by Dean Owen
He swore to himself that on the way home he was going to make her tell him what was the matter. Poor kid, she surely had plenty to be blue about—homeless, penniless, with a bitterly unhappy girlhood behind her and nothing but a lonely empty trail ahead.
As he watched her, there by the boulder, he was swept with the impulse to go over and take her into his arms and let her know that she had at least one friend in the world. But he fought the impulse down. Weeks ago he had sworn that never by word or act would he let her suspect that she meant anything more to him than a friend and partner. Alone with her from morning till dusk, day after day, he found it a desperately hard job, so hard that every night he wondered how he could possibly muddle through the next day without betraying himself. Outlaw and outcast, they were drawn close to each other, closer than he had ever been to anyone else on earth, by a sense of being two against the rest of humanity; and he could no more stop loving her than he could stop breathing.
Whenever he thought of going away from Little Saghelia and not seeing Leda any more, a fierce rebellion welled up in him against his outlawry, and he felt that he could never by his own volition leave her. But always the inevitable was there, inescapable, and he knew that he would have to go; and to save both himself and her from a bad crack-up, he had steadfastly kept silent.
Now, even in the face of her misery, he refused to break down that partnerly front.
In a few minutes he flipped out half a dozen trout, scrappy little pounders, as cold to the hand as icicles. After cleaning them and wrapping them in leaves, he rejoined Leda, picked up her knapsack and the pistol, because she looked so tired; and they started down the valley, following the winding game trail beside the creek.
As he walked along, parting the rain-wet bushes for Leda or holding back the occasional briar, he kept a sharp watch on the trail bends ahead and the buck-brush thickets of the valley bottom. He hardly expected an ambush, but then he did not know what to expect. Considering the critical state of the Casper-Ludlow warfare and the tremendous pressure on Hugh, these days of grace simply could not last.
“If his deadfall has taken all this long to build,” Gary thought, “it ought to be a wham when he does spring it! One thing sure, he isn’t going to be satisfied with a plain ambush for me or a mere bumping off. If he was jealous of me a month ago, he’s in a killing temper now. Whatever he tries, it’ll be calculated not only to put me out of the picture but to put himself back into it, in Leda’s eyes.”
Half a mile below the overfalls they left the main trail and swung up the west slope on a dim old path, to get out of the thick dangerous timber of the valley bottom.
Twenty minutes of steep climb brought them to a small hanging lake, one of a dozen in the upper valley. A tiny rock-girt tarn, perfectly round and only fifty feet across, it was beautifully clear and blue, the bluest water Gary had ever seen; and a stone tossed into it gave the hollow ch-oo-nk of many fathoms.
Several times on their return home he and Leda had halted there. It was so idyllic a spot whether they wanted to rest or not. Ferns hung from its dank rocks; a swath of purple lilies flanked its spillway on the lower side; the ground was carpeted with thick plushy sphagnum; and it lay in a drogue of old patriarchal pines. Deep in its blue depths big trout coursed slowly back and forth—wavy mottles that changed to a flash of black and a splash of silver when may-fly or beetle touched the surface.
At the edge of the tarn Leda flung herself down on the moss and gazed up at the vireos and flame-colored warblers in the high treetops. After tossing the rest of his grasshoppers to the trout and examining some queer black lilies near the spillway, Gary came back and sat down beside her.
The sun had inched down behind the western peakline, and the first shadows of twilight were creeping into the denser drogues of the valley. He knew that he and Leda ought to be hurrying on home; but he did not stir. An hour like this and a place like this came seldom; and besides he wanted to know what Leda’s trouble was and help her out, if he could. “Lee,” he asked gently, “tell me what’s the matter, won’t you? Something’s all wrong, I know.”
Leda shook her head. “There’s nothing the matter. And it’s my own business, anyhow.” This sounded somewhat inconsistent to Gary. She was evidently angry at him—very angry and aloof. For a whole month they had talked about everything under the sun, sharing each other’s thoughts and hopes; and now she was suddenly telling him to mind his own business.
