THE BRAVEST WOMAN HE EVER KNEW
Presently, during one of the interludes when darkness enveloped the gulf,
she began to entertain Tisdale with an experience in the Sierras, a little
adventure on one of those journeys with her father, when she had driven
Pedro and Don José. But though she told the story with composure, even
with a certain vivacity and charm, as she might have narrated it to a
small and intimate audience in any safe drawing-room, her self-control was
a transparency through which he saw her anxiety manoeuvering, in spite of
his promise, to keep him there.
"Strange, is it not?" she went on, "how things will take the gloss of
humor, looking back. That cloudburst was anything but funny at the time;
it was miserably exasperating to stand there drenched, with the
comfortable quarters of the mining company in sight, cut off by an
impassable washout. And it was wretched driving all those miles to our
hotel in wet clothes, with not so much as a dry rug to cover us; yet
afterwards, whenever I tried to tell about it, I failed to gain a shred of
sympathy. People laughed, as you are doing now."
"And you laughed with them," answered Tisdale quickly, "because looking
back you caught the right perspective. It is always so. Another incident
that seemed trivial in passing will loom up behind us like a cliff on the
horizon. And it is so with people. The man who held the foreground through
sheer egoism sinks to his proper place in obscurity, while a little,
white-faced woman we knew for a day stands out of the past like a
monument."
His brows clouded; he turned from the lantern light to look off again to
the shrouded mountain tops. "And looking back," he added, "the man you
thought you knew better than the rest, the partner, friend, to whom, when
you were reminded and it suited your convenience, you were ready to do a
service, stands out from the shadows clearly defined. It is under the test
of those high lights behind that his character shines. You wonder at his
greatness. His personality takes a stronger, closer hold, and you would
give the rest of your life just to go back and travel the old, hard road
again with him."
There was a long silence, broken once more by that far, wailing cry on the
wind. Miss Armitage started. She laid her hand on Tisdale's shoulder, the
nearest object, in a tightening grip, while for a breathless moment she
leaned forward, trying to penetrate the darkness of the gorge. The action
seemed to remind him of her presence, and he turned to look at her.
"Frightened again?" he asked.
Her hand fell; she settled back in her seat. "N-o, not very much, but it
took me off guard. It sounds so desolate, so--so--supernatural; like the
cry of a doomed soul."
Tisdale smiled. "That describes it, but you never have heard it at close
range."
She shivered; her glance moved again in apprehension to the
night-enshrouded Pass. "Have you, Mr. Tisdale?"
"Yes, lonesome nights by a mountain camp-fire, with just the wind piping
down a ravine, or a cataract breaking over a spur to fill the interlude."
"Oh, that must have been terrifying," and the shiver crept into her voice.
"But what did you do?"
"Why, I hurried to pull the embers together and throw on more spruce
boughs. A cougar is cautious around a fire."
There was another silence, then, "I was thinking of your little,
white-faced woman," said Miss Armitage. "She baffles me. Was she your
bravest woman or just your anemone? Would you mind telling me?"
"So you were thinking of her. That's odd; so was I." Tisdale changed his
position, turning to lean on the edge of the porch with his elbow resting
on the floor. "But it was that Gordon setter there that reminded me of
her. Her dog had the same points, though he had been better trained." He
paused briefly, then said: "She was both. She was like that small, white
flower which grows in the shelter of the Alaska woods--sweet and modest
and frail looking--yet she was the bravest woman and the strongest when it
came to endurance I ever knew."
"It happened, of course, in Alaska," Miss Armitage ventured, breaking the
pause. "You knew her there?"
