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+Project Gutenberg's The Chalice Of Courage, by Cyrus Townsend Brady
+
+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 Chalice Of Courage
+       A Romance of Colorado
+
+Author: Cyrus Townsend Brady
+
+Illustrator: Harrison Fisher
+             J. N. Marchand
+
+Release Date: September 20, 2011 [EBook #37492]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CHALICE OF COURAGE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Roger Frank, Mary Meehan and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                             THE CHALICE OF COURAGE
+
+                             _A Romance of Colorado_
+
+                             BY CYRUS TOWNSEND BRADY
+
+Author of "The Island of Regeneration," "The Better Man," "Hearts and
+the Highway," "As the Sparks Fly Upward," etc., etc.
+
+
+    _With Illustrations By
+    HARRISON FISHER and J. N. MARCHAND_
+
+    NEW YORK
+    DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY
+    1912
+
+    COPYRIGHT, 1911
+    BY W. G. CHAPMAN
+
+    COPYRIGHT, 1912
+    BY DODD, MEAD & COMPANY
+
+    _Published, February, 1912_
+
+
+
+
+              To My Beloved Friend
+             _JOHN B . WALKER, JR._
+
+    Great-hearted, Great-souled, High-spirited
+    Man of Colorado.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: "Leave me to myself, I would not take the finest, noblest
+man on earth--"]
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+Prefaces, like much study, are a weariness to the flesh; to some people,
+not to me. I can conceive of no literary proposition more attractive
+than the opportunity to write unlimited prefaces. Let me write the
+preface and I care not who writes the book. Unfortunately for my
+desires, I can only be prefatory in the case of my own. Happily my own
+are sufficiently numerous to afford me some scope in the indulgence of
+this passion for forewords.
+
+I suppose no one ever sat down to write a preface until after he had
+written the book. It is like the final pat that the fond parent gives to
+the child before it is allowed to depart in its best clothes. I have
+seen the said parent accompany the child quite a distance on the way,
+keeping up a continual process of adjustment of raiment which it was
+evidently loath to discontinue.
+
+And that is my case exactly. Here is the novel with which I have done my
+best, which I have written and rewritten after long and earnest thought,
+and yet I cannot let it go forth without some final, shall I say caress?
+And as it is, I really have nothing of importance to say! The final
+pats and pulls and tugs and smoothings do not materially add to the
+child's appearance or increase its fascination, and I am at a loss to
+find a reason for the preface except it be the converse of the statement
+about the famous and much disliked Dr. Fell!
+
+Perhaps, if I admit to you that I have been in the canyon, that I have
+followed the course of the brook, that I have seen that lake, that I
+have tramped those trails, it will serve to make you understand, dear
+reader, how real and actual it all is to me. Yes, I have even looked
+over the precipice down which the woman fell. I have talked with old
+Kirkby; Robert Maitland is an intimate friend of mine; I have even met
+his brother in Philadelphia and as for that glorious girl Enid--well,
+being a married man, I will refrain from any personal appraisement of
+her qualities. But I can with propriety dilate upon Newbold, and even
+Armstrong, bad as he was, has some place in my regard.
+
+If these people shall by any chance seem real to you and become your
+friends as they are mine, another of those pleasant ties that bind the
+author and his public together will have been woven, knotted, forged.
+Never mind the method so long as there is a tie. And with this hope,
+looking out up the winter snows that might have covered the range, as I
+have often seen them there, I bid you a happy good morning.
+
+                                          CYRUS TOWNSEND BRADY
+
+_St. George's Rectory, Kansas City, Missouri._
+
+_Thanksgiving Day, 1911._
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+
+   BOOK I
+
+   THE HIGHER LAW
+
+       I THE CUP THAT WOULD NOT PASS               1
+      II ALONE UPON THE TRAIL                     16
+
+
+   BOOK II
+
+   THE EAST AND THE WEST
+
+     III THE YOUNG LADY FROM PHILADELPHIA         29
+      IV THE GAME PLAYED IN THE USUAL WAY         43
+       V THE STORY AND THE LETTERS                55
+      VI THE POOL AND THE WATER SPRITE            72
+     VII THE BEAR, THE MAN AND THE FLOOD          88
+    VIII DEATH, LIFE AND THE RESURRECTION        101
+
+
+   BOOK III
+
+   FORGETTING AND FORGOT
+
+      IX A WILD DASH FOR THE HILLS               123
+       X A TELEGRAM AND A CALLER                 136
+      XI OVER THE HILLS AND FAR AWAY             149
+     XII ON THE TWO SIDES OF THE DOOR            166
+    XIII THE LOG HUT IN THE MOUNTAINS            179
+     XIV A TOUR OF INSPECTION                    193
+      XV THE CASTAWAYS OF THE MOUNTAINS          203
+
+
+   BOOK IV
+
+   OH YE ICE AND SNOW, PRAISE YE THE LORD
+
+     XVI THE WOMAN'S HEART                       223
+    XVII THE MAN'S HEART                         236
+   XVIII THE KISS ON THE HAND                    248
+     XIX THE FACE IN THE LOCKET                  261
+      XX THE STRENGTH OF THE WEAK                276
+
+
+   BOOK V
+
+   THE CUP IS DRAINED
+
+     XXI THE CHALLENGE OF THE RANGE              291
+    XXII THE CONVERGING TRAILS                   310
+   XXIII THE ODDS AGAINST HIM                    327
+    XXIV THE LAST RESORT OF KINGS AND MEN        339
+     XXV THE BECOMING END                        357
+    XXVI THE DRAUGHT OF JOY                      368
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+"LEAVE ME TO MYSELF, I WOULD NOT TAKE THE
+FINEST, NOBLEST MAN ON EARTH--"                _FRONTISPIECE_
+
+"READ THE LETTERS," HE SAID. "THEY'LL TELL
+THE STORY. GOOD-NIGHT."                       _FACING PAGE_ 70
+
+"WAIT! I AM A WOMAN, ABSOLUTELY ALONE,
+ENTIRELY AT YOUR MERCY"                            "   "   156
+
+IT WAS ALL UP WITH ARMSTRONG                       "   "   354
+
+
+
+
+THE CHALICE OF COURAGE
+
+(Courtesy of _The Outlook_)
+
+
+    Drink of the Chalice of Courage!
+      Pressed to the trembling lip,
+    The dark-veiled fears
+      From the passing years,
+    Like a dusty garment slip.
+
+    Drink of the Chalice of Courage!
+      Poured for the Hero's feast,
+    When the strength divine
+      Of its subtle wine
+    Is shared with the last and least.
+
+    Drink of the Chalice of Courage!
+      The mead of mothers and men,
+    And the sinewed might
+      Of the Victor's might,
+    Be yours, again and again.
+
+                Marie Hemstreet
+
+
+
+
+BOOK I
+
+THE HIGHER LAW
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE CUP THAT WOULD NOT PASS
+
+
+The huge concave of the rocky wall towering above them threw the woman's
+scream far into the vast profound of the canyon. It came sharp to the
+man's ear, yet terminated abruptly; as when two rapidly moving trains
+pass, the whistle of one is heard shrill for one moment only to be cut
+short on the instant. Brief as it was, however, the sound was
+sufficiently appalling; its suddenness, its unexpectedness, the awful
+terror in its single note, as well as its instantaneity, almost stopped
+his heart.
+
+With the indifference of experience and long usage he had been riding
+carelessly along an old pre-historic trail through the canyon, probably
+made and forgotten long before the Spaniards spied out the land.
+Engrossed in his thoughts, he had been heedless alike of the wall above
+and of the wall below. Prior to that moment neither the over-hanging
+rock that curved above his head nor the almost sheer fall to the river a
+thousand feet beneath the narrow ledge of the trail had influenced him
+at all. He might have been riding a country road so indifferent had
+been his progress. That momentary shriek dying thinly away into a
+strange silence changed everything.
+
+The man was riding a sure-footed mule, which perhaps somewhat accounted
+for his lack of care, and it seemed as if the animal must also have
+heard and understood the meaning of the woman's scream, for with no
+bridle signal and no spoken word the mule stopped suddenly as if
+petrified. Rider and ridden stood as if carved from stone.
+
+The man's comprehending, realizing fear almost paralyzed him. At first
+he could scarcely force himself to do that toward which his whole being
+tended--look around. Divining instantly the full meaning of that sudden
+cry, it seemed hours before he could turn his head; really her cry and
+his movement were practically simultaneous. He threw an agonized glance
+backward on the narrow trail and saw--nothing! Where there had been
+life, companionship, comradeship, a woman, there was now vacancy.
+
+The trail made a little bend behind him, he could see its surface for
+some distance, but not what lay beneath. He did not need the testimony
+of his eyes for that. He knew what was down there.
+
+It seemed to his distorted perceptions that he moved slowly, his limbs
+were like lead, every joint was as stiff as a rusty hinge. Actually he
+dropped from the mule's back with reckless and life-defying haste and
+fairly leaped backward on his path. Had there been any to note his
+progress, they would have said he risked his own life over every foot of
+the way. He ran down the narrow shelf, rock strewn and rough, swaying
+upon the unfathomable brink until he reached the place where she had
+been a moment since. There he dropped on one knee and looked downward.
+
+She was there! A few hundred feet below the trail edge the canyon wall,
+generally a sheer precipice, broadened out into a great butte, or
+buttress, which sloped somewhat more gently to the foaming, roaring
+river far beneath. About a hundred and fifty feet under him a stubby
+spur with a pocket on it jutted out from the face of the cliff; she had
+evidently struck on that spur and bounded off and fallen, half rolling,
+to the broad top of the butte two hundred or more feet below the pocket.
+
+Three hundred and fifty feet down to where she lay he could distinguish
+little except a motionless huddled mass. The bright blue of her dress
+made a splotch of unwonted color against the reddish brown monotones of
+the mountain side and canyon wall. She was dead, of course; she must be
+dead, the man felt. From that distance he could see no breathing, if
+such there were; indeed as he stared she grew less and less distinct to
+him, his eyes did not fill with tears, but to his vision the very earth
+itself, the vast depths of the canyon, the towering wall on the other
+side, seemed to quiver and heave before him. For the first time in his
+life the elevation made him dizzy, sick. He put his hands to his face to
+shut out the sight, he tore them away to look again. He lifted his eyes
+toward the other side across the great gulf to the opposing wall which
+matched the one upon which he stood, where the blue sky cloudless
+overhung.
+
+"God!" he whispered in futile petition or mayhap expostulation.
+
+He was as near the absolute breaking point as a man may go and yet not
+utterly give way, for he loved this woman as he loved that light of
+heaven above him, and in the twinkling of an eye she was no more. And so
+he stared and stared dumbly agonizing, wondering, helpless, misty-eyed,
+blind.
+
+He sank back from the brink at last and tried to collect his thoughts.
+What was he to do? There was but one answer to that question. He must
+go down to her. There was one quick and easy way; over the brink, the
+way she had gone. That thought came to him for a moment, but he put it
+away. He was not a coward, life was not his own to give or to take,
+besides she might be alive, she might need him. There must be some other
+way.
+
+Determining upon action, his resolution rose dominant, his vision
+cleared. Once again he forced himself to look over the edge and see
+other things than she. He was a daring, skillful and experienced
+mountaineer; in a way mountaineering was his trade. He searched the side
+of the canyon to the right and the left with eager scrutiny and found no
+way within the compass of his vision to the depths below. He shut his
+eyes and concentrated his thoughts to remember what they had passed over
+that morning. There came to him the recollection of a place which as he
+had viewed it he had idly thought might afford a practicable descent to
+the river's rim.
+
+Forgetful of the patient animal beside him, he rose to his feet and with
+one last look at the poor object below started on his wild plunge down
+the trail over which some men might scarcely have crept on hands and
+knees. Sweat bedewed his forehead, his limbs trembled, his pulses
+throbbed, his heart beat almost to bursting. Remorse sharpened by love,
+passion quickened by despair, scourged him, desperate, on the way. And
+God protected him also, or he had fallen at every uncertain, hurried,
+headlong step.
+
+And as he ran, thoughts, reproaches, scourged him on. Why had he brought
+her, why had he allowed her to take that trail which but for him and for
+her had probably not been traversed by man or woman or beast, save the
+mountain sheep, the gray wolves, or the grizzly bear, for five hundred
+years. She had protested that she was as good a mountaineer as he--and
+it was true--and she had insisted on accompanying him; he recollected
+that there had been a sort of terror in her urgency,--he must take her,
+he must not leave her alone, she had pleaded; he had objected, but he
+had yielded, the joy of her companionship had meant so much to him in
+his lonely journeying, and now--he accused himself bitterly as he surged
+onward.
+
+After a time the man forced himself to observe the road, he discovered
+that in an incredibly short period, perhaps an hour, he had traversed
+what it had taken them four times as long to pass over that very day. He
+must be near his goal. Ah, there it was at last, and in all the turmoil
+and torture of his brain he found room for a throb of satisfaction when
+he came upon the broken declivity. Yes, it did afford a practicable
+descent; some landslide centuries back had made there a sort of rude,
+rough, broken, megalithic stairway in the wall of the canyon. The man
+threw himself upon it and with bleeding hands, bruised limbs and torn
+clothing descended to the level of the river.
+
+Two atoms to the eye of the Divine, in that vast rift in the gigantic
+mountains. One unconscious, motionless, save for faint gasping breaths;
+the other toiling blindly along the river bank, fortunately here
+affording practicable going, to the foot of the great butte upon whose
+huge shoulder the other lay. The living and the dead in the waste and
+the wilderness of the everlasting hills.
+
+Unconsciously but unerringly the man had fixed the landmarks in his mind
+before he started on that terrific journey. Without a moment of
+incertitude, or hesitation, he proceeded directly to the base of the
+butte and as rapidly as if he had been fresh for the journey and the
+endeavor. Up he climbed without a pause for rest. It was a desperate
+going, almost sheer at times, but his passion found the way. He clawed
+and tore at the rocks like an animal, he performed feats of strength and
+skill and determination and reckless courage marvelous and impossible
+under less exacting demands. Somehow or other he got to the top at last;
+perhaps no man in all the ages since the world's first morning when God
+Himself upheaved the range had so achieved that goal.
+
+The last ascent was up a little stretch of straight rock over which he
+had to draw himself by main strength and determination. He fell panting
+on the brink, but not for a moment did he remain prone; he got to his
+feet at once and staggered across the plateau which made the head of the
+butte toward the blue object on the further side beneath the wall of the
+cliff above, and in a moment he bent over what had been--nay, as he saw
+the slow choking uprise of her breast, what was--his wife.
+
+He knelt down beside her and looked at her for a moment, scarce daring
+to touch her. Then he lifted his head and flung a glance around the
+canyon as if seeking help from man. As he did so he became aware, below
+him on the slope, of the dead body of the poor animal she had been
+riding, whose misstep, from whatever cause he would never know, had
+brought this catastrophe upon them.
+
+Nothing else met his gaze but the rocks, brown, gray, relieved here and
+there by green clumps of stunted pine. Nothing met his ear except far
+beneath him the roar of the river, now reduced almost to a murmur, with
+which the shivering leaves of aspens, rustled by the gentle breeze of
+this glorious morning, blended softly like a sigh of summer. No, there
+was nobody in the canyon, no help there. He threw his head back and
+stretched out his arms toward the blue depths of the heavens above, to
+the tops of the soaring peaks, and there was nothing there but the
+eternal silence of a primeval day.
+
+"God! God!" he murmured again in his despair.
+
+It was the final word that comes to human lips in the last extremity
+when life and its hopes and its possibilities tremble on the verge. And
+no answer came to this poor man out of that vast void.
+
+He bent to the woman again. What he saw can hardly be described. Her
+right arm and her left leg were bent backward and under her. They were
+shattered, evidently. He was afraid to examine her and yet he knew that
+practically every other bone in her body was broken as well. Her head
+fell lower than her shoulders, the angle which she made with the uneven
+rock on which she lay convinced him that her back was broken too. Her
+clothing was rent by her contact with the rocky spur above, it was torn
+from the neck downward, exposing a great red scar which ran across her
+sweet white young breast, blood oozing from it, while in the middle of
+it something yellow and bright gleamed in the light. Her cheek was cut
+open, her glorious hair, matted, torn and bloody, was flung backward
+from her down-thrown head.
+
+She should have been dead a thousand times, but she yet lived, she
+breathed, her ensanguined bosom rose and fell. Through her pallid lips
+bloody foam bubbled, she was still alive.
+
+The man must do something. He did not dare to move her body, yet he took
+off his hat, folded it, lifted her head tenderly and slipped it
+underneath; it made a better pillow than the hard rock, he thought. Then
+he tore his handkerchief from his neck and wiped away the foam from her
+lips. In his pocket he had a flask of whiskey, a canteen of water that
+hung from his shoulder somehow had survived the rough usage of the
+rocks. He mingled some of the water with a portion of the spirit in the
+cup of the flask and poured a little down her throat. Tenderly he took
+his handkerchief again, and wetting it laved her brow. Except to mutter
+incoherent prayers again and again he said no word, but his heart was
+filled with passionate endearments, he lavished agonized and infinite
+tenderness upon her in his soul.
+
+By and by she opened her eyes. In those eyes first of all he saw
+bewilderment, and then terror and then anguish so great that it cannot
+be described, pain so horrible that it is not good for man even to think
+upon it. Incredible as it may seem, her head moved, her lips relaxed,
+her set jaw unclenched, her tongue spoke thickly.
+
+"God!" she said.
+
+The same word that he had used, that final word that comes to the lips
+when the heart is wrung, or the body is racked beyond human endurance.
+The universal testimony to the existence of the Divine, that trouble and
+sometimes trouble alone, wrings from man. No human name, not even his,
+upon her lips in that first instant of realization!
+
+"How I--suffer," she faltered weakly.
+
+Her eyes closed again, the poor woman had told her God of her condition,
+that was all she was equal to. Man and human relationships might come
+later. The man knelt by her side, his hands upraised.
+
+"Louise," he whispered, "speak to me."
+
+Her eyes opened again.
+
+"Will," the anguished voice faltered on, "I am--broken--to pieces--kill
+me. I can't stand--kill me"--her voice rose with a sudden fearful
+appeal--"kill me."
+
+Then the eyes closed and this time they did not open, although now he
+overwhelmed her with words, alas, all he had to give her. At last his
+passion, his remorse, his love, gushing from him in a torrent of frantic
+appeal awakened her again. She looked him once more in the face and once
+more begged him for that quick relief he alone could give.
+
+"Kill me."
+
+That was her only plea. There has been One and only One, who could
+sustain such crucifying anguish as she bore without such appeal being
+wrested from the lips, yet even He, upon His cross, for one moment,
+thought God had forsaken and forgotten Him!
+
+She was silent, but she was not dead. She was speechless, but she was
+not unconscious, for she opened her eyes and looked at him with such
+pitiful appeal that he would fain hide his face as he could not bear it,
+and yet again and again as he stared down into her eyes he caught that
+heart breaking entreaty, although now she made no sound. Every twisted
+bone, every welling vein, every scarred and marred part on once smooth
+soft flesh was eloquent of that piteous petition for relief. "Kill me"
+she seemed to say in her voiceless agony. Agony the more appalling
+because at last it could make no sound.
+
+He could not resist that appeal. He fought against it, but the demand
+came to him with more and more terrific force until he could no longer
+oppose it. That cup was tendered to him and he must drain it. No more
+from his lips than from the lips of Him of the Garden could it be
+withdrawn. Out of that chalice he must drink. It could not pass. Slowly,
+never taking his eyes from her, as a man might who was fascinated or
+hypnotized, he lifted his hand to his holster and drew out his revolver.
+
+No, he could not do it. He laid the weapon down on the rock again and
+bowed forward on his knees, praying incoherently, protesting that God
+should place this burden on mere man. In the silence he could hear the
+awful rasp of her breath--the only answer. He looked up to find her eyes
+upon him again.
+
+Life is a precious thing, to preserve it men go to the last limit. In
+defense of it things are permitted that are permitted in no other case.
+Is it ever nobler to destroy it than to conserve it? Was this such an
+instance? What were the conditions?
+
+There was not a human being, white or red, within five days' journey
+from the spot where these two children of malign destiny confronted
+each other. That poor huddled broken mass of flesh and bones could not
+have been carried a foot across that rocky slope without suffering
+agonies beside which all the torture that might be racking her now would
+be as nothing. He did not dare even to lay hand upon her to straighten
+even one bent and twisted limb, he could not even level or compose her
+body where she lay. He almost felt that he had been guilty of
+unpardonable cruelty in giving her the stimulant and recalling her to
+consciousness. Nor could he leave her where she was, to seek and bring
+help to her. With all the speed that frantic desire, and passionate
+adoration, and divine pity, would lend to him, it would be a week before
+he could return, and by that time the wolves and the vultures--he could
+not think that sentence to completion. That way madness lay.
+
+The woman was doomed, no mortal could survive her wounds, but she might
+linger for days while high fever and inflammation supervened. And each
+hour would add to her suffering. God was merciful to His Son, Christ
+died quickly on the cross, mere man sometimes hung there for days.
+
+All these things ran like lightning through his brain. His hand closed
+upon the pistol, the eternal anodyne. No, he could not. And the
+tortured eyes were open again, it seemed as if the woman had summoned
+strength for a final appeal.
+
+"Will," she whispered, "if you--love me--kill me."
+
+He thrust the muzzle of his weapon against her heart, she could see his
+movement and for a moment gratitude and love shone in her eyes, and then
+with a hand that did not tremble, he pulled the trigger.
+
+A thousand thunder claps could not have roared in his ear with such
+detonation. And he had done it! He had slain the thing he loved! Was it
+in obedience to a higher law even than that writ on the ancient tables
+of stone?
+
+For a moment he thought incoherently, the pistol fell from his hand, his
+eyes turned to her face, her eyes were open still, but there was neither
+pain, nor appeal, nor love, nor relief in them; there was no light in
+them; only peace, calm, darkness, rest. His hand went out to them and
+drew the lids down, and as he did so, something gave way in him and he
+fell forward across the red, scarred white breast that no longer either
+rose or fell.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+ALONE UPON THE TRAIL
+
+
+They had started from their last camp early in the morning. It had been
+mid-day when she fell and long after noon when he killed her and lapsed
+into merciful oblivion. It was dusk in the canyon when he came to life
+again. The sun was still some distance above the horizon, but the
+jutting walls of the great pass cut off the light, the butte top was in
+ever deepening shadow.
+
+I have often wondered what were the feelings of Lazarus when he was
+called back to life by the great cry of his Lord. "Hither--Out!" Could
+that transition from the newer way of death to the older habit of living
+have been accomplished without exquisite anguish and pain, brief,
+sudden, but too sacred, like his other experiences, to dwell upon in
+mortal hours?
+
+What he of Bethany might perhaps have experienced this man felt long
+after under other circumstances. The enormous exertions of the day, the
+cruel bruises and lacerations to which clothes and body gave evidence,
+the sick, giddy, uncertain, helpless, feeling that comes when one
+recovers consciousness after such a collapse, would have been hard
+enough to bear; but he took absolutely no account of any of these things
+for, as he lifted himself on his hands, almost animal-like for a moment,
+from the cold body of his wife, everything came across him with a
+sudden, terrific, overwhelming, rush of recollection.
+
+She was dead, and he had killed her. There were reasons, arguments,
+excuses, for his course; he forgot them confronted by that grim,
+terrific, tragic fact. The difference between that mysterious thing so
+incapable of human definition which we call life, and that other
+mysterious thing equally insusceptible of explanation which we call
+death, is so great that when the two confront each other the most
+indifferent is awed by the contrast. Many a man and many a woman prays
+by the bedside of some agonized sufferer for a surcease of anguish only
+to be brought about by death, by a dissolution of soul and body,
+beseeching God of His mercy for the oblivion of the last, long, quiet,
+sleep; but when the prayer has been granted, and the living eyes look
+into the dead, the beating heart bends over the still one--it is a hard
+soul indeed which has the strength not to wish again for a moment, one
+little moment of life, to whisper one word of abiding love, to hear one
+word of fond farewell.
+
+Since that is true, what could this man think whose hand had pointed the
+weapon and pulled the trigger and caused that great gaping hole through
+what had once been a warm and loving heart? God had laid upon him a
+task, than which none had ever been heavier on the shoulders of man, and
+he did not think as he stared at her wildly that God had given him at
+the same time strength to bear his burden.
+
+Later, it might be that cold reason would come to his aid and justify
+him for what he had done, but now, now, he only realized that she was
+dead, and he had killed her. He forgot her suffering in his own anguish
+and reproach of himself. He found time to marvel at himself with a
+strange sort of wonder. How could he have done it.
+
+Something broke the current of his thoughts, and it was good for him
+that it was so. He heard a swish through the air and he looked away from
+his dead wife in the direction of the sound. A little distance off upon
+a pinnacle of rock he saw a vulture, a hideous, horrible, unclean,
+carrion bird. While he watched, another and another settled softly down.
+He rose to his feet and far beneath him from the tree clad banks of the
+river the long howl of a wolf smote upon his ear. Gluttony and rapine
+were at hand. Further down the declivity the body of the dead mule was
+the object of the converging attack from earth and air. The threat of
+that attack stirred him to life.
+
+There were things he had to do. The butte top was devoid of earth or
+much vegetation, yet here and there in hollows where water settled or
+drained, soft green moss grew. He stooped over and lifted the body of
+the woman. She seemed to fall together loosely and almost break within
+his hands--it was evidence of what the fall had done for her,
+justification for his action, too, if he had been in a mood to reason
+about it, but his only thought then was of how she must have suffered.
+By a strange perversion he had to fight against the feeling that she was
+suffering now. He laid her gently and tenderly down in a deep hollow in
+the rock shaped almost to contain her. He straightened her poor twisted
+limbs. He arranged with decent care the ragged dress, covering over the
+torn breast and the frightful wound above her heart. With the last of
+the water in the canteen, he washed her face, he could not wash out the
+scar of course. With rude unskillful hands, yet with pitiable
+tenderness, he strove to arrange her blood-matted hair, he pillowed her
+head upon his hat again.
+
+Sometimes the last impression of life is stamped on the face of death,
+sometimes we see in the awful fixity of feature that attends upon
+dissolution, the index of the agony in which life has passed, but more
+often, thank God, death lays upon pain and sorrow a smoothing, calming
+hand. It was so in this instance. There was a great peace, a great
+relief, in the face he looked upon; this poor woman had been tortured
+not only in body, that he knew, but she had suffered anguish of soul of
+which he was unaware, and death, had it come in gentler form would
+perhaps not have been unwelcome. That showed in her face. There was
+dignity, composure, surcease of care, repose--the rest that shall be
+forever!
+
+The man had done all that he could for her. Stop, there was one thing
+more; he knelt down by her side, he was not what we commonly call a
+religious man, the habit that he had learned at his mother's knee he had
+largely neglected in maturer years, but he had not altogether forgotten,
+and even the atheist--and he was far from that--might have prayed then.
+
+"God, accept her," he murmured. "Christ receive her,"--that was all but
+it was enough.
+
+He remained by her side some time looking at her; he would fain have
+knelt there forever; he would have been happy at that moment if he
+could have lain down by her and had someone do for them both the last
+kindly office he was trying to do for her. But that was not to be, and
+the growing darkness warned him to make haste. The wolf barks were
+sharper and nearer, he stooped over her, bent low and laid his face
+against hers. Oh that cold awful touch of long farewell. He tore himself
+away from her, lifted from her neck a little object that had gleamed so
+prettily amid the red blood. It was a locket. He had never seen it
+before and had no knowledge of what it might contain. He kissed it,
+slipped it into the pocket of his shirt and rose to his feet.
+
+The plateau was strewn with rock; working rapidly and skillfully he
+built a burial mound of stone over her body. The depression in which she
+lay was deep enough to permit no rock to touch her person. The cairn, if
+such it may be called, was soon completed. No beast of the earth or bird
+of the air could disturb what was left of his wife. It seemed so piteous
+to him to think of her so young, and so sweet and so fair, so soft and
+so tender, so brave and so true, lying alone in the vast of the canyon,
+weighted down by the great rocks that love's hands had heaped above her.
+But there was no help for it.
+
+Gathering up the revolver and canteen he turned and fell rather than
+climbed to the level of the river. It was quite dark in the depths of
+the canyon, but he pressed rapidly on over the uneven and broken rocks
+until he reached the giant stairway. Up them he toiled painfully until
+he attained again the trail.
+
+It was dark when he reached the wooded recess where they had slept the
+night before. There were grass and trees, a bubbling spring, an oasis
+amid the desert of rocks; he found the ashes of their fire and gathering
+wood heaped it upon the still living embers until the blaze rose and
+roared. He realized at last that he was weary beyond measure, he had
+gone through the unendurable since the morning. He threw himself down
+alone where they had lain together the night before and sought in vain
+for sleep. In his ears he heard that sharp, sudden, breaking cry once
+more, and her voice begging him to kill her. He heard again the rasp of
+her agonized breathing, the crashing detonation of the weapon. He
+writhed with the anguish of it all. Dry-eyed he arose at last and
+stretched out his hands to that heaven that had done so little for him
+he thought.
+
+Long after midnight he fell into a sort of uneasy, restless stupor. The
+morning sun of the new and desolate day recalled him to action. He arose
+to his feet and started mechanically down the trail alone--always and
+forever alone. Yet God was with him though he knew it not.
+
+Four days later a little party of men winding through the foothills came
+upon a wavering, ghastly, terrifying figure. Into the mining town two
+days before had wandered a solitary mule, scraps of harness dangling
+from it. They had recognized it as one of a pair the man had purchased
+for a proposed journey far into the unsurveyed and inaccessible
+mountains--to hunt for the treasures hidden within their granite
+breasts. It told too plainly a story of disaster. A relief party had
+been hurriedly organized to search for the two, one of whom was much
+beloved in the rude frontier camp.
+
+The man they met on the way was the man they had come to seek. His boots
+were cut to pieces, his feet were raw and bleeding for he had taken no
+care to order his going or to choose his way. His clothes were in rags,
+through rents and tatters his emaciated body showed its discolored
+bruises. His hands were swollen and soiled with wounds and the stains of
+the way. The front of his shirt was sadly and strangely discolored. He
+was hatless, his hair was gray, his face was as white as the snow on the
+crest of the peak, his lips were bloodless yet his eyes blazed with
+fever.
+
+For four days without food and with but little water this man had
+plodded down the mountain toward the camp. All his energies were merged
+in one desire, to come in touch with humanity and tell his awful story;
+the keeping of it to himself, which he must do perforce because he was
+alone in the world, added to the difficulty of endurance. The sun had
+beaten down upon him piteously during the day. The cold dew had drenched
+him in the night. Apparitions had met his vision alike in the darkness
+and in the light. Voices had whispered to him as he plodded on. But
+something had sustained him in spite of the awful drain, physical and
+mental, which had wasted him away. Something had sustained him until he
+came in touch with men, thereafter the duty would devolve upon his
+brethren not upon himself.
+
+They caught him as he staggered into the group of them, these Good
+Samaritans of the frontier; they undressed him and washed him, they
+bound up his wounds and ministered to him, they laid him gently down
+upon the ground, they bent over him tenderly and listened to him while
+he told in broken, disjointed words the awful story, of her plunge into
+the canyon, of his search for her, of her last appeal to him. And then he
+stopped.
+
+"What then?" asked one of the men bending over him as he hesitated.
+
+"God forgive me--I shot her--through the heart."
+
+There was appalling stillness in the little group of rough men, while he
+told them where she lay and begged them to go and bring back what was
+left of her.
+
+"You must bring her--back," he urged pitifully.
+
+None of the men had ever been up the canyon, but they knew of its
+existence and the twin peaks of which he had told them could be seen
+from afar. He had given them sufficient information to identify the
+place and to enable them to go and bring back the body for Christian
+burial. Now these rude men of the mining camp had loved that woman as
+men love a bright and cheery personality which dwelt among them.
+
+"Yes," answered the spokesman, "but what about you?"
+
+"I shall be--a dead man," was the murmured answer, "and I don't care--I
+shall be glad--"
+
+He had no more speech and no more consciousness after that. It was a
+sardonic comment on the situation that the last words that fell from his
+lips then should be those words of joy.
+
+"Glad, glad!"
+
+
+
+
+BOOK II
+
+THE EAST AND THE WEST
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE YOUNG LADY FROM PHILADELPHIA
+
+
+Miss Enid Maitland was a highly specialized product of the far east. I
+say far, viewing Colorado as a point of departure not as identifying her
+with the orient. The classic shades of Bryn Mawr had been the "Groves of
+Academus where with old Plato she had walked." Incidentally during her
+completion of the exhaustive curriculum of that justly famous
+institution she had acquired at least a bowing acquaintance with other
+masters of the mind.
+
+Nor had the physical in her education been sacrificed to the mental. In
+her at least the _mens sana_ and the _corpore sano_ were alike in
+evidence. She had ridden to hounds many times on the anise-scented trail
+of the West Chester Hunt! Exciting tennis and leisurely golf had engaged
+her attention on the courts and greens of the Merion Cricket Club. She
+had buffeted "Old Ocean's gray and melancholy waste" on the beach at
+Cape May and at Atlantic City.
+
+Spiritually she was a devoted member of the Episcopal Church, of the
+variety that abhors the word "Protestant" in connection therewith.
+Altogether she reflected great credit upon her pastors and masters,
+spiritual and temporal, and her up-bringing in the three departments of
+life left little to be desired.
+
+Upon her graduation she had been at once received and acclaimed by the
+"Assembly Set," of Philadelphia, to which indeed she belonged
+unquestioned by right of birth and position--and there was no other
+power under heaven by which she could have effected entrance therein; at
+least that is what the "outs" thought of that most exclusive circle. The
+old home of the Maitlands overlooking Rittenhouse Square had been the
+scene of her debut. In all the refined and decorous gayeties of
+Philadelphia's ultra-fastidious society she had participated. She had
+even looked upon money standardized New York in its delirium of
+extravagance, at least in so far as a sedate and well-born Philadelphia
+family could countenance such golden madness. During the year she had
+ranged like a conqueror--pardon the masculine appellation--between Palm
+Beach in the South and Bar Harbor in the North. Philadelphia was proud
+of her, and she was not unknown in those unfortunate parts of the United
+States which lay without.
+
+In all this she had remained a frank, free, unspoiled young woman. Life
+was full of zest for her, and she enjoyed it with the most
+un-Pennsylvanian enthusiasm.
+
+The second summer after her coming out found her in Colorado. Robert
+Maitland was one of the big men of the west. He had departed from
+Philadelphia at an early age and had settled in Colorado while it was
+still in the formative period. There he had grown up with the state. The
+Philadelphia Maitlands could never understand it or explain it. Bob
+Maitland must have been, they argued, a reversion to an ancient type, a
+throwback to some robber baron long antecedent to William Penn. And the
+speculation was true. The blood of some lawless adventurer of the past,
+discreetly forgot by the conservative section of the family, bubbled in
+his veins unchecked by the repressive atmosphere of his home and his
+early environment.
+
+He had thoroughly identified himself with his new surroundings and had
+plunged into all the activities of the west. During one period in his
+life he had actually served as sheriff of one of the border counties,
+and it was a rapid "bad man" indeed, who enjoyed any advantage over him
+when it came to drawing his "gun." His skill and daring had been
+unquestioned. He had made a name for himself which still abides,
+especially in the mountains where things yet remained almost as
+primitive as they had been from the beginning.
+
+His fame had been accompanied by fortune, too; the cattle upon a
+thousand hills were his, the treasures of mines of fabulous richness
+were at his command. He lived in Denver in one of the greatest of the
+bonanza palaces on the hills of that city, confronting the snow-capped
+mountain range. For the rest he held stock in all sorts of corporations,
+was a director in numerous concerns and so on--the reader can supply the
+usual catalogue, they are all alike. He had married late in life and was
+the father of two little girls and a boy, the oldest sixteen and the
+youngest ten.
+
+Going east, which he did not love, on an infrequent business trip he had
+renewed his acquaintance with his brother and the one ewe lamb of his
+brother's flock, to wit, the aforementioned Enid. He had been struck, as
+everybody was, by the splendid personality of the girl and had striven
+earnestly to disabuse her mind of the prevalent idea that there was
+nothing much worth while on the continent beyond the Alleghanies except
+scenery.
+
+"What you need, Enid, is a ride across the plains, a sight of real
+mountains, beside which these little foothills in Pennsylvania that
+people back here make so much of wouldn't be noticed. You want to get
+some of the spirited glorious freedom of the west into your conservative
+straight-laced little body!"
+
+"In my day, Robert," reprovingly remarked his brother, Enid's father,
+"freedom was the last thing a young lady gently born and delicately
+nurtured would have coveted."
+
+"Your day is past, Steve," returned the younger Maitland with shocking
+carelessness. "Freedom is what every woman desires now, especially when
+she is married. You are not in love with anybody are you, Enid?"
+
+"With not a soul," frankly replied the girl, greatly amused at the
+colloquy between the two men, who though both mothered by the same woman
+were as dissimilar as--what shall I say, the east is from the west? Let
+it go at that.
+
+"That's all right," said her uncle, relieved apparently. "I will take
+you out west and introduce you to some real men and--"
+
+"If I thought it possible," interposed Mr. Stephen Maitland in his most
+austere and dignified manner, "that my daughter," with a perceptible
+emphasis on the "my," as if he and not the daughter were the principal
+being under consideration, "should ever so far forget what belongs to
+her station in life and her family as to allow her affections to become
+engaged by anyone who, from his birth and up-bringing in the
+er--ah--unlicensed atmosphere of the western country would be _persona
+non grata_ to the dignified society of this ancient city and--"
+
+"Nonsense," interrupted the younger brother bluntly. "You have lived
+here wrapped up in yourselves and your dinky little town so long that
+mental asphyxiation is threatening you all."
+
+"I will thank you, Robert," said his brother with something approaching
+the manner in which he would have repelled a blasphemy, "not to refer to
+Philadelphia as--er--What was your most extraordinary word?"
+
+"'Dinky,' if my recollection serves."
+
+"Ah, precisely. I am not sure as to the meaning of the term but I
+conceive it to be something opprobrious. You can say what you like about
+me and mine, but Philadelphia, no."
+
+"Oh, the town's right enough," returned his brother, not at all
+impressed. "I'm talking about people now. There are just as fine men and
+women in the west as in New York or Philadelphia."
+
+"I am sure you don't mean to be offensive, Robert, but really the
+association of ideas in your mention of us with that common and vulgar
+New York is er--unpleasant," fairly shuddered the elder Maitland.
+
+"I'm only urging you to recognize the quality of the western people. I
+dare say they are of a finer type than the average here."
+
+"From your standpoint, no doubt," continued his brother severely and
+somewhat wearily as if the matter were not worth all this argument. "All
+that I want of them is that they stay in the west where they belong and
+not strive to mingle with the east; there is a barrier between us and
+them which it is not well to cross. To permit any intermixtures of
+er--race or--"
+
+"The people out there are white, Steve," interrupted his brother
+sardonically. "I wasn't contemplating introducing Enid here to Chinese,
+or Negroes, or Indians, or--"
+
+"Don't you see," said Mr. Stephen Maitland, stubbornly waving aside this
+sarcastic and irrelevant comment, "from your very conversation the vast
+gulf that there is between you and me? Although you had every advantage
+in life that birth can give you, we are--I mean you have changed so
+greatly," he had quickly added, loath to offend.
+
+But he mistook the light in his brother's eyes, it was a twinkle not a
+flash. Robert Maitland laughed, laughed with what his brother conceived
+to be indecorous boisterousness.
+
+"How little you know of the bone and sinew of this country, Steve," he
+exclaimed presently. Robert Maitland could not comprehend how it
+irritated his stately brother to be called "Steve." Nobody ever spoke of
+him but as Stephen Maitland--"But Lord, I don't blame you," continued
+the Westerner. "Any man whose vision is barred by a foothill couldn't be
+expected to know much of the main range and what's beyond."
+
+"There isn't any danger of my falling in love with anybody," said Enid
+at last, with all the confidence of two triumphant social seasons. "I
+think I must be immune even to dukes," she said gayly.
+
+"I referred to worthy young Americans of--" began her father who, to do
+him justice, was so satisfied with his own position that no foreign
+title 'dazzled' him in the least degree.
+
+"Rittenhouse Square," cut in Robert Maitland with amused sarcasm. "Well,
+Enid, you seem to have run the gamut of the east pretty thoroughly, come
+out and spend the summer with me in Colorado. My Denver house is open to
+you, we have a ranch amid the foothills, or if you are game we can
+break away from civilization entirely and find some unexplored, unknown
+canyon in the heart of the mountains and camp there. We'll get back to
+nature, which seems to be impossible in Philadelphia, and you will see
+things and learn things that you will never see or learn anywhere else.
+It'll do you good, too; from what I hear, you have been going the pace
+and those cheeks of yours are a little too pale for so splendid a girl,
+you look too tired under the eyes for youth and beauty."
+
+"I believe I am not very fit," said the girl, "and if father will
+permit--"
+
+"Of course, of course," said Stephen Maitland. "You are your own
+mistress anyway, and having no mother"--Enid's mother had died in her
+infancy--"I suppose that I could not interfere or object if I wished to,
+but no marrying or giving in marriage: Remember that."
+
+"Nonsense, father," answered the young woman lightly. "I am not anxious
+to assume the bonds of wedlock."
+
+"Well, that settles it," said Robert Maitland. "We'll give you a royal
+good time. I must run up to New York and Boston for a few days, but I
+shall be back in a week and I can pick you up then."
+
+"What is the house in Denver, is it er--may I ask, provided with all
+modern conveniences and--" began the elder Maitland nervously.
+
+Robert Maitland laughed.
+
+"What do you take us for, Steve? Do you ever read the western
+newspapers?"
+
+"I confess that I have not given much thought to the west since I
+studied geography and--_The Philadelphia Ledger_ has been thought
+sufficient for the family since--"
+
+"Gracious!" exclaimed Maitland. "The house cost half a million dollars
+if you must know it, and if there is anything that modern science can
+contribute to comfort and luxury that isn't in it, I don't know what it
+is. Shall it be the house in Denver, or the ranch, or a real camp in the
+wilds, Enid?"
+
+"First the house in Denver," said Enid, "and then the ranch and then the
+mountains."
+
+"Right O! That shall be the program."
+
+"Will my daughter's life be perfectly safe from the Cowboys, Indians and
+Desperadoes?"
+
+"Quite safe," answered Robert, with deep gravity. "The cowboys no longer
+shoot up the city and it has been years since the Indians have held up
+even a trolley car. The only real desperado in my acquaintance is the
+mildest, gentlest old stage driver in the west."
+
+"Do you keep up an acquaintance with men of that class, still?" asked
+his brother in great surprise.
+
+"You know I was Sheriff in a border county for a number of years and--"
+
+"But you must surely have withdrawn from all such society now."
+
+"Out west," said Robert Maitland, "when we know a man and like him, when
+we have slept by him on the plains, ridden with him through the
+mountains, fought with him against some border terror, some bad man
+thirsting to kill, we don't forget him, we don't cut his acquaintance,
+and it doesn't make any difference whether the one or the other of us is
+rich or poor. I have friends who can't frame a grammatical sentence, who
+habitually eat with their knives, yet who are absolutely devoted to me
+and I to them. The man is the thing out there." He smiled and turned to
+Enid. "Always excepting the supremacy of woman," he added.
+
+"How fascinating!" exclaimed the girl. "I want to go there right away."
+
+And this was the train of events which brought about the change. Behold
+the young lady astride of a horse for the first time in her life in a
+divided skirt, that fashion prevalent elsewhere not having been accepted
+by the best equestriennes of Philadelphia. She was riding ahead of a
+lumbering mountain wagon, surrounded by other riders, which was loaded
+with baggage, drawn by four sturdy broncos and followed by a number of
+obstinate little burros at present unencumbered with packs which would
+be used when they got further from civilization and the way was no
+longer practicable for anything on wheels.
+
+Miss Enid Maitland was clad in a way that would have caused her father a
+stroke of apoplexy if he could have been suddenly made aware of her
+dress, if she had burst into the drawing-room without announcement for
+instance. Her skirt was distinctly short, she wore heavy hobnailed shoes
+that laced up to her knees, she had on a bright blue sweater, a kind of
+a cap known as a tam-o-shanter was pinned above her glorious hair, which
+was closely braided and wound around her head. She wore a silk
+handkerchief loosely tied around her neck, a knife and revolver hung at
+her belt, a little watch was strapped to one wrist, a handsomely braided
+quirt dangled from the other, a pair of spurs adorned her heels and,
+most discomposing fact of all, by her side rode a handsome and dashing
+cavalier.
+
+How Mr. James Armstrong might have appeared in the conventional black
+and white of evening clothes was not quite clear to her, for she had as
+yet never beheld him in that obliterating raiment, but in the habit of
+the west, riding trousers, heavy boots that laced to the knees, blue
+shirt, his head covered by a noble "Stetson," mounted on the fiery
+restive bronco which he rode to perfection, he was ideal. Alas for the
+vanity of human proposition! Mr. James Armstrong, friend and protege
+these many years of Mr. Robert Maitland, mine owner and cattle man on a
+much smaller scale than his older friend, was desperately in love with
+Enid Maitland, and Enid, swept off her feet by a wooing which began with
+precipitant ardor so soon as he laid eyes on her, was more profoundly
+moved by his suit, or pursuit, than she could have imagined.
+
+_Omne ignotum pro magnifico!_
+
+She had been wooed in the conventional fashion many times and oft, on
+the sands of Palm Beach, along the cliffs of Newport, in the romantic
+glens of Mount Desert, in the old fashioned drawing-room overlooking
+Rittenhouse Square. She had been proposed to in motor cars, on the decks
+of yachts and once even while riding to hounds, but there had been a
+touch of sameness about it all. Never had she been made love to with the
+headlong gallantry, with the dashing precipitation of the west. It had
+swept her from her moorings. She found almost before she was aware of it
+that her past experience now stood her in little stead. She awoke to a
+sudden realization of the fact that she was practically pledged to James
+Armstrong after an acquaintance of three weeks in Denver and on the
+ranch.
+
+Business of the most important and critical nature required Armstrong's
+presence east at this juncture, and willy-nilly there was no way he
+could put off his departure longer. He had to leave the girl with an
+uneasy conscience that though he had her half-way promise, he had her
+but half-way won. He had snatched the ultimate day from his business
+demands to ride with her on the first stage of her journey to the
+mountains.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE GAME PLAYED IN THE USUAL WAY
+
+
+The road on which they advanced into the mountains was well made and
+well kept up. The canyon through the foothills was not very deep--for
+Colorado--and the ascent was gentle. Naturally it wound in every
+direction following the devious course of the river which it frequently
+crossed from one side to the other on rude log bridges. A brisk gallop
+of a half mile or so on a convenient stretch of comparatively level
+going put the two in the lead far ahead of the lumbering wagon and out
+of sight of those others of the party who had elected to go a horseback.
