Hour after hour they climbed, mostly in silence, speaking now and then some necessary word of caution, of assent. This way and that Tharon turned, but always moving upward in the same direction. From time to time Billy dropped a shred of the red kerchief about his neck, touched the soft walls with the handle of the knife he carried. This left a mark plain as a trail to his trained eyes.
At noon they halted for a little rest. From Tharon’s saddle Billy had taken the flask of water, the tightly rolled bundle of bread and meat in its meal-sack. They ate sparingly of this, drank more sparingly of the water. Billy wondered miserably how soon this last might become more precious than fine gold to him, as he thought of the waterless pockets of the blind and sliding country.
Long before she had rested sufficiently Tharon was up and ready to go. Ever her eager eyes were on the heights above. Ever they turned to the left of the steady line she set herself through and above the winding passes. From time to time Billy looked back. There was not a sign by which one might tell which way he had come if the last mark he made was around the first corner. Hundreds and thousands of spires and faces towered about them. It was a mystic maze of dead stone, cut and weathered by the elements.
“No wonder!” he told himself, “that the Indians call it the Enchanted Land!”
“We’ll reach False Ridge tomorrow, Billy,” Tharon told him confidently, “an’ over it lies God’s Cup. There’s water there––an’ Kenset.”
“What makes you think so?”
“I don’t know. Just feel. He’s there––alive or––” a half sob clutched at her voice––“or dead. But he’s there.”
“There’ll be some one with him if he’s alive, most likely.”
“Sure,” said Tharon briefly.
All the afternoon they traveled, sometimes touching with outstretched hands the faces on either side of them, again walking upward through majestic halls, solemn and beautiful. Everything about them was beautiful, the height, the sheer, straight walls, the myriad little blue shadows of tiny projections on their faces. Night came so early in the pits that long before they wished they were compelled to camp. In a blind pocket, walled like a room and round as an apple, they stopped, and Billy spread down the blanket he had taken from Drumfire’s back. This was their only preparation. They had nothing to do, no fire to build, no water to bring.
Tharon, scarcely conscious of the many miles she had traveled since the previous night, sat down upon the blanket, gathered her knees in her arms and stared at the vague blue phantoms of cliffs through the tall straight mouth that led into this sheltered pocket.
Outside the winds were drawing up the cañons. All day they had walked in this wind. It drew constantly up and down the cuts, this way and that, like contrary currents that met and fought each other, swung in together, went a little way in peace, to again split and surge away through other channels. The echoes were alive with every sound, both of their own making and that of the wind’s. A constant sighing droned through the depths, a mournful, whispering sound that sent the shivers down Tharon’s spine, made her think sadly of all the tragedies she had ever known.
Billy, lying full length beside her, his hands beneath his head, looked up to the narrow blue spot of sky so far away, and thought his own thoughts, and they were not wholly sad.
They fell to talking, softly, in low tones, as if in all the mysterious solitude there might be one to hear, and it was mostly speech of long ago––when Billy had first come into Lost Valley.
After a long and quiet hour the man insisted that she should sleep––that after the hard day and in view of the coming hard morrow, she needed rest.
“But I’m not tired, Billy,” Tharon protested, “no more’n as if I’d been ridin’ all day after th’ cattle.”
But Billy shook his head and hollowed a little place in the soft slide stuff at the Wall’s foot. In this he spread the blanket, folding it half back.
“Lie down,” he commanded, “an’ you’ll be asleep so quick you won’t know when it happens.”
Tharon slipped off her daddy’s belt and stretched her slim young form in the hollow, which fitted it like a cradle. Not for nothing had Billy slept out many a night with nothing save the earth and stars for bed and blanket. The hollow was craftily deepened at hip and shoulder, making a restful couch. As she settled herself therein he lapped the loose half of the blanket over her and tucked it in. Then he took his hat, folded it sharply and placed it under the tawny head.
In its place he would fain have laid his heart.
His fingers, settling the improvised pillow, tangled themselves wistfully in the sun-bright hair, and the boy groaned aloud.
