Kitabı oku: «The Settler», sayfa 23
XXXII
THE TRAIL AGAIN
Skipping that long if happy night, peep with dawn into Helen's bedroom, and see her up and singing small snatches of song that presently brought Jean Glaves, herself the earliest of birds, from bed to assist at the toilet. Should she wear this, that, or the other? There was the usual doubt which beset a young lady who wishes to look her best for occasion; but the result that went forth from big Jean's hug? A vision of healthy beauty that drew tentative smiles from a brace of drummers and attracted the stealthy regard of the entire station when she finally broke, like a burst of sunlight, on the platform. Continuing the figure, the smile, its crowning asset, faded like the afterglow when her anxious eyes refused her the tall familiar figure; and when the train pulled out without him, her disconsolate expression filled the aforesaid drummers with manly longings towards consolation.
Unpunctual? On such an occasion? And how silly she would look at Lone Tree! Slightly offended at first, she then grew alarmed. Perhaps he had suffered a relapse, was ill, dying! Be sure that her terrors compassed the possible and impossible during an hour's journey, and not until she saw a man come dashing across the tracks to the Lone Tree platform did she realize the fulness of his inspiration. He had taken the freight out the night before! If thinner, paler, he was very like the young man who had come to meet her three years ago. There, also, was the lone poplar that had christened the station; the ramshackle town with its clapboard hotels, false-fronted stores, grain-sheds, sitting in the midst of the plains that, flat and infinitely yellow, ran with the tracks over a boundless horizon. Lastly, there was Nels and his bleached grin, holding Death and the Devil, sleek, fat, and sinful as ever.
Carter's whispered greeting helped to keep her in the past. "Is this Miss Morrill?"
"Mr. Carter, I believe?" she had just time for the roguish answer, then their little comedy had to be laid aside till they were alone on trail. For the doctor came running from his office, the store-keeper plunged madly across tracks, Hooper, the agent, yelled, "Well, I swan!" and jumped to shake hands, while from a grain-shed emerged Jimmy Glaves, who had taken a lift in with Nels.
Wasn't she glad to see them? Yet a deeper happiness enveloped her when, looking back, she again saw Lone Tree, shrunken in the distance, its grain-sheds looking like red Noah's arks on a yellow carpet; when she heard only the pole and harness jigging a merry accompaniment to the beat of quick feet, whirring song of swift wheels.
It was very like that first occasion. Though stiff night frosts were now giving timely notice of winter's chill approach, the clerk of the weather had made special arrangements for a south wind; so it was warm as on that far day. Birds, animals, scenery, too, all helped to bring the happy past forward to the happy present, while Death and the Devil, those wicked ones, fostered the illusion by frequent boltings. Surely she remembered the ridge where her first coyote had caused her to cling to Carter, and earned a kiss by repetition of that shameful performance and faithful mimicry of his accent. "He shore looks hungry." Immediately thereafter they plunged out from among scattered farms into the "Dry Lands," but its yellow miles, generally a penance, flowed unnoticed under the buck-board. They were both astonished when, suddenly as before, they rattled through a bluff and dropped over the edge of the valley upon Father Francis at the mission door.
Nothing would suit but that they must dine with him while Louis, the half-breed stableman, fed and watered the ponies. But if the good priest's twinkle expressed knowledge that another of his day's works was come to fruitage, his quiet converse brought no jarring note into their communings.
Undisturbed, they began again at the ford and continued while the Park Lands rolled in great billows under the wheels. The Cree chimneys, Indian graveyards, other well-remembered objects passed in pleasant procession ere, coming to Flynn's, he looked at her. A shake of the head confirmed his doubt. Another time! So they swept on through vast, sun-washed spaces where cattle wandered freely as the whispering winds under flitting cloud-shadows, and so, about sundown, came to their own place with but a single interruption.
Passing Danvers at their own forks, he grinned his delight as he turned out to let them by and shouted after: "Say! I heard from Leslie! He's doing well on the Rand! Sends regards to both of you!"
While that bit of good news was still ringing in her ears, the house flashed out under the eaves of the forest, warm and bright under the setting sun. All was unchanged – the lake, stained just now a ruby red, the golden stubble fenced in by dark, environing woods. Within all was neat and clean as Nels's racial passion for soap and water could make it. So while he stabled the tired ponies, she donned one of her old aprons, rolled sleeves above dimpled elbows, and cooked supper; rather a superfluous performance aside from the grave pleasure he took in looking on.
Afterwards they sat on the doorstep, she between his knees, head pillowed against his breast, and looked at the copper moon that hung in the trees across the lake – watched it brighten to silver; listened to the harmonies of the night, the loon's weird alto, the bittern's bass, cry of a pivoting mallard, owl's solemn choral, a wilder, freer movement than was ever chained in a stave. Once a snuffle, soft-lapping, drifted in, and he replied to her start, "Bear-drinking." Otherwise they were silent up to the moment she arose, shivering.
"It is getting colder. I think I'll go in."
He stayed a little longer, stretched luxuriously out on the grass; was still there when, having made their bed, she came to the door. A vivid memory gave her pause. Just so had he looked – that night – dark, still, as the marble effigy of some old Crusader, with the moonlight quivering about him like an emanation.
"Are you coming, dear?" Perhaps the memory tinged her tone. Anyway, he sprang up, arms extended, and as she came running, he lifted her clear of the ground; carried her in and closed the door.
Her shiver had warrant. Within the hour the north wind began to herd luminous clouds across the moon. At midnight the cabin loomed darkly through a bridal veil of white.
