To Judith life had changed from a pleasant game in the sunshine to a
hideous nightmare. In a few dragging hours she had come to know
incredulity, anxiety, misery, dejection, black hopelessness, and icy
terror. She had come to look through a man's eyes at that which lay in
his heart, to feel for the first time in her fearless life that the
fortitude was slipping out of her bosom, that the strength was melting
in her.
She lay on a rude bed of fir-boughs, an utter, impenetrable blackness
like a palpable weight on her eyeballs. When it was silent about her,
and for the most part silence reigned with the oppressive gloom, she
yearned so for a little sound that she moved her foot along the rock
floor under her or snapped a dry twig between her fingers or even
listened eagerly for the coming of the terrible woman who was her
jailer.
Gropingly, again and again she went over in her thoughts the long
journey here, seeking fruitlessly to know whether she had come north,
south, or east from the ranch-house. It was one of these three
directions, for there were no such mountains as these to the west, no
such monster cliffs, no deep cavern reaching into the bowels of the
earth The sense that, even were she freed, she had no slightest idea
where she was, which way she must go, stunned her.
"Will I go mad after a while?" she wondered miserably. "Am I already
going mad? Oh, God, have mercy on me----"
From the instant when, Saturday night, she had been gripped suddenly in
a man's strong arms, when another man had smothered her outcry, she had
known in her heart that Bayne Trevors was taking his desperate chance
in the game. But in the darkness she had had only the two vague blurs
of their bodies to guess at. They had been masked; her own eyes were
covered, a bandage brought tightly over them, her mouth gagged, her
hands tied behind her, her body lifted into the saddle--all in a
moment. Neither man had spoken. Then, tied in the saddle, she only
knew that she was riding, that one man rode in front of her, leading
her horse, the other following close behind. The sense of direction
which she had lost in those first five minutes she had never been given
opportunity to regain. She might, even now, be a gunshot from her own
ranch; she might be twenty miles from it.
For the greater part of that Saturday night they had ridden; and when
trails died under them and rocks rose steeply, they walked, she and one
man. The other stayed with the horses. Not once did she hear a man's
voice; she did not know whether it was Trevors himself, or Quinnion, or
some utter stranger who forced her into this hiding.
They had climbed cliffs, now going down into chasms, now following
roaring creeks or making their way along the spine of some rocky ridge.
The one man with her was masked, his eyes rather guessed at than seen
through the slits of his bandanna handkerchief. He had jerked the
bandage from her eyes, since blindfolded she would make such poor
progress. But still he guarded his tongue.
"He would speak," she thought, "but that I would recognize his voice.
Trevors or Quinnion? Which?"
Feeling the first quick spurt of hope when she saw that there was but
one man to deal with, she was aquiver to seize the first opportunity
for flight. But that hope died swiftly as she recognized that no such
opportunity was to be granted her. Once she paused, looking to a
possible leap over a low ledge and escape in a thick bit of timber.
But the two eyes through the slits in the improvised mask had been keen
and quick, a heavy hand was laid on her arm, she felt the fingers bite
into her flesh as he sought to drive into her a full comprehension of
his grim determination that she should not escape.
It was when they had clambered high upon a mass of tumbled boulders,
topping a ridge, that Judith had seen the man's face. Docilely she had
obeyed his gestures for an hour; now, suddenly maddened at the silence
and the mask over his face, she sprang unexpectedly upon him, shoving
him from the rock on which he had stepped, snatching off his mask as
she did so. For the first time she heard his voice, cursing her coolly
as he gripped and held her.
It was Bayne Trevors, at last come out the open, his eyes hard on hers.
"It's just as well that you know whom you are up against," he said as
he held her with his hand heavy on her shrinking shoulder.
Summoning all of the reckless fearlessness which was her birthright,
she laughed at him coolly, laughed as the two stood against the
sky-line, upon the barren breast of a lonesome land.
"So you are a fool, after all, Bayne Trevors!" she jeered at him.
"Fool enough to mix first-hand in a dangerous undertaking."
Trevors shrugged.
