turned toward Seth. A shiver ran through
+her body, but her cheeks burned, and there was a voice in
+her ears that shouted, &ldquo;Tell him he&rsquo;s a fool to anger
+me!&rdquo; For a moment she was on the point of rushing
+upon Seth, and shrieking that warning into his face.
+But now it was too late.</p>
+<p>Like all the others Huntington stood for a few seconds
+fascinated by that figure in the puff of dust. And for
+just those few seconds there was a certain unsteadiness
+in his attitude, irresolution in the black eyes beneath
+their bushy brows. But the blue-whiteness under the
+dark beard was not the pallor of fear, so called. Seth
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_38' name='page_38'></a>38</span>
+Huntington was as incapable of physical cowardice as
+he was of moral courage. He was not afraid of Philip
+Haig, but he was dreadfully afraid of being thought
+afraid of him. There was yet time to avoid a clash with
+Haig, to withdraw from an undertaking in which he
+knew he was wholly in the wrong. But he was not equal
+to that test of character. He would sooner tackle all the
+Haigs in Christendom than face the derision of his
+neighbors, whom he had assiduously taught to expect
+great things of him on the first occasion. Here was
+the occasion; he had seized it, blinded by passion; and
+there was no way for him now but to see it through.
+He straightened up, and faced the three cow-punchers.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;All right!&rdquo; he cried defiantly. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a thousand.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>But the three had heard the name murmured by the
+crowd, had seen the distant horseman. Larkin was
+plainly elated. Raley and Smith, as plainly abashed,
+looked this way and that, avoiding the eyes of their
+leader, and every other eye as well. Huntington, seeing
+the game about to slip from his hands, whirled on his
+heel and looked swiftly toward the store.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Thompson!&rdquo; he yelled.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Here!&rdquo; was the answer, as a small, gray-bearded
+man in shirt sleeves advanced a step or two from the
+door.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Fetch me that roll from your safe, will you?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Right!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>As Thompson disappeared within the store, Huntington
+turned again toward the cowboys.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;A thousand dollars&ndash;&ndash;cash!&rdquo; he repeated.</p>
+<p>Larkin leaned forward on his horse, and looked at him
+shrewdly.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_39' name='page_39'></a>39</span></div>
+<p>&ldquo;Seems to me it&rsquo;s not the horse you&rsquo;re after so much
+as him,&rdquo; he said, with a grin and a nod toward the
+road.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That&rsquo;s as may be,&rdquo; retorted Huntington. &ldquo;Money
+talks.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;An&rsquo; it says mighty funny things sometimes,&rdquo; replied
+Larkin, who now made no concealment of his dislike
+of Huntington and his &ldquo;game.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;We&rsquo;ll see!&rdquo; cried Huntington angrily. &ldquo;How
+does twelve hundred sound to you two?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He looked steadily at Raley and Smith, who exchanged
+glances.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What&rsquo;s your awful hurry?&rdquo; Larkin demanded, in a
+drawling tone, but with an anxious eye for the galloping
+figure now in plain view. &ldquo;We&rsquo;ll give Haig a chance
+to bid&ndash;&ndash;eh, men?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Smith shot an angry but uneasy look at the leader.
+Huntington saw it, and guessed that there was more
+than weariness and greed in the willingness of Smith
+and Raley to combine against Larkin. Probably, he
+thought, there had been differences of opinion, disputes
+even, on the road to Paradise. He turned impatiently
+toward the store.</p>
+<p>At that instant Thompson ran out, broke through the
+ring of men, and handed a roll of &ldquo;yellowbacks&rdquo; to
+Huntington, who hurriedly peeled off several of the bills,
+and thrust them at arm&rsquo;s length toward the wavering
+cow-punchers.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Haig talked about a thousand dollars!&rdquo; he cried.
+&ldquo;There&rsquo;s fifteen hundred. Do you want it?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>For a moment it was heads or tails. Even Larkin
+eyed the money hungrily. Then his teeth clicked
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_40' name='page_40'></a>40</span>
+together, and he turned upon his partners, whose
+faces showed plainly the answer that was upon their
+lips.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;An&rsquo; what&rsquo;ll you say to <i>him</i>?&rdquo; he demanded.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Eighteen hundred!&rdquo; shouted Huntington.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That&rsquo;s good enough for me!&rdquo; cried Raley. &ldquo;Say
+it, Jud!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>There was a distant thunder of hoofs as Haig&rsquo;s
+horse took the short bridge over the Brightwater. The
+crowd backed still farther away from Huntington, who
+was again fingering his roll of bills.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Two thousand!&rdquo; he roared, shaking the handful
+of &ldquo;yellowbacks&rdquo; at the wavering Smith.</p>
+<p>Raley leaned from his saddle, and grabbed Smith&rsquo;s
+arm.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Quick, Jud!&rdquo; he pleaded hotly. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t be a
+fool!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;All right! We&rsquo;ll take it!&rdquo; answered Smith.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No!&rdquo; said Larkin firmly, pulling his horse around
+between Huntington and the two partners.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes!&rdquo; the two cried out together.</p>
+<p>Huntington stepped forward, and thrust both handfuls
+of bills almost into Larkin&rsquo;s face.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Name your price then!&rdquo; he bellowed.</p>
+<p>Larkin looked at the money,&ndash;&ndash;smelt it,&ndash;&ndash;as he said
+afterwards, grimly confessing his weakness at the sight
+of more than he could save in years of riding the range
+and branding mavericks. If there had been ten seconds
+more&ndash;&ndash;</p>
+<p>Haig galloped into the crowd, which gave him plenty
+of room, and reined up his pony just in front of the
+golden outlaw. For some instants he saw only the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_41' name='page_41'></a>41</span>
+horse; and his eyes kindled. Then he faced the cowboys
+and Huntington.</p>
+<p>They were fixed in almost the very attitudes in which
+he had come upon them. Huntington&rsquo;s outstretched
+hands had indeed fallen to his side, but they still
+clutched the crumpled bills. Raley&rsquo;s blood-stained
+face was purple with anger and chagrin, while Smith&rsquo;s
+wore a sullen, hangdog look. As for Larkin, he met
+Haig&rsquo;s questioning scrutiny with a look of mingled triumph
+and guilt.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, why don&rsquo;t you go on?&rdquo; asked Haig, with a
+smile.</p>
+<p>There was no response. The silence was again so
+complete that the music of the Brightwater was heard
+across the meadows.</p>
+<p>Haig slowly swept the crowd with an inquiring
+glance. All these men were hostile toward him, of
+course; but how far would they support Huntington?
+No matter! He swung himself suddenly out of the
+saddle, and addressed himself to the leader of the cowboys.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;re Larkin, aren&rsquo;t you?&rdquo; he said.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; answered the embarrassed cow-puncher.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And the others are Smith and&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Raley,&rdquo; prompted Larkin.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And here, of course, is my good friend Huntington,
+looking like Fortune with both hands full.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Several men in the crowd laughed, whereupon Huntington,
+who had evidently forgotten the money, made
+matters worse for himself by hastily and clumsily
+thrusting it into the pockets of his coat, while his face
+flushed angrily.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_42' name='page_42'></a>42</span></div>
+<p>&ldquo;That&rsquo;s right, Cousin Seth,&rdquo; Haig said lightly.
+&ldquo;You may need it.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Marion, at these words, quivered with alarm. Was
+he going to tell Huntington, there in that crowd, of
+the incident in the pasture? His next speech, however,
+reassured her.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Now, Larkin,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;let&rsquo;s understand things.
+That&rsquo;s my horse, isn&rsquo;t it?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That&rsquo;s what I&rsquo;ve been sayin&rsquo; some time back,&rdquo;
+answered Larkin, in a tone of relief.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And you, Smith?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I suppose so,&rdquo; was the sullen reply.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And Raley?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No, it ain&rsquo;t!&rdquo; answered that one with a sudden
+flare-up of courage.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Then whose horse is it?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It belongs to Larkin an&rsquo; Smith an&rsquo; me.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Of course. But why did you bring him to Paradise
+Park?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;To sell him.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;To whom, please?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Raley, caught in the trap, looked appealingly toward
+Smith, but got no help from him.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;To whom?&rdquo; repeated Haig sharply.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;To you&ndash;&ndash;if you wanted him!&rdquo; Raley blurted out
+at last.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;If I wanted him!&rdquo; retorted Haig ironically. &ldquo;I
+bargained for him with you, didn&rsquo;t I?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; growled Raley.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And you went and caught him <i>for me</i>?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And you brought him to Paradise Park <i>for me</i>?&rdquo;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_43' name='page_43'></a>43</span></div>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Very well. Don&rsquo;t be downhearted!&rdquo; he said cheerfully.
+&ldquo;A good name is more to be desired than great
+riches. Isn&rsquo;t that so, Cousin Seth?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The ranchman&rsquo;s face flamed.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;If you&rsquo;ve got anything to say to me, say it quick!&rdquo;
+he jerked out.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I have several things to say to you, one at a time,&rdquo;
+replied Haig smoothly. &ldquo;To begin with, these men
+told you the horse was mine, didn&rsquo;t they?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No, they didn&rsquo;t. They said you&rsquo;d offered a thousand
+dollars for him.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Haig laughed.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;All right, if that suits you better! They told you
+they had brought  him here to deliver him to me for a
+thousand dollars, and you thought it would be a fine
+joke to buy him yourself. Is that it?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Huntington did not respond to this, but watched
+Haig narrowly, a little puzzled by his manner.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;How much did he offer you?&rdquo; Haig asked Larkin.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Two thousand dollars&ndash;&ndash;and then he said name our
+price.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Haig whistled.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, I&rsquo;m damned if you haven&rsquo;t got some sporting
+blood in you!&rdquo; he said, smiling at Huntington.
+&ldquo;How much was in your roll?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Huntington&rsquo;s first impulse was to tell Haig that it
+was none of his business. But he was deceived by
+Haig&rsquo;s manner, having expected his enemy to fall upon
+him like a thunderbolt. His surprise was shared, indeed,
+by most of the men, who had expected gun-play
+on the jump. Only Marion, sitting still and watchful
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_44' name='page_44'></a>44</span>
+on her pony, was not misled. She felt that Haig was
+playing with Huntington, and biding his time.</p>
+<p>Huntington&rsquo;s vanity completed his self-delusion.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Four thousand, two hundred dollars&rdquo; he replied
+boastfully, glancing around at his neighbors.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Whew!&rdquo; uttered Haig, between pursed lips.
+Then to Larkin: &ldquo;You were hard pressed, weren&rsquo;t
+you? But never mind, boys, I&rsquo;ll do better than I promised&ndash;&ndash;and
+charge it up to Cousin Seth.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Another laugh flickered around the crowd. It was
+evident that there was no great objection to seeing
+Huntington baited.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;My name&rsquo;s Huntington!&rdquo; he snorted. &ldquo;What&rsquo;s
+this damned cousin business, anyhow?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Haig raised his eyebrows.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Does it annoy you?&rdquo; he asked, in a tone of exaggerated
+politeness.</p>
+<p>Huntington merely glared. He was one of those
+self-made wits who enjoy their own jokes immensely
+but grumble at plucking barbed shafts out of their own
+skins. He began to wish for the thunderbolt.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But it&rsquo;s your own fault, you know,&rdquo; Haig added.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What in hell are you talking about?&rdquo; Huntington
+growled.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m talking about your last visit to my ranch.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;My last&ndash;&ndash;What do you mean, damn you!&rdquo; the
+ranchman thundered, his right hand moving to his belt.</p>
+<p>There was a hurried movement among those of the
+crowd who, absorbed in the dialogue, had half-consciously
+crept nearer. But Haig appeared to have
+noticed neither Huntington&rsquo;s motion nor the backing
+away of the spectators.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_45' name='page_45'></a>45</span></div>
+<p>&ldquo;And wouldn&rsquo;t it have been reckless extravagance
+to pay good money for Sunnysides when you might just
+have come and taken him out of my corrals?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>For a few seconds Huntington, as if he could scarce
+believe that he heard aright, was speechless with amazement
+and rage.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Say it, damn you!&rdquo; he said chokingly. &ldquo;What do
+you mean?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t get so excited, or you may break a blood vessel,
+Cous&ndash;&ndash;I beg your pardon, <i>Mister</i> Huntington.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Say it!&rdquo; roared the ranchman.</p>
+<p>Then Haig dropped his mask.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I will say it,&rdquo; he began in a voice that rang ominously.
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll say it so that even you cannot fail to understand
+me. I mean that I&rsquo;m tired of your threats
+and persecutions. I mean that you have harassed me
+and my men at every opportunity. I mean that you
+drove that bunch of my cattle off the cliff last September.
+I mean that within twenty-four hours another fence has
+been cut, and that you know who did it. I mean that
+your attempt to buy my horse was only another of the
+contemptible and cowardly tricks you have played on me.
+I mean, Huntington, that you are a bully, a liar and a
+thief!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Huntington&rsquo;s hand had slipped to the butt of his revolver
+at the beginning of this intolerable speech; but
+he had waited, as if fascinated, as if unable to move
+under the torrent of denunciation. Then to the onlookers
+it appeared that the bold young man, who had
+not yet made the slightest motion toward his own
+weapon, would be slain in his tracks. But Haig was
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_46' name='page_46'></a>46</span>
+as much the quicker in action as he was the nimbler in
+wit.</p>
+<p>The two revolvers cracked, it seemed, as one, but
+with very different results. Haig&rsquo;s battered old hat,
+lifted as if by a sudden gust of wind, slid from his
+head, and fell to the ground with a bullet hole through
+it. But Huntington threw up his hands, pitched forward,
+and fell in a heap in the dusty road.</p>
+<p>There was a single shrill, short-cut shriek as a
+woman near the door of the post-office slipped down
+in a faint; and then a chorus of quavering cries as
+other women clutched the arms of the men nearest
+them.</p>
+<p>Marion swayed in her saddle, her head drooping on
+her breast. A young cowboy darted from the crowd,
+and grabbed her as she fell. He started to lift and
+carry her away, but, with a desperate effort, she recovered,
+and stood erect, trying to thrust him from
+her. He held her nevertheless, supporting her with
+an arm under one of hers.</p>
+<p>Haig had quickly turned and faced the group of
+men at the left of the road.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Is there anybody else here that wants to buy my
+horse?&rdquo; he demanded coolly.</p>
+<p>There was no response, no movement. He whirled,
+and confronted the silent row of men on the other side.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Is there anybody else here who thinks he can drive
+me out of Paradise Park?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Still no one replied; and Haig, with a shrug, thrust
+his revolver back in its holster.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Thompson!&rdquo; he called out.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Here!&rdquo; was the answer, in the same tone of readiness
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_47' name='page_47'></a>47</span>
+with which he had responded to Huntington. By
+keeping his mouth shut, and never taking sides in any of
+the occasional disagreements and disputes that enlivened
+the tedium of life in that community, Thompson
+had established a reputation for neutrality and trustworthiness,
+and was permitted to be everybody&rsquo;s friend.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Look after Huntington, please!&rdquo; said Haig.
+&ldquo;He&rsquo;s not badly hit&ndash;&ndash;you&rsquo;ll find the bullet under the
+left shoulder blade. It&rsquo;ll do him good.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Thompson and some others lifted Huntington, and
+carried him into the store; and at that moment the
+stage, its approach unnoticed, rattled up, and stopped
+with shrieking brakes and creaking harness. There
+was a sudden outbreak of speech on all sides, as if
+the tension had been relaxed by the recurrence of
+a familiar and orderly event. In the confusion Haig
+turned toward Sunnysides and the three cow-punchers.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Now, Larkin,&rdquo; he began briskly, &ldquo;we&rsquo;ll finish this
+business, and then&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He stopped short, and stared.</p>
+<p>By the side of the golden horse stood Marion. Still
+shocked and bewildered, yet strangely thrilled, she had
+stretched out one trembling arm, and rested her hand
+on the neck of the wild creature, from which every
+other person in the crowd around&ndash;&ndash;and she too in
+her right senses&ndash;&ndash;had kept away, in full appreciation
+of his reputation. Whether it was that the outlaw had
+for the time given up all notion of resistance and hostility,
+or that he felt the difference between the girl&rsquo;s
+gentle touch and the rough handling he had undergone,
+he did not stir. But this docility, this understanding,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_48' name='page_48'></a>48</span>
+was only a part of the sight that brought
+Haig to a standstill.</p>
+<p>He had left many things behind him, but there was
+one thing he had not been, able to destroy as he would
+have destroyed it, root and branch and flower. He
+would always have a weakness&ndash;&ndash;he called it that&ndash;&ndash;for
+beauty in whatever form it appeared to him. Sunsets
+and twilights, the shadows of trees in still waters,
+flowers and reeds, old ruins in the moonlight, sometimes
+even faces moved him until he was ashamed, and
+berated himself for a sentimental weakling. And
+now&ndash;&ndash;</p>
+<p>The girl was tawny as a leopard. Her hair was
+almost exactly the color of the outlaw&rsquo;s dull yellow
+mane, but finer, of course, and softer; and her complexion&ndash;&ndash;he
+wondered that he had not noticed it before&ndash;&ndash;had
+a peculiar richness and brilliancy that
+seemed to reflect the luster of Sunnysides&rsquo; golden hide.
+They stood there entrancing his artist-eye with their
+perfect harmony of line and color; and the last thin
+rays of the setting sun bathed horse and girl in a golden
+light&ndash;&ndash;an atmosphere in which they glowed like one
+of Titian&rsquo;s mellowed canvases.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t move, please!&rdquo; he exclaimed.</p>
+<p>But Marion did not hear, or did not heed. She
+dropped her hand, and glided toward him, while he
+watched her, curious and rapt. Perhaps it was because
+he saw her through that golden glow, perhaps
+because his nerves were a little unsteady in the reaction
+from the strain they had undergone, that she made a
+singular appeal to his imagination. He fancied that
+for all the fineness of her figure, the exquisite poise of
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_49' name='page_49'></a>49</span>
+her small head, the cameo-like delicacy of her face,
+there was something in her as wild, untamed, and elemental
+as the heart of Sunnysides.</p>
+<p>Thus she moved slowly past him, and passing gave
+him a long and steady look, with an unfathomable expression
+in her eyes,&ndash;&ndash;an expression neither of anger
+nor of bitterness nor of disgust nor of anything he
+might have expected after all he had done that day.
+He turned, and watched her until she had disappeared
+in the crowd around the stagecoach; and with her went
+out the last rays of the sun.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, I&rsquo;ll be damned!&rdquo; said Philip Haig.</p>
+<p>With a shake of his shoulders, as if to throw off some
+unwelcome weight upon them, he turned again to take
+up his business with the gaping cow-punchers.</p>
+<hr class='toprule' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_50' name='page_50'></a>50</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_V_HE_SHALL_TELL_ME' id='CHAPTER_V_HE_SHALL_TELL_ME'></a>
+<h2>CHAPTER V</h2>
+<h3>&ldquo;HE SHALL TELL ME!&rdquo;</h3>
+</div>
+<p>Doctor Wilson, arriving from Tellurium on
+the third day after the encounter at Paradise,
+found Huntington in a bad way, due not so much to
+the wound in his left shoulder as to the state of his
+mind. Haig&rsquo;s bullet was extracted without difficulty
+or serious complications, but Haig&rsquo;s words were encysted
+too deep for any probe. Huntington&rsquo;s self-love
+had been dealt a mortal blow; and somebody must pay
+for it.</p>
+<p>First of all it was Claire that paid; then Marion.
+He did not mean to be disagreeable to them, but never
+having cultivated self-restraint he had none of it now
+to ease the days of his convalescence. He filled the
+house with his clamor, and required as much attention
+as an ailing child. There were just two ways to keep
+him quiet. Claire soothed him when she sat at his bedside,
+with one of his huge &ldquo;paws&rdquo; held in her tiny
+hands; and Marion found, somewhat to her surprise,
+that Seth liked music. The piano was one of the wonders
+of the Huntington house, for pianos are not essential
+instruments in the equipment of cattle ranches,
+and this was the only one in all that region of cattledom.</p>
+<p>In music Seth&rsquo;s tastes were sentimental. &ldquo;Lost
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_51' name='page_51'></a>51</span>
+Chords&rdquo; and &ldquo;Rosaries&rdquo; subdued him almost to tears;
+and if Marion only brought him tuneful violets every
+morn he tried his best to be good. So when Claire
+was not on duty at the bedside Marion must needs be
+on duty at the piano,&ndash;&ndash;an ordeal that Claire endured,
+of course, more patiently than Marion.</p>
+<p>Claire was almost comically unfit to be a ranchman&rsquo;s
+wife, and she too had been a trial on occasions. She
+was small and delicate, but vivacious, amiable, bright.
+Her blue eyes always had a childlike wonder in them,
+and she was fond of wearing her fluffy, golden hair in a
+girlish knot low on her neck, or even in a long, thick
+braid down her back, with a blue ribbon bow at the
+end. She flitted about the house like a butterfly, and
+yet she had managed somehow to make her home the
+marvel of Paradise Park.</p>
+<p>To begin with it was the ordinary, one-story, rambling
+house of pine, with spruce-clad hills rising behind
+it, and a little stream, rollicking down between it
+and the corrals. But a wide veranda had been constructed
+on three sides of it, furnished with wicker
+chairs, and half-screened with boxes of growing flowers.
+All around the house flowers grew,&ndash;&ndash;old-fashioned garden
+flowers, roses and geraniums; beds of them everywhere,
+and blossoming shrubs along the stream.</p>
+<p>The house contained, besides the kitchen and the
+bedrooms, just one big room. This, with its low ceiling,
+unpainted timbers, and small windows, was not unlike
+the hall of some old manor house. The floor was
+covered with Navajo rugs in rich and barbaric colors;
+the walls were draped with burlap in dull red dyes;
+and the windows were curtained with chintz in bright
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_52' name='page_52'></a>52</span>
+yellows and reds. Above the windows and doors hung
+many heads of deer and elk and mountain sheep, and
+rifles on racks of horn. Between the two front windows
+stood the upright piano, and near it a small bookcase
+filled with novels and volumes of poetry. The big oak
+table at mealtime was made to look very inviting with
+white napery and modest china and silver, and a bouquet
+always in its center. At other times it was a library
+table, heaped with books and magazines, and in
+the evening, when the kerosene lamps were lighted, and
+the pi&ntilde;on was blazing in the great fireplace, the room
+seemed as remote from Paradise Park as Claire herself.</p>
+<p>There was an occasional visitor at Huntington&rsquo;s in
+the period of his convalescence, usually a ranchwife
+eager for another glimpse at Claire&rsquo;s wonderful housekeeping,
+or a young cow-puncher drawn by the attraction
+of two very pretty and unusual women in one
+house. But the ranchmen themselves, with two or
+three exceptions, were content to be solicitous at long
+range&ndash;&ndash;an abstention that relieved and at the same
+time troubled Huntington. He was not eager to talk
+with his neighbors about that episode at the post-office,
+but their aloofness filled him with uneasiness. Well,
+let them wait! They would hear from him again, and
+so should Haig!</p>
+<p>There was, among the visitors, one whose coming perceptibly
+lightened the tedium of those days. Marion
+had the good fortune to see him in time not to be taken
+by surprise. Seated on the veranda after an exhausting
+recital for the benefit of Huntington, she perceived the
+figure of a horseman&ndash;&ndash;yes, it was a horseman&ndash;&ndash;riding
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_53' name='page_53'></a>53</span>
+out of the pines toward the corrals. She stared.
+He was so little and so lost between his pony, which
+seemed extraordinarily big, and his sombrero, which undoubtedly
+was enormous, that she remained for a moment
+dumb, and then, choking with laughter, fled into
+the house.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Look, Claire, look!&rdquo; she cried, grabbing her
+cousin&rsquo;s arm.</p>
+<p>Claire, dragged to the door, looked and giggled.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Haven&rsquo;t you seen that before?&rdquo; she asked.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No! Never!&rdquo; answered Marion, her hand upon
+her mouth.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Of course. He&rsquo;s just arrived&ndash;&ndash;for the season.
+He was here last year, and the year before.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And they let him?&rdquo; demanded Marion, thinking
+of the irrepressible cow-punchers.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, he&rsquo;s all right!&rdquo; Claire assured her. &ldquo;That is,
+after you get used to him. The men had all sorts of
+fun with him the first summer he was here. But he
+took all their fun good-naturedly, and showed them he
+had pluck too. They began to like him. Everybody
+likes him, and so will you.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But in the name of&ndash;&ndash;who is he?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The little man had descended like a parachute from
+his pony, and was now bobbing rapidly up the graveled
+walk.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Smythe,&rdquo; explained Claire hurriedly. &ldquo;But
+he&rsquo;s here now&ndash;&ndash;I&rsquo;ll let him tell you&ndash;&ndash;he likes to
+talk.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>At the foot of the steps he caught sight of the two
+women in the doorway; removed his wonderful headgear
+with an eighteenth-century gesture; ducked his
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_54' name='page_54'></a>54</span>
+head in a twentieth-century bow; and smiled. Claire
+stepped quickly out on the veranda.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, Mr. Smythe!&rdquo; she cried gaily. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m so glad
+to see you. Come in!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He was an undersized young man, immaculately
+dressed in brown tweeds and shining boots, a very high
+white collar and a sky-blue tie. The sombrero swinging
+in his hand was quite new, ornamented with a broad
+band of stamped leather, and it had the widest brim obtainable
+at the shop in Denver where a specialty is made
+of equipping the tenderfoot for life in the cattle country.</p>
+<p>Smythe took Claire&rsquo;s proffered hand, and bent over
+it as if he had thought of kissing it, but lacked the courage
+of his gallantry. Claire introduced him to Marion,
+answered his questions about Seth, and then fluttered
+away to the kitchen, where she had an angel cake in the
+oven not to be entrusted to the cook.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I arrived only yesterday, Miss Gaylord,&rdquo; Smythe
+chirped. &ldquo;But I&rsquo;ve heard of you already.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know whether to thank you or not,&rdquo; answered
+Marion.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, if you please! What I heard made me very
+solicitous about Huntington&rsquo;s health.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He smiled knowingly at her, and Marion loosed some
+of her pent-up laughter. Truly, Smythe was going to
+be a treat! She studied him stealthily while he chattered
+on. He wore a pointed beard of reddish hue; his
+head was quite bald on top, and bulging at the brow;
+and the contour of that head, with its polished dome,
+and the narrow face tapering down to the pointed beard,
+was comically suggestive of a carrot. But it was an intelligent,
+even intellectual countenance, and his blue
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_55' name='page_55'></a>55</span>
+eyes were honest and bright. He might be laughed at,
+but he could not be flouted, she thought.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Then you&rsquo;ve been here before, Mr. &ndash;&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo; she began,
+and hesitated.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Smythe,&rdquo; he prompted her generously. &ldquo;J. Hamerton
+Smythe. S-m-y-t-h-e. I didn&rsquo;t change it from
+Smith, and I don&rsquo;t know what one of my esteemed ancestors
+did. But I&rsquo;m glad he did. It gives me a touch
+of artificiality, don&rsquo;t you think? I fear being too natural.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Marion laughed, and that pleased him. She led the
+way to chairs near an open window where a black and
+yellow butterfly hovered over a honeysuckle blossom that
+had nodded its friendly way into the room.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m from New York too,&rdquo; Smythe rattled on.
+&ldquo;Columbia. Doing a little tutoring and a little postgraduate
+work. This is my third summer in the Park.
+Found it by chance. Wanted to go somewhere, and was
+tired of the old places&ndash;&ndash;Maine and Adirondacks and
+the rest. Looked at a map in a railroad office, and there
+it was, sticking right out at me, the first name I lighted
+on. In small type too&ndash;&ndash;curious, wasn&rsquo;t it? Clerks in
+office hadn&rsquo;t heard of it, but I started out to find it.
+Thought I&rsquo;d better get to Paradise when I could. And
+now I&rsquo;m glad. I feel like an old settler, and I believe
+the cow-punchers have ceased to regard me as a tenderfoot.
+That&rsquo;s as flattering as a Ph.D.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m afraid they laugh at me,&rdquo; said Marion.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;On the contrary. Believe me, these cowboys have
+taken to reading poetry since you came.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Please be natural, Mr. Smythe!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Fact! I&rsquo;d hardly got my things unpacked before
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_56' name='page_56'></a>56</span>
+one of them was riding over to ask me if I had a book
+about Lady Clara Vere de Vere. It seems he&rsquo;d heard
+the poem recited somewhere. I asked him why he
+wanted it, but he looked so flustered that I let him off.
+Didn&rsquo;t have a Tennyson with me, unfortunately, but I
+gave him my Byron, and I think that will hold him for
+a while.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Charming!&rdquo; exclaimed Marion. &ldquo;But what has
+all that to do with me?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He&rsquo;s the chap that grabbed you in his arms when
+you were falling from your horse after that little business
+at Thompson&rsquo;s the other day.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Marion blushed, and then laughed.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But how did you come to hear about that?&rdquo; she
+demanded.</p>
+<p>He chuckled.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, I hear everything!&rdquo; he replied. &ldquo;My friends
+say I&rsquo;ve a nose for news.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, I shall be very careful what I say to you.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Please, no!&rdquo; he protested. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m a safety vault
+when it comes to secrets.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>She glanced quickly toward the door of Seth&rsquo;s bedroom,
+then toward the kitchen, before she spoke.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;So you&rsquo;ve heard all about that day at the post-office?&rdquo;
+she said in a low voice.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Terrible!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But not unexpected.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Why not unexpected?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; he replied, lowering his voice, and leaning
+nearer to Marion, &ldquo;I&rsquo;m afraid Huntington was looking
+for it.&rdquo;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_57' name='page_57'></a>57</span></div>
+<p>&ldquo;You mean&ndash;&ndash;he deserved it?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I won&rsquo;t say that. You see&ndash;&ndash;I&rsquo;m neutral, like
+Thompson. I like Huntington, and I like Haig. I
+look at this fight without prejudice, even though I&rsquo;ve a
+reason to be prejudiced.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;In favor of&ndash;&ndash;?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Huntington.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Why, please?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Huntington accepts my friendship, after a fashion.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But&ndash;&ndash;the other?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Nothing doing!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Marion stared at him, wondering.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Fact!&rdquo; he assured her, with a sheepish smile.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But why?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t know. I&rsquo;d like to, but he lives like a hermit.
+Latchstring never hangs outside his door.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>There was a certain evidence of feeling in Smythe&rsquo;s
+speech.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You speak as if you&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;As if I knew!&rdquo; He took the words out of her
+mouth. &ldquo;I do.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;How do you know?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I tried it.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And then?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Kicked out!&rdquo; he replied with a grimace.</p>
+<p>Marion laughed in spite of her burning eagerness to
+hear more.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Not exactly kicked,&rdquo; Smythe explained. &ldquo;But I&rsquo;d
+rather have been. He was as polite as&ndash;&ndash;he&rsquo;s a gentleman,
+you see, so he knew how to do it without using his
+hands or his feet.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But why?&rdquo; insisted Marion.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_58' name='page_58'></a>58</span></div>
+<p>&ldquo;Why did I try? Curiosity. Simple, elemental,
+irresponsible curiosity.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>She laughed again at his frank confession.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No, I mean why did he kick you out, as you call
+it?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That&rsquo;s what I want to know. And I will know, too.
+I tell you, Miss Gaylord, I admire the man immensely.
+His secretiveness only makes me like him the more,
+probably because I myself am so garrulous. Most persons,
+though, cannot tolerate a man who minds his own
+business. Those who have no reason to hate Haig dislike
+him because he does not ask them to like him. His
+affairs are his own. Did you notice that scar?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; answered Marion, scarcely above a whisper.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, you can build any sort of romance you like
+around that. He has had his romance or tragedy or
+something, you may be sure. But he&rsquo;s no ordinary man,
+whatever he may be doing in Paradise Park. I have
+heard that he&rsquo;s surrounded with books and pictures in
+his cottage. He&rsquo;s got a Chinaman for a valet, and an
+Indian for his man Friday, and their mouths are as
+tight as his. What&rsquo;s more, he must be all right in the
+main things, for his foreman and cowboys stick to him
+through thick and thin, and say nothing. I tell you,
+Miss Gaylord, I&rsquo;d like to be a friend of his, if only he
+gave a&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;A damn, I believe they say,&rdquo; she prompted demurely.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;By Jove!&rdquo; he said with enthusiasm. &ldquo;You are
+a&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>She held up a warning finger.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;We&rsquo;re going to be friends, you know,&rdquo; she said.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_59' name='page_59'></a>59</span>
+&ldquo;And friends understand each other&ndash;&ndash;without words.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Done!&rdquo; he agreed, reaching for her hand, and
+shaking it.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But this mystery,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Doesn&rsquo;t anybody
+know&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You know as much as all of us. Of course,&rdquo; he
+added banteringly, &ldquo;there&rsquo;s no denying a woman, when
+she starts. He might tell you!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The speech startled her, and she blushed.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Now, that&rsquo;s sheer impudence!&rdquo; she retorted.</p>
+<p>But he continued to look at her with a curious expression.
+How much had he guessed? In her confusion
+an impulse seized her. She leaned suddenly
+toward him, with flushed face and sparkling eyes.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You dare me?&rdquo; she demanded, her voice quivering.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I dare you!&rdquo; he answered gleefully.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well then, he shall tell me!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Good!&rdquo; he exclaimed. &ldquo;And I&rsquo;ll be around to
+take the kicks if he&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, Cousin Seth!&rdquo; cried Marion, leaping to her
+feet.</p>
+<p>The bedroom door had opened, and Huntington came
+out, dressed in his familiar corduroy suit, but with his
+left arm still bandaged to his side, Smythe hastened
+forward to greet him.</p>
+<hr class='toprule' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_60' name='page_60'></a>60</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_VI_THE_STORY_OF_THE_SCAR' id='CHAPTER_VI_THE_STORY_OF_THE_SCAR'></a>
+<h2>CHAPTER VI</h2>
+<h3>THE STORY OF THE SCAR</h3>
+</div>
+<p>She was awakened by the shrill chatter of the magpies
+in the tall pine near her window. Often she
+had resented their quarrelsome dialogue at dawn, but
+now she slipped eagerly out of bed, and hurried to the
+window. There had been rain in the night, but when
+she had pulled apart the chintz curtains and opened the
+wooden shutters the air was sweet and clean in her face,
+and the thin light showed the world rising joyously to
+the day.</p>
+<p>She dressed hastily in her oldest clothes, stole on tiptoe
+to the kitchen for a biscuit and a glass of milk,
+found fishing tackle on the veranda, and was soon
+running breathlessly past the corrals toward the banks
+of the Brightwater. And all this was a deliberate
+deception. She purposed to fish, of course&ndash;&ndash;a little,
+to justify the clandestine expedition; but what she
+really sought was solitude.</p>
+<p>It was half in jest that she had said to Smythe, &ldquo;He
+shall tell me!&rdquo; But in the night, by some strange
+alchemy, that jest had been transmuted into a purpose
+of which she was still doubtful, if not afraid. And yet
+to go forward seemed less difficult than to go back. For
+she had let the days of Seth&rsquo;s recovery and convalescence
+slip by without telling Claire of her experience in the
+Forbidden Pasture and on the road to Paradise. The
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_61' name='page_61'></a>61</span>
+duel at the post-office, she argued, surely had made it
+unnecessary to warn Huntington of Haig&rsquo;s anger. And
+yet, as their guest, as Claire&rsquo;s cousin&ndash;&ndash;But had they
+been quite fair to her? They had not warned her of the
+hostility across the Ridge; they had let her go blundering
+into the Forbidden Pasture; not that it mattered so
+much, though it might have been worse&ndash;&ndash;</p>
+<p>Her thoughts were becoming very much confused.
+She had permitted a man to treat her most offensively,
+and she had seen him shoot down another without compunction;
+and that other was her cousin, in whose house
+she was a guest. And yet she felt no resentment, no
+detestation, no censure, no rebuke. Instead, here she
+was running away to think out a plan whereby she might
+hear the whole story of the feud, and more, from Haig
+himself.</p>
+<p>The morning advanced in rose and pearl nuances. A
+hundred tantalizing perfumes filled the air; field-spiders&rsquo;
+webs sparkled in the dew like silver gossamer; meadow
+larks rose at her feet, and wove delicate patterns in the
+air with threads of melody. Who could think amid
+such diverting beauty? She lifted her head, and went
+singing through the meadows, knee-deep in the wet and
+clinging grass, and laughing when the parted branches
+of the willows splashed her face and drenched her.
+And then, at the first cast she made into a still, deep
+pool, where the night loitered under the very eye of day,
+an imprudent trout took the gray hackle fly, and made
+off with it. The splash, and the &ldquo;zip&rdquo; of the tightening
+line through the water; and then the fight, and the
+capture&ndash;&ndash;Well, if they were going to rise like that&ndash;&ndash;</p>
+<p>The sun was high before she became aware that she
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_62' name='page_62'></a>62</span>
+was very hot and tired and hungry. Her shoes were
+soaking wet, her skirts and stockings splashed with mud;
+one shoulder was being sunburned where a twig had
+caught and ripped her white flannel waist; and Seth&rsquo;s
+red silk handkerchief around her neck was scarcely a
+deeper crimson than her face.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But I can&rsquo;t catch them all in one day!&rdquo; she exclaimed
+reluctantly, leaning wearily against a tree.</p>
+<p>At that instant, under her very eyes, a trout leaped
+in the nearby pool.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Impudence!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll just get you, and
+then quit.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>But it was one pool too many; for at the second cast
+her hook caught in the rough bark of a log that projected
+far out into the stream.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh! Now I&rsquo;ve done it!&rdquo; she groaned.</p>
+<p>Several smart tugs at the line, with a whipping of the
+rod to right and left of the log, convinced her that the
+hook was too deeply embedded to be released by any such
+operation. Sinking down on a heap of driftwood on
+the bank, she gloomily contemplated the consequences
+of her greed. There were two ways to go about it now,&ndash;&ndash;to
+break the line and leave the hook to its fate, or to
+crawl out on the log and rescue it. The first was
+unsportsmanlike, the second was very likely to be dangerous.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Um-m-m!&rdquo; she muttered, with a grimace. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s
+not easy.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The log ran out, at a slight inclination upward, from
+the center of the heap of driftwood, and its free end,
+where the hackle fly reposed at a distance of fully twenty
+feet from the bank, was suspended barely two feet above
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_63' name='page_63'></a>63</span>
+the middle of the pool. She leaned forward, and gazed
+into its dark depths, which appeared to be scarcely
+stirred by the current, though five yards away the stream
+was making a merry racket over the shallows.</p>
+<p>She stood up, and looked around her. Through the
+screen of willows and cottonwoods on each sloping bank
+she saw the meadows lying green and silent in the sun.
+There was no sound except the prattle of the Brightwater
+and the murmur of the breeze in the foliage.
+She assured herself that she was quite alone.</p>
+<p>Next she folded and pinned up her skirt so that it
+hung just to her knees, and after a final glance in all
+directions, stepped cautiously out to the edge of the
+driftwood, knelt down on the fallen trunk, and began to
+creep warily out toward the embedded hook. The log
+was round, and none too large; her knees, protected only
+by thin stockings, were bruised by the rough and partly-loosened
+bark; and she scarcely dared to breathe lest she
+should lose her balance, and tumble into the yawning
+pool. Once she incautiously looked down, and saw her
+image waving dizzily on the slow-moving surface of the
+water.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; she gasped, as she drew back her gaze, and
+dug her nails into the log.</p>
+<p>But for all her fears, and because of them, it was
+tremendously exciting, and she became deeply absorbed
+in her task. Now clinging close to the log in sudden
+panic, now laughing tremulously at her trepidation, she
+forgot everything except her goal, and the inches by
+which she was approaching it. She had arrived within
+two feet of the hook, and was just about to reach a
+trembling hand to detach it, when she received a shock
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_64' name='page_64'></a>64</span>
+that was near to ending her expedition in an ignominious
+splash.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Wait!&rdquo; called out a voice, somewhere behind her.
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll help you!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The fright first nearly caused her to lose her grip on
+the log, and then left her cold and shivering. After
+that a wave of heat swept over her, and the blood tingled
+in her flushed and perspiring face.</p>
+<p>Who was it? Philip Haig, by all the ill luck in the
+world? Who else could have had the effrontery? She
+dared not turn to look, both in fear of falling, and in
+shame at being caught in that absurd predicament.
+What a sight! she thought. Her skirt was above her
+knees, and one stocking, caught by a projection of bark,
+had slipped down to her ankle. And that was not all!...
+With a desperate effort, she lifted one hand from
+its hold on the log, and tried to adjust her skirt; but the
+movement only unbalanced her. With a shriek she
+flattened herself, and lay there panting and miserable.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Wait!&rdquo; the voice cried, more sharply than before.
+&ldquo;No move&ndash;&ndash;for minute!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>She was arrested by the words. &ldquo;No move for
+minute!&rdquo; It was not the voice of Philip Haig, but in
+that assurance there was only a doubtful consolation.
+If not Haig&ndash;&ndash;who? There was something oddly foreign
+in that heavy, harsh, and yet not displeasing voice.
+A new fear presently mingled with the others. It was
+a wild country after all; and she had taken no note of
+the distance she had come, and little of her surroundings.
+But she could only obey, and wait.</p>
+<p>There came the sound of quick splashing in the water,
+and a few seconds later a man&rsquo;s head and shoulders
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_65' name='page_65'></a>65</span>
+appeared in the stream at her side. At sight of the
+strange, dark countenance suddenly upturned to her,
+within a foot of her own, she almost fainted. It was
+a face she had never seen before, solemn, stolid, with a
+copper-colored skin, high cheek bones, and deep-set, black
+eyes in which there was no more expression than there
+was on the thin, straight lips. She closed her eyes.</p>
+<p>But that was only for an instant, since nothing terrible
+was happening. When she dared to look again the man
+was quietly releasing the offending fly. He tossed it
+back in the direction of the bank, then stood for a
+moment regarding her, still without the trace of an expression
+on his dark face.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t be &rsquo;fraid!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Hold still!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>She obeyed him, though his next move was one to have
+brought a scream to her lips if she had not become
+incapable of utterance. Standing in the water, which
+came almost up to his armpits, he had kept his arms
+high above the surface of the pool. Now he stretched
+them out toward her, clasped both her ankles with one
+huge hand, slipped the other under her waist, and with
+what seemed incredible strength and assurance, lifted
+her off the log. Then, without so much as wetting the
+edge of her skirt, he bore her to the bank, and seated her
+gently on the heap of driftwood from which she had
+ventured so bravely only a little while before.</p>
+<p>Should she weep, or laugh, or rage at him? Through
+eyes half-blinded by tears, she searched his face; but he
+met her troubled and fiery gaze with the most perfect
+calm. Then, after a moment, he deliberately turned,
+and stood facing squarely away from her,&ndash;&ndash;an act of
+stoicism that at once removed her fears and completed
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_66' name='page_66'></a>66</span>
+her discomfiture. She took the hint implied in his
+movement, and bent down, blushing furiously, to pull
+up the fallen stocking, and let down her skirt.</p>
+<p>When she sat erect again the man had not changed
+his position; and she seized the opportunity to study
+him. His figure, though she had just had proof of his
+strength, was lean almost to thinness, very straight, and
+borne, she fancied, with a certain dignity and even
+majesty in its erectness. The straight, black hair under
+the sombrero was touched with gray. He was not
+young, past middle age perhaps; but she could hazard
+no nearer guess at his age. No matter! Looking at
+him thus, she began to feel her resentment falling away,
+as if every shaft from her angry eyes had broken harmlessly
+on that serene and unoffending back. Even her
+embarrassment began to seem inexcusable. The man
+had carried her ashore in much the manner he would
+have used if she had been a sack of oats to be saved from
+wetting.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You are very strong!&rdquo; Marion said at last.</p>
+<p>He turned slowly toward her. His face was grave
+and expressionless, but by no means dull; and his eyes
+were very black and bright.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You&ndash;&ndash;are&ndash;&ndash;all&ndash;&ndash;right&ndash;&ndash;now?&rdquo; he asked, ignoring
+her praise.</p>
+<p>There was a curious slowness and lack of emphasis
+in his speech, with a pause after each word, that gave a
+singular impressiveness to all he said.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But why did you do it?&rdquo; she demanded.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&rsquo;Fraid you fall,&rdquo; was his simple answer.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But I don&rsquo;t mind getting wet.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Easy drown in little water,&rdquo; he said laconically.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_67' name='page_67'></a>67</span></div>
+<p>She laughed at the idea of her drowning in a pool like
+that&ndash;&ndash;she who had battled triumphantly with the
+breakers at Atlantic City, Newport, and Bar Harbor.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But I can swim!&rdquo; she assured him.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I not know that,&rdquo; he replied, unmoved.</p>
+<p>True. And she must have appeared to be greatly in
+need of assistance.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Anyhow, I thank you!&rdquo; she said sincerely. &ldquo;But
+who am I thanking, please?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Pete.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Pete! Pete who?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Only Pete.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But have you no other name?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes. Indian name.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>And he rolled out a string of guttural syllables that
+sounded like names of places in the Maine woods.</p>
+<p>Indian name! Marion started; and in a flash she
+knew. Haig&rsquo;s man Friday! Here was luck indeed.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You are Mr. Haig&rsquo;s&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo; She hesitated.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Friend,&rdquo; he said, completing her sentence.</p>
+<p>Marion was again embarrassed. She did not know
+what to say next, fearing to say the wrong thing, and
+so to throw away a golden opportunity. In her search
+for the right lead, her eyes lighted on a fishing basket
+that lay on the ground not far from her own.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;But it&rsquo;s strange I didn&rsquo;t hear or
+see you!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Indian not make noise.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I should say not!&rdquo; she retorted, laughing.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Trout very smart,&rdquo; he added quietly.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve caught fourteen,&rdquo; she volunteered eagerly.
+&ldquo;And you?&rdquo;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_68' name='page_68'></a>68</span></div>
+<p>For answer he fetched his creel, and opened it.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; she cried, in envy and admiration, seeing that
+the creel was almost full, and that not a fish in sight was
+as small as her largest prize.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I give you some,&rdquo; he said, glancing at her own
+basket.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No! No!&rdquo; she protested quickly. &ldquo;I have
+plenty.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>She showed him her catch, which was by no means
+insignificant. Nevertheless Pete took three of his largest
+trout, and transferred them to her basket, ignoring
+her protests.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But they are for&ndash;&ndash;him, aren&rsquo;t they?&rdquo; she asked.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Biggest you no see. At bottom.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>That satisfied her, and she watched him silently while
+he found her rod, and reeled in the offending fly.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Brown fly better now,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;You ought see
+what trout eating before you try catch big ones.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>On this he drew a book of flies from his pocket, and
+replaced the gray hackle with a brown one. She questioned
+him eagerly, following this plain lead; and
+presently they were seated on the pile of driftwood,
+while he told her about the native trout and the rainbow
+and the California, of little brooks far up among the
+mountains where the trout were small but of a delicious
+flavor, of the time for flies and the time for worms, of
+famous catches he had made, of the way the Indians
+fished before the white man showed them patent rods
+and reels. By slow degrees Pete&rsquo;s iron features softened,
+and he smiled at her, not with his lips, but with
+his eyes, which were the blackest, surely, in the world.</p>
+<p>But Marion was not diverted from the questions that
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_69' name='page_69'></a>69</span>
+were next her heart. With all her woman&rsquo;s cunning of
+indirection, she brought the talk around to Philip Haig.
+Did he fish? Sometimes. Did he hunt? Much, when
+the deer came down from the heights with the first snows.
+Then&ndash;&ndash;she could resist no longer.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It must have been terrible&ndash;&ndash;the accident,&rdquo; she
+said, placing a finger on her cheek.</p>
+<p>He looked at her strangely, while she held her breath.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That no accident,&rdquo; he said at last, after what seemed
+to her an interminable interval of suspense.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No accident?&rdquo; she repeated, trying not to appear
+too eager.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He call it accident, maybe. He say it is nothing.
+Pete say it is much. It is big debt. Some day Pete
+pay.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>There was deep silence for a moment. The stream
+gurgled and splashed; the breeze whispered through the
+cottonwoods; and over all, or under all, was the vague,
+insistent, seductive sound that the summer makes in the
+fulness of its power.</p>
+<p>Marion hesitated, quivering with eagerness and uncertainty.
+She was afraid to ask more, lest she should
+be shortly rebuffed, and lose her opportunity. But Pete
+was looking at her steadily. She felt a flush coming
+into her face again. Had he guessed&ndash;&ndash;something&ndash;&ndash;already
+in her manner, in her impulsive questions?
+More likely it was the charm that, for once unconsciously,
+she wielded&ndash;&ndash;the elusive charm of woman that
+makes men want to tell, without the asking.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You like to hear?&rdquo; Pete said; and her heart leaped.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, please!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>And she was keenly disappointed. She had expected
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_70' name='page_70'></a>70</span>
+something romantic, something ennobling and fine.
+And it was only a barroom brawl, though Philip was
+not in it until the end, to be sure! Five Mexican sheep
+herders against the lone Indian. Guns and knives in
+the reeking border saloon; and afterwards in the street;
+and the Indian almost done for, bleeding from a dozen
+wounds; and then a voice ringing out above the fracas:
+&ldquo;No, I&rsquo;m damned if you do! Five to one, and greasers
+at that!&rdquo; And Philip Haig had jumped from his
+horse, and plunged into the m&ecirc;l&eacute;e, disdaining to draw his
+gun on greasers. Smash! Bang! went his fists, front
+and right and left.</p>
+<p>Pete had accounted for one Mexican, who would herd
+sheep no more on the plains of Conejos. The others
+fled. Then Haig, despite the knife-wound in his face,
+grabbed the Indian, and somehow lifted him up behind
+him on his horse.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Quick, Indian!&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;This town&rsquo;s full of
+greasers. You&rsquo;ve got no chance here.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>And then the long ride to Del Norte, with the Indian
+drooping on Haig&rsquo;s back; and a doctor of Haig&rsquo;s acquaintance,
+who sheltered and cured the silent savage.
+And Pete, convalescent, had come straight to Haig&rsquo;s
+ranch, and remained there, despite Haig&rsquo;s protests that
+he did not need another hand.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Pete stay until big debt is paid,&rdquo; said the Indian
+solemnly. And then, with a straight look into Marion&rsquo;s
+eyes, &ldquo;You ought tell Huntington he is damn fool.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Marion started. There it was again&ndash;&ndash;the warning!</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But why?&rdquo; she managed to ask.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Haig is brave man. Brave man always good man.
+So&ndash;&ndash;Huntington got no chance.&rdquo;</p>
+<hr class='toprule' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_71' name='page_71'></a>71</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_VII_THE_WAY_OF_A_MAID_WITH_A_MAN' id='CHAPTER_VII_THE_WAY_OF_A_MAID_WITH_A_MAN'></a>
+<h2>CHAPTER VII</h2>
+<h3>THE WAY OF A MAID WITH A MAN</h3>
+</div>
+<p>She rode casually down the Brightwater, and casually
+up the Brightwater; she loitered at crossroads,
+and tarried at Thompson&rsquo;s store; and not one glimpse
+did she catch of Philip Haig. Then one morning she
+rose at dawn, as she had risen on the day of her fishing
+exploit, with a purpose. But this time she dressed with
+exceeding care, in a riding suit she had not yet worn in
+the Park. It was soft dove-gray in color, with a long
+coat that showed the fine lines of her figure and, when
+she rode, revealed snug-fitting breeches above the tops of
+the polished boots,&ndash;&ndash;a very different costume from the
+black divided skirts and the short jacket in which she
+had galloped about the Park.</p>
+<p>Thus arrayed and resolute, she rode straight down the
+valley to the branch road that had once tempted her to
+adventure; straight up the hill; and straight through
+the woods until she halted once more in the shade of the
+outpost pine that stood beyond its clustered fellows like
+a sentinel above the valley. Her valley! She waited a
+moment, wondering if it welcomed her. There was the
+stream, still flashing in the sun, the meadows as brightly
+green as then, the grass of the pasture running in bronze
+waves before the breeze. From the heart of a wild rose
+a gorgeous red and brown butterfly flew out and fluttered
+over her head. Not a dozen yards below her a meadow
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_72' name='page_72'></a>72</span>
+lark, unseen, burst into sudden, thrilling song; and
+somewhere down the hill another took up the strain, then
+another and another, until the air was charged and
+quivering with melody, piercing sweet. She listened,
+her heart throbbing to the music, until the chorus died
+away in dripping cadences, and only a drowsy murmur
+came from the ripening fields to mingle with the low
+droning of the pine organ on the hill. Yes! Her valley
+welcomed her.</p>
+<p>She rode on down the hill, with only a quick and
+embarrassed glance into the Forbidden Pasture; and
+suddenly raised herself excitedly in the stirrups. There
+again was the spiral of blue smoke; then a chimney and
+a red roof; and finally the house itself, and barn and
+corrals, all tucked away against the foot of the hill.
+Dismounting, she led Tuesday back a few yards, and
+left him to feed along the roadside. Then she returned,
+and seated herself on a rock, half-hidden by a blackberry
+bush, to study the group of houses lying low and silent
+in the sun.</p>
+<p>There were more buildings than at Huntington&rsquo;s, but
+she saw no beds of flowers, no wide veranda screened
+with potted plants; a certain bareness and air of inhospitality,
+she thought. No tea and angel cake for visitors!
+Behind the ranch house were two cottages of
+unpainted pine, scorched to a yellow-brown by many a
+summer sun. One of them, doubtless, was the hermit&rsquo;s
+lodge. The barn, larger than Seth&rsquo;s, had a red roof,
+newly painted. And in one of the corrals&ndash;&ndash;yes&ndash;&ndash;the
+flash of a golden hide.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Sunnysides!&rdquo; murmured Marion.</p>
+<p>Then her heart stood still. She had descried the figure
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_73' name='page_73'></a>73</span>
+of a man seated with his back against the bars of this
+corral. But it was not Philip Haig; Sunnysides&rsquo; guard,
+no doubt, for he never left his post until relieved by
+another an hour or so later, when the dinner bell had
+been rung at the door of the ranch house.</p>
+<p>She had scarcely time to feel her disappointment
+before a man emerged from the stable leading a saddle
+horse. Another immediately followed, and this time
+there was no mistake. The second man was Philip
+Haig. He mounted quickly, and started off; then
+stopped to address a word or two, apparently, to the
+man at the stable door; and finally galloped past the
+ranch house and the cottages, and up the slope behind
+them toward the pines, across the valley from where she
+sat.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; cried Marion, in a tone of vexation and reproach.</p>
+<p>She watched him until he had disappeared among the
+trees; and tears started in her eyes. Would he always
+be riding away from her, behind the hills, the woods, a
+turn of the road? She sat a while in deep dejection;
+but not for long. Her spirit was too resilient for futile
+moping, and her purpose too firmly held to be abandoned
+on one reverse. She reflected that if he had gone he
+must as certainly return; and so, with a toss of her head,
+she presently arose, and fetched her raincoat and her
+luncheon from the saddle. The coat she spread out on
+the ground, seated herself on it with her back against
+the rock, and settled down to eat, and watch, and wait.</p>
+<p>Morning mounted hot and humming into noon, and
+noon dropped languidly into afternoon. The blazing
+sun centered his rays upon her; insects found and pestered
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_74' name='page_74'></a>74</span>
+her; discomfort cramped her limbs, and weariness
+weighted down her eyelids. Twice she dozed, and wakened
+with a start of fear lest she had slept her chance
+away. But each time she was reassured by a hurried
+survey of the group of buildings, where no one stirred,
+and there was no sign of Philip Haig. So the hours
+dragged their slow length along.</p>
+<p>It was late in the afternoon before her vigil was
+rewarded. Not from just the direction in which he had
+galloped away, but from farther up the valley, Haig
+reappeared. He rode as rapidly as before, straight to
+the door of the stable, reined up a moment there, and
+was off again,&ndash;&ndash;this time down the valley on a white
+road that was visible to Marion until it curved behind
+the distant point of the ridge on which she sat.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Now where&rsquo;s he going?&rdquo; she murmured, wrinkling
+her forehead as she saw him once more vanish from her
+sight.</p>
+<p>She did not know that road, but guessed that it
+joined the main highway somewhere far down the
+Brightwater. No matter! Here was her opportunity;
+for she saw, with quick appreciation, that she would
+now be able to place herself between him and the ranch
+buildings without showing herself to the men at the
+corrals. And then? She could not &ldquo;hold him up&rdquo;
+like a highwayman; and if she did not stop him he
+would raise his hat (perhaps), and ride past her without
+a word. And how was she to stop him? She had come
+there with a very definite purpose, but with no clear
+plan, trusting to the inspiration of the moment. And
+now the moment had arrived; but where was the inspiration?
+She had risen impulsively to her feet, and stood
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_75' name='page_75'></a>75</span>
+staring between narrowed eyelids, and beneath a puckered
+brow, at the white road, now quite empty again.
+Then suddenly&ndash;&ndash;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; she gasped.</p>
+<p>And thereupon she blushed, and looked furtively
+around her, as if she had been caught in some doubtful,
+if not discreditable, act. But there was no time for
+moral subtleties. She staggered&ndash;&ndash;for her legs were
+stiff from inaction&ndash;&ndash;to her pony, replaced her raincoat
+behind the saddle, mounted in hot haste, and rode down
+the steep hill toward the houses. At a little distance
+from them the road she traveled joined the other.
+There she turned abruptly, and followed the unfamiliar
+road until she was safely out of sight of any chance
+observer at the barn, and yet not so far from the trail
+she had just left but that she could return to it if, by
+any chance, he should come back that way.</p>
+<p>Dismounting quickly at the chosen spot, she turned
+Tuesday until he stood squarely across the road. Then
+her nimble fingers flew at the cinches of the saddle.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;There now!&rdquo; she exclaimed, hot with excitement
+and exertion.</p>
+<p>She stepped back to view her handiwork, and laughed
+nervously. Next she drew a tiny mirror and a bit of
+chamois skin from her bosom, and swiftly removed some
+of the dust and moisture from her flushed face. Then
+her hair, always somewhat unruly, required a touch or
+two. That done, she smoothed down the gray coat over
+her slender hips, adjusted the gray silk tie at her throat,
+and waited.</p>
+<p>He came, in his habitual cloud of dust; pulled up his
+pony within ten feet of the obstruction; saw the saddle
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_76' name='page_76'></a>76</span>
+hanging at a dangerous angle over Tuesday&rsquo;s side; and
+accepted the obvious conclusion that Miss Marion Gaylord,
+looking very warm and embarrassed, but certainly
+very pretty in her confusion, had narrowly escaped a
+fall.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I think I&rsquo;d better help you with that, Miss Gaylord,&rdquo;
+he said.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Thank you!&rdquo; she said, with an appealing reluctance.
+&ldquo;I can do it&ndash;&ndash;I often saddle my own horse,
+and&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I should judge that you had saddled him this time,&rdquo;
+he interrupted her to say, without the slightest trace of
+irony in his tone.</p>
+<p>She bit her lip, as she silently made way for him, and
+stood at Tuesday&rsquo;s head, stroking his neck with one
+small, gloved hand while Haig adjusted the blanket,
+fitted the saddle firmly, and tightened the double cinch.
+He was dressed in the nondescript costume he had worn
+at their first meeting. That same hat, uniquely insolent,
+soiled and limp and disreputable, was stuck on the
+back of his head, revealing a full, clean-moulded brow,
+over which, at one side, his thick black hair fell carelessly.
+His eyes were calm gray rather than stormy
+black to-day, but a gray that was singularly dark and
+deep and luminous. His manner was in the strangest
+contrast with the two different moods in which she had
+already seen him&ndash;&ndash;as if the fires were out, as if all
+emotion and interest had been dissolved in listlessness.
+And she divined at once that her chance of success was
+small.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That will hold, I think,&rdquo; he said gravely; and
+started toward his horse.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_77' name='page_77'></a>77</span></div>
+<p>&ldquo;It wasn&rsquo;t Tuesday&rsquo;s fault,&rdquo; she said eagerly.</p>
+<p>Haig paused, on one foot as it were, and looked over
+his shoulder.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It was fortunate for you that he&rsquo;s been well gentled,&rdquo;
+he said. &ldquo;You should look to your cinches rather often
+when you ride these hills.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>(&ldquo;You should keep your feet dry, and come in when
+it rains,&rdquo; he might as well have said, she thought angrily.)</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, it was careless of me,&rdquo; she answered, trying to
+say it brightly, but really wanting to shriek.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It happens to everybody once in a while,&rdquo; he
+said.</p>
+<p>On that, he stepped to his pony, put a foot in the
+stirrup, and one hand on the saddle horn, and paused.</p>
+<p>She could easily have flopped down in the road, and
+wept. Once he had raged at her, once he had thrilled
+her with a look, and now he was simply dismissing her,&ndash;&ndash;leaving
+her, as her father would have put it, &ldquo;to
+stew in her own juice.&rdquo; She saw all her elaborate
+strategy, her long vigil on the hill, her struggle with the
+saddle, her appealing&rsquo; glances&ndash;&ndash;all, all about to go for
+nothing.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He might at least help me on my horse!&rdquo; she
+thought, in bitter resentment.</p>
+<p>Perhaps tears blinded her. At any rate&ndash;&ndash;and this
+was without pretence, and no part of her scheme&ndash;&ndash;she
+did not see clearly what she was doing. It was nothing
+new to mount her pony from the level; she had done it a
+hundred times without mishap. But now, in her agitation,
+she stood somewhat too far away from Tuesday&rsquo;s
+shoulder; and the pony, as ponies will sometimes do,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_78' name='page_78'></a>78</span>
+started forward the instant he felt the weight in the
+stirrup.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Look out!&rdquo; cried Haig.</p>
+<p>It was too late. She missed the saddle; her right foot
+struck Tuesday&rsquo;s back, and slipped off; and she fell
+sprawling on the ground, with her left foot fast in the
+stirrup.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Whoa, Tuesday!&rdquo; she cried shrilly as she fell.</p>
+<p>Luckily the horse did not take alarm and run, as a less
+reliable animal might have done, dragging the girl
+under his heels. He stopped in his tracks, and stood
+obediently, even turning his head as if to see what
+damage had been done. It was enough. Marion was
+uninjured, but badly frightened; and her humiliation
+was complete. She lay on her back, struggling vainly
+to extricate her foot from the stirrup. Her coat skirts
+had fallen back, and&ndash;&ndash;Thank Heaven for the riding
+breeches, and not what she had worn under divided
+skirts!</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Lie still!&rdquo; yelled Haig, remembering what he had
+seen happen to men in such circumstances.</p>
+<p>In three leaps he was at her side. With a swift
+movement (and none too gentle), he wrenched her foot
+loose from the stirrup, and helped her to sit up, dazed
+and trembling and very white.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Your ankle&ndash;&ndash;is it hurt?&rdquo; he asked sharply.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know,&rdquo; she said.</p>
+<p>And then the expected &ldquo;inspiration of the moment&rdquo;
+came.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;A little,&rdquo; she added.</p>
+<p>And so it was done. Her foot had indeed been
+twisted slightly; she had truly, <i>truly</i> felt a twinge of
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_79' name='page_79'></a>79</span>
+pain. At another time she would have thought no
+more about it, but now&ndash;&ndash;The color rushed back into
+her cheeks; she fetched a smile that was half a grimace;
+and the game was on again.</p>
+<p>Haig reached a hand to her. She took it, and let
+him draw her to her feet.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Try the ankle&ndash;&ndash;just a step!&rdquo; he commanded.</p>
+<p>She rested her weight on her left foot.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; she cried out, and looked helplessly at Haig.</p>
+<p>A shadow, unmistakably of annoyance, passed over
+his face.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;re not going to faint, are you?&rdquo; he asked, looking
+keenly at her.</p>
+<p>Her color always came and went easily, and now, a
+little frightened by her bold deception, she was pale
+again.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No&ndash;&ndash;I think not,&rdquo; she said. (&ldquo;At any rate not
+here,&rdquo; she might have added.)</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Can you ride to the corrals?&rdquo; was his next question.</p>
+<p>The look of annoyance was now fixed on his face, but
+it did not discourage her.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, if&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>She looked doubtfully at Tuesday. Thereupon,
+without a word, Haig led the horse close to her, but
+placed so that she was at Tuesday&rsquo;s right side instead of
+the left. Then, while she supported herself with one
+hand on his shoulder, he raised her right foot, and thrust
+it into the stirrup; and, with a hand under each of her
+arms, lifted her until she was able to throw the left foot
+over, and her body into the saddle. Once more Marion
+bit her lip. His action was as devoid of personal interest
+as Pete&rsquo;s had been when he carried her out of the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_80' name='page_80'></a>80</span>
+pool; and she had not come to Philip Haig to be treated
+like a sack of oats!</p>
+<p>Haig mounted his pony, and rode up close beside her;
+and thus, in unbroken silence, they arrived at the door
+of the stable. There Haig dismounted quickly, stepped
+briskly around her horse, and almost before she was
+aware of his intention, lifted her out of the saddle, and
+set her on her feet&ndash;&ndash;all very carefully and gently, but
+also very scrupulously, without an unnecessary pressure,
+without even a glance into her waiting eyes. What was
+the man made of? Why would he not look at her?
+Why did he not rage at her&ndash;&ndash;if he could do nothing
+better? Well, the cat had at least seven lives
+left!</p>
+<p>She almost forgot to limp, but bethought herself in
+time, and gasped as he led her to an empty soap box at
+the side of the stable door. Having seated her there,
+he called out to the man on guard at Sunnysides&rsquo; corral:
+&ldquo;Where&rsquo;s Curly?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Down by the crick,&rdquo; was the answer.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Bring him here! I&rsquo;ll watch the horse.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Thereupon he took the man&rsquo;s place, and stood with
+his arms crossed on the top rail of the fence, his eyes
+fixed on the golden horse. And Marion felt a real pain
+at last,&ndash;&ndash;a pang of jealousy. So he preferred to look
+at the horse, did he? If he had chanced at that instant
+to glance at her he would have seen a pair of blue eyes
+blazing with wrath.</p>
+<p>The two men came hurrying from the creek.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Here, Curly!&rdquo; said Haig, resigning his post.
+&ldquo;Miss Gaylord has hurt her ankle. I found her unseated
+down the road yonder.&rdquo; He paused, as if to
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_81' name='page_81'></a>81</span>
+let that be thoroughly understood. &ldquo;I want you to
+hitch up the sorrels and drive her home.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Right!&rdquo; responded Curly, going into the stable.</p>
+<p>Marion then did almost faint. She had not foreseen
+that man&oelig;uver.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;d rather not, please,&rdquo; she said, as sweetly as she
+could in her dismay.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Rather not what?&rdquo; asked Haig, turning at last to
+her.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;d rather rest a while&ndash;&ndash;somewhere&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo; Her
+glance went past him in the direction of the cottage.
+&ldquo;Then I can ride home&ndash;&ndash;alone.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And tumble off in the road somewhere!&rdquo; he retorted,
+with a touch of derision in his tone.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, no!&rdquo; she pleaded. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s not as bad as that.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No matter! I can&rsquo;t allow you to take any chances,&rdquo;
+he insisted curtly.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Really, I need only a little rest,&rdquo; she persisted.
+&ldquo;If I could lie down a few minutes&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo; her eyes again
+were turned toward the cottage.</p>
+<p>He saw what she meant, and frowned.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No!&rdquo; he snapped. Then, checking himself, &ldquo;I
+don&rsquo;t mean to be inhospitable, but you ought to know
+that&rsquo;s impossible.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You mean&ndash;&ndash;Cousin Seth?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He shot a look at her that frightened her, but gratified
+her too. Was she rousing him at last?</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, if you like,&rdquo; he said, quietly enough. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m
+having a hard enough time with the fool without a
+woman being mixed up in the affair.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t understand,&rdquo; said Marion.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You don&rsquo;t understand!&rdquo; he repeated. &ldquo;Of course
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_82' name='page_82'></a>82</span>
+not. Women never understand&ndash;&ndash;until afterwards.
+I&rsquo;ll make it plainer. I&rsquo;m a bad man, as you have doubtless
+heard. What would Paradise Park say when it
+learned that you had been inveigled into my house?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>She was silent a moment.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well then, let me sit here and rest!&rdquo; she insisted.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But why?&rdquo; he demanded impatiently.</p>
+<p>She took her courage in both hands, and plunged.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I want to talk to you,&rdquo; she said eagerly. &ldquo;I want
+to ask you if there is no way&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Excuse me!&rdquo; he broke in. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t want you to
+talk to me. If I did&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He stopped, with a shrug. Marion felt her face reddening,
+but she dissembled her embarrassment.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; she exclaimed. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re not afraid of me,
+are you?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>It was spoken archly, in her most playful, most kittenish
+manner, and so she was amazed to see his face
+distorted as if by some violent emotion. But he spoke
+with restraint, though in a tone that was hard and harsh.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, I am afraid of you. The only thing in the
+world a man needs to fear is a woman.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The first effect of this speech was to surprise and
+shock her. The next was to make her heart leap. Had
+she come near the secret, after all? Then, finally, something
+deep in the man&rsquo;s eyes roused in her a thrill of
+pity. In another minute she would have melted, in her
+compassion, and begged him humbly to pardon her.
+But at that instant Curly emerged from the barn, leading
+the sorrels; and the devil that lurks behind a
+woman&rsquo;s tongue spoke for her before she was aware of
+it.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_83' name='page_83'></a>83</span></div>
+<p>&ldquo;So you&rsquo;d rather one of your men took me to Cousin
+Seth!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>It was scarcely out before she regretted it with all her
+heart. If there was a devil behind her tongue there
+was another back of the somber shadows in Haig&rsquo;s eyes.
+He flashed one comprehending look at her; his whole
+manner underwent a swift and terrifying change; he
+was again the Philip Haig of that day at the post office.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Great!&rdquo; he exclaimed. &ldquo;That will be the best joke
+of all. I&rsquo;ll drive you home myself, of course.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>For a moment Marion sat very still on the soap box,
+stunned, staring open-mouthed at Haig. What had she
+done? That mad speech! Then she leaped to her feet.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No! No!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;You shall not!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He smiled at her.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Shall not?&rdquo; he repeated sardonically.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I mean&ndash;&ndash;please not that!&rdquo; she faltered.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Why not?&rdquo; he demanded, almost gaily.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, please! I didn&rsquo;t mean it that way.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Of course you didn&rsquo;t mean it! Women never do
+mean it&ndash;&ndash;that way. And I suppose you didn&rsquo;t mean
+to let those men ride on to Paradise when they told you
+the horse was mine, did you?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; cried Marion, almost in a scream. &ldquo;How
+did you&ndash;&ndash;know?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He laughed.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I happened to ask Larkin if he had met nobody on
+the road who could have directed him. He said there
+was no one but a &lsquo;purty girl.&rsquo; That was you, wasn&rsquo;t
+it?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>She was speechless.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_84' name='page_84'></a>84</span></div>
+<p>&ldquo;And my warning to Huntington. Did you deliver
+that?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No,&rdquo; she answered, scarcely above a whisper.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Of course not. That would have been too simple
+and honest and direct. You can&rsquo;t be honest and
+straightforward to save your lives. You live by deception,
+and boast about your love of truth. Your deepest
+craving is for violence, while you prate about your gentle
+influence over men. I haven&rsquo;t the least doubt in the
+world that Mrs. Huntington, for all her baby face, is
+back of all Huntington&rsquo;s violence&ndash;&ndash;thinks she&rsquo;s a wonderful
+inspiration to him, with a special genius for the
+cattle business! And when she gets him killed&ndash;&ndash;with
+your assistance&ndash;&ndash;she&rsquo;ll flop down, and weep&ndash;&ndash;and
+you too, both of you&ndash;&ndash;and wail that you didn&rsquo;t mean
+it!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>She recoiled from him, and leaned helplessly against
+the wall of the stable.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;So you let the men ride on to Paradise,&rdquo; he went on
+with relentless mockery, &ldquo;and you let Huntington
+plunge into that business when you knew, from me, exactly
+what it meant. And you rode over here to-day&ndash;&ndash;I
+wonder, now, if your foot&rsquo;s really hurt, or if that also
+is some trick!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>It was the merest chance shot. He had no suspicion
+that she had been shamming, for he had been too much
+annoyed by the whole incident to be critical of her
+demeanor. But the shot went home. The girl, without
+a word or cry, suddenly sank down on the box, with her
+face buried in her hands.</p>
+<p>There ensued a moment of tense silence. For all the
+bitterness that surged under his railing speech, Haig
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_85' name='page_85'></a>85</span>
+was not untouched by the sight of the girl, bent and
+cowering before him. But at the same time he was
+exasperated anew by the scene that was being enacted
+under the eyes of his two men.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Come!&rdquo; he said presently, not without reluctant
+gentleness. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s growing late. We must start at
+once.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The words increased her terror. Through the hands
+that covered her eyes she could see Haig and Huntington&ndash;&ndash;with
+revolvers drawn; and Claire&rsquo;s white face&ndash;&ndash;She
+rose impulsively, dropping her hands from her hot
+and tear-stained cheeks. She would confess all to him,
+though it should betray the inmost secret of her heart;
+and would beseech him not to go&ndash;&ndash;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t say it&ndash;&ndash;here!&rdquo; he commanded sharply,
+lowering his voice as he bent toward her. &ldquo;They think
+there&rsquo;s something queer about all this. Come!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>She obeyed him silently, her resolution vanishing before
+his authority. Besides, there was yet time, somewhere
+on the road.</p>
+<hr class='toprule' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_86' name='page_86'></a>86</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_VIII_THE_END_OF_HER_STRATAGEM' id='CHAPTER_VIII_THE_END_OF_HER_STRATAGEM'></a>
+<h2>CHAPTER VIII</h2>
+<h3>THE END OF HER STRATAGEM</h3>
+</div>
+<p>For some minutes there was no speech, no sound
+except the swift beat of the horses&rsquo; hoofs on the
+hard roadway, and the crisp crunching of wheels in the
+sand. Marion sat rigid, staring straight in front of her,
+yet seeing nothing. Dazed and benumbed, her thoughts
+were in a hopeless tangle, without beginnings, without
+ends. How she had bungled the whole thing! And
+she might have been so happy, there at his side.</p>
+<p>Twilight was coming on in the serene, clear beauty
+of the mountains: the distant peaks glowed like great
+opals in the sundown hues; there was an indescribable
+sweetness in the air, something magical in the soft but
+cold night breeze that began to pour down upon the
+valley from the eternal snows.</p>
+<p>Timidly, out of the corner of her eye, Marion glanced
+at Haig, and saw that he was gazing steadily at the
+changing colors on the distant range. But there was no
+beauty for her in that perfect panorama. The fire had
+gone out of her, and she was shivering. He must have
+felt her movement, for suddenly he leaned forward,
+lifted the edge of the heavy lap-robe that had lain
+neglected at their feet, and tucked it around her. She
+drew back with a quick intake of breath as his face was
+for an instant close to her own. A moment later he
+began to speak in a tone that surprised and encouraged
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_87' name='page_87'></a>87</span>
+her, so little did it resemble the tones he had employed
+before. It was as if nothing had happened, as if they
+had long been talking of things casual, impersonal to
+them both.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s different in the San Luis,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s
+red down there. Nature&rsquo;s palette is a little short of red
+in this valley. Too much blue. Even nature sometimes
+gets a one-color obsession, like the painters. Here
+she&rsquo;s gone off on blue. It&rsquo;s the most dangerous color.
+Darwin says it was the last color produced in nature&rsquo;s
+laboratory. Ordinarily it&rsquo;s the least common in flowers
+and birds and insects. Hearn&ndash;&ndash;Have you read Lafcadio
+Hearn? No? But you ought to, that is, if you
+care for such things. He goes after blue&ndash;&ndash;the misuse
+of it. He says it&rsquo;s the color most pleasureable to the
+eye in its purest intensity. But you mustn&rsquo;t dab it on.
+A blue house is a crime. Blue&rsquo;s overdone here too, blue
+sky, blue mists, blue shadows, blue lakes, blue flowers,&ndash;&ndash;anemones,
+harebells, columbines and the rest. It&rsquo;s a
+relief to get into the reds of the San Luis&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Where Sunnysides came from!&rdquo; interrupted Marion,
+eager despite her misery.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Tell me about him, please!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>She wanted him to continue in that strain, and even
+Sunnysides was a less dangerous subject than&ndash;&ndash;another.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, about Sangre de Cristo first. That&rsquo;s a great
+range that stands up high and white along the east.
+Sangre de Cristo is Spanish for Blood of Christ. I
+can see those pious old rascal adventurers uncovering
+their blessed heads when they first glimpsed it. At sunset
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_88' name='page_88'></a>88</span>
+it takes the color&ndash;&ndash;not always, not often, in fact,
+perhaps a dozen times a year. There are days and days
+when the range is only white and cold, days when it&rsquo;s
+black with storms, and days when it&rsquo;s dismal gray.
+Then there comes an evening when the sun goes down
+red behind the San Juan, and the snows on Sangre de
+Cristo run like blood. The whole world, for a few
+minutes, seems to halt and stand still in awe at that
+weird and mysterious spectacle&ndash;&ndash;trainmen setting the
+brakes on squealing ore trains on Marshall Pass, and
+miners coming out of their tunnels above Creed all stop
+and look; Mexican sheep-herders in Conejos pause to
+cross themselves; ranchmen by their lonely corrals up
+and down the San Luis, and cowboys in the saddle on the
+open range&ndash;&ndash;all spellbound. It gives you a strange
+feeling&ndash;&ndash;something that goes back to the primitive instincts
+of mankind&ndash;&ndash;something of reverence, something
+of wonder, something of fear&ndash;&ndash;the fear that the first
+men had when they gazed on the phenomena they could
+not understand, and began to make their myths and
+their religions. Primitive superstition, primitive terror
+will never quite down in us, no matter how wise and
+practical we become. There&rsquo;s always, in beauty&ndash;&ndash;in
+sheer beauty something terrifying, as well as something
+sad. But&ndash;&ndash;do I bore you with my dithyrambs?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No! No!&rdquo; she exclaimed.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The scene couldn&rsquo;t have been set better for that
+spectacle. There&rsquo;s a green strip along the river, then
+bare sagebrush flats, and beyond the flats are sand dunes
+where nothing grows but cactus and mesquite, and here
+and there some tufts of grass as tough and dry as wire.
+In summer the dunes are a parched and blistered inferno.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_89' name='page_89'></a>89</span>
+In October they are raw gray desolation. I
+don&rsquo;t want to know what they are like in winter. The
+wind never ceases there. It builds the dunes into new
+shapes every day, and the sagebrush is always bent and
+lopsided and torn, and the colors are the gray and
+brown of the world&rsquo;s secret tragedy. But when the red
+sunset is on the dunes there&rsquo;s nothing I have ever seen
+so wild and passionate and beautiful.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It was late in the autumn. I rode out of a deep
+arroya, and came, without warning, into all that weird
+and solemn glory. There was a cold gush of air from
+up the valley. Far in the north were purple patches
+on the flats, and violet shadows in the foothills. But the
+dunes were all vermilion, and I can&rsquo;t tell you what hue
+of red lay spread out deep and vivid on the Sangre de
+Cristo peaks,&ndash;&ndash;a living, passionate, terrible blood-red.
+I&rsquo;m not very devout, but I tell you candidly that I
+reined up my horse, took off my hat, and sat there
+gazing, with the queerest feelings, and saying, like the
+old Spaniards, &lsquo;Sangre de Cristo! Blood of Christ!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Then something queer happened to me. You&rsquo;ve
+seen a flash of sunlight reflected from a window, far off?
+Well, it wasn&rsquo;t like that, except in the sharpness of its
+effect. And I knew there was no house in all that waste
+of sand. It was just a flash, and was gone. I searched
+the horizon, and saw nothing but red dunes, and little
+puffs of sand kicked up by the rising wind. Must have
+been some trick of vision, I thought, and I looked away
+again toward the blood-red peaks. And there it was
+again, in the corner of my eye. But it was gone when I
+tried to fix it. I put spurs to my horse, and rode toward
+the dunes, and caught the flash again&ndash;&ndash;just a bright
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_90' name='page_90'></a>90</span>
+yellow speck in the darkening vermilion. It came and
+went, and seemed then to have been lost completely. I
+was about convinced that the red sunset had gone to my
+head&ndash;&ndash;that I was following something that existed only
+in my brain.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Then, as I loped up to the top of a dune&ndash;&ndash;there he
+stood, on another dune, perhaps two hundred yards
+away. His golden hide reflected the red glow like polished
+metal, his mane flamed in the wind. You cannot
+possibly imagine the effect of it, in that unreal light, in
+that setting of desolation, with the crimson mountains
+behind him. He stood alone on the hill, with his head
+high, motionless as a statue. For as long as half a
+minute he let me look at him. Then he turned, and
+was gone like a flash of fire. I had just one more
+glimpse of him, flying over the dunes, and followed by a
+score or more of wild horses of all colors except his
+color, and none worth looking at. With him the red
+went out of the landscape, the peaks turned white, and
+I sat alone in the gray, raw twilight. But right there I
+made up my mind about one thing: I must have that
+horse. You know the rest.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But what do you mean to do with him?&rdquo; asked
+Marion, vaguely troubled.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ride him.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t!&rdquo; she gasped.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Why not?&rdquo; he demanded.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He&rsquo;ll kill you!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Haig laughed.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, I think not!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But what is the use?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What&rsquo;s the use of anything?&rdquo;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_91' name='page_91'></a>91</span></div>
+<p>&ldquo;But it&rsquo;s&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Mere folly, you think?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Now you don&rsquo;t mean that at all, Miss Gaylord.
+You know perfectly well that if I were doing it to please
+you&ndash;&ndash;to win your admiration&ndash;&ndash;you wouldn&rsquo;t call it
+folly.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You will please me&ndash;&ndash;and win my admiration&ndash;&ndash;if
+you don&rsquo;t do it. Please!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But I don&rsquo;t want&ndash;&ndash;You&rsquo;ll pardon me?&ndash;&ndash;I
+don&rsquo;t want to win your admiration.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>What could she say to that? There was a moment of
+silence.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;When?&rdquo; she asked quietly.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m waiting for Farrish, my foreman. He&rsquo;s the
+only man I can absolutely depend upon. He&rsquo;s in
+Omaha. He&rsquo;ll be back next week.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And you won&rsquo;t begin without him?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>She had no choice but to be satisfied with a few days
+of grace. Moreover, something might happen before
+the return of Farrish; the outlaw might escape, or she
+might find another opportunity to plead with Haig, or&ndash;&ndash;What
+was she thinking of? Something was going to
+happen that very evening; and she had almost forgotten
+it, in her absorption!</p>
+<p>She had meant to do, long before now, what he had
+prevented her doing at the stable,&ndash;&ndash;to confess her deception,
+to plead for mercy, to beg him to go back. Failing
+in that, there was Tuesday trotting behind the trap;
+she could leap out, prove to Haig that her foot was
+uninjured, and insist upon riding home alone. But now
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_92' name='page_92'></a>92</span>
+the confession seemed ten times more difficult than it
+had seemed in the first flush of her resolution. They
+were far up the Brightwater by this time; a few minutes
+more would bring them to the branch road that led to
+Huntington&rsquo;s. Yet how could she tell him?</p>
+<p>&ldquo;My foot doesn&rsquo;t hurt any more,&rdquo; she began, compromising
+with her resolution.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That&rsquo;s because you&rsquo;ve been sitting still,&rdquo; he replied.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But it doesn&rsquo;t hurt when I move it. See!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>She lifted the foot, and rested it on the dashboard,
+bending and twisting it.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;By which you mean to tell me that I am to go back,&rdquo;
+he said.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Please!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No!&rdquo; he answered curtly.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It wasn&rsquo;t badly sprained at all,&rdquo; she persisted. &ldquo;I
+was only&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo; She caught herself, with a shock. &ldquo;I
+was only frightened, I think.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t believe you.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But it&rsquo;s the truth.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Then it was not the truth in the first place.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>There it was now, her best occasion to come out with
+it. But no; she could not.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s not so bad as I feared,&rdquo; she stammered.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I trust not. A sprain is a bad business.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But you&rsquo;ll go back now!&rdquo; she pleaded.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, why won&rsquo;t you?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve started.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That&rsquo;s not the reason!&rdquo; she cried desperately.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;True, there&rsquo;s another reason. That makes two.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What other reason?&rdquo;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_93' name='page_93'></a>93</span></div>
+<p>&ldquo;I want to ask Huntington about his health.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The deviltry had come back into his voice; and just
+ahead of them she saw the fork of the road.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;There&rsquo;s a third reason too, I&rsquo;m afraid,&rdquo; she answered
+bitterly.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What&rsquo;s that, do you think?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You want to punish me!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Perhaps&ndash;&ndash;a little.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Do you think that&rsquo;s&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Noble? Manly? Kind? Generous?&rdquo; he broke
+in.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Do you really think it&rsquo;s worth your while to punish
+me?&rdquo; she asked with passionate irony.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But why?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Because I hope to be let alone hereafter.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>At that her anger rose.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Do you think that is the way a man should speak to
+a woman?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It seems to be the only way to make a woman understand.
+And even then&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>She felt that he shrugged his shoulders in the darkness.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Then I&rsquo;m sorry for the women you have known!&rdquo;
+she retorted.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That should make it all the easier for you to avoid
+any more accidents in my part of the Park,&rdquo; he answered
+unperturbed. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s your own fault if I&rsquo;m rude. I
+haven&rsquo;t forced my attentions upon you. If you feel that
+you&rsquo;ve been mistreated, there&rsquo;s another reason&ndash;&ndash;that
+makes four, doesn&rsquo;t it?&ndash;&ndash;for my going to Huntington&rsquo;s.
+We&rsquo;ll be there in five minutes. You can tell him.&rdquo;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_94' name='page_94'></a>94</span></div>
+<p>She could find no answer to all this. Brutal as it
+was, she knew that she had deserved it. Her anger
+fell away, for she had found already that she could
+not be angry with him long; and now, even in her torment,
+she began to be sorry for him, wondering what he
+had passed through that had so hardened and embittered
+him.</p>
+<p>But the team had turned into the branch road; and
+she must act at once. There remained but one thing
+for her to do: to leap out of the trap, and refuse to go
+farther with him. On the thought, she measured the
+distance to the ground, the speed of the trotting sorrels.
+Perhaps she moved a little. Or had he actually read
+her thoughts? For suddenly, but very quietly, he laid
+a hand on her shoulder.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;You might really hurt yourself
+this time.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>She sank back in dismay, but with a thrill of admiration.
+What was this man, who knew her thoughts
+before she herself knew them, who mastered her&ndash;&ndash;and
+despised her? She trembled, and was glad of the night
+that concealed her flushed face from him. As for her
+purpose, she was at the end of her resources. No confession,
+no plea would avail to shake his determination.
+She could do no more; and judgment was upon her&ndash;&ndash;soon.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Hold the reins, please!&rdquo; commanded Haig.</p>
+<p>He leaped out of the trap, opened the gate, and closed
+it when he had led the sorrels through. Then he climbed
+into the trap, and drove on. There was no moon. The
+ranch buildings lay huddled and indistinct in the dim
+starlight.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_95' name='page_95'></a>95</span></div>
+<p>At the sound of the hoofs and wheels a man emerged
+from the stable, bearing a lantern. He hurried up to
+them, stumbling sleepily, and peering at the figures
+vaguely seen in the gloom.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Here, Williams!&rdquo; Haig said shortly. &ldquo;Hold my
+team, will you! I&rsquo;ll be only a few minutes.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The lantern fell from the man&rsquo;s hand, struck the
+ground with a clatter, and lay on its side, flaming and
+smoking.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Pick it up!&rdquo; ordered Haig.</p>
+<p>The man obeyed, with the suddenness of a jack-in-the-box,
+and stood as if petrified.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Quick! The horses! They&rsquo;re no damned broncos!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Williams jumped to the bridles; and a gleam from the
+lantern showed Marion his face. His mouth was open,
+his eyes staring with incredulity and alarm. She was
+seized with a preposterous desire to laugh at that comical
+visage, made grotesque by the wavering light of the
+lantern that danced in the fellow&rsquo;s hand. She was on
+the verge of hysteria.</p>
+<p>Haig leaped out, and held up his arms for her, snapping
+his fingers impatiently. In almost complete inertia,
+yet with every nerve quivering, she let him help
+her to the ground, where he placed her arm in his, and
+started toward the ranch house.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Limp! Limp!&rdquo; he whispered in her ear.</p>
+<p>She obeyed him mechanically. Everything seemed
+to have become very still and cold; feeling had frozen in
+her limbs; terror clutched at her icily out of the gloom.
+There were two lighted windows in front of her, two
+baleful yellow gleams, like the eyes of a monster of the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_96' name='page_96'></a>96</span>
+night. At any instant the door would open, gulping
+her in.</p>
+<p>She choked down a cry. Her feet were like lead now,
+and she stumbled on the first of the half-dozen steps that
+led to the veranda. Haig pulled her up quickly, flung
+his right arm around her waist, and fairly carried her
+up the steps. At that moment, just as they stood on the
+level floor, the door was opened, and Huntington&rsquo;s huge
+body appeared in silhouette against the lamplight.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That you, Marion?&rdquo; he called out, peering into the
+darkness. Then, almost instantly: &ldquo;Somebody with
+you, Marion?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Haig answered for her.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Good evening, Cousin Seth!&rdquo; he called out cheerily.
+&ldquo;I just dropped in to ask about your health.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>For perhaps as long as it took him to catch his arrested
+breath, Huntington stood motionless. Then, with an
+oath, he bounded back into the room, and disappeared,
+as Marion dully realized, in the direction of his room,
+where his revolver hung on a rack. She felt the form
+beside her straighten out like a loosed spring; and the
+next instant she was borne swiftly forward into the
+light, into the house, into the scene she had pictured, the
+scene she herself had prepared. The arm that supported
+her was quickly withdrawn, and she was left
+standing at one side of the door, while Haig leaped away
+from her, and stood waiting at the other.</p>
+<p>Even as this was done, Huntington reappeared at
+the door of his bedroom. The revolver in his right hand
+moved slowly upward. In the kitchen doorway was
+Claire&ndash;&ndash;a stricken thing in blue and gold&ndash;&ndash;clinging
+to the doorpost, her lips parted, her eyes wide with
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_97' name='page_97'></a>97</span>
+terror. But Haig! Could anything have been more
+horrible than that smile? It was fearless, mocking, insolent.
+And his whole attitude matched it perfectly.
+He stood carelessly erect, with arms folded, disdaining
+Huntington&rsquo;s weapon. But not the slightest motion of
+his enemy&ndash;&ndash;perhaps not even the thought before it&ndash;&ndash;could
+have escaped him. Marion knew him; and she
+felt as certain as if it had already happened that if Seth
+lifted his revolver by so much as another inch he would
+be stretched out on the floor there as he had been on the
+ground at Paradise.</p>
+<p>All this she saw in an interval as brief as that between
+two clicks of the shutter of her kodak. Then the clock
+on the mantel began to strike. It was a friendly clock,
+with a musical, soft note. But now its stroke crashed
+upon the silence like a tolling bell. It seemed to have
+its part in that halted scene, as if all waited on its last
+solemn count. If she could only move, think, speak,
+before it finished!</p>
+<p>The next thing she knew she was in the middle of the
+room, directly between the two men, and speaking.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Wait, Seth!&rdquo; she heard herself saying. &ldquo;I did it.
+I brought him here to&ndash;&ndash;to make peace with you.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>She ended on the clock&rsquo;s last note; and silence fell
+again. Huntington&rsquo;s jaw dropped; amazement was
+printed on his face, and incredulity. Marion walked
+quietly up to him, took the revolver from his hand, and
+left him standing in the doorway, his arms hanging
+loose at his side. She crossed the room to Haig, slowly,
+somewhat gropingly like a somnambulist, with a half-smiling,
+strange expression fixed on her chalk-white
+face. She stretched out her left hand to him, her right
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_98' name='page_98'></a>98</span>
+still clasping Seth&rsquo;s six-shooter. There was something
+magnetic, curiously compelling in her manner; for she
+said nothing, made no sound. Haig stared at her, the
+odious smile fading from his lips; his arms slowly fell
+apart, one hand in the direction of the revolver at his
+hip; and for a moment it seemed that he too would yield
+to her. But suddenly he threw back his head, and
+laughed.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;By Jupiter!&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t think it was in
+you. You almost got me too. Good night&ndash;&ndash;all!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>On that he turned on his heel, and vanished into the
+night. Marion heard him laughing still as his boots
+crunched on the gravel; heard his voice in brief and
+sharp command at the stable; heard the beat of the sorrels&rsquo;
+hoofs on the road, and the fragment of a song
+wafted back to her,&ndash;&ndash;something rollicking and insolent,
+in a foreign tongue. She stood listening until the
+sounds had died away in the night, and silence enveloped
+her. Then, just as Huntington leaped forward with a
+bellow of rage,&ndash;&ndash;too late, as ever,&ndash;&ndash;and Claire, with a
+shriek, rushed to throw herself between him and the
+door, Marion&rsquo;s head drooped forward, her knees gave
+way, and she fell senseless on the floor.</p>
+<p>Huntington&rsquo;s big revolver, slipping from her nerveless
+fingers as she fell, struck the Navajo rug with a
+muffled thump, bounced and rolled over, and settled
+down harmlessly on a patch of barbaric red.</p>
+<hr class='toprule' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_99' name='page_99'></a>99</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_IX_HEARTS_INSURGENT' id='CHAPTER_IX_HEARTS_INSURGENT'></a>
+<h2>CHAPTER IX</h2>
+<h3>HEARTS INSURGENT</h3>
+</div>
+<p>Seth recovered his revolver, and lunged toward the
+door. But Claire was before him. She flung herself
+upon him, clutching the lapels of his coat.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Seth! Seth!&rdquo; she shrieked. &ldquo;What are you doing?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll follow him!&rdquo; he roared. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll follow him!
+I&rsquo;ll end the whole thing! I&rsquo;ll finish it, I tell you!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No! No!&rdquo; she wailed; and clung to him frantically.</p>
+<p>He was beside himself, almost incoherent, for the
+moment quite irresponsible. It is very likely that, but
+for Claire, he would have mounted a horse and pursued
+Haig to his ranch, with such consequences as anybody
+except himself could easily have foreseen. But he was
+not so far gone in frenzy as to hurt Claire, as he must
+have done in tearing himself loose from her. He stood
+a moment in tragic helplessness, grinding his teeth, and
+hurling muttered imprecations out into the night that
+covered Philip Haig. Then he looked down at the
+golden head pressed against his breast, and felt the frail
+body quivering; and some sense of what he was doing, or
+was about to do, reached his brain through the fumes of
+rage. There was yet a long struggle; for he was too
+ponderous for quick decisions, and at the same time too
+outright for successful equivocation. Defeat was always
+a staggering blow to him, since he had no art to
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_100' name='page_100'></a>100</span>
+mask it. And now, lacking the sagacity to swallow his
+mortification and to bide his time, he could only suffer,
+rending himself in lieu of another on whom to pour his
+fury.</p>
+<p>In the midst of this futile passion his roving eyes fell
+on Marion. She lay where she had fallen, in a dead
+faint, limp on the red-and-yellow rug. Seth stared at
+her a full minute, while an indefinable suspicion grew
+in the back of his brain. She had said, &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve brought
+him here to make peace with you.&rdquo; And Haig himself
+had given the lie to that speech! What did it all mean?
+By God, he would find out!</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Come, Claire!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Attend to Marion!&rdquo;
+And he began to loosen her fingers from his coat.</p>
+<p>But she only clutched it the tighter.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;ll go!&rdquo; she cried.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No! Not to-night!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You promise?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes! Yes!&rdquo; he growled.</p>
+<p>She looked steadily up at him, questioning, fearful,
+until he bent down and kissed her.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;There!&rdquo; he said, roughly and yet not ungently.
+&ldquo;Now go to Marion!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>They picked her up, and laid her on the couch at
+one side of the big room; and Claire unbuttoned her
+dress at the throat, and bathed her face and neck with
+cold water, while Seth rubbed and slapped her hands.</p>
+<p>Her first impulse, on opening her eyes and seeing
+Claire and Seth leaning over her, was to raise her head,
+and look toward the door. She saw only a patch of
+darkness, empty and still. Then she remembered how
+she had heard his mocking voice fade away in the night;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_101' name='page_101'></a>101</span>
+and her eyes returned to Seth and Claire. Their faces
+told her what to expect: and she knew that they were
+right in demanding, as they would demand, the fullest
+explanation.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Water, please!&rdquo; she murmured, moistening her dry
+lips with her tongue.</p>
+<p>She sat up, slowly emptied the glass that Claire placed
+in her trembling hand, then buttoned her collar over her
+bare throat, and began to pin up the locks of hair that
+had fallen about her face and neck. Her hands, she
+thought, were very thin and white. She had never
+fainted before, and was still a little frightened and surprised.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What does it all mean, Marion?&rdquo; demanded Huntington.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Wait, Seth, can&rsquo;t you?&rdquo; warned Claire. Then to
+Marion: &ldquo;There&rsquo;s no hurry, dear. When you feel
+better.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>But her eyes denied her words. There was indeed no
+way out of it. Marion must speak, and without delay.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m cold,&rdquo; she said, shivering.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Of course!&rdquo; cried Claire. &ldquo;Come to the fire.
+And Seth! Close the door, please!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Huntington strode to the door, and slammed it shut.
+Then he returned to the chimney piece, and watched
+Marion as she leaned toward the blaze. He could barely
+restrain himself, waiting for her to begin.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve been a silly fool, I suppose,&rdquo; she said presently,
+sitting erect again, and facing her cousins courageously.
+&ldquo;It was all my fault. You mustn&rsquo;t blame him.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>An impatient exclamation by Huntington drew a
+warning glance from Claire.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_102' name='page_102'></a>102</span></div>
+<p>&ldquo;Tell us just what happened, dear!&rdquo; she urged
+gently.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t exactly know&ndash;&ndash;I can&rsquo;t just understand
+how it happened,&rdquo; Marion began. &ldquo;I had an accident&ndash;&ndash;in
+the road. My foot was hurt&ndash;&ndash;my ankle was
+twisted&ndash;&ndash;or I thought it was&ndash;&ndash;and I was frightened.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;An accident?&rdquo; said Claire.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I was off my pony&ndash;&ndash;the cinches were loose&ndash;&ndash;and&ndash;&ndash;when
+I tried to mount again&ndash;&ndash;I slipped&ndash;&ndash;somehow&ndash;&ndash;and
+fell. He was just in time to help me,
+and&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Where was that?&rdquo; asked Huntington.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Just below his place. He was coming back&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But what were you doing over there?&rdquo; demanded
+Huntington.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Riding,&rdquo; she said calmly, perhaps a little defiantly.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, I know that. But on his land?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Did you ever tell me anything about that?&rdquo; she
+retorted.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No, but&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Then how was I to know?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But you&rsquo;ve heard&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, I heard some things at the post-office. You&rsquo;ve
+told me nothing.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Huntington&rsquo;s face reddened angrily.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Never mind that now!&rdquo; cried Claire sharply, sending
+another warning look at Seth. &ldquo;Go on, dear!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Marion went on, very carefully. With Claire alone
+she might have been more frank and confiding, but
+Seth&rsquo;s belligerent attitude had begun to stir resentment
+in her.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He thought I had a bad sprain. He was annoyed;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_103' name='page_103'></a>103</span>
+he didn&rsquo;t take any pains to conceal that from me. But
+he lifted me into the saddle, and rode with me to his
+stable, and told one of his men to hitch up a team, and
+drive me home. That would have been&ndash;&ndash;all right, and
+he had no intention&ndash;&ndash;until&ndash;&ndash;something I said&ndash;&ndash;I
+must have been hysterical&ndash;&ndash;something made him angry,
+and he&ndash;&ndash;said he would drive me home himself.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And you let him!&rdquo; cried Claire reproachfully.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No, I didn&rsquo;t <i>let</i> him. He did it in spite of all I
+could do. I pleaded with him, I tried every way to stop
+him. Once I started to leap out of the trap. But he
+caught me. He laughed at me But he was very angry
+too; he scolded me dreadfully. Said I needed to be
+punished for&ndash;&ndash;I don&rsquo;t know what. He hates women,
+and says we&rsquo;re always meddling in men&rsquo;s affairs. It
+served me right, of course. And please remember it
+was all my fault&ndash;&ndash;truly!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Did he say anything about making peace?&rdquo; asked
+Claire.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No. That was all mine. I had to do something
+quickly. You know that.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But what did he say about me?&rdquo; growled Huntington,
+who was far from satisfied, and still suspicious.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Not much. Oh, yes!&rdquo; she added impulsively.
+&ldquo;He said you and he could probably come to an understanding
+quickly enough if&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>She paused, embarrassed.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;If what?&rdquo; demanded Huntington.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That was only because he dislikes women, I think.
+He said&ndash;&ndash;if Claire&ndash;&ndash;Mrs. Huntington, he said,&ndash;&ndash;would
+let you alone.&rdquo;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_104' name='page_104'></a>104</span></div>
+<p>&ldquo;I?&rdquo; cried Claire. It was almost a scream of astonishment
+and indignation.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll show him!&rdquo; shouted Huntington. &ldquo;He&rsquo;d better
+keep her name out of it, or I&rsquo;ll&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I haven&rsquo;t done anything!&rdquo; wailed Claire.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll make him pay for that!&rdquo; bellowed Huntington,
+bringing his fist down on the mantel.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You mustn&rsquo;t blame him!&rdquo; protested Marion hastily.
+&ldquo;He was angry at me, and I don&rsquo;t think he&rsquo;s as
+bad as you think he is.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Marion!&rdquo; cried Claire, her eyes widening with
+wonder.</p>
+<p>Then Marion had the misfortune to blush under
+Claire&rsquo;s curious gaze. She blushed, at first, merely because
+she had gone too far in her effort to clear Haig of
+responsibility for what had occurred that evening; and
+then the blood stormed into her cheeks as she encountered
+Claire&rsquo;s look, and attached a deeper meaning to it
+than it actually conveyed.</p>
+<p>Huntington leaned forward, and gazed suspiciously
+into Marion&rsquo;s crimsoned face.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, I&rsquo;ll be damned!&rdquo; he broke out. &ldquo;You&rsquo;d
+think the girl was in love with this ruffian!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>For an instant there was a silence much like the
+silence that follows a clap of thunder. Then Marion
+rose slowly to her feet, quivering, her eyes ablaze.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ruffian?&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;If there&rsquo;s any ruffian
+it&rsquo;s&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>She caught herself. She was innately gentle and
+fastidious, and she could not, without shame, have
+forced her lips to say the things that she felt in her outraged
+heart. But she looked at him; and under that
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_105' name='page_105'></a>105</span>
+look Seth quailed and shrank. What had he said to
+evoke this luminous hatred? He had not meant&ndash;&ndash;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And I think she&rsquo;s right, Seth Huntington!&rdquo; exclaimed
+Claire, coming to Marion, and putting an arm,
+around her. &ldquo;If there&rsquo;s any ruffian it&rsquo;s you, and I&rsquo;m
+ashamed of you!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Huntington&rsquo;s jaw dropped, and he stared at them, his
+eyes bulging with astonishment. Then suddenly he
+turned, and bolted from the room. The door leading to
+the kitchen was flung shut behind him; then the outer
+door banged; and in a moment his heavy footsteps were
+heard on the veranda, where he strode to and fro in
+helpless rage and shame and wonder. He had a feeling
+of soreness over all his body, as if some one had roundly
+pummelled him; his face itched beneath his beard; he
+could not find a comfortable place for his hands. Well,
+he agreed with Haig about one thing: women were hell!
+And here was Claire siding with Marion against him;
+and calling him a ruffian! Was he a ruffian? What
+had he said to merit that? Couldn&rsquo;t they take a joke?
+But this casuistry did not go down, though he tried to
+hammer it down with many violent gestures. He began
+to have certain qualms that he recognized as premonitory
+signs of weakening; and he struggled to bolster up
+his anger. Damn Haig! If he had only finished him
+that day in the timber, when the others had wanted to!
+But this was a vain regret. There remained the present
+situation. Gradually his steps faltered. He stopped
+often to look vacantly at the stars. They had nothing
+to say to him. He felt very solitary, alone in the
+world.</p>
+<p>After a time the kitchen door was opened softly.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_106' name='page_106'></a>106</span></div>
+<p>&ldquo;Seth!&rdquo; came a whisper from that direction.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well?&rdquo; he answered uncertainly.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Aren&rsquo;t you cold?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, we are. The fire&rsquo;s going out.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Umph!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Won&rsquo;t you please fetch some wood?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>No reply. Claire slipped out, and crept up to him.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Come!&rdquo; she commanded softly. &ldquo;Do you want us
+to freeze?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Still no reply.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, you do, do you?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s time you went to bed.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No, it isn&rsquo;t. We&rsquo;re not going to bed until you come
+in and beg Marion&rsquo;s pardon.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No, I&rsquo;ll be&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>She tried to clap her hand over his mouth, but succeeded
+only in hitting his nose a smart tap, which was
+just as effective, since it checked him.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No swearing, either!&rdquo; she went on. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve
+been rude enough for one night, don&rsquo;t you think? I&rsquo;ll
+tell you my opinion of it later. She&rsquo;s going to be easy
+with you because she&rsquo;s sorry about it all. Come!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Huntington did not move, or answer her.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Do you want her to leave by the next stage&ndash;&ndash;and
+have this all over the Park too&ndash;&ndash;like Haig&rsquo;s visit?
+Come!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He groaned, but followed her. At the door of the
+living room he caught sight of Marion seated before the
+fireplace, where only embers glowed dull red.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll get some wood,&rdquo; he said quickly, glad of even
+a few minutes&rsquo; grace.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_107' name='page_107'></a>107</span></div>
+<p>Fortune tossed him a small favor: the wood bin
+near the kitchen door was empty&ndash;&ndash;almost. Another
+time that would have brought a storm down on the
+head of the unlucky stable hand whose duty it was
+to keep the bin filled. But now Seth rejoiced at
+having to go to the wood yard, and found it much too
+near.</p>
+<p>He re-entered the house with an armload of sticks,
+and placed them carefully on the embers; stirred up the
+glowing mass with a poker; readjusted the fresh wood;
+provoked the red coals once more; and at last, having
+exhausted the dilatory possibilities of the fire, stood up
+clumsily to face the ordeal.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, Marion,&rdquo; he began awkwardly, &ldquo;I&rsquo;m in for it,
+I reckon.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>She did not reply; she only looked at him. There
+were dark shadows around her eyes that heightened the
+pallor of her cheeks; but the eyes themselves were clear
+and piercing, and as cold now as they had been fiery
+before. For once in his life Huntington was conscious
+of his bulk; he felt conspicuous; and the wound in his
+shoulder, almost healed, began to itch and ache.&ndash;&ndash;There
+were worse things than being shot.&ndash;&ndash;If she
+would only turn those eyes away from him! And then
+it dawned upon him that she was waiting.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I beg your pardon, Marion!&rdquo; he stammered. &ldquo;I
+was ugly. I didn&rsquo;t really mean&ndash;&ndash;I hope you&rsquo;ll forgive
+me.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>For a minute longer she let him stew in his kettle,
+then lifted him out scrupulously, at the end of a very
+long fork, and dropped him steaming, as if he had been
+a lump of unsavory fat.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_108' name='page_108'></a>108</span></div>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, I forgive you,&rdquo; she said, very, very distantly.
+&ldquo;You probably weren&rsquo;t thinking.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>If that was forgiveness! But he did not know&ndash;&ndash;even
+Claire did not know then&ndash;&ndash;how deeply he had
+wounded Marion with his rude and accusing speech,&ndash;&ndash;as
+if he had called a jeering crowd to look at the little
+flower that blooms but once, and very secretly, in a
+woman&rsquo;s heart. Forgive him? She never would forgive
+him for that blundering outburst, which was indeed
+the more unforgivable because he did not seriously
+mean, and certainly did not believe, the thing he said.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Thank you, Marion dear!&rdquo; said Claire softly.</p>
+<p>At that Marion suddenly rushed to Claire, and knelt
+by her chair. She had her own faults to be forgiven.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve been very foolish!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve caused
+you pain and humiliation. I&rsquo;m sorry. Please forgive
+me!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>So they cried it out in each other&rsquo;s arms, while Huntington
+rolled a cigarette, took one whiff of it, and tossed
+it into the fire. It required a stronger narcotic than
+tobacco to soothe his fevered spirits. After a while he
+whirled around and faced the two women.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;See here, Marion!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s all our fault
+for not telling you about Haig. But we didn&rsquo;t want to
+annoy you with our troubles, and we never imagined
+you&rsquo;d stumble on to him. Do you know now what this
+is all about?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>She spared him the answer that she had heard something
+on that point the day of the shooting.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No; that is, very little.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, it&rsquo;s just this: Before he came here we were
+all playing the game peacefully together. Each of us
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_109' name='page_109'></a>109</span>
+had just about enough land, with the cut hay and the
+winter pastures, to pull through the winter, and there
+was just enough free grazing up in the edges of the
+timber to keep the cattle going through the summer and
+early fall.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That was government land,&rdquo; explained Claire.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And open to all of us,&rdquo; added Seth. &ldquo;We never
+had any dispute with the Englishman who owned Haig&rsquo;s
+ranch before him, and he got fair treatment, though he
+wasn&rsquo;t here much of the time to look after it. We heard
+he had some family trouble, and one day when he&rsquo;d
+been gone a long time&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That&rsquo;s four years now,&rdquo; interrupted Claire.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes. Haig showed up, and said the ranch was his.
+He started in straight off to hog the whole thing.
+Bought a thousand head of cattle&ndash;&ndash;that made thirteen
+hundred head&ndash;&ndash;almost as many as all the rest of us
+had put together. He turned the thirteen hundred into
+the open range, and hired men to keep them moving the
+right way for the good feed, and&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He had a perfect right to do that, you see,&rdquo; Claire
+put in hastily.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Legal right, maybe,&rdquo; Huntington went on. &ldquo;But
+he didn&rsquo;t have any real right to more than his share.
+We organized, bunched our cattle, and stayed with &rsquo;em.
+That way we were stronger than he, and soon had his
+cattle starving. Then he disappeared, and we didn&rsquo;t
+see anything of him for three weeks. And what do you
+suppose the damned skunk&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Seth!&rdquo; cried Claire warningly, with an anxious
+look at Marion.</p>
+<p>Marion merely shook her head.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_110' name='page_110'></a>110</span></div>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, he fooled us. He went to Denver, got a lawyer
+on the job, looked up the records, found there&rsquo;d been
+a mistake in the surveys, and came back to us with a
+government deed to almost half the forest reserve that
+we&rsquo;d been using as free pasture. Then he ordered us
+off, and we went, with six Winchesters pointed at our
+fool backs. What do you think of that, Marion?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But why?&rdquo; asked Marion. &ldquo;I mean what was his
+motive in all that? He isn&rsquo;t a cattleman. I mean&ndash;&ndash;I
+don&rsquo;t think he cares enough&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>She stopped, finding herself in dangerous waters.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Why? Because he&rsquo;s a&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo; Huntington checked
+himself. &ldquo;Anyhow, he barely escaped a lynching that
+night. And if he only knew it, I&rsquo;m the one that stopped
+it. I said we&rsquo;d find some other way. But we haven&rsquo;t
+found it. We had to bring most of our stock down to
+the pastures we needed for winter, and in winter we had
+to buy hay at eighteen dollars a ton. And Haig had
+hay to sell. Three of our men were driven out of
+business. Tom Jenkins, being dead broke and discouraged,
+with a family, killed himself. I had to sell
+off a third of my cattle, and twenty head disappeared,
+and I never saw them again. And maybe you can understand
+now how I felt when I saw him this evening,
+standing there in my own house, grinning at me.
+God!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He turned, grabbed up the poker, and began jabbing
+viciously at the fire.</p>
+<p>Yes, Marion could understand that, but&ndash;&ndash;She was
+not satisfied. There was something missing from Seth&rsquo;s
+narrative. Haig&rsquo;s accusations that day at the post-office&ndash;&ndash;his
+missing cattle, and the cut wires at the Forbidden
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_111' name='page_111'></a>111</span>
+Pasture&ndash;&ndash;And if all that Seth had said was true,
+which she doubted, the mystery was only deepened.
+She was sure that Haig was only playing a part, that
+he was not a cattleman by choice, and that his heart was
+not in the game, whatever it was. She wanted to ask
+questions, but refrained, lest she should again arouse
+Seth&rsquo;s suspicions. She would see Smythe.</p>
+<hr class='toprule' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_112' name='page_112'></a>112</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_X_STRICTLY_CONFIDENTIAL' id='CHAPTER_X_STRICTLY_CONFIDENTIAL'></a>
+<h2>CHAPTER X</h2>
+<h3>STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL</h3>
+</div>
+<p>The next afternoon Huntington, with painful diffidence,
+yet anxious to come to some sort of terms
+with Marion, proposed that she should begin her shooting
+lessons. She acquiesced in a manner that relieved
+him immensely, for she, on her side, was sorely in need
+of distraction. So they were presently on the hillside
+behind the ranch house with the rifles,&ndash;&ndash;Seth&rsquo;s Winchester
+and the little Savage he had bought for Claire,
+who, to his great disappointment, did not like guns, and
+never could be taught to see the sights with one eye
+closed. His delight, therefore, was unbounded when
+Marion took to the Savage with almost the quick adaptability
+of a man. True, her first shots went high and
+wild among the foliage, but she was fast getting the grip
+of the gun, and had actually once scraped the bark of
+the tree on which the target of white paper was tacked,
+when they were hailed by a cheerful voice demanding
+permission for an unarmed and perfectly harmless man
+to approach.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Smythe!&rdquo; growled Huntington, resenting the
+interruption. Then aloud, as heartily as he could:
+&ldquo;Hello, Smythe! You&rsquo;re quite safe.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What&rsquo;s going on here, anyhow?&rdquo; asked Smythe.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Where are your boasted powers of observation?&rdquo;
+retorted Marion.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_113' name='page_113'></a>113</span></div>
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s more polite to ask.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;In Paradise Park?&rdquo; she queried, in a tone of mild
+surprise.</p>
+<p>Seth&rsquo;s face reddened as he stooped over a half-empty
+cartridge-box. He had congratulated himself too soon.
+But while Smythe and Marion exchanged more badinage
+he refilled the magazine of the Savage, and held it ready.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Will you have another try?&rdquo; he asked.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, please, if Mr. Smythe will only keep still. I
+know I can never hit anything if he talks.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m mum!&rdquo; he answered.</p>
+<p>The first shot went wild. So, indeed, the second and
+third.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;There! What did I tell you?&rdquo; cried Marion petulantly.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But I didn&rsquo;t say a word!&rdquo; protested Smythe.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What were you thinking, then?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What a charming Diana&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t think any more, please!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But I can&rsquo;t stop thinking!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;In that case you&rsquo;d better talk. You certainly talk
+enough without thinking.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Bull&rsquo;s-eye!&rdquo; he cried joyously. &ldquo;Now try
+again!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I suppose I must learn not to be bothered.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>She pressed her lips together, and steadied herself
+resolutely. She would show him! The next shot cut
+a furrow in the bark of the pine; the second struck
+within two inches of the target; and the third pinked
+the edge of the paper itself.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That will do for this time,&rdquo; she said, in some elation,
+as she handed the gun to Huntington.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_114' name='page_114'></a>114</span></div>
+<p>&ldquo;To-morrow you&rsquo;ll do better,&rdquo; he assured her.
+&ldquo;And then we&rsquo;ll try it at longer range.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He began to pick up the cartridge boxes and his own
+rifle.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;re not riding to-day?&rdquo; said Smythe.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;How did you guess it?&rdquo; she demanded, laughing.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, a truce! A truce!&rdquo; he pleaded. &ldquo;I mean, if
+you are not going for a ride, will you walk up the hill
+there?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He pointed toward the pines.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Why?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;To please me,&rdquo; he answered.</p>
+<p>But she caught a look in his eyes that decided her.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Certainly, if you are so easily pleased.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, I&rsquo;m a very Lazarus at the table of life!&rdquo; he retorted
+gaily. &ldquo;Every crumb comforts me.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>She laughed, and stepped away with him among the
+rocks, while Huntington, still swearing at Smythe for a
+meddling fool, strode down the hill.</p>
+<p>Marion surmised that Smythe had something to say
+to her. Had he heard already? Had the news of yesterday&rsquo;s
+comedy, that was so near a tragedy, already
+spread far and wide over the Park? But that was
+scarcely possible, since Haig&rsquo;s men would be silent,
+and Seth had kept Williams too busy all day for
+gossip.</p>
+<p>They climbed the rocky slope without more words,
+clambering over bowlders and fallen tree trunks, until
+they reached the summit of the hill, and flung themselves
+down, hot and panting, on a great flat rock that
+commanded a sweeping view of the Park. At one side
+more hills rose, small mountains in themselves, thickly
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_115' name='page_115'></a>115</span>
+wooded, with white peaks towering behind. On the
+other, the valley of the Brightwater lay green and bronze
+in the sun, with the white stream curling and curving
+among the meadows. Far across the valley, beyond the
+ridge that divided the Park in unequal halves&ndash;&ndash;that
+fateful ridge!&ndash;&ndash;the western range of mountains glittered,
+dazzling white.</p>
+<p>Marion&rsquo;s eyes at once sought out Thunder Mountain.
+What would it say to her to-day? Storm! Its top
+was half-hidden in a gray-black swirl of clouds, though
+the sun was bright on the snow-clad peaks around
+it.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What do you see?&rdquo; asked Smythe, as soon as his
+lungs would consent to speech.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;My mountain,&rdquo; she answered, without turning her
+head.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Which is that?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Thunder Mountain.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Umph! You&rsquo;re welcome to it!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>She was silent.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Why your mountain?&rdquo; he asked presently.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But there must be a reason&ndash;&ndash;or something.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That&rsquo;s just it&ndash;&ndash;something. It&rsquo;s hideous, but it
+fascinates me. I can&rsquo;t help thinking that&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That what?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>They laughed together.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s got a bad reputation,&rdquo; said Smythe.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Perhaps that&rsquo;s the reason.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Then she was embarrassed, thinking unexpectedly of
+another bad reputation in the Park.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_116' name='page_116'></a>116</span></div>
+<p>&ldquo;Perhaps,&rdquo; he answered, smiling at the back of her
+head, where the tawny hair curved up adorably from the
+soft, white neck.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Tell me about it!&rdquo; she said at length.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s a death trap.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You mean&ndash;&ndash;men have gone up there?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, yes!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;How?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;There&rsquo;s a trail, what&rsquo;s left of it. The Warpath,
+they call it.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The Warpath?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes. It was first a war trail, when fighting tribes
+lived in these mountains. But even the Indians didn&rsquo;t
+use it often&ndash;&ndash;only in midsummer. It&rsquo;s a trail over
+bare rocks, marked by stones set up at long intervals.
