final determination there was no more uncertainty or hesitation about
Armstrong's course. In another moment he was standing in the private
room of his friend. The two men were not alone there. Stephen Maitland
sat in a low chair before another window removed from the desk somewhat,
staring out at the range. The old man was huddled down in his seat,
every line of his figure spoke of grief and despair. Of all the places
in Denver he liked best his brother's office fronting the rampart of the
mountains, and hour after hour he sat there quietly looking at the
summits, sometimes softly shrouded in white, sometimes swept bare by the
fierce winter gales that blew across them, sometimes shining and
sparkling so that the eye could scarce sustain their reflection of the
dazzling sun of Colorado; and at other times seen dimly through mists of
whirling snow.
Oh, yes, the mountains challenged him also to the other side of the
range. His heart yearned for his child, but he was too old to make the
attempt. He could only sit and pray and wait with such faint and fading
hope as he could still cherish until the break up of the spring came.
For the rest he troubled nobody; nobody noticed him, nobody marked him,
nobody minded him. Robert Maitland transacted his business a little more
softly, a little more gently, that was all. Yet the presence of his
brother was a living grief and a living reproach to him. Although he was
quite blameless he blamed himself. He did not know how much he had grown
to love his niece until he had lost her. His conscience accused him
hourly, and yet he knew not where he was at fault or how he could have
done differently. It was a helpless and hopeless situation. To him,
therefore, entered Armstrong.
"Maitland," he began, "I can't stand it any longer, I'm going into the
mountains."
"You are mad!"
"I can't help it. I can't sit here and face them, damn them, and remain
quiet."
"You will never come out alive."
"Oh, yes I will, but if I don't I swear to God I don't care."
Old Stephen Maitland rose unsteadily to his feet and gripped the back of
his chair.
"Did I hear aright, sir?" he asked with all the polished and graceful
courtesy of birth and breeding which never deserted him in any emergency
whatsoever. "Do you say--"
"I said I was going into the mountains to search for her."
"It is madness," urged Robert Maitland.
But the old man did not hear him.
"Thank God!" he exclaimed with deep feeling. "I have sat here day after
day and watched those mighty hills, and I have said to myself that if I
had youth and strength as I have love, I would not wait."
"You are right," returned Armstrong, equally moved, and indeed it would
have been hard to have heard and seen that father unresponsively, "and I
am not going to wait either."
"I understand your feeling, Jim, and yours too, Steve," began Robert
Maitland, arguing against his own emotions, "but even if she escaped the
flood, she must be dead by this time."
"You needn't go over the old arguments, Bob. I'm going into the
mountains and I'm going now. No," he continued swiftly, as the other
opened his mouth to interpose further objections, "you needn't say
another word. I'm a free agent and I'm old enough to decide what I can
do. There is no argument, there is no force, there is no appeal, there
is nothing that will restrain me. I can't sit here and eat my heart out
when she may be there."
"But it's impossible!"
"It isn't impossible. How do I know that there may not have been
somebody in the mountains, she may have wandered to some settlement,
some hunter's cabin, some prospector's hut."
"But we were there for weeks and saw nothing, no evidence of humanity."
"I don't care. The mountains are filled with secret nooks you could pass
by within a stone's throw and never see into, she may be in one of them.
I suppose she is dead and it's all foolish, this hope, but I'll never
believe it until I have examined every square rod within a radius of
fifty miles from your camp. I'll take the long chance, the longest
even."
"Well, that's all right," said Robert Maitland. "Of course I intend to
do that as soon as the spring opens, but what's the use of trying to do
it now?"
"It's use to me. I'll either go mad here in Denver, or I must go to seek
for her there."
"But you will never come back if you once get in those mountains alone."
"I don't care whether I do or not. It's no use, old man, I am going and
that's all there is about it."
Robert Maitland knew men, he recognized finality when he heard it or
when he saw it and it was quite evident that he was in the presence of
it then. It was of no use for him or anyone to say more.
"Very well," he said, "I honor you for your feeling even if I don't
think much of your common sense."
"Damn common sense," cried Armstrong triumphantly, "it's love that moves
me now."
At that moment there was a tap on the door. A clerk from an outer office
bidden to enter announced that old Kirkby was in the ante-room.
"Bring him in," directed Maitland, eager to welcome him.
He fancied that the new comer would undoubtedly assist him in dissuading
Armstrong from his foolhardy, useless enterprise.
"Mornin', old man," drawled Kirkby.
"Howdy, Armstrong. My respects to you, sir," he said, sinking his voice
a little as he bowed respectfully toward Mr. Stephen Maitland, a very
sympathetic look in the old frontiersman's eyes at the sight of the
bereaved father.
"Kirkby, you've come in the very nick of time," at once began Robert
Maitland.
"Allus glad to be Johnny-on-the-spot," smiled the older man.
"Armstrong here," continued the other intent upon his purpose, "says he
can't wait until the spring and the snows melt, he is going into the
mountains now to look for Enid."
Kirkby did not love Armstrong, he did not care for him a little bit, but
there was something in the bold hardihood of the man, something in the
way which he met the reckless challenge of the mountains that the old
man and all the others felt that moved the inmost soul of the hardy
frontiersman. He threw an approving glance at him.
"I tell him that it is absurd, impossible; that he risks his life for
nothing, and I want you to tell him the same thing. You know more about
the mountains than either of us."
"Mr. Kirkby," quavered Stephen Maitland, "allow me. I don't want to
influence you against your better judgment, but if you could sit here as
I have done and think that maybe she is there and perhaps alive still,
and in need, you would not say a word to deter him."
"Why, Steve," expostulated Robert Maitland, "surely you know I would
risk anything for Enid; somehow it seems as if I were being put in the
selfish position by my opposition."
"No, no," said his brother, "it isn't that. You have your wife and
children, but this young man--"
"Well, what do you say, Kirkby? Not that it makes any difference to me
what anybody says. Come, we are wasting time," interposed Armstrong,
who, now that he had made up his mind, was anxious to be off.
"Jim Armstrong," answered Kirkby decidedly, "I never thought much of you
in the past, an' I think sence you've put out this last projick of yourn
that I'm entitled to call you a damn fool, w'ich you are, an' I'm
another, for I'm goin' into the mountains with you."
"Oh, thank God!" cried Stephen Maitland fervently.
"I know you don't like me," answered Armstrong; "that's neither here nor
there. Perhaps you have cause to dislike me, perhaps you have not; I
don't like you any too well myself; but there is no man on earth I'd
rather have go with me on a quest of this kind than you, and there's my
hand on it."
Kirkby shook it vigorously.
"This ain't committin' myself," he said cautiously. "So far's I'm
concerned you ain't good enough for Miss Maitland, but I admires your
spirit, Armstrong, an' I'm goin' with you. Tain't no good, twon't
produce nothin', most likely we'll never come back agin; but jest the
same I'm goin' along; nobody's goin' to show me the trail; my nerve and
grit w'en it comes to helpin' a young feemale like that girl is as good
as anybody's I guess. You're her father," he drawled on, turning to
Stephen Maitland, "an' I ain't no kin to her, but by gosh, I believe I
can understand better than anyone else yere what you are feelin'."
"Kirkby," said Robert Maitland, smiling at the other two, "you have gone
clean back on me. I thought you had more sense. But somehow I guess it's
contagious, for I am going along with you two myself."
"And I, cannot I accompany you?" pleaded Stephen Maitland, eagerly
drawing near to the other three.
"Not much," said old Kirkby promptly. "You ain't got the stren'th, ol'
man, you don't know them mountains, nuther; you'd be helpless on a pair
of snow shoes, there ain't anything you could do, you'd jest be a drag
on us. Without sayin' anything about myself, w'ich I'm too modest for
that, there ain't three better men in Colorado to tackle this job than
Jim Armstrong an' Bob Maitland an'--well, as I said, I won't mention no
other names."
"God bless you all, gentlemen," faltered Stephen Maitland. "I think
perhaps I may have been wrong, a little prejudiced against the west, you
are men that would do honor to any family, to any society in
Philadelphia or anywhere else."
"Lord love ye," drawled Kirkby, his eyes twinkling, "there ain't no
three men on the Atlantic seaboard that kin match up with two of us
yere, to say nothin' of the third."
"Well," said Robert Maitland, "the thing now is to decide on what's to
be done."
"My plan," said Armstrong, "is to go to the old camp."
"Yep," said Kirkby, "that's a good point of deeparture, as my seafarin'
father down Cape Cod way used to say, an' wot's next."
"I am going up the canyon instead of down," said the man, with a flash of
inspiration.
"That ain't no bad idea nuther," assented the old man; "we looked the
ground over pretty thoroughly down the canyon, mebbe we can find
something up it."
"And what do you propose to take with you?" asked Maitland.
"What we can carry on the backs of men. We will make a camp somewhere
about where you did. We can get enough husky men up at Morrison who will
pack in what we want and with that as a basis we will explore the upper
reaches of the range."
"And when do we start?"
"There is a train for Morrison in two hours," answered Armstrong. "We
can get what we want in the way of sleeping bags and equipment between
now and then if we hurry about it."
"Ef we are goin' to do it, we might as well git a move on us," assented
Kirkby, making ready to go.
"Right," answered Robert Maitland grimly. "When three men set out to
make fools of themselves the sooner they get at it and get over with it
the better. I've got some business matters to settle, you two get what's
needed and I'll bear my share."
A week later a little band of men on snow shoes, wrapped in furs to
their eyes, every one heavily burdened with a pack, staggered into the
clearing where once had been pitched the Maitland camp. The place was
covered with snow of course, but on a shelf of rock half way up the
hogback, they found a comparatively level clearing and there, all
working like beavers, they built a rude hut which they covered with
canvas and then with tightly packed snow and which would keep the three
who remained from freezing to death. Fortunately they were favored by a
brief period of pleasant weather and a few days served to make a
sufficiently habitable camp.
Maitland, Kirkby and Armstrong worked with the rest. There was no
thought of search at first. Their lives depended upon the erection of a
suitable shelter and it was not until the helpers, leaving their burdens
behind them, had departed that the three men even considered what was to
be done next.
"We must begin a systematic search to-morrow," said Armstrong decisively
as the three men sat around the cheerful fire in the hut.
"Yes," assented Maitland. "Shall we go together, or separately?"
"Separately, of course. We are all hardy and experienced men, nothing is
apt to happen to us, we will meet here every night and plan the next
day's work. What do you say, Kirkby?"
