The Courage of Marge O'Doone Part 19

"I can climb it," she cried, with an excitement which he had not seen in her before. "I can climb it--and travel all night--to tell Brokaw and Hauck I don't belong to them any more, and that we're going away! Brokaw will be like a mad beast, and before we go I'll scratch his eyes out!"

"Good Lord!" gasped David under his breath.

"And if Hauck swears at me I'll scratch _his_ out!" she declared, trembling in the glorious antic.i.p.ation of her vengeance. "I'll ... I'll scratch _his_ out, anyway, for what he did to Nisikoos!"

David stared at her. She was looking away from him, her eyes on the break between the mountains, and he noticed how tense her slender body had become and how tightly her hands were clenched.

"They won't dare to touch me or swear at me when you are there," she added, with sublime faith.

She turned in time to catch the look in his face. Swiftly the excitement faded out of her own. She touched his arm, hesitatingly.

"Wouldn't ... you want me ... to scratch out their eyes?" she asked.

He shook his head.

"It wouldn't do," he said. "We must be very careful. We mustn't let them know you ran away. We must tell them you climbed up the mountain, and got lost."

"I never get lost," she protested.

"But we must tell them that just the same," he insisted. "Will you?"

She nodded emphatically.

"And now, before we start, tell me why they haven't followed you?"

"Because I came over the mountain," she replied, pointing again toward the break. "It's all rock, and Tara left no marks. They wouldn't think we'd climb over the range. They've been looking for us in the other valley if they have hunted for us at all. We were going to climb over _that_ range, too." She turned so that she was pointing to the south.

"And then?"

"There are people over there. I've heard Hauck talk about them."

"Did you ever hear him speak of a man by the name of Tavish?" he asked, watching her closely.

"Tavish?" She pursed her lips into a red "O," and little lines gathered thoughtfully between her eyes. "Tavish? No-o-o, I never have."

"He lived at one time on Firepan Creek. Had small-pox," said David.

"That is terrible," the girl shuddered. "The Indians die of it up here.

Hauck says that my father and mother died of small-pox, before I could remember. It is all like a dream. I can see a woman's face sometimes, and I can remember a cabin, and snow, and lots of dogs. Are you ready to go?"

He shouldered his pack, and as he arranged the straps Marge ran to Tara.

At her command the big beast rose slowly and stood before her, swinging his head from side to side, his jaws agape. David called to Baree and the dog came to him like a streak and stood against his leg, snarling fiercely.

"Tut, tut," admonished David, softly, laying a hand on Baree's head.

"We're all friends, boy. Look here!"

He walked straight over to the grizzly and tried to induce Baree to follow him. Baree came half way and then sat himself on his haunches and refused to budge another inch, an expression so doleful in his face that it drew from the girl's lips a peal of laughter in which David found it impossible not to join. It was delightfully infectious; he was laughing more with her than at Baree. In the same breath his merriment was cut short by an unexpected and most amazing discovery. Tara, after all, had his usefulness. His mistress had vaulted astride of him, and was nudging him with her heels, leaning forward so that with one hand she was pulling at his left ear. The bear turned slowly, his finger-long claws clicking on the stones, and when his head was in the right direction Marge released his ear and spoke sharply, beating a tattoo with her heels at the same time.

"_Neah_, Tara, _Neah_!" she cried.

After a moment's hesitation, in which the grizzly seemed to be getting his bearings, Tara struck out straight for the break between the mountains, with his burden. The girl turned and waved a beckoning hand at David.

"_Pao_! you must hurry!" she called to him, laughing at the astonishment in his face.

He had started to fill his pipe, but for the next few minutes he forgot that the pipe was in his hand. His eyes did not leave the huge beast, ambling along a dozen paces ahead of him, or the slip of a girl who rode him. He had caught a glimpse of Baree, and the dog's eyes seemed to be bulging. He half believed that his own mouth was open when the girl called to him. What had happened was most startlingly unexpected, and what he stared at now was a wondrous sight! Tara travelled with the rolling, slouching gait typical of the wide-quartered grizzly, and the girl was a sinuous part of him--by all odds the most wonderful thing in the world to David at this moment. Her hair streamed down her back in a cascade of sunlit glory. She flung back her head, and he thought of a wonderful golden-bronze flower. He heard her laugh, and cry out to Tara, and when the grizzly climbed up a bit of steep slide she leaned forward and became a part of the bear's back, her curls shimmering in the thick ruff of Tara's neck. As he toiled upward in their wake, he caught a glimpse of her looking back at him from the top of the slide, her eyes shining and her lips smiling at him. She reminded him of something he had read about Leucosia, his favorite of the "Three Sirens," only in this instance it was a siren of the mountains and not of the sea that was leading him on to an early doom--if he had to keep up with that bear! His breath came more quickly. In ten minutes he was gasping for wind, and in despair he slackened his pace as the bear and his rider disappeared over the crest of the first slope. She was waving at him then, fully two hundred yards up that infernal hill, and he was sure that she was laughing. He had almost reached the top when he saw her sitting in the shade of a rock, watching him as he toiled upward. There was a mischievous seriousness in the blue of her eyes when he reached her side.