+The Indians didn&rsquo;t mark it. They had their own ways
+of knowing it. But after the Indians came trappers,
+hunters, prospectors, and some of them set up the
+stones. It would be a valuable short cut between the
+Park and the San Luis country, if it were safe. But
+it&rsquo;s not. I&rsquo;m told that many lives have been lost on it.
+I can&rsquo;t find details except of one tragedy. Some ten
+years ago a party of English people, guests at the ranch
+that Haig now owns, went on a pleasure trip to Thunder
+Mountain. They meant to go only as far as timber
+line. It&rsquo;s not difficult as far as the foot of the scarp
+that lifts to the flat top you see yonder. It&rsquo;s done on
+horseback to that point&ndash;&ndash;and across too, if you care
+to try it. But on top&ndash;&ndash;that&rsquo;s another matter. It isn&rsquo;t
+the mountain itself that gets you. It&rsquo;s the storms.
+The English party ventured on top, and three of them
+never came back. The wind hurled them into a chasm,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_117' name='page_117'></a>117</span>
+and their bodies were never recovered. That&rsquo;s enough
+for me, thank you!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Has nobody in the Park ever been across?&rdquo; Marion
+persisted.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Old Parker&ndash;&ndash;Jim Parker&rsquo;s father&ndash;&ndash;crossed it
+once, many years ago. But he came back another way,
+around by Tellurium. Young Parker has been as far
+as the Devil&rsquo;s Chair. That&rsquo;s the top of the notch where
+the wind sucks you into it&ndash;&ndash;unless, by good chance, it
+blows you away from it.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And no one else?&rdquo; Marion insisted, breathless.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;One other man has gone to the Twin Sisters.
+That&rsquo;s halfway over.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Who was that?&rdquo; she asked; as if she did not know.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He balked at the women, you see.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Smythe chuckled.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The Twin Sisters,&rdquo; Smythe went on, &ldquo;are two
+huge gray rocks, I&rsquo;m told, vaguely resembling carved
+figures. The trail passes between them. There&rsquo;s no
+other possible way, and when the wind is blowing it
+shoots out between them like water from a fire-hose.
+Haig was caught just there by a storm. He came back
+fighting mad, and swore he&rsquo;d cross Thunder Mountain
+yet, or die there. But that reminds me. I&rsquo;ve got news
+for you.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;News?&rdquo; asked Marion, with a start.</p>
+<p>Her first thought was of Sunnysides. Had Haig decided
+not to wait for Farrish? But no! It would be
+something about yesterday&rsquo;s sensation.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It keeps well, I see,&rdquo; she said lightly.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t want to excite you so soon after that long
+climb.&rdquo;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_118' name='page_118'></a>118</span></div>
+<p>&ldquo;Thank you! If you think I can&rsquo;t stand it you just
+keep it to yourself&ndash;&ndash;if you can!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But I came expressly to tell you.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Then why don&rsquo;t you expressly tell me? Don&rsquo;t be
+exasperating, Mr. Smythe!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He grinned exultantly.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve been eavesdropping.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Not intentionally. Pure accident. But I didn&rsquo;t
+stick my fingers in my ears.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No, I can understand that.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Thanks. It was this way: I was fishing&ndash;&ndash;for
+fish, really. Under a clump of willows, just where the
+road from Haig&rsquo;s joins the main valley road. You
+know?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, yes!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Haig and another man, Higgins, it turned out to be&ndash;&ndash;he&rsquo;s
+a Denver lawyer&ndash;&ndash;with his family for an outing
+down at Cobalt Lake. It appeared he&rsquo;d been up to
+see Haig partly on business and partly just for a
+friendly visit. They separated there, after a little conversation.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;It&rsquo;s strange you&rsquo;ve never heard a word from him,&rsquo;
+said Higgins.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;Four years,&rsquo; answered Haig.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;He&rsquo;s probably off in South Africa somewhere.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;Or India. It&rsquo;s a long trail be followed, no doubt.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;You can only wait, I suppose,&rsquo; Higgins said.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;Well, I&rsquo;ve nothing else to do,&rsquo; Haig replied, with
+a laugh.&rdquo; Smythe paused.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That&rsquo;s something to think about,&rdquo; he said musingly.
+&ldquo;Who is this &lsquo;he&rsquo;? And why is Haig waiting for
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_119' name='page_119'></a>119</span>
+him? Well, that was all I heard about that. Higgins
+next asked Haig if he wouldn&rsquo;t please change his mind
+about riding down to see them.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;No,&rsquo; Haig answered. &lsquo;I never go anywhere.
+I&rsquo;m not very sociable, no longer a gregarious creature.
+Ask my neighbors about that!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;Oh, hang your neighbors! This is different.
+We&rsquo;re not living here, and we can&rsquo;t pester you. But
+you see I got Hail Columbia from my wife for not
+bringing you to see her in Denver, and she&rsquo;s dead set on
+getting acquainted with you here. She says you&rsquo;re the
+most unselfish man in the world. I&rsquo;d be jealous if&ndash;&ndash;&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;Oh, come now!&rsquo; protested Haig, laughing.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;It&rsquo;s true. So you&rsquo;ll drop this hermit business for
+once, won&rsquo;t you? It will give my wife much pleasure.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;There was a little silence.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;Well, have your own way,&rsquo; said Haig at last &lsquo;I
+suppose a man&rsquo;s got to humor his lawyer, if he doesn&rsquo;t
+want to lose a plain case some day. But I warn you.
+I&rsquo;m not very amusing, that is, I trust not.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;Good!&rsquo; cried Higgins. &lsquo;We&rsquo;ll not keep you long.
+The day after to-morrow, shall we say? Right! Now
+good-by! And don&rsquo;t let Huntington pot you&ndash;&ndash;before
+you&rsquo;ve seen Mrs. Higgins.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;They both laughed at that. Higgins drove off down
+the valley in his road wagon, and Haig galloped toward
+home. And then I found a trout had run away with my
+hook. Big fellow too, and clever as Satan. Scuttled
+away under a rock and worked loose before I could get
+after him. But it was a good day&rsquo;s fishing just the
+same, don&rsquo;t you think?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>She did not reply at once; and Smythe discreetly
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_120' name='page_120'></a>120</span>
+busied himself tossing stones at an impertinent chipmunk
+that popped in and out among the rocks and
+fallen limbs.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Have you seen this Mrs. Higgins?&rdquo; asked Marion
+suddenly.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No,&rdquo; Smythe answered gravely, though his eyes
+twinkled wickedly. &ldquo;But Higgins is sixty at least, and
+I fancy his wife&rsquo;s too old to be&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo; A warning look
+checked him. &ldquo;But really, Miss Gaylord, you ought
+not to jump down my throat after I&rsquo;ve brought you such
+an interesting knot for your pretty hands to untie.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>She laughed at his lugubrious countenance, then stood
+up, and reached out a hand to him, letting him hold it
+for just a breath of time.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No, you&rsquo;re a good friend. I know it.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m not very deep,&rdquo; he said, with a touch of dejection.
+&ldquo;Nobody ever takes me very seriously. But I
+hope you&rsquo;ll trust me!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Indeed I will! But come! We must go back.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>So they went slipping and sliding down the hill,
+digging their heels into the ground, clinging to rocks
+and trees to check their swift descent, laughing at their
+wild plunges and gyrations. At the house, when they
+had rested a while on the veranda, Marion dismissed
+Smythe as quickly as she could without abruptness; and
+when he had gone she hastened to her room, and locked
+the door, and flung herself down on the bed, with her
+hands clasped behind her head, to stare up at the ceiling
+in a whirl of thoughts. There was a mystery! There
+was a motive behind Haig&rsquo;s conduct! &ldquo;The most unselfish
+man in the world&rdquo; And she repeated the words
+over and over again, and gathered them to her heart.</p>
+<hr class='toprule' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_121' name='page_121'></a>121</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_XI_AVALANCHE' id='CHAPTER_XI_AVALANCHE'></a>
+<h2>CHAPTER XI</h2>
+<h3>AVALANCHE</h3>
+</div>
+<p>Huntington soon had his revenge on Marion,
+though, in his blindness, he never knew it. She
+and Claire, after an unusually protracted Small Talk
+the night before, arose late one morning to find the
+house topsy-turvy from masculine activity. On the
+veranda they discovered Seth cleaning rifles, surrounded
+by cartridge boxes, hunting knives, canvas bags and
+wrappings, rubber coats, leather straps, fishing tackle
+and what not.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;In the name of goodness, Seth Huntington! What
+are you doing?&rdquo; shrilled Claire.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Guess!&rdquo; replied Huntington, with a rather heavy
+attempt at tantalizing.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, I know! Camping. But you don&rsquo;t mean to-day?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Sure!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But why didn&rsquo;t you ask us?&rdquo; demanded Claire.
+&ldquo;Maybe we don&rsquo;t choose&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But you do, though. I promised Marion that as
+soon as I&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He stopped, for even his habitually veiled eyes could
+not miss the look of consternation on Marion&rsquo;s face.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Why&ndash;&ndash;I thought&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo; he began uncertainly. &ldquo;Of
+course, if you don&rsquo;t want to go&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The oiled rag dropped from his hand. His descent
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_122' name='page_122'></a>122</span>
+from elation (he had planned a little surprise) to dejection
+and chagrin was a tumble that touched Marion&rsquo;s
+commiseration and disarmed her. She did not want to
+go camping; she did not want to leave the Park for even
+a day, an hour; she did not want to miss any opportunity
+to see Haig. More than ever now was she determined
+to solve his mystery. So Huntingdon&rsquo;s &ldquo;surprise&rdquo; was
+a greater shock to her than he, simple man, could possibly
+have foreseen or perceived. But even if she had
+not been moved by his rather ludicrous disappointment
+she would not have dared to refuse acquiescence in his
+programme. She had indeed expressed an ardent&ndash;&ndash;oh,
+too ardent!&ndash;&ndash;desire to go camping, and any explanation
+she could think of on the instant would have led
+her into regions where she could not trust herself.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Indeed, I want to go!&rdquo; she cried quickly, though
+there was a big lump in her throat. &ldquo;You took me by
+surprise, that&rsquo;s all.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I should say so!&rdquo; said Claire. &ldquo;Think you&rsquo;re
+smart, don&rsquo;t you? We might have been all dressed for
+it if you&rsquo;d only told us. When do we start, Big Boss?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Huntington recovered his good spirits quickly, assured
+that he had succeeded after all.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I thought we&rsquo;d ride to Ely&rsquo;s to-day, sleep there to-night,
+and make Mount Avalanche to-morrow evening.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Then we must hurry,&rdquo; said Claire. &ldquo;Come,
+Marion.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;How long&ndash;&ndash;shall we be gone?&rdquo; asked Marion,
+struggling to appear enthusiastic.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Four or five days, I suppose.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Her heart sank. She could have cried with vexation.
+But she managed to conceal her real feelings in
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_123' name='page_123'></a>123</span>
+the bustle of preparation. There were provisions to be
+packed: cans and jars and bottles; bacon and ham and
+flour against the possible event of bad luck with the
+guns and rods; warm clothes and bedding; medicines
+and bandages. So fully occupied were her hands and
+brain with these details, and later with her first real
+experience with the mountain trails, that her heart must
+perforce keep its peace until some hour of solitude.</p>
+<p>Toward five o&rsquo;clock of the second day they reached
+their destination,&ndash;&ndash;a grassy shelf a little below timber
+line on Mount Avalanche. There, in some past age,
+an avalanche of titanic proportions had carried away
+part of the mountain itself; and they camped now on the
+top of the d&eacute;bris, long since concealed by a dense forest
+growth, as if nature had employed her utmost arts to
+hide the wound. Marion could not but yield a little to
+emotions of delight and wonder. On that high platform
+she stood above a marvelous mountain world,
+below another mountain world as marvelous. Behind
+her Avalanche reared sheer and sharp and white against
+the sky. On either side were snow-clad peaks. At her
+feet were forests in solid masses of green, now darkening
+in the twilight. And beyond, far, far beyond, the
+Park they had left lay bright under the sun&rsquo;s after-glow,
+with a background of range on range of mountains in
+their violet haze. On the shelf was forage for the
+horses; near at hand were moss and balsam for their
+beds; and at a little distance a rivulet, ice-cold, had
+shady pools where small trout awaited capture. And
+the air was like dry wine on the lips, with a tang of
+resin in the nostrils; and the woods sang a song that
+even Marion could not resist.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_124' name='page_124'></a>124</span></div>
+<p>Here they pitched two tents just large enough to
+cover the beds of balsam boughs and moss and blankets.
+In the three days they passed in camp Marion learned
+many things that were to be of incalculable value to her
+one day, though she never could have guessed that all
+this too, like the encounter in the Forbidden Pasture,
+had been ordered in the Beginning, details in the
+Scheme of Things. She learned surprising secrets of
+makeshift cookery; she learned the Indian&rsquo;s lesson of a
+very little fire; she learned the mountaineer&rsquo;s economy
+of matches and like precious articles. She fished in the
+small pools that lay hidden away in dark recesses of the
+forest, practised shooting with her rifle, and on the third
+day, in the timber below the camp, with Seth at her
+side, brought down her first deer.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I told you!&rdquo; cried Huntington, delighted at the
+progress of his pupil.</p>
+<p>But her heart was not in all this; it was clamoring
+now to be heard, and would by no means be stilled.
+Each evening Marion walked apart from the others, to
+stand at the edge of the lofty platform, and watch her
+green and violet Elysium swallowed up in night. Each
+morning she searched for it through her field glasses to
+assure herself that it had not vanished in the dark.
+And when the last day of their outing came, the last
+evening, the last night, she could scarce contain her impatience.
+To-morrow they would start; and the day
+after&ndash;&ndash;</p>
+<p>She could not sleep that night. Every twig and
+every needle of her pine mattress seemed to have conspired
+to torture her. She tossed about until she could
+no longer endure her bed; and in the middle of the night
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_125' name='page_125'></a>125</span>
+she crept out of the tent, and sat, wrapped in a blanket,
+before the smouldering embers of the fire. The hobbled
+horses grazed not far away; a night bird twitted solitarily
+in the brush; and from the depths of the forest
+came the scream of some savage creature out on its kill.
+Against the star-crowded sky the peaks stood up cold
+and impassive. What cared they? What did the
+world care? What did Philip care?</p>
+<p>For now she knew that she loved him. Yes, yes, she
+loved him! In her heart she had known it from the
+beginning, since that meeting in the Forbidden Pasture,
+had known it as one knows things without acknowledgment.
+Her mind had acknowledged only the hundred
+reasons why she should not, could not love him. He
+had repelled her; he had not veiled his meaning, had not
+concealed his antagonism; he had told her plainly, brutally
+almost, that he would not endure her presence, that
+she must avoid his side of the Park.</p>
+<p>Then she thought of Robert,&ndash;&ndash;Robert, so devoted
+and so true. What was she doing: throwing away his
+love that was so unselfishly, so whole-heartedly laid at
+her feet? Had she been mad to flee from him? Yes,
+mad! Pride rose to support the fondness and the admiration
+she had felt for him. And so there ensued a
+struggle between the two fine spirits that dwelt in her,&ndash;&ndash;the
+proud little lady of the Fragonard and the Viking
+with red hair.</p>
+<p>The Viking won. Had not her father said to her,
+in those long talks about her mother, that love is the
+only thing? And back she came, on swiftest wings of
+passion, to Philip; and she was glad. She knew now
+the meaning of her restlessness in the dark days in the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_126' name='page_126'></a>126</span>
+unheeding city; she knew whose voice had called, whose
+arms had held her, though he was unaware. He needed
+her, though he did not know it. And she had come to
+him, without understanding. Somewhere she had read
+a fugitive bit of verse that had meant nothing then, and
+had been forgotten until now, when it suddenly sang
+across the years and the spaces like a call to courage:</p>
+<table summary=''><tr><td>
+<p class='cg'><span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>&ldquo;The wild wind bloweth<br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>The cross of fire.<br />
+The wild heart knoweth<br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>Its own desire.&rdquo;</p>
+</td></tr></table>
+<p>The wild heart knoweth its own desire! She rose to
+her feet with a singing and a resurrection of her heart.
+She scarcely knew that her limbs were stiff and that her
+body ached with cold. Her spirit was aroused. She
+could not go and take Philip as her father had taken the
+one he loved. But there were ways; when had a woman
+ever failed, in love, of finding them? She set herself
+to thinking, planning, scheming, while she walked
+swiftly to and fro before the tents. And presently she
+stopped her pacing, and looked curiously around her.
+There had come a subtle alteration in the aspect of the
+night. A shivering freshness had crept insensibly into
+the air. Leaves and grass and the very air appeared to
+be astir, though the silence and the darkness were as
+before. She looked up eagerly at the sky, and saw that
+the stars were pale. It was not yet the dawn; it was
+only the passing of the night. But the dawn was near.
+The dawn! The dawn!</p>
+<p>She did not wish Seth to find her there. He would
+ask questions, staring at her. She crept stealthily back
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_127' name='page_127'></a>127</span>
+into her tent, and lay there, shaking with cold, to wait
+for the noise that Huntington would make as he sought
+for live embers in the ashes of the fire.</p>
+<hr class='tb' />
+<p>Once out of the mountains and in the foothills, she
+rode far ahead of Seth and Claire, impatient at the slow
+progress necessitated by the difficulties of the pack
+horses. Late in the afternoon she found herself at a
+fork of the road with which she was familiar. A little
+way up the less-used of the two branches there was a
+glade where columbines grew in extraordinary profusion.
+She had gathered armloads of them there, and
+seemed scarcely to have touched the edge of that wild
+garden where nature had been seized with a prodigal
+impulse. And now, rather to be doing something than
+to await in irritation for Seth and Claire, she turned
+her pony&rsquo;s head and rode toward the glade. In five
+minutes she was fording a little stream, beyond which
+the road rose slightly to cross the shoulder of a hill, and
+dipped again to run in a sharp curve along the margin
+of the glade. She took the rise at a gallop, sped down
+the other slope, and at the curve of the road reined up
+her horse with a startled cry. She had come suddenly
+upon a team hitched at the side of the road,&ndash;&ndash;the sorrels
+and the trap in which Philip Haig had driven her to
+Huntington&rsquo;s that terrible evening.</p>
+<p>For a moment she was bereft of thought and feeling.
+At that very instant she had been thinking of him; what
+instant was she not thinking of him? But the utterly
+unexpected encounter&ndash;&ndash;for he was there somewhere, in
+the glade, no doubt&ndash;&ndash;swept away all that courage she
+had found on Avalanche. She felt suddenly helpless,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_128' name='page_128'></a>128</span>
+inert, afraid; and before she could regain her self-possession,
+call back her high resolve, the bushes at the
+roadside parted, and Philip stood before her. He bore
+a great bouquet of columbines, their stems wrapped in
+damp moss and leaves and tied securely with a string.
+At sight of her he halted; and that look of annoyance
+she had seen him wear in the road below his ranch house
+came again into his pale face. For some seconds they
+regarded each other in silence.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;True,&rdquo; he said at length, with a smile that tortured
+her, &ldquo;this is not my side of the Ridge. I am the trespasser,
+even though this is public domain. You have as
+much right here as I&ndash;&ndash;more, since I said the Ridge was
+the dividing line. So&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He stepped quickly to her horse&rsquo;s side, pressed the
+great bunch of pale-blue flowers into her limp but obedient
+hands, lifted his battered hat, turned on his heel,
+walked directly to the trap, leaped into the seat, and
+drove swiftly away. She watched him dully until he
+was out of sight behind a bend in the road, among the
+trees; watched the spot where he had disappeared until
+it became a blur to her aching eyes. Then she looked
+slowly down at the flowers in her hands. Columbines!
+Frail, lovely things, the fairest product, she had thought,
+of nature&rsquo;s laboratory, reflecting the infinite, ineffable
+blue of God&rsquo;s skies, delicate as the flower that had
+bloomed with such wonderful, unexpected beauty in her
+own heart! How she could have treasured them, wept
+over them, hugged them to her breast, if he had given
+them to her in another way. Slowly her fingers relaxed.
+The flowers fell into the dust of the road. She stared
+down, at them a moment; and then, with a cry, leaped
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_129' name='page_129'></a>129</span>
+from her horse, picked them up eagerly, clasped them to
+her breast, buried her face in them, and watered them
+with her tears.</p>
+<hr class='tb' />
+<p>Seth said he guessed he would ride down to the post-office
+before supper; yesterday was mail day; might be
+something. Marion was glad of his departure, and to
+avoid Claire was not difficult, considering what baths,
+and changing of linen, and brushing of hair they required
+after their outing. Refreshed and rested, they
+had scarcely met before the new-lighted fire at twilight
+when Seth returned, stamping vigorously into the room.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;re the lucky one, Marion,&rdquo; he said.</p>
+<p>He fumbled in his pockets, and finally produced a
+letter. She took it, glanced at it, and let it fall into her
+lap. A great stillness seemed to have come upon the
+world. She appeared to be looking at Seth and Claire
+across great distances. She could hear her heart pounding
+in her bosom, like something that hammered for
+freedom. Ages seemed to have passed before she was
+able to rise slowly, to smile, to beg to be excused a
+moment. In her room she stood quite still, mechanically
+tore open the envelope, and read:</p>
+<blockquote>
+<p>Dear Marion: You told me not to write, and I have obeyed
+till now. Don&rsquo;t scold, please! You see I am in Denver. It&rsquo;s
+business. Honest! A mining deal, just for a flyer. It may
+mean millions or nothing. I am here for several days, possibly
+weeks. Won&rsquo;t you <i>please</i> let me run up to see you?
+Don&rsquo;t say no, Marion. I promise to be good. I have an auto
+here, and they tell me the roads are O.&nbsp;K. at this season. I&rsquo;ll
+come away the minute you tell me to. If I can see you only
+for an hour it will make me very happy.</p>
+<p class='ralign'>Yours always,<span class='rindent4'>&nbsp;</span><br />
+<span class='smcap'>Robert</span>.<span class='rindent2'>&nbsp;</span></p>
+</blockquote>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_130' name='page_130'></a>130</span></div>
+<p>She read it twice, while the color slowly returned to
+her cheeks. Then the letter faded from her sight, and
+she saw a face that wore a cruel smile, and heard a voice
+that bade her begone. And suddenly a wave of resentment,
+of anger, swept over her. To have been scorned,
+flouted, humiliated by one to whom&ndash;&ndash;And here was
+a man who wanted her as he wanted nothing else in the
+world, who would toil for her, die for her, who would
+treasure every word and smile she should consent to give
+him, whose one desire was to make her happy. What
+madness had come over her that she&ndash;&ndash;she the Viking&rsquo;s
+daughter&ndash;&ndash;Her eyes were drawn, she knew not how,
+to the columbines that she had carefully, tenderly arranged
+in a bowl on her dressing table. In a passion
+she rushed upon them, snatched them up dripping, bore
+them to the open window, and flung them with all her
+strength out upon the lawn. A moment she stood looking
+at them, her hands clutched upon her heaving breast,
+her whole body quivering with the storm that raged
+within her. Then she whirled around, flung herself
+down at her little writing table, and wrote:</p>
+<blockquote>
+<p>Dear Robert: Yes, come. <span class='smcap'>Marion.</span></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Her hand trembled now so that she could scarcely address
+the envelope, and seal it. But it was done at last.
+She rose, and paused a moment to collect herself. Her
+mouth was dry, her forehead was hot under the hand
+that she pressed upon it. Nervously she poured a glass
+of water from the crystal pitcher that stood on a little
+table by the window, and gulped it down. Her eyes,
+as she did so, fell again upon the bouquet of columbines
+lying forlorn, their tender faces half buried in the dry
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_131' name='page_131'></a>131</span>
+grass. A cry rose to her lips, but she forced it back,
+and with a tightening of her lips, turned and went rapidly
+out into the room where Seth and Claire awaited
+her.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What do you think?&rdquo; she cried, in a voice that
+sounded strangely shrill and unmusical in her ears.
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s from Robert&ndash;&ndash;Robert Hillyer&ndash;&ndash;Papa&rsquo;s good
+friend&ndash;&ndash;and mine. He wants to come up and see me&ndash;&ndash;he&rsquo;s
+in Denver&ndash;&ndash;on business. He wants to come up&ndash;&ndash;he
+says&ndash;&ndash;just for a day or two&ndash;&ndash;do you mind&ndash;&ndash;if
+I ask him?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Of course, dear!&rdquo; cried Claire, with enthusiasm.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Sure!&rdquo; seconded Seth. &ldquo;Tell him he&rsquo;s very welcome.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I knew you&rsquo;d say that!&rdquo; said Marion excitedly.
+&ldquo;So&ndash;&ndash;the letter&ndash;&ndash;it&rsquo;s all ready. Can it go out&ndash;&ndash;the
+stage goes to-morrow, doesn&rsquo;t it?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; replied Huntington. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll take it down in
+the morning&ndash;&ndash;before you&rsquo;re up.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Please!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>She stood a moment, smiling at them. Then her eyes
+wandered aimlessly around the room. She must do
+something quick, or she would go to pieces. She saw
+the piano, and fairly ran to it. Crash! went the chords.
+Rippling and tumbling on one another came the notes
+under her nervous fingers. Out of the jumble of unrelated
+sounds presently emerged a gay and sparkling
+melody; and then a gayer one; and after that a rollicking
+song from one of the latest musical comedies.
+There followed two of the sauciest, most irresponsible
+tunes that ever made a vaudeville success. She played
+with abandon, a kind of reckless fury, sitting erect, with
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_132' name='page_132'></a>132</span>
+her head flung back, an insouciant smile flickering about
+her lips, her lithe body swaying with the music. Then
+suddenly, in the midst of a tune, she stopped, arose,
+faced Seth and Claire with flaming cheeks and eyes
+unnaturally bright.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Great, Marion!&rdquo; cried Seth, slapping his thigh.
+&ldquo;Go on, please!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>But Claire had seen what Huntington had not. She
+turned to him swiftly, with a quick command, as if she
+had suddenly remembered something.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve clean forgot that pie, Seth. Go to the cave and
+bring me some apples. Quick, now!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He sensed something a little queer in that order,
+which would have been very natural and pleasing at any
+other time, but he did not stop to question. Claire
+waited until the door had closed behind him, then ran
+to Marion, with anxiety pictured in her face.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What is it, Marion?&rdquo; she exclaimed.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, Claire, Claire!&rdquo; cried Marion, breaking.
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m so&ndash;&ndash;so&ndash;&ndash;unhappy!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Then she flung herself into Claire&rsquo;s arms, weeping
+without restraint.</p>
+<hr class='toprule' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_133' name='page_133'></a>133</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_XII_SUNNYSIDES' id='CHAPTER_XII_SUNNYSIDES'></a>
+<h2>CHAPTER XII</h2>
+<h3>SUNNYSIDES</h3>
+</div>
+<p>Marion was not alone in her misery; but knowledge
+of this, had it by any chance come to her,
+would not have eased her heart, though it might indeed
+have hardened it a little against more suffering to come.</p>
+<p>Toward bedtime of the eighth day after that encounter
+at the glade of the columbines, Philip Haig sat
+stiffly silent in his armchair, staring into the fire. His
+brow was dark with discontent, his cheeks had paled
+with the slow ebbing of the tide of passion that had
+swept over him. It had begun to rise, though he was
+not then aware of it, or barely aware of it, the day
+Marion had halted him in the road below his ranch
+house; it had reached its flood as he drove away from
+her and left the bouquet of columbines in her limp
+hands.</p>
+<p>Who was this girl? And why had she come to torture
+him? To him she now appeared as the incarnation
+of his tragedy. In her the Past, from which he had
+fled to the far corners of the earth, hiding his trail in
+seas and deserts and in stagnant backwaters of humanity,
+had tracked him down at last. And all the grief
+and bitterness and hatred that he had beaten down, or
+thought he had beaten down, had returned to rend and
+tear him.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_134' name='page_134'></a>134</span></div>
+<p>Two beings he had loved, and to them he had given,
+to each in a different way, all his heart and soul and
+mind: his father and&ndash;&ndash;that other. She had come to
+him at his most susceptible age, when, devoted only to
+art, he knew nothing of the world&ndash;&ndash;a green boy, the
+wise ones had called him. She had come to him with
+all the surprise and wonder of a revelation, a coronation,
+a fulfillment, a golden epiphany. He had attributed to
+her such spiritual perfections as should have gone with
+her beauty and her grace; worshipped her for all that
+she was not and all that he was himself. And she had
+deceived him, exploited him, plundered him,&ndash;&ndash;and
+laughed at him when by chance, one tragic, intolerable
+night, he found her out. And the next morning, as if
+his cup were not already full, he had received a cablegram,
+in his attic studio in Paris, telling him that his
+father had killed himself in a moment of despair over
+financial difficulties. So he had killed his father with
+his excessive demands for money to squander on &rsquo;Tonite.
+To be sure, he did not know&ndash;&ndash;had had no hint from
+home&ndash;&ndash;had never guessed that his father was in
+trouble. Nevertheless he had killed him&ndash;&ndash;rather, she
+had killed him. What a fool he had been! Never
+such another fool since God placed man and woman
+together in one world. Cursing himself and her, and
+in her cursing all her sex, he fled&ndash;&ndash;he knew not where.
+So stunned and dazed he was that he never really came
+to himself, found himself, until one day he awoke in
+Hong Kong.</p>
+<p>That was the beginning of the new life, if such it
+might be called. He became a wanderer, an adventurer,
+seeking always new faces, new places, new experiences,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_135' name='page_135'></a>135</span>
+trying always to forget, hoping always for a blessed
+knock on the head in some mad undertaking, for a thin
+knife in the back in some wild adventure. But in all
+his wanderings the one kind of adventure that he refused,
+the one excitement that he steadfastly shunned,
+was the one that, because of his very aloofness, and of
+something that women ever saw in his eyes, was offered
+to him the most freely, in every land beneath the sun.</p>
+<p>Slim Jim entered, bringing whisky and hot water.
+Haig turned his head to look at him. Jim never
+changed, whatever his environment; he was always the
+Orient, the inscrutable East. And now, slipping in so
+stealthily, he seemed to bring with him an atmosphere,
+an odor, a call, and Haig, still looking at Jim, but
+scarcely seeing him, began to murmur lines that intoxicated
+him:</p>
+<table summary=''><tr><td>
+<p class='cg'>&ldquo;I know not where the white road runs, nor what the blue hills are,<br />
+But man can have the sun for friend, and for his guide a star;<br />
+And there&rsquo;s no end of voyaging when once the voice is heard,<br />
+For the river calls and the road calls, and&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+</td></tr></table>
+<p>He stopped and sat suddenly erect.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Jim!&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;Do you remember the night we
+took old Kwang&rsquo;s girl away from the river rats in Tien-Tsin?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Vellee well,&rdquo; answered the Chinaman.</p>
+<p>His face was expressionless; he concealed the joy that
+this mood of his master aroused in his thin breast. Jim
+did not like the Park, and only the recollection of one
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_136' name='page_136'></a>136</span>
+day when he had stood tied to a capstan on a pirate
+junk, with a dozen fiends around him trying to make
+him tell something he did not know, and Haig had
+suddenly descended upon them like the foreign devil
+he was,&ndash;&ndash;well, Jim took his gods where he found them,
+and from that day Haig had never been able to rid himself
+of this idolater.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Tien-Tsin! Tien-Tsin!&rdquo; Haig repeated, lingering
+covetously on the words. &ldquo;But that was a fight, eh!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No likee!&rdquo; replied Jim.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No likee!&rdquo; cried Haig. &ldquo;Why, you hypocritical
+young ruffian, you! That was one of the happiest
+nights of your life. You&rsquo;re always trying to make people
+think you&rsquo;re asleep, or timid. I can see, right now,
+that long knife of yours slip under my arm, and catch
+the big fellow in the stomach. He just coughed once,
+and crumpled up at my feet. In the nick of time, too,
+Jim, and I let the next one have it. The rest of them
+took to their heels, and you with your long pigsticker
+after them. No likee! Jim, you&rsquo;re a moon-faced old
+liar, and a disgrace to your ten thousand and seven ancestors.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Jim&rsquo;s smile was perfectly noncommittal. He was
+too wily to appear eager. Besides, he did not really
+like fighting, which made all the more trouble for somebody
+when he had to fight. But he was heartily sick of
+this cold and uneventful life in the Park. Better a
+thousand times the foolish adventures, the unnecessary
+battles, the restless wanderings of other days!</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That was a night!&rdquo; said Haig, flinging himself back
+in his chair to gaze dreamily into the flames, while Jim,
+like a blue ghost, stole noiselessly away. And there,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_137' name='page_137'></a>137</span>
+in the glow of the dying fire, bright and alluring visions
+successively took shape: A red-and-yellow temple on
+a hill, to which a thousand steps led up from a lake the
+color of a blue heron&rsquo;s breast; a junk with sails of
+purple creeping out of a morning mist as yellow as saffron;
+an island with a still lagoon in its center, and
+coconut palms alive with screaming parrots of every
+gorgeous hue; a sandy beach where jabbering natives
+dragged the flotsam of a wrecked steamer out of the
+breakers; a village on a high plateau, where a drum
+throbbed incessantly, and naked Indian children peered
+out from behind the huts; a skirmish line in khaki
+crawling up to the brow of a shell-swept hill; a dog-team
+yelping under the long lash of a half-breed Aleut,
+on a frozen river that sparkled in the sun; a sweating
+jungle where two bright spots glowed balefully in the
+gloom.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;God!&rdquo; groaned Haig, as he sat erect at last, and
+reached for the glass, now cold. He tasted it, and set
+it back with a wry face.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Damn Thursby!&rdquo; he muttered. &ldquo;Does he think
+I&rsquo;m going to stay here forever, like a bear in a pit?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He woke the next morning in an ugly humor, having
+slept little, and then only to dream such dreams as
+fed his discontent. He berated Jim because the biscuits
+were cold (which was not Jim&rsquo;s fault), and because
+the coffee was hot (which was according to his
+orders). Trivial annoyances, most of them of his own
+making or imagining, multiplied on all sides, fomenting
+his irritability until, by the time he strode out of the
+cottage, his temper was at white heat. What might
+have happened to the patient, devoted men about the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_138' name='page_138'></a>138</span>
+stable and corrals is not difficult of conjecture, but they
+were saved by Sunnysides. Almost the first object that
+caught Haig&rsquo;s eye was the yellow outlaw gleaming in
+the morning sunlight.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; he exclaimed.</p>
+<p>His inner turmoil of these last few days had banished
+all thought of the stallion of the San Luis. But now,
+his eyes gleamed as he quickened his steps toward the
+stable.</p>
+<p>Farrish and Pete were at work among the stalls; Bill
+stood guard over Sunnysides; and the fourth man,
+Curly, was mending a saddle in the harness-room.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Farrish!&rdquo; Haig called out, striding into the stable.
+&ldquo;We&rsquo;ll tackle the yellow fellow this morning.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Farrish and Pete turned, and looked at him curiously.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;All right!&rdquo; answered Farrish; and then added
+doubtfully: &ldquo;Now?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes. At once.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Farrish, in a manner that showed a certain reluctance,
+put up the currycomb with which he had been grooming
+the sorrels, and started toward the rear door. But Pete
+stood still.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You too, Pete!&rdquo; said Haig, impatiently.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I think you better not&ndash;&ndash;to-day,&rdquo; answered the Indian,
+in his slow way.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Why?&rdquo; snapped Haig.</p>
+<p>Pete had seen the expression on Haig&rsquo;s face, and did
+not like it. But he hesitated to utter what was in his
+mind.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Why?&rdquo; repeated Haig.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I think you better wait,&rdquo; was all that Pete could
+say.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_139' name='page_139'></a>139</span></div>
+<p>&ldquo;Hell!&rdquo; cried Haig. &ldquo;Get your lariat! And be
+quick about it!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He had read Pete&rsquo;s thought; his ill-humor had evidently
+shown itself in his face; but the caution only
+whetted his purpose. Throwing off his coat as he went,
+he passed through the rear door of the barn, and climbed
+into the outlaw&rsquo;s corral, followed by Farrish, Curly,
+and Pete.</p>
+<p>Sunnysides received them with suspicion. His head
+was high, his nostrils were dilated, his tail swished
+slowly, like a tiger&rsquo;s. One forefoot was raised a little,
+resting on the toe, and the muscles of his shoulders
+quivered under the glossy hide. He had fully recovered
+from the effects of his rough treatment on the road, and
+his skin shone with a satin-like luster in the morning
+sun.</p>
+<p>There was a moment&rsquo;s pause, while Haig and the
+others looked at the horse, and he at them.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Now then, Farrish! Pete!&rdquo; commanded Haig.</p>
+<p>And the battle began. Farrish and Pete turn by
+turn flung their lariats at the horse&rsquo;s head and feet, but
+time after time he dodged, and ducked, and capered
+away from the whirling noose, or wriggled out of the
+coil as it tightened around him.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He&rsquo;s greased lightning!&rdquo; ejaculated Bill, from his
+perch on the fence.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He&rsquo;s hell, that&rsquo;s what he is!&rdquo; retorted Curly, from
+a corner of the corral.</p>
+<p>Farrish and Pete went silently on with their work.
+They knew that eventually, dance and squirm as he
+might, the horse would be caught in one or the other of
+the relentless loops. And so it proved. While Sunnysides
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_140' name='page_140'></a>140</span>
+was side-stepping a throw by Farrish, Pete&rsquo;s rope
+slipped snakily over his head, and tightened around the
+arched neck. With an artful lunge toward the Indian,
+and a lowering of his head, the horse struggled to throw
+off the coil. But it held.</p>
+<p>Then followed a mad performance. The horse was
+over all the corral at once, it seemed: rearing, plunging,
+leaping, tossing his head, crashing into the fence with
+such fury that it barely stood up under his onslaughts.
+Bill was knocked off the fence backward on to his head;
+Curly, crowded into his corner, barely avoided a vicious
+kick; and Haig&rsquo;s temper was not improved by the narrow
+escape he had from being crushed against a post.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Bill!&rdquo; he yelled. &ldquo;Get a rope!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The man ran into the barn, returned with a lariat, and
+joined the fray. Plainly chagrined, though unhurt by
+his fall, Bill took long chances to even up the score;
+and under the very hoofs of the infuriated animal, he
+made a throw that brought Sunnysides sprawling on the
+ground, his forefeet caught in Bill&rsquo;s noose. It was the
+work of a few seconds then for Farrish to secure the hind
+feet also; and the horse lay prostrate, panting and half-choked,
+but defiant still.</p>
+<p>Giving him no time to recover, and no more breath
+than he actually required, Haig and Curly forced the
+bit of a bridle into the outlaw&rsquo;s foaming mouth. Then
+the noose on his hind feet was cautiously removed, one
+forefoot was freed, and the horse was allowed to rise.
+The next proceeding appeared to be resented by Sunnysides
+even more than what he had already been subjected
+to. While Farrish and Pete held his head, Haig approached
+him cautiously with a saddle, and dropped it
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_141' name='page_141'></a>141</span>
+on his back. There was a lightning-like motion, and
+the saddle was tossed a dozen feet away, while the two
+men at the horse&rsquo;s head were jerked almost off their
+feet. Again and again the saddle was laid on his back,
+to remain there barely an instant. But at the fifth attempt,
+to the astonishment of all, Sunnysides stood still,
+as if, being an equine Napoleon, he had changed his
+plan of battle in the face of the enemy. Without
+further resistance, he permitted the saddle to be adjusted
+and cinched, permitted the men to lead him out
+of the corral into the larger one adjoining it, and permitted
+Haig to mount him and take the bridle reins in
+his hand.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll be damned!&rdquo; said Curly. &ldquo;You&rsquo;d think&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Shut up!&rdquo; cried Farrish. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s a bluff.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Now then!&rdquo; ordered Haig, pointing to the rope that
+still held one forefoot.</p>
+<p>The rope was removed.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The other!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Pete and Farrish slipped off the lariat that remained
+noosed around the outlaw&rsquo;s neck, and stepped back.</p>
+<p>For some seconds there was no sound, no motion, no
+sign of any design on the part of Sunnysides. Then,
+with the swiftness and surprise of a flash of powder in
+the dark, a shocking thing occurred. Without a preliminary
+movement, either of lunging or bucking or leaping
+to one side, or any of the expected tactics, Sunnysides,
+with incredible suddenness, reared straight up into
+the air, threw himself over, and fell on his back, pinning
+Haig to the ground beneath him.</p>
+<p>Before any of the men could move, the horse rolled
+over sprawling, scrambled to his feet, and charged at
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_142' name='page_142'></a>142</span>
+the fence. There was a crash and the sound of splintering
+wood. The top plank fell, broken in two jagged
+pieces, and the horse&rsquo;s forefeet were over the second
+plank. But before he could leap again, Curley had
+caught the bridle rein, and swung the outlaw&rsquo;s head
+around, holding him there until Bill had leaned over
+the broken fence and roped the forelegs once more.
+After a moment of furious struggle, Sunnysides appeared
+to realize that it was useless; and thus the two
+men held him, with his forefeet still hanging outside
+the fence, while they turned their eyes toward Haig.</p>
+<p>Farrish and the Indian knelt at his side. He lay
+quite still, unconscious, and for a moment they thought
+him dead. Pete put his head down on Haig&rsquo;s breast,
+and listened. Then he rose to his feet.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Whisky!&rdquo; he muttered, and ran toward the stable.</p>
+<p>In two minutes he was back, bearing a flask, which he
+uncorked as he ran. Forcing the mouth of it between
+Haig&rsquo;s lips, he let the scorching liquor trickle down the
+throat until the flask was half emptied. Then he poured
+some of the whisky in the palm of his hand, and rubbed
+it on Haig&rsquo;s face and bared breast and wrists, while
+Farrish, in his turn, ran to the stable and brought a
+lap robe, which he folded and placed under Haig&rsquo;s head.</p>
+<p>They waited helplessly, without speech. At the
+fence, Bill and Curley clung to their ropes. Sunnysides,
+his forefeet still projecting over the plank, and
+the saddle hanging lopsided from his back, had his
+head drawn back so far that he could see the group in
+the middle of the corral. His eyes were bloodshot,
+foam dripped from his mouth, the breath came whistling
+through his half-shut windpipe.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_143' name='page_143'></a>143</span></div>
+<p>But in the cottonwoods the birds sang undisturbed,
+and the pines far up the hill droned their old tune unchanged.
+From the ranch house came the rattle of tin
+pans, and the voice of the cook singing a song of the
+round-up.</p>
+<p>After a long time, Haig stirred. A moan came with
+the first deep breath; his eyes opened, staring up at the
+two faces above him; his lips moved, but at first no
+sound came from them. Pete leaned closer, and listened.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Did&ndash;&ndash;he&ndash;&ndash;get&ndash;&ndash;away?&rdquo; came in a whisper.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No,&rdquo; answered Pete. &ldquo;He caught.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>A smile flickered on Haig&rsquo;s lips, and went out; and at
+the same time a tiny trickle of blood oozed out, and
+ran down through the dust on the white cheek. Pete
+and Farrish looked at each other; and when they turned
+to Haig again, his eyes were closed, and the pallor of
+his face had deepened to a bluish, ashen hue.</p>
+<p>Pete bent quickly to put his ear again to Haig&rsquo;s
+breast.</p>
+<hr class='toprule' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_144' name='page_144'></a>144</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_XIII_HILLYERS_DILEMMA' id='CHAPTER_XIII_HILLYERS_DILEMMA'></a>
+<h2>CHAPTER XIII</h2>
+<h3>HILLYER&rsquo;S DILEMMA</h3>
+</div>
+<p>Hillyer&rsquo;s loyal heart was near to bursting with
+joy. In all the days of his eager courtship
+Marion had never seemed so close to him, so fairly
+within his grasp, as now. She had welcomed him with
+totally unexpected warmth, considering the many times
+she had rejected him, and considering, too, the letter he
+had received from her on her departure. Absence, he
+thought, had advanced his cause for him. A dozen
+times he was on the point of boldly violating the six
+months&rsquo; embargo she had placed upon his pleadings;
+but as often as the fervent words rose to his lips fear
+froze them there, and he was silent.</p>
+<p>As for Marion, she was for the moment absorbed in
+a little plan that was not for Robert&rsquo;s knowledge. She
+was intent upon meeting Philip in Robert&rsquo;s company;
+she wanted to bow to him, and smile, and let him see
+that there was one man at least who prized her, if he
+did not. But the imp of perversity seemed to have
+come to abide permanently in the Park. Though
+Marion, in the first two days of Robert&rsquo;s visit, guided
+him, in the big automobile, everywhere except beyond
+the Ridge and to the glade of the columbines, she had
+never a glimpse of Philip. All this maddened her; and
+if Robert had but spoken, there were times when&ndash;&ndash;But
+Robert did not speak.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_145' name='page_145'></a>145</span></div>
+<p>Near noon of the third day they met Smythe in the
+main valley road a mile or so below the post-office. At
+sight of him bobbing along toward them, almost lost between
+his horse and his sombrero, Marion&rsquo;s first impulse
+was to speed past him without stopping. She was not
+sure she could trust his discretion; for she had told
+Robert nothing about Philip Haig. But she did not
+wish to offend the faithful Smythe; and so, on second
+thought, she hurriedly acquainted Robert with the identity
+of the approaching figure, and warned him to control
+his inevitable mirth.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He is funny,&rdquo; she said, laughing in spite of herself,
+&ldquo;but he can&rsquo;t help that. He&rsquo;s been very good to
+me, in his way.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>In the meantime Smythe&rsquo;s horse was deciding the
+matter on his own account. This was the first automobile
+the pony had ever seen, and he made up his mind
+promptly that he did not like it. He reared and bucked,
+bolting first to one side and the other of the road, and
+refused to consider Smythe&rsquo;s well-worded assurance that
+wise horses were really fond of automobiles, which were
+taking a great deal of work off their shoulders.</p>
+<p>Hillyer stopped the machine, and cut off the power.
+But the pony&rsquo;s suspicions had been thoroughly aroused,
+and the sudden silence seemed to him more portentous
+than even the noise of the motor. Smythe thereupon
+had his work cut out for him, but he would not compromise
+either by dismounting, or by turning and riding
+away. Slowly and patiently he urged the frightened
+pony toward the automobile until, after many setbacks
+and panics, he had brought him near enough for
+conversation.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_146' name='page_146'></a>146</span></div>
+<p>&ldquo;There now, Peanuts!&rdquo; he said to the prancing
+animal. &ldquo;You see you were quite mistaken.&rdquo; Then,
+to Hillyer and Marion: &ldquo;He&rsquo;s a little like myself.
+He doesn&rsquo;t really believe in ghosts, but he&rsquo;s dreadfully
+afraid of them.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t know you were such an accomplished horseman,&rdquo;
+said Marion.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Didn&rsquo;t you? Well, you see&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>At that instant the pony suffered a fresh access of
+alarm. He bounded suddenly sideways, and at the
+same time ducked as if he purposed to stand on his
+head, though what good that would have done only he
+knew. The movement threw Smythe over the pony&rsquo;s
+head, and flat on his back in the dust; and in a twinkling
+Peanuts was dashing up the road, with his tail in
+the air, and the stirrups flapping at his sides.</p>
+<p>For some seconds Smythe lay half-stunned; but before
+Marion and Hillyer, leaping from the automobile,
+were able to reach him, he sat up, and began to straighten
+out his crushed sombrero, eyeing it critically. He was
+covered with dust, and one end of his white collar, torn
+from the button, stuck out above his coat. But his
+aplomb was perfect.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;As I was saying, when interrupted,&rdquo; he began, continuing
+to minister to the sombrero, &ldquo;you see I am an
+accomplished horseman.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Marion and Hillyer broke out in uncontrollable laughter.
+Then Hillyer hastened to assist Smythe to
+rise.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Not hurt, I hope?&rdquo; said Robert.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Objectively, no. Subjectively, yes. Sartorially, a
+wreck.&rdquo;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_147' name='page_147'></a>147</span></div>
+<p>They laughed now without restraint, which seemed
+to please Smythe immensely. He proceeded to tuck
+the end of the torn collar back into its place, where it
+refused to stay; to brush his clothes; to adjust the
+abused sombrero in exactly the long-studied angle on his
+head.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I hope you&rsquo;ll forgive us for laughing,&rdquo; said Marion,
+&ldquo;but&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Say no more about it, please!&rdquo; protested Smythe.
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;d rather make you laugh than weep&ndash;&ndash;assuming that
+anybody would weep for me.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, I&rsquo;d have felt very badly if you&rsquo;d been hurt,&rdquo;
+Marion assured him. &ldquo;And you might have been,
+too.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No, a cropper like that&rsquo;s nothing. Peanuts
+isn&rsquo;t&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo; He paused just a second to look into Marion&rsquo;s
+eyes with an expression that arrested her attention
+sharply. &ldquo;Peanuts isn&rsquo;t Sunnysides.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Sunnysides?&rdquo; she cried out unguardedly.</p>
+<p>Smythe&rsquo;s eyes warned her, as he waited to give her
+time for self-control. He did not know how far Hillyer
+was in her confidence.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Is there news&ndash;&ndash;about&ndash;&ndash;Sunnysides?&rdquo; she faltered,
+struggling desperately with herself.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he answered. Then he continued slowly, in
+as light a manner as possible, the while he held her with
+a concentrated gaze: &ldquo;I&rsquo;d been down the valley as far
+as the mouth of the canyon. Coming back, about two
+miles below where Haig&rsquo;s road joins this, I saw the
+sorrels in a cloud of dust. &lsquo;Hello!&rsquo; I said. &lsquo;Something&rsquo;s
+up, or the sorrels wouldn&rsquo;t be driven like that.&rsquo;
+In a minute or two I made out Bill Craven, one of Haig&rsquo;s
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_148' name='page_148'></a>148</span>
+men, leaning forward in the seat of a road wagon, and
+laying on the whip. &lsquo;If Haig saw that!&rsquo; I thought.
+And so I&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Go on, please!&rdquo; said Marion shrilly.</p>
+<p>But Smythe was purposely deliberate; for he saw
+Hillyer looking at her curiously.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I wasn&rsquo;t going to let anybody abuse his horses if I
+could prevent it. Besides, how did I know but Craven
+was stealing the sorrels? I threw my pony straight
+across the road. Craven reined the sorrels up on their
+hind legs, almost on top of me.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;What in hell?&rsquo; he yelled.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;That&rsquo;s what I want to know,&rsquo; I answered.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;Can&rsquo;t you see I&rsquo;m in a hurry, damn you?&rsquo; he
+shouted angrily.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;That&rsquo;s exactly what I do see,&rsquo; I replied. &lsquo;But
+Haig never whips those horses.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;That&rsquo;s none of your business, and Haig ain&rsquo;t carin&rsquo;
+much now,&rsquo; he fired back at me. &lsquo;Get out o&rsquo; my way, or
+I&rsquo;ll&ndash;&ndash;&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;Now just keep cool!&rsquo; I told him. &lsquo;What&rsquo;s the
+trouble?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Craven snorted, but he told me, as the quickest way
+out of it. Haig had been hurt&ndash;&ndash;trying to ride Sunnysides.
+He&rsquo;s&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Hurt? How?&rdquo; asked Marion; and Smythe was
+relieved to detect a new steadiness in her voice. She
+had passed the danger point.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The horse went over backwards, pinning him to the
+ground, with the saddle horn in his stomach. Craven&rsquo;s
+gone for the doctor.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>She gave him one long, searching look, as if to pluck
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_149' name='page_149'></a>149</span>
+out anything he might have been hiding from her.
+Then she turned swiftly toward the automobile.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Come, Robert! Quick!&rdquo; she commanded.</p>
+<p>She climbed quickly into the machine, followed by
+Hillyer, who was puzzled and alarmed by what he had
+seen in Marion&rsquo;s face.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You too, Mr. Smythe. Hurry!&rdquo; cried Marion.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But my horse?&rdquo; objected Smythe.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He&rsquo;ll run home,&rdquo; answered Marion impatiently.
+&ldquo;Come! We may need you.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Smythe obeyed, and jumped into the tonneau, while
+Robert cranked up and threw in the clutch.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Fast!&rdquo; cried Marion.</p>
+<p>Hillyer glanced at her. She was very white; her
+lips were pressed together, her eyes were fixed on the
+road ahead. The machine lurched under them.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Faster!&rdquo; urged Marion, in another minute.</p>
+<p>The machine, with a kind of shudder, responded to
+Hillyer&rsquo;s hand, and shot out with fresh speed.</p>
+<p>Another brief silence.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The cut-out!&rdquo; she ordered.</p>
+<p>Hillyer bent to the mechanism, and the engine, with
+the muffler off, roared and shrieked as it took the smooth
+white road, with every bar and rivet throbbing under the
+pressure. Only then did Marion turn, and motion to
+Smythe. He leaned forward, clinging to the back of
+her seat.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The doctor?&rdquo; she shouted in his ear.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Craven had started for Tellurium,&rdquo; he yelled back.
+&ldquo;Said he&rsquo;d kill the sorrels. I told him there was a
+doctor at Lake Cobalt&ndash;&ndash;Doctor Norris of Omaha&ndash;&ndash;just
+arrived, with his family. &lsquo;You&rsquo;re not such a fool
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_150' name='page_150'></a>150</span>
+after all,&rsquo; said Craven. (I&rsquo;ll talk with him about that
+later.) &lsquo;Thanks!&rsquo; I said, and pulled my horse out of
+the way. &lsquo;That saves two days.&rsquo; He gave the horses
+the whip again, and I started for Huntington&rsquo;s to tell
+you&ndash;&ndash;Watch out! There&rsquo;s the turn!&rdquo; he shouted in
+Hillyer&rsquo;s ear.</p>
+<p>The wheels tore up the sand as the machine, with
+the power off but still going at more than half-speed under
+its momentum, skidded and scraped around the turn
+into Haig&rsquo;s road.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Now!&rdquo; cried Marion.</p>
+<p>Again the automobile shivered, and plunged, and went
+clamoring like a mad thing up the little valley, the hills
+echoing back its roar. The white road leaped up at
+them, gulping them in. A red steer, astray from some
+pasture, crossed the road far ahead of them, and Marion
+closed her eyes as the machine, with a sickening swerve,
+missed it by inches. The next instant she was pointing
+to the group of buildings squatting under the hill; and
+then she was out of the automobile, and running to Farrish
+at the door of the barn. His face confirmed her
+worst fears.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Where is he?&rdquo; she asked, with a swift look around.</p>
+<p>He pointed toward the larger of the two cottages.
+With Hillyer and Smythe silently following, she ran
+to the cottage, and through the open door. There she
+found herself in a bare, uncarpeted room, furnished
+only with two chairs and a table. On the table lay a
+faded and battered gray hat. For an instant her gaze
+rested on it, and a lump rose in her throat. But she
+resolutely turned away, tightening her lips.</p>
+<p>There were two inner doors, one of which, ajar, revealed
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_151' name='page_151'></a>151</span>
+a glimpse of brightly polished pans hanging on
+the wall. The other door was closed. After an instant
+of hesitation, she walked straight toward it.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Marion!&rdquo; called Hillyer warningly.</p>
+<p>She did not heed him, but turned the knob, softly
+opened the door, and with Robert and Smythe at her
+heels, stepped into a dimly lighted room where the
+aroma of a pine log blazing in the fireplace mingled
+with the pungent odor of ammonia. Smythe was quick
+to observe, over Marion&rsquo;s shoulder, that the room was a
+sort of library and bedroom combined, carpeted in dark
+red, the walls papered in red also, and the windows curtained
+with heavy tapestry silk of the same rich hue.
+There were low bookcases on two sides of the room,
+with pictures above them; several marble statuettes on
+the bookcases; and a little jade Buddha beside a two-foot
+bronze god of terrifying aspect on the mantelpiece.
+In the middle of the apartment stood a solid library
+table, of which the cover was a curious strip of faded
+yellow silk embroidered with a dragon in green, a fragment
+of an old Chinese banner.</p>
+<p>At the left of the door, its head against the wall, was
+a brass bed in which a figure moved restlessly under the
+covers. Near the head of the bed, on the side nearest
+the door, stood the Indian, his stolid, bronzed face
+turned toward Marion as she entered. On the other
+side, holding one of Haig&rsquo;s hands, knelt Slim Jim in his
+blue silks, his yellowish face as expressionless as Pete&rsquo;s,
+except for an alert and questioning look in his eyes.
+There was no sound except the low crackling of the fire,
+and the rasp of heavy breathing, with sharp catches in it
+that spoke eloquently of pain.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_152' name='page_152'></a>152</span></div>
+<p>Marion stepped to Pete&rsquo;s side, and looked down into
+the face of Philip Haig. In the dim light it had the
+pallor of death, with the parted lips and the staring
+eyes of the dead, or the dying. But he breathed; and
+presently her steady, searching, pitying gaze brought his
+eyes to meet her own, and she saw that they were living
+eyes, though clouded and darkened with agony. Almost
+was she on her knees, weeping over him, regardless
+of those in the doorway watching her. And it was not
+their presence so much as the necessity for action that
+restrained and steadied her. She did not even speak his
+name; but after her one long look, she turned away, and
+with every outward sign of calm, removed her gloves
+and hat and coat, and placed them on a chair in a
+corner of the room. Then she beckoned to Pete, who
+followed her, with Smythe and Hillyer, into the bare
+outer room.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Close the door, please!&rdquo; she commanded quietly.</p>
+<p>Smythe closed it.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Where is he hurt?&rdquo; she asked the Indian.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Here.&rdquo; He laid a hand on his stomach.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Was he unconscious?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes. Long time.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;How long has he been like that&ndash;&ndash;awake?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Maybe two hours.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What have you done? What have you given him?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Whisky.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Nothing else?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Water. Ammonia on face and breast.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Was there blood?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes. From mouth.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>She had another struggle then, and the tears started
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_153' name='page_153'></a>153</span>
+in spite of all that she could do. But she conquered
+them.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Much blood?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No. Little, only at first.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Thank you, Pete.&rdquo; Then, turning to Hillyer: &ldquo;I
+want you, Robert, please, to drive home, and tell Mrs.
+Huntington to make up a bundle of the things I shall
+need. Wait! A pencil and a bit of paper, please.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>For a moment he did not move to comply.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What are you going to do, Marion?&rdquo; he asked, his
+voice shaking slightly with the effort of speaking calmly.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m going to nurse him,&rdquo; she replied, meeting his
+look without flinching.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But, Marion! I don&rsquo;t&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Pencil and paper, Robert!&rdquo; she said firmly.</p>
+<p>He tore a leaf from a notebook, and gave it to her
+with his pencil.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Thank you,&rdquo; she said; and seated herself at the
+table to write.</p>
+<p>But there was the dilapidated hat again&ndash;&ndash;so stained
+and soiled, a crumpled, tragic, intimate thing&ndash;&ndash;arresting
+her. How it had filled her dreams! How she
+had laughed at it, fondly, tenderly, as a mother smiles
+at the battered school hat of her boy! Once, she had
+fancied it hanging on the pink wall in her room, a
+trophy, with a ribbon tied around its sweated band.
+And now she wanted to grab it up, and hug it to her
+breast. But she only lifted it gently, and placed it a
+little farther away, on the other side of the table. Then
+she made her notes.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;There, Robert!&rdquo; she said, rising, and handing the
+list to him. &ldquo;Claire will know where to find them.&rdquo;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_154' name='page_154'></a>154</span></div>
+<p>He took the paper mechanically, his eyes fixed on
+Marion.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Will you come down, to the car for a moment?&rdquo; he
+asked.</p>
+<p>She saw the look, and softened under it. But she
+could not answer his questions then.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Later, if you wish it.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>For a moment he hesitated. But he could say no
+more in the presence of Smythe and Pete, though they
+were talking together at the other side of the room. So
+he moved slowly away, but was suddenly stopped by a
+cry from Marion.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh! Oh!&rdquo; she exclaimed. &ldquo;Why didn&rsquo;t somebody&ndash;&ndash;why
+didn&rsquo;t I think of it before? The car?
+Run, Robert! Drive down the road toward the lake.
+You&rsquo;ll overtake the sorrels&ndash;&ndash;or meet them. Bring the
+doctor in the car. Fast, please!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Hillyer, without another word, ran and leaped into
+the automobile, and was soon bringing the echoes out
+of the hills again. He sank low in the seat, and fixed
+his eyes on the road that stretched out blinding white in
+the sunlight.</p>
+<hr class='toprule' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_155' name='page_155'></a>155</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_XIV_COALS_OF_FIRE' id='CHAPTER_XIV_COALS_OF_FIRE'></a>
+<h2>CHAPTER XIV</h2>
+<h3>COALS OF FIRE</h3>
+</div>
+<p>Seth was oiling a pair of boots on the veranda,
+while Claire talked to him about Hillyer, who had
+pleased her immeasurably by his devotion to Marion,
+and even more, of course, by his generous compliments
+to herself. She was delicately calling Seth&rsquo;s attention
+to the pleasure, the profits, and the sanctity of politeness,
+when she caught sight of Hillyer&rsquo;s automobile
+emerging slowly and silently from the trees that concealed
+the road at a little distance from the corrals.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;There he is now!&rdquo; she exclaimed. And then, an
+instant later: &ldquo;Why, he&rsquo;s alone!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>She stood up excitedly, and Seth also, dropping a
+half-oiled boot on the floor.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What the devil?&rdquo; ejaculated Huntington.</p>
+<p>So they stood, waiting and wondering, while Hillyer
+alighted from the automobile, and walked, with exasperating
+slowness&ndash;&ndash;with reluctance, if they had but known
+it&ndash;&ndash;up the graveled path among the flower beds.
+Something in the look of him caused Claire to clutch a
+post of the veranda for support.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Where&rsquo;s Marion?&rdquo; she cried.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;She&rsquo;s all right,&rdquo; replied Hillyer, as he mounted the
+steps. &ldquo;That is, nothing has happened to her. But
+there&rsquo;s been an accident.&rdquo; He hesitated. &ldquo;Who is
+this Philip Haig?&rdquo;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_156' name='page_156'></a>156</span></div>
+<p>&ldquo;Haig? What about Haig?&rdquo; demanded Huntington.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He&rsquo;s been hurt. A horse threw him.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Sunnysides?&rdquo; cried Huntington excitedly.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I believe so.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He will, will he?&rdquo; chuckled Huntington. &ldquo;That
+serves&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But Marion?&rdquo; interrupted Claire. &ldquo;What about
+Marion?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Hillyer looked doubtfully from one to the other, in
+much embarrassment. What did they know? Or were
+they as ignorant as he of the situation that had been
+revealed to him as if by the flash of a thunderbolt?
+And how much should he disclose to them, in loyalty to
+Marion? But in his pocket was Marion&rsquo;s list.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;She&rsquo;s there&ndash;&ndash;with him,&rdquo; he said at length.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;There? Where?&rdquo; thundered Huntington.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;At his house.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>They stood stock-still, staring at him.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;She wishes Mrs. Huntington to make up a bundle
+of these things for me to take to her.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He handed the list to Claire, who took it, and held it
+at arm&rsquo;s length, regarding it curiously, as if she had
+not understood.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You mean that&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo; she began, and stopped.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;She says she&rsquo;s going to nurse him.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;She&rsquo;s going to&ndash;&ndash;what?&rdquo; Claire&rsquo;s voice rose almost
+to a shriek.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Nurse him.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And you&rsquo;ve left her there with that&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Huntington was going to say &ldquo;ruffian,&rdquo; but was
+checked by a sudden recollection, as well as by the look
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_157' name='page_157'></a>157</span>
+that Hillyer flashed at him. For a moment the two
+men faced each other, the one with anger boiling up
+inside of him, the other struggling to put down the resentment
+aroused by Huntington&rsquo;s belligerent tone.
+Claire crushed the slip of paper in her hand, and
+watched them fearfully.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I judge from your manner,&rdquo; said Hillyer at length,
+when he had controlled himself, &ldquo;that you dislike her
+being there as much as I do. But as I am all in the
+dark, I&rsquo;ll be greatly obliged to you if you will answer
+my question. Who is Philip Haig?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That&rsquo;s what I&rsquo;d like to know!&rdquo; blurted out Huntington.</p>
+<p>Hillyer made a gesture of impatience.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But he&rsquo;s your neighbor,&rdquo; he said curtly.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And that&rsquo;s about all I know of him,&rdquo; Huntington
+replied, &ldquo;except that we ought to have run him out of
+the Park long ago, and will do it yet, so help me
+God!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Why?&rdquo; asked Hillyer shortly.</p>
+<p>Then, as clearly as he could in his rage, Seth gave
+Hillyer a brief account of the events of the four years
+that Haig had been in the Park,&ndash;&ndash;an account that satisfied
+Hillyer as little as it had satisfied Marion. He
+had meant, in the beginning, to ask how Marion had
+come to know Haig, and if they had been much together;
+but he now surmised that Huntington and his wife were
+as ignorant as himself of that acquaintanceship, or
+friendship, or whatever it was that could have made
+possible the astounding emotions he had seen on Marion&rsquo;s
+face. Hillyer&rsquo;s situation was difficult. If Marion
+had a secret he must guard it for her, whatever it
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_158' name='page_158'></a>158</span>
+might cost him. Yet now he needed help, and no one
+could help him but Huntington and his wife. And at
+the first words on the subject, Huntington had (more in
+the tone of his speech than the matter) shown him that
+little help could be expected in that quarter. Last of
+all, and not to be forgotten, he was the Huntingtons&rsquo;
+guest.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;How bad&rsquo;s he hurt?&rdquo; asked Huntington.</p>
+<p>Hillyer shook his head dubiously.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s impossible to say just yet. Doctor Norris fears
+that the pancreas is ruptured. In that case&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo; He
+shrugged his shoulders. &ldquo;At any rate, the pancreas
+and the stomach are temporarily paralyzed by the blow
+of the saddle horn&ndash;&ndash;the horse seems to have gone over
+backward on him. If he gets over the shock there&rsquo;s
+still the danger of inflammation. There ought to be
+ice packs. Cold water will have to do. They must be
+changed every minute. Doctor Norris told me&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo; He
+paused to look intently at Claire&ndash;&ndash;&ldquo;Doctor Norris told
+me that nothing but the most careful nursing can save
+him.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Let the Chinaman do it!&rdquo; Huntington blurted out.</p>
+<p>Hillyer shook his head.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No. Norris says he will not trust him. You see,
+Haig&rsquo;s pleading for water must be denied. He can
+command the Chinaman, and that&ndash;&ndash;Besides, all this
+is not to the point. Marion has made up her mind, and
+I assure you&ndash;&ndash;Please get the things she asks for,
+Mrs. Huntington.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You don&rsquo;t mean you&rsquo;re going to take them!&rdquo; shouted
+Huntington.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Certainly. She&rsquo;s asked for them.&rdquo;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_159' name='page_159'></a>159</span></div>
+<p>&ldquo;And you&rsquo;re going to let her stay there&ndash;&ndash;with
+him?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Hillyer smiled. Having abandoned all hope of assistance
+from Huntington, he was thinking of other
+measures, and was scarcely as attentive as he might have
+been to the increasing truculence of his host.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What would you do?&rdquo; he asked quietly.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;d bring her away!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Would you care to go and try it?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>This was a keener thrust than Hillyer had any intention
+of delivering, provoked though he was by Huntington&rsquo;s
+behavior; for Seth had not included in his narrative
+any reference to the affair at the post-office, or to
+Haig&rsquo;s visit to his house. Huntington&rsquo;s face became
+purple; and if he had been apoplectic in disposition he
+would surely have suffered a seizure in that moment of
+choking rage.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll go there right enough!&rdquo; he bellowed. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll go,
+when I get ready. I&rsquo;ll go when he&rsquo;s able to stand up
+and take what&rsquo;s coming to him. As for her&ndash;&ndash;you can
+take her things, and her trunks too, while you&rsquo;re about
+it.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Hillyer gazed at him dumbfounded for just a breath
+of time. Then his own face flamed.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Quite right, Mr. Huntington!&rdquo; he said, taking a
+step toward him. &ldquo;I haven&rsquo;t seen much of Haig, but
+from what I&rsquo;ve seen of you, I think his house can be no
+worse place for Miss Gaylord than yours. What&rsquo;s more,
+you&rsquo;re an&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo; He caught himself, whirled on his heel,
+and addressed Claire. &ldquo;May I ask you, please, to pack
+Marion&rsquo;s trunks. I&rsquo;ll attend to mine.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Claire had stood quite silent, with her blue eyes opening
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_160' name='page_160'></a>160</span>
+wider and wider, for the moment helpless, but trusting
+more to Hillyer&rsquo;s resources of diplomacy than to her
+husband&rsquo;s self-control. Now her face crimsoned with
+mortification, and she stood up with all the inches of her
+five foot two.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;ll do no such thing!&rdquo; she cried, and one little
+heel came down on the floor with a jolt. &ldquo;The idea!
+The very idea! Oh!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>For a moment she stood poised, like a butterfly in a
+rage, if one can imagine it; then she tripped straight to
+Huntington, clasped the lapels of his coat, and drew
+herself up on tiptoes, trying to meet his eyes.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Aren&rsquo;t you ashamed of yourself?&rdquo; she cried.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No, I&rsquo;m not!&rdquo; he growled.</p>
+<p>But he was, or at least was dimly conscious of his
+egregious misbehavior; for he looked neither at Hillyer
+nor his wife, and was red now where he had been
+purple.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But you are, though!&rdquo; She turned her face toward
+Hillyer, without loosing her hold on Seth&rsquo;s coat.
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you mind him, Mr. Hillyer! He&rsquo;s just a big
+bear. And Haig has been a trial to us. Marion&rsquo;s my
+guest, and&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo; She looked up into Seth&rsquo;s beard
+again&ndash;&ndash;&ldquo;If you think you&rsquo;re going to send her away
+like this&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>She stopped short, as on a sudden thought, and then,
+with a giggle, buried her face in his flannel shirt. And
+the next thing, as unexpected as her blue-eyed rage, she
+dropped her hands from his coat, stooped to catch up the
+hem of her skirt between thumb and forefinger of each
+hand, and began to pirouette around the room.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, ho!&rdquo; she exclaimed, laughing triumphantly,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_161' name='page_161'></a>161</span>
+her little body swaying as she tripped, with low curtsies
+to Seth and Hillyer, who for the moment forget their
+animosity in wonder at this feminine diversion.
+&ldquo;Beautiful! Gorgeous! Oh, splendid!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>She stopped, at length, in front of Seth, dropped to
+one knee, bowed till her golden head almost touched the
+floor, and rose again to stand with her hands on
+her hips, her arms akimbo, her face flushed with excitement.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Seth Huntington!&rdquo; she cried ecstatically. &ldquo;Do
+you know what we&rsquo;re going to do?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He merely stared.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;We&rsquo;re going to heap coals of fire on his head.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What do you mean?&rdquo; demanded Huntington uneasily.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Marion&rsquo;s going to nurse Haig. There&rsquo;s no way
+any of us can stop her. She&rsquo;s our cousin and guest, and
+we&rsquo;ve got to show it. If they want to talk, we&rsquo;ll give
+them something to talk about. <i>I&rsquo;ll go and nurse Haig
+too!</i>&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Dead silence.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; cried Hillyer.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;ll not!&rdquo; roared Huntington.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Watch me!&rdquo; retorted Claire, turning swiftly, and
+running toward her bedroom. But halfway there she
+stopped. &ldquo;No, don&rsquo;t watch me! You just go and look
+after the cattle. Leave this Mr. Haig to us, and he&rsquo;ll
+be the best friend you ever had before Marion and I get
+through with him.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Hillyer, recovering from his amazement, stepped smiling
+to where she stood, and reached both his hands to
+her.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_162' name='page_162'></a>162</span></div>
+<p>&ldquo;Mrs. Huntington,&rdquo; he said warmly. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re a
+peach!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>She laughed gaily, and put both her tiny hands in
+his, for just an instant.</p>
+<p>This was the last straw. Seth snorted like a baited
+animal, whirled around, bolted from the house, and ran
+blindly to the barn.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Saddle Nigger!&rdquo; he yelled to Williams, who obeyed
+with stumbling alacrity, while Huntington strode up
+and down before the door.</p>
+<p>From the window of the ranch house Claire and
+Hillyer, silent, watched him until he had flung himself
+into the saddle, dug the spurs into the flanks of his
+favorite and now astonished black horse, and disappeared
+up the hill.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Where&rsquo;s he going?&rdquo; asked Hillyer, suspicious that
+Huntington meant mischief.</p>
+<p>Claire drew back from the window with a sigh of relief.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He&rsquo;s going to&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo; She laughed softly, but with
+just a little tremor in her voice&ndash;&ndash;&ldquo;He&rsquo;s going to&ndash;&ndash;look
+after the cattle.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Hillyer saw that her blue eyes were moist.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He&rsquo;s the best man in the world, and&ndash;&ndash;I love him,&rdquo;
+she said, looking at Hillyer with a soft appeal. &ldquo;You
+believe that, don&rsquo;t you?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Indeed I do, Mrs. Huntington,&rdquo; Hillyer answered
+heartily.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Then you must forgive him; he has such a temper!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m sorry we had any misunderstanding,&rdquo; Hillyer
+was able to say sincerely. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll talk it over with him&ndash;&ndash;later.&rdquo;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_163' name='page_163'></a>163</span></div>
+<p>&ldquo;Please!&rdquo; urged Claire.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But I must go now. Those things for Marion,
+please.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll have them ready in a minute. And I&rsquo;ve only
+to slip on another dress, and&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But you don&rsquo;t mean&ndash;&ndash;You&rsquo;re not going?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Of course I am!&rdquo; she answered, with a look of surprise.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I think you&rsquo;d better not,&rdquo; he said quietly.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But why?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Now think a minute, Mrs. Huntington. Your husband
+objects to your going. It will not only anger him
+more, but it will hurt him. Isn&rsquo;t that so?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she admitted reluctantly.</p>
+<p>Her coals of fire had kindled her imagination. Such
+a romantic idea! There would be such talk, such a sensation!</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It would be another matter if there were anything
+you could do,&rdquo; Hillyer went on. &ldquo;But there isn&rsquo;t.
+And I know very well that Marion would send you back
+if you did go.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>That was true enough, on reflection; but it was a disappointment!</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But Marion! There alone!&rdquo; she said, making her
+last stand.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I shall be there,&rdquo; replied Hillyer. &ldquo;The Chinaman&rsquo;s
+going to fix a bed for me. I&rsquo;ll look after Marion.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>So she yielded, and was glad of it when she had time
+to think it over. She gave Hillyer the bundle for Marion,
+and watched him go, waving a good-by from the
+veranda. Then she hastened to the kitchen to make
+apple dumplings for supper. If there was one thing
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_164' name='page_164'></a>164</span>
+that could always be counted on to soothe Seth it was
+apple dumplings.</p>
+<hr class='tb' />
+<p>Meanwhile it was indeed a black day for Huntington.
+Fate was against him. Tearing himself, mangled in
+spirit, out of one trap, he rode blindly into another.
+Far up in the hills, riding savagely, he knew not where,
+nor cared, vowing dark vengeance on Haig, his attention
+was drawn at last by the weird and ominous bellowing
+of cattle. Following the sound, he came to a
+little hollow where a hundred or more cattle were gathered,
+like the rapt spectators in an amphitheater, around
+two bulls engaged in mortal combat. One, as Seth
+quickly saw, was a red Hereford, his best thoroughbred;
+the other, a black Angus, and even more valuable, was
+Haig&rsquo;s. The red bull, bleeding from many wounds, was
+plainly being worsted in the encounter. With a roar
+of rage, Huntington drew his revolver, urged his unwilling
+horse down into the arena where the turf was
+torn up for many yards around the combatants, circled
+about until he could take sure aim, and emptied every
+chamber of the gun into the head and neck of the Angus.
+The bull sank to the ground, head first, in a lumbering
+mass that kicked once or twice, shivered, and lay still.</p>
+<p>But the Hereford, red-eyed with blood and fury,
+turned on Huntington, and drove him, barely escaping
+being gored, into the thick timber. In a place of safety
+Huntington jerked his horse around, and sat limp in
+the saddle, staring down at the scene of his final humiliation.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That&rsquo;s it! That&rsquo;s it!&rdquo; he bellowed. &ldquo;Even my
+own bull turns on me. Haw! Haw!&rdquo; His hollow,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_165' name='page_165'></a>165</span>
+hoarse, and unmirthful laughter echoed among the pines.
+&ldquo;Great joke! Haig will like that. And the rest of
+them. Hell!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>But Haig! And the Angus! Well, there&rsquo;d got to
+be a show-down anyhow pretty soon. He dismounted,
+and seated himself on a fallen tree trunk, and gave
+himself up to reflections upon which it is only the most
+obvious kindness and discretion to draw the curtain.</p>
+<hr class='toprule' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_166' name='page_166'></a>166</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_XV_THE_VALLEY_OF_THE_SHADOW' id='CHAPTER_XV_THE_VALLEY_OF_THE_SHADOW'></a>
+<h2>CHAPTER XV</h2>
+<h3>THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW</h3>
+</div>
+<p>The days dragged by under the burdens of doubt
+and torture, and out of the Valley of the Shadow
+came Philip Haig, with some new and disquieting
+thoughts to occupy him in his convalescence. Toiling
+up out of the darkness, where foul fiends seemed to
+have torn and mangled his body with their fiery claws,
+his fingers were still warm from the pressure of a soft,
+guiding hand; there was a haunting memory of kisses
+on his forehead, of a cheek laid close to his; and he
+could still hear the gentle but commanding voice that
+told him to be patient&ndash;&ndash;to be still&ndash;&ndash;that life was
+coming back to him.</p>
+<p>Life! As if he cared for life! Had he not spent
+years on years in seeking what just now had been in his
+very grasp, only to be withdrawn by two caressing
+hands? And Doctor Morris, on the day of his final
+visit, had left him no possibility of misunderstanding.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Miss Gaylord has saved your life,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I
+could do little. It was her nursing that pulled you
+through.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He wanted much to tell the doctor just how much
+value he placed on that life. But to what purpose?
+Doctors lived in their own peculiar atmosphere of conceit
+and self-deception, crowing like a hen over a new-laid
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_167' name='page_167'></a>167</span>
+egg whenever they chanced to bring back a soul to
+the miseries from which it had struggled to escape. It
+would be a waste of words, for Norris would never understand.
+Would Marion? Cold terror seized him at
+the thought of the coming, the inevitable scene with her.
+She, he realized vaguely, was different from&ndash;&ndash;from all
+the others he had ever seen and looked down upon
+from his safe heights of cynical hatred and contempt.
+She was not selfish or mercenary&ndash;&ndash;not consciously
+selfish or mercenary. And she was not vile. But she
+was all the more dangerous because her heart was pure.
+She was too high-bred, too fine, to demand payment of
+his debt; but her very reticence and delicacy, he foresaw,
+would make his repudiation of that debt&ndash;&ndash;that
+factitious debt&ndash;&ndash;more difficult. Twice or thrice, as
+he struggled with his problem, he was conscious of a
+curious, disturbing thrill. She loved him. There had
+been a time, long, long ago&ndash;&ndash;But now he was a man;
+he had learned his lesson; and he knew that the chains
+would be no less hateful because they were made of
+gold.</p>
+<p>There came a day when he sat, wrapped in blankets,
+in an armchair near the window, where he could see the
+grass waving in the sunlight on the slope above the
+cottage, and the pines bending in the breeze high up the
+hill. Marion, near him, her hands folded in her lap,
+looked sometimes out of the window but more often at
+him, though his eyes avoided hers. She was scarcely
+less pale than he, and very tired and worn. Despite
+Hillyer&rsquo;s protestations she had slept little in the ten
+days of Philip&rsquo;s peril; for she would trust no one but
+herself to do with iron determination exactly what the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_168' name='page_168'></a>168</span>
+doctor had commanded. Philip&rsquo;s pitiable pleading for
+water in his semi-delirium her love alone was strong
+enough to resist. But this was the last day of her watch
+over him. In an hour she must go. She had frankly
+asked Robert to let her have this last afternoon alone
+with Philip; and had promised him that he should then
+have the answer to every question that he had loyally
+put aside for her.</p>
+<p>They sat a long time silent, while the shadow of the
+cottage lengthened on the grass.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It wasn&rsquo;t worth it, Miss Gaylord,&rdquo; Haig said at
+length.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&ndash;&ndash;I don&rsquo;t understand,&rdquo; she faltered.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Doctor Norris tells me that you saved my life.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m glad if he thinks I helped a little,&rdquo; she answered,
+trying to smile.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He left me no room for doubt. Very plain-spoken
+is Doctor Norris.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m afraid he exaggerated,&rdquo; she protested gently.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But Jim&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Jim&rsquo;s all right in his way, but he couldn&rsquo;t have
+done it.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I am paid,&rdquo; she said simply.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Paid?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes. Knowing that you live.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No. You think you mean that, perhaps, but you
+don&rsquo;t.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t mean what?&rdquo; she asked in surprise.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You don&rsquo;t mean that you are paid.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>She turned away, and looked out the window, her
+heart throbbing.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_169' name='page_169'></a>169</span></div>
+<p>&ldquo;I must tell you something, Miss Gaylord,&rdquo; he went
+on resolutely. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not grateful.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Not grateful?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I mean, I&rsquo;m not glad to owe my life to you.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But I haven&rsquo;t asked&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No. Not directly.&rdquo; He hesitated a moment.
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s like this: If a man had saved my life, I could pay
+him. There would be a clasp of the hand, and a look
+from man to man. Or I should save his life in turn, or
+do him some service. Or&ndash;&ndash;there are other ways.
+There&rsquo;s Pete&rsquo;s way and Jim&rsquo;s way&ndash;&ndash;of paying. But I
+can&rsquo;t pay you in any of the ways I could pay a man.
+And I can&rsquo;t pay in the only way a woman knows.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t,&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t, please!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>She was right, he thought. He was doing it brutally.
+He must try another method. There followed a long
+silence, while he tried to frame a speech that would tell
+her, and would not hurt too much; for now, strangely,
+he found himself reluctant to give her pain, even to put
+himself in a false light before her&ndash;&ndash;to be misunderstood.
+At last he leaned toward her&ndash;&ndash;forced her to
+meet his gaze.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Could you&ndash;&ndash;if you had ever loved one man with
+all your heart and soul&ndash;&ndash;held him as dear to you
+as life&ndash;&ndash;dearer than life itself&ndash;&ndash;without whom
+life would be impossible&ndash;&ndash;could you ever love
+another?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>For all her anguish she was able to detect the trap
+that he had set for her. &ldquo;Yes&rdquo; would cheapen the
+quality and deny the finality of her love for him; &ldquo;no&rdquo;
+would be an acceptance of the doom and tragedy she saw
+shadowing his eyes. She did not answer.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_170' name='page_170'></a>170</span></div>
+<p>&ldquo;You see, you dare not answer that,&rdquo; he went on.
+&ldquo;I suppose I ought to tell you the story. But I won&rsquo;t.
+It&rsquo;s long, and not a pretty story at all. But this much
+I will tell you. I gave one woman all I had to give.
+She threw it away&ndash;&ndash;and laughed at me. I have nothing more.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>She took it very bravely and very quietly, as it seemed
+to him. He felt a certain admiration. There was
+good blood in the girl. Her father must have been
+worth knowing. His thoughts would have taken a different
+direction&ndash;&ndash;would have been nothing so complacent
+if he had known just what she was thinking.
+His speech, terrifying at first, had actually renewed a
+hope that had fallen very low. She did not believe a
+word of what he had said, that is, of his having nothing
+more to give. Whenever did woman believe any such
+thing as that, no matter how solemnly, on what stoutest
+oaths, with what tragic air a man has told it to her?
+Love is not love that doubts its own compelling power.
+And Marion, gazing fondly at Philip now, felt somewhat
+as a mother feels who smilingly indulges some
+childhood tragedy of her boy, knowing that it will pass
+as the cloud upon an April sky. If this was the worst
+he had to say to her&ndash;&ndash;</p>
+<p>But it was not the worst. Philip felt an intense relief
+to see her accept the situation with such unexpected
+calm. He admired her consciously now,&ndash;&ndash;for her intelligence.
+He began to think that he might almost take
+her hand, and thank her, as he would thank a man for
+doing him a service, however mistakenly. But something
+held him back from that folly. He wondered a
+little at her silence, and it was by way of breaking it
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_171' name='page_171'></a>171</span>
+before it should become embarrassing that he searched
+for something safe and commonplace to say to her.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It was my own fault, you know, that I was injured.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Why your own fault?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I was in a bad humor. I lost my self-control. And
+I got what I deserved.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He thought she would ask him why he had been in a
+bad humor, and he purposed to say that he was raging
+in discontent, longing for the white road again. It
+would be safe enough now, no doubt, to tell her in this
+fashion that if ever she should come to the Park again
+she would not find him there. But his words had suggested
+something entirely different to her mind.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What are you going to do with him?&rdquo; she asked, in
+sudden vague anxiety.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Do with him?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes&ndash;&ndash;Sunnysides? I wish you&rsquo;d please sell him.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Sell him? Sell Sunnysides?&rdquo; His voice betrayed
+his astonishment.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But I haven&rsquo;t ridden him yet.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You don&rsquo;t mean&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo; Her voice failed.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That I&rsquo;m going to ride him? Just as soon as I get
+well.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>For some seconds she sat dazed. It was so utterly unexpected.
+The thought had not once occurred to her
+that he would try again what had all but cost him his
+life. It is at some such point as this that man&rsquo;s and
+woman&rsquo;s natures make one of their many departures
+from the parallel. To Haig the taming of Sunnysides
+now meant everything; to Marion it seemed a useless, a
+worse than useless risk, a wicked waste. What had been
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_172' name='page_172'></a>172</span>
+the worth, then, of all her labor of love, if it was to be
+thrown away? He would be killed the next time.
+And in the horror with which she foresaw that tragic
+end of all that she had planned and builded, her courage
+and confidence fell away from her, and left her weak
+and helpless. She uttered a thin, little cry, and slipped
+to the floor on her knees, clasping his emaciated hand
+that lay on an arm of the chair.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No! No!&rdquo; she cried frantically. &ldquo;Please,
+Philip! Please promise me you won&rsquo;t do that!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Then she broke down completely, her head drooped,
+and she sank down in a heap, with her face between her
+hands.</p>
+<p>Haig was stunned. He had blundered again. Fool,
+not to have let her go away from him in silence, in calm!
+He looked down at that crumpled figure, at the mass
+of tawny hair, with the red-gold lights in it, the enticing
+soft whiteness of her neck where the hair curved cleanly
+upward, the graceful slope of the shoulders that now
+shook with sobs. And something stirred in him, something
+deep, too deep to be reached and overpowered.
+It grew until it sang through all his being, a feeling
+such as he had never known before. She was fine and
+beautiful; she was a thing to be desired; and he had
+only to reach out, and take her for his own. Before he
+was aware of it, he had stretched out his hand until it
+almost touched her hair. Then from across the years
+a mocking voice rang out shrill and cold and cruel:
+&ldquo;Now don&rsquo;t you go mussing up my apartment, Pipo!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He drew back his hand with a jerk, and clutched the
+chair; and sat bolt upright, while every nerve rang
+with the alarm.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_173' name='page_173'></a>173</span></div>
+<p>Minutes passed. The sobs gradually subsided; the
+figure on the floor slowly ceased its convulsive movements;
+and again a deep silence enveloped the room.
+Out on the brown-green slope the sun&rsquo;s rays were
+slanting low, the shadow of the cottage climbed the
+hill.</p>
+<p>Well, Haig thought, he had bungled the business
+after all. That was what came of trying to do it nicely,
+with delicacy. Hard words were the kindest in the
+end, because the quickest understood.</p>
+<p>She had not yet lifted her head when he turned to
+look at her again; and that made it easier.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t leave the ranch&ndash;&ndash;just now,&rdquo; he said slowly.
+&ldquo;If I could, I would. So I think&ndash;&ndash;I think you ought
+to go back home&ndash;&ndash;to New York, I mean&ndash;&ndash;at once.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>She did not answer. And it was only after another
+silence that she looked up at him, and he saw that her
+eyes were still filled with tears, and there was a curious
+little puckering of her chin.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You said you wished you could repay me,&rdquo; she said.
+&ldquo;Do you?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he answered, wondering. &ldquo;But I told
+you&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But there is a way!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Promise me you will not ride Sunnysides.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He shook his head.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No. I can&rsquo;t promise that.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Why?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That&rsquo;s one of the things you couldn&rsquo;t possibly understand.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But it&rsquo;s such a little thing!&rdquo;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_174' name='page_174'></a>174</span></div>
+<p>&ldquo;If I gave you that, I should indeed have nothing
+left. You would have all.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>It was true that she could not in the least understand.
+But she knew she could not move him.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Then promise me,&rdquo; she pleaded, &ldquo;that you&rsquo;ll not
+try it until you are quite, quite well!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh. I promise you that!&rdquo; he replied, with a grim
+smile.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Thank you&ndash;&ndash;Philip!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Presently she arose, and looked down at him with a
+long, lingering gaze that seemed to be searching for
+something in his features.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;ll take just what Jim gives you?&rdquo; she asked
+anxiously.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Of course.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And not try to&ndash;&ndash;boss him about the medicines and
+the food?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I promise to obey orders.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And you&rsquo;ll be very careful?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>She moved slowly toward the door. But halfway
+there she stopped, and turned to look at him again.
+How could she leave him now? She couldn&rsquo;t! She
+couldn&rsquo;t! He was gazing away from her, out through
+the window. Wasn&rsquo;t he going to say a word to her&ndash;&ndash;of
+farewell? She came back unsteadily, and stood behind
+his chair, her hands stretched out above his head.
+Then suddenly, impulsively, not touching him with
+her hands, she leaned down, and kissed his forehead.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Good-by!&rdquo; she said, her voice breaking.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Good-by!&rdquo; he answered gently, but without turning
+his head.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_175' name='page_175'></a>175</span></div>
+<p>He heard the door opened and closed, very softly.
+After that he sat a long time in silence. Well, she was
+gone! It had been a trying afternoon, and he was glad
+to have it ended. And yet the room seemed to be
+extraordinarily empty, as it had never been before his
+illness. The stillness rather oppressed him. Damn it
+all, sickness did strange things to a man! Took a lot
+out of him! He straightened himself in his chair.</p>
+<p>Presently Jim entered.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, Jim!&rdquo; said Haig. &ldquo;Here we are again, eh?
+I&rsquo;m hungry.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You eat, she come back,&rdquo; Jim answered shrewdly.</p>
+<p>Haig looked at him sharply, but the Chinaman&rsquo;s face
+was like a paper mask.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Shut up!&rdquo; he cried savagely.</p>
+<hr class='toprule' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_176' name='page_176'></a>176</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_XVI_QUESTIONS_AND_ANSWERS' id='CHAPTER_XVI_QUESTIONS_AND_ANSWERS'></a>
+<h2>CHAPTER XVI</h2>
+<h3>QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS</h3>
+</div>
+<p>Hillyer was waiting for her at the barn when
+she came at last, with a smile that eased his
+anxiety, if only in an inconsiderable degree. But he
+saw, as he took her handbag and bundle, and placed
+them in the automobile, that she had been crying. This
+gladdened while it angered him, and he was lost among
+the many interpretations that might be put upon those
+signs of distress. Had she come to the end of her infatuation?
+Had she been subjected to insults as the reward
+of her service? He dared not ask her such questions&ndash;&ndash;not
+yet; but he was resolved (and there were
+material reasons, too, for that decision) to have his own
+case settled, one way or another, at once.</p>
+<p>Neither of them spoke more than a conventional
+word or two until Hillyer, after full speed down Haig&rsquo;s
+road to the junction, slowed up on the main highway
+along the Brightwater. It was the serenest of summer
+evenings, very still and fragrant, with a touch of
+autumn in the air. The eastern sky was filled with
+pale golds and pinks, and the foothills were warm with
+purples. Marion&rsquo;s face was averted from Hillyer, and
+her eyes were fixed, not on the soft alternations of color
+in the sky, but on Thunder Mountain, where the only
+clouds to be seen in all the expanse of blue lay low upon
+its uncompromising head.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_177' name='page_177'></a>177</span></div>
+<p>&ldquo;Marion!&rdquo; said Hillyer, at length.</p>
+<p>She did not miss the note in his voice that exposed his
+intention, but long preparation for this moment enabled
+her to face him calmly.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, I know, Robert,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;You have much
+to say to me.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m going to-morrow,&rdquo; he began abruptly. &ldquo;Will
+you go with me?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;To-morrow? Go with you?&rdquo; she repeated, with a
+little start of surprise.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes. Will you go with me?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But I don&rsquo;t understand, Robert.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I must be in Denver the day after to-morrow.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&ndash;&ndash;I didn&rsquo;t know your time was so short. I&rsquo;m
+afraid&ndash;&ndash;I&rsquo;ve spoiled your visit.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That doesn&rsquo;t matter, Marion, if you&rsquo;ll go back with
+me.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But I can&rsquo;t&ndash;&ndash;just yet.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Why not?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m not ready. I haven&rsquo;t half finished my visit
+with Claire.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>She was, after all, somewhat confused, for she had
+not expected him to approach the subject in just this
+way.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But the summer is almost gone. It&rsquo;s near the end
+of August,&rdquo; persisted Hillyer.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;There&rsquo;s another month of good weather. And September,
+Claire says, is the most beautiful of all.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That may be, unless Huntington&rsquo;s right. He told
+me only yesterday that it&rsquo;s going to be an early winter.
+There&rsquo;s come a chill in the air even since I&rsquo;ve been
+here.&rdquo;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_178' name='page_178'></a>178</span></div>
+<p>&ldquo;Nonsense!&rdquo; she replied, recovering her composure.
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll go out with the last stage.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And get caught in an avalanche or something!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I suppose Seth does want to get rid of me!&rdquo; she
+said, with a faint laugh.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That&rsquo;s not it at all.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, I&rsquo;m not afraid.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But suppose you stay too late, and get caught.
+You&rsquo;d have to remain here all winter. The Park,
+Huntington says, is as tight as a jail after the snows
+come.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Claire stays here through the winter sometimes.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He felt a fresh alarm, and showed it. It would be
+just like her! he thought.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;See here, Marion!&rdquo; he said, plunging at last.
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve obeyed your order not to say anything about&ndash;&ndash;the
+future. I meant not to say anything until the
+time was up. But you must see I can&rsquo;t keep silent now,
+after&ndash;&ndash;what&rsquo;s happened. You must know I can&rsquo;t go
+away and leave you without knowing what&ndash;&ndash;it all
+means. You said you&rsquo;d tell me as soon as you&rsquo;d finished
+nursing&ndash;&ndash;him. No, wait, please! Let me say it at
+once. You know I love you. I want you to marry me.
+I need you, Marion. There&rsquo;s never been an hour, a
+minute that I haven&rsquo;t thought of you. I can&rsquo;t work&ndash;&ndash;I
+can&rsquo;t do anything without you. I love you more
+than&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Stop, Robert!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re making it
+harder for both of us.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Harder&ndash;&ndash;for&ndash;&ndash;both of us?&rdquo; he repeated slowly.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>There was a moment&rsquo;s silence. Hillyer, while he
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_179' name='page_179'></a>179</span>
+spoke, had half-consciously stopped the automobile,
+which stood now, humming softly, in the middle of the
+road that stretched white and empty ahead of them and
+behind them. The night breeze had risen, blowing cold
+from the snows, and the shadows were creeping down
+into the valley, as if they came from dark caverns in the
+hills.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Robert,&rdquo; she said sadly. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s no use. I must
+tell you. I&ndash;&ndash;I can&rsquo;t marry you.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Why?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You make me say it!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;Well, Robert,
+I&ndash;&ndash;I don&rsquo;t love you.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m not asking you to love me!&rdquo; he rejoined, almost
+savagely. &ldquo;I only ask you&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Listen!&rdquo; she interrupted, placing a hand on his
+arm. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s not all.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You mean&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>She stopped him with a pressure on his arm.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Once, not knowing, I almost consented,&rdquo; she went
+on. &ldquo;But something checked me&ndash;&ndash;held me back.
+You remember how restless I was&ndash;&ndash;how troubled.
+You would have laughed at me if I had told you. But
+something seemed to be calling me&ndash;&ndash;a voice from a
+long distance. I laughed at myself for a foolish girl&ndash;&ndash;at
+first. I said it was nerves, and I fought against it.
+And it was then that I came nearest to saying yes to
+you, thinking that I was indeed foolish in holding back.
+I liked you. I&rsquo;ve always liked you, Robert. You&rsquo;d
+been such a splendid friend, and I was grateful. I
+wanted to repay you&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>She stopped suddenly, and a flush mounted swiftly
+into her pale cheeks. Repay! The word recalled
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_180' name='page_180'></a>180</span>
+sharply to her, acutely and painfully, all that Haig had
+said about paying her. Were they, then, in the same
+dreadful situation, she and Haig, with debts they could
+never pay? For the first time some sense of the terrible
+finality of his decision struck in upon her secret hopes.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t talk of that!&rdquo; Robert was saying, seizing the
+moment of silence. &ldquo;I never&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But always, when I was about to yield&ndash;&ndash;I couldn&rsquo;t.
+I didn&rsquo;t know why then. But now I do.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You mean&ndash;&ndash;Haig?&rdquo; he asked hoarsely.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You don&rsquo;t&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo; He could not bring himself to speak
+the word.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, Robert. I love him.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>It took all the courage she possessed. But she owed
+it to him and to herself.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t believe it!&rdquo; he blurted out. &ldquo;I won&rsquo;t believe
+it! You are not yourself, Marion. You are worn
+out. You have been fascinated. He&rsquo;s strange&ndash;&ndash;different&ndash;&ndash;new
+to you. It&rsquo;s your imagination, not your
+heart, that&rsquo;s been&ndash;&ndash;won. He&rsquo;s led you on by&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No!&rdquo; she broke in. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re quite wrong. It&rsquo;s
+not his fault at all. He doesn&rsquo;t love me.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Of course not. I know that kind of fellow. You
+didn&rsquo;t need to leave New York to find plenty like him.
+He only wants to&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Robert!&rdquo; she cried warningly.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Then what&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He hates me, I think,&rdquo; she replied sadly.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Then why in the world do you&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo; He was floundering.
+&ldquo;What do you know about him, anyhow?
+Who is he? Where did he come from?&rdquo;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_181' name='page_181'></a>181</span></div>
+<p>That sounded so much like Seth Huntington that she
+smiled, thinking of the picture that he must have drawn
+for Hillyer.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I know very little about him,&rdquo; she replied quietly.
+&ldquo;But I know that Cousin Seth is mistaken.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But how do you know he hates you?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He made that clear in the beginning&ndash;&ndash;not me
+alone, but all women. He shunned me. He told me
+twice that I must not speak to him again. And this
+afternoon, while you waited for me&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo; Her voice
+broke, with a laugh that was half a sob. &ldquo;He&ndash;&ndash;finished
+it.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He was rude to you!&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll make
+him&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>She put her hand quickly on his arm.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No. He was very gentle&ndash;&ndash;and kind.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What did he say?&rdquo; Hillyer demanded, almost imperatively.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He said that&ndash;&ndash;he couldn&rsquo;t leave the ranch just now,
+so I&rsquo;d better go back to New York&ndash;&ndash;at once.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He did, did he?&rdquo; cried Hillyer angrily, his chivalry
+for the moment dominant. But then he saw suddenly
+another meaning, for him, in the brutal ultimatum; and
+his face brightened. &ldquo;That settles it, doesn&rsquo;t it?&rdquo; he
+exclaimed eagerly.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Settles what?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Why, you&rsquo;ll go with me!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What do you mean?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I told you I&rsquo;m not ready yet.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>There was a silence while Hillyer, buoyed up with
+new hope, made some hurried calculations.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_182' name='page_182'></a>182</span></div>
+<p>&ldquo;Then listen, Marion!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll go to Denver,
+and come back in a week or ten days. I&rsquo;ll arrange
+things so that I can stay here until&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, Robert! You won&rsquo;t understand.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He stared at her blankly.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;re making it so hard for me!&rdquo; she cried pathetically.
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve told you already that I cannot marry
+you.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But why! Why!&rdquo; he persisted.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Because I haven&rsquo;t myself&ndash;&ndash;I&rsquo;ve nothing to give.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But how can you love him after he has&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Told me he does not love me?&rdquo; she said, taking the
+words from him. &ldquo;Then how can you love me when I
+have said the same thing to you?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He struggled desperately, in deep water.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s different, Marion. You don&rsquo;t hate me&ndash;&ndash;I
+think. You say you like me. That&rsquo;s enough now&ndash;&ndash;to
+start with. It&rsquo;s all I ask. I&rsquo;ll try to make you
+happy, and I&rsquo;ll wait for love. You shall have all the
+things in the world you want. I&rsquo;m making scads of
+money. Everything I touch just rolls up into bank
+notes. I want you to come and spend all that money
+for me. Remember, Marion, your father wished it.
+If he were here now&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes!&rdquo; she put in with sudden fire. &ldquo;If he were
+here now do you know what he would say to me?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He felt that he had blundered, and made no reply.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He would say to me&ndash;&ndash;Oh, I can hear him now!
+He would say: &lsquo;Follow your heart, daughter. Love&rsquo;s
+the only thing in the world that really counts.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>She smiled triumphantly, but wistfully. And Hillyer
+was still silent.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_183' name='page_183'></a>183</span></div>
+<p>&ldquo;Daddy wasn&rsquo;t very good at quoting Scripture,&rdquo; she
+went on musingly, &ldquo;but he used to say: &lsquo;Better a
+dinner of herbs where love is than a stalled ox and
+hatred therewith.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But there isn&rsquo;t any hatred therewith!&rdquo; cried Hillyer
+desperately. &ldquo;I love you, Marion, and if you don&rsquo;t
+love me&ndash;&ndash;you don&rsquo;t hate me. So there&rsquo;s more than
+half of it, and&ndash;&ndash;can&rsquo;t we trust the future a little
+bit?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But what are you going to do?&rdquo; he asked, shifting
+his line of attack.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know,&rdquo; she replied, with a helpless gesture.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You can&rsquo;t go back to New York without money
+enough to take your proper place in the world. Of
+course, if you&rsquo;ll let me, I&rsquo;ll&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Robert!&rdquo; she interrupted sharply.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, I mean it just the same!&rdquo; he replied stoutly.
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve got to take care of you, and if you won&rsquo;t&ndash;&ndash;See
+here, Marion! I simply refuse to be turned down this
+way. I&rsquo;ll not take your stubborn, whimsy little &lsquo;no&rsquo;
+for my answer. You&rsquo;re on my hands, thank God!
+whether you like it or not. Maybe you won&rsquo;t love me.
+Maybe you won&rsquo;t marry me. We&rsquo;ll see about that!
+But I&rsquo;m going to look after you&ndash;&ndash;I&rsquo;m going to take care
+of you, just the same&ndash;&ndash;and you can just stop tightening
+those lips&ndash;&ndash;they&rsquo;re not as red as they ought to be&ndash;&ndash;and
+you can make up your mind that you can boss me
+so far and no farther.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Marion smiled at him indulgently, but gratefully, and
+even a little proudly; for she had been very proud of
+him in the days when only friendship was spoken of.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_184' name='page_184'></a>184</span>
+She did not in the least resent his speech; but neither
+did she answer him.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s getting late, Robert,&rdquo; she said, shivering a little.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;So it is,&rdquo; he replied. &ldquo;And you&rsquo;ve no warm wrap
+for the night air.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He drew the lap-robe around her, and started the
+automobile. Through the gathering night they drove,
+almost without speaking, to Huntington&rsquo;s, where the
+best supper that Claire could contrive from the limited
+stores at her disposal awaited the prodigal. There was
+naturally some constraint at table. Huntington had
+made his peace with Hillyer, having apologized humbly,
+and expatiated on the cause of his wrath. But he did
+not know how he stood with Marion, who had been a
+long time in the camp of the enemy, and who doubtless
+knew too of his speech about her trunks. He had not
+dared to ask Hillyer whether he had related that incident
+to her, and he felt the need of extreme discretion
+until he should discover what kind of a rod she had in
+pickle for him, or, at any rate, until the time should be
+propitious to tell her that he was sorry for his conduct.
+Marion was tired, and disinclined to talk, while Hillyer,
+on his side, had his mind fully occupied, between his
+deal in mines and his deal in love, in both of which he
+had encountered unexpected difficulties. Only Claire
+was gay and untroubled, and she accepted eagerly the
+task of saving the party from awkward silences. For
+once in many moons she was allowed to talk unchecked,
+and she made the most of her opportunity.</p>
+<p>After supper, Marion announced her purpose to go
+to bed at once. She was sure, she declared, that she
+could sleep &ldquo;around the clock.&rdquo;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_185' name='page_185'></a>185</span></div>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll be off before you&rsquo;re up, then,&rdquo; said Hillyer.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You must go to-morrow?&rdquo; asked Claire.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Absolutely. It means thousands.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Then we&rsquo;ll sit on the veranda a few minutes,&rdquo; said
+Marion. &ldquo;Not long, though. I&rsquo;m dreadfully sleepy.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>It was not long. They found they had little to say
+to each other, since the one subject of which both were
+thinking, each from a different point of view, was tacitly
+barred. And Hillyer soon saw that Marion was sorely
+in need of rest.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Go to bed now, dear girl!&rdquo; he said presently.
+&ldquo;And please take good care of yourself. I want to see
+the color back in your cheeks when I return.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I will, Robert,&rdquo; she answered. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll be quite all
+right in a day or two.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And you&ndash;&ndash;don&rsquo;t really think of staying here all
+winter?&rdquo; he ventured to ask diffidently.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No,&rdquo; she replied. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s hardly possible.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Then good-by&ndash;&ndash;until you hear my horn in the
+road down yonder.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Good-by, Robert, and good luck!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>She gave him both her hands, for a moment, with a
+tenderness that lingered with him far on his way.</p>
+<hr class='toprule' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_186' name='page_186'></a>186</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_XVII_INTERLUDE' id='CHAPTER_XVII_INTERLUDE'></a>
+<h2>CHAPTER XVII</h2>
+<h3>INTERLUDE</h3>
+</div>
+<p>August ripened into September, and the Park
+underwent a subtle and fascinating change. In
+the meadows the hay lay in long windrows, golden green;
+on the slopes vermilion flowers succeeded blue; in the
+sunsets tender pinks yielded to burnt orange and vivid
+red. The nights had grown perceptibly colder, but the
+days were still warm and dry and radiant, though with a
+tang in the air that stirred the blood. And a thousand
+perfumes, known and unknown, distilled from meadow
+and field and forest, scented every vagrant breeze.</p>
+<p>Marion was soon herself again, in body if not in
+mind. A few long nights of sleep, a few days in the
+saddle, and sufficient nourishment (for she had neglected
+herself at Haig&rsquo;s, despite Jim&rsquo;s solicitude) restored her
+physically to what she had been on the day of Haig&rsquo;s
+accident. But she, too, had changed, and as subtly as
+the season.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What&rsquo;s come over Marion?&rdquo; asked Huntington of
+Claire one day, after he had caught himself regarding
+her with the rapt interest of a discoverer.</p>
+<p>Claire looked at him pityingly. She knew, but she
+was not going to tell him.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Why?&rdquo; she asked innocently.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, I don&rsquo;t exactly know,&rdquo; he replied doubtfully.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_187' name='page_187'></a>187</span>
+&ldquo;She&rsquo;s prettier than ever&ndash;&ndash;but so are you. That
+isn&rsquo;t it. She&rsquo;s kind of&ndash;&ndash;It&rsquo;s no use. I don&rsquo;t
+know.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Claire laughed, and then became severe.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That&rsquo;s because she&rsquo;s forgiven you,&rdquo; she said.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No, it isn&rsquo;t!&rdquo; he asseverated, not without embarrassment.
+&ldquo;You can see for yourself that she&rsquo;s different.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Very well!&rdquo; she retorted maliciously. &ldquo;Perhaps
+if you&rsquo;d done such a noble thing as nursing Haig back
+to life you&rsquo;d be different too.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;d see him in&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Shame!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;You wouldn&rsquo;t do anything
+of the kind. Your bark&rsquo;s worse than your bite, sir.
+And besides, while I think of it, you really must stop
+saying &lsquo;hell&rsquo; and &lsquo;damn&rsquo; so much. The habit&rsquo;s growing
+on you.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Having no ready answer to that speech, he merely
+looked at her, perhaps a little guiltily, then bent down
+and kissed her, and hurried out of the house. He was,
+in truth, though he never would have had the courage to
+acknowledge it, even to Claire, ashamed of himself, and
+anxious too. His inflammable temper had rather out-flamed
+itself in its last-recorded performance, and he
+had begun to suspect that it had been responsible for
+some, though by no means all, of his troubles. The
+killing of Haig&rsquo;s bull, he now realized, was a foolish and
+indefensible act, which could be traced easily to him
+because of the bull that was gored; and he must prepare
+to account to Haig for it. And so, knowing that
+he would again be in the wrong, as in the affair at the
+post-office, he was torn between accentuated bitterness
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_188' name='page_188'></a>188</span>
+toward Haig and growing discontent with himself. He
+would never be afraid of Haig, but he was becoming
+steadily more afraid of Marion. Whether it was that
+he had really developed intuition, which told him of
+Marion&rsquo;s spiritual growth, or that he was in constant
+dread lest she make some new demand upon him in
+regard to Haig, he lived in much awe of her. She had
+once spoken, on a memorable occasion, of making peace
+between Haig and himself. It would be just like her,
+wouldn&rsquo;t it, to try to bring them together? Well, let
+her try it! He would be the last man in Paradise Park.
+And so on, until he was once more almost satisfied with
+himself.</p>
+<p>The faithful Smythe, meanwhile, brought Marion
+almost daily news of Philip. That he was rapidly recovering
+she heard with a ringing joy, which had its
+alloy of fear; for she knew that the day he felt himself
+to be in full possession of his powers he would attempt
+again to conquer Sunnysides. So from day to day her
+apprehension mounted until it became well-nigh insupportable.
+And her own helplessness maddened her.
+What could she do? Nothing! Nothing but wait,
+and pray God to protect him. Every night she prayed
+for him, and every morning, on her knees; and every
+hour the prayer was in her heart. She rode sometimes
+as far as the farther edge of the woods that crowned the
+ridge, and looked long at the little valley, and at the
+smoke rising in a thin spiral from the ranch house that
+she could not see. At the right of it would be the cottage,
+and at the left the barn, and the corral where
+Sunnysides bided his time. And then, having looked
+until she could endure no more, she would ride slowly
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_189' name='page_189'></a>189</span>
+home, to await the next coming of Smythe with news.</p>
+<p>Once she went to the glade of the columbines. She
+did not feel any longer the antipathy she once felt to
+the spot that had, in one devastating moment, revealed
+to her the fatuity of her dreams. Now she was in
+search of the old hopes that she had once revelled in,
+while she gathered armloads of columbines, and imagined
+they were for Philip.</p>
+<p>Dismounting eagerly at the foot of the little hill, she
+plunged through the brush, and halted at the margin of
+the glade, stricken with the keenest disappointment.
+The columbines were gone; only a brave, pale blossom
+here and there lingered pathetically in a waste of dried
+and drooping stems. She stood staring at them a moment;
+then, with a cry, she threw herself down among
+them, and gave herself up to grief, letting the tears
+come in what flood they would, while her hand clutched
+one poor survivor of the summer glory.</p>
+<p>Gone, then, like the summer, were all those dreams.
+And very soon must come the end of all. Barely two
+weeks remained to her in the Park,&ndash;&ndash;barely two weeks
+in which the miracle that she awaited could be wrought.
+What miracle could move him when her love had failed?
+And yet&ndash;&ndash;Once, in her desperation, she suggested to
+Claire and Seth that she should remain all winter in
+the Park; but they rose up together against any such
+scheme. It was absurd, they agreed. They would be
+delighted to have her with them as many summers as
+she might wish; and they were already counting on her
+return to them next June. But the Park in winter was
+no place for a woman, unless she had been long inured
+to such hardships as were involved in that hibernation.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_190' name='page_190'></a>190</span>
+Claire had remained two winters there, it was true, but
+Seth had vowed that she should never miss the last stage
+again. Marion&rsquo;s proposal only clinched the matter the
+more firmly; and it was eventually agreed that Claire
+should go with Marion to New York, where they would
+live very quietly, taking what pleasures their means
+would permit, until spring should bring them back to
+the mountains. And so, barring a miracle, she was at
+the end of her hopes.</p>
+<p>Meanwhile, she had heard from Robert. He was
+nearly wild, he wrote. The big deal was going slowly&ndash;&ndash;not
+badly, but with maddening delays. He was
+tempted to &ldquo;chuck the whole business,&rdquo; though it meant
+thousands, perhaps half a million. Yet how could he
+do that? He was working for her; and if he left
+Denver the deal would certainly fall through. But
+there was yet time; any day the stubborn partner might
+yield; and so on. Poor Robert! thought Marion. She
+imagined what Philip would have done if he had wanted
+her as Robert did. Would any deal, any prospect of
+millions, have kept him away from her? So she reasoned,
+forgetting entirely the other side of the case.
+Haig, if she could have asked him, would have told her:
+yes, that&rsquo;s all very well, but the man would have to get
+those thousands or other thousands afterwards, just the
+same; a woman wants to have her cake and eat it too;
+and so much the worse for the man if he cannot dance
+attendance on her and make money for her at the same
+time!</p>
+<p>She wrote to Robert that be must not think of leaving
+his business. Moreover, she would soon be in Denver,
+on her way back home.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_191' name='page_191'></a>191</span></div>
+<p>In the late afternoon Haig leaned against Sunnysides&rsquo;
+corral, smoking his pipe and gazing fixedly at the golden
+outlaw. The air was very still, almost too still, as if
+nature had paused before a sudden and violent alteration
+of her mood. In the bright sky, a little hard even
+for September, there was no cloud, except on the western
+horizon, where dark vapors hovered over the bald head
+of Thunder Mountain. The scent of the harvest in the
+meadows blended with the odor of burning pine that
+came from the ranch house, where Flick built the fire
+for supper. On the hill the pines were still, but the
+brook babbled on, and there was an incessant low twittering
+of birds in the cottonwoods.</p>
+<p>Haig had now fully recovered. He had taken to his
+horse again some days before, to ride a little the first
+day, and more the next, each day adding something to
+his exercise, until he felt the blood running warmly in
+his veins, and his muscles tightening at his will. Then
+he had hardened himself with every kind of labor around
+the ranch. For he was impatient to remove the stigma
+of doubt that Sunnysides had burned into his soul. He
+had told Marion that she was incapable of understanding
+why he must conquer Sunnysides. He was not sure
+that he understood it himself. But he knew that he
+must. Ever since that day when he had fled into the
+world he had fought to be master of himself; and his
+way of being master of himself was to be master of
+every man and every animal and every obstacle that
+appeared across his path,&ndash;&ndash;that irresponsible, uncharted
+path that had neither beginning nor end, that led he
+knew not where nor cared. Every moment was a moment
+to itself, and every day was its own if he had done
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_192' name='page_192'></a>192</span>
+what he had set out to do. His one purpose in life was
+not to be beaten, never to fail, though he should throw
+away to-morrow what he had won to-day. So it was
+that to conquer Sunnysides was for the moment the one
+thing that counted, and he would have no rest until it
+was done.</p>
+<p>Twilight settled down upon the valley. Haig&rsquo;s pipe
+went out, and still he stood gazing at Sunnysides. In
+the dusk the horse glowed like a living jewel that holds
+the light when the sun has gone. Night fell, and the
+golden hide became a shimmer in the dark, as the outlaw
+moved restlessly to and fro in his prison. Then,
+of a sudden, with the unexpectedness and unreason of a
+dog&rsquo;s wolf-howl at the rising moon, there rose from the
+gloom of the corral a shrill, wild neigh that shattered
+the peaceful silence of the night.</p>
+<p>Haig left the fence, and walked swiftly to the barn.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Farrish!&rdquo; he said shortly. &ldquo;We&rsquo;ll break Sunnysides
+to-morrow. Tell Pete and Curly not to ride away
+in the morning. The cattle can wait.&rdquo;</p>
+<hr class='toprule' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_193' name='page_193'></a>193</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_XVIII_THE_CHALLENGE_OF_THE_BRUTE' id='CHAPTER_XVIII_THE_CHALLENGE_OF_THE_BRUTE'></a>
+<h2>CHAPTER XVIII</h2>
+<h3>THE CHALLENGE OF THE BRUTE</h3>
+</div>
+<p>There had been yellow, mellow weather for weeks
+on weeks, but this day dawned hard and cold.
+Some projected rancor of the winter was in the air.
+Westward the peaks were blanketed with thick gray
+clouds, while eastward a sullen redness showed where
+the sun strove to rise on an angry world. The wind
+was the kind that scrapes raw the nerves, buffeting man
+and beast with cross-currents and unexpected blasts,
+howling and shrieking around chimneys and gables,
+covering everything with dust and sand.</p>
+<p>Haig awoke to hear the wind tearing at the shutters
+and the roof, the pines on the hillside thundering like
+surf, the hills reverberating with the maddest trumpetings.
+He lay a moment listening; his pulse quickened,
+at the sound of all that tumult; and he leaped from his
+bed calling loudly for Slim Jim. It was a day for
+battle. The very elements were up and at it, as if all
+nature had enlisted in the struggle between man and
+brute.</p>
+<p>For all his eagerness, he ate his breakfast leisurely,
+resolved to make no such error as he had made before.
+There should be no mad haste and no anger; no working
+on an empty stomach, on nerves drawn taut. Bacon
+and eggs and buckwheat cakes, with coffee and a single
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_194' name='page_194'></a>194</span>
+pipe, occupied an hour or more; and then, feeling fit
+for anything, he set out for the corrals.</p>
+<p>He did not scruple this time to take every precaution
+known to the experts of the corrals. Bill was mounted
+on the wisest horse in the stables, with a lariat ready
+against the event of Sunnysides trying the fence again.
+Then Haig directed Farrish, Curly, and Pete to rope
+and saddle the outlaw, saving himself for the supreme
+struggle. But to their astonishment there was none of
+the difficulties in the preliminaries that they encountered
+on the previous occasion; only two or three vicious
+movements, no more.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Foxy, ain&rsquo;t you?&rdquo; said Farrish to the outlaw, when
+the saddle was on. &ldquo;Savin&rsquo; yourself, are you, you yellow
+devil?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The horse was led as before into the larger corral.
+He stepped nimbly, obediently, as if resistance were the
+farthest thing from his thoughts, even when Haig, his
+arch-enemy, walked up to him, grasped the bridle, and
+looked steadily into his eyes. For a moment all stood
+still, as the challenge passed between man and brute.
