Читать книгу: «The Heart of Thunder Mountain», страница 15

Leaping to the pebbly bank, she rubbed herself swiftly with the towel, and felt the glow of health rushing through her body, all pink and gleaming in the sun. Then she dressed, and combed her hair; rinsed and wrung out the towel, and hung it on the willow-limbs to dry; and started back toward the camp in the highest spirits, and eager for service. And then, at twenty paces, she was stricken cold and rigid by the sight that met her unsuspecting eyes.

Haig had left his blankets, and was now dragging himself like a wounded animal along the earth. Already he had covered more than half the distance to the rock on which his revolver lay; and it seemed as if she would stand rooted there in helpless horror until he reached it. Then, with an incautious cry, she bounded forward. Haig heard her, and flung himself toward the stone with reckless determination. Where he had inches, Marion had yards to go; it was a race that might, in another age, have done credit to the ingenuity of a Roman emperor. If Philip was mad with pain and anger, Marion was frantic with fear and love. It seemed to her that the turf gripped her feet, that the wind in her face would strangle her, that her skirts were leaden sheets around her knees. And she barely resisted falling in a senseless heap when, at ten yards from the goal, she saw that she would be too late.

He beat her to the rock by merely a few seconds; but he was fairly spent. His fingers bled where he had dug them into the sand; the sweat rolled down his face; and exhaustion bound him as with bands of iron. Yet he was able to reach for the gun, and clutch it; and with a final effort that seemed to tear the heart from his breast, he dragged the weapon under him, pressed the muzzle upward, pulled the trigger, at the very instant that Marion threw herself upon him.

There was a muffled report, the fumes stung their eyes and nostrils, and for a moment both lay still. Then Marion felt a movement under her, and guessed that Haig was fumbling with the revolver. An indescribable energy seized her, something tigerish in its fury, and beyond her own proper powers, so that she flung him over on his back as if he had been a child in strength and size. With both hands she gripped the wrist below the clutched revolver, and while she held it away from his body she drew her own body over his, and threw herself on his extended arm, between his hand and his breast.

There was a savage struggle still, the man affirming his right to die, and the woman denying it. But the issue could not be long in doubt; for Haig’s strength was at the ebb, while Marion’s flowed in from earth and air and sky, from the future and from the past. And she wore him down at last, until the revolver dropped from his grasp, his eyelids closed, his limbs relaxed, and he lay still. Waiting a moment for certainty, she cautiously loosened one of her hands from his wrist, and grabbed the revolver, and flung it with all her might. Then, seeing it land twenty feet away on the grass, she rolled away from him, and sat up panting, hollow-eyed, disheveled, and trembling on the verge of a collapse.

For some seconds there was no sound but their labored breathing; and not until Haig opened his eyes and looked at her, with a hunted, baffled, and still defiant expression in their somber depths, did Marion break down. Then suddenly, after a premonitory quivering of her chin, she buried her face in her hands, and wept without more effort at restraint, in utter abandonment to her agony. Haig watched, at first in anger, and then in some confusion of emotions. Once before he had looked upon her thus bowed and shaken; and now as then he felt a strange upheaval, and an unfathomable sensation that had no likeness to anything he had ever before experienced. He wanted very much to speak to her, but could not trust himself; and after all, what was there to be said?

It was she who rescued him from irresolution. She dropped her hands from her face, and cried out in a voice that was broken with sobbing: “Why, Philip, why did you do that?”

“Why?” he asked, in something like amazement.

“Yes.”

“I’ve already told you why.”

“But–no–you haven’t told me!”

“It was to save you–for one thing.”

“To save me?”

“I told you that your only chance is to go at once.”

“But I told you I wouldn’t go!”

“I know. That’s the reason.”

“But–don’t you know, Philip, that–don’t you see that–if you killed yourself you’d–kill me too?”

There should have been no necessity for these words. Perhaps any other man in the world, certainly most men of far less intelligence and less acuteness of feeling, would have known long ago just what she meant. He knew, indeed, that this girl loved him; but he did not believe that she or any other woman was capable of the sacrifice implied in her answer.

“You mean that–you would have–” He hesitated.

“Yes.”

