DEAD MAN’S MILE
It was comfort rather than advice that a very weary and dispirited
Beatrice needed when at last she arrived at Dr. Minturn’s house. She
greeted the rosy, laughing Nancy with much enthusiasm, for the sisters
had missed each other sorely; but she was impatient for the moment when
she could talk over their whole affair with the kindly doctor. After
supper, accordingly, he sat, on the grassy bank in the moonlight, with a
girl on each side of him, and listened gravely to all that Beatrice,
with occasional additions from Nancy, had to say. It was not easy for
her to confess what harm she had done by her impulsive and over
confident words, but she told her story bravely to the end.
“There is no use in the world,” the doctor commented cheerfully, “in
spending time in vain remorse. We should decide what must be done now.
It may be, the only thing is to wait.”
Beatrice drew a deep quivering sigh. It seemed, in the midst of
excitement and the anxiety to atone, that waiting was the one
intolerable thing.
“I can’t bear to wait,” she burst out at last.
“I have never told you,” Dr. Minturn rejoined slowly, “of how Miriam and
I came to live here. We used to be in a big city and we had that same
full, restless life that most city dwellers know. Some people thrive in
such an atmosphere, some can endure it, but it was destruction to us
both. I had more patients than I could care for, Miriam’s days were as
crowded as mine. We saw each other little and were always tired when our
daily duties were done. I realized vaguely that such unceasing toil must
kill any man before long, but the excitement of my growing practice was
something I could not give up. Then Miriam, one day, asked me some
questions; she knew some one who had such and such symptoms, who felt
this way during the smoky winter and that way when the air was damp and
the wind was raw. I was in haste and my verdict was quick. ‘Such a
person could not live a year,’ I declared. And then she told me the
person was herself!”
He paused to look down at the quiet house under the trees, where
Miriam’s shadow showed on one white curtain after another as she went to
and fro about her work. For a minute he watched as though to assure
himself that the memory of that terrible day was only a dream.
“It is something we all have to learn; how to watch our whole, secure,
happy world fall to pieces before our eyes, and still keep our minds
clear and be able to think what to do. ‘A change of climate,’ my
fellow-doctors advised; ‘Quiet, rest, no anxiety’; but they all shook
their heads. We tried place after place, it would be too long a story to
tell how we drifted here at last. The cottage was only half its size,
then, but it was habitable; the place seemed good as any; and neither of
us had the heart to go farther. The wrench of leaving the old life, the
weariness of wandering from place to place had all done harm; and the
good effect of the change had not yet come. Miriam was always cheerful,
always hopeful, but I watched her grow thinner and weaker every day. I
stood by, helpless. There was nothing to do but wait, though it seemed
that waiting must drive me mad.”
Beatrice nodded understandingly. Waiting—how she hated it! It seemed as
though there must always be something to do other than to wait; but it
was likely to be the wrong thing.
“There was one morning when I had been watching beside her bed all
night, thinking, as she slept, how pinched and thin and shadowy she had
grown. We were young then, if you can think of us as that, young like
your Aunt Anna and John Herrick, with years to dream of still before us.
And that night it seemed as though it all was coming to an end. I can
remember how the dawn came in at the windows and how Miriam opened her
eyes to look up at me and smile. I believe she was thinking that she
would rather die here in the clean, empty quiet than in that roaring,
smoke-filled town that we called home.
“But it was no place of peace for me. I called the nurse and flung
myself out of the house; I tramped away up the mountain, crushing the
roses and forget-me-nots under foot with a savage pleasure that I can
still recall. I stood on the highest ridge at last, looked out over the
valley and the dark hills with their summits bathed in sunshine, at the
winding silver thread of the river, and I held up my arms and opened my
lips to curse them all.
“The words I meant to say were never spoken. I heard a footstep on the
trail behind me and, as I looked around, a man passed by me and went
down the mountain. He was old, far older than I am now, his face was so
weather-beaten, his long hair so grizzled, and his back so bent that he
might have passed for Father Time himself. He said no word, but he gave
me one look that seemed to read every thought within me, a glance of
complete and utter scorn. Some old prospector he was, a man who had
spent his life trudging over the barren hillsides, looking for new
mines, disappointed a thousand times, seeking fortune and never finding
it. Others who followed him had prospered by his discoveries, had found
the riches that he could not keep; for the man who prospects is seldom
the man who gathers wealth. He gathers other things, however;
forbearance, understandings, and a strange, deep patience, born of
lonely valleys, endless trails, and wide starry skies. It was no wonder
he scorned me and my pitiful little anger with the mountains he called
his.
“I never saw him again. He stepped into my life and out of it again, and
we did not even exchange a word. Yet I have never forgotten the lesson
his one look taught me. I went down the hill after a little, and the
nurse met me at the door.
“‘I thought you would never come,’ she said. ‘I have been thinking for
days that there was a little change, and now I am sure of it.’
“Yes, the broad daylight showed it: the flame of Miriam’s life was
burning a little brighter; the mountain air was beginning to do its work
at last. In a week she could sit up; in a month she could walk about;
and in a year she was well.”
“And you never went home again?” Nancy asked, when a pause marked the
end of his tale.