+There was perhaps a tacit agreement among the latter not to break in
+upon this growing friendship or, more frankly, not to interfere in a
+developing love affair.
+
+The canyon broadened here and there at long intervals and ranch houses
+were found in every clearing, but these were few and far between and for
+the most part Armstrong and Enid Maitland rode practically alone save
+for the passing of an occasional lumber wagon.
+
+"You can't think," began the man, as they drew rein after a splendid
+gallop and the somewhat tired horses readily subsided into a walk, "how
+I hate to go back and leave you."
+
+"And you can't think how loath I am to have you return," the girl
+flashed out at him with a sidelong glance from her bright blue eyes and
+a witching smile from her scarlet lips.
+
+"Enid Maitland," said the man, "you know I just worship you. I'd like to
+sweep you out of your saddle, lift you to the bow of mine and ride away
+with you. I can't keep my hands off you, I--"
+
+Before she realized what he would be about he swerved his horse toward
+her, his arm went around her suddenly. Taken completely off her guard
+she could make no resistance, indeed she scarcely knew what to expect
+until he crushed her to him and kissed her, almost roughly, full on the
+lips.
+
+"How dare you!" cried the girl, her face aflame, freeing herself at
+last, and swinging her own horse almost to the edge of the road which
+here ran on an excavation some fifty feet above the river.
+
+"How dare I?" laughed the audacious man, apparently no whit abashed by
+her indignation. "When I think of my opportunity I am amazed at my
+moderation."
+
+"Your opportunity, your moderation?"
+
+"Yes; when I had you helpless I took but one kiss, I might have held you
+longer and taken a hundred."
+
+"And by what right did you take that one?" haughtily demanded the
+outraged young woman, looking at him beneath level brows while the color
+slowly receded from her face. She had never been kissed by a man other
+than a blood relation in her life--remember, suspicious reader, that she
+was from Philadelphia--and she resented this sudden and unauthorized
+caress with every atom and instinct of her still somewhat conventional
+being.
+
+"But aren't you half-way engaged to me?" he pleaded in justification,
+seeing the unwonted seriousness with which she had received his impudent
+advance. "Didn't you agree to give me a chance?"
+
+"I did say that I liked you very much," she admitted, "no man better,
+and that I thought you might--"
+
+"Well, then--" he began.
+
+But she would not be interrupted.
+
+"I did not mean that you should enjoy all the privileges of a conquest
+before you had won me. I will thank you not to do that again, sir."
+
+"It seems to have had a very different effect upon you than it did upon
+me," replied the man fervently. "I loved you before, but now, since I
+have kissed you, I worship you."
+
+"It hasn't affected me that way," retorted the girl promptly, her face
+still frowning and indignant. "Not at all, and--"
+
+"Forgive me, Enid," pleaded the other. "I just couldn't help it. You
+were so beautiful I had to. I took the chance. You are not accustomed to
+our ways."
+
+"Is this your habit in your love affairs?" asked the girl swiftly and
+not without a spice of feminine malice.
+
+"I never had any love affairs before," he replied with a ready masculine
+mendacity, "at least none worth mentioning. But you see this is the
+west, we have gained what we have by demanding every inch that nature
+offers, and then claiming the all. That's the way we play the game out
+here and that's the way we win."
+
+"But I have not yet learned to play the 'game,' as you call it, by any
+such rules," returned the young woman determinedly, "and it is not the
+way to win me if I am the stake."
+
+"What is the way?" asked the man anxiously. "Show me and I'll take it
+no matter what its difficulty."
+
+"Ah, for me to point out the way would be to play traitor to myself,"
+she answered, relenting and relaxing a little before his devoted wooing.
+"You must find it without assistance. I can only tell you one thing."
+
+"And what is that?"
+
+"You do not advance toward the goal by such actions as those of a moment
+since."
+
+"Look here," said the other suddenly. "I am not ashamed of what I did,
+and I'm not going to pretend that I am, either."
+
+"You ought to be," severely.
+
+"Well, maybe so, but I'm not. I couldn't help it any more than I could
+help loving you the minute I saw you. Put yourself in my place."
+
+"But I am not in your place, and I can't put myself there. I do not wish
+to. If it be true, as you say, that you have grown to--care so much for
+me and so quickly--"
+
+"If it be true?" came the sharp interruption as the man bent toward her
+fairly devouring her with his bold, ardent gaze.
+
+"Well, since it is true," she admitted under the compulsion of his
+protest, "that fact is the only possible excuse for your action."
+
+"You find some justification for me, then!"
+
+"No, only a possibility, but whether it be true or not, I do not feel
+that way--yet."
+
+There was a saving grace in that last word, which gave him a little
+heart. He would have spoken, but she suffered no interruption, saying:
+
+"I have been wooed before, but--"
+
+"True, unless the human race has become suddenly blind," he said softly
+under his breath.
+
+"But never in such ungentle ways."
+
+"I suppose you have never run up against a real red-blooded man like me
+before."
+
+"If red-blooded be evidenced mainly by lack of self-control, perhaps I
+have not. Yet there are men whom I have met who would not need to
+apologize for their qualities even to you, Mr. James Armstrong."
+
+"Don't say that. Evidently I make but poor progress in my wooing. Never
+have I met with a woman quite like you."--And in that indeed lay some of
+her charm, and she might have replied in exactly the same language and
+with exactly the same meaning to him.--"I am no longer a boy. I must be
+fifteen years older than you are, for I am thirty-five."
+
+The difference between their years was not quite so great as he
+declared, but woman-like the girl let the statement pass unchallenged.
+
+"And I wouldn't insult your intelligence by saying you are the only
+woman that I have ever made love to, but there is a vast difference
+between making love to a woman and loving one. I have just found that
+out for the first time. I marvel at the past, and I am ashamed of it,
+but I thank God that I have been saved for this opportunity. I want to
+win you, and I am going to do it, too. In many things I don't match up
+with the people with whom you train. I was born out here, and I've made
+myself. There are things that have happened in the making that I am not
+especially proud of, and I am not at all satisfied with the results,
+especially since I have met you. The better I know you the less pleased
+I am with Jim Armstrong, but there are possibilities in me, I rather
+believe, and with you for inspiration, Heavens!"--the man flung out his
+hand with a fine gesture of determination. "They say that the east and
+west don't naturally mingle, but it's a lie, you and I can beat the
+world."
+
+The woman thrilled to his gallant wooing. Any woman would have done so,
+some of them would have lost their heads, but Enid Maitland was an
+exceedingly cool young person, for she was not quite swept off her feet,
+and did not quite lose her balance.
+
+"I like to hear you say things like that," she answered. "Nobody quite
+like you has ever made love to me, and certainly not in your way, and
+that's the reason I have given you a half-way promise to think about it.
+I was sorry that you could not be with us on this adventure, but now I
+am rather glad, especially if the even temper of my way is to be
+interrupted by anything like the outburst of a few moments since."
+
+"I am glad, too," admitted the man. "For I declare I couldn't help it.
+If I have to be with you either you have got to be mine, or else you
+would have to decide that it could never be, and then I'd go off and
+fight it out."
+
+"Leave me to myself," said the girl earnestly, "for a little while; it's
+best so. I would not take the finest, noblest man on earth--"
+
+"And I am not that."
+
+"Unless I loved him. There is something very attractive about your
+personality. I don't know in my heart whether it is that or--"
+
+"Good," said the man, as she hesitated. "That's enough," he gathered up
+the reins and whirled his horse suddenly in the road, "I am going back.
+I'll wait for your return to Denver, and then--"
+
+"That's best," answered the girl.
+
+She stretched out her hand to him, leaning backward. If he had been a
+different kind of a man he would have kissed it, as it was he took it
+in his own hand and almost crushed it with a fierce grip.
+
+"We'll shake on that, little girl," he said, and then without a backward
+glance he put spurs to his horse and galloped furiously down the road.
+
+No, she decided then and there, she did not love him, not yet. Whether
+she ever would she could not tell. And yet she was half bound to him.
+The recollection of his kiss was not altogether a pleasant memory; he
+had not done himself any good by that bold assault upon her modesty,
+that reckless attempt to rifle the treasure of her lips. No man had ever
+really touched her heart, although many had engaged her interest. Her
+experiences therefore were not definitive or conclusive. If she had
+truly loved James Armstrong, in spite of all that she might have said,
+she would have thrilled to the remembrance of that wild caress. The
+chances, therefore, were somewhat heavily against him that morning as he
+rode hopefully down the trail alone.
+
+His experiences in love affairs were much greater than hers. She was by
+no means the first woman he had kissed--remember suspicious reader that
+he was _not_ from Philadelphia!--hers were not the first ears into which
+he had poured passionate protestations. He was neither better nor worse
+than most men, perhaps he fairly enough represented the average, but
+surely fate had something better in store for such a superb woman--a
+girl of such attainments and such infinite possibilities, she must mate
+higher than with the average man. Perhaps there was a sub-consciousness
+of this in her mind as she silently waited to be overtaken by the rest
+of the party.
+
+There were curious glances and strange speculations in that little
+company as they saw her sitting her horse alone. A few moments before
+James Armstrong had passed them at a gallop, he had waved his hand as he
+dashed by and had smiled at them, hope giving him a certain assurance,
+although his confidence was scarcely warranted by the facts.
+
+His demeanor was not in consonance with Enid's somewhat grave and
+somewhat troubled present aspect. She threw off her preoccupation
+instantly and easily, however, and joined readily enough in the merry
+conversation of the way.
+
+Mr. Robert Maitland, as Armstrong had said, had known him from a boy.
+There were things in his career of which Maitland did not and could not
+approve, but they were of the past, he reflected, and Armstrong was
+after all a pretty good sort. Mr. Maitland's standards were not at all
+those of his Philadelphia brother, but they were very high. His
+experiences of men had been different; he thought that Armstrong,
+having certainly by this time reached years of discretion, could be
+safely entrusted with the precious treasure of the young girl who had
+been committed to his care, and for whom his affection grew as his
+knowledge of and acquaintanceship with her increased.
+
+As for Mrs. Maitland and the two girls and the youngster, they were
+Armstrong's devoted friends. They knew nothing about his past, indeed
+there were things in it of which Maitland himself was ignorant, and
+which had they been known to him might have caused him to withhold even
+his tentative acquiescence in the possibilities.
+
+Most of these things were known to old Kirkby who with masterly skill,
+amusing nonchalance and amazing profanity, albeit most of it under his
+breath lest he shock the ladies, tooled along the four nervous excited
+broncos who drew the big supply wagon. Kirkby was Maitland's oldest and
+most valued friend. He had been the latter's deputy sheriff, he had been
+a cowboy and a lumberman, a mighty hunter and a successful miner, and
+now although he had acquired a reasonable competence, and had a nice
+little wife and a pleasant home in the mountain village at the entrance
+to the canyon, he drove stage for pleasure rather than for profit. He had
+given over his daily twenty-five mile jaunt from Morrison to Troutdale
+to other hands for a short space that he might spend a little time with
+his old friend and the family, who were all greatly attached to him, on
+this outing.
+
+Enid Maitland, a girl of a kind that Kirkby had never seen before, had
+won the old man's heart during the weeks spent on the Maitland ranch. He
+had grown fond of her, and he did not think that Mr. James Armstrong
+merited that which he evidently so overwhelmingly desired. Kirkby was
+well along in years, but he was quite capable of playing a man's game
+for all that, and he intended to play it in this instance.
+
+Nobody scanned Enid Maitland's face more closely than he, sitting humped
+up on the front seat of the wagon, one foot on the high brake, his head
+sunk almost to the level of his knee, his long whip in his hand, his
+keen and somewhat fierce brown eyes taking in every detail of what was
+going on about him. Indeed there was but little that came before him
+that old Kirkby did not see.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE STORY AND THE LETTERS
+
+
+Imagine, if you please, the forest primeval; yes, the murmuring pines
+and the hemlocks of the poem as well, by the side of a rapidly rushing
+mountain torrent fed by the eternal snows of the lofty peaks of the
+great range. A level stretch of grassy land where a mountain brook
+joined the creek was dotted with clumps of pines and great boulders
+rolled down from the everlasting hills--half an acre of open clearing.
+On the opposite side of the brook the canyon wall rose almost sheer for
+perhaps five hundred feet, ending in jagged, needle-edged pinnacles of
+rock, sharp, picturesque and beautiful. A thousand feet above ran the
+timber line, and four thousand feet above that the crest of the greatest
+peak in the main range.
+
+The white tents of the little encampment which had gleamed so brightly
+in the clear air and radiant sunshine of Colorado, now stood dim and
+ghost-like in the red reflection of a huge camp fire. It was the evening
+of the first day in the wilderness.
+
+For two days since leaving the wagon, the Maitland party with its long
+train of burros heavily packed, its horsemen and the steady plodders on
+foot, had advanced into unexplored and almost inaccessible retreats of
+the mountains--into the primitive indeed! In this delightful spot they
+had pitched their tents and the permanent camp had been made. Wood was
+abundant, the water at hand was as cold as ice, as clear as crystal and
+as soft as milk. There was pasturage for the horses and burros on the
+other side of the mountain brook. The whole place was a little
+amphitheater which humanity occupied perhaps the first time since
+creation.
+
+Unpacking the burros, setting up the tents, making the camp, building
+the fire had used up the late remainder of the day which was theirs when
+they had arrived. Opportunity would come to-morrow to explore the
+country, to climb the range, to try the stream that tumbled down a
+succession of waterfalls to the right of the camp and roared and rushed
+merrily around its feet until, swelled by the volume of the brook, it
+lost itself in tree-clad depths far beneath. To-night rest after labor,
+to-morrow play after rest.
+
+The evening meal was over. Enid could not help thinking with what scorn
+and contempt her father would have regarded the menu, how his gorge
+would have risen--hers too for that matter!--had it been placed before
+him on the old colonial mahogany of the dining-room in Philadelphia. But
+up there in the wilds she had eaten the coarse homely fare with the zest
+and relish of the most seasoned ranger of the hills. Anxious to be of
+service, she had burned her hands and smoked her hair and scorched her
+face by usurping the functions of the young ranchman who had been
+brought along as cook, and had actually fried the bacon herself! Imagine
+a goddess with a frying pan! The black thick coffee and the condensed
+milk, drunk from the graniteware cup, had a more delicious aroma and a
+more delightful taste than the finest Mocha and Java in the daintiest
+porcelain of France. _Optimum condimentum._ The girl was frankly,
+ravenously hungry, the air, the altitude, the exertion, the excitement
+made her able to eat anything and enjoy it.
+
+She was gloriously beautiful, too; even her brief experience in the west
+had brought back the missing roses to her cheek, and had banished the
+bister circles from beneath her eyes. Robert Maitland, lazily reclining
+propped up against a boulder, his feet to the fire, smoking an old pipe
+that would have given his brother the horrors, looked with approving
+complacency upon her, confident and satisfied that his prescription was
+working well. Nor was he the only one who looked at her that way. Marion
+and Emma, his two daughters, worshiped their handsome Philadelphia
+cousin and they sat one on either side of her on the great log lying
+between the tents and the fire. Even Bob junior condescended to give her
+approving glances. The whole camp was at her feet. Mrs. Maitland had
+been greatly taken by her young niece. Kirkby made no secret of his
+devotion; Arthur Bradshaw and Henry Phillips, each a "tenderfoot" of the
+extremest character, friends of business connections in the east, who
+were spending their vacation with Maitland, shared in the general
+devotion; to say nothing of George the cook, and Pete, the packer and
+"horse wrangler."
+
+Phillips, who was an old acquaintance of Enid's, had tried his luck with
+her back east and had sense enough to accept as final his failure.
+Bradshaw was a solemn young man without that keen sense of humor which
+was characteristic of the west. The others were suitably dressed for
+adventure, but Bradshaw's idea of an appropriate costume was
+distinguished chiefly by long green felt puttees which swathed his huge
+calves and excited curious inquiry and ribald comment from the surprised
+denizens of each mountain hamlet through which they had passed, to all
+of which Bradshaw remained serenely oblivious. The young man, who does
+not enter especially into this tale, was a vestryman of the church in
+his home in the suburbs of Philadelphia. His piety had been put to a
+severe strain in the mountains.
+
+That day everybody had to work on the trail--everybody wanted to for
+that matter. The hardest labor consisted in the driving of the burros.
+Unfortunately there was no good and trained leader among them through an
+unavoidable mischance, and the campers had great difficulty in keeping
+the burros on the trail. To Arthur Bradshaw had been allotted the most
+obstinate, cross-grained and determined of the unruly band, and old
+Kirkby and George paid particular attention to instructing him in the
+gentle art of manipulating him over the rocky mountain trail.
+
+"Wall," said Kirkby with his somewhat languid, drawling, nasal voice,
+"that there burro's like a ship w'ich I often seed 'em w'n I was a kid
+down east afore I come out to God's country. Nature has pervided 'em
+with a kind of a hellum. I remember if you wanted the boat to go to the
+right you shoved the hellum over to the left. Sta'boad an' port was the
+terms as I recollects 'em. It's jest the same with burros, you takes 'em
+by the hellum, that's by the tail, git a good tight twist on it an' ef
+you want him to head to the right, slew his stern sheets around to the
+left, an' you got to be keerful you don't git no kick back w'ich if it
+lands on you is worse 'n the ree-coil of a mule."
+
+Arthur faithfully followed directions, narrowly escaping the outraged
+brute's small but sharp pointed heels on occasion. His efforts not being
+productive of much success, finally in his despair he resorted to brute
+strength; he would pick the little animal up bodily, pack and all--he
+was a man of powerful physique--and swing him around until his head
+pointed in the right direction; then with a prayer that the burro would
+keep it there for a few rods anyway, he would set him down and start him
+all over again. The process, oft repeated, became monotonous after a
+while. Arthur was a slow thinking man, deliberate in action, he stood it
+as long as he possibly could. Kirkby who rode one horse and led two
+others, and therefore was exempt from burro driving, observed him with
+great interest. He and Bradshaw had strayed way behind the rest of the
+party.
+
+At last Arthur's resistance, patience and piety, strained to the
+breaking point, gave way suddenly. Primitive instincts rose to the
+surface and overwhelmed him like a flood. He deliberately sat down on a
+fallen tree by the side of a trail, the burro halting obediently, turned
+and faced him with hanging head apparently conscious that he merited the
+disapprobation that was being heaped upon him, for from the desperate
+tenderfoot there burst forth so amazing, so fluent, so comprehensive a
+torrent of assorted profanity, that even the old past master in
+objurgation was astonished and bewildered. Where did Bradshaw, mild and
+inoffensive, get it? His proficiency would have appalled his Rector and
+amazed his fellow vestrymen. Not the Jackdaw of Rheims himself was so
+cursed as that little burro. Kirkby sat on his horse in fits of silent
+laughter until the tears ran 'down his cheeks, the only outward and
+visible expression of his mirth.
+
+Arthur only stopped when he had thoroughly emptied himself, possibly of
+an accumulation of years of repression.
+
+"Wall," said Kirkby, "you sure do overmatch anyone I ever heard w'en it
+comes to cursin'. W'y you could gimme cards an' spades an' beat me, an'
+I was thought to have some gift that-a-way in the old days."
+
+"I didn't begin to exhaust myself," answered Bradshaw, shortly, "and
+what I did say didn't equal the situation. I'm going home."
+
+"I wouldn't do that," urged the old man. "Here, you take the hosses an'
+I'll tackle the burro."
+
+"Gladly," said Arthur. "I would rather ride an elephant and drive a herd
+of them than waste another minute on this infernal little mule."
+
+The story was too good to keep, and around the camp fire that night
+Kirkby drawled it forth. There was a freedom and easiness of intercourse
+in the camp, which was natural enough. Cook, teamster, driver, host,
+guest, men, women, children, and I had almost said burros, stood on the
+same level. They all ate and lived together. The higher up the mountain
+range you go, the deeper into the wilderness you plunge, the further
+away from the conventional you draw, the more homogeneous becomes
+society and the less obvious are the irrational and unscientific
+distinctions of the lowlands. The guinea stamp fades and the man and the
+woman are pure gold or base metal inherently and not by any artificial
+standard.
+
+George, the cattle man who cooked, and Peter, the horse wrangler, who
+assisted Kirkby in looking after the stock, enjoyed the episode
+uproariously, and would fain have had the exact language repeated to
+them, but here Robert Maitland demurred, much to Arthur's relief, for he
+was thoroughly humiliated by the whole performance.
+
+It was very pleasant lounging around the camp fire, and one good story
+easily led to another.
+
+"It was in these very mountains," said Robert Maitland, at last, when
+his turn came, "that there happened one of the strangest and most
+terrible adventures that I ever heard of. I have pretty much forgotten
+the lay of the land, but I think it wasn't very far from here that there
+is one of the most stupendous canyons through the range. Nobody ever goes
+there--I don't suppose anybody has ever been there since. It must have
+been at least five years ago that it all happened."
+
+"It was four years an' nine months, exactly, Bob," drawled old Kirkby,
+who well knew what was coming.
+
+"Yes, I dare say you are right. I was up at Evergreen at the time,
+looking after timber interests, when a mule came wandering into the
+camp, saddle and pack still on his back."
+
+"I knowed that there mule," said Kirkby. "I'd sold it to a feller named
+Newbold, that had come out yere an' married Louise Rosser, old man
+Rosser's daughter, an' him dead, an' she bein' an orphan, an' this
+feller bein' a fine young man from the east, not a bit of a tenderfoot
+nuther, a minin' engineer he called hisself."
+
+"Well, I happened to be there too, you remember," continued Maitland,
+"and they made up a party to go and hunt up the man, thinking something
+might have happened."
+
+"You see," explained Kirkby, "we was all mighty fond of Louise Rosser.
+The hull camp was actin' like a father to her at the time, so long's she
+hadn't nobody else. We was all at the weddin', too, some six months
+afore. The gal married him on her own hook, of course, nobody makin'
+her, but somehow she didn't seem none too happy, although Newbold, who
+was a perfect gent, treated her white as far as we knowed."
+
+The old man stopped again and resumed his pipe.
+
+"Kirkby, you tell the story," said Maitland.
+
+"Not me," said Kirkby. "I have seen men shot afore for takin' words
+out'n other men's mouths an' I ain't never done that yit."
+
+"You always were one of the most silent men I ever saw," laughed George.
+"Why, that day Pete yere got shot accidental an' had his whole breast
+tore out w'en we was lumbering over on Black Mountain, all you said was,
+'Wash him off, put some axle grease on him an' tie him up.'"
+
+"That's so," answered Pete, "an' there must have been somethin' powerful
+soothin' in that axle grease, for here I am, safe an' sound, to this
+day."
+
+"It takes an old man," assented Kirkby, "to know when to keep his mouth
+shet. I learned it at the muzzle of a gun."
+
+"I never knew before," laughed Maitland, "how still a man you can be.
+Well, to resume the story, having nothing to do, I went out with the
+posse the sheriff gathered up--"
+
+"Him not thinkin' there had been any foul play," ejaculated the old man.
+
+"No, certainly not."
+
+"Well, what happened, Uncle Bob," inquired Enid.
+
+"Just you wait," said young Bob, who had heard the story. "This is an
+awful good story, Cousin Enid."
+
+"I can't wait much longer," returned the girl. "Please go on."
+
+"Two days after we left the camp, we came across an awful figure,
+ragged, blood stained, wasted to a skeleton, starved--"
+
+"I have seen men in extreme cases afore," interposed Kirkby, "but never
+none like him."
+
+"Nor I," continued Maitland.
+
+"Was it Newbold?" asked Enid.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And what had happened to him?"
+
+"He and his wife had been prospecting in these very mountains, she had
+fallen over a cliff and broken herself so terribly that Newbold had to
+shoot her."
+
+"What!" exclaimed Bradshaw. "You don't mean that he actually killed
+her?"
+
+"That's what he done," answered old Kirkby.
+
+"Poor man," murmured Enid.
+
+"But why?" asked Phillips.
+
+"They were five days away from a settlement, there wasn't a human being
+within a hundred and fifty miles of them, not even an Indian," continued
+Maitland. "She was so frightfully broken and mangled that he couldn't
+carry her away."
+
+"But why couldn't he leave her and go for help?" asked Bradshaw.
+
+"The wolves, the bears, or the vultures would have got her. These woods
+and mountains were full of them then and there are some of them, left
+now, I guess."
+
+The two little girls crept closer to their grown up cousin, each casting
+anxious glances beyond the fire light.
+
+"Oh, you're all right, little gals," said Kirkby, reassuringly, "they
+wouldn't come nigh us while this fire is burnin' an' they're pretty well
+hunted out I guess; 'sides, there's men yere who'd like nothin' better'n
+drawin' a bead on a big b'ar."
+
+"And so," continued Maitland, "when she begged him to shoot her, to put
+her out of her misery, he did so and then he started back to the
+settlement to tell his story and stumbled on us looking after him."
+
+"What happened then?"
+
+"I went back to the camp," said Maitland. "We loaded Newbold on a mule
+and took him with us. He was so crazy he didn't know what was happening,
+he went over the shooting again and again in his delirium. It was
+awful."
+
+"Did he die?"
+
+"I don't think so," was the answer, "but really I know nothing further
+about him. There were some good women in that camp, and we put him in
+their hands, and I left shortly afterwards."
+
+"I kin tell the rest," said old Kirkby. "Knowin' more about the
+mountains than most people hereabouts I led the men that didn't go back
+with Bob an' Newbold to the place w'ere he said his woman fell, an'
+there we found her, her body, leastways."
+
+"But the wolves?" queried the girl.
+
+"He'd drug her into a kind of a holler and piled rocks over her. He'd
+gone down into the canyon, w'ich was somethin' frightful, an' then
+climbed up to w'ere she'd lodged. We had plenty of rope, havin' brought
+it along a purpose, an' we let ourselves down to the shelf where she was
+a lyin'. We wrapped her body up in blankets an' roped it an' finally
+drug her up on the old Injun trail, leastways I suppose it was made
+afore there was any Injuns, an' brought her back to Evergreen camp,
+w'ich the only thing about it that was green was the swing doors on the
+saloon. We got a parson out from Denver an' give her a Christian
+burial."
+
+"It that all?" asked Enid as the old man paused again.
+
+"Nope."
+
+"Oh, the man?" exclaimed the woman with quick intuition.
+
+"He recovered his senses so they told us, an' w'en we got back he'd
+gone."
+
+"Where?" was the instant question.
+
+Old Kirkby stretched out his hands.
+
+"Don't ax me," he said. "He'd jest gone. I ain't never seed or heerd of
+him sence. Poor little Louise Rosser, she did have a hard time."
+
+"Yes," said Enid, "but I think the man had a harder time than she. He
+loved her?"
+
+"It looked like it," answered Kirkby.
+
+"If you had seen him, his remorse, his anguish, his horror," said
+Maitland, "you wouldn't have had any doubt about it. But it is getting
+late. In the mountains everybody gets up at daybreak. Your sleeping bags
+are in the tents, ladies, time to go to bed."
+
+As the party broke up, old Kirkby rose slowly to his feet. He looked
+meaningly toward the young woman, upon whom the spell of the tragedy
+still lingered, he nodded toward the brook, and then repeated his
+speaking glance at her. His meaning was patent, although no one else had
+seen the covert invitation.
+
+"Come, Kirkby," said the girl in quick response, "you shall be my
+escort. I want a drink before I turn in. No, never mind," she said, as
+Bradshaw and Phillips both volunteered, "not this time."
+
+The old frontiersman and the young girl strolled off together. They
+stopped by the brink of the rushing torrent a few yards away. The noise
+that it made drowned the low tones of their voices and kept the others,
+busy preparing to retire, from hearing what they said.
+
+"That ain't quite all the story, Miss Enid," said the old trapper
+meaningly. "There was another man."
+
+"What!" exclaimed the girl.
+
+"Oh, there wasn't nothin' wrong with Louise Rosser, w'ich she was Louise
+Newbold, but there was another man. I suspected it afore, that's why she
+was sad. W'en we found her body I knowed it."
+
+"I don't understand."
+
+"These'll explain," said Kirkby. He drew out from his rough hunting coat
+a package of soiled letters; they were carefully enclosed in an oil skin
+and tied with a faded ribbon. "You see," he continued, holding them in
+his hand, yet carefully concealing them from the people at the fire.
+"W'en she fell off the cliff--somehow the mule lost his footin', nobody
+never knowed how, leastways the mule was dead an' couldn't tell--she
+struck on a spur or shelf about a hundred feet below the brink.
+Evidently she was carryin' the letters in her dress. Her bosom was
+frightfully tore open an' the letters was lying there. Newbold didn't
+see 'em, because he went down into the canyon an' came up to the shelf,
+or butte head, w'ere the body was lyin', but we dropped down. I was the
+first man down an' I got 'em. Nobody else seein' me, an' there ain't no
+human eyes, not even my wife's, that's ever looked on them letters,
+except mine and now yourn."
+
+"You are going to give them to me?"
+
+"I am," said Kirkby.
+
+"But why?"
+
+"I want you to know the hull story."
+
+"But why, again?"
+
+"I rather guess them letters'll tell," answered the old man evasively,
+"an' I like you, and I don't want to see you throwed away."
+
+[Illustration: "Read the letters," he said. "They'll tell the story.
+Good night."]
+
+"What do you mean?" asked the girl, curiously, thrilling to the
+solemnity of the moment, the seriousness, the kind affection of the old
+frontiersman, the weird scene, the fire light, the tents gleaming
+ghost-like, the black wall of the canyon and the tops of the mountain
+range broadening out beneath the stars in the clear sky where they
+twinkled above her head. The strange and terrible story, and now the
+letters in her hand which somehow seemed to be imbued with human
+feeling, greatly affected her! Kirkby patted her on the shoulder.
+
+"Read the letters," he said. "They'll tell the story. Good-night."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE POOL AND THE WATER SPRITE
+
+
+Long after the others in the camp had sunk into the profound slumber of
+weary bodies and good consciences, a solitary candle in the small tent
+occupied by Enid Maitland alone, gave evidence that she was busy over
+the letters which Kirkby had handed to her.
+
+It was a very thoughtful girl indeed who confronted the old frontiersman
+the next morning. At the first convenient opportunity when they were
+alone together she handed him the packet of letters.
+
+"Have you read 'em?" he asked.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Wall, you keep 'em," said the old man gravely. "Mebbe you'll want to
+read 'em agin."
+
+"But I don't understand why you want me to have them."
+
+"Wall, I'm not quite sure myself why, but leastways I do an'--"
+
+"I shall be very glad to keep them," said the girl still more gravely,
+slipping them into one of the pockets of her hunting shirt as she
+spoke.
+
+The packet was not bulky, the letters were not many nor were they of any
+great length. She could easily carry them on her person and in some
+strange and inexplicable way she was rather glad to have them. She could
+not, as she had said, see any personal application to herself in them,
+and yet in some way she did feel that the solution of the mystery would
+be hers some day. Especially did she think this on account of the
+strange but quiet open emphasis of the old hunter.
+
+There was much to do about the camp in the mornings. Horses and burros
+to be looked after, fire wood to be cut, plans for the day arranged,
+excursions planned, mountain climbs projected. Later on unwonted hands
+must be taught to cast the fly for the mountain trout which filled the
+brook and pool, and all the varied duties, details and fascinating
+possibilities of camp life must be explained to the new-comers.
+
+The first few days were days of learning and preparation, days of mishap
+and misadventure, of joyous laughter over blunders in getting settled,
+or learning the mysteries of rod and line, of becoming hardened and
+acclimated. The weather proved perfect; it was late October and the
+nights were very cold, but there was no rain and the bright sunny days
+were invigorating and exhilarating to the last degree. They had huge
+fires and plenty of blankets and the colder it was in the night the
+better they slept.
+
+It was an intensely new experience for the girl from Philadelphia, but
+she showed a marked interest and adaptability, and entered with the
+keenest zest into all the opportunities of the charming days. She was a
+good sportswoman and she soon learned to throw a fly with the best of
+them. Old Kirkby took her under his especial protection, and as he was
+one of the best rods in the mountains, she enjoyed every advantage.
+
+She had always lived in the midst of life. Except in the privacy of her
+own chamber she had rarely ever been alone before--not twenty feet from
+a man: she thought whimsically; but here the charm of solitude attracted
+her, she liked to take her rod and wander off alone. She actually
+enjoyed it.
+
+The main stream that flowed down the canyon was fed by many affluents
+from the mountain sides, and in each of them voracious trout appeared.
+She explored them as she had opportunity. Sometimes with the others but
+more often by herself. She discovered charming and exquisite nooks,
+little stretches of grass, the size perhaps of a small room, flower
+decked, ferny bordered, overshadowed by tall gaunt pine trees, the
+sunlight filtering through their thin foliage, checkering the verdant
+carpet beneath. Huge moss covered boulders, wet with the everdashing
+spray of the roaring brooks, lay in mid-stream and with other natural
+stepping stones hard-by invited her to cross to either shore. Waterfalls
+laughed musically in her ears, deep still pools tempted her skill and
+address.
+
+Sometimes leaving rod and basket by the waterside, she climbed some
+particularly steep acclivity of the canyon wall and stood poised, wind
+blown, a nymph of the woods, upon some pinnacle of rock rising needle
+like at the canyon's edge above the sea of verdure which the wind waved
+to and fro beneath her feet. There in the bright light, with the breeze
+blowing her golden hair, she looked like some Norse goddess, blue eyed,
+exhilarated, triumphant.
+
+She was a perfectly formed woman on the ancient noble lines of Milo
+rather than the degenerate softness of Medici. She grew stronger of limb
+and fuller of breath, quicker and steadier of eye and hand, cooler of
+nerve, in these demanding, compelling adventures among the rocks in this
+mountain air. She was not a tall woman, indeed slightly under rather
+than over the medium size, but she was so ideally proportioned, she
+carried herself with the fearlessness of a young chamois, that she
+looked taller than she was. There was not an ounce of superfluous flesh
+upon her, yet she had the grace of Hebe, the strength of Pallas Athene,
+and the swiftness of motion of Atalanta. Had she but carried bow and
+spear, had she worn tunic and sandals, she might have stood for Diana
+and she would have had no cause to blush by comparison with the finest
+model of Praxiteles' chisel or the most splendid and glowing example of
+Appelles' brush.
+
+Uncle Robert was delighted with her. His contribution to her western
+outfit was a small Winchester. She displayed astonishing aptitude under
+his instructions and soon became wonderfully proficient with that deadly
+weapon and with a revolver also. There was little danger to be
+apprehended in the daytime among the mountains the more experienced men
+thought, still it was wise for the girl always to have a weapon in
+readiness, so in her journeyings, either the Winchester was slung from
+her shoulder or carried in her hand, or else the Colt dangled at her
+hip. At first she took both, but finally it was with reluctance that she
+could be persuaded to take either. Nothing had ever happened. Save for a
+few birds now and then she had seemed the only tenant of the
+wildernesses of her choice.
+
+One night after a camping experience of nearly two weeks in the
+mountains, and just before the time for breaking up and going back to
+civilization, she announced that early the next morning she was going
+down the canyon for a day's fishing excursion.
+
+None of the party had ever followed the little river very far, but it
+was known that some ten miles below the stream merged in a lovely
+gem-like lake in a sort of crater in the mountains. From thence by a
+series of waterfalls it descended through the foothills to the distant
+plains beyond. The others had arranged to climb one especially dangerous
+and ambition provoking peak which towered above them and which had never
+before been surmounted so far as they knew. Enid enjoyed mountain
+climbing. She liked the uplift in feeling that came from going higher
+and higher till some crest was gained, but on this occasion they urged
+her to accompany them in vain.
+
+When the fixity of her decision was established she had a number of
+offers to accompany her, but declined them all, bidding the others go
+their way. Mrs. Maitland, who was not feeling very well, old Kirkby, who
+had climbed too many mountains to feel much interest in that game, and
+Pete, the horse wrangler, who had to look after the stock, remained in
+camp; the others, with the exception of Enid, started at daybreak for
+their long ascent. She waited until the sun was about an hour high and
+then bade good-by to the three and began the descent of the canyon.
+Traveling light for she was going far--farther indeed than she knew--she
+left her Winchester at home, but carried the revolver with the fishing
+tackle and substantial luncheon.
+
+Now the river--a river by courtesy only--and the canyon turned sharply
+back on themselves just beyond the little meadow where the camp was
+pitched. Past the tents that had been their home for this joyous period
+the river ran due east for a few hundred feet, after which it curved
+sharply, doubled back and flowed westward for several miles before it
+gradually swung around to the east on its proper course again.
+
+It had been Enid's purpose to cut across the hills and strike the river
+where it turned eastward once more, avoiding the long detour back. In
+fact she had declared her intention of doing that to Kirkby and he had
+given her careful directions so that she should not get lost in the
+mountains.
+
+But she had plenty of time and no excuse or reason for saving it; she
+never tired of the charm of the canyon; therefore, instead of plunging
+directly over the spur of the range, she followed the familiar trail
+and after she had passed westward far beyond the limits of the camp to
+the turning, she decided, in accordance with that utterly irresponsible
+thing, a woman's will, that she would not go down the canyon that day
+after all, but that she would cross back over the range and strike the
+river a few miles above the camp and go up the canyon instead.
+
+She had been up in that direction a few times, but only for a short
+distance, as the ascent above the camp was very sharp; in fact for a
+little more than a mile the brook was only a succession of waterfalls;
+the best fishing was below the camp and the finest woods were deeper in
+the canyon. She suddenly concluded that she would like to see what was up
+in that unexplored section of the country and so, with scarcely a
+momentary hesitation, she abandoned her former plan and began the ascent
+of the range.
+
+Upon decisions so lightly taken what momentous consequences depend?
+Whether she should go up the stream or down the stream, whether she
+should follow the rivulet to its source or descend it to its mouth, was
+apparently a matter of little moment, yet her whole life turned
+absolutely upon that decision. The idle and unconsidered choice of the
+hour was fraught with gravest possibilities. Had that election been
+made with any suspicion, with any foreknowledge, had it come as the
+result of careful reasoning or far-seeing of probabilities, it might
+have been understandable, but an impulse, a whim, the vagrant idea of an
+idle hour, the careless chance of a moment, and behold! a life is
+changed. On one side were youth and innocence, freedom and contentment,
+a happy day, a good rest by the cheerful fire at night; on the other,
+peril of life, struggle, love, jealousy, self-sacrifice, devotion,
+suffering, knowledge--scarcely Eve herself when she stood apple in hand
+with ignorance and pleasure around her and enlightenment and sorrow
+before her, had greater choice to make.
+
+How fortunate we are that the future is veiled, that the psalmist's
+prayer that he might know his end and be certified how long he had to
+live is one that will not and cannot be granted; that it has been given
+to but One to foresee His own future, for no power apparently could
+enable us to stand up against what might be, because we are only human
+beings not sufficiently alight with the spark divine. We wait for the
+end because we must, but thank God we know it not until it comes.
+
+Nothing of this appeared to the girl that bright sunny morning. Fate hid
+in those mountains under the guise of fancy. Lighthearted, carefree,
+fitted with buoyant joy over every fact of life, she left the flowing
+water and scaled the cliff beyond which in the wilderness she was to
+find, after all, the world.
+
+The ascent was longer and more difficult and dangerous than she had
+imagined when she first confronted it, perhaps it was typical and
+foretold her progress. More than once she had to stop and carefully
+examine the face of the canyon wall for a practicable trail; more than
+once she had to exercise extremest care in her climb, but she was a bold
+and fearless mountaineer by this time and at last surmounting every
+difficulty she stood panting slightly, a little tired but triumphant,
+upon the summit.
+
+The ground was rocky and broken, the timber line was close above her and
+she judged that she must be several miles from the camp. The canyon was
+very crooked, she could see only a few hundred yards of it in any
+direction. She scanned her circumscribed limited horizon eagerly for the
+smoke from the great fire that they always kept burning in the camp, but
+not a sign of it was visible. She was evidently a thousand feet above
+the river whence she had come. Her standing ground was a rocky ridge
+which fell away more gently on the other side for perhaps two hundred
+feet toward the same brook. She could see through vistas in the trees
+the up-tossed peaks of the main range, bare, chaotic, snow covered,
+lonely, majestic, terrible.
+
+The awe of the everlasting hills is greater than that of the heaving
+sea. Save in the infrequent periods of calm, the latter always moves,
+the mountains are the same for all time. The ocean is quick, noisy,
+living; the mountains are calm, still--dead.
+
+The girl stood as it were on the roof of the world, a solitary human
+being, so far as she knew, in the eye of God above her. Ah, but the Eyes
+Divine look long and see far; things beyond the human ken are all
+revealed. None of the party had ever come this far from the camp in this
+direction she knew. And she was glad to be the first, as she fatuously
+thought, to observe that majestic solitude.
+
+Surveying the great range she wondered where the peak climbers might be.
+Keen sighted though she was she could not discover them. The crest that
+they were attempting lay in another direction hidden by a nearer spur.
+She was in the very heart of the mountains; peaks and ridges rose all
+about her, so much so that the general direction of the great range was
+lost. She was at the center of a far flung concavity of crest and
+range. She marked one towering point to the right of her that rose
+massively grand above all the others. To-morrow she would climb to that
+high point and from its lofty elevation look upon the heavens above and
+the earth beneath, aye and the waters under the earth far below.
+To-morrow!--it is generally known that we do not usually attempt the
+high points in life's range at once, content are we with lower altitudes
+to-day.
+
+There was no sound above her, the rushing water over the rocks upon the
+nearer side she could hear faintly beneath her, there was no wind about
+her, to stir the long needles of the pines. It was very still, the kind
+of a stillness of body which is the outward and visible complement of
+that stillness of the soul in which men know God. There had been no
+earthquake, no storm, the mountains had not heaved beneath her feet, the
+great and strong wind had not passed by, the rocks had not been rent and
+broken, yet Enid caught herself listening as if for a Voice. The thrall
+of majesty, silence, loneliness was upon her. She stood--one stands when
+there is a chance of meeting God on the way, one does not kneel until He
+comes--with her raised hands clasped, her head uplifted in exultation
+unspeakable, God-conquered with her face to heaven upturned.
+
+"I will lift up mine eyes to the hills whence cometh my salvation," her
+heart sang voicelessly. "We praise Thee, O God, we magnify Thy Holy Name
+forever," floated through her brain, in great appreciation of the
+marvelous works of the Almighty Shaping Master Hand. Caught up as it
+were into the heavens, her soul leaped to meet its maker. Thinking to
+find God she waited there on the heaven-kissing hill.
+
+How long she stayed she did not realize; she took no note of time, it
+did not occur to her even to look at the watch on her wrist; she had
+swept the skyline cut off as it were by the peaks when first she came,
+and when at last she turned away--even divinest moments must have an
+end--she looked not backward. She saw not a little cloud hid on the
+horizon behind the rampart of ages, as it were, no bigger than a man's
+hand, a cloud full of portent and which would alarm greatly the veteran
+Kirkby in the camp and Maitland on the mountain top. Both of them
+unfortunately were unable to see it, one being on the other side of the
+range, and the other deep in the canyon, and for both of them as for the
+girl the sun still shone brightly.
+
+The declivity to the river on the upper side was comparatively easy and
+Enid Maitland went slowly and thoughtfully down to it until she reached
+the young torrent. She got her tackle ready, but did no casting as she
+made her way slowly up the ever narrowing, ever rising canyon. She was
+charmed and thrilled by the wild beauty of the way, the spell of the
+mountains was deep upon her. Thoughtfully she wandered on until,
+presently she came to another little amphitheater like that where the
+camp was pitched, only smaller. Strange to say the brook, or river, here
+broadened into a little pool perhaps twenty feet across; a turn had
+thrown a full force of water against the huge boulder wall and in ages
+of effort a giant cup had been hollowed out of the native rock. The pool
+was perhaps four or five feet deep, the rocky bottom worn smooth, the
+clearing was upon the opposite side and the banks were heavily wooded
+beyond the spur of the rock which formed the back of the pool. She could
+see the trout in it. She made ready to try her fortune, but before she
+did so an idea came to her--daring, unconventional, extraordinary, begot
+of innocence and inexperience.
+
+The water of course was very cold, but she had been accustomed all her
+life to taking a bath at the natural temperature of the water at
+whatever season. She knew that the only people in that wilderness were
+the members of her own party; three of them were at the camp below, the
+others were ascending a mountain miles away. The canyon was deep sunk,
+and she satisfied herself by careful observation that the pool was not
+overlooked by any elevations far or near.
+
+Her ablutions in common with those of the rest of the campers had been
+by piecemeal of necessity. Here was an opportunity for a plunge in a
+natural bath tub. She was as certain that she would be under no
+observation as if she were in the privacy of her own chamber. Here again
+impulse determined the end. In spite of her assurance there was some
+little apprehension in the glance that she cast about her, but it soon
+vanished. There was no one. She was absolutely alone. The pool and the
+chance of the plunge had brought her down to earth again; the thought of
+the enlivening exhilaration of the pure cold water dashing against her
+own sweet warm young body changed the current of her thoughts--the
+anticipation of it rather.
+
+Impulsively she dropped her rod upon the grass, unpinned her cap, threw
+the fishing basket from her shoulder. She was wearing a stout sweater;
+that too joined the rest. Nervous hands manipulated buttons and the
+fastenings. In a few moments the sweet figure of youth, of beauty, of
+purity and of innocence brightened the sod and shed a white luster upon
+the green of the grass and moss and pines, reflecting light to the gray
+brown rocks of the range. So Eve may have looked on some bright Eden
+morning. A few steps forward and this nymph of the woods, this naiad of
+the mountains, plunged into the clear, cold waters of the pool--a water
+sprite and her fountain!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE BEAR, THE MAN AND THE FLOOD
+
+
+The water was deep enough to receive her dive and the pool was long
+enough to enable her to swim a few strokes. The first chill of the icy
+water was soon lost in the vigorous motions in which she indulged, but
+no mere human form however hardened and inured could long endure that
+frigid bath. Reluctantly, yet with the knowledge that she must go, after
+one more sweeping dive and a few magnificent strokes, she raised her
+head from the water lapping her white shoulders, and shaking her face
+clear from the drops of crystal, faced the shore. It was no longer
+untenanted, she was no longer alone.
+
+What she saw startled and alarmed her beyond measure. Planted on her
+clothes, looking straight at her, having come upon her in absolute
+silence, nothing having given her the least warning of his approach, and
+now gazing at her with red, hungry, evil, vicious eyes, the eyes of the
+covetous filled with the cruel lust of desire and carnal possession, and
+yet with a glint of surprise in them, too, as if he did not know quite
+what to make of the white loveliness of this unwonted apparition
+flashing so suddenly at him out of the water, this strange invader of
+the domain of which he fancied he was sole master and lord paramount,
+stood a great, monstrous frightful looking Grizzly Bear. _Ursus
+Horribilis_, indeed.
