CHAPTER XXIV

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*"A MAN OF STRAW"*

Smith, having slower horses and the bulk of the outfit, started for the Pass at daybreak, with the understanding that Stratton would overtake him at the crossing of the Nisqually; and it was hardly two hours later that the thoroughbred forded the Des Chutes above the lodge, and, followed by a pack-animal, made a sharp ascent to the rock tower, where his master halted to load the remainder of the cache.

The forest fires that had been the salvation of the _Phantom_, had proved a disadvantage on the road from Seattle. The two horsemen had been forced to make wide detours around blazing timber; sometimes the trail was lost in the charred ruins of burned out tracts, and arriving at the ranch where Stratton had expected to pick up pack-animals, they found the buildings completely wiped away, and all signs of humanity and life gone. But Smith annulled these delays by starting a red trail backward from the Nisqually plains through the untouched woods they had travelled; cutting off any chance of pursuit for several days.

Stratton had been further handicapped by the pain in his head, which the heat and glare brought on with increasing violence. There were moments when riding became impossible, and he threw himself from the saddle, prone on the earth, to wait for harder paroxysms to pass. But as they approached the headwaters, they came into the shade of clean, unbroken timber; the smoke decreased to scarcely more than a haze, and, while Smith pressed Laramie to forage for the necessary pack-horses, Stratton was able to allow himself twenty-four hours of absolute rest, induced by a few drops of the mixture he had learned to use in the solitude of his lodge, and this put him on his feet again.

Still he made slow progress down the rough path from the tower that morning, and even when he struck the main trail he halted repeatedly, like a man of two minds. Finally he wheeled and, encumbered by the pack-horse, which led indifferently, paced back, and turned into a by-way that brought him into the school branch. He held Sir Donald at a walk and studied the ground, until, though he noticed Mose's footprints in a moist place, he was satisfied the black had not yet passed. Presently he stopped, listening. The track, there, doubled a trunk of great girth; a hollow cedar stump, roofed like an arbor by the branches of young alders, which also screened a break in the inner wall, like a curtain before a door.

The sound became a brisk and steady lope. To this man, who had waited for it often, who was accustomed to read the individuality of horses as a psychologist studies men, it was unmistakable. He backed the pack-animal into the salal, and held the thoroughbred in, while Colonel, falling to a gentle pace, rounded the curve and came to a playful standstill.

"Good morning." Alice's glance moved from Stratton to the laden pack-horse. "But it looks like good-by," she said.

"Yes, I turned back to say it. I missed seeing you at the homestead, yesterday, and I am starting on another trading and hunting trip. I should find elk now, in the mountains, and I hope to bring you the horns of a goat."

"I'll have a place for all you bring," she answered, her lips dimpling. "Mose told me you were going. But," she added seriously, "I'm glad you are going alone. Mose saw Pete Smith, late last evening, creeping along from the foot-bridge, and this morning, of course you know, Mill Thornton's horse was gone."

"Not the sorrel?" Sir Donald, accustomed to every fluctuation of his master's voice, trembled and wheeled. But the hand on the bridle steadied and brought him around. "No," Stratton added, "No, I had not heard. I came the other way, by the ford and the canyon trail, and so missed seeing Mrs. Mill. And Thornton believes it was Smith?"

"Yes, he is sure of it. There was a clear track on the wet grass across my claim to strike the canyon trail. He followed it far enough to be certain, then started for the prairie to get Jake's horse. Ketchem is very swift and he expected to bring the Government detectives back with him. They have tracked Pete to the settlement, and spent last night at the Myers homestead."

Stratton put his hand on the black's glossy neck, giving it a quick, firm stroke. "And they are looking for--Smith?" he asked.

"Yes. He has committed some new crime; Samantha didn't understand what. I doubt if the man who told Mill knew. But," she halted an instant, compelling his eyes with her clear, steadfast look that seemed to expect a best in him, "you will help the Government now. You will stop him if the opportunity comes. And you know how Mill needs his horse. Think if it was Sir Donald; think how it must go all against the grain of a fine, mettlesome creature to be touched, even, by those unclean, wicked hands."

