SOLITUDE AND STORM
In his hidden valley Venters awakened from sleep, and his ears rang
with innumerable melodies from full-throated mockingbirds, and his eyes
opened wide upon the glorious golden shaft of sunlight shining through
the great stone bridge. The circle of cliffs surrounding Surprise
Valley lay shrouded in morning mist, a dim blue low down along the
terraces, a creamy, moving cloud along the ramparts. The oak forest in
the center was a plumed and tufted oval of gold.
He saw Bess under the spruces. Upon her complete recovery of strength
she always rose with the dawn. At the moment she was feeding the quail
she had tamed. And she had begun to tame the mocking-birds. They
fluttered among the branches overhead and some left off their songs to
flit down and shyly hop near the twittering quail. Little gray and
white rabbits crouched in the grass, now nibbling, now laying long ears
flat and watching the dogs.
Venters’s swift glance took in the brightening valley, and Bess and her
pets, and Ring and Whitie. It swept over all to return again and rest
upon the girl. She had changed. To the dark trousers and blouse she had
added moccasins of her own make, but she no longer resembled a boy. No
eye could have failed to mark the rounded contours of a woman. The
change had been to grace and beauty. A glint of warm gold gleamed from
her hair, and a tint of red shone in the clear dark brown of cheeks.
The haunting sweetness of her lips and eyes, that earlier had been
illusive, a promise, had become a living fact. She fitted harmoniously
into that wonderful setting; she was like Surprise Valley—wild and
beautiful.
Venters leaped out of his cave to begin the day.
He had postponed his journey to Cottonwoods until after the passing of
the summer rains. The rains were due soon. But until their arrival and
the necessity for his trip to the village he sequestered in a far
corner of mind all thought of peril, of his past life, and almost that
of the present. It was enough to live. He did not want to know what lay
hidden in the dim and distant future. Surprise Valley had enchanted
him. In this home of the cliff-dwellers there were peace and quiet and
solitude, and another thing, wondrous as the golden morning shaft of
sunlight, that he dared not ponder over long enough to understand.
The solitude he had hated when alone he had now come to love. He was
assimilating something from this valley of gleams and shadows. From
this strange girl he was assimilating more.
The day at hand resembled many days gone before. As Venters had no
tools with which to build, or to till the terraces, he remained idle.
Beyond the cooking of the simple fare there were no tasks. And as there
were no tasks, there was no system. He and Bess began one thing, to
leave it; to begin another, to leave that; and then do nothing but lie
under the spruces and watch the great cloud-sails majestically move
along the ramparts, and dream and dream. The valley was a golden,
sunlit world. It was silent. The sighing wind and the twittering quail
and the singing birds, even the rare and seldom-occurring hollow crack
of a sliding weathered stone, only thickened and deepened that
insulated silence.
Venters and Bess had vagrant minds.
“Bess, did I tell you about my horse Wrangle?” inquired Venters.
“A hundred times,” she replied.
“Oh, have I? I’d forgotten. I want you to see him. He’ll carry us
both.”
“I’d like to ride him. Can he run?”
“Run? He’s a demon. Swiftest horse on the sage! I hope he’ll stay in
that cañon.”
“He’ll stay.”
They left camp to wander along the terraces, into the aspen ravines,
under the gleaming walls. Ring and Whitie wandered in the fore, often
turning, often trotting back, open-mouthed and solemn-eyed and happy.
Venters lifted his gaze to the grand archway over the entrance to the
valley, and Bess lifted hers to follow his, and both were silent.
Sometimes the bridge held their attention for a long time. To-day a
soaring eagle attracted them.
“How he sails!” exclaimed Bess. “I wonder where his mate is?”
“She’s at the nest. It’s on the bridge in a crack near the top. I see
her often. She’s almost white.”
They wandered on down the terrace, into the shady, sun-flecked forest.
A brown bird fluttered crying from a bush. Bess peeped into the leaves.
“Look! A nest and four little birds. They’re not afraid of us. See how
they open their mouths. They’re hungry.”
Rabbits rustled the dead brush and pattered away. The forest was full
of a drowsy hum of insects. Little darts of purple, that were running
quail, crossed the glades. And a plaintive, sweet peeping came from the
coverts. Bess’s soft step disturbed a sleeping lizard that scampered
away over the leaves. She gave chase and caught it, a slim creature of
nameless color but of exquisite beauty.
“Jewel eyes,” she said. “It’s like a rabbit—afraid. We won’t eat you.
There—go.”
