The Song of the Lark by Willa Cather (best reads .TXT) 📕

wall and rolled herself in a blanket, and Fred threw the heavier blankets over her. The wool of the Navajo sheep was soon kindled by the warmth of her body, and was impenetrable to dampness. Her hair, where it hung below the rubber hat, gathered the moisture like a sponge. Fred put on the slicker, tied the sweater about his neck, and settled himself cross-legged beside her. The chamber was so dark that, although he could see the outline of her head and shoulders, he could not see her face. He struck a wax match to light his pipe. As he sheltered it between his hands, it sizzled and sputtered, throwing a yellow flicker over Thea and her blankets.

“You look like a gypsy,” he said as he dropped the match. “Anyone you’d rather be shut up with than me? No? Sure about that?”

“I think I am. Aren’t you cold?”

“Not especially.” Fred smoked in silence, listening to the roar of the water outside. “We may not get away from here right away,” he remarked.

“I shan’t mind. Shall you?”

He laughed grimly and pulled on his pipe. “Do you know where you’re at, Miss Thea Kronborg?” he said at last. “You’ve got me going pretty hard, I suppose you know. I’ve had a lot of sweethearts, but I’ve never been so much⁠—engrossed before. What are you going to do about it?” He heard nothing from the blankets. “Are you going to play fair, or is it about my cue to cut away?”

“I’ll play fair. I don’t see why you want to go.”

“What do you want me around for?⁠—to play with?”

Thea struggled up among the blankets. “I want you for everything. I don’t know whether I’m what people call in love with you or not. In Moonstone that meant sitting in a hammock with somebody. I don’t want to sit in a hammock with you, but I want to do almost everything else. Oh, hundreds of things!”

“If I run away, will you go with me?”

“I don’t know. I’ll have to think about that. Maybe I would.” She freed herself from her wrappings and stood up. “It’s not raining so hard now. Hadn’t we better start this minute? It will be night before we get to Biltmer’s.”

Fred struck another match. “It’s seven. I don’t know how much of the path may be washed away. I don’t even know whether I ought to let you try it without a lantern.”

Thea went to the doorway and looked out. “There’s nothing else to do. The sweater and the slicker will keep me dry, and this will be my chance to find out whether these shoes are really watertight. They cost a week’s salary.” She retreated to the back of the cave. “It’s getting blacker every minute.”

Ottenburg took a brandy flask from his coat pocket. “Better have some of this before we start. Can you take it without water?”

Thea lifted it obediently to her lips. She put on the sweater and Fred helped her to get the clumsy slicker on over it. He buttoned it and fastened the high collar. She could feel that his hands were hurried and clumsy. The coat was too big, and he took off his necktie and belted it in at the waist. While she tucked her hair more securely under the rubber hat he stood in front of her, between her and the gray doorway, without moving.

“Are you ready to go?” she asked carelessly.

“If you are,” he spoke quietly, without moving, except to bend his head forward a little.

Thea laughed and put her hands on his shoulders. “You know how to handle me, don’t you?” she whispered. For the first time, she kissed him without constraint or embarrassment.

“Thea, Thea, Thea!” Fred whispered her name three times, shaking her a little as if to waken her. It was too dark to see, but he could feel that she was smiling.

When she kissed him she had not hidden her face on his shoulder⁠—she had risen a little on her toes, and stood straight and free. In that moment when he came close to her actual personality, he felt in her the same expansion that he had noticed at Mrs. Nathanmeyer’s. She became freer and stronger under impulses. When she rose to meet him like that, he felt her flash into everything that she had ever suggested to him, as if she filled out her own shadow.

She pushed him away and shot past him out into the rain. “Now for it, Fred,” she called back exultantly. The rain was pouring steadily down through the dying gray twilight, and muddy streams were spouting and foaming over the cliff.

Fred caught her and held her back. “Keep behind me, Thea. I don’t know about the path. It may be gone altogether. Can’t tell what there is under this water.”

But the path was older than the white man’s Arizona. The rush of water had washed away the dust and stones that lay on the surface, but the rock skeleton of the Indian trail was there, ready for the foot. Where the streams poured down through gullies, there was always a cedar or a piñon to cling to. By wading and slipping and climbing, they got along. As they neared the head of the canyon, where the path lifted and rose in steep loops to the surface of the plateau, the climb was more difficult. The earth above had broken away and washed down over the trail, bringing rocks and bushes and even young trees with it. The last ghost of daylight was dying and there was no time to lose. The canyon behind them was already black.

“We’ve got to go right through the top of this pine tree, Thea. No time to hunt a way around. Give me your hand.” After they had crashed through the mass of branches, Fred stopped abruptly. “Gosh, what a hole! Can you jump it? Wait a minute.”

He cleared the washout, slipped on the wet rock at the farther side, and caught himself just in time