WHAT HAPPENED AT THE LAKE
Shortly before dusk on the night following Jerkline Jo's revel in
Ragtown, the empty wagons of her train rumbled to the highest point in
the mountain pass and were drawn up side by side, like an artillery
organization in "battery-front" formation, on the shores of the
mountain lake.
Jo's fireless cooker had been working for her throughout the trip, and
while her bantering skinners cared for the teams and greased the great
axles in preparation for the morrow's journey, the girl made ready the
evening meal.
At last supper was over, and, as was their custom, the men helped her
wash the dishes. Thus the task became a short one. The men settled
down to their smoking about the crackling camp fire, and as light still
remained at this high altitude, Jo decided on a stroll along the lake
shore.
All about stood the tall peaks, their crests snow-mantled. Over the
level lowlands about the lake the silent forests of pine and fir swept
away on all sides. The lake, some two miles in length, lay like an
opal in the palm of the mountains, flashing fiery colors that it stole
from the sunset clouds above it.
The air was chill and quiet. Not a ripple disturbed the surface of the
tranquil lake, so cold and remote. Jo buttoned her coat for warmth and
trudged on away from the camp, watching flocks of chattering mudhens
and mallards that fed on a long spaghettilike growth which grew on the
lake bottom and floated to the surface.
She walked for a mile before she turned. She was thinking of the
previous night, and of the banker's unexpected proposal of marriage
when she had accepted his invitation for supper after the dance. She
had known Dalworth only a short time, and his ardent wooing had come as
a distinct surprise.
Now she had turned back toward the winking eye of the camp fire, which
threw a brilliant dagger of light across the now dark lake. In the
stream of fiery color, water fowl bobbed about grotesquely. Close at
hand was a grove of pines, a few trees extending down to the shore,
though for the most part the land immediately about the lake was an
open, grassy meadow. She heard a slight rustling in among the pines as
she passed them.
She had not strapped on her cartridge belt and six-shooter when leaving
camp. In fact, she seldom carried the weapon, but always kept it
hanging close to her hand in the wagon. Now and then she strapped it
on when in Ragtown, for of late an element had been sifting in with
which she was not familiar. It represented the riffraff from the
cities--men who knew nothing of construction camps and were unaware of
the fact that she, because of old associations and a thorough
understanding of frontier men and frontier life, could enter a dance
hall and still be respected and absolutely safe from harm. One of
these had put an arm about her one night, and promptly had been
rewarded with a blow on the nose; for Jo did not slap when she
administered rebuke, but punched expertly and powerfully, as does a
man. Next moment the offender had been pitched bodily into the street
by as many rough hands as could lay hold of him. Only Jo's
intervention had saved the man from being kicked into insensibility.
Once again she heard the rustling, and wished that she had her gun. It
was only some animals, she told herself--a coon or a skunk, or perhaps
a wild cat or coyote prowling about to spring upon an unsuspecting
mudhen that had swam too far inshore. Still, a strange dread seized
her, and she quickened her step.
Again she heard the rustle and the sound of a soft footfall. No animal
would have produced that single, rather heavy tread. She glanced
apprehensively toward the dark trees, and it seemed to her that she saw
a black upright bulk move stealthily from one trunk to another.
Then two things happened at once. From the pines stealthily emerged
the figure of a man--there was no mistaking it. But in the same
instant there came a call from close at hand:
"Jo! Jo! Where are you?"
A feeling of vast relief came over the girl as she recognized the
caressing voice of the man from Wild-cat Hill. Instantly the figure on
her left faded; the blur of it became one with the shadows of the trees.
"Hiram!" she called gladly. "Here I am! Hurry!"
The sound of running feet answered her, and in a little while the big
form of Hiram Hooker reached her side.
Jo was breathing weakly. She could not remember of ever before having
been so near a panic or fright. What had caused the unfamiliar feeling
now was a mystery to her--unless the suggested menace in the sight of
the dark, skulking figure had been augmented by the ghostly quietude of
the black forest and the unfriendly solitude of the cold mountain lake.
