Lightning Passes the Barrier
Blanche knew better than to make any mystery of the situation when she
encountered Lightning. She knew it was a moment when frankness alone
was possible. For the old man laid bare his soul to her in the words of
his greeting.
“You got her mare,” he had cried, at sight of the pinto, in tones that
were unforgettable. “Wher’ is she? I want her, that pore, sick kid.”
Blanche replied without hesitation as she reined up her horse.
“That’s why I’m here, Lightning,” she said gently. “We’ve got her.
Found her lying all of a heap up this gorge. My friends have taken her
back to our camp, where there’s a doctor man.”
“She ain’t--dead?” Something like terror looked out of the man’s eyes,
and again Blanche realised his burning devotion.
“She’s bad, but I don’t think she’s dead,” she replied. “Will you come
with me?”
“You ain’t--lyin’?”
“Why should I lie?”
The man remained for a moment without speaking. He was striving to read
behind the eyes of the woman who had no desire to conceal the truth.
“We’ll go right now,” he said at last, and bestirred himself.
“This pony?” Blanche demurred. “Can we leave her at the farm?”
Lightning shook his head decidedly.
“She’ll need her,” he said. “We’ll take her along.” Then his manner
softened. “Maybe you’ll tell me things, ma’am,” he said. “You can tell
me as we go.”
It was then that Blanche became mistress of the situation. She was
determined that no chance word of hers should hurt her brother. And
she had no fear of this man, for all his manner and the ugly guns he
carried.
“No,” she said. “I’ve told you the simple truth. We found poor Molly
badly smashed. She’s gone where the right help can be found for her.
And I’ll take you to her at once, if you like. You must trust me.”
And Lightning agreed. Whatever suspicions Blanche’s refusal might have
inspired they remained unexpressed. For the time he seemed suddenly to
have frozen up.
Now they had ridden the miles of the gorge together, right up the
headwaters of the creek, only speaking just sufficient for the needs of
the journey.
At the foot of the inclined ledge, over which the ascent to the cavern
mouth had yet to be made, Blanche turned to the cattleman. Beelzebub,
with head haughtily raised, gazed disdainfully upon its more lowly
companions.
Blanche indicated the path, which, for all its indefiniteness at the
start, carried prompt conviction to the practical mind of Lightning.
He observed the marks of usage at once. The lank grass was obviously
hoof-trodden.
“Will the pinto trail behind on your rope?” she asked. “There isn’t
room for two ponies abreast. If it won’t travel that way we’d best
leave it right here. You can pick her up going back.”
Lightning shook his head. His eyes were unsmiling.
“Molly needs her,” he said shortly.
“Well, it’s up to you,” Blanche said with a shrug. “Look up there at
the mouth of that tunnel, where the water’s pouring down the rocks.
This path rises on a ledge, and makes its way to that cave. We’re going
to pass right inside it. It’s a tunnel; and the walls of rock meet
overhead for several hundred yards. After that they open out, and we
pass into the higher hill country. Do you feel good about it?”
“You said Molly’s at the end of our journey, ma’am,” Lightning said
quietly. “The things by the way don’t matter a curse.”
Blanche smiled as she listened. Her heart warmed towards this queer
creature with his ragged whisker, and his long guns with their many
barrels.
She inclined her head, and turned Beelzebub to the path.
“Then keep close on my trail,” she said, and lifted her reins.
The procession started. Beelzebub moved confidently. The creature
was familiar with every foot of the path, and seemed to rejoice in
the rapid dropping away of the gloomy lake-shore as he mounted the
sometimes almost precipitous incline. Lightning came hard behind him,
and beyond him trailed the pinto on the end of a rawhide rope.
There was not a moment of hesitation on the part of the horses new to
the ascent. Lightning was a master in the saddle, and his horse had
the added encouragement of the black quarters directly in front of his
nose. The pinto, behind, knew her stable companion, and was more than
content.
The path quickly became a rocky ledge about four feet wide, with the
wall of the hill sloping back from it. It mounted sharply and then
flattened; and, a few yards farther on, it rose sharply again.
Lightning seemed quite unconcerned with its vagaries. He seemed to
disregard its turnings and twistings, and its width at no time gave him
a moment of unease. He once or twice glanced below as the precipice
deepened, and the flash of sunlit waters caught his eye; but his chief
concern was the well-clad woman’s figure, ahead of him, and the thing
that had already passed between them.
