"Suppose we pitch pennies to see what direction to take," suggested the girl; but the boy only laughed.
"Haven't much time for that, Miss," he answered. "Look how them clouds is crowdin' us; we've got to hunt cover or get soaked. This trail goes somewhere; may be to an Injun village. I allow we'd better freeze to it."
"All right. We'll allow that we had," agreed Miss Hardy. "Betty, get around here, and get up this hill! I know every step is taking us farther from the ranch, but this seems the only direction in which a trail leads. Jim, how far do you suppose we are from home?"
"'Bout fifteen miles, I guess," said the boy, looking blue.
"And we haven't found the lost sheep?"
"No, we haven't."
"And we have got lost?"
"Yes."
"Jim, I don't believe we are a howling success as sheep farmers."
"I don't care a darn about the sheep just now," declared Jim. "What I want to know is where we are to sleep to-night."
"Oh, you want too much," she answered briskly; "I am content to sit up all night, if I only can find a dry place to stay in—do you hear that?" as the thunder that had grumbled in the distance now sounded its threats close above them.
"Yes, I hear it, and it means business, too. I wish we were at the end of this trail," he said, urging his horse up through the scrubby growth of laurel.
The darkness was falling so quickly that it was not an easy matter to keep the trail; and the wind hissing through the trees made an open space a thing to wish for. Jim, who was ahead, gave a shout as he reached the summit of the hill where the trail crossed it.
"We're right!" he yelled that she might hear his voice above the thunder and the wind; "there's some sort of a shanty across there by a big pond; it's half a mile away, an' the rain's a-comin'—come on!"
And on they went in a wild run to keep ahead of the rain-cloud that was pelting its load at them with the force of hail. The girl had caught a glimpse of the white sheen of a lake or pond ahead of them; the shanty she did not wait to pick out from the gloom, but followed blindly after Jim, at a breakneck gait, until they both brought up short, in the shadow of a cabin in the edge of the timber above the lake.
"Jump off quick and in with you" called Jim; and without the ceremony of knocking, she pushed open the door and dived into the interior.
It was almost as dark as night. She stumbled around until she found a sort of bed in one corner, and sat down on it, breathless and wet. The rain was coming down in torrents, and directly Jim, with the saddles in his arms, came plunging in, shaking himself like a water-spaniel.
"Great guns! But it's comin' down solid," he gasped; "where are you?"
"Here—I've found a bed, so somebody lives here. Have you any matches?"
"I allow I have," answered Jim, "if they only ain't wet—no, by George, they're all right."
The brief blaze of the match showed him the fire-place and a pile of wood beside it, and a great osier basket of broken bark. "Say, Miss Hardy, we've struck great luck," he announced while on his knees, quickly starting a fire and fanning it into a blaze with his hat; "I wonder who lives here and where they are. Stickin' to that old trail was a pay streak—hey?"
In the blaze of the fire the room assumed quite a respectable appearance. It was not a shanty, as Jim had at first supposed, but a substantial log-cabin, furnished in a way to show constant and recent occupation.
A table made like a wide shelf jutted from the wall under the one square window; a bed and two chairs that bespoke home manufacture were covered by bear-skins; on the floor beside the bed was a buffalo-robe; and a large locked chest stood against the wall. Beside the fire-place was a cupboard with cooking and table utensils, and around the walls hung trophies of the hunt. A bow and quiver of arrows and a knotted silken sash hung on one wooden peg, and added to a pair of moccasins in the corner, gave an Indian suggestion to the occupancy of the cabin, but the furnishing in general was decidedly that of a white person; to the rafters were fastened some beaver-paws and bear-claws, and the skins of three rattlesnakes were pendent against the wall.
"Well, this is a queer go! ain't it?" remarked Jim as he walked around taking a survey of the room. "I'd like to know who it all belongs to. Did you ever hear folks about here speak of old Davy MacDougall?"
"Yes, I have," answered the girl, sitting down on the buffalo-robe before the fire, to dry her shoulders at the blaze.
