that day if the details could be conveniently arranged.
It was a long trail to Sugar Spring, and from there up Spirit Canyon the
climb was so tedious and steep that Brit took a full hour for the trip,
resting the team often because they were soft from the new grass diet
and sweated easily. They lost none of their spirit, however, and when
the road was steepest nagged at each other with head-shakings and bared
teeth, and ducked against each other in pretended fright at every
unusual rock or bush.
At the top he was forced to drive a full half mile beyond the piled
posts to a flat large enough to turn around. All this took time,
especially since Caroline, the brown mare, would rather travel ten miles
straight ahead than go backward ten feet. Brit was obliged to "take it
out of her" with the rein ends and his full repertoire of opprobrious
epithets before he could cramp the wagon and head them down the trail
again.
At the post pile he unhitched the team for safety's sake and tied them
to trees, where he fed them a little grain in nose bags. He was absorbed
now in his work and thought no more about the Sawtooth. He fastened the
log chain to the rear wheels to brake the wagon on the long grade down
the canyon, loaded the wagon with posts, bound them fast with a lighter
chain he had brought for the purpose, ate his own lunch and decided
that, since he had made fair time and would arrive home too early to do
the chores and too late to start any other job, he would cruise farther
up the mountain side and see what was the prospect of getting out logs
enough for an addition to the cabin.
Now that Raine was going to live with him, two rooms were not enough.
Brit wanted to make her as happy as he could, in his limited fashion. He
had for some days been planning a "settin' room and bedroom" for her.
She would be having beaux after awhile when she got acquainted, he
supposed. He could not deny her the privilege; she was young and she
was, in Brit's opinion, the best looking girl he had ever seen, not even
excepting Minnie, her mother. But he hoped she wouldn't go off and get
married the first thing she did,--and one good way to prevent that, he
reasoned, was to make her comfortable with him. He had noticed how
pleased she was that their cabin was of logs. She had even remarked that
she could not understand how a rancher would ever want to build a board
shack if there was any timber to be had. Well, timber was to be had, and
she should have her log house, though the hauling was not going to be
any sunshine, in Brit's opinion. With his axe he walked through the
timber, craning upward for straight tree trunks and lightly blazing the
ones he would want, the occasional axe strokes sounding distinctly in
the quiet air.
Lorraine heard them as she rode old Yellowjacket puffing up the grade,
following the wagon marks, and knew that she was nearing the end of her
journey,--for which Yellowjacket, she supposed, would be thankful. She
had started not more than an hour later than her father, but the team
had trotted along more briskly than her poor old nag would travel, so
that she did not overtake her dad as she had hoped.
She was topping the last climb when she saw the team tied to the trees,
and at the same moment she caught a glimpse of a man who crawled out
from under the load of posts and climbed the slope farther on. She was
on the point of calling out to him, thinking that he was her dad, when
he disappeared into the brush. At the same moment she heard the stroke
of an axe over to the right of where the man was climbing.
She was riding past the team when Caroline humped her back and kicked
viciously at Yellowjacket, who plunged straight down off the trail
without waiting to see whether Caroline's aim was exact. He slid into a
juniper thicket and sat down looking very perplexed and very permanently
placed there. Lorraine stepped off on the uphill side of him, thanked
her lucky stars she had not broken a leg, and tried to reassure
Yellowjacket and to persuade him that no real harm had been done him.
Straightway she discovered that Yellowjacket had a mind of his own and
that a pessimistic mind. He refused to scramble back into the trail,
preferring to sit where he was, or since Lorraine made that too
uncomfortable, to stand where he had been sitting. Yellowjacket, I may
explain, owned a Roman nose, a pendulous lower lip and drooping eyelids.
Those who know horses will understand.
By the time Lorraine had bullied and cajoled him into making a somewhat
circuitous route to the road, where he finally appeared some distance
above the point of his descent, Brit was there, hitching the team to the
wagon.
"What yuh doing up there?" he wanted to know, looking up with some
astonishment.
Lorraine furnished him with details and her opinion of both Caroline and
Yellow jacket. "I simply refuse to ride this comedy animal another
mile," she declared with some heat. "I'll drive the team and you can
ride him home, or he can be tied on behind the wagon."
