LOVE
During all these waiting days Venters, with the exception of the
afternoon when he had built the gate in the gorge, had scarcely gone
out of sight of camp and never out of hearing. His desire to explore
Surprise Valley was keen, and on the morning after his long talk with
the girl he took his rifle and, calling Ring, made a move to start. The
girl lay back in a rude chair of boughs he had put together for her.
She had been watching him, and when he picked up the gun and called the
dog Venters thought she gave a nervous start.
“I’m only going to look over the valley,” he said.
“Will you be gone long?”
“No,” he replied, and started off. The incident set him thinking of his
former impression that, after her recovery from fever, she did not seem
at ease unless he was close at hand. It was fear of being alone, due,
he concluded, most likely to her weakened condition. He must not leave
her much alone.
As he strode down the sloping terrace, rabbits scampered before him,
and the beautiful valley quail, as purple in color as the sage on the
uplands, ran fleetly along the ground into the forest. It was pleasant
under the trees, in the gold-flecked shade, with the whistle of quail
and twittering of birds everywhere. Soon he had passed the limit of his
former excursions and entered new territory. Here the woods began to
show open glades and brooks running down from the slope, and presently
he emerged from shade into the sunshine of a meadow. The shaking of the
high grass told him of the running of animals, what species he could
not tell, but from Ring’s manifest desire to have a chase they were
evidently some kind wilder than rabbits. Venters approached the willow
and cottonwood belt that he had observed from the height of slope. He
penetrated it to find a considerable stream of water and great
half-submerged mounds of brush and sticks, and all about him were old
and new gnawed circles at the base of the cottonwoods.
“Beaver!” he exclaimed. “By all that’s lucky! The meadow’s full of
beaver! How did they ever get here?”
Beaver had not found a way into the valley by the trail of the
cliff-dwellers, of that he was certain; and he began to have more than
curiosity as to the outlet or inlet of the stream. When he passed some
dead water, which he noted was held by a beaver dam, there was a
current in the stream, and it flowed west. Following its course, he
soon entered the oak forest again, and passed through to find himself
before massed and jumbled ruins of cliff wall. There were tangled
thickets of wild plum-trees and other thorny growths that made passage
extremely laborsome. He found innumerable tracks of wildcats and foxes.
Rustlings in the thick undergrowth told him of stealthy movements of
these animals. At length his further advance appeared futile, for the
reason that the stream disappeared in a split at the base of immense
rocks over which he could not climb. To his relief he concluded that
though beaver might work their way up the narrow chasm where the water
rushed, it would be impossible for men to enter the valley there.
This western curve was the only part of the valley where the walls had
been split asunder, and it was a wildly rough and inaccessible corner.
Going back a little way, he leaped the stream and headed toward the
southern wall. Once out of the oaks he found again the low terrace of
aspens, and above that the wide, open terrace fringed by silver
spruces. This side of the valley contained the wind or water worn
caves. As he pressed on, keeping to the upper terrace, cave after cave
opened out of the cliff; now a large one, now a small one. Then yawned,
quite suddenly and wonderfully above him, the great cavern of the
cliff-dwellers.
It was still a goodly distance, and he tried to imagine, if it appeared
so huge from where he stood, what it would be when he got there. He
climbed the terrace and then faced a long, gradual ascent of weathered
rock and dust, which made climbing too difficult for attention to
anything else. At length he entered a zone of shade, and looked up. He
stood just within the hollow of a cavern so immense that he had no
conception of its real dimensions. The curved roof, stained by ages of
leakage, with buff and black and rust-colored streaks, swept up and
loomed higher and seemed to soar to the rim of the cliff. Here again
was a magnificent arch, such as formed the grand gateway to the valley,
only in this instance it formed the dome of a cave instead of the span
of a bridge.
Venters passed onward and upward. The stones he dislodged rolled down
with strange, hollow crack and roar. He had climbed a hundred rods
inward, and yet he had not reached the base of the shelf where the
cliff-dwellings rested, a long half-circle of connected stone house,
with little dark holes that he had fancied were eyes. At length he
gained the base of the shelf, and here found steps cut in the rock.
