Part 10 (2/2)
”Do you mean to say that I was coolly ambushed before I could----”
She silenced him with a quick little gesture. Blacklock and Miss Cantrell were still pacing their sentry beat, and the major's ”H'm--ha!”
rose in irascible contradiction above the hum of voices.
”I have said all that I dare to say; more than I should have said if you were not so rashly determined to make light of things you do not understand,” she rejoined evenly.
”They are things which I should understand--which I must understand if I am to deal intelligently with them,” he insisted. ”I have been calling them one part accident and three parts superst.i.tion or imagination. But if there is design----”
Again she stopped him with the imperative little gesture.
”I did not say there was design,” she denied.
It was an _impa.s.se_, and the silence which followed emphasised it. When he rose to take his leave, love prompted an offer of service, and he made it.
”I cannot help believing that you are mistaken,” he qualified. ”But I respect your anxiety so much that I would willingly share it if I could.
What do you want me to do?”
She turned to look away down the maple-shadowed avenue and her answer had tears in it.
”I want you to be watchful--always watchful. I wish you to believe that your life is in peril, and to act accordingly. And, lastly, I beg you to help me to keep Mr. Wingfield away from Elbow Canyon.”
”I shall be heedful,” he promised. ”And if Mr. Wingfield comes material-hunting, I shall be as inhospitable as possible. May I come again to Castle 'Cadia?”
The invitation was given instantly, almost eagerly.
”Yes; come as often as you can spare the time. Must you go now? Shall I have Otto bring the car and drive you around to your camp?”
Ballard promptly refused to put the chauffeur to the trouble. It was only a little more than a mile in the direct line from the house on the knoll to the point where the river broke through the foothill hogback, and the night was fine and starlit. After the day of hard riding he should enjoy the walk.
Elsa did not go with him when he went to say good-night to Miss Cauffrey and to his host. He left her sitting in the hammock, and found her still there a few minutes later when he came back to say that he must make his acknowledgments to her father through her. ”I can't find him, and no one seems to know where he is,” he explained.
She rose quickly and went to the end of the portico to look down a second tree-shadowed avenue skirting the mountainward slope of the knoll.
”He must have gone to the laboratory; the lights are on,” she said; and then with a smile that thrilled him ecstatically: ”You see what your footing is to be at Castle 'Cadia. Father will not make company of you; he expects you to come and go as one of us.”
With this heart-warming word for his leave-taking Ballard sought out the path to which she directed him and swung off down the hill to find the trail, half bridle-path and half waggon road, which led by way of the river's windings to the outlet canyon and the camp on the outer mesa.
When he was but a little distance from the house he heard the _pad pad_ of soft footfalls behind him, and presently a great dog of the St.
Bernard breed overtook him and walked sedately at his side. Ballard loved a good dog only less than he loved a good horse, and he stopped to pat the St. Bernard, talking to it as he might have talked to a human being.
Afterward, when he went on, the dog kept even pace with him, and would not go back, though Ballard tried to send him, coaxing first and then commanding. To the blandishments the big retriever made his return in kind, wagging his tail and thrusting his huge head between Ballard's knees in token of affection and loyal fealty. To the commands he was entirely deaf, and when Ballard desisted, the dog took his place at one side and one step in advance, as if half impatient at his temporary master's waste of time.
At the foot-bridge crossing the river the dog ran ahead and came back again, much as if he were a scout pioneering the way; and at Ballard's ”Good dog! Fine old fellow!” he padded along with still graver dignity, once more catching the step in advance and looking neither to right nor left.
At another time Ballard might have wondered why the great St. Bernard, most sagacious of his tribe, should thus attach himself to a stranger and refuse to be shaken off. But at the moment the young man had a heartful of other and more insistent queryings. Gained ground with the loved one is always the lover's most heady cup of intoxication; but the lees at the bottom of the present cup were sharply tonic, if not bitter.
What was the mystery so evidently enshrouding the tragedies at Elbow Canyon? That they were tragedies rather than accidents there seemed no longer any reasonable doubt. But with the doubt removed the mystery cloud grew instantly thicker and more impenetrable. If the tragedies were growing out of the fight for the possession of Arcadia Park, what manner of man could Colonel Craigmiles be to play the kindly, courteous host at one moment and the backer and instigator of murderers at the next? And if the charge against the colonel be allowed to stand, it immediately dragged in a sequent which was clearly inadmissible: the unavoidable inference being that Elsa Craigmiles was in no uncertain sense her father's accessory.
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