The Chalice Of Courage: A Romance of Colorado

"What we can carry on the backs of men. We will make a camp somewhere about where you did. We can get enough husky men up at Morrison who will pack in what we want and with that as a basis we will explore the upper reaches of the range."

"And when do we start?"

"There is a train for Morrison in two hours," answered Armstrong. "We can get what we want in the way of sleeping bags and equipment between now and then if we hurry about it."

"Ef we are goin' to do it, we might as well git a move on us," assented Kirkby, making ready to go.

"Right," answered Robert Maitland grimly. "When three men set out to make fools of themselves the sooner they get at it and get over with it the better. I've got some business matters to settle, you two get what's needed and I'll bear my share."

A week later a little band of men on snow shoes, wrapped in furs to their eyes, every one heavily burdened with a pack, staggered into the clearing where once had been pitched the Maitland camp. The place was covered with snow of course, but on a shelf of rock half way up the hogback, they found a comparatively level clearing and there, all working like beavers, they built a rude hut which they covered with canvas and then with tightly packed snow and which would keep the three who remained from freezing to death. Fortunately they were favored by a brief period of pleasant weather and a few days served to make a sufficiently habitable camp.

Maitland, Kirkby and Armstrong worked with the rest. There was no thought of search at first. Their lives depended upon the erection of a suitable shelter and it was not until the helpers, leaving their burdens behind them, had departed that the three men even considered what was to be done next.

"We must begin a systematic search to-morrow," said Armstrong decisively as the three men sat around the cheerful fire in the hut.

"Yes," assented Maitland. "Shall we go together, or separately?"

"Separately, of course. We are all hardy and experienced men, nothing is apt to happen to us, we will meet here every night and plan the next day's work. What do you say, Kirkby?"

The old man had been quietly smoking while the others talked. He smiled at them in a way which aroused their curiosity and made them feel that he had news for them.

"While you was puttin' the finishin' touches on this yere camp, I come acrost a heap o' stuns, that somehow the wind had swept bare. There was a big drift in front of it w'ich kep' us from seein' it afore; it was built up in the open w'ere there want no trees, an' in our lumberin' operations we want lookin' that-a-way. I came acrost a bottle by chance an' – "

"Well, for God's sake, old man," cried Armstrong impatiently, "what did you find in it, anything?"

"This," answered Kirkby, carefully producing a folded scrap of paper from his leather vest.

Armstrong fell on it ravenously, and as Maitland bent over him they both read these words by the fire light.

"Miss Enid Maitland, whose foot is so badly crushed as to prevent her traveling, is safe in a cabin at the head of this canon. I put this notice here to reassure any who may be seeking her as to her welfare. Follow the stream up to its source."

    Wm. Berkeley Newbold.

"Thank God!" exclaimed Robert Maitland.

"You called me a damn fool, Kirkby," said Armstrong, his eyes gleaming. "What do you think of it now?"

"It's the damn fool, I find," said Kirkby sapiently, "that gener'ly gits there. Providence seems to be a-watchin' over 'em."

"You said you chanced on this paper, Jack," continued Maitland, "it looks to me like the deliberate intention of Almighty God."

"I reckon so," answered the other simply. "You see He's got to look after all the damn fools on earth to keep 'em from doin' too much damage to theirselves an' to others in this yere crooked trail of a world."

"Let us start now," urged Armstrong.

"Tain't possible," said the old man, taking another puff at his pipe, and only a glistening of the eye betrayed the joy that he felt; otherwise his phlegmatic calm was unbroken, his demeanor just as undisturbed as it always was. "We'd jest throw away our lives a wanderin' round these yere mountains in the dark, we've got to have light an' clear weather. Ef it should be snowin' in the mornin' we'd have to wait until it cleared."

"I won't wait a minute," cried Armstrong. "At daybreak, weather or no weather, I start."

"What's your hurry, Jim?" continued Kirkby calmly. "The gal's safe, one day more or less ain't goin' to make no difference."

"She's with another man," answered Armstrong quickly.

"Do you know this Newbold?" asked Maitland, looking at the note again.

"No, not personally, but I have heard of him."

"I know him," answered Kirkby quickly, "an' you've seed him too, Bob; he's the fellow that shot his wife, that married Louise Rosser."

"That man!"

"The very same."

