by Bret Harte
CHAPTER IV
Teresa awoke with a start. It was day already, but how far advanced theeven, unchanging, soft twilight of the woods gave no indication.Her companion had vanished, and to her bewildered senses so had thecamp-fire, even to its embers and ashes. Was she awake, or had shewandered away unconsciously in the night? One glance at the tree aboveher dissipated the fancy. There was the opening of her quaint retreatand the hanging strips of bark, and at the foot of the opposite treelay the carcass of the bear. It had been skinned, and, as Teresa thoughtwith an inward shiver, already looked half its former size.
Not yet accustomed to the fact that a few steps in either directionaround the circumference of those great trunks produced the suddenappearance or disappearance of any figure, Teresa uttered a slightscream as her young companion unexpectedly stepped to her side. "Yousee a change here," he said; "the stamped-out ashes of the camp-fire lieunder the brush," and he pointed to some cleverly scattered boughsand strips of bark which completely effaced the traces of last night'sbivouac. "We can't afford to call the attention of any packer or hunterwho might straggle this way to this particular spot and this particulartree; the more naturally," he added, "as they always prefer to camp overan old fire." Accepting this explanation meekly, as partly a reproachfor her caprice of the previous night, Teresa hung her head.
"I'm very sorry," she said, "but wouldn't that," pointing to the carcassof the bear, "have made them curious?"
But Low's logic was relentless.
"By this time there would have been little left to excite curiosity, ifyou had been willing to leave those beasts to their work."
"I'm very sorry," repeated the woman, her lips quivering.
"They are the scavengers of the wood," he continued in a lighter tone;"if you stay here you must try to use them to keep your house clean."
Teresa smiled nervously.
"I mean that they shall finish their work to-night," he added, "and Ishall build another camp-fire for us a mile from here until they do."
But Teresa caught his sleeve.
"No," she said hurriedly, "don't, please, for me. You must not take thetrouble, nor the risk. Hear me; do, please. I can bear it, I WILLbear it--to-night. I would have borne it last night, but it was sostrange--and"--she passed her hands over her forehead--"I think I musthave been half mad. But I am not so foolish now."
She seemed so broken and despondent that he replied reassuringly:"Perhaps it would be better that I should find another hiding-place foryou, until I can dispose of that carcass so that it will not draw dogsafter the wolves, and men after THEM. Besides, your friend the sheriffwill probably remember the bear when he remembers anything, and try toget on its track again."
"He's a conceited fool," broke in Teresa in a high voice, with a slightreturn of her old fury, "or he'd have guessed where that shot came from;and," she added in a lower tone, looking down at her limp and nervelessfingers, "he wouldn't have let a poor, weak, nervous wretch like me getaway."
"But his deputy may put two and two together, and connect your escapewith it."
Teresa's eyes flashed. "It would be like the dog, just to save hispride, to swear it was an ambush of my friends, and that he wasoverpowered by numbers. Oh yes! I see it all!" she almost screamed,lashing herself into a rage at the bare contemplation of this diminutionof her glory. "That's the dirty lie he tells everywhere, and is tellingnow."
She stamped her feet and glanced savagely around, as if at any risk toproclaim the falsehood. Low turned his impassive, truthful face towardsher.
"Sheriff Dunn," he began gravely, "is a politician, and a fool when hetakes to the trail as a hunter of man or beast. But he is not a cowardnor a liar. Your chances would be better if he were--if he laid yourescape to an ambush of your friends, than if his pride held you aloneresponsible."
"If he's such a good man, why do you hesitate?" she replied bitterly."Why don't you give me up at once, and do a service to one of yourfriends?"
"I do not even know him," returned Low opening his clear eyes upon her."I've promised to hide you here, and I shall hide you as well from himas from anybody."
Teresa did not reply, but suddenly dropping down upon the groundburied her face in her hands and began to sob convulsively. Low turnedimpassively away, and putting aside the bark curtain climbed into thehollow tree. In a few moments he reappeared, laden with provisions anda few simple cooking utensils, and touched her lightly on the shoulder.She looked up timidly; the paroxysm had passed, but her lashes yetglittered.
"Come," he said, "come and get some breakfast. I find you have eatennothing since you have been here--twenty-four hours."
