by Zane Grey
“Tell me something more about what I did, when I was here that last time,” said Keven, determined to damn himself utterly and forever in his own sight.
“Oh, there are a million things,” she jubilated, in contrast to her former pathos. “We climbed the trails. We used to watch the deer in the oak groves. Once we were treed by wild pigs! How funny that was! We gathered flowers and ferns. We used to wash the sand for gold. I have a little vial full of gold dust that we washed. But the river was your god. I was jealous of the river. You loved it best, and then the water ouzels and the steelhead…. All the time since you’ve been away, while I was home, when I heard the ouzels in the mornings and evenings I would cry.”
“Water ouzels? These little elfish Rogue River birds that build their nests under the cliffs, so when their young ones hatch they’ll fall in the water?”
“Yes, yes, Kev,” she cried eagerly. “We used to try to get to those mud nests sticking on the walls. But we never could…. Don’t you remember how I first took you to the rock ledges where the steelhead lay? No one ever knew them but Dad and I. But I showed you. Don’t you remember one lovely morning that I saw a big steelhead rising? And I showed you where. You cast and cast. You tried every fly you had. And at last I let you try one I had tied myself. It was buff and black. The old sockdolager rose up and fastened to that fly. Then he leaped—a monster. Sixteen, perhaps eighteen pounds. And he took you down around the bend. You ran, you waded, you swam the river over and back again, while I flew and screamed along the bank. Oh, don’t you remember, Kev? … How I met you at the head of the rapids where you lost him? Your rod was broken and so was your heart…. It was then, Kev, that I let you—no, that I gave you my first kiss.”
A door seemed to jar and shock back on the dim threshold of that closed chamber in Keven Bell’s brain. He saw again that monster rose-and-silver trout, leaping and tearing down the swift river. He saw again a girl, black-eyed and blackhaired, flying barefooted over the sand and stones, screaming in wild abandon.
“Beryl, I remember—I remember!” he exclaimed, his eyes closed in a rapture that had its inception in the past. The next instant the girl was on his breast, weeping, crying out her thanksgiving for his deliverance from oblivion. Instinctively, unconsciously his arms closed round her. And when he opened his eyes there he stood with a dark head on his breast, with fragrant hair at his lips. He could not realize it. The dogs wagged eager tails and gazed up wonderingly at this stranger. Then Keven looked up. Was that waterfall, like downward-flying lace as white as snow, anything real and tangible? Did cloud ships sail across the blue sky and drop moving shadows along the mountain slope? Was that scent of sweet myrtle a delusion? Were the purple asters swaying in the breeze flowers of a dream? Was he only mad or dead?
It was she who released herself.
“Dad is away from home,” she said. “He goes to Portland sometimes. He said he would stop over at Gold Beach to see you. Oh, won’t he be glad!”
The horror of the fate that had overtaken Keven swept over him again.
“You are pale—tired. You look so strange,” she said tremulously.
“I’m all in, Beryl,” he replied, suddenly weak. “I wasn’t strong—and I walked too far. Then I slept in my wet things and it cramped me. I’m starved, too.”
“Oh, dear! And here I’ve been wearing you out with my fury!” she exclaimed self-accusingly. “But, oh, the joy of having you back! My Keven! My soldier home from the war! … Come. I shall rest you and feed you and nurse you till you are the Keven of old.”
She led him toward the cabin. He espied an Indian woman peering at them from the porch. The dogs trotted on ahead, assured now that all was well. The blue smoke curled up from the stone chimney. Keven caught the odor of a wood fire and baking bread. He seemed powerless to resist, though he knew he could flee like a madman into the forest.
CHAPTER TWELVE
KEVEN woke to the sweet, wild, plaintive notes of a water ouzel outside the open window of the cabin where he had slept.
He lay listening, marveling. A faint murmur of the brook came up from somewhere. These two wilderness sounds belonged together. Sunlight and shadows of leaves lay across the bed. He gazed around the cabin. It had not been used as a habitation of late. It smelled like the pinewoods. A chair and table made of boughs were the only other pieces of furniture. An open fireplace and chimney of gray stone occupied the center of the back wall. A ten-point set of deer horns stood out prominently. Ornaments of reeds, shriveled and sere, hung on the peeled yellow logs. Outside the open door, on a wide-roofed porch, lay a black hound asleep.
