Thurston of Orchard Valley Part 34

"Do you think he would care to meet you?" asked Millicent, cuttingly.

"Perhaps he mightn't. You could have the Nelsons over, and press of business might detain me. Anyway, you'll have no time to settle all about that money and your English property if he goes out on the Atlantic train. You two seem to have got quite friendly again, and I'm tolerably sure he'd stay if you asked him."

Millicent's anger was rising all the time; but, because her suspicions increased every moment, she kept herself in hand. Feeling certain this was part of some plot, and that her husband was not steady enough to carry out his _role_ cleverly, she desired to discover his exact intentions before denouncing him.

"Why should I press him?"

Had it been before the dinner Leslie might have acted more discreetly.

As it was, he looked at the speaker somewhat blankly. "Why? Because I want you to. Now don't ask troublesome questions or put on your tragedy air, Millicent, but just promise to keep him here until after the east-bound train starts, anyway. I'm not asking for caprice--I--I particularly want a man to see him who will not be in the city until the following day."

Then, remembering what she had heard outside the steamer's deck house, a light suddenly broke in upon the woman. The man whose keen eyes would interfere with Shackleby's plans must be Thurston, and it was evident there was a scheme on hand to wreck his work in his absence.

Once she had half-willingly a.s.sisted her husband to Thurston's detriment; but much had changed since then, and remembering that she had already, without knowing it, played into the confederate's hands by writing to him, her indignation mastered her.

"I could not persuade him against his wishes, and would not do so if I could," she declared, turning full upon her husband.

"You can and must," replied Leslie, whose pa.s.sion blazed up. "I'm about sick of your obstinacy and fondness for dramatic situations. You could do anything with any man you laid yourself out to inveigle, as I know to my cost, and in this case--by the Lord, I'll make you!"

"I will not!" Millicent's face was white with anger as she fixed her eyes on him. "For a few moments you shall listen to me. What you and Shackleby are planning does not concern me; but I will not move a finger to help you. Once before you said--what you have done--and if I have never forgotten it I tried to do so. This time I shall do neither. I have borne very much from you already, but, sunk almost to your level as I am, there are things I cannot stoop to countenance.

For instance, the draft I am to cajole from Thurston is not intended for a speculation in mining shares, but--for Coralie."

The little carved bracket came down from the wall with a crash, and Leslie, whose face was swollen with fury, gripped the speaker's arm savagely. "After to-morrow you can do just what pleases you and go where you will," he responded in a voice shaking with rage and fear.

"But in this I will make you obey me. As to Coralie, somebody has slandered me. The money is for what I told you, and nothing else."

Millicent with an effort wrenched herself free. "It is useless to protest, for I would not believe your oath," she said, looking at him steadily with contempt showing in every line of her pose. "Obey--you!

As the man I, with blind folly, abandoned for you warned me, you are too abject a thing. Liar, thief, have I not said sufficient?--adulterer!"

"Quite!" cried Leslie, who yielded to the murderous fury which had been growing upon him, and leaning down struck her brutally upon the mouth.

"What I am you have made me--and, by Heaven, it is time I repaid you in part."

Millicent staggered a little under the blow, which had been a heavy one, but her wits were clear, and, moving swiftly to a bell b.u.t.ton, the pressure of her finger was answered by a tinkle below.

"I presume you do not wish to make a public scandal," she said thickly, for the lace handkerchief she removed from her smarting lips was stained with blood. Then, as their Chinese servant appeared in the doorway, "Your master wants you, John."

Before Leslie could grasp her intentions she had vanished, there was a rustle of drapery on the stairway, followed by the jar of a lock, and he was left face to face was the stolid Asiatic.

"Wantee someling, sah?" the Chinaman asked.

Leslie glared at him speechless until, with a humble little nod, the servant said:

"Linga linga bell; too much hullee, John quick come. Wantee someling.

Linga linga bell."

