The nest of the tuneful Burnhams, although in the suburbs of Indian
Spring, was not in ordinary weather and seasons hidden from the longing
eyes of the youth of that settlement. That night, however, it was veiled
in the smoke that encompassed the great highway leading to Excelsior.
It is presumed that the Burnham brood had long since folded their
wings, for there was no sign of life nor movement in the house as a
rapidly-driven horse and buggy pulled up before it. Fortunately, the
paternal Burnham was an early bird, in the habit of picking up the first
stirring mining worm, and a resounding knock brought him half dressed
to the street door. He was startled at seeing Father Wynn before him, a
trifle flushed and abstracted.
“Ah ha! up betimes, I see, and ready. No sluggards here--ha, ha!” he
said heartily, slamming the door behind him, and by a series of pokes in
the ribs genially backing his host into his own sitting-room. “I’m up,
too, and am here to see Nellie. She’s here, eh--of course?” he added,
darting a quick look at Burnham.
But Mr. Burnham was one of those large, liberal Western husbands who
classified his household under the general title of “woman folk,” for
the integers of which he was not responsible. He hesitated, and then
propounded over the balusters to the upper story the direct query--
“You don’t happen to have Nellie Wynn up there, do ye?”
There was an interval of inquiry proceeding from half a dozen reluctant
throats, more or less cottony and muffled, in those various degrees
of grievance and mental distress which indicate too early roused
young womanhood. The eventual reply seemed to be affirmative, albeit
accompanied with a suppressed giggle, as if the young lady had just been
discovered as an answer to an amusing conundrum.
“All right,” said Wynn, with an apparent accession of boisterous
geniality. “Tell her I must see her, and I’ve only got a few minutes to
spare. Tell her to slip on anything and come down; there’s no one here
but myself, and I’ve shut the front door on Brother Burnham. Ha, ha!”
and suiting the action to the word, he actually bundled the admiring
Brother Burnham out on his own doorstep. There was a light pattering on
the staircase, and Nellie Wynn, pink with sleep, very tall, very slim,
hastily draped in a white counterpane with a blue border and a general
classic suggestion, slipped into the parlor. At the same moment her
father shut the door behind her, placed one hand on the knob, and with
the other seized her wrist.
“Where were you yesterday?” he asked.
Nellie looked at him, shrugged her shoulders, and said, “Here.”
“You were in the Carquinez Woods with Low Dorman; you went there in
disguise; you’ve met him there before. He is your clandestine lover; you
have taken pledges of affection from him; you have--”
“Stop!” she said.
He stopped.
“Did he tell you this?” she asked, with an expression of disdain.
“No; I overheard it. Dunn and Brace were at the house waiting for you.
When the coach did not bring you, I went to the office to inquire. As I
left our door I thought I saw somebody listening at the parlor windows.
It was only a drunken Mexican muleteer leaning against the house; but
if HE heard nothing, I did. Nellie, I heard Brace tell Dunn that he had
tracked you in your disguise to the woods--do you hear? that when you
pretended to be here with the girls you were with Low--alone; that you
wear a ring that Low got of a trader here; that there was a cabin in the
woods--”
“Stop!” she repeated.
Wynn again paused.
“And what did YOU do?” she asked.
“I heard they were starting down there to surprise you and him together,
and I harnessed up and got ahead of them in my buggy.”
“And found me here,” she said, looking full into his eyes.
He understood her and returned the look. He recognized the full
importance of the culminating fact conveyed in her words, and was
obliged to content himself with its logical and worldly significance. It
was too late now to take her to task for mere filial disobedience; they
must become allies.
“Yes,” he said hurriedly; “but if you value your reputation, if you wish
to silence both these men, answer me fully.”
“Go on,” she said.
“Did you go to the cabin in the woods yesterday?”
“No.”
“Did you ever go there with Low?”
“No; I do not know even where it is.”
