Hours pa.s.sed. Endless hours to the tired-footed girl. They had left the last woods behind them now and reached a clearing of bracken among the granite, and here Johnny Byrd stopped, and stared out with an unconcealed bewilderment that turned her hopes to lead.

With him, she stared out at the great gray peaks closing in about them without recognizing a friend among them. Dim and unfamiliar they loomed, shrouded in clouds, like chilly giants in gray m.u.f.flers against the damp.

It was not old Baldy. It could not be old Baldy. One looked up at old Baldy from the Lodge and she had heard that from old Baldy one looked down upon the Lodge and the river and the opening valley. She had been told that from old Baldy the Martin chalet resembled a cuckoo clock.

No cuckoo clocks in those vague sweeps below.

"Can we not go down a little bit?" said Maria Angelina gently. "Farther down again we might find the right path. . . . Up here--I think we are on the wrong mountain."

Turning, Johnny looked about. Ahead of him were overhanging slabs of rock.

Irresolution vanished. "That's the top now," he declared. "We are just coming up the wrong side, that's all. I'll say it's wrong--but here we are. I'll bet the others are up there now--lapping up that food. Come on, Ri-Ri, we haven't far now to go."

In a gust of optimism he held out his hand and Maria Angelina clutched it with a weariness courage could not conceal.

It seemed to her that her breath was gone utterly, that her feet were leaden weights and her muscles limply effortless. But after him she plunged, panting and scrambling up the rocks, and then, very suddenly, they found themselves to be on only a plateau and the real mountain head reared high and aloof above.

Under his breath--and not particularly under it, either--Johnny Byrd uttered a distinct blasphemy.

And in her heart Maria Angelina awfully seconded it.

Then with decidedly a.s.sumed nonchalance, "Gosh! All that way to supper!"

said the young man. "Well, come on, then--we got to make a dent in this."

"Oh, are you sure--are you _sure_ that this is the right mountain?"

Maria Angelina begged of him.

"Don't I know Baldy?" he retorted. "We're just on another side of it from the others, I told you. Come on, Ri-Ri--we'll soon smell the coffee boiling."

She wished he had not mentioned coffee. It put a name to that gnawing, indefinite feeling she had been too intent to own.

Coffee . . . Fragrant and steaming, with bread and b.u.t.ter . . .

sandwiches filled with minced ham, with cream cheese, with olive paste--sandwiches filled with anything at all! Cold chicken . . . salad . . . fruit. Food in any form! _Food!!_

She felt empty. Utterly empty and disconsolate.

And she was tired. She had never known such tiredness--her feet ached, her legs ached, her back ached, her arms ached. She could have dropped with the achingness of her. Each effort was a punishment.

Yet she went on with a feverish haste. She was driven by a compulsion to which fatigue was nothing.

It had become terrible not to be reunited with the others. She thought of the hours, the long hours, that she and Johnny Byrd had been alone and she flinched, shivering under the whiplash of fear.

What were they saying of her, those others? What were they thinking?

She knew how unwarrantable, how inexcusable a thing she had done.

It had begun with deliberate loitering. For that--for a little of that--she had the sanction of the new American freedom, the permission of Cousin Jane's casual, understanding smile.

"It's all right," that smile had seemed to say to her, "it's all right as long as it's Johnny Byrd--but be careful, Ri-Ri."

And she had loitered shamefully, she had plunged into the woods with Johnny in that thunder storm, she had let him take her on the wrong path.

And now it was growing dark and they were far from the others--and she was not sure, even, that they were upon the right way.

But they _must_ be. They could not be so hideously, so finally wrong.

Panic routed her exhaustion and she toiled furiously on.

"You're a pretty good scout--for a little Wop," said Johnny Byrd with a sudden grin and a moment's brightness was lighted within her.

She did not speak--she could only breathe hard and smile.

Nearer and nearer they gained the top, rough climbing but not dangerous.

The top was not far now. Johnny shouted and listened, then shouted again.

Once they thought they heard voices but it was only the echoes of their own, borne hollowly back.

"The wind is the other way," said Johnny, and on they went, charging up a steep, gravelly slope over more rocks and into a scrub group of firs.

Surely this was as near the top as one could go! Nothing above but barren, tilted rock. Nothing beyond but more boulders and stunted trees.

The place lay bare before their eyes.

Round and round they went, calling, holding their breath to listen.

Then, with a common impulse, they turned and stared at each other.

That moment told Maria Angelina what panic was.

CHAPTER VII

JOHNNY BECOMES INEVITABLE

She did not speak. She was afraid she was going to burst into tears. Her knees were trembling and she sat down with the effect of collapse and looked mutely up at Johnny.

"Judas," said Johnny bitterly.

He stared around once more, evading her eyes now, and then he moved over and sat down beside her, drawing out his cigarettes.

Slowly he took one, tapped its end upon a rock, and lighted it. Then, the case still open, he looked inquiringly at her.

"Smoke, Ri-Ri?" he questioned. "Ought to--never too late to learn."

She shook her head, smiling faintly. She knew his own perturbation must be immense. She did not want to add to it; she wanted to be brave and conceal her own agony.