The Heart of Thunder Mountain

CHAPTER XXIV

HAIG’S ARGUMENT

When she had unsaddled Tuesday, and left him grazing near the “camp,” Marion set out with Murray’s hatchet and knife to cut splints for Haig’s broken leg. Haig watched her run across the meadow, leap the brook, and hurry on to a grove of quaking aspens at the edge of the forest. Then he lay back to consider the logic of the situation, with the following result, which appeared to him unanswerable:

First. The girl yonder had already saved his life once, and was doing her best, though against impossible odds, to save it again. Her motive was one that need not be dwelt upon in this fatal crisis. The fact remained that for him she was facing certain death, and he must do all in his power to save her. That was the starting point from which all reckonings must be made.

Second. His own case was hopeless. Long before he should be able to move from where he lay, the valley would be buried in snow to half the height of those pines yonder. If she remained with him her case would be hopeless too. Death would be inevitable for both of them: death from starvation, from exposure, from cold. They had neither food, nor proper clothing, nor shelter of any kind. The hardiest mountaineer would not dream, of attempting to pass eight or nine months of winter in a place like that, even with his two arms and two legs free. He, with his broken leg, and she, a woman, would not survive an eighth or a ninth of that period.

Third. The chances of rescue. There would be no search for him, he reflected with a grim smile. But for Marion, undoubtedly. To-morrow morning, Marion not having returned, Murray would start out to find her. There was not one chance in a thousand that, at this season, there would be such another day as the one now ending, and ending in storm. But suppose that Murray should make his way across the summit, and find them. Murray could do nothing for a man with a broken leg at the bottom of a gulch with a cliff on one side and miles on miles of mountain forest on the other sides. As for Marion, if she would not go at his, Haig’s, command, she would certainly pay little heed to Murray. So Murray would accomplish nothing. However, it would not come to that. Murray would be driven back by the winds. He would ride down to the Park and give the alarm. Search parties would be formed, and they would assail the mountain. But fifty men would be no stronger than one man on Thunder Mountain. It was just possible that some of them might force their way across the flat between storms. But every day that possibility, such as it was, would grow less. It would be madness for the girl to wait. She had crossed the mountain once; she knew the way; and if the winds should permit rescuers to come to her they would permit her to go to them. It was her only chance, however desperate; to remain where she was meant certain death.

Fourth. She would not, it was quite clear, stir from his side as long as he was alive. Therefore he must do quickly what he had tried to do before.

The idea was so familiar to him by now that it required no contemplation. He raised his head, and looked toward the stone where his revolver lay; and then toward the aspen grove where Marion labored. His gaze rested on her for some minutes. It was too late for her to start to-night, even if there were no storm on the mountain. And if he did it now she would face a night of solitude and terror, perhaps would not live through it. He would wait till morning; and when she should have gone for wood, or water–

She came back presently with an armload of small limbs she had hacked from the youngest trees. Her left hand bled where she had awkwardly struck it with the hatchet; and there were tears in her eyes, which she tried to conceal from him. He was sorry for her–and angry. It was not his fault; he had done all he could, even to brutality.

“Did you tell Huntington, or his wife, what you were going to do?” was his first speech.

“No. But I sent Mr. Smythe–he rode with me as far as Norton’s–I sent him back with a message that I was going to stop the night at Murray’s.”

“And the Murrays? What did you tell them?”

“That I’d be back before night. But why do you ask?”

“I’m thinking that Smythe is a fool, and Murray is a blockhead.”

“They did all they could to stop me,” she answered quietly.

She had begun to strip the bark and twigs from the green limbs; and he watched her crude efforts for a moment.

“I think I might manage that part of it,” he said at length. “You must build a fire.”

She started to obey him, but stopped short, and looked at him in sudden fear and suspicion.

“No, you can trust me with the knife,” he said. “I promise.”

She handed the limbs and the knife to him; and he saw that her hands trembled.

“You’ll find plenty of dead wood at the edge of the forest,” he said. “Don’t venture far among the trees.”

