Chapter X: Part 10

But he must forget. He couldn't go on feeling like this about another man's wife. And he was glad she loved the Judge. Yes, since she was going to marry, he was glad she loved the Judge. Sometimes--he had been a little in doubt. Still--what did all this Lem had told him really amount to? Of course the young imp had exaggerated, for instance there was that yarn about Stratton's horse, still--just what shreds of truth had he possessed, out of which to fabricate the story? Another time he could have laughed at the boy's rendition of Stratton's careful language, but had this man approached her, disgraced, outlawed as he was, in that way? Yes, he was bold enough; he had stopped her, spoken to her, pressed his case; that much was true. The thought of this quickened Forrest's blood; it ran hot in his veins. Once more his hands tingled, burned, for close physical contact with this man.

When he was again conscious of his surroundings it was twilight in the forest. The trees no longer stood out singly but in confused masses. Light fog began to lift from the hollows, wet still from the recent rains; the air grew chilly. Then presently, through an opening ahead, appeared the knob-like crest of the south hill, girdled with a ribbon of mist; and as he rode towards the clearing, there unfolded a company of peaks, shading from copper and amethyst to a purplish black. He passed a branch trail, rising and winding up in the direction of the canyon, and making a final curve, came upon Thornton's cabin, and Samantha churning and singing in the little porch.

"How do you do?" he said, swinging down from the saddle and taking her offered hand; "I sent my congratulations to Mill, through Miss Hunter, some time ago, but I must congratulate you both on this homestead. It makes a great showing. I'm coming back in a day or two to look over the section, but tonight I'm going right on to the falls."

"You'll kem ercross Mill down ther," she answered, smiling. "He 'lowed he'd hev er look at ther river. It's out on a reg'lar tear. You kin hear it, can't you? It's ripped out ther teacher's sluice-gate, an' carried away a mighty nice little bridge Mr. Stratton put in below ther falls."

So Alice had built a sluice-gate. He smiled, puzzled, and then with a flash of understanding. Of course it was she who had taught Thornton the problem of bringing the stream to his land. It was she who had suggested the line of sluice-box he had noticed ahead, along the trail. Well, he could spare the water. He was glad to.

"I promised to leave Ketchem with Mill," he said, and loosened his snug blanket roll from behind the saddle. "Jake expects him down at the Station tomorrow. I would like to have a look at my own horse, and see Miss Hunter for a moment before I go on."

"Why," said Samantha in surprise, "she ain't here. I 'low she's too powerful busy tendin' to her own ranch."

"Her own ranch?" he repeated.

"Yes. Fur ther land sakes, don't you know she homesteaded that ther piece to ther falls?"

Forrest stood a silent moment. His look moved from Samantha's face to a high spur of the hill. His breath came a little heavily, with a slight uplift of the shoulders, and he raised his hand to the handkerchief, knotted loosely at his throat, and eased it, as though it choked. Then he took up the strapped blanket from the step and swung it to his back and started on down the trail. He had forgotten to say good-night, and Samantha waited, watching him curiously, and holding in the fretting horse. Presently he stopped in uncertainty, like a man lost, and turned and came back.

"I didn't expect to find a house at the falls," he said and forced a smile; "and, you see it seems pretty good to me to get out-of-doors again. I've been looking forward to spending tonight in the open air. I think, if that branch I passed back there around the curve, goes to the canyon, I'll try it."

"Yes, it does," answered Samantha. "It goes up past ther granite tower an' down to ther ford above Mr. Stratton's place. I 'low Pete Smith blazed that ther branch ter skip our ranch. He wa'n't goin' ter resk no chances o' kemin' ercross Mill."

"Then," said Forrest, "that's the trail I want. I intend to prospect south from the canyon. And I ought to find it dry up there for a camp tonight; it's pretty wet in the timber, and the tower should make a good windbreak from this Chinook. But I must hurry to make it before dark."

"You better stop 'ith us," said Samantha, her warm heart creeping into her tone. "It's lonesome up ther, an' I could cook you some mighty nice trout."

But he would not, and Samantha tied Ketchem and walked with the young man as far as the curve. "Say," she said impulsively, breaking the silence, "don't you feel so cut up 'bout that ther homestead. Uncle Eben always 'lowed you wanted that piece, an' 'at she knew it; an' I dunno what she done it fur, but you jes' wait tell you find out ther reason. She ain't ther kind ter do a mean thing."

"Oh, I know that; I know that," he answered quickly. "Don't think I blame her. It was her right, if she wanted the land. I don't need another reason. Good-night."

But Samantha followed a step further. "Say," she called, "ef she hedn't filed on that piece Mill would. He counted on homesteadin' that one, 'stead o' this. She got in ahead o' him, but he jes' hates to own he got cut out by er girl."

Her little, uncertain laugh, meant to cheer him, followed him up the trail. Then presently he reached the branch and pushed up swiftly towards the tower. "If I had stopped at Olympia to make the entry at the Land Office, I should have discovered the truth," he thought. "And of course--of course Mill, or some other man, must have taken it long ago, if she had let the opportunity go. Tomorrow, tomorrow--I'll go down and see what she has made of it. I couldn't now. Not tonight."