The old man had been quietly smoking while the others talked. He smiled
at them in a way which aroused their curiosity and made them feel that
he had news for them.
"While you was puttin' the finishin' touches on this yere camp, I come
acrost a heap o' stuns, that somehow the wind had swept bare. There was
a big drift in front of it w'ich kep' us from seein' it afore; it was
built up in the open w'ere there want no trees, an' in our lumberin'
operations we want lookin' that-a-way. I came acrost a bottle by chance
an'--"
"Well, for God's sake, old man," cried Armstrong impatiently, "what did
you find in it, anything?"
"This," answered Kirkby, carefully producing a folded scrap of paper
from his leather vest.
Armstrong fell on it ravenously, and as Maitland bent over him they both
read these words by the fire light.
"_Miss Enid Maitland, whose foot is so badly crushed as to prevent
her traveling, is safe in a cabin at the head of this canyon. I put
this notice here to reassure any who may be seeking her as to her
welfare. Follow the stream up to its source._"
_Wm. Berkeley Newbold._
"Thank God!" exclaimed Robert Maitland.
"You called me a damn fool, Kirkby," said Armstrong, his eyes gleaming.
"What do you think of it now?"
"It's the damn fool, I find," said Kirkby sapiently, "that gener'ly gits
there. Providence seems to be a-watchin' over 'em."
"You said you chanced on this paper, Jack," continued Maitland, "it
looks to me like the deliberate intention of Almighty God."
"I reckon so," answered the other simply. "You see He's got to look
after all the damn fools on earth to keep 'em from doin' too much damage
to theirselves an' to others in this yere crooked trail of a world."
"Let us start now," urged Armstrong.
"Tain't possible," said the old man, taking another puff at his pipe,
and only a glistening of the eye betrayed the joy that he felt;
otherwise his phlegmatic calm was unbroken, his demeanor just as
undisturbed as it always was. "We'd jest throw away our lives a
wanderin' round these yere mountains in the dark, we've got to have
light an' clear weather. Ef it should be snowin' in the mornin' we'd
have to wait until it cleared."
"I won't wait a minute," cried Armstrong. "At daybreak, weather or no
weather, I start."
"What's your hurry, Jim?" continued Kirkby calmly. "The gal's safe, one
day more or less ain't goin' to make no difference."
"She's with another man," answered Armstrong quickly.
"Do you know this Newbold?" asked Maitland, looking at the note again.
"No, not personally, but I have heard of him."
"I know him," answered Kirkby quickly, "an' you've seed him too, Bob;
he's the fellow that shot his wife, that married Louise Rosser."
"That man!"
"The very same."
"You say you never saw him, Jim?" asked Maitland.
"I repeat I never met him," said Armstrong, flushing suddenly, "but I
knew his wife."
"Yes, you did that--" drawled the old mountaineer.
"What do you mean?" flashed Armstrong.
"I mean that you knowed her, that's all," answered the old man with an
innocent air that was almost childlike.
When the others woke up in the morning Armstrong's sleeping bag was
empty. Kirkby crawled out of his own warm nest, opened the door and
peered out into the storm.
"Well," he said, "I guess the damn fool has beat God this time; it don't
look to me as if even He could save him now."
"But we must go after him at once," urged Maitland.
"See for yourself," answered the old man, throwing wider the door.
"We've got to wait 'til this wind dies down unless we give the Almighty
the job o' lookin' after three instid o' one."
CHAPTER XXII
THE CONVERGING TRAILS
Whatever the feelings of the others, Armstrong found himself unable to
sleep that night. It seemed to him that fate was about to play him the
meanest and most fantastic of tricks. Many times before in his crowded
life he had loved other women, or so he characterized his feelings, but
his passion for Louise Rosser Newbold had been in a class by itself
until he had met Enid Maitland. Between the two there had been many
women, but these two were the high points, the rest was lowland.
Once before, therefore, this Newbold had cut in ahead of him and had won
the woman he loved. Armstrong had cherished a hard grudge against him
for a long time. He had not been of those who had formed the rescue
party led by old Kirkby and Maitland which had buried the poor woman on
the great butte in the deep canyon. Before he got back to the camp the
whole affair was over and Newbold had departed. Luckily for him,
Armstrong had always thought, for he had been so mad with grief and rage
and jealousy that if he had come across him helpless or not he would
have killed him out of hand.
Armstrong had soon enough forgotten Louise Rosser, but he had not
forgotten Newbold. All his ancient animosity had flamed into instant
life again, at the sight of his name last night. The inveteracy of his
hatred had been in no way abated by the lapse of time it seemed.
Everybody in the mining camp had supposed that Newbold had wandered off
and perished in the mountains, else Armstrong might have pursued him and
hunted him down. The sight of his name on that piece of paper was
outward and visible evidence that he still lived. It had almost the
shock of a resurrection, and a resurrection to hatred rather than to
love. If Newbold had been alone in the world, if Armstrong had chanced
upon him in the solitude, he would have hated him just as he did; but
when he thought that his ancient enemy was with the woman he now loved,
with a growing intensity, beside which his former resentment seemed weak
and feeble, he hated him yet the more.
He could not tell when the notice, which he had examined carefully, was
written; there was no date upon it, but he could come to only one
conclusion. Newbold must have found Enid Maitland alone in the mountains
very shortly after her departure and he had had her with him in his
cabin alone for at least a month. Armstrong gritted his teeth at the
thought. He did not undervalue the personality of Newbold, he had never
happened to see him, but he had heard enough about him to understand his
qualities as a man. The tie that bound Armstrong to Enid Maitland was a
strong one, but the tie by which he held her to him, if indeed he held
her at all, was very tenuous and easily broken; perhaps it was broken
already, and so he hated him still more and more.
Indeed his animosity was so great and growing that for the moment he
took no joy in the assurance of the girl's safety, yet he was not
altogether an unfair man and in calmer moments he thanked God in his own
rough way that the woman he loved was alive and well, or had been when
the note was written. He rejoiced that she had not been swept away with
the flood or that she had not been lost in the mountains and forced to
wander on, finally to starve and freeze and die. In one moment her
nearness caused his heart to throb with joyful anticipation. The
certainty that at the first flush of day he would seek her again sent
the warm blood to his cheeks. But these thoughts would be succeeded by
the knowledge that she was with his enemy. Was this man to rob him of
the latest love as he had robbed him of the first? Perhaps the hardest
task that was ever laid upon Armstrong was to lie quietly in his
sleeping bag and wait until the morning.
So soon as the first indication of dawn showed through the cracks of the
door, he slipped quietly out of his sleeping bag and without disturbing
the others drew on his boots, put on his heavy fur coat and cap and
gloves, slung his Winchester and his snow shoes over his shoulder and
without stopping for a bite to eat softly opened the door, stepped out
and closed it after him. It was quite dark in the bottom of the canyon,
although a few pale gleams overhead indicated the near approach of day.
It was quite still, too. There were clouds on the mountain top heavy
with threat of wind and snow.
The way was not difficult, the direction of it that is. Nor was the
going very difficult at first; the snow was frozen and the crust was
strong enough to bear him. He did not need his snow shoes and indeed
would have had little chance to use them in the narrow broken rocky
pass. He had slipped away from the others because he wanted to be the
first to see the man and the woman. He did not want any witness to that
meeting. They would have to come on later of course, but he wanted an
hour or two in private with Enid and Newbold without any interruption.
His conscience was not clear. Nor could he settle upon a course of
action.
How much Newbold knew of his former attempt to win away his wife, how
much of what he knew he had told Enid Maitland, Armstrong could not
surmise. Putting himself into Newbold's place and imagining that the
engineer had possessed entire information, he decided that he must have
told everything to Enid Maitland so soon as he had found out the quasi
relation between her and Armstrong. And Armstrong did not believe the
woman he loved could be in anybody's presence a month without telling
something about him. Still it was possible that Newbold knew nothing and
that he told nothing therefore.
The situation was paralyzing to a man of Armstrong's decided, determined
temperament. He could not decide upon the line of conduct he should
pursue. His course in this, the most critical emergency he had ever
faced, must be determined by circumstances of which he felt with savage
resentment he was in some measure the sport. He would have to leave to
chance what ought to be subject to his will. Of only one thing was he
sure--he would stop at nothing, murder, lying, nothing to win that
woman, and to settle his score with that man.
There was really only one thing he could do and that was to press on up
the canyon. He had no idea how far it might be or how long a journey he
would have to make before he reached that shelf on the high hill where
stood that hut in which she dwelt. As the crow flies it could not be a
great distance, but the canyon zigzagged through the mountains with as
many curves and angles as a lightning flash. He plodded on therefore
with furious haste, recklessly speeding over places where a misstep in
the snow or a slip on the icy rocks would have meant death or disaster
to him.
He had gone about an hour, and had perhaps made four miles from the
camp, when the storm burst upon him. It was now broad day and the sky
was filled with clouds and the air with driving snow. The wind whistled
down the canyon with terrific force, it was with difficulty that he made
any headway at all against it. It was a local storm; if he could have
looked through the snow he would have discovered calmness on the top of
the peaks. It was one of those sudden squalls of wind and snow which
rage with terrific force while they last but whose range was limited and
whose duration would be as short as it was violent.
A less determined man than he would have bowed to the inevitable and
sought some shelter behind a rock until the fury of the tempest was
spent, but there was no storm that blew that could stop this man so long
as he had strength to drive against it. So he bent his head to the
fierce blast and struggled on. There was something titantic and
magnificent about the iron determination and persistence of Armstrong.
The two most powerful passions which move humanity were at his service;
love led him and hate drove him. And the two were so intermingled that
it was difficult to say which predominated, now one and now the other.
The resultant of the two forces however was an onward move that would
not be denied.
His fur coat was soon covered with snow and ice, the sharp needles of
the storm cut his face wherever it was exposed. The wind forced its way
through his garments and chilled him to the bone. He had eaten nothing
since the night before and his vitality was not at its flood, but he
pressed onward and upward and there was something grand in his
indomitable progress. _Excelsior!_
Back in the hut Kirkby and Maitland sat around the fire waiting most
impatiently for the wind to blow itself out and for that snow to stop
falling through which Armstrong struggled forward. As he followed the
windings of the canyon, not daring to ascend to the summit of either
wall and seek short cuts across the range, he was sensible that he was
constantly rising. There were many indications to his experienced mind;
the decrease in the height of the surrounding pines, the increasing
rarity of the icy air, the growing difficulty in breathing under the
sustained exertion he was making, the quick throbbing of his accelerated
heart, all told him he was approaching his journey's end.
