The Rim of the Desert Part 8

"But winters, at Seattle and in Was.h.i.+ngton even, it has been the same."

"Winters, why, winters, I have my geological reports to get in shape for the printer; interminable proofs to go over; and there are so many necessary people to meet in connection with my work. Then, too, if the season has been spent in opening country of special interest, I like to prepare a paper for the geographical society; that keeps me in touch with old friends."

"Old friends," she repeated after a moment. "Do you know it was one of them, or rather one of your closest friends, who encouraged my delusion in regard to you?"

"No, how was it?"

"Why, he said you were the hardest man in the world to turn, a man of iron when once you made up your mind, but that Mrs. Feversham was right; you were shy. He had known you to go miles around, on occasion, to avoid a town, just to escape meeting a woman. And he told us--of course I can repeat it since it is so ridiculously untrue--that it was easier to bridle a trapped moose than to lead you to a ballroom; but that once there, no doubt you would gentle fine."

She leaned back in her seat, laughing softly, though it was obviously a joke at her own expense as well as Tisdale's. "And I believed it," she added. "I believed it--every word."

Tisdale laughed too, a deep undernote. "That sounds like Billy Foster. I wager it was Foster. Was it?" he asked.

She nodded affirmatively.

"Then Foster has met you." Tisdale's voice rang a little. "He knows you, after all."

"Yes, he could hardly help knowing me. His business interests are with my closest friends, the Morgansteins; they think a great deal of him. And he happens to play a remarkably good hand at bridge; we always depend on him to make up a table when he is in town."

Tisdale's eyes rested a thoughtful moment on the road ahead. Strange Foster never had mentioned her. But that showed how blind, how completely infatuated with the Spanish woman the boy was. His face set austerely.

Then suddenly he started; his grasp tightened on the reins so that the colts sprang to the sharp grade. "Do you happen to know that enchantress, too?" he asked.

"Whom?" questioned Miss Armitage.

"I mean Mrs. Weatherbee. I believe she counts the Morgansteins among her friends, and you said you were staying at Vivian Court, where her apartments are."

"Oh, yes, I know--her. I"--the color flamed and went in her face; her glance fell once more to the steep slope, searching out the narrowing stream through the trees. "I--'ve known Beatriz Weatherbee all my life.

I--I think a great deal of her."

"Madam, madam!" Tisdale protested, "don't tell me that. You have known her, lived near her, perhaps, in California, those years when you were growing up; shared the intimacies young girls enjoy. I understand all that, but don't say you care anything for her now."

Miss Armitage lifted her face. Her eyes did not sparkle then; they flamed.

"Why shouldn't I, Mr. Tisdale? And who are you to disparage Beatriz Weatherbee? You never have known her. What right have you to condemn her?"

"This right, Miss Armitage; she destroyed David Weatherbee. And I know what a life was lost, what a man was sacrificed."

CHAPTER VII

A NIGHT ON THE MOUNTAIN ROAD

They drove on for a long interval in silence. The colts, sobered by the sharp pull to the divide, kept an even pace now that they had struck the down-grade, and Tisdale's gaze, hard still, uncompromising, remained fixed absently on the winding road. Once, when the woman beside him ventured to look in his face, she drew herself a little more erect and aloof. She must have seen the futility of her effort to defend her friend, and the fire that had flashed in her eyes had as quickly died. It was as though she felt the iron out-cropping in this man and shrank from him baffled, almost afraid. Yet she held her head high, and the delicate lines, etched again at the corners of her mouth, gave it a saving touch of decision or fort.i.tude.

But suddenly Hollis drew the horses in. Miss Armitage caught a great breath. The way was blocked by a fallen pine tree, which, toppling from the bluff they were skirting, had carried down a strip of the road and started an incipient slide. "We can't drive around," he said at last, and the humor broke the grim lines of his mouth. "We've got to go through."

She looked hastily back along the curve, then ahead down the steep mountainside. "We never could turn in this pla--ace, but it isn't possible to drive through. Fate is against us."

"Why, I think Fate favored us. She built this barricade, but she left us an open door. I must unhitch, though, to get these kittens through."

As he spoke he put the reins in her hands and, springing out, felt under the seat for the halters. The girl's glance moved swiftly along the tilting pine, searching for that door. The top of the tree, with its debris of branches, rested p.r.o.ne on the slope below the road; but the trunk was supported by a shoulder of the bluff on which it had stood. This left a low and narrow portal under the clean bole between the first thick bough and the wall. "But the buggy!" she exclaimed.

