Part 20

But he would not, and Samantha tied Ketchem and walked with the young man as far as the curve. "Say," she said impulsively, breaking the silence, "don't you feel so cut up 'bout that ther homestead. Uncle Eben always 'lowed you wanted that piece, an' 'at she knew it; an' I dunno what she done it fur, but you jes' wait tell you find out ther reason. She ain't ther kind ter do a mean thing."

"Oh, I know that; I know that," he answered quickly. "Don't think I blame her. It was her right, if she wanted the land. I don't need another reason. Good-night."

But Samantha followed a step further. "Say," she called, "ef she hedn't filed on that piece Mill would. He counted on homesteadin' that one, 'stead o' this. She got in ahead o' him, but he jes' hates to own he got cut out by er girl."

Her little, uncertain laugh, meant to cheer him, followed him up the trail. Then presently he reached the branch and pushed up swiftly towards the tower. "If I had stopped at Olympia to make the entry at the Land Office, I should have discovered the truth," he thought. "And of course--of course Mill, or some other man, must have taken it long ago, if she had let the opportunity go. Tomorrow, tomorrow--I'll go down and see what she has made of it. I couldn't now. Not tonight."

He stumbled through a darker tangle of undergrowth and came out in the open at the tower. But the forces at work earlier in the Pass had lately been busy here. Suddenly a great crack yawned at his feet. It seemed to mark off, accurately, as though a master hand had drawn the line, the whole jutting front of the cliff, and like the beginnings of a moat enclosed the leaning column. He moved back a few yards to the trees, and found a dry place for his blanket, under the spreading boughs of a fir. Presently the light of his camp-fire cut the gloom, and the air was redolent with the savor of toasting bacon.

Twilight deepened. The voice of the cataract came up the wind. Somewhere a dead bough creaked. He lounged, his elbow on the blanket, his head propped on his hand, and looked off absently across the darkening gorge. Did he not see once more, at the foot of a near and familiar slope, a small tent white and silent under the dew and starshine?

His lips began to breathe a whistle. Presently it rose, still soft, sweet, tender, in Schubert's Serenade.

*CHAPTER XXVIII*

*THE PRESSURE OF THE WILDERNESS*

The wilderness has great adaptability. She fits herself to the man; she plays on his moods. To Stratton she became an inquisitor, tireless, implacable. She wracked him with his defeat; she taunted him with memories. At last the hour came, when, far on his retreat to the border, his worst perils past, he turned his horse and started back.

There were nearer approaches to the Sound through the mountains; a day's ride southeastward would have taken him to the railroad on the Columbia, but he chose to recross those miles of hostile country, where, to the horsemen of the plains, Sir Donald had long been a coveted and marked prize. He had not known the full value of Smith's service on those previous trips; his Indian blood had been a passport where a solitary white man could not go; and, while he had something to gain, the outlaw on the night watch had been vigilant, safe. During this last journey it was only through strategy and an incessant fighting off of sleep, that Stratton had been able to save the chestnut, probably his life. And now, returning, he was forced to make wide detours, avoiding his former course. He spent whole days, watchful, under cover of shallow coulees, and pushed on warily at night, riding knee-deep through arid tracts of sage brush, hiding his trail when he could, in the meager channel of a stream, or the rocks of a wash, keeping away, always, from beaten tracks.

In that great silence, where the report of a gun carried like a thunder-clap, he could not risk a shot at passing game. Once he snared a bird; again a squirrel; and several times he caught fish, which he ventured a small fire to prepare. But his food supply, divided into rations, and after a few days reparcelled, fell to almost nothing.

Finally the chestnut's hoofs struck the familiar upward trail to the Pass. His alertness quickened but his master's dropped away. He rode indifferently, mechanically; his eyes gloomed retrospective under his black contracted brows. His face had lost its faultless contour; lines seamed it. He was like a man who had lived hard and fast, tragic epochs in brief days.

