by Zane Grey
Verde might have come, but he was not there now. Sudden, strange relief swept over Jake. He sank to a seat on the step on the edge of the little porch. His sombrero fell off unheeded, and the cold misty rain touched his face. His heart labored as though after a long strain. He sat there in the lonely, silent gorge, vaguely, dully conscious of any agony deep hidden somewhere under the weight of other emotions. It passed, and he addressed himself to the necessary tasks.
He unsaddled and unpacked, and turned the horses loose, with the thought that it was well for them a storm was brewing. Then he carried his packs and saddle inside the cabin, and set about building a fire in the rude stone fireplace. He appeared slow and awkward. Not only were his fingers all thumbs, but they also trembled in a way quite incomprehensible to him.
“Reckon I’m cold an’ hungry,” he thought.
Every few moments, while cooking supper, which he quite unconsciously planned for two, he would halt in his preparations and listen for the thud of hoofs or the jangle of spurs. But he heard only the melancholy wail of the rising wind.
Presently he stuck a dry fagot of pitchpine into the fire, and with a blazing torch he went outside the cabin to search in the dust for tracks. He found only his own and those made by his horses. Not satisfied, he made a more thorough search. But it was all in vain!
“Verde hasn’t been here,” he muttered at last, and pondered the situation. There was absolutely no doubt about the fact of Verde’s fresh tracks in the trail above the gorge. What had delayed him? And Jake reminded himself of Verde’s impetuosity and recklessness on bad trails.
Jake went back into the cabin, where, as many times before, he set some food and drink to keep hot in case Verde might arrive late. Then he unrolled his bed on the heavy mat of dry spruce boughs. This done, he stepped out again. The darkness was like pitch. High up there along the black rim the wind made a low, dismal roaring sound. He could see the leaden band of sky between the two black rims.
He returned presently to the warm fireside, to which he extended his nervous hands. He faced the fire awhile. That had always been one of his joys. But tonight it was not a joy. An arch face suddenly shone out of the glow — a girl’s face, roguish, with sweet red lips and strange, unmatched, inviting eyes. Jake had to turn his back to them.
It struck him singularly that Kitty Main’s face in the embers of this cabin fire was something he had never before beheld there. She was something new. She did not belong to that cabin. Thought of her seemed out of place there. He did not even want to think of her now.
When the fire died low Jake went to bed. He was tired and his eyes were heavy. Sleep at last overcame his mind.
In the night he awoke. A tiny pattering of rain sounded on the roof. The wind had lulled somewhat. The night was so black he could not see the door or window. He could tell that the hour was late, for he had rested. And gradually he grew wide awake. The pattering rain ceased, came again in little gusts, died away, only to return. It recalled to Jake that his father had once forbidden him and Verde to camp very late in the fall at this Black Gorge cabin. A blizzard such as sometimes set in after a late fall might snow them in for the whole winter. Jake had completely forgotten this. Likewise had Verde, or if he had not forgotten, he had come anyway. Black Gorge was the one hiding place where they could not be disturbed. His father knew of it, yet could never have found the way there.
The rain pattered again, slightly harder, and a wind sighed in the pines and spruces over the cabin. Suddenly a low, distant rumble startled Jake. Thunder! He sat up in bed, listening. A thunderclap late in the fall was rare and always preceded a terrible storm. Possibly he was mistaken. Sometimes rocks rolled down in distant canyons, making a sound like thunder.
Then the ebony darkness split. An appalling white light flashed through the open door. The cabin was illuminated with the brightness of noonday. Outside, the black pines stood up against the blue-white glare, the black jaws of the gorge seemed to be snapping at the angry sky. Then thunder crashed with a deafening blast. The cabin shook. The sharp explosion changed to boom and bellow, filling the narrow gorge with reverberating echoes, endlessly repeated until they rumbled away into utter silence.
Toward dawn, which he ascertained by a grayness superseding the pitch blackness, there came a gradual lessening of the deluge and lulls in the bellowing of the wind.
Day broke leaden, gusty, with signs of the inevitable change from rain to snow. Jake struck a fire and then went to look around.
