The Mountain Girl

  CHAPTER I

  IN WHICH DAVID THRYNG ARRIVES AT CAREW'S CROSSING

  The snow had ceased falling. No wind stirred among the trees thatcovered the hillsides, and every shrub, every leaf and twig, still boreits feathery, white load. Slowly the train labored upward, with twoengines to take it the steepest part of the climb from the valley below.David Thryng gazed out into the quiet, white wilderness and was glad. Hehoped Carew's Crossing was not beyond all this, where the ragged edge ofcivilization, out of which the toiling train had so lately lifted them,would begin again.

  He glanced from time to time at the young woman near the door who sat asthe bishop had left her, one slight hand grasping the handle of herbasket, and with an expression on her face as placid and fraught withmystery as the scene without. The train began to crawl more heavily,and, looking down, Thryng saw that they were crossing a trestle over adeep gorge before skirting the mountain on the other side. Suddenly itoccurred to him that he might be carried beyond his station. He stoppedthe smiling young brakeman who was passing with his flag.

  "Let me know when we come to Carew's Crossing, will you?"

  "Next stop, suh. Are you foh there, suh?"

  "Yes. How soon?"

  "Half an houh mo', suh. I'll be back d'rectly and help you off, suh.It's a flag station. We don't stop there in winter 'thout we're calledto, suh. Hotel's closed now."

  "Hotel? Is there a hotel?" Thryng's voice betokened dismay.

  "Yes, suh. It's a right gay little place in summah, suh." He passed on,and Thryng gathered his scattered effects. Ill and weary, he was gladto find his long journey so nearly at an end.

  On either side of the track, as far as eye could see, was asnow-whitened wilderness, seemingly untouched by the hand of man, and hefelt as if he had been carried back two hundred years. The only hintthat these fastnesses had been invaded by human beings was an occasionalrough, deeply red wagon road, winding off among the hills.

  The long trestle crossed, the engines labored slowly upward for a time,then, turning a sharp curve, began to descend, tearing along the narrowtrack with a speed that caused the coaches to rock and sway; and thusthey reached Carew's Crossing, dropping down to it like a rushingtorrent.

  Immediately Thryng found himself deposited in the melting snow somedistance from the station platform, and at the same instant, above thenoise of the retreating train, he heard a cry: "Oh, suh, help him, helphim! It's poor little Hoyle!" The girl whom he had watched, and aboutwhom he had been wondering, flashed by him and caught at the bridle of afractious colt, that was rearing and plunging near the corner of thestation.

  "Poor little Hoyle! Help him, suh, help him!" she cried, clingingdesperately, while the frantic animal swung her off her feet, close tothe flying heels of the kicking mule at his side.

  Under the heavy vehicle to which the ill-assorted animals were attached,a child lay unconscious, and David sprang forward, his weaknessforgotten in the demand for action. In an instant he had drawn thelittle chap from his perilous position and, seizing the mule, succeededin backing him to his place. The cause of its fright having by this timedisappeared, the colt became tractable and stood quivering and snorting,as David took the bridle from the girl's hand.

  "I'll quiet them now," he said, and she ran to the boy, who hadrecovered sufficiently to sit up and gaze in a dazed way about him. Asshe bent over him, murmuring soothing words, he threw his arms aroundher neck and burst into wild sobbing.

  "There, honey, there! No one is hurt. You are not, are you, honey son?"

  "I couldn't keep a holt of 'em," he sobbed.

  "You shouldn't have done it, honey. You should have let me get home asbest I could." Her face was one which could express much, passive as ithad been before. "Where was Frale?"

  "He took the othah ho'se and lit out. They was aftah him. They--"

  "S-sh. There, hush! You can stand now; try, Hoyle. You are a man now."

  The little fellow rose, and, perceiving Thryng for the first time,stepped shyly behind his sister. David noticed that he had a deformitywhich caused him to carry his head twisted stiffly to one side, and alsothat he had great, beautiful brown eyes, so like those of a hunted fawnas he turned them upon the stranger with wide appeal, that he seemed averitable creature of the wilderness by which they were surrounded.