These facilitated climbing, and as he went up he thought how easily
this vanished race of men might once have held that stronghold against
an army. There was only one possible place to ascend, and this was
narrow and steep.
Venters had visited cliff-dwellings before, and they had been in ruins,
and of no great character or size but this place was of proportions
that stunned him, and it had not been desecrated by the hand of man,
nor had it been crumbled by the hand of time. It was a stupendous tomb.
It had been a city. It was just as it had been left by its builders.
The little houses were there, the smoke-blackened stains of fires, the
pieces of pottery scattered about cold hearths, the stone hatchets; and
stone pestles and mealing-stones lay beside round holes polished by
years of grinding maize—lay there as if they had been carelessly
dropped yesterday. But the cliff-dwellers were gone!
Dust! They were dust on the floor or at the foot of the shelf, and
their habitations and utensils endured. Venters felt the sublimity of
that marvelous vaulted arch, and it seemed to gleam with a glory of
something that was gone. How many years had passed since the
cliff-dwellers gazed out across the beautiful valley as he was gazing
now? How long had it been since women ground grain in those polished
holes? What time had rolled by since men of an unknown race lived,
loved, fought, and died there? Had an enemy destroyed them? Had disease
destroyed them, or only that greatest destroyer—time? Venters saw a
long line of blood-red hands painted low down upon the yellow roof of
stone. Here was strange portent, if not an answer to his queries. The
place oppressed him. It was light, but full of a transparent gloom. It
smelled of dust and musty stone, of age and disuse. It was sad. It was
solemn. It had the look of a place where silence had become master and
was now irrevocable and terrible and could not be broken. Yet, at the
moment, from high up in the carved crevices of the arch, floated down
the low, strange wail of wind—a knell indeed for all that had gone.
Venters, sighing, gathered up an armful of pottery, such pieces as he
thought strong enough and suitable for his own use, and bent his steps
toward camp. He mounted the terrace at an opposite point to which he
had left. He saw the girl looking in the direction he had gone. His
footsteps made no sound in the deep grass, and he approached close
without her being aware of his presence. Whitie lay on the ground near
where she sat, and he manifested the usual actions of welcome, but the
girl did not notice them. She seemed to be oblivious to everything near
at hand. She made a pathetic figure drooping there, with her sunny hair
contrasting so markedly with her white, wasted cheeks and her hands
listlessly clasped and her little bare feet propped in the framework of
the rude seat. Venters could have sworn and laughed in one breath at
the idea of the connection between this girl and Oldring’s Masked
Rider. She was the victim of more than accident of fate—a victim to
some deep plot the mystery of which burned him. As he stepped forward
with a half-formed thought that she was absorbed in watching for his
return, she turned her head and saw him. A swift start, a change rather
than rush of blood under her white cheeks, a flashing of big eyes that
fixed their glance upon him, transformed her face in that single
instant of turning, and he knew she had been watching for him, that his
return was the one thing in her mind. She did not smile; she did not
flush; she did not look glad. All these would have meant little
compared to her indefinite expression. Venters grasped the peculiar,
vivid, vital something that leaped from her face. It was as if she had
been in a dead, hopeless clamp of inaction and feeling, and had been
suddenly shot through and through with quivering animation. Almost it
was as if she had returned to life.
And Venters thought with lightning swiftness, “I’ve saved her—I’ve
unlinked her from that old life—she was watching as if I were all she
had left on earth—she belongs to me!” The thought was startlingly new.
Like a blow it was in an unprepared moment. The cheery salutation he
had ready for her died unborn and he tumbled the pieces of pottery
awkwardly on the grass while some unfamiliar, deep-seated emotion,
mixed with pity and glad assurance of his power to succor her, held him
dumb.
“What a load you had!” she said. “Why, they’re pots and crocks! Where
did you get them?”
Venters laid down his rifle, and, filling one of the pots from his
canteen, he placed it on the smoldering campfire.
“Hope it’ll hold water,” he said, presently. “Why, there’s an enormous
cliff-dwelling just across here. I got the pottery there. Don’t you
think we needed something? That tin cup of mine has served to make tea,
broth, soup—everything.”
