A RECONCILIATION
The small boy, ignoring Jane, sprang toward the mountain girl and dragged
her into the cabin. On the floor lay Julie, her cheeks wet with tears,
her eyes dulled with suffering.
With a glad cry Jane leaped into the darkened room and was about to take
the small girl in her arms, but Julie turned away and held her hands out
toward Meg, when to their surprise Jane sank down in a worn-out heap on
the floor and began to sob bitterly.
"Oh, mother, mother!" she cried, as though addressing someone she knew
must be present, "help me to take your place with Julie and Gerald. Tell
them to forgive me."
Meg feared that Jane's long day of anguish had temporarily unbalanced her
mind, but Julie, hearing that cry, reached out a comforting hand.
"Jane," she said weakly, "don't feel so badly. I guess we were awfully
trying, me and Gerald."
Passionately Jane caught the child in her arms and held her close. She
kissed her forehead and her tumbled hair. Then she reached out a hand to
the boy, who had drawn near amazed to see his usually cold, hard sister
so affected.
"Give me another chance, Gerald!" she cried, tears streaming unheeded
down her cheeks. "Don't hate me yet. I'm going to begin all over. I'm
going to try to be like mother."
A cry of pain from the small girl then caught her attention.
"Julie, what is it, dear? Are you hurt? What has happened?"
Gerald spoke up: "That's why we came in here. We were headin' down the
mountain for the Packard ranch when Julie fell. I guess her ankle is
hurt."
Meg at once was on her knees unbuttoning the high shoe. The ankle was
swollen, but there were no bones broken.
"It is a bad sprain," she said.
Then, swinging the knapsack which she always carried when on a mountain
hike from her back, she took out her emergency kit. She washed the angry
looking place with soothing liniment and then wound tightly about it
strips of clean white cloth.
"Now," she said, "we will have some refreshments."
This amazed her listeners and greatly pleased at least one of them.
"Gee-golly!" Gerald cried. "I hadn't thought of it before, but I guess
I'm starving to death more'n likely."
Meg smiled as she produced a box of raisins. "This may not seem much of a
menu, but it is all one needs for several days to sustain life."
The small boy took a generous handful and gobbled it with speed. Then the
mountain girl brought out a canteen.
"Bring us some water from the creek," she told him. Jane held out a
detaining hand.
"Oh, Meg," she implored, "don't send Gerry to that raging torrent. Don't
you remember how we heard it roaring?"
"But you don't hear it now," was the reply. "The water from the
cloudburst has long since gone to the valley to be absorbed, much of it,
in the coarse gravel. You'll find Crazy Creek just as it always is."
"That's where Julie sprained her ankle," Gerald said. "We were trying to
reach it to get a drink."
He soon returned with the canteen full of ice-cold water. His eyes were
wide.
"Say, girls," he began, "we can't make it home tonight, can we? The sun's
going down west of our peak right this minute."
"We didn't expect to," Meg replied. "Gerald, you come with me and we will
bring in pine branches or kinnikinick, if we can find any, for our beds."
From her knapsack Meg took a folding knife as she talked.
"Kinnikinick?" the boy gayly repeated. Everything that had happened now
appeared to him in the light of a jolly adventure except, of course,
Julie's ankle, and she no longer seemed to be in pain. "What sort of a
thing is that?"
Meg had led the way out of the cabin.
"Here's some!" she shouted, and the boy raced over to find the girl whom
he so admired bending over a dense evergreen vine.
"It's prettier in winter," she told him, "for then it has red berries
among the bright green leaves. It makes a wonderful bed. It is so soft
and springy."
After half an hour of effort branches of pine and some of the kinnikinick
were laid on the floor, Julie was made comfortable, but Jane would not
lie down. She sat with her back against the wall holding the small girl's
head on her lap. Dan had been right. One could carve oneself after a
model. Never, never again would she lose sight, she assured herself, of
her chosen goal, which was to do in all things as her dear mother would
have done.
As soon as the sun sank it began to grow dark. Meg had at once barred the
door, and also she had examined the floor and walls to be sure that there
was no yawning knothole large enough to admit a snake.
The children slept from sheer exhaustion, but Jane and Meg stayed awake
through the seemingly endless hours, while night prowlers howled many
times close to their cabin.
