Читать книгу Crimson Mountain (Musaicum Romance Classics) - Grace Livingston Hill - Страница 3

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Laurel Sheridan stood right in the way as Phil Pilgrim rounded the curve and came rattling down the old road from the cow pasture where he used to sometimes drive a few cattle to the railroad junction long years ago when he was a mere boy living on his grandfather’s farm.

She was a pretty girl with a halo of gold hair and big, troubled blue eyes, and what was she doing there? This wasn’t a regular road, just a cow path to the junction. ­

Phil hadn’t wanted to take this road to-day. It held no pleasant memories. He had come here as a boy because there had been no other place for him to go when both his father and mother died. His grandfather had sent for him, and they had lived there together, a couple of sorrowful hearts, one young, one old, never even getting well acquainted with one another, and both grieving silently for the ones who were gone. Then one morning his grandfather didn’t wake up as usual at dawn, and when Phil returned from his early trip driving the cows to pasture, he found him dead in his bed with the first look of peace on the tired old face he had ever seen him wear.

The boy had walked down the mountain and gotten the undertaker and a couple of men who had been friendly to them, and they had buried the old man in the little hillside cemetery across the road and a short distance down the mountain from the house. After that Phil locked the plain little home and went down to the village and got himself a job, also a place to work for his board and room. From that time on, he began to save up till he could buy a simple stone to mark his grandfather’s resting place, a mate to the stone his grandfather had put up above his grandmother’s grave.

It was to visit that simple little burying ground, to make sure his orders had been carried out about the stone, that Phil Pilgrim had taken that road that day. Of course it was a rough road, scarcely more than a cow path in some places, but it passed both the old home and the cemetery. He wanted to stop a moment at the old house and look it over carefully, for he had received a letter the day before saying that the government was planning to build a munitions plant in that neighborhood and wanted to buy his land. He wanted to be sure whether he should sell it all or perhaps retain the house and a bit of land to rent. But it had been a sad pilgrimage and only brought back desolate days when it had seemed to him that life was nothing but a burden, young though he was.

He did not linger long after his investigations were over. With lifted hat he passed the little plot of ground at the edge of the road with its two white stones that gleamed side by side, and he drove on down the mountain rapidly, glad to be away again out into a world that was not shrouded in sorrow.

Phil brushed his hand across his forehead and eyes and drew a deep sigh. He was bidding a final good-bye to that sad youthful part of his life.

True, he had been out and away from it for a number of years now. He had worked his way through high school, working Saturdays and after school in a filling station. Later he had won a scholarship to college and had been a dedicated student there. Now he was through and had the coveted diploma, which had been his goal for his dead mother’s sake. And now suddenly the world had gone mad with war! So, he had taken the next step that duty demanded of him and enlisted. Life didn’t look any too bright, anyway, even now when he had finished doing what he had been striving for so long. He hadn’t had time for friends or relaxation, except a little dash of athletics now and then when he had found that he could make his ability to run and swim into a source of more revenue.

But now all that was over. He was a soldier. He was wearing a uniform. He was going into a new life. And if, as some of them said, the next scene would be battle, with maybe death ahead, well, what of it? Would it be any worse than all the other changes that had come into his empty, hardworking young life? Would there perhaps be heaven, as his mother had always believed, where all the hard things would be over and joy ahead forever? Well, it might be! But there must surely be some conditions to that, and he had never learned the conditions. If his mother had lived, she might have taught him. Perhaps she had tried, but she was so sorrowful during those last days after his father was gone, and she was so ill and weak! Well, if there was a way out of this maze, he would find it if he could, and work his way through, as he had worked it through other hard things. How he had gone out at night alone and practiced running, and in the dark, swimming, when his hard day’s work was over! Oh, of course that had been good for him, too, keeping him in fine trim physically in spite of his plodding days and nights of study and hard work. Yes, he would find a way through!

He wasn’t looking forward eagerly to war, yet he must take it as he had taken all the rest, a way to attain on earth, or to reach heaven if there was a heaven.

He drew a deep, heavy sigh.

Thoughts like these were unprofitable. He must get on. There were people in the village he must see. His old employer was a grim, silent man, but he had been kindly at the end and had even allowed a small bonus on the last few months’ work. He wanted to thank him for that kindness. Then there was a small bank account he must look after. A teacher in the high school to thank, who had given good advice and helped him to understand some of the difficulties that might have hindered him. He must not forget any who had been his friends. They might have forgotten him by this time, doubtless had, for the months had been long and there were many boys coming and going about the village. But still he would feel better to have hunted them all out and thanked them for their kindness.

