The dawn meadow

Chapter I

T he Sierras are full of surprises. Sawtoothed and ragged, they stretch their mighty bulk lengthwise of the continent. In winter they present a solid front of snow, ten feet on the level, to the winds that sweep across the plains. But at the first touch of spring they begin to reveal beauties that they have hidden from us, like hearts capable of the noblest friendship, until better acquaintance. Then the leaves come out on the alders; the dainty azaleas begin to bud. Snow plants show the first scarlet blooms, and leafy tangles make a harmony of freshest green.

But the sweetest of all the Sierras’ surprises are the mountain meadows, set often among the most forbidding cliffs. They are watered by streams of melted snow until they are like emeralds in the richness of their coloring, starred with flowers, and fringed with sugar pines, firs, or aspens. All the spring days, that lengthen on into the summer, these meadows are flooded with sunshine and bathed in the trickle of a thousand tiny rivulets. To stumble upon one of them among rough cliffs, guarded by its calm, uplifted pines, is like finding one’s way back for a little to the dawn of life — 5 it is so fresh, so newly created, so set apart and overflowing with vernal sunshine and warm air that tangs with life in the nostril. To one who lingers in such a spot there is neither yesterday nor tomorrow. Only today calls, holding in its arms the gifts of health, long thoughts, free sky, and silence.

Mrs. Onverell might always be counted upon to do the unexpected thing. It was this quality in her which charmed people most, unless they happened to be depending upon her for something. Then admiration was mingled with other feelings. This quality, more than any other, made her a social leader in San Francisco, city of the unexpected and the bizarre. Strange extremes met in her; she combined a real love of nature, the life of wood and stream, with a passion for dress, frivolities, and crowded streets.

It was also Mrs. Onverell’s talent for the unexpected that laid the foundation for this story. In one of the most inaccessible corners of the Sierras, approached only by the narrowest of horseback trails, which ran perilously along the edge of a great cliff, lay one hundred and twenty acres of lovely mountain meadow. Cliffs surrounded it for a thousand feet or more on all sides. Mrs. Onverell had stumbled on it, by chance, during a hunting expedition with her husband. Its beauty and isolation caught at her heart-strings, for it was the season with her when the needle of her nature pointed toward the open. There was only one possible inlet to the little retreat which lay like a jewel among its pointed facets. This was by way of crawling underneath a gigantic, overhanging rock, whence they emerged, dusty and breathless, on the further side.

They stood and looked at it with exclamations of delight, captive at once to its charm. Majestic granite walls clasped it on every side so securely that, without artificial trails, only wild animals could find a way up or down. On the north these cliffs were sculptured into domes and battlements of rare beauty, fifteen hundred feet high. Hardy junipers had found a scanty but secure foothold upon the shoulders of these northern cliffs, and every ridge that cut their surface was the home of wonderful brakes and ferns, shoulder high. The centre of the basin was a waving lawn of greenest grass, already starred with wild flowers; its shores were tall groves of pine and fir.

“What a little paradise!” cried Mrs. Onverell. “Buy it for me and we’ll build a bungalow, where we can come whenever we get tired of the world. ”

“Big Jim,” as those who knew him called the six-foot fellow, had the nature of a nice, cleanminded boy. He had not been married long enough, even in ten years, to have gotten over the wonder of it. Far more knowledge of the world and its ways looked out from her soft blue eyes than from his brown ones. In their household her will was to him a beautiful law. It was the same to her, and so they achieved a oneness of mind that made for harmony. Jim accepted his happiness without question, and never analyzed it to see if it could be bettered.

The suggestion of a little refuge, where they could come and be together, touched him so deeply that the quick moisture came to his eyes.

“You wouldn’t be lonely.^” he questioned her as one who would be contradicted. “It’s awfully far away and quiet. ”

“Far away!” she exclaimed, nestling close to him with a little shiver, “I should say it was far away! If that great boulder should fall we’d be as much cut off from the rest of the world as if we’d never been created. That’s what makes it so nice and different.”

“It might be managed,” said Jim, reflectively, “if we could blast that entrance wide enough without upsetting the boulder. The lumber could be packed up on burros, and there’s rock enough at hand for all the foundation and chimneys and pillars we want. ”

“You’ll do it, Jim?” she pleaded.

