Part 5

Mose stepped out into the trail and stood looking after them, but his gaze rested on Stratton's mount. He loved the thoroughbred, coveted him, every inch of the long sleek body, the slender limbs, the swelling chest, the dappled shading, that, like a reflection of leaves on a forest pool, ran through the shining, chestnut coat. Surely there was never another like him. Even among those fine herds of which Yelm Jim boasted this horse must stand the chief, the glory of the whole Palouse plains, the envy of the proudest Yakima.

He walked on towards the bend around which the horses had disappeared. The noise of the river was in his ears. After a while the air grew resinous with burning firboughs, and finally, through the trees, he caught the glow of Kingsley's camp-fire. He and his wife had chosen to pitch their tents here on the bank of the Nisqually, rather than to share the cramped quarters of the settler.

She was seated with the teacher on a log in the full light of the blazing boughs, when Mose stopped on the edge of the open to reconnoiter, and he saw instantly their resemblance to each other. The two men, resting a little apart, listened amusedly to their eager conversation, while nearer, but to the right, Mill Thornton stood with his hand at the bit of the young sorrel, waiting for a last word with Samantha Myers.

She had joined the camp to "help an' hev er little fun." And she was a slim, graceful girl,--"all tech an' go," Eben would have told you,--with the beautiful color that is as delicate as the tints of a seashell, and yet impervious to life out-of-doors. Her hair, as fine as corn silk, was pale red, and when she bent over the tin reflector, in which she was cooking some very light rolls, her head seemed to catch the vital charm of the flames.

"But," Thornton was saying, "kem to think of it, I never see er Myers yet that wasn't er good cook. Ther's your Uncle Eben, when he's driv to it, he kin stir up a flapjack, an' turn her at eggsactly ther minute. Beats all. Yes," he resumed in afterthought, "take 'em as er fambly, ther Myerses is er pretty smart crowd; but you, well, I don't keer how many's on ther tree, Samanthy, you're ther peach."

She stood erect and flashed him a look that startled the boldness from his young eyes. "Mebbe I am, Mill," she said, gently, "but I bet, even ef you do think so, you wouldn't spare the sorrel long 'nough fur me to ride ter Rainier."

"No," he answered, flushing, "no, I wouldn't. She ain't well 'nough broke. You oughter not ask me."

"I'd resk her," she urged still, sweetly, and smiled into his troubled face; "I'd love ter ride her, Mill. But," she went on after a pause, and shrugging her shoulders, drew herself aloof, "you're jest like Jake. He's turrible 'fraid I'd get Ketchem killed."

"And yourself, too," he said warmly.

"But Uncle Eben," she added, "he 'lows I kin ride. He ain't so powerful scared 'bout--_Ginger_."

With this she laughed, her hands on her hips, her elbows shaking, and Thornton, himself laughing deeply, in keen appreciation, turned to set his foot in the stirrup. "You're all right, Samanthy," he said. "You're all right, but I 'low it wa'n't a peach I meant; it was jest er sassy sweetbrier rose. It's so blame' innercent lookin' an' soft, but er feller can't tech it 'ithout feelin' ther thorns."

The horse started, but she tripped after him a step to say softly, "Say, Mill, why don't you call it eglantine?"

He wheeled. "Who calls it eglantine?"

She laid a warning finger on her lip. "Mr. Stratton. But I never sensed what he was talkin' 'bout tell he showed me that ther sweetbrier growin' ther by the table."

"Was he meanin' you?"

She started back to the reflector, but paused to nod her head over her shoulder; a hundred imps danced in her eyes. "I'd love ter hear you call me that, Mill. My stars--eglantine!"

Her lips bubbled laughter; it followed him, teasing, taunting, as he rode on through the wood.

Mose, passing him, stalked into the open and towards the farther group. Kingsley waved his hand in careless recognition, and rising, threw back his tent-fly and drew out the blankets. "Well, Mose," he said, "what do you think of these?"

The boy bent to feel their texture gravely. "Dey ess plent' good 'nough blankets, monjee, ya-as, an Yelm Jim ees tell me--_go_. But Tyee Sahgalee ees goin' be hy-as mad. Sacre, it ees pos'ble he ees keel you. Den, merci, some more white man doan' lak go Rainier."

