Part 11

It was not the words alone, nor the kind, sweet tone, nor yet her dear physical nearness, but rather that the silence which followed was eloquent with unspoken thought. It was as though he heard her spirit cry suddenly, "I can never leave out you."

"You do know it," he said. "You do know it." And then it broke from him. "What made you promise to marry Judge Kingsley? What made you, when you knew how much I thought of you?"

She did not answer, but she turned and walked up the dock towards the house. After a moment he overtook her. "Don't hurry so," he said. "Are you afraid of me? I won't hurt you."

"Hurt me? You? Oh, I wish you would." But she continued to hurry and he suited his steps to hers. They reached the gate. "Wait, just a moment," he said. "You are going away tomorrow. I know I shouldn't have said--what I did; it was worse than unfair to the Judge; but I want to know this--why did you put off that marriage? Why didn't you go to Washington with him, as he hoped? As I hoped, for there, at least you would have been--safe!"

"Please don't worry about me, Paul," she answered, and looked past him, steadily, holding her chin high, "I can take care of myself. You ought to know that. I'm very strong-minded; it grows on me. I like to do things; be the head. And I love the settlement; I want to finish my work. Sometimes--sometimes, when I think of it, I'm afraid of Washington. I shall find it too crowded; I'm so used to lots of room." She paused, but silence was harder than speech and she went on quickly, "Not one man in a thousand would understand me, but Uncle Silas--dear Silas--" she dashed her hand across her eyes and turning, ran up the steps to the door--"knows how to manage me. He--" she groped for the knob--"He is ready to--wait."

*CHAPTER XV*

*THE MAN IN THE TIDE-RIP*

On Orcas, one of the larger islands of the Archipelago de Haro, there is an eminence of several thousand feet. The eastern side rises in abrupt benches from the sea, but westward it breaks less precipitously to a narrow, bluff-locked harbor. Stratton objected to this anchorage; it was a place of strong currents and shallows. But Kingsley laughed. He knew Orcas like a book. He had been up to that summit and the view was worth stopping over a day for. There was a ranch on the shore of a lake high up in the timber where the night could be passed comfortably, and a couple of horses, the only ones on the island, could be secured there for the trail. The party could divide, Alice going up with Stratton that afternoon,--it was a matter of a few hours,--while he and Louise would ride up early the following morning.

In the end Philip had his way, and Stratton, who had exerted himself, hitherto, to make the cruise one of unalloyed pleasure, lapsed into moody silence. He found himself, late in the afternoon, riding with Alice, up a sharp pitch of the mountain. Below them dipped a cross-cut of trail, and overhead another section of the switchback hung like a tilting shelf under a knobby shoulder that concealed the true dome. They gained the spur and halted, breathing the horses on a breadth of level. The girl turned a little in her saddle to look down. There was the inlet where the _Phantom_, like a toy ship, rode at anchor; and there was the lake, a big, opal-filled bowl, with the farmhouse, where they had left Philip with Louise and the child, balanced like a tiny box on its rim. Northward islands on islands rose purple or amethyst out of the sea; southward and westward the Olympic Mountains stretched a gleaming barricade, and the Straits of Juan de Fuca divided like the fingers of a great reaching hand.

"I love it; oh, you don't know how I love it." Her glance returned to Stratton and she started; the glow in her face died. "But you--I see it doesn't compensate you for the rough trail and this excuse of a mount. When you ride you want Sir Donald."

"No, it is not that." He smiled briefly, with effort, and pulled his shoulders straight. "I happened to remember a man--I once knew. He was wrecked off this island; there on the north shore. It was another such day as this, clear and shining, but his sloop was caught in a tide-rip. You can see it down there; that creeping, white-lipped streak. The rocks under it grip like teeth." He paused and the hand directing her attention fell. He lifted his hat and wiped a sudden moisture from his face. "It all happened in a moment," he added, "and the boat was broken into kindling."

