The Spirit of Sweetwater | Page 3

self-conscious as a boy.
Once the fair invalid turned and looked back, but she was too far away
for him to discern the expression of her face. He was not possessed of
self-esteem enough to believe she had turned to look for him.
He followed them in their slow pace till they turned in at the doorway
of the principal hotel of the village. They entered at the ladies' door

while he kept on to the main entrance and rotunda. There was no
elevator in the house, and the invalid paused a moment before
attempting the stairway. It was pitiful to see her effort to make light of
it all to her companion, who was quite evidently her father. She smiled
at him even while she pressed one slim hand against her bosom.
Clement longed to take her in his arms and carry her up the stairway--it
seemed the thing most worth doing in all the world--but he could only
lean against the desk and see them go slowly stair by stair out of sight.
"Who are they?" he asked of the clerk whom he detected also watching
them with almost the same breathless interest.
"Chicago merchant, G. B. Ross. That's his daughter. She's pretty far
gone--consumption, I reckon. It looks tough to see a girl like that go off.
You'd think now----"
Clement did not remain to hear the clerk moralize further; he went
immediately to his own hotel, paid his bill, and ordered his baggage
sent to the other house. He wondered at himself for this overpowering
interest in a sick girl, and at his plan to see her again.
He reasoned that he would be able to see her at breakfast time,
provided she came down to breakfast, and provided he hit upon the
same hour of eating. He began to calculate upon the probable hour
when she would come down. It was astounding how completely she
occupied his thought already.
He struck off up the cañon where no sound was, other than the roar of
the wild little stream which seemed to lift its voice in wilder clamor as
the night fell. Its presence helped him to think out his situation. He had
grown self-analytical during his life in the camp, where he was alone so
far as his finer feelings were concerned, and he had come to believe in
many strange things which he said nothing about to any friend he had.
He had come to believe in fate and also in intuition. A powerful
impulse to do he counted higher than reason. That is to say, if he had a
powerful impulse to run a shaft in a certain direction he would so act,

no matter if his reason declared dead against it. The hidden and
uncontrollable processes of his mind had given him the secret of "The
Witch's" gold, had led him right in his shafting and in his selection of
friends and assistants--and had made him a millionaire at thirty-seven
years of age. He was prone to over-value the intuitional side of his
nature, probably--an error common among practical men.
Fate was, with him, luck raised to a higher power. What was to be
would be; the unexpected happened; the expected, hoped for, labored
for, did not always happen. All around him men stumbled upon mines,
while other men, more skilful, more observant, failed. The luck was
against them.
It was quite in harmony with his nature that he should be absorbed in
the singular and powerful impulse he had to seek an acquaintance with
that poor dying girl.
Dying! At that word he rebelled. God would not take so beautiful a
creature away from earth; men needed her to teach them gentleness and
submission. More than this, he had an almost uncontrollable impulse to
go to her, and putting aside doctors say to her:
"I am the one to heal you."
He had never had an impulse to heal before, but the fact that it was
unaccountable and powerful and definite, fitted in with his successes.
He gave it careful thought. It must mean something because it had
never come to him before, and because it rose out of the mysterious
depths of his brain.
She must not die! The wind, the mountains, the clear air, the good,
sweet water, the fragrant pines, the splendid sun--these things must
help her. "And I, perhaps I, too, can help her?"
Back in the glare of the hotel rotunda, with its rows of bored men
sitting stolidly smoking, idly talking, his impulse and his resolution
seemed very unmanly and preposterous. It is so easy to lose faith in the
elemental in the midst of the superficial and ephemeral of daily habit.

CHAPTER II
Clement was an early riser, and, notwithstanding his restless night, was
astir at six.