Part 15

Kitty was ironing clothes in the kitchen of the living shack. She and her father had been alone in camp for four days. It had rained in the interim and the greens of Milburn gulch were freshly polished and gilded. Inside the shack the cherry-coloured embers glowed on the grate, and a blue gingham dress was falling into crisp and immaculate folds as it was turned on the ironing board. The door stood open, and a single big fly buzzed in and out over the sill, as if he couldn't make up his mind whether he preferred sunshine or shadow.

While Kitty propelled the iron she thought a girl's thoughts, which alight on a subject as delicately as butterflies, and as lightly sheer away. Since she had beheld the eager light in Bill's eyes at the sight of the dark girl, a fluttering disquiet winged in Kitty's mind. She was thinking of men and women now.

"Annie knows much more"----thus it ran in her head. "I wish she would tell me. I ought to know. But why do I want to know what is ugly? But it's neither ugly nor beautiful; it's mixed. Men are not angels. That's only silly dreaming that leaves you flat. I wouldn't want a man to be too good, really. Just a spice of danger and uncertainty."

Kitty blushed, and looked around her guiltily as if this dreadful thought might have been overheard. She applied herself to her ironing with prim lips.

"I am a fool!" she thought. "Annie is wise. I wish she would come."

Kitty's thoughts were broken in upon by the sound of a footstep outside the shack. Something heavy and unfamiliar in the fall of it caused her to call out sharply: "Is that you, dad?"

There was no answer. She started around the ironing-board to investigate. At the same moment the doorway was darkened by the figure of a stranger, a piteous, ghastly, unkempt travesty of manhood. For a moment he wavered there, then pitched headlong to Kitty's feet. One arm reached toward her as in supplication; the other was grotesquely doubled under him.

Kitty screamed, and stood rooted to the spot. The man lay without moving. He had uttered no sound. Jim Sholto came running from the works with a blanched face. He all but fell over the body, and stood like his daughter, turned into stone with astonishment, His admirable composure quickly asserted itself. He dropped to his knees.

"Help me to turn him over, lass," he said quietly.

The face that was revealed with its sunken, bearded cheeks and painfully drawn lips seemed aged to Kitty. The eyes were closed. Jim lowered his head to listen at the man's breast.

"He lives," he said succinctly. "Dislocated shoulder--starvation. Give me your sharpest knife to cut away this sleeve. Get a pillow for his head. Put water on the stove."

Kitty flew to obey the various orders.

"I'll put his shoulder in before he comes to," Jim went on grimly. "It is more merciful. It's a nasty job--after a week or more untended. Can you stand it?"

Kitty nodded.

"Then hold him as I bid you."

Jim Sholto at fifty was still more powerful than either of his sons. He needed all his strength for the cruel job in hand. The swollen, feverish flesh was dreadful to see. Kitty closed her eyes and gritted her teeth and held on. Deep, soft groans broke from the unconscious man as Jim worked over him. Finally, with a dull click as of colliding billiard balls, it was done. Jim stood up and wiped his face. Now that the most urgent service had been rendered, curiosity began to have way.

"Did you see him come?" he asked.

Kitty shook her head.

"H'm!" said Jim. "With all this vast empty land to choose from, he stumbles on us. Look, his moccasins are worn clean through."

"What happened to him?" said Kitty.

"Who knows?" said Jim. "Maybe just the folly of an ignorant man travelling alone. Maybe there's something on him to give us a clue."

Jim knelt again. His searching fingers came in contact with a little cloth packet sewed to the inside of the man's shirt. Cutting the stitches with the point of his knife, he unwrapped it, and revealed inside a final wrapping of soft cotton, a delicate platinum chain with a great gleaming emerald hanging from it. Father and daughter looked at each other in strong amazement.

"There's some strange tale behind this," said Jim. "Put it in a safe place."

The stranger's eyelids flickered, and a slight sound issued from his lips.

"We must lay him on your bed," said Jim. "This is your job from now. Is there any condensed milk left?"

"I have saved a can," said Kitty.

"Dilute it and warm it, and feed him bread soaked in it when he is able to swallow. Keep hot cloths around his shoulder. Like he will have fever. Give him gelseminum and aconite. You know the doses."

