Part 13

Smith was there. He was removing from the fire a trout which he had cooked on a long sharpened stick. He worked with a noiseless, gliding motion, and even when he seated himself on the flat rock, which became at once both chair and table, and fell hurriedly to eating his breakfast, he kept up a ceaseless pantomime; beating the earth softly with his foot, starting up, subsiding, shivering, looking behind him, listening, and like an animal long hunted, again starting.

Two horses stood near him accoutered for the trail. One, his own, brought from Laramie's meadow, where at intervals it was pastured, carried saddle-bags and a snug blanket roll at the crupper; the other was an indifferent pack-animal laden with camp supplies.

"He ees tek de long trail, for sure," whispered Mose. "Monjee, how ees it he ees leave Colonel?"

"If those are Mr. Stratton's things he's got to take them back," she said. "Come, we must make him."

Mose shook his head. "We doan' be able."

"We must." Then she squared her shoulders and walked forward with a clear "Good-morning."

Instantly the man was on his feet, and grasping the rifle which stood at hand, against the tower wall, he dropped to his knee behind the improvised table. The gun rested across the rock and he took sight carefully.

The girl came on into the open. "Don't be afraid of me," she said and steadied her voice, "I only want to talk to you."

He lifted his head and looked at her in astonishment. She came a few steps further, and Mose, silent, alert, stalked after her and stood waiting. "I came to speak to you about milking my cow," she said, and ruffled her brows. "You should have asked me."

At this Smith laughed and rising from his knee, seated himself again on the rock. But he held his gun in readiness.

"I suppose," she went on, "it seems--to you--a very small matter, compared with breaking into Mr. Stratton's house."

He laughed again, loudly, insolently.

She watched him with the rising storm in her eyes. She was no longer afraid. Clearly the man was unashamed; the spark of good that she had been taught to believe was latent in the breast of the lowest man, was lacking here. He must be the exception that proved the rule. "You've got to take these things back," she said at last, decisively, yet holding her voice in check; "now, at once."

Smith lifted his gun higher, scowling. "You go home," he said gruffly. "Mose, you go. Be quick 'bout it."

She remembered suddenly the day at school when Lem had admitted that men in the settlement sometimes struck women, but she did not move. Then she was conscious that Mose was walking back towards the wood. "Mose," she said, and turning, stamped her foot, "stay here."

He stopped and looked over his shoulder. "It ees bes' dat you come right 'way," he said. "Mebbe Mill T'ornton ees able to do somet'ing, you spik to heem."

The man laughed still more insolently. "You go," he repeated.

The next instant he sprang to his feet and faced the wood on the other side of the open. There was a brief interval filled with the sounds of bodies moving through low boughs, the snapping of twigs, the striking of hoofs on loose rock, then Stratton's smooth, deliberate voice said, "Well, Smith, I think I have a horse now that won't refuse his pack, and I have tested him at a ford."

Smith put down his gun and hurried to take the led animal, and Stratton rode on past the clump of scrub firs, where the waiting horses were hitched, and saw suddenly the girl by the tower. A great wave of color surged over his face and left it white. His big frame rocked slowly as though he gathered himself from a heavy and unexpected blow; then he sat motionless.

"Oh," she said, and hurried to meet him, "I'm so glad you came this way, instead of going straight through to the bridge. This man has looted your lodge. I was just trying to make him take back your things."

Stratton drew a great breath. He shook himself like a man throwing off a weight, and swung himself down from the saddle. "You were? Well, thank you, Miss Hunter, but he should have told you that I gave him the key." He paused and his eyes moved to Smith, who had gone to an aperture in the tower, and was lifting from it other supplies for the fresh pack-horse. "In fact," he added, "I have engaged Pete to go over the Pass with me, to cook and look after my outfit."

Her glance moved to Sir Donald's full leather saddlebags and snug blanket roll, and returned to his master. "You have engaged this man," she said slowly, "to go over the mountains with you?"