Wynn felt that she was telling the truth. Nellie knew it; but as she
would have been equally satisfied with an equally efficacious falsehood,
her face remained unchanged.
“And when did he leave you?”
“At nine o’clock, here. He went to the hotel.”
“He saved his life, then, for Dunn is on his way to the woods to kill
him.”
The jeopardy of her lover did not seem to affect the young girl with
alarm, although her eyes betrayed some interest.
“Then Dunn has gone to the woods?” she said thoughtfully.
“He has,” replied Wynn.
“Is that all?” she asked.
“I want to know what you are going to do?”
“I WAS going back to bed.”
“This is no time for trifling, girl.”
“I should think not,” she said, with a yawn; “it’s too early, or too
late.”
Wynn grasped her wrist more tightly. “Hear me! Put whatever face you
like on this affair, you are compromised--and compromised with a man you
can’t marry.”
“I don’t know that I ever wanted to marry Low, if you mean him,” she
said quietly.
“And Dunn wouldn’t marry you now.”
“I’m not so sure of that, either.”
“Nellie,” said Wynn excitedly, “do you want to drive me mad? Have you
nothing to say--nothing to suggest?”
“Oh, you want me to help you, do you! Why didn’t you say that first?
Well, go and bring Dunn here.”
“Are you mad? The man has gone already in pursuit of your lover,
believing you with him.”
“Then he will the more readily come and talk with me without him. Will
you take the invitation--yes or no?”
“Yes, but--”
“Enough. On your way there you will stop at the hotel and give Low a
letter from me.”
“Nellie!”
“You shall read it, of course,” she said scornfully, “for it will be
your text for the conversation you will have with him. Will you please
take your hand from the lock and open the door?”
Wynn mechanically opened the door. The young girl flew up-stairs. In a
very few moments she returned with two notes: one contained a few lines
of formal invitation to Dunn; the other read as follows:
“DEAR MR. DORMAN,--My father will tell you how deeply I regret that our
recent botanical excursions in the Carquinez Woods have been a source of
serious misapprehensions to those who had a claim to my consideration,
and that I shall be obliged to discontinue them for the future. At
the same time he wishes me to express my gratitude for your valuable
instruction and assistance in that pleasing study, even though
approaching events may compel me to relinquish it for other duties.
May I beg you to accept the inclosed ring as a slight recognition of my
obligations to you?
“Your grateful pupil,
“NELLIE WYNN.”
When he had finished reading the letter, she handed him a ring, which
he took mechanically. He raised his eyes to hers with perfectly genuine
admiration. “You’re a good girl, Nellie,” he said, and, in a moment
of parental forgetfulness, unconsciously advanced his lips towards her
cheek. But she drew back in time to recall him to a sense of that human
weakness.
“I suppose I’ll have time for a nap yet,” she said, as a gentle hint to
her embarrassed parent. He nodded and turned towards the door.
“If I were you,” she continued, repressing a yawn, “I’d manage to be
seen on good terms with Low at the hotel; so perhaps you need not give
the letter to him until the last thing. Good-by.”
The sitting-room door opened and closed behind her as she slipped
up-stairs, and her father, without the formality of leave-taking,
quietly let himself out by the front door.
When he drove into the high road again, however, an overlooked
possibility threatened for a moment to indefinitely postpone his amiable
intentions regarding Low. The hotel was at the further end of the
settlement towards the Carquinez Woods, and as Wynn had nearly reached
it he was recalled to himself by the sounds of hoofs and wheels rapidly
approaching from the direction of the Excelsior turnpike. Wynn made no
doubt it was the sheriff and Brace. To avoid recognition at that moment,
he whipped up his horse, intending to keep the lead until he could turn
into the first cross-road. But the coming travelers had the fleetest
horse, and finding it impossible to distance them he drove close to the
ditch, pulling up suddenly as the strange vehicle was abreast of him,
and forcing them to pass him at full speed, with the result already
chronicled. When they had vanished in the darkness, Mr. Wynn, with a
heart overflowing with Christian thankfulness and universal benevolence,
wheeled round, and drove back to the hotel he had already passed. To
pull up at the veranda with a stentorian shout, to thump loudly at the
deserted bar, to hilariously beat the panels of the landlord’s door,
and commit a jocose assault and battery upon that half-dresssed and
half-awakened man, was eminently characteristic of Wynn, and part of his
amiable plans that morning.
