Tort Salvation

: Ridgway Of Montana

She must have fallen asleep there, for when she opened her eyes it was

day. Underneath her was a lot of bedding he had found in the cabin, and

tucked about her were the automobile rugs. For a moment her brain, still

sodden with sleep, struggled helplessly with her surroundings. She looked

at the smoky rafters without understanding, and her eyes searched the

cabin wonderingly for her maid. When she remembered, her first thought was<
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to look for the man. That he had gone, she saw with instinctive terror.



But not without leaving a message. She found his penciled note, weighted

for security by a dollar, at the edge of the hearth.



"Gone on a foraging expedition. Back in an hour, Little Partner," was all

it said. The other man also had promised to be back in an hour, and he had

not come, but the strong chirography of the note, recalling the resolute

strength of this man's face, brought content to her eyes. He had said he

would come back. She rested secure in that pledge.



She went to the window and looked out over the great white wastes that

rose tier on tier to the dull sky-line. She shuddered at the arctic

desolation of the vast snow-fields. The mountains were sheeted with

silence and purity. It seemed to the untaught child-woman that she was

face to face with the Almighty.



Once during the night she had partially awakened to hear the roaring wind

as it buffeted snow-clouds across the range. It had come tearing along the

divide with the black storm in its vanguard, and she had heard fearfully

the shrieks and screams of the battle as it raged up and down the gulches

and sifted into them the deep drifts.



Half-asleep as she was, she had been afraid and had cried out with terror

at this strange wakening; and he had been beside her in an instant.



"It's all right, partner. There's nothing to be afraid of," he had said

cheerfully, taking her little hand in his big warm one.



Her fears had slipped away at once. Nestling down into her rug, she had

smiled sleepily at him and fallen asleep with her cheek on her hand, her

other hand still in his.



While she had been asleep the snow-tides had filled the gulch, had risen

level with the top of the lower pane of the window. Nothing broke the

smoothness of its flow save the one track he had made in breaking a way

out. That he should have tried to find his way through such an untracked

desolation amazed her. He could never do it. No puny human atom could

fight successfully against the barriers nature had dropped so sullenly to

fence them. They were set off from the world by a quarantine of God. There

was something awful to her in the knowledge. It emphasized their

impotence. Yet, this man had set himself to fight the inevitable.



With a little shudder she turned from the window to the cheerless room.

The floor was dirty; unwashed dishes were piled upon the table. Here and

there were scattered muddy boots and overalls, just as their owner, the

prospector, had left them before he had gone to the nearest town to

restock his exhausted supply of provisions. Disorder and dirt filled the

rough cabin, or so it seemed to her fastidious eye.



The inspiration of the housewife seized her. She would surprise him on his

return by opening the door to him upon a house swept and garnished. She

would show him that she could be of some use even in such a primitive

topsy-turvy world as this into which Fate had thrust her willy-nilly.



First, she carried red live coals on a shovel from the fireplace to the

cook-stove, and piled kindling upon them till it lighted. It was a new

experience to her. She knew nothing of housework; had never lit a fire in

her life, except once when she had been one of a camping party. The smoke

choked her before she had the lids back in their places, but despite her

awkwardness, the girl went about her unaccustomed tasks with a light

heart. It was for her new-found hero that she played at housekeeping. For

his commendation she filled the tea-kettle, enveloped herself in a cloud

of dust as she wielded the stub of a broom she discovered, and washed the

greasy dishes after the water was hot. A childish pleasure suffused her.

All her life her least whims had been ministered to; she was reveling in a

first attempt at service. As she moved to and fro with an improvised

dust-rag, sunshine filled her being. From her lips the joy notes fell in

song, shaken from her throat for sheer happiness. This surely was life,

that life from which she had so carefully been hedged all the years of her

young existence.



As he came down the trail he had broken, with a pack on his back, the man

heard her birdlike carol in the clear frosty air. He emptied his chest in

a deep shout, and she was instantly at the window, waving him a welcome

with her dust-rag.



"I thought you were never coming," she cried from the open door as he came

up the path.



Her eyes were starry in their eagerness. Every sensitive feature was alert

with interest, so that the man thought he had never seen so mobile and

attractive a face.



"Did it seem long?" he asked.



"Oh, weeks and weeks! You must be frozen to an icicle. Come in and get

warm."



"I'm as warm as toast," he assured her.



He was glowing with exercise and the sting of the cold, for he had tramped

two miles through drifts from three to five feet deep, battling with them

every step of the way, and carrying with him on the return trip a box of

provisions.



"With all that snow on you and the pack on your back, it's like Santa

Claus," she cried, clapping her hands.



"Before we're through with the adventure we may think that box a sure

enough gift from Santa," he replied.



