The Rim of the Desert

by Ada Woodruff Anderson

  She shook her head. “Not nearer than Puget Sound. But I have a marvelous view from my hotel windows in Seattle, and often in long summer twilights from the deck of Mr. Morganstein's yacht, I've watched the changing Alpine glow on the mountain. I always draw my south curtains first, at Vivian Court, to see whether the dome is clear or promises a wet day. I've learned a mountain, surely as a person, has individuality; every cloud effect is to me a different mood, and sometimes, when I've been most unhappy or hard-pressed, the sight of Rainier rising so serene, so pure, so high above the fretting clouds, has given me new courage. Can you understand that, Mr. Tisdale? How a mountain can become an influence, an inspiration, in a life?”

  “I think so, yes.” Tisdale paused, then added quietly: “But I would like to be the first to show you old Rainier at close range.”

  At this she moved a little; he felt the invisible barrier stiffen between them. “Mr. Morganstein promised to motor us through to the National Park Inn when the new Government road was finished, but we've been waiting for the heavy summer travel to be over. It has been like the road to Mecca since the foot of the mountain has been accessible.”

  There was a silence, during which Tisdale watched the pulling team. Her manner of reminding him of his position was unmistakable, but it was her frequent reference to young Morganstein that began to nettle him. Why should she wish specially to motor to Rainier with that black-browed, querulous nabob? Why had she so often sailed on his yacht? And why should she ever have been unhappy and hard-pressed, as she had confessed? She who was so clearly created for happiness. But to Tisdale her camaraderie with Nature was charming. It was so very rare. A few of the women he had known hitherto had been capable of it, but they had lived rugged lives; the wilderness gave them little else. And of all the men whom he had made his friends through an eventful career, there was only Foster who sometimes felt the magnitude of high places,—and there had been David Weatherbee. At this thought of Weatherbee his brows clouded, and that last letter, the one that had reached him at Nome and which he still carried in his breast pocket, seemed suddenly to gather a vital quality. It was as though it cried out: “I can't stand these everlasting ice peaks, Hollis; they crowd me so.”

  Miss Armitage sat obliviously looking off once more across the valley. The thunder-heads, denser now and driving in legions along the opposite heights, stormed over the snow peak and assailed the far, shining dome.

  “Oh,” she exclaimed, “see Rainier now! That blackest cloud is lifting over the summit. Rain is streaming from it like a veil of gauze; but the dome still shines through like a transfigured face!”

  Tisdale's glance rested a moment on the wonder. His face cleared. “If we were on the other side of the Cascades,” he said, “that weather-cap would mean a storm before many hours; but here, in this country of little rain, I presume it is only a threat.”

  The bays began to round a curve and presently Rainier, the lesser heights, all the valley of Kittitas, closed from sight. They had reached the timber belt; poplars threaded the parks of pine, and young growths of fir, like the stiff groves of a toy village, gathered hold on the sharp mountain slopes. Sometimes the voice of a creek, hurrying down the canyon to join the Yakima, broke the stillness, or a desert wind found its way in and went wailing up the water-course. And sometimes in a rocky place, the hoof-beats of the horses, the noise of the wheels, struck an echo from spur to spur. Then Tisdale commenced to whistle cautiously, in fragments at first, with his glance on the playing ears of the colts, until satisfied they rather liked it, he settled into a definite tune, but with the flutelike intonations of one who loves and is accustomed to make his own melody.

  He knew that this woman beside him, since they had left the civilization of the valley behind, half repented her adventure. He felt the barrier strengthen to a wall, over which, uncertain, a little afraid, she watched him. At last, having finished the tune, he turned and surprised the covert look from under her curling black lashes.

  “I hope,” he said, and the amusement broke softly in his face, “all this appraisal is showing a little to my credit.”

  The color flamed pinkly in her face. She looked away. “I was wondering if you blamed me. I've been so unconservative—so—so—even daring. Is it not true?”

  “No, Miss Armitage, I understand how you had to decide, in a moment, to take that eastbound train in Snoqualmie Pass, and that you believed it would be possible to motor or stage across to Wenatchee from the Milwaukee road.”

