The last fording of the river had been made, and from the summit of the
Red Buttes they looked down on the long level, specked with sage and
flecked with alkaline incrustings, that lay between them and the
Sweetwater. Across the horizon the Wind River mountains stretched a
chain of majestic, snowy shapes. Desolation ringed them round, the
swimming distances fusing with the pallor of ever-receding horizons,
the white road losing itself in the blotting of sage, red elevations
rising lonely in extending circles of stillness. The air was so clear
that a tiny noise broke it, crystal-sharp like the ring of a smitten
glass. And the sense of isolation was intensified as there was no
sound from anywhere, only a brooding, primordial silence that seemed to
have remained unbroken since the first floods drained away.
Below in the plain the white dots of an encampment showed like a growth
of mushrooms. Near this, as they crawled down upon it, the enormous
form of Independence Rock detached itself from the faded browns and
grays to develop into a sleeping leviathan, lost from its herd and
fallen exhausted in a sterile land.
Courant was curious about the encampment, and after the night halt rode
forward to inspect it. He returned in the small hours reporting it a
train of Mormons stopped for sickness. A boy of fifteen had broken his
leg ten days before and was now in a desperate condition. The train
had kept camp hoping for his recovery, or for the advent of help in one
of the caravans that overhauled them. Courant thought the boy beyond
hope, but in the gray of the dawn the doctor mounted, and with Susan,
David, and Courant, rode off with his case of instruments strapped to
his saddle.
The sun was well up when they reached the Mormon camp. Scattered about
a spring mouth in the litter of a three days' halt, its flocks and
herds spread wide around it, it was hushed in a sullen dejection. The
boy was a likely lad for the new Zion, and his mother, one of the wives
of an elder, had forgotten her stern training, and fallen to a common
despair. Long-haired men lolled in tent doors cleaning their rifles,
and women moved between the wagons and the fires, or sat in rims of
shade sewing and talking low. Children were everywhere, their spirits
undimmed by disaster, their voices calling from the sage, little,
light, half-naked figures circling and bending in games that babies
played when men lived in cliffs and caves. At sight of the mounted
figures they fled, wild as rabbits, scurrying behind tent flaps and
women's skirts, to peep out in bright-eyed curiosity at the strangers.
The mother met them and almost dragged the doctor from his horse. She
was a toil-worn woman of middle age, a Mater Dolorosa now in her hour
of anguish. She led them to where the boy lay in a clearing in the
sage. The brush was so high that a blanket had been fastened to the
tops of the tallest blushes, and under its roof he was stretched,
gray-faced and with sharpened nose. The broken leg had been bound
between rough splints of board, and he had traveled a week in the
wagons in uncomplaining agony. Now, spent and silent, he awaited
death, looking at the newcomers with the slow, indifferent glance of
those whose ties with life are loosening. But the mother, in the
ruthless unbearableness of her pain, wanted something done, anything.
An Irishman in the company, who had served six months as a helper in a
New York hospital, had told her he could amputate the leg, as he had
seen the operation performed. Now she clamored for a doctor--a real
doctor--to do it.
He tried to persuade her of its uselessness, covering the leg in which
gangrene was far advanced, and telling her death was at hand. But her
despair insisted on action, her own suffering made her remorseless.
The clamor of their arguing voices surrounded the moribund figure lying
motionless with listless eyes as though already half initiated into new
and profound mysteries. Once, his mother's voice rising strident, he
asked her to let him rest in peace, he had suffered enough.
Unable to endure the scene Susan left them and joined a woman whom she
found sewing in the shade of a wagon. The woman seemed unmoved,
chatting as she stitched on the happenings of the journey and the
accident that had caused the delay. Here presently David joined them,
his face pallid, his lips loose and quivering. Nothing could be done
with the mother. She had insisted on the operation, and the Irishman
had undertaken it. The doctor and Courant would stay by them; Courant
was to hold the leg. He, David, couldn't stand it. It was like an
execution--barbarous--with a hunting knife and a saw.
In a half hour Courant came walking round the back of the wagon and
threw himself on the ground beside them. The leg had been amputated
and the boy was dying. Intense silence fell on the camp, only the
laughter and voices of the children rising clear on the thin air. Then
a wail arose, a penetrating, fearful cry, Rachel mourning for her
child. Courant raised his head and said with an unemotional air of
relief, "he's dead." The Mormon woman dropped her sewing, gave a low
exclamation, and sat listening with bitten lip. Susan leaned against
the wagon wheel full of horror and feeling sick, her eyes on David,
who, drawing up his knees, pressed his forehead on them. He rested
thus, his face hidden, while the keening of the mother, the cries of an
animal in pain, fell through the hot brightness of the morning like the
dropping of agonized tears down blooming cheeks.
When they ceased and the quiet had resettled, the Mormon woman rose and
put away her sewing.
"I don't seem to have no more ambition to work," she said and walked
away.
"She's another of his wives," said Courant.
"She and the woman whose son is dead, wives of the same man?"
He nodded.
