“It looks all right,” he said quietly, helping her down, “but if you find anything wrong, or should happen to want me, I shall be at that other hotel until two o'clock. Good-by!”
He saw the surprise in her face change to swift appreciation. Then “Good-by,” she answered and walked towards the door. But there she stopped. Tisdale, looking back as he gave her suitcase to a boy, saw her lips part, though she did not speak. Then her eyelids drooped, the color played softly in her face, and she turned to go in. There had been no invitation in her attitude, yet he had felt a certain appeal. It flashed over him she did not want to motor up the valley; she wished to drive on with him. Too proud, too fine to say so, she was letting her opportunity go. He hurried across the pavement.
“Miss Armitage,” he said, and instantly she turned; the sparkles leaped in her eyes; she came towards him a few steps and stopped expectantly. “If I start up the valley at two”—and he looked at his watch—“that will be a rest of nearly three hours. It means the heat of the day, but if it seems better than motoring over a country road with a public chauffeur, I would be glad to have you drive for me.”
CHAPTER X. A WOMAN'S HEART-STRINGS
“Now I know the meaning of Wenatchee. It's something racy, Mr. Tisdale, and a little wicked, yet with unexpected depths, and just the coolest, limpid hazel-green.”
Tisdale's pulses quickened; his blood responded to her exhilaration. “Yes, only”—and he waited to catch the glance she lifted from the stream—“your green is blue, and you forgot to count the sparkles in.”
As he spoke, the bays paced off the bridge. They sprang, gathering themselves lightly for a sharp ascent and for an interval held the driver's close attention. The town and the Columbia were behind, and the road, which followed the contour of the slopes rising abruptly from the Wenatchee, began a series of sudden turns; it cut shelf-wise high across the face of a ridge; spurs constantly closed after them; there seemed no way back or through, then, like an opening gate, a bluff detached from the wall ahead, and they entered another breadth of valley. In the wide levels that bordered the river, young orchards began to supplant the sage. Looking down from the thoroughfare, the even rows and squares seemed wrought on the tawny background like the designs of a great carpet. Sometimes, paralleling the road, the new High Line canal followed an upper cut; it trestled a ravine or, stopped by a rocky cliff, bored through. Where a finished spillway irrigated a mountainside, all the steep incline between the runnels showed lines on lines of diminutive trees, pluckily taking root-hold.
A little after that, near an old mission, they dropped to a lower bench and passed an apple orchard in full bearing. Everywhere boughs laden with a gold or crimson harvest were supported by a network of scaffolding. It was marvelous that fruit could so crowd and cling to a slender stem and yet round and color to such perfection. Miss Armitage slowed the horses down and looked up the shady avenues. Presently a driveway divided the tract, leading to a dwelling so small it had the appearance of a toy house; but on the gatepost above the rural delivery box the name of the owner shone ostentatiously. It was “Henderson Bailey, Hesperides Vale.”
“Do you see?” she asked. “This is that station master's orchard, where the Rome Beauty grew.”
But the team was troublesome again. The road made a turn, rounding the orchard, and began the descent to a bridge. On the right a great water-wheel, supplied with huge, scoop-shaped buckets, was lifting water from the river to distribute it over a reclaimed section. The bays pranced toward it suspiciously. “Now, now, Tuck,” she admonished, “be a soldier.” The colt sidled gingerly. “Whoa, Nip, whoa!” and, rearing lightly, they took the approach with a rush.
As they quieted and trotted evenly off the bridge, a large and brilliant signboard set in an area of sage-brush challenged the eye. Miss Armitage fluted a laugh.
“Buy one of these Choice Lots,”
she read, with charming, slightly mocking exaggeration.
“Buy to-day.
“To-morrow will see this Property the Heart of a City.
“Buy before the Prices Soar.
“Talk with Henderson Bailey.
“This surely is Hesperides Vale,” she added.
The amusement went out of Tisdale's face. “Yes, madam, and your journey's end. Probably the next post-box will announce the name of your friends.”