"I'm sorry, _Sakewawin_," she said, lowering her eyes until they were hidden under the silken sheen of her long lashes, "I couldn't make Tara go slowly. He is hungry, and he knows that he is going home."

"And I thought you had sore feet," he managed to say.

"I don't ride him going _down_ a mountain," she explained, thrusting out her ragged little feet. "I can't hang on, and I slip over his head. You must walk ahead of Tara. That will hold him back."

He tried this experiment when they continued their ascent, and Tara followed so uncomfortably close that at times David could feel his warm breath against his hand. When they reached the second slope the girl walked beside him. For a half mile it was not a bad climb and there was soft gra.s.s underfoot. After that came the rock and shale, and the air grew steadily colder. They had started at one o'clock and it was five when they reached the first snow. It was six when they stood at the summit. Under them lay the valley of the Firepan, a broad, sun-filled sweep of scattered timber and green plain, and the girl pointed into it, north and west.

"Off there is the Nest," she said. "We could almost see it if it weren't for that big, red mountain."

She was very tired, though she had ridden Tara at least two thirds of the distance up the mountains. In her eyes was the mistiness of exhaustion, and as a chill wind swept about them she leaned against David, and he could feel that her endurance was nearly gone. As they had come up to the snow line he had made her put on the light woollen shirt he carried in his pack; and the big handkerchief, in which he had so long wrapped the picture, he had fastened scarf-like about her head, so she was not cold. But she looked pathetically childlike and out of place, standing here beside him at the very top of the world, with the valley so far down that the clumps of timber in it were like painted splashes. It was a half mile down to the first bit of timber--a small round patch of it in a narrow dip--and he pointed to it encouragingly.

"We'll camp there and have supper. I believe it is far enough down for a fire. And if it is impossible for you to ride Tara--I'm going to carry you!"

"You can't, _Sakewawin_" she sighed, letting her head touch his arm for a moment. "It is more difficult to carry a load down a mountain than up.

I can walk."

Before he could stop her she had begun to descend. They went down quickly--three times as quickly as they had climbed the other side--and when, half an hour later, they reached the timber in the dip, he felt as if his back were broken. The girl had persistently kept ahead of him, and with a little cry of triumph she dropped down at the foot of the first balsam they came to. The pupils of her eyes were big and dark as she looked up at him, quivering with the strain of the last great effort, and yet she tried to smile at him.

"You may carry me--some time--but not down a mountain," she said, and laid her head wearily on the pillow of her arm, so that her face was concealed from him. "And now--please get supper, _Sakewawin_."

He spread his blanket over her before he began searching for a camp site. He noticed that Tara was already hunting for roots. Baree followed close at his master's heels. Quite near, David found a streamlet that trickled down from the snow line, and to a gra.s.sy plot on the edge of this he dragged a quant.i.ty of dry wood and built a fire. Then he made a thick couch of balsam boughs and went to his little companion. In the half hour he had been at work she had fallen asleep. Utter exhaustion was in the limpness of her slender body as he raised her gently in his arms. The handkerchief had slipped back over her shoulder and she was wonderfully sweet, and helpless, as she lay with her head on his breast.

She was still asleep when he placed her on the balsams, and it was dark when he awakened her for supper. The fire was burning brightly. Tara had stretched himself out in a huge, dark bulk in the outer glow of it.

Baree was close to the fire. The girl sat up, rubbed her eyes, and stared at David.

"_Sakewawin_," she whispered then, looking about her in a moment's bewilderment.

"Supper," he said, smiling. "I did it all while you were napping, little lady. Are you hungry?"

He had spread their meal so that she did not have to move from her balsams, and he had brought a short piece of timber to place as a rest at her back, cushioned by his shoulder pack and the blanket. After all his trouble she did not eat much. The mistiness was still in her eyes, so after he had finished he took away the timber and made of the balsams a deep pillow for her, that she might lie restfully, with her head well up, while he smoked. He did not want her to go to sleep. He wanted to talk. And he began by asking how she had so carelessly run away with only a pair of moccasins on her feet and no clothes but the thin garments she was wearing.

"They were in Tara's pack, _Sakewawin_," she explained, her eyes glowing like sleepy pools in the fireglow. "They were lost."

He began then to tell her about Father Roland. She listened, growing sleepier, her lashes drooping slowly until they formed dark curves on her cheeks. He was close enough to marvel at their length, and as he watched them, quivering in her efforts to keep awake and listen to him, they seemed to him like the dark petals of two beautiful flowers closing slumbrously for the night. It was a wonderful thing to see them open suddenly and find the full glory of the sleep-filled eyes on him for an instant, and then to watch them slowly close again as she fought valiantly to conquer her irresistible drowsiness, the merest dimpling of a smile on her lips. The last time she opened them he had her picture in his hands, and was looking at it, quite close to her, with the fire lighting it up. For a moment he thought the sight if it had awakened her completely.

"Throw it into the fire," she said. "Brokaw made me let him take it, and I hate it. I hate Brokaw. I hate the picture. Burn it."

"But I must keep it," he protested. "Burn it! Why it's...."

"You won't want it--after to-night."

Her eyes were closing again, heavily, for the last time.