"And there's a younger one, about sixteen. She was up there helping
with water and rags--a strong, nervy girl. She had whisky all ready in
a tin cup to give to the mother. When she saw it was all up with him
she went round collecting stones to cover the grave with and keep the
wolves off."
"Before he was dead?"
"Yes. They've got to move on at once. They can't lose any more time.
When we were arguing with that half-crazy woman, I could see the girl
picking up the stones and wiping off her tears with her apron."
"What dreadful people," she breathed.
"Dreadful? What's dreadful in having some sense? Too bad about the
boy. He set his teeth and didn't make a sound when that fool of an
Irishman was sawing at him as if he was a log. I never saw such grit.
If they've got many like him they'll be a great people some day."
David gave a gasping moan, his arms relaxed, and he fell limply
backward on the ground. They sprang toward him and Susan seeing his
peaked white face, the eyes half open, thought he was dead, and dropped
beside him, a crouched and staring shape of terror.
"What is it? What's the matter?" she cried, raising wild eyes to
Courant.
"Nothing at all," said that unmoved person, squatting down on his heels
and thrusting his hand inside David's shirt. "Only a faint. Why,
where's your nerve? You're nearly as white as he is."
His eyes were full of curiosity as he looked across the outstretched
figure at her frightened face.
"I--I--thought for a moment he was dead," she faltered.
"And so you were going to follow his example and die on his body?" He
got up. "Stay here and I'll go and get some water." As he turned away
he paused and, looking back, said, "Why didn't you do the fainting?
That's more your business than his," gave a sardonic grin and walked
off.
Susan raised the unconscious head and held it to her bosom. Alone,
with no eye looking, she pressed her lips on his forehead. Courant's
callousness roused a fierce, perverse tenderness in her. He might
sneer at David's lack of force, but she understood. She crooned over
him, moved his hair back with caressing fingers, pressing him against
herself as if the strength of her hold would assure her of the love she
did not feel and wanted to believe in. Her arms were close round him,
his head on her shoulder when Courant came back with a dipper of water.
"Get away," he said, standing over them. "I don't want to wet you."
But she curled round her lover, her body like a protecting shield
between him and danger.
"Leave go of him," said Courant impatiently. "Do you think I'm going
to hurt him with a cup full of water?"
"Let me alone," she answered sullenly. "He'll be all right in a
minute."
"You can be any kind of a fool you like, but you can't make me one.
Come, move." He set the dipper on the ground.
He leaned gently over her and grasped her wrists. The power of his
grip amazed her; she was like a mouse in the paws of a lion. Her puny
strength matched against his was conquered in a moment of futile
resistance.
"Don't be a fool," he said softly in her ear. "Don't act like a silly
baby," and the iron hands unclasped her arms and drew her back till
David's head slid from her knees to the ground.
"There! We're all right now." He let her go, snatched up the dipper
and sent a splash of water into David's face.
"Poor David," he said. "This'll spoil his good looks."
"Stop," she almost screamed. "I'd rather have him lie in a faint for
an hour than have you speak so about him."
Without noticing her, he threw another jet of water and David stirred,
drew a deep breath and opened his eyes. They touched the sky, the
wagon, the nearby sage, and then Susan's face. There they rested,
recognition slowly suffusing them.
"What happened?" he said in a husky voice.
"Fainted, that was all," said Courant.
David closed his eyes.
"Oh, yes, I remember now."
Susan bent over him.
"You frightened me so!"
"I'm sorry, Missy, but it made me sick--the leg and those awful cries."
Courant emptied the dipper on the ground.
"I'll see if they've got any whisky. You'll have to get your grit up,
David, for the rest of the trail," and he left them.
A half hour later the cry of "Roll out" sounded, and the Mormon camp
broke. The rattling of chains and ox yokes, and the cursing of men
ruptured the stillness that had gathered round the moment of death.
Life was a matter of more immediate importance. Tents were struck, the
pots and pans thrown into the wagons, the children collected, the stock
driven in. With ponderous strain and movement the great train formed
and took the road. As it drew away the circle of its bivouac showed in
trampled sage and grass bitten to the roots. In the clearing where the
boy had lain was the earth of a new-made grave, a piece of wood thrust
in at the head, the mound covered with stones gathered by the elder's
young wife. The mountain tragedy was over.
By the fire that evening Zavier employed himself scraping the dust from
a buffalo skull. He wiped the frontal bone clean and white, and when
asked why he was expending so much care on a useless relic, shrugged
his shoulders and laughed. Then he explained with a jerk of his head
in the direction of the vanished Mormons that they used buffalo skulls
to write their letters on. In the great emigration of the year before
their route was marked by the skulls set up in prominent places and
bearing messages for the trains behind.
"And are you going to write a letter on that one?" Susan asked.
"No; I do not write English good, and French very bad. But maybe some
one else will use it," and he laughed boyishly and laid the skull by
the fire.
In the depth of the night Susan was wakened by a hand on her shoulder
that shook her from a dreamless sleep. She started up with a cry and
felt another hand, small and cold on her mouth, and heard a whispering
voice at her ear,
"Hush. Don't make a sound. It's Lucy."