"Well, I believe this is his cabin, and we are about ten mile from home," decided the boy. "I didn't think we'd strayed as far north as Scot's Mountain, but I allow this is it."
"Well, I wish he would come home and get supper," said the girl, easily adapting herself to any groove into which she happened to fall; "but perhaps we should have sent him word of our visit. What did you do with the horses, Jim?"
"Put 'em in a shed at the end o' the house—a bang-up place, right on the other side o' this fire-place. Whoever lives here keeps either a horse or a cow."
"I hope it's a cow, and that there's some milk to be had. Jimmy, I wonder if there is anything to eat in that cupboard."
"I've been thinkin' o' that myself," said Jim in answer to that insinuating speech.
"Suppose you do something besides think—suppose you look," suggested the more unscrupulous of the foragers; "I'm hungry."
"So am I," acknowledged her confederate; "you an' me is most alike about our eatin', ain't we? Mrs. Houghton said yesterday I had a terrible appetite."
The boy at once began making an examination of the larder, wondering, as he did so, what the girl was laughing at.
The rain was coming down in torrents through the blackness of the night; now and then the lightning would vie with the fire in lighting up the room, while the thunder seemed at home in that valley of the mountain, for its volleys of sound and their echoes never ceased.
Small wonder that anyone's house would seem a home to the two, or that they would have no compunction in taking possession of it.
"There's coffee here somewhere, I can smell it," announced Jim; "an' here's rice an' crackers, an' corn-meal, an' dried raspberries, an' potatoes, an'—yes, here's the coffee! Say, Miss Hardy, we'll have a regular feast!"
"I should say so!" remarked that lady, eyeing Jim's "find" approvingly; "I think there is a bed of coals here at this side of the fire-place that will just fit about six of those potatoes—can you eat three, Jim?"
"Three will do if they're big enough," said Jim, looking dubiously at the potatoes; "but these ain't as good-sized as some I've seen."
"Then give me two more; that makes five for you and three for me."
"Hadn't you better shove in a couple more?" asked Jim with a dash of liberality. "You know MacDougall may come back hungry, an' then we can spare him two—that makes ten to roast."
"Ten it is!" said the girl, burying two more in the ashes as the share of their host. "Jim, see if there is any water in here to make coffee with."
"Yes, a big jar full," reported the steward; "an' here is a little crock half full of eggs—prairie-chicken, I guess—say, can you make a pone?"
"I think I can;" and the cook at once rolled up the sleeves of her riding-dress, and Jimmy brought out the eggs and some bits of salt meat—evidently bear-meat—that was hung from the ceiling of the cupboard; at once there began a great beating of eggs and stirring up of a corn pone; some berries were set on the coals to stew in a tin-cup, the water put to boil for the coffee, and an iron skillet with a lid utilized as an oven; and the fragrance of the preparing eatables filled the little room and prompted the hungry lifting of lids many times ere the fire had time to do its work.
"That pone's a 'dandy!'" said Jim, taking a peep at it; "it's gettin' as brown as—as your hair; an' them berries is done, an' ain't it time to put in the coffee?"
Acting on this hint, the coffee, beaten into a froth with an egg, had the boiling water poured over it, and set bubbling and aromatic on the red coals.
"You mayn't be much use to find strayed-
off stock," said Jim deliberately, with his head on one side, as he watched the apparent ease with which the girl managed her primitive cooking apparatus; "but I tell you—you ain't no slouch when it comes to gettin' grub ready, and gettin' it quick."
"Better keep your compliments until you have tried to eat some of the cooking," suggested Miss Hardy, on her knees before the fire. "I believe the pone is done."
"Then we'll dish-up in double-quick," said Jim, handing her two tin pans for the pone and potatoes. "We'll have to set the berries on in the tin—by George! what's that?"
"That" was the neigh of Betty in the shed by the chimney, and an answering one from somewhere out in the darkness. Through the thunder and the rain they had heard no steps, but Jim's eyes were big with suspense as he listened.
"My horse has broke loose from the shed," he said angrily, reaching for his hat; "and how the dickens I'm to find him in this storm I don't know."