She did not answer directly. She looked beyond the heads of the team to the top of the valley, where two brown slopes parted like drawn curtains and opened a blue vista of canyon closed by a lofty snow-peak. The sun had more than fulfilled its morning promise of heat, but a soft breeze began to pull from that white summit down the watercourse.
“I did not tell you I had friends in Hesperides Vale,” she said at last. Her eyes continued to search the far blue canyon, but her color heightened at his quick glance of surprise, and she went on with a kind of breathlessness.
“I—I have a confession to make. I—But hasn't it occurred to you, Mr. Tisdale, that I might be interested in this land you are on your way to see?”
His glance changed. It settled into his clear, calculating look of appraisal. Under it her color flamed; she, turned her face farther away. “No,” he answered slowly, “No, that had not occurred to me.”
“I should have told you at the beginning, but I thought, at first, you knew. Afterward—but I am going to explain now,” and she turned resolutely, smiling a little to brave that look. “Mr. Morganstein had promised, when he planned the trip to Portland, that he would run over from Ellensburg to look the property up. He believed it might be feasible to plat it into five-acre tracts to put on the market. Of course we knew nothing of the difficulties of the road; we had heard it was an old stage route, and we expected to motor through and return the same day. So, when the accident happened to the car in Snoqualmie Pass, and the others were taking the Milwaukee train home, I decided, on the impulse of the moment, to finish this side trip to Wenatchee and return to Seattle by the Great Northern. I admit seeing you on the eastbound influenced me. We—Mrs. Feversham—guessed you were on your way to see this land, and when the porter was uncertain of the stage from Ellensburg, but that you were leaving the trail below Kittitas, I thought you had found a newer, quicker way. So—I followed you.”
Tisdale's brows relaxed. He laughed a little softly, trying to ease her evident distress. “I am glad you did, Miss Armitage. I am mighty glad you did. But I see,” he went on slowly, his face clouding again, “I see Mrs. Weatherbee had been talking to you about that tract. It's strange I hadn't thought of that possibility. I'll wager she even tried to sell the land off a map, in Seattle. I wonder, though, when this Weatherbee trip was arranged to look the property over, that she didn't come, too. But no doubt that seemed too eager.”
The blue lights flashed in her eyes; her lip trembled. “Be fair,” she said. “You can afford to be—generous.”
“I am going to be generous, Miss Armitage, to you.” The ready humor touched his mouth again, the corners of his eyes. “I am going to take you over the ground with me; show you Weatherbee's project, his drawn plans. But afterwards, if you outbid me—”
“You need not be afraid of that,” she interrupted quickly. “I—you must know”—she paused, her lashes drooped—“I—am not very rich,” she finessed.
Tisdale laughed outright. “Neither am I. Neither am I.” Then, his glance studying the road, he said: “I think we take that branch. But wait!” He drew his map from his pocket and pored over it a moment. “Yes, we turn there. After that there is just one track.”
For an instant Miss Armitage seemed to waver. She sent a backward look to the river, and the glance, returning, swept Tisdale; then she straightened in her seat and swung the bays into the branch. It cut the valley diagonally, away from the Wenatchee, past a last orchard, into wild lands that stretched in level benches under the mountain wall. One tawny, sage-mottled slope began to detach from the rest; it took the shape of a reclining brazen beast, partly leopard, part
ly wolf, and a line of pine trees that had taken root in a moist strata along the backbone had the effect of a bristling mane.
“That is Weatherbee's landmark,” said Tisdale. “He called it Cerberus. It is all sketched in true as life on his plans. The gap there under the brute's paw is the entrance to his vale.”
As they approached, the mountain seemed to move; it took the appearance of an animal, ready to spring. Miss Armitage, watching, shivered. The dreadful expectation she had shown the previous night when the cry of the cougar came down the wind, rose in her face. It was as though she had come upon that beast, more terrifying than she had feared, lying in wait for her. Then the moment passed. She raised her head, her hands tightened on the reins, and she drove resolutely into the shadows of the awful front. “Now,” she said, not quite steadily, “now I know how monstrously alive a mountain can seem.”
