Ralph followed Philippe and Kitty through the narrow cleft in the rock,
and the three of them stood huddled together at the bottom of the hole.
The opening was like an eye looking down on them. Philippe sent Kitty
aloft by means of the pine trunk. Looking at Ralph, he scratched his
head in perplexity. How to get him out with his arms bound was the
question.
"Untie me," said Ralph mildly. "I'll let you tie me again."
This sudden tractibility aroused Philippe's suspicions. He debated the
matter scowlingly. However, Ralph, deprived of the use of his right
arm, was not a formidable antagonist, and the half-breed decided to
chance it. As Ralph climbed, he followed close at his heels, and
quickly secured him again at the top.
They made their way down the bed of the ravine. No more than Philippe
could Kitty understand the new light in Ralph's eyes. She glanced at
him covertly, wondering with a fresh pang of jealousy what had taken
place behind her back. Ralph was walking on air. He had suffered so
much that he snatched at the prospect of happiness, however fleeting.
Both the immediate danger and the hopeless future were put out of his
mind; it was enough for him that Nahnya had promised to come to him;
she was one to keep her word!
Jim Sholto saw them coming, and ran down the bank to embrace his
daughter. Kitty's answering welcome was not overwarm; she was too
bitterly concerned with another matter. Jim, hurt by her coldness and
ascribing it to its cause, turned angrily on Ralph.
"You young blackguard!" he cried. "You'll stoop to use a helpless girl
to further your evil ends, will you?"
Poor Kitty, all day the helpless plaything of circumstances, asserted
herself at last. She forced herself between the two men. "If you
abuse him any more I shall hate you!" she cried to her father, with an
outbreak of passion that surprised herself. "It was not his fault at
all! I set him loose of my own free will, out of common humanity,
which you lacked! He sent me back, but I would not let him go alone in
such a state! I keep telling you it's Annie Crossfox he's in love
with. He has made no pretences to me!"
"Where's your pride, lass?" cried Jim.
"It's you who won't let me have any pride!" she flashed back at him.
"Never speak of this again!"
He took her arm. "Come away!" he said grimly.
At the top of the bank they met Joe Mixer. "You've got him!" he cried
gleefully to Philippe. To Ralph: "You ----! How do you feel about it
now?"
Kitty, apprehending blows to follow, wrenched her arm out of her
father's grasp, and turned on Joe. The flames still burned high in her
cheeks. "Let him alone!" she cried. "He's not your prisoner!" To her
father she said passionately: "He was sent out in your care! If you
don't take him and keep him from this cowardly bully, you won't take
me!"
All men dread a roused woman. "Softly with your epithets, girl!" said
Jim scowling. To Philippe he said sullenly: "Give him over to me."
Philippe yielded his prisoner, nothing loath. Joe Mixer, keen to learn
what the half-breed had discovered, did not care what became of Ralph.
Stack and Crusoe had joined the group, and the three of them volleyed
questions at Philippe. Jim Sholto lingered to listen; he was a
gold-hunter, too. Ralph, forgotten for the moment by all the men, sat
down beside the trail and hugged his dream, deaf and blind to what was
going on around him. Kitty watched him sorely.
"It was just like she told," Philippe said; "a long walk through the
cave, and a pretty valley on the other side. There is no other way to
get in. It is Bowl of the Mountains, all right."
"Did you see any gold?" demanded Joe.
"Plenty," said Philippe. "The bottom of all the little streams are
yellow with it. I pick up a little. See!"
Digging his hand into his pocket, he brought it forth full of yellow
grains, which he emptied carelessly into Joe's twitching palm. The
heads of the four white men came together, and the four pairs of eyes
showed the same insane glitter.
"This is the stuff!" cried Joe, pouring the grains with a voluptuous
pleasure from palm to palm. "Sweeter than booze! sweeter than women!
It'll buy you plenty of both! Gad! I'll keep a great chest of it
always by me, and come dig in it every day for the pleasure of the feel
and the heft of it!"
"Can we get it out through the cave?" asked Jim.
"Sure!" said Philippe. "It's easy going."
"How about the girl?" demanded Joe.
"She is there with her family."
"How many?"
"An old man, a young man, two boys, and four women."
"H'm! They could make it awkward for us," said Joe frowning.
"They not care for gold," said Philippe, with an innocent, stolid air.
"Wash a little, and let it lie. When I tell Nahnya you all here, him
feel bad. Him say no use. Him say not fight you."
"Come on, then!" cried Joe excitedly. "Let's lose no time!"