"Yes, it was in Alaska and about five years ago. The season I gave up
getting rich in a hurry and went back to geological work. I had spent the
winter on the Tanana with David Weatherbee. We had staked a promising
placer, and we were ready to begin sluicing with the first spring thaw,
when he sold his interest unexpectedly to meet an obligation down in the
States. That nettled me, and I sold out my own share to the same men and
accepted a position with the department, who had written to ask me to take
charge of a party working above Seward. Weatherbee started with me, but I
left him to prospect along the headwaters of the Susitna. My surveys kept
me in the neighborhood of Turnagain Arm until midsummer, when I moved camp
up the river to the mouth of an unexplored tributary. It was the kind of
stream to lure a prospector or a sportsman, clear, rapid, broken by
riffles and sand-bars, while the grassy shores looked favorable for elk or
caribou. To bridge the delay while the last pack-horses straggled in and
the men were busy pitching tents and putting things into shape, I decided
to go on a short hunting trip. I traveled light, with only a single
blanket rolled compactly for my shoulder strap, in case the short night
should overtake me, with a generous lunch that Sandy, the cook, had
supplied, but at the end of two hours' steady tramping I had sighted
nothing. I had reached a wooded ravine and a snow-peak, apparently the
source of the stream, closed the top of the gorge. It was the heart of the
wilderness, over a hundred miles from a settlement and off the track of
road-houses, but a few rods on I came upon the flume and dump of a placer
mine. The miner's cabin stood a little farther up the bank under a clump
of spruce, but the place seemed abandoned. Then I noticed some berry
bushes near the sluice had been lately snapped off, where some heavy
animal had pushed through, and a moment later, in the moist soil at a
small spillway, I picked up the trail of a large bear.
"The tracks led me up the rough path towards the cabin, but midway I came
to a fallen tree. It must have been down a week or more, but no attempt
had been made to clear the trail or to cut through, so, pushing up over
the matted boughs, I leaped from the bole to avoid the litter beyond. At
the same instant I saw under me, wedged in the broken branches, the body
of my bear. He was a huge grizzly, and must have made an easy and ugly
target as he lumbered across the barricade. I found one bullet had taken
him nearly between the eyes, while another had lodged in the shoulder. And
it was plain the shots were aimed from the window, with the rifle probably
resting on the sill.
"As I went on up the path, the loud baying of a dog came from the cabin,
then a woman's face, young and small and very white, appeared at the
window. Seeing me, she turned quickly and threw open the door. The next
instant her hand fell to the neck of a fine Gordon setter and, tugging at
his collar, she drew back and stood surveying me from head to foot. 'It's
all right, madam,' I said, stopping before her. 'Don't try to hold him.
The bear won't trouble you any more. You made a mighty fine shot.'
"'Oh,' she said, and let the dog go, 'I am so glad you have come.' And she
sank into a chair, shaking and sobbing."
"You mean," exclaimed Miss Armitage breathlessly, "it was she who killed
the bear?"
Tisdale nodded gently. "I wish I could make you understand the situation.
She was not a sportswoman. She was city bred and had been carefully
reared--accustomed to have things done for her. I saw this at a glance.
Only her extremity and the fear that the dog would be hurt nerved her to
shoot."
"Oh, I see, I see," said Miss Armitage. "Fate had brought her, left her in
that solitary place--alone."
"Fate?" Tisdale questioned. "Well, perhaps, but not maliciously; not in
jest. On second thought I would not lay it to Fate at all. You see, she
had come voluntarily, willingly, though blindly enough. She was one of the
few women who are capable of a great love."
Tisdale waited, but the woman beside him had no more to say. "I saw I must
give her time to gather her self-control," he went on, "so I turned my
attention to the setter, who was alternately springing on me and excitedly
wagging his tail. I like a good dog, and I soon had him familiarly
snuffing my pockets; then he stretched himself playfully, with an
inquiring, almost human yawn; but suddenly remembering the bear, he stood
pointing, head up, forepaw lifted, and made a rush, baying furiously.
"'It's all right, madam,' I repeated and stepped into the room. 'You made
a fine shot, and that bearskin is going to make a great rug for your
floor.'
"She lifted her face, downing a last sob, and gave me a brave little
smile. 'It isn't altogether the bear,' she explained. 'It's partly because
I haven't seen any one for so long, and partly because, for a moment, I
thought you were my husband. I've been worried about him. He has been gone
over three weeks, and he never stayed longer than five days before. But it
was a relief to have you come.'
"It sounds differently when I repeat it. You lose the sweet shyness of her
face, the appeal in her eyes not yet dry, and that soft minor chord in her
voice that reminds me now of a wood-thrush.
"'I understand,' I hurried to say, 'the solitude has grown intolerable. I
know what that means, I have lived so long in the eternal stillness
sometimes that the first patter of a rain on the leaves came like the
tramp of an army, and the snapping of a twig rang sharp as a pistol shot.'
"'You do understand,' she said. 'You have been through it. And, of course,
you see my husband had to leave me. The trail up the canyon is the merest
thread. It would have been impossible for me, and I should have only
hindered him, now, when every day counts.'
