*XXXII*
*THE TRAIL AGAIN*
Skipping that long if happy night, peep with dawn into Helen's bedroom,
and see her up and singing small snatches of song that presently brought
Jean Glaves, herself the earliest of birds, from bed to assist at the
toilet. Should she wear this, that, or the other? There was the usual
doubt which beset a young lady who wishes to look her best for occasion;
but the result that went forth from big Jean's hug? A vision of healthy
beauty that drew tentative smiles from a brace of drummers and attracted
the stealthy regard of the entire station when she finally broke, like a
burst of sunlight, on the platform. Continuing the figure, the smile,
its crowning asset, faded like the afterglow when her anxious eyes
refused her the tall familiar figure; and when the train pulled out
without him, her disconsolate expression filled the aforesaid drummers
with manly longings towards consolation.
Unpunctual? On such an occasion? And how silly she would look at Lone
Tree! Slightly offended at first, she then grew alarmed. Perhaps he
had suffered a relapse, was ill, dying! Be sure that her terrors
compassed the possible and impossible during an hour's journey, and not
until she saw a man come dashing across the tracks to the Lone Tree
platform did she realize the fulness of his inspiration. He had taken
the freight out the night before! If thinner, paler, he was very like
the young man who had come to meet her three years ago. There, also, was
the lone poplar that had christened the station; the ramshackle town
with its clapboard hotels, false-fronted stores, grain-sheds, sitting in
the midst of the plains that, flat and infinitely yellow, ran with the
tracks over a boundless horizon. Lastly, there was Nels and his
bleached grin, holding Death and the Devil, sleek, fat, and sinful as
ever.
Carter's whispered greeting helped to keep her in the past. "Is this
Miss Morrill?"
"Mr. Carter, I believe?" she had just time for the roguish answer, then
their little comedy had to be laid aside till they were alone on trail.
For the doctor came running from his office, the store-keeper plunged
madly across tracks, Hooper, the agent, yelled, "Well, I swan!" and
jumped to shake hands, while from a grain-shed emerged Jimmy Glaves, who
had taken a lift in with Nels.
Wasn't she glad to see them? Yet a deeper happiness enveloped her when,
looking back, she again saw Lone Tree, shrunken in the distance, its
grain-sheds looking like red Noah's arks on a yellow carpet; when she
heard only the pole and harness jigging a merry accompaniment to the
beat of quick feet, whirring song of swift wheels.
It was very like that first occasion. Though stiff night frosts were
now giving timely notice of winter's chill approach, the clerk of the
weather had made special arrangements for a south wind; so it was warm
as on that far day. Birds, animals, scenery, too, all helped to bring
the happy past forward to the happy present, while Death and the Devil,
those wicked ones, fostered the illusion by frequent boltings. Surely
she remembered the ridge where her first coyote had caused her to cling
to Carter, and earned a kiss by repetition of that shameful performance
and faithful mimicry of his accent. "He shore looks hungry."
Immediately thereafter they plunged out from among scattered farms into
the "Dry Lands," but its yellow miles, generally a penance, flowed
unnoticed under the buck-board. They were both astonished when,
suddenly as before, they rattled through a bluff and dropped over the
edge of the valley upon Father Francis at the mission door.
Nothing would suit but that they must dine with him while Louis, the
half-breed stableman, fed and watered the ponies. But if the good
priest's twinkle expressed knowledge that another of his day's works was
come to fruitage, his quiet converse brought no jarring note into their
communings.
Undisturbed, they began again at the ford and continued while the Park
Lands rolled in great billows under the wheels. The Cree chimneys,
Indian graveyards, other well-remembered objects passed in pleasant
procession ere, coming to Flynn's, he looked at her. A shake of the
head confirmed his doubt. Another time! So they swept on through vast,
sun-washed spaces where cattle wandered freely as the whispering winds
under flitting cloud-shadows, and so, about sundown, came to their own
place with but a single interruption.
Passing Danvers at their own forks, he grinned his delight as he turned
out to let them by and shouted after: "Say! I heard from Leslie! He's
doing well on the Rand! Sends regards to both of you!"
While that bit of good news was still ringing in her ears, the house
flashed out under the eaves of the forest, warm and bright under the
setting sun. All was unchanged--the lake, stained just now a ruby red,
the golden stubble fenced in by dark, environing woods. Within all was
neat and clean as Nels's racial passion for soap and water could make
it. So while he stabled the tired ponies, she donned one of her old
aprons, rolled sleeves above dimpled elbows, and cooked supper; rather a
superfluous performance aside from the grave pleasure he took in looking
on.
Afterwards they sat on the doorstep, she between his knees, head
pillowed against his breast, and looked at the copper moon that hung in
the trees across the lake--watched it brighten to silver; listened to
the harmonies of the night, the loon's weird alto, the bittern's bass,
cry of a pivoting mallard, owl's solemn choral, a wilder, freer movement
than was ever chained in a stave. Once a snuffle, soft-lapping, drifted
in, and he replied to her start, "Bear-drinking." Otherwise they were
silent up to the moment she arose, shivering.
"It is getting colder. I think I'll go in."
He stayed a little longer, stretched luxuriously out on the grass; was
still there when, having made their bed, she came to the door. A vivid
memory gave her pause. Just so had he looked--that night--dark, still,
as the marble effigy of some old Crusader, with the moonlight quivering
about him like an emanation.
"Are you coming, dear?" Perhaps the memory tinged her tone. Anyway, he
sprang up, arms extended, and as she came running, he lifted her clear
of the ground; carried her in and closed the door.
Her shiver had warrant. Within the hour the north wind began to herd
luminous clouds across the moon. At midnight the cabin loomed darkly
through a bridal veil of white.