Part 41 (1/2)

”You didn't really think I'd leave you, did you, Fan?”

She opened her eyes. Heyl was there. He reached down, and lifted her lightly to her feet. ”Timberline Cabin's not a hundred yards away. I just did it to try you.”

She had spirit enough left to say, ”Beast.”

Then he swung her up, and carried her down the trail. He carried her, not in his arms, as they do it in books and in the movies. He could not have gone a hundred feet that way. He carried her over his shoulder, like a sack of meal, by one arm and one leg, I regret to say. Any boy scout knows that trick, and will tell you what I mean. It is the most effectual carrying method known, though unromantic.

And so they came to Timberline Cabin, and Albert Edward Cobbins was in the doorway. Heyl put her down gently on the bench that ran alongside the table. The hospitable table that bore two smoking cups of tea.

f.a.n.n.y's lips were cracked, and the skin was peeled from her nose, and her hair was straggling and her eyes red-rimmed. She drank the tea in great gulps. And then she went into the tiny bunkroom, and tumbled into one of the shelf-bunks, and slept.

When she awoke she sat up in terror, and b.u.mped her head against the bunk above, and called, ”Clancy!”

”Yep!” from the next room. He came to the door. The acrid smell of their pipes was incense in her nostrils. ”Rested?”

”What time is it?”

”Seven o'clock. Dinner time. Ham and eggs.”

She got up stiffly, and bathed her roughened face, and produced a powder pad (they carry them in the face of danger, death, and dissolution) and dusted it over her scaly nose. She did her hair--her vigorous, abundant hair that shone in the lamplight, pulled down her blouse, surveyed her torn shoes ruefully, donned the khaki skirt that Albert Edward had magically produced from somewhere to take the place of her breeches.

She dusted her shoes with a bit of rag, regarded herself steadily in the wavering mirror, and went in.

The two men were talking quietly. Albert Edward was moving deftly from stove to table. They both looked up as she came in, and she looked at Heyl. Their eyes held.

Albert Edward was as sporting a gentleman as the late dear king whose name he bore. He went out to tend Heyl's horse, he said. It was little he knew of horses, and he rather feared them, as does a sailing man. But he went, nevertheless.

Heyl still looked at f.a.n.n.y, and f.a.n.n.y at him.

”It's absurd,” said f.a.n.n.y. ”It's the kind of thing that doesn't happen.”

”It's simple enough, really,” he answered. ”I saw Ella Monahan in Chicago, and she told me all she knew, and something of what she had guessed. I waited a few days and came back. I had to.” He smiled. ”A pretty job you've made of trying to be selfish.”

At that she smiled, too, pitifully enough, for her lower lip trembled.

She caught it between her teeth in a last sharp effort at self-control.

”Don't!” she quavered. And then, in a panic, her two hands came up in a vain effort to hide the tears. She sank down on the rough bench by the table, and the proud head came down on her arms so that there was a little clatter and tinkle among the supper things spread on the table.

Then quiet.

Clarence Heyl stared. He stared, helplessly, as does a man who has never, in all his life, been called upon to comfort a woman in tears.