BLIND LOVE
At sunrise the harassed dreamer awoke to find Gowan gazing down at him
somberly.
"You--you here?" he exclaimed, starting up on his elbow. "What is--" He
checked himself and muttered brokenly, "I've been dreaming--horrible
nightmares."
"He's down there overhauling his outfit," said Gowan. "Hope you've
thought the matter over."
"My answer must be the same. I cannot do it, I cannot!" replied
Ashton. He spoke hurriedly, as if afraid to linger on the thought.
"You can't--not to save her and have me give her to you?" asked
Gowan.
Ashton clenched his hands and bent over in an agony of doubt and
indecision.
"You devil!" he groaned.
"What! Because I'm willing to give her up, in order to see her
saved?"
"Why don't you shoot him, if you're so anxious?" queried Ashton.
"And hang for it," retorted the puncher. "You can do it with an
accident, and no risk. Anyway, that'll make things easier for his
wife--to have him meet a natural death. Won't be anything said about
why he was taken off. She hasn't begun to suspect what's going on
between him and--"
Gowan paused, looked at the tent, and concluded: "I've done my part. I
won't say any more. But just you remember what I've told you. You
won't run any risk. Mr. Knowles hasn't come back yet. There'll be only
them and me along, and we won't be able to see you do it. Just
remember what it will mean to her--just remember that--when you get
him where a shove or a loosened spike--Savvy?"
He went to loosen the diamond hitch of the packs that he had brought
with him from the ranch. Ashton sank back and lay brooding until the
girl came from the tent and called to inquire how he felt. Too
wretched to care about his appearance, he rose and went over to her.
"Oh!" she exclaimed at sight of his haggard face. "You are ill!"
"Only an attack of indigestion and loss of sleep--something I often
have," he lied. "A cup of coffee will set me up. Don't worry. I'm
strong--head doesn't bother me at all this morning, except a numb
feeling inside."
"I shall dress the wound at once, while the coffee is boiling," she
replied.
He would have objected. She silenced him with a look that acted on his
chafed spirit like oil upon a burn. Her kind, almost tender voice and
the soft touch of her fingers on his head soothed his anguish and
seemed to counteract the poison instilled by Gowan. He began to doubt
the puncher and the witness of his own eyes.
When Blake and his wife came to breakfast, Ashton was so cheerful that
they hardly noticed the traces of haggardness that yet lingered in his
face. Blake at once centered the attention of all by explaining his
plans for the exploration of the canyon. In addition to the surveyor's
chain, a hammer, and the rope and spikes,--which were to be used only
in making the descent,--he and Ashton were to carry the level and rod
and a quantity of food. At the suggestion of Isobel, he agreed to take
her father's revolver and fire it at intervals, on the chance that the
watchers above might see the flash of the shots and so be able to
follow the progress of the explorers down in the depths.
Genevieve quickly thought out signals to be given in response. If at
night, a torch was to be cast down into the chasm; if in the daytime,
a white flag, made of a sheet sent by Yuki, was to be waved out over
the brink. As the explorers might become confused in the gloom of the
canyon bottom, the point of the bend opposite Dry Fork Gulch was to be
marked by a beacon fire built on the verge of the canyon wall.
Blake had already arranged everything that he and Ashton were to take
down with them. Immediately after breakfast the outfit was fastened on
the packhorses, together with food, water and blankets for those who
were to remain on the heights. The ladies were determined to keep
above the explorers at all points where the rim of the canyon could be
approached. Gowan was to fetch and carry for them and take the horses
down to the pool for water at night.
Within half an hour after breakfast the party was jogging away from
camp, fully equipped for the great undertaking. Gowan was afoot. His
horse, as well as the regular pack animals, was heavily loaded with
stores. He walked with Isobel, who had insisted that Ashton should
ride her pony. Blake strode along at his wife's stirrup, carrying his
son in a clasp as tender as it was strong.