"Yes, I am starting on a long hunting and trading trip, through the Palouse and Big Bend country, and Smith knows the plains and the Indians. He will be invaluable to me in that uncertain wilderness. But I shall probably go down the Columbia, when I strike the railroad, and come back to the Sound from Portland, by way of the Northern Pacific."

"You are going a long hunting trip," she repeated, and met his look steadily. "You have engaged this man, this outlaw, for your camp cook and guide. You know you are helping him to elude the Government. Oh, how can you, an intelligent, educated American, be so indifferent to the laws? I don't understand you. I don't understand you."

She turned away.

"Wait, just a moment," he said. "Is the case so different from your own? You took this other half-breed Indian into your house; you gave him a new start; yet the rascal had stolen our horses; he had left us high up, nine thousand feet, on Mt. Rainier in the face of a storm. He did even worse."

"Hush," she said. Mose stood, waiting, a few yards off. His face was turned to the lower gorge and she looked at him with apprehension. "There is no comparison," she went on softly. "You know it. He was just a boy, untaught, his character unformed, and he believed he was right. There was plenty of good in him, ready to be brought out by any one who cared to take the trouble. I have proved that; he has repaid me a hundred times. But this fellow--this desperado--think of his record. Look in his face."

She moved on with this, to join Mose, but her foot struck something that clinked against a stone, and she stopped to look down. Then she stooped and picked up the object, turning it curiously in her hands. It was a small tin receptacle, unlike anything she had ever seen before. There were some strange characters marked on it, presumably Chinese, and while she studied them she noticed that the can had sprung a little at the upper edge, and a sticky substance began to ooze into her palm. It emitted a sickish odor and she held the thing out to Stratton in sudden disgust. "What is it?" she asked. "Do you know? Did you drop it?"

Again he pulled himself together. He took the tin and hurled it over the cliff. Some distance down it struck a projecting ledge, and sent back, faintly, a clink. "I know what it is, yes," he said grimly. "The man who dropped it--bungled."

His glance moved again to Smith and the steel flashed in his eyes. But the outlaw had not heard. He was engrossed in a full canvas bag which he was adjusting to the pack saddle.

"Come, there is water here," Stratton went to the rock where Smith had breakfasted, and lifted a flask. "Hold out your hands."

She held them out, turning them under the stream he poured. "Rub them," he said; "it stains. Again, the odor clings. The stuff should never have touched your hands."

"What is it?" she repeated.

He was silent.

"What is it?" she persisted. "Can't you tell me?"

"Yes, yes, I can--if I must." He threw his head with a sudden reckless decision. "It stands for shame, ostracism, degradation, according to your code. The man who touches it takes his fate in his hands. It sticks, its slime covers him, sucks him down. Look in my face."

But at the look she gave him, that straight, searching look, which forever expected a best in him, the boldness went out of his face. A quiver swept it, as though he felt deep down the twist of a probe. "Once, up there below the Paradise," he said, "you promised your mercy. The time has come; I ask it--now."

"You mean it is"--but her voice failed. Her eyes widened with fear, and yet there rose in them an appeal. "You mean," she repeated, "you were going to--" But the word would not out; it died in her throat. Then, "Promise me you will not," she entreated. "Promise--no matter how desperate you may feel--you will always put the feeling down. I should blame myself; I should feel someway responsible. I couldn't help it. It would spoil my life."

He drew his hand slowly across his eyes and moved back, leaning on the tower wall. So she thought that. She believed that he had contemplated self-destruction, and in that crude, spectacular way. And of course she attributed his reason to her rejection of him. He could have laughed aloud at his escape. "I promise," he answered. "I promise. I will leave it to Nature. When the time comes she can provide a way."

"Thank you, I trust you." She gave him her hand. "Good-by."

She hesitated, glancing once more at the outlaw, but of him she had nothing further to say. Stratton stood watching her down the trail; when she disappeared he moved to the edge of the cliff and waited for a final glimpse of her, far below in the canyon.

