Part 25 (2/2)

”If this isn't the valley, I'm through for this year,” she said. ”And I've got to-day and to-morrow to explore it.” She wondered at her indifference--at her strange lack of excitement at this, the crucial moment of her long quest, even as she had wondered at her absence of fear, believing as she did, that Bethune was still in the hills. The feeling inspired by the outlaw had been a feeling of rage, rather than terror, and had rapidly crystallized in her outraged mind into an abysmal soul-hate. She knew that, should the man accost her again, she would kill him--and not for a single instant did she doubt her ability to kill him. Vaguely, as she stood looking out over the valley, she wondered if he were following her--if at that moment he were lying concealed, somewhere among the surrounding rocks or patches of scrub?

Yet, she was conscious of no feeling of fear. She even attempted no concealment as, standing there upon the bare rock, she drew her father's map and photographs from her pocket and subjected them to a long and minute scrutiny. And then, still holding them in her hand, gazed once more over the valley. ”To 'a,' to 'b,'” she repeated. ”What is there that daddy would have designed as 'a,' and 'b?'” Suddenly, her glance became fixed upon a point up the valley that lay just within her range of vision. With puckered eyes and hat-brim drawn low upon her forehead, she stared steadily into the distance. She knew that she had never before seen this valley, and yet the place seemed, somehow, strangely familiar. With a low cry she bent over one of the photographs. Her hands trembled violently as her eyes once more flew to the valley. Yes, there it was, spread out before her just the way it was in the photograph--the rock-strewn ground--she could even identify the various rocks with the rocks in the picture. There was the lone tree, and the long rock wall, higher at its upper end, and--yes, she could just discern it--the zigzag crack in the rock ledge! Jamming the papers into her pocket she leaped into the saddle and dashed toward a fringe of scrub that marked the course of a coulee which led downward into the valley. Over its edge, and down its brush-choked course, slipping, sliding, scrambling, she urged her horse, reckless of safety, reckless of anything except that her weary, and at times it had seemed her hopeless, search was about to end. She had stood where her daddy had stood when he took that photograph--had seen with her own eyes--the jagged crack in the rock wall!

In the valley the going was better, and with quirt and spur she urged her horse to his best, her eyes on the lone pine tree. At the rock wall beyond, she pulled up sharply and stared at the jagged crevice that bisected it from top to bottom. It was the crevice of the photograph! Very deliberately she began at the top and traced its course to the bottom. She noted the scraggly, stunted pines that fringed the rim of the wall and that the crack started straight, and then zigzagged to the ground. Producing the ”close up” photograph, she compared it with the reality before her--an entirely superfluous and needless act, for each minute detail of the spot at which she stared was indelibly engraved upon her memory. For hours on end, she had studied those photographs, and now--she laughed aloud, and the sound roused her to action. Slipping from the horse, she fumbled at the pack strings of the saddle and loosened the canvas bag. She reached into it, and stood erect holding a light hand-axe. Once more she consulted her map. ”Stake l. c.,” she read. ”That's lode claim--and then that funny wiggly mark, and then the word center.” Her brows drew together as she studied the ground. Suddenly her face brightened. ”Why, of course!” she exclaimed. ”That mark represents the crack, and daddy meant to stake the claim with the crack for the center. Well, here goes!” She vehemently attacked a young sapling, and ten minutes later viewed with pride her four roughly hacked stakes. Picking up one of them and the axe, she paced off her distance, and as she reached the first corner point, stared in surprise at the ground. The claim had already been staked! Eagerly she stooped to examine the bit of wood.

It had evidently been in place for some time--how long, the girl could not tell. Long enough, though, for its surface to have become weather-grayed and discolored. ”Daddy's stakes,” she breathed softly, and as her fingers strayed over the surface two big tears welled into her eyes and trickled unheeded down her cheeks. ”If he staked the claim, I wonder why he didn't file,” she puzzled over the matter for a moment, and dismissed it. ”I don't know why. But, anyway, the thing for me to do is to get in my own stakes--only, I'll file, just as soon as I can get to the register's office.”

After considerable difficulty, she succeeded in planting her own stake close beside the other, which marked the southwest corner of the claim, a short time later the northwest corner was staked, and the girl stared again at the rock wall. ”Why, I've got to put in my eastern boundary stakes up on top--three hundred feet back from the edge!” she exclaimed; ”maybe I'll find his notice on one of those stakes.” It required only a moment to locate a ravine that led to the top of the ledge which was not nearly so high as the one that formed the opposite side of the valley. She found the old stakes, but no sign of a notice. ”The wind, and the snow, and the rain have destroyed it long ago,” she muttered. ”And, now for my own notice.”

