The White Desert Part 8

Barry stared.

"I'd noticed that. Thought it was a house, but couldn't be sure. I thought I understood Ba'tiste to say you only came out here in the summer."

"I did that when I was going to school. Now I stay here all the year 'round."

"Isn't it lonely?"

"Out here? With a hundred kinds of birds to keep things going? With the trout leaping in the streams in the summer time, and a good gun in the hollow of your arm in the winter? Besides, there's old Lost Wing and his squaw, you know. I get a lot of enjoyment out of them when we're snowed in--in the winter. He's told me fully fifty versions of how the Battle of Wounded Knee was fought, and as for Custer's last battle--it's wonderful!"

"He knows all about it?"

"I'd hardly say that." Medaine reached under her cap for a hairpin, looked quickly at Barry as though to ask him whether he could stand pain, then pressed a recalcitrant thorn into a position where it could be extracted. "I think the best description of Lost Wing is that he's an admirable fiction writer. Ba'tiste says he has more lies than a dog has fleas."

"Then it isn't history?"

"Of course not. Just imagination. But it's well done, with plenty of gestures. He stands in front of the fire and acts it all out while his squaw sits on the floor and grunts and nods and wails at the right time, and it's really entertaining. They're about a million years old, both of them. My father got them when he first came down here from Montreal. He wanted Lost Wing as a sort of bodyguard. It was a good deal wilder in this region then than it is now, and father owned a good deal of land."

"So Ba'tiste tells me. He says that practically all of the forests around here are yours."

"They will be, next year," came simply, "when I'm--"

She stopped and laughed.

"Ba'tiste told me. Twenty-one."

"He never could keep anything to himself."

"What's wrong about that? I'm twenty-seven myself."

"Honestly? You don't look it."

"Don't I? I ought to. I've got a beard and everything. See?" He pulled his hand away for a moment to rub the two-days' growth on his face. "I tried to shave this morning. Couldn't make it. Ba'tiste said he'd play barber for me this afternoon. Next time you come over I'll be all slicked up."

Again she laughed, and once more pursued the remaining thorns.

"How do you know there'll be a next time?"

"If there isn't, I'll drive nails in myself, so you'll have to pull 'em out." Then seriously. "You do come over here often, don't you?"

"Of course--" then, the last thorn disposed of, she rose--"to see Ba'tiste. I look on him as a sort of a guardian. He knew my father.

But let's talk about yourself. You seem remarkably clear in your mind to be afflicted with amnesia. Are you sure you don't remember anything--?"

"No--not now. But," and Barry hedged painfully, "I think I will. It acts to me like a momentary thing. Every once in a while I get a flash as though it were all coming back; it was just the fall, I'm sure of that. My head's all right."

"You mean your brain?"

"Yes. I don't act crazy, or anything like that, do I?"

"Well," and she smiled quizzically, "of course, I don't know you, so I have nothing to go by. But I must admit that you say terribly foolish things."

Leaving him to think over that, she turned, laughed a good-by, and with the rolling, bow-legged old Lost Wing in her wake, retraced the path to the top of the hill, there to hesitate a moment, wave her hand quickly, and then, as though hurrying away from her action, disappeared. Barry Houston sat for a long time, visualizing her there on the brow of the hill, her head with its long-visored cap tilted, her hand upraised, her trimness and her beauty silhouetted against the opalesque sky, dreaming,--and with a bit of heartache in it. For this sort of thing had been his hope in younger, fairer days. This sort of a being had been his make-believe companion of a Castle in Spain. This sort of a joking, whimsical girl had been the one who had come to him in the smoke wreaths and tantalized him and promised him--

But now, his life was gray. His heart was not his own. His life was at best only a grim, drab thing of ugly memories and angered determinations. If a home should ever come to him, it must be in company with some one to whom he owed the grat.i.tude of friends.h.i.+p in time of need; not love not affection, but the paying of a debt of deepest honor. Which Barry would do, and faithfully and honestly and truthfully. As for the other--

He leaned against the bark slabs of the cabin. He closed his eyes. He grinned cheerily.

