Part 21

Mose, coming from his father's cabin, heard that cry, and quickened his pace to a run. He reached the place where the footbridge had been, and stood crossing himself as he had been taught by the priest. "Jesus--Mary," he whispered, and then, "Oh, Sahgalee, Tyee Sahgalee."

But the hemlock had grounded at a bend below. Its palisade of green boughs fringed the rampart of a fixed jam. He turned and ran, wading, down between the alders and cottonwoods, and Laramie's dogs came splashing after him, taking advantage of logs or any slight rise, but swimming where they must. He came out on a low bluff above the drift, and when he saw what silent shape it carried, he crossed himself once more. Then he grasped two stout trailing boughs and swung himself down on the jam.

Two sections of the footbridge held the body wedgelike, but the face and breast were awash. Mose fell to his knees and tried to turn and lift the face from the water. "Mo'sieur," he said, in an agony of entreaty and fear, "Mo'sieur, you can' be hurt mooch."

But there was no answer.

"Mo'sieur," he repeated, and shifted his arm lower to raise the submerged breast; "Monjee, mo'sieur, you mus' help yourself, some."

Still no response; and the boy made no further attempt to rouse him, for he had felt, suddenly, the grip of the hemlock. He withdrew his arm, and, cuffing aside one of the snuffing hounds, laid his hand on the neck of the other and rose. Then he took breath and lifted his voice in a great shout. The dogs swelled it, belling a prolonged note. He listened and repeated the call with his palm to his mouth. This time it brought a faint reply from Laramie, and the hounds sounded a louder clarion.

And the storming Des Chutes swept away the deep, full-throated cry, and the speaking hills caught it and sent it back like a lament from far promontories.

*CHAPTER XXX*

*THE LOST PROSPECT*

Below the falls the overflow had formed a backwater through the meadow, and that Saturday morning Alice took the Jerseys from the higher ground of the home enclosure, and put them to graze on the slope. She intended to ride directly on to the Station for the mail, and made a short cut through the park to strike the trail beyond the first knoll. It was then, while the black paced slowly among the wet trees, that the sound of the landslide clashed through the hills. Colonel stopped, trembling; hoofs planted, head up, nostrils wide and quivering, then, panic driven, broke. A little later, when she had drawn him down, and still quieting him, turned again towards the trail, Stratton's horse, arrested by the washed out bridge on his way to the lodge, thundered back in the direction of the Nisqually.

There was a flash of the chestnut coat between the branches; a glimpse of the empty saddle and he was gone. But instantly Alice saw that Stratton had returned. He had, of course, taken the branch through the canyon and the thoroughbred had refused the swollen ford; he had bolted, skirting the submerged jungle to the main trail, and left his master unhorsed, perhaps hurt, at the crossing.

She turned and rode back towards the gorge, expecting to pick up the trail at the foot of the bluff, where it wound down from the tower. "It's all right, Colonel," she said, "it's all right. You ought to know a slide by this time. But I don't blame you; it was a monster; it sounded like the whole canyon wall coming down."

Dropping from the open park to the underbrush of the gorge, she turned the horse into a thinned way, evidently once blazed by some passing woodsman. Then, presently, looking up between boughs, she saw a low cloud, trailing over and blotting out the summit where the tower had stood, and below it the demolished front of the cliff. At the same moment, Colonel, pushing through a tangle of salal, stumbled to his knees. She glanced back to see what had caused the fall and her eyes rested on a weather-beaten stake, such as a surveyor or prospector uses in marking off land, driven close to alow, outcropping ledge. A few steps farther on she noticed a blaze in the bark of a hemlock, in which had been cut a small arrow, pointing downward at this rock.