The engineer was the only cheerful member of the party. Even Thomas
Herbert, that best tempered of babies, was peevish and fretful. He was
instinctively reflexing the suppressed nervousness and anxiety of his
mother. Gowan and Ashton were as gloomy in look and speech as the
shadowy depths of the canyon. Isobel bravely sought to respond to
Blake's confidence in the favorable outcome of the survey; but her
smile, like Genevieve's, was forced and her eyes were troubled.
They reached the point of attack as the rays of the morning sun were
beginning to strike down into the side gorge. This was as Blake had
planned. He at once began to direct the preparations for the descent,
himself doing the lion's share of the work.
A long detour to a point higher up the ravine offered an easy descent
of its bottom to the place where it pitched steeply into the canyon.
Blake preferred to take a short cut down the almost vertical side of
the gulch. The three pieces of rope, each a hundred feet long, were
knotted together and used to lower a grass-padded package containing
all the equipment of the explorers except the level. The bundle was
lodged on a broad shelf of rock, over two hundred and fifty feet
down.
"Our first measurement," remarked Blake, as he subtracted from three
hundred feet the length of the line left above the edge of the cliff.
He jotted down the remainder in his notebook, and nodded to Ashton,
who, with Gowan and Isobel, was holding the end of the rope. "You see
why I had Mr. Gowan bring gloves and chaps and your leggins. We will
make the line fast around that rock, and follow our outfit."
Ashton stared, slack jawed. "Really, you cannot mean--?"
"Yes. Why not?" asked Blake. "There's nothing to a slide like this
except the look of it."
"Oh, Tom!" breathlessly cried Genevieve. "Are you sure--quite sure!"
"Sure I'm sure, little woman," he replied. "There's not the slightest
danger. This is a new manila rope, and the package, with all those
spikes in it, weighs as much as I do. That gives us a sure test."
"I might have known!" she sighed her relief.
"Still it does look a bit stiff for a start-off," he admitted. "If
Lafe prefers, he can go around and come down the ravine bed. I shall
slide the line and be getting the outfit in shape for shooting the
chutes."
"How about the rope?" asked Isobel.
"You are to drop it to me as soon as I get down and stand from under,"
directed Blake. He examined with minute care the loop and knot with
which Gowan and Isobel had made the rope fast around the point of
rock. Having satisfied himself that the knot was perfectly secure, he
turned to his wife and opened his arms. "Now, Sweetheart! Wish us good
luck and a quick journey!"
Gowan and Ashton drew back and looked away as Genevieve flung herself
on her husband's broad chest, unable to restrain her tears.
"Now, now, little woman," he soothed, patting her shoulder. "There's
nothing to be afraid of, and you know it."
"If--if only we could see you down there!" she sobbed.
"You will, part of the time, with your glasses. And you'll be sure to
see the flash of some of my shots. That's all that I'm worrying
about--you'll be skirting along the canyon rim. Promise me you'll not
go near the edge except where the footing is perfectly safe."
"Yes, Dear. I shall have Thomas to remind me to be careful. But you?"
"I shall have the thought of you both to keep me from being rash.
Remember that."
"You will not be rash, I know," she answered, smiling up at him
bravely. "You will go and come back to us soon. Now kiss me and
Thomas. I shall not detain you from your work."
"Spoken like my partner," he quietly praised her.
Both by tone and manner he was plainly seeking to ease the parting to
the calmness of an ordinary farewell. His wife responded to this,
outwardly at least. Not so Isobel. From the moment he had turned to
Genevieve, the girl had betrayed a rapidly increasing agitation.
He went to kiss his baby, who had fallen asleep during the last half
mile of the trip and lay sprawled in the shade of a bowlder. As he
came back, Genevieve lingered beside the child, as if half fearful of
watching her husband begin his dizzy descent of the rope.
Isobel was standing close to the verge, her bosom heaving with
quick-drawn breaths, her excited face flushing and paling in rapid
alternation. Blake had pulled on his left glove, but had kept his
right hand bare for her. As he held it out he looked up from the taut
rope at his feet and saw her excessively agitated face.
