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CHAPTER VI. THE MILL-WHEEL OF STEERS
Meantime, at the ranch, when Judkins's news had sent Venters on the
trail of the rustlers, Jane Withersteen led the injured man to her house
and with skilled fingers dressed the gunshot wound in his arm.
"Judkins, what do you think happened to my riders?"
"I—I d rather not say," he replied.
"Tell me. Whatever you'll tell me I'll keep to myself. I'm beginning
to worry about more than the loss of a herd of cattle. Venters hinted
of—but tell me, Judkins."
"Well, Miss Withersteen, I think as Venters thinks—your riders have
been called in."
"Judkins!... By whom?"
"You know who handles the reins of your Mormon riders."
"Do you dare insinuate that my churchmen have ordered in my riders?"
"I ain't insinuatin' nothin', Miss Withersteen," answered Judkins, with
spirit. "I know what I'm talking about. I didn't want to tell you."
"Oh, I can't believe that! I'll not believe it! Would Tull leave my
herds at the mercy of rustlers and wolves just because—because—? No,
no! It's unbelievable."
"Yes, thet particular thing's onheard of around Cottonwoods But, beggin'
pardon, Miss Withersteen, there never was any other rich Mormon woman
here on the border, let alone one thet's taken the bit between her
teeth."
That was a bold thing for the reserved Judkins to say, but it did not
anger her. This rider's crude hint of her spirit gave her a glimpse of
what others might think. Humility and obedience had been hers always.
But had she taken the bit between her teeth? Still she wavered. And
then, with quick spurt of warm blood along her veins, she thought of
Black Star when he got the bit fast between his iron jaws and ran wild
in the sage. If she ever started to run! Jane smothered the glow and
burn within her, ashamed of a passion for freedom that opposed her duty.
"Judkins, go to the village," she said, "and when you have learned
anything definite about my riders please come to me at once."
When he had gone Jane resolutely applied her mind to a number of tasks
that of late had been neglected. Her father had trained her in the
management of a hundred employees and the working of gardens and fields;
and to keep record of the movements of cattle and riders. And beside the
many duties she had added to this work was one of extreme delicacy, such
as required all her tact and ingenuity. It was an unobtrusive, almost
secret aid which she rendered to the Gentile families of the village.
Though Jane Withersteen never admitted so to herself, it amounted to no
less than a system of charity. But for her invention of numberless kinds
of employment, for which there was no actual need, these families of
Gentiles, who had failed in a Mormon community, would have starved.
In aiding these poor people Jane thought she deceived her keen
churchmen, but it was a kind of deceit for which she did not pray to be
forgiven. Equally as difficult was the task of deceiving the Gentiles,
for they were as proud as they were poor. It had been a great grief to
her to discover how these people hated her people; and it had been a
source of great joy that through her they had come to soften in hatred.
At any time this work called for a clearness of mind that precluded
anxiety and worry; but under the present circumstances it required all
her vigor and obstinate tenacity to pin her attention upon her task.
Sunset came, bringing with the end of her labor a patient calmness and
power to wait that had not been hers earlier in the day. She expected
Judkins, but he did not appear. Her house was always quiet; to-night,
however, it seemed unusually so. At supper her women served her with a
silent assiduity; it spoke what their sealed lips could not utter—the
sympathy of Mormon women. Jerd came to her with the key of the great
door of the stone stable, and to make his daily report about the horses.
One of his daily duties was to give Black Star and Night and the other
racers a ten-mile run. This day it had been omitted, and the boy grew
confused in explanations that she had not asked for. She did inquire if
he would return on the morrow, and Jerd, in mingled surprise and relief,
assured her he would always work for her. Jane missed the rattle and
trot, canter and gallop of the incoming riders on the hard trails. Dusk
shaded the grove where she walked; the birds ceased singing; the wind
sighed through the leaves of the cottonwoods, and the running water
murmured down its stone-bedded channel. The glimmering of the first star
was like the peace and beauty of the night. Her faith welled up in her
heart and said that all would soon be right in her little world. She
pictured Venters about his lonely camp-fire sitting between his faithful
dogs. She prayed for his safety, for the success of his undertaking.
Early the next morning one of Jane's women brought in word that Judkins
wished to speak to her. She hurried out, and in her surprise to see him
armed with rifle and revolver, she forgot her intention to inquire about
his wound.
"Judkins! Those guns? You never carried guns."
"It's high time, Miss Withersteen," he replied. "Will you come into the
grove? It ain't jest exactly safe for me to be seen here."
She walked with him into the shade of the cottonwoods.
"What do you mean?"
"Miss Withersteen, I went to my mother's house last night. While there,
some one knocked, an' a man asked for me. I went to the door. He wore
a mask. He said I'd better not ride any more for Jane Withersteen. His
voice was hoarse an' strange, disguised I reckon, like his face. He said
no more, an' ran off in the dark."
"Did you know who he was?" asked Jane, in a low voice.
"Yes."
Jane did not ask to know; she did not want to know; she feared to know.
All her calmness fled at a single thought.
"Thet's why I'm packin' guns," went on Judkins. "For I'll never quit
ridin' for you, Miss Withersteen, till you let me go."
"Judkins, do you want to leave me?"
"Do I look thet way? Give me a hoss—a fast hoss, an' send me out on the
sage."
"Oh, thank you, Judkins! You're more faithful than my own people. I
ought not accept your loyalty—you might suffer more through it. But
what in the world can I do? My head whirls. The wrong to Venters—the
stolen herd—these masks, threats, this coil in the dark! I can't
understand! But I feel something dark and terrible closing in around
me."
"Miss Withersteen, it's all simple enough," said Judkins, earnestly.
"Now please listen—an' beggin' your pardon—jest turn thet deaf Mormon
ear aside, an' let me talk clear an' plain in the other. I went around
to the saloons an' the stores an' the loafin' places yesterday. All your
riders are in. There's talk of a vigilance band organized to hunt down
rustlers. They call themselves 'The Riders.' Thet's the report—thet's
the reason given for your riders leavin' you. Strange thet only a
few riders of other ranchers joined the band! An' Tull's man, Jerry
Card—he's the leader. I seen him en' his hoss. He 'ain't been to Glaze.
I'm not easy to fool on the looks of a hoss thet's traveled the sage.
Tull an' Jerry didn't ride to Glaze!... Well, I met Blake en' Dorn, both
good friends of mine, usually, as far as their Mormon lights will let
'em go. But these fellers couldn't fool me, an' they didn't try very
hard. I asked them, straight out like a man, why they left you like
thet. I didn't forget to mention how you nursed Blake's poor old mother
when she was sick, an' how good you was to Dorn's kids. They looked
ashamed, Miss Withersteen. An' they jest froze up—thet dark set look
thet makes them strange an' different to me. But I could tell the
difference between thet first natural twinge of conscience an' the later
look of some secret thing. An' the difference I caught was thet they
couldn't help themselves. They hadn't no say in the matter. They looked
as if their bein' unfaithful to you was bein' faithful to a higher duty.
An' there's the secret. Why it's as plain as—as sight of my gun here."
"Plain!... My herds to wander in the sage—to be stolen! Jane Withersteen
a poor woman! Her head to be brought low and her spirit broken!... Why,
Judkins, it's plain enough."
"Miss Withersteen, let me get what boys I can gather, an' hold the white
herd. It's on the slope now, not ten miles out—three thousand head,
an' all steers. They're wild, an' likely to stampede at the pop of a
jack-rabbit's ears. We'll camp right with them, en' try to hold them."
"Judkins, I'll reward you some day for your service, unless all is
taken from me. Get the boys and tell Jerd to give you pick of my horses,
except Black Star and Night. But—do not shed blood for my cattle nor
heedlessly risk your lives."
Jane Withersteen rushed to the silence and seclusion of her room, and
there could not longer hold back the bursting of her wrath. She went
stone-blind in the fury of a passion that had never before showed its
power. Lying upon her bed, sightless, voiceless, she was a writhing,
living flame. And she tossed there while her fury burned and burned, and
finally burned itself out.
Then, weak and spent, she lay thinking, not of the oppression that would
break her, but of this new revelation of self. Until the last few days
there had been little in her life to rouse passions. Her forefathers
had been Vikings, savage chieftains who bore no cross and brooked no
hindrance to their will. Her father had inherited that temper; and at
times, like antelope fleeing before fire on the slope, his people fled
from his red rages. Jane Withersteen realized that the spirit of wrath
and war had lain dormant in her. She shrank from black depths hitherto
unsuspected. The one thing in man or woman that she scorned above all
scorn, and which she could not forgive, was hate. Hate headed a flaming
pathway straight to hell. All in a flash, beyond her control there
had been in her a birth of fiery hate. And the man who had dragged her
peaceful and loving spirit to this degradation was a minister of God's
word, an Elder of her church, the counselor of her beloved Bishop.
The loss of herds and ranges, even of Amber Spring and the Old Stone
House, no longer concerned Jane Withersteen, she faced the foremost
thought of her life, what she now considered the mightiest problem—the
salvation of her soul.
She knelt by her bedside and prayed; she prayed as she had never prayed
in all her life—prayed to be forgiven for her sin to be immune from
that dark, hot hate; to love Tull as her minister, though she could not
love him as a man; to do her duty by her church and people and those
dependent upon her bounty; to hold reverence of God and womanhood
inviolate.
When Jane Withersteen rose from that storm of wrath and prayer for help
she was serene, calm, sure—a changed woman. She would do her duty as
she saw it, live her life as her own truth guided her. She might never
be able to marry a man of her choice, but she certainly never would
become the wife of Tull. Her churchmen might take her cattle and horses,
ranges and fields, her corrals and stables, the house of Withersteen and
the water that nourished the village of Cottonwoods; but they could not
force her to marry Tull, they could not change her decision or break
her spirit. Once resigned to further loss, and sure of herself, Jane
Withersteen attained a peace of mind that had not been hers for a year.
She forgave Tull, and felt a melancholy regret over what she knew he
considered duty, irrespective of his personal feeling for her. First
of all, Tull, as he was a man, wanted her for himself; and secondly,
he hoped to save her and her riches for his church. She did not believe
that Tull had been actuated solely by his minister's zeal to save her
soul. She doubted her interpretation of one of his dark sayings—that
if she were lost to him she might as well be lost to heaven. Jane
Withersteen's common sense took arms against the binding limits of her
religion; and she doubted that her Bishop, whom she had been taught had
direct communication with God—would damn her soul for refusing to marry
a Mormon. As for Tull and his churchmen, when they had harassed her,
perhaps made her poor, they would find her unchangeable, and then she
would get back most of what she had lost. So she reasoned, true at last
to her faith in all men, and in their ultimate goodness.
The clank of iron hoofs upon the stone courtyard drew her hurriedly
from her retirement. There, beside his horse, stood Lassiter, his dark
apparel and the great black gun-sheaths contrasting singularly with his
gentle smile. Jane's active mind took up her interest in him and her
half-determined desire to use what charm she had to foil his evident
design in visiting Cottonwoods. If she could mitigate his hatred of
Mormons, or at least keep him from killing more of them, not only would
she be saving her people, but also be leading back this bloodspiller to
some semblance of the human.
