The Heart of Thunder Mountain. Edfrid A. Bingham
California, of little brooks far up among the mountains where the trout were small but of a delicious flavor, of the time for flies and the time for worms, of famous catches he had made, of the way the Indians fished before the white man showed them patent rods and reels. By slow degrees Pete’s iron features softened, and he smiled at her, not with his lips, but with his eyes, which were the blackest, surely, in the world.
But Marion was not diverted from the questions that were next her heart. With all her woman’s cunning of indirection, she brought the talk around to Philip Haig. Did he fish? Sometimes. Did he hunt? Much, when the deer came down from the heights with the first snows. Then–she could resist no longer.
“It must have been terrible–the accident,” she said, placing a finger on her cheek.
He looked at her strangely, while she held her breath.
“That no accident,” he said at last, after what seemed to her an interminable interval of suspense.
“No accident?” she repeated, trying not to appear too eager.
“He call it accident, maybe. He say it is nothing. Pete say it is much. It is big debt. Some day Pete pay.”
There was deep silence for a moment. The stream gurgled and splashed; the breeze whispered through the cottonwoods; and over all, or under all, was the vague, insistent, seductive sound that the summer makes in the fulness of its power.
Marion hesitated, quivering with eagerness and uncertainty. She was afraid to ask more, lest she should be shortly rebuffed, and lose her opportunity. But Pete was looking at her steadily. She felt a flush coming into her face again. Had he guessed–something–already in her manner, in her impulsive questions? More likely it was the charm that, for once unconsciously, she wielded–the elusive charm of woman that makes men want to tell, without the asking.
“You like to hear?” Pete said; and her heart leaped.
“Oh, please!”
And she was keenly disappointed. She had expected something romantic, something ennobling and fine. And it was only a barroom brawl, though Philip was not in it until the end, to be sure! Five Mexican sheep herders against the lone Indian. Guns and knives in the reeking border saloon; and afterwards in the street; and the Indian almost done for, bleeding from a dozen wounds; and then a voice ringing out above the fracas: “No, I’m damned if you do! Five to one, and greasers at that!” And Philip Haig had jumped from his horse, and plunged into the mêlée, disdaining to draw his gun on greasers. Smash! Bang! went his fists, front and right and left.
Pete had accounted for one Mexican, who would herd sheep no more on the plains of Conejos. The others fled. Then Haig, despite the knife-wound in his face, grabbed the Indian, and somehow lifted him up behind him on his horse.
“Quick, Indian!” he cried. “This town’s full of greasers. You’ve got no chance here.”
And then the long ride to Del Norte, with the Indian drooping on Haig’s back; and a doctor of Haig’s acquaintance, who sheltered and cured the silent savage. And Pete, convalescent, had come straight to Haig’s ranch, and remained there, despite Haig’s protests that he did not need another hand.
“Pete stay until big debt is paid,” said the Indian solemnly. And then, with a straight look into Marion’s eyes, “You ought tell Huntington he is damn fool.”
Marion started. There it was again–the warning!
“But why?” she managed to ask.
“Haig is brave man. Brave man always good man. So–Huntington got no chance.”
CHAPTER VII
THE WAY OF A MAID WITH A MAN
She rode casually down the Brightwater, and casually up the Brightwater; she loitered at crossroads, and tarried at Thompson’s store; and not one glimpse did she catch of Philip Haig. Then one morning she rose at dawn, as she had risen on the day of her fishing exploit, with a purpose. But this time she dressed with exceeding care, in a riding suit she had not yet worn in the Park. It was soft dove-gray in color, with a long coat that showed the fine lines of her figure and, when she rode, revealed snug-fitting breeches above the tops of the polished boots,–a very different costume from the black divided skirts and the short jacket in which she had galloped about the Park.
Thus arrayed and resolute, she rode straight down the valley to the branch road that had once tempted her to adventure; straight up the hill; and straight through the woods until she halted once more in the shade of the outpost pine that stood beyond its clustered fellows like a sentinel above the valley. Her valley! She waited a moment, wondering if it welcomed her. There was the stream, still flashing in the sun, the meadows as brightly green as then, the grass of the pasture running in bronze waves before the breeze. From the heart of a wild rose a gorgeous red and brown butterfly flew out and fluttered over her head. Not a dozen yards below her a meadow lark, unseen, burst into sudden, thrilling song; and somewhere down the hill another took up the strain, then another and another, until the air was charged and quivering with melody, piercing sweet. She listened, her heart throbbing to the music, until the chorus died away in dripping cadences, and only a drowsy murmur came from the ripening fields to mingle with the low droning of the pine organ on the hill. Yes! Her valley welcomed her.
She rode on down the hill, with only a quick and embarrassed glance into the Forbidden Pasture; and suddenly raised herself excitedly in the stirrups. There again was the spiral of blue smoke; then a chimney and a red roof; and finally the house itself, and barn and corrals, all tucked away against the foot of the hill. Dismounting, she led Tuesday back a few yards, and left him to feed along the roadside. Then she returned, and seated herself on a rock, half-hidden by a blackberry bush, to study the group of houses lying low and silent in the sun.
There were more buildings than at Huntington’s, but she saw no beds of flowers, no wide veranda screened with potted plants; a certain bareness and air of inhospitality, she thought. No tea and angel cake for visitors! Behind the ranch house were two cottages of unpainted pine, scorched to a yellow-brown by many a summer sun. One of them, doubtless, was the hermit’s lodge. The barn, larger than Seth’s, had a red roof, newly painted. And in one of the corrals–yes–the flash of a golden hide.
“Sunnysides!” murmured Marion.
Then her heart stood still. She had descried the figure of a man seated with his back against the bars of this corral. But it was not Philip Haig; Sunnysides’ guard, no doubt, for he never left his post until relieved by another an hour or so later, when the dinner bell had been rung at the door of the ranch house.
She had scarcely time to feel her disappointment before a man emerged from the stable leading a saddle horse. Another immediately followed, and this time there was no mistake. The second man was Philip Haig. He mounted quickly, and started off; then stopped to address a word or two, apparently, to the man at the stable door; and finally galloped past the ranch house and the cottages, and up the slope behind them toward the pines, across the valley from where she sat.
“Oh!” cried Marion, in a tone of vexation and reproach.
She watched him until he had disappeared among the trees; and tears started in her eyes. Would he always be riding away from her, behind the hills, the woods, a turn of the road? She sat a while in deep dejection; but not for long. Her spirit was too resilient for futile moping, and her purpose too firmly held to be abandoned on one reverse. She reflected that if he had gone he must as certainly return; and so, with a toss of her head, she presently arose, and fetched her raincoat and her luncheon from the saddle. The coat she spread out on the ground, seated herself on it with her back against the rock, and settled down to eat, and watch, and wait.
Morning mounted hot and humming into noon, and noon dropped languidly into afternoon. The blazing sun centered his rays upon her; insects found and pestered her; discomfort cramped her limbs, and weariness weighted down her eyelids. Twice she dozed, and wakened with a start of fear lest she had slept her chance away. But each time she was reassured by a hurried survey of the group of buildings, where no one stirred, and there was no sign of Philip Haig. So the hours dragged their slow length along.
It was late in the afternoon