He judged that he must now be drawing near the source of the stream, and
that he would presently come upon the shelter. He had no means of
ascertaining the time, he would not have dared to unbutton his coat to
glance at his watch, and it is difficult to measure the flying minutes
in such scenes as those through which he passed, but he thought he must
have gone at least seven miles in perhaps three hours, which he fancied
had elapsed, his progress in the last two having been frightfully slow.
Every foot of advance he had to fight for.
Suddenly, after a quick turn in the canyon, a passage through a narrow
entrance between lofty cliffs, and he found himself in a pocket or a
circular amphitheater which he could see was closed on the further side.
The bottom of this enclosure or valley was covered with pines, now
drooping under tremendous burdens of snow. In the midst of the pines a
lakelet was frozen solid, the ice was covered with the same dazzling
carpet of white.
He could have seen nothing of this had not the sudden storm now stopped
as precipitately almost as it had begun. Indeed, accustomed to the
grayness of the snowfall, his eyes were fairly dazzled by the bright
light of the sun, now quite high over the range, which struck him full
in the face.
He stopped, panting, exhausted, and leaned against the rocky wall of the
canyon's mouth which, here rose sheer over his head. This certainly was
the end of the trail, the lake was the source of the frozen rivulet
along whose rocky and torn banks he had tramped since dawn. Here if
anywhere he would find the object of his quest.
Refreshed by the brief pause and encouraged by the sudden stilling of
the storm, he stepped out of the canyon and ascended a little knoll
whence he had a full view of the pocket over the tops of the pines.
Shading his eyes from the light with his hand as best he could, he
slowly swept the circumference with his eager glance, seeing nothing
until his eye fell upon a huge broken trail of rocks projecting from the
snow, indicating the ascent to a broad bare shelf of the mountains
across the lake to the right. Following this up he saw a huge block of
snow which suggested dimly the outlines of a hut!
Was that the place? Was she there? He stared fascinated and as he did so
a thin curl of smoke rose above the snow heap and wavered up in the cold
quiet air! That was a human habitation then, it could be none other than
the hut referred to in the note. Enid Maitland must be there, and
Newbold!
The lake lay directly in front of him beyond the trees at the foot of
the knoll and between him and the slope that led up to the hut. If it
had been summer, he would have been compelled to follow the water's edge
to the right or to the left, both journeys would have led over difficult
trails with little to choose between them, but the lake was now frozen
hard and covered with snow. He had no doubt that the snow would bear
him, but to make sure he drew his snow shoes from his shoulder, slipped
his feet in the straps, and sped straight on through the trees and then
across the lake like an arrow from a bow.
In five minutes he was at the foot of the giant stairs. Kicking off his
snow shoes he scrambled up the broken way, easily finding in the snow a
trail which had evidently been passed and repassed daily. In a few
moments he was at the top of the shelf. A hard trampled path ran
between high walls of snow to a door!
Behind that door what would he find? Just what he brought to it, love
and hate he fancied. We usually find on the other side of doors no more
and no less than we bring to our own sides. But whatever it might be,
there was no hesitation in Armstrong's course. He ran toward it, laid
his hand on the latch and opened it.
What creatures of habit we are! Early in that same morning, after one
vain attempt again to influence the woman who was now the deciding and
determining factor and who seemed to be taking the man's place, Newbold,
ready for his journey, had torn himself away from her presence and had
plunged down the giant stair. He had done everything that mortal man
could do for her comfort; wood enough to last her for two weeks had been
taken from the cave and piled in the kitchen and elsewhere so as to be
easily accessible to her, the stores she already had the run of and he
had fitted a stout bar to the outer door which would render it
impregnable to any attack that might be made against it, although he saw
no quarter from which any assault impended.
Enid had recovered not only her strength but a good deal of her nerve.
That she loved this man and that he loved her had given her courage.
She would be fearfully lonely of course, but not so much afraid as
before. The month of immunity in the mountains without any interruption
had dissipated any possible apprehensions on her part. It was with a
sinking heart however that she saw him go at last.
They had been so much together in that month they had learned what love
was. When he came back it would be different, he would not come alone.
The first human being he met would bring the world to the door of the
lonely but beloved cabin in the mountains--the world with its questions,
its inferences, its suspicions, its denunciations and its accusations!
Some kind of an explanation would have to be made, some sort of an
answer would have to be given, some solution of the problem would have
to be arrived at. What these would be she could not tell.
Newbold's departure was like the end of an era to her. The curtain
dropped, when it rose again what was to be expected? There was no
comfort except in the thought that she loved him. So long as their
affections matched and ran together nothing else mattered. With the
solution of it all next to her sadly beating heart she was still
supremely confident that Love, or God--and there was not so much
difference between them as to make it worth while to mention the One
rather than the Other--would find the way.
Their leave taking had been singularly cold and abrupt. She had realized
the danger he was apt to incur and she had exacted a reluctant promise
from him that he would be careful.
"Don't throw your life away, don't risk it even, remember that it is
mine," she had urged.
And just as simply as she had enjoined it upon him he had promised. He
had given his word that he would not send help back to her but that he
would bring it back, and she had confidence in that word. A confidence
that had he been inclined to break his promise would have made it
absolutely impossible. There had been a long clasp of the hands, a long
look in the eyes, a long breath in the breast, a long throb in the heart
and then--farewell. They dared no more.
Once before he had left her and she had stood upon the plateau and
followed his vanishing figure with anxious troubled thought until it had
been lost in the depths of the forest below. She had controlled herself
in this second parting for his sake as well as her own. Under the ashes
of his grim repression she realized the presence of live coals which a
breath would have fanned into flame. She dared nothing while he was
there, but when he shut the door behind him the necessity for
self-control was removed. She had laid her arms on the table and bowed
her head upon them and shook and quivered with emotions unrelieved by a
single tear--weeping was for lighter hearts and less severe demands!
His position after all was the easier of the two. As of old it was the
man who went forth to the battle field while the woman could only wait
passively the issue of the fight. Although he was half blinded with
emotion he had to give some thought to his progress, and there was yet
one task to be done before he could set forth upon his journey toward
civilization and rescue.
It was fortunate, as it turned out, that this obligation detained him.
He was that type of a merciful man whose mercies extended to his beasts.
The poor little burros must be attended to and their safety assured so
far as it could be, for it would be impossible for Enid Maitland to care
for them. Indeed he had already exacted a promise from her that she
would not leave the plateau and risk her life on the icy stairs with
which she was so unfamiliar.
He had gone to the corral and shaken down food enough for them which if
it had been doled out to them day by day would have lasted longer than
the week he intended to be absent; of course he realized that they would
eat it up in half that time, but even so they would probably suffer not
too great discomfort before he got back.
All these preparations took some little time. It had grown somewhat late
in the morning before he started. There had been a fierce storm raging
when he first looked out and at her earnest solicitation he had delayed
his departure until it had subsided.
His tasks at the corral were at last completed; he had done what he
could for them both, nothing now remained but to make the quickest and
safest way to the settlement. Shouldering the pack containing his ax and
gun and sleeping bag and such provisions as would serve to tide him over
until he reached human habitations, he set forth. He did not look up to
the hut; indeed, he could not have seen it for the corral was almost
directly beneath it; but if it had been in full view he would not have
looked back, he could not trust himself to; every instinct, every
impulse in his soul would fain drag him back to that hut and to the
woman. It was only his will and, did he but know it, her will that made
him carry out his purpose.
He would have saved perhaps half a mile on his journey if he had gone
straight across the lake to the mouth of the canyon. We are creatures of
habit. He had always gone around the lake on the familiar trail and
unconsciously he followed that trail that morning. He was thinking of
her as he plodded on in a mechanical way over the trail which followed
the border of the lake for a time, plunged into the woods, wound among
the pines and at last reached that narrow rift in the encircling wall
through which the river flowed. He had passed along the white way
oblivious to all his surroundings, but as he came to the entrance he
could not fail to notice what he suddenly saw in the snow.
Robinson Crusoe when he discovered the famous footprint of Man Friday in
the sand was not more astonished at what met his vision than Newbold on
that winter morning. For there, in the virgin whiteness, were the tracks
of a man!
He stopped dead with a sudden contraction of the heart. Humanity other
than he and she in that wilderness? It could not be! For a moment he
doubted the evidence of his own senses. He shook his pack loose from his
shoulders and bent down to examine the tracks to read if he could their
indications. He could see that some one had come up the canyon, that
someone had leaned against the wall, that someone had gone on. Where had
he gone?
To follow the new trail was child's play for him. He ran by the side of
it until he reached the knoll. The stranger had stopped again, he had
shifted from one foot to another, evidently he had been looking about
him seeking someone, only Enid Maitland of course. The trail ran forward
to the edge of the frozen lake, there the man had put on his snow shoes,
there he had sped across the lake like an arrow and like an arrow
himself, although he had left behind his own snow shoes, Newbold ran
upon his track. Fortunately the snow crest upbore him. The trail ran
straight to the foot of the rocky stairs. The newcomer had easily found
his way there.
With beating heart and throbbing pulse, Newbold himself bounded up the
acclivity after the stranger, marking as he did so evidences of the
other's prior ascent. Reaching the top like him he ran down the narrow
path and in his turn laid his hand upon the door.
He was not mistaken, he heard voices within. He listened a second and
then flung it open, and as the other had done, he entered.
Way back on the trail, old Kirkby and Robert Maitland, the storm having
ceased, were rapidly climbing up the canyon. Fate was bringing all the
actors of the little drama within the shadow of her hand.
CHAPTER XXIII
THE ODDS AGAINST HIM
The noise of the opening of the door and the in-rush of cold air that
followed awoke Enid Maitland to instant action. She rose to her feet and
faced the entrance through which she expected Newbold to reappear--for
of course the newcomer must be he--and for the life of her she could not
help that radiating flash of joy at that momentary anticipation which
fairly transfigured her being; although if she had stopped to reflect
she would have remembered that not in the whole course of their
acquaintance had Newbold ever entered her room at any time without
knocking and receiving permission.
Some of that joy yet lingered in her lovely face when she tardily
recognized the newcomer in the half light. Armstrong, scarcely waiting
to close the door, sprang forward joyfully with his hands outstretched.
