The White Desert Part 32

"Certainly."

"May I talk to him privately? He understands English?"

She nodded. Then:

"I will tell Lost Wing that anything you have to say to him shall be a secret even from me. I--do not want to know it."

She spoke to the Indian in Sioux then and drew away, her eyes on the tracings of a snowshoe. Houston, pointing with his head, gave the Indian his directions.

"A woman is sick in a cabin, two miles straight west from here. Get Ba'tiste Renaud and take him there. Turn away from the stream at a tall, dead lodgepole and go to the left. You will see the cabin. I would rather that you would not go in and that you know nothing about the woman. Tell Ba'tiste that her name must stay a secret until she herself is willing that it be otherwise. Do you understand?"

"A'ri." The Indian went then toward his mistress, waiting her sanction to the mission. She looked at Barry Houston.

"Have you given him his directions?"

"Yes."

"Then, Lost Wing, do as he has told you."

The Sioux started on, soon to be engulfed in the swirling veil of the storm. Barry turned again to the girl.

"Just one more request: I can't carry the child up there--this way.

Will you help strap her to my pack?"

Silently she a.s.sisted him in the grim task of mercy. Then:

"Do you know the Pa.s.s?"

"I can find my way."

"Do you know it?"

He shook his head. She tapped one glove against the other.

"It is impossible then. You--"

"I'll make it some way. Thank you--for helping me."

He started on. But she called him back.

"It's dangerous--too dangerous," and there was a note of pity in her voice. "It's bad enough on foot when there's no snow--if you're not familiar with it. I--"

"Tell me the way. Perhaps I could find it. It's not for myself. I made a promise to the child's mother. I'm afraid she's dying."

A new light came into the girl's eyes, a light of compa.s.sion, of utmost pity,--the pity that one can feel for some one who has transgressed, some one who faces the penalty, who feels the lash of the whip, yet does not cry out. Slowly she came toward Houston, then bent to tighten the fastenings of her snowshoes.

"I know the way," came quietly. "I have been over it--in summer and winter. I will show you."

"You! Medaine! I--I--beg pardon." The outburst had pa.s.sed his lips almost before he realized it. "Miss Robinette, you don't know what you're saying. It's all a man could do to make that climb. I--"

"I know the way," she answered, without indicating that she had heard his remonstrance. "I am glad to go--for the sake of--" She nodded slightly toward the tenderly wrapped bundle on the pack. "I would not feel right otherwise."

"But--"

Then she faced him.

"I am not afraid," came with a quiet a.s.surance that spoke more than words. It told Barry Houston that this little woman of the hills was willing to help him, although she loathed him; that she was willing to undergo hardships, to quell her own dislike for the man she aided that she might give him a.s.sistance in a time of death. And he thrilled with it, in spite of the false beliefs that he knew existed in the mind of Medaine Robinette. It gave him a pride in her,--even though he knew this pride to be gained at the loss of his own prestige. And more than all, it made him glad that he had played the man back there in the little, lonely cabin, where lay a sorrow-crazed woman, grieving for a child who was gone; that he too had been big enough and strong enough to forget the past in the exigencies of the moment; that he had aided where he might have hindered; that he had soothed where a lesser nature might have stormed. He bowed his head in acknowledgment of her announcement. Then, side by side, affixing the stout cord that was to form a bond of safety between two alien souls, they started forth, a man who had been accused, but who was strong enough to rise above it, and a woman whose woman-heart had dictated that dislike, distrust, even physical fear be subjugated to the greater, n.o.bler purpose of human charity.

CHAPTER XXI

Silence was their portion as they turned toward the mountains. There was little to say. Now and then as Houston, in the lead, got off the trail, Medaine jerked on the cord to draw his attention, then pointed, and Barry obeyed. Thus their pilgrimage progressed.

An hour found them in the hills, plodding steadily upward, following the smoother mounds of snow which indicated heavy, secure drifts, at times progressing easily, almost swiftly, at others veering and tacking, making the precipitous ascent by digging their shoes into the snow and literally pulling themselves up, step by step. Here, where the crags rose about them, where sheer granite walls, too steep, too barren to form a resting place even for the driven snow, rose brown and gaunt above them, where the wind seemed to shriek at them from a hundred places at once, Houston dropped slowly back to watch the effect that it all was having upon the girl, to study her strength and her ability to go on. But there was no weakening in the st.u.r.dy little step, no evidence of fatigue. As they went higher, and the wind beat against them with its hail of splintered ice particles, Houston saw her heavily gloved hands go to her face in sudden pain and remain there.

The man went to her side, and grasping her by the shoulder, stopped her. Then, without explanation, he brought forth a heavy bandanna handkerchief and tied it about her features, as high as possible without shutting off the sight. Her eyes thanked him. They went on.

Higher--higher! the old cracks of Houston's lips, formed in his days of wandering, opened and began to bleed, the tiny, red drops falling on his clothing and congealing there. The flying ice cut his skin; he knew that his eyeb.a.l.l.s were becoming red again, the blood-red where never a speck of white showed, only black pupils staring forth from a sea of carmine. Harder and swifter the wind swept about them; its force greater than the slight form of the woman could resist. Close went Houston to her; his arm encircled her--and she did not resist--she who, down there in the west country in the days that had gone, would have rebelled at the touch of his hand! But now they were in a strange land where personalities had vanished; two beings equipped with human intelligence and the power of locomotion, little more. All else in their natures had become subjugated to the greater tasks which faced them; the primitive had come to life; they were fighting against every vengeful weapon which an outraged Nature could hurl,--fighting at cross-purposes, he to fulfill a promise to a woman who might even now be dead, she to a.s.suage the promptings of a merciful nature, even to the extent of the companionship of a man she had been led to revile.

Afternoon came, and the welcome shelter of a ledge where the snow had drifted far outward, leaving a small s.p.a.ce of dry rock,--to them like an island to a drifting victim of shipwreck. There they stopped, to bring food from the small provision pack which had been shifted to Medaine's shoulders, to eat silently, then, without a word, to rise and go onward.

Miles and miles,--rods in fact. Aeons of s.p.a.ce after that, in which huddled, bent figures in the grip of stormdom, climbed, veering, swinging about the easier stretches, crawling at painfully slow pace up the steeper inclines. Upward through the stinging blast of the tempest they went, toward the top of a stricken world. Late afternoon; then Medaine turned toward the bleeding man beside her.

"A mile more."

She said no more. He nodded in answer and extended a hand to aid her over a slippery stretch of ice-coated granite. Timber line came and went. The snowfall ceased, to give way to the grayness of heavy, scudding clouds and the spasmodic flurries of driving white, as the gusty wind caught up the loose fall of the drifts and whirled it on, like hara.s.sed, lost souls seeking in vain a place they could abide.

And it was in one of the moments of quiet that Medaine pointed above.

Five splotches showed on the mountain side,--the roofs of as many cabins; the rest of them were buried in snow. No smoke came from the slanting chimneys; no avenues were shoveled to the doorways; the drifts were unbroken.

"Gone!" Houston voiced the monosyllable.

"Yes. Probably on to Crestline. I was afraid of it."

"Night's coming."

"It's too late to turn back now."

And in spite of the pain of bleeding, snow-burned lips, Houston smiled at her,--the smile that a man might give a sister of whom he was inordinately proud.

"Are you afraid?"

"Of what?"

"Me."

She did not answer for a moment. Then: