by Bret Harte
CHAPTER III.
Out of compliment to Miss Nellie Wynn, Yuba Bill, on reaching IndianSpring, had made a slight detour to enable him to ostentatiously setdown his fair passenger before the door of the Burnhams. When it hadclosed on the admiring eyes of the passengers and the coach had rattledaway, Miss Nellie, without any undue haste or apparent change inher usual quiet demeanor, managed, however, to dispatch her businesspromptly, and, leaving an impression that she would call again beforeher return to Excelsior, parted from her friends and slipped awaythrough a side street to the General Furnishing Store of Indian Spring.In passing this emporium, Miss Nellie's quick eye had discovered a cheapbrown linen duster hanging in its window. To purchase it, and put itover her delicate cambric dress, albeit with a shivering sense that shelooked like a badly folded brown-paper parcel, did not take long. As sheleft the shop it was with mixed emotions of chagrin and security thatshe noticed that her passage through the settlement no longer turnedthe heads of its male inhabitants. She reached the outskirts of IndianSpring and the high-road at about the time Mr. Brace had begun hisfruitless patrol of the main street. Far in the distance a faintolive-green table mountain seemed to rise abruptly from the plain.It was the Carquinez Woods. Gathering her spotless skirts beneath herextemporized brown domino, she set out briskly towards them.
But her progress was scarcely free or exhilarating. She was notaccustomed to walking in a country where "buggy-riding" was consideredthe only genteel young-lady-like mode of progression, and its regularprovision the expected courtesy of mankind. Always fastidiously booted,her low-quartered shoes were charming to the eye, but hardly adaptedto the dust and inequalities of the highroad. It was true that she hadthought of buying a coarser pair at Indian Spring, but once face to facewith their uncompromising ugliness, she had faltered and fled. The sunwas unmistakably hot, but her parasol was too well known and offeredtoo violent a contrast to the duster for practical use. Once she stoppedwith an exclamation of annoyance, hesitated, and looked back. In halfan hour she had twice lost her shoe and her temper; a pink flush tookpossession of her cheeks, and her eyes were bright with suppressed rage.Dust began to form grimy circles around their orbits; with cat-likeshivers she even felt it pervade the roots of her blond hair. Graduallyher breath grew more rapid and hysterical, her smarting eyes becamehumid, and at last, encountering two observant horsemen in the road, sheturned and fled, until, reaching the wood, she began to cry.
Nevertheless she waited for the two horsemen to pass, to satisfy herselfthat she was not followed; then pushed on vaguely, until she reached afallen tree, where, with a gesture of disgust, she tore off her haplessduster and flung it on the ground. She then sat down sobbing, but aftera moment dried her eyes hurriedly and started to her feet. A few pacesdistant, erect, noiseless, with outstretched hand, the young solitaryof the Carquinez Woods advanced towards her. His hand had almost touchedhers, when he stopped.
"What has happened?" he asked gravely.
"Nothing," she said, turning half away, and searching the ground withher eyes, as if she had lost something. "Only I must be going back now."
"You shall go back at once, if you wish it," he said, flushing slightly."But you have been crying; why?"
Frank as Miss Nellie wished to be, she could not bring herself tosay that her feet hurt her, and the dust and heat were ruining hercomplexion. It was therefore with a half-confident belief thather troubles were really of a moral quality that she answered,"Nothing--nothing, but--but--it's wrong to come here."
"But you did not think it was wrong when you agreed to come, at ourlast meeting," said the young man, with that persistent logic whichexasperates the inconsequent feminine mind. "It cannot be any more wrongto-day."
"But it was not so far off," murmured the young girl, without lookingup.
"Oh, the distance makes it more improper, then," he said abstractedly;but after a moment's contemplation of her half-averted face, he askedgravely, "Has anyone talked to you about me?"
Ten minutes before, Nellie had been burning to unburthen herself of herfather's warning, but now she felt she would not. "I wish you wouldn'tcall yourself Low," she said at last.
"But it's my name," he replied quietly.
"Nonsense! It's only a stupid translation of a stupid nickname. Theymight as well call you 'Water' at once."
"But you said you liked it."
"Well, so I do. But don't you see--I--oh dear! you don't understand."
