The Valley of Silent Men

by James Oliver Curwood

  CHAPTER XXIV

  Kent had not forgotten that he was an outlaw, but he was not afraid.Now that he had something new and thrilling to fight for, he fell backagain upon what he called "the finesse of the game." He approachedChippewyan cautiously, although he was sure that even his old friendsat the Landing would fail to recognize him now. His beard was four orfive inches long, and his hair was shaggy and uncut. Picard had madehim a coat, that winter, of young caribou skin, and it was fringed likean Indian's. Kent chose his time and entered Chippewyan just beforedusk.

  Oil lamps were burning in the Hudson's Bay Company's store when he wentin with his furs. The place was empty, except for the factor's clerk,and for an hour he bartered. He bought a new outfit, a Winchesterrifle, and all the supplies he could carry. He did not forget a razorand a pair of shears, and when he was done he still had the value oftwo silver fox skins in cash. He left Chippewyan that same night, andby the light of a Winter moon made his camp half a dozen milesnorthward toward Smith Landing.

  He was on the Slave River now and for weeks traveled slowly butsteadily northward on snowshoes. He avoided Fort Smith and SmithLanding and struck westward before he came to Fort Resolution. It wasin April that he struck Hay River Post, where the Hay River emptiesinto Great Slave Lake. Until the ice broke up, Kent worked at HayRiver. When it was safe, he started down the Mackenzie in a canoe. Itwas late in June when he turned up the Liard to the South Nahani.

  "You go straight through between the sources of the North and the SouthNahani," Marette had told him. "It is there you find the SulphurCountry, and beyond the Sulphur Country is the Valley of Silent Men."

  At last he came to the edge of this country. He camped with the stinkof it in his nostrils. The moon rose, and he saw that desolate world asthrough the fumes of a yellow smoke. With dawn he went on.

  He passed through broad, low morasses out of which rose sulphurousfogs. Mile after mile he buried himself deeper in it, and it becamemore and more a dead country, a lost hell. There were berry bushes onwhich there grew no berries. There were forests and swamps, but withouta living creature to inhabit them.

  It was a country of water in which there were no fish, of air in whichthere were no birds, of plants without flowers--a reeking, stinkingcountry still with the stillness of death. He began to turn yellow. Hisclothing, his canoe, his hands, face--everything turned yellow. Hecould not get the filthy taste of sulphur out of his mouth. Yet he kepton, straight west by the compass Gowen had given him at Hay River. Eventhis compass became yellow in his pocket. It was impossible for him toeat. Only twice that day did he drink from his flask of water.

  And Marette had made this journey! He kept telling himself that. It wasthe secret way in and out of their hidden world, a region accursed bydevils, a forbidden country to both Indian and white man. It was hardfor him to believe that she had come this way, that she had drunk inthe air that was filling his own lungs, nauseating him a dozen times tothe point of sickness. He worked desperately. He felt neither fatiguenor the heat of the warm water about him.

  Night came, and the moon rose, lighting up with a sickly glow thediseased world that had swallowed him. He lay in the bottom of hiscanoe, covering his face with his caribou coat, and tried to sleep. Butsleep would not come. Before dawn he struck on, watching his compass bythe light of matches. All that day he made no effort to swallow food.But with the coming of the second night he found the air easier tobreathe. He fought his way on by the light of the moon which wasclearer now. And at last, in a resting spell, he heard far ahead of himthe howl of a wolf.

  In his joy he cried out. A western breeze brought him air that he drankin as a desert-stricken man drinks water. He did not look at hiscompass again, but worked steadily in the face of that fresh air. Anhour later he found that he was paddling again a slow current, and whenhe tasted the water it was only slightly tainted with sulphur. Bymidnight the water was cool and clean. He landed on a shore of sand andpebbles, stripped to the skin, and gave himself such a scouring as hehad never before experienced. He had worn his old trapping shirt andtrousers, and after his bath he changed to the outfit which he had keptclean in his pack. Then he built a fire and ate his first meal in twodays.

  The next morning he climbed a tall spruce and surveyed the countryabout him. Westward there was a broad low country shut in fifteen ortwenty miles away by the foothills. Beyond these foothills rose thesnow-capped peaks of the Rockies. He shaved himself, cut his hair, andwent on. That night he camped only when he could drive his canoe nofarther. The waterway had narrowed to a creek, and he was among thefirst green shoulders of the hills when he stopped. With another dawnhe concealed his canoe in a sheltered place and went on with his pack.