"Yes?" He slipped the handkerchief into his pocket and stared at her
with a glint of anger in the blue-gray of his eyes. He lifted his
broad shoulders. "Or wise man enough to do my own work when needs be,
and when I'd have no bungling? I'm going to square with you, girl.
Square with you for meddling, for a bullet-hole in each shoulder. If
there's a fool in our little junketing party, it's a girl who thought
she could handle a man's-size job."
They went on, over the ridge and down. Judith made no second attempt
to surprise him, for always his eyes watched her. Nor did she seek to
hold back or in any way to hamper him now. For, swiftly adjusting
herself to the new conditions, she made her first decision: Trevors did
think her a "fool of a girl," Trevors did sneer at her helplessness in
that man's way of his. Let him think her a little fool; let him hold
her in his contempt; let him grow to think her cowed and afraid and
helpless. Then, when the time came----
Again she had been blindfolded; seeing the look in Trevors's eyes, she
had offered no objection. Again she had followed him in a darkness
made at sunrise by a bandage across her eyes. Again, the bandage
removed, she winked at the sunlight. Again they climbed ridges,
dropped down into tiny valleys, fought their way along thunderous
ravines where the water was lashed into white foam. Again blindfolded,
again trudging on, her whole body beginning to tremble with fatigue,
the weakness of hunger upon her. And at length, out of a cañon, making
a perilous way up the steep walls of rock, they came to the mouth of
the black cavern in which she lay now, waiting for the sound of a
stirring foot.
Only an instant had Judith stood upon the ledge outside the cave before
she was thrust into the black interior. But in that instant her eager
eyes had made out, upon a tiny bit of table-land across the chasm of
the gorge, a cabin, sending aloft a plume of smoke.
Then, after an hour, the terrible woman had come to whom Trevors had
intrusted her, bringing food and water in her hard, blackened hands,
carrying the flickering fires of madness in her unfathomable eyes. A
lantern set on the floor made rude shadows, and out of them crept this
woman, leering at Trevors, peering at Judith, licking her thin lips,
and chuckling to herself.
"I have brought her back to you, Ruth," he said, speaking softly, more
softly than Judith had thought the man could speak. "You will know
what to do with her. And you will not let her escape you again."
The mad woman, for only too plainly was her reason strangely misshapen,
stood in silence, her great muscular body looming high above Judith's,
a giant of a woman, bigger than Trevors even, broad and heavy, her
forearms thick and corded, her bare throat like the bull neck of a
prize-fighter.
"I will know, I will know," she said, her eyes filled with cunning, her
voice a strange singsong oddly at variance with the coarse bigness of
her body. "Oh, no, she will never escape from me again."
"I will have a man on the ledge outside night and day," went on
Trevors. "But we cannot be so sure of others as we are of ourselves,
Ruth. You know that, don't you?"
"Oh, yes, I know," she answered quickly. As she spoke she suddenly
shot out her long arm so that her great, bony hand fastened like a big
claw on the girl's shoulder. "I have got her again! She is mine, all
mine. Oh, I will keep her well."
In a little while Trevors left. He had not returned. Mad Ruth, still
gripping Judith's shoulder, half led her, half thrust her farther back
in the cavern. Judith made no resistance. Always, even when terror
was uppermost she held one thought in mind: "If I can make them think
me a little fool and a weakling, my chance may come after a while."
As the two women passed around a bend in the sinuous tunnel-like cave,
the faint rays of the lantern they had left behind them died out, and
heavy darkness shut them in. Judith could barely make out the huge
form towering over her. But Ruth, whether her eyes were like a cat's
and accustomed to this sombre place, or whether a hand on a rock wall
or a foot on the uneven floor under her told her which way to go, moved
on without hesitation. Judith estimated roughly that they had come
fifty yards from the outside ledge in front of the cave when she was
pushed down and felt the rude bed of fir-boughs under her.
"So," grunted the woman, for the first time removing her hard hand from
the girl's shoulder, "I've got you again, my pretty. And this time you
don't play any more little tricks on your old mother."
She was gone swiftly, all but silently, through the gloom, her form
vaguely outlined against the lantern's glimmer, to bring the food and
water which she had set down when she came in. Judith drank and ate.
