Читать книгу The Heart of the Red Firs - Ada Woodruff Anderson - Страница 5

CHAPTER VI

MOSE

Yelm Jim sat brooding in his lodge. He was wrapped in his blanket and an old campaign hat shaded his eyes from the fire, which was kindled on the packed earth floor, and found partial vent through an opening in the roof, around which hung haunches of drying venison and bear. The squaw Clak-la-sum-kah was cooking bread, an unleavened mixture of flour and water, in a frying-pan over the coals. At the same time she watched some fine trout, which were suspended from a rod set in forked stakes above the embers. Mose, who had caught these fish, lounged on a couch that, built of shakes, extended along three sides of the room, and was furnished with woven mats of ribbon grass or the bast of cedar. The wall behind him also was covered with this fabric, which was of the color of ripened maize.

It was one of those intervals when the boy, having incensed his father, sought refuge with his mother's people while Laramie's wrath cooled. At such times the Indian in Mose effaced the white. He bound his head in a crimson handkerchief, and wrapped himself in a blanket, which Clak-la-sum-kah had adorned with many buttons for her grandson's use. He looked a true Klickitat, straight as a young hemlock, lithe as a nearly grown cougar in the woods. His face was a bronze oval, sharply chiseled, and he had the eyes of a hawk. He recalled to the old chief his own youth, when, having a different and much hyphened name, he had been a leader among the young braves of the powerful Yakima nation beyond the Cascades; when, hunting the buffalo, he had crossed the Rockies and skirmished with the Blackfeet, or, exacting tribute from weaker neighbors, had driven home numberless horses to pasture on the vast Palouse plains. He found in the boy an appreciative and tireless listener when he recounted these past glories, and he painted them brilliantly, in sharp contrast to the colorless present. Mose had no brave companions, no followers in the hunt, no tribe.

And the whites were responsible for this; they only were to blame. Not the Hudson Bay men, who, trading for furs, brought guns and many useful things to the Indians, but the "Bostons," who came at the first to rob them of their country. From the beginning the Yakimas had understood and opposed them, and, when at last a thousand warriors had crossed the Cascades to fall on the white settlements of the salt water, Yelm Jim had been among them. They had met defeat, and he, himself, had spent breaking years in the strong house of the "Bostons," and at the end of his captivity he had found himself poor and forgotten and another tyee raised in his place. For this reason the old chief had not returned to his people, but had buried himself in the forest.

But already the white settlers pressed hard on his retreat; axes, the rasp of saws, their shrill voices scattered the deer. He must go farther and farther in search of grouse that once had nested almost at his door; and now, since Slocum had robbed Mose of the musket, the old chief must set laboriously to work and shape the miserable arrow points of agate.

When Yelm Jim thought of this final outrage he drew yet more fiercely at his pipe, and in the shadow of his ragged hatbrim his brows beetled and gloomed. It was not the right moment for young Kingsley to darken the doorway.

One of Laramie's hounds, which had again tracked Mose, sprang up growling, but at a word from the boy settled back whimpering, with his nose between his paws. His mate, snuffing suspiciously, moved to the intruder's feet.

His familiar "Clahowya," said in a big, frank voice, startled the lodge and the first dog belled a note.

"Clahowya," he repeated. "Hello."

Still no answer except a longer note from the hound.

The young man stopped in the entrance and took off his hat, using it slowly as a fan. His close-cropped hair clung in damp, blond waves to his shapely head. The tan of a brief outing had not spoiled his unusual fairness; his face in the shadows was white, but his black eyes gathered depth and brilliancy.

"I think you are the young fellow I'm looking for," he said, addressing the indifferent boy on the couch. "It's dark to one coming in from the sunlight, and that blanket and handkerchief hardly tally with the description I had of you, but you must be Mose."

The boy regarded the trout which the squaw was turning. "Nawitka," he said.

"You are? Well then, Mose, I want you to guide us to Mt. Rainier." He paused, but the boy was silent and the old chief continued to draw deeply at his pipe. "You understand," he went on, "we are going to the mountain and want you to show us the way. If the weather stays fine I mean to try for the summit. Nika cumtux?" And he repeated in Chinook with an elaborate gesture, "Copa si-yah top."

Mose expressed his appreciation of the man's attempt at the language in a fleeting smile, but he made no reply. Yelm Jim also was silent, but he drew yet more furiously at his pipe.

"Let him go with us," continued Kingsley, addressing the chief, "and you shall have that pair of brown blankets you were so interested in yesterday, at the camp."

Still another pause. "If he goes with me up the mountain you can have all my blankets, the tents, the whole outfit, when we come back," added Kingsley.

