I
"My, nothing's the matter with the world to-day! It's so good it almost
hurts."
She raised her head from the white petticoat she was ironing, and gazed
out of the doorway and down the valley with a warm light in her eyes and a
glowing face. The snow-tipped mountains far above and away, the
fir-covered, cedar-ranged foothills, and, lower down, the wonderful maple
and ash woods, with their hundred autumn tints, all merging to one soft,
red tone, the roar of the stream tumbling down the ravine from the
heights, the air that braced the nerves like wine--it all seemed to be
part of her, the passion of life corresponding to the passion of living in
her.
After watching the scene dreamily for a moment, she turned and laid the
iron she had been using upon the hot stove near. Taking up another, she
touched it with a moistened finger to test the heat, and, leaning above
the table again, passed it over the linen for a few moments, smiling at
something that was in her mind. Presently she held the petticoat up,
turned it round, then hung it in front of her, eying it with critical
pleasure.
"_To-morrow!_" she said, nodding at it. "You won't be seen, I suppose, but
_I'll_ know you're nice enough for a queen--and that's enough to know."
She blushed a little, as though some one had heard her words and was
looking at her, then she carefully laid the petticoat over the back of a
chair. "No queen's got one whiter, if I do say it," she continued, tossing
her head.
In that, at any rate, she was right, for the water of the mountain springs
was pure, the air was clear, and the sun was clarifying; and little
ornamented or frilled as it was, the petticoat was exquisitely soft and
delicate. It would have appealed to more eyes than a woman's.
"To-morrow!" She nodded at it again and turned again to the bright world
outside. With arms raised and hands resting against the timbers of the
doorway, she stood dreaming. A flock of pigeons passed with a whir not far
away, and skirted the woods making down the valley. She watched their
flight abstractedly, yet with a subconscious sense of pleasure. Life--they
were Life, eager, buoyant, belonging to this wild region, where still the
heart could feel so much at home, where the great world was missed so
little.
Suddenly, as she gazed, a shot rang out down the valley, and two of the
pigeons came tumbling to the ground, a stray feather floating after. With
a startled exclamation she took a step forward. Her brain became confused
and disturbed. She had looked out on Eden, and it had been ravaged before
her eyes. She had been thinking of to-morrow, and this vast prospect of
beauty and serenity had been part of the pageant in which it moved. Not
the valley alone had been marauded, but that "To-morrow," and all it meant
to her.
Instantly the valley had become clouded over for her, its glory and its
grace despoiled. She turned back to the room where the white petticoat lay
upon the chair, but stopped with a little cry of alarm.
A man was standing in the centre of the room. He had entered stealthily by
the back door, and had waited for her to turn round. He was haggard and
travel-stained, and there was a feverish light in his eyes. His fingers
trembled as they adjusted his belt, which seemed too large for him.
Mechanically he buckled it tighter.
"You're Jenny Long, ain't you?" he asked. "I beg pardon for sneakin' in
like this, but they're after me, some ranchers and a constable--one o' the
Riders of the Plains. I've been tryin' to make this house all day. You're
Jenny Long, ain't you?"
She had plenty of courage, and, after the first instant of shock, she had
herself in hand. She had quickly observed his condition, had marked the
candor of the eye and the decision and character of the face, and doubt of
him found no place in her mind. She had the keen observation of the
dweller in lonely places, where every traveller has the potentialities of
a foe, while the door of hospitality is opened to him after the custom of
the wilds. Year in, year out, since she was a little girl and came to live
here with her Uncle Sanger when her father died--her mother had gone
before she could speak--travellers had halted at this door, going North or
coming South, had had bite and sup, and bed, maybe, and had passed on,
most of them never to be seen again. More than that, too, there had been
moments of peril, such as when, alone, she had faced two wood-thieves with
a revolver, as they were taking her mountain-pony with them, and herself
had made them "hands-up," and had marched them into a prospector's camp
five miles away.
She had no doubt about the man before her. Whatever he had done, it was
nothing dirty or mean--of that she was sure.