+Then Haig tested the cinches of the saddle, looked carefully
+around him, and disposed the men with a final
+word to each.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Now then! Off with it!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Farrish removed the last rope, and then only the
+bridle rein in Haig&rsquo;s hand, and the fence yonder, stoutly
+repaired since the last battle, remained between Sunnysides
+and the sandhills of the San Luis. True, only a
+fence and a guard had held him all these weeks of his
+captivity, but that fence had been built up, on his
+arrival, two planks higher than the one in which he now
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_195' name='page_195'></a>195</span>
+found himself again, and from which he had all but
+escaped at the first opportunity.</p>
+<p>Haig put his feet cautiously into the stirrup, and
+sprang into the saddle. He was prepared for a repetition
+of the trick that had almost cost him his life, and
+ready to swing himself out of the saddle if Sunnysides
+should go over backward again. But the horse was indeed
+&ldquo;foxy&rdquo;; one would have said that he knew his
+man, and would waste no time or energy on man&oelig;uvers
+that his enemy had discounted. For some seconds he
+stood quite motionless, while Haig settled firmly in his
+seat, and gripped the bridle rein expectantly. At length
+the horse lifted and turned his head, and looked, as it
+appeared, toward the western mountains, half hidden
+in the gray swirl of clouds.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, over there&rsquo;s the San Luis,&rdquo; muttered Haig.
+&ldquo;But it&rsquo;s a long way, and you&rsquo;re not going.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Farrish grinned. But Pete stood like a wooden Indian,
+so still and intent was he, with his black eyes fixed
+on the outlaw. Curly loosened the coils of the lariat in
+his hands. In a corner of the corral Bill, mounted and
+watchful, held his rope ready for a throw.</p>
+<p>Still Sunnysides did not move. But his tail swished
+with the slow and menacing movement of a tiger&rsquo;s, and
+there was just a quiver of muscles under his golden
+hide.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Watch out!&rdquo; called Pete.</p>
+<p>And then it came. The horse bounded into the air,
+and came down stiff-legged, with a jolt that Haig felt
+in every bone. Then he leaped sideways half a dozen
+feet, and Haig was flung far over, hanging perilously in
+the saddle. With almost one motion the horse was in
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_196' name='page_196'></a>196</span>
+the air again, to come down with the same frightful,
+jarring shock. Instantly thereupon he lunged forward,
+stopped short, ducked his head, and narrowly missed
+hurling Haig like a stone from a catapult.</p>
+<p>All these tactics were repeated with variations; and
+then, of a sudden, as if he thought Haig had forgotten
+his experience by this time, he reared, and with the same
+lightning swiftness as before, went over backward on
+the ground. But Haig was too quick for him. He
+swung himself to one side, released his right foot from
+the stirrup, and rolled away from beneath the horse as
+they came down with a crash. At the same instant Pete
+and Curly rushed in, and the horse leaped to his feet
+only to be brought down again with two ropes on his
+legs.</p>
+<p>Haig, dusty but uninjured, was on his feet in a jiffy,
+and leaning over the thwarted outlaw.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You didn&rsquo;t really think you could do it again, did
+you?&rdquo; he said.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But he&rsquo;s a hellyun, though, ain&rsquo;t he!&rdquo; ejaculated
+Curly, bracing himself on his rope.</p>
+<p>The horse was allowed to rise; Haig climbed cautiously
+into the saddle once more; and the same tense
+silence as the first ensued, while Sunnysides waited, as
+if for inspiration.</p>
+<p>Then it was on as before, but with accentuated fury.
+The horse, for his opening demonstration, bucked with
+his back curved like a steel bow. Haig was almost
+propelled into the air, but hung on desperately; and as
+the outlaw came down on stiffened legs Haig jabbed the
+spurs viciously into his flanks. For Sunnysides had
+been too calculating in his measures; it was desirable to
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_197' name='page_197'></a>197</span>
+stir him up, to anger him, to torment him until he
+should wear himself out with his furious struggles.</p>
+<p>The spurs did it. In an instant Sunnysides was a
+demon. All that he had done was like the antics of a
+colt compared with what followed. No eye in the corral
+could follow and record all his movements. He
+was in every part of the enclosure at once, it seemed.
+There were instants, too, when he appeared to have disassociated
+himself from the earth, and to have taken to
+the air as his element. And then the earth rang again
+with the clatter of his hoofs; his four legs became a
+hundred, and then were four again, pounding like piledrivers,
+like steel drills. He flung himself against the
+fence until it swayed and creaked, and Haig&rsquo;s legs were
+bruised by the violent contact. Clouds of dust rose and
+hung above the enclosure, and settled on the outlaw&rsquo;s wet
+shoulders, on Haig&rsquo;s sweating face, in his eyes and
+nostrils, and in his throat until he was fairly choking.
+But though half-blinded, dizzy, and aching in all his
+body, Haig hung on, and dug the spurs ceaselessly into
+the horse&rsquo;s flanks.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;God! He&rsquo;s got him!&rdquo; cried Farrish.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Your game&rsquo;s up!&rdquo; yelled Curly tauntingly, dancing
+with joy in his corner of the corral.</p>
+<p>But the game was not up. Curly&rsquo;s words were barely
+out of his mouth when something went wrong with Haig.
+Just what happened none could be quite sure of, then or
+afterward; but in the midst of Sunnysides&rsquo; plungings,
+there came a windmill kind of movement, rather like the
+whirling of a dervish, out of which the horse lunged
+swiftly forward, and halted violently, with his head
+down, and his forelegs stiff before him. It was apparently
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_198' name='page_198'></a>198</span>
+an elaboration of one of the commonest tricks
+of all; and if Haig could have stuck to the saddle then
+he probably would have won. But he was thrown. He
+went sprawling over the horse&rsquo;s lowered head, and struck
+the ground on his head and shoulders, and lay still.</p>
+<p>What followed was more marvelous even than the unseating
+of Haig with the shout of victory already rising
+to his lips. There came a snort that ended in a scream;
+and then a flash of yellow through the dust. Bill
+Craven, on his horse at one side of the corral, saw it
+coming straight toward him, and tried to whirl his
+noose. Too late. The outlaw was upon him; his own
+pony, rearing, was caught unbalanced; and Bill himself
+instinctively leaned backward in the saddle. There was
+a terrific impact; the pony was struck squarely on the
+left fore-quarter; and horse and rider went down together
+in a heap against the fence. Then over them
+went the outlaw, trampling them as he leaped and clambered,
+taking the top plank with him as he landed outside
+the corral on his head and knees. In an instant he
+was up; in another, or the same instant, he was off,
+with his head down, and belly to earth, with the speed
+of a race-horse and the frenzy of a wild thing set free.</p>
+<p>Haig was only slightly stunned by the fall. He
+heard, though he did not see, the escape of Sunnysides;
+and for one black moment all in the present was blotted
+out. But that was only the dizziness, and the reeling
+pain in his head; and there was the sky filled with gray-black,
+contending clouds; and Pete was leaning over
+him.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Hurt?&rdquo; asked the Indian.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No.&rdquo;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_199' name='page_199'></a>199</span></div>
+<p>He reached up one hand, and Pete helped him to his
+feet. Swaying a little, he looked around the corral.
+Farrish was on the outside, gazing down the road where
+Sunnysides was now almost out of sight, a mere yellow
+spot in a cloud of dust. Curly was jerking Craven&rsquo;s
+horse to its feet.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What&rsquo;s the matter there?&rdquo; called Haig.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Bill&rsquo;s hurt!&rdquo; answered Curly.</p>
+<p>With Pete at his side, not yet assured that all was well
+with him, Haig walked unsteadily to where Bill lay
+against the fence.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What is it, Craven?&rdquo; he asked.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Leg broke. My horse fell on me,&rdquo; Bill answered
+weakly. He had, besides, a gash in the left side of his
+head, from which the blood flowed down his face.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Into the barn with him!&rdquo; Haig ordered quietly.</p>
+<p>They placed him on a cot, and Pete gave him a long
+pull at his ever-ready flask.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m sorry, Bill!&rdquo; said Haig, looking down at him.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s my own fault,&rdquo; replied Craven. &ldquo;An&rsquo; it
+serves me damned right for lettin&rsquo; him get by me.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Haig smiled grimly, then turned to the other men
+with orders. He was ominously quiet; even the dullest
+of them, the slow-witted Curly, saw and wondered at the
+unusual calm that showed on his face and in his accents.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Now then, business!&rdquo; he said, with swift decision.
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;ll take the sorrels, Curly, and drive to Tellurium
+for the doctor. Don&rsquo;t be afraid to drive them; I&rsquo;ll not
+be on your back for that. Pete, go to the cottage, and
+bring my gun. Jim knows where it is. Farrish&ndash;&ndash;where&rsquo;s
+Farrish?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Here!&rdquo;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_200' name='page_200'></a>200</span></div>
+<p>He came leading two ponies from their stalls.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What are you doing, Farrish?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I supposed we&rsquo;d better find out where he&rsquo;s gone, and
+see if&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;There&rsquo;s no doubt where he&rsquo;s headed for, is there?&rdquo;
+Haig interrupted. &ldquo;And who&rsquo;s going to stop him?
+No, saddle Trixy!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But you&rsquo;re not going alone?&rdquo; said Farrish.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Bill&rsquo;s knocked out. Curly&rsquo;s off as soon as he can
+start for Tellurium. That leaves you and Pete to look
+after the ranch. I may be gone some time.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But you can&rsquo;t rope him alone!&rdquo; protested Farrish.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t expect to. There isn&rsquo;t a horse in the Park
+that could overtake him. He&rsquo;ll make for the San Luis,
+of course. I&rsquo;ll get help there. Now then, Farrish,
+you&rsquo;re in charge of the ranch. If anything should happen
+to me, Jim knows where all my papers are. That&rsquo;s
+all.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Farrish hastened to saddle Trixy, coiling a rope at the
+saddle horn, and strapping a slicker behind the saddle.
+At this moment came Pete from the cottage, bringing the
+revolver and cartridge belt, which Haig buckled on while
+Farrish led Trixy out in front of the stable.</p>
+<p>There was a word or two more to Farrish, about the
+cattle and the hay, and Haig swung himself into the
+saddle.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Wait!&rdquo; cried Pete, running out of the stable.</p>
+<p>He handed a flask of whisky to Haig, who took it,
+smiling, and thrust it into a pocket of his coat.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Sure cure for everything, eh, Pete?&rdquo;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_201' name='page_201'></a>201</span></div>
+<p>But he reached down, and clasped Pete&rsquo;s hand.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You will be cold, maybe,&rdquo; said the Indian simply.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;All right, men!&rdquo; said Haig. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll take good
+care of Craven, of course. And you&rsquo;ll use your best
+judgment about everything, Farrish. I&rsquo;m not coming
+back without Sunnysides.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He put spurs to the little bay mare, and dashed away.
+Pete and Farrish stood watching him until he had
+turned the point of the ridge.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Hell!&rdquo; said Farrish.</p>
+<p>In the cottage door stood a figure in blue silks, intently
+gazing after the disappearing horseman.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He catchum, allee light!&rdquo; murmured Slim Jim.</p>
+<hr class='toprule' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_202' name='page_202'></a>202</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_XIX_SMYTHES_LAST_BUDGET' id='CHAPTER_XIX_SMYTHES_LAST_BUDGET'></a>
+<h2>CHAPTER XIX</h2>
+<h3>SMYTHE&rsquo;S LAST BUDGET</h3>
+</div>
+<p>Seth had heard at the post-office that the deer were
+coming down unusually early from their summer
+haunts high in the mountains. A fine herd had been
+seen just above Bratner&rsquo;s, and Seth proposed to Marion
+that she should have a try at them. They would start
+early in the morning, stop the night at Bratner&rsquo;s, and be
+back home late the second evening. Marion reluctantly
+consented, and before going to bed that night she laid out
+woolen underwear, her stoutest riding costume, with
+divided skirts and knickerbockers and tan boots lacing
+almost to her knees. She did not want to go, but, as
+more than once before, she yielded to Seth&rsquo;s insistence
+rather than attempt an explanation.</p>
+<p>That night, however, summer departed from the Park.
+A dry storm descended on the valley, and Marion lay
+awake while the wind howled around the corners of the
+ranch house, of which every timber seemed to be crying
+out in agony. She knew that high among the rocks the
+storm was smashing about in fury, and even in its sheltered
+hollow the house was hammered as if the elements
+were bent upon its annihilation. When each prodigious
+outcry had spent itself and died away there was still the
+moaning and fretting and troubled whimpering that
+reminded her of the plaints of an invalid pleading for
+help between paroxysms of pain. She was strangely depressed
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_203' name='page_203'></a>203</span>
+by it, unaccountably distressed, and was glad
+when the first faint whitening of the window curtains
+told her of the dawn. She arose and dressed&ndash;&ndash;after
+a moment&rsquo;s hesitation&ndash;&ndash;in the costume she had prepared
+the night before. Seth surely would not insist on
+the shooting trip in such weather, she thought, but it
+would please him to see her dressed for it. Besides, the
+temperature of her room reminded her that she would
+need warm clothes if she went out anywhere on such a
+day.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Good, Marion!&rdquo; cried Seth sure enough, when he
+saw her at the breakfast table. &ldquo;Glad you&rsquo;re not discouraged
+by a little wind.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But&ndash;&ndash;you don&rsquo;t mean to go on a day like this?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Why not?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The wind, and&ndash;&ndash;we&rsquo;ll get soaking wet.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No, it&rsquo;s only a wind storm, and this is the tail end
+of it. The sun&rsquo;ll be out in a couple of hours. We
+needn&rsquo;t start in a hurry. We&rsquo;ll leave the horses as they
+are&ndash;&ndash;they&rsquo;re all ready, bundles and the rest&ndash;&ndash;until we
+see.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Seth&rsquo;s optimism annoyed her, but she felt encouraged
+when, after breakfast, she stepped out on the veranda
+and met the cold and quarrelsome day. A rough blast
+struck her in the face; she saw a ragged drift of clouds
+torn by the wind; and the whole landscape seemed to
+have undergone a melancholy change. Dispirited beyond
+measure, despite the one satisfaction that the
+weather gave, she re-entered the house, and sank uneasily
+into an armchair by the fire.</p>
+<p>But Seth&rsquo;s prediction was justified. Toward ten
+o&rsquo;clock the wind ceased, and patches of blue began to
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_204' name='page_204'></a>204</span>
+show in the blanket of gray. Claire shared Marion&rsquo;s
+disinclination to go shooting on such a day (or any other
+kind of a day, for her part!), and they stood at the window
+actually deploring the blue rents in the clouds, when
+Marion uttered a sharp exclamation of surprise.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Smythe!&rdquo; she gasped.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;On a day like this!&rdquo; cried Claire.</p>
+<p>He had dismounted quickly, and was walking toward
+the house; and as he neared the steps Marion saw in his
+face what caused her to press her hand on her bosom
+to still her heart. Something had happened! And she
+had known it all the time&ndash;&ndash;had known it even in her
+sleep!</p>
+<p>Claire ran to the door and opened it.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, Mr. Smythe!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re just in
+time to cheer us up. We&rsquo;re deep in the mulligrubs.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He entered smiling, removing his sombrero with his
+customary flourish. But as he advanced he shot a swift,
+keen look at Marion.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Something&rsquo;s happened!&rdquo; she repeated to herself.</p>
+<p>But she came forward with a smile, and shook hands
+with Smythe, searching his face. And he was warning
+her again. She could have shrieked with impatience
+and anxiety, but she held herself, and waited.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;A terrible night, wasn&rsquo;t it?&rdquo; said Claire, giving
+Smythe a chair.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Terrific!&rdquo; replied he. &ldquo;You know the big pine
+that hung over the road just this side of Toumine&rsquo;s?
+Well, it&rsquo;s down, right across the road. I had to ride
+around it, up among the underbrush.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t sleep at all, and I&rsquo;m used to winds, too,&rdquo;
+said Claire.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_205' name='page_205'></a>205</span></div>
+<p>&ldquo;It got me up at daylight,&rdquo; Smythe went on. &ldquo;It
+didn&rsquo;t look like much of a day for riding, but I got
+nervous sitting around listening to my good landlady&ndash;&ndash;one
+of the young Martins is threatened with something
+or other&ndash;&ndash;and started out to see how the
+landscape had been changed. There are trees down
+everywhere, and&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo; He paused. &ldquo;What are you doing
+this morning, Miss Gaylord?&rdquo; he asked, very casually.</p>
+<p>She had been silent, watching him.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;We were going shooting, but we&rsquo;ve been waiting to
+see if the weather would change.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Then you haven&rsquo;t been out?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Only on the veranda for a minute.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Let&rsquo;s take a brisk walk, then. It&rsquo;ll do you good&ndash;&ndash;warm
+you up a little.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she said weakly.</p>
+<p>She went to her room for her hat, and pinning it on
+before the mirror, started at sight of her face, which
+had grown very white. She was almost incapable of
+thought. The hatpin slipped from her cold fingers, and
+fell to the floor. She stared at it strangely before stooping
+to pick it up. How could she bear to hear what
+Smythe had come to tell her! But it was good of him
+to wait until he could tell her alone.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Will you go too, Mrs. Huntington?&rdquo; Smythe said,
+as Marion emerged from her room.</p>
+<p>Claire looked at Marion, and wondered at the whiteness
+of her face, and the haunted look in her eyes.
+Nothing had been said, but she saw there was something.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No, thank you!&rdquo; she said promptly. &ldquo;The house
+suits me this morning.&rdquo;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_206' name='page_206'></a>206</span></div>
+<p>Smythe and Marion walked up the hill toward the
+tree where Marion had practised shooting. Until they
+reached it neither spoke.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well?&rdquo; said Marion, turning suddenly on him.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Sunnysides has got away.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And he?&rdquo; she cried.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Thrown, but not hurt.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>She stared at him a moment, dazed. Then she threw
+back her head, and clasped her hands on her breast.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; she murmured. &ldquo;But how you frightened
+me!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Smythe looked at her silently; and presently, when
+she lowered her eyes, she saw that his face was very
+grave. But Haig was unhurt, and Sunnysides had
+escaped. She had prayed for just that.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What is it?&rdquo; she cried, leaning forward to clutch
+his arm.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He&rsquo;s following.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Following?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes. Alone.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Where?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yonder.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He pointed to the west.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;To the San Luis?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The way they brought him here?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No. Sunnysides has taken the trail over Thunder
+Mountain.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Her hand fell from his arm. She swayed, as if she
+would collapse. Smythe grabbed her, with an arm
+around her waist, and led her, unresisting and dumb, to
+a near rock, where he seated her gently, and stood watching
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_207' name='page_207'></a>207</span>
+her. He had been too abrupt, he thought; but how
+else could he have told her?</p>
+<p>She struggled bravely.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Tell me!&rdquo; she said at length.</p>
+<p>He knew little about the event at the ranch. There
+had been a terrific struggle; Haig had almost conquered;
+then the outlaw had flung him over his head, trampled
+one of his men, breaking his leg, and leaped the fence to
+liberty.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But&ndash;&ndash;Thunder Mountain?&rdquo; cried Marion.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That&rsquo;s the strangest part of it,&rdquo; Smythe replied.
+&ldquo;Even Haig refused at first to believe it. Nobody
+knows whether it was deliberate or accidental. It seems
+that &lsquo;Red&rsquo; Davis, who works for Toumine, was taking
+a load of hay to Lake Cobalt. He&rsquo;d stopped just beyond
+the junction of the main road and Haig&rsquo;s to fix the
+harness or something, when he heard a furious galloping
+in Haig&rsquo;s road. He looked&ndash;&ndash;and Sunnysides must
+have been something worth seeing, as he came storming
+down on the boy, with red eyes and foaming lips, the
+bridle reins dangling at his knees, and the stirrups flying.
+&lsquo;Red&rsquo; had never seen him, but he&rsquo;d heard a lot,
+and he jumped behind the wagon as if the devil was after
+him. But the clatter of hoofs ceased suddenly, and the
+boy peered around the hay to see what had happened.
+There was Sunnysides, just at the junction, with his
+head high, snorting and sniffing, first in the direction of
+the wagon, and then the other way up the road. With a
+characteristic boyish burst of daring or deviltry, &lsquo;Red&rsquo;
+leaped out from his shelter, and yelled. The horse
+leaped into the air, let out a wild neigh, and bolted up
+the road toward the post-office.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_208' name='page_208'></a>208</span></div>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;Red&rsquo; watched him until he had disappeared, and
+then drove on. It must have been half an hour later
+that he heard more mad galloping behind him. He
+turned to look, and there came Haig, riding like all
+fury.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;Have you seen a horse?&rsquo; he yelled as he reined up
+alongside the wagon.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;Well I just guess!&rsquo; said the boy. &lsquo;Sunnysides.
+How did he&ndash;&ndash;?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;How was the saddle&ndash;&ndash;loose or not?&rsquo; asked Haig.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;No, it hadn&rsquo;t turned&ndash;&ndash;if that&rsquo;s what&ndash;&ndash;&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;Thank you!&rsquo; replied Haig, starting on.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;Wait!&rsquo; the boy shouted. &lsquo;He ain&rsquo;t gone that
+way!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;What?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;I say, he ain&rsquo;t gone that way.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Haig stared at him suspiciously. Was the boy trying
+to trick him, in emulation of his elders? He was
+about to ride on, disdaining to heed him, when something
+in the boy&rsquo;s honest face struck his attention.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;Are you dreaming?&rsquo; he cried.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;No, I ain&rsquo;t!&rsquo; retorted Davis, deeply offended.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;Where did he go then?&rsquo; demanded Haig.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;Yander,&rsquo; answered &lsquo;Red.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Haig was incredulous.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;It&rsquo;s the truth!&rsquo; protested the boy. And then he
+told Haig what he had seen.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;But how in hell&ndash;&ndash;&rsquo; Haig began.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Then suddenly it came to him.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;Thunder Mountain!&rsquo; he cried. Then, half to
+himself: &lsquo;The trail drops down from Thunder Mountain&ndash;&ndash;somewhere&ndash;&ndash;into
+the Black Lake country, and
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_209' name='page_209'></a>209</span>
+then&ndash;&ndash;over the Sangre de Cristo is the San Luis. <i>But
+how does he know that?</i>&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;He knows a lot, he does!&rsquo; said &lsquo;Red.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Then Haig was off, flinging back &lsquo;Thank you!&rsquo; at
+the boy. But he took the precaution to confirm &lsquo;Red&rsquo;s&rsquo;
+story at the post-office. Thompson himself had seen
+Sunnysides, still going like the wind. Tom Banks came
+in a little later with news of the outlaw well up the road
+toward Norton&rsquo;s, and Haig after him. So there&rsquo;s no
+doubt the way they&rsquo;ve gone. But it&rsquo;s a losing game if
+Sunnysides can keep up the speed he was hitting when
+he was last seen.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;A losing game!&rdquo; She, better than anybody else in
+the Park, knew what that meant. She rose slowly, and
+looked across the Park at Thunder Mountain, now lost
+among the clouds. No, not quite; for through a rift she
+was just able to make out the timber line on the mountain&rsquo;s
+jutting shoulder. Above that she knew the bleak
+rocks rose sheer to the bald head that was battered by
+tempests, seared by lightning, swept smooth by the winds
+that never ceased.</p>
+<p>So this was the message! This was what Thunder
+Mountain had said to her! This was the answer to her
+questions! Day after day she had studied it, when
+storms gathered on that frowning head, when vapors
+made a smudge there in the midst of the glittering assemblage
+of the peaks, and when, for a meager hour,
+once in a while, the summit stood clear in the sunshine,
+as if the tortured mountain, condemned to everlasting
+punishment, had been given a brief reprieve.</p>
+<p>Now, at last, she understood. Somewhere on that
+evil trail was Philip. He could never cross Thunder
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_210' name='page_210'></a>210</span>
+Mountain! Sunnysides might, perhaps; but he&ndash;&ndash;he
+had tried, and failed. Others had tried, and&ndash;&ndash;died
+for it. But he would try again; she knew how desperately
+he would throw himself upon that fatal head.
+And then? It was the end!</p>
+<p>But she must know. She could not stay there.</p>
+<p>She started down the hill, running; and Smythe followed
+her in amazement and alarm. He did not like
+that last look on her face.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Wait!&rdquo; he called, in a voice that for once rang with
+authority.</p>
+<p>She stopped, and let him overtake her.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What are you doing?&rdquo; he demanded.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m going to Murray&rsquo;s&ndash;&ndash;for news,&rdquo; she answered.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No!&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s madness.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s necessary,&rdquo; she rejoined. &ldquo;And there&rsquo;s no
+danger.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;How do you know?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I met Mrs. Murray once at the post-office. She
+talked to me about Murray&rsquo;s ranch&ndash;&ndash;it&rsquo;s in a gulch
+just below timber line. She asked me to come and visit
+her&ndash;&ndash;and I&rsquo;m going.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Then I&rsquo;ll go with you!&rdquo; retorted Smythe.</p>
+<p>She looked at him intently, and smiled in a way that
+puzzled and disturbed him. But before he could make
+any considerable effort to analyze it, the smile had fled,
+and he was following Marion helplessly down the hill.</p>
+<p>At the steps of the veranda she paused, and waited
+for him.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll be out in a minute,&rdquo; she said; and left him
+seating himself uneasily, his perplexity plainly showing
+in his face.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_211' name='page_211'></a>211</span></div>
+<p>Marion opened the door, and faltered on the threshold.
+Seth was there with Claire; and she must face them
+both.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Mr. Smythe wants me to go for a ride with him,&rdquo;
+she said, advancing smilingly. &ldquo;We can start to-morrow
+on the shooting trip, can&rsquo;t we, Cousin Seth?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>She had not often called him &ldquo;Cousin Seth&rdquo; of late;
+and he was delighted.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; he said reflectively, &ldquo;I&rsquo;d rather planned
+starting to-day, but if to-morrow suits you better it&rsquo;s all
+right, Marion. Go along with your young man!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Claire was studying her anxiously, and Marion hastened
+to disarm her.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Thank you, Seth!&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;You see, I&rsquo;m not
+feeling quite myself this morning&ndash;&ndash;such a night I had!
+A short ride will be about all I&rsquo;m good for. I&rsquo;ll feel
+better to-morrow.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, then, dear,&rdquo; said Claire, &ldquo;you&rsquo;ll not be gone
+long, will you?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t worry!&rdquo; was the evasive reply. &ldquo;Mr.
+Smythe will take good care of me.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>On that she kissed Claire, nodded brightly to Huntington,
+and hurried away. Almost running in her eagerness,
+she led the way to the stable, where two horses
+stood saddled, with rifles in leather cases hanging from
+the saddlebows, and bundles strapped behind. Smythe
+started to remove the gun from Tuesday&rsquo;s saddle.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No, leave it there!&rdquo; commanded Marion.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Certainly. But why?&rdquo; asked Smythe.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know,&rdquo; she replied. &ldquo;It just occurred to
+me.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But the bundle? You won&rsquo;t need that.&rdquo;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_212' name='page_212'></a>212</span></div>
+<p>&ldquo;No. But yes&ndash;&ndash;leave it! It&rsquo;s not very big.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Smythe looked at her keenly, and with a vague suspicion;
+but there was no confusion in her face or manner.
+She was, in fact, not thinking of the bundle or the gun;
+or if she thought of them&ndash;&ndash;Such rigid instruments
+as words, worn blunt with usage and misuse, are quite
+inadequate to describe the faint and fugitive character
+of that thought,&ndash;&ndash;the idea still in its inception, inchoate,
+embryo. She was going to Murray&rsquo;s for news of
+Philip Haig; and all beyond that purpose was&ndash;&ndash;beyond.</p>
+<p>Smythe was not satisfied, but he could say no more;
+for Marion was already mounting Tuesday, and he
+could only follow.</p>
+<p>At the edge of the little wood below the ranch house
+Marion turned in the saddle, and saw Claire standing in
+the doorway. She waved her hand, and Claire waved
+hers in response; and then the trees came between them,
+as they had done a hundred times that summer. But
+now a lump rose in Marion&rsquo;s throat. Dear Claire!
+She had been so good to her!</p>
+<p>They emerged from the woods, and Marion spurred
+Tuesday to the gallop, and Smythe came galloping behind.
+For some distance down the valley she made a
+point of keeping well ahead of him, by this means avoiding
+conversation, for which she was not prepared. Her
+eyes continually sought the dark, gaunt mass of rock
+that was then, little by little, breaking through the reek
+on Thunder Mountain. Philip would be up there soon.
+He had&ndash;&ndash;how many hours the start of her? She
+checked Tuesday&rsquo;s gait, and let Smythe come up beside
+her.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_213' name='page_213'></a>213</span></div>
+<p>&ldquo;What time was it when he passed the post-office?&rdquo;
+she asked.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;About eight o&rsquo;clock.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>And now it was almost noon! She spurred her pony
+on.</p>
+<p>They turned the corner at Thompson&rsquo;s, galloping, and
+caught a glimpse of Mrs. Thompson in the doorway,
+with a look of wonder on her face. Two miles beyond
+they swerved without lessening their speed into a less-traveled
+road that presently was winding in and out
+among the timber, which opened at the end of another
+mile, and showed them Norton&rsquo;s ranch in its sheltered
+valley among the foothills. It was from Norton&rsquo;s, or
+near it, that the last word had come of Haig and Sunnysides;
+so there was no need to stop for confirmation of
+their direction. The valley narrowed to a gulch, and
+the forest came down on either side, and the road ahead
+of them was swallowed up in shade.</p>
+<p>Here, as if at the entrance to some unknown (for she
+had never been past Norton&rsquo;s, in all her rides about the
+Park), her purpose required that Marion should rid
+herself of Smythe. Moreover, there was Claire to be
+thought of; and she did not want Huntington to be
+riding up the trail after her that night.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Now, Mr. Smythe,&rdquo; she said, reining up in the first
+shadow of the woods, &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve something for you to do
+for me.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What is it?&rdquo; he asked in surprise.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I want you to leave me now, and take a message to
+Mrs. Huntington.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But I can&rsquo;t&ndash;&ndash;leave you.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, you must.&rdquo;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_214' name='page_214'></a>214</span></div>
+<p>&ldquo;But you&rsquo;re not going on alone!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m not afraid. I&rsquo;ve got my rifle. Besides, I&rsquo;ll be
+at Murray&rsquo;s before dark, and there, as you know, I shall
+be in good hands. But Claire will worry unless she
+knows where I am.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;She&rsquo;ll worry just the same.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No. She knows Mrs. Murray very well.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But&ndash;&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Good-by, Mr. Smythe!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>She reached her hand to him, and he took it reluctantly.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s all wrong, Miss Gaylord!&rdquo; he protested. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m
+convinced that I&rsquo;m acting like a fool. If anything happens
+to you, I&rsquo;ll&ndash;&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Nothing will happen to me. Good-by!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Smythe watched her until she was swallowed up by
+the woods; he looked at the pines piling up to the distant
+crests of the mountains, mass on mass, and solitude
+enfolding deeper solitude; he listened to the long, low,
+rolling murmur of the forest, sweet but menacing.
+Then, with the inward comment that he was several
+kinds of a blithering idiot, he turned and rode back
+toward the Park, evolving various interesting but futile
+theories to explain the fact that he, a man of undoubted
+intelligence, had always acted the part of the giddy fool
+in moments of emergency. And there was Huntington&ndash;&ndash;another
+fool! He could foresee a pretty dialogue
+between them.</p>
+<hr class='toprule' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_215' name='page_215'></a>215</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_XX_THE_TRAIL_HELD_TRUE' id='CHAPTER_XX_THE_TRAIL_HELD_TRUE'></a>
+<h2>CHAPTER XX</h2>
+<h3>&ldquo;THE TRAIL HELD TRUE&rdquo;</h3>
+</div>
+<p>The forest enveloped her, but she sheltered herself
+in its heart, and was glad of its soothing
+silence. The wind had died down to a rustling murmur
+in the highest foliage; through rifts in the dark-green
+canopy she caught glimpses of a cool blue sky;
+and there was a rooty sweetness in the air.</p>
+<p>Mile by mile the road, a mere track traveled by
+Murray&rsquo;s team at long intervals, grew rougher and
+more difficult. Soon it had abandoned the easy grades
+for the gulch, and climbed steep mountain sides, in a
+devious course through heavy timber, dropping to
+tumbling rivulets, climbing again to hang on the edges
+of high cliffs, dodging here and there among massive,
+outjutting rocks. Four hours she rode thus, mounting,
+ever mounting, with glimpses now and then of the
+forests massed green-black below, and glimpses even of
+the Park itself, around the shoulder of a hill,&ndash;&ndash;a patch
+of green and violet bright with sunshine. And then,
+when weariness had begun to weigh upon her, and as
+the shadows of the forest turned to glooms, she saw
+with a thrill of expectation that the road dipped ahead
+of her into a little gulch that lay hidden away in a cleft
+of the mountains. She must surely be near her destination
+now; and sure enough, she was riding presently
+along the bank of a roaring stream; beyond her was a
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_216' name='page_216'></a>216</span>
+small meadow of a brilliant green, and at the far edge
+of it a log cabin, with friendly smoke curling from
+the chimney.</p>
+<p>But she was surprised and disappointed. She had
+expected, on reaching Murray&rsquo;s, to see the stark head
+of Thunder Mountain towering above it, near and
+sheer. It was nowhere visible; not even the silvery
+peaks, its neighbors, were to be seen; there were only
+forests heaped on forests to the sky line. The trail,
+then, must be longer than she thought; and she seemed
+to be no closer to him than when she had studied the
+bald head of the mountain through the clouds.</p>
+<p>She was welcomed by Mrs. Murray with cordiality,
+but in some surprise. A stout and jovial person,
+whose spirits appeared not to have been lowered in the
+least degree by the loneliness of her surroundings, Mrs.
+Murray was a helpful hostess to Marion, who was
+now in a state of deep dejection. A little boy and his
+smaller sister, both very dirty but rugged and red-cheeked,
+played in the open space before the cabin.
+The week&rsquo;s washing was on the line, and from behind
+it, at the sound of a horse&rsquo;s hoof beats, came Mrs. Murray,
+staring in amazement. Wonders on wonders in
+that solitude, where nothing ever happened! First a
+runaway horse of unheard-of color, saddled and bridled,
+dashing past the cabin, and almost trampling the children
+at their play; then Philip Haig, with his set face
+and burning eyes, making inquiries, and asking for a
+bite to eat; and then&ndash;&ndash;&ndash;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well! If it ain&rsquo;t Miss Gaylord!&rdquo; cried Mrs.
+Murray, as she rushed to greet her. &ldquo;What in the
+world&ndash;&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_217' name='page_217'></a>217</span></div>
+<p>She paused on that, recalling suddenly what she had
+heard at Thompson&rsquo;s of Marion&rsquo;s nursing Haig back to
+life, and intuitively associating her appearance there
+with his. Marion saw the thought reflected in the
+woman&rsquo;s honest face, and knew that after all the happenings
+of the summer, and the gossip that had followed,
+her better course was to be frank with Mrs.
+Murray from the start. Besides she could not wait to
+ask her questions by any indirection.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Have you seen him?&rdquo; she demanded eagerly.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, he was here&ndash;&ndash;about noontime. The look on
+his face!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>She threw up her hands in a gesture that indicated
+the abandonment of all hope for such a man.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And Sunnysides?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Long before him. The critter almost run over my
+two babies, playin&rsquo; there before the door. Poor dears,
+scared almost out o&rsquo; their skins!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What did he say?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Nothin&rsquo;. That is, not much. About the horse
+first. My man told him it ain&rsquo;t no use tryin&rsquo; to ketch
+him, an&rsquo; it&rsquo;s foolish to try to cross Thunder Mountain.
+Murray&rsquo;s been here ten years, an&rsquo; ain&rsquo;t gone much
+further&rsquo;n the edge of it. Storms allus drove him back.
+An&rsquo; what&rsquo;s the use, when he&rsquo;s got wife an&rsquo; childer to
+look after? Of course Haig&ndash;&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What did he say then?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He says he c&rsquo;n cross if Sunnysides can, an&rsquo; if they
+can&rsquo;t they&rsquo;ll fight it out up there. My man asks why
+he didn&rsquo;t go &rsquo;round a safe way an&rsquo; wait for Sunnysides
+in the San Luis, if he thinks the horse&rsquo;s goin&rsquo;
+back home. Haig says he&rsquo;d made up his mind to cross
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_218' name='page_218'></a>218</span>
+Thunder Mountain some time, an&rsquo; now&rsquo;s as good a
+time as any. But it&rsquo;s&ndash;&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo; She was checked at last
+by the look of anguish on Marion&rsquo;s face. &ldquo;But you
+just come in. It&rsquo;s supper time, almost, an&rsquo; you must
+be right hungry. Murray&rsquo;ll be here soon, an&rsquo; he&rsquo;ll
+put up your horse.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>In the cabin there was to be seen at first just one big
+room, with two beds at one end, a table surrounded by
+chairs in the middle, and a stove in the midst of kettles
+and pans and tubs at the other. But presently
+Marion noticed a kind of balcony above the beds, and
+she learned later that this was the &ldquo;spare bedroom&rdquo;
+in which she would be stowed away for the night.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He was hungry too,&rdquo; Mrs. Murray went on, being
+careful, however, to confine herself to the material side
+of the subject. &ldquo;He ate some dinner, an&rsquo; then, after
+we give up tryin&rsquo; to stop him, Murray said he&rsquo;d got to
+take somethin&rsquo; with him to eat, an&rsquo; some blankets.
+He hadn&rsquo;t a thing, mind you, an&rsquo; didn&rsquo;t want to take
+nothin&rsquo;, but he did take a good-sized strip o&rsquo; bacon and
+some bread&ndash;&ndash;I&rsquo;d just did the bakin&rsquo;&ndash;&ndash;an&rsquo; a fryin&rsquo;-pan
+an&rsquo; matches an&rsquo; a knife. Murray done &rsquo;em up in a
+pair o&rsquo; blankets, an&rsquo; stuck in a leather coat with sheepskin
+inside, an&rsquo; hung a hatchet on his saddle. He&rsquo;ll
+need &rsquo;em&ndash;&ndash;if he gits across into the Black Lake country,
+which&rsquo;s worse some ways than Thunder Mountain&ndash;&ndash;forest&rsquo;t
+ain&rsquo;t never been touched, an&rsquo; bad lands, an&rsquo;&ndash;&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Murray&rsquo;s entrance interrupted this speech, which
+was becoming painful to her guest, in spite of the good
+woman&rsquo;s resolution to say nothing discouraging. Murray,
+a bearded, rough fellow in whose face shone good
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_219' name='page_219'></a>219</span>
+nature and contentment with the living he made out of
+his cows and chickens and few head of stock feeding in
+the mountain meadows, received a whispered hint, and
+obediently talked of other things than Haig and the
+runaway. They supped on bacon and eggs, with bread
+and butter and milk; and an hour afterwards Marion
+was tucked away in a comfortable bed in that queer
+&ldquo;spare bedroom&rdquo; up against the eaves of the log
+cabin.</p>
+<p>Exhaustion soon brought her sleep. But in the
+middle of the night she was awakened by a storm that
+swept high over the ranch house, scarcely touching it
+in its sheltered hollow, but shrieking and wailing
+among the rocks and pines. She sat up in her bed to
+listen! Thunder Mountain! Before her eyes there
+rose, out of the dark of the cabin, a vision of Philip
+prone among the rocks of that terrible summit, struck
+down by the wind, or felled by a thunderbolt, drenched
+with rain, and perishing of cold. There came, above
+the howling of the wind, a deafening crash of thunder
+that rolled away in sullen bellowing. She buried her
+face among the pillows to shut out the frightful sound;
+and at length, when the tumult had died away to recur
+no more, she lay weeping softly until sleep came again
+to her relief. She did not wake again till morning.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;How much farther up can I go?&rdquo; asked Marion at
+breakfast.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You don&rsquo;t mean&ndash;&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo; began Mrs. Murray in alarm.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No,&rdquo; replied Marion quickly. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t mean the
+top. But can&rsquo;t I ride near enough to see it?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You c&rsquo;n go to timber line safe enough,&rdquo; said Murray.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_220' name='page_220'></a>220</span></div>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, I&rsquo;ve been that far, but you mustn&rsquo;t think o&rsquo;
+goin&rsquo; further,&rdquo; added the woman, still suspicious.
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll tell you what! Murray&rsquo;ll go with you.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;By no means!&rdquo; Marion protested. &ldquo;It isn&rsquo;t
+necessary at all. I can follow trails well enough.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I wish you&rsquo;d let Murray go with you. He&rsquo;ll be
+glad to show you&ndash;&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No. Thank you just the same, Mrs. Murray,
+but&ndash;&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And you&rsquo;ll not try to go past timber line?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t worry about that, please! I know I could
+never go where men have failed. I&rsquo;ve heard all about
+Thunder Mountain, and I just want to see it, near.
+Besides&ndash;&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>She did not finish, but turned quickly away. This
+sign of emotion was not hidden from Mrs. Murray, and
+it heightened her anxiety. Lord only knew what the
+girl&rsquo;d try to do once she got out of their sight! But
+where the intellectual and argumentative Smythe had
+failed, what could be expected of these simple mountain
+folk, who for all their sturdy independence were
+not a little awed by the superior poise and distinction
+of their visitor? Moreover, Marion was at this moment
+entirely honest in her assurance that she intended
+to go no farther than timber line. If the idea
+that lay deep in the back of her mind had grown since
+its inception some hours before, it was yet formless and
+unrecognized; if her purpose now had her firmly
+gripped, she was as yet unconscious of it, obeying it
+subconsciously, while she told herself, as she told Mrs.
+Murray, that she wanted only to satisfy her aching
+heart by doing merely all that a girl could do. To
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_221' name='page_221'></a>221</span>
+make sure that Philip had not already failed&ndash;&ndash;that he
+had not been thrown back from the very edge of the
+fatal crest&ndash;&ndash;that he did not now lie somewhere on the
+last steep slope above timber line, where she might see
+and save him: this was the utmost of her design in
+setting out that morning against the protests of her
+hosts.</p>
+<p>Yielding at last, where she could avail no more, the
+ranchwife fixed up a simple luncheon of bread and
+butter and jam, which she tied in a little package at
+Marion&rsquo;s saddlebow. And then, with a final word of
+warning that she must stop at timber line, an&rsquo; be back
+at the house &rsquo;fore dark, or she, Mrs. Murray, would be
+wild, and he, Murray, would have to go searching for
+her, the good woman let her go, and waved a fat farewell
+to her until Marion was out of sight among the
+trees.</p>
+<p>Once more the forest enfolded her. Though the
+wagon road ended at Murray&rsquo;s, the trail was still for
+some distance plainly marked, and offered few difficulties.
+Even when it began to be less distinct she was
+not alarmed. Smythe had told her, and Murray had
+confirmed his description, that Thunder Mountain was
+not formidable as far as the foot of the final scarp.
+Seth had taught her something of the lore of trails, and
+she was confident that she would be able to find her way
+even if the underfoot marks should fail. There would
+be blazes on trees, and broken limbs and twigs, and
+many subtle signs that she now sought to marshal in
+her mind against a possible perplexity. With eyes
+alert, she rode slowly and resolutely on, ever higher
+and higher, hour after hour, most of the time through
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_222' name='page_222'></a>222</span>
+dense woods, but now and then across a rocky slope, or
+down into a shallow gulch, and out again. By imperceptible
+degrees the trail grew fainter; and once it
+failed her utterly, in a small open space in the woods.</p>
+<p>For a moment she was on the very point of panic;
+the forest seemed to be closing in on her with sudden
+malignity; and the terror of Thunder Mountain held
+her in its cold grip. But desperation called up her
+courage. She walked Tuesday in an ever-widening
+circle around the spot where she had lost the trail, with
+her heart almost still, and her eyes straining at every
+tree as it came within her vision. Where? Where?
+Would there be no more blazes, no more broken limbs,
+no more prints of hoofs on the mossy earth? Had she
+left the trail farther back than she had thought? And
+would she wander over all the vast bosom of the mountain
+until she fell from the saddle, and knew no more?</p>
+<p>It was a real peril, and one that might have had a
+tragic termination as easily as a happy one,&ndash;&ndash;more
+easily, indeed, if she had lost her head. But something
+strong within her kept her senses keen; and suddenly
+she broke out in a cry of joy and triumph that
+went echoing down the forest aisles. There, on a
+patriarchal pine, though almost obliterated by time and
+weather, was the blaze in the bark that told her the
+trail ran at the base of that solid trunk. She halted
+Tuesday there&ndash;&ndash;and faced a new difficulty: in her
+many circlings she had lost the general direction in
+which she had been riding. The trail was under her
+horse&rsquo;s hoofs; but which way should she go? There
+appeared to be no ascent the one way or the other, and
+no slope on either side.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_223' name='page_223'></a>223</span></div>
+<p>She solved the problem by following the trail regardless
+of direction until she was able to discover in
+the black mold the fresh print of a horse&rsquo;s hoof&ndash;&ndash;an
+unshod hoof this was, and the print certainly no older
+than yesterday. Without serious misgivings now, she
+rode on, and in a few minutes the trail mounted again
+with a sharpness sufficient to remove the last of her
+doubts.</p>
+<p>Well, she was a woodsman now, and would fear no
+more. But she took the precaution to banish all
+thoughts excepting those necessary to the task in hand.
+The woods themselves offered countless temptations to
+distraction. They were alive. Grouse moved among
+the branches of the trees; small birds of a very silent
+habit fluttered across the trail; and once a deer slipped
+away through a dim and leafy avenue. In moist
+places flowers of tender hues still bloomed as if to shame
+the autumn browns of the underbrush. And then she
+emerged from the soft shades of the green woods into
+one of the most melancholy of mountain places, a great
+patch of burnt timber. For surely half an hour she
+rode through a veritable cemetery of pines, among multitudes
+of tall straight shafts from which the flames
+had licked the foliage and stripped the limbs, and from
+which the rains and snows and winds of winter had
+washed the charred bark until the boles stood white and
+ghastly, infinitely sad and still. No life was here, no
+flutter or call or hum of living creatures; and the
+silence was like a menace. She began to cast apprehensive
+glances around her, and was glad to the very
+core of her when the forest gradually greened again,
+and she was in the cool and friendly shade.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_224' name='page_224'></a>224</span></div>
+<p>Yet another terrifying experience awaited her,&ndash;&ndash;not
+terrifying in the sense of any peril to herself so
+much as in its vivid suggestion of peril to Philip Haig.
+Without warning there came a prodigious crash of
+thunder; very near, it seemed. The whole earth
+rocked and shook, she fancied, under that smashing
+blow, and thereupon a savage bellowing filled the vault
+of heaven, and the forest quivered with the reverberations.
+Hard on the first blow fell another; and then
+the strokes descended in a swift and terrible succession,
+until there was one continuous and deafening
+roar like nothing she had ever heard or imagined. By
+this she knew that she was now close up under the
+frowning battlement of Thunder Mountain; and that a
+storm had burst upon that shelterless and unpitied head,
+with a malevolent timeliness befitting its ill repute.
+And somewhere in the midst of that destroying fury
+was Philip Haig!</p>
+<p>The blue tracery of sky was blotted out; the forest
+became dark as night; the tree tops heaved and thrashed
+about in the wind that rushed down the mountain side.
+On the heels of the wind came a drenching rain, and
+Marion took what refuge was offered close to the trunk
+of a huge pine, which shook and shivered as if it too
+had nerves that were unstrung by all this tumult.</p>
+<p>It passed, and the sky cleared with what to her seemed
+extraordinary swiftness. And when she rode out again
+to pick up the trail, the air was indescribably fresh and
+exhilarating, and the sun was soon filtering through the
+foliage upon her pathway.</p>
+<p>The trail grew more precipitous, its surroundings
+more rugged and wild. Rocks took the place of the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_225' name='page_225'></a>225</span>
+soft, mossy soil, and the forest thinned and shrank.
+Where there had been monarchs in their majesty she
+rode now among stunted pines and dwarf oaks no
+higher than her head. And soon she was at timber
+line, where the beaten and disheartened trees grew
+downward, or curled along the earth like serpents, or
+spread out in fantastic, unnatural, and monstrous
+shapes.</p>
+<p>And there at last towered the bald head of Thunder
+Mountain. She could not see, of course, the flat top
+itself. Before her rose a precipitous slope, covered
+with loose stones and d&eacute;bris, and ending in a jagged
+line of rock against the sky, dull gray against the blue.
+Thin grass grew yet some distance up the slope; and
+then it was bare of vegetation, bare of soil, with a
+wavering faint line marking where life ended and death
+began.</p>
+<p>She halted near the last gnome-tree, and stared at
+the desolate slope and the forbidding sky line. This
+was the end of her journey; and she knew no more than
+she could have known back there in the Park. The
+mountain was still the sphinx, telling her nothing,
+though she had come to it at last after months of questioning,
+with one question on her lips. Where was
+Philip? Perhaps just yonder, just beyond that sharp-raised
+barrier. From that crest, no doubt, the whole
+expanse of the summit would be visible. And how
+could she go back alone, without being able to assure
+herself forever that she had done her best?</p>
+<p>She studied the slope. From where she stood to the
+gray sky line the distance was perhaps seven hundred
+feet. But the trail, which she could discern faintly
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_226' name='page_226'></a>226</span>
+marked among the loose and sliding stones, traveled
+five or six times that distance in its zigzag course.
+Fascinated, her eyes followed it in and out until its
+dim line vanished high up in the gray-brown uniformity
+of the steep ascent. From this she looked up
+eagerly at the sky. It was a clear steel-blue; the sun
+shone bright on the expanse of stone; a vigorous but
+not violent breeze came from around the distant curve
+of the slope. It seemed incredible, considering all
+that she had heard, and all that she had imagined.
+The mountain, she knew, had its brief and infrequent
+hours of quiet, but she had pictured it as terrifying
+even in its calm. Now it was formidable and mysterious,
+and she could not forget its menace; but it was
+not terrible. On top, perhaps&ndash;&ndash;&ndash;</p>
+<p>She urged Tuesday forward. The trail went far
+out to the right at an easy gradient, turned sharply,
+and came back to reach out as far to the left. It was
+more difficult than Marion had imagined, for the reason
+that the loose stones afforded an ill footing for the
+pony, which slipped and slid and stumbled, often going
+to his knees, and more than once barely avoiding a fall
+that would have sent horse and rider rolling down to
+be caught by the network of stunted trees. But Tuesday
+was sure of foot; and so, with muscles quivering
+under the strain, and his eyes bulging with anxiety
+and fear, he climbed up and up without disaster, while
+Marion leaned far forward in the saddle, her nerves
+on edge, her eyes alert, and her heart pounding wildly,
+as much from excitement as from its struggle with that
+high altitude.</p>
+<p>How long that climb endured she never knew; the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_227' name='page_227'></a>227</span>
+actual minutes seemed to her as hours, their total an
+eternity. But at last, trembling and sweating, Tuesday
+stood on a narrow shelf of granite, with the long
+slope behind, and a wall of rock ahead. While the
+pony rested, Marion looked to left and right for the
+continuation of the trail. She could not see it, but
+knew there should be an opening somewhere in the wall
+that rose sheer some twenty-five or thirty feet above
+her head. Slowly riding along the platform, searching
+for a sign, the wall at her left, and the declivity at
+her right, she came to a place where the barrier curved
+inward, and was also hollowed out at its base, so that a
+shallow cave (speaking loosely) was formed, where
+some sort of shelter might have been found from a
+storm. This possibility flashed into Marion&rsquo;s mind,
+for she could not forget the mountain and its ways.
+She dismounted to look into the cave, and at two steps
+started forward with a cry.</p>
+<p>On the rocky floor was a small heap of ashes and
+charred ends of sticks. Kneeling quickly, she tore off
+a glove, and thrust her fingers into the ashes. They
+were warm! And near the ashes she discovered the
+rind of a thin slice of bacon, and a few crumbs of
+bread. Philip had passed Murray&rsquo;s soon after midday;
+he would have reached the cave, then, before
+night; and so he had slept there, and risen at dawn,
+and eaten his meagre breakfast, and ridden on.</p>
+<p>She leaped to her feet, ran out and mounted her
+pony, and rode forward along the platform, searching
+for the trail.</p>
+<hr class='toprule' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_228' name='page_228'></a>228</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_XXI_IN_THE_HOLLOW_OF_THE_STORM' id='CHAPTER_XXI_IN_THE_HOLLOW_OF_THE_STORM'></a>
+<h2>CHAPTER XXI</h2>
+<h3>IN THE HOLLOW OF THE STORM</h3>
+</div>
+<p>Haig arrived at timber line about an hour before
+nightfall. On the long trail he had considered
+thoroughly all the chances of his case, and was prepared
+to undergo delays and disappointments. He
+knew Thunder Mountain. Even without reckoning on
+storms (and the vapors were at that moment settling
+down on the frowning battlement), it were foolhardiness,
+or worse, to attempt the passage of the mountain
+in the night. Then he remembered the shallow cave
+that he had noticed on his previous visit to the summit;
+and his plans were made.</p>
+<p>He gathered an armful of dry sticks and shreds of
+bark, climbed the treacherous slope as Marion did some
+hours later, and settled himself in the half-shelter of
+the cave to await the morning. A rasher of bacon, a
+slice of bread, and a pipe of tobacco refreshed him;
+and he rolled himself in his blankets, and went to sleep.
+Like Marion in the &ldquo;spare bedroom&rdquo; far below, he
+was awakened in the night by the savage hammerings
+of the storm. The very rocks beneath him seemed to
+be jarred by that cannonade; the wind, howling around
+the cliff, threatened to drag him out of his cave; and
+the rain fell in torrents on the platform, almost flooding
+his stone bed. But he turned over in his blankets,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_229' name='page_229'></a>229</span>
+and hoped the mountain would &ldquo;keep it up&rdquo; all night.
+Even Sunnysides would be halted by a storm like that.</p>
+<p>He arose at the first sign of dawn, hurried through
+his scant and salty breakfast, quenched his thirst with
+rain water scooped out of depressions in the rock, and
+started on. Knowing the trail at this point, he rode
+straight out along the platform, and came in half a
+minute to the spot where the wall of rock was broken
+down into a clutter of d&eacute;bris, in width some forty feet.
+Up through this litter of disintegrated granite the trail
+lurched with many twists and turns, and emerged at
+last upon one of the lower levels of the summit.</p>
+<p>Trixy was winded, and for a moment Haig rested
+her, while he surveyed the scene. And in the thrill of
+that moment, facing the undertaking in which he had
+once failed, he all but forgot Sunnysides. The wind
+was low, and scarcely more difficult to meet than a stiff
+blow in the Park; but aside from that he saw little encouraging
+in the prospect. Behind him, it was true,
+the forests and all the hills and valleys lay clear in the
+morning light, with just a thin mist clinging in the
+gulches; and around him on all sides but one the sharp
+peaks stood up shining white in the first rays of the
+sun. But in front of him gray vapors, not yet dense
+enough to be described as clouds, came swirling and
+tumbling toward him across the stone-littered surface
+of the flat. Unless the sun should dissipate those
+vapors&ndash;&ndash;He shrugged his shoulders, and rode on.</p>
+<p>Almost fourteen thousand feet above the level of the
+sea, the bald head of Thunder Mountain, stripped as it
+has been of its ennobling peak, needs only three or four
+hundred feet to be as high as the snow-clad summits on
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_230' name='page_230'></a>230</span>
+each side. Seen from afar, that bare head appears to
+be as flat and smooth as a table, but in reality its entire
+area, roughly circular in outline, and something more
+than three miles in its largest diameter, is broken up
+into terraces, into slopes and hillocks, into hollows and
+mounds, all strewn with, bowlders and loose stones, with
+here and there uprearing rocks of fantastic and suggestive
+shapes. There is no life there,&ndash;&ndash;no birds, no
+conies or chipmunks that inhabit most high places of
+these mountains; no flowers, no grass, no sign of vegetation;
+nothing but granite. The trail runs sometimes
+plainly across level reaches of loose stones, sometimes
+over long smooth surfaces of rock, sometimes in and out
+among wildernesses of shattered and tumbled fragments
+of the mountain&rsquo;s blasted head. At varying intervals,
+particularly in its more difficult stages, it is marked by
+small pyramids of stones, and by crosses cut crudely in
+the rock. Care must be taken not to miss one of these
+marks; for the trail, in avoiding inaccessible heaps of
+granite, goes in places perilously near the edge of the
+summit, which falls away in more than one known
+precipice a thousand feet to the unknown gulch below.</p>
+<p>The wind was cold, and Haig felt that its strength
+was steadily increasing, though it yet blew fitfully.
+He made the second level without mishap, but was
+brought to a momentary standstill there by the fiercer
+rush of wind on the higher terrace. It seemed strange,
+at first thought, that the wind had not blown away the
+vapors that now enveloped him; but he saw presently
+that it was not blowing across the mountain, but rather
+in a circular, whirlwind motion that gradually became
+more violent. The terrace he now crossed was as
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_231' name='page_231'></a>231</span>
+smooth as a floor, and he found his way only by means
+of the crosses carved in the rocks beneath his feet.
+Then the trail dropped suddenly into a shallow trough;
+mounted to another field of crumbled stones; and rose
+unevenly to a barrier that he remembered with a pang
+of chagrin. This was what at the first glance would
+have appeared to be a solid and insurmountable wall of
+rock, perhaps fifteen feet in height, and stretching
+away to the very edge of the plateau at his right, and to
+a wilderness of granite on the left. But directly ahead
+of him the wall was cleft, and there was a narrow pathway
+climbing up between two huge rocks that had been
+carved by the elements into shapes bearing a fanciful
+resemblance to human figures. These were the Twin
+Sisters.</p>
+<p>Here Haig had been caught by a storm that hurled
+him back defeated; and he had, moreover, narrowly
+escaped a worse thing than mere defeat; for the wind
+had carried him off the trail, and almost to the brink
+of the chasm that yawned some hundred yards away.
+Now, remembering that experience, he spurred Trixy
+forward to take the aperture in the wall before the
+wind should suddenly become insupportable; and this
+time he was more fortunate. The pony leaped and
+clambered up the slippery path, and at the exit was
+caught by a blast that hurled and pinned her, as if she
+had been no heavier than a butterfly, against the base
+of the righthand towering figure. For some seconds
+neither horse nor man was able to move from that fixed
+position, where the wind flattened them against the
+rock. Then it swerved sharply, flung them against
+the other Sister with such force that Haig&rsquo;s leg was
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_232' name='page_232'></a>232</span>
+stunned and bruised, and finally released them with a
+shriek that sounded like a cry of disappointed rage.
+Trixy plunged forward with a snort, and Haig saw that
+the trail was again plain across another field of scattered
+stones.</p>
+<p>Now, thrilled by this victory, he urged the pony onward
+at all possible speed toward the worst of all the
+perils of the mountain. The stone field was succeeded
+by a series of mounds and hollows, and this by a second
+slippery floor; and then he mounted the ridge that terminated
+in the Devil&rsquo;s Chair. Here was the highest
+point attained by the trail: a flat rock measuring perhaps
+twenty yards one way, and a little less the other,
+lifted high above the surrounding slopes, and having
+(hence its name) a huge back formed by the abrupt
+termination of the ridge. From the chair the rock
+dipped in a kind of hollow like a chute, worn smooth
+by the winds and rains; and everything that ever fell
+into that chute was swallowed by the chasm of unplumbed
+and unestimated depth. Sometimes the wind
+blew up through the chute across the Devil&rsquo;s Chair;
+sometimes it blew down through it into the chasm. It
+was blowing out when Parker reached the chair, and
+he was hurled back down, the slope three times before
+he acknowledged his defeat; it was blowing in when the
+three members of the English party were sucked down
+into the chasm.</p>
+<p>Haig could have cried aloud the joy that ran through
+him, when, having spurred Trixy up the steep ascent
+to a footing on the Devil&rsquo;s Chair, he found that almost
+a perfect calm reigned there, due to some sudden shift
+in the currents of the air.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_233' name='page_233'></a>233</span></div>
+<p>&ldquo;Quick, Trixy! On!&rdquo; he cried.</p>
+<p>The horse bounded across the platform, slid and
+stumbled down the other side, and was up again, leaping
+forward, and a little to the left, where there was
+firmer going over another field of stones. And now at
+length, to Haig&rsquo;s relief, the trail bent sharply in toward
+the middle of the plateau, and thus away from
+the peril of the chasms.</p>
+<p>But his elation was short-lived. If Thunder Mountain
+had admitted him between the Twin Sisters, and
+spared him at the Devil&rsquo;s Chair, it was only to hurl
+upon him its accumulated fury farther on. Engrossed
+in the endless difficulties of the trail, he had not observed
+the stealthy and insidious change that was taking
+place in the atmosphere until it had advanced far
+toward its climax. The un-looked for calm, so opportune,
+was but a pause before an outburst of elemental
+rage. The vapors lifted, and hung in still masses a
+few feet above the earth. Haig picked his way along
+in a strange, weird, yellowish light, in a stillness that
+was all the more impressive by contrast with the recent
+howling and hammering of the wind. There was not
+a faintest puff of air on his cheek, and not a sound
+except the click of Trixy&rsquo;s feet among the stones, and
+his own hurried breathing. All else seemed to have
+paused, expectant, waiting.</p>
+<p>It did not come as storms come in the valley, or on
+the plain, or among the hills; not even as they come in
+the mountains. It did not come from north, or east,
+or west, or south, or from any known horizon; it had
+no sensible direction; it was there. Out of the portentous
+hush (not into it) there came first a whisper,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_234' name='page_234'></a>234</span>
+something low and malevolent; then a singular moaning
+sound, incomparably dismal and hollow and pervasive.
+Haig moved his head from side to side, endeavoring
+to trace it&ndash;&ndash;before, behind, above&ndash;&ndash;he
+knew not where. The moaning murmur grew, and still
+there was no perceptible movement in the air; it rose
+whining up, up, up the scale until at last it was a shrill,
+demoniacal shriek. And then, out of the darkening
+mists, it leaped upon him.</p>
+<p>In this whirling, wicked, wondrous thing there was
+no orderly and recognizable succession of phenomena,
+such as wind and lightning and rain. These came all
+in one swoop, all in one frightful blend. It was black,
+and it was bright. The lightning came not from the
+sky, discharging its bolts to earth; it was on the very
+surface of the plateau. It flamed and crackled on uplifted
+rocks; it ran hissing like fiery serpents among
+the scattered stones; it buzzed and exploded in the
+very face of Haig, and under the pony&rsquo;s belly. If he
+had been caught in a burning storehouse of fireworks&ndash;&ndash;rockets,
+Roman candles, pinwheels, and all the ingenious
+products of the pyrotechnician&ndash;&ndash;the experience
+might have been like this, only a thousand times less
+terrifying. He dodged and ducked, and threw up his
+hands to shield his face, expecting instantly that one of
+those exploding things would make an end of him.</p>
+<p>Then there were other horrors to be endured. The
+din became incessant. Simultaneous with the hiss and
+crackle and crack of the lightning there was a continuous
+deafening detonation in the air above him, crash
+on crash and roar on roar. The terrors of the first
+few seconds had been chiefly those felt and heard. But
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_235' name='page_235'></a>235</span>
+the wind had steadily increased in violence. It did
+not blow against him, bowling him over, but whirled
+around him with a speed that was every instant accelerated.
+He felt that he had no weight. He seemed
+about to be lifted into the vortex of the storm, to be
+flung far out into space.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Down, girl! Down!&rdquo; he tried to shout.</p>
+<p>But there was no sound from his lips. He felt the
+pony stiffening under him, bracing herself stiff-legged
+on the stones; and he knew that she shared his fear.
+And all this time the rain beat down upon him, in
+lead-like sheets, with intermittent bombardments of
+hailstones. It occurred to him to wonder dully which
+would win&ndash;&ndash;the wind that sought to whirl him up
+into the sky, or the rain that was for beating him to
+earth, or the lightning that would burn him to cinders.
+Then thought left him, and his last impression was of
+being torn limb from limb, and atom from atom, in
+excruciating pain.</p>
+<p>He was roused at length to the consciousness of having
+been lifted and hurled; and found himself prostrate
+on the ground, face downward, with the rain
+flooding him. Trixy lay at his side, flat like himself,
+her head stretched out among the stones. They seemed
+to lie in a vacuum, in the very hollow of the storm.
+Around them the clatter, the clang and the uproar
+were even more terrifying than before because they
+were now separated from these noises, no longer a part
+of them. All was blackness, shot through with fire.
+Haig was no more tortured in his body, except for the
+sense of being suffocated. He seemed to inhale raw
+ozone; the air fairly stank with the odors of decomposition;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_236' name='page_236'></a>236</span>
+the saliva in his mouth had a peculiar pungent
+and disagreeable taste. He gasped and fought
+for breath.</p>
+<p>Such reason as was left to him told him that this
+was the end of all. At any instant something would
+flash out of that wall of blackness, and destroy him
+with a blow. His spirit rose exultantly to meet and
+welcome it; he rejoiced in such a death, slain by the
+elements, on the roof of the world, alone, unseen; it
+was a glorious exit, the finish he had sought for years
+on years, his heart&rsquo;s desire. Triumphant and defiant,
+he tried to roar back at the thunder, to outscream the
+wind, to face the lightning with undimmed eyes.</p>
+<p>There came a blinding flash, exceeding in brightness
+anything he had yet experienced. But with it, to his
+amazement, there emerged from the blackness a vision
+that brought life back to him with a shocking thrill.
+For there, not ten paces distant, was Sunnysides.
+Only for an instant; and then all was again obscure.
+He must have been mistaken. It was only a figment of
+fancy, a creation of his tortured brain, a phenomenon
+associated with his passing from life to death. And
+yet he waited, staring into the smothering void.</p>
+<p>Another flash of fire across the black&ndash;&ndash;and Sunnysides!
+But now the lightning, as if directed by some
+intelligence, became again continuous, its flashes joined
+in one spouting flame. And in the very midst of it
+stood the outlaw in his familiar attitude, with one forefoot
+slightly raised, his head high, his nostrils distended,
+his dark eyes filled with fire. There had never
+been anything so bright and beautiful. His golden
+hide gleamed with planetary splendor, like the mythical
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_237' name='page_237'></a>237</span>
+horses of the sun. This was The Horse, the golden
+epiphany of the brute, the answer to all of Haig&rsquo;s fears
+and resolutions. And in the very hour of his exit&ndash;&ndash;</p>
+<p>Rage rose again within him. Instinctively, for he
+was scarce capable of thought, he tried to reach his revolver.
+But his arms were leaden. His fingers
+touched the butt of the weapon, and stopped as if paralyzed.
+The horse wavered and danced before his eyes;
+there was a culminating detonation; he felt a terrific
+blow on his head. And he knew no more.</p>
+<hr class='toprule' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_238' name='page_238'></a>238</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_XXII_THE_NARROW_PASSAGE' id='CHAPTER_XXII_THE_NARROW_PASSAGE'></a>
+<h2>CHAPTER XXII</h2>
+<h3>THE NARROW PASSAGE</h3>
+</div>
+<p>Light came with unutterable mystery. Yet Haig
+lay for a moment waiting, mistrustful of the
+peace that encompassed him. Then he cautiously
+raised his head, and looked. Trixy stood near him,
+panting and wild-eyed. The whole surface of the
+plateau was glistening wet; a cold breeze poured over
+him, without violence; and the sky above him was as
+innocent and bright as a baby&rsquo;s smile.</p>
+<p>Where, then, was the storm? He moved his head
+painfully, and searched the horizon; and yonder,
+around the icy parapets of Silver Tip, with roll on roll
+of reverberations in its wake, the black storm was in
+full flight. His eyes followed it with a curious and
+exaggerated interest; for he had seen its birth, and
+tested its power, and it had given him a new experience.</p>
+<p>Presently he tried to rise, and found that his limbs
+were numb. His right arm ached to the tips of his
+fingers. His head swam, and he had difficulty in arranging
+his impressions in any sort of orderly succession,
+especially those in which Sunnysides participated.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I wonder how much of it really happened!&rdquo; he
+mused.</p>
+<p>Unexpectedly his eyes lighted on his revolver, where
+it lay among the stones at his side. Ah! It had
+burned his fingers. He picked it up, and examined it
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_239' name='page_239'></a>239</span>
+curiously. But none of the cartridges had been exploded.
+The gun, then, had been knocked out of his
+hand before he could lift and aim it; and the storm
+had taunted him with Sunnysides, and cheated him.
+No matter! The game was not yet up.</p>
+<p>He struggled to his feet, and stretched himself, and
+pounded his chest, which ached from his heavy breathing.
+Then his eyes sought the trail ahead, scanning
+the level spaces and the heaped-up masses of granite;
+and an instant later a cry escaped his lips. For there,
+perhaps half a mile away, and mounting rapidly a gray
+ridge of rock, his body outlined against the blue sky,
+was Sunnysides. It had been no vision, then, no figment
+of his tortured brain. But where had the horse
+been all this time, to have been caught in the same storm
+with his pursuer, despite his half-hour start, his greater
+speed, and the night that came between them? True,
+there had been a storm in the night; that might have
+delayed, but it should not have kept him. True, too,
+he might have lost the trail, and wandered over the
+plateau; but Haig could not have missed him, if he had
+been anywhere in sight before the storm revealed him.
+No, nothing could explain it; and there remained only
+one hypothesis, which was untenable, preposterous and
+mad. And yet it fascinated and held him. He had
+once said jocularly that Sunnysides was not a real horse
+at all; that he was a demon&ndash;&ndash;a spirit. Well, it was a
+real horse, right enough, that had crushed him, and
+thrown him again, and broken Bill Craven&rsquo;s leg, and
+fled; and that was a real horse yonder, outlined against
+the sky. If some devilish instinct in the brute, or
+some agent of Destiny, or mere fling of chance had
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_240' name='page_240'></a>240</span>
+held him on the plateau to tantalize and lead on his
+pursuer&ndash;&ndash;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Dreaming again!&rdquo; Haig muttered, with a wry
+smile, and yet with a vague uneasiness that he could
+not put down.</p>
+<p>But in another instant he had leaped to his horse,
+tested the cinches with trembling fingers, climbed stiffly
+into the saddle, and dug the spurs into Trixy&rsquo;s flanks.
+When he looked again toward the ridge, the outlaw had
+disappeared; but there was no ignis-fatuus trick in
+that; and the horse would be seen again when Haig
+too had topped the rise. For the trail was now leading
+him in a relatively straight line toward the exact
+spot where Sunnysides had vanished; and more assuring
+than all else, a very material and comforting proof
+that this was a real horse he followed, was the discovery
+he made halfway up the slope. There, among the
+stones, lay the outlaw&rsquo;s saddle. Clearly the runaway
+had only just now been able to shake it off, and its condition,
+bruised and cut and dirty, showed that Sunnysides
+had been put to some trouble to be rid of it, having
+doubtless rolled over and over on it in his efforts to be
+free. And there, too, was a plausible explanation of
+the fact that Sunnysides was not now far on the trail.</p>
+<p>From the top of the ridge, Haig saw the outlaw picking
+his way through a wilderness of rocks that had the
+grewsome aspect of a cemetery&ndash;&ndash;the graveyard of the
+gods. Following through this depressing scene, he lost
+sight of Sunnysides, and on emerging upon another
+floor-like expanse of solid stone he received a surprise
+that caused him to rein up Trixy with a jerk. The
+quarry was nowhere in sight, though Haig&rsquo;s position
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_241' name='page_241'></a>241</span>
+gave him a sweeping view of the flat ahead of him, even
+to the edge of the summit, now scarcely three quarters
+of a mile away. There was no possibility that the
+horse could have traversed that distance in the time
+Haig was passing through the &ldquo;cemetery;&rdquo; neither
+was there any place on that part of the plateau where it
+could be concealed.</p>
+<p>The trail itself solved the mystery. It did not lead
+straight on, as Haig had imagined; and he experienced
+some difficulty in finding it on the smooth floor, from
+which the elements had all but obliterated the crosses
+made by the pioneers. Then his astonishment was
+great to find that it turned at a sharp angle to the left,
+dropped sheer over the edge of the flat rock, coiled down
+a slope littered with d&eacute;bris to another field of loose
+stones, and in a quarter of a mile brought up at the
+brink of a cliff. Sunnysides, then, had crossed the
+summit, and was descending to whatever lay below.</p>
+<p>In ten minutes Haig himself was at the margin of
+the chasm; for little wider than a chasm was that deep
+and narrow gulch, far up the side of Thunder Mountain,
+into which he now looked in wonderment and perplexity.
+A thousand feet or more below him lay a
+tiny patch of meadow of a brilliant green, with a thread
+of water sparkling through it, and on all sides, excepting
+that nearest him, black forests encompassed it, and
+mounted dense to the timber line save where, at his
+right, the stream ran down through its gorge. There,
+evidently, would go the trail also, dropping into the
+Black Lake country, of evil reputation.</p>
+<p>But where now was the trail? He dismounted, and
+leaned over the edge of the precipice; and there he discovered
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_242' name='page_242'></a>242</span>
+that he had missed the exact point of departure
+by some fifteen yards, and that at this distance to his
+left there was a break in the sharp brink, where the
+trail fell off precipitately to a heap of broken stone
+and sand. The cliff had been shattered in some convulsion
+of nature, or loosened and disintegrated by the
+elements, and enormous masses of it had fallen into the
+gulch. These masses appeared to be in a state of instability,
+and it was not clear to Haig, from where he
+lay, how a trail could ever have been picked out among
+those jutting rocks and slides of d&eacute;bris, or how, once
+found, it could have remained intact on that shifting
+foundation. Was it possible that any living thing had
+ever made its way down (much less <i>up</i>) that steep and
+treacherous rubble heap?</p>
+<p>He was studying it incredulously, when Sunnysides
+suddenly resolved all doubts. From behind a projecting
+rock the horse came out on one of the many
+rough ledges that had been formed by lateral cleavage of
+the cliff in its fall. Hesitating a moment there, he
+plunged down a short declivity, and landed sprawling
+on another shelf perhaps twenty feet lower down, and
+somewhat to the right of the first, where he once more
+vanished from Haig&rsquo;s sight.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;All right!&rdquo; cried Haig. &ldquo;If you can do that we
+can. Eh, Trixy?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He mounted quickly, urged the reluctant mare to the
+break in the edge of the cliff, and forced her over. For
+some thirty feet the trail went down the face of the
+precipice, much like a fire escape on the wall of a tenement
+house, barely wide enough to accommodate horse
+and rider,&ndash;&ndash;so narrow, indeed, that Haig&rsquo;s left leg
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_243' name='page_243'></a>243</span>
+was scraped and bruised by hard contact with the stone.
+At the bottom of this incline, his amazement was great
+at finding a solid platform of rock, on which, he was
+able easily to turn and go down another incline underneath
+the first. Plainly all this was not the result of
+accident; the hands of men had been busy here; and
+picks and shovels had supplemented the work of nature.
+But below the next platform there certainly had been a
+secondary slide of rock, for the trail was nowhere discernible,
+though it should evidently have slipped down,
+at a greater angle from the cliff than before, to a third
+turning point on a shelf some forty feet away to the
+left. Here the d&eacute;bris was loose and fine, and with a
+little urging Trixy was induced to take the descent,
+carrying quantities of sand and stones with her as she
+slid and sprawled safely to the next goal.</p>
+<p>Thus they went, sometimes finding the trail plain
+over solid rock and hard-packed d&eacute;bris, sometimes slipping
+and scrambling among stones and sand, but always
+drawing nearer and nearer in a zigzag course,
+now easy and then difficult, to the green vale below.
+There were moments when Trixy was on her knees,
+moments when she was on her haunches, moments when
+she stood swaying above the pit, and moments when all
+traces of the trail had vanished. But somewhere below
+was Sunnysides.</p>
+<p>Far down the declivity, so near the valley that Haig
+was able to look across into the tops of the tallest pines,
+they came to what appeared to be the last of the rocky
+ledges. Having for some minutes seen nothing of the
+outlaw, Haig supposed that the runaway had already
+reached the meadow, and was by now on the trail
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_244' name='page_244'></a>244</span>
+through the forest. But just as Trixy&rsquo;s shod hoofs
+struck the platform with a clatter, Haig caught sight of
+Sunnysides far out on the narrow shelf. He was trotting
+briskly along, for the shelf was smooth and level.
+But, on a sudden he stopped, stood a moment with his
+head thrust forward and down, and then turned cautiously
+around, his four feet bunched together on the
+narrow footing.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What&rsquo;s up now?&rdquo; ejaculated Haig.</p>
+<p>And then he saw it. Twice before he had noted
+where a similar error might have been made, on other
+ledges farther up; and he himself had avoided them
+only by carefully studying the aspect of the declivity
+below him. Sunnysides had undoubtedly lost time
+through such mistakes; and now he was trapped. At
+the point where he stood, the shelf ended abruptly &ldquo;in
+the air&rdquo;; and between him and the exit at the other
+end of the platform was Haig. The trail had come
+down to about the middle of this platform, which was
+like an unrailed balcony, scarce three feet in width,
+with a high wall of rock on one side, and on the other
+a straight drop of twenty feet to a veritable chute of
+stones that terminated in a widespread litter of d&eacute;bris
+on the meadow.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Caught like a rat!&rdquo; cried Haig. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve got you
+now!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>But what could he do with him? His rope was useless
+on that meager footing, where there was barely
+room for his horse to stand, much less for Haig to swing
+a noose. And worse: if Sunnysides was trapped, so
+was his enemy; for the horse was already, through
+fright or belligerency, moving slowly toward Haig. In
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_245' name='page_245'></a>245</span>
+a flash it was clear to Haig that the outlaw meant to
+have it out with him then and there; and that there
+would be no time to turn Trixy, and find the outlet into
+the valley.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s too bad, but&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He drew his revolver, and waited. There was yet a
+chance, he thought, or hoped, that the horse would halt,
+and postpone the issue. He did not want to kill him;
+he had not come across Thunder Mountain to kill him;
+he had come to take him back to Paradise Park. And
+so he waited&ndash;&ndash;fatally. The outlaw came slowly until
+half the space between him and Haig had been covered.
+Then, at a distance of perhaps a hundred feet,
+when no choice was left to him, Haig swung up his
+gun, and fired. At that very instant, Sunnysides uttered
+a savage cry, a shrill neigh ending in a scream;
+and, charged at the horse and rider in his path.</p>
+<p>Haig fired again, and missed; threw himself forward
+on Trixy&rsquo;s neck, jerked the pony&rsquo;s head in toward
+the wall, and fired again; and missed. He tried to
+shoot once more, into the very face of the oncoming
+brute, but too late. There was a vision of flaming
+black eyes and white teeth, in a yellow blur; and then
+a tremendous impact, a crash. Trixy was flung back
+on her haunches, with one hind leg over the edge of the
+shelf, Haig barely hanging in the saddle. The outlaw
+leaped back, and lunged again; thrust himself between
+Trixy and the wall; toppled pony and rider off into
+the void; and passed on, with a shriek of triumphant
+rage.</p>
+<p>Haig and Trixy turned in the air, struck the chute
+of stones and sand, and rolled over and over as they
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_246' name='page_246'></a>246</span>
+went down in a flying slide of d&eacute;bris. But Haig did
+not know that, for his head struck a stone at the first
+contact with the chute.</p>
+<hr class='tb' />
+<p>Sentience returned to him through mists of pain.
+He lay in a twisted heap on a patch of grass, surrounded
+by the scattered detritus of the cliff. At first
+he could not remember, and could not see. His head
+rang with pain, and his eyes were filled with dust, and
+with something wet. He managed presently to lift an
+arm and wipe his eyes with his hand; and saw dimly
+that the hand was covered with blood. His eyes then
+filled again; and he swept his sleeves across them and
+his forehead. That was better. Blinking, and wiping
+his face again and again, he looked dully around him
+until memory came back, and brought recognition of
+his plight.</p>
+<p>He tried to sit up, but sank down quickly with a
+groan. One leg was bent almost double under the
+other, and would not move. This fact struck him at
+first as very queer&ndash;&ndash;an inexplicable phenomenon.
+Then he tried it again. His left leg moved at his will,
+and that encouraged him. His right hip and part of
+the thigh too moved, but the leg below lay loose and
+dead.</p>
+<p>The blood was in his eyes again. It exasperated
+him; he could do nothing unless he were able to see.
+He wiped his face again with his sleeve, then put his
+hand to his head, and winced a little as the fingers
+touched a gash just above the left temple, from which
+the blood still flowed. By turning his head he found
+that the blood ran down away from his eyes instead of
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_247' name='page_247'></a>247</span>
+into them. The new position also gave him a view of
+several things that held his attention.</p>
+<p>First there was the clutter of stones around him.
+Then his eyes swept upward to the ledge whence he had
+come rolling down&ndash;&ndash;how far? He calculated the distance
+curiously. Eighty feet&ndash;&ndash;a hundred, surely.
+How did he come to be still alive? he wondered. And
+Trixy! Where was she.</p>
+<p>Once more he tackled the problem of sitting up, and
+it became easier now in his full understanding of his
+condition. By ignoring the dead leg entirely, since it
+was of no further use to him, he contrived to raise himself
+with his hands on the ground behind him for support.
+Then with a jerk that brought a cry of pain, he
+sat erect, swaying but resolute. At this instant he
+heard a soft whinny behind him. Twisting himself
+around, he saw Trixy lying some twenty feet away,
+with her forelegs doubled up beneath her, and her head
+lifted and pointed toward him. He studied the little
+mare a moment.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Trixy! Get up!&rdquo; he commanded suspiciously.</p>
+<p>She lifted her head higher, made a desperate effort
+to rise, sank back, and whinnied piteously.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;So! Yours too, eh! Nice fix, Trixy!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He surveyed the scene. They were in a bright green
+meadow about two hundred yards in width and perhaps
+half a mile in length. Across the meadow from where
+he lay the black forest mounted toward the sky. At
+one end the vale narrowed into a mere ravine, which
+vanished upward in deep woods; at the other it widened
+to the forest, and by the way the pine-masses came
+down to this spot from both sides he knew that there
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_248' name='page_248'></a>248</span>
+the trail ran down the mountain toward the Black Lake
+country. The vale was very still under the bright
+blue sky; there was just a murmur in the forest; and
+no sound of birds came to his ears.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;A beautiful site&ndash;&ndash;for a graveyard!&rdquo; he said
+aloud, and smiled.</p>
+<p>The blood still trickled into his eyes, and annoyed
+him greatly. It must be stopped, or he could do nothing
+that needed to be done. In an inside pocket of his
+coat he found a handkerchief, which he bound around
+his head, after he had wiped his face once more. The
+pain in his head had subsided to a dull throbbing, which
+did not matter. But&ndash;&ndash;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;God! I&rsquo;m thirsty!&rdquo; he muttered.</p>
+<p>He looked again across the meadow. The thread of
+water that he had seen from the top of the cliff was
+a considerable brook that ran silently through about
+the middle of the green. He measured the distance,&ndash;&ndash;fifty
+or sixty yards, maybe seventy, or more. He could
+do it, by dragging himself along the ground, he thought.
+But was it worth the effort, and the pain? It would
+hurt him like the devil&ndash;&ndash;that broken leg. Never did
+like pain; would probably howl; and that would not be
+nice, even with no creature but Trixy to hear him.
+No; he would stay where he was. Then suddenly he
+thought of Pete&rsquo;s whisky, and thrust his hand into his
+pocket, only to encounter fragments of glass.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That&rsquo;s a lesson,&rdquo; he thought grimly. &ldquo;Never
+carry whisky in glass bottles.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>And now his roving eyes lighted once more on Trixy.
+No good letting her suffer. He would send her away
+first. On the thought, his hand went back to the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_249' name='page_249'></a>249</span>
+holster at his hip; and stayed there, while his heart
+stood still, and a chill went over him, and thought
+ceased. The holster was empty.</p>
+<p>After a while he was able to think about it. One of
+two things would happen to him. There were, very
+probably, mountain lions in those forests. But they
+were not the worst thing he faced. To be eaten were
+perhaps preferable to dying little by little, of hunger
+and thirst. He had been near starvation, twice in his
+life; and once he had been thirsty,&ndash;&ndash;that is to say,
+<i>thirsty</i>,&ndash;&ndash;and God save him from dying of thirst!
+But wait! He hesitated; then held his breath; and in
+a total suspension of thought slowly reached his hand
+down into a side pocket of his trousers. And then he
+almost yelled aloud for joy. His pocketknife was
+there!</p>
+<p>Meanwhile&ndash;&ndash;Trixy. It was cruel not to be able to
+end her suffering. What had become of the gun? It
+was in his hand when he toppled over the edge of the
+platform, and must have fallen with him. So it could
+not be far away, though perhaps buried out of sight.
+He began patiently to inspect every square foot of the
+ground around him, as far as he could trust his eyes to
+see clearly, separating the space into imaginary segments
+of a circle, and scrutinizing each of them until
+he had set apart every tuft of grass from every other
+tuft, and every stone from its neighbors. Minute after
+minute, with dogged perseverance, he kept himself at
+this exhausting task until the sweat was rolling down,
+his face, and his eyes burned deep in his head. Then
+suddenly something leaped inside of him,&ndash;&ndash;some nerve
+that was quicker than thought in its response to vision.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_250' name='page_250'></a>250</span></div>
+<p>&ldquo;Ah!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The gun lay against a stone, its muzzle upward, at a
+distance of about forty feet, beyond and somewhat to
+the left of Trixy. It would take some crawling; and
+that would hurt. But when he had fixed the gun&rsquo;s
+position in his mind, so that he might not miss it, he
+set his teeth together, and started.</p>
+<p>No great distance, after all, is forty feet. That is
+to say, no great distance after you&rsquo;ve covered it. And
+the pain did not matter now. He lay on the ground
+again, flattened out, panting and gazing up at the blue
+sky. The sweat stood in big cold drops on his face;
+and he trembled as if stricken with ague. He could
+not shoot in that condition; he must rest, and wait.
+But the thirst was torture now.</p>
+<p>After a time, he turned himself half around in order
+to face Trixy, and rested his right elbow on the ground,
+with the gun up in the air.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Good-by, Trixy!&rdquo; he said softly.</p>
+<p>But wait! How many shots left? He examined
+the revolver. Two! For an instant he was stricken
+again with dread. Then his left hand felt for the belt
+at his waist; and he laughed nervously. What a state
+he was in! There were cartridges to burn!</p>
+<p>The gun came slowly down to an aim, then waved in
+his hand as he pulled the trigger.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Hell!&rdquo; he muttered.</p>
+<p>He tried again, pulling himself together, and gritting
+his teeth. The second report rang out, and echoed
+high among the rocks. The mare&rsquo;s head fell, her body
+quivered, one hind foot kicked out; and she was
+gone.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_251' name='page_251'></a>251</span></div>
+<p>Oh, yes! He could hit good horses! But not
+Sunnysides.</p>
+<p>He ejected the exploded cartridges, and filled the
+chambers with fresh ones; then lay back and rested
+again, the gun still clutched in his hand. And why did
+he wait? To get strength, for one thing. He wanted
+to sit up to do it, since he could not stand. And
+then&ndash;&ndash;there was another trouble. Four times before he
+had tried to do it, and something had happened,&ndash;&ndash;something
+different and utterly unexpected each time had
+checked him. It had not so much mattered then, because
+he could afford to wait. But now&ndash;&ndash;</p>
+<p>He drew upon the last of his reserves of strength,
+and sat up&ndash;&ndash;too suddenly. An excruciating pain shot
+through his injured leg, and radiated like flame through
+every nerve and tissue of his body. The revolver, half
+lifted, fell from his fingers. Swaying, he groped for
+it, clutched it again, and frantically raised it to his
+head. And when he felt the hard muzzle just above
+his ear, he pulled the trigger. And so the third report
+went ringing through the quiet valley, and Philip Haig
+sank backward on the greensward, and lay still.</p>
+<hr class='toprule' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_252' name='page_252'></a>252</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_XXIII_THE_MIRACLE' id='CHAPTER_XXIII_THE_MIRACLE'></a>
+<h2>CHAPTER XXIII</h2>
+<h3>THE MIRACLE</h3>
+</div>
+<p>Between two storms, the peace that lay upon the
+seared and battered head of Thunder Mountain,
+like the peace that comes to a sufferer between paroxysms
+of pain, was of a kind unknown to lower levels.
+In all the range of natural phenomena, in all the gamut
+of sensation, there is nothing else at once so beautiful,
+inspiring, and appalling as utter silence; and nothing
+else so rare. To the sea, the desert, and the peak it is
+given in few and perfect hours; but neither to the
+desert nor to the sea is it given in such transcendency
+as to the peak. And on no peak could silence ever have
+seemed so like a miracle as on the flat top of Thunder
+Mountain between two storms.</p>
+<p>It were hazardous to say how far Marion was conscious
+of the beautiful, inspiring, and appalling nature
+of that silence. She was too deeply intent upon her
+purpose to be conscious of much besides the material
+difficulties in her path. She knew that on the gray-black
+surface of the mountain nothing stirred; that the
+winds were still; that no murmur of forest or ripple of
+water or soft pulsation of a living world was there. It
+was a dead place, dead these many ages; and all its associations
+in her mind were those of death and the living
+terror of death. But she was not afraid. True,
+she was beset by fears, but they only hovered over her,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_253' name='page_253'></a>253</span>
+brushing her face with their black wings. True also,
+her eyes roved wide, as if at any instant something unknown
+and dreadful would come upon her out of that
+blue sky, from behind the next rock barrier, or up from
+the mountain&rsquo;s ugly heart itself. But these were superficial
+fears, and in her heart she was not afraid.</p>
+<p>From the moment that she emerged upon the first
+terrace, where Haig had stood some hours before, she
+knew that she would not go back until (and unless) she
+found him. That had been her purpose from the beginning,
+from the time she ran down the hill above
+Huntington&rsquo;s, with Smythe following in alarm; but it
+had been hidden from her until, in the exaltation that
+ensued upon the finding of the ashes of Haig&rsquo;s fire, she
+drove her pony up the last ascent, and knew that if the
+mountain had claimed Philip it must claim her too.</p>
+<p>But this thought was, in a sense, as superficial as
+her fears; for in her soul there lived a perfect faith.
+Through all her grief and jealousy and anger and despair
+she had never entirely lost the pure light of her
+star. She never doubted deeply that her love would
+triumph, even when reason told her that it had already
+failed; and the very words with which she had consented
+to leave the Park by the last stage were hollow,
+though they contained a prayer. She had prayed for
+a miracle; and the miracle had happened. Why should
+she be afraid?</p>
+<p>So she was not surprised when the Twin Sisters welcomed
+her without so much as a gentle puff of wind
+upon her cheek; when the Devil&rsquo;s Chair, though she
+held her breath at sight of what lay below, was scarce
+more difficult than the ridge in Paradise Park; and
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_254' name='page_254'></a>254</span>
+when the central waste, where the storm had leaped on
+Haig, held no evil in store for her. The only obstacles
+encountered were those presented by the trail itself;
+and these, as Smythe had told her, though by no means
+trivial, were not insurmountable to one with a clear
+eye and steady nerves. It was never the trail itself
+that was deadly; it was the wind that would blow her
+into a chasm, the mist that would decoy her from the
+path, and the storm that would beat her down among
+the stones. But there was no wind, no mist, no storm;
+and if that was not a miracle&ndash;&ndash;</p>
+<p>Several times, to be sure, she missed the trail: once
+in the second field of loose stones, before she had become
+accustomed to the signs; once on a wide floor of
+solid rock, where Tuesday slipped and fell, and she
+rose a little stunned, and in a brief confusion; and
+once, the most alarming of all, when she was for half an
+hour lost in that granite wilderness that to Haig had
+suggested a cemetery of the gods. But faith sustained
+her, and her purpose stood in the stead of courage that
+might have faltered and even failed. The one moment
+when something like despair struck at her heart was
+that when she found the bruised and dirty saddle cast
+aside by the runaway, and thought at first that it was
+Philip&rsquo;s; and the one moment of real terror was that
+in which, on the summit of the last ridge, she looked
+back and saw that dark gray vapors were surging up
+out of the chasm below the Devil&rsquo;s Chair.</p>
+<p>It chanced that in following the trail from the sharp
+turn on the last rock floor to the brink of the cliff (the
+last pyramid stands some fifty yards back from it),
+Marion arrived at about the same distance to the left
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_255' name='page_255'></a>255</span>
+of the drop-off as Haig had brought up at the right of
+it. From this point even less of the meadow was visible
+than Haig had seen at the first view, and the mass
+of fallen and tumbled granite appeared even more formidable.
+Her immediate sensation was of tragic despair,
+as the evidence of her eyes for one instant overwhelmed
+her faith. But where was Philip? And
+Sunnysides?</p>
+<p>Then a suspicion flashed into her mind. Perhaps
+she had missed the trail,&ndash;&ndash;the real trail. She could
+not have been mistaken in the signs; there was the last
+pyramid in plain view still from where she stood. But
+it was not unlikely that there was another trail from
+the sharp turn where she had been confused for a moment,
+another exit made necessary by the disruption
+of the cliff. She paused uncertainly, looking now at
+the great heap of stone below her,&ndash;&ndash;a thousand feet
+of jagged rock and sliding sand,&ndash;&ndash;and now back at the
+toilsome way she had come. And then her eyes were
+caught by something that held her spellbound with
+horror. Up to the rocky skyline from beyond the
+barrier she had lately crossed there swept a tumbling
+mist, as gray-black as the rock itself; and an instant
+after she felt a stinging blow of wind on her cheek, and
+heard a low whisper in the air around her.</p>
+<p>She was roused by a sound that brought her up rigid
+and alert in the saddle. What was that? A faint report,
+as of a gun&ndash;&ndash;from somewhere. She listened,
+turning her head slowly and cautiously, and holding her
+breath. A long time, it seemed to her, she listened;
+and heard only that warning whisper of the wind across
+the flat. But there! Another! It came up faintly
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_256' name='page_256'></a>256</span>
+from below, expiring at the very edge of the precipice.
+She peered guardedly down into the chasm, and saw
+nothing but the vast pile of d&eacute;bris, and a bit of green
+meadow over against the edge of the black forest. But
+it was a gun! She began now to examine the edge of
+the cliff. To her left it fell sheer away hundreds of
+feet to the lower masses of fallen stone; and there was
+no trail on that side. Dismounting, she led her horse
+slowly along the brink at her right; and so came at
+length to the spot where the trail dropped to the first
+incline. It seemed incredible; but then, even as the
+word framed itself in her mind, her heart bounded
+up into her throat. There&ndash;&ndash;there&ndash;&ndash;under her eyes
+were hoofprints, the print of steel shoes in the sand;
+and they went down, down, down. And, as if to remove
+the last of doubt and hesitancy, there came wavering
+up from below a third thin report, a little more
+distinct than the others, and undeniable.</p>
+<p>She lifted her face toward the sky, and pressed her
+hands upon her breast.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;God help us! God help us&ndash;&ndash;both!&rdquo; she murmured.</p>
+<p>Then she remounted Tuesday, and forced him over
+the edge of the cliff.</p>
+<hr class='tb' />
+<p>Haig lay on his back, his head against the stone by
+which he had recovered the coveted revolver. A handkerchief
+dyed red and blackened with powder stains
+lay against one cheek. His right hand still clutched
+the revolver.</p>
+<p>He did not move, and she thought him dead. Then,
+through the blackness that enveloped her, she dully
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_257' name='page_257'></a>257</span>
+and slowly comprehended that his eyes were closed, not
+staring up at her. She knelt swiftly, and pressed her
+head to his breast; and then leaped to her feet with a
+wild outcry.</p>
+<p>Tuesday stood a few yards away, with tail outstretched
+and nostrils distended, gazing affrightedly at
+the body of Trixy lying in her wretched heap. Marion
+ran to the saddle, and tore at the thongs that held her
+bundle; jerked it loose, and bore it quickly to Haig&rsquo;s
+side; and in a few seconds had placed the mouth of her
+whisky flask between Haig&rsquo;s lips, and let a little of the
+liquid trickle down his throat. But there was no response,
+and she stood up again, looking for water.
+The brook that had seemed so far away from Haig was
+at no distance for her flying feet; and she was back on
+the run with her sombrero filled. Dashing the water
+into Philip&rsquo;s face, she was off again for more. With
+this she bathed his face and neck and wrists; and then
+set herself to slapping the palms of his hands with her
+own.</p>
+<p>Still there was no response. But when she pressed
+her head to his breast once more she was assured that
+she had not been mistaken; his heart was beating feebly&ndash;&ndash;but
+beating. A second time she put the whisky
+flask to his lips; and returned to the limp hands, rubbing
+them, slapping them until her own burned and
+ached.</p>
+<p>Hours it seemed, and ages flowing away into eternity.
+The sky was darkening, and from the top of
+Thunder Mountain came a muffled roar that was echoed
+back and forth across the valley. She looked up at the
+towering cliff, and trembled. And then, with the last
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_258' name='page_258'></a>258</span>
+fading reverberation, there came another sound that
+brought her leaning down close to Philip&rsquo;s face. Was
+it a sigh, or only&ndash;&ndash;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Philip! Philip! Philip!&rdquo; she called, softly at first,
+then in a cry that rang across the meadow.</p>
+<p>At last a quiver went through the limp figure; the
+eyes were opened, only to be quickly closed again, as
+if the light had hurt them. She called to him again, in
+pleading accents. The eyelids fluttered, and he looked
+up into the face of the girl bending over him. It was
+a puzzled, uncomprehending look. And thereupon his
+lips moved.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, Philip! What is it?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t understand,&rdquo; he whispered.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s Marion!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you know me?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But&ndash;&ndash;where?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know. Thunder Mountain.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, I know that!&rdquo; he said, with a note of impatience.
+&ldquo;Sunnysides and&ndash;&ndash;all that. But&ndash;&ndash;you?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I followed, and found you.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>A weak smile flickered on his lips. She saw that he
+did not believe her.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Look! Look!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s Marion. And
+yonder&ndash;&ndash;is Tuesday.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He moved his head a little, and stared at the pony
+still standing fascinated and terrified by the stillness
+of poor Trixy.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s&ndash;&ndash;impossible!&rdquo; he muttered. &ldquo;You couldn&rsquo;t&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He made an effort to look up at the cliff down, which
+he had come.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But it&rsquo;s quite true, Philip. I&rsquo;m here.&rdquo;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_259' name='page_259'></a>259</span></div>
+<p>But she saw that he was still groping in the dark.
+He lifted his right hand, and touched his head, while
+the expression of perplexity grew rather than lessened
+on his face. She saw that there was not only a gash in
+the left temple, but a furrow on the right side of his
+head, a swollen red streak where the hair had been
+burned away. And the black stains on the handkerchief,
+and the revolver clutched in his hand.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Philip!&rdquo; she said softly, reproachfully.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t understand!&rdquo; he reiterated, and closed his
+eyes.</p>
+<p>She studied him, and the place where he lay, and the
+dead pony; the two wounds in his head, the bloody
+handkerchief&ndash;&ndash;And it was only partly clear to her.
+He had fallen, and been hurt; but Philip, as she knew
+him, would have made nothing of that cut on his temple.
+Why, then, had he abandoned the pursuit, and tried to
+kill himself?</p>
+<p>A groan escaped him.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What is it, Philip?&rdquo; she asked.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;re hurting me!&rdquo; he answered, opening his
+eyes again.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Hurting you?&rdquo; she exclaimed. &ldquo;No! Where?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;My leg&rsquo;s broken.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>With a sharp cry she moved away from him, and saw
+that in her eagerness she had pressed against his right
+leg. For just a moment she was so concerned with the
+pain she had caused him that she did not realize the
+full significance of his answer. Then it came to her
+with a shock. She looked slowly around her: at the
+black forest on three sides of the little meadow; at the
+cliff on the other; at the terrible trail down which she
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_260' name='page_260'></a>260</span>
+had come, she scarce knew how; and at the storm clouds
+on Thunder Mountain.</p>
+<p>He saw the thought in her face.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You see, it&rsquo;s no use!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;With a broken
+leg.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>She met his eyes with a clear and steady gaze; and
+smiled. And that look he could not read.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Now, then, Philip!&rdquo; she said at length, rising
+quietly to her feet. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll go to work.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;To work?&rdquo; he repeated.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Of course!&rdquo; she replied, with brave lightness.
+&ldquo;There&rsquo;s a lot to do. First, there&rsquo;s your leg.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, it&rsquo;s broken,&rdquo; he answered sardonically.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;We&rsquo;ll mend it. And the cut on your head needs
+to be dressed. And I&rsquo;m dreadfully hungry, and&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>She stopped, and the smile fled from her face, and the
+strength ran from her limbs.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I told you. It&rsquo;s no use,&rdquo; said Haig.</p>
+<p>But she had one resource of courage of which he was
+unaware: her faith.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; she answered stoutly, &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve enough in my
+bundle for one meal anyhow. After that&ndash;&ndash;who
+knows?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Will you give me a drink of water, please?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>She stooped quickly for her hat, the only vessel she
+had.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Look in the roll on my saddle,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Murray
+put some things there.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>She glanced around uncertainly; then understood.
+The saddle was on Trixy still. But Trixy was dead,
+and she did not like the idea of touching her. She
+hesitated just the length of time required for an unpleasant
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_261' name='page_261'></a>261</span>
+smile to twist Haig&rsquo;s lips. She saw it, and
+her face flamed with shame. A fine start she was making!
+And it was only a dead horse! She walked resolutely
+to the prostrate body, hurriedly untied the roll
+of blankets, and returned running.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh! Oh! Oh!&rdquo; she cried, as she unrolled the
+bundle. &ldquo;A cup! A pan! And bacon and bread!
+And matches.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Murray,&rdquo; said Haig.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, I know. Mrs. Murray told me, but I&rsquo;d forgotten.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>She ran to the stream, and brought him a cupful of
+water; and another; and while he drank the second,
+she picked up his revolver, and carried it to a stone
+fully as far away as it had been when he crawled for it.
+He was on the point of calling her back, but thought
+better of it; to have done that would only have confirmed
+her suspicions.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Now then, sir!&rdquo; she began. &ldquo;Your leg.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What about it?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;We&rsquo;ve got to set it.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That&rsquo;s absurd!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Why is it absurd?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You can&rsquo;t do it, in the first place.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But I can. I&rsquo;ve seen my father do it.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It won&rsquo;t heal&ndash;&ndash;in the fix we&rsquo;re in.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;We&rsquo;ll do our best,&rdquo; she rejoined bravely.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Listen!&rdquo; he said, with some sternness. &ldquo;If it
+should knit, which I doubt, it will take six weeks or two
+months before I can use it. Do you know what will
+happen before two months&ndash;&ndash;before one month&ndash;&ndash;before
+two weeks, even?&rdquo;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_262' name='page_262'></a>262</span></div>
+<p>She only looked at him questioningly.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Snow!&rdquo; he said shortly.</p>
+<p>She could find no answer, unless it were an answer
+that she dared not give him&ndash;&ndash;yet.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, then!&rdquo; he said, with an air of finality.
+&ldquo;You can&rsquo;t start to-night, of course. It&rsquo;s too late, and
+there&rsquo;s a storm going up there besides. But to-morrow
+morning&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo; He looked up at the cliff and frowned.
+&ldquo;Perhaps Tuesday can make it. If he balks, you&rsquo;ve
+got to do it on foot. The mountain let you pass once.
+Maybe it will spare you again. Maybe! God knows!
+But it&rsquo;s your only chance. I&rsquo;m done for, and can&rsquo;t
+help you. It&rsquo;s sure death for you to stay here. It&rsquo;s
+sure death to try the trail into the Black Lake country.
+You have just one chance. You&rsquo;ve got to take it to-morrow
+morning. And God help you for being such
+a fool!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>She heard him through, and smiled; and he noted,
+for his own information, that this smile of hers was getting
+on his nerves. What did she mean by it? There
+was something very superior about it, though very
+gentle and indulgent; and a thing or two she had said
+to him before flashed back into his mind. Was she
+trying to mother him? The thought made him angry.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well?&rdquo; he demanded.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Of course I&rsquo;ll not go!&rdquo; she said simply.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You will go!&rdquo; he retorted wrathfully.</p>
+<p>She knelt quickly at his side, and took one of his
+hands between both her own.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Philip!&rdquo; she said gently. &ldquo;I know that&ndash;&ndash;perhaps&ndash;&ndash;it&rsquo;s
+a foolish question to ask. You mustn&rsquo;t
+call me silly. But&ndash;&ndash;do you believe in miracles?&rdquo;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_263' name='page_263'></a>263</span></div>
+<p>&ldquo;Miracles be damned!&rdquo; he blurted out. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll
+see&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>She put her hand over his mouth.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Listen, Philip!&rdquo; she went on. &ldquo;I prayed for a
+miracle, and it has happened. Perhaps there&rsquo;ll be another;
+who knows? We&rsquo;ll wait and see. If nothing
+happens, why&ndash;&ndash;Do you think I&rsquo;m afraid?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He made no answer, and she needed none.</p>
+<hr class='toprule' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_264' name='page_264'></a>264</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_XXIV_HAIGS_ARGUMENT' id='CHAPTER_XXIV_HAIGS_ARGUMENT'></a>
+<h2>CHAPTER XXIV</h2>
+<h3>HAIG&rsquo;S ARGUMENT</h3>
+</div>
+<p>When she had unsaddled Tuesday, and left him
+grazing near the &ldquo;camp,&rdquo; Marion set out with
+Murray&rsquo;s hatchet and knife to cut splints for Haig&rsquo;s
+broken leg. Haig watched her run across the meadow,
+leap the brook, and hurry on to a grove of quaking
+aspens at the edge of the forest. Then he lay back to
+consider the logic of the situation, with the following
+result, which appeared to him unanswerable:</p>
+<p>First. The girl yonder had already saved his life
+once, and was doing her best, though against impossible
+odds, to save it again. Her motive was one that
+need not be dwelt upon in this fatal crisis. The fact
+remained that for him she was facing certain death,
+and he must do all in his power to save her. That was
+the starting point from which all reckonings must be
+made.</p>
+<p>Second. His own case was hopeless. Long before
+he should be able to move from where he lay, the valley
+would be buried in snow to half the height of those
+pines yonder. If she remained with him her case
+would be hopeless too. Death would be inevitable for
+both of them: death from starvation, from exposure,
+from cold. They had neither food, nor proper clothing,
+nor shelter of any kind. The hardiest mountaineer
+would not dream, of attempting to pass eight
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_265' name='page_265'></a>265</span>
+or nine months of winter in a place like that, even with
+his two arms and two legs free. He, with his broken
+leg, and she, a woman, would not survive an eighth or
+a ninth of that period.</p>
+<p>Third. The chances of rescue. There would be no
+search for him, he reflected with a grim smile. But
+for Marion, undoubtedly. To-morrow morning, Marion
+not having returned, Murray would start out to find
+her. There was not one chance in a thousand that, at
+this season, there would be such another day as the one
+now ending, and ending in storm. But suppose that
+Murray should make his way across the summit, and
+find them. Murray could do nothing for a man with
+a broken leg at the bottom of a gulch with a cliff on
+one side and miles on miles of mountain forest on the
+other sides. As for Marion, if she would not go at his,
+Haig&rsquo;s, command, she would certainly pay little heed
+to Murray. So Murray would accomplish nothing.
+However, it would not come to that. Murray would
+be driven back by the winds. He would ride down to
+the Park and give the alarm. Search parties would
+be formed, and they would assail the mountain. But
+fifty men would be no stronger than one man on Thunder
+Mountain. It was just possible that some of them
+might force their way across the flat between storms.
+But every day that possibility, such as it was, would
+grow less. It would be madness for the girl to wait.
+She had crossed the mountain once; she knew the way;
+and if the winds should permit rescuers to come to her
+they would permit her to go to them. It was her only
+chance, however desperate; to remain where she was
+meant certain death.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_266' name='page_266'></a>266</span></div>
+<p>Fourth. She would not, it was quite clear, stir from
+his side as long as he was alive. Therefore he must do
+quickly what he had tried to do before.</p>
+<p>The idea was so familiar to him by now that it required
+no contemplation. He raised his head, and
+looked toward the stone where his revolver lay; and
+then toward the aspen grove where Marion labored.
+His gaze rested on her for some minutes. It was too
+late for her to start to-night, even if there were no
+storm on the mountain. And if he did it now she
+would face a night of solitude and terror, perhaps would
+not live through it. He would wait till morning; and
+when she should have gone for wood, or water&ndash;&ndash;</p>
+<p>She came back presently with an armload of small
+limbs she had hacked from the youngest trees. Her
+left hand bled where she had awkwardly struck it with
+the hatchet; and there were tears in her eyes, which
+she tried to conceal from him. He was sorry for her&ndash;&ndash;and
+angry. It was not his fault; he had done all he
+could, even to brutality.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Did you tell Huntington, or his wife, what you
+were going to do?&rdquo; was his first speech.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No. But I sent Mr. Smythe&ndash;&ndash;he rode with me
+as far as Norton&rsquo;s&ndash;&ndash;I sent him back with a message
+that I was going to stop the night at Murray&rsquo;s.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And the Murrays? What did you tell them?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That I&rsquo;d be back before night. But why do you
+ask?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m thinking that Smythe is a fool, and Murray is
+a blockhead.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;They did all they could to stop me,&rdquo; she answered
+quietly.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_267' name='page_267'></a>267</span></div>
+<p>She had begun to strip the bark and twigs from the
+green limbs; and he watched her crude efforts for a
+moment.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I think I might manage that part of it,&rdquo; he said at
+length. &ldquo;You must build a fire.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>She started to obey him, but stopped short, and
+looked at him in sudden fear and suspicion.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No, you can trust me with the knife,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I
+promise.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>She handed the limbs and the knife to him; and he
+saw that her hands trembled.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;ll find plenty of dead wood at the edge of the
+forest,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t venture far among the
+trees.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The shadows were deepening along the other side of
+the meadow, and he watched her a little anxiously while
+she made half a dozen trips for dry limbs and small
+chunks of half-rotted logs. And now she felt a curious
+thrill as she began to employ the knowledge she had
+gained on her camping expedition. She had never
+dreamed that it would be so useful to her! And she
+found new courage in thinking, while she worked, how
+all her life she had been undergoing preparation, training,
+education for this hour. She wished that she
+might run to Philip and tell him all this&ndash;&ndash;and of her
+faith! But he would not understand her.</p>
+<p>Soon a fine fire was crackling on the grass, against
+one of the largest stones that had fallen from the cliff.
+Then she brought a small package from her bundle,
+and made a cup of hot chocolate for Haig and another
+for herself. This, with a small slice of bread for each
+of them, made their supper for that day; for such
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_268' name='page_268'></a>268</span>
+provisions as they possessed must be treasured scrupulously.</p>
+<p>Haig had by this time finished trimming the aspen
+sticks; and by the fading light of day and the red light
+of the fire they set to work to mend the broken leg.
+Between them they knew something of surgery: she by
+recollecting all that she had seen in her father&rsquo;s office,
+where she had more than once helped Doctor Gaylord
+with his needles and bandages; he by recalling experiences
+on battlefields, in lumber camps, and in various
+rough places of the world. She brought his blankets,
+and helped him to move until he lay flat on them, with
+his head propped against a stone. Then the leg was
+stripped, and the ordeal began.</p>
+<p>It was not the pain so much as the uselessness of it
+that exasperated Haig; and he was tempted to drive
+her away from him, and have no more of it. But this,
+he realized, would only have caused more arguments,
+and tears, and protestations, and perhaps the revelation
+of his purpose. So he endured it to satisfy and divert
+her.</p>
+<p>Luckily the fracture was a simple one; and with
+strips of linen for which Marion sacrificed some of her
+scanty supply of clothing, and the thin sticks of tough
+aspen wood, the leg was bound straight and firm.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;If we only knew!&rdquo; said Marion at last, leaning
+back to contemplate her work.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Knew what?&rdquo; he asked between his teeth.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;If it&rsquo;s right!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Between pain and rage he could not answer her; and
+thinking that he was near to a collapse, she ran for
+water and bathed his face, and gave him a little of the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_269' name='page_269'></a>269</span>
+precious whisky that remained in her flask. After that
+he lay quiet, and she went to her preparations for the
+night.</p>
+<p>The vale now lay in deep blackness, impenetrable
+walls of it beyond the red circle of firelight. The cliff
+made a dim, dark line against the blue-black sky; the
+forest on the other side a ragged tracery. The stars
+were few, and far. A low breeze murmured among
+the pines, and swept softly, but very cold, across the
+meadow. Marion began to feel the chill; and having
+wrapped Philip&rsquo;s blanket tight around him, and spread
+over him the leather coat she had found in his bundle,
+she heaped more wood on the fire, and sat down before
+it, with her blankets around her, and her rifle at her
+side, to watch and wait.</p>
+<p>She was very tired, but she dared not lie down to
+sleep. A long time she sat there, glancing now and
+then at Haig, where he lay very still, and oftener out
+into the blackness. But drowsiness gradually overcame
+her, and her head sank forward on her uplifted knees.</p>
+<p>She was awakened by a terrifying cry that rang
+shivering across the valley. She started to her feet,
+and listened. It must have been a dream, she thought.
+No! There it was again&ndash;&ndash;a cry that started low, like
+a child&rsquo;s peevish wail, and ended in a piercing scream.
+She grabbed up her rifle, and stood peering into the
+darkness.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t be afraid!&rdquo; said the voice of Haig from the
+edge of the firelight. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s only a bobcat. He&rsquo;ll not
+come near the fire.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Thank you&ndash;&ndash;Philip!&rdquo; she answered. Then, with
+a nervous laugh: &ldquo;It did frighten me, though!&rdquo;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_270' name='page_270'></a>270</span></div>
+<p>She stood a moment, still listening. But the cry
+came no more.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Aren&rsquo;t you sleeping?&rdquo; she asked softly.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>With trembling limbs, and eyes fixed on the darkness
+from whence had come the scream, she stepped
+cautiously to the pile of wood, and threw more limbs
+and bits of logs into the blaze. Then she seated herself
+again, resolved that she would not fall asleep. But
+presently she started to her feet in another panic at
+sight of a dark form moving in the blackness. But it
+was only Tuesday, coming nearer to the fire, as if he
+too had been alarmed by the wild beast&rsquo;s cry. She
+settled down once more to her vigil, her rifle across her
+lap.</p>
+<p>In spite of her resolution, her head sank to her knees
+again, and she was aroused at length by the cold. It
+bit through the blankets and clothing into the flesh of
+her limbs; sharp shivers ran up and down her back; and
+she was very miserable. Rising stiffly, she walked a
+while before the fire until she stumbled from weariness;
+then sat down again, and nodded, only to be waked by
+the frost gnawing at her flesh. Again and again she
+slept and woke in accentuated misery. But finally she
+saw, with unspeakable relief, that the stars were paling
+in their blue-black vault. She turned toward Thunder
+Mountain, and watched the dim line of the cliff sharpening
+against the whitening sky. Yet all was blackness
+in the gulch, and it seemed a long time before a soft
+gray light began to steal in upon the red light of the
+fire, and a new crispness came into the air. She waited
+until she could make out the forms of trees across the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_271' name='page_271'></a>271</span>
+valley, shrouded in thin morning mist, before she threw
+the last few sticks of wood on the dying fire, and crept
+to the side of Haig, where she lay down close beside
+him, with her blankets wrapped around her. There
+she fell into a heavy sleep, and did not waken until the
+sun, rising above Thunder Mountain, shone warm in
+her face.</p>
+<p>For some seconds she lay luxuriating in the warmth
+that seemed incredible after that night of cold and
+terror. Then she moved softly, raised herself on one
+elbow, and looked at Philip. He slept. His face was
+haggard under his three days&rsquo; growth of beard. She
+leaned over him, and pressed her lips ever so lightly to
+his forehead. He did not stir.</p>
+<p>Tuesday grazed a few yards away; the vale lay green
+and peaceful in the sunlight; and from the pine woods,
+where that hideous cry had lifted in the night, came
+now only the gentle murmur of the breeze in the
+massed foliage. By contrast with the chill horror of
+the night, the scene was positively exhilarating; and
+Marion rose to her work with hope throbbing through
+every vein, and courage singing along every nerve of
+her body.</p>
+<p>First she fetched wood to renew the fire, now only a
+heap of smouldering embers. That done, she went to
+make her toilet in the brook, with the soap and towel
+she had stowed in her bundle for the shooting trip.
+Poor Seth! she thought, with a momentary pang; he
+would not get the deer he wanted, after all. And by
+this thought was set in motion a little current of regrets
+that filled her mind until it was diverted by the stream.
+She had intended only to wash her face and hands,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_272' name='page_272'></a>272</span>
+now grimy after her labors at the fire. But chance led
+her to a deep, still pool with a bottom of fine sand and
+a tiny shore of pebbles that seemed to have been
+designed for bathing. Temptation seized her, and on
+the very impulse, seeing that a clump of willows
+screened her from the camp, she eagerly undressed, and
+plunged into the water, uttering quick gasps at the cold
+contact, and short-clipped shrieks of pleasure.</p>
+<p>And so, behold a marvel! Three days ago, in the
+security and familiarity of the Park, where no hardships
+or perils threatened, and where she knew that
+Philip was safe in his cottage across the ridge, and that
+her own pink bedroom awaited her at night, so deep
+was she in dejection that nothing could have induced an
+outburst of mere physical enjoyment such as this. But
+now, while Philip lay on his blankets, a prisoner in
+that narrow vale, and death stood at her side uncovered
+and undisguised, her spirits rose as they had never
+risen since her confession, on Mount Avalanche, and if
+Haig had been listening he might have heard her low
+laughter across the meadow.</p>
+<p>Had she yet failed to realize her situation? Or was
+it that tragedy had put on its comic mask, and
+laughed at death? The truth is simple. Her faith had
+triumphed over what seemed to be insuperable obstacles;
+and she was with Philip, for better or for worse. A
+miracle had been wrought; and miracles are not
+meaningless, or idle, or without purpose. It was a
+feeling perhaps unknown to man, who is merely a
+reasoning creature, much given to material consideration
+of natural causes and effects, and so compelled by
+his limitations to grope in outer darkness. And it was
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_273' name='page_273'></a>273</span>
+not so much a feeling as an instinct, and not so much an
+instinct as a law, of which she was the involuntary
+instrument. Her purpose was so strong within her
+that there was no need of thought; and so she did not
+think.</p>
+<p>Leaping to the pebbly bank, she rubbed herself
+swiftly with the towel, and felt the glow of health
+rushing through her body, all pink and gleaming in the
+sun. Then she dressed, and combed her hair; rinsed
+and wrung out the towel, and hung it on the willow-limbs
+to dry; and started back toward the camp in the
+highest spirits, and eager for service. And then, at
+twenty paces, she was stricken cold and rigid by the
+sight that met her unsuspecting eyes.</p>
+<p>Haig had left his blankets, and was now dragging
+himself like a wounded animal along the earth. Already
+he had covered more than half the distance to the
+rock on which his revolver lay; and it seemed as if she
+would stand rooted there in helpless horror until he
+reached it. Then, with an incautious cry, she bounded
+forward. Haig heard her, and flung himself toward
+the stone with reckless determination. Where he had
+inches, Marion had yards to go; it was a race that might,
+in another age, have done credit to the ingenuity of a
+Roman emperor. If Philip was mad with pain and
+anger, Marion was frantic with fear and love. It
+seemed to her that the turf gripped her feet, that the
+wind in her face would strangle her, that her skirts were
+leaden sheets around her knees. And she barely resisted
+falling in a senseless heap when, at ten yards
+from the goal, she saw that she would be too late.</p>
+<p>He beat her to the rock by merely a few seconds; but
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_274' name='page_274'></a>274</span>
+he was fairly spent. His fingers bled where he had dug
+them into the sand; the sweat rolled down his face; and
+exhaustion bound him as with bands of iron. Yet he
+was able to reach for the gun, and clutch it; and with a
+final effort that seemed to tear the heart from his breast,
+he dragged the weapon under him, pressed the muzzle
+upward, pulled the trigger, at the very instant that
+Marion threw herself upon him.</p>
+<p>There was a muffled report, the fumes stung their
+eyes and nostrils, and for a moment both lay still.