“What’s the matter, Billy, dear?” asked Tharon anxiously, but Billy laughed lightly, a thin sound in the mighty caverns.
“Nothing in God’s world, Tharon,” he lied. “Now go to sleep.”
And he walked away to the tall mouth and sat down with his back against one of the walls. From his pocket he took papers and tobacco and proceeded to roll himself a cigarette.... Dawn showed the narrow doorway strewn with their butts, as leaves strew mountain trails in autumn.
* * *
Things were ready to happen in Lost Valley––several things.
At the Golden Cloud, Lola looked across the level stretches toward the Stronghold with tragic dark eyes, and smiled at a dozen men whom she scarcely saw. Settlers from all up and down the Wall drifted into Corvan and out again, intent, silent, watchful. Vaqueros and riders from the Stronghold also came and went, as intent, as silent. They passed each other with hostile eyes and trigger fingers were unusually limber. The air was pregnant with change.
Buck Courtrey was conspicuous by his absence.
He was not seen in the town, neither was he at the Stronghold.
There were soft whispers afloat that he was with the Pomos up under the Rockface at the north.
And at the Stronghold, poor Ellen, whiter than ever, more like a broken lily drooping on its stem, trembled and waited for a day that was set soon––too terribly soon!––the day, farcically appointed, for the suit for divorce against her.
Word of this was abroad through all the Valley. Underground speculation was rife as to which of the two women whom Courtrey favoured, Lola or Tharon, was responsible. Some said one, some the other. But Lola knew.
Then came the day itself––a golden summer day as sweet and bright as that one years ago when Courtrey had married Ellen––at this same pine building where the laughable legal farces were enacted now.
Pale as a new moon Ellen rode in across the rolling stretches on one of the Ironwoods, with Cleve beside her. She was spiritless, silent. Cleve was silent, too, though for a far different reason. There was a frown between his brows, a glitter in his narrowed eyes. He was thinking of the only man in Corvan whom he had been able to persuade to present Ellen’s protest––Dick Burtree, one-time lawyer and man of parts in the outside, now a puffed and threadbare vagabond, whose paramount idea was whiskey and more whiskey. But Burtree could talk. Over his mottled and shapeless lips could, on occasion, pour a stream of pure oratory silver as the Vestal’s Veil.
When he was drunk he feared neither man nor devil, and he could speak best so. Therefore Cleve had given him enough money in advance to put him in trim.
“What you think Buck’ll say about me, Cleve?” Ellen asked anxiously. “What’s he mean to accuse me of?”
“Any dirty thing he can trump up, Sis,” said Cleve gravely, “he’s a-goin’ to make it a nasty mess––an’ I wish to God you’d jest ride on down th’ Wall with me an’ never even look back.”
He leaned from his saddle and took the blue-veined hand in his. There was an unspeakable tenderness in his eyes as he regarded his sister. “What you say, Ellen? There’s life below, an’ work an’ other men. You’ll marry again, sometime–––”
But Ellen shook her head with its maize-gold crown.
“Nary other man, Cleve,” she said gently. “I’m all Buck’s w
oman.”
So they rode on toward the town, and Cleve knew that his last faint hope was dead.
In the town itself there was a stir. Courtrey was there, and Wylackie Bob, and Black Bart and Arizona, a bunch of dark, evil men in all surety.
The Ironwoods were in evidence everywhere, but strange to say, there were no Finger Marks. Not a man from the Holding was in town.
When Cleve and Ellen, alone together, rode in, it lacked yet a half hour of the time set for trial. There was no place to go but Baston’s, so they dismounted at the hitch-rack. Ellen, swaying on her feet, looked all around with her big pale eyes, and when she saw Courtrey some distance away she put a hand to her heart as simply as a hurt child. She was a pitiful creature in her long white dress, for she had ridden in on an old sidesaddle, and she shook out the crumpled folds in a wistful attempt to look proper. On her head was the inevitable sunbonnet of slats and calico.
