Tales of Trail and Town Part 14

"But wot," said d.i.c.k brusquely, "wot if the girl was really skeert at something she'd seen, and fainted dead away, as she said she did,--and--and"--he hesitated--"some stranger came along and picked her up?"

Monsieur Ribaud looked at him pityingly.

"A Mademoiselle de Fontonelle is picked up by her servants, by her family, but not by the young man in the woods, alone. It is even more compromising!"

"Do you mean to say," said d.i.c.k furiously, "that the ragpickers and sneaks that wade around in the slumgallion of this country would dare to spatter that young gal?"

"I mean to say, yes,--a.s.suredly, positively yes!" said Ribaud, rubbing his hands with a certain satisfaction at d.i.c.k's fury. "For you comprehend not the position of la jeune fille in all France! Ah! in America the young lady she go everywhere alone; I have seen her--pretty, charming, fascinating--alone with the young man. But here, no, never!

Regard me, my friend. The French mother, she say to her daughter's fiance, 'Look! there is my daughter. She has never been alone with a young man for five minutes,--not even with you. Take her for your wife!'

It is monstrous! it is impossible! it is so!"

There was a silence of a few minutes, and d.i.c.k looked blankly at the iron gates of the park of Fontonelles. Then he said: "Give me a cigar."

Monsieur Ribaud instantly produced his cigar case. d.i.c.k took a cigar, but waved aside the proffered match, and entering the cafe, took from his pocket the letter to Mademoiselle de Fontonelles, twisted it in a spiral, lighted it at a candle, lit his cigar with it, and returning to the veranda held it in his hand until the last ashes dropped on the floor. Then he said, gravely, to Ribaud:--

"You've treated me like a white man, Frenchy, and I ain't goin' back on yer--though your ways ain't my ways--nohow; but I reckon in this yer matter at the shotto you're a little too previous! For though I don't as a gin'ral thing take stock in ghosts, I BELIEVE EVERY WORD THAT THEM FOLK SAID UP THAR. And," he added, leaning his hand somewhat heavily on Ribaud's shoulder, "if you're the man I take you for, you'll believe it too! And if that chap, Armand de Fontonelles, hadn't hev picked up that gal at that moment, he would hev deserved to roast in h.e.l.l another three hundred years! That's why I believe her story. So you'll let these yer Fontonelles keep their ghosts for all they're worth; and when you next feel inclined to talk about that girl's LOVER, you'll think of me, and shut your head! You hear me, Frenchy, I'm shoutin'! And don't you forget it!"

Nevertheless, early the next morning, Monsieur Ribaud accompanied his guest to the railway station, and parted from him with great effusion.

On his way back an old-fashioned carriage with a postilion pa.s.sed him.

At a sign from its occupant, the postilion pulled up, and Monsieur Ribaud, bowing to the dust, approached the window, and the pale, stern face of a dignified, white-haired woman of sixty that looked from it.

"Has he gone?" said the lady.

"a.s.suredly, madame; I was with him at the station."

"And you think no one saw him?"

"No one, madame, but myself."

"And--what kind of a man was he?"

Monsieur Ribaud lifted his shoulders, threw out his hands despairingly, yet with a world of significance, and said:--

"An American."

"Ah!"

The carriage drove on and entered the gates of the chateau. And Monsieur Ribaud, cafe proprietor and Social Democrat, straightened himself in the dust and shook his fist after it.

A NIGHT ON THE DIVIDE

With the lulling of the wind towards evening it came on to snow--heavily, in straight, quickly succeeding flakes, dropping like white lances from the sky. This was followed by the usual Sierran phenomenon. The deep gorge, which, as the sun went down, had lapsed into darkness, presently began to reappear; at first the vanished trail came back as a vividly whitening streak before them; then the larches and pines that ascended from it like b.u.t.tresses against the hillsides glimmered in ghostly distinctness, until at last the two slopes curved out of the darkness as if hewn in marble. For the sudden storm, which extended scarcely two miles, had left no trace upon the steep granite face of the high cliffs above; the snow, slipping silently from them, left them still hidden in the obscurity of night. In the vanished landscape the gorge alone stood out, set in a chaos of cloud and storm through which the moonbeams struggled ineffectually.

It was this unexpected sight which burst upon the occupants of a large covered "station wagon" who had chanced upon the lower end of the gorge.

