Part 13 (2/2)
She yielded, and he held the jacket while she put it on.
”There's another thing,” he added. ”I'm going to carry you for the next hundred yards, or possibly farther.”
”No,” replied Evelyn firmly. ”On that point, my determination is as strong as yours.”
Vane made a sign of acquiescence.
”You may have your way for a minute; I expect that will be long enough.”
He was correct. Evelyn moved forward a pace or two, and then stopped with the skirt she had gathered up brus.h.i.+ng the quivering emerald moss, and her boots, which were high ones, hidden in the mire. She had some difficulty in pulling them out. Then Vane coolly picked her up.
”All you have to do is to keep still for the next few minutes,” he informed her in a most matter-of-fact voice.
Evelyn did not move, though she recognized that had he shown any sign of self-conscious hesitation she would at once have shaken herself loose. As it was, the fact that he appeared perfectly at ease and unaware that he was doing anything unusual was rea.s.suring. Then as he plodded forward she wondered at his steadiness, for she remembered that when she had once fallen heavily when nailing up a clematis her father, who was a vigorous man, had found it difficult to carry her upstairs. Vane had never carried any woman in his arms before, but he had occasionally had to pack--as it is termed in the West--hundred-and-forty-pound flour bags over a rocky portage, and, though the comparison did not strike him as a happy one, he thought the girl was not quite so heavy as that. He was conscious of a curious thrill and a certain stirring of his blood, but this, he decided, must be sternly ignored. His task was not an easy one, and he stumbled once or twice, but he accomplished it and set the girl down safely on firmer ground.
”Now,” he said, ”there's only the drop to the dale, but we must endeavor to keep out of the beck.”
His voice and air were unembarra.s.sed, though he was breathless, and Evelyn fancied that in this and the incident of the jacket he had at last revealed the forceful, natural manners of the West. It was the first glimpse she had had of them, and she was not displeased. The man had merely done what was most advisable, with practical sense.
A little farther on, a shoot of falling water swept out of the mist above and came splas.h.i.+ng down a crag, spread out in frothing threads. It flowed across their path, reunited in a deep gully, and then fell tumultuously into the beck, which was now ten or twelve feet below them. They clung to the rock as they traced it downward, stepping cautiously from ledge to ledge and from slippery stone to stone. At times a stone plunged into the mist beneath them, and Vane grasped the girl's arm and held out a steadying hand, but he was never fussy nor needlessly concerned. When she wanted help, it was offered at the right moment; but that was all. Had she been alarmed, her companion's manner would have been more comforting than persistent solicitude. He was, she decided, one who could be relied upon in an emergency.
”You are sure-footed,” she remarked, when they stopped a minute or two for breath.
Vane laughed as he glanced into the vapor-rilled depths beneath. They stood on a ledge, two or three yards in width, with a tall crag behind them and the beck, which had rapidly grown larger, leaping half seen from rock to rock in the rift in front.
”I was born among these fells; and I have helped to pack various kinds of mining truck over much rougher mountains.”
”Have you ever gone up as steep a place as this with a load?”
”If I remember rightly, the top of the Hause drops about three hundred feet, and we'll probably spend half an hour in reaching the valley. There was one western divide that it took us several days to cross, dragging a tent, camp gear and provisions in relays. Its foot was wrapped in tangled brush that tore most of our clothes to rags, and the last pitch was two thousand feet of rock where the snow lay waist-deep in the hollows.”
”Two thousand feet! That dwarfs our little drop to the Hause. What were you doing so far up in the ranges?”
”Looking for a copper mine.”
”And you found one?”
”No; not that time. As a rule, the mineral trail leads poor men to greater poverty, and sometimes to a grave; but once you have set your feet on it you follow it again. The thing becomes an obsession; you feel forced to go.”
”Even if you bring nothing back?”
Vane laughed.
”One always brings back something--frost-bite, bruises, a bag of specimens that a.s.sayers and mineral development men smile at. They're the palpable results, but in most cases you pick up an intangible something else.”
”And that is?”
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