  Then the girl stepped forward and thanked him with voice and eyes; buthe scarcely understood the words she said, as her tones trailedlingeringly over the vowels, and almost eliminated the "r," so lightlywas it touched, while her accent fell utterly strange upon his Englishear. She looked to the harness with practised eye, and then laid herhand beside Thryng's, on the bridle. It was a strong, shapely hand andwrist.

  "I can manage now," she said. "Hoyle, get my basket foh me."

  But Thryng suggested that she climb in and take the reins first,although the animals stood quietly enough now; the mule looked evendejected, with hanging head and forward-drooping ears.

  The girl spoke gently to the colt, stroking him along the side andmurmuring to him in a cooing voice as she mounted to the high seat andgathered up the reins. Then the two beasts settled themselves to theirplaces with a wontedness that assured Thryng they would be perfectlymanageable under her hand.

  David turned to the child, relieved him of the basket, which was heavywith unusual weight, and would have lifted him up, but Hoyle eluded hisgrasp, and, scrambling over the wheel with catlike agility, slippedshyly into his place close to the girl's side. Then, with more thanchildlike thoughtfulness, the boy looked up into her face and said in alow voice:--

  "The gen'l'man's things is ovah yandah by the track, Cass. He cyant tote'em alone, I reckon. Whar is he goin'?"

  Then Thryng remembered himself and his needs. He looked at the line oftrack curving away up the mountain side in one direction, and in theother lost in a deep cut in the hills; at the steep red banks risinghigh on each side, arched over by leafy forest growth, with all theinterlacing branches and smallest twigs bearing their delicate burden ofwhite, feathery snow. He caught his breath as a sense of the strange,untamed beauty, marvellous and utterly lonely, struck upon him. Beyondthe tracks, high up on the mountain slope, he thought he spied,well-nigh hid from sight by the pines, the gambrel roof of a largebuilding--or was it a snow-covered rock?

  "Is that a house up there?" he asked, turning to the girl, who satleaning forward and looking steadily down at him.

  "That is the hotel."

  "A road must lead to it, then. If I could get up there, I could senddown for my things."

  "They is no one thar," piped the boy; and Thryng remembered thebrakeman's words, and how he had rebelled at the thought of a hotelincongruously set amid this primeval beauty; but now he longed for thecomfort of a warm room and tea at a hospitable table. He wished he hadaccepted the bishop's invitation. It was a predicament to be dropped inthis wild spot, without a store, a cabin, or even a thread of blue smoketo be seen as indicating a human habitation, and no soul near save thesetwo children.

  The sun was sinking toward the western hilltops, and a chillness begancreeping about him as the shadows lengthened across the base of themountain, leaving only the heights in the glowing light.

  "Really, you know, I can't say what I am to do. I'm a stranger here--"

  It seemed odd to him at the moment, but her face, framed in the hugesunbonnet,--a delicate flower set in a rough calyx,--suddenly lost allexpression. She did not move nor open her lips. Thryng thought hedetected a look of fear in the boy's eyes, as he crept closer to her.

  In a flash came to him the realization of the difficulty. His friend hadtold him of these people,--their occupations, their fear of the worldoutside and below their fastnesses, and how zealously they guarded theirhomes and their rights from outside intrusion, yet how hospitable andgenerous they were to all who could not be considered their hereditaryenemies.

  He hastened to speak reassuring words, and, bethinking himself that shehad called the boy Hoyle, he explained how one Adam Hoyle had sent him
.

  "The doctor is my friend, you know. He built a cabin somewhere within aday's walk, he told me, of Carew's Crossing, on a mountain top. Maybeyou knew him?"

  A slight smile crept about the girl's lips, and her eyes brightened."Yes, suh, we-all know Doctah Hoyle."

  "I am to have the cabin--if I can find it--live there as he did, and seewhat your hills will do for me." He laughed a little as he spoke,deprecating his evident weakness, and, lifting his cap, wiped the coldmoisture from his forehead.

  She noted his fatigue and hesitated. The boy's questioning eyes werefixed on her face, and she glanced down into them an answering look. Herlips parted, and her eyes glowed as she turned them again on David, butshe spoke still in the same passive monotone.

