"Yes. I ought to get here soon after dark. Will you meet me?"
She gave him a quick, shy little nod, turned without shaking hands, and struck out for the cabin. All through the day happiness flooded her heart. While she waited on Holt or helped Mrs. Olson cook or watched Swift.w.a.ter while he put up the tent in the lee of the cabin, little s.n.a.t.c.hes of song bubbled from her lips. Sometimes they were bits of old Irish ballads that popped into her mind. Once, while she was preparing some coffee for her patient, it was a stanza from Burns:--
"Till a" the seas gang dry, my dear, And the rocks melt wi" the sun: I will luve thee still, my dear, While the sands o" life shall run."
She caught old Gideon looking at her with a queer little smile on his weather-tanned face and she felt the color beat into her cheeks.
"I haven"t bought a wedding present for twenty years," he told her presently, apropos of nothing that had been said. "I won"t know what"s the proper thing to get, Miss Sheba."
"If you talk nonsense like that I"ll go out and talk to Mr. Swift.w.a.ter Pete," she threatened, blushing.
Old Gid folded his hands meekly. "I"ll be good--honest I will. Let"s see. I got to make safe and sane conversation, have I? Hm! Wonder when that lazy, long-legged, good-for-nothing horsethief and holdup that calls himself Gordon Elliot will get back to camp."
Sheba looked into his twinkling eyes suspiciously as she handed him his coffee. For a moment she bit her lip to keep back a smile, then said with mock severity,--
"Now, I _am_ going to leave you to Mrs. Olson."
When sunset came it found Sheba on the trail. Swift.w.a.ter Pete had offered to go with her, but she had been relieved of his well-meant kindness by the demand of Holt.
"No, you don"t, Pete. You ain"t a-goin" off gallivantin" with no young lady. You"re a-goin" to stay here and fix my game laig for me. What do you reckon Miss Sheba wants with a fat, lop-sided lummox like you along with her?"
Pete grew purple with embarra.s.sment. He had not intended anything more than civility and he wanted this understood.
"Hmp! Ain"t you got no sense a-tall, Gid? If Miss Sheba"s h.e.l.l-bent on goin" to meet Elliot, I allowed some one ought to go along and keep the dark offen her. "Course there ain"t nothin" going to harm her, unless she goes and gets lost--"
Sheba"s smile cooled the heat of the stage-driver. "Which she isn"t going to do. Good of you to offer to go with me. Don"t mind Mr. Holt.
Everybody knows he doesn"t mean half of what he says. I"d be glad to have you come with me, but it isn"t necessary at all. So I"ll not trouble you."
Darkness fell quickly, but Sheba still held to the trail. There was no sign of Elliot, but she felt sure he would come soon. Meanwhile she followed steadily the tracks he had made earlier in the day.
She stopped at last. It was getting much colder. She was miles from the camp. Reluctantly she decided to return. Then, out of the darkness, he came abruptly upon her, the man whom she had come out to meet.
Under the magic of the Northern stars they found themselves again in each other"s arms for that brief moment of joyful surprise. Then, as it had been in the morning, Sheba drew herself shyly away.
"They are waiting supper for us," she told him irrelevantly.
He did not shout out his happiness and tell her to let them wait.
For Gordon, too, felt awed at this wonderful adventure of love that had befallen them. It was enough for him that they were moving side by side, alone in the deep snows and the biting cold, that waves of emotion crashed through his pulses when his swinging hand touched hers.
They were acutely conscious of each other. Excitement burned in the eyes that turned to swift, reluctant meetings. She was a woman, and he was her lover. Neither of them dared quite accept the fact yet, but it filled the background of all their thoughts with delight.
Sheba did not want to talk of this new, amazing thing that had come into her life. It was too sacred a subject to discuss just yet even with him.
So she began to tell him odd fancies from childhood that lingered in her Celtic heart, tales of the "little folk" that were half memories and half imaginings, stirred to life by some odd a.s.sociation of sky and stars. She laughed softly at herself as she told them, but Gordon did not laugh at her.
Everything she did was for him divinely done. Even when his eyes were on the dark trail ahead he saw only the dusky loveliness of curved cheek, the face luminous with a radiance some women are never privileged to know, the rhythm of head and body and slender legs that was part of her individual, heaven-sent charm.
The rest had finished supper before Gordon and Sheba reached camp, but Mrs. Olson had a hot meal waiting for them.
"I fixed up the tent for the women folks--stove, sleeping-bags, plenty of wood. Touch a match to the fire and it"ll be snug as a bug in a rug,"
explained Swift.w.a.ter to Gordon.
Elliot and Sheba were to start early for Kusiak and later the rescue party would arrive to take care of Holt and Mrs. Olson.
"Time to turn in," Holt advised. "You better light that stove, Elliot."
The young man was still in the tent arranging the sleeping-bags when Sheba entered. He tried to walk out without touching her, intending to call back his good-night. But he could not do it. There was something flamey about her to-night that went to his head. Her tender, tremulous little smile and the turn of the buoyant little head stirred in him a lover"s rhapsody.
"It"s to be a long trail we cover to-morrow, Sheba. You must sleep.
Good-night."
"Good-night--Gordon."
There was a little flash of audacity in the whimsical twist of her mouth. It was the first time she had ever called him by his given name.
Elliot threw away prudence and caught her by the hands.
"My dear--my dear!" he cried.
She trembled to his kiss, gave herself to his embrace with innocent pa.s.sion. Tendrils of hair, fine as silk, brushed his cheeks and sent strange thrills through him.
They talked the incoherent language of lovers that is compounded of murmurs and silences and the touch of lips and the meetings of eyes.
There were to be other nights in their lives as rich in memories as this, but never another with quite the same delight.
Presently Sheba reminded him with a smile of the long trail he had mentioned. Mrs. Olson bustled into the tent, and her presence stressed the point.
"Good-night, neighbors," Gordon called back from outside the tent.
Sheba"s "Good-night" echoed softly back to him.
The girl fell asleep to the sound of the light breeze slapping the tent and to the doleful howling of the huskies.
CHAPTER XXVIII
A MESSAGE FROM THE DEAD
Macdonald drove his team into the teeth of the storm. The wind came in gusts. Sometimes the gale was so stiff that the dogs could scarcely crawl forward against it; again there were moments of comparative stillness, followed by squalls that slapped the driver in the face like the whipping of a loose sail on a catboat.
High drifts made the trail difficult. Not once but fifty times Macdonald left the gee-pole to break a way through snow-waves for the sled. The best he could get out of his dogs was three miles an hour, and he knew that there was not another team or driver in the North could have done so well.
It was close to noon when he reached a division of the road known as the Fork. One trail ran down to the river and up it to the distant creeks.
The other led across the divide, struck the Yukon, and pointed a way to the coast. White drifts had long since blotted out the track of the sled that had preceded him. Had the fugitives gone up the river to the creeks with intent to hole themselves up for the winter? Or was it their purpose to cross the divide and go out over the ice to the coast?
The pursuer knew that Gid Holt was wise as a weasel. He could follow blindfolded the paths that led to every creek in the gold-fields.
It might be taken as a certainty that he had not plunged into such a desperate venture without having a plan well worked out beforehand.
Elliot had a high grade of intelligence. Would they try to reach the coast and make their get-away to Seattle? Or would they dig themselves in till the heavy snows were past and come back to civilization with the story of a lucky strike to account for the gold they brought with them?