The altitude was lower, the country one of forested plateaus and canyons, the water pure, the wild game abundant. Why had he not considered that? How infinitely preferable the fragrant, sun-flocked pine forests and the amber brooks to this rock-ribbed region from the bowels of which poured only bitterness! He had been mad to imagine that toil on a bleak, hard range might constitute his salvation.
Nevertheless Paul divined that wherever he went the same problem would present itself, the same shadow would keep step on his trail, the same naked shingle of sorrow would be his beat. Unless he could find something—not a place, nor any labor, nor an anchor to hold to, but some new meaning that would make life worth living!
“I am getting somewhere,” he muttered aloud. “That cowboy—did he hit upon it?”
To alleviate his own trouble by taking up the burden of others! What a splendid prospect! But it was beyond Paul Manning. He was not good enough nor Christian enough to accept such a role. Never again would he pass by a fellow man in distress without lending a kindly hand, but to devote his whole future to benevolence—that was beyond him. What had he wanted before this blow had struck him? To travel, to experience, to know adventure, to achieve, to write the old dreams, to live and to love.
To live and to love! But it had been love which had desolated him. The strangeness of his nature loomed out at that moment; the recollection of more than one direct ancestor who had been ruined by an unrequited passion; the memory of his adoration for his mother; the fact that he recognized a strong feminine strain of tenderness in himself. But perhaps he had made too much of his infatuation for Amy. He was still young and healthy—at least in body, if not in spirit. He would forget in time. And then the old bitterness and despair swept over him. How could any kind of love ever be possible for him again? That was the insupportable truth.
So profound was Paul’s absorption in his self-analysis that he paid no heed to a thumping sound at his door until he was sharply disrupted by a vociferous baby voice: “Da!”
Suddenly he became aware of the fact that the baby he had heard crying a short time ago had entered his door and was crawling over the floor toward the bed.
“Well! Say, youngster, where you going?” burst out Paul, at once amused and concerned.
The baby kept on with a singleness of purpose. He might have been a year or more old, and he was most decidedly pretty, though not robust. Reaching the bed he caught Paul’s leg and elevated himself to a standing position and then, with the manifest delight of conquest, he crowed lustily.
Paul lifted him up to his knee, feeling a queer little thrill at the tight grip of tiny hands. “You’re lost, doggone you. And what am I to do about it?”
Soft footfalls outside were accompanied by an anxious voice: “Tommy . . . Tommy, where are you?”
Paul did not reply as promptly as might have been required of him, and in another moment the quick muffled footsteps entered the corridor. A young girl peered in through the doorway and seeing Paul with his charge, she uttered a little cry of relief and surprise. Then she entered.
“Oh! The little rascal! I hope he didn’t disturb you,” she exclaimed, and the contralto voice was the one that Paul had heard crooning to the baby.
“Very pleasantly so,” replied Paul with a smile. “I don’t remember being so popular before.”
“It was kind of you to take him up,” she said, and coming forward she bent to lift the baby from Paul’s lap. The baby had other ideas about that. He clung to his refuge, and a slight struggle ensued before the girl could lift the child into the hollow of her elbow. A vivid blush directed Paul’s closer attention to her face.
“I—I did not know anyone was here—in this room, or I should not have let him out,” she said.
“My name is Paul Manning,” he replied. “I am going to be a partner of Belmont’s in the cattle business.”
“Partner?” she echoed.
“Yes. And live here.”
“Live—here!” she ejaculated incredulously.
By this time Paul had discerned that she was more than pretty, though it took an effort to remove his gaze from her eyes. They were large, and either their dark topaz hue or their expression gave them a singular, haunting beauty. For the rest she had a pale oval face, sweet lips youthful in color and curve but old in wistful sadness, a broad low forehead crowned by rippling bronze hair with glints of gold in it.
“Yes, I’m going to live here for a while, until I can build a shack,” replied Paul. “I’m a quiet fellow and won’t be in the way.”
“Oh! I—I didn’t mean . . . You’re welcome indeed. I was just surprised.”
“You are Belmont’s daughter?” asked Paul.
“No.”
“A relative, then—or maybe working here?” went on Paul kindly, wanting her to introduce herself.
“Working, yes. But I’m neither relative nor servant.”
That low reply, tinged with bitterness, effectually checked Paul’s curiosity. But he could scarcely restrain his gaze. And suddenly he became aware of a change in the girl, as well as of the fact that he had not really observed her closely.
“I am Louise—this baby’s mother—and Belmont’s wife,” she added, a curious dullness about her tone.
“My God! Mother? Why, you can’t be more than a child,” Paul blurted out, shocked out of his composure.
“I am seventeen years old,” she said, and if one were to judge from the solemnity of her tone she might have been fifty.
“Seventeen!” echoed Paul, and became suddenly silent, aware of an expression of intolerable pain in her eyes. It was the look of a hunted fugitive—of a creature fettered, tortured. It called to the depths of Paul, in a message that fired his pity and understanding. Through his own suffering he comprehended her trouble. She was literally a child, already forced into motherhood. If she had told him in so many words that her life was despair and misery—that she hated the father of this baby—the fact could not have been any clearer. And he had raved about his own loss, his own grief! What did he know of either?
Paul stared up at her, conscious of the significance of the moment, released and delivered from the past, flooded by the appalling reality of life; while she stared down at him, wide-eyed and wondering, somehow transfixed by what she had suddenly felt in this stranger but could not understand.
CHAPTER 2
Paul sat upon the porch of the trading post awaiting the arrival of Kintell and Belmont, who were expected that morning.
The noonday hour in the sun was pleasantly warm. Paul had discovered a penchant for getting out of the bleak desert wind into the lee of a wall. A new direction of thought made all his hours increasingly acceptable. Everything pertaining to this trading post and to the cattle project he had entered was now a matter of interest. He tried in vain to dismiss the disquieting suspicion as to why he had changed his mind about building a little cabin up on the ridge. The lame reasons he gave himself would not down. And the dismaying moment came when he confessed that the girl Louise presented the most tragic, baffling and fascinating study he had ever known.
