A Man in the Open Part 10

She fainted.

There, I'm dead sick of writing this letter, and my wrist is all toothache.

JESSE.

CHAPTER III

LOVE

_Kate's Narrative_

Jesse argues that there's nothing to boast of in the way he saved me.

Horse and rifle are like feet to run with, hands to fight with, part of his life. "Now, if I'd rode a giraffe and harpooned you, I'd have my name in all the papers. Shucks! Skill and courage are things to shame the man who hasn't got them."

I married Lionel Trevor in the days when he looked like a G.o.d as Parsifal, sang like an angel, had Europe at his feet. "Something wrong with Europe," is Jesse's comment. "West of the Rockies we don't use such, except to sell their skins."

When Lionel lost his voice--more to him than are horse and gun to Jesse--he would not ask me to follow him into the wilderness but tried to persuade me to stay on in London. I was singing "Eurydice" in _Orfeo_, my feet, thanks to Lionel, were at last on the great ladder, and if I was ambitious, who shall blame me? Yet for better, for worse, we were married, and here among the pines, in this celestial air, a year or two at the most would give him back his voice. My place was at his side, for better or worse, and when he drank, when day by day I watched the light of reason give place in his eyes to b.e.s.t.i.a.l vice, until at last I found myself chained to a maniac--till death us do part--it was then I first saw Jesse, the one man whose eyes showed understanding.

I can't write about that day when Lionel, a thing possessed of devils, hunted me through the woods like a bear. It wasn't fair. I'm only twenty-eight years old. It wasn't fair that I should be treated like that. I doubt if I remember all that happened. I must have been crazed with pain and fear until suddenly I woke up on a boulder by that awful river, and saw him drift past me, caught in the rapids, drowning. I would have shouted I was so glad, until he saw me, and dying as he was, looked at me with Lionel's clear sane eyes.

I fainted, and when I awoke again in the dusk, Jesse bent over me, not as he is, the rugged fighting frontiersman, but dressed in white, wearing a wreath of beaten gold leaves, the laurel crown. He was a Greek warrior, and it seemed to me that I, too, wore the Grecian dress, a milk-white peplum. We were walking side by side along a beach between the cliffs and the sea. He stopped, looking seaward, his bronzed face set with an anxiety, which as he watched, became fear. He clasped me in his arms, and then I saw that out of the distance of the sea, came a wave, rus.h.i.+ng straight at us, a monstrous tidal wave with curved and gla.s.sy front, crowned with a creaming surf of high-flung diamond. The cliff barred all escape, and we stood waiting, locked in each other's arms, commending our spirits to the G.o.ds--

My eyes broke through the vision, for Jesse, the real Jesse of this present life, shook me, imploring me to rouse myself. He says I woke up shouting "Zeus! Zeus!" He lifted me in his arms and carried me.

Of course I was hysterical, being overwrought, and the very thought is nonsense that in some past life thousands of years ago, Jesse and I were lovers. That night and for three weeks afterward, I lay delirious. At the ferryman's cabin he made me a bed of pine boughs, until my household stuff and the Chinese servant could be brought down from the ranch. He sent Surly Brown to bring Doctor McGee, and the Widow O'Flynn as my nurse, while her son Billy was hired to do his pack-train work. From that time onward the pack outfit carried cargoes of ore from the mine, and loads from Hundred Mile House of every comfort and luxury which money could buy for me. Jesse bought tents, which he set up beside the cabin, one for my servant, the other for Brown and himself, besides such travelers as from time to time stayed over night at the ferry. When I got well, I found that Jesse had spent the savings of years, and had not a dollar left.

The widow nursed me by day, Jesse by night, and after one attempt by Mrs. O'Flynn, it was he who dressed my foot. In his hands he had the delicate strength of a trained surgeon, but also something more, that sympathetic touch which charms away pain, bringing ease to the mind as well as to the body. "'Tisn't," said he, "as if you kicked me out of the stable every time I laid a hand on yo' pastern. That Jones, when she hurt her foot, just kicked me black and blue."

When at last I crept out of doors to bask in the autumn sunlight, the cotton woods and aspens were changed to lemon, the sumac to crimson, the fallen needles of the pines clothed the slopes with orange, and a mist of milky blue lay in the canon. Very beautiful were those days, when no breath of wind stirred the warm perfume, and the music of the rapids echoed from sun-warmed precipice and glowing woodlands up to the gorgeous cobalt of the sky. Cured of all sick fancies, I was content to rest.

