by Zane Grey
If she had gazed and gaped before, what did she do now? All the details she had seen were here repeated and magnified. In addition, was a wicked red stream down in a series of rapids. The cañon opened into a larger one, bewildering to Cherry’s eyes.
Next she descried Heftral digging with a pick. He stood just around the jutting point of wall, and it had been the cracking of his pick that attracted her attention. Cherry made her way to him. Strange he did not see her. He was shamming or absorbed, not improbably the latter. He dug like a man who had found the foot of the rainbow.
Cherry hailed him with: “Hey, there, subway digger!”
Heftral was startled. He whirled and dropped his pick. Cherry did not need to be told that he had actually forgotten her.
“Why… Miss Winters… you… I…,” he stammered.
“Fine morning on the avenue,” she returned.
“It is fine,” he said, recovering himself, and reaching for the pick.
“Stephen, you forgot me, didn’t you?”
“I’m afraid I did.”
“Left me alone to be eaten by grizzly bears or run off and get lost or anything!”
“There are no bears. And you can’t run off until the creek falls. Nor can anybody get across to frighten you.”
“Very well, but that doesn’t explain your leaving me alone.”
“No, it doesn’t. To be honest, I just plain forgot you.”
“Can you beat that! You’re a funny captor. As you evidently didn’t intend to maltreat me, I certainly expected to be taken care of, amused, and instructed. And you forget me!”
“I always forget everything, when I come to Beckyshibeta,” he replied apologetically. “Everything except that here, somewhere in these caverns, is buried the lost pueblo of Beckyshibeta. I know it. I have read the signs…I daresay if I had run off with the Queen of Sheba or Helen of Troy, I’d have forgotten.”
Cherry seemed again struck with his singular simplicity and passion. The man was so keen, so sincere, so strong and hopeful that he deserved to find the treasure upon which he set such store.
“I’ll find Beckyshibeta for you,” she said impulsively.
He stared, then laughed. “I suppose that’d be woman’s revenge. To heap coals of fire upon my head. To flay me with remorse…But, fun or no fun, please don’t find Beckyshibeta for me.”
“Why not? It seems to be your driving passion. Most men I know are driven by other motives. Money, power, fame.”
“Beckyshibeta would give me all these. But I’ve never thought of them.”
“Then why don’t you want me to find it?”
“I’m quite mad enough over you now. If you found Beckyshibeta, I…”
“Oh. So that’s it? That would be a calamity.”
“I agree with you. Therefore be careful not to go digging around in these caves. As to that, you stay in camp and stop following me.”
“I’ll follow you if I want to…but I don’t,” retorted Cherry.
“I don’t approve of you gadding,” he said severely. “I thought you’d rest all day.”
“Take me back,” returned Cherry imperiously.
“You found your way here alone. Now go back and stay there,” he ordered.
Cherry did not know whether to swear or laugh at him. He was most decidedly in earnest. It might be well to save the profanity for a more fitting time. So she laughed.
“My Lord, I go,” she said. “When will it please you to return to our castle?”
“I’ll be along later,” he rejoined, quite oblivious to her levity. “You can fix yourself some lunch.”
Whereupon Cherry left him to his explorations and turned back, pondering the interview. Every encounter with Heftral left her unsatisfied, but she could not figure out why. It took her a good half hour, resting frequently, to retrace her steps, and all this while she divided her thoughts between Heftral and Beckyshibeta. At last she reached camp and found a comfortable slab. She was exhausted, yet the exertion had been good for her.
“Dad was not such a damned fool, after all,” soliloquized Cherry. “I like Stephen Heftral…It’s up to me to find out why. I’m sorry Dad picked him to abduct me. Because I want to hate him and foil him utterly. But thank God I’ve run into one man who isn’t drunk with alcohol, money, or women.”
