The sun at meridian that day burned away the mists, for it was May and
the high sun was able to prevail.
The sluiceway of Skulltree dam was open and in the caldron of the gorge
a yeasty flood boiled and the sunlight painted rainbows in the drifting
spume. Rolling cumbrously, end over end, at the foot of the sluice,
lifting glistening, dripping flanks, sinking and darting through the
white smother of the waters, the logs of the Flagg drive had begun their
flight to the holdbooms of Adonia.
Lida and the taciturn squire whom she had drafted had climbed to the
cliffs above the gorge in order to behold the first fruits of the
compact which had been concluded with Craig and the Comas. Latisan went
with her to the cliff because she had asked him to show her the way. His
manner with her was not exactly shyness; she had been studying him,
trying anxiously to penetrate his thoughts. He was reserved, but
awkwardly so; it was more like embarrassment; it was a mingling of
deference and despair in the face of a barrier.
It was warm up there where the sun beat against the granite, and she
pulled off the jacket which had been one of her credentials in the north
country. "I took the liberty of wearing it--and the cap. I'll not need
them any more."
She took the cap from her head. The breeze which had followed the calm
of the mist fluttered a loose lock of her hair across her forehead and
the sun lighted a glint within the tress. He gazed and blinked.
"I heard you had them--I heard it in Mern's office in New York," he
said, with poor tact.
She offered them and he took the garments, clutching the cap and holding
the jacket across his arm.
"I don't blame you for looking at me as you do," she went on, demurely
and deprecatingly feminine at that moment. She smoothed her blouse with
both hands and glanced down at her stained and ragged skirt. "It's my
only warm dress and I've lived and slept in it--and I haven't minded a
bit when the coffee slopped. I was trying to do my best."
He rocked his head voicelessly, helplessly--striving to fit speech to
the thoughts that surged in him.
Then she made a request which perturbed him still more: "You came up
here on horseback, I think you said. May I borrow the horse?"
"Do you mean that you're going away?" he gulped.
She spread her hands and again glanced down at her attire. She was
hiding deeper motives behind the thin screen of concern for her
wardrobe, trying to make a jest of the situation, and not succeeding.
"You must own up that I need to go shopping."
He turned from her to the chasm where the logs were tumbling along.
"And there's nothing to keep me here any longer, Mr. Latisan, now that
you have come back!"
He faced her again, swinging with a haste that ground his heels sharply
on the ledge. But she put up her hand when he opened his mouth.
"Do you think it will do us any good to bring up what has happened? I
don't. I implore you not to mention it. You have come back to your
work--it's waiting for you. After what you have done to-day you'll never
need to lower your eyes before any man on this river. In my heart, when
I gave you your cap and jacket, I was asking you to take back your work.
I ask you with all the earnestness that's in me! Won't you do it?" There
was a hint of a sob in her tones, but her eyes were full of the
confidence of one who felt that she was not asking vainly.
He did not hesitate. But words were still beyond the reach of his
tongue. He dragged off the billycock hat which he had bought in town and
scaled it far out into the turbid flood. He pulled off the wrinkled coat
of the ready-made suit and tossed it down the side of the cliff. With
the cap on his head and buckling the belt of the jacket he stood before
her. "The men gave me my chance to-day; you're giving me a bigger one."
"Then I'm only wasting your time--up here!"
It had not been in Latisan's mind that he would make any reference to
the past; she had implored him to keep silent and he was determined to
obey. He was rigidly resolved to offer no plea for the future; this was
the granddaughter--presumably the heiress of Echford Flagg, to be taken
into her own after this service she had rendered. A Latisan of the
broken Latisans had no right to lift his eyes to her!
If there had been a twinkle of hope for his comfort in her attitude of
reliance on him after he had arrived at Skulltree, there was none at
that moment, for she had become distinctly dignified and distant. He
swung back to that bitter conclusion which he had made a part of his
convictions when he had pondered on the matter in his little room in New
York--her frantically pledged affection had been only a part of her
campaign of sacrifice. He was not blaming her for the pretense--he was
not calling it deceit. She had fought for her own with such weapons as
she could command in a time of stress.
He followed her meekly when she hurried down from the cliff.
On the path which led back to the Flagg camp a breathless cookee met
them. "A team is here from Adonia, miss. It's the big bays--Mr. Flagg's
horses."
Instinctively she turned to Ward, making him her prop as she had done
previously on that day.
"I've been expecting it," he told her. "It's just what your grandfather
would do after he got word that Craig had gone through Adonia with his
roughnecks. Mr. Flagg wouldn't leave you here to face what was
threatened."