Murmuring water drew their steps down into a shallow shaded ravine
where a brown brook brawled softly over mossy stones. Multitudes of
strange, gray frogs with white spots and black eyes lined the rocky
bank and leaped only at close approach. Then Venters’s eye descried a
very thin, very long green snake coiled round a sapling. They drew
closer and closer till they could have touched it. The snake had no
fear and watched them with scintillating eyes.
“It’s pretty,” said Bess. “How tame! I thought snakes always ran.”
“No. Even the rabbits didn’t run here till the dogs chased them.”
On and on they wandered to the wild jumble of massed and broken
fragments of cliff at the west end of the valley. The roar of the
disappearing stream dinned in their ears. Into this maze of rocks they
threaded a tortuous way, climbing, descending, halting to gather wild
plums and great lavender lilies, and going on at the will of fancy.
Idle and keen perceptions guided them equally.
“Oh, let us climb there!” cried Bess, pointing upward to a small space
of terrace left green and shady between huge abutments of broken cliff.
And they climbed to the nook and rested and looked out across the
valley to the curling column of blue smoke from their campfire. But the
cool shade and the rich grass and the fine view were not what they had
climbed for. They could not have told, although whatever had drawn them
was well-satisfying. Light, sure-footed as a mountain goat, Bess
pattered down at Venters’s heels; and they went on, calling the dogs,
eyes dreamy and wide, listening to the wind and the bees and the
crickets and the birds.
Part of the time Ring and Whitie led the way, then Venters, then Bess;
and the direction was not an object. They left the sun-streaked shade
of the oaks, brushed the long grass of the meadows, entered the green
and fragrant swaying willows, to stop, at length, under the huge old
cottonwoods where the beavers were busy.
Here they rested and watched. A dam of brush and logs and mud and
stones backed the stream into a little lake. The round, rough beaver
houses projected from the water. Like the rabbits, the beavers had
become shy. Gradually, however, as Venters and Bess knelt low, holding
the dogs, the beavers emerged to swim with logs and gnaw at cottonwoods
and pat mud walls with their paddle-like tails, and, glossy and shiny
in the sun, to go on with their strange, persistent industry. They were
the builders. The lake was a mud-hole, and the immediate environment a
scarred and dead region, but it was a wonderful home of wonderful
animals.
“Look at that one—he puddles in the mud,” said Bess. “And there! See
him dive! Hear them gnawing! I’d think they’d break their teeth. How’s
it they can stay out of the water and under the water?”
And she laughed.
Then Venters and Bess wandered farther, and, perhaps not all
unconsciously this time, wended their slow steps to the cave of the
cliff-dwellers, where she liked best to go.
The tangled thicket and the long slant of dust and little chips of
weathered rock and the steep bench of stone and the worn steps all were
arduous work for Bess in the climbing. But she gained the shelf,
gasping, hot of cheek, glad of eye, with her hand in Venters’s. Here
they rested. The beautiful valley glittered below with its millions of
wind-turned leaves bright-faced in the sun, and the mighty bridge
towered heavenward, crowned with blue sky. Bess, however, never rested
for long. Soon she was exploring, and Venters followed; she dragged
forth from corners and shelves a multitude of crudely fashioned and
painted pieces of pottery, and he carried them. They peeped down into
the dark holes of the kivas, and Bess gleefully dropped a stone and
waited for the long-coming hollow sound to rise. They peeped into the
little globular houses, like mud-wasp nests, and wondered if these had
been store-places for grain, or baby cribs, or what; and they crawled
into the larger houses and laughed when they bumped their heads on the
low roofs, and they dug in the dust of the floors. And they brought
from dust and darkness armloads of treasure which they carried to the
light. Flints and stones and strange curved sticks and pottery they
found; and twisted grass rope that crumbled in their hands, and bits of
whitish stone which crushed to powder at a touch and seemed to vanish
in the air.
“That white stuff was bone,” said Venters, slowly. “Bones of a
cliff-dweller.”
“No!” exclaimed Bess.
“Here’s another piece. Look!... Whew! dry, powdery smoke! That’s bone.”
Then it was that Venters’s primitive, childlike mood, like a savage’s,
seeing, yet unthinking, gave way to the encroachment of civilized
thought. The world had not been made for a single day’s play or fancy
or idle watching. The world was old. Nowhere could be gotten a better
idea of its age than in this gigantic silent tomb. The gray ashes in
Venters’s hand had once been bone of a human being like himself. The
pale gloom of the cave had shadowed people long ago. He saw that Bess
had received the same shock—could not in moments such as this escape
her feeling living, thinking destiny.
