CHAPTER VIII
DEATH, LIFE AND THE RESURRECTION
The man was coming back from one of his rare visits to the settlements.Ahead of him he drove a train of burros who, well broken to their work,followed with docility the wise old leader in the advance. The burroswere laden with his supplies for the approaching winter. The season waslate, the mountains would soon be impassable on account of the snow,indeed he chose the late season always for his buying in order that hemight not be followed and it was his habit to buy in different places indifferent years that his repeated and expected presence at one spotmight not arouse suspicion.
Intercourse with his fellow men was limited to this yearly visit to asettlement and even that was of the briefest nature, confined always tothe business in hand. Even when busy in the town he pitched a small tentin the open on the outskirts and dwelt apart. No men there in those dayspried into the business of other men too closely. Curiosity was neithersafe nor necessary. If he aroused transient interest or speculation itsoon died away. He vanished into the mountains and as he came no more tothat place, he was soon forgotten.
Withdrawing from his fellow men and avoiding their society, this man wasnever so satisfied as when alone in the silent hills. His heart andspirit rose with every step he made away from the main traveled roads orthe more difficult mountain trails.
For several days he journeyed through the mountains, choosing thewildest and most inaccessible parts for his going. Amid the canyons andpeaks he threaded his way with unerring accuracy, ascending higher andhigher until at last he reached the mountain aerie, the lonelyhermitage, where he made his home. There he reveled in his isolation.What had been punishment, expiation, had at last become pleasure.
Civilization was bursting through the hills in every direction, railwayswere being pushed hither and thither, the precious metals were beingdiscovered at various places and after them came hoards of men and withthem--God save the mark--women; but his section of the country hadhitherto been unvisited even by hunters, explorers, miners or pleasureseekers. He was glad, he had grown to love the spot where he had madehis home, and he had no wish to be forced, like little Joe, to move on.
Once a man who loved the strife, noble or ignoble, of the madding crowd,he had grown accustomed to silence, habituated to solitude. Winter andsummer alike he roamed the mountains, delving into every forest,exploring every hidden canyon, surmounting every inaccessible peak; nostorm, no snow, no condition of wind or weather daunted him or stoppedhim. He had no human companionship by which to try his mettle, butnevertheless over the world of the material which lay about him he was amaster as he was a man.
He found some occupation, too, in the following of old Adam'sinheritance, during the pleasant months of summer he made such garden ashe could. His profession of mining engineer gave him other employment.Round about him lay treasures inestimable, precious metals abounded inthe hills. He had located them, tested, analyzed, estimated the wealththat was his for the taking--it was as valueless to him as the doubloonsand golden guineas were to Selkirk on his island. Yet the knowledge thatit was there gave him an energizing sense of potential power,unconsciously enormously flattering to his self esteem.
Sometimes he wandered to the extreme verge of the range and on cleardays saw far beneath him the smoke of great cities of the plains. Hecould be a master among men as he was a master among mountains, if hechose. On such occasions he laughed cynically, scornfully, yet rarelydid he ever give way to such emotion.
A great and terrible sorrow was upon him; cherishing a great passion hehad withdrawn himself from the common lot to dwell upon it. From aperverted sense of expiation, in a madness of grief, horror and despair,he had made himself a prisoner to his ideas in the desert of themountains. Back to his cabin he would hasten, and there surrounded byhis living memories--deathless yet of the dead!--he would recreate thepast until dejection drove him abroad on the hills to meet God if notman--or woman. Night-day, sunshine-shadow, heat-cold, storm-calm; thesewere his life.
Having disburdened his faithful animals of their packs and having seenthem safely bestowed for the winter in the corral he had built near thebase of the cliff upon which his rude home was situated, he took hisrifle one morning for one of those lonely walks across the mountainsfrom which he drew such comfort because he fancied the absence of manconduced to the nearness of God. It was a delusion as old nearly as theChristian religion. Many had made themselves hermits in the past inremorse for sin and for love toward God; this man had buried himself inthe wilderness in part for the first of these causes, in other part forthe love of woman. In these days of swift and sudden change he had beenconstant to a remembrance and abiding in his determination for fiveswift moving years. The world for him had stopped its progress in onebrief moment five years back--the rest was silence. What had happenedsince then out yonder where people were mated he did not know and he didnot greatly care.
In his visits to the settlements he asked no questions, he bought nopapers, he manifested no interest in the world; something in him haddied in one fell moment, and there had been, as yet, no resurrection.Yet life, and hope, and ambition do not die, they are indeed eternal._Resurgam!_
Life with its tremendous activities, its awful anxieties, its wearingstrains, its rare triumphs, its opportunities for achievement, forservice; hope with its illuminations, its encouragements, itsexpectations; ambition with its stimulus, its force, its power; andgreatest of all love, itself alone--all three were latent in him. Intouch with a woman these had gone. Something as powerful and as humanmust bring them back.
