For a minute or two he waited, looking at the hole and picturing to himself a lonely, heart-sick little girl coming here year after year to forget the drunken coarseness of her father and the profane nagging of her mother. A disappointing place, this prosaic cavity; not at all the picturesque grotto his fancy had painted when, in idle moments, his mind had reverted to her confession of a “playhouse” where she took refuge by her “own self.” Yet somewhere within it must be a real cavern among the sunken rocks, where, forgetful of the raw crudity of her life, she had lain many a time gazing star-eyed at the figments of her dreams. Did she ever, he wondered, dream of a Prince Charming who should bear her over the hills and far away into a world of lights and laughter, music and perfume?
Perhaps her untutored imagination could not even vision such a world. Perhaps her soul, like her body, was hemmed in by the eternal rim of the rock bowl—that soul which yet groped vaguely upward with its unconscious artistry, its vision of dead men who shook the hills with their tramping, its effort to place on paper the beauty of the green pool in Coxing Kill. Perhaps Lou Brackett’s dictum was inexorably true: Them that’s borned into the Traps lives into the Traps and dies into the Traps.
Recalling himself, he dropped to his knees, dubiously sized up the passage, sank prone, and began worming his way inward.
Once inside, he found that it was not so black as it had looked. Somewhere ahead, light came faintly up from a lower level. The tunnel slanted at an easy grade and curved a little to the right. For the first few feet he found her surmise correct—it was a tight passage for him. But, after inching along in growing distaste for the squeezing discomfort of the hole, he found the rock walls veering aside and lifting above him. A few feet more, and he had room to rise to all fours. The dim light grew a shade stronger. He found his face hanging over a drop, below which was a steep, curving chute.
Swinging his feet foremost, he went over and down, sliding a little but holding himself by hand-grips along the wall. He stopped on the level lip of another drop.
Before him widened an oblong cavern, fairly well lighted by rifts in the stony walls and by another entrance at its farther end—a sizable hole at the floor-level, evidently leading downward. It looked quite dry, except for a tiny trickle of water down one side; its floor was well carpeted with leaves, obviously brought in from above; and in the walls were irregular natural shelves, most of which held small treasures of childhood—a cracked cup or two, worn-out cooking utensils—such things as a little girl might have brought there to make it a real “playhouse.” And some six feet away was the little girl herself—Marion—with her wild Steve.
“H’are ye, Hamp,” the youth hoarsely greeted him—and clutched at his chest. For a second or two he set his teeth; then, throwing one sleeve across his mouth to muffle the sound, coughed repeatedly. When he lowered the arm his lips were drawn. Dumbly he rubbed his chest.
“Howdy, partner,” Douglas returned, surveying him keenly and noting his haggard face and hollow eyes. “Sore inside?”
“Got cold,” nodded Steve. “Can’t stop this ’ere cough a-rackin’. Can’t sleep good. An’ ther’s a misery onto my left lung. Lot o’ pains like red-hot needles. Got to breathe short. Cough nigh rips the lung outen me. Makes too much noise too. If them dicks hearn it——”
He spoke in short whispers, his hand rubbing mechanically, as if it had done the same thing at frequent intervals for many hours. The man above regarded him gravely. Though strong of lung himself, he knew what pleurisy was; knew, too, that there was such a thing as pleuropneumonia. The lad below looked to be rapidly heading into something of the kind. He certainly was not the healthy young fellow he had been that day in Uncle Eb’s barn.