+
+He was an aged monarch of the mountains, reddish brown in color
+originally, but now a hoary dirty gray. His body was massive and burly,
+his legs short, dark colored and immensely powerful. His broad square
+head moved restlessly. His fanged mouth opened and a low hoarse growl
+came from the red cavern of his throat. He was an old and terrible
+monster who had tasted the blood of man and who would not hesitate to
+attack even without provocation especially anything at once so harmless
+and so whitely inviting as the girl in the pool.
+
+The girl forgot the chill of the water in the horror of that moment.
+Alone, naked, defenseless, lost in the mountains, with the most
+powerful, sanguinary and ferocious beast of the continent in front of
+her, she could neither fight nor fly, she could only wait his pleasure.
+He snuffed at her clothing a moment and stood with one fore foot
+advanced for a second or two growling deeply, evidently, she thought
+with almost superhuman keenness of perception, preparing to leap into
+the pool and seize upon her.
+
+The rush of the current as it swirled about her caused her to sway
+gently, otherwise she stood motionless and apprehensive, terribly
+expectant. She had made no sound, and save for that low growl the great
+beast had been equally silent. There was an awful fixity in the gaze she
+turned upon him and he wavered under it. It annoyed him. It bespoke a
+little of the dominance of the human. But she was too surprised, too
+unnerved, too desperately frightened to put forth the full power of mind
+over matter. There was piteous appeal in her gaze. The bear realized
+this and mastered her sufficiently.
+
+She did not know whether she was in the water or in the air, there were
+but two points upon which her consciousness was focussed in the vast
+ellipse of her imagination. Another moment or two and all coherency of
+thought would be gone. The grizzly, still unsettled and uneasy before
+her awful glance, but not deterred by it, turned its great head sideways
+a little to escape the direct immobile stare, brought his sharp clawed
+foot down heavily and lurched forward.
+
+Scarcely had a minute elapsed in which all this happened. That huge
+threatening heave of the great body toward her relieved the tension.
+She found voice at last. Although it was absolutely futile she realized
+as she cried, her released lips framed the loud appeal.
+
+"Help! for God's sake."
+
+Although she knew she cried but to the bleak walls of the canyon, the
+drooping pines, the rushing river, the distant heaven, the appeal went
+forth accompanied by the mightiest conjuration known to man.
+
+"For God's sake, Help!"
+
+How dare poor humanity so plead, the doubter cries. What is it to God if
+one suffers, another bleeds, another dies. What answer could come out of
+that silent sky?
+
+Sometimes the Lord speaks with the loud voice of men's fashioning,
+instead of in that still whisper which is His own and the sound of which
+we fail to catch because of our own ignoble babble!
+
+The answer to her prayer came with a roar in her nervous frightened ear
+like a clap of thunder. Ere the first echo of it died away, it was
+succeeded by another and another and another, echoing, rolling,
+reverberating among the rocks in ever diminishing but long drawn out
+peals.
+
+On the instant the bear rose to his feet, swayed slightly and struck as
+at an imaginary enemy with his weighty paws. A hoarse, frightful
+guttering roar burst from his red slavering jaws, then he lurched
+sideways and fell forward, fighting the air madly for a moment, and lay
+still.
+
+With staring eyes that missed no detail, she saw that the brute had been
+shot in the head and shoulder three times, and that he was apparently
+dead. The revulsion that came over her was bewildering; she swayed
+again, this time not from the thrust of the water but with sick
+faintness. The tension suddenly taken off, unstrung, the loose bow of
+her spirit quivered helplessly; the arrow of her life almost fell into
+the stream.
+
+And then a new and more appalling terror swept over her. Some man had
+fired that shot. Actaeon had spied upon Diana. With this sudden
+revelation of her shame, the red blood beat to the white surface in
+spite of the chill water. The anguish of that moment was greater than
+before. She could be killed, torn to pieces, devoured, that was a small
+thing, but that she should be so outraged in her modesty was
+unendurable. She wished the hunter had not come. She sunk lower in the
+water for a moment fain to hide in its crystal clarity and realized as
+she did how frightfully cold she was. Yet, although she froze where she
+was and perished with cold she could not go out on the bank to dress,
+and it would avail her little she saw swiftly, since the huge monster
+had fallen a dead heap on her clothes.
+
+Now all this, although it takes minutes to tell, had happened in but a
+few seconds. Seconds sometimes include hours, even a life time, in their
+brief composition. She thought it would be just as well for her to sink
+down and die in the water, when a sudden splashing below her caused her
+to look down the stream.
+
+She was so agitated that she could make out little except that there was
+a man crossing below her and making directly toward the body of the
+bear. He was a tall black bearded man, she saw he carried a rifle, he
+looked neither to the right nor to the left, he did not bestow a glance
+upon her. She could have cried aloud in thanksgiving for his apparent
+obliviousness to her as she crouched now neck deep in the benumbing
+cold. The man stepped on the bank, shook himself like a great dog might
+have done and marched over to the bear. He up-rooted a small near-by
+pine, with the ease of a Hercules--and she had time to mark and marvel
+at it in spite of everything--and then with that as a lever he
+unconcernedly and easily heaved the body of the monster from off her
+clothing. She was to learn later what a feat of strength it was to move
+that inert carcass weighing much more than half a ton.
+
+Thereafter he dropped the pine tree by the side of the dead grizzly and
+without a backward look tramped swiftly and steadily up the canyon
+through the trees, turning at the point of it, and was instantly lost to
+sight. His gentle and generous purpose was obvious even to the
+frightened, agitated, excited girl.
+
+The woman watched him until he disappeared, a few seconds longer, and
+then she hurled herself through the water and stepped out upon the
+shore. Her sweater, which the bear had dragged forward in its advance,
+lay on top of the rest of her clothes covered with blood. She threw it
+aside and with nervous, frantic energy, wet, cold, though she was, she
+jerked on in some fashion enough clothes to cover her nakedness and then
+with more leisurely order and with necessary care she got the rest of
+her apparel in its accustomed place upon her body, and then when it was
+all over she sank down prone and prostrate upon the grass by the carcass
+of the now harmless monster which had so nearly caused her undoing, and
+shivered, cried and sobbed as if her heart would break.
+
+She was chilled to the bone by her motionless sojourn, albeit it had
+been for scarcely more than a minute, in that icy water, and yet the
+blood rushed to her brow and face, to every hidden part of her in waves
+as she thought of it. It was a good thing that she cried, she was not a
+weeping woman, her tears came slowly as a rule and then came hard. She
+rather prided herself upon her stoicism, but in this instance the great
+deeps of her nature had been undermined and the fountains thereof were
+fain to break forth.
+
+How long she lay there, warmth coming gradually to her under the direct
+rays of the sun, she did not know, and it was a strange thing that
+caused her to arise. It grew suddenly dark over her head. She looked up
+and a rim of frightful, black, dense clouds had suddenly blotted out the
+sun. The clouds were lined with gold and silver and the long rays shot
+from behind the somber blind over the yet uncovered portions of the
+heaven, but the clouds moved with the irresistible swiftness and
+steadiness of a great deluge. The wall of them lowered above her head
+while they extended steadily and rapidly across the sky toward the other
+side of the canyon and the mountain wall.
+
+A storm was brewing such as she had never seen, such as she had no
+experience to enable her to realize its malign possibilities. Nay, it
+was now at hand. She had no clew, however, of what was toward, how
+terrible a danger overshadowed her. Frightened but unconscious of all
+the menace of the hour her thoughts flew down the canyon to the camp. She
+must hasten there. She looked for her watch which she had picked from
+the grass and which she had not yet put on; the grizzly had stepped upon
+it, it was irretrievably ruined. She judged from her last glimpse of the
+sun that it must now be early afternoon. She rose to her feet and
+staggered with weakness, she had eaten nothing since morning, and the
+nervous shock and strain through which she had gone had reduced her to a
+pitiable condition.
+
+Her luncheon had fortunately escaped unharmed. In a big pocket of her
+short skirt there was a small flask of whiskey, which her Uncle Robert
+had required her to take with her. She felt sick and faint, but she knew
+that she must eat if she was to make the journey, difficult as it might
+prove, back to the camp. She forced herself to take the first mouthful
+of bread and meat she had brought with her, but when she had tasted she
+needed no further incentive, she ate to the last crumb; she thought this
+was the time she needed stimulants too, and mingling the cold water from
+the brook with a little of the ardent spirit from the flask she drank.
+Some of the chill had worn off, some of the fatigue had gone.
+
+She rose to her feet and started down the canyon; her bloody sweater
+still lay on the ground with other things of which she was heedless. It
+had grown colder but she realized that the climb down the canyon would
+put her stagnant blood in circulation and all would be well.
+
+Before she began the descent of the pass, she cast one long glance
+backward whither the man had gone. Whence came he, who was he, what had
+he seen, where was he now? She thanked God for his interference in one
+breath and hated him for his presence in the other.
+
+The whole sky was now black with drifting clouds, lightning flashed
+above her head, muttered peals of thunder, terrifically ominous, rocked
+through the silent hills. The noise was low and subdued but almost
+continuous. With a singular and uneasy feeling that she was being
+observed, she started down the canyon, plunging desperately through the
+trees, leaping the brook from side to side where it narrowed, seeking
+ever the easiest way. She struggled on, panting with sudden inexplicable
+terror almost as bad as that which had overwhelmed her an hour
+before--and growing more intense every moment, to such a tragic pass had
+the day and its happenings brought her.
+
+Poor girl, awful experience really was to be hers that day. The Fates
+sported with her--bodily fear, outraged modesty, mental anguish and now
+the terror of the storm.
+
+The clouds seemed to sink lower, until they almost closed about her.
+Long gray ghostly arms reached out toward her. It grew darker and darker
+in the depths of the canyon. She screamed aloud--in vain.
+
+Suddenly the rolling thunder peals concentrated, balls of fire leaped
+out of the heavens and struck the mountains where she could actually see
+them. There are not words to describe the tremendous crashings which
+seemed to splinter the hills, to be succeeded by brief periods of
+silence, to be followed by louder and more terrific detonations.
+
+In one of those appalling alternations from sound to silence she heard a
+human cry--an answering cry to her own! It came from the hills behind
+her. It must proceed, she thought, from the man. She could not meet that
+man; although she craved human companionship as never before, she did
+not want his. She could not bear it. Better the wrath of God, the fury
+of the tempest.
+
+Heedless of the sharp note of warning, of appeal, in the voice ere it
+was drowned by another roll of thunder, she plunged on in the darkness.
+The canyon narrowed here, she made her way down the ledges, leaping
+recklessly from rock to rock, slipping, falling, grazing now one side,
+now the other, hurling herself forward with white face and bruised body
+and torn hands and throbbing heart that would fain burst its bonds.
+There was once an ancient legend of a human creature, menaced by all the
+furies, pitilessly pursued by every malefic spirit of earth and air;
+like him this sweet young girl, innocent, lovely, erstwhile happy, fled
+before the storm.
+
+And then the heavens opened, the fountains of the great deeps were
+broken down, and with absolute literalness the floods descended. The
+bursting clouds, torn asunder by the wild winds, riven by the pent up
+lightning within their black and turgid breasts, disburdened themselves.
+The water came down, as it did of old when God washed the face of the
+world, in a flood. The narrow of the canyon was filled ten, twenty,
+thirty feet in a moment by the cloud burst. The black water rolled and
+foamed, surging like the rapids at Niagara.
+
+The body of the girl, utterly unprepared, was caught up in a moment and
+flung like a bolt from a catapult down the seething sea filled with the
+trunks of the trees and the debris of the mountains, tossing almost
+humanly in the wild confusion. She struck out strongly, swimming more
+because of the instinct of life than for any other reason. A helpless
+atom in the boiling flood. Growing every minute greater and greater as
+the angry skies disgorged themselves of their pent up torrents upon her
+devoted head.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+DEATH, LIFE AND THE RESURRECTION
+
+
+The man was coming back from one of his rare visits to the settlements.
+Ahead of him he drove a train of burros who, well broken to their work,
+followed with docility the wise old leader in the advance. The burros
+were laden with his supplies for the approaching winter. The season was
+late, the mountains would soon be impassable on account of the snow,
+indeed he chose the late season always for his buying in order that he
+might not be followed and it was his habit to buy in different places in
+different years that his repeated and expected presence at one spot
+might not arouse suspicion.
+
+Intercourse with his fellow men was limited to this yearly visit to a
+settlement and even that was of the briefest nature, confined always to
+the business in hand. Even when busy in the town he pitched a small tent
+in the open on the outskirts and dwelt apart. No men there in those days
+pried into the business of other men too closely. Curiosity was neither
+safe nor necessary. If he aroused transient interest or speculation it
+soon died away. He vanished into the mountains and as he came no more to
+that place, he was soon forgotten.
+
+Withdrawing from his fellow men and avoiding their society, this man was
+never so satisfied as when alone in the silent hills. His heart and
+spirit rose with every step he made away from the main traveled roads or
+the more difficult mountain trails.
+
+For several days he journeyed through the mountains, choosing the
+wildest and most inaccessible parts for his going. Amid the canyons and
+peaks he threaded his way with unerring accuracy, ascending higher and
+higher until at last he reached the mountain aerie, the lonely
+hermitage, where he made his home. There he reveled in his isolation.
+What had been punishment, expiation, had at last become pleasure.
+
+Civilization was bursting through the hills in every direction, railways
+were being pushed hither and thither, the precious metals were being
+discovered at various places and after them came hoards of men and with
+them--God save the mark--women; but his section of the country had
+hitherto been unvisited even by hunters, explorers, miners or pleasure
+seekers. He was glad, he had grown to love the spot where he had made
+his home, and he had no wish to be forced, like little Joe, to move on.
+
+Once a man who loved the strife, noble or ignoble, of the madding crowd,
+he had grown accustomed to silence, habituated to solitude. Winter and
+summer alike he roamed the mountains, delving into every forest,
+exploring every hidden canyon, surmounting every inaccessible peak; no
+storm, no snow, no condition of wind or weather daunted him or stopped
+him. He had no human companionship by which to try his mettle, but
+nevertheless over the world of the material which lay about him he was a
+master as he was a man.
+
+He found some occupation, too, in the following of old Adam's
+inheritance, during the pleasant months of summer he made such garden as
+he could. His profession of mining engineer gave him other employment.
+Round about him lay treasures inestimable, precious metals abounded in
+the hills. He had located them, tested, analyzed, estimated the wealth
+that was his for the taking--it was as valueless to him as the doubloons
+and golden guineas were to Selkirk on his island. Yet the knowledge that
+it was there gave him an energizing sense of potential power,
+unconsciously enormously flattering to his self esteem.
+
+Sometimes he wandered to the extreme verge of the range and on clear
+days saw far beneath him the smoke of great cities of the plains. He
+could be a master among men as he was a master among mountains, if he
+chose. On such occasions he laughed cynically, scornfully, yet rarely
+did he ever give way to such emotion.
+
+A great and terrible sorrow was upon him; cherishing a great passion he
+had withdrawn himself from the common lot to dwell upon it. From a
+perverted sense of expiation, in a madness of grief, horror and despair,
+he had made himself a prisoner to his ideas in the desert of the
+mountains. Back to his cabin he would hasten, and there surrounded by
+his living memories--deathless yet of the dead!--he would recreate the
+past until dejection drove him abroad on the hills to meet God if not
+man--or woman. Night-day, sunshine-shadow, heat-cold, storm-calm; these
+were his life.
+
+Having disburdened his faithful animals of their packs and having seen
+them safely bestowed for the winter in the corral he had built near the
+base of the cliff upon which his rude home was situated, he took his
+rifle one morning for one of those lonely walks across the mountains
+from which he drew such comfort because he fancied the absence of man
+conduced to the nearness of God. It was a delusion as old nearly as the
+Christian religion. Many had made themselves hermits in the past in
+remorse for sin and for love toward God; this man had buried himself in
+the wilderness in part for the first of these causes, in other part for
+the love of woman. In these days of swift and sudden change he had been
+constant to a remembrance and abiding in his determination for five
+swift moving years. The world for him had stopped its progress in one
+brief moment five years back--the rest was silence. What had happened
+since then out yonder where people were mated he did not know and he did
+not greatly care.
+
+In his visits to the settlements he asked no questions, he bought no
+papers, he manifested no interest in the world; something in him had
+died in one fell moment, and there had been, as yet, no resurrection.
+Yet life, and hope, and ambition do not die, they are indeed eternal.
+_Resurgam!_
+
+Life with its tremendous activities, its awful anxieties, its wearing
+strains, its rare triumphs, its opportunities for achievement, for
+service; hope with its illuminations, its encouragements, its
+expectations; ambition with its stimulus, its force, its power; and
+greatest of all love, itself alone--all three were latent in him. In
+touch with a woman these had gone. Something as powerful and as human
+must bring them back.
+
+It was against nature that a man dowered as he should so live to himself
+alone. Some voice should cry to his soul in its cerements of futile
+remorse, vain expiations and benumbing recollection; some day he should
+burst these grave clothes self-wound about him and be once more a man
+and a master among men, rather than the hermit and the recluse of the
+solitudes.
+
+He did not allow these thoughts to come into his life, indeed it is
+quite likely that he scarcely realized them at all yet; such
+possibilities did not present themselves to him; perhaps the man was a
+little mad that morning, maybe he trembled on the verge of a
+break--upward, downward I know not so it be away--unconsciously as he
+strode along the range.
+
+He had been walking for some hours, and as he grew thirsty it occurred
+to him to descend to the level of the brook which he heard below him and
+of which he sometimes caught a flashing glimpse through the trees. He
+scrambled down the rocks and found himself in a thick grove of pine.
+Making his way slowly and with great difficulty through the tangle of
+fallen timber which lay in every direction, the sound of a human voice,
+the last thing on earth to be expected in that wilderness, smote upon
+the fearful hollow of his ear.
+
+Any voice or any word then and there would have surprised him, but there
+was a note of awful terror in this voice, a sound of frightened appeal.
+The desperation in the cry left him no moment for thought, the demand
+was for action. The cry was not addressed to him, apparently, but to
+God, yet it was he who answered--sent doubtless by that Over-looking
+Power who works in such mysterious ways His wonders to perform!
+
+He leaped over the intervening trees to the edge of the forest where the
+rapid waters ran. To the right of him rose a huge rock, or cliff, in
+front of him the canyon bent sharply to the north, and beneath him a few
+rods away a speck of white gleamed above the water of a deep and still
+pool that he knew.
+
+_There was a woman there!_
+
+He had time for but the swiftest glance, he had surmised that the voice
+was not that of a man's voice instantly he heard it, and now he was
+sure. She stood white breast deep in the water staring ahead of her. The
+next instant he saw what had alarmed her--a Grizzly Bear, the largest,
+fiercest, most forbidding specimen he had ever seen. There were a few of
+those monsters still left in the range, he himself had killed several.
+
+The woman had not seen him. He was a silent man by long habit;
+accustomed to saying nothing, he said nothing now. But instantly aiming
+from the hip with a wondrous skill and a perfect mastery of the weapon,
+and indeed it was a short range for so huge a target, he pumped bullet
+after bullet from his heavy Winchester into the evil monarch of the
+mountains. The first shot did for him, but making assurance doubly and
+trebly sure, he fired again and again. Satisfied at last that the bear
+was dead, and observing that he had fallen upon the clothes of the
+bather, he turned, descended the stream for a few yards until he came to
+a place where it was easily fordable, stepped through it without a
+glance toward the woman shivering in the water, whose sensation, so far
+as a mere man could, he thoroughly understood and appreciated, and whose
+modesty he fain would spare, having not forgotten to be a gentleman in
+five years of his own society--high test of quality, that.
+
+He climbed out upon the bank, up-rooted a small tree, rolled the bear
+clear of the heap of woman's clothing and marched straight ahead of him
+up the canyon and around the bend.
+
+Thereafter, being a man, he did not faint or fall, but completely
+unnerved he leaned against the canyon wall, dropped his gun at his feet
+and stood there trembling mightily, sweat bedewing his forehead, and the
+sweat had not come from his exertions. In one moment the whole even
+tenor of his life was changed. The one glimpse he had got of those white
+shoulders, that pallid face, that golden head raised from the water had
+swept him back five years. He had seen once more in the solitude a
+woman.
+
+Other women he had seen at a distance and avoided in his yearly visits
+to the settlements of course; these had passed him by remotely, but here
+he was brought in touch intimately with humanity. He who had taken life
+had saved it. A woman had sent him forth, was a woman to call him back?
+
+He cursed himself for his weakness. He shut his eyes and summoned other
+memories. How long he stood there he could not have told; he was
+fighting a battle and it seemed to him at last that he triumphed.
+Presently the consciousness came to him that perhaps he had no right to
+stand there idle, it might be that the woman needed him, perhaps she had
+fainted in the water, perhaps--He turned toward the bend which concealed
+him from her and then he stopped. Had he any right to intrude upon her
+privacy? He must of necessity be an unwelcome visitor to her, he had
+surprised her at a frightful disadvantage; he knew instinctively,
+although the fault was none of his, although he had saved her life
+thereby, that she would hold him and him alone responsible for the
+outrage to her modesty, and although he had seen little at first glance
+and had resolutely kept his eyes away, the mere consciousness of her
+absolute helplessness appealed to him--to what was best and noblest in
+him, too. He must go to her. Stay, she might not yet be clothed, in
+which event--But no, she must be dressed, or dead, by this time and in
+either case he would have a duty to discharge.
+
+It devolved upon him to make sure of her safety, he was in a certain
+sense responsible for it, until she got back to her friends wherever
+they might be; but he persuaded himself that otherwise he did not want
+to see her again, that he did not wish to know anything about her
+future; that he did not care whether it was well or ill with her; and it
+was only stern obligation which drove him toward her--oh fond and
+foolish man!
+
+He compromised with himself at last by climbing the ridge that had shut
+off a view of the pool, and looking down at the place so memorable to
+him. He was prepared to withdraw instantly should circumstances warrant,
+and he was careful so to conceal himself as to give no possible
+opportunity for her to discover his scrutiny.
+
+With a beating heart and eager eyes he searched the spot. There lay the
+bear and a little distance away prone on the grass, clothed but whether
+in her right mind or not he could not tell, lay the woman. For a moment,
+as he bent a concentrated eager gaze upon her, he thought she might have
+fainted or that she might have died. In any event he reflected that she
+had strength and nerve and will to have dressed herself before either of
+these things had happened. She lay motionless under his gaze for so long
+that he finally made up his mind that common humanity required him to go
+to her assistance.
+
+He rose to his feet on the instant and saw the woman also lift herself
+from the grass as if moved by a similar impulse. In his intense
+preoccupation he had failed to observe the signs of the times. A sense
+of the overcast sky came to him suddenly, as it did to her, but with a
+difference. He knew what was about to happen, his experience told him
+much more as to the awful potentialities of the tempest than she could
+possibly imagine. She must be warned at once, she must leave the canyon
+and get up on the higher ground without delay. His duty was plain and
+yet he did it not. He could not. The pressure upon him was not yet
+strong enough.
+
+A half dozen times as he watched her deliberately sitting there eating,
+he opened his mouth to cry to her, yet he could not bring himself to
+it. A strange timidity oppressed him, halted him, held him back. A man
+cannot stay away five years from men and woman and be himself with them
+in the twinkling of an eye. And when to that instinctive and acquired
+reluctance against which he struggled in vain, he added the assurance
+that whatever his message he would be unwelcome on account of what had
+gone before, he could not force himself to go to her or even to call to
+her, not yet. He would keep her under surveillance, however, and if the
+worst came he could intervene in time to rescue her. He counted without
+his cost, his usual judgment bewildered. So he followed her through the
+trees and down the bank.
+
+Now he was so engrossed in her and so agitated that his caution slept,
+his experience was forgotten. The storm in his own breast was so great
+that it overshadowed the storm brewing above. Her way was easier than
+his and he had fallen some distance behind when suddenly there rushed
+upon him the fact that a frightful and unlooked for cloudburst was about
+to occur above their heads. A lightning flash and a thunder clap at last
+arrested his attention. Then, but not until then, he flung everything to
+the winds and amid the sudden and almost continuous peals of thunder he
+sent cry after cry toward her which were lost in the tremendous
+diapason of sound that echoed and re-echoed through the rifts of the
+mountains.
+
+"Wait," he cried again and again. "Come up higher. Get out of the canyon.
+You'll be drowned."
+
+But he had waited too long, the storm had developed too rapidly, she was
+too far ahead of and beneath him. She heard nothing but the sound of a
+voice, shrill, menacing, fraught with terror for her, not a word
+distinguishable; scarcely to her disturbed soul even a human voice, it
+seemed like the weird cry of some wild spirit of the storm. It sounded
+to her overwrought nerves so utterly inhuman that she only ran the
+faster.
+
+The canyon swerved and then doubled back, but he knew its direction;
+losing sight of her for the moment he plunged straight ahead through the
+trees, cutting off the bend, leaping with superhuman agility and
+strength over rocks and logs until he reached a point where the rift
+narrowed between two walls and ran deeply. There and then the heavens
+opened and the floods came and beat into that open maw of that vast
+crevasse and filled it full in an instant.
+
+As the deluge came roaring down, bearing onward the sweepings and
+scourings of the mountains, he caught a glimpse of her white desperate
+face rising, falling, now disappearing, now coming into view again, in
+the foamy midst of the torrent. He ran to the cliff bank and throwing
+aside his gun he scrambled down the wall to a certain shelf of the rock
+over which the rising water broke thinly. Ordinarily it was twenty feet
+above the creek bed. Bracing himself against a jagged projection he
+waited, praying. The canyon was here so narrow that he could have leaped
+to the other side and yet it was too wide for him to reach her if the
+water did not sweep her toward his feet. It was all done in a
+second--fortunately a projection on the other side threw the force of
+the torrent toward him and with it came the woman.
+
+She was almost spent; she had been struck by a log upheaved by some
+mighty wave, her hands were moving feebly, her eyes were closed, she was
+drowning, dying, but indomitably battling on. He stooped down and as a
+surge lifted her he threw his arm around her waist and then braced
+himself against the rock to sustain the full thrust of the mighty flood.
+As he seized her she gave way suddenly, as if after having done all that
+she could there was now nothing left but to trust herself to his hand
+and God's. She hung a dead weight on his arm in the ravening water
+which dragged and tore at her madly.
+
+He was a man of giant strength, but the struggle bade fair to be too
+much even for him. It seemed as if the mountain behind him was giving
+way. He set his teeth, he tried desperately to hold on, he thrust out
+his right hand, holding her with the other one, and clawed at the
+dripping rock in vain. In a moment the torrent mastered him and when it
+did so it seized him with fury and threw him like a stone from a sling
+into the seething vortex of the mid-stream. But in all this he did not,
+he would not, release her.
+
+Such was the swiftness of the motion with which they were swept downward
+that he had little need to swim; his only effort was to keep his head
+above water and to keep from being dashed against the logs that tumbled
+end over end, or whirled sideways, or were jammed into clusters only to
+burst out on every hand. He struggled furiously to keep himself from
+being overwhelmed in the seething madness, and what was harder, to keep
+the lifeless woman in his arms from being stricken or wrenched away. He
+knew that below the narrows where the canyon widened the water would
+subside, the awful fury of the rain would presently cease. If he could
+steer clear of the rocks in the broad he might win to land with her.
+
+The chances against him were thousands to nothing. But what are chances
+in the eyes of God. The man in his solitude had not forgotten to pray,
+his habits stood him in good stead now. He petitioned shortly, brokenly,
+in brief unspoken words, as he battled through the long dragging
+seconds.
+
+Fighting, clinging, struggling, praying, he was swept on. Heavier and
+heavier the woman dragged in an unconscious heap. It would have been
+easier for him if he had let her go; she would never know and he could
+then escape. The idea never once occurred to him. He had indeed
+withdrawn from his kind, but when one depended upon him all the old
+appeal of weak humanity awoke quick response in the bosom of the strong.
+He would die with the stranger rather than yield her to the torrent or
+admit himself beaten and give up the fight. So the conscious and the
+unconscious struggled through the narrow of the canyon.
+
+Presently with the rush and hurl of a bullet from the mouth of a gun,
+they found themselves in a shallow lake through which the waters still
+rushed mightily, breaking over rocks, digging away shallow rooted trees,
+leaping, biting, snarling, tearing at the big walls spread away on
+either side. He had husbanded some of his strength for this final
+effort, this last chance of escape. Below them at the other end of this
+open the walls came together again; there the descent was sharper than
+before and the water ran to the opening with racing speed. Once again in
+the torrent and they would be swept to death in spite of all.
+
+Shifting his grasp to the woman's hair, now unbound, he held her with
+one hand and swam hard with the other. The current still ran swiftly,
+but with no gigantic upheaving waves as before. It was more easy to
+avoid floating timber and debris, and on one side where the ground
+sloped somewhat gently the quick water flowed more slowly. He struck out
+desperately for it, forcing himself away from the main stream into the
+shallows and ever dragging the woman. Was it hours or minutes or seconds
+after that he gained the battle and neared the shore at the lowest edge?
+
+He caught with his forearm, as the torrent swerved him around, a stout
+young pine so deeply rooted as yet to have withstood the flood.
+Summoning that last reserve of strength that is bestowed upon us in our
+hour of need, and comes unless from God we know not whence, he drew
+himself in front of the pine, got his back against it, and although the
+water thundered against him still--only by comparison could it be called
+quieter--and his foothold was most precarious, he reached down carefully
+and grasped the woman under the shoulders. His position was a cramped
+one, but by the power of his arms alone he lifted her up until he got
+his left arm about her waist again. It was a mighty feat of strength
+indeed.
+
+The pine stood in the midst of the water, for even on the farther side
+the earth was overflowed but the water was stiller; he did not know what
+might be there, but he had to chance it. Lifting her up he stepped out,
+fortunately meeting firm ground; a few paces and he reached solid rock
+above the flood. He raised her above his head and laid her upon the
+shore, then with the very last atom of all his force, physical, mental
+and spiritual, he drew himself up and fell panting and utterly exhausted
+but triumphant by her side.
+
+The cloud burst was over, but the rain still beat down upon them, the
+thunder still roared above them, the lightning still flashed about them,
+but they were safe, alive if the woman had not died in his arms. He had
+done a thing superhuman--no man knowing conditions would have believed
+it. He himself would have declared a thousand times its patent
+impossibility.
+
+For a few seconds he strove to recover himself; then he thought of the
+flask he always carried in his pocket. It was gone; his clothes were
+ragged and torn, they had been ruined by his battle with the waves. The
+girl lay where he had placed her on her back. In the pocket of her
+hunting skirt he noticed a little protuberance; the pocket was provided
+with a flap and tightly buttoned. Without hesitation he unbuttoned it.
+There was a flask there, a little silver mounted affair; by some miracle
+it had not been broken. It was half full. With nervous hands he opened
+it and poured some of its contents down her throat; then he bent over
+her his soul in his glance, scarcely knowing what to do next. Presently
+she opened her eyes.
+
+And there, in the rain, by that raging torrent whence he had drawn her
+as it were from the jaws of death by the power of his arm, in the
+presence of the God above them, this man and this woman looked at each
+other and life for both of them was no longer the same.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK III
+
+FORGETTING AND FORGOT
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+A WILD DASH FOR THE HILLS
+
+
+Old Kirkby, who had been lazily mending a saddle the greater part of the
+morning, had eaten his dinner, smoked his pipe and was now stretched out
+on the grass in the warm sun taking a nap. Mrs. Maitland was drowsing
+over a book in the shadow of one of the big pines, when Pete, the horse
+wrangler, who had been wandering rather far down the canyon rounding up
+the ever straying stock, suddenly came bursting into the camp.
+
+"Heavens!" he cried, actually kicking the prostrate frontiersman as he
+almost stumbled over him. "Wake up, old man, an'--"
+
+"What the--" began Kirkby fiercely, thus rudely aroused from slumber and
+resentful of the daring and most unusual affront to his dignity and
+station, since all men, and especially the younger ones, held him in
+great honor.
+
+"Look there!" yelled Pete in growing excitement and entirely oblivious
+to his _lese-majeste_, pointing at a black cloud rolling over the top of
+the range. "It'll be a cloud burst sure, we'll have to git out o' here
+an' in a hurry too. Oh, Mrs. Maitland."
+
+By this time Kirkby was on his feet. The storm had stolen upon him
+sleeping and unaware, the configuration of the canyon having completely
+hid its approach. At best the three in the camp could not have
+discovered it until it was high in the heavens. Now the clouds were
+already approaching the noonday sun. Kirkby was alive to the situation
+at once; he had the rare ability of men of action, of awakening with all
+his faculties at instant command; he did not have to rub his eyes and
+wonder where he was, and speculate as to what was to be done. The moment
+that his eyes, following Pete's outstretched arm, discovered the black
+mass of clouds, he ran toward Mrs. Maitland, and standing on no ceremony
+he shook her vigorously by the shoulder.
+
+"We'll have to run for our lives, ma'm," he said briefly. "Pete, drive
+the stock up on the hills, fur as you kin, the hosses pertikler, they'll
+be more to us an' them burros must take keer of themselves."
+
+Pete needed no urging, he was off like a shot in the direction of the
+improvised corral. He loosed the horses from their pickets and started
+them up the steep trail that led down from the hogback to the camp by
+the water's edge. He also tried to start the burros he had just rounded
+up in the same direction. Some of them would go and some of them would
+not. He had his hands full in an instant. Meanwhile Kirkby did not
+linger by the side of Mrs. Maitland; with incredible agility for so old
+a man he ran over to the tent where the stores were kept and began
+picking out such articles of provision as he could easiest carry.
+
+"Come over here, Mrs. Maitland," he cried. "We'll have to carry up on
+the hill somethin' to keep us from starvin' till we git back to town. We
+hadn't orter camped in this yere pocket noways, but who'd ever expected
+anything like this now."
+
+"What do you fear?" asked the woman, joining him as she spoke and
+waiting for his directions.
+
+"Looks to me like a cloud bust," was the answer. "Creek's pretty full
+now, an' if she does break everything below yere'll go to hell on a
+run."
+
+It was evidence of his perturbation and anxiety that he used such
+language which, however, in the emergency did not seem unwarranted even
+to the refined ear of Mrs. Maitland.
+
+"Is it possible?" she exclaimed.
+
+"Taint only possible, it's sartin. Now ma'm," he hastily bundled up a
+lot of miscellaneous provisions in a small piece of canvas, tied it up
+and handed it to her, "that'll be for you." Immediately after he made up
+a much larger bundle in another tent fly, adding, "an' this is mine."
+
+"Oh, let us hurry," cried Mrs. Maitland, as a peal of thunder, low,
+muttered, menacing, burst from the flying clouds now obscuring the sun,
+and rolled over the camp.
+
+"We've got time enough yit," answered Kirkby coolly calculating their
+chances. "Best git your slicker on, you'll need it in a few minutes."
+
+Mrs. Maitland ran to her own tent and soon came out with sou'wester and
+yellow oil skins completely covering her. Kirkby meantime had donned his
+own old battered soiled rain clothes and had grabbed up Pete's.
+
+"I brought the children's coats along," said Mrs. Maitland, extending
+three others.
+
+"Good," said Kirkby, "now we'll take our packs an'--"
+
+"Do you think there is any danger to Robert?"
+
+"He'll git nothin' worse'n a wettin'," returned the old man confidently.
+"If we'd pitched the tents up on the hogback, that's all we'd a been in
+for."
+
+"I have to leave the tents and all the things," said Mrs. Maitland.
+
+"You can stay with them," answered Kirkby, dryly, "but if what I think's
+goin' to happen comes off, you won't have no need of nothin' no
+more--Here she comes."
+
+As he spoke there was a sudden swift downpour of rain, not in drops, but
+in a torrent. Catching up his own pack and motioning the woman to do
+likewise with her load, Kirkby caught her by the hand, and half led,
+half dragged her up the steep trail from the brook to the ridge which
+bordered the side of the canyon. The canyon was much wider here than
+further up and there was much more room and much more space for the
+water to spread. Yet, they had to hurry for their lives as it was. They
+had gone up scarcely a hundred feet when the disgorgement of the heavens
+took place. The water fell with such force, directness and
+continuousness that it almost beat them down. It ran over the trail down
+the side of the mountain in sheets like waterfalls. It required all the
+old man's skill and address to keep himself and his companion from
+losing their footing and falling down into the seething tumult below.
+
+The tents went down in an instant. Where there had been a pleasant bit
+of meadow land was now a muddy tossing lake of black water. Some of the
+horses and most of the burros which Pete had been unable to do anything
+with were engulfed in a moment. The two on the mountain side could see
+them swimming for dear life as they swept down the canyon. Pete himself,
+with a few of the animals, was already scrambling up to safety.
+
+Speech was impossible between the noise of the falling rain and the
+incessant peals of thunder, but by persistent gesture old Kirkby urged
+the terrified trembling woman up the trail until they finally reached
+the top of the hogback, where under the poor shelter of the stunted
+pines they joined Pete with such of the horses as he had been able to
+drive up. Kirkby taking a thought for the morrow, noted that there were
+four of them, enough to pull the wagon if they could get back to it.
+
+After the first awful deluge of the cloud burst it moderated slightly,
+but the hard rain came down steadily, the wind rose as well and in spite
+of their oil skins they were soon wet and cold. It was impossible to
+make a fire, there was no place for them to go, nothing to be done, they
+could only remain where they were and wait. After a half hour of
+exposure to the merciless fury of the storm, a thought came suddenly to
+Mrs. Maitland; she leaned over and caught the frontiersman by his wet
+sleeve. Seeing that she wished to speak to him he bent his head toward
+her lips.
+
+"Enid," she cried, pointing down the canyon; she had not thought before
+of the position of the girl.
+
+Kirkby, who had not forgotten her, but who had instantly realized that
+he could do nothing for her, shook his head, lifted his eyes and
+solemnly pointed his finger up to the gray skies. He had said nothing to
+Mrs. Maitland before, what was the use of troubling her.
+
+"God only kin help her," he cried; "she's beyond the help of man."
+
+Ah, indeed, old trapper, whence came the confident assurance of that
+dogmatic statement? For as it chanced at that very moment the woman for
+whose peril your heart was wrung was being lifted out of the torrent by
+a man's hand! And, yet, who shall say that the old hunter was not right,
+and that the man himself, as men of old have been, was sent from God?
+
+"It can't be," began Mrs. Maitland in great anguish for the girl she had
+grown to love.
+
+"Ef she seed the storm an' realized what it was, an' had sense enough
+to climb up the canyon wall," answered the other, "she won't be no worse
+off 'n we are; ef not--"
+
+Mrs. Maitland had only to look down into the seething caldron to
+understand the possibility of that "if."
+
+"Oh," she cried, "let us pray for her that she sought the hills."
+
+"I've been a doin' it," said the old man gruffly.
+
+He had a deep vein of piety in him, but like other rich ores it had to
+be mined for in the depths before it was apparent.
+
+By slow degrees the water subsided, and after a long while the rain
+ceased, a heavy mist lay on the mountains and the night approached
+without any further appearance of the veiled sun. Toward evening Robert
+Maitland with the three men and the three children joined the wretched
+trio above the camp. Maitland, wild with excitement and apprehension,
+had pressed on ahead of the rest. It was a glad faced man indeed who ran
+the last few steps of the rough way and clasped his wife in his arms,
+but as he did so he noticed that one was missing.
+
+"Where is Enid?" he cried, releasing his wife.
+
+"She went down the canyon early this mornin' intendin' to stay all day,"
+slowly and reluctantly answered old Kirkby, "an'--"
+
+He paused there, it wasn't necessary for him to say anything more.
+
+Maitland walked to the edge of the trail and looked down into the
+valley. It had been swept clean of the camp. Rocks had been rolled over
+upon the meadow land, trunks of trees torn up by the roots had lodged
+against them, it was a scene of desolate and miserable confusion and
+disaster.
+
+"Oh, Robert, don't you think she may be safe?" asked Mrs. Maitland.
+
+"There's jest a chance, I think, that she may have suspicioned the storm
+an' got out of the canyon," suggested the old frontiersman.
+
+"A slim chance," answered Maitland gloomily. "I wouldn't have had this
+happen for anything on earth."
+
+"Nor me; I'd a heap ruther it had got me than her," said Kirkby simply.
+
+"I didn't see it coming," continued Maitland nodding as if Kirkby's
+statement were to be accepted as a matter of course, as indeed it was.
+"We were on the other slope of the mountain, until it was almost over
+head."
+
+"Nuther did I. To tell the truth I was lyin' down nappin' w'en Pete,
+yere, who'd been down the canyon rounding up some of the critters, came
+bustin' in on us."
+
+"I ain't saved but four hosses," said Pete mournfully, "and there's only
+one burro on the hogback."
+
+"We came back as fast as we could," said Maitland. "I pushed on ahead.
+George, Bradshaw and Phillips are bringing Bob and the girls. We must
+search the canyon."
+
+"It can't be done to-night, old man," said Kirkby.
+
+"I tell you we can't wait, Jack!"
+
+"We've got to. I'm as willin' to lay down my life for that young gal as
+anybody on earth, but in this yere mist an' as black a night as it's
+goin' to be, we couldn't go ten rod without killin' ourselves an' we
+couldn't see nothin' noways."
+
+"But she may be in the canyon."
+
+"If she's in the canyon 'twon't make no difference to her w'ether we
+finds her to-morrer or next day or next year, Bob."
+
+Maitland groaned in anguish.
+
+"I can't stay here inactive," he persisted stubbornly.
+
+"It's a hard thing, but we got to wait till mornin'. Ef she got out of
+the canyon and climbed up on the hogback she'll be all right; she'll soon
+find out she can't make no progress in this mist and darkness. No, old
+friend, we're up agin it hard; we jest got to stay the night w'ere we
+are an' as long as we got to wait we might as well make ourselves as
+comfortable as possible. For the wimmen an' children anyway. I fetched
+up some ham and some canned goods and other eatin's in these yere canvas
+sacks, we might kindle a fire--"
+
+"It's hardly possible," said Maitland, "we shall have to eat it cold."
+
+"Oh, Robert," pleaded his wife, "isn't it possible that she may have
+escaped?"
+
+"Possible, yes, but--"
+
+"We won't give up hope, ma'am," said Kirkby, "until to-morrer w'en we've
+had a look at the canyon."
+
+By this time the others joined the party. Phillips and Bradshaw showed
+the stuff that was in them; they immediately volunteered to go down the
+canyon at once, knowing little or nothing of its dangers and indifferent
+to what they did know, but as Kirkby had pointed out the attempt was
+clearly impossible. Maitland bitterly reproached himself for having
+allowed the girl to go alone, and in those self reproaches old Kirkby
+joined.
+
+They were too wet and cold to sleep, there was no shelter and it was not
+until early in the morning they succeeded in kindling a fire. Meanwhile
+the men talked the situation over very carefully. They were two days'
+journey from the wagons. It was necessary that the woman and children
+should be taken back at once. Kirkby hadn't been able to save much more
+than enough to eat to get them back to a ranch or settlement, and on
+very short rations at best. It was finally decided that George and Pete
+with Mrs. Maitland, the two girls and the youngster should go back to
+the wagon, drive to the nearest settlement, leave the women and then
+return on horseback with all speed to meet Maitland and Kirkby who would
+meanwhile search the canyon.
+
+The two men from the east had to go back with the others although they
+pleaded gallantly to be allowed to remain with the two who were to take
+up the hunt for Enid. Maitland might have kept them with him, but that
+meant retaining a larger portion of the scanty supplies that had been
+saved, and he was compelled against his will to refuse their requests.
+Leaving barely enough to subsist Maitland and Kirkby for three or four
+days, or until the return of the relief party, the groups separated at
+daybreak.
+
+"Oh, Robert," pleaded his wife, as he kissed her good-by, "take care of
+yourself, but find Enid."
+
+"Yes," answered her husband, "I shall, never fear, but I must find the
+dear girl or discover what has become of her."
+
+There was not time for further leave taking. A few hand clasps from man
+to man and then Robert Maitland standing in the midst of the group bowed
+his head in the sunny morning, for the sky again was clear, and poured
+out a brief prayer that God would prosper them, that they would find the
+child and that they would all be together again in health and happiness.
+And without another word, he and Kirkby plunged down the side of the
+canyon, the others taking up their weary march homeward with sad hearts
+and in great dismay.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+A TELEGRAM AND A CALLER
+
+
+"You say," asked Maitland, as they surveyed the canyon, "that she went
+down the stream?"
+
+"She said she was goin' down. I showed her how to cut across the
+mountains an' avoid the big bend, I've got no reason to suspicion that
+she didn't go w'ere she said."
+
+"Nevertheless," said Maitland, "it is barely possible that she may have
+changed her mind and gone up the canyon."
+
+"Yep, the female mind does often change unexpected like," returned the
+other, "but w'ether she went up or down, the only place for us to look,
+I take it, is down, for if she's alive, if she got out of the canyon and
+is above us, nacherly she'd follow it down yere an' we'd a seed her by
+this time. If she didn't git out of the canyon, why, all that's left of
+her is bound to be down stream."
+
+Maitland nodded, he understood.
+
+"We'd better go down then," continued Kirkby, whose reasoning was
+flawless except that it made no allowance for the human-divine
+interposition that had been Enid Maitland's salvation. "An' if we don't
+find no traces of her down stream, we kin come back here an' go up."
+
+It was a hard desperate journey the two men took. One of them followed
+the stream at its level, the other tramped along in the mountains high
+above the high water mark of the day before. If they had needed any
+evidence of the power of that cloud burst and storm, they found it in
+the canyon. In some places where it was narrow and rocky, the pass had
+been fearfully scoured; at other places the whole aspect of it was
+changed. The place was a welter of up-rooted trees, logs jammed together
+in fantastic shapes; it was as if some wanton besom of destruction had
+swept the narrow rift.
+
+Ever as they went they called and called. The broken obstructions of the
+way made their progress slow; what they would have passed over
+ordinarily in half a day, they had not traversed by nightfall and they
+had seen nothing. They camped that night far down the canyon and in the
+morning with hearts growing heavier every hour they resumed their
+search.
+
+About noon of the second day they came to an immense log jam where the
+stream now broadened and made a sudden turn before it plunged over a
+fall of perhaps two hundred feet into the lake. It was the end of their
+quest. If they did not find her there, they would never find her
+anywhere, they thought. With still hearts and bated breath they climbed
+out over the log jam and scrutinized it. A brownish gray patch concealed
+beneath the great pines caught their eyes. They made their way to it.
+
+"It's a b'ar, a big grizzly," exclaimed Kirkby.
+
+The huge brute was battered out of all semblance of life, but that it
+was a grizzly bear was clearly evident. Further on the two men caught
+sight suddenly of a dash of blue. Kirkby stepped over to it, lifted it
+in his hand and silently extended it to Maitland. It was a sweater, a
+woman's sweater. They recognized it at once. The old man shook his head.
+Maitland groaned aloud.