“H’m, it would be a difficult proposition — a matter of months, probably — ”

“But I want it!”

“Well, Mayme, we’ll see.”

Of course he built her the bungalow. Thereupon it became a nine days’ topic at luncheon or reception, and all Mrs. OnverelTs friends commented, criticised, and envied. Mrs. Onverell was possessed of sufficient energy and initiative to make all her doings full of interest, and the exclusive little house-parties that she began at once to give became astonishingly popular. Soon it was no unusual thing for social leader or society bud to leave innumerable engagements and go for a considerable journey by train and horseback to the little mountain meadow.

Mrs. Onverell planned her parties regardless of times or seasons, whenever the call of the open sounded in her heart. So it surprised nobody that the very height of Grand Opera season should find her with face set toward the mountains. Caruso had never been in better voice. Sembrich and Gadski were drawing the suburbanites in crowds to the city. She had secured a box for the season and had enjoyed the first two performances as they merited. Then, quite suddenly, as Onverell helped her out of the carriage on the second night, her mood changed.

“Jim, we ’re going to give a house-party over Sunday, ” she declared. “ Perhaps that will help me to get decently through with the woes of those Wagner people. They sing theirs to an audience. I want to go and tell mine to the birds and squirrels. ”

“But — ” said Jim.

“You need a rest. You are killing yourself with business. ”

Onverell smiled whimsically. “You won’t find any one to go with you this week,” he said.

“Oh, yes, I will. There’s Mrs. Vance. She’s crazy to get away from all her relatives-in-law, who are trying to break things up between her and Fred. Then there’s Ethel Stanton. Her people are doing the Orient, and she told me tonight that she couldn’t keep up the social pace any longer. She said she’d rather have a good night’s sleep than to hear an all-star cast sing her favorite opera. She’s longing to commune with Nature.”

“You’d better bring Bob Forrest along then.”

“Ah, sits the wind in that quarter?”

“Decidedly. Bob can fish with me by day and make love to Ethel in the evening. We’ll be helping along a very pretty romance. ”

“It’s all right, is it, Jim? Ethel is born to the purple, you know. ”

“Oh, Forrest is all right. He puts through some of the biggest real estate deals in the city. He belongs to all the best clubs; he’s no end of a good fellow.”

“Ask him, then, by all means. Perhaps we’ll have another ‘engagement of interest’ to announce on our return. ”

“I fancy it’s an accomplished fact already. Ethel ’s father has been keen on it for some time. He thinks Forrest is bound to be a big man, and he wants to see Ethel settled. ”

“Tell him to be ready by Thursday,” said Mrs. Onverell.

Chapter II

T his was how it happened that a party of four found themselves on the veranda of Mrs. Onverell’s mountain bungalow about sunset of Thursday, the seventeenth of April. Only four, for Mrs. Vance had weakened at the last moment. The bungalow was a long and rather rambling structure of battened boards, left to be stained by time and weather. Its great beauty lay in the massive rock foundation and supporting pillars, which made it seem a natural outgrowth of its surroundings. The house was deceptively luxurious in its appointments. The broad veranda was as large as a living room, and was furnished with rugs, couches, and lounging chairs.

The evening air at this altitude was cold and ethereally pure. The meadow grass on all sides was starred with blue-eyes and mountain daisies. A pink flush was creeping into the sky; the woods that fringed the surrounding cliffs had already taken on their twilight air of mystery. At their edge, great sugar pines towered two hundred feet into the air, shutting out all but a scant circle of sky from the meadow below. Bright-hued birds called and fluttered among the branches of the 11 firs, and the mountain-brook that divided the meadow had lost its morning laughter and seemed to be whispering secret things of the approaching night.

Mrs. Onverell stood at the veranda rail and watched the creeping shadows. Her eyes were dreamy, and she twisted the ribbons of her garden hat between her fingers. Hearing a step beside her she half turned her head. It was her husband. He put an arm about her shoulders.

