The Chalice Of Courage: A Romance of Colorado

He felt like a knave and a traitor, as if he had been base, disloyal, false to his ideal, recreant to his remembrance. Was he indeed a true man? Did he have that rugged strength, that abiding faith, that eternal consciousness, that lasting affection beside which the rocky paths he often trod were things transient, perishable, evanescent? Was he a weakling that he fell at the first sight of another woman?

He stopped his ceaseless pace forward and backward, and stopped near that frail and futile door. She was there and there was none to prevent. His hand sought the latch.

What was he about to do? God forbid that a thought he could not freely share with humanity should enter his brain then. He held all women sacred, and so he had ever done, and this woman in her loveliness, in her helplessness, in her weakness, trebly appealed to him. But he would look upon her, he would fain see if she were there, if it were all not a dream, the creation of his disordered imagination.

Men had gone mad in hermitages in the mountains, they had been driven insane in lonely oases in vast deserts; and they had peopled their solitudes with men and women. Was this same working of a disordered brain too much turned upon itself and with too tremendous a pressure upon it producing an illusion? Was there in truth any woman there? He would raise the latch and open the door and look. Once more the hand went stealthily to the latch.

The woman slept quietly on. No thin barricade easily unlocked or easily broken protected her. Something intangible yet stronger than the thickest, the most rigid, bars of steel guarded her; something unseen, indescribable, but so unmistakable when it throbs in the breast that those who depend on it feel that their dependence is not in vain, watched over her.

Cherishing no evil thought, the man had power to gratify his desire which might yet bear a sinister construction should his action be observed. It was her privacy he was invading; she had trusted to him, she had said so, to his honor and that stood her in good stead. His honor! Not in five years had he heard the word or thought the thing, but he had not forgotten it. She had not appealed to an unreal thing. Upon a rock her trust was based. His hand left the latch, it fell gently, he drew back and turned away trembling, a conqueror who mastered himself. He was awake to the truth again.

What had he been about to do? Profane, uninvited, the sanctity of her chamber, violate the hospitality of his own house. Even with a proper motive imperil his self-respect, shatter her trust, endanger that honor which so suddenly became a part of him on demand. She would not probably know, she could never know unless she awoke. What of that? That ancient honor of his life and race rose like a mountain whose scarped face cannot be scaled.

He fell back with a swift turn, a feeling almost womanly – and more men perhaps if they lived in feminine isolation, as self-centered as women are so often by necessity, would be as feminine as their sisters – influenced him, overcame him. His hand went to his hunting shirt; nervously he tore it open, he grasped a bright object that hung against his breast; as he did so, the thought came to him that not before in five years had he been for a moment unconscious of the pressure of that locket over his heart, but now that this other had come, he had to seek for it to find it.

The man dragged it out, held it in his hand and opened it. He held it so tightly that it almost gave beneath the strong grasp of his strong hand. From a near-by box he drew another object with his other hand; he took the two to the light, the soft light of the candle upon the table, and stared from one to the other with eyes brimming.

Like crystal gazers he saw other things than those presented to the casual vision, he heard other sounds than the beat of the rain upon the roof, the roar of the wind down the cañon. A voice that he had sworn he would never forget, but which, God forgive him, had not now the clearness that it might have had yesterday, whispered awful words to him.

Anon he looked into another face, red too, but with no hue from the hearth or leaping flame, but red with the blood of ghastly wounds. He heard again that report, the roar louder and more terrible than any peal of thunder that rived the clouds above his head and made the mountains quake and tremble. He was conscious again of the awful stillness of death that supervened. He dropped on his knees, buried his face in his hands where they rested on picture and locket on the rude table.

Ah, the past died hard; for a moment he was the lover of old – remorse, passionate expiation, solitude – he and the dead together – the world and the living forgot! He would not be false, he would be true; there was no power in any feeble woman's tender hand to drive him off his course, to shake his purpose, to make him a new, another man. O, Vanitas, Vanitatum!

