She laughed happily. "It's only the next day. Just keep where you are
till the sun gets a little higher." She drew near and put a hand on his
brow. "You don't feel feverish. Oh, I hope this trip hasn't set you
back."
He laid his hands together, and then felt of his pulse. "I don't seem to
have a temperature. I just feel lazy, limp and lazy; but I'm going to get
up, if you'll just leave the room for a moment--"
"Don't try it now. Wait till you have had your breakfast. You'll feel
stronger then."
He yielded again to the force of her will, and fell back into a luxurious
drowse hearing the stove roar and the bacon sizzle in the pan. There was
something primitive and broadly poetic in the girl's actions. Through the
haze of the kitchen smoke she enlarged till she became the typical
frontier wife, the goddess of the skillet and the coffee-pot, the consort
of the pioneer, equally skilled with the rifle and the rolling-pin. How
many millions of times had this scene been enacted on the long march of
the borderman from the Susquehanna to the Bear Tooth Range?
Into his epic vision the pitiful absurdity of his own part in the play
broke like a sad discord. "Of course, it is not my fault that I am a
weakling," he argued. "Only it was foolish for me to thrust myself into
this stern world. If I come safely out of this adventure I will go back
to the sheltered places where I belong."
At this point came again the disturbing realization that this night of
struggle, and the ministrations of his brave companion had involved him
deeper in a mesh from which honorable escape was almost impossible. The
ranger's cabin, so far from being an end of their compromising intimacy,
had added and was still adding to the weight of evidence against them
both. The presence of the ranger or the Supervisor himself could not now
save Berea from the gossips.
She brought his breakfast to him, and sat beside him while he ate,
chatting the while of their good fortune. "It is glorious outside, and I
am sure daddy will get across to-day, and Tony is certain to turn up
before noon. He probably went down to Coal City to get his mail."
"I must get up at once," he said, in a panic of fear and shame. "The
Supervisor must not find me laid out on my back. Please leave me alone
for a moment."
She went out, closing the door behind her, and as he crawled from his bed
every muscle in his body seemed to cry out against being moved.
Nevertheless, he persisted, and at last succeeded in putting on his
clothes, even his shoes--though he found tying the laces the hardest task
of all--and he was at the wash-basin bathing his face and hands when
Berrie hurriedly re-entered. "Some tourists are coming," she announced,
in an excited tone. "A party of five or six people, a woman among them,
is just coming down the slope. Now, who do you suppose it can be? It
would be just our luck if it should turn out to be some one from the
Mill."
He divined at once the reason for her dismay. The visit of a woman at
this moment would not merely embarrass them both, it would torture
Berrie. "What is to be done?" he asked, roused to alertness.
"Nothing; all we can do is to stand pat and act as if we belonged here."
"Very well," he replied, moving stiffly toward the door. "Here's where I
can be of some service. I am an excellent white liar."
As our hero crawled out into the brilliant sunshine some part of his
courage came back to him. Though lame in every muscle, he was not ill.
That was the surprising thing. His head was clear, and his breath full
and deep. "My lungs are all right," he said to himself. "I'm not going to
collapse." And he looked round him with a new-born admiration of the
wooded hills which rose in somber majesty on either side the roaring
stream. "How different it all looks this morning," he said, remembering
the deep blackness of the night.
The beat of hoofs upon the bridge drew his attention to the cavalcade,
which the keen eyes of the girl had detected as it came over the ridge to
the east. The party consisted of two men and two women and three
pack-horses completely outfitted for the trail.
One of the women, spurring her horse to the front, rode serenely up to
where Wayland stood, and called out: "Good morning. Are you the ranger?"
"No, I'm only the guard. The ranger has gone down the trail."
He perceived at once that the speaker was an alien like himself, for she
wore tan-colored riding-boots, a divided skirt of expensive cloth, and a
jaunty, wide-rimmed sombrero. She looked, indeed, precisely like the
heroine of the prevalent Western drama. Her sleeves, rolled to the elbow,
disclosed shapely brown arms, and her neck, bare to her bosom, was
equally sun-smit; but she was so round-cheeked, so childishly charming,
that the most critical observer could find no fault with her make-up.