Coming from a still lower alt.i.tude, they had known nothing of the storm, which had momentarily ceased, but had left a record of its intensity in nearly two feet of snow. For some moments the horses floundered and struggled on, in what the travelers believed to be some old forgotten drift or avalanche, until the extent and freshness of the fall became apparent. To add to their difficulties, the storm recommenced, and not comprehending its real character and limit, they did not dare to attempt to return the way they came. To go on, however, was impossible. In this quandary they looked about them in vain for some other exit from the gorge. The sides of that gigantic white furrow terminated in darkness.

Hemmed in from the world in all directions, it might have been their tomb.

But although THEY could see nothing beyond their prison walls, they themselves were perfectly visible from the heights above them. And Jack Tenbrook, quartz miner, who was sinking a tunnel in the rocky ledge of shelf above the gorge, stepping out from his cabin at ten o'clock to take a look at the weather before turning in, could observe quite distinctly the outline of the black wagon, the floundering horses, and the crouching figures by their side, scarcely larger than pygmies on the white surface of the snow, six hundred feet below him. Jack had courage and strength, and the good humor that accompanies them, but he contented himself for a few moments with lazily observing the travelers'

discomfiture. He had taken in the situation with a glance; he would have helped a brother miner or mountaineer, although he knew that it could only have been drink or bravado that brought HIM into the gorge in a snowstorm, but it was very evident that these were "greenhorns," or eastern tourists, and it served their stupidity and arrogance right! He remembered also how he, having once helped an Eastern visitor catch the mustang that had "bucked" him, had been called "my man," and presented with five dollars; he recalled how he had once spread the humble resources of his cabin before some straying members of the San Francisco party who were "opening" the new railroad, and heard the audible wonder of a lady that a civilized being could live so "coa.r.s.ely"? With these recollections in his mind, he managed to survey the distant struggling horses with a fine sense of humor, not unmixed with self-righteousness.

There was no real danger in the situation; it meant at the worst a delay and a camping in the snow till morning, when he would go down to their a.s.sistance. They had a s.p.a.cious traveling equipage, and were, no doubt, well supplied with furs, robes, and provisions for a several hours'

journey; his own pork barrel was quite empty, and his blankets worn. He half smiled, extended his long arms in a decided yawn, and turned back into his cabin to go to bed. Then he cast a final glance around the interior. Everything was all right; his loaded rifle stood against the wall; he had just raked ashes over the embers of his fire to keep it intact till morning. Only one thing slightly troubled him; a grizzly bear, two-thirds grown, but only half tamed, which had been given to him by a young lady named "Miggles," when that charming and historic girl had decided to accompany her paralytic lover to the San Francisco hospital, was missing that evening. It had been its regular habit to come to the door every night for some sweet biscuit or sugar before going to its lair in the underbrush behind the cabin. Everybody knew it along the length and breadth of Hemlock Ridge, as well as the fact of its being a legacy from the fair exile. No rifle had ever yet been raised against its lazy bulk or the stupid, small-eyed head and ruff of circling hairs made more erect by its well-worn leather collar.

Consoling himself with the thought that the storm had probably delayed its return, Jack took off his coat and threw it on his bunk. But from thinking of the storm his thoughts naturally returned again to the impeded travelers below him, and he half mechanically stepped out in his shirt-sleeves for a final look at them.

But here something occurred that changed his resolution entirely. He had previously noticed only the three foreshortened, crawling figures around the now stationary wagon bulk. They were now apparently making arrangements to camp for the night. But another figure had been added to the group, and as it stood perched upon a wagon seat laid on the snow Jack could see that its outline was not bifurcated like the others.

But even that general suggestion was not needed! the little head, the symmetrical curves visible even at that distance, were quite enough to indicate that it was a woman! The easy smile faded from Jack's face, and was succeeded by a look of concern and then of resignation. He had no choice now; he MUST go! There was a woman there, and that settled it.

Yet he had arrived at this conclusion from no sense of gallantry, nor, indeed, of chivalrous transport, but as a matter of simple duty to the s.e.x. He was giving up his sleep, was going down six hundred feet of steep trail to offer his services during the rest of the night as much as a matter of course as an Eastern man would have offered his seat in an omnibus to a woman, and with as little expectation of return for his courtesy.

