“You’d better get back to your folks,” he said. “They’ll be worried about you.”
“Oh, no they won’t. I explained to them that I’m going to be out late. I told them I was conferring with the sheriff.”
“Look here,” he said, “you can’t do things like that.”
“Why can’t I?”
“Because, for one thing, I’m here alone — and for another thing, you can’t wander around the mountains at night.”
“Are you going to invite me to supper?”
“No.”
“That’s fine,” she said. “I’ll stay anyway. What else are we going to have besides sour-dough biscuit?”
Watching her slip off her jacket and roll up her sleeves, he surrendered with a grin. “We’re going to have some jerked venison, stewed up with onions and canned tomatoes. You wouldn’t have the faintest idea how to cook it, so go over there and sit down and watch.”
Two hours later, when they had eaten and the dishes had been cleaned up and when they had talked themselves into a better understanding, Roberta Coe announced that she was starting back down the trail. She knew, of course, that Ames would go with her.
“Do you have a flashlight,” she asked, “so that you can see the trail when you come back?”
“I don’t need a flashlight.”
He walked over to the wall, took down the .30-.30 rifle, pushed shells into the magazine.
“What’s that for?” she asked.
“Oh,” he said, “sometimes we see deer, and fresh meat is—”
She laughed and said, “It’s illegal to shoot after sundown. The deer season is closed, and the hills are simply crawling with game wardens and deputy sheriffs. You must think I’m terribly dumb. However, I’m glad you have the rifle. Come on.”
They left the cabin, to stand for a moment in the bracing night air, before starting down the trail.
“You’re not locking the door?” she asked.
“No need to lock the barn door after the horse has been stolen.”
“Somehow I wish you would. You might — have a visitor.”
“I think I’d be glad to see him,” he said, swinging the rifle slightly so that it glinted in the moonlight.
“Do you want me to lead the way with the flashlight or to come behind?”
“I’ll go ahead,” he said, “and please don’t use the flashlight.”
“But we’ll need it.”
“No we won’t. There’s a moon that will give us plenty of light for more than an hour. It’s better to adjust your eyes to the darkness, rather than continually flashing a light on and off.”
He started off down the trail, walking with his long, easy stride.
The moon, not yet quite half full, was in the west, close to Venus, which shone as a shining beacon. It was calm and still, and the night noises seemed magnified. The purling of the stream became the sound of a rushing cascade.
The day had been warm, but now in the silence of the night the air had taken on the chill that comes from the high places, a windless, penetrating chill which makes for appreciation of the soft warmth of down-filled sleeping bags. The moon-cast shadows of the silhouetted pine trees lay across the trail like tangible barriers, and the silent, brooding strangeness of the mountains dwarfed Roberta Coe’s consciousness until her personality seemed to her disturbed mind to be as puny as her light footfalls on the everlasting granite.
There was a solemn strangeness about the occasion which she wished to perpetuate, something that she knew she would want to remember as long as she lived; so when they were a few hundred yards from camp, she said, “Frank, I’m tired. Can’t we rest a little while? You don’t realize what a space-devouring stride you have.”
“Your camp’s only around that spur,” he said. “They’ll be worrying about you and—”
“Oh, bother!” she said. “Let them worry. I want to rest.”
There was the trunk of a fallen pine by the side of the trail, and she seated herself on it. He came back to stand uncomfortably at her side, then, propping the gun against the log, seated himself beside her.
The moon was sliding down toward the mountains now, and the stars were beginning to come out in unwinking splendor. She knew that she would be cold as soon as the warmth of the exercise left her blood, but knew also that Frank Ames was under a tension, experiencing a struggle with himself.
She moved slightly, her shoulder brushed against his, her hair touched his cheek, and the contact set off an emotional explosion. His arms were about her, his mouth strained to hers. She knew this was what she had been wanting for what had seemed ages.
She relaxed in the strength of his sinewy arms, her head tilting back so he could find her lips. Sudden pulses pounded in her temples. Then suddenly he had pushed her away, was saying contritely, “I’m sorry.”
She waited for breath and returning self-assurance. Glancing at him from under her eyelashes, she decided on the casual approach. She laughed and said, “Why be sorry? It’s a perfect night, and, after all, we’re human.” She hoped he wouldn’t notice the catch in her voice, a very unsophisticated catch which belied the casual manner she was trying to assume.
“You’re out of my set,” he said. “You’re... you’re as far above me as that star.”
“I wasn’t very far above you just then. I seemed to be — quite close.”
“You know what I mean. I’m a hillbilly, a piece of human flotsam cast up on the beach by the tides of war. Damn it, I don’t mean to be poetic about it and I’m not going to be apologetic. I’m—”
“You’re sweet,” she interrupted.
“You have everything; all the surroundings of wealth. You’re camped up here in the mountains with wranglers to wait on you. I’m a mountain man.”
“Well, good Lord,” she laughed, a catch in her throat, “you don’t need to plan marriage just because you kissed me.”
And in the constricted silence which followed, she knew that was exactly what he had been planning.
Suddenly, she turned and put her hand over his. “Frank,” she said, “I want to tell you something... something I want you to keep in confidence. Will you?”
“Yes.” His voice sounded strained.
She laughed. “I just finished promising the sheriff I’d never tell this to anyone.” And then, without further preliminaries, she told him about her marriage, about the scandal, the annulment of her marriage.
When she had finished, there was a long silence. Abruptly she felt a nervous reaction. The cold, still air of the mountains seemed unfriendly. She felt terribly alien, a hopelessly vulnerable morsel of humanity in a cold, granite world which gave no quarter to vulnerability.
“I’m glad you told me,” Frank Ames said simply, then jackknifed himself up from the log. “You’ll catch cold sitting here. Let’s move on.”
Angry and hurt, she fought back the tears until the lighted tents of her camp were visible.
“I’m all right now,” she said hastily. “Good-by — thanks for the dinner.”
She saw that he wanted to say something, but she was angry both at him and at herself, thoroughly resentful that she had confided in this man. She wanted to rush headlong into the haven of her lighted camp, escaping the glow of the campfire, but she knew he was watching, so she tried to walk with dignity, leaving him standing there, vaguely aware that there was something symbolic in the fact that she had left him just outside the circle of firelight.
She would have liked to reach her tent undiscovered, but she knew that the others were wondering about her. She heard Dick Nottingham’s voice saying, “Someone’s coming,” then Sylvia Jessup calling, “Is that you, Roberta?”
“In person,” she said, trying to make her voice sound gay.