EL CAPITAN
The mutterings above the mountains now grew rapidly louder and while
the two hovered over the fire, a thunder-squall, rolling wildly down
the eastern slope, burst over the Gap. Its sudden fury put aside for a
time all question of moving, and Nan's face took on a grave expression
as she looked in the firelight at her companion, thinking of how far
such a storm might imperil their situation, how far cut off their
already narrow chance of escape.
De Spain--reclining close beside her, looking into the depths of her
eyes as the flickering blaze revealed them, drying himself in their
warmth and light, eating and drinking of their presence on the
mountainside alone with him, and pledged to him, his protection, and
his fortunes against the world--apparently thought of nothing beyond
the satisfaction of the moment. The wind drove the storm against the
west side of the huge granite peak under which they were sheltered and
gave them no present trouble in their slender recess. But Nan knew
even better than her companion the fickle fury of a range storm, and
understood uncomfortably well how a sudden shift might, at any moment,
lay their entire path open to its fierceness. She warned de Spain they
must be moving, and, freshened by the brief rest, they set out toward
El Capitan.
Their trail lay along granite levels of comparatively good going and,
fleeing from the squall, they had covered more than half the distance
that separated them from the cliff, when a second thunder-storm,
seeming to rush in from the desert, burst above their heads. Drenched
with rain, they were forced to draw back under a projecting rock. In
another moment the two storms, meeting in the Gap, crashed together.
Bolt upon bolt of lightning split the falling sheets of water, and
thunder, exploding in their faces, stunned and deafened them.
Mountain peaks, played on by the wild light, leaped like spectres out
of the black, and granite crags, searched by blazing shafts, printed
themselves in ghostly flames on the retina; thunder, searching
unnumbered gorges, echoed beneath the sharper crashes in one long,
unending roll, and far out beyond the mountains the flooded desert
tossed on a dancing screen into the glare, rippled like a madcap sea,
and flashed in countless sheets of blinding facets. As if an unseen
hand had touched a thousand granite springs above the Gap, every
slender crevice spouted a stream that shot foaming out from the
mountainsides. The sound of moving waters rose in a dull, vast roar,
broken by the unseen boom of distant falls, launching huge masses of
water into caverns far below. The storm-laden wind tore and swirled
among the crowded peaks, and above all the angry sky moaned and
quivered in the rage of the elements.
Nan leaned within de Spain's arm. "If this keeps up," he said after
some time, "our best play is to give up crossing to-night. We might
hide somewhere on the mountain to-morrow, and try it toward evening."
"Yes, if we have to," she answered. But he perceived her reluctant
assent. "What I am afraid of, Henry, is, if they were to find us. You
know what I mean."
"Then we won't hide," he replied. "The minute we get the chance we
will run for it. This is too fierce to last long."
"Oh, but it's November!" Nan reminded him apprehensively. "It's
winter; that's what makes it so cold. You never can tell in
November."
"It won't last all night, anyway," he answered with confidence.
Despite his assurance, however, it did last all night, and it was
only the lulls between the sharp squalls that enabled them to cover
the trail before daylight. When they paused before El Capitan the fury
of the night seemed largely to have exhausted itself, but the
overcharged air hung above the mountains, trembling and moaning like a
bruised and stricken thing. Lightning, playing across the inky
heavens, blazed in constant sheets from end to end of the horizon. Its
quivering glare turned the wild night into a kind of ghastly,
uncertain day. Thunder, hoarse with invective, and hurled mercilessly
back and forth by the fitful wind, drew farther and farther into the
recess of the mountains, only to launch its anger against its own
imprisoned echoes. Under it all the two refugees, high on the
mountainside, looked down on the flooding Gap.
Their flight was almost ended. Only the sheer cliff ahead blocked
their descent to the aspen grove. De Spain himself had already crossed
El Capitan once, and he had done it at night--but it was not, he was
compelled to remind himself, on a night like this. It seemed now a
madman's venture and, without letting himself appear to do so, he
watched Nan's face as the lightning played over it, to read if he
could, unsuspected, whether she still had courage for the undertaking.
She regarded him so collectedly, whether answering a question or
asking one, that he marvelled at her strength and purpose. Hardly a
moment passed after they had started until the eastern sky lightened
before the retreating storm, and with the first glimmer of daylight,
the two were at the beginning of the narrow foothold which lay for
half a mile between them and safety.
Here the El Capitan trail follows the face of the almost vertical wall
which, rising two thousand feet in the air, fronts the gateway of
Morgan's Gap.