“Rather fine thing in the line of sunsets,” he said, his gaze resting with pleasure on the rosy sky and the cliffs, which were taking on opal tints. “Forrest and I made a good catch this afternoon. If we’re going to come here often, though, we’ll have to stock the stream. It’s such a limited space to work, hardly a mile at most.”

“And there’s really no way of following the stream up beyond the meadow?”

“None that I have found. The water seeps through the cliff in some way at a point about a hundred and fifty feet above the meadow, and then slides down over rock as smooth as ice. We seem to be in a sort of pocket, perhaps hollowed out by the original stream when it was a really imposing torrent.”

She crept a little closer to him. “It’s such a delightful, lonesome, shivery sort of a place, Jim. It makes me feel as I used as a child, when I told myself ghost stories in the dark. Sometimes I’m on the verge of being really frightened. That’s why I like it so much. ”

“Here’s Forrest now,” said Onverell. “Hello, Bob, it’s pretty near time to dress for dinner.”

“I’m glad to hear that,” exclaimed a hearty voice. “I’m as hungry as a fox.”

Mrs. Onverell turned to greet the young man who came forward. He was broad-shouldered, and his clean-shaven face wore a genial smile that was worth thousands to him in his social and business relations. It was easy to see why he was known as a good fellow, yet the keenness of his eyes contradicted the rest of his face. Also there were shadows beneath them, and lines about his mouth that told of nervous strain. A man pays somehow for being one of the foremost real estate manipulators in a big city at the age of thirty. It was easy to see that this man had paid in nerve and brain force. His hands were seldom at rest; the muscles of his eyes twitched. When he was not absorbed in the full swing of business, he craved excitement in some other form. Only a desire to please Onverell, whom he was trying to interest in a big hotel project, would have brought him to this quiet, isolated nook. His mind was constantly busy with details, even while he talked and laughed in apparent whole-hearted enjoyment.

Now, catching Mrs. Onverell’s regretful glance at the softly flushing sky, he responded to her mood with ready sympathy.

“We can’t go in while that sunset lasts,” he said. “We’ll feed our aesthetic natures and let the mere animal instincts wait.”

“Besides,” said Mrs. Onverell, “our party isn’t complete yet. ”

“Not complete?” questioned Onverell in surprise, “why, who else — ”

“It’s a man, Jim, or she would have told you,” said a voice behind them. It was a charming voice, with a delicate accent of the south. A tall, graceful girl rose from a porch chair near one of the pillars and advanced toward them. She had gray eyes that could no more keep from giving coquettish glances than a kitten’s, and a red mouth all ready to break into smiles or droop like a grieved child’s.

“It is somebody she was afraid you’d object to,” she continued mischievously, “so she kept it a secret until it was too late for you to do anything. ”

Mrs. Onverell flushed somewhat guiltily, and they all laughed.

“You are speaking from experience of course, Ethel,” said Forrest.

The pretty girl turned her head to look at him from under her long lashes.

“Not at all,” she replied. “Men know things from experience. A woman just knows them.”

“It’s another of Mayme’s discoveries, I’ll wager,” said Onverell.

They laughed again. Mrs. OnverelTs fondness for the unusual displayed itself occasionally in what she called “social discoveries.” These were people whose odd or romantic qualities had caught her capricious fancy. By virtue of her position as a social leader she insisted upon introducing them widely, sometimes with disastrous results.

“Last June it was the Baba Berendi,” went on Ethel. “His hair was long and greasy, and he called up spirits from the vasty deep. The Christmas before it was a young Japanese poet, and he recited odes to her charms in the dead of night. I wonder what it is now.”

“Tell us, Mrs. Onverell,” coaxed Forrest with his genial laugh.

Mrs. Onverell tilted her chin stubbornly. “Amuse yourselves by guessing, ” she replied. “ It will give you something to talk about.”

“What a slander on our conversational powers!” exclaimed the girl. “But I’ll forgive you because I’ve had such a beautiful day. I’ve been picking all the blue-eyes in the meadow. See.” She stretched out her hands to them, full of the delicate blossoms.

She might have been a portrait by Sargent, against the dark background of shadow behind her. Her hair was light and curled softly about her face, her eyes were full of contradictions. Coquetry and conscious power played over the surface of something deeper, like sunlight over a lake. The changing expressions of her face showed her sensitively strung, like a fine violin.

