The Last Climb
That first visit of Aaron King and Conrad Lagrange to the old home of
Sibyl Andrés was the beginning of a delightful comradeship.
Often, in the evening, the two men, with Czar, went to spend an hour in
friendly intercourse with their neighbors up the canyon. Always, they were
welcomed by Myra Willard with a quiet dignity; while Sibyl was frankly
delighted to have them come. Always, they were invited with genuine
hospitality to "come again." Frequently, Brian Oakley and perhaps Mrs.
Oakley would be there when they arrived; or the Ranger would come riding
into the yard before they left. At times, the canyon's mountain wall
echoed the laughter of the little company as Sibyl and the novelist played
their fantastical game of words; or again, the older people would listen
to the blending voices of the artist and the girl as, in the quiet hush of
the evening, they sang together to Myra Willard's accompaniment on the
violin; or, perhaps, Sibyl, with her face upturned to the mountain tops,
would make for her chosen friends the music of the hills.
Not infrequently, too, the girl would call at the camp in the sycamore
grove--sometimes riding with the Ranger, sometimes alone; or they would
hear her merry hail from the gate the other side of the orchard as she
passed by. And sometimes, in the morning, she would appear--equipped with
rod or gun or basket--to frankly challenge Aaron King to some long ramble
in the hills.
So the days for the young man at the beginning of his life work, and for
the young woman at the beginning of her womanhood, passed. Up and down the
canyon, along the boulder-strewn bed of the roaring Clear Creek, from the
Ranger Station to the falls; in the quiet glades under the alders hung
with virgin's-bower and wild grape; beneath the live-oaks on the
mountains' flanks or shoulders; in dimly lighted, cedar-sheltered gulches,
among tall brakes and lilies; or high up on the canyon walls under the
dark and fragrant pines--over all the paths and trails familiar to her
girlhood she led him--showing him every nook and glade and glen--teaching
him to know, as he had asked, the mountains that she herself so loved.
The time came, at last, when the two men must return to Fairlands. With
Mr. and Mrs. Oakley they were spending the evening at Sibyl's home when
Conrad Lagrange announced that they would leave the mountains, two days
later.
"Then,"--said the girl, impulsively,--"Mr. King and I are going for one
last good-by climb to-morrow. Aren't we?" she concluded--turning to the
artist.
Aaron King laughed as he answered, "We certainly seem to be headed that
way. Where are we going?"
"We will start early and come back late"--she returned--"which really is
all that any one ought to know about a climb that is just for the climb.
And listen--no rod, no gun, no sketch-book. I'll fix a lunch."
"Watch out for my convict," warned the Ranger. "He must be getting mighty
hungry, by now."
Early in the morning, they set out. Crossing the canyon, they climbed the
Oak Knoll trail--down which the artist and Conrad Lagrange had been led by
the uncanny wisdom of Croesus, a few weeks before--to the pipe-line. Where
the path from below leads into the pipe-line trail, under the live-oaks,
on a shelf cut in the comparatively easy slope of the mountain's shoulder,
they paused for a look over the narrow valley that lay a thousand feet
below. Across the wide, gray, boulder-strewn wash of the mountain
torrent's way, with the gleaming thread of tumbling Clear Creek in its
center, they could see the white dots that marked the camp back of the old
orchard; and, farther up the stream, could distinguish the little opening
with the cedar thicket and the giant sycamores that marked the spot where
Sibyl was born.
Aaron King, looking at the girl, recalled that day when he and Conrad
Lagrange, in a spirit of venturesome fun, had left the choice of trails to
the burro. "Good, old Croesus!" he said smiling.
She knew the story of how they had been guided to their camping place, and
laughed in return, as she answered, "He's a dear old burro, is Croesus,
and worthy of a better name."
"Plutus would be better," suggested the artist.
"Because a Greek God is better than a Lydian King?" she asked curiously.
"Wasn't Plutus the giver of wealth?" he returned.
"Yes."
"Well, and wasn't he forced by Zeus to distribute his gifts without regard
to the characters of the recipients?"
She laughed merrily. "Plutus or Croesus--I'm glad he chose the Oak Knoll
trail."
"And so am I," answered the man, earnestly.
Leisurely, they followed the trail that is hung--narrow thread-like
path--high upon the mountain wall, invisible from the floor of the canyon
below. At a point where the trail turns to round the inward curve of one
of the small side canyons--where the pines grow dark and tall--some
thoughtful hand had laid a small pipe from the large conduit tunnel, under
the trail, to a barrel fixed on the mountainside below the little path.
Here they stopped again and, while they loitered, filled a small canteen
with the cold, clear water from the mountain's heart. Farther on, where
the pipe-line again rounds the inward curve of the wall between two
mountain spurs, they turned aside to follow the Government trail that
leads to the fire-break on the summit of the Galenas and then down into
the valley on the other side. At the gap where the Galena trail crosses
the fire-break, they again turned aside to make their leisure way along
the broad, brush-cleared break that lies in many a fold and curve and kink
like a great ribbon on the thin top of the ridge. With every step, now,
they were climbing. Midday found them standing by a huge rock at the edge
of a clump of pines on one of the higher points of the western end of the
range. Here they would have their lunch.
As they sat in the lee of the great rock, with the wind that sweeps the
mountain tops singing in the pines above their heads, they looked directly
down upon the wide Galena Valley and far across to the spurs and slopes of
the San Jacintos beyond. Sibyl's keen eyes--mountain-trained from
childhood--marked a railway train crawling down the grade from San
Gorgonio Pass toward the distant ocean. She tried in vain to point it out
to her companion. But the city eyes of the man could not find the tiny
speck in the vast landscape that lay within the range of their vision. The
artist looked at his watch. The train was the Golden State Limited that
had brought him from the far away East, a few months before.
