"No, you're a good friend. I know it."

"I'm not very deep," he said, with a touch of dejection. "n.o.body ever takes me very seriously. But I hope you'll trust me!"

"Indeed I will! But come! We must go back."

So they went slipping and sliding down the hill, digging their heels into the ground, clinging to rocks and trees to check their swift descent, laughing at their wild plunges and gyrations. At the house, when they had rested a while on the veranda, Marion dismissed Smythe as quickly as she could without abruptness; and when he had gone she hastened to her room, and locked the door, and flung herself down on the bed, with her hands clasped behind her head, to stare up at the ceiling in a whirl of thoughts. There was a mystery! There was a motive behind Haig's conduct! "The most unselfish man in the world"

And she repeated the words over and over again, and gathered them to her heart.

CHAPTER XI

AVALANCHE

Huntington soon had his revenge on Marion, though, in his blindness, he never knew it. She and Claire, after an unusually protracted Small Talk the night before, arose late one morning to find the house topsy-turvy from masculine activity. On the veranda they discovered Seth cleaning rifles, surrounded by cartridge boxes, hunting knives, canvas bags and wrappings, rubber coats, leather straps, fishing tackle and what not.

"In the name of goodness, Seth Huntington! What are you doing?"

shrilled Claire.

"Guess!" replied Huntington, with a rather heavy attempt at tantalizing.

"Oh, I know! Camping. But you don't mean to-day?"

"Sure!"

"But why didn't you ask us?" demanded Claire. "Maybe we don't choose--"

"But you do, though. I promised Marion that as soon as I--"

He stopped, for even his habitually veiled eyes could not miss the look of consternation on Marion's face.

"Why--I thought--" he began uncertainly. "Of course, if you don't want to go--"

The oiled rag dropped from his hand. His descent from elation (he had planned a little surprise) to dejection and chagrin was a tumble that touched Marion's commiseration and disarmed her. She did not want to go camping; she did not want to leave the Park for even a day, an hour; she did not want to miss any opportunity to see Haig. More than ever now was she determined to solve his mystery. So Huntingdon's "surprise" was a greater shock to her than he, simple man, could possibly have foreseen or perceived. But even if she had not been moved by his rather ludicrous disappointment she would not have dared to refuse acquiescence in his programme. She had indeed expressed an ardent--oh, too ardent!--desire to go camping, and any explanation she could think of on the instant would have led her into regions where she could not trust herself.

"Indeed, I want to go!" she cried quickly, though there was a big lump in her throat. "You took me by surprise, that's all."

"I should say so!" said Claire. "Think you're smart, don't you? We might have been all dressed for it if you'd only told us. When do we start, Big Boss?"

Huntington recovered his good spirits quickly, a.s.sured that he had succeeded after all.

"I thought we'd ride to Ely's to-day, sleep there to-night, and make Mount Avalanche to-morrow evening."

"Then we must hurry," said Claire. "Come, Marion."

"How long--shall we be gone?" asked Marion, struggling to appear enthusiastic.

"Four or five days, I suppose."

Her heart sank. She could have cried with vexation. But she managed to conceal her real feelings in the bustle of preparation. There were provisions to be packed: cans and jars and bottles; bacon and ham and flour against the possible event of bad luck with the guns and rods; warm clothes and bedding; medicines and bandages. So fully occupied were her hands and brain with these details, and later with her first real experience with the mountain trails, that her heart must perforce keep its peace until some hour of solitude.

Toward five o'clock of the second day they reached their destination,--a gra.s.sy shelf a little below timber line on Mount Avalanche. There, in some past age, an avalanche of t.i.tanic proportions had carried away part of the mountain itself; and they camped now on the top of the debris, 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 ma.s.ses 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 pa.s.sed 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 gla.s.ses to a.s.sure 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 impa.s.sive. 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 pa.s.sion, 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 s.p.a.ces like a call to courage:

"The wild wind bloweth The cross of fire.

The wild heart knoweth Its 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 gra.s.s 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 pa.s.sing 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 trespa.s.ser, 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 G.o.d'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 pa.s.sed 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.