“I noticed we hadn’t a great deal to cook in.”
She laughed. It was the first time. He liked that laugh, and though he
was tempted to look at her, he did not want to show his surprise or his
pleasure.
“Will you take me over there, and all around in the valley—pretty soon,
when I’m well?” she added.
“Indeed I shall. It’s a wonderful place. Rabbits so thick you can’t
step without kicking one out. And quail, beaver, foxes, wildcats. We’re
in a regular den. But—haven’t you ever seen a cliff-dwelling?”
“No. I’ve heard about them, though. The—the men say the Pass is full of
old houses and ruins.”
“Why, I should think you’d have run across one in all your riding
around,” said Venters. He spoke slowly, choosing his words carefully,
and he essayed a perfectly casual manner, and pretended to be busy
assorting pieces of pottery. She must have no cause again to suffer
shame for curiosity of his. Yet never in all his days had he been so
eager to hear the details of anyone’s life.
“When I rode—I rode like the wind,” she replied, “and never had time to
stop for anything.”
“I remember that day I—I met you in the Pass—how dusty you were, how
tired your horse looked. Were you always riding?”
“Oh, no. Sometimes not for months, when I was shut up in the cabin.”
Venters tried to subdue a hot tingling.
“You were shut up, then?” he asked, carelessly.
“When Oldring went away on his long trips—he was gone for months
sometimes—he shut me up in the cabin.”
“What for?”
“Perhaps to keep me from running away. I always threatened that.
Mostly, though, because the men got drunk at the villages. But they
were always good to me. I wasn’t afraid.”
“A prisoner! That must have been hard on you?”
“I liked that. As long as I can remember I’ve been locked up there at
times, and those times were the only happy ones I ever had. It’s a big
cabin, high up on a cliff, and I could look out. Then I had dogs and
pets I had tamed, and books. There was a spring inside, and food
stored, and the men brought me fresh meat. Once I was there one whole
winter.”
It now required deliberation on Venters’s part to persist in his
unconcern and to keep at work. He wanted to look at her, to volley
questions at her.
“As long as you can remember—you’ve lived in Deception Pass?” he went
on.
“I’ve a dim memory of some other place, and women and children; but I
can’t make anything of it. Sometimes I think till I’m weary.”
“Then you can read—you have books?”
“Oh yes, I can read, and write, too, pretty well. Oldring is educated.
He taught me, and years ago an old rustler lived with us, and he had
been something different once. He was always teaching me.”
“So Oldring takes long trips,” mused Venters. “Do you know where he
goes?”
“No. Every year he drives cattle north of Sterling—then does not return
for months. I heard him accused once of living two lives—and he killed
the man. That was at Stone Bridge.”
Venters dropped his apparent task and looked up with an eagerness he no
longer strove to hide.
“Bess,” he said, using her name for the first time, “I suspected
Oldring was something besides a rustler. Tell me, what’s his purpose
here in the Pass? I believe much that he has done was to hide his real
work here.”
“You’re right. He’s more than a rustler. In fact, as the men say, his
rustling cattle is now only a bluff. There’s gold in the cañons!”
“Ah!”
“Yes, there’s gold, not in great quantities, but gold enough for him
and his men. They wash for gold week in and week out. Then they drive a
few cattle and go into the villages to drink and shoot and kill—to
bluff the riders.”
“Drive a few cattle! But, Bess, the Withersteen herd, the red
herd—twenty-five hundred head! That’s not a few. And I tracked them
into a valley near here.”
“Oldring never stole the red herd. He made a deal with Mormons. The
riders were to be called in, and Oldring was to drive the herd and keep
it till a certain time—I won’t know when—then drive it back to the
range. What his share was I didn’t hear.”
“Did you hear _why_ that deal was made?” queried Venters.
“No. But it was a trick of Mormons. They’re full of tricks. I’ve heard
Oldring’s men tell about Mormons. Maybe the Withersteen woman wasn’t
minding her halter! I saw the man who made the deal. He was a little,
queer-shaped man, all humped up. He sat his horse well. I heard one of
our men say afterward there was no better rider on the sage than this
fellow. What was the name? I forget.”
