She laid a warning finger on her lip. "Mr. Stratton. But I never sensed
what he was talkin' 'bout tell he showed me that ther sweetbrier growin'
ther by the table."
"Was he meanin' you?"
She started back to the reflector, but paused to nod her head over her
shoulder; a hundred imps danced in her eyes. "I'd love ter hear you
call me that, Mill. My stars--eglantine!"
Her lips bubbled laughter; it followed him, teasing, taunting, as he
rode on through the wood.
Mose, passing him, stalked into the open and towards the farther group.
Kingsley waved his hand in careless recognition, and rising, threw back
his tent-fly and drew out the blankets. "Well, Mose," he said, "what do
you think of these?"
The boy bent to feel their texture gravely. "Dey ess plent' good 'nough
blankets, monjee, ya-as, an Yelm Jim ees tell me--_go_. But Tyee
Sahgalee ees goin' be hy-as mad. Sacre, it ees pos'ble he ees keel you.
Den, merci, some more white man doan' lak go Rainier."
He turned with this and stalked swiftly back into the gloom. Alice rose
in astonishment. Kingsley laughed. "If I should lose myself over a
precipice," he said, "or drop into a crevasse, I suppose he would
believe it was all the vengeance of his Indian God."
"But," she answered, "his father is a devout Catholic. The priest is
making an acolyte of Mose." She sank back, helplessly, into her place.
"I--I suppose it's impossible for him to grasp everything"--she was
thinking of Laramie and the globe--"at once."
Her sister leaned towards Kingsley. A sudden apprehension rose in her
great, dark eyes, and her voice, in emotion, dropped to contralto notes.
"I wish you would give up that idea of trying for the summit," she said.
He laughed again, tossing his fine head. "Oh, don't bother, Louise; I
shall be safe enough with Stratton along. He never takes a risk."
Stratton smiled and adjusted the rolled blankets to his back, leaning on
them comfortably. "The Captain's right," he said. "He knows me. I
always ask myself first, 'Is it safe?' And then, 'Is it worth while?'"
The teacher looked at him a searching moment and arched her brows. Then
she reached and lifted her sister's guitar from the end of the log. Her
fingers trailed briefly over the strings and settled in a thread of
tune. She repeated the accompaniment, singing softly, inviting
Kingsley's tenor.
"She shone in the light of declining day,
Each sail was set, and each heart was gay."
And presently the other man hummed an undernote, but Louise was silent.
She had changed her position a little, clasping her hands loosely around
her knee, with her face slightly lifted and turned to the darkening
wood. It was the face of a dreamer, rapt, sensitive, who peopled the
shadows, and to whom the many voices of the night tuned in unbroken
symphony.
In the interlude Kingsley turned to her. "Where is your voice, Louise?
We need the contralto."
She started and looked at him, smiling. It was then she resembled
Alice. The expression was there and the charm; but softened, finer, as
the painting of a master may be reproduced in pastel.
Her voice was beautiful. She took up the song, subduing her notes to
her sister's lighter compass, but the music, that had been simply
pleasing, assumed, suddenly, the touch and finish of grand opera.
For the white squall rides on the surg-ing wave, And the
bark is gulph'd in an o-cean's grave, For the
white squall rides on the surg-ing wave, And the
bark is gulph'd in an o-cean's grave, in an
o-cean's grave, in an o - - ocan's grave.
[Illustration: Music fragment]
*CHAPTER VII*
*THE INSTRUMENT OF TYEE SAHGALEE*
The summer day breaks early in the Puget Sound country. It was not yet
four by Stratton's watch when he stepped from his tent and stood
analyzing the weather, but all the sky overhead was changing to yellow,
and directly, while he looked, to streaks of flame. The heights,
towering a thousand feet on the opposite side of the gorge, were
burnished copper, and Rainier, walling the top of the canyon, warmed to
amethyst and rose. Its crest, at an altitude of nearly fifteen thousand
feet, was hardly seven miles distant.
But the great forest that hemmed in the small open where the camp was
pitched, still gloomed in shadow, and the air was sharp with the breath
of near glacier and snowfield. Stratton saw that Mose had left his
blanket, gone already to bring up the horses, and the close report of a
gun told that Kingsley was off in search of the early bird. Then
Samantha came from the other tent and stirred the smouldering fire. She
added a dry hemlock bough, watching the roused flames fasten on the
resinous wood.
"Good morning, Psyche," he said.
She lifted her glance, nodding. She had a mouth like a Cupid's bow and
the short upper lip twitched with enforced gravity before the shaft
sped. "Ef you hed er wife, I 'low she'd get er new name 'bout every
day, an' mebbe twicet. Land, it 'ud keep her busy rememberin' who she
was."