  For a week he picked his way slowly westward. It was a splendid countryinto which he had come, and yet he found no sign of human life. Thefoothills changed to mountains, and he believed he was in the CampbellRange. Also he knew that he had followed the logical trail from thesulphur country. Yet it was the eighth day before he came upon a signwhich told him that another living being had at some time passed thatway. What he found were the charred remnants of an old camp-fire. Ithad been a white man's fire. He knew that by the size of it. It hadbeen an all-night fire of green logs cut with an axe.

  On the tenth day he came to the westward slope of the first range andlooked down upon one of the most wonderful valleys his eyes had everbeheld. It was more than a valley. It was a broad plain. Fifty milesacross it rose the towering majesty of the mightiest of all the Yukonmountains.

  And now, though he saw a paradise about him, his heart began to sinkwithin him. It seemed to him inconceivable that in a country so vast hecould find the spot for which he was seeking. His one hope lay infinding white men or Indians, some one who might guide him.

  He traveled slowly over the fifty-mile plain rich with a verdure ofgreen, covered with flowers, a game paradise. Few hunters had come sofar out of the Yukon mountains, he told himself. And none had come fromout of the sulphur country. It was a new and undiscovered world. On hismap it was a blank space. And there were no signs of people. Ahead ofhim the Yukon mountains rose in an impenetrable wall, peak after peak,crested with snow, towering like mighty watchdogs above the clouds. Heknew what lay beyond them--the great rivers of the Western slope,Dawson City, the gold country and its civilization. But those thingswere on the other side of the mountains. On his side there was only thevast and undisputed silence of a paradise as yet unclaimed by man.

  As he went on into this valley there grew upon him a strange andcomforting peace. Yet with it there was a steadily increasing beliefthat he would not find that for which he had come in search. He did notattempt to analyze this belief. It became a part of him, just as hismental tranquillity had grown upon him. His one hope of success wasthat nearer the mountains he might find white men or Indians.

  He no longer used his compass, but guided himself by a cluster of threegigantic peaks. One of these was taller than the other two. As hejourneyed, his eyes were always returning to it. It fascinated him,impinged itself upon him as the watcher of a million years, guardingthe valley. He began to think of it as the Watcher. Each hour of hisprogress seemed to bring it a little more intimately to his vision.From his first night's camp in the valley he saw the moon sink behindit. Within him a voice that never died kept whispering to him that thismountain, greater than all the others, had been Marette's guardian. Tenthousand times she must have looked at it, as he had looked at it thatday--if her home was anywhere this side of the Campbell Range. Ahundred miles away she could have seen the Watcher on a clear day.

  On the second day the mountain continued to grow upon Kent. Bymid-afternoon it began to take on a new character. The peak of it wasin the form of a mighty castle that changed as he advanced. And the twolesser peaks were forming into definite contours. Before the haze oftwilight dimmed his vision, he knew that what he had seen was not awhimsical invention of his imagination. The Watcher had grown into theshape of a mighty human head facing south. A res
tless excitementpossessed him, and he traveled on long after dusk. At dawn he was onthe trail again. Westward the sky cleared, and suddenly he stopped, anda cry came from him.

  The Watcher's head was there, as if chiseled by the hands of giants.The two smaller peaks had unveiled their mystery. Startling and weird,their crests had taken on the form of human heads. One of them waslooking north. The other faced the valley. And Kent, his heartpounding, cried to himself,

  "The Silent Men!"

  He did not hear himself, but the thought itself was a tumultuous thingwithin him. It came upon him like an inundation, a sudden and thrillinginspiration backed by the forces of a visual truth. _The Valley ofSilent Men_. He repeated the words, staring at the three colossal headsin the sky. Somewhere near them, under them,--one side or theother--was Marette's hidden valley!

  He went on. A strange joy consumed him. In it, at times, his grief wasobliterated, and it seemed to him in these moments that Marette mustsurely be at the valley to greet him when he came to it. But always thetragedy of the Death Chute came back to him, and with it the thoughtthat the three giant heads were watching--and would always watch--for abeloved lost one who would never return. As the sun went down that day,the face bowed to the valley seemed alive with the fire of a livingquestion sent directly to Kent.

  "Where is she?" it asked. "Where is she? Where is she?"

