Chapter VI: Part 6

"He was thrown ashore," Stratton continued, "with wreckage, and he spent the night miserably, crawling under cover with his cache. At daybreak he found this trail; he believed he was on the mainland and that this was the way to that town over there, where he had arranged to meet his accomplices. He decided to carry the chest with him to the edge of the settlement. But the sun beat down mercilessly on that switchback, and he had eaten nothing since the wreck of his sloop. The chest gathered weight with every step. He travelled slower and slower, at one moment determined to abandon it, and the next reminding himself that it must pay for the loss of his boat. At last, from that high shoulder where we stopped to-day, he saw the revenue cutter creeping up the cove. That spurred him on to the stream. There, tired out, indifferent, he threw himself down to ease his aching muscles and take breath. He fell asleep. When he wakened it was late; the sun was almost gone. He rose and took the chest and hurried on to this final pitch. But looking back, he saw the Customs men below, finishing the wood. He found nowhere to hide the stuff; he dared not leave it, and, with increasing panic, he reached this summit, and ran on down, to find himself cut off by that cliff."

Stratton's even voice caught and broke. His forehead was wet with big, clinging drops, as though he himself had just made that great physical effort. His glance moved from the precipice, and, meeting the girl's clear, direct look, a sudden quiver swept his face. "And?" she said.

"He saw no way around," Stratton resumed quietly, "and in his extremity, he sent the chest over the brink. Then he came back to this bench and waited for the officers. They recognized him; one, the captain of the cutter, had known his father well, for years. 'There was a man above us on the trail,' he said; 'we hardly could have passed him, but he may have passed you. He carried a small chest or box.'

"And the boy looked him straight in the face and smiled. 'I guess you've missed your trail, captain,' he answered. 'You see this path ends here; be careful, it's a frightful drop. It looks like an old Indian trail; there at your feet are the ashes of signal fires. But the road you want branches below the switchback. Your man probably doubled back through the timber and struck across to the south shore.' And then he added frankly enough, 'I, myself, came up here for a sight of my sloop. She was stolen, and an Indian I met on the mainland had seen such a boat near this island. He put me over in his canoe.'"

"Oh," said Alice, "you call him a boy, yet he could stand and say all that like any hardened criminal."

"No," Stratton flushed hotly, and for an instant the steel flashed in his eyes, "even you should not call him that. He had been told, and shown, that some of the best men on the border took advantage of the Government; that the United States was able to stand it. You should remember, too, it was his first--offence."

She gave him a straight, uncompromising look. "Was the chest found?" she asked.

"No. There was no trace of it below the cliff; he looked, afterwards, and the lake is very deep, as you thought. There was no proof against him; those inspectors never for a moment doubted him. The man, whom they had seen boarding the sloop with the chest at Victoria, was a desperate character, under suspicion before; they believed he had stolen the boat, and that he had come upon the Indian waiting for his passenger, and had bribed him to take him off the island instead. And the boy went with them down the switchback, and identified the wreckage on the north shore. And they took him aboard the cutter and landed him at home, in Seattle, the next day."

"I understand," she said slowly, "it all rested with him. It would have been a triumph, his salvation, if he had confessed."

"I knew it." Stratton's face hardened. "I knew it. You sit here like young Justice, inexorable; you who never were tempted; never made a mistake; and nothing but the fundamental right will do. But think how that confession would have hampered him. A story like that clings. His whole future hinged on that day. And he had the confidence of those prominent men; the truth must have involved them. After all," he added, "the opium was lost. He gained nothing, and he had his punishment in the wreck of his sloop."

"Yes," she admitted, "he was punished in a way, but--"

"Listen," he pleaded. "He was reared very differently from you. His father was a man of honor, true, but he had business interests that kept him long intervals from home. And his mother, I think, hardly gave him much thought when he was a child. She was a very beautiful woman with luxurious tastes. There was most always a gay company around her, and it could never have greatly concerned her how her husband's money was made, so that she had it to spend. I will not say much about her,--she is gone, now, out of his life,--but the boy was taught early not to trouble her, and to look out for himself. I believe the only lessons she ever gave him were in quick, flippant retort, and to cover his hurts. He learned early, too, that the surest way to please her was to amuse her friends. Once, when he came into a room, unexpectedly, and conversation dropped, she looked at him, smiling, and said, 'Boy, what is disgrace?' And he answered directly, 'Disgrace, mother, is being caught.'"

"And she?" said Alice, after a moment.

"She? Why, she laughed, I think, with the others, and tapped him on the shoulder with her fan; or perhaps that time she clapped her adorable hands." He rose to his feet and stood looking off to that dim British coast. A great weariness settled over his face. "You see, in the end, it amounted to this; he thought, when he thought at all, that wrong rested only in detection. One must make and leave a good impression, but right motive, sincerity, in his world did not count. Then things changed. He saw life differently, through the eyes of the woman he loves."

Stratton's voice vibrated a little on the word. He turned and looked down at her, and that quiver again swept his face. But she did not see it. Her glance rested thoughtfully on the white peak, eastward, across the channel. That reference to the boy's mother, his training, home, struck the maternal chord, so strong in her, and she saw suddenly, clearly, the other side. The mountain began to flush with a sunset glow; a gentleness, almost tenderness, rose in her face.

