North of Fifty-Three Part 10

"Maybe not, but you need rest," Bill said quietly. "Quit thinking things. It'll be all the same a hundred years from now. Go on to bed.

You'll be more comfortable."

Thus peremptorily commanded, Hazel found herself granting instant obedience. The bed, as Bill had remarked, was far more comfortable than sitting by the fire. She got into the blankets just as she stood, even to her shoes, and drew the canvas sheet up so that it hid her face--but did not prevent her from seeing.

In spite of herself, she slept fitfully. Now and then she would wake with a start to a half-frightened realization of her surroundings and plight, and whenever she did wake and look past the fire it was to see Roaring Bill Wagstaff stretched out in the red glow, his brown head pillowed on one folded arm. Once she saw him reach to the wood without moving his body and lay a stick on the fire.

Then all at once she wakened out of sound slumber with a violent start.

Roaring Bill was shaking the tarpaulin over her and laughing.

"Arise, Miss Sleeping Beauty!" he said boyishly. "Breakfast's ready."

He went back to the fire. Hazel sat up, patting her tousled hair into some semblance of order. Off in the east a reddish streak spread skyward into somber gray. In the west, black night gave ground slowly.

"Well, it's another day," she whispered, as she had whispered to herself once before. "I wonder if there will ever be any more like it?"

CHAPTER VIII

IN DEEP WATER

The dawn thrust aside night's somber curtains while they ate, revealing a sky overcast with slaty clouds. What with her wanderings of the night before and the journey through the dark with Roaring Bill, she had absolutely no idea of either direction or locality. The infolding timber shut off the outlook. Forest-clad heights upreared here and there, but no landmark that she could place and use for a guide. She could not guess whether Cariboo Meadows was a mile distant, or ten, nor in what direction it might lie. If she had not done so before, she now understood how much she had to depend on Roaring Bill Wagstaff.

"Do you suppose I can get home in time to open school?" she inquired anxiously.

Roaring Bill smiled. "I don't know," he answered. "It all depends."

Upon what it depended he did not specify, but busied himself packing up. In half an hour or less they were ready to start. Bill spent a few minutes longer shortening the stirrups, then signified that she should mount. He seemed more thoughtful, less inclined to speech.

"You know where you are now, don't you?" she asked.

"Not exactly," he responded. "But I will before long--I hope."

The ambiguity of his answer did not escape her. She puzzled over it while Silk ambled sedately behind the other horses. She hoped that Bill Wagstaff knew where he was going. If he did not--but she refused to entertain the alternative. And she began to watch eagerly for some sign of familiar ground.

For two hours Roaring Bill tramped through aisles bordered with pine and spruce and fir, through thickets of berry bush, and across limited areas of gra.s.sy meadow. Not once did they cross a road or a trail.

With the clouds hiding the sun, she could not tell north from south after they left camp. Eventually Bill halted at a small stream to get a drink. Hazel looked at her watch. It was half past eight.

"Aren't we ever going to get there?" she called impatiently.

"Pretty soon," he called back, and struck out briskly again.

Another hour pa.s.sed. Ahead of her, leading one pack horse and letting the other follow untrammeled, Roaring Bill kept doggedly on, halting for nothing, never looking back. If he did not know where he was going, he showed no hesitation. And Hazel had no choice but to follow.

They crossed a ravine and slanted up a steep hillside. Presently Hazel could look away over an area of woodland undulating like a heavy ground swell at sea. Here and there ridges stood forth boldly above the general roll, and distantly she could descry a white-capped mountain range. They turned the end of a thick patch of pine scrub, and Bill pulled up in a small opening. From a case swinging at his belt he took out a pair of field gla.s.ses, and leisurely surveyed the country.

"Well?" Hazel interrogated.

She herself had cast an anxious glance over the wide sweep below and beyond, seeing nothing but timber and hills, with the silver thread of a creek winding serpent-wise through the green. But of habitation or trail there was never a sign. And it was after ten o'clock. They were over four hours from their camp ground.

"Nothing in sight, is there?" Bill said thoughtfully. "If the sun was out, now. Funny I can't spot that Soda Creek Trail."

