from things you've always known, of shifting duties and responsibilities for a time, and being free. Oh, it must be glorious, every bit of it, from the minute you buy your steamer ticket to the day when you come down the gang plank with funny labels pasted all over your suit-case!" 'But if you were leaving behind the only one who could make life worth while?" Was it extraordinary obtuseness in Tredway, or was it just the common denseness of a lover? "If there was anyone so necessary to me as that "began Miss Everdean judicially. "Yes?" urged Tredway, moving closer to catch her low-spoken decree. "I should kiss them good-by first, and "May I, Rilla? May I? I'm going to, anyway!" Actually, he did. For an amateur the thing was quite successfully accomplished, too. "And then," continued Miss Everdean, ignoring the interruption and firmly putting his arm back where it ought to be, "I should very humbly beg them to go along with me." "Oh, but I do! I have! Will you, Rilla? We'll start now, to-morrow, next week. We'll have a honeymoon trip that will never end, if you say so. Shall we?" "Hush! As if we were going off to be a pair of precious Wandering Jews! Behave, Hewitt, or I'll not go at all. And it's high time you went home. No, sir, not one more. Well, perhaps; but wait until tomorrow night comes. Whereupon Hewitt Tredway, being filled with joy unutterable and untranslatable, and not knowing what else to do, vaulted the picket fence, climbed through his study window, burned all his notes on the great Theory, and then sat in an armchair thinking exquisite thoughts until the stars grew pale and he fell asleep. As with the measles and other things, whatever it was that he was having, he was having it hard! By Alice Prescott Smith ILLUSTRATIONS BY FRANK E. SCHOONOVER N the forest gloom of the high Sierras, a woman was riding toward John Nash's cabin. John Nash was a poet. Had he been a miner, his cabin would have sought the untravelled timber instead of hanging on the red bank of the highway, just where the stage road lay level, for a breathing space, on the crest of the divide. Behind his cabin, the world dropped away into blue vapor; before it, the tableau of life drifted by. No poet could have asked for more. But John Nash had other titles than that of poet. He was spoken of as an old man, and a failure. There were times when he confessed himself as such, rhyming his gentle melancholy into verses where rhapsodies on the eternal mountains and the land of gold lay down in murmurous harmony with the tale of a man's defeat. He had outlived his time. Success or dissipation had claimed his comrades-those comrades who, with him, had heard the elf-call of forty-nine, and crossed the plains to the land of fantasy. He saw the children of the successful ones; they passed his cabin on their summer wanderings to the fishing resorts of the upper river, and when they stopped to greet the old miner whom their fathers had known, not all their kindliness could disguise their pitying patronage. They were keen-faced men from San Francisco, successful in their turn, but John Nash felt that their eyes were preoccupied; that when they looked at the mist wraiths that drifted over the firs in the canyon, they saw only fog, and trees, and a hill-side. He saw more. And so he sat untouched upon the citadel of his pride, and when, after such a meeting, he went to his cabin to write yet again the story of his years, some of the swelling gladness of the mountains was prisoned in his lines. There would be sudden mists in scoffing eyes when he droned his verses to the lounging audience in the Chaparral House the next evening. The Chaparral House was five miles away, and it brought him fame. The fishermen and campers who stopped there for a day on their way to the more pretentious resorts, heard of him, and rode over to his cabin, their cameras swinging on their saddle-horns. He showed them his view, and could be pressed to recite his poems in a shy sing-song. The women called him picturesque, and quoted Bret Harte openly. The men looked pitiful and wondering. It was a sojourner who was riding toward him this July morning. She was a young woman and alone, which was unusual in John Nash's experience, but she was not of the mountains, he knew, for she rode a man's saddle, and did it without cringing or apology. She slipped from her horse at the poet's door, and called to him. He saw, as he came toward her, that she was frowning. "See if you can find a stone here." She lifted the horse's off fore-foot. "I can't. But he's limping." The poet obeyed her. "There's nothing there," he decided. "He's stumbled and strained himself. That's one of Jim Littleton's horses." "Yes, we're stopping at the Chaparral House. If you'll let me have another horse I'll leave this one in your corral till I come back this afternoon.' She was still frowning; her face, under its red-dust coating, was pale. "I haven't any horse." "But you must have a horse!" Her breath of incredulity was near a sob. "I'm a good rider. I'll bring him back in good condition. Why, you must have a horse!" The poet stood in resentful silence. He had always had a horse till now, and the empty corral stabbed him. He could not tell this singular young woman about the price of hay. The young woman was equally silent. She tied her horse to the ring in the corner of the cabin, and turned to the poet. She was small; from her eyes to her riding boots, she looked red-brown and lustreless. The dust that covered her seemed less a profanation than when it fell on fairer women. She was gnome-like in her slender duskiness. "May I sit in your cabin for a minute?" She pressed her fingers on the frown between her eyes. "I must think." In the cabin