He turned with this and stalked swiftly back into the gloom. Alice rose in astonishment. Kingsley laughed. "If I should lose myself over a precipice," he said, "or drop into a crevasse, I suppose he would believe it was all the vengeance of his Indian God."

"But," she answered, "his father is a devout Catholic. The priest is making an acolyte of Mose." She sank back, helplessly, into her place. "I--I suppose it's impossible for him to grasp everything"--she was thinking of Laramie and the globe--"at once."

Her sister leaned towards Kingsley. A sudden apprehension rose in her great, dark eyes, and her voice, in emotion, dropped to contralto notes. "I wish you would give up that idea of trying for the summit," she said.

He laughed again, tossing his fine head. "Oh, don't bother, Louise; I shall be safe enough with Stratton along. He never takes a risk."

Stratton smiled and adjusted the rolled blankets to his back, leaning on them comfortably. "The Captain's right," he said. "He knows me. I always ask myself first, 'Is it safe?' And then, 'Is it worth while?'"

The teacher looked at him a searching moment and arched her brows. Then she reached and lifted her sister's guitar from the end of the log. Her fingers trailed briefly over the strings and settled in a thread of tune. She repeated the accompaniment, singing softly, inviting Kingsley's tenor.

"She shone in the light of declining day, Each sail was set, and each heart was gay."

And presently the other man hummed an undernote, but Louise was silent. She had changed her position a little, clasping her hands loosely around her knee, with her face slightly lifted and turned to the darkening wood. It was the face of a dreamer, rapt, sensitive, who peopled the shadows, and to whom the many voices of the night tuned in unbroken symphony.

In the interlude Kingsley turned to her. "Where is your voice, Louise? We need the contralto."

She started and looked at him, smiling. It was then she resembled Alice. The expression was there and the charm; but softened, finer, as the painting of a master may be reproduced in pastel.

Her voice was beautiful. She took up the song, subduing her notes to her sister's lighter compass, but the music, that had been simply pleasing, assumed, suddenly, the touch and finish of grand opera.

For the white squall rides on the surg-ing wave, And the bark is gulph'd in an o-cean's grave, For the white squall rides on the surg-ing wave, And the bark is gulph'd in an o-cean's grave, in an o-cean's grave, in an o - - ocan's grave.

*CHAPTER VII*

*THE INSTRUMENT OF TYEE SAHGALEE*

The summer day breaks early in the Puget Sound country. It was not yet four by Stratton's watch when he stepped from his tent and stood analyzing the weather, but all the sky overhead was changing to yellow, and directly, while he looked, to streaks of flame. The heights, towering a thousand feet on the opposite side of the gorge, were burnished copper, and Rainier, walling the top of the canyon, warmed to amethyst and rose. Its crest, at an altitude of nearly fifteen thousand feet, was hardly seven miles distant.

But the great forest that hemmed in the small open where the camp was pitched, still gloomed in shadow, and the air was sharp with the breath of near glacier and snowfield. Stratton saw that Mose had left his blanket, gone already to bring up the horses, and the close report of a gun told that Kingsley was off in search of the early bird. Then Samantha came from the other tent and stirred the smouldering fire. She added a dry hemlock bough, watching the roused flames fasten on the resinous wood.

"Good morning, Psyche," he said.

She lifted her glance, nodding. She had a mouth like a Cupid's bow and the short upper lip twitched with enforced gravity before the shaft sped. "Ef you hed er wife, I 'low she'd get er new name 'bout every day, an' mebbe twicet. Land, it 'ud keep her busy rememberin' who she was."

She tucked her sleeves up from her tapering arms, and kneeling, dipped them deep in a bubbling pool. Stratton laughed softly, enjoying her, and lifting his bag, crossed the open seeking a warm spring, which, screened in a network of young cedars, afforded a morning plunge. All along the valley iron and soda deposits discolored the earth, and mineral water, hot or sharply cold, sparkled in crystal basins.

An hour later the little cavalcade formed in line, with Kingsley leading on his big white horse, followed by Samantha, whose clear piping voice rose in alternate upbraiding or admonition, for she rode the indifferent Ginger. Mose, mounting Yelm Jim's piebald pony, crowded the cayuse with the two pack animals; then came Louise and the teacher, while Stratton closed the rear.