“Bern, people have _lived_ here,” she said, with wide, thoughtful eyes.
“Yes,” he replied.
“How long ago?”
“A thousand years and more.”
“What were they?”
“Cliff-dwellers. Men who had enemies and made their homes high out of
reach.”
“They had to fight?”
“Yes.”
“They fought for—what?”
“For life. For their homes, food, children, parents—for their women!”
“Has the world changed any in a thousand years?”
“I don’t know—perhaps a little.”
“Have men?”
“I hope so—I think so.”
“Things crowd into my mind,” she went on, and the wistful light in her
eyes told Venters the truth of her thoughts. “I’ve ridden the border of
Utah. I’ve seen people—know how they live—but they must be few of all
who are living. I had my books and I studied them. But all that doesn’t
help me any more. I want to go out into the big world and see it. Yet I
want to stay here more. What’s to become of us? Are we cliff-dwellers?
We’re alone here. I’m happy when I don’t think. These—these bones that
fly into dust—they make me sick and a little afraid. Did the people who
lived here once have the same feelings as we have? What was the good of
their living at all? They’re gone! What’s the meaning of it all—of us?”
“Bess, you ask more than I can tell. It’s beyond me. Only there was
laughter here once—and now there’s silence. There was life—and now
there’s death. Men cut these little steps, made these arrow-heads and
mealing-stones, plaited the ropes we found, and left their bones to
crumble in our fingers. As far as time is concerned it might all have
been yesterday. We’re here to-day. Maybe we’re higher in the scale of
human beings—in intelligence. But who knows? We can’t be any higher in
the things for which life is lived at all.”
“What are they?”
“Why—I suppose relationship, friendship—love.”
“Love!”
“Yes. Love of man for woman—love of woman for man. That’s the nature,
the meaning, the best of life itself.”
She said no more. Wistfulness of glance deepened into sadness.
“Come, let us go,” said Venters.
Action brightened her. Beside him, holding his hand she slipped down
the shelf, ran down the long, steep slant of sliding stones, out of the
cloud of dust, and likewise out of the pale gloom.
“We beat the slide,” she cried.
The miniature avalanche cracked and roared, and rattled itself into an
inert mass at the base of the incline. Yellow dust like the gloom of
the cave, but not so changeless, drifted away on the wind; the roar
clapped in echo from the cliff, returned, went back, and came again to
die in the hollowness. Down on the sunny terrace there was a different
atmosphere. Ring and Whitie leaped around Bess. Once more she was
smiling, gay, and thoughtless, with the dream-mood in the shadow of her
eyes.
“Bess, I haven’t seen that since last summer. Look!” said Venters,
pointing to the scalloped edge of rolling purple clouds that peeped
over the western wall. “We’re in for a storm.”
“Oh, I hope not. I’m afraid of storms.”
“Are you? Why?”
“Have you ever been down in one of these walled-up pockets in a bad
storm?”
“No, now I think of it, I haven’t.”
“Well, it’s terrible. Every summer I get scared to death and hide
somewhere in the dark. Storms up on the sage are bad, but nothing to
what they are down here in the cañons. And in this little valley—why,
echoes can rap back and forth so quick they’ll split our ears.”
“We’re perfectly safe here, Bess.”
“I know. But that hasn’t anything to do with it. The truth is I’m
afraid of lightning and thunder, and thunder-claps hurt my head. If we
have a bad storm, will you stay close to me?”
“Yes.”
When they got back to camp the afternoon was closing, and it was
exceedingly sultry. Not a breath of air stirred the aspen leaves, and
when these did not quiver the air was indeed still. The dark-purple
clouds moved almost imperceptibly out of the west.
“What have we for supper?” asked Bess.
“Rabbit.”
“Bern, can’t you think of another new way to cook rabbit?” went on
Bess, with earnestness.
“What do you think I am—a magician?” retorted Venters.
“I wouldn’t dare tell you. But, Bern, do you want me to turn into a
rabbit?”
There was a dark-blue, merry flashing of eyes and a parting of lips;
then she laughed. In that moment she was naive and wholesome.
“Rabbit seems to agree with you,” replied Venters. “You are well and
strong—and growing very pretty.”
Anything in the nature of compliment he had never before said to her,
and just now he responded to a sudden curiosity to see its effect. Bess
stared as if she had not heard aright, slowly blushed, and completely
lost her poise in happy confusion.
“I’d better go right away,” he continued, “and fetch supplies from
Cottonwoods.”
A startlingly swift change in the nature of her agitation made him
reproach himself for his abruptness.
