THEY had expected the riding party back for luncheon on Saturday, but
they did not come, and Ginger was unhappily sure that it was her Aunt
Fan who was retarding the procession. Some one raised a shout at six
o’clock that they were on the trail above the camp; ordinarily, they
would arrive in ten minutes, but it was half an hour before they wound
down beside the creek and through the rustic gate. The doctor rode
first.
“A fine trip,” he said stoutly. “Yes, it was a remarkably fine trip,
but Miss Fanny is pretty tired; it was just a little too much of an
undertaking for her, I’m afraid.”
“Just a little,” said Mrs. Featherstone, bitterly. She was bracing
herself in the saddle with both hands on the pommel, and her feet were
out of the stirrups, dangling. Her hat was pulled far forward and wisps
of damp hair adhered pastily to her face, and she was grimed with dust.
“I’d ride right up to my cabin, if I were you, Miss Fanny,” said the
doctor, his kind eyes solicitous.
“Yes,” said Ginger’s Aunt Fan through set teeth, “I shouldn’t like to
miss anything.”
Ginger, running beside old Sam, thought that he looked haggard and
sagged a little at the knees. One of the boys followed them, and with
his help she got her aunt to the ground. Mrs. Featherstone did not
speak until the boy had led the horse away to the corral, and then,
leaning heavily on her niece’s shoulder and breathing hard, she hissed,
“If you tell me that you ‘told me so’ I’ll kill you; I’ll kill you with
my bare hands.”
Ginger bent her head and bit her lips. “Let’s get into the cabin, Aunt
Fan.” She was very gentle about helping her. “Now, I’ll get those
puttees and shoes off, the first thing! You sit right down--”
“Sit down?” said her aunt, with bitter fury. “_Sit down?_ I never
expect to sit down again. If you can get my clothes off me standing up,
all right. Otherwise, they stay on.” She braced herself against the
wall and looked truculently down at the kneeling girl.
“Wait a minute,” said Ginger. “Aunt Fan, if you could walk up to the
bathhouse and get a hot tub--”
“Walk?” said Mrs. Featherstone. “_Walk?_” She looked as if she would
enjoy doing her young kinswoman an injury. “I guess you’d better leave
everything on; if you can lash me to the wall, some way, I dare say I
can sleep standing up; they say the men often did, in the War.”
“Oh, do let me get your things off,” Ginger pleaded. “You don’t know
how much better you’ll feel!”
“No, I don’t,” said her aunt, grimly. She shut her eyes and maintained
a brooding silence while her niece dragged off her puttees and shoes
and stockings and got her hot and swollen feet into soft knitted
slippers. “I can give you a foot bath, one foot at a time, Aunt Fan,”
she said, soothingly. “Don’t you worry--I can manage nicely!” She set a
basin of water to heating over an alcohol stove and ran back to divest
her of her other clothing, and to cold cream the dust from her burning
face; sometimes she had to rush into the tiny dressing room and fight
down a positive hysteria of mirth, but at last she had the large lady
cleansed and in her nightdress and kimono. “And now, if you’ll get into
bed, Aunt Fan, I’ll bring your supper!” she said, cheerfully.
“I sha’n’t move,” said the sufferer, firmly. “You can bring me food--”
“Yes--a little soup, and some hot tea--” said Ginger.
“_Food_,” said her aunt, with sudden vigor. “_Added_ to everything
else, I’m half starved. Bring--everything you find.”
She was still standing, braced against the wall, when the girl came
back with a laden tray, and Ginger put it on the waist-high shelf which
served for a dressing table and she was able to manage very nicely.
Nourishment seemed to unseal Aunt Fan’s lips. “I’ve made up my mind
about the doctor,” she said, darkly. “My _Lord_--that man isn’t a
suitor; he’s a mule driver! It wasn’t so bad the first hour, and even
the second hour I could stand it by thinking about other things, but we
rode until one before we stopped for lunch, and then I had to get off
... and to get on again ... and then we rode until six, and had supper
and went to bed--to _bed_!” She groaned aloud, pausing with a bit of
buttered biscuit half-way to her mouth. “He picked out the steepest
hillside in the entire Santa Lucia Range, and the one with the most
rocks on it ... all those rocks couldn’t have been born on it; he must
have lugged some of them there! Then he blew up that sleeping bag;
_sleeping_ bag! I’d like to know the village wag that invented it. It
was like trying to rest on a school of hot-water bags; first I rolled
off one side of it and then off the other, and then it slid down the
grade--it was as slippery as if it had been buttered! It slid down
five times and I guess I’d have gone straight down to the ocean and I
wouldn’t have cared much, either, if the doctor hadn’t caught me as I
went past, every time; he was ’way below that girl and me. Finally, he
tied it to a tree.... I never closed my eyes all night, and that Dr.