She tucked her sleeves up from her tapering arms, and kneeling, dipped
them deep in a bubbling pool. Stratton laughed softly, enjoying her,
and lifting his bag, crossed the open seeking a warm spring, which,
screened in a network of young cedars, afforded a morning plunge. All
along the valley iron and soda deposits discolored the earth, and
mineral water, hot or sharply cold, sparkled in crystal basins.
An hour later the little cavalcade formed in line, with Kingsley leading
on his big white horse, followed by Samantha, whose clear piping voice
rose in alternate upbraiding or admonition, for she rode the indifferent
Ginger. Mose, mounting Yelm Jim's piebald pony, crowded the cayuse with
the two pack animals; then came Louise and the teacher, while Stratton
closed the rear.
The trail became more and more precipitous, switch-backing across the
face of a spur, taking the edge of a cliff, breaking into sharp pitches
to a rushing ford. Trunks, logs, netlike boughs, shelving rock crowded
close. The head of the Nisqually and its glacier were not far off.
Then finally they turned up its beautiful tributary, the Paradise. Over
the stream Eagle Peak, the first of the Tatoosh Mountains, lifted a
tremendous front, and boulders, hurled from it, blocked the limpid
current, creating innumerable cascades. The air was flooded with
drifting spray, and the wet, luxuriant earth, reflecting the sun, filled
the gorge with playing color.
At last Alice drew rein near the brink fronting a great cataract.
Stratton dismounted and went to tighten her horse's girth. "Are you a
little afraid?" he asked.
"Afraid? Of the trail? Oh, no. I love it; it's my element. And
Colonel can go anywhere. He picks his way through bogs, pits, better
than I could, and he runs straight up these rocky stairs. I have only
to cling on," and she laughed.
"Well, you can trust him." Stratton's glance moved from her horse to
his own mount and back to the black. "Sir Donald has found his match.
But, how was it that Forrest gave up his horse?"
"He hasn't. I am only keeping Colonel for him, while he is at
Freeport."
"I see," said Stratton slowly, "I see. I hope if the time comes when I
must part with Sir Donald, I can leave him in the same hands."
At this she swept him with a swift, critical look, ruffling her brows.
"I have known Paul Forrest all my life," she said, and turned her eyes
again to the cataract.
"I understand." He smiled a little, both nettled and amused. "Before I
can venture to ask a favor of you, you must know and like me better than
you do now."
She flashed him another look, tilting her chin. "I like you as well as
I could like any American with _un_-American ways."
[Illustration: "'I like you as well as I could like any American with
_un_-American ways.'"]
For an instant he betrayed his surprise, then, "Well, thank you," he
said; "I appreciate your frankness; and perhaps you are right. My
mother was more a French woman than an American; she was a Creole of the
Mississippi. And my grandfather, on the other side, was a factor of the
Hudson Bay Company. My father, I suppose, passed over with New Georgia
into the hands of the United States. After all, it is hard for most any
American to tell in just what generation he began. But I admit I have
lived close to the border, Miss Hunter, often on the other side. In
fact I haven't always been able to determine the line."
"And I," she answered, with a gathering storm in her eyes, "I have lived
all of my life close to the boundary, but in a different way. The best
patriot is he who fights for his home while he defends his country, and
the sun for my family rose and set in 'Fifty-four, forty or fight.' We
know the line; we never crossed to the other side. My grandfather died
with Marcus Whitman."
She spoke then to her horse, starting him briskly. Stratton vaulted into
his saddle. "You touch-me-not!" he said under his breath. "You
touch-me-not!"
Far ahead Samantha approached a second cataract. It was a perilous
place, for the trail, skirting a precipice, rose from a bog in rocky and
winding stairs worn smooth and slippery by continuous spray.
Kingsley's horse cleared the morass; his iron shoes struck fire from the
shelving granite and he set himself to the steps. His master looked
back. "Make him leap," he shouted to Samantha, and while he spoke was
carried beyond a turn.
But Ginger delayed. He snuffed the ooze with disfavor. The girl jerked
his muzzle high. "Heft yourself, Ginger," she shrilled, and cut him
sharply on the flank. "Now, now, Ginger, get up."
And against belief, Ginger gathered himself, but the effort fell short.
His forefeet grappled the rock and he sank back floundering in the ooze.
The trained pack horses halted, and Mose threw himself from his pony and
pushed swiftly around the bog, through underbrush, to Ginger's head.
But Samantha had already slipped from her saddle, and worked herself
free of the struggling horse. She moved back coolly from the abyss and
emerged from the mudhole, dripping, but unhurt.
