CHAPTER VII
THE SHOT IN THE CANONS
Kenset of the foothills was very busy. Between study of his maps andthe endless riding of their claimed areas he was out from dawn tilldark.
He found, indeed, that none but he, of late years, had ridden thosesloping forest covered skirts. Some one, sometime, must have done so,else the maps themselves would not have been, but what marks they musthave left were either gone through the erosion of the elements or beenwantonly destroyed.
He fancied the former had been the case, for he saw no signs ofdestruction, and the very curiosity of the denizens of the Valleyprecluded familiarity with forest work.
So he laid out for himself the labour of a dozen men and went at itwith a vim that kept him at high tension. Therefore he had little timeto think of Tharon Last and the strange life in Lost Valley. Onlywhen he rode between given points, unintent on the land around, did hegive up to his speculations. At such times his mind invariably wentback to that first day at Baston's steps and he saw her again as hehad seen her then, tense, stooping, her elbows bent above the guns ather hips, coming backward along the porch, feeling for the steps withher foot.
Always he saw the ashen whiteness of her cheeks beneath her blowinghair.
Always he frowned at the memory and always he felt a thrill go downhis nerves. What was she, anyway, this wild, sweet creature of thewilderness who held herself aloof from his friendship, and said thatshe was "sworn?"
Kenset, sane, quiet, peace loving, shook himself mentally and triednot to think of her. But day after day he came down along the edges ofthe scattered woods where the cattle grazed--on the forest lands--andlooked over to where the Holding lay like a greener spot on the greenstretches.
He thought of her, living in this feudal hold, mistress of her riders,her cattle, and her wonderful racing horses of the Finger Marks,sweet, fair, wholesome--with the six-guns at her slender hips!
If only he, Kenset, could take those weapons from her clinging hands,could wipe out of her young heart the calm intent to kill!
It was preposterous! It was awful!
Bred to another life, another law, another type of woman, he could notreconcile this girl of Lost Valley with anything he knew.
He went over in his mind again and again the serene calmness of her inhis cabin that day of the race with Courtrey, and shook his head inpuzzlement.
But why should he trouble himself about her at all?
He had come here in his Government's service to reclaim its forest, tolook after its interest.
Why should he bother with the moral code of Lost Valley?
But reason as he might, the face of Tharon Last came back to haunthim, waking or asleep.
He knew that it troubled him and was, in a way, ashamed. So he workedhard at his tasks, relocated boundaries, marked them with a peculiarblaze in convenient trees which looked something like this:
and set up monuments with odd and undecipherable hieroglyphics uponthem.
And with each blaze, each mark and monument and sign, he drew closerin about him the net of suspicion and disapproval which was weaving inLost Valley, for there was not one but ran the gamut of closeinspection and speculation by Courtrey's men, by the settlers who camemany miles over from the western side of the Valley for the purpose,and by Tharon's riders.
Low mutters of disapproval growled in the Valley.
Who was this upstart, anyway, to come setting signs and marks in theland that had been theirs from time immemorial? What mattered thelittle copper-coloured badge on his breast? What mattered it that hewas beginning to send out word of his desire to work with and for thecattlemen of Lost Valley, the settlers, the homesteaders?
What was this matter of "grazing permits" of which he had spoken atthe Stronghold?
Permits?
They had grazed their cattle where and when they chose--andcould--from their earliest memory.
They asked no leave from Government.
When Kenset rode into Corvan he was treated with exaggerated politenessby those with whom he had to deal, with utter unconsciousness by allthe rest. To cattleman and settler alike he was as if he had not been.
None spoke to him in the few broad streets, none asked him to a bar todrink.
Serene, quiet, soft spoken, he came and went about his business, andsneers followed him covertly.
It was not long after Tharon's visit to the cabin in the glade, thatKenset, riding alone along the twilight land, passed close to themouth of Black Coulee one day at dusk. He rode loosely, slouchingsidewise in his saddle, for he had been to Corvan for his monthly mailand a few supplies tied in a bag behind his saddle, and he carried hisbroad hat in his hand.
The little cool wind that blew in from the narrow gorge of the BottleNeck and spread out like an invisible fan, breathed on his face with agrateful touch. The day had been hot, for the summer was openingbeautifully, and he had ridden Captain far. Therefore he jogged andrested, his arms hanging listlessly at his sides, his thoughts twothousand miles away.