"She is not like the women he has always known," Stratton went on. "She walks a higher level. Sometimes, she is so much a saint, he is afraid of her. He dreads her judgment, and yet he dreads more to have a suspicion of the truth reach her, some day, through others. Lately there are rumors afloat touching those men, who made a tool of him, and any time, a chance word from one of them may involve him. What do you think, Miss Hunter? You see she is like you in some ways; she takes your Puritan view of life and has your habit of sifting things. In her place would you think better of him if he told you? Could you, yourself, forgive him if--you loved him?"

She did not answer directly; she was weighing the question. At last her look came back from the mountain; she rose to her feet. "Yes," she said slowly, "Yes, I think that I could forgive him; it was a first offence. Of course it must have been the only time. I should forgive him for the same reason, or much the same reason, I did Mose. But, I could never love such a man, Mr. Stratton. Even if I never knew the truth, I should feel the stain. And I am the kind of woman who builds love on respect. The man I am going to care for, in the way you mean, has lived a clean life. He stands a man among men, sound to the core."

With this she turned and began to go down to her horse. Stratton waited a silent moment, watching her move lightly over the steep and jagged path. "The man she is going to care for," he repeated softly; "she means, of course, the Judge. But she will never make that marriage, never." He started to follow her, then he stopped and looked off once more, to that far Vancouver coast. "Strange, after these years, the sight of this place should make me go all to pieces. And strange how I bungled into that story. I had to tell her. That insistent something in her had me promising, down there at the switchback. Still, I could have told another woman easily enough, and won her to my side. Why am I always losing my hold when I talk to her? But I shouldn't have come ashore; I should have stayed aboard the yacht. God, how I hate this island."

He hurried on then, for she was already waiting in the saddle. She watched him with a grave kindness as he drew near. "You are still thinking of your friend," she said, "but please don't rely on my opinion. There are sweet and gentle women in the world who live just to forgive. Perhaps she, the one you mentioned, is one of them." She turned her horse into the trail, but glanced back over her shoulder to add, smiling a little, "You've been a good champion; tell him, when the time comes, to let you say a word for him."

"Trust me for that," he answered, and started his own horse; "if--the time comes I will speak for him."

*CHAPTER XVI*

*THE FIERY LANE*

Once, during Alice's brief stay at the mills, she had overheard Forrest censure a workman for finishing his pipe inside the restricted limits. This gave her an opportunity, that evening, to lead adroitly to the subject of forest fire. It was a perpetual menace in the settlement, she said; it sprang sometimes from almost nothing; a match dropped in a dry place, or a burning fragment shaken from a pipe; embers left alive by a passing camper; and oftener yet, it began with the ignition of slashed underbrush, when, to clear a bit of open for his cabin or pasture, a settler devastated whole areas of fine trees that could not be reproduced in a century. She wondered if Forrest, who so well understood the dangers as well as the values of timber, had ever devised a scheme, some practical, inexpensive method within the reach of ranchers, for its protection. And he had answered that of course the settlers should make it a local law never to start a "burn" in the dry season. But any man who knew the Washington woods, had learned that one of the surest ways to handle a first blaze was to smother it with shovelled earth. Even in midsummer the ground under the forest litter was damp; it was made porous by a network of roots and held moisture like a sponge; the trees drew from innumerable small reservoirs. But if he himself owned a section he would take the precaution to cut a broad swathe around the unprotected sides; and, if it was near a considerable water power, for instance those upper falls of the Des Chutes, he would keep in readiness a length of canvas hose, the big kind used for carrying a stream some distance in hydraulic mining, and be able to tap the river at a moment's warning.

She was particularly interested in this scheme, and gathered small details as to the size and make of the hose, and how he would connect it with the stream. He drew a rough plan on a card, showing a point where the river could be tapped with little trouble, by taking advantage of a certain jutting rock, to brace the necessary bit of flume and sluice-gate. "But," he had added, throwing aside the sketch to take his violin, "the chances are some other man will file on that section; he may even hit upon this little mechanism and have it all constructed before I see the headwaters again."

Afterwards Alice found that card, on Louise's table where he had left it, and saved it for future reference. The hose could not be secured in the Puget Sound towns; she could not obtain it in Portland; but finally it was purchased through a house carrying mining supplies in San Francisco.

Mill Thornton, who managed its final transportation, over twenty miles of trail from Yelm Station, was greatly interested in the innovation. She showed him Forrest's drawing, explaining it, and read to him a circular, which was enclosed with the hose and described its use. Then they went down to the falls and located the stone ledge. And in the end she contracted with the young rancher to do the mechanical work, in exchange for enough of the water power to supply a small flume to his claim. This was really another stroke of policy to insure her own trees, and Eben, who came out to "hev er look at ther water works," laughed. "Fur long-headedness," he told Thornton, "yes, an' grit, I 'low I'll stake my next pile on ther schoolmarm; yes, sir, ther schoolmarm, an' ergainst any durn man in this here hull deestrict."

