Wakefield in his turn made as if to go. "Look's like as though you'd got
somethin' up to Lame Gulch. Wal, you hold on to it, that's all!"
"You believe in Lame Gulch, then?"
"Lame Gulch is all right. It's chockfull of stuff, now I tell ye! Only
folks thought they was goin' to fish it out with a rod 'n line."
"Then you really think there 's something in it?"
"Somethin' in it? I tell ye, it's chockfull o' stuff! Only folks have
got it into their heads that the one thing in this world they kin git
without workin' for it, is _gold_! If that was so, what would it be
wuth? Less than pig-iron! I tell ye, there ain't nothin' in this world
that's to be got without workin' for it, 'n the more work it takes, the
more it's wuth! 'N the reason gold's wuth more 'n most things, is
because it takes more work 'n most things; more diggin' 'n more
calc'latin'. Why!" he went on, waxing more and more emphatic. "Ef
diggin' gold wa' n't no harder 'n mendin' roads, 't wouldn't _pay_ any
better,--now I tell ye!"
"Perhaps you're right," Wakefield admitted, "but that's not what we're
brought up to think."
"That's what my boys was brought up to think, 'n they're actin'
accordin'."
"Have you got some boys up at Lame Gulch?"
"Yes, four on 'em. 'N I've got a claim up there too, 'n they're workin'
it."
"Why don't you go up and work your claim yourself?" asked Wakefield.
A humorous twinkle came into the man's eyes.
"Wal, now I tell ye!" and his voice dropped to a confidential level.
"Railroadin' _pays better_, so far!"
"Do your boys get a living out of the mine?"
"Not yet, not yet. But they're skilled miners. 'N when they git hard up,
a couple on 'em put in a month's work for some skalliwag 'company' or
other, 'n so they keep agoin'. The three married ones ain't up there at
all."
"So you've got seven sons?"
"Yes; seven boys, all told. We lost a girl," he added, with an
indefinable change in his voice. "Her name was Loretty."
With that, Loretty's father passed up the path and disappeared within
the house.
"Nice old chap," Wakefield thought, as he walked on, past the little
houses with the presumable mortgages on them. "Nice of him to go on
caring for Loretty after he had lost her."
He wondered whether, after all, he had better make such a point of
forgetting about Dorothy! Up there on the red hilltop, hobnobbing with
the yellow cactus, he had resolved never to think of her again; but down
here among human habitations, fresh from the good human intercourse of
the last ten minutes, he did not feel so sure about it. He thought that,
on the whole, it might be as well to decide that question later.
Meanwhile, here was the street-commissioner's door, and here was a
decision that must be come to on the spot.
Harry Wakefield always looked back upon the day when he first pried a
big rock off its base, as a turning-point in his career; a move that put
the game in his own hands. The sensation was different from what he had
anticipated. He had fancied that he was about to engage in a
single-handed struggle, but no sooner had his grip closed upon the
crowbar, no sooner had he felt the mass of rock yield to its pressure,
than he found that he was not working single-handed. On the contrary, he
had the feeling of having got right down among the forces of nature and
of finding them ranged on his side. It was gravitation that gave the
rock its weight, but, look there! how some other law, which he did not
know the name of, dwelt in the resisting strength of the iron, worked in
the action of his muscles. His legs trembled, as he braced himself to
the effort; the veins of his neck throbbed hard; but the muscles of his
arms and chest held firm as the crowbar they guided, and slowly,
reluctantly, sullenly, the rock went over on its side. He dropped the
crowbar from his stiffening grasp and drew himself up, flinging his
shoulders back and panting deep and strong.
It was between six and seven o'clock in the morning, a radiant June
morning, which seemed alive with pleasant things. As he stood with his
head thrown back, taking a good draught of the delicious mountain air, a
bluebird shot, like a bit of the sky, in and out among the solemn pines
and delicate aspens. He looked down on the tangle of blossoming vines
and bushes that latticed the borders of the brook, which came dashing
down from the canon, still rioting on its way. The water would soon have
another cause for clamor, in the big stone that had so long cumbered the
road. He should presently have the fun of rolling it over the bank and
seeing it settle with a splash in the bed of the stream where it
belonged by rights. After that there was a fallen tree to be tackled, a
couple of rods farther on, and then he should take a rest with his
shovel and fill in some holes near by.
