She must have fallen asleep there, for when she opened her eyes it was day.
Underneath her was a lot of bedding he had found in the cabin, and tucked about
her were the automobile rugs. For a moment her brain, still sodden with sleep,
struggled helplessly with her surroundings. She looked at the smoky rafters
without understanding, and her eyes searched the cabin wonderingly for her
maid. When she remembered, her first thought was to look for the man. That he
had gone, she saw with instinctive terror.
But not without leaving a message. She found his penciled note, weighted for
security by a dollar, at the edge of the hearth.
“Gone on a foraging expedition. Back in an hour, Little Partner,” was all it
said. The other man also had promised to be back in an hour, and he had not
come, but the strong chirography of the note, recalling the resolute strength
of this man’s face, brought content to her eyes. He had said he would come
back. She rested secure in that pledge.
She went to the window and looked out over the great white wastes that rose
tier on tier to the dull sky-line. She shuddered at the arctic desolation of
the vast snow-fields. The mountains were sheeted with silence and purity. It
seemed to the untaught child-woman that she was face to face with the Almighty.
Once during the night she had partially awakened to hear the roaring wind as it
buffeted snow-clouds across the range. It had come tearing along the divide
with the black storm in its vanguard, and she had heard fearfully the shrieks
and screams of the battle as it raged up and down the gulches and sifted into
them the deep drifts.
Half-asleep as she was, she had been afraid and had cried out with terror at
this strange wakening; and he had been beside her in an instant.
“It’s all right, partner. There’s nothing to be afraid of,” he had said
cheerfully, taking her little hand in his big warm one.
Her fears had slipped away at once. Nestling down into her rug, she had smiled
sleepily at him and fallen asleep with her cheek on her hand, her other hand
still in his.
While she had been asleep the snow-tides had filled the gulch, had risen level
with the top of the lower pane of the window. Nothing broke the smoothness of
its flow save the one track he had made in breaking a way out. That he should
have tried to find his way through such an untracked desolation amazed her. He
could never do it. No puny human atom could fight successfully against the
barriers nature had dropped so sullenly to fence them. They were set off from
the world by a quarantine of God. There was something awful to her in the
knowledge. It emphasized their impotence. Yet, this man had set himself to
fight the inevitable.
With a little shudder she turned from the window to the cheerless room. The
floor was dirty; unwashed dishes were piled upon the table. Here and there were
scattered muddy boots and overalls, just as their owner, the prospector, had
left them before he had gone to the nearest town to restock his exhausted
supply of provisions. Disorder and dirt filled the rough cabin, or so it seemed
to her fastidious eye.
The inspiration of the housewife seized her. She would surprise him on his
return by opening the door to him upon a house swept and garnished. She would
show him that she could be of some use even in such a primitive topsy-turvy
world as this into which Fate had thrust her willy-nilly.
First, she carried red live coals on a shovel from the fireplace to the
cook-stove, and piled kindling upon them till it lighted. It was a new
experience to her. She knew nothing of housework; had never lit a fire in her
life, except once when she had been one of a camping party. The smoke choked
her before she had the lids back in their places, but despite her awkwardness,
the girl went about her unaccustomed tasks with a light heart. It was for her
new-found hero that she played at housekeeping. For his commendation she filled
the tea-kettle, enveloped herself in a cloud of dust as she wielded the stub of
a broom she discovered, and washed the greasy dishes after the water was hot. A
childish pleasure suffused her. All her life her least whims had been
ministered to; she was reveling in a first attempt at service. As she moved to
and fro with an improvised dust-rag, sunshine filled her being. From her lips
the joy notes fell in song, shaken from her throat for sheer happiness. This
surely was life, that life from which she had so carefully been hedged all the
years of her young existence.
As he came down the trail he had broken, with a pack on his back, the man heard
her birdlike carol in the clear frosty air. He emptied his chest in a deep
shout, and she was instantly at the window, waving him a welcome with her
dust-rag.
“I thought you were never coming,” she cried from the open door as he came up
the path.
Her eyes were starry in their eagerness. Every sensitive feature was alert with
interest, so that the man thought he had never seen so mobile and attractive a
face.
“Did it seem long?” he asked.
“Oh, weeks and weeks! You must be frozen to an icicle. Come in and get warm.”
“I’m as warm as toast,” he assured her.
He was glowing with exercise and the sting of the cold, for he had tramped two
miles through drifts from three to five feet deep, battling with them every
step of the way, and carrying with him on the return trip a box of provisions.
“With all that snow on you and the pack on your back, it’s like Santa Claus,”
she cried, clapping her hands.
“Before we’re through with the adventure we may think that box a sure enough
gift from Santa,” he replied.
After he had put it down, he took off his overcoat on the threshold and shook
the snow from it. Then, with much feet stamping and scattering of snow, he came
in. She fluttered about him, dragging a chair up to the fire for him, and
taking his hat and gloves. It amused and pleased him that she should be so
solicitous, and he surrendered himself to her ministrations.
