The Rim of the Desert Part 16

She shrank back, trembling, against the rocky wall; she glanced about her with the swift, futile manner of a creature helplessly trapped, then she pressed her fingers an instant to her eyes and straightened. "You never will forgive yourself," she said; not in anger, not in judgment, but in a tone so low, so sad, it seemed to express not only regret but finality.

Tisdale was silent. After a moment he turned to the lower side of the basin, which afforded better foothold than the wall he had descended, and began to work up from niche to ledge, grasping a chance bunch of sage, a stunted bush of chaparral that grew in a cranny, to steady himself. And the girl stood aloof, watching him. Finally he reached a shelf that brought him, in touch with the obstruction overhead and stopped to take out his pocketknife, with which he commenced to create a loophole. Little twigs rained down; a larger branch fell, letting the daylight through. The roof was a mesh of pine boughs.

At last he closed his knife and, taking firm hold on a fixed limb, leaned to reach his other palm down to her. "Come," he said, "set your foot in that first niche--no, the left one. Now, give me your hand."

She obeyed as she must, and Hollis pushed backward through the aperture he had made, getting the bough under one armpit. "Now, step to that jagged little spur; it's solid. The right one, too; there's room." She gained the upper ledge and waited, hugging the wall pluckily while he worked out on the rim of the basin and, stretching full length, with the stem of the tree under his waist, reached his arms down to her. "You will have to spring a little," he directed, "and grip my shoulders hard. Now, come!"

At last she was safe beside him. In another moment he was up and helped her to her feet. They stood looking towards the mountain top. The dun cloud stalking now with trailing skirts in the direction of the snow-peaks, hurled back a parting threat. "It was the pine tree," she exclaimed. "It was struck. And, see! It has carried down most of that chimney. Our staircase is completely wrecked."

Tisdale was silent. Her glance came back to him. A sudden emotion stirred her face. Then all the conservatism dropped from her like a discarded cloak, and he felt her intrepid spirit respond to his own. Now she understood that moment in the basin; she knew it had been supreme; she was great enough to see there was nothing to forgive. "You were right," she said, and her voice broke in those steadying pauses that carried more expression than any words. "Fate was with us again. But I owe--my life--to you."

"Sometime," he answered slowly, smiling a little, "not now, not here, I am going to hold you to the debt. And when I do, you are going to pay me--in full."

The beautiful color, that was like the pink of coral, flamed and went in her face. "We must hurry back to the team," she said and turned to finish the descent to the bench. "Horses are always so nervous in an electrical storm." Then suddenly, as Tisdale pushed by to help her in a difficult place, she stopped. "How strange!" she exclaimed. "That terrible curtain has lifted from the desert. It threatened a deluge any minute, and now it is moving off without a drop of rain."

"That's so," he replied. "A cross current of wind has turned it up the Columbia. But the rain is there; it is streaming along those Chelan summits in a downpour."

"And look!" she cried, after a moment. "A double rainbow! See how it spans the Wenatchee! It's a promise." And the turquoise lights shone once more in her eyes. "Here in this desert, at last, I may come to my 'pot of gold.'"

"You mean," responded Tisdale, "now you have seen the spring, Weatherbee's project seems possible to you. Well, I have reconsidered, too. I shall not outbid you. That would favor Mrs. Weatherbee too much. And my interests are going to keep me in Alaska indefinitely. I should be obliged to leave the plans in the hands of a manager, and I had rather trust them to you."

Miss Armitage did not answer directly. She was watching the arch, painted higher now, less brilliantly, on the lifting film. The light had gone out of her face. All the bench was in shadow; in the valley below a twilight indistinctness had fallen. Then suddenly once more Cerberus stood forth like a beast of bra.s.s. She shivered.

"It isn't possible," she said. "It isn't possible. Even if I dared--for David's sake--to a.s.sume the responsibility, I haven't the money to carry the project through."

Tisdale stopped and swung around. They had reached the flat rock under the sentinel pine tree. "Did you know David Weatherbee?" he asked.

