Part 10 (1/2)
Presently, during one of the interludes when darkness enveloped the gulf, she began to entertain Tisdale with an experience in the Sierras, a little adventure on one of those journeys with her father, when she had driven Pedro and Don Jose. But though she told the story with composure, even with a certain vivacity and charm, as she might have narrated it to a small and intimate audience in any safe drawing-room, her self-control was a transparency through which he saw her anxiety manoeuvering, in spite of his promise, to keep him there.
”Strange, is it not?” she went on, ”how things will take the gloss of humor, looking back. That cloudburst was anything but funny at the time; it was miserably exasperating to stand there drenched, with the comfortable quarters of the mining company in sight, cut off by an impa.s.sable washout. And it was wretched driving all those miles to our hotel in wet clothes, with not so much as a dry rug to cover us; yet afterwards, whenever I tried to tell about it, I failed to gain a shred of sympathy. People laughed, as you are doing now.”
”And you laughed with them,” answered Tisdale quickly, ”because looking back you caught the right perspective. It is always so. Another incident that seemed trivial in pa.s.sing will loom up behind us like a cliff on the horizon. And it is so with people. The man who held the foreground through sheer egoism sinks to his proper place in obscurity, while a little, white-faced woman we knew for a day stands out of the past like a monument.”
His brows clouded; he turned from the lantern light to look off again to the shrouded mountain tops. ”And looking back,” he added, ”the man you thought you knew better than the rest, the partner, friend, to whom, when you were reminded and it suited your convenience, you were ready to do a service, stands out from the shadows clearly defined. It is under the test of those high lights behind that his character s.h.i.+nes. You wonder at his greatness. His personality takes a stronger, closer hold, and you would give the rest of your life just to go back and travel the old, hard road again with him.”
There was a long silence, broken once more by that far, wailing cry on the wind. Miss Armitage started. She laid her hand on Tisdale's shoulder, the nearest object, in a tightening grip, while for a breathless moment she leaned forward, trying to penetrate the darkness of the gorge. The action seemed to remind him of her presence, and he turned to look at her.
”Frightened again?” he asked.
Her hand fell; she settled back in her seat. ”N-o, not very much, but it took me off guard. It sounds so desolate, so--so--supernatural; like the cry of a doomed soul.”
Tisdale smiled. ”That describes it, but you never have heard it at close range.”
She s.h.i.+vered; her glance moved again in apprehension to the night-enshrouded Pa.s.s. ”Have you, Mr. Tisdale?”
”Yes, lonesome nights by a mountain camp-fire, with just the wind piping down a ravine, or a cataract breaking over a spur to fill the interlude.”
”Oh, that must have been terrifying,” and the s.h.i.+ver crept into her voice.
”But what did you do?”
”Why, I hurried to pull the embers together and throw on more spruce boughs. A cougar is cautious around a fire.”
There was another silence, then, ”I was thinking of your little, white-faced woman,” said Miss Armitage. ”She baffles me. Was she your bravest woman or just your anemone? Would you mind telling me?”
”So you were thinking of her. That's odd; so was I.” Tisdale changed his position, turning to lean on the edge of the porch with his elbow resting on the floor. ”But it was that Gordon setter there that reminded me of her. Her dog had the same points, though he had been better trained.” He paused briefly, then said: ”She was both. She was like that small, white flower which grows in the shelter of the Alaska woods--sweet and modest and frail looking--yet she was the bravest woman and the strongest when it came to endurance I ever knew.”
”It happened, of course, in Alaska,” Miss Armitage ventured, breaking the pause. ”You knew her there?”
”Yes, it was in Alaska and about five years ago. The season I gave up getting rich in a hurry and went back to geological work. I had spent the winter on the Tanana with David Weatherbee. We had staked a promising placer, and we were ready to begin sluicing with the first spring thaw, when he sold his interest unexpectedly to meet an obligation down in the States. That nettled me, and I sold out my own share to the same men and accepted a position with the department, who had written to ask me to take charge of a party working above Seward. Weatherbee started with me, but I left him to prospect along the headwaters of the Susitna. My surveys kept me in the neighborhood of Turnagain Arm until midsummer, when I moved camp up the river to the mouth of an unexplored tributary. It was the kind of stream to lure a prospector or a sportsman, clear, rapid, broken by riffles and sand-bars, while the gra.s.sy sh.o.r.es looked favorable for elk or caribou. To bridge the delay while the last pack-horses straggled in and the men were busy pitching tents and putting things into shape, I decided to go on a short hunting trip. I traveled light, with only a single blanket rolled compactly for my shoulder strap, in case the short night should overtake me, with a generous lunch that Sandy, the cook, had supplied, but at the end of two hours' steady tramping I had sighted nothing. I had reached a wooded ravine and a snow-peak, apparently the source of the stream, closed the top of the gorge. It was the heart of the wilderness, over a hundred miles from a settlement and off the track of road-houses, but a few rods on I came upon the flume and dump of a placer mine. The miner's cabin stood a little farther up the bank under a clump of spruce, but the place seemed abandoned. Then I noticed some berry bushes near the sluice had been lately snapped off, where some heavy animal had pushed through, and a moment later, in the moist soil at a small spillway, I picked up the trail of a large bear.
”The tracks led me up the rough path towards the cabin, but midway I came to a fallen tree. It must have been down a week or more, but no attempt had been made to clear the trail or to cut through, so, pus.h.i.+ng up over the matted boughs, I leaped from the bole to avoid the litter beyond. At the same instant I saw under me, wedged in the broken branches, the body of my bear. He was a huge grizzly, and must have made an easy and ugly target as he lumbered across the barricade. I found one bullet had taken him nearly between the eyes, while another had lodged in the shoulder. And it was plain the shots were aimed from the window, with the rifle probably resting on the sill.
”As I went on up the path, the loud baying of a dog came from the cabin, then a woman's face, young and small and very white, appeared at the window. Seeing me, she turned quickly and threw open the door. The next instant her hand fell to the neck of a fine Gordon setter and, tugging at his collar, she drew back and stood surveying me from head to foot. 'It's all right, madam,' I said, stopping before her. 'Don't try to hold him.
The bear won't trouble you any more. You made a mighty fine shot.'
”'Oh,' she said, and let the dog go, 'I am so glad you have come.' And she sank into a chair, shaking and sobbing.”
”You mean,” exclaimed Miss Armitage breathlessly, ”it was she who killed the bear?”
Tisdale nodded gently. ”I wish I could make you understand the situation.
She was not a sportswoman. She was city bred and had been carefully reared--accustomed to have things done for her. I saw this at a glance.
Only her extremity and the fear that the dog would be hurt nerved her to shoot.”
”Oh, I see, I see,” said Miss Armitage. ”Fate had brought her, left her in that solitary place--alone.”
”Fate?” Tisdale questioned. ”Well, perhaps, but not maliciously; not in jest. On second thought I would not lay it to Fate at all. You see, she had come voluntarily, willingly, though blindly enough. She was one of the few women who are capable of a great love.”
Tisdale waited, but the woman beside him had no more to say. ”I saw I must give her time to gather her self-control,” he went on, ”so I turned my attention to the setter, who was alternately springing on me and excitedly wagging his tail. I like a good dog, and I soon had him familiarly snuffing my pockets; then he stretched himself playfully, with an inquiring, almost human yawn; but suddenly remembering the bear, he stood pointing, head up, forepaw lifted, and made a rush, baying furiously.