A flight of purple grackles soared across the sky and dropped their bright iridescent blackness down among the autumn trees. They scattered on the ground, searching for favorite foods, filling the air with their strange fall sounds, those sounds that make summer seem so definitely a thing of the past and the autumn sunshine only a passing gesture. Phil turned his eyes to the scene he was passing and remembered days when he had wandered alone wishing for things that never came. There was a great flat stone by the roadside. He had sat there the morning he got the thorn in his foot and tried to extract it. There was the big tree whose gnarled roots had made an armchair where he came to study now and then when he had some hard task to master. It was cushioned with velvet moss. Sometimes when he had been sitting there for a while he would get the idea that maybe in the future something nice would happen to him and then he could forget all the gloom and drabness of his life and be really happy. Yes? He had actually believed that. And now look what was happening! Just out of college! No job, no special friends, no opportunity to forge into things and do something really worthwhile. War ahead! Just war! Life in a training camp! It hadn’t been very exciting so far. And then what? Nothing to get excited or happy about. Joy? Maybe there wasn’t any such thing as joy in this earth anyway, although he had always fancied that he saw other people having it.

Well, he mustn’t get morbid. It certainly hadn’t been a cheerful thing to come to his grandfather’s old farm and the little cemetery. Still he had to come and see that everything was all right before he went back into camp and would no longer be able to order his life as he pleased. He had to be sure he wanted to sell.

Then, with another deep sigh, he swung his car around the curve of the hill, jolting along over the stony way, and there, right ahead of him, was a car standing with its hood open and a girl in front of it looking anxiously toward him. Fool girl getting in his way! He almost ran over her! Why did girls always have to get in the way? This was no road for a girl to be on anyway, a cattle path! How did she get here?

He ground on his brakes and came to an abrupt halt before her.

"I beg your pardon," he said politely. "Are you having engine trouble?"

"Yes, but I don’t know what it is." The girl lifted her very blue eyes apologetically, and instantly he wondered where he had seen those eyes before. Yet of course that was absurd. He didn’t have much to do with girls, especially not out here in the country. He’d never had anything to do with girls, even in school, when he lived on Crimson Mountain. He was too busy studying and working. It must be something in his subconscious memory that was brought to him by the look in that girl’s eyes.

These thoughts were vaguely passing through his mind as he sprang, annoyed, from his car and went to investigate the other one. What a nuisance it was to be interrupted at this point in his journey, when he had only just so much time and quite a good many things he wanted to do before he went on his way back to camp to meet whatever was about to be the next scene in his life.

Laurel Sheridan had turned from the highway several miles back into a wooded road that she thought was the shortcut around the high hill that was familiarly known in that vicinity as Crimson Mountain because of its gorgeous color in the autumn. But Laurel did not choose that road for its beauty, although it was glowing and lovely. She was in a hurry. She was going to be late for an appointment, and she was worried. She thought she remembered that this road was supposed to be the shortcut to Carrollton. But it didn’t seem to be so short. It certainly was farther than she remembered. Could she have made a mistake? It wasn’t a very good road either, but she had come so far now she couldn’t turn back. Oh, this must be right.

So, frantically she stepped on the gas and mounted the hill, surprised at the sharp turn to the right that the road took when it ought to have turned left. She glanced at the clock in the car, calculating whether she could possibly get to that high school before it was entirely too late for her purpose.

She was two-thirds of the way up the hill, and beginning to count the distance ahead and discount time, when suddenly her car began to buck like a balky horse, and then it stopped dead!

