The Rim of the Desert Part 9

It was then Miss Armitage, exhilarated at his success, hurried forward from the bend. "Oh," she cried radiantly, "how resourceful, how strong you are. It looked simply impossible; I couldn't guess what you meant to do, and now we have only to hitch the team and drive on to Wenatchee. But,"

she added gravely and shook her head, "it was defying Fate."

He turned, regarding her from under still cloudy brows, though the genial lines began to deepen anew. "I told you Fate was on our side. She threw those boughs there in easy reach. She might as well have said: 'There's some lumber I cut for you; now mend your road.'"

"Perhaps, well, perhaps," the girl laughed softly. "But if Fate had said that to any other man, at least to any man I know, he would not have heard."

But the Columbia was still far off when darkness closed, and with sunset the thunder-heads they had watched across the Kitt.i.tas Valley gathered behind them. It was as though armies encamped on the heights they had left, waiting for night to pa.s.s. Then searchlights began to play on the lower country; there was skirmis.h.i.+ng along the skyline; blades flashed.

At last, between the lightning flashes, the blackness was so dense it was hardly possible for Tisdale to see the road, and he could not trust the nervous team to keep the track; it was necessary to stop, at least to wait until the moon should rise. But while he was preparing to tell her so, the silence was broken by the barking of a dog. Instantly it was swelled by a deeper baying, and the echo rang a continuous clamor through the gorge.

Then a faint illumination brought out in silhouette a final bluff ahead; rounding it, they saw a low-roofed habitation, and in the open door a woman with a lamp.

One of the dogs stood bristling and growling beside her; the other, barking furiously, sprang from the porch so that for a moment Tisdale was busy with the plunging team. Then the woman spoke, and the setter, whimpering, snapping furtively, crept back to her feet.

"We have been delayed by an accident," Tisdale explained briefly, "and I want you to take this lady in for the night. Make her comfortable as possible, and I will see it is worth your while."

"This ain't much of a road-house." The woman held the lamp higher to scrutinize the lady's face. "We only got one room, an' the best I can do is to double up with the kids an' give you my bed."

"That will do very well," answered Tisdale quickly. "I can take care of myself. Of course there's a stable somewhere out here in the dark, and a bale or two of hay."

"No, we got a shed up, but we're short on feed. We're short on 'bout everything: flour, potatoes, bacon, beans. We've just took up this here claim, an' things ain't growed. But my man's gone down to Wenatchee to fetch a load." Then, seeing this fact was hardly one to solace her transient guests, she laughed shortly and went into the cabin to set the lamp on a table and bring a lantern that hung on the farther wall.

Tisdale turned to help Miss Armitage down. "We may be able to find better accommodations towards the Columbia, when the moon rises," he said, "but I can't be as sure of another--chaperon." Then, looking into her face, he added in his minor key: "I am sorry, but you will make the best of things, I know. And the night will pa.s.s. Come."

She slipped down beside him and stood holding her skirts out of the powdery soil, while her wide eyes searched that interior through the open door. Tisdale lifted the baggage from the buggy to the porch, then the woman returned with the lantern and, followed by the dogs, went to show him where he might stable the horses. After a moment Miss Armitage ventured up the low steps to the threshold. It was a portable cabin such as she had noticed from the train window at intervals where construction was incomplete along the new railroad. It was battered and weak, showing old earmarks of transportation, but it was furnished with a rusty cook-stove, some bench chairs, and two beds, which stood in the farther corners and nearly filled that half of the room. A few heavy dishes, the part of a loaf of bread, and several slices of indifferently fried bacon were on the table, between the lamp and a bucket containing a little water. Presently, still holding her skirts, she crossed the grimy floor and stood inspecting with a mingled fascination and dread those ancient beds. Both were dest.i.tute of linen, but one was supplied with a tumbled heap of coa.r.s.e, brown blankets. In the other, beneath a frayed comforter, two small boys were sleeping. Their sun-baked faces were overhung with thatches of streaked blond hair, and one restless arm, throwing off the sodden cover, partly exposed the child's day attire, an unclean denim blouse tucked into overalls. She turned in sudden panic and hurried back to the porch.

