The Chalice Of Courage: A Romance of Colorado

by Cyrus Townsend Brady

  CHAPTER VII

  THE BEAR, THE MAN AND THE FLOOD

  The water was deep enough to receive her dive and the pool was longenough to enable her to swim a few strokes. The first chill of the icywater was soon lost in the vigorous motions in which she indulged, butno mere human form however hardened and inured could long endure thatfrigid bath. Reluctantly, yet with the knowledge that she must go, afterone more sweeping dive and a few magnificent strokes, she raised herhead from the water lapping her white shoulders, and shaking her faceclear from the drops of crystal, faced the shore. It was no longeruntenanted, she was no longer alone.

  What she saw startled and alarmed her beyond measure. Planted on herclothes, looking straight at her, having come upon her in absolutesilence, nothing having given her the least warning of his approach, andnow gazing at her with red, hungry, evil, vicious eyes, the eyes of thecovetous filled with the cruel lust of desire and carnal possession, andyet with a glint of surprise in them, too, as if he did not know quitewhat to make of the white loveliness of this unwonted apparitionflashing so suddenly at him out of the water, this strange invader ofthe domain of which he fancied he was sole master and lord paramount,stood a great, monstrous frightful looking Grizzly Bear. _UrsusHorribilis_, indeed.

  He was an aged monarch of the mountains, reddish brown in colororiginally, but now a hoary dirty gray. His body was massive and burly,his legs short, dark colored and immensely powerful. His broad squarehead moved restlessly. His fanged mouth opened and a low hoarse growlcame from the red cavern of his throat. He was an old and terriblemonster who had tasted the blood of man and who would not hesitate toattack even without provocation especially anything at once so harmlessand so whitely inviting as the girl in the pool.

  The girl forgot the chill of the water in the horror of that moment.Alone, naked, defenseless, lost in the mountains, with the mostpowerful, sanguinary and ferocious beast of the continent in front ofher, she could neither fight nor fly, she could only wait his pleasure.He snuffed at her clothing a moment and stood with one fore footadvanced for a second or two growling deeply, evidently, she thoughtwith almost superhuman keenness of perception, preparing to leap intothe pool and seize upon her.

  The rush of the current as it swirled about her caused her to swaygently, otherwise she stood motionless and apprehensive, terriblyexpectant. She had made no sound, and save for that low growl the greatbeast had been equally silent. There was an awful fixity in the gaze sheturned upon him and he wavered under it. It annoyed him. It bespoke alittle of the dominance of the human. But she was too surprised, toounnerved, too desperately frightened to put forth the full power of mindover matter. There was piteous appeal in her gaze. The bear realizedthis and mastered her sufficiently.

  She did not know whether she was in the water or in the air, there werebut two points upon which her consciousness was focussed in the vastellipse of her imagination. Another moment or two and all coherency ofthought would be gone. The grizzly, still unsettled and uneasy beforeher awful glance, but not deterred by it, turned its great head sidewaysa little to escape the direct immobile stare, brought his sharp clawedfoot down heavily and lurched forward.

  Scarcely had a minute elapsed in which all this happened. That hugethreatening heave of the great body toward her relieved the tension.She found voice at last. Although it was absolutely futile she realizedas she cried, her released lips framed the loud appeal.

  "Help! for God's sake."

  Although she knew she cried but to the bleak walls of the canyon, thedrooping pines, the rushing river, the distant heaven, the appeal wentforth accompanied by the mightiest conjuration known to man.

  "For God's sake, Help!"

  How dare poor humanity so plead, the doubter cries. What is it to God ifone suffers, another bleeds, another dies. What answer could come out ofthat silent sky?

  Sometimes the Lord speaks with the loud voice of men's fashioning,instead of in that still whisper which is His own and the sound of whichwe fail to catch because of our own ignoble babble!

  The answer to her prayer came with a roar in her nervous frightened earlike a clap of thunder. Ere the first echo of it died away, it wassucceeded by another and another and another, echoing, rolling,reverberating among the rocks in ever diminishing but long drawn outpeals.

  On the instant the bear rose to his feet, swayed slightly and struck asat an imaginary enemy with his weighty paws. A hoarse, frightfulguttering roar burst from his red slavering jaws, then he lurchedsideways and fell forward, fighting the air madly for a moment, and laystill.

