Cornelia Meigs

“ A SONG FROM OVER THE SEA For a little time there was no sound in the big room as Beatrice stood gazing in open-mouthed astonishment at the piles of gold and silver pieces heaped upon the table, while Hester stood at the outer door to listen. The night sounds of the mountain came in: the wind among the trees, the squeaking of a bat, the far-off yelp of a coyote. Presently, however, these faint noises were drowned in another, distant but growing nearer and louder, the angry voices of excited men and the tramp of feet upon the road. ”

“ And this hillside at her feet—was it a forest or a garden into which she had stumbled? Hundreds of little spruce-trees, as tall as her shoulder and all of the same height, marched in straight rows across the slope of the mountain, clothing the steep ground in a smooth mantle of lusty green. A stream wound downward through the plantation, and on its bank, on a level bench below her, were a clump of willows and a white cottage with a red roof and a wide-open door.
“That must be Dr. Minturn’s house,” Beatrice reflected and a moment later caught sight of Dr. Minturn himself. ”

“ It was very pleasant to sit so still and let the silent minutes march by to the tune of rustling pine branches and the murmuring waterfall. As she sat looking down into the valley, time seemed very big and calm and empty, instead of bustling and full.
She rose at last to go on with her explorations. Behind the cabin was the tumbling cascade that identified the place, a plunge of foaming waters over a high ledge with a still black pool below, shot with gleams of sunshine and full of darting trout. ”

“ The peak of Gray Cloud Mountain, visible from their doorstep, loomed through the mist that had shrouded it from view and before dark showed its towering outline, clear-cut against the clouds. And never, never, so Beatrice and Nancy thought, had they seen a more glorious day than the morrow turned out to be. With the whole world washed clean, with the dripping water dried up in an hour by the all-conquering sunshine, it seemed that nothing could be more perfect. ”

“ They scrambled up the hill, out beyond the shadow of the pines to the open pasture land where the trees had been cut, where the new growth was springing up, and where among the old stumps the berry bushes and vines matted the ground. It was a hot summer day, very still, except for the grasshoppers singing shrilly, but not with that peaceful drowsy heat that Nancy knew. The air was far too bracing for any one to feel lazy or sleepy as on the summer days at home. The blue distances shimmered, the sky was cloudless, everything seemed to stir and throb with the energy of living. ”

“ It had given its treasures of gold and silver, the timber and pasturage of its lower slopes; its roaring streams watered the fields and the valley was fertile with soil washed from its rocky shoulders.
“A good part of the mountain belongs to me,” John Herrick said, “and a bit of it to Beatrice, too. I can go higher and higher, blasting its rocks, cutting its trees, but at a certain point I have to stop. There is no man yet who has conquered the wind and clouds and cold of the summit, and Gray Cloud Mountain is still master of us all.” ”

“ We climbed so high we could see valley after valley spread out below us, and the air was so clear one felt that it was possible to see halfway round the world if only the mountains did not block the way. There were two or three riders scattered over the trail below, tiny black figures like toys, although everything was so still we could hear their voices shouting to one another and could hear the plunge and splash of a waterfall a mile away. ”

“ Beatrice drew a deep quivering sigh. It seemed, in the midst of excitement and the anxiety to atone, that waiting was the one intolerable thing.
“I can’t bear to wait,” she burst out at last.
“I have never told you,” Dr. Minturn rejoined slowly, “of how Miriam and I came to live here. We used to be in a big city and we had that same full, restless life that most city dwellers know. Some people thrive in such an atmosphere, some can endure it, but it was destruction to us both. I had more patients than I could care for, Miriam’s days were as crowded as mine. ”

“ Beatrice thought. “How can we ever go down in the dark, with a helpless person to carry?”
But the doctor had declared that further delay meant too much danger to John Herrick, and that the attempt must be made. Down they went, past the rocky shelf where the girls had found him, past the dizzy precipice where Beatrice had dropped the ax and had so nearly followed it, over barriers that looked impassable, down steep declivities that were nothing but wells of blackness and hidden danger. ”