She drew a full breath and looked about her. Stratton, who had arrival,
grasped the situation and drew in his horse, humorously regarding her.
"Ain't I a sight?" she asked.
"Yes, Aphrodite, you are. You are a vision to haunt a man's dreams."
"I jedge you're 'bout right." She paused and the imps danced in her
eyes. "But I 'low it 'ud be er turrible nightmare."
She reached and broke a low branch of hemlock, with which she began
hastily to brush the mud from her skirt. Beyond the bog, Mose, who had
extricated the unfortunate pony, urged him up the granite stair. His
flanks were slippery with ooze. "My stars," she said, "I'm glad Mill
didn't kem this trip. I'd never hear ther last of it. He'd run er joke
ter death."
The ax was brought, and the bog was hurriedly bridged with corduroy for
the remaining horses. Then finally they trailed out of the heavy timber
into the parks of Paradise. A succession of emerald slopes opened
before them, broken by clumps of amabilis fir and mountain hemlock;
where a higher top rose out of a shapely mass it became a cathedral
spire. Sometimes the way wound through an area of blooming heliotrope
or asters; banks of gorgeous snapdragon or flaming Indian paintbrush
gave color, like landscape gardening, to whole hillsides. Then behind
them, pinnacle on pinnacle, closed the Tatoosh Range; a last sharp
ascent and they were on that small and lofty Plateau, at an altitude of
five thousand feet, since called The Camp of Clouds, with the splendor
of the great summit almost overhead.
The tents were pitched; horses picketed. It was hardly mid-afternoon.
"By this time tomorrow," said Kingsley, "if this weather stays with us,
we shall have made and I hope passed Gibraltar."
Stratton, lounging on a blanket, looked up to the black cliff, which,
rising sheer fifteen hundred feet, stood like a mighty fortress against
the whiteness of the dome. "I hope so," he answered, "but, Captain, I
never saw anything look so tremendously like work."
Louise rested on a grassy knob, her hands clasped loosely on her knee,
inspiration in her lifted face. She hardly heard her husband's remark,
or the other man's reply, but Alice started from her place beside her.
"Phil," she said, "take me with you. You can't understand what it means
to me, to be so near, to see the summit shining there, and go no
farther. I'm very strong, Phil, and clear-headed. I'm not afraid of
things. I--oh, you don't understand, but the mountain seems to beckon."
Kingsley walked a restless turn. "I do understand," he said. "I feel
it myself. But we don't know what we are going through, and we can't be
sure of the weather an hour ahead; clouds are manufactured right here at
a moment's notice. But wait, don't tease, and we'll compromise. I'm
going off now to reconnoiter. I believe the most feasible start is from
that ridge across this valley of the Paradise, but I want to be sure.
There'll be no time to waste in doubling back for fresh starts
to-morrow. And Mose has been up that way; he says, with care, we can use
the horses as far as the old snow. A glacier cuts in there, probably
the source of the Cowlitz, and he thinks we should be able to reach it
in a couple of hours. I'll take you that far--to the glacier."
At this Mose started from his recumbent position on the earth. He threw
out his arms in protest. "No, no, Mees," he said. "It ees bes' you
doan' go dare. Sacre, no."
"I'm not afraid," she answered smiling, "and if I'm a trouble I'll turn
back. I promise."
"You doan' be some tro'ble, Mees," he said quickly. "No, no, it ees dat
Tyee Sahgalee ees goin' be mad. Mebbe he ees mek dis mountain burn an'
break an' fall down. Monjee, monjee, Mees, you can' ride quick 'nough
away."
She laughed, shaking her head. "I don't believe that, Mose," she said,
"and you won't, after we have been there. Tyee Sahgalee don't care how
many of us go creeping up there, any more than we care about the ants
and spiders that crawl to the cabin door."
"You mean it is you who don't care," said Stratton. "You are ready to
take the risks, whatever they are. And if you are determined to go on
braving Providence, or Tyee Sahgalee, or whoever it is, the rest of the
day, I'm going to join the expedition; that is, unless Mrs. Kingsley is
afraid to stay here alone with Samantha."
"Oh," answered Louise, at last awake to the situation, "I want you to
go."
"I thought so," and he smiled. "I've proved something of a mascot on
occasion, and I'll look after the Captain."
The horses were brought and presently they were trailing away up the
pathless slopes in the wake of the piebald pony; fording countless
streams, leaping them, sinking in pitfalls through treacherous banks of
bloom. When, switchbacking up a lofty rise, Alice ventured to look
down, all the colored breadth of Paradise park unfolded like a map, and
the dome gathered majesty at every turn. They gained a shoulder, rounded
a curve, and before them stretched the levels of a plateau carpeted with
snow. Then, as they moved across this field, mountain on mountain
opened, shading to blue distance. Through a gap, out of a woolly cloud,
shone the opal crown of Adams, and presently, far off St. Helens rose
like a floating berg on an uptossed sea.
