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Philip started to his feet and ran to her side. Then he felt for the precious flask that he had preserved so sacredly through all their hardships, but it was gone. He glanced around him; it was lying on the snow, empty! For the first time in their weary pilgrimage Philip uttered a groan. At the sound Grace opened her sweet eyes. She saw her lover with the empty flask in his hand, and smiled faintly.
"I poured it all down your throat, dear," she said. "You looked so faint – I thought you were dying – forgive me!"
"But I was only stunned; and you, Grace, you" —
"Am better now," she said, as she strove to rise. But she uttered a weak little cry and fell back again.
Philip did not hear her. He was already climbing the ledge she had spoken of. When he returned his face was joyous.
"I see it, Grace; it is only a few miles away. It is still light, and we shall camp there to-night."
"I am afraid – not – dear Philip," said Grace, doubtfully.
"Why not?" asked Philip, a little impatiently.
"Because – I – think – my leg is broken!"
"Grace!"
But she had fainted.
CHAPTER V.
OUT OF THE WOODS – INTO THE SHADOW
Happily Grace was wrong. Her ankle was severely sprained, and she could not stand. Philip tore up his shirt, and, with bandages dipped in snow water, wrapped up the swollen limb. Then he knocked over a quail in the bushes and another duck, and clearing away the brush for a camping spot, built a fire, and tempted the young girl with a hot supper. The peril of starvation passed, their greatest danger was over – a few days longer of enforced rest and inactivity was the worst to be feared.
The air had grown singularly milder with the last few hours. At midnight a damp breeze stirred the pine needles above their heads, and an ominous muffled beating was heard upon the snow-packed vault. It was rain.
"It is the reveille of spring!" whispered Philip.
But Grace was in no mood for poetry – even a lover's. She let her head drop upon his shoulder, and then said —
"You must go on, dear, and leave me here."
"Grace!"
"Yes, Philip! I can live till you come back. I fear no danger now. I am so much better off than they are!"
A few tears dropped on his hand. Philip winced. Perhaps it was his conscience; perhaps there was something in the girl's tone, perhaps because she had once before spoken in the same way, but it jarred upon a certain quality in his nature which he was pleased to call his "common sense." Philip really believed himself a high-souled, thoughtless, ardent, impetuous temperament, saved only from destruction by the occasional dominance of this quality.
For a moment he did not speak. He thought how, at the risk of his own safety, he had snatched this girl from terrible death; he thought how he had guarded her through their perilous journey, taking all the burdens upon himself; he thought how happy he had made her – how she had even admitted her happiness to him; he thought of her present helplessness, and how willing he was to delay the journey on her account; he dwelt even upon a certain mysterious, ill-defined but blissful future with him to which he was taking her; and yet here, at the moment of their possible deliverance, she was fretting about two dying people, who, without miraculous interference, would be dead before she could reach them. It was part of Philip's equitable self-examination – a fact of which he was very proud – that he always put himself in the position of the person with whom he differed, and imagined how he would act under the like circumstances. Perhaps it is hardly necessary to say that Philip always found that his conduct under those conditions would be totally different. In the present instance, putting himself in Grace's position, he felt that he would have abandoned all and everything for a love and future like hers. That she did not was evidence of a moral deficiency or a blood taint. Logic of this kind is easy and irrefutable. It has been known to obtain even beyond the Sierras, and with people who were not physically exhausted. After a pause he said to Grace, in a changed voice —
"Let us talk plainly for a few moments, Grace, and understand each other before we go forward or backward. It is five days since we left the hut; were we even certain of finding our wandering way back again, we could not reach them before another five days had elapsed; by that time all will be over. They have either been saved or are beyond the reach of help. This sounds harsh, Grace, but it is no harsher than the fact. Had we stayed, we would, without helping them, have only shared their fate. I might have been in your brother's place, you in your sister's. It is our fortune, not our fault, that we are not dying with them. It has been willed that you and I should be saved. It might have been willed that we should have perished in our attempts to succour them, and that relief which came to them would have never reached us."
Grace was no logician, and could not help thinking that if Philip had said this before, she would not have left the hut. But the masculine reader will, I trust, at once detect the irrelevance of the feminine suggestion, and observe that it did not refute Philip's argument. She looked at him with a half frightened air. Perhaps it was the tears that dimmed her eyes, but his few words seemed to have removed him to a great distance, and for the first time a strange sense of loneliness came over her. She longed to reach her yearning arms to him again, but with this feeling came a sense of shame that she had not felt before.
Philip noticed her hesitation, and half interpreted it. He let her passive head fall.
"Perhaps we had better wait until we are ourselves out of danger before we talk of helping others," he said with something of his old bitterness. "This accident may keep us here some days, and we know not as yet where we are. Go to sleep now," he said more kindly, "and in the morning we will see what can be done."