Low did not reply, but turned his head with resigned gravity towards thedeeper woods. Grasping the barrel of his rifle with his left hand, hethrew his right arm across his left wrist and leaned slightly upon itwith the habitual ease of a Western hunter--doubly picturesque in hisown lithe, youthful symmetry. Miss Nellie looked at him from under hereyelids, and then half defiantly raised her head and her dark lashes.Gradually an almost magical change came over her features; her eyes grewlarger and more and more yearning, until they seemed to draw and absorbin their liquid depths the figure of the young man before her; her coldface broke into an ecstasy of light and color; her humid lips partedin a bright, welcoming smile, until, with an irresistible impulse, shearose, and throwing back her head stretched towards him two hands fullof vague and trembling passion.
In another moment he had seized them, kissed them, and, as he drew hercloser to his embrace, felt them tighten around his neck. "But what namedo you wish to call me?" he asked, looking down into her eyes.
Miss Nellie murmured something confidentially to the third button of hishunting shirt. "But that," he replied, with a smile, "THAT wouldn't beany more practical, and you wouldn't want others to call me dar--" Herfingers loosened around his neck, she drew her head back, and a singularexpression passed over her face, which to any calmer observer thana lover would have seemed, however, to indicate more curiosity thanjealousy.
"Who else DOES call you so?" she added earnestly. "How many, forinstance?"
Low's reply was addressed not to her ear, but her lips. She did notavoid it, but added, "And do you kiss them all like that?" Taking him bythe shoulders, she held him a little way from her, and gazed at him fromhead to foot. Then drawing him again to her embrace, she said, "I don'tcare, at least no woman has kissed you like that." Happy, dazzled, andembarrassed, he was beginning to stammer the truthful protestation thatrose to his lips, but she stopped him: "No, don't protest! say nothing!Let ME love YOU--that is all. It is enough." He would have caught herin his arms again, but she drew back. "We are near the road," she saidquietly. "Come! You promised to show me where you camped. Let US makethe most of our holiday. In an hour I must leave the woods."
"But I shall accompany you, dearest."
"No, I must go as I came--alone."
"But Nellie--"
"I tell you no," she said, with an almost harsh practical decision,incompatible with her previous abandonment. "We might be seen together."
"Well, suppose we are; we must be seen together eventually," heremonstrated.
The young girl made an involuntary gesture of impatient negation, butchecked herself. "Don't let us talk of that now. Come, while I am hereunder your own roof--" she pointed to the high interlaced boughs abovethem--"you must be hospitable. Show me your home; tell me, isn't it alittle gloomy sometimes?"
"It never has been; I never thought it WOULD be until the moment youleave it to-day."
She pressed his hand briefly and in a half-perfunctory way, as if hervanity had accepted and dismissed the compliment. "Take me somewhere,"she said inquisitively, "where you stay most; I do not seem to see youHERE," she added, looking around her with a slight shiver. "It is so bigand so high. Have you no place where you eat and rest and sleep?"
"Except in the rainy season, I camp all over the place--at any spotwhere I may have been shooting or collecting."
"Collecting?" queried Nellie.
"Yes; with the herbarium, you know."
"Yes," said Nellie dubiously. "But you told me once--the first time weever talked together," she added, looking
in his eyes--"something aboutyour keeping your things like a squirrel in a tree. Could we notgo there? Is there not room for us to sit and talk without beingbrow-beaten and looked down upon by these supercilious trees?"
"It's too far away," said Low truthfully, but with a somewhat pronouncedemphasis, "much too far for you just now; and it lies on another trailthat enters the wood beyond. But come, I will show you a spring knownonly to myself, the wood ducks, and the squirrels. I discovered it thefirst day I saw you, and gave it your name. But you shall christen ityourself. It will be all yours, and yours alone, for it is so hidden andsecluded that I defy any feet but my own or whoso shall keep step withmine to find it. Shall that foot be yours, Nellie?"
Her face beamed with a bright assent. "It may be difficult to track itfrom here," he said, "but stand where you are a moment, and don't move,rustle, nor agitate the air in any way. The woods are still now." Heturned at right angles with the trail, moved a few paces into the fernsand underbrush, and then stopped with his finger on his lips. For aninstant both remained motionless; then with his intent face bent forwardand both arms extended, he began to sink slowly upon one knee and oneside, inclining his body with a gentle, perfectly-graduated movementuntil his ear almost touched the ground. Nellie watched his gracefulfigure breathlessly, until, like a bow unbent, he stood suddenly erectagain, and beckoned to her without changing the direction of his face.
"What is it?" she asked eagerly.
