The Rim of the Desert Part 19

Tisdale halted again, and in the silence Elizabeth sighed. Then, "I'll bet you didn't waste any time in that place," exclaimed Morganstein.

"The eyes were closed," resumed Tisdale gently. "I saw the blow had taken him in his sleep, but the wantonness, the misery of it, turned me cold.

Then, you are right, I was seized with a panic to get away. I laid the papoose back in the place where I had found him and left my string of fish, a poor tribute, with what money I had about me, and hurried down into the bed of the brook.

"The squaws were several days' travel from the reservation, but I remembered we had pa.s.sed a small encampment a few miles down the river and another near the mouth of the Dosewallups, where a couple of Indians were fis.h.i.+ng from canoes. I knew they would patrol the stream as soon as the alarm was given, and my only chance was to make a wide detour, avoiding my camp where they would first look for me, swim the river, and push through the forest, around that steep, pyramid peak to the next canyon. You see it?--The Duckabush cuts through there to tide water. I left no trail in crossing the stony bed of the brook, and took advantage of a low basalt bluff in climbing the farther bank. It was while I was working my way over the rock into cover of the trees that the pleasant calling on the ridge behind me changed to the first terrible cry. The mother had found her dead baby.

"Twilight was on me when I stopped at last on the river bank to take off my shoes. I rolled them with my coat in a snug pack, which I secured with a length of fish-line to my shoulders before I plunged in. The current was swift; I lost headway, and a whirlpool caught me; I was swept under, came up grazing a ragged rock, dipped again through a riffle, and when I finally gathered myself and won out to the opposite sh.o.r.e, there was my camp in full view below me. I was winded, bruised, s.h.i.+vering, and while I lay resting I watched Sandy. He stirred the fire under his kettle, put a fresh lag on, then walked to the mouth of the brook and stood looking up stream, wondering, no doubt, what was keeping me. Then a long cry came up the gorge. It was lost in the rush of the rapids and rose again in a wailing dirge. The young squaw was mourning for her papoose. It struck me colder than the waters of the Dosewallups. Sandy turned to listen. I knew I had only to call, show myself, and the boys would be ready to fight for me every step of the trail down to the settlement; but there was no need to drag them in; I hoped they would waste no time in going out, and I found my pocket compa.s.s, set a course, and pushed into the undergrowth.

"That night journey was long-drawn torture. The moon rose, but its light barely penetrated the fir boughs. My coat and shoes were gone, torn from me in the rapids, and I walked blindly into snares of broken and p.r.o.nged branches, trod tangles of blackberry, and more than once my foot was pierced by the barbs of a devil's-club. Dawn found me stumbling into a small clearing. I was dull with weariness, but I saw a cabin with smoke rising from the chimney, and the possibility of a breakfast heartened me.

As I hurried to the door, it opened, and a woman with a milking pail came out. At sight of me she stopped, her face went white, and, dropping the bucket, she moved backward into the room. The next moment she brought a rifle from behind the door. 'If you come one step nearer,' she cried, 'I'll shoot.'"

Tisdale paused, and the humor broke gently in his face. "I saw she was quite capable of it," he went on, "and I stopped. It was the first time I had seemed formidable to a woman, and I raised my hand to my head--my hat was gone--to smooth my ruffled hair; then my glance fell from my s.h.i.+rt sleeves, soiled and in tatters, down over my torn trousers to my shoeless feet; my socks were in rags. 'I am sorry,' I began, but she refused to listen. 'Don't you say a word,' she warned and had the rifle to her shoulder, looking along the sight. 'If you do, I'll shoot, and I'm a pretty good shot.'

"'I haven't a doubt of that,' I answered, taking the word, 'and even if you were not, you could hardly miss at that range.'

"Her color came back, and she stopped sighting to look me over. 'Now,' she said, 'you take that road down the Duckabush, and don't you stop short of a mile. Ain't you ashamed,' she shrilled, as I moved ignominiously into the trail, 'going 'round scaring ladies to death?'