After he had put it down, he took off his overcoat on the threshold and

shook the snow from it. Then, with much feet stamping and scattering of

snow, he came in. She fluttered about him, dragging a chair up to the fire

for him, and taking his hat and gloves. It amused and pleased him that she

should be so solicitous, and he surrendered himself to her ministrations.



His quick eye noticed the swept floor and the

evanishment of disorder. "Hello! What's this clean through a fall

house-cleaning? I'm not the only member of the firm that has been working.

Dishes washed, floor swept, bed made, kitchen fire lit. You've certainly

been going some, unless the fairies helped you. Aren't you afraid of

blistering these little hands?" he asked gaily, taking one of them in his

and touching the soft palm gently with the tip of his finger.



"I should preserve those blisters in alcohol to show that I've really been

of some use," she answered, happy in his approval.



"Sho! People are made for different uses. Some are fit only to shovel and

dig. Others are here simply to decorate the world. Hard world. Hard work

is for those who can't give society anything else, but beauty is its own

excuse for being," he told her breezily.



"Now that's the first compliment you have given me," she pouted prettily.

"I can get them in plenty back in the drawing-rooms where I am supposed to

belong. We're to be real comrades here, and compliments are barred."



"I wasn't complimenting you," he maintained. "I was merely stating a

principle of art."



"Then you mustn't make your principles of art personal, sir. But since you

have, I'm going to refute the application of your principle and show how

useful I've been. Now, sir, do you know what provisions we have outside of

those you have just brought?"



He knew exactly, since he had investigated during the night. That they

might possibly have to endure a siege of some weeks, he was quite well

aware, and his first thought, after she had gone to sleep before the fire,

had been to make inventory of such provisions as the prospector had left

in his cabin. A knuckle of ham, part of a sack of flour, some navy beans,

and some tea siftings at the bottom of a tin can; these constituted the

contents of the larder which the miner had gone to replenish. But though

the man knew he assumed ignorance, for he saw that she was bubbling over

with the desire to show her forethought.



"Tell me," he begged of her, and after she had done so, he marveled aloud

over her wisdom in thinking of it.



"Now tell me about your trip," she commanded, setting herself tailor

fashion on the rug to listen.



"There isn't much to tell," he smiled "I should like to make an adventure

of it, but I can't. I just went and came back."



"Oh, you just went and came back, did you?" she scoffed. "That won't do at

all. I want to know all about it. Did you find the machine all right?"



"I found it where we left it, buried in four feet of snow. You needn't be

afraid that anybody will run away with it for a day or two. The pantry was

cached pretty deep itself, but I dug it out."



Her shy glance admired the sturdy lines of his powerful frame. "I am

afraid it must have been a terrible task to get there through the

blizzard."



"Oh, the blizzard is past. You never saw a finer, more bracing morning.

It's a day for the gods," he laughed boyishly.



She could have conceived no Olympian more heroic than he, and certainly

none with so compelling a vitality. "Such a warm, kind light in them!" she

thought of the eyes others had found hard and calculating.



It was lucky that the lunch the automobilists had brought from Avalanche

was ample and as yet untouched. The hotel waiter, who had attended to the

packing of it, had fortunately been used to reckon with outdoor Montana

appetites instead of cloyed New York ones. They unpacked the little hamper

with much gaiety. Everything was frozen solid, and the wine had cracked

its bottle.



"Shipped right through on our private refrigerator-car. That cold-storage

chicken looks the finest that ever happened. What's this rolled up in

tissue-paper? Deviled eggs and ham sandwiches AND caviar, not to speak of

claret frappe. I'm certainly grateful to the gentleman finished in ebony

who helped to provision us for this siege. He'll never know what a tip he

missed by not being here to collect."



"Here's jelly, too, and cake," she said, exploring with him.



"Not to mention peaches and pears. Oh, this is luck of a special brand! I

was expecting to put up at Starvation Camp. Now we may name it Point

Plenty."



"Or Fort Salvation," she suggested shyly. "Because you brought me here to

save my life."



She was such a child, in spite of her charming grown-up airs, that he

played make-believe with a zest that surprised himself when he came to

think of it. She elected him captain of Fort Salvation, with full power of

life and death over the garrison, and he appointed her second in command.

His first general order was to put the garrison on two meals a day.



She clapped her little hands, eyes sparkling with excitement. "Are we

really snow-bound? Must we go on half-rations?"



"It is the part of wisdom, lieutenant," he answered, smiling at her

enthusiasm. "We don't know how long this siege is going to last. If it

should set in to snow, we may be here several days before the relief-party

reaches us." But, though he spoke cheerfully, he was aware of sinister

possibilities in the situation. "Several weeks" would have been nearer his

real guess.



They ate breakfast at the shelf-table nailed in place underneath the

western window. They made a picnic of it, and her spirits skipped upon the

hilltops. For the first time she ate from tin plates, drank from a tin

cup, and used a tin spoon the worse for rust. What mattered it to her that

the teapot was grimy and the fryingpan black with soot! It was all part of

the wonderful new vista that had suddenly opened before her gaze. She had

awakened into life and already she was dimly realizing that many and

varied experiences lay waiting for her in that untrodden path beyond her

cloistered world.



