A NIGHT ON THE MOUNTAIN ROAD
They drove on for a long interval in silence. The colts, sobered by the
sharp pull to the divide, kept an even pace now that they had struck the
down-grade, and Tisdale's gaze, hard still, uncompromising, remained fixed
absently on the winding road. Once, when the woman beside him ventured to
look in his face, she drew herself a little more erect and aloof. She must
have seen the futility of her effort to defend her friend, and the fire
that had flashed in her eyes had as quickly died. It was as though she
felt the iron out-cropping in this man and shrank from him baffled, almost
afraid. Yet she held her head high, and the delicate lines, etched again
at the corners of her mouth, gave it a saving touch of decision or
fortitude.
But suddenly Hollis drew the horses in. Miss Armitage caught a great
breath. The way was blocked by a fallen pine tree, which, toppling from
the bluff they were skirting, had carried down a strip of the road and
started an incipient slide. "We can't drive around," he said at last, and
the humor broke the grim lines of his mouth. "We've got to go through."
She looked hastily back along the curve, then ahead down the steep
mountainside. "We never could turn in this pla--ace, but it isn't possible
to drive through. Fate is against us."
"Why, I think Fate favored us. She built this barricade, but she left us
an open door. I must unhitch, though, to get these kittens through."
As he spoke he put the reins in her hands and, springing out, felt under
the seat for the halters. The girl's glance moved swiftly along the
tilting pine, searching for that door. The top of the tree, with its
debris of branches, rested prone on the slope below the road; but the
trunk was supported by a shoulder of the bluff on which it had stood. This
left a low and narrow portal under the clean bole between the first thick
bough and the wall. "But the buggy!" she exclaimed.
"That's the trouble." Tisdale found one halter as he spoke and reached for
the other. "It is getting this trap over that will take time. But I pledge
myself to see you through these mountains before dark; and when we strike
the levels of the Columbia, these colts are going to make their record."
"You mean we can't hope to reach Wenatchee before dark?" Her voice shook
a little. "And there isn't a house in sight--anywhere. Mr. Tisdale, we
haven't even seen another traveler on this road."
"Well, this is luck!" He was drawing a coil of new rope from under the
seat. "This is luck! Lighter must have meant to picket his horses. Did I
tell you he was starting to drive these bays through to the fair at North
Yakima? And here is a hatchet--he expected to cut fire-wood--and this
looks like his lunch-box. Yes,"--and he lifted the lid to glance in--"here
are biscuits, sliced ham, all we need. Lighter must have intended to spend
a night on the road. And here is that second hitching-strap. Now, we are
all right: the outfit is complete."
He took the precaution to tie one of the horses before he commenced to
unfasten the traces, and he worked swiftly, dexterously, while the girl
watched him, directing him sometimes from her seat in the buggy. Presently
he lifted the remaining strap, but before he could snap the hook in the
ring, the colt's ears flattened back, and he gripped Tisdale's hand.
Instantly Miss Armitage snatched the whip and was on her feet. "Whoa,
Nip," she cried, and cut the vixen lightly between the ears. "Whoa, now,
whoa!"
The young horse released his hold and broke forward, with Hollis dragging
at the bit. He ducked with the colt under the barrier and, keeping his
feet with difficulty, ran hugging the bluff. Rocks, slipping beneath the
bay's incautious hoofs, rattled down the steep slope. Finally mastered by
that tugging weight, he settled to an unstable pace and so passed the
break in the road.
Miss Armitage had left the buggy. She followed to the opening and stood
watching Tisdale until, unable to find a safe hitching-place, he turned
another bend. The remaining horse pulled at his halter and neighed shrilly
for his mate. She went to him. After a moment she untied him and led him
through the passage. He followed easily, crowding her sometimes, yet
choosing his steps with the caution of a superior animal in a hard
situation. Midway over the break in the road, where it was narrowest, he
halted with a forefoot on a perilous table of granite, feeling, testing
its stability. "That's right, be careful," she admonished, allowing the
strap to slacken while she, herself, balanced her weight on the rocking
slab. "But it is safe enough--you see. Now, now, Tuck, come on."
But as she started on, Tisdale reappeared at the curve and, waving her
hand to reassure him, she took an incautious step. The slab, relieved
suddenly of her weight, tilted back and at the same instant caught on its
lowered edge the weight of the following horse. He backed off, jerking the
halter taut, but she kept her hold, springing again to the surface of the
rock. Loose splinters of granite began to clatter down the slope; then, in
the moment she paused to gather her equilibrium, she felt Tisdale's arm
reaching around to take the strap. "Creep by me," he said quietly. "No,
between me and the bluff, sidewise; there's room." She gained safe ground
and stood waiting while he brought the bay across. A last rain of rock
struck an answering echo through the gorge.
