CHAPTER XXII
THE CONVERGING TRAILS
Whatever the feelings of the others, Armstrong found himself unable tosleep that night. It seemed to him that fate was about to play him themeanest and most fantastic of tricks. Many times before in his crowdedlife he had loved other women, or so he characterized his feelings, buthis passion for Louise Rosser Newbold had been in a class by itselfuntil he had met Enid Maitland. Between the two there had been manywomen, but these two were the high points, the rest was lowland.
Once before, therefore, this Newbold had cut in ahead of him and had wonthe woman he loved. Armstrong had cherished a hard grudge against himfor a long time. He had not been of those who had formed the rescueparty led by old Kirkby and Maitland which had buried the poor woman onthe great butte in the deep canyon. Before he got back to the camp thewhole affair was over and Newbold had departed. Luckily for him,Armstrong had always thought, for he had been so mad with grief and rageand jealousy that if he had come across him helpless or not he wouldhave killed him out of hand.
Armstrong had soon enough forgotten Louise Rosser, but he had notforgotten Newbold. All his ancient animosity had flamed into instantlife again, at the sight of his name last night. The inveteracy of hishatred had been in no way abated by the lapse of time it seemed.
Everybody in the mining camp had supposed that Newbold had wandered offand perished in the mountains, else Armstrong might have pursued him andhunted him down. The sight of his name on that piece of paper wasoutward and visible evidence that he still lived. It had almost theshock of a resurrection, and a resurrection to hatred rather than tolove. If Newbold had been alone in the world, if Armstrong had chancedupon him in the solitude, he would have hated him just as he did; butwhen he thought that his ancient enemy was with the woman he now loved,with a growing intensity, beside which his former resentment seemed weakand feeble, he hated him yet the more.
He could not tell when the notice, which he had examined carefully, waswritten; there was no date upon it, but he could come to only oneconclusion. Newbold must have found Enid Maitland alone in the mountainsvery shortly after her departure and he had had her with him in hiscabin alone for at least a month. Armstrong gritted his teeth at thethought. He did not undervalue the personality of Newbold, he had neverhappened to see him, but he had heard enough about him to understand hisqualities as a man. The tie that bound Armstrong to Enid Maitland was astrong one, but the tie by which he held her to him, if indeed he heldher at all, was very tenuous and easily broken; perhaps it was brokenalready, and so he hated him still more and more.
Indeed his animosity was so great and growing that for the moment hetook no joy in the assurance of the girl's safety, yet he was notaltogether an unfair man and in calmer moments he thanked God in his ownrough way that the woman he loved was alive and well, or had been whenthe note was written. He rejoiced that she had not been swept away withthe flood or that she had not been lost in the mountains and forced towander on, finally to starve and freeze and die. In one moment hernearness caused his heart to throb with joyful anticipation. Thecertainty that at the first flush of day he would seek her again sentthe warm blood to his cheeks. But these thoughts would be succeeded bythe knowledge that she was with his enemy. Was this man to rob him ofthe latest love as he had robbed him of the first? Perhaps the hardesttask that was ever laid upon Armstrong was to lie quietly in hissleeping bag and wait until the morning.
So soon as the first indication of dawn showed through the cracks of thedoor, he slipped quietly out of his sleeping bag and without disturbingthe others drew on his boots, put on his heavy fur coat and cap andgloves, slung his Winchester and his snow shoes over his shoulder andwithout stopping for a bite to eat softly opened the door, stepped outand closed it after him. It was quite dark in the bottom of the canyon,although a few pale gleams overhead indicated the near approach of day.It was quite still, too. There were clouds on the mountain top heavywith threat of wind and snow.
The way was not difficult, the direction of it that is. Nor was thegoing very difficult at first; the snow was frozen and the crust wasstrong enough to bear him. He did not need his snow shoes and indeedwould have had little chance to use them in the narrow broken rockypass. He had slipped away from the others because he wanted to be thefirst to see the man and the woman. He did not want any witness to thatmeeting. They would have to come on later of course, but he wanted anhour or two in private with Enid and Newbold without any interruption.His conscience was not clear. Nor could he settle upon a course ofaction.
