138CHAPTER XVI
A FRIEND
A new spirit, a strange gladness, had come over Drusilla and parts which had been difficult became suddenly easy when she took up her work the next day; but when she walked out in the cool of the evening the sombrero and boy’s boots were gone. She wore a trailing robe, such as great ladies wear when they go to keep a tryst with knightly lovers, and she went up the trail to where Denver was working on the last of her father’s claims. He was up on the high cliff, busily tamping the powder that was to blast out the side of the hill, and she waited patiently until he had fired it and come down the slope with his tools.
“That makes four,” he said, “and I’m all out of powder.” But she only answered with a smile.
“I’ll have to wait, now,” he went on bluffly, “until McGraw comes up again, before I can do any more work.”
“Yes,” she answered and smiled again; a slow, expectant smile.
“What’s the matter?” he demanded and then his face changed and he fumbled with the strap of his canteen. And when he looked up his eyes met 139hers and there was no longer any secret between them.
“You can rest a few days, then,” she suggested softly, “I’d like to hear some of your records.”
“Yes–sure, sure,” he burst out hastily and they walked down the trail together. She went on ahead with the quick step of a dancer and Denver looked up at an eagle in the sky, as if in some way it could understand. But the eagle soared on, without effort and without ceasing, and Denver could only be glad. In some way, far beyond him, she had divined his love; but it was not to be spoken of–now. That would spoil it all, the days of sweet communion, the pretence that nothing had changed; yet they knew it had changed and in the sharing of that great secret lay the tie that should bind them together. Denver looked from the eagle to the glorious woman and remembered the prophecy again. Even yet he must beware, he must veil every glance, treat her still like a simple country child; for the seeress had warned him that his fate hung in the balance and she might still confer her hand upon another.
In the happy days that followed he did no more work, further than to sack his ore and ship it; but all his thoughts were centered upon Drusilla who was friendly and elusive by turns. On that first precious evening she came up with her father and inspected his smoke-blackened cave, and over his new records there sprang up a conversation that held him entranced for hours. She had been to the 140Metropolitan and the Boston Opera Houses and heard the great singers at their best; she understood their language, whether it was French or Italian or the now proscribed German of Wagner, and she listened to the records again and again, trying to steal the secret of their success. But through it all she was gentle and friendly, and all her old quarrelsomeness was gone.