HASTY WORDS
In the gray light that is the ghost of morning, a fantastic procession
went slowly down the headlong slope of Dead Man’s Mile. The tall doctor
strode ahead with his swinging lantern, and behind him came the two men
he had brought, carrying John Herrick between them upon a litter of
blankets. Nancy, following them clung fast to her pommel and was glad
the saddle was so deep that she could not well fall out of it, no matter
how much the doctor’s pony, upon which she was mounted, swayed and slid
down the path. For guidance, he was left almost as much to himself as
was the extra horse following at the end of the line, whose nose was so
close to the tail of the pony that Beatrice rode, and whose footsteps
were guided by the second lantern that bobbed and jerked from her
saddle-bow.
“It was the next thing to impossible to climb up in bright daylight,”
Beatrice thought. “How can we ever go down in the dark, with a helpless
person to carry?”
But the doctor had declared that further delay meant too much danger to
John Herrick, and that the attempt must be made. Down they went, past
the rocky shelf where the girls had found him, past the dizzy precipice
where Beatrice had dropped the ax and had so nearly followed it, over
barriers that looked impassable, down steep declivities that were
nothing but wells of blackness and hidden danger. A word of direction
from the doctor, a breathless squeak from Nancy once when her horse
lurched suddenly beneath her, the steady scuffle of the ponies’
feet—those were the only sounds. They had passed the icy shallows of the
tumbling stream, they had looped over the jutting shoulder of smooth
rock where there was scarcely a foothold: there was a long, stiff-legged
jump for each pony, and they were down.
Through the rustling underbrush of the lower slope, the main trail
leading downward from Gray Cloud Pass was firm under their feet.
“Looks like Broadway, don’t it, after that squirrel track back yonder?”
observed one of the men, as they stopped to rest for a little. The other
man went to catch Nancy’s pony which had been turned loose before the
storm and which now came, stamping and snorting, through the dark, drawn
by the lantern light and by the desire for company of its own kind.
It was possible to carry the litter between two horses now, so that the
doctor mounted, left one man to follow on foot, and ordered them all to
press forward. A moving shadow in the darkness proved to be John
Herrick’s black mare, who had managed to scramble to her feet and stood,
with head drooping and one leg helpless, beside the path.
“We can’t stop for her now,” the doctor said. “I will send some one back
to see if there is anything to be done.”
The poor creature was left behind, although Beatrice leaned from her
saddle to touch the soft anxious nose that was thrust out to her, and
although a pleading whinny could be heard long after the darkness had
swallowed up the suffering pony.
They went on steadily and quickly now, with Beatrice nodding in her
saddle from unbelievable weariness. They were fording a stream; they
were threading the grove of aspen-trees; they had reached the last mile
of their journey. The whispering leaves were all speaking together in
the morning breeze; the birds were beginning to sing; the darkness had
faded so that the light of Beatrice’s lantern had shrunk to the pale
ghost of a flame. She looked back to see the bare granite slope above
her turn from gray to rose, and to see the stark summit of Gray Cloud
Mountain shine in sudden silver radiance as the sunrise touched it.
Almost immediately she saw the men ahead of her stop, dismount, and lean
over the litter.
“He is awake, and I think he wants you,” one of them said to Nancy, but
she listened and shook her head.
“He is not really conscious,” she answered, “and it is my Aunt Anna that
he is asking for.”
It was a week, a dragging, interminable week, before any one was able to
know just what were to be the results of that fateful expedition up the
slopes of Gray Cloud Mountain. Nancy, stiff and aching in every muscle
from so much unwonted riding, was the first to recover and to set about
her housekeeping. Beatrice had sprained her knee in that perilous moment
when she dropped the ax over the mountain-side, but she had scarcely
noticed the mishap until, slipping from the saddle at her own door, she
found herself unable to walk into the house. For three days she was
almost helpless; by the end of seven, however, she was able to get about
and help Nancy and Christina with their work.