"Oh, Hiram!" she cried. "I'm so glad you're here! Hiram--I--I believe
I'm sc-scared."
How it happened neither of them knew, for all at once his powerful arms
were about her, and she had crept into them as less courageous women
instinctively seek the protection of the stronger sex. His arms
tightened and she pressed closer to him as if she were cold and seeking
warmth. Hiram was ablaze with love for her and exultation. He lifted
her bodily from the ground, and her lips quivered against his.
"Oh, Hiram! Hiram!" she cried then as if in terror. "What am I doing?
What is the matter with me? You kissed me, Hiram, and--and I let you!
I must have been terribly frightened. I--I seem to have lost my
reason."
"No! No! Don't say that!" begged Hiram huskily. "Jo, I love you!
You love me, Jo. Say you love me."
She hid her face against his breast and said nothing, but her shoulders
shook.
"Jo, say it!" he pleaded. "Don't torment me! You must love me. You
came to my arms when trouble threatened. Tell me that you love me, Jo!"
She only trembled and shivered as if cold.
"Tell me, Jo! Don't torture me. Tell me that you love me!"
There was a stifled sob; then, in muffled tones:
"You big, blind country jake! If you don't know that I'm telling you
that with every nerve and fiber of my being, you deserve torture!"
The forest and the lake came together in Hiram's vision, then vanished.
There was no lake, no trees, no sentinel peaks about them.
"But, Jo," said Hiram as they walked back slowly toward the camp, his
arm about her waist, "I can't marry you. I've got nothing--I'm only
your skinner. You--why, your profits every month run up into four
figures. Oh, I wish you hadn't a cent! I wish Drummond had beaten us
out!"
"What foolish talk!" she said scornfully. "What is money? I care so
little for money, Hiram. It was only to try and preserve from total
collapse all my hard-working, indomitable, old foster father had built
up so patiently that I undertook the freighting job. I've made
money--lots of it--and if you think you and the rest of the boys
haven't had a big share in my success you're all wrong. We'll keep on
skinning them to Ragtown till the steel is laid; then I mean to do
something handsome by the men who have been so loyal to me, and sell
the outfit. Then"--she sighed--"then something else," she finished.
"But that's neither here nor there," Hiram pointed out. "I'm penniless
compared with you. I couldn't marry a girl who had money while I have
nothing to offer her. I'm too much of a man for that. Why, everything
that I have I owe to you--even the education I am so slowly acquiring."
"Oh, I won't listen to such talk, Hiram! Most of my money is invested
in Tweet's project, anyway. We'll let him handle it, and you and I
will continue to study and improve ourselves. Then when Tweet begins
to pay us dividends we'll travel, and----"
"On your money! Not in a thousand years!"
"You're bull-headed about a trifle, Hiram," she accused.
"Jo," he said after a thoughtful pause, "don't wear that blue silk
dress and those diamonds and have your hair fixed that way any more.
It--it makes me feel hollowlike."
They had almost forgotten the man in the pines, there was so much else
to think about now. Jo was almost ready to confess that she had
imagined the entire incident--that she had heard only a prowling animal
and had seen the shadow of a shrub. Hiram, on his part, was too
triumphant over the thought that he, only a few months from the
backwoods of Mendocino County, had captured the heart of this splendid
girl, whom men praised and admired and swore by throughout all the
desert region.
Still the man was stubborn. In him was a knight-errantry which forbade
him to marry a girl and profit by the rewards of her pluck, energy, and
business courage. If he could not make money to offer her, he must do
something big for her, must win for her some conflict that threatened
her fortunes, must make himself worthy of her by some great service.
Hiram still kept his boyish dreams of the adventure girl who had
beckoned him from the forests to deeds of emprise. He had found his
adventure girl, but he would not consider that he had won her yet. He
little knew that night that his opportunity was close at hand, and that
the shadow which the coming event had cast before it had lurked there
in the lakeside pines.