On the other side of the door the unconscious woman slept quietly on. The red fire light died away, the glowing coals sank into gray ash. Within the smaller room the cold dawn stealing through the unshaded window looked upon a field of battle – deaths, wounds, triumphs, defeats – portrayed upon one poor human face, upturned as sometimes victors and vanquished alike upturn stark faces from the field to the God above who may pity but who has not intervened.

So Jacob may have looked after that awful night when he wrestled until the day broke with the angel and would not let him go until he blessed him, walking, forever after, with halting step as memorial but with his blessing earned. Hath, this man blessing won or not? And must he pay for it if he hath achieved it?

And all the while the woman slept quietly on upon the other side of that door.

CHAPTER XIII

THE LOG HUT IN THE MOUNTAINS

What awakened the woman she did not know; in all probability it was the bright sunlight streaming through the narrow window before her. The cabin was so placed that the sun did not strike fairly into the room until it was some hours high, consequently she had her long sleep out entirely undisturbed. The man had made no effort whatever to awaken her. Whatever tasks he had performed since daybreak had been so silently accomplished that she had not been aware of them.

So soon as he could do so, he had left the cabin and was now busily engaged in his daily duties outside the cabin and beyond earshot. He knew that sleep was the very best medicine for her and it was best that she should not be disturbed until in her own good time she awoke.

The clouds had emptied themselves during the night and the wind had at last died away toward morning and now there was a great calm abroad in the land. The sunlight was dazzling. Outside, where the untempered rays beat full upon the crests of the mountains, it was doubtless warm, but within the cabin it was chilly – the fire had long since burned completely away and he had not entered the room to replenish it. Yet Enid Maitland had lain snug and warm under her blankets. She presently tested her wounded foot by moving it gently and discovered agreeably that it was much less painful than she had anticipated. The treatment of the night before had been very successful.

She did not get up immediately, but the coldness of the room struck her so soon as she got out of bed. Upon her first awakening she was hardly conscious of her situation; her sleep had been too long and too heavy and her awakening too gradual for any sudden appreciation of the new condition. It was not until she had stared around the walls of the rude cabin for some time that she realized where she was and what had happened. When she did so she arose at once.

Her first impulse was to call. Never in her life had she felt such death-like stillness. Even in the camp almost always there had been a whisper of breeze through the pine trees, or the chatter of water over the rocks. But here there were no pine trees and no sound of rushing brook came to her. It was almost painful. She was keen to dress and go out of the house. She stood upon the rude puncheon floor on one foot scarcely able yet to bear even the lightest pressure upon the other. There were her clothes on chairs and tables before the fireplace. Such had been the heat thrown out by that huge blaze that a brief inspection convinced her that everything was thoroughly dry. Dry or wet she must needs put them on since they were all she had. She noticed that there were no locks on the doors and she realized that the only protection she had was the sense of decency and the honor of the man. That she had been allowed her sleep unmolested made her the more confident on that account.

She dressed hastily, although it was the work of some difficulty in view of her wounded foot and of the stiff condition of her rough dried apparel. Presently she was completely clothed save for that disabled foot. With the big clumsy bandages upon it she could not draw her stocking over it and even if she succeeded in that she could in no way make shift to put on her boot.

The situation was awkward, the predicament annoying; she was wearing bloomers and a short skirt for her mountain climbing and she did not know quite what to do. She thought of tearing up one of the rough unbleached sheets and wrapping it around her leg, but she hesitated as to that. It was very trying. Otherwise she would have opened the door and stepped out into the open air, now she felt herself virtually a prisoner.

She had been thankful that no one had disturbed her, but now she wished for the man. In her helplessness she thought of his resourcefulness with eagerness. The man however did not appear and there was nothing for her to do but to wait for him. Taking one of the blankets from the bed, she sat down and drew it across her knees and took stock of the room.