"Enid!" he cried.
Naturally he thought the look of expectant happiness he had surprised
upon her face was for him and he accounted for its sudden disappearance
by the shock of his unexpected, unannounced, abrupt, entrance.
The warm color had flushed her face, but as she stared at him her aspect
rapidly changed. She grew paler. The happy light that had shone in her
eyes faded away and as he approached her she shrank back.
"You!" she exclaimed almost in terror.
"Yes," he answered smilingly, "I have found you at last. Thank God you
are safe and well. Oh, if you could only know the agonies I have gone
through. I thought I loved you when I left you six weeks ago, but now--"
In eager impetuosity he drew nearer to her. Another moment and he would
have taken her in his arms, but she would have none of him.
"Stop," she said with a cold and inflexible sternness that gave pause
even to his buoyant joyful assurance.
"Why, what's the matter?"
"The matter? Everything, but--"
"No evasions, please," continued the man still cheerfully but with a
growing misgiving. His suspicions in abeyance for the moment because of
his joy at seeing her alive and well arose with renewed force. "I left
you practically pledged to me," he resumed.
"Not so fast," answered Enid Maitland, determined to combat the
slightest attempt to establish a binding claim upon her.
"Isn't it true?" asked Armstrong. "Here, wait," he said before she could
answer, "I am half frozen, I have been searching for you since early
morning in the storm." He unbuttoned and unbelted his huge fur coat as
he spoke and threw it carelessly on the floor by his Winchester leaning
against the wall. "Now," he resumed, "I can talk better."
"You must have something to eat then," said the girl.
She was glad of the interruption since she was playing for time. She did
not quite know how the interview would end, he had come upon her so
unexpectedly and she had never formulated how she should say to him that
which she felt she must say. She must have time to think, to collect
herself, which he on his part was quite willing to give her, for he was
not much better prepared for the interview than she. He really was
hungry and tired; his early journey had been foolhardy and in the
highest degree dangerous. The violence of his admiration for her, added
to the excitement of her presence and the probable nearness of Newbold
as to whose whereabouts he wondered, were not conducive to rapid
recuperation. It would be comfort to him also to have food and time.
"Sit down," she said. "I shall be back in a moment."
The fire of the morning was still burning in the stove in the kitchen;
to heat a can of soup, to make him some buttered toast and hot coffee
were the tasks of a few moments. She brought them back to him, set them
on the table before him and bade him fall to.
"By Jove," exclaimed the man after a little time as he began to eat
hastily but with great relish what she had prepared, while she stood
over him watching him silently, "this is cozy. A warm, comfortable room,
something to eat served by the finest woman in the world, the prettiest
girl on earth to look at--what more could a man desire? This is the way
it's going to be always in the future."
"You have no warrant whatever for saying or hoping that," answered the
girl slowly but decisively.
"Have I not?" asked the man quickly. "Did you not say to me a little
while ago that you liked me better than any man you had ever met and
that I might win you if I could? Well, I can, and what's more I will in
spite of yourself." He laughed. "Why, the memory of that kiss I stole
from you makes me mad." He pushed away the things before him and rose to
his feet once more. "Come, give me another," he said; "it isn't in the
power of woman to stand out against a love like mine."
"Isn't it?"
"No, indeed."
"Louise Newbold did," she answered very quietly, but with the swiftness
and the dexterity of a sword thrust by a master hand, a mighty arm.
Armstrong stared at her in open-mouthed astonishment.
"What do you know about Louise Rosser or Newbold?" he asked at last.
"All that I want to know."
"And did that damned hound tell you?"
"If you mean Mr. Newbold, he never mentioned your name, he does not know
you exist."
"Where is he now?" thundered the man.
"Have no fear," answered the woman calmly, "he has gone to the
settlements to tell them I am safe and to seek help to get me out of the
mountains."
"Fear!" exclaimed Armstrong, proudly, "I fear nothing on earth. For
years, ever since I heard his name in fact, I have longed to meet him. I
want to know who told you about that woman, Kirkby?"
"He never mentioned your name in connection with her."
"But you must have heard it somewhere," cried the man thoroughly
bewildered. "The birds of the air didn't tell it to you, did they?"
"She told me herself," answered Enid Maitland.
"She told you! Why, she's been dead in her grave five years, shot to
death by that murderous dog of a husband of hers."
"A word with you, Mr. Armstrong," said the woman with great spirit. "You
can't talk that way about Mr. Newbold; he saved my life twice over, from
a bear and then in the cloud burst which caught me in the canyon."
"That evens up a little," said Armstrong. "Perhaps for your sake I will
spare him."
"You!" laughed the woman contemptuously. "Spare him! Be advised, look to
yourself; if he ever finds out what I know, I don't believe any power on
earth could save you."
"Oh," said Armstrong carelessly enough, although he was consumed with
hate and jealousy and raging against her clearly evident disdain, "I can
take care of myself, I guess. Anyway, I only want to talk about you, not
about him or her. Your father--"
"Is he well?"
"Well enough, but heart-broken, crushed. I happened to be in his house
in Philadelphia when the telegram came from your uncle that you were
lost and probably dead. I had just asked him for your hand," he added,
smiling grimly at the recollection.
"You had no right to do that."
"I know that."
"It was not, it is not, his to give."
"Still, when I won you I thought it would be pleasant all around if he
knew and approved."
"And did he?"
"Not then, he literally drove me out of the house; but afterward he said
if I could find you I could have you; and I have found you and I will
have you whether you like it or not."
"Never," said the woman decisively.
The situation had got on Armstrong's nerves, and he must perforce show
himself in his true colors. His only resources were his strength, not of
mind but of body. He made another most damaging mistake at this
juncture.
"We are alone here, and I am master, remember," he said meaningly.
"Come, let's make it up. Give me a kiss for my pains and--"
"I have been alone here for a month with another man," answered Enid
Maitland, who was strangely unafraid in spite of his threat. "A
gentleman, he has never so much as offered to touch my hand without my
permission; the contrast is quite to your disadvantage."
"Are you jealous of Louise Rosser?" asked Armstrong, suddenly seeing
that he was losing ground and casting about desperately to account for
it, and to recover what was escaping him. "Why, that was nothing, a mere
boy and girl affair," he ran on with specious good humor, as if it were
all a trifle. "The woman was, I hate to say it, just crazy in love with
me, but I really never cared anything especially for her, it was just a
harmless sort of flirtation anyway. She afterward married this man
Newbold and that's all there was about it."
The truth would not serve him and in his desperation and desire he
staked everything on this astounding lie. The woman he loved looked at
him with her face as rigid as a mask.
"You won't hold that against me, will you?" pleaded the man. "I told you
that I'd been a man among men, yes among women, too, here in this rough
country and that I wasn't worthy of you; there are lots of things in my
past that I ought to be ashamed of and I am, and the more I see you the
more ashamed I grow, but as for loving any one else all that I've ever
thought or felt or experienced before now is just nothing."
And this indeed was true, and even Enid Maitland with all her prejudice
could realize and understand it. Out of the same mouth, it was said of
old, proceeded blessing and cursing, and from these same lips came truth
and falsehood; but the power of the truth to influence this woman was as
nothing to the power of falsehood. She could never have loved him, she
now knew; a better man had won her affections, a nobler being claimed
her heart; but if Armstrong had told the truth regarding his
relationship to Newbold's wife and then had completed it with his
passionate avowal of his present love for her, she would have at least
admired him and respected him.
"You have not told me the truth," she answered directly, "you have
deliberately been false."
"Can't you see," protested the man, drawing nearer to her, "how much I
love you?"
"Oh, that, yes I suppose that is true; so far as you can love anyone I
will admit that you do love me."
"So far as I can love anyone?" he repeated after her. "Give me a chance
and I'll show you."
"But you haven't told the truth about Mrs. Newbold. You have calumniated
the dead, you have sought to shelter yourself by throwing the burden of
a guilty passion upon the weaker vessel, it isn't man-like, it isn't--"
Armstrong was a bold fighter, quick and prompt in his decisions. He made
another effort to set himself right. He staked his all on another throw
of the dice, which he began to feel were somehow loaded against him.
"You are right," he admitted, wondering anxiously how much the woman
really knew. "It wasn't true, it was a coward's act, I am ashamed of it.
I'm so mad with love for you that I scarcely know what I am doing, but I
will make a clean breast of it now. I loved Louise Rosser after a
fashion before ever Newbold came on the scene. We were pledged to each
other, a foolish quarrel arose, she was jealous of other girls--"
"And had she no right to be?"
"Oh, I suppose so. We broke it off anyway, and then she married Newbold,
out of pique, I suppose, or what you will. I thought I was heart-broken
at the time, it did hit me pretty hard; it was five or six years ago, I
was a youngster then, I am a man now. The woman has been dead long
since. There was some cock-and-bull story about her falling off a cliff
and her husband being compelled to shoot her. I didn't half believe it
at the time and naturally I have been waiting to get even with him. I
have been hating him for five years, but he has been good to you and we
will let bygones be bygones. What do I care for Louise Rosser, or for
him, or for what he did to her, now? I am sorry that I said what I did,
but you will have to charge it to my blinding passion for you. I can
truthfully say that you are the one woman that I have ever craved with
all my heart. I will do anything, be anything, to win you."
It was very brilliantly done, he had not told a single untruth, he had
admitted much, but he had withheld the essentials after all. He was
playing against desperate odds, he had no knowledge of how much she
knew, or where she had learned anything. Everyone about the mining camp
where she had lived had known of his love for Louise Rosser, but he had
not supposed there was a single human soul who had been privy to its
later developments, and he could not figure out any way by which Enid
Maitland could have learned by any possibility any more of the story
than he had told her. He had calculated swiftly and with the utmost
nicety, just how much he should confess. He was a keen witted, clever
man and he was fighting for what he held most dear, but his eagerness
and zeal, as they have often done, overrode his judgment, and he made
another mistake at this juncture. His evil genius was at his elbow.
"You must remember," he continued, "that you have been alone here in
these mountains with a man for over a month; the world--"
"What, what do you mean?" exclaimed the girl, who indeed knew very well
what he meant, but who would not admit the possibility.
"It's not every man," he added, blindly rushing to his doom, "that would
care for you or want you--after that."
He received a sudden and terrible enlightenment.