In a little while she noticed her suitcase, opened it, and found her cologne; with this she drenched a fresh handkerchief and began to bathe her face and hands. Then she drew one of the bench chairs through the doorway and, seating herself with her back to the room, kept on dabbing her lips and her cheeks with the cool, delicately pungent perfume, and so gathered up the remnants of her scattered fort.i.tude. Finally, when the lantern glimmered again, and she was able to distinguish the two returning figures, she had laid aside her hat and coat, and she was ready to smile, if not radiantly at least encouragingly, at Tisdale as he came up the steps.

The woman went in to shake out and spread the blankets with a pretence at making the bed, and he followed to the threshold, where he took a swift and closer inventory of the room. Its resources were even more meager than he had supposed. He swung around and looked up through the darkness towards that sheltered cleft they had left near the Pa.s.s. He did not say anything, but the girl watching him answered his thought. "I wish it had been possible. It would have been delightful--the ground was like a carpet, clean and soft and fragrant--under those pines."

"I wish we had even had the forethought to bring down an armful of those boughs. But, after all, it might have been worse. At least you need not go hungry, with that lunch of Lighter's and your apples, to say nothing of the sandwiches I asked the steward to make before I left the train. And to-morrow, when you are safe with your friends at Wenatchee, you are going to forget this miserable experience like an unpleasant dream."

"I am not ungrateful," she said quickly. "I enjoyed every moment of that drive. And besides the apples, I have tea. I always tuck a little in my suitcase when we are touring with Mrs. Feversham, because she uses a different blend."

She bent as she spoke, to find the tea, which she produced together with a small kettle and alcohol burner. Her evident desire to contribute her share, the fine show of courage that accepted and made the best of the inevitable, went straight to Tisdale's heart. "Tea," he repeated mellowly, "tea and all the outfit. Well, that was mighty thoughtful of you. I won't even have to make a fire. But wait a minute; I am going to lift that table out here where it is cooler."

With two seats, there was barely room for it on the porch. Then, while he filled the kettle and lighted the burner, she spread the cloth, a fine damask towel supplied also from her baggage. On the whole it was a rather gay little supper and, considering the limitations of the menu, it bridged a long interval. Tisdale, who had been accustomed to drink tea black and bitter on a hard trail, but habitually refused it socially, tasted his cup with deliberation. "Miss Armitage," he exclaimed, "you can't delude me.

Whatever this beverage may be, I am sure it is no ordinary tea."

She was pouring a second cup when his glance fell from her face to her hands. They were delicately made, artistic, with wilful little thumbs, yet they impressed him with a certain resourcefulness, a strength in reserve.

Suddenly the light from the lantern which he had hung on a nail in the wall above the table, struck an exceedingly large ruby she wore on her left hand. It glowed blood-red, scintillated, flamed. He saw the stone was mounted with diamonds in a unique setting of some foreign workmans.h.i.+p, and he told himself it was probably an heirloom; it was too ma.s.sive, too ornate for a betrothal ring; still he moved uneasily and set the cup down untasted. His eyes returned to her face, questioning, doubting. He was like a musician surprised to detect in a beautiful symphony the first false note.

After that the conversation lagged. It was not cool on the porch. A broadside of lightning sweeping the cabin showed it stood in a narrow valley walled by precipitous, barren slopes and widening gulfwise towards the Columbia desert. The pent air seemed surcharged. It was as though that table was set in a s.p.a.ce between running dynamos, and when a stronger flash came, Miss Armitage instinctively grasped her chair, holding herself from contact with an unseen and terrible force. Once, during an interlude, the silence was broken by a strange, faint cry.

"Did you hear?" she asked breathlessly. "What was it?"

Tisdale smiled into her troubled eyes. "Why, just a cougar; lonesome, I guess, and calling his mate. But it's all right. Sounds carry in these mountain gorges, and his cry was picked up by some cross wind miles from here. Look at those dogs! They wouldn't stay curled up there on the ground asleep, too indifferent to p.r.i.c.k up an ear, if a cougar, or even a coyote, were near."

