A WOMAN'S HEART-STRINGS
"Now I know the meaning of Wenatchee. It's something racy, Mr. Tisdale,
and a little wicked, yet with unexpected depths, and just the coolest,
limpid hazel-green."
Tisdale's pulses quickened; his blood responded to her exhilaration. "Yes,
only"--and he waited to catch the glance she lifted from the stream--"your
green is blue, and you forgot to count the sparkles in."
As he spoke, the bays paced off the bridge. They sprang, gathering
themselves lightly for a sharp ascent and for an interval held the
driver's close attention. The town and the Columbia were behind, and the
road, which followed the contour of the slopes rising abruptly from the
Wenatchee, began a series of sudden turns; it cut shelf-wise high across
the face of a ridge; spurs constantly closed after them; there seemed no
way back or through, then, like an opening gate, a bluff detached from the
wall ahead, and they entered another breadth of valley. In the wide levels
that bordered the river, young orchards began to supplant the sage.
Looking down from the thoroughfare, the even rows and squares seemed
wrought on the tawny background like the designs of a great carpet.
Sometimes, paralleling the road, the new High Line canal followed an upper
cut; it trestled a ravine or, stopped by a rocky cliff, bored through.
Where a finished spillway irrigated a mountainside, all the steep incline
between the runnels showed lines on lines of diminutive trees, pluckily
taking root-hold.
A little after that, near an old mission, they dropped to a lower bench
and passed an apple orchard in full bearing. Everywhere boughs laden with
a gold or crimson harvest were supported by a network of scaffolding. It
was marvelous that fruit could so crowd and cling to a slender stem and
yet round and color to such perfection. Miss Armitage slowed the horses
down and looked up the shady avenues. Presently a driveway divided the
tract, leading to a dwelling so small it had the appearance of a toy
house; but on the gatepost above the rural delivery box the name of the
owner shone ostentatiously. It was "Henderson Bailey, Hesperides Vale."
"Do you see?" she asked. "This is that station master's orchard, where the
Rome Beauty grew."
But the team was troublesome again. The road made a turn, rounding the
orchard, and began the descent to a bridge. On the right a great
water-wheel, supplied with huge, scoop-shaped buckets, was lifting water
from the river to distribute it over a reclaimed section. The bays pranced
toward it suspiciously. "Now, now, Tuck," she admonished, "be a soldier."
The colt sidled gingerly. "Whoa, Nip, whoa!" and, rearing lightly, they
took the approach with a rush.
As they quieted and trotted evenly off the bridge, a large and brilliant
signboard set in an area of sage-brush challenged the eye. Miss Armitage
fluted a laugh.
"Buy one of these Choice Lots,"
she read, with charming, slightly mocking exaggeration.
"Buy to-day.
"To-morrow will see this Property the Heart of a City.
"Buy before the Prices Soar.
"Talk with Henderson Bailey.
"This surely is Hesperides Vale," she added.
The amusement went out of Tisdale's face. "Yes, madam, and your journey's
end. Probably the next post-box will announce the name of your friends."
She did not answer directly. She looked beyond the heads of the team to
the top of the valley, where two brown slopes parted like drawn curtains
and opened a blue vista of canyon closed by a lofty snow-peak. The sun had
more than fulfilled its morning promise of heat, but a soft breeze began
to pull from that white summit down the watercourse.
"I did not tell you I had friends in Hesperides Vale," she said at last.
Her eyes continued to search the far blue canyon, but her color heightened
at his quick glance of surprise, and she went on with a kind of
breathlessness.
"I--I have a confession to make. I--But hasn't it occurred to you, Mr.
Tisdale, that I might be interested in this land you are on your way to
see?"
His glance changed. It settled into his clear, calculating look of
appraisal. Under it her color flamed; she, turned her face farther away.
"No," he answered slowly, "No, that had not occurred to me."
"I should have told you at the beginning, but I thought, at first, you
knew. Afterward--but I am going to explain now," and she turned
resolutely, smiling a little to brave that look. "Mr. Morganstein had
promised, when he planned the trip to Portland, that he would run over
from Ellensburg to look the property up. He believed it might be feasible
to plat it into five-acre tracts to put on the market. Of course we knew
nothing of the difficulties of the road; we had heard it was an old stage
route, and we expected to motor through and return the same day. So, when
the accident happened to the car in Snoqualmie Pass, and the others were
taking the Milwaukee train home, I decided, on the impulse of the moment,
to finish this side trip to Wenatchee and return to Seattle by the Great
Northern. I admit seeing you on the eastbound influenced me. We--Mrs.
Feversham--guessed you were on your way to see this land, and when the
porter was uncertain of the stage from Ellensburg, but that you were
leaving the trail below Kittitas, I thought you had found a newer, quicker
way. So--I followed you."
