The Chalice Of Courage: A Romance of Colorado

by Cyrus Townsend Brady

There were three men in the room on that brilliant morning early in January something like a month after these adventures in the mountains which have been so veraciously set forth. Two of them were the brothers Maitland, the third was Newbold.

The shock produced upon Enid Maitland by the death of Armstrong, together with the tremendous episodes that had preceded it, had utterly prostrated her. They had spent the night at the hut in the mountains and had decided that the woman must be taken back to the settlements in some way at all hazards.

The wit of old Kirkby had effected a solution of the problem. Using a means certainly as old as Napoleon and the passage of his cannon over the Great St. Bernard—and perhaps as old as Hannibal!—they had made a rude sled from the trunk of a pine which they hollowed out and provided with a back and runners. There was no lack of fur robes and blankets for her comfort.

Wherever it was practicable the three men hitched themselves to the sled with ropes and dragged it and Enid over the snow. Of course for miles down the cañon it was impossible to use the sled. When the way was comparatively easy the woman supported by the two men, Newbold and Maitland, made shift to get along afoot. When it became too difficult for her, Newbold picked her up as he had done before and assisted by Maitland carried her bodily to the next resting place. At these times Kirkby looked after the sled.

They had managed to reach the temporary hut in the old camp the first night and rested there. They gathered up their sleeping bags and tents and resumed their journey in the morning. They were strong men, and, save for old Kirkby, young. It was a desperate endeavor but they carried it through.

When they hit the open trails the sledding was easy and they made great progress. After a week of terrific going they struck the railroad and the next day found them all safe in Maitland's house in Denver.

To Mr. Stephen Maitland his daughter was as one who had risen from the dead. And indeed when he first saw her she looked like death itself. No one had known how terrible that journey had been to the woman. Her three faithful attendants had surmised something, but in spite of all even they did not realize that in these last days she had been sustained only by the most violent effort of her will. She had no sooner reached the house, greeted her father, her aunt and the children than she collapsed utterly.

The wonder was, said the physician, not that she did it then but that she had not done it before. For a short time it appeared as if her illness might be serious, but youth, vigor, a strong body and a good constitution, a heart now free from care and apprehension and a great desire to live and love and be loved, worked wonders.

Newbold had enjoyed no opportunity for private conversation with the woman he loved, which was perhaps just as well. He had the task of readjusting himself to changed conditions; not only to a different environment, but to strange and unusual departures from his long cherished view points.

He could no longer doubt Armstrong's final testimony to the purity of his wife, although he had burned the letters unread, and by the same token he could no longer cherish the dream that she had loved him and him alone. Those words that had preceded that pistol shot had made it possible for him to take Enid Maitland as his wife without doing violence to his sense of honor or his self-respect. Armstrong had made that much reparation. And Newbold could not doubt that the other had known what would be the result of his speech and had chosen his words deliberately. Score that last action to his credit. He was a sensitive man, however; he realized the brutal and beastlike part he and Armstrong had both played before this woman they both loved, how they had battled like savage animals and how but for a lucky interposition he would have added murder to his other disabilities.