[Illustration: "THE BROOK, WHICH CAME DASHING DOWN FROM THE CANON, STILL
RIOTING ON ITS WAY."]
He had found a deserted lean-to, half way up the canon, where he had
arranged to camp while the work went on. As he thought of Chittenden and
Allery Jones and the rest, cooped up there in the town, still anxiously
watching the fluctuations of the stock-market, he was filled with
compassion for them, and he determined to have them out now and then and
give them a camp stew.
Of course the exultation of that first hour's work did not last. Before
the day was out, Wakefield had found out what he was "in for." An aching
back and blistered hands were providing him with sensations of a less
exhilarating order than those of the early morning. At one time, soon
after his "nooning" as he liked to call it, the sun blazed so fiercely
that he had ignominiously fled before it and taken refuge for an hour or
more among the trees. That was the episode which he least liked to
remember. He did not quite see why mending a road in the sun should be
so much more dangerous than playing polo at high noon, but, somehow, it
hurt more; and he recollected that his late father, who was a physician,
had once told him that pain was Nature's warning. Having, then, entered
into a close alliance with Nature, he thought it well to take her hints.
Before many days his apprenticeship was over and he was working like a
born day-laborer. After the first week he was well rid of aches and
pains; the muscles of his back were strengthened, the palms of his hands
were hardened, his skull, he thought to himself, must have thickened. In
all things, too, he was tuned to a lower key. But if the exhilaration of
that first morning was gone, it had only given place to something
better; namely, a solid sense of satisfaction. He knew it was all an
episode, this form of work at least; he knew that when his "job" was
done he should go back into the world and take up the life he had once
made a failure of; but he knew also that he should not fail again. A
sense of power had come into him; he had made friends with work for its
own sake. He believed that his brain was as good as his muscles, that it
would respond as readily to the demands he should put upon it. And he
had learned to be strenuous with himself.
Wakefield was in correspondence with a friend in San Francisco who
wanted him to come out there and practise law. He decided, rather
suddenly, to do so, coming to his decision the day after he was told
that Dorothy Ray was engaged to be married.
It was Dick Dayton who brought him the news. As he listened, he felt
something as he did that first day in the canon when the sun got too
strong for him. He thought, after Dayton left him, that he should have
given up the game then and there, if it had not been for some blasting
he was to do in the morning. The holes were all drilled, and it would be
a day's job to clear away the pieces and straighten things out at that
point. He should hate to have another man go on with the job. They might
cut him out with Dorothy,--that was sure to come, sooner or later,--but,
by the Great Horn Spoon! they should not get his job away from him!
It was not until he had turned in for the night that it occurred to him
that he had not asked whom Dorothy was engaged to. What did he care, any
way? he said to himself. He had gambled away his chances long ago. Yet,
Good Heavens, how dear she was! As he lay on the ground, outside the
little lean-to, staring up at the stars that glittered in the thin air
with what is called, at lower altitudes, a frosty brilliance, he seemed
to see her before him more plainly than he had ever done in the old days
when they had stood face to face. He had been too self-absorbed, too
blinded and bewildered with the urgency of his own case, to see her as
she really was. He remembered now,--something that he had never thought
about before,--the little toss of her hair, up from her forehead, which
was different from the way other girls wore their hair. It made a little
billow there, that was like her free spirit. Yes, she had always had a
free spirit. Perhaps it was the claim of ownership he had made, which
had repelled her so strongly. As well set up a claim of ownership over
those stars up there!
He tried to hope that the other fellow was man enough to deserve her;
but that was beyond his magnanimity. The only way to bear it, for the
present at least, was to leave the "other fellow" out of the question.
He was glad he did not know his name. And all night long, as he watched
the stars, their slow, imperceptible progress marked only by the
intervening tree-twigs, Dorothy's face was fairly visible to him, her
voice came to him distinct as an echo; her sweet, free nature unfolded
itself to his awakened consciousness.