It was Alice's intention to keep the canvas stretched in position during the dry season. Later, if the cleared land should cease to husband moisture, she might utilize it for irrigation. It had been laid for trial across the new meadow, which, cutting a wide swathe through the jungle, reached from the small open that surrounded the cottage to the river; but Myers having brought two Jerseys, which he had pastured several weeks, and turned them into the field, it was necessary, until a track outside could be leveled, to store the hose in the stable.

The meadow fence was built of heavy cedar rails, fixed horizontally and without nails. They needed no fastening but the uprights that held the crossed ends of each section. Parallel with it and forming a lane, ran a pile of dry brush, accumulated in clearing and ready to burn after the first rainfall. Backward from it and the untouched jungle that bordered the stream, sheltering that nest of a cottage pushing up and up the grassy slope, rose the ranks of the trees, free of undergrowth as a park, and including what Forrest had called "the heart of the red firs."

Time was precious on school mornings, and the teacher, early astir, was leading the black to water. She saw the sun touch the tops of the higher trees as she crossed the open from the stable. She noticed that the light wind drew from the river and was fragrant with balsams, and that it brought, already, a promise of heat. Then suddenly she stopped and inhaled a deeper breath, that was a different pungence. It was, unmistakably the burning resin of boughs. In the moment she waited, trying to locate the fire, Mother Girard with her empty pail, hurried from the meadow. She came to say that one of the Jerseys had been milked, and that the trail of the trespasser was still fresh on the dew. It left the lower end of the field, and, skirting the brush pile, turned up-stream. And it was there, at the farther end of the slashing, that, while she listened, the teacher saw a thin line of smoke.

Mose, working on that track for the hose near the upper end of the meadow fence, dropped his spade and ran. He tried to beat out the breaking flames, but others were eating under and through the dry criss-cross of branches; every instant they seized on a new layer, snapped, crackled, sent out another jet of smoke. It was not a case for shovelled earth. The pile was too high, too porous; it exposed a dozen open draughts on all sides, and the breeze, sucking in, found as many flues. Clearly the brush pile must burn, and only a miracle could save that portion of the fence bordering the narrow lane. He hurried to the corner to disconnect the rails. At the same time a standing tree, the first in a clump of young firs at the end of the slashing, ignited. The resinous needles sizzed, popped like a string of firecrackers. With the wind pulling as it did from the river, this meant the fire would sweep directly into the big timber, and in that event the cabin also was doomed. He left the fence, running to bring an ax to cut away some hazels adjoining the dangerous clump. Then, as he went, he suddenly remembered the canvas hose. In a moment he was at the stable and met the teacher and Mother Girard dragging the roll through the door.

The three together got it to the meadow and over the lowered bars. But while they ran, unrolling the canvas towards the river, two other trees in that clump began to send out those ominous little reports. The field was long, it seemed to increase in length, but before they reached the end of it Thornton came. He was able alone to finish stretching the hose and connect it with the flume, and sent Mose back to the nozzle end. The old mother hurried to drive the Jerseys to a safer distance, and Alice started to return to the maple near the stable where she had tied the horse. But, as she followed the fence, she noticed that some of the dead branches which littered the lane outside were burning. Every moment flames crept from another undermined section of the brush pile, but every moment counted. Any instant the big canvas would begin to fill; it was yet possible to save the fence. She climbed up and swung herself over into the lane. She ran along, pulling away the more dangerous limbs. And it grew hotter with each step. She covered her cheek with her hand; that too seemed to blister. She stumbled around, baffled, and looked towards the river. The whole clump of young firs was a blazing mass, and the hazels adjoining shrivelled and crackled. She started to go back into the field. Then she saw that smoke was rising in little puffs all among the rails. A curling red wave rippled along the top one, reaching for her hand; tiny blue tongues, orange ones, lapped and licked the scorching cedar everywhere. Then, while she wavered, trying to choose the less dangerous bars, she was enveloped in a great outpour of smoke. She staggered a few steps stifled, blinded; her feet tripped over a tangled mesh of twigs and she went down.

Beyond the fence the canvas began to distend. It rounded full; like a waking leviathan it stretched, squirmed. Thornton, running with the flow to help Mose at the nozzle, passed without seeing her. Then Stratton came. He had hurried from his lodge at the first hint of smoke; he had learned, in a word from Mose, where to look for her, and he discovered her. He put his shoulder to an upright and wrenched it away. He grasped the rails,--his hands blistered,--and flung them down. He bent to lift her, shielding her with his body, but at the same time a burning sapling, looped in the slashing, sprang, released like an unstrung bow, and struck the back of his head. He pitched, groaning, face downward. The smoke thinned but the brush pile became a roaring furnace. He got to his knees, groped for her, and half dragged, half carried her out of that fiery lane.

Her dress was burning; he smothered the flames, turning her on the meadow grass; he strangled more persistent vipers with his arms. But the pain from the blow was very great. He saw things all red, all black; they mixed in a blur. He stretched himself on the earth a breathing space and closed his eyes. "Great God," he muttered, "Great God, she must not have inhaled fire." And the words begun in imprecation ended like a prayer.