Rawdon never closed his mouth all night. I give you my word it sounded
as if he was doing it on purpose; I should think his wife would poison
him. And when I dozed off at four o’clock--I was so weak and exhausted
I just lost myself for a moment--the doctor began calling people to
get up! Ginger, I swear to you, if I’d had a weapon within reach I’d
have murdered him. That’s all he’s done on this trip--call people to
get up--up in the morning, up from a nap, up on the horses again. If
he ever gets to Heaven they’ll retire Gabriel on pension and give him
the trump!” She stopped, gasping a little, and ate earnestly for a
moment. “Can you imagine me, making my toilet at quarter after four in
the morning on a glassy hillside, Ginger McVeagh? I’d lost most of my
hairpins and my lip stick and my powder in those slides, and I had to
borrow from that canary-headed paper doll that’s vamping Dean Wolcott
till he doesn’t know whether he’s afoot or horseback. The doctor
started us off again before it was light, and we rode and we rode and
we _rode_--”
“I know, Aunt Fan. I know,” said Ginger, soothingly. “Now if you’ll
just get to bed--”
“Will you wait till I finish my supper? I tell you I’m weak for the
want of food. And when we got to Slate’s, late yesterday afternoon, the
doctor said I must take the hot sulphur bath or whatever it is, and I
thought I would; I might be finished with him as a friend, but I could
still take his advice as a physician. Well....”
“I know what it’s like, Aunt Fan; I’ve been there, you know,” said
Ginger, turning back the covers of the bed.
But nothing could stem the tide of her monologue. “It’s about seven
miles from the house, to begin with--”
“Oh, Aunt Fan--half a mile!”
“--seven miles down a horrible trail above the ocean, and that paper
doll went with me, and there was no bathhouse; there was no bathhouse
but a flag; you put the flag up or down at the top of the trail and
that shows whether there’s anybody bathing, and if you’ve got the
signal right, perhaps nobody comes down.... There were simply two tubs
right out in the landscape; it’s the most indecent thing I ever----”
“But, Aunt Fan, it’s under the side of the hill; no one could possibly
see you, and the flag was----”
“What about the ocean?” her aunt wanted indignantly to know. “What
about the Pacific Ocean? A steamer and a tug and two fishing boats
went by; I felt like a mermaid without even the privacy of a tail. But
I didn’t mind the ocean and the boats as much as I did that girl; I
detested her the first minute I laid eyes on her, and now she’s my most
intimate friend!”
“Aunt Fan, you _must_ try to rest! Just try lying down and see if you
don’t--”
“I suppose I can lie on my face,” said Mrs. Featherstone, staggering
weakly to the bed. “I shall faint away and die if I don’t get off my
feet; they’ve ulcerated.” She eased herself with sharp groans, to a
kneeling posture upon the bed. “I wish you could have heard the way the
doctor spoke to me, coming down that ghastly trail, just above camp.
The way he----”
“Now, Aunt Fan,” said Ginger, loyally, “the doctor may have been a
little impatient, and no doubt he was anxious about you, but----”
“That’s right,” said her aunt, heavily. “Turn against your own! It was
a hideously dangerous piece of trail, and I said I was going to get off
and walk--I was being shaken right up between the horse’s ears--and
I _wish_ you could have heard the tone in which he told me to stay
on. I give you my sacred word of honor, no man has ever spoken to me
in a tone like that--not even Jim Featherstone at his worst, and as
for Henry--Henry would have _died_ before-- Well, I’ve made up my
mind, all right. Dr. Gurney Mayfield could never make a woman happy;
I suppose he might make her healthy, if he got her young enough, but
not”--she stopped suddenly--“where are you going?”
“I thought I’d go up to the Lodge for a few minutes, Aunt Fan, after I
take this tray back,” said Ginger. “I think you’ll relax and rest if
you are quiet.”
