Leave Her to Heaven (7 page)

Harland after breakfast waited for Ellen to reappear, and he stayed at the lodge all day, refusing Robie's suggestion that they try the brooks; but she remained invisible till dinner time. Even then he had no chance to claim her, for when they rose from the table, she joined Tess and Lin at one end of the wide veranda, and they chattered together like children, flying into gales of laughter at their own words or at nothing. Harland, sitting with Glen and Mrs. Robie twenty feet away, wished he might join them, but would not without an invitation. The moon was waxing, and the canyon was paved with magic shadows that were broken by silver light patterns, and presently the two young people and Ellen strolled away down the trail together, and their voices came back softly through the night, blurred by the steady chuckle of the brook. After a time, at some distance, he heard them singing the nonsense songs of which children — young or old — never tire.
He was so abstracted that Robie noticed it and suggested they join the singers; but Harland, feeling that Robie had read his mind, reddened in the darkness; and he said he was sleepy and would go to bed, and did so.

At breakfast Robie proposed a day of fishing, and Harland agreed and hoped Ellen might go with them; but when Robie invited her to do so, she declined. ‘Lin says he and Charlie Yates and one of the cowboys want to try to locate a trail out of the box canyon up in the horse parks,' she explained. ‘I'm going with them.'

So to Harland the fishing was dull and profitless. Back at the lodge they found she had not returned, and they sat on the veranda for a while, and the sun sank lower in the west, till at last Glen said:

‘Look yonder!'

Ellen and Lin had appeared on the crest of the ridge above camp, and now they brought their horses plunging down the steep descent, refusing the trail, starting a small avalanche of tumbling loose stones, the horses as often as not sliding on their rumps, plunging through the pines and aspens which clad the slope, the riders with shrill cries urging them on. When they reached the level, Lin was one jump ahead; but as they raced toward the lodge, splashing through the brook, his hand lay too heavy on the reins, so that he twitched his horse off stride. Ellen passed him and came first to the goal triumphantly.

Lin had lost his hat, and from a deep scratch on Ellen's cheek fresh blood trickled, bright crimson against her warm dark skin. They were panting and laughing, and Lin explained to his father, while he gasped for breath:

‘We raced the last mile, Dad; took a straight line, up and down, over everything. I'd have beat her, too, but I swung too far south on the first pitch. I thought she was headed wrong.'

Glen laughed. ‘Ellen always knows exactly where she is, and where she's going,' he said drily.

‘She'll never beat me again,' Lin declared, and Ellen laughed and told him she could beat him whenever he chose. She was in
dungarees, hot and soiled from her long day in the saddle, that scratch on her cheek a red flame, her face as smudged and sweat-stained as the boy's; but she appeared for dinner in something light and soft and completely feminine, and the contrast beween her delicate and pulsing beauty now and the disordered hoyden she had been an hour before seemed to Harland so intoxicating that he became suddenly wary. When Robie next morning proposed an inspection trip to the upper pastures, he accepted, determined to put her out of his mind.

He and Robie rode all day, scouring every covert, starting the scattered bunches of cattle and inspecting them. Robie and Charlie decided it was time to brand and earmark the young stock, and settled on Tuesday for this task. When they returned to the lodge they found Ellen and Lin together on the veranda, and Robie asked: ‘What have you two been up to?'

‘Not a thing,' Ellen smilingly assured him. ‘We didn't feel like doing anything strenuous, so we've just been sitting here talking all day.'

Harland wondered whether he could spend a long day alone with any fourteen-year-old boy — unless of course it were Danny. Clearly Ellen liked boys, and understood them too. The youngster's eyes were shining as he watched her now.

That evening the moon was brighter, and the sky a cloudless bowl of paling stars. Lin went early to bed, and Ellen after a little rose and stood by the veranda rail. ‘I've sat still too long,' she said. ‘Mr. Harland, will you walk with me?'

Mrs. Berent — this was her first appearance at dinner for days — made a derisive sound. ‘Quoth the spider to the fly!' she said sharply; and everyone laughed in dutiful fashion, and Harland as he joined Ellen felt hot and angry; but when he was alone with her his anger passed. They followed the brook trail half a mile down the canyon to the lower bridge — the moon was bright enough to show them every pebble in the way — and they went at first in silence, till Harland said at last, remembering Danny:

‘You and Lin get along.'

‘I enjoy being with him,' she agreed.

‘I like him, too, but I can't imagine sitting and talking to him all day.'

Her tone was lightly quizzical. ‘ You're ever so dignified, aren't you? I think you're one of those men who wear a sort of mental beard. You try to seem more reserved and mature than you really are. Except the day you shot the turkey, I've never seen you really let go and throw back your head and laugh!'

“‘I' see ourselves as ithers see us,'” he quoted, amused. ‘I suppose I don't laugh much. Laughter is the luxury of the indolent, isn't it? Busy people don't have time to laugh.'

