The Forester's Daughter Part 25

Wayland, without really knowing anything about it, suspected that he owed his life to her intervention, and this belief deepened the feeling of admiration which he had hitherto felt toward her. He listened to her at work around the fire with a deepening sense of his indebtedness to her, and when she looked in to ask if she could do anything for him, his throat filled with an emotion which rendered his answer difficult.

As his mind cleared he became very curious to know precisely what had taken place, but he did not feel free to ask her. "She will tell me if she wishes me to know." That she had vanquished Belden and sent him on his way was evident, although he had not been able to hear what she had said to him at the last. What lay between the enemy's furious onslaught and the aid he lent in making the camp could only be surmised. "I wonder if she used her pistol?" Wayland asked himself. "Something like death must have stared him in the face."

"Strange how everything seems to throw me ever deeper into her debt," he thought, a little later. But he did not quite dare put into words the resentment which mingled with his grat.i.tude. He hated to be put so constantly into the position of the one protected, defended. And yet it was his own fault. He had put himself among people and conditions where she was the stronger. Having ventured out of his world into hers he must take the consequences.

That she loved him with the complete pa.s.sion of her powerful and simple nature he knew, for her voice had reached through the daze of his semi-unconsciousness with thrilling power. The touch of her lips to his, the close clasp of her strong arms were of ever greater convincing quality. And yet he wished the revelation had come in some other way. His pride was abraded. His manhood seemed somehow lessened. It was a disconcerting reversal of the ordinary relations between hero and heroine, and he saw no way of re-establishing the normal att.i.tude of the male.

Entirely unaware of what was pa.s.sing in the mind of her patient, Berrie went about her duties with a cheerfulness which astonished the sufferer in the tent. She seemed about to hum a song as she set the skillet on the fire, but a moment later she called out, in a tone of irritation: "Here comes Nash!"

"I'm glad of that," answered Wayland, although he perceived something of her displeasure.

Nash, on his way to join the Supervisor, raised a friendly greeting as he saw the girl, and drew rein. "I expected to meet you farther down the hill," he said. "Tony 'phoned that you had started. Where did you leave the Supervisor?"

"Over at the station waiting for you. Where's your outfit?"

"Camped down the trail a mile or so. I thought I'd better push through to-night. What about Norcross? Isn't he with you?"

She hesitated an instant. "He's in the tent. He fell and struck his head on a rock, and I had to go into camp here."

Nash was deeply concerned. "Is that so? Well, that's hard luck. Is he badly hurt?"

"Well, he had a terrible fall. But he's easier now. I think he's asleep."

"May I look in on him?"

"I don't think you'd better take the time. It's a long, hard ride from here to the station. It will be deep night before you can make it--"

"Don't you think the Supervisor would want me to camp here to-night and do what I could for you? If Norcross is badly injured you will need me."

She liked Nash, and she knew he was right, and yet she was reluctant to give up the pleasure of her lone vigil. "He's not in any danger, and we'll be able to ride on in the morning."

Nash, thinking of her as Clifford Belden's promised wife, had no suspicion of her feeling toward Norcross. Therefore he gently urged that to go on was quite out of order. "I _can't_ think of leaving you here alone--certainly not till I see Norcross and find out how badly he is hurt."

She yielded. "I reckon you're right," she said. "I'll go see if he is awake."

He followed her to the door of the tent, apprehending something new and inexplicable in her att.i.tude. In the music of her voice as she spoke to the sick man was the love-note of the mate. "You may come in," she called back, and Nash, stooping, entered the small tent.

"h.e.l.lo, old man, what you been doing with yourself? Hitting the high spots?"

Norcross smiled feebly. "No, the hill flew up and b.u.mped _me_."

"How did it all happen?"

"I don't exactly know. It all came of a sudden. I had no share in it--I didn't go for to do it."

"Whether you did or not, you seem to have made a good job of it."

Nash examined the wounded man carefully, and his skill and strength in handling Norcross pleased Berrie, though she was jealous of the warm friendship which seemed to exist between the men.

She had always liked Nash, but she resented him now, especially as he insisted on taking charge of the case; but she gave way finally, and went back to her pots and pans with pensive countenance.

