Ada Woodruff Anderson

“ The fog closed in, billow on billow, flooding the canyon, lapping the ledge where he stopped. Then for a moment the white sea parted, and the granite tower hung tilting over the abyss. It stood solitary, like a lighthouse on a stormy coast, and in another instant was blotted out.
He dismounted, and with his hand on his horse's neck, his hat pushed back, stood watching these waves, flowing, separating, rolling together, rushing out. "And it's something you can't grapple with, or put down," he said at last. "You've got to push into it, blind, or wait for it to break. It's like the future. ”

“ Her eyelids fluttered open. She looked at him startled. He leaned nearer. His voice quickened; it became a sensitive, soft-toned instrument, vibrant with tenderness. "Marry me, Alice," he said, "and I will shape my whole life to yours. You shall never see a city or a crowd if you say so. I will create an Eden out of this homestead; and when the settlement grows too civilized, when there is nothing left to reclaim or build, I will take you to new solitudes; I will carry you away in that schooner of mine, up and up into the Alaska wilderness, and on some unknown fiord set up another Paradise." ”

“ Sometimes on long Arctic nights, when they were recalling old times and old songs, he himself had taken Plunkett's part to David's Lionel. He could see that cabin now, the door set wide, while their voices stormed the white silence under the near Yukon stars. His eyes gathered their absent expression. It was as though he looked beyond the park, far and away into other vast solitudes; saw once more the cliffs of Nanatuk looming through fog and heard clearly, booming across the ice, the great, familiar baritone.
The notes of the organ ceased. Tisdale stirred like a man roused from sleep. ”

“ The red stain of old snow was under their feet and beyond the spur shone the clean, blue-green edge of the glacier. "We are higher than the treeline, now," said Philip, "and above the clouds."
She drew a breath of delight, lifting her glance to the near dome. "And it looks as though we could reach the summit in fifteen or twenty minutes. Oh, Phil, come, let's go."
Kingsley laughed. "We haven't climbed nine thousand feet; the hardest third of the ascent is above us. Don't you remember, the only two men who ever made that summit were half a day in just passing Gibraltar. ”

“ It was hardly four o'clock that Christmas eve when the Aquila arrived with the guests from Seattle, but the villa lights were on. A huge and resinous backlog, sending broad tongues of flame into the cavernous throat of the fireplace, gave to the illumination a ruddier, flickering glow. To Foster, who was the first to reach the veranda, Foster who had been so long accustomed to faring at Alaska road-houses, to making his own camp, on occasion, with a single helper in the frosty solitudes, that view through the French window must have seemed like a scene from the Arabian Nights. ”

“ And most of all he understood what she had done for him when that business depression laid a fatal hand on the mills. He had meant to do great things and he was one to take defeat hard; but she, this sweet, proud woman, with the courage in her voice and the heart-break in her eyes, had taught him by example how to fight a losing battle to the end, and—like a man.
The silence was broken by the neigh of a horse. It was unusual on that promontory; saddle-animals never took the foot-path over the bluff to the mills, and afterwards Forrest remembered the sound. ”

“ As these infant orchards dropped behind and the Wenatchee range loomed near, Cerberus detached from the other peaks; but it was no longer a tawny monster on guard; its contour was broken by many terraces, luxuriant with alfalfa and planted with trees.
"Why," exclaimed Mrs. Weatherbee, "there is the gap. Then, this must be the mountain—it reminded me once of a terrible, crouching, wild beast— but it has changed."
"Yes, ma'am," responded Banks, "she's looking tamer now. The peaches have taken right hold, and those fillers of strawberries are hurrying on the green. ”

“ The final echo died far off; the profound silence which had followed him all day settled again like an intangible presence over the gorge. It was a stillness to challenge the very breathing of a man, if he lived, and Stratton waited, listening, for any slight disturbance beyond the buttress. None reached him. But the sorrel was fleet. She would have sprung like the wind at the first crack of the catastrophe; and if there had been space to pass the pack-animals, it was possible she had carried Smith out of the track of the slide.
But clearly this portion of the trail was now impassable. ”