It was against nature that a man dowered as he should so live to himselfalone. Some voice should cry to his soul in its cerements of futileremorse, vain expiations and benumbing recollection; some day he shouldburst these grave clothes self-wound about him and be once more a manand a master among men, rather than the hermit and the recluse of thesolitudes.
He did not allow these thoughts to come into his life, indeed it isquite likely that he scarcely realized them at all yet; suchpossibilities did not present themselves to him; perhaps the man was alittle mad that morning, maybe he trembled on the verge of abreak--upward, downward I know not so it be away--unconsciously as hestrode along the range.
He had been walking for some hours, and as he grew thirsty it occurredto him to descend to the level of the brook which he heard below him andof which he sometimes caught a flashing glimpse through the trees. Hescrambled down the rocks and found himself in a thick grove of pine.Making his way slowly and with great difficulty through the tangle offallen timber which lay in every direction, the sound of a human voice,the last thing on earth to be expected in that wilderness, smote uponthe fearful hollow of his ear.
Any voice or any word then and there would have surprised him, but therewas a note of awful terror in this voice, a sound of frightened appeal.The desperation in the cry left him no moment for thought, the demandwas for action. The cry was not addressed to him, apparently, but toGod, yet it was he who answered--sent doubtless by that Over-lookingPower who works in such mysterious ways His wonders to perform!
He leaped over the intervening trees to the edge of the forest where therapid waters ran. To the right of him rose a huge rock, or cliff, infront of him the canyon bent sharply to the north, and beneath him a fewrods away a speck of white gleamed above the water of a deep and stillpool that he knew.
_There was a woman there!_
He had time for but the swiftest glance, he had surmised that the voicewas not that of a man's voice instantly he heard it, and now he wassure. She stood white breast deep in the water staring ahead of her. Thenext instant he saw what had alarmed her--a Grizzly Bear, the largest,fiercest, most forbidding specimen he had ever seen. There were a few ofthose monsters still left in the range, he himself had killed several.
The woman had not seen him. He was a silent man by long habit;accustomed to saying nothing, he said nothing now. But instantly aimingfrom the hip with a wondrous skill and a perfect mastery of the
weapon,and indeed it was a short range for so huge a target, he pumped bulletafter bullet from his heavy Winchester into the evil monarch of themountains. The first shot did for him, but making assurance doubly andtrebly sure, he fired again and again. Satisfied at last that the bearwas dead, and observing that he had fallen upon the clothes of thebather, he turned, descended the stream for a few yards until he came toa place where it was easily fordable, stepped through it without aglance toward the woman shivering in the water, whose sensation, so faras a mere man could, he thoroughly understood and appreciated, and whosemodesty he fain would spare, having not forgotten to be a gentleman infive years of his own society--high test of quality, that.
He climbed out upon the bank, up-rooted a small tree, rolled the bearclear of the heap of woman's clothing and marched straight ahead of himup the canyon and around the bend.
Thereafter, being a man, he did not faint or fall, but completelyunnerved he leaned against the canyon wall, dropped his gun at his feetand stood there trembling mightily, sweat bedewing his forehead, and thesweat had not come from his exertions. In one moment the whole eventenor of his life was changed. The one glimpse he had got of those whiteshoulders, that pallid face, that golden head raised from the water hadswept him back five years. He had seen once more in the solitude awoman.
Other women he had seen at a distance and avoided in his yearly visitsto the settlements of course; these had passed him by remotely, but herehe was brought in touch intimately with humanity. He who had taken lifehad saved it. A woman had sent him forth, was a woman to call him back?
He cursed himself for his weakness. He shut his eyes and summoned othermemories. How long he stood there he could not have told; he wasfighting a battle and it seemed to him at last that he triumphed.Presently the consciousness came to him that perhaps he had no right tostand there idle, it might be that the woman needed him, perhaps she hadfainted in the water, perhaps--He turned toward the bend which concealedhim from her and then he stopped. Had he any right to intrude upon herprivacy? He must of necessity be an unwelcome visitor to her, he hadsurprised her at a frightful disadvantage; he knew instinctively,although the fault was none of his, although he had saved her lifethereby, that she would hold him and him alone responsible for theoutrage to her modesty, and although he had seen little at first glanceand had resolutely kept his eyes away, the mere consciousness of herabsolute helplessness appealed to him--to what was best and noblest inhim, too. He must go to her. Stay, she might not yet be clothed, inwhich event--But no, she must be dressed, or dead, by this time and ineither case he would have a duty to discharge.