He stumbled through a darker tangle of undergrowth and came out in the open at the tower. But the forces at work earlier in the Pass had lately been busy here. Suddenly a great crack yawned at his feet. It seemed to mark off, accurately, as though a master hand had drawn the line, the whole jutting front of the cliff, and like the beginnings of a moat enclosed the leaning column. He moved back a few yards to the trees, and found a dry place for his blanket, under the spreading boughs of a fir. Presently the light of his camp-fire cut the gloom, and the air was redolent with the savor of toasting bacon.

Twilight deepened. The voice of the cataract came up the wind. Somewhere a dead bough creaked. He lounged, his elbow on the blanket, his head propped on his hand, and looked off absently across the darkening gorge. Did he not see once more, at the foot of a near and familiar slope, a small tent white and silent under the dew and starshine?

His lips began to breathe a whistle. Presently it rose, still soft, sweet, tender, in Schubert's Serenade.

*CHAPTER XXVIII*

*THE PRESSURE OF THE WILDERNESS*

The wilderness has great adaptability. She fits herself to the man; she plays on his moods. To Stratton she became an inquisitor, tireless, implacable. She wracked him with his defeat; she taunted him with memories. At last the hour came, when, far on his retreat to the border, his worst perils past, he turned his horse and started back.

There were nearer approaches to the Sound through the mountains; a day's ride southeastward would have taken him to the railroad on the Columbia, but he chose to recross those miles of hostile country, where, to the horsemen of the plains, Sir Donald had long been a coveted and marked prize. He had not known the full value of Smith's service on those previous trips; his Indian blood had been a passport where a solitary white man could not go; and, while he had something to gain, the outlaw on the night watch had been vigilant, safe. During this last journey it was only through strategy and an incessant fighting off of sleep, that Stratton had been able to save the chestnut, probably his life. And now, returning, he was forced to make wide detours, avoiding his former course. He spent whole days, watchful, under cover of shallow coulees, and pushed on warily at night, riding knee-deep through arid tracts of sage brush, hiding his trail when he could, in the meager channel of a stream, or the rocks of a wash, keeping away, always, from beaten tracks.

In that great silence, where the report of a gun carried like a thunder-clap, he could not risk a shot at passing game. Once he snared a bird; again a squirrel; and several times he caught fish, which he ventured a small fire to prepare. But his food supply, divided into rations, and after a few days reparcelled, fell to almost nothing.

Finally the chestnut's hoofs struck the familiar upward trail to the Pass. His alertness quickened but his master's dropped away. He rode indifferently, mechanically; his eyes gloomed retrospective under his black contracted brows. His face had lost its faultless contour; lines seamed it. He was like a man who had lived hard and fast, tragic epochs in brief days.

It was midday when he lifted his head and looked about him. The horse had stopped on a grassy bench. A slender rill cascading from a lofty spur formed a limpid pool, and overflowing, rippled between sunny banks and was lost in a clump of pines. Sir Donald had dropped his eager muzzle to the basin.

Backward the autumn wind drew sharp across the great plains, and upward, far up, a first snowfall held the Pass. Stratton swung himself out of the saddle and loosened the thoroughbred's girth. He picketed him near the trees, and with the limp saddle-bags flung over his arm, stood for a moment watching the horse. His handsome coat, ungroomed for weeks, was dappled with foam; dry froth discolored his heaving rib-defined sides; burs tangled his silver mane; and the wet square where his blanket had been was divided by a lurid galled spot. Yet he stood all spirit, head high, looking at his master with steady expectant, almost human eyes, turning a sensitive ear for the anticipated word. "Now make the most of your hour, Donald, old fellow," Stratton said. "It's a long pull still to Nisqually ford."

The chestnut, satisfied, fell to cropping the long grass by the stream. Stratton felt in his saddle-bag and drew out a biscuit tin and another of sardines. The first had been previously opened, but he stood turning the second in uncertainty, in his hands; then, looking up to that cloud over the Pass, he put the can back. He took three biscuit from the remaining box, recovered it and dropped it into the bag.

While he ate the biscuit a flock of geese passed, honking, far below him over the sun-baked plain. He stood watching the wavering line until it disappeared, then he unstrapped his blanket and spread it on the bank and threw himself down. He closed his eyes, but he did not sleep. His features worked, and from time to time he moved his head uneasily. "Yes," he said aloud, at last, "that was the weak link in the chain; I failed to ingratiate myself with Forrest. I could have done it--I could--if I had foreseen the end. It all hinged on him. Granted Kingsley's wife saw us that night; granted she moved the stuff, concealed it, as Smith said, under that rotten floor; she went to Forrest right off, I swear, and eased her conscience. And he put two and two together, in his calculating way; he guessed at the clue and sent Bates to look for it--at the top of the bluff. Always, everywhere it has been Paul Forrest. He built on a first word or two of suspicion from Bates, and tried to set the Captain against me; he spied on me, thwarted me--made himself my foil. I could have won out; I could have covered the disgrace; made a fresh start; lived it down; proved myself her kind of man--if he had not stood in the way. And I would like just once--before the finish--to meet him, hand to hand--and have it out. Damn him!--" he stretched his arms; the cords knotted; his fingers seemed to grasp something tangible; they clenched, relaxed, clenched again,--"Damn his righteous, irreproachable soul."