It was only little by little, in fragments which she obtained during
the slow days which followed, that she came to understand Trevors's
scheme. And the scheme was in keeping with the man; so far as it was
possible, Bayne Trevors was still playing safe.
Mad Ruth was an odd mixture of crazed suspicion, shrewd cunning,
cruelty, and madness. Perhaps very long ago--Judith came to believe
that it had occurred at the time when she had gone mad, for God knows
what reason--Mad Ruth had had a little daughter. The girl had been
lost to her, whether through death when an infant, or some tragic
accident when a young girl, Judith never knew. But Ruth's heart had
been bound up in that baby of hers; when madness came, it centred and
turned upon the return of her child, "Who had run away from her, but
who would come back some time." Trevors, having learned of her mad
passion, had shaped it to his purpose.
But that was not all. Judith had been brought to the cave early Sunday
morning. Sunday afternoon there came to the cave a well-dressed man
carrying a little black bag in his hand. He talked with Ruth; he took
up the lantern and came to look at Judith.
"So I'll know you again," he laughed. Then he went away. In fragments
which through long, empty hours her busy mind pieced together, bridging
the gaps, she grasped the rest of Trevors's plan. This man was a
physician, sent here from some one of the many mining towns in the
mountains, probably from a camp twenty or thirty miles away. He, too,
was a Trevors hireling. Should Judith ever accuse Trevors of having
brought her here, there was another story to be told. And this man
would tell it: How he had been summoned here to attend a girl who had
had a fall, who had wandered delirious through the mountains until Ruth
had found her; whom he had treated here, not daring at first to move
her for fear of permanent shock to her reason; who could give them no
help to establish her identity; who had a thousand absurd fears and
fancies and accusations to make; who in her babbling had at one time
accused Bayne Trevors of having forcibly abducted her; who at another
had cried that it was a man named Carson, a man named Lee, who had
brought her here.
Judith spent many a long hour exploring her prison, hoping to find a
way out. So far as she knew she had but one person to reckon with, Mad
Ruth. True, Trevors had said that he'd have a man on the ledge outside
day and night; Judith had never seen such a person, had never heard his
voice, and began to believe that it was a bit of bluff on Trevors's
part. But she had never again been where she could look out of the
cave's mouth, since Mad Ruth had her own pallet on the floor at the
narrowest part of the cave where it was like the neck of a monster
bottle, and always at the first sound of the girl's approach, was on
her feet to thrust her back. Clearly there was no way out of this
place of shadows except that through which she had come.
Judith sought an explanation of her imprisonment, and after long
groping she came very near the truth: Trevors would work his will with
Hampton through Hampton's faith in him and admiration for him. And, in
her absence, Hampton was the head of Blue Lake ranch.
Sunday night, hearing Mad Ruth moving cautiously, Judith raised herself
on her elbow, listening. She was confident that the woman was moving
toward the cave's mouth; she hoped wildly that Mad Ruth was tricked
into believing her asleep and was going out. Her shoes in her hands,
her stockinged feet falling lightly, Judith moved toward the mad
woman's couch.
Ruth was going out; was in fact even now slipping out of the narrow
throat of the cave and to the ledge. But Judith could not see her.
For a new, unexpected obstacle was in her way. Her outthrust hands
touched not rock walls but heavy wooden panels; she knew then that the
narrow neck of the cave was fitted with a heavy door and that it had
been drawn shut, fastened from without. In a sudden access of fury and
despair she beat at it with her two hands, crying out bitterly.
It was so dark, so inky black, and as still, save for her own outcry,
as a tomb sealed and forgotten. Such darkness, smothering hope,
suddenly was filled with vague terrors; for one worn-out and nervous as
Judith was, the darkness seemed to harbor a thousand ugly things which
watched her and mocked at her despair and reached out vile hands toward
her. She called loudly, and for answer had the crazed laugh of Mad
Ruth which floated in to her from without, but which seemed to drop
down from the void above.
"Judith, Judith," the girl whispered after the first outburst, when she
found that she was shaking pitifully. "You've got to do better than
this; I'm ashamed of you."
She went back to her couch, where she sat down seeking to hold her
jangling nerves in check. But, despite her intention, she sat shaking,
listening, listening--praying for even the footfall of her jailer.