Jesse had arranged with lawyers for the probate of Lionel's will, and settlement of his debts, which would leave me nothing. As far as Jesse knew, I was penniless, and to this day I have never dared acknowledge that, secured from the extravagance of my late husband, I have capital bringing in some seven thousand, five hundred dollars a year. Jesse supposed me to be dest.i.tute, and when I spoke of returning to my work in Europe, offered to raise the money for my pa.s.sage. Knowing his ranch to be mortgaged already to its full value, I wondered what limit there was to this poor man's valor. Yes, I would accept, a.s.suring him of swift repayment, yet dared not tell him the wages offered me at Covent Garden.

It seemed indecent that a woman's voice should be valued at more per week than his heroic earnings for a year.

I sang to him, simple emotional music: Orfeo's lament, the finale of _Il Trovatore_, the angel song from Chopin's _Marche Funebre_.

There was the last of my poor little test which had proved in him a chivalry, a generosity, a moral valor, a physical courage, a sense of beauty, a native humor, which made me very humble. All I had foolishly imagined in poor Lionel, all that a woman hopes for in a man, was here beyond the accidents of rank or caste. How pitiful seemed the standards of value which rated Lionel a gentleman, and this man common! Jesse is something by nature which gentlemen try to imitate with their culture.

Should I go back to imitations? I had outlived all that before I realized the glory of the great wilderness, before I met Jesse and loved him.

Could I promise to love, honor and obey? I loved him, I honored him, and as to obeying, of course that's the way they are managed.

I wonder why women make it so important that a man should propose? It needed no telling that Jesse and I were in love. It seemed only natural that we should marry, and any pretense of mourning for the late Mr.

Trevor would have been distasteful.

My dear father was content with my first marriage, because--it seems so quaint--Mr. Trevor was a sound churchman. The old saint had indeed one misgiving, for Lionel was very high church, and if he reverted to Rome, the religious education of any children--my father has found peace in a land where there are no doctrinal worries. But for his daughter he would pray still, lest she be yoked with an unbeliever. For my father's sake I asked Jesse about his religious convictions.

"Wall," he explained, "my old mother was a Hard-Sh.e.l.l Baptist, and father was Prohibition, so if them two forms of ignorance came to be used around here, I'd be a sort of mongrel."

"Surely you don't think the churches mere forms of ignorance?"

"Ignorance," he took the word up thoughtfully. "It's a thing I practises, and am apt to recognize by the way it acks. It ain't so scarce in them churches as you'd think. Maybe, knowin' more than me, you can tell me about that Sermon on the Mount. Was it a Catholic Mount, or Baptist, or Episcopalian?"

"Surely a hill, or mountain."

"And Jesus took his people away from the smell of denominations--Scribes, Pharisees, and such, to some place outdoors?"

The idea struck me full in the face like a sudden lash of spray, but before I could clear my eyes, the man had followed his thought to a weird conclusion.

"The more they build churches and chapels to corral Him, the more He takes to the woods. I sort of follow."

This only left me to wonder what my dear old white saint would have said.

Certainly he could never have accepted that American citizens.h.i.+p, and Jesse's nationality is vague. "Thar's G.o.d," he would say quite reverently, "and Mother England, and Uncle Sam, but beyond that I ain't much acquainted. The rest seems to be sort of foreigners. The Labrador?

Oh, that's just tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs."

Whatever he is, I love him,--primitive, elemental, kin of the woodland G.o.ds, habitant of the white sierras, the august forest, and the sweet wild pastures. My doubts fluttered away from the main issue to settle down on very twigs of detail. I had not courage to imagine what a fright he would look in civilized clothes, how awkward he would feel among folk and houses, or how such dear illusions would be shattered if ever my cynical relations saw him eat. He is a Baptist, and by his convictions liable to wed in store clothes, with a necktie like a bootlace, and number twelve kid gloves, taking his honeymoon as a solemnity at the very loudest hotel in San Francisco. Preferring plague, pestilence, famine, battle, murder, and sudden death, to such festivities, I pleaded our poverty, and dire need of keeping free from debt. Although born in the Labrador, he had been a cow-boy in Texas for half his working life.

As a stockman, he was to wed a rancher's widow. Was he ashamed of his business? No, proud as Lucifer! Was he ashamed of the dress of his trade? Not by a d.a.m.ned sight! Soldiers and sailors are proud to wear the dress of their trade when they marry. "So are cow-punchers," said he, with his head in the air. "S'pose we ride to Cariboo City, and get married in that little old log church."