Well indeed was it that the cabin had been erected on a bench high above the stream bed. Where last night had been a rough boulder and gravel-strewn gully, there was now a lake. What amazed Jake was the fact that he could not note any current. Perhaps it was because of the enormous volume of water that must be draining out of the gorge; and the underground exit was not large enough to take care of it. Nevertheless, that theory did not wholly satisfy Jake.
Thin yellow sheets of water were falling from the cliffs, and here and there narrow torrents rushed pell mell down the cracks and defiles of the slopes.
Jake gazed up at the dark, leaden sky. The storm clouds had lodged against the rim and hung there. Only in a few places could he see the ramparts, with the gray wall fringed by black pine. The air was still warm, but a gust of wind now and then brought a cold raw breath. During the day, or more likely when night fell, the rain would turn to snow.
Jake went into the cabin to cook breakfast. The situation was beyond him. By all the woodcraft of which he was master, he knew that the imperative need was to climb out of the gorge before the snow made it impossible. If it had not been for the certainty of Verde’s horse tracks on the trail Jake would have attempted to escape at once. But he well knew that Verde would not leave, even if he were able. Jake had no alternative. How futile now that a few hours of oblivion in sleep had brought his mind back toward normal! The die was cast. The catastrophe of a great storm could not make the situation any more desperate for him and Verde. But it made him think; and he had to deny the reason that began to dispel his passion of the past few weeks.
Methodically Jake went about his preparations for breakfast. He was a good cook and had always taken pride in the accomplishment. His keen sensibilities, however, were wholly absorbed in things outside the cabin — the moan of the wind rising again, the frequent rain squalls, the increasing roar of falling water. With some feeling that he could not understand he did not expect Verde, yet he listened for the sound of hoofs or the jangle of spurs.
He poured a second cup of coffee. Lifting the cup, he was about to drink when something happened wholly new in his experience. He wanted to drink, but could not.
Halfway to his lips the full cup poised.
Jake stared. The coffee was quivering.
“Gosh! Am I that nervous?” he exclaimed, and he set the cup down on a bench.
But the coffee continued to quiver. Indeed, the motion increased. There were queer little circles and waves inside the cup!
“Reckon I’m loco,” muttered Jake. Nevertheless, he strained his faculties. Something was wrong. In him, for a certainty, but also outside! He continued to stare at the coffee in the cup. Then he heard the rustling of the dry spruce boughs under his bed. Mice! He thought it rather an odd hour for mice to begin emerging. Next a faint rattling of the loft poles attracted his attention.
The whole cabin was shaking. Jake leaped to his feet, and rushed toward the door. The tremor increased. His cooking utensils began to clatter. The cans on the shelves took to dancing. The earth under the cabin was trembling.
A rumbling sound filled Jake’s ears. Thunder! The storm was about to break into its second and most fearful phase. It was a long, low, dull roar, gaining volume at the end instead of dying away! Was that thunder?
“Avalanche!” yelled Jake, and bounded wildly out of the cabin. In the open he halted. His terror had been absurd. The cabin was so situated that no earth slide or rolling rocks could reach it.
Uncertainty ceased for J
ake Dunton. The long, late Indian summer, so colorful and mellow and fruitful, must be paid for in the harsh terms with which nature always audited her account in the Tonto. Jake forgot his mission there in the realization that fate had shut him in Black Gorge on the eve of a blizzard. At the moment the peril did not strike him. He reacted as he might have on any of the other numerous sojourns in this canyon. He thought of Verde out there somewhere in the blackness.
“Damn Verde anyhow,” complained Jake. “Why won’t he ever listen to me?”
The pattering rain commenced again, and this time did not cease. Nor did the wind lull. Both perceptibly augmented, but so slowly as to persuade the lonely listener against his better judgement. They bade him hope against hope.
Then the storm broke with savage and demoniac fury. There was no more thunder, or at least in the mighty roar of wind and water Jake could not distinguish any. It took all Jake’s strength to close the cabin door. He went back to bed, thankful for the impervious roof he and Verde had built on that cabin, and for the safe site they had chosen.