They started forward, de Spain ahead. There was nothing now to hurry
them unduly, and everything to invite caution. The footholds were
slippery, rivulets still crossed the uncertain path, and fragments of
rock that had washed down on the trail, made almost every step a new
hazard. The face of El Capitan presents, midway, a sharp convex. Just
where it is thrown forward in this keen angle, the trail runs out
almost to a knife-edge, and the mountain is so nearly vertical that it
appears to overhang the floor of the valley.
They made half the stretch of this angle with hardly a misstep, but
the advance for a part of the way was a climb, and de Spain, turning
once to speak to Nan, asked her for her rifle, that he might carry it
with his own. What their story might have been had she given it to
him, none can tell. But Nan, holding back, refused to let him relieve
her. The dreaded angle which had haunted de Spain all night was safely
turned on hands and knees and, as they rounded it toward the east,
clouds scudding over the open desert broke and shot the light of dawn
against the beetling arete.
De Spain turned in some relief to point to the coming day. As he did
so a gust of wind, sweeping against the sheer wall, caught him off his
guard. He regained his balance, but a stone, slipping underfoot,
tipped him sidewise, and he threw himself on his knees to avoid the
dizzy edge. As he fell forward he threw up his hand to save his hat,
and in doing so released his rifle, which lay under his hand on the
rock. Before he could recover it the rifle slipped from reach. In the
next instant he heard it bouncing from rock to rock, five hundred feet
below.
Greatly annoyed and humiliated, he regained his feet and spoke with a
laugh to reassure Nan. Just as she answered not to worry, a little
singing scream struck their ears; something splashed suddenly close at
hand against the rock wall; chips scattered between them. From below,
the sound of a rifle report cracked against the face of the cliff.
They were so startled, so completely amazed that they stood
motionless. De Spain looked down and over the uneven floor of the
Gap. The ranch-houses, spread like toys in the long perspective, lay
peacefully revealed in the gray of the morning. Among the dark
pine-trees he could discern Nan's own home. Striving with the utmost
keenness of vision to detect where the shot had come from, de Spain
could discover no sign of life around any of the houses. But in
another moment the little singing scream came again, the blow of the
heavy slug against the splintering rock was repeated, the distant
report of the rifle followed.
"Under fire," muttered de Spain. He looked questioningly at Nan.
She herself, gazing across the dizzy depths, was searching for
the danger-point. A third shot followed at a seemingly regular
interval--the deliberate interval needed by a painstaking marksman
working out his range and taking his time to find it. De Spain
watched Nan's search anxiously. "We'd better keep moving," he said.
"Come! whoever is shooting can follow us a hundred yards either
way." In front of de Spain a fourth bullet struck the rock. "Nan,"
he muttered, "I've got you into a fix. If we can't stop that
fellow he is liable to stop us. Can you see anything?" he asked,
waiting for her to come up.
"Henry!" She was looking straight down into the valley, and laid her
hand on de Spain's shoulder. "Is there anything moving on the
ridge--over there--see--just east of Sassoon's ranch-house?"
De Spain, his eyes bent on the point Nan indicated, drew her forward
to a dip in the trail which, to one stretched flat, afforded a slight
protection. He made her lie down, and just beyond her refuge chose a
point where the path, broadening a little and rising instead of
sloping toward the outer edge, gave him a chance to brace himself
between two rocks. Flattened there like a target in mid-air, he threw
his hat down to Nan and, resting on one knee, waited for the shot that
should tumble him down El Capitan or betray the man bent on killing
him. Squalls of wind, sweeping into the Gap and sucked upward on the
huge expanse of rock below, tossed his hair and ballooned his coat as
he buttoned it. Another bullet, deliberately aimed, chipped the rock
above him. Nan, agonizing in her suspense, cried out she must join him
and go with him if he went. He steadied her apprehension and with a
few words reminded her, as a riflewoman, what a gamble every shot at a
height such as they occupied, and with such a wind, must be. He
reminded her, too, it was much easier to shoot down than up, but all
the time he was searching for the flash that should point the
assassin. A bullet struck again viciously close between them. De Spain
spoke slowly: "Give me your rifle." Without turning his head he held
out his hand, keeping his eyes rigidly on the suspicious spot on the
ridge. "How far is it to that road, Nan?"
She looked toward the faint line that lay in the deep shadows below.
"Three hundred yards."
"Nan, if it wasn't for you, I couldn't travel this country at all," he
remarked with studious unconcern. "Last time I had no ammunition--this
time, no rifle--you always have what's needed. How high are we, Nan?"
"Seven hundred feet."
"Elevate for me, Nan, will you?"
"Remember the wind," she faltered, adjusting the sight as he had
asked.