The horse moved on and she lifted her eyes again to the cliff. Midway the slide had shaved off a jutting spur, and, suddenly, a shaft of sunlight filtering through the clouds, struck from this new surface a blaze of colors. Instantly she thought of the samples of ore Paul Forrest had once shown her. Here were the same blues and purples, the shine of silver, the glint of dull yellow. It was, she knew it was, the lost prospect. It was Paul who had driven that stake. It was here in this canyon, while he groped a way out of the hills, he had stumbled on his find. The mist, hanging over as it did today, had obscured the tower and given the gorge a different aspect than later, in clear weather, it had shown. But this was the place and the slide had uncovered the mother lode.

She sat for a moment, holding in her horse and looking up at that dazzling ledge. She drew full breaths with parted lips; the bloom of a wild rose was in her cheeks; a soft brightness shone in her eyes. Then she was reminded of her present duty by a voice; a man's voice calling faintly, "Help, oh--help."

A little below the broken spur the cliff began to dip outward, forming an incline to the bottom of the gorge. Trees had found hold on this pitch, and where the top created a narrow bench, the uprooted trunk of a giant fir, flanked by the stub of an old cedar, timbered a barricade of splintered rock and earth. The last soft downrush had nearly filled this rampart, and streamed out through the dip between the felled boles, covering slabs and boulders, evening the slide to the appearance of a newly graded roadway. It was there, directly under the mineral ledge, that Alice located the voice. She concluded it was Stratton's; that he had not been thrown at the ford, but on the cliff; and he had been caught in the avalanche.

She answered the call, but it was not repeated, and she quickly chose a way to reach the shelf. She saw that the trail from the ford up the bluff was lost in shifting granite; and, for a long distance, passage up the fir was obstructed by a network of boughs; but the fallen cedar, slowly dying, had lost many of its branches; those remaining were still pliable. She left her horse, and, pushing through a litter of snapped saplings and broken limbs, reached this tree.

Its top was splintered and set like a brace against the trunk of a standing hemlock. Ragged boughs at first retarded her; she was forced to work on her knees, through their meshes. Sometimes she swung herself down to trudge ankle-deep, knee-deep through the soft fill around a barrier. She crawled over suspended boulders, under tilting slabs that had found lodgment on the great bole. In one of these places, where a mighty fragment of rock had struck, the bark was stripped loose in lengths. Later she remembered this.

At last she gained the end of the tree, and sinking in an accumulation of earth, found the support of a root and drew herself up, slowly, bringing her eyes to the top of the barricade. The color went from her face; her shoulders shook; her limbs; but she pulled herself higher and leaned on the rim. This man was not Stratton. His body was buried; only his head and one shoulder were uncovered; the face was turned from her. But this man was not Stratton.

She drew herself over the rampart and ran, stumbling in loose mold, to reach him. But when she saw his face a hand of iron seemed to tighten on her throat; her limbs gave under her. "Paul," she said. "Oh, Paul, Paul!"

The next moment she started up, her weakness gone. Her cheek had touched his; it was warm. A light breath had come from his lips. And he had called, he had been able to call, not long ago. She began to throw the loose earth from his chest, his breast; digging, working like a beaver with her two hands. Presently she laid her palm on his heart and caught a faint action. She felt in the pocket of his shirt for the emergency flask a timber-cruiser keeps about him in the wilderness, but it was not there. Still, the pocket was shallow, it might have dropped near, and she resumed her task, prodding at intervals for the flask. She freed his arm; his side. She had found no rocks around the upper part of his body; nothing but soft soil. To be quite sure she reached, feeling, under his back. And this brought from him a groan. A quiver swept his face, but when she had withdrawn her arm, he rested white and still as before.

The dirt had filled deeper over his abdomen, but she hurried to the rim of the rampart and selected a splinter of rock which she used as a scoop. At last his whole trunk was released, but his limbs were planted deeper yet. He seemed to have fallen feet first, and settled, afterwards, a little to one side. If only those feet had not struck rock. She was afraid--afraid--of--what she might unearth. Still she worked. And the faith of her missionary grandfather rose strong in her, and battled with her fear. "Dear God," her heart cried, "do not let him have touched rock. Show me--show me the best thing to do."