The cabin was built of logs, the room was large, perhaps twelve by twenty feet, with one side completely taken up by the stone fireplace; there were two windows, one on either side of the outer door which opened toward the southwest. The walls were unplastered save in the chinks between the rough hewn logs of which it was made. Over the fireplace and around on one side ran a rude shelf covered with books. She had no opportunity to examine them, although later she would become familiar with every one of them.

Into the walls on the other side were driven wooden pegs; from some of them hung a pair of snow shoes, a heavy Winchester rifle, fishing tackle and other necessary wilderness paraphernalia. On the puncheon floor wolf and bear skins were spread. In one corner against the wall again were piled several splendid pairs of horns from the mountain sheep.

The furniture consisted of the single bed or berth in which she had slept, built against the wall in one of the corners, a rude table on which were writing materials and some books. A row of curtained shelves, evidently made of small boxes and surmounted by a mirror, occupied another space. There were two or three chairs, the handiwork of the owner, comfortable enough in spite of their rude construction. On some other pegs hung a slicker and a sou'wester, a fur overcoat, a fur cap and other rough clothes; a pair of heavy boots stood by the fireplace. On another shelf there were a number of scientific instruments the nature of which she could not determine, although she could see that they were all in a beautiful state of preservation.

There was plenty of rude comfort in the room which was excessively mannish. In fact there was nothing anywhere which in any way spoke of the existence of woman – except a picture in a small rough wooden frame which stood on the table before which she sat down. The picture was of a handsome woman – naturally Enid Maitland saw that before anything else; she would not have been a woman if that had not engaged her attention more forcibly than any other fact in the room. She picked it up and studied it long and earnestly, quite unconscious of the reason for her interest, and yet a certain uneasy feeling might have warned her of what was toward in her bosom.

This young woman had not yet had time to get her bearings, she had not been able to realize all the circumstances of her adventure; so soon as she did so she would know that into her life a man had come and whatever the course of that life might be in the future, he would never again be out of it.

It was therefore with mingled and untranslatable emotions that she studied this picture. She marked with a certain resentment the bold beauty quite apparent despite the dim fading outlines of a photograph never very good. So far as she could discern the woman was dark haired and dark eyed – her direct antithesis! The casual viewer would have found little to find fault with in the presentment, but Enid Maitland's eyes were sharpened by – what, pray? At any rate she decided that the woman was of a rather coarse fiber, that in things finer and higher she would be found wanting. She was such a woman, so the girl reasoned acutely, as might inspire a passionate affection in a strong hearted, reckless youth, but whose charms being largely physical would pall in longer and more intimate association; a dangerous rival in a charge, but not so formidable in a steady campaign.

These thoughts were the result of long and earnest inspection and it was with some reluctance that the girl at last put the photograph aside and looked toward the door. She was hungry, ravenously so. She began to be a little alarmed and had just about made up her mind to rise and stumble out as she was, when she heard steps outside and a knock on the door.

"What is it?" she asked in response.

"May I come in?"

"Yes," was the quick answer.

The man opened the door, left it ajar and entered the room.

"Have you been awake long?" he began abruptly.

"Not very."

"I didn't disturb you because you needed sleep more than anything else. How do you feel?"

"Greatly refreshed, thank you."

"And hungry, I suppose?"

"Very."

"I will soon remedy that. Your foot?"

"It seems much better, but I – "

The girl hesitated, blushing. "I can't get my shoe on and – "

"Shall I have another look at it?"

"No, I don't believe it will be necessary. If I may have some of that liniment, or whatever it was you put on it, and more of that bandage, I think I can attend to it myself, but you see my stocking and my boot – "

The man nodded, he seemed to understand; he went to his cracker box chiffonier and drew from it a long coarse woolen stocking.

"That is the best that I can do for you," he said, extending it toward her somewhat diffidently.

"And that will do very nicely," said the girl. "It will cover the bandage and that is the main thing."