It devolved upon him to make sure of her safety, he was in a certainsense responsible for it, until she got back to her friends whereverthey might be; but he persuaded himself that otherwise he did not wantto see her again, that he did not wish to know anything about herfuture; that he did not care whether it was well or ill with her; and itwas only stern obligation which drove him toward her--oh fond andfoolish man!
He compromised with himself at last by climbing the ridge that had shutoff a view of the pool, and looking down at the place so memorable tohim. He was prepared to withdraw instantly should circumstances warrant,and he was careful so to conceal himself as to give no possibleopportunity for her to discover his scrutiny.
With a beating heart and eager eyes he searched the spot. There lay thebear and a little distance away prone on the grass, clothed but whetherin her right mind or not he could not tell, lay the woman. For a moment,as he bent a concentrated eager gaze upon her, he thought she might havefainted or that she might have died. In any event he reflected that shehad strength and nerve and will to have dressed herself before either ofthese things had happened. She lay motionless under his gaze for so longthat he finally made up his mind that common humanity required him to goto her assistance.
He rose to his feet on the instant and saw the woman also lift herselffrom the grass as if moved by a similar impulse. In his intensepreoccupation he had failed to observe the signs of the times. A senseof the overcast sky came to him suddenly, as it did to her, but with adifference. He knew what was about to happen, his experience told himmuch more as to the awful potentialities of the tempest than she couldpossibly imagine. She must be warned at once, she must leave the canyonand get up on the higher ground without delay. His duty was plain andyet he did it not. He could not. The pressure upon him was not yetstrong enough.
A half dozen times as he watched her deliberately sitting there eating,he opened his mouth to cry to her, yet he could not bring himself toit. A strange timidity oppressed him, halted him, held him back. A mancannot stay away five years from men and woman and be himself with themin the twinkling of an eye. And when to that instinctive and acquiredreluctance against which he struggled in vain, he added the assurancethat whatever his message he would be unwelcome on account of what hadgone before, he could not force himself to go to her or even to call toher, not yet. He would keep her under surveillance, however, and if theworst came he could intervene in time to rescue her. He counted withouthis cost, his usual judgment bewildered. So he followed her through thetrees and down the bank.
Now he was so engrossed in her and so agitated that his caution slept,his experience was forgotten. The storm in his own breast was so greatthat it overshadowed the storm brewing above. Her way was easier thanhis and he had fallen some distance behind when suddenly there rushedupon him the fact that a frightful and unlooked for cloudburst was aboutto occur above their heads. A lightning flash and a thunder clap at lastarrested his attention. Then, but not until then, he flung everything tothe winds and amid the sudden and almost continuous peals of thunder hesent cry after cry toward her which were lost in the tremendousdiapason of sound that echoed and re-echoed through the rifts of themountains.
"Wait," he cried again and again. "Come up higher. Get out of the canyon.You'll be drowned."
But he had waited too long, the storm had developed too rapidly, she wastoo far ahead of and beneath him. She heard nothing but the sound of avoice, shrill, menacing, fraught with terror for her, not a worddistinguishable; scarcely to her disturbed soul even a human voice, itseemed like the weird cry of some wild spirit of the storm. It soundedto her overwrought nerves so utterly inhuman that she only ran thefaster.
The canyon swerved and then doubled back, but he knew its direction;losing sight of her for the moment he plunged straight ahead through thetrees, cutting off the bend, leaping with superhuman agility andstrength over rocks and logs until he reached a point where the riftnarrowed between two walls and ran deeply. There and then the heavensopened and the floods came and beat into that open maw of that vastcrevasse and filled it full in an instant.
As the deluge came roaring down, bearing onward the sweepings andscourings of the mountains, he caught a glimpse of her white desperateface rising, falling, now disappearing, now coming into view again, inthe foamy midst of the torrent. He ran to the cliff bank and throwingaside his gun he scrambled down the wall to a certain shelf of the rockover which the rising water broke thinly. Ordinarily it was twenty feetabove the creek bed. Bracing himself against a jagged projection hewaited, praying. The canyon was here so narrow that he could have leapedto the other side and yet it was too wide for him to reach her if thewater did not sweep her toward his feet. It was all done in asecond--fortunately a projection on the other side threw the force ofthe torrent toward him and with it came the woman.
She was almost spent; she had been struck by a log upheaved by somemighty wave, her hands were moving feebly, her eyes were closed, she wasdrowning, dying, but indomitably battling on. He stooped down and as asurge lifted her he threw his arm around her waist and then bracedhimself against the rock to sustain the full thrust of the mighty flood.As he seized her she gave way suddenly, as if after having done all thatshe could there was now nothing left but to trust herself to his handand God's. She hung a dead weight on his arm in the ravening waterwhich dragged and tore at her madly.