After an interval he spoke again. "But it is too bad about the Captain. I will do my best for him; I will shoulder it all; and with the Judge's influence he should pull clear. Why,--" he started to his elbow with the shadow of his old, mocking smile,--"his wife can't witness against him, even if she wants to. A wife's testimony isn't allowable in a Washington court." He passed his hand across his eyes and sank back on his blanket. "I am sorry for that little woman though. She is so proud--so fine; it's going to cut--deep. She never liked me. Once, that last time I met her there at the ruin, she lifted her skirt and walked around the place where I had stood. How she must hate me now. But sometime, since it has made a reason for her to break with Kingsley, she ought to thank me."

Then finally, after another interval, he struck the keynote of his return. "My God, I had to come back. It was impossible, unbearable to ride on; day after day, alone--through the awful silence. To see her face--that last look she gave me, the contempt, the aversion of it--following me, crowding me, haunting every sage bush. I have got to change it. She used to like me--she would have loved me--and she will forgive me. She promised me, that time up at the Paradise, she promised me her mercy. She will forgive me--she must. I have got to see her--speak to her once more. And I am ready to--pay the price."

He rose to his feet and looked about him. He started, shivered a little, and drawing his hand across his eyes, fixed them on the feeding horse. But it was the narrowed, strained effort of a dulled vision. Sir Donald seemed a long distance off; or was it later than he thought? He looked at his watch, and finding a match, held the flame close to the face.

"It is nothing," he muttered, and dropping the match, put the watch back into his pocket. "It is nothing--it has happened before. I have been staring too long at the glare of the sun on those yellow plains. It will pass. In a moment or two--it will pass."

He began to walk slowly, unsteadily towards the horse. He put out his hand like one who feels his way in the night. "Donald, old fellow," he said. "Donald, we are getting to the end of the--rope."

Then he touched the chestnut's mane, and, at the contact, his iron nerve gave completely away. His whole frame trembled. His arm sank over the arching neck. He dropped his face on it, sobbing, not as he had when he was a child, but as such a man, not all men, can sob--just once in a lifetime.

*CHAPTER XXIX*

*THE CRACK OF DOOM*

Once more, up in the Pass, the glare of the sun on the fresh snow brought on that dullness of vision, and Stratton was forced to halt, creeping, groping out of the bitter wind to the shelter of a crag, where he spent the night, miserably. It was after that, though his sight returned, he discovered it had lost accuracy. Twice, when the prize seemed sure, he missed his aim. The first time it was a young elk, lagging behind the herd in a green pocket of a gorge; and again it was a stag that crossed the trail in front of him. Later, in making the dangerously high water at Nisqually ford, his ammunition became wet and useless. But on the final morning, at his old way camp hidden among some alders near the river, he succeeded in snaring a squirrel. This, with some late blueberries, which he had gathered on a higher slope the previous day, served to temper the keen edge of his hunger.

The snowfall in the Pass at a lower altitude had been a heavy rain, and when he mounted and turned into the trail, taking up the last stage of his journey, clouds still brooded over the hills; the gorges steamed fog that lifted and fell, directly, in sheets of mist, through which again filtered the mellow autumn sun. Water dripped from boughs, formed in every depression, and behind him the flooding Nisqually thundered a deepening chord. He avoided the main trail past Thornton's homestead and the teacher's claim to the bridge, taking instead the canyon branch to his lodge, where he expected to find a change of clothing. The suit he wore was frayed at knees and elbows, and, still damp from yesterday's ford, it absorbed moisture speedily. He must shave too, at the lodge, and breakfast,--there was coffee there and an excellent ham,--and put himself in condition for the interview with Alice. Afterwards he would ride on and give himself up to Thornton. The reward, if there was one, might compensate the young rancher for the loss of his sorrel.

Everywhere the changing dogwood and maple flamed through the October woods, and the brilliant leaves fell in showers, through which Sir Donald paced lightly, with suspicion. The wind, which drew with him up the ascent, billowed the tops of the firs below; the sound of them was like the rush and wash of a great sea, but the drifting mist closed in, obscuring the sun and the farther bluffs of the gorge. Then presently, looking up through the trees, he saw the tower, pushing out of denser cloud like a lighthouse on a gray and unfamiliar coast. A moment later he was conscious of a foreign and pleasing aroma in the air. It was coffee, the kind he had anticipated,--he had always been particular about the brand he used and how it was prepared,--and it flashed over him, with disproportionate heat, that some passing woodsman had filched it from the lodge. The next instant, riding up to the open, he came upon Forrest.

He was seated on a rock, with a plump and primely broiled pheasant on the boulder before him, while he filled his tin cup from a small coffee-pot which he had lifted from the coals. And Stratton's alertness failed him. He forgot the peril of capture, now, before he was ready; the significance of surrender to this man. He thought of nothing but the fragrant cup and that savory bird.

Paul looked up. He put down the coffee-pot and sprang to his feet. But his hand had hardly touched Sir Donald's bridle--close under the bit,--when he dipped as quickly back to escape the striking hoofs of the rearing animal.

Another moment, and, wheeling lightly on his hind feet, the chestnut brought his master's shoulders in contact with a stout bough, and he was unhorsed. Then, as he had been taught, the thoroughbred was off; skimming the trail like a bird back to the main track and on to the lodge.