Cherry found resting so good that she went back to her blankets, and did such an unheard-of thing as to fall asleep in the daytime. When she awoke, it was the middle of the afternoon. She felt better. Heftral had not returned. The fact that he stayed away from her, on any pretext, astonished Cherry. She was unaccustomed to that in men who had the entrée to her society. She had scarcely believed that he would remain away all day. “He’s mad about me, I don’t think,” she told herself emphatically. She was puzzled, piqued, amused, resentful, and something else she did not quite realize yet. It was, however, having a salutary effect.
Cherry contented herself with watching the changing afternoon lights in the cañon, and toward sunset, which came early, owing to the high walls, she thought she had been transported to some enchanted world. She saw the top of a distant mesa turn bright gold—exquisite rays of indescribably pure and beautiful light streamed down over the rims—in the distance, far through the gateway of the cañon, she saw purple of so royal a hue that she exclaimed in delight—walls were shrouded in pink haze, and near at hand the amber air seemed to float over the soft green foliage.
“I’m glad to be here,” sighed Cherry. And she began to discover hidden depths in herself. It might be possible that she could be self-sufficient for a while. There was something incalculably strong working against the habit of mind that had been hers. Clothes, luxury, amusement, idleness, the theater, the dance, the ever-present necessity of unlimited money, the attention of men—these were most astonishingly unnecessary here. Cherry shook off the spell. Beckyshibeta was only a hole in the rocks. Beautiful, strange, wild, yes, but it was not a place to change one’s soul. And she resented the awakening, insistent tearing at her mind.
Seven
The sun had set and the sky was full of rosy clouds when Heftral returned, dusty and tired, wiping his tanned face. He seemed different to Cherry, or she saw him with different eyes. There was something proven about him.
“How’s my fair prisoner?” he asked.
“If I’m better in body and mind, I can’t thank you for it,” she replied.
“¿Quién sabe?” he returned. “Do you like Beckyshibeta?”
“This terrible shut-in lonely hole in the rocks? Heavens!” she ejaculated languidly.
“Cherry, be honest,” he said.
“Why, Stephen, honest is my middle name,” she averred.
“No. It might be game, but it’s not honest. You are as crooked as a rail fence…mentally…Please be honest once, Cherry.”
“Why?” she inquired, curious, in spite of her frivolity.
“Because I have always connected you somehow with Beckyshibeta. Strange, but it’s so. I believed you would like it…be inspired, perhaps softened.”
“Stephen, am I hard?”
“Hard as these rocks.”
“You are not flattering.”
“Maybe not. But I’m honest,” he said stoutly.
“No, you’re not. You’re not straight about this stunt of yours. Dragging me off here.” And she bent penetrating eyes on Heftral.
“You will find me honest in the end,” he replied, the dark red blood staining his cheek.
“Ah-huh,” returned Cherry doubtfully.
“Are you going to be honest or not?” he inquired sharply. “I still have faith left in you…enough to believe you’re not utterly lost to…to the dream of glory of Nature.”
“Ain’t Nature grand?” rejoined Cherry with simpering impudence.
“Cherry Winters, if you don’t love Beckyshibeta,
I shall despise you,” he declared hotly.
There was no doubt about this, Cherry saw. Heftral was at war with the world—backing his faith in her against the materialism and paganism of the modern day. It thrilled Cherry—quite robbed her of her contrariness.
“Stephen, I’d like to make you despise me, but I can’t honestly. I do love Beckyshibeta and I am glad you dragged me here,” she said with a rich note in her voice, and turned away her face.
“Thank you. That will help,” he replied with emotion.
Cherry watched him go down to the creek with the water bucket. It would hardly do, Cherry considered, for her to think seriously about him just then, so she dismissed the gravity of the situation, not by any means easily. But she realized she must, sooner or later, have a reckoning with herself. For the present, she must stick to her part, and not let any earnestness or eloquence of Heftral’s betray her into honesty again.
Heftral returned whistling. Besides the brimming bucket, he carried a log of wood big enough to crush most men Cherry knew. She leisurely approached the camp and watched him swing an axe. He started a fire, put on the oven, and then went for more wood. This time he brought such a big load that Cherry objected.
