All thought of Beasley Melford quickly became lost in feelings of a deeper and stronger nature as Buck passed out into the open. His was not a nature to dwell unnecessarily upon the clashings of every-day life. Such pinpricks were generally superficial, to be brushed aside and treated without undue consideration until such time as some resulting fester might gather and drastic action become necessary. The fester had not yet gathered, therefore he set his quarrel aside for the time when he could give it his undivided attention.

As he strode away the world seemed very wide to Buck. So wide, indeed, that he had no idea of its limits, nor any desire to seek them. He preferred that his eyes should dwell only upon those things which presented themselves before a plain, wholesome vision. He had no desire to peer into the tainted recesses of any other life than that which he had always known. And in his outlook was to be witnessed the careful guidance of his friend, the Padre. Nor was his capacity stunted thereby, nor his strong manhood. On the contrary, it left him with a great reserve of power to fight his little battle of the wilderness.

Yet surely such a nature as his should have been dangerously open to disaster. The guilelessness resulting from such a simplicity of life ought surely to have fitted him for a headlong rush into the pitfalls which are ever awaiting the unwary. This might have been so in a man of less strength, less reckless purpose. Therein lay his greatest safeguard. His was the strength, the courage, the resource of a mind trained in the hard school of the battle for existence in the wilderness, where, without subtlety, without fear, he walked over whatever path life offered him, ready to meet every obstruction, every disaster, with invincible courage.

It was through this very attitude that his threat against Beasley Melford was not to be treated lightly. His comrades understood it. Beasley himself knew it. Buck had assured him that he would shoot him down like a dog if he offended against the unwritten laws of instinctive chivalry as he understood them, and he would do it without any compunction or fear of consequences.

A woman’s fame to him was something too sacred to be lightly treated, something quite above the mere consideration of life and death. The latter was an ethical proposition which afforded him, where a high principle was in the balance against it, no qualms whatsoever. It was the inevitable result of his harsh training in the life that was his. The hot, rich blood of strong manhood ran in his veins, but it was the hot blood tempered with honesty and courage, and without one single taint of meanness.

As he passed down the river bank, beyond which the racing waters flowed a veritable torrent, he saw the camp women moving about outside their huts. He saw them wringing out their rain-drenched garments. Thus he knew that the storm had served their miserable homes badly, and he felt sorry for them.

For the most part they were heavy, frowsy creatures, slatternly and uncouth. They came generally from the dregs of frontier cities, or were the sweepings of the open country, gleaned in the debauched moments of the men who protected them. Nor, as his eyes wandered in their direction, was it possible to help a comparison between them and the burden of delicate womanhood he held in his arms, a comparison which found them painfully wanting.

He passed on under the bold scrutiny of those feminine eyes, but they left him quite unconscious. His thoughts had drifted into a wonderful dreamland of his own, a dreamland such as he had never visited before, an unsuspected dreamland whose beauties could never again hold him as they did now.

The sparkling sunlight which had so swiftly followed in the wake of the storm, lapping up the moisture of the drenching earth with its fiery tongue, shed a radiance over the familiar landscape, so that it revealed new and unsuspected beauties to his wondering eyes. How came it that the world, his world, looked so fair? The distant hills, those hills which had always thrilled his heart with the sombre note of their magnificence, those hills which he had known since his earliest childhood, with their black, awe-inspiring forests, they were somehow different, so different.

He traced the purple ridges step by step till they became a blurred, gray monotony of tone fading away until it lost itself in the glittering white of the snowcaps. Everything he beheld in a new light. No longer did those hills represent the battle-ground where he and the Padre fought out their meagre existence. They had suddenly become one vast and beautiful garden where life became idyllic, where existence changed to one long joy. The torrents had shrunk to gentle streams, babbling their wonderful way through a fairy-land of scented gardens. The old forceful tearing of a course through the granite hearts of the hills was a thought of some long-forgotten age far back in the dim recesses of memory. The gloom of the darkling forests, too, had passed into the sunlit parks of delight. The rugged canyons had given place to verdant valleys of succulent pasture. The very snows themselves, those stupendous, changeless barriers, suggested nothing so much as the white plains of perfect life.

The old harsh lines of life had passed, and the sternness of the endless battle had given way to an unaccountable joy.

