CONVERGING TRAILS
Beulah Harris raised her arms above her head and drank in the fresh
mountain air that flooded through the open window. A smoky red, with
brighter shafts of yellow behind, streamed up from the eastern sky
and sent a glow of burnt-orange colour through her bedroom. The girl
stretched her spread fingers to the limit of their reach, and with
extended toes sought the iron bars at the foot of the bed, filling
her lungs with the fresh foothill ozone. Then she dropped her hands,
palm upward, with the backs of her finger-tips resting on her eyes,
and felt that it was good to be alive.
They had been great times--wonderful times--these weeks spent in the
freedom and harmony of the Arthurses' household. Mr. and Mrs.
Arthurs--Uncle Fred and Aunt Lilian, as she now called them--had
opened their hearts and their home to Beulah from the first. Indeed,
the girl was often conscious of their gaze upon her, and at times she
would look up quickly and surprise a strange, wistful look of
yearning in their eyes--a look that they tried very hard to hide from
her. They wanted to leave her free to live her own life--to shape her
career, for a time at least, wholly in accordance with her impulses.
And such a life as she had lived! Arthurs had at once placed a horse
at her disposal, and with a fierce delight at the leap she was taking
through conventions she swung her right leg over the saddle and sat
to place like any man. Although born and raised on a farm, horseback
riding was to her something of a novelty, and the assumption of the
masculine position was a positive epoch in her career. How the people
of Plainville would have been scandalized if they could have
witnessed her shocking familiarity with a horse! She thought of an
English girl who had been cut by the good society of Plainville
because she dared to ride like a biped instead of a mermaid. And she
laughed in a wild exultant freedom, while the wind whipped her hair
about her shoulders, and she felt her mount firm beneath her as they
cantered across the brown foothills.
Such hills they were! In her native plains they would have been
mountains of themselves, wonders of Nature to point out to strangers
and to hold in a kind of awe across the country-side, but here they
were foothills, mere fragments dropped from the trowel of the Builder
as He reared the majestic Rockies behind. And though she often in the
early morning, or at sunset, or when the moon was full and white,
feasted her eyes and her soul on the cold splendour of the mighty
range, it was to the warm brown foothills, with their stubbling of
little trees and their solemn warts of grey-green rock, that her
heart turned with something of human affection. At first Uncle Fred,
or Aunt Lilian, or, a little later, one of the two cowboys rode with
her on her expeditions, but her prairie sense of direction quickly
adapted itself to her new surroundings, and she soon learned to keep
a keen eye for the precipitous cut-banks that drop sheer from a level
plain and lie as unsuspected in the saffron sunlight as a coyote
among the ripened willows. There were quicksands, too--spots where
the water sprang from the hillside in a crystal stream and in a few
yards soaked into the kneady earth as in a sponge--but all these
places were fenced; even in Alberta, where cattle grow like rabbits
on the range, the paving of sink-holes with beef steers is an
expensive expedient. So Beulah quickly got her foothill sense, and in
a week was riding, care-free and exultant, across the ranges as her
heart listed or her horse preferred.
One morning, just as the first grey of dawn mottled the darkness of
her chamber, Beulah heard her door open, and through the uncertain
light she discerned Arthurs gently entering with a rifle in his hand.
She sat up, alert, but not afraid; the tingling health in her veins
left no place for fear and suffered no foolishness on the part of her
nervous system.
"What is it, Uncle Fred?" she whispered.
"H-s-h," he cautioned. "You know we have been losing calves with the
timber wolves? Well, there are two of the murderers just across from
the corral. I thought you might want to see them."
In an instant her feet were on the floor, and, hand in hand, she and
Arthurs stole to the window. At first her eyes could distinguish
nothing in the darkness, but by following Arthurs' index finger she
at last located two gaunt, shaggy creatures a little way up the
hillside beyond the corral, and a couple of hundred yards from the
house.
"However did you know they were there?" she whispered. "You must have
cat's eyes. I could hardly see them when you pointed them out."
"Not cat's eyes, Beulah," he answered. "Just rancher's eyes. I heard
the horses snorting, and I fancied there were visitors. Now, will you
take first shot?"
"Oh, that would be a shame. They would get away, and besides, I might
kill a horse."
"Well, won't press it this time," said Arthurs, "because I have a
little personal score to settle with these fellows. I guess I have
about five hundred dollars invested in each of them."
The wolves were moving leisurely about on the hillside, showing no
disposition to run away, but apparently afraid to approach closer to
the ranch buildings. Arthurs leaned his rifle across the window sill
and took steady aim, while the girl held her breath with excitement.
