Quill's Window Part 22

ALIX CROWN

The same post that carried her letter east was to take one from Courtney Thane to his mother.

DEAREST MATER:

I am going to ask Alix Crown to marry me. I have hesitated to do so for obvious reasons, perfectly clear to you. Now, I have decided.

She understands my financial situation. She knows that I am almost entirely dependent on you for support at present. If it had not been for the war and my confounded ill-health, I should, of course, have been quite independent by this time. I have explained my present unbearable situation to her in a general sort of way, and I know that she is in complete sympathy with me. Your resolve to not increase my allowance is, I suppose, irrevocable. I shall soon be in a position, I hope, to dispense with what you are already so gracious as to allow me. I have not deemed it wise to tell her at this time of my unfortunate and, as you say, foolish mismanagement of my affairs before and after father's death. When all is said and done, he didn't leave me very much. It went before I quite knew what was happening, and I submit that it was bad judgment due to my youth rather than to recklessness, as old Mumford claims. I'll make him eat his words some day. Thanks for your cheque. You are a darling.

You're the best mother a fellow ever had. I quite understand your position, so don't lose a moment's sleep thinking that I may be resenting your decision. I shall manage very nicely on what you give me. It is ample for my present needs. I shall probably find it rather humiliating when it comes time for a wedding journey, but, bless your dear old heart, I'll manage somehow.

I am quite well and very happy. Hope you are the same. By the way, have you made that visit to Washington?

Your loving son,

COURTNEY.

P.S.--I am still looking for the little parcel I asked you to send me. Have you forgotten to attend to it?

C.

As Alix and her friends went out to the automobile, the big police dog trotted beside Addison Blythe, looking up into his face with pleased and friendly eyes. He allowed the man to stroke his head and rumple the thick fur on his back.

"He likes you, Addison," said Alix, a serious little frown in her eyes. "I can't understand his not liking Courtney Thane. His hair fairly bristles and he growls like a bear every time he sees him.

Isn't it odd?"

Blythe looked up quickly. It was on the tip of his tongue to say something tactless. What he did say was this:

"Can you blame the poor dog for being jealous?"

CHAPTER XIII

THE OLD INDIAN TRAIL

Courtney delayed. A certain aloofness on Alix's part caused him to hesitate. Something in her manner following upon the visit of the Blythes invited speculation. She was as pleasant as ever, yet he sensed a subtle change that warned him of defeat if he attempted to storm the citadel. His confidence was slightly shaken,--but not his resolve.

"She's been different ever since those infernal Blythes were here," he reflected aloud, scowling as he watched her pa.s.s in the car several days after the departure of her guests.

She went to the city nearly every day now, and seldom returned before dark. Somehow he felt that his grip was slipping. He was standing in front of the Tavern. She had waved her hand to him, and had smiled gaily, but it was not the first time that week she had failed to stop and repeat her usual invitation for him to accompany her, even though she knew he would politely decline. He resented this oversight. How could she know that he hadn't changed his mind about going to the city? As a matter of fact, he had changed it. He would have gone like a shot. Indeed, he had dressed with that very object in view,--and she had gone by with a casual wave of her hand.

His annoyance was increased by the remark of Mr. Nichols, who was standing at the top of the steps at the time.

"Thought you said you was going up to town, Courtney," said the old man, with a detestable grin on his wrinkled visage.

"I didn't say anything of the kind," snapped Courtney, and strode off angrily.

His stroll,--and his reflections,--took him up the old Indian trail along the bank of the river. He wanted solitude. He wanted to be where he could talk without fear of being overheard. There was much that he had to say to himself.

The rarely used path through the willows and underbrush ran along the steep bank, sometimes within a few feet of water. Once before he had walked a couple of hundred yards over this ancient, hard-packed trail of Tec.u.mseh's people, but had been turned back by the sight of a small snake wriggling off into the long gra.s.s ahead of him.

That was in the warm days of early September. There was no likelihood of serpents being abroad on this chill October morning.

Leaving the road at the cut above the ferry landing, he turned into the trail. A half hour's walk brought him to the gradually rising, rock-covered slope that led to the base of Quill's Window. On all sides were great, flat slabs of stone, some of them almost buried in the earth, others sticking their jagged points up above the brush and weeds. Back in ages dim these drab, moss-covered rocks had been sliced from the side of the towering mound by the forces that shaped the earth, to be hurled hither and thither with the calm disdain of the mighty. No human agency had blasted them from their insecure hold on the shoulders of the cliff. Uncounted centuries ago they had come bounding, crashing down from the heights, shaken loose by the convulsions of Mother Earth, tearing their way through the feeble barrier of trees to a henceforth place of security.

The trail wound in and out among these boulders, dividing at a point several hundred feet south of the steep ascent to the top of the great black mound. The main-travelled path turned in from the river at this point, to skirt the hill at its rear. A more tortuous way, traversed presumably by the fishers and hunters of the tribes, or perhaps by war parties in swift pursuit or retreat, held directly to the bank of the stream and pa.s.sed along the front of the cliff.

Courtney took the latter branch. Presently he was picking his way carefully along the base of the cliff, scrambling over and between the rocks that formed a narrow ledge between the river and the sheer face of Quill's Window. He was now some fifty or sixty feet above the cold, grey water. Below him grew a line of stunted, ragged underbrush, springing from the earth-filled fissures among the boulders. Across the river stretched far away the farms and fields of the far-famed grain-belt.

