"There is no connection between the two--in your mind?" she asked. She was looking away from him, and he could not see her face. But the question was eager, almost pathetically eager.
"a.s.suredly not," he denied promptly. "Otherwise----"
"Otherwise you wouldn"t be here to-night as my father"s guest, you would say. But others are not as charitable. Mr. Macpherson was one of them.
He charged all the trouble to us, though he could prove nothing. He said that if all the circ.u.mstances were made public--" She faced him quickly, and he saw that the beautiful eyes were full of trouble. "Can"t you see what would happen--what is likely to happen if Mr. Wingfield sees fit to make literary material out of all these mysteries?"
The Kentuckian nodded. "The unthinking, newspaper-reading public would probably make one morsel of the accidents and your father"s known antagonism to the company. But Wingfield would be something less than a man and a lover if he could bring himself to the point of making literary capital out of anything that might remotely involve you or your father."
She shook her head doubtfully.
"You don"t understand the artistic temperament. It"s a pa.s.sion. I once heard Mr. Wingfield say that a true artist would make copy out of his grandmother."
Ballard scowled. It was quite credible that the Lester Wingfields were lost to all sense of the common decencies, but that Elsa Craigmiles should be in love with the sheik of the caddish tribe was quite beyond belief.
"I"ll choke him off for you," he said; and his tone took its colour from the contemptuous under-thought. "But I"m afraid I"ve already made a mess of it. To tell the truth, I suggested to Miss Van Bryck at dinner that our camp might be a good hunting-ground for Wingfield."
"_You said that to Dosia?_" There was something like suppressed horror in the low-spoken query.
"Not knowing any better, I did. She was speaking of Wingfield, and of the literary barrenness of house-parties in general. I mentioned the camp as an alternative--told her to bring him down, and I"d--Good heavens! what have I done?"
Even in the softened light of the electric globes he saw that her face had become a pallid mask of terror; that she was swaying in the hammock.
He was beside her instantly; and when she hid her face in her hands, his arm went about her for her comforting--this, though Wingfield was chatting amiably with Mrs. Van Bryck no more than three chairs away.
"Don"t!" he begged. "I"ll get out of it some way--lie out of it, fight out of it, if needful. I didn"t know it meant anything to you. If I had--Elsa, dear, I love you; you"ve known it from the first. You can make believe with other men as you please, but in the end I shall claim you. Now tell me what it is that you want me to do."
Impulsively she caught at the caressing hand on her shoulder, kissed it, and pushed him away with resolute strength.
"You must never forget yourself again, dear friend--or make me forget,"
she said steadily. "And you must help me as you can. There is trouble--deeper trouble than you know or suspect. I tried to keep you out of it--away from it; and now you are here in Arcadia, to make it worse, infinitely worse. You have seen me laugh and talk with the others, playing the part of the woman you know. Yet there is never a waking moment when the burden of anxiety is lifted."
He mistook her meaning.
"You needn"t be anxious about Wingfield"s material hunt," he interposed.
"If Miss Dosia takes him to the camp, I"ll see to it that he doesn"t hear any of the ghost stories."
"That is only one of the anxieties," she went on hurriedly. "The greatest of them is--for you."
"For me? Because----"
"Because your way to Arcadia lay over three graves. That means nothing to you--does it also mean nothing that your life was imperilled within an hour of your arrival at your camp?"
He drew the big chair nearer to the hammock and sat down again.
"Now you are letting Bromley"s imagination run away with yours. That rock came from our quarry. There was a night gang getting out stone for the dam."
She laid her hand softly on his knee.
"Do you want to know how much I trust you? That stone was thrown by a man who was standing upon the high bluff back of your headquarters. He thought you were alone in the office, and he meant to kill you. Don"t ask me who it was, or how I know--I _do_ know."
Ballard started involuntarily. It was not in human nature to take such an announcement calmly.
"Do you mean to say that I was coolly ambushed before I could----"
She silenced him with a quick little gesture. Blacklock and Miss Cantrell were still pacing their sentry beat, and the major"s "H"m--ha!"
rose in irascible contradiction above the hum of voices.
