Читать книгу Whispering Leaves - Alex Philip - Страница 5

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THE chill night air aroused Arlen from his stupor. Shivering, he groggily felt his way to the sleeping-bag and buried his aching head in its folds. He did not sleep much for the remainder of the night and woke from his fitful slumber next morning—woke a half hour before daylight. Immediately he thought of last night’s occurrence. There was an unreality about the memory, something incredible about the whole affair, so that it would have been easy for him to believe he had imagined it. But when he felt the lump on the top of his head; saw the wide slit in the locked duffle bag and its contents lying in scattered heaps, he knew that it was no figment of his imagination.

While he busied himself with breakfast preparations he groped for a solution of the puzzle that had been further deepened by last night’s attack. His bag had been thoroughly searched, but as far as he could see nothing had been taken. What had they expected to find? He touched the top of his head gingerly. Another score to settle with Hendricks and his Chinaman.

Arlen’s eyes hardened. Before last night’s cowardly attack he had hated Hendricks with a bitterness that was foreign to his make-up, but now he felt a kindling madness in his soul. He itched to pull Hendricks’ long, hooked nose. He wanted to bash it in, level with his face, or kick his feet out from under him and see him lying in the dust.

A sound from the trail attracted his attention. Not ten feet away a huge dog came to a standstill and except for the hair that bristled along his backbone stood as still as a brazen statue, head raised, ears pointed, heroic in pose and proportion. He looked like a long, lean greyhound, with his black muzzle, deep chest, slender waist and shaggy grey fur. The great wolf-like form stood motionless for a long moment while man and dog appraised each other.

“Hello, old boy.”

The dog stretched out his nose, just perceptibly, and sniffed. He took a step forward and sniffed again. Then, little by little, the great plume of a tail began to wag. The wag became faster. Arlen laughed with pleasure. He slapped his thigh and commanded, “Come here!” At his voice and gesture the dog came, folded back on his haunches, looking for all the world like a friendly grey wolf, and gravely extended one huge paw.

“You’re a friendly beggar,” Arlen commented, stroking the dog’s big head. He surveyed the animal’s lean flanks, slender waist and long legs. “And I’ll bet you can show some speed.”

The dog’s presence, the young man decided, meant that he could not be far from Lightning Creek Ranch. He further cemented his friendship by feeding the remnants of his breakfast to his visitor, and as the first rose colour of the rising sun tinted the east he lifted his pack to his chafed shoulders and with the big dog taking the lead set off down the road.

Gradually the trees fell away before him and presently, with an almost startling suddenness, he stood on the brink of an eminence, and the wide expanse of Cayuse Valley and lake lay spread before him. The lake, all blues and violets under the glow of the eastern sky, stretched for miles in a long curve, its further end hidden from sight behind the shoulder of a mountain. Along the shores poplars, birches and spruce ranged themselves like sentinels against the curtain of water.

To the right and beyond the creek lay the Lee place—for undoubtedly from Logan’s description, this was Lightning Creek Ranch. In the clear air the dilapidated log barn, corrals and sprawling out-buildings seemed only a stone’s throw distant. Back on a green hill, just visible through the leaves, bulked a huge log house, its windows showing lemon-coloured in the light of dawn. Behind the ranch the ridges were heavily timbered, and the sweeping meadows below this, right to the edge of the lake, were lush and green. A disconnected irrigation flume, evidently recently built, followed the snake-like course of Lightning Creek to a group of modern farm buildings. Of course this was the Chinaman’s ranch—that was certain.

The road from the lake to the ranch buildings was nothing but two ruts with grass between. Evidently the road was the line between the two holdings. Lin Hung’s land was enclosed by modern wire fences, while Lee’s was circled by rail fences, rotting and crumbling. Arlen walked up this road through an apparently interminable vista of cottonwoods and poplars, through a heaven of smells—cattle smells, and the smell of sweet, clean grass, stable smells and the smells of hoof-turned earth, of sunlight and the sweet pungent odour of cottonwood leaves.

Some of these huge cottonwoods drew his attention. Their gnarled roots spread a few feet and then seemed to plunge straight down, and their giant boles terminated in a wide spread of fragrance against the glorious blue of the Cariboo sky. There was, probably, two-hundred years or more packed inside their bark in circles. In that respect they were time-keepers, but Arlen thought of them more as guardians of the decrepit old mansion, protecting the house from bitter winds of winter and spreading shade and coolness over all during summer.

