Adam was thrown prostrate. In the thick, smothering dust he all but
lost his senses. Adam felt what seemed a stream of stones rolling over
his feet. The thundering, deafening roar rolled on, spread and thinned
to a rattling crash, deadened and ceased. Then from the hollows of
the hills boomed a mighty echo, a lifting and throwing of measureless
sound, that thumped from battlement to battlement and rumbled away like
muttering thunder.
The silence then was terrible by contrast. As horror relaxed its grim
clutch Adam began to realize that miraculously he had been spared. In
the hot, dusty pall he fought for breath like a drowning man. The heavy
dust settled and the lighter drifted away.
Adam clambered to his feet. The huge bowlder that had been his ship of
safety appeared to be surrounded by a sea of small rocks, level with
where he stood. The avalanche had spread a deep layer of rocks all
over and beyond the space adjacent to the camp. Not a vestige of the
shack remained. Magdalene Virey had been buried forever beneath a mass
of stone. Adam’s great frame shuddered with the convulsions of his
emotion. He bent and bowed under the inevitable. “Oh, too late! too
late!... Yet I knew all the time!” was the mournful cry he sent out
into the silence. Dazed, sick, horror-stricken, he bowed there above
Magdalene Virey’s sepulcher and salt tears burned his eyes and splashed
down upon the dusty stones. He suffered, dully at first, and then
acutely, as his stunned consciousness began to recover. Tragic this
situation had been from the beginning, and it could have had but one
end.
Suddenly he remembered Virey. The thought transformed him.
“He must have slid with the avalanche,” muttered Adam. “Buried under
here somewhere. One sepulcher for him and wife!... So he wanted
it--alive or dead!”
The lower part of the great slope was now solid rock, dusty and earthy
in places, in others the gray color of live granite. It led his eye
upward, half a mile, to the wide, riblike ridge that marked the lower
margin of another slope of weathered rocks. It shone in the hot
sunlight. Dark veils of heat rose, resembling smoke against the sky.
The very air seemed trembling, and over that mountain-side hovered the
shadow of catastrophe.
A moving white object caught Adam’s roving sight. His desert eyes
magnified that white object. A man! He was toiling over the loose
stones.
“_Virey!_” burst out Adam, and with the explosion of the word all of
the desert stormed in him and his nature was no different from the
cataclysm that had shorn and scarred the slope.
Like a wide-lunged primordial giant, Adam lifted his roar of rage
toward the heights--a yell that clapped fierce echoes from the cliffs.
Virey heard. He began to clamber faster over the rocks and sheered off
toward the right, where, under the beetling, steep slopes, every rod
was more fraught with peril.
Adam bounded like a huge soft-footed cat over and up the hummocky
spread of the avalanche. Virey’s only avenue of escape lay upward and
to the left. Once Adam cut him off there, he was in a trap.
To the right over the ridge small stones began to show, rolling and
bouncing, then shooting like bullets off the bare slant below. Virey
was out of Adam’s sight now, but evidently still headed in the fatal
direction. Like a mountain sheep, surest-footed of beasts, Adam bounded
from loose rock to sharp corner, across the wide holes, on and upward.
Another low, vast slope spread out and sheered gradually up before
him, breaking its uniformity far to the right, and waving gracefully
to steep slants of loose rock perilous to behold. Adam heard the faint
cracking of stones. He hurried on, working away from the left, until he
was climbing straight toward the splintered, toppling mass of mountain
peak, a mile above him. All now, in every direction, was broken rock,
round, sharp, flat, octagonal, every shape, but mostly round, showing
how in the process of ages the rolling and grinding had worn off the
edges. Here the heat smoked up. When Adam laid a hurried hand on a
stone he did not leave it there long.
At length he again espied Virey, far to the right and half a mile
farther up, climbing like a weary beast on hands and feet. By choice
or by mistake he had gone upward to the most hazardous zone of all
that treacherous, unstable mountain-side. Even now the little dusty
slides rolled from under him. Adam strode on. He made short cuts. He
avoided the looser slides. He zigzagged the steeper places. He would
attend to safe stepping stones for a few rods, then halt to lift his
gaze toward that white-shirted man toiling up like a crippled ape. The
mountain slope, though huge and wide under the glaring sun, seemed to
lose something of its openness. The red battlements and ramparts of
the heights were frowning down upon it, casting a shadow of menace,
if not of shade. The terrible forces of nature became manifest. Here
the thunderbolts boomed and the storms battled, and in past ages the
earthquake and volcanic fire had fretted the once noble peak. It was
ruined. It had disintegrated. Ready to spread its million cracks and
crumble, it lowered gloomily.