At last he noticed that his guide was ready. "Ride on with the pack-horses," he said. "I will overtake you in time to make Nisqually ford. And the next time you find a leaking can, Smith, be careful where you throw it."

When the man was gone he sank down on a rock and dropped his face in his hands. Finally he lifted his head and sat for an interval looking down the gorge in the direction she had taken. "She is so bright and quick," he told himself, "and yet she could not see the truth. With all of her knowledge of smuggling, and opium and rings, she has never seen or had a description of the stuff. It is strange, strange--for I went all to pieces, there, for a minute. It must be, after all, because she is so ready to take a man on trust. She is so tremendously honest herself, she won't accept a man's own doubt of himself. But I--I--had a narrow escape. Strange, too, what a hold she has had on me from the start. I would have braved it out, lied to a man; I would have laughed it off with any other woman; but she lifted her eyes, probing for that everlasting best in me, and I babbled like a fool."

Presently he drew a letter from his pocket. It was an answer to the one he had written the Judge. It had miscarried at first, and he had travelled so much the last weeks, it had been forwarded and missed him repeatedly. He had received it that morning at the Station on the prairie below the Myers claim. He opened the sheet and re-read it slowly.

"WASHINGTON, D.C., July 20th, 18--.

"MY DEAR STRATTON:--In response to your letter I want to remind you that I knew your father, John Stratton, well. He was a strong and capable man and always a gentleman. I am certainly interested in the career of his son. I also satisfied myself somewhat as to your standing, before I came East, because it is my custom to know about my nephew Philip's friends. I learned nothing of a disparaging nature.

"But in regard to the initial point of your letter, I can only say that a release from a marriage engagement should depend altogether on the direct request of the lady.

"Very truly yours, "SILAS KINGSLEY."

Stratton held the letter a thoughtful interval, then he rose and went over and laid it on Smith's smouldering fire. He stood watching it break into flame and curl up like a brown, dead leaf. "But it will influence him," he said. "He can't help it; it will raise a question."

He turned to untie his fretting horse. "So, Donald, old fellow, there is light ahead; we are almost out of the woods. A little more dishonor," he set his foot in the stirrup and swung himself up, "and we can afford to make a fresh start."

*CHAPTER XVIII*

*WATER-LOGGED*

At Freeport the following winter was severe. Snow lay for weeks, thawing, freezing, accumulating with every squall that came over from the mountains, and falling in small avalanches which started landslides all along the bluff. On some mornings the upper part of the harbor below Duwamish flats was covered with ice, which the rising tide lifted and broke into sheets. The logs taken from the water were glazed, and in still places inside the boom, ice packed solid. And with the unusual cold a lull in construction settled over the Northwest; there came a second drop in the prices of exported lumber. Many of the smaller mills closed under a subsidy. But the Judge, in answer to Forrest's statements of the situation, advised the cutting down of expenses to a minimum, and keeping things going, if only to give employment to the men. He had heard the Puget Sound country was flooded with idle mechanics, laborers, hundreds of construction hands discharged since the completion of the Northern Pacific. And of course the prevailing Eastern panic had in many instances caused the recall of invested capital. But he was confident that another half-year would see a pronounced revival; at any rate he would be able to make a trip home by that time, and he wanted to be on the ground and see conditions for himself before he came to a final decision.

At the close of January the men still received "reg'lar pay," to quote Mason, but the books showed that the manager's salary was accumulating to his credit. Other accounts indicated that the junior partner was overdrawing. He had his impulses of industry and economy when he tried to balance a considerable delinquency by spending an interval at the mills; but he always annulled the results by a yet deeper plunge, and his only systematic restriction was in deferring to take a house in town.