“Maybe I could help, Lee. If it’s something I’ve done—and it seems to be—I’ll sure correct it. Give me a chance, partner.”
That last word struck fire from Leda. She sat up quickly. “Don’t call me that!” she blazed at him. “‘Partner’—I hate it! Don’t you ever call me that again. I’m no old sourdough! Or a muskrat trapper!”
Her fiery outburst dumbfounded Gary so completely that he could only stare at her, speechless, utterly at a loss why that innocent little word should touch off such an explosion.
Like a floodgate loosening, as though this anger had been gathering in her for days and now was going out at one rush, Leda stormed at him:
“Hasn’t it ever occurred to you that I’m a girl? You don’t act like it! It’s ‘partner’ this and ‘partner’ that all day long! I’m not a man and don’t want to be one, and I’m not going to be treated like one, and from now on you can go hunting by yourself, Gary Frazier! Just because I’d rather climb rocks than lie around in a hammock with a book, and just because I’m not a useless butterfly, like Mona Casper, why you think I’m a—just a bush-loping ‘partner’! Even Hugh Ludlow treats me better than you do! He never makes me feel like a backwoodsman!”
“Why—why,” Gary stammered, in groping bewilderment, “d’you mean you don’t want me to treat you as a partner? Has that been the trouble? You mean you don’t like it, Lee?”
“Like it? I hate it! And I hate you!”
As Gary stared at her, at her flushed cheeks and angry eyes, he realized that he had stumbled, all unknowingly, on the cause of Leda’s strange mood. To his thunderstruck surprise he saw, he could not help seeing, that it was his air of casual partnership which had been grating on her unbearably; that when she said “hate” she meant “love”; that she had been wanting love in return from him because she was so alone, so friendless, and he was just about all the world to her.
He could hardly believe his eyes or believe she loved him. It was too momentous a thing to grasp in a few moments. He only knew that his campaign, so desperately maintained, to treat her like a partner, had certainly worked with a vengeance!
“I’m—I’m sorry, Leda,” he groped, scarcely knowing what to say. She probably wouldn’t believe him now, whatever he said. “It did occur to me that you’re a girl! Good heavens, I haven’t been able to think of much else but that! Why, Lee, I thought I was doing the right thing, for you and for myself, in treating you like a partner, but it’s been the hardest job of my life—”
“You’re just saying that. You don’t mean a word of it!” She stood up and turned away. “I’m going home. You’re just saying that to—just because I flared out.”
Gary sprang up and caught her arm. “Leda, please. Don’t go.” He took both her hands in his. “Good God, you must be blind, girl, if you can’t see that all the time I’ve been fighting myself and calling you ‘partner’ and trying to muddle along day after day—that I’ve been loving you and hating this partnerly front… Leda, look at me; don’t turn away like that. I didn’t mean to tell you this. I swore I never would. But it’s done now. Tell me you believe me, honey.”
“No! It isn’t so!” She struggled against him as he took her into his arms. “Gary. Don’t! I won’t let you. You’re just trying to be—be nice to me… You’ve been so kind and good—but now I won’t—won’t believe—”
He smoothed back her disheveled hair and kissed her lips, silencing her whispered protests.
“You
do believe. You’ve got to. Leda, look at me. You didn’t mean that ‘hate,’ did you, sweet?”
Leda looked up at him, her eyes full of tears—tears of shame, of lingering anger, of love she could not deny; and as she stood tiptoe for his kiss, she answered him, whispering, “No—Gary—not exactly—I mean, not now.”…
CHAPTER TEN
Twilight was gathering in earnest by the time they started on homeward. The sun still lingered in the high clouds overhead, but the valley was filled with purple shadows nearly to timberline, and in cave and canyon the owls were beginning to hoot their weird eight-noted calls.
A little awed and bewildered by their hour at the tarn, they walked along very silent, side by side where the trail allowed, following the dim old path through the drogues and dark rocky ravines.
