CHAPTER XXIII.
CONSUMMATION.
A MONTH passed, and John Sheldon, who might have taken the gold and left the girl, let the gold lie and sought Paula.
They were lonely days, and more than once he went to his horse for companionship. The provisions which he had brought in with him had dwindled away to nothing. His coffee was gone; he drank water for breakfast. His bacon was but a haunting memory. Beans and onions and potatoes were with the snows of yesteryear.
He missed them, but could manage upon venison and trout. But, especially after meals and before he turned in at night, when he looked into the black and empty bowl of his pipe, he shook his head and sighed.
Verily, a mighty thing is a man’s love for a woman! For, even when his tobacco was a thing of the past, John Sheldon, a man who loved his smoke, stayed on and contented himself with sunflower leaves!
He had once said, “I’ll stay if I have to wait until snow flies!” Now he said, “I’ll find her if I have to stick on the job all winter.”
There were days when he roamed for miles into the mountains; nights when he slept far out, as Paula was perhaps sleeping. Again, there were times when he slept in the cabin or at the mouth of the cavern, on the ledge.
Many a time, at dusk, he climbed to some peak to look down over the valley and distant ridges, hoping to see somewhere the blaze of her fire. Day after day he sought some other cave, some other distant cabin where, perhaps, she was hiding; where it might be that supplies had been cached against such a time as this. But the month went and another was well on the way, and his search was fruitless.
There came a soft night, throbbing with star radiance, glowing with the promise of a full moon, just rising beyond the eastern ridge, when Sheldon, tired and spiritless, came back into Johnny’s Luck from a long tramp to the north.
As he trudged back along the trail he had come to know so well he told himself that he was all kinds of a fool; that if he were not he’d put all the gold upon Buck’s back that a horse could stagger under, take upon his own shoulders all that he could carry, and go back to Belle Fortune and the world beyond.
But he knew that he would, not go; that he would remain there until he found Paula or knew that she was dead. Lately he had come to fear that one of the innumerable possible accidents had befallen her.
Head down, weary and hopeless, he made his slow way toward the cabin. He was within a score of paces from the house when he stopped with a sharp exclamation, standing staring.
She was there. She had heard him, was before him to the door, had come out into the night to meet him. The man stood looking at her in bewilderment. For here was no Paula whom he knew; no brown maiden of the bearskin; no boyish slip in miner’s boots and clothes.
Oddly, the memory of something he had seen years ago and many miles from here, came into his mind vividly. He had once found one of those strange plants called the fire-flower which flourish in bleak desolation, companionless; a wonderful creation with burning, blood-red heart, which upon the barren sweep of lava-beds is at once a living triumph and a mystery of loveliness.
This girl, here alone in the land of abandoned ruins and lonely, desolate isolation, was like that.
The Fire Flower!
Paula came on, taking short little steps which alone made her some new Paula. He looked down and saw a pair of incredibly small slippers, seeming brand new, flashing in the moonlight. He looked up and saw Paula smiling!
“I have come back to you,” said Paula, “because you are good and I love you. Are you glad?”
She had come back to him like a great lady out of an old love-story. Her hair was in little, old-fashioned curls; her neck and throat gleamed at him modestly from the laces and ribbons which bewildered him; upon her brown fingers were dainty mitts of 1870, and the gown itself, it was an elaborate and astounding ball-gown, all wide hoops and flounces, so that she seemed to him to be riding out to him upon a monster puff-ball. That her costume should, to the last detail, be like that of the lady of the picture, she carried in her hand a fan.
Paula with a fan! Paula in hoop-skirts!
“You are not glad?” cried Paula, her lips, which had been curved to her laughter, suddenly trembling.
“Glad!” cried John Sheldon. “Glad!”
And, a hundred things clamoring for expression, that was all that he said. Paula put her head to one side, like a bird, and looked at him. He looked at her, her curls, her sleeves, her ribbons, her fan—
Then Paula, gifted with understanding, laughed.
“Are you afraid of me now?” she asked softly.
“Before God—yes!” muttered Sheldon huskily.
“Kiss me!” said Paula.
