The White Desert Part 13

A quick smile flashed over the full lips.

"I didn't know, Barry. Pardon me."

Houston turned to the introduction, while Agnes Jierdon held forth a rather limp hand and while Ba'tiste, knit cap suddenly pulled from straggly gray hair, bent low in acknowledgment. Thayer, grumbling under his breath, started away. Houston went quickly toward him.

"You understood me?"

"Perfectly. I'm fired. I was good enough for your father, but you know more than he did. I was--"

"We won't go into that."

"There's nothing about it that I'm ashamed of."

Still the sneer was there, causing Barry's bandaged arm to ache for freedom and strength. "I don't have to go around hiding my past."

Houston bit down a retort and forced himself to the question:

"How long will it take you to get out of here?"

"I'll be out to-night. I don't stay where I'm not wanted. Needn't think I'll hang around begging you for a job. There are plenty of 'em, for men like me."

"One that I know of, in particular. I asked you when you could get out."

"An hour, if you're so impatient about it. But I want my check first."

"You'll get it, and everybody else connected with you. So you might as well give the word."

For a moment, Thayer stared at him in malignant hate, his gnarled hands twisting and knotting. Then, with a sudden impulse, he turned away toward the mill. A moment later the whistle blew and the saws ceased to snarl. Barry turned back to Agnes and Ba'tiste. The woman caught impulsively at his arm.

"Where on earth am I going to live, Barry?" she questioned. "I don't want to go back to town. And I can't stay in this deserted place, if every one is leaving it."

"I'll keep the cook. She can fix you a room in one of the cottages and stay there with you. However, it would be best to go back."

"But I won't." She shook her head with an attempt at levity. "I've come all this distance, worried to death every moment over you, and now I'm going to stay until I'm sure that everything's all right. Besides, Barry," she moved close to him, "you'll need me. Won't you? Haven't I always been near you when you've needed me? And aren't you taking on the biggest sort of job now?"

Houston smiled at her. True, she had always been near in time of trouble and it was only natural that now--

"Of course," came his answer. "Come, I'll have you made comfortable in the cottage." Then, as he started away, "May I see you, Ba'tiste, sometime to-night?"

"Ah, _oui_." The Canadian was moving toward his wagon and the waiting dog. "In the cabin."

Three hours later, the last of the men paid off, Agnes installed in the best of three little cottages in care of the motherly old cook, Barry Houston approached the door of Ba'tiste's cabin, the wolf-dog, who had picked him up a hundred yards away, trotting beside him. There was a light within; in the shadows by the grave, a form moved,--old Lost Wing. Medaine was there, then. Barry raised his hand to knock,--and halted. His name had been mentioned angrily; then again,--followed by the voice of the girl:

"I don't know what it is, Ba'tiste. Fred wouldn't tell me, except that it was something too horrible for me to know. And I simply can't do what you say. I can't be pleasant to him when I feel this way."

"But--"

"Oh, I know. I want to be fair, and I try to be. I speak to him when I meet him; isn't that enough? We're not old friends; we're hardly even acquaintances. And if there is something in his past to be ashamed of, isn't it best that we simply remain that way? I--"

Then she ceased. Houston had knocked on the door. A second later, he entered the cabin, to return Medaine Robinette's cool but polite greeting in kind, and to look apprehensively toward Ba'tiste Renaud.

But the old man's smile was genuine.

"We have been talk' about you, _oui_, yes!" he said. "Eh, Medaine?"

It was one of his thrusts. The girl colored, then turned toward the door.

"I'm afraid I've stayed longer than I intended," she apologized. "It's late. Good night."

Then she was gone. Houston looked at Ba'tiste, but the old French-Canadian merely waved a big hand.

"Woman," he said airily, "peuff! She is strange. Eet is nothing. Eet will pa.s.s. Now," as though the subject had been dismissed, "what mus'

Ba'teese do?"

"At the mill? I wish, if you don't mind, that you'd guard it for me.

I'm going to Denver on the morning train to hire a new crew. I don't want Thayer to do anything to the mill in my absence."

"Ah, _oui_. It shall be. You will sleep here?"

"If you don't mind? It's nearer Tabernacle."

"Bon--good! Golemar!" And the dog scratched at the door. "Come, we shall go to the mill. We are the watchmen, yes?"

"But I didn't mean for you to start to-night. I just thought--"

"There is no time like the minute," answered the Canadian quietly.

"To-night, you shall be Ba'teese, _oui_, yes. Ba'teese shall be you."

Pulling his knit cap on his head, he went out into the darkness and to the guardianship of the mill that belonged--to a man who looked like his Pierre. As for Houston, the next morning found him on the uncomfortable red cushions of the smoking car as the puffing train pulled its weary, way through the snowsheds of Crestline Mountain, on the way over the range. Evening brought him to Denver, and the three days which followed carried with them the sweaty smell of the employment offices and the gathering of a new crew. Then, tired, anxious with an eagerness that he never before had known, he turned back to the hills.

Before, in the days agone, they had been only mountains, reminders of an eruptive time in the cooling of the earth,--so many b.u.mpy places upon a topographical railroad map. But now,--now they were different.

They seemed like home. They were the future. They were the housing place of the wide s.p.a.ces where the streams ran through green valleys, where the sagebrush dotted the plateau plains, and where the world was a thing with a rim about it; hills soft blue and brown and gray and burning red in the sunlight, black, crumpled velvet beneath the moon and stars; hills where the pines grew, where his life awaited him, a new thing to be remolded nearer to his own desires, and where lived Ba'tiste, Agnes--and Medaine.

Houston thought of her with a sudden cringing.

In that moment as he stood outside the door of Ba'tiste's cabin, he had heard himself sealed and delivered to oblivion as far as she was concerned. He was only an acquaintance--one with a grisly shadow in his past--and it was best that he remain such. Grudgingly, Barry admitted the fact to himself, as he sat once more in the red-plush smoking car, surrounded by heavy-shouldered, sodden-faced men, his new crew, en route to Empire Lake. It was best. There was Agnes, with her debt of grat.i.tude to be paid and with her affection for him, which in its blindness could not discern the fact that it was repaid only as a sense of duty. There was the fight to be made,--and the past. Houston shuddered with the thought of it. Things were only as they should be; grimly he told himself that he had erred in even thinking of happiness such as comes to other men. His life had been drab and gray; it must remain so.

Past the gleaming lakes and eternal banks of snow the train crawled to the top of the world at Crestline, puffed and clattered through the snowsheds, then clambered down the mountain side to Tabernacle. With his dough-faced men about him, Houston sought transportation, at last to obtain it, then started the journey to the mill.

Into the canon and to the last rise. Then a figure showed before him, a gigantic form, running and tumbling through the underbrush at one side of the road, a dog bounding beside him. It was Ba'tiste, excited, red-faced, his arms waving like windmills, his voice booming even from a distance:

"M'sieu Houston! M'sieu Houston! Ba'teese have fail! Ba'teese no good! He watch for you--he is glad you come! Ba'teese ashame'!

Ashame'!"

He had reached the wagon now, panting, still striving to talk and failing for lack of breath, his big hands seeking to fill in the s.p.a.ces where words had departed. Houston leaned toward him, gripping him by a ma.s.sive shoulder.

"What's happened? What's--"

"Ba'teese ashame'!" came again between puffs of the big lungs.