There were days when he roamed for miles into the mountains; nights when he slept far out, as Paula was perhaps sleeping. Again, there were times when he slept in the cabin or at the mouth of the cavern, on the ledge.
Many a time, at dusk, he climbed to some peak to look down over the valley and distant ridges, hoping to see somewhere the blaze of her fire. Day after day he sought some other cave, some other distant cabin where, perhaps, she was hiding; where it might be that supplies had been cached against such a time as this. But the month went and another was well on the way, and his search was fruitless.
There came a soft night, throbbing with star radiance, glowing with the promise of a full moon, just rising beyond the eastern ridge, when Sheldon, tired and spiritless, came back into Johnny’s Luck from a long tramp to the north.
As he trudged back along the trail he had come to know so well he told himself that he was all kinds of a fool; that if he were not he’d put all the gold upon Buck’s back that a horse could stagger under, take upon his own shoulders all that he could carry, and go back to Belle Fortune and the world beyond.
But he knew that he would not go; that he would remain there until he found Paula or knew that she was dead. Lately he had come to fear that one of the innumerable possible accidents had befallen her.
Head down, weary and hopeless, he made his slow way toward the cabin. He was within a score of paces from the house when he stopped with a sharp exclamation, standing staring.
She was there. She had heard him, was before him to the door, had come out into the night to meet him. The man stood looking at her in bewilderment. For here was no Paula whom he knew; no brown maiden of the bearskin; no boyish slip in miner’s boots and clothes.
Oddly, the memory of something he had seen years ago and many miles from here, came into his mind vividly. He had once found one of those strange plants called the fire-flower which flourish in bleak desolation, companionless; a wonderful creation with burning, blood-red heart, which upon the barren sweep of lava-beds is at once a living triumph and a mystery of loveliness.
This girl, here alone in the land of abandoned ruins and lonely, desolate isolation, was like that.
The Fire Flower!