The Freebooters of the Wilderness Part 35

There was the story of the last great buffalo hunt at Battleford; of his first buffalo hunt when he had broken away from the other hunters in his early boyhood days and the buffalo bull had got him down in a crack of the earth under its feet. And there was the story of his first Synod Meeting, "when A came all wild an' woolley out o' the West!

My five brithers were there; they were a' preachers! One is the bishop! Oh, A guess they were on needles an' pins for fear o' what A'd do! A'd been in the West so long, A didn't know enough not to go s.h.i.+rtsleeves down the streets o' Montreal! Well, been a hot day!

'Twas an evenin' meetin'! All the missionaries to th' Indians were givin' experiences. One got up an' he wanted th' _dear sisters_ to raise a little money to build a fence; a fence, y' understand? An'

another got up an' wanted th' _dear sisters_ t' have a sewin' bee, gossip buzz, A call 'em, to raise a little money for the Lord t' build a school. Los.h.!.+ A stood it long as A could! Then A jumped up! 'Twas a hot night, an' A'd ripped off m' coat! A'm no sure my collar hadn't slumped t' a jelly, too! Says I, 'If y'r reverences will excuse a plain Western man speakin' plain Western speech, A want t' say A don't like t' hear strong well able-bodied men whinin' an' beggin' th' _dear sisters_ t' help them.' Says I, 'If th' brothers will just peel off their coats an' build their own fences, they'll find the Lord 'ull help them without any whinin' an' beggin'! Peel off y' coats, an' y'r dude duds,' says I, 'an' go t' work, an' don't insult G.o.d Almighty an'

disgust the women folk wi' that milk-sop bottle-baby rubber-ring talk.'"

"What did the meeting say?" asked Eleanor, surprised out of herself.

"Oh, A dunno that they said much at all! They kind o' stomped, tho'."

CHAPTER XXIII

IT AIN'T THE TRUTH I'M TELLIN' YOU: IT'S ONLY WHAT I'VE HEERD

They were opposite the Cabin. Now, by all the tricks of stage-craft and story-craft, the Ranger should have been standing posed in the doorway; but he wasn't. So different is fact from fiction--so much harder, always; so brutally inconsiderate of our desires; so much more surprisingly beautiful than we can desire. The door stood open and empty.

"Wait! A want to leave a note," said Matthews.

"May I look in and see what bachelor confusion is like?" asked Eleanor.

She wanted to see if he had noticed the framed picture. Noticed--bless you? The thing hung skugee on its nail; and there was a sprig of mountain everlasting stuck in the wire; and Eleanor would really have liked to see whether the gla.s.s above that picture were blurred. She leaned over the couch examining it while Matthews wrote a note; and she went hurriedly out of the door hot of face and happy.

The old man's note read: _We're going along to the Ridge to see that little Irish runt. If you chance back, will you happen along to see the old man. I'll keep her till six._

"It ain't the truth I'm tellin' y': it's ownly what I've heerd."

Meestress Lizzie O'Finnigan stood in the opening of the tent flap, a lonely little face, a lonely little figure in her tawdry rags, a lonely little soul in the great lone Forest, like a little mite lost in the big universe, Eleanor thought. She was telling them about the "Throuble expected at th' moine; an' faather bein' on hand t' take a fist; an' th' gen'leman from Waas.h.i.+n'ton waitin' for the Ranger man t'

come back; an' th' goin's on raported in the paphers. Ah, h' waz a baad man, wuz the Ranger, faather said."

"Do _you_ read the paper, little one?" broke in Matthews.

"_Nut_ the print, sor, but I do th' pitchers; an' th' murthers; an'

thim's all pitchered out plain so I can read! Faather sez he wun't have his independence proposed upon; if th' don't give him twinty thousan' fur settin' toight here, he'll peach; but about th' mine, th'

Ranger man iz expected t' make throuble, an' faather iz all powerful quick with his fist, sor, 'specially when he's in drink; an' he's t' be on hand. It ain't th' truth I'm tellin' y', sor; it's ownly what I've heerd."

"And if you sit tight here for five years, you are going to be wealthy?" asked Eleanor, taking her by the hand and leading her out to the woods.

The unwonted act almost startled the little face. She looked up at Eleanor questioningly. "Y's, mam, waal-thy," she said. "Faather sez when we're waal-thy, he'll be a gen'leman an' Oil be a loidy."

"All you need, to be a lady, or a gentleman is, to be wealthy? Is that it?" asked the old frontiersman laughing.

"Yes, sor," said the child solemnly, "Faather wull shure be a gen'leman."

"Do you like living here?" asked Eleanor.

"No, mam, I don't think much of it! In Smelter City, there wuz curcuses; an' elephants on _all_ the bills of fare; an' loidies dancin'

on th'r heads! Faather sez if I keep on dancin' as foine as I do now, mebbie I'll be able t' dance on m' head; but I wouldn't like to dance without any skeerts, wud y'?"