“Home was here now, and we had no wish to go back to a life that had so
nearly been the end of both of us. For a time there was no doctor in the
valley below us here, so I used to do what I could for the sick people
in these mountains. My place at home was soon filled; the tasks I had
left went on without me. By and by a younger man moved into this valley
to take the work, so that I was free to try that experiment that I had
long thought of—what Miriam calls my Christmas-tree Garden. I have
helped again when there were epidemics in the valley and when our doctor
went to war; but I am always glad to lay the burden down and come back
to my trees. And the point of all my long story is, my dear, that some
time in the course of our growing up, we must learn how to wait. To be
eager and ardent is part of being young, but to learn that eagerness
does not bring all things is a truth that the years bring us.”
He made a gesture toward the summit of Gray Cloud Mountain, a black mass
against the twinkling stars.
“He is learning his lesson, too, that boy up there, camping in the dark
and the silence, thinking it all out, coming nearer and nearer to the
truth of things at last.”
“Do you—oh, do you think that he might change and come back to us in the
end?” cried Beatrice in eager hope.
“I believe so. And when the time comes to act, you will know what to
do.”
A very sleepy and comforted girl was tucked into bed by the doctor’s
wife—a young person who thought she could not sleep on account of her
many anxieties, but who was lost in slumber almost before the door was
closed. She did not even hear the storm of wind and rain that swept over
the cottage in the night, but awoke in the morning to see the sun
shining, and to hear a camp-robber jay calling so loudly from the
nearest tree that she could sleep no longer.
“Your horse is not fit to go back for a day or two,” Dr. Minturn said at
breakfast. “You pushed him too hard when you climbed the pass, and you
should leave him here to rest. I will lend you my brown Presto. He is
not such a pony as Buck, I admit, but he will carry you safely enough.
You can come back for your horse later, or I will send him over the
range as soon as some one passes.”
The sun was high when she and Nancy set out together, shining above the
pass as they mounted upward.
“But there is something the matter with it,” Beatrice declared to her
sister; “there doesn’t seem to be any warmth in it, somehow.” And she
shivered a little.
An unusual haze seemed to hang like a blanket between them and the sun,
and the air held a strange chill. Even when wrapped in their warm coats,
the two girls felt cold as they climbed to the summit of the pass and
began the descent on the other side. Beatrice said very little, so busy
was her mind with many difficult problems. Must she tell Aunt Anna what
had happened, and let her know that all hopes of meeting her brother
were at an end? Would John Herrick’s house soon be closed, and would
Hester have to leave them too?
Would it be of any use—Good heavens! what was that lying beside the
trail? Something huge, dark, and unwieldy was stretched out among the
bushes: it was a black horse, apparently dead. They both knew those
white feet and the brand on the flank. It was John Herrick’s black mare,
Dolly.
They dismounted, while the poor creature opened its eyes and managed to
raise its head. A horse that is so injured that it cannot get up when a
person comes near is sorely hurt indeed. That much Beatrice knew, yet
was powerless to discover what was the matter. By some intuition Nancy
guessed one thing, at least, that was needed, for she ran to the stream,
filled her felt hat with water, and brought it back, spilling and
dripping, but with enough left for the poor animal to drink gratefully.
“I wish you could speak,” Beatrice said helplessly, as the mare laid her
head down again. Presto nudged her inquiringly with his nose, but she
did not move.
They observed as they stood looking at her, that the bridle was half
torn off—that the big saddle, with broken cantle, was twisted all to one
side by the pony’s fall. On the face of the mountain wall above them
they could trace Dolly’s disastrous course in trampled bushes, weeds
torn up by the roots, gouges in the rocky soil where she had slid and
rolled and struggled to regain her footing. But look where they might,
they could see no sign of John Herrick.
“When the time comes to act, you will know what to do.”
So Dr. Minturn had said, and he had been right. Beatrice knew well that
now was the moment for action, not waiting; and she felt her mind
surprisingly calm and cool. They must follow the spidery line of trail
that zig-zagged back and forth over the precipitous mountain-side, and
find the spot, high above, from which the black mare had fallen.
“You wait here, Nancy,” she ordered, but she heard the other horse’s
hoofs pattering behind her even as she turned. It was useless to try to
make Nancy stay behind. What was it Hester had said that way was
called—that tiny path that crawled out upon the smooth face of the rock
wall? It was Dead Man’s Mile.
There were moments when the brown pony slipped, moments when the vast
depths below made both the girls so giddy that they were forced to shut
their eyes. A big stone rolled under Presto’s foot and he drew back only
just in time to keep from plunging after it. Beatrice tried not to watch
it, but she could not keep her eyes away as it slid and bounded in
longer and longer leaps until finally it disappeared into the woods
below.
“Are you safe, Nancy?” she called. She did not dare look back.
“Yes,” came the reply, rather unsteadily, from Nancy close behind.