When he recovered enough to see, he found her sitting up, dazed a little, trembling, but watching Thornton and Mose, who at last had turned the flood on the blazing brush pile. The spray of it drifted over them, and presently a cloud of steam. With Stratton's help she was able to rise, and they went up through the field towards the cabin. Sometimes he put his arm under her shoulders, holding her on her feet; and sometimes he stumbled apart and stood for an instant with his eyes closed, while his teeth gripped the nether lip. Neither spoke until they reached the balcony steps. Then they stopped and she looked back at the men with the hose. "They will save the trees," she said. "See, the fire is under control; they have saved the trees."

But Stratton was looking at her. The coolness and mockery had dropped from him in that hour, like a broken mask. The emotions and passions kept in leash through months fought in his face. He saw her rock unsteadily again on her feet, and new strength surged to his arms. "Damn the trees," he answered, and lifted her and carried her up to the door. "Damn Slocum and his pipe; damn--myself."

She did not hear him. Her body had yielded to complete collapse. He watched her still face, cradled in the curve of his arm, and once while he crossed the room he bent his lips to her cheek. But something, that indefinable something that had baffled him on the glacier, seemed to push him back. It was as though her white spirit cried "no," and again his own soul shrank.

He laid her on a couch. He brought water and bathed her face. One cheek, the right one, was blistered; her lips were scorched; and one hand, also the right one, was burned horribly. He found olive oil in a small cupboard and, with little further search, some cotton stuff which he tore into bandages. He wrapped the hand,--both of his own were smarting, miserably,--and fixed an oiled pad for her cheek; and he moistened her lips, pouring oil between them, generously.

At this she opened her eyes and smiled. "Don't trouble," she said, "I didn't inhale any fire. I remembered to cover my mouth." Her lids drooped again, but she added softly, "They are fine--old--trees."

"The finest in the world," he answered, "but the price--was too high."

He lifted her other hand to bandage a slighter burn, and his own fingers trembled. When he finished he did not release it directly, but sat looking down at the uncovered, gently hollowed palm. She had very nice hands; he had always noticed that; not too small but beautifully made. Then it came over him where, once before, he had seen their loveliness spoiled. It was that day on Mt. Rainier when she had rescued him from the crevasse. And now, at last, he had been able to square that debt. He bent suddenly and kissed the palm. "Keep your trees," he said; "stay here in the wilderness as long as you want to, but give me the right to be near you, always, and protect you."

Her eyelids fluttered open. She looked at him startled. He leaned nearer. His voice quickened; it became a sensitive, soft-toned instrument, vibrant with tenderness. "Marry me, Alice," he said, "and I will shape my whole life to yours. You shall never see a city or a crowd if you say so. I will create an Eden out of this homestead; and when the settlement grows too civilized, when there is nothing left to reclaim or build, I will take you to new solitudes; I will carry you away in that schooner of mine, up and up into the Alaska wilderness, and on some unknown fiord set up another Paradise."

"Oh," she said at last, "please, please don't say any more." She tried to rise but her lips went white and she sank back on her pillows. In her haste she had pressed on the maimed hand. "I shouldn't have allowed you to say this," she hurried on with great effort, "but--I am very--tired. I--I don't think clearly. Wait. Listen. We have just come through a desperate time together. You saved--me. How can I be angry with you--so soon? But you have no right to speak like this to me. I have no right to hear you. You know I am going to marry Judge Kingsley."

"You are not. Unless," his voice held a threat, "you believe that you love him."

She closed her eyes again; the lids quivered, her lips, her whole face. "If I had not," she answered, and the words were almost a whisper, "could I have promised to marry him?"

He was silent then. He leaned back in his chair. Presently he reached, groping, and found a strip of the cotton stuff, which he dipped in the basin of water, and laid on his eyes.

Finally she looked at him. "Oh," she said, "you were hurt. You should have told me. I should have seen. What can I do for you?"

"Nothing," he answered, "nothing, thank you. It is a pain in my head that takes me from time to time. Something struck me, I think, out there in that fiery lane."

"Oh, I'm so sorry," she said. "I'm so sorry--in both ways. Please don't think I'm ungrateful. I have always liked you, and believed in you, even when you seemed to lose faith in yourself. I knew, underneath, you were all right. And if it was friendliness you asked--"

"Friendliness?" He threw the bandage aside and started to his feet. "Friendliness? No. It's you I want--all of you--heart and body and soul--to have--to keep." He moved, stumbling a little to the door. He put his hand to his eyes and waited a moment, then he turned and came back half way. "I was wrong," he said, and his voice struck a lower key, "I was wrong, pardon me. And I accept that friendliness, yes, as long as you say so."

He swung on his heel then, and went out of the room. That night, in his lodge, he laid ink and stationery on his table and commenced a letter. He wrote the date, and under it, in a large firm hand:

"JUDGE SILAS KINGSLEY, "WASHINGTON, D.C. "MY DEAR SIR:--

Then he paused. He laid the pen down and leaned back in his chair for a long interval in thought. But when he resumed the task it was with quickness and decision and no further halt.