As she went up the steps of the store with Cleve, Lola of the Golden Cloud, blazing like a comet in her red-and-black came face to face with her purposely. What was in Lola’s head none would ever know, but she wanted to see Courtrey’s wife.
As they met they stopped dead still, these two women who loved one man, and the look that passed between them was electric, deep, revealing. They stood so long staring into each other’s eyes that Cleve, frowning, plucked Ellen by the sleeve and made to push forward.
But as suddenly as a flash of light Lola reached out her two hands and caught Ellen’s in a tight clasp that only women know, the swift, clinging clasp of the secret fellowship of those who suffer.
For one tense moment she held them, while Ellen swayed forward for all the world as if she would sink in upon the deep full breast of this wanton whom she had hated! Then the spell broke, they fell apart with a rush, Lola swung out and went down the steps, while Ellen obediently followed Cleve into Baston’s store, where she sat on a nail keg and waited in a dull lethargy. Outside Courtrey, who had witnessed the thing from across the street, slapped his thigh and laughed uproariously.
It was a funny sight to him. But Lola’s beautiful black eyes blazed across at him with a light that none had ever seen before in their inscrutable depths.
Then the hour struck, and all Corvan, it seemed to Cleve, strung out toward the Court House. This was to be in open court––a spectacle. From somewhere in the adobe outskirts of the town came Ellen’s serving women, most of them, whom Cleve had sent in early in the day. They fell in with her and so, with only the brother who had never failed her and these dusky women of the silent tongues to back her, Ellen Courtrey went to her crucifixion as truly as though she had been one of the two thieves on Golgotha.
At the sight of Courtrey across the big bare room she went whiter than she was, if such a thing were possible, and slid weakly into the chair placed for her.
Then the thing proceeded––swiftly, lightly, with smiles on the faces of the crowd.
Old Ben Garland on the judge’s bench, was furtive, scared, nervous, fiddling with his papers and clearing his throat from time to time.
The county clerk at his table made a great deal out of the ceremony of swearing in the witnesses––Wylackie Bob, Black Bart, Arizona and one young Wylackie Indian woman who worked at the Stronghold. Cleve put up only the serving women whom he had sent in, some seven of them, every one of whom loved their mistress with the faithful fidelity of a dog. These women knew Ellen Courtrey as not even the master of the Stronghold himself knew her. They knew her in her idle hours, at her small tasks, at her bedside, in the loving solicitude she displayed for all of them––and they knew her on her knees in prayer, for Ellen had a strange and simple religion, half Catholic and half Pomo paganism.
In the straight-backed chair they gave her Ellen sat like a statue, sweet and still, a thing so obviously good that it seemed even Courtrey himself must weaken to behold her. But not Courtrey. He was on fire with the vision of Tharon Last on the Cup Rim’s floor, shaking her fist toward him in challenge––at Baston’s steps calling him a murderer and worse––at her western door, striking him from her with the strength of a man. He saw the signal fire flaring across the darkened Valley––and nothing on earth or in Heaven could have softened him to the woman who bound him away from this fighting girl, this gun woman whom he was breaking to him slowly but surely. He visioned her in Ellen’s room at the Stronghold––and the breath came fast in his throat.
And Ellen?
Ah, Ellen was thinking of the long past day when this man had found her in the barren rocklands and taken her with the high hand of a lover. She, too, drifted away from the chilling courtroom with its judge and its petty officials.... And then all suddenly she knew that men were talking––and about her. She heard the drone of question and answer––the rambling statements of the stranger, Arizona, accusing her of strange things––of asking him to take her on rides in Courtrey’s absence––of swinging with him nights in the hammock by the watering trough!
She sat and listened with parted lips and large innocent eyes fixed on the man in wonder. Cleve Whitmore clenched his hands until the nails cut deep, but he held his tongue and controlled his face. Only the blazing blue eyes spoke. She knew that Black Bart tried to tell something, that he made some mistake or other and had to begin all over again. There was a long and tedious time in here when she looked away out the window to where the prairie grass was blowing in the little winds and the shadows of clouds drifted across the green expanse.... She was numb and far away with misery. She did not care for anything in all this world. It seemed as if she was detached, aloof, dead already in body as she was in soul.... And then she heard the drawling voice of Wylackie Bob––and he was saying something unspeakable––about her! She listened like one in a trance––then she struggled up from her chair with tragic long arms extended, and the cry that rang from her lips was piteous.
