Ramon Garcia, standing a little apart, came softly forward.

"You die, senor?" he asked very gently.

The old man nodded while David Drennen looked up angrily at the interruption.

"You love your son?" Garcia asked, still very gently. "This Drennen is your son and you love him much?"

"Yes."

"Then I, Ramon Garcia, who have never done a good thing in my life, I do a good thing now! I give you something filled with sweetness to carry in your heart? For why?" He shrugged gracefully. "It is so short to tell, and maybe the telling make others happy, too. See. It is like this: Your son love the senorita de Bellaire. She love him.

_Bueno_. I, too, love her. I cannot make her happy and love me; so I will make her happy anyway. And you happy while you die, senor. And your son happy always."

They all looked at him wonderingly. He paused a moment, gathered what he had to say into as few words as might be and went on calmly.

"Senor David promise Miss Ygerne he stake Lemarc. He give Lemarc ten thousand dollars. Lemarc come back and say to the lady: 'He lie. He give me nothing. He say he give the money and more to the lady when she give herself to him . . . for a little while.' But the lady who had believe many lies will not believe this one. What then, _amigos_?

Then Ramon Garcia, loving the lady for his own, tell Sefton and Lemarc what they shall do. He say Ernestine Dumont shall play sick; she shall say she die and that George hit her; she shall make Senor David take her in his arms, maybe. And we take the Senorita de Bellaire to see!"

A gasp broke from Ygerne; a look that no man might read sweeping into her eyes. Drennen knelt still, looking stunned. A look of great happiness came into the old man's face.

"Garcia," he said, "you are a gentleman! It is the truth . . . this is what Ernestine has wanted to tell David . . ."

Now, coming swiftly, came the time for a man to die. He died like a man, fearlessly. He had made his h.e.l.l knowing the thing he did; a h.e.l.l not of filth and darkness but of fierce white flames that purified. He had walked through it, upright. He had lived without fear; he had done wrong but had done so that another, greater wrong might not be done; he had trodden his way manfully. He had suffered and had caused suffering. But he had not regretted. He had committed his one sin . . . if sin it were. After that his life had been clean. Not so much as a lie had come after, even a lie to save his own life. And in the end, the end coming swiftly now, it was well.

With David Drennen and Ygerne and Max close about him, his last sensation the touch of their hands, his last sight the sight of their tear-wet faces, knowing that when he was gone there would be one to comfort his son, he died.

It was dawn. David Drennen and Ygerne Bellaire standing silent, head bowed over the still form upon the bear skin, knew in their hearts that there had been no tragedy wrought here. The lips turned up to them were smiling. The man had died full of years, honoured in their hearts, loved deeply. He had grown weary at the end of a long trail and his rest had come to him as he wanted it.

They did not see Ramon Garcia who came softly to the door. For a moment he stood looking in, seeing only the girl; slowly there welled up into his soft eyes great tears. From his breast he took a little faded bunch of field flowers. He raised them to his lips; for a second, holding them there, he knelt, his eyes still alone for Ygerne.

Then he rose and crossed himself and went away.

They had not seen. But in a little they heard his voice as he rode down into the canon. It was the old song, lilted tenderly, the voice seeming young and gay and untroubled:

"_Dios_. It is sweet to be young . . . and to love."

CHAPTER XXV

THE BELATED DAWN

At last they pa.s.sed out of the thick shadows which lay in the forest lands and into the soft dawn light of the valley, Ygerne and David, riding side by side. Behind them lay the hard trails which separately each had travelled; before them now had the two trails merged, running pleasantly into one; behind them, far back in the lonely solitudes of the mountains, was the old Chateau Bellaire wrapped about in its own history as in a cloak of sable; in front of them, dozing upon the river banks, was MacLeod's Settlement.

They were thoughtful-eyed, thoughtful-souled, their lips silent, their hearts eloquent, as they rode through the quiet street, pa.s.sing Pere Marquette's, Joe's, finally coming abreast of Drennen's old dugout.

Drennen drew rein as Ygerne stopped her horse. Her eyes went to the rude cabin, its door open now as it used to be so often even when Drennen had lived there. Then she turned back from the house to the man and he saw that tears had gathered in the sweet grey depths and were spilling over.

It was the time of rich, deep midsummer in the North Woods which had brought them back to the Settlement on their way to Lebarge. It was the season of joy come again, the warm, tender joy of infinite love.

A certain thought, being framed upon Drennen's lips, was left unspoken because to the girl the same thought had come and she had spoken swiftly after her own impulsive way:

"You asked me to meet you once . . . at dawn," she said softly. "Do you remember? And, instead of coming, I left you a note which I could not have written . . . if I had not been mad . . ."

"That is gone by now, Ygerne," he answered gently.

"But," she whispered, "the dawn has come!"

So at last they came to the old log where Drennen had come upon her that day he had hurled his love at her like a curse.

The flash of blue across the Little MacLeod might have been the wing of the same blue bird that had called to them here so long ago. A winter had come, had wrought its changes upon the earth and had gone; now it was a deeper summertime; but, for all that, to-day might have been the day set apart for this belated lovers' meeting.

Out of the thick darkness at last into the rosy dawn. Sorrow and tragedy behind, covered deep in those shadows; love in front of them and all that it promises to the man and the woman.

Ygerne slipped from her horse and went straight to the log, perching upon it as she had sat that other day. Drennen, in a moment, followed her.

"Ygerne," he whispered.

Everything forgotten but the Now, a thrill ran through the girl. She lifted her eyes to his and smiled at him, holding out her arms. But, in spite of her, her heart was beating wildly, the blood was running into her face until her cheeks were stained, red and hot with it.

"Do you hate me . . . because I made you love me?" she asked, laughing a little, holding him back from her for the last deliciously shy second.

"Do you hate me, Ygerne, because always I was brute to you?"

Then she no longer made play at pressing him back from her.

"We must begin all over," she said at last. "Love is not love which does not trust to the uttermost. We both have lacked faith, David, dear. No matter what we see with our own eyes, hear with our own ears, we must never doubt again. You will always believe in me . . .

now . . . won't you, David?"

They were silent a little, busied with the same thoughts; they lived over the few meetings here; they remembered the rainbow upon the mountain flank, the dinner at Joe's Lunch Counter; they were saying good-bye to MacLeod's and were looking forward to Lebarge, the railroad and what lay for them beyond. . . .

Suddenly Drennen cried out strangely, and Ygerne, startled, looked at him wonderingly.

"What is it?" she asked quickly.

He pointed to something lying in the gra.s.s at the side of the log; just a few bits of weather spoiled cardboard which once upon a time had been a big box filled with candy for her. He told her what it was. Her hand shut down tight upon his arm; he could feel a little tremor shake her; then, deeply touched by this little thing, the girl was crying softly. A tear splashed upon his hand, a tear like a pearl.

"And there was something else, Ygerne," he said gently. "Look. The winter has left it and no man has come here to find it."

It was peeping out at him from the little hollow upon the log's uneven surface where he had dropped it, a glint of gold from under the piece of bark which he had put over it and which had not been thrust aside by the winter winds.

"I got it for you at the same time, Ygerne," he told her. "It was to be my first little present to you. . . ."

Winter snow and spring thaw had done no harm to the gold which could not rust nor to the pearls which could not tarnish. . . . Silently she bared her throat that he might fasten the pendant necklace for her.

His hands trembled and a strange awkwardness came upon him. But in the end it was done.