Glancing sunlight, striking at him through a nest of tumbled boulders
upon the ridge, woke Babe Deveril. He sat up sharply, stiff and cold
and confused, wondering briefly at finding himself here upon the
mountainside. Lynette was already sitting up, a huddling unit of
discomfort, her arms about her upgathered knees, her hair tousled, her
clothing torn, her eyes showing him that, though she had slept, she,
too, had awaked shivering and unrested. And yet, as he gathered his
wits, she was striving to smile.
"Good morning to you, my friend."
He got stiffly to his feet, stretching his arms up high above his head.
"At least, we're alive yet. That's something, Lynette."
"It's everything!" Emulating him she sprang up, scornfully disregarding
cramped body, her triumphant youth ignoring those little pains which
shot through her as pricking reminders of last night's endeavors. "To
live, to breathe, to be alive ... it's everything!"
"When one thinks back upon the possibilities of last night," he
answered, "the reply is 'Yes.' Good morning, and here's hoping that you
had no end of sweet dreams."
She looked at him curiously.
"I did dream," she said. "Did you?"
"No. When I slept, I slept hard. And your dreams?"
"Were all of two men. Of you and another man, Timber-Wolf, you call
him--Bruce Standing. I heard him call you 'Baby Devil'! That got into
my dreams. I thought that we three...."
She broke off, and still her eyes, fathomless, mysterious, regarded him
strangely.
"Well?" he demanded. "We three?"
She shivered. And, knowing that he had seen, she exclaimed quickly:
"That's because I'm cold! I'm near frozen. Can't we have a fire?"
"But the dream?" he insisted.
"Dreams are nothing by the time they're told," she answered swiftly.
"So why tell them? And the fire?"
"No," he told her, suddenly stubborn, and resentful that he could not
have free entrance into her sleeping-life. "We went without it when we
needed it most; now the sun's up and we don't need it; since, above
everything, there's no breakfast to cook."
"So you woke up hungry, too?"
"Hungry? I was eating my supper when first you showed upon my horizon.
And, what with looking at you or trying to look at you, I let half of
my supper go by me! I'd give a hundred dollars right this minute for
coffee and bacon and eggs!"
"You want a lot for a hundred dollars," she smiled back at him. Her
hands were already busy with her tumbled hair, for always was Lynette
purely feminine to her dainty finger-tips. "I'd give all of that just
for coffee alone."
"Come," said Deveril, "Let's go. Are you ready?"
"To move on? Somewhere, anywhere? And to search for breakfast? Yes; in
a minute."
First, she worked her way back through the brush, down into the creek
bed, and for a little while, as she bathed her face and neck and arms,
and did the most that circumstances permitted at making her morning
toilet, she was lost to his following eyes. Slowly he rolled himself a
cigarette; that, with a man, may take the place of breakfast, serving
to blunt the edge of a gnawing appetite. Long draughts of icy cold
water served her similarly. She stamped her feet and swung her arms and
twisted her body back and forth, striving to drive the cold out and get
her blood to leaping warmly. Then, before coming back to him, she stood
for a long time looking about her.
All the wilderness world was waking; she saw the scampering flash of a
rabbit; the little fellow came to a dead halt in a grassy open space,
and sat up with drooping forepaws and erect ears; she could fancy his
twitching nose as he investigated the morning air to inform himself as
to what scents, pleasurable, friendly, inimical, lay upon it.
"In case he is hungry, after nibbling about half the night," she mused,
"he knows just where to go for his breakfast."
The rabbit flapped his long ears and went about his business, whatever
it may have been, popping into the thicket. There grew in a pretty
grove both willows and wild cherry; beyond them a tall scattering of
cottonwoods; on the rising slope scrub-pines and juniper. And while
she stood there, looking down, she heard some quail calling, and saw
half a dozen sparrows busily beginning office hours, as it were, going
about their day's affairs. And one and all of these little fellows knew
just what he was about, and where to turn to a satisfying menu. When,
returning to Deveril, she confided in him something of her findings,
which would go to indicate that man was a pretty inefficient creature
when stood alongside the creatures of the wild, Deveril retorted:
"Let them eat their fill now; before night we'll be eating them!"
"You haven't even a gun...."