It was midday when he lifted his head and looked about him. The horse had stopped on a grassy bench. A slender rill cascading from a lofty spur formed a limpid pool, and overflowing, rippled between sunny banks and was lost in a clump of pines. Sir Donald had dropped his eager muzzle to the basin.

Backward the autumn wind drew sharp across the great plains, and upward, far up, a first snowfall held the Pass. Stratton swung himself out of the saddle and loosened the thoroughbred's girth. He picketed him near the trees, and with the limp saddle-bags flung over his arm, stood for a moment watching the horse. His handsome coat, ungroomed for weeks, was dappled with foam; dry froth discolored his heaving rib-defined sides; burs tangled his silver mane; and the wet square where his blanket had been was divided by a lurid galled spot. Yet he stood all spirit, head high, looking at his master with steady expectant, almost human eyes, turning a sensitive ear for the anticipated word. "Now make the most of your hour, Donald, old fellow," Stratton said. "It's a long pull still to Nisqually ford."

The chestnut, satisfied, fell to cropping the long grass by the stream. Stratton felt in his saddle-bag and drew out a biscuit tin and another of sardines. The first had been previously opened, but he stood turning the second in uncertainty, in his hands; then, looking up to that cloud over the Pass, he put the can back. He took three biscuit from the remaining box, recovered it and dropped it into the bag.

While he ate the biscuit a flock of geese passed, honking, far below him over the sun-baked plain. He stood watching the wavering line until it disappeared, then he unstrapped his blanket and spread it on the bank and threw himself down. He closed his eyes, but he did not sleep. His features worked, and from time to time he moved his head uneasily. "Yes," he said aloud, at last, "that was the weak link in the chain; I failed to ingratiate myself with Forrest. I could have done it--I could--if I had foreseen the end. It all hinged on him. Granted Kingsley's wife saw us that night; granted she moved the stuff, concealed it, as Smith said, under that rotten floor; she went to Forrest right off, I swear, and eased her conscience. And he put two and two together, in his calculating way; he guessed at the clue and sent Bates to look for it--at the top of the bluff. Always, everywhere it has been Paul Forrest. He built on a first word or two of suspicion from Bates, and tried to set the Captain against me; he spied on me, thwarted me--made himself my foil. I could have won out; I could have covered the disgrace; made a fresh start; lived it down; proved myself her kind of man--if he had not stood in the way. And I would like just once--before the finish--to meet him, hand to hand--and have it out. Damn him!--" he stretched his arms; the cords knotted; his fingers seemed to grasp something tangible; they clenched, relaxed, clenched again,--"Damn his righteous, irreproachable soul."

After an interval he spoke again. "But it is too bad about the Captain. I will do my best for him; I will shoulder it all; and with the Judge's influence he should pull clear. Why,--" he started to his elbow with the shadow of his old, mocking smile,--"his wife can't witness against him, even if she wants to. A wife's testimony isn't allowable in a Washington court." He passed his hand across his eyes and sank back on his blanket. "I am sorry for that little woman though. She is so proud--so fine; it's going to cut--deep. She never liked me. Once, that last time I met her there at the ruin, she lifted her skirt and walked around the place where I had stood. How she must hate me now. But sometime, since it has made a reason for her to break with Kingsley, she ought to thank me."

Then finally, after another interval, he struck the keynote of his return. "My God, I had to come back. It was impossible, unbearable to ride on; day after day, alone--through the awful silence. To see her face--that last look she gave me, the contempt, the aversion of it--following me, crowding me, haunting every sage bush. I have got to change it. She used to like me--she would have loved me--and she will forgive me. She promised me, that time up at the Paradise, she promised me her mercy. She will forgive me--she must. I have got to see her--speak to her once more. And I am ready to--pay the price."

He rose to his feet and looked about him. He started, shivered a little, and drawing his hand across his eyes, fixed them on the feeding horse. But it was the narrowed, strained effort of a dulled vision. Sir Donald seemed a long distance off; or was it later than he thought? He looked at his watch, and finding a match, held the flame close to the face.

"It is nothing," he muttered, and dropping the match, put the watch back into his pocket. "It is nothing--it has happened before. I have been staring too long at the glare of the sun on those yellow plains. It will pass. In a moment or two--it will pass."

