THE STORY OF THE SCAR
She was awakened by the shrill chatter of the magpies in the tall pine
near her window. Often she had resented their quarrelsome dialogue at
dawn, but now she slipped eagerly out of bed, and hurried to the
window. There had been rain in the night, but when she had pulled
apart the chintz curtains and opened the wooden shutters the air was
sweet and clean in her face, and the thin light showed the world
rising joyously to the day.
She dressed hastily in her oldest clothes, stole on tiptoe to the
kitchen for a biscuit and a glass of milk, found fishing tackle on the
veranda, and was soon running breathlessly past the corrals toward the
banks of the Brightwater. And all this was a deliberate deception. She
purposed to fish, of course--a little, to justify the clandestine
expedition; but what she really sought was solitude.
It was half in jest that she had said to Smythe, "He shall tell me!"
But in the night, by some strange alchemy, that jest had been
transmuted into a purpose of which she was still doubtful, if not
afraid. And yet to go forward seemed less difficult than to go back.
For she had let the days of Seth's recovery and convalescence slip by
without telling Claire of her experience in the Forbidden Pasture and
on the road to Paradise. The duel at the post-office, she argued,
surely had made it unnecessary to warn Huntington of Haig's anger. And
yet, as their guest, as Claire's cousin--But had they been quite fair
to her? They had not warned her of the hostility across the Ridge;
they had let her go blundering into the Forbidden Pasture; not that it
mattered so much, though it might have been worse--
Her thoughts were becoming very much confused. She had permitted a man
to treat her most offensively, and she had seen him shoot down another
without compunction; and that other was her cousin, in whose house she
was a guest. And yet she felt no resentment, no detestation, no
censure, no rebuke. Instead, here she was running away to think out a
plan whereby she might hear the whole story of the feud, and more,
from Haig himself.
The morning advanced in rose and pearl nuances. A hundred tantalizing
perfumes filled the air; field-spiders' webs sparkled in the dew like
silver gossamer; meadow larks rose at her feet, and wove delicate
patterns in the air with threads of melody. Who could think amid such
diverting beauty? She lifted her head, and went singing through the
meadows, knee-deep in the wet and clinging grass, and laughing when
the parted branches of the willows splashed her face and drenched her.
And then, at the first cast she made into a still, deep pool, where
the night loitered under the very eye of day, an imprudent trout took
the gray hackle fly, and made off with it. The splash, and the "zip"
of the tightening line through the water; and then the fight, and the
capture--Well, if they were going to rise like that--
The sun was high before she became aware that she was very hot and
tired and hungry. Her shoes were soaking wet, her skirts and stockings
splashed with mud; one shoulder was being sunburned where a twig had
caught and ripped her white flannel waist; and Seth's red silk
handkerchief around her neck was scarcely a deeper crimson than her
face.
"But I can't catch them all in one day!" she exclaimed reluctantly,
leaning wearily against a tree.
At that instant, under her very eyes, a trout leaped in the nearby
pool.
"Impudence!" she cried. "I'll just get you, and then quit."
But it was one pool too many; for at the second cast her hook caught
in the rough bark of a log that projected far out into the stream.
"Oh! Now I've done it!" she groaned.
Several smart tugs at the line, with a whipping of the rod to right
and left of the log, convinced her that the hook was too deeply
embedded to be released by any such operation. Sinking down on a heap
of driftwood on the bank, she gloomily contemplated the consequences
of her greed. There were two ways to go about it now,--to break the
line and leave the hook to its fate, or to crawl out on the log and
rescue it. The first was unsportsmanlike, the second was very likely
to be dangerous.
"Um-m-m!" she muttered, with a grimace. "It's not easy."
The log ran out, at a slight inclination upward, from the center of
the heap of driftwood, and its free end, where the hackle fly reposed
at a distance of fully twenty feet from the bank, was suspended barely
two feet above the middle of the pool. She leaned forward, and gazed
into its dark depths, which appeared to be scarcely stirred by the
current, though five yards away the stream was making a merry racket
over the shallows.
She stood up, and looked around her. Through the screen of willows and
cottonwoods on each sloping bank she saw the meadows lying green and
silent in the sun. There was no sound except the prattle of the
Brightwater and the murmur of the breeze in the foliage. She assured
herself that she was quite alone.
Next she folded and pinned up her skirt so that it hung just to her
knees, and after a final glance in all directions, stepped cautiously
out to the edge of the driftwood, knelt down on the fallen trunk, and
began to creep warily out toward the embedded hook. The log was round,
and none too large; her knees, protected only by thin stockings, were
bruised by the rough and partly-loosened bark; and she scarcely dared
to breathe lest she should lose her balance, and tumble into the
yawning pool. Once she incautiously looked down, and saw her image
waving dizzily on the slow-moving surface of the water.
