第58章 A NIGHT ON THE DIVIDE(5)

"Nonsense, Amy.Of course, this man Tenbrook will carry you down as he brought you up.Only I thought,--but there are steps, they're coming now.No!--only HE."The sound of crackling in the underbrush was followed by a momentary darkening of the open door of the cabin.It was the tall figure of the mountaineer.But he did not even make the pretense of entering; standing at the door he delivered his news to the interior generally.It was to the effect that everything was ready, and the two other men were even then harnessing the horses.

Then he drew back into the darkness.

"Papa," said Amy, in a sudden frightened voice, "I've lost my bracelet.""Haven't you dropped it somewhere there in the bunk?" asked her father.

"No.It's on the floor of the wagon.I remember now it fell off when I tumbled! And it will be trodden upon and crushed! Couldn't you run down, ahead of me, and warn them, papa, dear? Mr.Tenbrook will have to go so slowly with me." She tumbled out of the bunk with singular alacrity, shook herself and her skirts into instantaneous gracefulness, and fitted the velvet cap on her straying hair.Then she said hurriedly, "Run quick, papa dear, and as you go, call him in and say I am quite ready."Thus adjured, the obedient parent disappeared in the darkness.

With him also disappeared Miss Amy's singular alacrity.Sitting down carefully again on the edge of the bunk, she leaned against the post with a certain indefinable languor that was as touching as it was graceful.I need not tell any feminine readers that there was no dissimulation in all this,--no coquetry, no ostentation,--and that the young girl was perfectly sincere! But the masculine reader might like to know that the simple fact was that, since she had regained consciousness, she had been filled with remorse for her capricious and ungenerous rejection of Tenbrook's proffered service.More than that, she felt she had periled her life in that moment of folly, and that this man--this hero--had saved her.For hero he was, even if he did not fulfill her ideal,--it was only SHEthat was not a heroine.Perhaps if he had been more like what she wished she would have felt this less keenly; love leaves little room for the exercise of moral ethics.So Miss Amy Forester, being a good girl at bottom, and not exactly loving this man, felt towards him a frank and tender consideration which a more romantic passion would have shrunk from showing.Consequently, when Tenbrook entered a moment later, he found Amy paler and more thoughtful, but, as he fancied, much prettier than before, looking up at him with eyes of the sincerest solicitude.

Nevertheless, he remained standing near the door, as if indicating a possible intrusion, his face wearing a look of lowering abstraction.It struck her that this might be the effect of his long hair and general uncouthness, and this only spurred her to a fuller recognition of his other qualities.

"I am afraid," she began, with a charming embarrassment, "that instead of resting satisfied with your kindness in carrying me up here, I will have to burden you again with my dreadful weakness, and ask you to carry me down also.But all this seems so little after what you have just done and for which I can never, NEVER hope to thank you!" She clasped her two little hands together, holding her gloves between, and brought them down upon her lap in a gesture as prettily helpless as it was unaffected.

"I have done scarcely anything," he said, glancing away towards the fire, "and--your father has thanked me.""You have saved my life!"

"No! no!" he said quickly."Not that! You were in no danger, except from my rifle, had I missed.""I see," she said eagerly, with a little posthumous thrill at having been after all a kind of heroine, "and it was a wonderful shot, for you were so careful not to touch me.""Please don't say any more," he said, with a slight movement of half awkwardness, half impatience."It was a rough job, but it's over now."He stopped and chafed his red hands abstractedly together.She could see that he had evidently just washed them--and the glaring ring was more in evidence than ever.But the thought gave her an inspiration.

"You'll at least let me shake hands with you!" she said, extending both her own with childish frankness.

"Hold on, Miss Forester," he said, with sudden desperation."It ain't the square thing! Look here! I can't play this thing on you!--I can't let you play it on me any longer! You weren't in any danger,--you NEVER were! That bear was only a half-wild thing Ihelped to ra'r myself! It's taken sugar from my hand night after night at the door of this cabin as it might have taken it from yours here if it was alive now.It slept night after night in the brush, not fifty yards away.The morning's never come yet--till now," he said hastily, to cover an odd break in his voice, "when it didn't brush along the whole side of this cabin to kinder wake me up and say 'So long,' afore it browsed away into the canyon.Thar ain't a man along the whole Divide who didn't know it; thar ain't a man along the whole Divide that would have drawn a bead or pulled a trigger on it till now.It never had an enemy but the bees; it never even knew why horses and cattle were frightened of it.It wasn't much of a pet, you'd say, Miss Forester; it wasn't much to meet a lady's eye; but we of the woods must take our friends where we find 'em and of our own kind.It ain't no fault of yours, Miss, that you didn't know it; it ain't no fault of yours what happened;but when it comes to your THANKING me for it, why--it's--it's rather rough, you see--and gets me." He stopped short as desperately and as abruptly as he had begun, and stared blankly at the fire.

A wave of pity and shame swept over the young girl and left its high tide on her cheek.But even then it was closely followed by the feminine instinct of defence and defiance.The REAL hero--the GENTLEMAN--she reasoned bitterly, would have spared her all this knowledge.