"'You mean,' I said, 'he has left his placer to prospect for the main lode
above?' And she answered yes. That every gravel bar made a better showing;
the last trip had taken him above the tree line, and this time he expected
to prospect along the glacier at the source of the stream. Sometimes
erosions laid veins open, and any hour 'he might stumble on riches.' She
smiled again, though her lip trembled, then said it was his limited outfit
that troubled her most. He had taken only a light blanket and a small
allowance of bacon and bread.
"'But,' I reassured her, 'there is almost a certainty he has found game at
this season of the year.'
"She looked at the rifle she had set by the window against the wall. 'I
haven't been able to persuade him to take the gun,' she explained, 'for a
long time. He doesn't hunt any more.' She stopped, watching me, and locked
her slim hands. Then, 'He is greatly changed,' she went on. 'The last time
he came home, he hardly noticed me. He spent the whole evening sitting
with his eyes fixed on the floor--without a word. And the next morning,
before I was awake, he was gone.'
"At last her real fear was clear to me. There is a terrible fascination
about those Alaska gold streams. Each gravel bar has just showing enough
to lead a man on and on. He hugs the belief from hour to hour he is on the
brink of a great find, until he has eyes for nothing but the colors in the
sand. He forgets hunger, weariness, everything, and finally, if rescue
fails him, he sinks in complete collapse. More than once I had come on
such a wreck, straying demented, babbling, all but famished in the hills.
And I was sorry for that little woman. I understood the pitch she must
have reached to speak so freely to a passing stranger. But it was hard to
find just the right thing to say, and while I stood choosing words, she
hurried to explain that two days before she had taken the dog and tramped
up-stream as far as she had dared, hoping to meet her husband, and that
she had intended to go even farther that day, but had been prevented, as I
saw, by the bear, who had prowled about the cabin the greater part of the
night. The setter's continual barking and growling had failed to drive him
away.
"'If you had gone this morning,' I said, 'I should have missed you; then I
shouldn't have known about your husband. I am on my way up this canyon,
and I shall look for him. And, when I find him, I shall do my best to
bring him in touch with the outside world again.'"
Tisdale paused. The abrupt slope that over-topped the portable cabin began
to take shape in the darkness. It had the appearance of a sail looming
through fog. Then the shadows scattered, and the belated moon, lifting
over the dunes beyond the Columbia, silvered the mouth of the gorge. It
was as though that other distant canyon, of which he was thinking, opened
before him into unknown solitudes.
Miss Armitage leaned forward, watching his face, waiting for the issue of
the story.
"And you found him?" she asked at last.
"Yes. In the end." Tisdale's glance returned and, meeting hers, the grim
lines in his face relaxed. "But there was a long and rough tramp first.
She urged me to take the setter, and I saw the advantage in having a good
dog with me on such a search; any cleft, or thicket, or sprinkle of
boulders, might easily conceal a man's body from one passing only a few
feet off--but, much as he favored me, he was not to be coaxed far from his
mistress; so I suggested she should go, too.
"'Oh,' she said, catching at the chance, 'do you think Jerry can make up
for the delay, if I do? I will travel my best, I promise you.' And she led
the way, picking up the faint trail and setting a pace that I knew must
soon tire her, while the dog brushed by us, bounding ahead and rushing
back and expressing his satisfaction in all sorts of manoeuvers.
"In a little while, above the timber--the tree line is low on those Alaska
mountainsides--we came to a broad, grassy bog set deep between two spurs,
and she was forced to give me the lead. Then the canyon walls grew
steeper, lifting into rugged knobs. Sometimes I lost the prospector's
trail in a rock-choked torrent and picked it up again, where it hung like
a thin ribbon on a heather-grown slope; but it never wound or doubled if
there was foothold ahead. It led up stairs of graywacke, along the brink
of slaty cliffs that dropped sheer, hundreds of feet to the stream below.
Still she kept on pluckily, and whenever I turned to help her, I found her
there at my elbow, ready. Now and then in breadths of level, where it was
possible to walk abreast, we talked a little, but most of the distance was
covered in silence. I felt more and more sorry for her. She was so eager,
patient, watchful, forever scanning the pitches on either side. And if the
setter made a sudden break, scenting a bare perhaps, or starting a
ptarmigan, she always stopped, waiting with a light in her face; and when
he jogged back to her heels, the expectation settled into patience again.
