The Heritage of the Hills Part 36

Lime Rock upreared itself on the lip of a thousand-foot precipice that overhung the river. It was three hundred feet in height, a gigantic white pencil pointing toward the sky. At its base was a small level s.p.a.ce, large enough for a wagon and team to turn, but the remainder of the land about and above it was hillside, too steep for cows to climb.

And from the edge of the level land the canonside dropped straight downward, a ma.s.s of craggy rocks and ill-nourished growth. The trail that led to Lime Rock wound its way over a shelf four feet in width, hacked in the hillside. One false step on this trail and details of what must inevitably ensue would be hideous.

Oliver led the way when they reached the beginning of the trail. Both Poche and White Ann were mountain bred animals, sure-footed and unconcerned over Nature's threatening eccentricities. For a quarter of a mile the bay and the white threaded the narrow path, their riders silent. Then they came to Lime Rock and the security of the level land about it.

Here Oliver and Jessamy sat their horses and gazed down the dizzy precipice at the rus.h.i.+ng river, and up the steep, rocky wall on the other side.

"Do you know who owns the land on which our horses are standing?"

Jessamy finally asked.

"I've never given it a thought," said Oliver.

"It belongs to Damon Tamroy."

"That so? I didn't know he owned anything over this way."

"Yes, Damon owns it. But I have an option on it."

"You! Have an option on it!"

"Yes, a year's option. It was rather an underhanded trick that I played on old Damon, but he's not very angry about it. It's my first business venture.

"You see, I learned through a letter from a girl friend in San Francisco that a big cement company was thinking of invading this country. She wrote it merely as a bit of entertaining news, but I looked at it differently.

"I knew where they'd begin their invasion. Right here! That magnificent monument there is solid limestone, and the hills back of it are the same, though covered by a thin layer of soil. So I went to the owner of the land, Damon Tamroy, and got a year's option on it for twenty-five dollars--a hundred and sixty acres.

"How Damon laughed at me! I told him outright why I wanted to buy the land, if ever I could sc.r.a.pe enough together. He didn't consider it very valuable, and it may become mine any day this year that I can pungle up four hundred and seventy-five bucks more. When he quizzed me, I told him frankly that I was doing it in an effort to preserve Lime Rock for posterity, and he laughed louder than ever.

"But he changed his tune when a representative of the cement company approached him with an offer of fifteen dollars an acre. He took his loss good-naturedly enough, but accused me of putting over a slick little business deal on him. I had done so, in a way, and admitted it; and ever since I've been talking myself blue in the face when I meet him, trying to convince him that it's not the money I'm after at all.

"Think of an old hog of a cement company coming in here and erecting a rumbling old plant, with the noon whistle deriding the reverential calm of this magnificent canon, and their old drills and dynamite and things ripping Lime Rock from its throne! Bah! I'm going to San Francisco soon to get a job. I may decide to go this week. It will keep me hustling to put away four hundred and seventy-five dollars between now and the day my option expires."

Oliver sat looking gravely at the young idealist, suppressing his disappointment over the possibility of her early departure.

"But we have to have cement," he pointed out.

"Do we? Maybe so. But there's lots of limestone in the west. Men don't need to search out such spots as this in which to get it. There are less picturesque places, which will yield enough cement material for all our needs. Sometimes I think these big money-grabbers just love to ruin Nature with their old picks and powder. You may agree with me or not--I don't care. I'm not utilitarian, and don't care who knows it. The world's against me in my big fight to keep the money hogs from robbing life of all its poetry; but it's a fight to the last ditch! I'll save Lime Rock, anyway, if I have to beg and borrow."

"I don't know that I disagree with you at all," he told her softly.

"Money doesn't mean a great deal to me. I've shed no idle tears over my failure to inherit the money that I expected would be mine at Dad's death. I hold no ill will toward Dad. There's too much wampum in the world today. It won't buy much. The more people have the more they want.

The so-called 'standard of living' continues to rise, and with it the ills of our civilization steadily increase. Luxuries ruin health.

Automobiles make our muscles sluggish. Moving pictures clog our thinking apparatus. Telephones make us lazy. Phonographs and piano-players reduce our appreciation of the technique of music, which can come only by study and practice. What flying machines will do to us remains to be seen, but they'll never carry us to heaven!

"No, money means little enough to me. Give me the big outdoors and a regular horse, a keen zest in life, and true appreciation of every creature and rock and tree and blade that G.o.d has created, and I'll struggle along."

As he talked the colour had been mounting to her face. When he ceased she turned starry eyes upon him, her white teeth showing between slightly parted lips.

"Oliver Drew," she said, "you have made me very happy. I--"

A rush of blood throbbed suddenly at Oliver's temples, and once again he swung his horse close to hers.

"I'll try to make you happy always," he said low-voiced. "Jessamy--"

Again he opened his arms for her, but as before she drew herself away from him.

"Don't! Not--not now! Wait--Oliver!"

"Wait! Always wait! Why?"

"I--I must tell you something first. I can tell you now--after--after last night."

"Then tell me quickly," he demanded.

She rested both hands on her saddle horn and rose in her stirrups. For a long time her black eyes gazed down the precipice below them, while the wind whipped wisps of hair about her forehead. Oliver waited, drunk with the thought of his nearness to her.

"Watchman of the Dead!" she murmured at last.

Oliver started.

"Two years ago," she went on softly, "I met the second Watchman of the Dead. You are the third. The first was murdered in this forest. His name was Bolivio, and he made silver-mounted saddles and hair-ta.s.seled bridles."

Oliver scarce dared to breathe for fear of breaking the spell that seemed to have come over her. She did not look at him. She continued to gaze into her beloved canon and at her beloved hills beyond.

"Oh, where shall I begin!" she cried at last. "Where is the beginning? A man would begin at the first, I suppose, but a woman just can't! But I won't be true to the feminine method and begin at the end. I won't be a copy-cat. I'll begin in the middle, anyway."

A smile flickered across her red lips; but still she gazed away from him.

"Two years ago," she said, "I met the dearest man."

Oliver straightened, and lumps shuttled at the hinges of his jaws.

"I was riding White Ann on one of my lonely wanderings through the woods. I met him on the ridge above the Old Ivison Place and the river.

"After that I met him many times, in the forest and elsewhere; and the more I talked with him the more I liked him. He was my idea of a man."

Oliver, too, was now gazing into the canon, but he saw neither crags nor trees nor rus.h.i.+ng green river.

"And he grew to like me," her low tones continued. "We talked on many subjects, but mostly of what we've been talking about today.

"He was an idealist, this man. He was comparatively wealthy, but there are things in life that he placed above money and its acc.u.mulation. By and by he grew to like me more and more, and finally he told me point blank that I was his ideal woman; and then he grew confidential and told me all about himself--his past, present, and what he hoped for in the future. And in my hands he placed a trust. Please G.o.d, I have tried to keep the faith!"

She threw back her head and followed the flight of an eagle soaring serenely over Lime Rock. And with her eyes thus lifted she softly said:

"That man was Peter Drew--your father."

Oliver's breast heaved, but he made no sound. Once more her eyes were sweeping the abyss.

"That's the middle," she said. "Now I'll go back to the beginning and tell you what Peter Drew entrusted to my keeping.

"Thirty years ago Peter Drew, who then called himself Dan Smeed, was the partner of Adam Selden. They mined and hunted and trapped together throughout this country.