by Zane Grey
When he awoke, red cañon walls leaned far above him to a gap filled by a stream of deep blue sky. A song of rushing water murmured near his ears. He brought his gaze downward; a clear spring gushed from a crack in the wall; Silvermane cropped green bushes, and Wolf sat on his haunches, waiting, but no longer with sad eyes and strange mien. Hare raised himself, looking again and again, and slowly gathered his wits. Wolf had led him to water and Silvermane had carried him. The crimson blur had gone from his eyes and the dry burning from his skin, and the painful swelling from his tongue.
He drank long and deeply, and, rising with clearing thoughts and thankful heart, he kissed Wolf ’s white head, and laid his arms around Silvermane’s neck and pressed his cheek against the flowing mane. He fed them, and partook of food himself, not without difficulty, for his lips were puffed and his tongue felt like a piece of rope. When he had eaten, his strength came back.
At a word Wolf, with a wag of his tail, splashed into the gravelly streambed, splashing the water, and Hare followed on foot, leading Silvermane. There were little beds of pebbles and beaches of sand and short steps down which the water babbled. The cañon was narrow and tortuous; Hare could not see ahead or below, for the projecting red corners, growing higher as he descended, walled out the view. The blue stream of sky above grew bluer and the light a shade less bright. For an hour he went down steadily without a check, and the farther down, the rougher grew the way. Boulders began to lodge in narrow places and raise falls for the water to foam over. Silvermane clicked down confidently; many falls he rounded along the sides, others he climbed over carefully, and the bad ones, with a drop of several feet, he crashed down in a way to cause Hare much concern.
The slender stream of water, augmented by seeping springs and little rills, gained the dignity of a brook, and began to dash merrily and hurriedly downward, with the depth of the falls, the height of cliffs, and the size of the boulders increasing in the descent. Wolf splashed on unmindful; there was animation in his leaps, and, when he looked back for his laboring companions, there was a friendly protest in his eyes. Silvermane plainly showed that where a dog could go, he could go, and he plunged over the rocky falls. It became necessary for Hare to hold him back, and stand warily before him on the brink of steep places, and coax him over. His iron shoes struck hollow sounds on the stones under water and his snorts rang down the cañon. Hare clambered down over wet stones with fear for the horse. Silvermane, with fire in his eye, grinding, pounding down, slipped after and slid to his haunches on wet inclines, but he never fell, and no obstruction, no depth daunted him.
It was here Hare learned that passages he deemed impossible were as nothing to the desert stallion. Wolf pattered ever downward, dismayed by naught save his followers’ labored pace; he picked out the only way, stepped cautiously on dangerous slides, jumped where jumps were needed, rounded the massive boulders, and walked the steep, narrow shelves like a goat. Silvermane’s blood was heated; the desert was an old story to him; it had only tired him and parched his throat; this cañon of downward steps and falls, with ever deepening drops, was new to him, and roused his mettle. Hare restrained, coaxed, patted, and helped him. There were places where Hare had a baffling sense that further progress was impeded. Silvermane would put his head against Hare’s back and push him over, then, drawing hoofs close together on the edge of the fall, he dropped on his front hoofs with a crash so that he seemed to stand on his head.
The cañon narrowed as it deepened; the jutting walls leaned together, shutting out the light; the stream of sky far above was now only a strip of blue, and Hare had to throw back his head and look up to see it. Down and down for hours that seemed moments.
“It’ll be easier climbing up, Silvermane, if we ever get the chance,” panted Hare.
The sand and gravel and shale had disappeared; all was bare cleanwashed rock. In many places the brook failed as a trail, for it leaped down in white sheets over mossy cliffs. Hare faced these walls in despair. But Wolf led on over the ledges and Silvermane would not be denied. At last Hare shrank back from a hole that defied him utterly. Even Wolf hesitated. The cañon was barely twenty feet wide; the floor ended in a precipice; the stream leaped out and fell into a dark cleft from which no sound arose. On the right slope of wall a shelf slanted out; it was scarcely half a foot broad at the narrowest and then vanished in the dull light or ceased to be. Hare could not discern which. He stared helplessly up at the slanting shut-in walls.
