THE STORY OF THE TENAS PAPOOSE
Tisdale paused another moment, while his far-seeing gaze sifted the
shadows of Constance, then began: "We had made camp that afternoon, at the
point where Rocky Brook tumbles over the last boulders to join the swift
current of the Dosewallups. I am something of an angler, and Sandy knew
how to treat a Dolly Varden to divide honors with a rainbow; so while the
others were pitching the tents, it fell to me to push up stream with my
rod and flies. The banks rose in sharp pitches under low boughs of fir,
hemlock, or cedar, but I managed to keep well to the bed of the stream,
working from boulder to boulder and stopping to make a cast wherever a
riffle looked promising. Finally, to avoid an unusually deep pool, I
detoured around through the trees. It was very still in there; not even
the cry of a jay or the drum of a woodpecker to break the silence, until
suddenly I heard voices. Then, in a tangle of young alder, I picked up a
trail and came soon on a group of squaws picking wild blackberries. They
made a great picture with their beautifully woven, gently flaring,
water-tight baskets, stained like pottery; their bright shawls wrapped
scarfwise around their waists out of the way; heads bound in gay
handkerchiefs. It was a long distance from any settlement, and they
stood watching me curiously while I wedged myself between twin cedars, on
over a big fallen fir, out of sight.
"A little later I found myself in a small pocket hemmed by cliffs of
nearly two hundred feet, over which the brook plunged in a fine cataract.
Above, where it cut the precipice, a hanging spur of rock took the shape
of a tiger's profile, and a depression colored by mineral deposit formed a
big red eye; midway the stream struck shelving rock, breaking into a score
of cascades that spread out fan-shape and poured into a deep, green,
stone-lined pool; stirring, splashing, rippling ceaselessly, but so limpid
I could see the trout. It was a place that held me. When at last I put
away my flies and started down the bank, I knew dinner must be waiting for
me, but I had a string of beauties to pacify Sandy. As I hurried down to
the fallen tree, I heard the squaws calling to each other at a different
point out of sight up the ridge; then I found a step in the rough bole
and, setting my hands on the top, vaulted over. The next instant I would
have given anything, the best years of my life, to undo that leap. There,
where my foot had struck, left with some filled baskets in the lee of the
log, lay a small papoose."
Tisdale's voice vibrated softly and stopped, while his glance moved from
face to face. He held the rapt attention of every one, and in the pause
the water along the keel played a minor interlude. Behind the awning a
different sound broke faintly. It was like the rustle of paper; a turned
page.
"The baby was bound to the usual-shaped board," Hollis went on, "with a
woven pocket for the feet and a broad carrying-strap to fit the head of
the mother. I sat down and lifted the little fellow to my knees. I wore
heavy shoes, studded with nails for mountain climbing, and the mark of my
heel was stamped, cruelly, on the small brown cheek; the rim had crushed
the temple."
Tisdale halted again, and in the silence Elizabeth sighed. Then, "I'll bet
you didn't waste any time in that place," exclaimed Morganstein.
"The eyes were closed," resumed Tisdale gently. "I saw the blow had taken
him in his sleep, but the wantonness, the misery of it, turned me cold.
Then, you are right, I was seized with a panic to get away. I laid the
papoose back in the place where I had found him and left my string of
fish, a poor tribute, with what money I had about me, and hurried down
into the bed of the brook.
"The squaws were several days' travel from the reservation, but I
remembered we had passed a small encampment a few miles down the river and
another near the mouth of the Dosewallups, where a couple of Indians were
fishing from canoes. I knew they would patrol the stream as soon as the
alarm was given, and my only chance was to make a wide detour, avoiding my
camp where they would first look for me, swim the river, and push through
the forest, around that steep, pyramid peak to the next canyon. You see
it?--The Duckabush cuts through there to tide water. I left no trail in
crossing the stony bed of the brook, and took advantage of a low basalt
bluff in climbing the farther bank. It was while I was working my way over
the rock into cover of the trees that the pleasant calling on the ridge
behind me changed to the first terrible cry. The mother had found her dead
baby.