"I know," said Kitty.

A new era began for her from that moment. In the presence of this urgent reality her vague discontents were dissipated like morning mists. Kitty had a passion for mothering, which had never been satisfied, for they all treated her like a child, and none of them had ever been sick. At first the stricken man--that strange visitant from nowhere--was no more than an object for her to wreak her passionate pity upon. Only by degrees did he come to have an individuality for her. It commenced at the moment when she made the surprising discovery that he was young. She learned that from the fresh, vibrant quality of his voice. He was delirious.

All that night, and the next day, and the night that followed he tossed and murmured in his fever. But it could be seen that he was growing better. Kitty was sleepless and happy. At first his speech was formless and incoherent. Later he fixed Kitty with his big bright eyes, and spoke with an unnatural distinctness and appearance of sanity. She listened as one listens to a romance, interested and thrilled, but unsuspicious of any real foundation to the tale. It was too much like a phantasy of the imagination, all his talk of a beautiful valley hidden within the mountains, that you entered through a cave; and of a brave and lovely woman who ruled the place, that he called Nahnya. The name suggested nothing to Kitty.

"He is a poet," she thought with a touch of awe. In her simplicity she wrote it all down during the hours of the night, that she might be able to tell him later.

On the second morning, Kitty dozing on a chair beside the bed was startled into complete wakefulness by hearing him say in a weak, natural voice:

"You are real! I thought I had dreamed you!"

"You're better!" cried Kitty overjoyed.

"Is it still up North?" he said wonderingly. "I never expected to see a white girl!"

"There's none but me," said Kitty.

"How did I come here?" he asked.

"I don't know," said Kitty. "You just tumbled in the door."

He told her of his accident.

"The Stanley rapids!" said Kitty. "That is only ten miles up the river. You must have been many days making it!"

"Walking in circles I suppose," he said. "I started all right, keeping to the shore. But the pain was so bad, I suppose I got lightheaded. I remember stumbling through the woods with all kinds of things going through my head----!"

"You mustn't talk any more," said Kitty commandingly.

"All right," he said smiling. "Don't go away!"

Nourishment and good care worked wonders with the patient. He insisted on getting up next day. Catching sight of his face in a mirror, he cried out in horror, and demanded a razor. Kitty left him alone to make himself presentable, while she helped her father in the works.

Returning at length, she found him sitting in the kitchen metamorphosed. His thick dark hair was brushed and gleaming; he smiled at her with a face as smooth and bland as a boy's. Wonderful are the changes wrought in men's faces by a razor! Kitty, remembering how he had looked when her father turned him over, could scarcely believe her eyes.

There was likewise a changed quality in his smile. Kitty read in it that he found her good to look at. She was much taken aback by the discovery. In a twinkling, it seemed to her, their positions had been reversed. He was no longer her sick child, but a man--a possible master. Her heart began to beat fast. To hide her confusion, she turned and rummaged on the kitchen shelves. Even with her back turned she felt as if his careless, smiling eyes were laying bare her very soul. She could not tell whether it was painful or sweet to have it exposed to him.

Of course she was not as open as she fancied herself to be. Ralph guessed nothing. Presently she turned with a composed face, and without comment brought him the little packet they had discovered on his body.

He saw the emerald lying on her outstretched hand without offering to take it. An expression of pain crossed his face, and he averted his head.

"Please keep it for me," he said. "I don't want to be obliged to think of things yet."

A little jealous stab of the unknown pricked Kitty's breast. She put the bauble away in her room.

Coming back she said, with a brisk attempt to reassert a nurse's authority: "You may go out and sit in the sun for an hour."

It only made him smile now--covering her with confusion again. "Yes, ma'am," he said with mock humility. "If you'll come, too."

"I have my work to do," said Kitty rebukingly.

He was incorrigible. "Please, I can't walk all that way without help," he said plaintively.

She laughed, and helped him outside; lingered beside the bench--and finally sat down on the other end of it. Poor, inexperienced Kitty had no armour for her soft breast. They chattered and laughed, and the hours flew on wings. Ralph told her no more of his story than his name and profession. She, seeing that it distressed him to rake up the past, was happy to avoid it. For the same reason she forbore saying anything as yet about the wonderful story he had told in his delirium. She, likewise in private, made her father agree not to ask their visitor any questions until he was stronger.