Then Clak-la-sum-kah rose from her squatting posture by the fire and said in her vehement guttural, "Wake, wake. Mose wake clatawa. Wake clatawa copa si-yah illahee. Tyee Sahgalee hyas solleks. Hy-as solleks. Mose wake clatawa."

Kingsley looked from her to the boy, puzzled. "What is it she says?"

Mose rose from his lounging position and drew his blanket close. "Clak-la-sum-kah ees say 'no.' You mus' un'stan' Tyee Sahgalee ees same you all tam call God. Dat top of Rainier ees His plas. He doan' lak it for sure, we go dare. Sacré, dat mountain ees goin' shake an' smoke an' mek mooch fire we go dare, you can beli've it. But ya-as, Yelm Jim ees see it do dat long tam 'go. He ees say Tyee Sahgalee, ees be mad, because de firs' white man ees come."

Kingsley threw back his head and laughed. "I see," he said, "I see. And your Indian God wanted to reserve this country for his favorite people. But it's all foolishness, Mose; you ought to know it. That priest of your father's, who has been coming out here every month from Olympia, must have taught you different. You don't believe any such heathen nonsense. And you will show us over the trail. You aren't afraid to try the summit with me, though I doubt there's another boy in the settlement would dare."

"I ees hunt on dat mountain, si-yah, to de red snow," answered the boy slowly; "no Indian ees go pas' de red snow."

There was another silence. Kingsley ran his hand lightly down a tawny pelt that hung in the doorway. "Miss Hunter showed me that other cougar skin," he said. "She thinks you saved her life." He paused a grave moment, still stroking the fur. "And I know the story of this one. It's the pelt of the one you faced on that log crossing over the Des Chutes. You stopped to take careful aim, with the brute snarling, and the log dipping and heaving to the freshet underneath. And when he dropped no one else would have plunged into the flood as you did; not even to save this skin."

Mose's lips parted in his fleeting smile. "Dat ees not good plas to swim by Laramie's claim; monjee, no."

Yelm Jim shook his head slowly, and for the first time broke his silence with a profound, "Ugh."

"It was all the woods afloat that day," said Kingsley, "Myers told me—and the drift tearing down a current gone mad." He paused again and his glance moved to a great shaggy trophy against the matting on the farther wall. "And that," he added, "must be the pelt of the cinnamon bear you met up in the hills, single-handed, with just your knife."

"Nawitka." A sudden fire leaped in the old chief's eyes. "Hy-as close peltry. Mose hy-as shookum tumtum. Hy-as skookum."

"Mose has the strong heart," interpreted Kingsley. "Strong heart, yes. I tell you I'd have paid a stiff price to see that encounter."

"It ees good skin," said Mose, simply. "Oh, ya-as, for sure."

"See here, Mose—" the young man drew nearer—"in the face of all this you can't make me believe you're afraid of Rainier."

"A'm not 'fraid anyt'ing dese woods; bear, cougar, hi-yu water, snow, doan' mek me 'fraid. But Tyee Sahgalee, ugh." Mose drew his shoulders high in eloquent conclusion, and resuming his place on the couch, turned his face.

Kingsley laughed once more. "Oh, well, think it over. We shall start for the mountain anyway, whether we have a guide or not. We shall break camp the day after to-morrow. Let me know if you make up your mind to go, Mose; and you had better look at those blankets. They are pretty fine."

He turned away then, taking the river trail, and, as he went, his lips shaped a gay whistle. Once, as he approached his camp, he turned from the path and stepped out on a fallen fir that served as a footbridge to a green island, and looking up-stream saw the splendor of a northern sunset on the mighty dome. "I don't wonder they believe it," he said. "I don't wonder."

Almost an hour later Mose also stopped at this crossing and lifted his eyes to the mountain. It loomed, vast, white, symmetrical against the darkening east, its consecrated summit touched with a holy fire. He waited while the glory paled to opal and to a cold silver. When he turned from the log his lips set in a thin line; his eyes narrowed; his face hinted of cruelty.

Laramie's hounds had followed him; they crept through the underbrush at heel. But suddenly, on the edge of the mam trail, he stopped and laid his hand on one of them. "Back, Pichou," he said. "Monjee, down, down, so."

He remained almost hidden by a tangle of alder, while two riders passed. Neither noticed him; the teacher was talking, and Stratton, though he might have lifted his arm and touched the boy, turned his head to watch her face. They moved slowly, at a walk, until the thoroughbred, sighting the waiting figure, started, and, dancing, crowding the black, circled suspiciously by. Then, directly, both horses broke into a light canter, taking advantage of the bit of wider track.

