THE TEMPTATION
When the ladies explained their plans for remaining in camp on High
Mesa, Blake gave a ready assent.
"All right, Jenny. It'll be something like old times. Can't scare you
up any lions or fever, leopards or cyclones; but you may see that
wolf."
"I should welcome all savage Africa if it would rid us of this awful
canyon!" replied his wife.
"Won't you please give it up?" begged Isobel. "I am to blame for your
coming here. If anything should happen to you, I--I could never
forgive myself--never!"
Blake looked at the two lovely, anxious faces before him, and smiled
gravely. "There you go again, and you have yet to see that gulch. But
even if you find that it looks dangerous, you wouldn't want me to let
a little risk interfere with my work, would you? Think of the fools
who climb the highest and steepest mountains just for sport. I am
going down there because it is necessary."
"But is it?" the girl half sobbed.
"Someone must do it, sooner or later," he replied, and he took his
wife's hand in his big palm. "Come, little woman, speak up. Do you
want your husband to be a shirker and quitter?"
"Of course not, Tom. Yet one should be reasonable."
"I have had enough experience in climbing to know not to attempt the
impossible, Sweetheart," he assured her. "The worst looking places are
not always the most dangerous. I promise you to take only reasonable
risks."
"Have we time enough to look at the place this afternoon?" she
inquired.
Blake glanced at the sun, and nodded. "The riding is good. We can get
back long before dark. Ashton, you had better stretch out and rest."
"No, I shall go with you," replied Ashton, his lips set in as firm
lines as Blake's.
"You cannot go, Lafe, unless you agree to ride my pony," said Isobel.
"I'm not going to have Gowan call me a baby again," he objected.
"You will need all your strength tomorrow," predicted Blake.
"You must ride," insisted Isobel.
"Very well--to please you," he agreed. "We shall take turns."
Blake again looked at the sun. "As long as we are going, we may as
well carry forward the line of levels. We can take long turns nearly
all the way, so there will be little delay."
"And I shall rod for you!" delightedly exclaimed Isobel.
"Only part of the time," qualified Ashton with a sharpness that the
others attributed to his zeal to serve her.
He filled his canteen from one of the cans of water brought up by
Gowan, and rinsed out the mouths and nostrils of the thirsty ponies.
This done, he and Genevieve mounted, and the party started off on a
route parallel with the canyon, which here trended back away from the
edge of the plateau.
They soon came to where the surface of the mesa was slashed with
gulleys and ravines, all running down into the canyon. Blake swung away
from the canyon, in order to head the worst of these ravines or to
cross them where they were less precipitous. Presently, however, he
struck in again towards the great rift along the flank of a high
barren ridge. At last he led over the ridge and down to the side of a
very large ravine where it pitched into the canyon at an angle little
less steep than the descent of Dry Fork Gulch.
The line of levels, as Blake had foretold, had been an easy one to
run. It was stopped on the corner of a shelf of rock that jutted out
above the gorge. Having provided a soft nest for the baby, the four
went out on the shelf and peered down the dizzy slope into the black
shadows of the depths.
The two ladies drew back shuddering. Blake looked about at them and
seeing their troubled faces, sought to quiet their dread.
"You have not looked close enough," he said. "With spikes and ropes,
the worst of this will be comparatively easy. There are ledges and
crevices all the way down. You cannot see the lower half. When I was
here with Gowan and Mr. Knowles, the sun was shining to the bottom.
The lower half of the descent is much less steep than this you see."
Genevieve smiled trustfully. "Oh, if you say it is safe, Tom!"
"We shall take down the rope and all the spikes we can carry," he
explained in further reassurance. "At the worst places a spike and a
piece of the rope will not only let us down safely, but can be left
for our ascent."
"Then it will be all right!" sighed Isobel.
"For him--yes!" broke in Ashton, his voice harsh and strained. He was
cringing back, white-faced, from the edge of the gulch.
"Why, Lafe!" exclaimed the girl. "If Tom--Mr. Blake goes down, surely
you can't mean that you--"
"He's used to climbing--I'm not!" Ashton sought to excuse himself.
