Before the mail took that letter eastward, Ben Connor received his final
advice from Jack Townsend. It was under the hotel man's supervision that
he selected his outfit of soft felt hat, flannel shirts, heavy socks,
and Napatan boots; Townsend, too, went with him to pick out the pack
mule and all the elements of the pack, from salt to canned tomatoes.
As for the horse, Townsend merely stood by to admire while Ben Connor
went through a dozen possibilities and picked a solidly built chestnut
with legs enough for speed in a pinch, and a flexible fetlock--joints
that promised an easy gait.
"You won't have no trouble," said Townsend, as Connor sat the saddle,
working the stirrups back and forth and frowning at the creaking new
leather. "Wherever you go you'll find gents ready to give you a hand on
your way."
"Why's that? Don't I look like an old hand at this game?"
"Not with that complexion; it talks city a mile off. If you'd tell me
where you're bound for--"
"But I'm not bound anywhere," answered Connor. "I'm out to follow my
nose."
"With that gun you ought to get some game."
Connor laid his hand on the butt of the rifle which was slung in a case
under his leg. He had little experience with a gun, but he said
nothing.
"All trim," continued Townsend, stepping back to look. "Not a flaw in
the mule; no sign of ringbone or spavin, and when a mule ain't got them,
he's got nothin' wrong. Don't treat him too well. When you feel like
pattin' him, cuss him instead. It's mule nature to like a beatin' once
in a while; they spoil without it, like kids. He'll hang back for two
days, but the third day he'll walk all over your hoss; never was a hoss
that could walk with a mule on a long trip. Well, Mr. Connor, I guess
you're all fixed, but I'd like to send a boy along to see you get
started right."
"Don't worry," smiled Connor. "I've written down all your suggestions."
"Here's what you want to tie on to special," said the fat man. "Don't
move your camp on Fridays or the thirteenth; if you come nigh a town and
a black cat crosses your trail, you camp right there and don't move on
to that town till the next morning. And wait a minute--if you start out
and find you've left something in camp, make a cross in the trail before
you go back."
He frowned to collect his thoughts.
"Well, if you don't do none of them three things, you can't come out far
wrong. S'long, and good luck, Mr. Connor."
Connor waved his hand, touched the chestnut with his heel and the horse
broke into a trot, while the rope, coming taut, first stretched the neck
of the mule and then tugged him into a dragging amble. In this manner
Connor went out of Lukin. He smiled to himself, as he thought
confidently of the far different fashion in which he would return.
The first day gave Connor a raw nose, a sunburned neck and wrists, and
his supper was charred bacon and tasteless coffee; but the next morning
he came out of the choppy mountains and went down a long, easy slope
into the valley of the Girard. There was always water here, and fine
grass for the horse and mule, with a cool wind off the snows coming down
the ravine. By the third day he was broken into the routine of his work
and knew the most vulnerable spot on the ribs of the mule, and had a pet
name for the chestnut. Thereafter the camping trip was pleasant enough.
It took him longer than he had expected, for he would not press the
horse as the pitch of the ravine grew steeper; later he saw his wisdom
in keeping the chestnut fresh for the final burst, for when he reached
the head-spring of the Girard, he faced a confusion of difficult, naked
mountains. He was daunted but determined, and the next morning he filled
his canteens and struck into the last stage of his journey.
Luck gave him cool weather, with high moving clouds, which curtained the
sun during the middle of the day, but even then it was hard work. He had
not the vestige of a trail to follow; the mountain sides were bare rock.
A scattering of shrubs and dwarfed trees found rooting in crevices, but
on the whole Connor was journeying through a sea of stone, and
sometimes, when the sun glinted on smooth surface, the reflection
blinded him. By noon the chestnut was hobbling, and before nightfall
even the mule showed signs of distress. And though Connor traveled now
by compass, he was haunted by a continual fear that he might have
mistaken his way, or that the directions he had picked up at Lukin might
be entirely wrong. Evening was already coming over the mountains when he
rounded a slope of black rock and found below him a picture that tallied
in every detail with all he had heard of the valley.
