III
The tunnel, as Hammond had conceived, was short. Its sepulchral gloom ended on open air at the very edge of what seemed to have been the bed of a mountain torrent, and, though only the tiniest of streams trickled down the centre of it, its sides were glistening with moisture as though swept very recently by rushing waters. On the further side rose an unbroken wall of rock.
“Oh, please don’t venture any further, Mr. Hammond,” pleaded Josephine Stone tremulously.
“Not to-day,” agreed Hammond, “but I just want to drop down and have a look up this stream-bed. Unless I miss my guess it is the pass that leads into the Cup.”
Suiting action to his words, he let himself down to the first of a series of natural stone steps on the side of the stream-bed.
His foot no sooner touched the step than the tunnel back of them was flooded with a wicked green flash, blinding in its intensity. Simultaneously, from above, in the towering cliffs of Nannabijou came a single reverberating, gonglike note. Followed a low, vibrating rumble which merged into a thunderous roaring and crashing increasing every second in volume as if the whole mountainside were tumbling down upon them.
Hammond felt the girl grip convulsively at his coat sleeve as she cried out. He drew back into the tunnel.
There was a hiss and whine of flying rock particles; then a raging, white-foaming flood, filling the stream-bed almost to its brim, swept by like a monster thing of life. The empty, silent channel was transformed in the twinkling of an eye into a mountain torrent, absolutely impassable, ready to hurl to death any living thing in its path.
The way to the Cup of Nannabijou had been effectually sealed.
“Come,” cried the girl, “let us leave this terrible place.”
Hammond sprang to her side and they hurried out through the tunnel and down through the pass in the rock to the trail in the woods. Not until they had crossed the bridge over the creek did Josephine Stone pause to speak. Her face was pale and Hammond noted with alarm she was all a-tremble.
“Oh, that rushing water!” She gasped. “The lightning—and that man!”
“Man?”
“Yes. You didn’t see him. But I did—his face at the other end of the tunnel—in the lightning flash.”
“What did he look like? Where did he go?”
“He was an Indian—he seemed to fade out of sight like a spirit.”
There flashed on Hammond memory of what Sandy Macdougal had told him about an Indian shadowing him, but he said lightly: “Likely some idle Indian following us out of curiosity.”
Josephine Stone shook her head. “There is something wicked and mysterious about the Cup of Nannabijou,” she contended. “They say men have gone up there and never been seen again. I should not have let you attempt to get down into that stream-bed.”
“I might have had a narrow squeak if I had attempted it a minute or so sooner,” he reflected. Then: “By the way, if I may ask, how long do you expect to remain at Amethyst Island?”
“That I can hardly say—it all depends.” She hesitated. “It may be a couple of weeks and it may be more, but I hope to get away before the bitter weather sets in.”
Her face had suddenly become grave. He could sense that allusion to her business in this wild part of Canada, whatever it might be, distressed her, so he dropped the subject for less personal matters.
When they finally came out upon the lakeshore at the foot of the trail the girl stayed him with a hand upon his arm. “This is where we must part to-day,” she said looking anxiously along the beach.
He did not question her evident haste to leave him. “When may I come again?” he asked.
“Any time.” Softly. “To-morrow, if it’s nice.”
She was standing with her little white hand extended. He looked down into those wondrous blue orbs with their warm light—and was lost. His right hand closed over her fingers and his left went about her little shoulders and swept her to him.
She gasped frightenedly, suppressing a startled cry. “Not yet—not here,” she pleaded.
“That was unfair of me,” he started to say, but he did not release her. “I—”
“Not if you—you hurry.” The significance of her low whisper was tantalising.
His arms closed her to him. This time her face rose to his, the long, silky lashes drooping under those divinely arched brows. His lips found the warm, velvety caress of hers. He felt her tremble like a prisoned bird in his arms.
There came to them the sound of footfalls and a rasping of steel boot-hobs on the rock up the trail. The girl pressed him from her, wide, genuine alarm in her eyes. “You must go—quickly,” she urged.
“Then until we meet again—Josephine—good-bye,” he whispered.
“Good-bye—Louis.”
He flung off along the lakeshore trail. But at a sound he stopped in the screen of evergreens.
The low-hanging branches of the balsams parted at the mouth of the other trail and a great figure of a man, immaculate, faultless in his tartan mackinaw, corduroy riding breeches and knee-high white elk bush boots, stepped out upon the sands of the beach.
The newcomer doffed his soft narrow-brimmed stetson hat with the grace and courtliness of a knight of old. Acey Smith!
The deviltry that invariably lurked about the lumber-man’s pale, handsome face was masked in the blandest of smiles.
“Good-morning, Miss Stone.” His greeting had a low, rich quality of music in it that bespoke the cultured gentleman Hammond conceived him not to be. The magical effect of his presence on the young woman gave Hammond his first poignant twinge of jealousy.
“I hope I did not keep you waiting long,” she offered, going forward to meet him. “I was away for a long walk this morning.”
“Up the hill?”
She nodded.
His face grew grave. “I thought I told you you must not go up the hill alone,” he chided. “It’s dangerous country.”
“Oh, but I wasn’t alone.” She paused, but his face gave no inkling of surprise. “Only I over-stayed my time and I was afraid I kept you waiting.”
“I wasn’t in the least inconvenienced,” he replied. “Shall we go down to your favourite seat now?”
She tripped to his side and they sauntered along the beach toward Amethyst Island.
It was quite beneath Louis Hammond to play the part of eavesdropper, though a curiosity akin to jealousy as to what the Big Boss of the Nannabijou Camps and Josephine Stone could have in common was fairly burning him up. He swung resolutely away in the opposite direction—for the camp.
His thoughts were in a mighty whirl. But withal they were pleasant thoughts—deliriously pleasant.
He had held in his arms Josephine Stone, she whom he had dreamed of so long as the Girl with the High-arched Eyebrows—had kissed her—yes, had been kissed by her in return. Hammond was astounded over his own enterprise as a lover.
When such a woman suffered a man to kiss her on the mouth, he swore to himself, she must—must hold him in a regard higher than any other man. It therefore did not matter about Acey Smith.
Such a woman he could trust!
But had Hammond been a witness to what took place on the beach after he left he assuredly would not have been so easy of mind. He might have been turned white-hot with jealousy.
Or, being the sound philosopher that he was, in spite of his youth, he might have reasoned that under stress of certain circumstances the best of women will do strange things.