"What made you?" he asked. "You knew I would hurry back. What made you?
handicapped, too, by those skirts and abominable heels."
"I saw you were hurt--the vixen meant to hurt--and I knew I could manage
Tuck. I--I thought you might need me."
Her breath was coming hard and quick; her eyes were big and shadowy and,
looking into their depths, the light began to play softly in his own. "You
thought right," he said. "I am going to."
He turned to lead the horse around to the cleft where he had left his
mate. Miss Armitage followed. She regarded his broad back, pursing her
lips a little and ruffling her brows. "It is only a bruise," he said
presently over his shoulder, "and it served me right. Lighter warned me of
that trick."
Nevertheless the handkerchief with which he had wrapped the bruise was
showing a red stain, and past the break in the road he changed the halter
to his left hand. The hitching-place he had chosen was in a cleft formed
by a divided spur of the mountain. It was roofed by the boughs of two
pines, and the boles of the trees offered secure hold. She seated herself
on a boulder, set benchwise against the rocky wall, and watched him
critically while he tied the second horse.
"How pleasant," she said intrepidly; "it is like coming unexpectedly into
a room ready furnished in brown and green."
Tisdale turned. "I could make you comfortable in this pocket, if it came
to that," he said. "It's sheltered and level as a floor, and I could make
you a bed, springy and fragrant, of boughs; the camp-fire would close the
door. And you needn't go hungry with Lighter's lunch and your apples; or
thirsty with my drinking-cup to fill down there at the stream."
Even before he finished speaking her brows arched in protest, and he felt
the invisible barrier stiffen hard as a wall. "We really must hurry, Mr.
Tisdale," she said, rising. "Though it may be impossible to reach
Wenatchee to-night, we must find some sort of house. And where there is a
house, there must be housekeeping and"--her voice wavered--"a woman."
"Of course," he answered. "And we have at least two hours of daylight
left. Don't worry; I am going now to hurry that carriage around."
He had said "of course," but while he went back to the buggy, his mind
reviewed the sordid shelters he had found in just such solitudes, where a
woman's housekeeping was the exception. Men in communities employed camp
cooks, but most prospectors, ranchers, and cattlemen depended on
themselves. There had been times when he himself had been forced to make
bread. He had learned that first winter he had spent in Alaska with
Weatherbee. At the thought of that experimental mixture, he smiled grimly.
Then, suddenly, he imagined this gently nurtured woman confronted by a
night in such a shack as they had occupied. He saw her waiting expectantly
for that impossible chaperon; and, grasping the situation, struggling
pluckily to cover her amazement and dismay; he saw himself and Weatherbee
nerving each other to offer her that miserable fare. He hoped they would
find a housekeeper at the first house on that mountain road, but that
lunch of Lighter's gave him a sense of security, like a reserve fund,
inadequate, yet something against imminent panic.
Miss Armitage did not return to her seat when he was gone. She fell to
pacing the level; to the upper spur and back; to the lower wall and
return; then, finally, it was a few yards further to the bend, to discover
what progress Tisdale had made. The buggy was not yet in sight, but the
new rope stretched diagonally from beyond the breach in the road to a
standing tree on the bluff above her, and he was at work with the hatchet,
cutting away an upright bough on the fallen pine. Other broken limbs,
gathered from the debris, were piled along the slide to build up the edge.
When his branch dropped, he sprang down and dragged it lengthwise to
reinforce the rest. Presently he was on the log again, reaching now for
the buggy tongue, he set his knee as a brace on the stump of the limb,
his muscular body bent, lifted, strained. Then the front wheels rolled up
across the bole; he slipped to the ground and grasped the outer one,
steadying it down. After a moment, when he had taken in the slack of the
line, the remaining tires slowly followed, and he began to ease the
vehicle along the patched roadway. The rain of rock was renewed; fragments
of granite shifted under the bulkhead of boughs; the buggy heeled lower,
lower; then, at the final angle, began to right while the rope strung
taut. The narrowest point was passed, and Tisdale stopped a breathing
space.