While he stared, Wolf pattered out upon the ledge and Silvermane stamped restlessly. With a desperate fear of losing his beloved horse Hare let go the bridle and stepped upon the ledge. He walked rapidly, for a slow step meant uncertainty and a false one meant death. He heard the sharp metallic click of Silvermane’s shoes, and he listened in agonized suspense for the slip, the snort, the crash that he feared must inevitably come, but which did not. Seeing nothing except the narrow ledge, yet feeling the blue abyss beneath him, he bent intense keen effort to his task, and finally walked out into lighter space upon level rock. To his infinite relief Silvermane appeared rounding a red corner out of the dark passage, and was soon beside him.
“My gray champion, what you can’t do is beyond me!” exclaimed Hare.
The cañon widened; there was a clear demarcation where the red walls gave place to yellow; the brook showed no outlet from its subterranean channel. Wolf led down yellow slopes, and under toppling walls, and through shattered sections of cliff, always down and down. Nature made Hare forget his errand; the strength of his resolve had gone into mechanical toil; he kept on, thoughtless of distance, careful of Silvermane, and feeling the smart of bruised hands and knees and chafed feet and the ache of laboring lungs.
Time went on and the sun hung in the midst of the broadening belt of blue sky. A long slant of yellow slope led down to a sagecovered level, which Hare crossed, pleased to see blooming cacti and wondering at their slender lofty green stems shining with gold flowers. He descended into a ravine that became precipitous. Here he made only slow advance. Upon arriving at the bottom he found himself in a wonderful lane with an almost level floor and a shallow stream and fresh green willows. Wolf took the direction of the flowing water. Hare’s thoughts reverted to the object of this long trail, and his hopes began to mount, his heart to beat high.
He gazed ahead with straining eyes. Presently there was not a break in the walls. A drowsy hum of falling water came to Hare, and was strange reminder of the oasis, and the dull roar of the Colorado, and of Mescal.
His flagging energies leaped into life with the cañon suddenly opening to bright light and blue sky and beautiful valley, white and gold in blossom, green with grass and cottonwood. On a flowerscented wind rushed a muffled roar again, like distant thunder.
Wolf dashed into the cottonwoods. Silvermane whistled a piercing snort of satisfaction and reached for the long grass.
For Hare the light held something more than beauty, the breeze something more than sweet moist scent of water and blossom. Both were charged with overpowering portent.
Wolf appeared in the open, leaping upon a slender brown-garbed form.
“Mescal!” cried Hare.
She ran toward him, with dark arms outstretched, her hair flying in the wind, her dark eyes wild with joy.
“Jack! Jack! Jack! Oh, Jack!”
The great cañon towers seemed toppling to Hare’s blinded sight.
Chapter Sixteen
For an instant Hare’s brain reeled, and Mescal’s broken murmurings were meaningless to him. Then his faculties grew steady and acute, and he held the girl as if he intended never to let her go, passionately sure that she was a warm pulsating reality, glad in the sweet consciousness of her abandon. Mescal clung to him with a wildness that gave him anxiety for her reason. There as something almost fierce in her grip on his arms and his shoulders, in the blind groping for his face, in the touch that lost tenderness in a rough madness of joy and doubt.
“Mescal! It’s Jack, safe and well, come to take
you home,” he said. “Lift your face, let me look at you.”
At the sound of his voice all her tense strength changed to a yielding weakness; she leaned back supported by his arms and looked at him. Hare trembled before the dusky level glance he remembered so well, and, as tears began to flow, he drew her head to his shoulder. He had forgotten to prepare himself for a different Mescal. Despite the quivering smile of happiness, what pain in her eyes! The oval contour, the rich bloom of her face had gone; beauty was there still, but it was the ghost of the old beauty.
“Jack . . . is it . . . really you?” she asked.
“Assuredly,” he said, and fell to kissing her.
She slipped out of his arms, breathless and scarlet. “Tell me all . . . .”
“There’s much to tell on both sides, but not before you kiss me. It has been more than a year.”
