The Courage of Marge O'Doone, James Oliver Curwood [smart books to read .txt] 📗

and what he stared at now was a wondrous sight! Tara travelled with the rolling, slouching gait typical of the wide-quartered grizzly, and the girl was a sinuous part of him--by all odds the most wonderful thing in the world to David at this moment. Her hair streamed down her back in a cascade of sunlit glory. She flung back her head, and he thought of a wonderful golden-bronze flower. He heard her laugh, and cry out to Tara, and when the grizzly climbed up a bit of steep slide she leaned forward and became a part of the bear's back, her curls shimmering in the thick ruff of Tara's neck. As he toiled upward in their wake, he caught a glimpse of her looking back at him from the top of the slide, her eyes shining and her lips smiling at him. She reminded him of something he had read about Leucosia, his favorite of the "Three Sirens," only in this instance it was a siren of the mountains and not of the sea that was leading him on to an early doom--if he had to keep up with that bear! His breath came more quickly. In ten minutes he was gasping for wind, and in despair he slackened his pace as the bear and his rider disappeared over the crest of the first slope. She was waving at him then, fully two hundred yards up that infernal hill, and he was sure that she was laughing. He had almost reached the top when he saw her sitting in the shade of a rock, watching him as he toiled upward. There was a mischievous seriousness in the blue of her eyes when he reached her side.
"I'm sorry, _Sakewawin_," she said, lowering her eyes until they were hidden under the silken sheen of her long lashes, "I couldn't make Tara go slowly. He is hungry, and he knows that he is going home."
"And I thought you had sore feet," he managed to say.
"I don't ride him going _down_ a mountain," she explained, thrusting out her ragged little feet. "I can't hang on, and I slip over his head. You must walk ahead of Tara. That will hold him back."
He tried this experiment when they continued their ascent, and Tara followed so uncomfortably close that at times David could feel his warm breath against his hand. When they reached the second slope the girl walked beside him. For a half mile it was not a bad climb and there was soft grass underfoot. After that came the rock and shale, and the air grew steadily colder. They had started at one o'clock and it was five when they reached the first snow. It was six when they stood at the summit. Under them lay the valley of the Firepan, a broad, sun-filled sweep of scattered timber and green plain, and the girl pointed into it, north and west.
"Off there is the Nest," she said. "We could almost see it if it weren't for that big, red mountain."
She was very tired, though she had ridden Tara at least two thirds of the distance up the mountains. In her eyes was the mistiness of exhaustion, and as a chill wind swept about them she leaned against David, and he could feel that her endurance was nearly gone. As they had come up to the snow line he had made her put on the light woollen shirt he carried in his pack; and the big handkerchief, in which he had so long wrapped the picture, he had fastened scarf-like about her head, so she was not cold. But she looked pathetically childlike and out of place, standing here beside him at the very top of the world, with the valley so far down that the clumps of timber in it were like painted splashes. It was a half mile down to the first bit of timber--a small round patch of it in a narrow dip--and he pointed to it encouragingly.
"We'll camp there and have supper. I believe it is far enough down for a fire. And if it is impossible for you to ride Tara--I'm going to carry you!"
"You can't, _Sakewawin_" she sighed, letting her head touch his arm for a moment. "It is more difficult to carry a load down a mountain than up. I can walk."
Before he could stop her she had begun to descend. They went down quickly--three times as quickly as they had climbed the other side--and when, half an hour later, they reached the timber in the dip, he felt as if his back were broken. The girl had persistently kept ahead of him, and with a little cry of triumph she dropped down at the foot of the first balsam they came to. The pupils of her eyes were big and dark as she looked up at him, quivering with the strain of the last great effort, and yet she tried to smile at him.
"You may carry me--some time--but not down a mountain," she said, and laid her head wearily on the pillow of her arm, so that her face was concealed from him. "And now--please get supper, _Sakewawin_."
He spread his blanket over her before he began searching for a camp site. He noticed that Tara was already hunting for roots. Baree followed close at his master's heels. Quite near, David found a streamlet that trickled down from the snow line, and to a grassy plot on the edge of this he dragged a quantity of dry wood and built a fire. Then he made a thick couch of balsam boughs and went to his little companion. In the half hour he had been at work she had fallen asleep. Utter exhaustion was in the limpness of her slender body as he raised her gently in his arms. The handkerchief had slipped back over her shoulder and she was wonderfully sweet, and helpless, as she lay with her head on his breast. She was still asleep when he placed her on the balsams, and it was dark when he awakened her for supper. The fire was burning brightly. Tara had stretched himself out in a huge, dark bulk in the outer glow of it. Baree was close to the fire. The girl sat up, rubbed her eyes, and stared at David.