"All right; I have found it," he continued, moving forward withoutturning his head.
"But how? What did you kneel for?" He did not reply, but taking her handin his continued to move slowly on through the underbrush, as ifobeying some magnetic attraction. "How did you find it?" again askedthe half-awed girl, her voice unconsciously falling to a whisper. Stillsilent, Low kept his rigid face and forward tread for twenty yardsfurther; then he stopped and released the girl's half-impatient hand."How did you find it?" she repeated sharply.
"With my ears and nose," replied Low gravely.
"With your nose?"
"Yes; I smelt it."
Still fresh with the memory of his picturesque attitude, the young man'sreply seemed to involve something more irritating to her feelings thaneven that absurd anticlimax. She looked at him coldly and critically,and appeared to hesitate whether to proceed. "Is it far?" she asked.
"Not more than ten minutes now, as I shall go."
"And you won't have to smell your way again?"
"No; it is quite plain now," he answered seriously, the young girl'ssarcasm slipping harmlessly from his Indian stolidity. "Don't you smellit yourself?"
But Miss Nellie's thin, cold nostrils refused to take that vulgarinterest.
"Nor hear it? Listen!"
"You forget I suffer the misfortune of having been brought up under aroof," she replied coldly.
"That's true," repeated Low, in all seriousness; "it's not your fault.But do you know, I sometimes think I am peculiarly sensitive to water; Ifeel it miles away. At night, though I may not see it or even know whereit is, I am conscious of it. It is company to me when I am alone, andI seem to hear it in my dreams. There is no music as sweet to me asits song. When you sang with me that day in church, I seemed to hear itripple in your voice. It says to me more than the birds do, more thanthe rarest plants I find. It seems to live with me and for me. It is myearliest recollection; I know it will be my last, for I shall die in itsembrace. Do you think, Nellie," he continued, stopping short and gazingearnestly in her face--"do you think that the chiefs knew this when theycalled me 'Sleeping Water'?"
To Miss Nellie's several gifts I fear the gods had not added poetry. Aslight knowledge of English verse of a select character, unfortunately,did not assist her in the interpretation of the young man's speech, norrelieve her from the momentary feeling that he was at times deficientin intellect. She preferred, however, to take a personal view of thequestion, and expressed her sarcastic regret that she had not knownbefore that she had been indebted to the great flume and ditch atExcelsior for the pleasure of his acquaintance. This pert remarkoccasioned some explanation, which ended in the girl's accepting a kissin lieu of more logical argument. Nevertheless, she was still consciousof an inward irritation--always distinct from her singular and perfectlymaterial passion--which found vent as the difficulties of theirundeviating progress through the underbrush increased. At last she losther shoe again, and stopped short. "It's a pity your Indian friendsdid not christen you 'Wild Mustard' or 'Clover,'" she said satirically,"that you might have had some sympathies and longings for the openfields instead of these horrid jungles! I know we will not get back intime."
Unfortunately, Low accepted this speech literally and with hisremorseless gravity. "If my name annoys you, I can get it changed by thelegislature, you know, and I can find out what my father's name was, andtake that. My mother, who died in giving me birth, was the daughter of achief."
"Then your mother was really an Indian?" said Nellie, "and you are--"She stopped short.
"But I told you all this the day we first met," said Low, with graveastonishment. "Don't you remember our long talk coming from church?"
"No," said Nellie coldly, "you didn't tell me." But she was obliged todrop her eyes before the unwavering, undeniable truthfulness of his.
"You have forgotten," he said calmly; "but it is only right you shouldhave your own way in disposing of a name that I have cared little for;and as you're to have a share of it--"
"Yes, but it's getting late, and if we are not going forward--"interrupted the girl impatiently.
"We ARE going forward," said Low imperturbably; "but I wanted to tellyou, as we were speaking on THAT subject" (Nellie looked at her watch),"I've been offered the place of botanist and naturalist in ProfessorGrant's survey of Mount Shasta, and if I take it--why, when I come back,darling--well--"
"But you're not going just yet," broke in Nellie, with a new expressionin her face.
"No."
"Then we need not talk of it now," she said, with animation.
Her sudden vivacity relieved him. "I see what's the matter," he saidgently, looking down at her feet; "these little shoes were not made tokeep step with a moccasin. We must try another way." He stooped as ifto secure the erring buskin, but suddenly lifted her like a child to hisshoulder. "There," he continued, placing her arm round his neck, "youare clear of the ferns and brambles now, and we can go on. Are youcomfortable?" He looked up, read her answer in her burning eyes andthe warm lips pressed to his forehead at the roots of his straight darkhair, and again moved onward as in a mesmeric dream. But he did notswerve from his direct course, and with a final dash through theundergrowth parted the leafy curtain before the spring.
