The Heart of Thunder Mountain

Toward five o’clock of the second day they reached their destination,–a grassy shelf a little below timber line on Mount Avalanche. There, in some past age, an avalanche of titanic proportions had carried away part of the mountain itself; and they camped now on the top of the débris, long since concealed by a dense forest growth, as if nature had employed her utmost arts to hide the wound. Marion could not but yield a little to emotions of delight and wonder. On that high platform she stood above a marvelous mountain world, below another mountain world as marvelous. Behind her Avalanche reared sheer and sharp and white against the sky. On either side were snow-clad peaks. At her feet were forests in solid masses of green, now darkening in the twilight. And beyond, far, far beyond, the Park they had left lay bright under the sun’s after-glow, with a background of range on range of mountains in their violet haze. On the shelf was forage for the horses; near at hand were moss and balsam for their beds; and at a little distance a rivulet, ice-cold, had shady pools where small trout awaited capture. And the air was like dry wine on the lips, with a tang of resin in the nostrils; and the woods sang a song that even Marion could not resist.

Here they pitched two tents just large enough to cover the beds of balsam boughs and moss and blankets. In the three days they passed in camp Marion learned many things that were to be of incalculable value to her one day, though she never could have guessed that all this too, like the encounter in the Forbidden Pasture, had been ordered in the Beginning, details in the Scheme of Things. She learned surprising secrets of makeshift cookery; she learned the Indian’s lesson of a very little fire; she learned the mountaineer’s economy of matches and like precious articles. She fished in the small pools that lay hidden away in dark recesses of the forest, practised shooting with her rifle, and on the third day, in the timber below the camp, with Seth at her side, brought down her first deer.

“I told you!” cried Huntington, delighted at the progress of his pupil.

But her heart was not in all this; it was clamoring now to be heard, and would by no means be stilled. Each evening Marion walked apart from the others, to stand at the edge of the lofty platform, and watch her green and violet Elysium swallowed up in night. Each morning she searched for it through her field glasses to assure herself that it had not vanished in the dark. And when the last day of their outing came, the last evening, the last night, she could scarce contain her impatience. To-morrow they would start; and the day after–

She could not sleep that night. Every twig and every needle of her pine mattress seemed to have conspired to torture her. She tossed about until she could no longer endure her bed; and in the middle of the night she crept out of the tent, and sat, wrapped in a blanket, before the smouldering embers of the fire. The hobbled horses grazed not far away; a night bird twitted solitarily in the brush; and from the depths of the forest came the scream of some savage creature out on its kill. Against the star-crowded sky the peaks stood up cold and impassive. What cared they? What did the world care? What did Philip care?

For now she knew that she loved him. Yes, yes, she loved him! In her heart she had known it from the beginning, since that meeting in the Forbidden Pasture, had known it as one knows things without acknowledgment. Her mind had acknowledged only the hundred reasons why she should not, could not love him. He had repelled her; he had not veiled his meaning, had not concealed his antagonism; he had told her plainly, brutally almost, that he would not endure her presence, that she must avoid his side of the Park.

Then she thought of Robert,–Robert, so devoted and so true. What was she doing: throwing away his love that was so unselfishly, so whole-heartedly laid at her feet? Had she been mad to flee from him? Yes, mad! Pride rose to support the fondness and the admiration she had felt for him. And so there ensued a struggle between the two fine spirits that dwelt in her,–the proud little lady of the Fragonard and the Viking with red hair.

The Viking won. Had not her father said to her, in those long talks about her mother, that love is the only thing? And back she came, on swiftest wings of passion, to Philip; and she was glad. She knew now the meaning of her restlessness in the dark days in the unheeding city; she knew whose voice had called, whose arms had held her, though he was unaware. He needed her, though he did not know it. And she had come to him, without understanding. Somewhere she had read a fugitive bit of verse that had meant nothing then, and had been forgotten until now, when it suddenly sang across the years and the spaces like a call to courage:

“The wild wind blowethThe cross of fire.The wild heart knowethIts own desire.”