“Jerry Card?” suggested Venters.
“That’s it. I remember—it’s a name easy to remember—and Jerry Card
appeared to be on fair terms with Oldring’s men.”
“I shouldn’t wonder,” replied Venters, thoughtfully. Verification of
his suspicions in regard to Tull’s underhand work—for the deal with
Oldring made by Jerry Card assuredly had its inception in the Mormon
Elder’s brain, and had been accomplished through his orders—revived in
Venters a memory of hatred that had been smothered by press of other
emotions. Only a few days had elapsed since the hour of his encounter
with Tull, yet they had been forgotten and now seemed far off, and the
interval one that now appeared large and profound with incalculable
change in his feelings. Hatred of Tull still existed in his heart, but
it had lost its white heat. His affection for Jane Withersteen had not
changed in the least; nevertheless, he seemed to view it from another
angle and see it as another thing—what, he could not exactly define.
The recalling of these two feelings was to Venters like getting
glimpses into a self that was gone; and the wonder of them—perhaps the
change which was too illusive for him—was the fact that a strange
irritation accompanied the memory and a desire to dismiss it from mind.
And straightway he did dismiss it, to return to thoughts of his
significant present.
“Bess, tell me one more thing,” he said. “Haven’t you known any
women—any young people?”
“Sometimes there were women with the men; but Oldring never let me know
them. And all the young people I ever saw in my life was when I rode
fast through the villages.”
Perhaps that was the most puzzling and thought-provoking thing she had
yet said to Venters. He pondered, more curious the more he learned, but
he curbed his inquisitive desires, for he saw her shrinking on the
verge of that shame, the causing of which had occasioned him such
self-reproach. He would ask no more. Still he had to think, and he
found it difficult to think clearly. This sad-eyed girl was so utterly
different from what it would have been reason to believe such a
remarkable life would have made her. On this day he had found her
simple and frank, as natural as any girl he had ever known. About her
there was something sweet. Her voice was low and well modulated. He
could not look into her face, meet her steady, unabashed, yet wistful
eyes, and think of her as the woman she had confessed herself.
Oldring’s Masked Rider sat before him, a girl dressed as a man. She had
been made to ride at the head of infamous forays and drives. She had
been imprisoned for many months of her life in an obscure cabin. At
times the most vicious of men had been her companions; and the vilest
of women, if they had not been permitted to approach her, had, at
least, cast their shadows over her. But—but in spite of all this—there
thundered at Venters some truth that lifted its voice higher than the
clamoring facts of dishonor, some truth that was the very life of her
beautiful eyes; and it was innocence.
In the days that followed, Venters balanced perpetually in mind this
haunting conception of innocence over against the cold and sickening
fact of an unintentional yet actual gift. How could it be possible for
the two things to be true? He believed the latter to be true, and he
would not relinquish his conviction of the former; and these
conflicting thoughts augmented the mystery that appeared to be a part
of Bess. In those ensuing days, however, it became clear as clearest
light that Bess was rapidly regaining strength; that, unless reminded
of her long association with Oldring, she seemed to have forgotten it;
that, like an Indian who lives solely from moment to moment, she was
utterly absorbed in the present.
Day by day Venters watched the white of her face slowly change to
brown, and the wasted cheeks fill out by imperceptible degrees. There
came a time when he could just trace the line of demarcation between
the part of her face once hidden by a mask and that left exposed to
wind and sun. When that line disappeared in clear bronze tan it was as
if she had been washed clean of the stigma of Oldring’s Masked Rider.
The suggestion of the mask always made Venters remember; now that it
was gone he seldom thought of her past. Occasionally he tried to piece
together the several stages of strange experience and to make a whole.
He had shot a masked outlaw the very sight of whom had been ill omen to
riders; he had carried off a wounded woman whose bloody lips quivered
in prayer; he had nursed what seemed a frail, shrunken boy; and now he
watched a girl whose face had become strangely sweet, whose dark-blue
eyes were ever upon him without boldness, without shyness, but with a
steady, grave, and growing light. Many times Venters found the clear
gaze embarrassing to him, yet, like wine, it had an exhilarating
effect. What did she think when she looked at him so? Almost he
believed she had no thought at all. All about her and the present there
in Surprise Valley, and the dim yet subtly impending future, fascinated
Venters and made him thoughtful as all his lonely vigils in the sage
had not.