How much Newbold knew of his former attempt to win away his wife, howmuch of what he knew he had told Enid Maitland, Armstrong could notsurmise. Putting himself into Newbold's place and imagining that theengineer had possessed entire information, he decided that he must havetold everything to Enid Maitland so soon as he had found out the quasirelation between her and Armstrong. And Armstrong did not believe thewoman he loved could be in anybody's presence a month without tellingsomething about him. Still it was possible that Newbold knew nothing andthat he told nothing therefore.
The situation was paralyzing to a man of Armstrong's decided, determinedtemperament. He could not decide upon the line of conduct he shouldpursue. His course in this, the most critical emergency he had everfaced, must be determined by circumstances of which he felt with savageresentment he was in some measure the sport. He would have to leave tochance what ought to be subject to his will. Of only one thing was hesure--he would stop at nothing, murder, lying, nothing to win thatwoman, and to settle his score with that man.
There was really only one thing he could do and that was to press on upthe canyon. He had no idea how far it might be or how long a journey hewould have to make before he reached that shelf on the high hill wherestood that hut in which she dwelt. As the crow flies it could not be agreat distance, but the canyon zigzagged through the mountains with asmany curves and angles as a lightning flash. He plodded on thereforewith furious haste, recklessly speeding over places where a misstep inthe snow or a slip on the icy rocks would have meant death or disasterto him.
He had gone about an hour, and had perhaps made four miles from thecamp, when the storm burst upon him. It was now broad day and the skywas filled with clouds and the air with driving snow. The wind whistleddown the canyon with terrific force, it was with difficulty that he madeany headway at all against it. It was a local storm; if he could havelooked through the snow he would have discovered calmness on the top ofthe peaks. It was one of those sudden squalls of wind and snow whichrage with terrific force while they last but whose range was limited andwhose duration would be as short as it was violent.
A less determined man than he would have bowed to the inevitable andsought some shelter behind a rock until the fury of the tempest wasspent, but there was no storm that blew that could stop this man so longas he had strength to drive against it. So he bent his head to thefierce blast and struggled on. There was something titantic andmagnificent about the iron determination and persistence of Armstrong.The two most powerful passions which move humanity were at his service;love led him and hate drove him. And the two were so intermingled thatit was difficult to say which predominated, now one and now the other.The resultant of the two forces however was an onward move that wouldnot be denied.
His fur coat was soon covered with snow and ice, the sharp needles ofthe storm cut his face wherever it was exposed. The wind forced its waythrough his garments and chilled him to the bone. He had eaten nothingsince the night before and his vitality was not at its flood, but hepressed onward and upward and there was something grand in hisindomitable progress. _Excelsior!_
Back in the hut Kirkby and Maitland sat around the fire waiting mostimpatiently for the wind to blow itself out and for that snow to stopfalling through which Armstrong struggled forward. As he followed thewindings of the canyon, not daring to ascend to the summit of eitherwall and seek short cuts across the range, he was sensible that he wasconstantly rising. There were many indications
to his experienced mind;the decrease in the height of the surrounding pines, the increasingrarity of the icy air, the growing difficulty in breathing under thesustained exertion he was making, the quick throbbing of his acceleratedheart, all told him he was approaching his journey's end.
He judged that he must now be drawing near the source of the stream, andthat he would presently come upon the shelter. He had no means ofascertaining the time, he would not have dared to unbutton his coat toglance at his watch, and it is difficult to measure the flying minutesin such scenes as those through which he passed, but he thought he musthave gone at least seven miles in perhaps three hours, which he fanciedhad elapsed, his progress in the last two having been frightfully slow.Every foot of advance he had to fight for.
Suddenly, after a quick turn in the canyon, a passage through a narrowentrance between lofty cliffs, and he found himself in a pocket or acircular amphitheater which he could see was closed on the further side.The bottom of this enclosure or valley was covered with pines, nowdrooping under tremendous burdens of snow. In the midst of the pines alakelet was frozen solid, the ice was covered with the same dazzlingcarpet of white.
He could have seen nothing of this had not the sudden storm now stoppedas precipitately almost as it had begun. Indeed, accustomed to thegrayness of the snowfall, his eyes were fairly dazzled by the brightlight of the sun, now quite high over the range, which struck him fullin the face.
He stopped, panting, exhausted, and leaned against the rocky wall of thecanyon's mouth which, here rose sheer over his head. This certainly wasthe end of the trail, the lake was the source of the frozen rivuletalong whose rocky and torn banks he had tramped since dawn. Here ifanywhere he would find the object of his quest.
