Part 17 (1/2)

”Oh,” she cried softly, ”it never seemed as charming before; but, of course, it is coming, as we have, straight from the hot desert. There's the coolest, fragrant wood road down there, Mr. Tisdale, from the hotel to Surprise Falls. It follows the stream past deep green pools and cascades breaking among the rocks. Listen. We should hear the river now.”

Tisdale smiled. There was nothing to be heard but the echo of the running trucks and the scream of the whistle repeated from cliff and spur. They were switchbacking down the fire-scarred front of a mountain. He bent a little to look beyond her. It was as though they were coasting down a tilted shelf in an oblique wall, and over the blackened skeletons of firs he followed the course of the river out through crowding blue b.u.t.tes.

Returning, his glance traced the track, cross-cutting up from the gorge.

”I know Surprise Falls,” he said; ”and the old Skykomish from start to finish. There's a point below the Springs where the current boils through great flumes of granite into a rocky basin. Long before the hotel was thought of, I fished that pool.”

”I know! I know!” she responded, glowing. ”We--Miss Morganstein and her brother and I--found it this summer. We had to work down-stream across those fissures to reach it, but it was worth the trouble. There never was another such pool. It was like a mighty bowl full of dissolving emeralds; and the trout loved it. We caught twenty, and we built a fire on the rocks and cooked them. It was delightfully cool and shady. It was one of those golden days one never forgets; I was sorry when it was gone.” She paused, the high wave of her excitement pa.s.sed. ”I never could live in that treeless country,” she went on. ”Water, running as G.o.d made it, plenty of it, is a necessity to me. But please take your seat, Mr. Tisdale.” She settled back in her place and began to date her telegram. ”I am just sending the briefest message to let Mrs. Feversham know where I am.”

”The porter is coming back for it now,” he answered ”And thank you, but I am going in the smoking-car.”

As he approached the vestibule, he caught her reflection in the mirror at the end of the sleeper. She was looking after him, and she leaned forward a little with parted lips, as though she had started to call him back, but her eyes clouded in uncertainty; then suddenly, the sparkle rose. It suffused her whole face. She had met his glance in the gla.s.s. And the porter was waiting. She settled herself once more and devoted herself to the telegram.

The lines in Tisdale's face deepened mellowly. He believed that, now they were so near their journey's end, she wanted to be sure of an opportunity to thank him some more. ”I am coming back,” he said inwardly, addressing the woman in the mirror, ”but I must have a smoke to keep my pulse normal.”

But he did not return to the sleeper, for the reason that at Scenic Hot Springs the Seattle papers were brought aboard. The copy of the _Press_ he bought contained the account of the accident in Snoqualmie Pa.s.s. The ill.u.s.trations were unusually clear, and Daniels' cuts were supplemented by another labelled: ”The Morganstein party leaving Vivian Court,” which also designated the group.

(Mrs. Feversham, wife of the special delegate from Alaska, in the tonneau.

Her sister, Miss Morganstein, on her right.

Mrs. Weatherbee seated in front.

Frederic Morganstein driving the car.)

And under the central picture Hollis read: ”Mrs. Weatherbee (Miss Armitage?), as she drove the machine into the embankment.”

The paper rattled a little in his hands. His face flamed, then settled gray and very still. Except that his eyes moved, flas.h.i.+ng from the photographs to the headlines, he might have been a man hewn of granite.

”One more reason why the Snoqualmie highway should be improved,” he read.

”Narrow escape of the Morganstein party. Mrs. Weatherbee's presence of mind.” And, half-way down the page, ”Mrs. Weatherbee modestly a.s.sumes an incognito when interviewed by a representative of the _Press_.”

But Tisdale did not look at the story. He crushed the newspaper into the corner of his seat and turned his face to the window. His cigar had gone out. He laid it mechanically on the sill. So, this was the woman who had wrecked David Weatherbee; who had cast her spell over level-headed Foster; and already, in the less than three days he had known her, had made a complete idiot of him. Suppose Foster should hear about that drive through the mountains that had cost him over seven hundred dollars; suppose Foster should know about that episode in the basin on Weatherbee's own ground. A great revulsion came over him.

Presently he began to take up detail after detail of that journey. Now he saw the real impulse that had led her to board the eastbound train in Snoqualmie Pa.s.s. She had recognized him, conjectured he was on his way to find that tract of Weatherbee's; and she had determined to go over the land with him, cajole him into putting the highest estimate possible on the property. Even now, there in the sleeper, she was congratulating herself no doubt on the success of her scheme.

At the thought of the ease with which he had allowed himself to be ensnared, his muscles tightened. It was as though the iron in the man took shape, shook off the veneer, encased him like a coat of mail. Hitherto, in those remote Alaska solitudes, this would have meant the calling to account of some transgressor in his camp. He began to sift for the prime element in this woman's wonderful personality. It was not physical beauty alone; neither was it that mysterious magnetism, almost electrical, yet delicately responsive as a stringed instrument. One of these might have kept that tremendous hold on Weatherbee near, but on Weatherbee absent through those long, breaking years, hardly. It was something deeper; something elusive yet insistent that had made it easier for him to brave out his defeat alone in the Alaska wilderness than come back to face.

Clearly she was not just the handsome animal he had believed her to be.

Had she not called herself proud? Had he not seen her courage? She had a spirit to break. A soul!

CHAPTER XIII

”A LITTLE STREAK OF LUCK”

It was not the first time Jimmie Daniels had entertained the Society Editor at the Rathskeller, and that Monday, though he had invited her to lunch with him in the Venetian room, she asked him, as was her habit, to ”order for both.”

”Isn't there something special you'd like?” he asked generously; ”something you haven't had for a long time?”

”No. You are so much of an epicure--for a literary person--I know it's sure to be something nice. Besides,” and the shadow of a smile drifted across her face, ”it saves me guessing the state of your finances.”