Superst.i.tion, abashed-eyed step daughter in the house of civilisation, lifts her head defiantly in the wilderness. She is born of the solitudes, a true daughter of the silent places. Here, where men were few and scattered broadcast by the great hand of adventure across the broken miles of all but impa.s.sable mountains, superst.i.tion is no longer merely an incident but an essential factor in human life and destiny.

And here men long ago had come to frown when their questing eyes found the great, gaunt form of David Drennen in the van of some mad rush to new fields: He was unlucky; men who rubbed shoulders with him were foredoomed to share his misfortune; the gold, glittering into their eyes from a gash in the earth, would vanish when his shadow fell across it.

In many things he had grown to be more like a wild beast than a man.

He had hunted with the human pack and he had found selfishness and jealousy and treachery on every hand. He came to look upon these as the essential characteristics of the human race. Even now that he was wounded he saw but one sordid motive of greed under the hesitant offers of help; even now he had been less like a wounded man than a stricken wolf. The wolf would have withdrawn to his hidden lair; he would have contented himself with scant food; he would have licked his wound clean and have waited for it to heal; he would have snapped and snarled at any intrusion, knowing the way of his fellows when they fall upon a wounded brother. So Drennen.

CHAPTER IX

"TO THE GIRL I AM GOING TO KISS TO-NIGHT!"

An odd mood was upon him this afternoon. Perhaps since moods are contagious, his was caught from the girl, Ygerne. With a sort of jeering laughter in his heart he surrendered to his inclination. The world had gone stale in his mouth; a black depression beat at him with its stiffling [Transcriber's note: stifling?] wings; an hour with the girl might offer other amus.e.m.e.nt than the mere angering of Lemarc and Sefton. He wanted only one thing in the world; to be whole of body so that he might fare out on the trail again, a fresh trail now that gold lay at the end of it. But since he might not have the greater wish he contented himself with the lesser.

He shaved himself, grimly conscious of the contempt looking out at him from the haggard eyes in the mirror. Those eyes mocked him like another man's. Then he went to Pere Marquette's store, paying scant attention to the three or four men he found there. He made known his wants and tossed his gold pieces to the counter, taking no stock of curious gazes. He saw that Kootanie George was there and that Kootanie's big boots were gummed with the red mud of the upper trail.

He took no trouble to hide his sneer; Kootanie George, too, had been out in search of his gold and had returned empty handed.

To each question of Pere Marquette his answer was the same:

"The best you've got; d.a.m.n the price."

Marquette had but the one white silk shirt in the house and Drennen took it, paying the ten dollars without a word. There were many pairs of boots to fit him; one pair alone took his fancy, though he knew the rich black leather and the shapely high heels would cause him to hurl them away to-morrow as things unfit for the foot of man. He selected corduroy breeches and a soft black hat and returned to his dugout, leaving fifty dollars upon the counter. And when he had dressed and had laughed at himself he went back up the muddy road for Ygerne. But first he stopped at Joe's.

"I want the private room," he said, and Joe nodded eagerly as he saw Drennen's hand emerge from his pocket. "And I want the best dinner for two you can put on. Tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs and all."

Joe, slipping the first of Drennen's money into his pocket and cherishing high hopes of more, set himself and his boy to work, seeing his way of arriving at the second gold piece with no great loss of time.

The long northern twilight was an hour old when Drennen called for Ygerne. She came out of her room at Marquette's ready for him. She had told him she must "dress" for the occasion. He had thought her joking. In spite of him he stared at her wonderingly a moment. And, despite her own gathering of will, a flush crept into her cheeks under his look while her own eyes widened to the alterations a little effort had made in the man. And the thing each noted swiftly of the other was scarcely less swiftly noted by all men and women in the Settlement before they had gone down to Joe's: he had suddenly become as handsome as a devil from h.e.l.l; she as radiant as an angel.

"Are we just going to step into a ballroom for the masquerade?" she half whispered with a queer little intake of breath as she found his arm with a white gloved hand. "And is all this," waving at the Settlement itself, the river snaking its way through the narrow valley, the frowning fronts of Ironhead and Indian Peak against the saffron sky, "just so much painted canvas for the proper background?"

He laughed and brought his eyes away from the white throat and shoulders, letting them sweep upward to the mystery of her eyes, the dusky hair half seen, half guessed under the sheen of her scarf, wondering the while at the strange femininity of her in bringing such dainty articles of dress to such a land. Then, his eyes finding the prettily slippered and stockinged feet, he moved with her to the side of the road where the ground was harder.