The wild heart knoweth its own desire! She rose to her feet with a singing and a resurrection of her heart. She scarcely knew that her limbs were stiff and that her body ached with cold. Her spirit was aroused. She could not go and take Philip as her father had taken the one he loved. But there were ways; when had a woman ever failed, in love, of finding them? She set herself to thinking, planning, scheming, while she walked swiftly to and fro before the tents. And presently she stopped her pacing, and looked curiously around her. There had come a subtle alteration in the aspect of the night. A shivering freshness had crept insensibly into the air. Leaves and grass and the very air appeared to be astir, though the silence and the darkness were as before. She looked up eagerly at the sky, and saw that the stars were pale. It was not yet the dawn; it was only the passing of the night. But the dawn was near. The dawn! The dawn!

She did not wish Seth to find her there. He would ask questions, staring at her. She crept stealthily back into her tent, and lay there, shaking with cold, to wait for the noise that Huntington would make as he sought for live embers in the ashes of the fire.

Once out of the mountains and in the foothills, she rode far ahead of Seth and Claire, impatient at the slow progress necessitated by the difficulties of the pack horses. Late in the afternoon she found herself at a fork of the road with which she was familiar. A little way up the less-used of the two branches there was a glade where columbines grew in extraordinary profusion. She had gathered armloads of them there, and seemed scarcely to have touched the edge of that wild garden where nature had been seized with a prodigal impulse. And now, rather to be doing something than to await in irritation for Seth and Claire, she turned her pony’s head and rode toward the glade. In five minutes she was fording a little stream, beyond which the road rose slightly to cross the shoulder of a hill, and dipped again to run in a sharp curve along the margin of the glade. She took the rise at a gallop, sped down the other slope, and at the curve of the road reined up her horse with a startled cry. She had come suddenly upon a team hitched at the side of the road,–the sorrels and the trap in which Philip Haig had driven her to Huntington’s that terrible evening.

For a moment she was bereft of thought and feeling. At that very instant she had been thinking of him; what instant was she not thinking of him? But the utterly unexpected encounter–for he was there somewhere, in the glade, no doubt–swept away all that courage she had found on Avalanche. She felt suddenly helpless, inert, afraid; and before she could regain her self-possession, call back her high resolve, the bushes at the roadside parted, and Philip stood before her. He bore a great bouquet of columbines, their stems wrapped in damp moss and leaves and tied securely with a string. At sight of her he halted; and that look of annoyance she had seen him wear in the road below his ranch house came again into his pale face. For some seconds they regarded each other in silence.

“True,” he said at length, with a smile that tortured her, “this is not my side of the Ridge. I am the trespasser, even though this is public domain. You have as much right here as I–more, since I said the Ridge was the dividing line. So–”

He stepped quickly to her horse’s side, pressed the great bunch of pale-blue flowers into her limp but obedient hands, lifted his battered hat, turned on his heel, walked directly to the trap, leaped into the seat, and drove swiftly away. She watched him dully until he was out of sight behind a bend in the road, among the trees; watched the spot where he had disappeared until it became a blur to her aching eyes. Then she looked slowly down at the flowers in her hands. Columbines! Frail, lovely things, the fairest product, she had thought, of nature’s laboratory, reflecting the infinite, ineffable blue of God’s skies, delicate as the flower that had bloomed with such wonderful, unexpected beauty in her own heart! How she could have treasured them, wept over them, hugged them to her breast, if he had given them to her in another way. Slowly her fingers relaxed. The flowers fell into the dust of the road. She stared down, at them a moment; and then, with a cry, leaped from her horse, picked them up eagerly, clasped them to her breast, buried her face in them, and watered them with her tears.

Seth said he guessed he would ride down to the post-office before supper; yesterday was mail day; might be something. Marion was glad of his departure, and to avoid Claire was not difficult, considering what baths, and changing of linen, and brushing of hair they required after their outing. Refreshed and rested, they had scarcely met before the new-lighted fire at twilight when Seth returned, stamping vigorously into the room.

“You’re the lucky one, Marion,” he said.