+
+"See yere," said Kirkby, pointing to the ragged and torn garment where
+evidences of discoloration still remained, "looks like there'd bin blood
+on it."
+
+"Heavens!" cried Maitland, "not that bear, I'd rather anything than
+that."
+
+"W'atever it is, she's gone," said the old man with solemn finality.
+
+"Her body may be in these logs here--"
+
+"Or in the lake," answered Kirkby gloomily; "but w'erever she is we
+can't git to her now."
+
+"We must come back with dynamite to break up this jam and--"
+
+"Yep," nodded the old man, "we'll do all that, of course, but now, arter
+we search this jam o' logs I guess there's nothin' to do but go back,
+an' the quicker we git back to the settlement, the quicker we can git
+back here. I think we kin strike acrost the mountains an' save a day an'
+a half. There's no need of us goin' back up the canyon now, I take it."
+
+"No," answered the other. "The quicker the better, as you say, and we
+can head off George and the others that way."
+
+They searched the pile eagerly, prying under it, peering into it,
+upsetting it, so far as they could with their naked hands, but with
+little result, for they found nothing else. They had to camp another day
+and next morning they hurried straight over the mountains, reaching the
+settlement almost as soon as the others. Maitland with furious energy at
+once organized a relief party. They hurried back to the logs, tore the
+jam to pieces, searched it carefully and found nothing. To drag the lake
+was impossible; it was hundreds of feet deep and while they worked it
+froze. The weather had changed some days before, heavy snows had already
+fallen, they had to get out of the mountains without further delay or
+else be frozen up to die. Then and not till then did Maitland give up
+hope. He had refrained from wiring to Philadelphia, but when he reached
+a telegraph line some ten days after the cloud burst, he sent a long
+message east, breaking to his brother the awful tidings.
+
+And in all that they did he and Kirkby, two of the shrewdest and most
+experienced of men, showed with singular exactitude how easy it is for
+the wisest and most capable of men to make mistakes, to leave the plain
+trail, to fail to deduce the truth from the facts presented. Yet it is
+difficult to point to a fault in their reasoning, or to find anything
+left undone in the search.
+
+Enid had started down the canyon, near the end of it they had discovered
+one of her garments which they could not conceive any reason for her
+taking off. It was near the battered body of one of the biggest
+grizzlies that either man had ever seen, it held evidence of blood
+stains upon it still, they had found no body, but they were as
+profoundly sure that the mangled remains of the poor girl lay within the
+depths of that mountain lake as if they had actually seen her there. The
+logic was all flawless.
+
+It so happened that on that November morning, when the telegram was
+approaching him, Mr. Stephen Maitland had a caller. He came at an
+unusually early hour. Mr. Stephen Maitland, who was no longer an early
+riser, had indeed just finished his breakfast when the card of Mr. James
+Armstrong of Colorado was handed to him.
+
+"This, I suppose," he thought testily, "is one of the results of Enid's
+wanderings into that God-forsaken land. Did you ask the man his
+business, James?" he said aloud to the footman.
+
+"Yes, sir; he said he wanted to see you on important business, and when
+I made bold to ask him what business, he said it was none of mine, and
+for me to take the message to you, sir."
+
+"Impudent," growled Mr. Maitland.
+
+"Yes, sir; but he is the kind of a gentleman you don't talk back to,
+sir."
+
+"Well, you go back and tell him that you have given me his card, and I
+should like to know what he wishes to see me about, that I am very busy
+this morning and unless it is a matter of importance--you understand?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"I suppose now I shall have the whole west unloaded upon me; every
+vagabond friend of Robert's and people who meet Enid," he thought, but
+his reveries were shortly interrupted by the return of the man.
+
+"If you please, sir," began James hesitatingly, as he re-entered the
+room, "he says his business is about the young lady, sir."
+
+"Confound his impudence!" exclaimed Mr. Maitland, more and more annoyed
+at what he was pleased to characterize mentally as western assurance.
+"Where is he?"
+
+"In the hall, sir."
+
+"Show him into the library and say I shall be down in a moment."
+
+"Very good, sir."
+
+It was a decidedly wrathful individual who confronted Stephen Maitland a
+few moments afterwards in the library, for Armstrong was not accustomed
+to such cavalier treatment, and had Maitland been other than Enid's
+father he would have given more outward expression of his indignation
+over the discourtesy in his reception.
+
+"Mr. James Armstrong, I believe," began Mr. Maitland, looking at the
+card in his hand.
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Er--from Colorado?"
+
+"And proud of it."
+
+"Ah, I dare say. I believe you wished to see me about--"
+
+"Your daughter, sir."
+
+"And in what way are you concerned about her, sir?"
+
+"I wish to make her my wife."
+
+"What!" exclaimed the older man in a voice equally divided between
+horror and astonishment. "How dare you, sir? You amaze, me beyond
+measure with your infernal impudence."
+
+"Excuse me, Mr. Maitland," interposed Armstrong quickly and with great
+spirit and determination, "but where I come from we don't allow anybody
+to talk to us in this way. You are Enid's father and a much older man
+than I, but I can't permit you to--"
+
+"Sir," said the astounded Maitland, drawing himself up at this bold
+flouting, "you may be a very worthy young man, I have no doubt of it,
+but it is out of the question. My daughter--"
+
+Again a less excited hearer might have noticed the emphasis on the
+pronoun.
+
+"Why, she is half way engaged to me now," interrupted the younger man
+with a certain contemptuous amusement in his voice. "Look here, Mr.
+Maitland, I've knocked around the world a good deal, I know what's what,
+I know all about you Eastern people, and I don't fancy you any more than
+you fancy me. Miss Enid is quite unspoiled yet and that is why I want
+her. I'm well able to take care of her too; I don't know what you've got
+or how you got it, but I can come near laying down dollar for dollar
+with you and mine's all clean money, mines, cattle, lumber, and it's
+all good money. I made it myself. I left her in the mountains three
+weeks ago with her promise that she would think very seriously of my
+suit. After I came back to Denver--I was called east--I made up my mind
+that I'd come here when I'd finished my business and have it out with
+you. Now you can treat me like a dog if you want to, but if you expect
+to keep peace in the family you'd better not, for I tell you plainly
+whether you give your consent or not I mean to win her. All I want is
+her consent, and I've pretty nearly got that."
+
+Mr. Stephen Maitland was black with wrath at this clear, unequivocal,
+determined statement of the case from Armstrong's point of view.
+
+"I would rather see her dead," he exclaimed with angry stubbornness,
+"than married to a man like you. How dare you force yourself into my
+house and insult me in this way? Were I not so old a man I would show
+you, I would give you a taste of your own manner."
+
+The old man's white mustache fairly quivered with what he believed to be
+righteous indignation. He stepped over to the other and looked hard at
+him, his eyes blazing, his ruddy cheeks redder than ever. The two men
+confronted each other unblenchingly for a moment, then Mr. Maitland
+touched a bell button in the wall by his side. Instantly the footman
+made his appearance.
+
+"James," said the old man, his voice shaking and his knees trembling
+with passion, which he did not quite succeed in controlling despite a
+desperate effort, "show this--er--gentleman the door. Good morning, sir,
+our first and last interview is over."
+
+He bowed with ceremonious politeness as he spoke, becoming more and more
+composed as he felt himself mastering the situation. And Armstrong, to
+do him justice, knew a gentleman when he saw him, and secretly admired
+the older man and began to feel a touch of shame at his own rude way of
+putting things.
+
+"Beg pardon, sir," said the footman, breaking the awkward silence, "but
+here is a telegram that has just come, sir."
+
+There was nothing for Armstrong to do or say. Indeed, having expressed
+himself so unrestrainedly to his rapidly increasing regret, as the old
+man took the telegram he turned away in considerable discomfiture, James
+bowing before him at the door opening into the hall and following him as
+he slowly passed out. Mr. Stephen Maitland mechanically and with great
+deliberation and with no premonition of evil tidings, tore open the
+yellow envelope and glanced at the dispatch. Neither the visitor nor
+the footman had got out of sight or hearing when they heard the old man
+groan and fall back helplessly into a chair. Both men turned and ran
+back to the door, for there was that in the exclamation which gave rise
+to instant apprehension. Stephen Maitland now as white as death sat
+collapsed in the chair gasping for breath, his hand on his heart. The
+telegram lay open on the floor. Armstrong recognized the seriousness of
+the situation, and in three steps was by the other's side.
+
+"What is it?" he asked eagerly, his hatred and resentment vanished at
+the sight of the old man's ghastly, stricken countenance.
+
+"Enid!" gasped her father. "I said I would rather see her--dead, but--it
+is not true--I--"
+
+James Armstrong was a man of prompt decision. Without a moment's
+hesitation he picked up the telegram; it was full and explicit, thus it
+read:
+
+     "We were encamped last week in the mountains. Enid went down the
+     canyon for a day's fishing alone. A sudden cloud burst filled the
+     canyon, washed away the camp. Enid undoubtedly got caught in the
+     torrent and was drowned. We have found some of her clothing but not
+     her body. Have searched every foot of the canyon. Think body has got
+     into the lake now frozen. Snow falling, mountains impassable, will
+     search for her in the spring when the winter breaks. I am following
+     this telegram in person by first train. Would rather have died a
+     thousand deaths than had this happen. God help us."
+
+     "ROBERT MAITLAND."
+
+Armstrong read it, stared at it a moment frowning heavily, passed it
+over to the footman and turned to the stricken father.
+
+"Old man, I loved her," he said simply. "I love her still, I believe
+that she loves me. They haven't found her body, clothes mean nothing,
+I'll find her, I'll search the mountains until I do. Don't give way,
+something tells me that she's alive, and I'll find her."
+
+"If you do," said the broken old man, crushed by the swift and awful
+response to his thoughtless exclamation, "and she loves you, you shall
+have her for your wife."
+
+"It doesn't need that to make me find her," answered Armstrong grimly.
+"She is a woman, lost in the mountains in the winter, alone. They
+shouldn't have given up the search; I'll find her as there is a God
+above me whether she's for me or not."
+
+A good deal of a man this James Armstrong of Colorado, in spite of many
+things in his past of which he thought so little that he lacked the
+grace to be ashamed of them. Stephen Maitland looked at him with a
+certain respect and a growing hope, as he stood there in the library
+stern, resolute, strong.
+
+Perhaps--
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+"OVER THE HILLS AND FAR AWAY"
+
+
+Recognition--or some other more potent instantaneous force--brought the
+woman to a sitting position. The man drew back to give her freedom of
+action, as she lifted herself on her hands. It was moments before
+complete consciousness of her situation came to her; the surprise was
+yet too great. She saw things dimly through a whirl of driving rain, of
+a rushing mighty wind, of a seething sea of water, but presently it was
+all plain to her again. She had caught no fair view of the man who had
+shot the bear as he splashed through the creek and tramped, across the
+rocks and trees down the canyon, at least she had not seen his front
+face, but she recognized him immediately. The thought tinged with color
+for a moment, her pallid cheek.
+
+"I fell into the torrent," she said feebly, putting her hand to her head
+and striving by speech to put aside that awful remembrance.
+
+"You didn't fall in," was the answer. "It was a cloud burst, you were
+caught in it."
+
+"I didn't know."
+
+"Of course not, how should you."
+
+"And how came I here?"
+
+"I was lucky enough to pull you out."
+
+"Did you jump into the flood for me?"
+
+The man nodded.
+
+"That's twice you have saved my life this day," said the girl, forcing
+herself woman-like to the topic that she hated.
+
+"It's nothing," deprecated the other.
+
+"It may be nothing to you, but it is a great deal to me," was the
+answer. "And now what is to be done?"
+
+"We must get out of here at once," said the man. "You need shelter,
+food, a fire. Can you walk?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"Let me help you." He rose to his feet, reached down to her, took her
+hands in the strong grasp of his own and raised her lightly to her feet
+in an effortless way which showed his great strength. She did not more
+than put the weight of her body slightly on her left foot when a spasm
+of pain shot through her, she swerved and would have fallen had he not
+caught her. He sat her gently on the rock.
+
+"My foot," she said piteously. "I don't know what's the matter with it."
+
+Her high boots were tightly laced of course, but he could see that her
+left foot had been badly mauled or sprained, already the slender ankle
+was swelling visibly. He examined it swiftly a moment. It might be a
+sprain, it might be the result of some violent thrust against the rocks,
+some whirling tree trunks might have caught and crushed her foot, but
+there was no good in speculating as to causes; the present patent fact
+was that she could not walk, all the rest was at that moment
+unimportant. This unfortunate accident made him the more anxious to get
+her to a place of shelter without delay. It would be necessary to take
+off her boot and give the wounded member proper treatment. For the
+present the tight shoe acted as a bandage, which was well.
+
+When the man had withdrawn himself from the world, he had inwardly
+resolved that no human being should ever invade his domain or share his
+solitude, and during his long sojourn in the wilderness his
+determination had not weakened. Now his consuming desire was to get this
+woman, whom fortune--good or ill!--had thrown upon his hands, to his
+house without delay. There was nothing he could do for her out there in
+the rain. Every drop of whiskey was gone; they were just two
+half-drowned, sodden bits of humanity cast up on that rocky shore, and
+one was a helpless woman.
+
+"Do you know where your camp is?" he asked at last.
+
+He did not wish to take her to her own camp, he had a strange instinct
+of possession in her. In some way he felt he had obtained a right to
+deal with her as he would; he had saved her life twice, once by chance,
+the other as the result of deliberate and heroic endeavor, and yet his
+honor and his manhood obliged him to offer to take her to her own people
+if he could. Hence the question, the answer to which he waited so
+eagerly.
+
+"It's down the canyon. I am one of Mr. Robert Maitland's party."
+
+The man nodded. He didn't know Robert Maitland from Adam, and he cared
+nothing about him.
+
+"How far down?" he asked.
+
+"I don't know; how far is it from here to where you--where--where we--"
+
+"About a mile," he replied quickly, fully understanding her reason for
+faltering.
+
+"Then I think I must have come at least five miles from the camp this
+morning."
+
+"It will be four miles away then," said the man.
+
+The girl nodded.
+
+"I couldn't carry you that far," he murmured half to himself. "I
+question if there is any camp left there anyway. Where was it, down by
+the water's edge?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Every vestige will have been swept away by that, look at it," he
+pointed over to the lake.
+
+"What must we do?" she asked instantly, depending upon his greater
+strength, his larger experience, his masculine force.
+
+"I shall have to take you to my camp."
+
+"Is it far?"
+
+"About a mile or a mile and a half from here."
+
+"I can't walk that far."
+
+"No, I suppose not. You wouldn't be willing to stay here while I went
+down and hunted for your camp?"
+
+The girl clutched at him.
+
+"I couldn't be left here for a moment alone," she said in sudden fever
+of alarm. "I never was afraid before, but now--"
+
+"All right," he said, gently patting her as he would a child, "we'll go
+up to my camp and then I will try to find your people and--"
+
+"But I tell you I can't walk!"
+
+"You don't have to walk," said the man.
+
+He did not make any apology for his next action, he just stooped down
+and disregarding her faint protests and objections, picked her up in
+his arms. She was by no means a light burden, and he did not run away
+with her as the heroes of romances do. But he was a man far beyond the
+average in strength, and with a stout heart and a resolute courage that
+had always carried him successfully through whatever he attempted, and
+he had need of all his qualities, physical and mental, before he
+finished that awful journey.
+
+The woman struggled a little at first, then finally resigned herself to
+the situation; indeed, she thought swiftly, there was nothing else to
+do; she had no choice, she could not have been left alone there in the
+rocks in that rain, she could not walk. He was doing the only thing
+possible. The compulsion of the inevitable was upon them both.
+
+They went slowly. The man often stopped for rest, at which times he
+would seat her carefully upon some prostrate tree, or some rounded
+boulder, until he was ready to resume his task. He did not bother her
+with explanation, discussion or other conversation, for which she was
+most thankful. Once or twice during the slow progress she tried to walk,
+but the slightest pressure on her wounded foot nearly caused her to
+faint. He made no complaint about his burden and she found it after all
+pleasant to be upheld by such powerful arms; she was so sick, so tired,
+so worn out, and there was such assurance of strength and safety in his
+firm hold of her.
+
+By and by, in the last stage of their journey, her head dropped on his
+shoulder and she actually fell into an uneasy troubled sleep. He did not
+know whether she slumbered or whether she had fainted again. He did not
+dare to stop to find out, his strength was almost spent; in this last
+effort the strain upon his muscles was almost as great as it had been in
+the whirlpool. For the second time that day the sweat stood out on his
+forehead, his legs trembled under him. How he made the last five hundred
+feet up the steep wall to a certain broad shelf perhaps an acre in
+extent where he had built his hut among the mountains, he never knew;
+but the last remnant of his force was spent when he finally opened the
+unlatched door with his foot, carried her into the log hut and laid her
+upon the bed or bunk built against one wall of the cabin.
+
+Yet the way he put her down was characteristic of the man. That last
+vestige of strength had served him well. He did not drop her as a less
+thoughtful and less determined man might have done; he laid her there as
+gently and as tenderly as if she weighed nothing, and as if he had
+carried her nowhere. So quiet and easy was his handling of her that she
+did not wake up at once.
+
+So soon as she was out of his arms, he stood up and stared at her in
+great alarm which soon gave way to reassurance. She had not fainted;
+there was a little tinge of color in her cheek that had rubbed up
+against his rough wet shoulder; she was asleep, her regular breathing
+told him that. Sleep was of course the very best medicine for her and
+yet she should not be allowed to sleep until she had got rid of her wet
+clothing and until something had been done for her wounded foot. It was
+indeed an embarrassing situation.
+
+He surveyed her for a few moments wondering how best to begin. Then
+realizing the necessity for immediate action, he bent over and woke her
+up. Again she stared at him in bewilderment until he spoke.
+
+"This is my house," he said, "we are home."
+
+"Home!" sobbed the girl.
+
+"Under shelter, then," said the man. "You are very tired and very
+sleepy, but there is something to be done. You must take off those wet
+clothes at once, you must have something to eat, and I must have a look
+at that foot, and then you can have your sleep out."
+
+The girl stared at him; his program, if a radical one under the
+circumstances, was nevertheless a rational one, indeed the only one. How
+was it to be carried out? The man easily divined her thoughts.
+
+[Illustration: "Wait! I am a woman, absolutely alone, entirely at your
+mercy"]
+
+"There is another room in this house, a store room, I cook in there," he
+said. "I am going in there now to get you something to eat, meanwhile
+you must undress yourself and go to bed."
+
+He went to a rude set of box-like shelves draped with a curtain,
+apparently his own handiwork, against the wall, and brought from it a
+long and somewhat shapeless woolen gown.
+
+"You can wear this to sleep in," he continued. "First of all, though, I
+am going to have a look at that foot."
+
+He bent down to where her wounded foot lay extended on the bed.
+
+"Wait!" said the girl, lifting herself on her arm and as she did so he
+lifted his head and answered her direct gaze with his own. "I am a
+woman, absolutely alone, entirely at your mercy, you are stronger than
+I, I have no choice but to do what you bid me. And in addition to the
+natural weakness of my sex I am the more helpless from this foot. What
+do you intend to do with me? How do you mean to treat me?"
+
+It was a bold, a splendid question and it evoked the answer it merited.
+
+"As God is my judge," said the man quietly, "just as you ought to be
+treated, as I would want another to treat my mother, or my sister, or
+my wife--" she noticed how curiously his lips suddenly tightened at that
+word--"if I had one. I never harmed a woman in my life," he continued
+more earnestly, "only one, that is," he corrected himself, and once
+again she marked that peculiar contraction of the lips. "And I could not
+help that," he added.
+
+"I trust you," said the girl at last after gazing at him long and hard
+as if to search out the secrets of his very soul. "You have saved my
+life and things dearer will be safe with you. I have to trust you."
+
+"I hope," came the quick comment, "that it is not only for that. I don't
+want to be trusted upon compulsion."
+
+"You must have fought terribly for my life in the flood," was the
+answer. "I can remember what it was now, and you carried me over the
+rocks and the mountains without faltering. Only a man could do what you
+have done. I trust you anyway."
+
+"Thank you," said the man briefly as he bent over the injured foot
+again.
+
+The boot laced up the front, the short skirt left all plainly visible.
+With deft fingers he undid the sodden knot and unlaced it, then stood
+hesitatingly for a moment.
+
+"I don't like to cut your only pair of shoes," he said as he made a
+slight motion to draw it off, and then observing the spasm of pain, he
+stopped. "Needs must," he continued, taking out his knife and slitting
+the leather.
+
+He did it very carefully so as not to ruin the boot beyond repair, and
+finally succeeded in getting it off without giving her too much pain.
+And she was not so tired or so miserable as to be unaware of his
+gentleness. His manner, matter-of-fact, business-like, if he had been a
+doctor one would have called it professional, distinctly pleased her in
+this trying and unusual position. Her stocking was stained with blood.
+The man rose to his feet, took from a rude home-made chair a light
+Mexican blanket and laid it considerately across the girl.
+
+"Now if you can manage to get off your stocking, yourself, I will see
+what can be done," he said turning away.
+
+It was the work of a few seconds for her to comply with his request.
+Hanging the wet stocking carefully over a chair back, he drew back the
+blanket a little and carefully inspected the poor little foot. He saw at
+once that it was not an ordinary sprained ankle, but it seemed to him
+that her foot had been caught between two tossing logs, and had been
+badly bruised. It was very painful, but would not take so long to heal
+as a sprain. The little foot, normally so white, was now black and blue
+and the skin had been roughly torn and broken. He brought a basin of
+cold water and a towel and washed off the blood, the girl fighting down
+the pain and successfully stifling any outcry.
+
+"Now," he said, "you must put on this gown and get into bed. By the time
+you are ready for it I will have some broth for you and then we will
+bandage that foot. I shall not come in here for some time, you will be
+quite alone and safe."
+
+He turned and left the room, shutting the door after him as he went out.
+For a second time that day Enid Maitland undressed herself and this time
+nervously and in great haste. She was almost too excited and
+apprehensive to recall the painful circumstances attendant upon her
+first disrobing. She said she trusted the man absolutely, yet she would
+not have been human if she had not looked most anxiously toward that
+closed door. He made plenty of noise in the other room, bustling about
+as if to reassure her.
+
+She could not rest the weight of her body on her left foot and getting
+rid of her wet clothes was a somewhat slow process in spite of her
+hurry, made more so by her extreme nervousness. The gown he gave her was
+far too big for her, but soft and warm and exquisitely clean. It draped
+her slight figure completely. Leaving her sodden garments where they had
+fallen, for she was not equal to anything else, she wrapped herself in
+the folds of the big gown and managed to get into bed. For all its rude
+appearance it was a very comfortable sleeping place, there were springs
+and a good mattress. The unbleached sheets were clean; although they had
+been rough dried, there was a delicious sense of comfort and rest in her
+position. She had scarcely composed herself when he knocked loudly upon
+her door.
+
+"May I come in?" he asked.
+
+When she bade him enter she saw he had in his hand a saucepan full of
+some steaming broth. She wondered how he had made it in such a hurry,
+but after he poured it into a granite ware cup and offered it to her,
+she took it without question. It was thick, warming and nourishing. He
+stood by her and insisted that she take more and more. Finally she
+rebelled.
+
+"Well, perhaps that will do for to-night," he said, "now let's have a
+look at your foot."
+
+She observed that he had laid on the table a long roll of white cloth;
+she could not know that he had torn up one of his sheets to make
+bandages, but so it was. He took the little foot tenderly in his hands.
+
+"I am going to hurt you," he said, "I am going to find out if there is
+anything more than a bruise, any bones broken."
+
+There was no denying that he did pain her exquisitely.
+
+"I can't help it," he said as she cried aloud. "I have got to see what's
+the matter, I am almost through now."
+
+"Go on, I can bear it," she said faintly. "I feel so much better anyway
+now that I am dry and warm."
+
+"So far as I can determine," said the man at last, "it is only a bad
+ugly bruise; the skin is torn, it has been battered, but it is neither
+sprained nor broken and I don't think it is going to be very serious.
+Now I am going to bathe it in the hottest water you can bear, and then I
+will bandage it and let you go to sleep."
+
+He went out and came back with a kettle of boiling water, with which he
+laved again and again, the poor, torn, battered little member. Never in
+her life had anything been so grateful as these repeated applications of
+hot water. After awhile he applied a healing lotion of some kind, then
+he took his long roll of bandage and wound it dexterously around her
+foot, not drawing it too close to prevent circulation, but just tight
+enough for support, then as he finished she drew it back beneath the
+cover.
+
+"Now," said he, "there is nothing more I can do for you to-night, is
+there?"
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"I want you to go to sleep now, you will be perfectly safe here. I am
+going down the canyon to search--"
+
+"No," said the girl apprehensively. "I dare not be left alone here;
+besides I know how dangerous it would be for you to try to descend the
+canyon in this rain. You have risked enough for me, you must wait until
+the morning. I shall feel better then."
+
+"But think of the anxiety of your friends."
+
+"I can't help it," was the nervous reply. "I am afraid to be left alone
+here at night."
+
+Her voice trembled, he was fearful she would have a nervous breakdown.
+
+"Very well," he said soothingly, "I will not leave you till the
+morning."
+
+"Where will you stay?"
+
+"I'll make a shakedown for myself in the store room," he answered. "I
+shall be right within call at any time."
+
+It had grown dark outside by this time and the two in the log hut could
+barely see each other.
+
+"I think I shall light the fire," continued the man; "it will be sort of
+company for you and it gets cold up here of nights at this season. I
+shouldn't wonder if this rain turned into snow. Besides, it will dry
+your clothes for you."
+
+Then he went over to the fireplace, struck a match, touched it to the
+kindling under the huge logs already prepared, and in a moment a
+cheerful blaze was roaring up through the chimney. Then he picked up
+from the floor where she had cast them in a heap, her bedraggled
+garments. He straightened them out as best he could, hung them over the
+backs of chairs and the table which he drew as near to the fire as was
+safe. Having completed this unwonted task he turned to the woman who had
+watched him curiously and nervously the while.
+
+"Is there anything more that I can do for you?"
+
+"Nothing; you have been as kind and as gentle as you were strong and
+brave."
+
+He threw his hand out with a deprecating gesture.
+
+"Are you quite comfortable?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And your foot?"
+
+"Seems very much better."
+
+"Good night then, I will call you in the morning."
+
+"Good night," said the girl gratefully, "and God bless you for a true
+and noble man."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+ON THE TWO SIDES OF THE DOOR
+
+
+The cabin contained a large and a small room. In the wall between them
+there was a doorway closed by an ordinary batten door with a wooden
+latch and no lock. Closed it served to hide the occupant of one room
+from the view of the other, otherwise it was but a feeble barrier. Even
+had it possessed a lock, a vigorous man could have burst it through in a
+moment.
+
+These thoughts did not come very clearly to Enid Maitland. Few thoughts
+of any kind came to her. Where she lay she could see plainly the dancing
+light of the glorious fire. She was warm; the deftly wrapped bandage,
+the healing lotion upon her foot, had greatly relieved the pain in that
+wounded member. The bed was hard but comfortable, much more so than the
+sleeping bags to which of late she had been accustomed.
+
+Few women had gone through such experiences mental and physical as had
+befallen her within the last few hours and lived to tell the story. Had
+it not been for the exhaustive strains of body and spirit to which she
+had been subjected, her mental faculties would have been on the alert
+and the strangeness of her unique position would have made her so
+nervous that she could not have slept.
+
+For the time being, however, the physical demands upon her entity were
+paramount. She was dry, she was warm, she was fed, she was free from
+anxiety and she was absolutely unutterably weary. Her thoughts were
+vague, inchoate, unconcentrated. The fire wavered before her eyes, she
+closed them in a few moments and did not open them.
+
+Without a thought, without a care, she fell asleep. Her repose was
+complete, not a dream even disturbed the profound slumber into which she
+sank. Pretty picture she made; her head thrown backward, her golden hair
+roughly dried and quickly plaited in long braids, one of which fell
+along the pillow while the other curled lovingly around her neck. Her
+face in the natural light would have looked pallid from what she had
+gone through, but the fire cast red glows upon it; the fitful light
+flickered across her countenance and sometimes the color wavered, it
+came and went as if in consciousness; and sometimes deep shadows
+unrelieved accentuated the paleness born of her sufferings.
+
+There is no light that plays so many tricks with the imagination, or
+that so stimulates the fancy as the light of an open fire. In its sudden
+outbursts it sometimes seems to add life touches to the sleeping and the
+dead. Had there been any eye to see this girl, she would have made a
+delightful picture in the warm glow from the stone hearth. There were no
+eyes to look, however, save those which belonged to the man on the other
+side of the door.
+
+On the hither side of that door in the room where the fire burned on the
+hearth, there was rest in the heart of the woman, on the farther side
+where the fire only burned in the heart of the man, there was tumult.
+Not outward and visible, but inward and spiritual, and yet there was no
+lack of apparent manifestation of the turmoil in the man's soul.
+
+Albeit the room was smaller than the other, it was still of a good size.
+He walked nervously up and down from one end to the other as ceaselessly
+as a wild animal impatient of captivity stalks the narrow limits of his
+contracted cage. The even tenor of his life had suddenly been diverted.
+The ordinary sequence of his days had been abruptly changed. The privacy
+of five years, which he had hoped and dreamed might exist as long as he,
+had been rudely broken in upon. Humanity, which he had avoided, from
+which he had fled, which he had cast away forever, had found him.
+_Abiit, excessit, evasit, erupit!_ And, lo, his departures were all in
+vain! The world, with all its grandeur and its insignificance, with all
+its powers and its weaknesses, with all its opportunities and its
+obligations, with all its joys and its sorrows, had knocked at his door;
+and that the knocking hand was that of a woman, but added to his
+perplexity and to his dismay.
+
+He had cherished a dream that he could live to himself alone with but a
+memory to bear him company, and from that dream he had been thunderously
+awakened. Everything was changed. What had once been easy had now become
+impossible. He might send her away, but though he swore her to secrecy
+she would have to tell her story and something of his; the world would
+learn some of it and seek him out with insatiable curiosity to know the
+rest.
+
+Eyes as keen as his would presently search and scrutinize the mountains
+where he had roamed alone. They would see what he had seen, find what he
+had found. Mankind, gold-lusting, would swarm and hive upon the hills
+and fight and love and breed and die.
+
+He would of course move on, but where? And went he whithersoever he
+might, he would now of necessity carry with him another memory which
+would not dwell within his mind in harmony with the memory which until
+that day had been paramount there alone.
+
+Slowly, laboriously, painfully, he had built his house upon the sand,
+and the winds had blown and the floods had come, not only in a literal
+but in a spiritual significance, and in one day that house had fallen.
+He stood amid the wrecked remains of it trying to recreate it, to endow
+once more with the fitted precision of the past the shapeless broken
+units of the fabric of his fond imagination.
+
+Whiles he resented with fierce, savage, passionate intensity the
+interruption of this woman into his life. Whiles he throbbed with equal
+intensity and almost as much passion at the thought of her.
+
+Have you ever climbed a mountain early in the morning while it was yet
+dark and having gained some dominant crest stood staring at the far
+horizon, the empurpled east, while the "dawn came up like thunder?" Or,
+better still, have you ever stood within the cold dark recesses of some
+deep valley of river or pass and watched the clear light spread its bars
+athwart the heavens, like nebulous mighty pinions, along the light
+touched crest of a towering range until all of a sudden, with a leap
+almost of joy, the great sun blazed in the high horizon?
+
+You might be born a child of the dark, and light might sear and burn
+your eyeballs accustomed to cooler, deeper shades, yet you could no more
+turn away from this glory, though you might hate it, than by mere effort
+of will you could cease to breathe the air. The shock that you might
+feel, the sudden surprise, is only faintly suggestive of the emotions in
+the breast of this man.
+
+Once long ago the gentlest and tenderest of voices called from the dark
+to the light, the blind. And it is given to modern science and to modern
+skill sometimes to emulate that godlike achievement. Perhaps the
+surprise, the amazement, the bewilderment, of him who having been blind
+doth now see, if we can imagine it, not having been in the case
+ourselves, will be a better guide to the understanding of this man's
+emotion when this woman came suddenly into his lonely orbit. His eyes
+were opened although he would not know it. He fought down his new
+consciousness and would have none of it. Yet it was there. He loved her!
+
+With what joy did Selkirk welcome the savage sharer of his solitude!
+Suppose she had been a woman of his own race; had she been old,
+withered, hideous, he must have loved her on the instant, much more if
+she were young and beautiful. The thing was inevitable. Such passions
+are born. God forbid that we should deny it. Even in the busy haunts of
+men where women are as plenty as blackberries, to use Falstaff's simile,
+and where a man may sometimes choose between a hundred, or a thousand,
+often such loves are born, forever.
+
+A voice in the night, a face in the street, a whispered word, the touch
+of a hand, the answering throb of another heart--and behold! two walk
+together where before each walked alone. Sometimes the man or the woman
+who is born again of love knows it not, declines to admit it, refuses to
+recognize it. Some birth pain must awake the consciousness of the new
+life.
+
+If those things are true and possible under every day conditions and to
+ordinary men and women, how much more to this solitary. He had seen this
+woman, white breasted like the foam, rising as the ancient goddess from
+the Paphian Sea. Over that recollection, as he was a gentleman and a
+Christian, he would fain draw a curtain, before it erect a wall. He must
+not dwell upon that fact, he would not linger over that moment. Yet he
+could not forget it.
+
+Then he had seen her lying prone, yet unconsciously graceful in her
+abandonment, on the sward; he had caught a glimpse of her white face
+desperately up-tossed by the rolling water; he had looked into the
+unfathomable depths of her eyes at that moment when she had awakened in
+his arms after such a struggle as had taxed his manhood and almost
+broken his heart; he had carried her unconsciously, ghastly white with
+her pain-drawn face, stumbling desperately over the rocks in the beating
+rain to this his home. There he had held that poor, bruised slender
+little foot in his hand, gently, skillfully treating it, when he longed
+to press his lips passionately upon it. Last of all he had looked into
+her face warmed with the red light of the fire, searched her weary eyes
+almost like blue pools, in whose depths there yet lurked life and light,
+while her golden hair tinged crimson by the blaze lay on the white
+pillow--and he loved her. God pity him, fighting against fact and
+admission of it, yet how could he help it?
+
+He had loved once before in his life with the fire of youth and spring,
+but it was not like this; he did not recognize this new passion in any
+light from the past, therefore he would not admit it, hence he did not
+understand it. But he saw and admitted and understood enough to know
+that the past was no longer the supreme subject in his life, that the
+present rose higher, bulked larger and hid more and more of his far-off
+horizon.
+
+He felt like a knave and a traitor, as if he had been base, disloyal,
+false to his ideal, recreant to his remembrance. Was he indeed a true
+man? Did he have that rugged strength, that abiding faith, that eternal
+consciousness, that lasting affection beside which the rocky paths he
+often trod were things transient, perishable, evanescent? Was he a
+weakling that he fell at the first sight of another woman?
+
+He stopped his ceaseless pace forward and backward, and stopped near
+that frail and futile door. She was there and there was none to prevent.
+His hand sought the latch.
+
+What was he about to do? God forbid that a thought he could not freely
+share with humanity should enter his brain then. He held all women
+sacred, and so he had ever done, and this woman in her loveliness, in
+her helplessness, in her weakness, trebly appealed to him. But he would
+look upon her, he would fain see if she were there, if it were all not a
+dream, the creation of his disordered imagination.
+
+Men had gone mad in hermitages in the mountains, they had been driven
+insane in lonely oases in vast deserts; and they had peopled their
+solitudes with men and women. Was this same working of a disordered
+brain too much turned upon itself and with too tremendous a pressure
+upon it producing an illusion? Was there in truth any woman there? He
+would raise the latch and open the door and look. Once more the hand
+went stealthily to the latch.
+
+The woman slept quietly on. No thin barricade easily unlocked or easily
+broken protected her. Something intangible yet stronger than the
+thickest, the most rigid, bars of steel guarded her; something unseen,
+indescribable, but so unmistakable when it throbs in the breast that
+those who depend on it feel that their dependence is not in vain,
+watched over her.
+
+Cherishing no evil thought, the man had power to gratify his desire
+which might yet bear a sinister construction should his action be
+observed. It was her privacy he was invading; she had trusted to him,
+she had said so, to his honor and that stood her in good stead. His
+honor! Not in five years had he heard the word or thought the thing, but
+he had not forgotten it. She had not appealed to an unreal thing. Upon a
+rock her trust was based. His hand left the latch, it fell gently, he
+drew back and turned away trembling, a conqueror who mastered himself.
+He was awake to the truth again.
+
+What had he been about to do? Profane, uninvited, the sanctity of her
+chamber, violate the hospitality of his own house. Even with a proper
+motive imperil his self-respect, shatter her trust, endanger that honor
+which so suddenly became a part of him on demand. She would not probably
+know, she could never know unless she awoke. What of that? That ancient
+honor of his life and race rose like a mountain whose scarped face
+cannot be scaled.
+
+He fell back with a swift turn, a feeling almost womanly--and more men
+perhaps if they lived in feminine isolation, as self-centered as women
+are so often by necessity, would be as feminine as their
+sisters--influenced him, overcame him. His hand went to his hunting
+shirt; nervously he tore it open, he grasped a bright object that hung
+against his breast; as he did so, the thought came to him that not
+before in five years had he been for a moment unconscious of the
+pressure of that locket over his heart, but now that this other had
+come, he had to seek for it to find it.
+
+The man dragged it out, held it in his hand and opened it. He held it so
+tightly that it almost gave beneath the strong grasp of his strong hand.
+From a near-by box he drew another object with his other hand; he took
+the two to the light, the soft light of the candle upon the table, and
+stared from one to the other with eyes brimming.
+
+Like crystal gazers he saw other things than those presented to the
+casual vision, he heard other sounds than the beat of the rain upon the
+roof, the roar of the wind down the canyon. A voice that he had sworn he
+would never forget, but which, God forgive him, had not now the
+clearness that it might have had yesterday, whispered awful words to
+him.
+
+Anon he looked into another face, red too, but with no hue from the
+hearth or leaping flame, but red with the blood of ghastly wounds. He
+heard again that report, the roar louder and more terrible than any peal
+of thunder that rived the clouds above his head and made the mountains
+quake and tremble. He was conscious again of the awful stillness of
+death that supervened. He dropped on his knees, buried his face in his
+hands where they rested on picture and locket on the rude table.
+
+Ah, the past died hard; for a moment he was the lover of old--remorse,
+passionate expiation, solitude--he and the dead together--the world and
+the living forgot! He would not be false, he would be true; there was no
+power in any feeble woman's tender hand to drive him off his course, to
+shake his purpose, to make him a new, another man. _O, Vanitas,
+Vanitatum!_
+
+On the other side of the door the unconscious woman slept quietly on.
+The red fire light died away, the glowing coals sank into gray ash.
+Within the smaller room the cold dawn stealing through the unshaded
+window looked upon a field of battle--deaths, wounds, triumphs,
+defeats--portrayed upon one poor human face, upturned as sometimes
+victors and vanquished alike upturn stark faces from the field to the
+God above who may pity but who has not intervened.
+
+So Jacob may have looked after that awful night when he wrestled until
+the day broke with the angel and would not let him go until he blessed
+him, walking, forever after, with halting step as memorial but with his
+blessing earned. Hath, this man blessing won or not? And must he pay for
+it if he hath achieved it?
+
+And all the while the woman slept quietly on upon the other side of that
+door.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+THE LOG HUT IN THE MOUNTAINS
+
+
+What awakened the woman she did not know; in all probability it was the
+bright sunlight streaming through the narrow window before her. The
+cabin was so placed that the sun did not strike fairly into the room
+until it was some hours high, consequently she had her long sleep out
+entirely undisturbed. The man had made no effort whatever to awaken her.
+Whatever tasks he had performed since daybreak had been so silently
+accomplished that she had not been aware of them.
+
+So soon as he could do so, he had left the cabin and was now busily
+engaged in his daily duties outside the cabin and beyond earshot. He
+knew that sleep was the very best medicine for her and it was best that
+she should not be disturbed until in her own good time she awoke.
+
+The clouds had emptied themselves during the night and the wind had at
+last died away toward morning and now there was a great calm abroad in
+the land. The sunlight was dazzling. Outside, where the untempered rays
+beat full upon the crests of the mountains, it was doubtless warm, but
+within the cabin it was chilly--the fire had long since burned
+completely away and he had not entered the room to replenish it. Yet
+Enid Maitland had lain snug and warm under her blankets. She presently
+tested her wounded foot by moving it gently and discovered agreeably
+that it was much less painful than she had anticipated. The treatment of
+the night before had been very successful.
+
+She did not get up immediately, but the coldness of the room struck her
+so soon as she got out of bed. Upon her first awakening she was hardly
+conscious of her situation; her sleep had been too long and too heavy
+and her awakening too gradual for any sudden appreciation of the new
+condition. It was not until she had stared around the walls of the rude
+cabin for some time that she realized where she was and what had
+happened. When she did so she arose at once.
+
+Her first impulse was to call. Never in her life had she felt such
+death-like stillness. Even in the camp almost always there had been a
+whisper of breeze through the pine trees, or the chatter of water over
+the rocks. But here there were no pine trees and no sound of rushing
+brook came to her. It was almost painful. She was keen to dress and go
+out of the house. She stood upon the rude puncheon floor on one foot
+scarcely able yet to bear even the lightest pressure upon the other.
+There were her clothes on chairs and tables before the fireplace. Such
+had been the heat thrown out by that huge blaze that a brief inspection
+convinced her that everything was thoroughly dry. Dry or wet she must
+needs put them on since they were all she had. She noticed that there
+were no locks on the doors and she realized that the only protection she
+had was the sense of decency and the honor of the man. That she had been
+allowed her sleep unmolested made her the more confident on that
+account.
+
+She dressed hastily, although it was the work of some difficulty in view
+of her wounded foot and of the stiff condition of her rough dried
+apparel. Presently she was completely clothed save for that disabled
+foot. With the big clumsy bandages upon it she could not draw her
+stocking over it and even if she succeeded in that she could in no way
+make shift to put on her boot.
+
+The situation was awkward, the predicament annoying; she was wearing
+bloomers and a short skirt for her mountain climbing and she did not
+know quite what to do. She thought of tearing up one of the rough
+unbleached sheets and wrapping it around her leg, but she hesitated as
+to that. It was very trying. Otherwise she would have opened the door
+and stepped out into the open air, now she felt herself virtually a
+prisoner.
+
+She had been thankful that no one had disturbed her, but now she wished
+for the man. In her helplessness she thought of his resourcefulness with
+eagerness. The man however did not appear and there was nothing for her
+to do but to wait for him. Taking one of the blankets from the bed, she
+sat down and drew it across her knees and took stock of the room.
+
+The cabin was built of logs, the room was large, perhaps twelve by
+twenty feet, with one side completely taken up by the stone fireplace;
+there were two windows, one on either side of the outer door which
+opened toward the southwest. The walls were unplastered save in the
+chinks between the rough hewn logs of which it was made. Over the
+fireplace and around on one side ran a rude shelf covered with books.
+She had no opportunity to examine them, although later she would become
+familiar with every one of them.
+
+Into the walls on the other side were driven wooden pegs; from some of
+them hung a pair of snow shoes, a heavy Winchester rifle, fishing tackle
+and other necessary wilderness paraphernalia. On the puncheon floor wolf
+and bear skins were spread. In one corner against the wall again were
+piled several splendid pairs of horns from the mountain sheep.
+
+The furniture consisted of the single bed or berth in which she had
+slept, built against the wall in one of the corners, a rude table on
+which were writing materials and some books. A row of curtained shelves,
+evidently made of small boxes and surmounted by a mirror, occupied
+another space. There were two or three chairs, the handiwork of the
+owner, comfortable enough in spite of their rude construction. On some
+other pegs hung a slicker and a sou'wester, a fur overcoat, a fur cap
+and other rough clothes; a pair of heavy boots stood by the fireplace.
+On another shelf there were a number of scientific instruments the
+nature of which she could not determine, although she could see that
+they were all in a beautiful state of preservation.
+
+There was plenty of rude comfort in the room which was excessively
+mannish. In fact there was nothing anywhere which in any way spoke of
+the existence of woman--except a picture in a small rough wooden frame
+which stood on the table before which she sat down. The picture was of a
+handsome woman--naturally Enid Maitland saw that before anything else;
+she would not have been a woman if that had not engaged her attention
+more forcibly than any other fact in the room. She picked it up and
+studied it long and earnestly, quite unconscious of the reason for her
+interest, and yet a certain uneasy feeling might have warned her of what
+was toward in her bosom.
+
+This young woman had not yet had time to get her bearings, she had not
+been able to realize all the circumstances of her adventure; so soon as
+she did so she would know that into her life a man had come and whatever
+the course of that life might be in the future, he would never again be
+out of it.
+
+It was therefore with mingled and untranslatable emotions that she
+studied this picture. She marked with a certain resentment the bold
+beauty quite apparent despite the dim fading outlines of a photograph
+never very good. So far as she could discern the woman was dark haired
+and dark eyed--her direct antithesis! The casual viewer would have found
+little to find fault with in the presentment, but Enid Maitland's eyes
+were sharpened by--what, pray? At any rate she decided that the woman
+was of a rather coarse fiber, that in things finer and higher she would
+be found wanting. She was such a woman, so the girl reasoned acutely, as
+might inspire a passionate affection in a strong hearted, reckless
+youth, but whose charms being largely physical would pall in longer and
+more intimate association; a dangerous rival in a charge, but not so
+formidable in a steady campaign.
+
+These thoughts were the result of long and earnest inspection and it was
+with some reluctance that the girl at last put the photograph aside and
+looked toward the door. She was hungry, ravenously so. She began to be a
+little alarmed and had just about made up her mind to rise and stumble
+out as she was, when she heard steps outside and a knock on the door.
+
+"What is it?" she asked in response.
+
+"May I come in?"
+
+"Yes," was the quick answer.
+
+The man opened the door, left it ajar and entered the room.
+
+"Have you been awake long?" he began abruptly.
+
+"Not very."
+
+"I didn't disturb you because you needed sleep more than anything else.
+How do you feel?"
+
+"Greatly refreshed, thank you."
+
+"And hungry, I suppose?"
+
+"Very."
+
+"I will soon remedy that. Your foot?"
+
+"It seems much better, but I--"
+
+The girl hesitated, blushing. "I can't get my shoe on and--"
+
+"Shall I have another look at it?"
+
+"No, I don't believe it will be necessary. If I may have some of that
+liniment, or whatever it was you put on it, and more of that bandage, I
+think I can attend to it myself, but you see my stocking and my boot--"
+
+The man nodded, he seemed to understand; he went to his cracker box
+chiffonier and drew from it a long coarse woolen stocking.
+
+"That is the best that I can do for you," he said, extending it toward
+her somewhat diffidently.