She gripped at the figure, felt the clasp of trembling arms, and a
cheek chill with the night cold, against her own.
"Lucy," she gasped, "what's the matter?"
"I want to speak to you. Be quiet."
"Has anything happened? Is some one sick?"
"No. It's not that. I'm going."
"Going? Going where--" She was not yet fully awake, filaments of
sleep clouded her clearness.
"Into the mountains with Zavier."
The filaments were brushed away in a rough sweep. But her brain
refused to accept the message. In the dark, she clutched at the body
against her, felt the beat of pulses distinct through the clothing, the
trembling of the hands going down through her flesh and muscle to her
heart.
"What do you mean? Where?"
"I don't know, into the mountains somewhere."
"With Zavier? Why?"
"Because he wants me to and I must."
"But-- Oh, Lucy--" she struggled from the blanket to her knees--"Oh,
Lucy!"
Her voice rose high and the hand felt for her mouth. She caught it and
held it off, her head bent back straining her eyes for the face above
her.
"Running away with him?"
"Yes. I couldn't go without telling you. I had to say good-by."
"Going with him forever, not coming back?"
"No, never!"
"But where--where to?"
"I don't know. In the mountains somewhere. There's a trail here he
knows. It branches off to the north and goes up to the places where
they get the skins."
"I don't believe you."
"It's true. The horses are waiting outside."
"Lucy, you've gone crazy. Don't--don't"-- She clung to the hand she
held, grasped upward at the arm. Both were cold and resistant. Her
pleading struck back from the hardness of the mind made up, the
irrevocable resolution.
"But he's not your husband."
Even at this moment, keyed to an act of lawlessness that in the
sheltered past would have been as impossible as murder, the great
tradition held fast. Lucy's answer came with a sudden flare of shocked
repudiation:
"He will be. There are priests and missionaries up there among the
Indians. The first one we meet will marry us. It's all right. He
loves me and he's promised."
Nothing of her wild courage came to the other girl, no echo of the call
of life and passion. It was a dark and dreadful fate, and Susan
strained her closer as if to hold her back from it.
"It's been fixed for two days. We had to wait till we got here and
crossed the trail. We're going right into the mountains and it's
summer, and there's plenty of game."
"The Indians?"
"We'll be in the Crow's country, and Zavier's mother was a Crow."
The words proved the completeness of her estrangement--the acceptance
of the alien race as no longer alien.
"Oh, Lucy, don't, don't. Wait till we get to Fort Bridger and marry
him there. Make him come to California with us. Don't do such an
awful thing--run away into the mountains with a half-breed."
"I don't care what he is. There's no one else for me but him. He's my
man and I'll go with him wherever he wants to take me."
"Wait and tell Bella."
"She wouldn't let me go. There'd be nothing but fighting and misery.
When you've made up your mind to do a thing you've got to do it
yourself, not go by what other people think."
There was a silence and they hung upon each other. Then Lucy put her
face against her friend's and kissed her.
"Good-by," she whispered, loosening her arms.
"I can't let you go. I won't. It'll kill you."
"I must. He's waiting."
She struggled from the embrace, pulling away the clasping hands
noiselessly, but with purpose. There was something of coldness, of the
semblance but not the soul of affection, in the determined softness
with which she sought release. She stole to the tent flap and peered
out. Her thoughts were already outside, flown to the shape hiding in
the shadow like birds darting from a cage. She did not turn at Susan's
strangled whisper.
"We'll never see you again, Bella, nor I, nor the children."
"Perhaps, some day, in California. He's there. I must go."
"Lucy!" She leaped after her. In the tent opening they once more
clasped each other.
"I can't let you go," Susan moaned.
But Lucy's kiss had not the fervor of hers. The strength of her being
had gone to her lover. Friendship, home, family, all other claims hung
loose about her, the broken trappings of her maidenhood. The great
primal tie had claimed her.
A black figure against the pallor of the night, she turned for a last
word.
"If you tell them and they come after us, Zavier'll fight them. He'll
fight if he kills them. They'll know to-morrow. Good-by," and she was
gone, a noiseless shadow, flitting toward the denser group of shadow
where her heart was.
Susan, crouched at the tent flap, saw her melt into the waiting
blackness, and then heard the muffled hoof beats growing thinner and
fainter as the silence absorbed them.
She sat thus till the dawn came. Once or twice she started up to give
the alarm, but fell back. Under the tumult of her thoughts a
conviction lay that Lucy must follow her own wild way. In the welter
of confused emotion it was all that was clear. It may have come from
that sense of Lucy's detachment, that consciousness of cords and
feelers stretching out to a new life which commanded and held closer
than the old had ever done. All she knew was that Lucy was obeying
some instinct that was law to her, that was true for her to obey. If
they caught her and brought her back it would twist her life into a
broken form. Was it love? Was that what had drawn her over all
obstacles, away from the established joys and comforts, drawn her like
a magnet to such a desperate course? With wide eyes the girl saw the
whiteness of the dawn, and sat gripped in her resolution of silence,
fearful at the thought of what that mighty force must be.