by Zane Grey
“It’s pretty,” said Bess. “How tame! I thought snakes always ran.”
“No. Even the rabbits didn’t run here till the dogs chased them.”
On and on they wandered to the wild jumble of massed and broken fragments of cliff at the west end of the valley. The roar of the disappearing stream dinned in their ears. Into this maze of rocks they threaded a tortuous way, climbing, descending, halting to gather wild plums and great lavender lilies, and going on at the will of fancy. Idle and keen perceptions guided them equally.
“Oh, let us climb there!” cried Bess, pointing upward to a small space of terrace left green and shady between huge abutments of broken cliff. And they climbed to the nook and rested and looked out across the valley to the curling column of blue smoke from their campfire. But the cool shade and the rich grass and the fine view were not what they had climbed for. They could not have told, although whatever had drawn them was well-satisfying. Light, sure-footed as a mountain goat, Bess pattered down at Venters’s heels; and they went on, calling the dogs, eyes dreamy and wide, listening to the wind and the bees and the crickets and the birds.
Part of the time Ring and Whitie led the way, then Venters, then Bess; and the direction was not an object. They left the sun-streaked shade of the oaks, brushed the long grass of the meadows, entered the green and fragrant swaying willows, to stop, at length, under the huge old cottonwoods where the beavers were busy.
Here they rested and watched. A dam of brush and logs and mud and stones backed the stream into a little lake. The round, rough beaver houses projected from the water. Like the rabbits, the beavers had become shy. Gradually, however, as Venters and Bess knelt low, holding the dogs, the beavers emerged to swim with logs and gnaw at cottonwoods and pat mud walls with their paddle-like tails, and, glossy and shiny in the sun, to go on with their strange, persistent industry. They were the builders. The lake was a mud-hole, and the immediate environment a scarred and dead region, but it was a wonderful home of wonderful animals.
“Look at that one — he puddles in the mud,” said Bess. “And there! See him dive! Hear them gnawing! I’d think they’d break their teeth. How’s it they can stay out of the water and under the water?”
And she laughed.
Then Venters and Bess wandered farther, and, perhaps not all unconsciously this time, wended their slow steps to the cave of the cliff-dwellers, where she liked best to go.
The tangled thicket and the long slant of dust and little chips of weathered rock and the steep bench of stone and the worn steps all were arduous work for Bess in the climbing. But she gained the shelf, gasping, hot of cheek, glad of eye, with her hand in Venters’s. Here they rested. The beautiful valley glittered below with its millions of wind-turned leaves bright-faced in the sun, and the mighty bridge towered heavenward, crowned with blue sky. Bess, however, never rested for long. Soon she was exploring, and Venters followed; she dragged forth from corners and shelves a multitude of crudely fashioned and painted pieces of pottery, and he carried them. They peeped down into the dark holes of the kivas, and Bess gleefully dropped a stone and waited for the long-coming hollow sound to rise. They peeped into the little globular houses, like mud-wasp nests, and wondered if these had been store-places for grain, or baby cribs, or what; and they crawled into the larger houses and laughed when they bumped their heads on the low roofs, and they dug in the dust of the floors. And they brought from dust and darkness armloads of treasure which they carried to the light. Flints and stones and strange curved sticks and pottery they found; and twisted grass rope that crumbled in their hands, and bits of whitish stone which crushed to powder at a touch and seemed to vanish in the air.
“That white stuff was bone,” said Venters, slowly. “Bones of a cliff-dweller.”
“No!” exclaimed Bess.
“Here’s another piece. Look!... Whew! dry, powdery smoke! That’s bone.”
Then it was that Venters’s primitive, childlike mood, like a savage’s, seeing, yet unthinking, gave way to the encroachment of civilized thought. The world had not been made for a single day’s play or fancy or idle watching. The world was old. Nowhere could be gotten a better idea of its age than in this gigantic silent tomb. The gray ashes in Venters’s hand had once been bone of a human being like himself. The pale gloom of the cave had shadowed people long ago. He saw that Bess had received the same shock — could not in moments such as this escape her feeling living, thinking destiny.
