Part 19 (1/2)
Tisdale halted again, and in the silence Elizabeth sighed. Then, ”I'll bet you didn't waste any time in that place,” exclaimed Morganstein.
”The eyes were closed,” resumed Tisdale gently. ”I saw the blow had taken him in his sleep, but the wantonness, the misery of it, turned me cold.
Then, you are right, I was seized with a panic to get away. I laid the papoose back in the place where I had found him and left my string of fish, a poor tribute, with what money I had about me, and hurried down into the bed of the brook.
”The squaws were several days' travel from the reservation, but I remembered we had pa.s.sed a small encampment a few miles down the river and another near the mouth of the Dosewallups, where a couple of Indians were fis.h.i.+ng from canoes. I knew they would patrol the stream as soon as the alarm was given, and my only chance was to make a wide detour, avoiding my camp where they would first look for me, swim the river, and push through the forest, around that steep, pyramid peak to the next canyon. You see it?--The Duckabush cuts through there to tide water. I left no trail in crossing the stony bed of the brook, and took advantage of a low basalt bluff in climbing the farther bank. It was while I was working my way over the rock into cover of the trees that the pleasant calling on the ridge behind me changed to the first terrible cry. The mother had found her dead baby.
”Twilight was on me when I stopped at last on the river bank to take off my shoes. I rolled them with my coat in a snug pack, which I secured with a length of fish-line to my shoulders before I plunged in. The current was swift; I lost headway, and a whirlpool caught me; I was swept under, came up grazing a ragged rock, dipped again through a riffle, and when I finally gathered myself and won out to the opposite sh.o.r.e, there was my camp in full view below me. I was winded, bruised, s.h.i.+vering, and while I lay resting I watched Sandy. He stirred the fire under his kettle, put a fresh lag on, then walked to the mouth of the brook and stood looking up stream, wondering, no doubt, what was keeping me. Then a long cry came up the gorge. It was lost in the rush of the rapids and rose again in a wailing dirge. The young squaw was mourning for her papoose. It struck me colder than the waters of the Dosewallups. Sandy turned to listen. I knew I had only to call, show myself, and the boys would be ready to fight for me every step of the trail down to the settlement; but there was no need to drag them in; I hoped they would waste no time in going out, and I found my pocket compa.s.s, set a course, and pushed into the undergrowth.
”That night journey was long-drawn torture. The moon rose, but its light barely penetrated the fir boughs. My coat and shoes were gone, torn from me in the rapids, and I walked blindly into snares of broken and p.r.o.nged branches, trod tangles of blackberry, and more than once my foot was pierced by the barbs of a devil's-club. Dawn found me stumbling into a small clearing. I was dull with weariness, but I saw a cabin with smoke rising from the chimney, and the possibility of a breakfast heartened me.
As I hurried to the door, it opened, and a woman with a milking pail came out. At sight of me she stopped, her face went white, and, dropping the bucket, she moved backward into the room. The next moment she brought a rifle from behind the door. 'If you come one step nearer,' she cried, 'I'll shoot.'”
Tisdale paused, and the humor broke gently in his face. ”I saw she was quite capable of it,” he went on, ”and I stopped. It was the first time I had seemed formidable to a woman, and I raised my hand to my head--my hat was gone--to smooth my ruffled hair; then my glance fell from my s.h.i.+rt sleeves, soiled and in tatters, down over my torn trousers to my shoeless feet; my socks were in rags. 'I am sorry,' I began, but she refused to listen. 'Don't you say a word,' she warned and had the rifle to her shoulder, looking along the sight. 'If you do, I'll shoot, and I'm a pretty good shot.'
”'I haven't a doubt of that,' I answered, taking the word, 'and even if you were not, you could hardly miss at that range.'
”Her color came back, and she stopped sighting to look me over. 'Now,' she said, 'you take that road down the Duckabush, and don't you stop short of a mile. Ain't you ashamed,' she shrilled, as I moved ignominiously into the trail, 'going 'round scaring ladies to death?'
