The Heart of Thunder Mountain Part 11

"Biggest you no see. At bottom."

That satisfied her, and she watched him silently while he found her rod, and reeled in the offending fly.

"Brown fly better now," he said. "You ought see what trout eating before you try catch big ones."

On this he drew a book of flies from his pocket, and replaced the gray hackle with a brown one. She questioned him eagerly, following this plain lead; and presently they were seated on the pile of driftwood, while he told her about the native trout and the rainbow and the California, of little brooks far up among the mountains where the trout were small but of a delicious flavor, of the time for flies and the time for worms, of famous catches he had made, of the way the Indians fished before the white man showed them patent rods and reels.

By slow degrees Pete's iron features softened, and he smiled at her, not with his lips, but with his eyes, which were the blackest, surely, in the world.

But Marion was not diverted from the questions that were next her heart. With all her woman's cunning of indirection, she brought the talk around to Philip Haig. Did he fish? Sometimes. Did he hunt? Much, when the deer came down from the heights with the first snows.

Then--she could resist no longer.

"It must have been terrible--the accident," she said, placing a finger on her cheek.

He looked at her strangely, while she held her breath.

"That no accident," he said at last, after what seemed to her an interminable interval of suspense.

"No accident?" she repeated, trying not to appear too eager.

"He call it accident, maybe. He say it is nothing. Pete say it is much. It is big debt. Some day Pete pay."

There was deep silence for a moment. The stream gurgled and splashed; the breeze whispered through the cottonwoods; and over all, or under all, was the vague, insistent, seductive sound that the summer makes in the fulness of its power.

Marion hesitated, quivering with eagerness and uncertainty. She was afraid to ask more, lest she should be shortly rebuffed, and lose her opportunity. But Pete was looking at her steadily. She felt a flush coming into her face again. Had he guessed--something--already in her manner, in her impulsive questions? More likely it was the charm that, for once unconsciously, she wielded--the elusive charm of woman that makes men want to tell, without the asking.

"You like to hear?" Pete said; and her heart leaped.

"Oh, please!"

And she was keenly disappointed. She had expected something romantic, something enn.o.bling and fine. And it was only a barroom brawl, though Philip was not in it until the end, to be sure! Five Mexican sheep herders against the lone Indian. Guns and knives in the reeking border saloon; and afterwards in the street; and the Indian almost done for, bleeding from a dozen wounds; and then a voice ringing out above the fracas: "No, I'm d.a.m.ned if you do! Five to one, and greasers at that!"

And Philip Haig had jumped from his horse, and plunged into the melee, disdaining to draw his gun on greasers. Smas.h.!.+ Bang! went his fists, front and right and left.

Pete had accounted for one Mexican, who would herd sheep no more on the plains of Conejos. The others fled. Then Haig, despite the knife-wound in his face, grabbed the Indian, and somehow lifted him up behind him on his horse.

"Quick, Indian!" he cried. "This town's full of greasers. You've got no chance here."

And then the long ride to Del Norte, with the Indian drooping on Haig's back; and a doctor of Haig's acquaintance, who sheltered and cured the silent savage. And Pete, convalescent, had come straight to Haig's ranch, and remained there, despite Haig's protests that he did not need another hand.

"Pete stay until big debt is paid," said the Indian solemnly. And then, with a straight look into Marion's eyes, "You ought tell Huntington he is d.a.m.n fool."

Marion started. There it was again--the warning!

"But why?" she managed to ask.

"Haig is brave man. Brave man always good man. So--Huntington got no chance."

CHAPTER VII

THE WAY OF A MAID WITH A MAN

She rode casually down the Bright.w.a.ter, and casually up the Bright.w.a.ter; she loitered at crossroads, and tarried at Thompson's store; and not one glimpse did she catch of Philip Haig. Then one morning she rose at dawn, as she had risen on the day of her fis.h.i.+ng exploit, with a purpose. But this time she dressed with exceeding care, in a riding suit she had not yet worn in the Park. It was soft dove-gray in color, with a long coat that showed the fine lines of her figure and, when she rode, revealed snug-fitting breeches above the tops of the polished boots,--a very different costume from the black divided skirts and the short jacket in which she had galloped about the Park.

Thus arrayed and resolute, she rode straight down the valley to the branch road that had once tempted her to adventure; straight up the hill; and straight through the woods until she halted once more in the shade of the outpost pine that stood beyond its cl.u.s.tered fellows like a sentinel above the valley. Her valley! She waited a moment, wondering if it welcomed her. There was the stream, still flas.h.i.+ng in the sun, the meadows as brightly green as then, the gra.s.s of the pasture running in bronze waves before the breeze. From the heart of a wild rose a gorgeous red and brown b.u.t.terfly flew out and fluttered over her head. Not a dozen yards below her a meadow lark, unseen, burst into sudden, thrilling song; and somewhere down the hill another took up the strain, then another and another, until the air was charged and quivering with melody, piercing sweet. She listened, her heart throbbing to the music, until the chorus died away in dripping cadences, and only a drowsy murmur came from the ripening fields to mingle with the low droning of the pine organ on the hill. Yes! Her valley welcomed her.

She rode on down the hill, with only a quick and embarra.s.sed glance into the Forbidden Pasture; and suddenly raised herself excitedly in the stirrups. There again was the spiral of blue smoke; then a chimney and a red roof; and finally the house itself, and barn and corrals, all tucked away against the foot of the hill. Dismounting, she led Tuesday back a few yards, and left him to feed along the roadside.

Then she returned, and seated herself on a rock, half-hidden by a blackberry bush, to study the group of houses lying low and silent in the sun.

There were more buildings than at Huntington's, but she saw no beds of flowers, no wide veranda screened with potted plants; a certain bareness and air of inhospitality, she thought. No tea and angel cake for visitors! Behind the ranch house were two cottages of unpainted pine, scorched to a yellow-brown by many a summer sun. One of them, doubtless, was the hermit's lodge. The barn, larger than Seth's, had a red roof, newly painted. And in one of the corrals--yes--the flash of a golden hide.

"Sunnysides!" murmured Marion.

Then her heart stood still. She had descried the figure of a man seated with his back against the bars of this corral. But it was not Philip Haig; Sunnysides' guard, no doubt, for he never left his post until relieved by another an hour or so later, when the dinner bell had been rung at the door of the ranch house.

She had scarcely time to feel her disappointment before a man emerged from the stable leading a saddle horse. Another immediately followed, and this time there was no mistake. The second man was Philip Haig. He mounted quickly, and started off; then stopped to address a word or two, apparently, to the man at the stable door; and finally galloped past the ranch house and the cottages, and up the slope behind them toward the pines, across the valley from where she sat.

"Oh!" cried Marion, in a tone of vexation and reproach.

She watched him until he had disappeared among the trees; and tears started in her eyes. Would he always be riding away from her, behind the hills, the woods, a turn of the road? She sat a while in deep dejection; but not for long. Her spirit was too resilient for futile moping, and her purpose too firmly held to be abandoned on one reverse. She reflected that if he had gone he must as certainly return; and so, with a toss of her head, she presently arose, and fetched her raincoat and her luncheon from the saddle. The coat she spread out on the ground, seated herself on it with her back against the rock, and settled down to eat, and watch, and wait.

Morning mounted hot and humming into noon, and noon dropped languidly into afternoon. The blazing sun centered his rays upon her; insects found and pestered her; discomfort cramped her limbs, and weariness weighted down her eyelids. Twice she dozed, and wakened with a start of fear lest she had slept her chance away. But each time she was rea.s.sured by a hurried survey of the group of buildings, where no one stirred, and there was no sign of Philip Haig. So the hours dragged their slow length along.

It was late in the afternoon before her vigil was rewarded. Not from just the direction in which he had galloped away, but from farther up the valley, Haig reappeared. He rode as rapidly as before, straight to the door of the stable, reined up a moment there, and was off again,--this time down the valley on a white road that was visible to Marion until it curved behind the distant point of the ridge on which she sat.

"Now where's he going?" she murmured, wrinkling her forehead as she saw him once more vanish from her sight.

She did not know that road, but guessed that it joined the main highway somewhere far down the Bright.w.a.ter. No matter! Here was her opportunity; for she saw, with quick appreciation, that she would now be able to place herself between him and the ranch buildings without showing herself to the men at the corrals. And then? She could not "hold him up" like a highwayman; and if she did not stop him he would raise his hat (perhaps), and ride past her without a word. And how was she to stop him? She had come there with a very definite purpose, but with no clear plan, trusting to the inspiration of the moment. And now the moment had arrived; but where was the inspiration? She had risen impulsively to her feet, and stood staring between narrowed eyelids, and beneath a puckered brow, at the white road, now quite empty again.

Then suddenly--

"Ah!" she gasped.

And thereupon she blushed, and looked furtively around her, as if she had been caught in some doubtful, if not discreditable, act. But there was no time for moral subtleties. She staggered--for her legs were stiff from inaction--to her pony, replaced her raincoat behind the saddle, mounted in hot haste, and rode down the steep hill toward the houses. At a little distance from them the road she traveled joined the other. There she turned abruptly, and followed the unfamiliar road until she was safely out of sight of any chance observer at the barn, and yet not so far from the trail she had just left but that she could return to it if, by any chance, he should come back that way.

Dismounting quickly at the chosen spot, she turned Tuesday until he stood squarely across the road. Then her nimble fingers flew at the cinches of the saddle.

"There now!" she exclaimed, hot with excitement and exertion.

She stepped back to view her handiwork, and laughed nervously. Next she drew a tiny mirror and a bit of chamois skin from her bosom, and swiftly removed some of the dust and moisture from her flushed face.

Then her hair, always somewhat unruly, required a touch or two. That done, she smoothed down the gray coat over her slender hips, adjusted the gray silk tie at her throat, and waited.

He came, in his habitual cloud of dust; pulled up his pony within ten feet of the obstruction; saw the saddle hanging at a dangerous angle over Tuesday's side; and accepted the obvious conclusion that Miss Marion g.a.y.l.o.r.d, looking very warm and embarra.s.sed, but certainly very pretty in her confusion, had narrowly escaped a fall.

"I think I'd better help you with that, Miss g.a.y.l.o.r.d," he said.

"Thank you!" she said, with an appealing reluctance. "I can do it--I often saddle my own horse, and--"