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"Why nothing I was simply interested," gasped Bob in astonishment. The mountaineer's eyes bored him through and through. Finally the man dropped his gaze. "I'll tell you," said he at last, "'cause you and Jim are the only square ones I know. I'm going to Mexico. I never been there. I'm going by Vermilion Valley, and Mono Pass. If they ask you, you can tell 'em different.
Bidding her companions wait outside, Grace went in and consulted with the mountaineer's wife. "Yes, you folks will have to sleep in the barn," Grace informed them. "I never thought I should have to sleep with the pigs and the cows," declared Nora. "Bad luck to the man that spoiled our fun." There was an old haymow overhead in the barn, and there the girls decided to make their bed for the night.
The instances she had quoted of the mountaineer's curious homing instinct the wild yearning he feels at moments of great straits to bury himself among the nooks of his native hills were they not all instances of murderers pursued by the police? It was abject terror that drove these men to their burrows.
The dogs lifted their heads to look, and one soft-stepping old hound got up with the nimbleness of expectation, and, with a prescient gratitude astir in his tail, went and sniffed at it. His aspect drooped suddenly, and he looked around in reproach at Stephen Quimbey, as if suspecting a practical joke. But there was no merriment in the young mountaineer's face.
He came to himself with a dim fancy that he was ill in bed; then realised his position with a mountaineer's intelligence, and worked himself loose and, after a rest or so, out until he saw the stars. He rested flat upon his chest for a space, wondering where he was and what had happened to him.
In his life in the hills he had found a little brightness, while in the old mountaineer's words that evening, he had glimpsed a future happiness, of which he had scarcely dared to dream. With the single exception of that one wild night, his life had been an unbroken calm. Now he was to leave it all. And for what?
Perhaps, indeed, the just and good were more burdened than the wicked; for to the wicked their own sins seldom appear so deadly black, and when a Balkan priest lately displayed pictures of eternal torment as warnings to a savage mountaineer's enormities, he was met by the reply, "Even we should not be so cruel."
The mountaineer's foot was on the soil he had trodden since childhood, and Harry found it quite difficult to keep pace with his strong, quick stride. His step landed firm and sure on the sloping surfaces, where Harry slipped or shambled. Clinging vines and sharp briers were avoided without an apparent effort, where every one grasped Harry, or tore his face and hands.
Grace smiled sweetly. Hippy strolled up to the mountaineer, also smiling, with right hand extended as if about to shake hands with their caller, but as he neared the man the smile suddenly left his face, and he inhaled a long full breath. "Beat it!" exploded Lieutenant Wingate in the mountaineer's ear, at the same time turning the man about and running him out of camp in bouncer fashion.
When be finished, he rose, picking up the old flint-lock. "Won't ye stay and hev some dinner?, asked the old woman. "No, thank you." Come ag'in," she said, cordially, adding the mountaineer's farewell, "I wish ye well." "Thank you, I will. Good-day." As he passed the girl he paused a moment and dropped the paper into her lap.
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