CHAPTER I
THE CUP THAT WOULD NOT PASS
The huge concave of the rocky wall towering above them threw the woman'sscream far into the vast profound of the canyon. It came sharp to theman's ear, yet terminated abruptly; as when two rapidly moving trainspass, the whistle of one is heard shrill for one moment only to be cutshort on the instant. Brief as it was, however, the sound wassufficiently appalling; its suddenness, its unexpectedness, the awfulterror in its single note, as well as its instantaneity, almost stoppedhis heart.
With the indifference of experience and long usage he had been ridingcarelessly along an old pre-historic trail through the canyon, probablymade and forgotten long before the Spaniards spied out the land.Engrossed in his thoughts, he had been heedless alike of the wall aboveand of the wall below. Prior to that moment neither the over-hangingrock that curved above his head nor the almost sheer fall to the river athousand feet beneath the narrow ledge of the trail had influenced himat all. He might have been riding a country road so indifferent hadbeen his progress. That momentary shriek dying thinly away into astrange silence changed everything.
The man was riding a sure-footed mule, which perhaps somewhat accountedfor his lack of care, and it seemed as if the animal must also haveheard and understood the meaning of the woman's scream, for with nobridle signal and no spoken word the mule stopped suddenly as ifpetrified. Rider and ridden stood as if carved from stone.
The man's comprehending, realizing fear almost paralyzed him. At firsthe could scarcely force himself to do that toward which his whole beingtended--look around. Divining instantly the full meaning of that suddencry, it seemed hours before he could turn his head; really her cry andhis movement were practically simultaneous. He threw an agonized glancebackward on the narrow trail and saw--nothing! Where there had beenlife, companionship, comradeship, a woman, there was now vacancy.
The trail made a little bend behind him, he could see its surface forsome distance, but not what lay beneath. He did not need the testimonyof his eyes for that. He knew what was down there.
It seemed to his distorted perceptions that he moved slowly, his limbswere like lead, every joint was as stiff as a rusty hinge. Actually hedropped from the mule's back with reckless and life-defying haste andfairly leaped backward on his path. Had there been any to note hisprogress, they would have said he risked his own life over every foot ofthe way. He ran down the narrow shelf, rock strewn and rough, swayingupon the unfathomable brink until he reached the place where she hadbeen a moment since. There he dropped on one knee and looked downward.
She was there! A few hundred feet below the trail edge the canyon wall,generally a sheer precipice, broadened out into a great butte, orbuttress, which sloped somewhat more gently to the foaming, roaringriver far beneath. About a hundred and fifty feet under him a stubbyspur with a pocket on it jutted out from the face of the cliff; she hadevidently struck on that spur and bounded off and fallen, half rolling,to the broad top of the butte two hundred or more feet below the pocket.
Three hundred and fifty feet down to where she lay he could distinguishlittle except a motionless huddled mass. The bright blue of her dressmade a splotch of unwonted color against the reddish brown monotones ofthe mountain side and canyon wall. She was dead, of course; she must bedead, the man felt. From that distance he could see no breathing, ifsuch there were; indeed as he stared she grew less and less distinct tohim, his eyes did not fill with tears, but to his vision the very earthitself, the vast depths of the canyon, the towering wall on the otherside, seemed to quiver and heave before him. For the first time in hislife the elevation made him dizzy, sick. He put his hands to his face toshut out the sight, he tore them away to look again. He lifted his eyestoward the other side across the great gulf to the opposing wall whichmatched the one upon which he stood, where the blue sky cloudlessoverhung.
"God!" he whispered in futile petition or mayhap expostulation.
He was as near the absolute breaking point as a man may go and yet notutterly give way, for he loved this woman as he loved that light ofheaven above him, and in the twinkling of an eye she was no more. And sohe stared and stared dumbly agonizing, wondering, helpless, misty-eyed,blind.
He sank back from the brink at last and tried to collect his thoughts.What was he to do? There was but one answer to that question. He mustgo down to her. There was one quick and easy way; over the brink, theway she had gone. That thought came to him for a moment, but he put itaway. He was not a coward, life was not his own to give or to take,besides she might be alive, she might need him. There must be some otherway.
Determining upon action, his resolution rose dominant, his visioncleared. Once again he forced himself to look over the edge and seeother things than she. He was a daring, skillful and experiencedmountaineer; in a way mountaineering was his trade. He searched the sideof the canyon to the right and the left with eager scrutiny and found noway within the compass of his vision to the depths below. He shut hiseyes and concentrated his thoughts to remember what they had passed overthat morning. There came to him the recollection of a place which as hehad viewed it he had idly thought might afford a practicable descent tothe river's rim.
Forgetful of the patient animal beside him, he rose to his feet and withone last look at the poor object below started on his wild plunge downthe trail over which some men might scarcely have crept on hands andknees. Sweat bedewed his forehead, his limbs trembled, his pulsesthrobbed, his heart beat almost to bursting. Remorse sharpened by love,passion quickened by despair, scourged him, desperate, on the way. AndGod protected him also, or he had fallen at every uncertain, hurried,headlong step.