"Mornin', ma'am," he said, black sombrero in hand.
"Lassiter I'm not an old woman, or even a madam," she replied, with her
bright smile. "If you can't say Miss Withersteen—call me Jane."
"I reckon Jane would be easier. First names are always handy for me."
"Well, use mine, then. Lassiter, I'm glad to see you. I'm in trouble."
Then she told him of Judkins's return, of the driving of the red herd,
of Venters's departure on Wrangle, and the calling-in of her riders.
"'Pears to me you're some smilin' an' pretty for a woman with so much
trouble," he remarked.
"Lassiter! Are you paying me compliments? But, seriously I've made up
my mind not to be miserable. I've lost much, and I'll lose more.
Nevertheless, I won't be sour, and I hope I'll never be unhappy—again."
Lassiter twisted his hat round and round, as was his way, and took his
time in replying.
"Women are strange to me. I got to back-trailin' myself from them long
ago. But I'd like a game woman. Might I ask, seein' as how you take this
trouble, if you're goin' to fight?"
"Fight! How? Even if I would, I haven't a friend except that boy who
doesn't dare stay in the village."
"I make bold to say, ma'am—Jane—that there's another, if you want
him."
"Lassiter!... Thank you. But how can I accept you as a friend? Think!
Why, you'd ride down into the village with those terrible guns and kill
my enemies—who are also my churchmen."
"I reckon I might be riled up to jest about that," he replied, dryly.
She held out both hands to him.
"Lassiter! I'll accept your friendship—be proud of it—return it—if I
may keep you from killing another Mormon."
"I'll tell you one thing," he said, bluntly, as the gray lightning
formed in his eyes. "You're too good a woman to be sacrificed as you're
goin' to be.... No, I reckon you an' me can't be friends on such terms."
In her earnestness she stepped closer to him, repelled yet fascinated by
the sudden transition of his moods. That he would fight for her was at
once horrible and wonderful.
"You came here to kill a man—the man whom Milly Erne—"
"The man who dragged Milly Erne to hell—put it that way!... Jane
Withersteen, yes, that's why I came here. I'd tell so much to no other
livin' soul.... There're things such a woman as you'd never dream of—so
don't mention her again. Not till you tell me the name of the man!"
"Tell you! I? Never!"
"I reckon you will. An' I'll never ask you. I'm a man of strange beliefs
an' ways of thinkin', an' I seem to see into the future an' feel things
hard to explain. The trail I've been followin' for so many years
was twisted en' tangled, but it's straightenin' out now. An', Jane
Withersteen, you crossed it long ago to ease poor Milly's agony. That,
whether you want or not, makes Lassiter your friend. But you cross it
now strangely to mean somethin to me—God knows what!—unless by your
noble blindness to incite me to greater hatred of Mormon men."
Jane felt swayed by a strength that far exceeded her own. In a clash of
wills with this man she would go to the wall. If she were to influence
him it must be wholly through womanly allurement. There was that about
Lassiter which commanded her respect. She had abhorred his name; face
to face with him, she found she feared only his deeds. His mystic
suggestion, his foreshadowing of something that she was to mean to him,
pierced deep into her mind. She believed fate had thrown in her way the
lover or husband of Milly Erne. She believed that through her an evil
man might be reclaimed. His allusion to what he called her blindness
terrified her. Such a mistaken idea of his might unleash the bitter,
fatal mood she sensed in him. At any cost she must placate this man; she
knew the die was cast, and that if Lassiter did not soften to a woman's
grace and beauty and wiles, then it would be because she could not make
him.
"I reckon you'll hear no more such talk from me," Lassiter went on,
presently. "Now, Miss Jane, I rode in to tell you that your herd of
white steers is down on the slope behind them big ridges. An' I seen
somethin' goin' on that'd be mighty interestin' to you, if you could see
it. Have you a field-glass?"
"Yes, I have two glasses. I'll get them and ride out with you. Wait,
Lassiter, please," she said, and hurried within. Sending word to Jerd to
saddle Black Star and fetch him to the court, she then went to her room
and changed to the riding-clothes she always donned when going into
the sage. In this male attire her mirror showed her a jaunty, handsome
rider. If she expected some little need of admiration from Lassiter, she
had no cause for disappointment. The gentle smile that she liked, which
made of him another person, slowly overspread his face.
"If I didn't take you for a boy!" he exclaimed. "It's powerful ***
what difference clothes make. Now I've been some scared of your dignity,
like when the other night you was all in white but in this rig—"
Black Star came pounding into the court, dragging Jerd half off his
feet, and he whistled at Lassiter's black. But at sight of Jane all his
defiant lines seemed to soften, and with tosses of his beautiful head he
whipped his bridle.
"Down, Black Star, down," said Jane.
He dropped his head, and, slowly lengthening, he bent one foreleg, then
the other, and sank to his knees. Jane slipped her left foot in the
stirrup, swung lightly into the saddle, and Black Star rose with a
ringing stamp. It was not easy for Jane to hold him to a canter through
the grove, and like the wind he broke when he saw the sage. Jane let him
have a couple of miles of free running on the open trail, and then she
coaxed him in and waited for her companion. Lassiter was not long in
catching up, and presently they were riding side by side. It reminded
her how she used to ride with Venters. Where was he now? She gazed
far down the slope to the curved purple lines of Deception Pass and
involuntarily shut her eyes with a trembling stir of nameless fear.
"We'll turn off here," Lassiter said, "en' take to the sage a mile or
so. The white herd is behind them big ridges."
"What are you going to show me?" asked Jane. "I'm prepared—don't be
afraid."
He smiled as if he meant that bad news came swiftly enough without being
presaged by speech.
When they reached the lee of a rolling ridge Lassiter dismounted,
motioning to her to do likewise. They left the horses standing, bridles
down. Then Lassiter, carrying the field-glasses began to lead the way
up the slow rise of ground. Upon nearing the summit he halted her with a
gesture.
"I reckon we'd see more if we didn't show ourselves against the sky,"
he said. "I was here less than an hour ago. Then the herd was seven or
eight miles south, an' if they ain't bolted yet—"
"Lassiter!... Bolted?"
"That's what I said. Now let's see."
Jane climbed a few more paces behind him and then peeped over the ridge.
Just beyond began a shallow swale that deepened and widened into a
valley and then swung to the left. Following the undulating sweep of
sage, Jane saw the straggling lines and then the great body of the white
herd. She knew enough about steers, even at a distance of four or
five miles, to realize that something was in the wind. Bringing her
field-glass into use, she moved it slowly from left to right, which
action swept the whole herd into range. The stragglers were restless;
the more compactly massed steers were browsing. Jane brought the glass
back to the big sentinels of the herd, and she saw them trot with quick
steps, stop short and toss wide horns, look everywhere, and then trot in
another direction.
"Judkins hasn't been able to get his boys together yet," said Jane. "But
he'll be there soon. I hope not too late. Lassiter, what's frightening
those big leaders?"
"Nothin' jest on the minute," replied Lassiter. "Them steers are
quietin' down. They've been scared, but not bad yet. I reckon the whole
herd has moved a few miles this way since I was here."
"They didn't browse that distance—not in less than an hour. Cattle
aren't sheep."
"No, they jest run it, en' that looks bad."
"Lassiter, what frightened them?" repeated Jane, impatiently.
"Put down your glass. You'll see at first better with a naked eye. Now
look along them ridges on the other side of the herd, the ridges where
the sun shines bright on the sage.... That's right. Now look en' look
hard en' wait."
Long-drawn moments of straining sight rewarded Jane with nothing save
the low, purple rim of ridge and the shimmering sage.
"It's begun again!" whispered Lassiter, and he gripped her arm.
"Watch.... There, did you see that?"
"No, no. Tell me what to look for?"
"A white flash—a kind of pin-point of quick light—a gleam as from sun
shinin' on somethin' white."
Suddenly Jane's concentrated gaze caught a fleeting glint. Quickly she
brought her glass to bear on the spot. Again the purple sage, magnified
in color and size and wave, for long moments irritated her with its
monotony. Then from out of the sage on the ridge flew up a broad, white
object, flashed in the sunlight and vanished. Like magic it was, and
bewildered Jane.
"What on earth is that?"
"I reckon there's some one behind that ridge throwin' up a sheet or a
white blanket to reflect the sunshine."
"Why?" queried Jane, more bewildered than ever.
"To stampede the herd," replied Lassiter, and his teeth clicked.
"Ah!" She made a fierce, passionate movement, clutched the glass
tightly, shook as with the passing of a spasm, and then dropped her
head. Presently she raised it to greet Lassiter with something like a
smile. "My righteous brethren are at work again," she said, in scorn.
She had stifled the leap of her wrath, but for perhaps the first time
in her life a bitter derision curled her lips. Lassiter's cool gray eyes
seemed to pierce her. "I said I was prepared for anything; but that was
hardly true. But why would they—anybody stampede my cattle?"
"That's a Mormon's godly way of bringin' a woman to her knees."
"Lassiter, I'll die before I ever bend my knees. I might be led I won't
be driven. Do you expect the herd to bolt?"
"I don't like the looks of them big steers. But you can never tell.
Cattle sometimes stampede as easily as buffalo. Any little flash or move
will start them. A rider gettin' down an' walkin' toward them sometimes
will make them jump an' fly. Then again nothin' seems to scare them.
But I reckon that white flare will do the biz. It's a new one on me,
an' I've seen some ridin' an' rustlin'. It jest takes one of them
God-fearin' Mormons to think of devilish tricks."
"Lassiter, might not this trick be done by Oldring's men?" asked Jane,
ever grasping at straws.
"It might be, but it ain't," replied Lassiter. "Oldring's an honest
thief. He don't skulk behind ridges to scatter your cattle to the four
winds. He rides down on you, an' if you don't like it you can throw a
gun."
Jane bit her tongue to refrain from championing men who at the very
moment were proving to her that they were little and mean compared even
with rustlers.
"Look!... Jane, them leadin' steers have bolted. They're drawin' the
stragglers, an' that'll pull the whole herd."
Jane was not quick enough to catch the details called out by Lassiter,
but she saw the line of cattle lengthening. Then, like a stream of white
bees pouring from a huge swarm, the steers stretched out from the main
body. In a few moments, with astonishing rapidity, the whole herd got
into motion. A faint roar of trampling hoofs came to Jane's ears, and
gradually swelled; low, rolling clouds of dust began to rise above the
sage.
"It's a stampede, an' a hummer," said Lassiter.
"Oh, Lassiter! The herd's running with the valley! It leads into the
canyon! There's a straight jump-off!"
"I reckon they'll run into it, too. But that's a good many miles yet.
An', Jane, this valley swings round almost north before it goes east.
That stampede will pass within a mile of us."
The long, white, bobbing line of steers streaked swiftly through the
sage, and a funnel-shaped dust-cloud arose at a low angle. A dull
rumbling filled Jane's ears.
"I'm thinkin' of millin' that herd," said Lassiter. His gray glance
swept up the slope to the west. "There's some specks an' dust way off
toward the village. Mebbe that's Judkins an' his boys. It ain't likely
he'll get here in time to help. You'd better hold Black Star here on
this high ridge."