It commenced to rain heavily, and she stopped to turn his face directly to the shower, throwing off her jacket and using it to prop his head. She spread her handkerchief on a clean slab to catch the moisture, and, when it was wet, pressed the drops from it, between his lips. But they were so few. If only the slide had opened a spring in the cliff; if only she could find the flask.

She went back, fighting down her despair, to her work. A moment later she heard him sigh. Relieved of the pressure of earth, his empty lungs had slowly filled and at last expelled their first good breath. She looked at him over her shoulder, holding her own breath, kneeling still with her hands in the mold. He opened his eyes--she dared not move--and saw her, blankly at first, and then with swift intelligence. "Alice," he said, "why--Alice. See here--I'm all right. I can wait. Please don't. That's work for a--man."

Instantly she was up and at his shoulder. "Don't try to talk," she said. "Don't move; but can you remember if you had your flask?"

He knit his brows. "It was in my pocket--the coat. But," he added with second recollection, "the slide must have brought it down with me."

"All right, I'll find it. Don't say any more; don't try to think, or move, or do anything. Rest."

He smiled a little and closed his eyes, and she hurried back with fresh effort to her task. Presently she was able to run her hand down, through the loose soil, to the end of the right limb. It was straight, and not the crumpled mass she had feared. But, working her arm through a wider range, she felt, a few inches from the leg, the edge of a slab. Then, directly, while she followed its contour to satisfy herself it did not touch him anywhere, her fingers came in contact with woolen cloth. She dug faster and faster, and finally unearthed the end of a sleeve; his coat sleeve which trailed from beneath the rock. She pulled at it, tried to shift the stone, alternately strained and dragged at the garment. But it was of no use. Her glance wavered despairingly to that second, still buried, limb, then she began to uncover the slab. And while she labored tirelessly, her heart cried, "Dear God, let me be able to lift it; do not let it be very--big."

At last she uncovered the outer edge. A little more digging along the thin side and again under the sleeve, then she set her hands, the strength of her young arms to the rock. It eased up slightly. She put her knee to it, bracing it while she tugged at the coat. It slipped a trifle. Again a lift, a wrench, a slip, and here was a pocket exposed, and in it she found the small metal flask; jammed, flattened, leaking a little, but holding, still, brandy.

She poured it hot between his lips, and presently he again opened his eyes. "I'm all right," he repeated, "yes--I am. Don't trouble; don't stay here--in the rain. I can wait for Thornton or--Myers. I'm all--right."

To prove the point he tried to get to his elbow, but settled back, going white again to the lips.

She turned her face away. Her eyes were dry, but the dread in them was beyond tears. After a moment she compelled her glance to meet his. Her lips moved, but the iron hand again seemed to strangle the words in her throat. "Is it"--they were out at last--"is it--your--back?"

"No, oh, no." He smiled his old smile of the eyes. "It's only a dislocated shoulder. With Thornton to help me it won't take long to straighten it out."

She returned to that second limb. "Dear God," she still prayed, "I am so afraid. But--if it is hurt--don't let it be past help." Aloud she said, and steadied her voice, "Mill was to have gone to the Station this morning."

"Of course--of course--I had forgotten. I left Ketchem for him last night. But Myers is somewhere here in the hills."

"Then the noise of the slide should bring him this way." She thrust the scoop carefully along the side of the uncovered knee. "Mose," she added, "went home with his father, yesterday, to help drive the sheep to high ground. Sheep"--her voice broke--"sheep--are so foolish--in a flood."

She laid the scoop down. There was no further need of digging; the leg was doubled back from the knee, in a heap. She got to her feet and turned, meeting his look again bravely. "You see," she said and smiled, "there isn't a man; you'll have to use me. What would you have asked Mill to do?"

"Why, set this arm. You could do it--it's simple--but I don't like to ask it of you. You take it--like this"--he reached and she knelt beside him to allow him to demonstrate with hers,--"and pull it out as far as you can--so--only harder--much harder. It's going to hurt some, I'll probably make a fuss, but never mind--pull. Then let it settle back into the shoulder socket--so. You've seen the round bone that fits in a shoulder of veal. Well, just think of that."