Ralph's frame of mind was natural to one recovering from a sudden, serious illness. He instinctively felt the necessity of maintaining a quiet mind while the strength stole deliciously back through his veins. Away back he apprehended a burden waiting to be shouldered when he was strong enough, but at present he would have none of it. He was no more than a bit of reanimated clay gratefully absorbing the sunshine. At no time was vanity a great factor in his make-up, and in his present purgated state it was non-existent. It honestly never occurred to him that their jolly talk and laughter, and the exchange of happy glances might be working irremediable damage in the breast of the dreamy girl beside him.

Ralph, now sufficiently recovered, was banished to the men's bunks, outside, and Kitty repossessed herself of her own room. That night in the secure and comfortable darkness her defences fell away from her. She pressed her lips to the pillow that had supported his dear head throughout his illness, and moistened it with her tears. "Little did I guess when he came tumbling through the doorway," she thought--and left the thought unfinished on a swelling breast. "It is like an answer to a prayer I didn't dare make," she whispered to herself. When doubts and jealousies of the mystery that enshrouded him obtruded on her, she thrust them away. "It must be all right!" she insisted. "His feet were led to our door!"

The next day passed in the same fashion. Ralph insisted on helping Kitty with the housework, much to her amused scorn. Ralph took an inexhaustible delight in her naïve simplicity. She loved to have him chaff her. He seemed to her the cleverest, kindest, most lovable of superior creatures. Further than that the mystery of his manliness thrilled her. In his eyes there lurked a strange, sly promise of rapture. She called it "wickedness" in her innocence and was sweetly troubled. "What shall I do if he tries to kiss me?" she thought in a delicious panic. As the day passed and he made no move to do so a faint chagrin made itself felt, which she refused to recognize.

As if moved by a common impulse they kept their conversational shallop floating in the safe shallows. Reminiscences of childhood afforded them much humorous matter. Ralph did most of the talking.

"Once when I was a kid," he said, "they dug up the street in front of our house for a drain, and ran into an Indian burial ground. My chum and I played ninepins on the sidewalk with the skulls, and the constable arrested us. What a fuss there was!"

"I should say so!" said Kitty, simulating a virtuous indignation. "Little savages!"

"Why?" said Ralph teasingly. "Old bones are all right. Don't you like their nice earthy smell?"

"Horrible!" said Kitty.

"Did you ever see Hamlet?" asked Ralph. He apostrophized, a teacup in his extended hand. "Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him well, Horatio. He was a fellow of infinite jest!"

Ralph acted out the speech for her with improvisations. Kitty was obliged to sit down suddenly, and to hold her sides. Kitty was one of those shy, admiring, easily shocked, and easily moved-to-laughter girls, that inspire a man to the highest flights of audacious wit.

"Speaking of bones," Ralph went on; "when I was a student at McGill, my room-mate and I saved up enough to buy a whole skeleton all properly articulated. It was a peach! We kept it in the closet hanging from a clothes-hook."

"Mercy!" said Kitty.

"The landlady had a daughter who had a beau, and the two of them used to make us fellows tired with their goings-on. They'd stand for half an hour at the foot of the stairs saying good-night. Yes, it sounded like a cow drawing her foot out of a boggy place!"

"Aren't you awful!" said Kitty, blushing.

"We decided that something must be done," Ralph went on. "I got some phosphorus paint, and we painted the skeleton all over and fastened a long line to the hook in his skull that was used to hang him up by. And that night when the pair of them came out in the hall downstairs, and turned down the light, we crept out on the upper landing, and leaned over the rail, and let Mr. Bones go walking slowly step by step down the stairs. He was a lovely blue colour; every bone stood out!"

"You might have killed them with fright," said Kitty.

"No such luck!" said Ralph. "They didn't hear him coming until he was halfway down. Then I rattled him a little. Jehosaphat! You never heard such a screech in your life! Both of them! They made for the front door, and rattled it like mad, and couldn't get it open! I laughed so hard the string slipped out of my hand. And Mr. Bones went down the rest of the stairs sitting up just like a person--rattle, clatter, smash! Oh, my! Oh, my!"