It was characteristic of the man to see the humor of the situation in that
moment while he stood wiping the perspiration from his face. Jove, how
Foster would enjoy seeing him labor like this for a girl. He imagined the
boy sitting up there at some coign of vantage on the bluff, admonishing,
advising him dryly, while he laughed in his sleeve. It was undeniably
funny. Alone, with one of Lighter's saddle-horses under him, his baggage
secured behind the saddle, he might have been threading the dunes of the
Columbia now. This incipient slide need not have caused him ten minutes'
delay, and eight, nine o'clock at the latest, would have found him putting
up for the night at the hotel in Wenatchee. But here he was hardly over
the divide; it was almost sunset, but he was dragging a buggy by hand
around a mountain top. He hoped Foster never would find out what he had
paid for these bays--the team of huskies that had carried him the long
trek from Nome to the Aurora mine and on through Rainy Pass had cost less.
Still, under the circumstances, would not Foster himself have done the
same? She was no ordinary woman; she was more than pretty, more than
attractive; there was no woman like her in all the world. To travel this
little journey with her, listen to her, watch her charms unfold, was worth
the price. And if it had fallen to Foster, if he were here now to feel the
spell of her, that Spanish woman would lose her hold. Then he remembered
that Foster knew her; she had admitted that. It was inconceivable, but he
had known her at the time he confessed his infatuation for Weatherbee's
wife. The amusement went out of Tisdale's face. He bent, frowning, to free
the buggy of the rope.
It was then Miss Armitage, exhilarated at his success, hurried forward
from the bend. "Oh," she cried radiantly, "how resourceful, how strong you
are. It looked simply impossible; I couldn't guess what you meant to do,
and now we have only to hitch the team and drive on to Wenatchee. But,"
she added gravely and shook her head, "it was defying Fate."
He turned, regarding her from under still cloudy brows, though the genial
lines began to deepen anew. "I told you Fate was on our side. She threw
those boughs there in easy reach. She might as well have said: 'There's
some lumber I cut for you; now mend your road.'"
"Perhaps, well, perhaps," the girl laughed softly. "But if Fate had said
that to any other man, at least to any man I know, he would not have
heard."
But the Columbia was still far off when darkness closed, and with sunset
the thunder-heads they had watched across the Kittitas Valley gathered
behind them. It was as though armies encamped on the heights they had
left, waiting for night to pass. Then searchlights began to play on the
lower country; there was skirmishing along the skyline; blades flashed.
At last, between the lightning flashes, the blackness was so dense it was
hardly possible for Tisdale to see the road, and he could not trust the
nervous team to keep the track; it was necessary to stop, at least to wait
until the moon should rise. But while he was preparing to tell her so, the
silence was broken by the barking of a dog. Instantly it was swelled by a
deeper baying, and the echo rang a continuous clamor through the gorge.
Then a faint illumination brought out in silhouette a final bluff ahead;
rounding it, they saw a low-roofed habitation, and in the open door a
woman with a lamp.
One of the dogs stood bristling and growling beside her; the other,
barking furiously, sprang from the porch so that for a moment Tisdale was
busy with the plunging team. Then the woman spoke, and the setter,
whimpering, snapping furtively, crept back to her feet.
"We have been delayed by an accident," Tisdale explained briefly, "and I
want you to take this lady in for the night. Make her comfortable as
possible, and I will see it is worth your while."
"This ain't much of a road-house." The woman held the lamp higher to
scrutinize the lady's face. "We only got one room, an' the best I can do
is to double up with the kids an' give you my bed."
"That will do very well," answered Tisdale quickly. "I can take care of
myself. Of course there's a stable somewhere out here in the dark, and a
bale or two of hay."
"No, we got a shed up, but we're short on feed. We're short on 'bout
everything: flour, potatoes, bacon, beans. We've just took up this here
claim, an' things ain't growed. But my man's gone down to Wenatchee to
fetch a load." Then, seeing this fact was hardly one to solace her
transient guests, she laughed shortly and went into the cabin to set the
lamp on a table and bring a lantern that hung on the farther wall.
Tisdale turned to help Miss Armitage down. "We may be able to find better
accommodations towards the Columbia, when the moon rises," he said, "but I
can't be as sure of another--chaperon." Then, looking into her face, he
added in his minor key: "I am sorry, but you will make the best of things,
I know. And the night will pass. Come."