Christina had come to stay at the cabin so that the girls might not be
alone, for Aunt Anna had moved to John Herrick’s house. It seemed at
first that she had found her brother only in time to part with him
again, for through four terrible days he lay so ill that not even Dr.
Minturn could have much hope. Perhaps no one knew until that dreadful
time how brave Aunt Anna could be. It was she who was cheerful; it was
she who was hopeful and kept up the courage of the others; it was her
tired, white, but smiling face upon which John Herrick’s eyes first fell
when he opened them to consciousness again.
The three girls were standing in the door and Dr. Minturn was with them,
but it was only his sister that John Herrick saw.
“Anna,” he said, “I have had a bad dream, I think.”
“Yes,” she nodded gravely. “We have all been dreaming, but at last we
are all awake.”
His eyes went to the window where, in the hot sun of brilliant noonday,
the moving tree-tops showed their densest green and the far mountains
stood blue against a bluer sky. He looked doubtful for a moment, as
though he had expected to find himself in his old home, in that room
where the rain in the chimney had lulled him to sleep through childhood
nights. When he remembered all that had happened since, would he shrink
away again into that isolation he had made for himself? They could
actually see, from the changes in his face, just how the flood of
memories rose and swept over him, recalling everything, from his
accident on the hill back to that day when he had vowed to shut the door
of home behind him forever. At last he turned to his sister again and
smiled.
“I thought I could never forgive all of you,” he said, “and it was you,
this whole long time, who should have forgiven me. Through all these
years I have been remembering how I went away, how I looked into that
row of serious faces, and thought I read doubt in every one of them.
Yes, Anna dear, I know you believed in me still; I know you called after
me; but I vowed it was too late. I heard your voice as I closed the
door: it has followed me ever since, but I would not listen. Can you
forgive me?”
The girls slipped away and Dr. Minturn closed the door.
“He’ll do,” he said gruffly. “He won’t need any of us to cure him now.”
A man who has spent the last ten years in the free open and the bracing
air of the Rocky Mountains does not linger long upon a sick bed when
once he has begun to recover. John Herrick was sitting up in a week’s
time and was able to limp about the house at the end of ten days. As his
strength grew, so did Aunt Anna’s, so that step by step they came along
the road of health together.
“Isn’t she wearing herself out nursing him?” Beatrice asked Dr. Minturn
anxiously, but he only laughed.
“It never harms people to do what they like most in the world,” he
answered. “I can hardly tell which of the two is getting well the
faster. They have no further need for me, so I will be getting back to
Miriam. I can leave the whole affair in your capable hands, Miss
Beatrice.”
Beatrice laughed, yet flushed with pleasure that the doctor should voice
such confidence in her. She could not help feeling a little thrill of
pride when she thought how well things were turning out. Even the black
mare was hobbling about the corral, giving promise that she could be
ridden almost as soon as John Herrick would be able to mount her. There
was still the affair in the village to be made clear, but of that
Beatrice had thought very little lately, and not at all of Dabney Mills.
A growing restlessness on Christina’s part was the first reminder of
what was going on about them.
“I don’t want to go,” she explained when, on Aunt Anna’s returning to
the cabin, Christina announced that she was needed at home; “but I am
anxious when I am away from Thorvik. I never know what new things he is
thinking up.”
She had waited to wash the evening dishes, lingering over them as though
she were unwilling to finish, but she had said a reluctant good-by at
last and had gone away down the hill. Beatrice sat on the doorstep
looking after her, and lingered long after she was gone, watching the
darkness deepen between the tree trunks, and the fireflies moving to and
fro. It had been an over-busy day with the result that she was very
tired. It was surely the worst possible moment that Dabney Mills could
have chosen to come striding through the dark, whistling with irritating
shrillness.
“There are all sorts of rumors about John Herrick’s being hurt,” he
began at once, “so I came up to see if I could get the real facts. I
tried to interview the old doctor when he was down in the village, but I
didn’t have much satisfaction. Now, you will have no objection to
telling me a few things, I feel sure.”