Tisdale looked at her. “You never could live in Alaska,” he said. “You feel too much this personality of inanimate things. That was David Weatherbee's trouble. You know how in the end he thought those Alaska peaks were moving. They got to 'crowding' him.”
The girl turned a little and met his look. Her eyes, wide with dread, entreated him. “Yes, I know,” she said, and her voice was almost a whisper. “I was thinking of him. But please don't say any more. I can't— bear it—here.”
So she was thinking of Weatherbee. Her emotion sprang from her sympathy for him. A gentleness that was almost tenderness crept over Tisdale's face. How fine she was, how sensitively made, and how measureless her capacity for loving, if she could feel like this for a man of whom she had only heard.
Miss Armitage, squaring her shoulders and sitting very erect once more, her lips closed in a straight red line drove firmly on. A stream ran musically along the road side,—a stream so small it was marvelous it had a voice. As they rounded the mountain, the gap widened into the mouth of the vale, which lifted back to an upper bench, over-topped by a lofty plateau. Then she swung the team around and stopped. The way was cut off by a barbed wire fence.
The enclosure was apparently a corral for a flock of Angora goats. There was no gate for the passage of teams; the road ended there, and a rough sign nailed to a hingeless wicket warned the wayfarer to “Keep Out.” On a rocky knob near this entrance a gaunt, hard-featured woman sat knitting. She measured the trespassers with a furtive, smouldering glance and clicked her needles with unnecessary force.
Tisdale's eyes made a swift inventory of the poor shelter, half cabin, partly shed, that evidently housed both the woman and her flock, then searched the barren field for some sort of hitching post. But the few bushes along the stream were small, kept low, doubtless, by the browsing goats, and his glance rested on a fringe of poplars beyond the upper fence.
“There's no way around,” he said at last, and the amusement broke softly in his face. “We will have to go through.”
“The wicket will take the team singly,” she answered, “but we must unhitch and leave the buggy here.”
“And first, if you think you can hold the colts that long, I must tackle this thistle.”
“I can manage,” she said, and the sparkles danced in her eyes, “unless you are vanquished.”
The woman rose and stood glowering while he sprang down and drew the wooden pin to open the wicket. Then, “You keep off my land,” she ordered sharply. “I will, madam,” he answered quietly, “as soon as I am satisfied it is yours.”
“I've lived on this claim 'most five years,” she screamed. “I'm homesteading, and when I've used the water seven years, I get the rights.” She sprang backward with a cattish movement and caught up a gun that had been concealed in some bushes. “Now you go,” she said.
But Tisdale stayed. He stood weighing her with his steady, appraising eyes, while he drew the township plat from his pocket.
“This is the quarter section I have come to look up. It starts here, you see,”—and having unfolded the map, he turned to hold it under her glance—“at the mouth of this gap, and lifts back through the pocket, taking in the slopes to this bench and on up over this ridge to include these springs.”
The woman, curbing herself to look at the plat, allowed the rifle to settle in the curve of her arm. “I piped the water down,” she said. “This stream was a dry gully. I fenced and put up a house.”
“The tract was commuted and bought outright from the Government over seven years ago.” Tisdale's voice quickened; he set his lips dominantly and folded the map. “I have copies of the field notes with me and the owner's landscape plans. And I am a surveyor, madam. It won't take me long to find out whether there is a mistake. But, before I go over the ground, I must get my horses through to a hitching-place. I will have to lower that upper fence, but if you will keep your goats together, I promise to put it back as soon as the team is through.”
“You let that fence alone.” Tisdale had started to cross the field, and she followed, railing, though the gun still rested in the hollow of her arm. “If one of those goats breaks away, the whole herd'll go wild. I can't round 'em in without my dog. He's off trailing one of the ewes. She strayed yesterday, and he'll chase the mountain through if he has to. It's no use to whistle; he won't come back without her. You let that fence be. You wouldn't dare to touch it,” she finished impotently, “if I had a man.”
“Haven't you?” Tisdale swung around, and his voice dropped to its soft undernote. “That's mighty hard. Who laid all that water-pipe? Who built your house?”