+
+"And that will do very nicely," said the girl. "It will cover the
+bandage and that is the main thing."
+
+The man laid on the table by the side of the stocking another strip of
+bandage torn from the same sheet; as he did so he noticed the picture.
+He caught it up quickly, a dark flush spreading over his face, and
+holding it in his hand he turned abruptly away.
+
+"I will go and cook you some breakfast while you get yourself ready. If
+you have not washed, you'll find a bucket of water and a basin and towel
+outside the door."
+
+He went through the inner door as suddenly as he had come through the
+outer one. He was a man of few words and whatever of social grace he
+might once have possessed and in more favorable circumstances exhibited,
+was not noticeable now; the tenderness with which he had cared for her
+the night before had also vanished.
+
+His bearing had been cool almost harsh and forbidding and his manner was
+as grim as his appearance. The conversation had been a brief one and her
+opportunity for inspection of him consequently limited, yet she had
+taken him in. She saw a tall splendid man, no longer very young,
+perhaps, but in the prime of life and vigor. His complexion was dark and
+burned browner by long exposure to sun and wind, winter and summer. In
+spite of the brown there was a certain color, a hue of health in his
+cheeks. His eyes were hazel, sometimes brown, sometimes gray, and
+sometimes blue, she afterward learned. A short thick closely cut beard
+and mustache covered the lower part of his face, disguising but not
+hiding the squareness of his jaw and the firmness, of his lips.
+
+He had worn his cap when he entered and when he took it off she noticed
+that his dark hair was tinged with white. He was dressed in a leather
+hunting suit, somewhat the worse for wear, but fitting him in a way to
+give free play to all his muscles. His movements were swift, energetic
+and graceful; she did not wonder that he had so easily hurled the bear
+to one side and had managed to carry her--no light weight, indeed!--over
+what she dimly recognized must have been a horrible trail, which
+burdened as he was would have been impossible to a man of less splendid
+vigor than he.
+
+The cabin was low ceiled and as she had sat looking up at him he had
+towered above her until he seemed to fill it. Naturally she had
+scrutinized his every action, as she had hung upon his every word. His
+swift and somewhat startled movement, his frowning as he had seized the
+picture on which she had gazed with such interest aroused the liveliest
+surprise and curiosity in her heart.
+
+Who was this woman? Why was he so quick to remove the picture from her
+gaze? Thoughts rushed tumultuously through her brain, but she realized
+at once that she lacked time to indulge them. She could hear him moving
+about in the other room, she threw aside the blanket with which she had
+draped herself, changed the bandage on her foot, drew on the heavy
+woolen stocking which of course was miles too big for her, but which
+easily took in her foot and ankle encumbered as they were by the rude,
+heavy but effective wrapping. Thereafter she hobbled to the door and
+stood for a moment almost aghast at the splendor and magnificence before
+her.
+
+He had built his cabin on a level shelf of rock perhaps fifty by a
+hundred feet in area. It was backed up against an overtowering cliff,
+otherwise the rock fell away in every direction. She divined that the
+descent from the shelf into the pocket or valley spread before her was
+sheer, except off to the right where a somewhat gentler acclivity of
+huge and broken boulders gave a practicable ascent--a sort of titantic
+stairs--to the place perched on the mountain side. The shelf was
+absolutely bare save for the cabin and a few huge boulders. There were a
+few sparse, stunted trees further up on the mountain side above; a few
+hundred feet beyond them, however, came the timber line, after which
+there was nothing but the naked rock.
+
+Below several hundred feet lay a clear emerald pool, whose edges were
+bordered by pines where it was not dominated by high cliffs. Already the
+lakelet was rimmed with ice on the shaded side. This enchanting little
+body of water was fed by the melting snow from the crest and peaks,
+which in the clear pure sunshine and rarefied air of the mountains
+seemed to rise and confront her within a stone's throw of the place
+where she stood.
+
+On one side of the lake in the valley or pocket beneath there was a
+little grassy clearing, and there this dweller in the wilderness had
+built a rude corral for the burros. On a rough bench by the side of the
+door she saw the primitive conveniences to which he had alluded. The
+water was delightfully soft and as it had stood exposed to the sun's
+direct rays for some time, although the air was exceedingly crisp and
+cold, it was tempered sufficiently to be merely cool and agreeable. She
+luxuriated in it for a few moments and while she had her face buried in
+the towel, rough, coarse, but clean, she heard a step. She looked up in
+time to see the man lay down upon the bench a small mirror and a clean
+comb. He said nothing as he did so and she had no opportunity to thank
+him before he was gone. The thoughtfulness of the act affected her
+strangely and she was very glad of a chance to unbraid her hair, comb it
+out and plait it again. She had not a hair pin left of course, and all
+she could do with it was to replait it and let it hang upon her
+shoulders; her coiffure would have looked very strange to civilization,
+but out there in the mountains, it was eminently appropriate.
+
+Without noticing details the man felt the general effect as she limped
+back into the room toward the table. Her breakfast was ready for her; it
+was a coarse fare, bacon, a baked potato hard tack crisped before the
+fire, coffee black and strong, with sugar but no cream. The dishes
+matched the fare, too, yet she noticed that the fork was of silver and
+by her plate there was a napkin, rough dried but of fine linen. The man
+had just set the brimming smoking coffee pot on the table when she
+appeared.
+
+"I am sorry I have no cream," he said, and then before she could make
+comment or reply, he turned and walked out of the door, his purpose
+evidently being not to embarrass her by his presence while she ate.
+
+Enid Maitland had grown to relish the camp fare, bringing to it the
+appetite of good health and exertion. She had never eaten anything that
+tasted so good to her as that rude meal that morning, yet she would have
+enjoyed it better, she thought, if he had only shared it with her, if
+she had not been compelled to eat it alone. She hastened her meal on
+that account, determined as soon as she had finished her breakfast to
+seek the man and have some definite understanding with him.
+
+And after all she reflected that she was better alone than in his
+presence, for there would come stealing into her thoughts the
+distressing episode of the morning before, try as she would to put it
+out of her mind. Well, she was a fairly sensible girl, the matter was
+passed, it could not be helped now, she would forget it as much as was
+possible. She would recur to it with mortification later on, but the
+present was so full of grave problems that there was not any room for
+the past.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+A TOUR OF INSPECTION
+
+
+The first thing necessary, she decided, when she had satisfied her
+hunger and finished her meal, was to get word of her plight and her
+resting place to her uncle and the men of the party; and the next thing
+was to get away, where she would never see this man again and perhaps be
+able to forget what had transpired--yet there was a strange pang of pain
+in her heart at that thought!
+
+No man on earth had ever so stimulated her curiosity as this one. Who
+was he? Why was he there? Who was the woman whose picture he had so
+quickly taken from her gaze? Why had so splendid a man buried himself
+alone in that wilderness? These reflections were presently interrupted
+by the reappearance of the man himself.
+
+"Have you finished?" he asked unceremoniously, standing in the doorway
+as he spoke.
+
+"Yes, thank you, and it was very good indeed."
+
+Dismissing this politeness with a wave of his hand but taking no other
+notice, he spoke again.
+
+"If you will tell me your name--"
+
+"Maitland, Enid Maitland."
+
+"Miss Maitland?"
+
+The girl nodded.
+
+"And where you came from, I will endeavor to find your party and see
+what can be done to restore you to them."
+
+"We were camped down that canyon at a place where another brook, a large
+one, flows into it, several miles I should think below the place
+where--"
+
+She was going to say "where you found me," but the thought of the way in
+which he had found her rushed over her again; and this time with his
+glance directly upon her, although it was as cold and dispassionate and
+indifferent as a man's look could well be, the recollection of the
+meeting to which she had been about to allude rushed over her with an
+accompanying wave of color which heightened her beauty as it covered her
+with shame.
+
+She could not realize that beneath his mask of indifference so
+deliberately worn, the man was as agitated as she, not so much at the
+remembrance of anything that had transpired, but at the sight, the
+splendid picture, of the woman as she stood, there in the little cabin
+then. It seemed to him as if she gathered up in her own person all the
+radiance and light and beauty, all the purity and freshness and
+splendor of the morning, to shine and dazzle in his face. As she
+hesitated in confusion, perhaps comprehending its causes he helped out
+her lame and halting sentence.
+
+"I know the canyon well," he said. "I think I know the place to which you
+refer; is it just about where the river makes an enormous bend upon
+itself?"
+
+"Yes, that is it. In that clearing we have been camped for ten days. My
+uncle must be crazy with anxiety to know what has become of me and--"
+
+The man interposed.
+
+"I will go there directly," he said. "It is now half after ten. That
+place is about seven miles or more from here across the range, fifteen
+or twenty by the river; I shall be back by nightfall. The cabin is your
+own."
+
+He turned away without another word.
+
+"Wait," said the woman, "I am afraid to stay here."
+
+She had been fearless enough before in these mountains but her recent
+experiences had somehow unsettled her nerves.
+
+"There is nothing on earth to hurt you, I think," returned the man.
+"There isn't a human being, so far as I know, in these mountains."
+
+"Except my uncle's party."
+
+He nodded.
+
+"But there might be another--bear," she added desperately, forcing
+herself.
+
+"Not likely, and they wouldn't come here if there were any. That's the
+first grizzly I have seen in years," he went on unconcernedly,
+studiously looking away from her, not to add to her confusion at the
+remembrance of that awful episode which would obtrude itself on every
+occasion. "You can use a rifle or gun?"
+
+She nodded; he stepped over to the wall and took down the Winchester
+which he handed her.
+
+"This one is ready for service, and you will find a revolver on the
+shelf. There is only one possible way of access to this cabin, that's
+down those rock stairs; one man, one woman, a child even, with these
+weapons could hold it against an army."
+
+"Couldn't I go with you?"
+
+"On that foot?"
+
+Enid pressed her wounded foot upon the ground; it was not so painful
+when resting, but she found she could not walk a step on it without
+great suffering.
+
+"I might carry you part of the way," said the man. "I carried you last
+night, but it would be impossible, all of it."
+
+"Promise me that you will be back by nightfall with Uncle Bob and--"
+
+"I shall be back by nightfall, but I can't promise that I will bring
+anybody with me."
+
+"You mean?"
+
+"You saw what the cloud burst nearly did for you," was the quick answer.
+"If they did not get out of that pocket there is nothing left of them
+now."
+
+"But they must have escaped," persisted the girl, fighting down her
+alarm at this blunt statement of possible peril. "Besides, Uncle Robert
+and most of the rest were climbing one of the peaks and--"
+
+"They will be all right then, but if I am to find the place and tell
+them your story, I must go now."
+
+He turned and without another word or a backward glance scrambled down
+the hill. The girl limped to the brink of the cliff over which he had
+plunged and stared after him. She watched him as long as she could see
+him until he was lost among the trees. If she had anybody else to depend
+upon she would certainly have felt differently toward him. When Uncle
+Robert and her Aunt and the children and old Kirkby and the rest
+surrounded her again she could hate that man in spite of all he had done
+for her, but now, as she stared after him determinedly making his way
+down the mountain and through the trees, it was with difficulty she
+could restrain herself from calling him back.
+
+The silence was most oppressive, the loneliness was frightful; she had
+been alone before in these mountains, but from choice; now the fact that
+there was no escape from them made the sensation a very different one.
+
+She sat down and brooded over her situation until she felt that if she
+did not do something and in some way divert her thoughts she would break
+down again. He had said that the cabin and its contents were hers. She
+resolved to inspect them more closely. She hobbled back into the great
+room and looked about her again. There was nothing that demanded careful
+scrutiny; she wasn't quite sure whether she was within the proprieties
+or not, but she seized the oldest and most worn of the volumes on the
+shelf. It was a text book on mining and metallurgy she observed, and
+opening it at the fly leaf, across the page she saw written in a firm
+vigorous masculine hand a name, "William Berkeley Newbold," and beneath
+these words, "Thayer Hall, Harvard," and a date some seven years back.
+
+The owner of that book, whether the present possessor or not, had been a
+college man. Say that he had graduated at twenty-one or twenty-two, he
+would be twenty-eight or twenty-nine years old now, but if so, why that
+white hair? Perhaps though the book did not belong to the man of the
+cabin.
+
+She turned to other books on the shelf. Many of them were technical
+books which she had sufficient general culture to realize could be only
+available to a man highly educated and a special student of mines and
+mining--a mining engineer, she decided, with a glance at those
+instruments and appliances of a scientific character plainly, but of
+whose actual use she was ignorant.
+
+A rapid inspection of the other books confirmed her in the conclusion
+that the man of the mountains was indeed the owner of the collection.
+There were a few well worn volumes of poetry and essays. A Bible,
+Shakespeare, Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, Tennyson, Keats, a small
+dictionary, a compendious encyclopedia, just the books, she thought,
+smiling at her conceit, that a man of education and culture would want
+to have upon a desert island where his supply of literature would be
+limited.
+
+The old ones were autographed as the first book she had looked in;
+others, newer editions to the little library if she could judge by their
+condition, were unsigned.
+
+Into the corner cupboard and the drawers of course she did not look.
+There was nothing else in the room to attract her attention, save some
+piles of manuscript neatly arranged on one of the shelves, each one
+covered with a square of board and kept in place by pieces of glistening
+quartz. There were four of these piles and another half the size of the
+first four on the table. These of course she did not examine, further
+than to note that the writing was in the same bold free hand as the
+signature in the books. If she had been an expert she might have deduced
+much from the writing; as it was she fancied it was strong, direct,
+manly.
+
+Having completed her inspection of this room, she opened the door and
+went into the other; it was smaller and less inviting. It had only one
+window and a door opening outside. There was a cook stove here and
+shelves with cooking utensils and granite ware, and more rude box
+receptacles on the walls which were filled with a bountiful and well
+selected store of canned goods and provisions of various kinds. This was
+evidently the kitchen, supply room, china closet. She saw no sign of a
+bed in it and wondered where and how the man had spent the night.
+
+By rights her mind should have been filled with her uncle and his party
+and in their alarm she should have shared, but she was so extremely
+comfortable, except for her foot, which did not greatly trouble her so
+long as she kept it quiet, that she felt a certain degree of contentment
+not to say happiness. The Adventure was so romantic and thrilling--save
+for those awful moments in the pool--especially to the soul of a
+conventional woman who had been brought up in the most humdrum and
+stereotyped fashion of the earth's ways, and with never an opportunity
+for the development of the spirit of romance which all of us exhibit
+some time in our life and which thank God some of us never lose, that
+she found herself reveling in it.
+
+She lost herself in pleasing imaginations of the tales of her adventures
+that she could tell when she got back to her uncle and when she got
+further back to staid old Philadelphia. How shocked everybody would be
+with it all there! Of course she resolved that she would never mention
+one episode of that terrible day, and she had somehow absolute
+confidence that this man, in spite of his grim, gruff taciturnity, who
+had shown himself so exceedingly considerate of her feelings would never
+mention it either.
+
+She had so much food for thought, that not even in the late afternoon of
+the long day, could she force her mind to the printed pages of the book
+she had taken at random from the shelf which lay open before her, where
+she sat in the sun, her head covered by an old "Stetson" that she had
+ventured to appropriate. She had dragged a bear skin out on the rocks in
+the sun and sat curled up on it half reclining against a boulder
+watching the trail, the Winchester by her side. She had eaten so late a
+breakfast that she had made a rather frugal lunch out of whatever had
+taken her fancy in the store room, and she was waiting most anxiously
+now for the return of the man.
+
+The season was late and the sun sank behind the peaks quite early in the
+afternoon, and it grew dark and chill long before the shadows fell upon
+the dwellers of the lowlands.
+
+Enid drew the bear skin around her and waited with an ever growing
+apprehension. If she should be compelled to spend the night alone in
+that cabin, she felt that she could not endure it. She was never so glad
+of anything in her life as when she saw him suddenly break out of the
+woods and start up the steep trail, and for a moment her gladness was
+not tempered by the fact, which she was presently to realize with great
+dismay, that as he had gone, so he now returned, alone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+THE CASTAWAYS OF THE MOUNTAINS
+
+
+The man was evidently seeking her, for so soon as he caught sight of her
+he broke into a run and came bounding up the steep ascent with the speed
+and agility of a chamois or a mountain sheep. As he approached the girl
+rose to her feet and supported herself upon the boulder against which
+she had been leaning, at the same time extending her hand to greet him.
+
+"Oh," she cried, her voice rising nervously as he drew near, "I am so
+glad you are back, another hour of loneliness and I believe I should
+have gone crazy."
+
+Now whether that joy in his return was for him, personally or for him
+abstractly, he could not tell; whether she was glad that he had come
+back simply because he was a human being who would relieve her
+loneliness or whether she rejoiced to see him individually, was a matter
+not yet to be determined. He hoped the latter, he believed the former.
+At any rate he caught and held her outstretched hand in the warm clasp
+of both his own. Burning words of greeting rushed to his lips
+torrentially, what he said, however, was quite commonplace; as is so
+often the case, thought and outward speech did not correspond.
+
+"It's too cold for you out here, you must go into the house at once," he
+declared masterfully and she obeyed with unwonted meekness.
+
+The sun had set and the night air had grown suddenly chill. Still
+holding her hand they started toward the cabin a few rods away. Her
+wounded foot was of little support to her and the excitement had
+unnerved her; in spite of his hand she swayed; without a thought he
+caught her about the waist and half lifted, half led her to the door. It
+seemed as natural as it was inevitable for him to assist her in this way
+and in her weakness and bewilderment she suffered it without comment or
+resistance. Indeed there was such strength and power in his arm, she was
+so secure there, that she liked it. As for him his pulses were bounding
+at the contact; but for that matter even to look at her quickened his
+heart beat.
+
+Entering the main room he led her gently to one of the chairs near the
+table and immediately thereafter lighted the fire which he had taken the
+precaution to lay before his departure. It had been dark in the cabin,
+but the fire soon filled it with glorious light. She watched him at his
+task and as he rose from the hearth questioned him.
+
+"Now tell me," she began, "you found--"
+
+"First your supper, and then the story," he answered, turning toward the
+door of the other room.
+
+"No," pleaded the girl, "can't you see that nothing is of any importance
+to me but the story? Did you find the camp?"
+
+"I found the place where it had been."
+
+"Where it had been!"
+
+"There wasn't a single vestige of it left. That whole pocket, I knew it
+well, had been swept clean by the flood."
+
+"But Kirkby, and Mrs. Maitland and--"
+
+"They weren't there."
+
+"Did you search for them?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"But they can't have been drowned," she exclaimed piteously.
+
+"Of course not," he began reassuringly. "Kirkby is a veteran of these
+mountains and--"
+
+"But do you know him?" queried the girl in great surprise.
+
+"I did once," said the man, flushing darkly at his admission. "I haven't
+seen him for five years."
+
+So that was the measure of his isolation, thought the woman, keen for
+the slightest evidence as to her companion's history, of which, by the
+way, he meant to tell her nothing.
+
+"Well?" she asked, breaking the pause.
+
+"Kirkby would certainly see the cloudburst coming and he would take the
+people with him in the camp up on the hogback near it. It is far above
+the flood line, they would be quite safe there."
+
+"And did you look for them there?"
+
+"I did. The trail had been washed out, but I scrambled up and found
+undisputed evidence that my surmise was correct. I haven't a doubt that
+all who were in the camp were saved."
+
+"Thank God for that," said the girl, greatly relieved and comforted by
+his reassuring words. "And my uncle, Mr. Robert Maitland, and the rest
+on the mountain, what do you think of them?"
+
+"I am sure that they must have escaped too. I don't think any of them
+have suffered more than a thorough drenching in the downpour and that
+they are all safe and perhaps on their way to the settlements now."
+
+"But they wouldn't go back without searching for me, would they?" cried
+the girl.
+
+"Certainly not, I suppose they are searching for you now."
+
+"Well then--"
+
+"Wait," said the man. "You started down the canyon, you told everybody
+that you were going that way. They naturally searched in that direction;
+they hadn't the faintest idea that you were going up the river."
+
+"No," admitted Enid, "that is true. I did not tell anyone. I didn't
+dream of going up the canyon when I started out in the morning; it was
+the result of a sudden impulse."
+
+"God bless that--" burst out the man and then he checked himself,
+flushing again, darkly.
+
+What had he been about to say? The question flashed into his own mind
+and into the woman's mind at the same time when she heard, the
+incompleted sentence; but she, too, checked the question that rose to
+her lips.
+
+"This is the way I figure it," continued the man hurriedly to cover up
+his confusion. "They fancy themselves alone in these mountains, which
+save for me they are; they believe you to have gone down the canyon.
+Kirkby with Mrs. Maitland and the others waited on the ridge until Mr.
+Maitland and his party joined them. They couldn't have saved very much
+to eat or wear from the camp, they were miles from a settlement, they
+probably divided into two parties; the larger with the woman and
+children started for home, the second went down the canyon searching for
+your dead body!"
+
+"And had it not been for you," cried the girl impulsively, "they had
+found it."
+
+"God permitted me to be of service to you," answered the man simply. "I
+can follow their speculations exactly; up or down, they believed you to
+have been in the canyon when the storm broke, therefore there was only
+one place and one direction to search for you."
+
+"And that was?"
+
+"Down the canyon."
+
+"What did you do then?"
+
+"I went down the canyon myself. I think I saw evidences that someone had
+preceded me, too."
+
+"Did you overtake them!"
+
+"Certainly not; they traveled as rapidly as I, they must have started
+early in the morning and they had several hours the advantage of me."
+
+"But they must have stopped somewhere for the night and--"
+
+"Yes," answered the man. "If I had had only myself to consider, I should
+have pressed on through the night and overtaken them when they camped."
+
+"Only yourself?"
+
+"You made me promise to return here by nightfall. I don't know whether I
+should have obeyed you or not. I kept on as long as I dared and still
+leave myself time to get back to you by dark."
+
+She had no idea of the desperate speed he had made to reach her while it
+was still daylight.
+
+"If you hadn't come when you did, I should have died," cried the girl
+impetuously. "You did perfectly right. I don't think I am a coward, I
+hope not, I never was afraid before, but--"
+
+"Don't apologize or explain to me, it's not necessary; I understand
+everything you feel. It was only because I had given you my word to be
+back by sunset that I left off following their trail. I was afraid that
+you might think me dead or that something had happened and--"
+
+"I should, I did," admitted the girl. "It wasn't so bad during the day
+time, but when the sun went down and you did not come I began to imagine
+everything. I saw myself left alone here in these mountains, helpless,
+wounded, without a human being to speak to. I could not bear it."
+
+"But I have been here alone for five years," said the man grimly.
+
+"That's different. I don't know why you have chosen solitude, but I--"
+
+"You are a woman," returned the other gently, "and you have suffered,
+that accounts for everything."
+
+"Thank you," said Enid gratefully. "And I am so glad you came back to
+me."
+
+"Back to you," reiterated the man and then he stopped. If he had allowed
+his heart to speak he would have said, back to you from the very ends of
+the world--"But I want you to believe that I honestly did not leave the
+trail until the ultimate moment," he added.
+
+"I do believe it," she extended her hand to him. "You have been very
+good to me, I trust you absolutely."
+
+And for the second time he took that graceful, dainty, aristocratic hand
+in his own larger, stronger, firmer grasp. His face flushed again; under
+other circumstances and in other days perhaps he might have kissed that
+hand; as it was he only held it for a moment and then gently released
+it.
+
+"And you think they are searching for me?" she asked.
+
+"I know it. I am sure of what I myself would do for one I love--I loved
+I mean, and they--"
+
+"And they will find me?"
+
+The man shook his head.
+
+"I am afraid they will be convinced that you have gone down with the
+flood. Didn't you have a cap or--"
+
+"Yes," said the woman, "and a sweater. The bear you shot covered the
+sweater with blood. I could not put it on again."
+
+As she spoke she flushed a glorious crimson at the remembrance of that
+meeting, but the man was looking away with studied care. She thanked him
+in her heart for such generous and kindly consideration.
+
+"They will have gone down the stream with the rest, and it's just
+possible that the searchers may find them, the body of the bear too.
+This river ends in a deep mountain lake and I think it is going to snow,
+it will be frozen hard to-morrow."
+
+"And they will think me--there?"
+
+"I am afraid so."
+
+"And they won't come up here?"
+
+"It is scarcely possible."
+
+"Oh!" exclaimed the woman faintly at the dire possibility that she might
+not be found.
+
+"I took an empty bottle with me," said the man, breaking the silence,
+"in which I had enclosed a paper saying that you were here and safe,
+save for your wounded foot, and giving directions how to reach the
+place. I built a cairn of rocks in a sheltered nook in the valley where
+your camp had been pitched and left the tightly corked bottle wedged on
+top of it. If they return to the camp they can scarcely fail to see it."
+
+"But if they don't go back there."
+
+"Well, it was just a chance."
+
+"And if they don't find me?"
+
+"You will have to stay here for a while; until your foot gets well
+enough to travel," returned the man evasively.
+
+"But winter is coming on, you said the lake would freeze to-night, and
+if it snows?"
+
+"It will snow."
+
+The woman stared at him, appalled.
+
+"And in that case--"
+
+"I am afraid," was the slow reply, "that you will have to stay here"--he
+hesitated in the face of her white still face--"all winter," he added
+desperately.
+
+"Alone!" exclaimed the girl faintly. "With you?"
+
+"Miss Maitland," said the man resolutely, "I might as well tell you the
+truth. I can make my way to the settlements now or later, but it will be
+a journey of perhaps a week. There will be no danger to me, but you will
+have to stay here. You could not go with me. If I am any judge you
+couldn't possibly use your foot for a mountain journey for at least
+three weeks, and by that time we shall be snowed in as effectually as if
+we were within the Arctic Circle. But if you will let me go alone to the
+settlement I can bring back your uncle, and a woman to keep you company,
+before the trails are impassable. Or enough men to make it practicable
+to take you through the canyons and down the trails to your home again. I
+could not do that alone even if you were well, in the depth of the
+winter."
+
+The girl shook her head stubbornly.
+
+"A week alone in these mountains and I should be mad," she said
+decisively. "It isn't to be thought of."
+
+"It must be thought of," urged the man. "You don't understand. It is
+either that or spend the winter here--with me."
+
+The woman looked at him steadily.
+
+"And what have I to fear from you?" she asked.
+
+"Nothing, nothing," protested the other, "but the world?"
+
+"The world," said the woman reflectively. "I don't mean to say that it
+means nothing to me, but it has cause enough for what it would fain say
+now." She came to her decision swiftly. "There is no help for it," she
+continued; "we are marooned together." She smiled faintly as she used
+the old word of tropic island and southern sea. "You have shown me that
+you are a man and a gentleman, in God and you I put my trust. When my
+foot gets well, if you can teach me to walk on snow shoes and it is
+possible to get through the passes, we will try to go back; if not, we
+must wait."
+
+"The decision is yours," said the man, "yet I feel that I ought to point
+out to you how--"
+
+"I see all that you see," she interrupted. "I know what is in your mind,
+it is entirely clear to me, we can do nothing else."
+
+"So be it. You need have no apprehension as to your material comfort; I
+have lived in these mountains for a long time, I am prepared for any
+emergency, I pass my time in the summer getting ready for the winter.
+There is a cave, or recess rather, behind the house which, as you see,
+is built against the rock wall, and it is filled with wood enough to
+keep us warm for two or three winters; I have an ample supply of
+provisions and clothing for my own needs, but you will need something
+warmer than that you wear," he continued.
+
+"Have you needle and thread and cloth?" she asked.
+
+"Everything," was the prompt answer.
+
+"Then I shall not suffer."
+
+"Are you that wonder of wonders," asked the man, smiling slightly, "an
+educated woman who knows how to sew?"
+
+"It is a tradition of Philadelphia," answered the girl, "that her
+daughters should be expert needlewomen."
+
+"Oh, you are from Philadelphia."
+
+"Yes, and you?"
+
+She threw the question at him so deftly and so quickly that she caught
+him unaware and off his guard a second time within the hour.
+
+"Baltimore," he answered before he thought and then bit his lip.
+
+He had determined to vouchsafe her no information regarding himself and
+here she had surprised him into an admission in the first blush of their
+acquaintance, and she knew that she had triumphed for she smiled in
+recognition of it.
+
+She tried another tack.
+
+"Mr. Newbold," she began at a venture, and as it was five years since he
+had heard that name, his surprise at her knowledge, which after all was
+very simple, betrayed him a third time. "We are like stories I have
+read, people who have been cast away on desert islands and--"
+
+"Yes," said the man, "but no castaways that I have ever read of have
+been so bountifully provided with everything necessary to the comfort
+of life as we are. I told you I lacked nothing for your material
+welfare, and even your mind need not stagnate."
+
+"I have looked at your books already," said the woman, answering his
+glance.
+
+This was where she had found his name he realized.
+
+"You will have this room for your own use and I will take the other for
+mine," he continued.
+
+"I am loath to dispossess you."
+
+"I shall be quite comfortable there, and this shall be your room
+exclusively except when you bid me enter, as when I bring you your
+meals; otherwise I shall hold it inviolate."
+
+"But," said the woman, "there must be an equal division of labor, I must
+do my share."
+
+"There isn't much to do in the winter, except to take care of the
+burros, keep up the fire and prepare what we have to eat."
+
+"I am afraid I should be unequal to outdoor work, but in the rest I must
+do my part."
+
+He recognized at once that idleness would be irksome.
+
+"So you shall," he assented heartily, "when your foot is well enough to
+make you an efficient member of our little society."
+
+"Thank you, and now--"
+
+"Is there anything else before I get supper?"
+
+"You think there is no hope of their searching for me here?"
+
+The man shook his head.
+
+"If James Armstrong had been in the party," she said reflectively, "I am
+sure he would never have given up."
+
+"And who is James Armstrong, may I ask?" burst forth the other bluntly.
+
+"Why he--I--he is a friend of my uncle's and an--acquaintance of my
+own."
+
+"Oh," said the man shortly and gloomily, as he turned away.
+
+Enid Maitland had been very brave in his presence, but when he went out
+she put her head down on her arms on the table and cried softly to
+herself. Was ever a woman in such a predicament, thrown into the arms of
+a man who had established every conceivable claim upon her gratitude,
+forced to live with him shut up in a two-room log cabin upon a lonely
+mountain range, surrounded by lofty and inaccessible peaks, pierced by
+terrific gorges soon to be impassable from the snows? She had read many
+stories of castaways from Charles Reade's famous "Foul Play" down to
+more modern instances, but in those cases there had always been an
+island comparatively large over which to range, with privacy,
+seclusion, opportunity for withdrawal; bright heavens, balmy breezes,
+idyllic conditions. Here were two uplifted from the earth upon a
+sky-piercing mountain; they would have had more range of action and more
+liberty of motion if they had been upon a derelict in the ocean.
+
+And she realized at the same time that in all those stories the two
+castaways always loved each other. Would it be so with them? Was it so!
+And again the hot flame within outvied the fire on the hearth as the
+blood rushed to the smooth surface of her cheek again.
+
+What would her father say if he could know her position, what would the
+world say, and above all what would Armstrong say? It cannot be denied
+that her thoughts were terribly and overwhelmingly dismayed, and yet
+that despair was not without a certain relief. No man had ever so
+interested her as this one. What was the mystery of his life, why was he
+there, what had he meant when he had blessed the idle impulse that had
+sent her into his arms?
+
+Her heart throbbed again. She lifted her face from her hands and dried
+her tears, a warm glow stole over her and once again not altogether from
+the fire. Who and what was this man? Who was that woman whose picture he
+had taken from her? Well, she would have time to find out. And meantime
+the world outside could think and do what it pleased. She sat staring
+into the firelight, seeing pictures there, dreaming dreams. She was as
+lovely as an angel to the man when he came back into the room.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK IV
+
+OH YE ICE AND SNOW, PRAISE YE THE LORD
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+THE WOMAN'S HEART
+
+
+That upper earth on which they lived was covered with a thick blanket of
+snow. The lakes and pools were frozen from shore to shore. The mountain
+brooks, if they flowed at all, ran under thick arches of ice. The
+deepest canyons were well nigh impassable from huge drifts that sometimes
+almost rose level with the tops of the walls. In every sheltered spot
+great banks of white were massed. The spreading branches of the tall
+pine trees in the valleys drooped under heavy burdens of snow. Only here
+and there sharp gaunt peaks were swept clean by the fierce winter winds
+and thrust themselves upward in the icy air, naked and bare. The cold
+was polar in its bitter intensity.
+
+The little shelf, or plateau, jutting out from the mountain side upon
+which the lonely cabin stood was sheltered from the prevailing winds,
+but the house itself was almost covered with the drifts. The constant
+fire roaring up the huge stone chimney had melted some of the snow at
+the top and it had run down the slanting roof and formed huge icicles
+on what had been the eaves of the house. The man had cut away the drifts
+from doors and windows for light and liberty. At first every stormy
+night would fill his laborious clearings with drifting snow, but as it
+became packed down and frozen solid he was able to keep his various ways
+open without a great deal of difficulty. A little work every morning and
+evening sufficed.
+
+Every day he had to go down the mountain stairway to the bottom of the
+pocket to feed and water the burros. What was a quick and simple task in
+milder, warmer seasons, sometimes took him half a day under the present
+rigorous conditions. And the woman never saw him start out in the storm
+without a sinking heart and grave apprehension. On his return to the
+cabin half frozen, almost spent and exhausted, she ever welcomed him
+with eager gratitude and satisfaction which would shine in her eyes,
+throb in her heart and tremble upon her lips, control it as she might.
+And he thought it was well worth all the trouble and hardships of his
+task to be so greeted when he came back to her.
+
+Winter had set in unusually early and with unprecedented severity. Any
+kind of winter in the mountains would have amazed the girl, but even the
+man with his larger experiences declared he had never before known such
+sharp and sudden cold, or such deep and lasting snow. His daily records
+had never shown such low temperatures, nor had his observation ever
+noted such wild and furious storms as raged then and there. It seemed as
+if Nature were in a conspiracy to seal up the mountains and all they
+contained, to make ingress and egress alike impossible.
+
+A month had elapsed and Enid's foot was now quite well. The man had
+managed to sew up her boot where his knife had cut it, and although the
+job was a clumsy one the result was a usable shoe. It is astonishing the
+comfort she took when she first put it on and discarded for good the
+shapeless woolen stocking which had covered the clumsy bandage, happily
+no longer necessary. Although the torn and bruised member had healed and
+she could use it with care, her foot was still very tender and capable
+of sustaining no violent or long continued strain. Of necessity she had
+been largely confined to the house, but whenever it had been possible he
+had wrapped her in his great bear skin coat and had helped her out to
+the edge of the cliff for a breath of fresh air.
+
+Sometimes he would leave her there alone, would perhaps have left her
+alone there always had she not imperiously required his company.
+
+Insensibly she had acquired the habit--not a difficult one for a woman
+to fall into--of taking the lead in the small affairs of their
+circumscribed existence, and he had acquiesced in her dominance without
+hesitation or remonstrance. It was she who ordered their daily walk and
+conversation. Her wishes were consulted about everything; to be sure no
+great range of choice was allowed them, or liberty of action, or
+freedom, in the constraints with which nature bound them, but whenever
+there was any selection she made it.
+
+The man yielded everything to her and yet he did it without in any way
+derogating from his self respect or without surrendering his natural
+independence. The woman instinctively realized that in any great crisis,
+in any large matter, the determination of which would naturally affect
+their present or their future, their happiness, welfare, life, he would
+assert himself, and his assertion would be unquestioned and
+unquestionable by her.
+
+There was a delightful satisfaction to the woman in the whole situation.
+She had a woman's desire to lead in the smaller things of life and yet
+craved the woman's consciousness that in the great emergencies she would
+be led, in the great battles she would be fought for, in the great
+dangers she would be protected, in the great perils she would be saved.
+There was rest, comfort, joy and satisfaction in these thoughts.
+
+The strength of the man she mastered was evidence of her own power and
+charm. There was a sweet, voiceless, unconscious flattery in his
+deference of which she could not be unaware.
+
+Having little else to do, she studied the man and she studied him with a
+warm desire and an enthusiastic predisposition to find the best in him.
+She would not have been a human girl if she had not been thrilled to the
+very heart of her by what the man had done for her. She recognized that
+whether he asserted it or not, he had established an everlasting and
+indisputable claim upon her.
+
+The circumstances of their first meeting, which as the days passed did
+not seem quite so horrible to her, and yet a thought of which would
+bring the blood to her cheek still on the instant, had in some way
+turned her over to him. His consideration of her, his gracious
+tenderness toward her, his absolute abnegation, his evident overwhelming
+desire to please her, to make the anomalous situation in which they
+stood to each other bearable in spite of their lonely and unobserved
+intimacy, by an absolute lack of presumption on his part--all those
+things touched her profoundly.
+
+Although she did not recognize the fact then, perhaps, she loved him
+from the moment her eyes had opened in the mist and rain after that
+awful battle in the torrent to see him bending over her.
+
+No sight that had ever met Enid Maitland's eyes was so glorious, so awe
+inspiring, so uplifting and magnificent as the view from the verge of
+the cliff in the sunlight of some bright winter morning. Few women had
+ever enjoyed such privileges as hers. She did not know whether she liked
+the winter crowned range best that way, or whether she preferred the
+snowy world, glittering cold in the moonlight; or even whether it was
+more attractive when it was dark and the peaks and drifts were only
+lighted by the stars which shone never so brightly as just above her
+head.
+
+When he allowed her she loved to stand sometimes in the full fury of the
+gale with the wind shrieking and sobbing, like lost souls in some icy
+inferno, through the hills and over the pines, the snow beating upon
+her, the sleet cutting her face if she dared to turn toward the storm.
+Generally he left her alone in the quieter moments, but in the tempest
+he stood watchful, on guard by her side, buttressing her, protecting
+her, sheltering her. Indeed, his presence then was necessary; without
+him she could scarce have maintained a footing. The force of the wind
+might have hurled her down the mountain but for his strong arm. When
+the cold grew too great he led her back carefully to the hut and the
+warm fire.
+
+Ah, yes, life and the world were both beautiful to her then, in night,
+in day, by sunlight, by moonlight, in calm and storm. Yet it made no
+difference what was spread before the woman's eyes, what glorious
+picture was exhibited to her gaze, she could not look at it more than a
+moment without thinking of the man. With the most fascinating panorama
+that the earth's surface could spread before human vision to engage her
+attention she looked into her own heart and saw there this man!
+
+Oh, she had fought against it at first, but lately she had luxuriated in
+it. She loved him, she loved him! And why not? What is it that women
+love in men? Strength of body? She could remember yet how he had carried
+her over the mountains in the midst of the storm, how she had been so
+bravely upborne by his arms to his heart. She realized later what a task
+that had been, what a feat of strength. The uprooting of that sapling,
+and the overturning of that huge grizzly were child's play to the long
+portage up the almost impassable canyon and mountain side which had
+brought her to this dear haven.
+
+Was it strength of character she sought, resolution, determination? This
+man had deliberately withdrawn from the world, buried himself in this
+mountain; and had stayed there deaf to the alluring call of man or
+woman; he had had the courage to do that.
+
+Was it strength of mind she admired? Enid Maitland was no mean judge of
+the mental powers of her acquaintance. She was just as full of life and
+spirit and the joy of them as any young woman should be, but she had not
+been trained by and thrown with the best for nothing. _Noblesse oblige!_
+That his was a mind well stored with knowledge of the most varied sort
+she easily and at once perceived. Of course the popular books of the
+last five years had passed him by, and of such he knew nothing, but he
+could talk intelligently, interestingly, entertainingly upon the great
+classics. Keats and Shakespeare were his most thumbed volumes. He had
+graduated from Harvard as a Civil Engineer with the highest honors of
+his class and school and the youngest man to get his sheepskin! Enid
+Maitland herself was a woman of broad culture and wide reading and she
+deliberately set herself to fathom this man's capabilities. Not
+infrequently, much to her surprise, sometimes to her dismay, but
+generally to her satisfaction, she found that she had no plummet with
+which to sound his greater depths.
+
+Did she seek in him that fine flower of good breeding, gentleness and
+consideration? Where could she find these qualities better displayed?
+She was absolutely alone with this man, entirely in his power, shut off
+from the world and its interference as effectually as if they had both
+been abandoned on an ice floe at the North Pole or cast away on some
+lonely island in the South Seas, yet she felt as safe as if she had been
+in her own house, or her uncle's, with every protection that human power
+could give. He had never presumed upon the situation in the least
+degree, he never once referred to the circumstances of their meeting in
+the remotest way, he never even discussed her rescue from the flood, he
+never told her how he had borne her through the rain to the lonely
+shelter of the hills, and in no way did he say anything that the most
+keenly scrutinizing mind would torture into an allusion to the pool and
+the bear and the woman. The fineness of his breeding was never so well
+exhibited as in this reticence. More often than not it is what he does
+not rather than what he does that indicates the man.
+
+It would be folly to deny that he never thought of these things. Had he
+forgotten them there would be no merit in his silence; but to remember
+them and to keep still--aye, that showed the man! He would close his
+eyes in that little room on the other side of the door and see again the
+dark pool, her white shoulders, her graceful arms, the lovely face with
+its crown of sunny hair rising above the rushing water. He had listened
+to the roar of the wind through the long nights, when she thought him
+asleep if she thought of him at all, and heard again the scream of the
+storm that had brought her to his arms. No snow drop that touched his
+cheek when he was abroad but reminded him of that night in the cold rain
+when he had held her close and carried her on. He could not sit and mend
+her boot without remembering that white foot before which he would fain
+have prostrated himself and upon which he would have pressed passionate
+kisses if he had given way to his desires. But he kept all these things
+in his heart, pondered them and made no sign.
+
+Did she ask beauty in her lover? Ah, there at last he failed. According
+to the canyons of perfection he did not measure up to the standard. His
+features were irregular, his chin a trifle too square, his mouth a
+thought too firm, his brow wrinkled a little; but he was good to look
+at, for he looked strong, he looked clean and he looked true. There was
+about him, too, that stamp of practical efficiency that men who can do
+things always have. You looked at him and you felt sure that what he
+undertook, that he would accomplish; that decision and capability were
+incarnate in him.
+
+But after all the things are said, love goes where it is sent, and I, at
+least, am not the sender. This woman loved this man neither because nor
+in spite of these qualities. That they were might account for her
+affection, but if they had not been, it may be that that affection, that
+that passion, would have sprung up in her heart still. No one can say,
+no one can tell how or why those things are. She had loved him while she
+raged against him and hated him. She did neither the one nor the other
+of those two last things, now, and she loved him the more.
+
+Mystery is a great mover, there is nothing so attractive as a problem we
+cannot solve. The very situation of the man, how he came there, what he
+did there, why he remained there, questions to which she had yet no
+answer, stimulated her profoundly. Because she did not know she
+questioned in secret; interest was aroused and the transition to love
+was easy.
+
+Propinquity, too, is responsible for many an affection. "The ivy clings
+to the first met tree." Given a man and woman heart free and throw them
+together and let there be decent kindness on both sides, and it is
+almost inevitable that each shall love the other. Isolate them from the
+world, let them see no other companions but the one man and the one
+woman and the result becomes more inevitable.
+
+Yes, this woman loved this man. She said in her heart--and I am not one
+to dispute her conclusions--that she would have loved him had he been
+one among millions to stand before her, and it was true. He was the
+complement of her nature. They differed in temperament as much as in
+complexion, and yet in such differences as must always be to make
+perfect love and perfect union, there were striking resemblances,
+necessary points of contact.
+
+There was no reason whatever why Enid Maitland should not love this man.
+The only possible check upon her feelings would have been her rather
+anomalous relation to Armstrong, but she reflected that she had promised
+him definitely nothing. When she had met him she had been heart whole,
+he had made some impression upon her fancy and might have made more with
+greater opportunity, but unfortunately for him, luckily for her, he had
+not enjoyed that privilege. She scarcely thought of him longer.
+
+She would not have been human if her mind had not dwelt upon the world
+beyond the skyline on the other side of the range. She knew how those
+who loved her must be suffering on account of her disappearance, but
+knowing herself safe and realizing that within a short time, when the
+spring came again, she would go back to them and that their mourning
+would be turned into joy by her arrival, she could not concern herself
+very greatly over their present feelings and emotions; and besides, what
+would be the use of worrying over those things. There was subject more
+attractive for her thoughts close at hand. And she was too blissfully
+happy to entertain for more than a moment any sorrow.
+
+She pictured her return and never by any chance did she think of going
+back to civilization alone. The man she loved would be by her side, the
+church's blessing would make them one. To do her justice in the
+simplicity and purity of her thoughts she never once thought of what the
+world might say about that long winter sojourn alone with this man. She
+was so conscious of her own innocence and of his delicate forbearance,
+she never once thought how humanity would elevate its brows and fairly
+cry upon her from the house tops. She did not realize that were she ever
+so pure and so innocent she could not now or ever reach the high
+position which Caesar, who was none too reputable himself, would fain
+have had his wife enjoy?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+THE MAN'S HEART
+
+
+Now love produces both happiness and unhappiness, dependent upon
+conditions, but on the whole I think the happiness predominates, for
+love itself if it be true and high is its own reward. Love may feel
+itself unworthy and may shrink even from the unlatching of the shoe lace
+of the beloved, yet it joys in its own existence nevertheless. Of course
+its greatest satisfaction is in the return, but there is a sweetness
+even in the despair of the truly loving.
+
+Enid Maitland, however, did not have to endure indifference, or fight
+against a passion which met with no response, for this man loved her
+with a love that was greater even than her own. The moon, in the trite
+aphorism, looks on many brooks, the brook sees no moon but the one above
+him in the heavens. In one sense his merit in winning her affection for
+himself from the hundreds of men she knew was the greater; in many years
+he had only seen this one woman. Naturally she should be everything to
+him. She represented to him not only the woman but womankind. He had
+been a boy practically when he had buried himself in those mountains,
+and in all that time he had seen nobody like Enid Maitland. Every
+argument which has been exploited to show why she should love him could
+be turned about to account for his passion for her. Those arguments are
+not necessary, they are all supererogatory, like idle words. To him also
+love had been born in an hour. It had flashed into existence as if from
+the fiat of the Divine.
+
+Oh, he had fought against it. Like the eremites of old he had been
+scourged into the desert by remorse and another passion, but time had
+done its work. The woman he first loved had ministered not to the
+spiritual side of the man, or if she had so ministered in any degree it
+was because he had looked at her with a glamour of inexperience and
+youth. During those five years of solitude, of study and of reflection,
+the truth had gradually unrolled itself before him. Conclusions vastly
+at variance with what he had ever believed possible as to the woman upon
+whom he had first bestowed his heart had got into his being and were in
+solution there, this present woman was the precipitant which brought
+them to life. He knew now what the old appeal of his wife had been. He
+knew now what the new appeal of this woman was.
