The White Desert

C >> Courtney Ryley Cooper >> The White Desert

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Barry laughed.

"Evidently that's a sore spot with you, Ba'tiste."

"No. Ba'teese no care. But if my Pierre had live, he would have make
love to her. She would have marry him. And to have M'sieu Thayer take
his place? No! Mebbe--" he said it hopefully, "mebbe you like
Medaine, huh?"

"I do! She's pretty, Ba'tiste."

"Mebbe you make love?"

But the man on the bed shook his head.

"I can't make love to anybody, Ba'tiste. Not until I've--I've found
something I'm looking for. I'm afraid that's a long way off. I
haven't the privileges of most young fellows. I'm a little--what would
you call it--hampered by circumstance. I've--besides, if I ever do
marry, it won't be for love. There's a girl back East who says she
cares for me, and who simply has taken it for granted that I think the
same way about her. She stood by me--in some trouble. Out of every
one, she didn't believe what they said about me. That means a lot.
Some way, she isn't my kind; she just doesn't awaken affection on my
part, and I spend most of my time calling myself a cad over it. But
she stood by me--and--I guess that's all that's necessary, after all.
When I've fulfilled my contract with myself--if I ever do--I'll do the
square thing and ask her to marry me."

Ba'tiste scowled.

"You dam' fool," he said. "Buy 'em present. Thank 'em, _merci
beaucoup_. But don' marry 'em unless 'you love 'em. Ba'teese, he
know. Ba'teese, he been in too many home where there is no love."

"True. But you don't know the story behind it all, Ba'tiste. And I
can't tell you except this: I got in some trouble. I'd rather not tell
you what it was. It broke my father's heart--and his confidence in me.
He--he died shortly afterward."

"And you--was it your fault?"

"If you never believe anything else about me, Ba'tiste, believe this:
that it wasn't. And in a way, it was proven to him, before he went.
But he had been embittered then. He left a will--with stipulations. I
was to have the land he owned out here at Empire Lake; and the flume
site leading down the right side of Hawk Creek to the mill. Some one
else owns the other side of the lake and the land on the opposite bank
of the stream."

"_Oui_. Medaine Robinette."

"Honestly? Is it hers?"

"When she is twenty-one. But go on."

"Father wouldn't leave me the mill. He seemed to have a notion that
I'd sell it all off--and he tied everything up in a way to keep me from
doing anything like that. The mill is rented to me. The land is mine,
and I can do everything but actually dispose of it. But on top of that
comes another twist: if I haven't developed the business within five
years into double what it was at the peak of its best development, back
goes everything into a trust fund, out of which I am to have a hundred
dollars a month, nothing more. That's what I'm out here for, Ba'tiste,
to find out why, in spite of the fact that I've worked day and night
now for a year and a half, in spite of the fact that I've gone out and
struggled and fought for contracts, and even beaten down the barriers
of dislike and distrust and suspicion to get business--why I can't get
it! Something or some one is blocking me, and I'm going to find out
what and who it is! I think I know one man--Thayer. But there may be
more. That's why I'm playing this game of lost identity. I thought I
could get out here and nose around without him knowing it. When he
found out at once who I was, and seemed to have had a previous tip that
I was coming out here, I had to think fast and take the first scheme
that popped into my head. Maybe if I can play the game long enough, it
will take him off his guard and cause him to work more in the open.
They may give me a chance to know where I stand. And I've got to know
that, Ba'tiste. Because--" and his voice was vibrant with
determination, "I don't care what happens to me personally. I don't
care whether five minutes after I have made it, I lose every cent of
what I have worked for. But I do care about this; I'm going to make
good to my father's memory. I'm going to be able to stand before a
mirror and look myself straight in the eye, knowing that I bucked up
against trouble, that it nearly whipped me, that it took the unfairest
advantage that Fate can take of a man in allowing my father to die
before I could fully right myself in his eyes, but that if there is a
Justice, if there is anything fair and decent in this universe, some
way he'll know, some way he'll rest in peace, with the understanding
that his son took up the gauntlet that death laid down for him, that he
made the fight, and that he won!"

"_Bon_--good!" Old Ba'tiste leaned over the foot of the bed. "My
Pierre--he would talk like that. _Bon_? Now--what is it you look for?"