Up and up they went. It seemed as though they would remember for all
their lives every treacherous inch of that trail along which they
crawled as a fly crawls crookedly up a window-pane, and yet that they
would never be able to find their way down again. Up and up—and there
suddenly was John Herrick, lying on a narrow shelf of rock just below
them, his white face turned upward to the sky, and the stones and tufts
of grass about him stained with blood. Just ahead, at the turn of the
trail, they could see his little tent, his various belongings heaped
together, and the aimless, drifting smoke of his still smoldering camp
fire.
Before Nancy could even cry out, Beatrice was down from her horse, down
from the trail, and was kneeling beside him. A gash across the forehead
was his most evident injury, but that could not account for all this
blood. No, here on the under side of his arm, where the sleeve of his
coat was torn away, this was the deeper wound from which had poured
forth that crimson deluge that had soaked his clothes and stained the
ground under him. Thanks to instructions that she had received long
before, she knew what to do. But could she be quick enough? Might she
not be too late? As she twisted her handkerchief, she tried to remember
just what she had been told, where the knot was to come, just which spot
was the proper one for the pressure.
Those first-aid lectures—it was only because every one else was going to
them that she had attended at all. And she was rather bored by the time
she had reached the third one, and prone to let her mind wander. With
maddening clearness, she could recollect how she had looked out of the
window, glanced at one girl’s hair-ribbon, decided she would have a
dress like the one in front of her, and with only half her mind had
listened to what the lecturer was saying. And now John Herrick’s chance
of life was hanging on her memory! Nancy was standing beside her,
helpless, horrified, unable to be of use until Beatrice should tell her
how. She remembered now: she had found the artery where the pulse still
beat feebly; she had arranged the pad to press against the bone; she was
telling Nancy how to help her twist the bandage tight.
Slowly the trickle of blood lessened, came forth, at last, one drop at a
time, and finally ceased altogether. It seemed a long, long wait before
John Herrick opened his eyes.
“Was Dolly killed?” he asked first, and then, after a while, “How do you
come to be here? Surely you never climbed that trail, you girls, alone?”
It was a grisly nightmare, their attempt to get him up to the level
bench of ground where he had pitched his camp, but they managed it at
last. One effort they made to lift him into Presto’s saddle, but it was
attended with so little success and such evident agony, that they gave
it up.
“There’s something broken—besides the cuts in my arm,” John Herrick
muttered, and lapsed into unconsciousness as they managed to drag him
under the shelter of his tent. They propped up his injured arm on a roll
of blankets, replenished the fire, and sat down on each side of him to
wait until he should rouse himself again.
Although it was high noon the sky was strangely dark, and even under the
sheltering wall of the tent the air was growing very cold. Heavy masses
of cloud were sailing across the overcast sky, and the mountains were
taking on a strange, somber color that was so unfamiliar as to be
terrifying.
Looking down, they saw that John Herrick had opened his eyes again and
was staring up at them without moving. In answer to the unspoken
question in Beatrice’s eyes, he began to explain very slowly, with long
pauses for rest.
“I fell, very early in the morning, before the dawn, just as the storm
was going by. I was riding recklessly in the dark. Poor Dolly knew we
were in danger and hung back, but I urged her on. She slipped and I was
flung clear, but I could not move. I could hear her scrambling and
rolling and falling farther and farther below me, but I could not even
turn my head. You say she was really still alive?”
He was quiet for a long time after this effort, but at last spoke again.
“You have made me very comfortable,” he said. “You have done everything
possible. Now it is time for you to go.”
“Go?” echoed Nancy. “Why must we go?”
His eyes were looking beyond her at the threatening sky, and that
ominous, deeping color of the range opposite. Only one peak, the
highest, stood shining above the others, still bathed in fitful
sunshine; but in a moment the enveloping shadow had crawled up the slope
and quenched its brilliance at last.
John Herrick spoke again, more insistently.
“At the very best it makes me shudder to have you two go down that trail
alone, and you must do it while the light is good and there is nothing
to hurry you.” He struggled to raise himself on his elbow and added
sharply, “You are not to delay. You can send some one back to find me.”
Nancy got up obediently and went to stand before the tent. The two
horses were lingering near the fire: she caught their bridles and
waited. It was her elder sister who must decide what they were to do.
A long bank of cloud, seething, boiling, dark below but white at its
upper edge, like surf breaking on a reef, was rolling over the summit of
the rugged height opposite. The slow roar of the rising wind could be
heard stirring the tree-tops in the forest below. Seeing Beatrice
hesitate at the door of the tent, John Herrick broke forth with the
desperate truth.
“There is snow coming. An hour of it will make the trail impassable for
you. It will be cold as midwinter before night, and dark long before
then. There is not a minute for you to lose. Beatrice, my dear, my dear,
what does anything matter if harm comes to you and your sister? Go! Go!”
A breath of wind touched Beatrice for a second and was gone, yet its icy
chill cut her to the very bone. Through the comparative warmth of the
air about them it had appeared and vanished like the dread ghost of that
bitter cold, reigning up yonder where the snows never melted and the
ice-fields clung to the mountain-side the whole year through. Nancy
shivered, and the brown horse, trembling too, shouldered close to her.
But Beatrice, in the door of the tent, turned suddenly to regard John
Herrick with steady eyes, with a look as fixed and determined as his
very own.
“We are not going to leave you,” she said.