“No, no, don’t go!” she said. “I didn’t mean—that about the rabbit. I—I
was only trying to be—funny. Don’t leave me all alone!”
“Bess, I must go sometime.”
“Wait then. Wait till after the storms.”
The purple cloud-bank darkened the lower edge of the setting sun, crept
up and up, obscuring its fiery red heart, and finally passed over the
last ruddy crescent of its upper rim.
The intense dead silence awakened to a long, low, rumbling roll of
thunder.
“Oh!” cried Bess, nervously.
“We’ve had big black clouds before this without rain,” said Venters.
“But there’s no doubt about that thunder. The storms are coming. I’m
glad. Every rider on the sage will hear that thunder with glad ears.”
Venters and Bess finished their simple meal and the few tasks around
the camp, then faced the open terrace, the valley, and the west, to
watch and await the approaching storm.
[Illustration: Venters and Bess finished their simple meal—then faced
the open terrace, to watch and await the approaching storm.]
It required keen vision to see any movement whatever in the purple
clouds. By infinitesimal degrees the dark cloud-line merged upward into
the golden-red haze of the afterglow of sunset. A shadow lengthened
from under the western wall across the valley. As straight and rigid as
steel rose the delicate spear-pointed silver spruces; the aspen leaves,
by nature pendant and quivering, hung limp and heavy; no slender blade
of grass moved. A gentle splashing of water came from the ravine. Then
again from out of the west sounded the low, dull, and rumbling roll of
thunder.
A wave, a ripple of light, a trembling and turning of the aspen leaves,
like the approach of a breeze on the water, crossed the valley from the
west; and the lull and the deadly stillness and the sultry air passed
away on a cool wind.
The night bird of the cañon, with clear and melancholy notes announced
the twilight. And from all along the cliffs rose the faint murmur and
moan and mourn of the wind singing in the caves. The bank of clouds now
swept hugely out of the western sky. Its front was purple and black,
with gray between, a bulging, mushrooming, vast thing instinct with
storm. It had a dark, angry, threatening aspect. As if all the power of
the winds were pushing and piling behind, it rolled ponderously across
the sky. A red flare burned out instantaneously, flashed from the west
to east, and died. Then from the deepest black of the purple cloud
burst a boom. It was like the bowling of a huge boulder along the crags
and ramparts, and seemed to roll on and fall into the valley to bound
and bang and boom from cliff to cliff.
“Oh!” cried Bess, with her hands over her ears. “What did I tell you?”
“Why, Bess, be reasonable!” said Venters.
“I’m a coward.”
“Not quite that, I hope. It’s strange you’re afraid. I love a storm.”
“I tell you a storm down in these cañons is an awful thing. I know
Oldring hated storms. His men were afraid of them. There was one who
went deaf in a bad storm, and never could hear again.”
“Maybe I’ve lots to learn, Bess. I’ll lose my guess if this storm isn’t
bad enough. We’re going to have heavy wind first, then lightning and
thunder, then the rain. Let’s stay out as long as we can.”
The tips of the cottonwoods and the oaks waved to the east, and the
rings of aspens along the terraces twinkled their myriad of bright
faces in fleet and glancing gleam. A low roar rose from the leaves of
the forest, and the spruces swished in the rising wind. It came in
gusts, with light breezes between. As it increased in strength the
lulls shortened in length till there was a strong and steady blow all
the time, and violent puffs at intervals, and sudden whirling currents.
The clouds spread over the valley, rolling swiftly and low, and
twilight faded into a sweeping darkness. Then the singing of the wind
in the caves drowned the swift roar of rustling leaves; then the song
swelled to a mourning, moaning wail; then with the gathering power of
the wind the wail changed to a shriek. Steadily the wind strengthened
and constantly the strange sound changed.
The last bit of blue sky yielded to the on-sweep of clouds. Like angry
surf the pale gleams of gray, amid the purple of that scudding front,
swept beyond the eastern rampart of the valley. The purple deepened to
black. Broad sheets of lightning flared over the western wall. There
were not yet any ropes or zigzag streaks darting down through the
gathering darkness. The storm center was still beyond Surprise Valley.
“Listen!... Listen!” cried Bess, with her lips close to Venters’s ear.
“You’ll hear Oldring’s knell!”
“What’s that?”
“Oldring’s knell. When the wind blows a gale in the caves it makes what
the rustlers call Oldring’s knell. They believe it bodes his death. I
think he believes so, too. It’s not like any sound on earth.... It’s
beginning. Listen!”