The shadows were deepening along the other side of the meadow, and he watched her a little anxiously while she made half a dozen trips for dry limbs and small chunks of half-rotted logs. And now she felt a curious thrill as she began to employ the knowledge she had gained on her camping expedition. She had never dreamed that it would be so useful to her! And she found new courage in thinking, while she worked, how all her life she had been undergoing preparation, training, education for this hour. She wished that she might run to Philip and tell him all this–and of her faith! But he would not understand her.

Soon a fine fire was crackling on the grass, against one of the largest stones that had fallen from the cliff. Then she brought a small package from her bundle, and made a cup of hot chocolate for Haig and another for herself. This, with a small slice of bread for each of them, made their supper for that day; for such provisions as they possessed must be treasured scrupulously.

Haig had by this time finished trimming the aspen sticks; and by the fading light of day and the red light of the fire they set to work to mend the broken leg. Between them they knew something of surgery: she by recollecting all that she had seen in her father’s office, where she had more than once helped Doctor Gaylord with his needles and bandages; he by recalling experiences on battlefields, in lumber camps, and in various rough places of the world. She brought his blankets, and helped him to move until he lay flat on them, with his head propped against a stone. Then the leg was stripped, and the ordeal began.

It was not the pain so much as the uselessness of it that exasperated Haig; and he was tempted to drive her away from him, and have no more of it. But this, he realized, would only have caused more arguments, and tears, and protestations, and perhaps the revelation of his purpose. So he endured it to satisfy and divert her.

Luckily the fracture was a simple one; and with strips of linen for which Marion sacrificed some of her scanty supply of clothing, and the thin sticks of tough aspen wood, the leg was bound straight and firm.

“If we only knew!” said Marion at last, leaning back to contemplate her work.

“Knew what?” he asked between his teeth.

“If it’s right!”

Between pain and rage he could not answer her; and thinking that he was near to a collapse, she ran for water and bathed his face, and gave him a little of the precious whisky that remained in her flask. After that he lay quiet, and she went to her preparations for the night.

The vale now lay in deep blackness, impenetrable walls of it beyond the red circle of firelight. The cliff made a dim, dark line against the blue-black sky; the forest on the other side a ragged tracery. The stars were few, and far. A low breeze murmured among the pines, and swept softly, but very cold, across the meadow. Marion began to feel the chill; and having wrapped Philip’s blanket tight around him, and spread over him the leather coat she had found in his bundle, she heaped more wood on the fire, and sat down before it, with her blankets around her, and her rifle at her side, to watch and wait.

She was very tired, but she dared not lie down to sleep. A long time she sat there, glancing now and then at Haig, where he lay very still, and oftener out into the blackness. But drowsiness gradually overcame her, and her head sank forward on her uplifted knees.

She was awakened by a terrifying cry that rang shivering across the valley. She started to her feet, and listened. It must have been a dream, she thought. No! There it was again–a cry that started low, like a child’s peevish wail, and ended in a piercing scream. She grabbed up her rifle, and stood peering into the darkness.

“Don’t be afraid!” said the voice of Haig from the edge of the firelight. “It’s only a bobcat. He’ll not come near the fire.”

“Thank you–Philip!” she answered. Then, with a nervous laugh: “It did frighten me, though!”

She stood a moment, still listening. But the cry came no more.

“Aren’t you sleeping?” she asked softly.

“No.”

With trembling limbs, and eyes fixed on the darkness from whence had come the scream, she stepped cautiously to the pile of wood, and threw more limbs and bits of logs into the blaze. Then she seated herself again, resolved that she would not fall asleep. But presently she started to her feet in another panic at sight of a dark form moving in the blackness. But it was only Tuesday, coming nearer to the fire, as if he too had been alarmed by the wild beast’s cry. She settled down once more to her vigil, her rifle across her lap.