"No, A wouldn't," answered the preacher quickly; and Eleanor laughed.

It was all so ludicrously pathetic. They asked her if she would not like to come down with them to the Indian School; and she looked wistfully and did not answer. Oh, G.o.d of Little Children, where are You? Are the Lambs outside the fold not Yours also?

When they pointed out the creatures of the woods to her, they found she did not know a squirrel from a chipmunk; and she p.r.o.nounced the merry chattering "odjus." When a cat bird came t.i.ttering on his tail, squeaking out every imaginary note of gladness and the frontiersman explained that this fellow sang only _after_ his family had been raised whereas the other birds sang _before_, she said he "wazn't as interestin' as th' elephants on the bill o' fare."

"Let's see! There's three trails here about!" Matthews was cogitating with his gaze on Eleanor. "There's the one across to the Upper Mesas; an' there's one back behind over th' shoulder of the Holy Cross down to the Lake Behind the Peak; an' there ought to be one between, runnin' up to the snows! Think y'r good for climbin' over this windfall while A carry this little puss on m' shoulder? Steer for the snow ahead!

Don't mind my laggin' back! Go on ahead an' wait for us! A'm goin' t'

see if A can't mine down to some gold beneath th' slime o' th' slums!

It's not in the course o' nature that any child should be blind t' this world, Miss Eleanor, if A can open th' doors for her! Go ahead; an' if y' find a good sittin' down place, just rest quiet an' wait for us an'

don't worry if we're long comin'! If A can't make her love G.o.d's big play ground, A'm no preacher!"

Eleanor laughed. Her last mining down to veins of gold had not been a particular success. She looked back at the two; the ma.s.sive thewed frontiersman with the shock of white hair and ruddy cheeks and almost boyish eyes; the little tawdry bundle of rags on his shoulder, with the black hollow eyes full of nameless fear and nameless knowledge, and the little old hard mouth with a dreadful tense sadness about the droop.

She heard the big genial voice with the roll of Scotch-Canadian drawling out its r's, and the child's thin "Yes, Sor, m' Faather;" then the child burst into a joyous laugh. Eleanor wondered what he could have said to elicit that laugh. When she glanced back, the old frontiersman had Lizzie standing on his outstretched hand holding to a branch overhead peering in a deserted hawk's nest. Even as Eleanor looked, the little future acrobat went scrabbling up into the tree with another joyous laugh.

Then, with that spirit of the child, which possesses us all when we give ourselves to the genii of the woods, Eleanor was following the long lanes of light between the giant spruces--the long lanes of light that lead on and on and on, ahead of you; out over the edge of the world into the realms of dreams and holiday and joy, where there is no Greed, and there is no l.u.s.t, and there is no nagging Care, and there is no Motiveless Malice spoiling things. She looked up. The gray green moss hung festooned from branch to branch; and the light sifted down a tempered rain of gold; and all the s.h.i.+ny evergreens shook gypsy castanets of joy to the riffling wind. She listened. The voices behind had faded away; and the air was vibrant of voiceless voices, of pixy tambourines beating the silence. There was a hush, the sibilant hush of waters rus.h.i.+ng down from the far snows of the Holy Cross; and a flutter--the flutter of all the little leaves clapping their hands; and a big voiceless voice of solemn undertone--the diapason of the pines harping the age-old melodies to the touch of the wind's invisible hands, melodies of the soul of the sea in the heart of the tree, of strength and power and eternity. As she listened, she could fancy some vast oratorio voicing the themes of humanity and the universe and G.o.d.

Then all the little people of the woods came peeping through the greenery surveying her, weighing her, examining her, testing her spirit of good or ill. A little squirrel went scampering up one huge tree trunk and down another, just a pace ahead, scouting for the other pixies of the woods, till with a scurr-r-r and chitter--chipper--ee, he whisked back in his tracks. "She's all right, people," he said. Then a whisky jack flitted from branch to branch of the under brush--always just a step ahead, not saying as much as was his custom, but peeking a deal with head c.o.c.ked from side to side. "No," said Eleanor, "I have no camp crumbs: you go back." The little red crested cross bill twittered in front of her from spray to spray of the purple fire weed and fern fronds; then, concluded that she was only a part of this out door world, anyway, and went back about his business on the trail behind. Two or three times, there was a vague rustle in the leaves that she couldn't localize--water ouzel in moss covert, or hawk babies in hiding, or--or what? She couldn't descry. Then, suddenly, with a hiss--ss and swear plain as a bird could swear, a little male grouse came sprinting down the trail to stop her, ruff up, tail spread to a fan, wings down, screaming at her in bad words "to stop! to stop! or he'd pick her eyes out!" Eleanor naturally stopped. There was a rustle and a flump; and a mother grouse whirred up with her brood--a dozen of them Eleanor counted, was it a second family? babies just in feather, clumsy and heavy of wing; and the little man ducked to hiding among the dead leaves. Eleanor peered everywhere. There was not the glint of an eye to betray hiding. She laughed and looked back for Matthews and his little pupil. A turn of the lane shut off all view; and again, she had that curious sensation of a vague movement back among the evergreens. She glanced forward. The light was shut off by a huge pile of windfall giant tree on tree, moss grown, with cypress and alder shoots from the great, broad dead trunks, a pile the height of a house. Pa.s.sage round the ends of the up-rooted trunks led back through the brushwood. Eleanor stepped to the lowest trunk and began climbing over the pile by ascending first one trunk, then back up another. Almost on the top, she paused. It was that same vague rustling movement, too noiseless to be a noise, too evanescent for a sound. She parted the screen of shrubbery growing from the p.r.o.ne trunks and peered forward.