‘You're on vacation here, not busy at all!'

‘An author never has a vacation. He's a walking sponge, sopping up impressions till he's saturated, then going to his desk and squeezing them out on paper.'

‘I'd forgotten you're an author,' she confessed. ‘Probably that's why you like to make phrases. Of course I know you must have worked hard, to be so successful so young.' She laughed at him in a teasing way. ‘I suppose you think you must live up to your position, pretend a — gravity you do not always feel. And then of course you're terribly shy!'

Harland chuckled. ‘I wonder why men always feel a little flattered at being told they're shy.'

‘They like to feel they're — heroes,' she suggested smilingly. ‘Keeping a stiff upper lip against heavy odds.' They came to the bridge and stopped, leaning on the handrail, looking down into the clear water; and she cried: ‘Look! You can see the trout, even in the moonlight.'

The night air was damp and cool and fragrant. ‘And you can smell flowers,' he agreed. ‘All your senses seem so much keener here.'

‘I know,' she murmured. Her shoulder almost touched his, and he caught a dizzying hint of some faint scent she wore. She looked up at him and an overhanging bough between her and the moon laid a dark shadow across her nose and mouth and chin; and he thought again, as on that first day he saw her, of those mysterious beauties of the harem, who wear a veil which hides
all but their eyes as the shadow hid all but her eyes now; and he smiled and spoke of this, said the shadow on her face was like one of those veils.

‘Yashmaks? Is that what they call them?' he suggested. ‘Or it's like one of the handkerchiefs train robbers used to wear as masks, when this country out here was young.'

‘I suppose we all wear masks,' she assented, and turned, and he moved at her side; and as they walked slowly back toward the lodge she asked questions about Danny; asked where he was, and how long he had been ill, and how he progressed; and Harland answered her, and to speak of Danny woke tenderness in him, and it was in his tones, so that she said at last:

‘You love him almost too much, don't you?' Her words faintly disturbed him, seemed to be in some way he could not define a threat to Danny. She said: ‘I wish I knew him. I get along well with boys his age — and Lin's.'

That sense of danger to Danny, groundless though it was, made his tone dry. ‘I'm sure you do,' he assented. She looked at him in surprise and let her hand rest lightly on his arm, as though in reassurance; but he did not speak again and they came back to the lodge.

On the day set for the branding, they all except Ruth and Mrs. Berent went to watch the proceedings. Cowboys rode into the mass of milling cattle, dropped their ropes over the necks of the calves they selected, and dragged the bucking victims toward where little fires were burning and the irons were hot. Sometimes a cow followed her offspring, excited by its bawling, making alarmed or threatening movements till she was driven away. Lin helped to throw the calves, but he was not big enough to handle them easily, and his ambition sometimes outran his powers. When he tackled a lusty antagonist there might follow a protracted struggle, the calf bucking and bawling, Lin's feet as often in the air as on the ground, till he was spattered with blood and smeared
with dirt and grime — and completely happy. Harland, laughing with the others at the boy's activities, had an itching impulse to dismount and try his hand; but he could picture too clearly the ridiculous figure he would cut if he proved inept. He thought no one guessed his wish, but when they all rode homeward, descending from sunlit heights into the cool and shadowed canyons again, Ellen brought her horse beside his and said with a twinkling amusement in her tones:

‘You were just aching to try to throw a calf, weren't you? I could see it in your eyes.'

He grinned. ‘Yes, I wanted to; but I had sense enough not to try.'

‘I did it, last year,' she assured him. ‘It's a knack, that's all. Not hard. If there hadn't been an audience, you'd have chanced it.'

‘Another week here and I'd feel young enough to tackle the job, even with an audience.'

‘Another week, yes,' she echoed in a lower tone. ‘But we've only another day.' He looked at her in sharpened attention, but then the trail narrowed so that she moved ahead, and they went single file and spoke no more. Yet at dinner that evening — Harland found himself between Ellen and Tess — she referred again to their approaching departure.

‘It doesn't seem possible that we've been here almost two weeks,' she said. ‘And yet it seems too as though we'd always been here!'

‘It's been very pleasant,' he agreed.

She nodded and, her eyes downcast, she said softly: ‘I'll never forget these days.'

As she spoke she moved her hand in such a way that the movement caught his eye, and he looked at her hand on the table here beside him and felt a shock of surprise. For the ring — Quinton's ring, whom she would never marry — was not now on her finger! He stared at her hand so long that she looked at him inquiringly.

‘What is it?' she asked.

‘Have you lost your ring?'

She shook her head, her eyes holding his. ‘No. I took it off, forever, an hour ago.'

The moment was simple, yet there was an electric message in it. Meeting her glance, he read that message plain; and his eyes were the first to fall. He looked at the fork beside his plate and absently turned it over and turned it back again. She began to talk to Lin, across the table, and he tried to put his thoughts in order. He felt himself entangled, held in light yet tenacious bonds; and a stubborn anger that was half alarm took hold of him. When they rose from the table he excused himself. There was a letter he must write, he said; and he sought the sanctuary of his own quarters, admitting not even to himself that this was flight.