On that very spot, Beatrice thought, he had been told once, twice, it
was difficult to say how many times, that his presence was unwelcome and
that he would be told nothing. Yet here he was again, as inquisitive and
as well-assured of success as ever.
“I don’t see why you keep coming and asking things,” she said irritably,
“when we never tell you anything.”
“A fellow can never tell,” he replied easily, “where he can pick up a
few facts, even in the most unlikely places. I won’t say this is a very
hopeful one, but there’s nowhere else to go. I hear your aunt has been
nursing Herrick. Now I could make something very interesting out of
that.”
His insinuating grin, half visible in the dark, was quite beyond
bearing.
“Why shouldn’t she be nursing him when she is his own sister?” she cried
hotly, a sudden burst of temper driving her quite beyond the bounds of
prudence.
Dabney’s mouth opened to speak, but no words came—only at last a long
whistle of astonishment.
“Sister!” he ejaculated; then repeated it to himself, “Sister!”
Beatrice said nothing, for she began to have an uneasy feeling that harm
might come from her hasty speech.
“But look-a-here,” Dabney Mills burst out, “if she’s his sister and he’s
your uncle, why did you never let on to any one? You were strangers to
him, you two girls, when you came here: I could swear it. And one day
when you were out, I asked your aunt if she had ever seen John Herrick,
and she said no.”
Still Beatrice was silent, with growing misgivings, as he went on
excitedly, as much to himself as to her.
“There must have been a family quarrel,” he speculated shrewdly.
“Herrick did something disgraceful, most likely, back there at home, and
came West to lose himself, and the rest of you followed, by and by, to
see him; but you never owned he belonged to you. Say, that’s something
to tell them down yonder at the meeting to-night. When they hear that
about his past, they may know for sure where to look for their money.”
He swung on his heel and was off in haste down the hill.
“Stop! Stop!” cried Beatrice, but he paid no heed. She ran a few steps
after him but he had already disappeared.
As she went into the house, she was thinking of that boulder that had
rolled from under her horse’s feet on the climb up Dead Man’s Mile. She
remembered how it bounded down the slope, disappearing in the wood to do
what damage she could not tell. In much the same way her thoughtless
speech had escaped from her and now, quite beyond her reach, was doing
harm at which she could only guess.
They all retired early that night, for Aunt Anna, who had just come
home, was tired as well as happy, and Nancy had been so busy that she
could not hold her eyes open even until a decent hour for bedtime. In
spite of her uneasy thoughts, Beatrice fell asleep quickly, and, even
after an hour of sound slumber, awoke with difficulty.
“It is raining,” she thought sleepily at first, hearing a light tap, tap
against the casement. “I must get up and close the window.”
Yet she would have dropped asleep again had not the sound continued
insistently. She rubbed the sleep from her eyes and sat up. To her
surprise, the stars were shining through the window, and no raindrops
but a handful of gravel pattered on the sill. She jumped up, drew her
big coat about her, for the night air was cold, and leaned out. A
shadowy figure, unrecognizable in the starlight, stood below her.
“Miss Deems,” came a voice, a rich Irish voice that after a moment of
doubt she realized was Dan O’Leary’s, the man who used to care for Buck;
“Miss Deems, there’s the deuce and all to pay down in the town to-night,
and this Dabney Mills here vows that it was your doing.”
She discerned then a second figure skulking among the shadows, a very
crestfallen Dabney Mills, brought hither evidently by no desire of his
own.
“He came to the meeting,” went on Dan, “and gave us a long tale of how
John Herrick’s past had come out at last, how he had got into disgrace
back East and came here to lose himself and take another name. And from
that he argues that it was John Herrick took the money we have all been
looking for this long time. I thought it only best to come straight to
you for the truth, since the fellow here was quoting you.”
Poor Beatrice’s teeth chattered with cold and misery as she leaned
against the window-frame and, below her breath, tried to explain just
how matters stood. Had Aunt Anna been wakeful, she would have been
reading in the room below and would have overheard, but fortunately she
was sleeping soundly on the sleeping-porch at the other side of the
house.
