The Golden Woman Part 42

He waited. It seemed ages, but in reality it was only moments.

Presently Joan looked up. She raised her eyes timidly, and in a moment Buck saw that they were filled with unshed tears. He started forward, but she shrank back farther. But it was not with repugnance. Her movement was almost reluctant, yet it was decided. It was sufficient for the man, and slowly, hopelessly he dropped his arms to his sides as the girl's voice so full of distress at last broke the silence.

"Oh, Buck, Buck, why--oh, why have you said these things to me? You don't know what you have done. Oh, it was cruel of you."

"Cruel?" Buck started. The color faded from his cheeks. "Me cruel--to you?"

"Yes, yes. Don't you understand? Can't you see? Now--now there is nothing left but--disaster. Oh, to think that I should have brought this upon you--you of all men!"

Buck's eyes suddenly lit. Unversed as he was in all such matters, he was not blind to the feeling underlying her words. But the light swiftly died from his eyes as he beheld the great tears roll slowly down the girl's fair cheeks, and her face droop forward into her hands.

In a moment all restraint was banished in the uprising of his great love. Without a thought of consequences he bridged the intervening s.p.a.ce at one step, and, in an instant, his arms were about the slim, yielding figure he so tenderly loved. In a moment his voice, low, tender, yet wonderful in its consoling strength, was encouraging her.

"Disaster?" he said. "Disaster because I love you? Where? How? Say, there's no disaster in my love for you. There can't be. All I ask, all I need is jest to make your path--easier. Your troubles ain't yours any longer. They sure ain't. They're mine, now, if you'll jest hand 'em to me. Disaster? No, no, little gal. Don't you to cry. Don't. Your eyes weren't made for cryin'. They're jest given you to be a man's hope. For you to see just how much love he's got for you."

Joan submitted to his embrace for just so long as he was speaking.

Then she looked up with terrified eyes and released herself.

"No, no, Buck. I must not listen. I dare not. It is my fate. My terrible fate. You don't understand. Beasley was right. I _was_ responsible for Ike's death. For Pete's death. But not in the way he meant. It is my curse. They loved me, and--disaster followed instantly. Can't you see? Can't you see? Oh, my dear, can't you see that this same disaster must dog you--now?"

Buck stared. Then he gathered himself together.

"Your fate?"

"Yes, yes. I am cursed. Oh," Joan suddenly gave a shrill laugh that was painful to hear. "Every man that has ever told me--what you have told me--has met with disaster, and--death."

For one second no sound broke the stillness of the barn but the restless movements of Caesar. Then, suddenly, a laugh, a clear, buoyant laugh, full of defiance, full of incredulity, rang through the building.

It was Buck. He moved forward, and in a moment the girl was lying close upon his breast.

"Is that the reason you mustn't, daren't, listen to me?" he cried, in a voice thrilling with hope and confidence. "Is that the only reason?

Jest because of death an' disaster to me? Jest that, an'--nothing more? Tell me, little gal. Tell me or--or I'll go mad."

"Yes, yes. But oh, you don't----"

"Yes, I do. Say, Joan, my little, little gal. Tell me. Tell me right now. You ain't--hatin' me for--for loving you so bad. Tell me."

Joan hid her face, and the tall man had to bend low to catch her words.

"I couldn't hate you, Buck. I--I----"

But Buck heard no more. He almost forcibly lifted the beautiful, tearful face to his, as he bent and smothered it with kisses.

After a few moments he stood her away from him, holding her slight shoulders, one in each hand. His dark eyes were glowing with a wild happiness, a wonderful, reckless fire, as he peered into her blushing face.

"You love me, little gal? You love me? Was ther' ever such a thought in the mind of sane man? You love me? The great big G.o.d's been mighty good to me. Disaster? Death? Let all the powers of man or devil come along, an' I'll drive 'em back to the h.e.l.l they belong to."