He ran to his horse and, throwing off saddle-bags and tightening the
cinches, he leaped astride and galloped straight down across the valley.
Jane went for Black Star and, leading him to the summit of the ridge,
she mounted and faced the valley with excitement and expectancy. She had
heard of milling stampeded cattle, and knew it was a feat accomplished
by only the most daring riders.
The white herd was now strung out in a line two miles long. The dull
rumble of thousands of hoofs deepened into continuous low thunder, and
as the steers swept swiftly closer the thunder became a heavy roll.
Lassiter crossed in a few moments the level of the valley to the eastern
rise of ground and there waited the coming of the herd. Presently, as
the head of the white line reached a point opposite to where Jane stood,
Lassiter spurred his black into a run.
Jane saw him take a position on the off side of the leaders of the
stampede, and there he rode. It was like a race. They swept on down the
valley, and when the end of the white line neared Lassiter's first
stand the head had begun to swing round to the west. It swung slowly and
stubbornly, yet surely, and gradually assumed a long, beautiful curve of
moving white. To Jane's amaze she saw the leaders swinging, turning till
they headed back toward her and up the valley. Out to the right of
these wild plunging steers ran Lassiter's black, and Jane's keen eye
appreciated the fleet stride and sure-footedness of the blind horse.
Then it seemed that the herd moved in a great curve, a huge half-moon
with the points of head and tail almost opposite, and a mile apart But
Lassiter relentlessly crowded the leaders, sheering them to the left,
turning them little by little. And the dust-blinded wild followers
plunged on madly in the tracks of their leaders. This ever-moving,
ever-changing curve of steers rolled toward Jane and when below her,
scarce half a mile, it began to narrow and close into a circle. Lassiter
had ridden parallel with her position, turned toward her, then aside,
and now he was riding directly away from her, all the time pushing the
head of that bobbing line inward.
It was then that Jane, suddenly understanding Lassiter's feat stared
and gasped at the riding of this intrepid man. His horse was fleet and
tireless, but blind. He had pushed the leaders around and around till
they were about to turn in on the inner side of the end of that line
of steers. The leaders were already running in a circle; the end of the
herd was still running almost straight. But soon they would be wheeling.
Then, when Lassiter had the circle formed, how would he escape? With
Jane Withersteen prayer was as ready as praise; and she prayed for this
man's safety. A circle of dust began to collect. Dimly, as through a
yellow veil, Jane saw Lassiter press the leaders inward to close the gap
in the sage. She lost sight of him in the dust, again she thought she
saw the black, riderless now, rear and drag himself and fall. Lassiter
had been thrown—lost! Then he reappeared running out of the dust into
the sage. He had escaped, and she breathed again.
Spellbound, Jane Withersteen watched this stupendous millwheel of
steers. Here was the milling of the herd. The white running circle
closed in upon the open space of sage. And the dust circles closed above
into a pall. The ground quaked and the incessant thunder of pounding
hoofs rolled on. Jane felt deafened, yet she thrilled to a new sound. As
the circle of sage lessened the steers began to bawl, and when it closed
entirely there came a great upheaval in the center, and a terrible
thumping of heads and clicking of horns. Bawling, climbing, goring, the
great mass of steers on the inside wrestled in a crashing din, heaved
and groaned under the pressure. Then came a deadlock. The inner strife
ceased, and the hideous roar and crash. Movement went on in the outer
circle, and that, too, gradually stilled. The white herd had come to a
stop, and the pall of yellow dust began to drift away on the wind.
Jane Withersteen waited on the ridge with full and grateful heart.
Lassiter appeared, making his weary way toward her through the sage. And
up on the slope Judkins rode into sight with his troop of boys. For the
present, at least, the white herd would be looked after.
When Lassiter reached her and laid his hand on Black Star's mane, Jane
could not find speech.
"Killed—my—hoss," he panted.
"Oh! I'm sorry," cried Jane. "Lassiter! I know you can't replace him,
but I'll give you any one of my racers—Bells, or Night, even Black
Star."
"I'll take a fast hoss, Jane, but not one of your favorites," he
replied. "Only—will you let me have Black Star now an' ride him over
there an' head off them fellers who stampeded the herd?"
He pointed to several moving specks of black and puffs of dust in the
purple sage.
"I can head them off with this hoss, an' then—"
"Then, Lassiter?"
"They'll never stampede no more cattle."
"Oh! No! No!... Lassiter, I won't let you go!"
But a flush of fire flamed in her cheeks, and her trembling hands shook
Black Star's bridle, and her eyes fell before Lassiter's.
CHAPTER VII. THE DAUGHTER OF WITHERSTEEN
"Lassiter, will you be my rider?" Jane had asked him.
"I reckon so," he had replied.
Few as the words were, Jane knew how infinitely much they implied. She
wanted him to take charge of her cattle and horse and ranges, and save
them if that were possible. Yet, though she could not have spoken aloud
all she meant, she was perfectly honest with herself. Whatever the price
to be paid, she must keep Lassiter close to her; she must shield from
him the man who had led Milly Erne to Cottonwoods. In her fear she so
controlled her mind that she did not whisper this Mormon's name to her
own soul, she did not even think it. Besides, beyond this thing she
regarded as a sacred obligation thrust upon her, was the need of a
helper, of a friend, of a champion in this critical time. If she could
rule this gun-man, as Venters had called him, if she could even keep him
from shedding blood, what strategy to play his flame and his presence
against the game of oppression her churchmen were waging against her?
Never would she forget the effect on Tull and his men when Venters
shouted Lassiter's name. If she could not wholly control Lassiter, then
what she could do might put off the fatal day.
One of her safe racers was a dark bay, and she called him Bells because
of the way he struck his iron shoes on the stones. When Jerd led out
this slender, beautifully built horse Lassiter suddenly became all eyes.
A rider's love of a thoroughbred shone in them. Round and round Bells he
walked, plainly weakening all the time in his determination not to take
one of Jane's favorite racers.
"Lassiter, you're half horse, and Bells sees it already," said Jane,
laughing. "Look at his eyes. He likes you. He'll love you, too. How
can you resist him? Oh, Lassiter, but Bells can run! It's nip and tuck
between him and Wrangle, and only Black Star can beat him. He's too
spirited a horse for a woman. Take him. He's yours."
"I jest am weak where a hoss's concerned," said Lassiter. "I'll take
him, an' I'll take your orders, ma'am."
"Well, I'm glad, but never mind the ma'am. Let it still be Jane."
From that hour, it seemed, Lassiter was always in the saddle, riding
early and late, and coincident with his part in Jane's affairs the days
assumed their old tranquillity. Her intelligence told her this was only
the lull before the storm, but her faith would not have it so.
She resumed her visits to the village, and upon one of these she
encountered Tull. He greeted her as he had before any trouble came
between them, and she, responsive to peace if not quick to forget, met
him halfway with manner almost cheerful. He regretted the loss of her
cattle; he assured her that the vigilantes which had been organized
would soon rout the rustlers; when that had been accomplished her riders
would likely return to her.
"You've done a headstrong thing to hire this man Lassiter," Tull went
on, severely. "He came to Cottonwoods with evil intent."
"I had to have somebody. And perhaps making him my rider may turn out
best in the end for the Mormons of Cottonwoods."
"You mean to stay his hand?"
"I do—if I can."
"A woman like you can do anything with a man. That would be well, and
would atone in some measure for the errors you have made."
He bowed and passed on. Jane resumed her walk with conflicting thoughts.
She resented Elder Tull's cold, impassive manner that looked down upon
her as one who had incurred his just displeasure. Otherwise he would
have been the same calm, dark-browed, impenetrable man she had known
for ten years. In fact, except when he had revealed his passion in the
matter of the seizing of Venters, she had never dreamed he could be
other than the grave, reproving preacher. He stood out now a strange,
secretive man. She would have thought better of him if he had picked
up the threads of their quarrel where they had parted. Was Tull what
he appeared to be? The question flung itself in-voluntarily over Jane
Withersteen's inhibitive habit of faith without question. And she
refused to answer it. Tull could not fight in the open Venters had said,
Lassiter had said, that her Elder shirked fight and worked in the dark.
Just now in this meeting Tull had ignored the fact that he had sued,
exhorted, demanded that she marry him. He made no mention of Venters.
His manner was that of the minister who had been outraged, but
who overlooked the frailties of a woman. Beyond question he seemed
unutterably aloof from all knowledge of pressure being brought to bear
upon her, absolutely guiltless of any connection with secret power over
riders, with night journeys, with rustlers and stampedes of cattle. And
that convinced her again of unjust suspicions. But it was convincement
through an obstinate faith. She shuddered as she accepted it, and that
shudder was the nucleus of a terrible revolt.
Jane turned into one of the wide lanes leading from the main street and
entered a huge, shady yard. Here were sweet-smelling clover, alfalfa,
flowers, and vegetables, all growing in happy confusion. And like these
fresh green things were the dozens of babies, tots, toddlers, noisy
urchins, laughing girls, a whole multitude of children of one family.
For Collier Brandt, the father of all this numerous progeny, was a
Mormon with four wives.
The big house where they lived was old, solid, picturesque the lower
part built of logs, the upper of rough clapboards, with vines growing
up the outside stone chimneys. There were many wooden-shuttered windows,
and one pretentious window of glass proudly curtained in white. As this
house had four mistresses, it likewise had four separate sections, not
one of which communicated with another, and all had to be entered from
the outside.
In the shade of a wide, low, vine-roofed porch Jane found Brandt's wives
entertaining Bishop Dyer. They were motherly women, of comparatively
similar ages, and plain-featured, and just at this moment anything but
grave. The Bishop was rather tall, of stout build, with iron-gray hair
and beard, and eyes of light blue. They were merry now; but Jane had
seen them when they were not, and then she feared him as she had feared
her father.
The women flocked around her in welcome.
"Daughter of Withersteen," said the Bishop, gaily, as he took her hand,
"you have not been prodigal of your gracious self of late. A Sabbath
without you at service! I shall reprove Elder Tull."
"Bishop, the guilt is mine. I'll come to you and confess," Jane replied,
lightly; but she felt the undercurrent of her words.
"Mormon love-making!" exclaimed the Bishop, rubbing his hands. "Tull
keeps you all to himself."
"No. He is not courting me."
"What? The laggard! If he does not make haste I'll go a-courting myself
up to Withersteen House."
There was laughter and further bantering by the Bishop, and then mild
talk of village affairs, after which he took his leave, and Jane was
left with her friend, Mary Brandt.
"Jane, you're not yourself. Are you sad about the rustling of the
cattle? But you have so many, you are so rich."
Then Jane confided in her, telling much, yet holding back her doubts of
fear.
"Oh, why don't you marry Tull and be one of us?
"But, Mary, I don't love Tull," said Jane, stubbornly.
"I don't blame you for that. But, Jane Withersteen, you've got to choose
between the love of man and love of God. Often we Mormon women have to
do that. It's not easy. The kind of happiness you want I wanted once. I
never got it, nor will you, unless you throw away your soul. We've all
watched your affair with Venters in fear and trembling. Some dreadful
thing will come of it. You don't want him hanged or shot—or treated
worse, as that Gentile boy was treated in Glaze for fooling round a
Mormon woman. Marry Tull. It's your duty as a Mormon. You'll feel no
rapture as his wife—but think of Heaven! Mormon women don't marry for
what they expect on earth. Take up the cross, Jane. Remember your father
found Amber Spring, built these old houses, brought Mormons here, and
fathered them. You are the daughter of Withersteen!"