"That's the trouble." Tisdale found one halter as he spoke and reached for the other. "It is getting this trap over that will take time. But I pledge myself to see you through these mountains before dark; and when we strike the levels of the Columbia, these colts are going to make their record."

"You mean we can't hope to reach Wenatchee before dark?" Her voice shook a little. "And there isn't a house in sight--anywhere. Mr. Tisdale, we haven't even seen another traveler on this road."

"Well, this is luck!" He was drawing a coil of new rope from under the seat. "This is luck! Lighter must have meant to picket his horses. Did I tell you he was starting to drive these bays through to the fair at North Yakima? And here is a hatchet--he expected to cut fire-wood--and this looks like his lunch-box. Yes,"--and he lifted the lid to glance in--"here are biscuits, sliced ham, all we need. Lighter must have intended to spend a night on the road. And here is that second hitching-strap. Now, we are all right: the outfit is complete."

He took the precaution to tie one of the horses before he commenced to unfasten the traces, and he worked swiftly, dexterously, while the girl watched him, directing him sometimes from her seat in the buggy. Presently he lifted the remaining strap, but before he could snap the hook in the ring, the colt's ears flattened back, and he gripped Tisdale's hand.

Instantly Miss Armitage s.n.a.t.c.hed the whip and was on her feet. "Whoa, Nip," she cried, and cut the vixen lightly between the ears. "Whoa, now, whoa!"

The young horse released his hold and broke forward, with Hollis dragging at the bit. He ducked with the colt under the barrier and, keeping his feet with difficulty, ran hugging the bluff. Rocks, slipping beneath the bay's incautious hoofs, rattled down the steep slope. Finally mastered by that tugging weight, he settled to an unstable pace and so pa.s.sed the break in the road.

Miss Armitage had left the buggy. She followed to the opening and stood watching Tisdale until, unable to find a safe hitching-place, he turned another bend. The remaining horse pulled at his halter and neighed shrilly for his mate. She went to him. After a moment she untied him and led him through the pa.s.sage. He followed easily, crowding her sometimes, yet choosing his steps with the caution of a superior animal in a hard situation. Midway over the break in the road, where it was narrowest, he halted with a forefoot on a perilous table of granite, feeling, testing its stability. "That's right, be careful," she admonished, allowing the strap to slacken while she, herself, balanced her weight on the rocking slab. "But it is safe enough--you see. Now, now, Tuck, come on."

But as she started on, Tisdale reappeared at the curve and, waving her hand to rea.s.sure him, she took an incautious step. The slab, relieved suddenly of her weight, tilted back and at the same instant caught on its lowered edge the weight of the following horse. He backed off, jerking the halter taut, but she kept her hold, springing again to the surface of the rock. Loose splinters of granite began to clatter down the slope; then, in the moment she paused to gather her equilibrium, she felt Tisdale's arm reaching around to take the strap. "Creep by me," he said quietly. "No, between me and the bluff, sidewise; there's room." She gained safe ground and stood waiting while he brought the bay across. A last rain of rock struck an answering echo through the gorge.

"What made you?" he asked. "You knew I would hurry back. What made you?

handicapped, too, by those skirts and abominable heels."

"I saw you were hurt--the vixen meant to hurt--and I knew I could manage Tuck. I--I thought you might need me."

Her breath was coming hard and quick; her eyes were big and shadowy and, looking into their depths, the light began to play softly in his own. "You thought right," he said. "I am going to."

He turned to lead the horse around to the cleft where he had left his mate. Miss Armitage followed. She regarded his broad back, pursing her lips a little and ruffling her brows. "It is only a bruise," he said presently over his shoulder, "and it served me right. Lighter warned me of that trick."

Nevertheless the handkerchief with which he had wrapped the bruise was showing a red stain, and past the break in the road he changed the halter to his left hand. The hitching-place he had chosen was in a cleft formed by a divided spur of the mountain. It was roofed by the boughs of two pines, and the boles of the trees offered secure hold. She seated herself on a boulder, set benchwise against the rocky wall, and watched him critically while he tied the second horse.

"How pleasant," she said intrepidly; "it is like coming unexpectedly into a room ready furnished in brown and green."

