Part 16 (1/2)

She shrank back, trembling, against the rocky wall; she glanced about her with the swift, futile manner of a creature helplessly trapped, then she pressed her fingers an instant to her eyes and straightened. ”You never will forgive yourself,” she said; not in anger, not in judgment, but in a tone so low, so sad, it seemed to express not only regret but finality.

Tisdale was silent. After a moment he turned to the lower side of the basin, which afforded better foothold than the wall he had descended, and began to work up from niche to ledge, grasping a chance bunch of sage, a stunted bush of chaparral that grew in a cranny, to steady himself. And the girl stood aloof, watching him. Finally he reached a shelf that brought him, in touch with the obstruction overhead and stopped to take out his pocketknife, with which he commenced to create a loophole. Little twigs rained down; a larger branch fell, letting the daylight through. The roof was a mesh of pine boughs.

At last he closed his knife and, taking firm hold on a fixed limb, leaned to reach his other palm down to her. ”Come,” he said, ”set your foot in that first niche--no, the left one. Now, give me your hand.”

She obeyed as she must, and Hollis pushed backward through the aperture he had made, getting the bough under one armpit. ”Now, step to that jagged little spur; it's solid. The right one, too; there's room.” She gained the upper ledge and waited, hugging the wall pluckily while he worked out on the rim of the basin and, stretching full length, with the stem of the tree under his waist, reached his arms down to her. ”You will have to spring a little,” he directed, ”and grip my shoulders hard. Now, come!”

At last she was safe beside him. In another moment he was up and helped her to her feet. They stood looking towards the mountain top. The dun cloud stalking now with trailing skirts in the direction of the snow-peaks, hurled back a parting threat. ”It was the pine tree,” she exclaimed. ”It was struck. And, see! It has carried down most of that chimney. Our staircase is completely wrecked.”

Tisdale was silent. Her glance came back to him. A sudden emotion stirred her face. Then all the conservatism dropped from her like a discarded cloak, and he felt her intrepid spirit respond to his own. Now she understood that moment in the basin; she knew it had been supreme; she was great enough to see there was nothing to forgive. ”You were right,” she said, and her voice broke in those steadying pauses that carried more expression than any words. ”Fate was with us again. But I owe--my life--to you.”

”Sometime,” he answered slowly, smiling a little, ”not now, not here, I am going to hold you to the debt. And when I do, you are going to pay me--in full.”

The beautiful color, that was like the pink of coral, flamed and went in her face. ”We must hurry back to the team,” she said and turned to finish the descent to the bench. ”Horses are always so nervous in an electrical storm.” Then suddenly, as Tisdale pushed by to help her in a difficult place, she stopped. ”How strange!” she exclaimed. ”That terrible curtain has lifted from the desert. It threatened a deluge any minute, and now it is moving off without a drop of rain.”

”That's so,” he replied. ”A cross current of wind has turned it up the Columbia. But the rain is there; it is streaming along those Chelan summits in a downpour.”

”And look!” she cried, after a moment. ”A double rainbow! See how it spans the Wenatchee! It's a promise.” And the turquoise lights shone once more in her eyes. ”Here in this desert, at last, I may come to my 'pot of gold.'”

”You mean,” responded Tisdale, ”now you have seen the spring, Weatherbee's project seems possible to you. Well, I have reconsidered, too. I shall not outbid you. That would favor Mrs. Weatherbee too much. And my interests are going to keep me in Alaska indefinitely. I should be obliged to leave the plans in the hands of a manager, and I had rather trust them to you.”

Miss Armitage did not answer directly. She was watching the arch, painted higher now, less brilliantly, on the lifting film. The light had gone out of her face. All the bench was in shadow; in the valley below a twilight indistinctness had fallen. Then suddenly once more Cerberus stood forth like a beast of bra.s.s. She s.h.i.+vered.

”It isn't possible,” she said. ”It isn't possible. Even if I dared--for David's sake--to a.s.sume the responsibility, I haven't the money to carry the project through.”

Tisdale stopped and swung around. They had reached the flat rock under the sentinel pine tree. ”Did you know David Weatherbee?” he asked.

She was silent. He put his hands in his pockets and stood regarding her with his upward look from under slightly frowning brows. ”So you knew David,” he went on. ”In California, I presume, before he went to Alaska.

But why didn't you tell me so?”

