第26章

But Jeff saw him not.With mind and will bent on one object--to reach the first habitation,the "Summit,"and send back help and assistance to his wounded comrade--he urged Rabbit forward.The mare knew her rider,but he had no time for caresses.Through the smarting of his hands he had only just noticed that they were badly burned,and the skin was peeling from them;he had confounded the blood that was flowing from a cut on his scalp,with that from the wounded horse.It was one hour yet to the "Summit,"but the road was good,the moon was bright,he knew what Rabbit could do,and it was not yet ten o'clock.

As the white outbuildings and irregular outlines of the "Summit House"began to be visible,Jeff felt a singular return of his former dreamy abstraction.The hour of peril,anger,and excitement he had just passed through seemed something of years ago,or rather to be obliterated with all else that had passed since he had looked upon that scene.Yet it was all changed--strangely changed!What Jeff had taken for the white,wooden barns and outhouses were greenhouses and conservatories.The "Summit Hotel"was a picturesque villa,nestling in the self-same trees,but approached through cultivated fields,dwellings of laborers,parklike gates and walls,and all the bountiful appointments of wealth and security.Jeff thought of Yuba Bill's malediction,and understood it as he gazed.

The barking of dogs announced his near approach to the principal entrance.Lights were still burning in the upper windows of the house and its offices.He was at once surrounded by the strange medley of a Californian ranchero's service,peons,Chinese,and vaqueros.Jeff briefly stated his business."Ah,Carrajo!"This was a matter for the major-domo,or,better,the padrone--Wilson!

But the padrone,Wilson,called out by the tumult,appeared in person--a handsome,resolute,middle-aged man,who,in a twinkling,dispersed the group to barn and stable with a dozen orders of preparation,and then turned to Jeff.

"You are hurt;come in."

Jeff followed him dazedly into the house.The same sense of remote abstraction,of vague dreaminess,was overcoming him.He resented it,and fought against it,but in vain;he was only half conscious that his host had bathed his head and given him some slight restorative,had said something to him soothingly,and had left him.Jeff wondered if he had fainted,or was about to faint,--he had a nervous dread of that womanish weakness,--or if he were really hurt worse than he believed.He tried to master himself and grasp the situation by minutely examining the room.It was luxuriously furnished;Jeff had but once before sat in such an arm-chair as the one that half embraced him,and as a boy he had dim recollections of a life like this,of which his father was part.

To poor Jeff,with his throbbing head,his smarting hands,and his lapsing moments of half forgetfulness,this seemed to be a return of his old premonition.There was a vague perfume in the room,like that which he remembered when he was in the woods with Miss Mayfield.He believed he was growing faint again,and was about to rise,when the door opened behind him.

"Is there anything we can do for you?Mr.Wilson has gone to seek your friend,and has sent Manuel for a doctor."HER voice!He rose hurriedly,turned;SHE was standing in the doorway!

She uttered a slight cry,turned very pale,advanced towards him,stopped and leaned against the chimney-piece.

"I didn't know it was YOU."

With her actual presence Jeff's dream and weakness fled.He rose up before her,his old bashful,stammering,awkward self.

"I didn't know YOU lived here,Miss Mayfield.""If you had sent word you were coming,"said Miss Mayfield,recovering her color brightly in one cheek.

The possibility of having sent a messenger in advance to advise Miss Mayfield of his projected visit did not strike Jeff as ridiculous.Your true lover is far beyond such trivialities.

He accepted the rebuke meekly.He said he was sorry.

"You might have known it."

"What,Miss Mayfield?"

"That I was here,if you WISHED to know."

Jeff did not reply.He bowed his head and clasped his burned hands together.Miss Mayfield saw their raw surfaces,saw the ugly cut on his head,pitied him,but went on hastily,with both cheeks burning,to say,womanlike,what was then deepest in her heart: