“The boys got together night before last,” continued McLean, “and after
holdin' a unanimous meetin', we visited her and spoke to her about goin'
back to her home. She was slow in corrallin' our idea on account of her
bein' no English scholar. But when she did, after three of us takin'
their turn at puttin' the proposition to her, she would not accept
any of our dust. And though she started to thank us the handsomest she
knowed how, it seemed to grieve her, for she cried. So we thought we'd
better get out. She's tried to tell us the name of her home, but yu'
can't pronounce such outlandishness.”
As we went down the mountains, we talked of other things, but always
came back to this; and we were turning it over still when the sun had
departed from the narrow cleft that we were following, and shone only
on the distant grassy tops which rose round us into an upper world of
light.
“We'll all soon have to move out of this camp, anyway,” said McLean,
unstrapping his coat from his saddle and drawing it on. “It gets chill
now in the afternoons. D' yu' see the quakin'-asps all turned yello',
and the leaves keeps fallin' without no wind to blow 'em down? We're
liable to get snowed in on short notice in this mountain country. If the
water goes to freeze on us we'll have to quit workin'. There's camp.”
We had rounded a corner, and once more sighted the cabin. I suppose it
may have been still half a mile away, upon the further side of a ravine
into which our little valley opened. But field-glasses were not needed
now to make out the cabin clearly, windows and door. Smoke rose from it;
for supper-time was nearing, and we stopped to survey the scene. As we
were looking, another hunter joined us, coming from the deep woods to
the edge of the pines where we were standing. This was Honey Wiggin. He
had killed a deer, and he surmised that all the boys would be back soon.
Others had met luck besides himself; he had left one dressing an elk
over the next ridge. Nobody seemed to have got in yet, from appearances.
Didn't the camp look lonesome?
“There's somebody, though,” said McLean.
The Virginian took the glasses. “I reckon--yes, that's Hank. The cold
has woke him up, and he's comin' in out o' the brush.”
Each of us took the glasses in turn; and I watched the figure go up the
hill to the door of the cabin. It seemed to pause and diverge to the
window. At the window it stood still, head bent, looking in. Then it
returned quickly to the door. It was too far to discern, even through
the glasses, what the figure was doing. Whether the door was locked,
whether he was knocking or fumbling with a key, or whether he spoke
through the door to the person within--I cannot tell what it was that
came through the glasses straight to my nerves, so that I jumped at a
sudden sound; and it was only the distant shrill call of an elk. I was
handing the glasses to the Virginian for him to see when the figure
opened the door and disappeared in the dark interior. As I watched the
square of darkness which the door's opening made, something seemed to
happen there--or else it was a spark, a flash, in my own straining eyes.
But at that same instant the Virginian dashed forward upon his horse,
leaving the glasses in my hand. And with the contagion of his act the
rest of us followed him, leaving the pack animals to follow us as they
should choose.
“Look!” cried McLean. “He's not shot her.”
I saw the tall figure of a woman rush out of the door and pass quickly
round the house.
“He's missed her!” cried McLean, again. “She's savin' herself.”
But the man's figure did not appear in pursuit. Instead of this,
the woman returned as quickly as she had gone, and entered the dark
interior.
“She had something,” said Wiggin. “What would that be?”
“Maybe it's all right, after all,” said McLean. “She went out to get
wood.”
The rough steepness of our trail had brought us down to a walk, and
as we continued to press forward at this pace as fast as we could, we
compared a few notes. McLean did not think he saw any flash. Wiggin
thought that he had heard a sound, but it was at the moment when the
Virginian's horse had noisily started away.
Our trail had now taken us down where we could no longer look across and
see the cabin. And the half-mile proved a long one over this ground. At
length we reached and crossed the rocky ford, overtaking the Virginian
there.
“These hawsses,” said he, “are played out. We'll climb up to camp afoot.
And just keep behind me for the present.”
We obeyed our natural leader, and made ready for whatever we might be
going into. We passed up the steep bank and came again in sight of the
door. It was still wide open. We stood, and felt a sort of silence which
the approach of two new-comers could not break. They joined us. They
had been coming home from hunting, and had plainly heard a shot here.
We stood for a moment more after learning this, and then one of the
men called out the names of Hank and Willomene. Again we--or I at
least--felt that same silence, which to my disturbed imagination seemed
to be rising round us as mists rise from water.
“There's nobody in there,” stated the Virginian. “Nobody that's alive,”
he added. And he crossed the cabin and walked into the door.
Though he made no gesture, I saw astonishment pass through his body, as
he stopped still; and all of us came after him. There hung the crucifix,
with a round hole through the middle of it. One of the men went to it
and took it down; and behind it, sunk in the log, was the bullet. The
cabin was but a single room, and every object that it contained could be
seen at a glance; nor was there hiding-room for anything. On the floor
lay the axe from the wood-pile; but I will not tell of its appearance.