CHAPTER XXVI

IRONY

The hills roll away, banking on every side, mounting up, pile on pile, like the mighty waves of a storm-swept ocean. The darkening splendor, the magnificent ruggedness crowds down upon the narrow open places with a strange sense of oppression, almost of desolation. It seems as if nothing on earth could ever be so great as that magnificent world, nothing could ever be so small as the life which peoples it.

The oppression, the desolation grows. The silent shadows of the endless woods crowd with a suggestion of horrors untold, of mysteries too profound to be even guessed at. A strange feeling as of a reign of enchantment pervading sets the flesh of the superst.i.tious creeping.

And the narrow, patchy sunlight, by its brilliant contrast, only serves to aggravate the sensitive nerves.

Yet in the woods lurk few enough dangers. It is only their dark stillness. They are still, still in the calm of the brightest day, or in the chill of a windless night. A timid bear, a wolf who spends its desolate life in dismal protest against a solitary fate, the crashing rush of a startled caribou, the deliberate bellow of a bull moose, strayed far south from its northern fastnesses. These are the harmless creatures peopling the obscure recesses. For the rest, they are the weird suggestions of a sensitive imagination.

The awe, however, is undeniable and the mind of man can never wholly escape it. Familiarity may temper, but inborn human superst.i.tion is indestructible. The brooding silence will shadow the lightest nature.

The storms must ever inspire wonder. The gloom hushes the voice. And so the growing dread. Man may curse the hills in his brutal moments, the thoughtful may be driven to despair, the laughter-loving may seek solace in tears of depression. But the fascination clings. There is no escape. The cloy of the seductive drug holds to that world of mystery, and they come to it again, and yet again.

Something of all this was vaguely drifting through the mind of one of the occupants of a four-horsed, two-wheeled spring cart as it rose upon the monstrous shoulder of one of the greater hills. Before it lay a view of a dark and wild descent, sloping away unto the very bowels of a pit of gloom. The trail was vague and bush-grown, and crowding trees dangerously narrowed it. To the right the hill fell sharply away at the edge of the track, an abyss that might well have been bottomless for aught that could be seen from above. To the left the crown of the hill rose sheer and barren, and only at its foot grew the vegetation that so perilously narrowed the track. Then, ahead, where the trail vanished, a misty hollow, dark and deep--the narrowing walls of a black canyon.

The blue eyes of the teamster were troubled. Was there ever such a country for white man to travel? His horses were jaded. Their lean sides were tuckered. Gray streaks of sweat scored them from shoulder to flank.

The man lolled heavily in his driving seat in the manner of the prairie teamster. He knew there was trouble ahead, but it was practically all he did know of the journey before him.

As the cart topped the rise he bestirred himself. His whip flicked the air without touching the horses, and he chirrupped encouragingly. The weary but willing creatures raised their drooping heads, their ribs expanded as they drew their "tugs" taut, and, at a slow, shuffling trot, they began the descent.

A voice from behind caused the man to glance swiftly over his shoulder.

"It's no use asking you where we are now, I suppose?" it said in a peevish tone.

But the teamster's mood was its match.

"Not a heap, I guess, ma'm," he retorted, and gave up his attention to avoiding the precipice on his right.

"How far is the place supposed to be?"

The woman's unease was very evident. Her eyes were upon the darkening walls of the canyon toward which they were traveling.

"Eighty miles from Crowsfoot. That's how the boss said, anyways."

"How far have we come now?"

The man laughed. There seemed to be something humorous in his pa.s.senger's inquiries.

"Crowsfoot to Snarth's farm, thirty-five miles, good. Snarth's to Rattler Head, thirty. Sixty-five. Fifteen into this precious camp on Yellow Creek. Guess we bin comin' along good since sun-up, an' now it's noon. Countin' our stop fer breakfast we ought to make thirty odd miles. Guess we come a good hundred." He laughed again.

The woman gave an exclamation of impatience and vexation.

"I think your employer ought to be ashamed of himself sending you to do the journey. You don't know where you are, or what direction we're going in. The horses are nearly foundered, and we may be miles and miles from our destination. What are you going to do?"

"Ke'p goin' jest as long as the hosses ken ke'p foot to the ground.