At the same time Keven looked about him, curious and thoughtful, he became conscious that he did not feel well. His body ached and his head was hot. The tremendous exertions to which he had driven himself, the exposure and starvation, and his overwrought condition of mind, had knocked him out.
But what was he to do? The answer struck harshly. He had to go on, the moment he was able. A day’s rest perhaps would fit him to travel. Yet— this Beryl Aard! He groaned and writhed. Last night, before slumber had claimed him, bit by bit he added to the regurgitation of memory. To him she had been a pretty wilderness girl, tormenting in her charm and reserve. He had not meant or done her any harm. He had not! But he had made love to her, in a boy’s teasing, passionate way, never thinking that she might take him seriously. Then he had gone home to fall victim to Rosamond Brandeth. Next the war, with its disruption of ties, of work, of life! He forgot the little girl who lived at Solitude. He had forgotten her as fickle, careless youth forgets. Then had followed the shock to his brain, his impaired sight and memory. How terribly now to come strangely face to face with Beryl Aard—to find her a woman, strong, good, beautiful, waiting for him through the years, loving him with that faithful love all men dreamed of and so few ever encountered! He was a fugitive. If he was not a murderer, if the slaying of that half-breed fisherman was just, he had yet murder in his mind. He swore he would kill the man who had ruined his good name, had made honest labor fruitless.
“I’ve got to beat it away quick,” he muttered. But could he sneak off like an ungrateful cur? Could he invent some urgent excuse to get up the river? Never had he been in such an appalling situation. But of what avail to torture himself? He had no choice. He was lost. He wanted only to beat down the malignant Atwell—mash his smug face, kick his fat belly, strangle him with bare hands. The lust of it obsessed him. Beyond that idea he had not thought collectively. Only chaos there! But he had persuaded himself that he would find satisfaction in this last bitter blow to the society that had wrecked him.
There came a light footfall upon the porch. The hound awoke to beat the floor with his tail. Then someone knocked.
“Keven…. Are you awake?” followed the query, in Beryl’s rich voice, eager, expectant.
“Yes. But that’s about all,” he replied.
She entered carrying a box-lid tray with his breakfast. She wore white, that brought out vividly her dark beauty. She appeared taller in white, not so robust, so full-bosomed. Her brown ankles were bare. On her feet she wore deerskin moccasins. She set the tray upon the table and moved it to his bedside. Then she looked down upon him with dark deep eyes he found hard to meet. They were fearful.
“Are you hungry? You couldn’t eat last night.”
“No. I’m just sunk,” he replied, and his voice did not appear strong.
She felt his cheeks and brow with a cool hand, and smoothing back his hair she sat down on the bed.
“You have fever. Try to eat a little,” she entreated.
“I’m not very presentable,” he replied awkwardly, yet he was thankful that he had forgotten to remove his blouse.
“This is Solitude, Kev,” she replied simply.
Whereupon Keven struggled to a sitting posture, placed a pillow to his back and the tray upon his lap. Blackberries and cream, ham and eggs, toast and coffee, discovered to him that he was famished. While he ate she watched him gravely. She
was studying him with all a woman’s keen faculties, hiding her feelings. Yesterday it had been the past upon which she dwelt; this morning she was concerned with the present. The force, the charm of her, frightened Keven. What could he say to her?
“You were hungry,” she said. “Kev, I think you have fever.”
“Might have any old thing, but I reckon it’s only a cold. I’ll get up after a little and mozy around.”
When she took the tray her hand came into contact with his, and again her touch gave him a magnetic thrill.
“Kev, you look ill—troubled,” she said, standing beside him.
Slowly he sank down under the blanket, as if he wanted to hide. But he met her eyes, and something in them inhibited his cowardice.
“I am, both, I guess…. Beryl, I learned to drink in the army hospital. It deadened my pain. At Gold Beach—my partner was a hard drinker. We were always cold and wet. So I drank more and more. I reckon it gave me false strength. I’ve had no liquor for two days. This morning I need some badly…. But I don’t want it…. I shall—never—drink—again.”