+Then Marion felt a movement under her, and guessed
+that Haig was fumbling with the revolver. An indescribable
+energy seized her, something tigerish in its
+fury, and beyond her own proper powers, so that she
+flung him over on his back as if he had been a child in
+strength and size. With both hands she gripped the
+wrist below the clutched revolver, and while she held it
+away from his body she drew her own body over his,
+and threw herself on his extended arm, between his
+hand and his breast.</p>
+<p>There was a savage struggle still, the man affirming
+his right to die, and the woman denying it. But the
+issue could not be long in doubt; for Haig&rsquo;s strength
+was at the ebb, while Marion&rsquo;s flowed in from earth and
+air and sky, from the future and from the past. And
+she wore him down at last, until the revolver dropped
+from his grasp, his eyelids closed, his limbs relaxed, and
+he lay still. Waiting a moment for certainty, she
+cautiously loosened one of her hands from his wrist,
+and grabbed the revolver, and flung it with all her
+might. Then, seeing it land twenty feet away on the
+grass, she rolled away from him, and sat up panting,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_275' name='page_275'></a>275</span>
+hollow-eyed, disheveled, and trembling on the verge of
+a collapse.</p>
+<p>For some seconds there was no sound but their
+labored breathing; and not until Haig opened his eyes
+and looked at her, with a hunted, baffled, and still
+defiant expression in their somber depths, did Marion
+break down. Then suddenly, after a premonitory
+quivering of her chin, she buried her face in her hands,
+and wept without more effort at restraint, in utter
+abandonment to her agony. Haig watched, at first in
+anger, and then in some confusion of emotions. Once
+before he had looked upon her thus bowed and shaken;
+and now as then he felt a strange upheaval, and an
+unfathomable sensation that had no likeness to anything
+he had ever before experienced. He wanted very much
+to speak to her, but could not trust himself; and after
+all, what was there to be said?</p>
+<p>It was she who rescued him from irresolution. She
+dropped her hands from her face, and cried out in a
+voice that was broken with sobbing: &ldquo;Why, Philip,
+why did you do that?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Why?&rdquo; he asked, in something like amazement.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve already told you why.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But&ndash;&ndash;no&ndash;&ndash;you haven&rsquo;t told me!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It was to save you&ndash;&ndash;for one thing.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;To save me?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I told you that your only chance is to go at
+once.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But I told you I wouldn&rsquo;t go!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I know. That&rsquo;s the reason.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But&ndash;&ndash;don&rsquo;t you know, Philip, that&ndash;&ndash;don&rsquo;t you
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_276' name='page_276'></a>276</span>
+see that&ndash;&ndash;if you killed yourself you&rsquo;d&ndash;&ndash;kill me
+too?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>There should have been no necessity for these words.
+Perhaps any other man in the world, certainly most
+men of far less intelligence and less acuteness of feeling,
+would have known long ago just what she meant. He
+knew, indeed, that this girl loved him; but he did not
+believe that she or any other woman was capable of the
+sacrifice implied in her answer.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You mean that&ndash;&ndash;you would have&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo; He hesitated.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>There ensued a silence that fell like a mist between
+them, through which neither knew the way. She saw
+that he had begun, by ever so little, to understand; and
+she feared to say more lest a wrong word should overtake
+a right one. As for Haig, his incredulity persisted
+notwithstanding the unquestionable sincerity of
+her speech. He did not doubt that she contemplated, in
+this moment of emotion, the complete and final sacrifice.
+But he was quite convinced that she would take a different
+view of the situation when the test should come.
+She did not yet appreciate, he argued, the peril of their
+position; she had not realized the hazard of her adventure
+or she never would have undertaken it; and
+undoubtedly she still thought there would be a way out
+for them. Under such a delusion it was easy for her,
+he concluded, to talk about dying with him. But she
+was tragically in error. His eyes lifted to the cliff.
+She should have been up there on her return hours ago.
+Now it was too late again; for the clouds were black
+and ugly on the summit, and a distant roaring came to
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_277' name='page_277'></a>277</span>
+his ears; and he knew what was happening or in
+preparation in the middle of the flat. But he must find
+a way to send her up that trail at dawn the next day;
+and his gaze dropped to where the revolver lay just
+visible in the thin grass into which she had thrown it.</p>
+<hr class='toprule' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_278' name='page_278'></a>278</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_XXV_DIANA' id='CHAPTER_XXV_DIANA'></a>
+<h2>CHAPTER XXV</h2>
+<h3>DIANA</h3>
+</div>
+<p>Still no speech came to either of them. After a
+while Marion rose silently, and went about her
+work. First, however, she sought the revolver in the
+grass, and carried it, with her rifle, to the clump of
+willows by the brook, where both weapons were safely
+beyond the present limits of Philip&rsquo;s powers. Then
+she returned to him with her towel, one end of it wetted
+and soaped.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;May I, please?&rdquo; she asked, smiling down at him.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;If you wish,&rdquo; he answered.</p>
+<p>She knelt, and began to wash the grime from his face,
+to cleanse the wound on his head, and readjust the
+bandage. Then his hands, after another trip to the
+stream to rub out the soiled end of the towel; and she
+was still busy with one of them, when she started back
+with a cry. His coat had opened wider, and she saw
+that his shirt was stained with blood. She had forgotten
+the revolver-shot!</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s nothing,&rdquo; said Haig. &ldquo;Only a flesh wound,
+I think.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But why didn&rsquo;t you tell me!&rdquo; she cried, almost
+with anger in her alarm.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It doesn&rsquo;t matter, does it?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Let me see it, quick!&rdquo; she commanded.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_279' name='page_279'></a>279</span></div>
+<p>He looked at her a moment, then opened the front of
+his flannel shirt and of the undershirt, and disclosed a
+flesh wound where the bullet had cut a streak across his
+chest. Marion bent close, and touched it with her
+fingers.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; she sighed at last, in deep relief.</p>
+<p>Haig&rsquo;s reply was a laugh of which the irony did not
+escape her.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Philip!&rdquo; she cried reproachfully.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, isn&rsquo;t it rather droll&ndash;&ndash;and ludicrous, when
+you come to think of it? First, Sunnysides&rsquo; punch in
+my stomach. And now, with my head cut open by a
+stone, and a broken leg, and two bullet-wounds&ndash;&ndash;I&rsquo;ve
+still got a splendid appetite. I ought to be on exhibition
+somewhere!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>His sardonic humor hurt her worse than his anger;
+and she went quickly to the brook to cleanse the towel
+again. Returning presently, she washed the new
+wound, and bandaged it; then examined the splints on
+the broken leg to assure herself that, as nearly as she
+could determine, no serious damage had been done to it
+by his reckless crawl; and finally brought his blankets,
+and insisted on making a sort of bed for him. After
+that she cooked two slices of bacon, and on this, with a
+little bread, they made their first meal of the day.
+And this brought her to the next and most pressing
+problem.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Will you help me think, Philip?&rdquo; she asked,
+when they had eaten.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;About what?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Food.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What&rsquo;s in the larder?&rdquo;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_280' name='page_280'></a>280</span></div>
+<p>She smiled at his tone, in spite of her own seriousness.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Bacon&ndash;&ndash;perhaps enough for three days, with the
+bread, if we don&rsquo;t eat much; and chocolate for four or
+five breakfasts. That&rsquo;s all.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And then?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Are there deer in those forests, do you think?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Very likely. This is an un-hunted country, I
+imagine.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Great!&rdquo; she cried.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What do you propose to do? Whistle for them?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>She could afford to smile at that.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Didn&rsquo;t you see my rifle?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Just now&ndash;&ndash;yes. What&rsquo;s it for?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;ll see.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Diana of Thunder Mountain, eh? Well, I&rsquo;m
+ready to admit you&rsquo;re some huntress. But deer!
+That&rsquo;s another thing.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The color flooded her cheeks.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Cousin Seth taught me to shoot,&rdquo; she answered,
+turning her face away. &ldquo;I killed a deer on Mount
+Avalanche.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But where did Cousin Seth learn to shoot? The
+last time he&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Please, Philip!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, when you&rsquo;ve brought down your deer, what
+will you do with it?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The color deserted her face at that.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I watched him do it,&rdquo; she said, shuddering at the
+recollection.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But you can&rsquo;t do that alone.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve got to,&rdquo; she replied simply. And then, on
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_281' name='page_281'></a>281</span>
+a sudden thought: &ldquo;There should be grouse too,
+shouldn&rsquo;t there?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Perhaps.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I learned to kill grouse with my rifle.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He looked at her with a wicked grin. This time he
+had her!</p>
+<p>&ldquo;How many cartridges have you?&rdquo; he asked.</p>
+<p>She ran for her belt, and counted the cartridges.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Twenty-seven.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;So. If you never miss, you&rsquo;ll get twenty-seven
+grouse. That would mean twenty-seven, meals. One
+meal a day, twenty-seven days. I&rsquo;d still be on my
+back, our ammunition would be gone, and&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t!&rdquo; she cried, in tears. &ldquo;I wasn&rsquo;t thinking.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Never mind!&rdquo; he replied, almost gently. &ldquo;But
+we&rsquo;ll deny ourselves the grouse.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, it&rsquo;s got to be the deer. I&rsquo;ll begin now.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No, there&rsquo;s something else that must be done first.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What is it?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;We&rsquo;ve got to move.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;For shelter, you mean?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Partly. But look there!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He pointed to the dead body of Trixy.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It will be easier&ndash;&ndash;and perhaps even nicer&ndash;&ndash;to
+move me than poor Trixy. See that big pine yonder&ndash;&ndash;the
+one that stands out from the forest? Well, you and
+Tuesday must drag me there.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But how?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He explained his plan to her, and she set herself at
+once to executing it. And her spirits rose again; for
+she thought he had abandoned his desperate resolution.
+So, indeed, he had&ndash;&ndash;for the moment. But he had
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_282' name='page_282'></a>282</span>
+deliberately beguiled her; their situation he knew to be
+quite unchanged in its inevitable termination, since a
+food supply would save them from starvation only to
+deliver them to the snow; and he must disarm her of
+suspicion in order to find a way to send her back on the
+trail. For he had reflected on the implication of tragic
+finality in the speech that had surprised and disturbed
+him; and he did not doubt that when the time should
+come, and she should find herself alone, her high resolve
+would prove to have been mere emotional exaggeration.</p>
+<p>Mounted on Tuesday, Marion attacked the boughs
+of a small pine with the hatchet until she had severed
+three large branches, to which she tied Haig&rsquo;s rope, and
+hauled them back to the camp. Of these branches Haig
+contrived a crude drag, on which he crawled, and lay
+flat; the free end of the rope was hitched to the horn of
+Tuesday&rsquo;s saddle; and the journey was begun. Twice
+the saddle slipped, and progress was interrupted while
+Marion tightened the cinches. Once the drag itself
+came to pieces, and Haig was left sprawling on the
+ground. But eventually, with no more serious injury
+to Haig than a bruised elbow, not counting his torn
+clothing, they reached the goal.</p>
+<p>There Marion made a wide bed against the exposed
+top roots of the tree, filling the spaces among the pine
+boughs with moss, and placing the two saddles at the
+head for pillows. Night had come before she had completed
+this labor, and gathered another supply of dead
+limbs and rotted logs, and cooked their meager supper.
+Then she wrapped Haig in his blankets, and rolled herself
+in her own, and lay down at his side. What with
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_283' name='page_283'></a>283</span>
+watching and replenishing the fire, and listening to
+night-cries heard or imagined, and waking from restless
+slumber chilled to the bone, she slept as little as on the
+preceding night, and was glad of the dawn, which came
+peacefully enough on the heels of a storm that raged on
+Thunder Mountain and sent a cold and beating rain
+upon the valley.</p>
+<p>This day brought its own bitter disappointment.
+After her bath in the clear pool among the willows, and
+their mere taste of bacon and bread in the name of
+breakfast, and a promise exacted from Haig, as a condition
+of her leaving him, that he would do nothing of
+which she would disapprove, she set out to get her deer.
+Rifle on shoulder, and eyes alert, she skirted the edge of
+the wood along the base of the cliff, through tall grasses
+of a golden green, among yellowing aspen groves, and
+under a fair blue sky. But presently she plunged into
+the thick of the forest, of which the trees towered to a
+height exceeding that of any she had ever seen before.
+In their tops the breeze was singing sonorously, but
+among their massive boles the silence was so tense that
+twigs cracking under her feet sounded like gun-shots
+echoing through the dim aisles.</p>
+<p>For some hours she wandered fruitlessly in that dark
+labyrinth, not only mindful of Philip&rsquo;s warning that she
+must not penetrate too deep into its depth, but fearful
+on her own account of an encounter with some such wild
+beast as that whose cry had terrified her. In time the
+hollow indifference of the woods began to weigh upon
+her spirits, which had been high and hopeful on her
+setting out. Worn out at last, she was just on the point
+of turning back toward the camp, defeated, when she
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_284' name='page_284'></a>284</span>
+came upon an open space, a lovely little glade, in which
+the grass grew rank and green, unripened by the sun.
+She started to cross it, but stopped suddenly, staring
+straight ahead. In the very middle of the lush and
+silent glade, a young doe rose swiftly to its feet, and
+looked at her. Marion stood and looked at the doe.
+Then there was a streak of pale yellow across the grass,
+the forest closed around it, and the doe was gone.
+Thereupon, Marion remembered her rifle, and saw with
+something like surprise, to begin with, that it was
+pointed foolishly toward the ground. She gazed at it
+a moment, then sat plump down on the mossy earth,
+and cried.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, what a fool!&rdquo; she groaned. &ldquo;What a poor,
+silly little fool! I ought to starve, starve, starve!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>And on the words the hunger that she had bravely
+kept back rose and punished her. To be hungry in a
+world of plenty, where she had only to reach out and
+help herself! To think of Philip, hungry too, and depending
+on her, on her boasted prowess! Humiliation
+scorched her like a flame. And this was Marion Gaylord!</p>
+<p>When she had recovered a little, she made directly for
+the open strip, having no more heart for her task, and
+nerving herself to confess the truth to Philip. Coming
+out upon the knoll through thick underbrush, she was
+startled by the leap of a rabbit from under her very
+feet; and before she was aware of what she was doing,
+she had thrown up her rifle, and fired. There was
+really no aim; the action was a gesture merely; and if
+she had tried to hit the rabbit she would have undoubtedly
+missed it clean. But the unlucky little beast,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_285' name='page_285'></a>285</span>
+happening in the path of Marion&rsquo;s angry disgust, turned
+a somersault in the air, and fell dead.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Of course!&rdquo; cried Marion. &ldquo;Of course I can kill
+rabbits.&rdquo; Then mercilessly: &ldquo;A rabbit a day for
+twenty-seven days&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo; And rage choked her.</p>
+<p>But she picked up her rabbit, and walked on. In
+half an hour she reached the camp, strode straight to the
+pine tree under which Haig lay, and held up before him
+the puny prize.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Now I know you&rsquo;re proud of me!&rdquo; she exclaimed,
+while her face crimsoned.</p>
+<p>Haig smiled indulgently. It was a little better than
+he had expected.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t be downcast!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t think
+you&rsquo;d get a deer the first day. You didn&rsquo;t even see one,
+I suppose.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But I did, though! I had one right under my eyes,
+not thirty feet away. And what do you think I did?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Stood and looked at it, of course. That&rsquo;s buck
+fever.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But it was only a tiny little doe!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Doe fever then, which is probably worse, if I know
+anything about&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That will do, Philip! You&rsquo;re laughing at me.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Not at all. You&rsquo;ve brought home something to eat,
+and that&rsquo;s more than I can do. Bunny looks big and
+fat. He&rsquo;ll make a fine dinner, and leave something for
+to-morrow.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Thank you, Philip!&rdquo; she said gratefully. &ldquo;You
+make me feel as if I were not such a failure after
+all.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;If you&rsquo;ll trust me with the knife,&rdquo; he said in a tone
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_286' name='page_286'></a>286</span>
+that took some of the edge off her satisfaction, &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll
+clean him for you.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>She gave him the knife reluctantly, and did not
+leave his side until he had finished cleaning and cutting
+up the rabbit, when he handed the knife back to her with
+a gesture that made her blush again. Two things she
+did not know: that he had a knife in his pocket much
+better suited to his secret purpose; and that his purpose
+was a purpose no longer. But even he was not yet
+aware of this last.</p>
+<p>It was not the next day, but the third, when the rabbit
+had been eaten to the bone, and the pangs of hunger
+prodded her, that Marion restored herself in her own
+eyes. In the edge of the forest, not more than two
+miles from the camp, she detected a mere brown patch
+in the browning bush. This time she did not forget
+her rifle. The brown patch moved just as she pulled
+the trigger; but when she reached the spot, in a fever
+of anxiety, she fairly shrieked to the wilderness. For
+there in the grass, still jerking spasmodically in its
+death agony, lay a doe, a larger one than that she had
+seen in the glade. No more &ldquo;one a day for twenty-seven
+days!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>What followed haunted her dreams for many nights
+thereafter&ndash;&ndash;a repulsive and sickening ordeal. She
+had seen Huntington do it, but then she had been able
+to turn her face away; and her hands&ndash;&ndash;But necessity,
+responsibility, and pride, and perhaps some primitive
+instinct also, nerved her to the task. And she staggered
+back to camp, and stood before Philip, white and
+trembling, but triumphant.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Take a drink of whisky!&rdquo; ordered Haig sharply.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_287' name='page_287'></a>287</span></div>
+<p>She obeyed him, gulping down the last of the precious
+contents of her flask.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s down there&ndash;&ndash;covered with leaves!&rdquo; she gasped
+out at length. &ldquo;Will anything&ndash;&ndash;disturb it before I
+can&ndash;&ndash;take Tuesday and the rope?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Do you mean you&rsquo;ve cleaned the whole deer?&rdquo; he
+asked curiously.</p>
+<p>She nodded, still shuddering.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, you&rsquo;re a brick!&rdquo; he said heartily. Then he
+added: &ldquo;I thought perhaps a bobcat had stolen your&ndash;&ndash;rabbit.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>She laughed with him, and then was off with Tuesday
+to bring her quarry home. She was not strong
+enough to lift and fasten the carcass on the horse&rsquo;s back;
+but the route was through clean grass along the cliff, and
+Tuesday made short work of that, with the deer dragged
+at the end of the rope.</p>
+<p>They had no salt, but there were a few rinds of bacon
+that Haig had told Marion to keep, and these were made
+to serve for seasoning. That venison, moreover, needed
+nothing to make it palatable; for they were ravenously
+hungry. Sprawled before the fire like savages, they
+feasted on a huge steak, broiled on two willow sticks,
+and well-browned on the outside at the start so that the
+tenderness was retained; and for an hour forgot. For
+so the stomach, at once the tyrant and the slave, has
+sometimes its hour of triumph, when heart and soul and
+brain are its willing captives, and the starkest fears and
+forebodings lose their sway, and death itself, though
+visible and near, has no power to ferment the grateful
+juices of the body.</p>
+<hr class='toprule' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_288' name='page_288'></a>288</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_XXVI_THE_SNOW' id='CHAPTER_XXVI_THE_SNOW'></a>
+<h2>CHAPTER XXVI</h2>
+<h3>THE SNOW</h3>
+</div>
+<p>In the night they were awakened by a terrific outburst
+on the mountain top, surpassing all they had yet
+heard since their arrival in the valley. The forest
+roared under the onslaughts of the wind that swept
+down through the gorge as through a funnel. Protected
+though the camp was, in a measure, fierce gusts
+now and then assailed it, and later the rain came, almost
+in torrents, beating through the canopy of foliage, and
+half-flooding the bed.</p>
+<p>Marion, rising to renew the fire, felt that a sharp
+change had come in the atmosphere. It was colder than
+any night they had yet endured. Wrapped again in
+her blankets, she was unable to keep warm. Her feet,
+near the fire, were too hot, while her back and shoulders
+ached as if they had been packed in ice. Turn which
+way she would, on her back, on her side, or face downward,
+there was no relief from that acid cold. She did
+not complain, but cried softly, trying to hold back her
+sobs so that he should not hear her.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;re cold,&rdquo; he said, hearing her nevertheless.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;A little&ndash;&ndash;not very,&rdquo; she answered bravely.</p>
+<p>But he knew very well how keenly she was suffering.
+His injured leg pained him almost beyond endurance,
+as if the frost had been concentrated there. There was
+nothing he could say or do for her or for himself.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_289' name='page_289'></a>289</span></div>
+<p>Toward morning, the fury of the storm having abated,
+they slept a little, fitfully and uneasily, in the half-insensibility
+to suffering that complete exhaustion brings.
+But they were glad when the first gray light of morning
+stole in among the shadows and touched their eyelids.
+With one accord, as if in a common apprehension, and
+moved by a single fear, they raised their heads, and at
+the first glance about them, sat up staring.</p>
+<p>The meadow lay white under its first coverlet of snow,
+the trees were draped in their winter mantles, their very
+bed had its downy quilt of snowflakes that had sifted
+through the branches of the tree.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s come,&rdquo; said Haig simply.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she answered, in a voice that echoed a tragic
+calm.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But it was due.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Seth kept saying we&rsquo;d have a hard and early
+winter.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Huntington&rsquo;s not such a fool as he looks,&rdquo; retorted
+Haig drily, as he lay back to look up resignedly into
+the foliage, where white now mingled with the green.</p>
+<p>For some time there was no more speech. Marion
+arose, and went silently about her work. She heaped
+wood on the fire until the flames leaped high, and the
+heat began to drive out the settled chill from her limbs,
+and she could move again without dull pain. Then to
+the brook; but her baths in the pool were ended. She
+washed face and hands, and brought back the wet towel
+for Philip. And breakfast was eaten almost in silence,
+and without appetite; for the good venison that had so
+rejoiced them the night before had already lost its
+flavor.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_290' name='page_290'></a>290</span></div>
+<p>&ldquo;Do you see the circles on the trees yonder, where the
+moss begins?&rdquo; asked Haig at length.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; Marion answered.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That&rsquo;s the snow line. It will lie thirty feet deep
+here.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>She had no answer to that. But she was thinking.
+There must be a way. She had no idea what it would
+be; but there must be some way out of it.</p>
+<p>When the camp had been cleaned up, and the pan
+and cup had been washed and put aside, and the fire
+replenished, she brought her rifle from its place behind
+the tree.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m going for a walk,&rdquo; she said.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Where?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know. Down along the cliff perhaps. I
+may see another deer.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes. You might as well. Deer meat will keep&ndash;&ndash;longer
+than we&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He checked the unnecessary speech. She rewarded
+him with a smile and left him.</p>
+<p>And now he faced a curious situation within himself.
+He saw clearly, but strangely without sensation, that it
+was too late for Marion to attempt the passage of the
+mountain. Whatever chance she might have had before&ndash;&ndash;and
+that was perhaps even less than the one in
+a thousand of which he had spoken&ndash;&ndash;she had now no
+chance at all, supposing that he should force her to seek
+it by measures of desperation. And why had he delayed?
+He did not know. Had he weakened? Had
+his injuries taken something from his courage? He
+drew his treasured knife from his pocket, opened the
+largest of the three keen blades, and passed it slowly but
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_291' name='page_291'></a>291</span>
+lightly across his wrist. No; his hand was steady; he
+could do it without a tremor. He could have done it
+yesterday, the day before, or any day. Well, then; had
+he become sceptical of such a solution of his problem?
+Perhaps. Six times in his life he had attempted that
+solution, and always he had failed. And yet, what
+could have thwarted him when Marion was far away in
+the forest, and he lay quiet and undisturbed on his
+blankets, in full possession of his faculties?</p>
+<p>By such process of elimination he arrived at the final
+question: was it she? Was it this girl that now stayed
+his hand, in spite of all his logic and clear vision and
+resolution? This girl, with her foolish faith, and misplaced
+love, and futile talk of miracles? Was it written
+that they should die together&ndash;&ndash;written in some volume
+of the book of life into which he had never looked? Or
+was she right? And would there be&ndash;&ndash;</p>
+<p>He looked out again upon the gleaming whiteness of
+the meadow, at the snow line on the pines, at the remorseless
+mountain. He passed slowly in review again
+the chances of a rescue, the chances of their wintering
+in that (soon-to-be) snowbound valley, the chances of
+a&ndash;&ndash;miracle. And he shook his head. The odds were
+beyond all reckoning; their fate was now as certain as
+if the cliff yonder, rent by another cataclysm, had
+tumbled down upon them while they slept. But he had
+known this in the very hour of his awakening to find her
+kneeling at his side; he had delayed giving her the one
+chance of escape. And so, was it because she had commanded
+him and he had unconsciously obeyed?</p>
+<p>It was mystery; it was enigma. He tried to think
+if he had erred in any way, if there was any fault to
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_292' name='page_292'></a>292</span>
+be attributed to him. No; he had dealt more than
+fairly with this girl; he had spoken frankly and brutally;
+he had never once consciously, by word or look, enticed
+her. Unconsciously, perhaps; but how could he ever
+have foreseen such consequences of the infatuation of
+which he had become slowly and incredulously informed?
+He would have gone raging out of the Park,
+between two suns (and Thursby be damned!), if he had
+ever dreamt of this tragic end of her midsummer
+madness.</p>
+<p>For two hours he lay thinking, torturing his brain
+for an explanation of this mystery, an understanding
+of this coil. And he was no nearer a solution than at
+the beginning, when his thoughts were interrupted by
+Marion. She came running out of the forest&ndash;&ndash;not
+running, but fairly bounding, as if her feet were too
+light to rest on earth. Her face was flushed, her eyes
+danced with excitement. But then, seeing his grave
+and questioning face, she stopped short in front of him,
+suddenly embarrassed.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well?&rdquo; he asked gently.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Would&ndash;&ndash;a cave do?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Her voice trembled between timidity and shortness
+of breath.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;A cave?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What kind of a cave?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;A big cave&ndash;&ndash;really two caves joined together.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Where?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;In the cliff&ndash;&ndash;down there.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>She pointed in the direction from which she had come
+at full speed.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_293' name='page_293'></a>293</span></div>
+<p>&ldquo;How high above the level of the valley?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>She stared at him, and was again embarrassed.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I forgot that!&rdquo; she said, in deep chagrin. &ldquo;But
+wait, please!&rdquo; She looked around her. &ldquo;I think&ndash;&ndash;I
+know what you mean! It&rsquo;s higher up than the marks
+on the trees there, surely it is!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Tell me about it!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s only a little way from here. There&rsquo;s a narrow,
+clear space all along between the forest and the cliff,
+where the grass grows high. But there&rsquo;s one place&ndash;&ndash;I
+missed it before, when I was just looking for deer&ndash;&ndash;where
+the cliff&ndash;&ndash;How can I describe it? It sinks in,
+and there&rsquo;s a slope up to it, solid rock. And at the top
+of the slope I saw a black hole, and got off my pony to
+look in. The slope is easy to climb. Tuesday climbed
+it with me. The mouth of the cave is partly hidden
+by a rock that sticks out so that you can see the opening
+only from one side. The entrance is no bigger than the
+door of your stable. I was afraid at first, but&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You thought of your miracle,&rdquo; he suggested, with
+a smile.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I knew something must be done, so I held my rifle
+ready, thinking it might be a wild beasts&rsquo; den, and
+listened a minute, and went in. There&rsquo;s the big cave
+first, as large as the sitting-room and kitchen together
+at Cousin Seth&rsquo;s, and there&rsquo;s a smaller one at the side,
+with a narrow opening between them. The small one
+has an opening outside too, just big enough for me to
+squeeze through, and look out on the forest below.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Was it cold in there? Did the wind blow
+through?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No, I think not. It seemed very dry and warm.&rdquo;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_294' name='page_294'></a>294</span></div>
+<p>He looked at her intently, and so strangely that she
+blushed again, she knew not why.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Who are you, anyhow?&rdquo; he asked, in a curious
+tone.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, you?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t understand,&rdquo; she faltered in confusion.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No matter!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;We&rsquo;ll try the cave.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He had no faith in the experiment. Even with food
+and shelter, there was still the cold that would steadily
+sap their strength, and stretch them lifeless before half
+the winter should have passed. But she should have
+her way; it would divert her mind from the inevitable;
+and they would, at least, be doing all their best. The
+trip to the cave would be hell for him, in his condition,
+but all that would be, at its worst, soon ended.</p>
+<p>A whole day being needed for the removal, they ventured
+to wait until the following morning. Storms
+raged through all the night on Thunder Mountain, and
+they woke again in utter wretchedness to find another
+and heavier sheet of snow upon the meadow.</p>
+<p>But Marion was soon up and at work in eagerness
+and hope. The fire and the broiled venison renewed
+them; and even the snow offered something by way of
+compensation, for Haig&rsquo;s journey on the freshly constructed
+drag was smoother over the snow than it had
+been in the first instance over the stone-littered earth.
+The ascent to the opening of the cave was, however, another
+matter; and there was imminent danger of Tuesday&rsquo;s
+sliding backward on the slippery rock, and crushing
+Haig beneath him. Twice, indeed, such a fatal
+accident was narrowly averted, and a less sure-footed
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_295' name='page_295'></a>295</span>
+animal than Tuesday would have resolved all Haig&rsquo;s
+doubts in one swift catastrophe. But there was no
+alternative, and Haig at length lay safe enough, though
+racked and exhausted, at the mouth of the cave; and
+when he had rested he raised himself on his elbows and
+looked around him.</p>
+<p>The top of the slope was almost level, and made a
+kind of porch in front of their new abode, about thirty
+feet in length and of half that measurement in its
+greatest width. Haig calculated the height of the platform
+above the valley&ndash;&ndash;fully forty feet. Below was
+the strip of grass, and then the forest towering high
+above them, protecting the cave, in some degree, from
+the winds that would come roaring down the gulch. At
+this height they should be able, in all probability, to
+defy the snows. With a sufficient store of food and
+fuel, and any kind of luck, there would have been&ndash;&ndash;God!
+Was there a chance?</p>
+<p>With his back to the wall! He had always been at
+his best against long odds. None of the adventures of
+the ten years that he counted as his life had ever been
+for any kind of gain; and the finest of them had been
+those in which there were the most tight places. So
+this coming struggle with the elements, though it should
+be a trial not of valor but of endurance and resourcefulness,
+lacking swift action and a culmination in one
+stirring hour, would once have allured him like a
+splendid game. And even now, for one instant, while
+he sat there keenly counting the forces on one side and
+the other, the pride of battle lighted up his features,
+and for that instant he was himself again. But a cruel
+and timely twinge in his injured leg recalled him to
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_296' name='page_296'></a>296</span>
+realities. His back was not to the wall; it was flat on
+the ground. He could not walk, he could not stand;
+and for weeks to come he would continue to be as helpless
+as in that moment. To endure a siege of eight
+months in the cave its garrison must have huge stores
+of food and fuel; pine boughs and moss in lieu of bedding;
+solid barricades at the entrances; and countless
+makeshifts for the comforts that were denied. And
+before he should be able to stir it would be too late.
+No, it was an idle dream; a month would see the end
+of both of them. So he lay back again, and looked up
+vacantly into the cold, blue sky.</p>
+<p>But Marion, standing at one side and watching him,
+had seen that flicker of the fire within, and was grateful
+for it beyond all reason or belief. It was all she
+needed. Her hands were already raw and bleeding,
+but she would work them to the bone if he would only
+guide and advise and comfort her; and she knew now
+that she could trust him, since there was no longer any
+question whether she should go or stay.</p>
+<p>All that day was spent in bringing up fresh boughs
+and moss for their beds, and in making them against
+the wall of the cavern where draughts would be the
+least likely to sweep over them; in bestowing their
+meager belongings; in hanging the venison from sticks
+thrust into a crevice in the rock; in finding the best
+place for the fire that must never be allowed to go
+down, and in planning the storage of food and fuel.</p>
+<p>Marion had no pressing anxiety about food, now that
+she had brought in her first deer; but fuel was a different
+matter. To her own appreciation of the problem
+Haig, that evening after dinner, added some calculations
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_297' name='page_297'></a>297</span>
+that revealed it to her in its baldest aspects. The
+morning, too, disclosed another layer of snow upon the
+valley. The winter was coming on without pity, and
+each succeeding day would see its lines drawn a little
+closer round them. There was not an hour, not a moment
+to be lost.</p>
+<p>At dawn she began, with Tuesday and the rope, to
+haul dead limbs and logs, the largest she was able to
+handle, going far at first in order to leave the nearest
+supplies for the last harvesting in deep snow. Under
+Haig&rsquo;s instructions, she filled all the space in the caves
+that would not be actually needed for their living quarters.
+Then she built the logs into a square and solid
+pile on the platform at one side of the entrance. These
+were not logs in any formidable sense, being for the
+most part half-rotted fragments of tree trunks that had
+long been decaying in the mold. But they were dry
+now, after the summer, and they made excellent slow-burning
+fuel. The dead limbs she cut up into small
+sticks, and filled the interstices of the heap, and all the
+space between it and the wall of rock. And eventually
+the whole platform was covered, and the slope on each
+side, until there was no longer room for Tuesday to
+mount to it, and barely room for Marion herself.</p>
+<p>In the meantime, varying her exertions, she made
+several trips into the woods for deer. After many disappointments,
+she succeeded, before the snow became
+too deep for further expeditions, in bringing back to
+the cave a splendid buck and three young does. Haig
+made for her a rabbit snare, and taught her how to set
+it, and with this device she had the luck to add a dozen
+rabbits to their store. And all this time she was piling
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_298' name='page_298'></a>298</span>
+up every stick of wood that she could find space for,
+even making a great heap at the foot of the slope to be
+drawn upon before the snow should cover it.</p>
+<p>Always the snow fell, steadily, remorselessly. Every
+night it snowed, and every day more or less, with intervals
+of brilliant sunshine. The wind blew with increasing
+violence, tossing the snow into huge drifts
+upon the meadow, which Marion still saw sometimes in
+her wood gathering, and sifting it in level masses among
+the trees, and flinging it in great banks against the
+cliff. Up and up crept the drifts and banks and levels
+until there came a day when she could do no more.</p>
+<p>And that day it seemed that she could have done no
+more in any kind of weather, under any inspiration or
+necessity. The record of what she did is but a footnote
+to the page of what she suffered. Time after time she
+had sunk down in the snow and lain there exhausted
+until strength came to her again from somewhere, and
+then had risen <i>manfully</i> to her work. For it was a
+man&rsquo;s work she did, with a courage as much greater
+than a man&rsquo;s as her strength was less. She was strong,
+for a woman; she had lived all her life much out of
+doors; and she had entered upon this ordeal in perfect
+health. But her willingness outsped her powers; and
+when the snow had spared her by driving her into the
+cave, she fairly staggered and groped and leaned against
+the wall, and knew that if she should now collapse she
+would never rise again. But even in that climax of
+her suffering, when for a moment she dared not move,
+in fear of toppling over on the floor, and could not keep
+back her sobs, there was an answer ready when Haig
+called to her across the cave.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_299' name='page_299'></a>299</span></div>
+<p>&ldquo;What is it, Marion?&rdquo; he asked softly.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Tuesday!&rdquo; she answered chokingly.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What about Tuesday?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He&rsquo;s a good horse.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He never balked or&ndash;&ndash;hesitated. He never threw
+me&ndash;&ndash;but once, and that wasn&rsquo;t his fault. It was&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>She stopped. And out of what black depths, and
+across what vistas of hope and despair and love and
+anguish, she looked back to that scene in the golden
+summer, in the Forbidden Pasture.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, I remember,&rdquo; said Haig.</p>
+<p>Then she told him brokenly how she had just said
+farewell to Tuesday; how he stood at the foot of the
+slope, thin as a specter, belly-deep in snow, his nose
+lifted inquiringly toward her.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Good-by, Tuesday!&rdquo; she cried; and fled stumbling
+up the slope, her hands on her ears to shut out his
+plaintive whinny.</p>
+<p>Haig watched her narrowly, and was not deceived.
+Through the first few days of Marion&rsquo;s struggles he had
+lain on his pallet in almost complete indifference, in
+full acceptance of the fate that awaited them; not callous
+to her sufferings, but resigned, as he thought, to
+endure what could not be prevented. Having resolved
+to humor her, he went from the extreme of resistance
+to the extreme of submission, and hardened his heart to
+endure what galled and humiliated and degraded him.
+Then anger seized him once more,&ndash;&ndash;anger at Marion,
+anger at himself, anger at Thursby, anger at circumstances,
+chance and destiny: blinding and suffocating
+anger. To have been brought to this shameful state, to
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_300' name='page_300'></a>300</span>
+lie there watching a woman, a mere girl, perform these
+menial tasks for him&ndash;&ndash;for him who had execrated and
+despised and scorned her sex&ndash;&ndash;for him who had accepted
+such services grudgingly even from men&ndash;&ndash;for
+him who had stalked around the world in defiant independence,
+indebted to no man and obligated to no
+woman: this was odious and intolerable. And it must
+be tolerated!</p>
+<p>Marion knew nothing of this fiery ordeal through
+which Haig came. Even in the fiercest and most maddening
+moment of his agony, when honor and pride and
+self-respect were being reduced to ashes, he did not fail
+to realize that to cry out, to rave or curse or denunciate,
+would only be to add something cowardly and contemptible
+to the sum of his disgrace. He did not even cast
+a stealthy glance toward his revolver, where it lay in a
+niche in the cavern wall, though Marion was out in the
+snow somewhere, and could not have stopped him if he
+had crawled to seize it. That, too, would have been an
+act of cowardice and of infamy; and something deep
+within him now continually spoke for her, and for
+whatever it was she stood for in this chaos that was the
+end of all.</p>
+<p>His fury slowly passed, and he had but emerged from
+its strangely purifying fire into a calm that was well-nigh
+as terrible, when she entered sobbing into the cave
+to tell him the pitiable little lie that all her visible distress
+was for a pony to whom she had said farewell.
+He saw her presently totter forward to put more fuel
+on the fire and begin to prepare their evening meal.
+With eyes from which the smoke of passion had now
+lifted, he saw what he had only vaguely seen before:
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_301' name='page_301'></a>301</span>
+that she was thin and haggard; that her pale face took
+on a hectic flush in the glow of the blazing pine; that
+her clothes were all in tatters, her riding-skirt slit in
+many places, her coat and flannel waist so worn, and
+torn that they barely covered her, and did indeed reveal
+one white shoulder through a gaping rent; that
+one dilapidated boot was quite out at toe; and that she
+was ill and faint and silent.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Marion!&rdquo; he called to her.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, Philip!&rdquo; she answered, turning to look at
+him.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Come here, please!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>She came and stood before him, unsteadily.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Let me see your hands!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>She knelt, and held them out to him. Taking them
+in his own hands, which were then far softer and whiter
+than hers, he looked long at the raw and bleeding
+cracks, at the swollen joints, at the bruised and calloused
+fingers, at the nails (they were once so pink and
+polished) worn down to the quick, and at one nail that
+had been split back almost to its root.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;They&rsquo;re not very pretty, are they?&rdquo; she said, with
+a weak little laugh that ended in a quiver of her chin.</p>
+<p>He lifted the hands, the right one and then the left,
+and touched them with his lips. She was very weary
+and faint and miserable; and he had never done anything
+like that before; and so she drew back her hands,
+and buried her face in them, and sank sobbing on the
+floor.</p>
+<hr class='toprule' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_302' name='page_302'></a>302</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_XXVII_THE_VOICE_IN_THE_HURRICANE' id='CHAPTER_XXVII_THE_VOICE_IN_THE_HURRICANE'></a>
+<h2>CHAPTER XXVII</h2>
+<h3>THE VOICE IN THE HURRICANE</h3>
+</div>
+<p>Their sufferings, as the days went crawling into
+weeks, attained a certain dead level of wretchedness.
+At that level, should nothing worse befall, they
+felt that they might exist through the eight months of
+their imprisonment; beyond that level lay deliverance
+by death. So they kept a painstaking account of time,
+and made a sort of solemn ceremony of that hour when,
+as night let down its black curtain before the entrance
+of the cavern, Marion cut another notch in the wall,
+and they clasped hands in a brave effort at good cheer,
+and said to each other, &ldquo;One more! One more!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The cold had steadily increased until it was just
+barely endurable. By day it was possible to combat it
+in some measure, but at night they were stung and
+tortured by the frost that invaded the cave, and defied
+their meager clothing. If they tried lying closely side
+by side with their blankets spread over them, the cold
+crept under the coverings, and bit through their garments
+into their emaciated limbs. If they wrapped
+themselves tightly in the blankets, one pair to each, and
+lay near the fire, they were able to catch only a few
+fitful moments of sleep before the frost on one side and
+the heat on the other forced them to move.</p>
+<p>At inexorable intervals the fire must be replenished.
+Heavy with sleep that was not sleep, feeble from lack
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_303' name='page_303'></a>303</span>
+of nourishment, and stiff from cold, Marion would rise
+and stumble to the nearest heap of wood, and carefully
+lay two or three pieces on the dying embers. The fire
+itself was to Marion a source of continual dread; for
+not only did it consume their precious and unrenewable
+supply of wood with a terrifying voracity, but she was
+fairly obsessed by the fear that she might let it go out.
+In that event they might never waken, clutched by the
+cold in their sleep; or wakening, find that something
+had happened to the matches. There remained a good
+store of these in the box enfolded carefully in a bit of
+cloth and a strip of deerskin, and bestowed in a high
+niche of the cavern; but there was sometimes moisture
+in the night winds, and there could be no absolute assurance
+that the matches would ignite in an emergency.</p>
+<p>The winds blew irregularly, sometimes roaring
+through the cave, and filling it with a whirl of smoke
+and snow, and sometimes creeping along the floor with
+the malevolence and stealthiness of a serpent. Marion
+had blocked up the entrance with small logs and limbs,
+but the winds and draughts made scorn of this loose
+barrier. Her clothes were fast falling from her body.
+She essayed crude patchwork with strips of deerskin
+and pins of wood, but these efforts were rendered futile
+by wear and tear and the rotting of the cloth itself.
+She began to be embarrassed when her flesh showed
+through the rents in her garments; but Haig, with a
+mingling of frankness and tact that might indeed have
+been less easy in other circumstances, effectually helped
+her to banish all false modesty from a situation in
+which they were reduced to primitive habits and almost
+to primitive familiarities.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_304' name='page_304'></a>304</span></div>
+<p>She was less able to accustom herself to the dirt,
+from which there was no escape, but which irked her
+nevertheless more than all else. She was no longer
+able to keep clean in any sense of cleanliness associated
+with civilization. Washing with water melted from
+snow, without soap or towels, had only the effect, as it
+seemed to her, to fix the grime more deeply in her skin.
+And the hair that had been her pride had now no more
+the golden lights in its tawny masses, and was becoming
+dark and harsh and sheenless in spite of her most assiduous
+attention.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t worry!&rdquo; said Haig one day, in a grim attempt
+at humor. &ldquo;Just imagine you are a belle of
+the Eskimos.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Philip! How can you?&rdquo; she cried.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Washing,&rdquo; he went on, &ldquo;is only another error of
+civilization. I have seen whole tribes of most respectable
+aborigines that never bathed. And they seemed
+to be quite happy. It saves a lot of time. But that&rsquo;s
+another queer thing. The more time we need, the more
+we waste it on matters that are really unimportant.
+Like most of our attempts to improve on nature, it costs
+more than it&rsquo;s worth, and&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That will do, Philip!&rdquo; she protested. &ldquo;I can
+forget I&rsquo;m hungry, but&ndash;&ndash;ugh! not this!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>But she spoke too bravely about her hunger. Their
+food by this time had begun to pall. The good venison,
+of which they had eaten joyously at first, became tasteless
+and then disgusting. They had no salt. The
+bacon and the bread had long since been consumed, and
+the chocolate also. There was left nothing but the
+flesh of deer and rabbits. Marion stewed it, broiled it,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_305' name='page_305'></a>305</span>
+baked it under hot ashes; and they even nibbled at it
+raw; but the time came when only the relentless pangs
+of hunger, the hunger of the animal, the sheer clamor
+of their stomachs could force them to eat the nauseating
+food. In consequence of this revulsion, they were always
+hungry; and sometimes, in spite of their resolution,
+they descended to torturing each other with talk
+of the good things there were in the world to eat.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Claire makes the most gorgeous apple dumplings!&rdquo;
+said Marion on one of these occasions.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Apple dumplings? Ye-es,&rdquo; replied Haig judiciously.
+&ldquo;But what about plain dumplings in chicken
+gravy?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Fricassee!&rdquo; cried Marion.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No. Maryland.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Still, Philip, if I had my choice it wouldn&rsquo;t be
+chicken at all.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What then?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Potatoes. Big, baked potatoes, split open, you
+know, with butter and salt and paprika.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Or sweet potatoes swimming in butter.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And salad&ndash;&ndash;lettuce and tomatoes and oil and
+vinegar.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And then pie. Think of blackberry pie!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And jam. I do love jam spread on toast.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll tell you something,&rdquo; said Haig recklessly. &ldquo;I
+could even eat sauerkraut!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Their worst craving was for salt. Marion could
+fairly taste the spray of the Atlantic on the bathing
+beaches. She dreamt of salt,&ndash;&ndash;barrels of salt and
+oceans of salt and caves she had read of in which salt
+hung in glittering stalactites. And Haig too. He
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_306' name='page_306'></a>306</span>
+described a desert where salt had risen to the surface
+and gleamed in crystals in the sand. And once he had
+lived a long time on salt pork, which he had thought the
+most insufferable food. But now! The taste of it
+came back to him, and went tingling through every
+nerve.</p>
+<p>To free their minds from such tormenting memories,
+Haig went deep into his adventures, his wanderings, his
+search for excitements. He told her of strange lands
+and peoples, of the beautiful spots of the world, of
+battles and perils and escapes,&ndash;&ndash;everything he had been
+through, with one exception. That&ndash;&ndash;the story of
+Paris&ndash;&ndash;was still a closed book to her. And similarly,
+there was one chapter of her life that she did not open
+to him. A certain delicacy, rendered more vital by their
+very situation, in which few delicacies could be maintained,
+restrained them from the uttermost self-revelation.
+The one subject that was not touched upon in the
+most intimate of their conversations was that dearest to
+Marion&rsquo;s heart and most incomprehensible to Haig&rsquo;s
+reason. Partly this avoidance was intuitive, and
+partly deliberate; where there was so much suffering
+that could not be escaped, they were scrupulous to inflict
+upon each other no unnecessary pain or embarrassment.
+Between a more common man and a less
+fastidious woman, placed in such propinquity, there
+would almost inevitably have been concessions and compromises
+but between these two there remained a barrier
+that might have been passed by Marion&rsquo;s unquestioning
+love, but never by Haig&rsquo;s inclinations, curbed
+as they had been through many years, and still reined
+in by his distrust.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_307' name='page_307'></a>307</span></div>
+<p>The day came when it seemed safe for Haig to stand
+and to move a little about the cave. He had fashioned
+slowly a pair of rude crutches, if they could be so
+called,&ndash;&ndash;two pine limbs trimmed down with his pocketknife,
+with their natural forks left to fit under his
+arms. Marion protested that he was attempting this
+feat much too soon, but she was compelled to watch him
+in an agony of suspense lest he should fall on the hard
+floor of the cave, or rest his weight on the injured leg,
+and so undo all that had cost them so much of care and
+labor. But caution restrained him; for he was aware
+of the danger, though he was also half-mad with impatience
+to be a man once more. Venturing only a few
+tentative steps at first, he steadily accustomed himself
+to movement with the aid of the awkward crutches, and
+in a few days was able to take up some of the work
+of their wretched habitation. Marion saw that this
+pleased him immensely, almost as if he had been a boy
+entrusted with a man&rsquo;s responsibility; and once, too,
+she saw him stand a long time before the row of notches
+on the wall, and thought his figure straightened, and a
+flush came into his pale cheek.</p>
+<p>And then, in the sixth week of their imprisonment,
+Marion fell ill. She had caught a cold, which was
+not the first by any means, but much more severe than
+its predecessors. With watery eyes and red noses and
+distressing coughs they had become familiar, but this
+was plainly a more serious matter. For three days
+more she dragged herself about, trying to conceal her
+state from him and from herself, but crying softly
+when he did not see her.</p>
+<p>One morning, as the dawn crept into the cavern, she
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_308' name='page_308'></a>308</span>
+tried as usual to rise from her hard bed, and fell back
+with a stifled moan. Haig heard her, and raised his
+head quickly, struck by an unaccustomed note in her
+low cry.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What is it, Marion?&rdquo; he asked in alarm.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s no use, dear!&rdquo; she whispered. &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t get
+up.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>For a moment he lay stricken, incapable of thought.
+Not that the event was unexpected. He had been reckoning
+on that; he had seen her steadily failing, and
+knew that she could not go on indefinitely under such
+privations. And yet, when it came, it was appalling.
+The grayness of the cave settled down upon him like a
+pall. Once he would have been indifferent to it, resigned
+to the knowledge that it was inevitable. But
+now he had come, if not to share her hope, at least to
+sympathize with it, and to wish ardently for her sake
+that her faith might be justified. And it seemed a
+pitiable thing that she should have been deceived, an
+intolerable thing that she should die there so uselessly,&ndash;&ndash;for
+him.</p>
+<p>He moved over to her, and placed his hand on her
+forehead. It was burning hot.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Water, please!&rdquo; she gasped.</p>
+<p>He hobbled to the entrance, and brought a cupful
+of snow, and melted it over the fire. She drank the
+water greedily, and begged for more. But he told her
+gently that she must wait a little while. Then he sat
+thinking. What should be done with fever? It would
+probably be pneumonia, or something as fatal. And it
+would take her as the north wind takes the drooping
+petals of a rose.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_309' name='page_309'></a>309</span></div>
+<p>He bent over her, and tried to soothe her with such
+futile words as came. The look she gave him went
+straight into deep, dark cells of his being that he
+thought had been closed and sealed forever. She
+begged him to eat; he must cook his own breakfast.
+Oh, but he must eat, or he should not be able to help
+her, she said. She would be quite well in a day or
+two; she was sure of that; and he must not get sick too.
+After he had been so patient and so good to her!</p>
+<p>Haig turned away with a groan, and tried to obey
+her. But eat? Eat that repulsive food that he had
+choked down these many days only to please her, only
+to subscribe to her foolish faith? He could not! But
+presently she raised her head, and saw that he was
+not eating, and chided him. Whereupon he swallowed
+some morsels of the venison, and assured her that he had
+eaten heartily.</p>
+<p>All that day she lay there, her face flushed, her eyes
+gleaming with a brightness that was more than the
+brightness of her indomitable spirit. When she smiled
+up at him he turned his face away that she might not
+see what he knew was written on it. And then he
+realized how much that smile had come to mean to him&ndash;&ndash;how
+all unawares he had come to covet and to prize
+it&ndash;&ndash;how he had half-consciously of late resorted to unexpected
+words and gestures to coax it to her lips.</p>
+<p>There was no sleep for either of them that night.
+The next day Marion grew steadily worse, and toward
+evening she became delirious. And there was no concealment
+in this delirium as there had been in his.
+All that he had not seen and heard and guessed before
+was now wholly revealed to him. He was permitted to
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_310' name='page_310'></a>310</span>
+see deep into the pure soul of the girl, into her very
+heart that was brimming over with love for him. His
+name came riding on every breath. It was Philip,
+Philip, Philip! And bit by bit, and fragment by fragment,
+he heard all the pitiful story of her love, of her
+petty stratagems, of the wicked little plot she had made,
+of the traps from which he had extricated himself, of
+the pretended sprain in her ankle, of her watching and
+waiting, of the anguish he had caused her, of her solitary
+communion with the stars on Mount Avalanche, of
+her dismissal of Hillyer, of her faith in the love that
+should not be denied and unrequited, of her prayers for
+a miracle that should bring him to her at last.</p>
+<p>He looked down at the poor, small foot in its ragged
+shoe; yes, that was the foot that was &ldquo;sprained.&rdquo; And
+how it had trudged, and dragged itself along for him,
+when every bone and muscle of her body ached! He
+looked at her hands, thin even in their swollenness, raw
+and bleeding, hard as a laborer&rsquo;s on the palms. How
+they had toiled and bled for him! For him! And
+what about him? What about Philip Haig?</p>
+<p>He leaned back from her, and closed his eyes. And
+suddenly it seemed as if something fell away from
+them, as if something that had bound and imprisoned
+and blinded him had been rudely shattered. In one
+terrible, torturing revelation he saw clearly what he
+had been, what he had done, what a miserable wreck he
+had made of life, what a pitiable, dwarfed, misshapen
+thing his soul had become in comparison with the soul
+of this girl whom he had despised. He saw that he had
+lived a life of almost untouched egoism, setting his
+own wrongs above all the other wrongs in the world,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_311' name='page_311'></a>311</span>
+counting his own griefs the greatest of all griefs, nursing
+his own tragedy as if it had been the first tragedy
+and the last. Bitterly, remorselessly he reviewed his
+selfishness, his hatred, his senseless rage, the heartlessness
+wrought by himself in a nature that had been, in
+the beginning, as pure, if not as precious and fine and
+beautiful, as hers.</p>
+<p>And that was not all. He had taken woman for the
+special object of his hatred. He had made himself believe
+that all women were alike. Was there, then, only
+one kind of woman in a world filled with many kinds
+of men? Because he had been a fool, because he had
+been deceived by one woman, he had concluded, in his
+folly, that every woman was a vampire or a parasite,&ndash;&ndash;&ldquo;a
+rag and a bone and a hank of hair&rdquo;!</p>
+<p>And now there lay before him indeed (and the words
+took on a new and more terrible meaning) &ldquo;a rag and
+a bone and a hank of hair.&rdquo; Yes, this was all that was
+left of her. This was what he had made of the most
+joyous and most beautiful creature that had ever
+crossed his path; this was the best he could do for one
+who had had the misfortune to love him and the courage
+to tell him so. This was his work! His memory
+went back to that day before the post-office. How beautiful
+she was then, how strangely beautiful, coming out
+of that halo of light by the side of the golden outlaw.
+Something had stirred within him then, as it had
+stirred again and again: at Huntington&rsquo;s when she
+reached for his revolver; in his cottage that last afternoon
+of her nursing. And he had repulsed it, put it
+down, and trampled on it, as if it had been an execrable
+thing instead of the very treasure he had been
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_312' name='page_312'></a>312</span>
+seeking all his life without knowing what he sought.
+And now he recognized it for what it was&ndash;&ndash;too late!</p>
+<p>He bent nearer to her, listening.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Philip! Philip!&rdquo; she was saying, in tender,
+coaxing accents, with that quivering of her chin that
+had many times been almost irresistible.</p>
+<p>Then came the final break-up of everything within
+him. He felt lifted as upon a flood, and a wild and
+passionate longing surged through all his being. He
+leaned swiftly over her, and clasped her in his arms,
+and pressed her hot cheek against his own. And then&ndash;&ndash;it
+was unendurable; he felt one of her arms softly
+encircling his neck. There was just one gentle pressure,
+and then the arm fell to her side, and her head
+sank weakly away from him. He laid her back tenderly
+on her hard bed.</p>
+<p>He sat up again, looking at her and listening. She
+rambled on in half-coherent speech. She had not heard
+him cry out her name; or if she had heard him it had
+been only a part of her fevered dreams. And this was
+the crowning bitterness: that he should want to speak
+to her, to tell her that he loved her, and she could
+not hear; that he was too late, and she would never
+know.</p>
+<p>He leaped to his feet in a whirling tempest of rage.
+He stumbled to the mouth of the cave, and thrust himself
+half through the barricade, and looked out into the
+wilderness of snow, and stood shaking his fist at it,
+quivering with passion, and uttering the wildest imprecations
+upon the world, upon the outlaw, and upon
+himself. And gradually they centered upon himself
+alone; and he stood presently, as it were, naked before
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_313' name='page_313'></a>313</span>
+God, with something like a prayer unspoken, a silent,
+voiceless petition rising from his tortured soul.</p>
+<p>He became calm after that. A curious peace, it
+seemed, had flowed in upon him. Mechanically he renewed
+the fire, brought water and held it to Marion&rsquo;s
+lips, and eased her position on the bed. Then he sat
+by her side to wait!</p>
+<p>Well, this was the end. She would be going soon,&ndash;&ndash;to-morrow,
+or the day after. He glanced toward the
+shelf where Marion&rsquo;s rifle and his revolver lay. She
+would not be there now to snatch the weapon from his
+hand! But she would be waiting for him. And there
+came back to him the strange feeling he had experienced
+in his cottage&ndash;&ndash;the pressure of her hand still
+warm on his own&ndash;&ndash;her hand helping up and up and
+out of the Valley of the Shadow. And her hand would
+be stretched out for him&ndash;&ndash;in the Beyond&ndash;&ndash;</p>
+<hr class='tb' />
+<p>It must have been about the middle of the next forenoon&ndash;&ndash;he
+had ceased to reckon time, and there were no
+more notches cut on the black wall of the cave&ndash;&ndash;when
+Philip, sitting at Marion&rsquo;s side, observed a curious,
+restless movement of her head. She had lain all morning
+in a stupor, very still, with only an occasional
+murmur from her dry lips. But now, moving her
+head from side to side, she tried to lift it, as if to
+listen.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What is it, Marion?&rdquo; asked Haig, leaning close to
+her.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Listen!&rdquo; she whispered.</p>
+<p>He obeyed her, or pretended to, and turned an ear
+toward the mouth of the cavern. The wind was up
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_314' name='page_314'></a>314</span>
+with its wailing and its snarls and shrieks. He heard
+it for a moment, then looked at her again.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;My poor girl! My poor Marion!&rdquo; he said.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Listen!&rdquo; she repeated, with a touching emphasis,
+almost childish, almost petulant.</p>
+<p>He heard the storm.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, Marion,&rdquo; he said, humoring her.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Can&rsquo;t you hear it?&rdquo; she pleaded. &ldquo;Listen!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>It was the delirium again; she was hearing things
+that were not, except in her disordered mind. Perhaps&ndash;&ndash;he
+had read somewhere that the dying, those of them
+that are pure at heart, sometimes hear the calling of
+the&ndash;&ndash;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Somebody&rsquo;s&ndash;&ndash;coming!&rdquo; she cried in the thinnest,
+most childlike treble. Her face shone; she tried to sit
+up; she raised one hand feebly toward him.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Please lie down, dear!&rdquo; pleaded Haig, pressing
+her gently back.</p>
+<p>She resisted him, smiling and frowning at the same
+time.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Be&ndash;&ndash;very&ndash;&ndash;still. And&ndash;&ndash;listen!&rdquo; she persisted.</p>
+<p>To please her, he sat erect, and listened. They were
+very still then, one of her hands between both of his.
+And the storm was raging. It was wilder, wilder. All
+the fury of Thunder Mountain seemed to be behind the
+wind that came shrieking and bellowing down the gulch.</p>
+<p>The seconds passed, with dead silence in the cave,
+and that bedlam let loose outside.</p>
+<p>Then suddenly Haig lifted his head. What was it?
+There seemed to have come&ndash;&ndash;No, it was but a mocking
+voice of the hurricane, one of the myriad voices of
+that wintry inferno, mocking them with a half-human
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_315' name='page_315'></a>315</span>
+cry. He looked sadly down at Marion, and saw that
+wondrous smile again upon her emaciated face. Oh,
+but this was maddening! Yet because she wished it,
+he listened again. And then, out of that tumult&ndash;&ndash;very
+faint and far&ndash;&ndash;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;My God! My God!&rdquo; he shouted.</p>
+<p>He leaped to his feet. He forgot his crutches. He
+flung himself across the floor of the cave in three reckless
+bounds, flung himself on the barrier of logs and
+limbs, clawing it like a maniac, or a wild beast, tore his
+way through it, and stood in the snow on the platform,
+calling into the storm, shrieking, bellowing, out-shrieking
+and out-bellowing the storm, swaying dizzily in the
+wind, and clutching at the air before him in a frenzy.</p>
+<hr class='toprule' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_316' name='page_316'></a>316</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_XXVIII_THE_MAN_WHO_DID_NOT_FORGET' id='CHAPTER_XXVIII_THE_MAN_WHO_DID_NOT_FORGET'></a>
+<h2>CHAPTER XXVIII</h2>
+<h3>THE MAN WHO DID NOT FORGET</h3>
+</div>
+<p>Out of the tempest came the answering halloo;
+and Haig redoubled his outcries. Twice it
+came, whipped and broken by the wind; and then there
+was but the wind itself. Exhausted by his efforts, and
+sick of desperation and despair, Haig sank back weakly
+against the rock. Round and round him whirled the
+snow; across his face the wind cut him with savage
+lashes; in his ears there was nothing, nothing but the
+storm. Then, all grew black before him. After all, it
+had been an hallucination; he had been as mad as
+Marion in her delirium; he had peopled the storm with
+imaginary beings, had given the wind a voice it did
+not know. Crushed by disappointment, acknowledging
+the end, he was sinking down upon the snow-covered
+platform, when, suddenly&ndash;&ndash;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Hal-lo-o-o!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>It was nearer and louder than before. Haig straightened
+up, and again filled the tumultuous air with
+hoarse cries. Once more the voice came; and then out
+of the white chaos at the right of the cave, almost level
+with the platform, a dark form appeared, striding forward
+with a peculiar swinging motion, clumsily but
+sure.</p>
+<p>Haig uttered one more call that dribbled into a sobbing
+cry.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_317' name='page_317'></a>317</span></div>
+<p>&ldquo;All&ndash;&ndash;right!&rdquo; answered the figure, in a smothered
+tone.</p>
+<p>Huge, hunchbacked and cumbersome, the figure
+shuffled up the slight slope between the level of the snow
+and the snowy platform, and halted. A mittened hand
+went up to its head, and brushed the snow from the
+face.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Pete!&rdquo; cried Haig.</p>
+<p>He attempted to move forward, stumbled, lunged
+toward the Indian, and collapsed in his arms. Pete,
+holding him, looked around until he saw the opening
+of the cave, and fairly carried Haig inside. For a
+few seconds, seeing nothing in the sudden change from
+the dazzling whiteness of the snow to the dim red light
+of the cavern, Pete stood still. Then Haig stiffened,
+stood erect, and pushed the Indian from him.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;There! Look!&rdquo; he gasped, pointing to where
+Marion lay, wild-eyed on the bed, wrapped in her
+blankets. Then he sank down on the floor, with his
+back against the wall, and gave himself up to dizziness
+and exhaustion.</p>
+<p>Pete quickly removed his thick mittens, unstrapped
+the bundle that rested on his back, and took off the
+snowshoes that had caused his approach over the snow
+to appear so like a lumbering animal&rsquo;s. Flinging all
+these on the floor, he went swiftly to Marion&rsquo;s side, and
+knelt there.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Sick?&rdquo; he asked.</p>
+<p>She did not answer, but stared at him, and smiled.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Listen!&rdquo; she whispered. &ldquo;Somebody&ndash;&ndash;coming!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Pete stood up, and looked at Haig.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_318' name='page_318'></a>318</span></div>
+<p>&ldquo;How long like this?&rdquo; he asked.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I forget. Three or four days.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You well?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; Haig answered weakly.</p>
+<p>Pete came closer, and pointed to the leg that Haig
+kept thrust stiffly out before him.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Broke?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;How long?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Six weeks.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The Indian asked no more questions just then, but
+hastened to open his pack. First he found a bottle of
+whisky, and made Haig take a long drink. Pete believed
+in two remedies for all human ills. He had a
+brew of herbs that he had inherited from his tribal ancestors,
+his sole inheritance besides his iron body. This
+brew was good for fevers; and whisky was good
+for everything else. Having doctored Haig with the
+whisky, he now turned to Marion with the brew. From
+a flask he poured some of the dark brown liquid into a
+cup, let it come just to a boil among the embers of
+the fire, and when it had cooled a little placed it to
+Marion&rsquo;s lips. It was bitter, and she tried to draw
+away from it, but Pete forced her gently to drain the
+cup.</p>
+<p>Whatever the brew might be worth, the whisky certainly
+was efficacious. Haig sat erect, and began hurling
+questions at the Indian.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;How did you get in here&ndash;&ndash;in God&rsquo;s name?&rdquo; was
+the first.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Black Lake country.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But how did you get in there?&rdquo;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_319' name='page_319'></a>319</span></div>
+<p>&ldquo;Simpson&rsquo;s Pass.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Haig stared at him. He knew that to reach Simpson&rsquo;s
+Pass the Indian must have gone far south below
+the canyon of the Big Bear, made a wide detour over
+the lower range, and ascended to the Pass around the
+shoulder of Big Bear Mountain. He had never heard
+of the Pass being crossed in winter, and it was almost
+unbelievable.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But the snow!&rdquo; he exclaimed.</p>
+<p>Pete pointed to the snowshoes.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But the Pass doesn&rsquo;t let into the Black Lake
+country,&rdquo; said Haig. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s another range of
+mountains.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes. I come over them.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;How long did it take you?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I been four weeks. But most of time looking in
+forest down there.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But how did you find us?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The Indian drew from his pocket a ragged and soiled
+piece of paper, and spread it out on the floor. It was
+a crude map, with Paradise Park outlined at one side,
+and at the other a labyrinth of lines and stars and
+crosses. The stars were peaks, the crosses were foothills,
+and the lines were creeks and valleys. Through
+the maze ran one heavier line that indicated the trail
+through the Black Lake country up to the cliff at the
+back of Thunder Mountain.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Old Parker made it,&rdquo; said Pete.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Tell me all!&rdquo; commanded Haig. &ldquo;But wait!&rdquo;
+He pointed to Marion.</p>
+<p>Marion&rsquo;s babbling had slowly subsided, and ceased.
+Pete rose and went to her noiselessly on his moccasined
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_320' name='page_320'></a>320</span>
+feet; and after looking at her a moment stepped
+cautiously back.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;She quiet now. Sleep soon,&rdquo; he said.</p>
+<p>And it was so. The next time he slipped over to her,
+the girl&rsquo;s eyes were closed, and soon she had sunk into
+a profound slumber from which she did not awake until
+late the next morning.</p>
+<p>Meanwhile Pete took up his story. Smythe had
+delivered Marion&rsquo;s message, and had told them what he
+feared. Claire&rsquo;s knowledge of the state of Marion&rsquo;s
+heart and mind enabled her to guess the worst, but Seth
+scouted the idea of her trying to reach the top of
+Thunder Mountain, or of Murray permitting her to
+try it. So two days were lost before the alarm was
+sounded by Murray, who, after two attempts to reach
+the top of the mountain, had given up and ridden to the
+Park for help.</p>
+<p>The whole valley responded to the call, and the most
+desperate efforts were made to reach the plateau, but the
+storms that Haig and Marion had heard in their
+sheltered gulch were of such fury and continuity that
+the hardiest of the ranchmen were unable to prevail
+against them. Huntington, half-crazed by the thought
+of the two days he had allowed to be lost, had gone
+farther than any of the others, and had been rescued
+with difficulty by some of his neighbors, who found him
+lying senseless at the foot of the ascent to the Devil&rsquo;s
+Chair, where the wind had hurled him back down the
+slope. Smythe was among those who saved him, for
+the little tutor had let the last stage go without him,
+and was one of the most reckless in the attacks on the
+mountain.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_321' name='page_321'></a>321</span></div>
+<p>All these efforts having failed, and the winter having
+fallen with exceptional suddenness and severity, even.
+Huntington was forced to accept the general opinion
+that nothing more could be done; that they could only
+wait for summer, when they could go to the mountain
+top and bring back Marion&rsquo;s body&ndash;&ndash;and doubtless
+Haig&rsquo;s too. And so, said Huntington, the feud was
+ended.</p>
+<p>One person alone in the Park refused to admit all
+this. Pete was forced indeed to admit it in theory, but
+he was resolved to prove it or disprove it on his own
+account. He had studied Thunder Mountain from the
+ridge above the ranch house all that day of Sunnysides&rsquo;
+escape, and the next. And he remembered now that a
+period of calm had followed the storm on that second
+day. If Haig or Marion, or both of them, had by
+chance reached the flat top in that interval, they might
+have crossed, and might be now somewhere in the forests
+on the other side.</p>
+<p>He went to Parker, talked with him long about the
+character of the Black Lake country, induced him to
+draw the crude map, and then visited Seth and Claire.
+Seth shook his head gloomily, but Claire eagerly proceeded
+to assemble enough supplies to have loaded down
+a pack horse. There followed a pitifully comical struggle
+with her before her &ldquo;first aid&rdquo; was reduced to
+what Pete could carry in his canvas knapsack,&ndash;&ndash;a small
+roll of underwear, needles and thread, bandages and a
+packet of household medicines in addition to Pete&rsquo;s own
+selection of a strip of bacon, a dozen onions, two score of
+vegetable soup tablets, two cans of condensed milk, small
+quantities of coffee and tea, salt and pepper, two cakes of
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_322' name='page_322'></a>322</span>
+soap and (especially insisted on by Pete) a plug of black
+tobacco and a pipe.</p>
+<p>All these supplies Pete had saved untouched, living
+himself on game shot on the long journey. For nearly
+five weeks he had struggled against unbelievable hardships,
+fighting like primitive man against the fiercest
+enmity of nature; had searched the whole Black Lake
+country; and that day, slowly following the direction of
+the trail up through the narrowing gulch among the tree
+tops, the smell of smoke was brought to his nostrils on
+the wind, and he traced it along the foot of the cliff.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But did you really expect to find us alive?&rdquo; asked
+Haig.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Then why did you do all this?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;All I could do. Indian never forgets.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Thereupon he brought out Haig&rsquo;s pipe and his own,
+and they smoked over it in silence, late into the night.</p>
+<p>Marion awoke the next morning with another look in
+her eyes. Her fever was still high, but she was no
+longer delirious. Too feeble to ask questions, she only
+smiled, and took obediently the remainder of the potion
+that Pete poured from his flask and heated in the tin-cup
+among the embers. On her wakening again it was
+seen that the fever was broken. But life in her was
+only a tiny flame, at times the merest spark that every
+gust of wind through the cavern threatened to extinguish.
+Hour after hour Haig and the Indian watched
+it, the one in such anguish as the repentant murderer
+suffers as he kneels over the poor victim of his rage,
+the other in stolid resignation, seeing that perhaps he
+had come too late.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_323' name='page_323'></a>323</span></div>
+<p>But the spark was the bravest little spark in the
+world; and it did not go out. In time Pete dared to
+give Marion a little weakened milk; and then, when she
+responded to the milk, a few sips of soup that was
+scarcely thicker than water. And thus from day to day
+they nursed her back to some recognizable shadow of
+what she had been two months before.</p>
+<p>There came an evening when they sat down to a
+veritable feast. Haig had stubbornly refused to taste
+any of the delicacies in Pete&rsquo;s store, excepting salt and
+pepper. Besides, with seasoning, the venison was no
+longer quite repugnant to his palate; and he and the
+Indian did very well on that until the feast was spread.
+And it was a feast remembered. There was soup, to
+begin with, drunk from the two cups they now possessed;
+then a rabbit stew, seasoned with <span class='smcap'>SALT AND
+PEPPER</span>, and flavored with an <span class='smcaplc'>ONION</span>; and black coffee
+(very black indeed, to be quite exact). Then Haig&rsquo;s
+and Pete&rsquo;s pipes were lighted; and the Indian must tell
+them again the story of the rescue; and let the wind
+howl its savagest!</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Poor Claire!&rdquo; said Marion, with a tremulous little
+laugh, when Pete told her how the knapsack was packed.</p>
+<p>And Haig looked across at her dizzily, as if the fumes
+of the strong tobacco had gone to his head.</p>
+<hr class='tb' />
+<p>Their situation was still miserable enough, but the
+Indian contrived to make it less unendurable. He
+knew some knacks of cookery that availed to make their
+venison and rabbit palatable; and the tea and coffee
+cheered them beyond all possibility of expression. No
+longer required to toil; with clean underwear; with
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_324' name='page_324'></a>324</span>
+soap for her blackened face and hands, Marion recovered
+her strength, or much of it, with amazing swiftness.
+Pete made a rough coat and even a skirt for her
+of deerskin. The coat was of double thickness, and
+very warm indeed, and so she gave back to Haig the
+remnant of the leather coat she had been wearing, which
+was now needed to cover his ragged corduroy. Then
+came moccasins, and better crutches for Haig; and so
+they settled down with new courage for what they
+thought would be a long wait through the implacable
+winter.</p>
+<p>Haig kept his secret, or supposed he was keeping it.
+Marion did not indeed remember how he had taken her
+in his arms in her delirium; rather, if there was a faint
+but insistent recollection of the embrace it was intangible
+and unreal. She had dreamed so often of that
+longed-for embrace that the reality was inseparable from
+the imagined. Nor was she aware of the revelation
+that had come to Haig, as if a dazzling light had broken
+through the walls of the cavern. But though he might
+keep his secret he could not conceal from her the change
+that had come over him, the tenderness and wonder and
+humility that had succeeded his hardness and scepticism
+and belligerency. She detected that alteration in every
+look he gave her, in every movement he made in waiting
+upon her, in every tone of his speech, though the words
+were the most commonplace. And in her great faith
+she was not surprised. But she was thrilled. The
+knowledge ran through her veins like a living fire, a
+better nourishment than food, a more potent cure than
+any medicine.</p>
+<p>So the long days, not quite so long as they used to be,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_325' name='page_325'></a>325</span>
+marched on. Despite the skilful services of Pete they
+were still always cold, always hungry, always weary for
+want of sleep, and always dirty and unkempt. Then
+there came a day when Pete astonished them. He
+brought in from the forest certain small limbs of tough
+wood, and began to trim them and bend them into shapes
+that they were presently able to recognize. Snowshoes!</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You don&rsquo;t mean&ndash;&ndash;Can we do it?&rdquo; cried Haig
+incredulously.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Can&rsquo;t stay here,&rdquo; was Pete&rsquo;s short reply.</p>
+<p>True; they could not stay there; it was just what
+Haig had been thinking, or trying to avoid thinking.
+But how would Marion be able to endure that terrible
+journey over Simpson&rsquo;s Pass? For her part she said
+nothing, but her eyes met Philip&rsquo;s; she reached her
+hand to him, and he clasped it tightly.</p>
+<p>Three weeks after Pete&rsquo;s arrival he began gradually
+to inure Haig and Marion to living and moving in the
+snow. He taught them to walk on snowshoes, to climb
+steep slopes on them, to pick their way among the trees.
+There were countless falls in deep drifts, and headlong
+plunges, and ungraceful wallowings in the snow. But
+they knew their lives depended on these labors, and they
+were even able to laugh at some of their awkward performances.
+These exercises were, moreover, very good
+for them. Ill-nourished though they were, the natural
+color crept back into their cheeks, the blood flowed
+briskly again, through their chilled veins, their muscles
+were strengthened by their struggles with the winds and
+the snow that still came on with unremitted vigor.
+Then Pete went a step farther in the preparations for
+the crucial test. Not only must they spend the greater
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_326' name='page_326'></a>326</span>
+part of the day outside the cave, but they must sleep, or
+try to sleep, a few hours every night in the snow,
+wrapped in their blankets, in holes scooped out under
+the lee of a snowbank, while the Indian stood guard
+nearby.</p>
+<p>It was near the end of December when Pete thought
+his charges had become sufficiently hardened to undertake
+the long journey. The weather, if it had not
+moderated (it would not begin to moderate there until
+long after spring had brought out the flowers in the
+distant Park), had settled a little after its first fury.
+The storms came with less frequency, and the snow
+had assumed a certain stability with the steadily added
+weight. Both Marion and Haig bad mastered their
+snowshoes, and were able to travel slowly after Pete.
+Moreover, all the delicacies that Pete had brought had
+been consumed, despite their most careful husbanding,
+and even the meager supply of salt and pepper would
+soon be exhausted, leaving only the unseasoned venison
+of odious memory.</p>
+<p>The night before the day set for their departure, Pete
+broiled strips of venison sufficient for a week or more,
+and stowed them in his knapsack. At dawn they were
+up, and eagerly making the final preparations. Haig
+and Marion, in their impatience, would have eaten
+nothing, but the Indian, true to his tribal habit of filling
+the stomach before a march, insisted that breakfast
+should be a methodical and leisurely business. From
+some recess he drew the last soup tablet, the last onion,
+and the last of the ground coffee, which he had
+clandestinely saved against this great event. The feast
+with which they had celebrated Marion&rsquo;s recovery was
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_327' name='page_327'></a>327</span>
+now repeated in celebration of their farewell to the cave,&ndash;&ndash;the
+soup, the rabbit stew and the black coffee.</p>
+<p>Then, when Pete had fastened their snowshoes
+securely on their moccasined feet, and had gone out to
+trample down the fresh snow on the platform before the
+cave, Haig and Marion stood together for a last look
+upon the scene of their sufferings. They looked at the
+dying fire, at the flattened beds of boughs, at the long
+row of notches on the wall, at the crutches lying among
+the firewood, at crumpled and ragged boots and bits of
+worn-out clothing.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Good-by&ndash;&ndash;you!&rdquo; cried Marion, laughing tremulously,
+very near to tears.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, good-by!&rdquo; said Haig.</p>
+<p>That cave&ndash;&ndash;what had it not meant for him! There
+was his Valley of the Shadow, into which he had again
+descended to seek and find the better part of him that
+he had left there long ago.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Go on out, please!&rdquo; he said presently. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll come
+in a minute.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>She looked at him curiously, but obeyed. Haig
+waited till she had gone, and then shuffled clumsily on
+his snowshoes across the floor to where, beyond the fire,
+lay one of Marion&rsquo;s boots. It was a torn and misshapen
+thing, the sole worn through, the leather curled up from
+the open toe. He picked it up hastily, and with a
+swift glance at the mouth of the cavern, thrust it into an
+inside pocket of his leather coat.</p>
+<hr class='tb' />
+<p>It was a wonderful, thrilling, terrifying journey,
+filled with hardships and perils. Caution and sheer toil
+of travel held them to slow progress. They went
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_328' name='page_328'></a>328</span>
+through vast forests, among the very tops of the tall
+pines; they climbed wide, bare slopes where the winds
+had almost stripped the snow from the gaunt rocks; they
+descended into sheltered valleys where the deer went
+scurrying at their approach; they crossed deep gulches
+packed half-full of blown and drifted snow; they passed
+close to the edges of precipices where a false step would
+have sent them whirling down into white abysses spiked
+with pines. Storms overtook them, and forced them to
+remain many hours in such shelter as they could find.
+Sometimes they slept under overhanging rocks with a
+fire blazing at their feet, but more often the night was
+spent in burrows dug in the snow. Their supply of
+venison ran out, and a day was lost while Pete hunted
+and killed a deer, and cooked strips of its flesh, to be
+seasoned with the very last of their salt and pepper,
+and kept in his knapsack. But even Marion did
+not lose courage or once falter, though many times her
+heart was in her mouth and a cold sweat on her forehead
+as they passed some formidable and terrifying obstacle.</p>
+<p>At length, on a bright and glittering day, when it
+seemed the storms had finally abandoned their enmity,
+they climbed slowly up the long slopes to Simpson&rsquo;s
+Pass, and stood at noon high above a wide and wonderful
+world of snow, with white mountains succeeding one
+another, range on range, as far as their eyes could reach
+before them and behind. And that afternoon, as they
+toiled around the shoulder of Big Bear Mountain, they
+stopped and gazed,&ndash;&ndash;Marion with tears streaming down
+her cheeks, and Haig with his hands clenched tightly at
+his sides. For there, still far away below them, but
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_329' name='page_329'></a>329</span>
+<i>there</i> beyond all mistake, lay Paradise Park, very white
+and still and glittering in the sun; and off at the right
+was Thunder Mountain, squatting among the silver
+peaks, its sullen head half hidden by gray-black
+clouds.</p>
+<hr class='toprule' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_330' name='page_330'></a>330</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_XXIX_GHOSTS' id='CHAPTER_XXIX_GHOSTS'></a>
+<h2>CHAPTER XXIX</h2>
+<h3>GHOSTS</h3>
+</div>
+<p>The lamp had not been lighted in the sitting-room
+at Huntington&rsquo;s, but the pitch log blazing in the
+great fireplace reddened the farthest corners of the room,
+and flushed the somber faces of Seth and Claire.
+Their habit, in these days of grief, was to sit the winter
+evenings through almost in silence, their self-reproaches
+long since spent, their hopes turned to ashes, which
+Claire alone tried sometimes to fan into a glow. They
+had eaten their supper before twilight, without speech,
+and then, as always, waited wearily for sleep.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It will be three months and two weeks to-morrow,&rdquo;
+she said, without looking away from the fire.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; answered Huntington.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Isn&rsquo;t it possible she may have reached&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s no use, Claire, thinking such things.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But Pete! He hasn&rsquo;t come back, and maybe that
+means&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>She did not even finish the sentence, which simply
+faded away on her lips, a useless and foolish conjecture.</p>
+<p>Another long silence followed. Seth&rsquo;s cigarette went
+out, and hung dead from his bearded lips, while he
+stared gloomily into the blaze. He sat with his back
+toward the front door. Claire, near a corner of the big
+stone chimney, leaned forward, her head inclined to one
+side, the cheek resting on her open hand, the elbow on
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_331' name='page_331'></a>331</span>
+her knee. Her eyes, which had been lifted from their
+long gazing at the fire at the moment she addressed her
+husband, were fixed on vacancy, looking past Huntington
+toward the door that led out upon the veranda, where the
+rising wind tossed little whirls of snow and dead leaves
+from the flower garden. She was torturing herself
+with a conjured vision of a wild, high place among snowbound
+rocks, in the midst of which a slender figure was
+slowly sinking down, and a white and stricken face was
+turned toward her. This was the vision that had become
+for her the settled picture of Marion&rsquo;s fate, a
+picture that was burned into her brain by many, many
+hours of imagining, day and night.</p>
+<p>The wind was howling around the ranch house, wailing
+among the gables, shrieking across the chimney top.
+It rattled at the door, as if to fling it open with sudden
+violence. And what was that? A footstep on the
+veranda? She shivered; it was only her shaken nerves
+again! Then came another rattle at the door. It
+moved. It <i>was</i> flung open. And there was the figure
+of her dream, but strangely and fantastically clad; and
+with a face that glowed, and lips that were parted in a
+smile.</p>
+<p>For a moment Claire did not move. Then slowly she
+lifted her head; her eyes grew round and staring, her
+mouth opened. Seth caught the look; it was one he had
+seen many times before.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Claire!&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;Stop that!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>His voice, perhaps, served to break the spell. Claire
+leaped to her feet. And the next instant there was a
+voice from the doorway.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Hello!&rdquo; said Marion cheerily, in a &ldquo;good evening&rdquo;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_332' name='page_332'></a>332</span>
+kind of tone, as if she had returned from the post-office.</p>
+<p>Huntington bounded from his chair, and whirled
+around with an oath,&ndash;&ndash;one oath surely that was forgiven
+him. But past him, with a scream dashed Claire.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Marion!&rdquo; she shrieked.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Marion!&rdquo; bellowed Seth.</p>
+<p>And then the two women were in each other&rsquo;s arms,
+and Seth grabbed one of Marion&rsquo;s hands, and the air
+was filled with hysterical cries and mighty, spluttered
+expletives. Then silence fell, while Claire and Marion
+wept without restraint, and Huntington searched for his
+handkerchief without finding it, and strode across the
+room and back, pounding one clenched hand into the
+palm of the other. But Marion presently tore herself
+out of Claire&rsquo;s embrace, and turned to grab an arm of
+Pete, who stood just outside the doorway, through which
+the wind unheeded was flinging snow and leaves into
+the room.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Here he is!&rdquo; cried Marion. &ldquo;He did it!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Claire promptly threw her arms around the Indian&rsquo;s
+neck, or as nearly around as she could reach, and stood
+on tiptoe to plant a kiss on his leathery cheek. Huntington
+too leaped on him, seizing his shoulder and hand,
+and dragging him farther into the room. Then he
+broke away, and ran for a bottle; and the two men
+clicked glasses and drank in silence. And two big
+chairs were drawn close to the fire for Pete and Marion;
+and while Claire sat crying softly, and Huntington, between
+&ldquo;damns&rdquo; and &ldquo;hells,&rdquo; wiped his eyes with the
+back of his hand, and Pete sat impressive, Marion
+quickly narrated the chief incidents of her pursuit of
+Haig, their long imprisonment, and the rescue.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_333' name='page_333'></a>333</span></div>
+<p>&ldquo;But Haig! Where&rsquo;s he?&rdquo; asked Huntington.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He left us at the junction,&rdquo; answered Marion.</p>
+<p>On that a moment of silence fell. Something in
+Marion&rsquo;s face told even Huntington to keep still. But
+Claire, seeing it, was secretly, wickedly, triumphantly
+glad. A very practical thought, however, came to her
+in time to prevent embarrassment, and Seth was sent
+bustling into the kitchen to relight the fire in the range.
+The cook had gone to bed, but Claire would get supper
+for them; for Pete must stay, she insisted. But at this
+the Indian rose, and said he must go to Haig, who had
+told him to hurry back for supper with him in the
+cottage.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, then, Pete,&rdquo; said Huntington from the door
+of the kitchen, &ldquo;you&rsquo;ll have another drink, anyhow.
+And you&rsquo;ll come up to-morrow to tell us how you found
+them, won&rsquo;t you?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Pete promised; the whisky was solemnly drunk
+again; and the three others followed him to the
+door.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But you must have a horse!&rdquo; said Huntington.</p>
+<p>So he jumped past him, and ran to the stable, bellowing
+for Williams.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Now take off your coat, Marion!&rdquo; cried Claire.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No. Not here,&rdquo; said Marion. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll see why.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>They waited before the blazing log for Huntington to
+return, whereupon he was sent to build a fire in Marion&rsquo;s
+room. When it was crackling finely, Marion, removed
+her deerskin coat and skirt. Claire stared at her, gasping;
+and then sank down on the bed in another fit of
+weeping. For Marion stood before her in rags and
+dirt.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_334' name='page_334'></a>334</span></div>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, but you should have seen me the day Pete
+came!&rdquo; cried Marion, with a pathetic little laugh.
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve actually got some flesh on my bones now.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Indescribable luxuries followed: a hot bath, wonderful
+clean garments, and Claire&rsquo;s happy fingers combing
+the tangles out of the tawny hair.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But I&rsquo;ll never be really and truly clean again,
+Claire!&rdquo; cried Marion ruefully, holding out her hands.</p>
+<p>Claire clasped them tenderly, while Marion, on
+a sudden thought, related to her Haig&rsquo;s speech about
+baths; and they laughed together.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;ve so many things to tell me,&rdquo; said Claire, with
+a curiosity she could not quite repress.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; answered Marion, blushing.</p>
+<p>It was nearly midnight when they sat down to supper,
+but none of them cared for time. Marion was not
+sleepy. She and Haig and Pete had slept well in a
+deserted cabin the last night of their journey, before a
+huge fire, in circumstances positively pleasant in comparison
+with what they had passed through. But she
+was hungry. As she never expected to be really and
+truly clean again, she doubted that she should ever get
+enough to eat. Claire did the best she could on that
+score, and that was something. There was chicken
+with cream gravy; and potatoes, baked in their skins,
+and seasoned with butter and salt and paprika; and
+three kinds of jelly to be spread on buttered toast; and
+angel cake. In the midst of the feast there were steps
+on the veranda, and a knock on the door; and Curly
+appeared, bearing two bottles of champagne.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Mr. Haig says you&rsquo;re all to drink Pete&rsquo;s health, an&rsquo;
+he ought to live to be a hundred,&rdquo; said Curly, grinning,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_335' name='page_335'></a>335</span>
+and gazing in wonderment at Marion, whose exploit
+had caused her to assume somewhat the nature of a
+goddess in his simple mind.</p>
+<p>When the door had closed on Curly, Huntington stood
+for a moment awkwardly holding the bottles, an expression
+almost of consternation on his face. He had
+once made some remarks about Haig&rsquo;s champagne.
+But he had the sense not to act the part of a skeleton
+at the feast. Pete&rsquo;s health was drunk by all; and might
+he live to be a hundred!</p>
+<p>In another hour Marion was in bed, in a real bed, in
+her own pink room, between sweet, clean sheets, and
+warm again at last, but shivering in sheer excess of comfort,
+and crying a little perhaps from overwhelming joy.
+For she knew in her heart&ndash;&ndash;something she could not
+yet tell even Claire.</p>
+<hr class='tb' />
+<p>Bill Craven was mending a bridle by the light of a
+smoky lantern in the stable, when he saw a ghost. It
+just opened the door, and walked in, and said, &ldquo;How
+are you, Bill?&rdquo; Craven fell backward off his stool, then
+leaped to his feet with a yell that caused a commotion
+among the barn swallows under the eaves, and brought
+Farrish and Curly tumbling down the ladder from the
+loft. Thereupon discipline, for which Haig had always
+been rather a stickler, suffered a bad half hour. They
+had given him up for lost; and had found on comparing
+experiences that each of them had many reasons for
+counting that loss his own. In the days following the
+attempts to rescue Miss Gaylord, these three had gone
+about the Park with chips on their shoulders, inviting
+any outspoken citizen to say to them anything that was
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_336' name='page_336'></a>336</span>
+not strictly proper and complimentary about Haig. So
+now, though the words were few after the first noisy
+demonstration, they were the kind of words that are
+worth hearing, from man to man.</p>
+<p>Haig and Bill Craven presently compared notes in the
+matter of &ldquo;busted&rdquo; legs. Bill&rsquo;s had mended much
+sooner than Haig&rsquo;s, which was quite easily understood,
+considering the great difference in their circumstances.
+Curly had &ldquo;nigh killed&rdquo; the sorrels, getting the doctor
+for Craven, but they were all right now. &ldquo;Fat and
+sassy,&rdquo; Curly added.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll take some of that out of them, to-morrow,&rdquo; said
+Haig. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll want the sleigh, Farrish. Please look
+after it in the morning.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Then, seeing their impatience, he told them of Sunnysides&rsquo;
+final escape, and of all the events that followed&ndash;&ndash;as
+much as was good for them to know.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But where&rsquo;s Pete?&rdquo; asked Craven.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He went to Huntington&rsquo;s with Miss Gaylord.
+He&rsquo;ll be along soon.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, jest wait till we git our hands on that damned
+Indian!&rdquo; cried Bill. &ldquo;Eh, men?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>It was evident that there would be a considerable disturbance
+in the barn on Pete&rsquo;s arrival.</p>
+<p>A few minutes later Haig had his surprise. On
+entering the cottage he first encountered Slim Jim in
+the outer room. Perhaps Jim&rsquo;s face turned a trifle
+yellower, perhaps his thin legs trembled a little under
+the sky-blue trousers; but that was about all, except the
+light that flickered an instant in his eyes.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Glad you back!&rdquo; he said simply. &ldquo;Want supper?&rdquo;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_337' name='page_337'></a>337</span></div>
+<p>&ldquo;Want supper! Why, you scrawny, evil-eyed
+heathen! Want supper! I want everything you&rsquo;ve
+got to eat, and everything you haven&rsquo;t got, and don&rsquo;t you
+tell me there&rsquo;s &rsquo;vellee lil&rsquo; either, or I&rsquo;ll break every bone
+in your body. And be quick about it too!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Jim hurried into the kitchen with so much of a departure
+from his oriental poise that the first pan he
+picked up fell to the floor with a clatter. That was the
+most eloquent testimonial he could have given, unless it
+was the supper that was ready for Haig in an hour&ndash;&ndash;and
+no &ldquo;velle lil&rdquo; supper at that&ndash;&ndash;to his participation
+in the general rejoicing.</p>
+<p>Haig, meanwhile, opened the inner door, stepped
+into the library-bedroom, and halted dead still on the
+threshold. At his entrance, a tall, thin young man,
+with a very pale face, rose like an automaton and stared
+at him. It was a question which of the two was the
+more amazed.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Thursby!&rdquo; cried Haig, recovering the more
+quickly.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Haig!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Where did you come from?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;From the other side of the world. And you?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;From the very bowels of the earth, man!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>They walked slowly toward each other until they met,
+and clasped hands.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You found him?&rdquo; asked Haig, searching the other&rsquo;s
+face.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;In Singapore.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And then?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He&rsquo;s dead.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And she?&rdquo;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_338' name='page_338'></a>338</span></div>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve sent her back to her people in Devonshire.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Haig gripped hard the hand that was still clasped in
+his own, and there was a moment of silence.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Haig, &ldquo;we&rsquo;ll have a nip of whisky, and
+then&ndash;&ndash;You&rsquo;ve come back to take your ranch, of
+course.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I <i>came</i> back for that, but I can&rsquo;t figure out that it&rsquo;s
+mine now.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;How&rsquo;s that?&rdquo; asked Haig, pouring out the drinks.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I left three hundred head of cattle, and now I learn
+there are thirteen hundred head, almost.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t let that worry you. I&rsquo;ve sold enough of the
+increase to bring back all the money they cost me. So
+we&rsquo;re quits.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Why not?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Be sensible, Haig. First thing, why did you do
+it?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;For the fun of it, partly.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And after that?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, your fine ranch here wasn&rsquo;t making much
+money, and I thought you&rsquo;d need a good deal, perhaps,
+before you got through with your&ndash;&ndash;affair.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And yet you say we&rsquo;re quits!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m satisfied.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But I&rsquo;m not. You&rsquo;ll take a half interest, and we&rsquo;ll
+go partners.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I say yes,&rdquo; persisted Thursby. &ldquo;But I&rsquo;m forgetting
+to ask questions. How the devil did you get
+back?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I will a tale unfold will harrow up thy bones&ndash;&ndash;and
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_339' name='page_339'></a>339</span>
+the rest of it,&rdquo; replied Haig, laughing. &ldquo;But first:
+when did you arrive?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;By the last stage in.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And what have you told them&ndash;&ndash;my pleasant neighbors?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Nothing. But they have the impression that I
+came for the final payment on the ranch, and that I remained
+because you were lost in the mountains.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Good. Now, old man, I&rsquo;ll tell you how you can
+repay me in full for anything you may think I&rsquo;ve done
+for you.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Go on!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Are you ready to assume the responsibility for my
+acts? I mean in the matter of the land and cattle?
+The rest is still my affair.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Most certainly.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, then. I&rsquo;ve very special reasons for needing
+peace with Huntington.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Thursby looked at him curiously. This from Philip
+Haig!</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And you want me to&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t misunderstand me. I&rsquo;ve gone up there before,
+and I&rsquo;m going again to-morrow. But I want to
+give Huntington a chance. So if you&rsquo;ll go to his house
+to-morrow morning, and tell him that I&rsquo;ve finished,
+that the ranch is not mine, and&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But the ranch is yours&ndash;&ndash;or half yours.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Never mind about that now. We&rsquo;ll talk it over
+later. Just tell Huntington that the ranch is not mine,
+and never has been, and&ndash;&ndash;whatever else you like.
+Then say to him that if he still wants to fight me I&rsquo;ll
+meet him anywhere, and we&rsquo;ll settle it. In any event,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_340' name='page_340'></a>340</span>
+you will tell him, I&rsquo;m coming to his place to-morrow
+afternoon, and I&rsquo;ll have no gun.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I see.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And you&rsquo;ll do it?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Of course. With all my heart.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>And he made a thorough job of it. He told them&ndash;&ndash;Huntington,
+Claire and Marion&ndash;&ndash;that he had been in
+great trouble. What that trouble was concerned nobody
+but himself, but it was enough to send him around the
+world, reckless of everything but the immediate object
+of his pursuit. Philip Haig, an old friend, had volunteered
+to look after his ranch for him, and to provide
+him with money when he needed it. So, if Haig had
+seemed too aggressive and selfish in his methods, all that
+he had done had been done in a spirit of&ndash;&ndash;he might say
+a spirit that was almost quixotic. And having done all
+this, increasing Thursby&rsquo;s holdings of cattle four times,
+Haig refused to accept anything for his time and labor,
+and insisted that their account was closed.</p>
+<p>Marion had known nothing of all this, save for the
+hints she had received from Smythe, following the
+conversation overheard by him. Philip had told her
+nothing of it in recounting his adventures. With
+glistening eyes she looked from Claire to Huntington,
+where they sat open-mouthed, and was thrilled with
+pride and triumph. Claire at length turned, and
+looked at her, and smiled. As for Huntington, he was
+simply (as he explained afterwards, seeking to justify
+his ready acquiescence) flabbergasted.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;This has been a very bitter business, Thursby,&rdquo; he
+said. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s cost me a lot of cattle and money, and I&rsquo;ll
+not take back a thing I&rsquo;ve said about Haig&rsquo;s grabbing
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_341' name='page_341'></a>341</span>
+everything in sight, and ruining his neighbors. But I
+will say, after what you&rsquo;ve told me, that&ndash;&ndash;damn it,
+Thursby! he is a man.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He&rsquo;s ready to fight with you or talk with you, as
+you wish.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Huntingdon eyed him suspiciously.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Did Haig say that?&rdquo; he demanded.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He certainly did.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Then tell him, if he&rsquo;s on the square, it&rsquo;ll be talk.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Claire, ignoring Thursby&rsquo;s presence, ran and snuggled
+close to Seth, while he put his arm around her.
+But it was at Marion, <i>to</i> Marion, that Seth looked, seeking
+the approval that he had never before been able to
+get from her. Their eyes met, and she nodded, smiling.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Very well!&rdquo; said Thursby. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s coming to see
+you this afternoon.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What?&rdquo; cried Huntington.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He&rsquo;s coming this afternoon. And he wished me
+to say explicitly that he will have no gun.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>To Huntington this seemed almost incredible. He
+was heartily sick of the warfare, and glad of any way
+out of it that would not be too humiliating to himself.
+But Haig was coming to him; and this meant, surely,
+that something had occurred to his enemy that would
+make the event easy for himself, if not quite free from
+embarrassment. He looked again at Marion; and at
+last, seeing her radiant countenance, he understood that
+this was her achievement, that it was for her Haig
+would be coming unarmed to the house of his bitter foe
+that afternoon.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m ready,&rdquo; he said to Thursby, with an elation he
+was only partly able to conceal.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_342' name='page_342'></a>342</span></div>
+<p>Smythe was the next visitor, arriving in a state of
+such contrition that Marion pitied him. His jaunty
+air was gone. He was quite unable to respond to
+Marion&rsquo;s gentle jesting, seeing that her cheeks were still
+sunken and pale, that the body whose graces he had so
+much admired was now palpably thin under her loose
+clothing. He had blamed himself bitterly for the disaster
+that had overtaken her, and his sufferings had been
+real and lasting.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;If I&rsquo;d been half a man I&rsquo;d never have let you go on
+alone that day,&rdquo; he said after she had greeted him
+brightly, giving him both her hands.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, indeed!&rdquo; retorted Marion. &ldquo;And what
+would you have done?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Gone with you.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But I sent you back.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I was a fool!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;A fool to do as I told you, Mr. Smythe?&rdquo; she demanded
+archly.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes. You didn&rsquo;t know what you were doing.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But I did know what I was doing.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>This come with such depth of feeling that he knew he
+would no longer be able to bring her news of Philip
+Haig.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Then I&rsquo;m glad,&rdquo; he said simply.</p>
+<p>Presently she told him her story; but much was
+omitted, especially the keenest of her sufferings, since
+remorse still haunted Smythe&rsquo;s solemn eyes.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And what have you been doing?&rdquo; she asked.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Trying to read and study, but it&rsquo;s been no
+use.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And you&rsquo;ve lost a year in your career!&rdquo;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_343' name='page_343'></a>343</span></div>
+<p>&ldquo;That&rsquo;s nothing. I can make it up, if you&rsquo;ve forgiven
+me.&rdquo; She gave him her hand again.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;There&rsquo;s nothing to forgive!&rdquo; she answered warmly.
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;ve been a good friend to me. I owe you&ndash;&ndash;more
+than you know&ndash;&ndash;more than I can tell you&ndash;&ndash;now!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>On that she rose hurriedly, and went to her room for&ndash;&ndash;a
+handkerchief. It was quite ten minutes before she
+returned to finish their talk, and to tell him that he must
+come to see her often through the long months of winter
+that remained.</p>
+<hr class='toprule' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_344' name='page_344'></a>344</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_XXX_THE_LAMP_RELIGHTED' id='CHAPTER_XXX_THE_LAMP_RELIGHTED'></a>
+<h2>CHAPTER XXX</h2>
+<h3>THE LAMP RELIGHTED</h3>
+</div>
+<p>Marion, at the window, was the first to see him;
+and what she saw caused her to clutch at her
+throat to stifle a cry. He was not on horseback, though
+the roads were quite passable, but in a sleigh; and
+there was a jingle of sleigh bells on the frosty air. He
+had come with the sorrels&ndash;&ndash;for her&ndash;&ndash;at last!</p>
+<p>She opened the door for him, giving him her hand&ndash;&ndash;was
+it possible?&ndash;&ndash;a little shyly. Huntington, at Haig&rsquo;s
+entrance, rose from his chair before the fire; and Claire
+too, clinging to the chimney, scarce able to believe that
+there would not be such another scene as that of one
+evening long ago.</p>
+<p>Silence, a little awkward for all of them, followed
+Marion&rsquo;s greeting, while the two men stood looking at
+each other. Then Haig walked direct to Huntington,
+frankly smiling.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;How are you, Huntington? And Mrs. Huntington?&rdquo;
+he was saying quietly.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;All well,&rdquo; replied Huntington, rather stiffly, meaning
+to be very reserved in this business.</p>
+<p>Claire inclined her head without speaking. Her blue
+eyes were round, her lips parted, and something of the
+old terror showed in her face, though she knew very
+well why Haig was there.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_345' name='page_345'></a>345</span></div>
+<p>&ldquo;Thursby has told you?&rdquo; asked Haig.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; was Huntingdon&rsquo;s answer, still putting
+everything up to his enemy.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well then, Huntington, since you&rsquo;ll deal with
+Thursby now, I thought we might as well ask each other
+a few questions, and give straight answers.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m ready,&rdquo; said Huntington gruffly.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Thank you. First, did you drive that bunch of
+cattle off the cliff?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No. But did you scatter those twenty head of
+mine?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No. Both mere accidents undoubtedly. Second,
+did you advise setting an ambush for me?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No. That was&ndash;&ndash;no matter who. I talked them
+out of it, and was sorry for it afterwards.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But you did say you&rsquo;d drive me out of the Park.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, and I&rsquo;d have done it any way short of&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Sending me out in a coffin! But we all lost our
+tempers, of course.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And with good reason on our side,&rdquo; retorted Huntington
+stoutly.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Perhaps. But I&rsquo;ll ask you to remember that everything
+I did was open and aboveboard. If any of your
+cattle strayed, if any of <i>your</i> fences were cut, I had
+nothing to do with it.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I believe you&ndash;&ndash;now, after what Thursby&rsquo;s told
+me.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Thank you. We make progress. But there are
+two things more. Who cut the fence of my winter
+pasture?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>For a moment Huntington was silent, his face reddening.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_346' name='page_346'></a>346</span></div>
+<p>&ldquo;I did that,&rdquo; he replied at length, half defiantly, but
+in great confusion.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But why? There was nothing to be gained by
+that. There were no cattle in the pasture or near it.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Huntington hesitated, shifting his weight uneasily
+from his left foot to his right, and back again to the left.
+Then he looked at Marion, saw the appeal in her eyes,
+and plunged.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I wanted to make you angry.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;To make me angry?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;To make you do something reckless.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Haig studied him, and saw that he was dealing with
+a man who was in some respects, and for all his physical
+strength, a boy&ndash;&ndash;a child. He felt his anger rising,
+but put it down resolutely.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That was very foolish, Huntington!&rdquo; he said, with
+some sharpness. &ldquo;It certainly made me furious, as
+you saw later at the post-office.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But you were wrong to call me a liar and a thief.
+And that&rsquo;s something you&rsquo;ve got to&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Got to what?&rdquo; demanded Haig quickly.</p>
+<p>Huntington did not answer at once. Claire&rsquo;s face,
+already as pale as it could well be, became drawn and
+ashen, while Marion, seeing the danger, unconsciously
+took a step forward, as if to throw herself between the
+two men. For some tense seconds Huntington and
+Haig faced each other belligerently.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Got to what, Huntington?&rdquo; repeated Haig.
+&ldquo;There&rsquo;s nothing I&rsquo;ve <i>got</i> to do.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Huntington had not meant the &ldquo;got&rdquo; in the sense in
+which it was taken by Haig. He had begun to say,
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;ve got to admit that was pretty hard.&rdquo; But his
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_347' name='page_347'></a>347</span>
+unfortunate pause on the uncompleted sentence had
+justified Haig in putting the worst possible construction
+on the objectionable phrase. And now Huntington
+could not finish it as he had intended, without seeming
+to back down, or weaken. Nor could he afford to drop
+the mischievous word for another. In his desperation
+he took the boldest course, and made a more aggressive
+speech by far than any he had rehearsed for the occasion,
+and forgotten.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;ve got to take that back!&rdquo; he blurted out.</p>
+<p>It was Haig&rsquo;s turn now to ponder deeply. His first
+impulse was to tell Huntington to go to the devil, and
+thereupon to walk out of the house. But he had come
+there to make peace; and he bethought himself in time
+that to give way to anger would only be to allow Huntington
+the first victory he had ever had over him. Besides&ndash;&ndash;he
+turned toward Marion, and saw her face
+distorted with apprehension. That decided the issue.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;All in good time, Huntington,&rdquo; he said, with a
+smile. &ldquo;Your actions certainly justified everything I
+said. What have you to say about your scheme to take
+my horse?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Huntington groped in vain for one of the crushing
+retorts that he had valiantly prepared for this meeting.
+Then he caught Marion&rsquo;s eye again.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That was a mistake,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;But I&rsquo;m no thief
+and no liar.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I grant you&rsquo;re honest enough, Huntington, when
+you stop to think. As for Sunnysides, he&rsquo;s settled that
+business for himself. And if you&rsquo;ll give me a straightforward
+answer on one more point, I&rsquo;ll acquit you of
+being a liar.&rdquo;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_348' name='page_348'></a>348</span></div>
+<p>&ldquo;What&rsquo;s that?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You killed my bull, didn&rsquo;t you?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, I did! But it was a question of yours or
+mine. They were fighting, and mine was getting the
+worst of it.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And it never occurred to you to let the best one
+win?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No. I was angry. It was the day that&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo; He
+caught himself, and looked in fresh alarm at Marion.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The day that&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo; Haig prompted.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No matter. I was angry. I&rsquo;ll pay you what the
+bull was worth.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No. Settle that with Thursby. Is there anything
+more?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Nothing except the cause of the whole trouble.
+You took more than your share.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;We might talk all day and all night about that, and
+come to no understanding. But I&rsquo;ll tell you what I&rsquo;ve
+done. I&rsquo;ve suggested to Thursby that he and you and
+the rest of them go into a pool. There&rsquo;s enough pasture
+for all of you if&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That&rsquo;s an idea!&rdquo; cried Huntington. &ldquo;What does
+Thursby say?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He&rsquo;s willing. He doesn&rsquo;t like trouble as I&ndash;&ndash;did.
+He&rsquo;ll even sell off some of his stock.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Huntington was silent a moment, looking doubtfully
+at Haig. Then the best of him rose to the occasion.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I told Thursby that&ndash;&ndash;I hadn&rsquo;t anything to take
+back, but that&ndash;&ndash;you&rsquo;re a man, for all of it And if
+you&ndash;&ndash;Damn it! There&rsquo;s my hand.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Done!&rdquo; said Haig heartily.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_349' name='page_349'></a>349</span></div>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; cried Claire, breaking away from the mantel,
+to which she clung through all the interview, trembling
+between hope and fear. She stepped up to Haig, her
+eyes shining through tears.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Mine too!&rdquo; she said, offering her hand to him.</p>
+<p>But when it was all finished there was another awkward
+interval of silence. For years of controversy and
+enmity are not so quickly resolved into perfect peace.
+It was Haig who brought back a certain ease to them.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Would you mind, Mrs. Huntington, if I asked Miss
+Gaylord to go for a drive with me?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Indeed, no!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And if she took dinner with me? I&rsquo;ll bring her
+back early.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;If Marion thinks&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>But Marion, who had stood silent and anxious until
+then, did not reply to Claire&rsquo;s glance of inquiry. She
+heard the last words as if in a dream. But dreams
+were coming true these days; miracle followed miracle.
+With a stifled cry she ran past them, and into her room.
+There she sank down on the edge of the bed, and
+crossed her hands over her breast, and stared at vacancy,
+her face burning, a mist before her eyes. Weakness
+overcame her for a moment. Then she leaped to her
+feet, dressed quickly for the drive, and went out befurred
+and radiant to put her arms around Claire and
+kiss her.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;ll be welcome, Haig, if you want to&ndash;&ndash;to come
+in any time,&rdquo; Huntington was saying awkwardly.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I will!&rdquo; replied Haig.</p>
+<p>Then Philip and Marion were gone, and Seth and
+Claire stood staring at the door.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_350' name='page_350'></a>350</span></div>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, I&rsquo;m so happy, Seth!&rdquo; cried Claire at last,
+holding up her arms to him.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Umph!&rdquo; said Huntington, submitting to her
+ecstatic endearments.</p>
+<hr class='tb' />
+<p>The Park glittered in its robe of white; the sun
+shone with cold brilliancy out of a steel-blue sky; the
+air was still and sparkling, stinging their cheeks into a
+glow as they sped down the valley. Under the runners
+of the sleigh the dry snow sang and crackled, and flew
+up in a fine shower like dust of diamonds beneath the
+swift feet of the sorrels.</p>
+<p>Haig gave Marion no chance to say a word while the
+sleigh went swinging and bounding down the road, and
+the fields slipped past them in a dazzling succession.
+When he was not leaning forward to urge the sorrels to
+greater speed he was talking rapidly. He told her of
+the scenes at the stable and the cottage on his return,
+elaborating the description until Marion&rsquo;s laughter
+rang above the sounds of their swift traveling. He was
+talking to keep up his courage, and to postpone the
+speech that was in his heart and that now, after all,
+when the time had come, filled him with doubts and
+fears, and seemed to him the boldest thing he had ever
+set himself to do. For the first time in ten years he
+was afraid, and doubtful of himself.</p>
+<p>The door of the cottage was thrown open by Slim
+Jim, in his newest and brightest costume of blue silk.
+Marion smiled at him as she passed, for she could not
+trust herself to speak; and then she was in that room
+whence she had gone one day in utter dejection, praying
+for a miracle. She stood for a few seconds looking
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_351' name='page_351'></a>351</span>
+around her, recognizing all the familiar objects: the
+bed where Haig had undergone his agonies, the table
+where the medicines had stood, the window and a
+glimpse of the slope outside, now white instead of yellowing
+green. There was a roaring fire, and tea things
+stood on the table.</p>
+<p>Silence enveloped them while Philip helped her with
+her wraps, and saw her seated in an armchair before
+the fire. Despite the color that the cold drive had
+brought into her cheeks, her features were still pinched
+and pale. Many weeks would be required, a summer
+perhaps, to restore her to what she had been before her
+terrible experience. And yet she seemed to him more
+beautiful than ever. Watching her furtively and anxiously,
+he endured a raging conflict of emotions, recalling
+with a poignant feeling of shame all that he had
+said to her in that room and elsewhere, in return for
+what she had done for him. An impulse seized him to
+rush to the door and lock it, to turn on her savagely,
+forbidding her to leave him as he had forbidden her to
+come to him. For all the proofs he had had of her love
+and devotion seemed inadequate to quiet the doubts
+he now confessed. He found speech strangely difficult;
+he went out of the room twice to give quite unnecessary
+instructions to Jim; and returned to busy himself arranging
+things in the room that obviously needed no
+arranging.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Thursby was good enough to go somewhere to-day,
+and let us have the cottage,&rdquo; he managed to say at
+length. &ldquo;Do you mind if we are quite alone?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Philip!&rdquo; she responded reproachfully. &ldquo;How
+you talk!&rdquo;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_352' name='page_352'></a>352</span></div>
+<p>&ldquo;Then we&rsquo;ll have tea.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He called the Chinaman, who brought in the steaming
+teapot, the hot milk, and the buttered toast.
+Marion poured the tea in silence. They drank, too,
+almost in silence, and nibbled at the toast, forgetful
+that two days before, and for three dreadful months,
+tea and toast and milk, served on a table laid with
+white linen, would have seemed like a heavenly dispensation.
+Their very experience in the cave, which
+had broken down so many barriers between them,
+seemed to have reared a new one that neither understood.
+It was Marion who made a beginning to scale
+that barrier.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You have made Claire very happy, Philip,&rdquo; she
+said.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That was easy,&rdquo; he answered.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But it was grand!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And you too&ndash;&ndash;a little?&rdquo; he ventured.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You know that, Philip!&rdquo; And then, a little mischievously:
+&ldquo;Remember I tried to make peace between
+you once.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And a fine job you made of it!&rdquo; he retorted.</p>
+<p>Then they both laughed, and lapsed again into silence.
+But presently Haig arose, went to a cabinet standing
+against the wall, and brought back a faded photograph,
+which he handed to her.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;My father,&rdquo; he said.</p>
+<p>She saw a face that seemed a little sad, but the kindest
+of eyes, with a half serious twinkle in them.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The dear man!&rdquo; she exclaimed softly.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;We were great friends,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;We used to
+take long walks together of a Sunday afternoon. He
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_353' name='page_353'></a>353</span>
+was a silent man, rather, and we did not talk much, but&ndash;&ndash;shall
+I tell you one thing he used to say to me,
+often?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, Philip.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I believed it then. But things happened to make
+me think that father was mistaken. For ten years I
+didn&rsquo;t believe it at all.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What was it, Philip?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He used to say: &lsquo;My boy, there&rsquo;s only one thing
+in the world that&rsquo;s worth while. And that is love.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Why, that&rsquo;s what Daddy always said, almost his
+very words!&rdquo; she cried, her eyes filling.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;If I only knew&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo; he began.</p>
+<p>But she could endure no more. She rose swiftly to
+her feet, her eyes devouring him, her arms stretched
+out.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Marion!&rdquo; he cried, and leaped to catch her, and
+folded her close, as he had clasped her in the cave. But
+now the arms that stole up around his neck did not
+fall away weakly as before, but tightened, and held
+him.</p>
+<p>A long time they remained thus, in a silence broken
+only by the crackling of the flames, which they did not
+hear, and the wind rising outside the cottage, for which
+they did not care. At length he put his fingers under
+her chin, and raised her head so that he could look into
+her eyes.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I believe it now!&rdquo; he said.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s true!&rdquo; she answered, so low that he scarcely
+heard it.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I love you!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve loved you always!&rdquo;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_354' name='page_354'></a>354</span></div>
+<p>Then even in her joy the recollection of all that she
+had come through to this moment brought back that
+quivering of her chin, which had become only too
+familiar to him in days past. His head sank toward
+her, and their lips met.</p>
+<p>After a while he led her back to her chair, and knelt
+down to look up at her. For there were other difficulties.
+He had nothing to give her, he said; neither
+riches nor family nor honor nor any future of which
+he could be assured. She stopped him, with a hand
+laid gently on his lips. He held it there, kissing it.
+How it had toiled and hurt for him, that little hand,
+still rough and scarred!</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Can you ever forgive me?&rdquo; he pleaded.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;There&rsquo;s nothing to forgive, Philip. You did not
+understand.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;There! You&rsquo;re treating me like a child again!&rdquo;
+he protested, smiling contentedly.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And once you scolded me dreadfully for that!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But you were right. I&rsquo;ve been a child; for
+ten years I&rsquo;ve been a child that thought it was a
+man.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>She did not reply to that, fearing to wound him.
+So another golden silence fell between them, while he
+held her hands, stroking the hard, cracked skin of them.
+After a while he brought a chair, and sat close by her
+side, and told her all that had been left untold,&ndash;&ndash;about
+his boyhood, his ambitions, his ignorance and innocence,
+his work in Paris and the future it seemed to
+hold for him; and then the girl on the Seine boat, and
+what he saw one night in her apartment, and his despair;
+his father&rsquo;s death, and the wanderings that followed;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_355' name='page_355'></a>355</span>
+and how the shy and introspective boy had become
+in one day a man of violence and desperation, his
+heart full of hatred and bitterness.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And so I thought, Marion, that you were all alike;
+not alike in all things, but the virtuous more dangerous
+than the vicious, because more calculating and cold.
+You even&ndash;&ndash;I thought you were the most dangerous of
+all. I knew you were good, but I said your goodness
+was only another form of selfishness, that you had been
+reared in luxury, and taught to expect as your right
+many things you had never earned and never could earn
+or deserve. I said&ndash;&ndash;Wait, dear&ndash;&ndash;I said that the
+man who should marry you would be nothing but a
+beast of burden, a slave. It was so difficult to believe
+you could be content with&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;With love!&rdquo; she whispered.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But <i>can</i> you?&rdquo; he demanded, a ghost of the old incredulity
+rising in spite of all.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I haven&rsquo;t told you about Robert,&rdquo; she said softly.
+&ldquo;He has wealth, and will have much more. He loves
+me. He offered me all, to do with it as I wished. I&rsquo;ve
+known him all my life&ndash;&ndash;almost. He&rsquo;s good too, poor
+Robert! But that day, after you&rsquo;d told me that I
+must go back to New York at once, I&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Marion!&rdquo; Haig cried.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No, listen! I told him that day that I could never
+marry him. He couldn&rsquo;t understand&ndash;&ndash;like you,
+Philip. He thought&ndash;&ndash;dear Robert!&ndash;&ndash;he thought
+that money&ndash;&ndash;I know it&rsquo;s what they want most&ndash;&ndash;so
+many women. But, Philip, dear heart! Don&rsquo;t you
+know that if a woman really loves there&rsquo;s nothing she
+won&rsquo;t do&ndash;&ndash;on her hands and knees&ndash;&ndash;to the end of
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_356' name='page_356'></a>356</span>
+the world? And if she has love, what else is there&ndash;&ndash;that
+matters?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t know,&rdquo; he answered, &ldquo;and I couldn&rsquo;t have
+believed it until&ndash;&ndash;that day in the cave, when you fell
+ill.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He told her then of the revelation that had come to
+him, and how he had taken her in his arms, in a fury
+of love and despair.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But I thought it was a dream!&rdquo; she murmured.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No. I found you then&ndash;&ndash;and myself&ndash;&ndash;and
+thought it was too late!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Later, across the table, when Slim Jim had brought
+in the after-dinner coffee, Haig looked at her gravely,
+and said:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;May I become very practical for a minute,
+Marion?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, but not too practical.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, it&rsquo;s like this: I&rsquo;ve got&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He paused to reach for her hand, to clasp it on the
+cloth.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;<i>When</i>, Marion?&rdquo; he asked, leaning toward her.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, we must talk with Claire about that, mustn&rsquo;t
+we?&rdquo; she protested, blushing. Then softly: &ldquo;She&rsquo;s
+the only mother I&rsquo;ve got, you see. And besides, there&rsquo;s
+no&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No, not even a justice of the peace!&rdquo; he said,
+laughing. &ldquo;We might strap on our old snowshoes, and
+go to Tellurium.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The idea!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, listen. Do you know what I&rsquo;ve been thinking?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>She shook her head.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_357' name='page_357'></a>357</span></div>
+<p>&ldquo;Paris.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Paris?&rdquo; she repeated, a little startled, after all
+that he had revealed to her.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes. I&rsquo;ve got a little money in the bank in Tellurium,
+and I&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You needn&rsquo;t be so proud of it!&rdquo; she retorted.