"Come on!" echoed Stack and Crusoe Campbell. The desire was no less
strong in Jim Sholto's face. He looked at Kitty uneasily.
Philippe hung back. "I paddle half the night!" he said, with an
admirable assumption of the disgruntled servant. "I walk all day. Am
I a steam-engine? I got eat and sleep now."
"Sleep?" cried Joe. "Man, there's a fortune waiting for every one of
us in there!"
"I got sleep, me," Philippe repeated stubbornly. "The gold is there
to-morrow just the same, I guess."
"Damn these redskins!" cried Joe. "They're all alike!"
"Go yourself," said Philippe. "The way is free. Don' blame me if you
fall in the hole, or get lost."
A heated argument resulted. Philippe was inexorable. He knew well
enough that the white men would not venture into the bowels of the
earth without him. Philippe finally picked up his blanket, and
carrying it apart lay down and affected to go to sleep. The others
were obliged to resign themselves to wait.
Meanwhile Jim Sholto was in a quandary. He could not bear to have
Kitty camping with that rough crew, and he was jealous of leaving her a
moment alone with Ralph, yet he could not tear himself away from the
vicinity with such riches waiting to be gathered. He could not but
compare the ease of washing gold in a stream with the strenuous labour
of smelting ore in little home-made furnaces.
He compromised with himself by establishing his camp a few hundred
yards away from Joe's. It was the spot where the operation had been
performed on old Marya's arm. Ralph was secretly gladdened by the
choice of the spot. It was not far for Nahnya to come. During the
rest of the afternoon Ralph and Kitty slept. Jim occupied himself in
building a shelter of branches to house Kitty throughout the night.
There was not much conversation around this campfire. It irked Ralph
to be obliged to accept Jim's grim hospitality, but there was no help
for it. Immediately after supper Kitty disappeared within her shelter,
and Jim soon lay down in his blanket athwart the entrance. He made no
objection to Ralph's dragging his bed to a little distance. If Ralph
had escaped altogether, Jim would have been only too well pleased.
When Jim's snores began to displace the heavy stillness of the forest,
Ralph rose and dragged his blankets still farther away. Jim had tied
him in such a manner that his left arm was free from the elbow. He
arranged his bed after a fashion directly in the trail, and lay down to
wait. It was about nine o'clock. It would not be dark until after
ten. He knew that Nahnya could not venture out of the cave until then,
and that he must give her time to make a detour of the other camp.
He lay in a kind of fever watching for evidences of darkness with avid
eyes. One cannot measure the subtle stages of the passing of day any
better than its coming. It goes and it comes and all is said. Thus to
Ralph counting the crawling minutes it seemed as if the bright sky
clung obstinately to its brightness, and as if the dim spacious aisles
of the forest refused to grow dimmer. Losing patience at last, he
closed his eyes and tossed restlessly. When he opened them again,
behold! it was nearly dark.
His heart began to beat, and his mouth went dry. In every whisper of
the leaves he thought he heard the brush of her skirt. The tiny, furry
footfalls that began to stir among the pine needles suggested her
creeping moccasins, now on this side, now on that. A dozen times he
started to a sitting position, sure he heard her, only to fall back
disappointed. The thought that something might finally prevent her
from coming turned him sick with apprehension.
She came as softly as a breath through the forest, and dropped on her
knees beside him, without his having heard her coming. His eyes were
well-used to the darkness, and he could make her out faintly; her
graceful head outlined against a patch of sky overhead; her two hands
pressed hard to her breast in a way that he knew. He heard, or fancied
he heard, her heart's quick beating. A great peace succeeded the
torture of suspense.
"You've come!" he breathed.
"I am mad! I am foolish!" she faltered.
He apprehended that the slightest thing would send her flying back
again. By turning a little he managed to reach her hand and to pull it
down to his lips. Her fingers crept eagerly inside his, as she had
never allowed them to do before. She had confessed nothing with her
voice yet, but her whole being breathed a passionate warmth over him
that made him dizzy with happiness.
"Nahnya, darling, untie my hands," he whispered.
"No!" she said tremulously.
He pleaded with her urgently.
Her trembling hand stroked his cheek with a touch like flower petals.
"Ah, do not make me fight you now," she begged. "I so tire of fighting
you, Ralph. You know if I let you free, you not let me go back. I
must go back! Do not make me sorry I come!"
"This is harder to bear than Joe Mixer's tortures!" he bitterly
complained.
She tried to disengage the hand he clung to. "If you say that, I must
go now," she whispered sadly.
It terrified him. "No! No! Anything you want!" he said swiftly.