"Go the devil. Oh, get out before I throw you," roared Leslie, and John vanished with the waft of a blue gown, while Millicent's book crashed against the door close behind his head.

CHAPTER XXVI

A RECKLESS JOURNEY

The rising moon hung low above the lofty pines behind the city, when Millicent sank s.h.i.+vering into a chair beside the window of her bedroom.

Under the impact of the blow her teeth had gashed her upper lip, but she did not feel the pain as she sat with hands clenched, looking down on the blaze of silver that grew broader across the inlet. She was faint and dizzy, incapable as yet of definite thought; but confused memories flashed through her brain, one among them more clearly than the rest. Instead of land-locked water s.h.i.+mmering beneath the Western pines, she saw dim English beeches with the coppery disk of the rising moon behind, and she heard a tall man speak with stinging scorn to one who cowered before him among the shadows.

"I was mad that night, and have paid for the madness ever since. Now when it is too late I know what I have lost!" she gasped with a catch of the breath that was a sob repressed.

There was a heavy step on the stairway, and Millicent shrank with the nausea of disgust as somebody tried the door. She drew a deep breath of relief, when the steps pa.s.sed on unevenly.

The memories returned. They led her through a long succession of mistakes, falsehoods, slights and wrongs up to the present, and she s.h.i.+vered again, while a heavy drop of blood splashed warm upon her hand. Then she was mistress of herself once more, and a hazy purpose grew into definite shape. She could at least warn the man whom she had wronged, and so make partial reparation. It was not a wish for revenge upon her husband which prompted her to desire that amends might be made for her past treachery. Smarting with shame, she longed only to escape from him. After the day's revelations she could never forgive that blow.

Millicent was a woman of action, and it was a relief to consider practical details. She decided that a telegram might lie for days at the station nearest the canon, while what distance divided one from the other she did not know. There was no train before noon the next day, and she feared that the plot might be put into execution as soon as Geoffrey left his camp. Therefore, she must reach it before he did so.

Afterwards--but she would not consider the future then, and, if she could but warn him, nothing mattered greatly, neither physical peril nor the risk of her good name.

It was long before Millicent Leslie had thought all this out, but when once her way seemed clear, exhausted by conflicting emotions, she sank into heavy slumber, and the sun was high before she awakened. Leslie had gone to his office, and she ate a little, chose her thickest furs, and waited for noon in feverish suspense. Her husband might return and prevent her departure by force. She feared that, should he guess her intention, a special locomotive might be hired, even after the train had started. It was, therefore, necessary to slip away without word or sign, unless, indeed, she could mislead him, and, smiling mirthlessly, she laid an open letter inside her writing-case.

At last the time came, and she went out carrying only a little hand-bag, pa.s.sed along the unfrequented water side to the station by the wharf, and ensconced herself in the corner of the car nearest the locomotive, counting the seconds until it should start. Once she trembled when she saw Shackleby hurry along the platform, but she breathed again when he hailed a man leaning out from the vestibule of a car. At last, the big bell clanged, and the Atlantic express, rolling out of the station, began its race across the continent.

It was nearly dusk when, with a scream of brakes, the cars lurched into a desolate mountain station, and Millicent s.h.i.+vered as she alighted in the frost-dried dust of snow. A nipping wind sighed down the valley.

The tall firs on the hillside were fading into phantom battalions of climbing trees, and above them towered a dim chaos of giant peaks, weirdly awe-inspiring under the last faint glimmer of the dying day. A few lights blinked among the lower firs, and Millicent, hurrying towards them at the station agent's direction, was greeted by the odors of coa.r.s.e tobacco as she pushed open the door of the New Eldorado saloon.

A group of bronze-faced men, some in jackets of fringed deerskin and some in coa.r.s.e blue jean, sat about the stove, and, though Millicent involuntarily shrank from them, there was no reason why she should feel any fear in their presence. They were rude of aspect--on occasion more rude of speech--but, in all the essentials that become a man, she would have found few to surpa.s.s them in either English or Western cities.