“Bern, people have lived here,” she said, with wide, thoughtful eyes.
“Yes,” he replied.
“How long ago?”
“A thousand years and more.”
“What were they?”
“Cliff-dwellers. Men who had enemies and made their homes high out of reach.”
“They had to fight?”
“Yes.”
“They fought for — what?”
“For life. For their homes, food, children, parents — for their women!”
“Has the world changed any in a thousand years?”
“I don’t know — perhaps a little.”
“Have men?”
“I hope so — I think so.”
“Things crowd into my mind,” she went on, and the wistful light in her eyes told Venters the truth of her thoughts. “I’ve ridden the border of Utah. I’ve seen people — know how they live — but they must be few of all who are living. I had my books and I studied them. But all that doesn’t help me any more. I want to go out into the big world and see it. Yet I want to stay here more. What’s to become of us? Are we cliff-dwellers? We’re alone here. I’m happy when I don’t think. These — these bones that fly into dust — they make me sick and a little afraid. Did the people who lived here once have the same feelings as we have? What was the good of their living at all? They’re gone! What’s the meaning of it all — of us?”
“Bess, you ask more than I can tell. It’s beyond me. Only there was laughter here once — and now there’s silence. There was life — and now there’s death. Men cut these little steps, made these arrow-heads and mealing-stones, plaited the ropes we found, and left their bones to crumble in our fingers. As far as time is concerned it might all have been yesterday. We’re here to-day. Maybe we’re higher in the scale of human beings — in intelligence. But who knows? We can’t be any higher in the things for which life is lived at all.”
“What are they?”
“Why — I suppose relationship, friendship — love.”
“Love!”
“Yes. Love of man for woman — love of woman for man. That’s the nature, the meaning, the best of life itself.”
She said no more. Wistfulness of glance deepened into sadness.
“Come, let us go,” said Venters.
Action brightened her. Beside him, holding his hand she slipped down the shelf, ran down the long, steep slant of sliding stones, out of the cloud of dust, and likewise out of the pale gloom.
“We beat the slide,” she cried.
The miniature avalanche cracked and roared, and rattled itself into an inert mass at the base of the incline. Yellow dust like the gloom of the cave, but not so changeless, drifted away on the wind; the roar clapped in echo from the cliff, returned, went back, and came again to die in the hollowness. Down on the sunny terrace there was a different atmosphere. Ring and Whitie leaped around Bess. Once more she was smiling, gay, and thoughtless, with the dream-mood in the shadow of her eyes.
“Bess, I haven’t seen that since last summer. Look!” said Venters, pointing to the scalloped edge of rolling purple clouds that peeped over the western wall. “We’re in for a storm.”
“Oh, I hope not. I’m afraid of storms.”
“Are you? Why?”
“Have you ever been down in one of these walled-up pockets in a bad storm?”
“No, now I think of it, I haven’t.”
“Well, it’s terrible. Every summer I get scared to death and hide somewhere in the dark. Storms up on the sage are bad, b
ut nothing to what they are down here in the canyons. And in this little valley — why, echoes can rap back and forth so quick they’ll split our ears.”
“We’re perfectly safe here, Bess.”
“I know. But that hasn’t anything to do with it. The truth is I’m afraid of lightning and thunder, and thunder-claps hurt my head. If we have a bad storm, will you stay close to me?”
“Yes.”
When they got back to camp the afternoon was closing, and it was exceedingly sultry. Not a breath of air stirred the aspen leaves, and when these did not quiver the air was indeed still. The dark-purple clouds moved almost imperceptibly out of the west.
“What have we for supper?” asked Bess.
“Rabbit.”
“Bern, can’t you think of another new way to cook rabbit?” went on Bess, with earnestness.
“What do you think I am — a magician?” retorted Venters.
“I wouldn’t dare tell you. But, Bern, do you want me to turn into a rabbit?”
There was a dark-blue, merry flashing of eyes and a parting of lips; then she laughed. In that moment she was naive and wholesome.
“Rabbit seems to agree with you,” replied Venters. “You are well and strong — and growing very pretty.”
