revelation, lived in his dream, helped the girl grow farther and farther
away from her trouble, until that inevitable hour arrived when he was
driven by accumulated emotion as much as the exigency of the case.
He had not often walked with her beyond the dark shade of the pinyons
round the cottage, but this night, when he knew he must tell her, he led
her away down the path, through the cedar grove to the west end of the
valley where it was wild and lonely and sad and silent.
The moon was full and the great peaks were crowned as with snow. A
coyote uttered his cutting cry. There were a few melancholy notes from
a night bird of the stone walls. The air was clear and cold, with a
tang of frost in it. Shefford gazed about him at the vast, uplifted,
insulating walls, and that feeling of his which was more than a sense
told him how walls like these and the silence and shadow and mystery had
been nearly all of Fay Larkin's life. He felt them all in her.
He stopped out in the open, near the line where dark shadow of the wall
met the silver moonlight on the grass, and here, by a huge flat stone
where he had come often alone and sometimes with Ruth, he faced Fay
Larkin in the spirit to tell her gently that he knew her, and sternly to
force her secret from her.
“Am I your friend?” he began.
“Ah!--my only friend,” she said.
“Do you trust me, believe I mean well by you, want to help you?”
“Yes, indeed.”
“Well, then, let me speak of you. You know one topic we've never touched
upon. You!”
She was silent, and looked wonderingly, a little fearfully, at him, as
if vague, disturbing thoughts were entering the fringe of her mind.
“Our friendship is a strange one, is it not?” he went on.
“How do I know? I never had any other friendship. What do you mean by
strange?”
“Well, I'm a young man. You're a--a married woman. We are together a
good deal--and like to be.”
“Why is that strange?” she asked.
Suddenly Shefford realized that there was nothing strange in what was
natural. A remnant of sophistication clung to him and that had spoken.
He needed to speak to her in a way which in her simplicity she would
understand.
“Never mind strange. Say that I am interested in you, and, as you're not
happy, I want to help you. And say that your neighbors are curious and
oppose my idea. Why do they?”
“They're jealous and want you themselves,” she replied, with sweet
directness. “They've said things I don't understand. But I felt
they--they hated in me what would be all right in themselves.”
Here to simplicity she added truth and wisdom, as an Indian might have
expressed them. But shame was unknown to her, and she had as yet only
vague perceptions of love and passion. Shefford began to realize the
quickness of her mind, that she was indeed awakening.
“They are jealous--were jealous before I ever came here. That's only
human nature. I was trying to get to a point. Your neighbors are
curious. They oppose me. They hate you. It's all bound up in the--the
fact of your difference from them, your youth, beauty, that you're not
a Mormon, that you nearly betrayed their secret at the trial in
Stonebridge.”
“Please--please don't--speak of that!” she faltered.
“But I must,” he replied, swiftly. “That trial was a torture to you. It
revealed so much to me.... I know you are a sealed wife. I know there
has been a crime. I know you've sacrificed yourself. I know that love
and religion have nothing to do with--what you are.... Now, is not all
that true?”
“I must not tell,” she whispered.
“But I shall MAKE you tell,” he replied, and his voice rang.
“Oh no, you cannot,” she said.
“I can--with just one word!”
Her eyes were great, starry, shadowy gulfs, dark in the white beauty of
her face. She was calm now. She had strength. She invited him to speak
the word, and the wistful, tremulous quiver of her lips was for his
earnest thought of her.
“Wait--a--little,” said Shefford, unsteadily. “I'll come to that
presently. Tell me this--have you ever thought of being free?”
“Free!” she echoed, and there was singular depth and richness in her
voice. That was the first spark of fire he had struck from her. “Long
ago, the minute I was unwatched, I'd have leaped from a wall had I
dared. Oh, I wasn't afraid. I'd love to die that way. But I never
dared.”
“Why?” queried Shefford, piercingly.
She was silent then.
“Suppose I offered to give you freedom that meant life?”
“I--couldn't--take it.”
“Why?”
“Oh, my friend, don't ask me any more.”
“I know, I can see--you want to tell me--you need to tell.”
“But I daren't.”
“Won't you trust me?”
“I do--I do.”
“Then tell me.”
“No--no--oh no!”