  “Yes, but,” she persisted, “you think, having learned my mistake, I should have stayed on the freight train as far as Ellensburg, where I could have waited for the next passenger back to Seattle.”

  “If you had, you would have disappointed me. That would have completely spoiled my estimate of you.”

  “Your estimate of me?” she questioned.

  “Yes.” He paused and his glance moved slowly, a little absently, up the unfolding gorge. “It's a fancy of mine to compare a woman, on sight, with some kind of flower. It may be a lily or a rose or perhaps it's a flaunting tulip. Once, up in the heart of the Alaska forest, it was just a sweet wood anemone.” He paused again, looking off through the trees, and a hint of tenderness touched his mouth. “For instance,” he went on, and his voice quickened, “there is your friend, Mrs. Feversham. I never have met her, but I've seen her a good many times, and she always reminds me of one of those rich, dark roses florists call Black Prince. And there's her sister, who makes me think of a fine, creamy hyacinth; the sturdy sort, able to stand on its own stem without a prop. And they are exotics, both of them; their personality, wherever they are, has the effect of a strong perfume.”

  He paused again, so long that this time his listener ventured to prompt him. “And I?” she asked.

  “You?” He turned, and the color flushed through his tan. “Why, you are like nothing in the world but a certain Alaska violet I once stumbled on. It was out of season, on a bleak mountainside, where, at the close of a miserable day, I was forced to make camp. A little thing stimulates a man sometimes, and the sight of that flower blooming there when violet time was gone, lifting its head next to a snow-field, nodding so pluckily, holding its own against the bitter wind, buoyed me through a desperate hour.”

  She turned her face to look down through the treetops at the complaining stream. Presently she said: “That is better than an estimate; it is a tribute. I wish I might hope to live up to it, but sooner or later,” and the vibration played softly in her voice, “I am going to disappoint you.”

  Tisdale laughed, shaking his head. “My first impressions are the ones that count,” he said simply. “But do you want to turn back now?”

  “N—o, unless you—do.”

  Tisdale laughed again mellowly. “Then it's all right. We are going to see this trip through. But I wish I could show you that Alaska mountainside in midsummer. Imagine violets on violets, thousands of them, springing everywhere in the vivid new grass. You can't avoid crushing some, no matter how carefully you pick your steps. There's a rocky seat half-way up on a level spur, where you might rest, and I would fill your lap with those violets, big, long-stemmed ones, till the blue lights danced in your eyes.”

  They were doing that now, and her laugh fluted softly through the wood. For that moment the barrier between them lost substance; it became the sheerest tissue, a curtain of gauze. Then the aloofness for which he waited settled on her. She looked away, her glance again seeking the stream. “I can't imagine anything more delightful,” she said.

  A rough and steep breadth of road opened before them, and for a while the bays held his attention, then in a better stretch, he felt her swift side-glance again reading his face. “Do you know,” she said, “you are not at all the kind of man I was led to expect.”

  “No?” He turned interestedly, with the amusement shading the corners of his mouth. “What did you hear?”

  “Why, I heard that you were the hardest man in the world to know; the most elusive, shyest.”


  Tisdale's laugh rang, a low note from the depths of his mellow heart. “And you believed that?”

  She nodded, and he caught the blue sparkles under her drooping lids. “You know how Mrs. Feversham has tried her best to know you; how she sent you invitations repeatedly to dinner or for an evening at Juneau, Valdez, Fairbanks, and you invariably made some excuse.”

  “Oh, but that's easily explained. Summers, when she timed her visits to Alaska, I was busy getting my party into the field. The working season up there is short.”

  “But winters, at Seattle and in Washington even, it has been the same.”

  “Winters, why, winters, I have my geological reports to get in shape for the printer; interminable proofs to go over; and there are so many necessary people to meet in connection with my work. Then, too, if the season has been spent in opening country of special interest, I like to prepare a paper for the geographical society; that keeps me in touch with old friends.”

  “Old friends,” she repeated after a moment. “Do you know it was one of them, or rather one of your closest friends, who encouraged my delusion in regard to you?”