"In the first place, I want to know how so many accidents can happen in
a single plant, just at the wrong time. I want to know why it is that
I can go out and fight for a contract, and then lose it because a saw
has broken, or an off-bearer, lugging slabs away from the big wheel,
can allow one to strike at just the wrong moment and let the saw pick
it up and drive it through the boiler, laying up the whole plant for
three weeks. I want to know why it is that only about one out of three
contracts I land are ever filled. Thayer's got something to do with
it, I know. Why? That's another question. But there must be others.
I want to know who they are and weed them out. I've only got three and
a half years left, and things are going backward instead of forward."

"How you intend to fin' this out?"

"I don't know. I've got one lead--as soon as I'm able to get into
town. That may give me a good deal of information; I came out here, at
least, in the hope that it would. After that, I'm hazy. How big a
telegraph office is there at Tabernacle?"

"How big?" Ba'tiste laughed. "How _petite_! Eet is about the size of
the--what-you-say--the peanut."

"Is there ever a time when the operator isn't there?"

"At noon. He go out to dinner, and he leave open the door. If eet is
something you want, walk in."

"Thanks." A strange eagerness was in Houston's eyes. "I think I'll be
able to get up to-morrow. Maybe I can walk over there; it's only a
mile or two, isn't it?"

But when to-morrow, came, it found a white, bandaged figure sitting
weakly in front of Ba'tiste's cabin, nothing more. Strength of purpose
and strength of being had proved two different things, and now he was
quite content to rest there in the May sunshine, to watch the
chattering magpies as they went about the work of spring
house-building, to study the colors of the hills, the mergings of the
tintings and deeper hues as the scale ran from brown to green to blue,
and finally to the stark red granite and snow whites of Mount Taluchen.

Ba'tiste and his constant companion, Golemar, were making the round of
the traps and had been gone for hours. Barry was alone--alone with the
beauties of spring in the hills, with the soft call of the meadow lark
in the bit of greenery which fringed the still purling stream in the
little valley, the song of the breeze through the pines, the sunshine,
the warmth--and his problems.

Of these, there were plenty. In the first place, how had Thayer known
that he was on the way from the East? He had spoken to only two
persons,--Jenkins, his bookkeeper, and one other. To these two persons
he merely had given the information that he was going West on a bit of
a vacation. He had deliberately chosen to come in his car, so that
there might be every indication, should there be such a thing as a spy
in his rather diminutive office, that he merely intended a jaunt
through a few States, certainly not a journey half across the country.
But just the same, the news had leaked; Thayer had been informed, and
his arrival had been no surprise.

That there had been need for his coming, Barry felt sure. At the
least, there was mismanagement at the mill; contract after contract
lost just when it should have been gained told him this, if nothing
more. But--and he drew a sheet of yellow paper from his pocket and
stared hard at it--there was something else, something which had
aroused his curiosity to an extent of suspicion, something which might
mean an open book of information to him if only he could reach
Tabernacle at the right moment and gain access to the telegraph files
without the interference of the agent.

Then suddenly he ceased his study of the message and returned it to his
pocket. Two persons were approaching the cabin from the opposite
hill,--a girl whom he was glad to see, and a man who walked, or rather
rolled, in the background: Medaine Robinette and a sort of rear guard
who, twenty or thirty feet behind her, followed her every step, trotted
when she ran down the steep side of an embankment, then slowed as she
came to a walk again. A bow-legged creature he was, with ill-fitting
clothing and a broad "two-gallon" hat which evidently had been
bequeathed to him by some cow-puncher, long hair which straggled over
his shoulders, and a beaded vest which shone out beneath the scraggly
outer coat like a candle on a dark night. Instinctively Barry knew him
to be the grunting individual who had waited outside the door the night
before,--Lost Wing, Medaine's Sioux servant: evidently a
self-constituted bodyguard who traveled more as a shadow than as a
human being. Certainly the girl in the foreground gave no indication
that she was aware of his presence; nor did she seem to care.

Closer she came, and Barry watched her, taking a strange sort of
delight in the skipping grace with which she negotiated the stepping
stones of the swollen little stream which intervened between her and
the cabin of Ba'tiste Renaud, then clambered over the straggling pile
of massed logs and dead timber which strewed the small stretch of flat
before the rise began, leading to where he rested. More like some
graceful, agile boy was she than a girl. Her clothing was of that type
which has all too soon taken the place of the buckskin in the West,--a
riding habit, with stout little shoes and leather puttees; her hair was
drawn tight upon her head and encased in the shielding confines of a
cap, worn low over her forehead, the visor pulled aside by a jutting
twig and now slanting out at a rakish angle; her arms full of something
pink and soft and pretty. Barry wondered what it could be,--then
brightened with sudden hope.