They dismounted at the foot of a knob flanked by loose rock. The red
stain of old snow was under their feet and beyond the spur shone the
clean, blue-green edge of the glacier. "We are higher than the
treeline, now," said Philip, "and above the clouds."
She drew a breath of delight, lifting her glance to the near dome. "And
it looks as though we could reach the summit in fifteen or twenty
minutes. Oh, Phil, come, let's go."
Kingsley laughed. "We haven't climbed nine thousand feet; the hardest
third of the ascent is above us. Don't you remember, the only two men
who ever made that summit were half a day in just passing Gibraltar. We
may find it no longer passable."
While his look rested on the grim fortress a thin cloud rose like smoke
from its base. It covered the cliff swiftly and trailed across the
dome. "Out of nothing, without notice," and he shook his head; "that's
what I've heard."
He turned. Stratton was busy searching for a safe hitching-place for
his horse; he never stood well. But Mose had stepped nearer Kingsley.
The boy's shoulders were inclined forward, and his eyes, in that
instant, were those of a crouching animal about to spring.
"Well, Mose," he said carelessly, "your Tyee Sahgalee is hiding his
face. I suppose you think we've come far enough. But we'll show him."
He moved on with Alice up the knob, and Stratton joined them. But
presently Mose stalked by leading the way to the glacier. His face had
the gray look of fear, but his lips were set in the thin line that gave
him an older, sinister touch, the shadow of cruelty.
He moved swiftly and surely. He did not once look back. He gave no
direction or warning. They followed, slipping and stumbling through the
moraine, and gaining the ragged brow of the knob, found themselves
suddenly on the brink of a mighty precipice. Far, far down, the infant
Cowlitz sprang into life and struggled out between stupendous columns
and needles. Locked in the opposite pinnacled cliffs shone the sheer,
blue-seamed front of the glacier, and the throes that gave the river
birth resounded through the gorge.
Stratton uncoiled the spare lariat he carried, and taking an end, with
Philip closing, and the girl between, drew slowly along the rim. Mose,
curving far ahead, came out on the slippery incline of the glacier.
Finally he stopped under a great upheaval of ice, and resting against a
block, waited, with his back turned to them and his face lifted to the
clouding dome.
Behind them another cloud formed over the Tatoosh Mountains, driving
fast to meet the advancing column from Gibraltar; and, in a little
while, when they had come out on the ice, and made slow headway up the
tilting surface from the abyss, mist lifted swiftly, flooding, giving
immensity to the darkening gorge. Kingsley walked a trifle in advance
of Alice, with Stratton abreast of him. Suddenly Mose's tracks, on a
recent light snowfall which had offered foothold, swerved, and both men
stopped. They were on the brink of a narrow, deep, incredibly deep,
crevasse.
Alice moved back, shivering. She looked, a mute question trembling on
her lips, at Mose. But he continued to stand, oblivious, with his eyes
fixed, expectantly, on the clouding dome.
"See here," called Philip, "see here; next time you let us know." Then
his glance returned to the crevasse. "Reminds me of a tremendous white
watermelon," he said, "with just one thin, clean slice gone."
"Yes?" questioned Stratton, smiling, "it strikes me differently. I
thought right away of some curious metal, with just enough taken, by
some nice process, to shape a gigantic blade."
"A blade, yes," said Alice, "for the hand of Tyee Sahgalee."
Stratton's eyes met hers amusedly. He wondered if she was capable of
superstition. "Even then," he said, "it is only a surface impression,
lost the moment you look down. It's an ice-crevasse; nothing else." He
turned to Kingsley, who was already studying the glacier ahead. "Of
course this will not delay us to-morrow, Captain, but it is time, now,
to turn back."
"In a moment. There's a streak on there that bothers me. Looks like a
more serious break. I want to see it at closer range. Wait here; I
won't be fifteen minutes."
He moved back impetuously, and, giving himself short headway, took the
crevasse in a leap. Showers of loosened ice clinked down from the rim.
Most of the particles struck the sides that closed in twenty feet below,
and rebounding, dropped again and sent back faint echoes from the last
level of the abyss.
Stratton stood watching Philip up the glacier, but presently, Alice drew
away from the crevasse and turned to look back down the gorge. The sun
no longer shone. All that brilliant vista of opal peak and amethyst
spur, shading to blue distance, was curtained in closing sheets of mist.