Chiefly it was the present that he wished to dwell upon; but it was the
call of the future which stirred him to action. No idea had he of what
that future had in store for Bess and him. He began to think of
improving Surprise Valley as a place to live in, for there was no
telling how long they would be compelled to stay there. Venters
stubbornly resisted the entering into his mind of an insistent thought
that, clearly realized, might have made it plain to him that he did not
want to leave Surprise Valley at all. But it was imperative that he
consider practical matters; and whether or not he was destined to stay
long there, he felt the immediate need of a change of diet. It would be
necessary for him to go farther afield for a variety of meat, and also
that he soon visit Cottonwoods for a supply of food.
It occurred again to Venters that he could go to the cañon where
Oldring kept his cattle, and at little risk he could pack out some
beef. He wished to do this, however, without letting Bess know of it
till after he had made the trip. Presently he hit upon the plan of
going while she was asleep.
That very night he stole out of camp, climbed up under the stone
bridge, and entered the outlet to the Pass. The gorge was full of
luminous gloom. Balancing Rock loomed dark and leaned over the pale
descent. Transformed in the shadowy light, it took shape and dimensions
of a spectral god waiting—waiting for the moment to hurl himself down
upon the tottering walls and close forever the outlet to Deception
Pass. At night more than by day Venters felt something fearful and
fateful in that rock, and that it had leaned and waited through a
thousand years to have somehow to deal with his destiny.
“Old man, if you must roll, wait till I get back to the girl, and then
roll!” he said, aloud, as if the stones were indeed a god.
And those spoken words, in their grim note to his ear, as well as
contents to his mind, told Venters that he was all but drifting on a
current which he had not power nor wish to stem.
Venters exercised his usual care in the matter of hiding tracks from
the outlet, yet it took him scarcely an hour to reach Oldring’s cattle.
Here sight of many calves changed his original intention, and instead
of packing out meat he decided to take a calf out alive. He roped one,
securely tied its feet, and swung it over his shoulder. Here was an
exceedingly heavy burden, but Venters was powerful—he could take up a
sack of grain and with ease pitch it over a pack-saddle—and he made
long distance without resting. The hardest work came in the climb up to
the outlet and on through to the valley. When he had accomplished it,
he became fired with another idea that again changed his intention. He
would not kill the calf, but keep it alive. He would go back to
Oldring’s herd and pack out more calves. Thereupon he secured the calf
in the best available spot for the moment and turned to make a second
trip.
When Venters got back to the valley with another calf, it was close
upon daybreak. He crawled into his cave and slept late. Bess had no
inkling that he had been absent from camp nearly all night, and only
remarked solicitously that he appeared to be more tired than usual, and
more in the need of sleep. In the afternoon Venters built a gate across
a small ravine near camp, and here corralled the calves; and he
succeeded in completing his task without Bess being any the wiser.
That night he made two more trips to Oldring’s range, and again on the
following night, and yet another on the next. With eight calves in his
corral, he concluded that he had enough; but it dawned upon him then
that he did not want to kill one. “I’ve rustled Oldring’s cattle,” he
said, and laughed. He noted then that all the calves were red. “Red!”
he exclaimed. “From the red herd. I’ve stolen Jane Withersteen’s
cattle!... That’s about the strangest thing yet.”
One more trip he undertook to Oldring’s valley, and this time he roped
a yearling steer and killed it and cut out a small quarter of beef. The
howling of coyotes told him he need have no apprehension that the work
of his knife would be discovered. He packed the beef back to camp and
hung it upon a spruce-tree. Then he sought his bed.
On the morrow he was up bright and early, glad that he had a surprise
for Bess. He could hardly wait for her to come out. Presently she
appeared and walked under the spruce. Then she approached the
camp-fire. There was a tinge of healthy red in the bronze of her
cheeks, and her slender form had begun to round out in graceful lines.
“Bess, didn’t you say you were tired of rabbit?” inquired Venters. “And
quail and beaver?”