He tried to write to Danny, tried to read; but he could not, so he went to bed, yet not at once to sleep, for the message in her eyes a while ago had been clear beyond any doubting. Since his books began to succeed he had been more than once the target of flattering feminine glances, but never before had his own interest been in the slightest degree aroused. Ellen, he knew now, would marry him if he chose; but he had been sure for years that he would never marry anyone, and he was sure tonight that he would never marry Ellen. ‘We'd always be either on the peaks, sublimely happy, or in the bleak valleys of anger and despair,' he told himself; and he knew he would prefer to dwell in a pleasant intervale, one of those lovely spots which so often he had seen along a northern river, where the grassy meadows were dotted with tall graceful elms, and quiet deer came feeding, and a little brook sang near-by, and there were friendly hills all about, and perhaps a few mountains, not too closely seen, visible far away.

Yes, it was peace a man wanted. He reflected with an amused smile that Ruth was much more the sort of woman an author ought to marry: self-effacing, strong, serene, with a sense of humor which occasionally revealed itself in her pleasant eyes. But of course there was no question of his marrying Ruth!

For that matter, there was no question of his marrying anyone!
Ellen would marry him if he chose — but he did not so choose! If in the future he ever regretted this decision — he chuckled with resolute amusement at the thought — he could always write a book about her. He began to imagine such a book, to imagine the emotions and the actions of which such a woman might be capable, and the deeds to which she might provoke a man; and just as Ellen had once fallen asleep while reading a book he had written, SO he now fell asleep while he shaped in his mind a novel in which she should play the leading role. Thus he had his revenge.

Harland's decision, it seemed to him next day, had set him free. They all sat together at breakfast and for a while on the veranda afterward, with no plans for this last day here. Without avoiding Ellen, he nevertheless was able to ignore her, and not once that day were they alone together. He remembered his plan to go out to the ranch tomorrow by way of the canyon below the lodge, fishing on the way; and after dinner that evening he spoke to Robie about it. Robie readily promised to send a horse to meet him at the foot of the canyon.

‘You'll want to pack a lunch,' he advised. ‘It's only about ten miles, and the first two or three miles you've already fished; but it's slow going from there on. You'll be all day at it.'

Harland, with a malicious satisfaction in thus escaping Ellen, decided to tell no one his plan, to leave early the next morning before the others were about. Robie agreed to this.

‘Start as early as you like,' he assented. ‘Cook will put you up a lunch. I'll have Charlie go down to the head of the gorge with you, to bring back your horse.'

So in the morning before the others appeared, Harland was on his way. Robie had said he would sometimes need to wade; but boots were heavy walking, so he had chosen sneakers with, stout soles. He carried no fish basket, but wore a sleeveless fishing vest with many pockets. His lunch was stowed in one of them, and in another a roll of cheesecloth in which he would pack any particularly handsome trout which he decided to save.

When Charlie said good-bye to him and he was alone, Harland, felt a deep relief. The beauty of the mountains and the deep canyons, the long days in the open, the nights when the stars stooped low and the moon turned the shadowed world into a silvered glory, all had combined till now to create a stage setting hard to resist. Another week here and he might have lost his wits; but now, though he would see Ellen again tonight and tomorrow at the ranch, the spell she might have cast over him was broken. In frank gratefulness he knew he was secure.

He began to fish. Whenever he cast a fly, the greedy trout rushed to seize it; but they were mere hungry youngsters, and so numerous that after an hour the sport began to pall. Then in a pearl-gray swirl where bubbles from a little cascade made the water opaque, he saw a great trout rise to suck in some tiny insect floating in the boil. That was a fish worth keeping, and he decided to try for it. Dropping his fly where the big one had risen, he caught at once a little native, and another and another. Not till he had taken — and thrown back — seven of these small fry did he hook a respectable fish. This one may have been a foot long, and he caught and released four more of a pound or a little over. When the fish he had seen did rise at last, Harland saw its broad side and its wide tail as it turned. He lifted the tip and the trout was on.

He held it, giving it no play. It drowned quickly, and Harland, standing at the water's edge, stooped down, and after two false tries hooked his thumb into its gills and lifted it clear. With the rod in one hand, the fish in the other, he turned and climbed out on the ledge above where he had been standing; and he cracked the trout's neck and disgorged the hook and drew out his strip of cheesecloth to pack the great fish tenderly away. It would run, he judged, a fair three pounds; and he was admiring its fast fading colors, his ears filled with the roar of the water here beside him to the exclusion of all other sounds, when a shadow fell across the ledge on which he stood, and he looked up and saw Ellen, ten feet above him, between him and the sun.

After his first instant of surprise, he knew the shock of terror which a wild thing in a trap might feel.