She cast an annoyed glance at her dial. She couldn’t be out of gas, could she? Horrors! With no filling station probably till she got to the foot of the mountain on the other side. She seemed to be all turned around. Which way was Carrollton, anyway? She certainly must have taken a wrong turn somewhere. Oh, it couldn’t be her gas was out! And she was still going up. Oh, if she could only make the top of the hill, perhaps she could coast down safely and make a filling station. In vain she tried to start the car again, yet the dial showed a little gas. What a fool she had been to take this road, with no place to get help if she had trouble. This couldn’t be the old shortcut across Crimson Mountain. She hadn’t had any doubt when she turned into the dirt road. It had seemed just as she remembered it, but now as she gave a quick look around, somehow it didn’t seem so familiar. She must have made a mistake. She tried to think back to the days of her little girlhood when her class had been brought into the woods for a picnic one day. What a happy time they’d had, and how she had always looked wistfully toward that dirt road into which their cars had turned that day to bring them to the lovely woods on the top of old Crimson. The look of that rough dirt road had always held a charm for her all that next winter after the picnic, whenever they drove down the highway. To tell the truth, that was the main reason why she had turned into it to-day, although she had heard it was a shorter way, and she was in a hurry. After all, it was nearly five years since she had been in this region, and there might have been two roads. She had passed one about a quarter of a mile before she reached this one. But it had seemed to her too fine a road to lead to the old picnic place. She was positive that the picnic road of old had been a dirt road, and that first road had been paved. But of course it might have been improved since early days. Well, what should she do now? If she could only get her engine going, perhaps she could turn around and go back. Take that other road. Wouldn’t that be best?

But try as she would, she could not make her engine speak, and she drew an impatient sigh as she got out of her car and walked to the front. She was afraid of that hood. She had never succeeded in getting it open. The car had always been kept in order for her by the man at the garage, but now there was no one but herself to depend on. She hadn’t any idea what she was going to do when she got the hood open, but that was what all men did first when anything was the matter with a car—they opened the hood. So she struggled to open it and throw it back nonchalantly as she had seen the men in the filling stations do. But struggle as she might, that hood refused to open. Till suddenly the handle she held gave a lurch, and up it came! At least it came up about eight inches and then lurched back again and seemed to settle down harder than ever.

But Laurel was not a girl to give up easily, and she was becoming more and more conscious of that school committee she had promised to meet, where she was going to apply for a job. So she went at the matter more vigorously this time and finally managed to swing up that hood and anchor it. She cast a troubled glance inside that mysterious engine, but nothing came of it. She had never had experience in machinery of any sort, and none of those pipes and tubes and screws made sense to her. For the first time, it occurred to her as strange that anyone could have thought out and made a thing so complicated and that, being made, it could manage to carry people around the country. Before this she had always taken cars for granted and thought nothing about them.

And so, having walked all about that engine and studied each part carefully without getting any light, she straightened up and stood there, trying to think what she should do next. Was it thinkable that she could walk down to the village and send somebody back from a filling station or garage after her car? She hadn’t the slightest idea how far it would be, if indeed she was on the right road to Carrollton.

Then suddenly she heard the sound of a swiftly coming car. It was up around that curve ahead. She cast a quick, anxious glance at the road. It seemed so narrow, and her car was right in the middle. There was a deep gully at one side and a steep embankment edged by thick woods on the other.

And then Phil Pilgrim’s car came sweeping around the curve straight at her, and she stood petrified, her big blue eyes wide and startled.

He stopped just before he reached her.

Phil Pilgrim went over to the car and studied it a minute, swung himself in behind the wheel and tried out various parts of its mechanism with no result, swung out to the ground again and back to the engine, stooping to get a better view. Then he straightened up, looked at the girl, and said in a crisp, reproachful tone, as if it was entirely her fault, "Your generator’s shot."

"Oh!" said Laurel meekly. "Just what does that mean? What do I have to do?"

"Well, it means you’ll have to have a new generator," he said with a grim smile. "What are you doing here anyway? This isn’t a road. It’s only a cattle path." He wanted her to understand that it was none of his affair. He had business in other directions.

"Oh!" she said again breathlessly. "I didn’t know. Well, would there be someplace near here where I could telephone for one?"

His smile became a half grin, or was there a shade of almost contempt in his tone as he answered?

"Well, not exactly!" He said it crisply. "They haven’t established public telephone service yet on this highway."

"Oh, of course not," said Laurel with a timid, apologetic smile. "I ought to have known better, of course. You see, I thought this was a shortcut to Carrollton. I must have made a mistake somewhere. But at least I can walk down to the highway, can’t I? It can’t be so far away. Or is it?"

There was an appeal in her voice and her eyes that made Phil Pilgrim ashamed.

"Oh, I guess it won’t come to that," he said gruffly. He would have to take her to the town of course, and that would make no end of delay for him. What a nuisance that would be! He half wished he had not come up to Crimson himself this afternoon, but then, what would the girl have done if he hadn’t? He wasn’t a youth who had practiced looking after himself and his own interests first. His mother had taught him courtesy and gentlemanliness before she left him in this world alone.