She slipped down beside him and stood holding her skirts out of the
powdery soil, while her wide eyes searched that interior through the open
door. Tisdale lifted the baggage from the buggy to the porch, then the
woman returned with the lantern and, followed by the dogs, went to show
him where he might stable the horses. After a moment Miss Armitage
ventured up the low steps to the threshold. It was a portable cabin such
as she had noticed from the train window at intervals where construction
was incomplete along the new railroad. It was battered and weak, showing
old earmarks of transportation, but it was furnished with a rusty
cook-stove, some bench chairs, and two beds, which stood in the farther
corners and nearly filled that half of the room. A few heavy dishes, the
part of a loaf of bread, and several slices of indifferently fried bacon
were on the table, between the lamp and a bucket containing a little
water. Presently, still holding her skirts, she crossed the grimy floor
and stood inspecting with a mingled fascination and dread those ancient
beds. Both were destitute of linen, but one was supplied with a tumbled
heap of coarse, brown blankets. In the other, beneath a frayed comforter,
two small boys were sleeping. Their sun-baked faces were overhung with
thatches of streaked blond hair, and one restless arm, throwing off the
sodden cover, partly exposed the child's day attire, an unclean denim
blouse tucked into overalls. She turned in sudden panic and hurried back
to the porch.
In a little while she noticed her suitcase, opened it, and found her
cologne; with this she drenched a fresh handkerchief and began to bathe
her face and hands. Then she drew one of the bench chairs through the
doorway and, seating herself with her back to the room, kept on dabbing
her lips and her cheeks with the cool, delicately pungent perfume, and so
gathered up the remnants of her scattered fortitude. Finally, when the
lantern glimmered again, and she was able to distinguish the two returning
figures, she had laid aside her hat and coat, and she was ready to smile,
if not radiantly at least encouragingly, at Tisdale as he came up the
steps.
The woman went in to shake out and spread the blankets with a pretence at
making the bed, and he followed to the threshold, where he took a swift
and closer inventory of the room. Its resources were even more meager than
he had supposed. He swung around and looked up through the darkness
towards that sheltered cleft they had left near the Pass. He did not say
anything, but the girl watching him answered his thought. "I wish it had
been possible. It would have been delightful--the ground was like a
carpet, clean and soft and fragrant--under those pines."
"I wish we had even had the forethought to bring down an armful of those
boughs. But, after all, it might have been worse. At least you need not go
hungry, with that lunch of Lighter's and your apples, to say nothing of
the sandwiches I asked the steward to make before I left the train. And
to-morrow, when you are safe with your friends at Wenatchee, you are going
to forget this miserable experience like an unpleasant dream."
"I am not ungrateful," she said quickly. "I enjoyed every moment of that
drive. And besides the apples, I have tea. I always tuck a little in my
suitcase when we are touring with Mrs. Feversham, because she uses a
different blend."
She bent as she spoke, to find the tea, which she produced together with a
small kettle and alcohol burner. Her evident desire to contribute her
share, the fine show of courage that accepted and made the best of the
inevitable, went straight to Tisdale's heart. "Tea," he repeated mellowly,
"tea and all the outfit. Well, that was mighty thoughtful of you. I won't
even have to make a fire. But wait a minute; I am going to lift that table
out here where it is cooler."
With two seats, there was barely room for it on the porch. Then, while he
filled the kettle and lighted the burner, she spread the cloth, a fine
damask towel supplied also from her baggage. On the whole it was a rather
gay little supper and, considering the limitations of the menu, it bridged
a long interval. Tisdale, who had been accustomed to drink tea black and
bitter on a hard trail, but habitually refused it socially, tasted his cup
with deliberation. "Miss Armitage," he exclaimed, "you can't delude me.
Whatever this beverage may be, I am sure it is no ordinary tea."
She was pouring a second cup when his glance fell from her face to her
hands. They were delicately made, artistic, with wilful little thumbs, yet
they impressed him with a certain resourcefulness, a strength in reserve.
Suddenly the light from the lantern which he had hung on a nail in the
wall above the table, struck an exceedingly large ruby she wore on her
left hand. It glowed blood-red, scintillated, flamed. He saw the stone was
mounted with diamonds in a unique setting of some foreign workmanship, and
he told himself it was probably an heirloom; it was too massive, too
ornate for a betrothal ring; still he moved uneasily and set the cup down
untasted. His eyes returned to her face, questioning, doubting. He was
like a musician surprised to detect in a beautiful symphony the first
false note.
After that the conversation lagged. It was not cool on the porch. A
broadside of lightning sweeping the cabin showed it stood in a narrow
valley walled by precipitous, barren slopes and widening gulfwise towards
the Columbia desert. The pent air seemed surcharged. It was as though that
table was set in a space between running dynamos, and when a stronger
flash came, Miss Armitage instinctively grasped her chair, holding herself
from contact with an unseen and terrible force. Once, during an interlude,
the silence was broken by a strange, faint cry.