“ Through an opening in the trees Beatrice caught a glimpse, as she descended, of the house beyond the stream. She could even see a man ride up to the door and a girl come running out to greet him. Then a drop in the trail hid both house and people abruptly from her view.
The warm sun seemed to be left completely behind as she and Buck pressed onward with all possible haste. Something new caught her curious attention in a moment, however, and made her stop again. To the right of the pathway, in a little clearing among the pines, she had spied the glow of a tiny fire. ”

“ South of the town was a portion of Ely that she had not seen before, a group of warehouses, some office buildings, and a huddle of workmen’s bunk-houses. She could see the cobweb lines of temporary railroad, a steam-shovel moving on a flat-car, and innumerable men toiling like black ants along the sides of the raw cut that had been made in the red soil of the valley.
“That must be the irrigation ditch that Dan O’Leary was telling us about,” she reflected. “How hot it looks down there! I did not dream they had so many men. And how clear the air is! ”

“ Then the doctor led Beatrice beyond the garden and the clump of willows to where she could see the whole sweep of the mountain and the shadows flooding the valley as darkness crept up the hill.
“It was a plan of my own, this replanting where the pine forest has been cut,” he explained, as he sat down by Beatrice on the grassy slope, evidently delighted to have some one to listen to his enthusiasm. “The Government does a good deal of this reforesting where tracts have been cut down or burned, but they can’t give the trees the care that I do. Nobody could except a man who loves them. ”

“ A word of direction from the doctor, a breathless squeak from Nancy once when her horse lurched suddenly beneath her, the steady scuffle of the ponies’ feet—those were the only sounds. They had passed the icy shallows of the tumbling stream, they had looped over the jutting shoulder of smooth rock where there was scarcely a foothold: there was a long, stiff-legged jump for each pony, and they were down.
Through the rustling underbrush of the lower slope, the main trail leading downward from Gray Cloud Pass was firm under their feet. ”

“ After they had finished their lunch they still sat lazily by the fire, watching the thin smoke drift far across the depths below them until it lost itself in the distant blue haze. Beatrice was leaning against the warm rock while her companion sat upright, his clear-cut profile showing against the vast blue sky.
“He looks hardly more than just grown up, when he talks and laughs like that,” was her inward reflection. It seemed as though he had dropped the burden that had been so heavy all these years, and, in this hour of friendliness, had gone back to the boyhood he had cast from him. ”

“ He might say what he chose, Beatrice was thinking, but he could not destroy her eagerness to see the place. The trail ran crookedly upward before her, disappeared in some dense pine woods, then slanted across the spur of the mountain and vanished again. Higher above rose the bare, rocky slopes of the tall peak that dominated the whole valley, Gray Cloud Mountain, on one of whose lower, rugged shoulders lay her land and her cabin. ”

“ There was only a little further for them to climb, for a long ridge of rock, shouldering up through the underbrush, cut off their ascent with its smooth wall that offered no foothold. Beside it the mountain-side fell away in a sheer drop of a hundred feet of precipice so that their retreat was blocked completely. A vast furry form rose through the bushes beside them, and the bear struck at them with her great paw. Nancy was too bewildered to understand how Dabney Mills came suddenly to be behind her, while she was thrust forward into the very face of their enemy. ”

“ The girls laughed in unison, it was so like what they had been saying.
“Beatrice,” her aunt went on suddenly, “Dr. Minturn told me about your falling over the cliff when you went to fetch him for me.”
“It was not much of a cliff,” returned Beatrice sheepishly, involuntarily rubbing the bruised elbow that was now the one memento of her misadventure. She had meant to keep that incident from Aunt Anna’s knowledge.
“It frightened me,” her aunt said, “but it opened my eyes to what you were willing to do for me. We are all of us changed and we are all beginning to understand one another better. ”