"I didn't know it," she said, with a faint smile. Then seeing hisburden, and possessed by a new and strange desire for some menialemployment, she said hurriedly, "Let me carry something--do, please,"and even tried to disencumber him.
Half annoyed, Low at last yielded, and handing his rifle said, "There,then, take that; but be careful--it's loaded!"
A cruel blush burnt the woman's face to the roots of her hair as shetook the weapon hesitatingly in her hand.
"No!" she stammered, hurriedly lifting her shame-suffused eyes to his;"no! no!"
He turned away with an impatience which showed her how completelygratuitous had been her agitation and its significance, and said,"Well, then, give it back if you are afraid of it." But she as suddenlydeclined to return it; and shouldering it deftly, took her place by hisside. Silently they moved from the hollow tree together.
During their walk she did not attempt to invade his taciturnity.Nevertheless she was as keenly alive and watchful of his every movementand gesture as if she had hung enchanted on his lips. The unerringway with which he pursued a viewless, undeviating path through thosetrackless woods, his quick reconnaissance of certain trees or openings,his mute inspection of some almost imperceptible footprint of bird orbeast, his critical examination of certain plants which he plucked anddeposited in his deerskin haversack, were not lost on the quick-wittedwoman. As they gradually changed the clear, unencumbered aisles of thecentral woods for a more tangled undergrowth, Teresa felt that subtleadmiration which culminates in imitation, and simulating perfectly thestep, tread, and easy swing of her companion, followed so accurately hislead that she won a gratified exclamation from him when their goalwas reached--a broken, blackened shaft, splintered by long-forgottenlightning, in the centre of a tangled carpet of wood-clover.
"I don't wonder you distanced the deputy," he said cheerfully, throwingdown his burden, "if you can take the hunting-path like that. In a fewdays, if you stay here, I can venture to trust you alone for a littlepasear when you are tired of the tree."
Teresa looked pleased, but busied herself with arrangements for thebreakfast, while he gathered the fuel for the roaring fire which soonblazed beside the shattered tree.
Teresa's breakfast was a success. It was a revelation to the youngnomad, whose ascetic habits and simple tastes were usually content withthe most primitive forms of frontier cookery. It was at least a surpriseto him to know that without extra trouble kneaded flour, water, andsaleratus need not be essentially heavy; that coffee need not be boiledwith sugar to the consistency of syrup; that even that rarest delicacy,small shreds of venison covered with ashes and broiled upon the end ofa ramrod boldly thrust into the flames, would be better and even moreexpeditiously cooked upon burning coals. Moved in his practical nature,he was surprised to find this curious creature of disorganized nervesand useless impulses informed with an intelligence that did not precludethe welfare of humanity or the existence of a soul. He respected herfor some minutes, until in the midst of a culinary triumph a big teardropped and spluttered in the saucepan. But he forgave the irrelevancyby taking no notice of it, and by doing full justice to that particulardish.
Nevertheless, he asked several questions based upon these recentlydiscovered qualities. It appeared that in the old days of her wanderingswith the circus troupe she had often been forced to undertake thisnomadic housekeeping. Bu
t she "despised it," had never done it since,and always had refused to do it for "him"--the personal pronounreferring, as Low understood, to her lover, Curson. Not caring to revivethese memories further, Low briefly concluded: "I don't know what youwere, or what you may be, but from what I see of you you've got all thesabe of a frontierman's wife."
She stopped and looked at him, and then with an impulse of imprudencethat only half concealed a more serious vanity, asked, "Do you think Imight have made a good squaw?"
"I don't know," he replied quietly. "I never saw enough of them toknow."
Teresa, confident from his clear eyes that he spoke the truth, buthaving nothing ready to follow this calm disposal of her curiosity,relapsed into silence.
The meal finished, Teresa washed their scant table equipage in a littlespring near the camp-fire; where, catching sight of her disordered dressand collar, she rapidly threw her shawl, after the national fashion,over her shoulder and pinned it quickly. Low cached the remainingprovisions and the few cooking utensils under the dead embers and ashes,obliterating all superficial indication of their camp-fire as deftly andartistically as he had before.
"There isn't the ghost of a chance," he said in explanation, "thatanybody but you or I will set foot here before we come back to supper,but it's well to be on guard. I'll take you back to the cabin now,though I bet you could find your way there as well as I can."