At first the young girl was dazzled by the strong light that came from arent in the interwoven arches of the wood. The breach had been caused bythe huge bulk of one of the great giants that had half fallen, and waslying at a steep angle against one of its mightiest brethren, havingborne down a lesser tree in the arc of its downward path. Two of theroots, as large as younger trees, tossed their blackened and barelimbs high in the air. The spring--the insignificant cause of this vastdisruption--gurgled, flashed, and sparkled at the base; the limpid babyfingers that had laid bare the foundations of that fallen column playedwith the still clinging rootlets, laved the fractured and twisted limbs,and, widening, filled with sleeping water the graves from which they hadbeen torn.
"It had been going on for years, down there," said Low, pointing to acavity from which the fresh water now slowly welled, "but it had beenquickened by the rising of the subterranean springs and rivers whichalways occurs at a certain stage of the dry season. I remember thaton that very night--for it happened a little after midnight, when allsounds are more audible--I was troubled and oppressed in my sleep bywhat you would call a nightmare; a feeling as if I was kept down bybonds and pinions that I longed to break. And then I heard a crash inthis direction, and the first streak of morning brought me the sound andscent of water. Six months afte
rwards I chanced to find my way here, asI told you, and gave it your name. I did not dream that I should everstand beside it with you, and have you christen it yourself."
He unloosened the cup from his flask, and filling it at the springhanded it to her. But the young girl leant over the pool, and pouringthe water idly back said, "I'd rather put my feet in it. Mayn't I?"
"I don't understand you," he said wonderingly.
"My feet are SO hot and dusty. The water looks deliciously cool. May I?"
"Certainly."
He turned away as Nellie, with apparent unconsciousness, seated herselfon the bank, and removed her shoes and stockings. When she had dabbledher feet a few moments in the pool, she said over her shoulder--
"We can talk just as well, can't we?"
"Certainly."
"Well, then, why didn't you come to church more often, and why didn'tyou think of telling father that you were convicted of sin and wanted tobe baptized?"
"I don't know," hesitated the young man.
"Well, you lost the chance of having father convert you, baptize you,and take you into full church fellowship."
"I never thought--" he began.
"You never thought. Aren't you a Christian?"
"I suppose so."
"He supposes so! Have you no convictions--no profession?"
"But, Nellie, I never thought that you--"
"Never thought that I--what? Do you think that I could ever be anythingto a man who did not believe in justification by faith, or in thecovenant of church fellowship? Do you think father would let me?"
In his eagerness to defend himself he stepped to her side. But seeingher little feet shining through the dark water, like outcroppings ofdelicately veined quartz, he stopped embarrassed. Miss Nellie, however,leaped to one foot, and, shaking the other over the pool, put her handon his shoulder to steady herself. "You haven't got a towel--or," shesaid dubiously, looking at her small handkerchief, "anything to dry themon?"
But Low did not, as she perhaps expected, offer his own handkerchief.
"If you take a bath after our fashion," he said gravely, "you must learnto dry yourself after our fashion."
Lifting her again lightly in his arms, he carried her a few steps to thesunny opening, and bade her bury her feet in the dried mosses and bakedwithered grasses that were bleaching in a hollow. The young girl uttereda cry of childish delight, as the soft ciliated fibres touched hersensitive skin.
"It is healing, too," continued Low; "a moccasin filled with it after aday on the trail makes you all right again."
But Miss Nellie seemed to be thinking of something else.
"Is that the way the squaws bathe and dry themselves?"
"I don't know; you forget I was a boy when I left them."
"And you're sure you never knew any?"
"None."
The young girl seemed to derive some satisfaction in moving her feetup and down for several minutes among the grasses in the hollow; then,after a pause, said, "You are quite certain I am the first woman thatever touched this spring?"
"Not only the first woman, but the first human being, except myself."
"How nice!"