The moment had come. How sad, tragic, yet glorious for him! It would be
like a magic touch upon this lovely, cold, white ghost of Fay Larkin,
transforming her into a living, breathing girl. He held his love as a
thing aloof, and, as such, intangible because of the living death she
believed she lived, it had no warmth and intimacy for them. What might
it not become with a lightning flash of revelation? He dreaded, yet he
was driven to speak. He waited, swallowing hard, fighting the tumultuous
storm of emotion, and his eyes dimmed.
“What did I come to this country for?” he asked, suddenly, in ringing,
powerful voice.
“To find a girl,” she whispered.
“I've found her!”
She began to shake. He saw a white hand go to her breast.
“Where is Surprise Valley?... How were you taken from Jane Withersteen
and Lassiter?... I know they're alive. But where?”
She seemed to turn to stone.
“Fay!--FAY LARKIN!... I KNOW YOU!” he cried, brokenly.
She slipped off the stone to her knees, swayed forward blindly with her
hands reaching out, her head falling back to let the moon fall full upon
the beautiful, snow-white, tragically convulsed face.
XIII. THE STORY OF SURPRISE VALLEY
“... Oh, I remember so well! Even now I dream of it sometimes. I hear
the roll and crash of falling rock--like thunder.... We rode and rode.
Then the horses fell. Uncle Jim took me in his arms and started up the
cliff. Mother Jane climbed close after us. They kept looking back. Down
there in the gray valley came the Mormons. I see the first one now.
He rode a white horse. That was Tull. Oh, I remember so well! And I was
five or six years old.
“We climbed up and up and into dark cañon and wound in and out. Then
there was the narrow white trail, straight up, with the little cut
steps and the great, red, ruined walls. I looked down over Uncle Jim's
shoulder. I saw Mother Jane dragging herself up. Uncle Jim's blood
spotted the trail. He reached a flat place at the top and fell with me.
Mother Jane crawled up to us.
“Then she cried out and pointed. Tull was 'way below, climbing the
trail. His men came behind him. Uncle Jim went to a great, tall rock and
leaned against it. There was a bloody hole in his hand. He pushed
the rock. It rolled down, banging the loose walls. They crashed and
crashed--then all was terrible thunder and red smoke. I couldn't hear--I
couldn't see.
“Uncle Jim carried me down and down out of the dark and dust into a
beautiful valley all red and gold, with a wonderful arch of stone over
the entrance.
“I don't remember well what happened then for what seemed a long, long
time. I can feel how the place looked, but not so clear as it is now
in my dreams. I seem to see myself with the dogs, and with Mother Jane,
learning my letters, marking with red stone on the walls.
“But I remember now how I felt when I first understood we were shut in
for ever. Shut in Surprise Valley where Venters had lived so long. I
was glad. The Mormons would never get me. I was seven or eight years old
then. From that time all is clear in my mind.
“Venters had left supplies and tools and grain and cattle and burros, so
we had a good start to begin life there. He had killed off the wildcats
and kept the coyotes out, so the rabbits and quail multiplied till there
were thousands of them. We raised corn and fruit, and stored what we
didn't use. Mother Jane taught me to read and write with the soft red
stone that marked well on the walls.
“The years passed. We kept track of time pretty well. Uncle Jim's hair
turned white and Mother Jane grew gray. Every day was like the one
before. Mother Jane cried sometimes and Uncle Jim was sad because they
could never be able to get me out of the valley. It was long before they
stopped looking and listening for some one. Venters would come back,
Uncle Jim always said. But Mother Jane did not think so.
“I loved Surprise Valley. I wanted to stay there always. I remembered
Cottonwoods, how the children there hated me, and I didn't want to go
back. The only unhappy times I ever had in the valley were when Ring and
Whitie, my dogs, grew old and died. I roamed the valley. I climbed to
every nook upon the mossy ledges. I learned to run up the steep cliffs.
I could almost stick on the straight walls. Mother Jane called me a wild
girl. We had put away the clothes we wore when we got there, to save
them, and we made clothes of skins. I always laughed when I thought of
my little dress--how I grew out of it. I think Uncle Jim and Mother Jane
talked less as the years went by. And after I'd learned all she could
teach me we didn't talk much. I used to scream into the caves just to
hear my voice, and the echoes would frighten me.
“The older I grew the more I was alone. I was always running round the
valley. I would climb to a high place and sit there for hours,
doing nothing. I just watched and listened. I used to stay in the
cliff-dwellers' caves and wonder about them. I loved to be out in the
wind. And my happiest time was in the summer storms with the thunder
echoes under the walls. At evening it was such a quiet place--after
the night bird's cry, no sound. The quiet made me sad but I loved it. I
loved to watch the stars as I lay awake.
