A HINT OF WHITE
The heels had left two deeply defined gouges in the ground; there was a
sharp hollow where the head had lain, and a broad depression for the
shoulders. It was the impression of the body of a man--a large man
like Wilbur. Any hope, any doubt she might have had, slipped from her
mind, and despair rolled into it with an even, sullen current, like the
motion of the river.
It is strange what we do with our big moments of fear and sorrow and
even of joy. Now Mary stooped and carefully washed out the coffee-pot,
and filled it again with water higher up the bank; and turned back
toward the edge of the trees.
It was all subconscious, this completing of the task which Wilbur had
begun, and subconscious still was her careful rebuilding of the fire
till it flamed high, as though she were setting a signal to recall the
wanderer. But the flame, throwing warmth and red light across her
eyes, recalled her sharply to reality, and she looked up and saw the
dull dawn brightening beyond the dark evergreens.
Guilt, too, swept over her, for she remembered what big, handsome Dick
Wilbur had said: He would meet his end through a woman. Now it had
come to him, and through her.
She cringed at the thought, for what was she that a man should die in
her service? She raised her hands with a moan to the nodding tops of
the trees, to the vast, black sky above them, and the full knowledge of
Wilbur's strength came to her, for had he not ridden calmly, defiantly,
into the heart of this wilderness, confident in his power to care both
for himself and for her? But she! What could she do wandering by
herself? The image of Pierre le Rouge grew dim indeed and sad and
distant.
She looked about her at the pack, which had been distributed expertly,
and disposed on the ground by Wilbur. She could not even lash it in
place behind the saddle. So she drew the blanket once more around her
shoulders and sat down to think.
She might return to the house--doubtless she could find her way back.
And leave Pierre in the heart of the mountains, surely lost to her
forever. She made a determination, sullen, like a child, to ride on
and on into the wilderness, and let fate take care of her. The pack
she could bundle together as best she might; she would live as she
might; and for a guide there would be the hunger for Pierre.
So she ended her thoughts with a hope; her head nodded lower, and she
slept the deep, deep sleep of the exhausted mind and the lifeless body.
She woke hours later with a start, instantly alert, quivering with fear
and life and energy, for she felt like one who has gone to sleep with
voices in his ear.
While she slept some one had been near her; she could have sworn it
before her startled eyes glanced around.
And though she kept whispering, with white lips, "No, no; it is
impossible!" yet there was evidence which proved it. The fire should
have burned out, but instead it flamed more brightly than ever, and
there was a little heap of fuel laid conveniently close. Moreover,
both horses were saddled, and the pack lashed on the saddle of her own
mount.
Whatever man or demon had done this work evidently intended that she
should ride Wilbur's beautiful bay. Yes, for when she went closer,
drawn by her wonder, she found that the stirrups had been much
shortened.
Nothing was forgotten by this invisible caretaker; he had even left out
the cooking-tins, and she found a little batter of flapjack flour mixed.
The riddle was too great for solving. Perhaps Wilbur had disappeared
merely to play a practical jest on her; but that supposition was too
childish to be retained an instant. Perhaps--perhaps Pierre himself
had discovered her, but having vowed never to see her again, he cared
for her like the invisible hands in the old Greek fable.
This, again, an instinctive knowledge made her dismiss. If he were so
close, loving her, he could not stay away; she read in her own heart,
and knew. Then it must be something else; evil, because it feared to
be seen; not wholly evil, because it surrounded her with care.
At least this new emotion obscured somewhat the terror and the sorrow
of Wilbur's disappearance. She cooked her breakfast as if obeying the
order of the unseen, climbed into the saddle of Wilbur's horse, and
started off up the valley, leading her own mount.
Every moment or so she turned in the saddle suddenly in the hope of
getting a glimpse of the follower, but even when she surveyed the
entire stretch of country from the crest of a low hill, she saw
nothing--not the least sign of life.
She rode slowly, this day, for she was stiff and sore from the violent
journey of the night before, but though she went slowly, she kept
steadily at the trail. It was a broad and pleasant one, being the
beaten sand of the river-bottom; and the horse she rode was the finest
that ever pranced beneath her.