"Twilight was on me when I stopped at last on the river bank to take off
my shoes. I rolled them with my coat in a snug pack, which I secured with
a length of fish-line to my shoulders before I plunged in. The current was
swift; I lost headway, and a whirlpool caught me; I was swept under, came
up grazing a ragged rock, dipped again through a riffle, and when I
finally gathered myself and won out to the opposite shore, there was my
camp in full view below me. I was winded, bruised, shivering, and while I
lay resting I watched Sandy. He stirred the fire under his kettle, put a
fresh lag on, then walked to the mouth of the brook and stood looking up
stream, wondering, no doubt, what was keeping me. Then a long cry came up
the gorge. It was lost in the rush of the rapids and rose again in a
wailing dirge. The young squaw was mourning for her papoose. It struck me
colder than the waters of the Dosewallups. Sandy turned to listen. I knew
I had only to call, show myself, and the boys would be ready to fight for
me every step of the trail down to the settlement; but there was no need
to drag them in; I hoped they would waste no time in going out, and I
found my pocket compass, set a course, and pushed into the undergrowth.
"That night journey was long-drawn torture. The moon rose, but its light
barely penetrated the fir boughs. My coat and shoes were gone, torn from
me in the rapids, and I walked blindly into snares of broken and pronged
branches, trod tangles of blackberry, and more than once my foot was
pierced by the barbs of a devil's-club. Dawn found me stumbling into a
small clearing. I was dull with weariness, but I saw a cabin with smoke
rising from the chimney, and the possibility of a breakfast heartened me.
As I hurried to the door, it opened, and a woman with a milking pail came
out. At sight of me she stopped, her face went white, and, dropping the
bucket, she moved backward into the room. The next moment she brought a
rifle from behind the door. 'If you come one step nearer,' she cried,
'I'll shoot.'"
Tisdale paused, and the humor broke gently in his face. "I saw she was
quite capable of it," he went on, "and I stopped. It was the first time I
had seemed formidable to a woman, and I raised my hand to my head--my hat
was gone--to smooth my ruffled hair; then my glance fell from my shirt
sleeves, soiled and in tatters, down over my torn trousers to my shoeless
feet; my socks were in rags. 'I am sorry,' I began, but she refused to
listen. 'Don't you say a word,' she warned and had the rifle to her
shoulder, looking along the sight. 'If you do, I'll shoot, and I'm a
pretty good shot.'
"'I haven't a doubt of that,' I answered, taking the word, 'and even if
you were not, you could hardly miss at that range.'
"Her color came back, and she stopped sighting to look me over. 'Now,' she
said, 'you take that road down the Duckabush, and don't you stop short of
a mile. Ain't you ashamed,' she shrilled, as I moved ignominiously into
the trail, 'going 'round scaring ladies to death?'
"But I did not go that mile. Out of sight of the cabin I found myself in
one of those old burned sections, overgrown with maple. The trees were
very big, and the gnarled, fantastic limbs and boles were wrapped in thick
bronze moss. It covered the huge, dead trunks and logs of the destroyed
timber, carpeted the earth, and out of it grew a natural fernery." He
turned his face a little, involuntarily seeking Mrs. Weatherbee. "I wish
you could have seen that place," he said. "Imagine a great billowing sea
of infinite shades of green, fronds waving everywhere, light, beautifully
stencilled elk-fern, starting with a breadth of two feet and tapering to
lengths of four or five; sword-fern shooting stiffly erect, and whole
knolls mantled in maidenhair."
"I know, I know!" she responded breathlessly. "It must have been
beautiful, but it was terrible if you were pursued. I have seen such a
place. Wherever one stepped, fronds bent or broke and made a plain trail.
But of course you kept to the beaten road."
