Microby's literary delinquency in no wise impaired her willingness to work. She had inherited none of her father's predilection toward eternal rest, and all day, side by side with Patty, she scraped, and scoured, and scrubbed, and washed, until the little cabin and its contents fairly radiated cleanliness. The moving in was great fun for the mountain girl. Especially the unpacking of the two trunks that resisted all efforts to lift them until their contents had been removed. But at last the work was finished even to the arrangement of dishes and utensils, the stowing of supplies, and the blowing up of the air mattress that replaced the musty hay of the sheep herder. And as the long shadows of mountains crept slowly across the little valley and began to climb the opposite slope, Patty stood in the door of her cabin and watched Microby mount the superannuated Indian pony and proceed slowly down the creek, her bare feet swinging awkwardly in the loops of rope that served as stirrups of her dilapidated stock saddle.
When horse and rider disappeared into a grove of cottonwoods, Patty's gaze returned to her immediate surroundings—her saddle-horse contentedly snipping grass, the waters of the shallow creek burbling noisily over the stones, the untidy scattering of tin cans, and the leaning panels of the old sheep corral. She frowned at the panels. "I'll just use you for firewood," she muttered. "And that reminds me that I've got to wake up to my responsibility as head of the household—even if the household does only consist of one bay cayuse, named Dan, and a tiny one-room cabin, and two funny little squirrel-tailed pack rats, and me." She reached for her brand new ax, and picking her way from stone to stone, crossed the creek, and attacked a sagging panel.
Patty Sinclair was no hot-house flower, and the hand that gripped the ax was strong and brown and capable. Back home she had been known to the society reporters as "an out-door girl," by which it was understood that rather than afternoon auction at henfests, she affected tennis, golf, swimming, and cross-country riding. She could saddle her own horse, and paddle a canoe for hours on end. Even the ax was no stranger to her hand, for upon rare occasions when her father had returned during the summer months from his everlasting prospecting, he had taken her to camp in the mountains, and there from the quiet visionary whom she loved more than he ever knew, she learned the ax, and the compass, and a hundred tricks of camp lore that were to stand her well in hand. Partly inherited, partly acquired through association with her father upon those never-to-be-forgotten pilgrimages to the shrine of nature, her love of the vast solitudes shone from her uplifted eyes as she stood for a moment, ax in hand, and let her gaze travel slowly from the sun-gilded peaks of the mountains, down their darkening sides, to the dusk-enshrouded reaches of her valley. "He used to watch the sun go down, and he never wearied at the wonder of it," she breathed, softly. "And then, as the darkness deepened and the bull-bats came wheeling overhead, and the whip-poor-wills began calling from the thickets, he would light his pipe, and I would cuddle up close to him, and the firelight would grow redder and brighter and the soft warm dark would grow blacker. The pine trees would lose their shapes and blend into the formless night and mysterious shadow shapes would dance to the flicker of the little flames. It was then he would talk of the things he loved; of quartz, and drift, and the mother lode; of storms, and bears, and the scent of pines; of reeking craters, parched deserts, ice-locked barrens, and the wind-lashed waters of lakes. 'And some day, little daughter,' he would say, 'some day you are going with daddy and see all these things for yourself—things whose grandeur you have never dreamed. It won't be long, now—I'm on the right track at last—only till I've made my strike.' Always—'it won't be long now.' Always—'I'm on the right track, at last.' Always—'just ahead is the strike'—that lure, that mocking chimera that saps men's lives! And now, he is—gone, and I am chasing the chimera." Salt tears stung her eyes and blurred the timbered slopes. "They said he was a—a ne'er-do-well. He became almost a joke—" the words ended in a dry sob, as the bright blade of the ax crashed viciously into the rotting panel. A few moments later she picked up an armful of wood, and retracing her steps, piled it neatly behind the stove. She lighted the fire, fetched a pail of water from the spring, and moved the picketed cayuse to a spot beside the creek where the grass was green and lush. She had intended after supper to study her map and familiarize herself with the two small photographs that were pinned to it. But, when the meal was over and the dishes washed and put away she was too sleepy to do anything but drop the huge wooden bar that the sheep herder had contrived to insure himself against a possible night attack from his enemies into its place and crawl into her bunk. How good it felt, she thought, sleepily—the yielding air mattress, and the soft, clean blankets, after the straw tick on the floor, and the course sour blankets in the Wattses' stuffy room.
Somewhere, way off in the hills, a wolf howled and almost before the sound had died away the girl was asleep.