  “No, how was it?”

  “Why, he said you were the hardest man in the world to turn, a man of iron when once you made up your mind, but that Mrs. Feversham was right; you were shy. He had known you to go miles around, on occasion, to avoid a town, just to escape meeting a woman. And he told us—of course I can repeat it since it is so ridiculously untrue—that it was easier to bridle a trapped moose than to lead you to a ballroom; but that once there, no doubt you would gentle fine.”

  She leaned back in her seat, laughing softly, though it was obviously a joke at her own expense as well as Tisdale's. “And I believed it,” she added. “I believed it—every word.”

  Tisdale laughed too, a deep undernote. “That sounds like Billy Foster. I wager it was Foster. Was it?” he asked.

  She nodded affirmatively.

  “Then Foster has met you.” Tisdale's voice rang a little. “He knows you, after all.”

  “Yes, he could hardly help knowing me. His business interests are with my closest friends, the Morgansteins; they think a great deal of him. And he happens to play a remarkably good hand at bridge; we always depend on him to make up a table when he is in town.”

  Tisdale's eyes rested a thoughtful moment on the road ahead. Strange Foster never had mentioned her. But that showed how blind, how completely infatuated with the Spanish woman the boy was. His face set austerely. Then suddenly he started; his grasp tightened on the reins so that the colts sprang to the sharp grade. “Do you happen to know that enchantress, too?” he asked.

  “Whom?” questioned Miss Armitage.

  “I mean Mrs. Weatherbee. I believe she counts the Morgansteins among her friends, and you said you were staying at Vivian Court, where her apartments are.”

  “Oh, yes, I know—her. I”—the color flamed and went in her face; her glance fell once more to the steep slope, searching out the narrowing stream through the trees. “I—'ve known Beatriz Weatherbee all my life. I—I think a great deal of her.”

  “Madam, madam!” Tisdale protested, “don't tell me that. You have known her, lived near her, perhaps, in California, those years when you were growing up; shared the intimacies young girls enjoy. I understand all that, but don't say you care anything for her now.”

  Miss Armitage lifted her face. Her eyes did not sparkle then; they flamed. “Why shouldn't I, Mr. Tisdale? And who are you to disparage Beatriz Weatherbee? You never have known her. What right have you to condemn her?”

  “This right, Miss Armitage; she destroyed David Weatherbee. And I know what a life was lost, what a man was sacrificed.”

  CHAPTER VII. A NIGHT ON THE MOUNTAIN ROAD

  They drove on for a long interval in silence. The colts, sobered by the sharp pull to the divide, kept an even pace now that they had struck the down-grade, and Tisdale's gaze, hard still, uncompromising, remained fixed absently on the winding road. Once, when the woman beside him ventured to look in his face, she drew herself a little more erect and aloof. She must have seen the futility of her effort to defend her friend, and the fire that had flashed in her eyes had as quickly died. It was as though she felt the iron out-cropping in this man and shrank from him baffled, almost afraid. Yet she held her head high, and the delicate lines, etched again at the corners of her mouth, gave it a saving touch of decision or fortitude.

  But suddenly Hollis drew the horses in. Miss Armitage caught a great breath. The way was blocked by a fallen pine tree, which, toppling from the bluff they were skirting, had carried down a strip of the road and started an incipient slide. “We can't drive around,” he said at last, and the humor broke the grim lines of his mouth. “We've got to go through.”

  She looked hastily back along the curve, then ahead down the steep mountainside. “We never could turn in this pla—ace, but it isn't possible to drive through. Fate is against us.”

  “Why, I think Fate favored us. She built this barricade, but she left us an open door. I must unhitch, though, to get these kittens through.”

  As he spoke he put the reins in her hands and, springing out, felt under the seat for the halters. The girl's glance moved swiftly along the tilting pine, searching for that door. The top of the tree, with its debris of branches, rested prone on the slope below the road; but the trunk was supported by a shoulder of the bluff on which it had stood. This left a low and narrow portal under the clean bole between the first thick bough and the wall. “But the buggy!” she exclaimed.