Red, sinister, bare, ghastly, this smoky slope under the pitiless sun
was a fitting place for Wansfell to get his hands on Virey--murderer of
a woman. Adam thought of it that way because he remembered how Virey
had been fascinated at the story of Baldy McKue. But mostly Adam’s mind
worked like the cunning instinct of a wolf to circumvent its prey.
Thoughts were but flashes. The red tinge in Adam’s sight did not all
come from the color or the rock. And it was when he halted to look or
rest that he thought at all.
But the time came when he halted for more than that. Placing his hands
around his mouth, he expanded his deep lungs and burst into trumpetlike
yell:
“VIREY!” The fugitive heard, turned from his toiling, slid to a seat on
the precarious slope, and waited. “I’LL BREAK YOUR BONES!”
A wild cry pealed down to ring in Adam’s ears. He had struck terror to
the heart of the murderer. And Adam beat down his savage eagerness, so
as to lengthen the time till Virey’s doom. Not thus did the desert in
Adam speak, but what the desert had made him. Agony, blood, death! They
were almost as old as the rocks. Other animate shapes, in another age,
had met in strife there, under the silent, beetling peak. Life was the
only uttermost precious thing. All else, all suffering, all possession,
was nothing. To kill a man was elemental, as to save him was divine.
Virey’s progress became a haunting and all-satisfying spectacle to
behold, and Adam’s pursuit became studied, calculated, retarded--a
thing as cruel as the poised beak of a vulture.
Virey got halfway up a gray, desolate, weathered slant, immense in
its spread, another fan-shaped, waiting avalanche. The red ragged
heights loomed above; below hung a mountain-side as unstable as water,
restrained, perhaps, by a mere pebble. Here Virey halted. Farther he
could not climb. Like a spent and cornered rat he meant to show fight.
Adam soon reached a point directly below Virey, some hundreds of
yards--a long, hard climb. He paused to catch his breath.
“Bad slope for me if he begins to roll stones!” muttered Adam, grimly.
But neither rolling stones nor avalanches could stop Adam. The end of
this tragedy was fixed. It had been set for all the years of Virey’s
life and back into the past. The very stones cried out. Glaring sun,
smoking heat, shining slope, and the nameless shadow--all were tinged
with a hue inimical to Virey’s life. The lonely, solemn, silent desert
day, at full noontide heat, bespoke the culmination of something
Virey had long ago ordained. Far below, over the lower hills of the
Panamints, yawned Death Valley, ghastly gray through the leaden haze,
an abyss of ashes, iron walled and sun blasted, hateful and horrible as
the portal of hell. High up and beyond, faintly red against an obscure
space of sky, towered the Funerals, grand and desolate.
Adam began to climb the weathered slope, taking a zigzag course.
Sliding stones only slightly retarded his ascent. He stepped too
quickly. Usually when a stone slipped his weight had left it.
Virey set loose a bowlder. It slid, rolled, leaped, fell with a crack,
and then took to hurtling bounds, starting a multitude of smaller
stones. Adam kept keen eye on the bowlder and paid no attention to the
others. Then he stepped aside out of its course. As it whizzed past
him Virey slid another loose upon the slope. Adam climbed even as the
rock bounded down, and a few strides took him to one side. Virey ran
over, directly in line with Adam, and started another huge rock. Thus
by keeping on a zigzag ascent Adam kept climbing most of the time,
and managed to avoid the larger missiles. The smaller ones, however,
could not all be avoided. And their contact was no slight matter. Virey
tugged upon a large rock, deeply embedded, and rolled it down. Huge,
bounding, crashing, it started a rattling slide that would have swept
Adam to destruction had it caught him. But he leaped out of line just
in the nick of time. Virey began to work harder, to set loose smaller
stones and more of them, so that soon he had the slope a perilous
ascent for Adam. They cracked and banged down, and the debris rattled
after them. Adam swerved and leaped and ran. He smelled the brimstone
powder and the granite dust. Fortunately, no cloud of dust collected
to obscure his watchful sight. He climbed on, swiftly when advantage
offered, cautiously when he must take time to leap and dodge. Then
a big rock started a multitude of small ones, and all clattered and
spread. Adam dashed forward and backward. The heavier stones bounced
high, and as many came at one time, he could not watch all. As he
dodged one, another waved the hair of his head, and then another,
striking his shoulder, knocked him down. The instant he lay there,
other stones rolled over him. Adam scrambled up. Even pain could not
change his fierce, cold implacability, but it accelerated his action.
