CHAPTER XXVIII
A HINT OF WHITE
The heels had left two deeply defined gouges in the ground; there was a sharp hollow where the head had lain, and a broad depression for the shoulders. It was the impression of the body of a man—a large man like Wilbur. Any hope, any doubt she might have had, slipped from her mind, and despair rolled into it with an even, sullen current, like the motion of the river.
It is strange what we do with our big moments of fear and sorrow and even of joy. Now Mary stooped and carefully washed out the coffee-pot, and filled it again with water higher up the bank; and turned back toward the edge of the trees.
It was all subconscious, this completing of the task which Wilbur had begun, and subconscious still was her careful rebuilding of the fire till it flamed high, as though she were setting a signal to recall the wanderer. But the flame, throwing warmth and red light across her eyes, recalled her sharply to reality, and she looked up and saw the dull dawn brightening beyond the dark evergreens.
Guilt, too, swept over her, for she remembered what big, handsome Dick Wilbur had said: He would meet his end through a woman. Now it had come to him, and through her.
She cringed at the thought, for what was she that a man should die in her service? She raised her hands with a moan to the nodding tops of the trees, to the vast, black sky above them, and the full knowledge of Wilbur's strength came to her, for had he not ridden calmly, defiantly, into the heart of this wilderness, confident in his power to care both for himself and for her? But she! What could she do wandering by herself? The image of Pierre le Rouge grew dim indeed and sad and distant.
She looked about her at the pack, which had been distributed expertly, and disposed on the ground by Wilbur. She could not even lash it in place behind the saddle. So she drew the blanket once more around her shoulders and sat down to think.
She might return to the house—doubtless she could find her way back. And leave Pierre in the heart of the mountains, surely lost to her forever. She made a determination, sullen, like a child, to ride on and on into the wilderness, and let fate take care of her. The pack she could bundle together as best she might; she would live as she might; and for a guide there would be the hunger for Pierre.
So she ended her thoughts with a hope; her head nodded lower, and she slept the deep, deep sleep of the exhausted mind and the lifeless body. She woke hours later with a start, instantly alert, quivering with fear and life and energy, for she felt like one who has gone to sleep with voices in his ear.
While she slept some one had been near her; she could have sworn it before her startled eyes glanced around.
And though she kept whispering, with white lips, "No, no; it is impossible!" yet there was evidence which proved it. The fire should have burned out, but instead it flamed more brightly than ever, and there was a little heap of fuel laid conveniently close. Moreover, both horses were saddled, and the pack lashed on the saddle of her own mount.
Whatever man or demon had done this work evidently intended that she should ride Wilbur's beautiful bay. Yes, for when she went closer, drawn by her wonder, she found that the stirrups had been much shortened.
Nothing was forgotten by this invisible caretaker; he had even left out the cooking-tins, and she found a little batter of flapjack flour mixed.
The riddle was too great for solving. Perhaps Wilbur had disappeared merely to play a practical jest on her; but that supposition was too childish to be retained an instant. Perhaps—perhaps—Pierre himself had discovered her, but having vowed never to see her again, he cared for her like the invisible hands in the old Greek fable.
This, again, an instinctive knowledge made her dismiss. If he were so close, loving her, he could not stay away; she read in her own heart, and knew. Then it must be something else; evil, because it feared to be seen; not wholly evil, because it surrounded her with care.
At least this new emotion obscured somewhat the terror and the sorrow of Wilbur's disappearance. She cooked her breakfast as if obeying the order of the unseen, climbed into the saddle of Wilbur's horse, and started off up the valley, leading her own mount.
Every moment or so she turned in the saddle suddenly in the hope of getting a glimpse of the follower, but even when she surveyed the entire stretch of country from the crest of a low hill, she saw nothing—not the least sign of life.
She rode slowly, this day, for she was stiff and sore from the violent journey of the night before, but though she went slowly, she kept steadily at the trail. It was a broad and pleasant one, being the beaten sand of the river-bottom; and the horse she rode was the finest that ever pranced beneath her.