“That makes me very happy. I hate drink,” she returned. “Before I came home I saw a good deal of it at Roseburg. My aunt kept an inn, out of town along the river. It’s a pretty place. Motorists stop there. Often I used to serve them sandwiches. They usually had flasks. That Major Atwell, who spoke so vilely of you in the paper, he came there with a girl named Brandeth, from Grant’s Pass. Did you know her?”
“Rosamond Brandeth? Yes. I used to know her,” replied Keven steadily. What next would this girl reveal?
“He got her quite tipsy,” went on Beryl. “It disgusted me so…. Then, after that, Major Atwell came frequently, alone. He tried to make up to me, Kev.”
“He did? Well,” replied Keven, conscious of a raking sting in his veins, “I heard Atwell was a devil among the women…. How did he make out with you?”
Her red lips parted, showing her white even teeth, and she laughed. “He didn’t make out at all. The minute I realized he was after me—I’m a stupid little country girl, Kev—I never showed myself again. Soon after that I came home for good.”
“Beryl, you read what Atwell said about me assaulting him?” queried Keven.
“Dad told me. I’m ashamed to admit I was tickled. But I was wild with rage over Atwell’s implicating you in—in the Carstone scandal. We heard of that two years and more ago.”
“Then you didn’t take it—seriously?” gulped Keven, swallowing hard.
“I knew you could never be mixed up in anything like that,” she replied, with sweet directness.
“Ahuh…. I—I’m glad to tell you I wasn’t.”
“Kev, is that what’s troubling you?”
“Yes, a little. Atwell had me arrested at Gold Beach. I was in jail a month. He had hatched up a case on me. But it fell through. Somebody upstate must be wise to Atwell, for he couldn’t get the papers necessary to move me out of Curry County.”
“In jail—a month!” she gasped. “Soon after you arrived there?”
“Yes. And afterwards I was no good.”
“I wondered why you didn’t write me. How often I rode to Merrill, in hopes I’d get a letter! None ever came.”
“Garry and I did well at first,” went on Keven. “We were market fishing. But there’s much antagonism toward upriver fishermen. The fishermen at Gold Beach worked against us in every way. Finally they destroyed our net. Then we took to trolling. And last they either refused our fish or offered a miserable price. And, Beryl, no less a person than your Major Atwell backed those fishermen, egged them on to drive us out.”
“Slacker Atwell, they call him in Roseburg. Don’t call him mine. I loathed him,” retorted Beryl, her face hot, her eyes snapping. “So he’s been hounding you? The beast! I’d do more than assault him, if I were a man.”
Keven found her championship incredibly sweet. It stirred him to Homeric eloquence, to betrayal of his secret, to gratitude that was reverent, to the utter impossibility of deceiving this girl.
“Beryl, my trouble is—I killed a man,” burst out Keven, meaning to tell all.
She gave him a horrified stare and sank to her knees by his bedside.
“Kev! … You can’t be serious?” she cried, wringing her hands.
“It’s true. I killed a fisherman named Mulligan,” replied Keven hoarsely. “Jabbed my fish knife in his throat…. But I wasn’t—I’m not sorry.”
“My God!” she wailed, and her face went deathly white. “Kev, what have you done? … Oh, darling—darling—how awful!”
She clasped him with fiercely protective hands. She bent over him blindly, convulsed of face, choking in her realization.
Keven lifted her up, shook her, pulled her twining arms from round his neck. “But it was self-defense, Beryl,” he began, in hurried passion. “I’m no murderer…. He was beating down my partner, Garry. I think he killed him…. Brace up, Beryl. It’s not so terrible—the truth isn’t. Listen. Let me tell you the whole story.”
His vehemence, his physical violence, checked her terror. She sank back upon her knees, her hands at a pulsing breast which seemed to house too big a heart, and she fixed great tragic eyes of love upon him.
Keven began with his attack upon Atwell, and went on with the fight down the river, the market fishing, the jail episode, the underground process which, wore him and Garry down, their resort to hook-and-line fishing in order to live, its utter failure, and then the discovery of the net with the four-inch mesh, and at last the terrible fight on the river in the dusk of the gathering storm, and his escape.
