The clock, striking the hour of two, filled in a lull that might
otherwise have seemed to require conversation. For some minutes,
Johnson, raised to a higher level of exaltation, even, than was the
Girl, had been secretly rejoicing in the Fate that had brought them
together.
"It's wonderful that I should have found her at last and won her love,"
he soliloquised. "We must be Fortune's children--she and I."
The minutes ticked away and still they were silent. Then, of a sudden,
with infinite tenderness in his voice, Johnson asked:
"What is your name, Girl--your real name?"
"Min--Minnie; my father's name was Smith," she told him, her eyes cast
down under delicately tremulous lids.
"Oh, Minnie Sm--"
"But 'twa'n't his right name," quickly corrected the Girl, and
unconsciously both rose to their feet. "His right name was Falconer."
"Minnie Falconer--well, that is a pretty name," commented Johnson; and
raising her hand to his lips he pressed them against it.
"I ain't sure that's what he said it was--I ain't sure o' anythin' only
jest you," she said coyly, burying her face in his neck.
"You may well be sure of me since I've loved--" Johnson's sentence was
cut short, a wave of remorse sweeping over him. "Turn your head away,
Girl, and don't listen to me," he went on, gently putting her away from
him. "I'm not worthy of you. Don't listen but just say no, no, no, no."
The Girl, puzzled, was even more so when Johnson began to pace the
floor.
"Oh, I know--I ain't good enough for you !" she cried with a little
tremour in her voice. "But I'll try hard, hard . . . If you see
anythin' better in me, why don't you bring it out, 'cause I've loved you
ever since I saw you first, 'cause I knowed that you--that you were the
right man."
"The right man," repeated Johnson, dismally, for his conscience was
beginning to smite him hard.
"Don't laugh!"
"I'm not laughing," as indeed he was not.
"O' course every girl kind o' looks ahead," went on the Girl in
explanation.
"Yes, I suppose," he observed seriously.
"An' figgers about bein'--well, Oh, you know--about bein' settled. An'
when the right man comes, why, she knows 'im, you bet! Jest as we both
knowed each other standin' on the road to Monterey. I said that day,
he's good, he's gran' an' he can have me."
"I could have you," murmured Johnson, meditatively.
The Girl nodded eagerly.
There was a long silence in which Johnson was trying to make up his mind
to tear himself away from her,--the one woman whom he loved in the
world,--for it had been slowly borne in upon him that he was not a fit
mate for this pure young girl. Nor was his unhappiness lessened when he
recalled how she had struggled against yielding to him. At last,
difficult though it was, he took his courage in both hands, and said:
"Girl, I have looked into your heart and my own and now I realise what
this means for us both--for you, Girl--and knowing that, it seems hard
to say good-bye as I should, must and will . . ."
At those clear words spoken by lips which failed so utterly to hide his
misery, the Girl's face turned pale.
"What do you mean?" she asked.
Johnson coloured, hesitated, and finally with a swift glance at the
clock, he briefly explained:
"I mean it's hard to go and leave you here. The clock reminded me that
long before this I should have been on my way. I shouldn't have come up
here at all. God bless you, dear," and here their eyes came together and
seemed unable to part,--"I love you as I never thought I could . . ."
But at Johnson's queer look she hastened to inquire:
"But it ain't for long you're goin'?"
For long! Then she had not understood that he meant to go for all time.
How tell her the truth? While he pondered over the situation there came
to him with great suddenness the thought that, perhaps, after all, Life
never intended that she should be given to him only to be taken away
almost as suddenly; and seized with a desire to hold on to her at any
cost, he sprang forward as if to take her in his arms, but before he
reached her, he stopped short.
"Such happiness is not for me," he muttered under his breath; and then
aloud he added: "No, no, I've got to go now while I have the courage, I
mean." He broke off as suddenly as he had begun, and taking her face in
his hands he kissed her good-bye.
