CHAPTER XXV.
JANE’S RESOLVE
The lunch was prepared, the potatoes had cooked quite to pieces, but still the children did not return. Jane was becoming terrorized. She was startled when there came a sharp rapping at the front door. Running into the living-room, her hand pressed to her heart, she saw standing there a tall, uncouth-looking mountaineer. She believed, and rightly, that it was the trapper who lived near them.
He began at once: “Dan Abbott came to our place nigh an hour ago sayin’ the young ’uns was lost. Meg and me wasn’t to home, but my woman said she’d tell whichever of us come fust and we’d help hunt. Ben’t they back yet?”
Jane shook her head. “Oh, Mr. Heger,” she cried, “what do you suppose has happened to them? Do you suppose they have been harmed?”
It was unusual for the kind face of the man to look hard, but at that moment it did so. His voice was stern. “Dan Abbott said ’twas you as let them young ’uns go to hunt for him, not knowin’ whar he was. Wall, Miss, I’ll tell ye this: If ’tis they ever come back alive, yo’d better keep them young ’uns a little closer to home. Thar’s no harm if they stay on the road. Nothin’s likely to happen thar, but ’way off in the wilderness places, wall, thar’s no tellin’ what may have happened. I’ll bid you good day.”
Here was still another of her fellow men who scorned her. Of course, Dan had not told him the whole truth, that she had said she hoped she never again would see the children. Oh, why had she said it? She knew, even in her anger, that she had not meant it.
She sank down on the porch and buried her face in her hands. Would this torture never end? The odor of something burning reached her and, leaping to her feet, she ran to the kitchen and pushed back the kettle of potatoes that had started to scorch. There was no one to eat the lunch she had spread on the table and at two o’clock she began to mechanically put things back in their places, when she heard a step on the porch. Running into the living-room, hardly able to breath in her great anxiety, she saw her brother stagger in and fall as one spent from a long race on the cot-bed they were using as a day lounge. For a moment he lay white and still, his eyes closed. Jane knelt at his side and held his limp hand. “Brother. Brother Dan,” she sobbed, “you are worn out. Oh, won’t you stay here and let me be the one to hunt? I would give my life to save the children. Dan, brother, open your eyes and tell me that you forgive me and believe me.” A tightening of the clasp of the limp hand was the only answer she received. Jane, rising, brought water, cold from the brook, and when she returned the lad was sitting up, his elbows on his knees, his face bent on the palms of his hands.
He looked at her as she handed him the goblet of water and when he saw the lines of suffering in her face, his heart, that had been like adamant, softened.
“Sister,” he took her hand as he spoke, “I well know we none of us mean what we say in anger, and yet the results are often just as disastrous. I have sent word to the Packard ranch for them to be on the lookout for our little ones. Luckily, high on the mountain, I came upon the cabin of a forest ranger where there was a telephone to Redfords and Mrs. Bently said she would relay the message to Mr. Packard.” Then he rose, coughing in the same racking way that he had on the train. “Now I am rested, I must start out again.”
Jane clung to him, trying to detain him. “Oh, brother, please eat something. I had lunch all ready. Even yet it is warm.” The lad smiled at her wanly, but shook his head. “I couldn’t swallow food, and there are springs wherever I go.”