The same lanes of gold-sifted light leading over the edge of the world through the aisled evergreens, but at the end a glint as of emerald, the sheen of water with the metal glister of green enamel, water marbled like onyx or malachite, with the reflection of a snow cross and dun gray shadows--shadows of deer standing motionless at the opening of the aisled trees--come out from the forest at sundown to their drinking place. Lane of light? It had been a lane of delight; and that was what all life might be but for the Satyr shadows lurking along the trail. There were two or three little fawns, just turning from ash coat to ochre gray, nuzzling and wasting the water; and one of the year old deer had turned its head and was sniffing the air looking back, a poetry of motionless motion, all senses poised. Eleanor held her breath. If only the other two would come: yet she had put back her hand to warn them if they should come; and stood so, looking and listening. She remembered afterwards by the nodding of the blue bells she had known that the wind was away from the deer to her. There was a quick step on the lowest log. She stretched back her hand to signal quiet. The quick noiseless step came up the logs like a stair--winged feet. She turned to see what effect this fairy scene would have on the little denizen of the slums.

It wasn't the frontiersman at all. It was the Ranger; and she had let the screen of branches spring back with a snap; and the deer had leaped in mid-air, vanis.h.i.+ng phantoms; and her hands had met his half way; and his eyes were s.h.i.+ning with a light that blinded her presence of mind.

Then, he had drawn her to himself; and afterwards, when she had tried to live it over again, she realized that she had lost count.

Shall we let the curtain drop, dear reader? For you must remember you are looking upon two sensible young people, who have resolved to keep each other strong to their resolutions. He had planned exactly how he would conduct himself when this meeting came; guarded, very guarded, so guarded she must know he was keeping a grip for both. And she had known exactly what she would do when he came: she would be frank, perfectly frank and open; for had they not both taken the resolution?

And when she came to herself, it was as that night at the Death Watch--her face thrown back and he was kissing the pulsing veins of her throat, saying in a voice between a breath and a whisper--"When one has ached in the Desert for seven weeks, one is pretty thirsty."

"Let me go, dear! This wild happiness is a kind of madness."

"Give me all you have for me in but one more!" He bent over her face; when he released her, she was faint.

He offered her hand-hold down over the tree trunks to the lake; and when their feet touched solid earth again, took a grip of the situation to relieve her embarra.s.sment and began talking furiously of the Desert ride and the dream face that had twice saved his life. Eleanor stopped stock still.

"Why, _that_ was my dream," she explained; and their hands met half way and before she had finished telling, it had happened all over again.

They were standing on the margin of the lake. The sun was behind the peak, and the wine glow lay on the snow cross, and the topaz gate was ajar again to the new infinite life, and I think they were both a little bit afraid. An old world poet has said something about fools rus.h.i.+ng in where angels fear to tread. The mountaineer expresses the same thought in his own more picturesque and I think more poetic vernacular, certainly it is a vernacular _next_ to life rather than books. It is an axiom that "only the most blatant tenderfoot, the most tumble-footed greenhorn, will monkey on the edge of a precipice."

The marbled water shadows deepened to fire in the Alpine after glow; and the little waves of the lake came lipping and lisping and laving at their feet.

"There is no use trying to tell about it or talk it out," burst out Wayland.

"Don't," said Eleanor. "Mr. Matthews told us much last night: and I'll dig the rest out of him the next time I see him."

"I'm not talking of the Desert. I'm talking of you. It's so G.o.d-blessed beautiful, Eleanor! I used to think and think in the Desert what this would be like; and it's so much more beautiful than one could hope or guess. Don't you think there must be something in G.o.d and Heaven and all that? Love is so much more beautiful than a fellow could possibly think?"

"Don't you think they'll be wondering about us?" asked Eleanor.