THE HEART OF THE RED FIRS (continued 3)

"You're mighty pretty that erway," he said softly, putting his hand on her arm,—he felt its plump roundness through the thin sleeve,—"I'd like ter kiss you, ef I 'lowed you could stand it to hev that ther tiresome crowd laffin'."

"My stars, Mill," she said and all the imps in her eyes mocked him, "ain't you good? You're most er an-gel. I'll bet under your shirt you kin jest feel ther wings er sproutin'."

But even then his courage failed him. "Oh, kem on," he said, "ther ain't er girl in this hull deestrict kin beat you singin'. I'm ready ter lick ther fellow says so."

He led her back towards the waiting company, his grasp tightening on her arm. She hung her head and came reluctantly, catching at a branch, dragging her feet.

"Well," said Eben, putting down his mug and drawing his hand across his whiskers, "ef you're done er bein' bashful, now, Samanthy, we're ready ter listen."

She straightened herself with a little cough and looked at her audience. Then her glance fell and she shrank behind her captor with a faint, "I don't like ter."

But the young man did not relax his hold, and though his face crimsoned, he impelled her forward, closing his lips firmly over locked teeth, and watching her warily, as an athlete measures an uncertain antagonist. And he confessed to her privately, afterwards, that it "took more nerve" to make her sing than was required later "to put a head on Pete Smith."

She met his look helplessly, but straightened herself once more, with that little cough, and commenced in a clear quavering soprano.

"I've travelled all over ther country, prospectin'

an' diggin' fur gold,

I've tunnelled, hydraulicked an' cradled, an' I

hev be'n frequently sold."

The men grew silent, those to whom the song was new giving attention only to the singer, the others dividing interest between her and the table. But the words appealed to most, and convinced that, well started, she would brave out the ordeal, Thornton resumed his place. He masked his face in a set expression of indifference, but when his glance moved to Samantha, his bold young heart leaped and proclaimed itself through the batteries of his eyes.

She finished the song and took up her interrupted work of pouring coffee. Eben cleared his throat, and parted his beard, stroking it gently. "That ther chase you jest hed, Mill, 'minds me of er time I hed over to Montaner. I dunno's I ever let on 'bout that ther hunt o' mine."

He paused, still stroking his whiskers, while the audience grew attentive. "It was er full grown grizzly," he went on, "an' I'd give her a mighty mean shot, so't she was fightin' ugly. I hedn't another catridge an' I dunno's I'd hed time ter load up ef I hed. I natu'ally hed ter light out, an' ther wa'n't er tree in sight; nothin' but er few scrub hazels. But I got ter circlin' round them, ther bear after me, tell ther first thing I see we was wearin' er reg'lar ditch in ther ground. When it got 'bout's high's my head he let up er minute ter get his wind, an' I see my chanct ter climb out. I was jest dead beat an' all I could do was ter lay down close ter that bank an' watch that ther grizzly chase hisself—didn't seem ter miss me—tell he dropped."

There was a pregnant silence, then young Thornton said gravely, "It was er mighty close call, Eben, sure; 'bout ther closest you ever hed. But I 'low you never showed us that ther grizzly's skin."

There was another brief silence, during which Eben thoughtfully regarded his empty plate. "You're right," he said at last, "you're right, Mill, but that ther pelt wa'n't worth keepin'. You see when I clumb down after it I see it was spoiled. That ther ditch was mighty narrer, an' scrapin' round so long he jest natu'ally rubbed ther hair clean offn both sides."

The men, laughing, rose by twos and threes to return to their work. It was then, while the women and children closed in around the table, that Stratton rode into the clearing. Though he had travelled far that day his person was not the worse for it; and Sir Donald's shining coat, his long, lithe body, slender limbs and swelling chest, must have delighted more critical eye than Alice Hunter's.

"This is very nice of you," she said, going to meet him. "I was just feeling a little homesick for a face from the Sound. But Judge Kingsley is in Washington, and no one else knew of the house-raising. What happened to bring you?"

"Why, this quarter section caught my fancy the first time I saw it, last summer, and I made up my mind to take it. But I heard, yesterday, an entry had already been made, by a woman; probably one of these Canadian daughters of the settlement, and the easiest course was to hurry straight on to the headwaters, and ward off her improvements, and buy her off."

"She is not to be bought."

"You think not? Then,"—he gave her a side glance and finished tying the knot in Sir Donald's halter,—"I may decide to contest."

"Contest—this claim? you wouldn't do that?"

"Oh, yes I would." He paused to break a sword fern, with which he flecked off nicely a remaining bit of dust from his riding-boot. "I think I could make out a very good case. I should cover it with a timber filing."

"A timber filing," she replied quietly, "doesn't hold over a homestead right. At least, the exception is rare."

"But I should prove the exception. I should prove that the land is worthless for agriculture, and the timber entry of the adjoining quarter would strengthen the point. I might, however, find it advisable to make the location under mineral rights."

"But there is no mineral, to my knowledge, on this tract; though beyond, somewhere, in these hills, I have heard—there are indications."

"Then," and he waived that possibility, "it is enough that it is one of the best timbered sections in the Puget Sound Basin. These are fine old trees. And"— He paused to fleck an ant from his sleeve—"I have friends at court."

"Doubtless." Her patience was exhausted. "Such as those irreproachable men of whom Phil Kingsley once told us." She flashed him a look with that swift uplifting of her chin, and turned her face to the high shoulder of the hill. Her lips closed firmly; her breath came a little hard and quick; the ready color burned in her cheek.

Her retort brought the steel to his own eyes, but he had no answer. Her glance returned. "How could you find a timber claim desirable in this mountainous place? Twenty miles from a railroad, and on the Des Chutes, where to raft logs, or even dream of it, is sheer madness?"

"But suppose I should wish to put up a sawmill, and cut the timber right here on the ground? It would be a great thing for the settlement." His smile, which always hinted of mockery, lingered, and he watched her with the quiet enjoyment of the true angler, who is sure, but plays cautiously, to lose nothing of the sport.

"It might benefit the settlement," she said, and flashed him another look of fine scorn, though he saw her lip tremble, "but it would be years before you could hope for returns on the investment."

At this he laughed outright. "I withdraw," he said, "I withdraw. You are in fighting trim to your fingertips. You know too much about land law, Miss Hunter; the Judge has been a thorough instructor, and what you do not know about logging and milling, I am inclined to think is not worth knowing. But the homestead is yours. Now please establish a record for hospitality. I've had a long ride since breakfast."

"Do you mean—" She paused, flushing, then lifted her face to him all sudden brightness and charm. "Oh, you do mean it; I see—I see. You were only teasing me. It's hard, sometimes, to tell just where your jest breaks off—or begins. But did you really want this section?

"Yes, I looked it up at the Land Office, as I came through Olympia, intending to make a timber entry, and found the homestead filing under your name." He had followed her to the table, taking the seat beside her. And he stopped a moment, while he divided a roasted pheasant which he shared with her, then he said, "I do not pretend to fathom your reasons for burying yourself here in the wilderness; it is enough for me to know that you want this land. And the next quarter, on the other side of the cataract, is vacant. It is unsurveyed, but the squatter's right will serve me as well. I only want the place now for a sort of shooting-box; somewhere to stay in the hunting and fishing seasons, and, incidentally, to carry on a little traffic with Laramie and one or two other trappers, who have shown me already some very good furs."

She looked him over interestedly from this new point of view. "So," she said, "So, you are to be my nearest neighbor, with just the river between. Last autumn I thought I should have all the big heart of the hills to myself, but since Christmas Mill Thornton has taken up the next section but one on the school trail, and now you follow. The country is being settled very fast." She turned her eyes again to that high spur. After a moment she asked, "Have you been in Seattle lately, or at the mills?"

"Yes, I was there two days ago and saw your sister. She was well, but I think that the isolation wears on her, though she will not say so. She admits, however, that she misses you, and she and the Captain are planning a cruise among the islands. They are timing it for your spring vacation, confident you will join them."

"Oh," she said, and delight shone in her eyes, "you don't know how that tempts me; it's my favorite cruise."

"And you will arrange to go?"

She shook her head. "How can I? That short vacation means so much to me; I've planned it all away. Mose is going to clear a strip towards the river, for Colonel's pasture, and it must be big enough for the two Jerseys which Judge Kingsley is sending me. And I must furnish the cabin and take actual possession. But I don't know what to say to Louise. She doesn't know about this homestead, Mr. Stratton; I don't want her to know. You see it's all a venture; I might have to relinquish; I might—fail."

"I understand," he answered, again laughing, "and I promise to keep the secret from the Captain,—he can ridicule,—I promise, provided you go that cruise."

"I'm afraid I must." She shook her head again, ruffling her brows. "After all I ought to be able to spare this one week to my sister; she's going to think I'm forgetting her, often enough, before I'm through."

While they were talking a man had entered the clearing from the river side. He moved with a noiseless, sliding motion, and, seating himself at the lower end of the table, aloof from the children, who still loitered there, began unceremoniously to appease a prodigious appetite. Alice watched him in half recognition. His face in the strong light of midday was more than forbidding; it repelled while it also possessed the fascination of extreme ugliness. His old ragged hatbrim, turned back from a slanting forehead, left unshaded a pair of small, beadlike, shifting eyes. Suddenly she remembered where she had seen him before. It was at Laramie's cabin the time she had taken refuge from the storm. He was that midnight visitor, Smith.

