The Heart of Thunder Mountain

CHAPTER I

THE FORBIDDEN PASTURE

She sat hunched up in the middle of the silent pasture, where the tall, thin grass ran ripening before the breeze in waves the hue of burnished bronze. Her cow pony grazed greedily a few yards away, lifting his head now and then to gaze inquiringly at her, and then returning to his gluttony with a satisfied snort, commendatory of this long rest. The girl had removed her small sombrero to adjust the masses of tawny hair that had become disordered in her morning ride; and the breeze now played with it, and the sun sought out its glints of gold. She was fair, of a curiously rich complexion with soft golden tints beneath the skin, as if the rusty gold in her hair was just the outcropping of what ran in solution in her veins. And there was a certain air about her that contrasted strangely with the scene upon which she now gazed intently, with her head bent forward, and her hands clasped round her upthrust knees.

It was a little valley she had come upon by chance, snugly tucked away among the hills. Below the bronze-colored slope there were lush meadows of a brilliant green, and a shallow, swift stream that flashed over black bowlders and white sand; beyond the meadows lay more shining pastures rising to pale-green aspen groves and then to dark-green pines; and above all these the foothills climbed swiftly to the mountains, and the mountains more swiftly to the sky. There were faint blue mists in the foothills, fainter violet shadows on the distant fields, an icy whiteness on the peaks; and in the sky no more than two small puffs of cloud like eiderdown adrift in the depths of blue. What at first had seemed an utter silence laid upon that summer landscape had now become, as she looked and listened, a silence full of sound; of that indefinable humming undertone of nature maturing in the sun; of insects busy at their harvest; of birds in the distance calling; of grasses rustling in the breeze; of pines on the long ridge droning like an organ in the Recessional.

Yes, it was very beautiful, she thought. And sweet. And peaceful. She had come a long way–halfway across the great continent–to find that peace. But why should there be a touch of sadness in all that beauty? And why should there be need to search for her handkerchief to press against her eyes? For the first time since she had come to Paradise Park she felt a little lonely, a little doubtful about the wisdom of her brave revolt.

She sank back at last, and lay curled up in the grass with her head pillowed on one bent arm. There, to her half-closed eyes, the grass seemed like a fairy forest, soon peopled by her fancy, the fancy of a girl who still retained the quick imagination of a child. An Indian paintbrush flamed at her with barbaric passion; nodding harebells tinkled purple melodies; and a Mariposa lily with a violet eye seemed like a knight in white armor, bowing himself into her outstretched hand. Her eyelids drooped more and more. The music of the pines and the murmur of the pasture blended in a faint and fading lullaby…

Tuesday’s shrill neigh awakened her. She sat up shivering, for the warm air was underlaid with cold; and quivering, for the alarm had fallen pat upon the climax of her dream. She rubbed her eyes, a little blinded by the sunlight, and saw that Tuesday stood with head high and nostrils distended, gazing past her toward the upper end of the pasture. She was not surprised, being yet under the spell of her dream-fairyland, to see a horseman galloping straight toward her. If not the white knight, then–For some seconds she stared, awakening slowly; and smiled at length at her childish fancy. It was only a cowboy, doubtless, riding upon his own prosaic business. And yet–She became gradually aware of something unusual, something disquieting in the manner of the man’s approach. The horse was leaping under the spurs; the rider sat upright and alert in the saddle; and suddenly, as she watched him, the man’s hand went to his hip, and there was a gleam of metal in the sun.

She was not afraid. Seth Huntington had assured her there was nothing to be feared in Paradise Park. But for all that, it was not without uneasiness that she hastily arranged the meager folds of her divided skirt, and passed her hands quickly over the still disordered masses of her hair. And then he was fairly upon her, reining up with a jerk that brought the sweating pony back upon its haunches.

