"We must." Then she squared her shoulders and walked forward with a
clear "Good-morning."
Instantly the man was on his feet, and grasping the rifle which stood at
hand, against the tower wall, he dropped to his knee behind the
improvised table. The gun rested across the rock and he took sight
carefully.
The girl came on into the open. "Don't be afraid of me," she said and
steadied her voice, "I only want to talk to you."
He lifted his head and looked at her in astonishment. She came a few
steps further, and Mose, silent, alert, stalked after her and stood
waiting. "I came to speak to you about milking my cow," she said, and
ruffled her brows. "You should have asked me."
At this Smith laughed and rising from his knee, seated himself again on
the rock. But he held his gun in readiness.
"I suppose," she went on, "it seems--to you--a very small matter,
compared with breaking into Mr. Stratton's house."
He laughed again, loudly, insolently.
She watched him with the rising storm in her eyes. She was no longer
afraid. Clearly the man was unashamed; the spark of good that she had
been taught to believe was latent in the breast of the lowest man, was
lacking here. He must be the exception that proved the rule. "You've
got to take these things back," she said at last, decisively, yet
holding her voice in check; "now, at once."
Smith lifted his gun higher, scowling. "You go home," he said gruffly.
"Mose, you go. Be quick 'bout it."
She remembered suddenly the day at school when Lem had admitted that men
in the settlement sometimes struck women, but she did not move. Then
she was conscious that Mose was walking back towards the wood. "Mose,"
she said, and turning, stamped her foot, "stay here."
He stopped and looked over his shoulder. "It ees bes' dat you come
right 'way," he said. "Mebbe Mill T'ornton ees able to do somet'ing,
you spik to heem."
The man laughed still more insolently. "You go," he repeated.
The next instant he sprang to his feet and faced the wood on the other
side of the open. There was a brief interval filled with the sounds of
bodies moving through low boughs, the snapping of twigs, the striking of
hoofs on loose rock, then Stratton's smooth, deliberate voice said,
"Well, Smith, I think I have a horse now that won't refuse his pack, and
I have tested him at a ford."
Smith put down his gun and hurried to take the led animal, and Stratton
rode on past the clump of scrub firs, where the waiting horses were
hitched, and saw suddenly the girl by the tower. A great wave of color
surged over his face and left it white. His big frame rocked slowly as
though he gathered himself from a heavy and unexpected blow; then he sat
motionless.
"Oh," she said, and hurried to meet him, "I'm so glad you came this way,
instead of going straight through to the bridge. This man has looted
your lodge. I was just trying to make him take back your things."
Stratton drew a great breath. He shook himself like a man throwing off
a weight, and swung himself down from the saddle. "You were? Well,
thank you, Miss Hunter, but he should have told you that I gave him the
key." He paused and his eyes moved to Smith, who had gone to an
aperture in the tower, and was lifting from it other supplies for the
fresh pack-horse. "In fact," he added, "I have engaged Pete to go over
the Pass with me, to cook and look after my outfit."
Her glance moved to Sir Donald's full leather saddlebags and snug
blanket roll, and returned to his master. "You have engaged this man,"
she said slowly, "to go over the mountains with you?"
"Yes, I am starting on a long hunting and trading trip, through the
Palouse and Big Bend country, and Smith knows the plains and the
Indians. He will be invaluable to me in that uncertain wilderness. But
I shall probably go down the Columbia, when I strike the railroad, and
come back to the Sound from Portland, by way of the Northern Pacific."
"You are going a long hunting trip," she repeated, and met his look
steadily. "You have engaged this man, this outlaw, for your camp cook
and guide. You know you are helping him to elude the Government. Oh,
how can you, an intelligent, educated American, be so indifferent to the
laws? I don't understand you. I don't understand you."
She turned away.
"Wait, just a moment," he said. "Is the case so different from your
own? You took this other half-breed Indian into your house; you gave
him a new start; yet the rascal had stolen our horses; he had left us
high up, nine thousand feet, on Mt. Rainier in the face of a storm. He
did even worse."