Joe had seen with amazing rapidity that the "tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs" were not wanting. With old knowledge born of many years of restaurant work, he knew that any day some prospector might find that which all prospectors endlessly sought and that then he would grind his bare grubstake contemptuously under his heel and demand to eat. Upon such occasions there would be no questions asked as to price if Joe but tickled the tingling palate. Joe had unlocked the padlock of the cellar trapdoor; he had gone down and had unlocked another padlock upon a great box.

And all that which he had brought out, beginning with a white tablecloth and ending with nuts and raisins, had been a revelation to his boy a.s.sistant. There was potted chicken, there were tinned tomatoes and peaches, there were many things which David Drennen had not looked upon for the matter of years.

The "private room" into which Joe, even his ap.r.o.n changed for the occasion, showed them was simply the far end of the long lunch room, half shut off from the rest of the house by a flimsy part.i.tion having no door, but a wide, high arch let into it through which a man at the lunch counter might see the little table and both of the diners.

Drennen, stepping in front of Joe, took Ygerne's scarf, drew out her chair for her, and having seen her seated, took his own place with the table between them. He nodded approvingly as he noted that Joe had not been without taste; for the restaurant keeper had even thought of flowers and the best that the Settlement could provide, a flaming red snowplant, stood in the centre of the table in a gla.s.s bowl of clean white snow.

Joe brought the wine, a bucket at which the boy had scrubbed for ten minutes, holding the bottle as the gla.s.s bowl held the snow-plant, in a bed of snow. When he offered it a trifle uncertainly to Drennen's gaze and Drennen looked at it and away, nodding carelessly, Joe allowed himself to smile contentedly. Champagne here was like so much molten gold; it was a.s.sured that Drennen was "going the limit."

Drennen lifted his gla.s.s. His glance, busied a moment reminiscently with the bubbling amber fluid, travelled across the table. Ygerne Bellaire had raised her gla.s.s with him. Her eyes were sparkling, a little eager, a little excited, perhaps a little triumphant.

"Isn't it fun?" she said gaily.

He looked back gravely into her laughing eyes.

"May I drink your health?" he demanded. "And success to whatever venture has brought you so far from the beaten trail."

She set down her gla.s.s, making a little moue of pretended disappointment at him with her red mouth.

"And I was thinking that I was to have the honour of drawing something gallant, at least flattering, something befitting the occasion, from you!" she said. "Why don't you say, 'Here's lookin' at you,' and be done with it?"

He laughed.

"Then I'll say what I was thinking. May I drink this to the one woman I have ever seen whom I'd fall in love with . . . if I were a fool like other men?"

He drank his wine slowly, draining the gla.s.s, his eyes full upon hers.

She laughed and when he had done said lightly,

"At least that's better." She sipped her own wine and set it aside again. "Why didn't you say that in the first place? Why must you think one thing and say another?"

"That way lies wisdom," he told her coolly.

"Or stupidity, which?" she retorted.

"Shall a man say all of the foolish things which flash into his brain?"

"Why not?" She shrugged, twisting her gla.s.s in slow fingers. "If all of the nonsense were taken out of life what would be left, I wonder?"

"I have the honour to entertain the high-born Lady Ygerne Bellaire at dinner," he said in mock deference. "Her request is my command. Shall I voice my second idiotic thought?"

She nodded, making her mouth smile at him while her eyes were gravely speculative.

"Then," and his bow was in accord with the mockery of his tone, "I was thinking that for the reason best known to the King of Fools I'd like to kiss that red mouth of yours, Ygerne!"

"You'd be the first man who had ever done so," she told him steadily.

"Quite sure of that?" he sneered.

"Yes."

"Tempting me further?" he laughed at her.

"I don't think you'd dare, with all of your presumption, Mr. Drennen."

"Because there are a couple of men out there to see, I suppose?"

"No. I don't think that that would stop you. Because of this."

A hand, dropped to her lap, came up to the level of the table top and in its palm he saw the shining barrel of a small automatic pistol.

Again he laughed at her.

"It seems the latest fad for women to carry such playthings," he ridiculed her. "I wonder how frightened you'd have to be before you could pull the trigger?"

"Just merely angered," she smiled back at him, as the weapon went back into her lap, and out of sight.