Judith of the Plains

by Marie Manning

  XI

  The Cabin In The Valley

  And Judith, taken unawares by the unexpected turn of things, comforted asa lost child that is found, told all her feeling for him in the way shecalled his name. The easy tenderness of the man awoke; his senses swayedto the magic of her voice, the mystery of the night, the shadow world inwhich they two, 'twixt earth and sky, were alone. They rode withoutspeaking. Peter's hand sought hers, and all her woman's terror of thedesolation, her fear of the vague terrors of the dreadful night, spoke inher answering pressure. It was as if the desert had given them to eachother as they groped through the silent darkness. In the great company ofearth, sky, silence, and this great-hearted woman, Peter grew conscious ofa real thrill. There were depths to life--vast, still depths; this woman'sunselfish love for him made him realize them. He felt his soul sweepingout on the great tide of things. Farther and farther it swept; his patronsaint, caution, beckoning frantically from the receding shore, was milesbehind. "Judith!" he said, and he scarce recognized his own voice."Judith!" he struggled as a swimmer in a drowning clutch. Then his patronsaint threw him a life-line and he saved the situation.

  "Judith!" he said, a third time, and now he knew his voice. It was thevoice of the man who tilted at life picturesquely in a broad-brimmed hat,who loved his darling griefs and fitted them as a Rembrandt fits itsbackground. And still, in the same voice, the voice he knew, he said: "Ifeel as if we had died and our souls were meeting. You know Aldrich'sexquisite lines:

  "Somewhere in desolate, wind-swept space, In twilight land--no man's land-- Two hurrying shapes met face to face And bade each other stand.

  "'And who are you?' cried one, agape, Shuddering in the gloaming light. I know not,' said the other shape, 'I only died last night.'"

  "'I only died last night!'" she repeated the line, slowly, significantly.In her questioning she forgot the night, the desolation, the presence ofthe man. Had she died last night? Had youth, the joy of living, herinfinite capacity for love, had they died when Peter, with the ugly hasteof the man without a nice sense of the time that should elapse between theold and the new love, had spurred away cheerfully at the beck of anotherwoman? And now the desert, this earth-mother as she called it, in theIndian way, had given him back to her, thrown them together as driftwoodin the still ocean of space. She drew a long breath, the breath of onewaking from an anguished dream. A wild, unreasoning gladness woke in herheart, the joy of living swept her back again to life. She had not diedlast night, she was riding through the wilderness with Peter.

  "Look!" she whispered. The sky had lost its forbidding blackness. Thesharp notches of the mountains, faintly outlined in white, undulatedthrough an eternity of space. Venus hung in the west, burning softly as ashaded lamp. The trail they climbed seemed to end in her pale yellowlight.

  Peter had saved the situation, but the wild beauty of the night stirred inhim that gift of silvery speech that was ever his tribute to the sex,rather than the woman. He bent towards Judith. A loosened strand of herhair blew across his cheek. The breakneck ride to Kitty was already themadness of a dead and gone incarnation. He pointed to the pale star, andtold her it was the omen of their destiny; the formless blackness throughwhich they had groped was the way of life, but for such as were notcondemned to eternal darkness Venus held high her lamp and they scaled theheights.

  And Judith, listening, found her heart a battle-field of love and hate."Were women dogs, that men should play with them in idle moods, caressthem, and fling them out for other toys?" she demanded of herself, evenwhile the tones of his voice melted her innermost being to thankfulnessfor this hour that he was wholly hers.

  Gayly, with ready turns of speech and snatches of song, trolled in hismusical barytone, Peter rode through the night, even as he rode throughlife, a Sir Knight of the Joyous Heart, unbrushed by the wing of sorrow,loving his pale griefs for the values they gave the picture. And Judithunderstood by reason of that exquisite perception that was hers in allmatters pertaining to him, and, knowing, only loved the more.

  Down the valley came the sharp yelp of a coyote, and in a moment thetowering crags had taken it up, the echo repeating it and giving it backto the valley, where the coyote barked again at the shadow of his voice.The night was full of the eerie laughter. Peter put a restraining hand onDolly's bridle, and, waiting for the coyote to stop, called Judith's name,and all the mountains made music of it. The echo sang the old Hebrew nameas if it had been a psalm. Peter's voice gave it to the mountainsjoyously, but the mountains gave it back in the minor. And Judith wasreminded of the soft, singing syllables that her mother, in the Indianway, had made of her daughter's Indian name. The remembrance tugged at herheart. In her joy at seeing Peter she had forgotten that the errand thathad brought her was an errand of life and death--life and death for herbrother!