Tisdale shook his head. "That road outside the clearing was simply a
narrow, little used path; and I was so dead tired I began to look for a
place where I might take an hour's rest. I chose a big cedar snag a few
rods from the trail, the spreading kind that is always hollow, and found
the opening screened in fern and just wide enough to let me in. Almost
instantly I was asleep and--do you know?"--the humor broke again gently--
"it was late in the afternoon when I wakened. And I was only roused then
by a light blow on my face. I started up. The thing that had struck me was
a moccasin, and its mate had dropped at my elbow. Then I saw a can of milk
with a loaf of bread placed inside my door. But there was no one in sight,
though I hurried to look, and I concluded that for some unaccountable
reason that inhospitable woman had changed her opinion of me and wanted to
make amends. I took a long draught of the milk--it was the best I ever
tasted--then picked up one of the moccasins. It was new and elaborately
beaded, the kind a woman fancies for wall decorations, and she had
probably bartered with some passing squaw for the pair. But the size
looked encouraging, and with a little ripping and cutting, I managed to
work it on. Pinned to the toe of the other, I found a note. It ran like
this: 'Two Indians are trailing you. I sent them down-stream, but they
will come back. They told me about that poor little papoose.'
"I saw she must have followed me that morning, while searching for her
cow, or perhaps to satisfy herself I had left the clearing, and so
discovered my hiding-place. The broader track of her skirts must have
covered mine through the fern."
Tisdale paused. The _Aquila_ had come under the lee of Bainbridge Island.
The Olympics were out of sight, as the yacht, heeling to the first tide
rip, began to turn into the Narrows, and the batteries of Fort Ward
commanded her bows; a beautiful wooded point broke the line of the
opposite shore. It rimmed a small cove. But Mrs. Weatherbee was not
interested; her attention remained fixed on Tisdale. Indeed he held the
eyes of every one. Then Marcia Feversham relieved the tension. "And the
Indians came back?" she asked.
"Oh, yes, that was inevitable; they had to come back to pick up my trail.
But you don't know what a different man that rest and the moccasins made
of me. In five minutes I was on the road and making my best time up the
gorge, in the opposite direction. The woman was standing in her door as I
passed the cabin; she put a warning finger to her lips and waved me on. In
a little while the ground began to fall in short pitches; sometimes it
broke in steps over granite spurs where the exposed roots of fir and
hemlock twined; then I came to a place where an immense boulder, big as a
house, moving down the mountain, had left a swath through the timber, and
I heard the thunder of the Duckabush. I turned into this cut, intending to
cross the river and work down the canyon on the farther side, and as I
went I saw the torrent storming below me, a winding sheet of spray. The
boulder had stopped on a level bluff, but two sections, splitting from it,
had dropped to the bank underneath and, tilting together in an apex,
formed a small cavern through which washed a rill. It made a considerable
pool and, dividing, poured on either side of the uprooted trunk of a fir
that bridged the stream. The log was very old; it sagged mid-channel, as
though a break had started, and snagged limbs stretched a line of
pitfalls. But a few yards below the river plunged in cataract, and above I
found sheer cliffs curving in a double horseshoe. It was impossible to
swim the racing current, and I came back to the log. By that time another
twilight was on me. The forest had been very still; I hadn't noticed a
bird all day, but while I stood weighing the chances of that crossing, I
heard the harsh call of a kingfisher or jay. It seemed to come from the
slope beyond the bluff, and instantly an answer rose faintly in the
direction of the trail. I was leaning on one of the tilted slabs, and I
wormed myself around the base, to avoid leaving an impression in the wet
sand, and dipped under the trailing bough of a cedar, through the pool,
and crawled up into the cavern. There wasn't room to stand erect, and I
waited crouching, over moccasins in water. The cedar began to sway--I had
used the upper boughs to ease myself in sliding down the slab from the
bluff--a fragment of granite dropped, then an Indian came between me and
the light.