  With staring eyes that missed no detail, she saw that the brute had beenshot in the head and shoulder three times, and that he was apparentlydead. The revulsion that came over her was bewildering; she swayedagain, this time not from the thrust of the water but with sickfaintness. The tension suddenly taken off, unstrung, the loose bow ofher spirit quivered helplessly; the arrow of her life almost fell intothe stream.

  And then a new and more appalling terror swept over her. Some man hadfired that shot. Actaeon had spied upon Diana. With this suddenrevelation of her shame, the red blood beat to the white surface inspite of the chill water. The anguish of that moment was greater thanbefore. She could be killed, torn to pieces, devoured, that was a smallthing, but that she should be so outraged in her modesty wasunendurable. She wished the hunter had not come. She sunk lower in thewater for a moment fain to hide in its crystal clarity and realized asshe did how frightfully cold she was. Yet, although she froze where shewas and perished with cold she could not go out on the bank to dress,and it would avail her little she saw swiftly, since the huge monsterhad fallen a dead heap on her clothes.

  Now all this, although it takes minutes to tell, had happened in but afew seconds. Seconds sometimes include hours, even a life time, in theirbrief composition. She thought it would be just as well for her to sinkdown and die in the water, when a sudden splashing below her caused herto look down the stream.

  She was so agitated that she could make out little except that there wasa man crossing below her and making directly toward the body of thebear. He was a tall black bearded man, she saw he carried a rifle, helooked neither to the right nor to the left, he did not bestow a glanceupon her. She could have cried aloud in thanksgiving for his apparentobliviousness to her as she crouched now neck deep in the benumbingcold. The man stepped on the bank, shook himself like a great dog mighthave done and marched over to the bear. He up-rooted a small near-bypine, with the ease of a Hercules--and she had time to mark and marvelat it in spite of everything--and then with that as a lever heunconcernedly and easily heaved the body of the monster from off herclothing. She was to learn later what a feat of strength it was to movethat inert carcass weighing much more than half a ton.

  Thereafter he dropped the pine tree by the side of the dead grizzly andwithout a backward look tramped swiftly and steadily up the canyonthrough the trees, turning at the point of it, and was instantly lost tosight. His gentle and generous purpose was obvious even to thefrightened, agitated, excited girl.

  The woman watched him until he disappeared, a few seconds longer, andthen she hurled herself through the water and stepped out upon theshore. Her sweater, which the bear had dragged forward in its advance,lay on top of the rest of her clothes covered with blood. She threw itaside and with nervous, frantic energy, wet, cold, though she was, shejerked on in some fashion enough clothes to cover her nakedness and thenwith more leisurely order and with necessary care she got the rest ofher apparel in its accustomed place upon her body, and then when it wasall over she sank down prone and prostrate upon the grass by the carcassof the now harmless monster which had so nearly caused her undoing, andshivered, cried and sobbed as if her heart would break.

  She was chilled to the bone by her motionless sojourn, albeit it hadbeen for scarcely more than a minute, in that icy water, and yet theblood rushed to her brow and face, to every hidden part of her in wavesas she thought of it. It was a good thing that she cried, she was not
aweeping woman, her tears came slowly as a rule and then came hard. Sherather prided herself upon her stoicism, but in this instance the greatdeeps of her nature had been undermined and the fountains thereof werefain to break forth.

  How long she lay there, warmth coming gradually to her under the directrays of the sun, she did not know, and it was a strange thing thatcaused her to arise. It grew suddenly dark over her head. She looked upand a rim of frightful, black, dense clouds had suddenly blotted out thesun. The clouds were lined with gold and silver and the long rays shotfrom behind the somber blind over the yet uncovered portions of theheaven, but the clouds moved with the irresistible swiftness andsteadiness of a great deluge. The wall of them lowered above her headwhile they extended steadily and rapidly across the sky toward the otherside of the canyon and the mountain wall.