"Hush," she said. Mose stood, waiting, a few yards off. His face was
turned to the lower gorge and she looked at him with apprehension.
"There is no comparison," she went on softly. "You know it. He was
just a boy, untaught, his character unformed, and he believed he was
right. There was plenty of good in him, ready to be brought out by any
one who cared to take the trouble. I have proved that; he has repaid me
a hundred times. But this fellow--this desperado--think of his record.
Look in his face."
She moved on with this, to join Mose, but her foot struck something that
clinked against a stone, and she stopped to look down. Then she stooped
and picked up the object, turning it curiously in her hands. It was a
small tin receptacle, unlike anything she had ever seen before. There
were some strange characters marked on it, presumably Chinese, and while
she studied them she noticed that the can had sprung a little at the
upper edge, and a sticky substance began to ooze into her palm. It
emitted a sickish odor and she held the thing out to Stratton in sudden
disgust. "What is it?" she asked. "Do you know? Did you drop it?"
Again he pulled himself together. He took the tin and hurled it over
the cliff. Some distance down it struck a projecting ledge, and sent
back, faintly, a clink. "I know what it is, yes," he said grimly. "The
man who dropped it--bungled."
His glance moved again to Smith and the steel flashed in his eyes. But
the outlaw had not heard. He was engrossed in a full canvas bag which
he was adjusting to the pack saddle.
"Come, there is water here," Stratton went to the rock where Smith had
breakfasted, and lifted a flask. "Hold out your hands."
She held them out, turning them under the stream he poured. "Rub them,"
he said; "it stains. Again, the odor clings. The stuff should never
have touched your hands."
"What is it?" she repeated.
He was silent.
"What is it?" she persisted. "Can't you tell me?"
"Yes, yes, I can--if I must." He threw his head with a sudden reckless
decision. "It stands for shame, ostracism, degradation, according to
your code. The man who touches it takes his fate in his hands. It
sticks, its slime covers him, sucks him down. Look in my face."
But at the look she gave him, that straight, searching look, which
forever expected a best in him, the boldness went out of his face. A
quiver swept it, as though he felt deep down the twist of a probe.
"Once, up there below the Paradise," he said, "you promised your mercy.
The time has come; I ask it--now."
"You mean it is"--but her voice failed. Her eyes widened with fear, and
yet there rose in them an appeal. "You mean," she repeated, "you were
going to--" But the word would not out; it died in her throat. Then,
"Promise me you will not," she entreated. "Promise--no matter how
desperate you may feel--you will always put the feeling down. I should
blame myself; I should feel someway responsible. I couldn't help it. It
would spoil my life."
He drew his hand slowly across his eyes and moved back, leaning on the
tower wall. So she thought that. She believed that he had contemplated
self-destruction, and in that crude, spectacular way. And of course she
attributed his reason to her rejection of him. He could have laughed
aloud at his escape. "I promise," he answered. "I promise. I will
leave it to Nature. When the time comes she can provide a way."
"Thank you, I trust you." She gave him her hand. "Good-by."
She hesitated, glancing once more at the outlaw, but of him she had
nothing further to say. Stratton stood watching her down the trail;
when she disappeared he moved to the edge of the cliff and waited for a
final glimpse of her, far below in the canyon.
At last he noticed that his guide was ready. "Ride on with the
pack-horses," he said. "I will overtake you in time to make Nisqually
ford. And the next time you find a leaking can, Smith, be careful where
you throw it."