There was an angry glitter in the man’s dark eyes, his face was black with passion, and the bright object she had seen flashing in his hand was the twin brother of Huntington’s six-shooter. He was roughly, even meanly, dressed. His coarse blue flannel shirt was unbuttoned at the throat; his soiled brown corduroy trousers were thrust unevenly into dusty and wrinkled boot tops; his old, gray hat was slouched over one side of his forehead, shading his eyes. But the face beneath that faded and disreputable hat, as Marion saw with a slight thrill of curiosity, belonged to no ranch hand or cow-puncher. Whoever he might be, and whatever he might be doing there scowling at her, she felt at once that he was as foreign as herself to that neighborhood. But there was no time at that moment to analyze her feeling, to formulate her thought. And her next impression, following very swiftly, was one of vague antagonism. She felt that she was going to hate him.

“What new trick is this?” he demanded angrily, when he had looked from the girl to her pony, and at her again, with unconcealed suspicion.

For a moment she was undecided whether to answer him sharply or to rebuke his incivility with silence.

“I don’t know!” she replied at last, by way of compromise between her two impulses, with a half-playful emphasis on the “I,” accompanied by a very solemn, shaking of the head and a very innocent widening of the eyes.

There was a pause while he searched her face with a distrustful scrutiny.

“You’re not just the person I was looking for,” he said finally, with a touch of irony.

“How fortunate!” she replied, in a tone that was like a mocking echo of his own.

Her eyes met his unflinchingly, a little impudently, telling him nothing; then they slowly fell, and rested on the revolver in his hand. With a shrug he thrust the weapon into its holster.

“Thank you!” she said sweetly. “You really won’t need it.”

He jerked his head impatiently.

“How did you get in here?” he demanded, quite as roughly as before.

There was no reason in the world why she should not have answered him simply and directly; but she did not. She was exasperated, not so much by his words as by his manner, and not so much by his manner even as by something provocative in the man himself. He was rude, but it was not his rudeness that most annoyed her. She scarcely knew what it was,–perhaps a certain indifference, a certain cold contempt that she detected underlying all his anger, a certain icy and impenetrable reserve that, for all his hot words, and for all his lowering looks, she resented most as being in some way personal to her. And instantly the minx in her rose up for mischief.

“By aeroplane, of course!” she said tartly.

It was a silly speech, and she regretted it almost before it had left her lips.

A faint flush came into the enemy’s face.

“Spoken like a woman!” he retorted. “Always tragic over little things and flippant over big ones.”

That brought the color up into her face. But she was not subdued; for the cat in woman also has nine lives–at least.

“There’s my horse,” she said, with a toss of her head. “You saw him.”

“True! But cow ponies don’t easily jump four-wire fences.”

“Why should they when the fences are down?”

“Good! We arrive by the devious ways that women love. Perhaps you’ll give me the answer now that you should have given in the first place. How did you get in here?”

She bit her lip, reflected a moment, and attempted a flank movement.

“My name is Marion Gaylord.”

“I knew that.”

“But you have never seen me before!”

“No. But that’s one of Huntington’s horses, and Miss Gaylord is a guest at his house. You see, I am more courteous than you after all. I answer your questions.”

“Perhaps I’ll answer yours when I know what right you have to ask them.”

A light began to dawn upon him.

“Do you mean–you don’t know where you are?”

“No.”

He gave her a long, searching look before he spoke again.

“My name is Philip Haig,” he said, leaning forward with a curious smile.

The result was all that he could have wished for. Until that moment she had remained seated, firm in her determination not to be disturbed by him. But now she rose slowly to her feet, her face reddening, her lips parted, a frightened look in her eyes. The shoe was on the other foot, with a vengeance.

He saw all this, and without compunction, seized his advantage. With a grim smile he threw the reins over the pony’s head, swung himself out of the saddle, and stepped toward her. As he came on he removed his dilapidated hat with a gesture that made her forget it was dilapidated,–a mocking, insolent gesture though it was. In spite of her embarrassment she let none of his features escape her quickening interest. She saw that he was tall, erect, alert; handsome in some strange and half-repellent way, with his pale dark face, rather long in contour, and with his black, curly hair matted on the broad forehead. But she almost recoiled when, on his drawing nearer, she saw for the first time–it had been hidden by the shadow of his slouched hat–an ugly scar that ran from the outer corner of his left eye down to the jawbone below the ear. It gave to one side of his face a singularly sinister expression that vanished when he turned and disclosed a profile that was not without nobility and charm.