"I didn't tell my grandfather who I was. Dick promised to keep the
secret," she faltered.
"Remember! Words have wings up in this region! I explained to you once,
Miss Kennard, and you know what happened when I let loose that flock of
them at Adonia--like a fool. I don't dare to think about it!"
He paced away from her; then he returned, calm again. "Mr. Flagg must
have heard--he would keep in touch with what has been going on up
here--and after he knew, it would be his style to let you go ahead and
win out. He would understand what it is you're trying to do. His sending
that team, now that he is afraid of danger, proves that he knows."
When she ran on ahead Latisan did not try to keep up with her; he was
once again the drive boss of Flagg's crew, a hired man; he had no excuse
for meddling in the family affairs of his employers, he reflected, and
in his new humility he was avoiding anything which might savor of
inquisitive surveillance.
The man who had put the horses to the jumper in Adonia, the man whom she
knew as Jeff, was the deputy whom Flagg had sent. He had come in
haste--that was plain to her; he was mopping the flanks of the sweating
bays.
The deference with which he touched his cap informed her fully as to the
amount of knowledge possessed by the Flagg household. He unbuttoned, one
after the other, his overcoat, his inner coat, his waistcoat, and from
the deepest recess in his garments produced a sealed letter; his
precautions in regard to it attested the value he put on a communication
from the master to the master's granddaughter.
The envelope was blank.
The men of the shift that had been relieved stood about her in a circle.
The arrival of the bays was an event which matched the other sensational
happenings of the crowded day, and she was conscious that, without
meaning to be disrespectful, the men were hankering to be taken wholly
into her confidence--were expecting that much favor from her.
Granddaughter of Echford Flagg she might be--but more than all she was
one of the crew, that season, a companion who had inspired them, toiled
with them, and triumphed with them. If any more good news had come they,
as friends, were entitled to know it, their expressions told her. They
were distinctly conveying to her their notion that she should stand
there and read the letter aloud.
The hand which clutched the missive was trembling, and she was filled
with dread in spite of the consoling thought that she had achieved so
much. She was afraid to open the letter and she escaped out of the
circle of inquiring faces and hid herself in her tent; even the crude
flourish of importance displayed by the manner of Jeff in delivering the
communication to her had its effect in making her fears more profound.
The whims of old age--Flagg had dwelt on the subject! She remembered
that when she was in the big house with Latisan, her grandfather had
beat on the page of the Bible and had anathematized the ties of family
in his arraignment of faults. He had been kind, after his fashion, when
she was incognito, but now that he knew----
She ripped the envelope from the letter and opened the sheet; it was a
broad sheet and had been folded many times to make it fit the envelope.
It was more like rude print than handwriting. At first she thought that
her grandfather had been able to master a makeshift chirography with his
left hand. But boldly at the top of the sheet, as a preface of apology,
was this statement: "Dicktated to Dick and excuse looks and mesteaks.
Hese a poor tool at writtin."
Crouching on her bed of boughs, the sheet on her knees, her hands
clutched into her wind-rumpled hair above her temples, she read the
letter which her grandfather had contrived with the help of his drafted
amanuensis.
To my Grand-daughter. He have to use short words and few. Dick
is slow and can't spel.
Lida's thoughts were running parallel with her reading, and she
remembered that, in those letters of hideous arraignment which she had
found in her mother's effects, Echford Flagg's own spelling was
fantastically original. But under the layers of ugly malediction she had
found pathos: he said that he'd had no schooling of his own, and on that
account had been led to turn his business over to the better but
dishonest ability of Alfred Kennard.
Reading on, she could picture the scene--the two old men toiling with
pathetic earnestness over the task of preparing that letter; here and
there, the words only partially deleted by lines run across them, were
evidences that in his flustration under the master's vitriolic
complaints, old Dick had confused comment with dictated matter--and had
included comment in his unthinking haste to get everything down. Three
times a "Dam your pelt" had been written and crossed out.
He tell you I knew you when I gave you my old cant dog.
Lida gasped when she read the blunt declaration. She might have guessed
that Echford Flagg would have repulsed a stranger; he had disguised his
true sentiments under the excuse of an old man's whim!
I let you go. It was making a squair deal between you and me.
Nicola sent me a man to tell me how you had gorn north with his
men and so I took Dick back after I had fired him.
It was at this point that a particularly prominent "Dam your pelt" was
interjected.
The old fool would have blabbed to me what you told him to keep
quiet about. He aint fit to be trusted with any secrits. But he
was scard to tell me you was Lida. I told him. But the Comas
helyun has gorn past here with men and guns. Let him have the
logs. I want you, my granddaughter. Come home.
