The Rim of the Desert Part 7

"Oh," she exclaimed, "there must be thousands of them; how can the ones in the center breathe? Whoa, Nip, whoa now! Do you think you are one of those lambs? And there's no chance to go around; it is fenced with barbed wire on both sides; we simply must drive through, No, let me, please. Steady, now, Tuck, steady, whoa."

They had pa.s.sed the mounted herders, and the colts broke their way playfully, dancing, curveting with bowing necks, into the midst of the flock. Soon the figures of the advance shepherds loomed through the dust.

They were turning the sheep into a harvested field. They rolled in over the yellow stubble like a foaming sea. Far away, outlined like a sail against an island rick, the night tent of these nomads was already pitched.

Tisdale laughed softly. "Well, madam, that was skilful piloting. A bidarka couldn't have been safer riding in a skiddery sea."

"A bidarka?" she questioned, ruffling her brows.

Tisdale nodded. "One of those small skin canoes the Alaskan natives use.

And it's touchy as a duck; comes bobbing up here and there, but right-side up every time. And it's frail looking, frail as an eggsh.e.l.l, yet I would stake a bidarka against a lifeboat in a surf. Do you know?"--he went on after a moment--"I would like to see you in one, racing out with the whitecaps up there in Bering Sea; your face all wet with spray, and your hair tucked away in the hood of a gray fox parka. Nothing else would show; the rest of you would be stowed below in a wonderful little water-tight compartment."

"It sounds delightful," she said, and the sparkles broke in her eyes.

After that there was a long silence. The bays fell into an even trot. The mountains loomed near, then before them, on the limits of the plain, a mighty herd of cattle closed the road. The girl rose a little in her place and looked over that moving sea of backs. "We must drive through again,"

she said. "It's going to be stifling but there's no possible way around.

No," she protested, when he would have taken the reins, "I'm able. I learned once, years ago, on a great ranch in southern California. I'd rather." She settled in her seat smiling a little. "It's in the blood."

Tisdale reached and took the whip. They had pa.s.sed the drivers and were pushing into the herd. Sometimes a red-eyed brute turned with lowered horns and dripping mouth, then backed slowly out of the way of the team.

Sometimes, in a thicker press, an animal wheeled close to the tires and, stemming the current, sounded a protest. But the young horses, less playful now, divided the great herd and came at last safely out of the smother. The road began to lift, as they rounded the first rampart of the range, and Tisdale's glance fell to her hands. "Those gloves are done for, as I expected," he exclaimed. "I'll wager your palms are blistered. Come, own they hurt."

She nodded. "But it was worth it, though you may drive now, if you wish.

It's my wrists; they have been so long out of practice. You don't know how they a--che."

"So," he said, when he had taken the reins, "so you are as fond of horses as this."

"Horses like these, yes. I haven't felt as happy and young since I gave up Pedro and Don Jose."

Tisdale turned a little to look in her face. She had said "young" with the tone of one whose youth is past, yet the most conservative judge could not place her age a day over twenty-five. And she was so buoyant, so vibrant.

His pulses quickened. It was as though currents of her vitality were being continually transmitted through his veins.

As they ascended, the plain unfolded like a map below; harvest fields, pastures of feeding cattle or sheep, meadows of alfalfa, unreclaimed reaches of sage-brush, and, far off among her shade-trees, the roofs of Ellensburg reflecting the late sun. Above the opposite range that hemmed the valley southward some thunder-heads crowded fast towards a loftier snow-peak. Far away across the divide, white, symmetrical, wrought of alabaster, inlaid with opal, lifted a peerless dome.

"Mount Rainier!" exclaimed Tisdale.

"I knew it." Her voice vibrated softly. "Even at this distance I knew. It was like seeing unexpectedly, in an unfamiliar country, the head of a n.o.ble friend lifting above the crowd."