On their way back Teresa ran ahead of her companion, and plucking a fewtiny leaves from a hidden oasis in the bark-strewn trail brought them tohim.
"That's the kind you're looking for, isn't it?" she said, half timidly.
"It is," responded Low, in gratified surprise; "but how did you know it?You're not a botanist, are you?"
"I reckon not," said Teresa; "but you picked some when we came, and Inoticed what they were."
Here was indeed another revelation. Low stopped and gazed at her withsuch frank, open, utterly unabashed curiosity that her black eyes fellbefore him.
"And do you think," he asked with logical deliberation, "that you couldfind any plant from another I should give you?"
"Yes."
"Or from a drawing of it"
"Yes; perhaps even if you described it to me."
A half-confidential, half-fraternal silence followed.
"I tell you what. I've got a book--"
"I know it," interrupted Teresa; "full of these things."
"Yes. Do you think you could--"
"Of course I could," broke in Teresa, again.
"But you don't know what I mean," said the imperturbable Low.
"Certainly I do. Why, find 'em, and preserve all the different ones foryou to write under--that's it, isn't it?"
Low nodded his head, gratified but not entirely convinced that she hadfully estimated the magnitude of the endeavor.
"I suppose," said Teresa, in the feminine postscriptum voice which itwould seem entered even the philosophical calm of the aisles they weretreading--"I suppose that SHE places great value on them?"
Low had indeed heard Science personified before, nor was it at allimpossible that the singular woman walking by his side had also. Hesaid "Yes;" but added, in mental reference to the Linnean Society of SanFrancisco, that "THEY were rather particular about the rarer kinds."
Content as Teresa had been to believe in Low's tender relations withsome favored ONE of her sex, this frank confession of a plural devotionstaggered her.
"They?" she repeated.
"Yes," he continued calmly. "The Botanical Society I correspond with aremore particular than the Government Survey."
"Then you are doing this for a society?" demanded Teresa, with a stare.
"Certainly. I'm making a collection and classification of specimens. Iintend--but what are you looking at?"
Teresa had suddenly turned away. Putting his hand lightly on hershoulder, the young man brought her face to face him again.
She was laughing.
"I thought all the while it was for a girl," she said; "and--" Buthere the mere effort of speech sent her off into an audible and genuineoutburst of laughter. It was the first time he had seen her even smileother than bitterly. Characteristically unconscious of any humor inher error, he remained unembarrassed. But he could not help noticinga change in the expression of her face, her voice, and even herintonation. It seemed as if that fit of laughter had loosed the lastties that bound her to a self-imposed character, had swept away the lastbarrier between her and her healthier nature, had dispossessed a painfulunreality, and relieved the morbid tension of a purely nervous attitude.The change in her utterance and the resumption of her softer Spanishaccent seemed to have come with her confidences, and Low took leaveof her before their sylvan cabin with a comrade's heartiness, and acomplete forgetfulness that her voice had ever irritated him.
When he returned that afternoon he was startled to find the cabin empty.But instead of bearing any appearance of disturbance or hurried flight,the rude interior seemed to have magically assumed a decorous orderand cleanliness unknown before. Fresh bark hid the inequalities ofthe floor. The skins and blankets were folded in the corners, the rudeshelves were carefully arranged, even a few tall ferns and bright butquickly fading flowers were disposed around the blackened chimney. Shehad evidently availed herself of the change of clothing he had broughther, for her late garments were hanging from the hastily-devised woodenpegs driven in the wall. The young man gazed around him with mixedfeelings of gratification and uneasiness. His presence had beendispossessed in a single hour; his ten years of lonely habitation hadleft no trace that this woman had not effaced with a deft move of herhand. More than that, it looked as if she had always occupied it; andit was with a singular conviction that even when she should occupy it nolonger it would only revert to him as her dwelling that he dropped thebark shutters athwart the opening, and left it to follow her.
To his quick ear, fine eye, and abnormal senses, this was easy enough.She had gone in the direction of this morning's camp. Once or twice hepaused with a half-gesture of recognition and a characteristic "Good!"at the place where she had stopped, but was surprised to find that hermain course had been as direct as his own. Deviating from this directline with Indian precaution, he first made a circuit of the camp,and approached the shattered trunk from the opposite direction. Heconsequently came upon Teresa unawares. But the momentary astonishmentand embarrassment were his alone.