+&ldquo;So have I, in New York. So you needn&rsquo;t think it&rsquo;s
+your money I&rsquo;m after, sir!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>They laughed, and then he had both her hands across
+the table.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It isn&rsquo;t much, I assure you,&rdquo; he went on. &ldquo;But
+it will do for a while in Paris. I mean&ndash;&ndash;if you will
+go with me&ndash;&ndash;to find my old master, or another. You
+know, Marion, he said to me many times: &lsquo;You&rsquo;re
+going to be a painter some day, <i>mon petit</i>; you&rsquo;re going
+to do big things, if you&rsquo;ll work, work, work.&rsquo; And
+so&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;ll paint again!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;Oh, and I shall
+keep house for you! You may not believe it, but I&rsquo;m a
+splendid cook. But I&rsquo;ve got to have salt. You must
+earn enough to buy salt!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll try.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>At that he rose, and went again to the cabinet from
+which he had brought the photograph, and returned
+with his hands behind his back.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What do you suppose I&rsquo;ve got for our mantelpiece&ndash;&ndash;if
+we have such a thing in our attic?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What in the world, Philip?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Shut your eyes, please!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>She obeyed, and in the middle of the table he set
+down the tattered and grimy little boot that he had carried
+away from the cave.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_358' name='page_358'></a>358</span></div>
+<p>&ldquo;Now open!&rdquo; he commanded.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; she cried, staring at the eloquent memento.</p>
+<p>Then she flung back her head, with a quick indrawing
+of her breath, and looked up at him through a
+bright mist that gathered in her eyes. And her face
+was radiant.</p>
+<p>He went quickly to her, and leaned down to kiss her
+hair, her eyes, her lips; and her arms crept once more
+around his neck.</p>
+<hr class='toprule' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_359' name='page_359'></a>359</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_XXXI_SANGRE_DE_CRISTO' id='CHAPTER_XXXI_SANGRE_DE_CRISTO'></a>
+<h2>CHAPTER XXXI</h2>
+<h3>SANGRE DE CRISTO</h3>
+</div>
+<p>Late October in the San Luis, and the raw day
+near its close. Across the melancholy flats the
+north wind&rsquo;s plaintive note rose at intervals into a
+wailing cry. The thin grasses bent before it, the sagebrush
+took on new and fantastic shapes, and danced
+like demons to the tune. In gray-brown desolation the
+sand dunes rolled away to the foothills, far and violet
+and dim. All was cold and bleak and forbidding, and
+the sun itself appeared to be retiring eagerly from a
+scene so dreary and disheartening.</p>
+<p>Then came magic. Sangre de Cristo, sharp against
+the eastern sky, began to change its hue. A pink
+flush came into the gleaming white. It grew deeper,
+darker, more vivid; it spread, and ran in richer and
+richer tints along the range. Now it was rose, and
+now vermilion, and at last a deep and living scarlet,
+staining the snowy slopes, and flowing like new blood
+down the gulches and ravines. The foothills caught
+the color, and the violets became purple and then red;
+the sand dunes caught it, and their gray-browns were
+overlaid with crimson; the flats too caught it, and the
+sagebrush bending low, and the grass quivering in the
+wind were touched with some reflection of that far-reaching
+hue. From the green along the river the
+color swept, indefinable and dim at first, then by degrees
+intensified upon the flats, across the sand dunes,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_360' name='page_360'></a>360</span>
+among the hills until at length it was passionate and
+deep and indescribable on the Sangre de Cristo peaks.</p>
+<p>A cowboy, searching for lost mavericks, rode slowly
+to the top of a low sand dune, reined up his pony, and
+sat silent in the midst of this solemn spectacle. He was
+not emotional. He was looking for calves, and &ldquo;sore&rdquo;
+at not finding them, and hungry, and far from the X
+bar O; and night was coming on. But he sat still in
+his saddle, removed his flopping sombrero, and looked
+toward the east. Bareheaded, the wind stinging his
+cheek and flinging dry sand in his eyes, he gazed and
+wondered at the familiar but never negligible mystery
+of Sangre de Cristo.</p>
+<p>But suddenly he rose in his stirrups, and shaded his
+eyes with his hand to make out what it was that had
+caught his vision in that flood of red among the dunes.
+Again it came, a flash of yellow in the red. It was
+there, and gone. And then it came and lingered, as if
+inviting him, like a jewel in the sand, or rather, like a
+challenge and a taunt.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;So you&rsquo;re back, are you?&rdquo; cried Larkin, of the X
+bar O. &ldquo;Well, you c&rsquo;n jest stay there. I&rsquo;m done with
+you. You ain&rsquo;t no horse at all, damn you! You&rsquo;re a
+devil! But I wonder&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Then Sunnysides was gone. At the same time the
+light paled on the distant peaks. The wind blew colder,
+and swept the color off the dunes. The flats darkened
+under the advancing shades of night. And Larkin,
+muttering, put spurs to his pony, and galloped away
+toward supper and bed.</p>
+<p style='text-align:center;margin-top:1.5em;margin-bottom:1em'>THE END</p>
+<hr class='pb' />
+<div style='margin:10px auto; text-align:center;'>
+<img alt='adpage' src='images/illus-ad1.jpg' />
+</div>
+<hr class='pb' />
+<div style='margin:10px auto; text-align:center;'>
+<img alt='ad page' src='images/illus-ad2.jpg' />
+</div>
+
+<!-- generated by ppg.rb version: ppg0814 -->
+<!-- timestamp: Fri Aug 14 09:20:29 -0600 2009 -->
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Heart of Thunder Mountain, by Edfrid A. Bingham
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+</body>
+</html>
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+Project Gutenberg's The Heart of Thunder Mountain, by Edfrid A. Bingham
+
+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: The Heart of Thunder Mountain
+
+Author: Edfrid A. Bingham
+
+Illustrator: Anton Otto Fisher
+
+Release Date: August 15, 2009 [EBook #29697]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HEART OF THUNDER MOUNTAIN ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed
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+
+
+[Illustration: "He tried to shoot once more, into the very face of the
+oncoming brute."--FRONTISPIECE. _See Page 245._]
+
+
+
+
+THE HEART OF THUNDER MOUNTAIN
+
+By EDFRID A. BINGHAM
+
+With Frontispiece in Colors
+
+By ANTON OTTO FISHER
+
+A. L. BURT COMPANY
+
+Publishers New York
+
+Published by Arrangements with Little, Brown & Company
+
+
+
+
+Copyright, 1916,
+
+By Edfrid A. Bingham.
+
+All rights reserved
+
+Published, March, 1916
+
+Reprinted, March, 1916 (twice)
+
+July, 1916; August, 1916
+
+April, 1917
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+  CHAPTER                                                         PAGE
+        I The Forbidden Pasture                                      1
+       II The Road to Paradise                                      15
+      III Seth Huntington's Opportunity                             26
+       IV The Highest Bidder                                        37
+        V "He Shall Tell Me!"                                       50
+       VI The Story of the Scar                                     60
+      VII The Way of a Maid With a Man                              71
+     VIII The End of Her Stratagem                                  86
+       IX Hearts Insurgent                                          99
+        X Strictly Confidential                                    112
+       XI Avalanche                                                121
+      XII Sunnysides                                               133
+     XIII Hillyer's Dilemma                                        144
+      XIV Coals of Fire                                            155
+       XV The Valley of the Shadow                                 166
+      XVI Questions and Answers                                    176
+     XVII Interlude                                                186
+    XVIII The Challenge of the Brute                               193
+      XIX Smythe's Last Budget                                     202
+       XX "The Trail Held True"                                    215
+      XXI In the Hollow of the Storm                               228
+     XXII The Narrow Passage                                       238
+    XXIII The Miracle                                              252
+     XXIV Haig's Argument                                          264
+      XXV Diana                                                    278
+     XXVI The Snow                                                 288
+    XXVII The Voice in the Hurricane                               302
+   XXVIII The Man Who Did Not Forget                               316
+     XXIX Ghosts                                                   330
+      XXX The Lamp Relighted                                       344
+     XXXI Sangre De Cristo                                         359
+
+
+
+
+THE HEART OF THUNDER MOUNTAIN
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE FORBIDDEN PASTURE
+
+
+She sat hunched up in the middle of the silent pasture, where the
+tall, thin grass ran ripening before the breeze in waves the hue of
+burnished bronze. Her cow pony grazed greedily a few yards away,
+lifting his head now and then to gaze inquiringly at her, and then
+returning to his gluttony with a satisfied snort, commendatory of this
+long rest. The girl had removed her small sombrero to adjust the
+masses of tawny hair that had become disordered in her morning ride;
+and the breeze now played with it, and the sun sought out its glints
+of gold. She was fair, of a curiously rich complexion with soft golden
+tints beneath the skin, as if the rusty gold in her hair was just the
+outcropping of what ran in solution in her veins. And there was a
+certain air about her that contrasted strangely with the scene upon
+which she now gazed intently, with her head bent forward, and her
+hands clasped round her upthrust knees.
+
+It was a little valley she had come upon by chance, snugly tucked away
+among the hills. Below the bronze-colored slope there were lush
+meadows of a brilliant green, and a shallow, swift stream that
+flashed over black bowlders and white sand; beyond the meadows lay
+more shining pastures rising to pale-green aspen groves and then to
+dark-green pines; and above all these the foothills climbed swiftly to
+the mountains, and the mountains more swiftly to the sky. There were
+faint blue mists in the foothills, fainter violet shadows on the
+distant fields, an icy whiteness on the peaks; and in the sky no more
+than two small puffs of cloud like eiderdown adrift in the depths of
+blue. What at first had seemed an utter silence laid upon that summer
+landscape had now become, as she looked and listened, a silence full
+of sound; of that indefinable humming undertone of nature maturing in
+the sun; of insects busy at their harvest; of birds in the distance
+calling; of grasses rustling in the breeze; of pines on the long ridge
+droning like an organ in the Recessional.
+
+Yes, it was very beautiful, she thought. And sweet. And peaceful. She
+had come a long way--halfway across the great continent--to find that
+peace. But why should there be a touch of sadness in all that beauty?
+And why should there be need to search for her handkerchief to press
+against her eyes? For the first time since she had come to Paradise
+Park she felt a little lonely, a little doubtful about the wisdom of
+her brave revolt.
+
+She sank back at last, and lay curled up in the grass with her head
+pillowed on one bent arm. There, to her half-closed eyes, the grass
+seemed like a fairy forest, soon peopled by her fancy, the fancy of a
+girl who still retained the quick imagination of a child. An Indian
+paintbrush flamed at her with barbaric passion; nodding harebells
+tinkled purple melodies; and a Mariposa lily with a violet eye seemed
+like a knight in white armor, bowing himself into her outstretched
+hand. Her eyelids drooped more and more. The music of the pines and
+the murmur of the pasture blended in a faint and fading lullaby....
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+Tuesday's shrill neigh awakened her. She sat up shivering, for the
+warm air was underlaid with cold; and quivering, for the alarm had
+fallen pat upon the climax of her dream. She rubbed her eyes, a little
+blinded by the sunlight, and saw that Tuesday stood with head high and
+nostrils distended, gazing past her toward the upper end of the
+pasture. She was not surprised, being yet under the spell of her
+dream-fairyland, to see a horseman galloping straight toward her. If
+not the white knight, then--For some seconds she stared, awakening
+slowly; and smiled at length at her childish fancy. It was only a
+cowboy, doubtless, riding upon his own prosaic business. And yet--She
+became gradually aware of something unusual, something disquieting in
+the manner of the man's approach. The horse was leaping under the
+spurs; the rider sat upright and alert in the saddle; and suddenly, as
+she watched him, the man's hand went to his hip, and there was a gleam
+of metal in the sun.
+
+She was not afraid. Seth Huntington had assured her there was nothing
+to be feared in Paradise Park. But for all that, it was not without
+uneasiness that she hastily arranged the meager folds of her divided
+skirt, and passed her hands quickly over the still disordered masses
+of her hair. And then he was fairly upon her, reining up with a jerk
+that brought the sweating pony back upon its haunches.
+
+There was an angry glitter in the man's dark eyes, his face was black
+with passion, and the bright object she had seen flashing in his hand
+was the twin brother of Huntington's six-shooter. He was roughly, even
+meanly, dressed. His coarse blue flannel shirt was unbuttoned at the
+throat; his soiled brown corduroy trousers were thrust unevenly into
+dusty and wrinkled boot tops; his old, gray hat was slouched over one
+side of his forehead, shading his eyes. But the face beneath that
+faded and disreputable hat, as Marion saw with a slight thrill of
+curiosity, belonged to no ranch hand or cow-puncher. Whoever he might
+be, and whatever he might be doing there scowling at her, she felt at
+once that he was as foreign as herself to that neighborhood. But there
+was no time at that moment to analyze her feeling, to formulate her
+thought. And her next impression, following very swiftly, was one of
+vague antagonism. She felt that she was going to hate him.
+
+"What new trick is this?" he demanded angrily, when he had looked from
+the girl to her pony, and at her again, with unconcealed suspicion.
+
+For a moment she was undecided whether to answer him sharply or to
+rebuke his incivility with silence.
+
+"I don't know!" she replied at last, by way of compromise between her
+two impulses, with a half-playful emphasis on the "I," accompanied by
+a very solemn, shaking of the head and a very innocent widening of the
+eyes.
+
+There was a pause while he searched her face with a distrustful
+scrutiny.
+
+"You're not just the person I was looking for," he said finally, with
+a touch of irony.
+
+"How fortunate!" she replied, in a tone that was like a mocking echo
+of his own.
+
+Her eyes met his unflinchingly, a little impudently, telling him
+nothing; then they slowly fell, and rested on the revolver in his
+hand. With a shrug he thrust the weapon into its holster.
+
+"Thank you!" she said sweetly. "You really won't need it."
+
+He jerked his head impatiently.
+
+"How did you get in here?" he demanded, quite as roughly as before.
+
+There was no reason in the world why she should not have answered him
+simply and directly; but she did not. She was exasperated, not so much
+by his words as by his manner, and not so much by his manner even as
+by something provocative in the man himself. He was rude, but it was
+not his rudeness that most annoyed her. She scarcely knew what it
+was,--perhaps a certain indifference, a certain cold contempt that she
+detected underlying all his anger, a certain icy and impenetrable
+reserve that, for all his hot words, and for all his lowering looks,
+she resented most as being in some way personal to her. And instantly
+the minx in her rose up for mischief.
+
+"By aeroplane, of course!" she said tartly.
+
+It was a silly speech, and she regretted it almost before it had left
+her lips.
+
+A faint flush came into the enemy's face.
+
+"Spoken like a woman!" he retorted. "Always tragic over little things
+and flippant over big ones."
+
+That brought the color up into her face. But she was not subdued; for
+the cat in woman also has nine lives--at least.
+
+"There's my horse," she said, with a toss of her head. "You saw him."
+
+"True! But cow ponies don't easily jump four-wire fences."
+
+"Why should they when the fences are down?"
+
+"Good! We arrive by the devious ways that women love. Perhaps you'll
+give me the answer now that you should have given in the first place.
+_How did you get in here?_"
+
+She bit her lip, reflected a moment, and attempted a flank movement.
+
+"My name is Marion Gaylord."
+
+"I knew that."
+
+"But you have never seen me before!"
+
+"No. But that's one of Huntington's horses, and Miss Gaylord is a
+guest at his house. You see, I am more courteous than you after all. I
+answer your questions."
+
+"Perhaps I'll answer yours when I know what right you have to ask
+them."
+
+A light began to dawn upon him.
+
+"Do you mean--you don't know where you are?"
+
+"No."
+
+He gave her a long, searching look before he spoke again.
+
+"My name is Philip Haig," he said, leaning forward with a curious
+smile.
+
+The result was all that he could have wished for. Until that moment
+she had remained seated, firm in her determination not to be
+disturbed by him. But now she rose slowly to her feet, her face
+reddening, her lips parted, a frightened look in her eyes. The shoe
+was on the other foot, with a vengeance.
+
+He saw all this, and without compunction, seized his advantage.
+With a grim smile he threw the reins over the pony's head, swung
+himself out of the saddle, and stepped toward her. As he came on he
+removed his dilapidated hat with a gesture that made her forget it
+was dilapidated,--a mocking, insolent gesture though it was. In
+spite of her embarrassment she let none of his features escape her
+quickening interest. She saw that he was tall, erect, alert; handsome
+in some strange and half-repellent way, with his pale dark face,
+rather long in contour, and with his black, curly hair matted on
+the broad forehead. But she almost recoiled when, on his drawing
+nearer, she saw for the first time--it had been hidden by the shadow
+of his slouched hat--an ugly scar that ran from the outer corner of
+his left eye down to the jawbone below the ear. It gave to one
+side of his face a singularly sinister expression that vanished when
+he turned and disclosed a profile that was not without nobility
+and charm.
+
+Then suddenly her mystification was complete. Their eyes met, not as
+before, but very near, so close had he come to her, still smiling. And
+instantly, instinctively, she lowered hers; for she felt as if she had
+been caught peering through a window at something she had no right to
+see. Yet the next instant she was looking again, half-guiltily, but
+irresistibly drawn. The eyes were of a curious color,--smoky black, or
+dark gray-blue, or somber purple,--liquid and deep like a woman's,
+but with a steady, dull glow in their depths that was unlike anything
+she had ever seen or imagined. What was it that burned there?
+Suffering? Hunger? Evil? Sorrow? Shame? It gave her something to think
+about for many a day and night. Meanwhile--
+
+"I see you have heard of me," he said mockingly.
+
+She had no reply. She was realizing slowly that she had trespassed,
+that she had perhaps seriously compromised her cousin, and, most
+humiliating of all, that she had assumed quite the wrong attitude
+toward the man.
+
+"You really didn't know you were on my land?" he demanded, with a
+little less offensiveness in his tone.
+
+"No," she answered weakly.
+
+"And Huntington didn't send you here?"
+
+"No."
+
+"I believe you, of course. But it's rather queer. How did you
+happen--if you don't mind--"
+
+She did not mind in the least--was eager, indeed, to explain her
+presence there.
+
+"I'm just learning to ride," she began impulsively.
+
+"This was my first venture off the valley road, and I--"
+
+"And you came straight to me!" he exclaimed, chuckling.
+
+At that a strange thing happened. He had meant only that she, the
+guest and cousin of Seth Huntington, his bitter foe, had blundered
+straight into the camp of the enemy; and that was a rare joke on
+Huntington. But she was a girl; her little adventure was already rosy
+with romance; and the effect of his careless speech was as if he had
+looked into her heart, and read aloud for her something she had not
+known was there. To his surprise and wonder the girl's fair face
+turned red to the roots of her tawny hair, and a look of helpless
+confusion came into the clear, blue eyes that until now, for all her
+embarrassment, had frankly met his own. She looked suddenly away from
+him.
+
+"You make me ashamed," she said at length, stealing a look at him.
+
+"If you know anything about my difficulty with Huntington," he began,
+"you'll understand that--"
+
+"I do. I do understand!" she interrupted eagerly. "I don't know much
+about it--the trouble. They haven't told me. I've only overheard some
+talk--and I didn't ask. I rode down the valley this morning trying to
+do it like a cowboy. And there was a branch road--and then the break
+in the fence--and before I knew it I'd fallen asleep. That's
+all--except--" She shot a half-mischievous glance at him "--you
+spoiled a very beautiful dream."
+
+But this was all lost upon him. His face was clouding again.
+
+"Where is it--the break in the fence?"
+
+Chagrined at the failure of her bit of coquetry, she merely pointed in
+the direction whence she had come.
+
+"Thank you!" he said. "At last!"
+
+With that he went swiftly to his pony, mounted, and started to ride
+away. But suddenly he reined up again, whirled his horse savagely
+around, and faced Marion with the sunlight full upon the scarred side
+of his face, now ugly with menace.
+
+"If that fence has been cut," he said, in a hard and level tone, "it's
+been cut by Huntington or his men. You tell him for me, please--and
+you'll be doing _him_ a favor not to forget it--tell him that he's a
+fool to anger me. I've been very patient in this business, but I don't
+claim patience as one of my virtues. Do you hear? Tell him he's a fool
+to anger me!"
+
+She watched him gallop to the gap in the barb-wire fence; she watched
+him dismount to examine the severed wires; she watched him leap on his
+horse again, and ride furiously down the road until he was lost to
+view below the dip in the slope toward the valley. And still for some
+minutes she stood staring at the place where he had disappeared. Then,
+left alone with her pent-up emotions, she no longer resisted them.
+Tears of vexation started in her eyes; chagrin, resentment, anger
+swept over her in turn. She dug the heel of one small boot into the
+unoffending soil--his soil--and thrust her clenched hands down at her
+side.
+
+"Oh! Oh! Oh!" she cried, over and over again, striding forward and
+back across some yards of pasture, trampling lilies and harebells
+under her heedless feet, turning her flaming face at intervals toward
+the spot in the smiling landscape that had last held the figure of
+Philip Haig.
+
+The shame of it! She had never--never--never been treated so
+outrageously. It was unendurable--and she had endured it! She flung
+herself down on the ground and wept.
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+Marion was now facing life alone. Her nearest remaining relative was
+her cousin, Claire Huntington. Her mother--a Southern girl who might
+have stepped out of a panel by Fragonard, so fine and soft and
+Old-World-like was her beauty--had died when she was still a child.
+Her father, Doctor Gaylord, was the antithesis of the sprite-like
+creature he had married,--a big, athletic, outdoor sort of man, with
+truly violent red hair and beard, whose favorite expression about
+himself had been that a very capable pirate had been sacrificed to
+make a tolerable physician. But he had prospered in his profession;
+and then had died with amazing suddenness, leaving his estate in an
+almost hopeless mess.
+
+Robert Hillyer had tackled the problem,--Robert, the alert, the
+busy, the supremely confident, the typical money-getter of the
+money-worshipping metropolis. He had long been deeply in love with
+Marion, but he had not made great headway in his suit, despite the
+advantage of Doctor Gaylord's approval. Now, having saved enough out
+of the estate (for so he said, though he never told Marion the
+details of that miracle) to provide her with an income barely
+sufficient to keep her in comfort but not in the luxury to which she
+had been accustomed, he plainly expected his reward. And this was to
+Marion an intolerable situation. She did not love Robert. She liked
+him, admired him, trusted him; no more. Knowing her father's wishes,
+she saw the way marked straight before her; for Robert already had
+wealth, and could and would give her all the material things she
+desired. Time and again she was on the point of yielding, but
+something checked her, held her back, as if a voice had whispered
+in her ear, and strong arms had seized her. She grew restless,
+discontented, melancholy. And suddenly, on a moment's inspiration, the
+strangest impulse she had ever known, she had revolted and fled from
+the scene of her unhappiness, telling Robert (by letter) only that
+she must have time to think, and that for six months he must leave
+her to herself. She had fled to Claire, that cousin on her father's
+side, who some years before, to the wonder and chagrin of many
+Gaylords east and west,--to all except the Viking physician, who
+had rejoiced in her spirit,--had eloped with a cowboy, since turned
+successful cattleman, whom she had met at the Denver Carnival. Ten
+days now had Marion been in Paradise Park, rejoicing in her
+freedom, rejoicing in the half-wild life, rejoicing in the tonic
+air and the tonic beauty of this Rocky Mountain valley, shut in,
+isolated, and so aptly named. And only to-day had there come any
+emotions that disturbed her peace.
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+When she looked up again her eyes were sharply arrested by a scene
+that seemed curiously to picture her own mood. Far up at the head
+of the valley a cloud that was scarcely heavier than a mist came
+stealing out of a gulch to take its shining way along the range of
+mountains. Dropping in its flight a shower as light as a bridal veil,
+it sped glistening across the face of mountain after mountain,
+softening the stark grays and reds, while above it the peaks gleamed
+white. On and on it came until at last it arrived at the mouth of a
+deep, dark gorge in the side of a mountain that, in its strange and
+forbidding aspect, differed notably from all the others in the
+majestic range. There it paused as if arrested by some stern command,
+hung for a moment in palpable agitation, and was swiftly swallowed
+up in the gorge. And again she had a vague and uneasy feeling, as
+she had when first she saw it, that Thunder Mountain,--but she could
+not fit that feeling into thought, could find no words to frame it.
+Yet she was fascinated.
+
+It was half-hidden now in surging, black storm-clouds, while all the
+sharp and snow-clad peaks around it glittered in the sun. Even in
+those rare moments when it was freed from clouds and mists it stood
+alone in its peculiar grandeur. Unlike all the others it wore no
+diadem of snow. Some terrible convulsion of nature, some cataclysm at
+its birth or in the fiery days of its youth, had left it bald-headed,
+ugly, and deformed. But for that catastrophe it would have been far
+loftier than any of its fellows; and even now the hunchback towered
+among them, its flat head level with their pointed peaks, the most
+conspicuous figure in the imposing pageant raised against the western
+sky.
+
+And its deformity was not the whole of its misfortune. It bore the
+brunt of every tempest that broke upon that massive barrier of
+mountains. Its granite head was the very breeding-place of storms. The
+peaks around it had their days of calm, but Thunder Mountain never. An
+hour or two perhaps--no more. It knew no peace. The elements were, and
+are now, and forever will be quarreling upon its worn and battered
+head; lightning and rain and snow and wind are forever hammering and
+beating it turn by turn. It is the Quasimodo and the Lear and the Gray
+Friar of mountains, all in one. And if, on some still and perfect day,
+its tonsured head emerges from the clouds, the watcher in the Park has
+but to turn his head a moment, and look again, and lo! it wears its
+gray cowl as before, and stoops growling and grumbling under its
+endless punishment.
+
+Suddenly, as Marion looked, the silence was rudely shattered. Roll on
+roll of thunder swept across the valley, crashed against the hills,
+rebounded from wall to wall of mountains, until all the Park was
+filled with the sullen bellowing. And then, amid all the tumult,
+Marion heard something more,--a voice that mingled with the voice of
+the mountain, and thrilled her while it filled her with a singular
+disquietude. She had dismissed Haig from her thoughts. She was sure of
+that. And yet through all the uproar, and in the tense silence that
+ensued, she heard his taunting voice:
+
+"And you came straight to me!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE ROAD TO PARADISE
+
+
+The gap in the fence remained exactly as it had been when it invited
+her to adventure. But now she halted there, dismounted, and picked up
+the end of a wire that lay trailing on the ground. With new-found
+interest she examined the fracture, and stared at it in wonder.
+Dropping it, and kneeling excitedly in the grass, she searched
+another, and still another wire, and with the same result. Even to her
+unpractised eye the facts were plain: the four wires had not been
+broken; they had been cleanly cut, and very recently, as shown by the
+absence of rust on the severed ends. By whom? And why? Seth
+Huntington, Haig had said. Impossible! Absurd! True, she had heard
+Seth denouncing him; Claire also; and without knowing the cause of the
+feud, or caring, she had learned that Huntington and Haig were
+bitterly at odds about something,--cattle, she thought, or was it
+land? But that Seth could have stooped to the low trick implied in
+these cut wires! And yet--
+
+She looked down the half-made road by which Haig had disappeared. It
+was quite empty now, save for Tuesday and herself. Nor was there sight
+of man or beast in all the valley. Haig's cattle, like Seth's and the
+other ranchmen's, were grazing in the summer pastures, no doubt in
+little shut-in valleys far up among the pines yonder, where the
+violet mists were deepening.
+
+She mounted her horse again, and rode slowly up the hill. But just
+where the road entered the woods at the summit of the ridge she
+stopped once more, and turned for a last look at her lost valley. Her
+gaze swept it lovingly from where, at her left, the long ridge shut
+off the view, to where, far at her right, the valley narrowed into a
+pine-screened gulch; and back again almost to the spot where the road
+dipped and disappeared. There her eyes were suddenly caught by
+something she had not seen before,--a thin spiral of blue smoke that
+mounted slowly until it was struck and dissipated by the breeze from
+across the ridge. Haig's ranchhouse, surely, nestling below the hill!
+The house would be visible, doubtless, from the place where Haig had
+vanished from her sight. What would it be like? she wondered.
+
+The next instant she had pulled her pony half-around toward the
+valley. But Tuesday turned his head, and looked at her; and she felt
+the blood rushing into her face.
+
+"Go on, Tuesday!" she cried, jerking him back into the road. "What are
+you doing?"
+
+She rode on into the pines, embarrassed beyond all belief.
+
+In a few minutes she had emerged again from the woods, descended the
+hill, and regained the main-traveled road along the Brightwater.
+Still she rode slowly, forgetting that she had learned at last to
+ride like a cowboy. She was reluctant to return to Huntington's,
+reluctant to relate her experiences as she had always related them
+until to-day. Haig had sent a warning to Huntington. It was her
+duty to deliver it. But how could she tell just so much and no more?
+There would be questions. She would be cross-examined, kindly enough
+but relentlessly. And in some strange way this meeting had become a
+private matter; Haig's warning was inextricably mixed with other
+things that did not concern Huntington. Just what these were, and why
+they were so very private, she could not quite explain to herself;
+and for the moment she did not try. They were things to be thought
+about later, when she could think more clearly. She knew only that
+she should never be able to endure either the banter or the
+disapproval of Huntington. What did Claire see in him anyhow,--the
+soft and sensitive Claire, with her blue eyes and her pretty face
+always upturned so trustfully to him? For the first time she realized
+that she had distrusted Seth from the beginning.
+
+In the midst of these confused and disconcerting thoughts, she became
+aware that she was no longer alone in the highway. Slowly as she rode,
+she was steadily overtaking a group of horsemen that appeared to be in
+difficulties. At intervals there was a commotion in the group, and
+clouds of dust from time to time concealed it from her sight. She
+reined up Tuesday, and hesitated, having had her fill of adventure for
+one day. Then, as the men seemed to be quite oblivious to her
+presence, and deeply absorbed in their own affair, curiosity drew her
+onward; and all her scruples were forgotten when she had ridden near
+enough to see the cause of the disturbance.
+
+Three men on cow ponies were leading, driving, and avoiding a fourth
+horse, which was not a cow pony by any possible extension of the
+word. This horse, which wore neither saddle nor bridle, but only a
+rope around his neck, maintained an almost uninterrupted struggle with
+his guards. At the first near glimpse she caught of him through the
+dust, Marion uttered an exclamation of surprise and admiration. He was
+larger than the ponies ridden by the men, larger than any cow pony,
+yet not a big horse measured by any standard with which she was
+familiar. His lines were like those of a thoroughbred, and in his
+movements, for all his fury, there was a lightness, a daintiness, an
+eloquence that suggested nothing so much as the airy grace of a young
+girl skipping and dancing across a playground.
+
+But it was his color especially that drew the cry from Marion's lips.
+This was pale yellow, not the cream color of the familiar buckskin
+breed, but something golden; of a brilliant luster like gold leaf, but
+softer; rather like cloth-of-gold, with a living, quivering sheen. All
+the horse's body was of this uniform, strange tint, but his mane and
+tail were a dull, tawny yellow deepening at the extremities into the
+hue of rusty gold. Though his hide was streaked with the sweat of his
+rebellion, and caked in places with the dust of the long road he had
+come, and welted by the whips of his tormentors, the color and the
+gloss shone out as undimmed as his proud spirit was undaunted by the
+hard knocks of his captivity.
+
+The three men clearly were hard pressed. Their faces were coated thick
+with dust; their eyes were red-rimmed, bulging, and bloodshot; their
+movements were heavy with fatigue. Scarcely a sound escaped their lips
+as they watched for every fresh manoeuver of their prisoner, and
+fought doggedly to gain a yard or two along the road. In the silence
+and intensity of the struggle there was something savage, elemental,
+and incomparable, heightened by the extraordinary beauty of the animal
+and the uncouth appearance of the men. Between them, the captive and
+his captors, Marion's sympathy was about equally divided. At every
+gallant sally made by the horse her heart leaped, and she hoped
+instinctively that he would go free. But then, the next instant, she
+was thrilled by the bold and shrewd counter-play of the cow-punchers
+that blocked the horse's strategy.
+
+Marion had scarcely comprehended all this, and imperfectly, when a
+terrifying thing occurred. The golden horse seemed to have paused and
+gathered all his forces for an effort that should make his best
+previous performance look like the silly antics of a colt. Suddenly,
+and without any warning manoeuver, he charged the full length of his
+rope straight at the man who held it coiled in his hand, with the end
+looped around the horn of his saddle. At the final bound, he reared as
+if to fall upon the cowboy and mangle him with his forefeet. But
+instead of finishing this attack, he whirled on his hind legs with
+incredible swiftness; and before the man could gather up the slack of
+the rope, or brace himself for the shock, the wild horse dashed across
+the road with all the strength and fury there was in him.
+
+Marion screamed, and closed her eyes. There were dreadful sounds of
+falling bodies, of bodies dragged on the ground, with grunts and
+groans and smothered cries. Then silence. When she dared to look she
+could see at first only a welter of men and horses half-hidden by the
+dust. Near her lay the gold horse with his head twisted backward by
+the taut rope, which choked him until his eyes bulged, and foam
+dripped from his lips. The man who had held the lariat lay half under
+his fallen pony, whose efforts to rise were checked by the tightened
+rope still tied to the saddlebow. The two other men were on their
+feet, one clutching the straightened halter, the second deftly
+slipping a lariat around the prisoner's pawing hind legs.
+
+It was all over in a minute. The taut rope was cut near the saddle of
+the fallen pony, which then scrambled to its feet; the leader rose,
+shook himself, and proceeded phlegmatically to adjust the turned
+saddle, and to climb stiffly into it; the leading-rope was passed to
+him again, the second lariat was loosed from the outlaw's feet,
+permitting him to rise; the other men remounted; and the procession
+moved on again in silence, scarcely a word having been spoken from the
+time the horse made his mad charge for liberty. And now he seemed to
+have had enough of the conflict, for he stepped forward obediently
+and, Marion fancied, as demurely as a child that has finished a
+naughty tantrum.
+
+Then at last there was speech. One of the men had dropped back a few
+paces to be in the rear of the prisoner. He sat heavily in the saddle,
+leaning forward as if he would fall on the pony's neck. But his eyes
+never left the golden horse, and when he spoke it was not to the girl,
+who had ridden close up to his side, but to himself, in a kind of
+hoarse and guttural soliloquy.
+
+"But he ain't done. He's foolin'," the man said again and again, as if
+he had started the words and could not stop them. "He ain't done. He's
+foolin'."
+
+Marion looked at him curiously. He was the typical cow-puncher, in
+blue flannel shirt and leather chaps, with the inevitable revolver
+hanging loosely at his hip, and a long quirt suspended from his right
+wrist. The dust on his face was stained with blood that had flowed
+from a raw bruise on his temple, and Marion now noticed that his left
+arm hung limp at his side.
+
+"You're hurt!" she said softly.
+
+The man turned, and stared at her blankly, and she saw that his face
+was distorted into a set expression of pain.
+
+"Arm busted," he said, after a moment, as if surprised by her
+question; and then renewed his watch.
+
+"How did it happen?" she asked.
+
+"Throwed me."
+
+"You don't mean you tried to ride him!"
+
+"Jerked me. Th' man ain't born't c'n ride 'im."
+
+"You were leading him?"
+
+"No, just thought I was," he said grimly. "He drug me."
+
+"When was that?"
+
+"This morning--about seven miles back."
+
+"Where did he come from?"
+
+"San Luis."
+
+"Where is that, please?"
+
+"Over yander," he answered, nodding toward the western mountains.
+
+Marion stared.
+
+"You haven't brought him over the mountains!"
+
+"'Round by Pinto Pass, an' up through the canyon."
+
+"I've never seen a horse like that before," she said, after a brief
+silence.
+
+"Nor anybody else has," he replied, with a note of pride.
+
+"But he's no cow pony--surely."
+
+"You ain't never heard o' Sunnysides?"
+
+"No."
+
+He looked at her curiously.
+
+"Of course not," he said apologetically. "You're f'm the city. East,
+maybe?"
+
+"Yes, I'm from New York."
+
+"Then it's natch'ral. Everybody in these parts has heard o'
+Sunnysides, though it's not many that's seen him."
+
+"Please tell me about him."
+
+The man's eyes brightened a little.
+
+"He's got some strange blood in him," he began. "Nobody knows what it
+is, but th' ain't another one o' that color, nor his devil spirit, in
+the whole bunch. The rest of 'em's just ordinary wild horses runnin'
+up an' down the sandhills of the San Luis. There's people't say he's a
+ghost horse. Fact! An' they say't he'll never stay caught. I don't
+know. It's certain't he's been caught three times,--not countin' the
+times cow-punchers an' others has thought they'd caught him, but
+hadn't. The first time he was caught actual he broke out o' the
+strongest corral in the San Luis--at night--an' nobody sees hide nor
+hair of 'im--not so much as a flicker o' yellow in the moonlight. An'
+back he was, headin' the herd again.
+
+"Nex' time Thad Brinker ropes him. Thad's the topnotch cow-puncher
+between the Black Hills an' the Rio Grande, an' he comes all the way
+f'm Dakoty when he hears the yarn about Sunnysides. Thad gits
+fourteen men to help him round up the bunch, an' then he ropes the
+gold feller after a fight that's talked about yit in the San Luis. He
+ropes him. An' then what does Brinker do?"
+
+He looked at Marion as if he dared her to make as many guesses as she
+wished. She shook her head.
+
+"You ain't the only one that'd never hit it," he went on with
+satisfaction. "Thad ropes him, an' while they lay there restin',
+Sunnysides all tied up so he can't move, an' Brinker rubbin' some
+bumps he'd come by in the fracas, just then the red comes up onto
+Sangre de Cristo. Brinker sees it--Ever seen the sunset color on
+Sangre de Cristo? No? That's a pity, Miss. Indeed, that's a pity. But
+you're f'm Noo York, you said."
+
+He paused again, and Marion began to realize the full degree of her
+provinciality and ignorance. She was from New York. What a pity!
+
+"Well," said the cowboy, as if resolved to do the best he could in the
+circumstances, "sometimes--maybe three or four times a year--it's
+weird. It's religious. The white peaks turn red as blood--that's why
+they're called Sangre de Cristo. It's Spanish for Blood of Christ. It
+makes you feel queer-like"--He paused a moment thoughtfully, watching
+the golden horse as it stepped quietly, lightly, with head high, just
+ahead of them. "The red comes onto Sangre de Cristo, an' Brinker sees
+it. He looks at the blood on the peaks, an' then at the gold horse
+lyin' there all torn an' dirty, an' this is what Brinker does, an'
+maybe he couldn't help it. He ups an' cuts the ropes, an' Sunnysides's
+off to his waitin' bunch, an' they all go snortin' down the valley."
+
+There was a touch of awe in the man's voice, and Marion felt a little
+of it too. She looked toward the serrated barrier of mountains, in the
+very middle of which stood old Thunder under his pall of cloud. Beyond
+lay San Luis--Sangre de Cristo--and what romance! Would she ever--Her
+eyes rested for a moment on the black pile that now, as always,
+fascinated and yet disturbed her.
+
+"And you?" she said at length, turning to the cowboy.
+
+"There wasn't no red sunset this time," the man answered, with a grim
+smile. "But we ain't slep' since," he added, with a return of
+weariness.
+
+"You caught him?" she asked admiringly.
+
+"Us three."
+
+"But what are you doing with him here?"
+
+"He's sold, if we c'n find the man't offered a thousand for him a year
+ago."
+
+"Who was he?"
+
+But she knew already. Some swift flash of intuition told her there was
+but one man in Paradise Park who--
+
+"His name's Haig, an' he's--"
+
+"Philip Haig!" she murmured.
+
+"You know him?"
+
+"Yes--no. That is, I've heard of him."
+
+It was on her lips,--the explanation that the men had passed the
+branch road leading to Haig's ranch, that they were now riding away
+from it. But she hesitated. And why? She did not know then; but an
+hour later she would be reproaching herself bitterly for that moment's
+indecision. The words were almost spoken, but something checked them;
+and before she could make up her mind to follow her first natural
+impulse it was too late.
+
+The leader of the party turned in his saddle, and called to the man at
+Marion's side, who rode quickly forward and joined his companions.
+There was a conversation inaudible to her ears, and while she still
+pondered over her inexplicable hesitation the cowboys and the golden
+horse, followed by Marion, approached the group of squat, unpainted
+houses that bore without apology the name of Paradise.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+SETH HUNTINGTON'S OPPORTUNITY
+
+
+It was Thursday, the one day of the week when Paradise needed no
+apologist. For on Thursdays the stage arrived from Tellurium, bringing
+the mail and, now and then, a passenger, and always a whiff of the
+outside world. No resident of Paradise Park would willingly have
+missed the arrival of the stage; and on this occasion fully two-thirds
+of the male population, with nine-tenths of the female, had already
+assembled. But the stage was not due for an hour or more. The women
+bargained and gossiped in Thompson's store; the men, most of them,
+were gathered around a stiff game of freeze-out in the Square Deal
+Saloon; and only the score or more of saddle horses hitched in front
+of the store, and the dozen or so of buckboards and road wagons parked
+in the rear of it, showed that Paradise was in its weekly state of
+mild and patient expectancy.
+
+So the three cow-punchers, the yellow horse, and Marion rode into
+Paradise without being seen or heard, and halted in front of the
+post-office.
+
+"Hal-lo! Hallo!" sang out the leader of the cowboys. And then, with
+the petulance of one that is "all in": "Is this a dam' graveyard?"
+
+A thin man in his shirt sleeves, with a whisky glass in one hand and a
+towel in the other, came to the door of the Square Deal Saloon. His
+pallid face had the look of settled weariness that is characteristic
+of keepers of such oases. Slavin had never, within the recollection of
+the oldest frequenter of his establishment, betrayed the slightest
+interest in anything. If there was a certain change in his expression
+as he looked out between narrowed eyelids into the garish sunlight it
+was one indicative of mild resentment at having been disturbed in his
+methodic occupation behind the bar. He saw with neither interest nor
+anticipation the three strangers, who ought to have had enough sense
+to dismount and walk in if they wanted anything.
+
+"Well," he began in a drawling and sarcastic tone, "what--"
+
+It probably would have been a cautious and covered insult to the
+presumed intelligence of the strangers, if he had finished the
+question. But it died away on his thin lips. His fishy, blue eyes had
+caught at last the gleam of Sunnysides, half in eclipse behind the
+dull-hued cow ponies. For a few seconds he stared, while his mouth
+stood open, and his features slowly responded to the first emotion he
+had felt in years.
+
+"Hell's bobcats!" he yelled.
+
+The glass slipped from his hand, and fell tinkling in pieces on the
+floor as he lunged out into the road.
+
+In the saloon there was a moment of tense silence as the men there
+slowly realized that a phenomenon had occurred. Slavin was excited!
+The silence was followed by a hubbub of raised voices and a racket of
+overturned chairs and the scrape and thud of boots on the sanded
+floor. At that instant a woman in a pink calico dress, drawn by
+Slavin's yell, came to the door of Thompson's, and promptly screeched.
+The poker game was never finished; Thompson's trade was ruined for
+the day; and the strange group in the roadway became the center of a
+jostling, uproarious crowd of men and women, who alternately bombarded
+the three cow-punchers with questions and stared at Sunnysides in
+silent wonder. But they were careful to maintain a respectful distance
+between themselves and the formidable captive, though he stood
+motionless amid all the uproar, like a golden statue of a horse, with
+his head raised proudly, his yellow-black eyes flashing defiance and
+suspicion, and his lustrous hide gleaming in the sun.
+
+Marion's enjoyment of this exciting scene was tinged with a vague
+uneasiness. She had watched the men come tumbling out of the Square
+Deal Saloon and the women swarming from Thompson's store, and had felt
+a curious relief at seeing neither Seth nor Claire among them.
+Though she could not have given any reason for her satisfaction,
+their absence, and Seth's especially, seemed to her a piece of rare
+good fortune. Haig's warning--"Tell him he's a fool to anger
+me!"--was still echoing at the back of her brain; her recent act
+of incomprehensible errancy still troubled and perplexed her; and
+try as she would, she was unable to suppress the feeling that she had
+become inextricably entangled in the feud between Haig and Huntington.
+She was not yet ready to face Huntington. Thank Heaven, he was not
+there!
+
+But at the very instant of her self-congratulation, and when she was
+just turning her attention again to the hubbub around the golden
+outlaw, her eye was suddenly caught, across the heads of the crowd, by
+a figure that caused her to stiffen in the saddle.
+
+"Seth!" she gasped.
+
+He came striding rapidly from the direction of the blacksmith's, the
+most distant of the group of buildings,--a large and heavy but
+well-built man, whose black, short-cropped beard and bushy,
+overhanging eyebrows gave him a somewhat truculent expression, which
+was heightened by his rough and domineering demeanor. He was better
+dressed, or more carefully at least, than any of the other men. He
+wore a coat and trousers of dark-brown corduroy, a light-gray flannel
+shirt with a flowing black tie, and a wide-brimmed Stetson hat. His
+belt, under the unbuttoned coat, was of elaborately stamped leather,
+with a pocket at one side from which a heavy, gold watch chain was
+looped to a silver ring, and with an ornate holster at the other where
+the black butt of a revolver was visible as he moved.
+
+He shouldered his way through the crowd in the heedless manner of most
+bulky men, who seldom realize how much space they take that properly
+belongs to others. At six feet from the golden horse he halted, and
+surveyed him with shining eyes.
+
+"Sunnysides, eh?" he said, turning toward the nearest of the
+strangers.
+
+"The's only one," replied the cow-puncher.
+
+"Who caught him this time?"
+
+"Us three. That's Jim Raley, with the busted arm. That other is Jud
+Smith, My name's Larkin. We belong to the X bar O outfit on Lost
+Soldier Creek."
+
+"Second outfit below Forty-Mile," said Huntington, familiarly.
+
+"Right!"
+
+"Sanders still foreman?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then what are you doing with that horse up here?"
+
+The cow-puncher grinned.
+
+"I ketch your meanin'," he replied. "It's like this. Sanders chased
+Sunnysides three seasons, an' thought he'd roped him. But all he gits
+'s a cracked leg, an' not a yeller hair of the slippery beast. Then us
+three takes on the job--not presumin' to be better'n Sanders, but
+hopin' for luck. It comes our way, an' there you are. We offer him to
+Sanders--for a price, natch'rally--but he says he don't believe in
+ghosts, an' we c'n go to hell with him."
+
+"You must have missed the road. This is Paradise," said Huntington.
+
+The crowd roared its appreciation.
+
+"The' ain't much in names," observed Larkin testily.
+
+The crowd laughed again, though, of course, less heartily.
+
+"Well, Heaven or Hell," said Huntington, "is the horse for sale?"
+
+"He is--if he ain't sold already."
+
+"How's that?"
+
+"We're offered a price for him--if it still holds good. That's why
+we've come to Paradise--an' no other reason, believe me!"
+
+"How much?"
+
+"Thousand."
+
+There was a stir in the crowd.
+
+"That's some price for a bronco," said Huntington, with an assumed
+indifference.
+
+"It sure is--if you're talkin' about a _bronco_," retorted the
+cow-puncher.
+
+There was a brief silence, in which all eyes were turned again upon
+the golden horse, standing motionless but alert, as if keenly alive to
+all that passed. The common ponies around him stamped, and champed
+their bits, and moved restlessly in their places, but Sunnysides
+remained calm and observant, with all the dignity and contempt of a
+captive patrician in a crowd of yokels.
+
+Marion saw admiration and desire growing in Seth's eyes, and knew that
+her foreboding had not been without reason.
+
+"And who's paying a thousand dollars for him?" asked Huntington.
+
+"Haig's his name, Philip Haig," answered Larkin. "Know him?"
+
+If Larkin had been a little nettled by the levity of the Paradisians
+he now had his revenge, though much to his surprise, in the
+extraordinary effect produced by his simple announcement. The smiles
+faded from the faces assembled around him; significant glances were
+exchanged; and there followed a silence so deep that the murmur of the
+Brightwater could be heard quite clearly across the meadows. Then
+there was a rustling movement in the crowd, and every face, as if by a
+common impulse, or at a given signal, was turned toward Huntington.
+
+Marion was not sure of the feelings of the others, but there could be
+no mistake in what she read in Huntington's black countenance. She was
+not only frightened, but surprised and pained. For all his coarseness
+and crudity, she had until to-day believed him to be innately gentle,
+with only a rough and ungracious exterior. She had seen him always
+tender with Claire, whom undoubtedly he loved with all the best there
+was in him. But now she perceived the other side of his character,
+which she had indeed divined at first, but which she had firmly, on
+account of Claire, refused to acknowledge. An unworthy passion glowed
+in his eyes; his features were distorted by an expression of mingled
+cunning and hate; and his head somehow seemed to sink lower between
+his shoulders as he leaned slightly forward, studying the face of the
+cow-puncher. Then swiftly he took himself in hand, and masked his
+passions under an air of careless badinage that was, for the moment,
+suited to his purpose.
+
+"But I don't just understand," he drawled insinuatingly. "Haig hasn't
+been away from the Park lately--unless he's gone an' come by night."
+
+A snicker or two, and one loud guffaw rewarded him for this insult to
+his absent foe. But Marion felt the color rising to her cheeks.
+
+"It's a year ago he's seen him, 'way off, shinin' in the sun,"
+explained Larkin. "He stops at the X bar O, an' says he'll give a
+thousand for him."
+
+"So that's all you've got to go on, is it?" sneered Huntington.
+
+"Yes," answered Larkin uneasily.
+
+"An' you think he'll make good, do you?"
+
+"If a man's word ain't good he don't stay in this country long, does
+he?"
+
+"That's right--he won't stay long!" replied Huntington, with a savage
+laugh.
+
+"You mean to say--" queried Larkin pointedly, leaning across the neck
+of his pony, and looking keenly into Huntington's eyes.
+
+"Nothing," answered Huntington, lifting his huge shoulders.
+
+"That's sayin' a lot an' sayin' nothing," retorted Larkin.
+
+"You'll know more when you try to collect that thousand."
+
+"All right," responded Larkin, gathering up the reins as if to
+terminate the interview. "Where's his place--if it ain't a secret?"
+
+"It's over beyond that ridge," said Huntington, pointing toward the
+west. "You go back about three miles the way you came, an' there's a
+branch road--"
+
+"Hell!" snorted the cowboy whose arm hung limp at his side.
+
+The three men exchanged glances. They were very weary; they had used
+almost the last of their powers to bring the outlaw this far; and they
+were plainly reluctant to undertake another tussle with the tireless
+animal, now ready, without doubt, to renew his struggle for liberty.
+
+Huntington watched them narrowly.
+
+"I'm all in!" grumbled Raley.
+
+"You look it," said Huntington. Then he added lightly: "Still, you
+ought to fetch up at Haig's place before morning."
+
+Marion felt disgust and resentment rising in her at this misrepresentation
+of the distance to Haig's ranch. Whatever Haig had done, this was
+cowardly and unfair. She looked eagerly at the other men, expecting to
+hear some one correct the gross exaggeration. But the faces were all
+blank, and no one spoke.
+
+Something like a groan escaped from the lips of the injured cowboy. He
+looked as if he might tumble from the saddle at any instant.
+
+"Sure we can!" said Larkin doggedly. "Come, men! Let's move on."
+
+"Well, good luck!" said Huntington carelessly. And then, as if on
+second thought: "But see here! You fellows look all right to me, and
+if Haig's changed his mind, or hasn't got the cash handy, bring the
+horse back here, and I'll talk business with you."
+
+"Talk business now!" Smith blurted out, averting his eyes from
+Larkin.
+
+"Very well. I'll give you five hundred for him--if you don't want to
+go any farther. He ain't worth it, but he's a kind of a curiosity,
+and--"
+
+"That ain't talkin' business worth a dam'!" cried Larkin. "Come along,
+men!"
+
+He turned his pony's head, and took a fresh grip on the halter that
+held the prisoner. Smith moved also, though slowly, but Raley did not
+budge.
+
+"I'm damned if I go any further!" he growled.
+
+Smith stopped, and looked uncertainly from Raley to Larkin, from
+Larkin to Huntington, who was studying him craftily.
+
+"The five hundred isn't wind," said Huntington sneeringly. "It's over
+there in Thompson's safe, if you want it."
+
+"We'll see Haig first," said Larkin, compressing his lips, and
+speaking more to his companions than to Huntington.
+
+Smith shifted uneasily in his saddle, while Raley avoided Larkin's
+eyes, and looked appealingly at Huntington. The ranchman, in his
+turn, took a sidelong glance, furtive and questioning, at the faces of
+his neighbors. The moment was critical, and much more was involved in
+the crisis than the possession of the golden outlaw. For a long time
+Huntington had assumed a certain leadership in the Park, but it had
+not always been unquestioned. His qualifications for leadership were
+not as apparent to all his neighbors as they were to himself, and
+there were some who even resented his pretensions. Nevertheless he
+had, in a way, succeeded; and he had been permitted to represent the
+entire valley as far as he liked in the war with Philip Haig. One and
+all, indeed, regarded Haig as an intruder; many of them had more than
+once threatened violence against him; and there was not among them one
+whom Haig, if he had wanted a defender, could have counted on. Yet,
+for all that, Huntington was practically alone in the depth of his
+hatred and the violence of his methods. If Haig had no friends in the
+Park, he had only a few, perhaps no more than two or three, inveterate
+enemies, of whom Huntington was the active representative.
+
+Huntington now saw in the faces of the men around him that they were
+doubtful of him, and that the time was opportune to turn their
+passivity into energetic support of his plans. Moreover, he had
+already "put his foot in it," had gone too far to withdraw without
+discredit. Having openly insulted the absent enemy, and having clearly
+revealed his intention to cheat him of this prize, to weaken now would
+be to abandon forever all hope of ascendency. For an instant he
+regretted what he had done, and cursed himself under his breath.
+Then, taking a new grip on himself, he returned to the attack.
+
+"Seven hundred and fifty, then!" he said with a swagger. "And it's
+cash, not words."
+
+There was a moment of suspense. The three men, who were moving slowly
+away, turned in their saddles. Not a muscle quivered, not a foot
+stirred in the expectant crowd. Marion felt that in another minute she
+would cry out, shrieking at Seth, shrieking the warning Haig had sent
+by her.
+
+"That's good enough, for me!" declared Raley, throwing the reins over
+his pony's head, and preparing painfully to dismount.
+
+"No, Jim!" cried Smith. "Let him say a thousand, an' I'm with you.
+'Tain't exactly on the square, but the's no use killin' ourselves
+for--"
+
+His speech was cut short by a shrill cry from a woman who stood on a
+horse block at the outer edge of the crowd.
+
+"Look! Look!" she called, pointing a finger toward the long white
+road.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE HIGHEST BIDDER
+
+
+Far up the road appeared a little cloud of dust with a black speck in
+its center.
+
+A murmur ran through the crowd; a name was passed from mouth to mouth;
+and the men nearest Huntington began to edge away instinctively,
+leaving a larger and larger space clear around him and the three
+cow-punchers.
+
+Marion too looked, and understood. She had not dismounted, but still
+sat her pony within ten feet of the outlaw, at the side of the
+roadway, in about the middle of which stood Huntington. With an effort
+she drew her eyes away from that ominous black spot in the distance,
+and turned toward Seth. A shiver ran through her body, but her cheeks
+burned, and there was a voice in her ears that shouted, "Tell him he's
+a fool to anger me!" For a moment she was on the point of rushing upon
+Seth, and shrieking that warning into his face. But now it was too
+late.
+
+Like all the others Huntington stood for a few seconds fascinated by
+that figure in the puff of dust. And for just those few seconds there
+was a certain unsteadiness in his attitude, irresolution in the black
+eyes beneath their bushy brows. But the blue-whiteness under the dark
+beard was not the pallor of fear, so called. Seth Huntington was as
+incapable of physical cowardice as he was of moral courage. He was not
+afraid of Philip Haig, but he was dreadfully afraid of being thought
+afraid of him. There was yet time to avoid a clash with Haig, to
+withdraw from an undertaking in which he knew he was wholly in the
+wrong. But he was not equal to that test of character. He would sooner
+tackle all the Haigs in Christendom than face the derision of his
+neighbors, whom he had assiduously taught to expect great things of
+him on the first occasion. Here was the occasion; he had seized it,
+blinded by passion; and there was no way for him now but to see it
+through. He straightened up, and faced the three cow-punchers.
+
+"All right!" he cried defiantly. "It's a thousand."
+
+But the three had heard the name murmured by the crowd, had seen the
+distant horseman. Larkin was plainly elated. Raley and Smith, as
+plainly abashed, looked this way and that, avoiding the eyes of their
+leader, and every other eye as well. Huntington, seeing the game about
+to slip from his hands, whirled on his heel and looked swiftly toward
+the store.
+
+"Thompson!" he yelled.
+
+"Here!" was the answer, as a small, gray-bearded man in shirt sleeves
+advanced a step or two from the door.
+
+"Fetch me that roll from your safe, will you?"
+
+"Right!"
+
+As Thompson disappeared within the store, Huntington turned again
+toward the cowboys.
+
+"A thousand dollars--cash!" he repeated.
+
+Larkin leaned forward on his horse, and looked at him shrewdly.
+
+"Seems to me it's not the horse you're after so much as him," he said,
+with a grin and a nod toward the road.
+
+"That's as may be," retorted Huntington. "Money talks."
+
+"An' it says mighty funny things sometimes," replied Larkin, who now
+made no concealment of his dislike of Huntington and his "game."
+
+"We'll see!" cried Huntington angrily. "How does twelve hundred sound
+to you two?"
+
+He looked steadily at Raley and Smith, who exchanged glances.
+
+"What's your awful hurry?" Larkin demanded, in a drawling tone, but
+with an anxious eye for the galloping figure now in plain view. "We'll
+give Haig a chance to bid--eh, men?"
+
+Smith shot an angry but uneasy look at the leader. Huntington saw it,
+and guessed that there was more than weariness and greed in the
+willingness of Smith and Raley to combine against Larkin. Probably, he
+thought, there had been differences of opinion, disputes even, on the
+road to Paradise. He turned impatiently toward the store.
+
+At that instant Thompson ran out, broke through the ring of men, and
+handed a roll of "yellowbacks" to Huntington, who hurriedly peeled off
+several of the bills, and thrust them at arm's length toward the
+wavering cow-punchers.
+
+"Haig talked about a thousand dollars!" he cried. "There's fifteen
+hundred. Do you want it?"
+
+For a moment it was heads or tails. Even Larkin eyed the money
+hungrily. Then his teeth clicked together, and he turned upon his
+partners, whose faces showed plainly the answer that was upon their
+lips.
+
+"An' what'll you say to _him_?" he demanded.
+
+"Eighteen hundred!" shouted Huntington.
+
+"That's good enough for me!" cried Raley. "Say it, Jud!"
+
+There was a distant thunder of hoofs as Haig's horse took the short
+bridge over the Brightwater. The crowd backed still farther away from
+Huntington, who was again fingering his roll of bills.
+
+"Two thousand!" he roared, shaking the handful of "yellowbacks" at the
+wavering Smith.
+
+Raley leaned from his saddle, and grabbed Smith's arm.
+
+"Quick, Jud!" he pleaded hotly. "Don't be a fool!"
+
+"All right! We'll take it!" answered Smith.
+
+"No!" said Larkin firmly, pulling his horse around between Huntington
+and the two partners.
+
+"Yes!" the two cried out together.
+
+Huntington stepped forward, and thrust both handfuls of bills almost
+into Larkin's face.
+
+"Name your price then!" he bellowed.
+
+Larkin looked at the money,--smelt it,--as he said afterwards, grimly
+confessing his weakness at the sight of more than he could save in
+years of riding the range and branding mavericks. If there had been
+ten seconds more--
+
+Haig galloped into the crowd, which gave him plenty of room, and
+reined up his pony just in front of the golden outlaw. For some
+instants he saw only the horse; and his eyes kindled. Then he faced
+the cowboys and Huntington.
+
+They were fixed in almost the very attitudes in which he had come upon
+them. Huntington's outstretched hands had indeed fallen to his side,
+but they still clutched the crumpled bills. Raley's blood-stained face
+was purple with anger and chagrin, while Smith's wore a sullen,
+hangdog look. As for Larkin, he met Haig's questioning scrutiny with a
+look of mingled triumph and guilt.
+
+"Well, why don't you go on?" asked Haig, with a smile.
+
+There was no response. The silence was again so complete that the
+music of the Brightwater was heard across the meadows.
+
+Haig slowly swept the crowd with an inquiring glance. All these men
+were hostile toward him, of course; but how far would they support
+Huntington? No matter! He swung himself suddenly out of the saddle,
+and addressed himself to the leader of the cowboys.
+
+"You're Larkin, aren't you?" he said.
+
+"Yes," answered the embarrassed cow-puncher.
+
+"And the others are Smith and--"
+
+"Raley," prompted Larkin.
+
+"And here, of course, is my good friend Huntington, looking like
+Fortune with both hands full."
+
+Several men in the crowd laughed, whereupon Huntington, who had
+evidently forgotten the money, made matters worse for himself by
+hastily and clumsily thrusting it into the pockets of his coat, while
+his face flushed angrily.
+
+"That's right, Cousin Seth," Haig said lightly. "You may need it."
+
+Marion, at these words, quivered with alarm. Was he going to tell
+Huntington, there in that crowd, of the incident in the pasture? His
+next speech, however, reassured her.
+
+"Now, Larkin," he said, "let's understand things. That's my horse,
+isn't it?"
+
+"That's what I've been sayin' some time back," answered Larkin, in a
+tone of relief.
+
+"And you, Smith?"
+
+"I suppose so," was the sullen reply.
+
+"And Raley?"
+
+"No, it ain't!" answered that one with a sudden flare-up of courage.
+
+"Then whose horse is it?"
+
+"It belongs to Larkin an' Smith an' me."
+
+"Of course. But why did you bring him to Paradise Park?"
+
+"To sell him."
+
+"To whom, please?"
+
+Raley, caught in the trap, looked appealingly toward Smith, but got no
+help from him.
+
+"To whom?" repeated Haig sharply.
+
+"To you--if you wanted him!" Raley blurted out at last.
+
+"If I wanted him!" retorted Haig ironically. "I bargained for him with
+you, didn't I?"
+
+"Yes," growled Raley.
+
+"And you went and caught him _for me_?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And you brought him to Paradise Park _for me_?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Very well. Don't be downhearted!" he said cheerfully. "A good name is
+more to be desired than great riches. Isn't that so, Cousin Seth?"
+
+The ranchman's face flamed.
+
+"If you've got anything to say to me, say it quick!" he jerked out.
+
+"I have several things to say to you, one at a time," replied Haig
+smoothly. "To begin with, these men told you the horse was mine,
+didn't they?"
+
+"No, they didn't. They said you'd offered a thousand dollars for
+him."
+
+Haig laughed.
+
+"All right, if that suits you better! They told you they had brought
+him here to deliver him to me for a thousand dollars, and you thought
+it would be a fine joke to buy him yourself. Is that it?"
+
+Huntington did not respond to this, but watched Haig narrowly, a
+little puzzled by his manner.
+
+"How much did he offer you?" Haig asked Larkin.
+
+"Two thousand dollars--and then he said name our price."
+
+Haig whistled.
+
+"Well, I'm damned if you haven't got some sporting blood in you!" he
+said, smiling at Huntington. "How much was in your roll?"
+
+Huntington's first impulse was to tell Haig that it was none of his
+business. But he was deceived by Haig's manner, having expected his
+enemy to fall upon him like a thunderbolt. His surprise was shared,
+indeed, by most of the men, who had expected gun-play on the jump.
+Only Marion, sitting still and watchful on her pony, was not misled.
+She felt that Haig was playing with Huntington, and biding his time.
+
+Huntington's vanity completed his self-delusion.
+
+"Four thousand, two hundred dollars" he replied boastfully, glancing
+around at his neighbors.
+
+"Whew!" uttered Haig, between pursed lips. Then to Larkin: "You were
+hard pressed, weren't you? But never mind, boys, I'll do better than I
+promised--and charge it up to Cousin Seth."
+
+Another laugh flickered around the crowd. It was evident that there
+was no great objection to seeing Huntington baited.
+
+"My name's Huntington!" he snorted. "What's this damned cousin
+business, anyhow?"
+
+Haig raised his eyebrows.
+
+"Does it annoy you?" he asked, in a tone of exaggerated politeness.
+
+Huntington merely glared. He was one of those self-made wits who enjoy
+their own jokes immensely but grumble at plucking barbed shafts out of
+their own skins. He began to wish for the thunderbolt.
+
+"But it's your own fault, you know," Haig added.
+
+"What in hell are you talking about?" Huntington growled.
+
+"I'm talking about your last visit to my ranch."
+
+"My last--What do you mean, damn you!" the ranchman thundered, his
+right hand moving to his belt.
+
+There was a hurried movement among those of the crowd who, absorbed in
+the dialogue, had half-consciously crept nearer. But Haig appeared to
+have noticed neither Huntington's motion nor the backing away of the
+spectators.
+
+"And wouldn't it have been reckless extravagance to pay good money for
+Sunnysides when you might just have come and taken him out of my
+corrals?"
+
+For a few seconds Huntington, as if he could scarce believe that he
+heard aright, was speechless with amazement and rage.
+
+"Say it, damn you!" he said chokingly. "What do you mean?"
+
+"Don't get so excited, or you may break a blood vessel, Cous--I beg
+your pardon, _Mister_ Huntington."
+
+"Say it!" roared the ranchman.
+
+Then Haig dropped his mask.
+
+"I will say it," he began in a voice that rang ominously. "I'll say it
+so that even you cannot fail to understand me. I mean that I'm tired
+of your threats and persecutions. I mean that you have harassed me and
+my men at every opportunity. I mean that you drove that bunch of my
+cattle off the cliff last September. I mean that within twenty-four
+hours another fence has been cut, and that you know who did it. I mean
+that your attempt to buy my horse was only another of the contemptible
+and cowardly tricks you have played on me. I mean, Huntington, that
+you are a bully, a liar and a thief!"
+
+Huntington's hand had slipped to the butt of his revolver at the
+beginning of this intolerable speech; but he had waited, as if
+fascinated, as if unable to move under the torrent of denunciation.
+Then to the onlookers it appeared that the bold young man, who had not
+yet made the slightest motion toward his own weapon, would be slain in
+his tracks. But Haig was as much the quicker in action as he was the
+nimbler in wit.
+
+The two revolvers cracked, it seemed, as one, but with very different
+results. Haig's battered old hat, lifted as if by a sudden gust of
+wind, slid from his head, and fell to the ground with a bullet hole
+through it. But Huntington threw up his hands, pitched forward, and
+fell in a heap in the dusty road.
+
+There was a single shrill, short-cut shriek as a woman near the door
+of the post-office slipped down in a faint; and then a chorus of
+quavering cries as other women clutched the arms of the men nearest
+them.
+
+Marion swayed in her saddle, her head drooping on her breast. A young
+cowboy darted from the crowd, and grabbed her as she fell. He started
+to lift and carry her away, but, with a desperate effort, she
+recovered, and stood erect, trying to thrust him from her. He held her
+nevertheless, supporting her with an arm under one of hers.
+
+Haig had quickly turned and faced the group of men at the left of the
+road.
+
+"Is there anybody else here that wants to buy my horse?" he demanded
+coolly.
+
+There was no response, no movement. He whirled, and confronted the
+silent row of men on the other side.
+
+"Is there anybody else here who thinks he can drive me out of Paradise
+Park?"
+
+Still no one replied; and Haig, with a shrug, thrust his revolver back
+in its holster.
+
+"Thompson!" he called out.
+
+"Here!" was the answer, in the same tone of readiness with which he
+had responded to Huntington. By keeping his mouth shut, and never
+taking sides in any of the occasional disagreements and disputes that
+enlivened the tedium of life in that community, Thompson had
+established a reputation for neutrality and trustworthiness, and was
+permitted to be everybody's friend.
+
+"Look after Huntington, please!" said Haig. "He's not badly
+hit--you'll find the bullet under the left shoulder blade. It'll do
+him good."
+
+Thompson and some others lifted Huntington, and carried him into the
+store; and at that moment the stage, its approach unnoticed, rattled
+up, and stopped with shrieking brakes and creaking harness. There was
+a sudden outbreak of speech on all sides, as if the tension had been
+relaxed by the recurrence of a familiar and orderly event. In the
+confusion Haig turned toward Sunnysides and the three cow-punchers.
+
+"Now, Larkin," he began briskly, "we'll finish this business, and
+then--"
+
+He stopped short, and stared.
+
+By the side of the golden horse stood Marion. Still shocked and
+bewildered, yet strangely thrilled, she had stretched out one
+trembling arm, and rested her hand on the neck of the wild creature,
+from which every other person in the crowd around--and she too in her
+right senses--had kept away, in full appreciation of his reputation.
+Whether it was that the outlaw had for the time given up all notion of
+resistance and hostility, or that he felt the difference between the
+girl's gentle touch and the rough handling he had undergone, he did
+not stir. But this docility, this understanding, was only a part of
+the sight that brought Haig to a standstill.
+
+He had left many things behind him, but there was one thing he had not
+been, able to destroy as he would have destroyed it, root and branch
+and flower. He would always have a weakness--he called it that--for
+beauty in whatever form it appeared to him. Sunsets and twilights, the
+shadows of trees in still waters, flowers and reeds, old ruins in the
+moonlight, sometimes even faces moved him until he was ashamed, and
+berated himself for a sentimental weakling. And now--
+
+The girl was tawny as a leopard. Her hair was almost exactly the color
+of the outlaw's dull yellow mane, but finer, of course, and softer;
+and her complexion--he wondered that he had not noticed it before--had
+a peculiar richness and brilliancy that seemed to reflect the luster
+of Sunnysides' golden hide. They stood there entrancing his artist-eye
+with their perfect harmony of line and color; and the last thin rays
+of the setting sun bathed horse and girl in a golden light--an
+atmosphere in which they glowed like one of Titian's mellowed
+canvases.
+
+"Don't move, please!" he exclaimed.
+
+But Marion did not hear, or did not heed. She dropped her hand, and
+glided toward him, while he watched her, curious and rapt. Perhaps it
+was because he saw her through that golden glow, perhaps because his
+nerves were a little unsteady in the reaction from the strain they had
+undergone, that she made a singular appeal to his imagination. He
+fancied that for all the fineness of her figure, the exquisite poise
+of her small head, the cameo-like delicacy of her face, there was
+something in her as wild, untamed, and elemental as the heart of
+Sunnysides.
+
+Thus she moved slowly past him, and passing gave him a long and steady
+look, with an unfathomable expression in her eyes,--an expression
+neither of anger nor of bitterness nor of disgust nor of anything he
+might have expected after all he had done that day. He turned, and
+watched her until she had disappeared in the crowd around the
+stagecoach; and with her went out the last rays of the sun.
+
+"Well, I'll be damned!" said Philip Haig.
+
+With a shake of his shoulders, as if to throw off some unwelcome
+weight upon them, he turned again to take up his business with the
+gaping cow-punchers.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+"HE SHALL TELL ME!"
+
+
+Doctor Wilson, arriving from Tellurium on the third day after the
+encounter at Paradise, found Huntington in a bad way, due not so much
+to the wound in his left shoulder as to the state of his mind. Haig's
+bullet was extracted without difficulty or serious complications, but
+Haig's words were encysted too deep for any probe. Huntington's
+self-love had been dealt a mortal blow; and somebody must pay for it.
+
+First of all it was Claire that paid; then Marion. He did not mean to
+be disagreeable to them, but never having cultivated self-restraint he
+had none of it now to ease the days of his convalescence. He filled
+the house with his clamor, and required as much attention as an ailing
+child. There were just two ways to keep him quiet. Claire soothed him
+when she sat at his bedside, with one of his huge "paws" held in her
+tiny hands; and Marion found, somewhat to her surprise, that Seth
+liked music. The piano was one of the wonders of the Huntington house,
+for pianos are not essential instruments in the equipment of cattle
+ranches, and this was the only one in all that region of cattledom.
+
+In music Seth's tastes were sentimental. "Lost Chords" and "Rosaries"
+subdued him almost to tears; and if Marion only brought him tuneful
+violets every morn he tried his best to be good. So when Claire was
+not on duty at the bedside Marion must needs be on duty at the
+piano,--an ordeal that Claire endured, of course, more patiently than
+Marion.
+
+Claire was almost comically unfit to be a ranchman's wife, and she too
+had been a trial on occasions. She was small and delicate, but
+vivacious, amiable, bright. Her blue eyes always had a childlike
+wonder in them, and she was fond of wearing her fluffy, golden hair in
+a girlish knot low on her neck, or even in a long, thick braid down
+her back, with a blue ribbon bow at the end. She flitted about the
+house like a butterfly, and yet she had managed somehow to make her
+home the marvel of Paradise Park.
+
+To begin with it was the ordinary, one-story, rambling house of pine,
+with spruce-clad hills rising behind it, and a little stream,
+rollicking down between it and the corrals. But a wide veranda had
+been constructed on three sides of it, furnished with wicker chairs,
+and half-screened with boxes of growing flowers. All around the house
+flowers grew,--old-fashioned garden flowers, roses and geraniums; beds
+of them everywhere, and blossoming shrubs along the stream.
+
+The house contained, besides the kitchen and the bedrooms, just one
+big room. This, with its low ceiling, unpainted timbers, and small
+windows, was not unlike the hall of some old manor house. The floor
+was covered with Navajo rugs in rich and barbaric colors; the walls
+were draped with burlap in dull red dyes; and the windows were
+curtained with chintz in bright yellows and reds. Above the windows
+and doors hung many heads of deer and elk and mountain sheep, and
+rifles on racks of horn. Between the two front windows stood the
+upright piano, and near it a small bookcase filled with novels and
+volumes of poetry. The big oak table at mealtime was made to look very
+inviting with white napery and modest china and silver, and a bouquet
+always in its center. At other times it was a library table, heaped
+with books and magazines, and in the evening, when the kerosene lamps
+were lighted, and the pinon was blazing in the great fireplace, the
+room seemed as remote from Paradise Park as Claire herself.
+
+There was an occasional visitor at Huntington's in the period of his
+convalescence, usually a ranchwife eager for another glimpse at
+Claire's wonderful housekeeping, or a young cow-puncher drawn by the
+attraction of two very pretty and unusual women in one house. But the
+ranchmen themselves, with two or three exceptions, were content to be
+solicitous at long range--an abstention that relieved and at the same
+time troubled Huntington. He was not eager to talk with his neighbors
+about that episode at the post-office, but their aloofness filled him
+with uneasiness. Well, let them wait! They would hear from him again,
+and so should Haig!
+
+There was, among the visitors, one whose coming perceptibly lightened
+the tedium of those days. Marion had the good fortune to see him in
+time not to be taken by surprise. Seated on the veranda after an
+exhausting recital for the benefit of Huntington, she perceived the
+figure of a horseman--yes, it was a horseman--riding out of the pines
+toward the corrals. She stared. He was so little and so lost between
+his pony, which seemed extraordinarily big, and his sombrero, which
+undoubtedly was enormous, that she remained for a moment dumb, and
+then, choking with laughter, fled into the house.
+
+"Look, Claire, look!" she cried, grabbing her cousin's arm.
+
+Claire, dragged to the door, looked and giggled.
+
+"Haven't you seen that before?" she asked.
+
+"No! Never!" answered Marion, her hand upon her mouth.
+
+"Of course. He's just arrived--for the season. He was here last year,
+and the year before."
+
+"And they let him?" demanded Marion, thinking of the irrepressible
+cow-punchers.
+
+"Oh, he's all right!" Claire assured her. "That is, after you get used
+to him. The men had all sorts of fun with him the first summer he was
+here. But he took all their fun good-naturedly, and showed them he had
+pluck too. They began to like him. Everybody likes him, and so will
+you."
+
+"But in the name of--who is he?"
+
+The little man had descended like a parachute from his pony, and was
+now bobbing rapidly up the graveled walk.
+
+"Smythe," explained Claire hurriedly. "But he's here now--I'll let him
+tell you--he likes to talk."
+
+At the foot of the steps he caught sight of the two women in the
+doorway; removed his wonderful headgear with an eighteenth-century
+gesture; ducked his head in a twentieth-century bow; and smiled.
+Claire stepped quickly out on the veranda.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Smythe!" she cried gaily. "I'm so glad to see you. Come in!"
+
+He was an undersized young man, immaculately dressed in brown tweeds
+and shining boots, a very high white collar and a sky-blue tie. The
+sombrero swinging in his hand was quite new, ornamented with a broad
+band of stamped leather, and it had the widest brim obtainable at the
+shop in Denver where a specialty is made of equipping the tenderfoot
+for life in the cattle country.
+
+Smythe took Claire's proffered hand, and bent over it as if he had
+thought of kissing it, but lacked the courage of his gallantry. Claire
+introduced him to Marion, answered his questions about Seth, and then
+fluttered away to the kitchen, where she had an angel cake in the oven
+not to be entrusted to the cook.
+
+"I arrived only yesterday, Miss Gaylord," Smythe chirped. "But I've
+heard of you already."
+
+"I don't know whether to thank you or not," answered Marion.
+
+"Oh, if you please! What I heard made me very solicitous about
+Huntington's health."
+
+He smiled knowingly at her, and Marion loosed some of her pent-up
+laughter. Truly, Smythe was going to be a treat! She studied him
+stealthily while he chattered on. He wore a pointed beard of reddish
+hue; his head was quite bald on top, and bulging at the brow; and the
+contour of that head, with its polished dome, and the narrow face
+tapering down to the pointed beard, was comically suggestive of a
+carrot. But it was an intelligent, even intellectual countenance, and
+his blue eyes were honest and bright. He might be laughed at, but he
+could not be flouted, she thought.
+
+"Then you've been here before, Mr. ----" she began, and hesitated.
+
+"Smythe," he prompted her generously. "J. Hamerton Smythe. S-m-y-t-h-e.
+I didn't change it from Smith, and I don't know what one of my
+esteemed ancestors did. But I'm glad he did. It gives me a touch of
+artificiality, don't you think? I fear being too natural."
+
+Marion laughed, and that pleased him. She led the way to chairs near
+an open window where a black and yellow butterfly hovered over a
+honeysuckle blossom that had nodded its friendly way into the room.
+
+"I'm from New York too," Smythe rattled on. "Columbia. Doing a little
+tutoring and a little postgraduate work. This is my third summer in
+the Park. Found it by chance. Wanted to go somewhere, and was tired of
+the old places--Maine and Adirondacks and the rest. Looked at a map in
+a railroad office, and there it was, sticking right out at me, the
+first name I lighted on. In small type too--curious, wasn't it? Clerks
+in office hadn't heard of it, but I started out to find it. Thought
+I'd better get to Paradise when I could. And now I'm glad. I feel like
+an old settler, and I believe the cow-punchers have ceased to regard
+me as a tenderfoot. That's as flattering as a Ph.D."
+
+"I'm afraid they laugh at me," said Marion.
+
+"On the contrary. Believe me, these cowboys have taken to reading
+poetry since you came."
+
+"Please be natural, Mr. Smythe!"
+
+"Fact! I'd hardly got my things unpacked before one of them was
+riding over to ask me if I had a book about Lady Clara Vere de Vere.
+It seems he'd heard the poem recited somewhere. I asked him why he
+wanted it, but he looked so flustered that I let him off. Didn't have
+a Tennyson with me, unfortunately, but I gave him my Byron, and I
+think that will hold him for a while."
+
+"Charming!" exclaimed Marion. "But what has all that to do with me?"
+
+"He's the chap that grabbed you in his arms when you were falling from
+your horse after that little business at Thompson's the other day."
+
+Marion blushed, and then laughed.
+
+"But how did you come to hear about that?" she demanded.
+
+He chuckled.
+
+"Oh, I hear everything!" he replied. "My friends say I've a nose for
+news."
+
+"Well, I shall be very careful what I say to you."
+
+"Please, no!" he protested. "I'm a safety vault when it comes to
+secrets."
+
+She glanced quickly toward the door of Seth's bedroom, then toward the
+kitchen, before she spoke.
+
+"So you've heard all about that day at the post-office?" she said in a
+low voice.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Terrible!"
+
+"But not unexpected."
+
+"Why not unexpected?"
+
+"Well," he replied, lowering his voice, and leaning nearer to Marion,
+"I'm afraid Huntington was looking for it."
+
+"You mean--he deserved it?"
+
+"I won't say that. You see--I'm neutral, like Thompson. I like
+Huntington, and I like Haig. I look at this fight without prejudice,
+even though I've a reason to be prejudiced."
+
+"In favor of--?"
+
+"Huntington."
+
+"Why, please?"
+
+"Huntington accepts my friendship, after a fashion."
+
+"But--the other?"
+
+"Nothing doing!"
+
+Marion stared at him, wondering.
+
+"Fact!" he assured her, with a sheepish smile.
+
+"But why?"
+
+"Don't know. I'd like to, but he lives like a hermit. Latchstring
+never hangs outside his door."
+
+There was a certain evidence of feeling in Smythe's speech.
+
+"You speak as if you--"
+
+"As if I knew!" He took the words out of her mouth. "I do."
+
+"How do you know?"
+
+"I tried it."
+
+"And then?"
+
+"Kicked out!" he replied with a grimace.
+
+Marion laughed in spite of her burning eagerness to hear more.
+
+"Not exactly kicked," Smythe explained. "But I'd rather have been. He
+was as polite as--he's a gentleman, you see, so he knew how to do it
+without using his hands or his feet."
+
+"But why?" insisted Marion.
+
+"Why did I try? Curiosity. Simple, elemental, irresponsible
+curiosity."
+
+She laughed again at his frank confession.
+
+"No, I mean why did he kick you out, as you call it?"
+
+"That's what I want to know. And I will know, too. I tell you, Miss
+Gaylord, I admire the man immensely. His secretiveness only makes me
+like him the more, probably because I myself am so garrulous. Most
+persons, though, cannot tolerate a man who minds his own business.
+Those who have no reason to hate Haig dislike him because he does not
+ask them to like him. His affairs are his own. Did you notice that
+scar?"
+
+"Yes," answered Marion, scarcely above a whisper.
+
+"Well, you can build any sort of romance you like around that. He has
+had his romance or tragedy or something, you may be sure. But he's no
+ordinary man, whatever he may be doing in Paradise Park. I have heard
+that he's surrounded with books and pictures in his cottage. He's got
+a Chinaman for a valet, and an Indian for his man Friday, and their
+mouths are as tight as his. What's more, he must be all right in the
+main things, for his foreman and cowboys stick to him through thick
+and thin, and say nothing. I tell you, Miss Gaylord, I'd like to be a
+friend of his, if only he gave a--"
+
+"A damn, I believe they say," she prompted demurely.
+
+"By Jove!" he said with enthusiasm. "You are a--"
+
+She held up a warning finger.
+
+"We're going to be friends, you know," she said. "And friends
+understand each other--without words."
+
+"Done!" he agreed, reaching for her hand, and shaking it.
+
+"But this mystery," she said. "Doesn't anybody know--"
+
+"You know as much as all of us. Of course," he added banteringly,
+"there's no denying a woman, when she starts. He might tell you!"
+
+The speech startled her, and she blushed.
+
+"Now, that's sheer impudence!" she retorted.
+
+But he continued to look at her with a curious expression. How much
+had he guessed? In her confusion an impulse seized her. She leaned
+suddenly toward him, with flushed face and sparkling eyes.
+
+"You dare me?" she demanded, her voice quivering.
+
+"I dare you!" he answered gleefully.
+
+"Well then, he shall tell me!"
+
+"Good!" he exclaimed. "And I'll be around to take the kicks if he--"
+
+"Oh, Cousin Seth!" cried Marion, leaping to her feet.
+
+The bedroom door had opened, and Huntington came out, dressed in his
+familiar corduroy suit, but with his left arm still bandaged to his
+side, Smythe hastened forward to greet him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE STORY OF THE SCAR
+
+
+She was awakened by the shrill chatter of the magpies in the tall pine
+near her window. Often she had resented their quarrelsome dialogue at
+dawn, but now she slipped eagerly out of bed, and hurried to the
+window. There had been rain in the night, but when she had pulled
+apart the chintz curtains and opened the wooden shutters the air was
+sweet and clean in her face, and the thin light showed the world
+rising joyously to the day.
+
+She dressed hastily in her oldest clothes, stole on tiptoe to the
+kitchen for a biscuit and a glass of milk, found fishing tackle on the
+veranda, and was soon running breathlessly past the corrals toward the
+banks of the Brightwater. And all this was a deliberate deception. She
+purposed to fish, of course--a little, to justify the clandestine
+expedition; but what she really sought was solitude.
+
+It was half in jest that she had said to Smythe, "He shall tell me!"
+But in the night, by some strange alchemy, that jest had been
+transmuted into a purpose of which she was still doubtful, if not
+afraid. And yet to go forward seemed less difficult than to go back.
+For she had let the days of Seth's recovery and convalescence slip by
+without telling Claire of her experience in the Forbidden Pasture and
+on the road to Paradise. The duel at the post-office, she argued,
+surely had made it unnecessary to warn Huntington of Haig's anger. And
+yet, as their guest, as Claire's cousin--But had they been quite fair
+to her? They had not warned her of the hostility across the Ridge;
+they had let her go blundering into the Forbidden Pasture; not that it
+mattered so much, though it might have been worse--
+
+Her thoughts were becoming very much confused. She had permitted a man
+to treat her most offensively, and she had seen him shoot down another
+without compunction; and that other was her cousin, in whose house she
+was a guest. And yet she felt no resentment, no detestation, no
+censure, no rebuke. Instead, here she was running away to think out a
+plan whereby she might hear the whole story of the feud, and more,
+from Haig himself.
+
+The morning advanced in rose and pearl nuances. A hundred tantalizing
+perfumes filled the air; field-spiders' webs sparkled in the dew like
+silver gossamer; meadow larks rose at her feet, and wove delicate
+patterns in the air with threads of melody. Who could think amid such
+diverting beauty? She lifted her head, and went singing through the
+meadows, knee-deep in the wet and clinging grass, and laughing when
+the parted branches of the willows splashed her face and drenched her.
+And then, at the first cast she made into a still, deep pool, where
+the night loitered under the very eye of day, an imprudent trout took
+the gray hackle fly, and made off with it. The splash, and the "zip"
+of the tightening line through the water; and then the fight, and the
+capture--Well, if they were going to rise like that--
+
+The sun was high before she became aware that she was very hot and
+tired and hungry. Her shoes were soaking wet, her skirts and stockings
+splashed with mud; one shoulder was being sunburned where a twig had
+caught and ripped her white flannel waist; and Seth's red silk
+handkerchief around her neck was scarcely a deeper crimson than her
+face.
+
+"But I can't catch them all in one day!" she exclaimed reluctantly,
+leaning wearily against a tree.
+
+At that instant, under her very eyes, a trout leaped in the nearby
+pool.
+
+"Impudence!" she cried. "I'll just get you, and then quit."
+
+But it was one pool too many; for at the second cast her hook caught
+in the rough bark of a log that projected far out into the stream.
+
+"Oh! Now I've done it!" she groaned.
+
+Several smart tugs at the line, with a whipping of the rod to right
+and left of the log, convinced her that the hook was too deeply
+embedded to be released by any such operation. Sinking down on a heap
+of driftwood on the bank, she gloomily contemplated the consequences
+of her greed. There were two ways to go about it now,--to break the
+line and leave the hook to its fate, or to crawl out on the log and
+rescue it. The first was unsportsmanlike, the second was very likely
+to be dangerous.
+
+"Um-m-m!" she muttered, with a grimace. "It's not easy."
+
+The log ran out, at a slight inclination upward, from the center of
+the heap of driftwood, and its free end, where the hackle fly reposed
+at a distance of fully twenty feet from the bank, was suspended barely
+two feet above the middle of the pool. She leaned forward, and gazed
+into its dark depths, which appeared to be scarcely stirred by the
+current, though five yards away the stream was making a merry racket
+over the shallows.
+
+She stood up, and looked around her. Through the screen of willows and
+cottonwoods on each sloping bank she saw the meadows lying green and
+silent in the sun. There was no sound except the prattle of the
+Brightwater and the murmur of the breeze in the foliage. She assured
+herself that she was quite alone.
+
+Next she folded and pinned up her skirt so that it hung just to her
+knees, and after a final glance in all directions, stepped cautiously
+out to the edge of the driftwood, knelt down on the fallen trunk, and
+began to creep warily out toward the embedded hook. The log was round,
+and none too large; her knees, protected only by thin stockings, were
+bruised by the rough and partly-loosened bark; and she scarcely dared
+to breathe lest she should lose her balance, and tumble into the
+yawning pool. Once she incautiously looked down, and saw her image
+waving dizzily on the slow-moving surface of the water.
+
+"Oh!" she gasped, as she drew back her gaze, and dug her nails into
+the log.
+
+But for all her fears, and because of them, it was tremendously
+exciting, and she became deeply absorbed in her task. Now clinging
+close to the log in sudden panic, now laughing tremulously at her
+trepidation, she forgot everything except her goal, and the inches by
+which she was approaching it. She had arrived within two feet of the
+hook, and was just about to reach a trembling hand to detach it, when
+she received a shock that was near to ending her expedition in an
+ignominious splash.
+
+"Wait!" called out a voice, somewhere behind her. "I'll help you!"
+
+The fright first nearly caused her to lose her grip on the log, and
+then left her cold and shivering. After that a wave of heat swept over
+her, and the blood tingled in her flushed and perspiring face.
+
+Who was it? Philip Haig, by all the ill luck in the world? Who else
+could have had the effrontery? She dared not turn to look, both in
+fear of falling, and in shame at being caught in that absurd
+predicament. What a sight! she thought. Her skirt was above her knees,
+and one stocking, caught by a projection of bark, had slipped down to
+her ankle. And that was not all!... With a desperate effort, she
+lifted one hand from its hold on the log, and tried to adjust her
+skirt; but the movement only unbalanced her. With a shriek she
+flattened herself, and lay there panting and miserable.
+
+"Wait!" the voice cried, more sharply than before. "No move--for
+minute!"
+
+She was arrested by the words. "No move for minute!" It was not the
+voice of Philip Haig, but in that assurance there was only a doubtful
+consolation. If not Haig--who? There was something oddly foreign in
+that heavy, harsh, and yet not displeasing voice. A new fear presently
+mingled with the others. It was a wild country after all; and she had
+taken no note of the distance she had come, and little of her
+surroundings. But she could only obey, and wait.
+
+There came the sound of quick splashing in the water, and a few
+seconds later a man's head and shoulders appeared in the stream at
+her side. At sight of the strange, dark countenance suddenly upturned
+to her, within a foot of her own, she almost fainted. It was a face
+she had never seen before, solemn, stolid, with a copper-colored skin,
+high cheek bones, and deep-set, black eyes in which there was no more
+expression than there was on the thin, straight lips. She closed her
+eyes.
+
+But that was only for an instant, since nothing terrible was
+happening. When she dared to look again the man was quietly releasing
+the offending fly. He tossed it back in the direction of the bank,
+then stood for a moment regarding her, still without the trace of an
+expression on his dark face.
+
+"Don't be 'fraid!" he said. "Hold still!"
+
+She obeyed him, though his next move was one to have brought a scream
+to her lips if she had not become incapable of utterance. Standing in
+the water, which came almost up to his armpits, he had kept his arms
+high above the surface of the pool. Now he stretched them out toward
+her, clasped both her ankles with one huge hand, slipped the other
+under her waist, and with what seemed incredible strength and
+assurance, lifted her off the log. Then, without so much as wetting
+the edge of her skirt, he bore her to the bank, and seated her gently
+on the heap of driftwood from which she had ventured so bravely only a
+little while before.
+
+Should she weep, or laugh, or rage at him? Through eyes half-blinded
+by tears, she searched his face; but he met her troubled and fiery
+gaze with the most perfect calm. Then, after a moment, he deliberately
+turned, and stood facing squarely away from her,--an act of stoicism
+that at once removed her fears and completed her discomfiture. She
+took the hint implied in his movement, and bent down, blushing
+furiously, to pull up the fallen stocking, and let down her skirt.
+
+When she sat erect again the man had not changed his position; and she
+seized the opportunity to study him. His figure, though she had just
+had proof of his strength, was lean almost to thinness, very straight,
+and borne, she fancied, with a certain dignity and even majesty in its
+erectness. The straight, black hair under the sombrero was touched
+with gray. He was not young, past middle age perhaps; but she could
+hazard no nearer guess at his age. No matter! Looking at him thus, she
+began to feel her resentment falling away, as if every shaft from her
+angry eyes had broken harmlessly on that serene and unoffending back.
+Even her embarrassment began to seem inexcusable. The man had carried
+her ashore in much the manner he would have used if she had been a
+sack of oats to be saved from wetting.
+
+"You are very strong!" Marion said at last.
+
+He turned slowly toward her. His face was grave and expressionless,
+but by no means dull; and his eyes were very black and bright.
+
+"You--are--all--right--now?" he asked, ignoring her praise.
+
+There was a curious slowness and lack of emphasis in his speech, with
+a pause after each word, that gave a singular impressiveness to all he
+said.
+
+"But why did you do it?" she demanded.
+
+"'Fraid you fall," was his simple answer.
+
+"But I don't mind getting wet."
+
+"Easy drown in little water," he said laconically.
+
+She laughed at the idea of her drowning in a pool like that--she who
+had battled triumphantly with the breakers at Atlantic City, Newport,
+and Bar Harbor.
+
+"But I can swim!" she assured him.
+
+"I not know that," he replied, unmoved.
+
+True. And she must have appeared to be greatly in need of assistance.
+
+"Anyhow, I thank you!" she said sincerely. "But who am I thanking,
+please?"
+
+"Pete."
+
+"Pete! Pete who?"
+
+"Only Pete."
+
+"But have you no other name?"
+
+"Yes. Indian name."
+
+And he rolled out a string of guttural syllables that sounded like
+names of places in the Maine woods.
+
+Indian name! Marion started; and in a flash she knew. Haig's man
+Friday! Here was luck indeed.
+
+"You are Mr. Haig's--" She hesitated.
+
+"Friend," he said, completing her sentence.
+
+Marion was again embarrassed. She did not know what to say next,
+fearing to say the wrong thing, and so to throw away a golden
+opportunity. In her search for the right lead, her eyes lighted on a
+fishing basket that lay on the ground not far from her own.
+
+"Oh!" she cried. "But it's strange I didn't hear or see you!"
+
+"Indian not make noise."
+
+"I should say not!" she retorted, laughing.
+
+"Trout very smart," he added quietly.
+
+"I've caught fourteen," she volunteered eagerly. "And you?"
+
+For answer he fetched his creel, and opened it.
+
+"Oh!" she cried, in envy and admiration, seeing that the creel was
+almost full, and that not a fish in sight was as small as her largest
+prize.
+
+"I give you some," he said, glancing at her own basket.
+
+"No! No!" she protested quickly. "I have plenty."
+
+She showed him her catch, which was by no means insignificant.
+Nevertheless Pete took three of his largest trout, and transferred
+them to her basket, ignoring her protests.
+
+"But they are for--him, aren't they?" she asked.
+
+"Biggest you no see. At bottom."
+
+That satisfied her, and she watched him silently while he found her
+rod, and reeled in the offending fly.
+
+"Brown fly better now," he said. "You ought see what trout eating
+before you try catch big ones."
+
+On this he drew a book of flies from his pocket, and replaced the gray
+hackle with a brown one. She questioned him eagerly, following this
+plain lead; and presently they were seated on the pile of driftwood,
+while he told her about the native trout and the rainbow and the
+California, of little brooks far up among the mountains where the
+trout were small but of a delicious flavor, of the time for flies and
+the time for worms, of famous catches he had made, of the way the
+Indians fished before the white man showed them patent rods and reels.
+By slow degrees Pete's iron features softened, and he smiled at her,
+not with his lips, but with his eyes, which were the blackest, surely,
+in the world.
+
+But Marion was not diverted from the questions that were next her
+heart. With all her woman's cunning of indirection, she brought the
+talk around to Philip Haig. Did he fish? Sometimes. Did he hunt? Much,
+when the deer came down from the heights with the first snows.
+Then--she could resist no longer.
+
+"It must have been terrible--the accident," she said, placing a finger
+on her cheek.
+
+He looked at her strangely, while she held her breath.
+
+"That no accident," he said at last, after what seemed to her an
+interminable interval of suspense.
+
+"No accident?" she repeated, trying not to appear too eager.
+
+"He call it accident, maybe. He say it is nothing. Pete say it is
+much. It is big debt. Some day Pete pay."
+
+There was deep silence for a moment. The stream gurgled and splashed;
+the breeze whispered through the cottonwoods; and over all, or under
+all, was the vague, insistent, seductive sound that the summer makes
+in the fulness of its power.
+
+Marion hesitated, quivering with eagerness and uncertainty. She was
+afraid to ask more, lest she should be shortly rebuffed, and lose her
+opportunity. But Pete was looking at her steadily. She felt a flush
+coming into her face again. Had he guessed--something--already in her
+manner, in her impulsive questions? More likely it was the charm that,
+for once unconsciously, she wielded--the elusive charm of woman that
+makes men want to tell, without the asking.
+
+"You like to hear?" Pete said; and her heart leaped.
+
+"Oh, please!"
+
+And she was keenly disappointed. She had expected something romantic,
+something ennobling and fine. And it was only a barroom brawl, though
+Philip was not in it until the end, to be sure! Five Mexican sheep
+herders against the lone Indian. Guns and knives in the reeking border
+saloon; and afterwards in the street; and the Indian almost done for,
+bleeding from a dozen wounds; and then a voice ringing out above the
+fracas: "No, I'm damned if you do! Five to one, and greasers at that!"
+And Philip Haig had jumped from his horse, and plunged into the melee,
+disdaining to draw his gun on greasers. Smash! Bang! went his fists,
+front and right and left.
+
+Pete had accounted for one Mexican, who would herd sheep no more on
+the plains of Conejos. The others fled. Then Haig, despite the
+knife-wound in his face, grabbed the Indian, and somehow lifted him up
+behind him on his horse.
+
+"Quick, Indian!" he cried. "This town's full of greasers. You've got
+no chance here."
+
+And then the long ride to Del Norte, with the Indian drooping on
+Haig's back; and a doctor of Haig's acquaintance, who sheltered and
+cured the silent savage. And Pete, convalescent, had come straight to
+Haig's ranch, and remained there, despite Haig's protests that he did
+not need another hand.
+
+"Pete stay until big debt is paid," said the Indian solemnly. And
+then, with a straight look into Marion's eyes, "You ought tell
+Huntington he is damn fool."
+
+Marion started. There it was again--the warning!
+
+"But why?" she managed to ask.
+
+"Haig is brave man. Brave man always good man. So--Huntington got no
+chance."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE WAY OF A MAID WITH A MAN
+
+
+She rode casually down the Brightwater, and casually up the
+Brightwater; she loitered at crossroads, and tarried at Thompson's
+store; and not one glimpse did she catch of Philip Haig. Then one
+morning she rose at dawn, as she had risen on the day of her fishing
+exploit, with a purpose. But this time she dressed with exceeding
+care, in a riding suit she had not yet worn in the Park. It was soft
+dove-gray in color, with a long coat that showed the fine lines of her
+figure and, when she rode, revealed snug-fitting breeches above the
+tops of the polished boots,--a very different costume from the black
+divided skirts and the short jacket in which she had galloped about
+the Park.
+
+Thus arrayed and resolute, she rode straight down the valley to the
+branch road that had once tempted her to adventure; straight up the
+hill; and straight through the woods until she halted once more in the
+shade of the outpost pine that stood beyond its clustered fellows like
+a sentinel above the valley. Her valley! She waited a moment,
+wondering if it welcomed her. There was the stream, still flashing in
+the sun, the meadows as brightly green as then, the grass of the
+pasture running in bronze waves before the breeze. From the heart of a
+wild rose a gorgeous red and brown butterfly flew out and fluttered
+over her head. Not a dozen yards below her a meadow lark, unseen,
+burst into sudden, thrilling song; and somewhere down the hill another
+took up the strain, then another and another, until the air was
+charged and quivering with melody, piercing sweet. She listened, her
+heart throbbing to the music, until the chorus died away in dripping
+cadences, and only a drowsy murmur came from the ripening fields to
+mingle with the low droning of the pine organ on the hill. Yes! Her
+valley welcomed her.
+
+She rode on down the hill, with only a quick and embarrassed glance
+into the Forbidden Pasture; and suddenly raised herself excitedly in
+the stirrups. There again was the spiral of blue smoke; then a chimney
+and a red roof; and finally the house itself, and barn and corrals,
+all tucked away against the foot of the hill. Dismounting, she led
+Tuesday back a few yards, and left him to feed along the roadside.
+Then she returned, and seated herself on a rock, half-hidden by a
+blackberry bush, to study the group of houses lying low and silent in
+the sun.
+
+There were more buildings than at Huntington's, but she saw no beds of
+flowers, no wide veranda screened with potted plants; a certain
+bareness and air of inhospitality, she thought. No tea and angel cake
+for visitors! Behind the ranch house were two cottages of unpainted
+pine, scorched to a yellow-brown by many a summer sun. One of them,
+doubtless, was the hermit's lodge. The barn, larger than Seth's, had a
+red roof, newly painted. And in one of the corrals--yes--the flash of
+a golden hide.
+
+"Sunnysides!" murmured Marion.
+
+Then her heart stood still. She had descried the figure of a man
+seated with his back against the bars of this corral. But it was not
+Philip Haig; Sunnysides' guard, no doubt, for he never left his post
+until relieved by another an hour or so later, when the dinner bell
+had been rung at the door of the ranch house.
+
+She had scarcely time to feel her disappointment before a man emerged
+from the stable leading a saddle horse. Another immediately followed,
+and this time there was no mistake. The second man was Philip Haig. He
+mounted quickly, and started off; then stopped to address a word or
+two, apparently, to the man at the stable door; and finally galloped
+past the ranch house and the cottages, and up the slope behind them
+toward the pines, across the valley from where she sat.
+
+"Oh!" cried Marion, in a tone of vexation and reproach.
+
+She watched him until he had disappeared among the trees; and tears
+started in her eyes. Would he always be riding away from her, behind
+the hills, the woods, a turn of the road? She sat a while in deep
+dejection; but not for long. Her spirit was too resilient for futile
+moping, and her purpose too firmly held to be abandoned on one
+reverse. She reflected that if he had gone he must as certainly
+return; and so, with a toss of her head, she presently arose, and
+fetched her raincoat and her luncheon from the saddle. The coat she
+spread out on the ground, seated herself on it with her back against
+the rock, and settled down to eat, and watch, and wait.
+
+Morning mounted hot and humming into noon, and noon dropped languidly
+into afternoon. The blazing sun centered his rays upon her; insects
+found and pestered her; discomfort cramped her limbs, and weariness
+weighted down her eyelids. Twice she dozed, and wakened with a start
+of fear lest she had slept her chance away. But each time she was
+reassured by a hurried survey of the group of buildings, where no one
+stirred, and there was no sign of Philip Haig. So the hours dragged
+their slow length along.
+
+It was late in the afternoon before her vigil was rewarded. Not from
+just the direction in which he had galloped away, but from farther up
+the valley, Haig reappeared. He rode as rapidly as before, straight to
+the door of the stable, reined up a moment there, and was off
+again,--this time down the valley on a white road that was visible to
+Marion until it curved behind the distant point of the ridge on which
+she sat.
+
+"Now where's he going?" she murmured, wrinkling her forehead as she
+saw him once more vanish from her sight.
+
+She did not know that road, but guessed that it joined the main
+highway somewhere far down the Brightwater. No matter! Here was her
+opportunity; for she saw, with quick appreciation, that she would now
+be able to place herself between him and the ranch buildings without
+showing herself to the men at the corrals. And then? She could not
+"hold him up" like a highwayman; and if she did not stop him he would
+raise his hat (perhaps), and ride past her without a word. And how was
+she to stop him? She had come there with a very definite purpose, but
+with no clear plan, trusting to the inspiration of the moment. And now
+the moment had arrived; but where was the inspiration? She had risen
+impulsively to her feet, and stood staring between narrowed eyelids,
+and beneath a puckered brow, at the white road, now quite empty again.
+Then suddenly--
+
+"Ah!" she gasped.
+
+And thereupon she blushed, and looked furtively around her, as if she
+had been caught in some doubtful, if not discreditable, act. But there
+was no time for moral subtleties. She staggered--for her legs were
+stiff from inaction--to her pony, replaced her raincoat behind the
+saddle, mounted in hot haste, and rode down the steep hill toward the
+houses. At a little distance from them the road she traveled joined
+the other. There she turned abruptly, and followed the unfamiliar road
+until she was safely out of sight of any chance observer at the barn,
+and yet not so far from the trail she had just left but that she could
+return to it if, by any chance, he should come back that way.
+
+Dismounting quickly at the chosen spot, she turned Tuesday until he
+stood squarely across the road. Then her nimble fingers flew at the
+cinches of the saddle.
+
+"There now!" she exclaimed, hot with excitement and exertion.
+
+She stepped back to view her handiwork, and laughed nervously. Next
+she drew a tiny mirror and a bit of chamois skin from her bosom, and
+swiftly removed some of the dust and moisture from her flushed face.
+Then her hair, always somewhat unruly, required a touch or two. That
+done, she smoothed down the gray coat over her slender hips, adjusted
+the gray silk tie at her throat, and waited.
+
+He came, in his habitual cloud of dust; pulled up his pony within ten
+feet of the obstruction; saw the saddle hanging at a dangerous angle
+over Tuesday's side; and accepted the obvious conclusion that Miss
+Marion Gaylord, looking very warm and embarrassed, but certainly very
+pretty in her confusion, had narrowly escaped a fall.
+
+"I think I'd better help you with that, Miss Gaylord," he said.
+
+"Thank you!" she said, with an appealing reluctance. "I can do it--I
+often saddle my own horse, and--"
+
+"I should judge that you had saddled him this time," he interrupted
+her to say, without the slightest trace of irony in his tone.
+
+She bit her lip, as she silently made way for him, and stood at
+Tuesday's head, stroking his neck with one small, gloved hand while
+Haig adjusted the blanket, fitted the saddle firmly, and tightened the
+double cinch. He was dressed in the nondescript costume he had worn at
+their first meeting. That same hat, uniquely insolent, soiled and limp
+and disreputable, was stuck on the back of his head, revealing a full,
+clean-moulded brow, over which, at one side, his thick black hair fell
+carelessly. His eyes were calm gray rather than stormy black to-day,
+but a gray that was singularly dark and deep and luminous. His manner
+was in the strangest contrast with the two different moods in which
+she had already seen him--as if the fires were out, as if all emotion
+and interest had been dissolved in listlessness. And she divined at
+once that her chance of success was small.
+
+"That will hold, I think," he said gravely; and started toward his
+horse.
+
+"It wasn't Tuesday's fault," she said eagerly.
+
+Haig paused, on one foot as it were, and looked over his shoulder.
+
+"It was fortunate for you that he's been well gentled," he said. "You
+should look to your cinches rather often when you ride these hills."
+
+("You should keep your feet dry, and come in when it rains," he might
+as well have said, she thought angrily.)
+
+"Yes, it was careless of me," she answered, trying to say it brightly,
+but really wanting to shriek.
+
+"It happens to everybody once in a while," he said.
+
+On that, he stepped to his pony, put a foot in the stirrup, and one
+hand on the saddle horn, and paused.
+
+She could easily have flopped down in the road, and wept. Once he had
+raged at her, once he had thrilled her with a look, and now he was
+simply dismissing her,--leaving her, as her father would have put it,
+"to stew in her own juice." She saw all her elaborate strategy, her
+long vigil on the hill, her struggle with the saddle, her appealing'
+glances--all, all about to go for nothing.
+
+"He might at least help me on my horse!" she thought, in bitter
+resentment.
+
+Perhaps tears blinded her. At any rate--and this was without pretence,
+and no part of her scheme--she did not see clearly what she was doing.
+It was nothing new to mount her pony from the level; she had done it a
+hundred times without mishap. But now, in her agitation, she stood
+somewhat too far away from Tuesday's shoulder; and the pony, as ponies
+will sometimes do, started forward the instant he felt the weight in
+the stirrup.
+
+"Look out!" cried Haig.
+
+It was too late. She missed the saddle; her right foot struck
+Tuesday's back, and slipped off; and she fell sprawling on the ground,
+with her left foot fast in the stirrup.
+
+"Whoa, Tuesday!" she cried shrilly as she fell.
+
+Luckily the horse did not take alarm and run, as a less reliable
+animal might have done, dragging the girl under his heels. He stopped
+in his tracks, and stood obediently, even turning his head as if to
+see what damage had been done. It was enough. Marion was uninjured,
+but badly frightened; and her humiliation was complete. She lay on her
+back, struggling vainly to extricate her foot from the stirrup. Her
+coat skirts had fallen back, and--Thank Heaven for the riding
+breeches, and not what she had worn under divided skirts!
+
+"Lie still!" yelled Haig, remembering what he had seen happen to men
+in such circumstances.
+
+In three leaps he was at her side. With a swift movement (and none too
+gentle), he wrenched her foot loose from the stirrup, and helped her
+to sit up, dazed and trembling and very white.
+
+"Your ankle--is it hurt?" he asked sharply.
+
+"I don't know," she said.
+
+And then the expected "inspiration of the moment" came.
+
+"A little," she added.
+
+And so it was done. Her foot had indeed been twisted slightly; she had
+truly, _truly_ felt a twinge of pain. At another time she would have
+thought no more about it, but now--The color rushed back into her
+cheeks; she fetched a smile that was half a grimace; and the game was
+on again.
+
+Haig reached a hand to her. She took it, and let him draw her to her
+feet.
+
+"Try the ankle--just a step!" he commanded.
+
+She rested her weight on her left foot.
+
+"Oh!" she cried out, and looked helplessly at Haig.
+
+A shadow, unmistakably of annoyance, passed over his face.
+
+"You're not going to faint, are you?" he asked, looking keenly at
+her.
+
+Her color always came and went easily, and now, a little frightened by
+her bold deception, she was pale again.
+
+"No--I think not," she said. ("At any rate not here," she might have
+added.)
+
+"Can you ride to the corrals?" was his next question.
+
+The look of annoyance was now fixed on his face, but it did not
+discourage her.
+
+"Yes, if--"
+
+She looked doubtfully at Tuesday. Thereupon, without a word, Haig led
+the horse close to her, but placed so that she was at Tuesday's right
+side instead of the left. Then, while she supported herself with one
+hand on his shoulder, he raised her right foot, and thrust it into the
+stirrup; and, with a hand under each of her arms, lifted her until she
+was able to throw the left foot over, and her body into the saddle.
+Once more Marion bit her lip. His action was as devoid of personal
+interest as Pete's had been when he carried her out of the pool; and
+she had not come to Philip Haig to be treated like a sack of oats!
+
+Haig mounted his pony, and rode up close beside her; and thus, in
+unbroken silence, they arrived at the door of the stable. There Haig
+dismounted quickly, stepped briskly around her horse, and almost
+before she was aware of his intention, lifted her out of the saddle,
+and set her on her feet--all very carefully and gently, but also very
+scrupulously, without an unnecessary pressure, without even a glance
+into her waiting eyes. What was the man made of? Why would he not look
+at her? Why did he not rage at her--if he could do nothing better?
+Well, the cat had at least seven lives left!
+
+She almost forgot to limp, but bethought herself in time, and gasped
+as he led her to an empty soap box at the side of the stable door.
+Having seated her there, he called out to the man on guard at
+Sunnysides' corral: "Where's Curly?"
+
+"Down by the crick," was the answer.
+
+"Bring him here! I'll watch the horse."
+
+Thereupon he took the man's place, and stood with his arms crossed on
+the top rail of the fence, his eyes fixed on the golden horse. And
+Marion felt a real pain at last,--a pang of jealousy. So he preferred
+to look at the horse, did he? If he had chanced at that instant to
+glance at her he would have seen a pair of blue eyes blazing with
+wrath.
+
+The two men came hurrying from the creek.
+
+"Here, Curly!" said Haig, resigning his post. "Miss Gaylord has hurt
+her ankle. I found her unseated down the road yonder." He paused, as
+if to let that be thoroughly understood. "I want you to hitch up the
+sorrels and drive her home."
+
+"Right!" responded Curly, going into the stable.
+
+Marion then did almost faint. She had not foreseen that manoeuver.
+
+"I'd rather not, please," she said, as sweetly as she could in her
+dismay.
+
+"Rather not what?" asked Haig, turning at last to her.
+
+"I'd rather rest a while--somewhere--" Her glance went past him in the
+direction of the cottage. "Then I can ride home--alone."
+
+"And tumble off in the road somewhere!" he retorted, with a touch of
+derision in his tone.
+
+"Oh, no!" she pleaded. "It's not as bad as that."
+
+"No matter! I can't allow you to take any chances," he insisted
+curtly.
+
+"Really, I need only a little rest," she persisted. "If I could lie
+down a few minutes--" her eyes again were turned toward the cottage.
+
+He saw what she meant, and frowned.
+
+"No!" he snapped. Then, checking himself, "I don't mean to be
+inhospitable, but you ought to know that's impossible."
+
+"You mean--Cousin Seth?"
+
+He shot a look at her that frightened her, but gratified her too. Was
+she rousing him at last?
+
+"Yes, if you like," he said, quietly enough. "I'm having a hard enough
+time with the fool without a woman being mixed up in the affair."
+
+"I don't understand," said Marion.
+
+"You don't understand!" he repeated. "Of course not. Women never
+understand--until afterwards. I'll make it plainer. I'm a bad man, as
+you have doubtless heard. What would Paradise Park say when it learned
+that you had been inveigled into my house?"
+
+She was silent a moment.
+
+"Well then, let me sit here and rest!" she insisted.
+
+"But why?" he demanded impatiently.
+
+She took her courage in both hands, and plunged.
+
+"I want to talk to you," she said eagerly. "I want to ask you if there
+is no way--"
+
+"Excuse me!" he broke in. "I don't want you to talk to me. If I
+did--"
+
+He stopped, with a shrug. Marion felt her face reddening, but she
+dissembled her embarrassment.
+
+"Oh!" she exclaimed. "You're not afraid of me, are you?"
+
+It was spoken archly, in her most playful, most kittenish manner, and
+so she was amazed to see his face distorted as if by some violent
+emotion. But he spoke with restraint, though in a tone that was hard
+and harsh.
+
+"Yes, I am afraid of you. The only thing in the world a man needs to
+fear is a woman."
+
+The first effect of this speech was to surprise and shock her. The
+next was to make her heart leap. Had she come near the secret, after
+all? Then, finally, something deep in the man's eyes roused in her a
+thrill of pity. In another minute she would have melted, in her
+compassion, and begged him humbly to pardon her. But at that instant
+Curly emerged from the barn, leading the sorrels; and the devil that
+lurks behind a woman's tongue spoke for her before she was aware of
+it.
+
+"So you'd rather one of your men took me to Cousin Seth!"
+
+It was scarcely out before she regretted it with all her heart. If
+there was a devil behind her tongue there was another back of the
+somber shadows in Haig's eyes. He flashed one comprehending look at
+her; his whole manner underwent a swift and terrifying change; he was
+again the Philip Haig of that day at the post office.
+
+"Great!" he exclaimed. "That will be the best joke of all. I'll drive
+you home myself, of course."
+
+For a moment Marion sat very still on the soap box, stunned, staring
+open-mouthed at Haig. What had she done? That mad speech! Then she
+leaped to her feet.
+
+"No! No!" she cried. "You shall not!"
+
+He smiled at her.
+
+"Shall not?" he repeated sardonically.
+
+"I mean--please not that!" she faltered.
+
+"Why not?" he demanded, almost gaily.
+
+"Oh, please! I didn't mean it that way."
+
+"Of course you didn't mean it! Women never do mean it--that way. And I
+suppose you didn't mean to let those men ride on to Paradise when they
+told you the horse was mine, did you?"
+
+"Oh!" cried Marion, almost in a scream. "How did you--know?"
+
+He laughed.
+
+"I happened to ask Larkin if he had met nobody on the road who could
+have directed him. He said there was no one but a 'purty girl.' That
+was you, wasn't it?"
+
+She was speechless.
+
+"And my warning to Huntington. Did you deliver that?"
+
+"No," she answered, scarcely above a whisper.
+
+"Of course not. That would have been too simple and honest and direct.
+You can't be honest and straightforward to save your lives. You live
+by deception, and boast about your love of truth. Your deepest craving
+is for violence, while you prate about your gentle influence over men.
+I haven't the least doubt in the world that Mrs. Huntington, for all
+her baby face, is back of all Huntington's violence--thinks she's a
+wonderful inspiration to him, with a special genius for the cattle
+business! And when she gets him killed--with your assistance--she'll
+flop down, and weep--and you too, both of you--and wail that you
+didn't mean it!"
+
+She recoiled from him, and leaned helplessly against the wall of the
+stable.
+
+"So you let the men ride on to Paradise," he went on with relentless
+mockery, "and you let Huntington plunge into that business when you
+knew, from me, exactly what it meant. And you rode over here to-day--I
+wonder, now, if your foot's really hurt, or if that also is some
+trick!"
+
+It was the merest chance shot. He had no suspicion that she had been
+shamming, for he had been too much annoyed by the whole incident to be
+critical of her demeanor. But the shot went home. The girl, without a
+word or cry, suddenly sank down on the box, with her face buried in
+her hands.
+
+There ensued a moment of tense silence. For all the bitterness that
+surged under his railing speech, Haig was not untouched by the sight
+of the girl, bent and cowering before him. But at the same time he was
+exasperated anew by the scene that was being enacted under the eyes of
+his two men.
+
+"Come!" he said presently, not without reluctant gentleness. "It's
+growing late. We must start at once."
+
+The words increased her terror. Through the hands that covered her
+eyes she could see Haig and Huntington--with revolvers drawn; and
+Claire's white face--She rose impulsively, dropping her hands from her
+hot and tear-stained cheeks. She would confess all to him, though it
+should betray the inmost secret of her heart; and would beseech him
+not to go--
+
+"Don't say it--here!" he commanded sharply, lowering his voice as he
+bent toward her. "They think there's something queer about all this.
+Come!"