When Ruth was with her she attempted in a hundred ways to gauge the
woman's warped brain, to seek some way to get the better of her, to
gain her trust and so to slip away. But she found that here was the
usual cunning born of madness, and that Ruth's one idea was to keep the
girl who had escaped her once but who must never escape again. There
were times when suspicion awakened in Ruth's mind, and she broke into
violent rage, so that her big body shook and her eyes in the
lantern-light were cruel and murderous, when Judith shrank back, and
tried to change the woman's thoughts. For more than once had Mad Ruth
cried out:
"I'll kill you! Kill you with my own hands to keep you here. To keep
you mine, mine, mine!"
The woman carried no weapon, but after her two hands had once gripped
the girl's shoulders, shaking her, Judith knew that Ruth needed no
weapon. Hers was a strength greater than Trevors's, greater than two
men's. If Mad Ruth saw fit to kill Judith with her two hands, she
could do it.
Sunday passed and Sunday night; Monday and Monday night. Judith knew
that she had accomplished nothing, except perhaps to make Ruth believe
that she was very much of a coward. In Ruth's mad brain that was
little enough, since this did not allay her cunning watchfulness. Then
Judith began to do something else, something actively. Just to be
occupied, was something. Her fingers selected the largest, thickest
branch from her bed of fir-boughs. It was perhaps a couple of inches
in diameter and heavy, because it was green. Silently, cautious of a
twig snapped, she began with her fingers to strip the branch, tough and
pliable. Then the limb must be cut into a length which would make it a
club to be used in a cramped space. She found a bit of stone, hard
granite, which had scaled from the walls and which had a rough edge.
With this, working many a quiet hour, she at last cut in two the
fir-bough. She lifted it in her hands, to feel the weight of it,
before she thrust it under her bed to lie hidden there against possible
need. Poor thing as it was, she felt no longer utterly defenseless.
Once Mad Ruth, lighting the lantern, had dropped a good match. When
she had gone, Judith secured it hastily, hiding it as if it were gold.
She knew that now and then Mad Ruth went down the cliffs and to the
cabin across the chasm. Always at night and at the darkest hour. When
she heard her go, Judith rose swiftly and went to the heavy door.
Always she found it locked; her shaking at it hardly budged the heavy
timbers. But though she could not see it, she studied it with her
fingers until she had a picture of it in her mind. A picture that only
increased her hopelessness. Barehanded she could never hope to break
it down or push it aside. And above it and below, and on each side,
were the solid walls of stone.
She no longer knew what day it was. She scarcely knew if it were day
or night. But, setting herself something to do so that she would not
go mad, mad as Mad Ruth, she secured for herself another weapon.
Another bit of stone which her groping fingers had found and hidden
with her club; a jagged, ugly rock half the size of a man's head. Some
little scraps of bread and meat, hoarded from her scanty meals, she hid
in her blouse.
"If I could stun her, just stun her," she got into the way of
whispering to herself. "Not kill her outright--just stun her----"
At last, seeing that she must work her own salvation with the crude
weapons given her, Judith told herself that she could wait no longer.
Another day and another and she would be weak from the confinement and
poor food and nervous, wakeful hours. She must act while the strength
was in her. And, if Trevors had spoken the truth, if there were a man
to deal with outside--well, she must shut her mind to that until she
came to it.
Mad Ruth was gone again, and Judith stood by the thick door, her heart
beating furiously while she waited. It seemed to her eager impatience
that Ruth would never come back. Then after a long, long time she
heard a little scraping sound upon the rock ledge outside, the sound of
a quick step. And then, before she heard the snarling, ugly voice
which she had heard once and had never forgotten, she knew that this
time she had waited too long, that it was not Ruth coming.
One man--and there might be others. She stepped back to her bed, hid
the two weapons and waited. She must make no mistakes now.
The door was flung open. Outside it was dark, pitch-dark. But
evidently the man entering had no fear of being seen. He threw down a
bundle of dry fagots, and set fire to them. The blaze, leaping up,
casting wavering gleams to where Judith stood, showed her plainly the
twisted, ugly face of Quinnion, his red-rimmed eyes peering at her,
filled with evil light.