The Highgrader Part 24

"No, but I've thought of something. They say horses will find their own way home if you let them. Loosen the reins, dear."

Moya spoke with a business-like cheerfulness meant to deceive her friend. She knew it must be her part to lead. Joyce was as soft and about as competent as a kitten to face a crisis like this. She was a creature all curves and dimples, sparkling with the suns.h.i.+ne of life like the wavelets of a gla.s.sy sea. But there was in her an instinctive shrinking from all pain and harshness. When her little world refused to smile, as very rarely it did for her, she shut her eyes, stopped her ears, and pouted. Against the implacable condition that confronted them now she could only whimper her despair.

They waited with loose reins for the ponies to move. The storm beat upon them, confining their vision to a s.p.a.ce within reach of their outstretched arms. Only the frightened wails of Joyce and the comforting words of her friend could be heard in the shriek of the wind. The ponies, feeling themselves free, stirred restlessly. Moya clucked to her roan and patted his neck encouragingly.

"Good old Billy. Take us home, old fellow," she urged.

Presently the horse began to move, aimlessly at first, but soon with a steadiness that suggested purpose. Moya unloosed with her chill fingers the rope coiled to her saddle, and threw one end to her friend.

"Tie it tight to the saddle horn, Joyce--with a double knot," she ordered. "And keep your hand on it to see that it doesn't come undone."

"I can't tie it. My hands are frozen ... I'm freezing to death."

Moya made fast one end of the rope and then slipped from the saddle. The other end she tied securely to the saddle horn of her friend. She stripped from her hands the heavy riding gauntlets she wore and gave them to Joyce.

"Pull these on and your hands will be warmer. Don't give up. Sit tight and buck up. If you do we'll be all right."

"But I can't.... It's awful.... How far do we have to go?"

"We'll soon hit the road. Then we can go faster."

Moya swung to her saddle again stiffly, and Billy took up the march in the driving storm, which was growing every minute more fierce and bitter. The girl did not dare give way to her own terror, for she felt if she should become panic-stricken all would be lost. She tried to remember how long people could live in a blizzard. Had she not read of some men who had been out two days in one and yet reached safety?

The icy blast bit into her, searched through to her bones and sapped her strength. More than once she drew up the rope with her icy hands to make sure that Joyce was still in the saddle. She found her there blue from exposure, almost helpless, but still faintly responsive to the call of life.

The horses moved faster, with more certainty, so that Moya felt they had struck a familiar trail. But in her heart she doubted whether either of the riders would come to shelter alive. The ponies traveled upward into the hills.

Joyce, lying forward helpless across the saddle horn, slid gently to the ground. Her friend stopped. What could she do? Once she had descended, it would be impossible to get back into the saddle.

Searching the hillside, the girl's glance was arrested by a light. She could not at first believe her good fortune. From the saddle she slipped to the ground in a huddle, stiffly found her feet again, and began to clamber up the stiff incline. Presently she made out a hut. Stumblingly, she staggered up till she reached the door and fell heavily against it, clutching at the latch so that it gave to her hand and sent her lurching into the room. Her knees doubled under her and she sank at the feet of one of two men who sat beside a table playing cards.

The man leaped up as if he had seen a ghost. "G.o.ddlemighty, it's a woman!"

"My friend ... she's outside ... at the foot of the hill ... save her,"

the girl's white lips framed.

They slipped on mackinaw coats and disappeared into the white swirling night. Moya crouched beside the red-hot stove, and life slowly tingled through her frozen veins, filling her with sharp pain. To keep back the groans she had to set her teeth. It seemed to her that she had never endured such agony.

After a time the men returned, carrying Joyce between them. They put her on the bed at the far corner of the room, and one of the men poured from a bottle on the table some whisky. This they forced between her unconscious lips. With a s.h.i.+vering sigh she came back to her surroundings.

Moya moved across to the group by the bed.

"I'll take care of her if you'll look after the horses," she told the men.

One of them answered roughly. "The horses will have to rough it. This ain't any night for humans to be hunting horses."

"They can't be far," Moya pleaded.

Grudgingly the second man spoke. "Guess we better get them, Dave. They were down where we found the girl. We can stable them in the tunnel."

Left to herself, Moya unlaced the shoes of Miss Seldon. Vigorously she rubbed the feet and limbs till the circulation began to be restored.

Joyce cried and writhed with the pain, while the other young woman ma.s.saged and cuddled her in turn. The worst of the suffering was past before the men returned, stamping snow from their feet and shaking it from their garments over the floor.

"A h.e.l.l of a night to be out in," the one called Dave growled to his fellow.

"Did you get the horses?" Moya asked timidly.

"They're in the tunnel." The ungracious answer was given without a glance in her direction.

They were a black-a-vised, ill-favored pair, these miners upon whose hospitality fate had thrown them. Foreigners of some sort they were, Cornishmen, Moya guessed. But whatever their nationality they were primeval savages untouched by the fourteen centuries of civilizing influences since their forbears ravaged England. To the super-nervous minds of these exhausted young women there was a suggestion of apes in the huge musclebound shoulders and the great rough hands at the ends of long gnarled arms. Small s.h.i.+fty black eyes, rimmed with red from drink, suggested cunning, while the loose-lipped heavy mouths added more than a hint of b.e.s.t.i.a.lity. It lent no comfort to the study of them that the large whisky bottle was two-thirds empty.

They slouched back to their cards and their bottle. It had been bad enough to find them sullen and inhospitable, but as the liquor stimulated their unhealthy imaginations it was worse to feel the covert looks stealing now and again toward them. Joyce, sleeping fitfully in the arms of Moya, woke with a start to see them drinking together at the table.

"I don't like them. I'm afraid of them," she whispered.

"We mustn't let them know it," Moya whispered in her ear.

For an hour she had been racked by fears, had faced unflinchingly their low laughs and furtive glances.

Now one of the men spoke. "From Goldbanks?"

"Yes."

"You don't live there."

"No. We belong to the English party--Mr. Verinder's friends."

"Oh, Verinder's friends. And which of you is his particular friend?" The sneer was unmistakable.

"We started out this afternoon for wild flowers and the storm caught us," Moya hurried on.

"So you're Verinder's friends, are you? Well, we don't think a whole lot of Mr. Verinder out here."

Moya knew now that the mention of Verinder's name had been a mistake.

The relations between the mine owners and the workmen in the camp were strained, and as a foreign non-resident capitalist the English millionaire was especially obnoxious. Moreover, his supercilious manners had not helped to endear him since his arrival.

The man called Dave got to his feet with a reckless laugh. "No free lodgings here for Mr. Verinder's friends. You'n got to pay for your keep, my dears."

Miss Dwight looked at him with unflinching eyes which refused to understand his meaning. "We'll pay whatever you ask and double the amount after we reach camp."

"Don't want your dirty money. Gi' us a kiss, la.s.s. That's fair pay. We ain't above kissing Verinder's friends if he is a rotten slave driver."

Moya rose to her slender height, and the flash of courage blazed in her eyes.

"Sit down," she ordered.

The man stopped in his tracks, amazed at the resolution of the slim tall girl.

"Go on, Dave. Don't let her bluff you," his companion urged.