the poet was again resentful. His guest's eyes recked nothing of the room's quaint homeliness; the fireplace of rough trachyte, that had been photographed by scores of women who had come before, she passed without an exclamation. Indeed, she showed her host as little ceremony. She dropped on the bench by the table, and buried her head in her hands. The dust from her ridinggauntlets and sombrero sifted over the well-scrubbed floor. The man who had scrubbed the floor gathered his courage to protest. "I should think you'd be- Why, you're shivering! Are you cold?" His accusation, high with the peevish resolution of old age, trailed off into the gentlest solicitude. "No." She raised her head. "No, I'm not cold. This is nervousness. I must get to Thayer's Mill to-day. You have no horse. They have no more at Chaparral. But I must get to the mill. What can I do?" The poet was silent. The question was obviously idle. There was nothing that she could do. In the mountains one does not embroider speech with needless explanations. The woman accepted the silence; she dropped her head back on her hand. Outside the tethered horse whinnied pleadingly. "You might ride Littleton's horse, after all," the poet ventured after a time. "He isn't very lame. He might stand it." "Punish an animal for a man's-mistake. No, I can't do that." She drew her gauntlet from her left hand, and the poet saw her wedding-ring. It seemed to free him from his unreasoning sense of responsibility. He shifted uneasily. He was old and mystery tired him. He wished that this silent woman would go. Yet even as he thought it, the silent woman flared to life. She crossed the room and dropped beside him on the floor. She had been watching him. He could not know, since it was his own, how tender and patient was the face that other women had called only picturesque. "Mr. Nash," she had a small voice, threaded with unexpected vibrations, "they have told me about you at Chaparral. I know that you live here even in the winter, when the snow drives the rest of the world away. I know that you are kind to everyone and everything. You must have learned to look at life very quietly and wisely in all these years alone with God and the mountains. Tell me, if you started to do something that you knew was right, but that hurt you cruelly-that might cost you your happiness—and then if an accident, a trivial, petty little accident, blocked your way, what would you do? Would you feel that you had done your part, and throw the responsibility on God or fate? Or would you know that you were still accountable, and that if you failed, God had nothing to do with it, but that you had lacked in will or courage?" The poet's fingers busied themselves with his beard. He could not speak. His thoughts raced from the woman's question to dwell on the wonder that she should have deferred to him as a daughter to a father. She looked very young and unhappy. Her eyes trusted his power and knowledge as never woman had relied on him before. He battled with a longing to tell her to go home and be content. "I guess God leaves it pretty much to us," he admitted. "Then what is to be done? I am Isabel Dale. My husband is Morton Dale of 'The San Francisco and Sierra Land and Improvement Company.' If I can reach Thayer's Mill to-day, I can save whatwhat I care more for than for my happiness. Can I walk to Thayer's Mill? I am small, but very strong." "You have to get there to-day?" "To-day." "Then come." He led her to the back of the cabin, and pointed downward. "Thayer's is down there where the East Fork comes in. It's a quarter the distance of the wagon road if you go the way the crow flies. But there's no trail." The woman looked in silence. The abyss was not sheer. It was ribbed and tortured with rocky spurs and deep-gashed canyons. A mountain had struggled out of chaos, and the scars of the conflict were cut deep. The gulf palpitated with color; amethyst and purple strove with the black green of the pines. It was as beautiful as sunrise, or the tropic moon on quiet seas, or as any of the great silent joys of life. It was as relentless as the cruel-thorned chaparral that clothed it. face, freed of dust and blood-stains, was flower-sweet in its tenderness-" tell me, can a man-a strong man-ever forgive a woman who tricks and humiliates him? Couldn't he forgive her if he knew that she did it because his right was dearer to her than her own happiness?" "I don't know. I don't know anything about women," the poet answered dully. "When will they begin to look for you?" He looked away that he might not see interrupted the poet. "Not till sundown. My husband went to Madroña Gulch this morning. They think at Chaparral that I followed him. There will be no excitement till he comes back to-night." The poet turned. "Then I'll get a snack of something to eat before we go." He had known few subtleties and fewer women, but he was sure that this girl who had looked to him as to a father had made up her mind. "But you are not going?" Her lips flowered scarlet. Another, watching, might have seen that life could not have been kind to her that she should bloom so tropically under a stranger's gentleness. John Nash was thinking of something else. "It's better for you to go," he argued, moodily he could feel in advance the prick of the heat, and the panting exhaustion"I see you've got to go to respect yourself. Yes, I'm going, too.' When they had fought with the brush for an hour, her arms were bleeding. The poet was older in woodcraft and saved himself, but he could place no bar to her impatience. She pressed against the thornset bushes, letting them tear at their will, if they would but give her passage. The pinching lines of anxiety left her face, and