“Something to wash this wood smoke from my throat, Brother Carter, and
about as much again to prop open your eyes,” he said, dragging Carter
before the bar, “and glasses round for as many of the boys as are up
and stirring after a hard-working Christian’s rest. How goes the honest
publican’s trade, and who have we here?”
“Thar’s Judge Robinson and two lawyers from Sacramento, Dick Curson over
from Yolo,” said Carter, “and that ar young Injin yarb doctor from the
Carquinez Woods. I reckon he’s jist up--I noticed a light under his door
as I passed.”
“He’s my man for a friendly chat before breakfast,” said Wynn. “You
needn’t come up. I’ll find the way. I don’t want a light; I reckon my
eyes ain’t as bright nor as young as his, but they’ll see almost as far
in the dark--he! he!” And, nodding to Brother Carter, he strode
along the passage, and with no other introduction than a playful and
preliminary “Boo!” burst into one of the rooms. Low, who by the light
of a single candle was bending over the plates of a large quarto, merely
raised his eyes and looked at the intruder. The young man’s natural
imperturbability, always exasperating to Wynn, seemed accented that
morning by contrast with his own over-acted animation.
“Ah ha!--wasting the midnight oil instead of imbibing the morning dews,”
said Father Wynn archly, illustrating his metaphor with a movement of
his hand to his lips. “What have we here?”
“An anonymous gift,” replied Low simply, recognizing the father of
Nellie by rising from his chair. “It’s a volume I’ve longed to possess,
but never could afford to buy. I cannot imagine who sent it to me.”
Wynn was for a moment startled by the thought that this recipient of
valuable gifts might have influential friends. But a glance at the bare
room, which looked like a camp, and the strange, unconventional garb of
its occupant, restored his former convictions. There might be a promise
of intelligence, but scarcely of prosperity, in the figure before him.
“Ah! We must not forget that we are watched over in the night season,”
he said, laying his hand on Low’s shoulder, with an illustration of
celestial guardianship that would have been impious but for its palpable
grotesqueness. “No, sir, we know not what a day may bring forth.”
Unfortunately, Low’s practical mind did not go beyond a mere human
interpretation. It was enough, however, to put a new light in his eye
and a faint color in his cheek.
“Could it have been Miss Nellie?” he asked, with half-boyish hesitation.
Mr. Wynn was too much of a Christian not to bow before what appeared to
him the purely providential interposition of this suggestion. Seizing
it and Low at the same moment, he playfully forced him down again in his
chair.
“Ah, you rascal!” he said, with infinite archness; “that’s your game,
is it? You want to trap poor Father Wynn. You want to make him say ‘No.’
You want to tempt him to commit himself. No, sir!--never, sir!--no, no!”
Firmly convinced that the present was Nellie’s, and that her father only
good-humoredly guessed it, the young man’s simple, truthful nature was
embarrassed. He longed to express his gratitude, but feared to betray
the young girl’s trust. The Reverend Mr. Wynn speedily relieved his
mind.
“No,” he continued, bestriding a chair, and familiarly confronting Low
over its back. “No, sir--no! And you want me to say ‘No,’ don’t you,
regarding the little walks of Nellie and a certain young man in the
Carquinez Woods?--ha, ha! You’d like me to say that I knew nothing
of the botanizings, and the herb collectings, and the picknickings
there--he, he!--you sly dog! Perhaps you’d like to tempt Father Wynn
further, and make him swear he knows nothing of his daughter disguising
herself in a duster and meeting another young man--isn’t it another
young man?--all alone, eh? Perhaps you want poor old Father Wynn to say
No. No, sir, nothing of the kind ever occurred. Ah, you young rascal!”