Jaded men, watching her or speaking to her, often found that she touched something in them back to life; then, as curiously, disappointed their awakened sensibilities. Yet she seemed one on whom a high destiny waited. Robert Forrest thought that he had found it for her when he should make her mistress of a certain house on Nob Hill. He approached her now with an air of possession and her answering smile was quick and warm.

“Tell me who the last guest is to be, ” she coaxed again.

“You are missing the sunset, dear,” said Mrs. Onverell.

“I might better have stayed with the fiowers!” she declared. “I hated to stop gathering them. I want to fill every vase in the house.”

“Onverell,” said Forrest sternly, “tell us, do you know, or do you not know who is this mysterious last guest?”

The spell of the open was at work with them, even in these few hours. Small happenings had attained importance, interest in one’s fellows had become no longer a virtue, but a natural impulse.

“So that’s why Jose rode off with the two horses this morning?” questioned Ethel. “I suppose he went to the Junction to meet the train. I heard it whistle long ago.”

“It is quite time they were here now,” said Mrs. Onverell. “Listen and you will hear the rumble the horses make coming through the Jaws of Death.”

“What is that?” queried Ethel.

“That’s what we call the big hole that Jim blasted out of the cliff, beneath the overhanging boulder. I named it so because it’s the only entrance to Paradise. It is far more convenient than a knocker or doorbell, for it gives one at least five minutes warning of visitors.”

“What a name! It makes a man shiver,” declared Forrest. One could see at times how much his animation was forced, as if he held weariness and strain at arm’s length.

“It isn’t the name that frightens me,” said Ethel, “it’s that huge rock poised over one’s head with such apparent insecurity. What would happen if it fell?”

Onverell, feeling the demand of the unanswered question, roused himself to a survey of the narrow pass which gave entrance to the meadow. It seemed dark and forbidding; night had already gathered there.

“If you were underneath when it fell, what happened to you afterwards would depend upon your past life,” he said. “If you happened to be on the outside, this little Paradise in here would be snatched forever from your longing eyes. ”

“Is there really no other way to get in?” she questioned.

“I have never found any other.”

“Suppose you were on this side when it fell?” she persisted. Her eyes had grown dark with a vague apprehension.

“The birds of the air would come and strew leaves over your bleached bones. ”

“Do you mean that we couldn’t get out?” asked Forrest, incredulously.

“That boulder is merely a fragment of the cliff. Any convulsion big enough to make it fall would probably bring the two sides of the cliff together in a mass of debris. They’re only a trail’s width apart. ”

There was half a moment of silence. His description gathered force from the frowning shadows that stole out from the base of the cliff across the meadow.

“Jim, you wretch!” exclaimed Mrs. Onverell.

Forrest’s big, hearty laugh broke the momentary tension.

“The old rock has stayed in place for so many centuries that I think we may safely count upon it a little longer, ” he said.

The sun, about to fall behind the cliffs, poured a flood of purest gold into the cup-like valley where the meadow lay, filling it until it overflowed. At the same time a hollow rumble echoed from the pass.

“There comes the mysterious guest!” exclaimed Onverell.

“Is he young or old?” queried Ethel.

Mrs. Onverell smiled provokingly.

Now the horsemen came into view at the lower end of the meadow. The horses were wet with the sharp pull up grade from the railroad junction fourteen miles away. The man who rode ahead wore a check shirt, a red bandanna, and a broad sombrero. As he drew nearer one could note that there was something odd in his appearance. The lower part of his face seemed to have been crushed in, perhaps by the hoof of a horse. The effect was to give his whole countenance an expression of deepest gloom, and the voice in which he poured out a stream of mild profanity against his weary horse, was mournful in the extreme.

“Where did you get him?” questioned Forrest of Onverell.

“Jose? He’s a bit of local color I hired to complete the scenery. George Bisbee recommended him to me as the biggest liar in four counties. Listen to him. ”

The man’s voice floated up to them clearly.

“Git right, old lady,” he was saying sorrowfully to the horse. “Don’t take sech blamed advantage of your sex. Fine airs can’t be put up with in bosses, they’re bad enough in wimmin.”