"Yes, I'm Jenny Long," she answered. "What have you done? What are they
after you for?"
[Illustration: "THEY SHOT ME AN' HURT ME"]
"Oh! to-morrow," he answered--"to-morrow I got to git to Bindon. It's life
or death. I come from prospecting two hundred miles up North. I done it in
two days and a half. My horse dropped dead--I'm near dead myself. I tried
to borrow another horse up at Clancey's, and at Scotton's Drive, but they
didn't know me, and they bounced me. So I borrowed a horse off Weigall's
paddock, to make for here--to you. I didn't mean to keep that horse. Hell,
I'm no horse-stealer! But I couldn't explain to them, except that I had to
git to Bindon to save a man's life. If people laugh in your face, it's no
use explainin'. I took a roan from Weigall's, and they got after me. 'Bout
six miles up they shot at me an' hurt me."
She saw that one arm hung limp at his side and that his wrist was wound
with a red bandana.
She started forward. "Are you hurt bad? Can I bind it up or wash it for
you? I've got plenty of hot water here, and it's bad letting a wound get
stale."
He shook his head. "I washed the hole clean in the creek below. I doubled
on them. I had to go down past your place here, and then work back to be
rid of them. But there's no telling when they'll drop onto the game, and
come back for me. My only chance was to git to you. Even if I had a horse,
I couldn't make Bindon in time. It's two days round the gorge by trail. A
horse is no use now--I lost too much time since last night. I can't git to
Bindon to-morrow in time, if I ride the trail."
"The river?" she asked, abruptly.
"It's the only way. It cuts off fifty mile. That's why I come to you."
She frowned a little, her face became troubled, and her glance fell on his
arm nervously. "What've I got to do with it?" she asked, almost sharply.
"Even if this was all right"--he touched the wounded arm--"I couldn't take
the rapids in a canoe. I don't know them, an' it would be sure death.
That's not the worst, for there's a man at Bindon would lose his
life--p'r'aps twenty men--I dunno; but one man sure. To-morrow, it's go or
stay with him. He was good--Lord, but he was good!--to my little gal years
back. She'd only been married to me a year when he saved her, riskin' his
own life. No one else had the pluck. My little gal, only twenty she was,
an' pretty as a picture, an' me fifty miles away when the fire broke out
in the hotel where she was. He'd have gone down to hell for a friend, an'
he saved my little gal. I had her for five years after that. That's why I
got to git to Bindon to-morrow. If I don't, I don't want to see to-morrow.
I got to go down the river to-night."
She knew what he was going to ask her. She knew he was thinking what all
the North knew, that she was the first person to take the Dog Nose Rapids
in a canoe, down the great river scarce a stone's-throw from her door; and
that she had done it in safety many times. Not in all the West and North
were there a half dozen people who could take a canoe to Bindon, and they
were not here. She knew that he meant to ask her to paddle him down the
swift stream, with its murderous rocks, to Bindon. She glanced at the
white petticoat on the chair, and her lips tightened. To-morrow--to-morrow
was as much to her here as it would be to this man before her, or the man
he would save at Bindon.
"What do you want?" she asked, hardening her heart.
"Can't you see? I want you to hide me here till to-night. There's a full
moon, an' it would be as plain goin' as by day. They told me about you up
North, and I said to myself, 'If I git to Jenny Long, an' tell her about
my friend at Bindon, an' my little gal, she'll take me down to Bindon in
time.' My little gal would have paid her own debt if she'd ever had the
chance. She didn't--she's lying up on Mazy Mountain. But one woman'll do a
lot for the sake of another woman. Say, you'll do it, won't you? If I
don't git there by to-morrow noon, it's no good."
She would not answer. He was asking more than he knew. Why should she be
sacrificed? Was it her duty to pay the "little gal's debt," to save the
man at Bindon? To-morrow was to be the great day in her own life. The one
man in all the world was coming to marry her to-morrow. After four years'
waiting, after a bitter quarrel in which both had been to blame, he was
coming from the mining town of Selby to marry her to-morrow.