"I am addressing you, as Miss Hunter's guardian, to let you know that today I have asked her to be my wife. Though I had contemplated this for some time the matter was precipitated by a serious fire on her homestead, during which I was privileged to be of service. She was rescued from a dangerous position, painfully, though not deeply burned, and I trust will send you the particulars soon.

"It is natural you should wish to learn something further in regard to my financial circumstances and social standing, and I am enclosing the cards of several Seattle friends whom it is very possible you know; also the address of Sir McDonald of Victoria, who was my father's close friend and can tell you all about me. You will remember I have taken up my father's business of fur dealer, which he carried on so long and successfully, and, as soon as the construction of my new steam-schooner is completed, I expect to equip her for extensive operations northward in Alaska, making a specialty of sealskins and sable, with what can be secured of otter and silver fox. I believe I may be considered in a position to support a wife comfortably.

"As to the rest, I have every reason to think Miss Hunter is not indifferent to me, though she feels, in honor, bound by her promise to you. I trust you will understand it is most difficult for me to make this statement, but I am confident you will not care to longer hold her to an engagement, which she made in gratitude and through a conscientious sense of duty, and which I believe was urged on your part, simply through a desire to see her future secure.

"Most sincerely and respectfully yours,
"MARK DOUGLAS STRATTON."

He folded this letter slowly and put it in the envelope, which he addressed carefully. The pain had returned to his head. The Judge's name seemed suddenly to be written in blood. It trailed from his pen. Still he finished, and groping in his pocketbook found a stamp.

Then he rose to his feet. He closed his eyes and clasped his hands at the back of his head. "My God," he groaned, "Oh, my--God!" He went over and threw himself face downward on his bed. But in a moment he was up again, stumbling across the floor, in agony. Finally he stopped and knelt near the inner wall and felt for the third board. It was of hewn cedar and heavy enough to go unnailed. He raised it, not without difficulty, and found a long narrow box set in the earth, underneath. He lifted the lid and took out one of several packages that filled it. He unrolled the wrapping of coarse flannel far enough to reach a small tin; then he laid the bundle aside and stood turning this in his hands. It was a five-tael opium can such as is used in transporting the crude drug. "Well," he told himself, "why not? The stuff is sold, daily, over every druggist's counter, for pain not half--as horrible--as this."

He took his knife and sprung the end of the tin enough to pour a little of the thick, sticky substance into a glass. "It is--strong--of course," he said; "a drop or two, diluted, ought to be sufficient." He added the water, stirred it, and drank it off.

In a very short time the relief came. He sat down on the edge of his bed and drew off one of his riding-boots; then he tried to pull the other and failed. He stretched himself, dressed, on the couch, and groping weakly, found a blanket and succeeded in covering his knees.

When he wakened it was daybreak and some one, a man, was working in the room. He was kneeling by that uncovered box and removing the packages to a canvas sack, open beside him on the hewn floor. Stratton watched him a silent moment, then, "Where is Slocum, Smith?" he asked.

The man turned on his knees. It was a writhing movement and he threw his head like a startled snake. "Slocum hyas scare," he answered. "He doan' come here today."

"Afraid of me, is he? Well, he has reason to be. I told him to keep away from that homestead. I told him, when I gave him that tobacco, to be careful where he smoked."

"Slocum hyas cultus," said the man. "Slocum no count." He resumed his work, but after a silent moment, he reared his head again to say, "Mose find some plas where Slocum ees sleep. He ees see Slocum's blanket by one beeg cedar log, an' some brush on top, nawitka, to mek roof. An' Mose ees know it ees Slocum's bed, for he ees fin under dat blanket, Yelm Jim's gun."

Stratton understood. He seemed to see Alice, now, with that bandaged hand, following Mose through the underbrush to see for herself that human lair. His glance moved from Smith and that stuff on the floor. A great revulsion suddenly came over him. The pain in his head was dull; it no longer troubled him, but he turned his face to the wall and set his teeth over a groan.

At last he heard Smith put the plank back in its place and start with the filled sack across the floor. He stopped him at the door. "It will be safer for Slocum, after this," he said, "to stay on the other side of the Pass. Let him help you through the mountains, this trip, Smith, but see that you leave him there."

*CHAPTER XVII*

*THE MAN WHO BUNGLED*

Early in the autumn Samantha and young Thornton were married. The teacher, in a letter to her sister, said it was a charming wedding. She told how the schoolhouse was converted into a bower for the occasion; how all the settlement was there, displaying heirlooms of finery, but nothing equalled Laramie's vest of blue and crimson satin brocade, which he wore over a new woolen shirt, and with an extra polish of the cowskin shoes. And she told how, when the old minister, imported from Olympia for the ceremony, stood waiting on the platform under a canopy of fern, and she, herself, commenced a bit of Mendelssohn's march on Eben's violin, the bridal couple in the doorway made a picture to remember; how Samantha was delightful in a crisp white muslin, and when she hung back shyly, Mill grasped her arm and dragged her up the aisle. How his face was red--possibly his stiff collar was a size too small--and his eyes flashed defiance, like a pirate convoying a risky prize. She told also how, when the ordeal was safely through, and Samantha rode the sorrel to her new home, Thornton walking at her side, all the district followed for the housewarming. But though she described minutely this cabin, and the improvements and values of the claim, of that other section almost adjoining, where lived their nearest neighbor, she still had nothing to say.