He scarcely recognized her. She was wearing the garments he had broughther the day before--a certain discarded gown of Miss Nellie Wynn, whichhe had hurriedly begged from her under the pretext of clothing the wifeof a distressed overland emigrant then on the way to the mines. Althoughhe had satisfied his conscience with the intention of confessing thepious fraud to her when Teresa was gone and safe from pursuit, itwas not without a sense of remorse that he witnessed the sacrilegioustransformation. The two women were nearly the same height and size; andalthough Teresa's maturer figure accented the outlines more strongly, itwas still becoming enough to increase his irritation.
Of this becomingness she was doubtless unaware at the moment that hesurprised her. She was conscious of having "a change," and this hademboldened her to "do her hair" and otherwise compose herself. Aftertheir greeting she was the first to allude to the dress, regretting thatit was not more of a rough disguise, and that, as she must now discardthe national habit of wearing her shawl "manta" fashion over her head,she wanted a hat. "But you must not," she said, "borrow any more dressesfor me from your young woman. Buy them for me at some shop. They left meenough money for that." Low gently put aside the few pieces of gold shehad drawn from her pocket, and briefly reminded her of the suspicionsuch a purchase by him would produce. "That's so," she said, with alaugh. "Caramba! what a mule I'm becoming! Ah! wait a moment. I have it!Buy me a common felt hat--a man's hat--as if for yourself, as a changeto that animal," pointing to the fox-tailed cap he wore summer andwinter, "and I'll show you a trick. I haven't run a theatrical wardrobefor nothing." Nor had she, for the hat thus pro
cured, a few days later,became, by the aid of a silk handkerchief and a bluejay's feather, afascinating "pork pie."
Whatever cause of annoyance to Low still lingered in Teresa's dress,it was soon forgotten in a palpable evidence of Teresa's value as abotanical assistant. It appeared that during the afternoon she had notonly duplicated his specimens, but had discoverd one or two rareplants as yet unclassified in the flora of the Carquinez Woods. He wasdelighted, and in turn, over the campfire, yielded up some details ofhis present life and some of his earlier recollections.
"You don't remember anything of your father?" she asked. "Did he evertry to seek you out?"
"No! Why should he?" replied the imperturbable Low; "he was not aCherokee."
"No, he was a beast," responded Teresa promptly. "And your mother--doyou remember her?"
"No, I think she died."
"You THINK she died? Don't you know?"
"No!"
"Then you're another!" said Teresa. Notwithstanding this frankness, theyshook hands for the night: Teresa nestling like a rabbit in a hollow bythe side of the campfire; Low with his feet towards it, Indian-wise,and his head and shoulders pillowed on his haversack, only halfdistinguishable in the darkness beyond.
With such trivial details three uneventful days slipped by. Theirretreat was undisturbed, nor could Low detect, by the least evidenceto his acute perceptive faculties, that any intruding feet had sincecrossed the belt of shade. The echoes of passing events at Indian Springhad recorded the escape of Teresa as occurring at a remote and purelyimaginative distance, and her probable direction the county of Yolo.
"Can you remember," he one day asked her, "what time it was when you cutthe riata and got away?"
Teresa pressed her hands upon her eyes and temples.
"About three, I reckon."
"And you were here at seven; you could have covered some ground in fourhours?"
"Perhaps--I don't know," she said, her voice taking up its old qualityagain. "Don't ask me--I ran all the way."
Her face was quite pale as she removed her hands from her eyes, and herbreath came as quickly as if she had just finished that race for life.
"Then you think I am safe here?" she added, after a pause.
"Perfectly--until they find you are NOT in Yolo. Then they'll look here.And THAT'S the time for you to go THERE." Teresa smiled timidly.
"It will take them some time to search Yolo--unless," she added, "you'retired of me here." The charming non sequitur did not, however, seem tostrike the young man. "I've got time yet to find a few more plants foryou," she suggested.
"Oh, certainly!"
"And give you a few more lessons in cooking."
"Perhaps."
The conscientious and literal Low was beginning to doubt if she werereally practical. How otherwise could she trifle with such a situation?