“ Tisdale answered slowly. "Long before that day I found her, she must have known it was a losing fight. But the glory of the battle is not always to the victor. And she blamed herself that she had not gone north with her husband at the start. You see she loved him, and love with that kind of woman means self-sacrifice; she counted it a privilege to have been there, to have faced the worst with him, done what she could."
Miss Armitage straightened, lifting her head with that movement of a flower shaken on its stem. "Every woman owes it to herself to keep her self-respect," she said. ”

“ Forrest saw her and stood holding the gate. The slab-fire suddenly burst into brighter flame. It showed him clearly the stains of earth and brine upon her gown; the grime of dust and moisture on her worn face. She raised her hand to ward off his look, and her sleeve, rent to the elbow, fell back from her beautiful forearm, baring a long deep, bleeding hurt, ploughed there by the brass-bound end of the falling chest. "Louise, Louise," he said. "What is it? Tell me."
She pushed him aside and went up the steps.
"Trust me," he said. "Let me help you." ”

“ A vast company of peaks began to lift, tier on tier like an amphitheater, above the rim of the dome, while far eastward, as they cross-cut the rounding incline, stretched those tawny mountains that had the appearance of strange and watchful beasts, guarding the levels of the desert, bare of snow. Glimpses there were of the blue Columbia, the racy Wenatchee, but Weatherbee's pocket was closed. Then, presently, as they gained the summit, it was no longer an amphitheater into which they looked, but a billowing sea of cloud, out of which rose steep and inhospitable shores. ”

“ She saw now what that friendly intimacy of nearly two years, in that isolated place, must have meant to both Louise and Forrest. How she had created for him his only social and home life; how, day after day, countless times each day, she must have felt his quiet sympathy, helpfulness, in sharp contrast to the neglect and irresponsibility of Philip. And they had played, sung, innumerable evenings together; no man on earth could so appreciate her beautiful voice, her personal sweetness; and she had always loved his violin. How could she—how could any woman—have remained indifferent? ”

“ Tisdale laughed again mellowly. "Then it's all right. We are going to see this trip through. But I wish I could show you that Alaska mountainside in midsummer. Imagine violets on violets, thousands of them, springing everywhere in the vivid new grass. You can't avoid crushing some, no matter how carefully you pick your steps. There's a rocky seat half-way up on a level spur, where you might rest, and I would fill your lap with those violets, big, long-stemmed ones, till the blue lights danced in your eyes." ”

“ The likeness to her sister had never seemed as marked to Forrest as it was then, when he came upon her unexpectedly, by the fallen hemlock, on his way to the mills. Was not this the trail to the headwaters? Had they not paused to choose a way through the windfall?
She did not see him, and he waited, mastered by that brief illusion. And while he watched her face she saw the heights of the Olympics change from rose to burnished brass; every peak and spur flamed a signal to the departing sun. ”

“ To Hollis, coming suddenly, as he did, upon the bronze figure in the Wenatchee sunshine, it seemed to warm with a latent consciousness. He felt poignantly a sense of David's personality, as he had known him at the crowning period of his life.
"It suits me," responded Banks. "My, yes, it's about as good a likeness as we can get of Dave." He put on his hat, which involuntarily he had removed, and started the car on around the curve. "But it's a mighty lot like you. It crops out most in the eyes, seeing things off somewheres, clear out of sight, and the way you carry your size. You was a team." ”

“ Mose stepped out into the trail and stood looking after them, but his gaze rested on Stratton's mount. He loved the thoroughbred, coveted him, every inch of the long sleek body, the slender limbs, the swelling chest, the dappled shading, that, like a reflection of leaves on a forest pool, ran through the shining, chestnut coat. Surely there was never another like him. Even among those fine herds of which Yelm Jim boasted this horse must stand the chief, the glory of the whole Palouse plains, the envy of the proudest Yakima. ”

“ Hope is an insistent thing. It may be strangled, lie cold and buried deep in the heart of a man, yet suddenly, without premonition, he may feel it rise and stretch small hands, groping towards a ray of light. So in that reminiscent hour while the train labored up through the Cascades to the great tunnel, Tisdale told himself this woman—the one woman for whom he must have been waiting all these years, at whose coming old and cherished memories had faded to shadows—was very near to loving him. ”