He fumbled in his pockets, and finally produced a letter. She took it, glanced at it, and let it fall into her lap. A great stillness seemed to have come upon the world. She appeared to be looking at Seth and Claire across great distances. She could hear her heart pounding in her bosom, like something that hammered for freedom. Ages seemed to have passed before she was able to rise slowly, to smile, to beg to be excused a moment. In her room she stood quite still, mechanically tore open the envelope, and read:

Dear Marion: You told me not to write, and I have obeyed till now. Don’t scold, please! You see I am in Denver. It’s business. Honest! A mining deal, just for a flyer. It may mean millions or nothing. I am here for several days, possibly weeks. Won’t you please let me run up to see you? Don’t say no, Marion. I promise to be good. I have an auto here, and they tell me the roads are O. K. at this season. I’ll come away the minute you tell me to. If I can see you only for an hour it will make me very happy.

Yours always,Robert.

She read it twice, while the color slowly returned to her cheeks. Then the letter faded from her sight, and she saw a face that wore a cruel smile, and heard a voice that bade her begone. And suddenly a wave of resentment, of anger, swept over her. To have been scorned, flouted, humiliated by one to whom–And here was a man who wanted her as he wanted nothing else in the world, who would toil for her, die for her, who would treasure every word and smile she should consent to give him, whose one desire was to make her happy. What madness had come over her that she–she the Viking’s daughter–Her eyes were drawn, she knew not how, to the columbines that she had carefully, tenderly arranged in a bowl on her dressing table. In a passion she rushed upon them, snatched them up dripping, bore them to the open window, and flung them with all her strength out upon the lawn. A moment she stood looking at them, her hands clutched upon her heaving breast, her whole body quivering with the storm that raged within her. Then she whirled around, flung herself down at her little writing table, and wrote:

Dear Robert: Yes, come. Marion.

Her hand trembled now so that she could scarcely address the envelope, and seal it. But it was done at last. She rose, and paused a moment to collect herself. Her mouth was dry, her forehead was hot under the hand that she pressed upon it. Nervously she poured a glass of water from the crystal pitcher that stood on a little table by the window, and gulped it down. Her eyes, as she did so, fell again upon the bouquet of columbines lying forlorn, their tender faces half buried in the dry grass. A cry rose to her lips, but she forced it back, and with a tightening of her lips, turned and went rapidly out into the room where Seth and Claire awaited her.

“What do you think?” she cried, in a voice that sounded strangely shrill and unmusical in her ears. “It’s from Robert–Robert Hillyer–Papa’s good friend–and mine. He wants to come up and see me–he’s in Denver–on business. He wants to come up–he says–just for a day or two–do you mind–if I ask him?”

“Of course, dear!” cried Claire, with enthusiasm.

“Sure!” seconded Seth. “Tell him he’s very welcome.”

“I knew you’d say that!” said Marion excitedly. “So–the letter–it’s all ready. Can it go out–the stage goes to-morrow, doesn’t it?”

“Yes,” replied Huntington. “I’ll take it down in the morning–before you’re up.”

“Please!”

She stood a moment, smiling at them. Then her eyes wandered aimlessly around the room. She must do something quick, or she would go to pieces. She saw the piano, and fairly ran to it. Crash! went the chords. Rippling and tumbling on one another came the notes under her nervous fingers. Out of the jumble of unrelated sounds presently emerged a gay and sparkling melody; and then a gayer one; and after that a rollicking song from one of the latest musical comedies. There followed two of the sauciest, most irresponsible tunes that ever made a vaudeville success. She played with abandon, a kind of reckless fury, sitting erect, with her head flung back, an insouciant smile flickering about her lips, her lithe body swaying with the music. Then suddenly, in the midst of a tune, she stopped, arose, faced Seth and Claire with flaming cheeks and eyes unnaturally bright.

“Great, Marion!” cried Seth, slapping his thigh. “Go on, please!”

But Claire had seen what Huntington had not. She turned to him swiftly, with a quick command, as if she had suddenly remembered something.

“I’ve clean forgot that pie, Seth. Go to the cave and bring me some apples. Quick, now!”

He sensed something a little queer in that order, which would have been very natural and pleasing at any other time, but he did not stop to question. Claire waited until the door had closed behind him, then ran to Marion, with anxiety pictured in her face.

“What is it, Marion?” she exclaimed.

“Oh, Claire, Claire!” cried Marion, breaking. “I’m so–so–unhappy!”