“So it was beautiful and happy for me there till--till...
“Two years or more ago there was a bad storm, and one of the great walls
caved. The walls were always weathering, slipping. Many and many a time
have I heard the rumble of an avalanche, but most of them were in other
cañon. This slide in the valley made it possible, Uncle Jim said,
for men to get down into the valley. But we could not climb out unless
helped from above. Uncle Jim never rested well after that. But it never
worried me.
“One day, over a year ago, while I was across the valley, I heard
strange shouts, and then screams. I ran to our camp. I came upon men
with ropes and guns. Uncle Jim was tied, and a rope was round his neck.
Mother Jane was lying on the ground. I thought she was dead until I
heard her moan. I was not afraid. I screamed and flew at Uncle Jim to
tear the ropes off him. The men held me back. They called me a pretty
cat. Then they talked together, and some were for hanging Lassiter--that
was the first time I ever knew any name for him but Uncle Jim--and some
were for leaving him in the valley. Finally they decided to hang him.
But Mother Jane pleaded so and I screamed and fought so that they left
off. Then they went away and we saw them climb out of the valley.
“Uncle Jim said they were Mormons, and some among them had been born in
Cottonwoods. I was not told why they had such a terrible hate for him.
He said they would come back and kill him. Uncle Jim had no guns to
fight with.
“We watched and watched. In five days they did come back, with more men,
and some of them wore black masks. They came to our cave with ropes and
guns. One was tall. He had a cruel voice. The others ran to obey him. I
could see white hair and sharp eyes behind the mask. The men caught me
and brought me before him.
“He said Lassiter had killed many Mormons. He said Lassiter had killed
his father and should be hanged. But Lassiter would be let live and
Mother Jane could stay with him, both prisoners there in the valley, if
I would marry the Mormon. I must marry him, accept the Mormon faith, and
bring up my children as Mormons. If I refused they would hang Lassiter,
leave the heretic Jane Withersteen alone in the valley, and take me and
break me to their rule.
“I agreed. But Mother Jane absolutely forbade me to marry him. Then the
Mormons took me away. It nearly killed me to leave Uncle Jim and Mother
Jane. I was carried and lifted out of the valley, and rode a long way
on a horse. They brought me here, to the cabin where I live, and I have
never been away except that--that time--to--Stonebridge. Only little by
little did I learn my position. Bishop Kane was kind, but stern, because
I could not be quick to learn the faith.
“I am not a sealed wife. But they're trying to make me one. The master
Mormon--he visited me often--at night--till lately. He threatened me. He
never told me a name--except Saint George. I don't--know him--except his
voice. I never--saw his face--in the light!”
. . . . . . . . . . .
Fay Larkin ended her story. Toward its close Shefford had grown
involuntarily restless, and when her last tragic whisper ceased all his
body seemed shaken with a terrible violence of his joy. He strode to and
fro in the dark shadow of the stone. The receding blood left him cold,
with a pricking, sickening sensation over his body, but there seemed
to be an overwhelming tide accumulating deep in his breast--a tide of
passion and pain. He dominated the passion, but the ache remained. And
he returned to the quiet figure on the stone.
“Fay Larkin!” he exclaimed, with a deep breath of relief that the secret
was disclosed. “So you're not a wife!... You're free! Thank Heaven! But
I felt it was sacrifice. I knew there had been a crime. For crime it is.
You child! You can't understand what crime. Oh, almost I wish you and
Jane and Lassiter had never been found. But that's wrong of me. One year
of agony--that shall not ruin your life. Fay, I will take you away.”
“Where?” she whispered.
“Away from this Mormon country--to the East,” he replied, and he spoke
of what he had known, of travel, of cities, of people, of happiness
possible for a young girl who had spent all her life hidden between the
narrow walls of a silent, lonely valley--he spoke swiftly and eloquently
till he lost his breath.
There was an instant of flashing wonder and joy on her white face, and
then the radiance paled, the glow died. Her soul was the darker for that
one strange, leaping glimpse of a glory not for such as she.
“I must stay here,” she said, shudderingly.
“Fay!--How strange to SAY Fay aloud to YOU!--Fay, do you know the way to
Surprise Valley?”
“I don't know where it is, but I could go straight to it,” she replied.
