Produced by Donald Lainson
IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS
By Bret Harte
CHAPTER I.
The sun was going down on the Carquinez Woods. The few shafts ofsunlight that had pierced their pillared gloom were lost in unfathomabledepths, or splintered their ineffectual lances on the enormous trunksof the redwoods. For a time the dull red of their vast columns, and thedull red of their cast-off bark which matted the echoless aisles, stillseemed to hold a faint glow of the dying day. But even this soon passed.Light and color fled upwards. The dark interlaced treetops, that had allday made an impenetrable shade, broke into fire here and there; theirlost spires glittered, faded, and went utterly out. A weird twilightthat did not come from the outer world, but seemed born of the wooditself, slowly filled and possessed the aisles. The straight, tall,colossal trunks rose dimly like columns of upward smoke. The few fallentrees stretched their huge length into obscurity, and seemed to lie onshadowy trestles. The strange breath that filled these mysterious vaultshad neither coldness nor moisture; a dry, fragrant dust arose from thenoiseless foot that trod their bark-strewn floor; the aisles might havebeen tombs, the fallen trees enormous mummies; the silence the solitudeof a forgotten past.
And yet this silence was presently broken by a recurring sound likebreathing, interrupted occasionally by inarticulate and stertorousgasps. It was not the quick, panting, listening breath of some stealthyfeline or canine animal, but indicated a larger, slower, and morepowerful organization, whose progress was less watchful and guarded, oras if a fragment of one of the fallen monsters had become animate.At times this life seemed to take visible form, but as vaguely, asmisshapenly, as the phantom of a nightmare. Now it was a square objectmoving sideways, endways, with neither head nor tail and scarcelyvisible feet; then an arched bulk rolling against the trunks of thetrees and recoiling again, or an upright cylindrical mass, but alwaysoscillating and unsteady, and striking the trees on either hand. Thefrequent occurrence of the movement suggested the figures of some weirdrhythmic dance to music heard by the shape alone. Suddenly it eitherbecame motionless or faded away.
There was the frightened neighing of a horse, the sudden jingling ofspurs, a shout and outcry, and the swift apparition of three dancingtorches in one of the dark aisles; but so intense was the obscuritythat they shed no light on surrounding objects, and seemed to advanceof their own volition without human guidance, until they disappearedsuddenly behind the interposing bulk of one of the largest trees. Beyondits eighty feet of circumference the light could not reach, and thegloom remained inscrutable. But the voices and jingling spurs were hearddistinctly.
"Blast the mare! She's shied off that cursed trail again."
"Ye ain't lost it again, hev ye?" growled a second voice.
"That's jist what I hev. And these blasted pine-knots don't give lightan inch beyond 'em. D--d if I don't think they make this cursed holeblacker."
There was a laugh--a woman's laugh--hysterical, bitter, sarcastic,exasperating. The second speaker, without heeding it, went on:--
"What in thunder skeert the hosses? Did you see or hear anything?"
"Nothin'. The wood is like a graveyard."
The woman's voice again broke into a hoarse, contemptuous laugh. The manresumed angrily:--
"If you know anything, why in h-ll don't you say so, instead of cacklinglike a d--d squaw there? P'raps you reckon you ken find the trail too."
"Take this rope off my wrist," said the woman's voice, "untie my hands,let me down, and I'll find it." She spoke quickly and with a Spanishaccent.
It was the men's turn to laugh. "And give you a show to snatch thatsix-shooter and blow a hole through me, as you did to the Sheriff ofCalaveras, eh? Not if this court understands itself," said the firstspeaker dryly.
"Go to the devil, then," she said curtly.
"Not before a lady," responded the other. There was another laugh fromthe men, the spurs jingled again, the three torches reappeared frombehind the tree, and then passed away in the darkness.
