The Heart of Thunder Mountain Part 22

Honest! A mining deal, just for a flyer. It may mean millions or nothing. I am here for several days, possibly weeks. Won't you _please_ let me run up to see you? Don't say no, Marion. I promise to be good. I have an auto here, and they tell me the roads are O. K. at this season. I'll come away the minute you tell me to. If I can see you only for an hour it will make me very happy.

Yours always, Robert.

She read it twice, while the color slowly returned to her cheeks. Then the letter faded from her sight, and she saw a face that wore a cruel smile, and heard a voice that bade her begone. And suddenly a wave of resentment, of anger, swept over her. To have been scorned, flouted, humiliated by one to whom--And here was a man who wanted her as he wanted nothing else in the world, who would toil for her, die for her, who would treasure every word and smile she should consent to give him, whose one desire was to make her happy. What madness had come over her that she--she the Viking's daughter--Her eyes were drawn, she knew not how, to the columbines that she had carefully, tenderly arranged in a bowl on her dressing table. In a pa.s.sion she rushed upon them, s.n.a.t.c.hed them up dripping, bore them to the open window, and flung them with all her strength out upon the lawn. A moment she stood looking at them, her hands clutched upon her heaving breast, her whole body quivering with the storm that raged within her. Then she whirled around, flung herself down at her little writing table, and wrote:

Dear Robert: Yes, come. MARION.

Her hand trembled now so that she could scarcely address the envelope, and seal it. But it was done at last. She rose, and paused a moment to collect herself. Her mouth was dry, her forehead was hot under the hand that she pressed upon it. Nervously she poured a gla.s.s of water from the crystal pitcher that stood on a little table by the window, and gulped it down. Her eyes, as she did so, fell again upon the bouquet of columbines lying forlorn, their tender faces half buried in the dry gra.s.s. A cry rose to her lips, but she forced it back, and with a tightening of her lips, turned and went rapidly out into the room where Seth and Claire awaited her.

"What do you think?" she cried, in a voice that sounded strangely shrill and unmusical in her ears. "It's from Robert--Robert Hillyer--Papa's good friend--and mine. He wants to come up and see me--he's in Denver--on business. He wants to come up--he says--just for a day or two--do you mind--if I ask him?"

"Of course, dear!" cried Claire, with enthusiasm.

"Sure!" seconded Seth. "Tell him he's very welcome."

"I knew you'd say that!" said Marion excitedly. "So--the letter--it's all ready. Can it go out--the stage goes to-morrow, doesn't it?"

"Yes," replied Huntington. "I'll take it down in the morning--before you're up."

"Please!"

She stood a moment, smiling at them. Then her eyes wandered aimlessly around the room. She must do something quick, or she would go to pieces. She saw the piano, and fairly ran to it. Crash! went the chords. Rippling and tumbling on one another came the notes under her nervous fingers. Out of the jumble of unrelated sounds presently emerged a gay and sparkling melody; and then a gayer one; and after that a rollicking song from one of the latest musical comedies. There followed two of the sauciest, most irresponsible tunes that ever made a vaudeville success. She played with abandon, a kind of reckless fury, sitting erect, with her head flung back, an insouciant smile flickering about her lips, her lithe body swaying with the music. Then suddenly, in the midst of a tune, she stopped, arose, faced Seth and Claire with flaming cheeks and eyes unnaturally bright.

"Great, Marion!" cried Seth, slapping his thigh. "Go on, please!"

But Claire had seen what Huntington had not. She turned to him swiftly, with a quick command, as if she had suddenly remembered something.

"I've clean forgot that pie, Seth. Go to the cave and bring me some apples. Quick, now!"

He sensed something a little queer in that order, which would have been very natural and pleasing at any other time, but he did not stop to question. Claire waited until the door had closed behind him, then ran to Marion, with anxiety pictured in her face.

"What is it, Marion?" she exclaimed.

"Oh, Claire, Claire!" cried Marion, breaking. "I'm so--so--unhappy!"

Then she flung herself into Claire's arms, weeping without restraint.

CHAPTER XII

SUNNYSIDES

Marion was not alone in her misery; but knowledge of this, had it by any chance come to her, would not have eased her heart, though it might indeed have hardened it a little against more suffering to come.

Toward bedtime of the eighth day after that encounter at the glade of the columbines, Philip Haig sat stiffly silent in his armchair, staring into the fire. His brow was dark with discontent, his cheeks had paled with the slow ebbing of the tide of pa.s.sion that had swept over him. It had begun to rise, though he was not then aware of it, or barely aware of it, the day Marion had halted him in the road below his ranch house; it had reached its flood as he drove away from her and left the bouquet of columbines in her limp hands.

Who was this girl? And why had she come to torture him? To him she now appeared as the incarnation of his tragedy. In her the Past, from which he had fled to the far corners of the earth, hiding his trail in seas and deserts and in stagnant backwaters of humanity, had tracked him down at last. And all the grief and bitterness and hatred that he had beaten down, or thought he had beaten down, had returned to rend and tear him.

Two beings he had loved, and to them he had given, to each in a different way, all his heart and soul and mind: his father and--that other. She had come to him at his most susceptible age, when, devoted only to art, he knew nothing of the world--a green boy, the wise ones had called him. She had come to him with all the surprise and wonder of a revelation, a coronation, a fulfillment, a golden epiphany. He had attributed to her such spiritual perfections as should have gone with her beauty and her grace; worshipped her for all that she was not and all that he was himself. And she had deceived him, exploited him, plundered him,--and laughed at him when by chance, one tragic, intolerable night, he found her out. And the next morning, as if his cup were not already full, he had received a cablegram, in his attic studio in Paris, telling him that his father had killed himself in a moment of despair over financial difficulties. So he had killed his father with his excessive demands for money to squander on 'Tonite. To be sure, he did not know--had had no hint from home--had never guessed that his father was in trouble.