Then suddenly, into the middle of his perplexity and the strained silence that his words had brought, came a rushing, stampeding sound of many hooves, pounding along the road around which young Pilgrim had just come. And then, appearing as suddenly as he had done, came cattle. They looked to Laurel like millions as their brown faces and wild, excited eyes surmounted by terrifying horns showed around the curve and pelted straight at her.

She cried out in terror, and then she was speechless with horror as the frightened creatures came on, led by two angry bulls escaped from their keepers, who were now running wildly in pursuit and shouting to them but only adding to the confusion.

It was not a large herd and would not have been unmanageable, perhaps, if it had not been for those two unexpected cars and the man and girl. But now the animals snorted and plunged ahead, climbing up and over one another, angrily dashing this way and that, clambering upon the running boards of the cars, and shying, startled, away. The girl stood paralyzed with fear, her brain refusing to act, every muscle frozen. An instant more and she felt she would be down beneath those awful trampling hooves, crushed and bleeding, and that would be the end!

Then just as she felt that she was losing consciousness and knew it would be impossible either to run or withstand the onslaught that was coming, strong arms behind her caught her up, away above that horde. With what seemed like superhuman strength, she was lifted up the steep embankment, above where the two cars stood.

Though barely higher than the struggling creatures, she no longer felt their hot breath on her face, and even the screaming of the cattle, the roaring of the bulls, seemed below her.

And yet the creatures were still there, struggling past in one wild melee. She could dimly feel their crowding, pushing forms jostling now and again, when one of them struggled up the bank. But they could not reach her, for the young man held her close in his arms. Her face was down on his chest, and his back and shoulders were taking the brunt of the crowding animals, his body protecting her at their every turn.

Gradually she came to herself and realized these things, feeling strangely safe there in the midst of all the confusion.

It seemed an eternity while those puffing, snorting, frightened steers were floundering frantically past them. The young man held his place on that steep hillside, now and then sliding, shoved aside, and almost falling, yet holding his footing, with Laurel in his arms. In reality it was only a very short time, for the animals were not many, and the two men and three boys who were attending them were doing their best to get them back to the road and to corral the angry bulls.

The attendants did not seem even to notice the man and the frightened girl on the bank above the cars. Or if they saw them, they had no time to look at them and wonder. They were just a part of the obstacles that had caused the confusion. Fool people who came onto a cattle road where they had no right to be! If they got frightened or hurt, it was their own fault. There was a sign at both ends of this road, and surely anybody in this age of the world could read. And if this was an accident, it wasn’t their accident, and they had no time to stop. It was their business to prevent an accident of their own. And so they presently passed on.

It seemed hardly credible that the wild, teeming creatures were gone, and the two were alone at last. Then suddenly Laurel realized that she was in the arms of a strange young man! She opened frightened eyes, almost afraid to break this blessed silence that had left them there together, alive and safe.

Pilgrim looked down at her with troubled eyes.

"Are you all right?" he asked in a low tone, almost as if those departed steers were enemies who might hear and return.

The touch of his arms around her, the tone of his voice, thrilled Laurel as nothing had ever done before, but the only reply she seemed able to make was a trembling nod. She was not a girl given to thrills or to tears, but suddenly she felt tears coming and knew they would greatly complicate the scene. She must not let them come. He would think she was a fool. She closed her eyes quickly to drive them back, but two great tears rolled out and down her cheeks.

"You are hurt!" he charged anxiously. "Did one of those beasts touch you? Did their horns reach you anywhere? I tried hard to cover you. Where are you hurt?"

"No, no, I am not hurt," she protested quickly, struggling to rise. "I was only frightened and kind of shaken up. It is silly, of course. But you were wonderful. You saved my life! You can put me down now. I’m quite all right!"

"That’s good," said Pilgrim. "I’m glad. But I guess we won’t let you down on this steep hillside. Listen! What was that?"

He lifted his head alertly and looked back toward the curve around which the cattle had come so suddenly. Then his face grew serious. "We must get out of here before another bunch of cattle comes," he said sternly. "There are two more farmers up here where they raise a few cows, and when one of the three gets a bunch ready to ship, the other two try to send some at the same time. This is the cattle path straight down to the railroad junction. They have probably arranged to have the four o’clock train stop and take on their stock. That’s the way it used to be when I lived up this way. Are you quite sure you are all right?" He gave her another intense look.

Then, without giving her opportunity to answer, he strode firmly down to the road with Laurel still in his arms, gave one quick glance behind and ahead, and put her in the seat of his own car.