"But I did not go that mile. Out of sight of the cabin I found myself in one of those old burned sections, overgrown with maple. The trees were very big, and the gnarled, fantastic limbs and boles were wrapped in thick bronze moss. It covered the huge, dead trunks and logs of the destroyed timber, carpeted the earth, and out of it grew a natural fernery." He turned his face a little, involuntarily seeking Mrs. Weatherbee. "I wish you could have seen that place," he said. "Imagine a great billowing sea of infinite shades of green, fronds waving everywhere, light, beautifully stencilled elk-fern, starting with a breadth of two feet and tapering to lengths of four or five; sword-fern shooting stiffly erect, and whole knolls mantled in maidenhair."

"I know, I know!" she responded breathlessly. "It must have been beautiful, but it was terrible if you were pursued. I have seen such a place. Wherever one stepped, fronds bent or broke and made a plain trail.

But of course you kept to the beaten road."

Tisdale shook his head. "That road outside the clearing was simply a narrow, little used path; and I was so dead tired I began to look for a place where I might take an hour's rest. I chose a big cedar snag a few rods from the trail, the spreading kind that is always hollow, and found the opening screened in fern and just wide enough to let me in. Almost instantly I was asleep and--do you know?"--the humor broke again gently-- "it was late in the afternoon when I wakened. And I was only roused then by a light blow on my face. I started up. The thing that had struck me was a moccasin, and its mate had dropped at my elbow. Then I saw a can of milk with a loaf of bread placed inside my door. But there was no one in sight, though I hurried to look, and I concluded that for some unaccountable reason that inhospitable woman had changed her opinion of me and wanted to make amends. I took a long draught of the milk--it was the best I ever tasted--then picked up one of the moccasins. It was new and elaborately beaded, the kind a woman fancies for wall decorations, and she had probably bartered with some pa.s.sing squaw for the pair. But the size looked encouraging, and with a little ripping and cutting, I managed to work it on. Pinned to the toe of the other, I found a note. It ran like this: 'Two Indians are trailing you. I sent them down-stream, but they will come back. They told me about that poor little papoose.'

"I saw she must have followed me that morning, while searching for her cow, or perhaps to satisfy herself I had left the clearing, and so discovered my hiding-place. The broader track of her skirts must have covered mine through the fern."

Tisdale paused. The _Aquila_ had come under the lee of Bainbridge Island.

The Olympics were out of sight, as the yacht, heeling to the first tide rip, began to turn into the Narrows, and the batteries of Fort Ward commanded her bows; a beautiful wooded point broke the line of the opposite sh.o.r.e. It rimmed a small cove. But Mrs. Weatherbee was not interested; her attention remained fixed on Tisdale. Indeed he held the eyes of every one. Then Marcia Feversham relieved the tension. "And the Indians came back?" she asked.

"Oh, yes, that was inevitable; they had to come back to pick up my trail.

