King Spruce Part 45

"Take me away from the woods!" she gasped.

The look that pa.s.sed between them was speech unutterable. He had no words for her then. In silence he made the long sledge ready for her.

Christopher helped him, silent with the reticence of the woodsman. If he had even glanced at Elva Barrett no bystander could have detected that glance. There were thick camp spreads on the sled. Christopher's thoughtfulness had provided them, and when they had been wrapped about her the two men set away, each with hand on the sled-rope.

"We'll go the short way back to Enchanted," said the old guide, answering Wade's glance. "Back across d.i.c.kery, up the tote road, and follow the Cameron and Telos roads. It will dodge all camps, and keep us away from foolish questions. I've got enough in my pack from Withee's camp for us to eat."

Abe floundered behind, keeping them in sight with the pertinacity of a dog, and he ate the bread that Straight threw to him with a dog's mute grat.i.tude.

Only the desperation of men utterly resolved could have accomplished the journey they set before them. The girl rode, a silent, shrouded figure; the men strode ahead, silent; Abe struggled on behind, ploughing the snow with dragging feet. When the night fell they went on by the lantern's light.

It was long after midnight when they came at last to the Enchanted camps, walking like automatons and almost senseless with fatigue. Wade lifted the girl from the sled when they halted in front of the w.a.n.gan.

Her stiffened and cramped limbs would not move of themselves. And when she was on her feet, and staggered, he kept his arm about her, gently and un.o.btrusively.

"This is the best home I have to offer you," he said. "Nina Ide is here waiting. We will wake her, and she will do for you what should be done.

Oh, that sounds cold and formal, I know--but the poor girl waiting in there will put into words all the joy I feel but can't speak. My head is pretty light, and my heels heavy, and I don't seem to be thinking very clearly, Miss Barrett," he murmured, his voice weak with pathetic weariness.

She was struggling with sobs, striving to speak; but he hastened on, as though at last his full heart found words.

"This is--this--I hardly know how to say this. But I understand why you came." He felt her tremble. "But, my G.o.d, Elva, I don't dare to believe that you thought so ill of me that you were coming to plead with me for your father's sake." It was not resentment, it was pa.s.sionate grief that burst from him, and she put her hands about his arm.

"I told you it was folly that sent me," she sobbed. "But he had been unjust to you, Dwight. Oh, it was folly that sent me, but I wanted to know if you--if you--" She was silent and trembled, and when she did not speak he clasped her close, trembling as pitifully as she.

"Oh, if you only dared say that you wanted to know whether I still loved you!" he breathed, in a broken whisper. "And I would say--"

It seemed that his heart came into his throat, for her fingers pressed more closely upon his arm. In that instant he could not speak. He pretended to look for Christopher, but that wise woodsman's tact did not fail. He saw Christopher disappearing into the gloom of the dingle, and heard the careful lisp of the wooden latch in its socket and the cautious creak of the closing door. There was only the hush of the still night about him, and when he turned again the starlight was shining on Elva Barrett's upraised face. And her dark eyes were imperiously demanding that he finish his sentence--so imperiously that his tongue burst all the shackles of his sensitive prudence.

"And I would say that my love is so far above the mean things of the world that they can't make it waver, and it is so unselfish that I can love you the more be-because you love your father and obey him. And all I ask is that you don't misunderstand me." There was deep meaning in his tones.

"Oh Dwight, my boy," she moaned, "it's an awful thing for a daughter to disobey her father. But it's more awful when she finds that he--" But he put his fingers tenderly on her lips, and when she kissed them, tears coursing on her cheeks, he gathered her close, and his lips did the service that his fingers retired from in tremulous haste.

"My little girl," he said, softly, "keep that story off your lips. It is too hard, too bitter. I may have said cruel things to your father. He may tell you they were cruel. But remember that she had your eyes and your face--that poor girl I found in the woods. And before G.o.d, if not before men, she is your sister. And so I gave of my heart and my strength to help her. And I know your heart so well, Elva, that I leave it all to you. It's better to be ashamed than to be unjust."

"She _is_ my sister," she answered, simply, but with earnestness there was no mistaking. "And you may leave it all in my hands."

Then fearfully, anxiously, grief and shame at shattered faith in a father showing in the face she lifted to him, she asked:

"It was he, was it not--the old man that took me away and sat before me and cursed me? He was her--her husband?"

His look replied to her. Then he said, soothingly: "It was not in our hands, dear. But that which is in our hands let us do as best we can, and so"--he kissed her, this time not as the lover, but as the faithful, earnest, consoling friend--"and so--to sleep! The morning's almost here, and it will bring a brighter day."

She drew his head down and pressed her lips to his forehead.

"True knighthood has come again," she murmured. "And my knight has taken me from the enchanted forest, and has shown me his heart--and the last was best."

