From Sand Hill to Pine. Bret Harte
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himself, spread out the whole page, examined it carefully, and then a fatuous grin began slowly to extend itself over his whole face, invading his eyes and ears, until the heavy, harsh, dogged lines of his nostrils and jaws had utterly disappeared.
“B’gosh!” he said, “that’s square! Kin I keep it?”
“Certainly,” said Brice. “I brought it for you.”
“Is that all ye came for?” said Hiram, with sudden suspicion.
“No,” said the young man frankly. Yet he hesitated a moment as he added, “I would like to see Miss Flora.”
His hesitation and heightened color were more disarming to suspicion than the most elaborate and carefully prepared indifference. With their knowledge and pride in their relative’s fascinations they felt it could have but one meaning! Hiram wiped his mouth with his hand, assumed a demure expression, glanced at his wife, and answered:—
“She ain’t here now.”
Mr. Brice’s face displayed his disappointment. But the true lover holds a talisman potent with old and young. Mrs. Tarbox felt a sneaking maternal pity for this suddenly stricken Strephon.
“She’s gone home,” she added more gently—“went at sun-up this mornin’.”
“Home,” repeated Brice. “Where’s that?”
Mrs. Tarbox looked at her husband and hesitated. Then she said—a little in her old manner—“Her uncle’s.”
“Can you direct me the way there?” asked Brice simply.
The astonishment in their faces presently darkened into suspicion again. “Ef that’s your little game,” began Hiram, with a lowering brow—
“I have no little game but to see her and speak with her,” said Brice boldly. “I am alone and unarmed, as you see,” he continued, pointing to his empty belt and small dispatch bag slung on his shoulder, “and certainly unable to do any one any harm. I am willing to take what risks there are. And as no one knows of my intention, nor of my coming here, whatever might happen to me, no one need know it. You would be safe from questioning.”
There was that hopeful determination in his manner that overrode their resigned doggedness. “Ef we knew how to direct you thar,” said the old woman cautiously, “ye’d be killed outer hand afore ye even set eyes on the girl. The house is in a holler with hills kept by spies; ye’d be a dead man as soon as ye crossed its boundary.”
“Wot do YOU know about it?” interrupted her husband quickly, in querulous warning. “Wot are ye talkin’ about?”
“You leave me alone, Hiram! I ain’t goin’ to let that young feller get popped off without a show, or without knowin’ jest wot he’s got to tackle, nohow ye kin fix it! And can’t ye see he’s bound to go, whatever ye says?”
Mr. Tarbox saw this fact plainly in Brice’s eyes, and hesitated.
“The most that I kin tell ye,” he said gloomily, “is the way the gal takes when she goes from here, but how far it is, or if it ain’t a blind, I can’t swar, for I hevn’t bin thar myself, and Harry never comes here but on an off night, when the coach ain’t runnin’ and thar’s no travel.” He stopped suddenly and uneasily, as if he had said too much.
“Thar ye go, Hiram, and ye talk of others gabblin’! So ye might as well tell the young feller how that thar ain’t but one way, and that’s the way Harry takes, too, when he comes yer oncet in an age to talk to his own flesh and blood, and see a Christian face that ain’t agin him!”
Mr. Tarbox was silent. “Ye know whar the tree was thrown down on the road,” he said at last.
“Yes.”
“The mountain rises straight up on the right side of the road, all hazel brush and thorn—whar a goat couldn’t climb.”
“Yes.”
“But that’s a lie! for thar’s a little trail, not a foot wide, runs up from the road for a mile, keepin’ it in view all the while, but bein’ hidden by the brush. Ye kin see everything from thar, and hear a teamster spit on the road.”
“Go on,” said Brice impatiently.
“Then it goes up and over the ridge, and down the other side into a little gulch until it comes to the canyon of the North Fork, where the stage road crosses over the bridge high up. The trail winds round the bank of the Fork and comes out on the LEFT side of the stage road about a thousand feet below it. That’s the valley and hollow whar Harry lives, and that’s the only way it can be found. For all along the LEFT of the stage road is a sheer pitch down that thousand feet, whar no one kin git up or down.”
“I understand,” said Brice, with sparkling eyes. “I’ll find my way all right.”
“And when ye git thar, look out for yourself!” put in the woman earnestly. “Ye may have regular greenhorn’s luck and pick up Flo afore ye cross the boundary, for she’s that bold that when she gets lonesome o’ stayin’ thar she goes wanderin’ out o’ bounds.”
“Hev ye any weppin,—any shootin’-iron about ye?” asked Tarbox, with a latent suspicion.
The young man smiled, and again showed his empty belt. “None!” he said truthfully.
“I ain’t sure ef that ain’t the safest thing arter all with a shot like Harry,” remarked the old man grimly. “Well, so long!” he added, and turned away.
It was clearly a leave-taking, and Brice, warmly thanking them both, returned to the road.
It was not far to the scene of the obstruction, yet but for Tarbox’s timely hint, the little trail up the mountain side would have escaped his observation. Ascending, he soon found himself creeping along a narrow ledge of rock, hidden from the road that ran fifty yards below by a thick network growth of thorn and bramble, which still enabled him to see its whole parallel length. Perilous in the extreme to any hesitating foot, at one point, directly above the obstruction, the ledge itself was missing—broken away by the fall of the tree from the forest crest higher up. For an instant Brice stood dizzy and irresolute before the gap. Looking down for a foothold, his eye caught the faint imprint of a woman’s shoe on a clayey rock projecting midway of the chasm. It must have been the young girl’s footprint made that morning, for the narrow toe was pointed in the direction she would go! Where SHE could pass should he shrink from going? Without further hesitation he twined his fingers around the roots above him, and half swung, half pulled himself along until he once more felt the ledge below him.
From time to time, as he went on along the difficult track, the narrow little toe-print pointed the way to him, like an arrow through the wilds. It was a pleasant thought, and yet a perplexing one. Would he have undertaken this quest just to see her? Would he be content with that if his other motive failed? For as he made his way up to the ridge he was more than once assailed by doubts of the practical success of his enterprise. In the excitement of last night, and even the hopefulness of the early morning, it seemed an easy thing to persuade the vain and eccentric highwayman that their interests might be identical, and to convince him that his, Brice’s, assistance to recover the stolen greenbacks and insure the punishment of the robber, with the possible addition of a reward from the express company, would be an inducement for them to work together. The risks that he was running seemed to his youthful fancy to atone for any defects in his logic or his plans. Yet as he crossed the ridge, leaving the civilized highway behind him, and descended the narrow trail, which grew wilder at each step, his arguments seemed no longer so convincing. He now hurried forward, however, with a feverish haste to anticipate the worst that might befall him.
The trail grew more intricate in the deep ferns; the friendly little footprint had vanished in this primeval wilderness. As he pushed through the gorge, he could hear at last the roar of the North Fork forcing its way through the canyon that crossed the gorge at right angles. At last he reached its current, shut in by two narrow precipitous walls that were spanned five hundred feet above by the stage road over a perilous bridge. As he approached the gloomy canyon, he remembered that the river, seen from above, seemed