She put up her red mouth temptingly, her eyes teasing and gay. And Sheldon hesitated no longer and was afraid no longer, but took her into his arms, hoop-skirts and flounces and ribbons and laces and all, and held her tight, tight.
“Oh!” laughed Paula. “You are like a bear. You hurt, and you will ruin my dress. I have saved it always—always and always—for—”
“For what, Paula, dear?” he asked.
“For to-night—for you!” she answered, her voice an awed whisper like his own.
“But you didn’t know—”
“Oh, I always knew! Some time you would come, a man tall like poor father, and strong—and young—and beautiful! I would dream of it sometimes and it would make me shiver, like cold. Like you make me shiver now!”
“Oh, my dear, my dear,” said Sheldon. “And I have been afraid you would never come back; I have walked mile after mile looking for you.”
“I know!” nodded Paula brightly. “I watched you every day.”
“What!” he cried.
“Oh, yes. I will show you to-morrow where I hid. It is up there in the rocks; another cave like the one you found—but you could never find this one unless I showed you, it is so cunningly hid. And every day I watched you. And one day I saw you go into the forest and come back with a strange, terrible beast bigger than a black bear following you, and I was afraid and screamed. I thought that it would eat you and—”
“Beast?” asked Sheldon.
“Yes. But you had caught it and tied a rope around its neck and were its master. Oh, I was glad I was so far away you didn’t hear me. And proud that you were so strong a man, so brave a man to capture a big beast, bigger than a bear—”
“Buck! It was my horse, child! And you don’t even know what a horse is?”
“No,” answered Paula, wondering. “Do they bite?”
“This one you shall ride—”
“I won’t!” cried Paula. “I’ll run away!”
Laughing, they turned together to the cabin, where he soon had a splendid fire going.
“Why did you wait all these days before coming back?” he asked her.
“Because,” she told him, “I was afraid at first. But I saw you were good; you did not hurt things just to be bad; when you passed close . enough to me I could see that your face was kind.”
“Go on,” grinned Sheldon. “Don’t stop there!”
“And,” she ended happily, “I wanted to see what you would do. Whether you would go on looking for me a long time, or whether you would forget me and go away.”
“And if I had gone?”
“Then,” said Paula simply, “I should have gone high up on the cliffs and thrown myself down. It would not have been much fun to live if you had gone away.”
“And now,” he asked her soberly, “are you afraid to go back with me, Paula? Back into the world outside?”
Paula crept closer up to him, putting her hand into his.
“Yes,” she said. “I am afraid.”
“But,” insisted Sheldon, “you must see, Paula—”
“I am afraid,” she repeated, and as he turned toward her he saw that her eyes, lifted to his, were shining softly with utter trust. “I am afraid, but I will go with you and be glad.”
“God bless you!” he whispered.
“Tell me something,” she said presently. “Something I have not asked you, but have wanted to know.”
“Yes, Paula. What is it?”
He wondered just how far back in his life history that question was going to search. She made herself comfortable in his arms. Then she asked her question:
“Have you a name, too?”
“What!” he replied, taken aback. “Don’t you even know my name?”
“No,” sighed Paula, the sigh bespeaking a vast and somewhat sleepy content. “What is it?”
“It is John Sheldon,” he told her.
“Then—some day—I will be Paula John Sheldon?”
“Just as soon,” cried John Sheldon, “as you and I can get to the nearest priest on the Little Smoky! And we start in the morning!”
“Aha, mes enfan's,” said the Father Dufresnil to the two other old men with whom he chummed at the settlement on the Little Smoky. (It was ten days later.) “The worl' is fonny! To me to-day there comes out of the woods a man, such a man, tall an’ big an’ his face like a boy, glad! An’ with him a lady—oh, mes enfan’s, a lady of beauty, with eyes which dance like the eyes of him! An’ this lady, she is dress’ like the gran’mother of ol’ Thibault there—in a ball-gown! An’ I, when I marry them! Oh, there was not to doubt the love in their four eyes! But see what that big man put in my han’!”
He dropped it to the oilcloth of the table.
It was a real golden nugget.
(The end.)