There a great crag loomed an instant and was gone. Here an uptossed
pile of ice-blocks flashed a sudden prismatic light and grew dim. Then
they themselves were wrapped in a noiseless, drenching cloud.
At the same moment she was startled by Stratton's brief note of surprise
and felt behind her a sudden jar. She turned. Mose was hurled sprawling
at her feet, and, clutching her skirt, was up instantly, panting, with
quivering nostril, eyes ablaze. Then, in the recoil, Stratton reeled on
the brink of the crevasse, recovered, stumbled on breaking crust, and
went down.
She stood for an interminable moment, waiting, listening, numbed, body
and mind. Then she was conscious that Mose was going, and she went
after him a few steps, calling his name. But his receding shape drifted
faster and faster, a fading shadow in the mist. She turned back,
lifting her voice in a great cry to Philip. And she was answered from
the abyss.
She dropped to her knees and crept close to look down. Stratton was
there, where the pale, green walls narrowed. He rested wedgelike, caught
at the armpits. He looked up and saw her. "Be careful," he said, "I am
all right."
Instantly the executive in her rose. "I have the lariat," she said.
"Fasten it to the ice where Mose stood," he called. "I can work along
that far."
He remembered that the rope was new and strong, one he himself had
selected as a reserve in picketing his own spirited horse. The question
was whether the ice would take his weight. He worked carefully,
laboriously along by shoulder and elbow, his body swinging from the
waist, starting a rain of ice at every move. At last, where the wall
crumbled, leaving a ledge, he was able to draw himself to his knees. He
cut foothold with his knife, and other niches higher up for his hands,
and pulled himself erect on the slippery shelf.
Beyond him the chasm widened between sheer walls, and it was in this
shaft that the lowered rope hung. It swung for a moment, like a failing
pendulum, and each oscillation, though he stood alert, missed his reach
a little more. The girl, peering into the abyss, understood, and again
disappeared. The line was drawn up, and presently it dropped almost at
his shoulder. He caught the end and, looking up, met her eyes over the
rim. "That's better," he said.
"Wait--one moment," she called and was gone once more. She did not
return this time, but her voice came to him, "Now, now, all ready."
The lariat tightened. It creaked, ground on the edge of the chasm; ice
chips fell ceaselessly. He swung out. He was a big fellow, heavy.
Would the support hold? Would Mose, his fury cooled, be neutral? Why,
yes, surely the boy was even setting himself to ease the strain. He
could feel an unmistakable give and pull above on the rope, as he
climbed, hand over hand.
He gained the top. He reached a palm around a slight pinnacle, for a
final grasp on the line, and pulled himself slowly out on the surface of
the glacier. He was a strong man, physically, a man of steady nerve,
one accustomed to take risks with Nature, as in those times a man of the
Northwest must, but what he saw, in that brief pause, sent a shiver
through him. He closed his eyes like one brought suddenly into intense
light.
The rope was fastened, as he had directed, to a thick column in the
upheaval, but it stretched diagonally to the projection on the brink of
the crevasse. And it was Alice, not Mose, who steadied it, throwing her
weight on it, twisting it on her hands, digging her heels in a shallow
cleft, straining back to ease the pressure on the knob. Suppose the
support had given way; suppose he had dragged her--this brave girl, all
life, charm, loveliness--down to destruction. It was horrible to think
of. Horrible.
Seeing him safe, she relaxed her hold and drew back, making way for him.
She breathed deeply, her chest heaving, and a moisture not of the cloud
clung to her lip, her brow in drops.
He pulled himself together and got to his feet. He did not speak to
her, then; he could not. But he put his hand to his mouth and lifted
his voice in a great hail. Kingsley responded, but his "Hello," came
faintly, through billows of mist. The calls were repeated. "We cannot
wait," Stratton said. "We must follow that rascal's tracks down, while
they last, to the horses."
"What made Mose do it?" she asked. "Oh, what made him?"
"Why, just Indian, I suppose; or say he was an instrument,
self-appointed, of his Tyee Sahgalee. But he shall be punished." He
closed his lips over the word, and a heat, like the flash of a blade,
leaped in his eyes. But when he took her hands to help her to her feet
the look changed. The light returned, yet softened, steady, and
currents of tenderness, long pent in the man, surged to his face. Her
palms were bruised, cut, cruelly. He lifted them, one, and then the
other, swiftly, very gently, to his lips. "You did this--for me," he
said. "You could do it--for me."
"Of course," she answered quickly, and drew the hands away, "I must have
done my best for anyone--for Mose, if things had been reversed. But, if
I hadn't been able, Phil would have come back in time; no doubt he could
have seen a better way."