Then suddenly her mystification was complete. Their eyes met, not as before, but very near, so close had he come to her, still smiling. And instantly, instinctively, she lowered hers; for she felt as if she had been caught peering through a window at something she had no right to see. Yet the next instant she was looking again, half-guiltily, but irresistibly drawn. The eyes were of a curious color,–smoky black, or dark gray-blue, or somber purple,–liquid and deep like a woman’s, but with a steady, dull glow in their depths that was unlike anything she had ever seen or imagined. What was it that burned there? Suffering? Hunger? Evil? Sorrow? Shame? It gave her something to think about for many a day and night. Meanwhile–

“I see you have heard of me,” he said mockingly.

She had no reply. She was realizing slowly that she had trespassed, that she had perhaps seriously compromised her cousin, and, most humiliating of all, that she had assumed quite the wrong attitude toward the man.

“You really didn’t know you were on my land?” he demanded, with a little less offensiveness in his tone.

“No,” she answered weakly.

“And Huntington didn’t send you here?”

“No.”

“I believe you, of course. But it’s rather queer. How did you happen–if you don’t mind–”

She did not mind in the least–was eager, indeed, to explain her presence there.

“I’m just learning to ride,” she began impulsively.

“This was my first venture off the valley road, and I–”

“And you came straight to me!” he exclaimed, chuckling.

At that a strange thing happened. He had meant only that she, the guest and cousin of Seth Huntington, his bitter foe, had blundered straight into the camp of the enemy; and that was a rare joke on Huntington. But she was a girl; her little adventure was already rosy with romance; and the effect of his careless speech was as if he had looked into her heart, and read aloud for her something she had not known was there. To his surprise and wonder the girl’s fair face turned red to the roots of her tawny hair, and a look of helpless confusion came into the clear, blue eyes that until now, for all her embarrassment, had frankly met his own. She looked suddenly away from him.

“You make me ashamed,” she said at length, stealing a look at him.

“If you know anything about my difficulty with Huntington,” he began, “you’ll understand that–”

“I do. I do understand!” she interrupted eagerly. “I don’t know much about it–the trouble. They haven’t told me. I’ve only overheard some talk–and I didn’t ask. I rode down the valley this morning trying to do it like a cowboy. And there was a branch road–and then the break in the fence–and before I knew it I’d fallen asleep. That’s all–except–” She shot a half-mischievous glance at him “–you spoiled a very beautiful dream.”

But this was all lost upon him. His face was clouding again.

“Where is it–the break in the fence?”

Chagrined at the failure of her bit of coquetry, she merely pointed in the direction whence she had come.

“Thank you!” he said. “At last!”

With that he went swiftly to his pony, mounted, and started to ride away. But suddenly he reined up again, whirled his horse savagely around, and faced Marion with the sunlight full upon the scarred side of his face, now ugly with menace.

“If that fence has been cut,” he said, in a hard and level tone, “it’s been cut by Huntington or his men. You tell him for me, please–and you’ll be doing him a favor not to forget it–tell him that he’s a fool to anger me. I’ve been very patient in this business, but I don’t claim patience as one of my virtues. Do you hear? Tell him he’s a fool to anger me!”

She watched him gallop to the gap in the barb-wire fence; she watched him dismount to examine the severed wires; she watched him leap on his horse again, and ride furiously down the road until he was lost to view below the dip in the slope toward the valley. And still for some minutes she stood staring at the place where he had disappeared. Then, left alone with her pent-up emotions, she no longer resisted them. Tears of vexation started in her eyes; chagrin, resentment, anger swept over her in turn. She dug the heel of one small boot into the unoffending soil–his soil–and thrust her clenched hands down at her side.

“Oh! Oh! Oh!” she cried, over and over again, striding forward and back across some yards of pasture, trampling lilies and harebells under her heedless feet, turning her flaming face at intervals toward the spot in the smiling landscape that had last held the figure of Philip Haig.

The shame of it! She had never–never–never been treated so outrageously. It was unendurable–and she had endured it! She flung herself down on the ground and wept.