None of the settlers gave him special attention, though Samantha filled his cup and Martha supplied him with an abundance of meat and bread. That was the unwritten code of the wilderness; no man was ever turned away hungry. And this man, though an escaped criminal, convicted of some crime against a remote Government, belonged to the community; as long as he respected its primitive laws he might come and go unmolested. But to pillage his neighbor—that was the unpardonable sin. And presently, at the moment of his departure, Smith crossed this line.

A short cruiser's ax, which young Thornton always carried in his belt over a new trail, was lying on a fallen tree directly in the outlaw's way. He was hampered by his gun, as he vaulted the log, but, by some sleight of hand, he slipped the ax under his blouse. Instantly there was a loud outcry, and before he could reach the cover of the jungle a cordon of settlers cut him off.

He swung about to break for the thicket at another point, but there the crowd closed. He stood motionless, weighing the odds, then he put his gun aside, setting the stock against a stump, and the ax reappeared, resting in the hollow of his arm. He caressed the edge of the blade lightly, with his long nervous fingers, and at the same time raised his shifting eyes to the owner, who confronted him. "A'm have some look at your ax, Mill," he said at last in a thick, choppy voice; "mebbe I lak to buy heem, ya-as, you want to sell heem, hey?"

Thornton drew a step nearer. "I 'low," he answered with slow emphasis, "you've examined that ther little ax of mine mighty close, Pete."

Smith understood. There was little use of subterfuge or denial. This cordon of men had become a tribunal, that, having already condemned, awaited the transgressor's punishment. His only escape hung on action, swift, sure. He swung the ax lightly, in a flash, but the instant it left his hand, the young rancher dipped his great shoulder, and rushing under the hurled blade, grappled with him. The confusion he had expected to create failed; his chances of reaching the friendly jungle shrank again. He writhed, twisted out of Thornton's grasp, and, snakelike, struck. Harder pressed, he fought, without system, ferociously, like a cornered rat, squeaking horribly and using his teeth.

There could be no doubt of the outcome. Nature, in creating Thornton, had made an athlete, and the great primal passions, latent in every man, sprang unleashed to meet the beast with whom he had to deal. His quick blows gathered impetus. His victim gave back slowly, snapping, snarling, steps he made no effort to regain. And the human ring moved with them, riverwards. It was miserable, but very swift, and the finish came when the retreating man tripped backward over a root and went down.

Laramie sprang to raise him, but at the same instant the teacher, throwing off Stratton's detaining arm, pushed into the circle and stood before the fallen man. She did not speak at once; the words, struggling in her throat, choked. But Thornton's great doubled forearm relaxed and dropped at his side. He met the command, the reproach in her brave eyes and the fury in his own died.

"I will not have it," she said at last, and her voice rang. "Remember,"—her look swept the cordon,—"from this day I will not have fighting on my land."

There was a brief silence. Laramie moved back to his place. Behind her the outlaw rolled on his side, then to his stomach, and began to worm himself towards a cedar that had broken the ring. No one stopped him. He covered the ground with incredible swiftness, with a writhing motion, learned of necessity and long contact with the jungle, and like some hideous goblin crawled under the dragging boughs of the tree.

Myers cleared his throat. "Pete orter kep' erway," he said mildly. "I 'low he didn't get mor'n was due him. Tell you, I've seen er man over in Montaner catch it er sight worse fur doin' less. That ther's a mighty good little ax o' Mill's."

Stratton, who had followed Alice closely, lifted Smith's rifle and walked coolly over to the cedar and passed it between the boughs. The outlaw was on his feet, and he clutched the gun and ran across the remaining bit of open, and dropped out of sight in the dense undergrowth.

"Of course," she said, replying to Eben, "I understand that. The man must be punished; but there are better ways."

"Ther nighest sheriff," said Eben, still mildly, "lives to Olympia, sixty miles straight. That's ther closest jedge, too, an' court."

"Still, here are men enough to hold him," and her voice deepened to a dominant note; "lock him in his cabin, guard him until the right officers can arrive. He should have been turned over to the Government long ago, you all know it, for greater crimes. It must be done now."

She set her lips and turned, and for the first time realized Smith was gone. Stratton stood waiting near the cedar. He saw the sudden relief flash through the consternation in her face. "You let him go," she said slowly. "You could have stopped him. It was your duty."

"Yes," he came towards her, "I let him go. I even helped him off. Pardon me or—punish me."

She stood for a moment looking up into his face, but he bore the scrutiny easily enough, smiling, with a tinge of mockery. "Oh," she said, "how could you? How could you? But I know the reason; it was an impulse—of the heart—to take the losing side. It was wrong—but I—like you for it."

"You like me?" he laughed softly, "You like me?" He paused, enjoying the confusion in her face. She turned it away. "So," he went on, "So you think I sided with the under dog? No, no, Miss Hunter, I am not that kind of a man. It just seemed the quickest way to terminate that miserable row. You should never have witnessed it; you should not have been here. This wilderness is no place for you."

Instantly her confusion was gone. "Oh," she said, "surely this has been proof enough. It is the one place, the right place; the settlement needs me. But—it's going to be the hardest work," she shook her head gravely, "and I want you to help me." She stood another moment searching his face, then, "You are a strange man," she added. "Why is it you cover your best and delight in showing your worst side?"

"There is no best," he answered quickly. "I am past appeal." And he turned and walked swiftly away towards the river and that section of land he had come to see.

Smith was gone; the episode was closed, and the men had resumed their interrupted work. Then, presently, the teacher called Mose and the older children to her assistance, and an arch was formed of stout saplings twined with hemlock and cedar. And when Stratton had returned and it had been set up on the finished floor, he helped to decorate it with flags and yards on yards of gay ribbon, in loops and bows and streamers. There were also, nodding under the smartest twigs, mysterious little packages wrapped in bright papers with fringed ends, so that Lem with increasing difficulty held his wonder. Garlands strung from the rafters, were studded with other flags and supported every variety of Japanese lantern.

The day drew to a close. On the ashes of last year's camp-fire, Mose kindled a new blaze, and the people gathered around it for a brief interval of rest. They discussed the gabled roof, the roomy balcony, and then the conditions of the soil. And afterwards Myers spun a grizzly yarn, rivaled by Laramie's recital of the elk hunt from which he had lately returned. And the women, brought together from remote solitudes, exchanged small personalities, sure of a sympathetic ear. They took up the misfortunes of Slocum's family, left without a head, and the fatal accident that had befallen young Girard, soothing his mother with a reminder of the good bargain she had made in selling the ranch, and the comfortable home she was to find with the teacher.

But when the round moon looked over the high shoulder of the slope, and the lighted lanterns began to show blue or red or orange spheres along the edge of the clearing, and filled the cabin with a soft illumination, Eben brought his violin, and with various trials of the bow upon the strings, led the way into the building. Then, when Mill Thornton had danced a hornpipe, and all the young folk had warmed their blood to the tune of Money Musk, followed by a stirring jig, the teacher led them a new step, fitting to the music of the settlement the qualities of the cotillion. She came under the arch, and reaching, took one of the small flags. But it was not to Stratton that she gave it, but to Laramie, who stood frowning in the doorway. Laramie, who had not danced these many years. And to the astonishment of everybody the Canadian answered the salutation of her pretty head, and sticking the flag in his buttonhole, commenced with much shuffling of the cowskin boots, a series of gyrations and curvetings that filled the newer generation with amazement and delight.

It was an easy matter for Samantha to learn that little novelty as to the flags, and the more difficult methods with the ribbons. Lem, there in the corner, with folded arms and watchful eyes imitating Laramie's wild motions, saw the teacher open that first package with the fringed ends, and still with that swaying movement, unfold and place on her head a yellow tissue hat. Then here were all of these large girls following her example, and Laramie himself pulling off his old squirrel-skin cap, and flinging it aside for a red bonnet. Mill Thornton too, and all the boys from Yelm and Tenalquet, were rigging themselves out in every kind of head-gear, and with flags and ribbons; making their best steps, and cheered on by the shouts and laughter of the older people ranged along the walls.

The bow ran faster and faster, as though it laughed in its sleeve at the wild figures they cut. Then, at length, the teacher slipped aside to relieve Eben. It was a different music, sweeter, softer, that she drew from the old cracked instrument, and she kept time with one foot, thrust a little forward; a smile played on her lips, there was a shining light in her eyes, and the yellow hat was pale against her ruddy hair.

But finally the measure changed. The revellers quieted under the unfamiliar strain. It was no longer dance music but Schubert's Serenade. A far-away look came over her face; a sweet tenderness. Her soul was in her touch; she called a speaking sadness from the strings. A great hush fell over the room.