+
+She obeyed him silently, her resolution vanishing before his
+authority. Besides, there was yet time, somewhere on the road.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE END OF HER STRATAGEM
+
+
+For some minutes there was no speech, no sound except the swift beat
+of the horses' hoofs on the hard roadway, and the crisp crunching of
+wheels in the sand. Marion sat rigid, staring straight in front of
+her, yet seeing nothing. Dazed and benumbed, her thoughts were in a
+hopeless tangle, without beginnings, without ends. How she had bungled
+the whole thing! And she might have been so happy, there at his side.
+
+Twilight was coming on in the serene, clear beauty of the mountains:
+the distant peaks glowed like great opals in the sundown hues; there
+was an indescribable sweetness in the air, something magical in the
+soft but cold night breeze that began to pour down upon the valley
+from the eternal snows.
+
+Timidly, out of the corner of her eye, Marion glanced at Haig, and saw
+that he was gazing steadily at the changing colors on the distant
+range. But there was no beauty for her in that perfect panorama. The
+fire had gone out of her, and she was shivering. He must have felt her
+movement, for suddenly he leaned forward, lifted the edge of the heavy
+lap-robe that had lain neglected at their feet, and tucked it around
+her. She drew back with a quick intake of breath as his face was for
+an instant close to her own. A moment later he began to speak in a
+tone that surprised and encouraged her, so little did it resemble the
+tones he had employed before. It was as if nothing had happened, as if
+they had long been talking of things casual, impersonal to them both.
+
+"It's different in the San Luis," he said. "There's red down there.
+Nature's palette is a little short of red in this valley. Too much
+blue. Even nature sometimes gets a one-color obsession, like the
+painters. Here she's gone off on blue. It's the most dangerous color.
+Darwin says it was the last color produced in nature's laboratory.
+Ordinarily it's the least common in flowers and birds and insects.
+Hearn--Have you read Lafcadio Hearn? No? But you ought to, that is, if
+you care for such things. He goes after blue--the misuse of it. He
+says it's the color most pleasureable to the eye in its purest
+intensity. But you mustn't dab it on. A blue house is a crime. Blue's
+overdone here too, blue sky, blue mists, blue shadows, blue lakes,
+blue flowers,--anemones, harebells, columbines and the rest. It's a
+relief to get into the reds of the San Luis--"
+
+"Where Sunnysides came from!" interrupted Marion, eager despite her
+misery.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Tell me about him, please!"
+
+She wanted him to continue in that strain, and even Sunnysides was a
+less dangerous subject than--another.
+
+"Well, about Sangre de Cristo first. That's a great range that stands
+up high and white along the east. Sangre de Cristo is Spanish for
+Blood of Christ. I can see those pious old rascal adventurers
+uncovering their blessed heads when they first glimpsed it. At sunset
+it takes the color--not always, not often, in fact, perhaps a dozen
+times a year. There are days and days when the range is only white and
+cold, days when it's black with storms, and days when it's dismal
+gray. Then there comes an evening when the sun goes down red behind
+the San Juan, and the snows on Sangre de Cristo run like blood. The
+whole world, for a few minutes, seems to halt and stand still in awe
+at that weird and mysterious spectacle--trainmen setting the brakes on
+squealing ore trains on Marshall Pass, and miners coming out of their
+tunnels above Creed all stop and look; Mexican sheep-herders in
+Conejos pause to cross themselves; ranchmen by their lonely corrals up
+and down the San Luis, and cowboys in the saddle on the open
+range--all spellbound. It gives you a strange feeling--something that
+goes back to the primitive instincts of mankind--something of
+reverence, something of wonder, something of fear--the fear that the
+first men had when they gazed on the phenomena they could not
+understand, and began to make their myths and their religions.
+Primitive superstition, primitive terror will never quite down in us,
+no matter how wise and practical we become. There's always, in
+beauty--in sheer beauty something terrifying, as well as something
+sad. But--do I bore you with my dithyrambs?"
+
+"No! No!" she exclaimed.
+
+"The scene couldn't have been set better for that spectacle. There's a
+green strip along the river, then bare sagebrush flats, and beyond the
+flats are sand dunes where nothing grows but cactus and mesquite, and
+here and there some tufts of grass as tough and dry as wire. In summer
+the dunes are a parched and blistered inferno. In October they are
+raw gray desolation. I don't want to know what they are like in
+winter. The wind never ceases there. It builds the dunes into new
+shapes every day, and the sagebrush is always bent and lopsided and
+torn, and the colors are the gray and brown of the world's secret
+tragedy. But when the red sunset is on the dunes there's nothing I
+have ever seen so wild and passionate and beautiful.
+
+"It was late in the autumn. I rode out of a deep arroya, and came,
+without warning, into all that weird and solemn glory. There was a
+cold gush of air from up the valley. Far in the north were purple
+patches on the flats, and violet shadows in the foothills. But the
+dunes were all vermilion, and I can't tell you what hue of red lay
+spread out deep and vivid on the Sangre de Cristo peaks,--a living,
+passionate, terrible blood-red. I'm not very devout, but I tell you
+candidly that I reined up my horse, took off my hat, and sat there
+gazing, with the queerest feelings, and saying, like the old
+Spaniards, 'Sangre de Cristo! Blood of Christ!'
+
+"Then something queer happened to me. You've seen a flash of sunlight
+reflected from a window, far off? Well, it wasn't like that, except in
+the sharpness of its effect. And I knew there was no house in all that
+waste of sand. It was just a flash, and was gone. I searched the
+horizon, and saw nothing but red dunes, and little puffs of sand
+kicked up by the rising wind. Must have been some trick of vision, I
+thought, and I looked away again toward the blood-red peaks. And there
+it was again, in the corner of my eye. But it was gone when I tried to
+fix it. I put spurs to my horse, and rode toward the dunes, and caught
+the flash again--just a bright yellow speck in the darkening
+vermilion. It came and went, and seemed then to have been lost
+completely. I was about convinced that the red sunset had gone to my
+head--that I was following something that existed only in my brain.
+
+"Then, as I loped up to the top of a dune--there he stood, on another
+dune, perhaps two hundred yards away. His golden hide reflected the
+red glow like polished metal, his mane flamed in the wind. You cannot
+possibly imagine the effect of it, in that unreal light, in that
+setting of desolation, with the crimson mountains behind him. He stood
+alone on the hill, with his head high, motionless as a statue. For as
+long as half a minute he let me look at him. Then he turned, and was
+gone like a flash of fire. I had just one more glimpse of him, flying
+over the dunes, and followed by a score or more of wild horses of all
+colors except his color, and none worth looking at. With him the red
+went out of the landscape, the peaks turned white, and I sat alone in
+the gray, raw twilight. But right there I made up my mind about one
+thing: I must have that horse. You know the rest."
+
+"But what do you mean to do with him?" asked Marion, vaguely
+troubled.
+
+"Ride him."
+
+"Don't!" she gasped.
+
+"Why not?" he demanded.
+
+"He'll kill you!"
+
+Haig laughed.
+
+"Oh, I think not!"
+
+"But what is the use?"
+
+"What's the use of anything?"
+
+"But it's--"
+
+"Mere folly, you think?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Now you don't mean that at all, Miss Gaylord. You know perfectly well
+that if I were doing it to please you--to win your admiration--you
+wouldn't call it folly."
+
+"You will please me--and win my admiration--if you don't do it.
+Please!"
+
+"But I don't want--You'll pardon me?--I don't want to win your
+admiration."
+
+What could she say to that? There was a moment of silence.
+
+"When?" she asked quietly.
+
+"I'm waiting for Farrish, my foreman. He's the only man I can
+absolutely depend upon. He's in Omaha. He'll be back next week."
+
+"And you won't begin without him?"
+
+"No."
+
+She had no choice but to be satisfied with a few days of grace.
+Moreover, something might happen before the return of Farrish; the
+outlaw might escape, or she might find another opportunity to plead
+with Haig, or--What was she thinking of? Something was going to
+happen that very evening; and she had almost forgotten it, in her
+absorption!
+
+She had meant to do, long before now, what he had prevented her doing
+at the stable,--to confess her deception, to plead for mercy, to beg
+him to go back. Failing in that, there was Tuesday trotting behind the
+trap; she could leap out, prove to Haig that her foot was uninjured,
+and insist upon riding home alone. But now the confession seemed ten
+times more difficult than it had seemed in the first flush of her
+resolution. They were far up the Brightwater by this time; a few
+minutes more would bring them to the branch road that led to
+Huntington's. Yet how could she tell him?
+
+"My foot doesn't hurt any more," she began, compromising with her
+resolution.
+
+"That's because you've been sitting still," he replied.
+
+"But it doesn't hurt when I move it. See!"
+
+She lifted the foot, and rested it on the dashboard, bending and
+twisting it.
+
+"By which you mean to tell me that I am to go back," he said.
+
+"Please!"
+
+"No!" he answered curtly.
+
+"It wasn't badly sprained at all," she persisted. "I was only--" She
+caught herself, with a shock. "I was only frightened, I think."
+
+"I don't believe you."
+
+"But it's the truth."
+
+"Then it was not the truth in the first place."
+
+There it was now, her best occasion to come out with it. But no; she
+could not.
+
+"It's not so bad as I feared," she stammered.
+
+"I trust not. A sprain is a bad business."
+
+"But you'll go back now!" she pleaded.
+
+"No."
+
+"Oh, why won't you?"
+
+"I've started."
+
+"That's not the reason!" she cried desperately.
+
+"True, there's another reason. That makes two."
+
+"What other reason?"
+
+"I want to ask Huntington about his health."
+
+The deviltry had come back into his voice; and just ahead of them she
+saw the fork of the road.
+
+"There's a third reason too, I'm afraid," she answered bitterly.
+
+"What's that, do you think?"
+
+"You want to punish me!"
+
+"Perhaps--a little."
+
+"Do you think that's--"
+
+"Noble? Manly? Kind? Generous?" he broke in.
+
+"Do you really think it's worth your while to punish me?" she asked
+with passionate irony.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"But why?"
+
+"Because I hope to be let alone hereafter."
+
+At that her anger rose.
+
+"Do you think that is the way a man should speak to a woman?"
+
+"It seems to be the only way to make a woman understand. And even
+then--"
+
+She felt that he shrugged his shoulders in the darkness.
+
+"Then I'm sorry for the women you have known!" she retorted.
+
+"That should make it all the easier for you to avoid any more
+accidents in my part of the Park," he answered unperturbed. "It's your
+own fault if I'm rude. I haven't forced my attentions upon you. If you
+feel that you've been mistreated, there's another reason--that makes
+four, doesn't it?--for my going to Huntington's. We'll be there in
+five minutes. You can tell him."
+
+She could find no answer to all this. Brutal as it was, she knew that
+she had deserved it. Her anger fell away, for she had found already
+that she could not be angry with him long; and now, even in her
+torment, she began to be sorry for him, wondering what he had passed
+through that had so hardened and embittered him.
+
+But the team had turned into the branch road; and she must act at
+once. There remained but one thing for her to do: to leap out of the
+trap, and refuse to go farther with him. On the thought, she measured
+the distance to the ground, the speed of the trotting sorrels. Perhaps
+she moved a little. Or had he actually read her thoughts? For
+suddenly, but very quietly, he laid a hand on her shoulder.
+
+"No!" he said. "You might really hurt yourself this time."
+
+She sank back in dismay, but with a thrill of admiration. What was
+this man, who knew her thoughts before she herself knew them, who
+mastered her--and despised her? She trembled, and was glad of the
+night that concealed her flushed face from him. As for her purpose,
+she was at the end of her resources. No confession, no plea would
+avail to shake his determination. She could do no more; and judgment
+was upon her--soon.
+
+"Hold the reins, please!" commanded Haig.
+
+He leaped out of the trap, opened the gate, and closed it when he had
+led the sorrels through. Then he climbed into the trap, and drove on.
+There was no moon. The ranch buildings lay huddled and indistinct in
+the dim starlight.
+
+At the sound of the hoofs and wheels a man emerged from the stable,
+bearing a lantern. He hurried up to them, stumbling sleepily, and
+peering at the figures vaguely seen in the gloom.
+
+"Here, Williams!" Haig said shortly. "Hold my team, will you! I'll be
+only a few minutes."
+
+The lantern fell from the man's hand, struck the ground with a
+clatter, and lay on its side, flaming and smoking.
+
+"Pick it up!" ordered Haig.
+
+The man obeyed, with the suddenness of a jack-in-the-box, and stood as
+if petrified.
+
+"Quick! The horses! They're no damned broncos!"
+
+Williams jumped to the bridles; and a gleam from the lantern showed
+Marion his face. His mouth was open, his eyes staring with incredulity
+and alarm. She was seized with a preposterous desire to laugh at that
+comical visage, made grotesque by the wavering light of the lantern
+that danced in the fellow's hand. She was on the verge of hysteria.
+
+Haig leaped out, and held up his arms for her, snapping his fingers
+impatiently. In almost complete inertia, yet with every nerve
+quivering, she let him help her to the ground, where he placed her arm
+in his, and started toward the ranch house.
+
+"Limp! Limp!" he whispered in her ear.
+
+She obeyed him mechanically. Everything seemed to have become very
+still and cold; feeling had frozen in her limbs; terror clutched at
+her icily out of the gloom. There were two lighted windows in front of
+her, two baleful yellow gleams, like the eyes of a monster of the
+night. At any instant the door would open, gulping her in.
+
+She choked down a cry. Her feet were like lead now, and she stumbled
+on the first of the half-dozen steps that led to the veranda. Haig
+pulled her up quickly, flung his right arm around her waist, and
+fairly carried her up the steps. At that moment, just as they stood on
+the level floor, the door was opened, and Huntington's huge body
+appeared in silhouette against the lamplight.
+
+"That you, Marion?" he called out, peering into the darkness. Then,
+almost instantly: "Somebody with you, Marion?"
+
+Haig answered for her.
+
+"Good evening, Cousin Seth!" he called out cheerily. "I just dropped
+in to ask about your health."
+
+For perhaps as long as it took him to catch his arrested breath,
+Huntington stood motionless. Then, with an oath, he bounded back into
+the room, and disappeared, as Marion dully realized, in the direction
+of his room, where his revolver hung on a rack. She felt the form
+beside her straighten out like a loosed spring; and the next instant
+she was borne swiftly forward into the light, into the house, into the
+scene she had pictured, the scene she herself had prepared. The arm
+that supported her was quickly withdrawn, and she was left standing at
+one side of the door, while Haig leaped away from her, and stood
+waiting at the other.
+
+Even as this was done, Huntington reappeared at the door of his
+bedroom. The revolver in his right hand moved slowly upward. In
+the kitchen doorway was Claire--a stricken thing in blue and
+gold--clinging to the doorpost, her lips parted, her eyes wide with
+terror. But Haig! Could anything have been more horrible than that
+smile? It was fearless, mocking, insolent. And his whole attitude
+matched it perfectly. He stood carelessly erect, with arms folded,
+disdaining Huntington's weapon. But not the slightest motion of his
+enemy--perhaps not even the thought before it--could have escaped
+him. Marion knew him; and she felt as certain as if it had already
+happened that if Seth lifted his revolver by so much as another
+inch he would be stretched out on the floor there as he had been on
+the ground at Paradise.
+
+All this she saw in an interval as brief as that between two clicks of
+the shutter of her kodak. Then the clock on the mantel began to
+strike. It was a friendly clock, with a musical, soft note. But now
+its stroke crashed upon the silence like a tolling bell. It seemed to
+have its part in that halted scene, as if all waited on its last
+solemn count. If she could only move, think, speak, before it
+finished!
+
+The next thing she knew she was in the middle of the room, directly
+between the two men, and speaking.
+
+"Wait, Seth!" she heard herself saying. "I did it. I brought him here
+to--to make peace with you."
+
+She ended on the clock's last note; and silence fell again.
+Huntington's jaw dropped; amazement was printed on his face, and
+incredulity. Marion walked quietly up to him, took the revolver from
+his hand, and left him standing in the doorway, his arms hanging loose
+at his side. She crossed the room to Haig, slowly, somewhat gropingly
+like a somnambulist, with a half-smiling, strange expression fixed on
+her chalk-white face. She stretched out her left hand to him, her
+right still clasping Seth's six-shooter. There was something
+magnetic, curiously compelling in her manner; for she said nothing,
+made no sound. Haig stared at her, the odious smile fading from his
+lips; his arms slowly fell apart, one hand in the direction of the
+revolver at his hip; and for a moment it seemed that he too would
+yield to her. But suddenly he threw back his head, and laughed.
+
+"By Jupiter!" he cried. "I didn't think it was in you. You almost got
+me too. Good night--all!"
+
+On that he turned on his heel, and vanished into the night. Marion
+heard him laughing still as his boots crunched on the gravel; heard
+his voice in brief and sharp command at the stable; heard the beat of
+the sorrels' hoofs on the road, and the fragment of a song wafted back
+to her,--something rollicking and insolent, in a foreign tongue. She
+stood listening until the sounds had died away in the night, and
+silence enveloped her. Then, just as Huntington leaped forward with a
+bellow of rage,--too late, as ever,--and Claire, with a shriek, rushed
+to throw herself between him and the door, Marion's head drooped
+forward, her knees gave way, and she fell senseless on the floor.
+
+Huntington's big revolver, slipping from her nerveless fingers as she
+fell, struck the Navajo rug with a muffled thump, bounced and rolled
+over, and settled down harmlessly on a patch of barbaric red.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+HEARTS INSURGENT
+
+
+Seth recovered his revolver, and lunged toward the door. But Claire
+was before him. She flung herself upon him, clutching the lapels of
+his coat.
+
+"Seth! Seth!" she shrieked. "What are you doing?"
+
+"I'll follow him!" he roared. "I'll follow him! I'll end the whole
+thing! I'll finish it, I tell you!"
+
+"No! No!" she wailed; and clung to him frantically.
+
+He was beside himself, almost incoherent, for the moment quite
+irresponsible. It is very likely that, but for Claire, he would have
+mounted a horse and pursued Haig to his ranch, with such consequences
+as anybody except himself could easily have foreseen. But he was not
+so far gone in frenzy as to hurt Claire, as he must have done in
+tearing himself loose from her. He stood a moment in tragic
+helplessness, grinding his teeth, and hurling muttered imprecations
+out into the night that covered Philip Haig. Then he looked down at
+the golden head pressed against his breast, and felt the frail body
+quivering; and some sense of what he was doing, or was about to do,
+reached his brain through the fumes of rage. There was yet a long
+struggle; for he was too ponderous for quick decisions, and at the
+same time too outright for successful equivocation. Defeat was always
+a staggering blow to him, since he had no art to mask it. And now,
+lacking the sagacity to swallow his mortification and to bide his
+time, he could only suffer, rending himself in lieu of another on whom
+to pour his fury.
+
+In the midst of this futile passion his roving eyes fell on
+Marion. She lay where she had fallen, in a dead faint, limp on the
+red-and-yellow rug. Seth stared at her a full minute, while an
+indefinable suspicion grew in the back of his brain. She had said,
+"I've brought him here to make peace with you." And Haig himself had
+given the lie to that speech! What did it all mean? By God, he would
+find out!
+
+"Come, Claire!" he said. "Attend to Marion!" And he began to loosen
+her fingers from his coat.
+
+But she only clutched it the tighter.
+
+"You'll go!" she cried.
+
+"No! Not to-night!"
+
+"You promise?"
+
+"Yes! Yes!" he growled.
+
+She looked steadily up at him, questioning, fearful, until he bent
+down and kissed her.
+
+"There!" he said, roughly and yet not ungently. "Now go to Marion!"
+
+They picked her up, and laid her on the couch at one side of the big
+room; and Claire unbuttoned her dress at the throat, and bathed her
+face and neck with cold water, while Seth rubbed and slapped her
+hands.
+
+Her first impulse, on opening her eyes and seeing Claire and Seth
+leaning over her, was to raise her head, and look toward the door. She
+saw only a patch of darkness, empty and still. Then she remembered how
+she had heard his mocking voice fade away in the night; and her eyes
+returned to Seth and Claire. Their faces told her what to expect: and
+she knew that they were right in demanding, as they would demand, the
+fullest explanation.
+
+"Water, please!" she murmured, moistening her dry lips with her
+tongue.
+
+She sat up, slowly emptied the glass that Claire placed in her
+trembling hand, then buttoned her collar over her bare throat, and
+began to pin up the locks of hair that had fallen about her face and
+neck. Her hands, she thought, were very thin and white. She had never
+fainted before, and was still a little frightened and surprised.
+
+"What does it all mean, Marion?" demanded Huntington.
+
+"Wait, Seth, can't you?" warned Claire. Then to Marion: "There's no
+hurry, dear. When you feel better."
+
+But her eyes denied her words. There was indeed no way out of it.
+Marion must speak, and without delay.
+
+"I'm cold," she said, shivering.
+
+"Of course!" cried Claire. "Come to the fire. And Seth! Close the
+door, please!"
+
+Huntington strode to the door, and slammed it shut. Then he returned
+to the chimney piece, and watched Marion as she leaned toward the
+blaze. He could barely restrain himself, waiting for her to begin.
+
+"I've been a silly fool, I suppose," she said presently, sitting erect
+again, and facing her cousins courageously. "It was all my fault. You
+mustn't blame him."
+
+An impatient exclamation by Huntington drew a warning glance from
+Claire.
+
+"Tell us just what happened, dear!" she urged gently.
+
+"I don't exactly know--I can't just understand how it happened,"
+Marion began. "I had an accident--in the road. My foot was hurt--my
+ankle was twisted--or I thought it was--and I was frightened."
+
+"An accident?" said Claire.
+
+"I was off my pony--the cinches were loose--and--when I tried to mount
+again--I slipped--somehow--and fell. He was just in time to help me,
+and--"
+
+"Where was that?" asked Huntington.
+
+"Just below his place. He was coming back--"
+
+"But what were you doing over there?" demanded Huntington.
+
+"Riding," she said calmly, perhaps a little defiantly.
+
+"Yes, I know that. But on his land?"
+
+"Did you ever tell me anything about that?" she retorted.
+
+"No, but--"
+
+"Then how was I to know?"
+
+"But you've heard--"
+
+"Yes, I heard some things at the post-office. You've told me
+nothing."
+
+Huntington's face reddened angrily.
+
+"Never mind that now!" cried Claire sharply, sending another warning
+look at Seth. "Go on, dear!"
+
+Marion went on, very carefully. With Claire alone she might have been
+more frank and confiding, but Seth's belligerent attitude had begun to
+stir resentment in her.
+
+"He thought I had a bad sprain. He was annoyed; he didn't take any
+pains to conceal that from me. But he lifted me into the saddle,
+and rode with me to his stable, and told one of his men to hitch
+up a team, and drive me home. That would have been--all right, and he
+had no intention--until--something I said--I must have been
+hysterical--something made him angry, and he--said he would drive me
+home himself."
+
+"And you let him!" cried Claire reproachfully.
+
+"No, I didn't _let_ him. He did it in spite of all I could do. I
+pleaded with him, I tried every way to stop him. Once I started to
+leap out of the trap. But he caught me. He laughed at me But he was
+very angry too; he scolded me dreadfully. Said I needed to be punished
+for--I don't know what. He hates women, and says we're always meddling
+in men's affairs. It served me right, of course. And please remember
+it was all my fault--truly!"
+
+"Did he say anything about making peace?" asked Claire.
+
+"No. That was all mine. I had to do something quickly. You know
+that."
+
+"But what did he say about me?" growled Huntington, who was far from
+satisfied, and still suspicious.
+
+"Not much. Oh, yes!" she added impulsively. "He said you and he could
+probably come to an understanding quickly enough if--"
+
+She paused, embarrassed.
+
+"If what?" demanded Huntington.
+
+"That was only because he dislikes women, I think. He said--if
+Claire--Mrs. Huntington, he said,--would let you alone."
+
+"I?" cried Claire. It was almost a scream of astonishment and
+indignation.
+
+"I'll show him!" shouted Huntington. "He'd better keep her name out of
+it, or I'll--"
+
+"I haven't done anything!" wailed Claire.
+
+"I'll make him pay for that!" bellowed Huntington, bringing his fist
+down on the mantel.
+
+"You mustn't blame him!" protested Marion hastily. "He was angry at
+me, and I don't think he's as bad as you think he is."
+
+"Marion!" cried Claire, her eyes widening with wonder.
+
+Then Marion had the misfortune to blush under Claire's curious gaze.
+She blushed, at first, merely because she had gone too far in her
+effort to clear Haig of responsibility for what had occurred that
+evening; and then the blood stormed into her cheeks as she encountered
+Claire's look, and attached a deeper meaning to it than it actually
+conveyed.
+
+Huntington leaned forward, and gazed suspiciously into Marion's
+crimsoned face.
+
+"Well, I'll be damned!" he broke out. "You'd think the girl was in
+love with this ruffian!"
+
+For an instant there was a silence much like the silence that follows
+a clap of thunder. Then Marion rose slowly to her feet, quivering, her
+eyes ablaze.
+
+"Ruffian?" she cried. "If there's any ruffian it's--"
+
+She caught herself. She was innately gentle and fastidious, and she
+could not, without shame, have forced her lips to say the things that
+she felt in her outraged heart. But she looked at him; and under that
+look Seth quailed and shrank. What had he said to evoke this luminous
+hatred? He had not meant--
+
+"And I think she's right, Seth Huntington!" exclaimed Claire, coming
+to Marion, and putting an arm, around her. "If there's any ruffian
+it's you, and I'm ashamed of you!"
+
+Huntington's jaw dropped, and he stared at them, his eyes bulging with
+astonishment. Then suddenly he turned, and bolted from the room. The
+door leading to the kitchen was flung shut behind him; then the outer
+door banged; and in a moment his heavy footsteps were heard on the
+veranda, where he strode to and fro in helpless rage and shame and
+wonder. He had a feeling of soreness over all his body, as if some one
+had roundly pummelled him; his face itched beneath his beard; he could
+not find a comfortable place for his hands. Well, he agreed with Haig
+about one thing: women were hell! And here was Claire siding with
+Marion against him; and calling him a ruffian! Was he a ruffian? What
+had he said to merit that? Couldn't they take a joke? But this
+casuistry did not go down, though he tried to hammer it down with many
+violent gestures. He began to have certain qualms that he recognized
+as premonitory signs of weakening; and he struggled to bolster up his
+anger. Damn Haig! If he had only finished him that day in the timber,
+when the others had wanted to! But this was a vain regret. There
+remained the present situation. Gradually his steps faltered. He
+stopped often to look vacantly at the stars. They had nothing to say
+to him. He felt very solitary, alone in the world.
+
+After a time the kitchen door was opened softly.
+
+"Seth!" came a whisper from that direction.
+
+"Well?" he answered uncertainly.
+
+"Aren't you cold?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Well, we are. The fire's going out."
+
+"Umph!"
+
+"Won't you please fetch some wood?"
+
+No reply. Claire slipped out, and crept up to him.
+
+"Come!" she commanded softly. "Do you want us to freeze?"
+
+Still no reply.
+
+"Oh, you do, do you?"
+
+"It's time you went to bed."
+
+"No, it isn't. We're not going to bed until you come in and beg
+Marion's pardon."
+
+"No, I'll be--"
+
+She tried to clap her hand over his mouth, but succeeded only in
+hitting his nose a smart tap, which was just as effective, since it
+checked him.
+
+"No swearing, either!" she went on. "You've been rude enough for one
+night, don't you think? I'll tell you my opinion of it later. She's
+going to be easy with you because she's sorry about it all. Come!"
+
+Huntington did not move, or answer her.
+
+"Do you want her to leave by the next stage--and have this all over
+the Park too--like Haig's visit? Come!"
+
+He groaned, but followed her. At the door of the living room he caught
+sight of Marion seated before the fireplace, where only embers glowed
+dull red.
+
+"I'll get some wood," he said quickly, glad of even a few minutes'
+grace.
+
+Fortune tossed him a small favor: the wood bin near the kitchen door
+was empty--almost. Another time that would have brought a storm down
+on the head of the unlucky stable hand whose duty it was to keep the
+bin filled. But now Seth rejoiced at having to go to the wood yard,
+and found it much too near.
+
+He re-entered the house with an armload of sticks, and placed them
+carefully on the embers; stirred up the glowing mass with a poker;
+readjusted the fresh wood; provoked the red coals once more; and at
+last, having exhausted the dilatory possibilities of the fire, stood
+up clumsily to face the ordeal.
+
+"Well, Marion," he began awkwardly, "I'm in for it, I reckon."
+
+She did not reply; she only looked at him. There were dark shadows
+around her eyes that heightened the pallor of her cheeks; but the eyes
+themselves were clear and piercing, and as cold now as they had been
+fiery before. For once in his life Huntington was conscious of his
+bulk; he felt conspicuous; and the wound in his shoulder, almost
+healed, began to itch and ache.--There were worse things than being
+shot.--If she would only turn those eyes away from him! And then it
+dawned upon him that she was waiting.
+
+"I beg your pardon, Marion!" he stammered. "I was ugly. I didn't
+really mean--I hope you'll forgive me."
+
+For a minute longer she let him stew in his kettle, then lifted him
+out scrupulously, at the end of a very long fork, and dropped him
+steaming, as if he had been a lump of unsavory fat.
+
+"Yes, I forgive you," she said, very, very distantly. "You probably
+weren't thinking."
+
+If that was forgiveness! But he did not know--even Claire did not know
+then--how deeply he had wounded Marion with his rude and accusing
+speech,--as if he had called a jeering crowd to look at the little
+flower that blooms but once, and very secretly, in a woman's heart.
+Forgive him? She never would forgive him for that blundering outburst,
+which was indeed the more unforgivable because he did not seriously
+mean, and certainly did not believe, the thing he said.
+
+"Thank you, Marion dear!" said Claire softly.
+
+At that Marion suddenly rushed to Claire, and knelt by her chair. She
+had her own faults to be forgiven.
+
+"I've been very foolish!" she cried. "I've caused you pain and
+humiliation. I'm sorry. Please forgive me!"
+
+So they cried it out in each other's arms, while Huntington rolled a
+cigarette, took one whiff of it, and tossed it into the fire. It
+required a stronger narcotic than tobacco to soothe his fevered
+spirits. After a while he whirled around and faced the two women.
+
+"See here, Marion!" he said. "It's all our fault for not telling you
+about Haig. But we didn't want to annoy you with our troubles, and we
+never imagined you'd stumble on to him. Do you know now what this is
+all about?"
+
+She spared him the answer that she had heard something on that point
+the day of the shooting.
+
+"No; that is, very little."
+
+"Well, it's just this: Before he came here we were all playing the
+game peacefully together. Each of us had just about enough land, with
+the cut hay and the winter pastures, to pull through the winter, and
+there was just enough free grazing up in the edges of the timber to
+keep the cattle going through the summer and early fall."
+
+"That was government land," explained Claire.
+
+"And open to all of us," added Seth. "We never had any dispute with
+the Englishman who owned Haig's ranch before him, and he got fair
+treatment, though he wasn't here much of the time to look after it. We
+heard he had some family trouble, and one day when he'd been gone a
+long time--"
+
+"That's four years now," interrupted Claire.
+
+"Yes. Haig showed up, and said the ranch was his. He started in
+straight off to hog the whole thing. Bought a thousand head of
+cattle--that made thirteen hundred head--almost as many as all the
+rest of us had put together. He turned the thirteen hundred into the
+open range, and hired men to keep them moving the right way for the
+good feed, and--"
+
+"He had a perfect right to do that, you see," Claire put in hastily.
+
+"Legal right, maybe," Huntington went on. "But he didn't have any real
+right to more than his share. We organized, bunched our cattle, and
+stayed with 'em. That way we were stronger than he, and soon had his
+cattle starving. Then he disappeared, and we didn't see anything of
+him for three weeks. And what do you suppose the damned skunk--"
+
+"Seth!" cried Claire warningly, with an anxious look at Marion.
+
+Marion merely shook her head.
+
+"Well, he fooled us. He went to Denver, got a lawyer on the job,
+looked up the records, found there'd been a mistake in the surveys,
+and came back to us with a government deed to almost half the forest
+reserve that we'd been using as free pasture. Then he ordered us off,
+and we went, with six Winchesters pointed at our fool backs. What do
+you think of that, Marion?"
+
+"But why?" asked Marion. "I mean what was his motive in all that? He
+isn't a cattleman. I mean--I don't think he cares enough--"
+
+She stopped, finding herself in dangerous waters.
+
+"Why? Because he's a--" Huntington checked himself. "Anyhow, he barely
+escaped a lynching that night. And if he only knew it, I'm the one
+that stopped it. I said we'd find some other way. But we haven't found
+it. We had to bring most of our stock down to the pastures we needed
+for winter, and in winter we had to buy hay at eighteen dollars a ton.
+And Haig had hay to sell. Three of our men were driven out of
+business. Tom Jenkins, being dead broke and discouraged, with a
+family, killed himself. I had to sell off a third of my cattle, and
+twenty head disappeared, and I never saw them again. And maybe you can
+understand now how I felt when I saw him this evening, standing there
+in my own house, grinning at me. God!"
+
+He turned, grabbed up the poker, and began jabbing viciously at the
+fire.
+
+Yes, Marion could understand that, but--She was not satisfied. There
+was something missing from Seth's narrative. Haig's accusations that
+day at the post-office--his missing cattle, and the cut wires at the
+Forbidden Pasture--And if all that Seth had said was true, which she
+doubted, the mystery was only deepened. She was sure that Haig was
+only playing a part, that he was not a cattleman by choice, and that
+his heart was not in the game, whatever it was. She wanted to ask
+questions, but refrained, lest she should again arouse Seth's
+suspicions. She would see Smythe.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL
+
+
+The next afternoon Huntington, with painful diffidence, yet anxious to
+come to some sort of terms with Marion, proposed that she should begin
+her shooting lessons. She acquiesced in a manner that relieved him
+immensely, for she, on her side, was sorely in need of distraction. So
+they were presently on the hillside behind the ranch house with the
+rifles,--Seth's Winchester and the little Savage he had bought for
+Claire, who, to his great disappointment, did not like guns, and never
+could be taught to see the sights with one eye closed. His delight,
+therefore, was unbounded when Marion took to the Savage with almost
+the quick adaptability of a man. True, her first shots went high and
+wild among the foliage, but she was fast getting the grip of the gun,
+and had actually once scraped the bark of the tree on which the target
+of white paper was tacked, when they were hailed by a cheerful voice
+demanding permission for an unarmed and perfectly harmless man to
+approach.
+
+"Smythe!" growled Huntington, resenting the interruption. Then aloud,
+as heartily as he could: "Hello, Smythe! You're quite safe."
+
+"What's going on here, anyhow?" asked Smythe.
+
+"Where are your boasted powers of observation?" retorted Marion.
+
+"It's more polite to ask."
+
+"In Paradise Park?" she queried, in a tone of mild surprise.
+
+Seth's face reddened as he stooped over a half-empty cartridge-box. He
+had congratulated himself too soon. But while Smythe and Marion
+exchanged more badinage he refilled the magazine of the Savage, and
+held it ready.
+
+"Will you have another try?" he asked.
+
+"Yes, please, if Mr. Smythe will only keep still. I know I can never
+hit anything if he talks."
+
+"I'm mum!" he answered.
+
+The first shot went wild. So, indeed, the second and third.
+
+"There! What did I tell you?" cried Marion petulantly.
+
+"But I didn't say a word!" protested Smythe.
+
+"What were you thinking, then?"
+
+"What a charming Diana--"
+
+"Don't think any more, please!"
+
+"But I can't stop thinking!"
+
+"In that case you'd better talk. You certainly talk enough without
+thinking."
+
+"Bull's-eye!" he cried joyously. "Now try again!"
+
+"I suppose I must learn not to be bothered."
+
+She pressed her lips together, and steadied herself resolutely. She
+would show him! The next shot cut a furrow in the bark of the pine;
+the second struck within two inches of the target; and the third
+pinked the edge of the paper itself.
+
+"That will do for this time," she said, in some elation, as she handed
+the gun to Huntington.
+
+"To-morrow you'll do better," he assured her. "And then we'll try it
+at longer range."
+
+He began to pick up the cartridge boxes and his own rifle.
+
+"You're not riding to-day?" said Smythe.
+
+"How did you guess it?" she demanded, laughing.
+
+"Oh, a truce! A truce!" he pleaded. "I mean, if you are not going for
+a ride, will you walk up the hill there?"
+
+He pointed toward the pines.
+
+"Why?"
+
+"To please me," he answered.
+
+But she caught a look in his eyes that decided her.
+
+"Certainly, if you are so easily pleased."
+
+"Oh, I'm a very Lazarus at the table of life!" he retorted gaily.
+"Every crumb comforts me."
+
+She laughed, and stepped away with him among the rocks, while
+Huntington, still swearing at Smythe for a meddling fool, strode down
+the hill.
+
+Marion surmised that Smythe had something to say to her. Had he heard
+already? Had the news of yesterday's comedy, that was so near a
+tragedy, already spread far and wide over the Park? But that was
+scarcely possible, since Haig's men would be silent, and Seth had kept
+Williams too busy all day for gossip.
+
+They climbed the rocky slope without more words, clambering over
+bowlders and fallen tree trunks, until they reached the summit of the
+hill, and flung themselves down, hot and panting, on a great flat rock
+that commanded a sweeping view of the Park. At one side more hills
+rose, small mountains in themselves, thickly wooded, with white peaks
+towering behind. On the other, the valley of the Brightwater lay green
+and bronze in the sun, with the white stream curling and curving among
+the meadows. Far across the valley, beyond the ridge that divided the
+Park in unequal halves--that fateful ridge!--the western range of
+mountains glittered, dazzling white.
+
+Marion's eyes at once sought out Thunder Mountain. What would it say
+to her to-day? Storm! Its top was half-hidden in a gray-black swirl of
+clouds, though the sun was bright on the snow-clad peaks around it.
+
+"What do you see?" asked Smythe, as soon as his lungs would consent to
+speech.
+
+"My mountain," she answered, without turning her head.
+
+"Which is that?"
+
+"Thunder Mountain."
+
+"Umph! You're welcome to it!"
+
+She was silent.
+
+"Why your mountain?" he asked presently.
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"But there must be a reason--or something."
+
+"That's just it--something. It's hideous, but it fascinates me. I
+can't help thinking that--"
+
+"That what?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+They laughed together.
+
+"It's got a bad reputation," said Smythe.
+
+"Perhaps that's the reason."
+
+Then she was embarrassed, thinking unexpectedly of another bad
+reputation in the Park.
+
+"Perhaps," he answered, smiling at the back of her head, where the
+tawny hair curved up adorably from the soft, white neck.
+
+"Tell me about it!" she said at length.
+
+"It's a death trap."
+
+"You mean--men have gone up there?"
+
+"Oh, yes!"
+
+"How?"
+
+"There's a trail, what's left of it. The Warpath, they call it."
+
+"The Warpath?"
+
+"Yes. It was first a war trail, when fighting tribes lived in these
+mountains. But even the Indians didn't use it often--only in
+midsummer. It's a trail over bare rocks, marked by stones set up at
+long intervals. The Indians didn't mark it. They had their own ways of
+knowing it. But after the Indians came trappers, hunters, prospectors,
+and some of them set up the stones. It would be a valuable short cut
+between the Park and the San Luis country, if it were safe. But it's
+not. I'm told that many lives have been lost on it. I can't find
+details except of one tragedy. Some ten years ago a party of English
+people, guests at the ranch that Haig now owns, went on a pleasure
+trip to Thunder Mountain. They meant to go only as far as timber line.
+It's not difficult as far as the foot of the scarp that lifts to the
+flat top you see yonder. It's done on horseback to that point--and
+across too, if you care to try it. But on top--that's another matter.
+It isn't the mountain itself that gets you. It's the storms. The
+English party ventured on top, and three of them never came back. The
+wind hurled them into a chasm, and their bodies were never recovered.
+That's enough for me, thank you!"
+
+"Has nobody in the Park ever been across?" Marion persisted.
+
+"Old Parker--Jim Parker's father--crossed it once, many years ago. But
+he came back another way, around by Tellurium. Young Parker has been
+as far as the Devil's Chair. That's the top of the notch where the
+wind sucks you into it--unless, by good chance, it blows you away from
+it."
+
+"And no one else?" Marion insisted, breathless.
+
+"One other man has gone to the Twin Sisters. That's halfway over."
+
+"Who was that?" she asked; as if she did not know.
+
+"He balked at the women, you see."
+
+Smythe chuckled.
+
+"The Twin Sisters," Smythe went on, "are two huge gray rocks, I'm
+told, vaguely resembling carved figures. The trail passes between
+them. There's no other possible way, and when the wind is blowing it
+shoots out between them like water from a fire-hose. Haig was caught
+just there by a storm. He came back fighting mad, and swore he'd cross
+Thunder Mountain yet, or die there. But that reminds me. I've got news
+for you."
+
+"News?" asked Marion, with a start.
+
+Her first thought was of Sunnysides. Had Haig decided not to wait for
+Farrish? But no! It would be something about yesterday's sensation.
+
+"It keeps well, I see," she said lightly.
+
+"I didn't want to excite you so soon after that long climb."
+
+"Thank you! If you think I can't stand it you just keep it to
+yourself--if you can!"
+
+"But I came expressly to tell you."
+
+"Then why don't you expressly tell me? Don't be exasperating, Mr.
+Smythe!"
+
+He grinned exultantly.
+
+"Well," he said, "I've been eavesdropping."
+
+"What?"
+
+"Not intentionally. Pure accident. But I didn't stick my fingers in my
+ears."
+
+"No, I can understand that."
+
+"Thanks. It was this way: I was fishing--for fish, really. Under a
+clump of willows, just where the road from Haig's joins the main
+valley road. You know?"
+
+"Yes, yes!"
+
+"Haig and another man, Higgins, it turned out to be--he's a Denver
+lawyer--with his family for an outing down at Cobalt Lake. It appeared
+he'd been up to see Haig partly on business and partly just for a
+friendly visit. They separated there, after a little conversation.
+
+"'It's strange you've never heard a word from him,' said Higgins.
+
+"'Four years,' answered Haig.
+
+"'He's probably off in South Africa somewhere.'
+
+"'Or India. It's a long trail be followed, no doubt.'
+
+"'You can only wait, I suppose,' Higgins said.
+
+"'Well, I've nothing else to do,' Haig replied, with a laugh." Smythe
+paused.
+
+"That's something to think about," he said musingly. "Who is this
+'he'? And why is Haig waiting for him? Well, that was all I heard
+about that. Higgins next asked Haig if he wouldn't please change his
+mind about riding down to see them.
+
+"'No,' Haig answered. 'I never go anywhere. I'm not very sociable, no
+longer a gregarious creature. Ask my neighbors about that!'
+
+"'Oh, hang your neighbors! This is different. We're not living here,
+and we can't pester you. But you see I got Hail Columbia from my wife
+for not bringing you to see her in Denver, and she's dead set on
+getting acquainted with you here. She says you're the most unselfish
+man in the world. I'd be jealous if--'
+
+"'Oh, come now!' protested Haig, laughing.
+
+"'It's true. So you'll drop this hermit business for once, won't you?
+It will give my wife much pleasure.'
+
+"There was a little silence.
+
+"'Well, have your own way,' said Haig at last 'I suppose a man's got
+to humor his lawyer, if he doesn't want to lose a plain case some day.
+But I warn you. I'm not very amusing, that is, I trust not.'
+
+"'Good!' cried Higgins. 'We'll not keep you long. The day after
+to-morrow, shall we say? Right! Now good-by! And don't let Huntington
+pot you--before you've seen Mrs. Higgins.'
+
+"They both laughed at that. Higgins drove off down the valley in his
+road wagon, and Haig galloped toward home. And then I found a trout
+had run away with my hook. Big fellow too, and clever as Satan.
+Scuttled away under a rock and worked loose before I could get after
+him. But it was a good day's fishing just the same, don't you think?"
+
+She did not reply at once; and Smythe discreetly busied himself
+tossing stones at an impertinent chipmunk that popped in and out among
+the rocks and fallen limbs.
+
+"Have you seen this Mrs. Higgins?" asked Marion suddenly.
+
+"No," Smythe answered gravely, though his eyes twinkled wickedly. "But
+Higgins is sixty at least, and I fancy his wife's too old to be--" A
+warning look checked him. "But really, Miss Gaylord, you ought not to
+jump down my throat after I've brought you such an interesting knot
+for your pretty hands to untie."
+
+She laughed at his lugubrious countenance, then stood up, and reached
+out a hand to him, letting him hold it for just a breath of time.
+
+"No, you're a good friend. I know it."
+
+"I'm not very deep," he said, with a touch of dejection. "Nobody ever
+takes me very seriously. But I hope you'll trust me!"
+
+"Indeed I will! But come! We must go back."
+
+So they went slipping and sliding down the hill, digging their heels
+into the ground, clinging to rocks and trees to check their swift
+descent, laughing at their wild plunges and gyrations. At the house,
+when they had rested a while on the veranda, Marion dismissed Smythe
+as quickly as she could without abruptness; and when he had gone she
+hastened to her room, and locked the door, and flung herself down on
+the bed, with her hands clasped behind her head, to stare up at the
+ceiling in a whirl of thoughts. There was a mystery! There was a
+motive behind Haig's conduct! "The most unselfish man in the world"
+And she repeated the words over and over again, and gathered them to
+her heart.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+AVALANCHE
+
+
+Huntington soon had his revenge on Marion, though, in his blindness,
+he never knew it. She and Claire, after an unusually protracted Small
+Talk the night before, arose late one morning to find the house
+topsy-turvy from masculine activity. On the veranda they discovered
+Seth cleaning rifles, surrounded by cartridge boxes, hunting knives,
+canvas bags and wrappings, rubber coats, leather straps, fishing
+tackle and what not.
+
+"In the name of goodness, Seth Huntington! What are you doing?"
+shrilled Claire.
+
+"Guess!" replied Huntington, with a rather heavy attempt at
+tantalizing.
+
+"Oh, I know! Camping. But you don't mean to-day?"
+
+"Sure!"
+
+"But why didn't you ask us?" demanded Claire. "Maybe we don't
+choose--"
+
+"But you do, though. I promised Marion that as soon as I--"
+
+He stopped, for even his habitually veiled eyes could not miss the
+look of consternation on Marion's face.
+
+"Why--I thought--" he began uncertainly. "Of course, if you don't want
+to go--"
+
+The oiled rag dropped from his hand. His descent from elation (he had
+planned a little surprise) to dejection and chagrin was a tumble that
+touched Marion's commiseration and disarmed her. She did not want to
+go camping; she did not want to leave the Park for even a day, an
+hour; she did not want to miss any opportunity to see Haig. More than
+ever now was she determined to solve his mystery. So Huntingdon's
+"surprise" was a greater shock to her than he, simple man, could
+possibly have foreseen or perceived. But even if she had not been
+moved by his rather ludicrous disappointment she would not have dared
+to refuse acquiescence in his programme. She had indeed expressed an
+ardent--oh, too ardent!--desire to go camping, and any explanation she
+could think of on the instant would have led her into regions where
+she could not trust herself.
+
+"Indeed, I want to go!" she cried quickly, though there was a big lump
+in her throat. "You took me by surprise, that's all."
+
+"I should say so!" said Claire. "Think you're smart, don't you? We
+might have been all dressed for it if you'd only told us. When do we
+start, Big Boss?"
+
+Huntington recovered his good spirits quickly, assured that he had
+succeeded after all.
+
+"I thought we'd ride to Ely's to-day, sleep there to-night, and make
+Mount Avalanche to-morrow evening."
+
+"Then we must hurry," said Claire. "Come, Marion."
+
+"How long--shall we be gone?" asked Marion, struggling to appear
+enthusiastic.
+
+"Four or five days, I suppose."
+
+Her heart sank. She could have cried with vexation. But she managed to
+conceal her real feelings in the bustle of preparation. There were
+provisions to be packed: cans and jars and bottles; bacon and ham and
+flour against the possible event of bad luck with the guns and rods;
+warm clothes and bedding; medicines and bandages. So fully occupied
+were her hands and brain with these details, and later with her first
+real experience with the mountain trails, that her heart must perforce
+keep its peace until some hour of solitude.
+
+Toward five o'clock of the second day they reached their destination,--a
+grassy shelf a little below timber line on Mount Avalanche. There, in
+some past age, an avalanche of titanic proportions had carried away
+part of the mountain itself; and they camped now on the top of the
+debris, long since concealed by a dense forest growth, as if nature had
+employed her utmost arts to hide the wound. Marion could not but yield a
+little to emotions of delight and wonder. On that high platform she
+stood above a marvelous mountain world, below another mountain world as
+marvelous. Behind her Avalanche reared sheer and sharp and white
+against the sky. On either side were snow-clad peaks. At her feet
+were forests in solid masses of green, now darkening in the
+twilight. And beyond, far, far beyond, the Park they had left lay
+bright under the sun's after-glow, with a background of range on range
+of mountains in their violet haze. On the shelf was forage for the
+horses; near at hand were moss and balsam for their beds; and at a
+little distance a rivulet, ice-cold, had shady pools where small
+trout awaited capture. And the air was like dry wine on the lips, with
+a tang of resin in the nostrils; and the woods sang a song that even
+Marion could not resist.
+
+Here they pitched two tents just large enough to cover the beds of
+balsam boughs and moss and blankets. In the three days they passed in
+camp Marion learned many things that were to be of incalculable value
+to her one day, though she never could have guessed that all this too,
+like the encounter in the Forbidden Pasture, had been ordered in the
+Beginning, details in the Scheme of Things. She learned surprising
+secrets of makeshift cookery; she learned the Indian's lesson of a
+very little fire; she learned the mountaineer's economy of matches and
+like precious articles. She fished in the small pools that lay hidden
+away in dark recesses of the forest, practised shooting with her
+rifle, and on the third day, in the timber below the camp, with Seth
+at her side, brought down her first deer.
+
+"I told you!" cried Huntington, delighted at the progress of his
+pupil.
+
+But her heart was not in all this; it was clamoring now to be heard,
+and would by no means be stilled. Each evening Marion walked apart
+from the others, to stand at the edge of the lofty platform, and watch
+her green and violet Elysium swallowed up in night. Each morning she
+searched for it through her field glasses to assure herself that it
+had not vanished in the dark. And when the last day of their outing
+came, the last evening, the last night, she could scarce contain her
+impatience. To-morrow they would start; and the day after--
+
+She could not sleep that night. Every twig and every needle of her
+pine mattress seemed to have conspired to torture her. She tossed
+about until she could no longer endure her bed; and in the middle of
+the night she crept out of the tent, and sat, wrapped in a blanket,
+before the smouldering embers of the fire. The hobbled horses grazed
+not far away; a night bird twitted solitarily in the brush; and from
+the depths of the forest came the scream of some savage creature out
+on its kill. Against the star-crowded sky the peaks stood up cold and
+impassive. What cared they? What did the world care? What did Philip
+care?
+
+For now she knew that she loved him. Yes, yes, she loved him! In her
+heart she had known it from the beginning, since that meeting in the
+Forbidden Pasture, had known it as one knows things without
+acknowledgment. Her mind had acknowledged only the hundred reasons why
+she should not, could not love him. He had repelled her; he had not
+veiled his meaning, had not concealed his antagonism; he had told her
+plainly, brutally almost, that he would not endure her presence, that
+she must avoid his side of the Park.
+
+Then she thought of Robert,--Robert, so devoted and so true. What was
+she doing: throwing away his love that was so unselfishly, so
+whole-heartedly laid at her feet? Had she been mad to flee from him?
+Yes, mad! Pride rose to support the fondness and the admiration she
+had felt for him. And so there ensued a struggle between the two fine
+spirits that dwelt in her,--the proud little lady of the Fragonard and
+the Viking with red hair.
+
+The Viking won. Had not her father said to her, in those long talks
+about her mother, that love is the only thing? And back she came, on
+swiftest wings of passion, to Philip; and she was glad. She knew now
+the meaning of her restlessness in the dark days in the unheeding
+city; she knew whose voice had called, whose arms had held her, though
+he was unaware. He needed her, though he did not know it. And she had
+come to him, without understanding. Somewhere she had read a fugitive
+bit of verse that had meant nothing then, and had been forgotten until
+now, when it suddenly sang across the years and the spaces like a call
+to courage:
+
+                         "The wild wind bloweth
+                         The cross of fire.
+                       The wild heart knoweth
+                         Its own desire."
+
+The wild heart knoweth its own desire! She rose to her feet with a
+singing and a resurrection of her heart. She scarcely knew that her
+limbs were stiff and that her body ached with cold. Her spirit was
+aroused. She could not go and take Philip as her father had taken the
+one he loved. But there were ways; when had a woman ever failed, in
+love, of finding them? She set herself to thinking, planning,
+scheming, while she walked swiftly to and fro before the tents. And
+presently she stopped her pacing, and looked curiously around her.
+There had come a subtle alteration in the aspect of the night. A
+shivering freshness had crept insensibly into the air. Leaves and
+grass and the very air appeared to be astir, though the silence and
+the darkness were as before. She looked up eagerly at the sky, and saw
+that the stars were pale. It was not yet the dawn; it was only the
+passing of the night. But the dawn was near. The dawn! The dawn!
+
+She did not wish Seth to find her there. He would ask questions,
+staring at her. She crept stealthily back into her tent, and lay
+there, shaking with cold, to wait for the noise that Huntington would
+make as he sought for live embers in the ashes of the fire.
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+Once out of the mountains and in the foothills, she rode far ahead of
+Seth and Claire, impatient at the slow progress necessitated by the
+difficulties of the pack horses. Late in the afternoon she found
+herself at a fork of the road with which she was familiar. A little
+way up the less-used of the two branches there was a glade where
+columbines grew in extraordinary profusion. She had gathered armloads
+of them there, and seemed scarcely to have touched the edge of that
+wild garden where nature had been seized with a prodigal impulse. And
+now, rather to be doing something than to await in irritation for Seth
+and Claire, she turned her pony's head and rode toward the glade. In
+five minutes she was fording a little stream, beyond which the road
+rose slightly to cross the shoulder of a hill, and dipped again to run
+in a sharp curve along the margin of the glade. She took the rise at a
+gallop, sped down the other slope, and at the curve of the road reined
+up her horse with a startled cry. She had come suddenly upon a team
+hitched at the side of the road,--the sorrels and the trap in which
+Philip Haig had driven her to Huntington's that terrible evening.
+
+For a moment she was bereft of thought and feeling. At that very
+instant she had been thinking of him; what instant was she not
+thinking of him? But the utterly unexpected encounter--for he was
+there somewhere, in the glade, no doubt--swept away all that courage
+she had found on Avalanche. She felt suddenly helpless, inert,
+afraid; and before she could regain her self-possession, call back her
+high resolve, the bushes at the roadside parted, and Philip stood
+before her. He bore a great bouquet of columbines, their stems wrapped
+in damp moss and leaves and tied securely with a string. At sight of
+her he halted; and that look of annoyance she had seen him wear in the
+road below his ranch house came again into his pale face. For some
+seconds they regarded each other in silence.
+
+"True," he said at length, with a smile that tortured her, "this is
+not my side of the Ridge. I am the trespasser, even though this is
+public domain. You have as much right here as I--more, since I said
+the Ridge was the dividing line. So--"
+
+He stepped quickly to her horse's side, pressed the great bunch of
+pale-blue flowers into her limp but obedient hands, lifted his
+battered hat, turned on his heel, walked directly to the trap, leaped
+into the seat, and drove swiftly away. She watched him dully until he
+was out of sight behind a bend in the road, among the trees; watched
+the spot where he had disappeared until it became a blur to her aching
+eyes. Then she looked slowly down at the flowers in her hands.
+Columbines! Frail, lovely things, the fairest product, she had
+thought, of nature's laboratory, reflecting the infinite, ineffable
+blue of God's skies, delicate as the flower that had bloomed with such
+wonderful, unexpected beauty in her own heart! How she could have
+treasured them, wept over them, hugged them to her breast, if he had
+given them to her in another way. Slowly her fingers relaxed. The
+flowers fell into the dust of the road. She stared down, at them a
+moment; and then, with a cry, leaped from her horse, picked them up
+eagerly, clasped them to her breast, buried her face in them, and
+watered them with her tears.
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+Seth said he guessed he would ride down to the post-office before
+supper; yesterday was mail day; might be something. Marion was glad of
+his departure, and to avoid Claire was not difficult, considering what
+baths, and changing of linen, and brushing of hair they required after
+their outing. Refreshed and rested, they had scarcely met before the
+new-lighted fire at twilight when Seth returned, stamping vigorously
+into the room.
+
+"You're the lucky one, Marion," he said.
+
+He fumbled in his pockets, and finally produced a letter. She took it,
+glanced at it, and let it fall into her lap. A great stillness seemed
+to have come upon the world. She appeared to be looking at Seth and
+Claire across great distances. She could hear her heart pounding in
+her bosom, like something that hammered for freedom. Ages seemed to
+have passed before she was able to rise slowly, to smile, to beg to be
+excused a moment. In her room she stood quite still, mechanically tore
+open the envelope, and read:
+
+  Dear Marion: You told me not to write, and I have obeyed till now.
+  Don't scold, please! You see I am in Denver. It's business.
+  Honest! A mining deal, just for a flyer. It may mean millions or
+  nothing. I am here for several days, possibly weeks. Won't you
+  _please_ let me run up to see you? Don't say no, Marion. I promise
+  to be good. I have an auto here, and they tell me the roads are
+  O. K. at this season. I'll come away the minute you tell me to. If
+  I can see you only for an hour it will make me very happy.
+
+                                                   Yours always,
+                                                           Robert.
+
+She read it twice, while the color slowly returned to her cheeks. Then
+the letter faded from her sight, and she saw a face that wore a cruel
+smile, and heard a voice that bade her begone. And suddenly a wave of
+resentment, of anger, swept over her. To have been scorned, flouted,
+humiliated by one to whom--And here was a man who wanted her as he
+wanted nothing else in the world, who would toil for her, die for her,
+who would treasure every word and smile she should consent to give
+him, whose one desire was to make her happy. What madness had come
+over her that she--she the Viking's daughter--Her eyes were drawn, she
+knew not how, to the columbines that she had carefully, tenderly
+arranged in a bowl on her dressing table. In a passion she rushed upon
+them, snatched them up dripping, bore them to the open window, and
+flung them with all her strength out upon the lawn. A moment she stood
+looking at them, her hands clutched upon her heaving breast, her whole
+body quivering with the storm that raged within her. Then she whirled
+around, flung herself down at her little writing table, and wrote:
+
+  Dear Robert: Yes, come. MARION.
+
+Her hand trembled now so that she could scarcely address the envelope,
+and seal it. But it was done at last. She rose, and paused a moment to
+collect herself. Her mouth was dry, her forehead was hot under the
+hand that she pressed upon it. Nervously she poured a glass of water
+from the crystal pitcher that stood on a little table by the window,
+and gulped it down. Her eyes, as she did so, fell again upon the
+bouquet of columbines lying forlorn, their tender faces half buried in
+the dry grass. A cry rose to her lips, but she forced it back, and
+with a tightening of her lips, turned and went rapidly out into the
+room where Seth and Claire awaited her.
+
+"What do you think?" she cried, in a voice that sounded strangely
+shrill and unmusical in her ears. "It's from Robert--Robert
+Hillyer--Papa's good friend--and mine. He wants to come up and see
+me--he's in Denver--on business. He wants to come up--he says--just
+for a day or two--do you mind--if I ask him?"
+
+"Of course, dear!" cried Claire, with enthusiasm.
+
+"Sure!" seconded Seth. "Tell him he's very welcome."
+
+"I knew you'd say that!" said Marion excitedly. "So--the letter--it's
+all ready. Can it go out--the stage goes to-morrow, doesn't it?"
+
+"Yes," replied Huntington. "I'll take it down in the morning--before
+you're up."
+
+"Please!"
+
+She stood a moment, smiling at them. Then her eyes wandered aimlessly
+around the room. She must do something quick, or she would go to
+pieces. She saw the piano, and fairly ran to it. Crash! went the
+chords. Rippling and tumbling on one another came the notes under her
+nervous fingers. Out of the jumble of unrelated sounds presently
+emerged a gay and sparkling melody; and then a gayer one; and after
+that a rollicking song from one of the latest musical comedies. There
+followed two of the sauciest, most irresponsible tunes that ever made
+a vaudeville success. She played with abandon, a kind of reckless
+fury, sitting erect, with her head flung back, an insouciant smile
+flickering about her lips, her lithe body swaying with the music. Then
+suddenly, in the midst of a tune, she stopped, arose, faced Seth and
+Claire with flaming cheeks and eyes unnaturally bright.
+
+"Great, Marion!" cried Seth, slapping his thigh. "Go on, please!"
+
+But Claire had seen what Huntington had not. She turned to him
+swiftly, with a quick command, as if she had suddenly remembered
+something.
+
+"I've clean forgot that pie, Seth. Go to the cave and bring me some
+apples. Quick, now!"
+
+He sensed something a little queer in that order, which would have
+been very natural and pleasing at any other time, but he did not stop
+to question. Claire waited until the door had closed behind him, then
+ran to Marion, with anxiety pictured in her face.
+
+"What is it, Marion?" she exclaimed.
+
+"Oh, Claire, Claire!" cried Marion, breaking. "I'm so--so--unhappy!"
+
+Then she flung herself into Claire's arms, weeping without restraint.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+SUNNYSIDES
+
+
+Marion was not alone in her misery; but knowledge of this, had it by
+any chance come to her, would not have eased her heart, though it
+might indeed have hardened it a little against more suffering to
+come.
+
+Toward bedtime of the eighth day after that encounter at the glade of
+the columbines, Philip Haig sat stiffly silent in his armchair,
+staring into the fire. His brow was dark with discontent, his cheeks
+had paled with the slow ebbing of the tide of passion that had swept
+over him. It had begun to rise, though he was not then aware of it, or
+barely aware of it, the day Marion had halted him in the road below
+his ranch house; it had reached its flood as he drove away from her
+and left the bouquet of columbines in her limp hands.
+
+Who was this girl? And why had she come to torture him? To him she now
+appeared as the incarnation of his tragedy. In her the Past, from
+which he had fled to the far corners of the earth, hiding his trail in
+seas and deserts and in stagnant backwaters of humanity, had tracked
+him down at last. And all the grief and bitterness and hatred that he
+had beaten down, or thought he had beaten down, had returned to rend
+and tear him.
+
+Two beings he had loved, and to them he had given, to each in a
+different way, all his heart and soul and mind: his father and--that
+other. She had come to him at his most susceptible age, when, devoted
+only to art, he knew nothing of the world--a green boy, the wise ones
+had called him. She had come to him with all the surprise and wonder
+of a revelation, a coronation, a fulfillment, a golden epiphany. He
+had attributed to her such spiritual perfections as should have
+gone with her beauty and her grace; worshipped her for all that she
+was not and all that he was himself. And she had deceived him,
+exploited him, plundered him,--and laughed at him when by chance, one
+tragic, intolerable night, he found her out. And the next morning,
+as if his cup were not already full, he had received a cablegram,
+in his attic studio in Paris, telling him that his father had killed
+himself in a moment of despair over financial difficulties. So he
+had killed his father with his excessive demands for money to
+squander on 'Tonite. To be sure, he did not know--had had no hint
+from home--had never guessed that his father was in trouble.
+Nevertheless he had killed him--rather, she had killed him. What a
+fool he had been! Never such another fool since God placed man and
+woman together in one world. Cursing himself and her, and in her
+cursing all her sex, he fled--he knew not where. So stunned and
+dazed he was that he never really came to himself, found himself,
+until one day he awoke in Hong Kong.
+
+That was the beginning of the new life, if such it might be called. He
+became a wanderer, an adventurer, seeking always new faces, new
+places, new experiences, trying always to forget, hoping always for a
+blessed knock on the head in some mad undertaking, for a thin knife in
+the back in some wild adventure. But in all his wanderings the one
+kind of adventure that he refused, the one excitement that he
+steadfastly shunned, was the one that, because of his very aloofness,
+and of something that women ever saw in his eyes, was offered to him
+the most freely, in every land beneath the sun.
+
+Slim Jim entered, bringing whisky and hot water. Haig turned his head
+to look at him. Jim never changed, whatever his environment; he was
+always the Orient, the inscrutable East. And now, slipping in so
+stealthily, he seemed to bring with him an atmosphere, an odor, a
+call, and Haig, still looking at Jim, but scarcely seeing him, began
+to murmur lines that intoxicated him:
+
+  "I know not where the white road runs, nor what the blue hills are,
+  But man can have the sun for friend, and for his guide a star;
+  And there's no end of voyaging when once the voice is heard,
+  For the river calls and the road calls, and--"
+
+He stopped and sat suddenly erect.
+
+"Jim!" he cried. "Do you remember the night we took old Kwang's girl
+away from the river rats in Tien-Tsin?"
+
+"Vellee well," answered the Chinaman.
+
+His face was expressionless; he concealed the joy that this mood of
+his master aroused in his thin breast. Jim did not like the Park, and
+only the recollection of one day when he had stood tied to a capstan
+on a pirate junk, with a dozen fiends around him trying to make him
+tell something he did not know, and Haig had suddenly descended upon
+them like the foreign devil he was,--well, Jim took his gods where he
+found them, and from that day Haig had never been able to rid himself
+of this idolater.
+
+"Tien-Tsin! Tien-Tsin!" Haig repeated, lingering covetously on the
+words. "But that was a fight, eh!"
+
+"No likee!" replied Jim.
+
+"No likee!" cried Haig. "Why, you hypocritical young ruffian, you!
+That was one of the happiest nights of your life. You're always trying
+to make people think you're asleep, or timid. I can see, right now,
+that long knife of yours slip under my arm, and catch the big fellow
+in the stomach. He just coughed once, and crumpled up at my feet. In
+the nick of time, too, Jim, and I let the next one have it. The rest
+of them took to their heels, and you with your long pigsticker after
+them. No likee! Jim, you're a moon-faced old liar, and a disgrace to
+your ten thousand and seven ancestors."
+
+Jim's smile was perfectly noncommittal. He was too wily to appear
+eager. Besides, he did not really like fighting, which made all the
+more trouble for somebody when he had to fight. But he was heartily
+sick of this cold and uneventful life in the Park. Better a thousand
+times the foolish adventures, the unnecessary battles, the restless
+wanderings of other days!
+
+"That was a night!" said Haig, flinging himself back in his chair to
+gaze dreamily into the flames, while Jim, like a blue ghost, stole
+noiselessly away. And there, in the glow of the dying fire, bright
+and alluring visions successively took shape: A red-and-yellow temple
+on a hill, to which a thousand steps led up from a lake the color of a
+blue heron's breast; a junk with sails of purple creeping out of a
+morning mist as yellow as saffron; an island with a still lagoon in
+its center, and coconut palms alive with screaming parrots of every
+gorgeous hue; a sandy beach where jabbering natives dragged the
+flotsam of a wrecked steamer out of the breakers; a village on a high
+plateau, where a drum throbbed incessantly, and naked Indian children
+peered out from behind the huts; a skirmish line in khaki crawling up
+to the brow of a shell-swept hill; a dog-team yelping under the long
+lash of a half-breed Aleut, on a frozen river that sparkled in the
+sun; a sweating jungle where two bright spots glowed balefully in the
+gloom.
+
+"God!" groaned Haig, as he sat erect at last, and reached for the
+glass, now cold. He tasted it, and set it back with a wry face.
+
+"Damn Thursby!" he muttered. "Does he think I'm going to stay here
+forever, like a bear in a pit?"
+
+He woke the next morning in an ugly humor, having slept little, and
+then only to dream such dreams as fed his discontent. He berated Jim
+because the biscuits were cold (which was not Jim's fault), and
+because the coffee was hot (which was according to his orders).
+Trivial annoyances, most of them of his own making or imagining,
+multiplied on all sides, fomenting his irritability until, by the time
+he strode out of the cottage, his temper was at white heat. What might
+have happened to the patient, devoted men about the stable and
+corrals is not difficult of conjecture, but they were saved by
+Sunnysides. Almost the first object that caught Haig's eye was the
+yellow outlaw gleaming in the morning sunlight.
+
+"Ah!" he exclaimed.
+
+His inner turmoil of these last few days had banished all thought of
+the stallion of the San Luis. But now, his eyes gleamed as he
+quickened his steps toward the stable.
+
+Farrish and Pete were at work among the stalls; Bill stood guard over
+Sunnysides; and the fourth man, Curly, was mending a saddle in the
+harness-room.
+
+"Farrish!" Haig called out, striding into the stable. "We'll tackle
+the yellow fellow this morning."
+
+Farrish and Pete turned, and looked at him curiously.
+
+"All right!" answered Farrish; and then added doubtfully: "Now?"
+
+"Yes. At once."
+
+Farrish, in a manner that showed a certain reluctance, put up the
+currycomb with which he had been grooming the sorrels, and started
+toward the rear door. But Pete stood still.
+
+"You too, Pete!" said Haig, impatiently.
+
+"I think you better not--to-day," answered the Indian, in his slow
+way.
+
+"Why?" snapped Haig.
+
+Pete had seen the expression on Haig's face, and did not like it. But
+he hesitated to utter what was in his mind.
+
+"Why?" repeated Haig.
+
+"I think you better wait," was all that Pete could say.
+
+"Hell!" cried Haig. "Get your lariat! And be quick about it!"
+
+He had read Pete's thought; his ill-humor had evidently shown itself
+in his face; but the caution only whetted his purpose. Throwing off
+his coat as he went, he passed through the rear door of the barn, and
+climbed into the outlaw's corral, followed by Farrish, Curly, and
+Pete.
+
+Sunnysides received them with suspicion. His head was high, his
+nostrils were dilated, his tail swished slowly, like a tiger's. One
+forefoot was raised a little, resting on the toe, and the muscles of
+his shoulders quivered under the glossy hide. He had fully recovered
+from the effects of his rough treatment on the road, and his skin
+shone with a satin-like luster in the morning sun.
+
+There was a moment's pause, while Haig and the others looked at the
+horse, and he at them.
+
+"Now then, Farrish! Pete!" commanded Haig.
+
+And the battle began. Farrish and Pete turn by turn flung their
+lariats at the horse's head and feet, but time after time he dodged,
+and ducked, and capered away from the whirling noose, or wriggled out
+of the coil as it tightened around him.
+
+"He's greased lightning!" ejaculated Bill, from his perch on the
+fence.
+
+"He's hell, that's what he is!" retorted Curly, from a corner of the
+corral.
+
+Farrish and Pete went silently on with their work. They knew that
+eventually, dance and squirm as he might, the horse would be caught in
+one or the other of the relentless loops. And so it proved. While
+Sunnysides was side-stepping a throw by Farrish, Pete's rope slipped
+snakily over his head, and tightened around the arched neck. With an
+artful lunge toward the Indian, and a lowering of his head, the horse
+struggled to throw off the coil. But it held.
+
+Then followed a mad performance. The horse was over all the corral at
+once, it seemed: rearing, plunging, leaping, tossing his head,
+crashing into the fence with such fury that it barely stood up under
+his onslaughts. Bill was knocked off the fence backward on to his
+head; Curly, crowded into his corner, barely avoided a vicious kick;
+and Haig's temper was not improved by the narrow escape he had from
+being crushed against a post.
+
+"Bill!" he yelled. "Get a rope!"
+
+The man ran into the barn, returned with a lariat, and joined the
+fray. Plainly chagrined, though unhurt by his fall, Bill took long
+chances to even up the score; and under the very hoofs of the
+infuriated animal, he made a throw that brought Sunnysides sprawling
+on the ground, his forefeet caught in Bill's noose. It was the work of
+a few seconds then for Farrish to secure the hind feet also; and the
+horse lay prostrate, panting and half-choked, but defiant still.
+
+Giving him no time to recover, and no more breath than he actually
+required, Haig and Curly forced the bit of a bridle into the outlaw's
+foaming mouth. Then the noose on his hind feet was cautiously removed,
+one forefoot was freed, and the horse was allowed to rise. The next
+proceeding appeared to be resented by Sunnysides even more than what
+he had already been subjected to. While Farrish and Pete held his
+head, Haig approached him cautiously with a saddle, and dropped it on
+his back. There was a lightning-like motion, and the saddle was tossed
+a dozen feet away, while the two men at the horse's head were jerked
+almost off their feet. Again and again the saddle was laid on his
+back, to remain there barely an instant. But at the fifth attempt, to
+the astonishment of all, Sunnysides stood still, as if, being an
+equine Napoleon, he had changed his plan of battle in the face of the
+enemy. Without further resistance, he permitted the saddle to be
+adjusted and cinched, permitted the men to lead him out of the corral
+into the larger one adjoining it, and permitted Haig to mount him and
+take the bridle reins in his hand.
+
+"I'll be damned!" said Curly. "You'd think--"
+
+"Shut up!" cried Farrish. "That's a bluff."
+
+"Now then!" ordered Haig, pointing to the rope that still held one
+forefoot.
+
+The rope was removed.
+
+"The other!"
+
+Pete and Farrish slipped off the lariat that remained noosed around
+the outlaw's neck, and stepped back.
+
+For some seconds there was no sound, no motion, no sign of any design
+on the part of Sunnysides. Then, with the swiftness and surprise of a
+flash of powder in the dark, a shocking thing occurred. Without a
+preliminary movement, either of lunging or bucking or leaping to one
+side, or any of the expected tactics, Sunnysides, with incredible
+suddenness, reared straight up into the air, threw himself over, and
+fell on his back, pinning Haig to the ground beneath him.
+
+Before any of the men could move, the horse rolled over sprawling,
+scrambled to his feet, and charged at the fence. There was a crash
+and the sound of splintering wood. The top plank fell, broken in two
+jagged pieces, and the horse's forefeet were over the second plank.
+But before he could leap again, Curley had caught the bridle rein, and
+swung the outlaw's head around, holding him there until Bill had
+leaned over the broken fence and roped the forelegs once more. After a
+moment of furious struggle, Sunnysides appeared to realize that it was
+useless; and thus the two men held him, with his forefeet still
+hanging outside the fence, while they turned their eyes toward Haig.
+
+Farrish and the Indian knelt at his side. He lay quite still,
+unconscious, and for a moment they thought him dead. Pete put his head
+down on Haig's breast, and listened. Then he rose to his feet.
+
+"Whisky!" he muttered, and ran toward the stable.
+
+In two minutes he was back, bearing a flask, which he uncorked as he
+ran. Forcing the mouth of it between Haig's lips, he let the scorching
+liquor trickle down the throat until the flask was half emptied. Then
+he poured some of the whisky in the palm of his hand, and rubbed it on
+Haig's face and bared breast and wrists, while Farrish, in his turn,
+ran to the stable and brought a lap robe, which he folded and placed
+under Haig's head.
+
+They waited helplessly, without speech. At the fence, Bill and Curley
+clung to their ropes. Sunnysides, his forefeet still projecting over
+the plank, and the saddle hanging lopsided from his back, had his head
+drawn back so far that he could see the group in the middle of the
+corral. His eyes were bloodshot, foam dripped from his mouth, the
+breath came whistling through his half-shut windpipe.
+
+But in the cottonwoods the birds sang undisturbed, and the pines far
+up the hill droned their old tune unchanged. From the ranch house came
+the rattle of tin pans, and the voice of the cook singing a song of
+the round-up.
+
+After a long time, Haig stirred. A moan came with the first deep
+breath; his eyes opened, staring up at the two faces above him; his
+lips moved, but at first no sound came from them. Pete leaned closer,
+and listened.
+
+"Did--he--get--away?" came in a whisper.
+
+"No," answered Pete. "He caught."
+
+A smile flickered on Haig's lips, and went out; and at the same time a
+tiny trickle of blood oozed out, and ran down through the dust on the
+white cheek. Pete and Farrish looked at each other; and when they
+turned to Haig again, his eyes were closed, and the pallor of his face
+had deepened to a bluish, ashen hue.
+
+Pete bent quickly to put his ear again to Haig's breast.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+HILLYER'S DILEMMA
+
+
+Hillyer's loyal heart was near to bursting with joy. In all the days
+of his eager courtship Marion had never seemed so close to him, so
+fairly within his grasp, as now. She had welcomed him with totally
+unexpected warmth, considering the many times she had rejected him,
+and considering, too, the letter he had received from her on her
+departure. Absence, he thought, had advanced his cause for him. A
+dozen times he was on the point of boldly violating the six months'
+embargo she had placed upon his pleadings; but as often as the fervent
+words rose to his lips fear froze them there, and he was silent.
+
+As for Marion, she was for the moment absorbed in a little plan that
+was not for Robert's knowledge. She was intent upon meeting Philip in
+Robert's company; she wanted to bow to him, and smile, and let him see
+that there was one man at least who prized her, if he did not. But the
+imp of perversity seemed to have come to abide permanently in the
+Park. Though Marion, in the first two days of Robert's visit, guided
+him, in the big automobile, everywhere except beyond the Ridge and to
+the glade of the columbines, she had never a glimpse of Philip. All
+this maddened her; and if Robert had but spoken, there were times
+when--But Robert did not speak.
+
+Near noon of the third day they met Smythe in the main valley road a
+mile or so below the post-office. At sight of him bobbing along toward
+them, almost lost between his horse and his sombrero, Marion's first
+impulse was to speed past him without stopping. She was not sure she
+could trust his discretion; for she had told Robert nothing about
+Philip Haig. But she did not wish to offend the faithful Smythe; and
+so, on second thought, she hurriedly acquainted Robert with the
+identity of the approaching figure, and warned him to control his
+inevitable mirth.
+
+"He is funny," she said, laughing in spite of herself, "but he can't
+help that. He's been very good to me, in his way."
+
+In the meantime Smythe's horse was deciding the matter on his own
+account. This was the first automobile the pony had ever seen, and he
+made up his mind promptly that he did not like it. He reared and
+bucked, bolting first to one side and the other of the road, and
+refused to consider Smythe's well-worded assurance that wise horses
+were really fond of automobiles, which were taking a great deal of
+work off their shoulders.
+
+Hillyer stopped the machine, and cut off the power. But the pony's
+suspicions had been thoroughly aroused, and the sudden silence seemed
+to him more portentous than even the noise of the motor. Smythe
+thereupon had his work cut out for him, but he would not compromise
+either by dismounting, or by turning and riding away. Slowly and
+patiently he urged the frightened pony toward the automobile until,
+after many setbacks and panics, he had brought him near enough for
+conversation.
+
+"There now, Peanuts!" he said to the prancing animal. "You see you
+were quite mistaken." Then, to Hillyer and Marion: "He's a little like
+myself. He doesn't really believe in ghosts, but he's dreadfully
+afraid of them."
+
+"I didn't know you were such an accomplished horseman," said Marion.
+
+"Didn't you? Well, you see--"
+
+At that instant the pony suffered a fresh access of alarm. He bounded
+suddenly sideways, and at the same time ducked as if he purposed to
+stand on his head, though what good that would have done only he knew.
+The movement threw Smythe over the pony's head, and flat on his back
+in the dust; and in a twinkling Peanuts was dashing up the road, with
+his tail in the air, and the stirrups flapping at his sides.
+
+For some seconds Smythe lay half-stunned; but before Marion and
+Hillyer, leaping from the automobile, were able to reach him, he sat
+up, and began to straighten out his crushed sombrero, eyeing it
+critically. He was covered with dust, and one end of his white collar,
+torn from the button, stuck out above his coat. But his aplomb was
+perfect.
+
+"As I was saying, when interrupted," he began, continuing to minister
+to the sombrero, "you see I am an accomplished horseman."
+
+Marion and Hillyer broke out in uncontrollable laughter. Then Hillyer
+hastened to assist Smythe to rise.
+
+"Not hurt, I hope?" said Robert.
+
+"Objectively, no. Subjectively, yes. Sartorially, a wreck."
+
+They laughed now without restraint, which seemed to please Smythe
+immensely. He proceeded to tuck the end of the torn collar back into
+its place, where it refused to stay; to brush his clothes; to adjust
+the abused sombrero in exactly the long-studied angle on his head.
+
+"I hope you'll forgive us for laughing," said Marion, "but--"
+
+"Say no more about it, please!" protested Smythe. "I'd rather make you
+laugh than weep--assuming that anybody would weep for me."
+
+"Oh, I'd have felt very badly if you'd been hurt," Marion assured him.
+"And you might have been, too."
+
+"No, a cropper like that's nothing. Peanuts isn't--" He paused just a
+second to look into Marion's eyes with an expression that arrested her
+attention sharply. "Peanuts isn't Sunnysides."
+
+"Sunnysides?" she cried out unguardedly.
+
+Smythe's eyes warned her, as he waited to give her time for
+self-control. He did not know how far Hillyer was in her confidence.
+
+"Is there news--about--Sunnysides?" she faltered, struggling
+desperately with herself.
+
+"Yes," he answered. Then he continued slowly, in as light a manner as
+possible, the while he held her with a concentrated gaze: "I'd been
+down the valley as far as the mouth of the canyon. Coming back, about
+two miles below where Haig's road joins this, I saw the sorrels in a
+cloud of dust. 'Hello!' I said. 'Something's up, or the sorrels
+wouldn't be driven like that.' In a minute or two I made out Bill
+Craven, one of Haig's men, leaning forward in the seat of a road
+wagon, and laying on the whip. 'If Haig saw that!' I thought. And so
+I--"
+
+"Go on, please!" said Marion shrilly.
+
+But Smythe was purposely deliberate; for he saw Hillyer looking at her
+curiously.
+
+"I wasn't going to let anybody abuse his horses if I could prevent it.
+Besides, how did I know but Craven was stealing the sorrels? I threw
+my pony straight across the road. Craven reined the sorrels up on
+their hind legs, almost on top of me.
+
+"'What in hell?' he yelled.
+
+"'That's what I want to know,' I answered.
+
+"'Can't you see I'm in a hurry, damn you?' he shouted angrily.
+
+"'That's exactly what I do see,' I replied. 'But Haig never whips
+those horses.'
+
+"'That's none of your business, and Haig ain't carin' much now,' he
+fired back at me. 'Get out o' my way, or I'll--'
+
+"'Now just keep cool!' I told him. 'What's the trouble?'
+
+"Craven snorted, but he told me, as the quickest way out of it. Haig
+had been hurt--trying to ride Sunnysides. He's--"
+
+"Hurt? How?" asked Marion; and Smythe was relieved to detect a new
+steadiness in her voice. She had passed the danger point.
+
+"The horse went over backwards, pinning him to the ground, with the
+saddle horn in his stomach. Craven's gone for the doctor."
+
+She gave him one long, searching look, as if to pluck out anything he
+might have been hiding from her. Then she turned swiftly toward the
+automobile.
+
+"Come, Robert! Quick!" she commanded.
+
+She climbed quickly into the machine, followed by Hillyer, who was
+puzzled and alarmed by what he had seen in Marion's face.
+
+"You too, Mr. Smythe. Hurry!" cried Marion.
+
+"But my horse?" objected Smythe.
+
+"He'll run home," answered Marion impatiently. "Come! We may need
+you."
+
+Smythe obeyed, and jumped into the tonneau, while Robert cranked up
+and threw in the clutch.
+
+"Fast!" cried Marion.
+
+Hillyer glanced at her. She was very white; her lips were pressed
+together, her eyes were fixed on the road ahead. The machine lurched
+under them.
+
+"Faster!" urged Marion, in another minute.
+
+The machine, with a kind of shudder, responded to Hillyer's hand, and
+shot out with fresh speed.
+
+Another brief silence.
+
+"The cut-out!" she ordered.
+
+Hillyer bent to the mechanism, and the engine, with the muffler off,
+roared and shrieked as it took the smooth white road, with every bar
+and rivet throbbing under the pressure. Only then did Marion turn, and
+motion to Smythe. He leaned forward, clinging to the back of her
+seat.
+
+"The doctor?" she shouted in his ear.
+
+"Craven had started for Tellurium," he yelled back. "Said he'd kill
+the sorrels. I told him there was a doctor at Lake Cobalt--Doctor
+Norris of Omaha--just arrived, with his family. 'You're not such a
+fool after all,' said Craven. (I'll talk with him about that later.)
+'Thanks!' I said, and pulled my horse out of the way. 'That saves two
+days.' He gave the horses the whip again, and I started for
+Huntington's to tell you--Watch out! There's the turn!" he shouted in
+Hillyer's ear.
+
+The wheels tore up the sand as the machine, with the power off but
+still going at more than half-speed under its momentum, skidded and
+scraped around the turn into Haig's road.
+
+"Now!" cried Marion.
+
+Again the automobile shivered, and plunged, and went clamoring like a
+mad thing up the little valley, the hills echoing back its roar. The
+white road leaped up at them, gulping them in. A red steer, astray
+from some pasture, crossed the road far ahead of them, and Marion
+closed her eyes as the machine, with a sickening swerve, missed it by
+inches. The next instant she was pointing to the group of buildings
+squatting under the hill; and then she was out of the automobile, and
+running to Farrish at the door of the barn. His face confirmed her
+worst fears.
+
+"Where is he?" she asked, with a swift look around.
+
+He pointed toward the larger of the two cottages. With Hillyer and
+Smythe silently following, she ran to the cottage, and through the
+open door. There she found herself in a bare, uncarpeted room,
+furnished only with two chairs and a table. On the table lay a faded
+and battered gray hat. For an instant her gaze rested on it, and a
+lump rose in her throat. But she resolutely turned away, tightening
+her lips.
+
+There were two inner doors, one of which, ajar, revealed a glimpse of
+brightly polished pans hanging on the wall. The other door was closed.
+After an instant of hesitation, she walked straight toward it.
+
+"Marion!" called Hillyer warningly.
+
+She did not heed him, but turned the knob, softly opened the door, and
+with Robert and Smythe at her heels, stepped into a dimly lighted room
+where the aroma of a pine log blazing in the fireplace mingled with
+the pungent odor of ammonia. Smythe was quick to observe, over
+Marion's shoulder, that the room was a sort of library and bedroom
+combined, carpeted in dark red, the walls papered in red also, and the
+windows curtained with heavy tapestry silk of the same rich hue. There
+were low bookcases on two sides of the room, with pictures above them;
+several marble statuettes on the bookcases; and a little jade Buddha
+beside a two-foot bronze god of terrifying aspect on the mantelpiece.
+In the middle of the apartment stood a solid library table, of which
+the cover was a curious strip of faded yellow silk embroidered with a
+dragon in green, a fragment of an old Chinese banner.
+
+At the left of the door, its head against the wall, was a brass bed in
+which a figure moved restlessly under the covers. Near the head of the
+bed, on the side nearest the door, stood the Indian, his stolid,
+bronzed face turned toward Marion as she entered. On the other side,
+holding one of Haig's hands, knelt Slim Jim in his blue silks, his
+yellowish face as expressionless as Pete's, except for an alert and
+questioning look in his eyes. There was no sound except the low
+crackling of the fire, and the rasp of heavy breathing, with sharp
+catches in it that spoke eloquently of pain.
+
+Marion stepped to Pete's side, and looked down into the face of Philip
+Haig. In the dim light it had the pallor of death, with the parted
+lips and the staring eyes of the dead, or the dying. But he breathed;
+and presently her steady, searching, pitying gaze brought his eyes to
+meet her own, and she saw that they were living eyes, though clouded
+and darkened with agony. Almost was she on her knees, weeping over
+him, regardless of those in the doorway watching her. And it was not
+their presence so much as the necessity for action that restrained and
+steadied her. She did not even speak his name; but after her one long
+look, she turned away, and with every outward sign of calm, removed
+her gloves and hat and coat, and placed them on a chair in a corner of
+the room. Then she beckoned to Pete, who followed her, with Smythe and
+Hillyer, into the bare outer room.
+
+"Close the door, please!" she commanded quietly.
+
+Smythe closed it.
+
+"Where is he hurt?" she asked the Indian.
+
+"Here." He laid a hand on his stomach.
+
+"Was he unconscious?"
+
+"Yes. Long time."
+
+"How long has he been like that--awake?"
+
+"Maybe two hours."
+
+"What have you done? What have you given him?"
+
+"Whisky."
+
+"Nothing else?"
+
+"Water. Ammonia on face and breast."
+
+"Was there blood?"
+
+"Yes. From mouth."
+
+She had another struggle then, and the tears started in spite of all
+that she could do. But she conquered them.
+
+"Much blood?"
+
+"No. Little, only at first."
+
+"Thank you, Pete." Then, turning to Hillyer: "I want you, Robert,
+please, to drive home, and tell Mrs. Huntington to make up a bundle of
+the things I shall need. Wait! A pencil and a bit of paper, please."
+
+For a moment he did not move to comply.
+
+"What are you going to do, Marion?" he asked, his voice shaking
+slightly with the effort of speaking calmly.
+
+"I'm going to nurse him," she replied, meeting his look without
+flinching.
+
+"But, Marion! I don't--"
+
+"Pencil and paper, Robert!" she said firmly.
+
+He tore a leaf from a notebook, and gave it to her with his pencil.
+
+"Thank you," she said; and seated herself at the table to write.
+
+But there was the dilapidated hat again--so stained and soiled, a
+crumpled, tragic, intimate thing--arresting her. How it had filled her
+dreams! How she had laughed at it, fondly, tenderly, as a mother
+smiles at the battered school hat of her boy! Once, she had fancied it
+hanging on the pink wall in her room, a trophy, with a ribbon tied
+around its sweated band. And now she wanted to grab it up, and hug it
+to her breast. But she only lifted it gently, and placed it a little
+farther away, on the other side of the table. Then she made her
+notes.
+
+"There, Robert!" she said, rising, and handing the list to him.
+"Claire will know where to find them."
+
+He took the paper mechanically, his eyes fixed on Marion.
+
+"Will you come down, to the car for a moment?" he asked.
+
+She saw the look, and softened under it. But she could not answer his
+questions then.
+
+"No," she said. "Later, if you wish it."
+
+For a moment he hesitated. But he could say no more in the presence of
+Smythe and Pete, though they were talking together at the other side
+of the room. So he moved slowly away, but was suddenly stopped by a
+cry from Marion.
+
+"Oh! Oh!" she exclaimed. "Why didn't somebody--why didn't I think of
+it before? The car? Run, Robert! Drive down the road toward the lake.
+You'll overtake the sorrels--or meet them. Bring the doctor in the
+car. Fast, please!"
+
+Hillyer, without another word, ran and leaped into the automobile, and
+was soon bringing the echoes out of the hills again. He sank low in
+the seat, and fixed his eyes on the road that stretched out blinding
+white in the sunlight.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+COALS OF FIRE
+
+
+Seth was oiling a pair of boots on the veranda, while Claire talked to
+him about Hillyer, who had pleased her immeasurably by his devotion to
+Marion, and even more, of course, by his generous compliments to
+herself. She was delicately calling Seth's attention to the pleasure,
+the profits, and the sanctity of politeness, when she caught sight of
+Hillyer's automobile emerging slowly and silently from the trees that
+concealed the road at a little distance from the corrals.
+
+"There he is now!" she exclaimed. And then, an instant later: "Why,
+he's alone!"
+
+She stood up excitedly, and Seth also, dropping a half-oiled boot on
+the floor.
+
+"What the devil?" ejaculated Huntington.
+
+So they stood, waiting and wondering, while Hillyer alighted from the
+automobile, and walked, with exasperating slowness--with reluctance,
+if they had but known it--up the graveled path among the flower beds.
+Something in the look of him caused Claire to clutch a post of the
+veranda for support.
+
+"Where's Marion?" she cried.
+
+"She's all right," replied Hillyer, as he mounted the steps. "That is,
+nothing has happened to her. But there's been an accident." He
+hesitated. "Who is this Philip Haig?"
+
+"Haig? What about Haig?" demanded Huntington.
+
+"He's been hurt. A horse threw him."
+
+"Sunnysides?" cried Huntington excitedly.
+
+"I believe so."
+
+"He will, will he?" chuckled Huntington. "That serves--"
+
+"But Marion?" interrupted Claire. "What about Marion?"
+
+Hillyer looked doubtfully from one to the other, in much embarrassment.
+What did they know? Or were they as ignorant as he of the situation
+that had been revealed to him as if by the flash of a thunderbolt? And
+how much should he disclose to them, in loyalty to Marion? But in his
+pocket was Marion's list.
+
+"She's there--with him," he said at length.
+
+"There? Where?" thundered Huntington.
+
+"At his house."
+
+They stood stock-still, staring at him.
+
+"She wishes Mrs. Huntington to make up a bundle of these things for me
+to take to her."
+
+He handed the list to Claire, who took it, and held it at arm's
+length, regarding it curiously, as if she had not understood.
+
+"You mean that--" she began, and stopped.
+
+"She says she's going to nurse him."
+
+"She's going to--what?" Claire's voice rose almost to a shriek.
+
+"Nurse him."
+
+"And you've left her there with that--"
+
+Huntington was going to say "ruffian," but was checked by a sudden
+recollection, as well as by the look that Hillyer flashed at him. For
+a moment the two men faced each other, the one with anger boiling up
+inside of him, the other struggling to put down the resentment aroused
+by Huntington's belligerent tone. Claire crushed the slip of paper in
+her hand, and watched them fearfully.
+
+"I judge from your manner," said Hillyer at length, when he had
+controlled himself, "that you dislike her being there as much as I do.
+But as I am all in the dark, I'll be greatly obliged to you if you
+will answer my question. Who is Philip Haig?"
+
+"That's what I'd like to know!" blurted out Huntington.
+
+Hillyer made a gesture of impatience.
+
+"But he's your neighbor," he said curtly.
+
+"And that's about all I know of him," Huntington replied, "except that
+we ought to have run him out of the Park long ago, and will do it yet,
+so help me God!"
+
+"Why?" asked Hillyer shortly.
+
+Then, as clearly as he could in his rage, Seth gave Hillyer a brief
+account of the events of the four years that Haig had been in the
+Park,--an account that satisfied Hillyer as little as it had satisfied
+Marion. He had meant, in the beginning, to ask how Marion had come to
+know Haig, and if they had been much together; but he now surmised
+that Huntington and his wife were as ignorant as himself of that
+acquaintanceship, or friendship, or whatever it was that could have
+made possible the astounding emotions he had seen on Marion's face.
+Hillyer's situation was difficult. If Marion had a secret he must
+guard it for her, whatever it might cost him. Yet now he needed help,
+and no one could help him but Huntington and his wife. And at the
+first words on the subject, Huntington had (more in the tone of his
+speech than the matter) shown him that little help could be expected
+in that quarter. Last of all, and not to be forgotten, he was the
+Huntingtons' guest.
+
+"How bad's he hurt?" asked Huntington.
+
+Hillyer shook his head dubiously.
+
+"It's impossible to say just yet. Doctor Norris fears that the
+pancreas is ruptured. In that case--" He shrugged his shoulders. "At
+any rate, the pancreas and the stomach are temporarily paralyzed by
+the blow of the saddle horn--the horse seems to have gone over
+backward on him. If he gets over the shock there's still the danger of
+inflammation. There ought to be ice packs. Cold water will have to do.
+They must be changed every minute. Doctor Norris told me--" He paused
+to look intently at Claire--"Doctor Norris told me that nothing but
+the most careful nursing can save him."
+
+"Let the Chinaman do it!" Huntington blurted out.
+
+Hillyer shook his head.
+
+"No. Norris says he will not trust him. You see, Haig's pleading for
+water must be denied. He can command the Chinaman, and that--Besides,
+all this is not to the point. Marion has made up her mind, and I
+assure you--Please get the things she asks for, Mrs. Huntington."
+
+"You don't mean you're going to take them!" shouted Huntington.
+
+"Certainly. She's asked for them."
+
+"And you're going to let her stay there--with him?"
+
+Hillyer smiled. Having abandoned all hope of assistance from
+Huntington, he was thinking of other measures, and was scarcely as
+attentive as he might have been to the increasing truculence of his
+host.
+
+"What would you do?" he asked quietly.
+
+"I'd bring her away!"
+
+"Would you care to go and try it?"
+
+This was a keener thrust than Hillyer had any intention of delivering,
+provoked though he was by Huntington's behavior; for Seth had not
+included in his narrative any reference to the affair at the
+post-office, or to Haig's visit to his house. Huntington's face became
+purple; and if he had been apoplectic in disposition he would surely
+have suffered a seizure in that moment of choking rage.
+
+"I'll go there right enough!" he bellowed. "I'll go, when I get ready.
+I'll go when he's able to stand up and take what's coming to him. As
+for her--you can take her things, and her trunks too, while you're
+about it."
+
+Hillyer gazed at him dumbfounded for just a breath of time. Then his
+own face flamed.
+
+"Quite right, Mr. Huntington!" he said, taking a step toward him. "I
+haven't seen much of Haig, but from what I've seen of you, I think his
+house can be no worse place for Miss Gaylord than yours. What's more,
+you're an--" He caught himself, whirled on his heel, and addressed
+Claire. "May I ask you, please, to pack Marion's trunks. I'll attend
+to mine."
+
+Claire had stood quite silent, with her blue eyes opening wider and
+wider, for the moment helpless, but trusting more to Hillyer's
+resources of diplomacy than to her husband's self-control. Now her
+face crimsoned with mortification, and she stood up with all the
+inches of her five foot two.
+
+"You'll do no such thing!" she cried, and one little heel came down on
+the floor with a jolt. "The idea! The very idea! Oh!"
+
+For a moment she stood poised, like a butterfly in a rage, if one can
+imagine it; then she tripped straight to Huntington, clasped the
+lapels of his coat, and drew herself up on tiptoes, trying to meet his
+eyes.
+
+"Aren't you ashamed of yourself?" she cried.
+
+"No, I'm not!" he growled.
+
+But he was, or at least was dimly conscious of his egregious
+misbehavior; for he looked neither at Hillyer nor his wife, and was
+red now where he had been purple.
+
+"But you are, though!" She turned her face toward Hillyer, without
+loosing her hold on Seth's coat. "Don't you mind him, Mr. Hillyer!
+He's just a big bear. And Haig has been a trial to us. Marion's my
+guest, and--" She looked up into Seth's beard again--"If you think
+you're going to send her away like this--"
+
+She stopped short, as on a sudden thought, and then, with a giggle,
+buried her face in his flannel shirt. And the next thing, as
+unexpected as her blue-eyed rage, she dropped her hands from his coat,
+stooped to catch up the hem of her skirt between thumb and forefinger
+of each hand, and began to pirouette around the room.
+
+"Oh, ho!" she exclaimed, laughing triumphantly, her little body
+swaying as she tripped, with low curtsies to Seth and Hillyer, who for
+the moment forget their animosity in wonder at this feminine
+diversion. "Beautiful! Gorgeous! Oh, splendid!"
+
+She stopped, at length, in front of Seth, dropped to one knee, bowed
+till her golden head almost touched the floor, and rose again to stand
+with her hands on her hips, her arms akimbo, her face flushed with
+excitement.
+
+"Seth Huntington!" she cried ecstatically. "Do you know what we're
+going to do?"
+
+He merely stared.
+
+"We're going to heap coals of fire on his head."
+
+"What do you mean?" demanded Huntington uneasily.
+
+"Marion's going to nurse Haig. There's no way any of us can stop her.
+She's our cousin and guest, and we've got to show it. If they want to
+talk, we'll give them something to talk about. _I'll go and nurse Haig
+too!_"
+
+Dead silence.
+
+"Ah!" cried Hillyer.
+
+"You'll not!" roared Huntington.
+
+"Watch me!" retorted Claire, turning swiftly, and running toward her
+bedroom. But halfway there she stopped. "No, don't watch me! You just
+go and look after the cattle. Leave this Mr. Haig to us, and he'll be
+the best friend you ever had before Marion and I get through with
+him."
+
+Hillyer, recovering from his amazement, stepped smiling to where she
+stood, and reached both his hands to her.
+
+"Mrs. Huntington," he said warmly. "You're a peach!"
+
+She laughed gaily, and put both her tiny hands in his, for just an
+instant.
+
+This was the last straw. Seth snorted like a baited animal, whirled
+around, bolted from the house, and ran blindly to the barn.
+
+"Saddle Nigger!" he yelled to Williams, who obeyed with stumbling
+alacrity, while Huntington strode up and down before the door.
+
+From the window of the ranch house Claire and Hillyer, silent, watched
+him until he had flung himself into the saddle, dug the spurs into the
+flanks of his favorite and now astonished black horse, and disappeared
+up the hill.
+
+"Where's he going?" asked Hillyer, suspicious that Huntington meant
+mischief.
+
+Claire drew back from the window with a sigh of relief.
+
+"He's going to--" She laughed softly, but with just a little tremor in
+her voice--"He's going to--look after the cattle."
+
+Hillyer saw that her blue eyes were moist.
+
+"He's the best man in the world, and--I love him," she said, looking
+at Hillyer with a soft appeal. "You believe that, don't you?"
+
+"Indeed I do, Mrs. Huntington," Hillyer answered heartily.
+
+"Then you must forgive him; he has such a temper!"
+
+"I'm sorry we had any misunderstanding," Hillyer was able to say
+sincerely. "I'll talk it over with him--later."
+
+"Please!" urged Claire.
+
+"But I must go now. Those things for Marion, please."
+
+"I'll have them ready in a minute. And I've only to slip on another
+dress, and--"
+
+"But you don't mean--You're not going?"
+
+"Of course I am!" she answered, with a look of surprise.
+
+"I think you'd better not," he said quietly.
+
+"But why?"
+
+"Now think a minute, Mrs. Huntington. Your husband objects to your
+going. It will not only anger him more, but it will hurt him. Isn't
+that so?"
+
+"Yes," she admitted reluctantly.
+
+Her coals of fire had kindled her imagination. Such a romantic idea!
+There would be such talk, such a sensation!
+
+"It would be another matter if there were anything you could do,"
+Hillyer went on. "But there isn't. And I know very well that Marion
+would send you back if you did go."
+
+That was true enough, on reflection; but it was a disappointment!
+
+"But Marion! There alone!" she said, making her last stand.
+
+"I shall be there," replied Hillyer. "The Chinaman's going to fix a
+bed for me. I'll look after Marion."
+
+So she yielded, and was glad of it when she had time to think it over.
+She gave Hillyer the bundle for Marion, and watched him go, waving a
+good-by from the veranda. Then she hastened to the kitchen to make
+apple dumplings for supper. If there was one thing that could always
+be counted on to soothe Seth it was apple dumplings.
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+Meanwhile it was indeed a black day for Huntington. Fate was against
+him. Tearing himself, mangled in spirit, out of one trap, he rode
+blindly into another. Far up in the hills, riding savagely, he knew
+not where, nor cared, vowing dark vengeance on Haig, his attention was
+drawn at last by the weird and ominous bellowing of cattle. Following
+the sound, he came to a little hollow where a hundred or more cattle
+were gathered, like the rapt spectators in an amphitheater, around two
+bulls engaged in mortal combat. One, as Seth quickly saw, was a red
+Hereford, his best thoroughbred; the other, a black Angus, and even
+more valuable, was Haig's. The red bull, bleeding from many wounds,
+was plainly being worsted in the encounter. With a roar of rage,
+Huntington drew his revolver, urged his unwilling horse down into the
+arena where the turf was torn up for many yards around the combatants,
+circled about until he could take sure aim, and emptied every chamber
+of the gun into the head and neck of the Angus. The bull sank to the
+ground, head first, in a lumbering mass that kicked once or twice,
+shivered, and lay still.
+
+But the Hereford, red-eyed with blood and fury, turned on Huntington,
+and drove him, barely escaping being gored, into the thick timber. In
+a place of safety Huntington jerked his horse around, and sat limp in
+the saddle, staring down at the scene of his final humiliation.
+
+"That's it! That's it!" he bellowed. "Even my own bull turns on me.
+Haw! Haw!" His hollow, hoarse, and unmirthful laughter echoed among
+the pines. "Great joke! Haig will like that. And the rest of them.
+Hell!"
+
+But Haig! And the Angus! Well, there'd got to be a show-down anyhow
+pretty soon. He dismounted, and seated himself on a fallen tree trunk,
+and gave himself up to reflections upon which it is only the most
+obvious kindness and discretion to draw the curtain.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW
+
+
+The days dragged by under the burdens of doubt and torture, and out of
+the Valley of the Shadow came Philip Haig, with some new and
+disquieting thoughts to occupy him in his convalescence. Toiling up
+out of the darkness, where foul fiends seemed to have torn and mangled
+his body with their fiery claws, his fingers were still warm from the
+pressure of a soft, guiding hand; there was a haunting memory of
+kisses on his forehead, of a cheek laid close to his; and he could
+still hear the gentle but commanding voice that told him to be
+patient--to be still--that life was coming back to him.
+
+Life! As if he cared for life! Had he not spent years on years in
+seeking what just now had been in his very grasp, only to be withdrawn
+by two caressing hands? And Doctor Morris, on the day of his final
+visit, had left him no possibility of misunderstanding.
+
+"Miss Gaylord has saved your life," he said. "I could do little. It
+was her nursing that pulled you through."
+
+He wanted much to tell the doctor just how much value he placed on
+that life. But to what purpose? Doctors lived in their own peculiar
+atmosphere of conceit and self-deception, crowing like a hen over a
+new-laid egg whenever they chanced to bring back a soul to the
+miseries from which it had struggled to escape. It would be a waste of
+words, for Norris would never understand. Would Marion? Cold terror
+seized him at the thought of the coming, the inevitable scene with
+her. She, he realized vaguely, was different from--from all the others
+he had ever seen and looked down upon from his safe heights of cynical
+hatred and contempt. She was not selfish or mercenary--not consciously
+selfish or mercenary. And she was not vile. But she was all the more
+dangerous because her heart was pure. She was too high-bred, too fine,
+to demand payment of his debt; but her very reticence and delicacy, he
+foresaw, would make his repudiation of that debt--that factitious
+debt--more difficult. Twice or thrice, as he struggled with his
+problem, he was conscious of a curious, disturbing thrill. She loved
+him. There had been a time, long, long ago--But now he was a man; he
+had learned his lesson; and he knew that the chains would be no less
+hateful because they were made of gold.
+
+There came a day when he sat, wrapped in blankets, in an armchair near
+the window, where he could see the grass waving in the sunlight on the
+slope above the cottage, and the pines bending in the breeze high up
+the hill. Marion, near him, her hands folded in her lap, looked
+sometimes out of the window but more often at him, though his eyes
+avoided hers. She was scarcely less pale than he, and very tired and
+worn. Despite Hillyer's protestations she had slept little in the ten
+days of Philip's peril; for she would trust no one but herself to do
+with iron determination exactly what the doctor had commanded.
+Philip's pitiable pleading for water in his semi-delirium her love
+alone was strong enough to resist. But this was the last day of her
+watch over him. In an hour she must go. She had frankly asked Robert
+to let her have this last afternoon alone with Philip; and had
+promised him that he should then have the answer to every question
+that he had loyally put aside for her.
+
+They sat a long time silent, while the shadow of the cottage
+lengthened on the grass.
+
+"It wasn't worth it, Miss Gaylord," Haig said at length.
+
+"I--I don't understand," she faltered.
+
+"Doctor Norris tells me that you saved my life."
+
+"I'm glad if he thinks I helped a little," she answered, trying to
+smile.
+
+"He left me no room for doubt. Very plain-spoken is Doctor Norris."
+
+"I'm afraid he exaggerated," she protested gently.
+
+"No."
+
+"But Jim--"
+
+"Jim's all right in his way, but he couldn't have done it."
+
+"I am paid," she said simply.
+
+"Paid?"
+
+"Yes. Knowing that you live."
+
+"No. You think you mean that, perhaps, but you don't."
+
+"I don't mean what?" she asked in surprise.
+
+"You don't mean that you are paid."
+
+She turned away, and looked out the window, her heart throbbing.
+
+"I must tell you something, Miss Gaylord," he went on resolutely. "I'm
+not grateful."
+
+"Not grateful?"
+
+"I mean, I'm not glad to owe my life to you."
+
+"But I haven't asked--"
+
+"No. Not directly." He hesitated a moment. "It's like this: If a man
+had saved my life, I could pay him. There would be a clasp of the
+hand, and a look from man to man. Or I should save his life in turn,
+or do him some service. Or--there are other ways. There's Pete's way
+and Jim's way--of paying. But I can't pay you in any of the ways I
+could pay a man. And I can't pay in the only way a woman knows."
+
+"Don't," she cried. "Don't, please!"
+
+She was right, he thought. He was doing it brutally. He must try
+another method. There followed a long silence, while he tried to frame
+a speech that would tell her, and would not hurt too much; for now,
+strangely, he found himself reluctant to give her pain, even to put
+himself in a false light before her--to be misunderstood. At last he
+leaned toward her--forced her to meet his gaze.
+
+"Could you--if you had ever loved one man with all your heart
+and soul--held him as dear to you as life--dearer than life
+itself--without whom life would be impossible--could you ever
+love another?"
+
+For all her anguish she was able to detect the trap that he had set
+for her. "Yes" would cheapen the quality and deny the finality of her
+love for him; "no" would be an acceptance of the doom and tragedy she
+saw shadowing his eyes. She did not answer.
+
+"You see, you dare not answer that," he went on. "I suppose I ought to
+tell you the story. But I won't. It's long, and not a pretty story at
+all. But this much I will tell you. I gave one woman all I had to
+give. She threw it away--and laughed at me. I have nothing more."
+
+She took it very bravely and very quietly, as it seemed to him. He
+felt a certain admiration. There was good blood in the girl. Her
+father must have been worth knowing. His thoughts would have taken a
+different direction--would have been nothing so complacent if he had
+known just what she was thinking. His speech, terrifying at first, had
+actually renewed a hope that had fallen very low. She did not believe
+a word of what he had said, that is, of his having nothing more to
+give. Whenever did woman believe any such thing as that, no matter how
+solemnly, on what stoutest oaths, with what tragic air a man has told
+it to her? Love is not love that doubts its own compelling power. And
+Marion, gazing fondly at Philip now, felt somewhat as a mother feels
+who smilingly indulges some childhood tragedy of her boy, knowing that
+it will pass as the cloud upon an April sky. If this was the worst he
+had to say to her--
+
+But it was not the worst. Philip felt an intense relief to see her
+accept the situation with such unexpected calm. He admired her
+consciously now,--for her intelligence. He began to think that he
+might almost take her hand, and thank her, as he would thank a man for
+doing him a service, however mistakenly. But something held him back
+from that folly. He wondered a little at her silence, and it was by
+way of breaking it before it should become embarrassing that he
+searched for something safe and commonplace to say to her.
+
+"It was my own fault, you know, that I was injured."
+
+"Why your own fault?"
+
+"I was in a bad humor. I lost my self-control. And I got what I
+deserved."
+
+He thought she would ask him why he had been in a bad humor, and he
+purposed to say that he was raging in discontent, longing for the
+white road again. It would be safe enough now, no doubt, to tell her
+in this fashion that if ever she should come to the Park again she
+would not find him there. But his words had suggested something
+entirely different to her mind.
+
+"What are you going to do with him?" she asked, in sudden vague
+anxiety.
+
+"Do with him?"
+
+"Yes--Sunnysides? I wish you'd please sell him."
+
+"Sell him? Sell Sunnysides?" His voice betrayed his astonishment.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"But I haven't ridden him yet."
+
+"You don't mean--" Her voice failed.
+
+"That I'm going to ride him? Just as soon as I get well."
+
+For some seconds she sat dazed. It was so utterly unexpected. The
+thought had not once occurred to her that he would try again what had
+all but cost him his life. It is at some such point as this that man's
+and woman's natures make one of their many departures from the
+parallel. To Haig the taming of Sunnysides now meant everything; to
+Marion it seemed a useless, a worse than useless risk, a wicked waste.
+What had been the worth, then, of all her labor of love, if it was to
+be thrown away? He would be killed the next time. And in the horror
+with which she foresaw that tragic end of all that she had planned and
+builded, her courage and confidence fell away from her, and left her
+weak and helpless. She uttered a thin, little cry, and slipped to the
+floor on her knees, clasping his emaciated hand that lay on an arm of
+the chair.
+
+"No! No!" she cried frantically. "Please, Philip! Please promise me
+you won't do that!"
+
+Then she broke down completely, her head drooped, and she sank down in
+a heap, with her face between her hands.
+
+Haig was stunned. He had blundered again. Fool, not to have let her go
+away from him in silence, in calm! He looked down at that crumpled
+figure, at the mass of tawny hair, with the red-gold lights in it, the
+enticing soft whiteness of her neck where the hair curved cleanly
+upward, the graceful slope of the shoulders that now shook with sobs.
+And something stirred in him, something deep, too deep to be reached
+and overpowered. It grew until it sang through all his being, a
+feeling such as he had never known before. She was fine and beautiful;
+she was a thing to be desired; and he had only to reach out, and take
+her for his own. Before he was aware of it, he had stretched out his
+hand until it almost touched her hair. Then from across the years a
+mocking voice rang out shrill and cold and cruel: "Now don't you go
+mussing up my apartment, Pipo!"
+
+He drew back his hand with a jerk, and clutched the chair; and sat
+bolt upright, while every nerve rang with the alarm.
+
+Minutes passed. The sobs gradually subsided; the figure on the floor
+slowly ceased its convulsive movements; and again a deep silence
+enveloped the room. Out on the brown-green slope the sun's rays were
+slanting low, the shadow of the cottage climbed the hill.
+
+Well, Haig thought, he had bungled the business after all. That was
+what came of trying to do it nicely, with delicacy. Hard words were
+the kindest in the end, because the quickest understood.
+
+She had not yet lifted her head when he turned to look at her again;
+and that made it easier.
+
+"I can't leave the ranch--just now," he said slowly. "If I could, I
+would. So I think--I think you ought to go back home--to New York, I
+mean--at once."
+
+She did not answer. And it was only after another silence that she
+looked up at him, and he saw that her eyes were still filled with
+tears, and there was a curious little puckering of her chin.
+
+"You said you wished you could repay me," she said. "Do you?"
+
+"Yes," he answered, wondering. "But I told you--"
+
+"But there is a way!"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Promise me you will not ride Sunnysides."
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"No. I can't promise that."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"That's one of the things you couldn't possibly understand."
+
+"But it's such a little thing!"
+
+"If I gave you that, I should indeed have nothing left. You would have
+all."
+
+It was true that she could not in the least understand. But she knew
+she could not move him.
+
+"Then promise me," she pleaded, "that you'll not try it until you are
+quite, quite well!"
+
+"Oh. I promise you that!" he replied, with a grim smile.
+
+"Thank you--Philip!"
+
+Presently she arose, and looked down at him with a long, lingering
+gaze that seemed to be searching for something in his features.
+
+"You'll take just what Jim gives you?" she asked anxiously.
+
+"Of course."
+
+"And not try to--boss him about the medicines and the food?"
+
+"I promise to obey orders."
+
+"And you'll be very careful?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+She moved slowly toward the door. But halfway there she stopped, and
+turned to look at him again. How could she leave him now? She
+couldn't! She couldn't! He was gazing away from her, out through the
+window. Wasn't he going to say a word to her--of farewell? She came
+back unsteadily, and stood behind his chair, her hands stretched out
+above his head. Then suddenly, impulsively, not touching him with her
+hands, she leaned down, and kissed his forehead.
+
+"Good-by!" she said, her voice breaking.
+
+"Good-by!" he answered gently, but without turning his head.
+
+He heard the door opened and closed, very softly. After that he sat a
+long time in silence. Well, she was gone! It had been a trying
+afternoon, and he was glad to have it ended. And yet the room seemed
+to be extraordinarily empty, as it had never been before his illness.
+The stillness rather oppressed him. Damn it all, sickness did strange
+things to a man! Took a lot out of him! He straightened himself in his
+chair.
+
+Presently Jim entered.
+
+"Well, Jim!" said Haig. "Here we are again, eh? I'm hungry."
+
+"You eat, she come back," Jim answered shrewdly.
+
+Haig looked at him sharply, but the Chinaman's face was like a paper
+mask.
+
+"Shut up!" he cried savagely.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
+
+
+Hillyer was waiting for her at the barn when she came at last, with a
+smile that eased his anxiety, if only in an inconsiderable degree. But
+he saw, as he took her handbag and bundle, and placed them in the
+automobile, that she had been crying. This gladdened while it angered
+him, and he was lost among the many interpretations that might be put
+upon those signs of distress. Had she come to the end of her
+infatuation? Had she been subjected to insults as the reward of her
+service? He dared not ask her such questions--not yet; but he was
+resolved (and there were material reasons, too, for that decision) to
+have his own case settled, one way or another, at once.
+
+Neither of them spoke more than a conventional word or two until
+Hillyer, after full speed down Haig's road to the junction, slowed up
+on the main highway along the Brightwater. It was the serenest of
+summer evenings, very still and fragrant, with a touch of autumn in
+the air. The eastern sky was filled with pale golds and pinks, and the
+foothills were warm with purples. Marion's face was averted from
+Hillyer, and her eyes were fixed, not on the soft alternations of
+color in the sky, but on Thunder Mountain, where the only clouds to be
+seen in all the expanse of blue lay low upon its uncompromising head.
+
+"Marion!" said Hillyer, at length.
+
+She did not miss the note in his voice that exposed his intention, but
+long preparation for this moment enabled her to face him calmly.
+
+"Yes, I know, Robert," she said. "You have much to say to me."
+
+"I'm going to-morrow," he began abruptly. "Will you go with me?"
+
+"To-morrow? Go with you?" she repeated, with a little start of
+surprise.
+
+"Yes. Will you go with me?"
+
+"But I don't understand, Robert."
+
+"I must be in Denver the day after to-morrow."
+
+"I--I didn't know your time was so short. I'm afraid--I've spoiled
+your visit."
+
+"That doesn't matter, Marion, if you'll go back with me."
+
+"But I can't--just yet."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"I'm not ready. I haven't half finished my visit with Claire."
+
+She was, after all, somewhat confused, for she had not expected him to
+approach the subject in just this way.
+
+"But the summer is almost gone. It's near the end of August,"
+persisted Hillyer.
+
+"There's another month of good weather. And September, Claire says, is
+the most beautiful of all."
+
+"That may be, unless Huntington's right. He told me only yesterday
+that it's going to be an early winter. There's come a chill in the air
+even since I've been here."
+
+"Nonsense!" she replied, recovering her composure. "I'll go out with
+the last stage."
+
+"And get caught in an avalanche or something!"
+
+"I suppose Seth does want to get rid of me!" she said, with a faint
+laugh.
+
+"That's not it at all."
+
+"Well, I'm not afraid."
+
+"But suppose you stay too late, and get caught. You'd have to remain
+here all winter. The Park, Huntington says, is as tight as a jail
+after the snows come."
+
+"Claire stays here through the winter sometimes."
+
+He felt a fresh alarm, and showed it. It would be just like her! he
+thought.
+
+"See here, Marion!" he said, plunging at last. "I've obeyed your order
+not to say anything about--the future. I meant not to say anything
+until the time was up. But you must see I can't keep silent now,
+after--what's happened. You must know I can't go away and leave you
+without knowing what--it all means. You said you'd tell me as soon as
+you'd finished nursing--him. No, wait, please! Let me say it at once.
+You know I love you. I want you to marry me. I need you, Marion.
+There's never been an hour, a minute that I haven't thought of you. I
+can't work--I can't do anything without you. I love you more than--"
+
+"Stop, Robert!" she cried. "You're making it harder for both of us."
+
+"Harder--for--both of us?" he repeated slowly.
+
+"Yes."