And as he ran, thoughts, reproaches, scourged him on. Why had he broughther, why had he allowed her to take that trail which but for him and forher had probably not been traversed by man or woman or beast, save themountain sheep, the gray wolves, or the grizzly bear, for five hundredyears. She had protested that she was as good a mountaineer as he--andit was true--and she had insisted on accompanying him; he recollectedthat there had been a sort of terror in her urgency,--he must take her,he must not leave her alone, she had pleaded; he had objected, but hehad yielded, the joy of her companionship had meant so much to him inhis lonely journeying, and now--he accused himself bitterly as he surgedonward.
After a time the man forced himself to observe the road, he discoveredthat in an incredibly short period, perhaps an hour, he had traversedwhat it had taken them four times as long to pass over that very day. Hemust be near his goal. Ah, there it was at last, and in all the turmoiland torture of his brain he found room for a throb of satisfaction whenhe came upon the broken declivity. Yes, it did afford a practicabledescent; some landslide centuries back had made there a sort of rude,rough, broken, megalithic stairway in the wall of the canyon. The manthrew himself upon it and with bleeding hands, bruised limbs and tornclothing descended to the level of the river.
Two atoms to the eye of the Divine, in that vast rift in the giganticmountains. One unconscious, motionless, save for faint gasping breaths;the other toiling blindly along the river bank, fortunately hereaffording practicable going, to the foot of the great butte upon whosehuge shoulder the other lay. The living and the dead in the waste andthe wilderness of the everlasting hills.
Unconsciously but unerringly the man had fixed the landmarks in his mindbefore he started on that terrific journey. Without a moment ofincertitude, or hesitation, he proceeded directly to the base of thebutte and as rapidly as if he had been fresh for the journey and theendeavor. Up he climbed without a pause for rest. It was a desperategoing, almost sheer at times, but his passion found the way. He clawedand tore at the rocks like an animal, he performed feats of strength andskill and determination and reckless courage marvelous and impossibleunder less exacting demands. Somehow or other he got to the top at last;perhaps no man in all the ages since the world's first morning when GodHimself upheaved the range had so achieved that goal.
The last ascent was up a little stretch of
straight rock over which hehad to draw himself by main strength and determination. He fell pantingon the brink, but not for a moment did he remain prone; he got to hisfeet at once and staggered across the plateau which made the head of thebutte toward the blue object on the further side beneath the wall of thecliff above, and in a moment he bent over what had been--nay, as he sawthe slow choking uprise of her breast, what was--his wife.
He knelt down beside her and looked at her for a moment, scarce daringto touch her. Then he lifted his head and flung a glance around thecanyon as if seeking help from man. As he did so he became aware, belowhim on the slope, of the dead body of the poor animal she had beenriding, whose misstep, from whatever cause he would never know, hadbrought this catastrophe upon them.
Nothing else met his gaze but the rocks, brown, gray, relieved here andthere by green clumps of stunted pine. Nothing met his ear except farbeneath him the roar of the river, now reduced almost to a murmur, withwhich the shivering leaves of aspens, rustled by the gentle breeze ofthis glorious morning, blended softly like a sigh of summer. No, therewas nobody in the canyon, no help there. He threw his head back andstretched out his arms toward the blue depths of the heavens above, tothe tops of the soaring peaks, and there was nothing there but theeternal silence of a primeval day.
"God! God!" he murmured again in his despair.
It was the final word that comes to human lips in the last extremitywhen life and its hopes and its possibilities tremble on the verge. Andno answer came to this poor man out of that vast void.
He bent to the woman again. What he saw can hardly be described. Herright arm and her left leg were bent backward and under her. They wereshattered, evidently. He was afraid to examine her and yet he knew thatpractically every other bone in her body was broken as well. Her headfell lower than her shoulders, the angle which she made with the unevenrock on which she lay convinced him that her back was broken too. Herclothing was rent by her contact with the rocky spur above, it was tornfrom the neck downward, exposing a great red scar which ran across hersweet white young breast, blood oozing from it, while in the middle ofit something yellow and bright gleamed in the light. Her cheek was cutopen, her glorious hair, matted, torn and bloody, was flung backwardfrom her down-thrown head.
She should have been dead a thousand times, but she yet lived, shebreathed, her ensanguined bosom rose and fell. Through her pallid lipsbloody foam bubbled, she was still alive.
The man must do something. He did not dare to move her body, yet he tookoff his hat, folded it, lifted her head tenderly and slipped itunderneath; it made a better pillow than the hard rock, he thought. Thenhe tore his handkerchief from his neck and wiped away the foam from herlips. In his pocket he had a flask of whiskey, a canteen of water thathung from his shoulder somehow had survived the rough usage of therocks. He mingled some of the water with a portion of the spirit in thecup of the flask and poured a little down her throat. Tenderly he tookhis handkerchief again, and wetting it laved her brow. Except to mutterincoherent prayers again and again he said no word, but his heart wasfilled with passionate endearments, he lavished agonized and infinitetenderness upon her in his soul.