Jane left Mary Brandt and went to call upon other friends. They received
her with the same glad welcome as had Mary, lavished upon her the
pent-up affection of Mormon women, and let her go with her ears ringing
of Tull, Venters, Lassiter, of duty to God and glory in Heaven.
"Verily," murmured Jane, "I don't know myself when, through all this, I
remain unchanged—nay, more fixed of purpose."
She returned to the main street and bent her thoughtful steps toward the
center of the village. A string of wagons drawn by oxen was lumbering
along. These "sage-freighters," as they were called, hauled grain and
flour and merchandise from Sterling, and Jane laughed suddenly in the
midst of her humility at the thought that they were her property, as was
one of the three stores for which they freighted goods. The water that
flowed along the path at her feet, and turned into each cottage-yard to
nourish garden and orchard, also was hers, no less her private property
because she chose to give it free. Yet in this village of Cottonwoods,
which her father had founded and which she maintained she was not her
own mistress; she was not able to abide by her own choice of a husband.
She was the daughter of Withersteen. Suppose she proved it, imperiously!
But she quelled that proud temptation at its birth.
Nothing could have replaced the affection which the village people had
for her; no power could have made her happy as the pleasure her presence
gave. As she went on down the street past the stores with their rude
platform entrances, and the saloons where tired horses stood with
bridles dragging, she was again assured of what was the bread and wine
of life to her—that she was loved. Dirty boys playing in the ditch,
clerks, teamsters, riders, loungers on the corners, ranchers on dusty
horses little girls running errands, and women hurrying to the stores
all looked up at her coming with glad eyes.
Jane's various calls and wandering steps at length led her to the
Gentile quarter of the village. This was at the extreme southern end,
and here some thirty Gentile families lived in huts and shacks and
log-cabins and several dilapidated cottages. The fortunes of these
inhabitants of Cottonwoods could be read in their abodes. Water they had
in abundance, and therefore grass and fruit-trees and patches of alfalfa
and vegetable gardens. Some of the men and boys had a few stray cattle,
others obtained such intermittent employment as the Mormons reluctantly
tendered them. But none of the families was prosperous, many were very
poor, and some lived only by Jane Withersteen's beneficence.
As it made Jane happy to go among her own people, so it saddened her to
come in contact with these Gentiles. Yet that was not because she was
unwelcome; here she was gratefully received by the women, passionately
by the children. But poverty and idleness, with their attendant
wretchedness and sorrow, always hurt her. That she could alleviate this
distress more now than ever before proved the adage that it was an ill
wind that blew nobody good. While her Mormon riders were in her employ
she had found few Gentiles who would stay with her, and now she was able
to find employment for all the men and boys. No little shock was it to
have man after man tell her that he dare not accept her kind offer.
"It won't do," said one Carson, an intelligent man who had seen better
days. "We've had our warning. Plain and to the point! Now there's
Judkins, he packs guns, and he can use them, and so can the daredevil
boys he's hired. But they've little responsibility. Can we risk having
our homes burned in our absence?"
Jane felt the stretching and chilling of the skin of her face as the
blood left it.
"Carson, you and the others rent these houses?" she asked.
"You ought to know, Miss Withersteen. Some of them are yours."
"I know?... Carson, I never in my life took a day's labor for rent or a
yearling calf or a bunch of grass, let alone gold."
"Bivens, your store-keeper, sees to that."
"Look here, Carson," went on Jane, hurriedly, and now her cheeks
were burning. "You and Black and Willet pack your goods and move your
families up to my cabins in the grove. They're far more comfortable than
these. Then go to work for me. And if aught happens to you there I'll
give you money—gold enough to leave Utah!"
The man choked and stammered, and then, as tears welled into his eyes,
he found the use of his tongue and cursed. No gentle speech could ever
have equaled that curse in eloquent expression of what he felt for Jane
Withersteen. How strangely his look and tone reminded her of Lassiter!
"No, it won't do," he said, when he had somewhat recovered himself.
"Miss Withersteen, there are things that you don't know, and there's not
a soul among us who can tell you."
"I seem to be learning many things, Carson. Well, then, will you let me
aid you—say till better times?"
"Yes, I will," he replied, with his face lighting up. "I see what it
means to you, and you know what it means to me. Thank you! And if better
times ever come, I'll be only too happy to work for you."
"Better times will come. I trust God and have faith in man. Good day,
Carson."
The lane opened out upon the sage-inclosed alfalfa fields, and the last
habitation, at the end of that lane of hovels, was the meanest.
Formerly it had been a shed; now it was a home. The broad leaves of a
wide-spreading cottonwood sheltered the sunken roof of weathered boards.
Like an Indian hut, it had one floor. Round about it were a few scanty
rows of vegetables, such as the hand of a weak woman had time and
strength to cultivate. This little dwelling-place was just outside the
village limits, and the widow who lived there had to carry her water
from the nearest irrigation ditch. As Jane Withersteen entered the
unfenced yard a child saw her, shrieked with joy, and came tearing
toward her with curls flying. This child was a little girl of four
called Fay. Her name suited her, for she was an elf, a sprite, a
creature so fairy-like and beautiful that she seemed unearthly.
"Muvver sended for oo," cried Fay, as Jane kissed her, "an' oo never
tome."
"I didn't know, Fay; but I've come now."
Fay was a child of outdoors, of the garden and ditch and field, and she
was dirty and ragged. But rags and dirt did not hide her beauty. The
one thin little bedraggled garment she wore half covered her fine, slim
body. Red as cherries were her cheeks and lips; her eyes were violet
blue, and the crown of her childish loveliness was the curling golden
hair. All the children of Cottonwoods were Jane Withersteen's friends,
she loved them all. But Fay was dearest to her. Fay had few playmates,
for among the Gentile children there were none near her age, and the
Mormon children were forbidden to play with her. So she was a shy, wild,
lonely child.
"Muvver's sick," said Fay, leading Jane toward the door of the hut.
Jane went in. There was only one room, rather dark and bare, but it was
clean and neat. A woman lay upon a bed.
"Mrs. Larkin, how are you?" asked Jane, anxiously.
"I've been pretty bad for a week, but I'm better now."
"You haven't been here all alone—with no one to wait on you?"
"Oh no! My women neighbors are kind. They take turns coming in."
"Did you send for me?"
"Yes, several times."
"But I had no word—no messages ever got to me."
"I sent the boys, and they left word with your women that I was ill and
would you please come."
A sudden deadly sickness seized Jane. She fought the weakness, as she
fought to be above suspicious thoughts, and it passed, leaving her
conscious of her utter impotence. That, too, passed as her spirit
rebounded. But she had again caught a glimpse of dark underhand
domination, running its secret lines this time into her own household.
Like a spider in the blackness of night an unseen hand had begun to run
these dark lines, to turn and twist them about her life, to plait
and weave a web. Jane Withersteen knew it now, and in the realization
further coolness and sureness came to her, and the fighting courage of
her ancestors.
"Mrs. Larkin, you're better, and I'm so glad," said Jane. "But may I
not do something for you—a turn at nursing, or send you things, or take
care of Fay?"
"You're so good. Since my husband's been gone what would have become of
Fay and me but for you? It was about Fay that I wanted to speak to you.
This time I thought surely I'd die, and I was worried about Fay. Well,
I'll be around all right shortly, but my strength's gone and I won't
live long. So I may as well speak now. You remember you've been asking
me to let you take Fay and bring her up as your daughter?"
"Indeed yes, I remember. I'll be happy to have her. But I hope the
day—"
"Never mind that. The day'll come—sooner or later. I refused your
offer, and now I'll tell you why."
"I know why," interposed Jane. "It's because you don't want her brought
up as a Mormon."
"No, it wasn't altogether that." Mrs. Larkin raised her thin hand and
laid it appealingly on Jane's. "I don't like to tell you. But—it's
this: I told all my friends what you wanted. They know you, care for
you, and they said for me to trust Fay to you. Women will talk, you
know. It got to the ears of Mormons—gossip of your love for Fay and
your wanting her. And it came straight back to me, in jealousy, perhaps,
that you wouldn't take Fay as much for love of her as because of your
religious duty to bring up another girl for some Mormon to marry."
"That's a damnable lie!" cried Jane Withersteen.
"It was what made me hesitate," went on Mrs. Larkin, "but I never
believed it at heart. And now I guess I'll let you—"
"Wait! Mrs. Larkin, I may have told little white lies in my life, but
never a lie that mattered, that hurt any one. Now believe me. I love
little Fay. If I had her near me I'd grow to worship her. When I asked
for her I thought only of that love.... Let me prove this. You and Fay
come to live with me. I've such a big house, and I'm so lonely. I'll
help nurse you, take care of you. When you're better you can work for
me. I'll keep little Fay and bring her up—without Mormon teaching.
When she's grown, if she should want to leave me, I'll send her, and not
empty-handed, back to Illinois where you came from. I promise you."
"I knew it was a lie," replied the mother, and she sank back upon
her pillow with something of peace in her white, worn face. "Jane
Withersteen, may Heaven bless you! I've been deeply grateful to you. But
because you're a Mormon I never felt close to you till now. I don't know
much about religion as religion, but your God and my God are the same."
CHAPTER VIII. SURPRISE VALLEY
Back in that strange canyon, which Venters had found indeed a valley of
surprises, the wounded girl's whispered appeal, almost a prayer, not to
take her back to the rustlers crowned the events of the last few days
with a confounding climax. That she should not want to return to them
staggered Venters. Presently, as logical thought returned, her appeal
confirmed his first impression—that she was more unfortunate than
bad—and he experienced a sensation of gladness. If he had known before
that Oldring's Masked Rider was a woman his opinion would have been
formed and he would have considered her abandoned. But his first
knowledge had come when he lifted a white face quivering in a convulsion
of agony; he had heard God's name whispered by blood-stained lips;
through her solemn and awful eyes he had caught a glimpse
of her soul. And just now had come the entreaty to him,
"Don't—take—me—back—there!"
Once for all Venters's quick mind formed a permanent conception of this
poor girl. He based it, not upon what the chances of life had made her,
but upon the revelation of dark eyes that pierced the infinite, upon a
few pitiful, halting words that betrayed failure and wrong and misery,
yet breathed the truth of a tragic fate rather than a natural leaning to
evil.
"What's your name?" he inquired.
"Bess," she answered.
"Bess what?"
"That's enough—just Bess."
The red that deepened in her cheeks was not all the flush of fever.
Venters marveled anew, and this time at the tint of shame in her face,
at the momentary drooping of long lashes. She might be a rustler's girl,
but she was still capable of shame, she might be dying, but she still
clung to some little remnant of honor.
"Very well, Bess. It doesn't matter," he said. "But this matters—what
shall I do with you?"
"Are—you—a rider?" she whispered.
"Not now. I was once. I drove the Withersteen herds. But I lost my
place—lost all I owned—and now I'm—I'm a sort of outcast. My name's
Bern Venters."