Anything in the nature of compliment he had never before said to her, and just now he responded to a sudden curiosity to see its effect. Bess stared as if she had not heard aright, slowly blushed, and completely lost her poise in happy confusion.
“I’d better go right away,” he continued, “and fetch supplies from Cottonwoods.”
A startlingly swift change in the nature of her agitation made him reproach himself for his abruptness.
“No, no, don’t go!” she said. “I didn’t mean — that about the rabbit. I — I was only trying to be — funny. Don’t leave me all alone!”
“Bess, I must go sometime.”
“Wait then. Wait till after the storms.”
The purple cloud-bank darkened the lower edge of the setting sun, crept up and up, obscuring its fiery red heart, and finally passed over the last ruddy crescent of its upper rim.
The intense dead silence awakened to a long, low, rumbling roll of thunder.
“Oh!” cried Bess, nervously.
“We’ve had big black clouds before this without rain,” said Venters. “But there’s no doubt about that thunder. The storms are coming. I’m glad. Every rider on the sage will hear that thunder with glad ears.”
Venters and Bess finished their simple meal and the few tasks around the camp, then faced the open terrace, the valley, and the west, to watch and await the approaching storm.
It required keen vision to see any movement whatever in the purple clouds. By infinitesimal degrees the dark cloud-line merged upward into the golden-red haze of the afterglow of sunset. A shadow lengthened from under the western wall across the valley. As straight and rigid as steel rose the delicate spear-pointed silver spruces; the aspen leaves, by nature pendant and quivering, hung limp and heavy; no slender blade of grass moved. A gentle splashing of water came from the ravine. Then again from out of the west sounded the low, dull, and rumbling roll of thunder.
A wave, a ripple of light, a trembling and turning of the aspen leaves, like the approach of a breeze on the water, crossed the valley from the west; and the lull and the deadly stillness and the sultry air passed away on a cool wind.
The night bird of the canyon, with clear and melancholy notes announced the twilight. And from all along the cliffs rose the faint murmur and moan and mourn of the wind singing in the caves. The bank of clouds now swept hugely out of the western sky. Its front was purple and black, with gray between, a bulging, mushrooming, vast thing instinct with storm. It had a dark, angry, threatening aspect. As if all the power of the winds were pushing and piling behind, it rolled ponderously across the sky. A red flare burned out instantaneously, flashed from the west to east, and died. Then from the deepest black of the purple cloud burst a boom. It was like the bowling of a huge boulder along the crags and ramparts, and seemed to roll on and fall into the valley to bound and bang and boom from cliff to cliff.
“Oh!” cried Bess, with her hands over her ears. “What did I tell you?”
“Why, Bess, be reasonable!” said Venters.
“I’m a coward.”
“Not quite that, I hope. It’s strange you’re afraid. I love a storm.”
“I tell you a storm down in these canyons is an awful thing. I know Oldring hated storms. His men were afraid of them. There was one who went deaf in a bad storm, and never could hear again.”
“Maybe I’ve lots to learn, Bess. I’ll lose my guess if this storm isn’t bad enough. We’re going to have heavy wind first, then lightning and thunder, then the rain. Let’s stay out as long as we can.”
The tips of the cottonwoods and the oaks waved to the east, and the rings of aspens along the terraces twinkled their myriad of bright faces in fleet and glancing gleam. A low roar rose from the leaves of the forest, and the spruces swished in the rising wind. It came in gusts, with light breezes between. As it increased in strength the lulls shortened in length till there was a strong and steady blow all the time, and violent puffs at intervals, and sudden whirling currents. The clouds spread over the valley, rolling swiftly and low, and twilight faded into a sweeping darkness. Then the singing of the wind in the caves drowned the swift roar of rustling leaves; then the song swelled to a mourning, moaning wail; then with the gathering power of the wind the wail changed to a shriek. Steadily the wind strengthened and constantly the strange sound changed.