Tisdale's brows relaxed. He laughed a little softly, trying to ease her
evident distress. "I am glad you did, Miss Armitage. I am mighty glad you
did. But I see," he went on slowly, his face clouding again, "I see Mrs.
Weatherbee had been talking to you about that tract. It's strange I hadn't
thought of that possibility. I'll wager she even tried to sell the land
off a map, in Seattle. I wonder, though, when this Weatherbee trip was
arranged to look the property over, that she didn't come, too. But no
doubt that seemed too eager."
The blue lights flashed in her eyes; her lip trembled. "Be fair," she
said. "You can afford to be--generous."
"I am going to be generous, Miss Armitage, to you." The ready humor
touched his mouth again, the corners of his eyes. "I am going to take you
over the ground with me; show you Weatherbee's project, his drawn plans.
But afterwards, if you outbid me--"
"You need not be afraid of that," she interrupted quickly. "I--you must
know"--she paused, her lashes drooped--"I--am not very rich," she
finessed.
Tisdale laughed outright. "Neither am I. Neither am I." Then, his glance
studying the road, he said: "I think we take that branch. But wait!" He
drew his map from his pocket and pored over it a moment. "Yes, we turn
there. After that there is just one track."
For an instant Miss Armitage seemed to waver. She sent a backward look to
the river, and the glance, returning, swept Tisdale; then she straightened
in her seat and swung the bays into the branch. It cut the valley
diagonally, away from the Wenatchee, past a last orchard, into wild lands
that stretched in level benches under the mountain wall. One tawny,
sage-mottled slope began to detach from the rest; it took the shape of a
reclining brazen beast, partly leopard, partly wolf, and a line of pine
trees that had taken root in a moist strata along the backbone had the
effect of a bristling mane.
"That is Weatherbee's landmark," said Tisdale. "He called it Cerberus. It
is all sketched in true as life on his plans. The gap there under the
brute's paw is the entrance to his vale."
As they approached, the mountain seemed to move; it took the appearance of
an animal, ready to spring. Miss Armitage, watching, shivered. The
dreadful expectation she had shown the previous night when the cry of the
cougar came down the wind, rose in her face. It was as though she had come
upon that beast, more terrifying than she had feared, lying in wait for
her. Then the moment passed. She raised her head, her hands tightened on
the reins, and she drove resolutely into the shadows of the awful front.
"Now," she said, not quite steadily, "now I know how monstrously alive a
mountain can seem."
Tisdale looked at her. "You never could live in Alaska," he said. "You
feel too much this personality of inanimate things. That was David
Weatherbee's trouble. You know how in the end he thought those Alaska
peaks were moving. They got to 'crowding' him."
The girl turned a little and met his look. Her eyes, wide with dread,
entreated him. "Yes, I know," she said, and her voice was almost a
whisper. "I was thinking of him. But please don't say any more. I can't--
bear it--here."
So she was thinking of Weatherbee. Her emotion sprang from her sympathy
for him. A gentleness that was almost tenderness crept over Tisdale's
face. How fine she was, how sensitively made, and how measureless her
capacity for loving, if she could feel like this for a man of whom she had
only heard.
Miss Armitage, squaring her shoulders and sitting very erect once more,
her lips closed in a straight red line drove firmly on. A stream ran
musically along the road side,--a stream so small it was marvelous it had
a voice. As they rounded the mountain, the gap widened into the mouth of
the vale, which lifted back to an upper bench, over-topped by a lofty
plateau. Then she swung the team around and stopped. The way was cut off
by a barbed wire fence.
The enclosure was apparently a corral for a flock of Angora goats. There
was no gate for the passage of teams; the road ended there, and a rough
sign nailed to a hingeless wicket warned the wayfarer to "Keep Out." On a
rocky knob near this entrance a gaunt, hard-featured woman sat knitting.
She measured the trespassers with a furtive, smouldering glance and
clicked her needles with unnecessary force.
Tisdale's eyes made a swift inventory of the poor shelter, half cabin,
partly shed, that evidently housed both the woman and her flock, then
searched the barren field for some sort of hitching post. But the few
bushes along the stream were small, kept low, doubtless, by the browsing
goats, and his glance rested on a fringe of poplars beyond the upper
fence.
"There's no way around," he said at last, and the amusement broke softly
in his face. "We will have to go through."
"The wicket will take the team singly," she answered, "but we must unhitch
and leave the buggy here."
"And first, if you think you can hold the colts that long, I must tackle
this thistle."
"I can manage," she said, and the sparkles danced in her eyes, "unless you
are vanquished."