"I have said all that I dare to say; more than I should have said if you were not so rashly determined to make light of things you do not understand," she rejoined evenly.
"They are things which I should understand--which I must understand if I am to deal intelligently with them," he insisted. "I have been calling them one part accident and three parts superst.i.tion or imagination. But if there is design----"
Again she stopped him with the imperative little gesture.
"I did not say there was design," she denied.
It was an _impa.s.se_, and the silence which followed emphasised it. When he rose to take his leave, love prompted an offer of service, and he made it.
"I cannot help believing that you are mistaken," he qualified. "But I respect your anxiety so much that I would willingly share it if I could.
What do you want me to do?"
She turned to look away down the maple-shadowed avenue and her answer had tears in it.
"I want you to be watchful--always watchful. I wish you to believe that your life is in peril, and to act accordingly. And, lastly, I beg you to help me to keep Mr. Wingfield away from Elbow Canyon."
"I shall be heedful," he promised. "And if Mr. Wingfield comes material-hunting, I shall be as inhospitable as possible. May I come again to Castle "Cadia?"
The invitation was given instantly, almost eagerly.
"Yes; come as often as you can spare the time. Must you go now? Shall I have Otto bring the car and drive you around to your camp?"
Ballard promptly refused to put the chauffeur to the trouble. It was only a little more than a mile in the direct line from the house on the knoll to the point where the river broke through the foothill hogback, and the night was fine and starlit. After the day of hard riding he should enjoy the walk.
Elsa did not go with him when he went to say good-night to Miss Cauffrey and to his host. He left her sitting in the hammock, and found her still there a few minutes later when he came back to say that he must make his acknowledgments to her father through her. "I can"t find him, and no one seems to know where he is," he explained.
She rose quickly and went to the end of the portico to look down a second tree-shadowed avenue skirting the mountainward slope of the knoll.
"He must have gone to the laboratory; the lights are on," she said; and then with a smile that thrilled him ecstatically: "You see what your footing is to be at Castle "Cadia. Father will not make company of you; he expects you to come and go as one of us."
With this heart-warming word for his leave-taking Ballard sought out the path to which she directed him and swung off down the hill to find the trail, half bridle-path and half waggon road, which led by way of the river"s windings to the outlet canyon and the camp on the outer mesa.
When he was but a little distance from the house he heard the _pad pad_ of soft footfalls behind him, and presently a great dog of the St.
Bernard breed overtook him and walked sedately at his side. Ballard loved a good dog only less than he loved a good horse, and he stopped to pat the St. Bernard, talking to it as he might have talked to a human being.
Afterward, when he went on, the dog kept even pace with him, and would not go back, though Ballard tried to send him, coaxing first and then commanding. To the blandishments the big retriever made his return in kind, wagging his tail and thrusting his huge head between Ballard"s knees in token of affection and loyal fealty. To the commands he was entirely deaf, and when Ballard desisted, the dog took his place at one side and one step in advance, as if half impatient at his temporary master"s waste of time.
At the foot-bridge crossing the river the dog ran ahead and came back again, much as if he were a scout pioneering the way; and at Ballard"s "Good dog! Fine old fellow!" he padded along with still graver dignity, once more catching the step in advance and looking neither to right nor left.
At another time Ballard might have wondered why the great St. Bernard, most sagacious of his tribe, should thus attach himself to a stranger and refuse to be shaken off. But at the moment the young man had a heartful of other and more insistent queryings. Gained ground with the loved one is always the lover"s most heady cup of intoxication; but the lees at the bottom of the present cup were sharply tonic, if not bitter.
What was the mystery so evidently enshrouding the tragedies at Elbow Canyon? That they were tragedies rather than accidents there seemed no longer any reasonable doubt. But with the doubt removed the mystery cloud grew instantly thicker and more impenetrable. If the tragedies were growing out of the fight for the possession of Arcadia Park, what manner of man could Colonel Craigmiles be to play the kindly, courteous host at one moment and the backer and instigator of murderers at the next? And if the charge against the colonel be allowed to stand, it immediately dragged in a sequent which was clearly inadmissible: the unavoidable inference being that Elsa Craigmiles was in no uncertain sense her father"s accessory.