The trail became more and more precipitous, switch-backing across the face of a spur, taking the edge of a cliff, breaking into sharp pitches to a rushing ford. Trunks, logs, netlike boughs, shelving rock crowded close. The head of the Nisqually and its glacier were not far off. Then finally they turned up its beautiful tributary, the Paradise. Over the stream Eagle Peak, the first of the Tatoosh Mountains, lifted a tremendous front, and boulders, hurled from it, blocked the limpid current, creating innumerable cascades. The air was flooded with drifting spray, and the wet, luxuriant earth, reflecting the sun, filled the gorge with playing color.

At last Alice drew rein near the brink fronting a great cataract. Stratton dismounted and went to tighten her horse's girth. "Are you a little afraid?" he asked.

"Afraid? Of the trail? Oh, no. I love it; it's my element. And Colonel can go anywhere. He picks his way through bogs, pits, better than I could, and he runs straight up these rocky stairs. I have only to cling on," and she laughed.

"Well, you can trust him." Stratton's glance moved from her horse to his own mount and back to the black. "Sir Donald has found his match. But, how was it that Forrest gave up his horse?"

"He hasn't. I am only keeping Colonel for him, while he is at Freeport."

"I see," said Stratton slowly, "I see. I hope if the time comes when I must part with Sir Donald, I can leave him in the same hands."

At this she swept him with a swift, critical look, ruffling her brows. "I have known Paul Forrest all my life," she said, and turned her eyes again to the cataract.

"I understand." He smiled a little, both nettled and amused. "Before I can venture to ask a favor of you, you must know and like me better than you do now."

She flashed him another look, tilting her chin. "I like you as well as I could like any American with _un_-American ways."

For an instant he betrayed his surprise, then, "Well, thank you," he said; "I appreciate your frankness; and perhaps you are right. My mother was more a French woman than an American; she was a Creole of the Mississippi. And my grandfather, on the other side, was a factor of the Hudson Bay Company. My father, I suppose, passed over with New Georgia into the hands of the United States. After all, it is hard for most any American to tell in just what generation he began. But I admit I have lived close to the border, Miss Hunter, often on the other side. In fact I haven't always been able to determine the line."

"And I," she answered, with a gathering storm in her eyes, "I have lived all of my life close to the boundary, but in a different way. The best patriot is he who fights for his home while he defends his country, and the sun for my family rose and set in 'Fifty-four, forty or fight.' We know the line; we never crossed to the other side. My grandfather died with Marcus Whitman."

She spoke then to her horse, starting him briskly. Stratton vaulted into his saddle. "You touch-me-not!" he said under his breath. "You touch-me-not!"

Far ahead Samantha approached a second cataract. It was a perilous place, for the trail, skirting a precipice, rose from a bog in rocky and winding stairs worn smooth and slippery by continuous spray.

Kingsley's horse cleared the morass; his iron shoes struck fire from the shelving granite and he set himself to the steps. His master looked back. "Make him leap," he shouted to Samantha, and while he spoke was carried beyond a turn.

But Ginger delayed. He snuffed the ooze with disfavor. The girl jerked his muzzle high. "Heft yourself, Ginger," she shrilled, and cut him sharply on the flank. "Now, now, Ginger, get up."

And against belief, Ginger gathered himself, but the effort fell short. His forefeet grappled the rock and he sank back floundering in the ooze. The trained pack horses halted, and Mose threw himself from his pony and pushed swiftly around the bog, through underbrush, to Ginger's head. But Samantha had already slipped from her saddle, and worked herself free of the struggling horse. She moved back coolly from the abyss and emerged from the mudhole, dripping, but unhurt.

She drew a full breath and looked about her. Stratton, who had arrival, grasped the situation and drew in his horse, humorously regarding her. "Ain't I a sight?" she asked.

"Yes, Aphrodite, you are. You are a vision to haunt a man's dreams."

"I jedge you're 'bout right." She paused and the imps danced in her eyes. "But I 'low it 'ud be er turrible nightmare."

She reached and broke a low branch of hemlock, with which she began hastily to brush the mud from her skirt. Beyond the bog, Mose, who had extricated the unfortunate pony, urged him up the granite stair. His flanks were slippery with ooze. "My stars," she said, "I'm glad Mill didn't kem this trip. I'd never hear ther last of it. He'd run er joke ter death."