Every point that his delighted eyes dwelt upon was tinged with something of the beatitude that stirred his senses. Every step he took was something of an unreality. And every whispering sound in the scented world through which he was passing found an echo of music in his dreaming soul.

Contact with the yielding burden lying so passive in his strong arms filled him with a rapture such as he had never known. The thought of sex was still far from his mind, and only was the manhood in him yielding to the contact, and teaching him through the senses that which his upbringing had sternly denied him.

He gazed down upon the wonderful pale beauty of the girl’s face. He saw the rich parted lips between which shone the ivory of her perfect, even teeth. The hair, so rich and flowing, dancing with glittering beams of golden light, as, stirring beneath the breath of the mountains, it caught the reflection of a perfect sun.

How beautiful she was. How delicate. The wonderful, almost transparent skin. He could trace the tangle of small blue veins like a fairy web through which flowed the precious life that was hers. And her eyes – those great, full, round pupils hidden beneath the veil of her deeply-fringed lids! But he turned quickly from them, for he knew that the moment she awoke his dream must pass into a memory.

His gaze wandered to the swanlike roundness of her white throat, to the gaping shirt-waist, where the delicate lace and tiny ribbon peeped out at him. It was all so wonderful, so marvelous. And she was in his arms – she, this beautiful stranger. Yet somehow she did not seem like a stranger. To his inflamed fancy she seemed to have lain in his arms all his life, all her life. No, she was no stranger. He felt that she belonged to him, she was part of himself, his very life.

Still she slept on. He suddenly found himself moving with greater caution, and he knew he was dreading the moment when some foolish stumble of his should bring her back to that life which he feared yet longed to behold. He longed for the delight of watching the play of emotions upon her lovely features, to hear her speak and laugh, and to watch her smile. He feared, for he knew that with her waking those delicious moments would be lost to him forever.

So he dreamed on. In his inmost soul he knew he was dreaming, and, in his reckless fashion, he desired the dream to remain unending. He saw the old fur fort no longer the uncouth shelter of two lonely lives, but a home made beautiful by a presence such as he had never dreamed of, a presence that shed beauty upon all that came under the spell of its influence. He pictured the warmth of delight which must be the man’s who lived in such an atmosphere.

His muscles thrilled at the thought of what a man might do under such an inspiration. To what might he not aspire? To what heights might he not soar? Success must be his. No disaster could come —

The girl stirred in his arms. He distinctly felt the movement, and looked down into her face with sudden apprehension. But his anxiety was swiftly dispelled, and a tender smile at once replaced the look in his dark eyes. No, she had not yet awakened, and so he was content.

But the incident had brought him realization. His arms were stiff and cramped, and he must rest them. Strong man that he was he had been wholly unaware of the distance he had carried her.

He gently laid her upon the grass and looked about him. Then it was that wonder crept into his eyes. He was at the ford of the creek, more than two miles from the camp, and on the hither bank, where the road entered the water, a spring cart lay overturned and broken, with the team of horses lying head down, buried beneath the turbulent waters as they raced on down with the flood.

Now he understood the full meaning of her presence in the camp. His quick eyes took in every detail, and at once her coming was explained. He turned back in the direction whence he had come, and his mind flew to the distance of the ford from the camp. She had bravely faced a struggle over two miles of a trail quite unknown to her when the worst storm he had ever known was at its height. His eyes came back to the face of the unconscious girl in even greater admiration.

“Not only beautiful but – ”

He turned away to the wreck, for there were still things he wished to know. And as he glanced about him he became more fully aware of the havoc of the storm. Even in the brilliant sunshine the whole prospect looked woefully jaded. Everywhere the signs told their pitiful tale. All along the river bank the torn and shattered pines drooped dismally. Even as he stood there great tree trunks and limbs of trees were washed down on the flood before his eyes. The banks were still pouring with the drainings of the hills and adding their quota to the swelling torrent.

But the overturned spring cart held most interest just now, and he moved over to it. The vehicle was a complete wreck, so complete, indeed, that he wondered how the girl had escaped without injury. Two trunks lay near by, evidently thrown out by the force of the upset, and it pleased him to think that they had been saved to their owner. He examined them closely. Yes, the contents were probably untouched by the water. But what was this? The initials on the lid were “J. S.” The girl’s name was Rest. At least so Mrs. Ransford had stated. He wondered. Then his wonder passed. These were very likely trunks borrowed for the journey. He remembered that the Padre had a leather grip with other initials than his own upon it.