His backward movement to avoid the horse took Forrest, stumbling, across the crack in the cliff which moatwise shut off the tower. The seam had widened during the night, and was full of water, which, where the rock formation failed, was undermining the soil, carrying the wash down through a small subcut into the trail towards the ford.

Stratton threw out his hand, grasping the fir to break his fall, and staggered erect. Blood streamed from his lips, which had struck the rough bole; but he set his teeth under them, hard. The steel flashed in his eyes. He turned on Forrest and all the latent passion in him broke into flame. The fineness in him, the high resolve shrank small. He confronted suddenly, in this man, the instrument of his disgrace and many-sided defeat. The three words he spoke were repeated slowly, in a low tone, and yet they seemed hurled by some force from the depths of his chest.

Forrest did not answer. He glanced behind him measuring the ground, which lifted a little to the left of the tower and dropped again abruptly to the precipice. It was this sink at the foundation which lowered the outer column, tilting the whole structure. He threw off his coat and moved back a pace, taking advantage of the rise, which brought him nearer Stratton's height, and waited, watchful, eyes steady, head up, feet firm, hands loose at his sides. His whole altitude said plainly, "I'm ready; come."

It all happened swiftly. In the moment Stratton crossed the break there came a tremendous jar. Instantly he recoiled. Behind Forrest the whole tower toppled, block on block, over the abyss. The cliff under him heaved; its face split, detaching at the seam. He ran, clearing it in a leap, and, like the crack of doom, the sounds of that downfall filled the gorge. He felt the next layer, a strata of soft earth, give beneath his feet. He struggled for firm ground; he would have gained it, but Stratton blocked the way. He thrust a hand against the shoulder of the reeling man, gave him backward impetus, and sprang away. Another instant, and with the last onrush Forrest went down.

Stratton retreated a little further. He turned, feeling his steps, with one hand outstretched, the other pressed to his eyes. Then he stopped, listening, fixing his fogged gaze on that awful brink, while the grinding, the striking of rock on rock, the crash of falling trees, started anew by that slide of soft earth, reverberated, multiplied echo on echo, from bluff and spur. He called once, but there was no human response. Then came--_Silence_.

He made his way to the rock which had been Forrest's seat, and sinking down, set his elbows on the larger boulder and dropped his face in his palms. It rained for a time heavily, but he paid little attention to the pelting drops which the wind brought slanting upon his head. After awhile the aroma of the cup which the lost man had filled, seeped over his senses. He drank it off at a draught, and groping for the coffee-pot, carefully, with difficulty, his hands shaking, poured a second cup; another. But the savor of the pheasant no longer attracted him.

"Oh, my God," he said at last, "what brought him to this place? What insane weakness brought me back? But I must see her. My God,"--his voice rose half in threat, half prayer--"I must see her, before--he--is found."

He got to his feet and commenced to grope his way down to the main trail. He was able to see the path, but a yard ahead it ended in a blur. It occurred to him that, at the time of the slide, the teacher must have started to school, and when he reached the better track he turned back towards the Nisqually as far as the cut. He made frequent stops, resting on logs or stones and closing his eyes to husband that glimmer of sight. Sometimes he stretched his spent body in complete relaxation on the wet leaves. The drip, drip of the foliage was continuous around him, but he knew when the rain ceased, for, though it was not possible to distinguish objects more clearly, he saw the filtered brightness of the sun among the trees. Then again the mist closed in, cloaking the timber. His wet clothes gathered weight; they chilled, numbed him. He quickened his steps and other footfalls seemed to follow. It was the tread of that unseen presence, which he had felt and defied, the day Smith was overtaken, and he stood on the buttress above the rockslide in the Pass. Always it stalked with him, behind him, beside him; when he halted it crowded him close.

He had hoped to meet Alice returning through the cut, but he reached the schoolhouse finally, only to find the door locked; the children and their teacher gone. He turned on the steps and looked up that steep trail through the burn. "She must have taken that way, around by the Myers claim, on some errand," he told himself. Then it flashed over him that somewhere, during those wretched halts in the wilderness, he had lost a day; this was not Friday, as he had conjectured, but Saturday, the week-end holiday.

He sank down on the steps and looked back over the level stretch of track he had just travelled. It was impossible to take up the return tramp to the headwaters so soon, but Laramie would give him some sort of bed and supper, and in the morning it might not be too late. He pulled himself together and rose. Then he stopped, listening. He had caught the sound of galloping hoofs. In a moment he whistled, his old, imperative note, that Sir Donald so well understood. The hoof-beats fell to a trot and the chestnut appeared. Stratton repeated the summons, but with a new, uncertain key, for his lip, stiff and swollen from the accident at the tower, had lost flexibility. The horse halted, head up, ears erect, sensitive, eyes dilating. But when his master started towards him he wheeled a little, and the stirrup, swinging high from the shifted saddle, struck him smartly. He crashed off through the jungle. His dragging bridle looped a snag, but he jerked free, and, making a detour around the clearing, struck the trail, breaking again into a mad gallop, back in the direction of the Nisqually.