For a time silence and immutability possessed the woods; the greattrunks loomed upwards, their fallen brothers stretched their slow lengthinto obscurity. The sound of breathing again became audible; the shapereappeared in the aisle, and recommenced its mystic dance. Presentlyit was lost in the shadow of the largest tree, and to the sound ofbreathing succeeded a grating and scratching of bark. Suddenly, as ifriven by lightning, a flash broke from the center of the tree-trunk,lit up the woods, and a sharp report rang through it. After a pausethe jingling of spurs and the dancing of torches were revived from thedistance.
"Hallo?"
No answer.
"Who fired that shot?"
But there was no reply. A slight veil of smoke passed away to the right,there was the spice of gunpowder in the air, but nothing more.
The torches came forward again, but this time it could be seen they wereheld in the hands of two men and a woman. The woman's hands were tiedat the wrist to the horse-hair reins of her mule, while a riata, passedaround her waist and under the mule's girth, was held by one of the men,who were both armed with rifles and revolvers. Their frightened horsescurveted, and it was with difficulty they could be made to advance.
"Ho! stranger, what are you shooting at?"
The woman laughed and shrugged her shoulders. "Look yonder at the rootsof the tree. You're a d--d smart man for a sheriff, ain't you?"
The man uttered an exclamation and spurred his horse forward, but theanimal reared in terror. He then sprang to the ground and approached thetree. The shape lay there, a scarcely distinguishable bulk.
"A grizzly, by the living Jingo! Shot through the heart."
It was true. The strange shape lit up by the flaring torches seemed morevague, unearthly, and awkward in its dying throes, yet the small shuteyes, the feeble nose, the ponderous shoulders, and half-human footarmed with powerful claws were unmistakable. The men turned by a commonimpulse and peered into the remote recesses of the wood again.
"Hi, Mister! come and pick up your game. Hallo there!"
The challenge fell unheeded on the empty woods.
"And yet," said he whom the woman had called the sheriff, "he can't befar off. It was a close shot, and the bear hez dropped in his tracks.Why, wot's this sticking in his claws?"
The two men bent over the animal. "Why, it's sugar, brown sugar--look!"There was no mistake. The huge beast's fore paws and muzzle werestreaked with the unromantic household provision, and heightened theabsurd contrast of its incongruous members. The woman, apparentlyindifferent, had taken that opportunity to partly free one of herwrists.
"If we hadn't been cavorting round this yer spot for the last halfhour, I'd swear there was a shanty not a hundred yards away," said thesheriff.
The other man, without replying, remounted his horse instantly.
"If there is, and it's inhabited by a gentleman that kin make centreshots like that in the dark, and don't care to explain how, I reckon Iwon't disturb him."
The sheriff was apparently of the same opinion, for he followed hiscompanion's example, and once more led the way. The spurs tinkled, thetorches danced, and the cavalcade slowly reentered the gloom. In anothermoment it had disappeared.
The wood sank again into repose, this time disturbed by neither shapenor sound. What lower forms of life might have crept close to itsroots were hidden in the ferns, or passed with deadened tread over thebark-strewn floor. Towards morning a coolness like dew fell from above,with here and there a dropping twig or nut, or the crepitant awakeningand stretching-out of cramped and weary branches. Later a dull, luriddawn, not unlike the last evening's sunset, filled the aisles. Thisfaded again, and a clear gray light, in which every object stood out insharp distinctness, too
k its place. Morning was waiting outside in allits brilliant, youthful coloring, but only entered as the matured andsobered day.
Seen in that stronger light, the monstrous tree near which the dead bearlay revealed its age in its denuded and scarred trunk, and showed inits base a deep cavity, a foot or two from the ground, partly hidden byhanging strips of bark which had fallen across it. Suddenly one of thesestrips was pushed aside, and a young man leaped lightly down.
But for the rifle he carried and some modern peculiarities of dress, hewas of a grace so unusual and unconventional that he might have passedfor a faun who was quitting his ancestral home. He stepped to the sideof the bear with a light elastic movement that was as unlike customaryprogression as his face and figure were unlike the ordinary typesof humanity. Even as he leaned upon his rifle, looking down at theprostrate animal, he unconsciously fell into an attitude that in anyother mortal would have been a pose, but with him was the picturesqueand unstudied relaxation of perfect symmetry.