So he had shot her crucifix, her Rock of Ages, the thing which enabled
her to bear her life, and that lifted her above life; and she--but there
was the axe to show what she had done then. Was this cabin really empty?
I looked more slowly about, half dreading to find that I had overlooked
something. But it was as the Virginian had said; nobody was there.
As we were wondering, there was a noise above our heads, and I was not
the only one who started and stared. It was the parrot; and we stood
away in a circle, looking up at his cage. Crouching flat on the floor of
the cage, his wings huddled tight to his body, he was swinging his head
from side to side; and when he saw that we watched him, he began a low
croaking and monotonous utterance, which never changed, but remained
rapid and continuous. I heard McLean whisper to the Virginian, “You bet
he knows.”
The Virginian stepped to the door, and then he bent to the gravel
and beckoned us to come and see. Among the recent footprints at the
threshold the man's boot-heel was plain, as well as the woman's broad
tread. But while the man's steps led into the cabin, they did not lead
away from it. We tracked his course just as we had seen it through the
glasses: up the hill from the brush to the window, and then to the door.
But he had never walked out again. Yet in the cabin he was not; we tore
up the half-floor that it had. There was no use to dig in the earth. And
all the while that we were at this search the parrot remained crouched
in the bottom of his cage, his black eye fixed upon our movements.
“She has carried him,” said the Virginian. “We must follow up
Willomene.”
The latest heavy set of footprints led us from the door along the ditch,
where they sank deep in the softer soil; then they turned off sharply
into the mountains.
“This is the cut-off trail,” said McLean to me. “The same he brought her
in by.”
The tracks were very clear, and evidently had been made by a person
moving slowly. Whatever theories our various minds were now shaping, no
one spoke a word to his neighbor, but we went along with a hush over us.
After some walking, Wiggin suddenly stopped and pointed.
We had come to the edge of the timber, where a narrow black canyon
began, and ahead of us the trail drew near a slanting ledge, where the
footing was of small loose stones. I recognized the odor, the volcanic
whiff, that so often prowls and meets one in the lonely woods of that
region, but at first I failed to make out what had set us all running.
“Is he looking down into the hole himself?” some one asked; and then
I did see a figure, the figure I had looked at through the glasses,
leaning strangely over the edge of Pitchstone Canyon, as if indeed he
was peering to watch what might be in the bottom.
We came near. But those eyes were sightless, and in the skull the story
of the axe was carved. By a piece of his clothing he was hooked in the
twisted roots of a dead tree, and hung there at the extreme verge. I
went to look over, and Lin McLean caught me as I staggered at the sight
I saw. He would have lost his own foothold in saving me had not one of
the others held him from above.
She was there below; Hank's woman, brought from Austria to the New
World. The vision of that brown bundle lying in the water will never
leave me, I think. She had carried the body to this point; but had she
intended this end? Or was some part of it an accident? Had she meant to
take him with her? Had she meant to stay behind herself? No word came
from these dead to answer us. But as we stood speaking there, a giant
puff of breath rose up to us between the black walls.
“There's that fluffy sigh I told yu' about,” said the Virginian.
“He's talkin' to her! I tell yu' he's talkin' to her!” burst out McLean,
suddenly, in such a voice that we stared as he pointed at the man in the
tree. “See him lean over! He's sayin', 'I have yu' beat after all.'” And
McLean fell to whimpering.
Wiggin took the boy's arm kindly and walked him along the trail. He did
not seem twenty yet. Life had not shown this side of itself to him so
plainly before.
“Let's get out of here,” said the Virginian.
It seemed one more pitiful straw that the lonely bundle should be
left in such a vault of doom, with no last touches of care from its
fellow-beings, and no heap of kind earth to hide it. But whether the
place is deadly or not, man dares not venture into it. So they took Hank
from the tree that night, and early next morning they buried him near
camp on the top of a little mound.
But the thought of Willomene lying in Pitchstone Canyon had kept sleep
from me through that whole night, nor did I wish to attend Hank's
burial. I rose very early, while the sunshine had still a long way to
come down to us from the mountain-tops, and I walked back along the
cut-off trail. I was moved to look once more upon that frightful place.
And as I came to the edge of the timber, there was the Virginian. He did
not expect any one. He had set up the crucifix as near the dead tree as
it could be firmly planted.
“It belongs to her, anyway,” he explained.
Some lines of verse came into my memory, and with a change or two I
wrote them as deep as I could with my pencil upon a small board that he
smoothed for me.
“Call for the robin redbreast and the wren, Since o'er shady groves they
hover, And with flowers and leaves do cover The friendless bodies of
unburied men. Call to this funeral dole The ant, the field-mouse, and
the mole To rear her hillocks that shall keep her warm.
“That kind o' quaint language reminds me of a play I seen onced in Saynt
Paul,” said the Virginian. “About young Prince Henry.”