Producing from her bag a pencil and a piece of paper, she wrote her description and affixed it to a stake by means of a bit of wire. Then, descending once more into the valley, she produced her luncheon and threw herself down beside the little creek. It was mid-afternoon, and she suddenly discovered that she was ravenously hungry. With her back against a rock fragment, she sat and feasted her eyes upon her claim--hers--HERS! Her thoughts flew backward to the enthusiasm of her father over this very claim. She remembered how his eyes had lighted as he told her of its hidden treasure. She remembered the jibes, and doubts, and covert sneers of the Middleton people, her father's death, her own anger and revolt, when she had suddenly decided, in the face of their council, entreaties, and commands to take up his work where he had left it. With kaleidoscopic rapidity her thoughts flew over the events of the ensuing months--the meeting with Vil Holland, her disappointment in the Watts ranch, her eager acceptance of the sheep camp, the long weary weeks of patiently riding along rock walls, taking each valley in turn, the growing fear of running out of funds before she could locate the claim. She shuddered as she thought of Monk Bethune, and of how nearly she had fallen a victim to his machinations. Her thoughts returned to Vil Holland, her ”guardian devil of the hills,” who had turned out to be in reality a guardian angel in disguise. ”Very much in disguise,” she smiled, ”with his jug of whisky.”

n.o.body who had helped make up her little world of people in the hill country was forgotten, the Thompsons, the Samuelsons, and the Wattses--she thought of them all. ”Why, I--I love every one of them,” she cried, as though the discovery surprised her. ”They're all, every one of them, real friends--they're not like the others, the smug, sleek, best citizens of Middleton. And I'll not forget one of them. We'll file that whole vein from one end to the other!” Catching up her horse, she mounted, and sat for a moment irresolute. ”I could make town, sometime to-night,” she mused, and then her eyes rested for a moment upon her horse's neck where the white alkali dust lay upon the rough, sweat-dried hair. ”No,” she decided. ”We'll go back to the cabin, and you can rest up, and to-morrow we'll start at daylight.”

”Mr. Christie was right,” she smiled, as she took the back trail for Monte's Creek. ”I don't have to teach school. But, I wonder how he could have gotten that 'hunch,' as he called it? When I've been searching for the claim for months?”

In a little valley that ran parallel to Monte's Creek, Patty encountered Microby Dandeline. The girl was lying stretched at full length upon the ground and did not notice her approach until she was almost on her, then she leaped to her feet, regarded her for a moment, and, with a frightened cry, sprang into the bush and scrambled out of sight along the steep side of a ravine. In vain Patty called, but her only answer was the diminis.h.i.+ng sounds of the girl's scrambling flight. ”What in the world has got into her of late,” she wondered, as she proceeded on her way. Certain it was that the girl avoided her, not only at the Watts ranch, but whenever they had chanced to meet in the hills. At first she had attributed it to anger or resentment over her own treatment of her when she had tried to get possession of the map. But, surely, even the dull-witted Microby must know that the incident had been forgotten. ”No,” she decided, ”there is something else.” Somehow, the girl no longer seemed the simple child-like creature of the wild. There was a furtiveness about her, and she had developed a certain crafty side glance, as though constantly seeking a means of escape from something. Her mother had noticed the change, and had confided to Patty that she was ”gittin' mo' triflin' every day, a-rammin' 'round the hills a-huntin' her a mine.” ”There's something worrying her,” muttered the girl. ”Something that she don't dare tell anyone, and it's sapping what little wit she has.”

It was late that evening when Patty ate her solitary supper. The sun had long set, and the dusk of the late twilight had settled upon the valley of Monte's Creek as she wiped the last dish and set it upon the shelf of her tiny cupboard. Suddenly she looked up. A form darkened the doorway, and quick as a flash, her eyes sought the six-gun that lay in its holster upon the bunk.

”You won't need that.” The voice was rea.s.suring. It was Vil Holland's voice; she had recognized him a second before he spoke and greeted him with a smile, even as she wondered what had brought him there. Only three times before had he come to her cabin, once to ascertain who was moving into the sheep camp, once when he had pitched Lord Clendenning into the creek, and again, only a few days before, when he had come to teach her to shoot. The girl noted that he seemed graver than usual, if that were possible. Certain it was that he appeared to be holding himself under restraint. She wondered if he had come to warn her of the proximity of Bethune.