In a close-cropped pasture on the Lee place cattle grazed and in a corner of this same field was a small cemetery enclosed by a fence of split cedar. Most of the graves were grass-grown and their marble slabs dim and grey with age, but two of them seemed fresh, and showed signs of recent care.

Near the fence there was a horse picking grass. The creature raised its head, inspected the stranger, then resumed with utter indifference. The animal, although small, had the lines of a thoroughbred; golden-coated, a star on its forehead, burly shoulders running down to an angle from bony withers; between the arms of the two forelegs a deep chest—lung power; and tapering, satiny long neck and small feet.

With a deep bark the huge dog leaped the fence and rushed toward the feeding horse. Arlen shouted a quick command which went unheeded, but his alarm was quickly dispelled as horse and dog tore about the enclosure with the dog weaving in and out under the horse’s head, barking joyously.

He passed through a tousled orchard, then through a slovenly barnyard where old-fashioned farm implements and wagons were left standing out in the weather. Pigs grunted and squealed, and from a ramshackle barn cows lowed softly. A rooster crowed and instantly other cocks answered his challenge to the day; torpid stars faded in the sky and wild birds sang in full chorus.

There was an air of desolation about the house. It held that unhappy, bewildered aspect which an abandoned farm usually wears. The ledge under the front door was grown up with weeds. It was plain that this part of the building was not in use. The curtainless windows stared at Arlen coldly as though resenting his intrusion. He passed the sagging front door with an instinctive feeling that it had not been opened since the last funeral. A thin pennon of smoke drifted above the trees from the rear of the house.

Rounding the corner of the building he stopped short. A girl with her back to him stood feeding a flock of multi-coloured hens. The first thing he noted was the sun shining on her hair which was curly and of a peculiar light golden colour and it hung below her shoulders. Immediately he knew what had given her hair its peculiar shade—the Cariboo sun had shot her golden hair with streaks of lighter colour.

She turned quickly as the dog rushed toward her.

“Why, Shep, you bad dog, where have you been all—”

Then she gazed in amazement at the man the Gods had wafted to her door at break of day. Her blue eyes, these wide apart, startled, amazed but direct, continued to stare at the stranger. She wore a pair of men’s khaki trousers tucked into the top of worn, heavy boots; a blue denim shirt open at the neck showed the deep bronze of her slender, sun-tanned throat. But her hands drew and held Arlen’s attention. The finger joints of the small hands were thickened, the palms calloused and hard. Her face was arresting and certainly pretty but a certain hardness of feature belied her youth. She was a grave little figure, as sombre and forlorn as the bare mountain that towered behind her and caught the first softening tinge of sun from the eastern sky.

“Are you Miss Lee?”

The girl nodded, her eyes still wide in amazement.

Arlen dropped his pack to the doorstep. “May I stay here for a few days?” he asked.

For a moment the girl hesitated. “Well, I’m afraid we’re not prepared—I—”

Arlen hastened to assure her that he was not hard to please.

“You’ll have to take us as you find us,” she warned him. “We are pretty much alone here.”

He liked the way she spaced her syllables. Her voice, too, was low-pitched, a round, smooth voice that somehow harmonized with her graceful figure. Certainly not the voice one would expect to hear in the backwoods.

She seemed ill at ease and he spoke of commonplace matters in an attempt to relieve her embarrassment. He told her of his hike over the trail, how he had camped overnight almost in sight of the ranch and of his meeting with her dog—but omitted to mention the night attack.

With a wide sweeping motion of her arm she flung the last handful of grain to the feeding fowls and invited her guest into the house. As he had surmised, only a small part of the big house was in use. The room into which she ushered him answered the purpose of both living-room and kitchen. The room was big and hospitable, with its worn but clean curtains billowing out with the breeze from the open window whence came streaming sunlight to display the worn, old-fashioned furniture.

Some of the aged chairs had been re-upholstered in more modern trappings by amateurish but not unskilful hands.

A huge rock fireplace, the opening sealed with a board frame, its mantel littered with ore specimens, framed photographs of bygone days of ox teams and mining, nearly filled one end of the room. A sagging kitchen stove, its oven door hinged with haywire, stood in one corner near a wooden sink, and on nails driven into the logs hung a motley array of battered cooking utensils. The floor was bare and unpainted, and around the stove and sink the tread of feet had worn hollows from which the heads of old-fashioned cut nails protruded.