"He won't lead," Brit objected. "Yeller's all right if you make up your
mind to a few failin's. You go ahead and ride him home. You sure can't
drive this team."
"I can!" Lorraine contended. "I've driven four horses--I guess I can
drive two, all right."
"Well, you ain't going to," Brit stated with a flat finality that
abruptly ended the argument.
Lorraine had never before been really angry with her father. She struck
Yellowjacket with her quirt and sent him sidling past the wagon and the
tricky Caroline, too stubborn to answer her dad when he called after her
that she had better ride behind the load. She went on, making
Yellowjacket trot when he did not want to trot down hill.
Behind her she heard the chuck-chuck of the loaded wagon. Far ahead she
heard some one whistling a high, sweet melody which had the queer, minor
strains of some old folk song. For just a few bars she heard it, and
then it was stilled, and the road dipping steeply before her seemed very
lonely, its emptiness cooling her brief anger to a depression that had
held her too often in its grip since that terrible night of the storm.
For the first time she looked back at her father lurching along on the
load and at the team looking so funny with the collars pushed up on
their necks with the weight of the load behind.
With a quick impulse of penitence she waved her hand to Brit, who waved
back at her. Then she went on, feeling a bit less alone in the world.
After all, he was her dad, and his life had been hard. If he failed to
understand her and her mental hunger for real companionship, perhaps she
also failed to understand him.
They had left the timber line now and had come to the lip of the canyon
itself. Lorraine looked down its steep, rock-roughened sides and
thought how her old director would have raved over its possibilities in
the way of "stunts." Yellow jacket, she noticed, kept circumspectly to
the center of the trail and eyed the canyon with frank disfavor.
She did not know at just what moment she became aware of trouble behind
her. It may have been Yellowjacket, turning his head sidewise and
abruptly quickening his pace that warned her. It may have been the
difference in the sound of the wagon and the impact of the horses' hoofs
on the rocky trail. She turned and saw that something had gone wrong.
They were coming down upon her at a sharp trot, stepping high, the wagon
tongue thrust up between their heads as they tried to hold back the
load.
Brit yelled to her then to get out of the way, and his voice was harsh
and insistent. Lorraine looked at the steep bank to the right, knew
instinctively that Yellowjacket would never have time to climb it before
the team was upon them, and urged him to a lope. She glanced back again,
saw that the team was not running away, that they were trying to hold
the wagon, and that it was gaining momentum in spite of them.
"Jump, dad!" she called and got no answer. Brit was sitting braced with
his feet far apart, holding and guiding the team. "He won't jump--he
wouldn't jump--any more than I would," she chattered to herself, sick
with fear for him, while she lashed her own horse to keep out of their
way.
The next she knew, the team was running, their eyeballs staring, their
front feet flung high as they lunged panic-stricken down the trail. The
load was rocking along behind them. Brit was still braced and clinging
to the reins.
Panic seized Yellowjacket. He, too, went lunging down that trail, his
head thrown from side to side that he might watch the thing that menaced
him, heedless of the fact that danger might lie ahead of him also.
Lorraine knew that he was running senselessly, that he might leave the
trail at any bend and go rolling into the canyon.
A sense of unreality seized her. It could not be deadly earnest, she
thought. It was so exactly like some movie thrill, planned carefully in
advance, rehearsed perhaps under the critical eye of the director, and
done now with the camera man turning calmly the little crank and
counting the number of film feet the scene would take. A little farther
and she would be out of the scene, and men stationed ahead would ride up
and stop her horse for her and tell her how well she had "put it over."
She looked over her shoulder and saw them still coming. It was real. It
was terribly real, the way that team was fleeing down the grade. She had
never seen anything like that before, never seen horses so frantically
trying to run from the swaying load behind them. Always, she had been
accustomed to moderation in the pace and a slowed camera to speed up the
action on the screen. Yellowjacket, too--she had never ridden at that
terrific speed down hill. Twice she lost a stirrup and grabbed the
saddle horn to save herself from going over his head.