Now, accustomed as was the Girl to the strange comings and goings of the
men at the camp, it did not occur to her to question him further when he
told her that he should have been away before now. Moreover, she trusted
and loved him. And so it was without the slightest feeling of misgiving
that she watched her lover quickly take down his coat and hat from the
peg on the wall and start for the door. On the other hand, it must have
required not a little courage on the man's part to have torn himself
away from this lovely, if unconventional, creature, just as he was
beginning to love truly and appreciate her. But, then, Johnson was a man
of no mean determination!
Not daring to trust himself to words, Johnson paused to look back over
his shoulder at the Girl before plunging forth into the night. But on
opening the door all the multitudinous wild noises of the forests
reached his ears: Sounds of whispering and rocking storm-tossed pines,
sounds of the wind making the rounds of the deep canyon below them,
sounds that would have made the blood run cold of a man more daring,
even, than himself. Like one petrified he stood blinded, almost, by the
great drifts of snow that were being driven into the room, while the
cabin rocked and shook and the roof cracked and snapped, the lights
flickered, smoked, or sent their tongues of fire upward towards the
ceiling, the curtains swayed like pendants in the air, and while
baskets, boxes, and other small furnishings of the cabin were blown in
every direction.
But it was the Girl's quick presence of mind that saved them from being
buried, literally, under the snow. In an instant she had rushed past him
and closed both the outer and inner doors of the cabin; then, going over
to the window, she tried to look through the heavily frosted panes; but
the falling of the sleet and snow, striking the window like fine shot,
made it impossible for her to see more than a few inches away.
"Why, it's the first time I knew that it--" She cut her sentence short
and ended with: "That's the way we git it up here! Look! Look!"
Whereupon, Johnson went over to the window and put his face close to
hers on the frosted panes; a great sea of white snow met his gaze!
"This means--" he said, turning away from the window and meeting her
glance--"surely it doesn't mean that I can't leave Cloudy to-night?"
"It means you can't get off the mountain to-night," calmly answered the
Girl.
"Good Lord!" fell from the man's lips.
"You can't leave this room to-night," went on the Girl, decidedly. "Why,
you couldn't find your way three feet from this door--you a stranger!
You don't know the trail anyway unless you can see it."
"But I can't stay here?" incredulously.
"Why not? Why, that's all right! The boys'll come up an' dig us out
to-morrow or day after. There's plenty o' wood an' you can have my bed."
And with no more ado than that, the Girl went over to the bed to remove
the covers and make it ready for his occupancy.
"I wouldn't think of taking that," protested the man, stoutly, while his
face clouded over.
The Girl felt a thrill at the note of regard in his voice and hastened
to explain:
"I never use it cold nights; I always roll up in my rug in front of the
fire." All of a sudden she broke out into a merry little laugh. "Jest
think of it stormin' all this time an' we didn't know it!"
But Johnson was not in a laughing mood. Indeed, he looked very grave and
serious when presently he said:
"But people coming up here and finding me might--"
The Girl looked up at him in blank amazement.
"Might what?" And then, while she waited for his answer, two shots in
close succession rang out in the night with great distinctness.
There was no mistaking the nearness of the sound. Instantly scenting
trouble and alert at the possibility of danger, Johnson inquired:
"What's that? What's that?"
"Wait! Wait!" came back from the Girl, unconsciously in the same tone,
while she strained her ears for other sounds. She did not have long to
wait, however, before other shots followed, the last ones coming from
further away, so it seemed, and at greater intervals.
"They've got a road agent--it's the posse--p'r'aps they've got Ramerrez
or one o' his band!" suddenly declared the Girl, at the same time
rushing over to the window for some verification of her words. But, as
before, the wind was beating with great force against the frosted panes,
and only a vast stretch of snow met her gaze. Turning away from the
window she now came towards him with: "You see, whoever it is, they're
snowed in--they can't get away."
Johnson knitted his brows and muttered something under his breath which
the Girl did not catch.
Again a shot was fired.
"Another thief crep' into camp," coldly observed the Girl almost
simultaneously with the report.