By and by she opened her eyes. In those eyes first of all he sawbewilderment, and then terror and then anguish so great that it cannotbe described, pain so horrible that it is not good for man even to thinkupon it. Incredible as it may seem, her head moved, her lips relaxed,her set jaw unclenched, her tongue spoke thickly.
"God!" she said.
The same word that he had used, that final word that comes to the lipswhen the heart is wrung, or the body is racked beyond human endurance.The universal testimony to the existence of the Divine, that trouble andsometimes trouble alone, wrings from man. No human name, not even his,upon her lips in that first instant of realization!
"How I--suffer," she faltered weakly.
Her eyes closed again, the poor woman had told her God of her condition,that was all she was equal to. Man and human relationships might comelater. The man knelt by her side, his hands upraised.
"Louise," he whispered, "speak to me."
Her eyes opened again.
"Will," the anguished voice faltered on, "I am--broken--to pieces--killme. I can't stand--kill me"--her voice rose with a sudden fearfulappeal--"kill me."
Then the eyes closed and this time they did not open, although now heoverwhelmed her with words, alas, all he had to give her. At last hispassion, his remorse, his love, gushing from him in a torrent of franticappeal awakened her again. She looked him once more in the face and oncemore begged him for that quick relief he alone could give.
"Kill me."
That was her only plea. There has been One and only One, who couldsustain such crucifying anguish as she bore without such appeal beingwrested from the lips, yet even He, upon His cross, for one moment,thought God had forsaken and forgotten Him!
She was silent, but she was not dead. She was speechless, but she wasnot unconscious, for she opened her eyes and looked at him with suchpitiful appeal that he would fain hide his face as he could not bear it,and yet again and again as he stared down into her eyes he caught thatheart breaking entreaty, although now she made no sound. Every twistedbone, every welling vein, every scarred and marred part on once smoothsoft flesh was eloquent of that piteous petition for relief. "Kill me"she seemed to say in her voiceless agony. Agony the more appallingbecause at last it could make no sound.
He could not resist that appeal. He fought against it, but the demandcame to him with more and more terrific force until he could no longeroppose it. That cup was tendered to him and he must drain it. No morefrom his lips than from the lips of Him of the Garden could it bewithdrawn. Out of that chalice he must drink. It could not pass. Slowly,never taking his eyes from her, as a man might who was fascinated orhypnotized, he lifted his hand to his holster and drew out his revolver.
No, he could not do it. He laid the weapon down on the rock again andbowed forward on his knees, praying incoherently, protesting that Godshould place this burden on mere man. In the silence he could hear theawful rasp of her breath--the only answer. He looked up to find her eyesupon him again.
Life is a precious thing, to preserve it men go to the last limit. Indefense of it things are permitted that are permitted in no other case.Is it ever nobler to destroy it than to conserve it? Was this such aninstance? What were the conditions?
There was not a human being, white or red, within five days' journeyfrom the spot where these two children of malign destiny confrontedeach other. That poor huddled broken mass of flesh and bones could nothave been carried a foot across that rocky slope without sufferingagonies beside which all the torture that might be racking her now wouldbe as nothing. He did not dare even to lay hand upon her to straighteneven one bent and twisted limb, he could not even level or compose herbody where she lay. He almost felt that he had been guilty ofunpardonable cruelty in giving her the stimulant and recalling her toconsciousness. Nor could he leave her where she was, to seek and bringhelp to her. With all the speed that frantic desire, and passionateadoration, and divine pity, would lend to him, it would be a week beforehe could return, and by that time the wolves and the vultures--he couldnot think that sentence to completion. That way madness lay.
The woman was doomed, no mortal could survive her wounds, but she mightlinger for days while high fever and inflammation supervened. And eachhour would add to her suffering. God was merciful to His Son, Christdied quickly on the cross, mere man sometimes hung there for days.
All these things ran like lightning through his brain. His hand closedupon the pistol, the eternal anodyne. No, he could not. And thetortured eyes were open again, it seemed as if the woman had summonedstrength for a final appeal.
"Will," she whispered, "if you--love me--kill me."
He thrust the muzzle of his weapon against her heart, she could see hismovement and for a moment gratitude and love shone in her eyes, and thenwith a hand that did not tremble, he pulled the trigger.
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bsp; A thousand thunder claps could not have roared in his ear with suchdetonation. And he had done it! He had slain the thing he loved! Was itin obedience to a higher law even than that writ on the ancient tablesof stone?
For a moment he thought incoherently, the pistol fell from his hand, hiseyes turned to her face, her eyes were open still, but there was neitherpain, nor appeal, nor love, nor relief in them; there was no light inthem; only peace, calm, darkness, rest. His hand went out to them anddrew the lids down, and as he did so, something gave way in him and hefell forward across the red, scarred white breast that no longer eitherrose or fell.
The Chalice Of Courage: A Romance of Colorado Page 5