Having resumed his coat, with a bottle of whiskey thrust into its pocket, he put on a pair of india-rubber boots reaching to his thighs, and, catching the blanket from his bunk, started with an axe and shovel on his shoulder on his downward journey. When the distance was half completed he shouted to the travelers below; the cry was joyously answered by the three men; he saw the fourth figure, now unmistakably that of a slender youthful woman, in a cloak, helped back into the wagon, as if deliverance was now sure and immediate. But Jack on arriving speedily dissipated that illusive hope; they could only get through the gorge by taking off the wheels of the wagon, placing the axle on rude sledge-runners of split saplings, which, with their a.s.sistance, he would fashion in a couple of hours at his cabin and bring down to the gorge. The only other alternative would be for them to come to his cabin and remain there while he went for a.s.sistance to the nearest station, but that would take several hours and necessitate a double journey for the sledge if he was lucky enough to find one. The party quickly acquiesced in Jack's first suggestion.

"Very well," said Jack, "then there's no time to be lost; unhitch your horses and we'll dig a hole in that bank for them to stand in out of the snow." This was speedily done. "Now," continued Jack, "you'll just follow me up to my cabin; it's a pretty tough climb, but I'll want your help to bring down the runners."

Here the man who seemed to be the head of the party--of middle age and a superior, professional type--for the first time hesitated. "I forgot to say that there is a lady with us,--my daughter," he began, glancing towards the wagon.

"I reckoned as much," interrupted Jack simply, "and I allowed to carry her up myself the roughest part of the way. She kin make herself warm and comf'ble in the cabin until we've got the runners ready."

"You hear what our friend says, Amy?" suggested the gentleman, appealingly, to the closed leather curtains of the wagon.

There was a pause. The curtain was suddenly drawn aside, and a charming little head and shoulders, furred to the throat and topped with a bewitching velvet cap, were thrust out. In the obscurity little could be seen of the girl's features, but there was a certain willfulness and impatience in her att.i.tude. Being in the shadow, she had the advantage of the others, particularly of Jack, as his figure was fully revealed in the moonlight against the s...o...b..nk. Her eyes rested for a moment on his high boots, his heavy mustache, so long as to mingle with the unkempt locks which fell over his broad shoulders, on his huge red hands streaked with black grease from the wagon wheels, and some blood, stanched with snow, drawn from bruises in cutting out brambles in the brush; on--more awful than all--a monstrous, shiny "specimen" gold ring encircling one of his fingers,--on the whiskey bottle that shamelessly bulged from his side pocket, and then--slowly dropped her dissatisfied eyelids.

"Why can't I stay HERE?" she said languidly. "It's quite nice and comfortable."

"Because we can't leave you alone, and we must go with this gentleman to help him."

Miss Amy let the tail of her eye again creep shudderingly over this impossible Jack. "I thought the--the gentleman was going to help US,"

she said dryly.

"Nonsense, Amy, you don't understand," said her father impatiently.

"This gentleman is kind enough to offer to make some sledge-runners for us at his cabin, and we must help him."

"But I can stay here while you go. I'm not afraid."

"Yes, but you're ALONE here, and something might happen."

"Nothing could happen," interrupted Jack, quickly and cheerfully. He had flushed at first, but he was now considering that the carrying of a lady as expensively attired and apparently as delicate and particular as this one might be somewhat difficult. "There's nothin' that would hurt ye here," he continued, addressing the velvet cap and furred throat in the darkness, "and if there was it couldn't get at ye, bein', so to speak, in the same sort o' fix as you. So you're all right," he added positively.

Inconsistently enough, the young lady did not accept this as gratefully as might have been imagined, but Jack did not see the slight flash of her eye as, ignoring him, she replied markedly to her father, "I'd much rather stop here, papa."

"And," continued Jack, turning also to her father, "you can keep the wagon and the whole gorge in sight from the trail all the way up. So you can see that everything's all right. Why, I saw YOU from the first."

He stopped awkwardly, and added, "Come along; the sooner we're off the quicker the job's over."

"Pray don't delay the gentleman and--the job," said Miss Amy sweetly.

Rea.s.sured by Jack's last suggestion, her father followed him with the driver and the second man of the party, a youngish and somewhat undistinctive individual, but to whose gallant anxieties Miss Amy responded effusively. Nevertheless, the young lady had especially noted Jack's confession that he had seen them when they first entered the gorge. "And I suppose," she added to herself mentally, "that he sat there with his boozing companions, laughing and jeering at our struggles."