"Finally we came to a rill where I urged her to rest; and when I had
spread my blanket on a boulder, she took the seat, leaning comfortably
against a higher rock, and watched me while I opened the tin box in which
Sandy had stored my lunch. She told me my cook made a good sandwich and
knew how to fry a bird Southern fashion. Then she spoke of the Virginia
town where she had lived before her marriage. The trip west had been her
wedding journey, and her husband, who was an architect, had intended to
open an office in a new town on Puget Sound, but at Seattle he caught the
Alaska fever.
"'The future looked very certain and brilliant then,' she said, with her
smile, 'but as long as I have my husband, nothing else counts. I could
live out my life, be happy here in this wilderness, anywhere, with him. If
I could only have him back--as he used to be.'"
Tisdale's voice softened, vibrating gently, so that the pathos of it all
must have impressed the coldest listener. The woman beside him trembled
and lifted her hand to her throat.
"I can't remember all she told me," he went on, "but her husband had left
her in Seattle when he started north, and the next season, when he failed
to return for her, she had sailed to Seward in search of him. She had
tried to influence him to give up the placer, when she saw the change in
him; at least to go down to one of the coast towns and take up the work
for which he had prepared, but he had delayed, with promises, until he was
beyond listening to her.
"'Of course he may stumble on riches any hour, as he believes,' she said
finally, 'but not all the comforts or luxuries in the world are worth the
price.' She did not break down, as she had in the cabin, but somehow I
could hear the tears falling in her voice. I can yet, and see them big and
shining deep in her eyes.
"But she was off again, making up the delay, before I could fasten my
pack, and when I overtook her in a level stretch and halted a moment to
frolic with the dog, her face brightened. Then she spoke of a little trick
she had taught him,--to go and meet his master and fetch his hat to her.
Sometimes she had hidden it in shrubs, or among rocks, but invariably he
had brought it home.
"At last we made a turn and saw the front of the glacier that closed the
top of the gorge. The stream gushed from a cavern at the foot, and above
the noise of water sounded the grinding and roaring of subterranean forces
at work. Once in a while a stone was hurled through. But that is
impossible to explain. You must have been on intimate terms with a glacier
to grasp the magnitude. Still, try to imagine the ice arching that cave
like a bridge and lifting back, rimmed in moraine, far and away to the
great white dome. And it was all wrapped in a fine Alpine splendor, so
that she stopped beside me in a sort of hushed wonder to look. But I could
hear her breath, laboring hard and quick, and she rocked uncertainly on
her feet. I laid my hand on her arm to steady her. It was time we turned
back. For half an hour I had been gathering courage to tell her so. While
I hesitated, allowing her a few minutes to take in the glory, the setter
ran nosing ahead, up over the wreckage along the edge of the glacier, and
on across the bridge. I waited until he disappeared in a small pocket,
then began: 'You know, madam, what all this color means. These twilights
linger, and it will be easier traveling down-grade, but we must hurry, to
have you home before dark.'
"She turned to answer but stopped, looking beyond me to the bridge. Then I
saw the setter had caught her attention. He was coming back. His black
body moved in strong relief against the ice-field, and I noticed he had
something in his mouth. It seemed about the size and color of a grouse,--a
ptarmigan, no doubt. Then it flashed over me the thing was a hat. At the
same moment I felt her tremble, and I had just time to see that her face
had gone white, when she sank against me, a dead weight. I carried her a
few yards to a bank of heather and laid her down, and while I was filling
my folding cup at the stream, the dog bounded over the rocks and dropped
the thing on her breast. It was a hat, a gray felt with a good brim, such
as a prospector, or indeed any man who lives in the open, favors; but the
setter's actions,--he alternately rushed towards the glacier and back to
his mistress, with short yelps,--warned me to be careful, and I tucked the
hat out of sight, between two stones. The dog had it out instantly, bent
on giving it to her, but I snatched it from him and threw it into the
torrent, where it struck upright, floating lightly on the brim, and lodged
in a shallow. He followed and came bounding back with it, while I was
raising the cup to her lips, and I had barely a chance to crowd it into my
blanket roll when she opened her eyes. 'He had Louis' hat,' she said and
drifted into unconsciousness again.