The first look was like a glance into a deep well of stone with a flash
of water in the bottom; afterward he sat on a boulder and arranged the
details of that big vista. Nothing led up to the Garden from any
direction; it was a freak of nature. Some convulsion of the earth, when
these mountains were first rising, perhaps, had split the rocks, or as
the surface strata rolled up, they parted over the central lift and left
this ragged fissure. Through the valley ran a river, but water could
never have cut those saw-tooth cliffs; and Connor noted this strange
thing: that the valley came to abrupt ends both north and south. By the
slant sunlight, and at that distance--for he judged the place to be some
ten or fifteen miles in length--it seemed as if the cliff fronts to the
north and south were as solid and lofty as a portion of the sides; yet
this could not be unless the river actually disappeared under the face
of the wall. Still, he could not make out details from the distance,
only the main outline of the place, the sheen of growing things, whether
trees or grass, and the glitter of the river which swelled toward the
center of the valley into a lake. He could discover only one natural
entrance; in the nearest cliff wall appeared a deep, narrow cleft, which
ran to the very floor of the valley, and the only approach was through a
difficult ravine. The sore-footed chestnut had caught the flash of
green, and now he pricked his ears and whinnied as if he saw home.
Connor started down the rocks toward the entrance, leading the horse,
while the mule trailed wearily behind. As he turned, the wind blew to
him out of the valley a faint rhythmical chiming. When he paused to
listen the sound disappeared.
He dipped out of the brighter level into a premature night below;
evening was gathering quickly, and with each step Connor felt the misty
darkness closing above his head. He was stumbling over the boulders,
downheaded, hardly able to see the ground at his feet, yet when he
reached the bottom of the little ravine which ran toward the entrance,
he looked up to a red sky, and the higher mountains rolled off in waves
of light. Distances were magnified; he seemed to look from the bottom of
the world to the top of it; he turned, a little dizzy, and between the
edges of the cleft that rose straight as Doric pillars, he saw a fire
burning at the entrance to the Garden of Eden. The sunset was above
them, but the fire sent a long ray through the night of the lower
valley. Connor pointed it out to his horse, and the little cavalcade
went slowly forward.
_CHAPTER EIGHT_
With every step that he took into the darkness the feeling of awe
deepened upon Connor, until he went frowning toward the fire as though
it were an eye that watched his coming. He was quite close when the
chestnut threw up its head with a snort and stopped, listening; Connor
listened as well, and he heard a music of men's voices singing together,
faint with distance; the sound traveled so far that he caught the pulse
of the rhythm and the fiber of the voices rather than the tune itself,
yet the awe which had been growing in Connor gathered suddenly in his
throat. He had to close his hands hard to keep from being afraid.
As though the chestnut felt the strangeness also, he neighed suddenly;
the rock walls of the ravine caught up the sound and trumpeted it back.
Connor, recovering from the shock, buried his fingers in the nostrils of
the horse and choked the sound away; but the echo still went faintly
before them and behind. The alarm had been given. The fire winked once
and went out. Connor was left without a light to guide him; he looked up
and saw that the sunset flush had fallen away to a dead gray.
He looked ahead to where the fire had been. Just then the horse jerked
his nose away and gasped in a new breath. Even that slight sound
flurried Connor, for it might guide the unknown danger to him. Connor
remembered that after all he was not a bandit stealing upon a peaceful
town; he composed his mind and his nerves with an effort, and was about
to step forward again when he saw in the night just before him a deeper
shade among the shadows. Peering, he discovered the dim outlines of a
man.
Ben Connor was not a coward, but he was daunted by this apparition. His
first impulse was to flee; his second was to leap at the other's throat.
It spoke much for his steadiness in a crisis that he did neither, but
called instead: "Who's there?"
Metal gritted on metal, and a shaft of light poured into Connor's face
so unexpectedly that he shrank. The chestnut reared, and turning to
control the horse, Connor saw his eyes and the eyes of the mule shining
like phosphorus. When he had quieted the gelding he saw that it was a
hooded lantern which had been uncovered. Not a ray fell on the bearer of
the light.