His ears became filled with an infernal din. The gorge might have become the battleground of all the elements from the beginning of time. Jake had never experienced such screaming of winds, such a torrential deluge of rain. He lay there, forgetting himself, fearful only for the lost Verde. Verde, the boy — lost again! And each terrible hour the storm gained in strength, changing, swelling, mounting to cataclysmic force.
Then his gaze fixed upon the stretch of gorge below. He could see to the narrow passage between the black walls through which he had come last night. Everywhere water was running off the cliffs. The canyon appeared to be wreathed in waterfalls, lacy, thin, yellow, with some like ragged ribbons of water.
The sound that had alarmed Jake did not cease. It grew in intensity. Slides of weathered rock on the slopes above! His keen eye sought the heights.
The skyline of the rim wall had changed. Could it be hidden in cloud? But the gray pall hung above and beyond. There seemed to be movement, either of a drifting veil of rain or a long section of slope. Jake wondered if his eyes were deceiving him. Had his love for Verde and Kitty, the jealousy and the fight and the hate, and the dreadful night of storm unhinged his mind? Was he going crazy?
No! His eagle eye had the truth at last. A section of the rim wall had slipped and was sliding down toward the lower end of Black Gorge.
Jake stood there, motionless and dumb with mingled terror and awe. The section of the rim, with its fringe of black pines erect, was moving downward with a gathering and ponderous momentum. The rumble increased to thunder.
A cloud of yellow dust began to lift against the background of stone wall and leaden sky, quickly blotting them out.
Jake’s straining sight recorded what seemed to be an illusion in his stunned mind. The line of erect pine trees turned at right angles, and the black spear-tipped trees pointed out over the gorge. Then they waved and dipped. The line broke, the trees leaned and whirled and fell, to be swallowed up by the clinging slope. Only the thundering, rending roar gave reality to what Jake saw. The section of rim wall, giving way, had started the whole slope below into a colossal avalanche. It was a brain-numbing spectacle: The vast green slope of cedar and piñon, of manzanita and oak, of yellow crag and red earth, had become a swelling, undulating cataract. It was beautiful, awe-inspiring. Only the cataclysmic sound rendered proof of its destructive force.
But in a few more seconds the grace and rhythmic movement gave place to upheaval, and then to a tremendous volleying of boulders flung ahead of the avalanche. Rocks as large as cabins hurdled the narrow split of Black Gorge. Large and small they began to crack like cannon balls against the far wall of the gorge.
Jake could see, at the instant when the green mass reached the verge, the width of canyon light streaked by multitudes of falling rocks. Then the avalanche, like a vast, tumbling waterfall of rocks and debris, slid over to fill the end of the gorge.
A terrific wind, propelled up the canyon, staggered Jake. The roar that had grown awful ceased to be sound. He heard no more.
The lower end of Black Gorge was buried by an avalanche that concealed its crushed and splintered mass of debris under a mantle of dust. The lake that had formed at the lower end of the gorge, and which had been displaced by the avalanche now, came swelling and rushing back like a flooded river breaking through its dikes, and the waters rose halfway up to where the cabin stood on the wide bench.
Jake’s first realization of a recovered sense of hearing came with this sound of the chafing flood waters. The contrast between the roar that had deafened him and the gentle lapping of the waves left his ears ringing.
The avalanche had come to rest under its sky-high dust cloud.
Jake ran down the trail and off the bench as far as he could go. Through the thinning dust curtain he saw the width of the gorge piled almost straight up with fresh red earth, skinned tree trunks, and rocks of every size. The avalanche had filled the gorge beyond the narrow defile. Its destructive force had extended to a point even beyond the limit of its wall. Jake had to find a new path between boulders higher than his head, and over logs and slides of shale.
Rocks were still rolling down under the veil of dust. And Jake thought it would be well to retreat to the cabin. Just as he turned back he heard a cry that froze his blood.