Slightly troubled, in spite of Wynn’s hearty manner, Low, with his usual
directness, however, said, “I do not want anyone to deny that I have
seen Miss Nellie.”
“Certainly, certainly,” said Wynn, abandoning his method, considerably
disconcerted by Low’s simplicity, and a certain natural reserve that
shook off his familiarity. “Certainly it’s a noble thing to be able to
put your hand on your heart and say to the world, ‘Come on, all of you!
Observe me; I have nothing to conceal. I walk with Miss Wynn in the
woods as her instructor--her teacher, in fact. We cull a flower here and
there; we pluck an herb fresh from the hands of the Creator. We look, so
to speak, from Nature to Nature’s God.’ Yes, my young friend, we should
be the first to repel the foul calumny that could misinterpret our most
innocent actions.”
“Calumny?” repeated Low, starting to his feet. “What calumny?”
“My friend, my noble young friend, I recognize your indignation. I know
your worth. When I said to Nellie, my only child, my perhaps too simple
offspring--a mere wildflower like yourself--when I said to her, ‘Go,
my child, walk in the woods with this young man, hand in hand. Let him
instruct you from the humblest roots, for he has trodden in the ways of
the Almighty. Gather wisdom from his lips, and knowledge from his simple
woodman’s craft. Make, in fact, a collection not only of herbs, but of
moral axioms and experience’--I knew I could trust you, and, trusting
you, my young friend, I felt I could trust the world. Perhaps I was
weak, foolish. But I thought only of her welfare. I even recall how that
to preserve the purity of her garments, I bade her don a simple duster;
that, to secure her from the trifling companionship of others, I
bade her keep her own counsel, and seek you at seasons known but to
yourselves.”
“But . . . did Nellie . . . understand you?” interrupted Low hastily.
“I see you read her simple nature. Understand me? No, not at first!
Her maidenly instinct--perhaps her duty to another--took the alarm. I
remember her words. ‘But what will Dunn say?’ she asked. ‘Will he not be
jealous?’”
“Dunn! jealous! I don’t understand,” said Low, fixing his eyes on Wynn.
“That’s just what I said to Nellie. ‘Jealous!’ I said. ‘What, Dunn,
your affianced husband, jealous of a mere friend--a teacher, a guide, a
philosopher. It is impossible.’ Well, sir, she was right. He is jealous.
And, more than that, he has imparted his jealousy to others! In other
words, he has made a scandal!”
Low’s eyes flashed. “Where is your daughter now?” he said sternly.
“At present in bed, suffering from a nervous attack brought on by these
unjust suspicions. She appreciates your anxiety, and, knowing that you
could not see her, told me to give you this.” He handed Low the ring and
the letter.
The climax had been forced, and, it must be confessed, was by no means
the one Mr. Wynn had fully arranged in his own inner consciousness.
He had intended to take an ostentatious leave of Low in the bar-room,
deliver the letter with archness, and escape before a possible
explosion. He consequently backed towards the door for an emergency.
But he was again at fault. That unaffected stoical fortitude in acute
suffering, which was the one remaining pride and glory of Low’s race,
was yet to be revealed to Wynn’s civilized eyes.
The young man took the letter, and read it without changing a muscle,
folded the ring in it, and dropped it into his haversack. Then he picked
up his blanket, threw it over his shoulder, took his trusty rifle in his
hand, and turned towards Wynn as if coldly surprised that he was still
standing there.
“Are you--are you--going?” stammered Wynn.
“Are you NOT?” replied Low dryly, leaning on his rifle for a moment as
if waiting for Wynn to precede him. The preacher looked at him a moment,
mumbled something, and then shambled feebly and ineffectively down the
staircase before Low, with a painful suggestion to the ordinary observer
of being occasionally urged thereto by the moccasin of the young man
behind him.