“Oh, very well,” said Mrs. Featherstone, letting herself down, inch
by inch, “go on and leave me! I came here for you, and suffered and
endured all of this for you, but never mind that. Go on and dance!
_Dance!_” She writhed at the thought. “But I suppose it would be
easier”--the words came muffled from the pillow--“for me to dance a
dance than to--_sit_ it out....”
Ginger put the tray down again and ran to draw the covers up over the
plump shoulders. “I’ll come back very soon, Aunt Fan, and please try to
sleep!”
“Sleep!” said her aunt, sniffing angrily and burrowing into the
feathery depths. “I’ll probably smother, but I guess there won’t be
much mourning,” and just as Ginger stepped outside she heard her
murmuring--“suppose I’ll have to sleep this way for a month ... thank
the Lord I didn’t waste a fortune getting my face lifted--a lot of good
it’d do now! I should have had my head examined instead!”
Ginger carried the tray to the kitchen and the kind little waitress
said she was glad to see the poor lady’d kept her appetite, and then
she walked out into the soft dusk and stood looking about the doctor’s
beloved camp. It was not quite dark, but the circling hills were
closing in, somber in silhouette, and the stars were very remote and
cold and bright; the tall redwoods seemed to stand guard over the
little cuddling cabins, and the trim little paths showed up whitely
against the darker earth surrounding them. It was a night of brisk
weather and there was no camp fire; they were all gathered in the
Lodge, and there were leaping flames on the hearth and a teasing tune
going on the phonograph, and the sound of rhythmic feet. Ginger stood
irresolute; she hadn’t thought she wanted the Lodge’s robust gayety
to-night, but she didn’t want to go back to the cabin until her poor
aunt had fallen asleep. While she was hesitating the doctor came to
the door and called her in.
“I’m might sorry about Miss Fanny,” he said remorsefully. “There won’t
be any serious consequences, of course, but I see now--as I should
have seen before--that she wasn’t equal to it.” He sighed a little. “I
expect my enthusiasm carries me away, sometimes.”
Ginger wondered if the doctor, too, had been making up his mind to make
up his mind--and had made it up. He was looking rather pensive, and a
good deal relieved.
The Lodge, save where the bridge players sat, was only dimly lighted
by Chinese lanterns and it was several minutes before Ginger saw that
Dean Wolcott was among the slow-moving dancers. The doctor went back
to the card table and she sat down in a dusky corner and hoped no one
would see her and ask her to dance. They were all very gay to-night;
the whole camp seemed vibrating with the laughing, lazy tune the
machine was grinding out; she decided to take her Aunt Fan back to San
Francisco as soon as she could stand the trip, and to go home to Dos
Pozos. She wanted work. And in December she would go on to visit Mary
Wiley.
The dance was finished and another one started, and Dean Wolcott bent
over her, suddenly. “Will you dance with me, Ginger?”
“I don’t think--I shall have to go back to Aunt Fan--” she began
uncertainly.
“Please,” he said, very low, and she got to her feet. The music was a
slow, throbbing thing, built on an old slave melody; there was longing
in it, and recklessness, and a little recurrent strain of poignant
pathos. They danced twice the length of the Lodge without speaking.
Then, without warning, when they were near the door, his arms tightened
about her. “Come out,” he said, imperatively. “Come down to the creek;
I must talk to you. Will you come, Ginger? You must come.” Still
dancing, her feet were guided almost over the threshold, and Dean
thrust out his arm to open the screen door.
But he stood still, staring, and his other arm fell away from her, for
a horseman was galloping furiously up the inviolate Main Street of the
tidy camp. “It’s the Scout!”
“Fire!” shouted Elmer Bunty, loping the Mabel horse to the very door
of the Lodge and making a spectacular stop. “Forest fire, Ranger!”
“Where?”
Some one had turned off the phonograph and the dancers were crowding
out and the card players were pushing back their chairs.
“Lost Valley, coming this way with a high wind and coming fast!” This
was the moment Elmer Bunty had been living for; there were thirty
people looking at him and listening to him now, and Ginger saw with a
little clutch at her heart that Dean Wolcott was not unmindful of it.
“Good work, Scout!” he said roundly. “Doctor, my Scout brings big news
and bad news--fire in Lost Valley, coming this way with a high wind.”
It was the new Ranger’s first fire, every one knew.
“And coming _fast_!” said Elmer Bunty, importantly.