"But he, your friend,"--she leaned towards him all suspense, sympathy, charm,--"he was saved?"

"Yes, he was saved. But it is a long story. Wait until we reach the summit; I can tell you better up there."

He turned his horse, falling behind her as they resumed the climb. Presently they entered a cool belt of timber. The air was freighted with the balsam of fir and pine, and she looked about her, drawing full breaths; a soft delight rose in her eyes. "Isn't it the best perfume on earth?" she asked. "At Nisqually it just lacks the tang of the sea. And there are the Alaska cedars they spoke of at the farm. The stream should run through them."

The horses quickened their pace and stopped where the rill widened into a pool. They dropped eager muzzles and began to take long, still draughts. She freed her foot from the stirrup and slipped lightly down. "We must fill the flask," she said, "where the spring bubbles through the rock."

Stratton tied the horses and followed her up the bank. She reached the place and stooped to fill her saddle-cup. "Oh," she said, pausing between draughts. "It's the kind of water to dream of hot summer nights; the kind you think of on dusty roads and want desperately."

She waited while he drank, watching him expectantly. "Yes," he admitted, "it is a spring to remember in a desert."

He stooped to fill the flask, but he did it clumsily, without his usual care, and drenched his sleeve. The pleasure in her face faded; she continued to watch him, but with ruffled brows. "Oh," she said at last, "I wouldn't have believed you could be so unrelenting; but you are determined to remind me, every step of the way, that you didn't want to stop at Orcas Island. You're the most unsatisfactory man, on a trip, I ever knew. Still, you were different last year, on the Paradise trail."

"Was I? Well, you see, I keep thinking of that man--in the tide-rip; he stopped here at this stream, to rest."

"The man who was wrecked? Did he come up here?"

"Yes, he thought that he was on the mainland. He tried to reach the settlement this way. But there isn't time to tell the story here."

He turned and led the way quickly back to the horses, and they mounted and rode on through the wood. At the foot of the final pitch they left the horses and pushed up over shelving rock to the bald summit. The sun was low in the west and the light touched the houses of a little seaport, eastward on the mainland; and above the craggy heights that overtopped the town a snow mountain caught the glory. Far southward the crown of Rainier seemed to rise like an opal island straight out of the shining sea.

Suddenly Stratton laid his hand on her arm. "Wait," he said, "this is the end. The summit breaks there, a sheer drop of a thousand feet, with a lake below.

"You know," she said. "You've been here before?"

"It is plain enough. Look down."

She looked; but she was obliged to creep another step and drop to her knees before she saw the lake, far, far below, tucked like a great sapphire in a high pocket of the mountain. "Oh," she said, "it seems fathoms deep; and there isn't a lasting snowfield on this mountain. What feeds it?"

He helped her back from the precipice and to her feet. "It is probably one of the Cascades' reservoirs," he answered; "supplied by some subterranean stream under the bed of the Straits."

She walked back a few rods and seated herself on a bench of rock. Her glance moved from the great white dome, on along the craggy peaks of the Cascades, northward. "Of course," she said presently, "that dim line of shore off there is the Vancouver coast. Think, Mr. Stratton, how near we came to losing all these lovely islands. While Congress was calling them 'a number of barren rocks, not worth the hour of discussion,' Sir Douglas was grazing great flocks of sheep on the fertile slopes of San Juan,--that must be it, that long, even shore between us and the end of Vancouver,--and investing its best harbor with British soldiers. Doesn't it rouse your blood, even now? Can't you almost hear that old pioneer slogan, 'Fifty-four, forty or fight?'"

Stratton laughed. "I am afraid not. You see I have lived in Victoria, and I have heard a good deal more about that old explorer Vancouver. You know he claimed all of this territory in the king's name. He called it New Georgia by right of discovery. And I have known some pretty fine people across the border, Miss Hunter. In fact they have treated me better than some I have known on this side. But there is hope; with you to teach me I may turn out a fairly good American patriot--yet."

