The Courage of Marge O'Doone Part 28

Through that pit of death David stumbled with the Girl. The fresh air struck their faces. The sun of day fell upon them. The green gra.s.s and the flowers of the mountain were under their feet. They looked down the slope, and saw, disappearing over the crest of the _coulee_, two men who were running for their lives.

CHAPTER XXVII

It may have been five minutes that David held the Girl in his arms, staring down into the sunlit valley into which the last two of Hauck's men had fled, and during that time he did not speak, and he heard only her steady sobbing. He drew into his lungs deep breaths of the invigorating air, and he felt himself growing stronger as the Girl's body became heavier in his embrace, and her arms relaxed and slipped down from his shoulders. He raised her face. There were no tears in her eyes, but she was still moaning a little, and her lips were quivering like a crying child's. He bent his head and kissed them, and she caught her breath pantingly as she looked at him with eyes which were limpid pools of blue out of which her terror was slowly dying away. She whispered his name. In her look and in that whisper there was unutterable adoration. It was for _him_ she had been afraid. She was looking at him now as one saved to her from the dead, and for a moment he strained her still closer, and as he crushed his face to hers he felt the warm, sweet caress of her lips, and the thrilling pressure of her hands, at his blood-stained cheeks. A sound from behind made him turn his head, and fifty feet away he saw the big grizzly ambling c.u.mbrously from the cabin. They could hear him growling as he stood in the suns.h.i.+ne, his head swinging slowly from side to side like a huge pendulum--in his throat the last echoing of that ferocious rage and hate that had destroyed their enemies. And in the same moment Baree stood in the doorway, his lips drawn back and his fangs gleaming, as if he expected other enemies to face him.

Quickly David led Marge beyond the boulder from behind which he had opened the fight, and drew her down with him into a soft carpet of gra.s.s, thick with the blue of wild violets, with the big rock shutting out the cabin from their vision.

"Rest here, little comrade," he said, his voice low and trembling with his wors.h.i.+p of her, his hands stroking back her wonderful hair. "I must return to the cabin. Then--we will go."

"Go!"

She repeated the word in the strangest, softest whisper he had ever heard, as if in it all at once she saw the sun and stars, the day and night, of her whole life. She looked from his face down into the valley, and into his face again.

"We--will go," she repeated, as he rose to his feet.

She s.h.i.+vered when he left her, shuddered with a terrible little cry which she tried to choke back even as she visioned the first glow of that wonderful new life that was dawning for her. David knew why. He left her without looking down into her eyes again, anxious to have these last terrible minutes over. At the open door of the cabin he hesitated, a little sick at what he knew he would see. And yet, after all, it was no worse than it should be; it was justice. He told himself this as he stepped inside.

He tried not to look too closely, but the sight, after a moment, fascinated him. If it had not been for the difference in their size he could not have told which was Hauck and which was Brokaw, for even on Hauck, Tara had vented his rage after Baree had killed him. Neither bore very much the semblance of a man just now--it seemed incredible that claw and fang could have worked such destruction, and he went suddenly back to the door to see that the Girl was not following him. Then he looked again. Henry lay at his feet across the fallen saplings of the battered door, his head twisted completely under him--or gone. It was Henry's rifle he picked up. He searched for cartridges then. It was a sickening task. He found nearly fifty of them on the three, and went out with the pack and the rifle. He put the pack over his shoulders before he returned to the rock, and paused only for a moment, when he rejoined the Girl. With her hand in his he struck down into the valley.

"A great justice has overtaken them," he said, and that was all he told her about the cabin, and she asked him no questions.

At the edge of the green meadows they stopped where a trickle of water from the mountain tops had formed a deep pool. David followed this trickle a little up the _coulee_ it had worn in the course of ages, found a sheltered spot, and stripped himself. To the waist he was covered with the stain and grime of battle. In the open pool Marge bathed her face and arms, and then sat down to finish her toilet with David's comb and brush. When he returned to her she was a radiant glory, hidden to her waist in the gold and brown fires of her disentangled hair. It was wonderful. He stood a step off and looked at her, his heart filled with a wonderful joy, his lips silent. The thought surged upon him now in an overmastering moment of exultation that she belonged to him, not for to-day, or to-morrow, but for all time; that the mountains had given her to him; that among the flowers and the wild things that "great, good G.o.d," of whom Father Roland had spoken so often, had created her for him; and that she had been waiting for him here, pure as the wild violets under his feet. She did not see him for a s.p.a.ce, and he watched her as she ran out her glowing tresses under the strokes of his brush.