  "Oh, yes. My little brothah was named foh him,--Adam Hoyle,--but we onlycall him Hoyle. It's a right long spell since the Doctah was heah. Hiscabin is right nigh us, a little highah up. Theah is no place wheah youcould stop nighah than ouahs. Hoyle, jump out and help fetch his thingsovah. You can put them in the back of the wagon, suh, and ride up withus. I have a sight of room foh them."

  The child was out and across the tracks in an instant, seizing a valisemuch too heavy for him, and Thryng cut his thanks short to go to hisrelief.

  "I kin tote it," said the boy shrilly.

  "No, no. I am the biggest, so I'll take the big ones. You bring thebundle with the strap around it--so. Now we shall get on, shan't we?But you are pretty strong for a little chap;" and the child's faceradiated smiles at the praise.

  Then David tossed in valise and rug, without which last no Englishmanever goes on a journey, and with much effort they managed to pull thebox along and hoist it also into the wagon, the body of which was filledwith corn fodder, covered with an old patchwork quilt.

  The wagon was of the rudest, clumsiest construction, the heavy box seton axles without springs, but the young physician was thankful for anykind of a conveyance. He had been used to life in the wild, takingthings as he found them--bunking in a tent, a board shanty, or out underthe open sky; with men brought heterogeneously together, some merelyrough woodsmen in their natural environment, others the scum of thecities to whom crime was become first nature, decency second, andothers, fleeing from justice and civilized law, hiding ofttimes a finenature delicately reared. During this time he had seldom seen a womanother than an occasional camp follower of the most degraded sort.

  Inured thus, he did not find his ride, embedded with good corn fodder,much of a hardship, even in a springless wagon over mountain roads.Wrapped in his rug, he braced himself against his box, with his facetoward the rear of the wagon, and gazed out from under its archingcanvas hood at the wild way, as it slowly unrolled behind them, and waspleased that he did not have to spend the night under the lee of thestation.

  The lingering sunlight made flaming banners of the snow clouds nowslowly drifting across the sky above the white world, and touched thehighest peaks with rose and gold. The shadows, ever changing, deepenedfrom faintest pink-mauve through heliotrope tints, to the richest violetin the heart of the gorges. Over and through all was the witchingmystery of fairy-like, snow-wreathed branches and twigs, interwoven andarching up and up in faint perspective to the heights above, and down,far down, to the depths of the regions below them; and all the time,mingled with the murmur of the voices behind him, and the creaking ofthe vehicle in which they rode, and the tramp of the animals when theycame to a hard roadbed with rock foundation,--noises which were notloud, but which seemed to be covered and subdued by the soft snow evenas it covered everything,--could be heard a light dropping andpattering, as the overladen last year's leaves and twigs dropped theirwhite burden to the ground. Sometimes the great hood of the wagon struckan overhanging bough and sent the snow down in showers as they passed.

  Heavily they climbed up, and warily made their descent of rocky steeps,passing through boggy places or splashing in clear streams which issuedfrom springs in the mountain side or fell from some distant height, thenclimbing again only to wind about and again descend. Often the way wasrough with boulders that had never been blasted out,--sometimes steeplyshelving where the gorge was deepest and the precipice sheerest. Pastall dangers the girl drove with skilful hand, now encouraging her teamwith her low voice, now restraining them, where their load crowded uponthem over slippery, shelving rocks, with strong pulls and sharp command.David marvelled at her serenity under the strain, and at her courage anddeftness. With the calmness of the boy nestling at her side, he resignedhimself to the sweet witchery of the time and place. Glancing up at thehigh seat behind him, he saw the child's feet dangling, and knew theymust be cold.

  "Why can't your little brother sit back here with me?" he said; "I'llcover him with my rug, and we'll keep each other warm."

  He saw the small hunched back stiffen, and try to appear big and manly,but she checked the team at a level dip in the road.

  "Yes, sonny, get ovah theah with the gentleman. It'll be some coldah nowthe sun's gone." But the little man was shyly reluctant to move. "Come,honey. Sistah'd a heap rathah you would."

