A Touch of Sun and Other Stories Part 23

The particular fall my schemer has located for his own--other claims to be discussed hereafter--is called the "Snow Bank." He says he doesn't want the earth: this one cataract is enough for him. To look at the whole frontage of the springs and listen to their roar, one would think there might be water enough for them both, poor children! Hardly what you'd call two bites of a cherry!

If the springs were the half of a broken diamond bracelet, the Snow Bank would be its brightest gem, lying separate in the case--perhaps the one that was the clasp. It is half hidden by the shoulder of a great barren bluff which, at a certain angle of the sun, throws a blue shadow over it.

At other times the fall is almost too bright in its foaming whiteness for the eye to endure.

Kitty is painting it with this shadow half across it; but the light shines upon it at its source. Tom is doubtful if she is showing the fall to the best advantage for his purpose, but he is obliging enough to let the artist try it in her own way first.

"Go up there," she says, "and stand at the head of the spring, if you want to show by comparison how big it is, or how small you are."

He goes, and gets in position, and Kitty makes some pencil-marks on the margin of her sketch. Then she waves her hands to tell him, across the shouting current, that she is done with him. She has been so quick that he thinks he must have mistaken her gesture. Then Harshaw makes the train-conductor's signal for the train to move on.

"You see," she says to Harshaw and me, who are looking over her shoulder, "_that_ would be the size of him in my sketch." She points to the marginal pencil-mark, which is not longer than the nib of a stub-pen. "I can't make a little black dot like that look like a man."

"In this particular sketch, for his purpose, he'd rather look like a dot than a man, I dare say," said Harshaw.

"Well, shall I put him in? I can make a note of it on the margin: 'This black dot is Mr. Daly, standing at the spring-head. He is six feet'"--

"But he isn't, you know," Harshaw says. "He's five feet ten--if he's that."

"Ten and a half," I hasten to amend.

Our lunch that day had been left in the boat. We went down and ate it under the mountain birches at a spot where the Snow Bank empties into the lagoon--not _our_ lagoon, as we called it, between our camp and the lovely Sand Springs Fall, but the upper one, made by the springs themselves, before their waters reach the river. In front of us, half embraced by the lagoon and half by the river, lay a little island-ranch of about ten acres, not cut up in crops, but all over green in pasture. A small cabin, propping up a large hop-vine, showed against a ma.s.s of birch and cottonwood on the river side of the island.

"What a place for a honeymoon!" said I.

"There is material there for half of a honeymoon," said Tom--"not bad material, either."

"Oh, yes," I said; "we have seen her--that is, we have seen her sunbonnet."

"Kitty, you've got a rival," I exclaimed: for there in the sunny centre of the island, planted with obvious design right in front of the Snow Bank, _our_ Snow Bank, was an artist's big white umbrella.

"Why should I not have, in a place like this?" she said. "If the schemers arrive by twos, why not two of my modest craft? _We_ shall leave it as we find it; we don't intend to carry it away in our pockets." She stopped, and blushed disdainfully. "I forgot," she murmured, "my own mercenary designs."

"I have not heard of these mercenary designs of yours. What are they, may I ask?" Harshaw had turned on his side on the gra.s.s, and half rose on one elbow as he looked at her.

"That is strange," mocked Kitty, with supreme coldness. "You have always been so interested in my affairs!"

"I always shall be," he replied seriously, with supreme gentleness.

"I ought to be so grateful."

"But unfortunately you are not."

"I should be grateful--if you would move a little farther to the right, if you please. That young person in the pink sunbonnet is coming down to water her horses again."

Harshaw calmly took himself out of her way altogether, lighted his pipe, and went down close to the water, and sat there on a stone, and presently, as we could hear, entered into easy conversation with the pink sunbonnet, the face of which leaned toward him over the pony's neck as he stooped to drink. The splashed waters became still, and softly the whole picture--pink sunbonnet, clay-bank pony, pale and shivery willows, and deep blue sky--developed on the negative of the clear lagoon.