Since then he had worked as if his life had depended upon it, and now,
after those ten days of fierce labor, his "job" was almost done. He had
worked his way well up into the canon, quite to the end of the distance
contracted for. A few days more would complete the job. He thought, with
a pang of regret, that his lines would never again fall in such glorious
places. He knew the canon by heart; he had seen it in every phase of its
summer beauty, by day and by night, in sunshine and in storm, and now
the autumn had come and the sensitive green of the aspens had turned to
yellow. They gleamed along the brook-side; they showed like an outcrop
of gold on the wall of rock over there, and in among the blue-green
pines; their yellow leaves strewed the ground on which he stood. It was
eight o'clock in the morning, and he was about to do his last blasting.
There was nobody up the canon, and nobody was likely to come from below
for an hour yet. The big boulder was not to thrust itself into the road
any more; another minute, and all that protruding side of it would be
blown off and there would be room for two teams to pass each other.
Hark! Was not that a horse's hoofs down below? He was already in the
act of "touching her off," holding the lighted match in the hollow of
his two hands. As he turned his head to listen, the fuse ignited with a
sharp _spit!_ scorching and blackening the palms of his hands, and
causing him to jump as violently as he used to do before his nerves were
trained to the business. Somewhat disgusted with his want of nerve, he
picked up his tools in a particularly leisurely manner, and deposited
them at a safe distance from the coming crash. Then, to make up for this
bit of bravado, he ran swiftly down the road,--"walluped" he said to
himself, thinking of Loretty's father,--and when he espied the horse, he
shouted and waved his arms in warning.
The horse stopped, and Wakefield slackened his pace. The moment he had
done so he recognized the rider. He was not conscious of any surprise at
seeing Dorothy Ray riding, all by herself, up the canon. He did not
pause to question as to how she got there, to wonder what she would
think of him, turned day-laborer. He felt nothing but an absolute
content and satisfaction in having her there before him; it seemed so
natural and so right that he did not see how it could have been
otherwise! He strode down the road to where she stood, and as she
dropped the bridle and held out both hands to him, he flung his old hat
away and clasped them in his powder-blackened palms.
"O Harry!" she cried with a joyful ring in her voice; "I never was so
glad to see anybody in my life!"
He did not say one word, but as he stood there, bareheaded, there was a
look in his face that gave her pause. Had she been too forward? Was he
so changed? She drew her hands away, and taking up the bridle, looked
uncertainly from side to side.
"Aren't we friends any more, Harry? Aren't you glad to see me?" she
asked. Her voice was unsteady like her look. He had never seen her like
this.
"Glad to see you, Dorothy?" he cried. "You seem like an angel straight
from Heaven, only a hundred thousand million times better!"
A sudden explosion boomed out, putting a period to this emphatic
declaration. Wakefield seized the rein of the startled horse, that
sprang shivering to one side; but Dorothy only said, quite composedly:
"I suppose you were blasting up there. Will there be another?"
"No; but how did you know it was I?"
"Why, I knew all about it, of course. Fanny told me, and Mrs. Dick
Dayton wrote home, and,--well, I knew about it a great deal better than
anybody else!"
"And you knew I was up here?"
"Of course I did! Why, else, should I have come up at daybreak?"
"But, Dorothy," Wakefield persisted, determined to make a clean breast
of it at the outset. "Did you know I had made a fizzle of everything out
here?"
"I knew you had lost your money," she replied, with an air of misprizing
such sordid considerations. "And Fanny told me you were going to
California, and,--I just thought I would come out with the Dennimans!"
she added irrelevantly.
He was walking beside her horse up the broad clean road he had once
taken such pride in;--ages ago he thought it must have been. On either
hand, the solemn cliffs, familiars of the past three months, stood
decked with gleaming bits of color; the brook went careering in their
shadow, calling and crooning its little tale. What was that over yonder
under the big pine-tree? Only a pair of bright eyes, that twinkled
curiously, then vanished in a whisking bit of fur! On a sudden he had
become estranged and disassociated from these intimate surroundings,
these sights and sounds which had so long been his companions. What had
they to do with Dorothy!
She was telling him of her journey out and of the friends she was
travelling with. She would have given him the home news, but, "Don't
talk about anybody but yourself, Dorothy," he said. "That's all that I
care about!"