"I could run a scared rabbit to death, I'm that starved! And now
suppose we get out of this."
The sun was striking at the tops of the yellow pines on the distant
ridge; the light was filtering downward; shadows were thinning about
them and even in the ravine below. Walking stiffly, until their bodies
gradually grew warm with the exertion, and always keeping to the
thickest clump of trees or tallest patch of brush, they began to work
their way down into the cañon. The sun ran them a race, but theirs
was the victory; it was still half night in the great cleft among the
mountains when they slid down the last few feet and found more level
land underfoot, and the greensward of the wild-grass meadow fringing
the lower stream. The cañon creek went slithering by them, cold and
glassy-clear, whitening over the riffles, falling musically into the
pools, dimpling and ever ready to break into widening circles, a
smiling, happy stream. And in it, they knew, were trout. They stood for
a moment, catching breath after the steep descent, looking into it.
"I wonder if you have a pin," said Deveril.
She pondered the matter, struck immediately by the aptness of the
suggestion; he could see how she wrinkled her brows as she tried to
remember if possibly she had made use of a pin in getting dressed the
last time.
"I've a hairpin or two left. I wonder if we could make that do?"
"Just watch and see!" he exclaimed joyously.
In putting her tumbled hair straight just now she had discovered two
pins, which, even when her hair had come down about her shoulders, had
happened to catch in a little snarl in the thick tresses; these she had
saved and used in making her morning toilet. Now she took her hair down
again and presented him with the two pins, gathering her hair up in two
thick, loose braids, while with curious eyes he watched her; and as
curiously, the thing done, she watched him busy himself with the pins.
A few paces farther on, creeping forward under the willow branches,
they came to a spot where the creek banks were clear of brush along a
narrow grassy strip, which, however, was screened from the mountainside
by a growth of taller trees. Here Deveril went to work on his
improvised fish-hook. One hairpin he put carefully into his pocket; the
other he bent rudely into the required shape, making an eye in one end
by looping and twisting. The other end, that intended for the hungry
mouth of a greedy trout, he regarded long and without enthusiasm.
"Too blunt, to begin with; next, no barb, too smooth; and, finally, the
thing bends too easily. Hairpins should be made of steel!"
But at least two of the defects could be simply remedied up to a
certain though not entirely satisfactory point. He squatted down and,
employing two hard stones, hammered gently at the malleable wire
until he flattened out the end of it into a thin blade with sharp,
jagged edges. Then, using his pocket-knife, he managed to cut several
little slots in this thin blade, so that there resulted a series of
roughnesses which were not unlike barbs; whereas he could put no great
faith in any one of them holding very securely, at least, taken all
together, they would tend toward keeping his hook, if once taken, from
slipping out so smoothly. He re-bent his pin and suddenly looked up at
her with a flashing grin.
He robbed one of his boots of its string; he cut the first likely
willow wand. Without stirring from his spot he dug in the moist earth
and got his worm. And then, motioning her to be very still, he crept a
few feet farther along the brook, found a pool which pleased him, hid
behind a clump of bushes and gently lowered his baited hook toward the
shadowy surface. And before the worm touched the water, a big trout saw
and leaped and struck ... and did a clean job of snatching the worm off
without having appeared to so much as touch the bent hairpin!
Three quiet sounds came simultaneously: the splash of the falling
fish, a grunt from Deveril, a gasp from Lynette. Deveril, thinking she
was about to speak, glared at her in savage admonition for silence;
she understood and remained motionless. Slowly he crept back to the
spot where he had dug his worm, and scratched about until he had
two more. One of them went promptly to his hook, while he held the
other in reserve. Again he approached his pool, again he lowered his
bait about the bush. This time the offering barely touched the water
before the trout struck again. Now Deveril was ready for him, deftly
manoeuvring his pole; his string tautened, his wallow bent, the fat,
glistening trout swung above the racing water.... Lynette was already
wondering how they were going to cook it!... There was again a splash,
and Deveril stood staring at a silly-looking hairpin, dangling at the
end of an absurd boot-lace. For now the hairpin failed to present the
vaguest resemblance to any kind of a hook; the trout's weight had been
more than sufficient to straighten it out so that the fish slipped off.
