A Fortune Hunter Or The Old Stone Corral Part 26

"This strange belief has been growing upon me since I heard Mrs.

Estill's and mother's revelations until it has become almost conviction, and if we find that on Antelope b.u.t.te, which I feel we will--then it will convince me that Mora is--G.o.d how strange that sounds!--Ivarene born again to enjoy the happiness which her untimely fate prevented her securing in her brief life."

As he scanned his own reflection in the mirror, by the sunlight, which now was flooding the eastern hills in its golden mantle, while a look of growing wonder and strange curiosity came over his face, he exclaimed, with a start: "Then Bruce Walraven is--myself!"

After a moment of serious reflection, he continued: "Well, there is nothing so very improbable or uncanny in the thought, at last; for it is just as probable that G.o.d may have given me a soul that had lived before, as one that had not. No; human nature has too much wisdom to ever have gained it by one life."

If our hero's theory was true, then Bruce could not have asked a better fate than to live his life again as the handsome youth reflected there, with his crisp golden hair, eyes of pansy blue, and the flush of young manhood on his glossy cheeks.

Chapter XXI.

An hour later found the Warlow family at the foot of Antelope b.u.t.te, whither they had all driven to make a search for--what they shrank from saying. They had been there only a short time when they saw the Estill carriage coming. When it drew near they discovered that it was Mrs.

Estill and Mora, who, when they were a.s.sisted to alight, said they had seen the Warlow carriage with their field-gla.s.s, and suspecting the meaning of its visit to the b.u.t.te, they had hurried up to join the search with their friends.

As Clifford, Rob, and Ralph were carefully searching the face of the declivity, Mrs. Warlow told Mrs. Estill of the remarkable fact that she had also seen that mystic light on the night it had disappeared from Estill Ranch; then, as Mora drew near, she gave a circ.u.mstantial account of the event, which caused her hearers to exchange looks of perplexed amazement.

Mora became thoughtfully silent, and, leaving the others, she wandered restlessly back and forth at the foot of the bluff, watching the searchers intently.

She was startled at length by a cry of astonishment from Clifford, and with the others she hastened up the steep acclivity to where he stood in a recess of the cliff. When she reached his side he was leaning heavily against the rocky wall, white and trembling.

"Oh, Clifford! speak! what is it?" she cried, breathless with a strange dread.

He could only point to the face of the rock with an unsteady finger, while the sweat-drops rained down from his white face, wrung by an agony of emotion which he vainly strove to repress.

Sinking down upon the sloping mound, matted with gra.s.s, and kneeling there at the foot of the cliff she read with a startled gaze the inscription which was carved in faint, moss-grown letters, upon the magnesian stone:--

"My Ivarene, my lost love, lies dead beside me with our little child, cold and still, on her breast. I am wounded and dying; but death is sweet now. We were coming here to watch for the trains when we were a.s.saulted by the strange hunter, who shot us both. My love only breathed one breath. I carried her here. The child was pierced by the same shot.

My eyes are growing dim; but I welcome death. Oh, farewell, bright world! I feel my life ebbing fast away, but would not stay without my darling. I go to meet her where there will be no more parting. Oh, the joy and bliss to see her smile again! It makes me long for death. We shall live again! Bru--"

With a wild cry of agonized grief, Mora covered her face, while the others read, with streaming eyes, that last message from the tomb. Then, as they drew back and waited with broken sobs and smothered weeping, Ralph and Robbie began tenderly to remove the _debris_ and soil which time had formed into a mound below the inscription.

When, at last, there was revealed two skeletons, locked together in the last clasp of love, which even death could not sever, Maud cried aloud with a wail of anguish:--

"Oh, _can this be the last_ of beautiful Ivarene and dear, brave Bruce?"

Choking back their sobs, they all knelt in a circle, while Mrs. Warlow's voice rose in a pa.s.sionate, fervid prayer; then tenderly, with loving care, they carried the remains down to the Warlow carriage, leaving Mora and Clifford still lingering by the vacant mound.