She was silent. He put his hands in his pockets and stood regarding her with his upward look from under slightly frowning brows. "So you knew David," he went on. "In California, I presume, before he went to Alaska.

But why didn't you tell me so?"

She waited another moment. In the great stillness Hollis heard her labored breathing. She put out her hand, steadying herself on the bole of the pine, then: "I've wanted to tell you," she began. "I've tried to--but--it was impossible to make you understand. I--I hadn't the courage."

Her voice fluted and broke. The last word was almost a whisper. She stood before Tisdale with veiled eyes, breath still coming hard and quick, the lovely color deepening and paling in her face, like a woman awaiting judgment. And it came over him in a flash, with the strength of conviction, that this beautiful, inscrutable girl wished him to know she had loved Weatherbee. Incredible as it seemed, she had been set aside for the Spanish woman. And she had learned about David's project; he himself perhaps had told her years ago in California. And though his wife had talked with Morganstein about platting the land into five-acre tracts to dispose of quickly, this woman had desired to see the property with a view to carrying out his plans. That was why she had continued the journey from Snoqualmie Pa.s.s alone. That was why she had braved the mountain drive with him. She had loved Weatherbee. This truth, sinking slowly, stirred his inner consciousness and, wrenched in a rising commotion, something far down in the depths of him lost hold. He had presumed to think, in the infinite scheme of things, this one woman had been reserved for him. He had dared to let her know he believed so; he had taken advantage of her helpless situation, on an acquaintance of two days. His own color began to burn through the tan. "You were right," he said at last, very gently, "I never can forgive myself. I can't understand it!" he broke out then, "if you had been his wife, David Weatherbee would have been safe with us here, to-day."

Miss Armitage started. She gave him a quick, searching glance, then sank down upon the rock. She seemed suddenly exhausted, like a woman who, hard-pressed in the midst of peril, finds unexpectedly a friendly threshold.

Tisdale looked off to the brazen slopes of Cerberus. It was the first time he had censured Weatherbee for anything, and suddenly, while he brooded, protesting over that one paramount mistake, he felt himself unaccountably responsible. He was seized with a compelling desire to, in some way, make it up to her. "Come," he said, "you mustn't lose heart; to-morrow, when you are rested, it will look easier. And the question of ready money need not trouble you. Mrs. Weatherbee has reached the point where she has got to hedge on the future. Make her an offer of five thousand dollars in yearly payments, say, of fifteen hundred. She'll take it. Then, if you agree, I will arrange a loan with a Seattle bank. I should allow enough margin to cover the first reclamation expenses. Your fillers of alfalfa and strawberries would bring swift returns, and before your orchards came into bearing, your vineyards would pay the purchase price on the whole tract."

He turned to her, smiling, and surprised a despair in her face that went to his heart.

"I thought, I hoped you meant to buy this land," she said.

"So I did, so I do, unless you decide to. And if you undertake this project, I pledge myself to see you through." His voice caught a pleading undernote. "It rests with you. Above every one it rests with you to even things for Weatherbee. Isn't that clear to you? Look ahead five years; see this vale green and shady with orchards; the trees laden with harvest; imagine his wife standing here on this bench, surveying it all. See her waking to the knowledge she has let a fortune slip through her hands; see her, the purchase price spent, facing the fact that another woman built her faith on David Weatherbee; had the courage to carry out his scheme and found it a bonanza. That is what is going to make her punishment strike home."

Miss Armitage rose. She stood a moment watching his face, then, "How you hate her!" she said.

"Hate?" Tisdale's laugh rang short and hard. "Well, I grant it; hate is the word. I hate her so much I've known better than go where she was; I've avoided her as an electrician avoids charged wire. Still, if I had found myself in Weatherbee's place; if I had made his mistake and married her, she should have felt my streak of iron. I might have stayed in Alaska as he did, but she would have stayed too and made a home for me, helped to fight things through." He paused and, meeting the appeal in her eyes, his face softened. "I've distressed you again," he added. "I'm sorry; but it isn't safe for me to speak of that woman; the thought of her starts my temperature rising in bounds. I want you to help me forget her. Yet, down in the depths of your heart you know you blame her."