* * * * *
Gayety fell from the camp, slipping from its shoulders like a bright
cape. The doctor, veteran fire fighter himself, mobilized his forces to
join the regulars of the vicinity--seasoned soldiers at Pfeiffer’s,
at Post’s; it was said that Mateo Golinda moved on the creeping flames
like a wave rolling up from the sea. The women put away their pretty
needlework and made stacks of hearty sandwiches and gallons of coffee,
and the boys and Ginger rode up to the first fire line and carried them
to the men.
Ginger’s Aunt Fan thought the most sensible thing for them to do was
to take the stage back to Monterey--agony as the trip would be for
her--but she found her niece adamant. “I can help the doctor,” she
said. “I’m not going to leave, Aunt Fan.”
She knew that the doctor had a double anxiety; beside and beyond the
red terror that menaced his camp and the country he loved, there was
his concern for Dean Wolcott. He had stood sponsor for him to these
people, persuading their own tried Ranger to go away on leave and give
his friend a chance, and now they were waiting and watching to see him
make good.
“Doctor,” said Ginger to him on the third day, riding up to meet him
with supplies, “I wish you would let me help you! I know how--I’ve
fought fire at home a dozen times with Aleck and Estrada.”
“You are helping me, Ginger, bringing up our food, looking after things
at camp-- It’s a great comfort for me to know that you are in charge
there.”
“But I’m not really needed there, doctor. In case of danger they could
all walk over to Pfeiffer’s--even Aunt Fan”--she smiled a little--“and
be taken in to Monterey. And I am needed here; you’re terribly
short-handed.”
“I know we are, just now, Ginger, but Dean has telephoned in to King
City to the Chief; he’ll be coming in to-morrow himself, with twenty
men, bringing their own supplies.”
“Yes, but to-day, and to-night?”
“We’ll manage; we’ll manage.” His eyes were bloodshot and his face was
lined with weariness and grimed with smoke, but he pulsed with energy.
He was dedicating himself gladly to the wild land which had been, quite
literally, his recreation; it had given him endless joy and content,
and now he was fighting in its service.
“Please let me stay?” Ginger put a hand on his arm. “I thought you
might; that’s why I came alone to-day, without the boys, and I left
word for them not to be anxious at camp if I didn’t come back--that I’d
be with you.”
He shook his head. “I couldn’t think of it, Ginger. Miss Fanny would
never forgive me; I expect she never will, as it is! No, you must go
back to camp.”
Ginger swung into the saddle. She flushed, but her gaze was very
steady. “Doctor, how is Dean doing? Are you satisfied?”
The taut lines of his face loosened and his tired eyes warmed. “Ginger,
that boy’s doing splendidly--remarkably! I’m no end pleased with him.
Fighting like an old campaigner, but he’s trying to swing too much
alone. He’s handling all the Marble Peak slope by himself--just the
youngster with him. Insisted on it, but it’s too much; he has all the
theory, but he hasn’t had the practice. Still, he’s doing great work,
Ginger, great work! If I had a man to spare, I’d send him over to him,
but we’re short ourselves, and we’ve got a nasty stretch. Well, I must
be getting back to work, and you must be getting back to camp. Tell the
folks not to worry--we’re getting it under.”
“I wish you’d let me stay,” said the girl, mutinously, but she turned
her horse and started down, and waved back at him just before she
rounded the bend. He was a gallant figure as he stood there, swinging
his old wide hat, fighting guardian of the hills and the trees he loved.
Ginger rode very slowly down the trail, and when she came to the
forks she drew rein. The right-hand trail led down to camp, and the
other wound back by a rising and circuitous route to the Marble Peak
territory. The air was heavily sultry and there was a brooding and
ominous feeling in it; flakes of ashes and bits of charred leaves
and now and then a spark fell to the ground; the sky was obscured
by a low-hanging curtain of smoke. There was a sense of menace and
foreboding, of the relentless advance of an implacable foe.
She sat there for a long moment and she was so still that a gray
squirrel, anxiously sniffing the sinister breeze, came close to her
before he was aware of her presence. She took swift account of her
equipment--two large canteens freshly filled with water, a compact
little case of sandwiches, a sharp hatchet in its leather case, three
sacks tied to the back of her saddle. Then, with her Scotch chin thrust
a little forward and her Spanish mouth smiling and tender, she turned
her horse and set swiftly forth on the red trail that led to Marble
Peak.