He began to walk slowly, unsteadily towards the horse. He put out his hand like one who feels his way in the night. "Donald, old fellow," he said. "Donald, we are getting to the end of the--rope."

Then he touched the chestnut's mane, and, at the contact, his iron nerve gave completely away. His whole frame trembled. His arm sank over the arching neck. He dropped his face on it, sobbing, not as he had when he was a child, but as such a man, not all men, can sob--just once in a lifetime.

*CHAPTER XXIX*

*THE CRACK OF DOOM*

Once more, up in the Pass, the glare of the sun on the fresh snow brought on that dullness of vision, and Stratton was forced to halt, creeping, groping out of the bitter wind to the shelter of a crag, where he spent the night, miserably. It was after that, though his sight returned, he discovered it had lost accuracy. Twice, when the prize seemed sure, he missed his aim. The first time it was a young elk, lagging behind the herd in a green pocket of a gorge; and again it was a stag that crossed the trail in front of him. Later, in making the dangerously high water at Nisqually ford, his ammunition became wet and useless. But on the final morning, at his old way camp hidden among some alders near the river, he succeeded in snaring a squirrel. This, with some late blueberries, which he had gathered on a higher slope the previous day, served to temper the keen edge of his hunger.

The snowfall in the Pass at a lower altitude had been a heavy rain, and when he mounted and turned into the trail, taking up the last stage of his journey, clouds still brooded over the hills; the gorges steamed fog that lifted and fell, directly, in sheets of mist, through which again filtered the mellow autumn sun. Water dripped from boughs, formed in every depression, and behind him the flooding Nisqually thundered a deepening chord. He avoided the main trail past Thornton's homestead and the teacher's claim to the bridge, taking instead the canyon branch to his lodge, where he expected to find a change of clothing. The suit he wore was frayed at knees and elbows, and, still damp from yesterday's ford, it absorbed moisture speedily. He must shave too, at the lodge, and breakfast,--there was coffee there and an excellent ham,--and put himself in condition for the interview with Alice. Afterwards he would ride on and give himself up to Thornton. The reward, if there was one, might compensate the young rancher for the loss of his sorrel.

Everywhere the changing dogwood and maple flamed through the October woods, and the brilliant leaves fell in showers, through which Sir Donald paced lightly, with suspicion. The wind, which drew with him up the ascent, billowed the tops of the firs below; the sound of them was like the rush and wash of a great sea, but the drifting mist closed in, obscuring the sun and the farther bluffs of the gorge. Then presently, looking up through the trees, he saw the tower, pushing out of denser cloud like a lighthouse on a gray and unfamiliar coast. A moment later he was conscious of a foreign and pleasing aroma in the air. It was coffee, the kind he had anticipated,--he had always been particular about the brand he used and how it was prepared,--and it flashed over him, with disproportionate heat, that some passing woodsman had filched it from the lodge. The next instant, riding up to the open, he came upon Forrest.

He was seated on a rock, with a plump and primely broiled pheasant on the boulder before him, while he filled his tin cup from a small coffee-pot which he had lifted from the coals. And Stratton's alertness failed him. He forgot the peril of capture, now, before he was ready; the significance of surrender to this man. He thought of nothing but the fragrant cup and that savory bird.

Paul looked up. He put down the coffee-pot and sprang to his feet. But his hand had hardly touched Sir Donald's bridle--close under the bit,--when he dipped as quickly back to escape the striking hoofs of the rearing animal.

Another moment, and, wheeling lightly on his hind feet, the chestnut brought his master's shoulders in contact with a stout bough, and he was unhorsed. Then, as he had been taught, the thoroughbred was off; skimming the trail like a bird back to the main track and on to the lodge.

His backward movement to avoid the horse took Forrest, stumbling, across the crack in the cliff which moatwise shut off the tower. The seam had widened during the night, and was full of water, which, where the rock formation failed, was undermining the soil, carrying the wash down through a small subcut into the trail towards the ford.