"You say you never saw him, Jim?" asked Maitland.

"I repeat I never met him," said Armstrong, flushing suddenly, "but I knew his wife."

"Yes, you did that – " drawled the old mountaineer.

"What do you mean?" flashed Armstrong.

"I mean that you knowed her, that's all," answered the old man with an innocent air that was almost childlike.

When the others woke up in the morning Armstrong's sleeping bag was empty. Kirkby crawled out of his own warm nest, opened the door and peered out into the storm.

"Well," he said, "I guess the damn fool has beat God this time; it don't look to me as if even He could save him now."

"But we must go after him at once," urged Maitland.

"See for yourself," answered the old man, throwing wider the door. "We've got to wait 'til this wind dies down unless we give the Almighty the job o' lookin' after three instid o' one."

CHAPTER XXII

THE CONVERGING TRAILS

Whatever the feelings of the others, Armstrong found himself unable to sleep that night. It seemed to him that fate was about to play him the meanest and most fantastic of tricks. Many times before in his crowded life he had loved other women, or so he characterized his feelings, but his passion for Louise Rosser Newbold had been in a class by itself until he had met Enid Maitland. Between the two there had been many women, but these two were the high points, the rest was lowland.

Once before, therefore, this Newbold had cut in ahead of him and had won the woman he loved. Armstrong had cherished a hard grudge against him for a long time. He had not been of those who had formed the rescue party led by old Kirkby and Maitland which had buried the poor woman on the great butte in the deep cañon. Before he got back to the camp the whole affair was over and Newbold had departed. Luckily for him, Armstrong had always thought, for he had been so mad with grief and rage and jealousy that if he had come across him helpless or not he would have killed him out of hand.

Armstrong had soon enough forgotten Louise Rosser, but he had not forgotten Newbold. All his ancient animosity had flamed into instant life again, at the sight of his name last night. The inveteracy of his hatred had been in no way abated by the lapse of time it seemed.

Everybody in the mining camp had supposed that Newbold had wandered off and perished in the mountains, else Armstrong might have pursued him and hunted him down. The sight of his name on that piece of paper was outward and visible evidence that he still lived. It had almost the shock of a resurrection, and a resurrection to hatred rather than to love. If Newbold had been alone in the world, if Armstrong had chanced upon him in the solitude, he would have hated him just as he did; but when he thought that his ancient enemy was with the woman he now loved, with a growing intensity, beside which his former resentment seemed weak and feeble, he hated him yet the more.

He could not tell when the notice, which he had examined carefully, was written; there was no date upon it, but he could come to only one conclusion. Newbold must have found Enid Maitland alone in the mountains very shortly after her departure and he had had her with him in his cabin alone for at least a month. Armstrong gritted his teeth at the thought. He did not undervalue the personality of Newbold, he had never happened to see him, but he had heard enough about him to understand his qualities as a man. The tie that bound Armstrong to Enid Maitland was a strong one, but the tie by which he held her to him, if indeed he held her at all, was very tenuous and easily broken; perhaps it was broken already, and so he hated him still more and more.

Indeed his animosity was so great and growing that for the moment he took no joy in the assurance of the girl's safety, yet he was not altogether an unfair man and in calmer moments he thanked God in his own rough way that the woman he loved was alive and well, or had been when the note was written. He rejoiced that she had not been swept away with the flood or that she had not been lost in the mountains and forced to wander on, finally to starve and freeze and die. In one moment her nearness caused his heart to throb with joyful anticipation. The certainty that at the first flush of day he would seek her again sent the warm blood to his cheeks. But these thoughts would be succeeded by the knowledge that she was with his enemy. Was this man to rob him of the latest love as he had robbed him of the first? Perhaps the hardest task that was ever laid upon Armstrong was to lie quietly in his sleeping bag and wait until the morning.

So soon as the first indication of dawn showed through the cracks of the door, he slipped quietly out of his sleeping bag and without disturbing the others drew on his boots, put on his heavy fur coat and cap and gloves, slung his Winchester and his snow shoes over his shoulder and without stopping for a bite to eat softly opened the door, stepped out and closed it after him. It was quite dark in the bottom of the cañon, although a few pale gleams overhead indicated the near approach of day. It was quite still, too. There were clouds on the mountain top heavy with threat of wind and snow.