It must be confessed that that day and the next she did trifle with it.She gave herself up to a grave and delicious languor that seemed to flowfrom shadow and silence and permeate her entire being. She passed hoursin a thoughtful repose of mind and spirit that seemed to fall like balmfrom those steadfast guardians, and distill their gentle ether in hersoul; or breathed into her listening ear immunity from the forgottenpast, and security for the present. If there was no dream of the futurein this calm, even recurrence of placid existence, so much the better.The simple details of each succeeding day, the quaint housekeeping, thebrief companionship and coming and going of her young host--himselfat best a crystallized personification of the sedate and hospitablewoods--satisfied her feeble cravings. She no longer regretted theinferior position that her fears had obliged her to take the first nightshe came; she began to look up to this young man--so much younger thanherself--without knowing what it meant; it was not until she foundthat this attitude did not detract from his picturesqueness thatshe discovered herself seeking for reasons to degrade him from thisseductive eminence.
A week had elapsed with little change. On two days he had been absentall day, returning only in time to sup in the hollow tree, which,thanks to the final removal of the dead bear from its vicinity, was nowconsidered a safer retreat than the exposed camp-fire. On the first ofthese occasions she received him with some preoccupation, paying butlittle heed to the scant gossip he brought from Indian Spring, andretiring early under the plea of fatigue, that he might seek his owndistant camp-fire, which, thanks to her stronger nerves and regainedcourage, she no longer required so near. On the second occasion, hefound her writing a letter more or less blotted with her tears. When itwas finished, she begged him to post it at Indian Spring, where in twodays an answer would be returned, under cover, to him.
"I hope you will be satisfied then," she added.
"Satisfied with what?" queried the young man.
"You'll see," she replied, giving him her cold hand. "Good-night."
"But can't you tell me now?" he remonstrated, retaining her hand.
"Wait two days longer--it isn't much," was all she vouchsafed to answer.
The two days passed. Their former confidence and good fellowship werefully restored when the morning came on which he was to bring theanswer from the post-office at Indian Spring. He had talked again ofhis future, and had recorded his ambition to procure the appointment ofnaturalist to a Government Surveying Expedition. She had even jocularlyproposed to dress herself in man's attire and "enlist" as his assistant.
"But you will be safe with your friends, I hope, by that time,"responded Low.
"Safe with my friends," she repeated in a lower voice. "Safe with myfriends--yes!" An awkward silence followed; Teresa broke it gayly: "Butyour girl, your sweetheart, my benefactor--will SHE let you go?"
"I haven't told her yet," said Low, gravely, "but I don't see why sheshould object."
"Object, indeed!" interrupted Teresa in a high voice and a sudden andutterly gratuitous indignation; "how should she? I'd like to see her doit!"
She accompanied him some distance to the intersection of the trail,where they parted in good spirits. On the dusty plain without a galewas blowing that rocked the high tree-tops above her, but, tempered andsubdued, entered the low aisles with a fluttering breath of morning anda sound like the cooing of doves. Never had the wood before shown sosweet a sense of security from the turmoil and tempest of the worldbeyond; never before had an intrusion from the outer life--even inthe shape of a letter--seemed so wicked a desecration. Tempted by thesolicitation of air and shade, she lingered, with Low's herbarium slungon her shoulder.
A strange sensation, like a shiver, suddenly passed across her nerves,and left them in a state of rigid tension. With every sense morbidlyacute, with every faculty strained to its utmost, the subtle instinctsof Low's woodcraft transformed and possessed her. She knew it now! Anew element was in the wood--a strange being--another life--anotherman approaching! She did not even raise her head to look about her, butdarted with the precision and fleetness of an arrow in the directionof her tree. But her feet were arrested, her limbs paralzyed, her veryexistence suspended, by the sound of a voice:--
"Teresa!"
It was a voice that had rung in her ears for the last two years in allphases of intensity, passion, tenderness, and anger; a voice upon whosemodulations, rude and unmusical though they were, her heart and soul hadhung in transport or anguish. But it was a chime that had rung its lastpeal to her senses as she entered the Carquinez Woods, and for the lastweek had been as dead to her as a voice from the grave. It was the voiceof her lover--Dick Curson!