At the mouth of Black Coulee where the sinister split of the deep washcame up to the level, there grew a fringe of wild poplar trees. Theywere beautiful things, tall and straight and thickly covered with amillion shiny leaves that whirled and rustled softly in the wind,showing all their soft white silver sides when the breeze came up fromthe south as it did this day. There was water in Black Coulee, manysmall springs, not deep enough nor steady enough to count for water ina range country, but sufficient to keep the poplars growing on the rimof the great wash, to stand them thick on the caving sides. Wholebenches of earth with their trees upon them slipped down these sidesfrom time to time, making of the Coulee a mysterious labyrinth ofthickets and shelves, of winding ways and secret places.
Kenset had heard a few wild stories about Black Coulee. Sam Drake hadtalked a bit more than most men of Lost Valley would have talked, andhe had listened idly.
Now as he rode up along the levels and neared the dark mouth of thecut he studied it with appraising eyes. It was sinister enough, in alltruth, a deep, dark place behind its veil of poplars, secretive,hushed.
The red light that dyed Lost Valley so wondrously at the hour of thesun's sharp decline above the peaks and ridges of the Canon Countrywas awash in all the great sunken cup, save at the west under theRockface where the shadows were already dark.
Kenset drank in the beauty of the scene with smiling eyes. Already alove for this hidden paradise had grown wonderfully in his heart. Hefelt as if he had never lived before, as if he had never knownbeauty.
And so, dreaming a little of other scenes, smiling to himself, hejogged along on Captain and was nearly past the frowning mouth of theCoulee, when there came the sharp snap of a rifle in the stillness,and Captain changed his feet, sagged and quivered, then caught himselfand leaped ahead. For one amazed moment Kenset thought the horse washit. Then, as he straightened in his saddle and dropped his hand tocatch up his hanging rein, he looked quickly down. Where he wasaccustomed to the smooth feel of the pommel beneath his palm there wasa sharp raw edge. A splinter of wood stood up and a small flare ofleather hung to one side.
A bullet, singing out of Black Coulee, had carried away part of thepommel.
Kenset shut his lips in a new line, gathered up his rein and drew thehorse down to a walk with an iron hand.
Slowly, without a backward glance, he rode on across the darkeninglevels. He was no fool.
He knew he had had his warning.
Very well. He would give back his acceptance of that warning.
He had said to Courtrey that night at the Stronghold that he had cometo stay.
No bunch of lawless bullies were going to scare him out.
No other shot followed. He had not expected one.
For a time after that he went about his work as usual. Nothinghappened; he had no outward sign of the distaste with which he wasregarded by all factions alike, it seemed.
He met Courtrey face to face in Corvan one day and spoke to himcivilly, bu
t Courtrey did not speak. Wylackie Bob did, however--asneering salutation that was a covert insult. Kenset touched his hatwith dignity and passed on.
"Of all th' tenderfeet!" said Baston, watching the small by-play. "Ib'lieve you could spit on him, boys."
"I don't," spoke up Old Pete, shuffling by on his bandy legs,"sometimes that quiet, soft-spoken kind rises--an' then hell's to payin their veecinity."
But Wylackie looked at the weazened snow-packer with his snake-likeeyes and snapped out a warning.
"Some folks takes sides too quick, sometimes."
But Old Pete went on about his business. He knew, as did all theValley, that a price was on his head with Courtrey's band for thedaring leap which had saved the life of Tharon Last that day inspring.
Sooner or later that price would be paid, but Old Pete was truewestern stuff. He had lived his life, had had his day, and he was fullof pride at the turn of fate which had made him a hero in a way at theend.
All the Valley stood off and admired Jim Last's daughter.
Pete basked in the reflected light. And Tharon herself had taken hisgnarled old hand one day in Baston's store and called him athoroughbred.
Folks in Lost Valley were chary of words, conservative to the lastdegree. That simple word, the handclasp, the look in the clear blueeyes, had been his eulogy.
It was whispered about, as was every smallest happening, and came tothe ears of Courtrey himself, who had promised those vague things forthe future on the fateful night. But Courtrey was playing a waitinggame. He was obsessed with the image of Tharon. Sooner or later hemeant to have her, to install her at the Valley's head. He had alwayshad what he wanted. Therefore, he expected to have this girl with thechallenging eyes, the maddening mouth, like crimson sumac.
