Shadows of Shasta Part 10

She listens, looks about again, and then, going up to the little gla.s.s tacked beside the fire-place, carefully arranges her splendid hair that droops down over her shoulders in the careless, perfect fas.h.i.+on of Evangeline.

"Heaven help any one who is out in this storm to-night!"

Then she takes another stick from the corner and places it on the fire.

"Forty-nine will be here soon, and Johnny; Johnny with news about him--about poor John Logan."

She shakes her head and clasps her hands.

"It is nearly half a year since that night. They can't take him--they dare not take him. They are hunting him--hunting him in this storm--hunting him as if he were a wild beast. He hides with the cattle in the sheds, with the very hogs in their pens. They come upon him there; he starts from his sleep and dashes away, while they follow, and track him by the blood of his feet in the snow. Oh, how terrible it is!

I must not think of it; I will go mad."

She turns to the door and listens. She draws back the ragged curtains from the window and tries to look out into the storm. She can hear and see nothing, and she walks back again to the fire. "I must set them their supper." As she says this, she goes to a little cupboard and takes a piece of bread, puts it on a plate and sets it on the table. Then she places two plates and two cups of water. "They will be here soon, and they must have their suppers. Oh, that grocery!" She shudders as she says this. "And Johnny will bring me news of him--of John Logan. What's that?"

She springs to the door, lifts the latch, and Stumps steals in, brus.h.i.+ng the snow from his neck and shoulders. He has a club in his hand, and looks back and about him as he shuts the door.

"Oh, sister, its awful! I tell you its too awful!"

"Brother--brother! What has happened? What is awful? What is it, Johnny? And he, John Logan?"

"He's been there!" The boy s.h.i.+vers and points in a half-frightened manner toward the little hill. "Yes, he has; he's been up on the hill by his mother's grave; and he's been to 'Squire Field's house--yes, he has; and he couldn't get in, for they had a big dog tied to the gate, and now they have got another dog tied to the gate. Yes, and they tracked him all around by the blood in the snow!"

"Oh brother! don't, don't!"

"Don't be afraid, sister; he has gone away now. Oh, if he would only go away and stay away--far away, and they couldn't catch him, I'd be just as glad as I could be! Yes, I would; so help me, I would."

"And he has been up there, and in this storm!"

She speaks this to herself, as she goes to the window and attempts to look out.

"Poor, poor John Logan!" sighs the boy. "I wish his mother was alive; I do, so help me. She was a good woman, she was; she didn't sick Bose on me, she didn't."

As the boy says this he stands his club in the corner, and looks with his sister for a moment sadly into the fire, and then suddenly says:

"I'm hungry. Sister, ain't you got something to eat. Forty-nine, he's down to the grocery, and Phin Emens he's down to the grocery, too, and he swears awfully about John Logan, and he says it's the Injun that's in him that makes him so bad. Do you think it's the Injun that's in him, sister?"

As the boy says this, the girl turns silently to the little table and pushes it toward him.

"There, Johnny, that's all there is. You must leave some for Forty-nine."

"Poor, poor John Logan!"

He eats greedily for a moment, then stops suddenly and looks into the fire.

Carrie, also looking into the fire, murmurs:

"And Sylvia Fields let them tie a dog there to keep him away! I would have killed that dog first. If John Logan should come here, I would open that door--I would open that door to him!"--There is a dark and terrified face at the window--"And I would give him bread to eat, and let him sit by this fire and get warm!"

"And I would, too--so help me, I would!" The boy pushes back his bread, and rises and goes up to his sister. "Yes, I would. I don't care what Phin Emens, or anybody says; for his mother didn't sick 'Bose' at me, she didn't!"

The pale and pitiful face at the window begins to brighten. There is snow in the long matted black locks that fall to his shoulders. For nearly half a year this man has fled from his fellow-man, a hunted grizzly, a hunted tiger of the jungle.

What wonder that his step is stealthy as he lifts the latch and enters?

