The Girl of the Golden West (15 page)

"Golly, it jest lifts you right up by your bootstraps to think
of it, don't it?"

Johnson was not smiling now, but sat gazing intently at her
through half-veiled lids.

"It does have that effect," he answered, the wonder of it all
creeping into his voice.

"Yet, p'r'aps he was ahead o' the game. P'r'aps—" She did not
finish the sentence, but broke out with fresh enthusiasm: "Oh, say,
I jest love this conversation with you! I love to hear you talk!
You give me idees!"

Johnson's heart was too full for utterance; he could only think
of his own happiness. The next instant the Girl called to Wowkle to
bring the candle, while she, still eager and animated, her eyes
bright, her lips curving in a smile, took up a cigar and handed it
to him, saying:

"One o' your real Havanas!"

"But I"—began Johnson, protestingly.

Nevertheless the Girl lit a match for him from the candle which
Wowkle held up to her, and, while the latter returned the candle to
the mantel, Johnson lighted his cigar from the burning match
between her fingers.

"Oh, Girl, how I'd love to know you!" he suddenly cried with the
fire of love in his eyes.

"But you do know me," was her answer, as she watched the smoke
from his cigar curl upwards toward the ceiling.

"Not well enough," he sighed.

For a brief second only she was silent. Whether she read his
thoughts it would be difficult to say; but there came a moment soon
when she could not mistake them.

"What's your drift, anyway?" she asked, looking him full in the
face.

"To know you as Dante knew the lady—'One hour for me, one hour
worth the world,'" he told her, all the while watching and loving
her beauty.

At the thought she trembled a little, though she answered with
characteristic bluntness:

"He didn't git it, Mr. Johnson."

"All the same there are women we could die for," insisted
Johnson, dreamily.

The Girl was in the act of carrying her cup to her mouth but put
it down on the table. Leaning forward, she inquired somewhat
sneeringly:

"Mr. Johnson, how many times have you died?" Johnson did not
have to think twice before answering. With wide, truthful eyes he
said:

"That day on the road to Monterey I said just that one woman for
me. I wanted to kiss you then," he added, taking her hand in his.
And, strange to say, she was not angry, not unwilling, but sweetly
tender and modest as she let it lay there.

"But, Mr. Johnson, some men think so much o' kisses that they
don't want a second kiss from the same girl," spoke up the Girl
after a moment's reflection.

"Doesn't that depend on whether they love her or not? Now all
loves are not alike," reasoned the man in all truthfulness.

"No, but they all have the same aim—to git 'er if they can,"
contended the Girl, gently withdrawing her hand.

Silence filled the room.

"Ah, I see you don't know what love is," at length sighed
Johnson, watching the colour come and go from her face.

The Girl hesitated, then answered in a confused, uneven
voice:

"Nope. Mother used to say, 'It's a tickling sensation at the
heart that you can't scratch,' an' we'll let it go at that."

"Oh, Girl, you're bully!" laughed the man, rising, and making an
attempt to embrace her. But all of a sudden he stopped and stood
with a bewildered look upon his face: a fierce gale was sweeping
the mountain. It filtered in through the crevices of the walls and
doors; the lights flickered; the curtains swayed; and the cabin
itself rocked uncertainly until it seemed as if it would be
uprooted. It was all over in a minute. In fact, the wind had died
away almost simultaneously with the Girl's loud cry of "Wowkle,
hist the winder!"

It is not to be wondered at, however, that Johnson looked
apprehensively about him with every fresh impulse of the gale. The
Girl's description of the storms on the mountain was fresh in his
mind, and there was also good and sufficient reason why he should
not be caught in a blizzard on the top of Cloudy Mountain!
Nevertheless, as before, the calm look which he saw on the Girl's
face reassured him. Advancing once more towards her, he stretched
out his arms as if to gather her in them.

"Look out, you'll muss my roses!" she cried, waving him back and
dodging Wowkle who, having cleared the table, was now making her
last trip to the cupboard.

"Well, hadn't you better take them off then?" suggested Johnson,
still following her up.

"Give a man an inch an' he'll be at Sank Hosey before you know
it!" she flung at him over her shoulder, and made straightway for
the bureau.