And it was an early autumn morning, a few days after the wedding, that the bars of the lower meadow fence were found down, and Mother Girard again discovered that one of the Jerseys, straying or driven out under cover of the timber, had been milked. The impressions were still fresh on the dew and the teacher joined Mose in search of the trespasser. This time the track skirted the jungle, and, rounding the slope, entered the canyon, where they met a beaten path leading from the upper end of Stratton's quarter-section. The river was bridged there by a fallen tree, below which it widened into a ford, and this new trail wound up the precipitous side of the gorge, some distance beyond the cliff that was capped by the leaning tower. The footprints took that direction.

Suddenly they both stopped and stood looking up at the stronghold. Then they turned to each other. A line of smoke, rising behind the tower, marked a camp-fire.

"But," she said at last, "if he wants milk he must ask me for it." And she started bravely up the side of the canyon.

Mose pressed after her closely. Finally he said, "It ees bes' you let me go firs', Mees. He ees have one good gun, for sure."

She swung around. "Isn't it Slocum?"

Mose shook his head. "No, Slocum doan' come roun' dis ranch some more. Monjee, he's too mooch 'fraid to stop roun' here. But Pete Smith, he doan' care, so long he ain' see Mill."

"Pete Smith." She paused, shivering a little, then she laughed. "It's funny, Mose, how creepy just his name makes me feel. I--I guess I will let you go first--if you aren't afraid. But wait, what makes you think it is Pete Smith?"

"For dat las' night, when A'm come back wid dose trout I catch down stream, I see heem by Mo'sieur's plas. Sacre, but he ees going fin' he ees lose some blankets, an' flour an' sugar, 'bout ev'ryt'ing, when he comes home."

"You mean Pete had broken into the lodge. Oh, you should have gone directly for Mill Thornton. But you tried to stop him, Mose? You at least warned him that you surely would get word to Mr. Stratton?"

Again Mose shook his head. "You mus' on'stan' it ees bes' I let Pete 'lone. He doan' want me talk to heem dare. Monjee, no. It ees lak I doan' see heem. Nawitka, I come straight 'way home."

He moved his rifle into the curve of his arm, and pushed by Alice, leading on up the bluff, through labyrinths of hazel and alder, up short sections of gullies. Just under the summit he stopped. "I doan' lak lose dis fine new gun," he said softly, and began to fondle the stock. "She's mooch more fine dan dat good gun of Pete Smith's. Nawitka, Mees, mebbe he ees watch us come 'cross de gorge. Mebbe he ees goin' have one drop on us. Den it ees bes' I leave dis gran' gun here; you think so, ya-as?

"Perhaps, Mose. I hadn't thought of--that. It seemed safe to have it along. He's the most hideous man. But he can't help that. And if he is on--guard--well, leave the gun, Mose. Of course he wouldn't harm us. He wouldn't dare."

Mose stood the rifle carefully in a hollow trunk, and moved on cautiously. She kept very close to him up to the top of the bluff, and there she laid her hand on his arm. "I'm frightened, Mose," she whispered. "I'm frightened."

He looked at her gravely. "Mebbe you doan' care so mooch 'bout dat milk now," he said.

She pulled herself straight. "It isn't the loss of the milk, Mose; you should understand that. It's the principle. He can't take anything of mine. It's wrong. Besides, if I let this go, unnoticed, we might wake up any morning to find greater things missing. We might even find Colonel gone."

She lifted her head higher and moved forward with new resolve. Mose kept pace with her, and presently they halted, screened by a mesh of young hemlock boughs, and looked out into the boulder-strewn open behind the tower.

Smith was there. He was removing from the fire a trout which he had cooked on a long sharpened stick. He worked with a noiseless, gliding motion, and even when he seated himself on the flat rock, which became at once both chair and table, and fell hurriedly to eating his breakfast, he kept up a ceaseless pantomime; beating the earth softly with his foot, starting up, subsiding, shivering, looking behind him, listening, and like an animal long hunted, again starting.

Two horses stood near him accoutered for the trail. One, his own, brought from Laramie's meadow, where at intervals it was pastured, carried saddle-bags and a snug blanket roll at the crupper; the other was an indifferent pack-animal laden with camp supplies.

"He ees tek de long trail, for sure," whispered Mose. "Monjee, how ees it he ees leave Colonel?"

"If those are Mr. Stratton's things he's got to take them back," she said. "Come, we must make him."

Mose shook his head. "We doan' be able."

"We must." Then she squared her shoulders and walked forward with a clear "Good-morning."

Instantly the man was on his feet, and grasping the rifle which stood at hand, against the tower wall, he dropped to his knee behind the improvised table. The gun rested across the rock and he took sight carefully.

The girl came on into the open. "Don't be afraid of me," she said and steadied her voice, "I only want to talk to you."