“Take me there. Show me your beautiful valley. Let me see where you ran
and climbed and spent so many lonely years.”
“Ah, how I'd love to! But I dare not. And why should you want me to take
you? We can run and climb here.”
“I want to--I mean to save Jane Withersteen and Lassiter,” he declared.
She uttered a little cry of pain. “Save them?”
“Yes, save them. Get them out of the valley, take them out of the
country, far away where they and YOU--”
“But I can't go,” she wailed. “I'm afraid. I'm bound. It CAN'T be
broken. If I dared--if I tried to go they would catch me. They would
hang Uncle Jim and leave Mother Jane alone there to starve.”
“Fay, Lassiter and Jane both will starve--at least they will die there
if we do not save them. You have been terribly wronged. You're a slave.
You're not a wife.”
“They--said I'll be burned in hell if I don't marry him.... Mother Jane
never taught me about God. I don't know. But HE--he said God was there.
I dare not break it.”
“Fay, you have been deceived by old men. Let them have their creed. But
YOU mustn't accept it.”
“John, what is God to you?”
“Dear child, I--I am not sure of that myself,” he replied, huskily.
“When all this trouble is behind us, surely I can help you to understand
and you can help me. The fact that you are alive--that Lassiter and Jane
are alive--that I shall save you all--that lifts me up. I tell you--Fay
Larkin will be my salvation.”
“Your words trouble me. Oh, I shall be torn one way and another.... But,
John, I daren't run away. I will not tell you where to find Lassiter and
Mother Jane.”
“I shall find them--I have the Indian. He found you for me. Nas Ta Bega
will find Surprise Valley.”
“Nas Ta Bega!... Oh, I remember. There was an Indian with the Mormons
who found us. But he was a Piute.”
“Nas Ta Bega never told me how he learned about you. That he learned was
enough. And, Fay, he will find Surprise Valley. He will save Uncle Jim
and Mother Jane.”
Fay's hands clasped Shefford's in strong, trembling pressure; the tears
streamed down her white cheeks; a tragic and eloquent joy convulsed her
face.
“Oh, my friend, save them! But I can't go.... Let them keep me! Let him
kill me!”
“Him! Fay--he shall not harm you,” replied Shefford in passionate
earnestness.
She caught the hand he had struck out with.
“You talk--you look like Uncle Jim when he spoke of the Mormons,” she
said. “Then I used to be afraid of him. He was so different. John, you
must not do anything about me. Let me be. It's too late. He--and his
men--they would hang you. And I couldn't bear that. I've enough to bear
without losing my friend. Say you won't watch and wait--for--for him.”
Shefford had to promise her. Like an Indian she gave expression to
primitive feeling, for it certainly never occurred to her that, whatever
Shefford might do, he was not the kind of man to wait in hiding for an
enemy. Fay had faltered through her last speech and was now weak and
nervous and frightened. Shefford took her back to the cabin.
“Fay, don't be distressed,” he said. “I won't do anything right away.
You can trust me. I won't be rash. I'll consult you before I make a
move. I haven't any idea what I could do, anyway.... You must bear up.
Why, it looks as if you're sorry I found you.”
“Oh! I'm glad!” she whispered.
“Then if you're glad you mustn't break down this way again. Suppose some
of the women happened to run into us.”
“I won't again. It's only you--you surprised me so. I used to think how
I'd like you to know--I wasn't really dead. But now--it's different.
It hurts me here. Yet I'm glad--if my being alive makes you--a little
happier.”
Shefford felt that he had to go then. He could not trust himself any
further.
“Good night, Fay,” he said.
“Good night, John,” she whispered. “I promise--to be good to-morrow.”
She was crying softly when he left her. Twice he turned to see the dim,
white, slender form against the gloom of the cabin. Then he went on
under the pinyons, blindly down the path, with his heart as heavy as
lead. That night as he rolled in his blanket and stretched wearily he
felt that he would never be able to sleep. The wind in the cedars made
him shiver. The great stars seemed relentless, passionless, white eyes,
mocking his little destiny and his pain. The huge shadow of the mountain
resembled the shadow of the insurmountable barrier between Fay and him.
. . . . . . . . . . .
Her pitiful, childish promise to be good was in his mind when he went
to her home on the next night. He wondered how she would be, and he
realized a desperate need of self-control.