[Illustration: "You have something to tell me--your voice--your eyes--"]
"Why, Miss Chuckie!" he remonstrated, "you're not going to break down
now. You see how Jenny takes it. There's nothing to fear."
"Oh, but, Tom!" she panted, "you--you don't understand! you don't
know! It's not merely the danger! It's the dreadful thought that if
you--if you should not--come back--and I hadn't told you!"
"Told me?" he echoed in hushed wonderment as her anguished soul looked
out at him through her wide eyes and he sensed the first vague
foreshadowing of the truth. "You have something to tell me--your
voice!--your eyes!--"
"You see it! You know me!" she gasped, and she flung herself into his
arms. Straining herself to him in half frantic ecstasy, she murmured
in a broken whisper: "Yes! I am--am Belle! It is wicked and selfish to
tell you; but to have you go down there without first--I could not
bear it! Yet I--I shall not drag you down--disgrace you. Never that!
I'll go away!... Oh, Tom! dear Tom!"
He had stood dumfounded by the revelation of her identity. At first he
could not speak; hardly could he think. His eyes stared into hers with
a dazed look. But before she could finish her impassioned declaration
of self-abnegation he roused from his bewilderment, and his great
arms closed about her quivering body. He crushed her to him and
pressed his lips upon her white forehead.
"Belle!--poor little Belle!... But why? Tell me why? All this time,
and you never showed by a single word or look!"
"I did!" she sought to defend herself from the tender reproach. "I
did, but I--I was afraid to tell."
"Afraid?"
The girl's face flamed scarlet with shame. She sought to draw away
from him. "Let me go, Tom! oh, please, let me go! I am a selfish,
wicked girl! I have done it! I have done it! Now there is no help for
it! She must be told--all!"
"All?" he questioned.
"Yes, all, Tom! I cannot deny Mary! She saved me! I believe she is in
Heaven. She could not help doing what she did. She could not help it,
Tom--and she saved me! I must give you up--go away; but I can never,
never deny my sister!"
Blake swung half around with the quivering girl, and looked over her
downbent head at his wife. Genevieve stood almost within arm's-length
of them. He met her gaze, and immediately pushed the girl out towards
her.
"Listen, Belle," he said. "It is all right. Here is Jenny waiting for
you. She understands."
Gowan, watching rigid and tense-lipped, with his hand clenched on the
hilt of his half-drawn Colt's, was astonished to see Mrs. Blake step
forward and clasp Isobel in her arms. But Ashton did not see the
strange act that checked the puncher's vengeful shot. While the girl
was yet clinging to Blake, he had turned and fled along the edge of
the ravine, for the moment stark mad with rage and despair.
He rushed off without a cry, and the others were themselves far too
surcharged with emotion to heed his going until he had disappeared
around a turn in the ravine. When at last, almost spent with exertion,
he staggered up a ridge to glare back at those from whom he had fled,
his bloodshot eyes could perceive only three figures on the brink of
the gorge. They were kneeling to look over into the ravine.
His thoughts were still in a wild whirl, but the heat of his mad rage
had passed and left him in a cold fury. He instantly comprehended that
Blake had swung over the edge and was descending the rope down the
almost sheer face of the ravine wall.
Now was the time! A touch of a knife-edge to the rope, and the girl
would be saved. Would Gowan think of it?... Of course he would
think of it. But he would not do it. He would leave the deed to be
done by the man to whom he had relinquished Miss Chuckie. It was
for that man to save her--to destroy the tempter and break the
spell of fascination that was drawing her over the brink of a pit
far deeper than any earthly canyon. He, Lafayette Ashton--not
Gowan--was the man. He must save her--down there in the depths, where
no eye could see.
[Transcriber's Note: Map of High Mesa and Dry Mesa with place of
descent and other landmarks shown appears here.]