She met his look briefly, but long enough for him to fathom the clear
depths of her eyes; and suddenly, before her dauntless white spirit, his
own soul, for the first time, shrank. It was as though another
unsounded abyss yawned between them, that the exigency of this hour
could not bridge.
They hurried on then, groping and slipping down the glacier, taking
Mose's trail. Sometimes they stopped while Stratton renewed his shout,
waiting always for Kingsley's answer, and they knew when he had crossed
the crevasse in safety, and that he followed on to the gorge.
They made the rocky knob and finally, out of obscurity, she caught
Colonel's familiar neigh. The call shrilled again, inquiring,
peremptory. But when they came to the end of the moraine where they had
left the horses, they found them gone.
The neigh was repeated once more, coming back faintly, from far across
the snowfield. "Mr. Stratton," she cried, "what has happened? Where is
Mose going?"
"Over the mountains to the Palouse plains, I haven't a doubt," and the
blade flashed again in his eyes. "It's the first thing a halfbreed
does, and they always drive stolen horses over there; it is impossible
to find them among those big, feeding bands of the Yakimas. He will
stampede the rest in the valley, and Yelm Jim will probably meet him
somewhere below the springs and help him take them through the Pass."
She stood for a moment with her head high, lips set, looking with
storming eyes into the mist. Then, "There isn't any time to waste," she
said. "We must take him this side of the springs." And she began to
trail the horses on across the snow.
"I wish there was a chance of it," said Stratton, "but you will only
spend yourself uselessly. You are miserably tired now. The horses will
make the down grade to the springs very fast, and you must see that the
trail through the timber, afoot, is simply impossible at night. We
should bury ourselves in one of those mudholes or plunge over some
cliff. We could never make the fords."
But she hurried on. There fell a long silence. It grew rapidly colder;
the winds freshened, tearing the cloud-wrack, driving it this way and
that, bringing the ragged ends together in bursts of hail or flurries of
snow. The girl's drenched skirts hampered her, still she pressed
resolutely on. Once she said, "An accident somewhere might delay the
band." And Stratton caught at the hope. He told her Mose would probably
try to mount Sir Donald, the fleetest horse, and that he had some
unexpected tricks. He was as full of coquetry as--well--a pretty woman,
though as easily managed, if a man knew him.
It was twilight and they were descending the final pitch into the park
when Kingsley at last overtook them. The camp-fire, which Samantha had
kindled with infinite difficulty on the plateau, burned like a beacon in
the gloom. "You should have seen that second crevasse," he said. "It
was tremendous. No way over, no way around; I tramped both directions
to see. We've simply got to choose another route, to-morrow. But what
became of the horses?"
"Mose took them." It was Alice who answered. "He took Colonel. But I
shall find him. I've got to find him if I have to walk every step of
the way over the mountains and through the Palouse. You know how much
Paul thinks of his horse, Philip. Oh, I can never face him; I can never
tell him--the truth."
She started on uncertainly, stumbled, and fell. Stratton lifted her,
and carried her a few steps over a rough place. "You mustn't trouble so
much," he said gently, "We are going to find that black if it takes a
year. Yes, we are and punish that Klickitat."
*CHAPTER VIII*
*"I'M GOING TO MAKE HIM WHITE"*
The night was terrible. The wind became a gale. It assailed the tents;
in the near hemlock grove it wrenched off great boughs; it lifted
lighter brands from the fire and scattered them broadcast. There was a
constant watch, which Samantha shared, to drag aside and beat out
dangerous embers. The fire was enclosed in a circular windbreak of
rocks, and other stones were brought to pin down the bellying canvas and
ballast the working stakes. Up the mountain clouds clashed in thunder;
the plateau was pelted by swift and furious storms of hail.
The final watch fell to Stratton. The wind was piercing and for warmth
he tramped the earth. Once he stopped to lift a fresh log on the fire,
and, drawing himself erect, his eyes rested on the women's tent. "She
must be sleeping," he told himself. "I hope so; she was so unhappy
about that black. That is her way--to take things hard--pleasure or
sorrow. Jove, how she could love a man. But--she would hold him to his
best, always, in every common move of every day." He shrugged his
shoulders and swung on his heel to look out into the darkness of the
valley. It was so dense that the flame-illumined plateau seemed to rim
an abyss. "That was it--the reason I went so nearly to pieces for that
minute, there on the glacier. I felt the Puritan in her all at once
demanding the best in me. And there was no best; there never can be."