"I don't think it was funny at all!" said Kitty. But she laughed, and her eyes confessed her admiration of his dreadful boldness.

"Next day we moved," said Ralph.

XVIII

THE TRIANGLE

On the following day, the fifth of Ralph's stay in Milburn gulch, he was strong enough to walk about more freely. Jim Sholto took him up the trail to show him the excavations. Jim was secretly hoping that in Ralph he would find a workman to take the place of one of the absent boys. Being past the period of heart troubles himself, the danger of introducing a strange and not uncomely young man into his family Eden had not suggested itself to him.

While they were away, Kitty worked about the cabin in a spasmodic way widely differing from her usual deft serenity. She would come to a stand staring before her mistily, a little smile wreathing the corners of her lips; rousing herself with a start, she would fly about for a while as if her life depended on getting done, only to fall into another dream. Absently picking things up, she dropped them in fresh places, and presently started hunting for them again. Snatches of impromptu song welled up from her breast, higher and higher, until her voice trembled and broke. She continually ran to the mirror, by turns anxious, critical, scornful, blushing, reassured by what she saw there. Every three minutes she went to the door and looked up the trail to see if he was coming back.

On one of these journeys she heard her name softly called behind her. Whirling about she beheld approaching by the trail from the river a graceful figure clad in buckskin skirt and blue flannel, her beautiful dark face composed and smiling, her black hair braided and wound about her upheld head. In short, it was her friend and preserver, holding out her hands, and smiling at Kitty wistfully and deprecatingly, just as she had seen her last.

Kitty shrieked with pleasure, and flinging her arms about her friend, dragged her into the cabin, and forced her into a chair.

"Annie! Annie! Annie!" she cried, dropping on her knees beside her. "How sweet of you to come! I wanted to see you so badly! You must stay a week!"

Nahnya shook her head, smiling. "I just brought the dugout back," she said in her soft full voice, that made a pleasant harmony with Kitty's excited accents. "And I brought fresh meat, mountain goat."

"Did you get your own boat all right?" Kitty demanded to know.

"It was only a little broke," said Nahnya. "I fix it easy."

"How could you bring two boats up against the current?" asked Kitty.

"I only bring yours," Nahnya answered. "Mine is down the river on this side where I can get it."

"How will you get it?"

"I will walk along the shore," said Nahnya. "It is not hard walking."

"Now I've got you, I'm not going to let you go in a hurry!" cried Kitty, clinging to her.

"But you're all busy here," objected Nahnya. "The men----"

"My brothers have gone outside," said Kitty. "There is only my father and--and a stranger."

"A stranger?" said Nahnya.

Kitty was not going to blurt out her secret. Her friend's mind must be prepared by delicate stages for its reception. "We have a white man stopping with us," she said very off-hand.

Nahnya was not blind to the self-conscious air and the blush. Her arm tightened affectionately about Kitty.

"Why did you run away from us like you did?" asked Kitty hastily, to create a diversion.

Nahnya shrugged. "I was afraid they thank me, and make a fuss," she said uneasily. "I feel like a fool then."

"You silly dear!" cried Kitty embracing her afresh.

There was a new demonstrativeness in Kitty, a breathless ardour that in itself was enough to tell the other woman something had happened since their parting.

"So you have a visitor," she said teasingly. "I think he is young, yes?"

Kitty tucked in an end of Nahnya's braid that was escaping. "Fairly young," she said.

"You are not so much lonely now I think," murmured Nahnya.

Kitty jumped up. "You must be hungry!" she cried. "I'm forgetting my duties!"

"Not an hour ago I ate," said Nahnya. "I am not hungry."

Kitty developed a great flow of small talk, about the weather, about her brothers, about everything except what was in both their minds. Nahnya let her run on. Under her friend's quiet, kind smile Kitty broke down at last, and running to her, dropped beside her again, and hid her hot face on the dark girl's shoulder.

"Oh, Annie!" she breathed on a trembling, rising inflection.

"Tell me," whispered Nahnya.