CHAPTER XII

A FACE IN THE NIGHT

Mason, the watchman at the Freeport mills, stood as was his habit when off duty, quite at the end of the dock, his red hair blowing in the wind, his hands thrust in the pockets of his oily brown jeans, and his feet planted firmly apart, notwithstanding one was an insecure wooden peg around which the leg of his trousers fluttered loosely. It was after the hour of closing, and about the doorways of the cabins, which nestled well under the bluff. groups of workmen loitered, or like Mason, enjoyed the breezier, salter atmosphere of the wharf. The sound of bagpipes came from a distant quarter up the beach, and the rival notes of an accordion floated over from a passing fishing-smack. But above all rose the deep wash of the sea. A lumber ship, with the light lines of her deckload showing above her low black hull, swung out from the upper dock and took on a boatful of tuneful sailors who had crossed the harbor from the town. Her tug, lying to the northward, awaited her cable. And out beyond the headland and its black reflection, the late sun reddened the Phantom's sails.

Mason's nautical gaze rested on the yacht, and he said, addressing Hop Sing, the cook, who had been transferred from the Judge's house to the mills, "A fine craft, ay, sir; a bit too narrer at ther beam, but a fine craft, sir."

Sing smiled blandly and tucked his long yellow finders into his wide sleeves. "Phlantom, she all lit-e," he admitted. "Mlisser Phil, he all lit-e."

The yacht swung into the shadow of the Head; the lightening cable between the ship and tug crossed her bows. The steamer with increased belching of smoke and pounding of machinery forged away and the vessel slowly answered the straining line. Mason leaned forward with a low exclamation; then, no longer able to hold himself, he lifted his voice in a hoarse shout. "Luff, luff 'er."

Even as he spoke the Phantom veered suddenly, and came around close-hauled, all but grazing the stern of the ship. And Mason saw the master at the helm, his cap pushed back, his eyes on the flapping canvas, while his lips coolly shaped the end of a chorus. A woman, young and pretty, with a cloud of blond hair, was seated near him, strumming time on a banjo, and, as Mason moved to take the line, she looked up at him with a gay laugh.

Stratton relieved Kingsley of the tiller while he went into the bows with the coiled line. The old sailor caught it and made a twist around a pile, hauling taut. "It wore neatly done," he said with the pride glowing in his homely face; "ay, sir, but it wore a close call, sir."

Philip laughed. "Not much of a trick if you know the Phantom, Mason. No, I'm not coming ashore. Here, give these packages to Mr. Forrest. Tell him I'm taking a run over to Tacoma. Will look in at the camp about those logs. That's all. Cast off."

Mason watched the Phantom swing out, then went up the wharf to the store. It was a long, low building with few windows and a massive door. The interior was gloomy, musty; sacks of flour piled in great lines partitioned the room; hams and bacon hung from the ceiling. At one side of the entrance the office was separated from the main floor by a latticed railing, and gave the manager an opportunity to work at his desk, and at the same time see those who entered. The window at his elbow overlooked the dock and informed him if an arriving vessel demanded his attention there.

Several men sauntered after Mason and joined the group gathered at the door. One entered, and Forrest turned from his desk to take the day's tally from him. Presently Hop Sing slipped through the idle and jeering crowd to collect an allowance of groceries. Mason laid his packages down and waited, leaning on the railing. His glance moved from the cook to the sawyer, a heavy, burly fellow, who stood in the entrance. As the Chinaman passed out this man turned with a sudden thrust of his powerful shoulder and Hop Sing plunged headlong on to the dock. There was a round of applause while he floundered in a broken crock of molasses and a burst bag of buckwheat, and the sawyer moved back with a gruff laugh. At the same instant something was thrown behind him, and he, too, fell, sprawling on the floor. The cry of derision was transferred to him, and Mason, having recovered his equilibrium, stooped and gravely felt of his wooden leg. "When a man's er peg like this," he said aggressively, forestalling the sawyer's anger, "he aren't to be walked over. I've known 'um to crack."

And the crowd cheered, for there was a story current at the mills that Mason had once, in an emergency, unstrapped this leg and used it for a weapon; not only to the discomfiture of his antagonist, but to the serious damage of the instrument, both having been laid up, afterwards, for extensive repairs.

The amusement shone for a moment in Forrest's eyes, but his face was tired and worn; the line between his brows had grown habitual. It deepened when the old sailor repeated Kingsley's message. He took a small packet of mail which the watchman had brought with the bundles, and hastily cut the string. "Here, Mason," he said, "take these letters over to Mrs. Kingsley.

"Ay sir." The answer was hearty, but Forrest caught the consternation in the tone. He knew that it took less courage for this crippled sailor to brave the sawyer than face a woman; and he understood, when Mason stopped at the corner outside to light his pipe, it was a subterfuge to gain time.

The Captain's house, like the cabins, stood in an enclosure filled with slabs and sawdust and covered with rough planking. The board walk, which led from the store to the cookhouse and mills, branched to this building, and, raised on higher piling, extended on around the headland to an old abandoned hotel. It was there, going slowly with her toddling baby in the direction of the ruin, that Mason discovered Mrs. Kingsley as he crossed up from the store.

The waves broke in a continuous swash under the planking, casting at intervals a piece of wreckage or rope of seaweed on the shore. The collection of drift there was wet from the ebbing tide. Far out, beyond the shadow of the Head, a pink flush still rested on he water, and the Phantom, moving into this glow with all her white sails set, heeled gently, a golden craft on a painted sea. And it was in that direction, towards the receding yacht, Louise's face was turned. She had stopped and the child, steadying himself with his hand on her skirt, stood dropping pebbles slowly between the rails.

Mason slackened his pace, setting his wooden peg lightly. It was difficult to approach any woman, but this one, young, pretty and with her back turned— He halted, waiting, with a forlorn hope that she would look around. But she did not. He coughed softly and pulled off his cap. Still she stood with her eyes towards the Phantom. He put on his cap and removed his pipe from his mouth, regarding her in mild helplessness. The small, proud head, the high, soft knot of dark hair, the graceful, slender figure in its trim gown, the shapely hand that rested on the railing; he noted all with growing awe. Then his clutch tightened on the letters and he cleared his throat with a gentle thump of the wooden peg.

She turned, startled, and looked at him. Her eyes were full of tears.

He thrust the letters into her hand in speechless haste and fled.

"Mason," she said, "oh, Mason." But he failed to hear. She did not repeat the call; she waited, listening to the thump, thump, of the receding peg, then her glance fell to the articles he had given her. One of the letters was pencilled and unstamped. She read it first.

"DEAR LOUISE:—

"I am sorry, but business kept me in town again last night, and I am on my way now to Tacoma. I have to hunt up a boom near there, and am taking a little crowd along for company. We will look in on the Yacht Club's dance and I wish you were coming. You really ought to find some sort of a nursemaid. I would stop off half an hour to see you, but must make the most of this wind. Will be back tomorrow evening.

"Yours,

"PHIL."

The hand holding the note trembled a little, and she lifted her clouding eyes again to the Phantom. "It is of no use," she said slowly, "I might as well be any piece of drift thrown here out of the tide. But—I had to try it. It was the only way."

She stood for a long time watching the yacht. It moved a lessening shape on the fading sea, and swung at last behind a point into the long southward sweep of the Sound. Then she was conscious that the child had left her. He was toddling to the ruin. She ran to overtake him. "Silas," she called. "No, Silas, no." But her voice and her rapid steps only hurried him laughing and crowing through the open bar-room door.

The broad floor of fine planking was still firm and smooth except about the place where the pool table had stood, and in front of the bar. The baby ran to hide there, peeping out at his mother with little exultant bursts of delight.

But this old bar, the last remaining bit of furniture in the place, guarded the sagging door of a small ell evidently once used as a tap-room. It stopped at the first story, and the flooring, made of rougher, wider lumber than that in the main building, was laid in short patched strips. It was rotting about the rusty nailheads; sometimes there were breaks. All this was lighted dimly by one small window, high up in the unfinished wall and curtained by the bluff, and she saw a dozen pitfalls in the ruin, yawning for her baby's feet. She drew the door shut, but it was without a lock and dragged back a foot or more.

The great rear door of the bar-room also stood open; it was loose on its hinges and grounded on the floor. The threshold dipped to a balcony, dismembered of railing and stairs. She caught the child up in her arms and hurried out through the front entrance back along the walk.

It was twilight when she entered her gate. A first star glimmered over the mills, and on the water front across the harbor Seattle's lamps shone whitely. Close at hand the burning slabpile at the end of the waste-chute took on a redder glow, sending long searching tongues of flame into the gloom of the bluff. She went in and lighted a swinging lamp. Its crimson shade sent a pleasing warmth through the room, which possessed the attractive element that follows the touch of a refined and orderly woman. There were no housemaids in that milling camp; no other women. The few men who had wives made their homes over in the town, where they spent the week-end. Once during the day Mason came in to make things "ship-shape," but he took the hour when she was at the cook-house, where the meals for the Captain's family, which included Forrest, were served in a small private dining-room off the main hall.

The night was cool and she lighted the fire in the grate and seated herself in a low wicker chair to read her remaining letter. It was from her sister, briefer than usual, for she expected to follow it within the week to go that promised cruise among the islands.

