"No, by Heaven!" he cried, lowering his gla.s.ses swiftly.

As he looked into her eyes the blood rushed to his brain with a surge.

Her face turned to his unconsciously, and their lips met.

"And I don't even know your name," she murmured.

"Waring Ridgway; and yours?"

"Aline Hope," she said absently. Then a hot Rush ran over the girlish face. "No, no, I had forgotten. I was married last week."

The gates of paradise, open for two days, clanged to on Ridgway. He stared out with unseeing eyes into the silent wastes of snow. The roaring in his ears and the mountainsides that churned before his eyes were reflections of the blizzard raging within him.

"I'll never forget--never," he heard her falter, and her voice was a thousand miles away.

From the storm within him he was aroused by a startled cry from the girl at his side. Her fascinated gaze was fixed on the summit of the ridge above them. There was a warning crackle. The overhanging comb snapped, slid slowly down, and broke off. With gathering momentum it descended, sweeping into its heart rocks, trees, and debris. A terrific roar filled the air as the great white cloud came tearing down like an express-train.

Ridgway caught her round the waist and flung the girl against the wall of the cabin, protecting her with his body. The avalanche was upon them, splitting great trees to kindling-wood in the fury of its rush.

The concussion of the wind shattered every window to fragments, almost tore the cabin from its foundations. Only the extreme tail of the slide touched them, yet they were buried deep in flying snow.

He found no great difficulty in digging a way out, and when he lifted her to the surface she was conscious. Yet she was pale even to the lips and trembled like an aspen in the summer breeze, clinging to him for support helplessly.

His cheerful voice rang like a bugle to her shocked brain.

"It's all past. We're safe now, dear--quite safe."

The first of the trail-breakers had dismounted and was plowing his way hurriedly to the cabin, but neither of them saw him as he came up the slope.

"Are you sure?" She shuddered, her hands still in his. "Wasn't it awful? I thought--" Her sentence trailed out unfinished.

"Are you unhurt, Aline?" cried the newcomer. And when he saw she was, he added: "Praise ye the Lord. O give thanks unto the Lord; for He is good: for His mercy endureth forever. He saved them for His name's sake, that He might make His mighty power to be known."

At sound of the voice they turned and saw the man hurrying toward them.

He was tall, gray, and seventy, of ma.s.sive frame and gaunt, still straight and vigorous, with the hooked nose and piercing eyes of a hawk. At first glance he looked always the bird of prey, but at the next as invariably the wolf, an effect produced by the salient reaching jaw and the glint of white teeth bared for a lip smile. Just now he was touched to a rare emotion. His hands trembled and an expression of shaken thankfulness rested in his face.

Aline, still with Ridgway's strong arms about her, slowly came back to the inexorable facts of life.

"You--here?"

"As soon as we could get through--and thank G.o.d in time."

"I would have died, except for--" This brought her immediately to an introduction, and after she had quietly released herself the man who had saved her heard himself being formally presented: "Mr. Ridgway, I want you to meet my husband, Mr. Harley."

Ridgway turned to Simon Harley a face of hammered steel and bowed, putting his hands deliberately behind his back.

"I've been expecting you at Mesa, Mr. Harley," he said rigidly. "I'll be glad to have the pleasure of welcoming you there."

The great financier was wondering where he had heard the man's name before, but he only said gravely: "You have a claim on me I can never forget, Mr. Ridgway."

Scornfully the other disdained this proffer. "Not at all. You owe me nothing, Mr. Harley--absolutely nothing. What I have done I have done for her. It is between her and me."

At this moment the mind of Harley fitted the name Ridgway to its niche in his brain. So this was the audacious filibuster who had dared to fire on the trust flag, the man he had come West to ruin and to humble.

"I think you will have to include me, Mr. Ridgway," he said suavely.

"What is done for my wife is done, also, for me."