They neared a sharp turn, and it took all her strength to pull her horse
to the inside and save him from plunging off down the canyon's side. The
nose of the hill hid for a moment her dad, and in that moment she heard
a crash and knew what had happened. But she could not stop; Yellowjacket
had his ears laid back flat on his senseless head, and the bit clamped
tight in his teeth.
She heard the crash repeated in diminuendo farther down in the canyon.
There was no longer the rattle of the wagon coming down the trail, the
sharp staccato of pounding hoofs.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
SWAN TALKS WITH HIS THOUGHTS
Lorraine, following instinct rather than thought, pulled Yellowjacket
into the first opening that presented itself. This was a narrow, rather
precipitous gully that seamed the slope just beyond the bend. The bushes
there whipped her head and shoulders cruelly as the horse forged in
among them, but they trapped him effectually where the gully narrowed to
a point. He stopped perforce, and Lorraine was out of the saddle and
running down to the trail before she quite realized what she was doing.
At the bend she looked down, saw the marks where the wagon had gone
over, scraping rocks and bushes from its path. Fence posts were strewn
at all angles down the incline, and far down a horse was standing with
part of the harness on him and with his head drooping dispiritedly. Her
father she could not see, nor the other horse, nor the wagon. A clump
of young trees hid the lower declivity. Lorraine did not stop to think
of what she would find down there. Sliding, running, she followed the
traces of the wreck to where the horse was standing. It was Caroline,
looking very dejected but apparently unhurt, save for skinned patches
here and there where she had rolled over rocks.
A little farther, just beyond the point of the grove which they seemed
to have missed altogether, lay the other horse and what was left of the
wagon. Brit she did not see at all. She searched the bushes, looked
under the wagon, and called and called.
A full-voiced shout answered her from farther up the canyon, and she ran
stumbling toward the sound, too agonized to shed tears or to think very
clearly. It was not her father's voice; she knew that beyond all doubt.
It was no voice that she had ever heard before. It had a clear resonance
that once heard would not have been easily forgotten. When she saw them
finally, her father was being propped up in a half-sitting position, and
the strange man was holding something to his lips.
"Just a little water. I carry me a bottle of water always in my pocket,"
said Swan, glancing up at her when she had reached them. "It sometimes
makes a man's head think better when he has been hurt, if he can drink a
little water or something."
Brit swallowed and turned his face away from the tilted bottle. "I
jumped--but I didn't jump quick enough," he muttered thickly. "The chain
pulled loose. Where's the horses, Raine?"
"They're all right. Caroline's standing over there. Are you hurt much,
dad?" It was a futile question, because Brit was already going off into
unconsciousness.
"He's hurt pretty bad," Swan declared honestly, looking up at her with
his eyes grown serious. "I was across the walley and I saw him coming
down the road like rolling rocks down a hill. I came quick. Now we make
stretcher, I think, and carry him home. I could take him on my back, but
that is hurting him too much." He looked at her--through her, it seemed
to Lorraine. In spite of her fear, in spite of her grief, she felt that
Swan was reading her very soul, and she backed away from him.
"I could help your father very much," he said soberly, "but I should
tell you a secret if I do that. I should maybe ask that you tell a lie
if somebody asks questions. Could you do that, Miss?"
"Lie?" Lorraine laughed uncertainly. "I'd _kill_!--if that would help
dad."
Swan was folding his coat very carefully and placing it under Brit's
head. "My mother I love like that," he said, without looking up. "My
mother I love so well that I talk with my thoughts to her sometimes. You
believe people can talk with their thoughts?"
"I don't know--what's that got to do with helping dad?" Lorraine knelt
beside Brit and began stroking his forehead softly, as is the soothing
way of women with their sick.
"I could send my thought to my mother. I could say to her that a man is
hurt and that a doctor must come very quickly to the Quirt ranch. I
could do that, Miss, but I should not like it if people knew that I did
it. They would maybe say that I am crazy. They would laugh at me, and it
is not right to laugh at those things."
"I'm not laughing. If you can do it, for heaven's sake go ahead! I don't
believe it, but I won't tell any one, if that's what you want."
"If some neighbors should ask, 'How did that doctor come so quick?'----"
"I'd rather lie and say I sent for him, than say that you or any one
else sent a telepathic message. That would sound more like a lie than a
lie would. How are we going to make a stretcher? We've got to get him
home, somehow----"
"At my cabin is blankets," Swan told her briskly. "I can climb the
hill--it is up there. In a little while I will come back."