"Let me stay quiet by you a little," she whispered. "Let me love you
quiet a little."
"Tell me you love me, and I'm satisfied," he said.
She sank down beside him and kissed him softly on the lips. "I love
you! I love you! I love you!" she murmured, with such passion as he
had never dreamed of hearing on the lips of a woman. "I love you the
first time I see you! Always it near kill me to make out I do not love
you! I love you till I die!"
They were silent for a space, clinging to each other, cheek to cheek in
the darkness, their breasts tossing on stormy sighs.
He said brokenly at last: "Nahnya, this is the strongest thing in the
world. Nothing else matters. You must not leave me!"
She partly raised herself, and put a gentle hand over his mouth. "In
your heart you know I mus' go," she whispered. "In your heart you know
ver' well there mus' not be anything between you and me! Do not spoil
our little time together by speaking of it!"
His head rolled impatiently on the ground. "I cannot live without
you," he muttered. "I will not live without you!"
She kissed him. "Yes, you will," she said softly. "You will promise
me now to live the best life you can. Because I am going to live, and
always I want think of you living brave and happy and curing the sick!"
"Happy!" he said bitterly.
"It will come," she said, with quiet certainty.
"Put your hand in my pocket," he said. "There is something there for
you."
She found the necklace and kissed it. "I will always wear it," she
said.
She lay down beside him again, on the edge of his blanket, but not
touching him, except that she caught his free hand and pressed it hard
to her cheek. "Often I am think the same," she whispered. "I think
what is the use of living a life like mine! But always something stop
me from ending it. Something make me to go on living, sad as life is.
Death is for those who are shamed, I think. I am not shamed. You are
not shamed."
"You're braver than I," he murmured.
"You're plenty brave," she whispered, kissing his hand. "To-day I see
you think you are shamed because you think you bring trouble on me.
You think you will jus' step off the little bridge----"
"How did you know that?" he cried, astonished.
"I see it in your eyes," she said simply. "I love you. Often I know
what you are thinking. That is why I say I come to-night. I want tell
you I love you! I want tell you I think you are strong and brave. I
glad you love me! I glad you love me hard enough to come back when I
tell you no. I not sorry for anything. It is not your fault that the
other men come after you, or that you told the secret when you were
sick. That was going to happen. Such things are not understood by us.
You mus' not be shamed. I not have you shamed, because you are my
brave, good man!"
"You're an angel of comfort," he murmured. "I was ashamed!"
"Promise me now that you will make the best life you can," she
whispered.
"I promise," he said.
Her quiet voice broke. "Oh, my darling love!" she cried. "Always,
always I will be thinking of you! Wherever you are my spirit will go
to you to love you and make you happy. You are my husband and my baby,
too! Oh! I cannot speak more! How can I let you go! How can I let
you go!"
She clung to him, her warm tears running down his face. He could not
speak. He soothed her silently. She fought down the sobs. By and by
she said quaintly:
"That is over."
When she got her breath back she partly raised herself, and said:
"Another promise, Ralph."
"What?"
"Kitty."
He moved restlessly.
"Be good to her," she pleaded. "She is jus' sweet!"
"Impossible!" he said. "She's too much mixed up in this. I never want
to see her again!"
"By and by maybe you change," said Nahnya softly. "If it was not for
me you would marry Kitty. She is the one for you."
"Never!" cried Ralph.
The soft hand was clapped over his mouth again. "Do not swear it!" she
said. "Who can tell how you feel by and by? Take what comes. You
will like her, I think. Not like this----" Her voice shook again. "I
not want it just like this. But it will be good. And if you feel kind
to her you will remember that I wished it, and it will not be false to
me. Promise me, if you feel good and kind to Kitty you will marry her!"
"It will never be!" he cried.
"Then what harm to promise me?" she said quickly. "It make me a little
happy."
"Very well, if I change I will marry her," he said sullenly. "But I
will never change!"
"Kitty will be good to you," murmured Nahnya, "and watch you, and take
care of you almost as good as me. Kitty--will have babies! I think of
that--it is a pain and a gladness, too!"
"Nahnya," he said, "you hurt me!"
She clung to him again. "No!" she breathed in a voice as tender and
thrilling as starlight; "my love will not hurt you; it will make you
strong! It will be a more wonderful love because we cannot be
together. It will be more real than what you see! It will shelter you
like a house over your head, and comfort you like a fire in winter!
Whenever you close your eyes I will be there, waiting for you!
Good-bye, my brave man, my darling love!"
She was gone before he realized she was going.