The Claim Jumpers: A Romance | Page 8

its length with less, for the simple reason that its course lay over the round brow of a hill bare of trees. He also discovered the "Northeast Corner of the Crazy Horse Lode" plainly marked on the white surface of a pine stake braced upright in a pile of rocks. Thence he confidently paced south, and found nothing. Next trip he came across pencilled directions concerning the "Miner's Dream Lode." The time after he ran against the "Golden Ball" and the "Golden Chain Lodes." Bennington reflected; his mind was becoming a little heated.
"It's because I went around those ledges and boulders," he said to himself; "I got off the straight line. This time I'll take the straight line and keep it."
So he addressed himself to the surmounting of obstructions. Work of that sort is not easy. At one point he lost his hold on a broad, steep rock, and slid ungracefully to the foot of it, his elbows digging frantically into the moss, and his legs straddled apart. As he struck bottom, he imagined he heard a most delicious little laugh. So real was the illusion that he gripped two handfuls of moss and looked about sharply, but of course saw nothing. The laugh was repeated.
He looked again, and so became aware of a Vision in pink, standing just in front of a big pine above him on the hill and surveying him with mischievous eyes.
Surprise froze him, his legs straddled, his hat on one side, his mouth open. The Vision began to pick its way down the hill, eyeing him the while.
That dancing scrutiny seemed to mesmerize him. He was enchanted to perfect stillness, but he was graciously permitted to take in the particulars of the girl's appearance. She was dainty. Every posture of her slight figure was of an airy grace, as light and delicate as that of a rose tendril swaying in the wind. Even when she tripped over a loose rock, she caught her balance again with a pretty little uplift of the hand. As she approached, slowly, and evidently not unwilling to allow her charms full time in which to work, Bennington could see that her face was delicately made; but as to the details he could not judge clearly because of her mischievous eyes. They were large and wide and clear, and of a most peculiar colour--a purple-violet, of the shade one sometimes finds in flowers, but only in the flowers of a deep and shady wood. In this wonderful colour--which seemed to borrow the richness of its hue rather from its depth than from any pigment of its own, just as beyond soundings the ocean changes from green to blue--an hundred moods seem to rise slowly from within, to swim visible, even though the mere expression of her face gave no sign of them. For instance, at the present moment her features were composed to the utmost gravity. Yet in her eyes bubbled gaiety and fun, as successive up-swellings of a spring; or, rather, as the riffles of sunlight and wind, or the pictured flight of birds across a pool whose surface alone is stirred.
Bennington realized suddenly, with overwhelming fervency, that he preferred to slide in solitude.
The Vision in the starched pink gingham now poised above him like a humming-bird over a flower. From behind her back she withdrew one hand. In the hand was the missing claim stake.
"Is this what you are looking for?" she inquired demurely.
The mesmeric spell broke, and Bennington was permitted to babble incoherencies.
She stamped her foot.
"Is this what you're looking for?" she persisted.
Bennington's chaos had not yet crystallized to relevancy.
"Wh-where did you get it?" he stammered again.
"IS THIS WHAT YOU'RE LOOKING FOR?" she demanded in very large capitals.
The young man regained control of his faculties with an effort.
"Yes, it is!" he rejoined sharply; and then, with the instinct that bids us appreciate the extent of our relief by passing an annoyance along, "Don't you know it's a penal offence to disturb claim stakes?"
He had suddenly discovered that he preferred to find claim stakes on claims.
The Vision's eyes opened wider.
"It must be nice to know so much!" said she, in reverent admiration.
Bennington flushed. As a de Laney, the girls he had known had always taken him seriously. He disliked being made fun of.
"This is nonsense," he objected, with some impatience. "I must know where it came from."
In the background of his consciousness still whirled the moil of his wonder and bewilderment. He clung to the claim stake as a stable object.
The Vision looked straight at him without winking, and those wonderful eyes filled with tears. Yet underneath their mist seemed to sparkle little points of light, as wavelets through a vapour which veils the surface of the sea. Bennington became conscious-stricken because of the tears, and still he owned