Breathless, with heart pounding in his breast, he listened. More than once in his life had he heard the shrill sound made by a horse in extreme terror or injured near to death. This was how Jake interpreted the sound. His heart jumped and he began to breathe again. Then the cry pealed out louder than before.
Jake began frantically climbing in the direction from which he thought the horse’s scream had come. The going was rough, over the loose debris flung off by the avalanche. He reached the line of trees and more level ground. It was wet and very slippery. Rain mixed with snow fell around him.
Then suddenly, close at hand, there rose a harsh, fierce shout. It seemed to Jake that he recognized Verde’s voice. He bounded through the wet brush and under the dripping trees.
A moment later he burst into a little glade, across which a good-sized pine had fallen. And on the side toward Jake, close to the wet earth, protruded a pair of boots equipped with long bright spurs. Jake recognized them. They did not move. The legs which wore them were pinned to the ground!
Like a panther, Jake leaped over the log. He found himself looking down into the ash-white, agonized face of Verde. The youth still was conscious. His eyes moved and fixed in an expression of disbelief on Jake’s face. Then recognition came and he murmured, “Jake.”
“My Gawd — Verde!” cried Jake, falling upon his knees to grasp Verde’s writhing hands.
“It got me — Jake,” whispered Verde. “Last night — my horse fell and me — broke my leg... I crawled — this far — then — the avalanche—”
“I’ll get you out, Verde,” declared Jake, and laying hold of the prostrate form, he started to pull.
Verde cursed and beat at his rescuer until he ceased his efforts to drag the fallen man from under the tree.
“Don’t,” whispered Verde, his face white and drawn, wet with big clammy drops of sweat, and jaw quivering. “Don’t touch me... I’m done for... But thank Gawd — you’ve come to — end my misery.”
Then Jake awoke to the horror of the facts. Verde lay crushed beneath the pine. It had caught him across the legs almost to his hips. Jake saw a white leg bone protruding through Verde’s overalls. The end of the bone was black with dirt.
If there were other bodily injuries, as no doubt there were, Jake could not see them. Verde’s arms were free, his chest was apparently sound. But there was a bloody cut on his head.
Again Verde screamed and the unearthly sound broke Jake’s nerve and strength. He let go, shaking in every nerve of his body. He had seen another leg bone come protruding out, bloody and white, through Verde’s overalls.
‘For Gawd’s sake, man,” panted Verde, “don
’t let me die by slow torture this way!”
He lay there, transfixing Jake with eyes Jake found almost unendurable to meet.
“Jake — old boy — fer the love of Gawd, put me out of — of my misery!”
Jake could only shake his head slowly.
“Shoot me, Jake... I cain’t stand it... No use anyhow... I’m smashed... Kill me!”
“Verde!”
“Don’t waste time!” pleaded Verde, the blue fire of his eyes momentarily burning away the mist of anguish. “Every second is worse than hellfire!... If you have any mercy — kill me!”
“No!”
“But Jake — dear old brother — you don’t savvy,” went on the pleading husky voice. “I’ll bless you in the hereafter... I beg you... Jake, you saved me once — when we were — young ‘uns. You know — down at Lost Boy Ford! You were brother to me then — an’ always you’ve been... But now the great thing is — to spare me more of this... Cain’t you see? Why, old boy, I’d do it — fer you... I swear to Gawd I would... Jake — if you — love me — end my misery!”
Jake’s nerveless hand groped for his gun. He seemed numbed. All the sweetness of the years rushed into this one supreme moment — unbearable in its heartshocking agony.
Verde was praying now for deliverance. The deathly radiance of his face seemed to come already from that other world he sought. His face was almost unearthly beautiful then — and it seemed as if the power to command came from beyond life itself. For a moment he almost overcame Jake’s resistance. But now a strength almost as great as the avalanche that had caught them seized upon Jake’s heart and mind, and the spell was broken.
When Verde saw that he had failed, he snatched at Jake’s gun with a wild and tortured cry. Jake flung it far from him.
Then Verde sank back unconscious. And Jake, whipping out his knife, began to dig frantically at the soft earth under Verde’s imprisoned legs.