The Hills of Desire

by Richard Aumerle Maher

Mary Donahue had indicated for Augusta the spring and the camping place. A high wall of hill stood up above the road on the right and out of the hill came the spring. On the river side of the road a fringe of trees screened the little flat promontory in the centre of which the wagon stood. Occasionally the purring of a swiftly driven automobile on the hard road within a few yards of them told them that the world still ran its hustling way, but they were as effectually hidden and private as if they had been securely housed in the middle of some vast estate of their own. And when the dishes were washed and everything put in shape for the night, Augusta brought blankets and they sat perched out on the very edge of the cliff looking down to where the "Central" trains thundered along some two hundred feet directly below them, and out across the broad, dark expanse of the river.

The Albany boat came gliding up the silent path of the river, her tiered, warmly lighted decks looking like a series of summer porches, the steady, even motion of the boat giving to the watchers on the hill the pleasant feeling that she was standing and that they were being gently carried past her.

The searchlight from the boat playing along the hill bank caught the figures of the boy and girl struck out in enormous silhouettes above the rim of the cliff and a merry cheer came up from the boat.

"Go on and mind your own business," scolded Jimmie. "We are no mooning young couple. And we are no subject for flash-light pictures. We are sober married folks, with our home in the background and a respectable horse in the middle distance."

The flashlight held them for a moment and then swung off overhead and went to peer into the windows of a moving train on the "West Shore." The band on the now receding boat broke into an old fashioned waltz tune which, sweetened and mellowed by the distance and the echoing chording of the hills, came up to them with the softness of a gentle, kindly dream of forgotten people.

The breaking contour of the river soon hid the lights of the boat, and Jimmie and Augusta were left to the great, solemn thinking silences about them, and to themselves, very content.

In the stark blackness of the closed wagon, in the middle of the night, Augusta found herself standing on the floor. She did not know how, or why, she had gotten out of the little string hammock that was her bed. But now she was shocked into full wakefulness. The wagon seemed to be moving and she gave a little scream of terror as she thought of the cliff and the terrible broken fall to the tracks below.

But the roar of the wind and swish of driven rain drowned her scream and she realized that what she thought was movement was just the swaying of the wagon body on its springs.

Reassured, and recovering quickly from her first fright, she stood swaying in the middle of the floor, her hand clutching the wooden side of Jimmie's bunk. He was sleeping quietly, very quietly it seemed, and Augusta had to lean her ear down almost to his lips to catch the stir of his breathing.

The chill of the water laden air caught her lightly clad body and she shivered as her hands went groping over Jimmie's bedding to see that he was all covered and dry. The tugging of the wind at the canvas threatened her now, not with the fear that it might overturn the wagon or drive it over the cliff but that it might rip a hole somewhere and drench Jimmie.