And Quinnion was coming on. She was trapped, caught between the two of
them. She heard Quinnion laugh again; he, too, had heard Ruth.
"Oh, God help me!" whispered Judith. "God help me now!"
There was no time to hesitate. If she stood here, Quinnion would in a
moment wrap his arms about her; if she dropped down, she would be in
the frenzied clutch of Mad Ruth.
A second she crouched, peering down into the gloom below her, seeking
to make out the form of the mad woman. Then she did not merely drop,
but jumped, landing fair upon the waiting figure, striking with her
boots on Mad Ruth's ample shoulders. A scream of rage from Ruth, a
little, strangling cry from Judith, and the two fell together. Ruth
clutched as she went down and a hand closed over the girl's ankle.
Judith rolled, struck again with the free boot, twisted sharply and
felt the grip torn loose from her ankle. She was free.
She jumped up and ran and knew that Ruth was running just behind her,
screaming terribly. Judith fell, and her heart grew sick within her.
But again she was up just as Ruth's hand clutched at her skirt,
clutched and was torn away as Judith ran on. Quinnion cursed from
above as she had not yet heard him curse. Ruth reviled both her and
Quinnion for having let her go.
Judith was running swiftly and felt that she could get the better of
the heavier, older woman in a race of this sort. She stumbled and
fell, and fear again gripped her; it seemed so long before she could
rise and clamber over a fallen log and race on. But the darkness which
tricked her protected her at the same time, playing no favorites now.
Ruth, too, had fallen; Ruth, too, was frenzied at the brief delay.
Stumbling, falling, rising, staggering back from a tree into which she
had run full tilt, bruised and torn, the girl ran on. At every free
step hope shot upward in her heart; at every fall she grew sick with
dread.
The cañon broadened rapidly, the ground underfoot grew less broken and
littered with boulders and logs. Through tangles of brush she went
blindly, throwing herself forward, falling, rising, falling, rising
again. It was a nightmare of a race, with Ruth always just there,
almost at her heels. She turned as far away from the stream as she
could, keeping under the cliffs where there was less brush; where the
way was more open; where the shadows were thickest.
She was outdistancing Mad Ruth. Ruth's weird voice came from a greater
distance; the woman was ten, maybe twenty, feet behind her.
The moon at last rose pale gold above the eastern ridge. And now
Judith could thank God for it. For the cañon had widened more and
more, the banks of the river were studded with big trees, there were
wide open spaces between them through which she shot like a frightened
deer, turning this way and that, darting about a clump of little firs,
plunging into the shadows under great sky-seeking cedars, running as
she had never run before and as she knew Mad Ruth could not run.
Free! She was free. The triumph of it danced in her blood. On she
ran and now Quinnion's voice and Ruth's were confused with the roar of
the river. On she ran and on and on, and but faintly there came to her
the sound of breaking brush somewhere behind her. Never had her blood
sung within her as it sang now; never had the dim, moonlit solitudes of
the mountains opened their sheltering arms to one more grateful to slip
into them, like a wounded child into the soothing embrace of its mother.
Now again she turned so that her flying steps brought her close to the
water's edge. Louder and louder grew its shouting voice in her ears,
little by little drowning out the sounds of Ruth and Quinnion behind
her. Now, in all the glorious night, there was no sound to reach her
but the sound of running water and her own beating feet. She was free.
But still she ran, summoning all of the reserve of strength and
will-power which was hers to command. The sky was brightening to the
climbing moon. She must round many a sweeping curve of the river, pass
under many a sheltering, shadowing tree before she dared slow her steps.
When she felt that she was overtaxing herself, she dropped from the
wild pace she had set herself into a little jogging trot. When her
whole body cried out at the effort demanded of it, she slowed down to a
brisk walk. She was shot through with pain, her throat ached, she was
growing dizzy. But on she went stubbornly. It was a full hour after
the last sound of pursuit had died out after her that she flung herself
down at the water's edge to drink and bathe her arms and face in the
cold stream. And, even then, she chose a spot where the shadow of a
great pine lay like ink over the bank.
The moon was high in the sky, the world bright with it, when Judith
left the valley into which the cañon had widened and made her way
slowly upward along a timbered ridge to the west. Of Quinnion and Mad
Ruth she now had no fear. Their chance of coming upon her was less
than negligible. She could creep into a clump of thick-standing young
trees and, even if they should come, could watch them go past. But as
they had dropped out of her world, another matter had entered it. The
mountains had befriended her; they had opened their arms to her and
that was all that she had asked of them. They had mothered her,
drawing her into hiding against their bosom. But it was a barren,
barren breast. And already she was hungry, daring to eat but sparingly
of her handful of bread and meat.
From this ridge, finding an open crest, she stood looking out over the
world. Mile after mile of mountain and cañon and cliff fell away on
every side. She sought eagerly for a landmark: to see yonder in the
distance Old Baldy or Copper Mountain or Three Fools' Peak, any one of
the mountains or ridges known to her. And in the end she could only
shake her head and sigh wearily and slip down where she was to fall
asleep, thanking God that she was free, asking God to lead her aright
in the morning.