“Careful, Jose,” called Mr. Onverell. “The ladies are listening. ”

Jose raised his head and regarded him solemnly. “Taint safe for a man to express his mind anywheres,” he lamented. “Whoa, you durn critter. ”

He dismounted from his horse. The other rider did the same. Those on the veranda leaned forward with lively curiosity as he turned toward the stone steps that formed the approach. They noticed that he moved with a certain freedom and swiftness, like a man accustomed to the woods or plains.

“Who is he, Mayme.^” murmured Onverell. “You’ve got to tell us now.”

“His muscles are in training,” said Forrest. “He’s some kind of an athlete.”

The stranger ’s hat was drawn low over his face, and they had caught no glimpse of it. He was slim and muscular. As he mounted the steps he seemed to be unusually tall, but his shoulders were stooped as if he had carried heavy burdens, either of mind or body. While they watched he reached the veranda and stood uncertain, lifting his hat. The rays of the sun fell across his face.

“Why, it is Charley Strong!” exclaimed Forrest, looking startled.

“Mayme,” said Onverell, almost harshly. “You certainly don’t expect us to receive him here?”

“I certainly do,” said Mrs. Onverell. “He’s brilliant and entertaining. Mrs. Stewart Wagner had him to dinner last week, and Mrs. De Lamo gave an evening the week before where he spoke about the Yosemite Indians. I’m not afraid we ’ll be contaminated. ”

“Well, I can stand a good deal,” muttered Jim, “but — ”

Mrs. Onverell stepped forward to greet the new comer, and Forrest looked at Jim with amused eyes.

“She’s quite refreshingly daring,” he murmured.

“We are glad to see you, Mr. Strong,” said Mrs. Onverell, holding out her hand with deliberate friendliness. “I hope you didn’t find the trip up to our mountain nest too long and tiresome. ”

The stranger bent over her hand, and for the first time his features were distinctly visible. He had dark hair, gray already at the temples. His dark eyes wore a strange expression, as if some heavy shadow that had brooded within them was gradually being consumed by a persistent inner fire of hope and courage, as the sun consumes the morning mist. Just now his face had lighted remarkably at the warmth of Mrs. Onverell ’s greeting, as if it were an unexpected thing.

“It was a fine ride,” he declared in a low and rather musical voice, “and leads to so much beauty as to justify a far rougher trip. What do you call this charming place, Mrs. Onverell?”

“Sierra del Nido, the mountain nest. I am glad you find it beautiful. This is my husband; Jim, this is Mr. Strong. ”

Big Jim shook hands with him rather perfunctorily, and the expression of his face was grave. But Ethel’s eyes danced with her enjoyment of a difficult situation. She turned half aside, her unconsciously coquettish glance studied his face.

“Mr. Forrest,” said Mrs. Onverell, “have you met Mr. Strong?”

“Yes,” said Forrest with his genial smile. He was playing his hostess ’ lead with a good grace, as usual. “I’ve met Mr. Strong several times. We crossed the continent in the same Pullman not long ago — ”

He stopped, for the man before him was not listening. Neither did he seem to notice Forrest’s outstretched hand. His gaze was riveted with a sudden, burning intensity on somebody behind Forrest. His form seemed to stiffen; his hand dropped to his side. Forrest turned involuntarily to discover the object of that intent gaze, and saw, with a start, that Ethel stood at his elbow.

“Mr. Strong,” she exclaimed, “how unexpected and how nice!”

The effect was all she meant it should be. The general look of astonishment at her greeting was punctuated by Forrest’s rather sharp question.

“Do you know Mr. Strong, Ethel?”

Ethel smiled up into the thin, dark face.

“We had a dramatic introduction,” she said. “Scene, the cliff boulevard at Lucerne; time, late afternoon; characters, two run-away horses, and a girl passing rapidly into a state of abject terror; enter a man, appearing suddenly out of nowhere. He stops the horses at the edge of the cliff. I was the girl; the man was Mr. Strong.”

She hesitated. The quick ebbing of blood from her face gave evidence that it had been an intense experience. A momentary wonder was born in them all. Had it stopped there or was there more that lay behind her silence Forrest turned away with a doubt born in his heart.