"What will happen? Why will your friend lose his life if you don't get to
Bindon?"
"By noon to-morrow, by twelve o'clock noon; that's the plot; that's what
they've schemed. Three days ago, I heard. I got a man free from trouble
North--he was no good, but I thought he ought to have another chance, and
I got him free. He told me of what was to be done at Bindon. There'd been
a strike in the mine, an' my friend had took it in hand with
knuckle-dusters on. He isn't the kind to fell a tree with a jack-knife.
Then three of the strikers that had been turned away--they was the
ringleaders--they laid a plan that'd make the devil sick. They've put a
machine in the mine, an' timed it, an' it'll go off when my friend comes
out of the mine at noon to-morrow."
Her face was pale now, and her eyes had a look of pain and horror. Her
man--him that she was to marry--was the head of a mine also at Selby,
forty miles beyond Bindon, and the horrible plot came home to her with
piercing significance.
"Without a second's warning," he urged, "to go like that, the man that was
so good to my little gal, an' me with a chance to save him, an' others
too, p'r'aps. You won't let it be. Say, I'm pinnin' my faith to you.
I'm--"
Suddenly he swayed. She caught him, held him, and lowered him gently in a
chair. Presently he opened his eyes. "It's want o' food, I suppose," he
said. "If you've got a bit of bread and meat--I must keep up."
She went to a cupboard, but suddenly turned toward him again. Her ears had
caught a sound outside in the underbrush. He had heard also, and he half
staggered to his feet.
"Quick--in here!" she said, and, opening a door, pushed him inside. "Lie
down on my bed, and I'll bring you vittles as quick as I can," she added.
Then she shut the door, turned to the ironing-board, and took up the iron,
as the figure of a man darkened the doorway.
"Hello, Jinny, fixin' up for to-morrow?" the man said, stepping inside,
with a rifle under his arm and some pigeons in his hand.
She nodded and gave him an impatient, scrutinizing glance. His face had a
fatuous kind of smile.
"Been celebrating the pigeons?" she asked, dryly, jerking her head toward
the two birds, which she had seen drop from her Eden skies a short time
before.
"I only had one swig of whiskey, honest Injun!" he answered. "I s'pose I
might have waited till to-morrow, but I was dead-beat. I got a bear over
by the Ten-mile Reach, and I was tired. I ain't so young as I used to be,
and, anyhow, what's the good? What's ahead of me? You're going to git
married to-morrow after all these years we bin together, and you're going
down to Selby from the mountains, where I won't see you, not once in a
blue moon. Only that old trollop, Mother Massy, to look after me."
"Come down to Selby and live there. You'll be welcome by Jake and me."
He stood his gun in the corner and, swinging the pigeons in his hand,
said: "Me live out of the mountains! Don't you know better than that? I
couldn't breathe, and I wouldn't want to breathe. I've got my shack here,
I got my fur business, and they're still fond of whiskey up North!" He
chuckled to himself, as he thought of the illicit still farther up the
mountain behind them. "I make enough to live on, and I've put a few
dollars by, though I won't have so many after to-morrow, after I've given
you a little pile, Jinny."
"P'r'aps there won't be any _to-morrow_, as you expect," she said,
slowly.
The old man started. "What! you and Jake ain't quarrelled again? You ain't
broke it off at the last moment, same as before? You ain't had a letter
from Jake?" He looked at the white petticoat on the chair-back, and shook
his head in bewilderment.
"I've had no letter," she answered. "I've had no letter from Selby for a
month. It was all settled then, and there was no good writing, when he was
coming to-morrow with the minister and the license. Who do you think'd be
postman from Selby here? It must have cost him ten dollars to send the
last letter."
"Then what's the matter? I don't understand," the old man urged,
querulously. He did not want her to marry and leave him, but he wanted no
more troubles; he did not relish being asked awkward questions by every
mountaineer he met as to why Jenny Long didn't marry Jake Lawson.
"There's only one way that I can be married to-morrow," she said, at last,
"and that's by you taking a man down the Dog Nose Rapids to Bindon
to-night."