"I took my flask from my pocket and, blaming myself for bringing her that
hard trip, mixed a draught. It revived her, and in a moment she started
up. 'Where is the hat?' she asked, looking about her. 'Jerry had it on the
ice-bridge.'
"At the sound of her voice, the dog, who had been trying to get at the
hat, commenced his manoeuvers to attract her across the gorge, bounding
ahead, calling her with his short, excited barks, and making all the signs
of a hunting dog impatient to lead to the quarry. She tried to get to her
feet, but I put my hand on her shoulder. 'Wait, madam,' I said. 'You must
rest a little longer before you try to start back. You were so tired you
fainted. And your eyes must have played you a trick.'
"'You mean,' she began and stopped.
"I am not much of a dissembler, and I found it hard to meet her look, but
I answered with all the assurance I could muster. 'I mean, madam, you are
mistaken about that hat.'
"She waited a moment, watching the setter, then her glance moved back
incredulously to me. 'Then what excites Jerry?' she asked.
"'Why,' I hurried to answer, 'just another bunch, of ptarmigan, probably.
But while you are resting here, I will go over into that pocket to satisfy
him.'
"The setter, content with my company, ran ahead, and I followed him across
the ice-bridge. The pocket was thickly strewn with broken rock, but at the
upper end there was a clear space grown with heather. And it was there, as
I feared, between a bluff and a solitary thumb-shaped boulder that the dog
had found his master."
Tisdale paused, looking off again with clouding brows to the stormy
heights. Eastward the moon in a clear sky threw a soft illumination on the
desert. The cry of the cougar had ceased. The electrical display was less
brilliant; it seemed farther off. Miss Armitage moved a little and waited,
watching his face.
"But of course," she ventured at last, "you mixed another draught from
your emergency flask. The stimulant saved his life."
"No." Tisdale's glance came slowly back. "He was beyond any help. A square
of canvas was set obliquely on the glacier side, and that and the blanket
which covered him proved the place was his camp; but the only traces of
food were a few cracker or bread crumbs in a trap made of twigs, and a
marmot skin and a bunch of ptarmigan feathers to show the primitive
contrivance had worked. There was no wood in the neighborhood, but the
ashes of a small fire showed he must have carried fuel from the belt of
spruce half-way down the gorge. If he had made such a trip and not gone on
to the cabin, it clearly proved his mental condition. Still in the end
there had been a glimmer of light, for he had torn a leaf from his
notebook and written first his wife's name and then a line, out of which I
was only able to pick the words 'give' and 'help' and 'States.' Evidently
he had tried to put the paper into his poke, which had dropped, untied,
from his hand with the pencil he had used. The sack was nearly full; it
had fallen upright in a fold of the blanket, so only a little of the gold,
which was very coarse and rough and bright, had spilled. I made all this
inventory almost at a glance, and saw directly he had left his pan and
shovel in the gravels of a stream that cascaded over the wall and through
the pocket to join the creek below the glacier. Then it came over me that
I must keep the truth from her until she was safely back at the cabin, and
I put the poke in my pocket and hurried to do what I could.
"The setter hampered me and was frantic when I turned away, alternately
following me a few yards, whining and begging, and rushing back to his
master. Finally he stopped on the farther side of the ice-bridge and set
up a prolonged cry. His mistress had come to meet me and she waited at the
crossing, supporting herself with her hands on a great boulder, shoulders
forward, breath hushed, watching me with her soul in her eyes. At last I
reached her. 'Madam,' I began, but the words caught in my throat. I turned
and looked up at the splendor on the mountain. The air drew sharp across
the ice, but a sudden heat swept me; I was wet with perspiration from head
to foot. 'Madam,' and I forced myself to meet her eyes, 'it is just as I
expected; the dog found--nothing.'
"She straightened herself slowly, still watching me, then suddenly threw
her arms against the rock and dropped her face. 'Come,' I said, 'we must
start back. Come, I want to hurry through to my camp for a horse.'
"This promise was all she needed to call up her supreme self-control, and
she lifted her face with a smile that cut me worse than any tears. 'I'm
not ungrateful,' she said, 'but--I felt so sure, from the first, you would
find him.'
"'And you felt right,' I hurried to answer. 'Trust me to bring him
through.'