On reaching the lower hall, however, he endeavored to create a diversion
in his favor by dashing into the bar-room and clapping the occupants on
the back with indiscriminate playfulness. But here again he seemed to be
disappointed. To his great discomfiture, a large man not only returned
his salutation with powerful levity, but with equal playfulness seized
him in his arms, and after an ingenious simulation of depositing him
in the horse-trough set him down in affected amazement. “Bleth’t if
I didn’t think from the weight of your hand it wath my old friend,
Thacramento Bill,” said Curson apologetically, with a wink at the
bystanders. “That’th the way Bill alwayth uthed to tackle hith friendth,
till he wath one day bounthed by a prithe-fighter in Frithco, whom he
had mithtaken for a mithionary.” As Mr. Curson’s reputation was of a
quality that made any form of apology from him instantly acceptable,
the amused spectators made way for him as, recognizing Low, who was just
leaving the hotel, he turned coolly from them and walked towards him.
“Halloo!” he said, extending his hand. “You’re the man I’m waiting for.
Did you get a book from the exthpreth offithe latht night?”
“I did. Why?”
“It’th all right. Ath I’m rethponthible for it, I only wanted to know.”
“Did YOU send it?” asked Low, quickly fixing his eyes on his face.
“Well, not exactly ME. But it’th not worth making a mythtery of it.
Teretha gave me a commithion to buy it and thend it to you anonymouthly.
That’th a woman’th nonthenth, for how could thee get a retheipt for it?”
“Then it was HER present,” said Low gloomily.
“Of courthe. It wathn’t mine, my boy. I’d have thent you a Tharp’th
rifle in plathe of that muthle loader you carry, or thomething
thenthible. But, I thay! what’th up? You look ath if you had been
running all night.”
Low grasped his hand. “Thank you,” he said hurriedly; “but it’s nothing.
Only I must be back to the woods early. Good-by.”
But Curson retained Low’s hand in his own powerful grip.
“I’ll go with you a bit further,” he said. “In fact, I’ve got thomething
to thay to you; only don’t be in thuch a hurry; the woodth can wait till
you get there.” Quietly compelling Low to alter his own characteristic
Indian stride to keep pace with his, he went on: “I don’t mind thaying
I rather cottoned to you from the time you acted like a white man--no
offenthe--to Teretha. She thayth you were left when a child lying
round, jutht ath promithcuouthly ath she wath; and if I can do anything
towardth putting you on the trail of your people, I’ll do it. I know
thome of the voyageurth who traded with the Cherokeeth, and your
father wath one-wathn’t he?” He glanced at Low’s utterly abstracted and
immobile face. “I thay, you don’t theem to take a hand in thith game,
pardner. What’th the row? Ith anything wrong over there?” and he pointed
to the Carquinez Woods, which were just looming out of the morning
horizon in the distance.
Low stopped. The last words of his companion seemed to recall him to
himself. He raised his eyes automatically to the woods and started.
“There IS something wrong over there,” he said breathlessly. “Look!”
“I thee nothing,” said Curson, beginning to doubt Low’s sanity; “nothing
more than I thaw an hour ago.”
“Look again. Don’t you see that smoke rising straight up? It isn’t blown
over there from the Divide; it’s new smoke! The fire is in the woods!”
“I reckon that’th so,” muttered Curson, shading his eyes with his hand.
“But, hullo! wait a minute! We’ll get hortheth. I say!” he shouted,
forgetting his lisp in his excitement--“stop!” But Low had already
lowered his head and darted forward like an arrow.