She shook her head, looking him over gravely, and he laughed again, and seated himself near her on the ledge. "Now, I am ready for that story," she said.

He looked off to that far line of the British coast. "I am almost sorry I promised to tell it," he answered; "still, you may hear it sometime, through others, and understand it less. I, well, I think a good deal of him; I want you to see it from his side. He was just a boy, Miss Hunter; a dare-devil sort of boy, fond of adventure and proud of his little boat. He never had been taught to regard the Government patriotically, as you do, and the men who tempted him were upright, irreproachable men,"--his lip curled,--"the ones of whom the Captain told you. One of them had been a close friend of this boy's father, and held a Government position of trust; the other, in whose office the boy was reading law, was a prominent attorney known all over the Northwest. They both knew how to appeal. His mother lived in Victoria at the time; he had made several trips across to see her in his new sloop; and they told him, laughing, he could go unsuspected anywhere, he looked so honest."

Stratton paused and his listener turned her face to him, waiting. "I understand," she said at last, and set her lips, "it was a case of smuggling. There was--a ring. And of course it was opium. Uncle Silas says it usually is opium; the duty is so great, and there is such an immense profit on a smuggled lot."

"Yes, it was opium." He turned his face a little more from her, watching still that far amethyst coast. "And there was a ring. He was to have a third interest in the profit to start a business he liked better than the law. But the revenue officers saw the chest carried to his sloop. They followed. There was a splendid breeze at first, and he led them a chase, dodging between these islands, cross-cutting from channel to channel. But the wind fell at sunset, or rather shifted, and he found himself in unfamiliar water. Still he slipped the cutter off this island and made a landing. He concealed the stuff, intending to return for it when the pursuit was over. But he was slow in finding a safe hiding-place and the tide changed; and when the sloop swung out on her first tack she was caught in that tide-rip."

Stratton paused. He passed his hand across his eyes, but Alice was silent. She looked off at the white mountain, and waited, holding her chin high and creasing her brows. Clearly the man in the tide-rip had lost her sympathy. Her attitude said, "It was what he deserved."

"He was thrown ashore," Stratton continued, "with wreckage, and he spent the night miserably, crawling under cover with his cache. At daybreak he found this trail; he believed he was on the mainland and that this was the way to that town over there, where he had arranged to meet his accomplices. He decided to carry the chest with him to the edge of the settlement. But the sun beat down mercilessly on that switchback, and he had eaten nothing since the wreck of his sloop. The chest gathered weight with every step. He travelled slower and slower, at one moment determined to abandon it, and the next reminding himself that it must pay for the loss of his boat. At last, from that high shoulder where we stopped to-day, he saw the revenue cutter creeping up the cove. That spurred him on to the stream. There, tired out, indifferent, he threw himself down to ease his aching muscles and take breath. He fell asleep. When he wakened it was late; the sun was almost gone. He rose and took the chest and hurried on to this final pitch. But looking back, he saw the Customs men below, finishing the wood. He found nowhere to hide the stuff; he dared not leave it, and, with increasing panic, he reached this summit, and ran on down, to find himself cut off by that cliff."

Stratton's even voice caught and broke. His forehead was wet with big, clinging drops, as though he himself had just made that great physical effort. His glance moved from the precipice, and, meeting the girl's clear, direct look, a sudden quiver swept his face. "And?" she said.

"He saw no way around," Stratton resumed quietly, "and in his extremity, he sent the chest over the brink. Then he came back to this bench and waited for the officers. They recognized him; one, the captain of the cutter, had known his father well, for years. 'There was a man above us on the trail,' he said; 'we hardly could have passed him, but he may have passed you. He carried a small chest or box.'