Grace sobbed herself to sleep! Poor, poor Grace! She had been looking for this opportunity of speaking about herself – about their future. This was to have been the beginning of her confidence about Dr. Devarges's secret; she would have told him frankly all the doctor had said, even his suspicions of Philip himself. And then Philip would have been sure to have told her his plans, and they would have gone back with help, and Philip would have been a hero whom Gabriel would have instantly recognised as the proper husband for Grace, and they would have all been very happy. And now they were all dead, and had died, perhaps, cursing her, and – Philip – Philip had not kissed her good-night, and was sitting gloomily under a tree!
The dim light of a leaden morning broke through the snow vault above their heads. It was raining heavily, the river had risen, and was still rising. It was filled with drift and branches, and snow and ice, the waste and ware of many a mile. Occasionally a large uprooted tree with a gaunt forked root like a mast sailed by. Suddenly Philip, who had been sitting with his chin upon his hands, rose with a shout. Grace looked up languidly. He pointed to a tree that, floating by, had struck the bank where they sat, and then drifted broadside against it, where for a moment it lay motionless.
"Grace," he said, with his old spirits, "Nature has taken us in hand herself. If we are to be saved, it is by her methods. She brought us here to the water's edge, and now she sends a boat to take us off again. Come!"
Before Grace could reply, Philip had lifted her gaily in his arms, and deposited her between two upright roots of the tree. Then he placed beside her his rifle and provisions, and leaping himself on the bow of this strange craft, shoved it off with a broken branch that he had found. For a moment it still clung to the bank, and then suddenly catching the impulse of the current, darted away like a living creature.
The river was very narrow and rapid where they had embarked, and for a few moments it took all of Philip's energy and undivided attention to keep the tree in the centre of the current. Grace sat silent, admiring her lover, alert, forceful, and glowing with excitement. Presently Philip called to her —
"Do you see that log? We are near a settlement."
A freshly-hewn log of pine was floating in the current beside them. A ray of hope shot through Grace's sad fancies; if they were so near help, might not it have already reached the sufferers? But she forbore to speak to Philip again upon that subject, and in his new occupation he seemed to have forgotten her. It was with a little thrill of joy that at last she saw him turn, and balancing himself with his bough upon their crank craft, walk down slowly toward her. When he reached her side he sat down, and, taking her hand in his, for the first time since the previous night, he said gently —
"Grace, my child, I have something to tell you."
Grace's little heart throbbed quickly; for a moment she did not dare to lift her long lashes toward his. Without noticing her embarrassment he went on —
"In a few hours we shall be no longer in the wilderness, but in the world again – in a settlement perhaps, among men and – perhaps women. Strangers certainly – not the relatives you have known, and who know you – not the people with whom we have been familiar for so many weeks and days – but people who know nothing of us, or our sufferings."
Grace looked at him, but did not speak.
"You understand, Grace, that, not knowing this, they might put their own construction upon our flight.
"To speak plainly, my child, you are a young woman, and I am a young man. Your beauty, dear Grace, offers an explanation of our companionship that the world will accept more readily than any other, and the truth to many would seem scarcely as natural. For this reason it must not be told. I will go back alone with relief, and leave you here in some safe hands until I return. But I leave you here not as Grace Conroy – you shall take my own name!"
A hot flush mounted to Grace's throat and cheek, and for an instant, with parted lips, she hung breathless upon his next word. He continued quietly —
"You shall be my sister – Grace Ashley."
The blood fell from her cheek, her eyelids dropped, and she buried her face in her hands. Philip waited patiently for her reply. When she lifted her face again, it was quiet and calm – there was even a slight flush of proud colour in her cheek as she met his gaze, and with the faintest curl of her upper lip said —
"You are right!"
At the same moment there was a sudden breaking of light and warmth and sunshine over their heads; the tree swiftly swung round a sharp curve in the river, and then drifted slowly into a broad, overflowed valley, sparkling with the emerald of gently sloping hillsides, and dazzling with the glow of the noonday sun. And beyond, from a cluster of willows scarcely a mile away, the smoke of a cabin chimney curled in the still air.
CHAPTER VI.
FOOTPRINTS
For two weeks an unclouded sun rose and set on the rigid outlines of Monument Point. For two weeks there had been no apparent change in the ghastly whiteness of the snow-flanked rocks; in the white billows that rose rank on rank beyond, in the deathlike stillness that reigned above and below. It was the first day of April; there was the mildness of early spring in the air that blew over this gaunt waste, and yet awoke no sound or motion. And yet a nearer approach showed that a slow insidious change had been taking place. The white flanks of the mountain were more hollow; the snow had shrunk visibly away in places, leaving the grey rocks naked and protuberant; the rigid outlines were there, but less full and rounded; the skeleton was beginning to show through the wasting flesh; there were great patches of snow that had sloughed away, leaving the gleaming granite bare below. It was the last change of the Hippocratic face that Nature turned toward the spectator. And yet this change had been noiseless – the solitude unbroken.
And then one day there suddenly drifted across the deathlike valley the chime of jingling spurs and the sound of human voices. Down the long defile a cavalcade of mounted men and pack mules made their way, plunging through drifts and clattering over rocks. The unwonted sound awoke the long slumbering echoes of the mountain, brought down small avalanches from cliff and tree, and at last brought from some cavern of the rocks to the surface of the snow a figure so wild, haggard, dishevelled, and monstrous, that it was scarcely human. It crawled upon the snow, dodging behind rocks with the timidity of a frightened animal, and at last, squatting behind a tree, awaited in ambush the approach of the party.