And once--ages ago it seemed to him now--he had thought that another woman was beautiful, and that another woman's glory was her hair! He felt his heart singing. She had not been like this. No. Worlds separated those two--that woman and this G.o.d-crowned little mountain flower who had come into his heart like the breath of a new life, opening for him new visions that reached even beyond the blue skies. And he wondered that she should love him. She looked up suddenly and saw him standing there. Love? Had he in all his life dreamed of the look that was in her face now? It made his heart choke him. He held open his arms, silently, as she rose to her feet, and she came to him in all that burnished glory of her unbound hair; and he held her close in his arms, kissing her soft lips, her flushed cheeks, her blue eyes, the warm sweetness of her hair.

And her lips kissed him. He looked out over the valley. His eyes were open to its beauty, but he did not see; a vision was rising before him, and his soul was breathing a prayer of grat.i.tude to the Missioner's G.o.d, to the G.o.d of the totem-wors.h.i.+ppers over the ranges, to the G.o.d of all things. It may be that the Girl sensed his voiceless exaltation, for up through the soft billows of her hair that lay crumpled on his breast she whispered:

"You love me a great deal, my _Sakewawin_?"

"More than life," he replied.

Her voice roused him. For a few moments he had forgotten the cabin, had forgotten that Brokaw and Hauck had existed, and that they were now dead. He held her back from him, looking into her face out of which all fear and horror had gone in its great happiness; a face filled with the joyous colour sent surging there by the wild beating of her heart, eyes confessing their adoration without shame, without concealment, without a droop of the long lashes behind which they might have hidden. It was wonderful, that love s.h.i.+ning straight out of their blue, marvellous depths!

"We must go now," he said, forcing himself to break the spell. "Two have escaped, Marge. It is possible, if there are others at the Nest...."

His words brought her back to the thing they had pa.s.sed through. She glanced in a startled way over the valley, then shook her head.

"There are two others," she said. "But they will not follow us, _Sakewawin_. If they should, we shall be over the mountain."

She braided her hair as he adjusted his pack. His heart was like a boy's. He laughed at her in joyous disapproval.

"I like to see it--unbound," he said. "It is beautiful. Glorious."

It seemed to him that all the blood in her body leaped into her face at his words.

"Then--I will leave it that way," she cried softly, her words trembling with happiness and her fingers working swiftly in the silken plaits of her braid. Unconfined, her hair s.h.i.+mmered about her again. And then, as they were about to set off, she ran up to him with a little cry, and without touching him with her hands raised her face to his.

"Kiss me," she said. "Kiss me, my _Sakewawin_!"

It was noon when they stood under the topmost crags of the southward range, and under them they saw once more the green valley, with its silvery stream, in which they had met that first day beside the great rock. It seemed to them both a long time ago, and the valley was like a friend smiling up at them its welcome and its gladness that they had at last returned. Its drone of running waters, the whispering music of the air, and the piping cries of the marmots sunning themselves far below, came up to them faintly as they rested, and as the Girl sat in the circle of David's arm, with her head against his breast, she pointed off through the blue haze miles to the eastward.

"Are we going that way?" she asked.

He had been thinking as they had climbed up the mountain. Off there, where she was pointing, were his friends, and hers; between them and that wandering tribe of the totem people on the Kwadocha there were no human beings. Nothing but the unbroken peace of the mountains, in which they were safe. He had ceased to fear their immensity--was no longer disturbed by the thought that in their vast and trackless solitude he might lose himself forever. After what had pa.s.sed, their gleaming peaks were beckoning to him, and he was confident that he could find his way back to the Finley and down to Hudson's Hope. What a surprise it would be to Father Roland when they dropped in on him some day, he and Marge!

