by Zane Grey
His frenzy, his wringing hands, his voiceless yells were eloquent of something that was gone! gone! gone! Kalispel understood then that not until this tragic moment of catastrophe had Leavitt known of the loss of his gold.
His pale face vanished from the dark doorway. And that instant, with a rumble and a shake the mass of slope let loose in a landslide to move down upon the cabin. The roof caved in, and earth poured down like water into a vessel.
Leavitt appeared at the door and then was felled by a falling rafter. He went down, his head outside the door. And there, wrenching and lunging, like an animal caught by its hind feet in a trap, he raised his body and flung his arms. In each hand he held a bag of gold. His face was a gray blotch, his strained action terrible.
The sliding silt filled the cabin and began to pour out of the door over Leavitt. Still he struggled. Like a waterfall the earth rushed off the roof on each side, leaving a slowly-closing, fan-shaped aperture through which the doomed man could be seen. Then came a sliding roar, a cloud of dust — and the cabin disappeared.
As if in mockery of the littleness of man, nature pealed out the doom which the wise old beaver and the savage chief had foreseen. No sound before had ever equaled that thundering travail of the mountain yielding its might, its bulk, its stability to the stupendous force of gravitation. For ages its foundation had groaned warnings. And now the hour of descent had come.
The slope was a billowy sea on end. Far up the trees were aslant, falling, wagging, piling up and sliding down. The hollows filled, the scant thickets rode the avalanche, the ridges rose like waves and sank in furrows. Majestic and awful, the mile-high face of the mountain moved down. Gradually the movement slowed and as gradually the rumbling thunder diminished. The shouts of men could be heard. Once more the sound of the stream penetrated the valley.
Blair approached Kalispel and Sydney, who had recovered from her faint.
“My God! Kal — isn’t it awful?” gasped Blair, taking hold of Sydney.
“Shore came in the nick of time for me,” replied Kalispel, hoarsely. “Pack an’ rustle, Blair.”
Masters appeared, approaching the edge of the slide, which had moved out some distance on the bench. He stopped for a while to watch it.
Sydney seized Kalispel’s hand.
“Look! The place where — I fell — is covered,” she whispered, with a glance Kalispel would never forget.
Presently Masters held up his hand and bellowed to the watching crowd.
“She’s movin’ three feet a minute.... Thunder City is doomed.... Run an’ tell everybody. Grab yore gold, some grub, a blanket, an’ rustle out of heah!”
Kalispel ran toward his cabin, every few moments halting to look back at the extraordinary spectacle. It was as great and as strange as had been his deliverance. Every rod that he progressed away from the sliding slope changed its perspective; the farther he got away the more he could see. Three feet a minute! It would not be long until the encroaching landslide must reach the edge of the long, one-streeted town. Miners were running like red-jacketed ants in every direction.
Jake’s gloomy visage lightened at sight of Kalispel.
“About time you got back! Didn’t I tell you I had a hunch?”
“Don’t rub it in.... Where’s — Ruth?”
“Poor kid, she’s scared ‘most damn near to death,” replied Jake, indicating that the girl was inside the cabin.
Ruth lay on the couch with her face covered. But Kalispel saw the heaving of her breast.
“Ruth!” he panted as he sat down beside her and tore her hands and scarf from her face. “I’m here.”
She leaped up to clasp him in her arms, and the horror faded from her eyes as she kissed him wildly, unconscious of all save his return.
“Why — kid — don’t take on so!” he said, huskily, but her clinging hands and lips were sweet to him.
“I saw the vigilantes march you up to Leavitt,” she whispered. “Jake held me back. He swore you’d come through.... But, oh, I nearly went mad!”
“Closest shave I — ever had,” replied Kalispel, breathing hard. He beckoned for Jake to come in the open door. Then he recounted to them the pregnant events of the last hour.
“Kal, there must be a God,” said Ruth, solemnly, when he had finished.
“I’ll never doubt it again,” replied Kalispel, fervently.
They did not remain longer in the cabin. Outside again, they gazed spellbound at the unparalleled scene. Shacks and tents were riding up-ended at the base of the moving mountain, splintering sounds came clearly across the distance; the sinister inexorable landslide crept toward the town.