Half-way up the mounting path Beelzebub dislodged a small rock, which
clattered as it rolled over the precipice and hurtled to the depths
below. The horse gave no heed to it, but its rider was startled.
Lightning saw her movement of sudden apprehension.
“Leave him his head, ma’am,” he warned. “He’s got elegant nerve.”
It was not his words so much as the sound of his voice that instantly
restored Blanche’s confidence. She eased her hand, and the horse
continued the ascent.
They had passed the sharp angle where the ledge cut on to the face of
the western hill, and mounted the last lift which terminated at the
tunnel entrance. The black pressed on eagerly towards the tumbling
waters, and Lightning was close behind. The clatter of hoofs became
lost in the turmoil of breaking water. A light spray was floating in
the air, moistening it, and tempering its heat to something pleasantly
cool and humid.
Far below them the lagoon, with its surrounding of forest, looked
strangely small and distant. And the creek itself, beyond that, looked
nothing bigger than a glistening silver thread. In his watchful fashion
Lightning had made an estimate of the height they had climbed. He knew
it could not be less than four hundred feet.
As the black came to the edge of the little watercourse Lightning
held up his horse. He realised the sharpness of the turn the creature
ahead of him had to make. He gave the beast room, and Beelzebub passed
swiftly into the water and into the tunnel.
The waiting man was about to follow on. He lifted his reins, but on
the instant checked his horse. He turned about in the saddle and sat
gazing far down the gorge. He sat there still and watchful until the
muffled tones of Blanche’s voice encouraging him came back to him from
the tunnel. Then he urged his horse, and followed her into the yawning
archway.
For awhile, as the darkness engulfed him, only the light from the
mouth of the cavern behind served Lightning with any idea of the nature
of the tunnel through which he was passing. At first he was aware
of dripping walls set nearly twenty feet apart. The roof, too, was
dripping, and his horse was wading a shallow stream whose depth was no
greater than sufficient to cover its fetlocks. But the sound of the
movements of the horse in front came back to him, and he was satisfied.
Wherever the woman led he was unafraid to follow. The pinto behind him
was less easy than its stable companion. It had no rider to encourage
it, and its equine terror was in full play. Once within the broad
cavern, however, Lightning drew it up alongside him, and persuaded it,
and soothed it, with voice and hand.
The light from behind died out, and black darkness completely engulfed
him. Only was there the splash of the water underfoot to afford any
sort of guidance. But this phase of the passage was little more than
momentary. Almost at once, it seemed, the pitchy darkness gave way to a
faint twilight that made progress possible. The light came from above,
and Lightning promptly discovered that the cavern had passed, and, in
its place, he was moving up the course of a stream flowing through a
deep cleft in the mountain. He gazed up, searching for a sight of the
sky above him, but there was none. The light percolated down through
the rift, but the rugged facets of rock hid its origin.
As he rode on the light steadily increased. The rift was widening. Now
Lightning could clearly see the outline of the horse and rider ahead
of him. And the walls were falling back, and the bed of the stream was
widening. Presently the woman and her horse passed out of view, and the
watchful man understood that the passage had taken a bend to the right.
He could clearly see the sharp, dark line of the wall directly ahead,
and on the opposite wall was an increase of light.
He came up to the bend. He passed it. And, in a moment, he beheld full
daylight. He drew a deep breath. It was an expression of that relief
which never fails the human on returning to the daylight which has been
denied.
* * * * *
The journey was nearing its end. For two hours or more Blanche and
Lightning had been riding the wilderness of forest, and hill, and
valley, since leaving the dark precincts of Nature’s secret postern.
It was a world whose might was nothing new with which to impress the
mind of Lightning. The hills were, perhaps, more sublime in their
magnificence; the forests were, perhaps, more deep and dark than those
amongst which his life was passed. The towering crests, spread with the
sweep of eternal glaciers, affected him no more than did the sparse
grass under his horse’s hoofs, and the beds of treacherous tundra which
had to be so carefully avoided. He was preoccupied to the exclusion of
everything in Nature. One thought, one purpose, alone actuated him.
Blindly he was permitting himself to be led to the only goal desired.