In spite of her resolution, her head sank to her knees again, and she was aroused at length by the cold. It bit through the blankets and clothing into the flesh of her limbs; sharp shivers ran up and down her back; and she was very miserable. Rising stiffly, she walked a while before the fire until she stumbled from weariness; then sat down again, and nodded, only to be waked by the frost gnawing at her flesh. Again and again she slept and woke in accentuated misery. But finally she saw, with unspeakable relief, that the stars were paling in their blue-black vault. She turned toward Thunder Mountain, and watched the dim line of the cliff sharpening against the whitening sky. Yet all was blackness in the gulch, and it seemed a long time before a soft gray light began to steal in upon the red light of the fire, and a new crispness came into the air. She waited until she could make out the forms of trees across the valley, shrouded in thin morning mist, before she threw the last few sticks of wood on the dying fire, and crept to the side of Haig, where she lay down close beside him, with her blankets wrapped around her. There she fell into a heavy sleep, and did not waken until the sun, rising above Thunder Mountain, shone warm in her face.

For some seconds she lay luxuriating in the warmth that seemed incredible after that night of cold and terror. Then she moved softly, raised herself on one elbow, and looked at Philip. He slept. His face was haggard under his three days’ growth of beard. She leaned over him, and pressed her lips ever so lightly to his forehead. He did not stir.

Tuesday grazed a few yards away; the vale lay green and peaceful in the sunlight; and from the pine woods, where that hideous cry had lifted in the night, came now only the gentle murmur of the breeze in the massed foliage. By contrast with the chill horror of the night, the scene was positively exhilarating; and Marion rose to her work with hope throbbing through every vein, and courage singing along every nerve of her body.

First she fetched wood to renew the fire, now only a heap of smouldering embers. That done, she went to make her toilet in the brook, with the soap and towel she had stowed in her bundle for the shooting trip. Poor Seth! she thought, with a momentary pang; he would not get the deer he wanted, after all. And by this thought was set in motion a little current of regrets that filled her mind until it was diverted by the stream. She had intended only to wash her face and hands, now grimy after her labors at the fire. But chance led her to a deep, still pool with a bottom of fine sand and a tiny shore of pebbles that seemed to have been designed for bathing. Temptation seized her, and on the very impulse, seeing that a clump of willows screened her from the camp, she eagerly undressed, and plunged into the water, uttering quick gasps at the cold contact, and short-clipped shrieks of pleasure.

And so, behold a marvel! Three days ago, in the security and familiarity of the Park, where no hardships or perils threatened, and where she knew that Philip was safe in his cottage across the ridge, and that her own pink bedroom awaited her at night, so deep was she in dejection that nothing could have induced an outburst of mere physical enjoyment such as this. But now, while Philip lay on his blankets, a prisoner in that narrow vale, and death stood at her side uncovered and undisguised, her spirits rose as they had never risen since her confession, on Mount Avalanche, and if Haig had been listening he might have heard her low laughter across the meadow.

Had she yet failed to realize her situation? Or was it that tragedy had put on its comic mask, and laughed at death? The truth is simple. Her faith had triumphed over what seemed to be insuperable obstacles; and she was with Philip, for better or for worse. A miracle had been wrought; and miracles are not meaningless, or idle, or without purpose. It was a feeling perhaps unknown to man, who is merely a reasoning creature, much given to material consideration of natural causes and effects, and so compelled by his limitations to grope in outer darkness. And it was not so much a feeling as an instinct, and not so much an instinct as a law, of which she was the involuntary instrument. Her purpose was so strong within her that there was no need of thought; and so she did not think.

Leaping to the pebbly bank, she rubbed herself swiftly with the towel, and felt the glow of health rushing through her body, all pink and gleaming in the sun. Then she dressed, and combed her hair; rinsed and wrung out the towel, and hung it on the willow-limbs to dry; and started back toward the camp in the highest spirits, and eager for service. And then, at twenty paces, she was stricken cold and rigid by the sight that met her unsuspecting eyes.

Haig had left his blankets, and was now dragging himself like a wounded animal along the earth. Already he had covered more than half the distance to the rock on which his revolver lay; and it seemed as if she would stand rooted there in helpless horror until he reached it. Then, with an incautious cry, she bounded forward. Haig heard her, and flung himself toward the stone with reckless determination. Where he had inches, Marion had yards to go; it was a race that might, in another age, have done credit to the ingenuity of a Roman emperor. If Philip was mad with pain and anger, Marion was frantic with fear and love. It seemed to her that the turf gripped her feet, that the wind in her face would strangle her, that her skirts were leaden sheets around her knees. And she barely resisted falling in a senseless heap when, at ten yards from the goal, she saw that she would be too late.