Where was the teamster? He looked out at the racing waters, and the question answered itself. Then he turned quickly to the girl. Poor soul, he thought, her coming to the farm had been one series of disasters. So, with an added tenderness, he stooped and lifted her gently in his arms and proceeded on his way.

At last he came to the farm, which only that morning he had so eagerly avoided. And his feelings were not at all unpleasant as he saw again the familiar buildings. The rambling house he had known so long inspired him with a fresh joy at the thought of its new occupant. He remembered how it had grown from a log cabin, just such as the huts of the gold-seekers, and how, with joy and pride, he and the Padre had added to it and reconstructed as the years went by. He remembered the time when he had planted the first wild cucumber, which afterward became an annual function and never failed to cover the deep veranda with each passing year. There, too, was the cabbage patch crowded with a wealth of vegetables. And he remembered how careful he had been to select a southern aspect for it. The small barns, the hog-pens, where he could even now hear the grunting swine grumbling their hours away. The corrals, two, across the creek, reached by a log bridge of their own construction. Then, close by stood the nearly empty hay corrals, waiting for this year’s crop. No, the sight of these things had no regrets for him now. It was a pleasant thought that it was all so orderly and flourishing, since this girl was its future mistress.

He reached the veranda before his approach was realized by the farm-wife within. Then, as his footsteps resounded on the rough surface of the flooring of split logs, Mrs. Ransford came bustling out of the parlor door.

“Sakes on me!” she cried, as she beheld the burden in her visitor’s arms. “If it ain’t Miss Rest all dead an’ done!” Her red hands went up in the air with such a comical tragedy, and her big eyes performed such a wide revolution in their fat, sunburnt setting that Buck half-feared an utter collapse. So he hurriedly sought to reassure her, and offered a smiling encouragement.

“I allow she’s mostly done, but I guess she’s not dead,” he said quickly.

The old woman heaved a tragic sigh.

“My! but you made me turn right over, as the sayin’ is. You should ha’ bin more careful, an’ me with my heart too, an’ all. The doctor told me as I was never to have no shock to speak of. They might set up hem – hemoritch or suthin’ o’ the heart, what might bring on sing – sing – I know it was suthin’ to do with singin’, which means I’d never live to see another storm like we just had, not if it sure come on this minit – ”

“I’m real sorry, ma’m,” said Buck, smiling quietly at the old woman’s volubility, but deliberately cutting it short. “I mean about the shock racket. Y’ see she needs fixin’ right, an’ I guess it’s up to you to git busy, while I go an’ haul her trunks up from the creek.”

Again the woman’s eyes opened and rolled.

“What they doin’ in the creek?” she demanded with sudden heat. “Who put ’em ther’? Some scallawag, I’ll gamble. An’ you standin’ by seein’ it done, as you might say. I never did see sech a place, nor sech folk. To think o’ that pore gal a-settin’ watchin’ her trunks bein’ pushed into the creek by a lot o’ loafin’ bums o’ miners, an’ no one honest enough, nor man enough to raise a hand to – to – ”

“With respec’, ma’m, you’re talkin’ a heap o’ foolishness,” cried Buck impatiently, his anxiety for the girl overcoming his deference for the other’s sex. “If you’ll show me the lady’s room I’ll carry her right into it an’ set her on her bed, an’ – ”

“Mercy alive, what’s the world a-comin’ to!” cried the indignant farm-wife. “Me let the likes o’ you into the gal’s bedroom! You? Guess you need seein’ to by the State, as the sayin’ is. I never heard the like of it. Never. An’ she jest a slip of a young gal, too, an’ all.”

But Buck’s patience was quite exhausted, and, without a moment’s hesitation, he brushed the well-meaning but voluble woman aside and carried the girl into the house. He needed no guidance here. He knew which was the best bedroom and walked straight into it. There he laid the girl upon an old chintz-covered settee, so that her wet clothes might be removed before she was placed into the neat white bed waiting for her. And the clacking tongue of Ma Ransford pursued his every movement.