But if the spectacle low down was fascinating, that high up on the slope was indescribably so. The movement seemed more visible there and it was monstrous. Over the ridge back of the center of the town hove in sight a moving forest that ordinarily had been hidden from view. With firs and pines uprooted, upflung, upended, a section of slope slid down with slow and terrible precision. Far at the end of the town, where the valley narrowed in its approach to the canyon, the landslide had made more progress. Borden’s huge dance-hall stood in line for almost instant annihilation.
“Oh, I hope the girls are safe!” cried Ruth.
“Never fear. They’ve had plenty of time. If only they had sense enough to get their clothes an’ grub. It’ll be bad if they don’t.”
“Kal, that landslide will wipe Thunder City out, dam the valley, an’ make a lake where we’re standin’ now,” declared Jake. “Aw no! I never had a hunch — not atall.”
“Wal, what hunch is eatin’ you now?” queried Kalispel. “I’ll tell when I get one.... Wow! hear thet smash! Borden’s dance-hall dancin’ to its grave! Ain’t thet a queer sight? It jest ain’t real, folks.”
“Jake, rustle to your packin’,” ordered Kalispel, remembering the issue at hand. “We want to get out ahead of the mob.”
“I reckon the exodus won’t begin till tomorrow,” returned Jake. “Most of these gold-hawgs will hang on till the end.”
“Ruth, rustle into warm things an’ overalls. It’ll be tough sleddin’ on the pass. But we’ll get over before night an’ camp below the snow line.”
“Listen! Oh, listen to the thunder!” cried Ruth, her eyes shining with excitement, her golden hair flying in the wind.
They packed feverishly for a while and then stopped to breathe and gaze again at the phenomenon. The Blairs rode by behind the freighters and a train of pack-animals. Far across the stream miners could be seen in droves, moving their effects up on the high bench. Fire broke out in one of the overturned buildings, sending forth flames and volumes of yellow smoke. The grinding of boulders went on, the cracking of walls, the thudding of trees, and the incessant shouting of excited men.
Kalispel selected the best burro to pack the alfagos which carried his gold. Over this pack he strapped his bed. Then he haltered the burro close at hand. The grimness of the hour did not prevent a singing of his heart. Ruth came out dressed to ride, and when he saw her he did not fear that the picture of Sydney Blair in riding-garb would ever haunt him again. By this time Jake had packed the other two burros.
“If you pack my saddle-horse, Jake, I’ll walk. I reckon that’ll take the outfit,” said Kalispel.
“Oh, look!” cried Ruth.
A mile of the face of the landslide had crept upon the long line of the buildings on the north side of the main street. Three feet a minute! Yet it might have been a tidal wave, for the crashing and rending, the smashing and rolling, the collapsing and upheaving of tents, shacks, cabins, stores, and saloons, gave the impression of swiftly-advancing havoc and ruin. The landslide seemed relentless. It had waited long; it had faithfully warned this mushroom city; and now it was fulfilling its augury.
Thunder again! The ground shook beneath Kalispel’s feet, and Ruth reached for him with eager hands and parted lips. Only a huge slide of earth from far above, pouring over the lower strata like lava over an old slow-moving stream! Rocks
heaved out of the moving silt to roll, to be buried again, to appear once more, to slide and gather momentum until they were hurtling down to leap the boulders on the bench and crack as if exploding, or were thudding soddenly into the piling earth around the houses. One half the city seemed alive, writhing and crunching in the maw of the avalanche, while the other half waited apprehensively the approach of the cataclysm.
“Ruth, fork your horse,” ordered Kalispel, driven to tear his gaze from the spectacle. “Jake, move ’em along. We’re late now.”
He watched the girl, keen even in that moment to see if she could make good her boast of horsemanship. Ruth never thought of it. She stepped up and swung into her saddle with a lithe ease and grace which could come only from long practice. Somehow the sight enhanced her value and suddenly gave her a charm he had not appreciated till then.
“Wal, you win, Calamity Jane. Ride on,” he called. And then he untied his burro, and with rifle in hand stepped out upon the trail.