They had taken each other's hands; seated side by side, they leanedagainst a curving elastic root that half supported, half encompassed,them. The girl's capricious, fitful manner succumbed as before to thenear contact of her companion. Looking into her eyes, Low fell into asweet, selfish lover's monologue, descriptive of his past and presentfeelings towards her, which she accepted with a heightened color, aslight exchange of sentiment, and a strange curiosity. The sun hadpainted their half-embraced silhouettes against the slanting tree-trunk,and began to decline unnoticed; the ripple of the water mingling withtheir whispers came as one sound to the listening ear; even theireloquent silences were as deep, and, I wot, perhaps as dangerous, as thedarkened pool that filled so noiselessly a dozen yards away. So quietwere they that the tremor of invading wings once or twice shook thesilence, or the quick scamper of frightened feet rustled the dead grass.But in the midst of a prolonged stillness the young man sprang up sosuddenly that Nellie was still half clinging to his neck as he stooderect. "Hush!" he whispered; "some one is near!"
He disengaged her anxious hands gently, leaped upon the slantingtree-trunk, and running half-way up its incline with the agility of asquirrel, stretched himself at full length upon it and listened.
To the impatient, inexplicably startled girl, it seemed an age before herejoined her.
"You are safe," he said; "he is going by the western trail towardsIndian Spring."
"Who is HE?" she asked, biting her lips with a poorly restrained gestureof mortification and disappointment.
"Some stranger," replied Low.
"As long as he wasn't coming here, why did you give me such a fright?"she said pettishly. "Are you nervous because a single wayfarer happensto stray here?"
"It was no wayfarer, for he tried to keep near the trail," said Low. "Hewas a stranger to the wood, for he lost his way every now and then. Hewas seeking or expecting some one, for he stopped frequently and waitedor listened. He had not walked far, for he wore spurs that tinkled andcaught in the brush; and yet he had not ridden here, for no horse'shoofs passed the road since we have been here. He must have come fromIndian Spring."
"And you heard all that when you listened just now?" asked Nellie, halfdisdainfully.
Impervious to her incredulity Low turned his calm eyes on her face."Certainly, I'll bet my life on what I say. Tell me: do you know anybodyin Indian Spring who would likely spy upon you?"
The young girl was conscious of a certain ill-defined uneasiness, butanswered, "No."
"Then it was not YOU he was seeking," said Low thoughtfully. Miss Nelliehad not time to notice the emphasis, for he added, "You must go at once,and lest you have been followed I will show you another way back toIndian Spring. It is longer, and you must hasten. Take your shoes andstockings with you until we are out of the bush."
He raised her again in his arms and strode once more out through thecovert into the dim aisles of the wood. They spoke but little; she couldnot help feeling that some other discordant element, affecting him morestrongly than it did her, had come between them, and was half perplexedand half frightened. At the end of ten minutes he seated her upon afallen branch, and telling her he would return by the time she hadresumed her shoes and stockings glided from her like a shadow. She wouldhave uttered an indignant protest at being left alone, but he was goneere she could detain him. For a moment she thought she hated him. Butwhen she had mechanically shod herself once more, not without nervousshivers at every falling needle, he was at her side.
"Do you know anyone who wears a frieze coat like that?" he asked,handing her a few torn shreds of wool affixed to a splinter of bark.
Miss Nellie instantly recognized the material of a certain sportingcoat worn by Mr. Jack Brace on festive occasions, but a strange yetinfallible instinct that was part of her nature made her instantlydisclaim all knowledge of it.
"No," she said.
"Not anyone who scents himself with some doctor's stuff like cologne?"continued Low, with the disgust of keen olfactory sensibilities.
Again Miss Nellie recognized the perfume with which the gallantexpressman was wont to make redolent her little parlor, but again sheavowed no knowledge of its possessor. "Well," returned Low with somedisappointment, "such a man has been here. Be on your guard. Let us goat once."
She required no urging to hasten her steps, but hurried breathlessly athis side. He had taken a new trail by which they left the wood at rightangles with the highway, two miles away. Following an almost effacedmule track along a slight depression of the plain, deep enough, however,to hide them from view, he accompanied her, until, rising to the levelagain, she saw they were beginning to approach the highway and thedistant roofs of Indian Spring. "Nobody meeting you now," hewhispered, "would suspect where you had been. Good night! until nextweek--remember."
They pressed each oth
er's hands, and standing on the slight ridgeoutlined against the paling sky, in full view of the highway, partingcarelessly, as if they had been chance met travelers. But Nellie couldnot restrain a parting backward glance as she left the ridge. Lowhad descended to the deserted trail, and was running swiftly in thedirection of the Carquinez Woods.