Johnson winced.
"Poor devil!" he muttered. "But of course, as you say, he's only a
thief."
In reply to which the Girl uttered words to the effect that she was glad
he had been caught.
"Well, you're right," said Johnson, thoughtfully, after a short silence;
then determinedly and in short jerky sentences, he went on: "I've been
thinking that I must go--tear myself away. I have very important
business at dawn--imperative business . . ."
The Girl, who now stood by the table folding up the white cloth cover,
watched him out of the corner of her eye, take down his coat from the
peg on the wall.
"Ever sample one o' our mountain blizzards?" she asked as he slipped on
his coat. "In five minutes you wouldn't know where you was. Your
important business would land you at the bottom of a canyon 'bout twenty
feet from here."
Johnson cleared his throat as if to speak but said nothing; whereupon
the Girl continued:
"You say you believe in Fate. Well, Fate has caught up with you--you got
to stay here."
Johnson was strangely silent. He was wondering how his coming there
to-night had really come about. But he could find no solution to the
problem unless it was in response to that perverse instinct which
prompts us all at times to do the very thing which in our hearts we know
to be wrong. The Girl, meanwhile, after a final creasing of the
neatly-folded cover, started for the cupboard, stopping on the way to
pick up various articles which the wind had strewn about the room.
Flinging them quickly into the cupboard she now went over to the window
and once more attempted to peer out into the night. But as before, it
was of no avail. With a shrug she straightened the curtains at the
windows and started for the door. Her action seemed to quicken his
decision, for, presently, with a gesture of resignation, he threw down
his hat and coat on the table and said as if speaking to himself:
"Well, it is Fate--my Fate that has always made the thing I shouldn't do
so easy." And then, turning to the Girl, he added: "Come, Girl, as you
say, if I can't go, I can't. But I know as I stand here that I'll never
give you up."
The Girl looked puzzled.
"Why, what do you mean?"
"I mean," began Johnson, pacing the floor slowly. Now he stopped by a
chair and pointed as though to the falling snow. "Suppose we say that's
an omen--that the old trail is blotted out and there is a fresh road.
Would you take it with me a stranger, who says: From this day I mean to
be all you'd have me. Would you take it with me far away from here and
forever?"
It did not take the Girl long to frame an answer. Taking Johnson's hand
she said with great feeling:
"Well, show me the girl that would want to go to Heaven alone! I'll sell
out the saloon--I'll go anywhere with you, you bet!"
Johnson bent low over her hand and kissed it. The Girl's straightforward
answer had filled his heart to overflowing with joy.
"You know what that means, don't you?" a moment later he asked.
Sudden joy leapt to her blue eyes.
"Oh, yes," she told him with a world of understanding in her voice.
There was a silence; then she went on reminiscently: "There's a little
Spanish Mission church--I pass it 'most every day. I can look in an' see
the light burnin' before the Virgin an' see the saints standin' round
with glassy eyes an' faded satin slippers. An' I often tho't what they'd
think if I was to walk right in to be made--well, some man's wife. It
makes your blood like pin-points thinkin' about it. There's somethin'
kind o' holy about love, ain't they?"
Johnson nodded. He had never regarded love in that light before, much
less known it. For many moments he stood motionless, a new problem of
right and wrong throbbing in his bosom.
At last, it being settled that Johnson was to pass the night in the
Girl's cabin, she went over to the bed and, once more, began to make it
ready for his occupancy. Meanwhile, Johnson, seated in the barrel rocker
before the fire, watched her with a new interest. The Girl had not gone
very far with her duties, however, when she suddenly came over to him,
plumping herself down on the floor at his feet.
"Say, did you ever ask any other woman to marry you?" she asked as she
leaned far back in his arms.
"No," was the man's truthful answer.
"Oh, how glad I am! Take me--ah, take me I don't care where as long as
it is with you!" cried the Girl in an ecstasy of delight.