"... The country is being settled very fast," she wrote. "Mill Thornton is clearing on his new homestead for a cabin, and Mr. Stratton has built a charming little lodge of cedar shakes thatched with bark, on his timber claim up the headwaters. It is tucked away in a clump of fine old trees, and the first time I saw him there, leaning in the doorway, with one of Laramie's dogs fawning over him, and bargaining with the trapper over a beaver pelt at his feet, I couldn't help calling, 'Good morning, Robin Hood.' It was so pleasant to find the place unspoiled, for most of the settlers set up their homes in a great burn, with not even an alder saved; not a flower or blade of grass left to ease the eyes."

But, though she had so much to tell about these matters, of her own homestead there was not a word. Louise folded the letter, puzzled, and laid it aside. She sat for an interval looking absently into the fire. "I don't understand," she said at last. "I don't understand why she is staying up there in the wilderness. She has promised to marry Uncle Silas, and yet she has let him go to Washington without her. She is willing to have the whole continent between them; and when a woman loves, as she should love the man she is going to marry, she is ready to shape her plans and interests to his. She wants to give him her companionship, to be at hand to help him the first moment he may need her. But Alice seems happy. I wonder what her reason is."

She had learned in this solitude to think aloud, gathering comradery from the sounds of her voice, and young Silas, growing tired of his playthings, came over to her knee. He looked up into her face gravely, trying to fathom her meaning. She laughed softly and lifted him to her lap. He was a lovely child; a little copy of Philip Kingsley in form and gesture; he had the same close-curling blond hair. He returned his mother's caress warmly, putting his stout arm about her neck and kissing her mouth, her cheek, again and again. Presently she undressed him, but she deferred the bed-going, enticing him, with surprise and frolic, to stay awake. She dreaded the silence that was to follow; the interminable loneliness of the slow night. But at last he went to sleep in her arms.

When she had tucked him away in his bed in an inner room and returned, she moved about restlessly, giving housewifely touches to things already arranged. "After all, it is the business," she said. "It must be—nearly always—the business. I am too exacting. I expect too much."

She reached the window and lifted her hand to draw the blind. But she started and dropped her arm, letting the shade spring back to the roller. Someone stood on the walk without. His long figure rose in the square of light which, blocked on the piazza, included the breadth of fence where he leaned. His dark, repulsive face was raised to her, and he seemed to fix her with his small, snakelike eyes. The next instant he dropped his goblin shape and shrank writhing away into the gloom.

She shivered and her fingers trembled when she reached again for the cord and drew the blind. She went into the hall and pushed the heavy bolt above the lock on the front door. When she had gone through the house and secured every door and window, she came back, still shivering, to the fire. "It is nothing," she told herself, and put her hand on the mantel, reassuring herself as a woman must when denied human support, "it was nothing. The man stopped a moment in passing, attracted by the light. I must have some—courage. But his face—was terrible."

Presently she went over to the piano and began to sound the keys; she struck loud, clarion chords, martialling forces to put down her fears. Her shaking fingers grew surer; she commenced to shape a bit of Wagner, and then a fragment of Schubert. That was the music she loved. She opened a folio of sonatas. She played with ease and skill and her frame swayed with a slight, rhythmic motion. Her soul was in her touch and in her eyes, grown large and misty. It was then her face was beautiful.

At last she turned a page and a loose sheet fluttered out. It was that sea song of Barry Cornwall's, that had been a favorite quartette in the old days aboard the Phantom. She began to play it, and presently her voice flooded the night.

"For the white squall rides on the surging wave,

And the bark is 'gulfed in an ocean's grave,

In an ocean's grave; in an ocean's grave."

Forrest, coming that way from his customary rounds of the mills, heard it, and the passion, the despair of it, held him at the gate. But he dropped his hand from the latch at the end and turned away. "There is nothing I can do for her." he told himself. "She is past feeling the solitude now. She is past being afraid."

CHAPTER XIII

THE PRESSURE OF THE THUMB-SCREW

The following night Forrest was seated near the open fire in his room off the store. His journal and ledger were on the table before him, and opposite Kingsley tilted his chair comfortably, and clasping his hands at the back of his head, lifted his glance to the lamp-lighted ceiling. He was smoking and looked a trifle bored.

"It amounts to this," said Forrest; "lumber has dropped to eight dollars a thousand and we've simply got to cut down expenses." He paused with his hands on the arms of his chair, his body slightly inclined forward, and looked at Philip with clear, stern eyes. "I am running the lightest possible force; I have dispensed with a bookkeeper and am doing his work nights. But here are still unpaid bills for machinery, saw-logs and towing; some weeks it even comes to a question of the wages of the men. I could, though, have met these demands better if I hadn't been so handicapped. For instance, in the matter of the Corona. I made out the bills of lading; I relied on the funds at a certain time and gave promises of payment. And then found out you had received the checks and had them cashed, and put most of the money to personal use. It not only places me in a difficult position but weakens the credit, the standing of the mills."

"I suppose so," said Kingsley, knocking the ashes carefully from his cigar. "I suppose so; I hadn't looked at it in that way. But the Enterprise will be here in a few days and her shipment ought to make things straight."

"Temporarily, yes. But see here, why can't you limit yourself to a salary? Say two hundred a month? If you could do this, and devote a definite time to work, I should know what to depend on, and we could pull through the year without calling on the Judge."

"Two hundred a month?" repeated Philip, and laughed.

"Yes. You know the Judge advised a regular salary."

"You seem to forget I have practically a half interest in this property."

"On the other hand, it is that I remember," answered Forrest dryly. "If the mills should go under it would bar me, of course, from another position of trust; but for you it would mean financial ruin."

Kingsley smoked for a brief interval in silence. Then he said, "I don't see the necessity of all this. There's Stratton, now, talks differently. He thinks I have a sure thing; that another year or two will see the opening of a great lumber traffic with the Orient. He calls Puget Sound the Gateway of the Pacific. I wish you could hear him."

"I have heard him," answered Forrest, again dryly. "But with me, his opinion doesn't count for much. To hold my faith a man has got to do the things he talks about. And Stratton isn't a man who works. In short, it's a problem where he gets his money. My friend Bates, of the Customs Service, has been in Victoria a good deal; he knows something about Stratton's family. His father, before he died, made a fortune in the fur trade, but his mother, who lived a rather smart life over there, spent it faster. Stratton is like her."

"He has taken up his father's business," said Kingsley warmly. "He is building a fine coasting schooner, now, to carry on an extensive trade, northward, with the Indians."

Forrest shook his head. "That's just it. A man dabbling spasmodically in furs, and living extravagantly most of the time about town, is hardly expected to have capital to invest in a fine steam-schooner."

Philip watched a puff of smoke rise and expand in blue haze above him. "I know what you're driving at," he said. "You're referring to his possible connection with a smuggling ring. Stratton told me all about it. There's nothing in it. Bates happens to have a grudge against him."

"Bates is hardly the man to satisfy a personal grudge in that way. He merely answered a question or two I asked him." Forrest paused and went on in a slightly deepened tone. "It seems to me incredible that you should let a fellow like Stratton manage you."

"Manage?" The Captain's chair came down abruptly on its front legs. "See here, even you can't say that, Paul. Stratton is my friend; I'm fond of him, but I do as I damn please."

Forrest was silent.

Kingsley rose to his feet and threw his cigar in the fire. "It's time I went up to the house," he said. "The crowd will be ready to go on to town, soon, and I've hardly seen Louise."

Forrest pushed back his chair and rose. "You agree, then, to the two hundred," he said quietly.

"Oh, come, you are worse than thumb-screws." He laughed a short, constrained laugh and looked at his watch.

"The Judge, you remember, takes it for granted."

"Oh, well,"—he ran his fingers swiftly through his close-cropped hair, and repeated the movement,—"I don't see how I can do it—but—I suppose so for awhile—yes."

He picked up his cap and started out through the store. Forrest followed him to the outer door. But there Philip stopped. "Come up to the house with me," he said, "and bring your violin. I've been telling them about you."

He stood jingling his keys in his pockets, and whistling in snatches, much like a schoolboy who tries to forget, yet remembers the unpleasant ending of a scrape, while Forrest went back to his room for the instrument.

It was a moonless night, but in the direction of the mills the burning slabpile brought out the lines of the bluff. It lighted the upper wharf and the great piles of finished or rough lumber. The whitewashed walls of the cabins reflected the glare. Everywhere, in the open doorways, seated on timbers or blocks in the vicinity of the fire, wherever there was protection from the north wind, or the flames threw heat, groups of workmen loitered. Suddenly Kingsley said, "I would like to see the whole thing dumped into that slabfire."

Forrest put his hand on Philip's shoulder. Both stopped and the light shone on the manager's face. The laugh lurked in his eyes, and the lines about his mouth softened. "And you'd like to see me at the bottom of the heap."

"I'm sick of these mills," said Philip petulantly. "I hate the place."

"And me. Come, say so."

"Well, then, yes, and you, since you are determined to put me through." He threw off Forrest's hand, and seeing the old watchman approaching on the branch walk, went a step to meet him. "I want you to go over to the cookhouse, Mason," he said, "and tell Sing to bring a little supper up. Take him down to the Phantom and get a dozen of champagne from the port cabin locker. Here's the key."