  That night Kent did not sleep.

  The next day there lay ahead of him a low and broken range, the firstof the deeper mountains. He climbed this steadily, and at noon hadreached the crest. And he knew that at last he was looking down intothe Valley of Silent Men. It was not a wide valley, like the other. Onthe far side of it, three or four miles away, rose the huge mountainwhose face was looking down upon the green meadows at its foot.Southward Kent could see for a long distance, and in the vivid sunlighthe saw the shimmer of creeks and little lakes, and the rich glow ofthick patches of cedar and spruce and balsam, scattered like great rugsof velvety luster amid the flowering green of the valley. Northward,three or four miles away the range which he had climbed made a sharptwist to the east, and that part of the valley--following the swing ofthe range--was lost to him. He turned in this direction after he hadrested. It was four o'clock when he came to the elbow in the valley,and could look down into the hidden part of it.

  What he saw at first was a giant cup hollowed out of the surroundingmountains, a cup two miles from brim to brim, the end of the valleyitself. It took him a few moments to focus his vision so that it wouldpick up the smaller and more intimate things half a mile under him, andyet, before he had done this, a sound came up to him that set aquiverevery nerve in his body. It was the far-down, hollow-sounding barkingof a dog.

  The warm, golden haze that precedes sunset in the mountains, wasgathering between him and the valley, but through this he made outafter a time evidences of human habitation almost straight under him.There was a small lake out of which ran a shimmering creek, and closeto this lake, yet equally near to the base of the mountain on which hewas standing, were a number of buildings and a stockade which lookedlike a toy. He could see no animals, no movement of any kind.

  Without seeking for a downward trail he began to descend. Again he didnot question himself. An overwhelming certainty possessed him. Of allplaces in the world this must be the Valley of Silent Men.

  And below him, flooded and half-hidden in the illusive sun-mist, wasMarette's old home. It seemed to him now that it belonged to him, thathe was a part of it, that in going to it he was achieving his lastgreat resting place, his final refuge, his own home. And the thoughtbecame strangely a part of him that a welcome must be waiting for himthere. He hurried until his breath came pantingly between his lips andhe was forced to rest. And at last he found himself where his progresswas made a foot at a time, and again and again he was forced to climbback and detour around treacherous slides and precipitous breaks whichleft sheer falls at his feet. The mist thickened in the valley. The sunsank behind the western peaks, and swiftly after that the gloom oftwilight deepened. It was seven o'clock when he came to the edge of theplain, at least a mile below the elbow which shut out the cup in thevalley. He was exhausted. His hands were bruised and bleeding. Darknessshut him in when he went on.

  When he rounded the elbow of the mountain, he did not try to keep backthe joyous cry that came to his lips. Ahead of him there were lights. Afew of them were scattered, but nearest to him he saw a cluster ofthem, like the glow that comes from a number of illumined windows. Hequickened his pace as he drew nearer to them, and at last he wanted torun. And then something stopped him, and it seemed to him that hisheart had risen into his throat and was choking him until he could notbreathe.

  It was a man's voice he heard, calling through the twilight gloom aname. "Marette--Marette--Marette--"

  Kent tried to cry out, but his breath came only in a gasp. He felthimself trembling. He reached out his arms, and a strange madnessrushed like fire into his brain.

  Again the voice called, "Marette--Marette--Marette--"

  The cup in the valley echoed the name. It rolled softly up themountainside. The air trembled with it, whispered it, passed it on--andsuddenly the madness in Kent found voice, and he shouted,

  "Marette--Marette--"

  He ran on. His knees felt weak. He shouted the name again, and theother voice was silent. Things loomed up out of the mist ahead of him,between him and the glowing windows. Some one--two people--wereadvancing to meet him, doubtfully, wonderingly. Kent was staggering,but he cried the name again, and this time it was a woman's cry thatanswered, and one of the two came toward him swift as a flash of light.

  Three paces apart they stood, and in that gloom of the after-twilighttheir burning eyes looked at each other, while for a space their bodiesremained stricken in the face of this miracle of a great and mercifulGod.

  The dead had risen. By a mighty effort Kent reached out his arms, andMarette swayed to him. When the other man came up, he found themcrumpled to their knees on the earth, clasped like children in eachother's arms. And as Kent raised his face, he saw that it was SandyMcTrigger who was looking down at him, the man whose life he had savedat Athabasca Landing.