THE WAY OUT
When a woman treads the ways of deceit she smiles--like Mona Lisa. But
was the great Leonardo deceived by the smile of his wife when she posed
for him so sweetly? No, he read her thoughts--how she was thinking of
another--and his master hand wove them in. There she smiles to-day,
smooth and pretty and cryptic; but Leonardo, the man, worked with heavy
heart as he laid bare the tragedy of his love. The message was for her,
if she cared to read it, or for him, that rival for her love; or, if
their hearts were pure and free from guilt, then there was no message at
all. She was just a pretty woman, soft and gentle and smiling--as
Virginia Huff had smiled.
She had not smiled often, Wiley Holman remembered it now, as he went
flying across the desert, and always there was something behind; but
when she had looked up at Blount and taken his fat hand, then he had
read her heart at a glance. If he had taken his punishment and not
turned back he would have been spared this great ache in his breast; but
no, he was not satisfied, he could not believe it, and so he had
received a worse wound. She had been playing with him all the time and,
when the supreme moment arrived, she had landed him like a trout; and
then, when she had left him belly-up from his disaster, she had turned
to Blount and smiled. There was no restraint now; she smiled to the
teeth; and Blount and the Directors smiled.
Wiley cursed to himself as he bored into the wind and burned up the road
to Keno. The mine was nothing; he could find him another one, but
Virginia had played him false. He did not mind losing her--he could find
a better woman--but how could he save his lost pride? He had played his
hand to win and, when it came to the showdown, she had slipped in the
joker and cleaned him. The Widow would laugh when she heard the news,
but she would not laugh at him. The road lay before him and his gas
tanks were full. He would gather up his belongings and drift. He stepped
on the throttle and went roaring through the town, but at the bottom of
the hill he stopped. The mine was shut down, not a soul was in sight,
and yet he had left but a few hours before.
He toiled wearily up the trail, where he had caught Virginia running and
held her fighting in his arms, and the world turned black at the
thought. What madness had this been that had kept him from suspecting
her when she had opposed his every move from the start. Had she not
wrecked his engine and ruined his mill? Then why had he trusted her with
his money? And that last innocent visit, when she had asked for her
stock, and thanked him so demurely at the end! She would not be
dismissed, all his rough words were wasted, until in the end she had
leaned over and kissed him. A Judas-kiss? Yes, if ever there was one; or
the kiss of Judith of Bethulia. But Judith had sold her kisses to save
her people--Virginia had sold hers for gold.
Yes, she had sold him out for money; after rebuking him from the
beginning she had stabbed him to the heart for a price. It was always
he, Wiley, who thought of nothing but money; who was the liar, the
miser, the thief. Everything that he did, no matter how unselfish, was
imputed to his love of money; and yet it had remained for Virginia,
the censorious and virtuous, to violate her trust for gain. It was not
for revenge that she had withheld the payment and snatched a million
dollars from his hand; she had told him herself that it was because
Blount had returned their stock and she would not throw it away. How
quick Blount had been to see that way out and to bribe her by
returning the stock--how damnably quick to read her envious heart and
know that she would fall for the offer. Well, now let them keep it and
smile their smug smiles and laugh at Honest Wiley; for if there ever
was a curse on stolen money then Virginia's would buy her no
happiness.
He raised his bloodshot eyes to look for the last time at the Paymaster,
which he had fought for and lost. What had they done to save it, to
bring it to what it was, to merit it for their own? For years it had
lain idle, and when he had opened it up they had fought him at every
step. They had shot him down with buckshot, and beaten him down with
rocks and threatened his life with Stiff Neck George. His eyes cleared
suddenly and he looked about the dump--he had forgotten his feud with
George. Yet if his men were gone, who then had driven them out but that
crooked-necked, fighting fool? And if George had driven them out, then
where was he now with his ancient, filed-down six-shooter? Wiley drew
his gun forward and walked softly towards the house, but as he passed a
metal ore-car a pistol was thrust into his face. He started back, and
there was George.
"Put 'em up!" he snarled, rising swiftly from behind the car, and the
hot fury left Wiley's brain. His anger turned cold and he looked down
the barrel at the grinning, spiteful eyes behind.
"You go to hell!" he growled, and George jabbed the gun into his
stomach.