Mose stepped out into the trail and stood looking after them, but his gaze rested on Stratton's mount. He loved the thoroughbred, coveted him, every inch of the long sleek body, the slender limbs, the swelling chest, the dappled shading, that, like a reflection of leaves on a forest pool, ran through the shining, chestnut coat. Surely there was never another like him. Even among those fine herds of which Yelm Jim boasted this horse must stand the chief, the glory of the whole Palouse plains, the envy of the proudest Yakima.

He walked on towards the bend around which the horses had disappeared. The noise of the river was in his ears. After a while the air grew resinous with burning firboughs, and finally, through the trees, he caught the glow of Kingsley's camp-fire. He and his wife had chosen to pitch their tents here on the bank of the Nisqually, rather than to share the cramped quarters of the settler.

She was seated with the teacher on a log in the full light of the blazing boughs, when Mose stopped on the edge of the open to reconnoiter, and he saw instantly their resemblance to each other. The two men, resting a little apart, listened amusedly to their eager conversation, while nearer, but to the right, Mill Thornton stood with his hand at the bit of the young sorrel, waiting for a last word with Samantha Myers.

She had joined the camp to "help an' hev er little fun." And she was a slim, graceful girl—"all tech an' go," Eben would have told you—with the beautiful color that is as delicate as the tints of a seashell, and yet impervious to life out-of-doors. Her hair, as fine as corn silk, was pale red, and when she bent over the tin reflector, in which she was cooking some very light rolls, her head seemed to catch the vital charm of the flames.

"But," Thornton was saying, "kem to think of it, I never see er Myers yet that wasn't er good cook. Ther's your Uncle Eben, when he's driv to it, he kin stir up a flapjack, an' turn her at eggsactly ther minute. Beats all. Yes," he resumed in afterthought, "take 'em as er fambly, ther Myerses is er pretty smart crowd; but you, well, I don't keer how many's on ther tree, Samanthy, you're ther peach."

She stood erect and flashed him a look that startled the boldness from his young eyes. "Mebbe I am, Mill," she said, gently, "but I bet, even ef you do think so, you wouldn't spare the sorrel long 'nough fur me to ride ter Rainier."

"No," he answered, flushing, "no, I wouldn't. She ain't well 'nough broke. You oughter not ask me."

"I'd resk her," she urged still, sweetly, and smiled into his troubled face; "I'd love ter ride her, Mill. But," she went on after a pause, and shrugging her shoulders, drew herself aloof, "you're jest like Jake. He's turrible 'fraid I'd get Ketchem killed."

"And yourself, too," he said warmly.

"But Uncle Eben," she added, "he 'lows I kin ride. He ain't so powerful scared 'bout—Ginger."

With this she laughed, her hands on her hips, her elbows shaking, and Thornton, himself laughing deeply, in keen appreciation, turned to set his foot in the stirrup. "You're all right, Samanthy," he said. "You're all right, but I 'low it wa'n't a peach I meant; it was jest er sassy sweetbrier rose. It's so blame' innercent lookin' an' soft, but er feller can't tech it 'ithout feelin' ther thorns."

The horse started, but she tripped after him a step to say softly, "Say, Mill, why don't you call it eglantine?"

He wheeled. "Who calls it eglantine?"

She laid a warning finger on her lip. "Mr. Stratton. But I never sensed what he was talkin' 'bout tell he showed me that ther sweetbrier growin' ther by the table."

"Was he meanin' you?"

She started back to the reflector, but paused to nod her head over her shoulder; a hundred imps danced in her eyes. "I'd love ter hear you call me that, Mill. My stars—eglantine!"

Her lips bubbled laughter; it followed him, teasing, taunting, as he rode on through the wood.

Mose, passing him, stalked into the open and towards the farther group. Kingsley waved his hand in careless recognition, and rising, threw back his tent-fly and drew out the blankets. "Well, Mose," he said, "what do you think of these?"

The boy bent to feel their texture gravely. "Dey ess plent' good 'nough blankets, monjee, ya-as, an Yelm Jim ees tell me—go. But Tyee Sahgalee ees goin' be hy-as mad. Sacré, it ees pos'ble he ees keel you. Den, merci, some more white man doan' lak go Rainier."

He turned with this and stalked swiftly back into the gloom. Alice rose in astonishment. Kingsley laughed. "If I should lose myself over a precipice," he said, "or drop into a crevasse, I suppose he would believe it was all the vengeance of his Indian God."

"But," she answered, "his father is a devout Catholic. The priest is making an acolyte of Mose." She sank back, helplessly, into her place. "I—I suppose it's impossible for him to grasp everything"—she was thinking of Laramie and the globe—"at once."

Her sister leaned towards Kingsley. A sudden apprehension rose in her great, dark eyes, and her voice, in emotion, dropped to contralto notes. "I wish you would give up that idea of trying for the summit," she said.

He laughed again, tossing his fine head. "Oh, don't bother, Louise; I shall be safe enough with Stratton along. He never takes a risk."