Tisdale turned. "I could make you comfortable in this pocket, if it came to that," he said. "It's sheltered and level as a floor, and I could make you a bed, springy and fragrant, of boughs; the camp-fire would close the door. And you needn't go hungry with Lighter's lunch and your apples; or thirsty with my drinking-cup to fill down there at the stream."

Even before he finished speaking her brows arched in protest, and he felt the invisible barrier stiffen hard as a wall. "We really must hurry, Mr.

Tisdale," she said, rising. "Though it may be impossible to reach Wenatchee to-night, we must find some sort of house. And where there is a house, there must be housekeeping and"--her voice wavered--"a woman."

"Of course," he answered. "And we have at least two hours of daylight left. Don't worry; I am going now to hurry that carriage around."

He had said "of course," but while he went back to the buggy, his mind reviewed the sordid shelters he had found in just such solitudes, where a woman's housekeeping was the exception. Men in communities employed camp cooks, but most prospectors, ranchers, and cattlemen depended on themselves. There had been times when he himself had been forced to make bread. He had learned that first winter he had spent in Alaska with Weatherbee. At the thought of that experimental mixture, he smiled grimly.

Then, suddenly, he imagined this gently nurtured woman confronted by a night in such a shack as they had occupied. He saw her waiting expectantly for that impossible chaperon; and, grasping the situation, struggling pluckily to cover her amazement and dismay; he saw himself and Weatherbee nerving each other to offer her that miserable fare. He hoped they would find a housekeeper at the first house on that mountain road, but that lunch of Lighter's gave him a sense of security, like a reserve fund, inadequate, yet something against imminent panic.

Miss Armitage did not return to her seat when he was gone. She fell to pacing the level; to the upper spur and back; to the lower wall and return; then, finally, it was a few yards further to the bend, to discover what progress Tisdale had made. The buggy was not yet in sight, but the new rope stretched diagonally from beyond the breach in the road to a standing tree on the bluff above her, and he was at work with the hatchet, cutting away an upright bough on the fallen pine. Other broken limbs, gathered from the debris, were piled along the slide to build up the edge.

When his branch dropped, he sprang down and dragged it lengthwise to reinforce the rest. Presently he was on the log again, reaching now for the buggy tongue, he set his knee as a brace on the stump of the limb, his muscular body bent, lifted, strained. Then the front wheels rolled up across the bole; he slipped to the ground and grasped the outer one, steadying it down. After a moment, when he had taken in the slack of the line, the remaining tires slowly followed, and he began to ease the vehicle along the patched roadway. The rain of rock was renewed; fragments of granite s.h.i.+fted under the bulkhead of boughs; the buggy heeled lower, lower; then, at the final angle, began to right while the rope strung taut. The narrowest point was pa.s.sed, and Tisdale stopped a breathing s.p.a.ce.

It was characteristic of the man to see the humor of the situation in that moment while he stood wiping the perspiration from his face. Jove, how Foster would enjoy seeing him labor like this for a girl. He imagined the boy sitting up there at some coign of vantage on the bluff, admonis.h.i.+ng, advising him dryly, while he laughed in his sleeve. It was undeniably funny. Alone, with one of Lighter's saddle-horses under him, his baggage secured behind the saddle, he might have been threading the dunes of the Columbia now. This incipient slide need not have caused him ten minutes'

delay, and eight, nine o'clock at the latest, would have found him putting up for the night at the hotel in Wenatchee. But here he was hardly over the divide; it was almost sunset, but he was dragging a buggy by hand around a mountain top. He hoped Foster never would find out what he had paid for these bays--the team of huskies that had carried him the long trek from Nome to the Aurora mine and on through Rainy Pa.s.s had cost less.

Still, under the circ.u.mstances, would not Foster himself have done the same? She was no ordinary woman; she was more than pretty, more than attractive; there was no woman like her in all the world. To travel this little journey with her, listen to her, watch her charms unfold, was worth the price. And if it had fallen to Foster, if he were here now to feel the spell of her, that Spanish woman would lose her hold. Then he remembered that Foster knew her; she had admitted that. It was inconceivable, but he had known her at the time he confessed his infatuation for Weatherbee's wife. The amus.e.m.e.nt went out of Tisdale's face. He bent, frowning, to free the buggy of the rope.