At the bend of the stream, where the trail turned, Kalispel had his last close view of Thunder City and the juggernaut which was destroying it.
That Ruth did not look back seemed strange. Kalispel turned even after he could see no more. But he could still hear the detonations like sodden blows. Far up the trail a train of pack-mules zigzagged toward the summit of the pass. The stream, bank-full, and yellow in hue, roared hurriedly down, as if sensing an hour when no escape from the valley would be possible. And the sun, westering, had begun to gild the white clouds over the western wall.
Kalispel marveled at his deliverance. There had been a moment when he had given up and prayed only to get his hands on a pair of guns. This vengeance had not been meant for him. A higher power had settled the score with Leavitt.
The trail grew steep and began its zigzag course. Jake, always a careful leader, often held the burros to rest. Kalispel climbed behind Ruth’s horse. She did not talk nor did she look back. Kalispel anticipated the moment when from the summit of the pass he would view the unparalleled scene of his life.
The air grew cold, with a hint of snow in its breath. Jake toiled on, his wide shoulders bowed. The lop-eared burros plodded on behind him. Kalispel never let go of the halter of his burro, a procedure which the wise animal regarded with disfavor. Jenny did not realize the preciousness of the treasure which burdened her. Nor was Kalispel able to make himself believe it.
The melodious roar of the stream ceased to thrum in Kalispel’s ears. It died gradually away. Sharp cold wind rustled the sagebrush on the slope. The rush of a bird of prey sounded above his head. And the patter of tiny hoofs went on.
At last Jake halted on the first level of the pass, where patches of snow spotted the gray. His ruddy face, almost as red as his shirt, turned down toward the valley. His mouth gaped, his jaw dropped, his eyes popped, and he threw up one long arm in a voiceless salutation of something aweinspiring.
Ruth must have seen him, she must have understood. But she bowed her head over the neck of her horse and did not turn. Kalispel’s lips had opened to call her, to have her share with him this last and unforgettable view of Thunder City. But suddenly he understood. Ruth had the strength not to look back. She had forever bidden farewell to that sordid gold-camp and to the life she had led there. She wanted no transcendant beauty of scene, no terrible convulsion of nature, limned on her memory.
But Kalispel gazed back and was stunned.
The long valley lay at his feet, under slanting rays and veils of golden light, and through its center meandered a shining stream of fire, which ended in a broad, shield-shaped, blazing lake.
The farthest end of the landslide had dammed the stream. Houses, half-submerged, like sinking boats, floated upon its surface. Men like ants toiled along its farther shore. Kalispel looked in vain for what had been the long, narrow gray-walled, white-tented town, for the long, wide street with its teeming life.
Chaos reigned down in that valley, transcendantly beautiful in its sunset hues and curtains, terrible with its naked destructive forces of earth and rock.
Kalispel had to gaze over and over again and readjust his perspective to make clear what he really did see. And when Jake and Ruth had gone on up the trail, and the sun sank behind the western wall, Kalispel had painted forever on his memory the grandeur of the slide of Thunder Mountain into the valley.
To his right and far above gleamed the stark, smooth, glistening slant of solid rock from which the mountain of earth had finally detached itself. Through the years it had moaned this intention. Halfway down and more, the avalanche had slid; and now even high up, its gradual subsiding was perceptible to the awe-struck watcher. It was moving to its rest. A wide belt of bare, dark earth slanted down from the naked rock. But this smooth slope gradually roughened down to the boulder-strewn, tree-spiked, hummocky middle of the landslide. Here began the chaotic evidences of the devastating nature of the element earth when once released from its confines. The slow, processional, downward trend had an awful solemnity. By steps and crevasses and bulges, all working, heaving, swelling, caving in, the great unstable bulk crept irresistibly down, and always down, growing wilder and raggeder, until it fell into the terraces that had moved like slow swells of the sea to wipe away the town.
What was left of Thunder City rode the avalanche, or was shoved ahead of the sliding wall out into the blazing lake.