He rejoined Forrest and they finished the distance in silence. But when they entered the parlor, where Kingsley's friends awaited him, his manner changed. "You must blame Paul for keeping me," he said lightly; "he was determined to talk. When he has a point to gain he has the grip of a vise; never lets go. You've simply got to yield through sheer weariness."

Every one laughed, and he crossed the room to seat himself beside the girl with a small blond head, who had accompanied him the previous day with a banjo. But his glance moved again and again to his wife. For the first time it nettled him to see another man interested in her. And Stratton was interested; Stratton, who was undeniably hard to please. It is the way of some men to appraise their wives according to the value placed on them by other men, and Kingsley began to make an inventory of her points; that was a nice flush in her cheeks, and he had nearly forgotten about that lighting of her dark eyes. And, too, that was a pretty way she wore her hair. Then he remembered how splendid it was unbound, for it rippled to her knees, and was soft as a black velvet cloak. And when she sang, presently, to the accompaniment of Forrest's violin, the Captain told himself she had never been in better voice. He resolved to be at the mills oftener; on the whole, if he had not just been forced into that miserable limit of two hundred dollars, he would like to set up an establishment over in town.

When she went from the room to consult Sing about that little supper, Philip followed her. She believed he had come to look in at little Silas, and she quietly threw open the inner door. The light streamed into the dark interior, showing the small white bed, the charming face of the sleeping child. There was a rosy glow on the round cheek, and one stout, dimpled arm, bared to the elbow, encircled his curly head.

Kingsley stood watching him a silent moment, then he put his arm around his wife and said softly, "He's all right; yes, he's fine. But he's been growing since I saw him; I hadn't thought it was so long. I must get home oftener. Do you know you were in great voice to-night; I never heard you sing so well."

"Yes?" she answered, smiling, "I am glad you think so. I sang for you."

"And this color in your cheeks; is it for me, too?"

"You know that I am glad to have you home."

He bent and kissed her. Her head rested an instant on his breast; he brushed his cheek against her hair. "You miss me, then, when I'm away?"

"Yes." She lifted her face. An intensity of expression that he had seen rarely, and always disliked, came over it; the force in her low voice jarred. Why couldn't she stay pleasant, as she had been there in the crowd. "I would do anything to keep you at home, Philip. Anything, if you would spend your evenings with me; your nights, as you used to."

His arm fell. "I thought you understood the outside business would keep me away," he said coolly. "I explained it at the first when you wanted to live here at the mills."

She moved a step away. Her heart cried, "It is not the business," but she said aloud, turning to him again with a smile, "A woman doesn't often reason; she only feels."

"That's the trouble; you feel too much; more than most women. When you are not serious, though, you are a very attractive woman."

She stood quite still, with her slender fingers locked, and that intensity growing in her eyes. "Do you know, Philip, sometimes I wonder how you ever could have cared for me; for the best that is in me is what you have overlooked. I should think,"—she paused and forced again that brave little smile,—"I should think that you might be—happier, if you had married a different kind—of woman."

At this he laughed. So she was a little jealous, that explained things, and of that flyaway, there in the other room. "There's the woman one marries," he answered lightly, "and the woman with whom one has a good time; they are seldom alike."

She was silent. There is nothing so cuts a proud and refined woman as the enforced knowledge of her husband's coarser grain; but her disappointment finds no expression; she covers her shame.

"But I don't blame you," he went on, still lightly, "I don't blame you; I don't deny you've had cause. I'm coming home oftener, after this, though; or, perhaps, before long, I can arrange to take a house in town. You would like that?"

"Yes. The loneliness is harder than I believed it could be; it wears on me. And I can't grow accustomed to the mill people. Last evening I saw a strange face at the window. It haunts me. I woke up in the night time, seeing it. It was—terrible. I have never been a brave woman, Philip. I am—afraid."

Her whole body trembled, overcome by the recollection of that face. But Kingsley laughed again. "Well, I don't wonder. For sheer physical ugliness, this crew Forrest has picked up might, almost to a man, dispute the palm. But Alice is coming; she'll show you pluck; she has it to spare. And we'll have that cruise through the islands. We'll make it a small family affair and take along little Si. Meantime Paul must see that the night watchman gives the house special attention, and I'll ask him to come in oftener with his violin."

CHAPTER XIV

THE SALMON-TROLLERS

"O-h, o-h, Mason, I hate to, but I've got to let you land him. He's a wh-a-le." She spoke softly; her eyes shone. She put the line in the old sailor's hands. "Now, now, Mason; oh, I don't mind a little water; that's all—right."

But it was a deluge, for the great salmon floundered first against her, almost in her lap, and then into the bottom of the skiff, at her feet. Mason bent to remove the hook, and Louise, in the bow, held little Silas over to see the big fish. "Mighty purty play; weighs all o' twenty pund; bet you a bottle."

"I believe it's a Chinook," said Alice.

The sailor's homely face glowed. He looked back to be sure the child's view was unobstructed. "Aye, sir, it's a Chinook, an' big's they make 'em. Bet you a bottle."

But the wager passed again unchallenged, and having met Louise's amused glance, Mason took up his oars abashed. Nothing but the excitement of landing that fish could have so loosened his tongue. He pulled a good stroke that brought them quickly to the shore. The wind came in long puffs from the north and the sea broke on the beach in a deliberate swell. The water was a cold blue, shading to brown in the shallows, for it was ebb-tide. They drew up to the float between the wharves and Mason steadied the boat while Alice lifted the baby out and, giving him to his mother, stopped to take a great bunch of flowering rhododendrons from high in the bow. Then he raised the salmon by the gills and stumped proudly ahead up the walk.

Alice looked at her sister and smiled. "There's a watch-dog you can trust," she said. "Yes, I mean it. He has a big, warm heart underneath, and little Si knows it, already."

"I think you are right," admitted Louise, "but it is strange it should have taken you hardly twenty-four hours to find it, while I have been months getting within speaking distance."

"I suppose," said Alice thoughtfully, "it's a way I have of wanting to utilize the material at hand. There's something, too, in meeting a man on his own ground. When you want to reach a sailor," and she laughed softly, "take a boat. Oh, Mason," she called, for he had made the turn up the branch walk to the house, "wait. Come around and weigh the salmon at the store."

She led the way, and the gloomy building seemed to gather a sudden radiance when she entered the door. Her face reflected a soft illumination from the showy pink flowers heaped in her arm. Forrest stepped down from his stool at the desk, and came outside the railing to meet her. Then, "What's that, Mason?" he asked. "You don't mean to tell me she really did catch a fish."

"Aye, sir,"—Mason stopped to put the salmon on the scales,—"twenty-two pund."

"That's so," said Forrest incredulously, "twenty-two and a quarter; well, for a Chinook that's a prize."

But the smile in her face died. Looking across the rhododendrons at him, it came over her again, as it had when she met him on her arrival the previous day, that he was losing his boyish color; that he was harassed and worn. "Don't you ever go fishing, Paul? Or cruising, or anywhere?"

He shook his head, smiling a little. "Hardly, this year. It's impossible to get away."

Little Silas, tugging at his mother's hand, drew her to the door. But Alice lingered. "Can't Phil Kingsley manage these mills yet, for even one day?"

He glanced in warning at Louise. "It takes us both," he answered quietly. "This milling business is pretty big; it reaches out; and he tends to the other end. But I'm all right. I like to work; I'm used to it. And I need it, lots of it, to keep me level-headed."

"You are that, but shall I tell you what I think, Paul Forrest? I think it's making you old, fast; or else, you are not well."

"Oh, yes, I am. But, I was up late last night; I was bothered some about a trial balance; that's all. I'm going to take this evening off. I want to try that accompaniment, if you will sing that new serenade for me."

He stood watching them from the entrance, Mason following with the salmon, while they crossed up the dock, then he went back to his desk. She had reached over the railing, in passing, to lay on his ledger a branch of rhododendron. He picked it up, smiling a little, and looked at it. No one else was in the store at the moment, and he touched the petals gently; his hand moved over the stiff, spiky leaves. "So," he told himself, "So, she has left me a bit of the woods. And she is like this plant; straight and self-reliant and independent like the stem; and with this same nice color of the blossom in her cheek." He laid the cool pink cluster against his own face; he pressed it with his lips. Then, suddenly, his whole frame began to tremble; his shoulders heaved. "I love her; I love—her," and he crushed the flower between his palms and threw it down. "My God, how can I help loving her?"