"You won't—take me—to Cottonwoods—or Glaze? I'd be—hanged."
"No, indeed. But I must do something with you. For it's not safe for
me here. I shot that rustler who was with you. Sooner or later he'll
be found, and then my tracks. I must find a safer hiding-place where I
can't be trailed."
"Leave me—here."
"Alone—to die!"
"Yes."
"I will not." Venters spoke shortly with a kind of ring in his voice.
"What—do you want—to do—with me?" Her whispering grew difficult, so
low and faint that Venters had to stoop to hear her.
"Why, let's see," he replied, slowly. "I'd like to take you some place
where I could watch by you, nurse you, till you're all right."
"And—then?"
"Well, it'll be time to think of that when you're cured of your wound.
It's a bad one. And—Bess, if you don't want to live—if you don't fight
for life—you'll never—"
"Oh! I want—to live! I'm afraid—to die. But I'd rather—die—than go
back—to—to—"
"To Oldring?" asked Venters, interrupting her in turn.
Her lips moved in an affirmative.
"I promise not to take you back to him or to Cottonwoods or to Glaze."
The mournful earnestness of her gaze suddenly shone with unutterable
gratitude and wonder. And as suddenly Venters found her eyes beautiful
as he had never seen or felt beauty. They were as dark blue as the sky
at night. Then the flashing changed to a long, thoughtful look, in which
there was a wistful, unconscious searching of his face, a look that
trembled on the verge of hope and trust.
"I'll try—to live," she said. The broken whisper just reached his ears.
"Do what—you want—with me."
"Rest then—don't worry—sleep," he replied.
Abruptly he arose, as if words had been decision for him, and with a
sharp command to the dogs he strode from the camp. Venters was conscious
of an indefinite conflict of change within him. It seemed to be a
vague passing of old moods, a dim coalescing of new forces, a moment of
inexplicable transition. He was both cast down and uplifted. He wanted
to think and think of the meaning, but he resolutely dispelled emotion.
His imperative need at present was to find a safe retreat, and this
called for action.
So he set out. It still wanted several hours before dark. This trip he
turned to the left and wended his skulking way southward a mile or more
to the opening of the valley, where lay the strange scrawled rocks. He
did not, however, venture boldly out into the open sage, but clung to
the right-hand wall and went along that till its perpendicular line
broke into the long incline of bare stone.
Before proceeding farther he halted, studying the strange character of
this slope and realizing that a moving black object could be seen far
against such background. Before him ascended a gradual swell of smooth
stone. It was hard, polished, and full of pockets worn by centuries
of eddying rain-water. A hundred yards up began a line of grotesque
cedar-trees, and they extended along the slope clear to its most
southerly end. Beyond that end Venters wanted to get, and he concluded
the cedars, few as they were, would afford some cover.
Therefore he climbed swiftly. The trees were farther up than he
had estimated, though he had from long habit made allowance for the
deceiving nature of distances in that country. When he gained the cover
of cedars he paused to rest and look, and it was then he saw how the
trees sprang from holes in the bare rock. Ages of rain had run down the
slope, circling, eddying in depressions, wearing deep round holes.
There had been dry seasons, accumulations of dust, wind-blown seeds, and
cedars rose wonderfully out of solid rock. But these were not beautiful
cedars. They were gnarled, twisted into weird contortions, as if growth
were torture, dead at the tops, shrunken, gray, and old. Theirs had
been a bitter fight, and Venters felt a strange sympathy for them. This
country was *** trees—and men.
He slipped from cedar to cedar, keeping them between him and the open
valley. As he progressed, the belt of trees widened and he kept to its
upper margin. He passed shady pockets half full of water, and, as he
marked the location for possible future need, he reflected that there
had been no rain since the winter snows. From one of these shady holes a
rabbit hopped out and squatted down, laying its ears flat.
Venters wanted fresh meat now more than when he had only himself to
think of. But it would not do to fire his rifle there. So he broke off
a cedar branch and threw it. He crippled the rabbit, which started to
flounder up the slope. Venters did not wish to lose the meat, and
he never allowed crippled game to escape, to die lingeringly in some
covert. So after a careful glance below, and back toward the canyon, he
began to chase the rabbit.
The fact that rabbits generally ran uphill was not new to him. But
it presently seemed singular why this rabbit, that might have escaped
downward, chose to ascend the slope. Venters knew then that it had a
burrow higher up. More than once he *** over to seize it, only in
vain, for the rabbit by renewed effort eluded his grasp. Thus the chase
continued on up the bare slope. The farther Venters climbed the more
determined he grew to catch his quarry. At last, panting and sweating,
he captured the rabbit at the foot of a steeper grade. Laying his rifle
on the bulge of rising stone, he killed the animal and slung it from his
belt.
Before starting down he waited to catch his breath. He had climbed
far up that wonderful smooth slope, and had almost reached the base
of yellow cliff that rose skyward, a huge scarred and cracked bulk. It
frowned down upon him as if to forbid further ascent. Venters bent over
for his rifle, and, as he picked it up from where it leaned against the
steeper grade, he saw several little nicks cut in the solid stone.
They were only a few inches deep and about a foot apart. Venters began
to count them—one—two—three—four—on up to sixteen. That number
carried his glance to the top of his first bulging bench of cliff-base.
Above, after a more level offset, was still steeper slope, and the line
of nicks kept on, to wind round a projecting corner of wall.
A casual glance would have passed by these little dents; if Venters had
not known what they signified he would never have bestowed upon them the
second glance. But he knew they had been cut there by hand, and,
though age-worn, he recognized them as steps cut in the rock by the
cliff-dwellers. With a pulse beginning to beat and hammer away his
calmness, he eyed that indistinct line of steps, up to where the
buttress of wall hid further sight of them. He knew that behind
the corner of stone would be a cave or a crack which could never be
suspected from below. Chance, that had sported with him of late, now
directed him to a probable hiding-place. Again he laid aside his rifle,
and, removing boots and belt, he began to walk up the steps. Like a
mountain goat, he was agile, sure-footed, and he mounted the first bench
without bending to use his hands. The next ascent took grip of fingers
as well as toes, but he climbed steadily, swiftly, to reach the
projecting corner, and slipped around it. Here he faced a notch in the
cliff. At the apex he turned abruptly into a ragged vent that split the
ponderous wall clear to the top, showing a narrow streak of blue sky.
At the base this vent was dark, cool, and smelled of dry, musty dust.
It zigzagged so that he could not see ahead more than a few yards at a
time. He noticed tracks of wildcats and rabbits in the dusty floor. At
every turn he expected to come upon a huge cavern full of little square
stone houses, each with a small aperture like a staring dark eye. The
passage lightened and widened, and opened at the foot of a narrow,
steep, ascending chute.
Venters had a moment's notice of the rock, which was of the same
smoothness and hardness as the slope below, before his gaze went
irresistibly upward to the precipitous walls of this wide ladder of
granite. These were ruined walls of yellow sandstone, and so split and
splintered, so overhanging with great sections of balancing rim, so
impending with tremendous crumbling crags, that Venters caught his
breath sharply, and, appalled, he instinctively recoiled as if a step
upward might jar the ponderous cliffs from their foundation. Indeed, it
seemed that these ruined cliffs were but awaiting a breath of wind
to collapse and come tumbling down. Venters hesitated. It would be a
foolhardy man who risked his life under the leaning, waiting avalanches
of rock in that gigantic split. Yet how many years had they leaned there
without falling! At the bottom of the incline was an immense heap of
weathered sandstone all crumbling to dust, but there were no huge rocks
as large as houses, such as rested so lightly and frightfully above,
waiting patiently and inevitably to crash down. Slowly split from the
parent rock by the weathering process, and carved and sculptured by ages
of wind and rain, they waited their moment. Venters felt how foolish
it was for him to fear these broken walls; to fear that, after they had
endured for thousands of years, the moment of his passing should be the
one for them to slip. Yet he feared it.
"What a place to hide!" muttered Venters. "I'll climb—I'll see where
this thing goes. If only I can find water!"
With teeth tight shut he essayed the incline. And as he climbed he bent
his eyes downward. This, however, after a little grew impossible; he had
to look to obey his eager, curious mind. He raised his glance and saw
light between row on row of shafts and pinnacles and crags that stood
out from the main wall. Some leaned against the cliff, others against
each other; many stood sheer and alone; all were crumbling, cracked,
rotten. It was a place of yellow, ragged ruin. The passage narrowed as
he went up; it became a slant, hard for him to stick on; it was smooth
as marble. Finally he surmounted it, surprised to find the walls still
several hundred feet high, and a narrow gorge leading down on the other
side. This was a divide between two inclines, about twenty yards wide.
At one side stood an enormous rock. Venters gave it a second glance,
because it rested on a pedestal. It attracted closer attention. It was
like a colossal pear of stone standing on its stem. Around the bottom
were thousands of little nicks just distinguishable to the eye. They
were marks of stone hatchets. The cliff-dwellers had chipped and chipped
away at this boulder till it rested its tremendous bulk upon a mere
pin-point of its surface. Venters pondered. Why had the little stone-men
hacked away at that big boulder? It bore no semblance to a statue or an
idol or a godhead or a sphinx. Instinctively he put his hands on it
and pushed; then his shoulder and heaved. The stone seemed to groan, to
stir, to grate, and then to move. It tipped a little downward and hung
balancing for a long instant, slowly returned, rocked slightly, groaned,
and settled back to its former position.
Venters divined its significance. It had been meant for defense. The
cliff-dwellers, driven by dreaded enemies to this last stand, had
cunningly cut the rock until it balanced perfectly, ready to be
dislodged by strong hands. Just below it leaned a tottering crag that
would have toppled, starting an avalanche on an acclivity where no
sliding mass could stop. Crags and pinnacles, splintered cliffs, and
leaning shafts and monuments, would have thundered down to block forever
the outlet to Deception Pass.
"That was a narrow shave for me," said Venters, soberly. "A balancing
rock! The cliff-dwellers never had to roll it. They died, vanished,
and here the rock stands, probably little changed.... But it might serve
another lonely dweller of the cliffs. I'll hide up here somewhere, if I
can only find water."
He descended the gorge on the other side. The slope was gradual, the
space narrow, the course straight for many rods. A gloom hung between
the up-sweeping walls. In a turn the passage narrowed to scarce a dozen
feet, and here was darkness of night. But light shone ahead; another
abrupt turn brought day again, and then wide open space.
Above Venters loomed a wonderful arch of stone bridging the canyon rims,
and through the enormous round portal gleamed and glistened a beautiful
valley shining under sunset gold reflected by surrounding cliffs. He
gave a start of surprise. The valley was a cove a mile long, half
that wide, and its enclosing walls were smooth and stained, and curved
inward, forming great caves. He decided that its floor was far higher
than the level of Deception Pass and the intersecting canyons. No purple
sage colored this valley floor. Instead there were the white of aspens,
streaks of branch and slender trunk glistening from the green of leaves,
and the darker green of oaks, and through the middle of this forest,
from wall to wall, ran a winding line of brilliant green which marked
the course of cottonwoods and willows.
