The Rim of the Desert Part 12

"You believe she might have influenced him, but I do not. Oh, I see, I see, how you have measured him by your own great heart. But"--she turned towards him and went on slowly, her voice fluctuating in little, steadying pauses--"even if you were right, you might be generous; you might try to imagine her side. Suppose she had not guessed his--need--of her; been able to read, as you did, between the lines. Sometimes a woman waits to be told. A proud woman does." She came back the few steps. "Beatriz Weatherbee isn't the kind of woman you think she is. She has faults, of course, but she has tried to make the best of her life. If she made a mistake--or thought she had--no one else knew it. She braved it through.

She's been high-strung, too."

Tisdale put up his hand. "Don't say any more; don't try to excuse her to me. It's of no use. Good night." But a few feet from the porch he stopped to add, less grimly: "I should have said good morning. You see how that pyramid stands out against that pale streak of horizon. There is only time for a nap before sunrise. Day is breaking."

She was silent, but something in the intensity of her gaze, the unspoken appeal that had also a hint of dread, the stillness of her small face, white in the uncertain light when so lately he had seen it sparkle and glow, brought him back.

"I've tired you out," he said. "I shouldn't have told you that story. But this outlook to-night reminded me of that other canyon, and I thought it might help to bridge over the time. There's nothing can tide one through an unpleasant situation like hearing about some one who fared worse. And I hadn't meant to go so far into details. I'm sorry," and he held out his hand, "but it was your interest, sympathy, something about you, that drew me on."

She did not answer directly. She seemed to need the moment to find her voice and bring it under control. Then, "Any one must have been interested," she said, and drew away her hand. "You have the story-teller's gift. And I want to thank you for making it all so clear to me; it was a revelation."

CHAPTER IX

THE DUNES OF THE COLUMBIA

Behind them, as Tisdale drove down, the heights they had crossed were still shrouded in thunder-caps, but before them the end of the Wenatchee range lifted clear-cut, in a mighty promontory, from the face of the desert. Already the morning sun gave a promise of heat, and as the bays rounded a knoll, Miss Armitage raised her hands to shade her eyes.

"What color!" she exclaimed. "How barbarous! How ages old! But don't say this is the Columbia, Mr. Tisdale. I know it is the Nile. Those are the ruins of Thebes. In a moment we shall see the rest of the pyramids and the Sphinx."

Tisdale brought the horses around a sand-pit in the road which began to parallel the river, rolling wide and swift and intensely blue, where the rapids ceased, then he glanced at the other sh.o.r.e, where fantastic columns and broken walls of granite rose like a ruined city through a red glory.

"It is worth coming from New York to see, but you have traveled abroad. Do you know, that disappoints me. A true American should see America first."

"Then I confess." The girl laughed softly. "I haven't been nearer the Nile than a lantern-slide lecture and the moving-picture show. But my father knew Egypt when he was a boy; maybe I've inherited some memories, too."

Her enthusiasm was irresistible. Looking into her glowing face, the mirth-provoking lines broke and re-formed at the corners of his own mouth and eyes.

"But," he explained after a moment, "this desert of the Columbia is not old; it's tremendously new; so new that Nature hasn't had time to take the scaffolding away. You know--do you not--this was all once a great inland sea? Countless glacial streams brought wash down from the mountains, filling the shallows with the finest alluvial earth. Then, in some big upheaval, one or perhaps several of these volcanic peaks poured down a strata of lava and ash. As the ice tongues receded, the streams gradually dried; only the larger ones, fed far back in the range, are left to-day."

"How interesting!" Her glance swept upward and backward along the heights and returned to the levels. "And naturally, as the bed of the sea was laid bare, these last streams found the lowest depression, the channel of the Columbia."

Her quickness, her evident desire to grasp the great scheme of things, which other women received with poorly veiled indifference, often hurried to evade, warmed his scientist soul. "Yes," he answered, "Nature remembered, while she was busy, to construct the main flume. She might as well have said, when it was finished: 'Here are some garden tracts I reclaimed for you. Now get to work; show what you can do.'"