Two hours later, when Forrest had finished his rounds of the mills, he found her with Mrs. Kingsley at the burning slabpile. Mason, with his wooden peg planted firmly in the sawdust as a brace, steadied the baby on an inverted keg, and whirled chips into the fire for his amusement. The strong light brought out the indigo anchor tattooed on the sailor's big, rough hand. The young mother watched his maneuvers. She leaned with her elbow on a projecting shelf of lumber, and her head and throat were wrapped, Madonna-wise, in a black lace scarf. Alice was seated near her on a great fir block. The flames illumined her uncovered ruddy hair. She was interested in the efforts of a workman who, a little apart, but availing himself of the firelight, was mending a pair of jeans. Another patched a shoe, and farther still, a trio drew up an empty box, and converting it into a table, started a spirited game of poker. She commenced to hum a bit of the gypsy chorus from the Bohemian Girl; and as Forrest approached she looked up smiling, and took up the words. He seated himself by her. Louise's contralto caught the measure, and presently the harmony was rounded by his fine baritone. They sang on through all the familiar parts; the arias, duets, choruses; and once more the romance and mystery of the place and night gave setting to this man and spoke for him. The girl looked up absently to the trees on the bluff. High up a fallen hemlock, caught on a stony spur, reared its gnarled roots from the gloom. Had they not rested today on the brink of the canyon? Had they not threaded the windfall? And this sound of running water, was it not the near thunder of the Des Chutes?

At last the child grew tired and his mother took him away to bed. Forrest went down to the store for his violin, and Alice walked that way with him. "I want to speak to you about Louise," she said. "She tells me nothing, she is so proud, but something troubles her. You have noticed it?"

"Yes," he answered, "yes, I have noticed it; but I know she is a very sensitive woman. She would face any hardship from a sense of duty; it amounts to martyrdom. She exacts, also, considerable from others."

"Oh, I understand all that. Of course she came here to the mills because she thought she owed it to Philip. But he is seldom here. Is it really the business keeps him away?"

"Yes, it's business, sometimes, and—sometimes—well, if you must know, it's a gay crowd and a pleasant evening over in town."

"I was confident of it." She paused, ruffling her brows, then she added earnestly, "But you don't know what a security it is to me, Paul, to feel that you are here, and will take care of her."

He shook his head. "I will do what I can always, of course, but it's less than you think."

"It's more than you think. It's meeting the small emergencies of every day; sometimes through Mason or Sing; sometimes personally, in your quiet way. And it's tiding her through the slow evenings when you can; she loves your violin, and the practice will be a help to you both."

"All right," he answered, smiling, "I promise that much."

They had reached the store and she waited on the edge of the dock while he went in for his instrument. When he came back they lingered, listening to the swash and gurgle of the tide among the piers. "You always liked this," he said presently; "you must often miss the sea."

"Yes," she answered, "you don't know how I've missed it. Sometimes, I've wanted it beyond anything." She looked at him. In the semi-darkness of the not yet risen moon, his face seemed to gather paleness. It touched her as its strength never had. The maternal down in the depths of her stirred. "And of course," she added gently, "you know, Paul, I couldn't think of the Sound, or indeed of any of the old life here, and leave out you."

It was not the words alone, nor the kind, sweet tone, nor yet her dear physical nearness, but rather that the silence which followed was eloquent with unspoken thought. It was as though he heard her spirit cry suddenly, "I can never leave out you."

"You do know it," he said. "You do know it." And then it broke from him. "What made you promise to marry Judge Kingsley? What made you, when you knew how much I thought of you?"

She did not answer, but she turned and walked up the dock towards the house. After a moment he overtook her. "Don't hurry so," he said. "Are you afraid of me? I won't hurt you."

"Hurt me? You? Oh, I wish you would." But she continued to hurry and he suited his steps to hers. They reached the gate. "Wait, just a moment," he said. "You are going away tomorrow. I know I shouldn't have said—what I did; it was worse than unfair to the Judge; but I want to know this—why did you put off that marriage? Why didn't you go to Washington with him, as he hoped? As I hoped, for there, at least you would have been—safe!"

"Please don't worry about me, Paul," she answered, and looked past him, steadily, holding her chin high, "I can take care of myself. You ought to know that. I'm very strong-minded; it grows on me. I like to do things; be the head. And I love the settlement; I want to finish my work. Sometimes—sometimes, when I think of it, I'm afraid of Washington. I shall find it too crowded; I'm so used to lots of room." She paused, but silence was harder than speech and she went on quickly, "Not one man in a thousand would understand me, but Uncle Silas—dear Silas—" she dashed her hand across her eyes and turning, ran up the steps to the door—"knows how to manage me. He—" she groped for the knob—"He is ready to—wait."

CHAPTER XV

THE MAN IN THE TIDE-RIP

On Orcas, one of the larger islands of the Archipelago de Haro, there is an eminence of several thousand feet. The eastern side rises in abrupt benches from the sea, but westward it breaks less precipitously to a narrow, bluff-locked harbor. Stratton objected to this anchorage; it was a place of strong currents and shallows. But Kingsley laughed. He knew Orcas like a book. He had been up to that summit and the view was worth stopping over a day for. There was a ranch on the shore of a lake high up in the timber where the night could be passed comfortably, and a couple of horses, the only ones on the island, could be secured there for the trail. The party could divide, Alice going up with Stratton that afternoon,—it was a matter of a few hours,—while he and Louise would ride up early the following morning.

In the end Philip had his way, and Stratton, who had exerted himself, hitherto, to make the cruise one of unalloyed pleasure, lapsed into moody silence. He found himself, late in the afternoon, riding with Alice, up a sharp pitch of the mountain. Below them dipped a cross-cut of trail, and overhead another section of the switchback hung like a tilting shelf under a knobby shoulder that concealed the true dome. They gained the spur and halted, breathing the horses on a breadth of level. The girl turned a little in her saddle to look down. There was the inlet where the Phantom, like a toy ship, rode at anchor; and there was the lake, a big, opal-filled bowl, with the farmhouse, where they had left Philip with Louise and the child, balanced like a tiny box on its rim. Northward islands on islands rose purple or amethyst out of the sea; southward and westward the Olympic Mountains stretched a gleaming barricade, and the Straits of Juan de Fuca divided like the fingers of a great reaching hand.

"I love it; oh, you don't know how I love it." Her glance returned to Stratton and she started; the glow in her face died. "But you—I see it doesn't compensate you for the rough trail and this excuse of a mount. When you ride you want Sir Donald."

"No, it is not that." He smiled briefly, with effort, and pulled his shoulders straight. "I happened to remember a man—I once knew. He was wrecked off this island; there on the north shore. It was another such day as this, clear and shining, but his sloop was caught in a tide-rip. You can see it down there; that creeping, white-lipped streak. The rocks under it grip like teeth." He paused and the hand directing her attention fell. He lifted his hat and wiped a sudden moisture from his face. "It all happened in a moment," he added, "and the boat was broken into kindling."

"But he, your friend,"—she leaned towards him all suspense, sympathy, charm,—"he was saved?"

"Yes, he was saved. But it is a long story. Wait until we reach the summit; I can tell you better up there."

He turned his horse, falling behind her as they resumed the climb. Presently they entered a cool belt of timber. The air was freighted with the balsam of fir and pine, and she looked about her, drawing full breaths; a soft delight rose in her eyes. "Isn't it the best perfume on earth?" she asked. "At Nisqually it just lacks the tang of the sea. And there are the Alaska cedars they spoke of at the farm. The stream should run through them."

The horses quickened their pace and stopped where the rill widened into a pool. They dropped eager muzzles and began to take long, still draughts. She freed her foot from the stirrup and slipped lightly down. "We must fill the flask," she said, "where the spring bubbles through the rock."

Stratton tied the horses and followed her up the bank. She reached the place and stooped to fill her saddle-cup. "Oh," she said, pausing between draughts. "It's the kind of water to dream of hot summer nights; the kind you think of on dusty roads and want desperately."

She waited while he drank, watching him expectantly. "Yes," he admitted, "it is a spring to remember in a desert."

He stooped to fill the flask, but he did it clumsily, without his usual care, and drenched his sleeve. The pleasure in her face faded; she continued to watch him, but with ruffled brows. "Oh," she said at last, "I wouldn't have believed you could be so unrelenting; but you are determined to remind me, every step of the way, that you didn't want to stop at Orcas Island. You're the most unsatisfactory man, on a trip, I ever knew. Still, you were different last year, on the Paradise trail."

"Was I? Well, you see, I keep thinking of that man—in the tide-rip; he stopped here at this stream, to rest."

"The man who was wrecked? Did he come up here?"

"Yes, he thought that he was on the mainland. He tried to reach the settlement this way. But there isn't time to tell the story here."

He turned and led the way quickly back to the horses, and they mounted and rode on through the wood. At the foot of the final pitch they left the horses and pushed up over shelving rock to the bald summit. The sun was low in the west and the light touched the houses of a little seaport, eastward on the mainland; and above the craggy heights that overtopped the town a snow mountain caught the glory. Far southward the crown of Rainier seemed to rise like an opal island straight out of the shining sea.

Suddenly Stratton laid his hand on her arm. "Wait," he said, "this is the end. The summit breaks there, a sheer drop of a thousand feet, with a lake below.

"You know," she said. "You've been here before?"

"It is plain enough. Look down."

She looked; but she was obliged to creep another step and drop to her knees before she saw the lake, far, far below, tucked like a great sapphire in a high pocket of the mountain. "Oh," she said, "it seems fathoms deep; and there isn't a lasting snowfield on this mountain. What feeds it?"

He helped her back from the precipice and to her feet. "It is probably one of the Cascades' reservoirs," he answered; "supplied by some subterranean stream under the bed of the Straits."