An old man, bent and twisted like the wind-tormented apple trees outside the window, came slowly from a room in the rear, shuffling along in heavy, mud-stained brogans, the uppers cracked and worn. His suit of overalls hung in tatters but there was a fine serenity and a proud poise about the old figure. The face of the man was not deeply lined or fissured, but its entire surface was a complexity of the finest wrinkles radiating in all directions. His hair rifted around his sunken temples like snow, but despite his great age his deep-set blue eyes were still bright and keen and intelligent—there was no sign of a flickering mentality.

Arlen accepted the proffered hand and stood looking down at the venerable figure. Here was an ambassador of another age—the early days of the Cariboo gold rush with its red-shirted, bewhiskered miners, six-shooters, dance halls and ox teams. A whole country had once paid tribute to the physical prowess and business acumen of the man who stood before him. There was a wistfulness in the lean, tanned face with the pebbled webs of wisdom in each corner of his eyes, and a desolate sort of dignity about the gnarled frame in worn clothes.

“Glad to have you with us,” Lee declared in a voice that was astonishingly deep and virile. “Are you a mining man?” he added hopefully, and was visibly disappointed at the reply.

“I want you to see some of the stuff I uncovered yesterday,” he said eagerly. He took a bit of rock from his pocket and passed it to Arlen.

“That’s the best I’ve hit yet,” he went on, his eyes shining. He looked earnestly up at the young man. “If I had the money to go on with—hire men and machinery—I could make a fortune.”

Arlen knew nothing about ore or mining. He turned the bit of rock in his hand. “Looks good,” he agreed.

The aged face brightened. “It’s the best prospect in the Cariboo. All I need is a little money—”

“Grandad,” Anne interrupted, her voice weary, “You better wash up. Breakfast will soon be ready.”

Arlen’s eyes travelled from the ancient, lonely toiler, bowed with a quarter of a century of unrewarded labour, to the sad-faced girl with the work-worn hands. Here was all that remained of a proud family; a family that would soon be dispossessed of their home—a home carved from the wilderness into which two generations of the Lees had poured their life-blood. Arlen was stirred by a curiously poignant sense of pity.

Logan’s figure darkened the doorway. He started slightly as his eyes encountered the visitor but he understood Arlen’s cautioning wink and there was no sign of recognition as he entered the room. Anne clumsily introduced them and the men shook hands.

Anne took down a nest of milk pails from a shelf and moved toward the door.

“I’ll milk for you,” Logan volunteered.

“You needn’t bother,” the girl replied coldly.

Logan flushed. He reached out and took two pails from her arm. Anne looked at him reproachfully and passed outside.

“I just got back from Pinchbeck yesterday,” Logan explained in an aside to Arlen, “and Anne is sore at me because I was drinking.”

Logan’s manner was not that of the garrulous, boastful, pugnacious Logan who had visited Hickman’s office in Vancouver. Quiet, unobtrusive, low-voiced, Arlen was surprised at the change in the man.

The big dog lay sunning himself in the yard.

“Time for the cows, Shep,” the girl said.

The animal was off like a shot. He ran in long, graceful leaps along the lane fence, sprang with effortless ease into the pasture among the cows. A few short, sharp barks and the cows moved into the lane to the barn. The dog took up his station behind the last swinging tail. The leader, a big Holstein, stopped at sight of the stranger leaning over the rail, but the dog started her again—that fellow was all right. Two dry cows tried to enter, but Shep nipped their heels and sent them back—he knew his business.

Logan rolled aside the barn door with a noise like distant thunder and the cows filed in. Arlen stood at the door listening to the pleasant sounds of the barn—the cows nosing their grain and munching it luxuriously as they stretched their necks; the soft tinkle of chains; the thump of their feet as they moved about; and, most musical of all, the rhythmic flow of milk into the tin pails.

When the girl was about to begin on her third cow Arlen took the pail from her.

“I want to find out if I’ve forgotten how to do it,” he smiled.

She watched him as he drew up the stool and sat down, pail resting between his shins. There were some few preliminaries on the part of the volunteer hand and then, zim, zim, zim, streams of milk suddenly pelted the bucket. Its sound changed to a heavier zoom, zoom, zoom; then to a zud, zud, zud, as the foam arose. Proud of his effort he turned his head to see if the girl was looking on. Their eyes met and Arlen grinned joyfully. The faintest trace of a smile illumined her grave face.