"You coward," she cried, with upraised hand, whether in protest or to
strike him neither ever knew, for at that moment the door opened the
second time that morning to admit another man.
CHAPTER XXIV
THE LAST RESORT OF KINGS AND MEN
The sudden entrant upon a quarrel between others is invariably at a
disadvantage. Usually he is unaware of the cause of difference and
generally he has no idea of the stage of development of the affair that
has been reached. Newbold suffered from this lack of knowledge and to
these disadvantages were added others. For instance, he had not the
faintest idea as to who or what was the stranger. The room was not very
light in the day time, Armstrong happened to be standing with his back
to it at some distance from the window by the side of which Enid stood.
Six years naturally and inevitably make some difference in a man's
appearance and it is not to be wondered that at first Newbold did not
recognize the man before him as the original of the face in his wife's
locket, although he had studied that face over and over again. A nearer
scrutiny, a longer study would have enlightened him of course, but for
the present he saw nothing but a stranger visibly perturbed on one side
and the woman he loved apparently fiercely resentful, sternly
indignant, confronting the other with an upraised hand.
The man, whoever he was, had affronted her, had aroused her indignation,
perhaps had insulted her, that was plain. He went swiftly to her side,
he interposed himself between her and the man.
"Enid," he asked, and his easy use of the name was a revelation and an
illumination to Armstrong, "who is this man, what has he done?"
It was Armstrong who replied. If Newbold were in the dark, not so he;
although they had never spoken, he had seen Newbold. He recognized him
instantly, indeed recognized or not the newcomer could be no other than
he. There was doubtless no other man in the mountains. He had expected
to find him when he approached the hut and was ready for him.
To the fire of his ancient hatred and jealousy was added a new fuel that
increased its heat and flame. This man had come between Armstrong and
the woman he loved before and had got away unscathed, evidently he had
come between him and this new woman he loved. Well, he should be made to
suffer for it this time and by Armstrong's own hands. The instant
Newbold had entered the room Armstrong had thirsted to leap upon him and
he meant to do it. One or the other of them, he swore in his heart,
should never leave that room alive.
But Newbold should have his chance. Armstrong was as brave, as fearless,
as intrepid, as any man on earth. There was much that was admirable in
his character; he would not take any man at a disadvantage in an
encounter such as he proposed. He would not hesitate to rob a man of his
wife if he could and he would not shrink from any deceit necessary to
gain his purpose with a woman, for good or evil, but he had his own
ideas of honor, he would not shoot an enemy in the back for instance.
Singular perversion, this, to which some minds are liable! To take from
a man his wife by subtle and underhand methods, to rob him of that which
makes life dear and sweet--there was nothing dishonorable in that! But
to take his life, a thing of infinitely less moment, by the same
process--that was not to be thought of. In Armstrong's code it was
right, it was imperative, to confront a man with the truth and take the
consequences; but to confront a woman with a lie and take her body and
soul, if so be she might be gained, was equally admirable. And there are
other souls than Armstrong's in which this moral inconsistency and
obliquity about men and women has lodgment.
Armstrong confronted Newbold therefore, lustful of battle; he yearned to
leap upon him, his fingers itched to grasp him, then trembled slightly
as he rubbed them nervously against his thumbs; his face protruded a
little, his eyes narrowed.
"My name is Armstrong," he said, determined to precipitate the issue
without further delay and flinging the words at the other in a tone of
hectoring defiance which, however, strange to say, did not seem to
affect Newbold in exactly the degree he had anticipated.
Yet the name was an illumination to Newbold, though not at all in the
way the speaker had fancied; the recollection of it was the one fact
concerning the woman he loved that rankled in the solitary's mind. He
had often wanted to ask Enid Maitland what she had meant by that chance
allusion to Armstrong which she had made in the beginning of their
acquaintance, but he had refrained. At first he had no right to question
her, there could be no natural end to their affections; and latterly
when their hearts had been disclosed to each other in the wild,
tempestuous, passionate scenes of the last two or three days, he had had
things of greater moment to engage his attention, subjects of more
importance to discuss with her.
He had for the time being forgotten Armstrong and he had not before
known what jealousy was until he had entered that room. To have seen her
with any man would have given him acute pain, perhaps just because he
had been so long withdrawn from human society, but to see her with this
man who flashed instantly into his recollection upon the utterance of
his name was an added exasperation.
Newbold turned to the woman, to whom indeed he had addressed his
question in the first place, and there was something in his movement
which bespoke a galling, almost contemptuous, obliviousness to the
presence of the other man which was indeed hard for him to bear.
Hate begets hate. He was quite conscious of Armstrong's antagonism,
which was entirely undisguised and open and which was growing greater
with every passing moment. The score against Newbold was running up in
the mind of his visitor.
"Ah," coolly said the owner of the cabin to the latest of his two
guests, "I do remember Miss Maitland did mention your name the first day
she spent here. Is he a--a friend of yours?" he asked of the woman.
"Not now," answered Enid Maitland.
She too was in a strange state of perturbation on account of the
dilemma in which she found herself involved. She was determined not to
betray the unconscious confidence of the dead. She hoped fervently that
Newbold would not recognize Armstrong as the man of the locket, but if
he did she was resolute that he should not also be recognized as the man
of the letters, at least not by her act. Newbold was ignorant of the
existence of those letters and she did not intend that he should be
enlightened so far as she could prevent it. But she was keen enough to
see that the first recognition would be inevitable; she even admitted
the fact that Armstrong would probably precipitate it himself. Well, no
human soul, not even their writer, knew that she had the letters except
old Kirkby and he was far away. She wished that she had destroyed them;
she had determined to do so at the first convenient opportunity. Before
that, however, she intended to show them not to Newbold but to
Armstrong, to disclose his perfidy, to convict him of the falsehood he
had told her and to justify herself even in his eyes for the action she
had taken.
Mingled with all these quick reflections was a deadly fear. She was
quick to perceive the hatred Armstrong cherished against Newbold on the
one hand because of the old love affair, the long standing grudge
breaking into sudden life; on the other because of her own failure to
come to Armstrong's hand and her love for Newbold which she had no
desire to conceal. The cumulation of all these passionate antagonisms
would only make him the more desperate, she knew.
Whether or not Newbold found out Armstrong's connection with his past
love there was sufficient provocation in the present to evoke all the
oppugnation and resentment of his nature. Enid felt as she might if the
puncheons of the floor had been sticks of dynamite with active
detonators in every heel that pressed them; as if the slightest movement
on the part of anyone would bring about an explosion.
The tensity of the situation was bewildering to her. It had come upon
her with such startling force; the unexpected arrival of Armstrong, of
all the men on earth the one who ought not to be there, and then the
equally startling arrival of Newbold, of whom perhaps the same might
have been said. If Newbold had only gone on, if he had not come back, if
she had been rescued by her uncle or old Kirkby--But "ifs" were idle,
she had to face a present situation to which she was utterly unequal.
She had entirely repudiated Armstrong, that was one sure point; she knew
how guilty he had been toward Newbold's wife, that was another; she
realized how he had deceived her, that was the third. These eliminated
the man from her affections. But it is one thing to thrust a man out of
your heart and another to thrust him out of your life; he was still
there. And by no means the sport of blind fate, Armstrong intended to
have something to say as to the course of events, to use his own powers
to determine the issue.
Of but one thing besides her hatred for Armstrong was Enid Maitland
absolutely certain; she would never disclose to the man she loved the
fact that the woman, the memory of whose supposed passion he cherished,
had been unfaithful to him in heart if not in deed. Nothing could wrest
that secret from her. She had been infected by Newbold's quixotic ideas,
the contagion of his perversion of common sense had fastened itself upon
her. She would not have been human either if she had not experienced a
thrill of pride and joy at the possibility that in some way, of which
she yet swore she would not be the instrument blind or otherwise, the
facts might be disclosed which would enable Newbold to claim her openly
and honorably, without hesitation before or remorse after, as his wife.
This fascinating flash of expectant hopeful feeling she thought unworthy
of her and strove to fight it down, but with manifest impossibility.
It has taken time to set these things down; to speak or to write is a
slow process and the ratio between outward expressions and inward is as
great as that between light and sound. Questions and answers between
these three followed as swiftly as thrust and parry between accomplished
swordsmen, and yet between each demand and reply they had time to
entertain these swift thoughts--as the drowning compass life experiences
in seconds!
"I may not be her friend," said Armstrong steadily, "but she left me in
these mountains a month ago with more than a half way promise to marry
me, and I have sought her through the snows to claim the fulfillment."
"You never told me that," exclaimed Newbold sternly and again addressing
the woman rather than the man.
"There was nothing to tell," she answered quickly. "I was a young girl,
heart free. I liked this man, perhaps because he was so different from
those to whom I had been accustomed and when he pressed his suit upon
me, I told him the truth. I did not love him, I did not know whether I
might grow to care for him or not; if I did, I should marry him and if I
did not no power on earth could make me. And now--I hate him!"
She flung the hard and bitter words at him savagely.
Armstrong was beside himself with fury at her remark, and Newbold's cool
indifference to him personally was unendurable. In battle such as he
waged he had the mistaken idea that anything was fair. He could not
really tell whether it was love of woman or hate of man that was most
dominant; he saw at once the state of affairs between the two. He could
hurt the man and the woman with one statement; what might be its
ulterior effect he did not stop to consider; perhaps if he had he would
not have cared greatly then. He realized anyway that since Newbold's
arrival his chance with Enid was gone; perhaps whether Newbold were
alive or dead it was gone forever, although Armstrong did not think
that, he was not capable of thinking very far into the future in his
then condition, the present bulked too large for that.
"I did not think after that kiss in the road that you would go back on
me this way, Enid," he said quickly.
"The kiss in the road!" cried Newbold, staring again at the woman.
"You coward," repeated she, with one swift envenomed glance at the other
man and then she turned to her lover. She laid her hand upon his arm,
she lifted her face up to him. "As God is my judge," she cried, her
voice rising with the tragic intensity of the moment and thrilling with
indignant protest, "he took it from me like the thief and the coward he
was and he tells it now like the liar he is. We were riding side by
side, I was utterly unsuspicious, I thought him a gentleman, he caught
me and kissed me before I knew it, I drove him from me. That's all."
"I believe you," said Newbold gently, and then, for the second time, he
addressed himself to Armstrong. "You came doubtless to rescue Miss
Maitland, and in so far your purpose was admirable and you deserve
thanks and respect, but no further. This is my cabin, your words and
your conduct render you unwelcome here. Miss Maitland is under my
protection, if you will come outside I will be glad to talk with you
further."