Aaron King remembered how, from the platform of the observation car, he
had looked up at the mountains from which he now looked down. He
remembered too, the woman into whose eyes he had, for the first time,
looked that day. Turning his face to the west, he could distinguish under
the haze of the distance the dark squares of the orange groves of
Fairlands. Before three days had passed he would be in his studio home
again. And the woman of the observation car platform--From distant
Fairlands, the man turned his eyes to the winsome face of his girl comrade
on the mountain top.
"Please"--she said, meeting his serious gaze with a smile of frank
fellowship--"please, what have I done?"
Smiling, he answered gravely, "I don't exactly know--but you have done
something."
"You look so serious. I'm sure it must be pretty bad. Can't you think what
it is?"
He laughed. "I was thinking about down there"--he pointed into the haze of
the distant valley to the west.
"Don't," she returned, "let's think about up here"--she waved her hand
toward the high crest of the San Bernardinos, and the mountain peaks about
them.
"Will you let me paint your portrait--when we get back to the orange
groves?" he asked.
"I'm sure I don't know," she returned. "Why do you want to paint me? I'm
nobody, you know--but just me."
"That's the reason I want to paint you," he answered.
"What's the reason?"
"Because you are you."
"But a portrait of me would not help you on your road to fame," she
retorted.
He flinched. "Perhaps," he said, "that's partly why I want to do it."
"Because it won't help you?"
"Because it won't help me on the road to fame. You _will_ pose for me,
won't you?"
"I'm sure I cannot say"--she answered--"perhaps--please don't let's talk
about it."
"Why not?" he asked curiously.
"Because"--she answered seriously--"we have been such good friends up here
in the mountains; such--such comrades. Up here in the hills, with the
canyon gates shut against the world that I don't know, you are like--like
Brian Oakley--and like my father used to be--and down there"--she
hesitated.
"Yes," he said, "and down there I will be what?"
"I don't know," she answered wistfully, "but sometimes I can see you going
on and on and on toward fame and the rewards it will bring you and you
seem to get farther and farther and farther away from--from the mountains
and our friendship; until you are so far away that I can't see you any
more at all. I don't like to lose my mountain friends, you know."
He smiled. "But no matter how famous I might become--no matter what fame
might bring me--I could not forget you and your mountains."
"I would not want you to remember me," she answered "if you were famous.
That is--I mean"--she added hesitatingly--"if you were famous just because
you _wanted_ to be. But I know you could never forget the mountains. And
that would be the trouble; don't you see? If you _could_ forget, it would
not matter. Ask Mr. Lagrange, he knows."
For some time Aaron King sat, without speaking, looking about at the world
that was so far from that other world--the world he had always known. The
girl, too,--seeming to understand the thoughts that he himself, perhaps,
could not have expressed,--was silent.
Then he said slowly, "I don't think that I care for fame as I did before
you taught me to know the mountains. It doesn't, somehow, now, seem to
matter so much. It's the _work_ that really matters--after all--isn't it?"
And Sibyl Andrés, smiling, answered, "Yes, it's the work that really
matters. I'm sure that _must_ be so."
In the afternoon, they went on, still following the fire-break, down to
where it is intersected by the pipe-line a mile from the reservoir on the
hill above the power-house; then back to Oak Knoll, again on the pipe-line
trail all the way--a beautiful and never-to-be-forgotten walk.
The sun was just touching the tops of the western mountains when they
started down Oak Knoll. The canyon below, already, lay in the shadow. When
they reached the foot of the trail, it was twilight. Across the road, by a
small streamlet--a tributary to Clear Creek--a party of huntsmen were
making ready to spend the night. The voices of the men came clearly
through the gathering gloom. Under the trees, they could see the
camp-fire's ruddy gleam. They did not notice the man who was standing,
half hidden, in the bushes beside the road, near the spot where the trail
opens into it. Silently, the man watched them as they turned up the road
which they would follow a little way before crossing the canyon to Sibyl's
home. Fifty yards farther on, they met Brian Oakley.
"Howdy, you two," called the Ranger, cheerily--without stopping his horse.
"Rather late to-night, ain't you?"
"We'll be there by dark," called the artist And the Ranger passed on.
At sound of the mountaineer's voice, the man in the bushes drew quickly
back. The officer's trained eyes caught the movement in the brush, and he
leaned forward in the saddle.
A moment later, the man reappeared in the road, farther down, around the
bend. As the Ranger approached, he was hailed by a boisterous, "Hello,
Brian! better stop and have a bite."
"How do you do, Mr. Rutlidge?" came the officer's greeting, as he reined
in his horse. "When did you land in the hills?"'
"This afternoon," answered the other. "We're just making camp. Come and
meet the fellows. You know some of them."
"Thanks, not to-night,"--returned Brian Oakley,--"deer hunt, I suppose."
"Yes--thought we would be in good time for the opening of the season. By
the way, do you happen to know where Lagrange and that artist friend of
his are camped?"
"In that bunch of sycamores back of the old orchard down there," answered
the Ranger, watching the man's face keenly. "I just passed Mr. King, up
the road a piece."
"That so? I didn't see him go by," returned the other. "I think I'll run
over and say 'hello' to Lagrange in the morning. We are only going as far
as Burnt Pine to-morrow, anyway."
"Keep your eyes open for an escaped convict," said the officer, casually.
"There's one ranging somewhere in here--came in about a month ago. He's
likely to clean out your camp. So long."
"Perhaps we'll take him in for you," laughed the other. "Good night." He
turned toward the camp-fire under the trees, as the officer rode away.
"Now what in hell did that fellow want to lie to me like that for," said
Brian Oakley to himself. "He must have seen King and Sibyl as they came
down the trail. Max, old boy, when a man lies deliberately, without any
apparent reason, you want to watch him."