In a few moments he had left not only his companion but the last
straggling houses of the outskirts far behind him, and had struck out in
a long, swinging trot for the disused “cut-off.” Already he fancied he
heard the note of clamor in Indian Spring, and thought he distinguished
the sound of hurrying hoofs on the great highway. But the sunken trail
hid it from his view. From the column of smoke now plainly visible
in the growing morning light he tried to locate the scene of the
conflagration. It was evidently not a fire advancing regularly from the
outer skirt of the wood, communicated to it from the Divide; it was a
local outburst near its centre. It was not in the direction of his cabin
in the tree. There was no immediate danger to Teresa, unless fear drove
her beyond the confines of the wood into the hands of those who might
recognize her. The screaming of jays and ravens above his head quickened
his speed, as it heralded the rapid advance of the flames; and the
unexpected apparition of a bounding body, flattened and flying over
the yellow plain, told him that even the secure retreat of the
mountain wild-cat had been invaded. A sudden recollection of Teresa’s
uncontrollable terror that first night smote him with remorse and
redoubled his efforts. Alone in the track of these frantic and
bewildered beasts, to what madness might she not be driven!
The sharp crack of a rifle from the high road turned his course
momentarily in that direction. The smoke was curling lazily over the
heads of the party of men in the road, while the huge hulk of a grizzly
was disappearing in the distance. A battue of the escaping animals had
commenced! In the bitterness of his heart he caught at the horrible
suggestion, and resolved to save her from them or die with her there.
How fast he ran, or the time it took him to reach the woods, has never
been known. Their outlines were already hidden when he entered them.
To a sense less keen, a courage less desperate, and a purpose less
unaltered than Low’s, the wood would have been impenetrable. The central
fire was still confined to the lofty tree tops, but the downward rush of
wind from time to time drove the smoke into the aisles in blinding and
suffocating volumes. To simulate the creeping animals, and fall to the
ground on hands and knees, feel his way through the underbrush when
the smoke was densest, or take advantage of its momentary lifting, and
without uncertainty, mistake, or hesitation glide from tree to tree in
one undeviating course, was possible only to an experienced woodsman. To
keep his reason and insight so clear as to be able in the midst of this
bewildering confusion to shape that course so as to intersect the wild
and unknown tract of an inexperienced, frightened wanderer belonged to
Low, and Low alone. He was making his way against the wind towards
the fire. He had reasoned that she was either in comparative safety to
windward of it, or he should meet her being driven towards him by it,
or find her succumbed and fainting at its feet. To do this he must
penetrate the burning belt, and then pass under the blazing dome. He
was already upon it; he could see the falling fire dropping like rain or
blown like gorgeous blossoms of the conflagration across his path. The
space was lit up brilliantly. The vast shafts of dull copper cast no
shadow below, but there was no sign nor token of any human being. For a
moment the young man was at fault. It was true this hidden heart of the
forest bore no undergrowth; the cool matted carpet of the aisles seemed
to quench the glowing fragments as they fell. Escape might be difficult,
but not impossible, yet every moment was precious. He leaned against a
tree, and sent his voice like a clarion before him: “Teresa!” There was
no reply. He called again. A faint cry at his back from the trail he had
just traversed made him turn. Only a few paces behind him, blinded and
staggering, but following like a beaten and wounded animal, Teresa,
halted, knelt, clasped her hands, and dumbly held them out before her.
“Teresa!” he cried again, and sprang to her side.
She caught him by the knees, and lifted her face imploringly to his.
“Say that again!” she cried, passionately. “Tell me it was Teresa you
called, and no other! You have come back for me! You would not let me
die here alone!”
He lifted her tenderly in his arms, and cast a rapid glance around
him. It might have been his fancy, but there seemed a dull glow in the
direction he had come.
“You do not speak!” she said. “Tell me! You did not come here to seek
her?”
“Whom?” he said quickly.
“Nellie!”
With a sharp cry he let her slip to the ground. All the pent-up
agony, rage, and mortification of the last hour broke from him in that
inarticulate outburst. Then, catching her hands again, he dragged her to
his level.
“Hear me!” he cried, disregarding the whirling smoke and the fiery
baptism that sprinkled them--“hear me! If you value your life, if you
value your soul, and if you do not want me to cast you to the beasts
like Jezebel of old, never--never take that accursed name again upon
your lips. Seek her--HER? Yes! Seek her to tie her like a witch’s
daughter of hell to that blazing tree!” He stopped. “Forgive me,” he
said in a changed voice. “I’m mad, and forgetting myself and you. Come.”