But you don't know what a different man that rest and the moccasins made of me. In five minutes I was on the road and making my best time up the gorge, in the opposite direction. The woman was standing in her door as I pa.s.sed the cabin; she put a warning finger to her lips and waved me on. In a little while the ground began to fall in short pitches; sometimes it broke in steps over granite spurs where the exposed roots of fir and hemlock twined; then I came to a place where an immense boulder, big as a house, moving down the mountain, had left a swath through the timber, and I heard the thunder of the Duckabush. I turned into this cut, intending to cross the river and work down the canyon on the farther side, and as I went I saw the torrent storming below me, a winding sheet of spray. The boulder had stopped on a level bluff, but two sections, splitting from it, had dropped to the bank underneath and, tilting together in an apex, formed a small cavern through which washed a rill. It made a considerable pool and, dividing, poured on either side of the uprooted trunk of a fir that bridged the stream. The log was very old; it sagged mid-channel, as though a break had started, and snagged limbs stretched a line of pitfalls. But a few yards below the river plunged in cataract, and above I found sheer cliffs curving in a double horseshoe. It was impossible to swim the racing current, and I came back to the log. By that time another twilight was on me. The forest had been very still; I hadn't noticed a bird all day, but while I stood weighing the chances of that crossing, I heard the harsh call of a kingfisher or jay. It seemed to come from the slope beyond the bluff, and instantly an answer rose faintly in the direction of the trail. I was leaning on one of the tilted slabs, and I wormed myself around the base, to avoid leaving an impression in the wet sand, and dipped under the trailing bough of a cedar, through the pool, and crawled up into the cavern. There wasn't room to stand erect, and I waited crouching, over moccasins in water. The cedar began to sway--I had used the upper boughs to ease myself in sliding down the slab from the bluff--a fragment of granite dropped, then an Indian came between me and the light.

"While he stopped to examine the sand at the edge of the pool, another followed. He ventured a short distance out on the log and came back, while the first set his rifle against the trunk and sank on his hands and knees to drink. The water, roiled probably by my steps, was not to his taste, and he rejected it with a disgusted 'Hwah!' When he rose, he stood looking across the pool into my cavern. I held my breath, hugging the bluff behind me like a lizard. It was so dark I doubted if even his lynx eyes could discover me, but he lifted the gun and for an instant I believed he meant to send a shot into the hole. Then he seemed to think better of wasting his ammunition and led the way down-stream. They stopped on a level bank over the cataract, and in a little while I caught the odor of smoke and later of cooking trout. My cramped position grew intolerable, and finally I crept out into the pool to reconnoitre. The light of their fire showed both figures stretched on the ground. They had camped for the night.

"It was useless to try to go down-stream; before dawn Indians would patrol the whole canyon; neither could I double back to the Dosewallups where they had as surely left a watch; my only course was to risk the log crossing at once, before the moon rose, and strike southward to the Lilliwaup, where, at the mouth of the gorge, I knew the mail steamer made infrequent stops. I began to work up between the gnarled roots to the top of the trunk and pushed laboriously with infinite caution out over the channel. I felt every inch of that log, but once a dead branch snapped short in my hand, and the noise rang sharp as a pistol shot. I waited, flattening myself to the bole, but the thunder of the river must have drowned the sound; the Indians did not stir. So at last I came to the danger point. Groping for the break, I found it started underneath, reaching well around. Caused probably by some battering bulk in the spring floods, and widening slowly ever since, it needed only a slight shock to bring it to a finish. I grasped a stout snag and tried to swing myself over the place, but there came a splitting report; and there was just time to drop astride above that stub of limb, when the log parted below it, and I was in the river. I managed to keep my hold and my head out of water, though the current did its best to suck me under. Then I saw that while the main portion of the tree had been swept away, the top to which I clung remained fixed to the bank, wedged no doubt between trunks or boulders. As I began to draw myself up out of the wash, a resinous bough thrown on the fire warned me the Indians were roused, and I flattened again like a chameleon on the slippery incline. They came as far as the rill and stood looking across, then went down-stream, no doubt to see whether the trunk had stranded on the riffles below the cataract. But they were back before I could finish the log, and the rising moon illuminated the gorge. I was forced to swing to the shady side of the snag. The time dragged endlessly; a wind piping down the watercourse cut like a hundred whips through my wet clothes; and I think in the end I only kept my hold because my fingers were too stiff to let go. But at last the Indians stretched themselves once more on the ground; their fire burned low, and I wormed myself up within reach of a friendly young hemlock, grasped a bough, and gained shelving rock. The next moment I relaxed, all but done for, on a dry bed of needles."

Tisdale paused, looking again from face to face, while the humor gleamed in his own. "I am making a long story of it," he said modestly. "You must be tired!"