She walked back a few rods and seated herself on a bench of rock. Her glance moved from the great white dome, on along the craggy peaks of the Cascades, northward. "Of course," she said presently, "that dim line of shore off there is the Vancouver coast. Think, Mr. Stratton, how near we came to losing all these lovely islands. While Congress was calling them 'a number of barren rocks, not worth the hour of discussion,' Sir Douglas was grazing great flocks of sheep on the fertile slopes of San Juan,—that must be it, that long, even shore between us and the end of Vancouver,—and investing its best harbor with British soldiers. Doesn't it rouse your blood, even now? Can't you almost hear that old pioneer slogan, 'Fifty-four, forty or fight?'"

Stratton laughed. "I am afraid not. You see I have lived in Victoria, and I have heard a good deal more about that old explorer Vancouver. You know he claimed all of this territory in the king's name. He called it New Georgia by right of discovery. And I have known some pretty fine people across the border, Miss Hunter. In fact they have treated me better than some I have known on this side. But there is hope; with you to teach me I may turn out a fairly good American patriot—yet."

She shook her head, looking him over gravely, and he laughed again, and seated himself near her on the ledge. "Now, I am ready for that story," she said.

He looked off to that far line of the British coast. "I am almost sorry I promised to tell it," he answered; "still, you may hear it sometime, through others, and understand it less. I, well, I think a good deal of him; I want you to see it from his side. He was just a boy, Miss Hunter; a dare-devil sort of boy, fond of adventure and proud of his little boat. He never had been taught to regard the Government patriotically, as you do, and the men who tempted him were upright, irreproachable men,"—his lip curled,—"the ones of whom the Captain told you. One of them had been a close friend of this boy's father, and held a Government position of trust; the other, in whose office the boy was reading law, was a prominent attorney known all over the Northwest. They both knew how to appeal. His mother lived in Victoria at the time; he had made several trips across to see her in his new sloop; and they told him, laughing, he could go unsuspected anywhere, he looked so honest."

Stratton paused and his listener turned her face to him, waiting. "I understand," she said at last, and set her lips, "it was a case of smuggling. There was—a ring. And of course it was opium. Uncle Silas says it usually is opium; the duty is so great, and there is such an immense profit on a smuggled lot."

"Yes, it was opium." He turned his face a little more from her, watching still that far amethyst coast. "And there was a ring. He was to have a third interest in the profit to start a business he liked better than the law. But the revenue officers saw the chest carried to his sloop. They followed. There was a splendid breeze at first, and he led them a chase, dodging between these islands, cross-cutting from channel to channel. But the wind fell at sunset, or rather shifted, and he found himself in unfamiliar water. Still he slipped the cutter off this island and made a landing. He concealed the stuff, intending to return for it when the pursuit was over. But he was slow in finding a safe hiding-place and the tide changed; and when the sloop swung out on her first tack she was caught in that tide-rip."

Stratton paused. He passed his hand across his eyes, but Alice was silent. She looked off at the white mountain, and waited, holding her chin high and creasing her brows. Clearly the man in the tide-rip had lost her sympathy. Her attitude said, "It was what he deserved."

"He was thrown ashore," Stratton continued, "with wreckage, and he spent the night miserably, crawling under cover with his cache. At daybreak he found this trail; he believed he was on the mainland and that this was the way to that town over there, where he had arranged to meet his accomplices. He decided to carry the chest with him to the edge of the settlement. But the sun beat down mercilessly on that switchback, and he had eaten nothing since the wreck of his sloop. The chest gathered weight with every step. He travelled slower and slower, at one moment determined to abandon it, and the next reminding himself that it must pay for the loss of his boat. At last, from that high shoulder where we stopped to-day, he saw the revenue cutter creeping up the cove. That spurred him on to the stream. There, tired out, indifferent, he threw himself down to ease his aching muscles and take breath. He fell asleep. When he wakened it was late; the sun was almost gone. He rose and took the chest and hurried on to this final pitch. But looking back, he saw the Customs men below, finishing the wood. He found nowhere to hide the stuff; he dared not leave it, and, with increasing panic, he reached this summit, and ran on down, to find himself cut off by that cliff."

Stratton's even voice caught and broke. His forehead was wet with big, clinging drops, as though he himself had just made that great physical effort. His glance moved from the precipice, and, meeting the girl's clear, direct look, a sudden quiver swept his face. "And?" she said.

"He saw no way around," Stratton resumed quietly, "and in his extremity, he sent the chest over the brink. Then he came back to this bench and waited for the officers. They recognized him; one, the captain of the cutter, had known his father well, for years. 'There was a man above us on the trail,' he said; 'we hardly could have passed him, but he may have passed you. He carried a small chest or box.'

"And the boy looked him straight in the face and smiled. 'I guess you've missed your trail, captain,' he answered. 'You see this path ends here; be careful, it's a frightful drop. It looks like an old Indian trail; there at your feet are the ashes of signal fires. But the road you want branches below the switchback. Your man probably doubled back through the timber and struck across to the south shore.' And then he added frankly enough, 'I, myself, came up here for a sight of my sloop. She was stolen, and an Indian I met on the mainland had seen such a boat near this island. He put me over in his canoe.'"

"Oh," said Alice, "you call him a boy, yet he could stand and say all that like any hardened criminal."

"No," Stratton flushed hotly, and for an instant the steel flashed in his eyes, "even you should not call him that. He had been told, and shown, that some of the best men on the border took advantage of the Government; that the United States was able to stand it. You should remember, too, it was his first—offence."

She gave him a straight, uncompromising look. "Was the chest found?" she asked.

"No. There was no trace of it below the cliff; he looked, afterwards, and the lake is very deep, as you thought. There was no proof against him; those inspectors never for a moment doubted him. The man, whom they had seen boarding the sloop with the chest at Victoria, was a desperate character, under suspicion before; they believed he had stolen the boat, and that he had come upon the Indian waiting for his passenger, and had bribed him to take him off the island instead. And the boy went with them down the switchback, and identified the wreckage on the north shore. And they took him aboard the cutter and landed him at home, in Seattle, the next day."

"I understand," she said slowly, "it all rested with him. It would have been a triumph, his salvation, if he had confessed."

"I knew it." Stratton's face hardened. "I knew it. You sit here like young Justice, inexorable; you who never were tempted; never made a mistake; and nothing but the fundamental right will do. But think how that confession would have hampered him. A story like that clings. His whole future hinged on that day. And he had the confidence of those prominent men; the truth must have involved them. After all," he added, "the opium was lost. He gained nothing, and he had his punishment in the wreck of his sloop."

"Yes," she admitted, "he was punished in a way, but—"

"Listen," he pleaded. "He was reared very differently from you. His father was a man of honor, true, but he had business interests that kept him long intervals from home. And his mother, I think, hardly gave him much thought when he was a child. She was a very beautiful woman with luxurious tastes. There was most always a gay company around her, and it could never have greatly concerned her how her husband's money was made, so that she had it to spend. I will not say much about her,—she is gone, now, out of his life,—but the boy was taught early not to trouble her, and to look out for himself. I believe the only lessons she ever gave him were in quick, flippant retort, and to cover his hurts. He learned early, too, that the surest way to please her was to amuse her friends. Once, when he came into a room, unexpectedly, and conversation dropped, she looked at him, smiling, and said, 'Boy, what is disgrace?' And he answered directly, 'Disgrace, mother, is being caught.'"

"And she?" said Alice, after a moment.

"She? Why, she laughed, I think, with the others, and tapped him on the shoulder with her fan; or perhaps that time she clapped her adorable hands." He rose to his feet and stood looking off to that dim British coast. A great weariness settled over his face. "You see, in the end, it amounted to this; he thought, when he thought at all, that wrong rested only in detection. One must make and leave a good impression, but right motive, sincerity, in his world did not count. Then things changed. He saw life differently, through the eyes of the woman he loves."

Stratton's voice vibrated a little on the word. He turned and looked down at her, and that quiver again swept his face. But she did not see it. Her glance rested thoughtfully on the white peak, eastward, across the channel. That reference to the boy's mother, his training, home, struck the maternal chord, so strong in her, and she saw suddenly, clearly, the other side. The mountain began to flush with a sunset glow; a gentleness, almost tenderness, rose in her face.

"She is not like the women he has always known," Stratton went on. "She walks a higher level. Sometimes, she is so much a saint, he is afraid of her. He dreads her judgment, and yet he dreads more to have a suspicion of the truth reach her, some day, through others. Lately there are rumors afloat touching those men, who made a tool of him, and any time, a chance word from one of them may involve him. What do you think, Miss Hunter? You see she is like you in some ways; she takes your Puritan view of life and has your habit of sifting things. In her place would you think better of him if he told you? Could you, yourself, forgive him if—you loved him?"

She did not answer directly; she was weighing the question. At last her look came back from the mountain; she rose to her feet. "Yes," she said slowly, "Yes, I think that I could forgive him; it was a first offence. Of course it must have been the only time. I should forgive him for the same reason, or much the same reason, I did Mose. But, I could never love such a man, Mr. Stratton. Even if I never knew the truth, I should feel the stain. And I am the kind of woman who builds love on respect. The man I am going to care for, in the way you mean, has lived a clean life. He stands a man among men, sound to the core."