"Oh, very well," she said. "Of course it is not right to ask you to do
it if you suffer from vertigo. I shall ask Kid to take your place. If
he refuses, Daddy will do it."
"That may mean delay," remarked Blake. "If that scoundrel really is
headed for Utah, your father may not be back for several days. Yet he
asked me to settle this matter as soon as possible."
"Then, if Kid will not go down with you, I shall," declared the girl,
her blue eyes flashing.
"No, no indeed, dear!" protested Genevieve. "It is simply impossible!
You shall not do it!"
"I shall, unless Kid--"
"You shall not ask him!" interposed Ashton, his pale face suddenly
flushing a hot red. "I am going down!"
"You will, Lafayette?" cried Genevieve. "That is very brave and--and
kind of you!"
"But if you have no experience in climbing?" objected Isobel in a tone
that transmuted the young man's angry flush into a glow of delight.
"Don't inexperienced climbers go up the Alps with guides?" he
nonchalantly replied. "I can trust Blake to get me safe to the bottom.
He will need me in his business."
"Good for you, Lafe!" commended Blake.
It was the first time that he had ever addressed Ashton so familiarly.
He accompanied it with the proffer of his hand. But Ashton did not
look at him. He was basking in the frankly admiring gaze of Miss
Knowles.
The party returned in the same manner that they had come out, for
Isobel firmly refused to permit Ashton to walk. Blake allowed her to
set the pace, and she chose such a rapid one that they reached camp a
full half hour before sunset.
A few minutes later, as they were sitting down to a hastily prepared
supper, Gowan appeared with the second load from the lower camp. Blake
and Ashton sprang up to loosen the packs of the sweating, panting
horses. The puncher swung down from his saddle, not to assist them,
but to remonstrate with Isobel.
"Been expecting to meet you, all the way up, Miss Chuckie," he said.
"Ain't you staying too late? You won't get home before long after
dark."
"Mrs. Blake and I are not going down tonight, Kid," replied the girl,
and she explained the change of plans.
Gowan listened attentively, though without commenting either by look
or word. When she had quite finished, he asked a single question:
"Think your Daddy won't mind, Miss Chuckie?"
"He will understand that we simply can't leave here until Lafe
and--Mr. Blake are safe up out of the canyon."
"All right. You're the boss," he acquiesced. "Just write out a list
of what you want. I'll take all the hawsses down to the waterhole, and
go on to the ranch. You can look for me back at sunup. The moon rises
between three and four."
"Genevieve, will you make out the list? Sit down and eat, Kid."
"Well, just a snack, Miss Chuckie. Wouldn't stop for that if the
hawsses didn't know the trail well enough to go down in the dark."
"Have you seen any sign of the murderer?" inquired Ashton.
Gowan drained the cup of scalding hot coffee handed to him by Isobel,
and answered jeeringly: "Don't worry, Tenderfoot. He won't try to get
you tonight. If he came back today, he saw me around. If he comes back
tonight, he won't think of climbing High Mesa to look for you."
Blake came to the puncher with a list written by himself and his wife
on a leaf from his fieldbook. Gowan folded it in his hatband, washed
down the last mouthful of bread and ham that he had been bolting, and
went to shift his saddle to Isobel's pony, the youngest and freshest
of the horses. In two minutes he was riding away down the ridge,
willingly followed by the four other horses. They knew as well as he
that they were returning to the waterhole.
As the campers again sat down to their supper Isobel paused with the
coffeepot upraised. "Genevieve," she inquired, "did you put cream on
the list?"
"Why, no, my dear. It did not occur to me."
"Nor may it to Yuki. He will be sure to send eggs and butter, but
unless he thinks to save tonight's cream--I'll run and tell Kid."
Ashton sprang up ahead of her. "I'll catch him," he said, and sprinted
down the ridge.
Racing around a thicket of scrub oak, he caught sight of Gowan more
than an eighth of a mile ahead. He whistled repeatedly. At last Gowan
twisted about in the saddle, and drew rein. He did not turn back, but
made Ashton come all the way to him.