"So help me, God, I'm going to . . .!" promised Johnson, his voice
strained, tense. "You're worth something better than me, Girl," he
added, a moment later, "but they say love works miracles every hour,
that it weakens the strong and strengthens the weak. With all my soul I
love you, with all my soul I--" The man let his voice die out, leaving
his sentence unfinished. Suddenly he called: "Why, Min-Minnie!"
"I wasn't really asleep," spoke up the Girl, blinking sleepily. "I'm
jest so happy an' let down, that's all." The next moment, however, she
was forced to acknowledge that she was awfully sleepy and would have to
say good-night.
"All right," said Johnson, rising, and kissed her good-night.
"That's your bed over there," she told him, pointing in the direction of
the curtains.
"But hadn't you better take the bed and let me sleep over here?"
"Not much!"
"You're sure you would be more comfortable by the fire--sure, now?"
"Yes, you bet!"
And so it was that Johnson decided to pass the night in the Girl's
canopied bed while she herself, rolled up in a blanket rug before the
fire, slept on the floor.
"This beats a bed any time," remarked the Girl, spreading out the rug
smoothly; and then, reaching up for the old patchwork, silk quilt that
hung from the loft, she added: "There's one thing--you don't have to
make it up in the mornin'."
"You're splendid, Girl!" laughed Johnson. Presently, he saw her quietly
closet herself in the cupboard, only to emerge a few minutes later
dressed for the night. Over her white cambric gown with its coarse lace
trimming showing at the throat, she wore a red woollen blanket robe held
in at the waist by a heavy, twisted, red cord which, to the man who got
a glimpse of her as she crossed the room, made her prettier, even, than
she had seemed at any time yet.
Quietly, now, the Girl began to put her house in order. All the lights,
save the quaintly-shaded lamp that was suspended over the table, were
extinguished; that one, after many unsuccessful attempts, was turned
down so as to give the right minimum of light which would not interfere
with her lover's sleep. Then she went over to the door to make sure that
it was bolted. Outside the wind howled and shrieked and moaned; but
inside the cabin it had never seemed more cosey and secure and peaceful
to her.
"Now you can talk to me from your bunk an' I'll talk to you from mine,"
she said in a sleepy, lazy voice.
Except for a prodigious yawn which came from the Girl there was an
ominous quiet hanging over the place that chilled the man. Sudden sounds
startled him, and he found it impossible to make any progress with his
preparations for the night. He was about to make some remark, however,
when to his well-attuned ears there came the sound of approaching
footsteps. In an instant he was standing in the parting made by the
curtains, his face eager, animated, tense.
"What's that?" he whispered.
"That's snow slidin'," the Girl informed him without the slightest trace
of anxiety in her voice.
"God bless you, Girl," he murmured, and retreated back of the curtains.
It was only an instant before he was back again with: "Why, there is
something out there--sounded like people calling," he again whispered.
"That's only the wind," she said, adding as she drew her robe tightly
about her: "Gettin' cold, ain't it?"
But, notwithstanding her assurances, Johnson did not feel secure, and it
was with many misgivings that he now directed his footsteps towards the
bed behind the curtains.
"Good-night!" he said uneasily.
"Good-night!" unconsciously returned the Girl in the same tone.
Taking off her slippers the Girl now put on a pair of moccasins and
quietly went over to her bed, where she knelt down and made a silent
prayer.
"Good-night!" presently came from a little voice in the rug.
"Good-night!" answered the man now settled in the centre of the
much-befrilled bed.
There was a silence; then the little voice in the rug called out:
"Say, what's your name?"
"Dick," whispered the man behind the curtains.
"So long, Dick!" drowsily.
"So long, Girl!" dreamily.
There was a brief silence; then, of a sudden, the Girl bolted upright in
bed, and asked:
"Say, Dick, are you sure you don't know that Nina Micheltoreña?"
"Sure," prevaricated the man, not without some compunction.
Whereupon the Girl fell back on her pillows and called out contentedly a
final "Good-night!"