Refreshed by the brief pause and encouraged by the sudden stilling ofthe storm, he stepped out of the canyon and ascended a little knollwhence he had a full view of the pocket over the tops of the pines.Shading his eyes from the light with his hand as best he could, heslowly swept the circumference with his eager glance, seeing nothinguntil his eye fell upon a huge broken trail of rocks projecting from thesnow, indicating the ascent to a broad bare shelf of the mountainsacross the lake to the right. Following this up he saw a huge block ofsnow which suggested dimly the outlines of a hut!
Was that the place? Was she there? He stared fascinated and as he did soa thin curl of smoke rose above the snow heap and wavered up in the coldquiet air! That was a human habitation then, it could be none other thanthe hut referred to in the note. Enid Maitland must be there, andNewbold!
The lake lay directly in front of him beyond the trees at the foot ofthe knoll and between him and the slope that led up to the hut. If ithad been summer, he would have been compelled to follow the water's edgeto the right or to the left, both journeys would have led over difficulttrails with little to choose between them, but the lake was now frozenhard and covered with snow. He had no doubt that the snow would bearhim, but to make sure he drew his snow shoes from his shoulder, slippedhis feet in the straps, and sped straight on through the trees and thenacross the lake like an arrow from a bow.
In five minutes he was at the foot of the giant stairs. Kicking off hissnow shoes he scrambled up the broken way, easily finding in the snow atrail which had evidently been passed and repassed daily. In a fewmoments he was at the top of the shelf. A hard trampled path ranbetween high walls of snow to a door!
Behind that door what would he find? Just what he brought to it, loveand hate he fancied. We usually find on the other side of doors no moreand no less than we bring to our own sides. But whatever it might be,there was no hesitation in Armstrong's course. He ran toward it, laidhis hand on the latch and opened it.
What creatures of habit we are! Early in that same morning, after onevain attempt again to influence the woman who was now the deciding anddetermining factor and who seemed to be taking the man's place, Newbold,ready for his journey, had torn himself away from her presence and hadplunged down the giant stair. He had done everything that mortal mancould do for her comfort; wood enough to last her for two weeks had beentaken from the cave and piled in the kitchen and elsewhere so as to beeasily accessible to her, the stores she already had the run of and hehad fitted a stout bar to the outer door which would render itimpregnable to any attack that might be made against it, although he sawno quarter from which any assault impended.
Enid had recovered not only her strength but a good deal of her nerve.That she loved this man and that he loved her had given her courage.She would be fearfully lonely of course, but not so much afraid asbefore. The month of immunity in the mountains without any interruptionhad dissipated any possible apprehensions on her part. It was with asinking heart however that she saw him go at last.
They had been so much together in that month they had learned what lovewas. When he came back it would be different, he would not come alone.The first human being he met would bring the world to the door of thelonely but beloved cabin in the mountains--the world with its questions,its inferences, its suspicions, its denunciations and its accusations!Some kind of an explanation would have to be made, some sort of ananswer would have to be given, some solution of the problem would haveto be arrived at. What these would be she could not tell.
Newbold's departure was like the end of an era to her. The curtaindropped, when it rose again what was to be expected? There was nocomfort except in the thought that she loved him. So long as theiraffections matched and ran together nothing else mattered. With thesolution of it all next to her sadly beating heart she was stillsupremely confident that Love, or God--and there was not so muchdifference between them as to make it worth while to mention the Onerather than the Other--would find the way.
Their leave taking had been singularly cold and abrupt. She had realizedthe danger he was apt to incur and she had exacted a reluctant promisefrom him that he would be careful.
"Don't throw your life away, don't risk it even, remember that it ismine," she had urged.
And just as simply as she had enjoined it upon him he had promised. Hehad given his word that he would not send help back to her but that hewould bring it back, and she had confidence in that word. A confidencethat had he been inclined to break his promise would have made itabsolutely impossible. There had been a long clasp of the hands, a longlook in the eyes, a long breath in the breast, a long throb in the heartand then--farewell. They dared no more.