His quick eye noticed the swept floor and the evanishment of disorder. “Hello!
What’s this clean through a fall house-cleaning? I’m not the only member of the
firm that has been working. Dishes washed, floor swept, bed made, kitchen fire
lit. You’ve certainly been going some, unless the fairies helped you. Aren’t
you afraid of blistering these little hands?” he asked gaily, taking one of
them in his and touching the soft palm gently with the tip of his finger.
“I should preserve those blisters in alcohol to show that I’ve really been of
some use,” she answered, happy in his approval.
“Sho! People are made for different uses. Some are fit only to shovel and dig.
Others are here simply to decorate the world. Hard world. Hard work is for
those who can’t give society anything else, but beauty is its own excuse for
being,” he told her breezily.
“Now that’s the first compliment you have given me,” she pouted prettily. “I
can get them in plenty back in the drawing-rooms where I am supposed to belong.
We’re to be real comrades here, and compliments are barred.”
“I wasn’t complimenting you,” he maintained. “I was merely stating a principle
of art.”
“Then you mustn’t make your principles of art personal, sir. But since you
have, I’m going to refute the application of your principle and show how useful
I’ve been. Now, sir, do you know what provisions we have outside of those you
have just brought?”
He knew exactly, since he had investigated during the night. That they might
possibly have to endure a siege of some weeks, he was quite well aware, and his
first thought, after she had gone to sleep before the fire, had been to make
inventory of such provisions as the prospector had left in his cabin. A knuckle
of ham, part of a sack of flour, some navy beans, and some tea siftings at the
bottom of a tin can; these constituted the contents of the larder which the
miner had gone to replenish. But though the man knew he assumed ignorance, for
he saw that she was bubbling over with the desire to show her forethought.
“Tell me,” he begged of her, and after she had done so, he marveled aloud over
her wisdom in thinking of it.
“Now tell me about your trip,” she commanded, setting herself tailor fashion on
the rug to listen.
“There isn’t much to tell,” he smiled “I should like to make an adventure of
it, but I can’t. I just went and came back.”
“Oh, you just went and came back, did you?” she scoffed. “That won’t do at all.
I want to know all about it. Did you find the machine all right?”
“I found it where we left it, buried in four feet of snow. You needn’t be
afraid that anybody will run away with it for a day or two. The pantry was
cached pretty deep itself, but I dug it out.”
Her shy glance admired the sturdy lines of his powerful frame. “I am afraid it
must have been a terrible task to get there through the blizzard.”
“Oh, the blizzard is past. You never saw a finer, more bracing morning. It’s a
day for the gods,” he laughed boyishly.
She could have conceived no Olympian more heroic than he, and certainly none
with so compelling a vitality. “Such a warm, kind light in them!” she thought
of the eyes others had found hard and calculating.
It was lucky that the lunch the automobilists had brought from Avalanche was
ample and as yet untouched. The hotel waiter, who had attended to the packing
of it, had fortunately been used to reckon with outdoor Montana appetites
instead of cloyed New York ones. They unpacked the little hamper with much
gaiety. Everything was frozen solid, and the wine had cracked its bottle.
“Shipped right through on our private refrigerator-car. That cold-storage
chicken looks the finest that ever happened. What’s this rolled up in
tissue-paper? Deviled eggs and ham sandwiches AND caviar, not to speak of
claret frappe. I’m certainly grateful to the gentleman finished in ebony who
helped to provision us for this siege. He’ll never know what a tip he missed by
not being here to collect.”
“Here’s jelly, too, and cake,” she said, exploring with him.
“Not to mention peaches and pears. Oh, this is luck of a special brand! I was
expecting to put up at Starvation Camp. Now we may name it Point Plenty.”
“Or Fort Salvation,” she suggested shyly. “Because you brought me here to save
my life.”
She was such a child, in spite of her charming grown-up airs, that he played
make-believe with a zest that surprised himself when he came to think of it.
She elected him captain of Fort Salvation, with full power of life and death
over the garrison, and he appointed her second in command. His first general
order was to put the garrison on two meals a day.
She clapped her little hands, eyes sparkling with excitement. “Are we really
snow-bound? Must we go on half-rations?”
“It is the part of wisdom, lieutenant,” he answered, smiling at her enthusiasm.
“We don’t know how long this siege is going to last. If it should set in to
snow, we may be here several days before the relief-party reaches us.” But,
though he spoke cheerfully, he was aware of sinister possibilities in the
situation. “Several weeks” would have been nearer his real guess.
They ate breakfast at the shelf-table nailed in place underneath the western
window. They made a picnic of it, and her spirits skipped upon the hilltops.