Gradually, moving on noiseless feet, the girl withdrew; her last
glimpse of Deveril, before she slipped out of sight among the willows,
showed her his face, grim in its set purpose. He was trying the third
time, and she believed that he would stand there without moving all day
long, if necessary. In the meantime she was done with inactivity and
watching; doing nothing when there was much to be done irked her.
Withdrawn far enough to make her certain that no chance sound made by
her would disturb his trout, she went on through the grove and across
little grassy open spaces flooring the cañon, making her way further
up-stream. When a hundred yards above him, she turned about a tangled
thicket and came upon the creek where it flashed through shallows. All
of her life she had lived in the mountains; as a little girl, many a
day had she followed a stream like this, bickering away down the most
tempting of wild places; and more than once, lying by a tiny clear
pool, had she caught in her hands one of the quick fishes, just to set
him in a little lakelet of her own construction, where she played with
him before letting him go again. To-day ... if she could catch her fish
first! While Deveril, man-like, taking all such responsibilities upon
his own shoulders, cursed silently and achieved nothing beyond loss of
bait and loss of temper!
Up-stream, always keeping close to the merrily musical water, she made
her slow way until she found a likely spot. At the base of a tiny
waterfall was a big smooth rock; the water from above, glassily smooth
in its well-worn channel, struck upon the rock and was divided briefly
into two streams. One of them, the lesser, poured down into a small,
rock-rimmed pool; the other, deflected sharply, sped down another
course, to rejoin its fellow a few feet below the pool.
It was to the pool itself, half shut off from the main current, that
Lynette gave her quickened attention. She crept closer, noiseless,
peeping over. A sudden dark gleam, the quick, nervous steering of a
trout rewarded her. She stood still, making a profound study of what
lay before her; in what the rock-edged pool aided and wherein it would
present difficulties. Scarcely more than a trickle of water poured out
at the lower side; she could hastily pile up a few stones there, and
so construct a wall insurmountable to the trout if minded to escape
down-stream. Then she looked to the far side, where the water slipped
in. She could lay a few broken limbs across the rock there and build up
a rampart of stones and turf upon it, and so deflect nearly all of the
incoming water. Both these things done, she could, if need be, bail the
pool out, and so come with certainty upon whatever fish had blundered
into it. She began to hope that she would find a dozen!
Twice, standing upon the glassy rocks, she slipped; once she got
soaking wet to her knee; another time she saved herself from a thorough
drenching in the ice-cold stream only at the cost of plunging one arm
down into it, elbow-deep. She shivered but kept steadily on.
She heard a bird among the bushes and started, thinking that here came
Deveril; she fancied him with a string of fish in his hand, laughing at
her. Impulsively she called to him.
The close walls of the ravine shut in her voice; the thickets muffled
it; the splash and gurgle of the tumbling water drowned it out. She
stood very still, hushed; now suddenly the silence, the loneliness,
the bigness of the wilderness closed in about her. She looked about
fearfully, half expecting to see men spring out from behind every
boulder or tree trunk. She longed suddenly to see Babe Deveril coming
up along the creek to her. She was tempted to break into a run racing
back to him.
She caught herself up short. All this was only a foolish flurry in
her breast, conjured up by that sudden realization of loneliness when
her quickened voice died away into the whispered hush of the still
solitudes. For an instant that feeling of being alone had overpowered
her, or threatened to do so; then her only thought had been of Babe
Deveril; she could have rushed fairly into his arms, so did her
emotions drive her. Now she found time to puzzle over herself; it
struck her now, for the first time, how she had fled unquestioningly
into this wilderness with a man. A man whom she did not even know.
That hasty headlong act of hers would seem to indicate a trust of a
sort. But did she actually trust Babe Deveril, with those keen, cutting
eyes of his and the way he had of looking at a girl, and the whole of
his reckless and dare-devil personality? Lynette Brooke had not lived
in a cave all of her brief span of life; nor had she grown into slim
girlhood and the full bud of her glorious youth without more than one
look into a mirror. Vapidly vain she was not; but clear-visioned she
was, and she knew and was glad for the vital, vivid beauty which was
hers and thanked God for it. And she glimpsed, if somewhat vaguely,
that to a man like Babe Deveril, taking life lightly, there was no
lure beyond that of red lips and sparkling eyes. How far could she be
sure of him? She went back with slow steps to her trout; she was glad
that Babe Deveril had not heard and come running to her just then. But
when Deveril did come, carrying two gleaming trout, she masked her
misgivings and lifted a laughing face toward his triumphant one.