"I saw a light down here," said Connor, after he had tried in vain to
make out the features of the other. "It looked like a fire, and I
started for it; I've lost my bearing in these mountains."
Without answering, the bearer of the lantern kept the shaft staring into
Connor's face for another moment; then it was as suddenly hooded and
welcome darkness covered the gambler. With a gesture which he barely
could make out, the silent man waved him forward down the ravine. It
angered Connor, this mummery of speechlessness, but with his anger was
an odd feeling of helplessness as though the other had a loaded gun at
his head.
The man walked behind him as they went forward, and presently the fire
shone out at them from the entrance to the valley; thus Connor saw the
blanket which had screened the fire removed, and caught a glimpse of a
second form.
Even the zenith was dark now, and it was double night in the ravine.
With the chestnut stumbling behind him, Connor entered the circle of the
fire and was stopped by the raised hand of the second man.
"Why are you here?" said the guard.
The voice was thin, but the articulation thick and soft, and as the
questioner stepped into the full glow of the fire, Connor saw a Negro
whose head was covered by white curls. He was very old; it seemed as
though time had faded his black pigment, and now his skin, a dark
bronze, was puckered at the corners of his mouth, about his eyes, and in
the center of his forehead, seeming to have dried in wrinkles like
parchment. While he talked his expression never varied from the weary
frown; yet years had not bowed him, for he stood straight as a youth,
and though his neck was dried away until it was no thicker than a strong
man's forearm, he kept his head high and looked at Connor.
The man who had gone out to stop Connor now answered for him, and
turning to the voice the gambler saw that this fellow was a Negro
likewise; as erect as the one by the fire, but hardly less ancient.
"He is lost in the mountains, and he saw the fire at the gate, Ephraim."
Ephraim considered Connor wistfully.
"This way is closed," he said; "you cannot pass through the gate."
The gambler looked up; a wall of rock on either side rose so high that
the firelight failed to carry all the distance, and the darkness arched
solidly above him. The calm dignity of the men stripped him of an
advantage which he felt should be his, but he determined to appear at
ease.
"Your best way," continued Ephraim, "is toward that largest mountain.
You see where its top is still lighted in the west, while the rest of
the range is black.
"Jacob can take you up from the ravine and show you the beginning of the
way. But do not pass beyond the sight of the fire, Jacob."
"Good advice," nodded Connor, forcing himself to smile, "if it weren't
that my horse is too sore-footed to carry me. Even the mule can hardly
walk--you see."
He waved his hand and the chestnut threw up its head and took one or two
halting steps to the side.
"In the meantime, I suppose you've no objection if I sit down here for a
moment or two?"
Ephraim, bowing as though he ushered the other into an apartment of
state, waved to a smooth-topped boulder comfortably near the fire.
"I wish to serve you," he went on, "in anything I can do without leaving
the valley. We have a tank just inside the gate, and Jacob will fill
your canteen and water the horse and mule as well."
"Kind of you," said Connor. "Cigarette?"
The proffered smoke brought a wrinkling of amazed delight into the face
of Ephraim and his withered hand stretched tentatively forth. Jacob
forestalled him with a cry and snatched the cigarette from the open palm
of Connor. He held it in both his cupped hands.
"Tobacco--again!" He turned to Ephraim. "I have not forgotten!"
Ephraim had folded his arms with dignity, and now he turned a reproving
glance upon his companion.
"Is it permitted?" he asked coldly.
The joy went out of the face of Jacob.
"What harm?"
"Is it permitted?" insisted Ephraim.
"He will not ask," argued Jacob dubiously.
"He knows without asking."
At this, very slowly and unwillingly, Jacob put the cigarette back into
the hand of Ben Connor. A dozen curious questions came into the mind of
the gambler, but he decided wisely to change the subject.
"The boss gives you orders not to leave, eh?" he went on. "Not a step
outside the gate? What's the idea?"
"This thing was true in the time of the old masters. Only Joseph can
leave the valley," Ephraim answered.
"And you don't know why no one is allowed inside the valley?"