“It’s an insult,” she cried angrily. “An insult to me an’ mine, as you might say. Me, who’s raised two daughters an’ one son, all of ’em dead, more’s the pity. First you drown the gal an’ her baggage, an’ then you git carryin’ her around, an’ walkin’ into her virgin bedroom without no by your leave, nor nuthin’.”

But Buck quite ignored her protests. He felt it was useless to explain. So he turned back and gave his final instructions from the doorway.

“You jest get her right to bed, ma’m, an’ dose her,” he said amiably. “I’d guess you best give her hot flannels an’ poultices an’ things while I go fetch her trunks. After that I’ll send off to Bay Creek fer the doctor. He ain’t much, but he’s better than the hoss doctor fer womenfolk. Guess I’ll git back right away.”

But the irate farm-wife, her round eyes blazing, slammed the door in his face as she flung her final word after him.

“You’ll git back nuthin’,” she cried furiously. “You let me git you back here agin an’ you’ll sure find a sort o’ first-class hell runnin’ around, an’ you won’t need no hot flannels nor poultices to ke’p you from freezin’ stone cold.”

Then, with perfect calmness and astonishing skill, she flung herself to the task of caring for her mistress in that practical, feminine fashion which, though he may appreciate, no man has ever yet quite understood.

CHAPTER VIII
THE SECRET OF THE HILL

It was the morning following the great storm, a perfect day of cloudless sunshine, and the Padre and Buck were on their way from the fur fort to the camp. Their mission was to learn the decision of its inhabitants as to their abandonment of the valley; and in the Padre’s pocket was a large amount of money for distribution.

The elder man’s spirits were quietly buoyant. Nor did there seem to be much reason why they should be. But the Padre’s moods, even to his friends, were difficult to account for. Buck, on the contrary, seemed lost in a reverie which held him closely, and even tended to make his manner brusque.

But his friend, in the midst of his own cheerful feelings, would not allow this to disturb him. Besides, he was a far shrewder man than his simple manner suggested.

“It’s well to be doing, lad,” he said, after some considerable silence. “Makes you feel good. Makes you feel life’s worth a bigger price than we mostly set it at.”

His quiet eyes took the other in in a quick, sidelong glance. He saw that Buck was steadily, but unseeingly, contemplating the black slopes of Devil’s Hill, which now lay directly ahead.

“Guess you aren’t feeling so good, boy?” he went on after a moment’s thoughtful pause.

The direct challenge brought a slow smile to Buck’s face, and he answered with surprising energy —

“Good? Why, I’m feelin’ that good I don’t guess even – even Beasley could rile me this mornin’.”

The Padre nodded with a responsive smile.

“And Beasley can generally manage to rile you.”

“Yes, he’s got that way, surely,” laughed Buck frankly. “Y’ see he’s – he’s pretty mean.”

“I s’pose he is,” admitted the other. Then he turned his snow-white head and glanced down at the lean flanks of Cæsar as the horse walked easily beside his mare.

“And that boy, Kid, was out in all that storm on your Cæsar,” he went on, changing the subject quickly from the man whom he knew bore him an absurd animosity. “A pretty great horse, Cæsar. He’s looking none the worse for fetching that whisky either. Guess the boys’ll be getting over their drunk by now. And it’s probably done ’em a heap of good. You did right to encourage ’em. Maybe there’s folks would think differently. But then they don’t just understand, eh?”

“No.”

Buck had once more returned to his reverie, and the Padre smiled. He thought he understood. He had listened overnight to a full account of the arrival of the new owner of their farm, and had gleaned some details of her attractiveness and youth. He knew well enough how surely the isolated mountain life Buck lived must have left him open to strong impressions.

They set their horses at a canter down the long declining trail which ran straight into the valley above which Devil’s Hill reared its ugly head. And as they went the signs of the storm lay everywhere about them. Their path was strewn with débris. The havoc was stupendous. Tree trunks were lying about like scattered nine-pins. Riven trunks, split like match-wood by the lightning, stood beside the trail, gaunt and hopeless. Partially-severed limbs hung drooping, their weeping foliage appealing to the stricken world about them for a sympathy which none could give. Even the hard, sun-baked trail, hammered and beaten to an iron consistency under a hundred suns of summer, was scored with now dry water-courses nearly a foot deep. With all his knowledge and long experience of the mountains even the Padre was filled with awe at the memory of what he had witnessed.