"_Sakewawin_," she whispered then, looking about her in a moment's bewilderment.
"Supper," he said, smiling. "I did it all while you were napping, little lady. Are you hungry?"
He had spread their meal so that she did not have to move from her balsams, and he had brought a short piece of timber to place as a rest at her back, cushioned by his shoulder pack and the blanket. After all his trouble she did not eat much. The mistiness was still in her eyes, so after he had finished he took away the timber and made of the balsams a deep pillow for her, that she might lie restfully, with her head well up, while he smoked. He did not want her to go to sleep. He wanted to talk. And he began by asking how she had so carelessly run away with only a pair of moccasins on her feet and no clothes but the thin garments she was wearing.
"They were in Tara's pack, _Sakewawin_," she explained, her eyes glowing like sleepy pools in the fireglow. "They were lost."
He began then to tell her about Father Roland. She listened, growing sleepier, her lashes drooping slowly until they formed dark curves on her cheeks. He was close enough to marvel at their length, and as he watched them, quivering in her efforts to keep awake and listen to him, they seemed to him like the dark petals of two beautiful flowers closing slumbrously for the night. It was a wonderful thing to see them open suddenly and find the full glory of the sleep-filled eyes on him for an instant, and then to watch them slowly close again as she fought valiantly to conquer her irresistible drowsiness, the merest dimpling of a smile on her lips. The last time she opened them he had her picture in his hands, and was looking at it, quite close to her, with the fire lighting it up. For a moment he thought the sight if it had awakened her completely.
"Throw it into the fire," she said. "Brokaw made me let him take it, and I hate it. I hate Brokaw. I hate the picture. Burn it."
"But I must keep it," he protested. "Burn it! Why it's...."
"You won't want it--after to-night."
Her eyes were closing again, heavily, for the last time.
"Why?" he asked, bending over her.
"Because, _Sakewawin_ ... you have me ... now," came her voice, in drowsy softness; and then the long lashes lay quietly against her cheeks.


CHAPTER XX
He thought of her words a long time after she had fallen asleep. Even in that last moment of her consciousness he had found her voice filled with a strange faith and a wonderful assurance as it had drifted away in a whisper. He would not want the picture any more--because he had _her_! That was what she had said, and he knew it was her soul that had spoken to him as she had hovered that instant between consciousness and slumber. He looked at her, sleeping under his eyes, and he felt upon him for the first time the weight of a sudden trouble, a gloomy foreboding--and yet, under it all, like a fire banked beneath dead ash, was the warm thrill of his possession. He had spread his blanket over her, and now he leaned over and drew back her thick curls. They were warm and soft in his fingers, strangely sweet to touch, and for a moment or two he fondled them while he gazed steadily into the childish loveliness of her face, dimpled still by that shadow of a smile with which she had fallen asleep. He was beginning to feel that he had accepted for himself a tremendous task, and that she, not much more than a child, had of course scarcely foreseen its possibilities. Her faith in him was a pleasurable thing. It was absolute. He realized it more as the hours dragged on and he sat alone by the fire. So great was it that she was going back fearlessly to those whom she hated and feared. She was returning not only fearlessly but with a certain defiant satisfaction. He could fancy her saying to Hauck, and the Red Brute: "I've come back. Now touch me if you dare!" What would he have to do to live up to that surety of her confidence in him? A great deal, undoubtedly. And if he won for her, as she fully expected him to win, what would he do with her? Take her to the coast--put her into a school somewhere down south? That was his first notion. For to him she looked more than ever like a child as she lay asleep on her bed of balsams.
He tried to picture Brokaw. He tried to see Hauck in his mental vision, and he thought over again all that the girl had told him about herself and these men. As he looked at her now--a little, softly breathing thing under his gray blanket--it was hard for him to believe anything so horrible as she had suggested. Perhaps her fears had been grossly exaggerated. The exchange of gold between Hauck and the Red Brute had probably been for something else. Even men engulfed in the brutality of the trade they were in would not think of such an appalling crime. And then--with a fierceness that made his blood boil--came the thought of that time when Brokaw had caught her in his arms, and had held her head back until it _hurt_--and had kissed her! Baree