CHAPTER XVIII
JACK SURRENDERS AT LAST
"The Stars Had Disappeared and Beyond the Universal Grayness There Was Now a Faint Rose Light"
IT was almost dawn when Frank Kent believed that he heard a faint answer to his last shouting. He was several miles from the outskirts of the Rainbow Ranch and in a neighborhood where he might least expect to find the girl he sought. But every acre of the ranch had been thoroughly gone over during the night, and still the men under Jim Colter's leadership were continuing the search along the track swept by the storm, but without finding a trace of Jack or the Indian boy or of the two horses which they were known to have been riding.
So, independently of the others, Frank had recently decided to try a new neighborhood, not because he had any faith in its being the right one, but because he felt that he must work alone. It was unendurable to continue longer hearing the other men declare that there was little chance of finding Jack or Carlos alive. For had they not been within the track of the sand storm they must certainly have returned home before this. Now Frank plunged on in the direction of the recent sound, although he had heard nothing a second time in reply to his continued calling.
Deep in his heart he was devoutly grateful that the dawn was finally breaking. The stars had disappeared, and beyond the universal grayness there was now a faint rose light. A moment before a western lark had risen before his aching eyes, poising, fluttering and then sailing straight overhead, singing its song of praise at the approach of the sun.
So Frank in a measure could behold the objects ahead of him, though among them he saw nothing to suggest Jacqueline Ralston. He was riding over flat country with little before him but sand and low scrub plants. And there were no signs of a horse's hoofs having lately struggled through it. Finally, however, Frank got down off his own horse and, stooping low, examined some faint tracings in the sands. He had not been trained to making observations of this sort and even with the best of scouts it is difficult to find footprints, in so fine and shifting a soil. Nevertheless when Frank straightened up again his face was less haggard and discouraged. For he had found a suggestion of a girl's riding boot printed in the sand and now and then in curious circles there were other such impressions.
With her head resting on a sand dune as though it were nature's pillow Frank at length came upon the girl. And even when within a few feet of Jack it was impossible to tell whether she was asleep or had fainted—or whether her silence and rigidity meant something worse. Yet the girl's expression was too worn and exhausted for the last great mystery; it had not the ineffable peace that comes after nature's final surrender. Even before he could touch her Frank had recognized this.
Quietly he began bathing her face with water poured upon his handkerchief from the water flask which he had carried all night in his pocket. Jack's own little water jug told its own story, since it was lying empty at her side, drained to the last drop. Then, when the girl's heavy lids fluttered slightly, Frank poured water between her scorched lips. Her first sign of consciousness was when she put up her hands to try and cling to his flask that she might have more. Yet the man drew it away, telling her to keep quiet and close her eyes for a few moments longer. Afterwards he allowed her another drink of water and then a few drops of beef tea from a smaller bottle, which Ruth Colter had given him.
Finally, with Frank's arm about her, Jack managed to sit up.
"I am so glad it was you who found me, Frank," she said a moment later. "All night I have thought you would come." She did not even try to walk or to explain what had happened, but let Frank lift her up on his horse, where she leaned against him in utter weakness and dependence, while the horse started slowly toward home.
The ride needs must be a long and fatiguing one even though aid reach them before their arrival at the Lodge. And Jack's pulse was still too faint to have her suffer further exhaustion. But after a while Frank leaned over, pressing his lips against the girl's heavy gold brown hair which had become unloosened from her long wandering and hung in two curled braids down her back.
"Are you glad I found you because you care for me, Jack?" he whispered, feeling that it was not altogether fair of him to ask such a question at such a time, and yet too impatient to wait.
The girl answered, "Yes" quite simply. A little later she added like a child: "Besides I knew you wouldn't scold, Frank. And of course I have been foolish and headstrong. I don't seem to know how to grow up. You'll ask Ruth and Jim not to make me explain to them until I have rested."
Frank smiled, but felt a curious lump in his throat—this new humility and dependence were so unlike Jack. Unconsciously the arm that had been holding her up closed more firmly about the girl's figure.
"Jack, Jack," he murmured, leaning low down until his lips were not far from her ear. "I have waited so long, I can wait no longer. You have just said that you cared for me, and for the second time I have believed you. Then you mean, you must mean that you are willing to be my wife."
For just an instant the girl's body quivered as though with a weakness beyond her power of control. The next moment she was shaking her head quietly and firmly, and although her companion could not see her face he heard her whisper, "No," with a measure of her old decision.
"Very well then," Frank returned just as firmly, "you shall never be troubled by my asking you that question again. As soon as possible I shall go home to England."