"And the boy looked him straight in the face and smiled. 'I guess you've missed your trail, captain,' he answered. 'You see this path ends here; be careful, it's a frightful drop. It looks like an old Indian trail; there at your feet are the ashes of signal fires. But the road you want branches below the switchback. Your man probably doubled back through the timber and struck across to the south shore.' And then he added frankly enough, 'I, myself, came up here for a sight of my sloop. She was stolen, and an Indian I met on the mainland had seen such a boat near this island. He put me over in his canoe.'"

"Oh," said Alice, "you call him a boy, yet he could stand and say all that like any hardened criminal."

"No," Stratton flushed hotly, and for an instant the steel flashed in his eyes, "even you should not call him that. He had been told, and shown, that some of the best men on the border took advantage of the Government; that the United States was able to stand it. You should remember, too, it was his first--offence."

She gave him a straight, uncompromising look. "Was the chest found?" she asked.

"No. There was no trace of it below the cliff; he looked, afterwards, and the lake is very deep, as you thought. There was no proof against him; those inspectors never for a moment doubted him. The man, whom they had seen boarding the sloop with the chest at Victoria, was a desperate character, under suspicion before; they believed he had stolen the boat, and that he had come upon the Indian waiting for his passenger, and had bribed him to take him off the island instead. And the boy went with them down the switchback, and identified the wreckage on the north shore. And they took him aboard the cutter and landed him at home, in Seattle, the next day."

"I understand," she said slowly, "it all rested with him. It would have been a triumph, his salvation, if he had confessed."

"I knew it." Stratton's face hardened. "I knew it. You sit here like young Justice, inexorable; you who never were tempted; never made a mistake; and nothing but the fundamental right will do. But think how that confession would have hampered him. A story like that clings. His whole future hinged on that day. And he had the confidence of those prominent men; the truth must have involved them. After all," he added, "the opium was lost. He gained nothing, and he had his punishment in the wreck of his sloop."

"Yes," she admitted, "he was punished in a way, but--"

"Listen," he pleaded. "He was reared very differently from you. His father was a man of honor, true, but he had business interests that kept him long intervals from home. And his mother, I think, hardly gave him much thought when he was a child. She was a very beautiful woman with luxurious tastes. There was most always a gay company around her, and it could never have greatly concerned her how her husband's money was made, so that she had it to spend. I will not say much about her,--she is gone, now, out of his life,--but the boy was taught early not to trouble her, and to look out for himself. I believe the only lessons she ever gave him were in quick, flippant retort, and to cover his hurts. He learned early, too, that the surest way to please her was to amuse her friends. Once, when he came into a room, unexpectedly, and conversation dropped, she looked at him, smiling, and said, 'Boy, what is disgrace?' And he answered directly, 'Disgrace, mother, is being caught.'"

"And she?" said Alice, after a moment.

"She? Why, she laughed, I think, with the others, and tapped him on the shoulder with her fan; or perhaps that time she clapped her adorable hands." He rose to his feet and stood looking off to that dim British coast. A great weariness settled over his face. "You see, in the end, it amounted to this; he thought, when he thought at all, that wrong rested only in detection. One must make and leave a good impression, but right motive, sincerity, in his world did not count. Then things changed. He saw life differently, through the eyes of the woman he loves."

Stratton's voice vibrated a little on the word. He turned and looked down at her, and that quiver again swept his face. But she did not see it. Her glance rested thoughtfully on the white peak, eastward, across the channel. That reference to the boy's mother, his training, home, struck the maternal chord, so strong in her, and she saw suddenly, clearly, the other side. The mountain began to flush with a sunset glow; a gentleness, almost tenderness, rose in her face.

"She is not like the women he has always known," Stratton went on. "She walks a higher level. Sometimes, she is so much a saint, he is afraid of her. He dreads her judgment, and yet he dreads more to have a suspicion of the truth reach her, some day, through others. Lately there are rumors afloat touching those men, who made a tool of him, and any time, a chance word from one of them may involve him. What do you think, Miss Hunter? You see she is like you in some ways; she takes your Puritan view of life and has your habit of sifting things. In her place would you think better of him if he told you? Could you, yourself, forgive him if--you loved him?"