Stratton smiled and adjusted the rolled blankets to his back, leaning on them comfortably. "The Captain's right," he said. "He knows me. I always ask myself first, 'Is it safe?' And then, 'Is it worth while?'"

The teacher looked at him a searching moment and arched her brows. Then she reached and lifted her sister's guitar from the end of the log. Her fingers trailed briefly over the strings and settled in a thread of tune. She repeated the accompaniment, singing softly, inviting Kingsley's tenor.

"She shone in the light of declining day,

Each sail was set, and each heart was gay."

And presently the other man hummed an undernote, but Louise was silent. She had changed her position a little, clasping her hands loosely around her knee, with her face slightly lifted and turned to the darkening wood. It was the face of a dreamer, rapt, sensitive, who peopled the shadows, and to whom the many voices of the night tuned in unbroken symphony.

In the interlude Kingsley turned to her. "Where is your voice, Louise? We need the contralto."

She started and looked at him, smiling. It was then she resembled Alice. The expression was there and the charm; but softened, finer, as the painting of a master may be reproduced in pastel.

Her voice was beautiful. She took up the song, subduing her notes to her sister's lighter compass, but the music, that had been simply pleasing, assumed, suddenly, the touch and finish of grand opera.

For the white squall rides on the surg-ing wave, And the

bark is gulph'd in an o-cean's grave, For the

white squall rides on the surg-ing wave, And the

bark is gulph'd in an o-cean's grave, in an

o-cean's grave, in an o - - ocan's grave.

Music fragment

CHAPTER VII

THE INSTRUMENT OF TYEE SAHGALEE

The summer day breaks early in the Puget Sound country. It was not yet four by Stratton's watch when he stepped from his tent and stood analyzing the weather, but all the sky overhead was changing to yellow, and directly, while he looked, to streaks of flame. The heights, towering a thousand feet on the opposite side of the gorge, were burnished copper, and Rainier, walling the top of the canyon, warmed to amethyst and rose. Its crest, at an altitude of nearly fifteen thousand feet, was hardly seven miles distant.

But the great forest that hemmed in the small open where the camp was pitched, still gloomed in shadow, and the air was sharp with the breath of near glacier and snowfield. Stratton saw that Mose had left his blanket, gone already to bring up the horses, and the close report of a gun told that Kingsley was off in search of the early bird. Then Samantha came from the other tent and stirred the smouldering fire. She added a dry hemlock bough, watching the roused flames fasten on the resinous wood.

"Good morning, Psyche," he said.

She lifted her glance, nodding. She had a mouth like a Cupid's bow and the short upper lip twitched with enforced gravity before the shaft sped. "Ef you hed er wife, I 'low she'd get er new name 'bout every day, an' mebbe twicet. Land, it 'ud keep her busy rememberin' who she was."

She tucked her sleeves up from her tapering arms, and kneeling, dipped them deep in a bubbling pool. Stratton laughed softly, enjoying her, and lifting his bag, crossed the open seeking a warm spring, which, screened in a network of young cedars, afforded a morning plunge. All along the valley iron and soda deposits discolored the earth, and mineral water, hot or sharply cold, sparkled in crystal basins.

An hour later the little cavalcade formed in line, with Kingsley leading on his big white horse, followed by Samantha, whose clear piping voice rose in alternate upbraiding or admonition, for she rode the indifferent Ginger. Mose, mounting Yelm Jim's piebald pony, crowded the cayuse with the two pack animals; then came Louise and the teacher, while Stratton closed the rear.

The trail became more and more precipitous, switch-backing across the face of a spur, taking the edge of a cliff, breaking into sharp pitches to a rushing ford. Trunks, logs, netlike boughs, shelving rock crowded close. The head of the Nisqually and its glacier were not far off. Then finally they turned up its beautiful tributary, the Paradise. Over the stream Eagle Peak, the first of the Tatoosh Mountains, lifted a tremendous front, and boulders, hurled from it, blocked the limpid current, creating innumerable cascades. The air was flooded with drifting spray, and the wet, luxuriant earth, reflecting the sun, filled the gorge with playing color.

At last Alice drew rein near the brink fronting a great cataract. Stratton dismounted and went to tighten her horse's girth. "Are you a little afraid?" he asked.

"Afraid? Of the trail? Oh, no. I love it; it's my element. And Colonel can go anywhere. He picks his way through bogs, pits, better than I could, and he runs straight up these rocky stairs. I have only to cling on," and she laughed.

"Well, you can trust him." Stratton's glance moved from her horse to his own mount and back to the black. "Sir Donald has found his match. But, how was it that Forrest gave up his horse?"

"He hasn't. I am only keeping Colonel for him, while he is at Freeport."