"Hallo, Mister!"
He raised his head so carelessly and listlessly that he did nototherwise change his attitude. Stepping from behind the tree, the womanof the preceding night stood before him. Her hands were free except fora thong of the riata, which was still knotted around one wrist, the endof the thong having been torn or burnt away. Her eyes were bloodshot,and her hair hung over her shoulders in one long black braid.
"I reckoned all along it was YOU who shot the bear," she said; "at leastsome one hiding yer," and she indicated the hollow tree with her hand."It wasn't no chance shot." Observing that the young man, either frommisconception or indifference, did not seem to comprehend her, sheadded, "We came by here, last night, a minute after you fired."
"Oh, that was YOU kicked up such a row, was it?" said the young man,with a shade of interest.
"I reckon," said the woman, nodding her head, "and them that was withme."
"And who are they?"
"Sheriff Dunn, of Yolo, and his deputy."
"And where are they now?"
"The deputy--in h-ll, I reckon; I don't know about the sheriff."
"I see," said the young man quietly; "and you?"
"I--got away," she said savagely. But she was taken with a suddennervous shiver, which she at once repressed by tightly dragging hershawl over her shoulders and elbows, and folding her arms defiantly.
"And you're going?"
"To follow the deputy, may be," she said gloomily. "But come, I say,ain't you going to treat? It's cursed cold here."
"Wait a moment." The young man was looking at her, with his arched browsslightly knit and a half smile of curiosity. "Ain't you Teresa?"
She was prepared for the question, but evidently was not certain whethershe would reply defiantly or confidently. After an exhaustive scrutinyof his face she chose the latter, and said, "You can bet your life onit, Johnny."
"I don't bet, and my name isn't Johnny. Then you're the woman whostabbed Dick Curson over at Lagrange's?"
She became defiant again.
"That's me, all the time. What are you going to do about it?"
"Nothing. And you used to dance at the Alhambra?" She whisked the shawlfrom her shoulders, held it up like a scarf, and made one or two stepsof the sembicuacua. There was not the least gayety, recklessness, orspontaneity in the action; it was simply mechanical bravado. It was soineffective, even upon her own feelings, that her arms presently droppedto her side, and she coughed embarrassedly. "Where's that whiskey,pardner?" she asked.
The young man turned toward the tree he had just quitted, andwithout further words assisted her to mount to the cavity. It was anirregular-shaped vaulted chamber, pierced fifty feet above by a shaft orcylindrical opening in the decayed trunk, which was blackened by smoke,as if it had served the purpose of a chimney. In one corner lay abearskin and blanket; at the side were two alcoves or indentations, oneof which was evidently used as a table, and the other as a cupboard.In another hollow, near the entrance, lay a few small sacks of flour,coffee, and sugar, the sticky contents of the latter still strewingthe floor. From this storehouse the young man drew a wicker flask ofwhiskey, and handed it, with a tin cup of water, to the woman. She wavedthe cup aside, placed the flask to her lips, and drank the undilutedspirit. Yet even this was evidently bravado, for the water startedto her eyes, and she could not restrain the paroxysm of coughing thatfollowed.
"I reckon that's the kind that kills at forty rods," she said, with ahysterical laugh. "But I say, pardner, you look as if you were fixedhere to stay," and she stared ostentatiously around the chamber. But shehad already taken in its minutest details, even to observing that thehanging strips of bark could be disposed so as to completely hide theentrance.
"Well, yes," he replied; "it wouldn't be very easy to pull up the stakesand move the shanty further on."
Seeing that either from indifference or caution he had not accepted hermeaning, she looked at him fixedly, and said,--
"What is your little game?"
"Eh?"
"What are you hiding for--here, in this tree?"
"But I'm not hiding."
"Then why didn't you come out when they hailed you last night?"
"Because I didn't care to."