Ellen?
Already he was setting in motion a thing that was to take care ofEllen.
The thing in hand now was to placate Tharon, the mistress of Last's,to play the overwhelming lover.
Courtrey knew better than to go near the Holding. Bully that he was heyet had sense enough to know that no fear of him dwelt in the huge oldhouse under the cottonwoods. If Tharon herself did not shoot him,one--or all--of her riders would. The day of the armed band ridingdown to take her was, if not past, passing fast. He recalled the lookof the settlers--poor spawn that he hated--whirling their solid columnbehind her to face him that day from the Cup Rim's floor.
No. Courtrey meant to have the girl some day--to hold in his arms thatached for her loveliness, the strong, resistant young body of her--tosate his thief's mouth with kisses. But he would call her to him ofher own will, would taste the savage triumph of seeing her come suingfor his mercy.
If Tharon meant to break Courtrey, he meant no less to break her.
Outlawry--mob law--they were pitted against each other.
And, lifting its head dimly through the smother of hatred, of wrong,of repression and reprisal, another law was struggling toward thelight in Lost Valley--the sane, quiet law of right and equality,typified by the smiling, dark-eyed man of the cabin in the forestglade.
Courtrey sent word to Tharon--an illy spelled letter, mailed atBaston's--that he had meant nothing by that race above the BlackCoulee, except another kiss. There was Courtrey's daring in theaffronting words.
She sent the letter back to him--riding in on El Key alone--with theoutline of a gun traced across it.
"Th' little wildcat!" grinned the man, "she's sure spunky!"
* * * * *
Once again Tharon met Kenset in the days that followed. Riding by theSilver Hollow she stopped one breathless afternoon, drank of thesnow-cold waters, shared them with El Rey, dropped the rein over thestallion's head and flung herself full length on the earth beside thespring. A clump of willow trees grew here, for every spring in LostValley had its lone sentinels to call its presence across thestretching miles. As the girl lay flat on her back with her handsbeneath her head, she looked up into the blue heart of the archingskies where the fleecy white clouds sailed, and a sense of sweetnessand peace came down upon her like a garment.
"You're sure some lovely spot, Lost Valley," she said aloud, "an' nomistake. I know, more'n ever as th' days go by that Jim Last was onlyjokin' when he told me of those other places out below, big as you,lovely as you. It just ain't possible. Is it, El Rey, old boy?"
And she moved a booted foot to the king's striped hoof and tapped itsmartly.
El Rey, always aloof, always touchy, never sure of temper, jumped andsnorted. The girl laughed and crossed her feet and fell to speculatingidly about the world that lay beyond Lost Valley. Little she knew ofit. Only the brief words of her father from time to time, thereluctant speech of Last's riders, for the master of the Holding hadlaid down the law concerning this.
His daughter was of the Valley, content. He meant her to be so always.The man who had instilled into her young mind a discontent with herenvironment, a longing for the "flesh-pots" of the world as he hadstyled it once, would have had short shrift at Last's. He would havereceived his time and "gone packing" swiftly.
And Tharon was content.
Barring the loneliness that had come with Jim Last's death, she waswell content.
So she lay by the willows and hummed a sliding tune, a soft, sweetthing of minors and high notes falling, like rippling waters, andlazily watched the high white clouds sail by.
And as she lay she became conscious of something else in the drowsingland beside herself and her horse. She felt it first, this presence--athin, dim vibration that sang in the earth beneath her. It stopped thewordless song on her lips, stilled the breath in her throat, set everynerve in her to listening, as it were.
Presently she sat up and felt quickly for the gun-butts in theirscabbards. Then she parted the willows and looked out over the rollingslopes and levels. True enough. A horseman was coming in from thewest, making for the Silver Hollow, but Tharon smiled and her fingersrelaxed on the gun. This man rode straight--like a lance, shethought--and his mount was brown, a good-enough common horse, but nosteed of Lost Valley.
Captain lacked the fire, the ramping keenness of the Ironwoods, thespirit and dash of the Finger Marks. For a long time the girl in thewillows watched them. Then as they came near she rose and caught ElRey's bridle.
He was no gentleman, this big blue-silver king. He was savage and wildand imperious. He hated other horses with a quick hatred sometimes andhad been known to wreak this sudden rage upon them in sickening fury.