"I will do what I can about the sorrel," he answered. "But I am going a long and hazardous journey; I may never see you again." He gave the black another quick, firm stroke, then, meeting her eyes, once more lost himself. "Smith is with me," he said. "Those men are looking for me. Think. Go back to that day at the tower when you stumbled on that strange, leaking tin. Go back farther to that time on Orcas Island; the story I told you there on the summit. I was that boy."

"You were that boy?"

"Yes. The time has come; I want you to know it from me. I was that boy. And you,"--he paused, and the quiver that was the surface stir of unsounded depths swept his face. "You were that woman. I can't give you up. You don't know how I love you. Wait. Listen. Never mind that friendliness; I break the truce. Never mind your impossible duty to the Judge. When a woman loves a man, as you are capable of loving, she doesn't hold him off the breadth of the whole continent; she goes when he calls. Wait. Listen. Forget that Puritan conscience of yours, this one half-hour, and I pledge myself to live up to it the rest of my life. Trust me. Promise you will join me in Chicago, New York, Montreal, whenever, wherever I write."

The color flamed in her face. "I shall be late to school," she said. "Turn Sir Donald, please."

She spoke to her horse, but the thicket crowded close and the chestnut continued to hold the way. "Wait, just one moment more," Stratton went on, "you do not understand. I will take you away, to the ends of the earth, if I must, and make a new start. I can do it; I can become the most rigid patriot, I swear, with you to back me. It rests completely with you, to make of me your kind of man, or to send me--I don't care where."

"I could never be any man's prop," she answered. "I thought you knew that!" Then suddenly her manner changed. Her face softened; her eyes filled with a great appeal. "Face it out, pay the price," she said. "I will help you; only be the man of character, of force, I have believed you to be, and not--a man of straw."

"Force," he caught at the word. "Force. Would you like me better if I should carry you away? I could do it, now, to-day; over the mountains, into the big Palouse wilderness. Sir Donald is very fleet,"--he watched her narrowly,--"and so is the black."

"Carry me away? Carry me?" Again her manner changed. She tipped back her head, laughing in soft derision.

"I know every byway northward to the British boundary and far beyond," he went on hurriedly. "Only give me the start over the divide, and the whole roused Northwest could never find you."

"But you forget my part; I should find a way back." And she laughed again, less merrily, still in derision.

He backed his horse a little among the alders, close to the cedar trunk, and swung himself from the saddle, moving to the chestnut's head and thrusting his arm through the bridle. The position brought him again to the neck of the black, and he slipped the same hand on through the coil of Colonel's lariat. "At least you are not afraid of me," he said. "I am glad of that."

"Afraid? Afraid of you? Oh, no. Why should I be? But the children will be waiting." Though the words were brave her voice trembled. It was not the first time she had tried to laugh this man off dangerous ground, but now, suddenly looking into his face, for the first time, she felt he had passed beyond her influence.

She was afraid. This was not the Stratton she had known; whose companionship hitherto had seemed a security on the trail; whose frequent visits to the headwaters had kept her in touch with the outside world; the friend who had once saved her from fire; whom, earlier, she had rescued from an ice-crevasse. That Stratton had been mocking, debonair; a few times she had seen him shaken with passion, but he had shown her strong under-currents of fine feeling; and, always, in any mood, he had remembered to be courteous, chivalrous; that was bred in the bone. But this man--it was as though she had not seen him before. His face was determined, hard. It might have been chiseled of rock. His silence was a threat. And, clearly, he did not mean to let her pass.

She turned in her saddle to look at the space behind her and gathered her rein. And instantly Stratton laid his palm on her hand and drew the bridle from her surprised hold. "You will hate me at first," he said, "perhaps hard and long; but--I can be patient--you will love me in the end and marry me."

He made a hitch in the rein and dropping it on the black's neck, lifted his hand to the silk handkerchief knotted at his throat.

