"Because it won't help me on the road to fame. You _will_ pose for me, won't you?"
"I'm sure I cannot say"--she answered--"perhaps--please don't let's talk about it."
"Why not?" he asked curiously.
"Because"--she answered seriously--"we have been such good friends up here in the mountains; such--such comrades. Up here in the hills, with the canyon gates shut against the world that I don't know, you are like--like Brian Oakley--and like my father used to be--and down there"--she hesitated.
"Yes," he said, "and down there I will be what?"
"I don't know," she answered wistfully, "but sometimes I can see you going on and on and on toward fame and the rewards it will bring you and you seem to get farther and farther and farther away from--from the mountains and our friendship; until you are so far away that I can't see you any more at all. I don't like to lose my mountain friends, you know."
He smiled. "But no matter how famous I might become--no matter what fame might bring me--I could not forget you and your mountains."
"I would not want you to remember me," she answered "if you were famous.
That is--I mean"--she added hesitatingly--"if you were famous just because you _wanted_ to be. But I know you could never forget the mountains. And that would be the trouble; don't you see? If you _could_ forget, it would not matter. Ask Mr. Lagrange, he knows."
For some time Aaron King sat, without speaking, looking about at the world that was so far from that other world--the world he had always known. The girl, too,--seeming to understand the thoughts that he himself, perhaps, could not have expressed,--was silent.
Then he said slowly, "I don't think that I care for fame as I did before you taught me to know the mountains. It doesn't, somehow, now, seem to matter so much. It's the _work_ that really matters--after all--isn't it?"
And Sibyl Andres, smiling, answered, "Yes, it's the work that really matters. I'm sure that _must_ be so."
In the afternoon, they went on, still following the fire-break, down to where it is intersected by the pipe-line a mile from the reservoir on the hill above the power-house; then back to Oak Knoll, again on the pipe-line trail all the way--a beautiful and never-to-be-forgotten walk.
The sun was just touching the tops of the western mountains when they started down Oak Knoll. The canyon below, already, lay in the shadow. When they reached the foot of the trail, it was twilight. Across the road, by a small streamlet--a tributary to Clear Creek--a party of huntsmen were making ready to spend the night. The voices of the men came clearly through the gathering gloom. Under the trees, they could see the camp-fire's ruddy gleam. They did not notice the man who was standing, half hidden, in the bushes beside the road, near the spot where the trail opens into it. Silently, the man watched them as they turned up the road which they would follow a little way before crossing the canyon to Sibyl's home. Fifty yards farther on, they met Brian Oakley.
"Howdy, you two," called the Ranger, cheerily--without stopping his horse.
"Rather late to-night, ain't you?"
"We'll be there by dark," called the artist And the Ranger passed on.
At sound of the mountaineer's voice, the man in the bushes drew quickly back. The officer's trained eyes caught the movement in the brush, and he leaned forward in the saddle.
A moment later, the man reappeared in the road, farther down, around the bend. As the Ranger approached, he was hailed by a boisterous, "Hello, Brian! better stop and have a bite."
"How do you do, Mr. Rutlidge?" came the officer's greeting, as he reined in his horse. "When did you land in the hills?"'
"This afternoon," answered the other. "We're just making camp. Come and meet the fellows. You know some of them."
"Thanks, not to-night,"--returned Brian Oakley,--"deer hunt, I suppose."
"Yes--thought we would be in good time for the opening of the season. By the way, do you happen to know where Lagrange and that artist friend of his are camped?"
"In that bunch of sycamores back of the old orchard down there," answered the Ranger, watching the man's face keenly. "I just passed Mr. King, up the road a piece."
"That so? I didn't see him go by," returned the other. "I think I'll run over and say 'hello' to Lagrange in the morning. We are only going as far as Burnt Pine to-morrow, anyway."
"Keep your eyes open for an escaped convict," said the officer, casually.
"There's one ranging somewhere in here--came in about a month ago. He's likely to clean out your camp. So long."
"Perhaps we'll take him in for you," laughed the other. "Good night." He turned toward the camp-fire under the trees, as the officer rode away.