“I did,” she answered grimly. “The man who hauled my load of lumber stopped long enough to help set the posts, but I did the rest.”
“You did?” Tisdale shook his head incredulously. “My! My! Made all the necessary improvements, single-handed, to hold your homestead and at the same time managed these goats.”
The woman's glance moved to the shack and out over the barren fields, and a shade of uncertainty crept into her passionate eyes. “The improvements don't make much of a show yet; I've had to be off so much in the mountains, foraging with the herd. But I was able to hire a boy half a day with the shearing this spring, and from now on they're going to pay. There are twenty-eight in the bunch, counting the kids, and I started with one old billy and two ewes.”
“My! My! what a record!” Tisdale paused to look back at Miss Armitage, who had turned the bays, allowing them to pace down a length of road and back.
“But,” he added, walking on, “what led you to choose goats instead of sheep?”
“I didn't do the choosing”; she moved abreast of Hollis, “it was a fool man.”
“So,” he answered softly, with a glimmer of amusement in his eyes, “there is a man, after all.”
“There was,” she corrected grimly. “The easiest fellow to be talked over under the sun; the kind always chasing off after a new scheme. First it was a mineral claim; then he banked the future on timber, and when he got tired waiting for stumpage to soar, he put up a dinky sawmill to cut his own trees. He was doing well, for him, getting out ties for a new railroad—it was down in Oregon—when he saw the chance to trade for a proved-up homestead. But it was the limit when he started out to buy a bunch of sheep and came back with that old Angora billy and two ewes.”
“I see.” They were near the fence, and Tisdale swerved a little to reach a stout poplar that formed the corner post. He saw that the wire ends met there and felt in his pocket for his knife. “I see. And then he left the responsibility to his wife.”
“The wedding hadn't come off,” she said sharply. “It was fixed for the seventeenth of June, and that was only May. And I told him I couldn't risk it—not in the face of those goats.”
“And he?” pressed Hollis gently. This thistle, isolated, denied human intercourse, was more easily handled than he had hoped.
“He said it suited him all right. He had been wanting to go to Alaska. Nothing but that wedding had kept him back.”
Tisdale stopped and opened his knife. “And he went?” he asked.
“Y
es.” The woman's face worked a little, and she stood looking at him with hard, tragic eyes. “He sold the homestead for what he could get to raise the money to take him to Dawson. He was gone in less than twenty-four hours and before daylight, that night he left, I heard those goats ma-a-ing under my window. He had staked them there in the front yard and tucked a note, with his compliments, in the door. He wrote he didn't know of anything else he could leave that would make me remember him better.”
Tisdale shook his head. “I wish I had been there.” He slipped the knife in between the ends of the wires and the bole, clawing, prying, twisting. “And you kept them?” he added.
“Yes, I don't know why, unless it was because I knew it was the last thing he expected. But I hated them worse than snakes. I couldn't stand it having them around, and I hired a boy to herd them out on his father's farm. Then I went on helping Dad, selling general merchandise and sorting mail. But the post-office was moved that year five miles to the new railroad station, and they put in a new man. Of course that meant a line of goods, too, and competition. Trade fell off, then sickness came. It lasted two years, and when Dad was gone, there wasn't much left of the store but debt.” She paused a moment, looking up to the serene sky above the high plateau. A sudden moisture softened her burning eyes, and her free hand crept to her throat. “Dad was a mighty fine man,” she said. “He had a great business head. It wasn't his fault he didn't leave me well fixed.”
Tisdale laid the loosened wire down on the ground and started to work on another. “But there was the man in Alaska,” he said. “Of course you let him know.”
“No, sir.” Her eyes flashed back to Tisdale's face. “You wouldn't have caught me writing to Johnny Banks, then. I'm not that kind. The most I could do was to see what I could make of the goats. I commenced herding them myself, but I hadn't the face to do it down there in Oregon, where everybody knew me, and I gradually worked north with them until I ended here.”
The Rim of the Desert Page 13