Then there was a quick flash, that shut the scene momentarily from
their eyes; the next moment they saw one of the wolves leap into the
air and fall, a sprawling mass, upon the ground, while the other
darted with the speed of a greyhound toward the neighbouring bushes.
Arthurs followed him with a bullet, but even so fine a marksman could
have found him only by chance in that uncertain light.
"Well, I guess there's a widow in Wolfville this morning," said
Arthurs, as he leisurely threw the discharged cartridge from the
barrel. "My apologies, Miss Beulah, for this somewhat unconventional
call and the interruption of your beauty sleep."
But Beulah was standing, wrapped in admiration. "Oh, Uncle Fred," she
exclaimed. "You're just wonderful. If I could only shoot like that!"
"It's all a matter of training," he told her. "Of course, you must
have good eyes and steady nerves, but you have those already. The
rifle is yours whenever you want it, and all the ammunition you can
carry. There's just one stipulation--for the first week shoot only at
foothills, and, remember, aim low."
So Beulah became a rifle enthusiast, and it astonished her how
rapidly she improved in marksmanship. With a little instruction from
Arthurs and the cowboys in the matter of sighting and holding her
weapon, she developed quickly from a stage of dangerous uncertainty
in her gunnery to one of almost expert accuracy. Then she made of the
rifle a companion on her horseback excursions, to the destruction of
gophers, rabbits, and even a badger and a coyote. It was a brave day
when she rode into the corral with a coyote strung across her saddle.
The river near by teemed with trout, and the girl soon caught the
fascination of the angler. Mrs. Arthurs had a pair of high rubber
boots, which she used when she herself went whipping the blue water,
and, anchored in these as far out as she dared go into the
gravel-bottomed stream, the girl laced the cold current back and
forth. And the wild exultation of her first bite! The fish darted up
and down stream, pulling out line faster than she could reel it in,
and Beulah, in her excitement, waded deeper into the stream as she
followed the quivering line. But mountain streams are treacherous;
one step too far plunged her into twenty feet of water, and the next
moment she was spinning round and round in the current. She had
learned to swim a few strokes in the creek on her father's farm, and
her meagre skill now stood her in good stead, for she was able to
keep afloat until the current threw her against a gravel bar that
jutted into the river. She dragged herself ashore, very wet, and of a
sudden, very frightened, and sat down on the warm stones. It was here
that she recorded another resolution; she would learn to swim--not a
feeble stroke or two, but to be master of this river which had so
nearly mastered her. "I will do it," she said. "I will swim it across
and back, if it takes till December, and--bur-r-r-rh--it's cold
enough now." Then it occurred to her that there was no better time to
start than the present. She looked out a place where the current was
not too strong, and where there were no treacherous rock-splits in
the bottom, spread her wet clothing to dry in the sun, and for an
hour fought the cold current at its own game.
It is not recorded how it came about, but Arthurs passed the word
among the ranch hands that a certain stretch of river bank was sacred
from all intrusion.
But it was in the life of the home, even more than in the joyous
freedom of the out-of-doors, that Beulah found her great delight. The
Arthurs, she knew, were wealthy--many times richer than her father,
who passed as a wealthy man among the farmers of Plainville. But with
the Arthurs wealth was merely an incident--a pleasant but by no means
essential by-product of their lives. They lived simply, but well;
they worked honestly, but did not slave; and in all their living and
working they shed a kindliness and courtesy that communicated itself
to all with whom they came in contact. The cowboys, Beulah soon
discovered, were as unlike the cowboys of fiction and of her
imagination as a Manitoba steer is unlike his Alberta brother; they
did not carry revolvers, nor swagger in high boots, nor rip the air
with their profanity; and their table manners reminded her of George
and Harry Grant, and the Grants were outstanding examples of right
living in the Plainville district. And Mrs. Arthurs, gentle and kind
in all her doings, and yet firm and strong and calm, she was--such a
woman, Beulah told herself, as her own mother might have been, had
her soul not been crushed under a load of unceasing labour. But, most
of all, it was to Fred Arthurs that the heart of the young girl
turned. Whether he sat over his desk at his letters, or dispensed
hospitality at his table (for all who passed up or down the valley,
as a matter of course, stopped for a meal at the Arthurses), or
cantered across the foothills, or shouted behind his lagging herds
(such shouting as it was, fit to split the canyons!}, or played ball
with the boys in the evening, or discussed theology with the
travelling missionary, or philosophy with his book-worm neighbour
from across the river, or read poetry with his wife on the Sunday
afternoons, or sang with his great voice in the mellow, yellow
eventide, or--most of all--when he looked at Beulah with his fine
eyes, and she caught the mirrored reflection of the hunger in his
soul, she felt that here was a man who had lived his life to the
uttermost and would go on living it through all eternity. She only
half guessed what his thoughts toward her were--she did not know that
Fred and Lilian Arthurs had at last agreed that they could do better
than leave their wealth to charity, and that a new will was soon to
be drawn--but to her he seemed pure gold, and a gentleman to his last
gesture. And she vowed one night that if ever she met a single man
like Fred Arthurs she would marry him although all the canons and
conventions of Christendom stood between them.