Still clasping her, he shook the door and called to the girl within; and when she came, crying eager questions, he put Elva Barrett into her arms and left them together.

As he walked away from the shadow of the camp into the shimmer of the starlight he felt the wine of love coursing his veins. His muscles ached, weariness clogged his heels, but his eyes were wide-propped and his ears hummed as with a sound of distant music. His thoughts seemed too sacred to be taken just then into the company of other men. He dreaded to go inside out of the radiance of the night. He turned from the door of the main camp when his hand was fumbling for the latch, pulled his cap over his ears, and began a slow patrol on the glistening stretch of road before the w.a.n.gan. The crisp snow sang like fairy bells under his feet. Orion dipped to the west, and the morning stars paled slowly as the flush crept up from the east. And still he walked and dreamed and gazed over the sombre obstacles near at hand in his life into the radiance of promise, even as he looked over the black spruces into the faint roses of the dawn.

Tommy Eye, teamster, stumbling towards the hovel for the early foddering, came upon him, and stopped and stared in utter amazement. He came close to make sure that the eerie light of the morning was not playing him false. Wade's cheerful greeting seemed to perplex him.

"It isn't a ha'nt, Tommy," said the young man, smiling on him.

"I have said all along as how it had got you," declared Tommy, with ingenuous disappointment, looking Wade up and down for marks of conflict. "But it may be that the ha'nts want only woods folk and are afraid of book-learnin'! So you're back, and the girl ain't, nor Christopher, nor--"

"We're all back," explained Wade, calculating on Tommy's news-mongering ability to relieve him of the need of circulating information. "We found the--the one that was lost. That was all! She was lost, and we found her, and we even found Foolish Abe, and he came back with us last night.

There was no mystery, Tommy. They were simply lost, and we found them.

They're asleep."

Tommy fingered the wrinkled skin of his neck and stared dubiously at Wade.

"You'll see Abe whittling shavings just the same as usual this morning,"

added the young man. "By-the-way, you and he may be interested to know that Lane, the old fire warden, died at Withee's camp the other day."

For reasons of his own Wade did not care to make either the news of the rescue or its place too definite.

"Then," declared Tommy, hanging grimly to the last prop left in his theory, "that accounts for it. 'Ladder' Lane is dead, and has turned into a ha'nt. It was him that called out the fool. And he'll be making more trouble yet. You'd better send for Prophet Eli, Mr. Wade, because the prophet is a charmer-man and can take care of old Lane."

"He has taken care of him already," said the young man. "We saw Prophet Eli, and he started right away to attend to the case." And Tommy's face displayed such eminent satisfaction that Wade had not the heart to destroy the man's belief that his book-learned boss had adopted a part of the woods creed of the supernatural. It was a day on which he felt very gentle towards the dreams of other persons, for his own beautiful dream shed its radiance on all men and all of life.

That she was there, safe, brought by amazing circ.u.mstances into the depths of the woods, and under his protection, seemed like a vision of the night as he walked back and forth and watched the morning grow.

When the sun was high and the men had been gone for hours, he put his dream to the test. He rapped gently on the w.a.n.gan door, and her voice, a very real and loving voice, answered. With his own hands he brought food for the two girls and spread a cedar-splint table, and served them as they ate, and ministered in little ways, through the hours of the day, and watched Elva's pallor and weariness give way before tenderness and love. With the poor shifts of a lumber-camp he, not intending it, taught her heart the lesson that love is independent of its housing.

He rode with them on the tote team to the northern jaws of Pogey Notch the next day, and sent them on, nestled in a bower of blankets. There had been no further word between them of the great thing that had come into their lives. They tacitly and joyously accepted it all, and left the solution of its problem to saner and happier days. But the face that she turned back to him as she rode away under the frowning rocks was a glowing promise of all he asked of life. And as he plodded back up the trail he went to his toil with tingling muscles and a triumphant soul.

CHAPTER XXIV

THE CHEESE RIND THAT NEEDED SHARP TEETH

"So, mister, please excuse us, but you open up that sluice, Or Gawd have mercy on ye, if I turn these gents here loose!"

--The Rapogenus Ball.

Rodburd Ide, fresh-arrived from Castonia in hot haste, saw well to it that he and Dwight Wade were safe from interruption in the w.a.n.gan camp.

He even drove a sliver from the wood-box over the latch of the door.

Wade, summoned down from the chopping by a breathless cookee to meet his partner, gazed upon these nervous, eager precautions in some alarm.

"Now, brace your feet, and get hold of something and hang on hard,"

advised the "Mayor of Castonia."

"Good Heavens, Mr. Ide, what has happened to her?" gasped the young man.

His trembling hands clutched at the edge of the splint table, hallowed by Elva Barrett's smiles of love across it.

"Her!" snorted the little man, in indignant astonishment. "You don't think I've whaled up here h.e.l.l-ti-larrup on a jumper to sit down and talk about women, do you?"