Tisdale's glance returned to her face. Surprise and understanding shone softly in his own. She turned, and met the look with a smile. It was then, for the first time, he discovered unsounded depths through the subdued lights of her eyes. "You must have known old Rainier intimately," he said.

She shook her head. "Not nearer than Puget Sound. But I have a marvelous view from my hotel windows in Seattle, and often in long summer twilights from the deck of Mr. Morganstein's yacht, I've watched the changing Alpine glow on the mountain. I always draw my south curtains first, at Vivian Court, to see whether the dome is clear or promises a wet day. I've learned a mountain, surely as a person, has individuality; every cloud effect is to me a different mood, and sometimes, when I've been most unhappy or hard-pressed, the sight of Rainier rising so serene, so pure, so high above the fretting clouds, has given me new courage. Can you understand that, Mr. Tisdale? How a mountain can become an influence, an inspiration, in a life?"

"I think so, yes." Tisdale paused, then added quietly: "But I would like to be the first to show you old Rainier at close range."

At this she moved a little; he felt the invisible barrier stiffen between them. "Mr. Morganstein promised to motor us through to the National Park Inn when the new Government road was finished, but we've been waiting for the heavy summer travel to be over. It has been like the road to Mecca since the foot of the mountain has been accessible."

There was a silence, during which Tisdale watched the pulling team. Her manner of reminding him of his position was unmistakable, but it was her frequent reference to young Morganstein that began to nettle him. Why should she wish specially to motor to Rainier with that black-browed, querulous nabob? Why had she so often sailed on his yacht? And why should she ever have been unhappy and hard-pressed, as she had confessed? She who was so clearly created for happiness. But to Tisdale her camaraderie with Nature was charming. It was so very rare. A few of the women he had known hitherto had been capable of it, but they had lived rugged lives; the wilderness gave them little else. And of all the men whom he had made his friends through an eventful career, there was only Foster who sometimes felt the magnitude of high places,--and there had been David Weatherbee.

At this thought of Weatherbee his brows clouded, and that last letter, the one that had reached him at Nome and which he still carried in his breast pocket, seemed suddenly to gather a vital quality. It was as though it cried out: "I can't stand these everlasting ice peaks, Hollis; they crowd me so."

Miss Armitage sat obliviously looking off once more across the valley. The thunder-heads, denser now and driving in legions along the opposite heights, stormed over the snow peak and a.s.sailed the far, shining dome.

"Oh," she exclaimed, "see Rainier now! That blackest cloud is lifting over the summit. Rain is streaming from it like a veil of gauze; but the dome still shines through like a transfigured face!"

Tisdale's glance rested a moment on the wonder. His face cleared. "If we were on the other side of the Cascades," he said, "that weather-cap would mean a storm before many hours; but here, in this country of little rain, I presume it is only a threat."

The bays began to round a curve and presently Rainier, the lesser heights, all the valley of Kitt.i.tas, closed from sight. They had reached the timber belt; poplars threaded the parks of pine, and young growths of fir, like the stiff groves of a toy village, gathered hold on the sharp mountain slopes. Sometimes the voice of a creek, hurrying down the canyon to join the Yakima, broke the stillness, or a desert wind found its way in and went wailing up the water-course. And sometimes in a rocky place, the hoof-beats of the horses, the noise of the wheels, struck an echo from spur to spur. Then Tisdale commenced to whistle cautiously, in fragments at first, with his glance on the playing ears of the colts, until satisfied they rather liked it, he settled into a definite tune, but with the flutelike intonations of one who loves and is accustomed to make his own melody.

He knew that this woman beside him, since they had left the civilization of the valley behind, half repented her adventure. He felt the barrier strengthen to a wall, over which, uncertain, a little afraid, she watched him. At last, having finished the tune, he turned and surprised the covert look from under her curling black lashes.

"I hope," he said, and the amus.e.m.e.nt broke softly in his face, "all this appraisal is showing a little to my credit."