"Tired!" exclaimed Elizabeth, "It's the very best story I ever heard.

Please go on."

"Of course you escaped," supplemented Marcia Feversham, "but we want to know how. And what was your chum doing all the time? And wasn't there another woman?"

Frederic Morganstein rumbled a short laugh. "Maybe you made the Lilliwaup, but I'll bet ten to one you missed your steamer."

Tisdale's eyes rested involuntarily again on Mrs. Weatherbee. She did not say anything, but she met the look with her direct gaze; her short upper lip parted, and the color burned softly in her cheek. "I made the Lilliwaup," he went on, "about two miles from the mouth, between the upper and lower falls. The river breaks in cascades there, hundreds of them as far as one can see, divided by tremendous boulders."

"We know the place," said Elizabeth quickly. "Our first cruise on the _Aquila_ was to the Lilliwaup. We climbed to the upper falls and spent hours along the cascades. Those boulders, hundreds of them, rose through the spray, all covered with little trees and ferns. There never was anything like it, but we called it The Fairy Isles."

Tisdale nodded. "It was near the end of that reach I found myself. The channels gather below, you remember, and pour down a steep declivity under a natural causeway. But the charm and grandeur were lost on me that day. I wanted to reach the old trail from the falls on the opposite sh.o.r.e, and I knew that stone bridge fell short a span, so I began to work my way from boulder to boulder out to the main stream. It was a wide chasm to leap, with an upward spring to a tilted table of basalt, and I overbalanced, slipped down, and, coasting across the surface, recovered enough on the edge to ease myself off to a nearly submerged ledge. There I stopped." He paused an instant, and his eyes sought Marcia Feversham's; the amus.e.m.e.nt played lightly on his flexible lips. "I had stumbled on another woman. She was seated on a lower boulder, sketching the stone bridge. I was behind her, but I saw a pretty hand and forearm, some nice brown hair tucked under a big straw hat, and a trim and young figure in a well-made gown of blue linen. Then she said pleasantly, without turning her head: 'Well, John, what luck?'

"I drew back into a shallow niche of the rock. I had not forgotten the first impression I made on the woman up the Duckabush and had no desire to 'scare ladies.' But my steamer was almost due, and I hoped John would come soon. Getting no reply from him, she rose and glanced around. Then she looked at her watch, put her hand to her mouth, and sent a long call up the gorge. 'Joh-n. Joh-n, h.e.l.lo!' She had a carrying, singer's voice, but it brought no answer, so after a moment she gathered up her things and started towards the bank. I watched her disappear among the trees; then, my fear of missing the steamer growing stronger than the dread of terrifying her, I followed. The trail drops precipitously around the lower falls, you remember, and I struck the level where the river bends at the foot of the cataract, with considerable noise. I found myself in a sort of open-air parlor flanked by two tents; rustic seats under a canopy of maple boughs, hammocks, a percolator bubbling on a sheet-iron contrivance over the camp-fire coals, and, looking at me across a table, the girl. 'I beg your pardon,' I hurried to say. 'Don't be afraid of me.'

"'Afraid?' she repeated. 'Afraid--of you?' And the way she said it, with a half scornful, half humorous surprise, the sight of her standing there so self-reliant, buoyant, the type of that civilization I had tried so hard to reach, started a reaction of my overstrained nerves. Still, I think I might have held myself together had I not at that moment caught the voice of that unhappy squaw. It struck a chill to my bones, and I sank down on the nearest seat and dropped my face in my hands, completely unmanned.

"I knew she came around the table and stood looking me over, but when I finally managed to lift my head, she had gone back to the percolator to bring me a cup of coffee. It had a pleasant aroma, and the cream with which she cooled it gave it a nice color. You don't know how that first draught steadied me. 'I am sorry, madam,' I said, 'but I have had a hard experience in these woods, and I expected to catch the mail boat for Seattle; but that singing down-stream means I am cut off.'