He lifted his head and looked at her in astonishment. She came a few steps further, and Mose, silent, alert, stalked after her and stood waiting. "I came to speak to you about milking my cow," she said, and ruffled her brows. "You should have asked me."

At this Smith laughed and rising from his knee, seated himself again on the rock. But he held his gun in readiness.

"I suppose," she went on, "it seems--to you--a very small matter, compared with breaking into Mr. Stratton's house."

He laughed again, loudly, insolently.

She watched him with the rising storm in her eyes. She was no longer afraid. Clearly the man was unashamed; the spark of good that she had been taught to believe was latent in the breast of the lowest man, was lacking here. He must be the exception that proved the rule. "You've got to take these things back," she said at last, decisively, yet holding her voice in check; "now, at once."

Smith lifted his gun higher, scowling. "You go home," he said gruffly. "Mose, you go. Be quick 'bout it."

She remembered suddenly the day at school when Lem had admitted that men in the settlement sometimes struck women, but she did not move. Then she was conscious that Mose was walking back towards the wood. "Mose," she said, and turning, stamped her foot, "stay here."

He stopped and looked over his shoulder. "It ees bes' dat you come right 'way," he said. "Mebbe Mill T'ornton ees able to do somet'ing, you spik to heem."

The man laughed still more insolently. "You go," he repeated.

The next instant he sprang to his feet and faced the wood on the other side of the open. There was a brief interval filled with the sounds of bodies moving through low boughs, the snapping of twigs, the striking of hoofs on loose rock, then Stratton's smooth, deliberate voice said, "Well, Smith, I think I have a horse now that won't refuse his pack, and I have tested him at a ford."

Smith put down his gun and hurried to take the led animal, and Stratton rode on past the clump of scrub firs, where the waiting horses were hitched, and saw suddenly the girl by the tower. A great wave of color surged over his face and left it white. His big frame rocked slowly as though he gathered himself from a heavy and unexpected blow; then he sat motionless.

"Oh," she said, and hurried to meet him, "I'm so glad you came this way, instead of going straight through to the bridge. This man has looted your lodge. I was just trying to make him take back your things."

Stratton drew a great breath. He shook himself like a man throwing off a weight, and swung himself down from the saddle. "You were? Well, thank you, Miss Hunter, but he should have told you that I gave him the key." He paused and his eyes moved to Smith, who had gone to an aperture in the tower, and was lifting from it other supplies for the fresh pack-horse. "In fact," he added, "I have engaged Pete to go over the Pass with me, to cook and look after my outfit."

Her glance moved to Sir Donald's full leather saddlebags and snug blanket roll, and returned to his master. "You have engaged this man," she said slowly, "to go over the mountains with you?"

"Yes, I am starting on a long hunting and trading trip, through the Palouse and Big Bend country, and Smith knows the plains and the Indians. He will be invaluable to me in that uncertain wilderness. But I shall probably go down the Columbia, when I strike the railroad, and come back to the Sound from Portland, by way of the Northern Pacific."

"You are going a long hunting trip," she repeated, and met his look steadily. "You have engaged this man, this outlaw, for your camp cook and guide. You know you are helping him to elude the Government. Oh, how can you, an intelligent, educated American, be so indifferent to the laws? I don't understand you. I don't understand you."

She turned away.

"Wait, just a moment," he said. "Is the case so different from your own? You took this other half-breed Indian into your house; you gave him a new start; yet the rascal had stolen our horses; he had left us high up, nine thousand feet, on Mt. Rainier in the face of a storm. He did even worse."

"Hush," she said. Mose stood, waiting, a few yards off. His face was turned to the lower gorge and she looked at him with apprehension. "There is no comparison," she went on softly. "You know it. He was just a boy, untaught, his character unformed, and he believed he was right. There was plenty of good in him, ready to be brought out by any one who cared to take the trouble. I have proved that; he has repaid me a hundred times. But this fellow--this desperado--think of his record. Look in his face."

She moved on with this, to join Mose, but her foot struck something that clinked against a stone, and she stopped to look down. Then she stooped and picked up the object, turning it curiously in her hands. It was a small tin receptacle, unlike anything she had ever seen before. There were some strange characters marked on it, presumably Chinese, and while she studied them she noticed that the can had sprung a little at the upper edge, and a sticky substance began to ooze into her palm. It emitted a sickish odor and she held the thing out to Stratton in sudden disgust. "What is it?" she asked. "Do you know? Did you drop it?"

Again he pulled himself together. He took the tin and hurled it over the cliff. Some distance down it struck a projecting ledge, and sent back, faintly, a clink. "I know what it is, yes," he said grimly. "The man who dropped it--bungled."

His glance moved again to Smith and the steel flashed in his eyes. But the outlaw had not heard. He was engrossed in a full canvas bag which he was adjusting to the pack saddle.

"Come, there is water here," Stratton went to the rock where Smith had breakfasted, and lifted a flask. "Hold out your hands."

She held them out, turning them under the stream he poured. "Rub them," he said; "it stains. Again, the odor clings. The stuff should never have touched your hands."

"What is it?" she repeated.

He was silent.

"What is it?" she persisted. "Can't you tell me?"

