Part 8 (2/2)

”No, I don't,” replied Harley. Despite himself a mist came to his eyes over this pathetic tragedy of long ago.

”Sylvia has never said much about that night she spent there with the dead, in the midst of the wrecked and plundered train, but when a number of border men, alarmed about the emigrants, pushed on the next day to save them if possible, what do you suppose they found her doing?”

”I can't guess.”

”She had got a spade somewhere from one of the wagons, and, little as she was, she was trying to bury her own dead. She was so busy that she didn't see them ride up, and William Plummer, their leader--he was a young man then--actually shed tears, so they say. Well, these men finished the burial, and Mr. Plummer put Sylvia on his horse before him and rode away. He adopted the little thing as his daughter. He said she was the bravest creature he had ever seen, and, as he was not likely to have any real daughter, she should take a place that ought to be filled.

”Were the Utes who did this ma.s.sacre punished?”

”No one knows; the soldiers killed a number of them in battle, but whether the slain were those who ambushed the train is not decided in border history.”

”I think I understand the rest of the story of Mr. Plummer and Miss Morgan,” said Harley.

”Yes, it is not hard to guess. Mr. Grayson and her other relatives farther East did not hear of her rescue until long afterwards; they supposed her dead--but no one could have cared for her better than Mr.

Plummer. He kept her first at his mining-hut in the mountains, but after two or three years he took her into town to Boise; he put her in the care of a woman there and sent her to school. He loved her already like a real daughter. She was just the kind to appeal to him, so brave and so fond of the wild life. They say that at first she refused to stay in Boise. She ran away and tried to go on foot to him away up in the mountains, where the mining-camp was. When he heard of it, they say he laughed, and I suspect that he swore an oath or two--he lived among rough men you know--but if he did, they were swear words of admiration; he said it was just like her independence and pluck. But he made her stay in Boise.”

”He knew what was right and what was due both him and her, because now he was becoming a great man in the Northwest. He rose to power in both financial and public life, and his daughter must be equal to her fortune. But he spoiled her, you can see that, and how could he help it?”

”She was fifteen before we heard that she was alive, and then Mr.

Grayson and her other relatives wanted to take her and care for her, but Mr. Plummer refused to give her up, and he was right. He had saved her when he found her a little girl alone in all those vast mountains, and he was ent.i.tled to her. Don't you think so, Mr. Harley?”

”I do,” replied Harley, with conviction.

”We yielded to his superior claim, but he sent her more than once to see us. We loved her from the first, and we love her yet.”

Here Mrs. Grayson paused and hesitated over her words, as if in embarra.s.sment.

”But it is not you and Mr. Grayson alone who love her,” suggested Harley.

”It is not we alone; in Boise everybody loves her, and at the mines and on Mr. Plummer's ranches they all love her, too.”

”I did not mean just that kind of love.”

Mrs. Grayson flushed a little, but she continued:

”You are speaking of Mr. Plummer himself; she was his daughter at first, and so long as she was a little girl I suppose that he never dreamed of her in any other light. But when she began to grow into a young woman, Mr. Harley--and a beautiful one, too, as beautiful as she is good--he began to look at her in a different way. When these elderly men, who have been so busy that they have not had time to fall in love, do fall in love, the fall is sudden and complete. Mr. Plummer was like the others. And what else could she do? She was too young to have seen much of the world. There was no young man, none of her own age, who had taken her heart. Mr. Plummer is a good man, and she owed him everything. Of course, she accepted him. I ask you, what else could she do?”

There was a defensive note in her voice when she said: ”I ask you, what else could she do?” and Harley replied, with due deliberation:

”Perhaps she could do nothing else, but sometimes, Mrs. Grayson, I have my doubts whether twenty and fifty can ever go happily together.”

”We like Mr. Plummer, and he is a great friend of my husband's.”

Harley said nothing, but he, too, liked Mr. Plummer, and he held him in the highest respect. It required little effort of the imagination to draw a picture of the brave mountaineer riding from the Indian ma.s.sacre with that little girl upon his saddle-bow. And much of his criticism of Sylvia Morgan herself was disarmed. She was more a child of the mountains even than his first fancy had made her, and it was not a wonder that her spirit was often masculine in its strength and boldness.

It was involuntary, but he thought of her with new warmth and admiration. Incited by this feeling, he soon joined her and the group that was with her. He had expected to find her sad and comparatively silent, but he had never seen her in a more lively mood, full of light talk and jest and a gay good-humor that could not have failed to infect the most hardened cynic. Certainly he did not escape its influence, nor did he seek to do so, but as he watched her he thought there was a slight touch of feverishness to her high spirits, as if she had just escaped from some great danger.

Before they reached Detroit he talked a while with Mr. Grayson, in the private drawing-room of the car--Mrs. Grayson had joined the others--and ”King” Plummer was the subject of their talk.

”Is he really such a great political power in the Northwest?” asked Harley.

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