"She started a little and looked me over again with new interest. 'The squaw,' she said, 'is mourning for her papoose. It was a terrible accident. A young hunter up the Dosewallups, where the Indians were berrying, killed the baby in jumping a log.'

"'Yes, madam,' I answered, and rose and put the cup down, 'I am the man.

It is harder breaking trail to the Lilliwaup than coming by canoe, and the Indians have beaten me. I must double back now to the Duckabush. By that time, they will have given up the watch.'

"'Wait,' she said, 'let me think.' But it did not take her long. A turn the length of the table, and her face brightened. 'Why, it's the easiest thing in the world,' she said. 'I must row you to the steamer.' Then when I hesitated to let her run the risk, she explained that her party had moved their camp from the mouth of the Dosewallups after these Indians arrived there; they knew her; they had seen her rowing about, and she always carried a good many traps; an easel, sun umbrella, cus.h.i.+ons, a steamer rug. I had only to lie down in the bottom of the boat, and she would cover me. And she drew back the flap of the nearest tent and told me to change my clothes for a brown suit she laid out, and canvas shoes.

'Come,' she urged, 'there's time enough but none to waste; and any minute the Indians may surprise you.'

"She was waiting with the rug and pillows and a pair of oars when I came out, and helped me carry them to the boat which was beached a short distance below her camp. When it was launched, and I was stowed under the baggage, with an ample breathing hole through which I could watch the rower, she pushed off and fell into a long, even stroke. Presently I noticed she had nice eyes, brown and very deep, and I thought her face was beautiful. It had the expressiveness, the swift intelligence that goes with a strong personality, and through all her determination, I felt a running note of caution. I knew she saw clearly while she braved the extremity. After a while her breast began to rise and fall with the exercise, her cheeks flushed, and I saw she had met the flood tide. All this time the voice of the squaw grew steadily nearer. I imagined her, as I had seen others before, kneeling on the bank, rocking herself, beating her breast. Then it came over me that we were forced to hug the sh.o.r.e to avoid one of the reedy shallows that choked the estuary and must pa.s.s very close to her. The next moment there was a lull, and the girl looked across her shoulder and called 'Clahowya!' At the same time she rested on her oars long enough to take off her hat and toss it with careless directness on my breathing hole. The squaw's answer came from above me, and she repeated and intoned the word so that it seemed part of her dirge.

'Clahowya! Clahowya! Clahowya! Wake tenas papoose. Halo! Halo!' The despair of it cut me worse than lashes. Then I heard other voices; a dog barked, and I understood we were skirting the encampment.

"After that the noise grew fainter, and in a little while the girl uncovered my face. The channel had widened; the tang of salt came on the wind; and when I ventured to raise my head a little, I saw the point at the mouth of the river looming purple-black. Then, as we began to round it, we came suddenly on a canoe, drifting broadside, with a single salmon hunter crouching in it, ready with his spear. It flashed over me that he was one of the two Indians who had tracked me to the Duckabush; the taller one who had tried to drink at the rill; then he made his throw and at the same instant the girl's hat fell again on my face. I heard her call her pleasant 'Clahowya!' and she added, rowing on evenly: 'Hyas delate salmon.' The next moment his answer rang astern: 'Clahowya! Clahowya! Hyas delate salmon.'

"At last I felt the swell of the open, and she leaned to uncover my face once more. 'The steamer is in sight,' she said, and I raised my head again and saw the boat, a small moving blot with a trailer of smoke, far up the sapphire sea. Then I turned on my elbow and looked back. The canoe and the encampment were hidden by the point; we were drifting off the wharf of the small town-site, almost abandoned, where the steamer made her stop. There was nothing left to do but express my grat.i.tude, which I did clumsily enough.

"'You mustn't make so much of it,' she said; 'the first thing a reservation Indian is taught is to forget the old law, a life for a life.'