“Only a year! Have I been gone only a year?”
“Yes, a year, an endless year. But it’s past now, and I’ve found you, thank God! Kiss me, Mescal. One kiss will recompense for that long year, though in it my heart broke.”
Shyly she raised her hands to his shoulders and put her lips to his. “Yes, you’ve found me, Jack, thank God, just about in time!”
“Mescal! What’s wrong? Aren’t you well?”
“Pretty well. But if you had not come soon I should have starved.”
“Starved? Let me get my saddlebags . . . I have bread and meat.”
“Wait. I’m not so hungry now. I mean very soon I should not have had any food at all.”
“But your peon . . . the dumb Indian? Surely he could find something to eat. What of him? Where is he?”
“My peon is dead. He has been dead for months, I don’t know how many.”
“Dead! What was the matter with him?”
“I never knew. I found him dead one morning, and I buried him in the sand.”
Mescal led Hare under the cottonwoods and pointed to the Indian’s grave, now green with grass. Farther on in a circle of trees stood a little hogan skillfully constructed out of brush; the edge of a red blanket peeped from the door; a burned-out fire smoked on a stone fireplace, and blackened earthen vessels lay near. The seeds of the cottonwoods were flying light as feathers; plum trees were pink in blossom; vines were twining and hanging; through the openings in the foliage shone the blue of sky and red of cliff. Patches of blossoming flowers were here and there lit to brilliance by golden shafts of sunlight. The twitter of birds and hum of bees were almost drowned in the soft roar of water.
“Is that the Colorado I hear?” asked Hare.
“No, that’s Thunder River. The Colorado is farther down in the cañon.”
“Farther down! Mescal, I must have come down a mile from the rim. Where are we anyway?”
“We are almost at the Colorado, and directly under the head of Coconina. We can see the mountain from the break in the valley below.”
“Come sit by me here under this tree. Tell me . . . how did you ever get here?”
Then Mescal related how the peon had led her on a long trail from Bitter Seeps, how they had camped at desert water holes, and on the fourth day descended to Thunder River.
“I was quite happy at first. It’s always summer down here. There were rabbits, birds, beaver, and fruit . . . we had enough to eat. I explored the valley with Wolf or rode Noddle up and down the cañon. Then my peon died, and I had to shift for myself. There came a time when the beaver left the valley, and Wolf and I had to make a rabbit serve for days. I knew then I’d have to get across the desert to the Navajos or starve in the cañon. I hesitated about climbing out into the desert, for I wasn’t sure of the trail to the water holes. Noddle wandered off up the cañon and never came back. After he was gone and I knew I couldn’t get out, I grew homesick. The days weren’t so bad because I was always hunting for something to eat, but the nights were lonely. I couldn’t sleep. I lay awake listening to the river, and it got so I could hear whispering and singing and music, and strange sounds, and low thunder, always low thunder. I wasn’t what you call frightened, only lonely, and the cañon was so black and full of mutterings. Sometimes I’d dream I was back on the plateau with you, Jack, and Bolly and the sheep, and, when I’d awake in the loneliness I’d cry right out . . . .”
“Mescal, I heard those cries,” said Hare.
“Then I knew I must send Wolf home. How hard it was to make him go! But at last he trotted off, looking backward, and I waited and waited.”
She finished and leaned against him and the hand that had plucked at his sleeve dropped to his fingers and there clung. Hare knew how her narrative had slighted the perils and privations of that long year. She had grown lonely in the cañon darkness; she had sent Wolf away and had waited—all was said in that. But more than any speech, the look of her, and the story told in the thin brown hands touched his heart. Not for an instant since his arrival had she altogether let loose of his fingers, or coat, or arm. She had lived so long alone in this weird cañon of silence and thunder where moving shadows and murmuring water had peopled her lonely world, that she needed to feel the substance of her hopes, to have physical assurance of the solidity of the man she loved.
“My mustang . . . Bolly . . . tell me of her,” said Mescal.
“Bolly’s fine. Sleek and fat and lazy! She’s been in the fields ever since you left. Not a bridle on her. Many times have I seen her poke her black muzzle over the fence and look down the lane. She’d never forget you, Mescal.”