He played no longer with Virey. He yelled again what he meant to do
with his hands, and he spread them aloft, great, clawlike members, the
sight of which inflamed Virey to desperation. Frantically he plowed up
the stones and rolled them, until he had a deluge plunging down the
slope. But it was not written that Adam should be disabled. Narrow
shaves he had, and exceeding risks he took, yet closer and closer he
climbed. Only a hundred yards now separated the men. Adam could plainly
see Virey’s ragged shirt, flying in shreds, his ashen face, his wet
hair matted over his eyes.
Suddenly above the cracks and rattling clash rose a heavy, penetrating
sound. Mighty rasp of a loose body against one of solidity! Startled to
a halt, Adam gazed down at his feet. The rocks seemed to be heaving.
Then a dreadful yell broke sharply. Virey! Adam flashed his gaze upward
in time to see the whole slope move. And that move was accompanied by a
rattling crash, growing louder and more prolonged. Virey stood stricken
by mortal terror in the midst of an avalanche.
Wheeling swiftly, Adam bounded away and down, his giant strides
reaching farther and faster, his quivering body light and supple,
his eye guiding his flying feet to surfaces that were safe. Behind,
beyond, above him the mountain slope roared until sound no longer meant
anything. His ears were useless. The slope under him heaved and waved.
Running for his life, he was at the same time riding an avalanche. The
accelerating motion under him was strange and terrifying. It endowed
him with wings. His feet scarcely touched the stones and in a few
seconds he had bounded off the moving section of slope.
Then he halted to turn and see, irresistibly called to watch Virey
go to what must soon be a just punishment. The avalanche, waving
like swells of the sea, seemed slowing its motion. Thin dust clouds
of powdered rock hung over it. Adam again became aware of sound--a
long-drawn, rattling roar, decreasing, deadening, dying. Suddenly as
the avalanche had started it halted. But it gave forth grating, ominous
warnings. Only an upper layer of the loose rock had slid down, and the
under layer appeared precisely like what the surface had been--rocks
and rocks of all sizes, just as loose, just as ready to roll.
Adam dared to stride back upon that exposed under layer, the better to
see straight down the steep slope. Grim and grisly it shone beneath the
gloomy sun. Perhaps the powdered dust created an obscurity high in the
air, but low down all was clear.
Virey could be plainly seen, embedded to his hips in the loose stones.
Writhing, squirming, wrestling, he sought to free himself from that
grip of granite. In vain! He was caught in a vise of his own making.
Prisoner of the mountain-side that he had used to betray his wife! He
had turned toward Adam, face upward. There seemed a change in him, but
in the racking excitement of that moment Adam could not tell what.
Then that desert instinct, like the bursting of a flood, moved Adam to
the violence of strife, the ruthlessness of nature, the blood-spilling
of men. Madness of hate seized him. The torrid heat of that desert sun
boiled in his blood, the granite of the slope hardened in his heart,
the red veils of smoky shadows colored his sight. Loneliness and
solitude were terrible forces of nature--primitive as the beginnings of
life. For years the contending strife of the desert had been his. For
months desolation, death, decay of Death Valley!
“MY TURN!” he yelled, in voice of thunder, and, bristling haired,
supple, and long armed, with strength and laugh and face of a savage,
he heaved a huge rock.