The ax was brought, and the bog was hurriedly bridged with corduroy for the remaining horses. Then finally they trailed out of the heavy timber into the parks of Paradise. A succession of emerald slopes opened before them, broken by clumps of amabilis fir and mountain hemlock; where a higher top rose out of a shapely mass it became a cathedral spire. Sometimes the way wound through an area of blooming heliotrope or asters; banks of gorgeous snapdragon or flaming Indian paintbrush gave color, like landscape gardening, to whole hillsides. Then behind them, pinnacle on pinnacle, closed the Tatoosh Range; a last sharp ascent and they were on that small and lofty Plateau, at an altitude of five thousand feet, since called The Camp of Clouds, with the splendor of the great summit almost overhead.

The tents were pitched; horses picketed. It was hardly mid-afternoon. "By this time tomorrow," said Kingsley, "if this weather stays with us, we shall have made and I hope passed Gibraltar."

Stratton, lounging on a blanket, looked up to the black cliff, which, rising sheer fifteen hundred feet, stood like a mighty fortress against the whiteness of the dome. "I hope so," he answered, "but, Captain, I never saw anything look so tremendously like work."

Louise rested on a grassy knob, her hands clasped loosely on her knee, inspiration in her lifted face. She hardly heard her husband's remark, or the other man's reply, but Alice started from her place beside her. "Phil," she said, "take me with you. You can't understand what it means to me, to be so near, to see the summit shining there, and go no farther. I'm very strong, Phil, and clear-headed. I'm not afraid of things. I--oh, you don't understand, but the mountain seems to beckon."

Kingsley walked a restless turn. "I do understand," he said. "I feel it myself. But we don't know what we are going through, and we can't be sure of the weather an hour ahead; clouds are manufactured right here at a moment's notice. But wait, don't tease, and we'll compromise. I'm going off now to reconnoiter. I believe the most feasible start is from that ridge across this valley of the Paradise, but I want to be sure. There'll be no time to waste in doubling back for fresh starts to-morrow. And Mose has been up that way; he says, with care, we can use the horses as far as the old snow. A glacier cuts in there, probably the source of the Cowlitz, and he thinks we should be able to reach it in a couple of hours. I'll take you that far--to the glacier."

At this Mose started from his recumbent position on the earth. He threw out his arms in protest. "No, no, Mees," he said. "It ees bes' you doan' go dare. Sacre, no."

"I'm not afraid," she answered smiling, "and if I'm a trouble I'll turn back. I promise."

"You doan' be some tro'ble, Mees," he said quickly. "No, no, it ees dat Tyee Sahgalee ees goin' be mad. Mebbe he ees mek dis mountain burn an' break an' fall down. Monjee, monjee, Mees, you can' ride quick 'nough away."

She laughed, shaking her head. "I don't believe that, Mose," she said, "and you won't, after we have been there. Tyee Sahgalee don't care how many of us go creeping up there, any more than we care about the ants and spiders that crawl to the cabin door."

"You mean it is you who don't care," said Stratton. "You are ready to take the risks, whatever they are. And if you are determined to go on braving Providence, or Tyee Sahgalee, or whoever it is, the rest of the day, I'm going to join the expedition; that is, unless Mrs. Kingsley is afraid to stay here alone with Samantha."

"Oh," answered Louise, at last awake to the situation, "I want you to go."

"I thought so," and he smiled. "I've proved something of a mascot on occasion, and I'll look after the Captain."

The horses were brought and presently they were trailing away up the pathless slopes in the wake of the piebald pony; fording countless streams, leaping them, sinking in pitfalls through treacherous banks of bloom. When, switchbacking up a lofty rise, Alice ventured to look down, all the colored breadth of Paradise park unfolded like a map, and the dome gathered majesty at every turn. They gained a shoulder, rounded a curve, and before them stretched the levels of a plateau carpeted with snow. Then, as they moved across this field, mountain on mountain opened, shading to blue distance. Through a gap, out of a woolly cloud, shone the opal crown of Adams, and presently, far off St. Helens rose like a floating berg on an uptossed sea.

They dismounted at the foot of a knob flanked by loose rock. The red stain of old snow was under their feet and beyond the spur shone the clean, blue-green edge of the glacier. "We are higher than the treeline, now," said Philip, "and above the clouds."