"Under your protection?" sneered Armstrong, completely beside himself.
"After a month with you alone I take it she needs no further
protection."
Newbold did not leap upon the man for that mordant insult to the woman,
his approach was slow, relentless, terrible. Eight or ten feet separated
them. Armstrong met him half way, his impetuosity was the greater, he
sprang forward, turned about, faced the full light from the narrow
window.
"Well," he cried, "have you got anything to say or do about it?"
For Newbold had stopped, appalled. He stood staring as if petrified;
recognition, recollection rushed over him. Now and at last he knew the
man. The face that confronted him was the same face that had stared out
at him from the locket he had taken from the bruised breast of his dead
wife, which had been a mystery to him for all these years.
"Well," tauntingly asked Armstrong again, "what are you waiting for, are
you afraid?"
From Newbold's belt depended a holster and a heavy revolver. As
Armstrong made to attack him he flashed it out with astonishing
quickness and presented it. The newcomer was unarmed, his Winchester
leaned against the wall by his fur coat and he had no pistol.
"If you move a step forward or backward," said Newbold with deadly calm,
"I will kill you without mercy."
"So you'd take advantage of a weaponless man, would you?" sneered
Armstrong.
"Oh, for God's sake," cried the woman, "don't kill him."
"You both misjudge me," was the answer. "I shall take no advantage of
this man. I would disdain to do so if it were necessary, but before the
last resort I must have speech with him, and this is the only way in
which I can keep him quiet for a moment, if as I suspect, his hate
measures with mine."
"You have the advantage," protested Armstrong. "Say your say and get it
over with. I've waited all these years for a chance to kill you and my
patience is exhausted."
Still keeping the other covered, Newbold stepped over to the table,
pulled out the drawer and drew from it the locket. Enid remembered she
had hastily thrust it there when he had handed it to her and there it
had lain unnoted and forgotten. It was quite evident to her what was
toward now. Newbold had recognized the other man, explanations were
inevitable. With his left hand Newbold sought the catch of the locket
and pressed the spring. In two steps he faced Armstrong with the open
locket thrust toward him.
"Your picture?" he asked.
"Mine."
"Do you know the locket?"
"I gave it to a woman named Louise Rosser five or six years ago."
"My wife."
"Yes, she was crazy in love with me but--"
With diabolic malice Armstrong left the sentence uncompleted. The
inference he meant should be drawn from his reticence was obvious.
"I took it from her dead body," gritted out Newbold.
"She was beside herself with love for me, an old affair, you know," said
Armstrong more explicitly, thinking to use a spear with a double barb to
pierce the woman's and the man's heart alike. That he defamed the dead
was of no moment then. "She wanted to leave you," he ran on glibly, "she
wanted me to take her back and--"
"Untrue," burst forth from Enid Maitland's lips. "A slanderous,
dastardly, cowardly untruth."
But the men paid no attention to her in their excitement, perhaps they
did not even hear her. Newbold thrust his pistol violently forward.
"Would you murder me as you murdered the woman?" gibed Armstrong in
bitter taunt.
Then Enid Maitland found it in her heart to urge Newbold to kill him
where he stood, but she had no time if she could have carried out her
design, for Newbold flung the weapon from him and the next moment the
two men leaped upon each other, straining, struggling, clawing,
battling like savage beasts, each seeking to clasp his fingers around
the throat of the other and then twist and crush until life was gone.
Saying nothing, fighting in a grim silence that was terrible, they
reeled crashing about the little room. No two men on earth could have
been better matched, yet Newbold had a slight advantage in height and
strength, as he had also the advantage in simple life and splendid
condition. Armstrong's hate and fierce temper counterbalanced these at
first and with arms locked and legs twined, with teeth clenched and eyes
blinded and pulses throbbing and hearts beating, they strove together.
The woman shrank back against the wall and stared frightened. She feared
for her lover, she feared for herself. Strange primitive feelings
throbbed in her veins. It was an old situation, when two male animals
fought for supremacy and the ownership of a female, whose destiny was
entirely removed from her own hands.
Armstrong had shown himself in his true colors at last. She would have
nothing to hope from him if he were the victor and she even wondered in
terror what might happen to her if the man she loved triumphed after the
passions aroused in such a battle. She grew sick and giddy, her bosom
rose and fell, her breath came fast as she followed the panting,
struggling, clinging, grinding figures about the room.
At first there had been no advantage to either, but now after five
minutes--or was it hours?--of fierce fighting, the strength and superior
condition of her lover began to tell. He was forcing the other backward.
Slowly, inch by inch, foot by foot, step by step, he mastered him. The
two intertwining figures were broadside to her now, she could see their
faces inflamed by the lust of the battle, engorged, blood red with hate
and fury. There was a look of exultation in one and the shadow of
approaching disaster in the other. But the consciousness that he was
being mastered ever so little only increased Armstrong's determination
and he fought back with the frenzy, the strength of a maddened gorilla,
and again for a space the issue was in doubt. But not for long.
The table, a heavy, cumbersome, four-legged affair, solid almost as a
rock, stood in the way. Newbold at last backed Armstrong up against it
and by superhuman effort bent him over it, held him with one arm and
using the table as a support, wrenched his left hand free, and sunk his
fingers around the other's throat. It was all up with Armstrong. It was
only a question of time now.
[Illustration: It was all up with Armstrong]
"Now," Newbold guttered out hoarsely, "you slandered the dead woman I
married, and you insulted the living one I love. Take back what you said
before you die."
"I forgive him," cried Enid Maitland. "Oh, don't kill him before my
eyes."
Armstrong was past speech. The inveteracy of his hatred could be seen
even in his fast glazing eyes, the indomitableness of his purpose yet
spoke in the negative shake of his head. He could die, but he would die
in his hate and in his purpose.
Enid ran to the two, she grappled Newbold's arm with both her own and
strove with all her might to tear it away from the other's throat. Her
lover paid no more attention to her than if a summer breeze had touched
him. Armstrong grew black in the face, his limbs relaxed, another second
or two and it would have been over with him.
Once more the door was thrown open, through it two snow covered men
entered. One swift glance told them all, one of them at least had
expected it. On the one side Kirkby, on the other Maitland, tore Newbold
away from his prey just in time to save Armstrong's life. Indeed the
latter was so far gone that he fell from the table to the floor
unconscious, choking, almost dying. It was Enid Maitland who received
his head in her arms and helped bring him back to life while the panting
Newbold stood staring dully at the woman he loved and the man he hated
on the floor at his feet.
CHAPTER XXV
THE BECOMING END
"Why did you interfere?" when at last he got his breath again, asked
Newbold of Maitland who still held him firmly although restraint was now
unnecessary, the heat and fire of his passion being somewhat gone out of
him. "I meant to kill him."
"He'd oughter die sure nuff," drawled old Kirkby, rising from where he
had been kneeling by Armstrong's side, "but I don't know's how you're
bound to be his executioner. He's all right now, Miss Enid," said the
old man. "Here"--he took a pillow from the bunk and slipped it under his
head and then extending his hands he lifted the excited almost
distraught woman to her feet--"tain't fittin' for you to tend on him."
"Oh," exclaimed Enid, her limbs trembling, the blood flowing away from
her heart, her face deathly white, fighting against the faintness that
came with the reaction, while old Kirkby supported and encouraged her.
"I thank God you came. I don't know what would have happened if you had
not."
"Has this man mistreated you?" asked Robert Maitland, suddenly
tightening his grip upon his hard breathing but unresisting passive
prisoner.
"No, no," answered his niece. "He has been everything that a man should
be."
"And Armstrong?" continued her uncle.
"No, not even he."
"I came in time, thank God!" ejaculated Newbold.
By this time Armstrong had recovered consciousness. To his other causes
for hatred were now added chagrin, mortification, shame. He had been
overcome. He would have been a dead man and by Newbold's hands if the
others had not interfered. He almost wished they had let his enemy
alone. Well, he had lost everything but a chance for revenge on them
all.
"She has been alone here with this man in this cabin for a month," he
said thickly. "I was willing to take her in spite of that, but--"
"He made that damned suggestion before," cried Newbold, his rage
returning. "I don't know who you are--"
"My name is Robert Maitland, and I am this girl's uncle."
"Well, if you were her father, I could only swear--"
"It isn't necessary to swear anything," answered Maitland serenely. "I
know this child. And I believe I'm beginning to find out this man."
"Thank you, Uncle Robert," said Enid gratefully, coming nearer to him as
she spoke. "No man could have done more for me than Mr. Newbold has, and
no one could have been more considerate of me. As for you," she turned
on, Armstrong, who now slowly got to his feet, "your insinuations
against me are on a par with your charges against the dead woman,
beneath contempt."
"What did he say about her?" asked Old Kirkby.
"You know my story?" asked Newbold.
"Yes."
"He said that my wife had been unfaithful to me--with him--and that he
had refused to take her back."
"And it was true," snarled Armstrong.
It was all Maitland could do to check Newbold's rush, but in the end it
was old Kirkby who most effectively interposed.
"That's a damned lie," he said quietly with his usual drawling voice.
"You can say so," laughed Armstrong, "but that doesn't alter the
facts."
"An' I can prove it," answered the old man triumphantly.
It was coming, the secret that she had tried to conceal was about to be
revealed, thought Enid. She made a movement toward the old man. She
opened her mouth to bid him be silent and then stopped. It would be
useless she knew. The determination was no longer hers. The direction of
affairs had been withdrawn from her. After all it was better that the
unloving wife should be proved faithful, even if her husband's cherished
memory of her love for him had to be destroyed thereby. Helpless she
listened knowing full well what the old frontiersman's next word would
be.
"Prove it!" mocked Armstrong. "How?"
"By your own hand, out of your own mouth, you dog," thundered old
Kirkby. "Miss Enid, w'ere are them letters I give you?"
"I--I--" faltered the girl, but there was no escape from the keen glance
of the old man, her hand went to the bosom of her tunic.
"Letters!" exclaimed Armstrong. "What letters?"
"These," answered Enid Maitland, holding up the packet.
Armstrong reached for them but Kirkby again interposed.
"No, you don't," he said dryly. "Them ain't for your eyes yit. Mr.