  But Peter's ready enthusiasms pressed him hard. Surely love-making was thebusiness of such a night. "Ah, Judith, goddess of the heights, if I couldsing your name like the mountains, would you love me a little?"

  For his pains he had a flash of white teeth in a smile that recalled hisfirst acquaintance with Kitty, the sort of smile one would give to a "niceboy" when his manoeuvres were a trifle obvious. "Not if you sang my nameas the chorus of all the Himalayas and the Rockies and Andes, and with thefire of all their volcanoes and the beauty of their snows and the strengthof all their hills, for it's not my way to love a little!"

  He bent towards her; to brush her cheek lightly as they rode was but toimply his appreciation of the scene as a bit of chiaroscuro, the panoramaof the desert night, eternal romance typified by the man and woman scalingthe heights, the goddess of love lighting them on their way by her flamingtorch. But Judith, who said little because she felt much, was in no moodto brook such dalliance, and, urging the mare sharply, she cantered downthe divide at peril of life and limb. Peter, cursing the heavy-footedbeast he rode, came stumbling after.

  Judith rode wildly through the night, leaving Peter laps behind, tobeseech, to prophesy dire happening if she should slip, and to scrambleafter, as best he might, on the heavy-footed beast he repudiated, with allhis ancestors, as oxen, to the fourth generation. But the woman kept herpace. She had stern questions to put to herself, and they were likely tohave truer answers if Peter were elsewhere than riding beside her. Whitherwas he going? They had met casually on a trail known to few honest men. Itled over a spur of the Wind River to a sort of no man's land, thehiding-place of horse and cattle thieves. She had gone to warn herbrother. Could he be going there--She could not bring herself to finish.

  Her heart was divided against itself. Within it were fought again the redand the white man's battles, bitterly, and to the finish. And now thewhite man, with his open warfare, won, and all her love rose up andscourged her little faith. She would wait on the trail for Peter, penitentand ashamed. And while she waited suspicions bred of her Indian bloodstirred distrustfully, and she told herself that her mother's daughtermade a worthy champion of the ways of white men. Did Hamilton hunt herbrother gallowsward, making merry with her the meantime? He had not evenbeen courteously concerned as to where she was going when they met on thedivide. They had met and ridden together as casually as if it had been themost natural thing for them both to be taking the horse-thief trail as asummer evening's ride. And she had not thought to wonder at his possibledestination, when the man from whom she rode in terror through the nightproved to be Peter, because the lesser question of his errand had beenswallowed up in the greater miracle of his presence.

  She was by this time well down the divide. The temperature had risenperceptibly on the down grade. The heat of the plains had already mingledwith the cool hill air; the heights, where Venus kept her love vigil, werealready past. Judith gave Dolly a breathing spell, herself lounging easilymeanwhile. She knew how to take her ease in the saddle as well as anycow-puncher on the range.

  "The Hayoka has dominion over me," she mused, with Indian fatalism. "Aswell resign myself to sor
row with dignity. Hayoka, Hayo--ka!" and she beganto croon softly a hymn of propitiation to the Hayoka, the Sioux god ofcontrariety. According to the legends, he sat naked and fanned himself ina Dakota blizzard and huddled, shivering, over a fire in the heat ofsummer. Likewise the Hayoka cried for joy and laughed for sorrow.

  She remembered how the nuns at Santa Fe had been shocked at her forpraying to Indian gods, and how once she had built a little mound ofstones, which was the Sioux way of making petition, in the shadow of thestatue of the Virgin Mary, and how Sister Angela had scattered the stonesand told her to pray instead to the Blessed Lady. She still prayed to theBlessed Lady every day; but sometimes, too, she reared little mounds ofstones in the desert when she was very sad and the kinship between her andthe dead gods of her mother's people seemed the closer for their commonsorrow.

  Peter, coming up with a much-blown horse, found her still chanting theIndian song.

  "Sing him a verse for me, Judith. Heaven knows I need something tostraighten out my infernal luck. Tell the Hayoka that I'm a good fellowand need only half a chance. Tell him to prosper my present venture."

  She had begun to chant the invocation, then stopped suddenly. "I must not;you know I am a Catholic." Suspicion that had been scotched, not killed,raised its head. "What was his present venture?" Her eye had not changedin expression, nor a tone of her voice, but in her heart was a sickeningdistrust for all things.