"Oh!" she gasped, as she drew back her gaze, and dug her nails into
the log.
But for all her fears, and because of them, it was tremendously
exciting, and she became deeply absorbed in her task. Now clinging
close to the log in sudden panic, now laughing tremulously at her
trepidation, she forgot everything except her goal, and the inches by
which she was approaching it. She had arrived within two feet of the
hook, and was just about to reach a trembling hand to detach it, when
she received a shock that was near to ending her expedition in an
ignominious splash.
"Wait!" called out a voice, somewhere behind her. "I'll help you!"
The fright first nearly caused her to lose her grip on the log, and
then left her cold and shivering. After that a wave of heat swept over
her, and the blood tingled in her flushed and perspiring face.
Who was it? Philip Haig, by all the ill luck in the world? Who else
could have had the effrontery? She dared not turn to look, both in
fear of falling, and in shame at being caught in that absurd
predicament. What a sight! she thought. Her skirt was above her knees,
and one stocking, caught by a projection of bark, had slipped down to
her ankle. And that was not all!... With a desperate effort, she
lifted one hand from its hold on the log, and tried to adjust her
skirt; but the movement only unbalanced her. With a shriek she
flattened herself, and lay there panting and miserable.
"Wait!" the voice cried, more sharply than before. "No move--for
minute!"
She was arrested by the words. "No move for minute!" It was not the
voice of Philip Haig, but in that assurance there was only a doubtful
consolation. If not Haig--who? There was something oddly foreign in
that heavy, harsh, and yet not displeasing voice. A new fear presently
mingled with the others. It was a wild country after all; and she had
taken no note of the distance she had come, and little of her
surroundings. But she could only obey, and wait.
There came the sound of quick splashing in the water, and a few
seconds later a man's head and shoulders appeared in the stream at
her side. At sight of the strange, dark countenance suddenly upturned
to her, within a foot of her own, she almost fainted. It was a face
she had never seen before, solemn, stolid, with a copper-colored skin,
high cheek bones, and deep-set, black eyes in which there was no more
expression than there was on the thin, straight lips. She closed her
eyes.
But that was only for an instant, since nothing terrible was
happening. When she dared to look again the man was quietly releasing
the offending fly. He tossed it back in the direction of the bank,
then stood for a moment regarding her, still without the trace of an
expression on his dark face.
"Don't be 'fraid!" he said. "Hold still!"
She obeyed him, though his next move was one to have brought a scream
to her lips if she had not become incapable of utterance. Standing in
the water, which came almost up to his armpits, he had kept his arms
high above the surface of the pool. Now he stretched them out toward
her, clasped both her ankles with one huge hand, slipped the other
under her waist, and with what seemed incredible strength and
assurance, lifted her off the log. Then, without so much as wetting
the edge of her skirt, he bore her to the bank, and seated her gently
on the heap of driftwood from which she had ventured so bravely only a
little while before.
Should she weep, or laugh, or rage at him? Through eyes half-blinded
by tears, she searched his face; but he met her troubled and fiery
gaze with the most perfect calm. Then, after a moment, he deliberately
turned, and stood facing squarely away from her,--an act of stoicism
that at once removed her fears and completed her discomfiture. She
took the hint implied in his movement, and bent down, blushing
furiously, to pull up the fallen stocking, and let down her skirt.
When she sat erect again the man had not changed his position; and she
seized the opportunity to study him. His figure, though she had just
had proof of his strength, was lean almost to thinness, very straight,
and borne, she fancied, with a certain dignity and even majesty in its
erectness. The straight, black hair under the sombrero was touched
with gray. He was not young, past middle age perhaps; but she could
hazard no nearer guess at his age. No matter! Looking at him thus, she
began to feel her resentment falling away, as if every shaft from her
angry eyes had broken harmlessly on that serene and unoffending back.
Even her embarrassment began to seem inexcusable. The man had carried
her ashore in much the manner he would have used if she had been a
sack of oats to be saved from wetting.
"You are very strong!" Marion said at last.
He turned slowly toward her. His face was grave and expressionless,
but by no means dull; and his eyes were very black and bright.
"You--are--all--right--now?" he asked, ignoring her praise.
There was a curious slowness and lack of emphasis in his speech, with
a pause after each word, that gave a singular impressiveness to all he
said.
"But why did you do it?" she demanded.
"'Fraid you fall," was his simple answer.
"But I don't mind getting wet."
"Easy drown in little water," he said laconically.
She laughed at the idea of her drowning in a pool like that--she who
had battled triumphantly with the breakers at Atlantic City, Newport,
and Bar Harbor.
"But I can swim!" she assured him.
"I not know that," he replied, unmoved.
True. And she must have appeared to be greatly in need of assistance.
"Anyhow, I thank you!" she said sincerely. "But who am I thanking,
please?"
"Pete."