“Buck!” it pealed across the stillness of the crowded room, “Buck!––it ain’t so! Never in this world, Buck! I ben true to you as your shadow! Before God, it ain’t true!”
There was a stir throughout the crowd, a breath that was audible. There were many of the Vigilantes there––a goodly number, all wondering where Tharon Last was, where Kenset was, where were the riders from Last’s. They had expected, what they did not know––something, at any rate, for this seemed somehow a test, a turning point. But there was nothing. They stirred and waited, like a great force heaving in its bed, blind, sluggish, but wakening.
And Ellen, chilled by Courtrey’s sneering face, the cold disapproval of Ben Garland’s striking mallet, sank back in her chair and covered her face with her shaking hands.... She heard some more awful things––then the voice of Dick Burtree beginning soft, low, silver like running waters. She heard it tell of that far away day of her marriage––of the years that followed––of Courtrey’s love for her––of her own gentleness, her beauty, “like the tender sunlight of spring on the snow and the golden sands”––of her service, her loyalty, her love that had “never faltered nor intruded” that “patient obedience to her master had but strengthened and made perfect.” Of the pitiful thing that her life had been this man made a wondrous thing, all sweet with twilights and haloed with service.
He talked until the courtroom was still as death and the Indian women behind her were rocking in unison of grief. Then she heard questions again and the gutteral soft voices of her women answering––with love and devotion in every halting word. Once again the crowd in the room stirred––and Courtrey’s narrow eyes went over it in that cold, promising glance.
For once in his life Courtrey, the bully, felt a premonitory chill down his spine––because for the first time that promising glance of his failed of its effect! Only here and there along the rows of faces did one cower. There were faces, many faces, that looked back at him with steady eyes and tight lips.... Verily it was time he conquered the riding, shooting, beautiful she-devil who had made this thing possible! The sooner he got Tharon Last away from
this bunch of spawn the better. Then he would sweep in with all his old swift methods, only sharper ones this time, and “clean” them all. When he got through it would be a different man’s Valley, make no mistake about that!
Here Ellen looked straight into his eyes and both were conscious of the shock. Ellen wilted and Courtrey frowned and struck a fist against the railing near him.... He looked up and met the hesitating eyes of Ben Garland on the bench and his own hardened down to pin points.
The farce was finished save for the Judge’s decision––Dick Burtree was slumped in his chair, dead drunk and asleep. Wylackie Bob was lighting a cigarette in his brown fingers, a smile on his evil mouth, his slow, black eyes covering the slim white form of Ellen in a speculative way, as if he dreamed of making true his blasphemous lies. Ellen was sweet as a flower in her open-lipped beauty, her panting despair. Wylackie did not notice the slim man beside her whose lips were so tight that they were a mere line across his face. No one at the Stronghold noticed Cleve much.
Then Ben Garland was speaking, and Ellen gathered her dim wits enough to make out that he was saying strange things––awful things––that had to do with Courtrey’s freedom.
Then she knew––swaying and groping with her blue-veined hands––that the thing was done––that she was no longer a wife. That she would never again sleep in the bend of Courtrey’s arm as she had slept in those golden days of long ago––that she was an outcast, blackened beyond all hope by the damning and unchoice words of Wylackie Bob.... Then the world faded out for Ellen in merciful blackness.
The petty officials rose with laughter and clanking of boots on the board floors––the crowd filed out in a striking silence. Never before had a crowd in Lost Valley gone out from a courtroom in that strange and bodeful silence.
The sight of Ellen lying white and limp across Cleve Whitmore’s shoulder like a sack of grain, as he passed out with the moving mass, had an odd effect. It was partly the white dress that did it––and the time was ripe.
Tharon of Lost Valley Page 17