Marion was now facing life alone. Her nearest remaining relative was her cousin, Claire Huntington. Her mother–a Southern girl who might have stepped out of a panel by Fragonard, so fine and soft and Old-World-like was her beauty–had died when she was still a child. Her father, Doctor Gaylord, was the antithesis of the sprite-like creature he had married,–a big, athletic, outdoor sort of man, with truly violent red hair and beard, whose favorite expression about himself had been that a very capable pirate had been sacrificed to make a tolerable physician. But he had prospered in his profession; and then had died with amazing suddenness, leaving his estate in an almost hopeless mess.

Robert Hillyer had tackled the problem,–Robert, the alert, the busy, the supremely confident, the typical money-getter of the money-worshipping metropolis. He had long been deeply in love with Marion, but he had not made great headway in his suit, despite the advantage of Doctor Gaylord’s approval. Now, having saved enough out of the estate (for so he said, though he never told Marion the details of that miracle) to provide her with an income barely sufficient to keep her in comfort but not in the luxury to which she had been accustomed, he plainly expected his reward. And this was to Marion an intolerable situation. She did not love Robert. She liked him, admired him, trusted him; no more. Knowing her father’s wishes, she saw the way marked straight before her; for Robert already had wealth, and could and would give her all the material things she desired. Time and again she was on the point of yielding, but something checked her, held her back, as if a voice had whispered in her ear, and strong arms had seized her. She grew restless, discontented, melancholy. And suddenly, on a moment’s inspiration, the strangest impulse she had ever known, she had revolted and fled from the scene of her unhappiness, telling Robert (by letter) only that she must have time to think, and that for six months he must leave her to herself. She had fled to Claire, that cousin on her father’s side, who some years before, to the wonder and chagrin of many Gaylords east and west,–to all except the Viking physician, who had rejoiced in her spirit,–had eloped with a cowboy, since turned successful cattleman, whom she had met at the Denver Carnival. Ten days now had Marion been in Paradise Park, rejoicing in her freedom, rejoicing in the half-wild life, rejoicing in the tonic air and the tonic beauty of this Rocky Mountain valley, shut in, isolated, and so aptly named. And only to-day had there come any emotions that disturbed her peace.

When she looked up again her eyes were sharply arrested by a scene that seemed curiously to picture her own mood. Far up at the head of the valley a cloud that was scarcely heavier than a mist came stealing out of a gulch to take its shining way along the range of mountains. Dropping in its flight a shower as light as a bridal veil, it sped glistening across the face of mountain after mountain, softening the stark grays and reds, while above it the peaks gleamed white. On and on it came until at last it arrived at the mouth of a deep, dark gorge in the side of a mountain that, in its strange and forbidding aspect, differed notably from all the others in the majestic range. There it paused as if arrested by some stern command, hung for a moment in palpable agitation, and was swiftly swallowed up in the gorge. And again she had a vague and uneasy feeling, as she had when first she saw it, that Thunder Mountain,–but she could not fit that feeling into thought, could find no words to frame it. Yet she was fascinated.

It was half-hidden now in surging, black storm-clouds, while all the sharp and snow-clad peaks around it glittered in the sun. Even in those rare moments when it was freed from clouds and mists it stood alone in its peculiar grandeur. Unlike all the others it wore no diadem of snow. Some terrible convulsion of nature, some cataclysm at its birth or in the fiery days of its youth, had left it bald-headed, ugly, and deformed. But for that catastrophe it would have been far loftier than any of its fellows; and even now the hunchback towered among them, its flat head level with their pointed peaks, the most conspicuous figure in the imposing pageant raised against the western sky.

And its deformity was not the whole of its misfortune. It bore the brunt of every tempest that broke upon that massive barrier of mountains. Its granite head was the very breeding-place of storms. The peaks around it had their days of calm, but Thunder Mountain never. An hour or two perhaps–no more. It knew no peace. The elements were, and are now, and forever will be quarreling upon its worn and battered head; lightning and rain and snow and wind are forever hammering and beating it turn by turn. It is the Quasimodo and the Lear and the Gray Friar of mountains, all in one. And if, on some still and perfect day, its tonsured head emerges from the clouds, the watcher in the Park has but to turn his head a moment, and look again, and lo! it wears its gray cowl as before, and stoops growling and grumbling under its endless punishment.