Newbold, I found them letters on the little shelf w'ere your wife first
struck w'en she fell over onto the butte w'ere she died. I figgered out
her dress was tore open there an' them letters she was carryin' fell out
an' lodged there. We had ropes an' we went down over the rocks that way.
I went first an' I picked 'em up. I never told nobody about it an' I
never showed 'em to a single human bein' until I give 'em to Miss
Maitland at the camp."
"Why not?" asked Newbold, taking the letters.
"There wasn't no good tellin' nobody then, jest fer the sake o' stirrin'
up trouble."
"But why did you give them to her at last?"
"Because I was afeered she might fall in love with Armstrong. I supposed
she'd know his writin', but w'en she didn't I jest let her keep 'em
anyway. I knowed it'd all come out somehow; there is a God above us in
spite of all the damned scoundrels on earth like this un."
"Are these letters addressed to my dead wife?" asked Newbold.
"They are," answered Enid Maitland; "look and see."
"And did Mr. Armstrong write them?"
"He'll deny it, I suppose," answered Kirkby.
"But I am familiar with his handwriting," said Maitland.
Taking the still unopened packet from Newbold he opened it, examined one
of the letters and handed them all back.
"There is no doubt about it," he said. "It's Armstrong's hand, I'll
swear to it."
"Oh, I'll acknowledge them," said Armstrong, seeing the absolute
futility of further denial. He had forgotten all about the letters. He
had not dreamed they were in existence. "You've got me beat between you,
the cards are stacked against me, I've done my damndest--" and indeed
that was true.
Well, he had played a great game, battling for a high stake he had stuck
at nothing. A career in which some good had mingled with much bad was
now at an end. He had lost utterly, would he show himself a good loser?
"Mr. Armstrong," said Newbold, quietly extending his hand, "here are
your letters."
"What do you mean?"
"I am not in the habit of reading letters addressed to other people
without permission and when the recipient of them is dead long since, I
am doubly bound."
"You're a damned fool," cried Armstrong contemptuously.
"That kind of a charge from your kind of a man is perhaps the highest
compliment you could pay me. I don't know whether I shall ever get rid
of the doubt you have tried to lodge in my soul about my dead wife,
but--"
"There ain't no doubt about it," protested old Kirkby earnestly. "I've
read them letters a hundred times over, havin' no scruples whatsomever,
an' in every one of 'em he was beggin' an' pleadin' with her to go away
with him an' fightin' her refusal to do it. I guess I've got to admit
that she didn't love you none, Newbold, an' she did love this here
wuthless Armstrong, but for the sake of her reputation I'll prove to you
all from them letters of hisn, from his own words, that there didn't
live a cleaner hearted, more virtuous, upright feemale than that there
wife of yourn, even if she didn't love you. It's God's truth an' you kin
take it from me."
"Mr. Armstrong," cried Enid Maitland, interposing at this juncture, "not
very long ago I told you I liked you better than any man I had ever
seen, I thought perhaps I might have loved you, and that was true. You
have played the coward's part and the liar's part in this room--"
"Did I fight him like a coward?" asked Armstrong.
"No," answered Newbold for her, remembering the struggle, "you fought
like a man."
Singular perversion of language and thought there! If two struggled like
wild beasts that was fighting like men!
"But let that pass," continued the woman. "I don't deny your physical
courage, but I am going to appeal to another kind of a courage which I
believe you possess. You have showed your evil side here in this room,
but I don't believe that's the only side you have, else I couldn't even
have liked you in the past. You have made a charge against two women,
one dead and one living. It makes little difference what you say about
me; I need no defense and no justification in the eyes of those here who
love me and for the rest of the world I don't care. But you have slain
this man's confidence in a woman he once loved, and whom he thought
loved him. As you are a man, tell him that it was a lie and that she was
innocent of anything else although she did love you."
What a singular situation, an observer who knew all might have
reflected? Here was Enid Maitland pleading for the good name of the
woman who had married the man she now loved, and whom by rights she
should have jealously hated.
"You ask me more than I can," faltered Armstrong, yet greatly moved by
this touching appeal to his better self.
"Let him speak no word," protested Newbold quickly. "I wouldn't believe
him on his oath."
"Steady now, steady," interposed Kirkby with his frontier instinct for
fair play. "The man's down, Newbold, don't hit him now."
"Give him a chance," added Maitland earnestly.
"You would not believe me, eh?" laughed Armstrong horribly; "well then
this is what I say, whether it is true or a lie you can be the judge."
What was he about to say? They all recognized instinctively that his
forthcoming deliverance would be a final one. Would good or evil
dominate him now? Enid Maitland had made her plea and it had been a
powerful one; the man did truly love the woman who urged him, there was
nothing left for him but a chance that she should think a little better
of him than he merited, he had come to the end of his resources. And
Enid Maitland spoke again as he hesitated.
"Oh, think, think before you speak," she cried.
"If I thought," answered Armstrong quickly, "I should go mad. Newbold,
your wife was as pure as the snow. That she loved me I cannot and will
not deny. She married you in a fit of jealousy and anger after a quarrel
between us in which I was to blame, and when I came back to the camp in
your absence I strove to make it up and used every argument that I
possessed to get her to leave you and to go with me. Although she had no
love for you she was too good and too true a woman for that. Now you've
got the truth, damn you; believe it or not as you like. Miss Maitland,"
he added swiftly, "if I had met you sooner, I might have been a better
man. Good-by."
He turned suddenly and none preventing, indeed it was not possible, he
ran to the outer door; as he did so his hand snatched something that lay
on the chest of drawers. There was a flash of light as he drew in his
arm but none saw what it was. In a few seconds he was outside the door.
The table was between old Kirkby and the exit, Maitland and Newbold were
nearest. The old man came to his senses first.
"After him," he cried, "he means--"
But before anybody could stir, the dull report of a pistol came through
the open door!
They found Armstrong lying on his back in the snowy path, his face as
white as the drift that pillowed his head, Newbold's heavy revolver
still clutched in his right hand and a bloody, welling smudge on his
left breast over his heart. It was the woman who broke the silence.
"Oh," she sobbed, "It can't be--"
"Dead," said Maitland solemnly.
"And it might have been by my hand," muttered Newbold to himself in
horror.
"He'll never cause no more trouble to nobody in this world, Miss Enid
an' gents," said old Kirkby gravely. "Well, he was a damned fool an' a
damned villain in some ways," continued the old frontiersman
reflectively in the silence broken otherwise only by the woman's sobbing
breaths, "but he had some of the qualities that go to make a man, an' I
ain't doubtin' but what them last words of hisn was mighty near true. Ef
he had met a gal like you earlier in his life he mought have been a
different man."
CHAPTER XXVI
THE DRAUGHT OF JOY
The great library was the prettiest room in Robert Maitland's
magnificent mansion in Denver's most favored residence section. It was a
long, low studded room with a heavy beamed ceiling. The low book cases,
about five feet high, ran between all the windows and doors on all sides
of the room. At one end there was a huge open fireplace built of rough
stone, and as it was winter a cheerful fire of logs blazed on the
hearth. It was a man's room preeminently. The drawing room across the
hall was Mrs. Maitland's domain, but the library reflected her husband's
picturesque if somewhat erratic taste. On the walls there were pictures
of the west by Remington, Marchand, Dunton, Dixon and others, and to set
them off finely mounted heads of bear and deer and buffalo. Swords and
other arms stood here and there. The writing table was massive and the
chairs easy, comfortable and inviting. The floor was strewn with robes
and rugs. From the windows facing westward, since the house was set on
a high hill, one could see the great rampart of the range.
There were three men in the room on that brilliant morning early in
January something like a month after these adventures in the mountains
which have been so veraciously set forth. Two of them were the brothers
Maitland, the third was Newbold.
The shock produced upon Enid Maitland by the death of Armstrong,
together with the tremendous episodes that had preceded it, had utterly
prostrated her. They had spent the night at the hut in the mountains and
had decided that the woman must be taken back to the settlements in some
way at all hazards.
The wit of old Kirkby had effected a solution of the problem. Using a
means certainly as old as Napoleon and the passage of his cannon over
the Great St. Bernard--and perhaps as old as Hannibal!--they had made a
rude sled from the trunk of a pine which they hollowed out and provided
with a back and runners. There was no lack of fur robes and blankets for
her comfort.
Wherever it was practicable the three men hitched themselves to the sled
with ropes and dragged it and Enid over the snow. Of course for miles
down the canyon it was impossible to use the sled. When the way was
comparatively easy the woman supported by the two men, Newbold and
Maitland, made shift to get along afoot. When it became too difficult
for her, Newbold picked her up as he had done before and assisted by
Maitland carried her bodily to the next resting place. At these times
Kirkby looked after the sled.
They had managed to reach the temporary hut in the old camp the first
night and rested there. They gathered up their sleeping bags and tents
and resumed their journey in the morning. They were strong men, and,
save for old Kirkby, young. It was a desperate endeavor but they carried
it through.
When they hit the open trails the sledding was easy and they made great
progress. After a week of terrific going they struck the railroad and
the next day found them all safe in Maitland's house in Denver.
To Mr. Stephen Maitland his daughter was as one who had risen from the
dead. And indeed when he first saw her she looked like death itself. No
one had known how terrible that journey had been to the woman. Her three
faithful attendants had surmised something, but in spite of all even
they did not realize that in these last days she had been sustained only
by the most violent effort of her will. She had no sooner reached the
house, greeted her father, her aunt and the children than she collapsed
utterly.
The wonder was, said the physician, not that she did it then but that
she had not done it before. For a short time it appeared as if her
illness might be serious, but youth, vigor, a strong body and a good
constitution, a heart now free from care and apprehension and a great
desire to live and love and be loved, worked wonders.
Newbold had enjoyed no opportunity for private conversation with the
woman he loved, which was perhaps just as well. He had the task of
readjusting himself to changed conditions; not only to a different
environment, but to strange and unusual departures from his long
cherished view points.
He could no longer doubt Armstrong's final testimony to the purity of
his wife, although he had burned the letters unread, and by the same
token he could no longer cherish the dream that she had loved him and
him alone. Those words that had preceded that pistol shot had made it
possible for him to take Enid Maitland as his wife without doing
violence to his sense of honor or his self-respect. Armstrong had made
that much reparation. And Newbold could not doubt that the other had
known what would be the result of his speech and had chosen his words
deliberately. Score that last action to his credit. He was a sensitive
man, however; he realized the brutal and beastlike part he and Armstrong
had both played before this woman they both loved, how they had battled
like savage animals and how but for a lucky interposition he would have
added murder to his other disabilities.