"Wonder if she's bringing them to me?"

The answer came a moment later as she faced him, panting slightly from
the exertion of the climb, the natural flush of exercise heightened by
her evident embarrassment.

"Oh, you're up!" came in an almost disappointed manner. Then with a
glance toward the great cluster of wild roses in her arms, "I don't
know what to do with these things now."

"Why?" Barry's embarrassment was as great as hers. "If--if it'll do
any good, I'll climb back into bed again."

"No--don't. Only I thought you were really, terribly ill and--"

"I am--I was--I will be. That is--gosh, it's a shame for you to go out
and pick all those and then have me sitting up here as strong as an ox.
I--"

"Oh, don't worry about that." She smiled at him with that sweetness
which only a woman can know when she has the advantage. "I didn't pick
them. Lost Wing"--she pointed to the skulking, outlandishly dressed
Indian in the background--"attended to that. I was going to send them
over by him. But I didn't have anything to do, so I just thought I'd
bring them myself."

"Thanks for that, anyway. Can't I keep them just the same--to put on
the table or something?"

"Oh, if you care to." Barry felt that she was truly disappointed that
he wasn't at the point of death, or at least somewhere near it.
"Where's Ba'tiste."

"Out looking after his traps, picking them up I think, for the summer.
He'll be back soon. Is there--"

"No. I usually come over every day to see him, you know." Then the
blue eyes lost their diffidence to become serious. "Do you remember
yet who you are?"

"Less right at this minute than at any other time!" spoke Barry
truthfully. "I'm out of my head entirely!" He reached for the flowers.

"Please don't joke that way. It's really serious. When I was
across--army nursing--I saw a lot of just such cases as yours. Shell
shock, you know. One has to be awfully careful with it."

"I know. But I'm getting the best of care. I--ouch!" His interest
had exceeded his caution. The unbandaged hand had waved the flowers
for emphasis and absently gripped the stems. The wild roses fluttered
to the ground. "Gosh!" came dolefully, "I'm all full of thorns. Guess
I'll have to pick 'em out with my teeth."

"Oh!" Then she picked up the roses and laid them gingerly aside. "You
can't use your other hand, can you?"

"No. Arm's broken."

"Then--" she looked back toward Lost Wing, hunched on a stump, and
Barry's heart sank. She debated a moment, at last to shake her head.
"No--he'd want to dig them out with a knife. If you don't mind." She
moved toward Houston and Barry thrust forth his hand.

"If you don't mind," he countered and she sat beside him. A moment
later:

"I must look like a fortune teller."

"See anything in my palm besides thorns?"

"Yes. A little dirt. Ba'tiste evidently isn't a very good nurse."

"I did the best I could with one hand. But I was pretty grimy. I--I
didn't know," and Barry grinned cheerfully, "I was going to be this
lucky."

She pretended not to hear the sally. And in some way Barry was glad.
He much rather would have her silent than making some flippant remark,
much rather would he prefer to lean comfortably back on the old bench
and watch the quiet, almost childish determination of her features as
she sought for a grip on the tiny protuberances of the thorns, the soft
brownness of the few strands of hair which strayed from beneath the
boyish cap, the healthy glow of her complexion, the smallness of the
clear-skinned hands, the daintiness of the trim little figure. Much
rather would he be silent with the picture than striving for answers to
questions that in their very naiveness were an accusation. Quite
suddenly Barry felt cheap and mean and dishonest. He felt that he
would like to talk about himself,--about home and his reasons for being
out here; his hopes for the mill which now was a shambling,
unprofitable thing; about the future and--a great many things. It was
with an effort, when she queried him again concerning his memory, that
he still remained Mr. Nobody. Then he shifted the conversation from
himself to her.

"Do you live out here?"

"Yes. Didn't Ba'tiste tell you? My house is just over the hill--you
can just see one edge of the roof through that bent aspen."

Barry stared.

"I'd noticed that. Thought it was a house, but couldn't be sure. I
thought I understood Ba'tiste to say you only came out here in the
summer."

"I did that when I was going to school. Now I stay here all the year
'round."

"Isn't it lonely?"

"Out here? With a hundred kinds of birds to keep things going? With
the trout leaping in the streams in the summer time, and a good gun in
the hollow of your arm in the winter? Besides, there's old Lost Wing
and his squaw, you know. I get a lot of enjoyment out of them when
we're snowed in--in the winter. He's told me fully fifty versions of
how the Battle of Wounded Knee was fought, and as for Custer's last
battle--it's wonderful!"