"Well," came at last, "there's no harm in thinking about it!"

CHAPTER VI

It was thus that Ba'tiste found him, still dreaming. The big voice of the Canadian boomed, and he reached forward to nudge Barry on his injured shoulder.

"And who has been bringing you flowers?" he asked.

"Medaine. That is--Miss Robinette."

"Medaine? Oh, ho! You hear, Golemar?" he turned to the fawning wolf-dog. "He calls her Medaine! Oh, ho! And he say he will marry, not for love. Peuff! We shall see, by gar, we shall see! Eh, Golemar?" Then to Barry, "You have sit out here too long."

"I? Nothing of the kind. Where's the axe? I'll do some fancy one-handed woodchopping."

And while Ba'tiste watched, grinning, Barry went about his task, swinging the axe awkwardly, but whistling with the joy of work. Nor did he pause to diagnose his light-heartedness. He only knew that he was in the hills; that the streets and offices and people of the cities, and the memories that they carried, had been left behind for him that he was in a new world to make a new fight and that he was strangely, inordinately happy Time after time the axe glinted, to descend upon the chopping block, until at last the pile of stovewood had reached its proper dimensions, and old Ba'tiste came from the doorway to carry it in. Then, half an hour later, they sat down to their meal of sizzling bacon and steaming coffee,--a great, bearded giant and the younger man whom he, in a moment of impulsiveness, had all but adopted. Ba'tiste was still joking about the visit of Medaine, Houston parrying his thrusts. The meal finished, Ba'tiste went forth once more, to the hunt of a bear trap and its deadfall, dragged away by a mountain lion during the last snow. Barry sought again the bench outside the cabin, to sit there waiting and hoping,--in vain. At last came evening, and he undressed laboriously for a long rest. Something awaited him in Tabernacle,--either the opening of a book of schemes, or at least the explanation of a mystery, and that meant a walk of quite two miles, the exercise of muscles which still ached, the straining of tendons drawn by injury and pain. But when the time came, he was ready.

"_Bon_--good!" came from Ba'tiste, as they turned into the little village of Tabernacle the next day, skirted the two clapboarded stores forming the "main business district," and edged toward the converted box car that pa.s.sed as a station. "_Bon_--the agent he is leaving."

Barry looked ahead, to see a man crossing an expanse of flat country toward what was evidently a boarding house. Ba'tiste nudged him.

"You will walk slowly, as though going into the station to loaf.

Ba'tiste will come behind--and keep watch."

Barry obeyed. A moment more and he was within the converted box car, to find it deserted and silent, except for the constant clackle of the telegraph key, rattling off the business of a mountain railroad system, like some garrulous old woman, to any one who would listen. There was no private office, only a railing and a counter, which Barry crossed easily. A slight crunching of gravel sounded without. It was Ba'tiste, now lounging in the doorway, ready at a moment to give the alarm. Houston turned hastily toward the file hook and began to turn the pages of the original copy which hung there.

A moment of searching and he leaned suddenly forward. Messages were few from Tabernacle; it had been an easy matter for him to come upon the originals of the telegrams he sought, in spite of the fact that they had been sent more than two weeks before. Already he was reading the first of the night letters:

Barry Houston, Empire Lake Mill and Lumber Co., 212 Grand Building, Boston, Ma.s.s.

Please order six-foot saw as before. Present one broken to-day through crystallization.

F. B. THAYER.

"That's one of 'em." Houston grunted the words, rather than spoke them. "That was meant for me all right--humph!"

The second one was before him now, longer and far more interesting to the man who bent over the telegraph file, while Ba'tiste kept watch at the door. Hastily he pulled a crumpled message from his pocket and compared them,--and grunted again.

"The same thing. Identically the same thing, except for the addresses!