With the cautioning words she passed the burnished weapon, glittering
yet with the rain-drops, into his hand. A flash came from the distant
ridge. Throwing the rifle to his shoulder, de Spain covered a hardly
perceptible black object on the trail midway between Sassoon's
ranch-house and a little bridge which he well remembered--he had
crossed it the night he dragged Sassoon into town. It seemed a long
time that he pressed the rifle back against his shoulder and held his
eye along the barrel. He was wondering as he covered the crouching
man with the deadly sight which of his enemies this might be. He even
slipped the rifle from his shoulder and looked long and silently at
the black speck before he drew the weapon back again into place. Then
he fired before Nan could believe he had lined the sights. Once,
twice, three times his hand fell and rose sharply on the lever, with
every mark of precision, yet so rapidly Nan could not understand how
he could discover what his shots were doing.
The fire came steadily back, and deliberately, without the least
intimation of being affected by de Spain's return. It was a duel shorn
of every element of equality, with an assassin at one end of the
range, and a man flattened half-way up the clouds against El Capitan
at the other, each determined to kill the other before he should stir
one more foot.
Far above, an eagle, in morning flight, soared majestically out from a
jutting crag and circled again and again in front of El Capitan, while
the air sang with the whining dice that two gamblers against death
threw across the gulf between them. Nan, half hidden in her trough of
rock, watched the great bird poise and wheel above the deadly firing,
and tried to close her eyes to the figure of de Spain above her,
fighting for her life and his own.
She had never before seen a man shooting to kill another. The very
horror of watching de Spain, at bay among the rocks, fascinated her.
Since the first day they had met she had hardly seen a rifle in his
hands.
Realizing how slightly she had given thought to him or to his skill at
that time, she saw now, spellbound, how a challenge to death,
benumbing her with fear, had transformed him into a silent, pitiless
foeman, fighting with a lightning-like decision that charged every
motion with a fatality for his treacherous enemy. Her rifle, at his
shoulder, no longer a mere mechanism, seemed in his hands something
weightless, sensible, alive, a deadly part of his arm and eye and
brain. There was no question, no thought of adjusting or handling or
haste in his fire, but only an incredible swiftness and sureness that
sent across the thin-aired chasm a stream of deadly messengers to seek
a human life. She could only hope and pray, without even forming the
words, that none of her blood were behind the other rifle, for she
felt that, whoever was, could never escape.
She tried not to look. The butt of the heating rifle lay close against
the red-marked cheek she knew so well, and to the tips of the fingers
every particle of the man's being was alive with strength and
resource. Some strange fascination drew her senses out toward him as
he knelt and threw shot after shot at the distant figure hidden on the
ridge. She wanted to climb closer, to throw herself between him and
the bullets meant for him. She held out her arms and clasped her hands
toward him in an act of devotion. Then while she looked, breathlessly,
he took his eyes an instant from the sights. "He's running!" exclaimed
de Spain as the rifle butt went instantly back to his cheek. "Whoever
he is, God help him now!"
The words were more fearful to Nan than an imprecation. He had driven
his enemy from the scant cover of a rut in the trail, and the man was
fleeing for new cover and for life. The speck of black in the field of
intense vision was moving rapidly toward the ranch-house. Bullet after
bullet pitilessly led the escaping wretch. Death dogged every eager
footfall. Suddenly de Spain jerked the rifle from his cheek, threw
back his head, and swept his left hand across his straining eyes. Once
more the rifle came up to place and, waiting for a heartbeat, to press
the trigger, he paused an instant. Flame shot again in the gray
morning light from the hot muzzle. The rifle fell away from the
shoulder. The black speck running toward the ranch-house stumbled, as
if stricken by an axe, and sprawled headlong on the trail. Throwing
the lever again like lightning, de Spain held the rifle back to his
cheek.
He did not fire. Second after second he waited, Nan, lying very still,
watching, mute, the dull-red mark above the wet rifle butt. No one had
need to tell her what had happened. Too well she read the story in de
Spain's face and in what she saw, as he knelt, perfectly still, only
waiting to be sure there was no ruse. She watched the rifle come
slowly down, unfired, and saw his drawn face slowly relax. Without
taking his eyes off the sprawling speck, he rose stiffly to his feet.
As if in a dream she saw his hand stretched toward her and heard, as
he looked across the far gulf, one word: "Come!"
They reached the end of the trail. De Spain, rifle in hand, looked
back. The sun, bursting in splendor across the great desert, splashed
the valley and the low-lying ridge with ribboned gold. Farther up the
Gap, horsemen, stirred by the firing, were riding rapidly down toward
Sassoon's ranch-house. But the black thing in the sunshine lay quite
still.