That should have been sufficient, but Grace was not quite contented.
Compliments on her beauty seldom pleased her, but she liked to feel the
hold she had upon those she attracted, and was not averse to having it
explained to her.
"No?" she said. "Then where are you going?"
Ingleby appeared a trifle astonished, as though he considered the
question quite unnecessary, which was naturally gratifying.
"To the Gold Commissioner's residence," he said.
"With my permission?" and Grace laughed.
Ingleby did not look at her. He was apparently staring at the forest,
which loomed through the whirling haze a faint blur of vanishing trees,
and he flung the answer over his shoulder.
"I think I would venture to go without it to-night," he said.
This was significant, but although the snow was certainly getting
thicker and the cold struck through her like an icy knife, Grace no
longer felt any apprehension. She was not unaccustomed to physical
discomfort and peril, and there could be, she felt, no doubt of her
reaching home safely while Ingleby plodded at the horse's head. He was
young, and by no means assertive, but there were men in the Green River
valley who shared her confidence in him. Still, the rough flounder
through the brushwood was becoming irksome, and where the trees were
smaller she could not avoid all the drooping branches by swaying in the
saddle, and at last she bade him pull up again.
"We are a long while striking the trail," she said.
"Yes," said Ingleby, without turning towards her.
Grace leaned down and touched him. "Why haven't we found it? I mean you
to tell me."
The man made a little gesture, for he recognized that tone.
"I'm sorry," he said quietly. "We have struck it, and didn't recognize
it. In fact, we must have gone straight across and left it behind us."
Grace sat still and looked at him. She could not see his face; he was no
more than a blurred shadowy shape in the haze of sliding snow. Still,
she could make out that he was standing very straight with slightly
tilted head, and she knew the intentness of gaze and look of tenacity in
the hidden face which usually accompanied that attitude. His answer also
pleased her. There was no attempt at concealing unpleasant
probabilities, for the man spoke frankly as to one whom he regarded as
his equal in courage and everything except, perhaps, bodily strength. In
the meanwhile, however, they were alone in the wilderness, cut off from
all hope of succour by anything but their own resources in a haze of
snow, with their limbs slowly stiffening under the Arctic cold.
"Then what are we to do?" she asked.
"Push on," said Ingleby. "The river must be close at hand to the right
of us. That is why I'm keeping to the higher ground. I don't want to
strike until we have passed Alison's Sault."
He wrenched at the bridle; but Grace had faint misgivings as they
floundered on again. Sault in that country implies a fall or rapid, and
the one in question was called after a prospector who had drowned
himself and a comrade there. It swept down to the mouth of the canyon in
a wild white rush, studded with great boulders that bruised and scarred
the pines the flood hurled down on them; and what made it more perilous
in the dark was the fact that the trail dipped to the brink of the
smaller rapids at the tail of it. Indeed, it was often necessary to
splash knee-deep through the slack of them along the shore; and Alison
had come by his death through mistaking the big sault for one of the
smaller ones on a black night. The man who fished him out of an eddy a
week later said that Alison looked very much as though he had been put
through a threshing mill.
It was, Grace fancied, half an hour later when they floundered down a
declivity, with the roar of the river growing louder in their ears. It
was with difficulty she kept in the saddle, and she was vaguely
conscious that her skirt was rent to tatters, though she was too stiff
and cold to trouble about that now. Even in the thicker timber the snow
was almost bewildering, and it was only now and then she could see
Ingleby scrambling and floundering in front of her. He was evidently
making his course by sound, for there was nothing that she could discern
to guide him.
Then somehow they slid down a bank, and there was a splash that told her
the cayuse was in the water. Ingleby seemed to be struggling with the
beast, but she could not make out why he did so. Nor did it seem of any
moment. She was dazed and bewildered and intolerably cold. There was a
further splashing, a plunge, and a flounder; the water rose to her
stirrup, and for a few horrible moments she felt that the beast was
going downstream with her. It was evident by the depth that they were in
the Sault. She fancied she cried out in her terror and that Ingleby
shouted in answer, but the roar of the river drowned the sound. In
another few seconds, however, the horse apparently struck rock with its
hoofs again; then the water that had lapped about her skirt seemed to
fall away, and in a frantic scrambling Ingleby dragged the pony up the
bank. The cayuse stood still, trembling, at the top of it, and Ingleby
was apparently quivering, too, for his voice shook a little as he
answered her half-coherent questions.