A reconnaissance in the shed behind the house showed him no plethora of

firewood. But here was ax, shovel, and saw, and he asked no more. First he

shoveled out a path along the eaves of the house where she might walk in

sentry fashion to take the deep breaths of clear sharp air he insisted

upon. He made it wide enough so that her skirt would not sweep against the

snow-bank, and trod down the trench till the footing was hard and solid.

Then with ax and saw he climbed the hillside back of the house and set

himself to get as much fuel as he could. The sky was still heavy with

unshed snow, and he knew that with the coming of night the storm would be

renewed.



Came noon, mid-afternoon, the early dusk of a mountain winter, and found

him still hewing and sawing, still piling load after load in the shed. Now

and again she came out and watched him, laughing at the figure he made as

he would come plunging through the snow with his armful of fuel.



She did not know, as he did, the vital necessity of filling the lean-to

before winter fell upon them in earnest and buried them deep with his

frozen blanket, and she was a little piqued that he should spend the whole

day away from her in such unsocial fashion.



"Let me help," she begged so often that he trod down a path, made boots

for her out of torn gunny-sacks which he tied round her legs, and let her

drag wood to the house on a pine branch which served for a sled. She wore

her gauntlets to protect her tender hands, and thereafter was happy until,

detecting signs of fatigue, he made her go into the house and rest.



As soon as she dared she was back again, making fun of him and the

earnestness with which he worked.



"Robinson Crusoe" was one name she fastened upon him, and she was not

satisfied till she had made him call her "Friday."



Twilight fell austere and sudden upon them with an immediate fall of

temperature that found a thermometer in her blue face.



He recommended the house, but she was of a contrary mood.



"I don't want to," she announced debonairly.



In a stiff military attitude he gave raucous mandate from his throat.



"Commanding officer's orders, lieutenant."



"I think I'm going to mutiny," she informed him, with chin saucily in air.



This would not do at all. The chill wind sweeping down the canon was

searching her insufficient clothing already. He picked her up in his arms

and ran with her toward the house, setting her down in the trench outside

the door. She caught her startled breath and looked at him in shy, dubious

amazement.



"Really you " she was beginning when he cut her short.



"Commanding officer's orders, lieutenant," came briskly from lips that

showed just a hint of a smile.



At once she clicked her heels together, saluted, and wheeled into the

cabin.



From the grimy window she watched his broad-shouldered vigor, waving her

hand whenever his face was turned her way. He worked like a Titan,

reveling in the joy of physical labor, but it was long past dark before he

finished and came striding to the hut.



They made a delightful evening of it, living in the land of Never Was. For

one source of her charm lay in the gay, childlike whimsicality o her

imagination. She believed in fairies and heroes with all her heart, which

with her was an organ not located in her brain. The delicious gurgle of

gaiety in her laugh was a new find to him in feminine attractions.



There had been many who thought the career of this pirate of industry

beggared fiction, though, few had found his flinty personality a radiaton

of romance. But this convent-nurtured child had made a discovery in men,

one out of the rut of the tailor-made, convention-bound society youths to

whom her experience for the most part had been limited. She delighted in

his masterful strength, in the confidence of his careless dominance. She

liked to see that look of power in his gray-blue eyes softened to the

droll, half-tender, expression with which he played the game of

make-believe. There were no to-morrows; to-day marked the limit of time

for them. By tacit consent they lived only in the present, shutting out

deliberately from their knowledge of each other, that past which was not

common to both. Even their names were unknown to each other, and both of

them were glad that it was so.



The long winter evening had fallen early, and they dined by candle-light,

considering merrily how much they might with safety eat and yet leave

enough for the to-morrows that lay before them. Afterward they sat before

the fire, in the shadow and shine of the flickering logs, happy and

content in each other's presence. She dreamed, and he, watching her,

dreamed, too. The wild, sweet wonder of life surged through them, touching

their squalid surroundings to the high mystery of things unreal.



The strangeness of it was that he was a man of large and not very

creditable experience of women, yet her deep, limpid eyes, her sweet

voice, the immature piquancy of her movements that was the expression of

her, had stirred his imagination more potently than if he had been the

veriest schoolboy nursing a downy lip. He could not keep his eyes from

this slender, exquisite girl, so dainty and graceful in her mobile

piquancy. Fire and passion were in his heart and soul, restraint and

repression in his speech and manner. For the fire and passion in him were

pure and clean as the winds that sweep the hills.



But for the girl--she was so little mistress of her heart that she had no

prescience of the meaning of this sweet content that filled her. And the

voices that should have warned her were silent, busy behind the purple

hills with lies and love and laughter and tears.



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