When the man was gone he sank down on a rock and dropped his face in his
hands. Finally he lifted his head and sat for an interval looking down
the gorge in the direction she had taken. "She is so bright and quick,"
he told himself, "and yet she could not see the truth. With all of her
knowledge of smuggling, and opium and rings, she has never seen or had a
description of the stuff. It is strange, strange--for I went all to
pieces, there, for a minute. It must be, after all, because she is so
ready to take a man on trust. She is so tremendously honest herself,
she won't accept a man's own doubt of himself. But I--I--had a narrow
escape. Strange, too, what a hold she has had on me from the start. I
would have braved it out, lied to a man; I would have laughed it off
with any other woman; but she lifted her eyes, probing for that
everlasting best in me, and I babbled like a fool."
Presently he drew a letter from his pocket. It was an answer to the one
he had written the Judge. It had miscarried at first, and he had
travelled so much the last weeks, it had been forwarded and missed him
repeatedly. He had received it that morning at the Station on the
prairie below the Myers claim. He opened the sheet and re-read it
slowly.
"WASHINGTON, D.C., July 20th, 18--.
"MY DEAR STRATTON:--In response to your letter I want to remind you that
I knew your father, John Stratton, well. He was a strong and capable
man and always a gentleman. I am certainly interested in the career of
his son. I also satisfied myself somewhat as to your standing, before I
came East, because it is my custom to know about my nephew Philip's
friends. I learned nothing of a disparaging nature.
"But in regard to the initial point of your letter, I can only say that
a release from a marriage engagement should depend altogether on the
direct request of the lady.
"Very truly yours,
"SILAS KINGSLEY."
Stratton held the letter a thoughtful interval, then he rose and went
over and laid it on Smith's smouldering fire. He stood watching it
break into flame and curl up like a brown, dead leaf. "But it will
influence him," he said. "He can't help it; it will raise a question."
He turned to untie his fretting horse. "So, Donald, old fellow, there
is light ahead; we are almost out of the woods. A little more
dishonor," he set his foot in the stirrup and swung himself up, "and we
can afford to make a fresh start."
*CHAPTER XVIII*
*WATER-LOGGED*
At Freeport the following winter was severe. Snow lay for weeks,
thawing, freezing, accumulating with every squall that came over from
the mountains, and falling in small avalanches which started landslides
all along the bluff. On some mornings the upper part of the harbor
below Duwamish flats was covered with ice, which the rising tide lifted
and broke into sheets. The logs taken from the water were glazed, and
in still places inside the boom, ice packed solid. And with the unusual
cold a lull in construction settled over the Northwest; there came a
second drop in the prices of exported lumber. Many of the smaller mills
closed under a subsidy. But the Judge, in answer to Forrest's
statements of the situation, advised the cutting down of expenses to a
minimum, and keeping things going, if only to give employment to the
men. He had heard the Puget Sound country was flooded with idle
mechanics, laborers, hundreds of construction hands discharged since the
completion of the Northern Pacific. And of course the prevailing
Eastern panic had in many instances caused the recall of invested
capital. But he was confident that another half-year would see a
pronounced revival; at any rate he would be able to make a trip home by
that time, and he wanted to be on the ground and see conditions for
himself before he came to a final decision.
At the close of January the men still received "reg'lar pay," to quote
Mason, but the books showed that the manager's salary was accumulating
to his credit. Other accounts indicated that the junior partner was
overdrawing. He had his impulses of industry and economy when he tried
to balance a considerable delinquency by spending an interval at the
mills; but he always annulled the results by a yet deeper plunge, and
his only systematic restriction was in deferring to take a house in
town.
Forrest was thinking of Kingsley while he finished his rounds of the
mills. It was at the close of a bleak day; there was an increasing
wind; ragged cloud scurried overhead, the forerunner of the black masses
driving up in the southwest. Philip was presumably in Victoria. He had
not heard from him for a week. "But," he told himself, as he came down
the steps from the landing to the walk, "it's useless to bother the
Judge with this side of it, now. It's as he says, he can't understand
things fully until he is on the ground."
He stopped at the branch to Kingsley's house to speak to the old
watchman, who was stumping up from the lower dock. "Well, Mason," he
said, "it's another blow."