With this she turned and began to go down to her horse. Stratton waited a silent moment, watching her move lightly over the steep and jagged path. "The man she is going to care for," he repeated softly; "she means, of course, the Judge. But she will never make that marriage, never." He started to follow her, then he stopped and looked off once more, to that far Vancouver coast. "Strange, after these years, the sight of this place should make me go all to pieces. And strange how I bungled into that story. I had to tell her. That insistent something in her had me promising, down there at the switchback. Still, I could have told another woman easily enough, and won her to my side. Why am I always losing my hold when I talk to her? But I shouldn't have come ashore; I should have stayed aboard the yacht. God, how I hate this island."

He hurried on then, for she was already waiting in the saddle. She watched him with a grave kindness as he drew near. "You are still thinking of your friend," she said, "but please don't rely on my opinion. There are sweet and gentle women in the world who live just to forgive. Perhaps she, the one you mentioned, is one of them." She turned her horse into the trail, but glanced back over her shoulder to add, smiling a little, "You've been a good champion; tell him, when the time comes, to let you say a word for him."

"Trust me for that," he answered, and started his own horse; "if—the time comes I will speak for him."

CHAPTER XVI

THE FIERY LANE

Once, during Alice's brief stay at the mills, she had overheard Forrest censure a workman for finishing his pipe inside the restricted limits. This gave her an opportunity, that evening, to lead adroitly to the subject of forest fire. It was a perpetual menace in the settlement, she said; it sprang sometimes from almost nothing; a match dropped in a dry place, or a burning fragment shaken from a pipe; embers left alive by a passing camper; and oftener yet, it began with the ignition of slashed underbrush, when, to clear a bit of open for his cabin or pasture, a settler devastated whole areas of fine trees that could not be reproduced in a century. She wondered if Forrest, who so well understood the dangers as well as the values of timber, had ever devised a scheme, some practical, inexpensive method within the reach of ranchers, for its protection. And he had answered that of course the settlers should make it a local law never to start a "burn" in the dry season. But any man who knew the Washington woods, had learned that one of the surest ways to handle a first blaze was to smother it with shovelled earth. Even in midsummer the ground under the forest litter was damp; it was made porous by a network of roots and held moisture like a sponge; the trees drew from innumerable small reservoirs. But if he himself owned a section he would take the precaution to cut a broad swathe around the unprotected sides; and, if it was near a considerable water power, for instance those upper falls of the Des Chutes, he would keep in readiness a length of canvas hose, the big kind used for carrying a stream some distance in hydraulic mining, and be able to tap the river at a moment's warning.

She was particularly interested in this scheme, and gathered small details as to the size and make of the hose, and how he would connect it with the stream. He drew a rough plan on a card, showing a point where the river could be tapped with little trouble, by taking advantage of a certain jutting rock, to brace the necessary bit of flume and sluice-gate. "But," he had added, throwing aside the sketch to take his violin, "the chances are some other man will file on that section; he may even hit upon this little mechanism and have it all constructed before I see the headwaters again."

Afterwards Alice found that card, on Louise's table where he had left it, and saved it for future reference. The hose could not be secured in the Puget Sound towns; she could not obtain it in Portland; but finally it was purchased through a house carrying mining supplies in San Francisco.

Mill Thornton, who managed its final transportation, over twenty miles of trail from Yelm Station, was greatly interested in the innovation. She showed him Forrest's drawing, explaining it, and read to him a circular, which was enclosed with the hose and described its use. Then they went down to the falls and located the stone ledge. And in the end she contracted with the young rancher to do the mechanical work, in exchange for enough of the water power to supply a small flume to his claim. This was really another stroke of policy to insure her own trees, and Eben, who came out to "hev er look at ther water works," laughed. "Fur long-headedness," he told Thornton, "yes, an' grit, I 'low I'll stake my next pile on ther schoolmarm; yes, sir, ther schoolmarm, an' ergainst any durn man in this here hull deestrict."

It was Alice's intention to keep the canvas stretched in position during the dry season. Later, if the cleared land should cease to husband moisture, she might utilize it for irrigation. It had been laid for trial across the new meadow, which, cutting a wide swathe through the jungle, reached from the small open that surrounded the cottage to the river; but Myers having brought two Jerseys, which he had pastured several weeks, and turned them into the field, it was necessary, until a track outside could be leveled, to store the hose in the stable.

The meadow fence was built of heavy cedar rails, fixed horizontally and without nails. They needed no fastening but the uprights that held the crossed ends of each section. Parallel with it and forming a lane, ran a pile of dry brush, accumulated in clearing and ready to burn after the first rainfall. Backward from it and the untouched jungle that bordered the stream, sheltering that nest of a cottage pushing up and up the grassy slope, rose the ranks of the trees, free of undergrowth as a park, and including what Forrest had called "the heart of the red firs."

Time was precious on school mornings, and the teacher, early astir, was leading the black to water. She saw the sun touch the tops of the higher trees as she crossed the open from the stable. She noticed that the light wind drew from the river and was fragrant with balsams, and that it brought, already, a promise of heat. Then suddenly she stopped and inhaled a deeper breath, that was a different pungence. It was, unmistakably the burning resin of boughs. In the moment she waited, trying to locate the fire, Mother Girard with her empty pail, hurried from the meadow. She came to say that one of the Jerseys had been milked, and that the trail of the trespasser was still fresh on the dew. It left the lower end of the field, and, skirting the brush pile, turned up-stream. And it was there, at the farther end of the slashing, that, while she listened, the teacher saw a thin line of smoke.

Mose, working on that track for the hose near the upper end of the meadow fence, dropped his spade and ran. He tried to beat out the breaking flames, but others were eating under and through the dry criss-cross of branches; every instant they seized on a new layer, snapped, crackled, sent out another jet of smoke. It was not a case for shovelled earth. The pile was too high, too porous; it exposed a dozen open draughts on all sides, and the breeze, sucking in, found as many flues. Clearly the brush pile must burn, and only a miracle could save that portion of the fence bordering the narrow lane. He hurried to the corner to disconnect the rails. At the same time a standing tree, the first in a clump of young firs at the end of the slashing, ignited. The resinous needles sizzed, popped like a string of firecrackers. With the wind pulling as it did from the river, this meant the fire would sweep directly into the big timber, and in that event the cabin also was doomed. He left the fence, running to bring an ax to cut away some hazels adjoining the dangerous clump. Then, as he went, he suddenly remembered the canvas hose. In a moment he was at the stable and met the teacher and Mother Girard dragging the roll through the door.

The three together got it to the meadow and over the lowered bars. But while they ran, unrolling the canvas towards the river, two other trees in that clump began to send out those ominous little reports. The field was long, it seemed to increase in length, but before they reached the end of it Thornton came. He was able alone to finish stretching the hose and connect it with the flume, and sent Mose back to the nozzle end. The old mother hurried to drive the Jerseys to a safer distance, and Alice started to return to the maple near the stable where she had tied the horse. But, as she followed the fence, she noticed that some of the dead branches which littered the lane outside were burning. Every moment flames crept from another undermined section of the brush pile, but every moment counted. Any instant the big canvas would begin to fill; it was yet possible to save the fence. She climbed up and swung herself over into the lane. She ran along, pulling away the more dangerous limbs. And it grew hotter with each step. She covered her cheek with her hand; that too seemed to blister. She stumbled around, baffled, and looked towards the river. The whole clump of young firs was a blazing mass, and the hazels adjoining shrivelled and crackled. She started to go back into the field. Then she saw that smoke was rising in little puffs all among the rails. A curling red wave rippled along the top one, reaching for her hand; tiny blue tongues, orange ones, lapped and licked the scorching cedar everywhere. Then, while she wavered, trying to choose the less dangerous bars, she was enveloped in a great outpour of smoke. She staggered a few steps stifled, blinded; her feet tripped over a tangled mesh of twigs and she went down.

Beyond the fence the canvas began to distend. It rounded full; like a waking leviathan it stretched, squirmed. Thornton, running with the flow to help Mose at the nozzle, passed without seeing her. Then Stratton came. He had hurried from his lodge at the first hint of smoke; he had learned, in a word from Mose, where to look for her, and he discovered her. He put his shoulder to an upright and wrenched it away. He grasped the rails,—his hands blistered,—and flung them down. He bent to lift her, shielding her with his body, but at the same time a burning sapling, looped in the slashing, sprang, released like an unstrung bow, and struck the back of his head. He pitched, groaning, face downward. The smoke thinned but the brush pile became a roaring furnace. He got to his knees, groped for her, and half dragged, half carried her out of that fiery lane.

Her dress was burning; he smothered the flames, turning her on the meadow grass; he strangled more persistent vipers with his arms. But the pain from the blow was very great. He saw things all red, all black; they mixed in a blur. He stretched himself on the earth a breathing space and closed his eyes. "Great God," he muttered, "Great God, she must not have inhaled fire." And the words begun in imprecation ended like a prayer.