But although Johnson desisted, he kept his eyes upon her as she
took the roses from her hair, losing none of the picture that she
made with the light beating and playing upon her glimmering eyes,
her rosy cheeks and her parted lips.

"Is there—is there anyone else?" he inquired falteringly,
half-fearful lest there was.

"A man always says, 'who was the first one?' but the girl says,
'who'll be the next one?'" she returned, as she carefully laid the
roses in her bureau drawer.

"But the time comes when there never will be a next one."

"No?"

"No."

"I'd hate to stake my pile on that," observed the Girl, drily.
She blew up each glove as it came off and likewise carefully laid
them away in the bureau drawer.

By this time Wowkle's soft tread had ceased, her duties for the
night were over, and she stood at the table waiting to be
dismissed.

"Wowkle, git to your wigwam!" suddenly ordered her mistress,
watching her until she disappeared into the cupboard; but she did
not see the Indian woman's lips draw back in a half-grin as she
closed the door behind her.

"Oh, you're sending her away! Must I go, too?" asked Johnson,
dismally.

"No—not jest yet; you can stay a—a hour or two longer," the Girl
informed him with a smile; and turning once more to the bureau she
busied herself there for a few minutes longer.

Johnson's joy knew no bounds; he burst out delightedly:

"Why, I'm like Dante! I want the world in that hour, because,
you see, I'm afraid the door of this little paradise might be shut
to me after—Let's say this is my one hour—the hour that gave
me—that kiss I want."

"Go long! You go to grass!" returned the Girl with a nervous
little laugh.

Johnson made one more effort and won out; that is, he succeeded,
at last, in getting her in his grasp.

"Listen," said the determined lover, pleading for a kiss as he
would have pleaded for his very life.

It was at this juncture that Wowkle, silently, stealthily,
emerged from the cupboard and made her way over to the door. Her
feet were heavily moccasined and she was blanketed in a stout
blanket of gay colouring.

"Ugh—some snow!" she muttered, as a gust of wind beat against
her face and drove great snow-flakes into the room, fairly taking
her breath away. But her words fell on deaf ears. For, oblivious to
the storm that was now raging outside, the youthful pair of lovers
continued to concentrate their thoughts upon the storm that was
raging within their own breasts, the Girl keeping up the struggle
with herself, while the man urged her on as only he knew how.

"Why, if I let you take one you'd take two," denied the Girl,
half-yielding by her very words, if she but knew it.

"No, I wouldn't—I swear I wouldn't," promised the man with great
earnestness.

"Ugh—very bad!" was the Indian woman's muffled ejaculation as
she peered out into the night. But she had promised her lover to
come to him when supper was over, and she would not break faith
with him even if it were at the peril of her life. The next moment
she went out, as did the red light in the Girl's lantern hanging on
a peg of the outer door.

"Oh, please, please," said the Girl, half-protestingly,
half-willingly.

But the man was no longer to be denied; he kept on urging:

"One kiss, only one."

Here was an appeal which could no longer be resisted, and though
half-frightened by the tone of his voice and the look in his eye,
the Girl let herself be taken into his arms as she murmured:

"'Tain't no use, I lay down my hands to you."

And so it was that, unconscious of the great havoc that was
being wrought by the storm, unconscious of the danger that
momentarily threatened their lives, they remained locked in each
other's arms. The Girl made no attempt to silence him now or
withdraw her hands from his. Why should she? Had he not come to
Cloudy Mountain to woo her? Was she not awaiting his coming? To her
it seemed but natural that the conventions should be as nothing in
the face of love. His voice, low and musical, charged with passion,
thrilled through her.

"I love you," said the man, with a note of possession that
frightened her while it filled her with strange, sweet joy. For
months she had dreamed of him and loved him; no wonder that she
looked upon him as her hero and yielded herself entirely to her
fate.

She lifted her eyes and he saw the love in them. She freed her
hands from his grasp, and then gave them back to him in a little
gesture of surrender.

"Yes, you're mine, an' I'm yours," she said with trembling
lips.

"I have lived but for this from the moment that I first saw
you," he told her, softly.