The woman rose and stood glowering while he sprang down and drew the
wooden pin to open the wicket. Then, "You keep off my land," she ordered
sharply. "I will, madam," he answered quietly, "as soon as I am satisfied
it is yours."
"I've lived on this claim 'most five years," she screamed. "I'm
homesteading, and when I've used the water seven years, I get the rights."
She sprang backward with a cattish movement and caught up a gun that had
been concealed in some bushes. "Now you go," she said.
But Tisdale stayed. He stood weighing her with his steady, appraising
eyes, while he drew the township plat from his pocket.
"This is the quarter section I have come to look up. It starts here, you
see,"--and having unfolded the map, he turned to hold it under her
glance--"at the mouth of this gap, and lifts back through the pocket,
taking in the slopes to this bench and on up over this ridge to include
these springs."
The woman, curbing herself to look at the plat, allowed the rifle to
settle in the curve of her arm. "I piped the water down," she said. "This
stream was a dry gully. I fenced and put up a house."
"The tract was commuted and bought outright from the Government over seven
years ago." Tisdale's voice quickened; he set his lips dominantly and
folded the map. "I have copies of the field notes with me and the owner's
landscape plans. And I am a surveyor, madam. It won't take me long to find
out whether there is a mistake. But, before I go over the ground, I must
get my horses through to a hitching-place. I will have to lower that upper
fence, but if you will keep your goats together, I promise to put it back
as soon as the team is through."
"You let that fence alone." Tisdale had started to cross the field, and
she followed, railing, though the gun still rested in the hollow of her
arm. "If one of those goats breaks away, the whole herd'll go wild. I
can't round 'em in without my dog. He's off trailing one of the ewes. She
strayed yesterday, and he'll chase the mountain through if he has to. It's
no use to whistle; he won't come back without her. You let that fence be.
You wouldn't dare to touch it," she finished impotently, "if I had a man."
"Haven't you?" Tisdale swung around, and his voice dropped to its soft
undernote. "That's mighty hard. Who laid all that water-pipe? Who built
your house?"
"I did," she answered grimly. "The man who hauled my load of lumber
stopped long enough to help set the posts, but I did the rest."
"You did?" Tisdale shook his head incredulously. "My! My! Made all the
necessary improvements, single-handed, to hold your homestead and at the
same time managed these goats."
The woman's glance moved to the shack and out over the barren fields, and
a shade of uncertainty crept into her passionate eyes. "The improvements
don't make much of a show yet; I've had to be off so much in the
mountains, foraging with the herd. But I was able to hire a boy half a day
with the shearing this spring, and from now on they're going to pay. There
are twenty-eight in the bunch, counting the kids, and I started with one
old billy and two ewes."
"My! My! what a record!" Tisdale paused to look back at Miss Armitage, who
had turned the bays, allowing them to pace down a length of road and back.
"But," he added, walking on, "what led you to choose goats instead of
sheep?"
"I didn't do the choosing"; she moved abreast of Hollis, "it was a fool
man."
"So," he answered softly, with a glimmer of amusement in his eyes, "there
is a man, after all."
"There was," she corrected grimly. "The easiest fellow to be talked over
under the sun; the kind always chasing off after a new scheme. First it
was a mineral claim; then he banked the future on timber, and when he got
tired waiting for stumpage to soar, he put up a dinky sawmill to cut his
own trees. He was doing well, for him, getting out ties for a new
railroad--it was down in Oregon--when he saw the chance to trade for a
proved-up homestead. But it was the limit when he started out to buy a
bunch of sheep and came back with that old Angora billy and two ewes."
"I see." They were near the fence, and Tisdale swerved a little to reach a
stout poplar that formed the corner post. He saw that the wire ends met
there and felt in his pocket for his knife. "I see. And then he left the
responsibility to his wife."
"The wedding hadn't come off," she said sharply. "It was fixed for the
seventeenth of June, and that was only May. And I told him I couldn't risk
it--not in the face of those goats."
"And he?" pressed Hollis gently. This thistle, isolated, denied human
intercourse, was more easily handled than he had hoped.
"He said it suited him all right. He had been wanting to go to Alaska.
Nothing but that wedding had kept him back."
Tisdale stopped and opened his knife. "And he went?" he asked.
"Yes." The woman's face worked a little, and she stood looking at him with
hard, tragic eyes. "He sold the homestead for what he could get to raise
the money to take him to Dawson. He was gone in less than twenty-four
hours and before daylight, that night he left, I heard those goats
_ma-a-ing_ under my window. He had staked them there in the front yard and
tucked a note, with his compliments, in the door. He wrote he didn't know
of anything else he could leave that would make me remember him better."
Tisdale shook his head. "I wish I had been there." He slipped the knife in
between the ends of the wires and the bole, clawing, prying, twisting.