CHAPTER 6. ON THE SNOW-TRAIL

Aline had pa.s.sed into the house, moved by an instinct which shrank from publicity in the inevitable personal meeting between her and her husband. Now, Harley, with the cavalier nod of dismissal, which only a multimillionaire can afford, followed her and closed the door. A pa.s.sionate rush of blood swept Ridgway's face. He saw red as he stood there with eyes burning into that door which had been shut in his face.

The nails of his clenched fingers bit into his palms, and his muscles gathered themselves tensely. He had been cast aside, barred from the woman he loved by this septuagenarian, as carelessly as if he had no claim.

And it came home to him that now he had no claim, none before the law and society. They had walked in Arcadia where shepherds pipe. They had taken life for granted as do the creatures of the woods, forgetful of the edicts of a world that had seemed far and remote. But that world had obtruded itself and shattered their dream. In the person of Simon Harley it had shut the door which was to separate him and her. Hitherto he had taken from life what he had wanted, but already he was grappling with the blind fear of a fate for once too strong for him.

"Well, I'm d.a.m.ned if it isn't Waring Ridgway," called a mellow voice from across the gulch.

The man named turned, and gradually the set lines of his jaw relaxed.

"I didn't notice it was you, Sam. Better bring the horses across this side of that fringe of aspens."

The dismounted horseman followed directions and brought the floundering horses through, and after leaving them in the cleared place where Ridgway had cut his firewood he strolled leisurely forward to meet the mine-owner. He was a youngish man, broad of shoulder and slender of waist, a trifle bowed in the legs from much riding, but with an elastic sufficiency that promised him the man for an emergency, a pledge which his steady steel-blue eyes, with the humorous lines about the corners, served to make more valuable. His apparel suggested the careless efficiency of the cow-man, from the high-heeled boots into which were thrust his corduroys to the broad-brimmed white Stetson set on his sunreddened wavy hair. A man's man, one would vote him at first sight, and subsequent impressions would not contradict the first.

"Didn't know you were down in this neck of woods, Waring," he said pleasantly, as they shook hands.

An onlooker might have noticed that both of them gripped hands heartily and looked each other squarely in the eye.

"I came down on business and got caught in the blizzard on my way back.

Came on her freezing in the machine and brought her here along with me.

I had my eye on that slide. The snow up there didn't look good to me, and the grub was about out, anyhow, so I was heading for the C B Ranch when I sighted you."

"Golden luck for her. I knew it was a chance in a million that she was still alive, but Harley wanted to take it. Say, that old fellow's made of steel wire. Two of my boys are plugging along a mile or two behind us, but he stayed right with the game to a finish--and him seventy-three, mind you, and a New Yorker at that. The old boy rides like he was born in a saddle," said Sam Yesler with enthusiasm.

"I never said he was a quitter," conceded Ridgway ungraciously.

"You're right he ain't. And say, but he's fond of his wife. Soon as he struck the ranch the old man b.u.t.ted out again into the blizzard to get her--slipped out before we knew it. The boys rounded him up wandering round the big pasture, and none too soon neither. All the time we had to keep herd on him to keep him from taking another whirl at it. He was like a crazy man to tackle it, though he must a-known it was suicide.

Funny how a man takes a shine to a woman and thinks the sun rises and sets by her. Far, as I have been able to make out women are much of a sameness, though I ain't setting up for a judge. Like as not this woman don't care a hand's turn for him."

"Why should she? He bought her with his millions, I suppose. What right has an old man like that with one foot in the grave to pick out a child and marry her? I tell you, Sam, there's something ghastly about it."

"Oh, well, I reckon when she sold herself she knew what she was getting. It's about an even thing--six of one and half a dozen of the other. There must be something rotten about a woman who will do a thing of that sort."

"Wait till you've seen her before pa.s.sing judgment. And after you have you'll apologize if you're a white man for thinking such a thing about her," the miner said hotly.

Yesler looked at his friend in amiable surprise. "I don't reckon we need to quarrel about Simon Harley's matrimonial affairs, do we?" he laughed.

"Not unless you want to say any harm of that lamb."