These long uneven terraces of debris fascinated Kalispel. From this viewpoint he could grasp all, as an eagle could when it leaned wide wings against the wind. From below Kalispel had not had any conception of this monstrous defacement of a mountain and the destruction of habitations of thousands of men. What struck him most was the relentless, slow descent. Every phase of this austere motion had in it the illimitable power that had doomed Leavitt. Watching there, Kalispel had a strange thought that the landslide had waited there for Leavitt.
Beyond all and above all shone forth its appalling and ghastly and sublime beauty. The triangular side of the mountain, the rock face, gleamed with the gold of the sunset; and the dark earth grew rich in purple and lilac; the rolling terraces caught the tints of the sun like oncoming billows of surf burning with gold fire on their crests; the tilted houses, ghosts of edifices where mirth and greed and hate had abided, moved on under down-dropping curtains of rose light, while others floated on the lake, gray-sailed barks that grotesquely rode the shimmering water.
Mountain and valley had existed there side by side, the one looming grandly over the other, for untold ages. Then, one amber-veiled afternoon, the mountain had begun its slide, and the valley was filling with debris and water. Death had stalked there. And only a step away the throng of intrepid miners, undaunted by this cataclysm, had pitched camp on the high bench beyond, there to watch it out, to remain behind for the precious gold, or to take the long trail, defeated but not despairing.
Kalispel wrenched himself from the scene, and profoundly grateful and humbled and troubled, he led his burro up the pass into the snow. The trail had been made and packed by those who had gone before. And on the descent beyond, the cold white mantle thinned out and failed. As twilight fell Kalispel plodded down into a sheltered grove of aspens where a bright fire blazed and Jake whistled at his tasks. Ruth sat before the fire, her face rosy and sweet, with no trace of grief, her small bare hands extended to the heat.
“We’re over the hill!” said Kalispel, as he gazed down upon his charge, and he meant vastly more than the surmounting of the snowy pass.
The Middle Fork presented Kalispel’s next problem. If it was in flood, there would be many miners camping at the ford. Kalispel desired to avoid contacts. The river itself did not worry him. He would wait until the flood subsided or build a raft and ferry his packs over on that. Ruth was at home in a saddle, and this surprising fact gave Kalispel unending satisfaction.
Trailing downhill was easy on burros and men. The ford of the Middle Fork was reached in the late afternoon of the third day out from the valley. The river was high, but not so
high as to hold back the miners who had turned their backs upon the Saw Tooths. Kalispel ordered camp and busied himself constructing a raft.
“What’n hell do we want a raft fer?” snorted Jake.
“Keep your shirt on, brother. I’m buildin’ it, you see.”
“But what’s it fer?”
“Reckon to freight Ruth’s fine togs safely across.”
“Kal, I burned them!” exclaimed Ruth.
“Aw, wal!... I’ll pack mine over on it, then. Hate to wet my clothes an’ bed.”
Next morning disclosed his wisdom. Jake had a ducking in the icy water and one of the burros was rolled by the swift current. Kalispel dragged his improvised raft up stream a hundred yards and crossed on it with his alfagos without a hitch. Ruth handled her horse like a cowboy.
“Yip-yip!” yelled Kalispel, unable to subdue exuberant feelings.
Chapter Sixteen
Kalispel made noonday halt in a grove of cottonwoods on the bank of the Salmon River below Challis.
He wanted to give that congested town a wide berth. But he sent Jake in to fetch back some very necessary fresh supplies, and upon a mission he did not confide to Ruth until his brother was out of sight.
“Say, kid,” he began, hesitatingly, as he felt his cheeks grow hot, “Jake is goin’ to fetch back the — the parson.”
“The — what?” flamed Ruth, starting up.
They sat resting in the shade of the cottonwoods some distance from the road, and screened by willows from passers-by. It was a pretty spot. Leaves of gold and green fluttering over them and carpeting the ground, blue sky and white clouds, warm sunshine and the amber river rolling on with its deep, gurgling, sonorous note — these seemed to encourage Kalispel in his delicate task.
“I sent for the parson,” he replied, after a pause. “I shore hate to make you feel bad, but, wal, it’s terrible important.”