THE TERMS
The Gulch was naked but unashamed, and lay in a drowsy stupor. An
easterly breeze, bringing coolness elsewhere, here gathered radiated
heat from gaunt walls on which the sun had poured all day, and
desiccating gusts beat on Power's face like superheated air gushing from
a furnace. Not that the place was an inferno--far from it. On a June day
just a year ago two young people had ridden up the rough trail on their
way to the Dolores ranch, and the girl had called the man's attention to
the exquisite coloring of the rocks and the profusion of flowers which
decked every niche and crevice. It may be that they looked then through
eyes which would have tinted with rose the dreariest of scenes; but even
today, in another couple of hours, when the sun was sinking over the
mountain range to the west, the Gulch would assuredly don a marvelous
livery of orange, and red, and violet. Each stray clump of stunted
herbage which had survived the drought would make a brave show, and
rock-mosses which should be moist and green would not spoil the picture
because they were withered and brown or black.
But Power, despite a full share of the artist's temperament, was blind
to the fierce blending of color which the cliffs offered in the blaze of
sunlight. His eyes were peering into his own soul, and he saw naught
there but dun despair and icy self-condemnation. For he blamed himself
for wrecking two lives. If Nancy Willard could possibly find happiness
as Hugh Marten's wife, he might indeed have cursed the folly of
hesitation that lost her; but there would be the salving consciousness
that she, at least, would drink of the nectar which wealth can buy in
such Homeric drafts. But he was denied the bitter-sweet recompense of
altruism. He knew Nancy, and he knew Marten, and he was sure that the
fairest wild flower which the Dolores ranch had ever seen would wilt and
pine in the exotic atmosphere into which her millionaire husband would
plunge her.
Hugh Marten was a man of cold and crafty nature. Success, and a close
study of its essentials, had taught him to be studiously polite, bland,
even benignant, when lavish display of these qualities suited his
purposes. But he could spring with the calculating ferocity of a panther
if thereby the object in view might be attained more swiftly and with
equal certainty. His upward progress among the mining communities of
Colorado, New Mexico, and, more recently, California had been
meteoric--once it began. None suspected the means until they saw the
end; then angry and disappointed rivals would compare notes, recognizing
too late how he had encouraged this group to fight that, only to gorge
both when his financial digestion was ready for the meal. He had the
faculty, common to most of his type, of surrounding himself with able
lieutenants. Thus, John Darien Power came to him with no stronger
backing than a college degree in metallurgy and a certificate of
proficiency as a mining engineer, credentials which an army of young
Americans can produce; but he discerned in this one young man the master
sense of the miner's craft, and promoted him rapidly.
He paid well, too, gave excellent bonuses over and above a high
salary--was, in fact, a pioneer among those merchant princes who
discovered that a helper is worth what he earns, not what he costs--and
Power was actually entitled, through his handling of the Sacramento
placer mine, to a sum large enough to warrant marriage with the woman he
loved. Not for one instant had the assistant dreamed that his chief was
casting a covetous eye on Nancy Willard. She was a girl of twenty, he a
man looking ten years older than the thirty-eight years he claimed.
Apparently, she was wholly unsuited to become the wife of a financial
magnate. She knew nothing of the outer maze of society and politics;
while it was whispered that Marten would soon run for state governor, to
be followed by a senatorship, and, possibly, by an embassy. To help such
ambitious emprise he needed a skilled partner, a woman of the world, a
mate born and reared in the purple, and none imagined, Power least of
any, that the vulture would swoop on the pretty little song-bird which
had emerged from the broken-down cage of the Dolores ranch. For the
place had been well named. Misfortune had dogged its owner's footsteps
ever since the death of his wife ten years earlier, and Francis Willard
was buffeted by Fate with a kind of persistent malevolence. Neighboring
farms had been rich in metals; his was bare. When other ranchers won
wealth by raising stock, he hardly held his own against disease,
dishonest agents, and unfortunate choice of markets. This present arid
season had even taken from him three-fourths of his store cattle.