He was a m
an of giant strength, but the struggle bade fair to be toomuch even for him. It seemed as if the mountain behind him was givingway. He set his teeth, he tried desperately to hold on, he thrust outhis right hand, holding her with the other one, and clawed at thedripping rock in vain. In a moment the torrent mastered him and when itdid so it seized him with fury and threw him like a stone from a slinginto the seething vortex of the mid-stream. But in all this he did not,he would not, release her.
Such was the swiftness of the motion with which they were swept downwardthat he had little need to swim; his only effort was to keep his headabove water and to keep from being dashed against the logs that tumbledend over end, or whirled sideways, or were jammed into clusters only toburst out on every hand. He struggled furiously to keep himself frombeing overwhelmed in the seething madness, and what was harder, to keepthe lifeless woman in his arms from being stricken or wrenched away. Heknew that below the narrows where the canyon widened the water wouldsubside, the awful fury of the rain would presently cease. If he couldsteer clear of the rocks in the broad he might win to land with her.
The chances against him were thousands to nothing. But what are chancesin the eyes of God. The man in his solitude had not forgotten to pray,his habits stood him in good stead now. He petitioned shortly, brokenly,in brief unspoken words, as he battled through the long draggingseconds.
Fighting, clinging, struggling, praying, he was swept on. Heavier andheavier the woman dragged in an unconscious heap. It would have beeneasier for him if he had let her go; she would never know and he couldthen escape. The idea never once occurred to him. He had indeedwithdrawn from his kind, but when one depended upon him all the oldappeal of weak humanity awoke quick response in the bosom of the strong.He would die with the stranger rather than yield her to the torrent oradmit himself beaten and give up the fight. So the conscious and theunconscious struggled through the narrow of the canyon.
Presently with the rush and hurl of a bullet from the mouth of a gun,they found themselves in a shallow lake through which the waters stillrushed mightily, breaking over rocks, digging away shallow rooted trees,leaping, biting, snarling, tearing at the big walls spread away oneither side. He had husbanded some of his strength for this finaleffort, this last chance of escape. Below them at the other end of thisopen the walls came together again; there the descent was sharper thanbefore and the water ran to the opening with racing speed. Once again inthe torrent and they would be swept to death in spite of all.
Shifting his grasp to the woman's hair, now unbound, he held her withone hand and swam hard with the other. The current still ran swiftly,but with no gigantic upheaving waves as before. It was more easy toavoid floating timber and debris, and on one side where the groundsloped somewhat gently the quick water flowed more slowly. He struck outdesperately for it, forcing himself away from the main stream into theshallows and ever dragging the woman. Was it hours or minutes or secondsafter that he gained the battle and neared the shore at the lowest edge?
He caught with his forearm, as the torrent swerved him around, a stoutyoung pine so deeply rooted as yet to have withstood the flood.Summoning that last reserve of strength that is bestowed upon us in ourhour of need, and comes unless from God we know not whence, he drewhimself in front of the pine, got his back against it, and although thewater thundered against him still--only by comparison could it be calledquieter--and his foothold was most precarious, he reached down carefullyand grasped the woman under the shoulders. His position was a crampedone, but by the power of his arms alone he lifted her up until he gothis left arm about her waist again. It was a mighty feat of strengthindeed.
The pine stood in the midst of the water, for even on the farther sidethe earth was overflowed but the water was stiller; he did not know whatmight be there, but he had to chance it. Lifting her up he stepped out,fortunately meeting firm ground; a few paces and he reached solid rockabove the flood. He raised her above his head and laid her upon theshore, then with the very last atom of all his force, physical, mentaland spiritual, he drew himself up and fell panting and utterly exhaustedbut triumphant by her side.
The cloud burst was over, but the rain still beat down upon them, thethunder still roared above them, the lightning still flashed about them,but they were safe, alive if the woman had not died in his arms. He haddone a thing superhuman--no man knowing conditions would have believedit. He himself would have declared a thousand times its patentimpossibility.
For a few seconds he strove to recover himself; then he thought of theflask he always carried in his pocket. It was gone; his clothes wereragged and torn, they had been ruined by his battle with the waves. Thegirl lay where he had placed her on her back. In the pocket of herhunting skirt he noticed a little protuberance; the pocket was providedwith a flap and tightly buttoned. Without hesitation he unbuttoned it.There was a flask there, a little silver mounted affair; by some miracleit had not been broken. It was half full. With nervous hands he openedit and poured some of its contents down her throat; then he bent overher his soul in his glance, scarcely knowing what to do next. Presentlyshe opened her eyes.
And there, in the rain, by that raging torrent whence he had drawn heras it were from the jaws of death by the power of his arm, in thepresence of the God above them, this man and this woman looked at eachother and life for both of them was no longer the same.
BOOK III
FORGETTING AND FORGOT
The Chalice Of Courage: A Romance of Colorado Page 12