“Some of what he said is half true,” Beatrice began, “and some of it is
all false.” Dan O’Leary listened to the end of her story without
comment.
“I was hoping you could give him the lie direct,” he said finally. “The
men below are wild with anger and are coming up the hill to tax John
Herrick with wrecking the company. They were walking and we had horses,
but they’ll not be so long behind us. Well, I’ll go back and stop them
if I can.”
“Couldn’t you—couldn’t you go up the hill and warn him?” Beatrice asked
desperately.
“No, they’d call me traitor if I did, for, though I’m a good friend to
John Herrick, after all I’m one with those below and pledged to help
them. We’ll be going back now. I’ll do the best I can. Here,” to Dabney,
“get on your horse and come along. It’s just such know-nothings as you
that let loose most of the mischief in the world.”
After they had gone, Beatrice still stood, clinging to the window-frame,
stunned and bewildered. This, then, was the result of her angry words;
this was the mischief that she had set on foot. What could she do to
make amends? She did not have to think long, but she turned from the
window with a sigh that was nearer a groan. She must lay the whole
matter before John Herrick, tell him the real truth of what she had said
and what had been the result. He could never forgive her; of that she
felt sure. She had put an end, all in a minute, to that new-found trust
and friendliness that had been so hardly won. Yet it was the only thing
to do.
Buck, who had been brought home a week before, sprang up from his straw
bed at the sound of his mistress’s footsteps. He submitted, for once, to
being saddled without protest, as though he had been too full of
curiosity concerning this strange night adventure to make any delay.
Down the path to the gate they made their way, then up the trail as fast
as Buck could be urged, with Beatrice’s head turned over her shoulder to
peer down at the town below. One building was brilliantly lighted—the
hall where the men’s meetings were held. There were lights in many of
the houses, too, although it was so nearly midnight. Then, carried by
the chill wind that blew up from the valley, came the far-off sound of
shouting voices from the throng of angry men who were marching up the
trail.
John Herrick’s house was alight also, for he was a person of late hours.
She could see, as she came near, that he was sitting by the big table in
the living-room and that Hester was nodding over a book in the chair
beside him. Since he was up and about again, she seemed unwilling to
leave him for a moment. Beatrice knocked, but could not wait for an
answer and burst in upon them, beginning to pour out her story before
she was half-way across the room.
Hester, starting up, listened in frank bewilderment, but the expression
on John Herrick’s face was quite different. Her tale was none too plain,
but he seemed to guess, long before she had finished, what it was she
was trying to say.
“Tell me,” he said at last when she paused; “tell me one thing.” Her
heart sank, for his eyes were hard and his tone was harsh and dry. “Why
did you come here? Was it to warn me, so that I could go away?”
“Oh, no, no,” she gasped, still breathless and incoherent. “I only felt
that you ought to know what harm I had done. I wanted you to be ready to
explain to the men when they came that it was I who had——”
“Do you mean,” he interrupted her, leaning forward in his chair, his
eyes fixed on her with a strange, intense eagerness; “do you mean that
you do not believe as they do? That you don’t suspect me of stealing
that money?”
The blank astonishment on Beatrice’s face was answer enough.
“It wouldn’t be possible!” she declared simply.
He leaned back, and put his hand over his face as though suddenly weary.
“God bless you, Beatrice,” he said. “I will remember that always, that
you believed in me.”
He rose slowly, limped across the room, and opened the door of a safe,
let into the wall between two bookcases. He brought out two steel boxes,
and set them on the table.
“Now go and open the doors,” he said, “so that when our friends arrive,
they can come in at once.”
While he unlocked the boxes, Hester went to do as he had directed; but
Beatrice, wondering and fascinated, could not leave his side. The first
lid that he lifted showed bundles of bank-notes, and the second, shining
piles of heavy gold pieces.
“Yes, this is the money that was missing,” he said.