So Tharon held him with a strong brown hand wrapped in the chain belowthe Spanish spade bit in his mouth. She stood beside him, waiting, aslim, golden creature, tawny of hair and blue of eye, and the greathorse towered above her mightily, his silver mane blowing up above hisarching neck in the little wind that came from the south.
They made a picture that Kenset never forgot, as he swung round thewillows and faced them.
El Rey screamed and pounded with his striped hoofs, but Tharon jerkedhim down with no gentle hand.
"Be still, you bully!" she said sharply.
"Why, Miss Last!" cried the forest man, "I'm so glad to meet you!"
There was the genuine delight of a boy in his voice, and Tharon caughtthe note. The sweet, disarming smile parted her lips and she was allgirl at the moment, artless, innocent, unstained by the shadow oflawlessness and crime that seemed to ever hang above her in Kenset'sthoughts.
"Are you?"
"I certainly am."
He swung down, gave Captain a drink at the edge of the spring farthestfrom El Rey, dropped the rein when he had finished, and swung aroundto face the girl. He took off his wide hat and wiped his forehead witha square of linen finer than anything of its kind she had ever seen.
Then he stood for a moment looking straight into her eyes with hissmiling dark ones. It seemed to Tharon that this man was alwayssmiling.
"This is your spring, isn't it?" he asked.
"Yes. The Silver Hollow. Th' Gold Pool is farther south toward th'Bla
ck Coulee. There was another one, fine as this, perhaps a betterone, up on th' Cup Rim Range, but Courtrey blew her up, damn him! Shewas called th' Crystal." Kenset caught his breath, mentally, all butphysically, and put up a hand to cover his lips.
This _was_ another type of woman from any he had ever met, in truth.
The oath, rolling roundly over her full red lips, was as unconsciousas the long breath that lifted her breast at the memory of thatoutrage.
"We replaced her with a well--an' it's a corker. Mebby better thanth' old Crystal, though she was a lovely thing. As clear as--as icethat's frozen hard without a ripple of white. You know that kind?"
"Yes," said Kenset gravely.
"Well," sighed Tharon, "she's gone, an' there ain't no use cryin' overspilt milk. What you ben a-doin' sence I helped you hang th'picture?"
"Won't you sit down?" Kenset stepped aside. "It is uncomfortable tostand through a visit--and I mean to have a long talk-fest with you,if you will be so kind."
Tharon flung herself down at the spring's edge, eased the right gunfrom under her hip, leaned on her elbow and prepared to listen.
"Fire away," she said.
Kenset laughed.
"For goodness' sake!" he ejaculated, "I said visit. That takes two.What have you been doing?"
"Well, everythin', mostly. Made a new shirt for Billy, for one thing.An' I showed Courtrey th' picture o' this."
She patted the blue gun that lay half in her lap, its worn scabbardblack against her brown skirt.
Kenset sobered at once. As ever when he let his mind dwell on thatdark shadow which sat so lightly on this girl, he had no feeling formirth.
A very real chill went down his spine and he looked intently into hereyes.
"How?" he asked, "what did you do?"
But Tharon shook her head.
"Nothin' you'd understand," she said quietly.
"I can show you something you will understand," he said, and reachedfor Captain's bridle. He pulled the horse around and pointed to thesaddle horn.
"See that?"
She looked up quickly. With the sure instinct of a dweller in a gunman's land she knew the meaning of the splintered wood of the pommel,the torn and ragged leather that had covered it.
"Hell!" she said softly, "where did you get that?"
"At the mouth of Black Coulee, at dusk a week ago."
For a long moment Tharon studied the saddle. Then her gaze dimmed,lengthened, went beyond into infinitude. The pupils of her eyes drewdown to tiny points of black against the brilliant blue.
At last she turned and held out a hand, rising from her elbow.
"I beg your pardon, Mister," she said quaintly, "fer that day at theHoldin' an' th' meal I offered an' took, an' fer my words. I know nowthat you are--that you were--straight. I don't yet know what you maymean in Lost Valley with your talk of Government, but I do know youain't a Courtrey man."
Kenset took the hand. It was firm and shapely and vibrant with theyoung life there was in her. He laid his other one over it and held itin a close clasp for a moment.