There ensued a silence that fell like a mist between them, through which neither knew the way. She saw that he had begun, by ever so little, to understand; and she feared to say more lest a wrong word should overtake a right one. As for Haig, his incredulity persisted notwithstanding the unquestionable sincerity of her speech. He did not doubt that she contemplated, in this moment of emotion, the complete and final sacrifice. But he was quite convinced that she would take a different view of the situation when the test should come. She did not yet appreciate, he argued, the peril of their position; she had not realized the hazard of her adventure or she never would have undertaken it; and undoubtedly she still thought there would be a way out for them. Under such a delusion it was easy for her, he concluded, to talk about dying with him. But she was tragically in error. His eyes lifted to the cliff. She should have been up there on her return hours ago. Now it was too late again; for the clouds were black and ugly on the summit, and a distant roaring came to his ears; and he knew what was happening or in preparation in the middle of the flat. But he must find a way to send her up that trail at dawn the next day; and his gaze dropped to where the revolver lay just visible in the thin grass into which she had thrown it.

CHAPTER XXV
DIANA

Still no speech came to either of them. After a while Marion rose silently, and went about her work. First, however, she sought the revolver in the grass, and carried it, with her rifle, to the clump of willows by the brook, where both weapons were safely beyond the present limits of Philip’s powers. Then she returned to him with her towel, one end of it wetted and soaped.

“May I, please?” she asked, smiling down at him.

“If you wish,” he answered.

She knelt, and began to wash the grime from his face, to cleanse the wound on his head, and readjust the bandage. Then his hands, after another trip to the stream to rub out the soiled end of the towel; and she was still busy with one of them, when she started back with a cry. His coat had opened wider, and she saw that his shirt was stained with blood. She had forgotten the revolver-shot!

“It’s nothing,” said Haig. “Only a flesh wound, I think.”

“But why didn’t you tell me!” she cried, almost with anger in her alarm.

“It doesn’t matter, does it?”

“Let me see it, quick!” she commanded.

He looked at her a moment, then opened the front of his flannel shirt and of the undershirt, and disclosed a flesh wound where the bullet had cut a streak across his chest. Marion bent close, and touched it with her fingers.

“Oh!” she sighed at last, in deep relief.

Haig’s reply was a laugh of which the irony did not escape her.

“Philip!” she cried reproachfully.

“Well, isn’t it rather droll–and ludicrous, when you come to think of it? First, Sunnysides’ punch in my stomach. And now, with my head cut open by a stone, and a broken leg, and two bullet-wounds–I’ve still got a splendid appetite. I ought to be on exhibition somewhere!”

His sardonic humor hurt her worse than his anger; and she went quickly to the brook to cleanse the towel again. Returning presently, she washed the new wound, and bandaged it; then examined the splints on the broken leg to assure herself that, as nearly as she could determine, no serious damage had been done to it by his reckless crawl; and finally brought his blankets, and insisted on making a sort of bed for him. After that she cooked two slices of bacon, and on this, with a little bread, they made their first meal of the day. And this brought her to the next and most pressing problem.

“Will you help me think, Philip?” she asked, when they had eaten.

“About what?”

“Food.”

“What’s in the larder?”

She smiled at his tone, in spite of her own seriousness.

“Bacon–perhaps enough for three days, with the bread, if we don’t eat much; and chocolate for four or five breakfasts. That’s all.”

“And then?”

“Are there deer in those forests, do you think?”

“Very likely. This is an un-hunted country, I imagine.”

“Great!” she cried.

“What do you propose to do? Whistle for them?”

She could afford to smile at that.

“Didn’t you see my rifle?”

“Just now–yes. What’s it for?”

“You’ll see.”

“Diana of Thunder Mountain, eh? Well, I’m ready to admit you’re some huntress. But deer! That’s another thing.”

The color flooded her cheeks.

“Cousin Seth taught me to shoot,” she answered, turning her face away. “I killed a deer on Mount Avalanche.”

“But where did Cousin Seth learn to shoot? The last time he–”

“Please, Philip!”

“Well, when you’ve brought down your deer, what will you do with it?”

The color deserted her face at that.

“I watched him do it,” she said, shuddering at the recollection.

“But you can’t do that alone.”

“I’ve got to,” she replied simply. And then, on a sudden thought: “There should be grouse too, shouldn’t there?”

“Perhaps.”

“I learned to kill grouse with my rifle.”

He looked at her with a wicked grin. This time he had her!

“How many cartridges have you?” he asked.

She ran for her belt, and counted the cartridges.

“Twenty-seven.”