"Yes, I blame her." Miss Armitage began to walk on towards the edge of the bench. "I blame her, but not as you do. I know she tried to do right; she would have gone to Alaska--if David had wished it--at the start. And she's been courageous, too. She's smiled--laughed in the face of defeat. Her closest friends never knew."

"You defend her. I wonder at that." Tisdale pa.s.sed her and turned to offer his help down the first abrupt pitch. "How you, who are the one to censure her the most, can speak for her always, as you do. But there you are like Weatherbee. It was his way to take the losing side; champion the absent."

"And there is where your resemblance stops," she answered quickly. "He lacked your streak of iron. Of course you know about your strange likeness to him, Mr. Tisdale. It is so very marked; almost a dual personality. It isn't height and breadth of shoulder alone; it's in the carriage, the turn of the head; and it creeps into your eyes sometimes; it gets into your voice. The first time I saw you, it was startling."

Tisdale moved on, picking up the trail they had made in ascending; the humor began to play reminiscently at the corners of his mouth. "Yes, I know about that resemblance. When we were on the Tanana, it was 'Tisdale's Twin' and 'Dave's Double.' A man has to take a name that fits up there, and we seemed to grow more alike every day. But that often happens when two friends who are accustomed to think in the same channels are brought into continual touch, and the first year we spent in the north together we were alone for weeks at a stretch, with no other human intercourse, not a prospector's camp within a hundred miles. The most incompatible partners, under those circ.u.mstances, will pick up subconsciously tricks of speech and gesture. Still, looking back, I see it was I who changed. I had to live up to Weatherbee; justify his faith in me."

Miss Armitage shook her head slowly. "That is hard to believe. Whoever tried to mould you would feel through the surface that streak of iron."

They had come to another precipitous place, and Tisdale turned again to give her the support of his hand. The position brought his face on a level with hers, and involuntarily she stopped. "But whatever you may say, Mr.

Tisdale," she went on, and as her palm rested in his the words gathered the weight of a pact, "whatever may--happen--I shall never forget your greatness to-day." She sprang down beside him, and drew away her hand and looked back to the summit they had left. "Still, tell me this," she said with a swift breathlessness. "If it had been David Weatherbee's wife up there with you when the thunderbolt struck, would it have made a difference? I mean, would you have left her to escape--or not--as she could?"

Tisdale waited a thoughtful moment. The ripple of amus.e.m.e.nt was gone; the iron, so near the surface, cropped through. "I can't answer that," he said. "I do not know. A man is not always able to control a first impulse, and before that pine tree fell there wasn't time to hesitate."

At this she was silent. All her buoyancy, the charming camaraderie that stopped just short of intimacy, had dropped from her. It was as though the atmosphere of that pocket rose and clung to her, enveloped her like a nimbus, as she went down. In the pent heat her face seemed cold. She had the appearance of being older. The fine vertical line at the corner of her mouth, which Tisdale had not noticed before, brought a tightness to his throat when he ventured to look at her. How could Weatherbee have been so blind? How could he have missed the finer, spiritual loveliness of this woman? Weatherbee, who himself had been so sensitive; whose intuition was almost feminine.

They had reached the final step from the bench to the floor of the vale when Hollis spoke again. "If you do decide to buy this land and open the project, I could recommend a man who would make a trusty manager."

"Oh, you don't understand," she replied in desperation "You don't understand. I should have to stay, to live in this terrible place for weeks, months at a time. I couldn't endure it. That dreadful mountain there at the gap would forever be watching me, holding me in."

Tisdale looked at her, knitting his brows, "I told you it was dangerous to allow yourself to feel the personality of inanimate things too much."

"I know. I know. And this terrible beast"--she paused, trying to steady her voice; her whole body trembled--"would remind me constantly of those awful Alaska peaks--the ones that crowded--threatened him."