Still she was not wholly rea.s.sured. She leaned forward, listening, trying to fathom the darkness with a lurking terror in her eyes. At last, when Tisdale rose to say good night, she, too, left her chair. She laid her hand on the edge of the table as though that might steady her voice. "Are you going to the stable?" she asked. "Did you find a possible bed?"

Hollis laughed. "You needn't trouble about me. I am the sort of fellow to find the soft side of a plank. Yes, it's true. There have been times when I've slept luxuriously on a board, with just my coat rolled up for a pillow."

There was a brief pause while her imagination grasped the thought; then: "You must have been very tired," she said.

"I was," he answered dryly and reached to take the lantern from the wall.

At the foot of the steps he halted and put the light down to pick up his bag, which he opened. "Here's a bunch of my handkerchiefs," he said. "They are bigger than yours. They should make you at least a pillow-case. Good night."

The setter rose to follow inquiringly at his heels; the lantern swung gently to his tread and, as his shape disappeared in the gloom, his whistle, sweet, soft, almost tender, fluted back to her. It was the "Good night" from the opera of _Martha_. And Miss Armitage smiled in the face of Fear and turned resolutely to go in.

But the next moment she was back again over the threshold. "Mr. Tisdale!"

she called, and the currents held so long in check surged in her voice.

"Mr. Tisdale!"

Instantly the lantern swung an arc. He came quickly back to the steps.

"Well," he said, breaking the pause, "what is the trouble?"

"I know I must seem foolish--but--please don't go--yet." Her position on the edge of the porch brought her face almost on a level with his. Her eyes in the semi-darkness were luminously big; her face, her whole body quivered. She leaned a little towards him, and her nearness, the low, vibrant intensity of her voice, set his pulses singing.

"I really can't stay in that room," she explained. "Those beds all but touch, and she, the mother, has crowded in, dressed as she is, to sleep with the children. There isn't any air to breathe. I--I really can't make myself lie down--there. I had rather spend the night here on the piazza.

Only--please wait--until--"

Tisdale laughed his short, mellow note. "You mean you are afraid of the dark, or is it the cougar?"

"It's both and the lightning, too. There! See how it plays along those awful heights; javelins of it; whole broadsides. I know it is foolish, but I can't help feeling it is following me. It singles me out, threatens me as though I am--guilty."

"Guilty? You? Of what?" Tisdale put down the lantern and came up the steps. "See here, Miss Armitage, come take your chair." He moved it around from the table and laid his hand on her arm, impelling her into the seat.

"Now face it out. Those flashes of heat lightning are about as dangerous as the Aurora Borealis. You ought to know that."

Then, because the personal contact had set his blood racing, he moved away to the edge of the porch and stood frowning off up the gorge. He knew she covered her face with her hands; he believed she was crying, and he desired beyond all reason to take her to his heart and quiet her. He only said: "But I understand. I have seen strong men just as foolish before an electrical storm, and the bravest woman I ever knew lost her grip one still morning just from solitude."

There was another silence, then suddenly she lifted her head. "I am sorry," she said, "but it is all over. I shall try my best not to annoy you any more."

"Annoy me? Why, you haven't. What makes you think that?" Tisdale turned, and the mellowness stole into his voice. "I didn't expect you to creep in and go to sleep tranquilly alongside that bunch of sage."

At this she smiled. "You have found a flower to fit even her."

"I never made a misfit--yet," he answered and waited, looking into her face, reading her through.

"But you have doubts," she supplemented, "and I warned you I should disappoint you. I warned you at the start."

Tisdale laughed again, softly. "The odds were all against that Alaska violet," he said, "but she weathered it through." And seating himself on the steps, he looked up again to the night-enshrouded Pa.s.s. The air was cooler; a light wind, drawing down from the divide, brought a hint of dampness; it was raining somewhere, far off. "My doubts are all right," he added, "and I am going to stay here as long as you want me to."

CHAPTER VIII

THE BRAVEST WOMAN HE EVER KNEW