CHAPTER XXVI
TO THE LUMBER CAMP
The gray morning mist rolled slowly up the hillsides from the bosom ofthe warming valley below. Great billows mounted, swelling in volumetill, overweighted, they toppled, surging like the breaking rollers ofa wind-swept ocean. Here and there the rosy sunlight brushed theswirling sea with a tenderness of color no painter's brush could everhope to produce. A precocious sunbeam shot athwart the leaden prospect.It bored its way through the churning fog searching the depths of somebenighted wood-lined hollow, as though to rouse its slumbering world.
Dense spruce and hemlock forests grew out of the mists. The spires ofgigantic pines rose, piercing the gray as though gasping for thewarming radiance above. A perching eagle, newly roused from itsslumbers, shrieked its morning song till the rebounding cries, echoingfrom a thousand directions, suggested the reveille of the entirefeathered world. The mournful whistle of a solitary marmot swelled thesong from many new directions, and the raucous chorus had for itsaccompaniment the thundering chords of hidden waters, seething andboiling in the mighty canyons below.
The long-drawn, sibilant hush of night was gone; the leaden mountaindawn had passed; day, glorious in its waking splendor, had routed thegrim shadows from the mystic depths of canyon, from the leaden-huedforest-laden valleys. The sunlight was upon the dazzling mountain-tops,groping, searching the very heart of the Rocky Mountains.
Dave's buckboard, no more conspicuous than some wandering ant in thevast mountain world, crawled from the depths of a wide valley andslowly mounted the shoulders of a forest-clad ridge. It vanished intothe twilight of giant woods, only to be seen again, some hours later,at a greater altitude, climbing, climbing the great slopes, ordescending to gaping hollows, but always attaining the higher lands.
But his speed was by no means a crawl in reality, only did it appear soby reason of the vastness of the world about him. His horses weretraveling as fresh, mettlesome beasts can travel when urged by such aman as Dave, with his nerves strung to a terrific tension by theemergency of his journey. The willing beasts raced down the hills overthe uneven trail with all the sure-footed carelessness of theprairie-bred broncho. They took the inclines with scarcely perceptibleslackening of their gait. And only the sharp hills served them forbreathing space.
Dave occupied the driving-seat while Mason sat guard over Jim Truscottin the carryall behind. Those two days on the trail had been unusuallysilent, even for men such as they were, and even taking intoconsideration the object of their journey. Truscott and Mason werealmost "dead beat" with all that had gone before, and Dave--he waswrapped in his own thoughts.
His thoughts carried him far away from his companions into a worldwhere love and strife were curiously blended. Every thread of suchthought sent him blundering into mires of trouble, the possibilities ofwhich set his nerves jangling with apprehension. But theircontemplation only stiffened his stern resolve to fight the comingbattle with a courage and resource such as never yet had he brought tobear in his bid for success. He knew that before him lay theculminating battle of his long and ardent sieging of Fortune'sstronghold. He knew that now, at last, he was face to face with thegreat test of his fitness. He knew that this battle had always beenbound to come before the goal of his success was reached; although,perhaps, its method and its cause may have taken a thousand otherforms. It is not in the nature of things that a man may march untestedstraight to the golden pastures of his ambitions. He must fight everyfoot of his way, and the final battle must ever be the sternest, thecrudest. God help the man if he has not the fitness, for Fate andFortune are remorseless foes.
But besides his native courage, Dave was stirred to even greaterefforts by man's strongest motive, be his cause for good or evil. Lovewas the main-spring of his inspiration. He had desired success with apassionate longing all his life, and his success was not allselfishness. But now, before all things, he saw the sweetly gentle faceof Betty Somers gazing with a heartful appeal, beckoning him, callinghim to help her. Every moment of that long journey the vision remainedwith him; every moment he felt might be the moment of dire tragedy forher. He dared not trust himself to consider the nature of that tragedy,or he must have turned and rended the man who was its cause. Only heblessed each moment that passed, bringing him nearer to her side. Heloved her as he loved nothing and no one else on earth, and somehowthere had crept into his mind the thought of a possibility he had neveryet dared to consider. It was a vague ray of hope that theimpossibility of his love was not so great as he had always believed.
How it had stolen in upon him he hardly knew. Perhaps it was hismother's persistent references to Betty. Perhaps it was the result ofhis talk with the man who had brought her to the straits she was nowplaced in. Perhaps it was one of these things, or both, coupled withthe memory of trifling incidents in the past, which had seemed to meannothing at the time of their happening.
Whatever it was, his love for the girl swept through him now in a waythat drove him headlong to her rescue. His own affairs of the mills,the fate of his friends in Malkern, of the village itself; all thesethings were driven into the background of his thoughts. Betty neededhim. The thought set his brain whirling with a wild thrillinghappiness, mazed, every alternate moment, with a horrible fear thatdrove him to the depths of despair.
It was high noon when smoke ahead warned him that the journey wasnearly over. The buckboard was on the ridge shouldering a wide valley,and below it was the rushing torrent of the Red Sand River. From hisposition Dave had a full view of the dull green forest world rollingaway, east and west, in vast, undulating waves as far as the eye couldreach. Only to the south, beyond the valley, was there a break in thedense, verdant carpet. And here it was he beheld the telltale smoke ofthe lumber camp.
"That's the camp," he said, looking straight ahead, watching the slowlyrising haze with longing eyes. "Guess we haven't to cross the river.Good."
Mason was looking out over his shoulder.
"No," he said after a moment's pause, while he tried to read the signshe beheld. "We don't cross the river. Keep to the trail. It takes usright past my shack."
"Where Parson Tom and----?"
"Yes, where they're living."
In another quarter of a mile they would be descending the hollow of asmall valley diverging from the valley of the Red Sand River. As theydrew near the decline, Dave spoke again.
"Can you make anything out, Mason?" he asked. "Seems to me that smokeis thick for--for stovepipes. There's two lots; one of 'em nearer thisway."
Mason stared out for some moments, shielding his eyes from the dazzlingsun.
"I can't be sure," he said at last. "The nearest smoke should be myshack."
A grave anxiety crept into Dave's eyes.
"It isn't thick there," he said, as though trying to reassure himself."That's your stovepipe?"
"Maybe."
Mason's reply expressed doubt.
Suddenly Dave leant over and his whip fell sharply across the horses'backs. They sprang at their neck-yoke and raced down into the final dip.