Once more the girl's shoulders trembled as if she had been struck an unexpected blow, but she made no reply. Frank realized that he was not playing fair and that she should not be troubled further.
For five or ten minutes more they rode on in complete silence, while Jack felt herself growing weaker and weaker. She was ashamed to be such a burden and yet only her own will power and Frank's arm were sustaining her.
A little later and Jack had again to be put down on the ground in a half fainting condition. By this time they had passed beyond the stretches of sandy desert and were in one of the outlying meadows of the Rainbow Ranch, not far from a branch of their creek. As Jack was almost unconscious Frank was able to bathe her face more comfortably, pushing back the tangled hair out of her eyes, that she might look more like the girl he loved. Then he shut his lips close together and his chin became squarer and his jaw firmer than ever Jacqueline's had been in her most obstinate days.
"I have just told a lie," he said to himself and yet rather grimly. "For of course I shall go on asking Jack to marry me until she finally consents. If she did not care for me that would be another matter and I should be a cad to annoy her. But there can't be any other barrier real or fancied that is big enough to come between us permanently."
Then, as Jack opened her eyes for the second time, and sat straight up as though vexed with her own weakness, Frank had a sudden recollection of Olive's strange message to him when he had first started on his search.
"Tell her it has all been a dreadful mistake and that there is nothing in the whole world that will make me so happy as her engagement to you."
"What could Olive's words mean? Who had made a mistake? Had Jack been under some cruelly false impression?" Frank was utterly mystified. Yet he held out his hand. "Come, dear, we will walk for a few minutes," he said gently, "and I will lead the horse. You will feel less stiff and tired with a little exercise. See, the daylight has come. How beautiful and fragrant the world is!"
Some change in Frank's voice, or in his manner—the girl did not know or care to think what the change might mean—made her take the hand held out so quietly toward her and hold it close in her own cold fingers. How exquisitely she could always be at peace with Frank, how perfectly he understood things without having them explained to him! After all, he was not going to be angry with her because of her unreasonable and unkind behavior. She had felt his anger a little more than she was willing to endure in her present state of exhaustion.
So Jack looked overhead with more of her accustomed sparkle and animation than she had yet showed. The sky was a radiant rose color, so deeply pink that it cast its reflection on the ground at her feet. They were near a group of trees and the birds were beginning to waken one another with mild reproaches and then sudden bursts of eloquent song.
"Frank," Jack began pensively enough, "I never saw a more wonderful dawn. But do you happen to have anything in your pocket more substantial than beef tea? I have not had anything to eat since yesterday at noon and I think perhaps I am dying of hunger."
With a laugh her companion let go her hand, drawing a package from his pocket. "Ruth gave me this at midnight along with the beef tea, but I have not been interested enough to see what was in it," he explained.
Greedily Jack tore open the bundle and had devoured a large chicken sandwich before good manners even suggested her sharing the luncheon with its owner. Afterwards Frank also confessed to being hungry, and so they walked on toward the Lodge like happy, runaway children, almost safe at home again.
Yet while he talked and laughed and ate Frank Kent was not forgetting Olive's words nor her final injunction to him. "Please tell her what I say when you first find her. Don't wait too long," she had begged.
"Jack, dear," Frank began casually in the midst of something else they had been discussing, "there is something I want to ask your forgiveness for before another five minutes have passed. Because I don't think I can hold out much longer. Back there on horseback when you were nearly dead with fatigue I was angry with you and told you that I never meant to ask you to marry me again. That was the most untruthful speech a man ever made! Because if you are too tired to listen I may have to wait until you have rested a little while, but not any longer. You know you care for me, dear. You are not the kind of a girl who would deceive a man by your words or your manner after all these years of friendship! There is some mystery that is keeping you from showing me your real feelings. I can't guess what it is. Yet Olive must think so too, for she told me to tell you that you had been making a dreadful mistake about something or other, heaven only knows what! And that our engagement would make her happier than anything in the world."
Jacqueline Ralston stood ankle deep in the rose-touched meadow grass with her straight-forward, honest gray eyes looking into the blue eyes of her companion.
"Did Olive tell you to say that to me? Did she really and truly seem to mean it?" she asked wonderingly.
Frank Kent nodded, not trusting himself to speak, nor wishing to lose an instant's vision of the girl's face, or an inflection of her voice.
Jack had been pale before; but now her face had flushed with such a look of exquisite gentleness and surrender, that in spite of all she had recently endured she had never been so beautiful.
Then it was like her to say with self-evident sincerity: "Of course you are right, Frank dear, I could not hide how much I cared for you even though I have done my best. It will be hard for me to leave the ranch and the people I love, but it would be harder to stay on here—without you!"