"And are you going to?" Her voice caught a little; she watched his face covertly yet expectantly, her breath arrested, with parted lips.

"Perhaps. I am on my way to find a certain garden spot that belonged to David Weatherbee. He knew more about reclamation than I, for he grew up among your California orchards, but I have the plans he drew; I ought to be able to see his project through."

"You mean you may buy the land, Mr. Tisdale, if--things--are as you expect?"

"Yes, provided I have Mrs. Weatherbee's price."

"What do you consider the tract is worth?"

"I couldn't make a fair estimate before I have been over the ground.

Seattle promoters are listing Wenatchee fruit lands now, but the Weatherbee tract is off the main valley. Still, the railroad pa.s.ses within a few miles, and the property must have made some advance since he bought the quarter section. That was over nine years ago. He was a student at Stanford then and spent a summer vacation up here in the Cascades with a party of engineers who were running surveys for the Great Northern. One day he was riding along a high ridge at the top of one of those arid gulfs, when he came to a bubbling spring. It was so cool and pleasant up there above the desert heat that he set up a little camp of his own in the shade of some pine trees that rimmed the pool, and the rest of the season he rode to and from his work. Then he began to see the possibilities of that alluvial pocket under irrigation, and before he went back to college he secured the quarter section. That was his final year, and he expected to return the next summer and open the project. But his whole future was changed by that unfortunate marriage. His wife was not the kind of woman to follow him into the desert and share inevitable discomfort and hardship until his scheme should mature. He began to plan a little Eden for her at the core, and to secure more capital he went to Alaska. He hoped to make a rich strike and come back in a year or two with plenty of money to hurry the project through. You know how near he came to it once, and why he failed. And that was not the only time. But every year he stayed in the north, his scheme took a stronger hold on him. He used to spend long Arctic nights elaborating, making over his plans. He thought and brooded on them so much that finally, when the end came, up there in the Chugach snows, he set up an orchard of spruce twigs--"

"I know, I know," interrupted Miss Armitage. "Please don't tell it over again. I--can't--bear it." And she sank against the back of the seat, shuddering, and covered her eyes with her hands.

Tisdale looked at her, puzzled. "Again?" he repeated. "But I see you must have heard the story through Mr. Feversham. I told it at the clubhouse the night he was in Seattle."

"It's impossible to explain; you never could understand." She sat erect, but Tisdale felt her body tremble, and she went on swiftly, with little breaks and catches: "You don't know the hold your story has on me. I've dreamed it all over at night; I've wakened cold and wet with perspiration from head to foot, as though I--too--were struggling through those frozen solitudes. I've been afraid to sleep sometimes, the dread of facing--it-- is so strong."

Watching her, a sudden tenderness rose through the wonder in Tisdale's face.

"So you dreamed you were fighting it through with me; that's strange. But I see the story was too hard for you; Feversham shouldn't have told it."

He paused and his brows clouded. "I wish I could make Weatherbee's wife dream it," he broke out. "It might teach her what he endured. I have gone over the ground with her in imagination, mile after mile, that long trek from Nome. I have seen her done for, whimpering in a corner, like the weakest husky in the team, there at the Aurora mine, and at her limit again up in Rainy Pa.s.s. And once lately, the night of the club supper, while I was lying awake in my room, looking off through the window to the harbor lights and the stars, I heard her crying deeply from the heart. She did not seem like herself then, but a different woman I was mighty sorry for."

Miss Armitage turned and met his look, questioning, hardly comprehending.

"That sounds occult," she said.

"Does it? Well, perhaps it is. But a man who has lived in the big s.p.a.ces has his senses sharpened. He sees farther; feels more."

There was a silent moment. The colts, topping a low dune, felt the pressure of the fills on the down-grade, and the nigh horse broke, turning the front wheel into a tangle of sage. "Mr. Tisdale," she cried a little tremulously, "do you think this is a catboat, tacking into a squall?