"Alison's Sault!" he said hoarsely. "It should have been behind us. I
never recognized it until the river swept my feet from under me. I
suppose I was dazed by the snow."
Grace sat silent a moment. She knew that they had looked death in the
face, for nothing made of flesh and blood could carry the life in it
through the mad turmoil of rock and flood in Alison's Sault. The roar of
the river was very impressive now, and the man's voice had shown that he
was shaken by some strong emotion which was not personal fear. Then, as
the crash of a great pine against a stream-swept stone rang through the
deep reverberations, she bent down and touched his shoulder. The contact
was momentary, but she felt a little quiver run through him.
"Nobody could have recognized it on such a night. It was not your
fault," she said.
"I can't forgive myself. The cayuse got out of hand--I couldn't hold
him. He was heading out into the stream. If that ledge hadn't been
there----"
He stopped with a gasp, and Grace was glad to recognize that of the two
she was the one who showed less concern. She guessed what he was
feeling, but could not restrain the desire to make certain.
"Well," she said. "If the shelf of rock had not been there?"
Ingleby turned and seemed to be listening to the river. Perhaps he did
it unconsciously, but the hoarse roar of the flood among the boulders
was sufficient answer.
"You were not cumbered with a horse that had lost its head. There is a
little slack close to the bank," she said.
The man turned and seemed by his attitude to be gazing at her in
astonishment.
"You can't suppose I should have scrambled out alone?" he said.
There was a suggestion of anger in his voice which Grace recognized as
wholly genuine. She had met and formed her own opinion of the
protestations of not a few young men in her time, and it was evident to
her that, while Ingleby's attitude became him, he did not recognize the
fact.
"You felt yourself responsible then?" she suggested.
"No," said the man slowly. "I certainly didn't; though it's clear that I
was. I don't think I felt anything except that--you--were in the rapid."
This was also evidently perfectly sincere, but he seemed to pull himself
up abruptly, and laughed in a fashion that suggested embarrassment.
"You will not remember that little speech. It's not the kind of thing
one is pleased with afterwards; but, in the circumstances, it was,
perhaps, excusable," he said.
He gave her no opportunity for answering, but struck the cayuse, and
they went on again. Still, Grace had noticed the tremor in his voice,
and knew that he had meant exactly what he said. Nor was she displeased
at it.
Then the thoughts and fancies which the moment of peril had galvanized
into activity grew blurred again, and she was only sensible of the
physical pain and weariness and an intolerable cold, as the man and
beast stumbled on. Twice again they dipped to the river, which, however,
scarcely rose to his knee, and after that there was only a sliding past
of snow-dimmed trees, while by a grim effort she kept herself in the
saddle. Then at last a light blinked in front of her through the filmy
haze, the cayuse stopped, and Ingleby, it seemed, lifted her down. At
least, she felt his arm about her, and then found herself standing
beside him before the commissioner's dwelling without any very clear
notion of how she came there. It was only afterwards she remembered,
with tingling cheeks, how she had seen a miner walk away with a
one-hundred-and-forty-pound bag of flour. Then they went into a lighted
room together, and stood still, gasping, a moment, with a distressful
dizziness creeping over both of them. Ingleby apparently roused himself
with an effort, and threw the door open.
"Keep away from the stove," he said, a trifle faintly. "There's a chair
yonder."
He stood in the entrance, white with snow, looking at her. The blood
was in her head now, and a most unpleasant tingling ran through her
half-frozen limbs, but Ingleby was a trifle grey in face.
"You can shut the door in another minute or two. I may come back
to-morrow to make sure you are none the worse?" he asked.