He was honest enough to say to himself that he would have done the same
thing over under the same circumstances, but that did not absolve his
conscience. He did not know how the woman looked at the transaction or
looked at him, for he had not enjoyed one moment alone with her to
enable him to find out.
They had buried Armstrong in the snow, Robert Maitland saying over him a
brief but fervent petition in which even Newbold joined. Enid Maitland
herself had repeated eloquently to her Uncle and old Kirkby that night
before the fire the story of her rescue from the flood by this man, how
he had carried her in the storm to the hut and how he had treated her
since, and Maitland had afterwards repeated her account to his brother
in Denver.
Maitland had insisted that Newbold share his hospitality, but that young
man had refused. Kirkby had a little place not far from Denver and
easily accessible to it and the old man had gladly taken the younger
one with him. Newbold had been in a fever of anxiety over Enid
Maitland's illness, but his alarm had soon been dispelled by the
physician's assurance and there was nothing now left for him but to wait
until she could see him. He inquired for her morning and evening at the
great house on the hill, he kept her room a bower of beauty with
priceless blossoms, but he had sent no word.
Robert Maitland had promised to let him know, however, so soon as Enid
could see him and it was in pursuance of a telephone message that he was
in the library that morning.
He had not yet become accustomed to the world, he had lived so long
alone that he had grown somewhat shy and retiring, the habits and
customs of years were not to be lightly thrown aside in a week or a
month. He had sought no interview with Enid's father heretofore, indeed
had rather avoided it, but on this morning he had asked for it, and when
Robert Maitland would have withdrawn he begged him to remain.
"Mr. Maitland," Newbold began, "I presume that you know my unfortunate
history."
"I have heard the general outlines of it, sir, from my brother and
others," answered the other kindly.
"I need not dwell upon it further then. Although my hair is tinged with
gray and doubtless I look much older, I was only twenty-eight on my last
birthday. I was not born in this section of the country, my home was in
Baltimore."
"Do you by any chance belong to the Maryland Newbolds, sir?"
"Yes, sir."
"They are distantly related to a most excellent family of the same name
in Philadelphia, I believe?"
"I have always understood that to be the truth."
"Ah, a very satisfactory connection indeed," said Stephen Maitland with
no little satisfaction. "Proceed, sir."
"There is nothing much else to say about myself, except that I love your
daughter and with your permission I want her for my wife."
Mr. Stephen Maitland had thought long and seriously over the state of
affairs. He had proposed in his desperation to give Enid's hand to
Armstrong if he found her. It had been impossible to keep secret the
story of her adventure, her rescue and the death of Armstrong. It was
natural and inevitable that gossip should have busied itself with her
name. It would therefore have been somewhat difficult for Mr. Maitland
to have withheld his consent to her marriage to almost any reputable
man who had been thrown so intimately with her, but when the man was so
unexceptionably born and bred as Newbold, what had appeared as a more or
less disagreeable duty, almost an imperative imposition, became a
pleasure!
Mr. Maitland was no bad judge of men when his prejudices were not
rampant and he looked with much satisfaction on the fine, clean limbed,
clear eyed, vigorous man who was at present suing for his daughter's
hand. Newbold had shaved his beard and had cropped close his mustache,
he was dressed in the habits of civilization and he was almost
metamorphosed. His shyness wore away as he talked and his inherited ease
of manner and his birthright of good breeding came back to him and sat
easily upon him.
Under the circumstances the very best thing that could happen would be a
marriage between the two; indeed, to be quite honest, Mr. Stephen
Maitland would have felt that perhaps under any circumstances his
daughter could do no better than commit herself to a man like this.
"I shall never attempt," he said at last, "to constrain my daughter. I
think I have learned something by my touch with this life here, perhaps
we of Philadelphia need a little broadening in airs more free. I am sure
that she would never give her hand without her heart, and therefore,
she must decide this matter herself. From her own lips you shall have
your answer."
"But you, sir; I confess that I should feel easier and happier if I had
your sanction and approval."
"Steve," said Mr. Robert Maitland, as the other hesitated, not because
he intended to refuse but because he was loath to say the word that so
far as he was concerned would give his daughter into another man's
keeping, "I think you can trust Newbold. There are men here who knew him
years ago; there is abundant evidence and testimony as to his qualities;
I vouch for him."
"Robert," answered his brother, "I need no such testimony; the way in
which he saved Enid, the way he comported himself during that period of
isolation with her, his present bearing--in short, sir, if a father is
ever glad to give away his daughter, I might say that I should be glad
to entrust her to you. I believe you to be a man of honor and a
gentleman, your family is almost as old as my own, as for the disparity
in our fortunes, I can easily remedy that."
Newbold smiled at Enid's father, but it was a pleasant smile, albeit
with a trace of mockery and a trace of triumph in it.
"Mr. Maitland I am more grateful to you than I can say for your consent
and approval which I shall do my best to merit. I think I may claim to
have won your daughter's heart, to have added to that your sanction
completes my happiness. As for the disparity in our fortunes, while your
generosity touches me profoundly, I hardly think that you need be under
any uneasiness as to our material welfare."
"What do you mean?"
"I am a mining engineer, sir; I didn't live five years alone in the
mountains of Colorado for nothing."
"Pray explain yourself, sir."
"Did you find gold in the hills?" asked Robert Maitland, quicker to
understand.
"The richest veins on the continent," answered Newbold.
"And nobody knows anything about it?"
"Not a soul."
"Have you located the claims?"
"Only one."
"We'll go back as soon as the snow melts," said the younger Maitland,
"and take them up. You are sure?"
"Absolutely."
"But I don't quite understand?" queried Mr. Stephen Maitland.
"He means," said his brother, "that he has discovered gold."
"And silver too," interposed Newbold.
"In unlimited quantities," continued the other Maitland.
"Your daughter will have more money than she knows what to do with,
sir," smiled Newbold.
"God bless me!" exclaimed the Philadelphian.
"And that, whether she marries me or not, for the richest claim of all
is to be taken out in her name," added her lover.
Mr. Stephen Maitland shook the other by the hand vigorously.
"I congratulate you," he said, "you have beaten me on all points. I must
therefore regard you as the most eligible of suitors. Gold in these
mountains, well, well!"
"And may I see your daughter and plead my cause in person, sir?" asked
Newbold.
"Certainly, certainly. Robert, will you oblige me--"
In compliance with his brother's gesture, Robert Maitland touched the
bell and bade the answering servant ask Miss Maitland to come down to
the library.
"Now," said Mr. Stephen Maitland as the servant closed the door, "you
and I would best leave the young people alone, eh, Robert?"
"By all means," answered the younger and opening the door again the two
older men went out leaving Newbold alone.
He heard a soft step on the stair in the hall without, the gentle swish
of a dress as somebody descended from the floor above. A vision appeared
in the doorway. Without a movement in opposition, without a word of
remonstrance, without a throb of hesitation on her part, he took her in
his arms. From the drawing room opposite, Mr. Robert Maitland softly
tiptoed across the hall and closed the library door, neither of the
lovers being aware of his action.
Often and often they had longed for each other on the opposite side of a
door and now at last the woman was in the man's arms and no door rose
between them, no barrier kept them apart any longer. There was no
obligation of loyalty or honor, real or imagined, to separate them now.
They had drunk deep of the chalice of courage, they had drained the cup
to the very bottom, they had shown each other that though love was the
greatest of passions, honor and loyalty were the most powerful of forces
and now they reaped the reward of their abnegation and devotion.
At last the woman gave herself up to him in complete and entire
abandonment without fear and without reproach; and at last the man took
what was his own without the shadow of a reservation. She shrank from no
pressure of his arms, she turned her face away from no touch of his
lips. They two had proved their right to surrender by their ability to
conquer.
Speech was hardly necessary between them and it was not for a long time
that coherent words came. Little murmurs of endearment, little
passionate whispers of a beloved name--these were enough then.
When he could find strength to deny himself a little and to hold her at
arm's length and look at her, he found her paler, thinner and more
delicate than when he had seen her in the mountains. She had on some
witching creation of pale blue and silver, he didn't know what it was,
he didn't care, it made her only more like an angel to him than ever.
She found him, too, greatly changed and highly approved the alterations
in his appearance.
"Why, Will," she said at last, "I never realized what a handsome man you
were."
He laughed at her.
"I always knew you were the most beautiful woman on earth."
"Oh, yes, doubtless when I was the only one."
"And if there were millions you would still be the only one. But it
isn't for your beauty alone that I love you. You knew all the time that
my fight against loving you was based upon a misinterpretation, a
mistake; you didn't tell me because you were thoughtful of a poor dead
woman."
"Should I have told you?"
"No. I have thought it all out: I was loyal through a mistake but you
wouldn't betray a dead sister, you would save her reputation in the mind
of the one being that remembered her, at the expense of your own
happiness. And if there were nothing else I could love you for that."
"And is there anything else?" asked she who would fain be loved for
other qualities.
"Everything," he answered rapturously, drawing her once more to his
heart.
"I knew that there would be some way," answered the satisfied woman
softly after a little space. "Love like ours is not born to fall short
of the completest happiness. Oh, how fortunate for me was that idle
impulse that turned me up the canyon instead of down, for if it had not
been for that there would have been no meeting--"
She stopped suddenly, her face aflame at the thought of the conditions
of that meeting, she must needs hide her face on his shoulder.
He laughed gayly.
"My little spirit of the fountain, my love, my wife that is to be! Did
you know that your father has done me the honor to give me your hand,
subject to the condition that your heart goes with it?"
"You took that first," answered the woman looking up at him again.
There was a knock on the door. Without waiting for permission it was
opened; this time three men entered, for old Kirkby had joined the
group. The blushing Enid made an impulsive movement to tear herself away
from Newbold's arms, but he shamelessly held her close. The three men
looked at the two lovers solemnly for a moment and then broke into
laughter. It was Kirkby who spoke first.
"I hear as how you found gold in them mountains, Mr. Newbold."
"I found something far more valuable than all the gold in Colorado in
these mountains," answered the other.
"And what was that?" asked the old frontiersman curiously and
innocently.
"This!" answered Newbold as he kissed the girl again.
THE END
End of Project Gutenberg's The Chalice Of Courage, by Cyrus Townsend Brady