Teresa whistled incredulously. "All right--then if you're not hiding,I'm going to." As he did not reply, she went on: "If I can keep out ofsight for a couple of weeks, this thing will blow over here, and I canget across into Yolo. I could get a fair show there, where the boysknow me. Just now the trails are all watched, but no one would think oflookin' here."
"Then how did you come to think of it?" he asked carelessly.
"Because I knew that bear hadn't gone far for that sugar; because I knowhe hadn't stole it from a cache--it was too fresh, and we'd have seenthe torn-up earth; because we had passed no camp; and because I knewthere was no shanty here. And, besides," she added in a low voice,"maybe I was huntin' a hole myself to die in--and spotted it byinstinct."
There was something in this suggestion of a hunted animal that, unlikeanything she had previously said or suggested, was not exaggerated, andcaused the young man to look at her again. She was standing under thechimney-like opening, and the light from above illuminated her head andshoulders. The pupils of her eyes had lost their feverish prominence,and were slightly suffused and softened as she gazed abstractedly beforeher. The only vestige of her previous excitement was in her left-handfingers, which were incessantly twisting and turning a diamond ring uponher right hand, but without imparting the least animation to her rigidattitude. Suddenly, as if conscious of his scrutiny, she stepped asideout of the revealing light and by a swift feminine instinct raised herhand to her head as if to adjust her straggling hair. It was only fora moment, however, for, as if aware of the weakness, she struggled toresume her aggressive pose.
"Well," she said. "Speak up. Am I goin' to stop here, or have I got toget up and get?"
"You can stay," said the young man quietly; "but as I've got myprovisions and ammunition here, and haven't any other place to go tojust now, I suppose we'll have to share it together."
She glanced at him under her eyelids, and a half-bitter,half-contemptuous smile passed across her face. "All right, old man,"she said, holding out her hand, "it's a go. We'll start in housekeepingat once, if you like."
"I'll have to come here once or twice a day," he said, quite composedly,"to look after my things, and get something to eat; but I'll be awaymost of the time, and what with camping out under the trees every nightI reckon my share won't incommode you."
She opened her black eyes upon him, at this original proposition. Thenshe looked down at her torn dress. "I suppose this style of thing ain'tvery fancy, is it?" she said, with a forced laugh.
"I think I know where to beg or borrow a change for you, if you can'tget any," he replied simply.
She stared at him again. "Are you a family man?"
"No."
She was silent for a moment. "Well," she said, "you can tell your girlI'm not particular ab
out its being in the latest fashion."
There was a slight flush on his forehead as he turned toward the littlecupboard, but no tremor in his voice as he went on: "You'll find teaand coffee here, and, if you're bored, there's a book or two. You read,don't you--I mean English?"
She nodded, but cast a look of undisguised contempt upon the two worn,coverless novels he held out to her. "You haven't got last week's'Sacramento Union,' have you? I hear they have my case all in; only themlying reporters made it out against me all the time."
"I don't see the papers," he replied curtly.
"They say there's a picture of me in the 'Police Gazette,' taken in theact," and she laughed.
He looked a little abstracted, and turned as if to go. "I think you'lldo well to rest a while just now, and keep as close hid as possibleuntil afternoon. The trail is a mile away at the nearest point, butsome one might miss it and stray over here. You're quite safe if you'recareful, and stand by the tree. You can build a fire here," he steppedunder the chimney-like opening, "without its being noticed. Even thesmoke is lost and cannot be seen so high."
The light from above was falling on his head and shoulders, as it had onhers. She looked at him intently.
"You travel a good deal on your figure, pardner, don't you?" she said,with a certain admiration that was quite sexless in its quality; "butI don't see how you pick up a living by it in the Carquinez Woods. Soyou're going, are you? You might be more sociable. Good-by."
"Good-by!" He leaped from the opening.
"I say pardner!"
He turned a little impatiently. She had knelt down at the entrance, soas to be nearer his level, and was holding out her hand. But he did notnotice it, and she quietly withdrew it.