“I wonder if she ever laughs,” he mused. “She’d be a lot prettier if she would.”

There was a peal of thanksgiving from the pigs waiting in the yard as the men dumped the rich, unseparated milk in the pig trough. Wasteful, Arlen thought.

“They’ve got an old separator but it’s busted,” Logan informed Arlen. “Don’t make any difference anyway as there’s no market for cream or butter. Just as well to turn it into pork.”

They had just dumped the last pail when Anne called them to breakfast. They filled tin basins at a wheezy old pump and washed up at a bench just outside the kitchen door.

Before entering the kitchen Arlen stood for a moment gazing admiringly over the wide acres stretching from the sun-drenched foothills behind him to the edge of the shimmering blue lake. His feet seemed to fasten into the earth with a sense of ownership. He could see tremendous promise in this rich, old farm if it were handled right; wished it belonged to him.

In spite of the fact that he had eaten that morning he was ravenously hungry. The smells in the big room were friendly and appetising. While he ate a bowl of porridge and cream he watched the girl’s deft motions as she moved about preparing breakfast, admired the grace of her lissom body, her womanly handling of utensils.

She cut slices from the loaf on the scarred breadboard and placed them between the wires of the toaster, slid a frying-pan of sputtering eggs into a huge, cracked platter and garnished them with strips of fragrant, crisp bacon. There was no scarcity of food, but he noticed how carefully she measured out the coffee from the nearly empty can. Two or three of the coffee beans missed the lip of the antique coffee mill and rolled behind a row of tins on the table. The girl searched diligently until each one was retrieved. She felt Arlen’s eyes upon her and her tanned face took on a deeper colour.

Old man Lee, his white hair neatly brushed, his face shiny from soap and water, sat at the head of the table and talked happily of the wealth his mine would one day produce.

“I’ll make a million dollars out of it within two years,” he boasted.

Arlen, willing to provoke the man to further speech, remarked, “Stranger things have happened.”

Thus encouraged, the old man went on talking, his tone eager as a fanatic’s. He elaborated his theme of how he would find the buried creek-bed and reach the hidden lode, and Arlen listening marvelled at the stubborn persistence and bravery of the man.

Lee hurried through his breakfast.

“Got a couple of holes ready to fire so if you’ll please excuse me I’ll get back to work.”

He shuffled across the room, took a torn and faded coat from the wall and with Anne’s assistance eased his stiffened old arms into the sleeves. He made a wry face. “Getting a little bit old, Anne,” he grinned. He threw a sack on his back and moved to the door.

Anne placed her arms about her grandfather’s bent shoulders. “Please stay at home today,” the girl pleaded. “You’re working too hard.”

“Never mind, Anne,” he said, pinching her cheek. “I’ll make you a rich woman some day.”

Anne stood in the doorway watching the stooped figure plodding up the trail.

“I wish there was some way to make him give it up,” she said wearily. “He’s old and weak, but he’s pouring every ounce of his strength into that hole.”

It was Anne who bore the burdens of the farm. Condemned to poverty nearly all her life she was the sacrificial slave to her grandfather’s weaknesses. It was she who performed household miracles, who stood as a buffer between the old man and his creditors, who listened to his vainglorious boastings and smiled sadly at his promises of wealth. With nothing more valuable to her name than a pair of overalls and a calico dress she had watched him bartering their patrimony for powder and tools to use in his beloved mine. She loved the gentle old man and was loyalty itself when others ridiculed his mania for the tunnel on the barren mountain. Many times she had sought to turn him from his path, but her efforts were futile. She hated the yawning hole in the mountain, and feared it; saw in it an incubus that drained away the aged man’s strength. But when he pleaded with her she yielded to his insistence and saw the mine swallow up, year after year, the little extra money the farm afforded them. And here in the wilderness the yawning tunnel and the man had fought for years their arduous duel—the man calmly passionate and optimistic; the mountain submitting to his attentions, swallowing his unremitting toil with not the slightest convulsion to show that it felt any effect from his effort.

Arlen saw the sad light in Anne’s deep blue eyes as she stood in the doorway gazing after the gnarled figure of her grandfather. He felt a quick admiration for the stoic courage of this girl; ached with pity for her.