Part 6 (1/2)
Impervious to her incredulity Low turned his calm eyes on her face.
”Certainly, I'll bet my life on what I say. Tell me: do you know anybody in Indian Spring who would likely spy upon you?”
The young girl was conscious of a certain ill-defined uneasiness, but answered, ”No.”
”Then it was not YOU he was seeking,” said Low thoughtfully. Miss Nellie had not time to notice the emphasis, for he added, ”You must go at once, and lest you have been followed I will show you another way back to Indian Spring. It is longer, and you must hasten. Take your shoes and stockings with you until we are out of the bush.”
He raised her again in his arms and strode once more out through the covert into the dim aisles of the wood. They spoke but little; she could not help feeling that some other discordant element, affecting him more strongly than it did her, had come between them, and was half perplexed and half frightened. At the end of ten minutes he seated her upon a fallen branch, and telling her he would return by the time she had resumed her shoes and stockings glided from her like a shadow. She would have uttered an indignant protest at being left alone, but he was gone ere she could detain him. For a moment she thought she hated him. But when she had mechanically shod herself once more, not without nervous s.h.i.+vers at every falling needle, he was at her side.
”Do you know anyone who wears a frieze coat like that?” he asked, handing her a few torn shreds of wool affixed to a splinter of bark.
Miss Nellie instantly recognized the material of a certain sporting coat worn by Mr. Jack Brace on festive occasions, but a strange yet infallible instinct that was part of her nature made her instantly disclaim all knowledge of it.
”No,” she said.
”Not anyone who scents himself with some doctor's stuff like cologne?”
continued Low, with the disgust of keen olfactory sensibilities.
Again Miss Nellie recognized the perfume with which the gallant expressman was wont to make redolent her little parlor, but again she avowed no knowledge of its possessor. ”Well,” returned Low with some disappointment, ”such a man has been here. Be on your guard. Let us go at once.”
She required no urging to hasten her steps, but hurried breathlessly at his side. He had taken a new trail by which they left the wood at right angles with the highway, two miles away. Following an almost effaced mule track along a slight depression of the plain, deep enough, however, to hide them from view, he accompanied her, until, rising to the level again, she saw they were beginning to approach the highway and the distant roofs of Indian Spring. ”n.o.body meeting you now,” he whispered, ”would suspect where you had been. Good night! until next week--remember.”
They pressed each other's hands, and standing on the slight ridge outlined against the paling sky, in full view of the highway, parting carelessly, as if they had been chance met travelers. But Nellie could not restrain a parting backward glance as she left the ridge. Low had descended to the deserted trail, and was running swiftly in the direction of the Carquinez Woods.
CHAPTER IV
Teresa awoke with a start. It was day already, but how far advanced the even, unchanging, soft twilight of the woods gave no indication.
Her companion had vanished, and to her bewildered senses so had the camp-fire, even to its embers and ashes. Was she awake, or had she wandered away unconsciously in the night? One glance at the tree above her dissipated the fancy. There was the opening of her quaint retreat and the hanging strips of bark, and at the foot of the opposite tree lay the carca.s.s of the bear. It had been skinned, and, as Teresa thought with an inward s.h.i.+ver, already looked half its former size.
Not yet accustomed to the fact that a few steps in either direction around the circ.u.mference of those great trunks produced the sudden appearance or disappearance of any figure, Teresa uttered a slight scream as her young companion unexpectedly stepped to her side. ”You see a change here,” he said; ”the stamped-out ashes of the camp-fire lie under the brush,” and he pointed to some cleverly scattered boughs and strips of bark which completely effaced the traces of last night's bivouac. ”We can't afford to call the attention of any packer or hunter who might straggle this way to this particular spot and this particular tree; the more naturally,” he added, ”as they always prefer to camp over an old fire.” Accepting this explanation meekly, as partly a reproach for her caprice of the previous night, Teresa hung her head.
”I'm very sorry,” she said, ”but wouldn't that,” pointing to the carca.s.s of the bear, ”have made them curious?”
But Low's logic was relentless.
”By this time there would have been little left to excite curiosity, if you had been willing to leave those beasts to their work.”
”I'm very sorry,” repeated the woman, her lips quivering.
”They are the scavengers of the wood,” he continued in a lighter tone; ”if you stay here you must try to use them to keep your house clean.”
Teresa smiled nervously.
”I mean that they shall finish their work to-night,” he added, ”and I shall build another camp-fire for us a mile from here until they do.”
But Teresa caught his sleeve.
”No,” she said hurriedly, ”don't, please, for me. You must not take the trouble, nor the risk. Hear me; do, please. I can bear it, I WILL bear it--to-night. I would have borne it last night, but it was so strange--and”--she pa.s.sed her hands over her forehead--”I think I must have been half mad. But I am not so foolish now.”
She seemed so broken and despondent that he replied rea.s.suringly: ”Perhaps it would be better that I should find another hiding-place for you, until I can dispose of that carca.s.s so that it will not draw dogs after the wolves, and men after THEM. Besides, your friend the sheriff will probably remember the bear when he remembers anything, and try to get on its track again.”