“So. If you never miss, you’ll get twenty-seven grouse. That would mean twenty-seven, meals. One meal a day, twenty-seven days. I’d still be on my back, our ammunition would be gone, and–”

“Don’t!” she cried, in tears. “I wasn’t thinking.”

“Never mind!” he replied, almost gently. “But we’ll deny ourselves the grouse.”

“Yes, it’s got to be the deer. I’ll begin now.”

“No, there’s something else that must be done first.”

“What is it?”

“We’ve got to move.”

“For shelter, you mean?”

“Partly. But look there!”

He pointed to the dead body of Trixy.

“It will be easier–and perhaps even nicer–to move me than poor Trixy. See that big pine yonder–the one that stands out from the forest? Well, you and Tuesday must drag me there.”

“But how?”

He explained his plan to her, and she set herself at once to executing it. And her spirits rose again; for she thought he had abandoned his desperate resolution. So, indeed, he had–for the moment. But he had deliberately beguiled her; their situation he knew to be quite unchanged in its inevitable termination, since a food supply would save them from starvation only to deliver them to the snow; and he must disarm her of suspicion in order to find a way to send her back on the trail. For he had reflected on the implication of tragic finality in the speech that had surprised and disturbed him; and he did not doubt that when the time should come, and she should find herself alone, her high resolve would prove to have been mere emotional exaggeration.

Mounted on Tuesday, Marion attacked the boughs of a small pine with the hatchet until she had severed three large branches, to which she tied Haig’s rope, and hauled them back to the camp. Of these branches Haig contrived a crude drag, on which he crawled, and lay flat; the free end of the rope was hitched to the horn of Tuesday’s saddle; and the journey was begun. Twice the saddle slipped, and progress was interrupted while Marion tightened the cinches. Once the drag itself came to pieces, and Haig was left sprawling on the ground. But eventually, with no more serious injury to Haig than a bruised elbow, not counting his torn clothing, they reached the goal.

There Marion made a wide bed against the exposed top roots of the tree, filling the spaces among the pine boughs with moss, and placing the two saddles at the head for pillows. Night had come before she had completed this labor, and gathered another supply of dead limbs and rotted logs, and cooked their meager supper. Then she wrapped Haig in his blankets, and rolled herself in her own, and lay down at his side. What with watching and replenishing the fire, and listening to night-cries heard or imagined, and waking from restless slumber chilled to the bone, she slept as little as on the preceding night, and was glad of the dawn, which came peacefully enough on the heels of a storm that raged on Thunder Mountain and sent a cold and beating rain upon the valley.

This day brought its own bitter disappointment. After her bath in the clear pool among the willows, and their mere taste of bacon and bread in the name of breakfast, and a promise exacted from Haig, as a condition of her leaving him, that he would do nothing of which she would disapprove, she set out to get her deer. Rifle on shoulder, and eyes alert, she skirted the edge of the wood along the base of the cliff, through tall grasses of a golden green, among yellowing aspen groves, and under a fair blue sky. But presently she plunged into the thick of the forest, of which the trees towered to a height exceeding that of any she had ever seen before. In their tops the breeze was singing sonorously, but among their massive boles the silence was so tense that twigs cracking under her feet sounded like gun-shots echoing through the dim aisles.

For some hours she wandered fruitlessly in that dark labyrinth, not only mindful of Philip’s warning that she must not penetrate too deep into its depth, but fearful on her own account of an encounter with some such wild beast as that whose cry had terrified her. In time the hollow indifference of the woods began to weigh upon her spirits, which had been high and hopeful on her setting out. Worn out at last, she was just on the point of turning back toward the camp, defeated, when she came upon an open space, a lovely little glade, in which the grass grew rank and green, unripened by the sun. She started to cross it, but stopped suddenly, staring straight ahead. In the very middle of the lush and silent glade, a young doe rose swiftly to its feet, and looked at her. Marion stood and looked at the doe. Then there was a streak of pale yellow across the grass, the forest closed around it, and the doe was gone. Thereupon, Marion remembered her rifle, and saw with something like surprise, to begin with, that it was pointed foolishly toward the ground. She gazed at it a moment, then sat plump down on the mossy earth, and cried.

“Oh, what a fool!” she groaned. “What a poor, silly little fool! I ought to starve, starve, starve!”