"Now what in hell did that fellow want to lie to me like that for," said Brian Oakley to himself. "He must have seen King and Sibyl as they came down the trail. Max, old boy, when a man lies deliberately, without any apparent reason, you want to watch him."
Chapter XXII
Shadows of Coming Events
Aaron King and Conrad Lagrange were idling in their camp, after breakfast the next morning, when Czar turned his head, quickly, in a listening attitude. With a low growl that signified disapproval, he moved forward a step or two and stood stiffly erect, gazing toward the lower end of the orchard.
"Some one coming, Czar?" asked the artist.
The dog answered with another growl, while the hair on his neck bristled in anger.
"Some one we don't like, heh!" commented the novelist. "Or"--he added as if musing upon the animal's instinct--"some one we ought not to like."
A bark from Czar greeted James Rutlidge who at that moment appeared at the foot of the slope leading up to their camp.
The two men--remembering the occasion of their visitor's last call at their home in Fairlands, when he had seen Sibyl in the studio--received the man with courtesy, but with little warmth. Czar continued to manifest his sentiments until rebuked by his master. The coolness of the reception, however, in no way disconcerted James Rutlidge; who, on his part, rather overdid his assumption of pleasure at meeting them again.
Explaining that he had come with a party of friends on a hunting trip, he told them how he had met Brian Oakley, and so had learned of their camp hidden behind the old orchard. The rest of his party, he said, had gone on up the canyon. They would stop at Burnt Pine on Laurel Creek, where he could easily join them before night. He could not think, he declared, of passing so near without greeting his friends.
"You two certainly are expert when it comes to finding snug, out-of-the-way quarters," he commented, searching the camp and the immediate surroundings with a careful and, ostensibly, an appreciative eye. "A thousand people might pass this old, deserted place without ever dreaming that you were so ideally hidden back here."
As he finished speaking, his roving eye came to rest upon a pair of gloves that Sibyl--the last time she had called--had carelessly left lying upon a stump close by a giant sycamore where, in camp fashion, the rods and creels and guns were kept. The artist had intended to return the gloves the day before, together with a book of trout-flies which the girl had also forgotten; but, in his eagerness for the day's outing, he had gone off without them.
The observing Conrad Lagrange did not fail to note that James Rutlidge had seen the telltale gloves. Fixing his peculiar eyes upon the visitor, he asked abruptly, with polite but purposeful interest, after the health of Mr. and Mrs. Taine and Louise.
The faint shadow of a suggestive smile that crossed the heavy features of James Rutlidge, as he turned his gaze from the gloves to meet the look of the novelist was maddening.
"The old boy is steadily going down," he said without feeling. "The doctors tell me that he can't last through the winter. It'll be a relief to everybody when he goes. Mrs. Taine is well and beautiful, as always--remarkable how she keeps up appearances, considering her husband's serious condition. Louise is quite as usual. They will all be back in Fairlands in another month. They sent regards to you both--in case I should run across you."'
The two men made the usual conventional replies, adding that they were returning to Fairlands the next day.
"So soon?" exclaimed their visitor, with another meaning smile. "I don't see how you can think of leaving your really delightful retreat. I understand you have such charming neighbors too. Perhaps though, they are also returning to the orange groves and roses."
Aaron King's face flushed hotly, and he was about to reply with vigor to the sneering words, when Conrad Lagrange silenced him with a quick look.
Ignoring the reference to their neighbors, the novelist replied suavely that they felt they must return to civilization as some matters in connection with the new edition of his last novel demanded his attention, and the artist wished to get back to his studio and to his work.
"Really," urged Rutlidge, mockingly, "you ought not to go down now. The deer season opens in two days. Why not join our party for a hunt? We would be delighted to have you."
They were coolly thanking him for the invitation,--that, from the tone in which it was given, was so evidently not meant,--when Czar, with a joyful bark, dashed away through the grove. A moment, and a clear, girlish voice called from among the trees that bordered the cienaga, "Whoo-ee." It was the signal that Sibyl always gave when she approached their camp.
James Rutlidge broke into a low laugh while Sibyl's friends looked at each other in angry consternation as the girl, following her hail and accompanied by the delighted dog, appeared in full view; her fishing-rod in hand, her creel swung over her shoulder.