+
+In humanity two things in life are inextricably intermingled, body and
+soul. Where the function of one begins and the function of the other
+ends no one is able to say. In all human passions there are admixtures
+of the earth earthy. We are born the sons of the Old Adam as we are
+re-born the sons of the New. Passions are complex. As in harvest wheat
+and tares grow together until the end, so in love earth and heaven
+mingle ever. He remembered a clause from an ancient marriage service he
+had read. "With my body I thee worship," and with every fiber of his
+physical being, he loved this woman.
+
+It would be idle to deny that, impossible to disguise the facts, but in
+the melting pot of passion the preponderant ingredients were mental and
+spiritual; and just because higher and holier things predominated, he
+held her in his heart a sacred thing. Love is like a rose: the material
+part is the beautiful blossom, the spiritual factor is the fragrance
+which abides in the rose jar even after every leaf has faded away, or
+which may be expressed from the soft petals by the hard circumstances of
+pain and sorrow until there is left nothing but the lingering perfume of
+the flower.
+
+His body trembled if she laid a hand upon him, his soul thirsted for
+her; present or absent he conjured before his tortured brain the
+sweetness that inhabited her breast. He had been clear-sighted enough
+in analyzing the past, he was neither clear-sighted nor coherent in
+thinking of the present. He worshiped her, he could have thrown himself
+upon his knees to her; if it would have added to her happiness she could
+have killed him, smiling at her. Rode she in the Juggernaut car of the
+ancient idol, with his body would he have unhesitatingly paved the way
+and have been glad of the privilege. He longed to compass her with sweet
+observances. The world revenged itself upon him for his long neglect, it
+had summed up in this one woman all its charm, its beauty, its romance,
+and had thrust her into his very arms. His was one of those great
+passions which illuminate the records of the past. Paolo had not loved
+Francesca more.
+
+Oh, yes, the woman knew he loved her. It was not in the power of mortal
+man, no matter how iron his restraint, how absolute the imposition of
+his will, to keep his heart hidden, his passion undisclosed. No one
+could keep such things secret. His love for her cried aloud in a
+thousand ways: even his look when he dared to turn his eyes upon her was
+eloquent of his feeling. He never said a word, however; he held his lips
+at least fettered and bound for he believed that honor and its
+obligations weighed down the balance upon the contrary side to which
+his inclinations lay.
+
+He was not worthy of this woman. In the first place all he had to offer
+her was a blood-stained hand. That might have been overcome in his mind;
+but pride in his self-punishment, his resolution to withdraw himself
+from man and woman until such time as God completed his expiation and
+signified His acceptance of the penitent by taking away his life, held
+him inexorably.
+
+The dark face of his wife rose before him. He forced himself to think
+upon her; she had loved him, she had given him all that she could. He
+remembered how she had pleaded with him that he take her on that last
+and most dangerous of journeys, her devotion to him had been so great
+she could not let him go out of her sight a moment, he thought
+fatuously! And he had killed her. In the queer turmoil of his brain he
+blamed himself for everything. He could not be false to his purpose,
+false to her memory, unworthy of the passion in which he believed she
+had held him and which he believed he had inspired.
+
+If he had gone out in the world, after her death, he might have
+forgotten most of these things, he might have lived them down. Saner,
+clearer views would have come to him. His morbid self-reproach and
+self-consciousness would have been changed. But he had lived with them
+alone for five years and now there was no putting them aside. Honor and
+pride, the only things that may successfully fight against love,
+overcame him. He could not give way. He wanted to, every time he was in
+her presence he longed to, sweep her to his heart and crush her in his
+arms and bend her head back and press kisses of fire on her lips.
+
+But honor and pride held him back. How long would they continue to
+exercise dominion over him? Would the time come when his passion rising
+like a sea would thunder upon these artificial embankments of his soul,
+beat them down and sweep them away?
+
+At first the disparity between their situations, not so much on account
+of family or of property--the treasures of the mountains, hidden since
+creation, he had discovered and let lie--but because of the youth and
+position of the woman compared to his own maturer years, his desperate
+experience, and his social withdrawal, had reinforced his determination
+to live and love without a sign. But he had long since got beyond this.
+Had he been free he would have taken her like a viking of old, if he had
+to pluck her from amid a thousand swords and carry her to a beggar's hut
+which love would have turned to a palace. And she would have come with
+him on the same conditions.
+
+He did not know that. Women have learned through centuries of weakness
+that fine art of concealment which man has never mastered. She never let
+him see what she thought of him. Yet he was not without suspicion; if
+that suspicion grew to certainty, would he control himself then?
+
+At first he had sought to keep out of her way, but she had compelled him
+to come in. The room that was kitchen and bedroom and store-room for him
+was cheerless and somewhat cold. Save at night or when he was busy with
+other tasks outside they lived together in the great room. It was always
+warm, it was always bright, it was always cheerful, there.
+
+The little piles of manuscript she had noted were books he had written.
+He made no effort to conceal such things from her. He talked frankly
+enough about his life in the hills, indeed there was no possibility of
+avoiding the discussion of such topics. On but two subjects was he
+inexorably silent. One was the present state of his affections and the
+other was the why and wherefore of his lonely life. She knew beyond
+peradventure that he loved her, but she had no faint suspicion even as
+to the reason why he had become a recluse. He had never given her the
+slightest clew to his past save that admission that he had known Kirkby,
+which was in itself nothing definite and which she never connected with
+that package of letters which she still kept with her.
+
+The man's mind was too active and fertile to be satisfied with manual
+labor alone, the books that he had written were scientific treatises in
+the main. One was a learned discussion of the fauna and flora of the
+mountains. Another was an exhaustive account of the mineral resources
+and geological formations of the range. He had only to allow a whisper,
+a suspicion of his discovery of gold and silver in the mountains to
+escape him and the canyons and crests alike would be filled with eager
+prospectors. Still a third work was a scientific analysis of the water
+powers in the canyons.
+
+He had willingly allowed her to read them all. Much of them she found
+technical and, aside from the fact that he had written them,
+uninteresting. But there was one book remaining in which he simply
+discussed the mountains in the various seasons of the year; when the
+snows covered them, when the grass and the moss came again, when the
+flowers bloomed, when autumn touched the trees. There was the soul of
+the man, poetry expressed in prose, man-like but none the less poetry
+for that. This book she pored over, she questioned him about it, they
+discussed it as they discussed Keats and the other poets.
+
+Those were happy evenings. She on one side of the fire sewing, her
+finger wound with cloth to hold his giant thimble, fashioning for
+herself some winter garments out of a gay colored, red, white and black
+ancient and exquisitely woven Navajo blanket, soft and pliable almost as
+an old fashioned piece of satin--priceless if she had but known
+it--which he put at her disposal. While on the other side of the same
+homely blaze he made her out of the skins of some of the animals that he
+had killed, shapeless foot coverings, half moccasin and wholly legging,
+which she could wear over her shoes in her short excursions around the
+plateau and which would keep her feet warm and comfortable.
+
+By her permission he smoked as he worked, enjoying the hour, putting
+aside the past and the future and for a few moments blissfully content.
+Sometimes he laid aside his pipe and whatever work he was engaged upon
+and read to her from some immortal noble number. Sometimes the
+entertainment fell to her and she sang to him in her glorious contralto
+voice, music that made him mad. Once he could stand it no longer. At
+the end of a burst of song which filled the little room--he had risen
+to his feet while she sang, compelled to the erect position by the
+magnificent melody--as the last notes died away and she smiled at him,
+triumphant and expectant of his praise and his approval, he hurled
+himself out of the room and into the night; wrestling for hours with the
+storm which after all was but a trifle to that which raged in his bosom.
+While she, left alone and deserted, quaked within the silent room till
+she heard him come back.
+
+Often and often when she slept quietly on one side the thin partition,
+he lay awake on the other, and sometimes his passion drove him forth to
+cool the fever, the fire in his soul, in the icy, wintry air. The
+struggle within him preyed upon him, the keen loving eye of the woman
+searched his face, scrutinized him, looked into his heart, saw what was
+there.
+
+She determined to end it, deciding that he must confess his affections.
+She had no premonition of the truth and no consideration of any evil
+consequences held her back. She could give free range to her love and
+her devotion. She had the ordering of their lives and she had the power
+to end the situation growing more and more impossible. She fancied the
+matter easily terminable. She thought she had only to let him see her
+heart in such ways as a maiden may, to bring joy to his own, to make
+him speak. She did not dream of the reality.
+
+One night, therefore, a month or more after she had come, she resolved
+to end the uncertainty. She believed the easiest and the quickest way
+would be to get him to tell her why he was there. She naturally surmised
+that the woman of the picture, which she had never seen since the first
+day of her arrival, was in some measure the cause of it; and the only
+pain she had in the situation was the keen jealousy that would obtrude
+itself at the thought of that woman. She remembered everything that he
+had said to her and she recalled that he had once made the remark that
+he would treat her as he would have his wife treated if he had one;
+therefore whoever and whatever the picture of this woman was, she was
+not his wife. She might have been someone he had loved, who had not
+loved him. She might have died. She was jealous of her, but she did not
+fear her.
+
+After a long and painful effort the woman had completed the winter suit
+she had made for herself. He had advised her and had helped her. It was
+a belted tunic that fell to her knees, the red and black stripes ran
+around it, edged the broad collar, cuffed the warm sleeves and marked
+the graceful waist line. It was excessively becoming to her. He had been
+down into the valley, or the pocket, for a final inspection of the
+burros before the night, which promised to be severe, fell, and she had
+taken advantage of the opportunity to put it on.
+
+She knew that she was beautiful; her determination to make this evening
+count had brought an unusual color to her cheeks, an unwonted sparkle to
+her eye. She stood up as she heard him enter the other room, she was
+standing erect as he came through the door and faced her. He had only
+seen her in the now somewhat shabby blue of her ordinary camp dress
+before, and her beauty fairly smote him in his face. He stood before
+her, wrapped in his great fur coat, snow and ice clinging to it,
+entranced. The woman smiled at the effect she produced.
+
+"Take off your coat," she said gently, approaching him. "Here, let me
+help you. Do you realize that I have been here over a month now? I want
+to have a little talk with you. I want you to tell me something."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+THE KISS ON THE HAND
+
+
+"Did it ever occur to you," began Enid Maitland gravely enough, for she
+quite realized the serious nature of the impending conversation, "did it
+ever occur to you that you know practically all about me, while I know
+practically nothing about you?"
+
+The man bowed his head.
+
+"You may have fancied that I was not aware of it, but in one way or
+another you have possessed yourself of pretty nearly all of my short
+and, until I met you, most uneventful life," she continued.
+
+Newbold might have answered that there was one subject which had been
+casually introduced by her upon one occasion and to which she had never
+again referred, but which was to him the most important of all subjects
+connected with her; and that was the nature of her relationship to one
+James Armstrong whose name, although he had heard it but once, he had
+not forgotten. The girl had been frankness itself in following his deft
+leads when he talked with her about herself, but she had shown the same
+reticence in recurring to Armstrong that he had displayed in questioning
+her about him. The statement she had just made as to his acquaintance
+with her history was therefore sufficiently near the truth to pass
+unchallenged and once again he gravely bowed in acquiescence.
+
+"I have withheld nothing from you," went on the girl; "whatever you
+wanted to know, I have told you. I had nothing to conceal, as you have
+found out. Why you wanted to know about me, I am not quite sure."
+
+"It was because--" burst out the man impetuously, and then he stopped
+abruptly and just in time.
+
+Enid Maitland smiled at him in a way that indicated she knew what was
+behind the sudden check he had imposed upon himself.
+
+"Whatever your reason, your curiosity--"
+
+"Don't call it that, please."
+
+"Your desire, then, has been gratified. Now it is my turn. I am not even
+sure about your name. I have seen it in these books and naturally I have
+imagined that it is yours."
+
+"It is mine."
+
+"Well, that is really all that I know about you. And now I shall be
+quite frank. I want to know more. You evidently have something to
+conceal or you would not be living here in this way. I have never asked
+you about yourself, or manifested the least curiosity to solve the
+problem you present, to find the solution of the mystery of your life."
+
+"Perhaps," said the man, "you didn't care enough about it to take the
+trouble to inquire."
+
+"You know," answered the girl, "that is not true. I have been consumed
+with desire to know?"
+
+"A woman's curiosity?"
+
+"Not that," was the soft answer that turned away his wrath.
+
+She was indeed frank. There was that in her way of uttering those two
+simple words that set his pulses bounding. He was not altogether and
+absolutely blind.
+
+"Come," said the girl, extending her hand to him, "we are alone here
+together. We must help each other. You have helped me, you have been of
+the greatest service to me. I can't begin to count all that you have
+done for me; my gratitude--"
+
+"Only that?"
+
+"But that is all that you have ever asked or expected," answered the
+young woman in a low voice, whose gentle tones did not at all accord
+with the boldness and courage of the speech.
+
+"You mean?" asked the man, staring at her, his face aflame.
+
+"I mean," answered the girl swiftly, willfully misinterpreting and
+turning his half-spoken question another way, "I mean that I am sure
+that some trouble has brought you here. I do not wish to force your
+confidence--I have no right to do so--yet I should like to enjoy it.
+Can't you give it to me? I want to help you. I want to do my best to
+make some return for what you have been to me and have done for me."
+
+"I ask but one thing," he said quickly.
+
+"And what is that?"
+
+But again he checked himself.
+
+"No," he said, "I am not free to ask anything of you."
+
+And that answer to Enid Maitland was like a knife thrust in the heart.
+The two had been standing, confronting each other. Her heart grew faint
+within her. She stretched out her hand vaguely, as if for support. He
+stepped toward her, but before he reached her she caught the back of the
+chair and sank down weakly. That he should be bound and not free, had
+never once occurred to her. She had quite misinterpreted the meaning of
+his remark.
+
+The man did not help her; he could not help her. He just stood and
+looked at her. She fought valiantly for self-control a moment or two
+and then utterly oblivious to the betrayal of her feelings involved in
+the question--the moments were too great for consideration of such
+trivial matters--she faltered:
+
+"You mean there is some other woman?"
+
+He shook his head in negation.
+
+"I don't understand."
+
+"There was some other woman?"
+
+"Where is she now?"
+
+"Dead."
+
+"But you said you were not free."
+
+He nodded.
+
+"Did you care so much for her that now--that now--"
+
+"Enid," he cried desperately. "Believe me, I never knew what love was
+until I met you."
+
+The secret was out now, it had been known to her long since, but now it
+was publicly proclaimed. Even a man as blind, as obsessed, as he could
+not mistake the joy that illuminated her face at this announcement. That
+very joy and satisfaction produced upon him, however, a very different
+effect than might have been anticipated. Had he been free indeed he
+would have swept her to his breast and covered her sweet face with
+kisses broken by whispered words of passionate endearment. Instead of
+that he shrank back from her and it was she who was forced to take up
+the burden of the conversation.
+
+"You say that she is dead," she began in sweet appealing bewilderment,
+"and that you care so much for me and yet you--"
+
+"I am a murderer," he broke out harshly. "There is blood upon my hands,
+the blood of a woman who loved me and whom, boy as I was, I thought that
+I loved. She was my wife, I killed her."
+
+"Great Heaven!" cried the girl, amazed beyond measure or expectation by
+this sudden avowal which she had never once suspected, and her hand
+instinctively went to the bosom of her dress where she kept that soiled,
+water-stained packet of letters, "are you that man?"
+
+"I am that man that did that thing, but what do you know?" he asked
+quickly, amazed in his turn.
+
+"Old Kirkby, my uncle Robert Maitland, told me your story. They said
+that you had disappeared from the haunts of men--"
+
+"And they were right. What else was there for me to do? Although
+innocent of crime, I was blood guilty. I was mad. No punishment could be
+visited upon me like that imposed by the stern, awful, appalling fact. I
+swore to prison myself, to have nothing more forever to do with mankind
+or womankind with whom I was unworthy to associate, to live alone until
+God took me. To cherish my memories, to make such expiation as I could,
+to pray daily for forgiveness. I came here to the wildest, the most
+inaccessible, the loneliest, spot in the range. No one ever would come
+here I fancied, no one ever did come here but you. I was happy after a
+fashion, or at least content. I had chosen the better part. I had work,
+I could read, write, remember and dream. But you came and since that
+time life has been heaven and hell. Heaven because I love you, hell
+because to love you means disloyalty to the past, to a woman who loved
+me. Heaven because you are here, I can hear your voice, I can see you,
+your soul is spread out before me in its sweetness, in its purity; hell
+because I am false to my determination, to my vow, to the love of the
+past."
+
+"And did you love her so much, then?" asked the girl, now fiercely
+jealous and forgetful of other things for the moment.
+
+"It's not that," said the man. "I was not much more than a boy, a year
+or two out of college. I had been in the mountains a year. This woman
+lived in a mining camp, she was a fresh, clean, healthy girl, her father
+died and the whole camp fathered her, looked after her, and all the
+young men in the range for miles on either side were in love with her.
+I supposed that I was, too, and--well, I won her from the others. We had
+been married but a few months and a part of the time my business as a
+mining engineer had called me away from her. I can remember the day
+before we started on the last journey. I was going alone again, but she
+was so unhappy over my departure, she clung to me, pleaded with me,
+implored me to take her with me, insisted on going wherever I went,
+would not be left behind. She couldn't bear me out of her sight, it
+seemed. I don't know what there was in me to have inspired such
+devotion, but I must speak the truth, however it may sound. She seemed
+wild, crazy about me. I didn't understand it; frankly, I didn't know
+what such love was--then--but I took her along. Shall I not be honest
+with you? In spite of the attraction physical, I had begun to feel even
+then that she was not the mate for me. I don't deserve it, and it shames
+me to say it of course, but I wanted a better mind, a higher soul. That
+made it harder--what I had to do, you know."
+
+"Yes, I know."
+
+"The only thing I could do when I came to my senses was to sacrifice
+myself to her memory because she had loved me so; as it were, she gave
+up her life for me, I could do no less than be true and loyal to the
+remembrance. It wasn't a sacrifice either until you came, but as soon as
+you opened your eyes and looked into mine in the rain and the storm upon
+the rock to which I had carried you after I had fought for you, I knew
+that I loved you. I knew that the love that had come into my heart was
+the love of which I had dreamed, that everything that had gone before
+was nothing, that I had found the one woman whose soul should mate with
+mine."
+
+"And this before I had said a word to you?"
+
+"What are words? The heart speaks to the heart, the soul whispers to the
+soul. And so it was with us. I had fought for you, you were mine, mine.
+My heart sang it as I panted and struggled over the rocks carrying you.
+It said the words again and again as I laid you down here in this cabin.
+It repeated them over and over; mine, mine! It says that every day and
+hour. And yet honor and fidelity bid me stay. I am free, yet bound; free
+to love you, but not to take you. My heart says yes, my conscience no. I
+should despise myself if I were false to the love which my wife bore me,
+and how could I offer you a blood stained hand?"
+
+He had drawn very near her while he spoke; she had risen again and the
+two confronted each other. He stretched out his hand as he asked that
+last question, almost as if he had offered it to her. She made the best
+answer possible to his demand, for before he could divine what she would
+be at, she had seized his hand and kissed it, and this time it was the
+man whose knees gave way. He sank down in the chair and buried his face
+in his hands.
+
+"Oh, God! Oh, God!" he cried in his humiliation and shame. "If I had
+only met you first, or if my wife had died as others die, and not by my
+hand in that awful hour. I can see her now, broken, bruised, bleeding,
+torn. I can hear the report of that weapon. Her last glance at me in the
+midst of her indescribable agony was one of thankfulness and gratitude.
+I can't stand it, I am unworthy even of her."
+
+"But you could not help it, it was not your fault. And you can't
+help--caring--for me--"
+
+"I ought to help it, I ought not love you, I ought to have known that I
+was not fit to love any woman, that I had no right, that I was pledged
+like a monk to the past. I have been weak, a fool. I love you and my
+honor goes, I love you and my self respect goes, I love you and my pride
+goes. Would God I could say I love you and my life goes and end it all."
+He stared at her a little space. "There is only one ray of satisfaction
+in it at all, one gleam of comfort," he added.
+
+"And what is that?"
+
+"You don't know what the suffering is, you don't understand, you don't
+comprehend."
+
+"And why not?"
+
+"Because you do not love me."
+
+"But I do," said the woman quite simply, as if it were a matter of
+course not only that she should love him, but that she should also tell
+him so.
+
+The man stared at her, amazed. Such fierce surges of joy throbbed
+through him as he had not thought the human frame could sustain. This
+woman loved him, in some strange way he had gained her affection. It was
+impossible, yet she had said so! He had been a blind fool. He could see
+that now. She stood before him and smiled up at him, looking at him
+through eyes misted with tears, with lips parted, with color coming and
+going in her cheek and with her bosom rising and falling. She loved him,
+he had but to step nearer to her to take her in his arms. There was
+trust, devotion, surrender, everything, in her attitude and between
+them, like that great gulf which lay between the rich man and the
+beggar, that separated heaven and hell, was that he could not cross.
+
+"I never dreamed, I never hoped--oh," he exclaimed as if he had got his
+death wound, "this cannot be borne."
+
+He turned away, but in two swift steps she caught him.
+
+"Where do you go?"
+
+"Out, out into the night."
+
+"You cannot go now, it is dark; hark to the storm, you will miss your
+footing; you would fall, you would freeze, you would die."
+
+"What matters that?"
+
+"I cannot have it."
+
+"It would be better so."
+
+He strove again to wrench himself away, but she would not be denied. She
+clung to him tenaciously.
+
+"I will not let you go unless you give me your word of honor that you
+will not leave the plateau, and that you will come back to me."
+
+"I tell you that the quicker and more surely I go out of your life, the
+happier and better it will be for you."
+
+"And I tell you," said the woman resolutely, "that you can never go out
+of my life again, living or dead," she released him with one hand and
+laid it upon her heart, "you are here."
+
+"Enid," cried the man.
+
+"No," she thrust him gently away with one hand yet detained him with the
+other--that was emblematic of the situation between them. "Not now, not
+yet, let me think, but promise me you will do yourself no harm, you will
+let nothing imperil your life."
+
+"As you will," said the man regretfully. "I had purposed to end it now
+and forever, but I promise."
+
+"Your word of honor?"
+
+"My word of honor."
+
+"And you won't break it?"
+
+"I never broke it to a human being, much less will I do so to you?"
+
+She released him. He went into the other room and she heard him cross
+the floor and open the door and go out into the night, into the storm
+again.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+THE FACE IN THE LOCKET
+
+
+Left alone in the room she sat down again before the fire and drew from
+her pocket the packet of letters. She knew them by heart, she had read
+and re-read them often when she had been alone. They had fascinated her.
+They were letters from some other man to this man's wife. They were
+signed by an initial only and the identity of the writer was quite
+unknown to her. The woman's replies were not with the others, but it was
+easy enough to see what those replies had been. All the passion of which
+the woman had been capable had evidently been bestowed upon the writer
+of the letters she had treasured.
+
+Her story was quite plain. She had married Newbold in a fit of pique. He
+was an Eastern man, the best educated, the most fascinating and
+interesting of the men who frequented the camp. There had been a quarrel
+between the letter writer and the woman, there were always quarrels,
+apparently, but this had been a serious one and the man had savagely
+flung away and left her. He had not come back as he usually did. She
+had waited for him and then she had married Newbold and then he had
+come back--too late!
+
+He had wanted to kill the other, but she had prevented, and while
+Newbold was away he had made desperate love to her. He had besought her
+to leave her husband, to go away with him. He had used every argument
+that he could to that end and the woman had hesitated and wavered, but
+she had not consented; she had not denied her love for him any more than
+she had denied her respect and a certain admiration for her gallant
+trusting husband. She had refused again and again the requests of her
+lover. She could not control her heart, nevertheless she had kept to her
+marriage vows. But the force of her resistance had grown weaker and she
+had realized that alone she would perhaps inevitably succumb.
+
+Her lover had been away when her husband returned prior to that last
+fateful journey. Enid Maitland saw now why she had besought him to take
+her with him. She had been afraid to be left alone! She had not dared to
+depend upon her own powers any more, her only salvation had been to go
+with this man whom she did not love, whom at times she almost hated, to
+keep from falling into the arms of the man she did love. She had been
+more or less afraid of Newbold. She had soon realized, because she was
+not blinded by any passion as he, that they had been utterly mismated.
+She had come to understand that when the same knowledge of the truth
+came to him, as it inevitably must some day, nothing but unhappiness
+would be their portion.
+
+Every kind of an argument in addition to those so passionately adduced
+in these letters urging her to break away from her husband and to seek
+happiness for herself while yet there was time, had besieged her heart,
+had seconded her lover's plea and had assailed her will, and yet she had
+not given way.
+
+Now Enid Maitland hated the woman who had enjoyed the first young love
+of the man she herself loved. She hated her because of her priority of
+possession, because her memory yet came between her and that man. She
+hated her because Newbold was still true to her memory, because Newbold,
+believing in the greatness of her passion for him, thought it shame and
+dishonor to his manhood to be false to her, no matter what love and
+longing drew him on.
+
+Yet there was a stern sense of justice in the bosom of this young woman.
+She exulted in the successful battle the poor woman had waged for the
+preservation of her honor and her good name, against such odds. It was a
+sex triumph for which she was glad. She was proud of her for the stern
+rigor with which she had refused to take the easiest way and the
+desperation with which she had clung to him she did not love, but to
+whom she was bound by the laws of God and man, in order that she might
+not fall into the arms of the man she did love, in defiance of right.
+
+Enid Maitland and this woman were as far removed from each other as the
+opposite poles of the earth, but there was yet a common quality in each
+one, of virtuous womanhood, of lofty morality. Natural, perhaps, in the
+one and to be expected; unnatural, perhaps, and to be unexpected in the
+other, but there! Now that she knew what love was and what its power and
+what its force--for all that she had felt and experienced and dreamed
+about before were as nothing to what it was since he had spoken--she
+could understand what the struggle must have been in that woman's heart.
+She could honor her, reverence her, pity her.
+
+She could understand the feeling of the man, too, she could think much
+more clearly than he. He was distracted by two passions, for his pride
+and his honor and for her; she had as yet but one, for him. And as there
+was less turmoil and confusion in her mind, she was the more capable of
+looking the facts in the face and making the right deduction from them.
+
+She could understand how in the first frightful rush of his grief and
+remorse and love the very fact that Newbold had been compelled to kill
+his wife, of whom she guessed he was beginning to grow a little weary,
+under such circumstances had added immensely to his remorse and
+quickened his determination to expiate his guilt and cherish her memory.
+She could understand why he would do just as he had done, go into the
+wilderness to be alone in horror of himself and in horror of his fellow
+men, to think only, mistakenly, of her.
+
+Now he was paying the penalty of that isolation. Men were made to live
+with one another, and no one could violate that law natural, or by so
+long an inheritance as to have so become, without paying that penalty.
+His ideas of loyalty and fidelity were warped, his conceptions of his
+duty were narrow. There was something noble in his determination, it is
+true, but there was something also very foolish. The dividing line
+between wisdom and folly is sometimes as indefinite as that between
+comedy and tragedy, between laughter and tears. If the woman he had
+married and killed had only hated him and he had known, it would have
+been different, but since he believed so in her love he could do nothing
+else.
+
+At that period in her reflections Enid Maitland saw a great light. The
+woman had not loved her husband after all, she had loved another. That
+passion of which he had dreamed had not been for him. By a strange chain
+of circumstances Enid Maitland held in her hand the solution of the
+problem. She had but to give him these letters to show him that his
+golden image had stood upon feet of clay, that the love upon which he
+had dwelt was not his. Once convinced of that he would come quickly to
+her arms. She cried a prayer of blessing on old Kirkby and started to
+her feet, the letters in hand, to call Newbold back to her and tell him,
+and then she stopped.
+
+Woman as she was, she had respect for the binding conditions and laws of
+honor as well as he. Chance, nay, Providence, had put the honor of this
+woman, her rival, in her hands. The world had long since forgotten this
+poor unfortunate; in no heart was her memory cherished save in that of
+her husband. His idea of her was a false one, to be sure, but not even
+to procure her own happiness could Enid Maitland overthrow that ideal,
+shatter that memory.
+
+She sat down again with the letters in her hand. It had been very simple
+a moment since, but it was not so now. She had but to show him those
+letters to remove the great barrier between them. She could not do it.
+It was clearly impossible. The reputation of her dead sister who had
+struggled so bravely to the end was in her hands, she could not
+sacrifice her even for her own happiness.
+
+Quixotic, you say? I do not think so. She had blundered unwittingly,
+unwillingly, upon the heart secret of the other woman, she could not
+betray it. Even if the other woman had been really unfaithful in deed as
+well as in thought to her husband, Enid could hardly have destroyed his
+recollection of her. How much more impossible it was since the other
+woman had fought so heroically and so successfully for her honor.
+Womanhood demanded her silence. Loyalty, honor, compelled her silence.
+
+A dead hand grasped his heart and the same dead hand grasped hers. She
+could see no way out of the difficulty. So far as she knew, no human
+soul except old Kirkby and herself knew this woman's story. She could
+not tell Newbold and she would have to impose upon Kirkby the same
+silence as she herself exercised. There was absolutely no way in which
+the man could find out. He must cherish his dream as he would. She would
+not enlighten him, she would not disabuse his mind, she could not
+shatter his ideal, she could not betray his wife. They might love as
+the angels of heaven and yet be kept forever apart--by a scruple, an
+idea, a principle, an abstraction, honor, a name.
+
+Her mind told her these things were idle and foolish, but her soul would
+not hear of it. And in spite of her resolutions she felt that eventually
+there would be some way. She would not have been a human woman if she
+had not hoped and prayed that. She believed that God had created them
+for each other, that He had thrown them together. She was enough of a
+fatalist in this instance at least to accept their intimacy as the
+result of His ordination. There must be some way out of the dilemma.
+
+Yet she knew that he would be true to his belief, and she felt that she
+would not be false to her obligation. What of that? There would be some
+way. Perhaps somebody else knew, and then there flashed into her mind
+the writer of the letters. Who was he? Was he yet alive? Had he any part
+to play in this strange tragedy aside from that he had already essayed?
+
+Sometimes an answer to a secret query is made openly. At this juncture
+Newbold came back. He stopped before her unsteadily, his face now marked
+not only by the fierceness of the storm outside, but by the fiercer
+grapple of the storm in his heart.
+
+"You have a right," he began, "to know everything now. I can withhold
+nothing from you."
+
+He had in his hand a picture and something yellow that gleamed in the
+light. "There," he continued, extending them toward her, "is the picture
+of the poor woman, who loved me and whom I killed, you saw it once
+before."
+
+"Yes," she nodded, taking it from him carefully and looking again in a
+strange commixture of pride, resentment and pity at the bold, somewhat
+coarse, entirely uncultured, yet handsome face which gave no evidence of
+the moral purpose which she had displayed.
+
+"And here," said the man, offering the other article, "is something that
+no human eye but mine has ever seen since that day. It is a locket I
+took from her neck. Until you came I wore it next my heart."
+
+"And since then?"
+
+"Since then I have been unworthy her as I am unworthy you, and I have
+put it aside."
+
+"Does it contain another picture?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Of her?"
+
+"A man's face."
+
+"Yours?"
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"Look and see," he answered. "Press the spring."
+
+Suiting action to word the next second Enid Maitland found herself
+gazing upon the pictured semblance of Mr. James Armstrong!
+
+She was utterly unable to suppress an exclamation and a start of
+surprise at the astonishing revelation. The man looked at her curiously,
+he opened his mouth to question her, but she recovered herself in part
+at least and swiftly interrupted him in a panic of terror lest she
+should betray her knowledge.
+
+"And what is the picture of another man doing in your wife's locket?"
+she asked to gain time, for she very well knew the reply; knew it,
+indeed, better than Newbold himself; who, as it happened, was equally in
+the dark both as to the man and the reason.
+
+"I don't know," answered the other.
+
+"Did you know this man?"
+
+"I never saw him in my life that I can recall."
+
+"And have you--did you--"
+
+"Did I suspect my wife?" he asked. "Never. I had too many evidences that
+she loved me and me alone for a ghost of suspicion to enter my mind. It
+may have been a brother, or her father in his youth."
+
+"And why did you wear it?"
+
+"Because I took it from her dead heart. Some day I shall find out who
+the man is, and when I shall I know there will be nothing to her
+discredit in the knowledge."
+
+Enid Maitland nodded her head. She closed the locket, laid it on the
+table and pushed it away from her. So this was the man the woman had
+loved, who had begged her to go away with him, this handsome Armstrong
+who had come within an ace of winning her own affection, to whom she was
+in some measure pledged!
+
+How strangely does fate work out its purposes. Enid had come from the
+Atlantic seaboard to be the second woman that both these two men loved!
+
+If she ever saw Mr. James Armstrong again, and she had no doubt that she
+would, she would have some strange things to say to him. She held in her
+hands now all the threads of the mystery, she was master of all the
+solutions, and each thread was as a chain that bound her.
+
+"My friend," she said at last with a deep sigh, "you must forget this
+night and go on as before. You love me, thank God for that, but honor
+and respect interpose between us. And I love you, and I thank God for
+that, too, but for me as well the same barrier rises. Whether we shall
+ever surmount these barriers God alone knows. He brought us together, He
+put that love in our hearts, we will have to leave it to Him to do as
+He will with us both. Meanwhile we must go on as before."
+
+"No," cried the man, "you impose upon me tasks beyond my strength; you
+don't know what love like mine is, you don't know the heart hunger, the
+awful madness I feel. Think, I have been alone with a recollection for
+all these years, a man in the dark, in the night, and the light comes,
+you are here. The first night I brought you here I walked that room on
+the other side of that narrow door like a lion pent up in bars of steel.
+I had only my own love, my own passionate adoration to move me then, but
+now that I know you love me, that I see it in your eyes, that I hear it
+from your lips, that I mark it in the beat of your heart, can I keep
+silent? Can I live on and on? Can I see you, touch you, breathe the same
+air with you, be shut up in the same room with you hour after hour, day
+after day, and go on as before? I can't do it; it is an impossibility.
+What keeps me now from taking you in my arms and from kissing the color
+into your cheeks, from making your lips my own, from drinking the light
+from your eyes?" He swayed near to her, his voice rose, "What restrains
+me?" he demanded.
+
+"Nothing," said the woman, never shrinking back an inch, facing him with
+all the courage and daring with which a goddess might look upon a man.
+"Nothing but my weakness and your strength."
+
+"Yes, that's it; but do not count too much upon the one or the other.
+Great God, how can I keep away from you. Life on the old terms is
+insupportable. I must go."
+
+"And where?"
+
+"Anywhere, so it be away."
+
+"And when?"
+
+"Now."
+
+"It would be death in the snow and in the mountains to-night. No, no,
+you can not go."
+
+"Well, to-morrow then. It will be fair, I can't take you with me, but I
+must go alone to the settlements, I must tell your friends you are here,
+alive, well. I shall find men to come back and get you. What I cannot do
+alone numbers together may effect. They can carry you over the worst of
+the trails, you shall be restored to your people, to your world again.
+You can forget me."
+
+"And do you think?" asked the woman, "that I could ever forget you?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"And will you forget me?"
+
+"Not as long as life throbs in my veins, and beyond."
+
+"And I too," was the return.
+
+"So be it. You won't be afraid to stay here alone, now."
+
+"No, not since you love me," was the noble answer. "I suppose I must,
+there is no other way, we could not go on as before. And you will come
+back to me as quickly as you can with the others?"
+
+"I shall not come back. I will give them the direction, they can find
+you without me. When I say good-by to you to-morrow it shall be
+forever."
+
+"And I swear to you," asserted the woman in quick desperation, "if you
+do not come back, they shall have nothing to carry from here but my dead
+body. You do not alone know what love is," she cried resolutely, "and I
+will not let you go unless I have your word to return."
+
+"And how will you prevent my going?"
+
+"I can't. But I will follow you on my hands and knees in the snow until
+I freeze and die unless I have your promise."
+
+"You have beaten me," said the man hopelessly. "You always do. Honor,
+what is it? Pride, what is it? Self respect, what is it? Say the word
+and I am at your feet, I put the past behind me."
+
+"I don't say the word," answered the woman bravely, white faced, pale
+lipped, but resolute. "To be yours, to have you mine, is the greatest
+desire of my heart, but not in the coward's way, not at the expense of
+honor, of self respect--no not that way. Courage, my friend, God will
+show us the way, and meantime good night."
+
+"I shall start in the morning."
+
+"Yes," she nodded reluctantly but knowing it had to be, "but you won't
+go without bidding me good-bye."
+
+"No."
+
+"Good night then," she said extending her hand.
+
+"Good night," he whispered hoarsely and refused it backing away. "I
+don't dare to take it. I don't dare to touch you again. I love you so,
+my only salvation is to keep away."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+THE STRENGTH OF THE WEAK
+
+
+Although Enid Maitland had spoken bravely enough while he was there,
+when she was alone her heart sank into the depths as she contemplated
+the dreadful and unsolvable dilemma in which these two lovers found
+themselves so unwittingly and inextricably involved. It was indeed a
+curious and bewildering situation. Passionate adoration for the other
+rose in each breast like the surging tide of a mighty sea and like that
+tide upon the shore it broke upon conventions, ideas, ideals and
+obligations intangible to the naked eye but as real as those iron coasts
+that have withstood the waves' assaults since the world's morning.
+
+The man had shaped his life upon a mistake. He believed absolutely in
+the unquestioned devotion of a woman to whom he had been forced to mete
+out death in an unprecedented and terrible manner. His unwillingness to
+derogate by his own conduct from the standard of devotion which he
+believed had inhabited his wife's bosom, made it impossible for him to
+allow the real love that had come into his heart for this new woman to
+have free course; honor, pride and self respect scourged him just in
+proportion to his passion for Enid Maitland.
+
+The more he loved her, the more ashamed he was. By a curious combination
+of circumstances, Enid Maitland knew the truth, she knew that from one
+point of view the woman had been entirely unworthy the reverence in
+which her husband held her memory. She knew that his wife had not loved
+him at all, that her whole heart had been given to another man, that
+what Newbold had mistaken for a passionate desire for his society
+because there was no satisfaction in life for the wife away from him was
+due to a fear lest without his protection she should be unable to resist
+the appeal of the other man which her heart seconded so powerfully. If
+it were only that Newbold would not be false to the obligation of the
+other woman's devotion, Enid might have solved the problem in a moment.
+
+It was not so simple, however. The fact that Newbold cherished this
+memory, the fact that this other woman had fought so desperately, had
+tried so hard not to give way, entitled her to Enid Maitland's
+admiration and demanded her highest consideration as well. Chance, or
+Providence, had put her in possession of this woman's secret. It was as
+if she had been caught inadvertently eavesdropping. She could not in
+honor make use of what she had overheard, as it were; she could not
+blacken the other woman's memory, she could not enlighten this man at
+the expense of his dead wife's reputation.
+
+Although she longed for him as much as he longed for her, although her
+love for him amazed her by its depth and intensity, even to bring her
+happiness commensurate with her feelings she could not betray her dead
+sister. The imposts of honor, how hard they are to sustain when they
+conflict with love and longing.
+
+Enid Maitland was naturally not a little thrown off her balance by the
+situation and the power that was hers. What she could not do herself she
+could not allow anyone else to do. The obligation upon her must be
+extended to others. Old Kirkby had no right to the woman's secret any
+more than she, he must be silenced. Armstrong, the only other being
+privy to the truth, must be silenced too.
+
+One thing at least arose out of the sea of trouble in a tangible way,
+she was done with Armstrong. Even if she had not so loved Newbold that
+she could scarcely give a thought to any other human being, she was done
+with Armstrong.
+
+A singular situation! Armstrong had loved another woman, so had Newbold,
+and the latter had even married this other woman, yet she was quite
+willing to forgive Newbold, she made every excuse for him, she made none
+for Armstrong. She was an eminently sane, just person, yet as she
+thought of the situation her anger against Armstrong grew hotter and
+hotter. It was a safety valve to her feelings, although she did not
+realize it. After all, Armstrong's actions rendered her a certain
+service; if she could get over the objection in her soul, if she could
+ever satisfy her sense of honor and duty, and obligation, she could
+settle the question at once. She had only to show the letters to Newbold
+and to say, "These were written by the man of the picture; it was he and
+not you your wife loved," and Newbold would take her to his heart
+instantly.
+
+These thoughts were not without a certain comfort to her. All the
+compensation of self-sacrifice is in its realization. That she could do
+and yet did not somehow ennobled her love for him. Even women are
+alloyed with base metal. In the powerful and universal appeal of this
+man to her, she rejoiced at whatever was of the soul rather than of the
+body. To possess power, to refrain from using it in obedience to some
+higher law is perhaps to pay oneself the most flattering of
+compliments. There was a satisfaction to her soul in this which was yet
+denied him.
+
+Her action was quite different from his. She was putting away happiness
+which she might have had in compliance with a higher law than that which
+bids humanity enjoy. It was flattering to her mind. In his case it was
+otherwise: he had no consciousness that he was a victim of misplaced
+trust, of misinterpreted action; he thought the woman for whom he was
+putting away happiness was almost as worthy, if infinitely less
+desirable, as the woman whom he now loved.
+
+Every sting of conscious weakness, every feeling of realized shame,
+every fear of ultimate disloyalty, scourged him. She could glory in it;
+he was ashamed, humiliated, broken.
+
+She heard him savagely walking up and down the other room, restlessly
+impelled by the same Erinnyes who of old scourged Orestes, the violater
+of the laws of moral being, drove him on. These malign Eumenides held
+him in their hands. He was bound and helpless; rage as he might in one
+moment, pray as he did in another, no light came into the whirling
+darkness of his torn, tempest tossed, driven soul. The irresistible
+impulse and the immovable body the philosophers puzzled over were
+exemplified in him. While he almost hated the new woman, while he
+almost loved the old, yet that he did neither the one thing nor the
+other absolutely was significant.
+
+Indeed he knew that he was glad Enid Maitland had come into his life. No
+life is complete until it is touched by that divine fire which for lack
+of another name we call love. Because we can experience that sensation
+we are said to be made in God's image. The image is blurred as the
+animal predominates, it is clearer as the spiritual has the ascendency.
+
+The man raved in his mind. White faced, stern, he walked up and down, he
+tossed his arms about him, he stopped, his eyes closed, he threw his
+hands up toward God, his heart cried out under the lacerations of the
+blows inflicted upon it. No flagellant of old ever trembled beneath the
+body lash as he under the spiritual punishment.
+
+He prayed that he might die at the same moment that he longed to live.
+He grappled blindly for solutions of the problem that would leave him
+with untarnished honor and undiminished self-respect and fidelity, and
+yet give him this woman; and in vain. He strove to find a way to
+reconcile the past with the present, realizing as he did so the futility
+of such a proposition. One or the other must be supreme; he must
+inexorably hold to his ideas and his ideals, or he must inevitably take
+the woman.
+
+How frightful was the battle that raged within his bosom. Sometimes in
+his despair he thought that he would have been glad if he and she had
+gone down together in the dark waters before all this came upon him. The
+floods of which the heavens had emptied themselves had borne her to him.
+Oh, if they had only swept him out of life with its trouble, its trials,
+its anxieties, its obligations, its impossibilities! If they had gone
+together! And then he knew that he was glad even for the torture,
+because he had seen her, because he had loved her, and because she had
+loved him.
+
+He marveled at himself curiously and in a detached way. There was a
+woman who loved him, who had confessed it boldly and innocently; there
+were none to say him nay. The woman who stood between had been dead five
+years, the world knew nothing, cared nothing; they could go out
+together, he could take her, she would come. On the impulse he turned
+and ran to the door and beat upon it. Her voice bade him enter and he
+came in.
+
+Her heart yearned to him. She was shocked, appalled, at the torture she
+saw upon his face. Had he been laid upon the rack and every joint pulled
+from its sockets, he could not have been more white and agonized.
+
+"I give up," he cried. "What are honor and self-respect to me? I want
+you. I have put the past behind. You love me, and I, I am yours with
+every fiber of my being. Great God! Let us cast aside these foolish
+quixotic scruples that have kept us apart. If a man's thoughts declare
+his guilt I am already disloyal to the other woman; deeply, entirely so.
+I have betrayed her, shamed her, abandoned her. Let me have some
+compensation for what I have gone through. You love me, come to me."
+
+"No," answered the woman, and no task ever laid upon her had been harder
+than that. "I do love you, I will not deny it, every part of me responds
+to your appeal. I should be so happy that I cannot even think of it, if
+I could put my hand in your own, if I could lay my head upon your
+shoulder, if I could feel your heart beat against mine, if I could give
+myself up to you, I would be so glad, so glad. But it can not be, not
+now."
+
+"Why not?" pleaded the man.
+
+He was by her side, his arm went around her. She did not resist
+physically, it would have been useless; she only laid her slender hand
+upon his broad breast and threw her head back and looked at him.
+
+"See," she said, "how helpless I am, how weak in your hands? Every
+voice in my heart bids me give way. If you insist I can deny you
+nothing. I am helpless, alone, but it must not be. I know you better
+than you know yourself, you will not take advantage of affection so
+unbounded, of weakness so pitiable."
+
+Was it the wisdom of calculation, or was it the wisdom of instinct by
+which she chose her course? Resistance would have been unavailing, in
+weakness was her strength.
+
+_Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth!_
+
+Yes, that was true. She knew it now if never before, and so did he.
+
+Slowly the man released her. She did not even then draw away from him;
+she stood with her hand still on his breast, she could feel the beating
+of his heart beneath her fingers.
+
+"I am right," she said softly. "It kills me to deny you anything, my
+heart yearns toward you, why should I deny it, it is my glory not my
+shame."
+
+"There is nothing above love like ours," he pleaded, wondering what
+marvelous mastery she exercised that she stopped him by a hand's touch,
+a whispered word, a faith.
+
+"No; love is life, love is God, but even God Himself is under
+obligations of righteousness. For me to come to you now, to marry you
+now, to be your wife, would be unholy. There would not be that perfect
+confidence between us that must endure in that relation. Your honor and
+mine, your self-respect and mine would interpose. If I can't have you
+with a clear conscience, if you can't come to me in the same way, we are
+better apart. Although it kills me, although life without you seems
+nothing and I would rather not live it, we are better apart. I cannot be
+your wife until--"
+
+"Until what and until when?" demanded Newbold.
+
+"I don't know," said the woman, "but I believe that somewhere, somehow,
+we shall find a way out of our difficulty. There is a way," she said a
+little incautiously, "I know it."
+
+"Show it to me."
+
+"No, I can not."
+
+"What prevents?"
+
+"The same thing which prevents you, honor, loyalty."
+
+"To a man?"
+
+"To a woman."
+
+"I don't understand."
+
+"No, but you will some day," she smiled at him. "See," she said,
+"through my tears I can smile at you, though my heart is breaking. I
+know that in God's good time this will work itself out."
+
+"I can't wait for God, I want you now," persisted the other.
+
+"Hush, don't say that," answered the woman, for a moment laying her hand
+on his lips. "But I forgive you, I know how you suffer."