Forrest was thinking of Kingsley while he finished his rounds of the mills. It was at the close of a bleak day; there was an increasing wind; ragged cloud scurried overhead, the forerunner of the black masses driving up in the southwest. Philip was presumably in Victoria. He had not heard from him for a week. "But," he told himself, as he came down the steps from the landing to the walk, "it's useless to bother the Judge with this side of it, now. It's as he says, he can't understand things fully until he is on the ground."

He stopped at the branch to Kingsley's house to speak to the old watchman, who was stumping up from the lower dock. "Well, Mason," he said, "it's another blow."

"Ay, sir." The old sailor swung around to look at the running sea. He knew the ships over the harbor were taking precautions against the growing storm; stretching an extra hawser, dropping a second and third anchor, clearing decks. But there was no vessel at the Freeport wharves; the bark that had sailed that morning left no other receiving.

"Keep the slab-fire low, Mason, and have an eye to the boom."

"Ay, ay, sir."

"And, Mason, go back and put the signal out for the _Success_. Let me know when she's in sight."

"Ay, sir?" The old sailor's voice took a rising inflection; his unlovely features worked.

"Yes," said Forrest, "I'm going over to Seattle for the doctor. Little Si is worse."

He turned then, and went up to the gate. Louise heard him on the steps and met him at the door. He followed her silently in to that inner room where little Silas lay. His head was propped high with pillows and the place sounded with his labored breathing. Forrest stood for a moment watching him: the heaving of the breast under the loose white gown; the flutter of the half-closed eyelids; the milky whiteness of the forehead between the crayon-like brows and rings of tumbled hair. The child was very lovable; he had always shown his fondness for him in demonstrative, winning ways; and in the earlier stages of his illness he had called for him, begging to be carried or rocked, and Forrest had devoted late hours to him, sharing the mother's vigil; ready with the comfort and security of his strong arms. Now, while he looked at the unconscious face, this large-hearted, homeless, home-loving man seemed to feel a small hand on his heart-strings; the touch tightened when the baby coughed.

He turned to Louise. "I'm going over on the _Success_," he said. "The doctor will come back with me. Is there anything else I can do?"

"No, unless--you can find Philip."

"I am afraid he is still in Victoria. He would hardly have started to cross the Straits in this storm."

"No," she assented, "not in this storm." She lifted her hand to her head in a bewildered way, and turned to her baby with the mechanical effort of one long worn out with anxiety and watching. But when the child coughed again, a harder paroxysm, the motherhood leaped to her eyes. "Paul," she cried, "oh, Paul."

He did not try to answer that appeal; he could not look at her. But he took the child's medicine from the table and stood for a moment, thoughtful, irresolute. A man who has the charge of workmen in an isolated place, out of range of a physician, picks up the rudiments of medicine and surgery, and presently he went to a stand holding a few general remedies. He poured a little of the liquid from the bottle he carried, into an empty vial, and added several drops of ammonia. He gave the baby a potion from the mixture, lifting the blond head higher, rearranging the pillows gently, with a woman's touch. He waited a brief interval, watching the result. "It's a very strong stimulant," he said. "Only use it every alternate time, or--if the attack is bad. I won't be longer than I can help."

While he walked down to the store he saw Mason's signal-light on the wharf, but the little mail steamer, plying between Seattle and a near port, was not yet in sight, though nearly an hour late. Forrest unlocked the door and lighted his desk lamp. "There isn't a rowboat on this beach," he thought. "Nothing but Sing's dugout; and what could she do in this sea?"

He began to post his books, but the child's face drifted between him and the open page, and that appeal of the mother's rang an undernote to the rush and scream of the wind. He laid his pen down and sat staring, absent, harassed, up at the rafters. A timber creaked; the great building shook in a heavier gust, and the sea swept with a long hiss and swash on the beach under the piling. Then presently above all these noises there came the shrill toot of a whistle.

It was a sound that brought him to his feet. He threw his books into the safe, lifted his overcoat from the counter, and was about to extinguish the light, when the door opened and Mason entered with a rush of sharp air. "She's gone by, sir," he said. "Headlight stove in, sir; sea smashing on the wheel-house."