Somewhere in these hills Molly was lying sick, possibly to death, and
the woman beside him was conducting him to the haven with which her
friends had provided her.
They were moving up an incline which mounted to a saddle between two
lesser hills. There were great sweeps of forest on either hand, and
with a break between them of barren, rocky highway that was without
a vestige of vegetation. Away to the right, far across a valley, a
mountain reared its head, and plunged it deep into the heart of the
summer cloudbanks. To the left of them lay the upward sweep of forest,
which only terminated where the snow-line cut it off.
“We’ve come more’n fifteen miles since we quit the headwaters,”
Lighting said, in his ungracious fashion. “How much farther?”
Blanche turned at the sound of his voice. She smiled as she took in the
hawk-like profile of the man. She realised his intensity of feeling.
She warned herself of the trust he had placed in her. And she forgot
completely his ungraciousness, and remembered only that phrase with
which he greeted her: “I want that pore sick kid.”
“You’ll see the camp from the ‘saddle,’” she said quietly, raising an
arm and pointing ahead. “It’s right below the Gateway.”
“The Gateway?”
The old man was staring round at her.
Blanche nodded. Her smile had deepened, but it elicited not a shadow of
any responsive smile.
“Yes. The Gateway of Hope,” she said. “It’s a wide-open Gateway, that’s
never closed to those in trouble--simple human trouble. And beyond it
is shelter, and help, and--peace. Molly’s in trouble, and--she’s passed
in through that Gateway.”
Lightning leant and spat beyond his horse’s shoulder. Then he raised a
hand and scratched the unbrushed hair under the wide brim of his hat.
He stared incredulously into the woman’s eyes.
“Say, ma’am,” he suddenly exploded, “you ain’t crazy?”
* * * * *
They had halted at the highest point of the saddle. Blanche had
permitted the cattleman to reach the summit first. It was he who had
made the halt. And he sat there in his saddle, gazing down on the thing
that had seemed to him so unbelievable.
There was the Gateway--two sheer, barren cliffs rising out of the
forest which grew about their feet. They were wide, so wide, and
towered to a height that was amazing. They formed a clean-cut gateway,
as though set up by some giant hand, for the silver streak of a placid
river that flowed in between them. Behind them and about them lay
a wilderness of wooded hills. They had none of the darkness of the
greater forests they had hitherto encountered. They were softly green
and gracious in their many hues.
But Lightning ignored these things. His concern was for that which
lay beyond the Gateway. It was the splendour of the valley which
had captured Jim Pryse during his long imprisonment in it, and the
handiwork that had since been achieved.
It was a wonderful picture in the light of the setting sun. And it
stirred the old man’s pulses with something of the hope of which
Blanche had spoken. The woman was not crazy. No. Molly was down there,
somewhere there in the shelter of that ranch-house, with its wonderful
pastures, and corrals, and barns, and----
Lightning turned from it all. He sought the woman’s face and realised
her smile. Then he turned an ear to windward.
“Are you satisfied I wasn’t fooling you, Lightning?” Blanche spoke
almost joyously. “Molly’s down there in my house by now, and maybe the
doctor’s already fixed her.”
“It’s your house, ma’am?” Lightning said, with an ear still turned.
“Mine and my brother’s. Shall we get on down? We’ve more than two miles
to go.”
“Sure, we’ll get right on down. Say----”
The old man broke off as the horses began the descent. As he made no
attempt to add anything further, Blanche spoke, and there was something
thrilling in her tone.
“He built all that,” she said. “He built it for a notion. A queer sort
of crazy notion. And I sort of feel his dream’s coming true. You’re a
cattleman, Lightning. There are cattle down there that’ll make you
feel good. There’s the sort of grass you dream about, and the life you
know. You’re the first from the outside that’s ever seen it.”
“You’re sure that’s so, ma’am?”
Blanche searched the eyes that were looking into hers.
“There’s only Molly else,” she said. “And maybe she’s not seen it yet,”
she added significantly.
“You got folk outside them gates?” Lightning asked, pointing at the
headlands.
“Not a soul.”
Lightning suddenly drew rein, and turned about in his saddle. He gazed
back over the way they had come.
“Then I guess ther’s a stranger chasin’ up,” he said sharply. “We’re
follered, ma’am.”