"And you kept them?" he added.
"Yes, I don't know why, unless it was because I knew it was the last thing
he expected. But I hated them worse than snakes. I couldn't stand it
having them around, and I hired a boy to herd them out on his father's
farm. Then I went on helping Dad, selling general merchandise and sorting
mail. But the post-office was moved that year five miles to the new
railroad station, and they put in a new man. Of course that meant a line
of goods, too, and competition. Trade fell off, then sickness came. It
lasted two years, and when Dad was gone, there wasn't much left of the
store but debt." She paused a moment, looking up to the serene sky above
the high plateau. A sudden moisture softened her burning eyes, and her
free hand crept to her throat. "Dad was a mighty fine man," she said. "He
had a great business head. It wasn't his fault he didn't leave me well
fixed."
Tisdale laid the loosened wire down on the ground and started to work on
another. "But there was the man in Alaska," he said. "Of course you let
him know."
"No, sir." Her eyes flashed back to Tisdale's face. "You wouldn't have
caught me writing to Johnny Banks, then. I'm not that kind. The most I
could do was to see what I could make of the goats. I commenced herding
them myself, but I hadn't the face to do it down there in Oregon, where
everybody knew me, and I gradually worked north with them until I ended
here."
Tisdale had dropped his knife. He stooped to pick it up. "That's where you
made your mistake," he said.
The woman drew a step nearer, watching his face; tense, breathless.
Clearly he had turned her thoughts from the fence, and he slipped the
knife in farther and continued to pry and twist the wire loose. "How do
you know it was a mistake?" she asked at last.
Tisdale laid the second wire down. "Well, wasn't it? To punish yourself
like this, to cheat yourself out of the best years of your life, when you
knew how much Banks thought of you. But you seem to have overlooked his
side. Do you think, when he knows how you crucified yourself, it's going
to make him any happier? He carried a great spirit bottled in that small,
wiry frame, but he got to seeing himself through your eyes. He was ashamed
of his failures--he had always been a little sensitive about his size--and
it wasn't the usual enthusiasm that started him to Alaska; he was stung
into going. It was like him to play his poor joke gamily, at the last, and
pretend he didn't care. A word from you would have held him--you must have
known that--and a letter from you afterwards, when you needed him, would
have brought him back. Or you might have joined him up there and made a
home for him all these years, but you chose to bury yourself here in the
desert of the Columbia, starving your soul, wasting your best on these
goats." He paused with the last loosened wire in his hands and stood
looking at her with condemning eyes. "What made you?" he added, and his
voice vibrated softly. "What made you?"
The woman's features worked; tears filled her eyes.
They must have been the first in many months, for they came with the gush
that follows a probe. "You know him," she said brokenly. "You've seen him
lately, up there in Alaska."
"I think so, yes. The Johnny Banks I knew in the north told me something
about a girl he left down in Oregon. But she was a remarkably pretty girl,
with merry black eyes and a nice color in her cheeks. Seems to me she used
to wear a pink gown sometimes, and a pink rose in her black hair, and made
a picture that the fellows busy along the new railroad came miles on
Sundays to see."
A bleak smile touched the woman's mouth. "Dad always liked to see me wear
nice clothes. He said it advertised the store." Then her glance fell to
her coarse, wretched skirt, and the contrast struck poignantly.
Tisdale moved the wires back, clearing a space for the bays to pass.
"There was one young engineer," he went on, as though she had not spoken;
"a big, handsome fellow, who came oftener than the rest. Banks thought it
was natural she should favor him. The little man believes yet that when he
was out of the way she married that engineer."
The woman was beyond speech. Tisdale had penetrated the last barrier of
her fortitude. The bitterness, pent so long, fostered in solitude, filled
the vent and surged through. Her shoulders shook, she stumbled a few steps
to the poplar and, throwing up her arm against the bole, buried her face,
sobbing, in her sleeve.
Tisdale looked back across the field. Miss Armitage was holding the team
in readiness at the wicket. "I am going now," he said. "You will have to
watch your goats until I get the horses through. But if you will write
that letter, madam, while I'm at work, I'll be glad to mail it for you."
The woman looked up. A sudden hope transfigured her face. "I wish I dared
to. But he wouldn't know me now; I've changed so. Besides, I don't know
his address."
"That's so." Tisdale met her glance thoughtfully. "But leave it to me. I
think I can get into touch with him when I am back in Seattle."
Miss Armitage watched him as he came swiftly across the field. "Oh," she
cried, when he reached the waiting team, "how did you accomplish it? Are
you a magician?"
Hollis shook his head. "I only tried to play a little on her
heart-strings, to gain time, and struck an unexpected chord. But it's all
right. It's going to do her good."