A little later, when Nash came out to make report, she was not very gracious in her manner. "He's pretty badly hurt," he said. "There's an ugly gash in his scalp, and the shock has produced a good deal of pain and confusion in his head; but he's going to be all right in a day or two. For a man seeking rest and recuperation he certainly has had a tough run of weather."

Though a serious-minded, honorable forester, determined to keep sternly in mind that he was in the presence of the daughter of his chief, and that she was engaged to marry another, Nash was, after all, a man, and the witchery of the hour, the charm of the girl's graceful figure, a.s.serted their power over him. His eyes grew tender, and his voice eloquent in spite of himself. His words he could guard, but it was hard to keep from his speech the song of the lover. The thought that he was to camp in her company, to help her about the fire, to see her from moment to moment, with full liberty to speak to her, to meet her glance, pleased him. It was the most romantic and moving episode in his life, and though of a rather dry and a.n.a.lytic temperament he had a sense of poesy.

The night, black, oppressive, and silent, brought a closer bond of mutual help and understanding between them. He built a fire of dry branches close to the tent door, and there sat, side by side with the girl, in the glow of embers, so close to the injured youth that they could talk together, and as he spoke freely, yet modestly, of his experiences Berrie found him more deeply interesting than she had hitherto believed him to be. True, he saw things less poetically than Wayland, but he was finely observant, and a man of studious and refined habits.

She grew friendlier, and asked him about his work, and especially about his ambitions and plans for the future. They discussed the forest and its enemies, and he wondered at her freedom in speaking of the Mill and saloon. He said: "Of course you know that Alec Belden is a partner in that business, and I'm told--of course I don't know this--that Clifford Belden is also interested."

She offered no defense of young Belden, and this unconcern puzzled him.

He had expected indignant protest, but she merely replied: "I don't care who owns it. It should be rooted out. I hate that kind of thing. It's just another way of robbing those poor tie-jacks."

"Clifford should get out of it. Can't you persuade him to do so?"

"I don't think I can."

"His relationship to you--"

"He is not related to me."

Her tone amazed him. "You know what I mean."

"Of course I do, but you're mistaken. We're not related that way any longer."

This silenced him for a few moments, then he said: "I'm rather glad of that. He isn't anything like the man you thought he was--I couldn't say these things before--but he is as greedy as Alec, only not so open about it."

All this comment, which moved the forester so deeply to utter, seemed not to interest Berea. She sat staring at the fire with the calm brow of an Indian. Clifford Belden had pa.s.sed out of her life as completely as he had vanished out of the landscape. She felt an immense relief at being rid of him, and resented his being brought back even as a subject of conversation.

Wayland, listening, fancied he understood her desire, and said nothing that might arouse Nash's curiosity.

Nash, on his part, knowing that she had broken with Belden, began to understand the tenderness, the anxious care of her face and voice, as she bent above young Norcross. As the night deepened and the cold air stung, he asked: "Have you plenty of blankets for a bed?"

"Oh yes," she answered, "but I don't intend to sleep."

"Oh, you must!" he declared. "Go to bed. I will keep the fire going."

At last she consented. "I will make my bed right here at the mouth of the tent close to the fire," she said, "and you can call me if you need me."

"Why not put your bed in the tent? It's going to be cold up here."

"I am all right outside," she protested.

"Put your bed inside, Miss Berrie. We can't let conventions count above timber-line. I shall rest better if I know you are properly sheltered."

And so it happened that for the third time she shared the same roof with her lover; but the nurse was uppermost in her now. At eleven thousand feet above the sea--with a cold drizzle of fine rain in the air--one does not consider the course of gossip as carefully as in a village, and Berrie slept unbrokenly till daylight.

Nash was the first to arise in the dusk of dawn, and Berrie, awakened by the crackle of his fire, soon joined him. There is no sweeter sound than the voice of the flame at such a time, in such a place. It endows the bleak mountainside with comfort, makes the ledge a hearthstone. It holds the promise of savory meats and fragrant liquor, and robs the frosty air of its terrors.