"So, Donald, so--you too. Well, I don't blame you, old fellow; I don't blame you." But this disappointment, following so closely on the other, told on Stratton. He sank down again on the steps.

After awhile he took out his pocketbook, and, finding a piece of paper and a pencil, wrote without superscription or signature,

"I came back to see you--I had to. Not to excuse myself, but to ask of you that mercy you once promised me--there below the Paradise--and then to take--what I deserve. I have fallen pretty far since that day on Mt. Rainier, and you are going to wish, all your life, you had left me in that crevasse. Great God, you don't know how I have wished it, too, out there in the terrible stillness of the Palouse; how miserably I wish it now. I would pay any price to see the old friendliness in your face again. But, this morning, up at the tower, I lost the chance. That is all. It cannot help you now, to know I would give anything to have Forrest safe--and be in his place--buried deep in that slide."

All the sheet was a wavering scrawl, but the last lines ran together word over word. He folded the paper, but after a thoughtful moment opened it and added at the bottom of the page, "I want Thornton to have my horse." Then he refolded it and slipped it under the door.

He stood for an interval looking towards the Des Chutes. "She will not find it until Monday," he said, "and by that time if I have not seen her, it will be too late." And he went down the steps and took the trail to Laramie's.

He heard the increasing roar of the freshet as he walked, and presently, when he reached the curve where the trail turned down-stream, he found the flood over banks; currents eddied through the underbrush, undermining the trunks of hemlocks and firs; carrying out detached boughs and logs. At the crossing to the Phiander claim the rustic footbridge was gone.

But Stratton remembered the banks were higher at Laramie's homestead; the old fallen fir, which bridged the channel there, had withstood the shock of many floods. He moved on, quickening his steps where he could, but, now that he had left the gravelly soil of the ridges for the loam of the bottom-land, walking became more difficult. The mud clung to his boots; in places footing oozed under him, and repeatedly, in lower levels, he was forced to make wide detours, leaving the path to push through tangles of alder and hazel or cottonwood. Often water washed above his ankles; at intervals it splashed to his knees.

At last he struggled up a little rise and came out on a low bluff. The great uprooted trunk of the fir footbridge was at his elbow, and he stopped, taking breath, and sank into a half sitting position on the knuckle of one gnarled root. His rain-soaked clothes shaded into the color of the dead, earth-stained tree, so that he might have been a part of it.

The fir had fallen with a downward slant to the farther bank, its top driving wedgelike between two cedars. These trees were standing with their trunks submerged, and, mid-channel, the log swung to the current and formed a dam, holding back an increasing collection of drift, through which the water rushed with the roar of rapids. The whole jam rose and fell with a concerted upheaval.

The roots of the fir, ballasted by forest litter, formed a short stairway up to the crossing, and presently Stratton mounted, slowly, with difficulty and began to feel his steps over the bridge. At the same time a great fallen hemlock swung down-stream, its upreared trunk coming foremost, a tremendous battering ram.

It was over in a moment. He stopped, mid-channel, listening, and turned his clouding eyes up-stream. The hemlock drove through the crunching drift and ploughed on through the bridge. He plunged forward, face down, with a sharp cry, and, impaled by a broken, submerged root, was swept out with the wreckage.

Mose, coming from his father's cabin, heard that cry, and quickened his pace to a run. He reached the place where the footbridge had been, and stood crossing himself as he had been taught by the priest. "Jesus--Mary," he whispered, and then, "Oh, Sahgalee, Tyee Sahgalee."

But the hemlock had grounded at a bend below. Its palisade of green boughs fringed the rampart of a fixed jam. He turned and ran, wading, down between the alders and cottonwoods, and Laramie's dogs came splashing after him, taking advantage of logs or any slight rise, but swimming where they must. He came out on a low bluff above the drift, and when he saw what silent shape it carried, he crossed himself once more. Then he grasped two stout trailing boughs and swung himself down on the jam.

Two sections of the footbridge held the body wedgelike, but the face and breast were awash. Mose fell to his knees and tried to turn and lift the face from the water. "Mo'sieur," he said, in an agony of entreaty and fear, "Mo'sieur, you can' be hurt mooch."

But there was no answer.

"Mo'sieur," he repeated, and shifted his arm lower to raise the submerged breast; "Monjee, mo'sieur, you mus' help yourself, some."

Still no response; and the boy made no further attempt to rouse him, for he had felt, suddenly, the grip of the hemlock. He withdrew his arm, and, cuffing aside one of the snuffing hounds, laid his hand on the neck of the other and rose. Then he took breath and lifted his voice in a great shout. The dogs swelled it, belling a prolonged note. He listened and repeated the call with his palm to his mouth. This time it brought a faint reply from Laramie, and the hounds sounded a louder clarion.

And the storming Des Chutes swept away the deep, full-throated cry, and the speaking hills caught it and sent it back like a lament from far promontories.

*CHAPTER XXX*

*THE LOST PROSPECT*

Below the falls the overflow had formed a backwater through the meadow, and that Saturday morning Alice took the Jerseys from the higher ground of the home enclosure, and put them to graze on the slope. She intended to ride directly on to the Station for the mail, and made a short cut through the park to strike the trail beyond the first knoll. It was then, while the black paced slowly among the wet trees, that the sound of the landslide clashed through the hills. Colonel stopped, trembling; hoofs planted, head up, nostrils wide and quivering, then, panic driven, broke. A little later, when she had drawn him down, and still quieting him, turned again towards the trail, Stratton's horse, arrested by the washed out bridge on his way to the lodge, thundered back in the direction of the Nisqually.