"I whistled the setter, and she called repeatedly, but he refused to
follow. When we started down the trail, he watched us from his post at the
farther end of the ice-bridge, whining and baying, and the moment she
stopped at the first turn to look back, he streaked off once more for that
pocket. 'Never mind,' I said, and helped her over a rough place, 'Jerry
knows he is a good traveler. He will be home before you.' But it was plain
to me he would not, and try as I might to hurry her out of range of his
cry, it belled again soon, and the cliffs caught it over and over and
passed it on to us far down the gorge."
There was one of those speaking silences in which the great heart of the
man found expression, and the woman beside him, following his gaze, sifted
the cloudy Pass. She seemed in that moment to see that other canyon,
stretching down from the glacier, and those two skirting the edge of
cliffs, treading broken stairs, pursued by the cry of the setter into the
gathering gloom of the Arctic night.
"It grew very cold in that gorge," he went on, "and I blamed myself for
taking her that trip more and more. She never complained, never stopped,
except to look back and listen for the dog, but shadows deepened under her
eyes; the patient lines seemed chiseled where they had been only lightly
drawn, and when she caught me watching her and coaxed up her poor little
smile, I could have picked her up in my arms and carried her the rest of
the way. But we reached the tree-line before she came to her limit. It was
at the turn in a cliff, and I stopped, looking down across the tops of a
belt of spruce, to locate the cabin. 'There it is,' I said. 'You see that
little brown patch down there in the blur of green. That is your house.
You are almost home.'
"She moved a step to see better and stumbled, and she only saved herself
by catching my arm in both hands. Then her whole body fell to shaking. I
felt unnerved a little, for that matter. It was a dangerous place. I had
been recklessly foolish to delay her there. But when I had found a safe
seat for her around the cliff, the shivering kept up, chill after chill,
and I mixed a draught for her, as I had at the glacier.
"'This will warm your blood,' I said, holding the cup for her. 'Come,
madam, we must fight the cold off for another hour; that should see you
home. After I have made a good fire, I am going to show you what a fine
little supper I can prepare. Bear steaks at this season are prime.'
"I laughed to encourage her, and because the chills were still obstinate,
I hurried to unstrap my blanket to wrap around her. And I only remembered
the hat when it dropped at her feet. She did not cry out but sat like a
marble woman, with her eyes fixed on it. Then, after a while, she bent and
lifted it and began to shape it gently with her numb little fingers. She
was beyond tears, and the white stillness of her face made me more
helpless than any sobbing. I could think of nothing to say to comfort her
and turned away, looking off in the direction of the cabin. It seemed
suddenly a long distance off.
"Finally she spoke, slowly at first, convincing herself. 'Jerry did bring
it across the ice-bridge. He found Louis and stayed to watch, as I
thought. Sir, now tell me the truth.'
"I turned back to her, and it came bluntly enough. Then I explained it was
not an accident or anything terrible; that the end had come easily,
probably the previous night, of heart failure. 'But I couldn't nerve
myself to tell you up there,' I said, 'with all those miles of hard travel
before you; and I am going back to-morrow, as I promised, to bring him
through.'
"She had nothing to say but rose and held out her hand. In a little while
I began to lead her down through the belt of spruce. I moved very slowly,
choosing steps, for she paid no attention to her footing. Her hand rested
limply in mine, and she stumbled, like one whose light has gone out in a
dark place."
Tisdale's story was finished, but Miss Armitage waited, listening. It was
as though in the silence she heard his unexpressed thoughts.
"But her life was wrecked," she said at last. "She never could forget.
Think of it! The terror of those weeks; the long-drawn suspense. She
should not have stayed in Alaska. She should have gone home at the
beginning. She was not able to help her husband. Her influence was lost."
"True," Tisdale answered slowly. "Long before that day I found her, she
must have known it was a losing fight. But the glory of the battle is not
always to the victor. And she blamed herself that she had not gone north
with her husband at the start. You see she loved him, and love with that
kind of woman means self-sacrifice; she counted it a privilege to have
been there, to have faced the worst with him, done what she could."
Miss Armitage straightened, lifting her head with that movement of a
flower shaken on its stem. "Every woman owes it to herself to keep her
self-respect," she said. "She owes it to her family--the past and future
generations of her race--to make the most of her life."
