She followed him in silence along the promontory. When they passed beyond the curve another man pushed out of the thicket into the trail. He ran with a gliding, half writhing motion to a point where a branch track, faint, little used, dipped over the Head. He took this course, twisting, swinging himself by low boughs, doubling where the path was lost in a precipitous gully, and so gained the beach. He crept under the bluff, rounding it and splashing ankle-deep in water, for the tide was running in, until he reached the rear balcony of the old hotel. He paused a moment, listening, with his beady eyes fixed on the walk stretching from the main entrance; then he laid the saddle-bags which he carried on the platform while he swung himself up. He waited another instant,—the sea broke with a gurgle among the piles; a passing gust set one of the doors creaking,—and picking up the empty bags he ran through the tap-room behind the bar. He found a key, strung on a cord around his neck, and fitted it in the new lock and opened the door. When he came out the saddle-bags were filled, and heavy, for he made his way up the promontory with difficulty. As he reached the summit the stillness was again broken by the neigh of a horse.
Forrest heard the sound faintly, while he helped Louise down the last pitch of the trail. But again he gave it little attention, for he noticed that the sawyer was the center of a small crowd at the corner of the cookhouse. The whole group turned to look at these two as they approached; curiously, as though they were strangers but just arrived.
She raised her face to Forrest with a mute question. He felt it, though his own gaze was directed straight ahead to the quiet harbor. The right hand at his side clenched, twice, and the line deepened to a great cleft between his brows. But he knew this crew and the futility of trying to put their rough conjectures down. To call the sawyer to account was to invite a wider notoriety, such as this woman could not endure. "I have been a fool," he told himself; "a blind fool. My God, the shame, the folly of it. And the most I can do is to keep it from her."
Aloud he said, and met that question in her face with his quiet smile, "I'm afraid that was a pretty steep grade for you; I hope the outlook up there paid you for the climb." His glance moved then over the stacked lumber of the mill yard, and he paused to say to a man in the crowd, "Dickman, that pile of scantling is listing; see to it in the morning, the first thing. And say, Johnson," he added, stopping again, "that new chain came today; I'll give it to you, now, at the store. You'll need it in the morning when you hoist that big red fir from the boom."
The rowboat was waiting for the Success outside the docks. The little steamer, veering from her course, slowed down to take Stratton aboard. He sprang lightly over the side and stood watching Mason pull away. Then he looked shoreward. He lifted his hat and smiled at the man and woman on the walk, and his lingering glance said, "Andromeda has found a Perseus."
CHAPTER XX
THE GRAND COUP
The Phantom was becalmed. The heated atmosphere was freighted with smoke that hung tissuelike along the shores of the Sound, showing only the ghostly lines of the forest. The deck and the white sails reflected, intensified the glare of the sky and the shimmering sea. The top of the cabin and the seats were sprinkled with fine white ashes, and flakes sifted slowly through the still air.
"Some rancher starts his brush pile burning, or a prospector fails to put out his camp-fire, and to pay for it, here is the whole country ablaze; it ought to be a state's prison crime." Kingsley pulled his cap over his cloudy brows and leaned back in his seat, tired and bored.
Stratton, to whom the remark was addressed, made no response. He was stretched full length on a blanket spread on a shady strip of the deck. Like the sea, he was motionless, and a silk handkerchief, laid over his face, outlined his features gruesomely.