The manager's hand dropped from the burner.

"But she answered the signal, Mason; she whistled the landing."

"Ay, sir, an' wore away, sir, er rollin' like er porpoise."

"Well, Mason, it means the dugout. She's on the beach above the float."

Mason's watery eyes blinked. "Ay, sir, an' more'n half full, sir."

"Then we'll bail her."

He laid his top coat back on the counter and turned out the light, and while he led the way down to the float, he blamed himself and excused and blamed himself anew, for depending on that little steamer.

Sheltered though it was by the wharves and the headland, the small landing rose and dipped; breaking crests swept sheer over it. Mason set his lantern on a pile and the manager helped him turn and empty the beached canoe. Roughly hewn from a cedar log, with bow and stern cut square and hollowed slightly like a scow, it had a clumsy appearance even as dugouts go, and in mild weather two men together could hardly have risked passage in her. Launched, she swashed in the tide like a thing water-logged.

No one knew how the craft first drifted to Freeport, though Hop Sing had appropriated her, to use on still evenings during the salmon run, when he visited his friends employed at the cannery a mile up the coast. The paddle was not in its usual hiding-place, a niche under the flooring of the nearest dock, and Forrest hurried up to the cook-house.

"Give me the paddle to the dugout, Sing," he said, stopping on the threshold; "I'm going over to Seattle."

The Chinaman whirled on his cork soles and looked at him. Then he swung his towel over his shoulder and his face expanded in a smile. "What for you jokee me, Boss? Hully sit down. I bling supper belly click. Steak muchee cold."

"Never mind supper, Sing; or just give me some coffee right here, while you find that paddle."

He poured the steaming coffee, black and bitter from long waiting, and gave the cup to Forrest. "What for you takee dugout? He no good. Too muchee blow, blow." His voice shrilled incredulously, but something in the manager's face made him turn abruptly and trip across the kitchen to his own private closet, where, after a brief search under his bunk, he brought forth the missing paddle.

He had a catlike aversion to moisture and cold, but Forrest had eased him through many a buffeting from the mill crew, and presently he lighted his lantern and followed him down to the float. He found Mason steadying the lurching dugout while the young man took his place forward of the stern. And he waited silently, but with growing concern, until the old sailor cast off the painter and gave the great even push which propelled the craft out between docks, then he, too, held his light aloft, vying with the watchman to illuminate the way. The wind filled his wide, white sleeves, baring his arms above the jade bracelets; it played havoc with his unwound cue and set all his loose garments fluttering; but he stood there long, shivering, with teeth chattering, holding the lantern yet higher and straining his eyes to follow that small, receding shape.

As he swung clear of the wharves Forrest felt the strong ebb, and low as the dugout was, she careened to the wind when she drifted out of the protection of the headland. A wave broke, drenching him through. Far to the northward he saw the revolving light on West Point; then a smaller flame appeared on the opposite shore, and he knew by the position of these lamps when he had reached the open, where the gale had its fullest sweep of the Sound. Another crest broke over him; another; still he made headway and held his course quartering to the trough. The deep whistle of an ocean collier came to him, and off the point he saw her lamps; a tug passed close at hand. He heard plainly the noise of her screw, but she went by without heeding his hail, and he caught the counter motion of her wake. Presently he noticed water about his knees, and groping, found the can; and while he bailed he tried with one hand to keep the dugout under control, but she swung broadside, taking a sea. He dropped the can and grasped the paddle with a great dip that brought her slowly around. His muscles ached; his fingers cramped; how that year of confinement at the mills had unfitted him.

When the beacons disappeared he knew that he had made a little more than half the distance. But the dugout never headed for the city lamps; she drove before the wind, and the most he could do was to swing her out of the trough, and ease her northeast by north, hoping to strike the point which marked the harbor entrance above the town.