her tongue frolicked. She told John Nash stories of the mart and the crowded ways. The breath of cities stirred in her voice, peopling the loneliness of the thin hot air. At the end of the second hour she lost her footing in the drifting rubble and was thrown the depth of a ravine. When the poet reached her she was holding herself upright by the limbs of a tree. The dark stains on her cotton waist were spreading, but her eyes laughed. A trickle of water moistened the bottom of the ravine, and the poet soaked his handkerchief and wiped her face. where the red was starting afresh. "I've never known anything about women, and now it's too late. But I've been thinking that even if I had had a daughter she might not have been like you." The woman sat down and cried. Her tears came as unexpectedly as her smiles, and passed as quickly. She clenched her hands, and started a trembling line of song that carolled of courage and laughter. The third hour found them nearing the lower levels. Black gnats fell upon them; a sticky, noisome cloud that would not be brushed away. "It's like the Bible plagues," said the poet. "But it leads out of the land of bondage," triumphed the woman. The later hours could not be reckoned by emotions. The main stream, chafed and turbulent, fretted the bottom of the canyon. The East Fork came in some miles away, and the banks that must be traversed were close-grown and boulder-beset. A large-leaved water plant grew in rank, wet jungles, and its slimy roots made treacherous footing. But the poet, careless of bruises, urged the woman to haste. The clammiest fear of the day lay at his heart. This rock-lined gorge was of ill-omen, for it was already peopled. He could hear at every turn the silken swish of sliding bodies. The rough granitic rocks that scraped the flesh bare, seemed tender in their mercies when he thought of the small red puncture that might at any moment be pricked in the woman's soft skin. And hour by hour the tragic hills looked down, watchful, impassive. Life was all about the wayfarers; savage life, teeming, exotic. Dragon flies brushed them with tropic-hued wings. Trout bared dappled backs to the slanting sunbeams. The stumbling figures on the stream's bank. "Tell me," she asked, wistfully-her were the only aliens; all other life that breathed could swim or drift the air. Jealous Nature girded at the intruders, and knew no pity for each painful fall. Red circles troubled the poet's eyes. "Maybe we're lost," he mumbled, peevishly. "Maybe the East Fork isn't here. I can't seem to remember." Then, without warning, came a meadow. Open, flower-spangled, it cuddled intimate and human in the cold majesty of the rock hills. A huddle of cabins showed curling smoke. Ten yoked steers, dumb and rebellious in their clanking chains, dragged a great log over the odorous grasses. A man urged them on with goad and blithe profanity. "Why, yes, ma'am, my name is Thayer," he said. The moon was high when the woman started homeward. Mrs. Thayer was crying; her arms were about the woman's neck. "Stay with us, stay with us," she begged with sobs. She knew what had been said to her husband in the meadow, But John Nash neither knew, nor cared to know, what had been the issue of their day. The madness of endeavor had left him. He was a quivering blank of fatigue. He was to stay with Mrs. Thayer for a few days, but Isabel Dale would not tarry. "I must get to my husband. I must get to my husband." Her voice broke into shivering rills of sound half inarticulate and crooning. "I must get to my husband." A boy was to drive her to Chaparral. By pushing the horse they could hope to reach the hotel shortly after daybreak. "You don't think that my husband will worry very much, do you?" she begged. He ought not to lose a night's sleep. He's been so tired lately." The poet rode with her as far as the edge of the meadow. He would leave the wagon where the wide-swung gate led into the high-road. "Don't forget to have Littleton send over for his horse," he reiterated with querulous insistence. "I left water, but there ain't much fodder in the corral. Now, don't forget." "There's a team coming!" The woman's voice broke sharply. "A white horse and a Oh, Morton! Morton! I'm here!" The carriage veered. The horses were pulled to their haunches. The man who leaped to meet the woman's cry was broad of girth and leonine. But he was trembling. She was over the wheel and in his arms. "Kiss me hard-once," she entreated. "Before I tell you." "What does this He pushed her away. mean? I came back at noon. They told me that you had followed me. I could prove that you had not. I found that you had asked how to reach this place. Explain, Isabel." The woman who had been pushed from his arms quivered at his voice. There was nothing gnome-like in her brown face now; it glinted with sudden lights. Go back," she said to the boy, "back to the house. Stay where you are, please, Mr. Nash." Her tones had surety but sweetness. John Nash could see the bloodstains rise and fall on the breast of her torn gown. He wondered gropingly whether he ought to show them to the man. But the woman was speaking. "I came to warn Mr. Thayer. I told him that the company was going to file on this land for a mineral claim. Don't go. It's too late. He's on his way to Marysville now. He left before sunset. He will file his claim, or get a friend to do it, before your papers can go in." Her husband fumbled for his whip, and John Nash cowered. Morton Dale was very angry, and his anger was a power that turned men white. The "San Francisco and Sierra Land and Improvement Company" knew this when they placed him in power. He fought with himself for a moment, then pointed to the carriage. "Get in there." |