The White Desert Part 7

"And you--was it your fault?"

"If you never believe anything else about me, Ba'tiste, believe this: that it wasn't. And in a way, it was proven to him, before he went.

But he had been embittered then. He left a will--with stipulations. I was to have the land he owned out here at Empire Lake; and the flume site leading down the right side of Hawk Creek to the mill. Some one else owns the other side of the lake and the land on the opposite bank of the stream."

"_Oui_. Medaine Robinette."

"Honestly? Is it hers?"

"When she is twenty-one. But go on."

"Father wouldn't leave me the mill. He seemed to have a notion that I'd sell it all off--and he tied everything up in a way to keep me from doing anything like that. The mill is rented to me. The land is mine, and I can do everything but actually dispose of it. But on top of that comes another twist: if I haven't developed the business within five years into double what it was at the peak of its best development, back goes everything into a trust fund, out of which I am to have a hundred dollars a month, nothing more. That's what I'm out here for, Ba'tiste, to find out why, in spite of the fact that I've worked day and night now for a year and a half, in spite of the fact that I've gone out and struggled and fought for contracts, and even beaten down the barriers of dislike and distrust and suspicion to get business--why I can't get it! Something or some one is blocking me, and I'm going to find out what and who it is! I think I know one man--Thayer. But there may be more. That's why I'm playing this game of lost ident.i.ty. I thought I could get out here and nose around without him knowing it. When he found out at once who I was, and seemed to have had a previous tip that I was coming out here, I had to think fast and take the first scheme that popped into my head. Maybe if I can play the game long enough, it will take him off his guard and cause him to work more in the open.

They may give me a chance to know where I stand. And I've got to know that, Ba'tiste. Because--" and his voice was vibrant with determination, "I don't care what happens to me personally. I don't care whether five minutes after I have made it, I lose every cent of what I have worked for. But I do care about this; I'm going to make good to my father's memory. I'm going to be able to stand before a mirror and look myself straight in the eye, knowing that I bucked up against trouble, that it nearly whipped me, that it took the unfairest advantage that Fate can take of a man in allowing my father to die before I could fully right myself in his eyes, but that if there is a Justice, if there is anything fair and decent in this universe, some way he'll know, some way he'll rest in peace, with the understanding that his son took up the gauntlet that death laid down for him, that he made the fight, and that he won!"

"_Bon_--good!" Old Ba'tiste leaned over the foot of the bed. "My Pierre--he would talk like that. _Bon_? Now--what is it you look for?"

"In the first place, I want to know how so many accidents can happen in a single plant, just at the wrong time. I want to know why it is that I can go out and fight for a contract, and then lose it because a saw has broken, or an off-bearer, lugging slabs away from the big wheel, can allow one to strike at just the wrong moment and let the saw pick it up and drive it through the boiler, laying up the whole plant for three weeks. I want to know why it is that only about one out of three contracts I land are ever filled. Thayer's got something to do with it, I know. Why? That's another question. But there must be others.

I want to know who they are and weed them out. I've only got three and a half years left, and things are going backward instead of forward."

"How you intend to fin' this out?"

"I don't know. I've got one lead--as soon as I'm able to get into town. That may give me a good deal of information; I came out here, at least, in the hope that it would. After that, I'm hazy. How big a telegraph office is there at Tabernacle?"

"How big?" Ba'tiste laughed. "How _pet.i.te_! Eet is about the size of the--what-you-say--the peanut."

"Is there ever a time when the operator isn't there?"

"At noon. He go out to dinner, and he leave open the door. If eet is something you want, walk in."

"Thanks." A strange eagerness was in Houston's eyes. "I think I'll be able to get up to-morrow. Maybe I can walk over there; it's only a mile or two, isn't it?"

But when to-morrow, came, it found a white, bandaged figure sitting weakly in front of Ba'tiste's cabin, nothing more. Strength of purpose and strength of being had proved two different things, and now he was quite content to rest there in the May suns.h.i.+ne, to watch the chattering magpies as they went about the work of spring house-building, to study the colors of the hills, the mergings of the tintings and deeper hues as the scale ran from brown to green to blue, and finally to the stark red granite and snow whites of Mount Taluchen.

Ba'tiste and his constant companion, Golemar, were making the round of the traps and had been gone for hours. Barry was alone--alone with the beauties of spring in the hills, with the soft call of the meadow lark in the bit of greenery which fringed the still purling stream in the little valley, the song of the breeze through the pines, the suns.h.i.+ne, the warmth--and his problems.

Of these, there were plenty. In the first place, how had Thayer known that he was on the way from the East? He had spoken to only two persons,--Jenkins, his bookkeeper, and one other. To these two persons he merely had given the information that he was going West on a bit of a vacation. He had deliberately chosen to come in his car, so that there might be every indication, should there be such a thing as a spy in his rather diminutive office, that he merely intended a jaunt through a few States, certainly not a journey half across the country.

But just the same, the news had leaked; Thayer had been informed, and his arrival had been no surprise.

That there had been need for his coming, Barry felt sure. At the least, there was mismanagement at the mill; contract after contract lost just when it should have been gained told him this, if nothing more. But--and he drew a sheet of yellow paper from his pocket and stared hard at it--there was something else, something which had aroused his curiosity to an extent of suspicion, something which might mean an open book of information to him if only he could reach Tabernacle at the right moment and gain access to the telegraph files without the interference of the agent.