"I see," said Stratton slowly, "I see. I hope if the time comes when I must part with Sir Donald, I can leave him in the same hands."

At this she swept him with a swift, critical look, ruffling her brows. "I have known Paul Forrest all my life," she said, and turned her eyes again to the cataract.

"I understand." He smiled a little, both nettled and amused. "Before I can venture to ask a favor of you, you must know and like me better than you do now."

She flashed him another look, tilting her chin. "I like you as well as I could like any American with un-American ways."

"'I like you as well as I could like any American with un-American ways.'"

For an instant he betrayed his surprise, then, "Well, thank you," he said; "I appreciate your frankness; and perhaps you are right. My mother was more a French woman than an American; she was a Creole of the Mississippi. And my grandfather, on the other side, was a factor of the Hudson Bay Company. My father, I suppose, passed over with New Georgia into the hands of the United States. After all, it is hard for most any American to tell in just what generation he began. But I admit I have lived close to the border, Miss Hunter, often on the other side. In fact I haven't always been able to determine the line."

"And I," she answered, with a gathering storm in her eyes, "I have lived all of my life close to the boundary, but in a different way. The best patriot is he who fights for his home while he defends his country, and the sun for my family rose and set in 'Fifty-four, forty or fight.' We know the line; we never crossed to the other side. My grandfather died with Marcus Whitman."

She spoke then to her horse, starting him briskly. Stratton vaulted into his saddle. "You touch-me-not!" he said under his breath. "You touch-me-not!"

Far ahead Samantha approached a second cataract. It was a perilous place, for the trail, skirting a precipice, rose from a bog in rocky and winding stairs worn smooth and slippery by continuous spray.

Kingsley's horse cleared the morass; his iron shoes struck fire from the shelving granite and he set himself to the steps. His master looked back. "Make him leap," he shouted to Samantha, and while he spoke was carried beyond a turn.

But Ginger delayed. He snuffed the ooze with disfavor. The girl jerked his muzzle high. "Heft yourself, Ginger," she shrilled, and cut him sharply on the flank. "Now, now, Ginger, get up."

And against belief, Ginger gathered himself, but the effort fell short. His forefeet grappled the rock and he sank back floundering in the ooze. The trained pack horses halted, and Mose threw himself from his pony and pushed swiftly around the bog, through underbrush, to Ginger's head. But Samantha had already slipped from her saddle, and worked herself free of the struggling horse. She moved back coolly from the abyss and emerged from the mudhole, dripping, but unhurt.

She drew a full breath and looked about her. Stratton, who had arrival, grasped the situation and drew in his horse, humorously regarding her. "Ain't I a sight?" she asked.

"Yes, Aphrodite, you are. You are a vision to haunt a man's dreams."

"I jedge you're 'bout right." She paused and the imps danced in her eyes. "But I 'low it 'ud be er turrible nightmare."

She reached and broke a low branch of hemlock, with which she began hastily to brush the mud from her skirt. Beyond the bog, Mose, who had extricated the unfortunate pony, urged him up the granite stair. His flanks were slippery with ooze. "My stars," she said, "I'm glad Mill didn't kem this trip. I'd never hear ther last of it. He'd run er joke ter death."

The ax was brought, and the bog was hurriedly bridged with corduroy for the remaining horses. Then finally they trailed out of the heavy timber into the parks of Paradise. A succession of emerald slopes opened before them, broken by clumps of amabilis fir and mountain hemlock; where a higher top rose out of a shapely mass it became a cathedral spire. Sometimes the way wound through an area of blooming heliotrope or asters; banks of gorgeous snapdragon or flaming Indian paintbrush gave color, like landscape gardening, to whole hillsides. Then behind them, pinnacle on pinnacle, closed the Tatoosh Range; a last sharp ascent and they were on that small and lofty Plateau, at an altitude of five thousand feet, since called The Camp of Clouds, with the splendor of the great summit almost overhead.

The tents were pitched; horses picketed. It was hardly mid-afternoon. "By this time tomorrow," said Kingsley, "if this weather stays with us, we shall have made and I hope passed Gibraltar."

Stratton, lounging on a blanket, looked up to the black cliff, which, rising sheer fifteen hundred feet, stood like a mighty fortress against the whiteness of the dome. "I hope so," he answered, "but, Captain, I never saw anything look so tremendously like work."

Louise rested on a grassy knob, her hands clasped loosely on her knee, inspiration in her lifted face. She hardly heard her husband's remark, or the other man's reply, but Alice started from her place beside her. "Phil," she said, "take me with you. You can't understand what it means to me, to be so near, to see the summit shining there, and go no farther. I'm very strong, Phil, and clear-headed. I'm not afraid of things. I—oh, you don't understand, but the mountain seems to beckon."