The man laid on the table by the side of the stocking another strip of bandage torn from the same sheet; as he did so he noticed the picture. He caught it up quickly, a dark flush spreading over his face, and holding it in his hand he turned abruptly away.

"I will go and cook you some breakfast while you get yourself ready. If you have not washed, you'll find a bucket of water and a basin and towel outside the door."

He went through the inner door as suddenly as he had come through the outer one. He was a man of few words and whatever of social grace he might once have possessed and in more favorable circumstances exhibited, was not noticeable now; the tenderness with which he had cared for her the night before had also vanished.

His bearing had been cool almost harsh and forbidding and his manner was as grim as his appearance. The conversation had been a brief one and her opportunity for inspection of him consequently limited, yet she had taken him in. She saw a tall splendid man, no longer very young, perhaps, but in the prime of life and vigor. His complexion was dark and burned browner by long exposure to sun and wind, winter and summer. In spite of the brown there was a certain color, a hue of health in his cheeks. His eyes were hazel, sometimes brown, sometimes gray, and sometimes blue, she afterward learned. A short thick closely cut beard and mustache covered the lower part of his face, disguising but not hiding the squareness of his jaw and the firmness, of his lips.

He had worn his cap when he entered and when he took it off she noticed that his dark hair was tinged with white. He was dressed in a leather hunting suit, somewhat the worse for wear, but fitting him in a way to give free play to all his muscles. His movements were swift, energetic and graceful; she did not wonder that he had so easily hurled the bear to one side and had managed to carry her – no light weight, indeed! – over what she dimly recognized must have been a horrible trail, which burdened as he was would have been impossible to a man of less splendid vigor than he.

The cabin was low ceiled and as she had sat looking up at him he had towered above her until he seemed to fill it. Naturally she had scrutinized his every action, as she had hung upon his every word. His swift and somewhat startled movement, his frowning as he had seized the picture on which she had gazed with such interest aroused the liveliest surprise and curiosity in her heart.

Who was this woman? Why was he so quick to remove the picture from her gaze? Thoughts rushed tumultuously through her brain, but she realized at once that she lacked time to indulge them. She could hear him moving about in the other room, she threw aside the blanket with which she had draped herself, changed the bandage on her foot, drew on the heavy woolen stocking which of course was miles too big for her, but which easily took in her foot and ankle encumbered as they were by the rude, heavy but effective wrapping. Thereafter she hobbled to the door and stood for a moment almost aghast at the splendor and magnificence before her.

He had built his cabin on a level shelf of rock perhaps fifty by a hundred feet in area. It was backed up against an overtowering cliff, otherwise the rock fell away in every direction. She divined that the descent from the shelf into the pocket or valley spread before her was sheer, except off to the right where a somewhat gentler acclivity of huge and broken boulders gave a practicable ascent – a sort of titantic stairs – to the place perched on the mountain side. The shelf was absolutely bare save for the cabin and a few huge boulders. There were a few sparse, stunted trees further up on the mountain side above; a few hundred feet beyond them, however, came the timber line, after which there was nothing but the naked rock.

Below several hundred feet lay a clear emerald pool, whose edges were bordered by pines where it was not dominated by high cliffs. Already the lakelet was rimmed with ice on the shaded side. This enchanting little body of water was fed by the melting snow from the crest and peaks, which in the clear pure sunshine and rarefied air of the mountains seemed to rise and confront her within a stone's throw of the place where she stood.