"I mean only right," he said, "sanity and law and decency. I think Ihave a big problem to handle here--aside from my work on the forest--aproblem I must solve before I can be effective in that work--and I ammore sincerely glad than I can say that my friend, the outlaw, tookthat warning shot at me. It ruined a perfectly good saddle, but it hasmade one point clear to you. I am no Courtrey man, and that's a solemnfact."
"An' I ain't ashamed to say I'm glad, too," said Tharon.
So, with the sun shining in the cloud-flecked heavens and the littlewinds blowing up from the south to ruffle the hair at the girl'stemples, these two sat by the Silver Hollow and talked of a thousandthings, after the manner of the young, for Kenset found himselfreverting to the things of youth in the light of Tharon's gravesimplicity.
They looked into each other's eyes and found there strange depths andlights. They were aliens, strangers, groping dimly for a commonground, and finding little, though presently they fell once more uponthe law in Lost Valley and earnestness deepened into gravity.
"Miss Last," said Kenset, thrilling at his daring, "why must this lawdwell in these?" and he reached a hand to tap the gun on her lap.
"Why? That very question'd show your ignorance to any Lost Valley man.Because it's all there is. You've seen Courtrey. You've seen SteptoeService. Can't you judge from them?"
"Surely, so far as they two go. A bad man and a bad sheriff. But theyare not all the officers of this County. Where and who is yourSuperior Judge?"
"Poor ol' Ben Garland. Weaker'n skim milk. Scared to say his soul'shis own."
There was infinite scorn in her voice.
"No, it's Steptoe Service, or nothin'."
Kenset thought a moment.
"Who's the Coroner?" he asked presently.
"Jim Banner," she answered quickly, "as straight a man as ever lived.Brave, too. He's been shot at more'n once fer takin' exception to someraw piece o' work in this Valley, fer pokin' his nose in, so to speak.Jim Last used to say he was th' only _man_ at the Seat, which isCorvan, you know, of course."
"District Attorney?"
"Tom Nord. Keen as a razor an' married to Courtrey's sister. Now doyou see why this is th' law?" She, too, tapped the gun.
Kenset frowned and looked down along the green range. He thought ofthe unpainted pine building in Corvan which was the Court House. Astrange personnel, truly, to invest it with authortity!
"I see," he said briefly, "but there must be some way out. This is notthe right way, the way that must come and last."
Tharon's lips drew into the thin line that made them like herfather's. "It's th' law that's here," she said and there was aninstant coldness in her voice, "an' it's th' law that'll last untilCourtrey or I go down."
The man, watching, saw that thinning of the lips, the hardening of allthe young lines of her face. He knew he had blundered. Talk was cheap.It was action that counted in Lost Valley.
With a quick motion he reached over and caught the girl's hand anddrew it to him, covering it with both of his.
Her eyes followed, came to rest on his face, cool, appraising,waiting.
She was, in all that had counted in his life, crude, untutored,basic.
Yet that calm look made his impulsive action seem unpardonable in thenext second. However a warm surge of feeling shot through him with thequiet resting of that firm brown hand between his own, and he held ittighter. Kenset had thought he was sophisticated, that little ornothing could stir him deeply--not since Ethel Van Riper had gone toEurope as the bride of the old Count of Easthaven. That had been fouryears back. He had been pretty young then, but the young feel deeply.
Now he held a gun woman's hand in the thin shade of a willow clump inthe heart of Lost Valley--and the blood surged in his ears, the levelsand slopes danced before his vision.
"Miss Tharon," he said, for the first time using her given name, "Ibeg your pardon. You are strong, simple, serene. You know your landand its ways. I am an alien, an interloper--but I can't bear to thinkof you as waiting for the time to kill a man--or to be killed in thekilling. It sickens me."
Tharon snatched her hand from his and leaped to her feet.
"Don't talk like that!" she cried passionately, "I don't like to hearit! I thought you were a real man, maybe, but you're not! You--you'rea woman! A soft woman--I hate th' breed!"
Her face was flushed, for what reason Kenset, stunned by her vehementwords, could not tell. She flung the rein up and followed it, leapingto saddle like a man.
"I tol' you we couldn't be friends!" she cried, her eyes blazing withsudden fire, "there ain't no manner of use a-tryin'."
Kenset, springing forward, caught El Rey's bit. The stallion rearedand struck, but he held him down.