“You’ll break your back,” she said in alarm. “Stephen, you may not be the most desirable of companions, but you’re better than a cripple. Please be careful.”
“Say, I’m not half a man. You ought to see an Indian pack in firewood. He fetches a whole tree…But come to think of it, if that causes you concern, I’ll try a big load next time.”
Cherry did not answer this. She sat down close by and watched him get supper.
“Stephen, how long will our supplies last…grub, as the cowboys call it?” she asked.
“I packed enough for three weeks, but did not allow for your unsuspected capacity. I daresay, if I stint myself, it’ll last ten days.”
“And then what?”
“Sufficient unto the day. We can subsist on rabbits, or I can ride to an Indian camp over here and get more. Or…we can return to the post.”
“What! You’d take me back there…to face my father, the Linns, and the cowboys, knowing me ruined, disgraced?” she exclaimed.
“Sure, I will,” he replied cheerfully.
“Stephen, if any other man had done this thing to me, and fetched me back…what would you do?”
“Do? A whole lot. I’d kill him.”
“Exactly. But it’s all right for you to do it?”
“Cherry, my intentions are honorable.”
“Do you imagine you can make the cowboys believe that?”
“I confess I’m a little worried on that score,” he replied ponderingly. “As a rule cowboys are obtuse and inclined to be bull-headed. Then they were so absurdly infatuated, and each of them thought he owned you. Stupid, conceited jackasses! Still they had ample encouragement.”
Cherry relapsed into silence, the better to enjoy the ever-increasing humor of this situation, and the deliciousness of another sentiment that seemed hard to define. Presently Heftral began to talk, as if she were the most interested of comrades, as indeed, if the truth were admitted, she was.
“I followed another blind lead today, all to no avail. Eight hours of digging for nothing. How often have I done that here? But I know Beckyshibeta is buried here somewhere. If I only had unlimited time. But the department insists on definite rewards, so to speak. I have to find things…bones, pottery, stone utensils and weapons. In short, I am forced to dig where they tell me to and not where I want to. Elliott, head of our department, was out last year. I think I told you. Awful pill…Elliott! He’s only a surface scratcher. Well, he belittled my theory. He said there was little sign of an ancient pueblo here at Beckyshibeta…And so I can get only snatches at work here.”
“Suppose we tell Elliott to go where it’s hot,” suggested Cherry.
“I wish I could. But I must have bread and butter, and some clean clothes occasionally,” he returned, and without pathos.
“Stephen, do you always expect to be poor?” she asked.
“I hope not. I have my dream. But I suppose I really always will be.”
“Too bad. But I don’t know. Money is a curse, they say. Personally I don’t see it…Do you know I am rich?”
“No. Your father, of course. But are you, too?”
“Yes, disgustingly rich. My mother left me seven hundred thousand dollars when she died.”
“Good Lord!” ejaculated Heftral, both astonished and startled, pausing in his work to gape at her. “Your father never told me that.”
“Well, it’s true. And Dad tells me it has nearly doubled. You see I can’t touch the whole principle until I’m twenty-five. I have only the income from it…fifty thousand or so a year…and I confess I’m broke half the time. I’m always borrowing from Dad.”
“Cherry, are you honest now?”
“Assuredly. I certainly wouldn’t string you so vulgarly.”
“Damn him, anyway,” Heftral declared forcefully with a violent gesture.
“Who? Dad?” she asked innocently.
But Heftral did not answer and there was an immediate change in his demeanor. He prepared supper in silence, and remained glum during the eating of it. Cherry let him alone. She partook heartily of the good meal, and then left Heftral to himself. By this time the early twilight was creeping under the walls and it would soon be night. Cherry strolled a little on the edge of the bank. She saw one lone star come wondrously out of the paling pink. Fair as a star when only one was shining in the sky! She had read that somewhere. Wordsworth, perhaps. What would he or Tennyson or Ruskin make out of Beckyshibeta? There was nothing in Europe to compare with the cañon country. Cherry felt proud of that.