"While he stopped to examine the sand at the edge of the pool, another
followed. He ventured a short distance out on the log and came back, while
the first set his rifle against the trunk and sank on his hands and knees
to drink. The water, roiled probably by my steps, was not to his taste,
and he rejected it with a disgusted 'Hwah!' When he rose, he stood looking
across the pool into my cavern. I held my breath, hugging the bluff behind
me like a lizard. It was so dark I doubted if even his lynx eyes could
discover me, but he lifted the gun and for an instant I believed he meant
to send a shot into the hole. Then he seemed to think better of wasting
his ammunition and led the way down-stream. They stopped on a level bank
over the cataract, and in a little while I caught the odor of smoke and
later of cooking trout. My cramped position grew intolerable, and finally
I crept out into the pool to reconnoitre. The light of their fire showed
both figures stretched on the ground. They had camped for the night.
"It was useless to try to go down-stream; before dawn Indians would patrol
the whole canyon; neither could I double back to the Dosewallups where
they had as surely left a watch; my only course was to risk the log
crossing at once, before the moon rose, and strike southward to the
Lilliwaup, where, at the mouth of the gorge, I knew the mail steamer made
infrequent stops. I began to work up between the gnarled roots to the top
of the trunk and pushed laboriously with infinite caution out over the
channel. I felt every inch of that log, but once a dead branch snapped
short in my hand, and the noise rang sharp as a pistol shot. I waited,
flattening myself to the bole, but the thunder of the river must have
drowned the sound; the Indians did not stir. So at last I came to the
danger point. Groping for the break, I found it started underneath,
reaching well around. Caused probably by some battering bulk in the spring
floods, and widening slowly ever since, it needed only a slight shock to
bring it to a finish. I grasped a stout snag and tried to swing myself
over the place, but there came a splitting report; and there was just time
to drop astride above that stub of limb, when the log parted below it, and
I was in the river. I managed to keep my hold and my head out of water,
though the current did its best to suck me under. Then I saw that while
the main portion of the tree had been swept away, the top to which I clung
remained fixed to the bank, wedged no doubt between trunks or boulders. As
I began to draw myself up out of the wash, a resinous bough thrown on the
fire warned me the Indians were roused, and I flattened again like a
chameleon on the slippery incline. They came as far as the rill and stood
looking across, then went down-stream, no doubt to see whether the trunk
had stranded on the riffles below the cataract. But they were back before
I could finish the log, and the rising moon illuminated the gorge. I was
forced to swing to the shady side of the snag. The time dragged endlessly;
a wind piping down the watercourse cut like a hundred whips through my wet
clothes; and I think in the end I only kept my hold because my fingers
were too stiff to let go. But at last the Indians stretched themselves
once more on the ground; their fire burned low, and I wormed myself up
within reach of a friendly young hemlock, grasped a bough, and gained
shelving rock. The next moment I relaxed, all but done for, on a dry bed
of needles."
Tisdale paused, looking again from face to face, while the humor gleamed
in his own. "I am making a long story of it," he said modestly. "You must
be tired!"
"Tired!" exclaimed Elizabeth, "It's the very best story I ever heard.
Please go on."
"Of course you escaped," supplemented Marcia Feversham, "but we want to
know how. And what was your chum doing all the time? And wasn't there
another woman?"
Frederic Morganstein rumbled a short laugh. "Maybe you made the Lilliwaup,
but I'll bet ten to one you missed your steamer."
Tisdale's eyes rested involuntarily again on Mrs. Weatherbee. She did not
say anything, but she met the look with her direct gaze; her short upper
lip parted, and the color burned softly in her cheek. "I made the
Lilliwaup," he went on, "about two miles from the mouth, between the upper
and lower falls. The river breaks in cascades there, hundreds of them as
far as one can see, divided by tremendous boulders."
"We know the place," said Elizabeth quickly. "Our first cruise on the
_Aquila_ was to the Lilliwaup. We climbed to the upper falls and spent
hours along the cascades. Those boulders, hundreds of them, rose through
the spray, all covered with little trees and ferns. There never was
anything like it, but we called it The Fairy Isles."