It rolled, it cracked, it banged, it hurtled high, to crash and smash,
and then, leaping aloft, instinct as if with mockery, it went over
Virey’s head to go on down over the precipice, whence it sent up a
sliding roar. Adam heaved another stone and watched it. Virey grew
motionless as a statue. He could not dance and dodge away from rolling
rocks as Adam had done. How strangely that second rock rolled! Starting
in line with Virey, it swerved to the right, then hit the slope and
swerved back in line, then, hitting again, swerved once more, missing
the miserable victim by a small margin.
“AHA THERE, VIREY!” yelled Adam, waving his hands. “ALL DAY AND ALL
NIGHT I’LL ROLL STONES!”
Virey was mute. He was chained. He was helpless. He could not move
or faint or die. Retribution had overtaken him. The nature of it
was to be the nature of the slow torture and merciless death he had
inflicted upon his wife. As he had chosen the most deadly and lonely
and awful spot on earth to hide her and kill her, so the nature that
he had embraced now chose to turn upon him. There was law here--law of
the unknown forces in life and in the elements. At that very moment
a vulture streaked down from the hazed heights and sailed, a black
shadow of wide-spread wings, across the slope. What had given this
grisly-omened bird sight and scent illimitable?
Adam braced his brawny shoulder under the bulge of a rock weighing
tons. Purple grew his face. His muscles split his shirt. His bones
cracked. But there was a nameless joy in this exercise of his enormous
strength. They were two men--one was weak, the other was strong. And
nature could not abide both. The huge rock grated, groaned, stirred,
moved--and turned over, slowly to roll, to crunch, to pound, and
then to gather speed, growing a thing of power, ponderous, active,
changing, at last to hurtle into the air, to plunge down with
thunderous crash, then to roll straight as a bee line at Virey. But
a few yards in front of him it rose aloft, with something of grace,
airily, and, sailing over Virey’s head, it banged and boomed out of
sight below. Long the echoes clapped, and at last the silence, the
speaking silence of that place, closed on the slope. It awoke again
to Adam’s rolling of a stone and another and another and then two
together. All these rocks rolled differently. They were playthings of
the god of the mountain. The mover of thunderbolts might have been
aiming his colossal missiles at an invisible target. All these rolling
stones seemed to head straight for Virey, but they were at the last
instant deflected by chance. They hit the slope and passed wide or
high. They were in league with the evil spirit that had dominated
Virey. They were instruments of torture. They were of the nature of the
desert. They belonged to Death Valley.
Adam did not soon tire at his gigantic task. The rolling stones
fascinated him. From dead things they leaped to life. How they hurtled
through space! Some shot aloft a hundred feet. Others split, and
rolled, like wheels, down and down, the halves passing on either side
of the doomed Virey. A multitude of rocks Adam turned loose, and then
another multitude. Into the heaving of every one went his intent to
kill. But Virey bore a charmed life.
A time came when Adam rolled his last stone. Like the very first one,
it sped straight for Virey, and just as it appeared about to crush him
it veered to one side. Adam stared grim and aghast. Could he never kill
Virey as Virey had murdered his wife and tried to kill him?
“She--said I’d--never kill--you!” panted Adam, and the doubt in him was
a strange, struggling thing, soon beaten down by his insatiable rage.
Then he took a stride downward, meaning to descend and finish Virey
with his hands.
As he stepped down the avalanche below grated with strange, harsh
sound. It seemed to warn him. Halting, he gazed with clearer eyes. What
was this change in Virey? Adam bent and peered. Had the man’s hair
turned snow white?
Adam made another and a longer stride downward. And that instant the
slope trembled. Virey flung up his arms as if to ward off another
rolling stone. A rending, as of the rock-bound fastness of the slope
yielding its hold--then the avalanche, with Virey in the center, moved
downward, slowly heaving like a swell of weighted waves, and started
to roll with angry roar. It gathered a ponderous momentum. It would
never stop again on that slope. A shining, red-tinged dust cloud
shrouded Virey. And then the avalanche, spilling over the declivity
below, shocked the whole mountain slope and lifted to the heavens a
thick-crashing, rolling roar of thunder. Death Valley engulfed the
hollow echo and boomed thunder across to the battlements of the Funeral
Mountains. And when the last rumble wore away, silence and solitude
reigned there, pervasive and peaceful, as they had in the ages before
man, with his passions, had evolved to vex nature.