He managed to persuade me; and I consented also to a hunting trip, instead of the usual honeymoon.

When I was well enough for the journey, I rode my colt, and Jesse his demon mare--Jones--my sole rival, I think, except that dreadful bear, in his affections. Two pack-ponies carried our camp and baggage, and each night he would set up a little tent for me, bedding himself down beside the fire. At the end of five days' journey, we rode at dusk into Cariboo.

Captain Taylor, of Hundred Mile House, and Pete Mathson, the _cargador_ of the Star Pack-train, two old stanch friends of Jesse, witnessed our marriage in the quaint log building which served the Cariboo miners as church and schoolhouse. The Reverend Cyril Redfern, pioneer and missionary, read the service, while our ponies waited just outside the door. Jesse wore his plain old leather shaps, a navy blue s.h.i.+rt, a scarf of ruby silk against his tanned neck, and golden Mexican spurs--his dearest treasure. He must have known he looked magnificent, for he carried himself with such quiet dignity, and his deep voice thrilled me, for it was music. I could hardly respond for crying, and would gladly have been alone afterward in the church that I might thank G.o.d for all His mercy.

Captain Taylor is a retired naval officer, a pioneer of the gold mines, a magistrate, a man to trust, and when he gave me his heartfelt congratulations, it was not without knowledge of Jesse's character. He and Pete, the _cargador_, rode with us to the camp of his Star Pack-train, and it was there in the forest that we ate our wedding breakfast. The blue haze of Indian summer, the serene splendor of the sunlit woods, and autumn snow on all the s.h.i.+ning hills--such was our banquet hall, and a rippling brook our orchestra. We drank healths in champagne from tin cups, and then, saddling up, Jesse and I rode away alone into the solitudes.

CHAPTER IV

THE LANDLORD

_Kate's Narrative_

Of his life before he reached this province Jesse will so far tell me nothing, yet his speech betrays him, for under the vivid dialect of the stock range, there is a streak of sailor, and beneath that I detect traces of brogue which may be native perhaps to Labrador. Out of a chaos of books he has picked words which pleased him, p.r.o.nounced of course to suit himself, and used in some sense which would shock any dictionary.

His manners and customs, too, are a field for research. Of course one expects him to be professional with rope, gun, and ax, but how did he learn the rest? I wanted a lantern--he made one; my boot was torn--he made one; my water-proof coat was ruined--he made one; and if I asked for a sewing-machine, he would refuse to move camp until he had one finished. If his name were not Smith I could prove him directly descended from the Swiss family Robinson. If a project sounds risky, I have to a.s.sume that it is something unusually safe, as the only way to keep him out of danger. If I should ever wish to be a widow, I have only to doubt his power to fly without wings.

Our journey last autumn led us into most awesome recesses of the coast range. Heads of the sea fiords lay dismal among crowding glaciers, white cataracts came roaring down through belt after belt of clouds, to where a grim surf battled with black rocks. In that dread region of avalanche and rockslide, of hanging ice-cliffs, roaring storms, ear-shattering thunder, our camp seemed too frail a thing to claim existence, our thread of smoke a little prayer for mercy. "Nary a dollar in sight," was Jesse's comment. "Such microbes don't breed here. D'ye think they'll ever vaccinate agin selfishness, Kate? That plague kills more souls than smallpox."

Guided by his uncanny woodcraft, I began to meet the paris.h.i.+oners, mountain sheep and goats, the elk and cariboo, eagles, bears, wolverines, and certainly I shared something of Jesse's untiring delight in all wild creatures. Even when we needed meat in camp, and some plump goose or mallard was at the mercy of his gun, Jesse would sometimes beg the victim off, and catch more trout. "So long as they don't hunt us," he would say, "I'd rather tote your camera than my gun.

But thar's that dog-gone beaver down the crick, he tried to bite me yesterday again. If he don't tame himself, I'll slap his face. Thinks he's editor."

Were there no clouds, would we realize that the sky is blue? If no little misunderstandings had risen above our horizon, would Jesse and I have realized our wedded happiness? How should I know when I read his pocket diary, what was meant by "one night out. Took Matilda," or "Matilda and Fussy to-night," or "marched with Harem!" Matilda and Fussy if you please, are blankets, and the Harem is his winter camp equipment.