His trot was as smooth and springy as the gallop of most horses, and
when she let him run over a few level stretches, it was as if she had
suddenly been taken up from the earth on wings. There was something
about the animal, too, which reminded her of its vanished owner; for it
had strength and pride and gentleness at once. Unquestionably it took
kindly to its new rider; for once when she dismounted the big horse
walked up behind and nuzzled her shoulder.
The mountains were much plainer before the end of the day. They rose
sheer up in wave upon frozen wave like water piled ragged by some
terrific gale, with the tops of the waters torn and tossed and then
frozen forever in that position, like a fantastic and gargantuan mask
of dreaming terror. It overawed the heart of Mary Brown to look up to
them, but there was growing in her a new impulse of friendly
understanding with all this scalped, bald region of rocks, as if in
entering the valley she had passed through the gate which closes out
the gentler world, and now she was admitted as a denizen of the
mountain-desert, that scarred and ugly asylum for crime and fear and
grandeur.
Feeling this new emotion, the old horizons of her mind gave way and
widened; her gentle nature, which had known nothing but smiles,
admitted the meaning of a frown. Did she not ride under the very
shadow of that frown with her two horses? Was she not armed? She
touched the holster at her hip, and smiled. To be sure, she could
never hit a mark with that ponderous weapon, but at least the pistol
gave the seeming of a dangerous lone rider, familiar with the wilds.
It was about dark, and she was on the verge of looking about for a
suitable camping-place, when the bay halted sharply, tossed up his
head, and whinnied. From the far distance she thought she heard the
beginning of a whinny in reply. She could not be sure, but the
possibility made her pulse quicken. In this region, she knew, no
stranger could be a friend.
So she started the bay at a gallop and put a couple of swift miles
between her and the point at which she had heard the sound; no living
creature, she was sure, could have followed the pace the bay held
during that distance. So, secure in her loneliness, she trotted the
horse around a bend of the rocks and came on the sudden light of a
camp-fire.
It was too late to wheel and gallop away; so she remained with her hand
fumbling at the butt of the revolver, and her wide, blue eyes fixed on
the flicker of the fire. Not a voice accosted her. As far as she
could peer among the lithe trunks of the saplings, not a sign of a
living thing was near.
Yet whoever built that fire must be near, for it was obviously, newly
laid. Perhaps some fleeing outlaw had pitched his camp here and had
been startled by her coming. In that case he lurked somewhere in the
woods at that moment, his keen eyes fixed on her, and his gun gripped
hard in his hand. Perhaps--and the thought thrilled her--this little
camp had been prepared by the same power, human or unearthly, which had
watched over her early that morning.
All reason and sane caution warned her to ride on and leave that camp
unmolested, but an overwhelming, tingling curiosity besieged her. The
thin column of smoke rose past the dark trees like a ghost, and
reaching the unsheltered space above the trees, was smitten by a light
wind and jerked away at a sharp angle.
She looked closer and saw a bed made of a great heap of the tips of
limbs of spruce, a bed softer than down and more fragrant than any
manufactured perfume, however costly.
Possibly it was the sight of this bed which tempted her down from the
saddle, at last. With the reins over her arm, she stood close to the
fire and warmed her hands, peering all the while on every side, like
some wild and beautiful creature tempted by the bait of the trap, but
shrinking from the scent of man.
As she stood there a broad, yellow moon edged its way above the hills
and rolled up through the black trees and then floated through the sky.
Beneath such a moon no harm could come to her. It was while she stared
at it, letting her tensed alertness relax little by little, that she
saw, or thought she saw, a hint of moving white pass over the top of
the rise of ground and disappear among the trees.
She could not be sure, but her first impulse was to gather the reins
with a jerk and place her foot in the stirrup; but then she looked back
and saw the fire, burning low now and asking like a human voice to be
replenished from the heap of small, broken fuel near by; and she saw
also the softly piled bed of evergreens.
She removed her foot from the stirrup. What mattered that imaginary
figure of moving white? She felt a strong power of protection lying
all about her, breathing out to her with the keen scent of the pines,
fanning her face with the chill of the night breeze. She was alone,
but she was secure in the wilderness.