"There is use, Tharon," he panted. "It's vital! Since that day onBaston's steps, when you backed out past me I have had you in mymind--my thoughts by day and night--there is use, and I'll keep yourhands from blood--Courtrey's or
any other--if it takes my life--sohelp me God!"
The girl leaned down and her blue eyes blazed in his face.
"An' make me false to th' crosses on Jim Last's stone?" she cried."No--not you or anybody else--could do that trick! Let go!"
The next moment she had whirled out from the flickering shade of thewillows and was gone around toward the north--there was only the soundof hoofs ringing on the earth. Kenset, left alone where the SilverHollow bubbled softly above its snowy sands, passed a trembling handacross his eyes and stood as in a trance.
What did it mean? What had he promised? What vital emotion had grippedhim that his usually quiet tongue had rushed into that torrentialspeech that dealt with life and death? What was Tharon Last to him?
A figure of the old West! A romantic gun woman with her weapons on herhips! A rider of wild horses!
Slowly, as if he had gained an added weight of years, he reinedCaptain and swung himself up. He rode east from the spring toward thelacy and far-reaching skirts of the forest, and for the first time hesaw the rolling country with tragic eyes.
It held deep issues--life and death and the passing or continuing ofregimes and and dynasties--but it was a wondrous country, and, comegood or bad, it had become his own. He swung around in his saddle andlooked far back across the Valley. He saw the golden light on itsuncounted acres, the shadow falling at the foot of the great Rockface,the mighty Wall itself with the silver ribbon of the Vestal's Veilfalling straight down from the upper rim, the distant town, lookingalways like a dull gem in a dark setting, and a thrill shot to hisheart.
Yes, if he lived to do his work in the hidden Valley--if he was shotthis night on his own doorstep, it was his country.
He who was alien in every way, was yet native.
Something in the depths of him came down as from far distant racialhaunts and was at home.
So he rode slowly up among the scattered oaks with his hands folded onthe mutilated pommel, and he knew that his lines were definitelycast.
* * * * *
Tharon Last rode into the Holding and dismounted in unwonted silence.
There was a frown between her brows, an unusual thing. She turned thestallion into his corral, dragged off the big saddle to hang it on itspeg, flung the studded bridle on a post.
The men were not in yet. Far toward the north beyond the big corralsshe could see the cattle grazing toward home. A surge of savage joy inher possessions flooded over her. These things were her own. They werewhat Jim Last had worked for all his life.
Not one hoof or hide should Courtrey take without swift reprisal.
Not one inch should he push her from her avowed purpose--not thoughall the strangers in the world came to Lost Valley and prated ofblood-guilt.
But for some vague reason which she could not have analyzed had shewished, she went to the paled-in garden where the silver waterstrickled and searched among the few flowers growing there for someblossom, sweeter, tenderer, more mild and timid than usual for thepale hands of the Virgin in the deep south room.
With the posy in her fingers she slipped quietly to her sanctuary andknelt before the statue, pensive, frowning, vaguely stirred. Shewhispered the prayers that Anita had taught her, but she found with astart that the words were meaningless, that she was saying themmechanically.
Her mind had been at the Silver Hollow, seeing again the forest man'sdark eyes, so grave, so quiet, so deep--her right hand was consciousas it had never been in all her life before. She heard a strange man'scondemning voice, felt the warmth of his hands pressed upon hers.
The mistress of Last's shook herself, both mentally and physically,and set herself to resay her prayers.
When she came out to the life and bustle of the ranch house the cattlewere streaming into the far corrals under their dust, the riders wereshouting, young Paula sang in the kitchen, and Anita passed back andforth about the evening meal.
* * * * *
There was a slim moon in the west above the Canon Country. The skieswere softly alight, high and vaulted, deep and mysterious and sweet.
World-silence, profound as eternity, hung tangibly above Lost Valleyand the Wall, the eastern ramparts of the shelving mountains, therocklands at the north. There was little sound in all this sleepingwilderness.
Bird life was rare. The waters that fell at seasons from the openmouths of the canyons half way up the Rockface were dried. Down in theValley itself there could be seen the lights of Corvan which neverwent out from dusk to dawn. Far to the north a black blot might havebeen visible with a fuller moon--Courtrey's herds bedded on the range,the only stock in the Valley so privileged.