They stood in silence a moment, the only sound the soft rustle of wild-ivy that half draped the cliff in its mottled foliage of crimson, green, and bronze; the radiant sunlight from the cloudless sky lit up the sunflowers and gentian that grew in stunted cl.u.s.ters on the hillside, while the sumac flaunted its plumes of scarlet, gold, and purple along the rifts of the white, rocky wall.

Lifting their gaze from the open grave, their eyes met in a swift flash of joy, while a half-puzzled look of delight and recognition struggled over their faces; then, bounding lightly over the open grave, Clifford whispered in a tone of unspeakable love and yearning:--

"Oh, Ivarene, my sweetheart of long ago, we meet at last!"

"Then it is as I have dreamed--and you are Bruce!" she answered, with a sob of joy, while springing into his outstretched arms.

"Yes, love, I am convinced that we meet again after all these years of waiting. Though to the world we may be only Mora and Clifford, yet, darling, to each other we will ever be Ivarene and Bruce," he replied, while raining kisses upon her upturned, radiant face.

Ah! how can I tell of the serene wedding morn that marked that happy day when Clifford and Mora paced back and forth on the sunlighted terrace at the Stone Corral, now no longer a modest cottage, but a stately though quaint mansion of red sandstone. The tender, blue haze of Indian summer brooded over the valley, where the fields of wheat shone dewy and green, and the newly-mown meadows stretched away like a verdant carpet far out onto the highlands, miles upon miles--all their own. The marble fountain threw a glittering sheen of silver high in the air, while the breeze swept the blossom-laden tendrils that trailed down the showy vases, and swayed the limbs of the old elm to and fro about the gables of the elegant home.

"Oh, Ivarene, dear love! how strange it is to take up the thread of our happiness on the spot, almost where our lives went out in such black despair just twenty-six years ago! I know why you wish to have our bridal here, darling; for it was here, at the Old Corral, that our former trials overwhelmed us, and it is doubly sweet to begin happiness again on this spot."

"Bruce, my darling, I can remember nothing of the old life and its trials, that ended at our grave on Antelope b.u.t.te; but my love for you--ah! that can never perish. It has survived even the horrors of that lonesome tomb. It is strange we only recognized each other at that empty grave; but I had always felt such a longing to meet some one, that now I know it was the spirit within me crying dumbly for you; and oh! the unutterable content when at length I met you, and the joy of only being with you now,--it is more than Eden!"

"Sweet Ivarene, do you ever ponder on what eternity means for us, now we have its secret?--a limitless succession of life in all its phases; that the grave is only the door to life again, when we can choose another birth--pa.s.sing through all the freshening scenes of infancy and youth; growing up again as boy and girl; seeking each other out for another union like this, where we shall always recognize each other, but forget the old life,--it is _this_ which gives hope and zest to this happy day; for we know that we shall really never be separated."

"We will pa.s.s a happy life together, my love; and from out our abundance we can sweeten the lives of many others who have not been blessed with great riches," he continued, in a tender tone.

"Yes, dear Bruce, and the treasure of Monteluma should be dedicated to charity alone, for we have enough without it," she replied; then, pointing to a newly-sodded grave at the foot of the lawn--a mound that was marked by a marble slab on which only was engraved,

"BRUCE AND IVARENE,"

she continued, with a smile of ineffable peace on her beaming face: "That is for the eyes of the world, dear Bruce; but we know that we are they, only masquerading under the names of Mora and Clifford."

At that moment Maud, Ralph, Hugh, and Grace came on to the terrace above, and Hugh, in a voice husky with emotion, said:--

"Come, Mora and Clifford, the minister waits."

Tarrying a moment, while the others moved on along the terrace, the happy pair stood gazing out over the tranquil valley, then, drawing aside her veil, which trailed liked a mist down over her robe of glistening satin, white as a snow-drift, she raised a radiant face to his, and said:--

"My Bruce, we live again--we live again!"

Stooping, while their lips met, he murmured:--

"Yes, Ivarene, dear bride, and this--oh! this is heaven!"

A moment more, and they had disappeared within the flower-wreathed doorway.