+
+The man could say nothing, do nothing. He stared at her a moment and his
+hand went to his throat as if he were choking.
+
+"Unworthy," he said hoarsely, "unworthy of the past, unworthy of the
+present, unworthy of the future. May God forgive me, I never can."
+
+"He will forgive you, never fear," answered Enid gently.
+
+"And you?" asked her lover. "I have ruined your life."
+
+"No, you have ennobled it. Let nothing ever make you forget that.
+Wherever you are and whatever you do and whatever you may have been, I
+love you and I shall love you to the end. Now you must go, it is so
+late, I can't stand any more. I throw myself on your mercy again. I grow
+weaker and weaker before you. As you are a man, as you are stronger,
+save me from myself. If you were to take me again in your arms," she
+went on steadily, "I know not how I could drive you back. For God's
+sake, if you love me--"
+
+That was the hardest thing he had ever done, to turn and go out of the
+room, out of her sight and leave her standing there with eyes shining,
+with pulses throbbing, with breath coming fast, with bosom panting. Once
+more, and at a touch she might have yielded!
+
+
+
+
+BOOK V
+
+THE CUP IS DRAINED
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+THE CHALLENGE OF THE RANGE
+
+
+Mr. James Armstrong sat at his desk before the west window of his
+private room in one of the tallest buildings in Denver. His suite of
+offices was situated on one of the top floors and from it over the
+intervening house tops and other buildings, he had a clear and
+unobstructed view of the mighty range. The earth was covered with snow.
+It had fallen steadily through the night but with the dawn the air had
+cleared and the sun had come out brightly although it was very cold.
+
+Letters, papers, documents, the demands of a business extensive and
+varied, were left unnoticed. He sat with his elbow on the desk and his
+head on his hand, looking moodily at the range. In the month that had
+elapsed since he had received news of Enid Maitland's disappearance he
+had sat often in that way, in that place, staring at the range, a prey
+to most despondent reflections, heavy hearted and disconsolate indeed.
+
+After that memorable interview with Mr. Stephen Maitland in Philadelphia
+he had deemed it proper to await there the arrival of Mr. Robert
+Maitland. A brief conversation with that distracted gentleman had put
+him in possession of all the facts in the case. As Robert Maitland had
+said, after his presentation of the tragic story, the situation was
+quite hopeless. Even Armstrong reluctantly admitted that her uncle and
+old Kirkby had done everything that was possible for the rescue or
+discovery of the girl.
+
+Therefore the two despondent gentlemen had shortly after returned to
+their western homes, Robert Maitland in this instance being accompanied
+by his brother Stephen. The latter never knew how much his daughter had
+been to him until this evil fate had befallen her. Robert Maitland had
+promised to inaugurate a thorough and extensive search to solve the
+mystery of her death, which he felt was certain, in the spring when the
+weather permitted humanity to have free course through the mountains.
+
+Mr. Stephen Maitland found a certain melancholy satisfaction in being at
+least near the place where neither he nor anyone had any doubt his
+daughter's remains lay hid beneath the snow or ice on the mountains in
+the freezing cold. Robert Maitland had no other idea than that Enid's
+body was in the lake. He intended to drain it--an engineering task of no
+great difficulty--and yet he intended also to search the hills for
+miles on either side of the main stream down which she had gone; for she
+might possibly have strayed away and died of starvation and exposure
+rather than drowning. At any rate he would leave nothing undone to
+discover her.
+
+He had strenuously opposed Armstrong's recklessly expressed intention of
+going into the mountains immediately to search for her. Armstrong was
+not easily moved from any purpose he once entertained or lightly to be
+hindered from attempting any enterprise that he projected, but by the
+time the party reached Denver the winter had set in and even he realized
+the futility of any immediate search for a dead body lost in the
+mountains. Admitting that Enid was dead the conclusions were sound of
+course.
+
+The others pointed out to Armstrong that if the woman they all loved had
+by any fortunate chance escaped the cloud burst she must inevitably have
+perished from cold, starvation and exposure in the mountain long since.
+There was scarcely a possibility that she could have escaped the flood,
+but if she had it would only to be devoted to death a little later. If
+she was not in the lake what remained of her would be in some lateral
+canyon. It would be impossible to discover her body in the deep snows
+until the spring and the warm weather came. When the snows melted what
+was concealed would be revealed. Alone, she could do nothing. And
+admitting again that Enid was alone this conclusion was as sound as the
+other.
+
+Now no one had the faintest hope that Enid Maitland was yet alive except
+perhaps her father, Mr. Stephen Maitland. They could not convince him,
+he was so old and set in his opinions and so utterly unfamiliar with the
+conditions that they tried to describe to him, that he clung to his
+belief in spite of all, and finally they let him take such comfort as he
+could from his vain hope without any further attempt at contradiction.
+
+In spite of all the arguments, however, Mr. James Armstrong was not
+satisfied. He was as hopeless as the rest, but his temperament would not
+permit him to accept the inevitable calmly. It was barely possible that
+she might not be dead and that she might not be alone. There was
+scarcely enough possibility of this to justify a suspicion, but that is
+not saying there was none at all.
+
+Day after day he had sat in his office denying himself to everyone and
+refusing to consider anything, brooding over the situation. He loved
+Enid Maitland, he loved her before and now that he had lost her he loved
+her still more.
+
+Not altogether admirable had been James Armstrong's outwardly successful
+career. In much that is high and noble and manly his actions--and his
+character--had often been lacking, but even the base can love and
+sometimes love transforms if it be given a chance. The passion of Cymon
+for Iphigenia, made a man and prince out of the rustic boor. His real
+love for Enid Maitland might have done more for Armstrong than he
+himself or anyone who knew him as he was--and few there were who had
+such knowledge of him--dreamed was possible. There was one thing that
+love could not do, however; it could not make him a patient philosopher,
+a good waiter. His rule of life was not very high, but in one way it was
+admirable in that prompt bold decisive action was its chiefest
+characteristic.
+
+On this certain morning a month after the heart breaking disaster his
+power of passive endurance had been strained to the vanishing point. The
+great white range was flung in his face like a challenge. Within its
+secret recesses lay the solution of the mystery. Somewhere, dead or
+alive, beyond the soaring rampart was the woman he loved. It was
+impossible for him to remain quiet any longer. Common sense, reason,
+every argument that had been adduced, suddenly became of no weight. He
+lifted his head and stared straight westward. His eyes swept the long
+semi-circle of the horizon across which the mighty range was drawn like
+the chord of a gigantic arc or the string of a mighty bow. Each white
+peak mocked him, the insolent aggression of the range called him
+irresistibly to action.
+
+"By God," he said under his breath, rising to his feet, "winter or no
+winter, I go."
+
+Robert Maitland had offices in the same building. Having once come to a
+final determination there was no more uncertainty or hesitation about
+Armstrong's course. In another moment he was standing in the private
+room of his friend. The two men were not alone there. Stephen Maitland
+sat in a low chair before another window removed from the desk somewhat,
+staring out at the range. The old man was huddled down in his seat,
+every line of his figure spoke of grief and despair. Of all the places
+in Denver he liked best his brother's office fronting the rampart of the
+mountains, and hour after hour he sat there quietly looking at the
+summits, sometimes softly shrouded in white, sometimes swept bare by the
+fierce winter gales that blew across them, sometimes shining and
+sparkling so that the eye could scarce sustain their reflection of the
+dazzling sun of Colorado; and at other times seen dimly through mists of
+whirling snow.
+
+Oh, yes, the mountains challenged him also to the other side of the
+range. His heart yearned for his child, but he was too old to make the
+attempt. He could only sit and pray and wait with such faint and fading
+hope as he could still cherish until the break up of the spring came.
+For the rest he troubled nobody; nobody noticed him, nobody marked him,
+nobody minded him. Robert Maitland transacted his business a little more
+softly, a little more gently, that was all. Yet the presence of his
+brother was a living grief and a living reproach to him. Although he was
+quite blameless he blamed himself. He did not know how much he had grown
+to love his niece until he had lost her. His conscience accused him
+hourly, and yet he knew not where he was at fault or how he could have
+done differently. It was a helpless and hopeless situation. To him,
+therefore, entered Armstrong.
+
+"Maitland," he began, "I can't stand it any longer, I'm going into the
+mountains."
+
+"You are mad!"
+
+"I can't help it. I can't sit here and face them, damn them, and remain
+quiet."
+
+"You will never come out alive."
+
+"Oh, yes I will, but if I don't I swear to God I don't care."
+
+Old Stephen Maitland rose unsteadily to his feet and gripped the back of
+his chair.
+
+"Did I hear aright, sir?" he asked with all the polished and graceful
+courtesy of birth and breeding which never deserted him in any emergency
+whatsoever. "Do you say--"
+
+"I said I was going into the mountains to search for her."
+
+"It is madness," urged Robert Maitland.
+
+But the old man did not hear him.
+
+"Thank God!" he exclaimed with deep feeling. "I have sat here day after
+day and watched those mighty hills, and I have said to myself that if I
+had youth and strength as I have love, I would not wait."
+
+"You are right," returned Armstrong, equally moved, and indeed it would
+have been hard to have heard and seen that father unresponsively, "and I
+am not going to wait either."
+
+"I understand your feeling, Jim, and yours too, Steve," began Robert
+Maitland, arguing against his own emotions, "but even if she escaped the
+flood, she must be dead by this time."
+
+"You needn't go over the old arguments, Bob. I'm going into the
+mountains and I'm going now. No," he continued swiftly, as the other
+opened his mouth to interpose further objections, "you needn't say
+another word. I'm a free agent and I'm old enough to decide what I can
+do. There is no argument, there is no force, there is no appeal, there
+is nothing that will restrain me. I can't sit here and eat my heart out
+when she may be there."
+
+"But it's impossible!"
+
+"It isn't impossible. How do I know that there may not have been
+somebody in the mountains, she may have wandered to some settlement,
+some hunter's cabin, some prospector's hut."
+
+"But we were there for weeks and saw nothing, no evidence of humanity."
+
+"I don't care. The mountains are filled with secret nooks you could pass
+by within a stone's throw and never see into, she may be in one of them.
+I suppose she is dead and it's all foolish, this hope, but I'll never
+believe it until I have examined every square rod within a radius of
+fifty miles from your camp. I'll take the long chance, the longest
+even."
+
+"Well, that's all right," said Robert Maitland. "Of course I intend to
+do that as soon as the spring opens, but what's the use of trying to do
+it now?"
+
+"It's use to me. I'll either go mad here in Denver, or I must go to seek
+for her there."
+
+"But you will never come back if you once get in those mountains alone."
+
+"I don't care whether I do or not. It's no use, old man, I am going and
+that's all there is about it."
+
+Robert Maitland knew men, he recognized finality when he heard it or
+when he saw it and it was quite evident that he was in the presence of
+it then. It was of no use for him or anyone to say more.
+
+"Very well," he said, "I honor you for your feeling even if I don't
+think much of your common sense."
+
+"Damn common sense," cried Armstrong triumphantly, "it's love that moves
+me now."
+
+At that moment there was a tap on the door. A clerk from an outer office
+bidden to enter announced that old Kirkby was in the ante-room.
+
+"Bring him in," directed Maitland, eager to welcome him.
+
+He fancied that the new comer would undoubtedly assist him in dissuading
+Armstrong from his foolhardy, useless enterprise.
+
+"Mornin', old man," drawled Kirkby.
+
+"Howdy, Armstrong. My respects to you, sir," he said, sinking his voice
+a little as he bowed respectfully toward Mr. Stephen Maitland, a very
+sympathetic look in the old frontiersman's eyes at the sight of the
+bereaved father.
+
+"Kirkby, you've come in the very nick of time," at once began Robert
+Maitland.
+
+"Allus glad to be Johnny-on-the-spot," smiled the older man.
+
+"Armstrong here," continued the other intent upon his purpose, "says he
+can't wait until the spring and the snows melt, he is going into the
+mountains now to look for Enid."
+
+Kirkby did not love Armstrong, he did not care for him a little bit, but
+there was something in the bold hardihood of the man, something in the
+way which he met the reckless challenge of the mountains that the old
+man and all the others felt that moved the inmost soul of the hardy
+frontiersman. He threw an approving glance at him.
+
+"I tell him that it is absurd, impossible; that he risks his life for
+nothing, and I want you to tell him the same thing. You know more about
+the mountains than either of us."
+
+"Mr. Kirkby," quavered Stephen Maitland, "allow me. I don't want to
+influence you against your better judgment, but if you could sit here as
+I have done and think that maybe she is there and perhaps alive still,
+and in need, you would not say a word to deter him."
+
+"Why, Steve," expostulated Robert Maitland, "surely you know I would
+risk anything for Enid; somehow it seems as if I were being put in the
+selfish position by my opposition."
+
+"No, no," said his brother, "it isn't that. You have your wife and
+children, but this young man--"
+
+"Well, what do you say, Kirkby? Not that it makes any difference to me
+what anybody says. Come, we are wasting time," interposed Armstrong,
+who, now that he had made up his mind, was anxious to be off.
+
+"Jim Armstrong," answered Kirkby decidedly, "I never thought much of you
+in the past, an' I think sence you've put out this last projick of yourn
+that I'm entitled to call you a damn fool, w'ich you are, an' I'm
+another, for I'm goin' into the mountains with you."
+
+"Oh, thank God!" cried Stephen Maitland fervently.
+
+"I know you don't like me," answered Armstrong; "that's neither here nor
+there. Perhaps you have cause to dislike me, perhaps you have not; I
+don't like you any too well myself; but there is no man on earth I'd
+rather have go with me on a quest of this kind than you, and there's my
+hand on it."
+
+Kirkby shook it vigorously.
+
+"This ain't committin' myself," he said cautiously. "So far's I'm
+concerned you ain't good enough for Miss Maitland, but I admires your
+spirit, Armstrong, an' I'm goin' with you. Tain't no good, twon't
+produce nothin', most likely we'll never come back agin; but jest the
+same I'm goin' along; nobody's goin' to show me the trail; my nerve and
+grit w'en it comes to helpin' a young feemale like that girl is as good
+as anybody's I guess. You're her father," he drawled on, turning to
+Stephen Maitland, "an' I ain't no kin to her, but by gosh, I believe I
+can understand better than anyone else yere what you are feelin'."
+
+"Kirkby," said Robert Maitland, smiling at the other two, "you have gone
+clean back on me. I thought you had more sense. But somehow I guess it's
+contagious, for I am going along with you two myself."
+
+"And I, cannot I accompany you?" pleaded Stephen Maitland, eagerly
+drawing near to the other three.
+
+"Not much," said old Kirkby promptly. "You ain't got the stren'th, ol'
+man, you don't know them mountains, nuther; you'd be helpless on a pair
+of snow shoes, there ain't anything you could do, you'd jest be a drag
+on us. Without sayin' anything about myself, w'ich I'm too modest for
+that, there ain't three better men in Colorado to tackle this job than
+Jim Armstrong an' Bob Maitland an'--well, as I said, I won't mention no
+other names."
+
+"God bless you all, gentlemen," faltered Stephen Maitland. "I think
+perhaps I may have been wrong, a little prejudiced against the west, you
+are men that would do honor to any family, to any society in
+Philadelphia or anywhere else."
+
+"Lord love ye," drawled Kirkby, his eyes twinkling, "there ain't no
+three men on the Atlantic seaboard that kin match up with two of us
+yere, to say nothin' of the third."
+
+"Well," said Robert Maitland, "the thing now is to decide on what's to
+be done."
+
+"My plan," said Armstrong, "is to go to the old camp."
+
+"Yep," said Kirkby, "that's a good point of deeparture, as my seafarin'
+father down Cape Cod way used to say, an' wot's next."
+
+"I am going up the canyon instead of down," said the man, with a flash of
+inspiration.
+
+"That ain't no bad idea nuther," assented the old man; "we looked the
+ground over pretty thoroughly down the canyon, mebbe we can find
+something up it."
+
+"And what do you propose to take with you?" asked Maitland.
+
+"What we can carry on the backs of men. We will make a camp somewhere
+about where you did. We can get enough husky men up at Morrison who will
+pack in what we want and with that as a basis we will explore the upper
+reaches of the range."
+
+"And when do we start?"
+
+"There is a train for Morrison in two hours," answered Armstrong. "We
+can get what we want in the way of sleeping bags and equipment between
+now and then if we hurry about it."
+
+"Ef we are goin' to do it, we might as well git a move on us," assented
+Kirkby, making ready to go.
+
+"Right," answered Robert Maitland grimly. "When three men set out to
+make fools of themselves the sooner they get at it and get over with it
+the better. I've got some business matters to settle, you two get what's
+needed and I'll bear my share."
+
+A week later a little band of men on snow shoes, wrapped in furs to
+their eyes, every one heavily burdened with a pack, staggered into the
+clearing where once had been pitched the Maitland camp. The place was
+covered with snow of course, but on a shelf of rock half way up the
+hogback, they found a comparatively level clearing and there, all
+working like beavers, they built a rude hut which they covered with
+canvas and then with tightly packed snow and which would keep the three
+who remained from freezing to death. Fortunately they were favored by a
+brief period of pleasant weather and a few days served to make a
+sufficiently habitable camp.
+
+Maitland, Kirkby and Armstrong worked with the rest. There was no
+thought of search at first. Their lives depended upon the erection of a
+suitable shelter and it was not until the helpers, leaving their burdens
+behind them, had departed that the three men even considered what was to
+be done next.
+
+"We must begin a systematic search to-morrow," said Armstrong decisively
+as the three men sat around the cheerful fire in the hut.
+
+"Yes," assented Maitland. "Shall we go together, or separately?"
+
+"Separately, of course. We are all hardy and experienced men, nothing is
+apt to happen to us, we will meet here every night and plan the next
+day's work. What do you say, Kirkby?"
+
+The old man had been quietly smoking while the others talked. He smiled
+at them in a way which aroused their curiosity and made them feel that
+he had news for them.
+
+"While you was puttin' the finishin' touches on this yere camp, I come
+acrost a heap o' stuns, that somehow the wind had swept bare. There was
+a big drift in front of it w'ich kep' us from seein' it afore; it was
+built up in the open w'ere there want no trees, an' in our lumberin'
+operations we want lookin' that-a-way. I came acrost a bottle by chance
+an'--"
+
+"Well, for God's sake, old man," cried Armstrong impatiently, "what did
+you find in it, anything?"
+
+"This," answered Kirkby, carefully producing a folded scrap of paper
+from his leather vest.
+
+Armstrong fell on it ravenously, and as Maitland bent over him they both
+read these words by the fire light.
+
+     "_Miss Enid Maitland, whose foot is so badly crushed as to prevent
+     her traveling, is safe in a cabin at the head of this canyon. I put
+     this notice here to reassure any who may be seeking her as to her
+     welfare. Follow the stream up to its source._"
+
+     _Wm. Berkeley Newbold._
+
+"Thank God!" exclaimed Robert Maitland.
+
+"You called me a damn fool, Kirkby," said Armstrong, his eyes gleaming.
+"What do you think of it now?"
+
+"It's the damn fool, I find," said Kirkby sapiently, "that gener'ly gits
+there. Providence seems to be a-watchin' over 'em."
+
+"You said you chanced on this paper, Jack," continued Maitland, "it
+looks to me like the deliberate intention of Almighty God."
+
+"I reckon so," answered the other simply. "You see He's got to look
+after all the damn fools on earth to keep 'em from doin' too much damage
+to theirselves an' to others in this yere crooked trail of a world."
+
+"Let us start now," urged Armstrong.
+
+"Tain't possible," said the old man, taking another puff at his pipe,
+and only a glistening of the eye betrayed the joy that he felt;
+otherwise his phlegmatic calm was unbroken, his demeanor just as
+undisturbed as it always was. "We'd jest throw away our lives a
+wanderin' round these yere mountains in the dark, we've got to have
+light an' clear weather. Ef it should be snowin' in the mornin' we'd
+have to wait until it cleared."
+
+"I won't wait a minute," cried Armstrong. "At daybreak, weather or no
+weather, I start."
+
+"What's your hurry, Jim?" continued Kirkby calmly. "The gal's safe, one
+day more or less ain't goin' to make no difference."
+
+"She's with another man," answered Armstrong quickly.
+
+"Do you know this Newbold?" asked Maitland, looking at the note again.
+
+"No, not personally, but I have heard of him."
+
+"I know him," answered Kirkby quickly, "an' you've seed him too, Bob;
+he's the fellow that shot his wife, that married Louise Rosser."
+
+"That man!"
+
+"The very same."
+
+"You say you never saw him, Jim?" asked Maitland.
+
+"I repeat I never met him," said Armstrong, flushing suddenly, "but I
+knew his wife."
+
+"Yes, you did that--" drawled the old mountaineer.
+
+"What do you mean?" flashed Armstrong.
+
+"I mean that you knowed her, that's all," answered the old man with an
+innocent air that was almost childlike.
+
+When the others woke up in the morning Armstrong's sleeping bag was
+empty. Kirkby crawled out of his own warm nest, opened the door and
+peered out into the storm.
+
+"Well," he said, "I guess the damn fool has beat God this time; it don't
+look to me as if even He could save him now."
+
+"But we must go after him at once," urged Maitland.
+
+"See for yourself," answered the old man, throwing wider the door.
+"We've got to wait 'til this wind dies down unless we give the Almighty
+the job o' lookin' after three instid o' one."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+THE CONVERGING TRAILS
+
+
+Whatever the feelings of the others, Armstrong found himself unable to
+sleep that night. It seemed to him that fate was about to play him the
+meanest and most fantastic of tricks. Many times before in his crowded
+life he had loved other women, or so he characterized his feelings, but
+his passion for Louise Rosser Newbold had been in a class by itself
+until he had met Enid Maitland. Between the two there had been many
+women, but these two were the high points, the rest was lowland.
+
+Once before, therefore, this Newbold had cut in ahead of him and had won
+the woman he loved. Armstrong had cherished a hard grudge against him
+for a long time. He had not been of those who had formed the rescue
+party led by old Kirkby and Maitland which had buried the poor woman on
+the great butte in the deep canyon. Before he got back to the camp the
+whole affair was over and Newbold had departed. Luckily for him,
+Armstrong had always thought, for he had been so mad with grief and rage
+and jealousy that if he had come across him helpless or not he would
+have killed him out of hand.
+
+Armstrong had soon enough forgotten Louise Rosser, but he had not
+forgotten Newbold. All his ancient animosity had flamed into instant
+life again, at the sight of his name last night. The inveteracy of his
+hatred had been in no way abated by the lapse of time it seemed.
+
+Everybody in the mining camp had supposed that Newbold had wandered off
+and perished in the mountains, else Armstrong might have pursued him and
+hunted him down. The sight of his name on that piece of paper was
+outward and visible evidence that he still lived. It had almost the
+shock of a resurrection, and a resurrection to hatred rather than to
+love. If Newbold had been alone in the world, if Armstrong had chanced
+upon him in the solitude, he would have hated him just as he did; but
+when he thought that his ancient enemy was with the woman he now loved,
+with a growing intensity, beside which his former resentment seemed weak
+and feeble, he hated him yet the more.
+
+He could not tell when the notice, which he had examined carefully, was
+written; there was no date upon it, but he could come to only one
+conclusion. Newbold must have found Enid Maitland alone in the mountains
+very shortly after her departure and he had had her with him in his
+cabin alone for at least a month. Armstrong gritted his teeth at the
+thought. He did not undervalue the personality of Newbold, he had never
+happened to see him, but he had heard enough about him to understand his
+qualities as a man. The tie that bound Armstrong to Enid Maitland was a
+strong one, but the tie by which he held her to him, if indeed he held
+her at all, was very tenuous and easily broken; perhaps it was broken
+already, and so he hated him still more and more.
+
+Indeed his animosity was so great and growing that for the moment he
+took no joy in the assurance of the girl's safety, yet he was not
+altogether an unfair man and in calmer moments he thanked God in his own
+rough way that the woman he loved was alive and well, or had been when
+the note was written. He rejoiced that she had not been swept away with
+the flood or that she had not been lost in the mountains and forced to
+wander on, finally to starve and freeze and die. In one moment her
+nearness caused his heart to throb with joyful anticipation. The
+certainty that at the first flush of day he would seek her again sent
+the warm blood to his cheeks. But these thoughts would be succeeded by
+the knowledge that she was with his enemy. Was this man to rob him of
+the latest love as he had robbed him of the first? Perhaps the hardest
+task that was ever laid upon Armstrong was to lie quietly in his
+sleeping bag and wait until the morning.
+
+So soon as the first indication of dawn showed through the cracks of the
+door, he slipped quietly out of his sleeping bag and without disturbing
+the others drew on his boots, put on his heavy fur coat and cap and
+gloves, slung his Winchester and his snow shoes over his shoulder and
+without stopping for a bite to eat softly opened the door, stepped out
+and closed it after him. It was quite dark in the bottom of the canyon,
+although a few pale gleams overhead indicated the near approach of day.
+It was quite still, too. There were clouds on the mountain top heavy
+with threat of wind and snow.
+
+The way was not difficult, the direction of it that is. Nor was the
+going very difficult at first; the snow was frozen and the crust was
+strong enough to bear him. He did not need his snow shoes and indeed
+would have had little chance to use them in the narrow broken rocky
+pass. He had slipped away from the others because he wanted to be the
+first to see the man and the woman. He did not want any witness to that
+meeting. They would have to come on later of course, but he wanted an
+hour or two in private with Enid and Newbold without any interruption.
+His conscience was not clear. Nor could he settle upon a course of
+action.
+
+How much Newbold knew of his former attempt to win away his wife, how
+much of what he knew he had told Enid Maitland, Armstrong could not
+surmise. Putting himself into Newbold's place and imagining that the
+engineer had possessed entire information, he decided that he must have
+told everything to Enid Maitland so soon as he had found out the quasi
+relation between her and Armstrong. And Armstrong did not believe the
+woman he loved could be in anybody's presence a month without telling
+something about him. Still it was possible that Newbold knew nothing and
+that he told nothing therefore.
+
+The situation was paralyzing to a man of Armstrong's decided, determined
+temperament. He could not decide upon the line of conduct he should
+pursue. His course in this, the most critical emergency he had ever
+faced, must be determined by circumstances of which he felt with savage
+resentment he was in some measure the sport. He would have to leave to
+chance what ought to be subject to his will. Of only one thing was he
+sure--he would stop at nothing, murder, lying, nothing to win that
+woman, and to settle his score with that man.
+
+There was really only one thing he could do and that was to press on up
+the canyon. He had no idea how far it might be or how long a journey he
+would have to make before he reached that shelf on the high hill where
+stood that hut in which she dwelt. As the crow flies it could not be a
+great distance, but the canyon zigzagged through the mountains with as
+many curves and angles as a lightning flash. He plodded on therefore
+with furious haste, recklessly speeding over places where a misstep in
+the snow or a slip on the icy rocks would have meant death or disaster
+to him.
+
+He had gone about an hour, and had perhaps made four miles from the
+camp, when the storm burst upon him. It was now broad day and the sky
+was filled with clouds and the air with driving snow. The wind whistled
+down the canyon with terrific force, it was with difficulty that he made
+any headway at all against it. It was a local storm; if he could have
+looked through the snow he would have discovered calmness on the top of
+the peaks. It was one of those sudden squalls of wind and snow which
+rage with terrific force while they last but whose range was limited and
+whose duration would be as short as it was violent.
+
+A less determined man than he would have bowed to the inevitable and
+sought some shelter behind a rock until the fury of the tempest was
+spent, but there was no storm that blew that could stop this man so long
+as he had strength to drive against it. So he bent his head to the
+fierce blast and struggled on. There was something titantic and
+magnificent about the iron determination and persistence of Armstrong.
+The two most powerful passions which move humanity were at his service;
+love led him and hate drove him. And the two were so intermingled that
+it was difficult to say which predominated, now one and now the other.
+The resultant of the two forces however was an onward move that would
+not be denied.
+
+His fur coat was soon covered with snow and ice, the sharp needles of
+the storm cut his face wherever it was exposed. The wind forced its way
+through his garments and chilled him to the bone. He had eaten nothing
+since the night before and his vitality was not at its flood, but he
+pressed onward and upward and there was something grand in his
+indomitable progress. _Excelsior!_
+
+Back in the hut Kirkby and Maitland sat around the fire waiting most
+impatiently for the wind to blow itself out and for that snow to stop
+falling through which Armstrong struggled forward. As he followed the
+windings of the canyon, not daring to ascend to the summit of either
+wall and seek short cuts across the range, he was sensible that he was
+constantly rising. There were many indications to his experienced mind;
+the decrease in the height of the surrounding pines, the increasing
+rarity of the icy air, the growing difficulty in breathing under the
+sustained exertion he was making, the quick throbbing of his accelerated
+heart, all told him he was approaching his journey's end.
+
+He judged that he must now be drawing near the source of the stream, and
+that he would presently come upon the shelter. He had no means of
+ascertaining the time, he would not have dared to unbutton his coat to
+glance at his watch, and it is difficult to measure the flying minutes
+in such scenes as those through which he passed, but he thought he must
+have gone at least seven miles in perhaps three hours, which he fancied
+had elapsed, his progress in the last two having been frightfully slow.
+Every foot of advance he had to fight for.
+
+Suddenly, after a quick turn in the canyon, a passage through a narrow
+entrance between lofty cliffs, and he found himself in a pocket or a
+circular amphitheater which he could see was closed on the further side.
+The bottom of this enclosure or valley was covered with pines, now
+drooping under tremendous burdens of snow. In the midst of the pines a
+lakelet was frozen solid, the ice was covered with the same dazzling
+carpet of white.
+
+He could have seen nothing of this had not the sudden storm now stopped
+as precipitately almost as it had begun. Indeed, accustomed to the
+grayness of the snowfall, his eyes were fairly dazzled by the bright
+light of the sun, now quite high over the range, which struck him full
+in the face.
+
+He stopped, panting, exhausted, and leaned against the rocky wall of the
+canyon's mouth which, here rose sheer over his head. This certainly was
+the end of the trail, the lake was the source of the frozen rivulet
+along whose rocky and torn banks he had tramped since dawn. Here if
+anywhere he would find the object of his quest.
+
+Refreshed by the brief pause and encouraged by the sudden stilling of
+the storm, he stepped out of the canyon and ascended a little knoll
+whence he had a full view of the pocket over the tops of the pines.
+Shading his eyes from the light with his hand as best he could, he
+slowly swept the circumference with his eager glance, seeing nothing
+until his eye fell upon a huge broken trail of rocks projecting from the
+snow, indicating the ascent to a broad bare shelf of the mountains
+across the lake to the right. Following this up he saw a huge block of
+snow which suggested dimly the outlines of a hut!
+
+Was that the place? Was she there? He stared fascinated and as he did so
+a thin curl of smoke rose above the snow heap and wavered up in the cold
+quiet air! That was a human habitation then, it could be none other than
+the hut referred to in the note. Enid Maitland must be there, and
+Newbold!
+
+The lake lay directly in front of him beyond the trees at the foot of
+the knoll and between him and the slope that led up to the hut. If it
+had been summer, he would have been compelled to follow the water's edge
+to the right or to the left, both journeys would have led over difficult
+trails with little to choose between them, but the lake was now frozen
+hard and covered with snow. He had no doubt that the snow would bear
+him, but to make sure he drew his snow shoes from his shoulder, slipped
+his feet in the straps, and sped straight on through the trees and then
+across the lake like an arrow from a bow.
+
+In five minutes he was at the foot of the giant stairs. Kicking off his
+snow shoes he scrambled up the broken way, easily finding in the snow a
+trail which had evidently been passed and repassed daily. In a few
+moments he was at the top of the shelf. A hard trampled path ran
+between high walls of snow to a door!
+
+Behind that door what would he find? Just what he brought to it, love
+and hate he fancied. We usually find on the other side of doors no more
+and no less than we bring to our own sides. But whatever it might be,
+there was no hesitation in Armstrong's course. He ran toward it, laid
+his hand on the latch and opened it.
+
+What creatures of habit we are! Early in that same morning, after one
+vain attempt again to influence the woman who was now the deciding and
+determining factor and who seemed to be taking the man's place, Newbold,
+ready for his journey, had torn himself away from her presence and had
+plunged down the giant stair. He had done everything that mortal man
+could do for her comfort; wood enough to last her for two weeks had been
+taken from the cave and piled in the kitchen and elsewhere so as to be
+easily accessible to her, the stores she already had the run of and he
+had fitted a stout bar to the outer door which would render it
+impregnable to any attack that might be made against it, although he saw
+no quarter from which any assault impended.
+
+Enid had recovered not only her strength but a good deal of her nerve.
+That she loved this man and that he loved her had given her courage.
+She would be fearfully lonely of course, but not so much afraid as
+before. The month of immunity in the mountains without any interruption
+had dissipated any possible apprehensions on her part. It was with a
+sinking heart however that she saw him go at last.
+
+They had been so much together in that month they had learned what love
+was. When he came back it would be different, he would not come alone.
+The first human being he met would bring the world to the door of the
+lonely but beloved cabin in the mountains--the world with its questions,
+its inferences, its suspicions, its denunciations and its accusations!
+Some kind of an explanation would have to be made, some sort of an
+answer would have to be given, some solution of the problem would have
+to be arrived at. What these would be she could not tell.
+
+Newbold's departure was like the end of an era to her. The curtain
+dropped, when it rose again what was to be expected? There was no
+comfort except in the thought that she loved him. So long as their
+affections matched and ran together nothing else mattered. With the
+solution of it all next to her sadly beating heart she was still
+supremely confident that Love, or God--and there was not so much
+difference between them as to make it worth while to mention the One
+rather than the Other--would find the way.
+
+Their leave taking had been singularly cold and abrupt. She had realized
+the danger he was apt to incur and she had exacted a reluctant promise
+from him that he would be careful.
+
+"Don't throw your life away, don't risk it even, remember that it is
+mine," she had urged.
+
+And just as simply as she had enjoined it upon him he had promised. He
+had given his word that he would not send help back to her but that he
+would bring it back, and she had confidence in that word. A confidence
+that had he been inclined to break his promise would have made it
+absolutely impossible. There had been a long clasp of the hands, a long
+look in the eyes, a long breath in the breast, a long throb in the heart
+and then--farewell. They dared no more.
+
+Once before he had left her and she had stood upon the plateau and
+followed his vanishing figure with anxious troubled thought until it had
+been lost in the depths of the forest below. She had controlled herself
+in this second parting for his sake as well as her own. Under the ashes
+of his grim repression she realized the presence of live coals which a
+breath would have fanned into flame. She dared nothing while he was
+there, but when he shut the door behind him the necessity for
+self-control was removed. She had laid her arms on the table and bowed
+her head upon them and shook and quivered with emotions unrelieved by a
+single tear--weeping was for lighter hearts and less severe demands!
+
+His position after all was the easier of the two. As of old it was the
+man who went forth to the battle field while the woman could only wait
+passively the issue of the fight. Although he was half blinded with
+emotion he had to give some thought to his progress, and there was yet
+one task to be done before he could set forth upon his journey toward
+civilization and rescue.
+
+It was fortunate, as it turned out, that this obligation detained him.
+He was that type of a merciful man whose mercies extended to his beasts.
+The poor little burros must be attended to and their safety assured so
+far as it could be, for it would be impossible for Enid Maitland to care
+for them. Indeed he had already exacted a promise from her that she
+would not leave the plateau and risk her life on the icy stairs with
+which she was so unfamiliar.
+
+He had gone to the corral and shaken down food enough for them which if
+it had been doled out to them day by day would have lasted longer than
+the week he intended to be absent; of course he realized that they would
+eat it up in half that time, but even so they would probably suffer not
+too great discomfort before he got back.
+
+All these preparations took some little time. It had grown somewhat late
+in the morning before he started. There had been a fierce storm raging
+when he first looked out and at her earnest solicitation he had delayed
+his departure until it had subsided.
+
+His tasks at the corral were at last completed; he had done what he
+could for them both, nothing now remained but to make the quickest and
+safest way to the settlement. Shouldering the pack containing his ax and
+gun and sleeping bag and such provisions as would serve to tide him over
+until he reached human habitations, he set forth. He did not look up to
+the hut; indeed, he could not have seen it for the corral was almost
+directly beneath it; but if it had been in full view he would not have
+looked back, he could not trust himself to; every instinct, every
+impulse in his soul would fain drag him back to that hut and to the
+woman. It was only his will and, did he but know it, her will that made
+him carry out his purpose.
+
+He would have saved perhaps half a mile on his journey if he had gone
+straight across the lake to the mouth of the canyon. We are creatures of
+habit. He had always gone around the lake on the familiar trail and
+unconsciously he followed that trail that morning. He was thinking of
+her as he plodded on in a mechanical way over the trail which followed
+the border of the lake for a time, plunged into the woods, wound among
+the pines and at last reached that narrow rift in the encircling wall
+through which the river flowed. He had passed along the white way
+oblivious to all his surroundings, but as he came to the entrance he
+could not fail to notice what he suddenly saw in the snow.
+
+Robinson Crusoe when he discovered the famous footprint of Man Friday in
+the sand was not more astonished at what met his vision than Newbold on
+that winter morning. For there, in the virgin whiteness, were the tracks
+of a man!
+
+He stopped dead with a sudden contraction of the heart. Humanity other
+than he and she in that wilderness? It could not be! For a moment he
+doubted the evidence of his own senses. He shook his pack loose from his
+shoulders and bent down to examine the tracks to read if he could their
+indications. He could see that some one had come up the canyon, that
+someone had leaned against the wall, that someone had gone on. Where had
+he gone?
+
+To follow the new trail was child's play for him. He ran by the side of
+it until he reached the knoll. The stranger had stopped again, he had
+shifted from one foot to another, evidently he had been looking about
+him seeking someone, only Enid Maitland of course. The trail ran forward
+to the edge of the frozen lake, there the man had put on his snow shoes,
+there he had sped across the lake like an arrow and like an arrow
+himself, although he had left behind his own snow shoes, Newbold ran
+upon his track. Fortunately the snow crest upbore him. The trail ran
+straight to the foot of the rocky stairs. The newcomer had easily found
+his way there.
+
+With beating heart and throbbing pulse, Newbold himself bounded up the
+acclivity after the stranger, marking as he did so evidences of the
+other's prior ascent. Reaching the top like him he ran down the narrow
+path and in his turn laid his hand upon the door.
+
+He was not mistaken, he heard voices within. He listened a second and
+then flung it open, and as the other had done, he entered.
+
+Way back on the trail, old Kirkby and Robert Maitland, the storm having
+ceased, were rapidly climbing up the canyon. Fate was bringing all the
+actors of the little drama within the shadow of her hand.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+THE ODDS AGAINST HIM
+
+
+The noise of the opening of the door and the in-rush of cold air that
+followed awoke Enid Maitland to instant action. She rose to her feet and
+faced the entrance through which she expected Newbold to reappear--for
+of course the newcomer must be he--and for the life of her she could not
+help that radiating flash of joy at that momentary anticipation which
+fairly transfigured her being; although if she had stopped to reflect
+she would have remembered that not in the whole course of their
+acquaintance had Newbold ever entered her room at any time without
+knocking and receiving permission.
+
+Some of that joy yet lingered in her lovely face when she tardily
+recognized the newcomer in the half light. Armstrong, scarcely waiting
+to close the door, sprang forward joyfully with his hands outstretched.
+
+"Enid!" he cried.
+
+Naturally he thought the look of expectant happiness he had surprised
+upon her face was for him and he accounted for its sudden disappearance
+by the shock of his unexpected, unannounced, abrupt, entrance.
+
+The warm color had flushed her face, but as she stared at him her aspect
+rapidly changed. She grew paler. The happy light that had shone in her
+eyes faded away and as he approached her she shrank back.
+
+"You!" she exclaimed almost in terror.
+
+"Yes," he answered smilingly, "I have found you at last. Thank God you
+are safe and well. Oh, if you could only know the agonies I have gone
+through. I thought I loved you when I left you six weeks ago, but now--"
+
+In eager impetuosity he drew nearer to her. Another moment and he would
+have taken her in his arms, but she would have none of him.
+
+"Stop," she said with a cold and inflexible sternness that gave pause
+even to his buoyant joyful assurance.
+
+"Why, what's the matter?"
+
+"The matter? Everything, but--"
+
+"No evasions, please," continued the man still cheerfully but with a
+growing misgiving. His suspicions in abeyance for the moment because of
+his joy at seeing her alive and well arose with renewed force. "I left
+you practically pledged to me," he resumed.
+
+"Not so fast," answered Enid Maitland, determined to combat the
+slightest attempt to establish a binding claim upon her.
+
+"Isn't it true?" asked Armstrong. "Here, wait," he said before she could
+answer, "I am half frozen, I have been searching for you since early
+morning in the storm." He unbuttoned and unbelted his huge fur coat as
+he spoke and threw it carelessly on the floor by his Winchester leaning
+against the wall. "Now," he resumed, "I can talk better."
+
+"You must have something to eat then," said the girl.
+
+She was glad of the interruption since she was playing for time. She did
+not quite know how the interview would end, he had come upon her so
+unexpectedly and she had never formulated how she should say to him that
+which she felt she must say. She must have time to think, to collect
+herself, which he on his part was quite willing to give her, for he was
+not much better prepared for the interview than she. He really was
+hungry and tired; his early journey had been foolhardy and in the
+highest degree dangerous. The violence of his admiration for her, added
+to the excitement of her presence and the probable nearness of Newbold
+as to whose whereabouts he wondered, were not conducive to rapid
+recuperation. It would be comfort to him also to have food and time.
+
+"Sit down," she said. "I shall be back in a moment."
+
+The fire of the morning was still burning in the stove in the kitchen;
+to heat a can of soup, to make him some buttered toast and hot coffee
+were the tasks of a few moments. She brought them back to him, set them
+on the table before him and bade him fall to.
+
+"By Jove," exclaimed the man after a little time as he began to eat
+hastily but with great relish what she had prepared, while she stood
+over him watching him silently, "this is cozy. A warm, comfortable room,
+something to eat served by the finest woman in the world, the prettiest
+girl on earth to look at--what more could a man desire? This is the way
+it's going to be always in the future."
+
+"You have no warrant whatever for saying or hoping that," answered the
+girl slowly but decisively.
+
+"Have I not?" asked the man quickly. "Did you not say to me a little
+while ago that you liked me better than any man you had ever met and
+that I might win you if I could? Well, I can, and what's more I will in
+spite of yourself." He laughed. "Why, the memory of that kiss I stole
+from you makes me mad." He pushed away the things before him and rose to
+his feet once more. "Come, give me another," he said; "it isn't in the
+power of woman to stand out against a love like mine."
+
+"Isn't it?"
+
+"No, indeed."
+
+"Louise Newbold did," she answered very quietly, but with the swiftness
+and the dexterity of a sword thrust by a master hand, a mighty arm.
+
+Armstrong stared at her in open-mouthed astonishment.
+
+"What do you know about Louise Rosser or Newbold?" he asked at last.
+
+"All that I want to know."
+
+"And did that damned hound tell you?"
+
+"If you mean Mr. Newbold, he never mentioned your name, he does not know
+you exist."
+
+"Where is he now?" thundered the man.
+
+"Have no fear," answered the woman calmly, "he has gone to the
+settlements to tell them I am safe and to seek help to get me out of the
+mountains."
+
+"Fear!" exclaimed Armstrong, proudly, "I fear nothing on earth. For
+years, ever since I heard his name in fact, I have longed to meet him. I
+want to know who told you about that woman, Kirkby?"
+
+"He never mentioned your name in connection with her."
+
+"But you must have heard it somewhere," cried the man thoroughly
+bewildered. "The birds of the air didn't tell it to you, did they?"
+
+"She told me herself," answered Enid Maitland.
+
+"She told you! Why, she's been dead in her grave five years, shot to
+death by that murderous dog of a husband of hers."
+
+"A word with you, Mr. Armstrong," said the woman with great spirit. "You
+can't talk that way about Mr. Newbold; he saved my life twice over, from
+a bear and then in the cloud burst which caught me in the canyon."
+
+"That evens up a little," said Armstrong. "Perhaps for your sake I will
+spare him."
+
+"You!" laughed the woman contemptuously. "Spare him! Be advised, look to
+yourself; if he ever finds out what I know, I don't believe any power on
+earth could save you."
+
+"Oh," said Armstrong carelessly enough, although he was consumed with
+hate and jealousy and raging against her clearly evident disdain, "I can
+take care of myself, I guess. Anyway, I only want to talk about you, not
+about him or her. Your father--"
+
+"Is he well?"
+
+"Well enough, but heart-broken, crushed. I happened to be in his house
+in Philadelphia when the telegram came from your uncle that you were
+lost and probably dead. I had just asked him for your hand," he added,
+smiling grimly at the recollection.
+
+"You had no right to do that."
+
+"I know that."
+
+"It was not, it is not, his to give."
+
+"Still, when I won you I thought it would be pleasant all around if he
+knew and approved."
+
+"And did he?"
+
+"Not then, he literally drove me out of the house; but afterward he said
+if I could find you I could have you; and I have found you and I will
+have you whether you like it or not."
+
+"Never," said the woman decisively.
+
+The situation had got on Armstrong's nerves, and he must perforce show
+himself in his true colors. His only resources were his strength, not of
+mind but of body. He made another most damaging mistake at this
+juncture.
+
+"We are alone here, and I am master, remember," he said meaningly.
+"Come, let's make it up. Give me a kiss for my pains and--"
+
+"I have been alone here for a month with another man," answered Enid
+Maitland, who was strangely unafraid in spite of his threat. "A
+gentleman, he has never so much as offered to touch my hand without my
+permission; the contrast is quite to your disadvantage."
+
+"Are you jealous of Louise Rosser?" asked Armstrong, suddenly seeing
+that he was losing ground and casting about desperately to account for
+it, and to recover what was escaping him. "Why, that was nothing, a mere
+boy and girl affair," he ran on with specious good humor, as if it were
+all a trifle. "The woman was, I hate to say it, just crazy in love with
+me, but I really never cared anything especially for her, it was just a
+harmless sort of flirtation anyway. She afterward married this man
+Newbold and that's all there was about it."
+
+The truth would not serve him and in his desperation and desire he
+staked everything on this astounding lie. The woman he loved looked at
+him with her face as rigid as a mask.
+
+"You won't hold that against me, will you?" pleaded the man. "I told you
+that I'd been a man among men, yes among women, too, here in this rough
+country and that I wasn't worthy of you; there are lots of things in my
+past that I ought to be ashamed of and I am, and the more I see you the
+more ashamed I grow, but as for loving any one else all that I've ever
+thought or felt or experienced before now is just nothing."