"If anybody dropped in and asked for you, what name will they say?"
He smiled. "Don't wait to hear."
"But suppose I wanted to sing out for you, what will I call you?"
He hesitated. "Call me--Lo."
"Lo, the poor Indian?"*
"Exactly."
* The first word of Pope's familiar apostrophe is humorously used in the Far West as a distinguishing title for the Indian.
It suddenly occurred to the woman, Teresa, that in the young man'sheight, supple, yet erect carriage, color, and singular gravity ofdemeanor there was a refined, aboriginal suggestion. He did not looklike any Indian she had ever seen, but rather as a youthful chief mighthave looked. There was a further suggestion in his fringed buckskinshirt and moccasins; but before she could utter the half-sarcasticcomment that rose to her lips he had glided noiselessly away, even as anIndian might have done.
She readjusted the slips of hanging bark with feminine ingenuity,dispersing them so as to completely hide the entrance. Yet this did notdarken the chamber, which seemed to draw a purer and more vigorous lightthrough the soaring shaft that pierced the roof than that which camefrom the dim woodland aisles below. Nevertheless, she shivered, anddrawing her shawl closely around her began to collect some half-burntfragments of wood in the chimney to make a fire. But the preoccupationof her thoughts rendered this a tedious process, as she would from timeto time stop in the middle of an action and fall into an attitude ofrapt abstraction, with far-off eyes and rigid mouth. When she had atlast succeeded in kindling a fire and raising a film of pale blue smoke,that seemed to fade and dissipate entirely before it reached the top ofthe chimney shaft, she crouched beside it, fixed her eyes on the darkestcorner of the cavern, and became motionless.
What did she see through that shadow?
Nothing at first but a confused medley of figures and incidents of thepreceding night; things to be put away and forgotten; things thatwould not have happened but for another thing--the thing before whicheverything faded! A ball-room; the sounds of music; the one man shehad cared for insulting her with the flaunting ostentation of hisunfaithfulness; herself despised, put aside, laughed at, or worse,jilted. And then the moment of delirium, when the light danced; the onewild act that lifted her, the despised one, above them all--made herthe supreme figure, to be glanced at by frightened women, stared at byhalf-startled, half-admiring men! "Yes," she laughed; but struck by thesound of her own voice, moved twice round the cavern nervously, and thendropped again into her old position.
As they carried him away he had laughed at her--like a hound that hewas; he who had praised her for her spirit, and incited her revengeagainst others; he who had taught her to strike when she was insulted;and it was only fit he should reap what he had sown. She was what he,what other men, had made her. And what was she now? What had she beenonce?
She tried to recall her childhood: the man and woman who might havebeen her father and mother; who fought and wrangled over her precociouslittle life; abused or caressed her as she sided with either; and thenleft her with a circus troupe, where she first tasted the power of hercourage, her beauty, and her recklessness. She remembered those flashesof triumph that left a fever in her veins--a fever that when it failedmust be stimulated by dissipation, by anything, by everything that wouldkeep her name a wonder in men's mouths, an envious fear to women. Sherecalled her transfer to the strolling players; her cheap pleasures, andcheaper rivalries and hatred--but always Teresa! the daring Teresa! thereckless Teresa! audacious as a woman, invincible as a boy; dancing,flirting, fencing, shooting, swearing, drinking, smoking, fightingTeresa! "Oh, yes; she had been loved, perhaps--who knows?--but alwaysfeared. Why should she change now? Ha, he should see."
She had lashed herself in a frenzy, as was her wont, with gestures,ejaculations, oaths, adjurations, and passionate apostrophes, but withthis strange and unexpected result. Heretofore she had always beensustained and kept up by an audience of some kind or quality, if onlyperhaps a humble companion; there had always been some one she couldfascinate or horrify, and she could read her power mirrored in theireyes. Even the half-abstracted indifference of her strange host had beensomething. But she was alone now. Her words fell on apathetic solitude;she was acting to viewless space. She rushed to the opening, dashed thehanging bark aside, and leaped to the ground.