Stratton threw out his hand, grasping the fir to break his fall, and staggered erect. Blood streamed from his lips, which had struck the rough bole; but he set his teeth under them, hard. The steel flashed in his eyes. He turned on Forrest and all the latent passion in him broke into flame. The fineness in him, the high resolve shrank small. He confronted suddenly, in this man, the instrument of his disgrace and many-sided defeat. The three words he spoke were repeated slowly, in a low tone, and yet they seemed hurled by some force from the depths of his chest.

Forrest did not answer. He glanced behind him measuring the ground, which lifted a little to the left of the tower and dropped again abruptly to the precipice. It was this sink at the foundation which lowered the outer column, tilting the whole structure. He threw off his coat and moved back a pace, taking advantage of the rise, which brought him nearer Stratton's height, and waited, watchful, eyes steady, head up, feet firm, hands loose at his sides. His whole altitude said plainly, "I'm ready; come."

It all happened swiftly. In the moment Stratton crossed the break there came a tremendous jar. Instantly he recoiled. Behind Forrest the whole tower toppled, block on block, over the abyss. The cliff under him heaved; its face split, detaching at the seam. He ran, clearing it in a leap, and, like the crack of doom, the sounds of that downfall filled the gorge. He felt the next layer, a strata of soft earth, give beneath his feet. He struggled for firm ground; he would have gained it, but Stratton blocked the way. He thrust a hand against the shoulder of the reeling man, gave him backward impetus, and sprang away. Another instant, and with the last onrush Forrest went down.

Stratton retreated a little further. He turned, feeling his steps, with one hand outstretched, the other pressed to his eyes. Then he stopped, listening, fixing his fogged gaze on that awful brink, while the grinding, the striking of rock on rock, the crash of falling trees, started anew by that slide of soft earth, reverberated, multiplied echo on echo, from bluff and spur. He called once, but there was no human response. Then came--_Silence_.

He made his way to the rock which had been Forrest's seat, and sinking down, set his elbows on the larger boulder and dropped his face in his palms. It rained for a time heavily, but he paid little attention to the pelting drops which the wind brought slanting upon his head. After awhile the aroma of the cup which the lost man had filled, seeped over his senses. He drank it off at a draught, and groping for the coffee-pot, carefully, with difficulty, his hands shaking, poured a second cup; another. But the savor of the pheasant no longer attracted him.

"Oh, my God," he said at last, "what brought him to this place? What insane weakness brought me back? But I must see her. My God,"--his voice rose half in threat, half prayer--"I must see her, before--he--is found."

He got to his feet and commenced to grope his way down to the main trail. He was able to see the path, but a yard ahead it ended in a blur. It occurred to him that, at the time of the slide, the teacher must have started to school, and when he reached the better track he turned back towards the Nisqually as far as the cut. He made frequent stops, resting on logs or stones and closing his eyes to husband that glimmer of sight. Sometimes he stretched his spent body in complete relaxation on the wet leaves. The drip, drip of the foliage was continuous around him, but he knew when the rain ceased, for, though it was not possible to distinguish objects more clearly, he saw the filtered brightness of the sun among the trees. Then again the mist closed in, cloaking the timber. His wet clothes gathered weight; they chilled, numbed him. He quickened his steps and other footfalls seemed to follow. It was the tread of that unseen presence, which he had felt and defied, the day Smith was overtaken, and he stood on the buttress above the rockslide in the Pass. Always it stalked with him, behind him, beside him; when he halted it crowded him close.

He had hoped to meet Alice returning through the cut, but he reached the schoolhouse finally, only to find the door locked; the children and their teacher gone. He turned on the steps and looked up that steep trail through the burn. "She must have taken that way, around by the Myers claim, on some errand," he told himself. Then it flashed over him that somewhere, during those wretched halts in the wilderness, he had lost a day; this was not Friday, as he had conjectured, but Saturday, the week-end holiday.