"He knows all about it?"

"I'd hardly say that." Medaine reached under her cap for a hairpin,
looked quickly at Barry as though to ask him whether he could stand
pain, then pressed a recalcitrant thorn into a position where it could
be extracted. "I think the best description of Lost Wing is that he's
an admirable fiction writer. Ba'tiste says he has more lies than a dog
has fleas."

"Then it isn't history?"

"Of course not. Just imagination. But it's well done, with plenty of
gestures. He stands in front of the fire and acts it all out while his
squaw sits on the floor and grunts and nods and wails at the right
time, and it's really entertaining. They're about a million years old,
both of them. My father got them when he first came down here from
Montreal. He wanted Lost Wing as a sort of bodyguard. It was a good
deal wilder in this region then than it is now, and father owned a good
deal of land."

"So Ba'tiste tells me. He says that practically all of the forests
around here are yours."

"They will be, next year," came simply, "when I'm--"

She stopped and laughed.

"Ba'tiste told me. Twenty-one."

"He never could keep anything to himself."

"What's wrong about that? I'm twenty-seven myself."

"Honestly? You don't look it."

"Don't I? I ought to. I've got a beard and everything. See?" He
pulled his hand away for a moment to rub the two-days' growth on his
face. "I tried to shave this morning. Couldn't make it. Ba'tiste
said he'd play barber for me this afternoon. Next time you come over
I'll be all slicked up."

Again she laughed, and once more pursued the remaining thorns.

"How do you know there'll be a next time?"

"If there isn't, I'll drive nails in myself, so you'll have to pull 'em
out." Then seriously. "You do come over here often, don't you?"

"Of course--" then, the last thorn disposed of, she rose--"to see
Ba'tiste. I look on him as a sort of a guardian. He knew my father.
But let's talk about yourself. You seem remarkably clear in your mind
to be afflicted with amnesia. Are you sure you don't remember
anything--?"

"No--not now. But," and Barry hedged painfully, "I think I will. It
acts to me like a momentary thing. Every once in a while I get a flash
as though it were all coming back; it was just the fall, I'm sure of
that. My head's all right."

"You mean your brain?"

"Yes. I don't act crazy, or anything like that, do I?"

"Well," and she smiled quizzically, "of course, I don't know you, so I
have nothing to go by. But I must admit that you say terribly foolish
things."

Leaving him to think over that, she turned, laughed a good-by, and with
the rolling, bow-legged old Lost Wing in her wake, retraced the path to
the top of the hill, there to hesitate a moment, wave her hand quickly,
and then, as though hurrying away from her action, disappeared. Barry
Houston sat for a long time, visualizing her there on the brow of the
hill, her head with its long-visored cap tilted, her hand upraised, her
trimness and her beauty silhouetted against the opalesque sky,
dreaming,--and with a bit of heartache in it. For this sort of thing
had been his hope in younger, fairer days. This sort of a being had
been his make-believe companion of a Castle in Spain. This sort of a
joking, whimsical girl had been the one who had come to him in the
smoke wreaths and tantalized him and promised him--

But now, his life was gray. His heart was not his own. His life was
at best only a grim, drab thing of ugly memories and angered
determinations. If a home should ever come to him, it must be in
company with some one to whom he owed the gratitude of friendship in
time of need; not love not affection, but the paying of a debt of
deepest honor. Which Barry would do, and faithfully and honestly and
truthfully. As for the other--

He leaned against the bark slabs of the cabin. He closed his eyes. He
grinned cheerily.

"Well," came at last, "there's no harm in thinking about it!"

CHAPTER VI

It was thus that Ba'tiste found him, still dreaming. The big voice of
the Canadian boomed, and he reached forward to nudge Barry on his
injured shoulder.

"And who has been bringing you flowers?" he asked.

"Medaine. That is--Miss Robinette."

"Medaine? Oh, ho! You hear, Golemar?" he turned to the fawning
wolf-dog. "He calls her Medaine! Oh, ho! And he say he will marry,
not for love. Peuff! We shall see, by gar, we shall see! Eh,
Golemar?" Then to Barry, "You have sit out here too long."

"I? Nothing of the kind. Where's the axe? I'll do some fancy
one-handed woodchopping."