"I understand the--movement," she said, and steadied her voice again, "and I'm--str-o-ong. I'll do my best."

It was quickly and successfully done, and he did not make a fuss. He only closed his eyes at the last and set his teeth on that pale under lip until it bled. And afterwards he rested so motionless that she gave him another draught from the flask. Then finally he was able to sit up and examine that injured leg. It was broken in two places, he said; at the ankle and midway to the knee. There was too, he noticed now, something wrong with that left side; probably a fractured rib. It was work for a good surgeon, yes, but nothing to worry over. And he would have a look at that slide, right away, and see what the possibilities were of getting down.

He worked his way to the rim of the ledge and she moved with him, watching his face; every shadow of pain that crossed it brought the anguish springing to her eyes. He raised his head, propping it on his hand, his elbow on the rocks, and his clear glance swept the fallen trees, and then more slowly the pitch stretching like smooth roadway between.

Her eyes moved from him to the incline and back to his face. "Colonel is down there in those standing alders," she said. "Could we risk him anywhere on the slide?"

"No." He shook his head. "No, my only chance is to coast."

"To coast? You mean"--and quick understanding leaped in her face--"you want a sled. There's a strip of bark down there, you can see it, where that piece of granite struck the cedar; it ought to make a good toboggan."

"The best kind," he answered, "if you can find some one to bring it up."

His glance came back from the slide while he spoke, but it moved no higher than the rim of the barricade. It had stopped raining and a shaft of sunlight, piercing the mist, flashed on a fragment of rock. He reached and took it, turning it in his hands slowly, to catch the play of colors. Then his eyes swept the splintered ore that spilled over the rampart, and he swung himself a little, starting up, though he was forced to sink back directly, in an endeavor to see the ledge overhead. Finally his gaze met hers.

"It looks like my lost prospect." His voice vibrated a little; his face had grown suddenly young, boyish, and the hope in it brought an answering light to her own. "Here are the same traces of free gold, the rarest find in the world, with this deposit of copper; and just a nice showing of silver. But I could have sworn that outcropping was at least a mile from here."

"Your stake is just down there, on a line with those alders. Colonel stumbled on it when we came through a little while ago. And, you can't see it from here, but the slide "--she paused, her lips trembling yet dimpling--"the slide has opened a great mineral vein, right above us."

He started up again, forgetting his injuries, and again sank back. "What luck," he said softly, "what luck. Strange," he added after a moment, "how I made that miscalculation."

"I think it was easy. You had broken your compass that day; you hadn't a glimpse of the sun; the whole top of this cliff must have been in cloud as it is today; the tower shut off completely. But, I'm going now." She bent to leave the flask beside him, propping it carefully to avoid loss of that remaining potion of liquor through the leak. "I may be gone a long time, but I'll hurry. I'm glad you have the prospect--to think of."

She stepped up on the edge of the rampart. "Promise you won't try to do anything," she said.

He shook his head, watching her with his smile of the eyes. "It's a safe promise. I wish it was harder to make."

She paused another moment, sitting on the edge and feeling for foothold on the root she had used in coming up; then she swung lightly off. Her eyes met his an instant across the rim. "Good-by," she said, and dipped from sight.

He raised himself a little higher, bracing his shoulder on a tilted slab, and waited for her to reappear on the bole below. She made her way quickly and surely down.

He believed she had gone for help, how uncertain and remote she had let him know, but, while he still watched that clump of alders, in which she had disappeared, she came back; and she carried a rope, presumably Colonel's lariat, coiled on her arm. Presently she put it down and began to cull out dangerous, snagged boughs from the debris at the bottom of the pitch. Where immovable rocks and stumps menaced, she heaped springy branches. And Forrest understood. She was guarding against his possible impact with the wreckage.

But at last she picked up the lariat and started back up the cedar. He saw her purpose and, also, the futility of any effort of his to stop her. "I might have guessed it," he said, and set his lips; "it was like her."