At last they stood fronting the big boulder, whose side had been blasted
off. Dorothy looked at the fragments of stone strewing the road, and at
the massive granite surface, now withdrawn among the pine-trees. One
huge branch, broken by a flying rock, hung down across its face. The
whole scene told of the play of tremendous forces, and Wakefield's was
the hand that had controlled and directed them. Obedient to long habit,
he stooped, and lifting a good-sized fragment, sent it crashing down the
bank into the brook.
"How strong you are, Harry!" she said.
There was something in the way she said it, that made him feel that he
must break the spell, then and there, or he should be playing the
mischief with his own peace of mind. Yet he was conscious of a strange
absence of conviction, as he asked abruptly: "Dorothy, whom are you
going to marry?"
So he had heard that foolish gossip, and that was why there was that
look in his face!
She was too generous to think of herself, too sure, indeed, of him and
of herself, to weigh her words. With the little, half-defiant toss of
the head he knew so well, yet gathering up the reins as if for instant
flight, she said:
"I should think that was for you to say, Harry!"
XII.
THE BLIZZARD PICNIC.
"Ah, there, Mr. Burns! Glad to see you! This is what we call real
Colorado weather!"
The speaker, a mercurial youth of two and twenty, was one of a group of
young people assembled, some on horseback, some in yellow buckboards, in
front of a stately Springtown mansion.
"Nothing conceited about us!" a girlish voice retorted. "I am sure you
understand by this time, Mr. Burns, that Colorado is a synonym for
perfection."
The new-comer laughed appreciatively as he drew rein close beside the
girl, who sat her part-thoroughbred with the ease and grace of lifelong
habit.
"I had learned my lesson pretty well before I came out, thanks to you,"
the young man answered, in a tone that was a trifle over-significant.
The girl flushed, whether from pleasure or annoyance, it was impossible
for the looker-on to decide. The looker-on--and his name, as usual, was
legion,--had found no lack of occupation since the arrival on the field,
some two weeks previous, of the Rev. Stephen Burns. Although the young
minister was staying at the hotel, like any other chance tourist, there
could be no question as to the object of his visit, for he passed most
of his waking hours, either under Dr. Lovejoy's roof, or in the society
of the doctor's daughter. The fact that Amy Lovejoy tolerated such
assiduous attendance boded ill for Springtown, yet so cheerful is the
atmosphere of the sunny-hearted little community, that foregone
conclusions of an unwelcome character carry but scant conviction to its
mind. Springtown could not spare Amy Lovejoy, therefore Springtown would
not be called upon to do so.
By this time the group was twenty strong, a truly gala assemblage, which
might have blocked the way on a less generous thoroughfare. On the broad
expanse of Western Avenue, however, no picnic party, however numerous,
was likely to interfere with traffic.
They were all young people, the chaperone of the occasion, a bride of
twenty, looking, as she was, one of the very youngest. The brilliant
February day gleamed like a jewel upon the proud and grateful earth. The
sky was one glorious arch of tingling blue, beneath which the snowy
peaks shone with a joyful glitter. The air had the keen, dry sparkle
that is sometimes compared to champagne, greatly to the advantage of
that pleasant beverage. In short, it was a real Colorado day, and these
young people were off on a real Colorado picnic. How exceptionally
characteristic the occasion might prove to be, no one suspected, simply
because no one payed sufficient heed to a shred of gray vapor that
hovered on the brow of the Peak. Amy Lovejoy, to be sure, remarked that
there would be wind before night, and another old resident driving by,
waved his hat toward the Peak, and cried, "Look out for hurricanes!" But
no one was the wiser for that.
The last packages of good things, the last overcoat and extra wrap, were
stowed away under the seats of the yellow buckboards; the mercurial
youth, Jack Hersey by name, had cried, for the last time, "Are we
ready,--say, _are_ we ready?" Elliot Chittenden's restive bronco, known
as "my nag," had cut its last impatient caper; and off they started, a
gay holiday throng, passing down the Avenue to the tune of jingling
harness and chattering voices and ringing hoofs. From a south porch on
the one hand, and a swinging gate on the other, friends called a cheery
greeting; elderly people jogging past in slow buggies, met the
pleasure-seekers with a benignant smile; foot-passengers turned and
waved their wide sombreros, and over yonder the Peak beamed upon them,
with never a hint of warning; for the gray vapor hovering there was far
too slight a film to cast a shadow upon that broad and radiant front.