Tears flooded her eyes. "Come home!" Old Dick had printed those words in
bold letters.
This is in haist but he has been 2 hours writtin it and so
I send Jeff to bring you. Dont wait. Kepe away from danjur.
Come home.
And old Dick, the toiling scribe, had smuggled in at the bottom of the
sheet a postscript, a vicarious confession which Echford Flagg did not
know how to make, "Hese cryin and monein for you. Come home!"
It was as if those two summoning words were spoken in her ear,
plaintively and quaveringly.
She ran from the tent, carrying her little bag and the cant dog scepter
of the Flaggs.
"Can you start back at once?" she called to Jeff.
"Aye! It's orders."
She saw Latisan at the shore, directing the movements of the men; he was
once more the drive master, his cant dog in his hand, terse in his
commands, obeyed in his authority.
He pulled off his cap and walked to meet her when she hastened toward
him.
"I'm going back to Adonia."
"My guess was right, you see!"
"Are you coming soon to report?--Shall I tell my grandfather----" She
halted in her query as if she were regretting the eagerness in her tone.
"I'll leave it to you to tell him all that has happened up here. But you
may say to him, if you will, that I'm staying with the drive from now
on."
Her charioteer swung the big bays and headed them toward the mouth of
the tote road, halting them near her.
Her emotions were struggling from the fetters with which she tried to
bind them. Those men standing around! She wished they would go away
about their business, but they surveyed her with the satisfied air of
persons who felt that they belonged in all matters that were on foot.
Latisan was repressed, grave, keeping his place, as he had assigned a
status to himself. She was glad when old Vittum broke upon the silence
that had become embarrassing. "It won't be like what it has been, after
you're gone, Miss Lida Kennard. But I feel that I'm speaking for the men
when I say that you're entitled to a lay-off, and if you'll be out on
the hill where you can wave your hand to us when we ride the leader
logs into the hold-boom, we'll all be much obligated to you! I was
thinking of calling for three cheers, but I remember how this idea
seemed to hit better." He led the procession of men past her; they
scrubbed their toil-roughened palms across their breasts and gave her
silent pledges when they grasped her hand. "It's sort of a family
party," said Vittum.
There was inspiration for her in that suggestion. This was no time for
convention, for placid weighing of this consideration against that, for
strait-laced repression. The environment encouraged her. Her exulting
joy drove her on.
Once before, forced by the intensity of her need, she had made small
account of convenances. But she acknowledged that a half truth had
nearly compassed destruction of her hopes and the ruin of a man; a liar
had taken advantage of an equivocal position. But now the whole truth
about her was clear. Her identity was known--her motives were beyond all
question. And there were no vindictive liars among those loyal followers
who had come storming down the river for the sake of her cause.
If she did what she had in her mind to do, what was it except the
confirmation of a pledge and the carrying out of a promise?
But when she looked appealingly up at Latisan he was steadfastly staring
past her. Her impulses were already galloping, but the instant prick of
pique was the final urge which made the impulses fairly run away.
She reached out and took Ward's hand and pressed it between her palms.
"If it's because I'm Lida Kennard instead of the table girl at Brophy's
tavern, you're foolish," she whispered, standing on tiptoe. "I gave you
my promise. But perhaps you think it isn't binding because there was no
seal, such as I put on that lawyer's paper down at the dam.
Well--then--here's the seal."
She flung her arms about his neck and kissed his cheek.
"Now let the winged word take flight through the region!" she told
herself. No man could misunderstand the declaration of that kiss!
When Latisan came to his senses sufficiently to move his muscles, she
avoided his groping arms and ran to the wagon. For a moment the big bays
crouched, expecting the whistling sweep of the whip, bending their necks
to watch the passenger climbing to her seat.
"Wait!" begged Latisan. He stumbled toward the wagon, staring at her,
tripped by the earth ridges to which he paid no heed.
"Yes!" she promised. And then in tones that were low and thrilling and
significant with honest pledge she said, "I'll wait for you--at home--at
home!"
Jeff obeyed her quick command and swung the whistling whip, and Latisan
stood gazing after her.
The men respected his stunned absorption in his thoughts. They went
scattering to their work. Felix walked with Vittum.
"Ba gor!" The French Canadian vented the ejaculation after taking a
deep breath. "When she say it to him--as she say it--it make goose flesh
wiggle all over maself!"
"As I have said!" Vittum was trudging along, his eyes on a big plug of
tobacco from which he was paring a slice. "As I have said!" He slid the
slice into his mouth from the blade of the knife. "She knows her
business!"