"And she made the most of hers," responded Tisdale quickly. "That was her
crowning year." He hesitated, then said quietly, with his upward look from
under slightly frowning brows: "And it was just that reason, the debt to
her race, that buoyed her all the way through. It controlled her there at
the glacier and gave her strength to turn back, when the setter refused to
come. Afterwards, in mid-winter, when news of the birth of her son came
down from Seward, I understood."
An emotion like a transparent shadow crossed his listener's face. "That
changes everything," she said. "But of course you returned the next day
with a horse to do as you promised, and afterwards helped her out to
civilization."
"I saw Louis Barbour buried, yes." Tisdale's glance traveled off again to
the distant Pass. "We chose a low mound, sheltered by a solitary spruce,
between the cabin and the creek, and I inscribed his name and the date on
the trunk of the tree. But my time belonged to the Government. I had a
party in the field, and the Alaska season is short. It fell to David
Weatherbee to see her down to Seward."
"To David Weatherbee?" Miss Armitage started. Protest fluctuated with the
surprise in her voice. "But I see, I see!" and she settled back in her
seat. "You sent him word. He had known her previously."
"No. When I left him early in the spring, he intended to prospect down the
headwaters of the Susitna, you remember, and I was carrying my surveys
back from the lower valley. We were working toward each other, and I
expected to meet him any day. In fact, I had mail for him at my camp that
had come by way of Seward, so I hardly was surprised the next morning,
when I made the last turn below the glacier with my horse to see old
Weatherbee coming over the ice-bridge.
"He had made a discovery at the source of that little tributary, where the
erosion of the glacier had opened a rich vein, and on following the stream
through graywackes and slate to the first gravelled fissure, he had found
the storage plant for his placer gold. He was on his way out to have the
claim recorded and get supplies and mail when he heard the baying setter
and, rounding the mouth of the pocket, saw the camp and the dead
prospector. Afterwards, when he had talked with the woman waiting down the
canyon, he asked to see her husband's poke and compared the gold with the
sample he had panned. It was the same, coarse and rough, with little
scraps of quartz clinging to the bigger flakes sometimes, and he insisted
the strike was Barbour's. He tried to persuade her to make the entry, but
she refused, and finally they compromised with a partnership."
"So they were partners." Miss Armitage paused, then went on with a touch
of frostiness: "And they traveled those miles of wilderness alone, for
days together, out to the coast."
"Yes." Tisdale's glance, coming back, challenged hers. "Sometimes the
wilderness enforces a social code of her own. Miss Armitage,"--his voice
vibrated softly,--"I wish you had known David Weatherbee. But imagine Sir
Galahad, that whitest knight of the whole Round Table, Sir Galahad on that
Alaska trail, to-day. And Weatherbee was doubly anxious to reach Seward.
There was a letter from his wife in that packet of mail I gave him. She
had written she was taking the opportunity to travel as far as Seward with
some friends, who were making the summer tour of the coast. But he was
ready to cut the trip into short and easy stages to see Mrs. Barbour
through. 'It's all right,' he said at the start. 'Leave it to me. I am
going to take this lady to my wife.'"
"And--at Seward?" questioned Miss Armitage, breaking the pause.
"At Seward his wife failed him. But he rented a snug cottage of some
people going out to the States and had the good fortune to find a motherly
woman, who knew something about nursing, to stay with Mrs. Barbour. It was
Christmas when her father arrived from Virginia to help her home, and it
was spring before she was able to make the sea voyage as far as Seattle."
"Expenses, in those new, frontier towns, are so impossible; I hope her
father was able"--she halted, then added hurriedly, flushing under
Tisdale's searching eyes, "but, of course, in any case, he reimbursed Mr.
Weatherbee."
"He did, you may be sure, if there was any need. But you have forgotten
that poke of Barbour's. There was dust enough to have carried her through
even an Alaska winter; but an old Nevada miner, on the strength of that
showing, paid her twenty thousand dollars outright for her interest in the
claim."
Miss Armitage drew a deep breath. "And David Weatherbee, too? He sold his
share--did he not--and stayed on at Seward?"