"Don't be so quick to give yourself a shower-bath," suggested the girl on the floor; "he won't stray far off, and may be glad to come back to the shed; and then again," she added, laughing, "it may be MacDougall."
Jim looked rather blankly at the supper on the hearth and the girl who seemed so much at home on the buffalo-robe.
"By George! it might be," he said slowly; and for the first time the responsibility of their confiscations loomed up before him. "Say," he added uneasily, "have you any money?"
"Money?" she repeated inquiringly; and then seeing the drift of his thoughts, "Oh, no, I haven't a cent."
"They say MacDougall is an old crank," he insinuated, looking at her out of the corner of his eye, to see what effect the statement would have on her. But she only smiled in an indifferent way. "An'—an' ef he wants the money cash down for this lay-out"—and he glanced comprehensively over the hearth—"well, I don't know what to say."
"That's easily managed," said the girl coolly; "you can leave your horse in pawn."
"An' foot it home ten miles?—not if I know it!" burst out Jim; "an' besides it's Hardy's horse."
"Well, then, leave the saddle, and ride home bareback."
"I guess not!" protested Jim, with the same aggressive tone; "that's my own saddle."
After this unanswerable reason, there was an expectant silence in the room for a little while, that was finally broken by Jim saying ruefully:
"If that is MacDougall, he'll have to have them two potatoes."
Rachel's risible tendencies were not proof against this final fear of Jim's, and her laughter drowned his grumblings, and also footsteps without, of which neither heard a sound until the door was flung open and a man walked into the room.
Jim looked at him with surprised eyes, and managed to stammer, "How are you?" for the man was so far from his idea of old Davy MacDougall that he was staggered.
But Miss Hardy only looked up, laughing, from her position by the fire, and drew the coffee-pot from the coals with one hand, while she reached the other to the new-comer.
"Klahowya! Mr. Jack," she said easily; "got wet, didn't you? You are just in time for supper."
"You!" was all he said; and Jim thought they were both crazy, from the way the man crossed the room to her and took her one hand in both his as if he never intended letting it go or saying another word, content only to hold her hand and look at her. And Miss Rachel Hardy's eyes were not idle either.
"Yes, of course it's I," she said, slipping her hand away after a little, and dropping her face that had flushed pink in the fire-light; "I don't look like a ghost, do I? You would not find a ghost at such prosaic work as getting supper."
"Getting supper?" he said, stepping back a bit and glancing around. For the first time he seemed to notice Jim, or have any remembrance of anything but the girl herself. "You mean that you two have been getting supper alone?"
"Yes, Jim and I. Mr. Jack, this is my friend Jim, from the ranch. We tried to guide each other after sheep, and both got lost; and as you did not get here in time to cook supper, of course we had to do it alone."
"But I mean was there no one else here?"—he still looked a little dazed and perplexed, his eyes roving uneasily about the room—"I—a—a young Indian—"
"No!" interrupted the girl eagerly. "Do you mean the Indian boy who brought me that black bear's skin? I knew you had sent it, though he would not say a word—looked at me as if he did not understand Chinook when I spoke."
"May be he didn't understand yours," remarked Jimmy, edging past her to rake the potatoes out of the ashes.
"But he wasn't here when we came," continued Miss Hardy. "The house was deserted and in darkness when we found it, just as the storm came on in earnest."
"And the fire?" said Genesee.
"There was none," answered the boy. "The ashes were stone-cold. I noticed it; so your Injun hadn't had any fire all day."
"All day!" repeated the man, going to the door and looking out. "That means a long tramp, and to-night—"
"And to-night is a bad one for a tramp back," added Jim.
"Yes," agreed Genesee, "that's what I was thinking."
If there was a breath of relief in the words, both were too occupied with the potatoes in the ashes to notice it. He shut the door directly as the wind sent a gust of rain inside, and then turned again to the pirates at the fire-place.
"What did you find to cook?" he asked, glancing at the "lay-out," as Jim called it. "I haven't been here since yesterday, and am afraid you didn't find much—any fresh meat?"