"I have never asked," said Ephraim.
Connor smoked fiercely, peering into the fire.
"Well," he said at length, "you see my troubles? I can't get into the
valley to rest up. I have to turn around and try to cross those
mountains."
"Yes," nodded Ephraim.
"But the horse and mule will never make it over the rocks. I'll have to
leave them behind or stay and starve with them."
"That is true."
"Rather than do that," said Connor, fencing for an opening, "I'd leave
the poor devils here to live in the valley."
"That cannot be. No animals are allowed to enter."
"What? You'd allow this pair to die at the gate of the valley?"
"No; I should lead them first into the mountains."
"This is incredible! But I tell you, this horse is my friend--I can't
desert him!"
He fumbled in his coat pocket and then stretched out his hand toward the
chestnut; the horse hobbled a few steps nearer and nosed the palm of it
expectantly.
"So!" muttered Ephraim, and shaded his eyes with his hand to look. He
settled back and said in a different voice: "The horse loves you; it is
said."
"I put the matter squarely up to you," said Connor. "You see how I
stand. Give me your advice!"
Ephraim protested. "No, no! I cannot advise you. I know nothing of what
goes on out yonder. Nevertheless--"
He broke off, for Connor was lighting another cigarette from the butt of
the first one, and Ephraim paused to watch, nodding with a sort of
vicarious pleasure as he saw Connor inhale deeply and then blow out a
thin drift of smoke.
"You were about to say something else when I lighted this."
"Yes, I was about to say that I could not advise you, but I can send to
Joseph. He is near us now."
"By all means send to Joseph."
"Jacob," ordered the keeper of the gate, "go to Joseph and tell him what
has happened."
The other nodded, and then whistled a long note that drifted up the
ravine. Afterward there was no answer, but Jacob remained facing
expectantly toward the inside of the valley and presently Connor heard a
sound that made his heart leap, the rhythmic hoofbeats of a galloping
horse; and even in the darkness the long interval between impacts told
him something of the animal's gait. Then into the circle of the
firelight broke a gray horse with his tail high, his mane fluttering. He
brought his gallop to a mincing trot and came straight toward Jacob, but
a yard away he stopped and leaped catlike to one side; with head tossed
high he stared at Connor.
Cold sweat stood on the forehead of the gambler, for it was like
something he had seen, something he remembered; all his dreams of what a
horse should be, come true.
Ephraim was saying sternly:
"In my household the colts are taught better manners, Jacob."
And Jacob answered, greatly perturbed: "There is a wild spirit in all
the sons of Harith."
"It is Cassim, is it not?" asked Ephraim.
"Peace, fool!" said Jacob to the stallion, and the horse came and stood
behind him, still watching the stranger over the shoulder of his master.
"Years dim your eyes, Ephraim," he continued. "This is not Cassim and he
is not the height of Cassim by an inch. No, it is Abra, the son of Hira,
who was the daughter of Harith."
He smiled complacently upon Ephraim, nodding his ancient head, and
Ephraim frowned.
"It is true that my eyes are not as young as yours, Jacob; but the
horses of my household are taught to stand when they are spoken to and
not dance like foolish children."
This last reproof was called forth by the continual weaving back and
forth of the stallion as he looked at Connor, first from one side of
Jacob and then from the other. The old man now turned with a raised
hand.
"Stand!" he ordered.
The stallion jerked up his head and became rigid.
"A sharp temper makes a horse without heart," said the oracular Ephraim.
Jacob scowled, and rolling his eyes angrily, searched for a reply; but
he found none. Ephraim clasped one knee tightly in both hands, and
weaving his head a little from side to side, delighted in his triumph.
"And the hand which is raised," went on the tormentor, "should always
fall."
He was apparently quoting from an authority against which there was no
appeal; now he concluded:
"Threats are for children, and yearlings; but a grown horse is above
them."
"The spirit of Harith has returned in Abra," said Jacob gloomily. "From
that month of April when he was foaled he has been a trial and a burden;
yes, if even a cloud blows over the moon he comes to my window and calls
me. There was never such a horse since Harith. However, he shall make
amends. Abra!"
