The Dual Alliance Part 9

After lunch Bill decreed a rest for man and beast. He made a couch of pine needles for Bob, threw down her blanket on it, and betook himself off with the ponies. Bob stretched out on her bed, Trent sitting beside her to smoke.

"Better take a nap," he suggested.

"Oh, I'm not at all sleepy," said she, and was off before she finished the sentence.

Trent sat, smiled, puffed, and looked off to the end of the world and back again at the sleeping girl. He lay on his back and stared up at the sky, glad of life, of health, glad, yes--he admitted it--glad of Barbara.

When Bill came back Paul laid his hand on Bob's and brought her to a sitting position, rubbing her eyes and blinking from deep sleep.

"I must have dropped off for a minute," she apologized.

"Yes, an hour or two."

"What?"

"You've been asleep for an hour."

"The divil I have! Did I miss anything?"

"A million-dollar panorama."

"Don't you let me sleep like that again, Paul Trent. I can sleep in a New York hotel to the tune of the Elevated. Did you sleep?"

"Yes."

"That helps some."

They rode through the late afternoon, when the air was like amber; through the time of the setting sun, when the world was like a gla.s.s prism of many colours; through the shadow time, when long bars of blue lay below in the valley to mark the mountains. Then, just before the red disk burned into the mountain top and disappeared, Bill announced camp for the night.

A mountain stream bounded and roared along beside the place. A hut had been set up by a logging gang, and a thick bed of hardwood chips and bark powder marked the spot where the forest giants had met their inglorious end. Bill attended to the ponies while Bob and Paul collected firewood.

Supper was a silent function--the silence of people who understand each other and need not talk. Bob smiled at Paul when their eyes met, and for the rest, they looked off over a sample of G.o.d's handiwork that made man-talk as futile as monkey chatter.

"Do ye want to sleep in the cabin, Mrs. Bob?"

They both smiled at his appropriation of her name.

"No, Bill, I want to sleep on that bank, in the tanbark beside the brook."

"It'll keep ye awake. Awful noisy critter."

"I don't care if it does. Besides, it won't. I'll pretend I'm a goldfish, and the mountain torrent is my home."

Bill grinned at that.

"Ye goin' to be a goldfish, too, Mr. Trent?"

"I'll roll up here by the fire."

"I'll take the cabin myself, then. Can ye keep awake till I clean up camp, or shall I shake down some beds now?"

"No, no, you go ahead with the housekeeping. We won't go to bed for hours," Bob answered.

She led the way up the trail a bit, Paul following.

"Bill has real tact--he's there when you want him, and only then."

"It is as near ideal as it can be," Paul a.s.sented. "You and I, and the world away," he added.

"There isn't any world--there's just earth and sky and G.o.d," said Bob softly.

"What about us?"

"We aren't us. We're blue shadows; the night will sap us up."

"No, no, I'm just beginning to be glad I'm I--to know what it means to live," he protested.

"I wonder if that is something to be glad for?" she mused.

It grew so dark that when Bill's shout reached them Paul had to grope his way down the trail first, Bob's hands on his shoulders as she came after him. Bill ordered them to turn in. They were to get an early start, and they needed sleep, because they were not broken in yet, they were still soft.

"There's a rocky bowl full of mounting water down there, where ye can wash," he said, pointing. "Here's yer bed, Mrs. Bob, and yer blankets is over there by the fire, Mr. Trent. I'll call ye in the mornin', if the sun don't git ye up."

He disappeared into the cabin, where a candle showed through the door.

"Let's go look at the bath-tub," said Bob. They clung together and made their way to the spot where the rocks made a pool. The moon was up, but the trees threw mysterious shadows across the water. Bob took a stick and plumbed it.

"It isn't deep."

"No, only noisy, I think."

"Paul, I'm going in. You go off up there in that clump of trees, so I can call you, if I drown."

"You aren't going into that torrent now, in the dark!"

"Yes, I am."

"You're crazy!"

"Please let me. It's perfectly safe, and I never wanted to do anything so much in my life."

"You funny child!" he said, and walked off, according to orders.

Bob slid out of her clothes and plunged boldly into the icy torrent. She jumped up and down and squealed, she tried to swim, she laughed up at the moon, and was back into her clothes in a jiffy. At her call Paul plunged out of the trees to the rescue.

"Lost your nerve, did you?"

"No, I've been in. It's wonderful. Now, I want a drink of brandy, and my bark bed."