Power did not know yet how the marriage had been brought to an issue so
speedily. In time, no doubt, he would fit together the pieces of the
puzzle; but that day his wearied brain refused to act. He might hazard a
vague guess that he had been misrepresented, that his absence in
California was construed falsely, that the letters he wrote had never
reached the girl's hands; but he was conscious now only of a numb
feeling of gratitude that he had been saved from killing his usurper,
and of an overmastering desire to look once more on Nancy's face before
she passed out of his life forever.
He climbed the Gulch to the divide. From that point he could see the
long, low buildings of the ranch, lying forlornly in the midst of empty
stockyards and scorched grazing land; though the Dolores homestead
itself looked neither forlorn nor grief-stricken. A hundred horses, or
more, were tethered in the branding yard near the house. Two huge tents
had been brought from Denver; the smoke of a field oven showed that some
professional caterer was busy; and a great company of men, women, and
children was gathered at that very moment near the porch, close to which
a traveling carriage was drawn up. A spluttering _feu de joie_, sounding
in the still air like the sharp cracking of a whip, announced that the
departure of bride and bridegroom was imminent; but the pair of horses
attached to the carriage reared and bucked owing to the shouting, and
Power had a momentary glimpse of a trim, neat figure, attired in
biscuit-colored cloth, and wearing a hat gay with red poppies, standing
in the veranda. Close at hand was a tall man dressed in gray tweed.
Mr. and Mrs. Hugh Marten were about to start on their honeymoon trip to
New York and Europe!
For an instant Power's eyes were blinded with tears; but he brushed away
the weakness with a savage gesture, and examined the stark rocks on each
side in search of a nook whence he might see without being seen. It was
the careless glance of a man maddened with well-nigh intolerable loss;
yet, had he known how much depended on his choice of a refuge, even in
the very crux of his grief and torment he would have given more heed to
it. As it was, he retreated a few paces, until hidden from any chance
eye which might rove that way from the ranch, chose a break in the cliff
where an expert cragsman could mount forty feet without difficulty, and
finally threw himself at full length on a ledge which sloped inward, and
was overhung by a mass of red granite, all cracked and blistered by
centuries of elemental war. Some stunted tufts of alfalfa grass were
growing on the outer lip of the ledge. By taking off his sombrero, and
peeping between the dried stems, he could overlook the cavalcade as it
passed without anyone being the wiser.
The surface of the rock was so hot as to be almost unbearable; but he
was completely oblivious of any sense of personal discomfort. That side
of the Gulch was in shadow now, and concealment was all he cared for. He
was sufficiently remote from the narrow track to which the horses would
necessarily be confined that he ran no risk of yielding to some
berserker fit of rage if he encountered Marten's surprised scrutiny,
when, perchance, he might have flung an oath at the man who had
despoiled him, and thereby caused distress to the woman he loved. To
avoid that calamity, he would have endured worse evils than the
blistering rock.
He remembered afterward that while he waited, crouched there like some
creature of the wild, his mind was nearly a blank. He was conscious only
of a dull torpor of wrath and suffering. He had neither plan nor hope
for the future. His profession, which he loved, had suddenly grown
irksome. In curiously detached mood, he saw the long procession of days
in the mines, in the mart, in the laboratory. And the nights--ah, dear
Heaven, the nights! What horror of dreariness would come to him then! He
seemed to hear an inner voice bidding him abandon it all, and hide in
some remote corner of the world where none knew him, and where every
familiar sight and sound would not remind him of Nancy Willard. Nancy
Willard--she was Nancy Marten now! He awoke to a dim perception of his
surroundings by hearing his teeth grating. And even that trivial thing
brought an exquisite pain of memory; for Nancy, reading a book one day,
came across a passage in which some disappointed rascal had "ground his
teeth in baffled rage," and he had joined in her shout of glee at the
notion that anyone should express emotion so crudely. So, then, a man
might really vent his agony in that way! Truly, one lived and learned,
and this was certainly an afternoon during which he had acquired an
intensive knowledge of life and its vicissitudes.
But now the elfin screeching of excited cowboys, and a continuous
fusillade of revolvers fired in the air as their owners raced alongside
the lumbering coach, announced that the wedded pair had begun their long
journey. The racket of yells and shooting, heightened by weird sounds
extracted from tin trumpets, bugles, and horns, drew rapidly nearer,
and, at any other time, Power would have been amused and interested by
the sudden eruption of life in the canyon brought about by this unwonted
intrusion on its peace. A horse or so, or a drove of steers, these were
normal features of existence, and no respectable denizen of the Gulch
would allow such trifles to trouble his or her alert wits for a moment.