  Then David reached up and gently lifted the atom of manhood, of pride,sensitiveness, and affection, over where he caused him to snuggle downin the fodder close to his side.

  For a while the child sat stiffly aloof, but gradually his little formrelaxed, and his head drooped sideways in the hollow of the stranger'sshoulder, held comfortably by Thryng's kindly encircling arm. Soon,with his small feet wrapped in the warm, soft rug, he slept soundly andsweetly, rocked, albeit rather roughly, in the jolting wagon.

  Thryng also dreamed, but not in sleep. His mind was stirred to unusualdepths by his strange surroundings--the silence, the mystery, the beautyof the night, and the suggestions of grandeur and power dimly revealedby the moonlight which bathed the world in a flood of glory.

  He was uplifted and drawn out of himself, and at the same time he wasthrown back to review his life and to see his most inward self, and tomarvel and question the wherefore of it all. Why was he here, away fromthe active, practical affairs which interest other men? Was he acreature of ideals only, or was he also a practical man, taking thewisest means of reaching and achieving results most worth while? He sawhimself in his childhood--in his youth--in his young manhood--even tothe present moment, jogging slowly along in a far country, rough andwild, utterly dependent on the courtesy of a slight girl, who held, forthe moment, his life in her hands; for often, as he gazed into the voidof darkness over narrow ledges, he knew that only the skill of those twosmall hands kept them from sliding into eternity: yet there was abouther such an air of wontedness to the situation that he was stirred by nosense of anxiety for himself or for her.

  He took out his pipe and smoked, still dreaming, comparing, andquestioning. Of ancient family, yet the younger son of three generationsof younger sons, all probability of great inheritance or title so farremoved from him, it behooved that he build for himself--what? Fortune,name, everything. Character? Ah, that was his heritage, all the heritagethe laws of England allowed him, and that not by right of English law,but because, fixed in the immutable, eternal Will, some laws there arebeyond the power of man to supersede. With an involuntary stiffening ofhis body, he disturbed for an instant the slumbering child, and quite asinvoluntarily he drew him closer and soothed him back to forgetfulness;and they both dreamed on, the child in his sleep, and the man in hiswide wakefulness and intense searching.

  His uncle, it is true, would have boosted him far toward creating bothname and fame for himself, in either army or navy, but he would none ofit. There was his older brother to be advanced, and the younger son ofthis same uncle to be placed in life, or married to wealth. This also hemight have done; well married he might have been ere now, and could bestill, for she was waiting--only--an ideal stood in his way. Whom hewould marry he would love. Not merely respect or like,--not evenboth,--but love he must; and in order to hold to this ideal he must flythe country, or remain to be unduly urged to his own discomfiture andpossibly to th
eir mutual undoing.

  As for the alternatives, the army or the navy, again his ideals hadformed for him impassable bars. He would found his career on the savingrather than the taking of life. Perhaps he might yet follow in the wakeof armies to mend bodies they have torn and cut and maimed, and healdiseases they have engendered--yes--perhaps--the ideals loomed big. Butwhat had he done? Fled his country and deftly avoided the mostheart-satisfying of human delights--children to call him father, andwife to make him a home; peace and wealth; thrust aside the helping handto power and a career considered most worthy of a strong and resourcefulman, and thrown personal ambition to the winds. Why? Because of hisideals--preferring to mend rather than to mar his neighbor.

  Surely he was right--and yet--and yet. What had he accomplished? Takenthe making of his life into his own hands and lost--all--if health werereally gone. One thing remained to him--the last rag and remnant of hischerished ideals--to live long enough to triumph over his own diseaseand take up work again. Why should he succumb? Was it fate? Was therethe guidance of a higher will? Might he reach out and partake of theDivine power? But one thing he knew; but one thing could he do. As theglory of white light around him served to reveal a few feet only of theway, even as the density beyond seemed impenetrable, still it was butseeming. There was a beyond--vast--mysterious--which he must search out,slowly, painfully, if need be, seeing a little way only, but seeing thatlittle clearly, revealed by the white light of spirit. His own or God's?Into the infinite he must search--search--and at last surely find.