And on the words the hunger that she had bravely kept back rose and punished her. To be hungry in a world of plenty, where she had only to reach out and help herself! To think of Philip, hungry too, and depending on her, on her boasted prowess! Humiliation scorched her like a flame. And this was Marion Gaylord!

When she had recovered a little, she made directly for the open strip, having no more heart for her task, and nerving herself to confess the truth to Philip. Coming out upon the knoll through thick underbrush, she was startled by the leap of a rabbit from under her very feet; and before she was aware of what she was doing, she had thrown up her rifle, and fired. There was really no aim; the action was a gesture merely; and if she had tried to hit the rabbit she would have undoubtedly missed it clean. But the unlucky little beast, happening in the path of Marion’s angry disgust, turned a somersault in the air, and fell dead.

“Of course!” cried Marion. “Of course I can kill rabbits.” Then mercilessly: “A rabbit a day for twenty-seven days–” And rage choked her.

But she picked up her rabbit, and walked on. In half an hour she reached the camp, strode straight to the pine tree under which Haig lay, and held up before him the puny prize.

“Now I know you’re proud of me!” she exclaimed, while her face crimsoned.

Haig smiled indulgently. It was a little better than he had expected.

“Don’t be downcast!” he said. “I didn’t think you’d get a deer the first day. You didn’t even see one, I suppose.”

“But I did, though! I had one right under my eyes, not thirty feet away. And what do you think I did?”

“Stood and looked at it, of course. That’s buck fever.”

“But it was only a tiny little doe!”

“Doe fever then, which is probably worse, if I know anything about–”

“That will do, Philip! You’re laughing at me.”

“Not at all. You’ve brought home something to eat, and that’s more than I can do. Bunny looks big and fat. He’ll make a fine dinner, and leave something for to-morrow.”

“Thank you, Philip!” she said gratefully. “You make me feel as if I were not such a failure after all.”

“If you’ll trust me with the knife,” he said in a tone that took some of the edge off her satisfaction, “I’ll clean him for you.”

She gave him the knife reluctantly, and did not leave his side until he had finished cleaning and cutting up the rabbit, when he handed the knife back to her with a gesture that made her blush again. Two things she did not know: that he had a knife in his pocket much better suited to his secret purpose; and that his purpose was a purpose no longer. But even he was not yet aware of this last.

It was not the next day, but the third, when the rabbit had been eaten to the bone, and the pangs of hunger prodded her, that Marion restored herself in her own eyes. In the edge of the forest, not more than two miles from the camp, she detected a mere brown patch in the browning bush. This time she did not forget her rifle. The brown patch moved just as she pulled the trigger; but when she reached the spot, in a fever of anxiety, she fairly shrieked to the wilderness. For there in the grass, still jerking spasmodically in its death agony, lay a doe, a larger one than that she had seen in the glade. No more “one a day for twenty-seven days!”

What followed haunted her dreams for many nights thereafter–a repulsive and sickening ordeal. She had seen Huntington do it, but then she had been able to turn her face away; and her hands–But necessity, responsibility, and pride, and perhaps some primitive instinct also, nerved her to the task. And she staggered back to camp, and stood before Philip, white and trembling, but triumphant.

“Take a drink of whisky!” ordered Haig sharply.

She obeyed him, gulping down the last of the precious contents of her flask.

“It’s down there–covered with leaves!” she gasped out at length. “Will anything–disturb it before I can–take Tuesday and the rope?”

“Do you mean you’ve cleaned the whole deer?” he asked curiously.

She nodded, still shuddering.

“Well, you’re a brick!” he said heartily. Then he added: “I thought perhaps a bobcat had stolen your–rabbit.”

She laughed with him, and then was off with Tuesday to bring her quarry home. She was not strong enough to lift and fasten the carcass on the horse’s back; but the route was through clean grass along the cliff, and Tuesday made short work of that, with the deer dragged at the end of the rope.

They had no salt, but there were a few rinds of bacon that Haig had told Marion to keep, and these were made to serve for seasoning. That venison, moreover, needed nothing to make it palatable; for they were ravenously hungry. Sprawled before the fire like savages, they feasted on a huge steak, broiled on two willow sticks, and well-browned on the outside at the start so that the tenderness was retained; and for an hour forgot. For so the stomach, at once the tyrant and the slave, has sometimes its hour of triumph, when heart and soul and brain are its willing captives, and the starkest fears and forebodings lose their sway, and death itself, though visible and near, has no power to ferment the grateful juices of the body.