"Yes, he wasted the best weeks of the season in Seward, waiting for his
wife. But she never came. She wrote she had changed her mind. He showed me
that letter one night at the close of the season when he stopped at my
camp on his way back to the Tanana. It was short but long enough to remind
him there were accounts pressing; one particularly that she called a 'debt
of honor.' She hadn't specified, but I guessed directly she had been
accepting loans from her friends, and I saw it was that that had worried
him. To raise the necessary money, he had been obliged to realize on the
new placer. His partner had been waiting to go in to the claim with him,
and Weatherbee's sudden offer to sell made the mining man suspicious. He
refused to buy at any price. Then David found an old prospector whom he
had once befriended and made a deal with him. It was five hundred dollars
down, and two thousand out of the first year's clean-up. And he sent all
of the ready money to her and started in to make a new stake below
Discovery. But the inevitable stampede had followed on the Nevada man's
heels, and the strike turned out small.
"It was one of those rich pockets we find sometimes along a glacier that
make fortunes for the first men, while the rank and file pan out defeat
and disappointment. There was the quartz body above, stringers and veins
of it reaching through the graywackes and slate, but to handle it
Weatherbee must set up a stamp-mill; and only a line of pack-mules from
the Andes, and another line of steamships could transport the ore to the
nearest smelter, on Puget Sound. So--he took up the long trek northward
again, to the Tanana. Think of it! The irony of it!"
Tisdale rose and turned on the step to look down at her. The light from
the lantern intensified the furrows between his brooding eyes. "And think
what it meant to Weatherbee to have seen, as he had, day after day, hour
after hour, the heart of another man's wife laid bare, while to his own he
himself was simply a source of revenue."
Miss Armitage too rose and stood meeting his look. Her lip trembled a
little, but the blue lights flamed in her eyes. "You believe that," she
said, and her voice dropped into an unexpected note. "You believe he threw
away that rich discovery for the few hundreds of dollars he sent his wife;
but I know--she was told--differently. She thought he was glad to--escape--
at so small a price. He wrote he was glad she had reconsidered that trip;
Alaska was no place for her."
"Madam," Tisdale remonstrated softly, "you couldn't judge David Weatherbee
literally by his letters. If you had ever felt his personality, you would
have caught the undercurrent, deep and strong, sweeping between the lines.
It wasn't himself that counted; it was what was best for her. You couldn't
estimate him by other men; he stood, like your white mountain, alone above
the crowd. And he set a pedestal higher than himself and raised his wife
there to worship and glorify. A word from her at any time would have
turned the balance and brought him home; her presence, her sympathy, even
that last season at the Aurora mine, would have brought him through. I
wish you had seen his face that day I met him below the glacier and had
told him about the woman waiting down the gorge. 'My God, Tisdale,' he
said, 'suppose it had been my wife.'"
Miss Armitage stood another moment, locking her hands one over the other
in a tightening grip. Her lip trembled again, but the words failed. She
turned and walked uncertainly the few steps to the end of the porch.
"You believe she might have influenced him, but I do not. Oh, I see, I
see, how you have measured him by your own great heart. But"--she turned
towards him and went on slowly, her voice fluctuating in little, steadying
pauses--"even if you were right, you might be generous; you might try to
imagine her side. Suppose she had not guessed his--need--of her; been able
to read, as you did, between the lines. Sometimes a woman waits to be
told. A proud woman does." She came back the few steps. "Beatriz
Weatherbee isn't the kind of woman you think she is. She has faults, of
course, but she has tried to make the best of her life. If she made a
mistake--or thought she had--no one else knew it. She braved it through.
She's been high-strung, too."
Tisdale put up his hand. "Don't say any more; don't try to excuse her to
me. It's of no use. Good night." But a few feet from the porch he stopped
to add, less grimly: "I should have said good morning. You see how that
pyramid stands out against that pale streak of horizon. There is only time
for a nap before sunrise. Day is breaking."
She was silent, but something in the intensity of her gaze, the unspoken
appeal that had also a hint of dread, the stillness of her small face,
white in the uncertain light when so lately he had seen it sparkle and
glow, brought him back.
"I've tired you out," he said. "I shouldn't have told you that story. But
this outlook to-night reminded me of that other canyon, and I thought it
might help to bridge over the time. There's nothing can tide one through
an unpleasant situation like hearing about some one who fared worse. And I
hadn't meant to go so far into details. I'm sorry," and he held out his
hand, "but it was your interest, sympathy, something about you, that drew
me on."
She did not answer directly. She seemed to need the moment to find her
voice and bring it under control. Then, "Any one must have been
interested," she said, and drew away her hand. "You have the
story-teller's gift. And I want to thank you for making it all so clear
to me; it was a revelation."