"Me, too—seein' that I've prayed for it day an' night," she
acknowledged, her eyes seeking his.

"Our destinies have brought us together; whatever happens now I
am content," he said, pressing his lips once more to hers. A little
while later he added: "My darkest hour will be lightened by the
memory of you, to-night."

The clock, striking the hour of two, filled in a lull that might
otherwise have seemed to require conversation. For some minutes,
Johnson, raised to a higher level of exaltation, even, than was the
Girl, had been secretly rejoicing in the Fate that had brought them
together.

"It's wonderful that I should have found her at last and won her
love," he soliloquised. "We must be Fortune's children—she and
I."

The minutes ticked away and still they were silent. Then, of a
sudden, with infinite tenderness in his voice, Johnson asked:

"What is your name, Girl—your real name?"

"Min—Minnie; my father's name was Smith," she told him, her eyes
cast down under delicately tremulous lids.

"Oh, Minnie Sm—"

"But 'twa'n't his right name," quickly corrected the Girl, and
unconsciously both rose to their feet. "His right name was
Falconer."

"Minnie Falconer—well, that is a pretty name," commented
Johnson; and raising her hand to his lips he pressed them against
it.

"I ain't sure that's what he said it was—I ain't sure o'
anythin' only jest you," she said coyly, burying her face in his
neck.

"You may well be sure of me since I've loved—" Johnson's
sentence was cut short, a wave of remorse sweeping over him. "Turn
your head away, Girl, and don't listen to me," he went on, gently
putting her away from him. "I'm not worthy of you. Don't listen but
just say no, no, no, no."

The Girl, puzzled, was even more so when Johnson began to pace
the floor.

"Oh, I know—I ain't good enough for you !" she cried with a
little tremour in her voice. "But I'll try hard, hard… If you see
anythin' better in me, why don't you bring it out, 'cause I've
loved you ever since I saw you first, 'cause I knowed that you—that
you were the right man."

"The right man," repeated Johnson, dismally, for his conscience
was beginning to smite him hard.

"Don't laugh!"

"I'm not laughing," as indeed he was not.

"O' course every girl kind o' looks ahead," went on the Girl in
explanation.

"Yes, I suppose," he observed seriously.

"An' figgers about bein'—well, Oh, you know—about bein' settled.
An' when the right man comes, why, she knows 'im, you bet! Jest as
we both knowed each other standin' on the road to Monterey. I said
that day, he's good, he's gran' an' he can have me."

"I could have you," murmured Johnson, meditatively.

The Girl nodded eagerly.

There was a long silence in which Johnson was trying to make up
his mind to tear himself away from her,—the one woman whom he loved
in the world,—for it had been slowly borne in upon him that he was
not a fit mate for this pure young girl. Nor was his unhappiness
lessened when he recalled how she had struggled against yielding to
him. At last, difficult though it was, he took his courage in both
hands, and said:

"Girl, I have looked into your heart and my own and now I
realise what this means for us both—for you, Girl—and knowing that,
it seems hard to say good-bye as I should, must and will…"

At those clear words spoken by lips which failed so utterly to
hide his misery, the Girl's face turned pale.

"What do you mean?" she asked.

Johnson coloured, hesitated, and finally with a swift glance at
the clock, he briefly explained:

"I mean it's hard to go and leave you here. The clock reminded
me that long before this I should have been on my way. I shouldn't
have come up here at all. God bless you, dear," and here their eyes
came together and seemed unable to part,—"I love you as I never
thought I could…"

But at Johnson's queer look she hastened to inquire:

"But it ain't for long you're goin'?"

For long! Then she had not understood that he meant to go for
all time. How tell her the truth? While he pondered over the
situation there came to him with great suddenness the thought that,
perhaps, after all, Life never intended that she should be given to
him only to be taken away almost as suddenly; and seized with a
desire to hold on to her at any cost, he sprang forward as if to
take her in his arms, but before he reached her, he stopped
short.

"Such happiness is not for me," he muttered under his breath;
and then aloud he added: "No, no, I've got to go now while I have
the courage, I mean." He broke off as suddenly as he had begun, and
taking her face in his hands he kissed her good-bye.