Even with Leda beside him, her hand in his, Gary could not fully realize that all this—the hour back yonder, the miracle of Leda’s love—was not a dream but sober actuality. It was all too new and strange and dazing.
In the confusion of his thoughts, he hardly knew how to judge himself for throwing his whole deliberate program to the winds. Had it been wrong of him—wrong and reckless and selfish? Had he failed, when the stark test came, to be a true friend to this girl beside him?
As he looked back across his relationship with Leda, it seemed to him that for an entire month he and Leda had been rushing headlong toward that hour at the tarn. He could no more have halted it than he could hold back a mile-long avalanche with his bare hands.
It dawned on him that the past hour had not only changed the whole outlook between him and Leda but had swept all his own plans into the discard. Until this evening he had had the prospect, however, slender, of whipping on to the Coast sometime before winter and making his get-away. That prospect was dead now. He could not go; he did not want to go. After this open avowal between them he could not possibly put Leda out of his life and leave her here alone, defenseless against Saghelia. She had no one on earth but himself. There was the reason why his casual partnership had plunged her into such despondency.
For a long time he had been suspecting that for good or bad, happiness or disaster, he and Leda were destined to stick together. Now he knew it.
It was unthinkable, too, for him to take her along, on the outlaw’s trail. If she should be arrested with him, she would face a prison term for aiding a murderer. And how could he ask her to share the hunger, the nerve-racking fears of that fly-by-night existence?
All this meant that he had to stay on Little Saghelia. He was bound there by invisible chains.
“But if I stay here,” he told himself, “I’m going to get caught. If Rhodes knows who I am—and that’s just about a sure thing—I’ve been living a month on borrowed time.”
Altogether, with the Police wanting him for murder, and Hugh Ludlow trying to kill him, and the cache hunt apparently hopeless, he felt that his fortunes had struck a new all-time low. Except for Leda. Whenever he thought of how her happiness was bound up with his own, he swore grimly that he had been pushed around enough and now he was going to do a little pushing himself.
With many windings the dim path brought them finally to a better trail that led straight home. A pall of heavy clouds, bringing a warm rain from the Kuro Siwa of the Pacific, had cut off the lingering afterglow of the sun; and the dark was coming on swiftly, earlier than usual.
“Tired, girl?” Gary asked, as they swung into the good trail.
“A little. I didn’t sleep very well last night.”
“Let’s stop then, and rest.”
“We’d better not, Gary. It’s later than we’ve ever been out, and Dads is probably worrying about us already.” She took his hand, as the trail led them into a drogue of black spruces, and her fingers tightened upon his “Gary—?”
“Yes, sweet.”
“Are we going to tell Dads anything about—about ourselves and this evening?”
“What do you think?”
“In a way I’d like to. But he’s not awf’ly dependable at keeping a secret, and he’s going in to Saghelia in a day or two, and if anybody should pump him about us. We mustn’t have that, Gary.”
“You’re thinking about Hugh Ludlow?”
“Yes. If he ever hears about this, ever hears the slightest whisper about it—!”
“He surely suspects already, Lee. In fact, he probably is imagining a lot more than… I mean, he knows how you nursed me when I was under the weather and how we go hunting together every day. But I guess it’s just as well not to confirm his suspicions. We’ll keep this evening to ourselves. It’s ours, anyway.”
“Yes, ours.”
As they walked along through the black spruces, an idea, born of desperate necessity, slowly took shape in Gary’s mind. With every road blocked, nothing was left to him except to turn and face his outlawry and fight it. Instead of waiting till the law nailed him or Hugh Ludlow rubbed him out, he himself would take the initiative and force a showdown. His idea was to deliberately give himself up to Rhodes and tell the sergeant the whole story about that evening in Winnipeg two months ago.
The evidence against him in that murder case was deadly, and he knew that his story would sound flimsy. But there was a chance that Rhodes might know the truth when he heard it.
What the silent inscrutable officer would do if he did believe—that was a question. One thing certain, he would have to act, one way or other. And another certainty, he would never allow a personal opinion, however favorable and friendly, to swerve him from his sworn duty. Whatever his own belief, he would never help a man condemned for murder to escape.