"'I know that,' I answered, 'still I couldn't have faced the best white man that first hour, and off there in the mountains, away from reservation influences, my chances looked small. I wish I could be as sure the men who were with me are safe.'

"She gave me a long, calculating look. 'They will be--soon,' she said. 'My brother Robert should be on the steamer with the superintendent and reservation guard.' And she dipped her oars again, pointing the boat a little more towards the landing, and watched the steamer while I sifted her meaning.

"'So,' I said at last. 'So they are there at that camp. You knew it and brought me by.'

"'You couldn't have helped them any,' she said, 'and you can go back, if you wish, with the guard.' Then she told me how she had visited the camp with her brother Robert and had seen them bound with stout strips of elk-hide. They had explained the accident and how one of them, to give me time at the start, had put himself in my place."

Tisdale halted a moment; a wave of emotion crossed his face. His look rested on Mrs. Weatherbee, and his eyes drew and held hers. She leaned forward a little; her lips parted over a hushed breath. It was as though she braved while she feared his next words. "That possibility hadn't occurred to me," he went on, "yet I should have foreseen it, knowing the man as I did. We were built on the same lines, practically the same size, and we had outfitted together for the trip. He wore high, brown shoes spiked for mountain climbing, exactly like mine; he even matched the marks of that heel. But Sandy wouldn't stand for it. He declared there was a third man who had gone up Rocky Brook and had not come back. One of the squaws who had seen me agreed with him, but they were bound and taken to the encampment. The next morning an Indian found my coat and shoes lodged on a gravel bar and picked up my trail. The camp moved then by canoe around to the mouth of the Duckabush. taking the prisoners with them, and waited for my trailers to come down. They had discovered me on the log crossing when it fell, and believed I was drowned."

There was another pause. Mrs. Weatherbee sighed and leaned back in her chair; then Mrs. Feversham said: "And they refused to let your subst.i.tute go?"

Tisdale nodded. "He was brought with Sandy along to the Lilliwaup. The Indians were traveling home, and no doubt the reservation influence had restrained them; still, they were staying a second night on the Lilliwaup, and when Robert spoke to them they were sullen and ugly. That was why he had hurried away to bring the superintendent down. He had started in his Peterboro but expected to find a man on the way who would take him on in his motor-boat. Once during the night John had drifted close to the camp to listen, but things were quiet, and they had bridged the morning with a little fis.h.i.+ng and sketching up-stream.

"'Suppose,' I said at last, 'suppose you had been afraid of me. I should be doubling back to the Duckabush now. As it is, I wouldn't give much for their opinion of me.'

"'I wish you could have heard that man Sandy,' she said, and--did I tell you she had a very nice smile? 'He called you true gold.' And while she went on to repeat the rest he had told her, it struck me pleasantly I was listening to my own obituary. But the steamer was drawing close. She whistled the landing, and the girl dipped her oars again, pulling her long, even strokes. I threw off the rug and sat erect, ready to ease the boat off as we came alongside. And there on the lower deck watching us stood a young fellow whom, from his resemblance to her, I knew as brother Robert, with the superintendent from the reservation, backed by the whole patrol. Then my old friend Doctor Wise, the new coroner at Hoodsport, came edging through the crowd to take my hand. 'Well, well, Tisdale, old man,'

he said, 'this is good. Do you know they had you drowned--or worse?'"

Tisdale settled back in his chair and, turning his face, looked off the port bow. The Narrows had dropped behind, and for a moment the deck of the _Aquila_ slanted to the tide rip off Port Orchard; then she righted and raced lightly across the broad channel. Ahead, off Bremerton Navy Yard, some anch.o.r.ed cruisers rose in black silhouette against a brilliant sea.

"And," said Marcia Feversham, "of course you went to the camp in a body and released the prisoners."

"Yes, we used the mail steamer's boats, and she waited for us until the inquest was over, then brought us on to Seattle. The motor-boat took the doctor and superintendent home."