The stallion stepped nearer and halted, alert.
"Go to him, fool. Go to the stranger and give him your head. Quick!"
The gray horse turned, hesitated, and then came straight to Connor, very
slowly; there he bowed his head and dropped his muzzle on the knee of
the white man, but all the while his eyes flared at the strange face in
terror. Jacob turned a proud smile upon Ephraim, and the latter nodded.
"It is a good colt," he admitted. "His heart is right, and in time he
may grow to some worth."
Once more Connor fumbled in his pocket.
"Steady," he said, looking squarely into the great, bright eyes.
"Steady, boy."
He put his hand under the nose of the stallion.
"It's a new smell, but little different."
Abra snorted softly, but though he shook he dared not move. The gambler,
with a side glance, saw the two men watching intently.
"Ah," said Connor, "you have pulled against a headstall here, eh?"
He touched an old scar on the cheek of the horse, and Abra closed his
eyes, but opened them again when he discovered that no harm was done to
him by the tips of those gentle fingers.
"You may let him have his head again," said Connor. "He will not leave
me now until he is ordered."
"So?" exclaimed Jacob. "We shall see! Enough Abra!"
The gray tossed up his head at that word, but after he had taken one
step he returned and touched the back of the white man's hand, snuffed
at his shoulder and at his hat and then stood with pricking ears. A soft
exclamation came in unison from Jacob and Ephraim.
"I have never seen it before," muttered Jacob. "To see it, one would say
he was a son of Julanda."
"It is my teaching and not the blood of Julanda that gives my horses
manners," corrected Ephraim. "However, if I might look in the hand of
the stranger--"
"There is nothing in it," answered Connor, smiling, and he held out both
empty palms. "All horses are like this with me."
"Is it true?" they murmured together.
"Yes; I don't know why. But you were going to bring Joseph."
"Ah," said Ephraim, shaking his head. "I had almost forgotten. Hurry,
Jacob; but if you will take my advice in the matter you will teach your
colts fewer tricks and more sound sense."
The other grunted, and putting his hand on the withers of Abra, he
leaped to the back with the lightness of a strong youth. A motion of his
hand sent the gray into a gallop that shot them through the gate into
darkness.
_CHAPTER NINE_
That faint and rhythmic chiming which Connor had heard from the mountain
when he first saw the valley now came again through the gate, more
clearly. There was something familiar about the sound--yet Connor could
not place it.
"Did you mark?" said Ephraim, shaking his head. "Did you see the colt
shy at the white rock as he ran? In my household that could never
happen; and yet Jacob does well enough, for the blood of Harith is as
stubborn as old oak and wild as a wolf. But your gift, sir"--and here he
turned with much respect toward Connor--"is a great one. I have never
seen Harith's sons come to a man as Abra came to you."
He was surprised to see the stranger staring toward the gate as if he
watched a ghost.
"He did not gallop," said Connor presently, and his voice faltered. "He
flowed. He poured himself through the air."
He swept a hand across his forehead and with great effort calmed the
muscles of his face.
"Are there more horses like that in the valley?"
Ephraim hesitated, for there was such a glittering hunger in the eyes of
this stranger that it abashed him. Vanity, however, brushed scruple
away.
"More like Abra in the valley? So!"
He seemed to hunt for superlatives with which to overwhelm his
questioner.
"The worst in my household is Tabari, the daughter of Numan, and she was
foaled lame in the left foreleg. But if ten like Abra were placed in
one corral and Tabari in the other, a wise man would give the ten and
take the one and render thanks that such good fortune had come his way."
"Is it possible?" exclaimed Connor in that same, small, choked voice.
"I speak calmly," said Ephraim gravely. He added with some hesitation:
"But if I must tell the whole truth, I shall admit that my household is
not like the household of the blood of Rustir. Just as she was the queen
of horses, so those of her blood are above other horses as the master is
above me. Yet, if ten like Tabari were placed in one corral and the
stallion Glani were placed in another, I suppose that a wise man would
give the ten for the one."