He might take the easy course—handcuffs, the Police butter-tub and a wire to headquarters announcing the capture of Gary Frazier. Or, in his silent fashion, he might figure out some line of action that would neither circumvent the law nor deliver an innocent man to death.
The whole idea was so fearful a gamble that Gary made no final decision. And he said nothing about it to Leda. She would never let him go to Rhodes. The mere thought of his taking that irretrievable step would drive her panicky.
Beyond the black spruces they came to a good-sized opening on the mountainside. With the setting of the sun a chill night wind had sprung up. As they crossed the boulder meadow they felt its cold nipping breath more strongly than in the timber. Noticing that Leda was shivering a little, Gary paused and took off his jacket and put it around her shoulders. “That better?”
“Lots.”
With that miracle still so new he wavered a moment, hesitant and awkward; but Leda’s face was upturned to him, and on a courageous impulse he bent and kissed her. “And you thought I didn’t like you, Lee! Girl, girl!”
“But how could I know, Gary—when you were so aloof and kept calling me ‘partner’ all the time?”
Arguing that point, they went on, down into a deep couloir scattered with big granite blocks. All around them they heard the night sounds of the wilderness; the sleepy twittering of golden-crowns safely tucked away in thickets of devil’s-club; the scream of a rabbit owl; and once, startling near, the surly ouf-ouf of a bear crashing through a briar tangle.
On the breeze came the muffled noise of the big overfalls. Like the scenes in a crystal-gazer’s ball, in which one could see whatever was in his mind, the far-away sound kept changing to their ears, now seeming like the murmur of voices, now like the low wailing of many winds, now like some unearthly chorus chanting a primitive minor song.
As they reached the bottom of the rock couloir and drew near the little torrent in its middle, Gary felt Leda’s hand suddenly grip his arm.
“Gary! I thought I heard something—a flip of brush—right ahead—there by that big rock!”
They stopped dead-short, peering into the black shadows.
“Maybe we’d better go around,” Gary whispered, though he heard or saw nothing. “That’s a good
place for an ambush. Let’s back out—” He broke off, and his hand dropped to the pistol at his belt. Beside the big boulder and scarcely three paces from them, a dark object rose up, a man-figure took on outline and stood there, blocking their path, with his arms raised in a command to halt.
After a moment or two the man moved toward them, not menacingly at all but with his arms folded and no weapons about him; and when he spoke, his voice was friendly enough, though a little exulting.
“How do, m’sieu; how do, mees,” he greeted them; and Gary, covering him with the gun and alert against the first hostile move, recognized the voice as that of Hugh Ludlow’s big half-breed, Eutrope. “Don’ be alarm’, m’sieu; I don’ hurt nobody.”
“What d’you want?” Gary snapped at him. He realized that he and Leda had walked into a deadfall; but what sort of trap it was he did not yet know, and he stalled for time till the move developed a little more.
“Moi, I don’ wan’ nut’ing,” the ’breed answered. “But M’sieu Hugh, he wan’s to have a leetle talk wit’ you. A leetle talk and mebbe a leetle somt’ing else. Down to valley at our camp. Dere won’ be no rough stuff from us onless you get kontrary. If you do, we have to hogtie you and carry you on a pole, lak breenging in to camp a beeg yo’ng moose.”
Gary caught that “we.” This ’breed was not alone. There were others with him, other men in those black shadows.
“Lee!” he whispered sharply, with quick presence of mind. “Slip out of this! Step behind me and fade. I’ll keep ’em busy till you get away.”
Leda refused point-blank. “They’re not after me. They want you! You make the break.” She tried to take the rifle from him. “Gary! Hurry it! I’ll hold them back.”
Gary pried her hand loose from the gun. “You might get killed!” Out of the corner of his eye he saw a blurred movement from behind a boulder just off the trail, and to his ears came the metallic sn-ii-ck of a rifle being cocked. “Don’t move, Lee! They’re all around us! We walked right into the middle of them.”