Then suddenly he ceased his study of the message and returned it to his pocket. Two persons were approaching the cabin from the opposite hill,--a girl whom he was glad to see, and a man who walked, or rather rolled, in the background: Medaine Robinette and a sort of rear guard who, twenty or thirty feet behind her, followed her every step, trotted when she ran down the steep side of an embankment, then slowed as she came to a walk again. A bow-legged creature he was, with ill-fitting clothing and a broad "two-gallon" hat which evidently had been bequeathed to him by some cow-puncher, long hair which straggled over his shoulders, and a beaded vest which shone out beneath the scraggly outer coat like a candle on a dark night. Instinctively Barry knew him to be the grunting individual who had waited outside the door the night before,--Lost Wing, Medaine's Sioux servant: evidently a self-const.i.tuted bodyguard who traveled more as a shadow than as a human being. Certainly the girl in the foreground gave no indication that she was aware of his presence; nor did she seem to care.

Closer she came, and Barry watched her, taking a strange sort of delight in the skipping grace with which she negotiated the stepping stones of the swollen little stream which intervened between her and the cabin of Ba'tiste Renaud, then clambered over the straggling pile of ma.s.sed logs and dead timber which strewed the small stretch of flat before the rise began, leading to where he rested. More like some graceful, agile boy was she than a girl. Her clothing was of that type which has all too soon taken the place of the buckskin in the West,--a riding habit, with stout little shoes and leather puttees; her hair was drawn tight upon her head and encased in the s.h.i.+elding confines of a cap, worn low over her forehead, the visor pulled aside by a jutting twig and now slanting out at a rakish angle; her arms full of something pink and soft and pretty. Barry wondered what it could be,--then brightened with sudden hope.

"Wonder if she's bringing them to me?"

The answer came a moment later as she faced him, panting slightly from the exertion of the climb, the natural flush of exercise heightened by her evident embarra.s.sment.

"Oh, you're up!" came in an almost disappointed manner. Then with a glance toward the great cl.u.s.ter of wild roses in her arms, "I don't know what to do with these things now."

"Why?" Barry's embarra.s.sment was as great as hers. "If--if it'll do any good, I'll climb back into bed again."

"No--don't. Only I thought you were really, terribly ill and--"

"I am--I was--I will be. That is--gosh, it's a shame for you to go out and pick all those and then have me sitting up here as strong as an ox.

I--"

"Oh, don't worry about that." She smiled at him with that sweetness which only a woman can know when she has the advantage. "I didn't pick them. Lost Wing"--she pointed to the skulking, outlandishly dressed Indian in the background--"attended to that. I was going to send them over by him. But I didn't have anything to do, so I just thought I'd bring them myself."

"Thanks for that, anyway. Can't I keep them just the same--to put on the table or something?"

"Oh, if you care to." Barry felt that she was truly disappointed that he wasn't at the point of death, or at least somewhere near it.

"Where's Ba'tiste."

"Out looking after his traps, picking them up I think, for the summer.

He'll be back soon. Is there--"

"No. I usually come over every day to see him, you know." Then the blue eyes lost their diffidence to become serious. "Do you remember yet who you are?"

"Less right at this minute than at any other time!" spoke Barry truthfully. "I'm out of my head entirely!" He reached for the flowers.

"Please don't joke that way. It's really serious. When I was across--army nursing--I saw a lot of just such cases as yours. Sh.e.l.l shock, you know. One has to be awfully careful with it."

"I know. But I'm getting the best of care. I--ouch!" His interest had exceeded his caution. The unbandaged hand had waved the flowers for emphasis and absently gripped the stems. The wild roses fluttered to the ground. "Gos.h.!.+" came dolefully, "I'm all full of thorns. Guess I'll have to pick 'em out with my teeth."

"Oh!" Then she picked up the roses and laid them gingerly aside. "You can't use your other hand, can you?"

"No. Arm's broken."

"Then--" she looked back toward Lost Wing, hunched on a stump, and Barry's heart sank. She debated a moment, at last to shake her head.

"No--he'd want to dig them out with a knife. If you don't mind." She moved toward Houston and Barry thrust forth his hand.

"If you don't mind," he countered and she sat beside him. A moment later:

"I must look like a fortune teller."

"See anything in my palm besides thorns?"

"Yes. A little dirt. Ba'tiste evidently isn't a very good nurse."

"I did the best I could with one hand. But I was pretty grimy. I--I didn't know," and Barry grinned cheerfully, "I was going to be this lucky."

She pretended not to hear the sally. And in some way Barry was glad.

He much rather would have her silent than making some flippant remark, much rather would he prefer to lean comfortably back on the old bench and watch the quiet, almost childish determination of her features as she sought for a grip on the tiny protuberances of the thorns, the soft brownness of the few strands of hair which strayed from beneath the boyish cap, the healthy glow of her complexion, the smallness of the clear-skinned hands, the daintiness of the trim little figure. Much rather would he be silent with the picture than striving for answers to questions that in their very naveness were an accusation. Quite suddenly Barry felt cheap and mean and dishonest. He felt that he would like to talk about himself,--about home and his reasons for being out here; his hopes for the mill which now was a shambling, unprofitable thing; about the future and--a great many things. It was with an effort, when she queried him again concerning his memory, that he still remained Mr. n.o.body. Then he s.h.i.+fted the conversation from himself to her.

"Do you live out here?"

"Yes. Didn't Ba'tiste tell you? My house is just over the hill--you can just see one edge of the roof through that bent aspen."