Suddenly, as Marion looked, the silence was rudely shattered. Roll on roll of thunder swept across the valley, crashed against the hills, rebounded from wall to wall of mountains, until all the Park was filled with the sullen bellowing. And then, amid all the tumult, Marion heard something more,–a voice that mingled with the voice of the mountain, and thrilled her while it filled her with a singular disquietude. She had dismissed Haig from her thoughts. She was sure of that. And yet through all the uproar, and in the tense silence that ensued, she heard his taunting voice:

“And you came straight to me!”

CHAPTER II

THE ROAD TO PARADISE

The gap in the fence remained exactly as it had been when it invited her to adventure. But now she halted there, dismounted, and picked up the end of a wire that lay trailing on the ground. With new-found interest she examined the fracture, and stared at it in wonder. Dropping it, and kneeling excitedly in the grass, she searched another, and still another wire, and with the same result. Even to her unpractised eye the facts were plain: the four wires had not been broken; they had been cleanly cut, and very recently, as shown by the absence of rust on the severed ends. By whom? And why? Seth Huntington, Haig had said. Impossible! Absurd! True, she had heard Seth denouncing him; Claire also; and without knowing the cause of the feud, or caring, she had learned that Huntington and Haig were bitterly at odds about something,–cattle, she thought, or was it land? But that Seth could have stooped to the low trick implied in these cut wires! And yet–

She looked down the half-made road by which Haig had disappeared. It was quite empty now, save for Tuesday and herself. Nor was there sight of man or beast in all the valley. Haig’s cattle, like Seth’s and the other ranchmen’s, were grazing in the summer pastures, no doubt in little shut-in valleys far up among the pines yonder, where the violet mists were deepening.

She mounted her horse again, and rode slowly up the hill. But just where the road entered the woods at the summit of the ridge she stopped once more, and turned for a last look at her lost valley. Her gaze swept it lovingly from where, at her left, the long ridge shut off the view, to where, far at her right, the valley narrowed into a pine-screened gulch; and back again almost to the spot where the road dipped and disappeared. There her eyes were suddenly caught by something she had not seen before,–a thin spiral of blue smoke that mounted slowly until it was struck and dissipated by the breeze from across the ridge. Haig’s ranchhouse, surely, nestling below the hill! The house would be visible, doubtless, from the place where Haig had vanished from her sight. What would it be like? she wondered.

The next instant she had pulled her pony half-around toward the valley. But Tuesday turned his head, and looked at her; and she felt the blood rushing into her face.

“Go on, Tuesday!” she cried, jerking him back into the road. “What are you doing?”

She rode on into the pines, embarrassed beyond all belief.

In a few minutes she had emerged again from the woods, descended the hill, and regained the main-traveled road along the Brightwater. Still she rode slowly, forgetting that she had learned at last to ride like a cowboy. She was reluctant to return to Huntington’s, reluctant to relate her experiences as she had always related them until to-day. Haig had sent a warning to Huntington. It was her duty to deliver it. But how could she tell just so much and no more? There would be questions. She would be cross-examined, kindly enough but relentlessly. And in some strange way this meeting had become a private matter; Haig’s warning was inextricably mixed with other things that did not concern Huntington. Just what these were, and why they were so very private, she could not quite explain to herself; and for the moment she did not try. They were things to be thought about later, when she could think more clearly. She knew only that she should never be able to endure either the banter or the disapproval of Huntington. What did Claire see in him anyhow,–the soft and sensitive Claire, with her blue eyes and her pretty face always upturned so trustfully to him? For the first time she realized that she had distrusted Seth from the beginning.

In the midst of these confused and disconcerting thoughts, she became aware that she was no longer alone in the highway. Slowly as she rode, she was steadily overtaking a group of horsemen that appeared to be in difficulties. At intervals there was a commotion in the group, and clouds of dust from time to time concealed it from her sight. She reined up Tuesday, and hesitated, having had her fill of adventure for one day. Then, as the men seemed to be quite oblivious to her presence, and deeply absorbed in their own affair, curiosity drew her onward; and all her scruples were forgotten when she had ridden near enough to see the cause of the disturbance.