+
+And this indeed was true, and even Enid Maitland with all her prejudice
+could realize and understand it. Out of the same mouth, it was said of
+old, proceeded blessing and cursing, and from these same lips came truth
+and falsehood; but the power of the truth to influence this woman was as
+nothing to the power of falsehood. She could never have loved him, she
+now knew; a better man had won her affections, a nobler being claimed
+her heart; but if Armstrong had told the truth regarding his
+relationship to Newbold's wife and then had completed it with his
+passionate avowal of his present love for her, she would have at least
+admired him and respected him.
+
+"You have not told me the truth," she answered directly, "you have
+deliberately been false."
+
+"Can't you see," protested the man, drawing nearer to her, "how much I
+love you?"
+
+"Oh, that, yes I suppose that is true; so far as you can love anyone I
+will admit that you do love me."
+
+"So far as I can love anyone?" he repeated after her. "Give me a chance
+and I'll show you."
+
+"But you haven't told the truth about Mrs. Newbold. You have calumniated
+the dead, you have sought to shelter yourself by throwing the burden of
+a guilty passion upon the weaker vessel, it isn't man-like, it isn't--"
+
+Armstrong was a bold fighter, quick and prompt in his decisions. He made
+another effort to set himself right. He staked his all on another throw
+of the dice, which he began to feel were somehow loaded against him.
+
+"You are right," he admitted, wondering anxiously how much the woman
+really knew. "It wasn't true, it was a coward's act, I am ashamed of it.
+I'm so mad with love for you that I scarcely know what I am doing, but I
+will make a clean breast of it now. I loved Louise Rosser after a
+fashion before ever Newbold came on the scene. We were pledged to each
+other, a foolish quarrel arose, she was jealous of other girls--"
+
+"And had she no right to be?"
+
+"Oh, I suppose so. We broke it off anyway, and then she married Newbold,
+out of pique, I suppose, or what you will. I thought I was heart-broken
+at the time, it did hit me pretty hard; it was five or six years ago, I
+was a youngster then, I am a man now. The woman has been dead long
+since. There was some cock-and-bull story about her falling off a cliff
+and her husband being compelled to shoot her. I didn't half believe it
+at the time and naturally I have been waiting to get even with him. I
+have been hating him for five years, but he has been good to you and we
+will let bygones be bygones. What do I care for Louise Rosser, or for
+him, or for what he did to her, now? I am sorry that I said what I did,
+but you will have to charge it to my blinding passion for you. I can
+truthfully say that you are the one woman that I have ever craved with
+all my heart. I will do anything, be anything, to win you."
+
+It was very brilliantly done, he had not told a single untruth, he had
+admitted much, but he had withheld the essentials after all. He was
+playing against desperate odds, he had no knowledge of how much she
+knew, or where she had learned anything. Everyone about the mining camp
+where she had lived had known of his love for Louise Rosser, but he had
+not supposed there was a single human soul who had been privy to its
+later developments, and he could not figure out any way by which Enid
+Maitland could have learned by any possibility any more of the story
+than he had told her. He had calculated swiftly and with the utmost
+nicety, just how much he should confess. He was a keen witted, clever
+man and he was fighting for what he held most dear, but his eagerness
+and zeal, as they have often done, overrode his judgment, and he made
+another mistake at this juncture. His evil genius was at his elbow.
+
+"You must remember," he continued, "that you have been alone here in
+these mountains with a man for over a month; the world--"
+
+"What, what do you mean?" exclaimed the girl, who indeed knew very well
+what he meant, but who would not admit the possibility.
+
+"It's not every man," he added, blindly rushing to his doom, "that would
+care for you or want you--after that."
+
+He received a sudden and terrible enlightenment.
+
+"You coward," she cried, with upraised hand, whether in protest or to
+strike him neither ever knew, for at that moment the door opened the
+second time that morning to admit another man.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+THE LAST RESORT OF KINGS AND MEN
+
+
+The sudden entrant upon a quarrel between others is invariably at a
+disadvantage. Usually he is unaware of the cause of difference and
+generally he has no idea of the stage of development of the affair that
+has been reached. Newbold suffered from this lack of knowledge and to
+these disadvantages were added others. For instance, he had not the
+faintest idea as to who or what was the stranger. The room was not very
+light in the day time, Armstrong happened to be standing with his back
+to it at some distance from the window by the side of which Enid stood.
+Six years naturally and inevitably make some difference in a man's
+appearance and it is not to be wondered that at first Newbold did not
+recognize the man before him as the original of the face in his wife's
+locket, although he had studied that face over and over again. A nearer
+scrutiny, a longer study would have enlightened him of course, but for
+the present he saw nothing but a stranger visibly perturbed on one side
+and the woman he loved apparently fiercely resentful, sternly
+indignant, confronting the other with an upraised hand.
+
+The man, whoever he was, had affronted her, had aroused her indignation,
+perhaps had insulted her, that was plain. He went swiftly to her side,
+he interposed himself between her and the man.
+
+"Enid," he asked, and his easy use of the name was a revelation and an
+illumination to Armstrong, "who is this man, what has he done?"
+
+It was Armstrong who replied. If Newbold were in the dark, not so he;
+although they had never spoken, he had seen Newbold. He recognized him
+instantly, indeed recognized or not the newcomer could be no other than
+he. There was doubtless no other man in the mountains. He had expected
+to find him when he approached the hut and was ready for him.
+
+To the fire of his ancient hatred and jealousy was added a new fuel that
+increased its heat and flame. This man had come between Armstrong and
+the woman he loved before and had got away unscathed, evidently he had
+come between him and this new woman he loved. Well, he should be made to
+suffer for it this time and by Armstrong's own hands. The instant
+Newbold had entered the room Armstrong had thirsted to leap upon him and
+he meant to do it. One or the other of them, he swore in his heart,
+should never leave that room alive.
+
+But Newbold should have his chance. Armstrong was as brave, as fearless,
+as intrepid, as any man on earth. There was much that was admirable in
+his character; he would not take any man at a disadvantage in an
+encounter such as he proposed. He would not hesitate to rob a man of his
+wife if he could and he would not shrink from any deceit necessary to
+gain his purpose with a woman, for good or evil, but he had his own
+ideas of honor, he would not shoot an enemy in the back for instance.
+
+Singular perversion, this, to which some minds are liable! To take from
+a man his wife by subtle and underhand methods, to rob him of that which
+makes life dear and sweet--there was nothing dishonorable in that! But
+to take his life, a thing of infinitely less moment, by the same
+process--that was not to be thought of. In Armstrong's code it was
+right, it was imperative, to confront a man with the truth and take the
+consequences; but to confront a woman with a lie and take her body and
+soul, if so be she might be gained, was equally admirable. And there are
+other souls than Armstrong's in which this moral inconsistency and
+obliquity about men and women has lodgment.
+
+Armstrong confronted Newbold therefore, lustful of battle; he yearned to
+leap upon him, his fingers itched to grasp him, then trembled slightly
+as he rubbed them nervously against his thumbs; his face protruded a
+little, his eyes narrowed.
+
+"My name is Armstrong," he said, determined to precipitate the issue
+without further delay and flinging the words at the other in a tone of
+hectoring defiance which, however, strange to say, did not seem to
+affect Newbold in exactly the degree he had anticipated.
+
+Yet the name was an illumination to Newbold, though not at all in the
+way the speaker had fancied; the recollection of it was the one fact
+concerning the woman he loved that rankled in the solitary's mind. He
+had often wanted to ask Enid Maitland what she had meant by that chance
+allusion to Armstrong which she had made in the beginning of their
+acquaintance, but he had refrained. At first he had no right to question
+her, there could be no natural end to their affections; and latterly
+when their hearts had been disclosed to each other in the wild,
+tempestuous, passionate scenes of the last two or three days, he had had
+things of greater moment to engage his attention, subjects of more
+importance to discuss with her.
+
+He had for the time being forgotten Armstrong and he had not before
+known what jealousy was until he had entered that room. To have seen her
+with any man would have given him acute pain, perhaps just because he
+had been so long withdrawn from human society, but to see her with this
+man who flashed instantly into his recollection upon the utterance of
+his name was an added exasperation.
+
+Newbold turned to the woman, to whom indeed he had addressed his
+question in the first place, and there was something in his movement
+which bespoke a galling, almost contemptuous, obliviousness to the
+presence of the other man which was indeed hard for him to bear.
+
+Hate begets hate. He was quite conscious of Armstrong's antagonism,
+which was entirely undisguised and open and which was growing greater
+with every passing moment. The score against Newbold was running up in
+the mind of his visitor.
+
+"Ah," coolly said the owner of the cabin to the latest of his two
+guests, "I do remember Miss Maitland did mention your name the first day
+she spent here. Is he a--a friend of yours?" he asked of the woman.
+
+"Not now," answered Enid Maitland.
+
+She too was in a strange state of perturbation on account of the
+dilemma in which she found herself involved. She was determined not to
+betray the unconscious confidence of the dead. She hoped fervently that
+Newbold would not recognize Armstrong as the man of the locket, but if
+he did she was resolute that he should not also be recognized as the man
+of the letters, at least not by her act. Newbold was ignorant of the
+existence of those letters and she did not intend that he should be
+enlightened so far as she could prevent it. But she was keen enough to
+see that the first recognition would be inevitable; she even admitted
+the fact that Armstrong would probably precipitate it himself. Well, no
+human soul, not even their writer, knew that she had the letters except
+old Kirkby and he was far away. She wished that she had destroyed them;
+she had determined to do so at the first convenient opportunity. Before
+that, however, she intended to show them not to Newbold but to
+Armstrong, to disclose his perfidy, to convict him of the falsehood he
+had told her and to justify herself even in his eyes for the action she
+had taken.
+
+Mingled with all these quick reflections was a deadly fear. She was
+quick to perceive the hatred Armstrong cherished against Newbold on the
+one hand because of the old love affair, the long standing grudge
+breaking into sudden life; on the other because of her own failure to
+come to Armstrong's hand and her love for Newbold which she had no
+desire to conceal. The cumulation of all these passionate antagonisms
+would only make him the more desperate, she knew.
+
+Whether or not Newbold found out Armstrong's connection with his past
+love there was sufficient provocation in the present to evoke all the
+oppugnation and resentment of his nature. Enid felt as she might if the
+puncheons of the floor had been sticks of dynamite with active
+detonators in every heel that pressed them; as if the slightest movement
+on the part of anyone would bring about an explosion.
+
+The tensity of the situation was bewildering to her. It had come upon
+her with such startling force; the unexpected arrival of Armstrong, of
+all the men on earth the one who ought not to be there, and then the
+equally startling arrival of Newbold, of whom perhaps the same might
+have been said. If Newbold had only gone on, if he had not come back, if
+she had been rescued by her uncle or old Kirkby--But "ifs" were idle,
+she had to face a present situation to which she was utterly unequal.
+
+She had entirely repudiated Armstrong, that was one sure point; she knew
+how guilty he had been toward Newbold's wife, that was another; she
+realized how he had deceived her, that was the third. These eliminated
+the man from her affections. But it is one thing to thrust a man out of
+your heart and another to thrust him out of your life; he was still
+there. And by no means the sport of blind fate, Armstrong intended to
+have something to say as to the course of events, to use his own powers
+to determine the issue.
+
+Of but one thing besides her hatred for Armstrong was Enid Maitland
+absolutely certain; she would never disclose to the man she loved the
+fact that the woman, the memory of whose supposed passion he cherished,
+had been unfaithful to him in heart if not in deed. Nothing could wrest
+that secret from her. She had been infected by Newbold's quixotic ideas,
+the contagion of his perversion of common sense had fastened itself upon
+her. She would not have been human either if she had not experienced a
+thrill of pride and joy at the possibility that in some way, of which
+she yet swore she would not be the instrument blind or otherwise, the
+facts might be disclosed which would enable Newbold to claim her openly
+and honorably, without hesitation before or remorse after, as his wife.
+This fascinating flash of expectant hopeful feeling she thought unworthy
+of her and strove to fight it down, but with manifest impossibility.
+
+It has taken time to set these things down; to speak or to write is a
+slow process and the ratio between outward expressions and inward is as
+great as that between light and sound. Questions and answers between
+these three followed as swiftly as thrust and parry between accomplished
+swordsmen, and yet between each demand and reply they had time to
+entertain these swift thoughts--as the drowning compass life experiences
+in seconds!
+
+"I may not be her friend," said Armstrong steadily, "but she left me in
+these mountains a month ago with more than a half way promise to marry
+me, and I have sought her through the snows to claim the fulfillment."
+
+"You never told me that," exclaimed Newbold sternly and again addressing
+the woman rather than the man.
+
+"There was nothing to tell," she answered quickly. "I was a young girl,
+heart free. I liked this man, perhaps because he was so different from
+those to whom I had been accustomed and when he pressed his suit upon
+me, I told him the truth. I did not love him, I did not know whether I
+might grow to care for him or not; if I did, I should marry him and if I
+did not no power on earth could make me. And now--I hate him!"
+
+She flung the hard and bitter words at him savagely.
+
+Armstrong was beside himself with fury at her remark, and Newbold's cool
+indifference to him personally was unendurable. In battle such as he
+waged he had the mistaken idea that anything was fair. He could not
+really tell whether it was love of woman or hate of man that was most
+dominant; he saw at once the state of affairs between the two. He could
+hurt the man and the woman with one statement; what might be its
+ulterior effect he did not stop to consider; perhaps if he had he would
+not have cared greatly then. He realized anyway that since Newbold's
+arrival his chance with Enid was gone; perhaps whether Newbold were
+alive or dead it was gone forever, although Armstrong did not think
+that, he was not capable of thinking very far into the future in his
+then condition, the present bulked too large for that.
+
+"I did not think after that kiss in the road that you would go back on
+me this way, Enid," he said quickly.
+
+"The kiss in the road!" cried Newbold, staring again at the woman.
+
+"You coward," repeated she, with one swift envenomed glance at the other
+man and then she turned to her lover. She laid her hand upon his arm,
+she lifted her face up to him. "As God is my judge," she cried, her
+voice rising with the tragic intensity of the moment and thrilling with
+indignant protest, "he took it from me like the thief and the coward he
+was and he tells it now like the liar he is. We were riding side by
+side, I was utterly unsuspicious, I thought him a gentleman, he caught
+me and kissed me before I knew it, I drove him from me. That's all."
+
+"I believe you," said Newbold gently, and then, for the second time, he
+addressed himself to Armstrong. "You came doubtless to rescue Miss
+Maitland, and in so far your purpose was admirable and you deserve
+thanks and respect, but no further. This is my cabin, your words and
+your conduct render you unwelcome here. Miss Maitland is under my
+protection, if you will come outside I will be glad to talk with you
+further."
+
+"Under your protection?" sneered Armstrong, completely beside himself.
+"After a month with you alone I take it she needs no further
+protection."
+
+Newbold did not leap upon the man for that mordant insult to the woman,
+his approach was slow, relentless, terrible. Eight or ten feet separated
+them. Armstrong met him half way, his impetuosity was the greater, he
+sprang forward, turned about, faced the full light from the narrow
+window.
+
+"Well," he cried, "have you got anything to say or do about it?"
+
+For Newbold had stopped, appalled. He stood staring as if petrified;
+recognition, recollection rushed over him. Now and at last he knew the
+man. The face that confronted him was the same face that had stared out
+at him from the locket he had taken from the bruised breast of his dead
+wife, which had been a mystery to him for all these years.
+
+"Well," tauntingly asked Armstrong again, "what are you waiting for, are
+you afraid?"
+
+From Newbold's belt depended a holster and a heavy revolver. As
+Armstrong made to attack him he flashed it out with astonishing
+quickness and presented it. The newcomer was unarmed, his Winchester
+leaned against the wall by his fur coat and he had no pistol.
+
+"If you move a step forward or backward," said Newbold with deadly calm,
+"I will kill you without mercy."
+
+"So you'd take advantage of a weaponless man, would you?" sneered
+Armstrong.
+
+"Oh, for God's sake," cried the woman, "don't kill him."
+
+"You both misjudge me," was the answer. "I shall take no advantage of
+this man. I would disdain to do so if it were necessary, but before the
+last resort I must have speech with him, and this is the only way in
+which I can keep him quiet for a moment, if as I suspect, his hate
+measures with mine."
+
+"You have the advantage," protested Armstrong. "Say your say and get it
+over with. I've waited all these years for a chance to kill you and my
+patience is exhausted."
+
+Still keeping the other covered, Newbold stepped over to the table,
+pulled out the drawer and drew from it the locket. Enid remembered she
+had hastily thrust it there when he had handed it to her and there it
+had lain unnoted and forgotten. It was quite evident to her what was
+toward now. Newbold had recognized the other man, explanations were
+inevitable. With his left hand Newbold sought the catch of the locket
+and pressed the spring. In two steps he faced Armstrong with the open
+locket thrust toward him.
+
+"Your picture?" he asked.
+
+"Mine."
+
+"Do you know the locket?"
+
+"I gave it to a woman named Louise Rosser five or six years ago."
+
+"My wife."
+
+"Yes, she was crazy in love with me but--"
+
+With diabolic malice Armstrong left the sentence uncompleted. The
+inference he meant should be drawn from his reticence was obvious.
+
+"I took it from her dead body," gritted out Newbold.
+
+"She was beside herself with love for me, an old affair, you know," said
+Armstrong more explicitly, thinking to use a spear with a double barb to
+pierce the woman's and the man's heart alike. That he defamed the dead
+was of no moment then. "She wanted to leave you," he ran on glibly, "she
+wanted me to take her back and--"
+
+"Untrue," burst forth from Enid Maitland's lips. "A slanderous,
+dastardly, cowardly untruth."
+
+But the men paid no attention to her in their excitement, perhaps they
+did not even hear her. Newbold thrust his pistol violently forward.
+
+"Would you murder me as you murdered the woman?" gibed Armstrong in
+bitter taunt.
+
+Then Enid Maitland found it in her heart to urge Newbold to kill him
+where he stood, but she had no time if she could have carried out her
+design, for Newbold flung the weapon from him and the next moment the
+two men leaped upon each other, straining, struggling, clawing,
+battling like savage beasts, each seeking to clasp his fingers around
+the throat of the other and then twist and crush until life was gone.
+
+Saying nothing, fighting in a grim silence that was terrible, they
+reeled crashing about the little room. No two men on earth could have
+been better matched, yet Newbold had a slight advantage in height and
+strength, as he had also the advantage in simple life and splendid
+condition. Armstrong's hate and fierce temper counterbalanced these at
+first and with arms locked and legs twined, with teeth clenched and eyes
+blinded and pulses throbbing and hearts beating, they strove together.
+
+The woman shrank back against the wall and stared frightened. She feared
+for her lover, she feared for herself. Strange primitive feelings
+throbbed in her veins. It was an old situation, when two male animals
+fought for supremacy and the ownership of a female, whose destiny was
+entirely removed from her own hands.
+
+Armstrong had shown himself in his true colors at last. She would have
+nothing to hope from him if he were the victor and she even wondered in
+terror what might happen to her if the man she loved triumphed after the
+passions aroused in such a battle. She grew sick and giddy, her bosom
+rose and fell, her breath came fast as she followed the panting,
+struggling, clinging, grinding figures about the room.
+
+At first there had been no advantage to either, but now after five
+minutes--or was it hours?--of fierce fighting, the strength and superior
+condition of her lover began to tell. He was forcing the other backward.
+Slowly, inch by inch, foot by foot, step by step, he mastered him. The
+two intertwining figures were broadside to her now, she could see their
+faces inflamed by the lust of the battle, engorged, blood red with hate
+and fury. There was a look of exultation in one and the shadow of
+approaching disaster in the other. But the consciousness that he was
+being mastered ever so little only increased Armstrong's determination
+and he fought back with the frenzy, the strength of a maddened gorilla,
+and again for a space the issue was in doubt. But not for long.
+
+The table, a heavy, cumbersome, four-legged affair, solid almost as a
+rock, stood in the way. Newbold at last backed Armstrong up against it
+and by superhuman effort bent him over it, held him with one arm and
+using the table as a support, wrenched his left hand free, and sunk his
+fingers around the other's throat. It was all up with Armstrong. It was
+only a question of time now.
+
+[Illustration: It was all up with Armstrong]
+
+"Now," Newbold guttered out hoarsely, "you slandered the dead woman I
+married, and you insulted the living one I love. Take back what you said
+before you die."
+
+"I forgive him," cried Enid Maitland. "Oh, don't kill him before my
+eyes."
+
+Armstrong was past speech. The inveteracy of his hatred could be seen
+even in his fast glazing eyes, the indomitableness of his purpose yet
+spoke in the negative shake of his head. He could die, but he would die
+in his hate and in his purpose.
+
+Enid ran to the two, she grappled Newbold's arm with both her own and
+strove with all her might to tear it away from the other's throat. Her
+lover paid no more attention to her than if a summer breeze had touched
+him. Armstrong grew black in the face, his limbs relaxed, another second
+or two and it would have been over with him.
+
+Once more the door was thrown open, through it two snow covered men
+entered. One swift glance told them all, one of them at least had
+expected it. On the one side Kirkby, on the other Maitland, tore Newbold
+away from his prey just in time to save Armstrong's life. Indeed the
+latter was so far gone that he fell from the table to the floor
+unconscious, choking, almost dying. It was Enid Maitland who received
+his head in her arms and helped bring him back to life while the panting
+Newbold stood staring dully at the woman he loved and the man he hated
+on the floor at his feet.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+THE BECOMING END
+
+
+"Why did you interfere?" when at last he got his breath again, asked
+Newbold of Maitland who still held him firmly although restraint was now
+unnecessary, the heat and fire of his passion being somewhat gone out of
+him. "I meant to kill him."
+
+"He'd oughter die sure nuff," drawled old Kirkby, rising from where he
+had been kneeling by Armstrong's side, "but I don't know's how you're
+bound to be his executioner. He's all right now, Miss Enid," said the
+old man. "Here"--he took a pillow from the bunk and slipped it under his
+head and then extending his hands he lifted the excited almost
+distraught woman to her feet--"tain't fittin' for you to tend on him."
+
+"Oh," exclaimed Enid, her limbs trembling, the blood flowing away from
+her heart, her face deathly white, fighting against the faintness that
+came with the reaction, while old Kirkby supported and encouraged her.
+"I thank God you came. I don't know what would have happened if you had
+not."
+
+"Has this man mistreated you?" asked Robert Maitland, suddenly
+tightening his grip upon his hard breathing but unresisting passive
+prisoner.
+
+"No, no," answered his niece. "He has been everything that a man should
+be."
+
+"And Armstrong?" continued her uncle.
+
+"No, not even he."
+
+"I came in time, thank God!" ejaculated Newbold.
+
+By this time Armstrong had recovered consciousness. To his other causes
+for hatred were now added chagrin, mortification, shame. He had been
+overcome. He would have been a dead man and by Newbold's hands if the
+others had not interfered. He almost wished they had let his enemy
+alone. Well, he had lost everything but a chance for revenge on them
+all.
+
+"She has been alone here with this man in this cabin for a month," he
+said thickly. "I was willing to take her in spite of that, but--"
+
+"He made that damned suggestion before," cried Newbold, his rage
+returning. "I don't know who you are--"
+
+"My name is Robert Maitland, and I am this girl's uncle."
+
+"Well, if you were her father, I could only swear--"
+
+"It isn't necessary to swear anything," answered Maitland serenely. "I
+know this child. And I believe I'm beginning to find out this man."
+
+"Thank you, Uncle Robert," said Enid gratefully, coming nearer to him as
+she spoke. "No man could have done more for me than Mr. Newbold has, and
+no one could have been more considerate of me. As for you," she turned
+on, Armstrong, who now slowly got to his feet, "your insinuations
+against me are on a par with your charges against the dead woman,
+beneath contempt."
+
+"What did he say about her?" asked Old Kirkby.
+
+"You know my story?" asked Newbold.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"He said that my wife had been unfaithful to me--with him--and that he
+had refused to take her back."
+
+"And it was true," snarled Armstrong.
+
+It was all Maitland could do to check Newbold's rush, but in the end it
+was old Kirkby who most effectively interposed.
+
+"That's a damned lie," he said quietly with his usual drawling voice.
+
+"You can say so," laughed Armstrong, "but that doesn't alter the
+facts."
+
+"An' I can prove it," answered the old man triumphantly.
+
+It was coming, the secret that she had tried to conceal was about to be
+revealed, thought Enid. She made a movement toward the old man. She
+opened her mouth to bid him be silent and then stopped. It would be
+useless she knew. The determination was no longer hers. The direction of
+affairs had been withdrawn from her. After all it was better that the
+unloving wife should be proved faithful, even if her husband's cherished
+memory of her love for him had to be destroyed thereby. Helpless she
+listened knowing full well what the old frontiersman's next word would
+be.
+
+"Prove it!" mocked Armstrong. "How?"
+
+"By your own hand, out of your own mouth, you dog," thundered old
+Kirkby. "Miss Enid, w'ere are them letters I give you?"
+
+"I--I--" faltered the girl, but there was no escape from the keen glance
+of the old man, her hand went to the bosom of her tunic.
+
+"Letters!" exclaimed Armstrong. "What letters?"
+
+"These," answered Enid Maitland, holding up the packet.
+
+Armstrong reached for them but Kirkby again interposed.
+
+"No, you don't," he said dryly. "Them ain't for your eyes yit. Mr.
+Newbold, I found them letters on the little shelf w'ere your wife first
+struck w'en she fell over onto the butte w'ere she died. I figgered out
+her dress was tore open there an' them letters she was carryin' fell out
+an' lodged there. We had ropes an' we went down over the rocks that way.
+I went first an' I picked 'em up. I never told nobody about it an' I
+never showed 'em to a single human bein' until I give 'em to Miss
+Maitland at the camp."
+
+"Why not?" asked Newbold, taking the letters.
+
+"There wasn't no good tellin' nobody then, jest fer the sake o' stirrin'
+up trouble."
+
+"But why did you give them to her at last?"
+
+"Because I was afeered she might fall in love with Armstrong. I supposed
+she'd know his writin', but w'en she didn't I jest let her keep 'em
+anyway. I knowed it'd all come out somehow; there is a God above us in
+spite of all the damned scoundrels on earth like this un."
+
+"Are these letters addressed to my dead wife?" asked Newbold.
+
+"They are," answered Enid Maitland; "look and see."
+
+"And did Mr. Armstrong write them?"
+
+"He'll deny it, I suppose," answered Kirkby.
+
+"But I am familiar with his handwriting," said Maitland.
+
+Taking the still unopened packet from Newbold he opened it, examined one
+of the letters and handed them all back.
+
+"There is no doubt about it," he said. "It's Armstrong's hand, I'll
+swear to it."
+
+"Oh, I'll acknowledge them," said Armstrong, seeing the absolute
+futility of further denial. He had forgotten all about the letters. He
+had not dreamed they were in existence. "You've got me beat between you,
+the cards are stacked against me, I've done my damndest--" and indeed
+that was true.
+
+Well, he had played a great game, battling for a high stake he had stuck
+at nothing. A career in which some good had mingled with much bad was
+now at an end. He had lost utterly, would he show himself a good loser?
+
+"Mr. Armstrong," said Newbold, quietly extending his hand, "here are
+your letters."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"I am not in the habit of reading letters addressed to other people
+without permission and when the recipient of them is dead long since, I
+am doubly bound."
+
+"You're a damned fool," cried Armstrong contemptuously.
+
+"That kind of a charge from your kind of a man is perhaps the highest
+compliment you could pay me. I don't know whether I shall ever get rid
+of the doubt you have tried to lodge in my soul about my dead wife,
+but--"
+
+"There ain't no doubt about it," protested old Kirkby earnestly. "I've
+read them letters a hundred times over, havin' no scruples whatsomever,
+an' in every one of 'em he was beggin' an' pleadin' with her to go away
+with him an' fightin' her refusal to do it. I guess I've got to admit
+that she didn't love you none, Newbold, an' she did love this here
+wuthless Armstrong, but for the sake of her reputation I'll prove to you
+all from them letters of hisn, from his own words, that there didn't
+live a cleaner hearted, more virtuous, upright feemale than that there
+wife of yourn, even if she didn't love you. It's God's truth an' you kin
+take it from me."
+
+"Mr. Armstrong," cried Enid Maitland, interposing at this juncture, "not
+very long ago I told you I liked you better than any man I had ever
+seen, I thought perhaps I might have loved you, and that was true. You
+have played the coward's part and the liar's part in this room--"
+
+"Did I fight him like a coward?" asked Armstrong.
+
+"No," answered Newbold for her, remembering the struggle, "you fought
+like a man."
+
+Singular perversion of language and thought there! If two struggled like
+wild beasts that was fighting like men!
+
+"But let that pass," continued the woman. "I don't deny your physical
+courage, but I am going to appeal to another kind of a courage which I
+believe you possess. You have showed your evil side here in this room,
+but I don't believe that's the only side you have, else I couldn't even
+have liked you in the past. You have made a charge against two women,
+one dead and one living. It makes little difference what you say about
+me; I need no defense and no justification in the eyes of those here who
+love me and for the rest of the world I don't care. But you have slain
+this man's confidence in a woman he once loved, and whom he thought
+loved him. As you are a man, tell him that it was a lie and that she was
+innocent of anything else although she did love you."
+
+What a singular situation, an observer who knew all might have
+reflected? Here was Enid Maitland pleading for the good name of the
+woman who had married the man she now loved, and whom by rights she
+should have jealously hated.
+
+"You ask me more than I can," faltered Armstrong, yet greatly moved by
+this touching appeal to his better self.
+
+"Let him speak no word," protested Newbold quickly. "I wouldn't believe
+him on his oath."
+
+"Steady now, steady," interposed Kirkby with his frontier instinct for
+fair play. "The man's down, Newbold, don't hit him now."
+
+"Give him a chance," added Maitland earnestly.
+
+"You would not believe me, eh?" laughed Armstrong horribly; "well then
+this is what I say, whether it is true or a lie you can be the judge."
+
+What was he about to say? They all recognized instinctively that his
+forthcoming deliverance would be a final one. Would good or evil
+dominate him now? Enid Maitland had made her plea and it had been a
+powerful one; the man did truly love the woman who urged him, there was
+nothing left for him but a chance that she should think a little better
+of him than he merited, he had come to the end of his resources. And
+Enid Maitland spoke again as he hesitated.
+
+"Oh, think, think before you speak," she cried.
+
+"If I thought," answered Armstrong quickly, "I should go mad. Newbold,
+your wife was as pure as the snow. That she loved me I cannot and will
+not deny. She married you in a fit of jealousy and anger after a quarrel
+between us in which I was to blame, and when I came back to the camp in
+your absence I strove to make it up and used every argument that I
+possessed to get her to leave you and to go with me. Although she had no
+love for you she was too good and too true a woman for that. Now you've
+got the truth, damn you; believe it or not as you like. Miss Maitland,"
+he added swiftly, "if I had met you sooner, I might have been a better
+man. Good-by."
+
+He turned suddenly and none preventing, indeed it was not possible, he
+ran to the outer door; as he did so his hand snatched something that lay
+on the chest of drawers. There was a flash of light as he drew in his
+arm but none saw what it was. In a few seconds he was outside the door.
+The table was between old Kirkby and the exit, Maitland and Newbold were
+nearest. The old man came to his senses first.
+
+"After him," he cried, "he means--"
+
+But before anybody could stir, the dull report of a pistol came through
+the open door!
+
+They found Armstrong lying on his back in the snowy path, his face as
+white as the drift that pillowed his head, Newbold's heavy revolver
+still clutched in his right hand and a bloody, welling smudge on his
+left breast over his heart. It was the woman who broke the silence.
+
+"Oh," she sobbed, "It can't be--"
+
+"Dead," said Maitland solemnly.
+
+"And it might have been by my hand," muttered Newbold to himself in
+horror.
+
+"He'll never cause no more trouble to nobody in this world, Miss Enid
+an' gents," said old Kirkby gravely. "Well, he was a damned fool an' a
+damned villain in some ways," continued the old frontiersman
+reflectively in the silence broken otherwise only by the woman's sobbing
+breaths, "but he had some of the qualities that go to make a man, an' I
+ain't doubtin' but what them last words of hisn was mighty near true. Ef
+he had met a gal like you earlier in his life he mought have been a
+different man."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+THE DRAUGHT OF JOY
+
+
+The great library was the prettiest room in Robert Maitland's
+magnificent mansion in Denver's most favored residence section. It was a
+long, low studded room with a heavy beamed ceiling. The low book cases,
+about five feet high, ran between all the windows and doors on all sides
+of the room. At one end there was a huge open fireplace built of rough
+stone, and as it was winter a cheerful fire of logs blazed on the
+hearth. It was a man's room preeminently. The drawing room across the
+hall was Mrs. Maitland's domain, but the library reflected her husband's
+picturesque if somewhat erratic taste. On the walls there were pictures
+of the west by Remington, Marchand, Dunton, Dixon and others, and to set
+them off finely mounted heads of bear and deer and buffalo. Swords and
+other arms stood here and there. The writing table was massive and the
+chairs easy, comfortable and inviting. The floor was strewn with robes
+and rugs. From the windows facing westward, since the house was set on
+a high hill, one could see the great rampart of the range.
+
+There were three men in the room on that brilliant morning early in
+January something like a month after these adventures in the mountains
+which have been so veraciously set forth. Two of them were the brothers
+Maitland, the third was Newbold.
+
+The shock produced upon Enid Maitland by the death of Armstrong,
+together with the tremendous episodes that had preceded it, had utterly
+prostrated her. They had spent the night at the hut in the mountains and
+had decided that the woman must be taken back to the settlements in some
+way at all hazards.
+
+The wit of old Kirkby had effected a solution of the problem. Using a
+means certainly as old as Napoleon and the passage of his cannon over
+the Great St. Bernard--and perhaps as old as Hannibal!--they had made a
+rude sled from the trunk of a pine which they hollowed out and provided
+with a back and runners. There was no lack of fur robes and blankets for
+her comfort.
+
+Wherever it was practicable the three men hitched themselves to the sled
+with ropes and dragged it and Enid over the snow. Of course for miles
+down the canyon it was impossible to use the sled. When the way was
+comparatively easy the woman supported by the two men, Newbold and
+Maitland, made shift to get along afoot. When it became too difficult
+for her, Newbold picked her up as he had done before and assisted by
+Maitland carried her bodily to the next resting place. At these times
+Kirkby looked after the sled.
+
+They had managed to reach the temporary hut in the old camp the first
+night and rested there. They gathered up their sleeping bags and tents
+and resumed their journey in the morning. They were strong men, and,
+save for old Kirkby, young. It was a desperate endeavor but they carried
+it through.
+
+When they hit the open trails the sledding was easy and they made great
+progress. After a week of terrific going they struck the railroad and
+the next day found them all safe in Maitland's house in Denver.
+
+To Mr. Stephen Maitland his daughter was as one who had risen from the
+dead. And indeed when he first saw her she looked like death itself. No
+one had known how terrible that journey had been to the woman. Her three
+faithful attendants had surmised something, but in spite of all even
+they did not realize that in these last days she had been sustained only
+by the most violent effort of her will. She had no sooner reached the
+house, greeted her father, her aunt and the children than she collapsed
+utterly.
+
+The wonder was, said the physician, not that she did it then but that
+she had not done it before. For a short time it appeared as if her
+illness might be serious, but youth, vigor, a strong body and a good
+constitution, a heart now free from care and apprehension and a great
+desire to live and love and be loved, worked wonders.
+
+Newbold had enjoyed no opportunity for private conversation with the
+woman he loved, which was perhaps just as well. He had the task of
+readjusting himself to changed conditions; not only to a different
+environment, but to strange and unusual departures from his long
+cherished view points.
+
+He could no longer doubt Armstrong's final testimony to the purity of
+his wife, although he had burned the letters unread, and by the same
+token he could no longer cherish the dream that she had loved him and
+him alone. Those words that had preceded that pistol shot had made it
+possible for him to take Enid Maitland as his wife without doing
+violence to his sense of honor or his self-respect. Armstrong had made
+that much reparation. And Newbold could not doubt that the other had
+known what would be the result of his speech and had chosen his words
+deliberately. Score that last action to his credit. He was a sensitive
+man, however; he realized the brutal and beastlike part he and Armstrong
+had both played before this woman they both loved, how they had battled
+like savage animals and how but for a lucky interposition he would have
+added murder to his other disabilities.
+
+He was honest enough to say to himself that he would have done the same
+thing over under the same circumstances, but that did not absolve his
+conscience. He did not know how the woman looked at the transaction or
+looked at him, for he had not enjoyed one moment alone with her to
+enable him to find out.
+
+They had buried Armstrong in the snow, Robert Maitland saying over him a
+brief but fervent petition in which even Newbold joined. Enid Maitland
+herself had repeated eloquently to her Uncle and old Kirkby that night
+before the fire the story of her rescue from the flood by this man, how
+he had carried her in the storm to the hut and how he had treated her
+since, and Maitland had afterwards repeated her account to his brother
+in Denver.
+
+Maitland had insisted that Newbold share his hospitality, but that young
+man had refused. Kirkby had a little place not far from Denver and
+easily accessible to it and the old man had gladly taken the younger
+one with him. Newbold had been in a fever of anxiety over Enid
+Maitland's illness, but his alarm had soon been dispelled by the
+physician's assurance and there was nothing now left for him but to wait
+until she could see him. He inquired for her morning and evening at the
+great house on the hill, he kept her room a bower of beauty with
+priceless blossoms, but he had sent no word.
+
+Robert Maitland had promised to let him know, however, so soon as Enid
+could see him and it was in pursuance of a telephone message that he was
+in the library that morning.
+
+He had not yet become accustomed to the world, he had lived so long
+alone that he had grown somewhat shy and retiring, the habits and
+customs of years were not to be lightly thrown aside in a week or a
+month. He had sought no interview with Enid's father heretofore, indeed
+had rather avoided it, but on this morning he had asked for it, and when
+Robert Maitland would have withdrawn he begged him to remain.
+
+"Mr. Maitland," Newbold began, "I presume that you know my unfortunate
+history."
+
+"I have heard the general outlines of it, sir, from my brother and
+others," answered the other kindly.
+
+"I need not dwell upon it further then. Although my hair is tinged with
+gray and doubtless I look much older, I was only twenty-eight on my last
+birthday. I was not born in this section of the country, my home was in
+Baltimore."
+
+"Do you by any chance belong to the Maryland Newbolds, sir?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"They are distantly related to a most excellent family of the same name
+in Philadelphia, I believe?"
+
+"I have always understood that to be the truth."
+
+"Ah, a very satisfactory connection indeed," said Stephen Maitland with
+no little satisfaction. "Proceed, sir."
+
+"There is nothing much else to say about myself, except that I love your
+daughter and with your permission I want her for my wife."
+
+Mr. Stephen Maitland had thought long and seriously over the state of
+affairs. He had proposed in his desperation to give Enid's hand to
+Armstrong if he found her. It had been impossible to keep secret the
+story of her adventure, her rescue and the death of Armstrong. It was
+natural and inevitable that gossip should have busied itself with her
+name. It would therefore have been somewhat difficult for Mr. Maitland
+to have withheld his consent to her marriage to almost any reputable
+man who had been thrown so intimately with her, but when the man was so
+unexceptionably born and bred as Newbold, what had appeared as a more or
+less disagreeable duty, almost an imperative imposition, became a
+pleasure!
+
+Mr. Maitland was no bad judge of men when his prejudices were not
+rampant and he looked with much satisfaction on the fine, clean limbed,
+clear eyed, vigorous man who was at present suing for his daughter's
+hand. Newbold had shaved his beard and had cropped close his mustache,
+he was dressed in the habits of civilization and he was almost
+metamorphosed. His shyness wore away as he talked and his inherited ease
+of manner and his birthright of good breeding came back to him and sat
+easily upon him.
+
+Under the circumstances the very best thing that could happen would be a
+marriage between the two; indeed, to be quite honest, Mr. Stephen
+Maitland would have felt that perhaps under any circumstances his
+daughter could do no better than commit herself to a man like this.
+
+"I shall never attempt," he said at last, "to constrain my daughter. I
+think I have learned something by my touch with this life here, perhaps
+we of Philadelphia need a little broadening in airs more free. I am sure
+that she would never give her hand without her heart, and therefore,
+she must decide this matter herself. From her own lips you shall have
+your answer."
+
+"But you, sir; I confess that I should feel easier and happier if I had
+your sanction and approval."
+
+"Steve," said Mr. Robert Maitland, as the other hesitated, not because
+he intended to refuse but because he was loath to say the word that so
+far as he was concerned would give his daughter into another man's
+keeping, "I think you can trust Newbold. There are men here who knew him
+years ago; there is abundant evidence and testimony as to his qualities;
+I vouch for him."
+
+"Robert," answered his brother, "I need no such testimony; the way in
+which he saved Enid, the way he comported himself during that period of
+isolation with her, his present bearing--in short, sir, if a father is
+ever glad to give away his daughter, I might say that I should be glad
+to entrust her to you. I believe you to be a man of honor and a
+gentleman, your family is almost as old as my own, as for the disparity
+in our fortunes, I can easily remedy that."
+
+Newbold smiled at Enid's father, but it was a pleasant smile, albeit
+with a trace of mockery and a trace of triumph in it.
+
+"Mr. Maitland I am more grateful to you than I can say for your consent
+and approval which I shall do my best to merit. I think I may claim to
+have won your daughter's heart, to have added to that your sanction
+completes my happiness. As for the disparity in our fortunes, while your
+generosity touches me profoundly, I hardly think that you need be under
+any uneasiness as to our material welfare."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"I am a mining engineer, sir; I didn't live five years alone in the
+mountains of Colorado for nothing."
+
+"Pray explain yourself, sir."
+
+"Did you find gold in the hills?" asked Robert Maitland, quicker to
+understand.
+
+"The richest veins on the continent," answered Newbold.
+
+"And nobody knows anything about it?"
+
+"Not a soul."
+
+"Have you located the claims?"
+
+"Only one."
+
+"We'll go back as soon as the snow melts," said the younger Maitland,
+"and take them up. You are sure?"
+
+"Absolutely."
+
+"But I don't quite understand?" queried Mr. Stephen Maitland.
+
+"He means," said his brother, "that he has discovered gold."
+
+"And silver too," interposed Newbold.
+
+"In unlimited quantities," continued the other Maitland.
+
+"Your daughter will have more money than she knows what to do with,
+sir," smiled Newbold.
+
+"God bless me!" exclaimed the Philadelphian.
+
+"And that, whether she marries me or not, for the richest claim of all
+is to be taken out in her name," added her lover.
+
+Mr. Stephen Maitland shook the other by the hand vigorously.
+
+"I congratulate you," he said, "you have beaten me on all points. I must
+therefore regard you as the most eligible of suitors. Gold in these
+mountains, well, well!"
+
+"And may I see your daughter and plead my cause in person, sir?" asked
+Newbold.
+
+"Certainly, certainly. Robert, will you oblige me--"
+
+In compliance with his brother's gesture, Robert Maitland touched the
+bell and bade the answering servant ask Miss Maitland to come down to
+the library.
+
+"Now," said Mr. Stephen Maitland as the servant closed the door, "you
+and I would best leave the young people alone, eh, Robert?"
+
+"By all means," answered the younger and opening the door again the two
+older men went out leaving Newbold alone.
+
+He heard a soft step on the stair in the hall without, the gentle swish
+of a dress as somebody descended from the floor above. A vision appeared
+in the doorway. Without a movement in opposition, without a word of
+remonstrance, without a throb of hesitation on her part, he took her in
+his arms. From the drawing room opposite, Mr. Robert Maitland softly
+tiptoed across the hall and closed the library door, neither of the
+lovers being aware of his action.
+
+Often and often they had longed for each other on the opposite side of a
+door and now at last the woman was in the man's arms and no door rose
+between them, no barrier kept them apart any longer. There was no
+obligation of loyalty or honor, real or imagined, to separate them now.
+They had drunk deep of the chalice of courage, they had drained the cup
+to the very bottom, they had shown each other that though love was the
+greatest of passions, honor and loyalty were the most powerful of forces
+and now they reaped the reward of their abnegation and devotion.
+
+At last the woman gave herself up to him in complete and entire
+abandonment without fear and without reproach; and at last the man took
+what was his own without the shadow of a reservation. She shrank from no
+pressure of his arms, she turned her face away from no touch of his
+lips. They two had proved their right to surrender by their ability to
+conquer.
+
+Speech was hardly necessary between them and it was not for a long time
+that coherent words came. Little murmurs of endearment, little
+passionate whispers of a beloved name--these were enough then.
+
+When he could find strength to deny himself a little and to hold her at
+arm's length and look at her, he found her paler, thinner and more
+delicate than when he had seen her in the mountains. She had on some
+witching creation of pale blue and silver, he didn't know what it was,
+he didn't care, it made her only more like an angel to him than ever.
+She found him, too, greatly changed and highly approved the alterations
+in his appearance.
+
+"Why, Will," she said at last, "I never realized what a handsome man you
+were."
+
+He laughed at her.
+
+"I always knew you were the most beautiful woman on earth."
+
+"Oh, yes, doubtless when I was the only one."
+
+"And if there were millions you would still be the only one. But it
+isn't for your beauty alone that I love you. You knew all the time that
+my fight against loving you was based upon a misinterpretation, a
+mistake; you didn't tell me because you were thoughtful of a poor dead
+woman."
+
+"Should I have told you?"
+
+"No. I have thought it all out: I was loyal through a mistake but you
+wouldn't betray a dead sister, you would save her reputation in the mind
+of the one being that remembered her, at the expense of your own
+happiness. And if there were nothing else I could love you for that."
+
+"And is there anything else?" asked she who would fain be loved for
+other qualities.
+
+"Everything," he answered rapturously, drawing her once more to his
+heart.
+
+"I knew that there would be some way," answered the satisfied woman
+softly after a little space. "Love like ours is not born to fall short
+of the completest happiness. Oh, how fortunate for me was that idle
+impulse that turned me up the canyon instead of down, for if it had not
+been for that there would have been no meeting--"
+
+She stopped suddenly, her face aflame at the thought of the conditions
+of that meeting, she must needs hide her face on his shoulder.
+
+He laughed gayly.
+
+"My little spirit of the fountain, my love, my wife that is to be! Did
+you know that your father has done me the honor to give me your hand,
+subject to the condition that your heart goes with it?"
+
+"You took that first," answered the woman looking up at him again.
+
+There was a knock on the door. Without waiting for permission it was
+opened; this time three men entered, for old Kirkby had joined the
+group. The blushing Enid made an impulsive movement to tear herself away
+from Newbold's arms, but he shamelessly held her close. The three men
+looked at the two lovers solemnly for a moment and then broke into
+laughter. It was Kirkby who spoke first.
+
+"I hear as how you found gold in them mountains, Mr. Newbold."
+
+"I found something far more valuable than all the gold in Colorado in
+these mountains," answered the other.
+
+"And what was that?" asked the old frontiersman curiously and
+innocently.
+
+"This!" answered Newbold as he kissed the girl again.
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Chalice Of Courage, by Cyrus Townsend Brady
+
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