Now, accustomed as was the Girl to the strange comings and
goings of the men at the camp, it did not occur to her to question
him further when he told her that he should have been away before
now. Moreover, she trusted and loved him. And so it was without the
slightest feeling of misgiving that she watched her lover quickly
take down his coat and hat from the peg on the wall and start for
the door. On the other hand, it must have required not a little
courage on the man's part to have torn himself away from this
lovely, if unconventional, creature, just as he was beginning to
love truly and appreciate her. But, then, Johnson was a man of no
mean determination!

Not daring to trust himself to words, Johnson paused to look
back over his shoulder at the Girl before plunging forth into the
night. But on opening the door all the multitudinous wild noises of
the forests reached his ears: Sounds of whispering and rocking
storm-tossed pines, sounds of the wind making the rounds of the
deep canyon below them, sounds that would have made the blood run
cold of a man more daring, even, than himself. Like one petrified
he stood blinded, almost, by the great drifts of snow that were
being driven into the room, while the cabin rocked and shook and
the roof cracked and snapped, the lights flickered, smoked, or sent
their tongues of fire upward towards the ceiling, the curtains
swayed like pendants in the air, and while baskets, boxes, and
other small furnishings of the cabin were blown in every
direction.

But it was the Girl's quick presence of mind that saved them
from being buried, literally, under the snow. In an instant she had
rushed past him and closed both the outer and inner doors of the
cabin; then, going over to the window, she tried to look through
the heavily frosted panes; but the falling of the sleet and snow,
striking the window like fine shot, made it impossible for her to
see more than a few inches away.

"Why, it's the first time I knew that it—" She cut her sentence
short and ended with: "That's the way we git it up here! Look!
Look!"

Whereupon, Johnson went over to the window and put his face
close to hers on the frosted panes; a great sea of white snow met
his gaze!

"This means—" he said, turning away from the window and meeting
her glance—"surely it doesn't mean that I can't leave Cloudy
to-night?"

"It means you can't get off the mountain to-night," calmly
answered the Girl.

"Good Lord!" fell from the man's lips.

"You can't leave this room to-night," went on the Girl,
decidedly. "Why, you couldn't find your way three feet from this
door—you a stranger! You don't know the trail anyway unless you can
see it."

"But I can't stay here?" incredulously.

"Why not? Why, that's all right! The boys'll come up an' dig us
out to-morrow or day after. There's plenty o' wood an' you can have
my bed." And with no more ado than that, the Girl went over to the
bed to remove the covers and make it ready for his occupancy.

"I wouldn't think of taking that," protested the man, stoutly,
while his face clouded over.

The Girl felt a thrill at the note of regard in his voice and
hastened to explain:

"I never use it cold nights; I always roll up in my rug in front
of the fire." All of a sudden she broke out into a merry little
laugh. "Jest think of it stormin' all this time an' we didn't know
it!"

But Johnson was not in a laughing mood. Indeed, he looked very
grave and serious when presently he said:

"But people coming up here and finding me might—"

The Girl looked up at him in blank amazement.

"Might what?" And then, while she waited for his answer, two
shots in close succession rang out in the night with great
distinctness.

There was no mistaking the nearness of the sound. Instantly
scenting trouble and alert at the possibility of danger, Johnson
inquired:

"What's that? What's that?"

"Wait! Wait!" came back from the Girl, unconsciously in the same
tone, while she strained her ears for other sounds. She did not
have long to wait, however, before other shots followed, the last
ones coming from further away, so it seemed, and at greater
intervals.

"They've got a road agent—it's the posse—p'r'aps they've got
Ramerrez or one o' his band!" suddenly declared the Girl, at the
same time rushing over to the window for some verification of her
words. But, as before, the wind was beating with great force
against the frosted panes, and only a vast stretch of snow met her
gaze. Turning away from the window she now came towards him with:
"You see, whoever it is, they're snowed in—they can't get
away."

Johnson knitted his brows and muttered something under his
breath which the Girl did not catch.

Again a shot was fired.

"Another thief crep' into camp," coldly observed the Girl almost
simultaneously with the report.

Johnson winced.

"Poor devil!" he muttered. "But of course, as you say, he's only
a thief."

