The Chalice Of Courage Part 17

"I am sorry I have no cream," he said, and then before she could make comment or reply, he turned and walked out of the door, his purpose evidently being not to embarra.s.s her by his presence while she ate.

Enid Maitland had grown to relish the camp fare, bringing to it the appet.i.te of good health and exertion. She had never eaten anything that tasted so good to her as that rude meal that morning, yet she would have enjoyed it better, she thought, if he had only shared it with her, if she had not been compelled to eat it alone. She hastened her meal on that account, determined as soon as she had finished her breakfast to seek the man and have some definite understanding with him.

And after all she reflected that she was better alone than in his presence, for there would come stealing into her thoughts the distressing episode of the morning before, try as she would to put it out of her mind. Well, she was a fairly sensible girl, the matter was pa.s.sed, it could not be helped now, she would forget it as much as was possible. She would recur to it with mortification later on, but the present was so full of grave problems that there was not any room for the past.

CHAPTER XIV

A TOUR OF INSPECTION

The first thing necessary, she decided, when she had satisfied her hunger and finished her meal, was to get word of her plight and her resting place to her uncle and the men of the party; and the next thing was to get away, where she would never see this man again and perhaps be able to forget what had transpired--yet there was a strange pang of pain in her heart at that thought!

No man on earth had ever so stimulated her curiosity as this one. Who was he? Why was he there? Who was the woman whose picture he had so quickly taken from her gaze? Why had so splendid a man buried himself alone in that wilderness? These reflections were presently interrupted by the reappearance of the man himself.

"Have you finished?" he asked unceremoniously, standing in the doorway as he spoke.

"Yes, thank you, and it was very good indeed."

Dismissing this politeness with a wave of his hand but taking no other notice, he spoke again.

"If you will tell me your name--"

"Maitland, Enid Maitland."

"Miss Maitland?"

The girl nodded.

"And where you came from, I will endeavor to find your party and see what can be done to restore you to them."

"We were camped down that canon at a place where another brook, a large one, flows into it, several miles I should think below the place where--"

She was going to say "where you found me," but the thought of the way in which he had found her rushed over her again; and this time with his glance directly upon her, although it was as cold and dispa.s.sionate and indifferent as a man's look could well be, the recollection of the meeting to which she had been about to allude rushed over her with an accompanying wave of color which heightened her beauty as it covered her with shame.

She could not realize that beneath his mask of indifference so deliberately worn, the man was as agitated as she, not so much at the remembrance of anything that had transpired, but at the sight, the splendid picture, of the woman as she stood, there in the little cabin then. It seemed to him as if she gathered up in her own person all the radiance and light and beauty, all the purity and freshness and splendor of the morning, to s.h.i.+ne and dazzle in his face. As she hesitated in confusion, perhaps comprehending its causes he helped out her lame and halting sentence.

"I know the canon well," he said. "I think I know the place to which you refer; is it just about where the river makes an enormous bend upon itself?"

"Yes, that is it. In that clearing we have been camped for ten days. My uncle must be crazy with anxiety to know what has become of me and--"

The man interposed.

"I will go there directly," he said. "It is now half after ten. That place is about seven miles or more from here across the range, fifteen or twenty by the river; I shall be back by nightfall. The cabin is your own."

He turned away without another word.

"Wait," said the woman, "I am afraid to stay here."

She had been fearless enough before in these mountains but her recent experiences had somehow unsettled her nerves.

"There is nothing on earth to hurt you, I think," returned the man.

"There isn't a human being, so far as I know, in these mountains."

"Except my uncle's party."

He nodded.

"But there might be another--bear," she added desperately, forcing herself.

"Not likely, and they wouldn't come here if there were any. That's the first grizzly I have seen in years," he went on unconcernedly, studiously looking away from her, not to add to her confusion at the remembrance of that awful episode which would obtrude itself on every occasion. "You can use a rifle or gun?"

She nodded; he stepped over to the wall and took down the Winchester which he handed her.

"This one is ready for service, and you will find a revolver on the shelf. There is only one possible way of access to this cabin, that's down those rock stairs; one man, one woman, a child even, with these weapons could hold it against an army."

"Couldn't I go with you?"

"On that foot?"

Enid pressed her wounded foot upon the ground; it was not so painful when resting, but she found she could not walk a step on it without great suffering.

"I might carry you part of the way," said the man. "I carried you last night, but it would be impossible, all of it."

"Promise me that you will be back by nightfall with Uncle Bob and--"

"I shall be back by nightfall, but I can't promise that I will bring anybody with me."

"You mean?"

"You saw what the cloud burst nearly did for you," was the quick answer.

"If they did not get out of that pocket there is nothing left of them now."

"But they must have escaped," persisted the girl, fighting down her alarm at this blunt statement of possible peril. "Besides, Uncle Robert and most of the rest were climbing one of the peaks and--"

"They will be all right then, but if I am to find the place and tell them your story, I must go now."

He turned and without another word or a backward glance scrambled down the hill. The girl limped to the brink of the cliff over which he had plunged and stared after him. She watched him as long as she could see him until he was lost among the trees. If she had anybody else to depend upon she would certainly have felt differently toward him. When Uncle Robert and her Aunt and the children and old Kirkby and the rest surrounded her again she could hate that man in spite of all he had done for her, but now, as she stared after him determinedly making his way down the mountain and through the trees, it was with difficulty she could restrain herself from calling him back.

The silence was most oppressive, the loneliness was frightful; she had been alone before in these mountains, but from choice; now the fact that there was no escape from them made the sensation a very different one.

She sat down and brooded over her situation until she felt that if she did not do something and in some way divert her thoughts she would break down again. He had said that the cabin and its contents were hers. She resolved to inspect them more closely. She hobbled back into the great room and looked about her again. There was nothing that demanded careful scrutiny; she wasn't quite sure whether she was within the proprieties or not, but she seized the oldest and most worn of the volumes on the shelf. It was a text book on mining and metallurgy she observed, and opening it at the fly leaf, across the page she saw written in a firm vigorous masculine hand a name, "William Berkeley Newbold," and beneath these words, "Thayer Hall, Harvard," and a date some seven years back.

The owner of that book, whether the present possessor or not, had been a college man. Say that he had graduated at twenty-one or twenty-two, he would be twenty-eight or twenty-nine years old now, but if so, why that white hair? Perhaps though the book did not belong to the man of the cabin.

She turned to other books on the shelf. Many of them were technical books which she had sufficient general culture to realize could be only available to a man highly educated and a special student of mines and mining--a mining engineer, she decided, with a glance at those instruments and appliances of a scientific character plainly, but of whose actual use she was ignorant.