  “That's the trouble.” Tisdale found one halter as he spoke and reached for the other. “It is getting this trap over that will take time. But I pledge myself to see you through these mountains before dark; and when we strike the levels of the Columbia, these colts are going to make their record.”

  “You mean we can't hope to reach Wenatchee before dark?” Her voice shook a little. “And there isn't a house in sight—anywhere. Mr. Tisdale, we haven't even seen another traveler on this road.”

  “Well, this is luck!” He was drawing a coil of new rope from under the seat. “This is luck! Lighter must have meant to picket his horses. Did I tell you he was starting to drive these bays through to the fair at North Yakima? And here is a hatchet—he expected to cut fire-wood—and this looks like his lunch-box. Yes,”—and he lifted the lid to glance in—“here are biscuits, sliced ham, all we need. Lighter must have intended to spend a night on the road. And here is that second hitching-strap. Now, we are all right: the outfit is complete.”

  He took the precaution to tie one of the horses before he commenced to unfasten the traces, and he worked swiftly, dexterously, while the girl watched him, directing him sometimes from her seat in the buggy. Presently he lifted the remaining strap, but before he could snap the hook in the ring, the colt's ears flattened back, and he gripped Tisdale's hand. Instantly Miss Armitage snatched the whip and was on her feet. “Whoa, Nip,” she cried, and cut the vixen lightly between the ears. “Whoa, now, whoa!”

  The young horse released his hold and broke forward, with Hollis dragging at the bit. He ducked with the colt under the barrier and, keeping his feet with difficulty, ran hugging the bluff. Rocks, slipping beneath the bay's incautious hoofs, rattled down the steep slope. Finally mastered by that tugging weight, he settled to an unstable pace and so passed the break in the road.

  Miss Armitage had left the buggy. She followed to the opening and stood watching Tisdale until, unable to find a safe hitching-place, he turned another bend. The remaining horse pulled at his halter and neighed shrilly for his mate. She went to him. After a moment she untied him and led him through the passage. He followed easily, crowding her sometimes, yet choosing his steps with the caution of a superior animal in a hard situation. Midway over the break in the road, where it was narrowest, he halted with a forefoot on a perilous table of granite, feeling, testing its stability. “That's right, be careful,” she admonished, allowing the strap to slacken
while she, herself, balanced her weight on the rocking slab. “But it is safe enough—you see. Now, now, Tuck, come on.”

  But as she started on, Tisdale reappeared at the curve and, waving her hand to reassure him, she took an incautious step. The slab, relieved suddenly of her weight, tilted back and at the same instant caught on its lowered edge the weight of the following horse. He backed off, jerking the halter taut, but she kept her hold, springing again to the surface of the rock. Loose splinters of granite began to clatter down the slope; then, in the moment she paused to gather her equilibrium, she felt Tisdale's arm reaching around to take the strap. “Creep by me,” he said quietly. “No, between me and the bluff, sidewise; there's room.” She gained safe ground and stood waiting while he brought the bay across. A last rain of rock struck an answering echo through the gorge.

  “What made you?” he asked. “You knew I would hurry back. What made you? handicapped, too, by those skirts and abominable heels.”

  “I saw you were hurt—the vixen meant to hurt—and I knew I could manage Tuck. I—I thought you might need me.”

  Her breath was coming hard and quick; her eyes were big and shadowy and, looking into their depths, the light began to play softly in his own. “You thought right,” he said. “I am going to.”

  He turned to lead the horse around to the cleft where he had left his mate. Miss Armitage followed. She regarded his broad back, pursing her lips a little and ruffling her brows. “It is only a bruise,” he said presently over his shoulder, “and it served me right. Lighter warned me of that trick.”

  Nevertheless the handkerchief with which he had wrapped the bruise was showing a red stain, and past the break in the road he changed the halter to his left hand. The hitching-place he had chosen was in a cleft formed by a divided spur of the mountain. It was roofed by the boughs of two pines, and the boles of the trees offered secure hold. She seated herself on a boulder, set benchwise against the rocky wall, and watched him critically while he tied the second horse.