Chapter XXV: A Voluntary Prisoner

The vertical rays of a blazing hot sun aroused Dexter from his lethargy. He felt light and warmth beating upon his face, and with the first faint stirring of consciousness his ears were aware of sounds of dripping water. A crisp smell of wood smoke drifted to his nostrils, and there came to him also stray wisps of odor that moved him to a pleased, drowsy recollection of an appetizing stew he had eaten some time or other from a camp kettle. He lay with his eyes closed, a little puzzled by his reviving sensations, trying to think where he was and what it all meant.

And then, all at once, he recalled. He had been sitting by a fire, waiting for Alison Rayne to give him a light for his pipe when suddenly he had lost consciousness. Presumably he had fainted, and from his stupor he must have passed into a deep, natural sleep. And he evidently had been sleeping for a long time. He opened his eyes, and hastily closed them again before the dazzling brightness of the sun. It was about noon, he decided. For a while longer he remained motionless, but presently he lifted his hand to shade his face, and again looked about him.

He was lying in the confines of a thick juniper clump, his body wrapped in a blanket, his head resting on a sweater that had been wadded up for a pillow. Near his feet a small fire crackled cheerfully. Over the fire hung a blackened bucket, with a savory steam issuing from beneath its dancing cover. Cross-legged on the ground, bending like an officiating priestess over the smoking embers, sat Alison Rayne.

The girl had discarded her white sweater, and wore a faded khaki shirt, unbuttoned at the collar, with sleeves rolled up over her smooth forearms. She held a forked stick in her small, somewhat grimy hand, and as the corporal watched, she took the lid from the bucket, poked at its contents, and then drew up her head to sniff with an air of complete satisfaction at the cloud of ascending steam. Her face was turned in profile, and Dexter could see only the soft curve of her cheek and the tip of her pert nose, as she bent in absorption over her cookery. A lock of her thick, bronze hair had fallen over her eyes, and she had not yet discovered that he was awake; but something in the corporal's searching regard must have acted with telepathic force, for she turned suddenly with a startled movement to meet his gaze.

"Oh!" she exclaimed. Her red lips parted in the suggestion of a smile. "Hello!"

"Hello!" said Dexter with a whimsical lift of one eyebrow. "Have I been sleeping for hours or for days?"

"Only since last night." She got to her feet and stood over him, a faint embarrassment in her manner. "You were a little feverish this morning, but I noticed a few minutes ago that the temperature's gone down."

"You've been looking after me all this time!" he said uncomfortably. "Have you had any sleep?"

"Oh, yes," she hastened to assure him. "I've got another blanket here, and I did pretty well during the night. Only bothered once in a while to see how you were doing."

"It makes me feel mighty mean, knowing you've done all this for me," Dexter remarked, and shook his head glumly. "The way things stand, it makes me feel sort of low-down and ungrateful. Even my thanks wouldn't seem to have much meaning."

"I don't want your thanks," she returned quickly. "Were you looking for thanks last fall for taking care of my brother? He thinks you saved his life."

Dexter glanced up sharply as she admitted her relationship with the boy in the cabin across the valley. But he made no comment. "It's the business of the police to render services when needed," he said lightly.

Alison had turned aside to stoop over her cooking fire. She lifted the lid from the simmering bucket, dipped in a tin cup, and offered her companion a steaming drink. "Rabbit broth," she said. "I went down to the brook this morning to see what I could find, and a little rabbit got frightened of me and jumped into a deep, mushy drift, and I caught him and skinned him and cooked him--hating myself." She faced him with a strange shyness in her eyes. "Anyhow, you needn't go hungry."

The corporal hoisted himself to a sitting posture, suppressing a groan as he stretched his stiff, sore muscles. He reached forward to take the cup, but found himself weaker than he had imagined.

"Here!" said the girl as the hot fluid slopped over his unsteady fingers. She knelt down before him, a faint rose leaf color tinging her cheeks as she did so; and she held the cup for him while he drank. In such manner he contrived to finish a second and third cupful of broth. And the rich, scalding liquid seemed to act as a magic potion. His feeling of lassitude and incompetency departed with the warming of his blood, and all at once it occurred to him that there was no sense in sitting idle, making an invalid of himself.

"We may as well be going," he announced abruptly, the old brisk note of decision returning to his voice.

"Do you think you ought to?" she said with a dubious glance.

"Got to!" Steadying himself with his hand, he cast aside the blanket and stood erect.

"Where do we go?" she asked faintly.

"Up the valley where you left us last fall," he told her, staring off with feigned interest towards the distant mountain ridges. "Colonel Devreaux is waiting for me."