And while Ba'tiste watched, grinning, Barry went about his task,
swinging the axe awkwardly, but whistling with the joy of work. Nor
did he pause to diagnose his light-heartedness. He only knew that he
was in the hills; that the streets and offices and people of the
cities, and the memories that they carried, had been left behind for
him that he was in a new world to make a new fight and that he was
strangely, inordinately happy Time after time the axe glinted, to
descend upon the chopping block, until at last the pile of stovewood
had reached its proper dimensions, and old Ba'tiste came from the
doorway to carry it in. Then, half an hour later, they sat down to
their meal of sizzling bacon and steaming coffee,--a great, bearded
giant and the younger man whom he, in a moment of impulsiveness, had
all but adopted. Ba'tiste was still joking about the visit of Medaine,
Houston parrying his thrusts. The meal finished, Ba'tiste went forth
once more, to the hunt of a bear trap and its deadfall, dragged away by
a mountain lion during the last snow. Barry sought again the bench
outside the cabin, to sit there waiting and hoping,--in vain. At last
came evening, and he undressed laboriously for a long rest. Something
awaited him in Tabernacle,--either the opening of a book of schemes, or
at least the explanation of a mystery, and that meant a walk of quite
two miles, the exercise of muscles which still ached, the straining of
tendons drawn by injury and pain. But when the time came, he was ready.

"_Bon_--good!" came from Ba'tiste, as they turned into the little
village of Tabernacle the next day, skirted the two clapboarded stores
forming the "main business district," and edged toward the converted
box car that passed as a station. "_Bon_--the agent he is leaving."

Barry looked ahead, to see a man crossing an expanse of flat country
toward what was evidently a boarding house. Ba'tiste nudged him.

"You will walk slowly, as though going into the station to loaf.
Ba'tiste will come behind--and keep watch."

Barry obeyed. A moment more and he was within the converted box car,
to find it deserted and silent, except for the constant clackle of the
telegraph key, rattling off the business of a mountain railroad system,
like some garrulous old woman, to any one who would listen. There was
no private office, only a railing and a counter, which Barry crossed
easily. A slight crunching of gravel sounded without. It was
Ba'tiste, now lounging in the doorway, ready at a moment to give the
alarm. Houston turned hastily toward the file hook and began to turn
the pages of the original copy which hung there.

A moment of searching and he leaned suddenly forward. Messages were
few from Tabernacle; it had been an easy matter for him to come upon
the originals of the telegrams he sought, in spite of the fact that
they had been sent more than two weeks before. Already he was reading
the first of the night letters:

Barry Houston,
Empire Lake Mill and Lumber Co.,
212 Grand Building, Boston, Mass.

Please order six-foot saw as before. Present one broken to-day through
crystallization.

F. B. THAYER.

"That's one of 'em." Houston grunted the words, rather than spoke
them. "That was meant for me all right--humph!"

The second one was before him now, longer and far more interesting to
the man who bent over the telegraph file, while Ba'tiste kept watch at
the door. Hastily he pulled a crumpled message from his pocket and
compared them,--and grunted again.

"The same thing. Identically the same thing, except for the addresses!
Ba'tiste," he called softly, "what kind of an operator is this fellow?"

"No good. A boy. Just out of school. Hasn't been here long."

"That explains it." Houston was talking to himself again. "He got the
two messages and--" Suddenly he bent forward and examined a notation
in a strange hand:

"Missent Houston. Resent Blackburn."

It explained much to Barry Houston, that scribble of four words. It
told him why he had received a telegram which meant nothing to him, yet
caused suspicion enough for a two-thousand-mile trip. It explained
that the operator, in sending two messages, had, through
absent-mindedness, put them both on the wire to the same person, when
they were addressed separately, that he later had seen his mistake and
corrected it. Barry smiled grimly.

"Thanks very much, Operator," he murmured. "It isn't every mistake
that turns out this lucky."

Then slowly, studiously, he compared the messages again, the one he had
received, and the one on the hook which read:

J. C. Blackburn,
Deal Building, Chicago, Ill.

Our friend reports Boston deal put over O. K. Everything safe.
Suggest start preparations for operations in time compete Boston for
the big thing. Have Boston where we want him and will keep him there.

THAYER.

It was the same telegram that Barry Houston had received and puzzled
over in Boston, except for the address. He had been right then; the
message had not been for him; instead it had been intended decidedly
_not_ for him and it meant--what? Hastily Houston crawled over the
railing, and motioning to Ba'tiste, led him away from the station.
Around the corner of the last store he brought forth his telegram and
placed it in the big man's hands.

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