She waited another moment. In the great stillness Hollis heard her labored breathing. She put out her hand, steadying herself on the bole of the pine, then: ”I've wanted to tell you,” she began. ”I've tried to--but--it was impossible to make you understand. I--I hadn't the courage.”

Her voice fluted and broke. The last word was almost a whisper. She stood before Tisdale with veiled eyes, breath still coming hard and quick, the lovely color deepening and paling in her face, like a woman awaiting judgment. And it came over him in a flash, with the strength of conviction, that this beautiful, inscrutable girl wished him to know she had loved Weatherbee. Incredible as it seemed, she had been set aside for the Spanish woman. And she had learned about David's project; he himself perhaps had told her years ago in California. And though his wife had talked with Morganstein about platting the land into five-acre tracts to dispose of quickly, this woman had desired to see the property with a view to carrying out his plans. That was why she had continued the journey from Snoqualmie Pa.s.s alone. That was why she had braved the mountain drive with him. She had loved Weatherbee. This truth, sinking slowly, stirred his inner consciousness and, wrenched in a rising commotion, something far down in the depths of him lost hold. He had presumed to think, in the infinite scheme of things, this one woman had been reserved for him. He had dared to let her know he believed so; he had taken advantage of her helpless situation, on an acquaintance of two days. His own color began to burn through the tan. ”You were right,” he said at last, very gently, ”I never can forgive myself. I can't understand it!” he broke out then, ”if you had been his wife, David Weatherbee would have been safe with us here, to-day.”

Miss Armitage started. She gave him a quick, searching glance, then sank down upon the rock. She seemed suddenly exhausted, like a woman who, hard-pressed in the midst of peril, finds unexpectedly a friendly threshold.

Tisdale looked off to the brazen slopes of Cerberus. It was the first time he had censured Weatherbee for anything, and suddenly, while he brooded, protesting over that one paramount mistake, he felt himself unaccountably responsible. He was seized with a compelling desire to, in some way, make it up to her. ”Come,” he said, ”you mustn't lose heart; to-morrow, when you are rested, it will look easier. And the question of ready money need not trouble you. Mrs. Weatherbee has reached the point where she has got to hedge on the future. Make her an offer of five thousand dollars in yearly payments, say, of fifteen hundred. She'll take it. Then, if you agree, I will arrange a loan with a Seattle bank. I should allow enough margin to cover the first reclamation expenses. Your fillers of alfalfa and strawberries would bring swift returns, and before your orchards came into bearing, your vineyards would pay the purchase price on the whole tract.”

He turned to her, smiling, and surprised a despair in her face that went to his heart.

”I thought, I hoped you meant to buy this land,” she said.

”So I did, so I do, unless you decide to. And if you undertake this project, I pledge myself to see you through.” His voice caught a pleading undernote. ”It rests with you. Above every one it rests with you to even things for Weatherbee. Isn't that clear to you? Look ahead five years; see this vale green and shady with orchards; the trees laden with harvest; imagine his wife standing here on this bench, surveying it all. See her waking to the knowledge she has let a fortune slip through her hands; see her, the purchase price spent, facing the fact that another woman built her faith on David Weatherbee; had the courage to carry out his scheme and found it a bonanza. That is what is going to make her punishment strike home.”

Miss Armitage rose. She stood a moment watching his face, then, ”How you hate her!” she said.

”Hate?” Tisdale's laugh rang short and hard. ”Well, I grant it; hate is the word. I hate her so much I've known better than go where she was; I've avoided her as an electrician avoids charged wire. Still, if I had found myself in Weatherbee's place; if I had made his mistake and married her, she should have felt my streak of iron. I might have stayed in Alaska as he did, but she would have stayed too and made a home for me, helped to fight things through.” He paused and, meeting the appeal in her eyes, his face softened. ”I've distressed you again,” he added. ”I'm sorry; but it isn't safe for me to speak of that woman; the thought of her starts my temperature rising in bounds. I want you to help me forget her. Yet, down in the depths of your heart you know you blame her.”

”Yes, I blame her.” Miss Armitage began to walk on towards the edge of the bench. ”I blame her, but not as you do. I know she tried to do right; she would have gone to Alaska--if David had wished it--at the start. And she's been courageous, too. She's smiled--laughed in the face of defeat. Her closest friends never knew.”