"I will not," she said, and caught a great breath, "I will not." She reached for the bridle, but again his hand closed over hers. She flashed him a look; unspeakable contempt, aversion, rose in her face. "You ruffian," she added. "You common ruffian, outlaw."

And he let the hand go. He released, too, his hold on the coiled lariat, and stood back like a man unexpectedly struck. He had ceased to bar the way; she was free to ride on, but she failed to notice that. She saw only this "ruffian" and her eyes stormed. "Listen," she said, and her voice, like her sister's, deepened to contralto notes. "I warn you. I can die just once and it will come to that before I ever bring myself to marry you. As long as I live I shall never love any man but--_Paul Forrest_."

So, at last, in this moment of great anger, the truth which she had not even admitted to herself, was surprised from her. Then she was silent. A wave of color surged and ebbed in her face. She began to tremble, a little at first, then harder; her whole body rocked.

And Stratton watched her. The light like a blade flashed in his eyes, but he gathered himself, slowly, in check, the Stratton she knew once more. "So," he said, finally, "so, after all, it is the black's master, as I thought, as I feared at the beginning. You might have told me; it was hardly fair to me to fabricate that yarn about the Judge, and stay by it so long."

"It was not a fabrication. I am going to marry Judge Kingsley," her voice broke and she finished almost in a whisper, "as I told you."

"I see," he answered slowly, "I see." He paused and went on yet more slowly. "To think of it, the irony of it, that Forrest should love your sister."

Colonel had started, but she drew him in and turned, again facing this man. "Hush," she said, and he saw that she shook once more, from head to foot. "Hush. Deny it. Own that you know, it isn't true."

He folded his arms, one drawn still through his bridle, and met her look steadily. "But I believe it," he answered. "I am sorry, but I believe it. How do you know it isn't true?"

"You know them both, yet you can ask. You--you must have seen that she could never care for any man but Philip Kingsley."

"I grant that," he answered and smiled. "I spoke merely of Forrest. It is he who is generally blamed."

"Blamed?" She lifted her chin high; her eyes storming.

"Yes, it is common talk among the mill men; I have overheard it discussed in a hotel lobby at Seattle, and at Olympia, where they are generally and intimately known."

"But you--you have denied it?"

He shook his head. "I am sorry, but how could I deny it?"

"Because Paul Forrest isn't that kind of man; you know it. You know he is as true, as steadfast as these hills."

"True to her," Stratton persisted softly, "true to her, yes."

"No--to me."

Then suddenly on the silence there rang an ominous sound. Colonel wheeled and looked, head up, sensitive ears playing, towards the Nisqually trail; he wheeled again and she allowed him to set the pace in the direction of the school.

Plainly there were many hoof-beats and they struck into the branch leaving the river trail. Stratton spoke to the indifferent pack-horse, touched him smartly on the flank and sent him careering after the black. Then he urged the thoroughbred quickly along the trunk to the break that was like a door. There was barely room to press through, and the chestnut's head rose among the alder branches that roofed the stump. But a word, a firm touch on the forelegs, and the trained animal dropped to his knees. Another word and he rolled to his side with his head flattened to receive his master's weight. It was the method used in breaking a cavalry mount for field drill; and Sir Donald remained motionless, while Bates and his deputies thundered by with Thornton, in hot pursuit of the black and the laden pack-horse.

Stratton rested lightly, easing his weight by bracing one knee on the earth. A bough rustled outside of the trunk; a twig snapped faintly, and he was conscious that a pair of ferret eyes peered cautiously, briefly, around through the aperture. But he made no sign until the posse had passed; then he threw out his arm, feeling, and drew Lem, struggling, towards him. "You spy," he whispered, and the anger flashed in his eyes; "you spy. Tell what you know and I will skin you--by inches--alive."

Then he tossed the shaking boy aside, in a heap, and in another instant had his horse up and out of his hiding-place, and mounting, galloped lightly back in the direction of Nisqually crossing and the Pass.

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