Miss Hardy shook her head.
"Salt meat and eggs, that's all," she said.
"Not by a long shot it ain't, Mr.—Mr Jack," said Jim, contradicting her flatly. "She's got a first-class supper; an' by George! she can make more out o' nothin' than any woman I ever seen." In his enthusiasm over Rachel he was unconscious of the slur on their host's larder. "I never knowed she was such a rattlin' cook!"
"I know I have never been given credit for my everyday, wearing qualities," said the girl, without looking up from the eggs she was scrambling in the bake-oven of a few minutes before. The words may have been to Jim, but by the man's eyes he evidently thought they were at Genesee—such a curious, pained look as that with which he watched her every movement, every curve of form and feature, that shone in the light of the fire. Once she saw the look, and her own eyes dropped under it for a moment, but that independence of hers would not let it be for long.
"Do you want a share of our supper?" she asked, looking up at him quizzically.
"Yes," he answered, but his steady, curious gaze at her showed that his thoughts were not of the question or answer.
Not so Jim. That young gentleman eyed dubiously first the lay-out and then Genesee's physique, trying to arrive at a mental estimate of his capacity and the probable division of the pone and potatoes.
"How about that saddle, now, Jim?" asked the girl. Whereupon Jim began a pantomime enjoining silence, back of the chair of the man, who appeared more like a guest than host—perhaps because it was so hard to realize that it was really his hearth where that girl sat as if at home. She noticed his preoccupation, and remarked dryly:
"You really don't deserve a share of our cooking after the way you deserted us before!—not even a klahowya when you took the trail."
"You're right, I reckon; but don't you be the one to blame me for that," he answered, in a tone that made the command a sort of plea; and Miss Hardy industriously gave her attention to the supper.
"It's all ready," announced Jim, as he juggled a pan of hot pone from one hand to another on the way to the table. "Ouch! but it's hot! Say, wouldn't some fresh butter go great with this!"
"Didn't you find any?" asked Genesee, waking to the practical things of life at Jim's remark.
"Find any? No! Is there any?" asked that little gourmand, with hope and doubt chasing each other over his rather thin face.
"I don't know—there ought to be;" and lifting a loose board in the floor by the cupboard, he drew forth a closely-woven reed basket, and on a smoo
th stone in the bottom lay a large piece of yellow butter, around which Jim performed a sort of dance of adoration.
What a supper that was, in the light of the pitch-pine and the fierce accompaniment of the outside tempest! Jim vowed that never were there potatoes so near perfection, in their brown jackets and their steaming, powdery flakes; and the yellow pone, and the amber coffee, and the cool slices of butter that Genesee told them was from an Indian village thirty miles north. And to the table were brought such tremendous appetites! at least by the cook and steward of the party. And above all, what a delicious atmosphere of unreality pervaded the whole thing! Again and again Genesee's eyes seemed to say, "Can it be you?" and grew warm as her quizzical glances told him it could be no one else.
As the night wore on, and the storm continued, he brought in armfuls of wood from the shed without, and in the talk round the fire his manner grew more assured—more at home with the surroundings that were yet his own. Long they talked, until Jim, unable to think of any more questions to ask of silver-mining and bear-hunting, slipped down in the corner, with his head on a saddle, and went fast asleep.
"I'll sit up and keep the fire going," said Genesee, at this sign of the late hour; "but you had better get what rest you can on that bunk there—you'll need it for your ride in the morning."
"In the morning!" repeated the girl coolly; "that sounds as if you are determined our visit shall end as soon as possible, Mr. Genesee Jack."
"Don't talk like that!" he said, looking across at her; "you don't know anything about it." And getting up hastily, he walked back and forward across the room; once stopping suddenly, as if with some determination to speak, and then, as she looked up at him, his courage seemed to vanish, and he turned his face away from her and walked to the door.
The storm had stilled its shrieks, and was dying away in misty moans down the dip in the hills, taking the rain with it. The darkness was intense as he held the door open and looked into the black vault, where not a glimmer of a star or even a gray cloud could be seen.
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