Without noticing the expression of half-savage delight that had passed
across her face, he lifted her in his arms.
“Which way are you going?” she asked, passing her hands vaguely across
his breast, as if to reassure herself of his identity.
“To our camp by the scarred tree,” he replied.
“Not there, not there,” she said, hurriedly. “I was driven from there
just now. I thought the fire began there until I came here.”
Then it was as he feared. Obeying the same mysterious law that had
launched this fatal fire like a thunderbolt from the burning mountain
crest five miles away into the heart of the Carquinez Woods, it had
again leaped a mile beyond, and was hemming them between two narrowing
lines of fire. But Low was not daunted. Retracing his steps through
the blinding smoke, he strode off at right angles to the trail near the
point where he had entered the wood. It was the spot where he had first
lifted Nellie in his arms to carry her to the hidden spring. If any
recollection of it crossed his mind at that moment, it was only shown in
his redoubled energy. He did not glide through the thick underbrush, as
on that day, but seemed to take a savage pleasure in breaking through it
with sheer brute force. Once Teresa insisted upon relieving him of
the burden of her weight, but after a few steps she staggered blindly
against him, and would fain have recourse once more to his strong arms.
And so, alternately staggering, bending, crouching, or bounding and
crashing on, but always in one direction, they burst through the jealous
rampart, and came upon the sylvan haunt of the hidden spring. The
great angle of the half-fallen tree acted as a harrier to the wind and
drifting smoke, and the cool spring sparkled and bubbled in the almost
translucent air. He laid her down beside the water, and bathed her
face and hands. As he did so his quick eye caught sight of a woman’s
handkerchief lying at the foot of the disrupted root. Dropping Teresa’s
hand, he walked towards it, and with the toe of his moccasin gave it one
vigorous kick into the ooze at the overflow of the spring. He turned to
Teresa, but she evidently had not noticed the act.
“Where are you?” she asked, with a smile.
Something in her movement struck him! He came towards her, and bending
down looked into her face. “Teresa! Good God!--look at me! What has
happened?”
She raised her eyes to his. There was a slight film across them; the
lids were blackened; the beautiful lashes gone forever!
“I see you a little now, I think,” she said, with a smile, passing her
hands vaguely over his face. “It must have happened when he fainted, and
I had to drag him through the blazing brush; both my hands were full,
and I could not cover my eyes.”
“Drag whom?” said Low, quickly.
“Why, Dunn.”
“Dunn! He here?” said Low, hoarsely.
“Yes; didn’t you read the note I left on the herbarium? Didn’t you come
to the camp-fire?” she asked hurriedly, clasping his hands. “Tell me
quickly!”
“No!”
“Then you were not there--then you didn’t leave me to die?”
“No! I swear it, Teresa!” the stoicism that had upheld his own agony
breaking down before her strong emotion.
“Thank God!” She threw her arms around him, and hid her aching eyes in
his troubled breast.
“Tell me all, Teresa,” he whispered in her listening ear. “Don’t move;
stay there, and tell me all.”
With her face buried in his bosom, as if speaking to his heart alone,
she told him part, but not all. With her eyes filled with tears, but a
smile on her lips, radiant with new-found happiness, she told him how
she had overheard the plans of Dunn and Brace, how she had stolen their
conveyance to warn him in time. But here she stopped, dreading to say
a word that would shatter the hope she was building upon his sudden
revulsion of feeling for Nellie. She could not bring herself to repeat
their interview--that would come later, when they were safe and out of
danger; now not even the secret of his birth must come between them with
its distraction, to mar their perfect communion. She faltered that Dunn
had fainted from weakness, and that she had dragged him out of danger.
“He will never interfere with us--I mean,” she said softly, “with ME
again. I can promise you that as well as if he had sworn it.”