Nevertheless he had killed him--rather, she had killed him. What a fool he had been! Never such another fool since G.o.d placed man and woman together in one world. Cursing himself and her, and in her cursing all her s.e.x, he fled--he knew not where. So stunned and dazed he was that he never really came to himself, found himself, until one day he awoke in Hong Kong.

That was the beginning of the new life, if such it might be called. He became a wanderer, an adventurer, seeking always new faces, new places, new experiences, trying always to forget, hoping always for a blessed knock on the head in some mad undertaking, for a thin knife in the back in some wild adventure. But in all his wanderings the one kind of adventure that he refused, the one excitement that he steadfastly shunned, was the one that, because of his very aloofness, and of something that women ever saw in his eyes, was offered to him the most freely, in every land beneath the sun.

Slim Jim entered, bringing whisky and hot water. Haig turned his head to look at him. Jim never changed, whatever his environment; he was always the Orient, the inscrutable East. And now, slipping in so stealthily, he seemed to bring with him an atmosphere, an odor, a call, and Haig, still looking at Jim, but scarcely seeing him, began to murmur lines that intoxicated him:

"I know not where the white road runs, nor what the blue hills are, But man can have the sun for friend, and for his guide a star; And there's no end of voyaging when once the voice is heard, For the river calls and the road calls, and--"

He stopped and sat suddenly erect.

"Jim!" he cried. "Do you remember the night we took old Kw.a.n.g's girl away from the river rats in Tien-Tsin?"

"Vellee well," answered the Chinaman.

His face was expressionless; he concealed the joy that this mood of his master aroused in his thin breast. Jim did not like the Park, and only the recollection of one day when he had stood tied to a capstan on a pirate junk, with a dozen fiends around him trying to make him tell something he did not know, and Haig had suddenly descended upon them like the foreign devil he was,--well, Jim took his G.o.ds where he found them, and from that day Haig had never been able to rid himself of this idolater.

"Tien-Tsin! Tien-Tsin!" Haig repeated, lingering covetously on the words. "But that was a fight, eh!"

"No likee!" replied Jim.

"No likee!" cried Haig. "Why, you hypocritical young ruffian, you!

That was one of the happiest nights of your life. You're always trying to make people think you're asleep, or timid. I can see, right now, that long knife of yours slip under my arm, and catch the big fellow in the stomach. He just coughed once, and crumpled up at my feet. In the nick of time, too, Jim, and I let the next one have it. The rest of them took to their heels, and you with your long pigsticker after them. No likee! Jim, you're a moon-faced old liar, and a disgrace to your ten thousand and seven ancestors."

Jim's smile was perfectly noncommittal. He was too wily to appear eager. Besides, he did not really like fighting, which made all the more trouble for somebody when he had to fight. But he was heartily sick of this cold and uneventful life in the Park. Better a thousand times the foolish adventures, the unnecessary battles, the restless wanderings of other days!

"That was a night!" said Haig, flinging himself back in his chair to gaze dreamily into the flames, while Jim, like a blue ghost, stole noiselessly away. And there, in the glow of the dying fire, bright and alluring visions successively took shape: A red-and-yellow temple on a hill, to which a thousand steps led up from a lake the color of a blue heron's breast; a junk with sails of purple creeping out of a morning mist as yellow as saffron; an island with a still lagoon in its center, and coconut palms alive with screaming parrots of every gorgeous hue; a sandy beach where jabbering natives dragged the flotsam of a wrecked steamer out of the breakers; a village on a high plateau, where a drum throbbed incessantly, and naked Indian children peered out from behind the huts; a skirmish line in khaki crawling up to the brow of a sh.e.l.l-swept hill; a dog-team yelping under the long lash of a half-breed Aleut, on a frozen river that sparkled in the sun; a sweating jungle where two bright spots glowed balefully in the gloom.

"G.o.d!" groaned Haig, as he sat erect at last, and reached for the gla.s.s, now cold. He tasted it, and set it back with a wry face.

"d.a.m.n Thursby!" he muttered. "Does he think I'm going to stay here forever, like a bear in a pit?"

He woke the next morning in an ugly humor, having slept little, and then only to dream such dreams as fed his discontent. He berated Jim because the biscuits were cold (which was not Jim's fault), and because the coffee was hot (which was according to his orders).

Trivial annoyances, most of them of his own making or imagining, multiplied on all sides, fomenting his irritability until, by the time he strode out of the cottage, his temper was at white heat. What might have happened to the patient, devoted men about the stable and corrals is not difficult of conjecture, but they were saved by Sunnysides. Almost the first object that caught Haig's eye was the yellow outlaw gleaming in the morning sunlight.

"Ah!" he exclaimed.

His inner turmoil of these last few days had banished all thought of the stallion of the San Luis. But now, his eyes gleamed as he quickened his steps toward the stable.

Farrish and Pete were at work among the stalls; Bill stood guard over Sunnysides; and the fourth man, Curly, was mending a saddle in the harness-room.

"Farrish!" Haig called out, striding into the stable. "We'll tackle the yellow fellow this morning."

Farrish and Pete turned, and looked at him curiously.

"All right!" answered Farrish; and then added doubtfully: "Now?"

"Yes. At once."