“Indeed I did.”
“What would you like?”
“I’m tired of meat, but if we have to live on it I’d like some beef.”
“Well, how does that strike you?” Venters pointed to the quarter
hanging from the spruce-tree. “We’ll have fresh beef for a few days,
then we’ll cut the rest into strips and dry it.”
“Where did you get that?” asked Bess, slowly.
“I stole that from Oldring.”
“You went back to the cañon—you risked—” While she hesitated the tinge
of bloom faded out of her cheeks.
“It wasn’t any risk, but it was hard work.”
“I’m sorry I said I was tired of rabbit. Why! How—When did you get that
beef?”
“Last night.”
“While I was asleep?”
“Yes.”
“I woke last night sometime—but I didn’t know.”
Her eyes were widening, darkening with thought, and whenever they did
so the steady, watchful, seeing gaze gave place to the wistful light.
In the former she saw as the primitive woman without thought; in the
latter she looked inward, and her gaze was the reflection of a troubled
mind. For long Venters had not seen that dark change, that deepening of
blue, which he thought was beautiful and sad. But now he wanted to make
her think.
“I’ve done more than pack in that beef,” he said. “For five nights I’ve
been working while you slept. I’ve got eight calves corralled near a
ravine. Eight calves, all alive and doing fine!”
“You went five nights!”
All that Venters could make of the dilation of her eyes, her slow
pallor, and her exclamation, was fear—fear for herself or for him.
“Yes. I didn’t tell you, because I knew you were afraid to be left
alone.”
“Alone?” She echoed his word, but the meaning of it was nothing to her.
She had not even thought of being left alone. It was not, then, fear
for herself, but for him. This girl, always slow of speech and action,
now seemed almost stupid. She put forth a hand that might have
indicated the groping of her mind. Suddenly she stepped swiftly to him,
with a look and touch that drove from him any doubt of her quick
intelligence or feeling.
“Oldring has men watch the herds—they would kill you. You must never go
again!”
When she had spoken, the strength and the blaze of her died, and she
swayed toward Venters.
“_Bess, I’ll not go again_,” he said, catching her.
[Illustration: “Bess, I’ll not go again”]
She leaned against him, and her body was limp and vibrated to a long,
wavering tremble. Her face was upturned to his. Woman’s face, woman’s
eyes, woman’s lips—all acutely and blindly and sweetly and terribly
truthful in their betrayal! But as her fear was instinctive, so was her
clinging to this one and only friend.
Venters gently put her from him and steadied her upon her feet; and all
the while his blood raced wild, and a thrilling tingle unsteadied his
nerve, and something—that he had seen and felt in her—that he could not
understand—seemed very close to him, warm and rich as a fragrant
breath, sweet as nothing had ever before been sweet to him.
With all his will Venters strove for calmness and thought and judgment
unbiased by pity, and reality unswayed by sentiment. Bess’s eyes were
still fixed upon him with all her soul bright in that wistful light.
Swiftly, resolutely he put out of mind all of her life except what had
been spent with him. He scorned himself for the intelligence that made
him still doubt. He meant to judge her as she had judged him. He was
face to face with the inevitableness of life itself. He saw destiny in
the dark, straight path of her wonderful eyes. Here was the simplicity,
the sweetness of a girl contending with new and strange and enthralling
emotions here the living truth of innocence; here the blind terror of a
woman confronted with the thought of death to her savior and protector.
All this Venters saw, but, besides, there was in Bess’s eyes a
slow-dawning consciousness that seemed about to break out in glorious
radiance.
“Bess, are you thinking?” he asked.
“Yes—oh yes!”
“Do you realize we are here alone—man and woman?”
“Yes.”
“Have you thought that we may make our way out to civilization, or we
may have to stay here—alone—hidden from the world all our lives?”
“I never thought—till now.”
“Well, what’s your choice—to go—or to stay here—alone with me?”
“Stay!” New-born thought of self, ringing vibrantly in her voice, gave
her answer singular power.
Venters trembled, and then swiftly turned his gaze from her face—from
her eyes. He knew what she had only half divined—that she loved him.