"Put 'em up!" he ordered, but some devil of resistance seized Wiley as
his hands went up. It was close, too close, and George had the drop on
him, but one hand struck out and the other clutched the gun while he
twisted his lithe body aside. At the roar of the shot he went for his
own gun, leaping back and stooping low. Another bullet clipped his shirt
and then his own gun spat back, shooting blindly through the smoke. He
emptied it, dodging swiftly and crouching close to the ground, and then
he sprang behind the car. There was a silence, but as he listened he
heard a gurgling noise, like the water flowing out of a canteen, and a
sudden, sodden thump. He looked out, and George was down. His blood was
gushing fast but the narrow, snaky eyes sought him out before they were
filmed by death. It was over, like a rush of wind.
Wiley flicked out his cylinder and filled it with fresh cartridges, then
looked around for the rest. He was calm now, and calculating and
infinitely brave; but no one stepped forth to face his gun. A boy, down
in town, started running towards the mine, only to turn back at some
imperative command. The whole valley was lifeless, yet the people were
there, and soon they would venture forth. And then they would come up,
and look at the body, and ask him to give up his gun; and if he did they
would take him to Vegas and shut him up in jail, where the populace
could come and stare at him. Blount and Jepson would come, and the Board
of Directors; and, in order to put him away, they would tell how he had
threatened George. They would make it appear that he had come to jump
the mine, and that George was defending the property; and then, with the
jury nicely packed, they would send him to the penitentiary, where he
wouldn't interfere with their plans.
In a moment of clairvoyance he saw Virginia before him, looking in
through the prison bars and smiling, and suddenly he put up his gun. She
had started this job and made him a murderer but he would rob her of
that last chance to smile. There was a road that he knew that had been
traveled before by men who were hard-pressed and desperate. It turned
west across the desert and mounted by Daylight Springs to dip down the
long slope to the Sink; and across the Valley of Death, if he could once
pass over it, there was no one he need fear to meet. No one, that is,
except stray men like himself, who had fled from the officers of the
law. Great mountain ranges, so they said, stretched unpeopled and
silent, beneath the glare of the desert sun; and though Death might
linger near it was under the blue sky and away from the cold malice of
men.
From his safe in the office Wiley took out a roll of bills, all that was
left of his vanished wealth; and he took down his rifle and belt; and
then, walking softly past the body of Stiff Neck George, he cranked up
his machine and started off. Every doorway in town was crowded with
heads, craning out to see him pass, and as he turned down the main
street he saw Death Valley Charley rushing out with a flask in his hand.
"We seen ye!" he grinned as Wiley slowed down, and dropped the flask of
whiskey on the seat.
"You killed him fair!" he shouted after him, but Wiley had opened up the
throttle and the answer to his praise was a roar.
The sun was at high noon when Wiley topped the divide and glided down
the canyon towards Death Valley. He could sense it in the distance by
the veil of gray haze that hung like a pall across his way. Beyond it
were high mountains, a solid wall of blue that seemed to rise from the
depths and float, detached, against the sky; and up the winding wash
which led slowly down and down, there came pulsing waves of heat. The
canyon opened out into a broad, rocky sand-flat, shut in on both sides
by knife-edged ridges dotted evenly with brittle white bushes; and each
jagged rock and out-thrust point was burned black by the suns of
centuries.
He passed an ancient tractor, abandoned by the wayside, and a deserted,
double-roofed house; and then, just below it where a ravine came down,
he saw a sign-board, pointing. Up the gulch was another sign, still
pointing on and up, and stamped through the metal of the disk was the
single word: Water. It was Hole-in-the-Rock Springs that old Charley had
spoken about and, somewhere up the canyon, there was a hole in the
limestone cap, and beneath it a tank of sweet water. On many a scorching
day some prospector, half dead from thirst, had toiled up that well-worn
trail; but now the way was empty, the freighter's house given over to
rats, and the road led on and on.