"Pete! Pete who?"
"Only Pete."
"But have you no other name?"
"Yes. Indian name."
And he rolled out a string of guttural syllables that sounded like
names of places in the Maine woods.
Indian name! Marion started; and in a flash she knew. Haig's man
Friday! Here was luck indeed.
"You are Mr. Haig's--" She hesitated.
"Friend," he said, completing her sentence.
Marion was again embarrassed. She did not know what to say next,
fearing to say the wrong thing, and so to throw away a golden
opportunity. In her search for the right lead, her eyes lighted on a
fishing basket that lay on the ground not far from her own.
"Oh!" she cried. "But it's strange I didn't hear or see you!"
"Indian not make noise."
"I should say not!" she retorted, laughing.
"Trout very smart," he added quietly.
"I've caught fourteen," she volunteered eagerly. "And you?"
For answer he fetched his creel, and opened it.
"Oh!" she cried, in envy and admiration, seeing that the creel was
almost full, and that not a fish in sight was as small as her largest
prize.
"I give you some," he said, glancing at her own basket.
"No! No!" she protested quickly. "I have plenty."
She showed him her catch, which was by no means insignificant.
Nevertheless Pete took three of his largest trout, and transferred
them to her basket, ignoring her protests.
"But they are for--him, aren't they?" she asked.
"Biggest you no see. At bottom."
That satisfied her, and she watched him silently while he found her
rod, and reeled in the offending fly.
"Brown fly better now," he said. "You ought see what trout eating
before you try catch big ones."
On this he drew a book of flies from his pocket, and replaced the gray
hackle with a brown one. She questioned him eagerly, following this
plain lead; and presently they were seated on the pile of driftwood,
while he told her about the native trout and the rainbow and the
California, of little brooks far up among the mountains where the
trout were small but of a delicious flavor, of the time for flies and
the time for worms, of famous catches he had made, of the way the
Indians fished before the white man showed them patent rods and reels.
By slow degrees Pete's iron features softened, and he smiled at her,
not with his lips, but with his eyes, which were the blackest, surely,
in the world.
But Marion was not diverted from the questions that were next her
heart. With all her woman's cunning of indirection, she brought the
talk around to Philip Haig. Did he fish? Sometimes. Did he hunt? Much,
when the deer came down from the heights with the first snows.
Then--she could resist no longer.
"It must have been terrible--the accident," she said, placing a finger
on her cheek.
He looked at her strangely, while she held her breath.
"That no accident," he said at last, after what seemed to her an
interminable interval of suspense.
"No accident?" she repeated, trying not to appear too eager.
"He call it accident, maybe. He say it is nothing. Pete say it is
much. It is big debt. Some day Pete pay."
There was deep silence for a moment. The stream gurgled and splashed;
the breeze whispered through the cottonwoods; and over all, or under
all, was the vague, insistent, seductive sound that the summer makes
in the fulness of its power.
Marion hesitated, quivering with eagerness and uncertainty. She was
afraid to ask more, lest she should be shortly rebuffed, and lose her
opportunity. But Pete was looking at her steadily. She felt a flush
coming into her face again. Had he guessed--something--already in her
manner, in her impulsive questions? More likely it was the charm that,
for once unconsciously, she wielded--the elusive charm of woman that
makes men want to tell, without the asking.
"You like to hear?" Pete said; and her heart leaped.
"Oh, please!"
And she was keenly disappointed. She had expected something romantic,
something ennobling and fine. And it was only a barroom brawl, though
Philip was not in it until the end, to be sure! Five Mexican sheep
herders against the lone Indian. Guns and knives in the reeking border
saloon; and afterwards in the street; and the Indian almost done for,
bleeding from a dozen wounds; and then a voice ringing out above the
fracas: "No, I'm damned if you do! Five to one, and greasers at that!"
And Philip Haig had jumped from his horse, and plunged into the melee,
disdaining to draw his gun on greasers. Smash! Bang! went his fists,
front and right and left.
Pete had accounted for one Mexican, who would herd sheep no more on
the plains of Conejos. The others fled. Then Haig, despite the
knife-wound in his face, grabbed the Indian, and somehow lifted him up
behind him on his horse.
"Quick, Indian!" he cried. "This town's full of greasers. You've got
no chance here."
And then the long ride to Del Norte, with the Indian drooping on
Haig's back; and a doctor of Haig's acquaintance, who sheltered and
cured the silent savage. And Pete, convalescent, had come straight to
Haig's ranch, and remained there, despite Haig's protests that he did
not need another hand.
"Pete stay until big debt is paid," said the Indian solemnly. And
then, with a straight look into Marion's eyes, "You ought tell
Huntington he is damn fool."
Marion started. There it was again--the warning!
"But why?" she managed to ask.
"Haig is brave man. Brave man always good man. So--Huntington got no
chance."