XVIII
HEIGHTS AND DEPTHS
If she had not known it before, Lucetta was to learn now that sickness of any sort is but a poor preparation for a battle of anxiety and endurance. On the one other occasion when she had been thrown upon her own resources Prime had been at least visibly present, and his helplessness had given her strength to fight off the terrors. But now she was alone and the terrors pressed thickly.
What if something had happened to the rabbit-hunter? She knew his utter lack of gun dexterity, and her terrified imagination conjured up harrowing pictures of the missing one lying wounded and helpless in some distant forest solitude, a victim of his unselfish effort to provide not for his own needs but for hers. The thought was a keen torture, but she could not banish it, and as the hours lengthened it threatened to drive her mad. There was nothing she could do save to keep the fire burning brightly, and this she did, breaking the monotony of the unnerving suspense from time to time by collecting dry wood to heap upon the blaze.
It was nearly midnight before the agony came to a sudden end. She was lying on the blanket pallet, with her face hidden in the crook of an elbow when she looked up and saw Prime standing beside her. It was not in human nature to undergo the revulsion from the depths of despair calmly.
"Donald!" she shrieked faintly, and forgetting her weakness, she sprang up and flung herself into his arms, sobbing in an ecstasy of relief.
He took it in good brotherly fashion, and if the fraternal attitude was not strictly sincere, it was made to appear so.
"There, there, little woman," he comforted, "you mustn't turn loose that way—you'll make yourself sick again. It's all over now, and I got your rabbit. See, here it is"—drawing it from his pocket and dangling it before her as if it were a new toy and she a child to be hastily diverted.
The diversion was not needed; she was freeing herself from the clasp of the remaining reassuring arm, and her cheeks were aflame.
"I didn't know I could be so silly! Please don't hold it against me, Donald," she begged. "If you only knew what I have been through since it grew dark! You'll forgive me and—and not remember it after we—after we——"
His weariness fell from him like a castoff garment. "Not if you don't want me to, Lucetta. But it was rather—er—pleasant, you know—to find that some one really cared enough about what had become of me to—to sort of forget herself for a moment."
The firelight was strong, and if he saw the adoring look that flashed into the gray eyes he was magnanimous enough, or modest enough, to pass it over to the sudden transition from despair to relief.
"It must have been something fierce for you," he went on; "but I did the best I could after I had been idiotic enough to get lost. Of course, since I had the gun with me, it was hours before I got sight of a rabbit; and even then I had to shoot at half a dozen of them before I could manage to hit one. By that time it was getting on toward sunset, and I had lost the brook which I had taken for a guide."
"I knew you would," she broke in. "But that wasn't the worst of it. I kept imagining that you had shot yourself accidentally, and every time I closed my eyes I could see you lying wounded and helpless!"
"You poor little worrier!" he pitied; "I knew you would be scared stiff if I didn't get back by dark, and in my hurry I bore too far to the left; a great deal too far, as it turned out, for when I reached the river I recognized the place. It was just this side of the grove where we were camping when the canoe was stolen."
"Horrors!" she gasped faintly. "And you have walked all that distance?"
"No," he grinned; "I ran a good part of it. When I came in a few minutes ago I was dead from the waist down; but I am all right now. You sit down and drink broth while I skin this rabbit. It's a juicy one—as fat as butter."
Fifteen minutes later the rabbit was stewing in the larger skillet, and Prime found time to ask Lucetta how she was feeling.
"Just plain hungry," she returned. "The fever hasn't come back any more, and if I ever have a medicine-chest of my own there will be boneset in it; great, big, smelly packages of it. Aren't you going to let me make a bit of bread to eat with that delicious gravy broth?"
"If it won't tire you too much," he consented, and at that he sat back and watched her while she mixed the bread, a housewifely little figure kneeling before the fire and patting the dough into a cake with hands that not all the rough work of the adventure weeks had made misshapen.
Somewhat beyond this they made their post-midnight meal, and were once more light-hearted and care-free. In the aftermath of it, when Prime had lighted his homemade pipe, they were even buoyant enough to plan for the future.
"We'll go on again to-morrow, shan't we?" the young woman assumed. "We can't be so very far from the towns now, with the river grown so large."
"I fancy we are nearer than we thought we were," Prime replied. "Over to the west, where I went this afternoon, there is another and still larger river. On its banks the timber has all been cut off and there is nothing but second and third growth. It is a safe bet that the two rivers come together a little below here, and if we are not stopped by our inability to cross the bigger river——"
"We are not going to be stopped," she prophesied hopefully. "I have a feeling that our troubles, or the worst of them, are all over."