”But I did not go that mile. Out of sight of the cabin I found myself in one of those old burned sections, overgrown with maple. The trees were very big, and the gnarled, fantastic limbs and boles were wrapped in thick bronze moss. It covered the huge, dead trunks and logs of the destroyed timber, carpeted the earth, and out of it grew a natural fernery.” He turned his face a little, involuntarily seeking Mrs. Weatherbee. ”I wish you could have seen that place,” he said. ”Imagine a great billowing sea of infinite shades of green, fronds waving everywhere, light, beautifully stencilled elk-fern, starting with a breadth of two feet and tapering to lengths of four or five; sword-fern shooting stiffly erect, and whole knolls mantled in maidenhair.”
”I know, I know!” she responded breathlessly. ”It must have been beautiful, but it was terrible if you were pursued. I have seen such a place. Wherever one stepped, fronds bent or broke and made a plain trail.
But of course you kept to the beaten road.”
Tisdale shook his head. ”That road outside the clearing was simply a narrow, little used path; and I was so dead tired I began to look for a place where I might take an hour's rest. I chose a big cedar snag a few rods from the trail, the spreading kind that is always hollow, and found the opening screened in fern and just wide enough to let me in. Almost instantly I was asleep and--do you know?”--the humor broke again gently-- ”it was late in the afternoon when I wakened. And I was only roused then by a light blow on my face. I started up. The thing that had struck me was a moccasin, and its mate had dropped at my elbow. Then I saw a can of milk with a loaf of bread placed inside my door. But there was no one in sight, though I hurried to look, and I concluded that for some unaccountable reason that inhospitable woman had changed her opinion of me and wanted to make amends. I took a long draught of the milk--it was the best I ever tasted--then picked up one of the moccasins. It was new and elaborately beaded, the kind a woman fancies for wall decorations, and she had probably bartered with some pa.s.sing squaw for the pair. But the size looked encouraging, and with a little ripping and cutting, I managed to work it on. Pinned to the toe of the other, I found a note. It ran like this: 'Two Indians are trailing you. I sent them down-stream, but they will come back. They told me about that poor little papoose.'
”I saw she must have followed me that morning, while searching for her cow, or perhaps to satisfy herself I had left the clearing, and so discovered my hiding-place. The broader track of her skirts must have covered mine through the fern.”
Tisdale paused. The _Aquila_ had come under the lee of Bainbridge Island.
The Olympics were out of sight, as the yacht, heeling to the first tide rip, began to turn into the Narrows, and the batteries of Fort Ward commanded her bows; a beautiful wooded point broke the line of the opposite sh.o.r.e. It rimmed a small cove. But Mrs. Weatherbee was not interested; her attention remained fixed on Tisdale. Indeed he held the eyes of every one. Then Marcia Feversham relieved the tension. ”And the Indians came back?” she asked.
”Oh, yes, that was inevitable; they had to come back to pick up my trail.
But you don't know what a different man that rest and the moccasins made of me. In five minutes I was on the road and making my best time up the gorge, in the opposite direction. The woman was standing in her door as I pa.s.sed the cabin; she put a warning finger to her lips and waved me on. In a little while the ground began to fall in short pitches; sometimes it broke in steps over granite spurs where the exposed roots of fir and hemlock twined; then I came to a place where an immense boulder, big as a house, moving down the mountain, had left a swath through the timber, and I heard the thunder of the Duckabush. I turned into this cut, intending to cross the river and work down the canyon on the farther side, and as I went I saw the torrent storming below me, a winding sheet of spray. The boulder had stopped on a level bluff, but two sections, splitting from it, had dropped to the bank underneath and, tilting together in an apex, formed a small cavern through which washed a rill. It made a considerable pool and, dividing, poured on either side of the uprooted trunk of a fir that bridged the stream. The log was very old; it sagged mid-channel, as though a break had started, and snagged limbs stretched a line of pitfalls. But a few yards below the river plunged in cataract, and above I found sheer cliffs curving in a double horseshoe. It was impossible to swim the racing current, and I came back to the log. By that time another twilight was on me. The forest had been very still; I hadn't noticed a bird all day, but while I stood weighing the chances of that crossing, I heard the harsh call of a kingfisher or jay. It seemed to come from the slope beyond the bluff, and instantly an answer rose faintly in the direction of the trail. I was leaning on one of the tilted slabs, and I wormed myself around the base, to avoid leaving an impression in the wet sand, and dipped under the trailing bough of a cedar, through the pool, and crawled up into the cavern. There wasn't room to stand erect, and I waited crouching, over moccasins in water. The cedar began to sway--I had used the upper boughs to ease myself in sliding down the slab from the bluff--a fragment of granite dropped, then an Indian came between me and the light.