Kingsley walked a restless turn. "I do understand," he said. "I feel it myself. But we don't know what we are going through, and we can't be sure of the weather an hour ahead; clouds are manufactured right here at a moment's notice. But wait, don't tease, and we'll compromise. I'm going off now to reconnoiter. I believe the most feasible start is from that ridge across this valley of the Paradise, but I want to be sure. There'll be no time to waste in doubling back for fresh starts to-morrow. And Mose has been up that way; he says, with care, we can use the horses as far as the old snow. A glacier cuts in there, probably the source of the Cowlitz, and he thinks we should be able to reach it in a couple of hours. I'll take you that far—to the glacier."

At this Mose started from his recumbent position on the earth. He threw out his arms in protest. "No, no, Mees," he said. "It ees bes' you doan' go dare. Sacré, no."

"I'm not afraid," she answered smiling, "and if I'm a trouble I'll turn back. I promise."

"You doan' be some tro'ble, Mees," he said quickly. "No, no, it ees dat Tyee Sahgalee ees goin' be mad. Mebbe he ees mek dis mountain burn an' break an' fall down. Monjee, monjee, Mees, you can' ride quick 'nough away."

She laughed, shaking her head. "I don't believe that, Mose," she said, "and you won't, after we have been there. Tyee Sahgalee don't care how many of us go creeping up there, any more than we care about the ants and spiders that crawl to the cabin door."

"You mean it is you who don't care," said Stratton. "You are ready to take the risks, whatever they are. And if you are determined to go on braving Providence, or Tyee Sahgalee, or whoever it is, the rest of the day, I'm going to join the expedition; that is, unless Mrs. Kingsley is afraid to stay here alone with Samantha."

"Oh," answered Louise, at last awake to the situation, "I want you to go."

"I thought so," and he smiled. "I've proved something of a mascot on occasion, and I'll look after the Captain."

The horses were brought and presently they were trailing away up the pathless slopes in the wake of the piebald pony; fording countless streams, leaping them, sinking in pitfalls through treacherous banks of bloom. When, switchbacking up a lofty rise, Alice ventured to look down, all the colored breadth of Paradise park unfolded like a map, and the dome gathered majesty at every turn. They gained a shoulder, rounded a curve, and before them stretched the levels of a plateau carpeted with snow. Then, as they moved across this field, mountain on mountain opened, shading to blue distance. Through a gap, out of a woolly cloud, shone the opal crown of Adams, and presently, far off St. Helens rose like a floating berg on an uptossed sea.

They dismounted at the foot of a knob flanked by loose rock. The red stain of old snow was under their feet and beyond the spur shone the clean, blue-green edge of the glacier. "We are higher than the treeline, now," said Philip, "and above the clouds."

She drew a breath of delight, lifting her glance to the near dome. "And it looks as though we could reach the summit in fifteen or twenty minutes. Oh, Phil, come, let's go."

Kingsley laughed. "We haven't climbed nine thousand feet; the hardest third of the ascent is above us. Don't you remember, the only two men who ever made that summit were half a day in just passing Gibraltar. We may find it no longer passable."

While his look rested on the grim fortress a thin cloud rose like smoke from its base. It covered the cliff swiftly and trailed across the dome. "Out of nothing, without notice," and he shook his head; "that's what I've heard."

He turned. Stratton was busy searching for a safe hitching-place for his horse; he never stood well. But Mose had stepped nearer Kingsley. The boy's shoulders were inclined forward, and his eyes, in that instant, were those of a crouching animal about to spring.

"Well, Mose," he said carelessly, "your Tyee Sahgalee is hiding his face. I suppose you think we've come far enough. But we'll show him."

He moved on with Alice up the knob, and Stratton joined them. But presently Mose stalked by leading the way to the glacier. His face had the gray look of fear, but his lips were set in the thin line that gave him an older, sinister touch, the shadow of cruelty.

He moved swiftly and surely. He did not once look back. He gave no direction or warning. They followed, slipping and stumbling through the moraine, and gaining the ragged brow of the knob, found themselves suddenly on the brink of a mighty precipice. Far, far down, the infant Cowlitz sprang into life and struggled out between stupendous columns and needles. Locked in the opposite pinnacled cliffs shone the sheer, blue-seamed front of the glacier, and the throes that gave the river birth resounded through the gorge.

Stratton uncoiled the spare lariat he carried, and taking an end, with Philip closing, and the girl between, drew slowly along the rim. Mose, curving far ahead, came out on the slippery incline of the glacier. Finally he stopped under a great upheaval of ice, and resting against a block, waited, with his back turned to them and his face lifted to the clouding dome.