He started off without waiting to see what Lorraine would have to say
about it, and with some misgivings she watched him run down to the
canyon's bottom and go forging up the opposite side with a most amazing
speed and certainty. In travel pictures she had seen mountain sheep
climb like that, and she likened him now to one of them. It seemed a
shame that he was a bit crazy, she thought; and immediately she recalled
his perfect assurance when he told her of sending thought messages to
his mother. She had heard of such things, she had even read a little on
the subject, but it had never seemed to her a practical means of
communicating. Calling a doctor, for instance, seemed to Lorraine
rather far-fetched an application of what was at best but a debatable
theory.
Considering the distance, he was back in a surprisingly short time with
two blankets, a couple of light poles and a flask of brandy. He seemed
as fresh and unwinded as if he had gone no farther than the grove, and
he wore, more than ever, his air of cheerful assurance.
"The doctor will be there," he remarked, just as if it were the simplest
thing in the world. "We can carry him to Fred Thurman's. There I can get
horses and a wagon, and you will not have to carry so far. And when we
get to your ranch the doctor will be there, I think. He is starting now.
We will hurry. I will fix it so you need not carry much. It is just to
make it steady for me."
While he talked he was working on the stretcher. He had a rope, and he
was knotting it in a long loop to the poles. Lorraine wondered why,
until he had lifted her father and placed him on the stretcher and
placed the loop over his own head and under one arm, as a ploughman
holds the reins, so that his hands may be free.
"If you will carry the front," said Swan politely, "it will not be
heavy for you like this. But you will help me keep it steady."
Lorraine was past discussing anything. She obeyed him silently, lifting
the end of the stretcher and leading the way down to the canyon's
bottom, where Swan assured her they could walk quite easily and would
save many detours which the road above must take. At the bottom Swan
stopped her so that he might shorten the rope and take more of the
weight on his shoulders. She protested half-heartedly, but Swan only
laughed.
"I am strong like a mule," he said. "You should see me wrestle with
somebody. Clear over my head--I can carry a man in my hands. This is so
you can walk fast. Three miles straight down we come to Thurman's ranch,
where I get the horses. It's funny how hills make a road far around.
Just three miles--that's all. I have walked many times."
Lorraine did not answer him. She felt that he was talking merely to keep
her from worrying, and she was fairly sick with anxiety and did not hear
half of what he was saying. She was nervously careful about choosing her
steps so that she would not stumble and jolt her father. She did not
believe that he was wholly unconscious, for she had seen his eyelids
tighten and his lips twitch several times, when she was waiting for
Swan. He had seemed to be in pain and to be trying to hide the fact from
her. She felt that Swan knew it, else he would have talked of her dad,
would at least have tried to reassure her. But it is difficult to speak
of a person who hears what you are saying, and Swan was talking of
everything, it seemed to her, except the man they were carrying.
She wondered if it were really true that Swan had sent a call through
space for a doctor; straightway she would call herself crazy for even
considering for a moment its possibility. If he could do that--but of
course he couldn't. He must just imagine it.
Many times Swan had her lower the stretcher to the ground, and would
make a great show of rubbing his arms and easing his shoulder muscles.
Whenever Lorraine looked full into his face he would grin at her as
though nothing was wrong, and when they came to a clear-running stream
he emptied the water bottle, dipped up a little fresh water, added
brandy, and lifted Brit's head very gently and gave him a drink. Brit
opened his eyes and looked at Swan, and from him to Lorraine, but he did
not say anything. He still had that tightened look around his mouth
which spelled pain.
"Pretty quick now we get you fixed up good," Swan told him cheerfully.
"One mile more is all, and we get the horses and I make a good bed for
you." He looked a signal, and Lorraine once more took up the stretcher.
Another mile seemed a long way, light though Swan had made the load for
her. She thought once that he must have some clairvoyant power, because
whenever she felt as if her arms were breaking, Swan would tell her to
stop a minute.
"How do you know a doctor will come?" she asked Swan suddenly, when they
were resting with the Thurman ranch in view half a mile below them.