"Did you hear?" she asked breathlessly. "What was it?"
Tisdale smiled into her troubled eyes. "Why, just a cougar; lonesome, I
guess, and calling his mate. But it's all right. Sounds carry in these
mountain gorges, and his cry was picked up by some cross wind miles from
here. Look at those dogs! They wouldn't stay curled up there on the ground
asleep, too indifferent to prick up an ear, if a cougar, or even a coyote,
were near."
Still she was not wholly reassured. She leaned forward, listening, trying
to fathom the darkness with a lurking terror in her eyes. At last, when
Tisdale rose to say good night, she, too, left her chair. She laid her
hand on the edge of the table as though that might steady her voice. "Are
you going to the stable?" she asked. "Did you find a possible bed?"
Hollis laughed. "You needn't trouble about me. I am the sort of fellow to
find the soft side of a plank. Yes, it's true. There have been times when
I've slept luxuriously on a board, with just my coat rolled up for a
pillow."
There was a brief pause while her imagination grasped the thought; then:
"You must have been very tired," she said.
"I was," he answered dryly and reached to take the lantern from the wall.
At the foot of the steps he halted and put the light down to pick up his
bag, which he opened. "Here's a bunch of my handkerchiefs," he said. "They
are bigger than yours. They should make you at least a pillow-case. Good
night."
The setter rose to follow inquiringly at his heels; the lantern swung
gently to his tread and, as his shape disappeared in the gloom, his
whistle, sweet, soft, almost tender, fluted back to her. It was the "Good
night" from the opera of _Martha_. And Miss Armitage smiled in the face of
Fear and turned resolutely to go in.
But the next moment she was back again over the threshold. "Mr. Tisdale!"
she called, and the currents held so long in check surged in her voice.
"Mr. Tisdale!"
Instantly the lantern swung an arc. He came quickly back to the steps.
"Well," he said, breaking the pause, "what is the trouble?"
"I know I must seem foolish--but--please don't go--yet." Her position on
the edge of the porch brought her face almost on a level with his. Her
eyes in the semi-darkness were luminously big; her face, her whole body
quivered. She leaned a little towards him, and her nearness, the low,
vibrant intensity of her voice, set his pulses singing.
"I really can't stay in that room," she explained. "Those beds all but
touch, and she, the mother, has crowded in, dressed as she is, to sleep
with the children. There isn't any air to breathe. I--I really can't make
myself lie down--there. I had rather spend the night here on the piazza.
Only--please wait--until--"
Tisdale laughed his short, mellow note. "You mean you are afraid of the
dark, or is it the cougar?"
"It's both and the lightning, too. There! See how it plays along those
awful heights; javelins of it; whole broadsides. I know it is foolish, but
I can't help feeling it is following me. It singles me out, threatens me
as though I am--guilty."
"Guilty? You? Of what?" Tisdale put down the lantern and came up the
steps. "See here, Miss Armitage, come take your chair." He moved it around
from the table and laid his hand on her arm, impelling her into the seat.
"Now face it out. Those flashes of heat lightning are about as dangerous
as the Aurora Borealis. You ought to know that."
Then, because the personal contact had set his blood racing, he moved away
to the edge of the porch and stood frowning off up the gorge. He knew she
covered her face with her hands; he believed she was crying, and he
desired beyond all reason to take her to his heart and quiet her. He only
said: "But I understand. I have seen strong men just as foolish before an
electrical storm, and the bravest woman I ever knew lost her grip one
still morning just from solitude."
There was another silence, then suddenly she lifted her head. "I am
sorry," she said, "but it is all over. I shall try my best not to annoy
you any more."
"Annoy me? Why, you haven't. What makes you think that?" Tisdale turned,
and the mellowness stole into his voice. "I didn't expect you to creep in
and go to sleep tranquilly alongside that bunch of sage."
At this she smiled. "You have found a flower to fit even her."
"I never made a misfit--yet," he answered and waited, looking into her
face, reading her through.
"But you have doubts," she supplemented, "and I warned you I should
disappoint you. I warned you at the start."
Tisdale laughed again, softly. "The odds were all against that Alaska
violet," he said, "but she weathered it through." And seating himself on
the steps, he looked up again to the night-enshrouded Pass. The air was
cooler; a light wind, drawing down from the divide, brought a hint of
dampness; it was raining somewhere, far off. "My doubts are all right," he
added, "and I am going to stay here as long as you want me to."