There was a flash of the chestnut coat between the branches; a glimpse of the empty saddle and he was gone. But instantly Alice saw that Stratton had returned. He had, of course, taken the branch through the canyon and the thoroughbred had refused the swollen ford; he had bolted, skirting the submerged jungle to the main trail, and left his master unhorsed, perhaps hurt, at the crossing.

She turned and rode back towards the gorge, expecting to pick up the trail at the foot of the bluff, where it wound down from the tower. "It's all right, Colonel," she said, "it's all right. You ought to know a slide by this time. But I don't blame you; it was a monster; it sounded like the whole canyon wall coming down."

Dropping from the open park to the underbrush of the gorge, she turned the horse into a thinned way, evidently once blazed by some passing woodsman. Then, presently, looking up between boughs, she saw a low cloud, trailing over and blotting out the summit where the tower had stood, and below it the demolished front of the cliff. At the same moment, Colonel, pushing through a tangle of salal, stumbled to his knees. She glanced back to see what had caused the fall and her eyes rested on a weather-beaten stake, such as a surveyor or prospector uses in marking off land, driven close to alow, outcropping ledge. A few steps farther on she noticed a blaze in the bark of a hemlock, in which had been cut a small arrow, pointing downward at this rock.

The horse moved on and she lifted her eyes again to the cliff. Midway the slide had shaved off a jutting spur, and, suddenly, a shaft of sunlight filtering through the clouds, struck from this new surface a blaze of colors. Instantly she thought of the samples of ore Paul Forrest had once shown her. Here were the same blues and purples, the shine of silver, the glint of dull yellow. It was, she knew it was, the lost prospect. It was Paul who had driven that stake. It was here in this canyon, while he groped a way out of the hills, he had stumbled on his find. The mist, hanging over as it did today, had obscured the tower and given the gorge a different aspect than later, in clear weather, it had shown. But this was the place and the slide had uncovered the mother lode.

She sat for a moment, holding in her horse and looking up at that dazzling ledge. She drew full breaths with parted lips; the bloom of a wild rose was in her cheeks; a soft brightness shone in her eyes. Then she was reminded of her present duty by a voice; a man's voice calling faintly, "Help, oh--help."

A little below the broken spur the cliff began to dip outward, forming an incline to the bottom of the gorge. Trees had found hold on this pitch, and where the top created a narrow bench, the uprooted trunk of a giant fir, flanked by the stub of an old cedar, timbered a barricade of splintered rock and earth. The last soft downrush had nearly filled this rampart, and streamed out through the dip between the felled boles, covering slabs and boulders, evening the slide to the appearance of a newly graded roadway. It was there, directly under the mineral ledge, that Alice located the voice. She concluded it was Stratton's; that he had not been thrown at the ford, but on the cliff; and he had been caught in the avalanche.

She answered the call, but it was not repeated, and she quickly chose a way to reach the shelf. She saw that the trail from the ford up the bluff was lost in shifting granite; and, for a long distance, passage up the fir was obstructed by a network of boughs; but the fallen cedar, slowly dying, had lost many of its branches; those remaining were still pliable. She left her horse, and, pushing through a litter of snapped saplings and broken limbs, reached this tree.

Its top was splintered and set like a brace against the trunk of a standing hemlock. Ragged boughs at first retarded her; she was forced to work on her knees, through their meshes. Sometimes she swung herself down to trudge ankle-deep, knee-deep through the soft fill around a barrier. She crawled over suspended boulders, under tilting slabs that had found lodgment on the great bole. In one of these places, where a mighty fragment of rock had struck, the bark was stripped loose in lengths. Later she remembered this.

At last she gained the end of the tree, and sinking in an accumulation of earth, found the support of a root and drew herself up, slowly, bringing her eyes to the top of the barricade. The color went from her face; her shoulders shook; her limbs; but she pulled herself higher and leaned on the rim. This man was not Stratton. His body was buried; only his head and one shoulder were uncovered; the face was turned from her. But this man was not Stratton.

She drew herself over the rampart and ran, stumbling in loose mold, to reach him. But when she saw his face a hand of iron seemed to tighten on her throat; her limbs gave under her. "Paul," she said. "Oh, Paul, Paul!"

The next moment she started up, her weakness gone. Her cheek had touched his; it was warm. A light breath had come from his lips. And he had called, he had been able to call, not long ago. She began to throw the loose earth from his chest, his breast; digging, working like a beaver with her two hands. Presently she laid her palm on his heart and caught a faint action. She felt in the pocket of his shirt for the emergency flask a timber-cruiser keeps about him in the wilderness, but it was not there. Still, the pocket was shallow, it might have dropped near, and she resumed her task, prodding at intervals for the flask. She freed his arm; his side. She had found no rocks around the upper part of his body; nothing but soft soil. To be quite sure she reached, feeling, under his back. And this brought from him a groan. A quiver swept his face, but when she had withdrawn her arm, he rested white and still as before.