CHAPTER VI
BETHUNE PAYS A CALL
It was past noon when Patty sank into the chair beside her table and glanced about her with a sigh of satisfaction. Warm June sunlight streamed through the open door and lay in a bright oblique patch upon the scrubbed floor. The girl's glance strayed past the door and rested with approval upon the little flat across the creek where a neat pile of panels replaced the broken sheep corral. She had spent hours in untwisting the baling wire with which they had been fastened to the posts and dragging them to the pile, and other hours in chopping a supply of firewood, and picking up the cans and broken bottles and pitching them into the deep ravine of a side coulee. Also she had built a little reservoir of rocks about her spring, and had found time to add a few touches to the interior of the cabin. "It's just as homey and cozy as it can be," she murmured, as her eyes strayed from the little window where the colored chintz curtain stirred lightly in the breeze, to the neatly arranged "dressing table" that she had contrived with the aid of four light packing boxes and a bit of figured cretonne. Another packing case, covered to match, served as a stool, and upon the wall above the table hung a small mirror. Four or five prints, looking oddly out of place, hung upon the dark log walls—pictures that had always hung in her room at Aunt Rebecca's, and which she had managed to crowd into one of the trunks. A fond imagination had pictured them adorning the walls of her "apartment" which was to be located in a spacious wing of the great Watts ranch house. "I don't care, I'm glad there wasn't any big ranch house," she muttered. "It's lots nicer this way, and I'm absolutely independent. We prospectors can't hope to be regular in our habits—and I've always wanted a house of my very own. Ten times better!" she exclaimed vehemently. "There won't be anybody to ask me every day or two if I've made my strike yet? And how much gold I brought back to-day? And all the other fool questions that seem so humorous to questioners and hearers, but which hurt and sting and rankle when you're sick at heart with disappointment, and gritting your teeth to keep up your courage and your belief in yourself. Oh I know! Daddy didn't know I knew, but I did—how it hurt when the village wits would slyly wink at each other as they asked their cruel questions. Even when I was a little girl I knew, and I could have killed them!" Her glance rested upon the canvas covered pack that lay in the corner at the foot of the bunk. "There are his things—his outfit, they call it here. I'm going to examine it." The sack of stiff oiled canvas, with its contents, was heavy, but the girl dragged it to the middle of the floor and squatting beside it, stared in dismay at the stout padlock and the chain that threaded a set of grommets. She was about to search for the key among the contents of her father's pockets which she had placed in the tray of her trunk, when her eye fell upon a thin slit close along the edge of the hem that held the grommets—a slit that, pulled wide, disclosed an aperture through which the contents of the sack could be easily removed but withal so cunningly contrived as to escape casual inspection. With an angry exclamation the girl stared at the gaping hole. "Someone has cut it!" she cried. "He doesn't seem to have taken much, though. It's about as full as it can be." She began hurriedly to remove the contents, piling them about her upon the floor. "I wonder if—if he left any papers, or note books, or maps, or things that would enable anyone to locate the claim? If he did," she muttered, peering into the empty sack, "they're gone, now."
One by one, she returned the belongings, handling them tenderly, now, and examining them lovingly, and many an article was returned to the sack, wet with its splash of hot tears. "Here's his coffee pot, and his plate, and frying pan, and his old pipe—" the pipe she did not replace, but put it with the other things in her trunk. "And here—why, it's a revolver and a belt of cartridges—like Vil Holland's! And a hat like his, too! And I thought he was a desperado because he wore them!" She jumped to her feet and, hurrying to the mirror, tried on the hat, pinching the crown into a peak, tilting it this way and that, and arranging and rearranging the soft roll brim. "It fits!" she cried, delighted as a child, and then with eyes sparkling, picked up the belt with its row of yellow cartridges and its ivory handled six gun dangling in the holster. Buckling the belt about her waist, she laughed aloud as the buckle tongue came to rest a full six inches beyond the last hole. "I'll look just as desperate as he does, now—except for his old jug. Daddy didn't have any jug, and I'm glad—that's where the difference is—it's the jug. But, I wish he had had one of those black horn effects for his scarf." She knotted the brilliant red scarf with its zigzag border of yellow, about her neck, and snatching a small pair of scissors from the dressing table, removed the heavy belt, and proceeded to bore a tongue hole at the point she had marked with her finger nail. So engrossed she became in the work, that she failed to hear the approach of horses' feet, and started violently at the sound of a voice from the doorway. "Permit me." The six shooter thudded to the floor, and sweeping the hat from his head, Monk Bethune crossed the room, and replaced it upon the table. He smiled as he noticed the scar left upon the thick leather by the scissor points; and repeated. "Permit me, please." He drew a penknife from his pocket, and picked up the belt. "A knife is so much better."