Tisdale's face cleared. So that was the trouble. Now he understood. "Then it's all right"--the minor notes in his voice, vibrating softly, had the quality of a caress--"don't worry any more. I am going to buy this land of David's. Trust me to see the project through."

CHAPTER XII

"WHOM THE G.o.dS WOULD DESTROY"

Hope is an insistent thing. It may be strangled, lie cold and buried deep in the heart of a man, yet suddenly, without premonition, he may feel it rise and stretch small hands, groping towards a ray of light. So in that reminiscent hour while the train labored up through the Cascades to the great tunnel, Tisdale told himself this woman--the one woman for whom he must have been waiting all these years, at whose coming old and cherished memories had faded to shadows--was very near to loving him. Already she knew that those mysterious forces she called Fate had impelled them out of their separate orbits through unusual ways, to meet. Sometime--he would not press her, he could be patient--but sometime she would surely pay him that debt.

He dwelt with new interest on his resemblance to Weatherbee, and he told himself it was her constancy to David that had kept her safe. Then it came over him that if Weatherbee had married her instead of the Spanish woman, that must have been an insurmountable barrier between them to-day. As long as they lived, she must have remained sacred on her pedestal, out of reach. But how n.o.bly partisan she was; how ready to cross swords for Weatherbee's wife. That was the incredible test; her capacity for loving was great.

The porter was turning on the lights. Tisdale moved a little and looked across the aisle. For that one moment he was glad Weatherbee had made his mistake. She was so incomparable, so adorable. Any other woman must have lost attractiveness, shown at least the wear and tear of that mountain journey, but her weariness appealed to him as her buoyancy had not. She had taken off her hat to rest her head on the high, cushioned back of the seat, and the drooping curves of her short upper lip, the blue shadows under those outward curling black lashes, roused a new emotion, the paternal, in the depths of his great heart. He wished to smooth her ruffled hair; it was so soft, so vital; under the electric light it seemed to flash little answering blue sparks. Then his glance fell to her relaxed palms, open in her lap, and he felt a quick solicitude over a scratch the barbed fence must have made on one small, determined thumb.

They had had trouble with the horses in the vale. Nip, who had broken away during the storm, had been rounded in by the goat-woman and her returning collie. The travelers found her trying to extricate his halter which had caught, holding him dangerously close, in the wire fencing. It had taken caution and long patience to free him, and more to hitch the excited team.

The delay had caused them to miss the westbound evening train; they were forced to drive back and spend the night at Wenatchee. And the morning Oriental Limited was crowded with delegates from some mystic order on an annual pilgrimage. There was no room in the observation car; Tisdale was able to secure only single seats on opposite sides of the sleeper.

The train rumbled through the great tunnel and came to a brief stop outside the west portal. It was snowing. Some railroad laborers, repairing the track, worked in overcoats and sweaters, hat brims drawn down, collars turned up against the bitter wind. The porter opened the transoms, and a piercing draught pulled through the smoky, heat-laden car. Miss Armitage sat erect and inhaled a full breath. She looked across at Tisdale, and the sparkles broke softly in her eyes. "It's Wellington!" she exclaimed. "In a moment we shall be racing down to Scenic Hot Springs and on along the Skykomish--home." Then she stopped the porter. "Bring me a telegraph blank, please. I want to send a message from the Springs."

The limited, under way again, dropped below the cloud. Great peaks and shoulders lifted everywhere; they began to make the loop around an incredibly deep and fissure-like gorge. It was a wonderful feat of railroad engineering; people on the other side of the car got to their feet and came over to see. The girl, with the yellow blank in her hand, drew close to Tisdale's elbow. "Oh, no," she demurred, when he rose to offer his seat, "I only want standing room just a moment. There's going to be a delightful view of Scenic."

The pa.s.senger beside Hollis picked up his bag. "Take my place," he said.

"I am getting off at the Springs."

Then presently, when she had moved into the vacated seat next the window, the peaks stood apart, and far, far below the untouched forest at the summer resort stood out darkly, with the gay eaves and gables of the hotel etched on it like a toy Swiss chalet on a green plateau.