The dirt had filled deeper over his abdomen, but she hurried to the rim of the rampart and selected a splinter of rock which she used as a scoop. At last his whole trunk was released, but his limbs were planted deeper yet. He seemed to have fallen feet first, and settled, afterwards, a little to one side. If only those feet had not struck rock. She was afraid--afraid--of--what she might unearth. Still she worked. And the faith of her missionary grandfather rose strong in her, and battled with her fear. "Dear God," her heart cried, "do not let him have touched rock. Show me--show me the best thing to do."

It commenced to rain heavily, and she stopped to turn his face directly to the shower, throwing off her jacket and using it to prop his head. She spread her handkerchief on a clean slab to catch the moisture, and, when it was wet, pressed the drops from it, between his lips. But they were so few. If only the slide had opened a spring in the cliff; if only she could find the flask.

She went back, fighting down her despair, to her work. A moment later she heard him sigh. Relieved of the pressure of earth, his empty lungs had slowly filled and at last expelled their first good breath. She looked at him over her shoulder, holding her own breath, kneeling still with her hands in the mold. He opened his eyes--she dared not move--and saw her, blankly at first, and then with swift intelligence. "Alice," he said, "why--Alice. See here--I'm all right. I can wait. Please don't. That's work for a--man."

Instantly she was up and at his shoulder. "Don't try to talk," she said. "Don't move; but can you remember if you had your flask?"

He knit his brows. "It was in my pocket--the coat. But," he added with second recollection, "the slide must have brought it down with me."

"All right, I'll find it. Don't say any more; don't try to think, or move, or do anything. Rest."

He smiled a little and closed his eyes, and she hurried back with fresh effort to her task. Presently she was able to run her hand down, through the loose soil, to the end of the right limb. It was straight, and not the crumpled mass she had feared. But, working her arm through a wider range, she felt, a few inches from the leg, the edge of a slab. Then, directly, while she followed its contour to satisfy herself it did not touch him anywhere, her fingers came in contact with woolen cloth. She dug faster and faster, and finally unearthed the end of a sleeve; his coat sleeve which trailed from beneath the rock. She pulled at it, tried to shift the stone, alternately strained and dragged at the garment. But it was of no use. Her glance wavered despairingly to that second, still buried, limb, then she began to uncover the slab. And while she labored tirelessly, her heart cried, "Dear God, let me be able to lift it; do not let it be very--big."

At last she uncovered the outer edge. A little more digging along the thin side and again under the sleeve, then she set her hands, the strength of her young arms to the rock. It eased up slightly. She put her knee to it, bracing it while she tugged at the coat. It slipped a trifle. Again a lift, a wrench, a slip, and here was a pocket exposed, and in it she found the small metal flask; jammed, flattened, leaking a little, but holding, still, brandy.

She poured it hot between his lips, and presently he again opened his eyes. "I'm all right," he repeated, "yes--I am. Don't trouble; don't stay here--in the rain. I can wait for Thornton or--Myers. I'm all--right."

To prove the point he tried to get to his elbow, but settled back, going white again to the lips.

She turned her face away. Her eyes were dry, but the dread in them was beyond tears. After a moment she compelled her glance to meet his. Her lips moved, but the iron hand again seemed to strangle the words in her throat. "Is it"--they were out at last--"is it--your--back?"

"No, oh, no." He smiled his old smile of the eyes. "It's only a dislocated shoulder. With Thornton to help me it won't take long to straighten it out."

She returned to that second limb. "Dear God," she still prayed, "I am so afraid. But--if it is hurt--don't let it be past help." Aloud she said, and steadied her voice, "Mill was to have gone to the Station this morning."

"Of course--of course--I had forgotten. I left Ketchem for him last night. But Myers is somewhere here in the hills."

"Then the noise of the slide should bring him this way." She thrust the scoop carefully along the side of the uncovered knee. "Mose," she added, "went home with his father, yesterday, to help drive the sheep to high ground. Sheep"--her voice broke--"sheep--are so foolish--in a flood."

She laid the scoop down. There was no further need of digging; the leg was doubled back from the knee, in a heap. She got to her feet and turned, meeting his look again bravely. "You see," she said and smiled, "there isn't a man; you'll have to use me. What would you have asked Mill to do?"

"Why, set this arm. You could do it--it's simple--but I don't like to ask it of you. You take it--like this"--he reached and she knelt beside him to allow him to demonstrate with hers,--"and pull it out as far as you can--so--only harder--much harder. It's going to hurt some, I'll probably make a fuss, but never mind--pull. Then let it settle back into the shoulder socket--so. You've seen the round bone that fits in a shoulder of veal. Well, just think of that."

"I understand the--movement," she said, and steadied her voice again, "and I'm--str-o-ong. I'll do my best."

It was quickly and successfully done, and he did not make a fuss. He only closed his eyes at the last and set his teeth on that pale under lip until it bled. And afterwards he rested so motionless that she gave him another draught from the flask. Then finally he was able to sit up and examine that injured leg. It was broken in two places, he said; at the ankle and midway to the knee. There was too, he noticed now, something wrong with that left side; probably a fractured rib. It was work for a good surgeon, yes, but nothing to worry over. And he would have a look at that slide, right away, and see what the possibilities were of getting down.