Prime smiled. "The joyous reaction is still with you, but that is all right and just as it should be. We'll keep on going until we come to a town or a railroad, and then——"
She was sufficiently light-hearted to laugh with him when he glanced down at his torn and travel-worn clothes.
"And then we shall be arrested for tramps," she finished for him. "There is one consolation—neither of us will look any worse than the other."
"When we find a town we shall find clothes," he asserted. "Luckily we have English money to buy with."
"Would you—would you spend that money?" she asked, half fearfully.
"Why not? I'd hock the dead men themselves if we had them and there wasn't any other way to raise the wind. But I have some good, old-fashioned American money, too."
"I shall have to borrow of you when we get to where we can buy things," she said, with a sudden access of shyness that was new to him. "I had a purse with a little money in it that night at Quebec, but it disappeared."
"What is mine is yours, Lucetta; surely you don't have to be told that, at this stage of the game."
"Thank you," she said softly. "That goes with everything else you have done for me." Then, after a pause: "Will you tell the other girl about this—about this adventure of ours, Donald?"
"Don't you think I ought to tell her? Isn't it her right to know?"
She took time to consider.
"I'm not sure; women are singular about some things; they don't always understand. Perhaps they don't care to understand—too much. Then there is always the difficulty of explaining things just as they were. I could tell better if I knew the girl. Is she young?"
"Why, y-yes—some years younger than I am. But she is all kinds of sensible."
"Is she in New York?"
"No," he answered soberly. "She is not in New York."
She took it as a hint that she was not to ask any more questions about the girl and changed the subject abruptly.
"Shall you go and look for Mr. Grider after we find a railroad?"
"Not immediately. I shall first see you safe at home in your girls'-school town in Ohio," he assured her firmly.
"Oh, that won't be necessary," she protested. "I have travelled alone many times. And I have my return ticket; or I shall have it when I get back to Quebec."
"Nevertheless, I am going home with you," Prime insisted stubbornly. "It is up to me to see you out of this, and I shall make a job of it while I am about it. When it is done I shall come back to Canada to find out who shanghaied us and what for. And when I find the people who did it they are going to pay for it."
"Even if they include Mr. Grider?"
"Yes, by Jove! Even if the man higher up happens to be Watson Grider. I don't mind the kidnapping so much for myself, but the man doesn't live, Lucetta, who can make you go through what you have gone through in the past month and get away with it."
"I don't ask you to fight for me, Donald," she interposed. "And, besides, it hasn't been all bad—or has it?"
"We have agreed every little while, between jolts, that it hasn't. I'll go further now, and say that it is the finest, truest, happiest thing that has ever happened to me—hardships and all."
"You mean because it has given you new working material?"
"No; I wasn't thinking so much of that, though the new material, and more especially the new angle, are worth something, of course. But there are bigger consequences than these—for me—Lucetta." Then he broke off and plunged headlong into something else. "How much of an income should a man have before he can ask a girl to marry him? Does the Domestic Science course include any such practical data as that?"
"Is that all you are waiting for?" she inquired, ignoring his question. "Have you asked the girl?"
"No; I haven't asked her yet. And the money is the main thing that I shall be waiting for from this time on."
"I should say it would depend entirely upon the girl—upon what she had been used to."
"I think—she hasn't—been used to having things made so very soft for her," he answered rather uncertainly. "But she has at least one ambition that is going to ask for a good chunk of money at first, until she—until she gets ready to—to settle down."
"And that is——?"
The suggestive query was never answered.
"None o' that, now! Ye'll be puttin' yer hands up ower yer heids—the baith o' ye—or it'll be the waur f'r ye!"
As Prime laid his pipe aside and was about to speak, the dark backgrounding of shadows beyond the circle of firelight filled suddenly with a rush of men. Prime saw the glint of the firelight upon a pair of brown gun-barrels, and when he mechanically reached for his own weapon a harsh voice with a broad Scottish burr in it broke raggedly into the stillness.
"None o' that, now! Ye'll be puttin' yer hands up ower yer heids—the baith o' ye—or it'll be the waur f'r ye! I'd have ye know I'm an under-sheriff o' this deestrict, and ye'll be reseestin' the officers o' the law at yer eril!"