Along the foot of the Rockface in the early evening a tiny processionhad crawled, three burros, their pack-saddles empty save for a coupleof sacks tied across each, and a weazened form that followed them--OldPete, the snow-packer, bound on his nightly journey to the CanonCountry for the bags of snow for the cooling of the Golden Cloud'srefreshments.
He was a little old man, grotesque and misshapen, yet he followedbriskly after the burros, which were the fastest travelers of theirkind in the land. He rolled on his bandy legs and kept the littleanimals on a constant trot with the wisp of stick he carried and thedeep, harsh cries that heralded his coming for a mile ahead and sentthe echoes reverberating between the canyon walls. A little north ofCorvan he had followed the Rockface close for a distance, thensuddenly turned back on his tracks and disappeared, burros and all.This was the invisible entrance to the Canon Country, a narrow mouththat opened sidewise into the very breast of the thousand-foot Walland led back along a thin sheet of rock that stood between the gorgeand the Valley. The floor of this cut or canyon, which was so narrowthat the laden burros had a "narrow squeak" to pass, as Pete said,lifted sharply. It rose smoothly underfoot in the pitch darkness, forthe cut was roofed in the living rock five hundred feet above, andclimbed for a mile. It was a dead, flat place, without sound, for thefootsteps of the burros and the man fell dully on the soft and slidingfloor, and it seemed to have no acoustic properties.
At the end of the mile this snake-like split in the solid rock camesuddenly out into a broader, more steeply pitched canyon whose wallswent straight up to the open skies above. Here there were heaps andpiles and long slides of dead stone, weathered and powdered, that hadfallen from time to time from the parent walls. This in turn led upand on to other breaks and splits and cuts, all open, all lifting tothe upper world, and all as blind and dangerous to follow as anydeathtrap that old Dame Nature ever devised. Here, at any crosscut,any debouching canyon, a man might turn to his undoing, might travel onand up and never reach those beckoning heights, seen clearly from someblind pocket he had wandered into, might never find his way back tothe original canyon among the continuous cuts that met and crossed andpassed each other among the towering points and sheets.
But Old Pete knew where he was going. Not for nothing had he threadedthese passages for fifteen years. He knew the Canon Country for thelower part better than any man in the Valley, if Courtrey beexcepted.
So this night he climbed and shouted to his burros and thought no moreof the sounding splits, for here the echoes raved, than he would havethought of the open plains below.
He passed on and up to where a certain cut lay full, year after year,of packed and hardened snow. For fifteen years Old Pete had visitedthis cut, a deeper drop into the nether world of rock, and cut hissupplies from its surface. Every season he took what he needed,leaving a widening circle at the edge from which he worked, where thecut he traveled passed the mouth of the pent canyon, and every year thesnows, sifting from high above, leveled it again. There was no knownoutlet for this glacier-like pack, no sliding chance, yet it wasalways on a certain level--each summer seeming to lose just what itgained in winter. It lay level at the mouth of the passing cut, wasnever filled higher.
Starting at dusk from Corvan, Pete reached his destination around twoo'clock, filled his sacks,
tied them on his mules and started down,coming out of the Rockface in time to meet the dawn that quivered onthe eastern ramparts.
But this night Old Pete, sturdy, fearless, unarmed, was not to see theaccustomed pageant of the rising sun, the fleeing veils of shadowsshifting on the Valley floor that he had watched with silent joy forall these years.
This night he was well down along his backward way, shouting in thedarkness, for the slim moon had dropped down behind the lofty peaksabove, when all the echoes in the world, it seemed, let loose in thecanyons and all the weight of the universe itself came pressing hardupon his dauntless heart with the crack of a gun.
"Th' price!" whispered Old Pete as he fell sprawling on his face, "ferpure flesh!" With which cryptic word he bade farewell to the soundingpasses, the tenets of manhood as he conceived them, the valour, andthe grumbling at life in general.
The little burros, placid and faithful, went on and saw the pageant ofthe dawn from the hidden gateway in the Wall, crept down the Rockface,single file, and at their accustomed hour stood at their accustomedplace before the Golden Cloud.
It was Wan Lee, Old Pete's _bete noir_, who found them there and ranshouting through the crowd of belated players in the saloon's bigroom, his pig-tail flying, his almond eyes popping, to upset a tableand batter on his master's door and scream that the "bullos" werehere, "allesame lone," and that there was blood all spattered on thehind one's rump!
Tharon of Lost Valley Page 7
