“Are there no bigger animals in these mountains?” she asked, dissatisfied.
“Yes,” he said. “There are deer — I see their tracks. And I saw the tracks of a bear.”
“But why can one never see the animals themselves?” She looked dissatisfied and wistful like a child.
“Why, it’s pretty hard for you to see them. They won’t let you come close. You have to keep still, in a place where they come. Or else you have to follow their tracks a long way.”
“I can’t bear to go away till I’ve seen them: a bear, or a deer — ”
The smile came suddenly on his face, indulgent.
“Well, what do you want? Do you want to go up into the mountains to some place, to wait till they come?”
“Yes,” she said, looking up at him with a sudden naïve impulse of recklessness.
And immediately his face became sombre again, responsible.
“Well,” he said, with slight irony, a touch of mockery of her. “You will have to find a house. It’s very cold at night now. You would have to stay all night in a house.”
“And there are no houses up there?” she said.
“Yes,” he replied. “There is a little shack that belongs to me, that a miner built a long time ago, looking for gold. You can go there and stay one night, and maybe you see something. Maybe! I don’t know. Maybe nothing come.”
“How much chance is there?”
“Well, I don’t know. Last time when I was there I see three deer come down to drink at the water, and I shot two raccoons. But maybe this time we don’t see anything.”
“Is there water there?” she asked.
“Yes, there is a little round pond, you know, below the spruce trees. And the water from the snow runs into it.”
“Is it far away?” she asked.
“Yes, pretty far. You see that ridge there” — and turning to the mountains he lifted his arm in the gesture which is somehow so moving, out in the West, pointing to the distance — ”that ridge where there are no trees, only rock” — his black eyes were focussed on the distance, his face impassive, but as if in pain — ”you go round that ridge, and along, then you come down through the spruce trees to where that cabin is. My father bought that placer claim from a miner who was broke, but nobody ever found any gold or anything, and nobody ever goes there. Too lonesome!”
The Princess watched the massive, heavy-sitting, beautiful bulk of the Rocky Mountains. It was early in October, and the aspens were already losing their gold leaves; high up, the spruce and pine seemed to be growing darker; the great flat patches of oak scrub on the heights were red like gore.
“Can I go over there?” she asked, turning to him and meeting the spark in his eye.
His face was heavy with responsibility.
“Yes,” he said, “you can go. But there’ll be snow over the ridge, and it’s awful cold, and awful lonesome.”
“I should like to go,” she said, persistent.
“All right,” he said. “You can go if you want to.”
She doubted, though, if the Wilkiesons would let her go; at least alone with Romero and Miss Cummins.
Yet an obstinacy characteristic of her nature, an obstinacy tinged perhaps with madness, had taken hold of her. She wanted to look over the mountains into their secret heart. She wanted to descend to the cabin below the spruce trees, near the tarn of bright green water. She wanted to see the wild animals move about in their wild unconsciousness.
“Let us say to the Wilkiesons that we want to make the trip round the Frijoles canyon,” she said.
The trip round the Frijoles canyon was a usual thing. It would not be strenuous, nor cold, nor lonely: they could sleep in the log house that was called an hotel.
Romero looked at her quickly.
“If you want to say that,” he replied, “you can tell Mrs. Wilkieson. Only I know she’ll be mad with me if I take you up in the mountains to that place. And I’ve got to go there first with a pack-horse, to take lots of blankets and some bread. Maybe Miss Cummins can’t stand it. Maybe not. It’s a hard trip.”
He was speaking, and thinking, in the heavy, disconnected Mexican fashion.
“Never mind!” The Princess was suddenly very decisive and stiff with authority. “I want to do it. I will arrange with Mrs. Wilkieson. And we’ll go on Saturday.”
He shook his head slowly.
“I’ve got to go up on Sunday with a pack-horse and blankets,” he said. “Can’t do it before.”
“Very well!” she said, rather piqued. “Then we’ll start on Monday.”
She hated being thwarted even the tiniest bit.