And then, quite unexpected, it came upon her, and thrilled her frame
from toe to temple. Jim Travers! It had been in the background of her
mind for months, the centre of the subconscious processes which
culminated in this revelation. Yes, Fred Arthurs at twenty-five must
have been such a man as Jim Travers. Jim Travers at fifty would be
such a man as Fred Arthurs. She was absolutely sure of it. Jim was
living his own life, seeking out that which was worth while, culling
the incidental from the essential, just as Fred Arthurs must have
done. She remembered with sudden joy how Jim had held a little
kindness to her of greater moment than the impatient engine in the
plough-field; the scores of little labours he had undertaken, not as
a sacrifice, but as a privilege--as his contribution to human
happiness. She would marry Jim Travers. The strange part of it was
her sudden certainty that she should marry him. She found herself
enveloped in a flame of possession, a feeling that he was hers--hers
now, this minute, and hers for ever. Beulah was a fatalist, although
she had never analyzed her own beliefs enough to know it, but she
knew that Destiny had linked her life with his and that Destiny would
not be balked. Her mind had been feeling its way, through the
darkness of months, to this sudden ecstasy, but now that she had
reached it she felt that it could never, never fail her. Her sense of
possession, of mergement, was complete; she felt that already their
souls had mingled irrevocably and indistinguishably.
The arrival of her mother at the Arthurses' ranch had brought fresh
joy to Beulah's life. She saw the colour coming back to the old face,
the frame straightening up a little, the light rekindling in the eye,
the spring returning to the instep. She had not thought that her
mother, after twenty-five years of unprotesting submission, had still
the nerve to place a limit on that submission, and the discovery had
surprised and delighted her. True, Mary Harris let it be known that
she was only on a visit, and in due course would return to her home;
but Beulah knew the die had been cast, and things could never again
be quite as they were. And Beulah told her secret, and her mother
just kissed her and let a tear or two fall in her hair.
So this morning, as the girl stretched her young limbs, rounding with
life and energy, and the burnt-orange glow of sunrise suffused the
room and lit the pink tissues of her slender fingers, she rested in
the deep peace which, ever since her revelation, had enveloped her
about. For a minute she let her mind dwell on the picture she carried
in her brain, until the association became too keen and threatened to
overwhelm her from very tenderness; then she sprang from her bed,
and, flipping the window-blind to the top, drank in the beauty of the
valley through the open window. Her bedroom had windows both to the
east and the west; and it was her custom to awaken early and feast on
the glory as it surged up the valley, and then, turning, watch the
long waves of light sink slowly down the white mountains. And this
morning, when she thought the first beams must be gilding the highest
peaks, she turned to the westward window and saw the light playing
under a Chinook arch across a segment of sky so soft and near she
could almost feel it with extended fingers. And then a sound caught
her ear, and up the trail she saw two men on horseback, a mounted
policeman and another, and behind them other men driving in a buggy.
By intuition Beulah knew that a mishap had occurred. The Arthurses'
ranch was the first abode of real civilization on the way out from
the mountains, and it was nothing unusual for a lumberman with a
chopped foot, or a prospector caught in sliding rock, or a
river-driver crushed between logs, or a hunter the victim of his own
marksmanship, to come limping or riding down the trail to this haven
of first aid. Quickly she drew on her simple clothing and hurried
downstairs, but Arthurs was already at the door. The little party
came into the yard, and the policeman rode up to the door. The other
horseman sat with his back to the house; his hands were chained
together in front of him.
"Good-morning, Sergeant Grey," said Arthurs. "You're early out."
The sergeant saluted. The salutation was intended for Arthurs, but at
the moment the policeman's eye fell on Beulah, and even the
discipline of the Force could not prevent a momentary turning of the
head.
"I've a badly hurt man here," he said, "a man who will need your
hospitality and care for some days. There was a shooting up the
valley last night. His father is here, too, unhurt physically, but on
the verge of collapse, if I am not mistaken."
"We will bring both of them in at once," said Arthurs. "Beulah, will
you call Lilian, and your mother, too? They may be needed. But who is
the third?" he continued, turning to Grey.
"A prisoner. It seems the older man overpowered him. Now let us get
this poor fellow in."
