An hour later found the Warlow family at the foot of Antelope Butte,
whither they had all driven to make a search for--what they shrank from
saying. They had been there only a short time when they saw the Estill
carriage coming. When it drew near they discovered that it was Mrs.
Estill and Mora, who, when they were assisted to alight, said they had
seen the Warlow carriage with their field-glass, and suspecting the
meaning of its visit to the butte, they had hurried up to join the
search with their friends.
As Clifford, Rob, and Ralph were carefully searching the face of the
declivity, Mrs. Warlow told Mrs. Estill of the remarkable fact that she
had also seen that mystic light on the night it had disappeared from
Estill Ranch; then, as Mora drew near, she gave a circumstantial account
of the event, which caused her hearers to exchange looks of perplexed
amazement.
Mora became thoughtfully silent, and, leaving the others, she wandered
restlessly back and forth at the foot of the bluff, watching the
searchers intently.
She was startled at length by a cry of astonishment from Clifford, and
with the others she hastened up the steep acclivity to where he stood in
a recess of the cliff. When she reached his side he was leaning heavily
against the rocky wall, white and trembling.
"Oh, Clifford! speak! what is it?" she cried, breathless with a strange
dread.
He could only point to the face of the rock with an unsteady finger,
while the sweat-drops rained down from his white face, wrung by an agony
of emotion which he vainly strove to repress.
Sinking down upon the sloping mound, matted with grass, and kneeling
there at the foot of the cliff she read with a startled gaze the
inscription which was carved in faint, moss-grown letters, upon the
magnesian stone:--
"My Ivarene, my lost love, lies dead beside me with our little child,
cold and still, on her breast. I am wounded and dying; but death is
sweet now. We were coming here to watch for the trains when we were
assaulted by the strange hunter, who shot us both. My love only breathed
one breath. I carried her here. The child was pierced by the same shot.
My eyes are growing dim; but I welcome death. Oh, farewell, bright
world! I feel my life ebbing fast away, but would not stay without my
darling. I go to meet her where there will be no more parting. Oh, the
joy and bliss to see her smile again! It makes me long for death. We
shall live again! Bru--"
With a wild cry of agonized grief, Mora covered her face, while the
others read, with streaming eyes, that last message from the tomb. Then,
as they drew back and waited with broken sobs and smothered weeping,
Ralph and Robbie began tenderly to remove the _débris_ and soil which
time had formed into a mound below the inscription.
When, at last, there was revealed two skeletons, locked together in the
last clasp of love, which even death could not sever, Maud cried aloud
with a wail of anguish:--
"Oh, _can this be the last_ of beautiful Ivarene and dear, brave Bruce?"
Choking back their sobs, they all knelt in a circle, while Mrs. Warlow's
voice rose in a passionate, fervid prayer; then tenderly, with loving
care, they carried the remains down to the Warlow carriage, leaving Mora
and Clifford still lingering by the vacant mound.
They stood in silence a moment, the only sound the soft rustle of
wild-ivy that half draped the cliff in its mottled foliage of crimson,
green, and bronze; the radiant sunlight from the cloudless sky lit up
the sunflowers and gentian that grew in stunted clusters on the
hillside, while the sumac flaunted its plumes of scarlet, gold, and
purple along the rifts of the white, rocky wall.
Lifting their gaze from the open grave, their eyes met in a swift flash
of joy, while a half-puzzled look of delight and recognition struggled
over their faces; then, bounding lightly over the open grave, Clifford
whispered in a tone of unspeakable love and yearning:--
"Oh, Ivarene, my sweetheart of long ago, we meet at last!"
"Then it is as I have dreamed--and you are Bruce!" she answered, with a
sob of joy, while springing into his outstretched arms.
"Yes, love, I am convinced that we meet again after all these years of
waiting. Though to the world we may be only Mora and Clifford, yet,
darling, to each other we will ever be Ivarene and Bruce," he replied,
while raining kisses upon her upturned, radiant face.
Ah! how can I tell of the serene wedding morn that marked that happy day
when Clifford and Mora paced back and forth on the sunlighted terrace at
the Stone Corral, now no longer a modest cottage, but a stately though
quaint mansion of red sandstone. The tender, blue haze of Indian summer
brooded over the valley, where the fields of wheat shone dewy and green,
and the newly-mown meadows stretched away like a verdant carpet far out
onto the highlands, miles upon miles--all their own. The marble fountain
threw a glittering sheen of silver high in the air, while the breeze
swept the blossom-laden tendrils that trailed down the showy vases, and
swayed the limbs of the old elm to and fro about the gables of the
elegant home.
"Oh, Ivarene, dear love! how strange it is to take up the thread of our
happiness on the spot, almost where our lives went out in such black
despair just twenty-six years ago! I know why you wish to have our
bridal here, darling; for it was here, at the Old Corral, that our
former trials overwhelmed us, and it is doubly sweet to begin happiness
again on this spot."
"Bruce, my darling, I can remember nothing of the old life and its
trials, that ended at our grave on Antelope Butte; but my love for
you--ah! that can never perish. It has survived even the horrors of that
lonesome tomb. It is strange we only recognized each other at that empty
grave; but I had always felt such a longing to meet some one, that now I
know it was the spirit within me crying dumbly for you; and oh! the
unutterable content when at length I met you, and the joy of only being
with you now,--it is more than Eden!"
"Sweet Ivarene, do you ever ponder on what eternity means for us, now we
have its secret?--a limitless succession of life in all its phases; that
the grave is only the door to life again, when we can choose another
birth--passing through all the freshening scenes of infancy and youth;
growing up again as boy and girl; seeking each other out for another
union like this, where we shall always recognize each other, but forget
the old life,--it is _this_ which gives hope and zest to this happy day;
for we know that we shall really never be separated."
"We will pass a happy life together, my love; and from out our abundance
we can sweeten the lives of many others who have not been blessed with
great riches," he continued, in a tender tone.
"Yes, dear Bruce, and the treasure of Monteluma should be dedicated to
charity alone, for we have enough without it," she replied; then,
pointing to a newly-sodded grave at the foot of the lawn--a mound that
was marked by a marble slab on which only was engraved,
"BRUCE AND IVARENE,"
she continued, with a smile of ineffable peace on her beaming face:
"That is for the eyes of the world, dear Bruce; but we know that we are
they, only masquerading under the names of Mora and Clifford."
At that moment Maud, Ralph, Hugh, and Grace came on to the terrace
above, and Hugh, in a voice husky with emotion, said:--
"Come, Mora and Clifford, the minister waits."
Tarrying a moment, while the others moved on along the terrace, the
happy pair stood gazing out over the tranquil valley, then, drawing
aside her veil, which trailed liked a mist down over her robe of
glistening satin, white as a snow-drift, she raised a radiant face to
his, and said:--
"My Bruce, we live again--we live again!"
Stooping, while their lips met, he murmured:--
"Yes, Ivarene, dear bride, and this--oh! this is heaven!"
A moment more, and they had disappeared within the flower-wreathed
doorway.