“Oh, how I want to see her! Tell me . . . everything.”
“Wait a little. Let me fetch Silvermane and we’ll make a fire and eat. Then . . . .”
“Tell me now.”
“Well, Mescal, it’s soon told.” Whereupon he began to acquaint her with the series of events growing out of her flight, and, when he recounted the story of the shooting at Silver Cup, Mescal rose with heaving bosom and blazing eyes.
“It was nothing . . . I wasn’t hurt much. Only the intention was bad. We saw no more of Snap or Holderness. The worst of it all was that Snap’s wife died.”
“Oh, I am sorry . . . sorry. Poor Father Naab. How he must hate me, the cause of it all! But I couldn’t stay . . . I couldn’t marry Snap.”
“Don’t blame yourself, Mescal. What Snap might have done if you had married him is a matter of conjecture. He might have left drink alone a while longer. But he was bad clean through. I heard Dave Naab tell him that. Snap would have gone over to Holderness sooner or later. And now he’s a rustler, if not worse.”
“Then Dene, Holderness, those men who hated you, think Snap killed you?”
“Yes.”
“What’s going to happen someday when you meet Snap, or any of them?”
“Somebody will be surprised,” replied Hare, with a laugh.
“Jack, it’s no laughing matter.” She fastened her hands in the lapels of his coat and gravely eyed him. “You can never hang up your gun again.”
“No. But perhaps I can keep out of their way, especially Snap’s. Mescal, you’ve forgotten Silvermane, and how he can run.”
“I have not forgotten. He can run, but he can’t beat Bolly.” She said this with a hint of her old spirit. “Jack . . . you want to take me back home?”
“Of course. What did you expect when you sent Wolf ?”
“I didn’t expect. I just wanted to see you, or somebody, and I thought of the Navajos. Couldn’t I live with them? Why can’t we stay here or in a cañon across the Colorado where there’s plenty of game?”
“I’m going to take you home and Father Naab shall marry you . . . to . . . to me.”
Startled, Mescal fell back upon his shoulder and did not stir or speak for a long time. “Did . . . did you tell him?”
“Yes.”
“What did he say? Was he angry? Tell me.”
“He was kind and good as he always is. He said if I found you, then the issue was between Snap and me, as man to man. You are still pledged to Snap in the Mormon Church and that can’
t be changed. I don’t suppose even if he’s outlawed that it could be changed.”
“Snap will not let any grass grow in the trails to the oasis,” said Mescal. “Once he finds I’ve come back to life, he’ll have me. You don’t know him, Jack. He’s terrible once he sets his mind. I’m afraid to go home.”
“My dear, there’s no other place for us to go. We can’t live the life of Indians.”
“But, Jack, think of me watching you ride out from home, fearful that you may never ride in. Think of me always looking for Snap! I couldn’t endure it. I’ve grown weak in this year of absence.”
“Mescal, look at me.” His voice rang as he held her by the shoulders so she had to face him. “This is the moment. We’ve got to decide everything. Let me see your eyes. I have never known what I was going to do. But your eyes will tell me. Now . . . say you love me!”
“Yes . . . yes.”
“Say it.”
“I . . . love you . . . Jack.”
“Say you’ll marry me!”
“I will marry you.”
“Then listen. I will get you out of this cañon and take you home. You are mine and I will keep you.” He held her tightly with strong arms; his face paled, his eyes darkened. “I do not want to meet Snap Naab. I shall try to keep out of his way. I hope I can. But, Mescal, I am yours now. Your happiness . . . perhaps your life . . . depends on me. That makes a difference. Understand!”
Silvermane walked into the glade with a saddle girth so tight that his master unbuckled it only by dint of repeated effort. Manifestly the rich grass of Thunder River Cañon appealed strongly to the desert stallion.
“Here, Silver, how do you expect to carry us out if you eat and drink like that?” Hare removed the saddle and tethered the gray to one of the cottonwoods. Wolf came trotting into camp proudly, carrying a rabbit.