But this tornado of pistol-shots and bellowing was a very different
matter, and coyotes, jack-rabbits, a magnificent mountain sheep, a
couple of great lizards--in fact, all manner of furred and scaly
creatures--deserted lairs where they might have remained in perfect
security, scampered frantically to other retreats, and doubtless cowered
there till dusk.
A coyote raced up the cleft at the top of which Power was hidden; but,
ere ever he had seen his enemy, man, he was aware of the hidden danger,
and fled to an untainted sanctuary elsewhere. He had hardly vanished
before the leading horsemen galloped into sight, and soon a motley but
highly picturesque regiment of Westerners filled the trail to its utmost
capacity. Both men and horses were at home in this rugged land, and
raced over its inequalities at a pace which would have brought down many
a rider who thinks he is a devil of a fellow when a mounted policeman
gallops after him in the park and cautions him sharply to moderate his
own and his steed's exuberance. Even in the joyous abandonment of this
typical western crowd there was a species of order; for they took care
not to incommode the coach, a cumbersome vehicle, but the only
practicable conveyance of its kind on four wheels which could be trusted
to traverse that rock-strewn path. Its heavy body was slung on stout
leather bands, and the wheels were low, set well apart, and moving on
axles calculated to withstand every sort of jolt and strain. The driver
was performing some excellent balancing feats on his perch while he
egged on a willing team or exchanged yells with some other choice spirit
who tore ahead when the road permitted. Among the throng were not a few
women and girls from Bison. They rode astride like their men folk, and
their shrill voices mingled cheerfully in the din.
Power was deaf and blind to the pandemonium and its sprites: he had eyes
only for the two people seated in the coach. The ancient equipage owned
low seats and lofty windows, having been built during a period when
ladies' headgear soared well above normal standards; so its occupants
were in full view, even at the elevation from which the unseen observer
looked down.
Marten, a powerfully built man, of commanding height and good physique,
clean-shaven, though the habit was far from general in the West at that
date, was evidently exerting himself to soothe and interest his pallid
companion. His swarthy face was flushed, and its constant smile was
effortless; for he had schooled himself to adapt the mood to the hour.
As the personnel of the cavalcade changed with each headlong gallop or
sudden halt, he nodded affably to the men, or bowed with some
distinction to the women; for Marten knew, or pretended that he knew,
every inhabitant of Bison.
His wife knew them too, without any pretense; but she kept her eyes
studiously lowered, and, if she spoke, used monosyllables, and those
scarcely audible, for Marten had obviously to ask twice what she had
said even during the fleeting seconds when the pair were visible to
Power. Her features were composed almost to apathy; but the watcher from
the cliff, who could read the slightest change of expression in a face
as mobile to the passing mood as a mountain tarn to the breeze, felt
that she was fulfilling a compact and holding her emotions in tense
subjection.
He hoped, he prayed, with frenzied craving of the most high gods, that
she might be moved to lift her eyes to his aery; but the petition was
denied, and the last memory vouchsafed of her was the sight of her
gloved hands clasped on her lap and holding a few sprigs of white
heather. Now, it was a refined malignity of Fate which revealed that
fact just then, because heather does not grow in Colorado, and the girl
had culled her simple little bouquet from a plant which Power had given
her. Once, in Denver, he had rendered some slight service to an
expatriated Scot, and, when a sister from Perth joined her brother,
bringing with her a pot of Highland soil in which bloomed the shrub dear
to every Scottish heart, Power was offered a cutting "for luck." Great
was Nancy Willard's delight at the gift; for, like the majority of her
sex, she yielded to pleasant superstition, and the fame of white heather
as a mascot has spread far beyond the bounds of Great Britain.
Power might well have cried aloud in his pain when he discovered that
his lost love had thought of him at the moment she was leaving her old
home. Perhaps he did utter some tortured plaint: he never knew, because
of what happened the instant after Nancy and her spray of heather were
reft from his straining vision.
One-thumb Jake, who had loitered at the ranch for a farewell drink, rode
up at a terrific pace, pulled his bronco on to its haunches alongside
the coach, and by way of salute, fired three shots from a revolver as
quickly as finger could press trigger.