Please, please let me drive."

Her effort was supreme. It relieved the tension, and when the change was made, she drew to the edge of the seat, holding her head high like that intrepid flower to which he had compared her.

"You mean," she said evenly, "the terrible silence of your big s.p.a.ces keys up the subjective mind. That, of course, was the trouble with Mrs.

Barbour's husband. He allowed it to dominate him. But a man like you"--and she gave him her swift, direct look, and the shadow of a smile touched her mouth--"well-balanced, strong, would have kept the danger down. I should never be afraid--for you. But," she hurried on, "I can understand too how in the great solitudes some men are drawn together. You have shown me. I did not know before I heard your story how much a man can endure for a friend--and sacrifice."

Tisdale looked off over the desert. "Friendship up there does mean something," he answered quietly. "Mere companionship in the Alaska wilderness is a test. I don't know whether it's the darkness of those interminable winters, or the monotony that plays on a man's nerves, but I have seen the closest partners get beyond speaking to each other. It's a life to bring out the good and the bad in a man; a life to make men hate; and it can forge two men together. But David Weatherbee never had an enemy. He never failed a man. In a crisis he was great. If things had been reversed"--he set his lips, his face hardened--"if Weatherbee had been in my place, there at Nome, with a letter of mine in his hands, he wouldn't have thrown away those four days."

"Yes, he would. Consider. He must have taken time to prepare for that terrible journey. How else could he have carried it through?" She leaned forward a little, compelling his glance, trying to reason down the tragedy in his face.

"How can you blame yourself?" she finished brokenly. "You must not. I will not--let you."

"Thank you for saying that." Tisdale's rugged features worked. He laid his hand for an instant over hers. "If any one in the world can set me right with myself, it is you."

After that they both were silent. They began to round the bold promontory at the end of the Wenatchee range; the Badger loomed on the rim of the desert, then Old Baldy seemed to swing his sheer front like an opened portal to let the blue flood of the Columbia through. The interest crept back to her face. Between them and those guardian peaks a steel bridge, fine as a spider web, was etched on the river, then a first orchard broke the areas of sage, the rows of young trees radiating from a small, new dwelling, like a geometrical pattern. Finally she said: "I would like to know a little more about Mrs. Barbour. Did you ever see her again, Mr.

Tisdale? Or the child?"

"Oh, yes. I made it a point the next winter, when I was in Washington, to run down into Virginia and look them up. And I have always kept in touch with them. She sends me new pictures of the boy every year. He keeps her busy. He was a rugged little chap at the start, did his best to grow, and bright!"--Tisdale paused, shaking his head, while the humorous lines deepened--"But he had to be vigorous to carry the name she gave him. Did I tell you it was Weatherbee Tisdale? Think of shouldering the names of two full-sized men on that atom. But she picked a nice diminutive out of it-- 'Bee.'

"It was a great christening party," he went on reminiscently. "She arranged it when she pa.s.sed through Seattle and had several hours to wait for her train. The ceremony was at Trinity, that stone church on the first hill, and the Bishop of Alaska, who was waiting too, officiated. I was in town at the time, getting my outfit together for another season in the north, but Weatherbee had to a.s.sume his responsibilities by proxy."

"Do you mean David Weatherbee was the child's G.o.dfather?"

"One of them, yes." Tisdale paused, and his brows clouded. "I wish the boy had been his own. That would have been his salvation. If David Weatherbee had had a son, he would be here with us now, to-day."

Miss Armitage was silent. She looked off up the unfolding watercourse, and the great weariness Tisdale had noticed that hour before dawn settled again on her face.

He laid his hand on the reins. "You are tired out," he said. "Come, give the lines to me. You've deceived me with all that fine show of spirits, but I've been selfish, or I must have seen. The truth is, I've been humoring this hand."

"You mean," she said quickly, "this vixen did hurt you yesterday more than you would admit?"