Part 37 (1/2)

”I'm not afraid. I've got my rifle. Besides, I'll be at Murray's before dark, and there, as you know, I shall be in good hands. But Claire will worry unless she knows where I am.”

”She'll worry just the same.”

”No. She knows Mrs. Murray very well.”

”But----”

”Good-by, Mr. Smythe!”

She reached her hand to him, and he took it reluctantly.

”It's all wrong, Miss g.a.y.l.o.r.d!” he protested. ”I'm convinced that I'm acting like a fool. If anything happens to you, I'll----”

”Nothing will happen to me. Good-by!”

Smythe watched her until she was swallowed up by the woods; he looked at the pines piling up to the distant crests of the mountains, ma.s.s on ma.s.s, and solitude enfolding deeper solitude; he listened to the long, low, rolling murmur of the forest, sweet but menacing. Then, with the inward comment that he was several kinds of a blithering idiot, he turned and rode back toward the Park, evolving various interesting but futile theories to explain the fact that he, a man of undoubted intelligence, had always acted the part of the giddy fool in moments of emergency. And there was Huntington--another fool! He could foresee a pretty dialogue between them.

CHAPTER XX

”THE TRAIL HELD TRUE”

The forest enveloped her, but she sheltered herself in its heart, and was glad of its soothing silence. The wind had died down to a rustling murmur in the highest foliage; through rifts in the dark-green canopy she caught glimpses of a cool blue sky; and there was a rooty sweetness in the air.

Mile by mile the road, a mere track traveled by Murray's team at long intervals, grew rougher and more difficult. Soon it had abandoned the easy grades for the gulch, and climbed steep mountain sides, in a devious course through heavy timber, dropping to tumbling rivulets, climbing again to hang on the edges of high cliffs, dodging here and there among ma.s.sive, outjutting rocks. Four hours she rode thus, mounting, ever mounting, with glimpses now and then of the forests ma.s.sed green-black below, and glimpses even of the Park itself, around the shoulder of a hill,--a patch of green and violet bright with suns.h.i.+ne. And then, when weariness had begun to weigh upon her, and as the shadows of the forest turned to glooms, she saw with a thrill of expectation that the road dipped ahead of her into a little gulch that lay hidden away in a cleft of the mountains. She must surely be near her destination now; and sure enough, she was riding presently along the bank of a roaring stream; beyond her was a small meadow of a brilliant green, and at the far edge of it a log cabin, with friendly smoke curling from the chimney.

But she was surprised and disappointed. She had expected, on reaching Murray's, to see the stark head of Thunder Mountain towering above it, near and sheer. It was nowhere visible; not even the silvery peaks, its neighbors, were to be seen; there were only forests heaped on forests to the sky line. The trail, then, must be longer than she thought; and she seemed to be no closer to him than when she had studied the bald head of the mountain through the clouds.

She was welcomed by Mrs. Murray with cordiality, but in some surprise.

A stout and jovial person, whose spirits appeared not to have been lowered in the least degree by the loneliness of her surroundings, Mrs. Murray was a helpful hostess to Marion, who was now in a state of deep dejection. A little boy and his smaller sister, both very dirty but rugged and red-cheeked, played in the open s.p.a.ce before the cabin.

The week's was.h.i.+ng was on the line, and from behind it, at the sound of a horse's hoof beats, came Mrs. Murray, staring in amazement.

Wonders on wonders in that solitude, where nothing ever happened!

First a runaway horse of unheard-of color, saddled and bridled, das.h.i.+ng past the cabin, and almost trampling the children at their play; then Philip Haig, with his set face and burning eyes, making inquiries, and asking for a bite to eat; and then----

”Well! If it ain't Miss g.a.y.l.o.r.d!” cried Mrs. Murray, as she rushed to greet her. ”What in the world----”

She paused on that, recalling suddenly what she had heard at Thompson's of Marion's nursing Haig back to life, and intuitively a.s.sociating her appearance there with his. Marion saw the thought reflected in the woman's honest face, and knew that after all the happenings of the summer, and the gossip that had followed, her better course was to be frank with Mrs. Murray from the start. Besides she could not wait to ask her questions by any indirection.

”Have you seen him?” she demanded eagerly.

”Yes, he was here--about noontime. The look on his face!”

She threw up her hands in a gesture that indicated the abandonment of all hope for such a man.

”And Sunnysides?”

”Long before him. The critter almost run over my two babies, playin'

there before the door. Poor dears, scared almost out o' their skins!”