He sat down upon a rock and gazed out over these fertile lands, now crowded with shocks of corn or rusty with the dead glories of summer. There were great square fields of stubble, fenced-in patches of pasture-land, small oases of woodland, houses and barns and silos as far as the eye could reach,--and always the huge red barns dwarfed the houses in which the farmers dwelt. Cattle and sheep and horses, wagons and men, all made small and insignificant in the sweep of this great and solemn panorama.

The home of Amos Vick was visible, standing half-a-mile back from the river. He looked hard and long at the house in which he had spent the first three weeks of his stay in the country. So young Cale had gone off to join the Navy, eh? Good! And Rosabel,--what of her? What was she doing over at the old Windom house that day?

Could it have been she who was watching him? Looking badly, too, they said. Such a strong, pretty, wind-tanned young thing she was!

How long ago was it? Not two months....He lit a cigarette and resumed his way, the shadow of a fond smile lingering in his eyes.

Rounding the curve, he came to that side of the stone hill which faced up the river. He had pa.s.sed many small, shallow niches along the base of the eminence, miniature caves from which oozed what might well have been described as sweat. There were, besides, deep upright slashes in the side of the rock, higher than his head, suggesting to the imagination the vain effort of some unhappy giant to burst through the walls of his rocky prison,--some monster of a man who now lay dead in the heart of the hill. The turn took him farther away from the river.

He was looking now into the tops of several tall sycamores that rose from the low ground at the foot of the hill. Extending far to the north along the river was a fringe of these much be-sung trees.

The s.p.a.ce between the straight face of the cliff and the edge of the ledge on which he stood was not more than seven or eight feet.

It was possible, he perceived, for one to continue along and down this natural path to the bottom of the hill, coming out among the trees in the low ground. The descent, however, was a great deal more precipitous than the ascent from the other direction.

Now that he was immediately below the cave known as Quill's Window, he was surprised to find that the cliff was not absolutely perpendicular. There was quite a p.r.o.nounced slant; the top of the wall was, at a guess, ten feet farther back than the foot. His gaze first sought the strange opening three-fourths of the way to the top,--a matter of eighty or ninety feet above the spot on which he stood. There it was,--a deep, black gash in the solid rock, rendered narrow by fore-shortening and a slightly protruding brow.

He could think of nothing more a.n.a.logous than an open mouth with a thick upper lip and the nether lip drawn in.

Then he saw what surprised him even more,--something that none of the chroniclers had mentioned: a series of hand-cut niches up the face of the cliff, leading directly to the mouth of the cave. He had been given to understand that there was no other means of reaching Quill's Window save from the top of the rock. These niches or "hand-holds" were about two feet apart. He examined the lower ones.

They were deeply chiselled, affording a substantial foothold as well as a grip for a strong, resolute climber. Most of them were packed with dirty, wind blown leaves from the trees nearby,--so tightly packed by the furious rains that beat against the rock that he had difficulty in removing the substance. Higher up they appeared to be quite clean and free from obstruction.

He sc.r.a.ped the leaves out of five or six of the slits, one after the other, as he climbed a short distance up the wall. Further progress was checked, not so much by lack of desire to go to the top, but by an involuntary glance over his shoulder. He was not more than ten feet above the trail, but the trail was shockingly narrow and uneven. So down he came, quite thrilled by his discovery, to lean against the rock and laugh scornfully over the silly tales about Quill's Window and its eerie impregnability. Anybody could climb up there! All that one needed was a stout heart and a good pair of arms. Closer inspection convinced him that these niches were of comparatively recent origin,--certainly they were not of Quill's time. David Windom? Had that adventurous lad hewn this ladder to the cave long before the beautiful Alix the First came to complete the romance of his dreams?

No matter who cut them, they were still there to prove that Quill's Window was accessible. According to tradition, no one had put foot inside the cave since David Windom, in his youth, had ventured to explore its grisly interior. Courtney promised himself that one day he would enter that unhallowed hole in the wall!

Retracing his steps over the trail, he soon found himself in the village. He was more cheerful now. He had talked himself into a better frame of mind....She was shy. She had reached the turning point,--the inevitable point where women tremble with a strange mixture of alarm and rapture, and are as timid as the questioning deer. What a fool he was not to have thought of that!

There was a small package in his lockbox at the postoffice--and two or three letters. The package was from New York, addressed in his mother's hand.

He stopped at the general delivery window for a chat with Mrs.

Pollock.

"I had forgotten all about my birthday," he said, "but here's mother reminding me of it as usual. She never forgets,--and, hang it all, she won't let ME forget." He fingered the unopened package lovingly.

"Goodness me, Mr. Thane,--is this your birthday?" she cried excitedly.

"We must have a celebration. We can't allow--"

"Alas, it is too late. Your super-efficient postal service has brought this to me just forty-eight hours behind time. Day before yesterday was the day, now that I think of it."

Mrs. Pollock mentally resolved to indite a short poem to him, notwithstanding. She could feel it coming, even as she stood there talking to him. The first line was already written, so to speak.

It went:

"The flight of Time has brought once more--"