"We eat, Lynette!" he announced gaily.
Suddenly his eyes warmed to the picture she made, paying swift tribute
to the tousled, flushed beauty of her. His glance left her face and ran
swiftly down her form; she felt suddenly as though her wet clothing
were plastered tight to her.
"You can finish this," she told him swiftly, "if you want to take any
more fish."
"But, look here! Where are you going? Breakfast...."
Her teeth were beginning to chatter.
"I'm going to try to get dry. You can start breakfast or...."
She fled, and called herself a fool for growing scarlet, as she knew
that she did; as though two burning rays had been directed full upon
her back, she could feel his look as she ran from him; she could not
quickly enough vanish from his keen eyes, beyond the thicket. And how
on earth she was going to get dry again until the sun stood high in the
sky, she did not in the least know. She could wring out the free water;
she could make flails of her arms and run up and down until she got
warm.... If only she had a fire; but that would be foolhardy, the smoke
arising to stand a signal for miles of their whereabouts....
And until this moment she had not thought of how they were to convert
freshly caught fish into an edible breakfast! How, without fire? She
began to shiver again, from head to foot now, and, confronted by her
own problem, that of getting warm and dry, she was content to leave all
other solutions to Deveril.
When half an hour later she returned to him, she found him smoking a
cigarette and crouching over a bed of dying coals, whereon certain
tempting morsels lay; Deveril was turning them this way and that; with
the savory odor of the grilling fish there arose from the embers a
whiff of the green sage-leaves which he had plucked at the slope of
the cañon and laid first on his bed of coals. Crisp mountain-trout,
garnished with sage! And plenty of clear, cold, sparkling water to
drink thereafter! Truly a morning repast for king and queen.
"I hope they keep us on the run for a month!" Deveril greeted her. "I
haven't had this much fun for a dozen years!"
"But your fire?" she asked anxiously. "Aren't you afraid? The smoke?"
"Where there's smoke, there's always fire," he told her lightly. "But
when a man's on the dodge, as we are, he can have a fire that gives out
almighty little smoke! It's all bone-dry wood, with only the handful
of sage and a few crisscross willow sticks. Look up, and see how much
smoke you can see!"
He had built his small blaze, ringed about by some rocks, in the heart
of a small grove of trees which stood forty or fifty feet high; he had
got his fire burning with strong, clean flames, from a handful of dry
leaves and twigs; Lynette, looking up, could make out only the faintest
bluish-gray wisp of smoke against the gray-green of the leaves. She
understood; always it was inevitable that they must accept whatever
chances the moment brought them, yet it was not at all likely that
their faint plume of smoke, vanishing among the treetops, would ever
draw the glance of any human eye other than their own.
"I'll tell you ..." began Deveril, and broke short off there, as
she and he, alert and tense once more, reminded that they were
fugitives, listened to a sudden sound disturbing their silence. A sound
unmistakable--a man at no great distance from them, but, fortunately,
upon the farther side of the stream, and thus beyond the double screen
of willows, was breaking his way through the brush. Both Deveril and
Lynette crouched low, peering through the bushes. They could only
make out that the man was coming up-stream. Once they caught a vague,
blurred glimpse of his legs, faded overalls and ragged boots. Then
they lost him entirely. They knew when he stopped and both waited
breathlessly to know if he had come upon some sign of their own trail.
But once more he went on, but now in such silence, as he crossed a
little open spot, that they could scarcely make out a sound. Had it
not been for the willows intervening, they could then have answered
their own question, "Who is it?"--a question just now of supreme
importance, of the importance of life and death. They lay lower; they
strove as never before to catch some glimpse that would tell them what
they wanted to know. The man stopped again; again went on. There was
something guarded about his movements; they felt that he must have
seen their tracks, that he was seeking in a roundabout way to come
unexpectedly upon them. And then, because there was a narrow natural
avenue through the brush, they were given one clear, though fleeting
glimpse, of him ... of his face--a face as tense and watchful as their
own had been ... the face of Mexicali Joe.