She did not answer directly; she was weighing the question. At last her look came back from the mountain; she rose to her feet. "Yes," she said slowly, "Yes, I think that I could forgive him; it was a first offence. Of course it must have been the only time. I should forgive him for the same reason, or much the same reason, I did Mose. But, I could never love such a man, Mr. Stratton. Even if I never knew the truth, I should feel the stain. And I am the kind of woman who builds love on respect. The man I am going to care for, in the way you mean, has lived a clean life. He stands a man among men, sound to the core."

With this she turned and began to go down to her horse. Stratton waited a silent moment, watching her move lightly over the steep and jagged path. "The man she is going to care for," he repeated softly; "she means, of course, the Judge. But she will never make that marriage, never." He started to follow her, then he stopped and looked off once more, to that far Vancouver coast. "Strange, after these years, the sight of this place should make me go all to pieces. And strange how I bungled into that story. I had to tell her. That insistent something in her had me promising, down there at the switchback. Still, I could have told another woman easily enough, and won her to my side. Why am I always losing my hold when I talk to her? But I shouldn't have come ashore; I should have stayed aboard the yacht. God, how I hate this island."

He hurried on then, for she was already waiting in the saddle. She watched him with a grave kindness as he drew near. "You are still thinking of your friend," she said, "but please don't rely on my opinion. There are sweet and gentle women in the world who live just to forgive. Perhaps she, the one you mentioned, is one of them." She turned her horse into the trail, but glanced back over her shoulder to add, smiling a little, "You've been a good champion; tell him, when the time comes, to let you say a word for him."

"Trust me for that," he answered, and started his own horse; "if--the time comes I will speak for him."

*CHAPTER XVI*

*THE FIERY LANE*

Once, during Alice's brief stay at the mills, she had overheard Forrest censure a workman for finishing his pipe inside the restricted limits. This gave her an opportunity, that evening, to lead adroitly to the subject of forest fire. It was a perpetual menace in the settlement, she said; it sprang sometimes from almost nothing; a match dropped in a dry place, or a burning fragment shaken from a pipe; embers left alive by a passing camper; and oftener yet, it began with the ignition of slashed underbrush, when, to clear a bit of open for his cabin or pasture, a settler devastated whole areas of fine trees that could not be reproduced in a century. She wondered if Forrest, who so well understood the dangers as well as the values of timber, had ever devised a scheme, some practical, inexpensive method within the reach of ranchers, for its protection. And he had answered that of course the settlers should make it a local law never to start a "burn" in the dry season. But any man who knew the Washington woods, had learned that one of the surest ways to handle a first blaze was to smother it with shovelled earth. Even in midsummer the ground under the forest litter was damp; it was made porous by a network of roots and held moisture like a sponge; the trees drew from innumerable small reservoirs. But if he himself owned a section he would take the precaution to cut a broad swathe around the unprotected sides; and, if it was near a considerable water power, for instance those upper falls of the Des Chutes, he would keep in readiness a length of canvas hose, the big kind used for carrying a stream some distance in hydraulic mining, and be able to tap the river at a moment's warning.

She was particularly interested in this scheme, and gathered small details as to the size and make of the hose, and how he would connect it with the stream. He drew a rough plan on a card, showing a point where the river could be tapped with little trouble, by taking advantage of a certain jutting rock, to brace the necessary bit of flume and sluice-gate. "But," he had added, throwing aside the sketch to take his violin, "the chances are some other man will file on that section; he may even hit upon this little mechanism and have it all constructed before I see the headwaters again."

Afterwards Alice found that card, on Louise's table where he had left it, and saved it for future reference. The hose could not be secured in the Puget Sound towns; she could not obtain it in Portland; but finally it was purchased through a house carrying mining supplies in San Francisco.