The stars watched over her, a pale, worn-out girl sleeping alone in the
heart of the wilderness; the night breezes sang through the century-old
tree-tops; and Judith, having striven to the utter-most, slept in heavy
dreamlessness.
With the cool dawn she awoke shivering and hungry. Her hair had
tumbled about her face, and sitting up she braided it with numb, sore
fingers. She looked at her hands; they well stained with blood from
many cuts. Her skirt was torn and soiled; her stockings were in
strips; her knees were bruised. But as she rose to her feet and once
more searched the riddle of a crag-broken world, her heart was light
with thankfulness.
Last night the one friend she had with her was the north star. To-day
she would seek to push on toward the west. In that direction she
believed the Blue Lake ranch lay, though at best it was a guess. But
going westward she could follow the course of the bigger streams, and
soon or late, if her strength held, she would come to some open valley
where men ran stock. Now, she would go down into the little meadow
lying a mile away yonder and seek to find something to eat. If she
could but dig a few wild onions, wild potatoes, they would keep her
alive. West she would go, if for no other reason than because thus she
would be setting her back squarely upon the cavern where Quinnion and
Ruth were.
The sun rolled into a clear blue sky and warmed her. She made her way
down the long flank of the mountain and into the tiny meadow. For
upward of two hours she remained there, nibbling at roots which she dug
up with a broken stick, seeking edible growths which she knew, finding
little, but enough to keep the life in her, the heart warm in her
breast. Then she went on, over a ridge again, down into a cañon and
along the stream which rose here and flowed westward.
By noon she was faint and sick and had to stop often to rest, her legs
shaking under her. Again she made a scant meal. She had stumbled on a
tiny field of wild potatoes and ate what she could of them, thinking
longingly of a match for a fire. The match which Ruth had dropped she
still had, but she carefully reserved it now, thinking how perhaps a
trout, caught in a pool, might save her life.
In her already half-starved condition and with the demands constantly
put on her strength, she would grow weaker and weaker if help did not
soon come. But she was still filled with the glory of freedom.
It was a heart-weary, trembling Judith who late that afternoon made her
way upward along another ridge, seeking anxiously to find from this
lookout some landmark which she had sought in vain last night. In her
blouse were the few roots she had brought with her from the field
discovered at noon. Lying in a little patch of dry grass, resting, she
watched the day go down and the night drift into the mountains, filling
the ravines, creeping up the slopes, rising slowly to the peak to which
she had climbed, seeping into her soul. Never had the passing of the
day seemed to her so majestic a thing, truly filled with awe. Never
until now had the solitudes seemed so vast, so utterly, stupendously
big. Never until now, as she lay staring up into the limitless sky,
having given up the world about her as unknown, had she drunk to the
lees of the cup of loneliness.
So great was the weariness of her tired body that as she lay still,
watching the stars come out one by one, she was half-resigned to lie so
and let death come to find her. It seemed to her that there in the
rude arms of Mother Earth a human life was a matter of no greater
consequence than the down upon a moth's wing. But she rested a little
and this mood, foreign to her intrepid heart, passed, and she sat up,
again resolute, again ready to make her fight as long as life beat
through her blood. At last she took the one match from her pocket.
She scarcely dared breathe when, with dry grass and twigs piled against
a rock, her dress shielding them from the wind, she rubbed the match
softly against her boot. A sputtering flame, making the blue light of
burning sulphur, died down, creating panic in her breast, then flared,
crackled, licked at the grass. She had a fire and she knew how to use
it!
When a log was blazing, assuring her that her fire was safe, she rose
swiftly and went in search of the tree she meant to burn. She found a
giant pine, pitch-oozing, standing in a rocky open space where there
was little danger of the fire spreading. Fagged out and eager as she
was, she had not come to the point of forgetting what a great
forest-fire meant.
She went back to her burning log, for a blazing dry branch which she
carried swiftly to the tree. Then she piled dry grass and dead twigs,
logs as heavy as she could carry, bits of brush. The flames licked at
the tree, ran up it, seemed to fall away, sprang at it again,
hungering. Now and then a long tongue of fire went crackling high up
along the side of the tree. Judith went back to a spot where, in a
ring of boulders, there was another grassy plot, threw herself down an
lay staring at the tongues of fire which were climbing higher and
higher.
Some one would see her beacon. A forest ranger, perhaps, whose duty it
was to ride fast and far to battle with the first spark threatening the
wooded solitudes; perhaps some crew in a logging-camp, than whom none
knew better the danger of spreading fires; perhaps some cow-boy, even
one of her own men--perhaps Quinnion and Ruth? She then would hide
among the rocks until they had come and gone. Even now, against the
sleep falling upon her, she drew farther back through the tumbled
boulders. Perhaps, Bud Lee. . . .
She went to sleep beyond the circle of bright light, tired and hungry
and striving against a returning hopelessness, her young body curled up
in the nest she had found, a cheek cuddled against her arm, wondering
vaguely if some one would see her fire and come--if that some one might
be Bud Lee.