”While he stopped to examine the sand at the edge of the pool, another followed. He ventured a short distance out on the log and came back, while the first set his rifle against the trunk and sank on his hands and knees to drink. The water, roiled probably by my steps, was not to his taste, and he rejected it with a disgusted 'Hwah!' When he rose, he stood looking across the pool into my cavern. I held my breath, hugging the bluff behind me like a lizard. It was so dark I doubted if even his lynx eyes could discover me, but he lifted the gun and for an instant I believed he meant to send a shot into the hole. Then he seemed to think better of wasting his ammunition and led the way down-stream. They stopped on a level bank over the cataract, and in a little while I caught the odor of smoke and later of cooking trout. My cramped position grew intolerable, and finally I crept out into the pool to reconnoitre. The light of their fire showed both figures stretched on the ground. They had camped for the night.
”It was useless to try to go down-stream; before dawn Indians would patrol the whole canyon; neither could I double back to the Dosewallups where they had as surely left a watch; my only course was to risk the log crossing at once, before the moon rose, and strike southward to the Lilliwaup, where, at the mouth of the gorge, I knew the mail steamer made infrequent stops. I began to work up between the gnarled roots to the top of the trunk and pushed laboriously with infinite caution out over the channel. I felt every inch of that log, but once a dead branch snapped short in my hand, and the noise rang sharp as a pistol shot. I waited, flattening myself to the bole, but the thunder of the river must have drowned the sound; the Indians did not stir. So at last I came to the danger point. Groping for the break, I found it started underneath, reaching well around. Caused probably by some battering bulk in the spring floods, and widening slowly ever since, it needed only a slight shock to bring it to a finish. I grasped a stout snag and tried to swing myself over the place, but there came a splitting report; and there was just time to drop astride above that stub of limb, when the log parted below it, and I was in the river. I managed to keep my hold and my head out of water, though the current did its best to suck me under. Then I saw that while the main portion of the tree had been swept away, the top to which I clung remained fixed to the bank, wedged no doubt between trunks or boulders. As I began to draw myself up out of the wash, a resinous bough thrown on the fire warned me the Indians were roused, and I flattened again like a chameleon on the slippery incline. They came as far as the rill and stood looking across, then went down-stream, no doubt to see whether the trunk had stranded on the riffles below the cataract. But they were back before I could finish the log, and the rising moon illuminated the gorge. I was forced to swing to the shady side of the snag. The time dragged endlessly; a wind piping down the watercourse cut like a hundred whips through my wet clothes; and I think in the end I only kept my hold because my fingers were too stiff to let go. But at last the Indians stretched themselves once more on the ground; their fire burned low, and I wormed myself up within reach of a friendly young hemlock, grasped a bough, and gained shelving rock. The next moment I relaxed, all but done for, on a dry bed of needles.”
Tisdale paused, looking again from face to face, while the humor gleamed in his own. ”I am making a long story of it,” he said modestly. ”You must be tired!”
”Tired!” exclaimed Elizabeth, ”It's the very best story I ever heard.
Please go on.”
”Of course you escaped,” supplemented Marcia Feversham, ”but we want to know how. And what was your chum doing all the time? And wasn't there another woman?”
Frederic Morganstein rumbled a short laugh. ”Maybe you made the Lilliwaup, but I'll bet ten to one you missed your steamer.”
Tisdale's eyes rested involuntarily again on Mrs. Weatherbee. She did not say anything, but she met the look with her direct gaze; her short upper lip parted, and the color burned softly in her cheek. ”I made the Lilliwaup,” he went on, ”about two miles from the mouth, between the upper and lower falls. The river breaks in cascades there, hundreds of them as far as one can see, divided by tremendous boulders.”
”We know the place,” said Elizabeth quickly. ”Our first cruise on the _Aquila_ was to the Lilliwaup. We climbed to the upper falls and spent hours along the cascades. Those boulders, hundreds of them, rose through the spray, all covered with little trees and ferns. There never was anything like it, but we called it The Fairy Isles.”