CLEAVING ONLY UNTO HER.
She made no great outcry. I saw her bend her face forward into her
hands.
"What shall we do?" she asked at length.
"I do not know," said I to her soberly; "but since there is water here
and a little shelter, it is my belief that we ought to stop here for the
night."
She looked out across the gray monotony that surrounded us, toward the
horizon now grown implacable and ominous. Her eyes were wide, and
evidently she was pondering matters in her mind. At last she turned to
me and held out her hands for me to assist her in dismounting.
"John Cowles, _of Virginia_," she said, "I am sorry we are lost."
I could make no answer, save to vow silently that if I lived she must be
returned safely to her home, unhurt body and soul. I dared not ponder on
conventions in a case so desperate as I knew ours yet might be. Silently
I unsaddled the horse and hobbled it securely as I might with the bridle
rein. Then I spread the saddle blanket for her to sit upon, and hurried
about for Plains fuel. Water we drank from my hat, and were somewhat
refreshed. Now we had food and water. We needed fire. But this, when I
came to fumble in my pockets, seemed at first impossible, for I found
not a match.
"I was afraid of that," she said, catching the meaning of my look. "What
shall we do? We shall starve!"
"Not in the least," said I, stoutly. "We are good Indians enough to make
a fire, I hope."
In my sheath was a heavy hunting knife; and now, searching about us on
the side of the coulee bank, I found several flints, hard and white.
Then I tore out a bit of my coat lining and moistened it a trifle, and
saturated it with powder from my flask, rubbed in until it all was dry.
This niter-soaked fabric I thought might serve as tinder for the spark.
So then I struck flint and steel, and got the strange spark, hidden in
the cold stone ages and ages there on the Plains; and presently the
spark was a little flame, and then a good fire, and so we were more
comfortable.
We roasted meat now, flat on the coals, the best we might, and so we
ate, with no salt to aid us. The girl became a trifle more cheerful,
though still distant and quiet. If I rose to leave the fire for an
instant, I saw her eyes following me all the time. I knew her fears,
though she did not complain.
Man is the most needful of all the animals, albeit the most resourceful.
We needed shelter, and we had none. Night came on. The great gray
wolves, haunters of the buffalo herds, roared their wild salute to us,
savage enough to strike terror to any woman's soul. The girl edged close
to me as the dark came down. We spoke but little. Our dangers had not
yet made us other than conventional.
Now, worst of all, the dark bank of cloud arose and blotted out all the
map of the stars. The sun scarce had sunk before a cold breath, silent,
with no motion in its coming, swept across or settled down upon the
Plains. The little grasses no longer stirred in the wind. The
temperature mysteriously fell more and more, until it was cold, very
cold. And those pale, heatless flames, icy as serpent tongues played
along the darkening heavens, and mocked at us who craved warmth and
shelter. I felt my own body shiver. She looked at me startled.
"You are cold," said she.
"No," I answered, "only angry because I am so weak." We sat silent for
very long intervals. At length she raised her hand and pointed.
Even as dusk sank upon us, all the lower sky went black. An advancing
roar came upon our ears. And then a blinding wave of rain drove across
the surface of the earth, wiping out the day, beating down with
remorseless strength and volume as though it would smother and drown us
twain in its deluge--us, the last two human creatures of the world!
It caught us, that wave of damp and darkness, and rolled over us and
crushed us down as we cowered. I caught up the blanket from the ground
and pulled it around the girl's shoulders. I drew her tight to me as I
lay with my own back to the storm, and pulled the saddle over her head,
with this and my own body keeping out the tempest from her as much as I
could. There was no other fence for her, and but for this she might
perhaps have died; I do not know. I felt her strain at my arms first,
then settle back and sink her head under the saddle flap and cower close
like some little schoolfellow, all the curves of her body craving
shelter, comfort, warmth. She shivered terribly. I heard her gasp and
sob. Ah, how I pitied her that hour!
[Illustration: COLONEL MERIWEATHER EXPRESSES HIS THANKS FOR THE RESCUE
OF HIS DAUGHTER]
[Illustration: ORME TESTIFIES THAT HE HEARD JOHN AND THE COLONEL
QUARRELING]
Our fire was gone at the first sweep of the storm, which raged
thunderously by, with heavy feet, over the echoing floor of the world.
There came other fires, such blazes and explosions of pale balls of
electricity as I had never dreamed might be, with these detonations of
pent-up elemental wrath such as I never conceived might have existence
under any sky. Night, death, storm, the strength of the elements, all
the primeval factors of the world and life were upon us, testing us,
seeking to destroy us, beating upon us, freezing, choking, blinding us,
leaving us scarce animate.
Yet not destroying us. Still, somewhere under the huddle and draggle of
it all burned on the human soul. The steel in my belt was cold, but it
had held its fire. The ice in the flints about us held fire also in its
depths. Fire was in our bodies, the fire of life--indomitable,
yearning--in our two bodies. So that which made the storm test us and
try us and seek to slay us, must perhaps have smiled grimly as it howled
on and at length disappeared, baffled by the final success of the
immutable and imperishable scheme. The fire in our two bodies still was
there.
As the rain lessened, and the cold increased, I knew that rigors would
soon come upon us. "We must walk," I said. "You shiver, you freeze."
"You tremble," she said. "You are cold. You are very cold."
"Walk, or we die," I gasped; and so I led her at last lower down the
side of the ravine, where the wind was not so strong.
"We must run," I said, "or we shall die." I staggered as I ran. With all
my soul I challenged my weakness, summoning to my aid that reserve of
strength I had always known each hour in my life. Strangely I felt--how
I cannot explain--that she must be saved, that she was I. Strange
phrases ran through my brain. I remembered only one, "Cleaving only
unto her"; and this, in my weakened frame of body and mind, I could not
separate from my stern prayer to my own strength, once so ready, now so
strangely departed from me.
We ran as we might, back and forward on the slippery mud, scrambled up
and down, panting, until at length our hearts began to beat more
quickly, and the love of life came back strongly, and the unknown,
mysterious fire deep down somewhere, inscrutable, elemental, began to
flicker up once more, and we were saved--saved, we two savages, we two
primitive human beings, the only ones left alive after the deluge which
had flooded all the earth--left alive to begin the world all over again.