"Oh, the colonel!" she exclaimed. "He--lived?"

Dexter nodded without speaking. The girl eyed him for a moment from under drooping lashes, and then quietly set about the preparations for breaking camp. No word was spoken of her promise of the night before, but it was tacitly understood between them that where he went, she had pledged herself to go.

They gathered up their scanty belongings, and the corporal forced himself to do his share of the work. He insisted on shouldering the larger pack, and after stamping out the fire, he led the way through the thicket and started on his northward journey.

In his present physical condition Dexter knew he could not hope to make the return trip in one, or even two, days; but he struck forward resolutely, intending to travel as far as he could while his strength lasted. It was a warm, almost sultry afternoon, and the snow was turning to water under the burning sun and running off the mountain slopes in thousands of trickling rivulets. The corporal's back-leading trail along the creek was waist-deep in slush and he was forced to search out new paths, across the higher shoulders of the mountain.

It was slippery, dangerous going at times, requiring the corporal's strictest attention in seeking the pathway ahead. For the most part they picked their way forward in silence, but now and then they would strike an easier stretch, and he was able to exchange a word or two with his companion as she trudged at his heels.

"What became of you that day last fall?" he asked her, while they were pushing across a level strip of ground. "I had misgivings about you all winter--fearing you might not have come through the storm."

"I went down through the valley, and crossed eastward into a frightful tangle of wilderness," she said. "I don't know how I lived through that night and the next. But I found a nook of shelter under the roots of a great tree, and in some way or another I built a fire and huddled over it. I stayed there, half frozen, with very little to eat, until the storm stopped. After that I started out, trying to find my brother. I was lost--didn't know which direction to go. I just had to guess, and, well--some guiding power must have helped me. There was not one chance in a thousand of my reaching any place, and yet, after a two days' struggle, I crossed over a wooded ridge, dragged myself up a snow-buried stream, and walked right into the cabin I was searching for--the place where you had left my brother the first day of the storm. I was about dead--fell on the doorsill. But Archie was there, and he heard me and carried me in. He was nearly frantic, not knowing what had become of me. He was unable to travel; could only wait, hoping for news."

"I don't mind admitting that I was a bit worried about you myself," remarked Dexter, glancing at her across his shoulder. "I wonder that you weren't frozen to death."

"I almost was," she said, and smiled vaguely as she met his eyes. "But I guess I'm about as hard to kill as you are."

"You and your brother spent the winter in that cabin?" he asked.

"Yes. We had enough food and fuel. It was hard, but we got through."

"Was Stark with you?" the corporal inquired casually.

She faced him squarely, and shook her head. "There was nobody with us. We saw no one else during the entire winter."

"You met Stark some time yesterday though," he observed.

"Why, no." She spoke in seeming frankness. "I told you--I've seen nobody but my brother, since I left you last fall."

"How did you know where to find me yesterday--under that tree trunk?" Dexter asked, fixing her with searching scrutiny.

"I was--I was just walking along the brook," she said after a moment's hesitation. "And there you were--"

"You were calling my name," the corporal interrupted. "That was before you could have seen me, or known that I was anywhere in the neighborhood." He shook his head with skepticism. "I supposed that you came deliberately out of the kindness of your heart--knowing that I was in trouble." He watched her tensely. "Somebody must have told you."

Alison averted her face for a moment, and apparently found nothing to say. When at length she turned back to meet Dexter's questioning gaze, the curve of her mouth had straightened into a stubborn line, the violet softness of her eyes seemingly changed to a chilly blue.

"I have told you that I saw nobody," she said in a voice that seemed to take her a thousand miles away from him. "It'll have to be enough for you to know merely that I found you. And I couldn't let you--or any living thing, for that matter--die in a trap. We'll have to let it go at that. Meanwhile you ought to be satisfied to remember that I'm your prisoner. I've given you my parole, and I won't try to escape again."

There was something in her straightforward gaze that forced Dexter to believe she told the truth--that she had not met Stark or his companions. Yet he knew equally well that she had not blundered by accident upon that remote spot where the tree had fallen upon him. She had learned of his plight somehow; but he could not guess by what strange, occult medium the knowledge had reached her. As he studied her inscrutable features, he recalled the mystifying events of the previous fall: how news had traveled unaccountably through the forest silences, how voices seemed to carry between distant places, without any visible means of transmission. As he had been hopelessly puzzled before, so now he found no answer or explanation; and with the fever throbbing in his brain, he scarcely felt capable of thinking.

Alison gave back his glance with fearless, unyielding eyes, and he knew how useless it was to question her. He gave it up for the present, and, beckoning with a curt nod, he turned in silence and started forward again on the trail.