+
+There was a moment's silence. Hillyer, while he spoke, had
+half-consciously stopped the automobile, which stood now, humming
+softly, in the middle of the road that stretched white and empty ahead
+of them and behind them. The night breeze had risen, blowing cold from
+the snows, and the shadows were creeping down into the valley, as if
+they came from dark caverns in the hills.
+
+"Robert," she said sadly. "It's no use. I must tell you. I--I can't
+marry you."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"You make me say it!" she cried. "Well, Robert, I--I don't love you."
+
+"I'm not asking you to love me!" he rejoined, almost savagely. "I only
+ask you--"
+
+"Listen!" she interrupted, placing a hand on his arm. "That's not
+all."
+
+"You mean--"
+
+She stopped him with a pressure on his arm.
+
+"Once, not knowing, I almost consented," she went on. "But something
+checked me--held me back. You remember how restless I was--how
+troubled. You would have laughed at me if I had told you. But
+something seemed to be calling me--a voice from a long distance. I
+laughed at myself for a foolish girl--at first. I said it was nerves,
+and I fought against it. And it was then that I came nearest to saying
+yes to you, thinking that I was indeed foolish in holding back. I
+liked you. I've always liked you, Robert. You'd been such a splendid
+friend, and I was grateful. I wanted to repay you--"
+
+She stopped suddenly, and a flush mounted swiftly into her pale
+cheeks. Repay! The word recalled sharply to her, acutely and
+painfully, all that Haig had said about paying her. Were they, then,
+in the same dreadful situation, she and Haig, with debts they could
+never pay? For the first time some sense of the terrible finality of
+his decision struck in upon her secret hopes.
+
+"Don't talk of that!" Robert was saying, seizing the moment of
+silence. "I never--"
+
+"But always, when I was about to yield--I couldn't. I didn't know why
+then. But now I do."
+
+"You mean--Haig?" he asked hoarsely.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You don't--" He could not bring himself to speak the word.
+
+"Yes, Robert. I love him."
+
+It took all the courage she possessed. But she owed it to him and to
+herself.
+
+"I don't believe it!" he blurted out. "I won't believe it! You are not
+yourself, Marion. You are worn out. You have been fascinated. He's
+strange--different--new to you. It's your imagination, not your heart,
+that's been--won. He's led you on by--"
+
+"No!" she broke in. "You're quite wrong. It's not his fault at all. He
+doesn't love me."
+
+"Of course not. I know that kind of fellow. You didn't need to leave
+New York to find plenty like him. He only wants to--"
+
+"Robert!" she cried warningly.
+
+"Then what--"
+
+"He hates me, I think," she replied sadly.
+
+"Then why in the world do you--" He was floundering. "What do you know
+about him, anyhow? Who is he? Where did he come from?"
+
+That sounded so much like Seth Huntington that she smiled, thinking of
+the picture that he must have drawn for Hillyer.
+
+"I know very little about him," she replied quietly. "But I know that
+Cousin Seth is mistaken."
+
+"But how do you know he hates you?"
+
+"He made that clear in the beginning--not me alone, but all women. He
+shunned me. He told me twice that I must not speak to him again. And
+this afternoon, while you waited for me--" Her voice broke, with a
+laugh that was half a sob. "He--finished it."
+
+"He was rude to you!" he cried. "I'll make him--"
+
+She put her hand quickly on his arm.
+
+"No. He was very gentle--and kind."
+
+"What did he say?" Hillyer demanded, almost imperatively.
+
+"He said that--he couldn't leave the ranch just now, so I'd better go
+back to New York--at once."
+
+"He did, did he?" cried Hillyer angrily, his chivalry for the moment
+dominant. But then he saw suddenly another meaning, for him, in the
+brutal ultimatum; and his face brightened. "That settles it, doesn't
+it?" he exclaimed eagerly.
+
+"Settles what?"
+
+"Why, you'll go with me!"
+
+"No."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"I told you I'm not ready yet."
+
+There was a silence while Hillyer, buoyed up with new hope, made some
+hurried calculations.
+
+"Then listen, Marion!" he said. "I'll go to Denver, and come back in a
+week or ten days. I'll arrange things so that I can stay here
+until--"
+
+"Oh, Robert! You won't understand."
+
+He stared at her blankly.
+
+"You're making it so hard for me!" she cried pathetically. "I've told
+you already that I cannot marry you."
+
+"But why! Why!" he persisted.
+
+"Because I haven't myself--I've nothing to give."
+
+"But how can you love him after he has--"
+
+"Told me he does not love me?" she said, taking the words from him.
+"Then how can you love me when I have said the same thing to you?"
+
+He struggled desperately, in deep water.
+
+"It's different, Marion. You don't hate me--I think. You say you like
+me. That's enough now--to start with. It's all I ask. I'll try to make
+you happy, and I'll wait for love. You shall have all the things in
+the world you want. I'm making scads of money. Everything I touch just
+rolls up into bank notes. I want you to come and spend all that money
+for me. Remember, Marion, your father wished it. If he were here
+now--"
+
+"Yes!" she put in with sudden fire. "If he were here now do you know
+what he would say to me?"
+
+He felt that he had blundered, and made no reply.
+
+"He would say to me--Oh, I can hear him now! He would say: 'Follow
+your heart, daughter. Love's the only thing in the world that really
+counts.'"
+
+She smiled triumphantly, but wistfully. And Hillyer was still silent.
+
+"Daddy wasn't very good at quoting Scripture," she went on musingly,
+"but he used to say: 'Better a dinner of herbs where love is than a
+stalled ox and hatred therewith.'"
+
+"But there isn't any hatred therewith!" cried Hillyer desperately. "I
+love you, Marion, and if you don't love me--you don't hate me. So
+there's more than half of it, and--can't we trust the future a little
+bit?"
+
+"No."
+
+"But what are you going to do?" he asked, shifting his line of
+attack.
+
+"I don't know," she replied, with a helpless gesture.
+
+"You can't go back to New York without money enough to take your
+proper place in the world. Of course, if you'll let me, I'll--"
+
+"Robert!" she interrupted sharply.
+
+"Well, I mean it just the same!" he replied stoutly. "I've got to
+take care of you, and if you won't--See here, Marion! I simply
+refuse to be turned down this way. I'll not take your stubborn, whimsy
+little 'no' for my answer. You're on my hands, thank God! whether you
+like it or not. Maybe you won't love me. Maybe you won't marry me.
+We'll see about that! But I'm going to look after you--I'm going to
+take care of you, just the same--and you can just stop tightening
+those lips--they're not as red as they ought to be--and you can make
+up your mind that you can boss me so far and no farther."
+
+Marion smiled at him indulgently, but gratefully, and even a little
+proudly; for she had been very proud of him in the days when only
+friendship was spoken of. She did not in the least resent his speech;
+but neither did she answer him.
+
+"It's getting late, Robert," she said, shivering a little.
+
+"So it is," he replied. "And you've no warm wrap for the night air."
+
+He drew the lap-robe around her, and started the automobile. Through
+the gathering night they drove, almost without speaking, to
+Huntington's, where the best supper that Claire could contrive from
+the limited stores at her disposal awaited the prodigal. There was
+naturally some constraint at table. Huntington had made his peace with
+Hillyer, having apologized humbly, and expatiated on the cause of his
+wrath. But he did not know how he stood with Marion, who had been a
+long time in the camp of the enemy, and who doubtless knew too of his
+speech about her trunks. He had not dared to ask Hillyer whether he
+had related that incident to her, and he felt the need of extreme
+discretion until he should discover what kind of a rod she had in
+pickle for him, or, at any rate, until the time should be propitious
+to tell her that he was sorry for his conduct. Marion was tired, and
+disinclined to talk, while Hillyer, on his side, had his mind fully
+occupied, between his deal in mines and his deal in love, in both of
+which he had encountered unexpected difficulties. Only Claire was gay
+and untroubled, and she accepted eagerly the task of saving the party
+from awkward silences. For once in many moons she was allowed to talk
+unchecked, and she made the most of her opportunity.
+
+After supper, Marion announced her purpose to go to bed at once. She
+was sure, she declared, that she could sleep "around the clock."
+
+"I'll be off before you're up, then," said Hillyer.
+
+"You must go to-morrow?" asked Claire.
+
+"Absolutely. It means thousands."
+
+"Then we'll sit on the veranda a few minutes," said Marion. "Not long,
+though. I'm dreadfully sleepy."
+
+It was not long. They found they had little to say to each other,
+since the one subject of which both were thinking, each from a
+different point of view, was tacitly barred. And Hillyer soon saw that
+Marion was sorely in need of rest.
+
+"Go to bed now, dear girl!" he said presently. "And please take good
+care of yourself. I want to see the color back in your cheeks when I
+return."
+
+"I will, Robert," she answered. "I'll be quite all right in a day or
+two."
+
+"And you--don't really think of staying here all winter?" he ventured
+to ask diffidently.
+
+"No," she replied. "That's hardly possible."
+
+"Then good-by--until you hear my horn in the road down yonder."
+
+"Good-by, Robert, and good luck!"
+
+She gave him both her hands, for a moment, with a tenderness that
+lingered with him far on his way.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+INTERLUDE
+
+
+August ripened into September, and the Park underwent a subtle and
+fascinating change. In the meadows the hay lay in long windrows,
+golden green; on the slopes vermilion flowers succeeded blue; in the
+sunsets tender pinks yielded to burnt orange and vivid red. The nights
+had grown perceptibly colder, but the days were still warm and dry and
+radiant, though with a tang in the air that stirred the blood. And a
+thousand perfumes, known and unknown, distilled from meadow and field
+and forest, scented every vagrant breeze.
+
+Marion was soon herself again, in body if not in mind. A few long
+nights of sleep, a few days in the saddle, and sufficient nourishment
+(for she had neglected herself at Haig's, despite Jim's solicitude)
+restored her physically to what she had been on the day of Haig's
+accident. But she, too, had changed, and as subtly as the season.
+
+"What's come over Marion?" asked Huntington of Claire one day, after
+he had caught himself regarding her with the rapt interest of a
+discoverer.
+
+Claire looked at him pityingly. She knew, but she was not going to
+tell him.
+
+"Why?" she asked innocently.
+
+"Well, I don't exactly know," he replied doubtfully. "She's prettier
+than ever--but so are you. That isn't it. She's kind of--It's no use.
+I don't know."
+
+Claire laughed, and then became severe.
+
+"That's because she's forgiven you," she said.
+
+"No, it isn't!" he asseverated, not without embarrassment. "You can
+see for yourself that she's different."
+
+"Very well!" she retorted maliciously. "Perhaps if you'd done such a
+noble thing as nursing Haig back to life you'd be different too."
+
+"I'd see him in--"
+
+"Shame!" she cried. "You wouldn't do anything of the kind. Your bark's
+worse than your bite, sir. And besides, while I think of it, you
+really must stop saying 'hell' and 'damn' so much. The habit's growing
+on you."
+
+Having no ready answer to that speech, he merely looked at her,
+perhaps a little guiltily, then bent down and kissed her, and hurried
+out of the house. He was, in truth, though he never would have had the
+courage to acknowledge it, even to Claire, ashamed of himself, and
+anxious too. His inflammable temper had rather out-flamed itself in
+its last-recorded performance, and he had begun to suspect that it had
+been responsible for some, though by no means all, of his troubles.
+The killing of Haig's bull, he now realized, was a foolish and
+indefensible act, which could be traced easily to him because of the
+bull that was gored; and he must prepare to account to Haig for it.
+And so, knowing that he would again be in the wrong, as in the affair
+at the post-office, he was torn between accentuated bitterness toward
+Haig and growing discontent with himself. He would never be afraid of
+Haig, but he was becoming steadily more afraid of Marion. Whether it
+was that he had really developed intuition, which told him of Marion's
+spiritual growth, or that he was in constant dread lest she make some
+new demand upon him in regard to Haig, he lived in much awe of her.
+She had once spoken, on a memorable occasion, of making peace between
+Haig and himself. It would be just like her, wouldn't it, to try to
+bring them together? Well, let her try it! He would be the last man in
+Paradise Park. And so on, until he was once more almost satisfied with
+himself.
+
+The faithful Smythe, meanwhile, brought Marion almost daily news of
+Philip. That he was rapidly recovering she heard with a ringing joy,
+which had its alloy of fear; for she knew that the day he felt himself
+to be in full possession of his powers he would attempt again to
+conquer Sunnysides. So from day to day her apprehension mounted until
+it became well-nigh insupportable. And her own helplessness maddened
+her. What could she do? Nothing! Nothing but wait, and pray God to
+protect him. Every night she prayed for him, and every morning, on her
+knees; and every hour the prayer was in her heart. She rode sometimes
+as far as the farther edge of the woods that crowned the ridge, and
+looked long at the little valley, and at the smoke rising in a thin
+spiral from the ranch house that she could not see. At the right of it
+would be the cottage, and at the left the barn, and the corral where
+Sunnysides bided his time. And then, having looked until she could
+endure no more, she would ride slowly home, to await the next coming
+of Smythe with news.
+
+Once she went to the glade of the columbines. She did not feel any
+longer the antipathy she once felt to the spot that had, in one
+devastating moment, revealed to her the fatuity of her dreams. Now she
+was in search of the old hopes that she had once revelled in, while
+she gathered armloads of columbines, and imagined they were for
+Philip.
+
+Dismounting eagerly at the foot of the little hill, she plunged
+through the brush, and halted at the margin of the glade, stricken
+with the keenest disappointment. The columbines were gone; only a
+brave, pale blossom here and there lingered pathetically in a waste of
+dried and drooping stems. She stood staring at them a moment; then,
+with a cry, she threw herself down among them, and gave herself up to
+grief, letting the tears come in what flood they would, while her hand
+clutched one poor survivor of the summer glory.
+
+Gone, then, like the summer, were all those dreams. And very soon must
+come the end of all. Barely two weeks remained to her in the
+Park,--barely two weeks in which the miracle that she awaited could be
+wrought. What miracle could move him when her love had failed? And
+yet--Once, in her desperation, she suggested to Claire and Seth that
+she should remain all winter in the Park; but they rose up together
+against any such scheme. It was absurd, they agreed. They would be
+delighted to have her with them as many summers as she might wish; and
+they were already counting on her return to them next June. But the
+Park in winter was no place for a woman, unless she had been long
+inured to such hardships as were involved in that hibernation. Claire
+had remained two winters there, it was true, but Seth had vowed that
+she should never miss the last stage again. Marion's proposal only
+clinched the matter the more firmly; and it was eventually agreed that
+Claire should go with Marion to New York, where they would live very
+quietly, taking what pleasures their means would permit, until spring
+should bring them back to the mountains. And so, barring a miracle,
+she was at the end of her hopes.
+
+Meanwhile, she had heard from Robert. He was nearly wild, he wrote.
+The big deal was going slowly--not badly, but with maddening delays.
+He was tempted to "chuck the whole business," though it meant
+thousands, perhaps half a million. Yet how could he do that? He was
+working for her; and if he left Denver the deal would certainly fall
+through. But there was yet time; any day the stubborn partner might
+yield; and so on. Poor Robert! thought Marion. She imagined what
+Philip would have done if he had wanted her as Robert did. Would any
+deal, any prospect of millions, have kept him away from her? So she
+reasoned, forgetting entirely the other side of the case. Haig, if she
+could have asked him, would have told her: yes, that's all very well,
+but the man would have to get those thousands or other thousands
+afterwards, just the same; a woman wants to have her cake and eat it
+too; and so much the worse for the man if he cannot dance attendance
+on her and make money for her at the same time!
+
+She wrote to Robert that be must not think of leaving his business.
+Moreover, she would soon be in Denver, on her way back home.
+
+In the late afternoon Haig leaned against Sunnysides' corral, smoking
+his pipe and gazing fixedly at the golden outlaw. The air was very
+still, almost too still, as if nature had paused before a sudden
+and violent alteration of her mood. In the bright sky, a little
+hard even for September, there was no cloud, except on the western
+horizon, where dark vapors hovered over the bald head of Thunder
+Mountain. The scent of the harvest in the meadows blended with the
+odor of burning pine that came from the ranch house, where Flick built
+the fire for supper. On the hill the pines were still, but the brook
+babbled on, and there was an incessant low twittering of birds in
+the cottonwoods.
+
+Haig had now fully recovered. He had taken to his horse again some
+days before, to ride a little the first day, and more the next, each
+day adding something to his exercise, until he felt the blood running
+warmly in his veins, and his muscles tightening at his will. Then he
+had hardened himself with every kind of labor around the ranch. For he
+was impatient to remove the stigma of doubt that Sunnysides had burned
+into his soul. He had told Marion that she was incapable of
+understanding why he must conquer Sunnysides. He was not sure that he
+understood it himself. But he knew that he must. Ever since that day
+when he had fled into the world he had fought to be master of himself;
+and his way of being master of himself was to be master of every man
+and every animal and every obstacle that appeared across his
+path,--that irresponsible, uncharted path that had neither beginning
+nor end, that led he knew not where nor cared. Every moment was a
+moment to itself, and every day was its own if he had done what he
+had set out to do. His one purpose in life was not to be beaten, never
+to fail, though he should throw away to-morrow what he had won to-day.
+So it was that to conquer Sunnysides was for the moment the one thing
+that counted, and he would have no rest until it was done.
+
+Twilight settled down upon the valley. Haig's pipe went out, and still
+he stood gazing at Sunnysides. In the dusk the horse glowed like a
+living jewel that holds the light when the sun has gone. Night fell,
+and the golden hide became a shimmer in the dark, as the outlaw moved
+restlessly to and fro in his prison. Then, of a sudden, with the
+unexpectedness and unreason of a dog's wolf-howl at the rising moon,
+there rose from the gloom of the corral a shrill, wild neigh that
+shattered the peaceful silence of the night.
+
+Haig left the fence, and walked swiftly to the barn.
+
+"Farrish!" he said shortly. "We'll break Sunnysides to-morrow. Tell
+Pete and Curly not to ride away in the morning. The cattle can wait."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+THE CHALLENGE OF THE BRUTE
+
+
+There had been yellow, mellow weather for weeks on weeks, but this day
+dawned hard and cold. Some projected rancor of the winter was in the
+air. Westward the peaks were blanketed with thick gray clouds, while
+eastward a sullen redness showed where the sun strove to rise on an
+angry world. The wind was the kind that scrapes raw the nerves,
+buffeting man and beast with cross-currents and unexpected blasts,
+howling and shrieking around chimneys and gables, covering everything
+with dust and sand.
+
+Haig awoke to hear the wind tearing at the shutters and the roof, the
+pines on the hillside thundering like surf, the hills reverberating
+with the maddest trumpetings. He lay a moment listening; his pulse
+quickened, at the sound of all that tumult; and he leaped from his bed
+calling loudly for Slim Jim. It was a day for battle. The very
+elements were up and at it, as if all nature had enlisted in the
+struggle between man and brute.
+
+For all his eagerness, he ate his breakfast leisurely, resolved to
+make no such error as he had made before. There should be no mad haste
+and no anger; no working on an empty stomach, on nerves drawn taut.
+Bacon and eggs and buckwheat cakes, with coffee and a single pipe,
+occupied an hour or more; and then, feeling fit for anything, he set
+out for the corrals.
+
+He did not scruple this time to take every precaution known to the
+experts of the corrals. Bill was mounted on the wisest horse in the
+stables, with a lariat ready against the event of Sunnysides trying
+the fence again. Then Haig directed Farrish, Curly, and Pete to rope
+and saddle the outlaw, saving himself for the supreme struggle. But to
+their astonishment there was none of the difficulties in the
+preliminaries that they encountered on the previous occasion; only two
+or three vicious movements, no more.
+
+"Foxy, ain't you?" said Farrish to the outlaw, when the saddle was on.
+"Savin' yourself, are you, you yellow devil?"
+
+The horse was led as before into the larger corral. He stepped nimbly,
+obediently, as if resistance were the farthest thing from his
+thoughts, even when Haig, his arch-enemy, walked up to him, grasped
+the bridle, and looked steadily into his eyes. For a moment all stood
+still, as the challenge passed between man and brute. Then Haig tested
+the cinches of the saddle, looked carefully around him, and disposed
+the men with a final word to each.
+
+"Now then! Off with it!"
+
+Farrish removed the last rope, and then only the bridle rein in Haig's
+hand, and the fence yonder, stoutly repaired since the last battle,
+remained between Sunnysides and the sandhills of the San Luis. True,
+only a fence and a guard had held him all these weeks of his
+captivity, but that fence had been built up, on his arrival, two
+planks higher than the one in which he now found himself again, and
+from which he had all but escaped at the first opportunity.
+
+Haig put his feet cautiously into the stirrup, and sprang into the
+saddle. He was prepared for a repetition of the trick that had almost
+cost him his life, and ready to swing himself out of the saddle if
+Sunnysides should go over backward again. But the horse was indeed
+"foxy"; one would have said that he knew his man, and would waste no
+time or energy on manoeuvers that his enemy had discounted. For some
+seconds he stood quite motionless, while Haig settled firmly in his
+seat, and gripped the bridle rein expectantly. At length the horse
+lifted and turned his head, and looked, as it appeared, toward the
+western mountains, half hidden in the gray swirl of clouds.
+
+"Yes, over there's the San Luis," muttered Haig. "But it's a long way,
+and you're not going."
+
+Farrish grinned. But Pete stood like a wooden Indian, so still and
+intent was he, with his black eyes fixed on the outlaw. Curly loosened
+the coils of the lariat in his hands. In a corner of the corral Bill,
+mounted and watchful, held his rope ready for a throw.
+
+Still Sunnysides did not move. But his tail swished with the slow and
+menacing movement of a tiger's, and there was just a quiver of muscles
+under his golden hide.
+
+"Watch out!" called Pete.
+
+And then it came. The horse bounded into the air, and came down
+stiff-legged, with a jolt that Haig felt in every bone. Then he leaped
+sideways half a dozen feet, and Haig was flung far over, hanging
+perilously in the saddle. With almost one motion the horse was in the
+air again, to come down with the same frightful, jarring shock.
+Instantly thereupon he lunged forward, stopped short, ducked his head,
+and narrowly missed hurling Haig like a stone from a catapult.
+
+All these tactics were repeated with variations; and then, of a
+sudden, as if he thought Haig had forgotten his experience by this
+time, he reared, and with the same lightning swiftness as before, went
+over backward on the ground. But Haig was too quick for him. He swung
+himself to one side, released his right foot from the stirrup, and
+rolled away from beneath the horse as they came down with a crash. At
+the same instant Pete and Curly rushed in, and the horse leaped to his
+feet only to be brought down again with two ropes on his legs.
+
+Haig, dusty but uninjured, was on his feet in a jiffy, and leaning
+over the thwarted outlaw.
+
+"You didn't really think you could do it again, did you?" he said.
+
+"But he's a hellyun, though, ain't he!" ejaculated Curly, bracing
+himself on his rope.
+
+The horse was allowed to rise; Haig climbed cautiously into the saddle
+once more; and the same tense silence as the first ensued, while
+Sunnysides waited, as if for inspiration.
+
+Then it was on as before, but with accentuated fury. The horse, for
+his opening demonstration, bucked with his back curved like a steel
+bow. Haig was almost propelled into the air, but hung on desperately;
+and as the outlaw came down on stiffened legs Haig jabbed the spurs
+viciously into his flanks. For Sunnysides had been too calculating in
+his measures; it was desirable to stir him up, to anger him, to
+torment him until he should wear himself out with his furious
+struggles.
+
+The spurs did it. In an instant Sunnysides was a demon. All that he
+had done was like the antics of a colt compared with what followed. No
+eye in the corral could follow and record all his movements. He was in
+every part of the enclosure at once, it seemed. There were instants,
+too, when he appeared to have disassociated himself from the earth,
+and to have taken to the air as his element. And then the earth rang
+again with the clatter of his hoofs; his four legs became a hundred,
+and then were four again, pounding like piledrivers, like steel
+drills. He flung himself against the fence until it swayed and
+creaked, and Haig's legs were bruised by the violent contact. Clouds
+of dust rose and hung above the enclosure, and settled on the outlaw's
+wet shoulders, on Haig's sweating face, in his eyes and nostrils, and
+in his throat until he was fairly choking. But though half-blinded,
+dizzy, and aching in all his body, Haig hung on, and dug the spurs
+ceaselessly into the horse's flanks.
+
+"God! He's got him!" cried Farrish.
+
+"Your game's up!" yelled Curly tauntingly, dancing with joy in his
+corner of the corral.
+
+But the game was not up. Curly's words were barely out of his mouth
+when something went wrong with Haig. Just what happened none could be
+quite sure of, then or afterward; but in the midst of Sunnysides'
+plungings, there came a windmill kind of movement, rather like the
+whirling of a dervish, out of which the horse lunged swiftly forward,
+and halted violently, with his head down, and his forelegs stiff
+before him. It was apparently an elaboration of one of the commonest
+tricks of all; and if Haig could have stuck to the saddle then he
+probably would have won. But he was thrown. He went sprawling over the
+horse's lowered head, and struck the ground on his head and shoulders,
+and lay still.
+
+What followed was more marvelous even than the unseating of Haig with
+the shout of victory already rising to his lips. There came a
+snort that ended in a scream; and then a flash of yellow through the
+dust. Bill Craven, on his horse at one side of the corral, saw it
+coming straight toward him, and tried to whirl his noose. Too late.
+The outlaw was upon him; his own pony, rearing, was caught unbalanced;
+and Bill himself instinctively leaned backward in the saddle.
+There was a terrific impact; the pony was struck squarely on the left
+fore-quarter; and horse and rider went down together in a heap against
+the fence. Then over them went the outlaw, trampling them as he
+leaped and clambered, taking the top plank with him as he landed
+outside the corral on his head and knees. In an instant he was up; in
+another, or the same instant, he was off, with his head down, and
+belly to earth, with the speed of a race-horse and the frenzy of a
+wild thing set free.
+
+Haig was only slightly stunned by the fall. He heard, though he did
+not see, the escape of Sunnysides; and for one black moment all in the
+present was blotted out. But that was only the dizziness, and the
+reeling pain in his head; and there was the sky filled with
+gray-black, contending clouds; and Pete was leaning over him.
+
+"Hurt?" asked the Indian.
+
+"No."
+
+He reached up one hand, and Pete helped him to his feet. Swaying a
+little, he looked around the corral. Farrish was on the outside,
+gazing down the road where Sunnysides was now almost out of sight, a
+mere yellow spot in a cloud of dust. Curly was jerking Craven's horse
+to its feet.
+
+"What's the matter there?" called Haig.
+
+"Bill's hurt!" answered Curly.
+
+With Pete at his side, not yet assured that all was well with him,
+Haig walked unsteadily to where Bill lay against the fence.
+
+"What is it, Craven?" he asked.
+
+"Leg broke. My horse fell on me," Bill answered weakly. He had,
+besides, a gash in the left side of his head, from which the blood
+flowed down his face.
+
+"Into the barn with him!" Haig ordered quietly.
+
+They placed him on a cot, and Pete gave him a long pull at his
+ever-ready flask.
+
+"I'm sorry, Bill!" said Haig, looking down at him.
+
+"It's my own fault," replied Craven. "An' it serves me damned right
+for lettin' him get by me."
+
+Haig smiled grimly, then turned to the other men with orders. He was
+ominously quiet; even the dullest of them, the slow-witted Curly, saw
+and wondered at the unusual calm that showed on his face and in his
+accents.
+
+"Now then, business!" he said, with swift decision. "You'll take the
+sorrels, Curly, and drive to Tellurium for the doctor. Don't be afraid
+to drive them; I'll not be on your back for that. Pete, go to the
+cottage, and bring my gun. Jim knows where it is. Farrish--where's
+Farrish?"
+
+"Here!"
+
+He came leading two ponies from their stalls.
+
+"What are you doing, Farrish?"
+
+"I supposed we'd better find out where he's gone, and see if--"
+
+"There's no doubt where he's headed for, is there?" Haig interrupted.
+"And who's going to stop him? No, saddle Trixy!"
+
+"But you're not going alone?" said Farrish.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"But--"
+
+"Bill's knocked out. Curly's off as soon as he can start for
+Tellurium. That leaves you and Pete to look after the ranch. I may be
+gone some time."
+
+"But you can't rope him alone!" protested Farrish.
+
+"I don't expect to. There isn't a horse in the Park that could
+overtake him. He'll make for the San Luis, of course. I'll get help
+there. Now then, Farrish, you're in charge of the ranch. If anything
+should happen to me, Jim knows where all my papers are. That's all."
+
+Farrish hastened to saddle Trixy, coiling a rope at the saddle horn,
+and strapping a slicker behind the saddle. At this moment came Pete
+from the cottage, bringing the revolver and cartridge belt, which Haig
+buckled on while Farrish led Trixy out in front of the stable.
+
+There was a word or two more to Farrish, about the cattle and the hay,
+and Haig swung himself into the saddle.
+
+"Wait!" cried Pete, running out of the stable.
+
+He handed a flask of whisky to Haig, who took it, smiling, and thrust
+it into a pocket of his coat.
+
+"Sure cure for everything, eh, Pete?"
+
+But he reached down, and clasped Pete's hand.
+
+"You will be cold, maybe," said the Indian simply.
+
+"All right, men!" said Haig. "You'll take good care of Craven, of
+course. And you'll use your best judgment about everything, Farrish.
+I'm not coming back without Sunnysides."
+
+He put spurs to the little bay mare, and dashed away. Pete and Farrish
+stood watching him until he had turned the point of the ridge.
+
+"Hell!" said Farrish.
+
+In the cottage door stood a figure in blue silks, intently gazing
+after the disappearing horseman.
+
+"He catchum, allee light!" murmured Slim Jim.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+SMYTHE'S LAST BUDGET
+
+
+Seth had heard at the post-office that the deer were coming down
+unusually early from their summer haunts high in the mountains. A fine
+herd had been seen just above Bratner's, and Seth proposed to Marion
+that she should have a try at them. They would start early in the
+morning, stop the night at Bratner's, and be back home late the second
+evening. Marion reluctantly consented, and before going to bed that
+night she laid out woolen underwear, her stoutest riding costume, with
+divided skirts and knickerbockers and tan boots lacing almost to her
+knees. She did not want to go, but, as more than once before, she
+yielded to Seth's insistence rather than attempt an explanation.
+
+That night, however, summer departed from the Park. A dry storm
+descended on the valley, and Marion lay awake while the wind howled
+around the corners of the ranch house, of which every timber seemed to
+be crying out in agony. She knew that high among the rocks the storm
+was smashing about in fury, and even in its sheltered hollow the house
+was hammered as if the elements were bent upon its annihilation. When
+each prodigious outcry had spent itself and died away there was still
+the moaning and fretting and troubled whimpering that reminded her of
+the plaints of an invalid pleading for help between paroxysms of pain.
+She was strangely depressed by it, unaccountably distressed, and was
+glad when the first faint whitening of the window curtains told her of
+the dawn. She arose and dressed--after a moment's hesitation--in the
+costume she had prepared the night before. Seth surely would not
+insist on the shooting trip in such weather, she thought, but it would
+please him to see her dressed for it. Besides, the temperature of her
+room reminded her that she would need warm clothes if she went out
+anywhere on such a day.
+
+"Good, Marion!" cried Seth sure enough, when he saw her at the
+breakfast table. "Glad you're not discouraged by a little wind."
+
+"But--you don't mean to go on a day like this?"
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"The wind, and--we'll get soaking wet."
+
+"No, it's only a wind storm, and this is the tail end of it. The
+sun'll be out in a couple of hours. We needn't start in a hurry. We'll
+leave the horses as they are--they're all ready, bundles and the
+rest--until we see."
+
+Seth's optimism annoyed her, but she felt encouraged when, after
+breakfast, she stepped out on the veranda and met the cold and
+quarrelsome day. A rough blast struck her in the face; she saw a
+ragged drift of clouds torn by the wind; and the whole landscape
+seemed to have undergone a melancholy change. Dispirited beyond
+measure, despite the one satisfaction that the weather gave, she
+re-entered the house, and sank uneasily into an armchair by the fire.
+
+But Seth's prediction was justified. Toward ten o'clock the wind
+ceased, and patches of blue began to show in the blanket of gray.
+Claire shared Marion's disinclination to go shooting on such a day (or
+any other kind of a day, for her part!), and they stood at the window
+actually deploring the blue rents in the clouds, when Marion uttered a
+sharp exclamation of surprise.
+
+"Smythe!" she gasped.
+
+"On a day like this!" cried Claire.
+
+He had dismounted quickly, and was walking toward the house; and as he
+neared the steps Marion saw in his face what caused her to press her
+hand on her bosom to still her heart. Something had happened! And she
+had known it all the time--had known it even in her sleep!
+
+Claire ran to the door and opened it.
+
+"Well, Mr. Smythe!" she cried. "You're just in time to cheer us up.
+We're deep in the mulligrubs."
+
+He entered smiling, removing his sombrero with his customary flourish.
+But as he advanced he shot a swift, keen look at Marion.
+
+"Something's happened!" she repeated to herself.
+
+But she came forward with a smile, and shook hands with Smythe,
+searching his face. And he was warning her again. She could have
+shrieked with impatience and anxiety, but she held herself, and
+waited.
+
+"A terrible night, wasn't it?" said Claire, giving Smythe a chair.
+
+"Terrific!" replied he. "You know the big pine that hung over the road
+just this side of Toumine's? Well, it's down, right across the road. I
+had to ride around it, up among the underbrush."
+
+"I didn't sleep at all, and I'm used to winds, too," said Claire.
+
+"It got me up at daylight," Smythe went on. "It didn't look like much
+of a day for riding, but I got nervous sitting around listening to my
+good landlady--one of the young Martins is threatened with something
+or other--and started out to see how the landscape had been changed.
+There are trees down everywhere, and--" He paused. "What are you doing
+this morning, Miss Gaylord?" he asked, very casually.
+
+She had been silent, watching him.
+
+"We were going shooting, but we've been waiting to see if the weather
+would change."
+
+"Then you haven't been out?"
+
+"Only on the veranda for a minute."
+
+"Let's take a brisk walk, then. It'll do you good--warm you up a
+little."
+
+"Yes," she said weakly.
+
+She went to her room for her hat, and pinning it on before the mirror,
+started at sight of her face, which had grown very white. She was
+almost incapable of thought. The hatpin slipped from her cold fingers,
+and fell to the floor. She stared at it strangely before stooping to
+pick it up. How could she bear to hear what Smythe had come to tell
+her! But it was good of him to wait until he could tell her alone.
+
+"Will you go too, Mrs. Huntington?" Smythe said, as Marion emerged
+from her room.
+
+Claire looked at Marion, and wondered at the whiteness of her face,
+and the haunted look in her eyes. Nothing had been said, but she saw
+there was something.
+
+"No, thank you!" she said promptly. "The house suits me this
+morning."
+
+Smythe and Marion walked up the hill toward the tree where Marion had
+practised shooting. Until they reached it neither spoke.
+
+"Well?" said Marion, turning suddenly on him.
+
+"Sunnysides has got away."
+
+"And he?" she cried.
+
+"Thrown, but not hurt."
+
+She stared at him a moment, dazed. Then she threw back her head, and
+clasped her hands on her breast.
+
+"Oh!" she murmured. "But how you frightened me!"
+
+Smythe looked at her silently; and presently, when she lowered her
+eyes, she saw that his face was very grave. But Haig was unhurt, and
+Sunnysides had escaped. She had prayed for just that.
+
+"What is it?" she cried, leaning forward to clutch his arm.
+
+"He's following."
+
+"Following?"
+
+"Yes. Alone."
+
+"Where?"
+
+"Yonder."
+
+He pointed to the west.
+
+"To the San Luis?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"The way they brought him here?"
+
+"No. Sunnysides has taken the trail over Thunder Mountain."
+
+Her hand fell from his arm. She swayed, as if she would collapse.
+Smythe grabbed her, with an arm around her waist, and led her,
+unresisting and dumb, to a near rock, where he seated her gently, and
+stood watching her. He had been too abrupt, he thought; but how else
+could he have told her?
+
+She struggled bravely.
+
+"Tell me!" she said at length.
+
+He knew little about the event at the ranch. There had been a terrific
+struggle; Haig had almost conquered; then the outlaw had flung him
+over his head, trampled one of his men, breaking his leg, and leaped
+the fence to liberty.
+
+"But--Thunder Mountain?" cried Marion.
+
+"That's the strangest part of it," Smythe replied. "Even Haig refused
+at first to believe it. Nobody knows whether it was deliberate or
+accidental. It seems that 'Red' Davis, who works for Toumine, was
+taking a load of hay to Lake Cobalt. He'd stopped just beyond the
+junction of the main road and Haig's to fix the harness or something,
+when he heard a furious galloping in Haig's road. He looked--and
+Sunnysides must have been something worth seeing, as he came storming
+down on the boy, with red eyes and foaming lips, the bridle reins
+dangling at his knees, and the stirrups flying. 'Red' had never seen
+him, but he'd heard a lot, and he jumped behind the wagon as if the
+devil was after him. But the clatter of hoofs ceased suddenly, and the
+boy peered around the hay to see what had happened. There was
+Sunnysides, just at the junction, with his head high, snorting and
+sniffing, first in the direction of the wagon, and then the other way
+up the road. With a characteristic boyish burst of daring or deviltry,
+'Red' leaped out from his shelter, and yelled. The horse leaped into
+the air, let out a wild neigh, and bolted up the road toward the
+post-office.
+
+"'Red' watched him until he had disappeared, and then drove on. It
+must have been half an hour later that he heard more mad galloping
+behind him. He turned to look, and there came Haig, riding like all
+fury.
+
+"'Have you seen a horse?' he yelled as he reined up alongside the
+wagon.
+
+"'Well I just guess!' said the boy. 'Sunnysides. How did he--?'
+
+"'How was the saddle--loose or not?' asked Haig.
+
+"'No, it hadn't turned--if that's what--'
+
+"'Thank you!' replied Haig, starting on.
+
+"'Wait!' the boy shouted. 'He ain't gone that way!'
+
+"'What?'
+
+"'I say, he ain't gone that way.'
+
+"Haig stared at him suspiciously. Was the boy trying to trick him, in
+emulation of his elders? He was about to ride on, disdaining to heed
+him, when something in the boy's honest face struck his attention.
+
+"'Are you dreaming?' he cried.
+
+"'No, I ain't!' retorted Davis, deeply offended.
+
+"'Where did he go then?' demanded Haig.
+
+"'Yander,' answered 'Red.'
+
+"Haig was incredulous.
+
+"'It's the truth!' protested the boy. And then he told Haig what he
+had seen.
+
+"'But how in hell--' Haig began.
+
+"Then suddenly it came to him.
+
+"'Thunder Mountain!' he cried. Then, half to himself: 'The trail drops
+down from Thunder Mountain--somewhere--into the Black Lake country,
+and then--over the Sangre de Cristo is the San Luis. _But how does he
+know that?_'
+
+"'He knows a lot, he does!' said 'Red.'
+
+"Then Haig was off, flinging back 'Thank you!' at the boy. But he took
+the precaution to confirm 'Red's' story at the post-office. Thompson
+himself had seen Sunnysides, still going like the wind. Tom Banks came
+in a little later with news of the outlaw well up the road toward
+Norton's, and Haig after him. So there's no doubt the way they've
+gone. But it's a losing game if Sunnysides can keep up the speed he
+was hitting when he was last seen."
+
+"A losing game!" She, better than anybody else in the Park, knew what
+that meant. She rose slowly, and looked across the Park at Thunder
+Mountain, now lost among the clouds. No, not quite; for through a rift
+she was just able to make out the timber line on the mountain's
+jutting shoulder. Above that she knew the bleak rocks rose sheer to
+the bald head that was battered by tempests, seared by lightning,
+swept smooth by the winds that never ceased.
+
+So this was the message! This was what Thunder Mountain had said to
+her! This was the answer to her questions! Day after day she had
+studied it, when storms gathered on that frowning head, when vapors
+made a smudge there in the midst of the glittering assemblage of the
+peaks, and when, for a meager hour, once in a while, the summit stood
+clear in the sunshine, as if the tortured mountain, condemned to
+everlasting punishment, had been given a brief reprieve.
+
+Now, at last, she understood. Somewhere on that evil trail was Philip.
+He could never cross Thunder Mountain! Sunnysides might, perhaps; but
+he--he had tried, and failed. Others had tried, and--died for it. But
+he would try again; she knew how desperately he would throw himself
+upon that fatal head. And then? It was the end!
+
+But she must know. She could not stay there.
+
+She started down the hill, running; and Smythe followed her in
+amazement and alarm. He did not like that last look on her face.
+
+"Wait!" he called, in a voice that for once rang with authority.
+
+She stopped, and let him overtake her.
+
+"What are you doing?" he demanded.
+
+"I'm going to Murray's--for news," she answered.
+
+"No!" he cried. "That's madness."
+
+"It's necessary," she rejoined. "And there's no danger."
+
+"How do you know?"
+
+"I met Mrs. Murray once at the post-office. She talked to me about
+Murray's ranch--it's in a gulch just below timber line. She asked me
+to come and visit her--and I'm going."
+
+"Then I'll go with you!" retorted Smythe.
+
+She looked at him intently, and smiled in a way that puzzled and
+disturbed him. But before he could make any considerable effort to
+analyze it, the smile had fled, and he was following Marion helplessly
+down the hill.
+
+At the steps of the veranda she paused, and waited for him.
+
+"I'll be out in a minute," she said; and left him seating himself
+uneasily, his perplexity plainly showing in his face.
+
+Marion opened the door, and faltered on the threshold. Seth was there
+with Claire; and she must face them both.
+
+"Mr. Smythe wants me to go for a ride with him," she said, advancing
+smilingly. "We can start to-morrow on the shooting trip, can't we,
+Cousin Seth?"
+
+She had not often called him "Cousin Seth" of late; and he was
+delighted.
+
+"Well," he said reflectively, "I'd rather planned starting to-day, but
+if to-morrow suits you better it's all right, Marion. Go along with
+your young man!"
+
+Claire was studying her anxiously, and Marion hastened to disarm her.
+
+"Thank you, Seth!" she said. "You see, I'm not feeling quite myself
+this morning--such a night I had! A short ride will be about all I'm
+good for. I'll feel better to-morrow."
+
+"Well, then, dear," said Claire, "you'll not be gone long, will you?"
+
+"Don't worry!" was the evasive reply. "Mr. Smythe will take good care
+of me."
+
+On that she kissed Claire, nodded brightly to Huntington, and hurried
+away. Almost running in her eagerness, she led the way to the stable,
+where two horses stood saddled, with rifles in leather cases hanging
+from the saddlebows, and bundles strapped behind. Smythe started to
+remove the gun from Tuesday's saddle.
+
+"No, leave it there!" commanded Marion.
+
+"Certainly. But why?" asked Smythe.
+
+"I don't know," she replied. "It just occurred to me."
+
+"But the bundle? You won't need that."
+
+"No. But yes--leave it! It's not very big."
+
+Smythe looked at her keenly, and with a vague suspicion; but there was
+no confusion in her face or manner. She was, in fact, not thinking of
+the bundle or the gun; or if she thought of them--Such rigid
+instruments as words, worn blunt with usage and misuse, are quite
+inadequate to describe the faint and fugitive character of that
+thought,--the idea still in its inception, inchoate, embryo. She was
+going to Murray's for news of Philip Haig; and all beyond that purpose
+was--beyond.
+
+Smythe was not satisfied, but he could say no more; for Marion was
+already mounting Tuesday, and he could only follow.
+
+At the edge of the little wood below the ranch house Marion turned in
+the saddle, and saw Claire standing in the doorway. She waved her
+hand, and Claire waved hers in response; and then the trees came
+between them, as they had done a hundred times that summer. But now a
+lump rose in Marion's throat. Dear Claire! She had been so good to
+her!
+
+They emerged from the woods, and Marion spurred Tuesday to the gallop,
+and Smythe came galloping behind. For some distance down the valley
+she made a point of keeping well ahead of him, by this means avoiding
+conversation, for which she was not prepared. Her eyes continually
+sought the dark, gaunt mass of rock that was then, little by little,
+breaking through the reek on Thunder Mountain. Philip would be up
+there soon. He had--how many hours the start of her? She checked
+Tuesday's gait, and let Smythe come up beside her.
+
+"What time was it when he passed the post-office?" she asked.
+
+"About eight o'clock."
+
+And now it was almost noon! She spurred her pony on.
+
+They turned the corner at Thompson's, galloping, and caught a glimpse
+of Mrs. Thompson in the doorway, with a look of wonder on her face.
+Two miles beyond they swerved without lessening their speed into a
+less-traveled road that presently was winding in and out among the
+timber, which opened at the end of another mile, and showed them
+Norton's ranch in its sheltered valley among the foothills. It was
+from Norton's, or near it, that the last word had come of Haig and
+Sunnysides; so there was no need to stop for confirmation of their
+direction. The valley narrowed to a gulch, and the forest came down on
+either side, and the road ahead of them was swallowed up in shade.
+
+Here, as if at the entrance to some unknown (for she had never been
+past Norton's, in all her rides about the Park), her purpose required
+that Marion should rid herself of Smythe. Moreover, there was Claire
+to be thought of; and she did not want Huntington to be riding up the
+trail after her that night.
+
+"Now, Mr. Smythe," she said, reining up in the first shadow of the
+woods, "I've something for you to do for me."
+
+"What is it?" he asked in surprise.
+
+"I want you to leave me now, and take a message to Mrs. Huntington."
+
+"But I can't--leave you."
+
+"Yes, you must."
+
+"But you're not going on alone!"
+
+"I'm not afraid. I've got my rifle. Besides, I'll be at Murray's
+before dark, and there, as you know, I shall be in good hands. But
+Claire will worry unless she knows where I am."
+
+"She'll worry just the same."
+
+"No. She knows Mrs. Murray very well."
+
+"But----"
+
+"Good-by, Mr. Smythe!"
+
+She reached her hand to him, and he took it reluctantly.
+
+"It's all wrong, Miss Gaylord!" he protested. "I'm convinced that I'm
+acting like a fool. If anything happens to you, I'll----"
+
+"Nothing will happen to me. Good-by!"
+
+Smythe watched her until she was swallowed up by the woods; he looked
+at the pines piling up to the distant crests of the mountains, mass on
+mass, and solitude enfolding deeper solitude; he listened to the long,
+low, rolling murmur of the forest, sweet but menacing. Then, with the
+inward comment that he was several kinds of a blithering idiot, he
+turned and rode back toward the Park, evolving various interesting but
+futile theories to explain the fact that he, a man of undoubted
+intelligence, had always acted the part of the giddy fool in moments
+of emergency. And there was Huntington--another fool! He could foresee
+a pretty dialogue between them.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+"THE TRAIL HELD TRUE"
+
+
+The forest enveloped her, but she sheltered herself in its heart, and
+was glad of its soothing silence. The wind had died down to a rustling
+murmur in the highest foliage; through rifts in the dark-green canopy
+she caught glimpses of a cool blue sky; and there was a rooty
+sweetness in the air.
+
+Mile by mile the road, a mere track traveled by Murray's team at long
+intervals, grew rougher and more difficult. Soon it had abandoned the
+easy grades for the gulch, and climbed steep mountain sides, in a
+devious course through heavy timber, dropping to tumbling rivulets,
+climbing again to hang on the edges of high cliffs, dodging here and
+there among massive, outjutting rocks. Four hours she rode thus,
+mounting, ever mounting, with glimpses now and then of the forests
+massed green-black below, and glimpses even of the Park itself, around
+the shoulder of a hill,--a patch of green and violet bright with
+sunshine. And then, when weariness had begun to weigh upon her, and as
+the shadows of the forest turned to glooms, she saw with a thrill of
+expectation that the road dipped ahead of her into a little gulch that
+lay hidden away in a cleft of the mountains. She must surely be near
+her destination now; and sure enough, she was riding presently along
+the bank of a roaring stream; beyond her was a small meadow of a
+brilliant green, and at the far edge of it a log cabin, with friendly
+smoke curling from the chimney.
+
+But she was surprised and disappointed. She had expected, on reaching
+Murray's, to see the stark head of Thunder Mountain towering above it,
+near and sheer. It was nowhere visible; not even the silvery peaks,
+its neighbors, were to be seen; there were only forests heaped on
+forests to the sky line. The trail, then, must be longer than she
+thought; and she seemed to be no closer to him than when she had
+studied the bald head of the mountain through the clouds.
+
+She was welcomed by Mrs. Murray with cordiality, but in some surprise.
+A stout and jovial person, whose spirits appeared not to have been
+lowered in the least degree by the loneliness of her surroundings,
+Mrs. Murray was a helpful hostess to Marion, who was now in a state of
+deep dejection. A little boy and his smaller sister, both very dirty
+but rugged and red-cheeked, played in the open space before the cabin.
+The week's washing was on the line, and from behind it, at the sound
+of a horse's hoof beats, came Mrs. Murray, staring in amazement.
+Wonders on wonders in that solitude, where nothing ever happened!
+First a runaway horse of unheard-of color, saddled and bridled,
+dashing past the cabin, and almost trampling the children at their
+play; then Philip Haig, with his set face and burning eyes, making
+inquiries, and asking for a bite to eat; and then----
+
+"Well! If it ain't Miss Gaylord!" cried Mrs. Murray, as she rushed to
+greet her. "What in the world----"
+
+She paused on that, recalling suddenly what she had heard at
+Thompson's of Marion's nursing Haig back to life, and intuitively
+associating her appearance there with his. Marion saw the thought
+reflected in the woman's honest face, and knew that after all the
+happenings of the summer, and the gossip that had followed, her better
+course was to be frank with Mrs. Murray from the start. Besides she
+could not wait to ask her questions by any indirection.
+
+"Have you seen him?" she demanded eagerly.
+
+"Yes, he was here--about noontime. The look on his face!"
+
+She threw up her hands in a gesture that indicated the abandonment of
+all hope for such a man.
+
+"And Sunnysides?"
+
+"Long before him. The critter almost run over my two babies, playin'
+there before the door. Poor dears, scared almost out o' their skins!"
+
+"What did he say?"
+
+"Nothin'. That is, not much. About the horse first. My man told him it
+ain't no use tryin' to ketch him, an' it's foolish to try to cross
+Thunder Mountain. Murray's been here ten years, an' ain't gone much
+further'n the edge of it. Storms allus drove him back. An' what's the
+use, when he's got wife an' childer to look after? Of course
+Haig----"
+
+"What did he say then?"
+
+"He says he c'n cross if Sunnysides can, an' if they can't they'll
+fight it out up there. My man asks why he didn't go 'round a safe way
+an' wait for Sunnysides in the San Luis, if he thinks the horse's
+goin' back home. Haig says he'd made up his mind to cross Thunder
+Mountain some time, an' now's as good a time as any. But it's----" She
+was checked at last by the look of anguish on Marion's face. "But you
+just come in. It's supper time, almost, an' you must be right hungry.
+Murray'll be here soon, an' he'll put up your horse."
+
+In the cabin there was to be seen at first just one big room, with two
+beds at one end, a table surrounded by chairs in the middle, and a
+stove in the midst of kettles and pans and tubs at the other. But
+presently Marion noticed a kind of balcony above the beds, and she
+learned later that this was the "spare bedroom" in which she would be
+stowed away for the night.
+
+"He was hungry too," Mrs. Murray went on, being careful, however, to
+confine herself to the material side of the subject. "He ate some
+dinner, an' then, after we give up tryin' to stop him, Murray said
+he'd got to take somethin' with him to eat, an' some blankets. He
+hadn't a thing, mind you, an' didn't want to take nothin', but he did
+take a good-sized strip o' bacon and some bread--I'd just did the
+bakin'--an' a fryin'-pan an' matches an' a knife. Murray done 'em up
+in a pair o' blankets, an' stuck in a leather coat with sheepskin
+inside, an' hung a hatchet on his saddle. He'll need 'em--if he gits
+across into the Black Lake country, which's worse some ways than
+Thunder Mountain--forest't ain't never been touched, an' bad lands,
+an'----"
+
+Murray's entrance interrupted this speech, which was becoming painful
+to her guest, in spite of the good woman's resolution to say nothing
+discouraging. Murray, a bearded, rough fellow in whose face shone
+good nature and contentment with the living he made out of his cows
+and chickens and few head of stock feeding in the mountain meadows,
+received a whispered hint, and obediently talked of other things than
+Haig and the runaway. They supped on bacon and eggs, with bread and
+butter and milk; and an hour afterwards Marion was tucked away in a
+comfortable bed in that queer "spare bedroom" up against the eaves of
+the log cabin.
+
+Exhaustion soon brought her sleep. But in the middle of the night she
+was awakened by a storm that swept high over the ranch house, scarcely
+touching it in its sheltered hollow, but shrieking and wailing among
+the rocks and pines. She sat up in her bed to listen! Thunder
+Mountain! Before her eyes there rose, out of the dark of the cabin, a
+vision of Philip prone among the rocks of that terrible summit, struck
+down by the wind, or felled by a thunderbolt, drenched with rain, and
+perishing of cold. There came, above the howling of the wind, a
+deafening crash of thunder that rolled away in sullen bellowing. She
+buried her face among the pillows to shut out the frightful sound; and
+at length, when the tumult had died away to recur no more, she lay
+weeping softly until sleep came again to her relief. She did not wake
+again till morning.
+
+"How much farther up can I go?" asked Marion at breakfast.
+
+"You don't mean----" began Mrs. Murray in alarm.
+
+"No," replied Marion quickly. "I don't mean the top. But can't I ride
+near enough to see it?"
+
+"You c'n go to timber line safe enough," said Murray.
+
+"Yes, I've been that far, but you mustn't think o' goin' further,"
+added the woman, still suspicious. "I'll tell you what! Murray'll go
+with you."
+
+"By no means!" Marion protested. "It isn't necessary at all. I can
+follow trails well enough."
+
+"I wish you'd let Murray go with you. He'll be glad to show you----"
+
+"No. Thank you just the same, Mrs. Murray, but----"
+
+"And you'll not try to go past timber line?"
+
+"Don't worry about that, please! I know I could never go where men
+have failed. I've heard all about Thunder Mountain, and I just want to
+see it, near. Besides----"
+
+She did not finish, but turned quickly away. This sign of emotion was
+not hidden from Mrs. Murray, and it heightened her anxiety. Lord only
+knew what the girl'd try to do once she got out of their sight! But
+where the intellectual and argumentative Smythe had failed, what could
+be expected of these simple mountain folk, who for all their sturdy
+independence were not a little awed by the superior poise and
+distinction of their visitor? Moreover, Marion was at this moment
+entirely honest in her assurance that she intended to go no farther
+than timber line. If the idea that lay deep in the back of her mind
+had grown since its inception some hours before, it was yet formless
+and unrecognized; if her purpose now had her firmly gripped, she was
+as yet unconscious of it, obeying it subconsciously, while she told
+herself, as she told Mrs. Murray, that she wanted only to satisfy her
+aching heart by doing merely all that a girl could do. To make sure
+that Philip had not already failed--that he had not been thrown back
+from the very edge of the fatal crest--that he did not now lie
+somewhere on the last steep slope above timber line, where she might
+see and save him: this was the utmost of her design in setting out
+that morning against the protests of her hosts.
+
+Yielding at last, where she could avail no more, the ranchwife fixed
+up a simple luncheon of bread and butter and jam, which she tied in a
+little package at Marion's saddlebow. And then, with a final word of
+warning that she must stop at timber line, an' be back at the house
+'fore dark, or she, Mrs. Murray, would be wild, and he, Murray, would
+have to go searching for her, the good woman let her go, and waved a
+fat farewell to her until Marion was out of sight among the trees.
+
+Once more the forest enfolded her. Though the wagon road ended at
+Murray's, the trail was still for some distance plainly marked, and
+offered few difficulties. Even when it began to be less distinct she
+was not alarmed. Smythe had told her, and Murray had confirmed his
+description, that Thunder Mountain was not formidable as far as the
+foot of the final scarp. Seth had taught her something of the lore of
+trails, and she was confident that she would be able to find her way
+even if the underfoot marks should fail. There would be blazes on
+trees, and broken limbs and twigs, and many subtle signs that she now
+sought to marshal in her mind against a possible perplexity. With eyes
+alert, she rode slowly and resolutely on, ever higher and higher, hour
+after hour, most of the time through dense woods, but now and then
+across a rocky slope, or down into a shallow gulch, and out again. By
+imperceptible degrees the trail grew fainter; and once it failed her
+utterly, in a small open space in the woods.
+
+For a moment she was on the very point of panic; the forest seemed to
+be closing in on her with sudden malignity; and the terror of Thunder
+Mountain held her in its cold grip. But desperation called up her
+courage. She walked Tuesday in an ever-widening circle around the spot
+where she had lost the trail, with her heart almost still, and her
+eyes straining at every tree as it came within her vision. Where?
+Where? Would there be no more blazes, no more broken limbs, no more
+prints of hoofs on the mossy earth? Had she left the trail farther
+back than she had thought? And would she wander over all the vast
+bosom of the mountain until she fell from the saddle, and knew no
+more?
+
+It was a real peril, and one that might have had a tragic termination
+as easily as a happy one,--more easily, indeed, if she had lost her
+head. But something strong within her kept her senses keen; and
+suddenly she broke out in a cry of joy and triumph that went echoing
+down the forest aisles. There, on a patriarchal pine, though almost
+obliterated by time and weather, was the blaze in the bark that told
+her the trail ran at the base of that solid trunk. She halted Tuesday
+there--and faced a new difficulty: in her many circlings she had lost
+the general direction in which she had been riding. The trail was
+under her horse's hoofs; but which way should she go? There appeared
+to be no ascent the one way or the other, and no slope on either
+side.
+
+She solved the problem by following the trail regardless of direction
+until she was able to discover in the black mold the fresh print of a
+horse's hoof--an unshod hoof this was, and the print certainly no
+older than yesterday. Without serious misgivings now, she rode on, and
+in a few minutes the trail mounted again with a sharpness sufficient
+to remove the last of her doubts.
+
+Well, she was a woodsman now, and would fear no more. But she took the
+precaution to banish all thoughts excepting those necessary to the
+task in hand. The woods themselves offered countless temptations to
+distraction. They were alive. Grouse moved among the branches of the
+trees; small birds of a very silent habit fluttered across the trail;
+and once a deer slipped away through a dim and leafy avenue. In moist
+places flowers of tender hues still bloomed as if to shame the autumn
+browns of the underbrush. And then she emerged from the soft shades of
+the green woods into one of the most melancholy of mountain places, a
+great patch of burnt timber. For surely half an hour she rode through
+a veritable cemetery of pines, among multitudes of tall straight
+shafts from which the flames had licked the foliage and stripped the
+limbs, and from which the rains and snows and winds of winter had
+washed the charred bark until the boles stood white and ghastly,
+infinitely sad and still. No life was here, no flutter or call or hum
+of living creatures; and the silence was like a menace. She began to
+cast apprehensive glances around her, and was glad to the very core of
+her when the forest gradually greened again, and she was in the cool
+and friendly shade.
+
+Yet another terrifying experience awaited her,--not terrifying in the
+sense of any peril to herself so much as in its vivid suggestion of
+peril to Philip Haig. Without warning there came a prodigious crash of
+thunder; very near, it seemed. The whole earth rocked and shook, she
+fancied, under that smashing blow, and thereupon a savage bellowing
+filled the vault of heaven, and the forest quivered with the
+reverberations. Hard on the first blow fell another; and then the
+strokes descended in a swift and terrible succession, until there was
+one continuous and deafening roar like nothing she had ever heard or
+imagined. By this she knew that she was now close up under the
+frowning battlement of Thunder Mountain; and that a storm had burst
+upon that shelterless and unpitied head, with a malevolent timeliness
+befitting its ill repute. And somewhere in the midst of that
+destroying fury was Philip Haig!
+
+The blue tracery of sky was blotted out; the forest became dark as
+night; the tree tops heaved and thrashed about in the wind that rushed
+down the mountain side. On the heels of the wind came a drenching
+rain, and Marion took what refuge was offered close to the trunk of a
+huge pine, which shook and shivered as if it too had nerves that were
+unstrung by all this tumult.
+
+It passed, and the sky cleared with what to her seemed extraordinary
+swiftness. And when she rode out again to pick up the trail, the air
+was indescribably fresh and exhilarating, and the sun was soon
+filtering through the foliage upon her pathway.
+
+The trail grew more precipitous, its surroundings more rugged and
+wild. Rocks took the place of the soft, mossy soil, and the forest
+thinned and shrank. Where there had been monarchs in their majesty she
+rode now among stunted pines and dwarf oaks no higher than her head.
+And soon she was at timber line, where the beaten and disheartened
+trees grew downward, or curled along the earth like serpents, or
+spread out in fantastic, unnatural, and monstrous shapes.
+
+And there at last towered the bald head of Thunder Mountain. She could
+not see, of course, the flat top itself. Before her rose a precipitous
+slope, covered with loose stones and debris, and ending in a jagged
+line of rock against the sky, dull gray against the blue. Thin grass
+grew yet some distance up the slope; and then it was bare of
+vegetation, bare of soil, with a wavering faint line marking where
+life ended and death began.
+
+She halted near the last gnome-tree, and stared at the desolate slope
+and the forbidding sky line. This was the end of her journey; and she
+knew no more than she could have known back there in the Park. The
+mountain was still the sphinx, telling her nothing, though she had
+come to it at last after months of questioning, with one question on
+her lips. Where was Philip? Perhaps just yonder, just beyond that
+sharp-raised barrier. From that crest, no doubt, the whole expanse of
+the summit would be visible. And how could she go back alone, without
+being able to assure herself forever that she had done her best?
+
+She studied the slope. From where she stood to the gray sky line the
+distance was perhaps seven hundred feet. But the trail, which she
+could discern faintly marked among the loose and sliding stones,
+traveled five or six times that distance in its zigzag course.
+Fascinated, her eyes followed it in and out until its dim line
+vanished high up in the gray-brown uniformity of the steep ascent.
+From this she looked up eagerly at the sky. It was a clear steel-blue;
+the sun shone bright on the expanse of stone; a vigorous but not
+violent breeze came from around the distant curve of the slope. It
+seemed incredible, considering all that she had heard, and all that
+she had imagined. The mountain, she knew, had its brief and infrequent
+hours of quiet, but she had pictured it as terrifying even in its
+calm. Now it was formidable and mysterious, and she could not forget
+its menace; but it was not terrible. On top, perhaps----
+
+She urged Tuesday forward. The trail went far out to the right at an
+easy gradient, turned sharply, and came back to reach out as far to
+the left. It was more difficult than Marion had imagined, for the
+reason that the loose stones afforded an ill footing for the pony,
+which slipped and slid and stumbled, often going to his knees, and
+more than once barely avoiding a fall that would have sent horse and
+rider rolling down to be caught by the network of stunted trees. But
+Tuesday was sure of foot; and so, with muscles quivering under the
+strain, and his eyes bulging with anxiety and fear, he climbed up and
+up without disaster, while Marion leaned far forward in the saddle,
+her nerves on edge, her eyes alert, and her heart pounding wildly, as
+much from excitement as from its struggle with that high altitude.
+
+How long that climb endured she never knew; the actual minutes seemed
+to her as hours, their total an eternity. But at last, trembling and
+sweating, Tuesday stood on a narrow shelf of granite, with the long
+slope behind, and a wall of rock ahead. While the pony rested, Marion
+looked to left and right for the continuation of the trail. She could
+not see it, but knew there should be an opening somewhere in the wall
+that rose sheer some twenty-five or thirty feet above her head. Slowly
+riding along the platform, searching for a sign, the wall at her left,
+and the declivity at her right, she came to a place where the barrier
+curved inward, and was also hollowed out at its base, so that a
+shallow cave (speaking loosely) was formed, where some sort of shelter
+might have been found from a storm. This possibility flashed into
+Marion's mind, for she could not forget the mountain and its ways. She
+dismounted to look into the cave, and at two steps started forward
+with a cry.
+
+On the rocky floor was a small heap of ashes and charred ends of
+sticks. Kneeling quickly, she tore off a glove, and thrust her fingers
+into the ashes. They were warm! And near the ashes she discovered the
+rind of a thin slice of bacon, and a few crumbs of bread. Philip had
+passed Murray's soon after midday; he would have reached the cave,
+then, before night; and so he had slept there, and risen at dawn, and
+eaten his meagre breakfast, and ridden on.
+
+She leaped to her feet, ran out and mounted her pony, and rode forward
+along the platform, searching for the trail.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+IN THE HOLLOW OF THE STORM
+
+
+Haig arrived at timber line about an hour before nightfall. On the
+long trail he had considered thoroughly all the chances of his case,
+and was prepared to undergo delays and disappointments. He knew
+Thunder Mountain. Even without reckoning on storms (and the vapors
+were at that moment settling down on the frowning battlement), it were
+foolhardiness, or worse, to attempt the passage of the mountain in the
+night. Then he remembered the shallow cave that he had noticed on his
+previous visit to the summit; and his plans were made.
+
+He gathered an armful of dry sticks and shreds of bark, climbed the
+treacherous slope as Marion did some hours later, and settled himself
+in the half-shelter of the cave to await the morning. A rasher of
+bacon, a slice of bread, and a pipe of tobacco refreshed him; and he
+rolled himself in his blankets, and went to sleep. Like Marion in the
+"spare bedroom" far below, he was awakened in the night by the savage
+hammerings of the storm. The very rocks beneath him seemed to be
+jarred by that cannonade; the wind, howling around the cliff,
+threatened to drag him out of his cave; and the rain fell in torrents
+on the platform, almost flooding his stone bed. But he turned over in
+his blankets, and hoped the mountain would "keep it up" all night.
+Even Sunnysides would be halted by a storm like that.
+
+He arose at the first sign of dawn, hurried through his scant and
+salty breakfast, quenched his thirst with rain water scooped out of
+depressions in the rock, and started on. Knowing the trail at this
+point, he rode straight out along the platform, and came in half a
+minute to the spot where the wall of rock was broken down into a
+clutter of debris, in width some forty feet. Up through this litter of
+disintegrated granite the trail lurched with many twists and turns,
+and emerged at last upon one of the lower levels of the summit.
+
+Trixy was winded, and for a moment Haig rested her, while he surveyed
+the scene. And in the thrill of that moment, facing the undertaking in
+which he had once failed, he all but forgot Sunnysides. The wind was
+low, and scarcely more difficult to meet than a stiff blow in the
+Park; but aside from that he saw little encouraging in the prospect.
+Behind him, it was true, the forests and all the hills and valleys lay
+clear in the morning light, with just a thin mist clinging in the
+gulches; and around him on all sides but one the sharp peaks stood up
+shining white in the first rays of the sun. But in front of him gray
+vapors, not yet dense enough to be described as clouds, came swirling
+and tumbling toward him across the stone-littered surface of the flat.
+Unless the sun should dissipate those vapors--He shrugged his
+shoulders, and rode on.
+
+Almost fourteen thousand feet above the level of the sea, the bald
+head of Thunder Mountain, stripped as it has been of its ennobling
+peak, needs only three or four hundred feet to be as high as the
+snow-clad summits on each side. Seen from afar, that bare head
+appears to be as flat and smooth as a table, but in reality its entire
+area, roughly circular in outline, and something more than three miles
+in its largest diameter, is broken up into terraces, into slopes and
+hillocks, into hollows and mounds, all strewn with, bowlders and loose
+stones, with here and there uprearing rocks of fantastic and
+suggestive shapes. There is no life there,--no birds, no conies or
+chipmunks that inhabit most high places of these mountains; no
+flowers, no grass, no sign of vegetation; nothing but granite. The
+trail runs sometimes plainly across level reaches of loose stones,
+sometimes over long smooth surfaces of rock, sometimes in and out
+among wildernesses of shattered and tumbled fragments of the
+mountain's blasted head. At varying intervals, particularly in its
+more difficult stages, it is marked by small pyramids of stones, and
+by crosses cut crudely in the rock. Care must be taken not to miss one
+of these marks; for the trail, in avoiding inaccessible heaps of
+granite, goes in places perilously near the edge of the summit, which
+falls away in more than one known precipice a thousand feet to the
+unknown gulch below.
+
+The wind was cold, and Haig felt that its strength was steadily
+increasing, though it yet blew fitfully. He made the second level
+without mishap, but was brought to a momentary standstill there by the
+fiercer rush of wind on the higher terrace. It seemed strange, at
+first thought, that the wind had not blown away the vapors that now
+enveloped him; but he saw presently that it was not blowing across
+the mountain, but rather in a circular, whirlwind motion that
+gradually became more violent. The terrace he now crossed was as
+smooth as a floor, and he found his way only by means of the crosses
+carved in the rocks beneath his feet. Then the trail dropped
+suddenly into a shallow trough; mounted to another field of
+crumbled stones; and rose unevenly to a barrier that he remembered
+with a pang of chagrin. This was what at the first glance would have
+appeared to be a solid and insurmountable wall of rock, perhaps
+fifteen feet in height, and stretching away to the very edge of the
+plateau at his right, and to a wilderness of granite on the left.
+But directly ahead of him the wall was cleft, and there was a
+narrow pathway climbing up between two huge rocks that had been
+carved by the elements into shapes bearing a fanciful resemblance to
+human figures. These were the Twin Sisters.
+
+Here Haig had been caught by a storm that hurled him back defeated;
+and he had, moreover, narrowly escaped a worse thing than mere defeat;
+for the wind had carried him off the trail, and almost to the brink of
+the chasm that yawned some hundred yards away. Now, remembering that
+experience, he spurred Trixy forward to take the aperture in the wall
+before the wind should suddenly become insupportable; and this time he
+was more fortunate. The pony leaped and clambered up the slippery
+path, and at the exit was caught by a blast that hurled and pinned
+her, as if she had been no heavier than a butterfly, against the base
+of the righthand towering figure. For some seconds neither horse nor
+man was able to move from that fixed position, where the wind
+flattened them against the rock. Then it swerved sharply, flung them
+against the other Sister with such force that Haig's leg was stunned
+and bruised, and finally released them with a shriek that sounded like
+a cry of disappointed rage. Trixy plunged forward with a snort, and
+Haig saw that the trail was again plain across another field of
+scattered stones.
+
+Now, thrilled by this victory, he urged the pony onward at all
+possible speed toward the worst of all the perils of the mountain. The
+stone field was succeeded by a series of mounds and hollows, and this
+by a second slippery floor; and then he mounted the ridge that
+terminated in the Devil's Chair. Here was the highest point attained
+by the trail: a flat rock measuring perhaps twenty yards one way, and
+a little less the other, lifted high above the surrounding slopes, and
+having (hence its name) a huge back formed by the abrupt termination
+of the ridge. From the chair the rock dipped in a kind of hollow like
+a chute, worn smooth by the winds and rains; and everything that ever
+fell into that chute was swallowed by the chasm of unplumbed and
+unestimated depth. Sometimes the wind blew up through the chute across
+the Devil's Chair; sometimes it blew down through it into the chasm.
+It was blowing out when Parker reached the chair, and he was hurled
+back down, the slope three times before he acknowledged his defeat; it
+was blowing in when the three members of the English party were sucked
+down into the chasm.
+
+Haig could have cried aloud the joy that ran through him, when, having
+spurred Trixy up the steep ascent to a footing on the Devil's Chair,
+he found that almost a perfect calm reigned there, due to some sudden
+shift in the currents of the air.
+
+"Quick, Trixy! On!" he cried.
+
+The horse bounded across the platform, slid and stumbled down the
+other side, and was up again, leaping forward, and a little to the
+left, where there was firmer going over another field of stones. And
+now at length, to Haig's relief, the trail bent sharply in toward the
+middle of the plateau, and thus away from the peril of the chasms.
+
+But his elation was short-lived. If Thunder Mountain had admitted him
+between the Twin Sisters, and spared him at the Devil's Chair, it was
+only to hurl upon him its accumulated fury farther on. Engrossed in
+the endless difficulties of the trail, he had not observed the
+stealthy and insidious change that was taking place in the atmosphere
+until it had advanced far toward its climax. The un-looked for calm,
+so opportune, was but a pause before an outburst of elemental rage.
+The vapors lifted, and hung in still masses a few feet above the
+earth. Haig picked his way along in a strange, weird, yellowish light,
+in a stillness that was all the more impressive by contrast with the
+recent howling and hammering of the wind. There was not a faintest
+puff of air on his cheek, and not a sound except the click of Trixy's
+feet among the stones, and his own hurried breathing. All else seemed
+to have paused, expectant, waiting.
+
+It did not come as storms come in the valley, or on the plain, or
+among the hills; not even as they come in the mountains. It did not
+come from north, or east, or west, or south, or from any known
+horizon; it had no sensible direction; it was there. Out of the
+portentous hush (not into it) there came first a whisper, something
+low and malevolent; then a singular moaning sound, incomparably dismal
+and hollow and pervasive. Haig moved his head from side to side,
+endeavoring to trace it--before, behind, above--he knew not where. The
+moaning murmur grew, and still there was no perceptible movement in
+the air; it rose whining up, up, up the scale until at last it was a
+shrill, demoniacal shriek. And then, out of the darkening mists, it
+leaped upon him.
+
+In this whirling, wicked, wondrous thing there was no orderly and
+recognizable succession of phenomena, such as wind and lightning and
+rain. These came all in one swoop, all in one frightful blend. It was
+black, and it was bright. The lightning came not from the sky,
+discharging its bolts to earth; it was on the very surface of the
+plateau. It flamed and crackled on uplifted rocks; it ran hissing like
+fiery serpents among the scattered stones; it buzzed and exploded in
+the very face of Haig, and under the pony's belly. If he had been
+caught in a burning storehouse of fireworks--rockets, Roman candles,
+pinwheels, and all the ingenious products of the pyrotechnician--the
+experience might have been like this, only a thousand times less
+terrifying. He dodged and ducked, and threw up his hands to shield his
+face, expecting instantly that one of those exploding things would
+make an end of him.
+
+Then there were other horrors to be endured. The din became
+incessant. Simultaneous with the hiss and crackle and crack of the
+lightning there was a continuous deafening detonation in the air
+above him, crash on crash and roar on roar. The terrors of the
+first few seconds had been chiefly those felt and heard. But the
+wind had steadily increased in violence. It did not blow against him,
+bowling him over, but whirled around him with a speed that was every
+instant accelerated. He felt that he had no weight. He seemed
+about to be lifted into the vortex of the storm, to be flung far
+out into space.
+
+"Down, girl! Down!" he tried to shout.
+
+But there was no sound from his lips. He felt the pony stiffening
+under him, bracing herself stiff-legged on the stones; and he knew
+that she shared his fear. And all this time the rain beat down upon
+him, in lead-like sheets, with intermittent bombardments of
+hailstones. It occurred to him to wonder dully which would win--the
+wind that sought to whirl him up into the sky, or the rain that was
+for beating him to earth, or the lightning that would burn him to
+cinders. Then thought left him, and his last impression was of being
+torn limb from limb, and atom from atom, in excruciating pain.
+
+He was roused at length to the consciousness of having been lifted and
+hurled; and found himself prostrate on the ground, face downward, with
+the rain flooding him. Trixy lay at his side, flat like himself, her
+head stretched out among the stones. They seemed to lie in a vacuum,
+in the very hollow of the storm. Around them the clatter, the clang
+and the uproar were even more terrifying than before because they were
+now separated from these noises, no longer a part of them. All was
+blackness, shot through with fire. Haig was no more tortured in his
+body, except for the sense of being suffocated. He seemed to inhale
+raw ozone; the air fairly stank with the odors of decomposition; the
+saliva in his mouth had a peculiar pungent and disagreeable taste. He
+gasped and fought for breath.
+
+Such reason as was left to him told him that this was the end of all.
+At any instant something would flash out of that wall of blackness,
+and destroy him with a blow. His spirit rose exultantly to meet and
+welcome it; he rejoiced in such a death, slain by the elements, on the
+roof of the world, alone, unseen; it was a glorious exit, the finish
+he had sought for years on years, his heart's desire. Triumphant and
+defiant, he tried to roar back at the thunder, to outscream the wind,
+to face the lightning with undimmed eyes.
+
+There came a blinding flash, exceeding in brightness anything he had
+yet experienced. But with it, to his amazement, there emerged from the
+blackness a vision that brought life back to him with a shocking
+thrill. For there, not ten paces distant, was Sunnysides. Only for an
+instant; and then all was again obscure. He must have been mistaken.
+It was only a figment of fancy, a creation of his tortured brain, a
+phenomenon associated with his passing from life to death. And yet he
+waited, staring into the smothering void.
+
+Another flash of fire across the black--and Sunnysides! But now the
+lightning, as if directed by some intelligence, became again
+continuous, its flashes joined in one spouting flame. And in the very
+midst of it stood the outlaw in his familiar attitude, with one
+forefoot slightly raised, his head high, his nostrils distended, his
+dark eyes filled with fire. There had never been anything so bright
+and beautiful. His golden hide gleamed with planetary splendor, like
+the mythical horses of the sun. This was The Horse, the golden
+epiphany of the brute, the answer to all of Haig's fears and
+resolutions. And in the very hour of his exit--
+
+Rage rose again within him. Instinctively, for he was scarce capable
+of thought, he tried to reach his revolver. But his arms were leaden.
+His fingers touched the butt of the weapon, and stopped as if
+paralyzed. The horse wavered and danced before his eyes; there was a
+culminating detonation; he felt a terrific blow on his head. And he
+knew no more.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+THE NARROW PASSAGE
+
+
+Light came with unutterable mystery. Yet Haig lay for a moment
+waiting, mistrustful of the peace that encompassed him. Then he
+cautiously raised his head, and looked. Trixy stood near him, panting
+and wild-eyed. The whole surface of the plateau was glistening wet; a
+cold breeze poured over him, without violence; and the sky above him
+was as innocent and bright as a baby's smile.
+
+Where, then, was the storm? He moved his head painfully, and searched
+the horizon; and yonder, around the icy parapets of Silver Tip, with
+roll on roll of reverberations in its wake, the black storm was in
+full flight. His eyes followed it with a curious and exaggerated
+interest; for he had seen its birth, and tested its power, and it had
+given him a new experience.
+
+Presently he tried to rise, and found that his limbs were numb. His
+right arm ached to the tips of his fingers. His head swam, and he had
+difficulty in arranging his impressions in any sort of orderly
+succession, especially those in which Sunnysides participated.
+
+"I wonder how much of it really happened!" he mused.
+
+Unexpectedly his eyes lighted on his revolver, where it lay among the
+stones at his side. Ah! It had burned his fingers. He picked it up,
+and examined it curiously. But none of the cartridges had been
+exploded. The gun, then, had been knocked out of his hand before he
+could lift and aim it; and the storm had taunted him with Sunnysides,
+and cheated him. No matter! The game was not yet up.
+
+He struggled to his feet, and stretched himself, and pounded his
+chest, which ached from his heavy breathing. Then his eyes sought the
+trail ahead, scanning the level spaces and the heaped-up masses of
+granite; and an instant later a cry escaped his lips. For there,
+perhaps half a mile away, and mounting rapidly a gray ridge of rock,
+his body outlined against the blue sky, was Sunnysides. It had been no
+vision, then, no figment of his tortured brain. But where had the
+horse been all this time, to have been caught in the same storm with
+his pursuer, despite his half-hour start, his greater speed, and the
+night that came between them? True, there had been a storm in the
+night; that might have delayed, but it should not have kept him. True,
+too, he might have lost the trail, and wandered over the plateau; but
+Haig could not have missed him, if he had been anywhere in sight
+before the storm revealed him. No, nothing could explain it; and there
+remained only one hypothesis, which was untenable, preposterous and
+mad. And yet it fascinated and held him. He had once said jocularly
+that Sunnysides was not a real horse at all; that he was a demon--a
+spirit. Well, it was a real horse, right enough, that had crushed him,
+and thrown him again, and broken Bill Craven's leg, and fled; and that
+was a real horse yonder, outlined against the sky. If some devilish
+instinct in the brute, or some agent of Destiny, or mere fling of
+chance had held him on the plateau to tantalize and lead on his
+pursuer--
+
+"Dreaming again!" Haig muttered, with a wry smile, and yet with a
+vague uneasiness that he could not put down.
+
+But in another instant he had leaped to his horse, tested the cinches
+with trembling fingers, climbed stiffly into the saddle, and dug the
+spurs into Trixy's flanks. When he looked again toward the ridge, the
+outlaw had disappeared; but there was no ignis-fatuus trick in that;
+and the horse would be seen again when Haig too had topped the rise.
+For the trail was now leading him in a relatively straight line toward
+the exact spot where Sunnysides had vanished; and more assuring than
+all else, a very material and comforting proof that this was a real
+horse he followed, was the discovery he made halfway up the slope.
+There, among the stones, lay the outlaw's saddle. Clearly the runaway
+had only just now been able to shake it off, and its condition,
+bruised and cut and dirty, showed that Sunnysides had been put to some
+trouble to be rid of it, having doubtless rolled over and over on it
+in his efforts to be free. And there, too, was a plausible explanation
+of the fact that Sunnysides was not now far on the trail.
+
+From the top of the ridge, Haig saw the outlaw picking his way through
+a wilderness of rocks that had the grewsome aspect of a cemetery--the
+graveyard of the gods. Following through this depressing scene, he
+lost sight of Sunnysides, and on emerging upon another floor-like
+expanse of solid stone he received a surprise that caused him to rein
+up Trixy with a jerk. The quarry was nowhere in sight, though Haig's
+position gave him a sweeping view of the flat ahead of him, even to
+the edge of the summit, now scarcely three quarters of a mile away.
+There was no possibility that the horse could have traversed that
+distance in the time Haig was passing through the "cemetery;" neither
+was there any place on that part of the plateau where it could be
+concealed.
+
+The trail itself solved the mystery. It did not lead straight on, as
+Haig had imagined; and he experienced some difficulty in finding it on
+the smooth floor, from which the elements had all but obliterated the
+crosses made by the pioneers. Then his astonishment was great to find
+that it turned at a sharp angle to the left, dropped sheer over the
+edge of the flat rock, coiled down a slope littered with debris to
+another field of loose stones, and in a quarter of a mile brought up
+at the brink of a cliff. Sunnysides, then, had crossed the summit, and
+was descending to whatever lay below.
+
+In ten minutes Haig himself was at the margin of the chasm; for little
+wider than a chasm was that deep and narrow gulch, far up the side of
+Thunder Mountain, into which he now looked in wonderment and
+perplexity. A thousand feet or more below him lay a tiny patch of
+meadow of a brilliant green, with a thread of water sparkling through
+it, and on all sides, excepting that nearest him, black forests
+encompassed it, and mounted dense to the timber line save where, at
+his right, the stream ran down through its gorge. There, evidently,
+would go the trail also, dropping into the Black Lake country, of evil
+reputation.
+
+But where now was the trail? He dismounted, and leaned over the edge
+of the precipice; and there he discovered that he had missed the
+exact point of departure by some fifteen yards, and that at this
+distance to his left there was a break in the sharp brink, where the
+trail fell off precipitately to a heap of broken stone and sand. The
+cliff had been shattered in some convulsion of nature, or loosened and
+disintegrated by the elements, and enormous masses of it had fallen
+into the gulch. These masses appeared to be in a state of instability,
+and it was not clear to Haig, from where he lay, how a trail could
+ever have been picked out among those jutting rocks and slides of
+debris, or how, once found, it could have remained intact on that
+shifting foundation. Was it possible that any living thing had ever
+made its way down (much less _up_) that steep and treacherous rubble
+heap?
+
+He was studying it incredulously, when Sunnysides suddenly resolved
+all doubts. From behind a projecting rock the horse came out on one of
+the many rough ledges that had been formed by lateral cleavage of the
+cliff in its fall. Hesitating a moment there, he plunged down a short
+declivity, and landed sprawling on another shelf perhaps twenty feet
+lower down, and somewhat to the right of the first, where he once more
+vanished from Haig's sight.
+
+"All right!" cried Haig. "If you can do that we can. Eh, Trixy?"
+
+He mounted quickly, urged the reluctant mare to the break in the edge
+of the cliff, and forced her over. For some thirty feet the trail went
+down the face of the precipice, much like a fire escape on the wall of
+a tenement house, barely wide enough to accommodate horse and
+rider,--so narrow, indeed, that Haig's left leg was scraped and
+bruised by hard contact with the stone. At the bottom of this incline,
+his amazement was great at finding a solid platform of rock, on which,
+he was able easily to turn and go down another incline underneath the
+first. Plainly all this was not the result of accident; the hands of
+men had been busy here; and picks and shovels had supplemented the
+work of nature. But below the next platform there certainly had been a
+secondary slide of rock, for the trail was nowhere discernible, though
+it should evidently have slipped down, at a greater angle from the
+cliff than before, to a third turning point on a shelf some forty feet
+away to the left. Here the debris was loose and fine, and with a
+little urging Trixy was induced to take the descent, carrying
+quantities of sand and stones with her as she slid and sprawled safely
+to the next goal.
+
+Thus they went, sometimes finding the trail plain over solid rock and
+hard-packed debris, sometimes slipping and scrambling among stones and
+sand, but always drawing nearer and nearer in a zigzag course, now
+easy and then difficult, to the green vale below. There were moments
+when Trixy was on her knees, moments when she was on her haunches,
+moments when she stood swaying above the pit, and moments when all
+traces of the trail had vanished. But somewhere below was Sunnysides.
+
+Far down the declivity, so near the valley that Haig was able to look
+across into the tops of the tallest pines, they came to what appeared
+to be the last of the rocky ledges. Having for some minutes seen
+nothing of the outlaw, Haig supposed that the runaway had already
+reached the meadow, and was by now on the trail through the forest.
+But just as Trixy's shod hoofs struck the platform with a clatter,
+Haig caught sight of Sunnysides far out on the narrow shelf. He was
+trotting briskly along, for the shelf was smooth and level. But, on a
+sudden he stopped, stood a moment with his head thrust forward and
+down, and then turned cautiously around, his four feet bunched
+together on the narrow footing.
+
+"What's up now?" ejaculated Haig.
+
+And then he saw it. Twice before he had noted where a similar error
+might have been made, on other ledges farther up; and he himself had
+avoided them only by carefully studying the aspect of the declivity
+below him. Sunnysides had undoubtedly lost time through such mistakes;
+and now he was trapped. At the point where he stood, the shelf ended
+abruptly "in the air"; and between him and the exit at the other end
+of the platform was Haig. The trail had come down to about the middle
+of this platform, which was like an unrailed balcony, scarce three
+feet in width, with a high wall of rock on one side, and on the other
+a straight drop of twenty feet to a veritable chute of stones that
+terminated in a widespread litter of debris on the meadow.
+
+"Caught like a rat!" cried Haig. "I've got you now!"
+
+But what could he do with him? His rope was useless on that meager
+footing, where there was barely room for his horse to stand, much less
+for Haig to swing a noose. And worse: if Sunnysides was trapped, so
+was his enemy; for the horse was already, through fright or
+belligerency, moving slowly toward Haig. In a flash it was clear to
+Haig that the outlaw meant to have it out with him then and there; and
+that there would be no time to turn Trixy, and find the outlet into
+the valley.
+
+"It's too bad, but--"
+
+He drew his revolver, and waited. There was yet a chance, he thought,
+or hoped, that the horse would halt, and postpone the issue. He did
+not want to kill him; he had not come across Thunder Mountain to kill
+him; he had come to take him back to Paradise Park. And so he
+waited--fatally. The outlaw came slowly until half the space between
+him and Haig had been covered. Then, at a distance of perhaps a
+hundred feet, when no choice was left to him, Haig swung up his gun,
+and fired. At that very instant, Sunnysides uttered a savage cry, a
+shrill neigh ending in a scream; and, charged at the horse and rider
+in his path.
+
+Haig fired again, and missed; threw himself forward on Trixy's neck,
+jerked the pony's head in toward the wall, and fired again; and
+missed. He tried to shoot once more, into the very face of the
+oncoming brute, but too late. There was a vision of flaming black eyes
+and white teeth, in a yellow blur; and then a tremendous impact, a
+crash. Trixy was flung back on her haunches, with one hind leg over
+the edge of the shelf, Haig barely hanging in the saddle. The outlaw
+leaped back, and lunged again; thrust himself between Trixy and the
+wall; toppled pony and rider off into the void; and passed on, with a
+shriek of triumphant rage.
+
+Haig and Trixy turned in the air, struck the chute of stones and sand,
+and rolled over and over as they went down in a flying slide of
+debris. But Haig did not know that, for his head struck a stone at the
+first contact with the chute.
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+Sentience returned to him through mists of pain. He lay in a twisted
+heap on a patch of grass, surrounded by the scattered detritus of the
+cliff. At first he could not remember, and could not see. His head
+rang with pain, and his eyes were filled with dust, and with something
+wet. He managed presently to lift an arm and wipe his eyes with his
+hand; and saw dimly that the hand was covered with blood. His eyes
+then filled again; and he swept his sleeves across them and his
+forehead. That was better. Blinking, and wiping his face again and
+again, he looked dully around him until memory came back, and brought
+recognition of his plight.
+
+He tried to sit up, but sank down quickly with a groan. One leg was
+bent almost double under the other, and would not move. This fact
+struck him at first as very queer--an inexplicable phenomenon. Then he
+tried it again. His left leg moved at his will, and that encouraged
+him. His right hip and part of the thigh too moved, but the leg below
+lay loose and dead.
+
+The blood was in his eyes again. It exasperated him; he could do
+nothing unless he were able to see. He wiped his face again with his
+sleeve, then put his hand to his head, and winced a little as the
+fingers touched a gash just above the left temple, from which the
+blood still flowed. By turning his head he found that the blood ran
+down away from his eyes instead of into them. The new position also
+gave him a view of several things that held his attention.
+
+First there was the clutter of stones around him. Then his eyes swept
+upward to the ledge whence he had come rolling down--how far? He
+calculated the distance curiously. Eighty feet--a hundred, surely. How
+did he come to be still alive? he wondered. And Trixy! Where was she.
+
+Once more he tackled the problem of sitting up, and it became easier
+now in his full understanding of his condition. By ignoring the dead
+leg entirely, since it was of no further use to him, he contrived to
+raise himself with his hands on the ground behind him for support.
+Then with a jerk that brought a cry of pain, he sat erect, swaying but
+resolute. At this instant he heard a soft whinny behind him. Twisting
+himself around, he saw Trixy lying some twenty feet away, with her
+forelegs doubled up beneath her, and her head lifted and pointed
+toward him. He studied the little mare a moment.
+
+"Trixy! Get up!" he commanded suspiciously.
+
+She lifted her head higher, made a desperate effort to rise, sank
+back, and whinnied piteously.
+
+"So! Yours too, eh! Nice fix, Trixy!"
+
+He surveyed the scene. They were in a bright green meadow about two
+hundred yards in width and perhaps half a mile in length. Across the
+meadow from where he lay the black forest mounted toward the sky. At
+one end the vale narrowed into a mere ravine, which vanished upward in
+deep woods; at the other it widened to the forest, and by the way the
+pine-masses came down to this spot from both sides he knew that there
+the trail ran down the mountain toward the Black Lake country. The
+vale was very still under the bright blue sky; there was just a murmur
+in the forest; and no sound of birds came to his ears.
+
+"A beautiful site--for a graveyard!" he said aloud, and smiled.
+
+The blood still trickled into his eyes, and annoyed him greatly. It
+must be stopped, or he could do nothing that needed to be done. In an
+inside pocket of his coat he found a handkerchief, which he bound
+around his head, after he had wiped his face once more. The pain in
+his head had subsided to a dull throbbing, which did not matter.
+But--
+
+"God! I'm thirsty!" he muttered.
+
+He looked again across the meadow. The thread of water that he had
+seen from the top of the cliff was a considerable brook that ran
+silently through about the middle of the green. He measured the
+distance,--fifty or sixty yards, maybe seventy, or more. He could do
+it, by dragging himself along the ground, he thought. But was it worth
+the effort, and the pain? It would hurt him like the devil--that
+broken leg. Never did like pain; would probably howl; and that would
+not be nice, even with no creature but Trixy to hear him. No; he would
+stay where he was. Then suddenly he thought of Pete's whisky, and
+thrust his hand into his pocket, only to encounter fragments of
+glass.
+
+"That's a lesson," he thought grimly. "Never carry whisky in glass
+bottles."
+
+And now his roving eyes lighted once more on Trixy. No good letting
+her suffer. He would send her away first. On the thought, his hand
+went back to the holster at his hip; and stayed there, while his
+heart stood still, and a chill went over him, and thought ceased. The
+holster was empty.
+
+After a while he was able to think about it. One of two things would
+happen to him. There were, very probably, mountain lions in those
+forests. But they were not the worst thing he faced. To be eaten were
+perhaps preferable to dying little by little, of hunger and thirst. He
+had been near starvation, twice in his life; and once he had been
+thirsty,--that is to say, _thirsty_,--and God save him from dying of
+thirst! But wait! He hesitated; then held his breath; and in a total
+suspension of thought slowly reached his hand down into a side pocket
+of his trousers. And then he almost yelled aloud for joy. His
+pocketknife was there!
+
+Meanwhile--Trixy. It was cruel not to be able to end her suffering.
+What had become of the gun? It was in his hand when he toppled over
+the edge of the platform, and must have fallen with him. So it could
+not be far away, though perhaps buried out of sight. He began
+patiently to inspect every square foot of the ground around him, as
+far as he could trust his eyes to see clearly, separating the space
+into imaginary segments of a circle, and scrutinizing each of them
+until he had set apart every tuft of grass from every other tuft, and
+every stone from its neighbors. Minute after minute, with dogged
+perseverance, he kept himself at this exhausting task until the sweat
+was rolling down, his face, and his eyes burned deep in his head. Then
+suddenly something leaped inside of him,--some nerve that was quicker
+than thought in its response to vision.
+
+"Ah!"
+
+The gun lay against a stone, its muzzle upward, at a distance of about
+forty feet, beyond and somewhat to the left of Trixy. It would take
+some crawling; and that would hurt. But when he had fixed the gun's
+position in his mind, so that he might not miss it, he set his teeth
+together, and started.
+
+No great distance, after all, is forty feet. That is to say, no great
+distance after you've covered it. And the pain did not matter now. He
+lay on the ground again, flattened out, panting and gazing up at the
+blue sky. The sweat stood in big cold drops on his face; and he
+trembled as if stricken with ague. He could not shoot in that
+condition; he must rest, and wait. But the thirst was torture now.
+
+After a time, he turned himself half around in order to face Trixy,
+and rested his right elbow on the ground, with the gun up in the air.
+
+"Good-by, Trixy!" he said softly.
+
+But wait! How many shots left? He examined the revolver. Two! For an
+instant he was stricken again with dread. Then his left hand felt for
+the belt at his waist; and he laughed nervously. What a state he was
+in! There were cartridges to burn!
+
+The gun came slowly down to an aim, then waved in his hand as he
+pulled the trigger.
+
+"Hell!" he muttered.
+
+He tried again, pulling himself together, and gritting his teeth. The
+second report rang out, and echoed high among the rocks. The mare's
+head fell, her body quivered, one hind foot kicked out; and she was
+gone.
+
+Oh, yes! He could hit good horses! But not Sunnysides.
+
+He ejected the exploded cartridges, and filled the chambers with fresh
+ones; then lay back and rested again, the gun still clutched in his
+hand. And why did he wait? To get strength, for one thing. He wanted
+to sit up to do it, since he could not stand. And then--there was
+another trouble. Four times before he had tried to do it, and
+something had happened,--something different and utterly unexpected
+each time had checked him. It had not so much mattered then, because
+he could afford to wait. But now--
+
+He drew upon the last of his reserves of strength, and sat up--too
+suddenly. An excruciating pain shot through his injured leg, and
+radiated like flame through every nerve and tissue of his body. The
+revolver, half lifted, fell from his fingers. Swaying, he groped for
+it, clutched it again, and frantically raised it to his head. And when
+he felt the hard muzzle just above his ear, he pulled the trigger. And
+so the third report went ringing through the quiet valley, and Philip
+Haig sank backward on the greensward, and lay still.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+THE MIRACLE
+
+
+Between two storms, the peace that lay upon the seared and battered
+head of Thunder Mountain, like the peace that comes to a sufferer
+between paroxysms of pain, was of a kind unknown to lower levels. In
+all the range of natural phenomena, in all the gamut of sensation,
+there is nothing else at once so beautiful, inspiring, and appalling
+as utter silence; and nothing else so rare. To the sea, the desert,
+and the peak it is given in few and perfect hours; but neither to the
+desert nor to the sea is it given in such transcendency as to the
+peak. And on no peak could silence ever have seemed so like a miracle
+as on the flat top of Thunder Mountain between two storms.
+
+It were hazardous to say how far Marion was conscious of the
+beautiful, inspiring, and appalling nature of that silence. She was
+too deeply intent upon her purpose to be conscious of much besides the
+material difficulties in her path. She knew that on the gray-black
+surface of the mountain nothing stirred; that the winds were still;
+that no murmur of forest or ripple of water or soft pulsation of a
+living world was there. It was a dead place, dead these many ages; and
+all its associations in her mind were those of death and the living
+terror of death. But she was not afraid. True, she was beset by fears,
+but they only hovered over her, brushing her face with their black
+wings. True also, her eyes roved wide, as if at any instant something
+unknown and dreadful would come upon her out of that blue sky, from
+behind the next rock barrier, or up from the mountain's ugly heart
+itself. But these were superficial fears, and in her heart she was not
+afraid.
+
+From the moment that she emerged upon the first terrace, where Haig
+had stood some hours before, she knew that she would not go back until
+(and unless) she found him. That had been her purpose from the
+beginning, from the time she ran down the hill above Huntington's,
+with Smythe following in alarm; but it had been hidden from her until,
+in the exaltation that ensued upon the finding of the ashes of Haig's
+fire, she drove her pony up the last ascent, and knew that if the
+mountain had claimed Philip it must claim her too.
+
+But this thought was, in a sense, as superficial as her fears; for in
+her soul there lived a perfect faith. Through all her grief and
+jealousy and anger and despair she had never entirely lost the pure
+light of her star. She never doubted deeply that her love would
+triumph, even when reason told her that it had already failed; and the
+very words with which she had consented to leave the Park by the last
+stage were hollow, though they contained a prayer. She had prayed for
+a miracle; and the miracle had happened. Why should she be afraid?
+
+So she was not surprised when the Twin Sisters welcomed her without so
+much as a gentle puff of wind upon her cheek; when the Devil's Chair,
+though she held her breath at sight of what lay below, was scarce more
+difficult than the ridge in Paradise Park; and when the central
+waste, where the storm had leaped on Haig, held no evil in store for
+her. The only obstacles encountered were those presented by the trail
+itself; and these, as Smythe had told her, though by no means trivial,
+were not insurmountable to one with a clear eye and steady nerves. It
+was never the trail itself that was deadly; it was the wind that would
+blow her into a chasm, the mist that would decoy her from the path,
+and the storm that would beat her down among the stones. But there was
+no wind, no mist, no storm; and if that was not a miracle--
+
+Several times, to be sure, she missed the trail: once in the second
+field of loose stones, before she had become accustomed to the signs;
+once on a wide floor of solid rock, where Tuesday slipped and fell,
+and she rose a little stunned, and in a brief confusion; and once, the
+most alarming of all, when she was for half an hour lost in that
+granite wilderness that to Haig had suggested a cemetery of the gods.
+But faith sustained her, and her purpose stood in the stead of courage
+that might have faltered and even failed. The one moment when
+something like despair struck at her heart was that when she found the
+bruised and dirty saddle cast aside by the runaway, and thought at
+first that it was Philip's; and the one moment of real terror was that
+in which, on the summit of the last ridge, she looked back and saw
+that dark gray vapors were surging up out of the chasm below the
+Devil's Chair.
+
+It chanced that in following the trail from the sharp turn on the last
+rock floor to the brink of the cliff (the last pyramid stands some
+fifty yards back from it), Marion arrived at about the same distance
+to the left of the drop-off as Haig had brought up at the right of
+it. From this point even less of the meadow was visible than Haig had
+seen at the first view, and the mass of fallen and tumbled granite
+appeared even more formidable. Her immediate sensation was of tragic
+despair, as the evidence of her eyes for one instant overwhelmed her
+faith. But where was Philip? And Sunnysides?
+
+Then a suspicion flashed into her mind. Perhaps she had missed the
+trail,--the real trail. She could not have been mistaken in the signs;
+there was the last pyramid in plain view still from where she stood.
+But it was not unlikely that there was another trail from the sharp
+turn where she had been confused for a moment, another exit made
+necessary by the disruption of the cliff. She paused uncertainly,
+looking now at the great heap of stone below her,--a thousand feet of
+jagged rock and sliding sand,--and now back at the toilsome way she
+had come. And then her eyes were caught by something that held her
+spellbound with horror. Up to the rocky skyline from beyond the
+barrier she had lately crossed there swept a tumbling mist, as
+gray-black as the rock itself; and an instant after she felt a
+stinging blow of wind on her cheek, and heard a low whisper in the air
+around her.
+
+She was roused by a sound that brought her up rigid and alert in the
+saddle. What was that? A faint report, as of a gun--from somewhere.
+She listened, turning her head slowly and cautiously, and holding her
+breath. A long time, it seemed to her, she listened; and heard only
+that warning whisper of the wind across the flat. But there! Another!
+It came up faintly from below, expiring at the very edge of the
+precipice. She peered guardedly down into the chasm, and saw nothing
+but the vast pile of debris, and a bit of green meadow over against
+the edge of the black forest. But it was a gun! She began now to
+examine the edge of the cliff. To her left it fell sheer away hundreds
+of feet to the lower masses of fallen stone; and there was no trail on
+that side. Dismounting, she led her horse slowly along the brink at
+her right; and so came at length to the spot where the trail dropped
+to the first incline. It seemed incredible; but then, even as the word
+framed itself in her mind, her heart bounded up into her throat.
+There--there--under her eyes were hoofprints, the print of steel shoes
+in the sand; and they went down, down, down. And, as if to remove the
+last of doubt and hesitancy, there came wavering up from below a third
+thin report, a little more distinct than the others, and undeniable.
+
+She lifted her face toward the sky, and pressed her hands upon her
+breast.
+
+"God help us! God help us--both!" she murmured.
+
+Then she remounted Tuesday, and forced him over the edge of the
+cliff.
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+Haig lay on his back, his head against the stone by which he had
+recovered the coveted revolver. A handkerchief dyed red and blackened
+with powder stains lay against one cheek. His right hand still
+clutched the revolver.
+
+He did not move, and she thought him dead. Then, through the blackness
+that enveloped her, she dully and slowly comprehended that his eyes
+were closed, not staring up at her. She knelt swiftly, and pressed her
+head to his breast; and then leaped to her feet with a wild outcry.
+
+Tuesday stood a few yards away, with tail outstretched and nostrils
+distended, gazing affrightedly at the body of Trixy lying in her
+wretched heap. Marion ran to the saddle, and tore at the thongs that
+held her bundle; jerked it loose, and bore it quickly to Haig's side;
+and in a few seconds had placed the mouth of her whisky flask between
+Haig's lips, and let a little of the liquid trickle down his throat.
+But there was no response, and she stood up again, looking for water.
+The brook that had seemed so far away from Haig was at no distance for
+her flying feet; and she was back on the run with her sombrero filled.
+Dashing the water into Philip's face, she was off again for more. With
+this she bathed his face and neck and wrists; and then set herself to
+slapping the palms of his hands with her own.
+
+Still there was no response. But when she pressed her head to his
+breast once more she was assured that she had not been mistaken; his
+heart was beating feebly--but beating. A second time she put the
+whisky flask to his lips; and returned to the limp hands, rubbing
+them, slapping them until her own burned and ached.
+
+Hours it seemed, and ages flowing away into eternity. The sky was
+darkening, and from the top of Thunder Mountain came a muffled roar
+that was echoed back and forth across the valley. She looked up at the
+towering cliff, and trembled. And then, with the last fading
+reverberation, there came another sound that brought her leaning down
+close to Philip's face. Was it a sigh, or only--
+
+"Philip! Philip! Philip!" she called, softly at first, then in a cry
+that rang across the meadow.
+
+At last a quiver went through the limp figure; the eyes were opened,
+only to be quickly closed again, as if the light had hurt them. She
+called to him again, in pleading accents. The eyelids fluttered, and
+he looked up into the face of the girl bending over him. It was a
+puzzled, uncomprehending look. And thereupon his lips moved.
+
+"Yes, Philip! What is it?"
+
+"I don't understand," he whispered.
+
+"It's Marion!" she cried. "Don't you know me?"
+
+"But--where?"
+
+"I don't know. Thunder Mountain."
+
+"Yes, I know that!" he said, with a note of impatience. "Sunnysides
+and--all that. But--you?"
+
+"I followed, and found you."
+
+A weak smile flickered on his lips. She saw that he did not believe
+her.
+
+"Look! Look!" she cried. "It's Marion. And yonder--is Tuesday."
+
+He moved his head a little, and stared at the pony still standing
+fascinated and terrified by the stillness of poor Trixy.
+
+"It's--impossible!" he muttered. "You couldn't--"
+
+He made an effort to look up at the cliff down, which he had come.
+
+"But it's quite true, Philip. I'm here."
+
+But she saw that he was still groping in the dark. He lifted his right
+hand, and touched his head, while the expression of perplexity grew
+rather than lessened on his face. She saw that there was not only a
+gash in the left temple, but a furrow on the right side of his head, a
+swollen red streak where the hair had been burned away. And the black
+stains on the handkerchief, and the revolver clutched in his hand.
+
+"Philip!" she said softly, reproachfully.
+
+"I don't understand!" he reiterated, and closed his eyes.
+
+She studied him, and the place where he lay, and the dead pony; the
+two wounds in his head, the bloody handkerchief--And it was only
+partly clear to her. He had fallen, and been hurt; but Philip, as she
+knew him, would have made nothing of that cut on his temple. Why,
+then, had he abandoned the pursuit, and tried to kill himself?
+
+A groan escaped him.
+
+"What is it, Philip?" she asked.
+
+"You're hurting me!" he answered, opening his eyes again.
+
+"Hurting you?" she exclaimed. "No! Where?"
+
+"My leg's broken."
+
+With a sharp cry she moved away from him, and saw that in her
+eagerness she had pressed against his right leg. For just a moment she
+was so concerned with the pain she had caused him that she did not
+realize the full significance of his answer. Then it came to her with
+a shock. She looked slowly around her: at the black forest on three
+sides of the little meadow; at the cliff on the other; at the terrible
+trail down which she had come, she scarce knew how; and at the storm
+clouds on Thunder Mountain.
+
+He saw the thought in her face.
+
+"You see, it's no use!" he said. "With a broken leg."
+
+She met his eyes with a clear and steady gaze; and smiled. And that
+look he could not read.
+
+"Now, then, Philip!" she said at length, rising quietly to her feet.
+"I'll go to work."
+
+"To work?" he repeated.
+
+"Of course!" she replied, with brave lightness. "There's a lot to do.
+First, there's your leg."
+
+"Yes, it's broken," he answered sardonically.
+
+"We'll mend it. And the cut on your head needs to be dressed. And I'm
+dreadfully hungry, and--"
+
+She stopped, and the smile fled from her face, and the strength ran
+from her limbs.
+
+"I told you. It's no use," said Haig.
+
+But she had one resource of courage of which he was unaware: her
+faith.
+
+"Well," she answered stoutly, "I've enough in my bundle for one meal
+anyhow. After that--who knows?"
+
+"Will you give me a drink of water, please?"
+
+She stooped quickly for her hat, the only vessel she had.
+
+"Look in the roll on my saddle," he said. "Murray put some things
+there."
+
+She glanced around uncertainly; then understood. The saddle was on
+Trixy still. But Trixy was dead, and she did not like the idea of
+touching her. She hesitated just the length of time required for an
+unpleasant smile to twist Haig's lips. She saw it, and her face
+flamed with shame. A fine start she was making! And it was only a dead
+horse! She walked resolutely to the prostrate body, hurriedly untied
+the roll of blankets, and returned running.
+
+"Oh! Oh! Oh!" she cried, as she unrolled the bundle. "A cup! A pan!
+And bacon and bread! And matches."
+
+"Murray," said Haig.
+
+"Yes, I know. Mrs. Murray told me, but I'd forgotten."
+
+She ran to the stream, and brought him a cupful of water; and another;
+and while he drank the second, she picked up his revolver, and carried
+it to a stone fully as far away as it had been when he crawled for it.
+He was on the point of calling her back, but thought better of it; to
+have done that would only have confirmed her suspicions.
+
+"Now then, sir!" she began. "Your leg."
+
+"What about it?"
+
+"We've got to set it."
+
+"That's absurd!"
+
+"Why is it absurd?"
+
+"You can't do it, in the first place."
+
+"But I can. I've seen my father do it."
+
+"It won't heal--in the fix we're in."
+
+"We'll do our best," she rejoined bravely.
+
+"Listen!" he said, with some sternness. "If it should knit, which I
+doubt, it will take six weeks or two months before I can use it. Do
+you know what will happen before two months--before one month--before
+two weeks, even?"
+
+She only looked at him questioningly.
+
+"Snow!" he said shortly.
+
+She could find no answer, unless it were an answer that she dared not
+give him--yet.
+
+"Well, then!" he said, with an air of finality. "You can't start
+to-night, of course. It's too late, and there's a storm going up there
+besides. But to-morrow morning--" He looked up at the cliff and
+frowned. "Perhaps Tuesday can make it. If he balks, you've got to do
+it on foot. The mountain let you pass once. Maybe it will spare you
+again. Maybe! God knows! But it's your only chance. I'm done for, and
+can't help you. It's sure death for you to stay here. It's sure death
+to try the trail into the Black Lake country. You have just one
+chance. You've got to take it to-morrow morning. And God help you for
+being such a fool!"
+
+She heard him through, and smiled; and he noted, for his own
+information, that this smile of hers was getting on his nerves. What
+did she mean by it? There was something very superior about it, though
+very gentle and indulgent; and a thing or two she had said to him
+before flashed back into his mind. Was she trying to mother him? The
+thought made him angry.
+
+"Well?" he demanded.
+
+"Of course I'll not go!" she said simply.
+
+"You will go!" he retorted wrathfully.
+
+She knelt quickly at his side, and took one of his hands between both
+her own.
+
+"Philip!" she said gently. "I know that--perhaps--it's a foolish
+question to ask. You mustn't call me silly. But--do you believe in
+miracles?"
+
+"Miracles be damned!" he blurted out. "I'll see--"
+
+She put her hand over his mouth.
+
+"Listen, Philip!" she went on. "I prayed for a miracle, and it has
+happened. Perhaps there'll be another; who knows? We'll wait and see.
+If nothing happens, why--Do you think I'm afraid?"
+
+He made no answer, and she needed none.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+HAIG'S ARGUMENT
+
+
+When she had unsaddled Tuesday, and left him grazing near the "camp,"
+Marion set out with Murray's hatchet and knife to cut splints for
+Haig's broken leg. Haig watched her run across the meadow, leap the
+brook, and hurry on to a grove of quaking aspens at the edge of the
+forest. Then he lay back to consider the logic of the situation, with
+the following result, which appeared to him unanswerable:
+
+First. The girl yonder had already saved his life once, and was doing
+her best, though against impossible odds, to save it again. Her motive
+was one that need not be dwelt upon in this fatal crisis. The fact
+remained that for him she was facing certain death, and he must do all
+in his power to save her. That was the starting point from which all
+reckonings must be made.
+
+Second. His own case was hopeless. Long before he should be able to
+move from where he lay, the valley would be buried in snow to half the
+height of those pines yonder. If she remained with him her case would
+be hopeless too. Death would be inevitable for both of them: death
+from starvation, from exposure, from cold. They had neither food, nor
+proper clothing, nor shelter of any kind. The hardiest mountaineer
+would not dream, of attempting to pass eight or nine months of winter
+in a place like that, even with his two arms and two legs free. He,
+with his broken leg, and she, a woman, would not survive an eighth or
+a ninth of that period.
+
+Third. The chances of rescue. There would be no search for him, he
+reflected with a grim smile. But for Marion, undoubtedly. To-morrow
+morning, Marion not having returned, Murray would start out to find
+her. There was not one chance in a thousand that, at this season,
+there would be such another day as the one now ending, and ending in
+storm. But suppose that Murray should make his way across the summit,
+and find them. Murray could do nothing for a man with a broken leg at
+the bottom of a gulch with a cliff on one side and miles on miles of
+mountain forest on the other sides. As for Marion, if she would not go
+at his, Haig's, command, she would certainly pay little heed to
+Murray. So Murray would accomplish nothing. However, it would not come
+to that. Murray would be driven back by the winds. He would ride down
+to the Park and give the alarm. Search parties would be formed, and
+they would assail the mountain. But fifty men would be no stronger
+than one man on Thunder Mountain. It was just possible that some of
+them might force their way across the flat between storms. But every
+day that possibility, such as it was, would grow less. It would be
+madness for the girl to wait. She had crossed the mountain once; she
+knew the way; and if the winds should permit rescuers to come to her
+they would permit her to go to them. It was her only chance, however
+desperate; to remain where she was meant certain death.
+
+Fourth. She would not, it was quite clear, stir from his side as long
+as he was alive. Therefore he must do quickly what he had tried to do
+before.
+
+The idea was so familiar to him by now that it required no contemplation.
+He raised his head, and looked toward the stone where his revolver lay;
+and then toward the aspen grove where Marion labored. His gaze rested
+on her for some minutes. It was too late for her to start to-night,
+even if there were no storm on the mountain. And if he did it now she
+would face a night of solitude and terror, perhaps would not live
+through it. He would wait till morning; and when she should have gone
+for wood, or water--
+
+She came back presently with an armload of small limbs she had hacked
+from the youngest trees. Her left hand bled where she had awkwardly
+struck it with the hatchet; and there were tears in her eyes, which
+she tried to conceal from him. He was sorry for her--and angry. It was
+not his fault; he had done all he could, even to brutality.
+
+"Did you tell Huntington, or his wife, what you were going to do?" was
+his first speech.
+
+"No. But I sent Mr. Smythe--he rode with me as far as Norton's--I sent
+him back with a message that I was going to stop the night at
+Murray's."
+
+"And the Murrays? What did you tell them?"
+
+"That I'd be back before night. But why do you ask?"
+
+"I'm thinking that Smythe is a fool, and Murray is a blockhead."
+
+"They did all they could to stop me," she answered quietly.
+
+She had begun to strip the bark and twigs from the green limbs; and he
+watched her crude efforts for a moment.
+
+"I think I might manage that part of it," he said at length. "You must
+build a fire."
+
+She started to obey him, but stopped short, and looked at him in
+sudden fear and suspicion.
+
+"No, you can trust me with the knife," he said. "I promise."
+
+She handed the limbs and the knife to him; and he saw that her hands
+trembled.
+
+"You'll find plenty of dead wood at the edge of the forest," he said.
+"Don't venture far among the trees."
+
+The shadows were deepening along the other side of the meadow, and he
+watched her a little anxiously while she made half a dozen trips for
+dry limbs and small chunks of half-rotted logs. And now she felt a
+curious thrill as she began to employ the knowledge she had gained on
+her camping expedition. She had never dreamed that it would be so
+useful to her! And she found new courage in thinking, while she
+worked, how all her life she had been undergoing preparation,
+training, education for this hour. She wished that she might run to
+Philip and tell him all this--and of her faith! But he would not
+understand her.
+
+Soon a fine fire was crackling on the grass, against one of the
+largest stones that had fallen from the cliff. Then she brought a
+small package from her bundle, and made a cup of hot chocolate for
+Haig and another for herself. This, with a small slice of bread for
+each of them, made their supper for that day; for such provisions as
+they possessed must be treasured scrupulously.
+
+Haig had by this time finished trimming the aspen sticks; and by the
+fading light of day and the red light of the fire they set to work to
+mend the broken leg. Between them they knew something of surgery: she
+by recollecting all that she had seen in her father's office, where
+she had more than once helped Doctor Gaylord with his needles and
+bandages; he by recalling experiences on battlefields, in lumber
+camps, and in various rough places of the world. She brought his
+blankets, and helped him to move until he lay flat on them, with his
+head propped against a stone. Then the leg was stripped, and the
+ordeal began.
+
+It was not the pain so much as the uselessness of it that exasperated
+Haig; and he was tempted to drive her away from him, and have no more
+of it. But this, he realized, would only have caused more arguments,
+and tears, and protestations, and perhaps the revelation of his
+purpose. So he endured it to satisfy and divert her.
+
+Luckily the fracture was a simple one; and with strips of linen for
+which Marion sacrificed some of her scanty supply of clothing, and the
+thin sticks of tough aspen wood, the leg was bound straight and firm.
+
+"If we only knew!" said Marion at last, leaning back to contemplate
+her work.
+
+"Knew what?" he asked between his teeth.
+
+"If it's right!"
+
+Between pain and rage he could not answer her; and thinking that he
+was near to a collapse, she ran for water and bathed his face, and
+gave him a little of the precious whisky that remained in her flask.
+After that he lay quiet, and she went to her preparations for the
+night.
+
+The vale now lay in deep blackness, impenetrable walls of it beyond
+the red circle of firelight. The cliff made a dim, dark line against
+the blue-black sky; the forest on the other side a ragged tracery. The
+stars were few, and far. A low breeze murmured among the pines, and
+swept softly, but very cold, across the meadow. Marion began to feel
+the chill; and having wrapped Philip's blanket tight around him, and
+spread over him the leather coat she had found in his bundle, she
+heaped more wood on the fire, and sat down before it, with her
+blankets around her, and her rifle at her side, to watch and wait.
+
+She was very tired, but she dared not lie down to sleep. A long time
+she sat there, glancing now and then at Haig, where he lay very still,
+and oftener out into the blackness. But drowsiness gradually overcame
+her, and her head sank forward on her uplifted knees.
+
+She was awakened by a terrifying cry that rang shivering across the
+valley. She started to her feet, and listened. It must have been a
+dream, she thought. No! There it was again--a cry that started low,
+like a child's peevish wail, and ended in a piercing scream. She
+grabbed up her rifle, and stood peering into the darkness.
+
+"Don't be afraid!" said the voice of Haig from the edge of the
+firelight. "It's only a bobcat. He'll not come near the fire."
+
+"Thank you--Philip!" she answered. Then, with a nervous laugh: "It did
+frighten me, though!"
+
+She stood a moment, still listening. But the cry came no more.
+
+"Aren't you sleeping?" she asked softly.
+
+"No."
+
+With trembling limbs, and eyes fixed on the darkness from whence had
+come the scream, she stepped cautiously to the pile of wood, and threw
+more limbs and bits of logs into the blaze. Then she seated herself
+again, resolved that she would not fall asleep. But presently she
+started to her feet in another panic at sight of a dark form moving in
+the blackness. But it was only Tuesday, coming nearer to the fire, as
+if he too had been alarmed by the wild beast's cry. She settled down
+once more to her vigil, her rifle across her lap.
+
+In spite of her resolution, her head sank to her knees again, and she
+was aroused at length by the cold. It bit through the blankets and
+clothing into the flesh of her limbs; sharp shivers ran up and down
+her back; and she was very miserable. Rising stiffly, she walked a
+while before the fire until she stumbled from weariness; then sat down
+again, and nodded, only to be waked by the frost gnawing at her flesh.