"Don't you know this country at all?" she asked gloomily.

"I thought I did," he replied. "But I can't seem to get my bearings to work out correctly. I'm awfully sorry to keep you in such a pickle.

But it can't be helped."

Thus he disarmed her for the time being. She could not find fault with a man who was doing his best to help her. If Roaring Bill were unable to bear straight for the Meadows, it was unfortunate for her, but no fault of his. At the same time, it troubled her more than she would admit.

"Well, we won't get anywhere standing on this hill," he remarked at length.

He took up the lead rope and moved on. They dropped over the ridge crest and once more into the woods. Roaring Bill made his next halt beside a spring, and fell to unlas.h.i.+ng the packs.

"What are you going to do?" Hazel asked.

"Cook a bite, and let the horses graze," he told her. "Do you realize that we've been going since daylight? It's near noon. Horses have to eat and rest once in a while, just the same as human beings."

The logic of this Hazel could not well deny, since she herself was tired and ravenously hungry. By her watch it was just noon.

Bill hobbled out his horses on the gra.s.s below the spring, made a fire, and set to work cooking. For the first time the idea of haste seemed to have taken hold of him. He worked silently at the meal getting, fried steaks of venison, and boiled a pot of coffee. They ate. He filled his pipe, and smoked while he repacked. Altogether, he did not consume more than forty minutes at the noon halt. Hazel, now woefully saddle sore, would fain have rested longer, and, in default of resting, tried to walk and lead Silk. Roaring Bill offered no objection to that. But he hit a faster gait. She could not keep up, and he did not slacken pace when she began to fall behind. So she mounted awkwardly, and Silk jolted and shook her with his trotting until he caught up with his mates. Bill grinned over his shoulder.

"You're learning fast," he called back. "You'll be able to run a pack train by and by."

The afternoon wore on without bringing them any nearer Cariboo Meadows so far as Hazel could see. Traveling over a country swathed in timber and diversified in contour, she could not tell whether Roaring Bill swung in a circle or bore straight for some given point.

She speculated futilely on the outcome of the strange plight she was in. It was a far cry from pounding a typewriter in a city office to jogging through the wilderness, lost beyond peradventure, her only company a stranger of unsavory reputation. Yet she was not frightened, for all the element of unreality. Under other circ.u.mstances she could have relished the adventure, taken pleasure in faring gypsy fas.h.i.+on over the wide reaches where man had left no mark. As it was--

She called a halt at four o'clock.

"Mr. Wagstaff!"

Bill stopped his horses and came back to her.

"Aren't we _ever_ going to get anywhere?" she asked soberly.

"Sure! But we've got to keep going. Got to make the best of a bad job," he returned. "Getting pretty tired?"

"I am," she admitted. "I'm afraid I can't ride much longer. I could walk if you wouldn't go so fast. Aren't there any ranches in this country at all?"

He shook his head. "They're few and far between," he said. "Don't worry, though. It isn't a life-and-death matter. If we were out here without grub or horses it might be tough. You're in no danger from exposure or hunger."

"You don't seem to realize the position it puts me in," Hazel answered.

A wave of despondency swept over her, and her eyes grew suddenly bright with the tears she strove to keep back. "If we wander around in the woods much longer, I'll simply be a sensation when I do get back to Cariboo Meadows. I won't have a shred of reputation left. It will probably result in my losing the school. You're a man, and it's different with you. You can't know what a girl has to contend with where no one knows her. I'm a stranger in this country, and what little they do know of me--"

She stopped short, on the point of saying that what Cariboo Meadows knew of her through the medium of Mr. Howard Perkins was not at all to her credit.

Roaring Bill looked up at her impa.s.sively. "I know," he said, as if he had read her thought. "Your friend Perkins talked a lot. But what's the difference? Cariboo Meadows is only a fleabite. If you're right, and you know you're right, you can look the world in the eye and tell it collectively to go to the devil. Besides, you've got a perverted idea. People aren't so ready to give you the bad eye on somebody else's say-so. It would take a lot more than a flash drummer's word to convince me that you're a naughty little girl. Pshaw--forget it!"