A jagged, saw-tooth range rose up to block his way and the sand-flat
narrowed down to a deep wash; and, then, still thundering on, he
struggled out through its throat and the Valley seemed to rise up and
smite him. He stopped his throbbing motor and sat appalled at its
immensity. Funereal mountains, black and banded and water-channeled,
rose up in solid walls on both sides and, down through the middle as far
as the eye could see, there stretched a white ribbon, set in green. It
swung back and forth across a wide, level expanse, narrow and gleaming
with water at the north and blending in the south with gray sands. The
writhing white band was Death Valley Sink, where the waters from
countless desert ranges drained down and were sucked up by the sun. Far
from the north it came, when the season was right and the cloudbursts
swept the Grape-Vines and the White mountains; the Panamints to the west
gave down water from winter snows that gathered on Telescope Peak; and
every ravine of the somber Funeral Range was gutted by the rush of
forgotten waters.
The Valley was dry, bone-dry and desiccated, and yet every hill, every
gulch and wash and canyon, showed the action of torrential waters. The
chocolate-brown flanks of the towering mountain walls were creased, and
ripped out and worn; and from the mouth of every canyon a great spit of
sand and boulders had been spewed out and washed down towards the Sink.
On the surface of this wash, rising up through thousands of feet, the
tips of buried mountains peeped out like tiny hill-tops, yet black, and
sharp and grim. The great ranges themselves, sweeping up from the
profundity till they seemed to cut off the world, looked like molded
cakes of chocolate which had been rained on and half melted down. They
were washed-down, melted, stripped of earth and vegetation; and down
from their flanks in a steep, even slope, lay the debris and scourings
of centuries.
The westering sun caught the glint of water in the poisonous,
salt-marshes of the Sink; but, far to the south, the great ultimate
Sink of Sinks was a-gleam with borax and salt. It was there where the
white band widened out to a lake-bed, that men came in winter to do
their assessment work and scrape up the cotton-ball borax. But if any
were there now they would know him for a fugitive and he took the road
to the west. It ran over boulders, ground smooth by rolling floods and
burned deep brown by the sun, and as he twisted and turned, throwing
his weight against the wheels, Wiley felt the growing heat. His shirt
clung to his back, the sweat ran down his face and into his stinging
eyes and as he stopped for a drink he noticed that the water no longer
quenched his thirst. It was warm and flat and after each fresh drink
the perspiration burst from every pore, as if his very skin cried out
for moisture. Yet his canteen was getting light and, until he could
find water, he put it resolutely away.
The road swung down at last into a broad, flat dry-wash, where the
gravel lay packed hard as iron, and as his racer took hold and began to
leap and frolic, he tore down the valley like the wind. The sun was
sinking low and the unknown lay before him, a land he had never seen;
yet before the night came on he must map out his course and stake his
life on the venture. Other automobiles might follow and snatch him back
if he delayed but an hour in his flight; but, once across Death Valley
and lost in those far mountains, he would leave the law behind. The men
he met would be fugitives like himself, or prospectors, or wandering
Shoshones; and, live or die, he would be away from it all--where he
would never see Virginia again.
The deep wash pinched in, as the other had done, before it gave out into
the plain; and, then, as he whirled around a point, he glided out into
the open. The foothills lay behind him and, straight athwart his way,
stretched a sea of motionless sand-waves. As far north as he could see,
the ocean of sand tossed and tumbled, the crests of its rollers crowned
with brush and grotesque drift-wood, the gnarled trunks and roots of
mesquite trees. To the east and west the high mountains still rose up,
black and barren, shutting in the sea of sand; but across the valley a
pass led smoothly up to a gap through the wall of the Panamints. It was
Emigrant Wash, up which the hardy Mormons had toiled in their western
pilgrimage, leaving at Lost Wagons and Salt Creek the bones of whole
caravans as a tribute to the power of the desert.
A smooth, steep slope led swiftly down to the edge of the Valley of
Death and as Wiley looked across he saw as in a vision a massive gateway
of stone. It was flung boldly out from the base of a blue mountain,
enclosing a dark valley behind; and from between its lofty walls a white
river of sand spread out like a flower down the slope. It was the
gateway to the Ube-Hebes, just as Charley had described it, and it was
only a few miles away. It lay just across the sand-flat, where the
great, even waves seemed marching in a phalanx towards the south; and
then up a little slope, all painted blue and purple, to the mysterious
valley beyond. The sun, swinging low, touched the summits of distant
sand-hills with a gleam of golden light and all the dark shadows moved
toward him. A breath of air fanned his cheek, and as he drank deep from
his canteen he nodded to the Gateway and smiled.