He knew that if he started with the pack on Sunday at dawn he would not be back until late at night. But he consented that they should start on Monday morning at seven. The obedient Miss Cummins was told to prepare for the Frijoles trip. On Sunday Romero had his day off. He had not put in an appearance when the Princess retired on Sunday night, but on Monday morning, as she was dressing, she saw him bringing in the three horses from the corral. She was in high spirits.
The night had been cold. There was ice at the edges of the irrigation ditch, and the chipmunks crawled into the sun and lay with wide, dumb, anxious eyes, almost too numb to run.
“We may be away two or three days,” said the Princess.
“Very well. We won’t begin to be anxious about you before Thursday, then,” said Mrs. Wilkieson, who was young and capable: from Chicago. “Anyway,” she added, “Romero will see you through. He’s so trustworthy.”
The sun was already on the desert as they set off towards the mountains, making the greasewood and the sage pale as pale-grey sands, luminous the great level around them. To the right glinted the shadows of the adobe pueblo, flat and almost invisible on the plain, earth of its earth. Behind lay the ranch and the tufts of tall, plumy cottonwoods, whose summits were yellowing under the perfect blue sky.
Autumn breaking into colour in the great spaces of the South-West.
But the three trotted gently along the trail, towards the sun that sparkled yellow just above the dark bulk of the ponderous mountains. Side-slopes were already gleaming yellow, flaming with a second light, under coldish blue of the pale sky. The front slopes were in shadow, with submerged lustre of red oak scrub and dull-gold aspens, blue-black pines and grey-blue rock. While the canyon was full of a deep blueness.
They rode single file, Romero first, on a black horse. Himself in black, made a flickering black spot in the delicate pallor of the great landscape, where even pine trees at a distance take a film of blue paler than their green. Romero rode on in silence past the tufts of furry greasewood. The Princess came next, on her sorrel mare. And Miss Cummins, who was not quite happy on horseback, came last, in the pale dust that the others kicked up. Sometimes her horse sneezed, and she started.
But on they went at a gentle trot. Romero never looked round. He could hear the sound of the hoofs following, and that was all he wanted.
For the rest, he held ahead. And the Princess, with that black, unheeding figure always travelling away from her, felt strangely helpless, withal elated.
They neared the pale, round foot-hills, dotted with the round dark piñon and cedar shrubs. The horses clinked and trotted among the stones. Occasionally a big round greasewood held out fleecy tufts of flowers, pure gold. They wound into blue shadow, then up a steep stony slope, with the world lying pallid away behind and below. Then they dropped into the shadow of the San Cristobal canyon.
The stream was running full and swift. Occasionally the horses snatched at a tuft of grass. The trail narrowed and became rocky; the rocks closed in; it was dark and cool as the horses climbed and climbed upwards, and the tree trunks crowded in the shadowy, silent tightness of the canyon. They were among cottonwood trees that ran straight up and smooth and round to an extraordinary height. Above, the tips were gold, and it was sun. But away below, where the horses struggled up the rocks and wound among the trunks, there was still blue shadow by the
sound of waters and an occasional grey festoon of old man’s beard, and here and there a pale, dripping crane’s-bill flower among the tangle and the débris of the virgin place. And again the chill entered the Princess’s heart as she realised what a tangle of decay and despair lay in the virgin forests.
They scrambled downwards, splashed across stream, up rocks and along the trail of the other side. Romero’s black horse stopped, looked down quizzically at the fallen trees, then stepped over lightly. The Princess’s sorrel followed, carefully. But Miss Cummins’s buckskin made a fuss, and had to be got round.
In the same silence, save for the clinking of the horses and the splashing as the trail crossed stream, they worked their way upwards in the tight, tangled shadow of the canyon. Sometimes, crossing stream, the Princess would glance upwards, and then always her heart caught in her breast. For high up, away in heaven, the mountain heights shone yellow, dappled with dark spruce firs, clear almost as speckled daffodils against the pale turquoise blue lying high and serene above the dark-blue shadow where the Princess was. And she would snatch at the blood-red leaves of the oak as her horse crossed a more open slope, not knowing what she felt.