He sank down on the steps and looked back over the level stretch of track he had just travelled. It was impossible to take up the return tramp to the headwaters so soon, but Laramie would give him some sort of bed and supper, and in the morning it might not be too late. He pulled himself together and rose. Then he stopped, listening. He had caught the sound of galloping hoofs. In a moment he whistled, his old, imperative note, that Sir Donald so well understood. The hoof-beats fell to a trot and the chestnut appeared. Stratton repeated the summons, but with a new, uncertain key, for his lip, stiff and swollen from the accident at the tower, had lost flexibility. The horse halted, head up, ears erect, sensitive, eyes dilating. But when his master started towards him he wheeled a little, and the stirrup, swinging high from the shifted saddle, struck him smartly. He crashed off through the jungle. His dragging bridle looped a snag, but he jerked free, and, making a detour around the clearing, struck the trail, breaking again into a mad gallop, back in the direction of the Nisqually.

"So, Donald, so--you too. Well, I don't blame you, old fellow; I don't blame you." But this disappointment, following so closely on the other, told on Stratton. He sank down again on the steps.

After awhile he took out his pocketbook, and, finding a piece of paper and a pencil, wrote without superscription or signature,

"I came back to see you--I had to. Not to excuse myself, but to ask of you that mercy you once promised me--there below the Paradise--and then to take--what I deserve. I have fallen pretty far since that day on Mt. Rainier, and you are going to wish, all your life, you had left me in that crevasse. Great God, you don't know how I have wished it, too, out there in the terrible stillness of the Palouse; how miserably I wish it now. I would pay any price to see the old friendliness in your face again. But, this morning, up at the tower, I lost the chance. That is all. It cannot help you now, to know I would give anything to have Forrest safe--and be in his place--buried deep in that slide."

All the sheet was a wavering scrawl, but the last lines ran together word over word. He folded the paper, but after a thoughtful moment opened it and added at the bottom of the page, "I want Thornton to have my horse." Then he refolded it and slipped it under the door.

He stood for an interval looking towards the Des Chutes. "She will not find it until Monday," he said, "and by that time if I have not seen her, it will be too late." And he went down the steps and took the trail to Laramie's.

He heard the increasing roar of the freshet as he walked, and presently, when he reached the curve where the trail turned down-stream, he found the flood over banks; currents eddied through the underbrush, undermining the trunks of hemlocks and firs; carrying out detached boughs and logs. At the crossing to the Phiander claim the rustic footbridge was gone.

But Stratton remembered the banks were higher at Laramie's homestead; the old fallen fir, which bridged the channel there, had withstood the shock of many floods. He moved on, quickening his steps where he could, but, now that he had left the gravelly soil of the ridges for the loam of the bottom-land, walking became more difficult. The mud clung to his boots; in places footing oozed under him, and repeatedly, in lower levels, he was forced to make wide detours, leaving the path to push through tangles of alder and hazel or cottonwood. Often water washed above his ankles; at intervals it splashed to his knees.

At last he struggled up a little rise and came out on a low bluff. The great uprooted trunk of the fir footbridge was at his elbow, and he stopped, taking breath, and sank into a half sitting position on the knuckle of one gnarled root. His rain-soaked clothes shaded into the color of the dead, earth-stained tree, so that he might have been a part of it.

The fir had fallen with a downward slant to the farther bank, its top driving wedgelike between two cedars. These trees were standing with their trunks submerged, and, mid-channel, the log swung to the current and formed a dam, holding back an increasing collection of drift, through which the water rushed with the roar of rapids. The whole jam rose and fell with a concerted upheaval.

The roots of the fir, ballasted by forest litter, formed a short stairway up to the crossing, and presently Stratton mounted, slowly, with difficulty and began to feel his steps over the bridge. At the same time a great fallen hemlock swung down-stream, its upreared trunk coming foremost, a tremendous battering ram.

It was over in a moment. He stopped, mid-channel, listening, and turned his clouding eyes up-stream. The hemlock drove through the crunching drift and ploughed on through the bridge. He plunged forward, face down, with a sharp cry, and, impaled by a broken, submerged root, was swept out with the wreckage.