He worked his way to the rim of the ledge and she moved with him, watching his face; every shadow of pain that crossed it brought the anguish springing to her eyes. He raised his head, propping it on his hand, his elbow on the rocks, and his clear glance swept the fallen trees, and then more slowly the pitch stretching like smooth roadway between.

Her eyes moved from him to the incline and back to his face. "Colonel is down there in those standing alders," she said. "Could we risk him anywhere on the slide?"

"No." He shook his head. "No, my only chance is to coast."

"To coast? You mean"--and quick understanding leaped in her face--"you want a sled. There's a strip of bark down there, you can see it, where that piece of granite struck the cedar; it ought to make a good toboggan."

"The best kind," he answered, "if you can find some one to bring it up."

His glance came back from the slide while he spoke, but it moved no higher than the rim of the barricade. It had stopped raining and a shaft of sunlight, piercing the mist, flashed on a fragment of rock. He reached and took it, turning it in his hands slowly, to catch the play of colors. Then his eyes swept the splintered ore that spilled over the rampart, and he swung himself a little, starting up, though he was forced to sink back directly, in an endeavor to see the ledge overhead. Finally his gaze met hers.

"It looks like my lost prospect." His voice vibrated a little; his face had grown suddenly young, boyish, and the hope in it brought an answering light to her own. "Here are the same traces of free gold, the rarest find in the world, with this deposit of copper; and just a nice showing of silver. But I could have sworn that outcropping was at least a mile from here."

"Your stake is just down there, on a line with those alders. Colonel stumbled on it when we came through a little while ago. And, you can't see it from here, but the slide "--she paused, her lips trembling yet dimpling--"the slide has opened a great mineral vein, right above us."

He started up again, forgetting his injuries, and again sank back. "What luck," he said softly, "what luck. Strange," he added after a moment, "how I made that miscalculation."

"I think it was easy. You had broken your compass that day; you hadn't a glimpse of the sun; the whole top of this cliff must have been in cloud as it is today; the tower shut off completely. But, I'm going now." She bent to leave the flask beside him, propping it carefully to avoid loss of that remaining potion of liquor through the leak. "I may be gone a long time, but I'll hurry. I'm glad you have the prospect--to think of."

She stepped up on the edge of the rampart. "Promise you won't try to do anything," she said.

He shook his head, watching her with his smile of the eyes. "It's a safe promise. I wish it was harder to make."

She paused another moment, sitting on the edge and feeling for foothold on the root she had used in coming up; then she swung lightly off. Her eyes met his an instant across the rim. "Good-by," she said, and dipped from sight.

He raised himself a little higher, bracing his shoulder on a tilted slab, and waited for her to reappear on the bole below. She made her way quickly and surely down.

He believed she had gone for help, how uncertain and remote she had let him know, but, while he still watched that clump of alders, in which she had disappeared, she came back; and she carried a rope, presumably Colonel's lariat, coiled on her arm. Presently she put it down and began to cull out dangerous, snagged boughs from the debris at the bottom of the pitch. Where immovable rocks and stumps menaced, she heaped springy branches. And Forrest understood. She was guarding against his possible impact with the wreckage.

But at last she picked up the lariat and started back up the cedar. He saw her purpose and, also, the futility of any effort of his to stop her. "I might have guessed it," he said, and set his lips; "it was like her."

She reached the place where the slab of granite had stripped the bark, and selecting a piece, made the lariat fast, and began slowly, laboriously, to drag it up. Sometimes the soft soil banked in front of the tow, so deep she was forced to tie it to the log, while she slipped down to clear the track; and in one of these places she looked up and saw Forrest's face, showing white above the ledge, and she called an encouraging "Hello."

He answered in a soft whistle, and because she seemed to work less desperately, he repeated the note at intervals. It settled into snatches of a tune; a tune so sweet, so tender, sometimes, she could hardly endure it, and yet again so full of appeal it drew her on; the loveliest parts of Schubert's Serenade, over and over, with the variations of a flute, and the soft, full-throated cadence of a bird.

At last it came no more. She had reached the barricade. She paid out the tow-line, and with its noosed end over her arm, mounted the trunk. She halted on the root, her breath coming hard and quick, and met his look again across the rim. "What made you?" he asked, his voice shaking. "What made you? You might have slipped. You might have started the whole slide."

She did not answer; she could not; she was tired beyond speech. She climbed slowly, with great difficulty, up over the edge, struggled to her feet, stumbled, and sank down.

He could not break her fall, as he had once, long ago, in the windfall, but he moved enough to draw her head to his shoulder. "What made you?" he repeated. "I'm not worth it. What made you?" And he kissed her lips.

He relieved her arm of the dragging rope, and tried to draw the tow up between the two trunks; but she stopped him. "You mustn't," she said. "You need all your strength. You must save yourself for that ride. I--I'm very str-o-ng, Paul. Only wait--just a moment."

"Of course we'll wait." He anchored the tow by slipping the lariat noose over the jagged top of the slab on which he leaned. "It's all right. There's no hurry."

The chinook caught her loosened hair and it fell like a shaken web, over her drenched shoulders, her waist. The sunlight struck from it the best colors of his prospect; glints of copper shading through the gold. He never had seen anything as beautiful except her face.