The Triumph of John Kars Part 25

"What can we do?" she asked, a woman looking for guidance from the one man.

"Do?"

Kars laughed. He flung out a hand. He was not thinking of what he purposed. The magic of Jessie's personality held him. Her tall gracious figure. Its exquisite modeling. The full rounded shoulders, their contours unconcealed by the light jacket she was wearing. Her neck, soft with the gentle fulness of youth. The ma.s.ses of ruddy brown hair coiled on her bare head without any of the artificiality of the women he encountered in Leaping Horse. The delicate complexion of her oval cheeks, untouched by the fierce climate in which she lived. To him she had become a perfect picture of womanhood.

The girl laid her small hand in his with all the confidence of a child.

The warm pressure, as his fingers closed over it, thrilled her.

Without a word of protest she submitted to his lead. They clambered down to the water's edge.

In a moment she was lifted off her feet. She felt herself borne high above the little gurgling cascade. Then she became aware of the splas.h.i.+ng feet under her. Then of a sinking sensation, as the man waded almost knee-deep in mud. There were moments of alarmed suspense.

Then she found herself standing on the opposite bank, with the man dripping at her side.

Of the two courses open to her she chose the better.

She laughed happily. Perhaps the choice was forced on her, for John Kars' eyes were so full of laughter that the infection became overwhelming.

"You--you should have told me," she exclaimed censoriously.

But the man shook his head.

"Guess you'd have--refused."

"I certainly should."

But the girl's eyes denied her words.

"Then we'd have gone around back, and you'd have been disappointed. I couldn't stand for your being disappointed. Say----" The man paused.

His eyes were searching the sunlit avenue ahead, where the drooping willow branches hung like floral stalact.i.tes in a cavern of ripe foliage. "It's queer how folks'll cut out the things they're yearning for because other folks are yearning to hand 'em on to them."

"No girl likes to be picked up, and--and thrown around like some ball game, because a man's got the muscles of a giant," Jessie declared with spirit.

"No. It's kind of making out he's superior to her, when he isn't.

Say, you don't figger I meant that way?"

There was anxiety in the final question for all the accompanying smile.

In a moment Jessie was all regret.

"I didn't have time to think," she said, "and anyway I wouldn't have figgered that way. And--and I'd hate a man who couldn't do things when it was up to him. You'd stand no sort of chance on the northern trail if you couldn't do things. You'd have been feeding the coyotes years back, else."

"Yes, and I'd hate to be feeding the coyotes on any trail."

They were moving down the winding woodland alley. They brushed their way through the delicate overhanging foliage. The dank scent of the place was seductive. It was intoxicating with an atmosphere such as lovers are powerless to resist. The murmur of the river came to them on the one hand, and the silence of the pine woods, on the other, lent a slumberous atmosphere to the whole place.

Jessie laughed. To her the thought seemed ridiculous.

"If the stories are true I guess it would be a mighty brave coyote would come near you--dead," she said. Then of a sudden the happy light died out of her eyes. "But--but--you nearly did--pa.s.s over. The Bell River neches nearly had your scalp."

It was the man's turn to laugh. He shook his head,

"Don't worry a thing that way," he said.

But the girl's smile did not so readily return. She eyed the ominous bandage which was still about his neck, and there was plain anxiety in her pretty eyes.

"How was it?" she demanded. "A--a chance shot?"

"A chance shot."

The man's reply came with a brevity that left Jessie wondering. It left her feeling that he had no desire to talk of his injury. And so it left her silent.

They wandered on, and finally it was Kars who broke the silence.

"Say, I guess you feel I ought to hand you the story of it," he said.

"I don't mean you're asking out of curiosity. But we folks of the north feel we need to hold up no secrets which could help others to steer a safe course in a land of danger. But this thing don't need talking about--yet. I got this getting too near around Bell River.

Well, I'm going to get nearer still." He smiled. "Guess I've been hit on one cheek, and I'm going to turn 'em the other. It'll be a dandy play seeing 'em try to hit that."

"You're--you're going to Bell River--deliberately?"

The girl's tone was full of real alarm.

"Sure. Next year."

"But--oh, it's mad--it's craziness."

The terror of Bell River was deep in Jessie's heart. Hers was the terror of the helpless who have heard in the far distance but seen the results. Kars understood. He laughed easily.

"Sure it's--crazy. But," his smiling eyes were gazing down into the anxious depths the girl had turned up to him, "every feller who makes the northern trail needs to be crazy some way. Guess I'm no saner than the others. It's a craziness that sets me chasing down Nature's secrets till I locate 'em right. Sometimes they aren't just Nature's secrets. Anyway it don't figger a heap. Just now I'm curious to know why some feller, who hadn't a thing to do with Nature beyond his shape, fancied handing it me plumb in the neck. Maybe it'll take me all next summer finding it out. But I'm going to find it out--sure."

The easy confidence of the man robbed his intention of half its terror for the girl. Her anxiety melted, and she smiled at his manner of stating his case.

"I wonder how it comes you men-folk so love the trail," she said. "I don't suppose it's all for profit--anyway not with you. Is it adventure? No. It's not all adventure either. It's just dead hards.h.i.+p half the time. Yes--it's a sort of craziness. Say, how does it feel to be crazy that way?"

"Feel? That's some proposition." Kars' face lit with amus.e.m.e.nt as he pondered the question. "Say, ever skip out of school at the Mission, and make a camp in the woods?"

The girl shook her head.

"Ah, then that won't help us any," Kars demurred, his eyes dwelling on the ruddy brown of the girl's chestnut hair. "What about a swell party after three days of ch.o.r.es in the house, when a blizzard's blowing?"

"That doesn't seem like any craziness," the girl protested.

"No, I guess not."

Kars searched again for a fresh simile.

"Say, how'd you feel if you'd never seen a flower, or green gra.s.s, or woods, and rivers, and mountains?" he suddenly demanded. "How'd you feel if you'd lived in a prison most all your life, and never felt your lungs take in a big dose of G.o.d's pure air, or stretched the strong elastic of the muscles your parents gave you? How'd you feel if you'd read and read all about the wonderful things of Nature, and never seen them, and then, all of a sudden, you found yourself out in a world full of trees, and flowers, and mountains, and woods, and skitters, and neches, and air--G.o.d's pure air, and with muscles so strong you could take a ten foot jump, and all the wonderful things you'd read about going on around you, such as fighting, murdering, and bugs and things, and folks who figger they're every sort of fellers, and aren't, and--and all that? Say, wouldn't you feel crazy? Wouldn't you feel you wanted to take it all in your arms, and, and just love it to death?"

"Maybe--for a while."

The girl's eyes were smiling provocatively. She loved to hear him talk. The strong rich tones of his voice in the quiet of the woodland gave her a sense of possession of him.