He beat her to the rock by merely a few seconds; but he was fairly spent. His fingers bled where he had dug them into the sand; the sweat rolled down his face; and exhaustion bound him as with bands of iron. Yet he was able to reach for the gun, and clutch it; and with a final effort that seemed to tear the heart from his breast, he dragged the weapon under him, pressed the muzzle upward, pulled the trigger, at the very instant that Marion threw herself upon him.

There was a muffled report, the fumes stung their eyes and nostrils, and for a moment both lay still. Then Marion felt a movement under her, and guessed that Haig was fumbling with the revolver. An indescribable energy seized her, something tigerish in its fury, and beyond her own proper powers, so that she flung him over on his back as if he had been a child in strength and size. With both hands she gripped the wrist below the clutched revolver, and while she held it away from his body she drew her own body over his, and threw herself on his extended arm, between his hand and his breast.

There was a savage struggle still, the man affirming his right to die, and the woman denying it. But the issue could not be long in doubt; for Haig’s strength was at the ebb, while Marion’s flowed in from earth and air and sky, from the future and from the past. And she wore him down at last, until the revolver dropped from his grasp, his eyelids closed, his limbs relaxed, and he lay still. Waiting a moment for certainty, she cautiously loosened one of her hands from his wrist, and grabbed the revolver, and flung it with all her might. Then, seeing it land twenty feet away on the grass, she rolled away from him, and sat up panting, hollow-eyed, disheveled, and trembling on the verge of a collapse.

For some seconds there was no sound but their labored breathing; and not until Haig opened his eyes and looked at her, with a hunted, baffled, and still defiant expression in their somber depths, did Marion break down. Then suddenly, after a premonitory quivering of her chin, she buried her face in her hands, and wept without more effort at restraint, in utter abandonment to her agony. Haig watched, at first in anger, and then in some confusion of emotions. Once before he had looked upon her thus bowed and shaken; and now as then he felt a strange upheaval, and an unfathomable sensation that had no likeness to anything he had ever before experienced. He wanted very much to speak to her, but could not trust himself; and after all, what was there to be said?

It was she who rescued him from irresolution. She dropped her hands from her face, and cried out in a voice that was broken with sobbing: “Why, Philip, why did you do that?”

“Why?” he asked, in something like amazement.

“Yes.”

“I’ve already told you why.”

“But–no–you haven’t told me!”

“It was to save you–for one thing.”

“To save me?”

“I told you that your only chance is to go at once.”

“But I told you I wouldn’t go!”

“I know. That’s the reason.”

“But–don’t you know, Philip, that–don’t you see that–if you killed yourself you’d–kill me too?”

There should have been no necessity for these words. Perhaps any other man in the world, certainly most men of far less intelligence and less acuteness of feeling, would have known long ago just what she meant. He knew, indeed, that this girl loved him; but he did not believe that she or any other woman was capable of the sacrifice implied in her answer.

“You mean that–you would have–” He hesitated.

“Yes.”

There ensued a silence that fell like a mist between them, through which neither knew the way. She saw that he had begun, by ever so little, to understand; and she feared to say more lest a wrong word should overtake a right one. As for Haig, his incredulity persisted notwithstanding the unquestionable sincerity of her speech. He did not doubt that she contemplated, in this moment of emotion, the complete and final sacrifice. But he was quite convinced that she would take a different view of the situation when the test should come. She did not yet appreciate, he argued, the peril of their position; she had not realized the hazard of her adventure or she never would have undertaken it; and undoubtedly she still thought there would be a way out for them. Under such a delusion it was easy for her, he concluded, to talk about dying with him. But she was tragically in error. His eyes lifted to the cliff. She should have been up there on her return hours ago. Now it was too late again; for the clouds were black and ugly on the summit, and a distant roaring came to his ears; and he knew what was happening or in preparation in the middle of the flat. But he must find a way to send her up that trail at dawn the next day; and his gaze dropped to where the revolver lay just visible in the thin grass into which she had thrown it.

CHAPTER XXV