“Makes you think, Buck, doesn’t it?” he said, pointing at a stately forest giant stretched prone along the edge of the trail, its proud head biting deeply into the earth, and its vast roots lifting twenty and more feet into the air. “I was out in the worst of it, too,” he went on thoughtfully. Then he smiled at the recollection of his puny affairs while the elements had waged their merciless war. “I was taking a golden fox out of a trap, ’way back there on the side of the third ridge. While I was doing it the first two crashes came. A hundred and more yards away two pines, big fellers, guess they were planted before the flood, were standing out solitary on a big rock overhanging the valley below. They were there when I first bent over the trap. When I stood up they were gone – rock and all. It made me think then. Guess it makes me think more now.”

“It surely was a storm,” agreed Buck absently.

They reached the open valley, and here the signs were less, so, taking advantage of the clearing, they set their horses at a fast gallop. Their way took them skirting the great slope of the hill-base, and every moment was bearing them on toward the old farm, for that way, some distance beyond, lay the ford which they must cross to reach the camp.

Neither seemed inclined for further talk. Buck was looking straight out ahead in the direction of the farm, and his preoccupation had given place to a smile of anticipation. The Padre was intent upon the black slopes of the hill. Farther along, the hill turned away toward the creek, and the trail bore to the left, passing on the hither side of a great bluff of woods which stretched right up to the very corrals of the farm. It was here, too, where the overhang of the suspended lake came into view, where Yellow Creek poured its swift, shallow torrent in the shadowed twilight of the single-walled tunnel and the gold-seekers held their operations in a vain quest of fortune.

They had just come abreast of this point and the Padre was observing the hill with that never-failing interest with which the scene always filled him. He believed there was nothing like it in all the world, and regarded it as a stupendous example of Nature’s engineering. But now, without warning, his interest leapt to a pitch of wonderment that set his nerves thrilling and filled his thoughtful eyes with an unaccustomed light of excitement. One arm shot out mechanically, pointing at the black rocks, and a deep sigh escaped him.

“Mackinaw!” he cried, pulling his horse almost on to its haunches. “Look at that!”

Buck swung round, while Cæsar followed the mare’s example so abruptly that his master was almost flung out of the saddle.

He, too, stared across in the direction indicated. And his whispered exclamation was an echo of the other’s astonishment.

“By the – !”

Then on the instant an almost unconscious movement, simultaneously executed, set their horses racing across the open in the direction of the suspended lake.

The powerful Cæsar, with his lighter burden, was the first to reach the spot. He drew up more than two hundred yards from where the domed roof forming the lake bed hung above the waters of the creek. He could approach no nearer, and his rider sat gazing in wonder at the spectacle of fallen rock and soil, and the shattered magnificence of the acres of crushed and broken pine woods which lay before him.

The whole face of the hill for hundreds and hundreds of feet along this side had been ruthlessly rent from its place and flung broadcast everywhere, and, in the chaos he beheld, Buck calculated that hundreds of thousands of tons of the blackened rock and subsoil had been dislodged by the tremendous fall.

Just for an instant the word “washout” flashed through his mind. But he dismissed it without further consideration. How could a washout sever such rock? Even he doubted the possibility of lightning causing such destruction. No, his thoughts flew to an earth disturbance of some sort. But then, what of the lake? He gazed up at where the rocky arch jutted out from the parent hill, and apprehension made him involuntarily move his horse aside. But his observation had killed the theory of an earth disturbance. Anything of that nature must have brought the lake down. For the dislodgment began under its very shadow, and had even further deepened the yawning cavern beneath its bed.

The Padre’s voice finally broke his reflections, and its tone suggested that he was far less awed, and, in consequence, his thoughts were far more practical.

“Their works are gone,” he said regretfully. “I’d say there’s not a sluice-box nor a conduit left. Maybe even their tools are lost. Poor devils!”

The man’s calm words had their effect. Buck at once responded to the practical suggestion.

“They don’t leave their tools,” he said. Then he pointed up at the lake. “Say, what if that had come down? What if the bowels o’ that hill had opened up an’ the water been turned loose? What o’ the camp? What o’ the women an’ – the kiddies?”