His trot was as smooth and springy as the gallop of most horses, and when she let him run over a few level stretches, it was as if she had suddenly been taken up from the earth on wings. There was something about the animal, too, which reminded her of its vanished owner; for it had strength and pride and gentleness at once. Unquestionably it took kindly to its new rider; for once when she dismounted the big horse walked up behind and nuzzled her shoulder.
The mountains were much plainer before the end of the day. They rose sheer up in wave upon frozen wave like water piled ragged by some terrific gale, with the tops of the waters torn and tossed and then frozen forever in that position, like a fantastic and gargantuan mask of dreaming terror. It overawed the heart of Mary Brown to look up to them, but there was growing in her a new impulse of friendly understanding with all this scalped, bald region of rocks, as if in entering the valley she had passed through the gate which closes out the gentler world, and now she was admitted as a denizen of the mountain-desert, that scarred and ugly asylum for crime and fear and grandeur.
Feeling this new emotion, the old horizons of her mind gave way and widened; her gentle nature, which had known nothing but smiles, admitted the meaning of a frown. Did she not ride under the very shadow of that frown with her two horses? Was she not armed? She touched the holster at her hip, and smiled. To be sure, she could never hit a mark with that ponderous weapon, but at least the pistol gave the seeming of a dangerous lone rider, familiar with the wilds.
It was about dark, and she was on the verge of looking about for a suitable camping-place, when the bay halted sharply, tossed up his head, and whinnied. From the far distance she thought she heard the beginning of a whinny in reply. She could not be sure, but the possibility made her pulse quicken. In this region, she knew, no stranger could be a friend.
So she started the bay at a gallop and put a couple of swift miles between her and the point at which she had heard the sound; no living creature, she was sure, could have followed the pace the bay held during that distance. So, secure in her loneliness, she trotted the horse around a bend of the rocks and came on the sudden light of a camp-fire.
It was too late to wheel and gallop away; so she remained with her hand fumbling at the butt of the revolver, and her wide, blue eyes fixed on the flicker of the fire. Not a voice accosted her. As far as she could peer among the lithe trunks of the saplings, not a sign of a living thing was near.
Yet whoever built that fire must be near, for it was obviously newly laid. Perhaps some fleeing outlaw had pitched his camp here and had been startled by her coming. In that case he lurked somewhere in the woods at that moment, his keen eyes fixed on her, and his gun gripped hard in his hand. Perhaps—and the thought thrilled her—this little camp had been prepared by the same power, human or unearthly, which had watched over her early that morning.
All reason and sane caution warned her to ride on and leave that camp unmolested, but an overwhelming, tingling curiosity besieged her. The thin column of smoke rose past the dark trees like a ghost, and reaching the unsheltered space above the trees, was smitten by a light wind and jerked away at a sharp angle.
She looked closer and saw a bed made of a great heap of the tips of limbs of spruce, a bed softer than down and more fragrant than any manufactured perfume, however costly.
Possibly it was the sight of this bed which tempted her down from the saddle, at last. With the reins over her arm, she stood close to the fire and warmed her hands, peering all the while on every side, like some wild and beautiful creature tempted by the bait of the trap, but shrinking from the scent of man.
As she stood there a broad, yellow moon edged its way above the hills and rolled up through the black trees and then floated through the sky. Beneath such a moon no harm could come to her. It was while she stared at it, letting her tensed alertness relax little by little, that she saw, or thought she saw, a hint of moving white pass over the top of the rise of ground and disappear among the trees.
She could not be sure, but her first impulse was to gather the reins with a jerk and place her foot in the stirrup; but then she looked back and saw the fire, burning low now and asking like a human voice to be replenished from the heap of small, broken fuel near by; and she saw also the softly piled bed of evergreens.
She removed her foot from the stirrup. What mattered that imaginary figure of moving white? She felt a strong power of protection lying all about her, breathing out to her with the keen scent of the pines, fanning her face with the chill of the night breeze. She was alone, but she was secure in the wilderness.