"There's water here—and this is the place for me," said Venters. "Only
birds can peep over those walls, I've gone Oldring one better."
Venters waited no longer, and turned swiftly to retrace his steps. He
named the canyon Surprise Valley and the huge boulder that guarded the
outlet Balancing Rock. Going down he did not find himself attended by
such fears as had beset him in the climb; still, he was not easy in
mind and could not occupy himself with plans of moving the girl and his
outfit until he had descended to the notch. There he rested a moment and
looked about him. The pass was darkening with the approach of night. At
the corner of the wall, where the stone steps turned, he saw a spur of
rock that would serve to hold the noose of a lasso. He needed no more
aid to scale that place. As he intended to make the move under cover
of darkness, he wanted most to be able to tell where to climb up. So,
taking several small stones with him, he stepped and slid down to the
edge of the slope where he had left his rifle and boots. He placed the
stones some yards apart. He left the rabbit lying upon the bench where
the steps began. Then he addressed a keen-sighted, remembering gaze to
the rim-wall above. It was serrated, and between two spears of rock,
directly in line with his position, showed a zigzag crack that at night
would let through the gleam of sky. This settled, he put on his belt
and boots and prepared to descend. Some consideration was necessary to
decide whether or not to leave his rifle there. On the return, carrying
the girl and a pack, it would be added encumbrance; and after debating
the matter he left the rifle leaning against the bench. As he went
straight down the slope he halted every few rods to look up at his mark
on the rim. It changed, but he fixed each change in his memory. When he
reached the first cedar-tree, he tied his scarf upon a dead branch, and
then hurried toward camp, having no more concern about finding his trail
upon the return trip.
Darkness soon emboldened and lent him greater speed. It occurred to him,
as he glided into the grassy glade near camp and head the whinny of a
horse, that he had forgotten Wrangle. The big sorrel could not be gotten
into Surprise Valley. He would have to be left here.
Venters determined at once to lead the other horses out through the
thicket and turn them loose. The farther they wandered from this canyon
the better it would suit him. He easily descried Wrangle through the
gloom, but the others were not in sight. Venters whistled low for the
dogs, and when they came trotting to him he sent them out to search for
the horses, and followed. It soon developed that they were not in the
glade nor the thicket. Venters grew cold and rigid at the thought of
rustlers having entered his retreat. But the thought passed, for the
demeanor of Ring and Whitie reassured him. The horses had wandered away.
Under the clump of silver spruces a denser mantle of darkness, yet not
so thick that Venter's night-practiced eyes could not catch the white
oval of a still face. He bent over it with a slight suspension of breath
that was both caution lest he frighten her and chill uncertainty of
feeling lest he find her dead. But she slept, and he arose to renewed
activity.
He packed his saddle-bags. The dogs were hungry, they whined about
him and nosed his busy hands; but he took no time to feed them nor to
satisfy his own hunger. He slung the saddlebags over his shoulders and
made them secure with his lasso. Then he wrapped the blankets closer
about the girl and lifted her in his arms. Wrangle whinnied and thumped
the ground as Venters passed him with the dogs. The sorrel knew he was
being left behind, and was not sure whether he liked it or not. Venters
went on and entered the thicket. Here he had to feel his way in pitch
blackness and to wedge his progress between the close saplings. Time
meant little to him now that he had started, and he edged along with
slow side movement till he got clear of the thicket. Ring and Whitie
stood waiting for him. Taking to the open aisles and patches of the
sage, he walked guardedly, careful not to stumble or step in dust or
strike against spreading sage-branches.
If he were burdened he did not feel it. From time to time, when he
passed out of the black lines of shade into the wan starlight, he
glanced at the white face of the girl lying in his arms. She had not
awakened from her sleep or stupor. He did not rest until he cleared the
black gate of the canyon. Then he leaned against a stone breast-high to
him and gently released the girl from his hold. His brow and hair
and the palms of his hands were wet, and there was a kind of nervous
contraction of his muscles. They seemed to ripple and string tense. He
had a desire to hurry and no sense of fatigue. A wind blew the scent
of sage in his face. The first early blackness of night passed with the
brightening of the stars. Somewhere back on his trail a coyote yelped,
splitting the dead silence. Venters's faculties seemed singularly acute.
He lifted the girl again and pressed on. The valley better traveling
than the canyon. It was lighter, freer of sage, and there were no rocks.
Soon, out of the pale gloom shone a still paler thing, and that was the
low swell of slope. Venters mounted it and his dogs walked beside him.
Once upon the stone he slowed to snail pace, straining his sight to
avoid the pockets and holes. Foot by foot he went up. The weird cedars,
like great demons and witches chained to the rock and writhing in silent
anguish, loomed up with wide and twisting naked arms. Venters crossed
this belt of cedars, skirted the upper border, and recognized the tree
he had marked, even before he saw his waving scarf.
Here he knelt and deposited the girl gently, feet first and slowly laid
her out full length. What he feared was to reopen one of her wounds.
If he gave her a violent jar, or slipped and fell! But the supreme
confidence so strangely felt that night admitted no such blunders.
The slope before him seemed to swell into obscurity to lose its definite
outline in a misty, opaque cloud that shaded into the over-shadowing
wall. He scanned the rim where the serrated points speared the sky, and
he found the zigzag crack. It was dim, only a shade lighter than the
dark ramparts, but he distinguished it, and that served.
Lifting the girl, he stepped upward, closely attending to the nature of
the path under his feet. After a few steps he stopped to mark his line
with the crack in the rim. The dogs clung closer to him. While chasing
the rabbit this slope had appeared interminable to him; now, burdened as
he was, he did not think of length or height or toil. He remembered
only to avoid a misstep and to keep his direction. He climbed on, with
frequent stops to watch the rim, and before he dreamed of gaining the
bench he bumped his knees into it, and saw, in the dim gray light, his
rifle and the rabbit. He had come straight up without mishap or swerving
off his course, and his shut teeth unlocked.
As he laid the girl down in the shallow hollow of the little ridge with
her white face upturned, she opened her eyes. Wide, staring black, at
once like both the night and the stars, they made her face seem still
whiter.
"Is—it—you?" she asked, faintly.
"Yes," replied Venters.
"Oh! Where—are we?"
"I'm taking you to a safe place where no one will ever find you. I must
climb a little here and call the dogs. Don't be afraid. I'll soon come
for you."
She said no more. Her eyes watched him steadily for a moment and then
closed. Venters pulled off his boots and then felt for the little steps
in the rock. The shade of the cliff above obscured the point he wanted
to gain, but he could see dimly a few feet before him. What he had
attempted with care he now went at with surpassing lightness. Buoyant,
rapid, sure, he attained the corner of wall and slipped around it. Here
he could not see a hand before his face, so he groped along, found a
little flat space, and there removed the saddle-bags. The lasso he took
back with him to the corner and looped the noose over the spur of rock.
"Ring—Whitie—come," he called, softly.
Low whines came up from below.
"Here! Come, Whitie—Ring," he repeated, this time sharply.
Then followed scraping of claws and pattering of feet; and out of the
gray gloom below him swiftly climbed the dogs to reach his side and pass
beyond.
Venters descended, holding to the lasso. He tested its strength by
throwing all his weight upon it. Then he gathered the girl up, and,
holding her securely in his left arm, he began to climb, at every few
steps jerking his right hand upward along the lasso. It sagged at each
forward movement he made, but he balanced himself lightly during the
interval when he lacked the support of a taut rope. He climbed as if he
had wings, the strength of a giant, and knew not the sense of fear. The
sharp corner of cliff seemed to cut out of the darkness. He reached
it and the protruding shelf, and then, entering the black shade of the
notch, he moved blindly but surely to the place where he had left the
saddle-bags. He heard the dogs, though he could not see them. Once more
he carefully placed the girl at his feet. Then, on hands and knees,
he went over the little flat space, feeling for stones. He removed a
number, and, scraping the deep dust into a heap, he unfolded the outer
blanket from around the girl and laid her upon this bed. Then he went
down the slope again for his boots, rifle, and the rabbit, and, bringing
also his lasso with him, he made short work of that trip.
"Are—you—there?" The girl's voice came low from the blackness.
"Yes," he replied, and was conscious that his laboring breast made
speech difficult.
"Are we—in a cave?"
"Yes."
"Oh, listen!... The waterfall!... I hear it! You've brought me back!"
Venters heard a murmuring moan that one moment swelled to a pitch almost
softly shrill and the next lulled to a low, almost inaudible sigh.
"That's—wind blowing—in the—cliffs," he panted. "You're far from
Oldring's—canyon."
The effort it cost him to speak made him conscious of extreme lassitude
following upon great exertion. It seemed that when he lay down and drew
his blanket over him the action was the last before utter prostration.
He stretched inert, wet, hot, his body one great strife of throbbing,
stinging nerves and bursting veins. And there he lay for a long while
before he felt that he had begun to rest.
Rest came to him that night, but no sleep. Sleep he did not want. The
hours of strained effort were now as if they had never been, and he
wanted to think. Earlier in the day he had dismissed an inexplicable
feeling of change; but now, when there was no longer demand on his
cunning and strength and he had time to think, he could not catch the
illusive thing that had sadly perplexed as well as elevated his spirit.
Above him, through a V-shaped cleft in the dark rim of the cliff, shone
the lustrous stars that had been his lonely accusers for a long, long
year. To-night they were different. He studied them. Larger, whiter,
more radiant they seemed; but that was not the difference he meant.
Gradually it came to him that the distinction was not one he saw, but
one he felt. In this he divined as much of the baffling change as he
thought would be revealed to him then. And as he lay there, with the
singing of the cliff-winds in his ears, the white stars above the dark,
bold vent, the difference which he felt was that he was no longer alone.
CHAPTER IX. SILVER SPRUCE AND ASPENS
The rest of that night seemed to Venters only a few moments of
starlight, a dark overcasting of sky, an hour or so of gray gloom, and
then the lighting of dawn.
When he had bestirred himself, feeding the hungry dogs and breaking
his long fast, and had repacked his saddle-bags, it was clear daylight,
though the sun had not tipped the yellow wall in the east. He concluded
to make the climb and descent into Surprise Valley in one trip. To that
end he tied his blanket upon Ring and gave Whitie the extra lasso and
the rabbit to carry. Then, with the rifle and saddle-bags slung upon his
back, he took up the girl. She did not awaken from heavy slumber.
That climb up under the rugged, menacing brows of the broken cliffs,
in the face of a grim, leaning boulder that seemed to be weary of its
age-long wavering, was a tax on strength and nerve that Venters
felt equally with something sweet and strangely exulting in its
accomplishment. He did not pause until he gained the narrow divide and
there he rested. Balancing Rock loomed huge, cold in the gray light
of dawn, a thing without life, yet it spoke silently to Venters: "I am
waiting to plunge down, to shatter and crash, roar and boom, to bury
your trail, and close forever the outlet to Deception Pass!"
On the descent of the other side Venters had easy going, but was
somewhat concerned because Whitie appeared to have succumbed to
temptation, and while carrying the rabbit was also chewing on it. And
Ring evidently regarded this as an injury to himself, especially as he
had carried the heavier load. Presently he snapped at one end of the
rabbit and refused to let go. But his action prevented Whitie from
further misdoing, and then the two dogs pattered down, carrying the
rabbit between them.