The gale swooped down with a hollow unearthly howl. It yelled and
pealed and shrilled and shrieked. It was made up of a thousand piercing
cries. It was a rising and a moving sound. Beginning at the western
break of the valley, it rushed along each gigantic cliff, whistling
into the caves and cracks, to mount in power, to bellow a blast through
the great stone bridge. Gone, as into an engulfing roar of surging
waters, it seemed to shoot back and begin all over again.
It was only wind, thought Venters. Here sped and shrieked the sculptor
that carved out the wonderful caves in the cliffs. It was only a gale,
but as Venters listened, as his ears became accustomed to the fury and
strife, out of it all or through it or above it pealed low and
perfectly clear and persistently uniform a strange sound that had no
counterpart in all the sounds of the elements. It was not of earth or
of life. It was the grief and agony of the gale. A knell of all upon
which it blew!
Black night enfolded the valley. Venters could not see his companion,
and knew of her presence only through the tightening hold of her hand
on his arm. He felt the dogs huddle closer to him. Suddenly the dense,
black vault overhead split asunder to a blue-white, dazzling streak of
lightning. The whole valley lay vividly clear and luminously bright in
his sight. Upreared, vast and magnificent, the stone bridge glimmered
like some grand god of storm in the lightning’s fire. Then all flashed
black again—blacker than pitch—a thick, impenetrable coal-blackness.
And there came a ripping, crashing report. Instantly an echo resounded
with clapping crash. The initial report was nothing to the echo. It was
a terrible, living, reverberating, detonating crash. The wall threw the
sound across, and could have made no greater roar if it had slipped in
avalanche. From cliff to cliff the echo went in crashing retort and
banged in lessening power, and boomed in thinner volume, and clapped
weaker and weaker till a final clap could not reach across the waiting
cliff.
In the pitchy darkness Venters led Bess, and, groping his way, by feel
of hand found the entrance to her cave and lifted her up. On the
instant a blinding flash of lightning illumined the cave and all about
him. He saw Bess’s face white now with dark, frightened eyes. He saw
the dogs leap up, and he followed suit. The golden glare vanished; all
was black; then came the splitting crack and the infernal din of
echoes.
Bess shrank closer to him and closer, found his hands, and pressed them
tightly over her ears, and dropped her face upon his shoulder, and hid
her eyes.
Then the storm burst with a succession of ropes and streaks and shafts
of lightning, playing continuously, filling the valley with a broken
radiance; and the cracking shots followed each other swiftly till the
echoes blended in one fearful, deafening crash.
Venters looked out upon the beautiful valley—beautiful now as never
before—mystic in its transparent, luminous gloom, weird in the
quivering, golden haze of lightning. The dark spruces were tipped with
glimmering lights; the aspens bent low in the winds, as waves in a
tempest at sea; the forest of oaks tossed wildly and shone with gleams
of fire. Across the valley the huge cavern of the cliff-dwellers yawned
in the glare, every little black window as clear as at noonday; but the
night and the storm added to their tragedy. Flung arching to the black
clouds, the great stone bridge seemed to bear the brunt of the storm.
It caught the full fury of the rushing wind. It lifted its noble crown
to meet the lightnings. Venters thought of the eagles and their lofty
nest in a niche under the arch. A driving pall of rain, black as the
clouds, came sweeping on to obscure the bridge and the gleaming walls
and the shining valley. The lightning played incessantly, streaking
down through opaque darkness of rain. The roar of the wind, with its
strange knell and the re-crashing echoes, mingled with the roar of the
flooding rain, and all seemingly were deadened and drowned in a world
of sound.
In the dimming pale light Venters looked down upon the girl. She had
sunk into his arms, upon his breast, burying her face. She clung to
him. He felt the softness of her, and the warmth, and the quick heave
of her breast. He saw the dark, slender, graceful outline of her form.
A woman lay in his arms! And he held her closer. He who had been alone
in the sad, silent watches of the night was not now and never must be
again alone. He who had yearned for the touch of a hand felt the long
tremble and the heart-beat of a woman. By what strange chance had she
come to love him! By what change—by what marvel had she grown into a
treasure!
No more did he listen to the rush and roar of the thunder-storm. For
with the touch of clinging hands and the throbbing bosom he grew
conscious of an inward storm—the tingling of new chords of thought,
strange music of unheard, joyous bells, sad dreams dawning to wakeful
delight, dissolving doubt, resurging hope, force, fire, and freedom,
unutterable sweetness of desire. A storm in his breast—a storm of real
love.