Behind them another cloud formed over the Tatoosh Mountains, driving fast to meet the advancing column from Gibraltar; and, in a little while, when they had come out on the ice, and made slow headway up the tilting surface from the abyss, mist lifted swiftly, flooding, giving immensity to the darkening gorge. Kingsley walked a trifle in advance of Alice, with Stratton abreast of him. Suddenly Mose's tracks, on a recent light snowfall which had offered foothold, swerved, and both men stopped. They were on the brink of a narrow, deep, incredibly deep, crevasse.

Alice moved back, shivering. She looked, a mute question trembling on her lips, at Mose. But he continued to stand, oblivious, with his eyes fixed, expectantly, on the clouding dome.

"See here," called Philip, "see here; next time you let us know." Then his glance returned to the crevasse. "Reminds me of a tremendous white watermelon," he said, "with just one thin, clean slice gone."

"Yes?" questioned Stratton, smiling, "it strikes me differently. I thought right away of some curious metal, with just enough taken, by some nice process, to shape a gigantic blade."

"A blade, yes," said Alice, "for the hand of Tyee Sahgalee."

Stratton's eyes met hers amusedly. He wondered if she was capable of superstition. "Even then," he said, "it is only a surface impression, lost the moment you look down. It's an ice-crevasse; nothing else." He turned to Kingsley, who was already studying the glacier ahead. "Of course this will not delay us to-morrow, Captain, but it is time, now, to turn back."

"In a moment. There's a streak on there that bothers me. Looks like a more serious break. I want to see it at closer range. Wait here; I won't be fifteen minutes."

He moved back impetuously, and, giving himself short headway, took the crevasse in a leap. Showers of loosened ice clinked down from the rim. Most of the particles struck the sides that closed in twenty feet below, and rebounding, dropped again and sent back faint echoes from the last level of the abyss.

Stratton stood watching Philip up the glacier, but presently, Alice drew away from the crevasse and turned to look back down the gorge. The sun no longer shone. All that brilliant vista of opal peak and amethyst spur, shading to blue distance, was curtained in closing sheets of mist. There a great crag loomed an instant and was gone. Here an uptossed pile of ice-blocks flashed a sudden prismatic light and grew dim. Then they themselves were wrapped in a noiseless, drenching cloud.

At the same moment she was startled by Stratton's brief note of surprise and felt behind her a sudden jar. She turned. Mose was hurled sprawling at her feet, and, clutching her skirt, was up instantly, panting, with quivering nostril, eyes ablaze. Then, in the recoil, Stratton reeled on the brink of the crevasse, recovered, stumbled on breaking crust, and went down.

She stood for an interminable moment, waiting, listening, numbed, body and mind. Then she was conscious that Mose was going, and she went after him a few steps, calling his name. But his receding shape drifted faster and faster, a fading shadow in the mist. She turned back, lifting her voice in a great cry to Philip. And she was answered from the abyss.

She dropped to her knees and crept close to look down. Stratton was there, where the pale, green walls narrowed. He rested wedgelike, caught at the armpits. He looked up and saw her. "Be careful," he said, "I am all right."

Instantly the executive in her rose. "I have the lariat," she said.

"Fasten it to the ice where Mose stood," he called. "I can work along that far."

He remembered that the rope was new and strong, one he himself had selected as a reserve in picketing his own spirited horse. The question was whether the ice would take his weight. He worked carefully, laboriously along by shoulder and elbow, his body swinging from the waist, starting a rain of ice at every move. At last, where the wall crumbled, leaving a ledge, he was able to draw himself to his knees. He cut foothold with his knife, and other niches higher up for his hands, and pulled himself erect on the slippery shelf.

Beyond him the chasm widened between sheer walls, and it was in this shaft that the lowered rope hung. It swung for a moment, like a failing pendulum, and each oscillation, though he stood alert, missed his reach a little more. The girl, peering into the abyss, understood, and again disappeared. The line was drawn up, and presently it dropped almost at his shoulder. He caught the end and, looking up, met her eyes over the rim. "That's better," he said.

"Wait—one moment," she called and was gone once more. She did not return this time, but her voice came to him, "Now, now, all ready."

The lariat tightened. It creaked, ground on the edge of the chasm; ice chips fell ceaselessly. He swung out. He was a big fellow, heavy. Would the support hold? Would Mose, his fury cooled, be neutral? Why, yes, surely the boy was even setting himself to ease the strain. He could feel an unmistakable give and pull above on the rope, as he climbed, hand over hand.

He gained the top. He reached a palm around a slight pinnacle, for a final grasp on the line, and pulled himself slowly out on the surface of the glacier. He was a strong man, physically, a man of steady nerve, one accustomed to take risks with Nature, as in those times a man of the Northwest must, but what he saw, in that brief pause, sent a shiver through him. He closed his eyes like one brought suddenly into intense light.