Swan did not look at her directly, as had been his custom. She saw a
darker shade of red creep up into his cheeks. "My mother says she would
send a doctor quick," he replied hesitatingly. "You will see. It is
because--your father he is not like other men in this country. Your
father is a good man. That is why a doctor comes."
Lorraine looked at him strangely and stooped again to her burden. She
did not speak again until they were passing the Thurman fence where it
ran up into the mouth of the canyon. A few horses were grazing there,
the sun striking their sides with the sheen of satin. They stared
curiously at the little procession, snorted and started to run, heads
and tails held high. But one wheeled suddenly and came galloping toward
them, stopped when he was quite close, ducked and went thundering past
to the head of the field. Lorraine gave a sharp little scream and set
down the stretcher with a lurch, staring after the horse wide-eyed, her
face white.
"They do it for play," Swan said reassuringly. "They don't hurt you. The
fence is between, and they don't hurt you anyway."
"That horse with the white face--I saw it--and when the man struck it
with his quirt it went past me, running like that and dragging--_oh-h_!"
She leaned against the bluff side, her face covered with her two palms.
Swan glanced down at Brit, saw that his eyes were closed, ducked his
head from under the looped rope and went to Lorraine.
"The man that struck that horse--do you know that man?" he asked, all
the good nature gone from his voice.
"No--I don't know--I saw him twice, by the lightning flashes. He
shot--and then I saw him----" She stopped abruptly, stood for a minute
longer with her eyes covered, then dropped her hands limply to her
sides. But when the horse came circling back with a great flourish, she
shivered and her hands closed into the fists of a fighter.
"Are you a Sawtooth man?" she demanded suddenly, looking up at Swan
defiantly. "It was a nightmare. I--I dreamed once about a horse--like
that."
Swan's wide-open eyes softened a little. "The Sawtooth calls me that
damn Swede on Bear Top," he explained. "I took a homestead up there and
some day they will want to buy my place or they will want to make a
fight with me to get the water. Could you know that man again?"
"Raine!" Brit's voice held a warning, and Lorraine shivered again as she
turned toward him. "Raine, you----"
He closed his eyes again, and she could get no further speech from him.
But she thought she understood. He did not want her to talk about Fred
Thurman. She went to her end of the stretcher and waited there while
Swan put the rope over his head. They went on, Lorraine walking with her
head averted, trying not to see the blaze-faced roan, trying to shut out
the memory of him dashing past her with his terrible burden, that night.
Swan did not speak of the matter again. With Lorraine's assistance he
carried Brit into Thurman's cabin, laid him, stretcher and all, on the
bed and hurried out to catch and harness the team of work horses.
Lorraine waited beside her father, helpless and miserable. There was
nothing to do but wait, yet waiting seemed to her the one thing she
could not do.
"Raine!" Brit's voice was very weak, but Lorraine jumped as though a
trumpet had bellowed suddenly in her ear. "Swan--he's all right. But
don't go telling--all yuh know and some besides. He ain't--Sawtooth,
but--he might let out----"
"I know. I won't, dad. It was that horse----"
Brit turned his face to the wall as if no more was to be said on the
subject. Lorraine wandered around the cabin, which was no larger than
her father's place. The rooms were scrupulously clean--neater than the
Quirt, she observed guiltily. Not one article, however small and
unimportant, seemed to be out of its place, and the floors of both rooms
were scrubbed whiter than any floors she had ever seen. Swan's
housekeeping qualities made her ashamed of her own imperfections; and
when, thinking that Swan must be hungry and that the least she could do
was to set out food for him, she opened the cupboard, she had a swift,
embarrassed vision of her own culinary imperfections. She could cook
better food than her dad had been content to eat and to set before
others, but Swan's bread was a triumph in sour dough. Biscuits tall and
light as bread can be she found, covered neatly with a cloth. Prunes
stewed so that there was not one single wrinkle in them--Lorraine could
scarcely believe they were prunes until she tasted them. She was
investigating a pot of beans when Swan came in.
"Food I am thinking of, Miss," he grinned at her. "We shall hurry, but
it is not good to go hungry. Milk is outside in a cupboard. It is
quicker than to make coffee."