They were getting fairly high, occasionally lifted above the canyon itself, in the low groove below the speckled, gold-sparkling heights which towered beyond. Then again they dipped and crossed stream, the horses stepping gingerly across a tangle of fallen, frail aspen stems, then suddenly floundering in a mass of rocks. The black emerged ahead, his black tail waving. The Princess let her mare find her own footing; then she too emerged from the clatter. She rode on after the black. Then came a great frantic rattle of the buckskin behind. The Princess was aware of Romero’s dark face looking round, with a strange, demon-like watchfulness, before she herself looked round, to see the buckskin scrambling rather lamely beyond the rocks, with one of his pale buff knees already red with blood.
“He almost went down!” called Miss Cummins.
But Romero was already out of the saddle and hastening down the path. He made quiet little noises to the buckskin, and began examining the cut knee.
“Is he hurt?” cried Miss Cummins anxiously, and she climbed hastily down.
“Oh, my goodness!” she cried, as she saw the blood running down the slender buff leg of the horse in a thin trickle. “Isn’t that awful?” She spoke in a stricken voice, and her face was white.
Romero was still carefully feeling the knee of the buckskin. Then he made him walk a few paces. And at last he stood up straight and shook his head.
“Not very bad!” he said. “Nothing broken.”
Again he bent and worked at the knees. Then he looked up at the Princess.
“He can go on,” he said. “It’s not bad.”
The Princess looked down at the dark face in silence.
“What, go on right up here?” cried Miss Cummins. “How many hours?”
“About five!” said Romero simply.
“Five hours!” cried Miss Cummins. “A horse with a lame knee! And a steep mountain! Why-y!”
“Yes, it’s pretty steep up there,” said Romero, pushing back his hat and staring fixedly at the bleeding knee. The buckskin stood in a stricken sort of dejection. “But I think he’ll make it all right,” the man added.
“Oh!” cried Miss Cummins, her eyes bright with sudden passion of unshed tears. “I wouldn’t think of it. I wouldn’t ride him up there, not for any money.”
“Why wouldn’t you?” asked Romero.
“It hurts him.”
Romero bent down again to the horse’s knee.
“Maybe it hurts him a little,” he said. “But he can make it all right, and his leg won’t get stiff.”
“What! Ride him five hours up the steep mountains?” cried Miss Cummins. “I couldn’t. I just couldn’t do it. I’ll lead him a little way and see if he can go. But I couldn’t ride him again. I couldn’t. Let me walk.”
“But Miss Cummins, dear, if Romero says he’ll be all right?” said the Princess.
“I know it hurts him. Oh, I just couldn’t bear it.”
There was no doing anything with Miss Cummins. The thought of a hurt animal always put her into a sort of hysterics.
They walked forward a little, leading the buckskin. He limped rather badly. Miss Cummins sat on a rock.
“Why, it’s agony to see him!” she cried. “It’s cruel!”
“He won’t limp after a bit, if you take no notice of him,” said Romero. “Now he plays up, and limps very much, because he wants to make you see.”
“I don’t think there can be much playing up,” said Miss Cummins bitterly. “We can see how it must hurt him.”
“It don’t hurt much,” said Romero.
But now Miss Cummins was silent with antipathy.
It was a deadlock. The party remained motionless on the trail, the Princess in the saddle, Miss Cummins seated on a rock, Romero standing black and remote near the drooping buckskin.
“Well!” said the man suddenly at last. “I guess we go back, then.”
And he looked up swiftly at his horse, which was cropping at the mountain herbage and treading on the trailing reins.
“No!” cried the Princess. “Oh no!” Her voice rang with a great wail of disappointment and anger. Then she checked herself.
Miss Cummins rose with energy.
“Let me lead the buckskin home,” she said, with cold dignity, “and you two go on.”
This was received in silence. The Princess was looking down at her with a sardonic, almost cruel gaze.
