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Page 30
"When you add to that combination," he muttered, "a sure-enough angel
come to doctor a man. . . ."
"Growing delirious again," laughed Virginia. "Give him a little
brandy, Mr. Norton. Then a smoke if he's dying for one. Then we'll
try to get a little sleep, all of us. You see, I had virtually no
sleep on the train last night and to-day has been a big day for me. If
I'm going to do your friend any good I've got to get three winks. And,
unless you're made out of reinforced sheet-iron, it's the same for you.
You can lie down close to Mr. Lane so that he can wake you easily if he
needs us. Now," and she rose, still smiling, but suddenly looking
unutterably weary, "where is the guest-chamber?"
She did not tell them that not only last night, but the night before
she had sat up in a day coach, saving every cent she could out of the
few dollars which were to give her and her brother a new start in the
world; there were many things which Virginia Page knew how to keep to
herself.
"This way," said Norton, taking up the lantern. "We can really make
you more comfortable than you'd think."
At the very least he could count confidently on treating her to a
surprise. She followed him for forty or fifty feet toward the end of
the cave and to an irregular hole in the side wall, through this, and
into another cave, smaller than the first, but as big as an ordinary
room. The floor was strewn with the short needles of the mountain
pine. As she turned, looking about her, she noted first another
opening in a wall suggesting still another cave; then, feeling a faint
breath of the night air on her cheek she saw a small rift in the outer
shell of rock and through it the stars thick in the sky.
"May you sleep well in Jim Galloway's hang-out," said Norton lightly.
"May you not be troubled with the ghosts of the old cliff-dwellers
whose house this was before our time. And may you always remember that
if there is anything in the world that I can do for you all you have to
do is let me know. Good night."
"Good night," she said.
He had left the lantern for her. She placed it on the floor and went
across her strange bedroom to the hole in the rock through which the
stars were shining. It seemed impossible that those stars out there
were the same stars which had shone upon her all of her life long. She
could fancy that she had gone to sleep in one world and now had
awakened in another, coming into a far, unknown territory where the
face of the earth was changed, where men were different, where life was
new. And though her body was tired her spirit did not droop. Rather
an old exhilaration was in her blood. She had stepped from an old,
outworn world into a new one, and with a quick stir of the pulses she
told herself that life was good where it was strenuous and that she was
glad that Virginia Page had come to San Juan.
"And now," she mused sleepily when at last she lay down upon heaped-up
pine-needles and drew over her the blanket Norton had brought, "I am
going to sleep in the hang-out of Jim Galloway and the old home of the
cliff-dwellers! Virginia Page, you are a downright lucky girl!"
Whereupon she blew out her lantern, smiled faintly at the stars shining
upon her, sighed wearily and went to sleep.
CHAPTER VIII
JIM GALLOWAY'S GAME
As full consciousness of her surroundings returned slowly to her,
Virginia Page at first thought that she had been awakened by the aroma
of boiling coffee. Then, sitting up, wide awake, she knew that Norton
had come to the doorway of her separate chamber and had called. She
threw off her blanket and got up hastily.
It was still dark. She imagined that she had merely dozed and that
Norton was summoning her because Brocky Lane was worse. A dim glow
shone through the cave entrance, that flickering, uncertain light
eloquent of a camp-fire. As her hands went swiftly and femininely to
her hair, she heard Norton's voice in a laughing remark. Only then she
knew that she had slept three or four hours, that the dawn was near,
that it was time for her to return to San Juan.
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