Then she flung herself into Claire’s arms, weeping without restraint.

CHAPTER XII

SUNNYSIDES

Marion was not alone in her misery; but knowledge of this, had it by any chance come to her, would not have eased her heart, though it might indeed have hardened it a little against more suffering to come.

Toward bedtime of the eighth day after that encounter at the glade of the columbines, Philip Haig sat stiffly silent in his armchair, staring into the fire. His brow was dark with discontent, his cheeks had paled with the slow ebbing of the tide of passion that had swept over him. It had begun to rise, though he was not then aware of it, or barely aware of it, the day Marion had halted him in the road below his ranch house; it had reached its flood as he drove away from her and left the bouquet of columbines in her limp hands.

Who was this girl? And why had she come to torture him? To him she now appeared as the incarnation of his tragedy. In her the Past, from which he had fled to the far corners of the earth, hiding his trail in seas and deserts and in stagnant backwaters of humanity, had tracked him down at last. And all the grief and bitterness and hatred that he had beaten down, or thought he had beaten down, had returned to rend and tear him.

Two beings he had loved, and to them he had given, to each in a different way, all his heart and soul and mind: his father and–that other. She had come to him at his most susceptible age, when, devoted only to art, he knew nothing of the world–a green boy, the wise ones had called him. She had come to him with all the surprise and wonder of a revelation, a coronation, a fulfillment, a golden epiphany. He had attributed to her such spiritual perfections as should have gone with her beauty and her grace; worshipped her for all that she was not and all that he was himself. And she had deceived him, exploited him, plundered him,–and laughed at him when by chance, one tragic, intolerable night, he found her out. And the next morning, as if his cup were not already full, he had received a cablegram, in his attic studio in Paris, telling him that his father had killed himself in a moment of despair over financial difficulties. So he had killed his father with his excessive demands for money to squander on ’Tonite. To be sure, he did not know–had had no hint from home–had never guessed that his father was in trouble. Nevertheless he had killed him–rather, she had killed him. What a fool he had been! Never such another fool since God placed man and woman together in one world. Cursing himself and her, and in her cursing all her sex, he fled–he knew not where. So stunned and dazed he was that he never really came to himself, found himself, until one day he awoke in Hong Kong.

That was the beginning of the new life, if such it might be called. He became a wanderer, an adventurer, seeking always new faces, new places, new experiences, trying always to forget, hoping always for a blessed knock on the head in some mad undertaking, for a thin knife in the back in some wild adventure. But in all his wanderings the one kind of adventure that he refused, the one excitement that he steadfastly shunned, was the one that, because of his very aloofness, and of something that women ever saw in his eyes, was offered to him the most freely, in every land beneath the sun.

Slim Jim entered, bringing whisky and hot water. Haig turned his head to look at him. Jim never changed, whatever his environment; he was always the Orient, the inscrutable East. And now, slipping in so stealthily, he seemed to bring with him an atmosphere, an odor, a call, and Haig, still looking at Jim, but scarcely seeing him, began to murmur lines that intoxicated him:

“I know not where the white road runs, nor what the blue hills are,But man can have the sun for friend, and for his guide a star;And there’s no end of voyaging when once the voice is heard,For the river calls and the road calls, and–”

He stopped and sat suddenly erect.

“Jim!” he cried. “Do you remember the night we took old Kwang’s girl away from the river rats in Tien-Tsin?”

“Vellee well,” answered the Chinaman.

His face was expressionless; he concealed the joy that this mood of his master aroused in his thin breast. Jim did not like the Park, and only the recollection of one day when he had stood tied to a capstan on a pirate junk, with a dozen fiends around him trying to make him tell something he did not know, and Haig had suddenly descended upon them like the foreign devil he was,–well, Jim took his gods where he found them, and from that day Haig had never been able to rid himself of this idolater.

“Tien-Tsin! Tien-Tsin!” Haig repeated, lingering covetously on the words. “But that was a fight, eh!”

“No likee!” replied Jim.

“No likee!” cried Haig. “Why, you hypocritical young ruffian, you! That was one of the happiest nights of your life. You’re always trying to make people think you’re asleep, or timid. I can see, right now, that long knife of yours slip under my arm, and catch the big fellow in the stomach. He just coughed once, and crumpled up at my feet. In the nick of time, too, Jim, and I let the next one have it. The rest of them took to their heels, and you with your long pigsticker after them. No likee! Jim, you’re a moon-faced old liar, and a disgrace to your ten thousand and seven ancestors.”

Jim’s smile was perfectly noncommittal. He was too wily to appear eager. Besides, he did not really like fighting, which made all the more trouble for somebody when he had to fight. But he was heartily sick of this cold and uneventful life in the Park. Better a thousand times the foolish adventures, the unnecessary battles, the restless wanderings of other days!

“That was a night!” said Haig, flinging himself back in his chair to gaze dreamily into the flames, while Jim, like a blue ghost, stole noiselessly away. And there, in the glow of the dying fire, bright and alluring visions successively took shape: A red-and-yellow temple on a hill, to which a thousand steps led up from a lake the color of a blue heron’s breast; a junk with sails of purple creeping out of a morning mist as yellow as saffron; an island with a still lagoon in its center, and coconut palms alive with screaming parrots of every gorgeous hue; a sandy beach where jabbering natives dragged the flotsam of a wrecked steamer out of the breakers; a village on a high plateau, where a drum throbbed incessantly, and naked Indian children peered out from behind the huts; a skirmish line in khaki crawling up to the brow of a shell-swept hill; a dog-team yelping under the long lash of a half-breed Aleut, on a frozen river that sparkled in the sun; a sweating jungle where two bright spots glowed balefully in the gloom.

“God!” groaned Haig, as he sat erect at last, and reached for the glass, now cold. He tasted it, and set it back with a wry face.

“Damn Thursby!” he muttered. “Does he think I’m going to stay here forever, like a bear in a pit?”

He woke the next morning in an ugly humor, having slept little, and then only to dream such dreams as fed his discontent. He berated Jim because the biscuits were cold (which was not Jim’s fault), and because the coffee was hot (which was according to his orders). Trivial annoyances, most of them of his own making or imagining, multiplied on all sides, fomenting his irritability until, by the time he strode out of the cottage, his temper was at white heat. What might have happened to the patient, devoted men about the stable and corrals is not difficult of conjecture, but they were saved by Sunnysides. Almost the first object that caught Haig’s eye was the yellow outlaw gleaming in the morning sunlight.

“Ah!” he exclaimed.

His inner turmoil of these last few days had banished all thought of the stallion of the San Luis. But now, his eyes gleamed as he quickened his steps toward the stable.

Farrish and Pete were at work among the stalls; Bill stood guard over Sunnysides; and the fourth man, Curly, was mending a saddle in the harness-room.

“Farrish!” Haig called out, striding into the stable. “We’ll tackle the yellow fellow this morning.”

Farrish and Pete turned, and looked at him curiously.

“All right!” answered Farrish; and then added doubtfully: “Now?”

“Yes. At once.”

Farrish, in a manner that showed a certain reluctance, put up the currycomb with which he had been grooming the sorrels, and started toward the rear door. But Pete stood still.

“You too, Pete!” said Haig, impatiently.

“I think you better not–to-day,” answered the Indian, in his slow way.

“Why?” snapped Haig.

Pete had seen the expression on Haig’s face, and did not like it. But he hesitated to utter what was in his mind.

“Why?” repeated Haig.

“I think you better wait,” was all that Pete could say.

“Hell!” cried Haig. “Get your lariat! And be quick about it!”

He had read Pete’s thought; his ill-humor had evidently shown itself in his face; but the caution only whetted his purpose. Throwing off his coat as he went, he passed through the rear door of the barn, and climbed into the outlaw’s corral, followed by Farrish, Curly, and Pete.

Sunnysides received them with suspicion. His head was high, his nostrils were dilated, his tail swished slowly, like a tiger’s. One forefoot was raised a little, resting on the toe, and the muscles of his shoulders quivered under the glossy hide. He had fully recovered from the effects of his rough treatment on the road, and his skin shone with a satin-like luster in the morning sun.

There was a moment’s pause, while Haig and the others looked at the horse, and he at them.

“Now then, Farrish! Pete!” commanded Haig.