Two men rode ahead; one grave, preoccupied, and reticent. The other alert, active, and voluble. At last the reticent man spoke, but slowly, and as if recalling a memory rather than recording a present impression.
"They cannot be far away from us now. It was in some such spot that I first saw them. The place is familiar."
"Heaven send that it may be!" said the other hastily, "for to tell you the truth, I doubt if we will be able to keep the men together a day longer in this crazy quest, unless we discover something."
"It was here," continued the other dreamily, not heeding his companion, "that I saw the figures of a man and woman. If there is not a cairn of stone somewhere about this spot, I shall believe my dream false, and confess myself an old fool."
"Well – as I said before," rejoined the other, laughing, "anything – a scrap of paper, an old blanket, or a broken waggon-tongue will do. Columbus helped his course and kept up his crew on a fragment of seaweed. But what are the men looking at? Great God! There is something moving by yonder rock!"
By one common superstitious instinct the whole party had crowded together – those who, a few moments before, had been loudest in their scepticism, held their breath with awe, and trembled with excitement – as the shambling figure that had watched them enter the cañon rose from its lair, and taking upon itself a human semblance, with uncouth gestures and a strange hoarse cry made towards them. It was Dumphy!
The leader was the first to recover himself. He advanced from the rest and met Dumphy half-way.
"Who are you?"
"A man."
"What's the matter?"
"Starving."
"Where are the others?"
Dumphy cast a suspicious glance at him and said —
"Who?"
"The others. You are not alone?"
"Yes, I am!"
"How did you get here?"
"What's that to you? I'm here and starving. Gimme suthin' to eat and drink."
He sank exhaustedly on all fours again.
There was a murmur of sympathy from the men.
"Give him suthin'. Don't you see he can't stand – much less talk? Where's the doctor?"
And then the younger of the leaders thus adjured – "Leave him to me – he wants my help just now more than yours."
He poured some brandy down his throat. Dumphy gasped, and then staggered to his feet.
"What did you say your name was?" asked the young surgeon kindly.
"Jackson," said Dumphy, with a defiantly blank look.
"Where from?"
"Missouri."
"How did you get here?"
"Strayed from my party."
"And they are – "
"Gone on. Gimme suthin' to eat!"
"Take him back to camp and hand him over to Sanchez. He'll know what to do," said the surgeon to one of the men. "Well, Blunt," he continued, addressing the leader, "you're saved – but your nine men in buckram have dwindled down to one, and not a very creditable specimen at that," he said, as his eyes followed the retreating Dumphy.
"I wish it were all, doctor," said Blunt simply; "I would be willing to go back now, but something tells me we have only begun. This one makes everything else possible. What have you there?"
One of the men was approaching, holding a slip of paper with ragged edges, as if torn from some position where it had been nailed.
"A notiss – from a tree. Me no sabe," said the ex-vaquero.
"Nor I," said Blunt, looking at it; "it seems to be in German. Call Glohr."
A tall Swiss came forward. Blunt handed him the paper. The man examined it.
"It is a direction to find property – important and valuable property – buried."
"Where?"
"Under a cairn of stones."
The surgeon and Blunt exchanged glances.
"Lead us there!" said Blunt.
It was a muffled monotonous tramp of about an hour. At the end of that time they reached a spur of the mountain around which the cañon turned abruptly. Blunt uttered a cry. Before them was a ruin – a rude heap of stones originally symmetrical and elevated, but now thrown down and dismantled. The snow and earth were torn up around and beneath it. On the snow lay some scattered papers, a portfolio of drawings of birds and flowers: a glass case of insects broken and demolished, and the scattered feathers of a few stuffed birds. At a little distance lay what seemed to be a heap of ragged clothing. At the sight of it the nearest horseman uttered a shout and leaped to the ground. It was Mrs. Brackett, dead.
CHAPTER VII.
IN WHICH THE FOOTPRINTS BEGIN TO FADE
She had been dead about a week. The features and clothing were scarcely recognizable; the limbs were drawn up convulsively. The young surgeon bent over her attentively.
"Starved to death?" said Blunt interrogatively.
The surgeon did not reply, but rose and examined the scattered specimens. One of them he picked up and placed first to his nose and then to his lips. After a pause he replied quietly —
"No. Poisoned."
The men fell back from the body.
"Accidentally, I think," continued the surgeon coolly; "the poor creature has been driven by starvation to attack the specimens. They have been covered with a strong solution of arsenic to preserve them from the ravages of insects, and this starving woman has been the first to fall a victim to the collector's caution."
There was a general movement of horror and indignation among the men. "Shoost to keep dem birds," said the irate Swiss. "Killing women to save his cussed game," said another. The surgeon smiled. It was an inauspicious moment for Dr. Devarges to have introduced himself in person.
