Shefford felt the blood burn his neck and face. He had pulled his tarpaulin closer to the trail, and his motive was as an open page to the keen Mormon.
"Why?" asked Shefford.
"There won"t be any Mormons riding in here soon--by night--to visit the women," replied Joe, bluntly. "Haven"t you figured there might be government spies watching the trails?"
"No, I haven"t."
"Well, take a hunch, then," added the Mormon, gruffly, and Shefford divined, as well as if he had been told, that warning word had gone to Stonebridge. Gone despite the fact that Nas Ta Bega had reported every trail free of watchers! There was no sign of any spies, cowboys, outlaws, or Indians in the vicinity of the valley. A pa.s.sionate grat.i.tude to the Mormon overcame Shefford; and the unreasonableness of it, the nature of it, perturbed him greatly. But, something hammered into his brain, if he loved one of these sealed wives, how could he help being jealous?
The result of Joe"s hint was that Shefford put off the hour of revelation, lived in his dream, helped the girl grow farther and farther away from her trouble, until that inevitable hour arrived when he was driven by acc.u.mulated emotion as much as the exigency of the case.
He had not often walked with her beyond the dark shade of the pinyons round the cottage, but this night, when he knew he must tell her, he led her away down the path, through the cedar grove to the west end of the valley where it was wild and lonely and sad and silent.
The moon was full and the great peaks were crowned as with snow. A coyote uttered his cutting cry. There were a few melancholy notes from a night bird of the stone walls. The air was clear and cold, with a tang of frost in it. Shefford gazed about him at the vast, uplifted, insulating walls, and that feeling of his which was more than a sense told him how walls like these and the silence and shadow and mystery had been nearly all of Fay Larkin"s life. He felt them all in her.
He stopped out in the open, near the line where dark shadow of the wall met the silver moonlight on the gra.s.s, and here, by a huge flat stone where he had come often alone and sometimes with Ruth, he faced Fay Larkin in the spirit to tell her gently that he knew her, and sternly to force her secret from her.
"Am I your friend?" he began.
"Ah!--my only friend," she said.
"Do you trust me, believe I mean well by you, want to help you?"
"Yes, indeed."
"Well, then, let me speak of you. You know one topic we"ve never touched upon. You!"
She was silent, and looked wonderingly, a little fearfully, at him, as if vague, disturbing thoughts were entering the fringe of her mind.
"Our friendship is a strange one, is it not?" he went on.
"How do I know? I never had any other friendship. What do you mean by strange?"
"Well, I"m a young man. You"re a--a married woman. We are together a good deal--and like to be."
"Why is that strange?" she asked.
Suddenly Shefford realized that there was nothing strange in what was natural. A remnant of sophistication clung to him and that had spoken.
He needed to speak to her in a way which in her simplicity she would understand.
"Never mind strange. Say that I am interested in you, and, as you"re not happy, I want to help you. And say that your neighbors are curious and oppose my idea. Why do they?"
"They"re jealous and want you themselves," she replied, with sweet directness. "They"ve said things I don"t understand. But I felt they--they hated in me what would be all right in themselves."
Here to simplicity she added truth and wisdom, as an Indian might have expressed them. But shame was unknown to her, and she had as yet only vague perceptions of love and pa.s.sion. Shefford began to realize the quickness of her mind, that she was indeed awakening.
"They are jealous--were jealous before I ever came here. That"s only human nature. I was trying to get to a point. Your neighbors are curious. They oppose me. They hate you. It"s all bound up in the--the fact of your difference from them, your youth, beauty, that you"re not a Mormon, that you nearly betrayed their secret at the trial in Stonebridge."
"Please--please don"t--speak of that!" she faltered.
"But I must," he replied, swiftly. "That trial was a torture to you. It revealed so much to me.... I know you are a sealed wife. I know there has been a crime. I know you"ve sacrificed yourself. I know that love and religion have nothing to do with--what you are.... Now, is not all that true?"
"I must not tell," she whispered.
"But I shall MAKE you tell," he replied, and his voice rang.
"Oh no, you cannot," she said.
"I can--with just one word!"
Her eyes were great, starry, shadowy gulfs, dark in the white beauty of her face. She was calm now. She had strength. She invited him to speak the word, and the wistful, tremulous quiver of her lips was for his earnest thought of her.
"Wait--a--little," said Shefford, unsteadily. "I"ll come to that presently. Tell me this--have you ever thought of being free?"
"Free!" she echoed, and there was singular depth and richness in her voice. That was the first spark of fire he had struck from her. "Long ago, the minute I was unwatched, I"d have leaped from a wall had I dared. Oh, I wasn"t afraid. I"d love to die that way. But I never dared."
"Why?" queried Shefford, piercingly.
She was silent then.
"Suppose I offered to give you freedom that meant life?"
"I--couldn"t--take it."
"Why?"
"Oh, my friend, don"t ask me any more."
"I know, I can see--you want to tell me--you need to tell."
"But I daren"t."
"Won"t you trust me?"
"I do--I do."
"Then tell me."
"No--no--oh no!"
The moment had come. How sad, tragic, yet glorious for him! It would be like a magic touch upon this lovely, cold, white ghost of Fay Larkin, transforming her into a living, breathing girl. He held his love as a thing aloof, and, as such, intangible because of the living death she believed she lived, it had no warmth and intimacy for them. What might it not become with a lightning flash of revelation? He dreaded, yet he was driven to speak. He waited, swallowing hard, fighting the tumultuous storm of emotion, and his eyes dimmed.
"What did I come to this country for?" he asked, suddenly, in ringing, powerful voice.
"To find a girl," she whispered.
"I"ve found her!"
She began to shake. He saw a white hand go to her breast.