There was dead silence as she entered, and the others copied him when one of the loungers, rising, took off his shapeless hat, not ungracefully.

"I want a guide and good horse to take me to Thurston's camp in the Orchard River Canon to-night," she said.

The men looked at one another, and the one who rose first replied: "Sorry to disappoint you, ma'am, but it's clean impossible. We'll have snow by morning, and it's steep chances a man couldn't get through in the dark now the shelf on the wagon trail's down."

"I must go. It is a matter of life and death, and I'm willing to pay whoever will guide me proportionate to the risk," insisted Millicent, shaking out on the table a roll of bills. Then, because she was a woman of quick perceptions, and noticed something in the big axeman's honest face, she added quickly, "I am in great distress, and disaster may follow every moment lost. Is there n.o.body in this settlement with courage enough to help me?"

This time the listeners whispered as they glanced sympathetically at the speaker. The big man said:

"If you're willing to face the risk I'll go with you. You can put back most of your money; but, because we're poor men you'll be responsible for the horses."

Millicent felt the cold strike through her with the keenness of steel when the went out into the night. Somebody lifted her to the back of a snorting horse, and a man already mounted seized its bridle. There was a shout of "Good luck!" and they had started on their adventurous journey. Loose floury snow m.u.f.fled the beat of hoofs, the lights of the settlement faded behind and the two were alone in a wilderness of awful white beauty, wherein it seemed no living thing had broken the frozen silence since the world was made. Staring vacantly before her Millicent saw the shoulders of the mighty peaks looming far above her through a haze of driving snow, which did not reach the lower slopes, where even the wind was still. The steam of the horses hung in white clouds about them as they climbed, apparently for hours, past scattered vedettes of dwindling pines. After a long pull on a steep trail the man checked the horses on the brink of a chasm filled with eddying mist.

"That should have been our way, but the whole blame trail slipped down into the valley," the man said. "Let me take hold of your bridle and trust to me. We're going straight over the spur yonder until we strike the trail again."

It was no longer a ride but a scramble. Even those sure-footed horses stumbled continually, and where the wind had swept the thin snow away, the iron on the sliding hoofs clanged on ice-streaked rock, or hundredweights of loose gravel rattled down the incline. Then there was juniper to be struggled through. They came to slopes almost precipitous up which the panting guide somehow dragged the horses, but, one strong with muscular vigor and the other sustained by sheer force of will, the two riders held stubbornly on. Millicent had risen superior to physical weakness that night.

"Four hours to the big divide! We've pretty well equaled Thurston's record," said the guide, striking a match inside his hollowed palm to consult his watch. "It's all down grade now, but we'll meet the wind in the long pa.s.s and maybe the snow."

Millicent's heart almost failed her when, as the match went out, she gazed down into the gulf of darkness that opened at her feet, but she answered steadily: "Press on. I must reach the camp by daylight, whatever happens."

They went on. The pace, instead of a scramble, became in places a wild glissade, and no beast of burden but a mountain pack-horse could have kept its footing ten minutes. Dark pines rose up from beneath them and faded back of them, here and there a scarred rock or whitened boulder flitted by, and then Millicent's sight was dimmed by a whirling haze of snow. How long the descent lasted she did not know. She could see nothing through the maze of eddying flakes but that a figure, magnified by them to gigantic proportions, rode close beside her, until they left the cloud behind and wound along the face of a declivity, which dipped into empty blackness close beneath.

Suddenly her horse stumbled; there was a flounder and a shock, and Millicent felt herself sliding very swiftly down a long slope of crusted snow. Hoa.r.s.e with terror, she screamed once, then something seized and held her fast, and she rose, shaking in every limb, to cling breathless to the guide.

"Hurt bad?" he gasped. "No!--I'm mighty glad. Snow slide must have gouged part of the trail out. Can you hold up a minute while I 'tend to the horse?"