She drew a breath of delight, lifting her glance to the near dome. "And it looks as though we could reach the summit in fifteen or twenty minutes. Oh, Phil, come, let's go."

Kingsley laughed. "We haven't climbed nine thousand feet; the hardest third of the ascent is above us. Don't you remember, the only two men who ever made that summit were half a day in just passing Gibraltar. We may find it no longer passable."

While his look rested on the grim fortress a thin cloud rose like smoke from its base. It covered the cliff swiftly and trailed across the dome. "Out of nothing, without notice," and he shook his head; "that's what I've heard."

He turned. Stratton was busy searching for a safe hitching-place for his horse; he never stood well. But Mose had stepped nearer Kingsley. The boy's shoulders were inclined forward, and his eyes, in that instant, were those of a crouching animal about to spring.

"Well, Mose," he said carelessly, "your Tyee Sahgalee is hiding his face. I suppose you think we've come far enough. But we'll show him."

He moved on with Alice up the knob, and Stratton joined them. But presently Mose stalked by leading the way to the glacier. His face had the gray look of fear, but his lips were set in the thin line that gave him an older, sinister touch, the shadow of cruelty.

He moved swiftly and surely. He did not once look back. He gave no direction or warning. They followed, slipping and stumbling through the moraine, and gaining the ragged brow of the knob, found themselves suddenly on the brink of a mighty precipice. Far, far down, the infant Cowlitz sprang into life and struggled out between stupendous columns and needles. Locked in the opposite pinnacled cliffs shone the sheer, blue-seamed front of the glacier, and the throes that gave the river birth resounded through the gorge.

Stratton uncoiled the spare lariat he carried, and taking an end, with Philip closing, and the girl between, drew slowly along the rim. Mose, curving far ahead, came out on the slippery incline of the glacier. Finally he stopped under a great upheaval of ice, and resting against a block, waited, with his back turned to them and his face lifted to the clouding dome.

Behind them another cloud formed over the Tatoosh Mountains, driving fast to meet the advancing column from Gibraltar; and, in a little while, when they had come out on the ice, and made slow headway up the tilting surface from the abyss, mist lifted swiftly, flooding, giving immensity to the darkening gorge. Kingsley walked a trifle in advance of Alice, with Stratton abreast of him. Suddenly Mose's tracks, on a recent light snowfall which had offered foothold, swerved, and both men stopped. They were on the brink of a narrow, deep, incredibly deep, crevasse.

Alice moved back, shivering. She looked, a mute question trembling on her lips, at Mose. But he continued to stand, oblivious, with his eyes fixed, expectantly, on the clouding dome.

"See here," called Philip, "see here; next time you let us know." Then his glance returned to the crevasse. "Reminds me of a tremendous white watermelon," he said, "with just one thin, clean slice gone."

"Yes?" questioned Stratton, smiling, "it strikes me differently. I thought right away of some curious metal, with just enough taken, by some nice process, to shape a gigantic blade."

"A blade, yes," said Alice, "for the hand of Tyee Sahgalee."

Stratton's eyes met hers amusedly. He wondered if she was capable of superstition. "Even then," he said, "it is only a surface impression, lost the moment you look down. It's an ice-crevasse; nothing else." He turned to Kingsley, who was already studying the glacier ahead. "Of course this will not delay us to-morrow, Captain, but it is time, now, to turn back."

"In a moment. There's a streak on there that bothers me. Looks like a more serious break. I want to see it at closer range. Wait here; I won't be fifteen minutes."

He moved back impetuously, and, giving himself short headway, took the crevasse in a leap. Showers of loosened ice clinked down from the rim. Most of the particles struck the sides that closed in twenty feet below, and rebounding, dropped again and sent back faint echoes from the last level of the abyss.

Stratton stood watching Philip up the glacier, but presently, Alice drew away from the crevasse and turned to look back down the gorge. The sun no longer shone. All that brilliant vista of opal peak and amethyst spur, shading to blue distance, was curtained in closing sheets of mist. There a great crag loomed an instant and was gone. Here an uptossed pile of ice-blocks flashed a sudden prismatic light and grew dim. Then they themselves were wrapped in a noiseless, drenching cloud.