For the first time she ate from tin plates, drank from a tin cup, and used a
tin spoon the worse for rust. What mattered it to her that the teapot was grimy
and the fryingpan black with soot! It was all part of the wonderful new vista
that had suddenly opened before her gaze. She had awakened into life and
already she was dimly realizing that many and varied experiences lay waiting
for her in that untrodden path beyond her cloistered world.
A reconnaissance in the shed behind the house showed him no plethora of
firewood. But here was ax, shovel, and saw, and he asked no more. First he
shoveled out a path along the eaves of the house where she might walk in sentry
fashion to take the deep breaths of clear sharp air he insisted upon. He made
it wide enough so that her skirt would not sweep against the snow-bank, and
trod down the trench till the footing was hard and solid. Then with ax and saw
he climbed the hillside back of the house and set himself to get as much fuel
as he could. The sky was still heavy with unshed snow, and he knew that with
the coming of night the storm would be renewed.
Came noon, mid-afternoon, the early dusk of a mountain winter, and found him
still hewing and sawing, still piling load after load in the shed. Now and
again she came out and watched him, laughing at the figure he made as he would
come plunging through the snow with his armful of fuel.
She did not know, as he did, the vital necessity of filling the lean-to before
winter fell upon them in earnest and buried them deep with his frozen blanket,
and she was a little piqued that he should spend the whole day away from her in
such unsocial fashion.
“Let me help,” she begged so often that he trod down a path, made boots for her
out of torn gunny-sacks which he tied round her legs, and let her drag wood to
the house on a pine branch which served for a sled. She wore her gauntlets to
protect her tender hands, and thereafter was happy until, detecting signs of
fatigue, he made her go into the house and rest.
As soon as she dared she was back again, making fun of him and the earnestness
with which he worked.
“Robinson Crusoe” was one name she fastened upon him, and she was not satisfied
till she had made him call her “Friday.”
Twilight fell austere and sudden upon them with an immediate fall of
temperature that found a thermometer in her blue face.
He recommended the house, but she was of a contrary mood.
“I don’t want to,” she announced debonairly.
In a stiff military attitude he gave raucous mandate from his throat.
“Commanding officer’s orders, lieutenant.”
“I think I’m going to mutiny,” she informed him, with chin saucily in air.
This would not do at all. The chill wind sweeping down the canon was searching
her insufficient clothing already. He picked her up in his arms and ran with
her toward the house, setting her down in the trench outside the door. She
caught her startled breath and looked at him in shy, dubious amazement.
“Really you” she was beginning when he cut her short.
“Commanding officer’s orders, lieutenant,” came briskly from lips that showed
just a hint of a smile.
At once she clicked her heels together, saluted, and wheeled into the cabin.
From the grimy window she watched his broad-shouldered vigor, waving her hand
whenever his face was turned her way. He worked like a Titan, reveling in the
joy of physical labor, but it was long past dark before he finished and came
striding to the hut.
They made a delightful evening of it, living in the land of Never Was. For one
source of her charm lay in the gay, childlike whimsicality of her imagination.
She believed in fairies and heroes with all her heart, which with her was an
organ not located in her brain. The delicious gurgle of gaiety in her laugh was
a new find to him in feminine attractions.
There had been many who thought the career of this pirate of industry beggared
fiction, though, few had found his flinty personality a radiaton of romance.
But this convent-nurtured child had made a discovery in men, one out of the rut
of the tailor-made, convention-bound society youths to whom her experience for
the most part had been limited. She delighted in his masterful strength, in the
confidence of his careless dominance. She liked to see that look of power in
his gray-blue eyes softened to the droll, half-tender, expression with which he
played the game of make-believe. There were no to-morrows; to-day marked the
limit of time for them. By tacit consent they lived only in the present,
shutting out deliberately from their knowledge of each other, that past which
was not common to both. Even their names were unknown to each other, and both
of them were glad that it was so.
The long winter evening had fallen early, and they dined by candle-light,
considering merrily how much they might with safety eat and yet leave enough
for the to-morrows that lay before them. Afterward they sat before the fire, in
the shadow and shine of the flickering logs, happy and content in each other’s
presence. She dreamed, and he, watching her, dreamed, too. The wild, sweet
wonder of life surged through them, touching their squalid surroundings to the
high mystery of things unreal.
The strangeness of it was that he was a man of large and not very creditable
experience of women, yet her deep, limpid eyes, her sweet voice, the immature
piquancy of her movements that was the expression of her, had stirred his
imagination more potently than if he had been the veriest schoolboy nursing a
downy lip. He could not keep his eyes from this slender, exquisite girl, so
dainty and graceful in her mobile piquancy. Fire and passion were in his heart
and soul, restraint and repression in his speech and manner. For the fire and
passion in him were pure and clean as the winds that sweep the hills.
But for the girl—she was so little mistress of her heart that she had no
prescience of the meaning of this sweet content that filled her. And the voices
that should have warned her were silent, busy behind the purple hills with lies
and love and laughter and tears.