She reached the place where the slab of granite had stripped the bark, and selecting a piece, made the lariat fast, and began slowly, laboriously, to drag it up. Sometimes the soft soil banked in front of the tow, so deep she was forced to tie it to the log, while she slipped down to clear the track; and in one of these places she looked up and saw Forrest's face, showing white above the ledge, and she called an encouraging "Hello."

He answered in a soft whistle, and because she seemed to work less desperately, he repeated the note at intervals. It settled into snatches of a tune; a tune so sweet, so tender, sometimes, she could hardly endure it, and yet again so full of appeal it drew her on; the loveliest parts of Schubert's Serenade, over and over, with the variations of a flute, and the soft, full-throated cadence of a bird.

At last it came no more. She had reached the barricade. She paid out the tow-line, and with its noosed end over her arm, mounted the trunk. She halted on the root, her breath coming hard and quick, and met his look again across the rim. "What made you?" he asked, his voice shaking. "What made you? You might have slipped. You might have started the whole slide."

She did not answer; she could not; she was tired beyond speech. She climbed slowly, with great difficulty, up over the edge, struggled to her feet, stumbled, and sank down.

He could not break her fall, as he had once, long ago, in the windfall, but he moved enough to draw her head to his shoulder. "What made you?" he repeated. "I'm not worth it. What made you?" And he kissed her lips.

He relieved her arm of the dragging rope, and tried to draw the tow up between the two trunks; but she stopped him. "You mustn't," she said. "You need all your strength. You must save yourself for that ride. I--I'm very str-o-ng, Paul. Only wait--just a moment."

"Of course we'll wait." He anchored the tow by slipping the lariat noose over the jagged top of the slab on which he leaned. "It's all right. There's no hurry."

The chinook caught her loosened hair and it fell like a shaken web, over her drenched shoulders, her waist. The sunlight struck from it the best colors of his prospect; glints of copper shading through the gold. He never had seen anything as beautiful except her face.

She gathered the shining mass in her hands and tried hurriedly to divide it in a braid, but he put his arm around her again and drew her head against his breast ihe contact of her hair thrilled him; spirals of it caught and clung to his hand. His immeshed fingers lost their power. Then he felt her whole warm body tremble. "It was too hard for you," he said. "You shouldn't have tried it. But I love you for it; I love you."

"I don't know how I ever could have doubted it." She lifted her head and looked at him. A flush rose in her face; she saw him through sudden mist. "I did doubt; I heard a monstrous story and I--believed it.

"Was it about Louise?"

"Yes," her voice was almost a whisper,--"Louise and--you."

His arm fell from her shoulder. He turned his face to the gorge, knitting his brows. "I want to explain that story," he said. "I want to explain it now before we start down. I was to blame, I should have looked ahead, and yet I don't see how it could have been avoided; not while she stayed alone there, and I kept my position at the mills. But--I never saw her in the same light as other women; she was so far above reproach, so spotless, so nearly--well--a saint. And it was so evident, always, she couldn't give a thought to any man but Philip. Then, too, I had known her all my life, and she was your sister; like you in so many ways. And she was so solitary, so unhappy, troubled. I was so sorry for her, and that life there under the Head was so miserably dull for us both. We came to depend on each other to tide over those slow evenings." He paused, resting a moment, then went on. "You must see what it meant to me, a homeless fellow who is pretty fond of a home. I liked those hundred comfortable little turns she gave to a room. And I thought a lot of young Silas; he had a way of claiming me. Then, there was the music; it was her inspiration and mine. After all I can't hope to make it clear to you. I don't excuse myself, I don't want to, but--well--I had just given up you. She was a kind, sweet friend, in trouble, and sometimes, at the most, a very nice reproduction, call it a picture, of you. If I stumbled, anywhere, it was the weakness of a man who has been desperately hurt, crippled, and is trying his best to get on his feet again."

"I understand," she said, "oh, I understand; but tell me this, in the end, if there had been no Philip, would it have made a difference?"