“Let him pass, now,” said Low; “that will come later on,” he added,
unconsciously repeating her thought in a tone that made her heart sick.
“But tell me, Teresa, why did you go to Excelsior?”
She buried her head still deeper, as if to hide it. He felt her broken
heart beat against his own; he was conscious of a depth of feeling her
rival had never awakened in him. The possibility of Teresa loving him
had never occurred to his simple nature. He bent his head and kissed
her. She was frightened, and unloosed her clinging arms; but he retained
her hand, and said, “We will leave this accursed place, and you shall
go with me as you said you would; nor need you ever leave me, unless you
wish it.”
She could hear the beating of her own heart through his words; she
longed to look at the eyes and lips that told her this, and read the
meaning his voice alone could not entirely convey. For the first time
she felt the loss of her sight. She did not know that it was, in this
moment of happiness, the last blessing vouchsafed to her miserable life.
A few moments of silence followed, broken only by the distant rumor of
the conflagration and the crash of falling boughs.
“It may be an hour yet,” he whispered, “before the fire has swept a path
for us to the road below. We are safe here, unless some sudden current
should draw the fire down upon us. You are not frightened?” She pressed
his hand; she was thinking of the pale face of Dunn, lying in the
secure retreat she had purchased for him at such a sacrifice. Yet
the possibility of danger to him now for a moment marred her present
happiness and security. “You think the fire will not go north of where
you found me?” she asked softly.
“I think not,” he said, “but I will reconnoitre. Stay where you are.”
They pressed hands, and parted. He leaped upon the slanting trunk and
ascended it rapidly. She waited in mute expectation.
There was a sudden movement of the root on which she sat, a deafening
crash, and she was thrown forward on her face.
The vast bulk of the leaning tree, dislodged from its aerial support by
the gradual sapping of the spring at its roots, or by the crumbling
of the bark from the heat, had slipped, made a half revolution, and,
falling, overbore the lesser trees in its path, and tore, in its
resistless momentum, a broad opening to the underbrush.
With a cry to Low, Teresa staggered to her feet. There was an interval
of hideous silence, but no reply. She called again. There was a sudden
deepening roar, the blast of a fiery furnace swept through the opening,
a thousand luminous points around her burst into fire, and in an instant
she was lost in a whirlwind of smoke and flame! From the onset of its
fury to its culmination twenty minutes did not elapse; but in that
interval a radius of two hundred yards around the hidden spring was
swept of life and light and motion.
For the rest of that day and part of the night a pall of smoke hung
above the scene of desolation. It lifted only towards the morning, when
the moon, rising high, picked out in black and silver the shrunken and
silent columns of those roofless vaults, shorn of base and capital. It
flickered on the still, overflowing pool of the hidden spring, and
shone upon the white face of Low, who, with a rootlet of the fallen tree
holding him down like an arm across his breast, seemed to be sleeping
peacefully in the sleeping water.
* * * * *
Contemporaneous history touched him as briefly, but not as gently. “It
is now definitely ascertained,” said “The Slumgullion Mirror,” “that
Sheriff Dunn met his fate in the Carquinez Woods in the performance
of his duty; that fearless man having received information of
the concealment of a band of horse thieves in their recesses. The
desperadoes are presumed to have escaped, as the only remains found are
those of two wretched tramps, one of whom is said to have been a digger,
who supported himself upon roots and herbs, and the other a degraded
half-white woman. It is not unreasonable to suppose that the fire
originated through their carelessness, although Father Wynn of the First
Baptist Church, in his powerful discourse of last Sunday, pointed at the
warning and lesson of such catastrophes. It may not be out of place
here to say that the rumors regarding an engagement between the pastor’s
accomplished daughter and the late lamented sheriff are utterly without
foundation, as it has been an on dit for some time in all well-informed
circles that the indefatigable Mr. Brace, of Wells, Fargo and Co.’s
Express, will shortly lead the lady to the hymeneal altar.”