His imagination had been stirred again. Again the Padre’s practice brought him back.

“You don’t need to worry that way, boy. It hasn’t fallen. Guess the earth don’t fancy turning her secrets loose all at once.”

Buck sighed.

“Yet I’d say the luck sure seems rotten enough.”

There was no answer, and presently the Padre pointed at the face of the hill.

“It was a washout,” he said with quiet assurance. “See that face? It’s softish soil. Some sort of gravelly stuff that the water got at. Sort of gravel seam in the heart of the rock.”

Buck followed the direction indicated and sat staring at it. Then slowly a curious look of hope crept into his eyes. It was the fanciful hope of the imaginative.

“Here,” he cried suddenly, “let’s get a peek at it. Maybe – maybe the luck ain’t as bad as we think.” And he laughed.

“What d’you mean?” asked the Padre sharply.

For answer he had to put up with a curt “Come on.” And the next moment he was following in Cæsar’s wake as he picked his way rapidly amongst the trees skirting the side of the wreckage. Their way lay inland from the creek, for Buck intended to reach the cliff face on the western side of the fall. It was difficult going, but, at the distance, safe enough. Not until they drew in toward the broken face of the hill would the danger really begin. There it was obvious enough to anybody. The cliff was dangerously overhanging at many points. Doubtless the saturation which had caused the fall had left many of those great projections sufficiently loose to dislodge at any moment.

Buck sought out what he considered to be the most available spot and drew his horse up. The rest must be done on foot. No horse could hope to struggle over such a chaotic path. At his suggestion both animals were tethered within the shelter of trees. At least the trees would afford some slight protection should any more of the cliff give way.

In less than a quarter of an hour they stood a hundred feet from the actual base of the cliff, and Buck turned to his friend.

“See that patch up there,” he said, pointing at a spread of reddish surface which seemed to be minutely studded with white specks. “Guess a peek at it won’t hurt. Seems to me it’s about ten or twelve feet up. Guess ther’ ain’t need for two of us climbin’ that way. You best wait right here, an’ I’ll git around again after a while.”

The Padre surveyed the patch, and his eyes twinkled.

“Ten or twelve feet?” he said doubtfully. “Twenty-five.”

“May be.”

“You think it’s – ?”

Buck laughed lightly.

“Can’t say what it is – from here.”

The other sat down on an adjacent rock.

“Get right ahead. I’ll wait.”

Buck hurried away, and for some moments the Padre watched his slim figure, as, scrambling, stumbling, clinging, he made his way to where the real climb was to begin. Nor was it until he saw the tall figure halt under an overhanging rock, which seemed to jut right out over his head, and look up for the course he must take in the final climb, that Buck’s actual danger came home to the onlooker. He was very little more given to realizing personal danger than Buck himself, but now a sudden apprehension for the climber gripped him sharply.

He stirred uneasily as he saw the strong hands reach up and clutch the jutting facets. He even opened his mouth to offer a warning as he saw the heavily-booted feet mount to their first foothold. But he refrained. He realized it might be disconcerting. A few breathless moments passed as Buck mounted foot by foot. Then came the thing the Padre dreaded. The youngster’s hold broke, and a rock hurtled by him from under his hand and very nearly dislodged him altogether.

In an instant the Padre was on his feet with the useless intention of going to his aid, but, even as he stood up, his own feet shot from under him, and he fell back heavily upon the rock from which he had just risen.

With an impatient exclamation he looked down to discover the cause of his mishap. There it lay, a loose stone of yellowish hue. He stooped to remove it, and, in a moment, his irritation was forgotten. In a moment everything else was forgotten. Buck was forgotten. The peril of the hill. The cliff itself. For the moment he was lifted out of himself. Years had passed away, his years of life in those hills. And something of the romantic dreams of his early youth thrilled him once again.

He stood up bearing the cause of his mishap clasped in his two hands and stared down at it. Then, after a long while, he looked up at the climbing man. He stood there quite still, watching his movements with unseeing eyes. His interest was gone. The danger had somehow become nothing now. There was no longer any thought of the active figure moving up the face of the hill with cat-like clinging hands and feet. There was no longer thought for his success or failure.