The first bullet sang through the air not more than an inch above
Power's forehead. He recalled afterward a slight stirring of his hair
caused by the passing of the missile, which spat viciously against the
wall of rock some ten feet above the ledge. The next two bullets struck
higher, and their impact evidently disturbed the equipoise of a mass of
stone already disintegrated by frost, because more than a ton of débris
crashed down, pinning Power to the ledge and nearly pounding the life
out of him. The resultant cloud of dust probably helped to render him
unconscious. At any rate, he lay there without word or movement, and, if
he were dead, his bones might have rested many a year in that strange
tomb unless the curiosity of some passerby was aroused by a flock of
quarreling vultures--a spectacle so common in cattle-land that the
wayfarer does not deviate a hand's breadth from his path because of it.
Nancy heard the thunder of the falling rocks, and looked out. The dust
pall told her exactly what had occurred, though the jubilant
congratulation of the shooter by the driver would have explained matters
in any event.
"Good fer you, Jake!" he shouted. "Gosh! when you're fed up on
cowpunchin' you kin go minin' wid a gun!"
She saw, too, what many others saw: A rattlesnake, rudely dislodged from
some deep crevice, emerged from the heap of rubbish, stopped suddenly,
swelled and puffed in anger, rattled its tail-plates, and was obviously
primed for combat. It seemed to change its mind, however, when a fourth
bullet from the cowboy's revolver grazed a big brown rhomboid which
offered a fair target just below the curved neck. There was another
shower of dust and granite chips, and, when this subsided, the reptile
had vanished.
Nancy sat back in the coach. Amid a chorus of laughter and jeers at what
his critics were pleased to regard as bad marksmanship, Jake spurred his
horse into a gallop again.
"What was it?" inquired Marten. Being on the other side of the vehicle,
he was unaware of the cause of this slight commotion.
"Nothing, really," she said dully.
"Oh, come now, little woman--the crowd would not yelp at Jake for no
reason."
"Well, his shots brought down some loose stones, and a rattler appeared
in the middle of the heap. It showed fight, too; but made off when Jake
fired again."
"Oh, is that all? There wouldn't be a snake on the ranch if your father
had kept a few pigs."
"Poor old dad couldn't keep anything--not even me!"
Her listless tone might have annoyed a weaker man; but Marten only
laughed pleasantly.
"I should be very unhappy if he had insisted on keeping you," he said.
"Of course, you hate having to part from him, and from a place where you
have lived during a few careless years; but you will soon learn to love
the big world to which I am taking you. Colorado in June is all very
well; but it can't begin to compare with London in July, the Engadine in
August, and Paris in September. Don't forget that the proper study of
mankind is man--and woman."
And so, the line was dangled skilfully before her eyes, and the spell
whispered gently into her ears, while she, mute and distraught, wondered
whether the dear memories of Colorado would ever weaken and grow dim.
Then she thought of Derry Power, and a film came over her blue eyes; but
she bit her under-lip in brave endeavor, and forced a smile at some
passing friend.
* * * * *
Power did not remain unconscious many minutes. The last straggler among
the mounted contingent was clattering through the canyon when the man
who had been near death three times in the same number of seconds awoke
to a burden of physical pain which, for the time, effectually banished
all other considerations.
At first he hardly realized where he was or what had happened. He was
half choked with dust, and the effort of his lungs to secure pure air
undoubtedly helped to restore his senses. It was humanly impossible to
curb the impulse toward self-preservation, and he tried at once to free
his limbs of an intolerable weight. He was able to move slightly; but
the agony which racked his left leg warned him that the limb was either
broken or badly sprained. His profession had often brought similar
accidents within his ken, and indications of a further probable
subsidence among the fallen stones--though the warning was so slight as
to be negligible to the ordinary ear--told him that he must be wary, or
a second avalanche might kill him outright.
By now the air was breathable, and he could see into the deserted Gulch.
He was well aware that no one might be expected to pass that way during
the next hour. Before returning to the feast in preparation at the
ranch, the escort would await the departure of the train; while those
who had not taken part in the procession would certainly remain there
until darkness ended the festivities. So he had the choice of two evils.