  A storm was brewing such as she had never seen, such as she had noexperience to enable her to realize its malign possibilities. Nay, itwas now at hand. She had no clew, however, of what was toward, howterrible a danger overshadowed her. Frightened but unconscious of allthe menace of the hour her thoughts flew down the canyon to the camp. Shemust hasten there. She looked for her watch which she had picked fromthe grass and which she had not yet put on; the grizzly had stepped uponit, it was irretrievably ruined. She judged from her last glimpse of thesun that it must now be early afternoon. She rose to her feet andstaggered with weakness, she had eaten nothing since morning, and thenervous shock and strain through which she had gone had reduced her to apitiable condition.

  Her luncheon had fortunately escaped unharmed. In a big pocket of hershort skirt there was a small flask of whiskey, which her Uncle Roberthad required her to take with her. She felt sick and faint, but she knewthat she must eat if she was to make the journey, difficult as it mightprove, back to the camp. She forced herself to take the first mouthfulof bread and meat she had brought with her, but when she had tasted sheneeded no further incentive, she ate to the last crumb; she thought thiswas the time she needed stimulants too, and mingling the cold water fromthe brook with a little of the ardent spirit from the flask she drank.Some of the chill had worn off, some of the fatigue had gone.

  She rose to her feet and started down the canyon; her bloody sweaterstill lay on the ground with other things of which she was heedless. Ithad grown colder but she realized that the climb down the canyon wouldput her stagnant blood in circulation and all would be well.

  Before she began the descent of the pass, she cast one long glancebackward whither the man had gone. Whence came he, who was he, what hadhe seen, where was he now? She thanked God for his interference in onebreath and hated him for his presence in the other.

  The whole sky was now black with drifting clouds, lightning flashedabove her head, muttered peals of thunder, terrifically ominous, rockedthrough the silent hills. The noise was low and subdued but almostcontinuous. With a singular and uneasy feeling that she was beingobserved, she started down the canyon, plunging desperately through thetrees, leaping the brook from side to side where it narrowed, seekingever the easiest way. She struggled on, panting with sudden inexplicableterror almost as bad as that which had overwhelmed her an hourbefore--and growing more intense every moment, to such a tragic pass hadthe day and its happenings brought her.

  Poor girl, awful experience really was to be hers that day. The Fatessported with her--bodily fear, outraged modesty, mental anguish and nowthe terror of the storm.

  The clouds seemed to sink lower, until they almost closed about her.Long gray ghostly arms reached out toward her. It grew darker and darkerin the depths of the canyon. She screamed aloud--in vain.

  Suddenly the rolling thunder peals concentrated, balls of fire leapedout of the heavens and struck the mountains where she could actually seethem. There are not words to describe the tremendous crashings whichseemed to splinter the hills, to be succeeded by brief periods ofsilence, to be followed by louder and more terrific detonations.

  In one of those appalling alternations from sound to silence she heard ahuman cry--an answering cry to her own! It came from the hills behindher. It must proceed, she thought, from the man. She could not meet thatman; although she craved human companionship as never before, she didnot want his. She could not bear it. Better the wrath of God, the furyof the tempest.

  Heedless of the sharp note of warning, of appeal, in the voice ere itwas drowned by another roll of thunder, she plunged on in the darkness.The canyon narrowed here, she made her way down the ledges, leapingrecklessly from rock to rock, slipping, falling, grazing now one side,now the other, hurling herself forward with white face and bruised bodyand torn hands and throbbing heart that would fain burst its bonds.There was once an ancient legend of a human creature, menaced by all thefuries, pitilessly pursued by every malefic spirit of earth and air;like him this sweet young girl, innocent, lovely, erstwhile happy, fledbefore the storm.

  And then the heavens opened, the fountains of the great deeps werebroken down, and with absolute literalness the floods descended. Thebursting clouds, torn asunder by the wild winds, riven by the pent uplightning within their black and turgid breasts, disburdened themselves.The water came down, as it did of old when God washed the face of theworld, in a flood. The narrow of the canyon was filled ten, twenty,thirty feet in a moment by the cloud burst. The black water rolled andfoamed, surging like the rapids at Niagara.

  The body of the girl, utterly unprepared, was caught up in a moment andflung like a bolt from a catapult down the seething sea filled with thetrunks of the trees and the debris of the mountains, tossing almosthumanly in the wild confusion. She struck out strongly, swimming morebecause of the instinct of life than for any other reason. A helplessatom in the boiling flood. Growing every minute greater and greater asthe angry skies disgorged themselves of their pent up torrents upon herdevoted head.