And Tappan recognized truth when he heard it. He was ready to do all in his power for this woman and believed she knew it. But words and acts of sentiment came hard to him.
“Are you goin’ to buy Jake’s ranch?” she asked.
“I don’t know. Is there any hurry?” returned Tappan.
“I reckon not. But I think I’ll settle that,” she said, decisively.
“How so?”
“Well, Jake hasn’t got any ranch,” she answered. And added hastily, “No clear title, I mean. He’s only homesteaded one hundred an’ sixty acres, an’ hasn’t proved up on it yet. But don’t you say I told you.”
“Was Jake aimin’ to be crooked?”
“I reckon. … An’ I was willin’ at first. But not now.”
Tappan did not speak at once. He saw the woman was in one of her brooding moods. Besides, he wanted to weigh her words. How significant they were! To-day more than ever she had let down. Humility and simplicity seemed to abide with her. And her brooding boded a storm. Tappan’s heart swelled in his broad breast. Was life going to dawn rosy and bright for the lonely prospector? He had money to make a home for this woman. What lay in the balance of the hour? Tappan waited, slowly realizing the charged atmosphere.
Madge’s somber eyes gazed out over the great void. But, full of thought and passion as they were, they did not see the beauty of that scene. But Tappan saw it. And in some strange sense the color and wildness and sublimity seemed the expression of a new state of his heart. Under him sheered down the ragged and cracked cliffs of the Rim, yellow and gold and gray, full of caves and crevices, ledges for eagles and niches for lions, a thousand feet down to the upward edge of the long green slopes and canyons, and so on down and down into the abyss of forested ravine and ridge, rolling league on league away to the encompassing barrier of purple mountain ranges.
The thickets in the canyons called Tappan’s eye back to linger there. How different from the scenes that used to be perpetually in his sight! What riot of color! The tips of the green pines, the crests of the silver spruces, waved about masses of vivid gold of aspen trees, and wonderful cerise and flaming red of maples, and crags of yellow rock, covered with the bronze of frostbitten sumach. Here was autumn and with it the colors of Tappan’s favorite season. From below breathed up the low roar of plunging brook; an eagle screeched his wild call; an elk bugled his piercing blast. From the Rim wisps of pine needles blew away on the breeze and fell into the void. A wild country, colorful, beautiful, bountiful. Tappan imagined he could quell his wandering spirit here, with this dark-eyed woman by his side. Never before had Nature so called him. Here was not the cruelty or flinty hardness of the desert. The air was keen and sweet, cold in the shade, warm in the sun. A fragrance of balsam and spruce, spiced with pine, made his breathing a thing of difficulty and delight. How for so many years had he endured vast open spaces without such eye-soothing trees as these? Tappan’s back rested against a huge pine that tipped the Rim, and had stood there, stronger than the storms, for many a hundred years. The rock of the promontory was covered with soft brown mats of pine needles. A juniper tree, with its bright green foliage and lilac-colored berries, grew near the pine, and helped to form a secluded little nook, fragrant and somehow haunting. The woman’s dark head was close to Tappan, as she sat with her elbows on her knees, gazing down into the basin. Tappan saw the strained tensity of her posture, the heaving of her full bosom. He wondered, while his own emotions, so long darkened, roused to the suspense of that hour.
Suddenly she flung herself into Tappan’s arms. The act amazed him. It seemed to have both the passion of a woman and the shame of a girl. Before she hid her face on Tappan’s breast he saw how the rich brown had paled, and then flamed.
“Tappan! … Take me away. … Take me away from here—from that life down there,” she cried, in smothered voice.
“Madge, you mean take you away—and marry you?” he replied.
“Oh, yes—yes—marry me, if you love me. … I don’t see how you can—but you do, don’t you?—Say you do.”
“I reckon that’s what ails me, Madge,” he replied, simply.
“Say so, then,” she burst out.
“All right, I do,” said Tappan, with heavy breath. “Madge, words don’t come easy for me. … But I think you’re wonderful, an’ I want you. I haven’t dared hope for that, till now. I’m only a wanderer. But it’d be heaven to have you—my wife—an’ make a home for you.”
“Oh—Oh!” she returned, wildly, and lifted herself to cling round his neck, and to kiss him. “You give me joy. … Oh, Tappan, I love you. I never loved any man before. I know now. … An’ I’m not wonderful—or good. But I love you.”
The fire of her lips and the clasp of her arms worked havoc in Tappan. No woman had ever loved him, let alone embraced him. To awake suddenly to such rapture as this made him strong and rough in his response. Then all at once she seemed to collapse in his arms and to begin to weep. He feared he had offended or hurt her, and was clumsy in his contrition. Presently she replied:
“Pretty soon—I’ll make you—beat me. It’s your love—your honesty—that’s shamed me. … Tappan, I was party to a trick to—sell you a worthless ranch. … I agreed to—try to make you love me—to fool you—cheat you. … But I’ve fallen in love with you.—An’ my God, I care more for your love—your respect—than for my life. I can’t go on with it. I’ve double-crossed Jake, an’ all of them. … Now, am I worth lovin’? Am I worth havin’?”
“More than ever, dear,” he said.
“You will take me away?”
“Anywhere—any time, the sooner the better.”
She kissed him passionately, and then, disengaging herself from his arms, she knelt and gazed earnestly at him. “I’ve not told all. I will some day. But I swear now on my soul—I’ll be what you think me.”
“Madge, you needn’t say all that. If you love me—it’s enough. More than I ever dreamed of.”
“You’re a man. Oh, why didn’t I meet you when I was eighteen instead of now—twenty-eight, an’ all that between. … But enough. A new life begins here for me. We must plan.”
“You make the plans an’ I’ll act on them.”
For a moment she was tense and silent, head bowed, hands shut tight. Then she spoke:
“To-night we’ll slip away. You make a light pack, that’ll go on your saddle. I’ll do the same. We’ll hide the horses out near where the trail crosses the brook. An’ we’ll run off—ride out of the country.”
Tappan in turn tried to think, but the whirl of his mind made any reason difficult. This dark-eyed, full-bosomed woman loved him, had surrendered herself, asked only his protection. The thing seemed marvelous. Yet she knelt there, those dark eyes on him, infinitely more appealing than ever, haunting with some mystery of sadness and fear he could not divine.
Suddenly Tappan remembered Jenet.
“I must take Jenet,” he said.
That startled her. “Jenet—Who’s she?”
“My