”I was in town, to-day,” he came directly to the point. ”An' Len Christie told me you're goin' to teach school.” He paused and his eyes rested upon her face as if seeking confirmation.

Patty laughed; she could afford to laugh, now that the necessity for teaching did not exist. ”I asked him if he could find a school for me sometime ago,” she replied, trying to fathom what was in his mind.

There was a moment of silence, during which Patty saw the man's fingers tighten upon his hat brim. ”I don't want you to do that. It ain't fit work--for you--teachin' other folks' kids.”

Patty stared at him in surprise. The words had come slowly, and at their conclusion he had paused.

”Maybe you could suggest some work that is more fit?”

The man ignored the hint of sarcasm. ”Yes--I think I can.” His head was slightly bowed, and Patty saw that it was with an effort he continued: ”That is, I don't know if I can make you see it like I do.

It's awful real to me--an' plain. Miss Sinclair, I can't make any fine speeches like they do in books. I wouldn't if I could--it ain't my way. I love you more than I could tell you if I knew all the words in the language, an' how to fit 'em together. I loved you that day I first saw you--back there on the divide at Lost Creek. You was afraid of me, an' you wouldn't show it, an' you wouldn't own up that you was lost--'til I'd made the play of goin' off an' leavin' you. An' I've loved you every minute since--an' every minute since, I've fought against lovin' you. But, it's no use. The more I fight it, the stronger it gets. It's stronger than I am. I can't down it. It's the first time I ever ran up against anything I couldn't whip.” Again he paused. Patty advanced a step, and her eyes glowed softly as they rested upon the form that stood in her doorway silhouetted against the after-glow. She saw Buck rub his velvet nose affectionately up and down the man's sleeve, and into her heart leaped a great longing for this man who, with the unconscious dignity of the vast open places upon him, had told her so earnestly of his love. She opened her lips to speak but there was a great lump in her throat, and no words came.

”That's why,” he continued, ”I know it ain't just a flash in the pan--this love of mine ain't. All summer I've watched you, an' the hardest thing I ever had to do was to set back an' let you play a lone hand against the worst devil that ever showed his face in the hills. But the way things stacked up, I had to. You had me sized up for the one that was campin' on your trail, an' anything I'd have done would have played into Bethune's hand. I know I ain't fit for you--no man is. But, I'll always do the best I know how by you--an' I'll always love you. As for the rest of it, I never saved any money. I know there's gold here in the hills, an' I've spent years huntin' it.

I'll find it, too--sometime. But, I ain't exactly a pauper, either.

I've got my two hands, an' I've got a contract with Old Man Samuelson to winter his cattle. I didn't want to do it first, but the figure he named was about twice what I thought the job was worth. I told him so right out, an' he kind of laughed an' said maybe I'd need it all, an'

anyhow, them cattle was all grade Herefords, an' was worth more to winter than common dogies. So, you see, we could winter through, all right, an' next summer, we could prospect together. The gold's here, somewhere--your dad knew it--an' I know it.”

Receiving no answering pat, the buckskin left off his nuzzling of the man's sleeve, and turned from the doorway. As he did so the brown leather jug sc.r.a.ped lightly against the jamb. The girl's eyes flew to the jug, and swiftly back to the man who stood framed in the doorway.

She loved him! For days and days she had known that she loved him, and for days and nights her thoughts had been mostly of him--this unsmiling knight of the saddle--her ”guardian devil of the hills.”

Without exception, the people whose regard was worth having respected him, and liked him, even though they deplored his refusal to accept steady work. They're just like the people back home, she thought. They have no imagination. To their minds the cowpuncher who draws his forty dollars a month, year in and year out, is in some manner more dependable than the man whose imagination and love of the boundless open lead him to stake his time against millions. What do they know of the joys and the despairs of uncertainty? In a measure they, too, love the plains and the hills--but their love of the open is inextricably interwoven with their preconceived ideas of conduct. But, Vil Holland is bound by no such convention; his ”outfit,” a pack horse to carry it, and his home--all outdoors! Her father had imagination, and year after year, in the face of the taunts and jibes of his small town neighbors, he had steadfastly allowed his imagination full sway, and at last--he had won. She had adored her father from whom she had inherited her love of the wild. But--there was the jug! Always her thoughts of Vil Holland had led up to that brown leather jug until she had come to hate it with an unreasoning hatred.

”I see you have not forgotten your jug.”

”No, I got it filled in town.” The man's reply was casual, as he would have mentioned his gloves, or his hat.

”You said you had never run up against anything you couldn't whip, except--except----”

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