Venters turned out of the gorge, and suddenly paused stock-still,
astounded at the scene before him. The curve of the great stone bridge
had caught the sunrise, and through the magnificent arch burst a
glorious stream of gold that shone with a long slant down into the
center of Surprise Valley. Only through the arch did any sunlight
pass, so that all the rest of the valley lay still asleep, dark green,
mysterious, shadowy, merging its level into walls as misty and soft as
morning clouds.
Venters then descended, passing through the arch, looking up at its
tremendous height and sweep. It spanned the opening to Surprise Valley,
stretching in almost perfect curve from rim to rim. Even in his hurry
and concern Venters could not but feel its majesty, and the thought came
to him that the cliff-dwellers must have regarded it as an object of
worship.
Down, down, down Venters strode, more and more feeling the weight of his
burden as he descended, and still the valley lay below him. As all
other canyons and coves and valleys had deceived him, so had this deep,
nestling oval. At length he passed beyond the slope of weathered stone
that spread fan-shape from the arch, and encountered a grassy terrace
running to the right and about on a level with the tips of the oaks and
cottonwoods below. Scattered here and there upon this shelf were clumps
of aspens, and he walked through them into a glade that surpassed in
beauty and adaptability for a wild home, any place he had ever seen.
Silver spruces bordered the base of a precipitous wall that rose
loftily. Caves indented its surface, and there were no detached ledges
or weathered sections that might dislodge a stone. The level ground,
beyond the spruces, dropped down into a little ravine. This was one
dense line of slender aspens from which came the low splashing of water.
And the terrace, lying open to the west, afforded unobstructed view of
the valley of green treetops.
For his camp Venters chose a shady, grassy plot between the silver
spruces and the cliff. Here, in the stone wall, had been wonderfully
carved by wind or washed by water several deep caves above the level of
the terrace. They were clean, dry, roomy.
He cut spruce boughs and made a bed in the largest cave and laid the
girl there. The first intimation that he had of her being aroused from
sleep or lethargy was a low call for water.
He hurried down into the ravine with his canteen. It was a shallow,
grass-green place with aspens growing up everywhere. To his delight
he found a tiny brook of swift-running water. Its faint tinge of amber
reminded him of the spring at Cottonwoods, and the thought gave him a
little shock. The water was so cold it made his fingers tingle as he
dipped the canteen. Having returned to the cave, he was glad to see the
girl drink thirstily. This time he noted that she could raise her head
slightly without his help.
"You were thirsty," he said. "It's good water. I've found a fine place.
Tell me—how do you feel?"
"There's pain—here," she replied, and moved her hand to her left side.
"Why, that's strange! Your wounds are on your right side. I believe
you're hungry. Is the pain a kind of dull ache—a gnawing?"
"It's like—that."
"Then it's hunger." Venters laughed, and suddenly caught himself with a
quick breath and felt again the little shock. When had he laughed? "It's
hunger," he went on. "I've had that gnaw many a time. I've got it now.
But you mustn't eat. You can have all the water you want, but no food
just yet."
"Won't I—starve?"
"No, people don't starve easily. I've discovered that. You must lie
perfectly still and rest and sleep—for days."
"My hands—are dirty; my face feels—so hot and sticky; my boots hurt."
It was her longest speech as yet, and it trailed off in a whisper.
"Well, I'm a fine nurse!"
It annoyed him that he had never thought of these things. But then,
awaiting her death and thinking of her comfort were vastly different
matters. He unwrapped the blanket which covered her. What a slender girl
she was! No wonder he had been able to carry her miles and pack her up
that slippery ladder of stone. Her boots were of soft, fine leather,
reaching clear to her knees. He recognized the make as one of a
boot-maker in Sterling. Her spurs, that he had stupidly neglected to
remove, consisted of silver frames and gold chains, and the rowels,
large as silver dollars, were fancifully engraved. The boots slipped off
rather hard. She wore heavy woollen rider's stockings, half length, and
these were pulled up over the ends of her short trousers. Venters took
off the stockings to note her little feet were red and swollen. He
bathed them. Then he removed his scarf and bathed her face and hands.
"I must see your wounds now," he said, gently.
She made no reply, but watched him steadily as he opened her blouse and
untied the bandage. His strong fingers trembled a little as he removed
it. If the wounds had reopened! A chill struck him as he saw the angry
red bullet-mark, and a tiny stream of blood winding from it down her
white breast. Very carefully he lifted her to see that the wound in her
back had closed perfectly. Then he washed the blood from her breast,
bathed the wound, and left it unbandaged, open to the air.
Her eyes thanked him.
"Listen," he said, earnestly. "I've had some wounds, and I've seen many.
I know a little about them. The hole in your back has closed. If you lie
still three days the one in your breast will close and you'll be safe.
The danger from hemorrhage will be over."
He had spoken with earnest sincerity, almost eagerness.
"Why—do you—want me—to get well?" she asked, wonderingly.
The simple question seemed unanswerable except on grounds of humanity.
But the circumstances under which he had shot this strange girl, the
shock and realization, the waiting for death, the hope, had resulted in
a condition of mind wherein Venters wanted her to live more than he had
ever wanted anything. Yet he could not tell why. He believed the killing
of the rustler and the subsequent excitement had disturbed him. For how
else could he explain the throbbing of his brain, the heat of his blood,
the undefined sense of full hours, charged, vibrant with pulsating
mystery where once they had dragged in loneliness?
"I shot you," he said, slowly, "and I want you to get well so I shall
not have killed a woman. But—for your own sake, too—"
A terrible bitterness darkened her eyes, and her lips quivered.
"Hush," said Venters. "You've talked too much already."
In her unutterable bitterness he saw a darkness of mood that could not
have been caused by her present weak and feverish state. She hated the
life she had led, that she probably had been compelled to lead. She
had suffered some unforgivable wrong at the hands of Oldring. With that
conviction Venters felt a shame throughout his body, and it marked the
rekindling of fierce anger and ruthlessness. In the past long year he
had nursed resentment. He had hated the wilderness—the loneliness of
the uplands. He had waited for something to come to pass. It had come.
Like an Indian stealing horses he had skulked into the recesses of the
canyons. He had found Oldring's retreat; he had killed a rustler; he had
shot an unfortunate girl, then had saved her from this unwitting act,
and he meant to save her from the consequent wasting of blood, from
fever and weakness. Starvation he had to fight for her and for himself.
Where he had been sick at the letting of blood, now he remembered it in
grim, cold calm. And as he lost that softness of nature, so he lost his
fear of men. He would watch for Oldring, biding his time, and he would
kill this great black-bearded rustler who had held a girl in bondage,
who had used her to his infamous ends.
Venters surmised this much of the change in him—idleness had passed;
keen, fierce vigor flooded his mind and body; all that had happened to
him at Cottonwoods seemed remote and hard to recall; the difficulties
and perils of the present absorbed him, held him in a kind of spell.
First, then, he fitted up the little cave adjoining the girl's room
for his own comfort and use. His next work was to build a fireplace of
stones and to gather a store of wood. That done, he spilled the contents
of his saddle-bags upon the grass and took stock. His outfit consisted
of a small-handled axe, a hunting-knife, a large number of cartridges
for rifle or revolver, a tin plate, a cup, and a fork and spoon,
a quantity of dried beef and dried fruits, and small canvas bags
containing tea, sugar, salt, and pepper. For him alone this supply would
have been bountiful to begin a sojourn in the wilderness, but he was no
longer alone. Starvation in the uplands was not an unheard-of thing;
he did not, however, worry at all on that score, and feared only his
possible inability to supply the needs of a woman in a weakened and
extremely delicate condition.
If there was no game in the valley—a contingency he doubted—it would
not be a great task for him to go by night to Oldring's herd and pack
out a calf. The exigency of the moment was to ascertain if there were
game in Surprise Valley. Whitie still guarded the dilapidated rabbit,
and Ring slept near by under a spruce. Venters called Ring and went to
the edge of the terrace, and there halted to survey the valley.
He was prepared to find it larger than his unstudied glances had made it
appear; for more than a casual idea of dimensions and a hasty conception
of oval shape and singular beauty he had not had time. Again the
felicity of the name he had given the valley struck him forcibly. Around
the red perpendicular walls, except under the great arc of stone, ran
a terrace fringed at the cliff-base by silver spruces; below that first
terrace sloped another wider one densely overgrown with aspens, and the
center of the valley was a level circle of oaks and alders, with the
glittering green line of willows and cottonwood dividing it in half.
Venters saw a number and variety of birds flitting among the trees.
To his left, facing the stone bridge, an enormous cavern opened in the
wall; and low down, just above the tree-tops, he made out a long shelf
of cliff-dwellings, with little black, staring windows or doors. Like
eyes they were, and seemed to watch him. The few cliff-dwellings he had
seen—all ruins—had left him with haunting memory of age and solitude
and of something past. He had come, in a way, to be a cliff-dweller
himself, and those silent eyes would look down upon him, as if in
surprise that after thousands of years a man had invaded the valley.
Venters felt sure that he was the only white man who had ever walked
under the shadow of the wonderful stone bridge, down into that wonderful
valley with its circle of caves and its terraced rings of silver spruce
and aspens.
The dog growled below and rushed into the forest. Venters ran down the
declivity to enter a zone of light shade streaked with sunshine. The
oak-trees were slender, none more than half a foot thick, and they grew
close together, intermingling their branches. Ring came running back
with a rabbit in his mouth. Venters took the rabbit and, holding the
dog near him, stole softly on. There were fluttering of wings among the
branches and quick bird-notes, and rustling of dead leaves and rapid
patterings. Venters crossed well-worn trails marked with fresh tracks;
and when he had stolen on a little farther he saw many birds and running
quail, and more rabbits than he could count. He had not penetrated the
forest of oaks for a hundred yards, had not approached anywhere near the
line of willows and cottonwoods which he knew grew along a stream. But
he had seen enough to know that Surprise Valley was the home of many
wild creatures.
Venters returned to camp. He skinned the rabbits, and gave the dogs the
one they had quarreled over, and the skin of this he dressed and hung
up to dry, feeling that he would like to keep it. It was a particularly
rich, furry pelt with a beautiful white tail. Venters remembered that
but for the bobbing of that white tail catching his eye he would not
have espied the rabbit, and he would never have discovered Surprise
Valley. Little incidents of chance like this had turned him here
and there in Deception Pass; and now they had assumed to him the
significance and direction of destiny.
His good fortune in the matter of game at hand brought to his mind the
necessity of keeping it in the valley. Therefore he took the axe and cut
bundles of aspens and willows, and packed them up under the bridge to
the narrow outlet of the gorge. Here he began fashioning a fence, by
driving aspens into the ground and lacing them fast with willows. Trip
after trip he made down for more building material, and the afternoon
had passed when he finished the work to his satisfaction. Wildcats might
scale the fence, but no coyote could come in to search for prey, and no
rabbits or other small game could escape from the valley.
