第31章 LOSS,OR GAIN?(4)

The cave by daylight was as the lightning had shown it,a big chamber,rock-walled,rock-floored,rock-roofed,in the side of the bluff,but little below the level of the ground and easy of entrance.

It was cool and damp,but,with the daylight through the doorway,it was merely shadowy inside.In the farther wall yawned the ragged opening to the black spaces leading off underground.

Through this opening these two had crept once,feeling that behind the wall somebody was crouching with evil intent.

They peered through the opening now,trying to see the miraculous way by which they had come into the cave from the rear.

But they stared only into blackness and caught the breath of the damp underground air with a faint odor of wood smoke somewhere.

"Elinor,it's a good thing we came through here in the night.

It would have been maddening to be forced in here by daylight.

We must have slipped down through a hole somewhere in our stumbles and hit a passage leading out of here only to the river,a sort of fire escape by way of the waters.You remember we couldn't get anywhere on the back track,except to the cliff above the Walnut.It's all very fine if the escaper gets out of the river before he reaches Lagonda's whirlpool."He was leaning far through the opening in the wall,gazing into the darkness and seeing nothing.

"Somewhere back in there,while I was pawing around that night,I found something up in a chink that felt like the odd-shaped little silver pitcher my mother had once--an old family heirloom,lost or stolen some time ago.I came back and hunted for it later,but it was winter time and cold as the grave outside and darker in here,and I couldn't find anything,so I concluded maybe I was mistaken altogether about its being like that old pitcher of ours.

It was a bad night for `seein'things';it might have been for `feelin'things'as well.There's nothing here but damp air and darkness."And even while he was speaking close beside the wall,so near that a hand could have reached him,a man was crouching;the same man whose cruel eyes had stared through the bushes at Lloyd Fenneben as he sat by the river before Pigeon Place;the same man whose eyes had leered at Vic Burleigh in this same place eighteen months before;the same man whom little Bug Buler's innocent face had startled as he was about to seize the money box at the gateway to the Sunrise football field;and this same man was crouching now to spring at Vic Burleigh's throat in the darkness.

"It's a good thing a fellow has a guardian angel once in a while,"Vic said,as he hastily withdrew his head and shoulders.

"We get pretty close to the edge of things sometimes and never know how near we are to destruction.""We were pretty close that night,"Elinor replied.

"Shall we rest here a little while,or do your savage sorority sisters require you to do time in so many minutes?"Vic asked,as they left the cave and came again into the sunlight,and all the sweetness of the April woodland,and the rugged beauty of the glen.

"I'm glad to rest,"Elinor said,dropping down on a stone.

Her cheeks were blooming from the exercise of the tramp,and her pretty hair was in disorder.

Far away from the west prairie came the faint note of a child's voice in song.

"Victor,"Elinor said,as they listened,"do you know that the Sunrise girls envy Bug Buler?They say you would have more time for the girls if it wasn't for him.What you spend for him you could spend on light refreshments for them,don't you see?""I know I'm a stingy cuss,"Vic said,carelessly,but a deeper red touched his cheek.

"You know you are not,"Elinor insisted,"and I've always thought it was a beautiful thing for a big grown man like you to care for a little orphan boy.

All the girls think so,too."

Burleigh looked down at her gratefully.

"I thought once--in fact,I was told once--that my care for him was sufficient reason why I should let all the girls alone,most of all why I should not think of Elinor Wream.""How strange!"Elinor's face had a womanly expression.

"I've never had a little child to love me.I've been brought up with only AEneas's small son Ascanius,and other classical children,on Uncle Joshua's Dead Language book shelves.

I feel sometimes as if I'd been robbed."

"You?I didn't know you had ever wanted anything you did n't get."Victor had thought all things were due to her and came as duly.

The womanly look on her face now was a revelation to him.

But then he had not dared to study her face for months,and he did not yet realize what life in Dr.Fenneben's home must mean to her character-building.

"I'll tell you some time about something I ought to have had,a sacrifice I was forced to make;but not now,Tell me about Bug."There was no bitterness in Elinor's tone,yet the idea of her having the capacity to endure gave her a newer charm to the man beside her.

"I have never known whose child Bug is,"he began.

"The way in which he came to me is full of terrible memories,and it all happened on the blackest day of my life--the hard life of a lonely boy on a Kansas claim.

That's why I never speak of it and try always to forget it.

I found him by mere accident,helpless and in awful danger.

He was about two years old then and all he could say was `bad man'and his name,`Bug Buler.'I've wondered if Bug is his name,or if he could not speak his real name plainly then."Burleigh paused,and a sense of Elinor's interest brought a thrill of joy to him.

"Where was he?"she asked.

Vic slowly unfastened his cuff and slipped his coat sleeve up to his elbow.

"Do you remember that scar?"he asked."It is not the only one I have.

I fought with death for that baby boy and I shall always carry the scars of that day.Bug was alone in a lonely little deserted dugout.

Somebody had left him there to perish.He was on a low chair,the only furniture in the room,and on the earth floor between him and me were five of the ugliest rattlesnakes that ever coiled for a deadly blow.