He could either possess his soul in patience until the mounted
contingent began to straggle back, or risk another rock-fall.
Naturally, he understood the cause and extent of the mishap, and his
present mood did not brook the delay entailed by the safer course.
Raising head and shoulders by lifting himself on both hands, he
contrived to twist round on his left side, and surveyed the position.
It was bad enough, in all conscience, but might have been worse. By far
the largest piece of granite had been the last to drop, and he saw that
it was poised precariously on some smaller lumps. Any attempt to
withdraw either of his legs (the left one was broken, beyond a doubt)
would disturb its balance, and, if it toppled on his body, he would be
imprisoned without hope of relief by his own effort. Rising still
higher, though each inch gained cost a twinge of agony that brought
sweat from every pore, he achieved a half-sitting, half-lolling posture.
Then, applying his miner's aptitude to the dynamics of the problem, he
packed the threatening boulder with others until it was wedged into
partial security.
He had barely finished this task, which only a splendid vitality enabled
him to carry through, when his eye was caught by something in the new
face of the rock which seemed to fascinate him for a second or two. Then
his mouth twisted in a rictus of dreadful mirth, so wrung was he with
pain, yet so overcome by what he had seen.
"So that is the price!" he almost shouted, accompanying the words with
others which seldom fell from his lips. "Those are the terms of
surrender, eh? Well, it is a compact made in hell; but I'll keep it!"
After that, his actions savored of a maniac's cunning rather than the
desire of a sane man to save his own life. Slowly, with never a groan,
he extracted both legs from beneath the pile of stones. The spurs were
his chief difficulty. One was held so tightly that he had to tear his
foot out by main force; but luckily it was the right foot, or he could
not have done it. Something had to give way under the strain, and
ultimately the spur was released by the yielding of a strap at a buckle.
The torture he suffered must have been intense; but he uttered no sound
save an occasional sob of effort, when all the strength of hands and
wrists were needed to move one or other of the chunks of granite without
dislodging the grim monster he had chained.
At last he was free. He felt the injured limb, which was almost
benumbed, and ascertained beyond doubt that it was fractured below the
knee. But he was safe enough, even though the precarious structure of
stones collapsed, and any other victim of like circumstances would have
been content with that tremendous achievement. Not so John Darien Power.
The mere fact that he need now only lie still until assistance reached
him seemed to lash him into a fresh panic of energy. After a hasty
glance into the canyon, obviously to find out whether or not anyone was
approaching, he began to throw pieces of débris into the fissure left
bare by the fall. When he had exhausted the store within reach he
crawled to a new supply, and piled stone upon stone until the rock wall
was covered to a height of more than two feet. Even then he was not
satisfied; but moved a second time, his apparent object, if any, being
to give the scene of his accident the semblance of a stone slide.
Finally, he did the maddest thing of all, lowering himself down the
cleft with a rapidity that was almost inconceivable in a man with a
broken leg. On reaching the level of the trail he slipped and fell.
That drew a queer sort of subdued shriek from his parched throat; but,
after a moment of white agony, he began to crawl in the direction of the
ranch. He chose that way deliberately, because the slope was downhill,
and not so rough as in the upper part of the gorge. With care, for he
meant to avoid another slip, but never halting, he dragged his crippled
body fully a hundred yards from the foot of the ledge. Then he crept
into the shade, at a spot where the side of the Gulch rose sheer for
twenty feet, turned over on his back, and lay quietly.
He had almost reached the end of his tether. His face was drawn, and
disfigured with dirt and perspiration. His eyelids dropped
involuntarily, as though to shut out a world which had suddenly become
savagely hostile; but his lips moved in a wan grimace, a wry parody of
the generous, warm-hearted smile that people had learned to associate
with Derry Power.
"My poor Nancy!" he murmured brokenly. "My dear lost sweetheart! If the
Fates have bought you from me, I was no party to the deal, and I'll
exact the last cent on it--I swear that by your own sprig of white
heather! Someone will pay, in blood and tears, or I'll know the reason
why! Yes, someone will pay! Power versus Marten, with the devil as
arbitrator! Marten has won the first round; but I'll take it to a higher
court. I'll choke the life out of him yet--choke--the beast!"
Of course, Power was light-headed.