Upon returning to camp he set about getting his supper at ease, around a
fine fire, without hurry or fear of discovery. After hard work that
had definite purpose, this freedom and comfort gave him peculiar
satisfaction. He caught himself often, as he kept busy round the
camp-fire, stopping to glance at the quiet form in the cave, and at
the dogs stretched cozily near him, and then out across the beautiful
valley. The present was not yet real to him.
While he ate, the sun set beyond a dip in the rim of the curved wall. As
the morning sun burst wondrously through a grand arch into this valley,
in a golden, slanting shaft, so the evening sun, at the moment of
setting, shone through a gap of cliffs, sending down a broad red burst
to brighten the oval with a blaze of fire. To Venters both sunrise and
sunset were unreal.
A cool wind blew across the oval, waving the tips of oaks, and while
the light lasted, fluttering the aspen leaves into millions of facets of
red, and sweeping the graceful spruces. Then with the wind soon came
a shade and a darkening, and suddenly the valley was gray. Night came
there quickly after the sinking of the sun. Venters went softly to look
at the girl. She slept, and her breathing was quiet and slow. He lifted
Ring into the cave, with stern whisper for him to stay there on
guard. Then he drew the blanket carefully over her and returned to the
camp-fire.
Though exceedingly tired, he was yet loath to yield to lassitude, but
this night it was not from listening, watchful vigilance; it was from
a desire to realize his position. The details of his wild environment
seemed the only substance of a strange dream. He saw the darkening rims,
the gray oval turning black, the undulating surface of forest, like a
rippling lake, and the spear-pointed spruces. He heard the flutter
of aspen leaves and the soft, continuous splash of falling water. The
melancholy note of a canyon bird broke clear and lonely from the high
cliffs. Venters had no name for this night singer, and he had never seen
one, but the few notes, always pealing out just at darkness, were as
familiar to him as the canyon silence. Then they ceased, and the rustle
of leaves and the murmur of water hushed in a growing sound that Venters
fancied was not of earth. Neither had he a name for this, only it was
inexpressibly wild and sweet. The thought came that it might be a moan
of the girl in her last outcry of life, and he felt a tremor shake him.
But no! This sound was not human, though it was like despair. He began
to doubt his sensitive perceptions, to believe that he half-dreamed what
he thought he heard. Then the sound swelled with the strengthening
of the breeze, and he realized it was the singing of the wind in the
cliffs.
By and by a drowsiness overcame him, and Venters began to nod, half
asleep, with his back against a spruce. Rousing himself and calling
Whitie, he went to the cave. The girl lay barely visible in the dimness.
Ring crouched beside her, and the patting of his tail on the stone
assured Venters that the dog was awake and faithful to his duty. Venters
sought his own bed of fragrant boughs; and as he lay back, somehow
grateful for the comfort and safety, the night seemed to steal away from
him and he sank softly into intangible space and rest and slumber.
Venters awakened to the sound of melody that he imagined was only the
haunting echo of dream music. He opened his eyes to another surprise
of this valley of beautiful surprises. Out of his cave he saw the
exquisitely fine foliage of the silver spruces crossing a round space
of blue morning sky; and in this lacy leafage fluttered a number of
gray birds with black and white stripes and long tails. They were
mocking-birds, and they were singing as if they wanted to burst their
throats. Venters listened. One long, silver-tipped branch dropped almost
to his cave, and upon it, within a few yards of him, sat one of the
graceful birds. Venters saw the swelling and quivering of its throat
in song. He arose, and when he slid down out of his cave the birds
fluttered and flew farther away.
Venters stepped before the opening of the other cave and looked in. The
girl was awake, with wide eyes and listening look, and she had a hand on
Ring's neck.
"Mocking-birds!" she said.
"Yes," replied Venters, "and I believe they like our company."
"Where are we?"
"Never mind now. After a little I'll tell you."
"The birds woke me. When I heard them—and saw the shiny trees—and the
blue sky—and then a blaze of gold dropping down—I wondered—"
She did not complete her fancy, but Venters imagined he understood her
meaning. She appeared to be wandering in mind. Venters felt her face and
hands and found them burning with fever. He went for water, and was glad
to find it almost as cold as if flowing from ice. That water was the
only medicine he had, and he put faith in it. She did not want to drink,
but he made her swallow, and then he bathed her face and head and cooled
her wrists.
The day began with the heightening of the fever. Venters spent the time
reducing her temperature, cooling her hot cheeks and temples. He kept
close watch over her, and at the least indication of restlessness, that
he knew led to tossing and rolling of the body, he held her tightly, so
no violent move could reopen her wounds. Hour after hour she babbled and
laughed and cried and moaned in delirium; but whatever her secret was
she did not reveal it. Attended by something somber for Venters, the day
passed. At night in the cool winds the fever abated and she slept.
The second day was a repetition of the first. On the third he seemed to
see her wither and waste away before his eyes. That day he scarcely went
from her side for a moment, except to run for fresh, cool water; and he
did not eat. The fever broke on the fourth day and left her spent and
shrunken, a slip of a girl with life only in her eyes. They hung upon
Venters with a mute observance, and he found hope in that.
To rekindle the spark that had nearly flickered out, to nourish the
little life and vitality that remained in her, was Venters's problem.
But he had little resource other than the meat of the rabbits and quail;
and from these he made broths and soups as best he could, and fed her
with a spoon. It came to him that the human body, like the human soul,
was a strange thing and capable of recovering from terrible shocks. For
almost immediately she showed faint signs of gathering strength. There
was one more waiting day, in which he doubted, and spent long hours by
her side as she slept, and watched the gentle swell of her breast rise
and fall in breathing, and the wind stir the tangled chestnut curls. On
the next day he knew that she would live.
Upon realizing it he abruptly left the cave and sought his accustomed
seat against the trunk of a big spruce, where once more he let his
glance stray along the sloping terraces. She would live, and the somber
gloom lifted out of the valley, and he felt relief that was pain. Then
he roused to the call of action, to the many things he needed to do
in the way of making camp fixtures and utensils, to the necessity of
hunting food, and the desire to explore the valley.
But he decided to wait a few more days before going far from camp,
because he fancied that the girl rested easier when she could see him
near at hand. And on the first day her languor appeared to leave her in
a renewed grip of life. She awoke stronger from each short slumber; she
ate greedily, and she moved about in her bed of boughs; and always, it
seemed to Venters, her eyes followed him. He knew now that her recovery
would be rapid. She talked about the dogs, about the caves, the valley,
about how hungry she was, till Venters silenced her, asking her to put
off further talk till another time. She obeyed, but she sat up in her
bed, and her eyes roved to and fro, and always back to him.
Upon the second morning she sat up when he awakened her, and would not
permit him to bathe her face and feed her, which actions she performed
for herself. She spoke little, however, and Venters was quick to
catch in her the first intimations of thoughtfulness and curiosity and
appreciation of her situation. He left camp and took Whitie out to
hunt for rabbits. Upon his return he was amazed and somewhat anxiously
concerned to see his invalid sitting with her back to a corner of the
cave and her bare feet swinging out. Hurriedly he approached, intending
to advise her to lie down again, to tell her that perhaps she might
overtax her strength. The sun shone upon her, glinting on the little
head with its tangle of bright hair and the small, oval face with its
pallor, and dark-blue eyes underlined by dark-blue circles. She looked
at him and he looked at her. In that exchange of glances he imagined
each saw the other in some different guise. It seemed impossible to
Venters that this frail girl could be Oldring's Masked Rider. It flashed
over him that he had made a mistake which presently she would explain.
"Help me down," she said.
"But—are you well enough?" he protested. "Wait—a little longer."
"I'm weak—dizzy. But I want to get down."
He lifted her—what a light burden now!—and stood her upright beside
him, and supported her as she essayed to walk with halting steps. She
was like a stripling of a boy; the bright, small head scarcely reached
his shoulder. But now, as she clung to his arm, the rider's costume she
wore did not contradict, as it had done at first, his feeling of her
femininity. She might be the famous Masked Rider of the uplands, she
might resemble a boy; but her outline, her little hands and feet, her
hair, her big eyes and tremulous lips, and especially a something that
Venters felt as a subtle essence rather than what he saw, proclaimed her
sex.
She soon tired. He arranged a comfortable seat for her under the spruce
that overspread the camp-fire.
"Now tell me—everything," she said.
He recounted all that had happened from the time of his discovery of the
rustlers in the canyon up to the present moment.
"You shot me—and now you've saved my life?"
"Yes. After almost killing you I've pulled you through."
"Are you glad?"
"I should say so!"
Her eyes were unusually expressive, and they regarded him steadily; she
was unconscious of that mirroring of her emotions and they shone with
gratefulness and interest and wonder and sadness.
"Tell me—about yourself?" she asked.
He made this a briefer story, telling of his coming to Utah, his
various occupations till he became a rider, and then how the Mormons had
practically driven him out of Cottonwoods, an outcast.
Then, no longer able to withstand his own burning curiosity, he
questioned her in turn.
"Are you Oldring's Masked Rider?"
"Yes," she replied, and dropped her eyes.
"I knew it—I recognized your figure—and mask, for I saw you once.
Yet I can't believe it!... But you never were really that rustler, as we
riders knew him? A thief—a marauder—a kidnapper of women—a murderer
of sleeping riders!"
"No! I never stole—or harmed any one—in all my life. I only rode and
rode—"
"But why—why?" he burst out. "Why the name? I understand Oldring made
you ride. But the black mask—the mystery—the things laid to your
hands—the threats in your infamous name—the night-riding credited
to you—the evil deeds deliberately blamed on you and acknowledged by
rustlers—even Oldring himself! Why? Tell me why?"
"I never knew that," she answered low. Her drooping head straightened,
and the large eyes, larger now and darker, met Venters's with a clear,
steadfast gaze in which he read truth. It verified his own conviction.
"Never knew? That's strange! Are you a Mormon?"
"No."
"Is Oldring a Mormon?"
"No."
"Do you—care for him?"
"Yes. I hate his men—his life—sometimes I almost hate him!"
Venters paused in his rapid-fire questioning, as if to brace him self to
ask for a truth that would be abhorrent for him to confirm, but which he
seemed driven to hear.
"What are—what were you to Oldring?"
Like some delicate thing suddenly exposed to blasting heat, the girl
wilted; her head dropped, and into her white, wasted cheeks crept the
red of shame.
Venters would have given anything to recall that question. It seemed
so different—his thought when spoken. Yet her shame established in his
mind something akin to the respect he had strangely been hungering to
feel for her.
"D—n that question!—forget it!" he cried, in a passion of pain for her
and anger at himself. "But once and for all—tell me—I know it, yet I
want to hear you say so—you couldn't help yourself?"
"Oh no."
"Well, that makes it all right with me," he went on, honestly. "I—I
want you to feel that... you see—we've been thrown together—and—and I
want to help you—not hurt you. I thought life had been cruel to me, but
when I think of yours I feel mean and little for my complaining. Anyway,
I was a lonely outcast. And now!... I don't see very clearly what it all
means. Only we are here—together. We've got to stay here, for long,
surely till you are well. But you'll never go back to Oldring. And I'm
sure helping you will help me, for I was sick in mind. There's something
now for me to do. And if I can win back your strength—then get you
away, out of this wild country—help you somehow to a happier life—just
think how good that'll be for me!"
End of Chapter IX �