“ It was her elder sister who must decide what they were to do.
A long bank of cloud, seething, boiling, dark below but white at its upper edge, like surf breaking on a reef, was rolling over the summit of the rugged height opposite. The slow roar of the rising wind could be heard stirring the tree-tops in the forest below. Seeing Beatrice hesitate at the door of the tent, John Herrick broke forth with the desperate truth.
“There is snow coming. An hour of it will make the trail impassable for you. It will be cold as midwinter before night, and dark long before then. ”

“ She was to be delayed once more, however, by another visitor, one even more unwelcome than the first. She had dismounted to give a final jerk to the cinch of the girth and was about to swing into the saddle again to ride through the gate when she saw Thorvik come striding across the lowered bars. His face was red with the heat of his steep climb and the veins stood out on his forehead below his bristling tow-colored hair. Such a face she had never seen before, distorted with anger and flushed with evil hate. ”

“ The other man went to catch Nancy’s pony which had been turned loose before the storm and which now came, stamping and snorting, through the dark, drawn by the lantern light and by the desire for company of its own kind.
It was possible to carry the litter between two horses now, so that the doctor mounted, left one man to follow on foot, and ordered them all to press forward. A moving shadow in the darkness proved to be John Herrick’s black mare, who had managed to scramble to her feet and stood, with head drooping and one leg helpless, beside the path. ”

“ Beatrice asked desperately.
“No, they’d call me traitor if I did, for, though I’m a good friend to John Herrick, after all I’m one with those below and pledged to help them. We’ll be going back now. I’ll do the best I can. Here,” to Dabney, “get on your horse and come along. It’s just such know-nothings as you that let loose most of the mischief in the world.”
After they had gone, Beatrice still stood, clinging to the window-frame, stunned and bewildered. ”

“ Beatrice drew rein when they had breasted the first rise, and paused a moment to look back. The houses strewn haphazard across the slope below her made more of a town than she had thought. There was the packing-box railroad station where she and her sister, Nancy, and their Aunt Anna had arrived so recently; there was the house where they were living, a little larger than the others, but square, hideous, and unshaded like the rest.
“We mustn’t care for architecture,” Nancy had said when they first surveyed their dwelling rather ruefully, “when the Rocky Mountains begin in our back yard.” ”

“ John Herrick muttered, and lapsed into unconsciousness as they managed to drag him under the shelter of his tent. They propped up his injured arm on a roll of blankets, replenished the fire, and sat down on each side of him to wait until he should rouse himself again.
Although it was high noon the sky was strangely dark, and even under the sheltering wall of the tent the air was growing very cold. Heavy masses of cloud were sailing across the overcast sky, and the mountains were taking on a strange, somber color that was so unfamiliar as to be terrifying. ”

“ After supper, accordingly, he sat, on the grassy bank in the moonlight, with a girl on each side of him, and listened gravely to all that Beatrice, with occasional additions from Nancy, had to say. It was not easy for her to confess what harm she had done by her impulsive and over confident words, but she told her story bravely to the end.
“There is no use in the world,” the doctor commented cheerfully, “in spending time in vain remorse. We should decide what must be done now. It may be, the only thing is to wait.” ”

“ What could she do to make amends? She did not have to think long, but she turned from the window with a sigh that was nearer a groan. She must lay the whole matter before John Herrick, tell him the real truth of what she had said and what had been the result. He could never forgive her; of that she felt sure. She had put an end, all in a minute, to that new-found trust and friendliness that had been so hardly won. Yet it was the only thing to do.
Buck, who had been brought home a week before, sprang up from his straw bed at the sound of his mistress’s footsteps. ”

“ There were lamps showing in some of the windows of the Village, as she rode clattering up the street, and streaks of light dropping through the rickety shutters of a big, ramshackle building in the center of the town. A stream of men was moving up the steps of this place, which seemed, as its door swung open, to be a public meeting hall. Its benches were crowded with rough-looking men, and someone on a platform at the far end was addressing the close-packed audience. She turned Buck loose at her own door to find his way home, as she had been instructed by Dan O’Leary. ”