"Yes, yes, I can--if I must." He threw his head with a sudden reckless decision. "It stands for shame, ostracism, degradation, according to your code. The man who touches it takes his fate in his hands. It sticks, its slime covers him, sucks him down. Look in my face."

But at the look she gave him, that straight, searching look, which forever expected a best in him, the boldness went out of his face. A quiver swept it, as though he felt deep down the twist of a probe. "Once, up there below the Paradise," he said, "you promised your mercy. The time has come; I ask it--now."

"You mean it is"--but her voice failed. Her eyes widened with fear, and yet there rose in them an appeal. "You mean," she repeated, "you were going to--" But the word would not out; it died in her throat. Then, "Promise me you will not," she entreated. "Promise--no matter how desperate you may feel--you will always put the feeling down. I should blame myself; I should feel someway responsible. I couldn't help it. It would spoil my life."

He drew his hand slowly across his eyes and moved back, leaning on the tower wall. So she thought that. She believed that he had contemplated self-destruction, and in that crude, spectacular way. And of course she attributed his reason to her rejection of him. He could have laughed aloud at his escape. "I promise," he answered. "I promise. I will leave it to Nature. When the time comes she can provide a way."

"Thank you, I trust you." She gave him her hand. "Good-by."

She hesitated, glancing once more at the outlaw, but of him she had nothing further to say. Stratton stood watching her down the trail; when she disappeared he moved to the edge of the cliff and waited for a final glimpse of her, far below in the canyon.

At last he noticed that his guide was ready. "Ride on with the pack-horses," he said. "I will overtake you in time to make Nisqually ford. And the next time you find a leaking can, Smith, be careful where you throw it."

When the man was gone he sank down on a rock and dropped his face in his hands. Finally he lifted his head and sat for an interval looking down the gorge in the direction she had taken. "She is so bright and quick," he told himself, "and yet she could not see the truth. With all of her knowledge of smuggling, and opium and rings, she has never seen or had a description of the stuff. It is strange, strange--for I went all to pieces, there, for a minute. It must be, after all, because she is so ready to take a man on trust. She is so tremendously honest herself, she won't accept a man's own doubt of himself. But I--I--had a narrow escape. Strange, too, what a hold she has had on me from the start. I would have braved it out, lied to a man; I would have laughed it off with any other woman; but she lifted her eyes, probing for that everlasting best in me, and I babbled like a fool."

Presently he drew a letter from his pocket. It was an answer to the one he had written the Judge. It had miscarried at first, and he had travelled so much the last weeks, it had been forwarded and missed him repeatedly. He had received it that morning at the Station on the prairie below the Myers claim. He opened the sheet and re-read it slowly.

"WASHINGTON, D.C., July 20th, 18--.

"MY DEAR STRATTON:--In response to your letter I want to remind you that I knew your father, John Stratton, well. He was a strong and capable man and always a gentleman. I am certainly interested in the career of his son. I also satisfied myself somewhat as to your standing, before I came East, because it is my custom to know about my nephew Philip's friends. I learned nothing of a disparaging nature.

"But in regard to the initial point of your letter, I can only say that a release from a marriage engagement should depend altogether on the direct request of the lady.

"Very truly yours,
"SILAS KINGSLEY."

Stratton held the letter a thoughtful interval, then he rose and went over and laid it on Smith's smouldering fire. He stood watching it break into flame and curl up like a brown, dead leaf. "But it will influence him," he said. "He can't help it; it will raise a question."

He turned to untie his fretting horse. "So, Donald, old fellow, there is light ahead; we are almost out of the woods. A little more dishonor," he set his foot in the stirrup and swung himself up, "and we can afford to make a fresh start."

*CHAPTER XVIII*

*WATER-LOGGED*

At Freeport the following winter was severe. Snow lay for weeks, thawing, freezing, accumulating with every squall that came over from the mountains, and falling in small avalanches which started landslides all along the bluff. On some mornings the upper part of the harbor below Duwamish flats was covered with ice, which the rising tide lifted and broke into sheets. The logs taken from the water were glazed, and in still places inside the boom, ice packed solid. And with the unusual cold a lull in construction settled over the Northwest; there came a second drop in the prices of exported lumber. Many of the smaller mills closed under a subsidy. But the Judge, in answer to Forrest's statements of the situation, advised the cutting down of expenses to a minimum, and keeping things going, if only to give employment to the men. He had heard the Puget Sound country was flooded with idle mechanics, laborers, hundreds of construction hands discharged since the completion of the Northern Pacific. And of course the prevailing Eastern panic had in many instances caused the recall of invested capital. But he was confident that another half-year would see a pronounced revival; at any rate he would be able to make a trip home by that time, and he wanted to be on the ground and see conditions for himself before he came to a final decision.

At the close of January the men still received "reg'lar pay," to quote Mason, but the books showed that the manager's salary was accumulating to his credit. Other accounts indicated that the junior partner was overdrawing. He had his impulses of industry and economy when he tried to balance a considerable delinquency by spending an interval at the mills; but he always annulled the results by a yet deeper plunge, and his only systematic restriction was in deferring to take a house in town.