THE TRAIL TO MOSQUITO
ANDY JEROME was up early the following morning, even before Shirttail
Henry was astir. He went to the creek, broke a thin sheet of ice, and
washed his hands and face. Then, quite proud of his achievement, he
stepped briskly back to camp to start a fire, only to find that newly
laid kindling had been lighted while he was at his toilet.
Now came Mary Temple, her lean arms encircling a big load of Henry’s
firewood, proving that she herself was still supreme as the early riser
of the party.
“Well, Mary, you’re a wonder!” Andy praised her. “I thought that for
once I’d beaten you to it. Good morning.”
“Get another armload of wood,” said Mary. “Good morning.”
Andy returned from the wood pile and let his burden clatter on the
ground.
“What’s for breakfast?”
“Beans.”
“Good! Beans are the stuff in camp, all right.”
“They’re the stuff in the Palace Hotel,” said Mary. “Beans conquered
the West. They won the war. They’re--”
“Oh, don’t tell me about the marvellous bean,” Andy cut in. “I’ve
always been a bean hound. And I’ll bet you can cook ’em, too. You’re a
wonderful cook, Mary, do you know it?”
“I’ve hinted as much to myself a couple of times,” Mary sniffed. “But
I’m nothing compared with my brother Ed.” Mary was diligently searching
in a pack-bag as she talked.
“That so?”
“Yes, Ed was a master cook--a chef. He worked for one of the big
bean-canning factories back East until they fired him.”
“That was too bad,” Andy sympathized. “What was the difficulty?--if I’m
not too inquisitive.”
“Ed killed a woman,” Mary explained, still fumbling in the bag.
Andy said nothing; the topic of their conversation seemed to be growing
a little delicate.
“Killed a woman he’d never seen,” Mary added.
“Mary Temple, are you trying to kid me?” asked Andy warily.
“To this day we don’t know her name,” Mary went on, still searching.
“But we know Ed killed her.”
“Spring it--I’ll bite. How’d he kill her?”
“He put two bites of pork in a can of pork and beans instead of one,”
said Mary. “And I know the woman that opened that can dropped dead.
Anyway, they fired Ed for wasting the company’s profits.”
She stood erect with a can-opener in one hand and a large can labelled
Pork and Beans in the other, and without a smile began the conflict
between them. “Better wake the doctor,” she advised. “The wonderful
cook will have breakfast ready in no time this morning. She and you
and the doctor can draw straws for the pork--I don’t care for it. Here
comes the good ship Marblehead.”
Andy chuckled. He liked this droll, gaunt Mary Temple who was so
devoted to the girl he loved. “And do you never expect to find more
than one bite of pork in a can of pork and beans?” he asked.
“I’d as soon think of finding the Valley of Arcana,” Mary replied.
With a brief “Good mornin’, ma’am” Shirttail Henry passed Mary Temple
at the campfire and went to his tumble-down stable. When Andy had
awakened Dr. Shonto and had received a feeble response to his call from
Charmian, he returned to Mary, to find Henry there with a slim sledge
that he had found among his belongings.
“Thought she might come in handy,” he grinned. “If we c’n pack her
on one o’ th’ burros, she’ll carry all our truck when we leave the
critters and keep on afoot. Can’t use her, though, lessen it snows. But
I thought we’d better take her along.”
“Good idea,” said Andy lightly, and turned to Mary, who was pointing to
a small die of fat pork, a tiny monument in the pan of sizzling beans.
“I found it,” she announced grimly.
A great deal of time was consumed after breakfast in packing the twelve
burros, for among the party only Shirttail Henry was an expert at the
art. He was careful in his preparations, and when all was ready for the
start nobody could think of anything necessary that he had omitted
from the pack. He hazed the little animals into the trail and followed
them on foot, the remainder of the party bringing up the rear on their
saddle horses.
The morning was crisp, the air tingling with frost. The thud of the
animals’ hoofs came clear and distinct, for the ground was frozen and
an uncanny hush dwelt in the heavy forest through which they passed.
The saddle horses frisked about, shying at this and that familiar
object, and their nostrils shot forth white steam, even as the nostrils
of fearsome dragons shoot forth smoke and fire and brimstone. Squirrels
scurried rattlingly over dead leaves from their interrupted breakfasts,
to twitch their grey plumes and wrinkle their muzzles at the travellers
from the security of lofty branches.
“Great morning to start our adventure,” commented Andy Jerome, as they
came upon a wide stretch of trail and he urged his horse to the side of
Charmian’s.
“Absolutely perfect,” Charmian agreed. “My, but my feet are cold!
Andy, I wonder if we _are_ absolute idiots, after all. Sometimes I
think that, if Doctor Shonto weren’t with us to lend the expedition an
air of dignity and--well, consequence--I’d lose my nerve. You and I
are mere kids, and don’t really know whether we have any business to
undertake this thing or not. But Doctor Shonto is a man of brains and
experience--a somebody--and it bolsters up my courage a lot to know
that he is with us and seems to approve. Were you surprised at his
coming along?”