As it grew dark she returned to the campfire. Heftral had disappeared. She looked into the opal heart of the embers and saw beautiful disturbing visions there. Then she climbed up the rock to her bed.
As she sat down on it, she was surprised to find it high and soft. Upon examination she discovered a foot layer of cedar boughs under it. How fragrant! Heftral must have done that right after supper. He was a paradox. He had handled her roughly, had driven her to the limit of endurance, yet he was thoughtful of her comfort. But the new bed certainly was a relief and a joy. Cherry sighed for some soft woolly pajamas. But she had to sleep in her clothes. After removing her shoes, she decided she would take off her stockings, too.
She crawled in between the blankets, and knew in her heart she would not have exchanged them for silk sheets. Weary, aching as she was, she could not wish it otherwise. She had never actually experienced rest. She had never been sufficiently aware of comfort, ease. They had been habits, with no reason for them. Here they served a wonderful blessing, a reward.
Where had Heftral gone? It had upset him to learn she was rich. Cherry could not figure out just why. No one would take him for a fortune-hunter. It would be more embarrassing, of course, to compromise a wealthy girl than a poor one, simply because marriage would not have such a sacrificial look. Every hour of this adventure had enhanced its romance, augmented its possibilities for delight as well as pain. What would the new day bring?
Eight
Cherry had been alone all morning. For several hours she had welcomed the solitude. She had not seen Heftral, who had called to her that he was leaving her breakfast on the fire. If anything she was more stiff and sore than ever, but the pangs wore off more quickly with the use of her muscles. About noon she began to feel relief.
She simply could not get over Heftral’s leaving her to her own devices. Beckyshibeta was more to him than she was. That both irritated and pleased Cherry. But of course she would not stand for it. So she set out to hunt him up.
The day was lovely, although when she got out in the sunshine, which was seldom, it was hot. The fragrant smells of summer wafted down into the cañon, mingling the swe
etness of sage with wildflowers and fresh green verdure. The creek had run down and was no longer a roaring torrent. Cherry thought she could wade in it if she wanted to. It would have been nothing for a horse.
When she walked away from camp under these magnificent walls, she became somebody else. She grew pensive, dreamy, absorbed, and happy. No use to deny! Only she did not want Heftral to see it. A confusing thing, too, was the fact that under its spell she had to force herself to be true to her old inclinations. Therefore she refused to realize, or at least to seek to understand, the elevating power of this strange cañon wilderness. She could not help sensation. She had to see, to feel, to smell the place, and even to taste the sweetness of the dry desert air.
By the time she had worked her way around the second jutting wall, where Heftral had been digging, she was warmed by the exertion and free of stiff joints. In truth she felt fine. Heftral had abandoned this cavern. So Cherry went on, to encounter the most difficult and hazardous climbing over rocks that the kidnaping escapade had led her to. There was a thrill in it. How gratified she felt to surmount the last rock pile. She espied Heftral about on a level with her. But the cañon jumped off deep below him and zigzagged in wonderful hair-raising ledges beyond.
Heftral did not see her, which fact tickled Cherry. She had opportunity to approach him by way of a dangerous ledge before he would be aware of her presence. High places did not bother Cherry. She was level-headed and cool, and reveled in taking risks.
When she got about halfway to him, however, she had to halt. She was getting in trouble and faced inclines that made even a girl of her bravery quail. So she sank down to rest and gaze.
The cañon opened wide. It was much vaster and wilder than that part of Beckyshibeta where Heftral had pitched the camp. Cherry felt something pull at her heartstrings. Was not this desert fastness simply marvelous? But to look down now made her shiver. She had been aware of the gradual height she had attained. Below, a hundred feet or more, spread a slope of talus, a jumble of broken rock that fell roughly down to the green thicket. She almost forgot Heftral and her mission in a realizing worship.
