CHAPTER VII
THE PINNACLE
It was an exciting situation.
Pemrose, who like the enthroned daredevil liked excitement, if she waswarm enough to enjoy it, had not hoped for quite such a tidbit when shecame to the mountains,--at least, short of the little Thunder Bird'srecord-breaking flight.
"Oh! I did so want to run across him again. I do so long to thank him!Why--why! we might never have escaped from that awful wreck, got out ofthe zero water, but for him, Una." The blue eyes were wet now, franklywet, bluebells by a mountain brook--the little bursting brooklet offeeling within.
"I--I'd like to thank him, too!" gushed Una, with that little fixed startwinkling most radiantly in one dark eye, the slight stand whichcharacterized it only at intense moments when feeling reached indefinitealtitudes. "Oh! how glad I am now," she ran on breathlessly, "that wemade Andrew leave the car down in a garage at the Pinnacle's foot andbring us up here for a sort of picnic supper," sending a sidelong glancescouting round for the tall, capped figure of the grizzled chauffeurwho, a brief ten years before, had been driving his "laird's" car uponBen Muir, a heathery mountain of his native Highlands.
Trustworthy as day, a capable driver and zealous Church Elder, he wasone to whose guardianship Una Grosvenor, the apple of her parents' eye,might safely be intrusted with her visiting friend while her fathergolfed and her mother lunched and played bridge in complacent peace ofmind.
"Oh! she's all right with Andrew; he's such a true-penny!" was herfather's dictum. "Safer with him, up here, than she would be with maidor housekeeper! And, after that shock in the winter, the doctor wantsher to be out of doors among the hills morning, noon andnight--practically all the time, if she can!"
Ah! so far, so good. But just at this unprecedented moment of excitementAndrew, the true-penny, had encountered another Scot, who emigratedbefore he did, and was breezily "clacking" with him at some distancefrom where two breathlessly expectant girls gazed down upon the blacktop of the nickum's head--and at his wheeling shoulders in the greatarmchair.
"Oh--oh! there he goes--see--curling up his legs, drawing up his feetcarefully, turning in the seat--standing up!" cried Pemrose, all Rose atthis crisis, prematurely blooming, as if it were June, not May, as shestood on tiptoe to meet a dramatic moment, reveling in the thought thatthe daredevil did not know what a surprise awaited him on top here, whata welcome--heart-eager gratitude.
She bit her lip, however, upon the impulsive cry, for she saw two girls,younger than herself, with a ten-year-old boy, who had been watching theclimber's feat from a near-by mound, turn and look at her curiously.
They were evidently acquainted with the daring usurper of the Devil'sChair.
For, having drawn up his legs until his knees touched his chin, thenraised himself to a standing position on the grim stone seat, cautiouslyturning, his strong fingers gripping the granite chair-arms, when hisback was to the precipice beneath and his face almost touching thetwelve-foot, well-nigh perpendicular rock which he had to climb, heactually had the hardihood to wave his hand to them.
"Now--now comes the 'scratch'!" he shouted laughingly. "I'm going tohook on to that 'nick' in the rock, there, just over my head, and drawmyself up. Had to 'shy' it coming down--for fear it would catch in myclothing."
"Didn't I--didn't I t-tell you it was him?" burst forth Pem, with allthe vehemence of a little spring torrent, in Una's ear as she caught thering of the chaffing voice which had railed at the Fates for "wishing awreck on" to unoffending youth, and was so boldly challenging them now.
And just as free and frank in her girlish gratitude as that torrentbubbling impulsively out of the earth, when the nickum reached the crestagain, she sprang forward, hand outstretched, to meet him. Her eyes,blue as the little fairy blossoms of the star-grass now, were breezeblown in the meadow of her gladness.
It was nothing--nothing not to know the name of one who had saved youfrom death, she thought.
By the rescue you knew him!
And he knew her!
Those eyes, those keen, girlish eyes which had looked through thespectroscope a hundred times, in her father's laboratory, into theremote mystery of that far-away upper air could not be deceived.
By the sudden, startled heave of his shoulders, whose defiant shrug sheremembered so well, by the quick intake of breath, as its climbing hisssharpened to a whistle--almost a rude whistle in the excitement of thefeat he had just performed--by the little stare of breathless surprise,of quandary, in his dark eyes, glowing like Una's, he recognized her ...and passed her by.
Recognized her as the girl whose "pep" he had complimented for puttinganother's life before her own--and didn't want to have anything more inlife to say to her!
Well! the Heavens fell upon the Pinnacle as Pem drew back--annihilated.
Snubbed for the first time in all her blue-sky life--and by a boy, too!
To be sure, indeed, the nickum, his glance darting past her to Una, hadgone by with a slight inclination of his bare head that was a stony bow.
To be sure, when one of the girls of his acquaintance questioned himabout the view from the Devil's Seat, there was a sort of creak in hisvoice as he answered:
"It's--a--corker! You can see away off: far-rms, lakes, all the othermountains--Mount Greylock, too, in the distance! But--but it's acat's-foot climb down--there!" breaking off breathlessly, as if feelingwere making a cat's-paw of him.
"Oh! you can really see Mount Greylock! As far away as that! Well! I'mgoing to try-y it, too," ventured one of his girlish companions whoseage was fourteen. "Summer and winter, I've done a lot of climbing, uphere!"
"You try it! Any girl try sitting in the Devil's Chair! Why! there isn'ta girl living who could do it," crowed the gray-shouldered youth: andnow his tones were lordly, as if he were picking himself up after aninner tumble.
"Hey! Is that so?" Pem--over-hearing--ground the words between herteeth.
"Have you never heard of Camp Fire, What a shame! What a shame! _If_ you've never heard of Camp Fire, You're to blame! You're to blame! Then don't take a nap, For we're on the map, Ready to prove it with s-snap!"
She hissed the last word at the nickum's back, as he halted at somedistance with his companions.
"Una! I'm going to do it," she panted. "I'm going to slide down thatrock there, turn round and sit in the Chair--then draw myself up again,as he did. I've got on sneakers. I know I can! I've done some breakneckclimbing with father--yes! and with my Camp Fire Group, too."
"I--I'll give you all my marshmallows that we brought with us to toastat an open fire, if you do!... Yes! and one of my two little thistlepins--pebble pins--that Andrew and his wife brought me from Scotland,when they went home last year, _if you do_.... Wasn't he justhor-rid? He didn't want to speak to us--to know us!"
Una's face flamed upon the bribe, and was so pretty lit by that fixedstar in the eye, that it must have been a zero-hearted nickum who couldturn his back upon it.
"Hold my hat," said Pem: if she had been a boy, the tone would havemeant: "Hold my coat while I thrash him!"
Unhesitatingly she stepped to the precipice-brink and measured thedistance to that Devil's Chair very coolly and critically with her eye.