What wonder that his eyes have an uncommon glare as he looks around, looks back over his shoulder as he shuts the door noiselessly behind him? What wonder that his clothes hang in shreds about him, and his feet and legs are bound in thongs; that his arms are almost bare; that his bloodless face is half hidden in black and s.h.a.ggy beard?

"Carrie, I have come to you. Yours is the only door that will open to me now."

"John Logan!" She starts; the boy, too, utters a low, stifled cry. Then they draw near the miserable man. For they are bred of the woods, and have nerves of iron, and they know the need and the power of silence, too.

"_You_ here, John Logan?" Carrie whispers, with a shudder.

"Ay, I am here--starving, dying!"

The boy takes up the bread he had dropped, and places it on the table before Logan. The hunted outcast sits down wearily and begins to eat with the greediness of a starved beast. The girl timidly brushes the snow from his hair, and takes a pin from her breast and begins to pin up a great rent in his s.h.i.+rt that shows his naked shoulder.

The boy is glad and full of heart, and of indescribable delight that he has given his bread to the starving man. He stands up, brightly, with his back to the fire for a moment, and then goes back and brushes off the snow from the man's matted hair, then back to the fire.

"I'm awful glad to see you eat, Mr. John Logan," says Stumps; "I wish there was more, I do," and he rocks on his foot and wags his head from shoulder to shoulder gleefully. "It ain't much--it ain't much, Mr. John Logan; but it is all there is."

"All there is, and they were eating it." The man says this aside to himself, and he hides his face for a moment, as if he would conceal a tear. Then, after a time he seems to recover himself, and he lays the bread down on the table, tenderly, silently, carefully indeed, as if it were the most delicate and precious thing on earth. Then, lifting his face, looks at them with an effort to be cheerful, and says:

"I--I forgot; I--I am not hungry. I have had my dinner. I--I, oh yes; I have been eating a great deal. Oh, no, no, no; I'm not hungry--not hungry!"

As the man says this he rises and stands between the others at the fire.

He puts his hands over their heads, and looks alternately in their uplifted faces. There is a long silence. "Carrie, they have tied a dog to that door, over yonder."

"There is no dog tied to this door, John Logan."

Low and tender with love, yet very firm and earnest is her voice. And her eyes are lifted to his. He looks down into her soul, and there is an understanding between them. There is a conversation of the eyes too refined for words; too subtle, too sweet, too swift for words.

They stand together but a moment there, soul flowing into soul and tiding forth, and to and fro; but it was as if they had talked together for hours. He leans his head, kisses her lifted and unresisting lips, and says, "G.o.d bless you," and that is all.

It is her first kiss, the imprint, the mint-mark on this virgin gold.

This maiden of a moment since, is a woman now.

"Do you know that they are after you?" The girl says this in a sort of wild whisper, as she looks toward the door.

"Do I know that they are after me? Father in Heaven, who should know it better than I?" The man throws up his arms, and totters back and falls into a seat from very weakness. "Do I know that they are after me? For more than half a year I have fled; night and day, and day and night I have fled, hidden away; starting up at midnight from down among the cattle, where I had crept to keep warm; and then on, on and on, out into the snow, the storm, over the frozen ground, to the deep canyon and dark woods, where, naked and bleeding, I disputed with the bear for his bed in the hollow tree."

The boy springs to the door. Is it the storm that is tugging and rattling at the latch?

But the girl seems to see, to heed, to hear only John Logan. She clutches his hand in both her own and covers it with kisses and with tears.

"John Logan, I pity you! I--I--" she had almost said, "I love you."

"Thank Heaven! Thank Heaven for one true heart, and one true hand when all the world is against me! Carrie, I could die now content. The bitterness of my heart pa.s.ses away, and the wild, mad nature that made me an Ishmaelite, with every man's hand against me, and my hand against all, is gone. I am another being. I could die now content;" and he bows his head.

"But you must not, you shall not die! You must go--go far away; why hover about this place?"