“We’ve only come about two hours,” said Miss Cummins. “I don’t mind a bit leading him home. But I couldn’t ride him. I couldn’t have him ridden with that knee.”
This again was received in dead silence. Romero remained impassive, almost inert.
“Very well, then,” said the Princess. “You lead him home. You’ll be quite all right. Nothing can happen to you, possibly. And say to them that we have gone on and shall be home tomorrow — or the day after.”
She spoke coldly and distinctly. For she could not bear to be thwarted.
“Better all go back, and come again another day,” said Romero — non-committal.
“There will never be another day,” cried the Princess. “I want to go on.”
She looked at him square in the eyes, and met the spark in his eye.
He raised his shoulders slightly.
“If you want it,” he said. “I’ll go on with you. But Miss Cummins can ride my horse to the end of the canyon, and I lead the buckskin. Then I come back to you.”
It was arranged so. Miss Cummins had her saddle put on Romero’s black horse, Romero took the buckskin’s bridle, and they started back. The Princess rode very slowly on, upwards, alone. She was at first so angry with Miss Cummins that she was blind to everything else. She just let her mare follow her own inclinations.
The peculiar spell of anger carried the Princess on, almost unconscious, for an hour or so. And by this time she was beginning to climb pretty high. Her horse walked steadily all the time. They emerged on a bare slope, and the trail wound through frail aspen stems. Here a wind swept, and some of the aspens were already bare. Others were fluttering their discs of pure, solid yellow leaves, so nearly like petals, while the slope ahead was one soft, glowing fleece of daffodil yellow; fleecy like a golden foxskin, and yellow as daffodils alive in the wind and the high mountain sun.
She paused and looked back. The near great slopes were mottled with gold and the dark hue of spruce, like some unsinged eagle, and the light lay gleaming upon them. Away through the gap of the canyon she could see the pale blue of the egg-like desert, with the crumpled dark crack of the Rio Grande Canyon. And far, far off, the blue mountains like a fence of angels on the horizon.
And she thought of her adventure. She was going on alone with Romero. But then she was very sure of herself, and Romero was not the kind of man to do anything to her against her will. This was her first thought. And she just had a fixed d
esire to go over the brim of the mountains, to look into the inner chaos of the Rockies. And she wanted to go with Romero, because he had some peculiar kinship with her; there was some peculiar link between the two of them. Miss Cummins anyhow would have been only a discordant note.
She rode on, and emerged at length in the lap of the summit. Beyond her was a great concave of stone and stark, dead-grey trees, where the mountain ended against the sky. But nearer was the dense black, bristling spruce, and at her feet was the lap of the summit, a flat little valley of sere grass and quiet-standing yellow aspens, the stream trickling like a thread across.
It was a little valley or shell from which the stream was gently poured into the lower rocks and trees of the canyon. Around her was a fairy-like gentleness, the delicate sere grass, the groves of delicate-stemmed aspens dropping their flakes of bright yellow. And the delicate, quick little stream threading through the wild, sere grass.
Here one might expect deer and fawns and wild things, as in a little paradise. Here she was to wait for Romero, and they were to have lunch.
She unfastened her saddle and pulled it to the ground with a crash, letting her horse wander with a long rope. How beautiful Tansy looked, sorrel, among the yellow leaves that lay like a patina on the sere ground. The Princess herself wore a fleecy sweater of a pale, sere buff, like the grass, and riding-breeches of a pure orange-tawny colour. She felt quite in the picture.
From her saddle-pouches she took the packages of lunch, spread a little cloth, and sat to wait for Romero. Then she made a little fire. Then she ate a devilled egg. Then she ran after Tansy, who was straying across-stream. Then she sat in the sun, in the stillness near the aspens, and waited.
The sky was blue. Her little alp was soft and delicate as fairy-land. But beyond and up jutted the great slopes, dark with the pointed feathers of spruce, bristling with grey dead trees among grey rock, or dappled with dark and gold. The beautiful, but fierce, heavy cruel mountains, with their moments of tenderness.
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence Page 650