In reply to which the Girl uttered words to the effect that she
was glad he had been caught.

"Well, you're right," said Johnson, thoughtfully, after a short
silence; then determinedly and in short jerky sentences, he went
on: "I've been thinking that I must go—tear myself away. I have
very important business at dawn—imperative business…"

The Girl, who now stood by the table folding up the white cloth
cover, watched him out of the corner of her eye, take down his coat
from the peg on the wall.

"Ever sample one o' our mountain blizzards?" she asked as he
slipped on his coat. "In five minutes you wouldn't know where you
was. Your important business would land you at the bottom of a
canyon 'bout twenty feet from here."

Johnson cleared his throat as if to speak but said nothing;
whereupon the Girl continued:

"You say you believe in Fate. Well, Fate has caught up with
you—you got to stay here."

Johnson was strangely silent. He was wondering how his coming
there to-night had really come about. But he could find no solution
to the problem unless it was in response to that perverse instinct
which prompts us all at times to do the very thing which in our
hearts we know to be wrong. The Girl, meanwhile, after a final
creasing of the neatly-folded cover, started for the cupboard,
stopping on the way to pick up various articles which the wind had
strewn about the room. Flinging them quickly into the cupboard she
now went over to the window and once more attempted to peer out
into the night. But as before, it was of no avail. With a shrug she
straightened the curtains at the windows and started for the door.
Her action seemed to quicken his decision, for, presently, with a
gesture of resignation, he threw down his hat and coat on the table
and said as if speaking to himself:

"Well, it is Fate—my Fate that has always made the thing I
shouldn't do so easy." And then, turning to the Girl, he added:
"Come, Girl, as you say, if I can't go, I can't. But I know as I
stand here that I'll never give you up."

The Girl looked puzzled.

"Why, what do you mean?"

"I mean," began Johnson, pacing the floor slowly. Now he stopped
by a chair and pointed as though to the falling snow. "Suppose we
say that's an omen—that the old trail is blotted out and there is a
fresh road. Would you take it with me a stranger, who says: From
this day I mean to be all you'd have me. Would you take it with me
far away from here and forever?"

It did not take the Girl long to frame an answer. Taking
Johnson's hand she said with great feeling:

"Well, show me the girl that would want to go to Heaven alone!
I'll sell out the saloon—I'll go anywhere with you, you bet!"

Johnson bent low over her hand and kissed it. The Girl's
straightforward answer had filled his heart to overflowing with
joy.

"You know what that means, don't you?" a moment later he
asked.

Sudden joy leapt to her blue eyes.

"Oh, yes," she told him with a world of understanding in her
voice. There was a silence; then she went on reminiscently:
"There's a little Spanish Mission church—I pass it 'most every day.
I can look in an' see the light burnin' before the Virgin an' see
the saints standin' round with glassy eyes an' faded satin
slippers. An' I often tho't what they'd think if I was to walk
right in to be made—well, some man's wife. It makes your blood like
pin-points thinkin' about it. There's somethin' kind o' holy about
love, ain't they?"

Johnson nodded. He had never regarded love in that light before,
much less known it. For many moments he stood motionless, a new
problem of right and wrong throbbing in his bosom.

At last, it being settled that Johnson was to pass the night in
the Girl's cabin, she went over to the bed and, once more, began to
make it ready for his occupancy. Meanwhile, Johnson, seated in the
barrel rocker before the fire, watched her with a new interest. The
Girl had not gone very far with her duties, however, when she
suddenly came over to him, plumping herself down on the floor at
his feet.

"Say, did you ever ask any other woman to marry you?" she asked
as she leaned far back in his arms.

"No," was the man's truthful answer.

"Oh, how glad I am! Take me—ah, take me I don't care where as
long as it is with you!" cried the Girl in an ecstasy of
delight.

"So help me, God, I'm going to…!" promised Johnson, his voice
strained, tense. "You're worth something better than me, Girl," he
added, a moment later, "but they say love works miracles every
hour, that it weakens the strong and strengthens the weak. With all
my soul I love you, with all my soul I—" The man let his voice die
out, leaving his sentence unfinished. Suddenly he called: "Why,
Min-Minnie!"