He tramped another interval. "But," he said at last, and the steel
flashed again in his eyes, "there is not a man living I am afraid to
face; and if I ever loved a woman--or thought I did--sooner or later she
was glad to have me tell her so. I never have failed to get what I
wanted, all my life, and I am going to want--_her_."
At daybreak it was snowing on the plateau. He roused Kingsley.
"Captain," he cried, shaking the sleeper, "Captain, wake up; we must
hurry."
Philip rose, stretching himself, stiffly, and drew aside the tent-fly.
"It doesn't look much like the summit to-day," he said.
"Summit?" repeated Stratton with disgust, "summit? What we have to think
of, is the quickest way to get these women out of this."
A gust of wind rushed through the aperture, past Kingsley, and filled
the tent. It lifted the canvas, balloon-wise, scattering the ballast,
up-pulling the stakes, and carried it far afield. It led the men a
chase, but they secured it and struggled with it back to the plateau.
Truly it was not a day for mountain-tops.
Camp was broken hurriedly, each of the men taking the necessary shoulder
pack, and leaving the bulk of the outfit to be sent for when they should
find horses. They pushed quickly down from the snow, which became rain
in the woods. And Alice led the way. She studied the trail
continually, separating the tracks of the ponies, where they struck the
path down the valley, from the deeper, water-filled impressions of the
American horses. She set Stratton a pace, and kept it almost to the ford
of the Paradise. Then suddenly she stopped an instant, listening, and
ran on along the bank to an old log foot-crossing. There on the end of
the bridge, sheltered by a trailing cedar, were her bridle and saddle;
and picketed on a grassy knoll under some alders she saw the black.
"Oh," she said, and took his head in her arms, "you beauty! You heart's
desire! But I knew--I knew Mose couldn't take you; I knew it."
Stratton stood for a moment watching her. "So," he said, "so the rascal
was white enough to leave your horse. He brought him this far with the
others to avoid pursuit last night."
Alice looked off a thoughtful moment, through the dripping trees. "I
knew his white conscience would get to upbraiding him," she said. "But
I can't help feeling glad he chose Colonel for the compromise."
Stratton laughed. "I hope it will upbraid him some more," he said, "and
induce him to leave my horse."
She would not mount, but waited for Louise to take the black. She
herself was not tired, and she moved lightly up the log, pausing
fearlessly, mid-channel, to watch Colonel feel his steps through the
ford and leading him up the bank and on some distance, until she was
assured he would carry her sister quietly. The rain fell with renewed
downpour, but she walked unmindful of boughs that drenched her
shoulders, and dripping skirts that weighted her limbs. Delight shone
in her eyes; whole face seemed to reflect some far illumination. She
had recovered Forrest's horse; the day was faultless.
But at last she was in the saddle and descending to the ford of the
Nisqually. The cloud-wrack was breaking then, and shafts of sunlight
struck the wet, green earth. Stratton walked a trifle in advance,
looking for a safe crossing over the rising channels. Suddenly he
stopped, and the black also halted, tossing his mane and shrilling his
ready, challenging neigh. There, moving out of the stream, up the
opposite bank, was a riderless horse. It was Sir Donald.
Stratton whistled, a soft, imperative note. The chestnut wheeled. The
man repeated the call, and the horse trotted gently back into the
channel. He halted once more on a gravel bar, his head high, ears
alert, then came on across to his master.
"So," said Stratton, slowly, "So, Donald, you showed the rascal your
little trick. You see, Miss Hunter, it was as I thought. Mose chose
the best horse. But he never mounted him. In his hurry he laid his
hand on the bit, and Sir Donald never allows that; he was trained that
way."
With this he vaulted into the saddle and led the way over from bar to
bar. He returned bringing the black, and while the others made the
crossing Alice waited, seating herself on a rock in the sun, and lifting
her face to the upper canyon. Presently the clouds parted like a rent
veil on the mountain. Once more Gibraltar menaced and the summit shone
in splendor.
"After all," she said, when Stratton rejoined her, "I can't blame Mose
for that belief. I felt it myself, for a moment, there on the glacier.
It was the steps of the Great White Throne. You can't understand."
"No," he replied, "No, you are right, I cannot. I am outside the
circle."
He bent and offered his hand to mount her on his horse, her sister
having kept the black, and she sprang lightly up. "Then," she said,
while he adjusted a stirrup, "you see no excuse for Mose?"
"No," and his face hardened, "No, I only see the half-breed threw me
into that crevasse. He took me off guard. And he left us miles from
anywhere, on that unknown mountain, in a storm, without horses. His
motives do not count."
Sir Donald started, trailing after the black. The little company filed
slowly down to the mineral springs. And there, in the open, unpicketed,
ready for the long trail, they found the other horses quietly feeding in
company with Ginger and the pack animals.