+Again and again she slept and woke in accentuated misery. But finally
+she saw, with unspeakable relief, that the stars were paling in their
+blue-black vault. She turned toward Thunder Mountain, and watched the
+dim line of the cliff sharpening against the whitening sky. Yet all
+was blackness in the gulch, and it seemed a long time before a soft
+gray light began to steal in upon the red light of the fire, and a new
+crispness came into the air. She waited until she could make out the
+forms of trees across the valley, shrouded in thin morning mist,
+before she threw the last few sticks of wood on the dying fire, and
+crept to the side of Haig, where she lay down close beside him, with
+her blankets wrapped around her. There she fell into a heavy sleep,
+and did not waken until the sun, rising above Thunder Mountain, shone
+warm in her face.
+
+For some seconds she lay luxuriating in the warmth that seemed
+incredible after that night of cold and terror. Then she moved softly,
+raised herself on one elbow, and looked at Philip. He slept. His face
+was haggard under his three days' growth of beard. She leaned over
+him, and pressed her lips ever so lightly to his forehead. He did not
+stir.
+
+Tuesday grazed a few yards away; the vale lay green and peaceful in
+the sunlight; and from the pine woods, where that hideous cry had
+lifted in the night, came now only the gentle murmur of the breeze in
+the massed foliage. By contrast with the chill horror of the night,
+the scene was positively exhilarating; and Marion rose to her work
+with hope throbbing through every vein, and courage singing along
+every nerve of her body.
+
+First she fetched wood to renew the fire, now only a heap of
+smouldering embers. That done, she went to make her toilet in the
+brook, with the soap and towel she had stowed in her bundle for the
+shooting trip. Poor Seth! she thought, with a momentary pang; he would
+not get the deer he wanted, after all. And by this thought was set in
+motion a little current of regrets that filled her mind until it was
+diverted by the stream. She had intended only to wash her face and
+hands, now grimy after her labors at the fire. But chance led her to
+a deep, still pool with a bottom of fine sand and a tiny shore of
+pebbles that seemed to have been designed for bathing. Temptation
+seized her, and on the very impulse, seeing that a clump of willows
+screened her from the camp, she eagerly undressed, and plunged into
+the water, uttering quick gasps at the cold contact, and short-clipped
+shrieks of pleasure.
+
+And so, behold a marvel! Three days ago, in the security and
+familiarity of the Park, where no hardships or perils threatened, and
+where she knew that Philip was safe in his cottage across the ridge,
+and that her own pink bedroom awaited her at night, so deep was she in
+dejection that nothing could have induced an outburst of mere physical
+enjoyment such as this. But now, while Philip lay on his blankets, a
+prisoner in that narrow vale, and death stood at her side uncovered
+and undisguised, her spirits rose as they had never risen since her
+confession, on Mount Avalanche, and if Haig had been listening he
+might have heard her low laughter across the meadow.
+
+Had she yet failed to realize her situation? Or was it that tragedy
+had put on its comic mask, and laughed at death? The truth is simple.
+Her faith had triumphed over what seemed to be insuperable obstacles;
+and she was with Philip, for better or for worse. A miracle had been
+wrought; and miracles are not meaningless, or idle, or without
+purpose. It was a feeling perhaps unknown to man, who is merely a
+reasoning creature, much given to material consideration of natural
+causes and effects, and so compelled by his limitations to grope in
+outer darkness. And it was not so much a feeling as an instinct, and
+not so much an instinct as a law, of which she was the involuntary
+instrument. Her purpose was so strong within her that there was no
+need of thought; and so she did not think.
+
+Leaping to the pebbly bank, she rubbed herself swiftly with the towel,
+and felt the glow of health rushing through her body, all pink and
+gleaming in the sun. Then she dressed, and combed her hair; rinsed and
+wrung out the towel, and hung it on the willow-limbs to dry; and
+started back toward the camp in the highest spirits, and eager for
+service. And then, at twenty paces, she was stricken cold and rigid by
+the sight that met her unsuspecting eyes.
+
+Haig had left his blankets, and was now dragging himself like a
+wounded animal along the earth. Already he had covered more than half
+the distance to the rock on which his revolver lay; and it seemed as
+if she would stand rooted there in helpless horror until he reached
+it. Then, with an incautious cry, she bounded forward. Haig heard her,
+and flung himself toward the stone with reckless determination. Where
+he had inches, Marion had yards to go; it was a race that might, in
+another age, have done credit to the ingenuity of a Roman emperor. If
+Philip was mad with pain and anger, Marion was frantic with fear and
+love. It seemed to her that the turf gripped her feet, that the wind
+in her face would strangle her, that her skirts were leaden sheets
+around her knees. And she barely resisted falling in a senseless heap
+when, at ten yards from the goal, she saw that she would be too late.
+
+He beat her to the rock by merely a few seconds; but he was fairly
+spent. His fingers bled where he had dug them into the sand; the sweat
+rolled down his face; and exhaustion bound him as with bands of iron.
+Yet he was able to reach for the gun, and clutch it; and with a final
+effort that seemed to tear the heart from his breast, he dragged the
+weapon under him, pressed the muzzle upward, pulled the trigger, at
+the very instant that Marion threw herself upon him.
+
+There was a muffled report, the fumes stung their eyes and nostrils,
+and for a moment both lay still. Then Marion felt a movement under
+her, and guessed that Haig was fumbling with the revolver. An
+indescribable energy seized her, something tigerish in its fury, and
+beyond her own proper powers, so that she flung him over on his back
+as if he had been a child in strength and size. With both hands she
+gripped the wrist below the clutched revolver, and while she held it
+away from his body she drew her own body over his, and threw herself
+on his extended arm, between his hand and his breast.
+
+There was a savage struggle still, the man affirming his right to die,
+and the woman denying it. But the issue could not be long in doubt;
+for Haig's strength was at the ebb, while Marion's flowed in from
+earth and air and sky, from the future and from the past. And she wore
+him down at last, until the revolver dropped from his grasp, his
+eyelids closed, his limbs relaxed, and he lay still. Waiting a moment
+for certainty, she cautiously loosened one of her hands from his
+wrist, and grabbed the revolver, and flung it with all her might.
+Then, seeing it land twenty feet away on the grass, she rolled away
+from him, and sat up panting, hollow-eyed, disheveled, and trembling
+on the verge of a collapse.
+
+For some seconds there was no sound but their labored breathing; and
+not until Haig opened his eyes and looked at her, with a hunted,
+baffled, and still defiant expression in their somber depths, did
+Marion break down. Then suddenly, after a premonitory quivering of her
+chin, she buried her face in her hands, and wept without more effort
+at restraint, in utter abandonment to her agony. Haig watched, at
+first in anger, and then in some confusion of emotions. Once before he
+had looked upon her thus bowed and shaken; and now as then he felt a
+strange upheaval, and an unfathomable sensation that had no likeness
+to anything he had ever before experienced. He wanted very much to
+speak to her, but could not trust himself; and after all, what was
+there to be said?
+
+It was she who rescued him from irresolution. She dropped her hands
+from her face, and cried out in a voice that was broken with sobbing:
+"Why, Philip, why did you do that?"
+
+"Why?" he asked, in something like amazement.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I've already told you why."
+
+"But--no--you haven't told me!"
+
+"It was to save you--for one thing."
+
+"To save me?"
+
+"I told you that your only chance is to go at once."
+
+"But I told you I wouldn't go!"
+
+"I know. That's the reason."
+
+"But--don't you know, Philip, that--don't you see that--if you killed
+yourself you'd--kill me too?"
+
+There should have been no necessity for these words. Perhaps any other
+man in the world, certainly most men of far less intelligence and less
+acuteness of feeling, would have known long ago just what she meant.
+He knew, indeed, that this girl loved him; but he did not believe that
+she or any other woman was capable of the sacrifice implied in her
+answer.
+
+"You mean that--you would have--" He hesitated.
+
+"Yes."
+
+There ensued a silence that fell like a mist between them, through
+which neither knew the way. She saw that he had begun, by ever so
+little, to understand; and she feared to say more lest a wrong word
+should overtake a right one. As for Haig, his incredulity persisted
+notwithstanding the unquestionable sincerity of her speech. He did not
+doubt that she contemplated, in this moment of emotion, the complete
+and final sacrifice. But he was quite convinced that she would take a
+different view of the situation when the test should come. She did not
+yet appreciate, he argued, the peril of their position; she had not
+realized the hazard of her adventure or she never would have
+undertaken it; and undoubtedly she still thought there would be a way
+out for them. Under such a delusion it was easy for her, he concluded,
+to talk about dying with him. But she was tragically in error. His
+eyes lifted to the cliff. She should have been up there on her return
+hours ago. Now it was too late again; for the clouds were black and
+ugly on the summit, and a distant roaring came to his ears; and he
+knew what was happening or in preparation in the middle of the flat.
+But he must find a way to send her up that trail at dawn the next day;
+and his gaze dropped to where the revolver lay just visible in the
+thin grass into which she had thrown it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+DIANA
+
+
+Still no speech came to either of them. After a while Marion rose
+silently, and went about her work. First, however, she sought the
+revolver in the grass, and carried it, with her rifle, to the clump of
+willows by the brook, where both weapons were safely beyond the
+present limits of Philip's powers. Then she returned to him with her
+towel, one end of it wetted and soaped.
+
+"May I, please?" she asked, smiling down at him.
+
+"If you wish," he answered.
+
+She knelt, and began to wash the grime from his face, to cleanse the
+wound on his head, and readjust the bandage. Then his hands, after
+another trip to the stream to rub out the soiled end of the towel; and
+she was still busy with one of them, when she started back with a cry.
+His coat had opened wider, and she saw that his shirt was stained with
+blood. She had forgotten the revolver-shot!
+
+"It's nothing," said Haig. "Only a flesh wound, I think."
+
+"But why didn't you tell me!" she cried, almost with anger in her
+alarm.
+
+"It doesn't matter, does it?"
+
+"Let me see it, quick!" she commanded.
+
+He looked at her a moment, then opened the front of his flannel shirt
+and of the undershirt, and disclosed a flesh wound where the bullet
+had cut a streak across his chest. Marion bent close, and touched it
+with her fingers.
+
+"Oh!" she sighed at last, in deep relief.
+
+Haig's reply was a laugh of which the irony did not escape her.
+
+"Philip!" she cried reproachfully.
+
+"Well, isn't it rather droll--and ludicrous, when you come to think of
+it? First, Sunnysides' punch in my stomach. And now, with my head cut
+open by a stone, and a broken leg, and two bullet-wounds--I've still
+got a splendid appetite. I ought to be on exhibition somewhere!"
+
+His sardonic humor hurt her worse than his anger; and she went quickly
+to the brook to cleanse the towel again. Returning presently, she
+washed the new wound, and bandaged it; then examined the splints on
+the broken leg to assure herself that, as nearly as she could
+determine, no serious damage had been done to it by his reckless
+crawl; and finally brought his blankets, and insisted on making a sort
+of bed for him. After that she cooked two slices of bacon, and on
+this, with a little bread, they made their first meal of the day. And
+this brought her to the next and most pressing problem.
+
+"Will you help me think, Philip?" she asked, when they had eaten.
+
+"About what?"
+
+"Food."
+
+"What's in the larder?"
+
+She smiled at his tone, in spite of her own seriousness.
+
+"Bacon--perhaps enough for three days, with the bread, if we don't eat
+much; and chocolate for four or five breakfasts. That's all."
+
+"And then?"
+
+"Are there deer in those forests, do you think?"
+
+"Very likely. This is an un-hunted country, I imagine."
+
+"Great!" she cried.
+
+"What do you propose to do? Whistle for them?"
+
+She could afford to smile at that.
+
+"Didn't you see my rifle?"
+
+"Just now--yes. What's it for?"
+
+"You'll see."
+
+"Diana of Thunder Mountain, eh? Well, I'm ready to admit you're some
+huntress. But deer! That's another thing."
+
+The color flooded her cheeks.
+
+"Cousin Seth taught me to shoot," she answered, turning her face away.
+"I killed a deer on Mount Avalanche."
+
+"But where did Cousin Seth learn to shoot? The last time he--"
+
+"Please, Philip!"
+
+"Well, when you've brought down your deer, what will you do with it?"
+
+The color deserted her face at that.
+
+"I watched him do it," she said, shuddering at the recollection.
+
+"But you can't do that alone."
+
+"I've got to," she replied simply. And then, on a sudden thought:
+"There should be grouse too, shouldn't there?"
+
+"Perhaps."
+
+"I learned to kill grouse with my rifle."
+
+He looked at her with a wicked grin. This time he had her!
+
+"How many cartridges have you?" he asked.
+
+She ran for her belt, and counted the cartridges.
+
+"Twenty-seven."
+
+"So. If you never miss, you'll get twenty-seven grouse. That would
+mean twenty-seven, meals. One meal a day, twenty-seven days. I'd still
+be on my back, our ammunition would be gone, and--"
+
+"Don't!" she cried, in tears. "I wasn't thinking."
+
+"Never mind!" he replied, almost gently. "But we'll deny ourselves the
+grouse."
+
+"Yes, it's got to be the deer. I'll begin now."
+
+"No, there's something else that must be done first."
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"We've got to move."
+
+"For shelter, you mean?"
+
+"Partly. But look there!"
+
+He pointed to the dead body of Trixy.
+
+"It will be easier--and perhaps even nicer--to move me than poor
+Trixy. See that big pine yonder--the one that stands out from the
+forest? Well, you and Tuesday must drag me there."
+
+"But how?"
+
+He explained his plan to her, and she set herself at once to executing
+it. And her spirits rose again; for she thought he had abandoned his
+desperate resolution. So, indeed, he had--for the moment. But he had
+deliberately beguiled her; their situation he knew to be quite
+unchanged in its inevitable termination, since a food supply would
+save them from starvation only to deliver them to the snow; and he
+must disarm her of suspicion in order to find a way to send her back
+on the trail. For he had reflected on the implication of tragic
+finality in the speech that had surprised and disturbed him; and he
+did not doubt that when the time should come, and she should find
+herself alone, her high resolve would prove to have been mere
+emotional exaggeration.
+
+Mounted on Tuesday, Marion attacked the boughs of a small pine with
+the hatchet until she had severed three large branches, to which she
+tied Haig's rope, and hauled them back to the camp. Of these branches
+Haig contrived a crude drag, on which he crawled, and lay flat; the
+free end of the rope was hitched to the horn of Tuesday's saddle; and
+the journey was begun. Twice the saddle slipped, and progress was
+interrupted while Marion tightened the cinches. Once the drag itself
+came to pieces, and Haig was left sprawling on the ground. But
+eventually, with no more serious injury to Haig than a bruised elbow,
+not counting his torn clothing, they reached the goal.
+
+There Marion made a wide bed against the exposed top roots of the
+tree, filling the spaces among the pine boughs with moss, and placing
+the two saddles at the head for pillows. Night had come before she had
+completed this labor, and gathered another supply of dead limbs and
+rotted logs, and cooked their meager supper. Then she wrapped Haig in
+his blankets, and rolled herself in her own, and lay down at his side.
+What with watching and replenishing the fire, and listening to
+night-cries heard or imagined, and waking from restless slumber
+chilled to the bone, she slept as little as on the preceding night,
+and was glad of the dawn, which came peacefully enough on the heels of
+a storm that raged on Thunder Mountain and sent a cold and beating
+rain upon the valley.
+
+This day brought its own bitter disappointment. After her bath in the
+clear pool among the willows, and their mere taste of bacon and bread
+in the name of breakfast, and a promise exacted from Haig, as a
+condition of her leaving him, that he would do nothing of which she
+would disapprove, she set out to get her deer. Rifle on shoulder, and
+eyes alert, she skirted the edge of the wood along the base of the
+cliff, through tall grasses of a golden green, among yellowing aspen
+groves, and under a fair blue sky. But presently she plunged into the
+thick of the forest, of which the trees towered to a height exceeding
+that of any she had ever seen before. In their tops the breeze was
+singing sonorously, but among their massive boles the silence was so
+tense that twigs cracking under her feet sounded like gun-shots
+echoing through the dim aisles.
+
+For some hours she wandered fruitlessly in that dark labyrinth, not
+only mindful of Philip's warning that she must not penetrate too deep
+into its depth, but fearful on her own account of an encounter with
+some such wild beast as that whose cry had terrified her. In time the
+hollow indifference of the woods began to weigh upon her spirits,
+which had been high and hopeful on her setting out. Worn out at last,
+she was just on the point of turning back toward the camp, defeated,
+when she came upon an open space, a lovely little glade, in which the
+grass grew rank and green, unripened by the sun. She started to cross
+it, but stopped suddenly, staring straight ahead. In the very middle
+of the lush and silent glade, a young doe rose swiftly to its feet,
+and looked at her. Marion stood and looked at the doe. Then there was
+a streak of pale yellow across the grass, the forest closed around it,
+and the doe was gone. Thereupon, Marion remembered her rifle, and saw
+with something like surprise, to begin with, that it was pointed
+foolishly toward the ground. She gazed at it a moment, then sat plump
+down on the mossy earth, and cried.
+
+"Oh, what a fool!" she groaned. "What a poor, silly little fool! I
+ought to starve, starve, starve!"
+
+And on the words the hunger that she had bravely kept back rose and
+punished her. To be hungry in a world of plenty, where she had only to
+reach out and help herself! To think of Philip, hungry too, and
+depending on her, on her boasted prowess! Humiliation scorched her
+like a flame. And this was Marion Gaylord!
+
+When she had recovered a little, she made directly for the open strip,
+having no more heart for her task, and nerving herself to confess the
+truth to Philip. Coming out upon the knoll through thick underbrush,
+she was startled by the leap of a rabbit from under her very feet; and
+before she was aware of what she was doing, she had thrown up her
+rifle, and fired. There was really no aim; the action was a gesture
+merely; and if she had tried to hit the rabbit she would have
+undoubtedly missed it clean. But the unlucky little beast, happening
+in the path of Marion's angry disgust, turned a somersault in the air,
+and fell dead.
+
+"Of course!" cried Marion. "Of course I can kill rabbits." Then
+mercilessly: "A rabbit a day for twenty-seven days--" And rage choked
+her.
+
+But she picked up her rabbit, and walked on. In half an hour she
+reached the camp, strode straight to the pine tree under which Haig
+lay, and held up before him the puny prize.
+
+"Now I know you're proud of me!" she exclaimed, while her face
+crimsoned.
+
+Haig smiled indulgently. It was a little better than he had expected.
+
+"Don't be downcast!" he said. "I didn't think you'd get a deer the
+first day. You didn't even see one, I suppose."
+
+"But I did, though! I had one right under my eyes, not thirty feet
+away. And what do you think I did?"
+
+"Stood and looked at it, of course. That's buck fever."
+
+"But it was only a tiny little doe!"
+
+"Doe fever then, which is probably worse, if I know anything about--"
+
+"That will do, Philip! You're laughing at me."
+
+"Not at all. You've brought home something to eat, and that's more
+than I can do. Bunny looks big and fat. He'll make a fine dinner, and
+leave something for to-morrow."
+
+"Thank you, Philip!" she said gratefully. "You make me feel as if I
+were not such a failure after all."
+
+"If you'll trust me with the knife," he said in a tone that took some
+of the edge off her satisfaction, "I'll clean him for you."
+
+She gave him the knife reluctantly, and did not leave his side until
+he had finished cleaning and cutting up the rabbit, when he handed the
+knife back to her with a gesture that made her blush again. Two things
+she did not know: that he had a knife in his pocket much better suited
+to his secret purpose; and that his purpose was a purpose no longer.
+But even he was not yet aware of this last.
+
+It was not the next day, but the third, when the rabbit had been eaten
+to the bone, and the pangs of hunger prodded her, that Marion restored
+herself in her own eyes. In the edge of the forest, not more than two
+miles from the camp, she detected a mere brown patch in the browning
+bush. This time she did not forget her rifle. The brown patch moved
+just as she pulled the trigger; but when she reached the spot, in a
+fever of anxiety, she fairly shrieked to the wilderness. For there in
+the grass, still jerking spasmodically in its death agony, lay a doe,
+a larger one than that she had seen in the glade. No more "one a day
+for twenty-seven days!"
+
+What followed haunted her dreams for many nights thereafter--a
+repulsive and sickening ordeal. She had seen Huntington do it, but
+then she had been able to turn her face away; and her hands--But
+necessity, responsibility, and pride, and perhaps some primitive
+instinct also, nerved her to the task. And she staggered back to camp,
+and stood before Philip, white and trembling, but triumphant.
+
+"Take a drink of whisky!" ordered Haig sharply.
+
+She obeyed him, gulping down the last of the precious contents of her
+flask.
+
+"It's down there--covered with leaves!" she gasped out at length.
+"Will anything--disturb it before I can--take Tuesday and the rope?"
+
+"Do you mean you've cleaned the whole deer?" he asked curiously.
+
+She nodded, still shuddering.
+
+"Well, you're a brick!" he said heartily. Then he added: "I thought
+perhaps a bobcat had stolen your--rabbit."
+
+She laughed with him, and then was off with Tuesday to bring her
+quarry home. She was not strong enough to lift and fasten the carcass
+on the horse's back; but the route was through clean grass along the
+cliff, and Tuesday made short work of that, with the deer dragged at
+the end of the rope.
+
+They had no salt, but there were a few rinds of bacon that Haig had
+told Marion to keep, and these were made to serve for seasoning. That
+venison, moreover, needed nothing to make it palatable; for they were
+ravenously hungry. Sprawled before the fire like savages, they feasted
+on a huge steak, broiled on two willow sticks, and well-browned on the
+outside at the start so that the tenderness was retained; and for an
+hour forgot. For so the stomach, at once the tyrant and the slave, has
+sometimes its hour of triumph, when heart and soul and brain are its
+willing captives, and the starkest fears and forebodings lose their
+sway, and death itself, though visible and near, has no power to
+ferment the grateful juices of the body.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+THE SNOW
+
+
+In the night they were awakened by a terrific outburst on the mountain
+top, surpassing all they had yet heard since their arrival in the
+valley. The forest roared under the onslaughts of the wind that swept
+down through the gorge as through a funnel. Protected though the camp
+was, in a measure, fierce gusts now and then assailed it, and later
+the rain came, almost in torrents, beating through the canopy of
+foliage, and half-flooding the bed.
+
+Marion, rising to renew the fire, felt that a sharp change had come in
+the atmosphere. It was colder than any night they had yet endured.
+Wrapped again in her blankets, she was unable to keep warm. Her feet,
+near the fire, were too hot, while her back and shoulders ached as if
+they had been packed in ice. Turn which way she would, on her back, on
+her side, or face downward, there was no relief from that acid cold.
+She did not complain, but cried softly, trying to hold back her sobs
+so that he should not hear her.
+
+"You're cold," he said, hearing her nevertheless.
+
+"A little--not very," she answered bravely.
+
+But he knew very well how keenly she was suffering. His injured leg
+pained him almost beyond endurance, as if the frost had been
+concentrated there. There was nothing he could say or do for her or
+for himself.
+
+Toward morning, the fury of the storm having abated, they slept a
+little, fitfully and uneasily, in the half-insensibility to suffering
+that complete exhaustion brings. But they were glad when the first
+gray light of morning stole in among the shadows and touched their
+eyelids. With one accord, as if in a common apprehension, and moved by
+a single fear, they raised their heads, and at the first glance about
+them, sat up staring.
+
+The meadow lay white under its first coverlet of snow, the trees were
+draped in their winter mantles, their very bed had its downy quilt of
+snowflakes that had sifted through the branches of the tree.
+
+"It's come," said Haig simply.
+
+"Yes," she answered, in a voice that echoed a tragic calm.
+
+"But it was due."
+
+"Seth kept saying we'd have a hard and early winter."
+
+"Huntington's not such a fool as he looks," retorted Haig drily, as he
+lay back to look up resignedly into the foliage, where white now
+mingled with the green.
+
+For some time there was no more speech. Marion arose, and went
+silently about her work. She heaped wood on the fire until the flames
+leaped high, and the heat began to drive out the settled chill from
+her limbs, and she could move again without dull pain. Then to the
+brook; but her baths in the pool were ended. She washed face and
+hands, and brought back the wet towel for Philip. And breakfast was
+eaten almost in silence, and without appetite; for the good venison
+that had so rejoiced them the night before had already lost its
+flavor.
+
+"Do you see the circles on the trees yonder, where the moss begins?"
+asked Haig at length.
+
+"Yes," Marion answered.
+
+"That's the snow line. It will lie thirty feet deep here."
+
+She had no answer to that. But she was thinking. There must be a way.
+She had no idea what it would be; but there must be some way out of
+it.
+
+When the camp had been cleaned up, and the pan and cup had been washed
+and put aside, and the fire replenished, she brought her rifle from
+its place behind the tree.
+
+"I'm going for a walk," she said.
+
+"Where?"
+
+"I don't know. Down along the cliff perhaps. I may see another deer."
+
+"Yes. You might as well. Deer meat will keep--longer than we--"
+
+He checked the unnecessary speech. She rewarded him with a smile and
+left him.
+
+And now he faced a curious situation within himself. He saw clearly,
+but strangely without sensation, that it was too late for Marion to
+attempt the passage of the mountain. Whatever chance she might have
+had before--and that was perhaps even less than the one in a thousand
+of which he had spoken--she had now no chance at all, supposing that
+he should force her to seek it by measures of desperation. And why had
+he delayed? He did not know. Had he weakened? Had his injuries taken
+something from his courage? He drew his treasured knife from his
+pocket, opened the largest of the three keen blades, and passed it
+slowly but lightly across his wrist. No; his hand was steady; he
+could do it without a tremor. He could have done it yesterday, the day
+before, or any day. Well, then; had he become sceptical of such a
+solution of his problem? Perhaps. Six times in his life he had
+attempted that solution, and always he had failed. And yet, what could
+have thwarted him when Marion was far away in the forest, and he lay
+quiet and undisturbed on his blankets, in full possession of his
+faculties?
+
+By such process of elimination he arrived at the final question: was
+it she? Was it this girl that now stayed his hand, in spite of all his
+logic and clear vision and resolution? This girl, with her foolish
+faith, and misplaced love, and futile talk of miracles? Was it written
+that they should die together--written in some volume of the book of
+life into which he had never looked? Or was she right? And would there
+be--
+
+He looked out again upon the gleaming whiteness of the meadow, at the
+snow line on the pines, at the remorseless mountain. He passed slowly
+in review again the chances of a rescue, the chances of their
+wintering in that (soon-to-be) snowbound valley, the chances of
+a--miracle. And he shook his head. The odds were beyond all reckoning;
+their fate was now as certain as if the cliff yonder, rent by another
+cataclysm, had tumbled down upon them while they slept. But he had
+known this in the very hour of his awakening to find her kneeling at
+his side; he had delayed giving her the one chance of escape. And so,
+was it because she had commanded him and he had unconsciously obeyed?
+
+It was mystery; it was enigma. He tried to think if he had erred in
+any way, if there was any fault to be attributed to him. No; he had
+dealt more than fairly with this girl; he had spoken frankly and
+brutally; he had never once consciously, by word or look, enticed her.
+Unconsciously, perhaps; but how could he ever have foreseen such
+consequences of the infatuation of which he had become slowly and
+incredulously informed? He would have gone raging out of the Park,
+between two suns (and Thursby be damned!), if he had ever dreamt of
+this tragic end of her midsummer madness.
+
+For two hours he lay thinking, torturing his brain for an explanation
+of this mystery, an understanding of this coil. And he was no nearer a
+solution than at the beginning, when his thoughts were interrupted by
+Marion. She came running out of the forest--not running, but fairly
+bounding, as if her feet were too light to rest on earth. Her face was
+flushed, her eyes danced with excitement. But then, seeing his grave
+and questioning face, she stopped short in front of him, suddenly
+embarrassed.
+
+"Well?" he asked gently.
+
+"Would--a cave do?"
+
+Her voice trembled between timidity and shortness of breath.
+
+"A cave?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"What kind of a cave?"
+
+"A big cave--really two caves joined together."
+
+"Where?"
+
+"In the cliff--down there."
+
+She pointed in the direction from which she had come at full speed.
+
+"How high above the level of the valley?"
+
+She stared at him, and was again embarrassed.
+
+"I forgot that!" she said, in deep chagrin. "But wait, please!" She
+looked around her. "I think--I know what you mean! It's higher up than
+the marks on the trees there, surely it is!"
+
+"Tell me about it!"
+
+"It's only a little way from here. There's a narrow, clear space all
+along between the forest and the cliff, where the grass grows high.
+But there's one place--I missed it before, when I was just looking for
+deer--where the cliff--How can I describe it? It sinks in, and there's
+a slope up to it, solid rock. And at the top of the slope I saw a
+black hole, and got off my pony to look in. The slope is easy to
+climb. Tuesday climbed it with me. The mouth of the cave is partly
+hidden by a rock that sticks out so that you can see the opening only
+from one side. The entrance is no bigger than the door of your stable.
+I was afraid at first, but--"
+
+"You thought of your miracle," he suggested, with a smile.
+
+"I knew something must be done, so I held my rifle ready, thinking it
+might be a wild beasts' den, and listened a minute, and went in.
+There's the big cave first, as large as the sitting-room and kitchen
+together at Cousin Seth's, and there's a smaller one at the side, with
+a narrow opening between them. The small one has an opening outside
+too, just big enough for me to squeeze through, and look out on the
+forest below."
+
+"Was it cold in there? Did the wind blow through?"
+
+"No, I think not. It seemed very dry and warm."
+
+He looked at her intently, and so strangely that she blushed again,
+she knew not why.
+
+"Who are you, anyhow?" he asked, in a curious tone.
+
+"I?"
+
+"Yes, you?"
+
+"I don't understand," she faltered in confusion.
+
+"No matter!" he said. "We'll try the cave."
+
+He had no faith in the experiment. Even with food and shelter, there
+was still the cold that would steadily sap their strength, and stretch
+them lifeless before half the winter should have passed. But she
+should have her way; it would divert her mind from the inevitable; and
+they would, at least, be doing all their best. The trip to the cave
+would be hell for him, in his condition, but all that would be, at its
+worst, soon ended.
+
+A whole day being needed for the removal, they ventured to wait until
+the following morning. Storms raged through all the night on Thunder
+Mountain, and they woke again in utter wretchedness to find another
+and heavier sheet of snow upon the meadow.
+
+But Marion was soon up and at work in eagerness and hope. The fire and
+the broiled venison renewed them; and even the snow offered something
+by way of compensation, for Haig's journey on the freshly constructed
+drag was smoother over the snow than it had been in the first instance
+over the stone-littered earth. The ascent to the opening of the cave
+was, however, another matter; and there was imminent danger of
+Tuesday's sliding backward on the slippery rock, and crushing Haig
+beneath him. Twice, indeed, such a fatal accident was narrowly
+averted, and a less sure-footed animal than Tuesday would have
+resolved all Haig's doubts in one swift catastrophe. But there was no
+alternative, and Haig at length lay safe enough, though racked and
+exhausted, at the mouth of the cave; and when he had rested he raised
+himself on his elbows and looked around him.
+
+The top of the slope was almost level, and made a kind of porch in
+front of their new abode, about thirty feet in length and of half that
+measurement in its greatest width. Haig calculated the height of the
+platform above the valley--fully forty feet. Below was the strip of
+grass, and then the forest towering high above them, protecting the
+cave, in some degree, from the winds that would come roaring down the
+gulch. At this height they should be able, in all probability, to defy
+the snows. With a sufficient store of food and fuel, and any kind of
+luck, there would have been--God! Was there a chance?
+
+With his back to the wall! He had always been at his best against long
+odds. None of the adventures of the ten years that he counted as his
+life had ever been for any kind of gain; and the finest of them had
+been those in which there were the most tight places. So this coming
+struggle with the elements, though it should be a trial not of valor
+but of endurance and resourcefulness, lacking swift action and a
+culmination in one stirring hour, would once have allured him like a
+splendid game. And even now, for one instant, while he sat there
+keenly counting the forces on one side and the other, the pride of
+battle lighted up his features, and for that instant he was himself
+again. But a cruel and timely twinge in his injured leg recalled him
+to realities. His back was not to the wall; it was flat on the
+ground. He could not walk, he could not stand; and for weeks to come
+he would continue to be as helpless as in that moment. To endure a
+siege of eight months in the cave its garrison must have huge stores
+of food and fuel; pine boughs and moss in lieu of bedding; solid
+barricades at the entrances; and countless makeshifts for the comforts
+that were denied. And before he should be able to stir it would be too
+late. No, it was an idle dream; a month would see the end of both of
+them. So he lay back again, and looked up vacantly into the cold, blue
+sky.
+
+But Marion, standing at one side and watching him, had seen that
+flicker of the fire within, and was grateful for it beyond all reason
+or belief. It was all she needed. Her hands were already raw and
+bleeding, but she would work them to the bone if he would only guide
+and advise and comfort her; and she knew now that she could trust him,
+since there was no longer any question whether she should go or stay.
+
+All that day was spent in bringing up fresh boughs and moss for their
+beds, and in making them against the wall of the cavern where draughts
+would be the least likely to sweep over them; in bestowing their
+meager belongings; in hanging the venison from sticks thrust into a
+crevice in the rock; in finding the best place for the fire that must
+never be allowed to go down, and in planning the storage of food and
+fuel.
+
+Marion had no pressing anxiety about food, now that she had brought in
+her first deer; but fuel was a different matter. To her own
+appreciation of the problem Haig, that evening after dinner, added
+some calculations that revealed it to her in its baldest aspects. The
+morning, too, disclosed another layer of snow upon the valley. The
+winter was coming on without pity, and each succeeding day would see
+its lines drawn a little closer round them. There was not an hour, not
+a moment to be lost.
+
+At dawn she began, with Tuesday and the rope, to haul dead limbs and
+logs, the largest she was able to handle, going far at first in order
+to leave the nearest supplies for the last harvesting in deep snow.
+Under Haig's instructions, she filled all the space in the caves that
+would not be actually needed for their living quarters. Then she built
+the logs into a square and solid pile on the platform at one side of
+the entrance. These were not logs in any formidable sense, being for
+the most part half-rotted fragments of tree trunks that had long been
+decaying in the mold. But they were dry now, after the summer, and
+they made excellent slow-burning fuel. The dead limbs she cut up into
+small sticks, and filled the interstices of the heap, and all the
+space between it and the wall of rock. And eventually the whole
+platform was covered, and the slope on each side, until there was no
+longer room for Tuesday to mount to it, and barely room for Marion
+herself.
+
+In the meantime, varying her exertions, she made several trips into
+the woods for deer. After many disappointments, she succeeded, before
+the snow became too deep for further expeditions, in bringing back to
+the cave a splendid buck and three young does. Haig made for her a
+rabbit snare, and taught her how to set it, and with this device she
+had the luck to add a dozen rabbits to their store. And all this time
+she was piling up every stick of wood that she could find space for,
+even making a great heap at the foot of the slope to be drawn upon
+before the snow should cover it.
+
+Always the snow fell, steadily, remorselessly. Every night it snowed,
+and every day more or less, with intervals of brilliant sunshine. The
+wind blew with increasing violence, tossing the snow into huge drifts
+upon the meadow, which Marion still saw sometimes in her wood
+gathering, and sifting it in level masses among the trees, and
+flinging it in great banks against the cliff. Up and up crept the
+drifts and banks and levels until there came a day when she could do
+no more.
+
+And that day it seemed that she could have done no more in any kind of
+weather, under any inspiration or necessity. The record of what she
+did is but a footnote to the page of what she suffered. Time after
+time she had sunk down in the snow and lain there exhausted until
+strength came to her again from somewhere, and then had risen
+_manfully_ to her work. For it was a man's work she did, with a
+courage as much greater than a man's as her strength was less. She was
+strong, for a woman; she had lived all her life much out of doors; and
+she had entered upon this ordeal in perfect health. But her
+willingness outsped her powers; and when the snow had spared her by
+driving her into the cave, she fairly staggered and groped and leaned
+against the wall, and knew that if she should now collapse she would
+never rise again. But even in that climax of her suffering, when for a
+moment she dared not move, in fear of toppling over on the floor, and
+could not keep back her sobs, there was an answer ready when Haig
+called to her across the cave.
+
+"What is it, Marion?" he asked softly.
+
+"Tuesday!" she answered chokingly.
+
+"What about Tuesday?"
+
+"He's a good horse."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"He never balked or--hesitated. He never threw me--but once, and that
+wasn't his fault. It was--"
+
+She stopped. And out of what black depths, and across what vistas of
+hope and despair and love and anguish, she looked back to that scene
+in the golden summer, in the Forbidden Pasture.
+
+"Yes, I remember," said Haig.
+
+Then she told him brokenly how she had just said farewell to Tuesday;
+how he stood at the foot of the slope, thin as a specter, belly-deep
+in snow, his nose lifted inquiringly toward her.
+
+"Good-by, Tuesday!" she cried; and fled stumbling up the slope, her
+hands on her ears to shut out his plaintive whinny.
+
+Haig watched her narrowly, and was not deceived. Through the first few
+days of Marion's struggles he had lain on his pallet in almost
+complete indifference, in full acceptance of the fate that awaited
+them; not callous to her sufferings, but resigned, as he thought, to
+endure what could not be prevented. Having resolved to humor her, he
+went from the extreme of resistance to the extreme of submission, and
+hardened his heart to endure what galled and humiliated and degraded
+him. Then anger seized him once more,--anger at Marion, anger at
+himself, anger at Thursby, anger at circumstances, chance and destiny:
+blinding and suffocating anger. To have been brought to this shameful
+state, to lie there watching a woman, a mere girl, perform these
+menial tasks for him--for him who had execrated and despised and
+scorned her sex--for him who had accepted such services grudgingly
+even from men--for him who had stalked around the world in defiant
+independence, indebted to no man and obligated to no woman: this was
+odious and intolerable. And it must be tolerated!
+
+Marion knew nothing of this fiery ordeal through which Haig came. Even
+in the fiercest and most maddening moment of his agony, when honor and
+pride and self-respect were being reduced to ashes, he did not fail to
+realize that to cry out, to rave or curse or denunciate, would only be
+to add something cowardly and contemptible to the sum of his disgrace.
+He did not even cast a stealthy glance toward his revolver, where it
+lay in a niche in the cavern wall, though Marion was out in the snow
+somewhere, and could not have stopped him if he had crawled to seize
+it. That, too, would have been an act of cowardice and of infamy; and
+something deep within him now continually spoke for her, and for
+whatever it was she stood for in this chaos that was the end of all.
+
+His fury slowly passed, and he had but emerged from its strangely
+purifying fire into a calm that was well-nigh as terrible, when she
+entered sobbing into the cave to tell him the pitiable little lie that
+all her visible distress was for a pony to whom she had said farewell.
+He saw her presently totter forward to put more fuel on the fire and
+begin to prepare their evening meal. With eyes from which the smoke of
+passion had now lifted, he saw what he had only vaguely seen before:
+that she was thin and haggard; that her pale face took on a hectic
+flush in the glow of the blazing pine; that her clothes were all in
+tatters, her riding-skirt slit in many places, her coat and flannel
+waist so worn, and torn that they barely covered her, and did indeed
+reveal one white shoulder through a gaping rent; that one dilapidated
+boot was quite out at toe; and that she was ill and faint and silent.
+
+"Marion!" he called to her.
+
+"Yes, Philip!" she answered, turning to look at him.
+
+"Come here, please!"
+
+She came and stood before him, unsteadily.
+
+"Let me see your hands!"
+
+She knelt, and held them out to him. Taking them in his own hands,
+which were then far softer and whiter than hers, he looked long at the
+raw and bleeding cracks, at the swollen joints, at the bruised and
+calloused fingers, at the nails (they were once so pink and polished)
+worn down to the quick, and at one nail that had been split back
+almost to its root.
+
+"They're not very pretty, are they?" she said, with a weak little
+laugh that ended in a quiver of her chin.
+
+He lifted the hands, the right one and then the left, and touched them
+with his lips. She was very weary and faint and miserable; and he had
+never done anything like that before; and so she drew back her hands,
+and buried her face in them, and sank sobbing on the floor.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+THE VOICE IN THE HURRICANE
+
+
+Their sufferings, as the days went crawling into weeks, attained a
+certain dead level of wretchedness. At that level, should nothing
+worse befall, they felt that they might exist through the eight months
+of their imprisonment; beyond that level lay deliverance by death. So
+they kept a painstaking account of time, and made a sort of solemn
+ceremony of that hour when, as night let down its black curtain before
+the entrance of the cavern, Marion cut another notch in the wall, and
+they clasped hands in a brave effort at good cheer, and said to each
+other, "One more! One more!"
+
+The cold had steadily increased until it was just barely endurable. By
+day it was possible to combat it in some measure, but at night they
+were stung and tortured by the frost that invaded the cave, and defied
+their meager clothing. If they tried lying closely side by side with
+their blankets spread over them, the cold crept under the coverings,
+and bit through their garments into their emaciated limbs. If they
+wrapped themselves tightly in the blankets, one pair to each, and lay
+near the fire, they were able to catch only a few fitful moments of
+sleep before the frost on one side and the heat on the other forced
+them to move.
+
+At inexorable intervals the fire must be replenished. Heavy with sleep
+that was not sleep, feeble from lack of nourishment, and stiff from
+cold, Marion would rise and stumble to the nearest heap of wood, and
+carefully lay two or three pieces on the dying embers. The fire itself
+was to Marion a source of continual dread; for not only did it consume
+their precious and unrenewable supply of wood with a terrifying
+voracity, but she was fairly obsessed by the fear that she might let
+it go out. In that event they might never waken, clutched by the cold
+in their sleep; or wakening, find that something had happened to the
+matches. There remained a good store of these in the box enfolded
+carefully in a bit of cloth and a strip of deerskin, and bestowed in a
+high niche of the cavern; but there was sometimes moisture in the
+night winds, and there could be no absolute assurance that the matches
+would ignite in an emergency.
+
+The winds blew irregularly, sometimes roaring through the cave, and
+filling it with a whirl of smoke and snow, and sometimes creeping
+along the floor with the malevolence and stealthiness of a serpent.
+Marion had blocked up the entrance with small logs and limbs, but the
+winds and draughts made scorn of this loose barrier. Her clothes were
+fast falling from her body. She essayed crude patchwork with strips of
+deerskin and pins of wood, but these efforts were rendered futile by
+wear and tear and the rotting of the cloth itself. She began to be
+embarrassed when her flesh showed through the rents in her garments;
+but Haig, with a mingling of frankness and tact that might indeed have
+been less easy in other circumstances, effectually helped her to
+banish all false modesty from a situation in which they were reduced
+to primitive habits and almost to primitive familiarities.
+
+She was less able to accustom herself to the dirt, from which there
+was no escape, but which irked her nevertheless more than all else.
+She was no longer able to keep clean in any sense of cleanliness
+associated with civilization. Washing with water melted from snow,
+without soap or towels, had only the effect, as it seemed to her, to
+fix the grime more deeply in her skin. And the hair that had been her
+pride had now no more the golden lights in its tawny masses, and was
+becoming dark and harsh and sheenless in spite of her most assiduous
+attention.
+
+"Don't worry!" said Haig one day, in a grim attempt at humor. "Just
+imagine you are a belle of the Eskimos."
+
+"Philip! How can you?" she cried.
+
+"Washing," he went on, "is only another error of civilization. I have
+seen whole tribes of most respectable aborigines that never bathed.
+And they seemed to be quite happy. It saves a lot of time. But that's
+another queer thing. The more time we need, the more we waste it on
+matters that are really unimportant. Like most of our attempts to
+improve on nature, it costs more than it's worth, and--"
+
+"That will do, Philip!" she protested. "I can forget I'm hungry,
+but--ugh! not this!"
+
+But she spoke too bravely about her hunger. Their food by this time
+had begun to pall. The good venison, of which they had eaten joyously
+at first, became tasteless and then disgusting. They had no salt. The
+bacon and the bread had long since been consumed, and the chocolate
+also. There was left nothing but the flesh of deer and rabbits. Marion
+stewed it, broiled it, baked it under hot ashes; and they even
+nibbled at it raw; but the time came when only the relentless pangs of
+hunger, the hunger of the animal, the sheer clamor of their stomachs
+could force them to eat the nauseating food. In consequence of this
+revulsion, they were always hungry; and sometimes, in spite of their
+resolution, they descended to torturing each other with talk of the
+good things there were in the world to eat.
+
+"Claire makes the most gorgeous apple dumplings!" said Marion on one
+of these occasions.
+
+"Apple dumplings? Ye-es," replied Haig judiciously. "But what about
+plain dumplings in chicken gravy?"
+
+"Fricassee!" cried Marion.
+
+"No. Maryland."
+
+"Still, Philip, if I had my choice it wouldn't be chicken at all."
+
+"What then?"
+
+"Potatoes. Big, baked potatoes, split open, you know, with butter and
+salt and paprika."
+
+"Or sweet potatoes swimming in butter."
+
+"And salad--lettuce and tomatoes and oil and vinegar."
+
+"And then pie. Think of blackberry pie!"
+
+"And jam. I do love jam spread on toast."
+
+"I'll tell you something," said Haig recklessly. "I could even eat
+sauerkraut!"
+
+Their worst craving was for salt. Marion could fairly taste the spray
+of the Atlantic on the bathing beaches. She dreamt of salt,--barrels
+of salt and oceans of salt and caves she had read of in which salt
+hung in glittering stalactites. And Haig too. He described a desert
+where salt had risen to the surface and gleamed in crystals in the
+sand. And once he had lived a long time on salt pork, which he had
+thought the most insufferable food. But now! The taste of it came back
+to him, and went tingling through every nerve.
+
+To free their minds from such tormenting memories, Haig went deep into
+his adventures, his wanderings, his search for excitements. He told
+her of strange lands and peoples, of the beautiful spots of the world,
+of battles and perils and escapes,--everything he had been through,
+with one exception. That--the story of Paris--was still a closed book
+to her. And similarly, there was one chapter of her life that she did
+not open to him. A certain delicacy, rendered more vital by their very
+situation, in which few delicacies could be maintained, restrained
+them from the uttermost self-revelation. The one subject that was not
+touched upon in the most intimate of their conversations was that
+dearest to Marion's heart and most incomprehensible to Haig's reason.
+Partly this avoidance was intuitive, and partly deliberate; where
+there was so much suffering that could not be escaped, they were
+scrupulous to inflict upon each other no unnecessary pain or
+embarrassment. Between a more common man and a less fastidious woman,
+placed in such propinquity, there would almost inevitably have been
+concessions and compromises but between these two there remained a
+barrier that might have been passed by Marion's unquestioning love,
+but never by Haig's inclinations, curbed as they had been through many
+years, and still reined in by his distrust.
+
+The day came when it seemed safe for Haig to stand and to move a
+little about the cave. He had fashioned slowly a pair of rude
+crutches, if they could be so called,--two pine limbs trimmed down
+with his pocketknife, with their natural forks left to fit under his
+arms. Marion protested that he was attempting this feat much too soon,
+but she was compelled to watch him in an agony of suspense lest he
+should fall on the hard floor of the cave, or rest his weight on the
+injured leg, and so undo all that had cost them so much of care and
+labor. But caution restrained him; for he was aware of the danger,
+though he was also half-mad with impatience to be a man once more.
+Venturing only a few tentative steps at first, he steadily accustomed
+himself to movement with the aid of the awkward crutches, and in a few
+days was able to take up some of the work of their wretched
+habitation. Marion saw that this pleased him immensely, almost as if
+he had been a boy entrusted with a man's responsibility; and once,
+too, she saw him stand a long time before the row of notches on the
+wall, and thought his figure straightened, and a flush came into his
+pale cheek.
+
+And then, in the sixth week of their imprisonment, Marion fell ill.
+She had caught a cold, which was not the first by any means, but much
+more severe than its predecessors. With watery eyes and red noses and
+distressing coughs they had become familiar, but this was plainly a
+more serious matter. For three days more she dragged herself about,
+trying to conceal her state from him and from herself, but crying
+softly when he did not see her.
+
+One morning, as the dawn crept into the cavern, she tried as usual to
+rise from her hard bed, and fell back with a stifled moan. Haig heard
+her, and raised his head quickly, struck by an unaccustomed note in
+her low cry.
+
+"What is it, Marion?" he asked in alarm.
+
+"It's no use, dear!" she whispered. "I can't get up."
+
+For a moment he lay stricken, incapable of thought. Not that the event
+was unexpected. He had been reckoning on that; he had seen her
+steadily failing, and knew that she could not go on indefinitely under
+such privations. And yet, when it came, it was appalling. The grayness
+of the cave settled down upon him like a pall. Once he would have been
+indifferent to it, resigned to the knowledge that it was inevitable.
+But now he had come, if not to share her hope, at least to sympathize
+with it, and to wish ardently for her sake that her faith might be
+justified. And it seemed a pitiable thing that she should have been
+deceived, an intolerable thing that she should die there so
+uselessly,--for him.
+
+He moved over to her, and placed his hand on her forehead. It was
+burning hot.
+
+"Water, please!" she gasped.
+
+He hobbled to the entrance, and brought a cupful of snow, and melted
+it over the fire. She drank the water greedily, and begged for more.
+But he told her gently that she must wait a little while. Then he sat
+thinking. What should be done with fever? It would probably be
+pneumonia, or something as fatal. And it would take her as the north
+wind takes the drooping petals of a rose.
+
+He bent over her, and tried to soothe her with such futile words as
+came. The look she gave him went straight into deep, dark cells of his
+being that he thought had been closed and sealed forever. She begged
+him to eat; he must cook his own breakfast. Oh, but he must eat, or he
+should not be able to help her, she said. She would be quite well in a
+day or two; she was sure of that; and he must not get sick too. After
+he had been so patient and so good to her!
+
+Haig turned away with a groan, and tried to obey her. But eat? Eat
+that repulsive food that he had choked down these many days only to
+please her, only to subscribe to her foolish faith? He could not! But
+presently she raised her head, and saw that he was not eating, and
+chided him. Whereupon he swallowed some morsels of the venison, and
+assured her that he had eaten heartily.
+
+All that day she lay there, her face flushed, her eyes gleaming with a
+brightness that was more than the brightness of her indomitable
+spirit. When she smiled up at him he turned his face away that she
+might not see what he knew was written on it. And then he realized how
+much that smile had come to mean to him--how all unawares he had come
+to covet and to prize it--how he had half-consciously of late resorted
+to unexpected words and gestures to coax it to her lips.
+
+There was no sleep for either of them that night. The next day Marion
+grew steadily worse, and toward evening she became delirious. And
+there was no concealment in this delirium as there had been in his.
+All that he had not seen and heard and guessed before was now wholly
+revealed to him. He was permitted to see deep into the pure soul of
+the girl, into her very heart that was brimming over with love for
+him. His name came riding on every breath. It was Philip, Philip,
+Philip! And bit by bit, and fragment by fragment, he heard all the
+pitiful story of her love, of her petty stratagems, of the wicked
+little plot she had made, of the traps from which he had extricated
+himself, of the pretended sprain in her ankle, of her watching and
+waiting, of the anguish he had caused her, of her solitary communion
+with the stars on Mount Avalanche, of her dismissal of Hillyer, of her
+faith in the love that should not be denied and unrequited, of her
+prayers for a miracle that should bring him to her at last.
+
+He looked down at the poor, small foot in its ragged shoe; yes, that
+was the foot that was "sprained." And how it had trudged, and dragged
+itself along for him, when every bone and muscle of her body ached! He
+looked at her hands, thin even in their swollenness, raw and bleeding,
+hard as a laborer's on the palms. How they had toiled and bled for
+him! For him! And what about him? What about Philip Haig?
+
+He leaned back from her, and closed his eyes. And suddenly it seemed
+as if something fell away from them, as if something that had bound
+and imprisoned and blinded him had been rudely shattered. In one
+terrible, torturing revelation he saw clearly what he had been, what
+he had done, what a miserable wreck he had made of life, what a
+pitiable, dwarfed, misshapen thing his soul had become in comparison
+with the soul of this girl whom he had despised. He saw that he had
+lived a life of almost untouched egoism, setting his own wrongs above
+all the other wrongs in the world, counting his own griefs the
+greatest of all griefs, nursing his own tragedy as if it had been the
+first tragedy and the last. Bitterly, remorselessly he reviewed his
+selfishness, his hatred, his senseless rage, the heartlessness wrought
+by himself in a nature that had been, in the beginning, as pure, if
+not as precious and fine and beautiful, as hers.
+
+And that was not all. He had taken woman for the special object of his
+hatred. He had made himself believe that all women were alike. Was
+there, then, only one kind of woman in a world filled with many kinds
+of men? Because he had been a fool, because he had been deceived by
+one woman, he had concluded, in his folly, that every woman was a
+vampire or a parasite,--"a rag and a bone and a hank of hair"!
+
+And now there lay before him indeed (and the words took on a new and
+more terrible meaning) "a rag and a bone and a hank of hair." Yes,
+this was all that was left of her. This was what he had made of the
+most joyous and most beautiful creature that had ever crossed his
+path; this was the best he could do for one who had had the misfortune
+to love him and the courage to tell him so. This was his work! His
+memory went back to that day before the post-office. How beautiful she
+was then, how strangely beautiful, coming out of that halo of light by
+the side of the golden outlaw. Something had stirred within him then,
+as it had stirred again and again: at Huntington's when she reached
+for his revolver; in his cottage that last afternoon of her nursing.
+And he had repulsed it, put it down, and trampled on it, as if it had
+been an execrable thing instead of the very treasure he had been
+seeking all his life without knowing what he sought. And now he
+recognized it for what it was--too late!
+
+He bent nearer to her, listening.
+
+"Philip! Philip!" she was saying, in tender, coaxing accents,
+with that quivering of her chin that had many times been almost
+irresistible.
+
+Then came the final break-up of everything within him. He felt lifted
+as upon a flood, and a wild and passionate longing surged through all
+his being. He leaned swiftly over her, and clasped her in his arms,
+and pressed her hot cheek against his own. And then--it was
+unendurable; he felt one of her arms softly encircling his neck. There
+was just one gentle pressure, and then the arm fell to her side, and
+her head sank weakly away from him. He laid her back tenderly on her
+hard bed.
+
+He sat up again, looking at her and listening. She rambled on in
+half-coherent speech. She had not heard him cry out her name; or if
+she had heard him it had been only a part of her fevered dreams. And
+this was the crowning bitterness: that he should want to speak to her,
+to tell her that he loved her, and she could not hear; that he was too
+late, and she would never know.
+
+He leaped to his feet in a whirling tempest of rage. He stumbled to
+the mouth of the cave, and thrust himself half through the barricade,
+and looked out into the wilderness of snow, and stood shaking his fist
+at it, quivering with passion, and uttering the wildest imprecations
+upon the world, upon the outlaw, and upon himself. And gradually they
+centered upon himself alone; and he stood presently, as it were, naked
+before God, with something like a prayer unspoken, a silent,
+voiceless petition rising from his tortured soul.
+
+He became calm after that. A curious peace, it seemed, had flowed in
+upon him. Mechanically he renewed the fire, brought water and held it
+to Marion's lips, and eased her position on the bed. Then he sat by
+her side to wait!
+
+Well, this was the end. She would be going soon,--to-morrow, or the
+day after. He glanced toward the shelf where Marion's rifle and his
+revolver lay. She would not be there now to snatch the weapon from his
+hand! But she would be waiting for him. And there came back to him the
+strange feeling he had experienced in his cottage--the pressure of her
+hand still warm on his own--her hand helping up and up and out of the
+Valley of the Shadow. And her hand would be stretched out for him--in
+the Beyond--
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+It must have been about the middle of the next forenoon--he had ceased
+to reckon time, and there were no more notches cut on the black wall
+of the cave--when Philip, sitting at Marion's side, observed a
+curious, restless movement of her head. She had lain all morning in a
+stupor, very still, with only an occasional murmur from her dry lips.
+But now, moving her head from side to side, she tried to lift it, as
+if to listen.
+
+"What is it, Marion?" asked Haig, leaning close to her.
+
+"Listen!" she whispered.
+
+He obeyed her, or pretended to, and turned an ear toward the mouth of
+the cavern. The wind was up with its wailing and its snarls and
+shrieks. He heard it for a moment, then looked at her again.
+
+"My poor girl! My poor Marion!" he said.
+
+"Listen!" she repeated, with a touching emphasis, almost childish,
+almost petulant.
+
+He heard the storm.
+
+"Yes, Marion," he said, humoring her.
+
+"Can't you hear it?" she pleaded. "Listen!"
+
+It was the delirium again; she was hearing things that were not,
+except in her disordered mind. Perhaps--he had read somewhere that the
+dying, those of them that are pure at heart, sometimes hear the
+calling of the--
+
+"Somebody's--coming!" she cried in the thinnest, most childlike
+treble. Her face shone; she tried to sit up; she raised one hand
+feebly toward him.
+
+"Please lie down, dear!" pleaded Haig, pressing her gently back.
+
+She resisted him, smiling and frowning at the same time.
+
+"Be--very--still. And--listen!" she persisted.
+
+To please her, he sat erect, and listened. They were very still then,
+one of her hands between both of his. And the storm was raging. It was
+wilder, wilder. All the fury of Thunder Mountain seemed to be behind
+the wind that came shrieking and bellowing down the gulch.
+
+The seconds passed, with dead silence in the cave, and that bedlam let
+loose outside.
+
+Then suddenly Haig lifted his head. What was it? There seemed to have
+come--No, it was but a mocking voice of the hurricane, one of the
+myriad voices of that wintry inferno, mocking them with a half-human
+cry. He looked sadly down at Marion, and saw that wondrous smile again
+upon her emaciated face. Oh, but this was maddening! Yet because she
+wished it, he listened again. And then, out of that tumult--very faint
+and far--
+
+"My God! My God!" he shouted.
+
+He leaped to his feet. He forgot his crutches. He flung himself across
+the floor of the cave in three reckless bounds, flung himself on the
+barrier of logs and limbs, clawing it like a maniac, or a wild beast,
+tore his way through it, and stood in the snow on the platform,
+calling into the storm, shrieking, bellowing, out-shrieking and
+out-bellowing the storm, swaying dizzily in the wind, and clutching at
+the air before him in a frenzy.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+THE MAN WHO DID NOT FORGET
+
+
+Out of the tempest came the answering halloo; and Haig redoubled his
+outcries. Twice it came, whipped and broken by the wind; and then
+there was but the wind itself. Exhausted by his efforts, and sick of
+desperation and despair, Haig sank back weakly against the rock.
+Round and round him whirled the snow; across his face the wind cut
+him with savage lashes; in his ears there was nothing, nothing but
+the storm. Then, all grew black before him. After all, it had been
+an hallucination; he had been as mad as Marion in her delirium; he
+had peopled the storm with imaginary beings, had given the wind a
+voice it did not know. Crushed by disappointment, acknowledging the
+end, he was sinking down upon the snow-covered platform, when,
+suddenly--
+
+"Hal-lo-o-o!"
+
+It was nearer and louder than before. Haig straightened up, and again
+filled the tumultuous air with hoarse cries. Once more the voice came;
+and then out of the white chaos at the right of the cave, almost level
+with the platform, a dark form appeared, striding forward with a
+peculiar swinging motion, clumsily but sure.
+
+Haig uttered one more call that dribbled into a sobbing cry.
+
+"All--right!" answered the figure, in a smothered tone.
+
+Huge, hunchbacked and cumbersome, the figure shuffled up the slight
+slope between the level of the snow and the snowy platform, and
+halted. A mittened hand went up to its head, and brushed the snow from
+the face.
+
+"Pete!" cried Haig.
+
+He attempted to move forward, stumbled, lunged toward the Indian, and
+collapsed in his arms. Pete, holding him, looked around until he saw
+the opening of the cave, and fairly carried Haig inside. For a few
+seconds, seeing nothing in the sudden change from the dazzling
+whiteness of the snow to the dim red light of the cavern, Pete stood
+still. Then Haig stiffened, stood erect, and pushed the Indian from
+him.
+
+"There! Look!" he gasped, pointing to where Marion lay, wild-eyed on
+the bed, wrapped in her blankets. Then he sank down on the floor, with
+his back against the wall, and gave himself up to dizziness and
+exhaustion.
+
+Pete quickly removed his thick mittens, unstrapped the bundle that
+rested on his back, and took off the snowshoes that had caused his
+approach over the snow to appear so like a lumbering animal's.
+Flinging all these on the floor, he went swiftly to Marion's side, and
+knelt there.
+
+"Sick?" he asked.
+
+She did not answer, but stared at him, and smiled.
+
+"Listen!" she whispered. "Somebody--coming!"
+
+Pete stood up, and looked at Haig.
+
+"How long like this?" he asked.
+
+"I forget. Three or four days."
+
+"You well?"
+
+"Yes," Haig answered weakly.
+
+Pete came closer, and pointed to the leg that Haig kept thrust stiffly
+out before him.
+
+"Broke?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"How long?"
+
+"Six weeks."
+
+The Indian asked no more questions just then, but hastened to open his
+pack. First he found a bottle of whisky, and made Haig take a long
+drink. Pete believed in two remedies for all human ills. He had a brew
+of herbs that he had inherited from his tribal ancestors, his sole
+inheritance besides his iron body. This brew was good for fevers; and
+whisky was good for everything else. Having doctored Haig with the
+whisky, he now turned to Marion with the brew. From a flask he poured
+some of the dark brown liquid into a cup, let it come just to a boil
+among the embers of the fire, and when it had cooled a little placed
+it to Marion's lips. It was bitter, and she tried to draw away from
+it, but Pete forced her gently to drain the cup.
+
+Whatever the brew might be worth, the whisky certainly was efficacious.
+Haig sat erect, and began hurling questions at the Indian.
+
+"How did you get in here--in God's name?" was the first.
+
+"Black Lake country."
+
+"But how did you get in there?"
+
+"Simpson's Pass."
+
+Haig stared at him. He knew that to reach Simpson's Pass the Indian
+must have gone far south below the canyon of the Big Bear, made a wide
+detour over the lower range, and ascended to the Pass around the
+shoulder of Big Bear Mountain. He had never heard of the Pass being
+crossed in winter, and it was almost unbelievable.
+
+"But the snow!" he exclaimed.
+
+Pete pointed to the snowshoes.
+
+"But the Pass doesn't let into the Black Lake country," said Haig.
+"There's another range of mountains."
+
+"Yes. I come over them."
+
+"How long did it take you?"
+
+"I been four weeks. But most of time looking in forest down there."
+
+"But how did you find us?"
+
+The Indian drew from his pocket a ragged and soiled piece of paper,
+and spread it out on the floor. It was a crude map, with Paradise Park
+outlined at one side, and at the other a labyrinth of lines and stars
+and crosses. The stars were peaks, the crosses were foothills, and the
+lines were creeks and valleys. Through the maze ran one heavier line
+that indicated the trail through the Black Lake country up to the
+cliff at the back of Thunder Mountain.
+
+"Old Parker made it," said Pete.
+
+"Tell me all!" commanded Haig. "But wait!" He pointed to Marion.
+
+Marion's babbling had slowly subsided, and ceased. Pete rose and went
+to her noiselessly on his moccasined feet; and after looking at her a
+moment stepped cautiously back.
+
+"She quiet now. Sleep soon," he said.
+
+And it was so. The next time he slipped over to her, the girl's eyes
+were closed, and soon she had sunk into a profound slumber from which
+she did not awake until late the next morning.
+
+Meanwhile Pete took up his story. Smythe had delivered Marion's
+message, and had told them what he feared. Claire's knowledge of the
+state of Marion's heart and mind enabled her to guess the worst, but
+Seth scouted the idea of her trying to reach the top of Thunder
+Mountain, or of Murray permitting her to try it. So two days were lost
+before the alarm was sounded by Murray, who, after two attempts to
+reach the top of the mountain, had given up and ridden to the Park for
+help.
+
+The whole valley responded to the call, and the most desperate efforts
+were made to reach the plateau, but the storms that Haig and Marion
+had heard in their sheltered gulch were of such fury and continuity
+that the hardiest of the ranchmen were unable to prevail against them.
+Huntington, half-crazed by the thought of the two days he had allowed
+to be lost, had gone farther than any of the others, and had been
+rescued with difficulty by some of his neighbors, who found him lying
+senseless at the foot of the ascent to the Devil's Chair, where the
+wind had hurled him back down the slope. Smythe was among those who
+saved him, for the little tutor had let the last stage go without him,
+and was one of the most reckless in the attacks on the mountain.
+
+All these efforts having failed, and the winter having fallen with
+exceptional suddenness and severity, even. Huntington was forced to
+accept the general opinion that nothing more could be done; that they
+could only wait for summer, when they could go to the mountain top and
+bring back Marion's body--and doubtless Haig's too. And so, said
+Huntington, the feud was ended.
+
+One person alone in the Park refused to admit all this. Pete was
+forced indeed to admit it in theory, but he was resolved to prove it
+or disprove it on his own account. He had studied Thunder Mountain
+from the ridge above the ranch house all that day of Sunnysides'
+escape, and the next. And he remembered now that a period of calm had
+followed the storm on that second day. If Haig or Marion, or both of
+them, had by chance reached the flat top in that interval, they might
+have crossed, and might be now somewhere in the forests on the other
+side.
+
+He went to Parker, talked with him long about the character of the
+Black Lake country, induced him to draw the crude map, and then
+visited Seth and Claire. Seth shook his head gloomily, but Claire
+eagerly proceeded to assemble enough supplies to have loaded down a
+pack horse. There followed a pitifully comical struggle with her
+before her "first aid" was reduced to what Pete could carry in his
+canvas knapsack,--a small roll of underwear, needles and thread,
+bandages and a packet of household medicines in addition to Pete's own
+selection of a strip of bacon, a dozen onions, two score of vegetable
+soup tablets, two cans of condensed milk, small quantities of coffee
+and tea, salt and pepper, two cakes of soap and (especially insisted
+on by Pete) a plug of black tobacco and a pipe.
+
+All these supplies Pete had saved untouched, living himself on game
+shot on the long journey. For nearly five weeks he had struggled
+against unbelievable hardships, fighting like primitive man against
+the fiercest enmity of nature; had searched the whole Black Lake
+country; and that day, slowly following the direction of the trail up
+through the narrowing gulch among the tree tops, the smell of smoke
+was brought to his nostrils on the wind, and he traced it along the
+foot of the cliff.
+
+"But did you really expect to find us alive?" asked Haig.
+
+"No."
+
+"Then why did you do all this?"
+
+"All I could do. Indian never forgets."
+
+Thereupon he brought out Haig's pipe and his own, and they smoked over
+it in silence, late into the night.
+
+Marion awoke the next morning with another look in her eyes. Her fever
+was still high, but she was no longer delirious. Too feeble to ask
+questions, she only smiled, and took obediently the remainder of the
+potion that Pete poured from his flask and heated in the tin-cup among
+the embers. On her wakening again it was seen that the fever was
+broken. But life in her was only a tiny flame, at times the merest
+spark that every gust of wind through the cavern threatened to
+extinguish. Hour after hour Haig and the Indian watched it, the one in
+such anguish as the repentant murderer suffers as he kneels over the
+poor victim of his rage, the other in stolid resignation, seeing that
+perhaps he had come too late.
+
+But the spark was the bravest little spark in the world; and it did
+not go out. In time Pete dared to give Marion a little weakened milk;
+and then, when she responded to the milk, a few sips of soup that was
+scarcely thicker than water. And thus from day to day they nursed her
+back to some recognizable shadow of what she had been two months
+before.
+
+There came an evening when they sat down to a veritable feast. Haig
+had stubbornly refused to taste any of the delicacies in Pete's store,
+excepting salt and pepper. Besides, with seasoning, the venison was no
+longer quite repugnant to his palate; and he and the Indian did very
+well on that until the feast was spread. And it was a feast
+remembered. There was soup, to begin with, drunk from the two cups
+they now possessed; then a rabbit stew, seasoned with SALT AND PEPPER,
+and flavored with an ONION; and black coffee (very black indeed, to be
+quite exact). Then Haig's and Pete's pipes were lighted; and the
+Indian must tell them again the story of the rescue; and let the wind
+howl its savagest!
+
+"Poor Claire!" said Marion, with a tremulous little laugh, when Pete
+told her how the knapsack was packed.
+
+And Haig looked across at her dizzily, as if the fumes of the strong
+tobacco had gone to his head.
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+Their situation was still miserable enough, but the Indian contrived
+to make it less unendurable. He knew some knacks of cookery that
+availed to make their venison and rabbit palatable; and the tea and
+coffee cheered them beyond all possibility of expression. No longer
+required to toil; with clean underwear; with soap for her blackened
+face and hands, Marion recovered her strength, or much of it, with
+amazing swiftness. Pete made a rough coat and even a skirt for her of
+deerskin. The coat was of double thickness, and very warm indeed, and
+so she gave back to Haig the remnant of the leather coat she had been
+wearing, which was now needed to cover his ragged corduroy. Then came
+moccasins, and better crutches for Haig; and so they settled down with
+new courage for what they thought would be a long wait through the
+implacable winter.
+
+Haig kept his secret, or supposed he was keeping it. Marion did not
+indeed remember how he had taken her in his arms in her delirium;
+rather, if there was a faint but insistent recollection of the embrace
+it was intangible and unreal. She had dreamed so often of that
+longed-for embrace that the reality was inseparable from the imagined.
+Nor was she aware of the revelation that had come to Haig, as if a
+dazzling light had broken through the walls of the cavern. But though
+he might keep his secret he could not conceal from her the change that
+had come over him, the tenderness and wonder and humility that had
+succeeded his hardness and scepticism and belligerency. She detected
+that alteration in every look he gave her, in every movement he made
+in waiting upon her, in every tone of his speech, though the words
+were the most commonplace. And in her great faith she was not
+surprised. But she was thrilled. The knowledge ran through her veins
+like a living fire, a better nourishment than food, a more potent cure
+than any medicine.
+
+So the long days, not quite so long as they used to be, marched on.
+Despite the skilful services of Pete they were still always cold,
+always hungry, always weary for want of sleep, and always dirty and
+unkempt. Then there came a day when Pete astonished them. He brought
+in from the forest certain small limbs of tough wood, and began to
+trim them and bend them into shapes that they were presently able to
+recognize. Snowshoes!
+
+"You don't mean--Can we do it?" cried Haig incredulously.
+
+"Can't stay here," was Pete's short reply.
+
+True; they could not stay there; it was just what Haig had been
+thinking, or trying to avoid thinking. But how would Marion be able to
+endure that terrible journey over Simpson's Pass? For her part she
+said nothing, but her eyes met Philip's; she reached her hand to him,
+and he clasped it tightly.
+
+Three weeks after Pete's arrival he began gradually to inure Haig and
+Marion to living and moving in the snow. He taught them to walk on
+snowshoes, to climb steep slopes on them, to pick their way among the
+trees. There were countless falls in deep drifts, and headlong
+plunges, and ungraceful wallowings in the snow. But they knew their
+lives depended on these labors, and they were even able to laugh at
+some of their awkward performances. These exercises were, moreover,
+very good for them. Ill-nourished though they were, the natural color
+crept back into their cheeks, the blood flowed briskly again, through
+their chilled veins, their muscles were strengthened by their
+struggles with the winds and the snow that still came on with
+unremitted vigor. Then Pete went a step farther in the preparations
+for the crucial test. Not only must they spend the greater part of
+the day outside the cave, but they must sleep, or try to sleep, a few
+hours every night in the snow, wrapped in their blankets, in holes
+scooped out under the lee of a snowbank, while the Indian stood guard
+nearby.
+
+It was near the end of December when Pete thought his charges had
+become sufficiently hardened to undertake the long journey. The
+weather, if it had not moderated (it would not begin to moderate there
+until long after spring had brought out the flowers in the distant
+Park), had settled a little after its first fury. The storms came with
+less frequency, and the snow had assumed a certain stability with the
+steadily added weight. Both Marion and Haig bad mastered their
+snowshoes, and were able to travel slowly after Pete. Moreover, all
+the delicacies that Pete had brought had been consumed, despite their
+most careful husbanding, and even the meager supply of salt and pepper
+would soon be exhausted, leaving only the unseasoned venison of odious
+memory.
+
+The night before the day set for their departure, Pete broiled strips
+of venison sufficient for a week or more, and stowed them in his
+knapsack. At dawn they were up, and eagerly making the final
+preparations. Haig and Marion, in their impatience, would have eaten
+nothing, but the Indian, true to his tribal habit of filling the
+stomach before a march, insisted that breakfast should be a methodical
+and leisurely business. From some recess he drew the last soup tablet,
+the last onion, and the last of the ground coffee, which he had
+clandestinely saved against this great event. The feast with which
+they had celebrated Marion's recovery was now repeated in celebration
+of their farewell to the cave,--the soup, the rabbit stew and the
+black coffee.
+
+Then, when Pete had fastened their snowshoes securely on their
+moccasined feet, and had gone out to trample down the fresh snow on
+the platform before the cave, Haig and Marion stood together for a
+last look upon the scene of their sufferings. They looked at the dying
+fire, at the flattened beds of boughs, at the long row of notches on
+the wall, at the crutches lying among the firewood, at crumpled and
+ragged boots and bits of worn-out clothing.
+
+"Good-by--you!" cried Marion, laughing tremulously, very near to
+tears.
+
+"Yes, good-by!" said Haig.
+
+That cave--what had it not meant for him! There was his Valley of the
+Shadow, into which he had again descended to seek and find the better
+part of him that he had left there long ago.
+
+"Go on out, please!" he said presently. "I'll come in a minute."
+
+She looked at him curiously, but obeyed. Haig waited till she had
+gone, and then shuffled clumsily on his snowshoes across the floor to
+where, beyond the fire, lay one of Marion's boots. It was a torn and
+misshapen thing, the sole worn through, the leather curled up from the
+open toe. He picked it up hastily, and with a swift glance at the
+mouth of the cavern, thrust it into an inside pocket of his leather
+coat.
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was a wonderful, thrilling, terrifying journey, filled with
+hardships and perils. Caution and sheer toil of travel held them to
+slow progress. They went through vast forests, among the very tops of
+the tall pines; they climbed wide, bare slopes where the winds had
+almost stripped the snow from the gaunt rocks; they descended into
+sheltered valleys where the deer went scurrying at their approach;
+they crossed deep gulches packed half-full of blown and drifted snow;
+they passed close to the edges of precipices where a false step would
+have sent them whirling down into white abysses spiked with pines.
+Storms overtook them, and forced them to remain many hours in such
+shelter as they could find. Sometimes they slept under overhanging
+rocks with a fire blazing at their feet, but more often the night was
+spent in burrows dug in the snow. Their supply of venison ran out, and
+a day was lost while Pete hunted and killed a deer, and cooked strips
+of its flesh, to be seasoned with the very last of their salt and
+pepper, and kept in his knapsack. But even Marion did not lose courage
+or once falter, though many times her heart was in her mouth and a
+cold sweat on her forehead as they passed some formidable and
+terrifying obstacle.
+
+At length, on a bright and glittering day, when it seemed the storms
+had finally abandoned their enmity, they climbed slowly up the long
+slopes to Simpson's Pass, and stood at noon high above a wide and
+wonderful world of snow, with white mountains succeeding one another,
+range on range, as far as their eyes could reach before them and
+behind. And that afternoon, as they toiled around the shoulder of Big
+Bear Mountain, they stopped and gazed,--Marion with tears streaming
+down her cheeks, and Haig with his hands clenched tightly at his
+sides. For there, still far away below them, but _there_ beyond all
+mistake, lay Paradise Park, very white and still and glittering in the
+sun; and off at the right was Thunder Mountain, squatting among the
+silver peaks, its sullen head half hidden by gray-black clouds.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+GHOSTS
+
+
+The lamp had not been lighted in the sitting-room at Huntington's, but
+the pitch log blazing in the great fireplace reddened the farthest
+corners of the room, and flushed the somber faces of Seth and Claire.
+Their habit, in these days of grief, was to sit the winter evenings
+through almost in silence, their self-reproaches long since spent,
+their hopes turned to ashes, which Claire alone tried sometimes to fan
+into a glow. They had eaten their supper before twilight, without
+speech, and then, as always, waited wearily for sleep.
+
+"It will be three months and two weeks to-morrow," she said, without
+looking away from the fire.
+
+"Yes," answered Huntington.
+
+"Isn't it possible she may have reached--"
+
+"It's no use, Claire, thinking such things."
+
+"But Pete! He hasn't come back, and maybe that means--"
+
+She did not even finish the sentence, which simply faded away on her
+lips, a useless and foolish conjecture.
+
+Another long silence followed. Seth's cigarette went out, and hung
+dead from his bearded lips, while he stared gloomily into the blaze.
+He sat with his back toward the front door. Claire, near a corner of
+the big stone chimney, leaned forward, her head inclined to one side,
+the cheek resting on her open hand, the elbow on her knee. Her eyes,
+which had been lifted from their long gazing at the fire at the moment
+she addressed her husband, were fixed on vacancy, looking past
+Huntington toward the door that led out upon the veranda, where the
+rising wind tossed little whirls of snow and dead leaves from the
+flower garden. She was torturing herself with a conjured vision of a
+wild, high place among snowbound rocks, in the midst of which a
+slender figure was slowly sinking down, and a white and stricken face
+was turned toward her. This was the vision that had become for her the
+settled picture of Marion's fate, a picture that was burned into her
+brain by many, many hours of imagining, day and night.
+
+The wind was howling around the ranch house, wailing among the gables,
+shrieking across the chimney top. It rattled at the door, as if to
+fling it open with sudden violence. And what was that? A footstep on
+the veranda? She shivered; it was only her shaken nerves again! Then
+came another rattle at the door. It moved. It _was_ flung open. And
+there was the figure of her dream, but strangely and fantastically
+clad; and with a face that glowed, and lips that were parted in a
+smile.
+
+For a moment Claire did not move. Then slowly she lifted her head; her
+eyes grew round and staring, her mouth opened. Seth caught the look;
+it was one he had seen many times before.
+
+"Claire!" he cried. "Stop that!"
+
+His voice, perhaps, served to break the spell. Claire leaped to her
+feet. And the next instant there was a voice from the doorway.
+
+"Hello!" said Marion cheerily, in a "good evening" kind of tone, as
+if she had returned from the post-office.
+
+Huntington bounded from his chair, and whirled around with an
+oath,--one oath surely that was forgiven him. But past him, with a
+scream dashed Claire.
+
+"Marion!" she shrieked.
+
+"Marion!" bellowed Seth.
+
+And then the two women were in each other's arms, and Seth grabbed one
+of Marion's hands, and the air was filled with hysterical cries and
+mighty, spluttered expletives. Then silence fell, while Claire and
+Marion wept without restraint, and Huntington searched for his
+handkerchief without finding it, and strode across the room and back,
+pounding one clenched hand into the palm of the other. But Marion
+presently tore herself out of Claire's embrace, and turned to grab an
+arm of Pete, who stood just outside the doorway, through which the
+wind unheeded was flinging snow and leaves into the room.
+
+"Here he is!" cried Marion. "He did it!"
+
+Claire promptly threw her arms around the Indian's neck, or as nearly
+around as she could reach, and stood on tiptoe to plant a kiss on his
+leathery cheek. Huntington too leaped on him, seizing his shoulder and
+hand, and dragging him farther into the room. Then he broke away, and
+ran for a bottle; and the two men clicked glasses and drank in
+silence. And two big chairs were drawn close to the fire for Pete and
+Marion; and while Claire sat crying softly, and Huntington, between
+"damns" and "hells," wiped his eyes with the back of his hand, and
+Pete sat impressive, Marion quickly narrated the chief incidents of
+her pursuit of Haig, their long imprisonment, and the rescue.
+
+"But Haig! Where's he?" asked Huntington.
+
+"He left us at the junction," answered Marion.
+
+On that a moment of silence fell. Something in Marion's face told even
+Huntington to keep still. But Claire, seeing it, was secretly,
+wickedly, triumphantly glad. A very practical thought, however, came
+to her in time to prevent embarrassment, and Seth was sent bustling
+into the kitchen to relight the fire in the range. The cook had gone
+to bed, but Claire would get supper for them; for Pete must stay, she
+insisted. But at this the Indian rose, and said he must go to Haig,
+who had told him to hurry back for supper with him in the cottage.
+
+"Well, then, Pete," said Huntington from the door of the kitchen,
+"you'll have another drink, anyhow. And you'll come up to-morrow to
+tell us how you found them, won't you?"
+
+Pete promised; the whisky was solemnly drunk again; and the three
+others followed him to the door.
+
+"But you must have a horse!" said Huntington.
+
+So he jumped past him, and ran to the stable, bellowing for Williams.
+
+"Now take off your coat, Marion!" cried Claire.
+
+"No. Not here," said Marion. "You'll see why."
+
+They waited before the blazing log for Huntington to return, whereupon
+he was sent to build a fire in Marion's room. When it was crackling
+finely, Marion, removed her deerskin coat and skirt. Claire stared at
+her, gasping; and then sank down on the bed in another fit of weeping.
+For Marion stood before her in rags and dirt.
+
+"Oh, but you should have seen me the day Pete came!" cried Marion,
+with a pathetic little laugh. "I've actually got some flesh on my
+bones now."
+
+Indescribable luxuries followed: a hot bath, wonderful clean garments,
+and Claire's happy fingers combing the tangles out of the tawny hair.
+
+"But I'll never be really and truly clean again, Claire!" cried Marion
+ruefully, holding out her hands.
+
+Claire clasped them tenderly, while Marion, on a sudden thought,
+related to her Haig's speech about baths; and they laughed together.
+
+"You've so many things to tell me," said Claire, with a curiosity she
+could not quite repress.
+
+"Yes," answered Marion, blushing.
+
+It was nearly midnight when they sat down to supper, but none of them
+cared for time. Marion was not sleepy. She and Haig and Pete had slept
+well in a deserted cabin the last night of their journey, before a
+huge fire, in circumstances positively pleasant in comparison with
+what they had passed through. But she was hungry. As she never
+expected to be really and truly clean again, she doubted that she
+should ever get enough to eat. Claire did the best she could on that
+score, and that was something. There was chicken with cream gravy; and
+potatoes, baked in their skins, and seasoned with butter and salt and
+paprika; and three kinds of jelly to be spread on buttered toast; and
+angel cake. In the midst of the feast there were steps on the veranda,
+and a knock on the door; and Curly appeared, bearing two bottles of
+champagne.
+
+"Mr. Haig says you're all to drink Pete's health, an' he ought to live
+to be a hundred," said Curly, grinning, and gazing in wonderment at
+Marion, whose exploit had caused her to assume somewhat the nature of
+a goddess in his simple mind.
+
+When the door had closed on Curly, Huntington stood for a moment
+awkwardly holding the bottles, an expression almost of consternation
+on his face. He had once made some remarks about Haig's champagne. But
+he had the sense not to act the part of a skeleton at the feast.
+Pete's health was drunk by all; and might he live to be a hundred!
+
+In another hour Marion was in bed, in a real bed, in her own pink
+room, between sweet, clean sheets, and warm again at last, but
+shivering in sheer excess of comfort, and crying a little perhaps from
+overwhelming joy. For she knew in her heart--something she could not
+yet tell even Claire.
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+Bill Craven was mending a bridle by the light of a smoky lantern in
+the stable, when he saw a ghost. It just opened the door, and walked
+in, and said, "How are you, Bill?" Craven fell backward off his stool,
+then leaped to his feet with a yell that caused a commotion among the
+barn swallows under the eaves, and brought Farrish and Curly tumbling
+down the ladder from the loft. Thereupon discipline, for which Haig
+had always been rather a stickler, suffered a bad half hour. They had
+given him up for lost; and had found on comparing experiences that
+each of them had many reasons for counting that loss his own. In the
+days following the attempts to rescue Miss Gaylord, these three had
+gone about the Park with chips on their shoulders, inviting any
+outspoken citizen to say to them anything that was not strictly
+proper and complimentary about Haig. So now, though the words were few
+after the first noisy demonstration, they were the kind of words that
+are worth hearing, from man to man.
+
+Haig and Bill Craven presently compared notes in the matter of
+"busted" legs. Bill's had mended much sooner than Haig's, which was
+quite easily understood, considering the great difference in their
+circumstances. Curly had "nigh killed" the sorrels, getting the doctor
+for Craven, but they were all right now. "Fat and sassy," Curly
+added.
+
+"I'll take some of that out of them, to-morrow," said Haig. "I'll want
+the sleigh, Farrish. Please look after it in the morning."
+
+Then, seeing their impatience, he told them of Sunnysides' final
+escape, and of all the events that followed--as much as was good for
+them to know.
+
+"But where's Pete?" asked Craven.
+
+"He went to Huntington's with Miss Gaylord. He'll be along soon."
+
+"Well, jest wait till we git our hands on that damned Indian!" cried
+Bill. "Eh, men?"
+
+It was evident that there would be a considerable disturbance in the
+barn on Pete's arrival.
+
+A few minutes later Haig had his surprise. On entering the cottage he
+first encountered Slim Jim in the outer room. Perhaps Jim's face
+turned a trifle yellower, perhaps his thin legs trembled a little
+under the sky-blue trousers; but that was about all, except the light
+that flickered an instant in his eyes.
+
+"Glad you back!" he said simply. "Want supper?"
+
+"Want supper! Why, you scrawny, evil-eyed heathen! Want supper! I want
+everything you've got to eat, and everything you haven't got, and
+don't you tell me there's 'vellee lil' either, or I'll break every
+bone in your body. And be quick about it too!"
+
+Jim hurried into the kitchen with so much of a departure from his
+oriental poise that the first pan he picked up fell to the floor with
+a clatter. That was the most eloquent testimonial he could have given,
+unless it was the supper that was ready for Haig in an hour--and no
+"velle lil" supper at that--to his participation in the general
+rejoicing.
+
+Haig, meanwhile, opened the inner door, stepped into the library-bedroom,
+and halted dead still on the threshold. At his entrance, a tall, thin
+young man, with a very pale face, rose like an automaton and stared at
+him. It was a question which of the two was the more amazed.
+
+"Thursby!" cried Haig, recovering the more quickly.
+
+"Haig!"
+
+"Where did you come from?"
+
+"From the other side of the world. And you?"
+
+"From the very bowels of the earth, man!"
+
+They walked slowly toward each other until they met, and clasped
+hands.
+
+"You found him?" asked Haig, searching the other's face.
+
+"In Singapore."
+
+"And then?"
+
+"He's dead."
+
+"And she?"
+
+"I've sent her back to her people in Devonshire."
+
+Haig gripped hard the hand that was still clasped in his own, and
+there was a moment of silence.
+
+"Well," said Haig, "we'll have a nip of whisky, and then--You've come
+back to take your ranch, of course."
+
+"I _came_ back for that, but I can't figure out that it's mine now."
+
+"How's that?" asked Haig, pouring out the drinks.
+
+"I left three hundred head of cattle, and now I learn there are
+thirteen hundred head, almost."
+
+"Don't let that worry you. I've sold enough of the increase to bring
+back all the money they cost me. So we're quits."
+
+"No."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Be sensible, Haig. First thing, why did you do it?"
+
+"For the fun of it, partly."
+
+"And after that?"
+
+"Well, your fine ranch here wasn't making much money, and I thought
+you'd need a good deal, perhaps, before you got through with
+your--affair."
+
+"And yet you say we're quits!"
+
+"I'm satisfied."
+
+"But I'm not. You'll take a half interest, and we'll go partners."
+
+"No."
+
+"I say yes," persisted Thursby. "But I'm forgetting to ask questions.
+How the devil did you get back?"
+
+"I will a tale unfold will harrow up thy bones--and the rest of it,"
+replied Haig, laughing. "But first: when did you arrive?"
+
+"By the last stage in."
+
+"And what have you told them--my pleasant neighbors?"
+
+"Nothing. But they have the impression that I came for the final
+payment on the ranch, and that I remained because you were lost in the
+mountains."
+
+"Good. Now, old man, I'll tell you how you can repay me in full for
+anything you may think I've done for you."
+
+"Go on!"
+
+"Are you ready to assume the responsibility for my acts? I mean in the
+matter of the land and cattle? The rest is still my affair."
+
+"Most certainly."
+
+"Well, then. I've very special reasons for needing peace with
+Huntington."
+
+Thursby looked at him curiously. This from Philip Haig!
+
+"And you want me to--"
+
+"Don't misunderstand me. I've gone up there before, and I'm going
+again to-morrow. But I want to give Huntington a chance. So if you'll
+go to his house to-morrow morning, and tell him that I've finished,
+that the ranch is not mine, and--"
+
+"But the ranch is yours--or half yours."
+
+"Never mind about that now. We'll talk it over later. Just tell
+Huntington that the ranch is not mine, and never has been, and--whatever
+else you like. Then say to him that if he still wants to fight me I'll
+meet him anywhere, and we'll settle it. In any event, you will tell
+him, I'm coming to his place to-morrow afternoon, and I'll have no
+gun."
+
+"I see."
+
+"And you'll do it?"
+
+"Of course. With all my heart."
+
+And he made a thorough job of it. He told them--Huntington, Claire and
+Marion--that he had been in great trouble. What that trouble was
+concerned nobody but himself, but it was enough to send him around the
+world, reckless of everything but the immediate object of his pursuit.
+Philip Haig, an old friend, had volunteered to look after his ranch
+for him, and to provide him with money when he needed it. So, if Haig
+had seemed too aggressive and selfish in his methods, all that he had
+done had been done in a spirit of--he might say a spirit that was
+almost quixotic. And having done all this, increasing Thursby's
+holdings of cattle four times, Haig refused to accept anything for his
+time and labor, and insisted that their account was closed.
+
+Marion had known nothing of all this, save for the hints she had
+received from Smythe, following the conversation overheard by him.
+Philip had told her nothing of it in recounting his adventures. With
+glistening eyes she looked from Claire to Huntington, where they sat
+open-mouthed, and was thrilled with pride and triumph. Claire at
+length turned, and looked at her, and smiled. As for Huntington, he
+was simply (as he explained afterwards, seeking to justify his ready
+acquiescence) flabbergasted.
+
+"This has been a very bitter business, Thursby," he said. "It's cost
+me a lot of cattle and money, and I'll not take back a thing I've said
+about Haig's grabbing everything in sight, and ruining his neighbors.
+But I will say, after what you've told me, that--damn it, Thursby! he
+is a man."
+
+"He's ready to fight with you or talk with you, as you wish."
+
+Huntingdon eyed him suspiciously.
+
+"Did Haig say that?" he demanded.
+
+"He certainly did."
+
+"Then tell him, if he's on the square, it'll be talk."
+
+Claire, ignoring Thursby's presence, ran and snuggled close to Seth,
+while he put his arm around her. But it was at Marion, _to_ Marion,
+that Seth looked, seeking the approval that he had never before been
+able to get from her. Their eyes met, and she nodded, smiling.
+
+"Very well!" said Thursby. "He's coming to see you this afternoon."
+
+"What?" cried Huntington.
+
+"He's coming this afternoon. And he wished me to say explicitly that
+he will have no gun."
+
+To Huntington this seemed almost incredible. He was heartily sick of
+the warfare, and glad of any way out of it that would not be too
+humiliating to himself. But Haig was coming to him; and this meant,
+surely, that something had occurred to his enemy that would make the
+event easy for himself, if not quite free from embarrassment. He
+looked again at Marion; and at last, seeing her radiant countenance,
+he understood that this was her achievement, that it was for her Haig
+would be coming unarmed to the house of his bitter foe that
+afternoon.
+
+"I'm ready," he said to Thursby, with an elation he was only partly
+able to conceal.
+
+Smythe was the next visitor, arriving in a state of such contrition
+that Marion pitied him. His jaunty air was gone. He was quite unable
+to respond to Marion's gentle jesting, seeing that her cheeks were
+still sunken and pale, that the body whose graces he had so much
+admired was now palpably thin under her loose clothing. He had blamed
+himself bitterly for the disaster that had overtaken her, and his
+sufferings had been real and lasting.
+
+"If I'd been half a man I'd never have let you go on alone that day,"
+he said after she had greeted him brightly, giving him both her
+hands.
+
+"Oh, indeed!" retorted Marion. "And what would you have done?"
+
+"Gone with you."
+
+"But I sent you back."
+
+"I was a fool!"
+
+"A fool to do as I told you, Mr. Smythe?" she demanded archly.
+
+"Yes. You didn't know what you were doing."
+
+"But I did know what I was doing."
+
+This come with such depth of feeling that he knew he would no longer
+be able to bring her news of Philip Haig.
+
+"Then I'm glad," he said simply.
+
+Presently she told him her story; but much was omitted, especially the
+keenest of her sufferings, since remorse still haunted Smythe's solemn
+eyes.
+
+"And what have you been doing?" she asked.
+
+"Trying to read and study, but it's been no use."
+
+"And you've lost a year in your career!"
+
+"That's nothing. I can make it up, if you've forgiven me." She gave
+him her hand again.
+
+"There's nothing to forgive!" she answered warmly. "You've been a good
+friend to me. I owe you--more than you know--more than I can tell
+you--now!"
+
+On that she rose hurriedly, and went to her room for--a handkerchief.
+It was quite ten minutes before she returned to finish their talk, and
+to tell him that he must come to see her often through the long months
+of winter that remained.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+THE LAMP RELIGHTED
+
+
+Marion, at the window, was the first to see him; and what she saw
+caused her to clutch at her throat to stifle a cry. He was not on
+horseback, though the roads were quite passable, but in a sleigh; and
+there was a jingle of sleigh bells on the frosty air. He had come with
+the sorrels--for her--at last!
+
+She opened the door for him, giving him her hand--was it possible?--a
+little shyly. Huntington, at Haig's entrance, rose from his chair
+before the fire; and Claire too, clinging to the chimney, scarce able
+to believe that there would not be such another scene as that of one
+evening long ago.
+
+Silence, a little awkward for all of them, followed Marion's greeting,
+while the two men stood looking at each other. Then Haig walked direct
+to Huntington, frankly smiling.
+
+"How are you, Huntington? And Mrs. Huntington?" he was saying
+quietly.
+
+"All well," replied Huntington, rather stiffly, meaning to be very
+reserved in this business.
+
+Claire inclined her head without speaking. Her blue eyes were round,
+her lips parted, and something of the old terror showed in her face,
+though she knew very well why Haig was there.
+
+"Thursby has told you?" asked Haig.
+
+"Yes," was Huntingdon's answer, still putting everything up to his
+enemy.
+
+"Well then, Huntington, since you'll deal with Thursby now, I thought
+we might as well ask each other a few questions, and give straight
+answers."
+
+"I'm ready," said Huntington gruffly.
+
+"Thank you. First, did you drive that bunch of cattle off the cliff?"
+
+"No. But did you scatter those twenty head of mine?"
+
+"No. Both mere accidents undoubtedly. Second, did you advise setting
+an ambush for me?"
+
+"No. That was--no matter who. I talked them out of it, and was sorry
+for it afterwards."
+
+"But you did say you'd drive me out of the Park."
+
+"Yes, and I'd have done it any way short of--"
+
+"Sending me out in a coffin! But we all lost our tempers, of course."
+
+"And with good reason on our side," retorted Huntington stoutly.
+
+"Perhaps. But I'll ask you to remember that everything I did was open
+and aboveboard. If any of your cattle strayed, if any of _your_ fences
+were cut, I had nothing to do with it."
+
+"I believe you--now, after what Thursby's told me."
+
+"Thank you. We make progress. But there are two things more. Who cut
+the fence of my winter pasture?"
+
+For a moment Huntington was silent, his face reddening.
+
+"I did that," he replied at length, half defiantly, but in great
+confusion.
+
+"But why? There was nothing to be gained by that. There were no cattle
+in the pasture or near it."
+
+Huntington hesitated, shifting his weight uneasily from his left foot
+to his right, and back again to the left. Then he looked at Marion,
+saw the appeal in her eyes, and plunged.
+
+"I wanted to make you angry."
+
+"To make me angry?"
+
+"To make you do something reckless."
+
+Haig studied him, and saw that he was dealing with a man who was in
+some respects, and for all his physical strength, a boy--a child. He
+felt his anger rising, but put it down resolutely.
+
+"That was very foolish, Huntington!" he said, with some sharpness. "It
+certainly made me furious, as you saw later at the post-office."
+
+"But you were wrong to call me a liar and a thief. And that's
+something you've got to--"
+
+"Got to what?" demanded Haig quickly.
+
+Huntington did not answer at once. Claire's face, already as pale as
+it could well be, became drawn and ashen, while Marion, seeing the
+danger, unconsciously took a step forward, as if to throw herself
+between the two men. For some tense seconds Huntington and Haig faced
+each other belligerently.
+
+"Got to what, Huntington?" repeated Haig. "There's nothing I've _got_
+to do."
+
+Huntington had not meant the "got" in the sense in which it was taken
+by Haig. He had begun to say, "You've got to admit that was pretty
+hard." But his unfortunate pause on the uncompleted sentence had
+justified Haig in putting the worst possible construction on the
+objectionable phrase. And now Huntington could not finish it as he had
+intended, without seeming to back down, or weaken. Nor could he afford
+to drop the mischievous word for another. In his desperation he took
+the boldest course, and made a more aggressive speech by far than any
+he had rehearsed for the occasion, and forgotten.
+
+"You've got to take that back!" he blurted out.
+
+It was Haig's turn now to ponder deeply. His first impulse was to tell
+Huntington to go to the devil, and thereupon to walk out of the house.
+But he had come there to make peace; and he bethought himself in time
+that to give way to anger would only be to allow Huntington the first
+victory he had ever had over him. Besides--he turned toward Marion,
+and saw her face distorted with apprehension. That decided the issue.
+
+"All in good time, Huntington," he said, with a smile. "Your actions
+certainly justified everything I said. What have you to say about your
+scheme to take my horse?"
+
+Huntington groped in vain for one of the crushing retorts that he had
+valiantly prepared for this meeting. Then he caught Marion's eye
+again.
+
+"That was a mistake," he said. "But I'm no thief and no liar."
+
+"I grant you're honest enough, Huntington, when you stop to think. As
+for Sunnysides, he's settled that business for himself. And if you'll
+give me a straightforward answer on one more point, I'll acquit you of
+being a liar."
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"You killed my bull, didn't you?"
+
+"Yes, I did! But it was a question of yours or mine. They were
+fighting, and mine was getting the worst of it."
+
+"And it never occurred to you to let the best one win?"
+
+"No. I was angry. It was the day that--" He caught himself, and looked
+in fresh alarm at Marion.
+
+"The day that--" Haig prompted.
+
+"No matter. I was angry. I'll pay you what the bull was worth."
+
+"No. Settle that with Thursby. Is there anything more?"
+
+"Nothing except the cause of the whole trouble. You took more than
+your share."
+
+"We might talk all day and all night about that, and come to no
+understanding. But I'll tell you what I've done. I've suggested to
+Thursby that he and you and the rest of them go into a pool. There's
+enough pasture for all of you if--"
+
+"That's an idea!" cried Huntington. "What does Thursby say?"
+
+"He's willing. He doesn't like trouble as I--did. He'll even sell off
+some of his stock."
+
+Huntington was silent a moment, looking doubtfully at Haig. Then the
+best of him rose to the occasion.
+
+"I told Thursby that--I hadn't anything to take back, but that--you're
+a man, for all of it And if you--Damn it! There's my hand."
+
+"Done!" said Haig heartily.
+
+"Oh!" cried Claire, breaking away from the mantel, to which she clung
+through all the interview, trembling between hope and fear. She
+stepped up to Haig, her eyes shining through tears.
+
+"Mine too!" she said, offering her hand to him.
+
+But when it was all finished there was another awkward interval of
+silence. For years of controversy and enmity are not so quickly
+resolved into perfect peace. It was Haig who brought back a certain
+ease to them.
+
+"Would you mind, Mrs. Huntington, if I asked Miss Gaylord to go for a
+drive with me?"
+
+"Indeed, no!"
+
+"And if she took dinner with me? I'll bring her back early."
+
+"If Marion thinks--"
+
+But Marion, who had stood silent and anxious until then, did not reply
+to Claire's glance of inquiry. She heard the last words as if in a
+dream. But dreams were coming true these days; miracle followed
+miracle. With a stifled cry she ran past them, and into her room.
+There she sank down on the edge of the bed, and crossed her hands over
+her breast, and stared at vacancy, her face burning, a mist before her
+eyes. Weakness overcame her for a moment. Then she leaped to her feet,
+dressed quickly for the drive, and went out befurred and radiant to
+put her arms around Claire and kiss her.
+
+"You'll be welcome, Haig, if you want to--to come in any time,"
+Huntington was saying awkwardly.
+
+"I will!" replied Haig.
+
+Then Philip and Marion were gone, and Seth and Claire stood staring at
+the door.
+
+"Oh, I'm so happy, Seth!" cried Claire at last, holding up her arms to
+him.
+
+"Umph!" said Huntington, submitting to her ecstatic endearments.
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Park glittered in its robe of white; the sun shone with cold
+brilliancy out of a steel-blue sky; the air was still and sparkling,
+stinging their cheeks into a glow as they sped down the valley. Under
+the runners of the sleigh the dry snow sang and crackled, and flew up
+in a fine shower like dust of diamonds beneath the swift feet of the
+sorrels.
+
+Haig gave Marion no chance to say a word while the sleigh went
+swinging and bounding down the road, and the fields slipped past them
+in a dazzling succession. When he was not leaning forward to urge the
+sorrels to greater speed he was talking rapidly. He told her of the
+scenes at the stable and the cottage on his return, elaborating the
+description until Marion's laughter rang above the sounds of their
+swift traveling. He was talking to keep up his courage, and to
+postpone the speech that was in his heart and that now, after all,
+when the time had come, filled him with doubts and fears, and seemed
+to him the boldest thing he had ever set himself to do. For the first
+time in ten years he was afraid, and doubtful of himself.
+
+The door of the cottage was thrown open by Slim Jim, in his newest and
+brightest costume of blue silk. Marion smiled at him as she passed,
+for she could not trust herself to speak; and then she was in that
+room whence she had gone one day in utter dejection, praying for a
+miracle. She stood for a few seconds looking around her, recognizing
+all the familiar objects: the bed where Haig had undergone his
+agonies, the table where the medicines had stood, the window and a
+glimpse of the slope outside, now white instead of yellowing green.
+There was a roaring fire, and tea things stood on the table.
+
+Silence enveloped them while Philip helped her with her wraps, and saw
+her seated in an armchair before the fire. Despite the color that the
+cold drive had brought into her cheeks, her features were still
+pinched and pale. Many weeks would be required, a summer perhaps, to
+restore her to what she had been before her terrible experience. And
+yet she seemed to him more beautiful than ever. Watching her furtively
+and anxiously, he endured a raging conflict of emotions, recalling
+with a poignant feeling of shame all that he had said to her in that
+room and elsewhere, in return for what she had done for him. An
+impulse seized him to rush to the door and lock it, to turn on her
+savagely, forbidding her to leave him as he had forbidden her to come
+to him. For all the proofs he had had of her love and devotion seemed
+inadequate to quiet the doubts he now confessed. He found speech
+strangely difficult; he went out of the room twice to give quite
+unnecessary instructions to Jim; and returned to busy himself
+arranging things in the room that obviously needed no arranging.
+
+"Thursby was good enough to go somewhere to-day, and let us have the
+cottage," he managed to say at length. "Do you mind if we are quite
+alone?"
+
+"Philip!" she responded reproachfully. "How you talk!"
+
+"Then we'll have tea."
+
+He called the Chinaman, who brought in the steaming teapot, the hot
+milk, and the buttered toast. Marion poured the tea in silence. They
+drank, too, almost in silence, and nibbled at the toast, forgetful
+that two days before, and for three dreadful months, tea and toast and
+milk, served on a table laid with white linen, would have seemed like
+a heavenly dispensation. Their very experience in the cave, which had
+broken down so many barriers between them, seemed to have reared a new
+one that neither understood. It was Marion who made a beginning to
+scale that barrier.
+
+"You have made Claire very happy, Philip," she said.
+
+"That was easy," he answered.
+
+"But it was grand!"
+
+"And you too--a little?" he ventured.
+
+"You know that, Philip!" And then, a little mischievously: "Remember I
+tried to make peace between you once."
+
+"And a fine job you made of it!" he retorted.
+
+Then they both laughed, and lapsed again into silence. But presently
+Haig arose, went to a cabinet standing against the wall, and brought
+back a faded photograph, which he handed to her.
+
+"My father," he said.
+
+She saw a face that seemed a little sad, but the kindest of eyes, with
+a half serious twinkle in them.
+
+"The dear man!" she exclaimed softly.
+
+"We were great friends," he said. "We used to take long walks together
+of a Sunday afternoon. He was a silent man, rather, and we did not
+talk much, but--shall I tell you one thing he used to say to me,
+often?"
+
+"Yes, Philip."
+
+"I believed it then. But things happened to make me think that father
+was mistaken. For ten years I didn't believe it at all."
+
+"What was it, Philip?"
+
+"He used to say: 'My boy, there's only one thing in the world that's
+worth while. And that is love.'"
+
+"Why, that's what Daddy always said, almost his very words!" she
+cried, her eyes filling.
+
+"If I only knew--" he began.
+
+But she could endure no more. She rose swiftly to her feet, her eyes
+devouring him, her arms stretched out.
+
+"Marion!" he cried, and leaped to catch her, and folded her close, as
+he had clasped her in the cave. But now the arms that stole up around
+his neck did not fall away weakly as before, but tightened, and held
+him.
+
+A long time they remained thus, in a silence broken only by the
+crackling of the flames, which they did not hear, and the wind rising
+outside the cottage, for which they did not care. At length he put his
+fingers under her chin, and raised her head so that he could look into
+her eyes.
+
+"I believe it now!" he said.
+
+"It's true!" she answered, so low that he scarcely heard it.
+
+"I love you!"
+
+"I've loved you always!"
+
+Then even in her joy the recollection of all that she had come through
+to this moment brought back that quivering of her chin, which had
+become only too familiar to him in days past. His head sank toward
+her, and their lips met.
+
+After a while he led her back to her chair, and knelt down to look up
+at her. For there were other difficulties. He had nothing to give her,
+he said; neither riches nor family nor honor nor any future of which
+he could be assured. She stopped him, with a hand laid gently on his
+lips. He held it there, kissing it. How it had toiled and hurt for
+him, that little hand, still rough and scarred!
+
+"Can you ever forgive me?" he pleaded.
+
+"There's nothing to forgive, Philip. You did not understand."
+
+"There! You're treating me like a child again!" he protested, smiling
+contentedly.
+
+"And once you scolded me dreadfully for that!"
+
+"But you were right. I've been a child; for ten years I've been a
+child that thought it was a man."
+
+She did not reply to that, fearing to wound him. So another golden
+silence fell between them, while he held her hands, stroking the hard,
+cracked skin of them. After a while he brought a chair, and sat close
+by her side, and told her all that had been left untold,--about his
+boyhood, his ambitions, his ignorance and innocence, his work in Paris
+and the future it seemed to hold for him; and then the girl on the
+Seine boat, and what he saw one night in her apartment, and his
+despair; his father's death, and the wanderings that followed; and
+how the shy and introspective boy had become in one day a man of
+violence and desperation, his heart full of hatred and bitterness.
+
+"And so I thought, Marion, that you were all alike; not alike in all
+things, but the virtuous more dangerous than the vicious, because more
+calculating and cold. You even--I thought you were the most dangerous
+of all. I knew you were good, but I said your goodness was only
+another form of selfishness, that you had been reared in luxury, and
+taught to expect as your right many things you had never earned and
+never could earn or deserve. I said--Wait, dear--I said that the man
+who should marry you would be nothing but a beast of burden, a slave.
+It was so difficult to believe you could be content with--"
+
+"With love!" she whispered.
+
+"But _can_ you?" he demanded, a ghost of the old incredulity rising in
+spite of all.
+
+"I haven't told you about Robert," she said softly. "He has wealth,
+and will have much more. He loves me. He offered me all, to do with it
+as I wished. I've known him all my life--almost. He's good too, poor
+Robert! But that day, after you'd told me that I must go back to New
+York at once, I--"
+
+"Marion!" Haig cried.
+
+"No, listen! I told him that day that I could never marry him. He
+couldn't understand--like you, Philip. He thought--dear Robert!--he
+thought that money--I know it's what they want most--so many women.
+But, Philip, dear heart! Don't you know that if a woman really loves
+there's nothing she won't do--on her hands and knees--to the end of
+the world? And if she has love, what else is there--that matters?"
+
+"I didn't know," he answered, "and I couldn't have believed it
+until--that day in the cave, when you fell ill."
+
+He told her then of the revelation that had come to him, and how he
+had taken her in his arms, in a fury of love and despair.
+
+"But I thought it was a dream!" she murmured.
+
+"No. I found you then--and myself--and thought it was too late!"
+
+Later, across the table, when Slim Jim had brought in the after-dinner
+coffee, Haig looked at her gravely, and said:
+
+"May I become very practical for a minute, Marion?"
+
+"Yes, but not too practical."
+
+"Well, it's like this: I've got--"
+
+He paused to reach for her hand, to clasp it on the cloth.
+
+"_When_, Marion?" he asked, leaning toward her.
+
+"Oh, we must talk with Claire about that, mustn't we?" she protested,
+blushing. Then softly: "She's the only mother I've got, you see. And
+besides, there's no--"
+
+"No, not even a justice of the peace!" he said, laughing. "We might
+strap on our old snowshoes, and go to Tellurium."
+
+"The idea!"
+
+"Well, listen. Do you know what I've been thinking?"
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"Paris."
+
+"Paris?" she repeated, a little startled, after all that he had
+revealed to her.
+
+"Yes. I've got a little money in the bank in Tellurium, and I--"
+
+"You needn't be so proud of it!" she retorted. "So have I, in New
+York. So you needn't think it's your money I'm after, sir!"
+
+They laughed, and then he had both her hands across the table.
+
+"It isn't much, I assure you," he went on. "But it will do for a while
+in Paris. I mean--if you will go with me--to find my old master, or
+another. You know, Marion, he said to me many times: 'You're going to
+be a painter some day, _mon petit_; you're going to do big things, if
+you'll work, work, work.' And so--"
+
+"You'll paint again!" she cried. "Oh, and I shall keep house for you!
+You may not believe it, but I'm a splendid cook. But I've got to have
+salt. You must earn enough to buy salt!"
+
+"I'll try."
+
+At that he rose, and went again to the cabinet from which he had
+brought the photograph, and returned with his hands behind his back.
+
+"What do you suppose I've got for our mantelpiece--if we have such a
+thing in our attic?"
+
+"What in the world, Philip?"
+
+"Shut your eyes, please!"
+
+She obeyed, and in the middle of the table he set down the tattered
+and grimy little boot that he had carried away from the cave.
+
+"Now open!" he commanded.
+
+"Oh!" she cried, staring at the eloquent memento.
+
+Then she flung back her head, with a quick indrawing of her breath,
+and looked up at him through a bright mist that gathered in her eyes.
+And her face was radiant.
+
+He went quickly to her, and leaned down to kiss her hair, her eyes,
+her lips; and her arms crept once more around his neck.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+SANGRE DE CRISTO
+
+
+Late October in the San Luis, and the raw day near its close. Across
+the melancholy flats the north wind's plaintive note rose at intervals
+into a wailing cry. The thin grasses bent before it, the sagebrush
+took on new and fantastic shapes, and danced like demons to the tune.
+In gray-brown desolation the sand dunes rolled away to the foothills,
+far and violet and dim. All was cold and bleak and forbidding, and the
+sun itself appeared to be retiring eagerly from a scene so dreary and
+disheartening.
+
+Then came magic. Sangre de Cristo, sharp against the eastern sky,
+began to change its hue. A pink flush came into the gleaming white. It
+grew deeper, darker, more vivid; it spread, and ran in richer and
+richer tints along the range. Now it was rose, and now vermilion, and
+at last a deep and living scarlet, staining the snowy slopes, and
+flowing like new blood down the gulches and ravines. The foothills
+caught the color, and the violets became purple and then red; the sand
+dunes caught it, and their gray-browns were overlaid with crimson; the
+flats too caught it, and the sagebrush bending low, and the grass
+quivering in the wind were touched with some reflection of that
+far-reaching hue. From the green along the river the color swept,
+indefinable and dim at first, then by degrees intensified upon the
+flats, across the sand dunes, among the hills until at length it was
+passionate and deep and indescribable on the Sangre de Cristo peaks.
+
+A cowboy, searching for lost mavericks, rode slowly to the top of a
+low sand dune, reined up his pony, and sat silent in the midst of this
+solemn spectacle. He was not emotional. He was looking for calves, and
+"sore" at not finding them, and hungry, and far from the X bar O; and
+night was coming on. But he sat still in his saddle, removed his
+flopping sombrero, and looked toward the east. Bareheaded, the wind
+stinging his cheek and flinging dry sand in his eyes, he gazed and
+wondered at the familiar but never negligible mystery of Sangre de
+Cristo.
+
+But suddenly he rose in his stirrups, and shaded his eyes with his
+hand to make out what it was that had caught his vision in that flood
+of red among the dunes. Again it came, a flash of yellow in the red.
+It was there, and gone. And then it came and lingered, as if inviting
+him, like a jewel in the sand, or rather, like a challenge and a
+taunt.
+
+"So you're back, are you?" cried Larkin, of the X bar O. "Well, you
+c'n jest stay there. I'm done with you. You ain't no horse at all,
+damn you! You're a devil! But I wonder--"
+
+Then Sunnysides was gone. At the same time the light paled on the
+distant peaks. The wind blew colder, and swept the color off the
+dunes. The flats darkened under the advancing shades of night. And
+Larkin, muttering, put spurs to his pony, and galloped away toward
+supper and bed.
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+POPULAR COPYRIGHT NOVELS
+
+AT MODERATE PRICES
+
+Ask your dealer for a complete list of A. L. Burt Company's Popular
+Copyright Fiction
+
+  Abner Daniel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Will N. Harben
+  Adventures of Gerard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A. Conan Doyle
+  Adventures of a Modest Man . . . . . . . . . . . . . . R. W. Chambers
+  Adventures of Sherlock Holmes  . . . . . . . . . . . . A. Conan Doyle
+  After House, The . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  Mary Roberts Rinehart
+  Ailsa Paige  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Robert W. Chambers
+  Alternative, The . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . George Barr McCutcheon
+  Alton of Somasco . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  Harold Bindloss
+  Amateur Gentleman, The . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jeffery Farnol
+  Andrew The Glad  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Maria Thompson Daviess
+  Ann Boyd . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Will N. Harben
+  Annals of Ann, The . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  Kate T. Sharber
+  Anna the Adventuress . . . . . . . . . . . . .  E. Phillips Oppenheim
+  Armchair at the Inn, The . . . . . . . . . . . . . F. Hopkinson Smith
+  Ariadne of Allan Water . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  Sidney McCall
+  At the Age of Eve  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  Kate T. Sharber
+  At the Mercy of Tiberius . . . . . . . . . . . . Augusta Evans Wilson
+  Auction Block, The . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  Rex Beach
+  Aunt Jane of Kentucky  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  Eliza C. Hall
+  Awakening of Helena Ritchie  . . . . . . . . . . . .  Margaret Deland
+  Bambi  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  Marjorie Benton Cooke
+  Bandbox, The . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Louis Joseph Vance
+  Barbara of the Snows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Harry Irving Green
+  Bar 20 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  Clarence E. Mulford
+  Bar 20 Days  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  Clarence E. Mulford
+  Barrier, The . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  Rex Beach
+  Beasts of Tarzan, The  . . . . . . . . . . . . . Edgar Rice Burroughs
+  Beechy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Bettina Von Hutten
+  Bella Donna  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Robert Hichens
+  Beloved Vagabond, The  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  Wm. J. Locke
+  Ben Blair  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Will Lillibridge
+  Beth Norvell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  Randall Parrish
+  Betrayal, The  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  E. Phillips Oppenheim
+  Better Man, The  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Cyrus Townsend Brady
+  Beulah (Ill. Ed) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Augusta J. Evans
+  Black Is White . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . George Barr McCutcheon
+  Blaze Derringer  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  Eugene P. Lyle, Jr.
+  Bob Hampton of Placer  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  Randall Parrish
+  Bob, Son of Battle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  Alfred Ollivant
+
+
+
+
+POPULAR COPYRIGHT NOVELS
+
+AT MODERATE PRICES
+
+Ask your dealer for a complete list of A. L. Burt Company's Popular
+Copyright Fiction
+
+  Brass Bowl, The . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  Louis Joseph Vance
+  Britton of the Seventh  . . . . . . . . . . . .  Cyrus Townsend Brady
+  Broad Highway, The  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  Jeffery Farnol
+  Bronze Bell, The  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  Louis Joseph Vance
+  Buck Peters, Ranchman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Clarence E. Mulford
+  Business of Life, The . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  Robert W. Chambers
+  Butterfly Man, The  . . . . . . . . . . . . .  George Barr McCutcheon
+  By Right of Purchase  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Harold Bindloss
+  Cabbages and Kings  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  O. Henry
+  Cab No. 44  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  R. F. Foster
+  Calling of Dan Matthews, The  . . . . . . . . . .  Harold Bell Wright
+  Cape Cod Stories  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Joseph C. Lincoln
+  Cap'n Eri . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Joseph C. Lincoln
+  Cap'n Warren's Wards  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Joseph C. Lincoln
+  Caravaners  . . . . . . . . Author of Elizabeth and Her German Garden
+  Cardigan  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  Robert W. Chambers
+  Carmen  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  (Geraldine Farrar Edition)
+  Carpet From Bagdad, The . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Harold MacGrath
+  Cash Intrigue, The  . . . . . . . . . . . . . George Randolph Chester
+  Castle by the Sea, The  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . H. B. M. Watson
+  Claw, The . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  Cynthia Stockley
+  C. O. D.  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  Natalie Sumner Lincoln
+  Colonial Free Lance, A  . . . . . . . . . . . . Chauncey O. Hotchkiss
+  Coming of the Law, The  . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  Chas. A. Seltzer
+  Conquest of Canaan, The . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  Booth Tarkington
+  Conspirators, The . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  Robert W. Chambers
+  Counsel for the Defense . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Leroy Scott
+  Crime Doctor, The . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . E. W. Hornung
+  Cry in the Wilderness, A  . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  Mary E. Waller
+  Cynthia of the Minute . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  Louis Joseph Vance
+  Dark Hollow, The  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  Anna Katharine Green
+  Dave's Daughter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  Patience Bevier Cole
+  Day of Days, The  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  Louis Joseph Vance
+  Day of the Dog, The . . . . . . . . . . . . .  George Barr McCutcheon
+  Depot Master, The . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Joseph C. Lincoln
+  Desired Woman, The  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  Will N. Harben
+  Destroying Angel, The . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  Louis Joseph Vance
+  Diamond Master, The . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  Jacques Futrelle
+  Dixie Hart  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  Will N. Harben
+  El Dorado . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  Baroness Orczy
+  Elusive Isabel  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  Jacques Futrelle
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Heart of Thunder Mountain, by Edfrid A. Bingham
+
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