Pemrose Lorry, Camp Fire Girl Part 23

She did so--and turned for the moment as faint as he was.

The whole trail swam, grew black--black as the wisp of thin, ebony silk, parachute silk, with a fraction of a bent wire frame peeping out from one corner of that roomy knapsack.

"Well! are you going to desert me now-ow?... Now that the thief is so-o nice-ly bagged!"

The man looked up at her, some dash of whimsical fire in him mastering weakness; at the girl kneeling, bolt upright, with the black rag between her hands, and the twisted sc.r.a.p of frame,--the frame which had drifted down two hundred miles.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The man looked up at her, some dash of whimsical fire mastering weakness. Page 268.]

"Ar-re you--going--to desert me now?"

Again the anchor held; the n.o.ble anchor: Give Service: it was as if a voice outside of her numbed self spoke the words.

The raven rags dropped from between her fingers,--their reflection from her face.

Steadily enough, she found the little vial lying amid the top layer in that pigskin knapsack, shook a few drops from it, into the thimble-like gla.s.s accompanying, mixed them with water, held them to his lips.

At the same time she dipped her handkerchief again and pa.s.sed it over his forehead.

"Ha! Pity as well as 'pep' in you, eh? Good!" The sufferer actually winked one eye as the stimulant trickled down. "Well! my dear, the little recording apparatus is in that knapsack too; I--I make you a present of it--and of the codicil to my brother's will, as well.... You won't have to wait twelve years."

Then, indeed, the trail seemed to double up, to wind itself around Pem's brain, rocks and all,--only every rock was gold-edged, a nugget.

Her eyes stared straight before her,--blue as the June violet that caught a drop from the spring near.

"Who--who are you?" screamed Una, forgetting that she was speaking to a broken man.

"How about my being your uncle, Treffrey Graham, my dear, who--who was such a mad fellow--in--youth; s-such an oddity? Oh-h! you've heard of him--have--you?"

The whimsical light in the pain-reddened eyes burned to mockery now. It showed the hippogriff, the "hot tamale", still there. Evidently eccentricity wasn't all dead.

"Humph! By Jove! I'm having some fun out of my broken knee, after all--electrifying you girls," gurgled the still racked voice. "Dramatic setting for a denouement, too, the old Man Killer trail!"

"But why--oh! why-y did you do it?" Pem s.n.a.t.c.hed up the rag of parachute again, her eyes going wildly from the soot-like sc.r.a.p of silk to a wonderful, antique ring upon the little finger of the pale hand which twitched so strangely below her.

"What! S-steal the little record, you mean!" The bushy eyebrows were twitching, too. "Well! maybe I want-ed to make sure, for myself, that the rocket really had gone higher than anything earthly ever flew yet, before--before I resigned a fortune to it."

That was the moment when the nuggets all turned to rocks again for Pemrose. He saw the change in her face.

"Oh! I don't mean anything der-og-a-tory to your father, my dear"--pain s.n.a.t.c.hed at the man's breath--"or to his invention, either. I knew him before you did. 'Why did I do it?' Curiosity--eccentricity, I suppose--anything you like to call it! I always was such a 'terror'--a regular zany, my college friends used to call me."

A flash from those prankful days, erratic as a shooting star, shot the glaze in the sufferer's eye.

"And, then--and then, I really am interested in everything connected with the conquest of the air--of s.p.a.ce--myself," the hampered speaker went on. "I've done a little flying, out West,--my son, too! I found out when the experiments with your father's in-vention--"

"We call it the Thunder Bird," put in Una, as pain again called for a break.

"Ha! Good name for it! Piles up the moon-going romance, eh? Well-ll,"

wearily, "having found out the par-ti-cu-lar night on which the lit-tle model rocket was to fly, I came up the mountain to a small camp that my son and I have ne-ar the summit--east side of Greylock. I was standing on the edge of the spruce woods, watching the whole performance.

Then--then, when the parachute dragging the little recording apparatus blew towards me in the darkness, almost into my hand, I--why! I s.n.a.t.c.hed it up and ran with it. Why? Oh, because I suppose the boy has never died in me: the boy that's 'part pirate, part pig!'" with a grating chuckle.

Incredible as it seemed, the low laughter, the treacherous tinkle, was echoed by girlish lips as that renascent urchin momentarily swaggered in the glaze of the suffering eye!