While Samantha made a fire and prepared the coffee the two men caught
and picketed the herd, reserving the few horses necessary for a hurried
trip back to the plateau for the outfit. And it was Alice, who, going
for a drink from her favorite well, discovered Mose. He was lying
semi-conscious on the wet earth, and over his black brows, branded with
the tip of an iron shoe, Sir Donald had set his mark.
The teacher dipped her handkerchief in the basin and bathed the hurt.
She went to ask Stratton's flask of him, and mixed the boy a draught,
and, a little later, when the young man followed her to the spring, he
found Mose able to recognize him. He stood a silent moment watching him
with hard eyes, and the boy met the look steadily; his muscles stiffened
as they had that day at school, when he braced himself to Laramie's
blow. Stratton's lip curled in disgust. After all, he could not punish
the fellow, down, helpless like that. He swung on his heel.
"Wait," said Alice, "it was just as you thought. The scheme to steal the
horses was Yelm Jim's; he was to meet him at the branch to the Pass and
help drive them over the mountains to the Palouse plains. But he meant
to leave Colonel; he only brought him as far as the Paradise to avoid
being overtaken. And that trouble at the crevasse was unpremeditated.
He was terribly frightened by the gathering storm. He believed it was a
judgment coming on us all, and he took the opportunity to--use you--for
a propitiation. Afterwards, in the night, he crept back up the valley
far enough to see the camp-fire, and you, safe--and keeping watch on the
plateau."
There was another brief silence. Stratton stood, still hard,
uncompromising, frowning down at the boy. "Be merciful," she said.
"Think; you were not hurt; you have Sir Donald, unharmed. Be generous.
Sometime,--who knows?--you yourself may ask it."
"No," he flashed, "No. I live my life; I do as I please. I ask nothing
of anyone. And in the end--I take what I deserve. That is my creed.
The boy must be punished."
He turned away, but she followed. In her earnestness she laid her hand
on his sleeve. "He has been punished," she said. "Look. He will carry
Sir Donald's brand all his life. He's just a boy, Mr. Stratton. He
left home angry, outraged, and Yelm Jim took the opportunity to make him
his tool. But he has good in him, I know. Remember, too, he saved my
life. And I need him; I'll be responsible for him."
Her eyes were raised to Stratton eloquent with appeal; the hand on his
arm trembled. "You need him; he saved your life." He paused and the
hardness went out of his face. "And you saved mine--you saved mine; I
do not forget that. And perhaps you were right just now; sometime I may
ask that mercy. I may ask it of--you."
Her hand fell from his sleeve; she drew back a step. "I will be ready,"
she said slowly, "if you are good to Mose." She looked back at the boy.
He was watching her. His lip quivered and his eyes filled with
unaccustomed tears. "I'll be responsible for him," she repeated, "I'm
going to make him white."
*CHAPTER IX*
*UNCLE SILAS*
It was the morning following his election and Judge Kingsley was taking
a late breakfast in his dining room. He had laid aside the
newspaper,--an interesting number, devoted chiefly to his final speech,
a personal and flattering editorial, and the returns,--to conclude some
business details with Forrest, who, seated near the open French window,
overlooking the terraced orchard, made brief memoranda in his note-book.
The Judge, then, was a man in his first prime, with that commanding
presence that does not challenge attention or respect, because he has
long been sure of both. He carried with ease a suggestion of coming
weight, and his voice, deliberate, sonorous, was that of a born orator.
"There, Forrest, I believe that is all." He pushed back his chair and
crossed his hands on his ample front. "Your father knew how to manage
men, and, there at Tumwater, he gave you a thorough apprenticeship. He
left you his executive ability and his knowledge of timber. But, if the
Freeport mills pay expenses these first two years, and Philip learns
something of business and the value of money, I shall have accomplished
my purpose."
Forrest smiled, his smile of the eyes, shaking his head. "I'm not much
of a diplomat; what I say is always just what I think. But I'll do my
best." He put the notebook into his pocket, and looking at his watch,
rose and took his hat. "I shall be able to catch the down steamer," he
said.
"Better wait over a day or two; the young people would miss you tonight
at the ball. And I want to speak to you about another matter." The
Judge paused, stroking his blond beard. "I want to speak to you
about--Alice."
Forrest returned to his chair. His eyes sought the window, avoiding the
Judge's scrutiny. Louise was there, swinging her child in a hammock
under the cherry trees. Her supple body swayed to the effort in
unconscious grace; the loose sleeves of her house gown fell away from
her uplifted, lovely arms, and the pose of her head brought out the
beautiful lines of throat and oval chin, but he saw her absently.