His heart beat excitedly as he told her about it, described the great distance they must travel, and what a wonderful journey it would be, with that glorious country at the end of it.... "We'll find your mother, then," he whispered. They talked a great deal about her mother and Father Roland as they made their way down into the valley, and whenever they stopped to rest she had new questions to ask, and each time there was that trembling doubt in her voice. "I wonder whether it's _true_."

And each time he a.s.sured her that it was.

"I have been thinking that it was Nisikoos who sent to her that picture you wanted to destroy," he said once. "Nisikoos must have known."

"Then why didn't she tell me?" she flashed.

"Because, it may be that she didn't want to lose you--and that she didn't send the picture until she knew that she was not going to live very long."

The girl's eyes darkened, and then--slowly--there came back the softer glow into them.

"I loved--Nisikoos," she said.

It was sunset when they began making their first camp in a cedar thicket, where David shot a porcupine for Tara and Baree. After their supper they sat for a while in the glow of the stars, and after that Marge snuggled down in her cedar bed and went to sleep. But before she closed her eyes she put her arms about his neck and kissed him good-night. For a long time after that he sat awake, thinking of the wonderful dream he had dreamed all his life, and which at last had come true.

Day after day they travelled steadily into the east and south. The mountains swallowed them, and their feet trod the gra.s.s of many strange valleys. Strange--and yet now and then David saw something he had seen once before, and he knew that he had not lost the trail. They travelled slowly, for there was no longer need of haste; and in that land of plenty there was more of pleasure than inconvenience in their foraging for what they ate. In her haste in making up the contents of the pack Marge had seized what first came to her hands in the way of provisions, and fortunately the main part of their stock was a 20-pound sack of oatmeal. Of this they made bannock and cakes. The country was full of game. In the valleys the black currants and wild raspberries were ripening lusciously, and now and then in the pools of the lower valleys David would shoot fish. Both Tara and Baree began to grow fat, and with quiet joy David noticed that each day added to the wonderful beauty and happiness in the Girl's face, and it seemed to him that her love was enveloping him more and more, and there never was a moment now that he could not see the glow of it in her eyes. It thrilled him that she did not want him out of her presence for more than a few minutes at a time.

He loved to fondle her hair, and she had a sweet habit of running her fingers through his own, and telling him each time how she loved it because it was a little gray; and she had a still sweeter way of holding one of his hands in hers when she was sitting beside him, and pressing it now and then to her soft lips.

They had been ten days in the mountains when, one evening, sitting beside him in this way, she said, with that adorable and almost childish ingenuousness which he loved in her:

"It will be nice to have Father Roland marry us, _Sakewawin_!" And before he could answer, she added: "I will keep house for you two at the Chateau."

He had been thinking a great deal about it.

"But if your mother should live down there--among the cities?" he asked.

She s.h.i.+vered a little, and nestled to him.

"I wouldn't like it, _Sakewawin_--not for long. I love _this_--the forest, the mountains, the skies." And then, suddenly she caught herself, and added quickly: "But anywhere--_anywhere_--if you are there, _Sakewawin_!"

"I too, love the forests, the mountains, and the skies," he whispered.

"We will have them with us always, little comrade."

It was the fourteenth day when they descended the eastern slopes of the Divide, and he knew that they were not far from the Kwadocha and the Finley. Their fifteenth night they camped where he and the b.u.t.terfly's lover had built a noonday fire; and this night, though it was warm and glorious with a full moon, the Girl was possessed of a desire to have a fire of their own, and she helped to add fuel to it until the flames leaped high up into the shadows of the spruce, and drove them far back with its heat. David was content to sit and smoke his pipe while he watched her flit here and there after still more fuel, now a shadow in the darkness, and then again in the full fireglow. After a time she grew tired and nestled down beside him, spreading her hair over his breast and about his face in the way she knew he loved, and for an hour after that they talked in whispering voices that trembled with their happiness. When at last she went to bed, and fell asleep, he walked a little way out into the clear moonlight and sat down to smoke and listen to the murmur of the valley, his heart too full for sleep. Suddenly he was startled by a voice.

"David!"