The rope was fastened, as he had directed, to a thick column in the upheaval, but it stretched diagonally to the projection on the brink of the crevasse. And it was Alice, not Mose, who steadied it, throwing her weight on it, twisting it on her hands, digging her heels in a shallow cleft, straining back to ease the pressure on the knob. Suppose the support had given way; suppose he had dragged her—this brave girl, all life, charm, loveliness—down to destruction. It was horrible to think of. Horrible.

Seeing him safe, she relaxed her hold and drew back, making way for him. She breathed deeply, her chest heaving, and a moisture not of the cloud clung to her lip, her brow in drops.

He pulled himself together and got to his feet. He did not speak to her, then; he could not. But he put his hand to his mouth and lifted his voice in a great hail. Kingsley responded, but his "Hello," came faintly, through billows of mist. The calls were repeated. "We cannot wait," Stratton said. "We must follow that rascal's tracks down, while they last, to the horses."

"What made Mose do it?" she asked. "Oh, what made him?"

"Why, just Indian, I suppose; or say he was an instrument, self-appointed, of his Tyee Sahgalee. But he shall be punished." He closed his lips over the word, and a heat, like the flash of a blade, leaped in his eyes. But when he took her hands to help her to her feet the look changed. The light returned, yet softened, steady, and currents of tenderness, long pent in the man, surged to his face. Her palms were bruised, cut, cruelly. He lifted them, one, and then the other, swiftly, very gently, to his lips. "You did this—for me," he said. "You could do it—for me."

"Of course," she answered quickly, and drew the hands away, "I must have done my best for anyone—for Mose, if things had been reversed. But, if I hadn't been able, Phil would have come back in time; no doubt he could have seen a better way."

She met his look briefly, but long enough for him to fathom the clear depths of her eyes; and suddenly, before her dauntless white spirit, his own soul, for the first time, shrank. It was as though another unsounded abyss yawned between them, that the exigency of this hour could not bridge.

They hurried on then, groping and slipping down the glacier, taking Mose's trail. Sometimes they stopped while Stratton renewed his shout, waiting always for Kingsley's answer, and they knew when he had crossed the crevasse in safety, and that he followed on to the gorge.

They made the rocky knob and finally, out of obscurity, she caught Colonel's familiar neigh. The call shrilled again, inquiring, peremptory. But when they came to the end of the moraine where they had left the horses, they found them gone.

The neigh was repeated once more, coming back faintly, from far across the snowfield. "Mr. Stratton," she cried, "what has happened? Where is Mose going?"

"Over the mountains to the Palouse plains, I haven't a doubt," and the blade flashed again in his eyes. "It's the first thing a halfbreed does, and they always drive stolen horses over there; it is impossible to find them among those big, feeding bands of the Yakimas. He will stampede the rest in the valley, and Yelm Jim will probably meet him somewhere below the springs and help him take them through the Pass."

She stood for a moment with her head high, lips set, looking with storming eyes into the mist. Then, "There isn't any time to waste," she said. "We must take him this side of the springs." And she began to trail the horses on across the snow.

"I wish there was a chance of it," said Stratton, "but you will only spend yourself uselessly. You are miserably tired now. The horses will make the down grade to the springs very fast, and you must see that the trail through the timber, afoot, is simply impossible at night. We should bury ourselves in one of those mudholes or plunge over some cliff. We could never make the fords."

But she hurried on. There fell a long silence. It grew rapidly colder; the winds freshened, tearing the cloud-wrack, driving it this way and that, bringing the ragged ends together in bursts of hail or flurries of snow. The girl's drenched skirts hampered her, still she pressed resolutely on. Once she said, "An accident somewhere might delay the band." And Stratton caught at the hope. He told her Mose would probably try to mount Sir Donald, the fleetest horse, and that he had some unexpected tricks. He was as full of coquetry as—well—a pretty woman, though as easily managed, if a man knew him.

It was twilight and they were descending the final pitch into the park when Kingsley at last overtook them. The camp-fire, which Samantha had kindled with infinite difficulty on the plateau, burned like a beacon in the gloom. "You should have seen that second crevasse," he said. "It was tremendous. No way over, no way around; I tramped both directions to see. We've simply got to choose another route, to-morrow. But what became of the horses?"

"Mose took them." It was Alice who answered. "He took Colonel. But I shall find him. I've got to find him if I have to walk every step of the way over the mountains and through the Palouse. You know how much Paul thinks of his horse, Philip. Oh, I can never face him; I can never tell him—the truth."

She started on uncertainly, stumbled, and fell. Stratton lifted her, and carried her a few steps over a rough place. "You mustn't trouble so much," he said gently, "We are going to find that black if it takes a year. Yes, we are and punish that Klickitat."