She ran forward wildly a few steps, and stopped.
"Hallo!" she cried. "Look, 'tis I, Teresa!"
The profound silence remained unbroken. Her shrillest tones were lostin an echoless space, even as the smoke of her fire had faded into pureether. She stretched out her clenched fists as if to defy the pillaredausterities of the vaults around her.
"Come and take me if you dare!"
The challenge was unheeded. If she had thrown herself violently againstthe nearest tree-trunk, she could not have been stricken more breathlessthan she was by the compact, embattled solitude that encompassed her.The hopelessness of impressing these cold and passive vaults withher selfish passion filled her with a vague fear. In her rage of theprevious night she had not seen the wood in its profound immobility.Left alone with the majesty of those enormous columns, she trembled andturned faint. The silence of the hollow tree she had just quitted seemedto her less awful than the crushing presence of these mute and monstrouswitnesses of her weakness. Like a wounded quail with lowered crest andtrailing wing, she crept back to her hiding place.
Even then the influence of the wood was still upon her. She picked upthe novel she had contemptuously thrown aside, only to let it fall againin utter weariness. For a moment her feminine curiosity was excitedby the discovery of an old book, in whose blank leaves were pressed avariety of flowers and woodland grasses. As she could not conceivethat these had been kept for any but a sentimental purpose, she wasdisappointed to find that underneath each was a sentence in an unknowntongue, that even to her untutored eye did not appear to be the languageof passion. Finally she rearranged the couch of skins and blankets, and,imparting to it in three clever shakes an entirely different character,lay down to pursue her reveries. But nature asserted herself, and ereshe knew it she was asleep.
So intense and prolonged had been her previous excitement that, thetension once relieved, she passed into a slumber of exhaustion
so deepthat she seemed scarce to breathe. High noon succeeded morning, thecentral shaft received a single ray of upper sunlight, the afternooncame and went, the shadows gathered below, the sunset fires began to eattheir way through the groined roof, and she still slept. She slept evenwhen the bark hangings of the chamber were put aside, and the young manreentered.
He laid down a bundle he was carrying and softly approached the sleeper.For a moment he was startled from his indifference; she lay so still andmotionless. But this was not all that struck him; the face before himwas no longer the passionate, haggard visage that confronted him thatmorning; the feverish air, the burning color, the strained muscles ofmouth and brow, and the staring eyes were gone; wiped away, perhaps, bythe tears that still left their traces on cheek and dark eyelash. Itwas the face of a handsome woman of thirty, with even a suggestion ofsoftness in the contour of the cheek and arching of her upper lip, nolonger rigidly drawn down in anger, but relaxed by sleep on her whiteteeth.
With the lithe, soft tread that was habitual to him, the young man movedabout, examining the condition of the little chamber and its stockof provisions and necessaries, and withdrew presently, to reappear asnoiselessly with a tin bucket of water. This done, he replenished thelittle pile of fuel with an armful of bark and pine cones, cast anapproving glance about him, which included the sleeper, and silentlydeparted.
It was night when she awoke. She was surrounded by a profound darkness,except where the shaft-like opening made a nebulous mist in the cornerof her wooden cavern. Providentially she struggled back to consciousnessslowly, so that the solitude and silence came upon her gradually, witha growing realization of the events of the past twenty-four hours, butwithout a shock. She was alone here, but safe still, and every houradded to her chances of ultimate escape. She remembered to have seen acandle among the articles on the shelf, and she began to grope her waytowards the matches. Suddenly she stopped. What was that panting?