On one side of the lake in the valley or pocket beneath there was a little grassy clearing, and there this dweller in the wilderness had built a rude corral for the burros. On a rough bench by the side of the door she saw the primitive conveniences to which he had alluded. The water was delightfully soft and as it had stood exposed to the sun's direct rays for some time, although the air was exceedingly crisp and cold, it was tempered sufficiently to be merely cool and agreeable. She luxuriated in it for a few moments and while she had her face buried in the towel, rough, coarse, but clean, she heard a step. She looked up in time to see the man lay down upon the bench a small mirror and a clean comb. He said nothing as he did so and she had no opportunity to thank him before he was gone. The thoughtfulness of the act affected her strangely and she was very glad of a chance to unbraid her hair, comb it out and plait it again. She had not a hair pin left of course, and all she could do with it was to replait it and let it hang upon her shoulders; her coiffure would have looked very strange to civilization, but out there in the mountains, it was eminently appropriate.

Without noticing details the man felt the general effect as she limped back into the room toward the table. Her breakfast was ready for her; it was a coarse fare, bacon, a baked potato hard tack crisped before the fire, coffee black and strong, with sugar but no cream. The dishes matched the fare, too, yet she noticed that the fork was of silver and by her plate there was a napkin, rough dried but of fine linen. The man had just set the brimming smoking coffee pot on the table when she appeared.

"I am sorry I have no cream," he said, and then before she could make comment or reply, he turned and walked out of the door, his purpose evidently being not to embarrass her by his presence while she ate.

Enid Maitland had grown to relish the camp fare, bringing to it the appetite of good health and exertion. She had never eaten anything that tasted so good to her as that rude meal that morning, yet she would have enjoyed it better, she thought, if he had only shared it with her, if she had not been compelled to eat it alone. She hastened her meal on that account, determined as soon as she had finished her breakfast to seek the man and have some definite understanding with him.

And after all she reflected that she was better alone than in his presence, for there would come stealing into her thoughts the distressing episode of the morning before, try as she would to put it out of her mind. Well, she was a fairly sensible girl, the matter was passed, it could not be helped now, she would forget it as much as was possible. She would recur to it with mortification later on, but the present was so full of grave problems that there was not any room for the past.

CHAPTER XIV

A TOUR OF INSPECTION

The first thing necessary, she decided, when she had satisfied her hunger and finished her meal, was to get word of her plight and her resting place to her uncle and the men of the party; and the next thing was to get away, where she would never see this man again and perhaps be able to forget what had transpired – yet there was a strange pang of pain in her heart at that thought!

No man on earth had ever so stimulated her curiosity as this one. Who was he? Why was he there? Who was the woman whose picture he had so quickly taken from her gaze? Why had so splendid a man buried himself alone in that wilderness? These reflections were presently interrupted by the reappearance of the man himself.

"Have you finished?" he asked unceremoniously, standing in the doorway as he spoke.

"Yes, thank you, and it was very good indeed."

Dismissing this politeness with a wave of his hand but taking no other notice, he spoke again.

"If you will tell me your name – "

"Maitland, Enid Maitland."

"Miss Maitland?"

The girl nodded.

"And where you came from, I will endeavor to find your party and see what can be done to restore you to them."

"We were camped down that cañon at a place where another brook, a large one, flows into it, several miles I should think below the place where – "

She was going to say "where you found me," but the thought of the way in which he had found her rushed over her again; and this time with his glance directly upon her, although it was as cold and dispassionate and indifferent as a man's look could well be, the recollection of the meeting to which she had been about to allude rushed over her with an accompanying wave of color which heightened her beauty as it covered her with shame.

She could not realize that beneath his mask of indifference so deliberately worn, the man was as agitated as she, not so much at the remembrance of anything that had transpired, but at the sight, the splendid picture, of the woman as she stood, there in the little cabin then. It seemed to him as if she gathered up in her own person all the radiance and light and beauty, all the purity and freshness and splendor of the morning, to shine and dazzle in his face. As she hesitated in confusion, perhaps comprehending its causes he helped out her lame and halting sentence.

"I know the cañon well," he said. "I think I know the place to which you refer; is it just about where the river makes an enormous bend upon itself?"

"Yes, that is it. In that clearing we have been camped for ten days. My uncle must be crazy with anxiety to know what has become of me and – "