The color flamed pinkly in her face. She looked away. "I was wondering if you blamed me. I've been so unconservative--so--so--even daring. Is it not true?"

"No, Miss Armitage, I understand how you had to decide, in a moment, to take that eastbound train in Snoqualmie Pa.s.s, and that you believed it would be possible to motor or stage across to Wenatchee from the Milwaukee road."

"Yes, but," she persisted, "you think, having learned my mistake, I should have stayed on the freight train as far as Ellensburg, where I could have waited for the next pa.s.senger back to Seattle."

"If you had, you would have disappointed me. That would have completely spoiled my estimate of you."

"Your estimate of me?" she questioned.

"Yes." He paused and his glance moved slowly, a little absently, up the unfolding gorge. "It's a fancy of mine to compare a woman, on sight, with some kind of flower. It may be a lily or a rose or perhaps it's a flaunting tulip. Once, up in the heart of the Alaska forest, it was just a sweet wood anemone." He paused again, looking off through the trees, and a hint of tenderness touched his mouth. "For instance," he went on, and his voice quickened, "there is your friend, Mrs. Feversham. I never have met her, but I've seen her a good many times, and she always reminds me of one of those rich, dark roses florists call Black Prince. And there's her sister, who makes me think of a fine, creamy hyacinth; the st.u.r.dy sort, able to stand on its own stem without a prop. And they are exotics, both of them; their personality, wherever they are, has the effect of a strong perfume."

He paused again, so long that this time his listener ventured to prompt him. "And I?" she asked.

"You?" He turned, and the color flushed through his tan. "Why, you are like nothing in the world but a certain Alaska violet I once stumbled on.

It was out of season, on a bleak mountainside, where, at the close of a miserable day, I was forced to make camp. A little thing stimulates a man sometimes, and the sight of that flower blooming there when violet time was gone, lifting its head next to a snow-field, nodding so pluckily, holding its own against the bitter wind, buoyed me through a desperate hour."

She turned her face to look down through the treetops at the complaining stream. Presently she said: "That is better than an estimate; it is a tribute. I wish I might hope to live up to it, but sooner or later," and the vibration played softly in her voice, "I am going to disappoint you."

Tisdale laughed, shaking his head. "My first impressions are the ones that count," he said simply. "But do you want to turn back now?"

"N--o, unless you--do."

Tisdale laughed again mellowly. "Then it's all right. We are going to see this trip through. But I wish I could show you that Alaska mountainside in midsummer. Imagine violets on violets, thousands of them, springing everywhere in the vivid new gra.s.s. You can't avoid crushing some, no matter how carefully you pick your steps. There's a rocky seat half-way up on a level spur, where you might rest, and I would fill your lap with those violets, big, long-stemmed ones, till the blue lights danced in your eyes."

They were doing that now, and her laugh fluted softly through the wood.

For that moment the barrier between them lost substance; it became the sheerest tissue, a curtain of gauze. Then the aloofness for which he waited settled on her. She looked away, her glance again seeking the stream. "I can't imagine anything more delightful," she said.

A rough and steep breadth of road opened before them, and for a while the bays held his attention, then in a better stretch, he felt her swift side-glance again reading his face. "Do you know," she said, "you are not at all the kind of man I was led to expect."

"No?" He turned interestedly, with the amus.e.m.e.nt shading the corners of his mouth. "What did you hear?"

"Why, I heard that you were the hardest man in the world to know; the most elusive, shyest."

Tisdale's laugh rang, a low note from the depths of his mellow heart. "And you believed that?"

She nodded, and he caught the blue sparkles under her drooping lids. "You know how Mrs. Feversham has tried her best to know you; how she sent you invitations repeatedly to dinner or for an evening at Juneau, Valdez, Fairbanks, and you invariably made some excuse."

"Oh, but that's easily explained. Summers, when she timed her visits to Alaska, I was busy getting my party into the field. The working season up there is short."