Teresa remained silent.She was beginning to be impatient and uneasy,fearing some mischance that might delay her dreaded,yet longed-for meeting with Low.Yet she could not leave this sick and exhausted man,HIS FATHER,now bound to her by more than mere humanity.
"Couldn't you manage,"she said gently,"to lean on me a few steps further,until I could bring you to a cooler spot and nearer assistance?"He nodded.She lifted him almost like a child to his feet.Aspasm of pain passed over his face."How far is it?"he asked.
"Not more than ten minutes,"she replied.
"I can make a spurt for that time,"he said coolly,and began to walk slowly but steadily on.Only his face,which was white and set,and the convulsive grip of his hand on her arm betrayed the effort.At the end of ten minutes she stopped.They stood before the splintered,lightning-scarred shaft in the opening of the woods,where Low had built her first camp-fire.She carefully picked up the herbarium,but her quick eye had already detected in the distance,before she had allowed Dunn to enter the opening with her,that her note was gone.Low had been there before them;he had been warned,as his absence from the cabin showed;he would not return there.They were free from interruption--but where had he gone?
The sick man drew a long breath of relief as she seated him in the clover-grown hollow where she had slept the second night of her stay."It's cooler than those cursed woods,"he said."Isuppose it's because it's a little like a grave.What are you going to do now?"he added,as she brought a cup of water and placed it at his side.
"I am going to leave you here for a little while,"she said cheerfully,but with a pale face and nervous hands."I'm going to leave you while I seek Low."The sick man raised his head."I'm good for a spurt,Teresa,like that I've just got through,but I don't think I'm up to a family party.Couldn't you issue cards later on?""You don't understand,"she said."I'm going to get Low to send some one of your friends to you here.I don't think he'll begrudge leaving HER a moment for that,"she added to herself bitterly.
"What's that you're saying?"he queried,with the nervous quickness of an invalid.
"Nothing--but that I'm going now."She turned her face aside to hide her moistened eyes."Wish me good luck,won't you?"she asked,half sadly,half pettishly.
"Come here!"
She came and bent over him.He suddenly raised his hands,and,drawing her face down to his own,kissed her forehead.
"Give that to HIM,"he whispered,"from ME."
She turned and fled,happily for her sentiment,not hearing the feeble laugh that followed,as Dunn,in sheer imbecility,again referred to the extravagant ludicrousness of the situation."It is about the biggest thing in the way of a sell all round,"he repeated,lying on his back,confidentially to the speck of smoke-obscured sky above him.He pictured himself repeating it,not to Nellie--her severe propriety might at last overlook the fact,but would not tolerate the joke--but to her father!It would be one of those characteristic Californian jokes Father Wynn would admire.
To his exhaustion fever presently succeeded,and he began to grow restless.The heat too seemed to invade his retreat,and from time to time the little patch of blue sky was totally obscured by clouds of smoke.He amused himself with watching a lizard who was investigating a folded piece of paper,whose elasticity gave the little creature lively apprehensions of its vitality.At last he could stand the stillness of his retreat and his supine position no longer,and rolled himself out of the bed of leaves that Teresa had so carefully prepared for him.He rose to his feet stiff and sore,and,supporting himself by the nearest tree,moved a few steps from the dead ashes of the camp-fire.The movement frightened the lizard,who abandoned the paper and fled.
With a satirical recollection of Brace and his "ridiculous"discovery through the medium of this animal,he stooped and picked up the paper."Like as not,"he said to himself,with grim irony,"these yer lizards are in the discovery business.