Tisdale nodded. "It was near the end of that reach I found myself. The
channels gather below, you remember, and pour down a steep declivity under
a natural causeway. But the charm and grandeur were lost on me that day. I
wanted to reach the old trail from the falls on the opposite shore, and I
knew that stone bridge fell short a span, so I began to work my way from
boulder to boulder out to the main stream. It was a wide chasm to leap,
with an upward spring to a tilted table of basalt, and I overbalanced,
slipped down, and, coasting across the surface, recovered enough on the
edge to ease myself off to a nearly submerged ledge. There I stopped." He
paused an instant, and his eyes sought Marcia Feversham's; the amusement
played lightly on his flexible lips. "I had stumbled on another woman. She
was seated on a lower boulder, sketching the stone bridge. I was behind
her, but I saw a pretty hand and forearm, some nice brown hair tucked
under a big straw hat, and a trim and young figure in a well-made gown of
blue linen. Then she said pleasantly, without turning her head: 'Well,
John, what luck?'
"I drew back into a shallow niche of the rock. I had not forgotten the
first impression I made on the woman up the Duckabush and had no desire to
'scare ladies.' But my steamer was almost due, and I hoped John would come
soon. Getting no reply from him, she rose and glanced around. Then she
looked at her watch, put her hand to her mouth, and sent a long call up
the gorge. 'Joh-n. Joh-n, hello!' She had a carrying, singer's voice, but
it brought no answer, so after a moment she gathered up her things and
started towards the bank. I watched her disappear among the trees; then,
my fear of missing the steamer growing stronger than the dread of
terrifying her, I followed. The trail drops precipitously around the lower
falls, you remember, and I struck the level where the river bends at the
foot of the cataract, with considerable noise. I found myself in a sort of
open-air parlor flanked by two tents; rustic seats under a canopy of maple
boughs, hammocks, a percolator bubbling on a sheet-iron contrivance over
the camp-fire coals, and, looking at me across a table, the girl. 'I beg
your pardon,' I hurried to say. 'Don't be afraid of me.'
"'Afraid?' she repeated. 'Afraid--of you?' And the way she said it, with a
half scornful, half humorous surprise, the sight of her standing there so
self-reliant, buoyant, the type of that civilization I had tried so hard
to reach, started a reaction of my overstrained nerves. Still, I think I
might have held myself together had I not at that moment caught the voice
of that unhappy squaw. It struck a chill to my bones, and I sank down on
the nearest seat and dropped my face in my hands, completely unmanned.
"I knew she came around the table and stood looking me over, but when I
finally managed to lift my head, she had gone back to the percolator to
bring me a cup of coffee. It had a pleasant aroma, and the cream with
which she cooled it gave it a nice color. You don't know how that first
draught steadied me. 'I am sorry, madam,' I said, 'but I have had a hard
experience in these woods, and I expected to catch the mail boat for
Seattle; but that singing down-stream means I am cut off.'
"She started a little and looked me over again with new interest. 'The
squaw,' she said, 'is mourning for her papoose. It was a terrible
accident. A young hunter up the Dosewallups, where the Indians were
berrying, killed the baby in jumping a log.'
"'Yes, madam,' I answered, and rose and put the cup down, 'I am the man.
It is harder breaking trail to the Lilliwaup than coming by canoe, and the
Indians have beaten me. I must double back now to the Duckabush. By that
time, they will have given up the watch.'
"'Wait,' she said, 'let me think.' But it did not take her long. A turn
the length of the table, and her face brightened. 'Why, it's the easiest
thing in the world,' she said. 'I must row you to the steamer.' Then when
I hesitated to let her run the risk, she explained that her party had
moved their camp from the mouth of the Dosewallups after these Indians
arrived there; they knew her; they had seen her rowing about, and she
always carried a good many traps; an easel, sun umbrella, cushions, a
steamer rug. I had only to lie down in the bottom of the boat, and she
would cover me. And she drew back the flap of the nearest tent and told me
to change my clothes for a brown suit she laid out, and canvas shoes.
'Come,' she urged, 'there's time enough but none to waste; and any minute
the Indians may surprise you.'
"She was waiting with the rug and pillows and a pair of oars when I came
out, and helped me carry them to the boat which was beached a short
distance below her camp. When it was launched, and I was stowed under the
baggage, with an ample breathing hole through which I could watch the
rower, she pushed off and fell into a long, even stroke. Presently I
noticed she had nice eyes, brown and very deep, and I thought her face was
beautiful. It had the expressiveness, the swift intelligence that goes
with a strong personality, and through all her determination, I felt a
running note of caution. I knew she saw clearly while she braved the
extremity. After a while her breast began to rise and fall with the
exercise, her cheeks flushed, and I saw she had met the flood tide. All
this time the voice of the squaw grew steadily nearer. I imagined her, as
I had seen others before, kneeling on the bank, rocking herself, beating
her breast. Then it came over me that we were forced to hug the shore to
avoid one of the reedy shallows that choked the estuary and must pass very
close to her. The next moment there was a lull, and the girl looked across
her shoulder and called 'Clahowya!' At the same time she rested on her
oars long enough to take off her hat and toss it with careless directness
on my breathing hole. The squaw's answer came from above me, and she
repeated and intoned the word so that it seemed part of her dirge.
'Clahowya! Clahowya! Clahowya! Wake tenas papoose. Halo! Halo!' The
despair of it cut me worse than lashes. Then I heard other voices; a dog
barked, and I understood we were skirting the encampment.
"After that the noise grew fainter, and in a little while the girl
uncovered my face. The channel had widened; the tang of salt came on the
wind; and when I ventured to raise my head a little, I saw the point at
the mouth of the river looming purple-black. Then, as we began to round
it, we came suddenly on a canoe, drifting broadside, with a single salmon
hunter crouching in it, ready with his spear. It flashed over me that he
was one of the two Indians who had tracked me to the Duckabush; the taller
one who had tried to drink at the rill; then he made his throw and at the
same instant the girl's hat fell again on my face. I heard her call her
pleasant 'Clahowya!' and she added, rowing on evenly: 'Hyas delate
salmon.' The next moment his answer rang astern: 'Clahowya! Clahowya! Hyas
delate salmon.'
"At last I felt the swell of the open, and she leaned to uncover my face
once more. 'The steamer is in sight,' she said, and I raised my head again
and saw the boat, a small moving blot with a trailer of smoke, far up the
sapphire sea. Then I turned on my elbow and looked back. The canoe and the
encampment were hidden by the point; we were drifting off the wharf of the
small town-site, almost abandoned, where the steamer made her stop. There
was nothing left to do but express my gratitude, which I did clumsily
enough.
"'You mustn't make so much of it,' she said; 'the first thing a
reservation Indian is taught is to forget the old law, a life for a life.'
"'I know that,' I answered, 'still I couldn't have faced the best white
man that first hour, and off there in the mountains, away from reservation
influences, my chances looked small. I wish I could be as sure the men who
were with me are safe.'
"She gave me a long, calculating look. 'They will be--soon,' she said. 'My
brother Robert should be on the steamer with the superintendent and
reservation guard.' And she dipped her oars again, pointing the boat a
little more towards the landing, and watched the steamer while I sifted
her meaning.
"'So,' I said at last. 'So they are there at that camp. You knew it and
brought me by.'
"'You couldn't have helped them any,' she said, 'and you can go back, if
you wish, with the guard.' Then she told me how she had visited the camp
with her brother Robert and had seen them bound with stout strips of
elk-hide. They had explained the accident and how one of them, to give me
time at the start, had put himself in my place."
