The sack had bumped poor Stafford black and blue. With a weary sigh he
flung it across the other shoulder--and whack, those stony potatoes
caught him on the left leg. But he was nearly there now. That silly,
adorable girl must have had plenty of time to make her explanation to
Barty. Stafford had sent her on ahead from the landing stage with an
electric flash light. It was only a short half mile over a good trail,
and he was only a little way behind her, never out of hearing of a call.
He thought that she ought to see Barty alone. They must arrange their
own affairs in their own pathetic, blundering way.
Whack! This time just behind the knee. Stafford flung the sack on the
ground and began to drag it after him. Let happen what might, he had the
tobacco safely in his pocket. If further meals depended upon carrying
that accursed sack any more, then he preferred never to eat again.
Ah! He saw the flare of the camp fire now.
“Hallo-o-o, Barty!” he shouted.
“Halloo-o-o, Stafford!” Barty responded cheerfully. “What’s been keeping
you so late? I was beginning to get a bit uneasy.”
Stafford made no answer, but came on at a very much quickened pace,
dragging the sack behind him over the rough ground.
“Leadenhall!” he said. He stood still, looking anxiously about him. The
flickering light of the fire illumined a small cleared space in the dark
woodland, and there was no one there but Barty. “Didn’t some one else
come?” he demanded sharply.
“Some one else?” said Barty, with a laugh. “Expecting callers?”
Then Stafford told him.
At first it seemed to Barty preposterous, and even a little annoying,
that the alert and self-reliant Jacko should have got herself lost in
this fashion. The trail up from the landing was perfectly clear and easy
to follow, and Stafford had given her his flash light.
Barty went all the way down to the lake again, calling her name. Then,
as he stood on the shore of the black water, the note in his voice
changed. A fitful wind had sprung up, driving clouds across the face of
the moon. The trees stirred and sighed. No matter what feminine folly
had induced her to leave the trail, she _had_ left it. She was gone,
beyond reach of his voice. Which way?
He remembered Stafford’s words--hard words for a young man of his temper
to swallow.
“You accepted the responsibility for her life and her happiness,”
Stafford had said; “and you left her--a young, lovely thing like that. I
think you failed her pretty badly, Leadenhall!”
It was Barty’s way to hold his tongue, and he had held his tongue then,
but he had thought.
“I tried to please her and I tried to please you,” was what he thought;
“and I’m hanged if either of you know what you want. All right--_I_ do!”
So he had set off in a grim and dogged humor. Of course, he was
glad--very glad--that Stafford had found Jacko so charming. Of course he
did not object to her going about with that fellow named
Terrill--certainly not! He trusted Jacko absolutely, and he was glad she
had been able to amuse herself a little; only it was a queer sort of
gladness. Of course, he wanted to be fair to his little pal.
“Jacko!” he shouted.
His lusty voice died away across the lake, and nothing answered. The
canoe was still there, so she couldn’t have gone back. She must have
turned off the trail into the woods. It was not a cold night; and there
was nothing there that could hurt her. Barty said that over and over
again to himself as he turned back--not along the trail, but through the
whispering wood.
His flash light threw a valiant little pathway through the surrounding
darkness. He stopped every now and then to call her. He limped
painfully, and because of his injured foot he had on soft moccasins, not
good for going over stones and broken branches; but he could have gone
barefoot over red-hot plowshares then, and scarcely known it.
What, nothing here to hurt her--little Jacko, alone in the black shadow
of the whispering trees--in the forest, where the old enemies, the
nameless and formless things, never wholly forgotten by the most
civilized heart, still lurked? He saw the wood not with his own eyes,
but with Jacko’s. Little Jacko, with her eager, beautiful gait, her
gallant little head held so high, and her pitiful youth and slightness!
“Jacko!” he shouted in anguish. “Jacko!”
He was in a panic now, trying to run, stumbling and falling, whirling
the flash light in a wide circle, shouting until his voice was hoarse
and strange. There was no fear, however baseless, that he did not feel
for her now, no disaster that he did not foresee.
And at last he heard her. Her voice answered his.
“Here, Barty!” she called faintly.
He found her sunk on the ground in a heap, under a tree, white and limp.
“I got lost, Barty,” she said, with a sob. “I’m--sorry!”
He caught her up in his arms and held her strained against his heart.
The flash light had fallen to the ground, and he could not see her face.
“Are you hurt?” he cried. “Jacko, are you hurt?”
She flung her arms round his neck and drew down his head. He felt tears
on her cheeks. He was filled with a sublime and almost intolerable
tenderness for this beloved creature, clinging to him. He had no words.
He could only hold her close in his arms and kiss her cold face again
and again.
“Barty!” she said. “Your foot! Let me down!”
But he would not. He carried her back to the camp, and he did not
stumble or falter once. White and haggard with exhaustion, he came
staggering into the friendly firelight with Jacko in his arms, her face
hidden on his shoulder, her dark hair hanging loose over his arm.
When he set her down, and she looked at him, she did not regret his
pain, his weariness, or the fear he had felt for her. On his face there
was a look that she would never forget--an exultation, a sort of
splendor that stirred her beyond all measure. This was his hour, the
hour that was due him, his hour of supreme effort and glorious victory.
He could not quite suppress a groan as he turned aside, for his foot
throbbed horribly; but she knew that he was glad to endure it for her,
that it was his right and his pride so to endure for the woman he loved.
For the sake of his love she had done this for him. She had strayed away
so that he might find her anew, so that they might start all over again,
with the past effaced and the future all before them.
Barty came limping toward her with a plate of unduly solid flapjacks
that he himself had cooked. He was followed by Stafford with a cup of
ferociously strong coffee. Both of them were so anxious, so concerned,
so busy doing clumsily what Jacqueline could have done so easily
herself. What she longed to do was to throw her arms about Barty’s neck,
to tell him that she did not want him to wait on her and serve her, but
to let her help him and share everything, good or bad, with him.
But she stifled that longing. As he stood before her, she looked up into
his face with a smile--a strange and beautiful smile which he did not
quite understand.
MUNSEY’S
MAGAZINE
MAY, 1925
Vol. LXXXIV NUMBER 4