The Girl of the Golden West Part 29

"It means you can't get off the mountain to-night," calmly answered the Girl.

"Good Lord!" fell from the man's lips.

"You can't leave this room to-night," went on the Girl, decidedly. "Why, you couldn't find your way three feet from this door--you a stranger!

You don't know the trail anyway unless you can see it."

"But I can't stay here?" incredulously.

"Why not? Why, that's all right! The boys'll come up an' dig us out to-morrow or day after. There's plenty o' wood an' you can have my bed."

And with no more ado than that, the Girl went over to the bed to remove the covers and make it ready for his occupancy.

"I wouldn't think of taking that," protested the man, stoutly, while his face clouded over.

The Girl felt a thrill at the note of regard in his voice and hastened to explain:

"I never use it cold nights; I always roll up in my rug in front of the fire." All of a sudden she broke out into a merry little laugh. "Jest think of it stormin' all this time an' we didn't know it!"

But Johnson was not in a laughing mood. Indeed, he looked very grave and serious when presently he said:

"But people coming up here and finding me might--"

The Girl looked up at him in blank amazement.

"Might what?" And then, while she waited for his answer, two shots in close succession rang out in the night with great distinctness.

There was no mistaking the nearness of the sound. Instantly scenting trouble and alert at the possibility of danger, Johnson inquired:

"What's that? What's that?"

"Wait! Wait!" came back from the Girl, unconsciously in the same tone, while she strained her ears for other sounds. She did not have long to wait, however, before other shots followed, the last ones coming from further away, so it seemed, and at greater intervals.

"They've got a road agent--it's the posse--p'r'aps they've got Ramerrez or one o' his band!" suddenly declared the Girl, at the same time rushing over to the window for some verification of her words. But, as before, the wind was beating with great force against the frosted panes, and only a vast stretch of snow met her gaze. Turning away from the window she now came towards him with: "You see, whoever it is, they're snowed in--they can't get away."

Johnson knitted his brows and muttered something under his breath which the Girl did not catch.

Again a shot was fired.

"Another thief crep' into camp," coldly observed the Girl almost simultaneously with the report.

Johnson winced.

"Poor devil!" he muttered. "But of course, as you say, he's only a thief."

In reply to which the Girl uttered words to the effect that she was glad he had been caught.

"Well, you're right," said Johnson, thoughtfully, after a short silence; then determinedly and in short jerky sentences, he went on: "I've been thinking that I must go--tear myself away. I have very important business at dawn--imperative business . . ."

The Girl, who now stood by the table folding up the white cloth cover, watched him out of the corner of her eye, take down his coat from the peg on the wall.

"Ever sample one o' our mountain blizzards?" she asked as he slipped on his coat. "In five minutes you wouldn't know where you was. Your important business would land you at the bottom of a canyon 'bout twenty feet from here."

Johnson cleared his throat as if to speak but said nothing; whereupon the Girl continued:

"You say you believe in Fate. Well, Fate has caught up with you--you got to stay here."

Johnson was strangely silent. He was wondering how his coming there to-night had really come about. But he could find no solution to the problem unless it was in response to that perverse instinct which prompts us all at times to do the very thing which in our hearts we know to be wrong. The Girl, meanwhile, after a final creasing of the neatly-folded cover, started for the cupboard, stopping on the way to pick up various articles which the wind had strewn about the room.

Flinging them quickly into the cupboard she now went over to the window and once more attempted to peer out into the night. But as before, it was of no avail. With a shrug she straightened the curtains at the windows and started for the door. Her action seemed to quicken his decision, for, presently, with a gesture of resignation, he threw down his hat and coat on the table and said as if speaking to himself:

"Well, it is Fate--my Fate that has always made the thing I shouldn't do so easy." And then, turning to the Girl, he added: "Come, Girl, as you say, if I can't go, I can't. But I know as I stand here that I'll never give you up."

The Girl looked puzzled.

"Why, what do you mean?"

"I mean," began Johnson, pacing the floor slowly. Now he stopped by a chair and pointed as though to the falling snow. "Suppose we say that's an omen--that the old trail is blotted out and there is a fresh road.

Would you take it with me a stranger, who says: From this day I mean to be all you'd have me. Would you take it with me far away from here and forever?"

It did not take the Girl long to frame an answer. Taking Johnson's hand she said with great feeling:

"Well, show me the girl that would want to go to Heaven alone! I'll sell out the saloon--I'll go anywhere with you, you bet!"

Johnson bent low over her hand and kissed it. The Girl's straightforward answer had filled his heart to overflowing with joy.

"You know what that means, don't you?" a moment later he asked.

Sudden joy leapt to her blue eyes.

"Oh, yes," she told him with a world of understanding in her voice.

There was a silence; then she went on reminiscently: "There's a little Spanish Mission church--I pa.s.s it 'most every day. I can look in an' see the light burnin' before the Virgin an' see the saints standin' round with gla.s.sy eyes an' faded satin slippers. An' I often tho't what they'd think if I was to walk right in to be made--well, some man's wife. It makes your blood like pin-points thinkin' about it. There's somethin'

kind o' holy about love, ain't they?"

Johnson nodded. He had never regarded love in that light before, much less known it. For many moments he stood motionless, a new problem of right and wrong throbbing in his bosom.

At last, it being settled that Johnson was to pa.s.s the night in the Girl's cabin, she went over to the bed and, once more, began to make it ready for his occupancy. Meanwhile, Johnson, seated in the barrel rocker before the fire, watched her with a new interest. The Girl had not gone very far with her duties, however, when she suddenly came over to him, plumping herself down on the floor at his feet.

"Say, did you ever ask any other woman to marry you?" she asked as she leaned far back in his arms.

"No," was the man's truthful answer.

"Oh, how glad I am! Take me--ah, take me I don't care where as long as it is with you!" cried the Girl in an ecstasy of delight.

"So help me, G.o.d, I'm going to . . .!" promised Johnson, his voice strained, tense. "You're worth something better than me, Girl," he added, a moment later, "but they say love works miracles every hour, that it weakens the strong and strengthens the weak. With all my soul I love you, with all my soul I--" The man let his voice die out, leaving his sentence unfinished. Suddenly he called: "Why, Min-Minnie!"

"I wasn't really asleep," spoke up the Girl, blinking sleepily. "I'm jest so happy an' let down, that's all." The next moment, however, she was forced to acknowledge that she was awfully sleepy and would have to say good-night.

"All right," said Johnson, rising, and kissed her good-night.

"That's your bed over there," she told him, pointing in the direction of the curtains.