Tisdale halted a moment; a wave of emotion crossed his face. His look
rested on Mrs. Weatherbee, and his eyes drew and held hers. She leaned
forward a little; her lips parted over a hushed breath. It was as though
she braved while she feared his next words. "That possibility hadn't
occurred to me," he went on, "yet I should have foreseen it, knowing the
man as I did. We were built on the same lines, practically the same size,
and we had outfitted together for the trip. He wore high, brown shoes
spiked for mountain climbing, exactly like mine; he even matched the marks
of that heel. But Sandy wouldn't stand for it. He declared there was a
third man who had gone up Rocky Brook and had not come back. One of the
squaws who had seen me agreed with him, but they were bound and taken to
the encampment. The next morning an Indian found my coat and shoes lodged
on a gravel bar and picked up my trail. The camp moved then by canoe
around to the mouth of the Duckabush. taking the prisoners with them, and
waited for my trailers to come down. They had discovered me on the log
crossing when it fell, and believed I was drowned."
There was another pause. Mrs. Weatherbee sighed and leaned back in her
chair; then Mrs. Feversham said: "And they refused to let your substitute
go?"
Tisdale nodded. "He was brought with Sandy along to the Lilliwaup. The
Indians were traveling home, and no doubt the reservation influence had
restrained them; still, they were staying a second night on the Lilliwaup,
and when Robert spoke to them they were sullen and ugly. That was why he
had hurried away to bring the superintendent down. He had started in his
Peterboro but expected to find a man on the way who would take him on in
his motor-boat. Once during the night John had drifted close to the camp
to listen, but things were quiet, and they had bridged the morning with a
little fishing and sketching up-stream.
"'Suppose,' I said at last, 'suppose you had been afraid of me. I should
be doubling back to the Duckabush now. As it is, I wouldn't give much for
their opinion of me.'
"'I wish you could have heard that man Sandy,' she said, and--did I tell
you she had a very nice smile? 'He called you true gold.' And while she
went on to repeat the rest he had told her, it struck me pleasantly I was
listening to my own obituary. But the steamer was drawing close. She
whistled the landing, and the girl dipped her oars again, pulling her
long, even strokes. I threw off the rug and sat erect, ready to ease the
boat off as we came alongside. And there on the lower deck watching us
stood a young fellow whom, from his resemblance to her, I knew as brother
Robert, with the superintendent from the reservation, backed by the whole
patrol. Then my old friend Doctor Wise, the new coroner at Hoodsport, came
edging through the crowd to take my hand. 'Well, well, Tisdale, old man,'
he said, 'this is good. Do you know they had you drowned--or worse?'"
Tisdale settled back in his chair and, turning his face, looked off the
port bow. The Narrows had dropped behind, and for a moment the deck of the
_Aquila_ slanted to the tide rip off Port Orchard; then she righted and
raced lightly across the broad channel. Ahead, off Bremerton Navy Yard,
some anchored cruisers rose in black silhouette against a brilliant sea.
"And," said Marcia Feversham, "of course you went to the camp in a body
and released the prisoners."
"Yes, we used the mail steamer's boats, and she waited for us until the
inquest was over, then brought us on to Seattle. The motor-boat took the
doctor and superintendent home."
"And the girl," said Elizabeth after a moment, "did you never see her
again?"
"Oh, yes." The genial lines deepened, and Hollis rose from his chair.
"Often. I always look them up when I am in Seattle."
"But who was John?"
"John? Why, he was her husband."
The Olympics had reappeared; the sun dropped behind a cloud over a high
crest; shafts of light silvered the gorges; the peaks caught an amethyst
glow. Tisdale, tracing once more that far canyon across the front of
Constance, walked slowly forward into the bows.
The yacht touched the Bremerton dock to take on the lieutenant who was
expected aboard, and at the same time Jimmie Daniels swung lightly over
the side aft. The Seattle steamer whistled from her slip on the farther
side of the wharf, and he hurried to the gang-plank. There he sent a
glance behind and saw Tisdale still standing with his back squared to the
landing, looking off over the harbor. And the _Press_ representative
smiled. He had gathered little information in regard to the coal question,
but in that notebook, buttoned snugly away in his coat, he had set down
the papoose story, word for word.