The last bit of blue sky yielded to the on-sweep of clouds. Like angry surf the pale gleams of gray, amid the purple of that scudding front, swept beyond the eastern rampart of the valley. The purple deepened to black. Broad sheets of lightning flared over the western wall. There were not yet any ropes or zigzag streaks darting down through the gathering darkness. The storm center was still beyond Surprise Valley.
“Listen!... Listen!” cried Bess, with her lips close to Venters’s ear. “You’ll hear Oldring’s knell!”
“What’s that?”
“Oldring’s knell. When the wind blows a gale in the caves it makes what the rustlers call Oldring’s knell. They believe it bodes his death. I think he believes so, too. It’s not like any sound on earth.... It’s beginning. Listen!”
The gale swooped down with a hollow unearthly howl. It yelled and pealed and shrilled and shrieked. It was made up of a thousand piercing cries. It was a rising and a moving sound. Beginning at the western break of the valley, it rushed along each gigantic cliff, whistling into the caves and cracks, to mount in power, to bellow a blast through the great stone bridge. Gone, as into an engulfing roar of surging waters, it seemed to shoot back and begin all over again.
It was only wind, thought Venters. Here sped and shrieked the sculptor that carved out the wonderful caves in the cliffs. It was only a gale, but as Venters listened, as his ears became accustomed to the fury and strife, out of it all or through it or above it pealed low and perfectly clear and persistently uniform a strange sound that had no counterpart in all the sounds of the elements. It was not of earth or of life. It was the grief and agony of the gale. A knell of all upon which it blew!
Black night enfolded the valley. Venters could not see his companion, and knew of her presence only through the tightening hold of her hand on his arm. He felt the dogs huddle closer to him. Suddenly the dense, black vault overhead split asunder to a blue-white, dazzling streak of lightning. The whole valley lay vividly clear and luminously bright in his sight. Upreared, vast and magnificent, the stone bridge glimmered like some grand god of storm in the lightning’s fire. Then all flashed black again — blacker than pitch — a thick, impenetrable coal-blackness. And there came a ripping, crashing report. Instantly an echo resounded with clapping crash. The initial report was nothing to the echo. It was a terrible, living, reverberating, detonating crash. The wall threw the sound across, and cou
ld have made no greater roar if it had slipped in avalanche. From cliff to cliff the echo went in crashing retort and banged in lessening power, and boomed in thinner volume, and clapped weaker and weaker till a final clap could not reach across the waiting cliff.
In the pitchy darkness Venters led Bess, and, groping his way, by feel of hand found the entrance to her cave and lifted her up. On the instant a blinding flash of lightning illumined the cave and all about him. He saw Bess’s face white now with dark, frightened eyes. He saw the dogs leap up, and he followed suit. The golden glare vanished; all was black; then came the splitting crack and the infernal din of echoes.
Bess shrank closer to him and closer, found his hands, and pressed them tightly over her ears, and dropped her face upon his shoulder, and hid her eyes.
Then the storm burst with a succession of ropes and streaks and shafts of lightning, playing continuously, filling the valley with a broken radiance; and the cracking shots followed each other swiftly till the echoes blended in one fearful, deafening crash.
Venters looked out upon the beautiful valley — beautiful now as never before — mystic in its transparent, luminous gloom, weird in the quivering, golden haze of lightning. The dark spruces were tipped with glimmering lights; the aspens bent low in the winds, as waves in a tempest at sea; the forest of oaks tossed wildly and shone with gleams of fire. Across the valley the huge cavern of the cliff-dwellers yawned in the glare, every little black window as clear as at noonday; but the night and the storm added to their tragedy. Flung arching to the black clouds, the great stone bridge seemed to bear the brunt of the storm. It caught the full fury of the rushing wind. It lifted its noble crown to meet the lightnings. Venters thought of the eagles and their lofty nest in a niche under the arch. A driving pall of rain, black as the clouds, came sweeping on to obscure the bridge and the gleaming walls and the shining valley. The lightning played incessantly, streaking down through opaque darkness of rain. The roar of the wind, with its strange knell and the re-crashing echoes, mingled with the roar of the flooding rain, and all seemingly were deadened and drowned in a world of sound.