In the cabin there was to be seen at first just one big room, with two
beds at one end, a table surrounded by chairs in the middle, and a
stove in the midst of kettles and pans and tubs at the other. But
presently Marion noticed a kind of balcony above the beds, and she
learned later that this was the "spare bedroom" in which she would be
stowed away for the night.
"He was hungry too," Mrs. Murray went on, being careful, however, to
confine herself to the material side of the subject. "He ate some
dinner, an' then, after we give up tryin' to stop him, Murray said
he'd got to take somethin' with him to eat, an' some blankets. He
hadn't a thing, mind you, an' didn't want to take nothin', but he did
take a good-sized strip o' bacon and some bread--I'd just did the
bakin'--an' a fryin'-pan an' matches an' a knife. Murray done 'em up
in a pair o' blankets, an' stuck in a leather coat with sheepskin
inside, an' hung a hatchet on his saddle. He'll need 'em--if he gits
across into the Black Lake country, which's worse some ways than
Thunder Mountain--forest't ain't never been touched, an' bad lands,
an'----"
Murray's entrance interrupted this speech, which was becoming painful
to her guest, in spite of the good woman's resolution to say nothing
discouraging. Murray, a bearded, rough fellow in whose face shone
good nature and contentment with the living he made out of his cows
and chickens and few head of stock feeding in the mountain meadows,
received a whispered hint, and obediently talked of other things than
Haig and the runaway. They supped on bacon and eggs, with bread and
butter and milk; and an hour afterwards Marion was tucked away in a
comfortable bed in that queer "spare bedroom" up against the eaves of
the log cabin.
Exhaustion soon brought her sleep. But in the middle of the night she
was awakened by a storm that swept high over the ranch house, scarcely
touching it in its sheltered hollow, but shrieking and wailing among
the rocks and pines. She sat up in her bed to listen! Thunder
Mountain! Before her eyes there rose, out of the dark of the cabin, a
vision of Philip prone among the rocks of that terrible summit, struck
down by the wind, or felled by a thunderbolt, drenched with rain, and
perishing of cold. There came, above the howling of the wind, a
deafening crash of thunder that rolled away in sullen bellowing. She
buried her face among the pillows to shut out the frightful sound; and
at length, when the tumult had died away to recur no more, she lay
weeping softly until sleep came again to her relief. She did not wake
again till morning.
"How much farther up can I go?" asked Marion at breakfast.
"You don't mean----" began Mrs. Murray in alarm.
"No," replied Marion quickly. "I don't mean the top. But can't I ride
near enough to see it?"
"You c'n go to timber line safe enough," said Murray.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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