CHAPTER FORTY

A MYSTERY SOLVED

Miss Bayley could not understand why the Martin children did not come to school that afternoon, for she had seen the snow-plow pass by and knew that the road was open. So anxious did she become that she dismissed the three pupils who were there, at two o’clock. Then, donning her warm wraps, she started walking down the highway toward the cañon.

The air was clear and sparkling. The girl-teacher felt as though she could run and shout, as the children did, but, fearing that she might shock Mrs. Enterprise Twiggly, she waited until she was on the downward trail and out of sight of the inn, then she flung her arms wide and sang a glad song of her childhood.

“Oh, but it’s good to be alive!” she said as she turned into the narrow, well-shoveled trail leading to the cabin. Just then a breeze, on mischief bent, perhaps, tossed a heavily-laden pine bough above her head and a small avalanche of snow crashed down upon her. Laughingly, she shook herself as best she could.

The snow had knocked her cherry-colored tam awry, and had loosened her hair, which curled at the ends and clustered about her ears and on her neck. With cheeks flushed and eyes brimming with mirth, the girl-teacher tapped upon the door of the cabin. No one answered, and she pushed it open and found herself facing a strange young man who, wrapped well in blankets, sat in the big easy-chair close to the stove. How Frederick Edrington had longed to climb to the shelter of the loft when he had seen the unwelcome guest passing the window, but there had not been time.

For one terrorized moment he had feared that, when the door opened, he would behold either his aunt or the dreaded Marlita Arden. It was with an audible sigh of relief that he beheld the vision of his dreams.

Miss Bayley was the more startled of the two. “Oh!” she exclaimed, as she backed toward the door again. “I—I didn’t know that the Martin children had company. I am so sorry—if—if I—” she hesitated.

The young man was the first to recover his presence of mind. “You haven’t, Miss Bayley,” he said with the smile that won friends for him among rich or poor, young or old. “I assure you that you have done the very nicest thing that you possibly could have done. I’m mighty glad to see you again. I—”

“Again?” The girl-teacher was indeed surprised, and at once began to search her memory for the time of their former meeting. Surely she could not have forgotten the good-looking young man, who bronzed face, with its clear-cut features, plainly told that his life-work kept him out-of-doors.

“Pardon me for not rising, Miss Bayley, and please do slip off your cloak and stay a while,” he begged. “Dixie and the others have gone to the Valley Ranch on an errand, but they will soon return.”

Then, as he saw the puzzled expression in her eyes, the young man answered her unspoken query. “Miss Bayley, you have never met me before, but I have heard my little friends speak of you so often that I feel well acquainted with you.”

Relieved, Josephine slipped off her fur-lined cloak and seated herself. For a moment she sat looking thoughtfully out of the window toward a snow-covered range that formed the other side of the wide cañon.

“May I hear about it?” the young engineer asked.

The girl smiled. “I was thinking of a queer old man who is camping up in the mountains, and wondering how he has weathered the storm.”

“Oh, indeed!” Mr. Edrington sat up as though interested. “Is this—er—old man of whom you speak a particular friend of yours?”

The girl nodded, then laughed. “Well, at least I do feel friendly toward him because he likes books. He has had two of mine, one on snakes and the other a history.”

Then, turning she asked a direct question: “Won’t you tell me your name? It’s hard to talk to a person and not call him anything.”

The young engineer flushed. “I say, Miss Bayley,” he apologized, “you’ll think I’m a regular boor, won’t you? I—er—my name is—Rattlesnake Sam.”

The girl’s amused laughter rang out, and though the listener was relieved, he was certainly puzzled.

“I was sure of it!” she said triumphantly. “You see what an excellent detective I am.”

“But, I say, Miss Bayley, this isn’t very complimentary. I do know that I need shaving, but Ken led me to believe that you thought Rattlesnake Sam was an old, dry-as-dust professor, a sort of ‘fossil,’ and I—er—” Then the young engineer laughed in his hearty, boyish way. “Honestly, Miss Bayley, I didn’t suppose I looked quite that old and fogyish.” Then the query: “Do I?”

The girl shook her head, but her eyes still twinkled. “No-o!” she confessed almost reluctantly, “and I’m dreadfully disappointed in you. I was actually looking forward to meeting the snake professor who looked like—well, like Thoreau or Burroughs, as I fancied, and now—” Pausing, the girl tilted her head sideways and gazed at him critically and yet merrily.

His good-looking bronzed face was expressive as he watched her, and his eyes were telling how much he admired her. He wondered what she would say.

“I believe I am disappointed in you,” the girl declared, and yet in a tone that did not quite carry conviction. “You’re much too modern to be real interesting.”

The young man looked disconsolate. “Alas!” said he. “Fate seems to be against me.” He glanced up hopefully. “I might grow a very long beard, Miss Bayley, if that would help to make me less modern and more interesting.” Then, as she only laughed her reply, the young engineer continued. “But you haven’t told me what clues you possessed that led you to discover my supposed well-hidden identity.”

Josephine looked at him searchingly. “Can men keep a secret?” she inquired.

“Much better than boys can, or so I’m beginning to think,” was the reply.

“No, you are wrong,” Miss Bayley defended. “Ken didn’t really tell. In fact, he doesn’t know that he told at all. As I look back now upon our conversations concerning the old man in the mountains, I realize that Ken did his very best to keep your secret, but he said such strange things sometimes. He hasn’t told,—not one word,—but one day when I offered him a penny for his thoughts, he said he was wishing somebody would get married, and he seemed so doleful about it that my curiosity was aroused.

“Then, when I told him that I thought he was rather young to be a match-maker, he confessed that what he was really wishing was that there would be a blizzard, so that his friend Rattlesnake Sam would have to leave the mountains and come down and stay at their cabin.

“Well, the storm did come and so, too, did you. Wasn’t the inference a natural one?”

The young man nodded. “It wouldn’t take a Sherlock Holmes to unravel that mystery,” he began, and then paused, for he was sure the little ripple of laughter that he heard was prefacing a merry remark. Nor was he wrong, for Josephine continued: “There is one part, however, that I cannot understand. Whom do you suppose Ken wants to have married? If he hadn’t mentioned it right in the very same breath with the blizzard, I wouldn’t be so curious.”

“Your curiosity is quite natural, Miss Bayley, and it’s going to be completely satisfied,” the young man said seriously. “I may need your help almost any day now, and so you, too, may share the secret with Dixie and Ken.” Then he told the whole story, beginning with the making of the mountain road, two years previous, and ending with his recent flight from the South and his reason for hiding.

To his surprise, his listener exclaimed: “Mr. Edrington, you are indeed to be congratulated upon your narrow escape. If you know Marlita Arden as well as I do, you are then aware that what she needs most is variety and admiration. I doubt if she would be the comrade sort of wife that I believe you would want.” Then, more seriously, “I do not dislike Marlita, understand, but I would be sorry to have my brother Tim marry her.”

The girl knew, by the listener’s expression that she was amazing him. Nor was she wrong. Marlita Arden was a snob. She would not speak civilly to a woman who earned her own living, and yet this young school-teacher spoke as though she knew the Southern heiress well.

He could not ask how well, and no further information was volunteered. Miss Bayley had risen and was donning her cloak. “I must be going,” she said, smiling at him, “for the dusk comes early these winter days.”

The young man implored, “Miss Bayley, won’t you come often? Have pity on a poor old fossil who’s a shut-in.”

“Perhaps! Good-by.” The teacher looked radiantly young and beautiful as she paused in the open door and smiled back at him.

“She’s a princess of a girl,” he thought; then he recalled his decision to never fall in love, and he tried to harden his heart.