  A belated moon had come up. The level plain, on which their horses threwgrotesque, elongated shadows, was flooded with honey-colored light. Eachstraggling clump of sage-brush, whitening bone and bowlder, gleamedmysterious, ghostly in the radiant flood-tide. They seemed to be ridingthrough a world that had no kinship with that black, formless void throughwhich they had groped but yet a little while. Then darkness had been uponthe face of the deep. Now there was a miracle of light such as only thedesert, in its desolation, knows. To Judith, with a soul attuned to everypassing expression of nature, there was significance in this transitionfrom darkness to light. The sudden radiance was emblematic of her belatedperception, coming as it did after a blindness so dense as to appearalmost wilful. Her mind was busy with a multitude of schemes. Fool thoughshe had been, she would not be the instrument of her brother's undoing.

  "I've come too far," she cried, in sudden dismay. "I should have stoppedat the foot of the divide. I've never been over the trail before."

  "You foolish child, why should you stop in the middle of the wilderness?"

  She wheeled the mare about and faced him, a figure of graven resolution.

  "I promised to meet Tom Lorimer there--now you know."

  With which she cracked Dolly sharply with her heel and began to retraceher way over the trail. Peter turned his horse and followed, with thefeeling of utter helplessness that a man has when confronted with thegranite obstinacy of women. Judith had meanwhile expected that theannouncement of her mythical appointment with Tom Lorimer would bereceived differently. Tom Lorimer's reputation was of the worst. AnEastern man formerly, an absconder from justice, rumor was busy with talesof ungodly merrymaking that went on at his ranch, where no woman wentexcept painted wisps from the dance-halls. But Peter was too loyal afriend, despite his shortcomings as a lover, to see in Judith's statementanything more than a sisterly devotion so deeply unselfish that it failedto take into account the danger to which she subjected herself.

  However, it was plainly his duty to prevent an unprotected rendezvous withLorimer, to reason, to plead, and, if he should fail to bring her to areasonable frame of mind, to go with her, come what would of the result.There were reasons innumerable why he, a cattle-man, should avoid theappearance of dealing with the sheep faction, he reflected, grimly.Lorimer owned sheep, many thousand head. His herds had been allowed tograze unmolested, while smaller owners, like Jim Rodney, had been crowdedout because his influence, politically, was a thing to be reckoned with.So Peter followed Judith, pleading Judith's cause; she did not understand,he told her, what she was doing; and while perhaps there was not anotherman in the country who would not honor her unselfishness in coming to him,Lorimer's chivalry was not a thing to be reckoned with, drunken beast thathe was. And Judith, worn with the struggle, tried beyond measure, madereckless by the daily infusion of ill-fortune, pulled up the mare andlaughed unpleasantly.

  "You think I'm going to see Lorimer about Jim? I'm going with him to amerrymaking. We're old pals, Lorimer and I."

  "Judith, dear, has it come to this, that you not only distrust an oldfriend, but that you try to degrade yourself to hide from him the factthat you are going to your brother's? You've never spoken to Lorimer. Iheard him say, not a week ago, that he had never succeeded in making yourecognize him. You deceived me at first when you spoke of meeting him--Ithought you had a message from Jim--but this talk of merrymaking is beneathyou." He shrugged his shoulders in disgust. He felt the torrent of griefthat rent her. No sob escaped her lips; there was no convulsive movementof shoulder. She rode beside him, still as the desert before thesand-storm breaks, her soul seared with white-hot iron that knows nosaving grace of sob or tear. She rode as Boadicea might have ridden tobattle; there was not a yielding line in her body. But over and over inher woman's heart there rang the cry: "I am so tired! If the long nightwould but come!"

  Peter drew out his watch. "It's a quarter to eleven. We'll have a hard bitof riding to reach Blind Creek before midnight."

  Then he knew as well as she, perhaps better, the route to Jim'shiding-place; she had never been there as yet. And if Peter knew,doubtless every cattle-man in the country knew. What a fool she had beenwith her talk of meeting Tom Lorimer! A sense of utter defeat seemed toparalyze her energies. She felt like a trapped thing that after eludingits pursuers again and again finds that it has been but running about acorral. Physical weariness was telling on her. She had been in the saddlesince a little past noon and it was now not far from midnight. And stillthere was the unanswered question of Peter's errand. It was long sinceeither had broken the silence. A delicious coolness had crept into the airwith the approach of midnight. Judith, breathing deep draughts of it,reminded herself of the stoicism that was hers by birthright.

  "Peter"--her voice lost some of its old ring, but it had a deepernote--"Peter, we make strange comrades, you and I, in a stranger world. Wemeet on Horse-Thief Trail, and there is reason to suppose that our errandsare inimical. You've pierced all my little pretences; you know that I amgoing to my brother, who is an outlaw--my brother, the rope for whosehanging is already cut. And yet we have been friends these many years, andwe meet in this world of desolation and weigh each other's words, andthere is no trust in our hearts. Our little faith is more pitiful than thecruel errands that bring us. I take it you, too, are going to mybrother's?"

  "I'm going there to see that you arrive safe and sound, but I had nointention of going when I left camp. You've brought me a good twenty milesout of my way, not to mention accusing me of ulterior motives. Now, aren'tyou penitent?" He smiled at her, boyish and irresistible. To Judith it wasmore reassuring than an oath. "It's like dogs fighting over a picked bone;the meat's all gone. The range is overworked; it needs a good, long rest."He turned towards Judith, speaking slowly. "What you have said is true.We're friends before we're partisans of either faction. I'm on my way to around-up. There's been an unexpected order to fill a beef contract--athousand steers. We're going to furnish five hundred, the XXX two hundredand fifty, and the "Circle-Star" two hundred and fifty. Men have beenscouring the enemy's country for days rounding up stragglers. It will gohard with the rustlers after this round-up, Judith."

  She felt a great wave of penitence and shame sweep over her. She had nottrusted him; in her heart she had nourished hideous suspicions of him, andhe was telling her, quite simply, of the plans of his own faction,trusting her, as, indeed, he might, but as she never expected to betrusted.

  "Peter, do you know that sometimes I think Jim has gone quite mad withthese range troubles. He's acted strangely ever since his sheep weredriven over
the cliff. He's not been home to Alida and the children sincehe has been out of jail, and you know how devoted to them he has alwaysbeen! He spends all his time tracking Simpson. Alida wrote me that sheexpects him to-night, and I'm going there on the chance."

  "It's the devil's own hole for desolation that he's come to." Peter lookedabout the cup-shaped valley that was but a _cul-de-sac_ in the mountains.Its approach was between the high rock walls of a canon. Passing betweenthem, the rise of temperature was almost incredible. The great barrier ofmountain-range, that cut it off from the rest of the world, seemed also tocut it off from light and air. The atmosphere hung lifeless, theoccasional bellow of range-cattle sounded far-off and muffled. Vegetationwas scant, the sage-brush grew close and scrubby, even the brilliantcactus flowers seemed to have abandoned the valley to its fate. A lonegroup of dead cotton-woods grew like sentinels close to the rocky walls.Their twisted branches, gaunt and bare, writhed upward as if in dumbsupplication. There was about them a something that made Judith comecloser to Peter as they passed them by. The night wind sang in theirleafless branches with a long-drawn, shuddering sigh. The despair of abarren, deserted thing seemed to have settled on them.

  "Those frightful trees, how can Alida stand them?" She looked back. "Oh, Iwish they were cut down!"

  Before them was the cabin, its ruined condition pitifully apparent even bynight. It had been deserted ten years before Jim brought his family to it.Rumor said it was haunted. Grim stories were told of the death of a womanwho had come there with a man, and had not lived to go away with him. Theroof of the adjoining stable had fallen in, the bars of the corral weremissing. The house was dark but for a feeble light that glimmered in onewindow, the beacon that had been lighted, night after night, against Jim'scoming. It added a further note of apprehension, peering through the dark,still valley like a wakeful, anxious eye, keeping a long and unrewardedvigil. Judith felt the consummation of the threatening tragedy after herfirst glimpse of the sentinel trees. She could not explain, but her heartcried, even as the wind in them had sung of death. Perhaps her mother'sspirit spoke to her, just as she had said, on that memorable drive, thatthe Great Mystery spoke to his people in the earth, the sky, and thefrowning mountains.

  "Peter"--she had slid from her horse and was clinging to his arm--"when ithappens, Peter, you will have no part in it?"

  "It won't happen, Judith, if I can help it."

  She kissed his hand as it held the loose reins.

  "Lord, I am not worthy!" was the thought in his heart. He sat graven inthe saddle. Sir Knight of the Joyous Heart though he was, the unsoughtkiss of trust gifted him with a self-reverence that would not soon forsakehim.

  Judith was rapping on the door and calling to Alida not to be frightened.And presently it was opened. Peter wanted to leave Judith, now that shewas safely at the end of her journey, but she would not hear of it till hehad eaten.

  "You would have had your comfortable supper five hours ago had you notbeen playing cavalier to me all over the wilderness." And Peter yielded.

  Judith busied herself about the kitchen. Her mood of racking apprehensionhad disappeared. Indian stoicism had again the guiding hand. She wavedPeter from the fire that she was kindling, as if he were a blunderingincompetent. But she let him slice the bacon and grind the coffee as onelets a child help. Alida came in, white-faced and anxious over the longabsence of her husband, but conscientiously hospitable nevertheless. Peternoticed that Judith made a gallant pretence of eating, crumbling her breadand talking the meanwhile. The pale wife, who had little to say at thebest of times, was put to the test to say anything at all. But, withal,their intent was so genuinely hospitable that Peter himself could notspeak with the pity of it. Accustomed as he was to the roughness of thesefrontier cabins, never had he seen a human habitation so desolate as this.The mud plaster had fallen away from between the logs, showing crosssections of the melancholy prospect. An atmosphere of tragedy brooded overthe place. Whether from its long period of emptiness, or from the vaguelyhinted murder of the woman who had died there, or whether it took itscharacter from the prevailing desolation, the cabin in the valley was anunlovely thing. Nor did the cleanliness, the conscientious making the bestof things, soften the woful aspect of the place. Rather was the appeal themore poignant to the seeing eye, as the brave makeshift of theself-respecting poor strikes deeper than the beggar's whine. The house wasbare but for the few things that Alida could take in the wagon in whichthey made their flight. And all through the pinch of poverty and grinningemptiness there was visible the woman-touch, the brave making the best ofnothing, the pitiful preparation for the coming of the man. Wild rosesfrom the creek bloomed against the gnarled and weather-warped logs of thewalls. Sprays of clematis trailed their white bridal beauty from cansrescued from the ashes of a camp-fire. But Alida was a strategist when itcame to adorning her home, and the rusty receptacle was hid beneathtrailing green leaves. There was at the window a muslin curtain that inits starched and ruffled estate was strongly suggestive of a child's frockhastily converted into a window drapery. The curtain was drawn aside thatthe lamp might shed its beam farther on the way of the traveller who camenot. There was but one other light in the place, a bit of candle. Alidaapologized for the poor light by which they must eat, but she did notoffer to take the lamp from the window.

  Peter was no longer Sir Knight of the Joyous Heart as he watched thelittle, white-faced woman, who went so often to the door to look towardsthe road that entered the valley that she was no longer aware of what shedid. He saw her wide eyes full of fear, the bow of the mouth strained tautwith anxiety, her unconscious fear of him as one of the alien faction, andwithal her concern for his comfort. Judith's control was far greater, butthough she hid it skilfully, he knew the sorrow that consumed her.

  There was a cry from the room beyond, and Judith, snatching up the candle,went in to the children. All three of them were sleeping cross-ways in onebed, their small, round arms and legs striking out through the land ofdreams as swimmers breasting the waves. She gave a little cry of delightand appreciation, and called Peter to look. Little Jim, who had cried insome passing fear, sat up sleepily. He stretched out his small arms toPeter, whom he had never seen before. Peter took him, and again he settledto sleep, apparently assured that he was in friendly hands.

  The warm, small body, giving itself with perfect confidence, stronglyaffected Peter's heightened susceptibilities. In the very nature of thesituation he could be no friend to Jim Rodney, yet here in his arms layJim Rodney's son, loving, trusting him instinctively. Judith noticed thathis face paled beneath its many coats of tan. He was afraid of the littlesleeping boy, afraid that his unaccustomed touch might hurt him, and yetloath to part with the small burden. Judith took the boy from Peter andplaced him between the two little girls on the bed.

  Through the window they could see Alida's dress glimmering, like a phantomin the darkness, as she strained her eyes towards the path. Peter hated toleave the women and children in this desolate place. The night was farspent. To reach the round-up in season, he could at best snatch a coupleof hours' sleep and be again in the saddle while the stars still shone.His saddle and saddle blanket were enough for him. The broad canopy ofheaven, the bosom of mother earth, had given him sound, dreamless sleepthese many years. He bade the women good-night, and made his bed where thecanon gave entrance to the valley. But sleep was slow to come. Now, inthat vague, uncertain world where we fall through oceans of space, and thewaking is the dream, the dream the waking, Peter caught pale flashes ofKitty's gold head as she ran and ran, ever in the pursuit of something,she knew not what. And as she ran hither and thither, she would turn herhead and beckon to Peter, and as he followed he felt the burden of yearscome upon him. And then he saw Judith's eyes, still and grave. He turnedand wakened. No, it was not Judith's eyes, but the stars above themountain-tops.