"And then--and then something told me--an aberration, I suppose, as my impulses usually are--that I had some sort of r-right to see the very first record man had ever got of that upper air, of s.p.a.ce, if--if I was go-ing to turn over a couple of hundred thousand dollars, for the pursuit of the--sov-er-eign invention."

"I--I can't believe it," murmured Pem into the stony teeth of the Man Killer.

"I meant to return the record next morning, but I was a-fraid your father might shoot me," to Pemrose. "Then, later, I heard he had gone down the mountain--that was yesterday and a mistake--I went-down, too, to beard him. A--a little more water, please! I could not climb again until to-day; I took the Man Killer trail, as being the shortest.

And--here I am!" grimly.

"Incidentally, I gave our family lawyer a shock, little niece," he went on, as Una, plucking up courage, adjusted her sweater under his head; she began to like this uncle with the pebble-like cast in his stone-gray eye, she began to think that girls--Camp Fire Girls, especially, with their love of the fanciful--might have more patience with him than others had had.

"Yes! you bet I gave old Cartwright the staggers!" He laughed down the twinge of agony in his voice. "Called him up on the long distance telephone, told him I was Treffrey Graham back; that I had been in the East nearly six months, with my son; that I came pretty near disclosing myself on the--on the day when the third installment of my brother's will was read--actually walked up to the door of my sister's house, then shied off, because ... Oh, gosh! this knee."

The voice broke; it had really become a feverish babble of excitement now--pain's wild excitement.

"Well! What was I saying--yes! I didn't ring the bell because I hadn't made up my mind whether I wanted to claim any share of my brother's fortune, or not; you see he hadn't been very fair to me in youth--taking away my sweetheart. None of my family had--for--that--matter! I didn't know whether I wanted to meet them again. Although I liked the look of my little niece; I had seen her, at a distance, with her mother. And then, we didn't need the money, my boy and I! Had enough of our own; Treffrey Graham may be a terror, but he isn't a failure--financially!"

No--not by a long shot! said the flame of the pigeon-blood ruby upon the pale little finger, now curling significantly in air,--the gem whose fire in this wild spot seemed as erratic as his own, seeing that none but a zany would have worn it here.

"So--so I told old Cartwright this morning that I stepped out of that strung-out will," a smile curled the pallid lips now; "that I authorized him to make preparations, at once, for the turning over of the remainder of my brother's wealth, in his name and mine, to the University of our native city, to be used for the furtherance of Professor Lorry's won-der-ful invention for r-reaching in-de-finite heights."

"My father!... Oh! my fa-ther!" It was a wild little cry to which the Man Killer rang now, as the head of Pemrose Lorry went down upon her knees.

"Yes, I'm glad his way is clear--though, I suppose, only a man 'whose head grew under his arm' would have managed the thing as I have done."

The sufferer winked through the veil of pain. "Now! my son is different.

He's a dare-devil too--but he knows where to stop. You couldn't have bribed him to steal that record--though somebody played a trick on him the other night--robbed him of his oars and a dance--just when he had 'taken the bit between his teeth', too; said he was tired of this camouflage business, and he was going--going whether I liked it, or not!"

"_Ah-h!_" That was the moment when Pem's shoulders trembled like the needles upon the little green cedar sapling that grew by the rill: all because the Wise Woman in her was shaking the Elf, bidding her go to sleep for ever--which the Elf, very properly, refused to do, for, after all, undiluted wisdom would be a colorless cloak for any young back.

"Well! he--he wouldn't speak to us when we just wanted to thank him for saving us in that terrible train-accident," put in Una defensively.

"Ha! That was my fault, little niece. I made him promise, on coming East, that he wouldn't go near any of his relatives, risk being identified by them, until I had decided what to do about the legacy--and whether I was going to make myself known to them, or not. Now-ow, I hope you'll be friends. He's your own cousin--Treff junior."

And so Jack at a Pinch at last came into his own in the shape of a name!

"Yes, called after me, he is! Goodness! don't I wish he'd hurry up and get here, now--with the doctor?"

It was a hollow groan. Pain was, at length, getting the better of that capricious spirit.

"Can't--can't I do--anything--to make you more comfortable?" Pemrose asked.

Then suddenly remembering that it was he who was making the Thunder Bird's fortune, as impulsively as the little cedar tree leaned to the swollen rill, she bent and kissed the cold sweat of pain from his forehead.

"That--that's worth coming East for," murmured the man, his own eyes growing wet. "Little niece! don't you want to--follow--suit? I suppose, a year from now, your Thunder Bird will fly."