But that night Fay Larkin was a different girl. In the dark, before she
spoke, he felt a difference that afforded him surprise and relief. He
greeted her as usual. And then it seemed, though not at all clearly,
that he was listening to a girl, strangely and unconsciously glad to see
him, who spoke with deeper note in her voice, who talked where always
she had listened, whose sadness was there under an eagerness, a subdued
gaiety as new to her, as sweet as it was bewildering. And he responded
with emotion, so that the hour passed swiftly, and he found himself back
in camp, in a kind of dream, unable to remember much of what she had
said, sure only of this strange sweetness suddenly come to her.
Upon the following night, however, he discovered what had wrought this
singular change in Fay Larkin. She loved him and she did not know it.
How passionately sweet and sad and painful was that realization for
Shefford! The hour spent with her then was only a moment.
He walked under the stars that night and they shed a glorious light upon
him. He tried to think, to plan, but the sweetness of remembered word or
look made mental effort almost impossible. He got as far as the thought
that he would do well to drift, to wait till she learned she loved
him, and then, perhaps, she could be persuaded to let him take her and
Lassiter and Jane away together.
And from that night he went at his work and the part he played in the
village with a zeal and a cunning that left him free to seek Fay when he
chose.
Sometimes in the afternoon, always for a while in the evening, he was
with her. They climbed the walls, and sat upon a lonely height to look
afar; they walked under the stars, and the cedars, and the shadows
of the great cliffs. She had a beautiful mind. Listening to her, he
imagined he saw down into beautiful Surprise Valley with all its weird
shadows, its colored walls and painted caves, its golden shafts of
morning light and the red haze at sunset; and he felt the silence that
must have been there, and the singing of the wind in the cliffs, and the
sweetness and fragrance of the flowers, and the wildness of it all. Love
had worked a marvelous transformation in this girl who had lived her
life in a cañon. The burden upon her did not weigh heavily. She could
not have an unhappy thought. She spoke of the village, of her Mormon
companions, of daily happenings, of Stonebridge, of many things in a
matter-of-fact way that showed how little they occupied her mind. She
even spoke of sealed wives in a kind of dreamy abstraction. Something
had possession of her, something as strong as the nature which had
developed her, and in its power she, in her simplicity, was utterly
unconscious, a watching and feeling girl. A strange, witching, radiant
beauty lurked in her smile. And Shefford heard her laugh in his dreams.
The weeks slipped by. The black mountain took on a white cap of snow;
in the early mornings there was ice in the crevices on the heights and
frost in the valley. In the sheltered cañon where sunshine seemed
to linger it was warm and pleasant, so that winter did not kill the
flowers.
Shefford waited so long for Fay's awakening that he believed it would
never come, and, believing, had not the heart to force it upon her. Then
there was a growing fear with him. What would Fay Larkin do when she
awakened to the truth? Fay was indeed like that white and fragile lily
which bloomed in the silent, lonely cañon, but the same nature that
had created it had created her. Would she droop as the lily would in a
furnace blast? More than that, he feared a sudden flashing into life of
strength, power, passion, hate. She did not hate yet because she did not
yet realize love. She was utterly innocent of any wrong having been done
her. More and more he began to fear, and a foreboding grew upon him.
He made up his mind to broach the subject of Surprise Valley and of
escaping with Lassiter and Jane; still, every time he was with Fay the
girl and her beauty and her love were so wonderful that he put off the
ordeal till the next night. As time flew by he excused his vacillation
on the score that winter was not a good time to try to cross the desert.
There was no grass for the mustangs, except in well-known valleys, and
these he must shun. Spring would soon come. So the days passed, and he
loved Fay more all the time, desperately living out to its limit the
sweetness of every moment with her, and paying for his bliss in the
increasing trouble that beset him when once away from her charm.
. . . . . . . . . . .
One starry night, about ten o'clock, he went, as was his custom, to
drink at the spring. Upon his return to the cedars Nas Ta Bega, who
slept under the same tree with him, had arisen, with his blanket hanging
half off his shoulder.
“Listen,” said the Indian.
Shefford took one glance at the dark, somber face, with its inscrutable
eyes, now so strange and piercing, and then, with a kind of cold
excitement, he faced the way the Indian looked, and listened. But he
heard only the soft moan of the night wind in the cedars.
Nas Ta Bega kept the rigidity of his position for a moment, and then
he relaxed, and stood at ease. Shefford knew the Indian had made a
certainty of what must have been a doubtful sound. And Shefford leaned
his ear to the wind and strained his hearing.