The policeman beckoned and Harris drove the buggy up to the door.
Arthurs glanced at him with a casual "Good-morning," but the next
instant his eyes were riveted on the visitor. "John Harris!" he
exclaimed, taking a great stride forward and extending his strong
arm. "Man, John, I'm glad to see you, but not in these troubles."
Harris took his hand in a silent clasp, and there was a warmth in it
that set his heart beating as it had not for years. "It's hard,
Fred," he managed to say in a dry voice, "but it's good to have you
by."
Arthurs bent over Allan, who was half sitting, half lying, in the
buggy. His face was sapped and grey in the growing light. Tenderly
the three men lifted him out. "Take him straight upstairs," said
Arthurs. "It will save moving him again." Both spare-rooms in the
house were occupied, but Arthurs led the way into Beulah's, and they
laid the wounded boy on the white bed.
Arthurs heard Beulah in the hall. "Take off his clothes, Grey," he
said, and turned to the doorway. "Where's your mother, Beulah?" he
asked in a low voice, closing the bedroom door behind him.
"Dressing." The girl looked in his face, and drew back with a little
cry. "What's the matter, Uncle Fred? What's wrong?"
"A friend of mine has been hurt, and an old friend of your mother's.
She must not see him just now. You will arrange that?"
"Yes. But I must see him--I must help."
Beulah hurried to the room where her mother was rapidly dressing, "A
man has been hurt, mother," she said, with suppressed excitement. "We
need hot water. Will you start a fire in the range?"
Mary Harris mistook Beulah's emotion for natural sympathy over a
suffering creature, and hurried to the kitchen. Mrs. Arthurs was
whispering with her husband in the hall, but a moment later joined
Mary at the range.
Then Beulah entered the room. The policeman was speaking to Arthurs.
"I must go into town now with my prisoner," he was saying. "I will
send out a doctor at once, and in the meantime I know you will do
everything possible."
Beulah turned her eyes to the bed. A man was lying there, and an old
man was sitting beside it. At the second glance she recognized him,
but in an instant she had herself under control. She walked with a
steady step to the bed and looked for a full minute in her brother's
face. Then she looked at her father.
"What have you done to him?" she said.
He threw out his hand feebly. "You do well to ask me that," he said.
"I take all the blame." He raised his face slowly until his eyes met
hers. They were not the eyes she had known. They were the eyes of a
man who had been crushed, who had been powdered between the wheels of
Fate. The old masterful quality, the old indomitable will that
stirred her anger and admiration were gone, and in their place were
coals of sorrow and ashes of defeat. For a moment she held back;
then, with arms outstretched, she fell upon her father's breast.
And then he felt his strength return. He drew her to him as all that
remained in the world; crushed her to him; then, very gently,
released her a little...He found his fingers threading her fine hair,
as they had loved to do when she was a little child.
She sank to her knees beside him, and at last she looked up in his
face. "Forgive me, my father," she whispered.
He kissed her forehead and struggled with his voice. "We all make
mistakes, Beulah," he said. "I have made mine this twenty-five years,
and there--there is the price!"
His words turned Beulah's thought to Allan, and the necessity for
action brought her to her feet. "We must save him," she cried. "We
must, and we will! Is the policeman gone? We must have the best
doctors from Calgary." Looking about she found that Grey and Arthurs
had left the room. They had slipped out to leave father and child
alone with their emotion, but she found them at the front of the
house.
She seized the policeman by the arm. "You must get us a doctor--the
best doctor in the country," she pled. "We will spare nothing--"
"My guest, Miss Harris, Sergeant Grey," said Arthurs, and the
policeman deftly converted her grasp into a handshake.
"Mr. Arthurs has told me the injured man is your brother. He shall
want for nothing. And the sooner I go the sooner you will have help."
"Your prisoner seems docile enough," Arthurs remarked, as the
policeman swung on to his horse.
"Rather a puzzler," said Grey. "Doesn't look the part, but was caught
in the act, or next thing to it, and his revolver was found lying on
the spot where the young man was shot. By the way, I had almost
forgotten. One of the robbers was shot and killed. I had to leave his
body, but I wish you would send a man up to stay about the place
until I can get a coroner out here."
"Robbers, did you say?" demanded Beulah. "Then it was for robbery?"
"Yes, Miss Harris. It seems your father had a large sum of money on
him. We have found no trace of it yet, but it is not likely that more
than two were implicated, and as one was shot on the spot this other
must know where the money is. We will bring it out of him in due
time."
So saying he rode down to the gate, thanked the cowboy who had been
keeping an eye on the prisoner, and the two started off at a smart
trot down the trail.