"Oh, Annie! It's so strange! I can't! I didn't want to tell you anything. I wanted you to see him, and--and to guess! I have lost myself completely! I am turned inside out! It came so suddenly. I never guessed anything like this! Oh, Annie! He's so strong, so kind, so mysterious, so clever, so dangerous! I am terrified of him. I am wretched when he is out of my sight for a minute!"

Nahnya's face became grave. "Has he said anything?" she whispered.

"Not yet."

"Oh, Kitty dear!" murmured Nahnya. "Be careful! Men----!"

"He's true!" said Kitty hotly. "That I can see in his eyes!"

"You know who he is?" asked Nahnya anxiously. "Where he come from? All about him?"

"No," faltered Kitty. "He's honest!" she cried. "My instinct tells me so. He's good to me. He's careful of me. He doesn't make love to me! Oh, Annie," she went on tremulously, "I've been living in a dream the last few days! All the time he teases me, and I love it because I know he is kind! All the time we laugh, and the hours go by like minutes!"

Once the opening was found, Kitty was not to be stopped from pouring out the whole of her simple heart to her friend. Nahnya held her close, and listened, and her dark head drooped.

Kitty, raising her face at last, was arrested by Nahnya's brooding look upon her. Kitty had never seen eyes so kind and so sad. Their look was as deep as the sea.

"Annie," she said sharply, "what's the matter? Aren't you glad?"

Nahnya pressed the girl convulsively. "I am glad," she murmured, bestirring herself. "I love you. I am glad if you are happy!"

"You were not looking glad," said Kitty.

"It is foolishness," said Nahnya. "Only--I think of me. I am young. I want be happy, too!"

"You will be!" cried Kitty.

Nahnya smiled--with those eyes! "It will never, never come to me!" she murmured.

"Why not?" Kitty demanded to know.

Nahnya laughed away the brooding look. "Foolish!" she cried, "I am jus' jealous! Tell me more! How did he come here?"

Kitty, like every lover, was a little selfish in her happiness. She allowed herself to be reassured by Nahnya's laughter. "He was travelling down the river all alone," she went on eagerly; "and he lost his boat and everything he had in the Stanley rapids, and dislocated his shoulder besides. The pain of it drove him out of his wits. For days he wandered in the bush. Providence directed his footsteps to us, dad says. He pitched headfirst through the doorway there, while I was working. Never in my life was I so frightened!"

Nahnya had succeeded in putting her own sadness out of mind. "You have not tell me what he look like," she said, warm with sympathy.

"He'll be here directly," said Kitty, blushing. "You shall see for yourself."

Springing up, Kitty ran to the door to look up the trail. He was not yet in sight. As she turned back into the room, Nahnya asked:

"What is his name?"

"Ralph Cowdray," said Kitty shyly.

There was silence in the cabin. The brook outside seemed suddenly to increase its brawling. Kitty, in her shyness, turned away her head when she spoke the name, therefore she did not see how Nahnya took it. Kitty waited for Nahnya to speak. The silence became like a weight on them both.

"Don't you think it's a pretty name?" murmured Kitty.

There was no answer. Kitty looked at her friend in surprise. Nahnya had not moved. She still sat quiet in the chair, her hands loose in her lap. But her head had fallen forward on her breast. The oblique glimpse that Kitty caught of her cheeks caused her to run to her friend, and fling an arm around her, and force her head up with the other hand, that she might see into her face. Nahnya kept her eyes obstinately veiled, but she could not disguise the shocking grayness that had crept into her curved cheeks.

"Annie! What's the matter!" she cried in distress. "You're sick! Why didn't you tell me? Come lie on my bed! Oh, how selfish I have been!"

Nahnya got up, steadying herself on the back of the chair. Her eyes were blank and piteous. "I am not sick," she said, measuring her words syllable by syllable. "I am all right. I will go now."

"You'll do nothing of the kind!" cried Kitty indignantly. "In such a state! Come, lie down, and let me take care of you!"

Nahnya stolidly resisted Kitty's effort to urge her toward the bedroom. Her measured voice began to shake in spite of her will. "You must let me go," she said.

"What nonsense!" cried Kitty, clinging to her.

Nahnya's voice came sharp and urgent. "You must let me go or it will be bad for all of us!"

Kitty fell back a step. "Bad for all of us!" she echoed in innocent perplexity. "What do you mean?"