“ She remained in the grove a long time. When she reappeared, the desert eastward was curtained in a gray film. Torn breadths of it, driven by some local current of air, formed tented clouds along the promontory. It was as though yesterday's army was marshalled against other hosts that held the Chelan heights. A twilight indistinctness settled over the valley between. Rain, a downpour, was near. She hurried on to the brow of the plateau, but she dared not attempt to go down around those crumbling chimneys alone. And Tisdale had said he would come back this side of the vale. ”

“ Showers of loosened ice clinked down from the rim. Most of the particles struck the sides that closed in twenty feet below, and rebounding, dropped again and sent back faint echoes from the last level of the abyss.
Stratton stood watching Philip up the glacier, but presently, Alice drew away from the crevasse and turned to look back down the gorge. The sun no longer shone. All that brilliant vista of opal peak and amethyst spur, shading to blue distance, was curtained in closing sheets of mist. There a great crag loomed an instant and was gone. ”

“ The bays began to round a curve and presently Rainier, the lesser heights, all the valley of Kittitas, closed from sight. They had reached the timber belt; poplars threaded the parks of pine, and young growths of fir, like the stiff groves of a toy village, gathered hold on the sharp mountain slopes. Sometimes the voice of a creek, hurrying down the canyon to join the Yakima, broke the stillness, or a desert wind found its way in and went wailing up the water-course. And sometimes in a rocky place, the hoof-beats of the horses, the noise of the wheels, struck an echo from spur to spur. ”

“ Thornton, running with the flow to help Mose at the nozzle, passed without seeing her. Then Stratton came. He had hurried from his lodge at the first hint of smoke; he had learned, in a word from Mose, where to look for her, and he discovered her. He put his shoulder to an upright and wrenched it away. He grasped the rails,—his hands blistered,—and flung them down. He bent to lift her, shielding her with his body, but at the same time a burning sapling, looped in the slashing, sprang, released like an unstrung bow, and struck the back of his head. ”

“ But to Tisdale her camaraderie with Nature was charming. It was so very rare. A few of the women he had known hitherto had been capable of it, but they had lived rugged lives; the wilderness gave them little else. And of all the men whom he had made his friends through an eventful career, there was only Foster who sometimes felt the magnitude of high places,—and there had been David Weatherbee. At this thought of Weatherbee his brows clouded, and that last letter, the one that had reached him at Nome and which he still carried in his breast pocket, seemed suddenly to gather a vital quality. ”

“ She followed him in silence along the promontory. When they passed beyond the curve another man pushed out of the thicket into the trail. He ran with a gliding, half writhing motion to a point where a branch track, faint, little used, dipped over the Head. He took this course, twisting, swinging himself by low boughs, doubling where the path was lost in a precipitous gully, and so gained the beach. He crept under the bluff, rounding it and splashing ankle-deep in water, for the tide was running in, until he reached the rear balcony of the old hotel. ”

“ After a while, word was brought that the Great Northern track was buried under forty feet of snow and rock and fallen trees for a distance of nearly a mile. Later a rotary steamed around the high curve on the mountain and stopped, like a toy engine on an upper shelf, while the Spokane local, upon which Banks had expected to return to Weatherbee, forged a few miles beyond the hotel to leave a hundred laborers from Seattle. Thin wreaths of vapor commenced to rise and, gathering volume with incredible swiftness, blotted out the plow and the snow-sheds, and meeting, broke in a storm of hail. ”

“ It was a bright day at the end of February, the Puget Sound spring, and she had found and fastened on her breast a first cluster of Oregon currant. The heart of the blossoms was reflected on her cheeks; the light of the early morning was in her eyes. "Oh," she said, "what a splendid table, Mose." And turning to the town carpenter, who accompanied her, "Isn't it fine? And this is the boy of whom I told you. He has split all of the shakes, hewn flooring, cut logs. He has done everything except what the young ranchers could do for me in a few odd days." ”