Was it her own breathing, quickened with a sudden nameless terror? orwas there something outside? Her heart seemed to stop beating whileshe listened. Yes! it was a panting outside--a panting now increased,multiplied, redoubled, mixed with the sounds of rustling, tearing,craunching, and occasionally a quick, impatient snarl. She crept onher hands and knees to the opening and looked out. At first the groundseemed to be undulating between her and the opposite tree. But a secondglance showed her the black and gray, bristling, tossing backs oftumbling beasts of prey, charging the carcass of the bear that lay atits roots, or contesting for the prize with gluttonous, choked breath,sidelong snarls, arched spines, and recurved tails. One of the boldesthad leaped upon a buttressing root of her tree within a foot of theopening. The excitement, awe, and terror she had undergone culminated inone wild, maddened scream, that seemed to pierce even the cold depths ofthe forest, as she dropped on her face, with her hands clasped over hereyes in an agony of fear.
Her scream was answered, after a pause, by a sudden volley of firebrandsand sparks into the midst of the panting, crowding pack; a few smotheredhowls and snaps, and a sudden dispersion of the concourse. In anothermoment the young man, with a blazing brand in either hand, leaped uponthe body of the bear.
Teresa raised her head, uttered a hysterical cry, slid down the tree,flew wildly to his side, caught convulsively at his sleeve, and fell onher knees beside him.
"Save me! save me!" she gasped, in a voice broken by terror. "Save mefrom those hideous creatures. No, no!" she implored, as he endeavoredto lift her to her feet. "No--let me stay here close beside you. So,"clutching the fringe of his leather hunting-shirt, and dragging herselfon her knees nearer him--"so--don't leave me, for God's sake!"
"They are gone," he replied, gazing down curiously at her, as she woundthe fringe around her hand to strengthen her hold; "they're only a lotof cowardly coyotes and wolves, that dare not attack anything that livesand can move."
The young woman responded with a nervous shudder. "Yes, that's it," shewhispered, in a broken voice; "it's only the dead they want. Promiseme--swear to me, if I'm caught, or hung, or shot, you won't let me beleft here to be torn and--ah! my God! what's that?"
She had thrown her arms around his knees, completely pinioning him toher frantic breast. Something like a smile of disdain passed across hisface as he answered, "It's nothing. They will not return. Get up!"
Even in her terror she saw the change in his face. "I know, I know!"she cried. "I'm frightened--but I cannot bear it any longer. Hear me!Listen! Listen--but don't move! I didn't mean to kill Curson--no! Iswear to God, no! I didn't mean to kill the sheriff--and I didn't. I wasonly bragging--do you hear? I lied! I lied--don't move, I swear to God Ilied. I've made myself out worse than I was. I have. Only don't leaveme now--and if I die--and it's not far off, may be--get me away fromhere--and from THEM. Swear it!"
"All right," said the young man, with a scarcely concealed movement ofirritation. "But get up now, and go back to the cabin."
"No; not THERE alone." Nevertheless, he quietly but firmly releasedhimself.
"I will stay here," he replied. "I would have been nearer to you, butI thought it better for your safety that my camp-fire should be furtheroff. But I can build it here, and that will keep the coyotes off."
"Let me stay with you--beside you," she said imploringly.
She looked so broken, crushed, and spiritless, so unlike the woman ofthe morning that, albeit with an ill grace, he tacitly consented, andturned away to bring his blankets. But in the next moment she was at hisside, following him like a dog, silent and wistful, and even offeringto carry his burden. When he had built the fire, for which she hadcollected the pine-cones and broken branches near them, he sat down,folded his arms, and leaned back against the tree in reserved anddeliberate silence.
Humble and submissive, she did not attempt to break in upon a reverieshe could not help but feel had little kindliness to herself. As thefire snapped and sparkled, she pillowed her head upon a root, and laystill to watch it.
It rose and fell, and dying away at times to a mere lurid glow, andagain, agitated by some breath scarcely perceptible to them, quickeninginto a roaring flame. When only the embers remained, a dead silencefilled the wood. Then the first breath of morning moved the tangledcanopy above, and a dozen tiny sprays and needles detached from theinterlocked boughs winged their soft way noiselessly to the earth. A fewfell upon the prostrate woman like a gentle benediction, and she slept.But even then, the young man, looking down, saw that the slender fingerswere still aimlessly but rigidly twisted in the leather fringe of hishunting-shirt.