"Well, what's wanted?" he demanded.
"Cream," panted Ashton. "Miss Chuckie says--tell Yuki."
"Shore pop, I'll bring all there is," replied Gowan. Ashton started
back. "Hold on," said the puncher. "I want to say something to you,
and here's the chance."
"What is it?"
"About him. I want you to keep a mighty close watch tonight."
"But you said that the murderer would not--"
"_Bah!_ What does he count in this deal? It's this engineer. I've been
chewing it over all afternoon. Miss Chuckie is as innocent and
trusting as a lamb, spite of her winterings in Denver, and she's
plumb locoed over him, reading so much about him in the reports."
"Still, it does not necessarily follow--"
"Don't it, though!" broke in the puncher. "Guess you didn't find it
any funnier than I did seeing her hanging onto his shoulder."
"Curse him!" cried Ashton, his jealousy flaring at the remembrance.
"Now you're talking!" approved Gowan. "That shows you like her like I
do. You're not going to stand for her losing her fortune."
"Her fortune?"
"By his flooding us off our range."
"Ah--as for that, I have been thinking it over. She told me Mr.
Knowles owns five sections. If water is put on them--Western Colorado
fruit lands are very valuable, you know."
"That's a lie. Water can't make five sections worth a range
like ours. But supposing it could--" the puncher leaned towards
Ashton, his eyes glaring with the cold malignancy of a striking
rattlesnake's--"supposing it could, how about us letting her
lose her good name?"
"Good God!" gasped Ashton. "It can't come to that!"
"Can't it? can't it? Where's your eyes? And him a married man! The--"
Gowan cursed horribly.
"You really believe it!" cried Ashton, convinced by the other's
outburst.
"Believe it? I know it!" declared Gowan. "If you thought half as much
of her as I do--"
"I do!--not half, but a hundred times more!"
"Yes, you do?"
"I swear it! I'd do anything for her!"
"Except save her from him."
"No, no! How can I? Tell me how!"
The puncher bent nearer to the half-frenzied man. "You're going down
that gulch with him. Suppose a spike gets knocked out or a rope breaks
or a loose rock gets pushed over?"
"God!" cried Ashton, putting his hands over his eyes. "That would be
murder!"
"_Bah!_ You'd make a dog sick! Willing to do anything for her--except
save her from him! And nothing to it but just an accident that's just
as like as not to happen anyway."
"But--murder!" shudderingly muttered Ashton.
"Murder a skunk," sneered Gowan. "If saving her from him isn't a case
of justifiable homicide, what is? Don't you get the idea? Just a
likely accident, down there where nobody can see."
Ashton dropped his hands, half clenched, to his sides. Beads of cold
sweat were gathering and running down his drawn face.
"I can't!" he whispered. "I--I can't!"
"Not if I agree to get out of the way and give you clear running?"
tempted Gowan.
"You would?"
"Yes. You see how much I like her. You rid her of him, and I'll let
you have her for doing it."
Ashton shuddered.
"Think it over--and watch him mighty close tonight," advised the
tempter.
A red flush leaped into Ashton's face. Gowan struck his spurs into his
horse's flank and loped away.
Ashton stood motionless. The puncher disappeared down the mountain
side. The twilight faded and darkness closed down about the tortured
man. He stood there motionless, his convulsed face alternately
flushing and paling, his eyes now clouding, now burning with rage and
hate.
When at last he returned to the camp he kept beyond the circle of
firelight. Hurriedly he rolled up in his blankets for the night,
muttering something about his head and his need of rest for the next
day's work. The others accepted the explanation without question. They
formed a cheerful domestic group about the fire from which he was shut
out by his passion.
The ladies withdrew into the tent at an early hour. Blake strolled
around the camp until after nine o'clock, but finally came with his
blankets and companionably rolled up near Ashton. He was soon fast
asleep. But Ashton lay tossing until after midnight. Weariness at
last weighed down the lids of his hot eyes and numbed his tortured
brain. He sank into a feverish sleep haunted with evil dreams.