"Ay, sir." The old sailor swung around to look at the running sea. He
knew the ships over the harbor were taking precautions against the
growing storm; stretching an extra hawser, dropping a second and third
anchor, clearing decks. But there was no vessel at the Freeport
wharves; the bark that had sailed that morning left no other receiving.
"Keep the slab-fire low, Mason, and have an eye to the boom."
"Ay, ay, sir."
"And, Mason, go back and put the signal out for the _Success_. Let me
know when she's in sight."
"Ay, sir?" The old sailor's voice took a rising inflection; his
unlovely features worked.
"Yes," said Forrest, "I'm going over to Seattle for the doctor. Little
Si is worse."
He turned then, and went up to the gate. Louise heard him on the steps
and met him at the door. He followed her silently in to that inner room
where little Silas lay. His head was propped high with pillows and the
place sounded with his labored breathing. Forrest stood for a moment
watching him: the heaving of the breast under the loose white gown; the
flutter of the half-closed eyelids; the milky whiteness of the forehead
between the crayon-like brows and rings of tumbled hair. The child was
very lovable; he had always shown his fondness for him in demonstrative,
winning ways; and in the earlier stages of his illness he had called for
him, begging to be carried or rocked, and Forrest had devoted late hours
to him, sharing the mother's vigil; ready with the comfort and security
of his strong arms. Now, while he looked at the unconscious face, this
large-hearted, homeless, home-loving man seemed to feel a small hand on
his heart-strings; the touch tightened when the baby coughed.
He turned to Louise. "I'm going over on the _Success_," he said. "The
doctor will come back with me. Is there anything else I can do?"
"No, unless--you can find Philip."
"I am afraid he is still in Victoria. He would hardly have started to
cross the Straits in this storm."
"No," she assented, "not in this storm." She lifted her hand to her
head in a bewildered way, and turned to her baby with the mechanical
effort of one long worn out with anxiety and watching. But when the
child coughed again, a harder paroxysm, the motherhood leaped to her
eyes. "Paul," she cried, "oh, Paul."
He did not try to answer that appeal; he could not look at her. But he
took the child's medicine from the table and stood for a moment,
thoughtful, irresolute. A man who has the charge of workmen in an
isolated place, out of range of a physician, picks up the rudiments of
medicine and surgery, and presently he went to a stand holding a few
general remedies. He poured a little of the liquid from the bottle he
carried, into an empty vial, and added several drops of ammonia. He
gave the baby a potion from the mixture, lifting the blond head higher,
rearranging the pillows gently, with a woman's touch. He waited a brief
interval, watching the result. "It's a very strong stimulant," he said.
"Only use it every alternate time, or--if the attack is bad. I won't be
longer than I can help."
While he walked down to the store he saw Mason's signal-light on the
wharf, but the little mail steamer, plying between Seattle and a near
port, was not yet in sight, though nearly an hour late. Forrest
unlocked the door and lighted his desk lamp. "There isn't a rowboat on
this beach," he thought. "Nothing but Sing's dugout; and what could she
do in this sea?"
He began to post his books, but the child's face drifted between him and
the open page, and that appeal of the mother's rang an undernote to the
rush and scream of the wind. He laid his pen down and sat staring,
absent, harassed, up at the rafters. A timber creaked; the great
building shook in a heavier gust, and the sea swept with a long hiss and
swash on the beach under the piling. Then presently above all these
noises there came the shrill toot of a whistle.
It was a sound that brought him to his feet. He threw his books into
the safe, lifted his overcoat from the counter, and was about to
extinguish the light, when the door opened and Mason entered with a rush
of sharp air. "She's gone by, sir," he said. "Headlight stove in, sir;
sea smashing on the wheel-house."
The manager's hand dropped from the burner.
"But she answered the signal, Mason; she whistled the landing."
"Ay, sir, an' wore away, sir, er rollin' like er porpoise."
"Well, Mason, it means the dugout. She's on the beach above the float."