Once before he had left her and she had stood upon the plateau andfollowed his vanishing figure with anxious troubled thought until it hadbeen lost in the depths of the forest below. She had controlled herselfin this second parting for his sake as well as her own. Under the ashesof his grim repression she realized the presence of live coals which abreath would have fanned into flame. She dared nothing while he wasthere, but when he shut the door behind him the necessity forself-control was removed. She had laid her arms on the table and bowedher head upon them and shook and quivered with emotions unrelieved by asingle tear--weeping was for lighter hearts and less severe demands!
His position after all was the easier of the two. As of old it was theman who went forth to the battle field while the woman could only waitpassively the issue of the fight. Although he was half blinded withemotion he had to give some thought to his progress, and there was yetone task to be done before he could set forth upon his journey towardcivilization and rescue.
It was fortunate, as it turned out, that this obligation detained him.He was that type of a merciful man whose mercies extended to his beasts.The poor little burros must be attended to and their safety assured sofar as it could be, for it would be impossible for Enid Maitland to carefor them. Indeed he had already exacted a promise from her that shewould not leave the plateau and risk her life on the icy stairs withwhich she was so unfamiliar.
He had gone to the corral and shaken down food enough for them which ifit had been doled out to them day by day would have lasted longer thanthe week he intended to be absent; of course he realized that they wouldeat it up in
half that time, but even so they would probably suffer nottoo great discomfort before he got back.
All these preparations took some little time. It had grown somewhat latein the morning before he started. There had been a fierce storm ragingwhen he first looked out and at her earnest solicitation he had delayedhis departure until it had subsided.
His tasks at the corral were at last completed; he had done what hecould for them both, nothing now remained but to make the quickest andsafest way to the settlement. Shouldering the pack containing his ax andgun and sleeping bag and such provisions as would serve to tide him overuntil he reached human habitations, he set forth. He did not look up tothe hut; indeed, he could not have seen it for the corral was almostdirectly beneath it; but if it had been in full view he would not havelooked back, he could not trust himself to; every instinct, everyimpulse in his soul would fain drag him back to that hut and to thewoman. It was only his will and, did he but know it, her will that madehim carry out his purpose.
He would have saved perhaps half a mile on his journey if he had gonestraight across the lake to the mouth of the canyon. We are creatures ofhabit. He had always gone around the lake on the familiar trail andunconsciously he followed that trail that morning. He was thinking ofher as he plodded on in a mechanical way over the trail which followedthe border of the lake for a time, plunged into the woods, wound amongthe pines and at last reached that narrow rift in the encircling wallthrough which the river flowed. He had passed along the white wayoblivious to all his surroundings, but as he came to the entrance hecould not fail to notice what he suddenly saw in the snow.
Robinson Crusoe when he discovered the famous footprint of Man Friday inthe sand was not more astonished at what met his vision than Newbold onthat winter morning. For there, in the virgin whiteness, were the tracksof a man!
He stopped dead with a sudden contraction of the heart. Humanity otherthan he and she in that wilderness? It could not be! For a moment hedoubted the evidence of his own senses. He shook his pack loose from hisshoulders and bent down to examine the tracks to read if he could theirindications. He could see that some one had come up the canyon, thatsomeone had leaned against the wall, that someone had gone on. Where hadhe gone?
To follow the new trail was child's play for him. He ran by the side ofit until he reached the knoll. The stranger had stopped again, he hadshifted from one foot to another, evidently he had been looking abouthim seeking someone, only Enid Maitland of course. The trail ran forwardto the edge of the frozen lake, there the man had put on his snow shoes,there he had sped across the lake like an arrow and like an arrowhimself, although he had left behind his own snow shoes, Newbold ranupon his track. Fortunately the snow crest upbore him. The trail ranstraight to the foot of the rocky stairs. The newcomer had easily foundhis way there.
With beating heart and throbbing pulse, Newbold himself bounded up theacclivity after the stranger, marking as he did so evidences of theother's prior ascent. Reaching the top like him he ran down the narrowpath and in his turn laid his hand upon the door.
He was not mistaken, he heard voices within. He listened a second andthen flung it open, and as the other had done, he entered.
Way back on the trail, old Kirkby and Robert Maitland, the storm havingceased, were rapidly climbing up the canyon. Fate was bringing all theactors of the little drama within the shadow of her hand.
The Chalice Of Courage: A Romance of Colorado Page 26