Mrs. Onverell broke the pause.

“And now it is really time to dress for dinner. Our last guest has arrived, and the bell will ring in half an hour.”

“Mercy, I never dressed in half an hour in my life!” exclaimed Ethel in pretty dismay.

“That was a city toilet,” murmured Mrs. Onverell in her ear. “There was somebody to dress for there.”

Ethel made no reply, but her glance sought the dark face of the stranger. There was a little fear in it and some mischief. She was right; he was watching her, and his grave look studied her until the color dyed her cheeks. He smiled down at her as one smiles at a pretty child.

“Jim,” said Mrs. Onverell, laying her hand on her husband’s arm, “ask Ikura to show Mr. Strong to the room that was arranged for him. ”

Both look and touch seemed to ask a half forgiveness, and Big Jim’s face softened.

“All right, Mayme,” he said, with a return to cheerfulness. “This way, Mr. Strong,” and they disappeared within the house.

Twilight had settled over the forest; the shadows were heavy; mysterious sounds were borne on the night wind, and strange scents. Rex, the collie, growled and the hair rose on his back. Ethel stood as if occupied with some absorbing thought. She patted his head with a soothing hand.

“Come, Ethel,” said Mrs. Onverell, looking back.

“Mrs. Onverell,” said the girl slowly, “who is Mr. Strong Pardon me for asking, but why should he not come here like other men?”

Mrs. Onverell paused.

“You have never heard anything about him, Ethel?”

“No. Only, after he saved my life that time — I saw something of him — for a few days. I knew then that he was different. But I never knew why. I feel very grateful to him. Is there any reason why one can not know him?”

“Yes and no,” said Mrs. Onverell slowly. “You had better let him alone, Ethel.”

Ethel looked at her a moment.

“He is my fellow guest in your house, Mrs. Onverell. That is all that I need to know about him. I recall my question.”

She moved quickly away and went in at the house door.

Mrs. Onverell, left on the veranda, looked after her.

“I think,” she said, half aloud, “that this is one occasion when I would have done well to consult Jim. ”

Chapter III

D inner at sierra del Nido was somewhat of a function, in spite of distance and difficulty of approach. Mrs. Onverell ’s idea of life in the open included many luxuries. In this way she kept a hold on civilization and gave herself the feeling of choice rather than necessity, which forms much of the charm of the simple life. Silver and cut glass, and two well trained Japanese servants, softened for her the asperities of house-keeping a hundred miles from the centre of supplies.

Neither did Mrs. Onverell always keep her whole-hearted enthusiasm for the open after the falling of night. Then the curtains were drawn against the darkness that lay so heavily over the meadow as to be felt like a presence. Great logs were kindled in every fireplace to drive out the chill, and the hostess and her guests sat down to a table dainty in every appointment.

It was Mrs. OnverelTs fancy to have the bungalow lighted only by candles. She had collected a great variety of odd candlesticks and candelabra. The candles on the dining table tonight were all yellow, and their soft glow was caught and reflected from a great bowl of yellow mountain daisies in 26 the center. The dinner was excellent, the principal dish being the afternoon catch of fish.

This had started Onverell on a series of stories and reminiscences of other big catches and fishy experiences. He was in a genial mood, and seemed determined to banish the slight constraint that had fallen upon the party when they gathered in the big living room before the meal. He told a story well, with a keen appreciation of its humor, and gradually the laughter became general and spontaneous. Strong sat quiet for the most part. From his place beside his hostess he listened or commented just openly enough to escape any suspicion of inattention. He seldom looked up from his plate, and no one seemed to speak to him directly. When he did glance about him, the keenness of his look was almost startling in its swift contrast to his usual impassiveness. In spite of themselves there was not one at the table who did not wonder what might be passing in the mind of this man who sat so quietly. They were aware that nothing in their own experience could give them the key, and his silence became invested with the charm of mystery.

“He can’t help dominating every other individuality in the room,” thought Ethel. She was angry with him because he had not even seen that she wore a low-neck gown of pale blue, and a collar of brilliants. “Only a strong nature could be really wicked, I suppose,” she mused.