第55章 A NIGHT ON THE DIVIDE(2)

The easy smile faded from Jack's face, and was succeeded by a look of concern and then of resignation.He had no choice now; he MUSTgo! There was a woman there, and that settled it.Yet he had arrived at this conclusion from no sense of gallantry, nor, indeed, of chivalrous transport, but as a matter of simple duty to the sex.

He was giving up his sleep, was going down six hundred feet of steep trail to offer his services during the rest of the night as much as a matter of course as an Eastern man would have offered his seat in an omnibus to a woman, and with as little expectation of return for his courtesy.

Having resumed his coat, with a bottle of whiskey thrust into its pocket, he put on a pair of india-rubber boots reaching to his thighs, and, catching the blanket from his bunk, started with an axe and shovel on his shoulder on his downward journey.When the distance was half completed he shouted to the travelers below; the cry was joyously answered by the three men; he saw the fourth figure, now unmistakably that of a slender youthful woman, in a cloak, helped back into the wagon, as if deliverance was now sure and immediate.But Jack on arriving speedily dissipated that illusive hope; they could only get through the gorge by taking off the wheels of the wagon, placing the axle on rude sledge-runners of split saplings, which, with their assistance, he would fashion in a couple of hours at his cabin and bring down to the gorge.The only other alternative would be for them to come to his cabin and remain there while he went for assistance to the nearest station, but that would take several hours and necessitate a double journey for the sledge if he was lucky enough to find one.The party quickly acquiesced in Jack's first suggestion.

"Very well," said Jack, "then there's no time to be lost; unhitch your horses and we'll dig a hole in that bank for them to stand in out of the snow." This was speedily done."Now," continued Jack, "you'll just follow me up to my cabin; it's a pretty tough climb, but I'll want your help to bring down the runners."Here the man who seemed to be the head of the party--of middle age and a superior, professional type--for the first time hesitated.

"I forgot to say that there is a lady with us,--my daughter," he began, glancing towards the wagon.

"I reckoned as much," interrupted Jack simply, "and I allowed to carry her up myself the roughest part of the way.She kin make herself warm and comf'ble in the cabin until we've got the runners ready.""You hear what our friend says, Amy?" suggested the gentleman, appealingly, to the closed leather curtains of the wagon.

There was a pause.The curtain was suddenly drawn aside, and a charming little head and shoulders, furred to the throat and topped with a bewitching velvet cap, were thrust out.In the obscurity little could be seen of the girl's features, but there was a certain willfulness and impatience in her attitude.Being in the shadow, she had the advantage of the others, particularly of Jack, as his figure was fully revealed in the moonlight against the snowbank.Her eyes rested for a moment on his high boots, his heavy mustache, so long as to mingle with the unkempt locks which fell over his broad shoulders, on his huge red hands streaked with black grease from the wagon wheels, and some blood, stanched with snow, drawn from bruises in cutting out brambles in the brush; on--more awful than all--a monstrous, shiny "specimen" gold ring encircling one of his fingers,--on the whiskey bottle that shamelessly bulged from his side pocket, and then--slowly dropped her dissatisfied eyelids.

"Why can't I stay HERE?" she said languidly."It's quite nice and comfortable.""Because we can't leave you alone, and we must go with this gentleman to help him."Miss Amy let the tail of her eye again creep shudderingly over this impossible Jack."I thought the--the gentleman was going to help US," she said dryly.

"Nonsense, Amy, you don't understand," said her father impatiently.

"This gentleman is kind enough to offer to make some sledge-runners for us at his cabin, and we must help him.""But I can stay here while you go.I'm not afraid.""Yes, but you're ALONE here, and something might happen.""Nothing could happen," interrupted Jack, quickly and cheerfully.

He had flushed at first, but he was now considering that the carrying of a lady as expensively attired and apparently as delicate and particular as this one might be somewhat difficult.

"There's nothin' that would hurt ye here," he continued, addressing the velvet cap and furred throat in the darkness, "and if there was it couldn't get at ye, bein', so to speak, in the same sort o' fix as you.So you're all right," he added positively.

Inconsistently enough, the young lady did not accept this as gratefully as might have been imagined, but Jack did not see the slight flash of her eye as, ignoring him, she replied markedly to her father, "I'd much rather stop here, papa.""And," continued Jack, turning also to her father, "you can keep the wagon and the whole gorge in sight from the trail all the way up.So you can see that everything's all right.Why, I saw YOUfrom the first." He stopped awkwardly, and added, "Come along; the sooner we're off the quicker the job's over.""Pray don't delay the gentleman and--the job," said Miss Amy sweetly.