There was no use in saying how pretty it was, so we resorted to the other note, of disparagement. I remarked that I should not think a pink sunbonnet would be ravishingly becoming to the average Snake River complexion, as I had seen it.

"_That_ sunbonnet is becoming, you bet!" Tom remarked. "Wait till you see the face inside it."

"Have you seen it?"

"Quite frequently. Do you think Harshaw would sit there talking with her, as he does by the hour, if that sunbonnet was not becoming?"

"As he does by the hour! And why have we not heard of her before?" I requested to be told.

"Business, my dear. She is a feature of the scheme--quite an important one.

She represents the hitch which is sure to develop early in the history of every live enterprise."

"Indeed?" I said. And if Harshaw talked with her on business, I didn't see what his talking had to do with the face inside her bonnet.

"I don't say that it's always on business," Tom threw in significantly.

"Who is the lady in the pink sunbonnet, and what is your business with her?" I demanded.

"I question the propriety of speaking of her in just that tone," said Tom, "inasmuch as she happens to be a lady--somewhat off the conventional lines.

She waters her own stock and milks her own cow, because the old Indian girl who lives with her is laid up at present with a fever. Her father was an artist--one of the great unappreciated"--

"So that was her father painting the Snow Bank?" I interrupted.

"Her father is dead, my dear, as you would have learned if you had listened to my story. But he lived here a good many years before he died. He had made a queer marriage, old man Decker tells me, and quarreled with the world on account of it. He came here with his disputed bride. She was somebody else's wife first, I believe, and there was a trifling informality about the matrimonial exchange; but it came out all right. They both died, and a sweeter, fresher little thing than the daughter! Adamant, though--bed-rock, so far as we are concerned."

"What do you want that belongs to her?" I asked. "Her island, perhaps?"

"Only right of way across it. But 'that's a detail.' She is the owner of something else we do want--this piece of ground,"--he looked about him and waved his hand,--"and all this above us, where our power-plant must stand.

And our business is to persuade her to sign the lease, or, if she won't lease, to sell it when we are ready to buy. We have to make sure of that piece of ground. This place is so confoundedly cut up with scenery and nonsense, there's not a spot available for our plant but this. We'll bridge the lagoon and make a landing on that point of birches over there."

"You will! And do you suppose she will sign a lease to empower you to wipe her off the face of the earth--abolish her and her pretty island at one fell swoop?"

"She knows nothing yet about our designs upon her toy island. We haven't approached her on that. We could manage without it at a pinch."

"So good of you!" I murmured.

"But we can't manage without a place to put our power-house."

"She'll have to sign her own death-warrant, of course. If you get a footing for your power-house you'll want the island next. I never heard of such grasping profanation."

"Well, if Cecy could see his way to fall in love with her,--I wouldn't ask him to woo her in cold blood,--it would be a monstrous convenient way to settle it."

"Why do you say such things before her?" I asked Tom when we were alone.

"They are not pretty things to say, in the first place."

"Have you noticed how she is always snubbing him? I thought it time somebody should try the counter-snub. He's not solely dependent for the joys of life on the crumbs of her society."

"Do you suppose she cares whom he talks to, or whom he spends his time with?"

"Perhaps she doesn't care. I should like to give her a chance to see if she cares, that's all."

Tom's location notice being plain for all eyes to read, the mistress of the island naturally inquired what he wanted with the Snow Bank; and he, thinking she would see at once the value to her ranch of such a neighboring enterprise, frankly told her of his scheme. Nothing of its scientific interest, its difficulties, its commercial value, even its benefit to herself, appealed to the little islander. To her it was simply an attempt to alter and ruin the spot she loved best on earth; to steal her beautiful waterfall and carry it away in an ugly iron pipe. Whether the thing could be done, she did not ask herself; the design was enough. Never would she lend herself, or anything that was hers, to such an impious desecration!