The Dual Alliance Part 11

"No, trying to make you like life well enough to stay on a while."

"I'm staying until you're elected, anyhow."

"If you should decide to stay on after that, what could I do to interest you?"

She lifted her brows in question.

"It's only the governor you're interested in--his fight, his success.

I'm just the works inside his officialism."

"Like the stick inside the scarecrow," she smilingly a.s.sented.

"Exactly. Now will that scarecrow continue to interest you when he is set up in the gubernatorial field?"

"Depends on how the 'big stick' acts. I love a fight, you know."

"I see no peace ahead for me," he sighed.

"Better take it now," she said. "Look off there--peace like frozen music. Is there such a thing as a fight for governor, as Broadway, marionettes on a stage, turmoil and unrest? Bad cess to 'em, I'm going to bed," she ended abruptly.

"Good-night, Boy-Girl-Woman."

When her light was out he spoke through the open window: "Why don't you want to be intimate with me?"

"Oh, I think it's more interesting not to be," she answered.

"Do you think our present relations are interesting?"

"Rather," she answered sleepily.

They rarely came to the cabin after this except for supplies and fresh clothes. Day after day they spent in the saddle up on the heights. Bill found them insatiable, they gave him no rest. Barbara was introduced to a trout line and a mountain brook trout of her own catching. After that she insisted on visiting all the streams for miles around, where trout were to be found.

"Talk about a taste for whiskey, it's nothing to a taste for trout,"

said Bob.

"More exclusive, too," Paul added. "You can get whiskey on every corner in New York, but real fresh mountain trout you travel for."

"And work for, and suffer after!"

The usual plan was to break camp early. Paul and Barbara would fish upstream, while Bill led the ponies and met them at an appointed place to eat the catch. In her hip boots, with her basket on her shoulder, Bob waded the swift-running streams, or stood on the rocks above, the sun bright, the air like a new life fluid, time measured only by an ever-pursuing appet.i.te. Long talks with Paul at night, under the stars, hours of silence, save for a word now and then to her pony, sleep in the open, with a plunge in an ice pool at dawn. Life was reduced to the lowest common denominator, the natural companionship of man, woman, and nature.

"How do you suppose we ever wandered so far away from the real things?"

she asked him one day.

"What do you count the real things?" curiously.

"Life in the open; simple relations of people."

"Is Bill your highest ideal of man? By that definition he has the things that count."

"He's happier than either of us."

"Happy nothing! He's contented--tight in the only rut he knows. His mind is as active as rutebaga." She laughed at the homely word, but he went on with the idea. "Do you think he thrills at your mountains--sings rude hymns to your sunsets? Not he. The mountains are made for tourists, tourists are made for guides. As for sunset, well, that means time to sleep."

"Oh, Paul," she protested.

"It's true. Your 'plain man of the soil' is a hero only in novels. In real life he is apt to be a grub."

"I'd rather be a grub than a Broadway Johnny."

"Oh, let's talk about a man," he suggested, smiling.

"But where will you find him?"

"Somewhere between your two extremes. A man's sensibilities have to be opened to nature by training, as his mind is to books. You said it yourself, 'he's got to use all of himself.'"

In all their days of closest intercourse, there was no hint of sentiment. They were two good chums, off holiday making, that was all.

What might come later, what was to be their ultimate relation, this sufficed for now. They both unconsciously protected this interim, this breathing s.p.a.ce, before they faced a possible upheaval in their lives.

The day was fair and the trout biting well. Barbara stood on a rock while Paul cast in midstream below her. All at once her line went taut and she began to play her fish. Nearer and nearer the edge of the high rock he drew her, more and more excited she became with the struggle.

All at once Paul heard a mighty splash, and strode to the rescue. She sat shoulder deep in the swift stream, as she had fallen, but with grim determination she played her fish!

"Take my line while I get up!" she ordered, transferring it.

"Are you hurt?" he asked.

"No, I sat down for the fun of it, Mister!" she snapped, as she got to her feet. "Give me that!" He grinned and resigned her rod to her and watched her land her antagonist.

"There," said she, plumping him into Paul's basket. "He was a good fighter and a diplomat. He thought if he drowned me I'd let go."

"He was a poor judge of character," Paul remarked.

"Gee! I'm wet!" she exclaimed.

"Naturally--you swam after him. I thought you were drowned when I heard the splash. We'd better follow Bill to camp and get you dried out."

"Oh, no, not with them biting a mile a minute," she protested.

"But you're wet to the skin."

"I won't melt."

"This isn't the last day of the world, you know. Have you got dry clothes in your kit?"

"Shirt, but no breeches."

"Bill will have to make a fire and hang you on the line."

"I'll go, but you stay on. I'll come back when I'm dry."