“Yes,” said Andy shortly.
“I wonder why he did come,” mused the girl.
“That’s a simple question to answer,” Andy told her with boyish
sulkiness. “He came because of you.”
She looked at him quickly, then lowered her eyes. Charmian knew
perfectly well that Andy Jerome was in love with her, and this
knowledge did not distress her in the least. She did not know whether
or not she was in love with Andy, but she knew that she liked to
have his admiring eyes upon her and to note the little caress in his
tones when he spoke to her in lowered accents. She knew now that
Andy bitterly resented his friend’s interest in her. But, of course,
womanlike, she pretended innocence.
“Do you think the doctor is interested in me?” she asked.
“Humph!”
“Why?--do you suppose?”
“Heavens and earth, Charmian! Wouldn’t any he-man be interested in a
woman like you?”
Charmian took a bold step. She was no unsophisticated débutante, this
young widow from Alaska. The relations between the sexes were no closed
book to her. She was modernly ready and willing to discuss the tender
passion. It was an integral part of life, and no false modesty caused
her to shrink from facing any of the realities. Furthermore, she was
a woman, young and pretty and desirable, and she liked to utilize her
world-old heritage of making all men admire her.
“You don’t for a moment imagine that Doctor Shonto is in love with me,
do you?” she asked, round-eyed.
“Humph! Of course he is. And you know it as well as I do, Charmian.”
She threw back her head and laughed, while Andy watched her frosty
breath and suffered silently.
“How ridiculous!” she exclaimed. “To think that a man of the calibre of
Doctor Inman Shonto could consider me in such a light as that. Andy,
you’re a scream!”
“Then why _is_ he with us?”--still gloomily.
“That’s just what I’m trying to find out. But your answer is
silly--stupid, Andy. But I suppose the novelty of the thing appeals to
him, as it does to you and me. After all, the doctor is not so old. I
find him quite naïve and boyish at times. Only thirty-four. Why, a man
shouldn’t begin to think of being serious until he has passed fifty.
Henry Ford says, even, that he ought not to begin to accumulate money
until he’s over forty. That from probably the richest man in the world!
And the doctor doesn’t look a day over twenty-five, does he?”
“I’ve never given his age much thought,” said Andy with impolite
abruptness.
“Don’t you feel well this morning, Andy? You seem so sort of grouchy.”
“I’m feeling fine,” said Andy in the same stiff tones.
There was a smile of vast complacency on Charmian’s lips as she looked
away from him off through the towering pines. She wondered if she
loved this boy, who carried his heart so openly on his coatsleeve. He
certainly was attractive in his handsome young manhood. He would make
an ardent lover. But what else, she wondered? He seemed to do little
or no thinking for himself. He just took life lightly and let things
slide, never worrying, never striving for anything, never revealing any
depth of soul in any of his varied moods. His family was well off, and
he did not have to work. Neither did she have to work, for that matter;
but she did work. She worked her mind. She pondered over many things.
She forced herself into deep reveries, reveries which were not consumed
with egotism. She thought of life and the problems of humanity, and
always she strove to think constructively. And thinking is the hardest
work that one can do.
Andy loved her--or thought he did. Quite well was she aware of that.
And it pleased her. She wanted fine young men to love her. She could
not help it. She--_they_--are born that way. Would men have it
otherwise?
But Dr. Shonto! The radiance with which the morning had endued her
transparent skin was heightened by the glowing thought. If she had
swayed Shonto, either by her physical or her mental or her plain
womanly charms, or all these combined (herself, in short), she had
made a conquest to be proud of. Of course to marry him was out of the
question entirely. The gulf of years was between them. But it was
warmly satisfactory for her to realize that a man of his importance
had entered into her novel little game of make-believe discovery, and
that he had not decided to come until she had assured him that she was
serious in her desire to undertake the trip. And she was in nowise
depressed over the thought that there was the remote possibility of
her being in the wilds, on the great, romantic adventure of which she
had dreamed so many times, with two seemly men who both were in love
with her. Born romancer that she was, Charmian Reemy could not have
pictured, in her most fantastic dreams, a situation more likely to add
a wondrous and thrilling page to a life that she had long ago decided
to make as novel as she could.
On up the trail the party forged, the labouring burros ahead, nibbling
at this and that prospective edible along the way. The sun climbed
high and sucked the frost from the stiff, chilled leaves. A clear sky
overhung the mountains, and all was still. A stone clattering into
a deep cañon made much ado, for the reverberations of its fall came
hollowly to the listeners’ ears. The bark of a squirrel as he revelled
in the doubtful warmth of the autumn sun was heard for miles, for the
mountains were steeped in that solemn hush that almost seems to sigh
for another summer that has gone, a hush that bespeaks resignment to
the dead days of winter yet to come.
And so to Mosquito they came, and camped there in the middle of a half
glad, half melancholy afternoon that dreamed its short hours away in
golden silence.