"It makes one think of the new Jerusalem, and the walls of Walhalla, and
every sort of brilliant vision," Stephen Burns remarked, as his horse
and Amy's cantered side by side, a little apart from the others.
"Yes," said Amy, looking absently before her; "I suppose it does." And
she wondered, as she had done more than once in the past two weeks, why
she could not enter more responsively into the spirit of his
conversation. She knew, and she would once have considered it a fact of
the first importance, that to Stephen Burns the New Jerusalem was not
more sacred than the abode of the ancient gods,--or, to be more
accurate, Walhalla was not less beautiful and real than the sacred city
of the Hebrews. Each had its own significance and value in his
estimation, as a dream, an aspiration of the human mind.
It was what seemed to Amy Lovejoy the originality and daring of the
young minister's views of things high and low, which had at first
fascinated the girl. She had never before met with just that type of
thinker,--indeed she had never before associated on equal terms with any
thinker of any type whatever!--and it was perhaps no wonder that she had
been inclined to identify the priest with his gospel, that she had been
ready to accept both with equal trust. In fact, nothing but her father's
cautious reluctance had deterred her from pledging herself, four months
ago, to this grave-eyed cavalier, riding now so confidently by her side.
She was her father's only child, and since the death of her mother, some
ten years previous to this, she had been called upon to fill the
important position of "apple of the eye" to a secretly adoring, if
somewhat sarcastic parent.
"Your parson may be all very well," the doctor had written, "but if he
is worth having he will keep! He must have the advantage of extreme
youth, to be taken with a callow chick like yourself, but that shall
not injure him in my eyes. Tell him to wait a while, and then come and
show himself. Two heads are better than one in most of the exigencies of
life, and when he comes, you and I can make up our minds about him at
our leisure."
The girl's mind had reverted, _a propos_ of nothing, to that concluding
sentence of her father's letter, which she had read at the time with an
indulgent but incredulous smile. Presently she became aware that her
companion was speaking again.
"It is all one," he was saying. "What we see and what we imagine; what
we aspire to, and what has been the aspiration of other men in other
ages. And how _good_ it all is!"
This he added with a certain turn and gesture which made the words
intensely personal. Why did they repel her so strongly, she wondered,
and wondering, she failed to answer. Involuntarily she had slackened her
horse's pace, and fallen in line with the others, and when Jack Hersey
rode up at that moment, she gave him a look of welcome which had the
effect of making him more mercurial than ever for the rest of the day.
"I say, Amy," he cried; "isn't this a dandy day?" and Amy felt herself
on good, homely, familiar ground, and she answered him with a heart
grown suddenly light as his own.
Stephen Burns, meanwhile, rode on beside her, with no very distinct
misgiving in his mind. He had, to be sure, been somewhat daunted once or
twice before, by a curious, intermittent asperity in her, which he could
not quite account for. Yet why should he expect to account for every
changing mood in this uniquely charming being? Had he not perceived from
the beginning that she was not fashioned quite after the usual pattern?
They had met, the previous autumn, in the quaint old New England town
where his people lived. She had come like a bit of the young West into
the staid, old-fashioned setting of the place, and he had rejoiced in
every trait that distinguished her from the conventional young lady of
his acquaintance. To-day, as they rode side by side toward the
broad-bosomed mountain to the southward, he told himself once more that
her nature was like this Colorado atmosphere, in its absolute clearness
and crispness. Such an air,--bracing, stinging, as it sometimes
was,--could never turn really harsh and easterly; neither, perhaps,
could it ever take on the soft languor of the summer sea. And Amy
Lovejoy's nature would always have the finer, more individual quality of
the high, pure altitude in which she had been reared. Possibly Stephen
Burns had yet something to learn about that agreeable climate with which
he was so ready to compare his love. The weather had been perfect since
he came to Colorado. How could he suspect the meaning of a tiny wisp of
vapor too slight to cast a visible shadow?
And Amy chatted gaily on with Jack Hersey, as they cantered southward,
while Stephen Burns, riding beside them, told himself with needless
reiteration, that he was well content. One reason for content he
certainly had at that moment, for he was a good horseman, as an
accomplished gentleman is bound to be, and he was never quite insensible
to the exhilaration of that delicious, rhythmic motion.