At the first gray streak of dawn, Julie stirred uneasily and began to cry
softly. Meg begged Jane to change positions with her, and, completely
worn out, Jane did lie down on the pine boughs which had been so placed
that they were springy and comfortable. Almost at once she fell asleep.
Meg removed the bandages that were hot from the little girl's hurt ankle
and again applied the cooling liniment. Other fresh strips of cloth were
used and then, with the small head pillowed on Meg's lap, Julie again
fell asleep. Gerald had not wakened through the night, not even when a
curious wolf had sniffed at their doorsill and had then lifted his head
to wail out his displeasure.
The sun was high above the peak when Jane leaped up, startled, from her
restless slumber. "What was that? I thought I heard a gun shot."
"You did." Nothing seemed to stir Meg from her undisturbed calm. "Someone
is coming. Julie, will you sit up against the wall, dear, and I will open
the door."
Gerald, half awake, but sensing some excitement, leaped out of the cabin,
his small gun held in readiness. "Do you 'spect it's the Utes?" he asked,
almost hoping that the answer would be in the affirmative. But Meg
laughed. "No," she said. "It is probably someone searching for you." Then
she fired in answer. From not far above them came two gun shots in rapid
succession.
"Oh, boy!" Gerald leaped to a position where he could see the road as it
wound under the pines. "There are two horsemen. Gee! One of 'em is Dan."
"And the other is Jean Sawyer!" his companion told him.
Julie had wanted to see what was going on, so hopping on one foot, she
appeared in the doorway, supported by Jane. The two lads uttered whoops
of joy when they saw the group awaiting them. Dan at once caught Gerald
in his arms and then glanced tenderly toward the two in the doorway.
Little did Jane guess that in that moment, white and worn as she was, she
had never looked so beautiful to her brother. And as for Jean Sawyer, he
saw in the face which had charmed him, a softer expression, and he knew
that some great transformation had taken place in the soul of the girl.
Leaping forward, he said with deep solicitude: "Oh, Miss Jane, how you
have suffered!"
Dan lifted Julie most carefully to the back of his horse as he said:
"Meg, can you ride in front of this little miss and I will walk at your
side?" Then he smiled, and Jane, glancing at him anxiously, rejoiced to
note he was not ill as she had feared he would be, though he did look
very tired. The lad continued: "You see, Jean and I expected to find you
all here. Intuitive knowledge, if you wish to call it that, and so we
planned what we would do. Jane is to ride on Silver, which Mr. Packard
loaned us, and Jean will lead the way."
"But where are we going?" his older sister inquired.
"Down to the ranch," Jean replied. "I had strict orders to bring you back
with me, all of you, for that visit that you were to have paid at the
weekend."
Meg was about to demur, but the lad hastened to say: "I told your father
that I would telephone the forest ranger as soon as you all were located.
He is waiting there for a message, and I cannot until I get you to the
ranch."
Still Meg thought she ought to climb back to her own home, but Jane
implored: "Oh, don't leave me! I do _so_ want you to go with us." That
settled it and though the girl from the East little dreamed it, there was
a warm glow of joy in the heart of the mountain girl who had so wanted a
friend of her own age.
Jane shuddered as they rode down the old trail of the deserted mining
camp. Shacks in all degrees of ruin stood about, machinery was rusting
where it had been left. The beauty of the mountain had been marred by
dark tunnels, outside of which stood heaps of orange and blue-gray
refuse. Even in the more substantial log huts, made of aspen poles,
windows were broken and doors hung on one hinge. "The desolation of the
place will haunt my dreams forever," the girl from the East said.
"And all this," Jean made a wide sweep with his arm, "because the paying
vein they had been so frantically following was lost. It might have been
found, Mr. Packard told me, but another rich strike was made on Eagle
Head Mountain and the inhabitants of this camp, to a man, deserted it and
flocked to that new mine, and from there they probably followed other
lures, ending, I suppose, as poor, or poorer, than when they began."
Dan was interested. "Then the lost vein may still be here, who knows?" he
commented with a backward glance at the deserted camp they had left. And
yet, was it deserted? As soon as the young people were gone a stealthy
figure appeared, slinking out of one of the huts. It was the old Ute
Indian and since he carried a pick and shovel, it was quite evident that
he had started out to dig. Was it the lost vein or some other treasure
that he sought?