“Oh, Kev—thank heaven it’s not—what I thought,” she whispered. “You frightened me so.”
“But it’s bad enough anyway. I can’t prove my innocence.”
“Truth always comes out.”
“It does not,” he said bitterly.
“You should give yourself up,” she replied earnestly. “Your innocence will come out. You have friends to fight for you.”
“I’d die before I’d go to jail again,” his voice rang out. “Atwell is too strong. He and Brandeth run the fisheries. They’d frame me. They have money, political pull. The matter of the four-inch nets would kill their interests at Gold Beach if it came out. They’d stop at nothing. I’d have no chance. They’d hang me!”
She shrank as if he had stabbed her. “Don’t—don’t! … Keven, are you honest with me? If your enemies are so strong, why then were you rushing to Grant’s Pass?”
She fixed him with accusing eyes before which he quailed.
“You were not coming here to hide,” she hurried on. “You were not only escaping…. Kev, you have something on your mind. Some deadly intent…. You mean to kill the man who has ruined you!”
Keven could neither deny nor confess. For him there seemed a monstrous inhibition in her love, in the incredible fidelity she had given him. And he was suddenly struck to the heart by his own falsehood. He could not tell her because he could not bear to make her suffer. How much more agony would his planned revenge heap upon her innocent head? He was stunned. He felt as if he were beating his head against a wall. Presently he would become as weak, as unstable as water.
She leaned over to grip his hands.
“Listen to me, Kev Bell. You are out of your mind. To kill Atwell would be fatal. Foolish! It’s beneath you. It would wreck me…. Oh, I beseech you, give it up. Think of your old father! Think of my faith in you—my love for you…. Stay here at Solitude. I know a place high up the mountain—a cave by the stream. You could live there for years and no one would ever know. I could see you every day. We could roam over the mountains. You could hunt. You could trap fur, you could prospect for gold. There is gold in these hills. It would be safe sometimes for you to come down to the river and fish for steelhead. Only the packers and the mail rider go by Solitude. And we always know the hour they pass. Dad would keep our secret. This Indian housekeeper of ours is dumb. You would be safe—and we could be together…. And all
the while Kev, the truth of your innocence would be working out. Something will happen to save you. Oh, trust me, darling, for I know. I feel it here.”
Keven had closed his eyes, blinded by the tragic loving spirit shining upon him. And as she went on in heart-arresting eloquence there seemed to be a gathering knot within him. It swelled, it multiplied, it possessed his soul and the very springs of his being. It took the shape of a diabolical Hydra-headed twining fetter against which was arrayed all that was good in him, all that hope would not let die. There came a vital wrench. Something black and hideous seemed to loosen and pass out of him, leaving him free.
“Beryl, I will stay,” he whispered, “and you can hide me. I meant to kill him. You have turned me.”
She laid her head on his breast.
The hound on the porch outside jumped up with a deep-throated bay and dashed off the porch. Then rang out a wild chorus of yelps and barks.
“Dad!” cried Beryl joyfully, leaping up to run to the door.
“Are you sure?” asked Keven, who had been rudely jarred from a tranquility so new and marvelous as to hold him prone and silent.
“I know what the dogs say, Kev,” she answered. “There, it is Dad. He’s alone. There’s nothing to alarm you.”
“Suppose he has—bad news!”
“I think not…. Kev, my prayers have been heard.”
“Please bring him here, but don’t tell him anything except that I’m here.”
Keven propped himself up in bed, as if to prepare himself. Aard would have the news from Gold Beach; and Keven shuddered at what that might be. He nerved himself for the worst. How long Beryl seemed! The moments dragged. Then he heard voices, approaching steps. Beryl flashed into the cabin, radiant of face. Then the tall form of Aard darkened the door, and his spurs jingled. Keven had expected to see a grave dark face, with piercing, searching eyes. But Aard, for once, seemed surprised out of his habitual imperturbability. He took one swift glance, as if to assure himself that his daughter had spoken truth, then he strode in, long arm extended.