The Water Hole

by Zane Grey

  Heftral’s pick, ringing steel on stone, brought Cherry back. She espied a ledge above her where no doubt Heftral had crossed to the wide area beyond. Coming to a narrowed point, she got on hands and knees, and began to crawl out. She knocked some loose rocks off the ledge. They rattled down. Cherry swore. Heftral heard the rattling and turned to look up.

  Flinging aside his pick, he ran forward to the end of the bench. “Stop!” he shouted.

  Cherry obeyed, more from suggestion than anything else. She gazed across the void at Heftral. “Howdy, Stephen!” she called gaily.

  “Didn’t I tell you not to follow me?” he queried angrily.

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Yes you do.”

  “All right, then I do.”

  “You turn around very carefully and go back,” he ordered. “Be careful…You’ll turn my hair gray.”

  “That’d make you very handsome and distinguished-looking,” replied Cherry.

  “Go back!” he shouted sternly.

  “Not on your life!” retorted Cherry, and started to crawl again. She was approaching the narrowest part. It might have daunted her before, but now she could have managed a more perilous place.

  “Stop! Turn back!” thundered Heftral.

  This was pouring oil upon the flame.

  “You go to the devil!” Cherry replied, and kept on crawling. She passed the risky point without a tremor or a slip, and presently, reaching the bench, she stood up before Heftral in cool triumph.

  “If you do that again, I’ll…I’ll…,” he choked.

  “That was a cinch,” replied Cherry coolly. “My stockings are thin, though, and the rock hurt my knees.” She rubbed them ruefully, quite unabashed by Heftral’s staring.

  “You’ll fall and kill yourself,” he stormed.

  “No, nix, never, not little Cherry. I was a trapeze performer in my class at college. That amble across there was easier than taking candy from a baby.”

  “I tell you it was extremely dangerous,” expostulated Heftral.

  “We’ll always disagree, Stephen. I imagine life together for us will be one long sweet hell.”

  “No, it won’t. I might have entertained such an idiotic idea once, but it’s dispelled.”

  “We needn’t discuss the future now. I’ve begun to reconcile my-…myself to this and you. Don’t spoil it…Did you have a nice dig this morning?”

  “Come. I’ll help you back over this ledge. Then you go to camp and stay there,” he said peremptorily.

  “No, I won’t. I want to be with you.”

  “Very sorry, but I don’t want you here.”

  “Why? I’ll sit still and watch you, and be quiet.”

  “No.”

  “Please, Stephen,” she pleaded.

  “I couldn’t work with your big eyes mocking me. You make me remember I’m only a poor struggling archaeologist.”

  “But you brought me here.”

  “Yes, and I’d…I’m damned sorry for it. Someday I’ll tell you why I did it.”

  “Are you repudiating your…your, well, your interest in me?” she queried with hauteur.

  “Call spades spades,” he returned. “You mean my love for you. No, I don’t repudiate that. I’m not ashamed of it, though it has made me a fool.”

  “Oh! Then there’s another reason why you brought me to Beckyshibeta?” she went on gravely. It seemed to Cherry that there was no use in trying to stall off the inevitable. Things tumbled over one another in a hurry to drive her. Pretty soon she would get sore and face them.

  “Yes, there’s another, and of that I am ashamed. But come, get out of here and leave me in peace.”

  “Mister Heftral,” Cherry said, now haughtily, “has it occurred to you that I ought not to be left alone…entirely aside from my loneliness?”

  “No, it hasn’t,” he returned, clenching his hands, and gazing helplessly down at the river.

  “Well, you’re rather dense. Some Indian or desperado…anybody might come. They could get across now, I think.”

  “No one ever comes here. At least, very seldom, and then I know they’re coming. You’re quite safe. And certainly you don’t want my society.”

  “It is rather dreadful. But I’ll stand it a while. I’ll stay here until you get ready to go back to camp,” replied Cherry airily, and she promptly sat down.

  Heftral took her hand and pulled at her. “Come,” he said, trying to control his temper.

  “Let go, or we’ll have another fight,” she warned. “The other time I didn’t hit below the belt, or bite.”

  He gave up. “Very well, if you’re that mulish, stay. But you look here, you spoiled child…if you cross this dangerous place again, you’ll be sorry.”

  “Why will I?” asked Cherry, immensely interested.

  “Because you’ll get what you should have had…long ago and many a time.”

  “And what’s that, teacher?”

  “A blame’ good spanking.”

  Cherry could not believe him serious, yet he looked amazingly so. But that was only temper—a bluff to rout her utterly. It was so preposterous that she laughed in his face. “Mister Heftral, pardon my laughing, but you are so crude…so original,” she said, and here the Cherry Winters of New York spoke in spite of herself. Perhaps nothing else she could have said would have stung him so bitterly.

  “I have no doubt of it. All the same, I meant what I said. We are in Arizona now. And if you can’t see the difference between real life and modern froth, I’m sorry for you. Most of America is too decadent for a good, healthy spanking. It has, I might say, a vastly different kind of interest in a young woman’s anatomy. But among the wholesome pioneers in the West, thank God, there are parents who are still old-fashioned. I’m not a parent. All the same I can constitute one, and give you jolly well what you need.”

  He strode away to his work, leaving Cherry for once flabbergasted. It took some moments for Cherry to recover her egotism to assume dominance of her thoughts. Heftral must truly be laboring under a hallucination. She would put him to the test presently.

  Sauntering closer to the middle of the wide bench, where he was plying his pick, she found as restful a seat as appeared available. It would tantalize him to have her so near, watching, as he called it, with her mocking eyes. She confessed to herself, however, that her interest in his work was growing keenly sincere. She truly wanted him to find Beckyshibeta even as she had boasted she might find it for him.

  “Stephen, how will you know when you strike this buried pueblo?” she asked suddenly. “What will it be like?”

  “I’d know the instant I struck my pick in it,” he replied with surprising animation. Heftral evidently was quick to recover from anger or slight.

  “You would, of course, but how would I know?”

  He gave her a depreciating glance. “Well, judging by the intelligence you’ve shown lately, you never would know a pueblo. Not if you fell into a kiva.”

  “Ah-huh! Gee, I’m a bright girl…What’s a kiva?”

  “It’s a deep circular hole in the ground, covered by a roof, with an entrance. Used by the cliff-dwellers…”

  Cherry interrupted him. All she had to do was to ask a question of an archaeological nature and he was off on a tangent.

  “Then if you disappear suddenly, I’m to search for your remains in a kiva? Very appropriate end for you, I’d say.”

  Heftral went back to work, and though Cherry directed sundry queries at him, he apparently did not hear them. She grew provocative. He gave no heed. Then she called him mummy hunter, grave robber, bone digger, and like names. Finally she resorted to cradle snatcher, but that likewise did not penetrate his skull.

  “Say,” she concluded in disgust, “if I offered to kiss you, would you talk?”

  “Yes,” he flashed, swiftly f
acing her with a gleam in his eye.

  “Oh! Well, I withhold the offer, but I’m glad you’re not altogether a dead one.”

  “Cherry Winters, you’re an unmitigated fraud,” he returned. “Also, you are a salamander.”

  “I don’t like the sound of that last word. Salamander?”

  “It’s a term I heard in New York. I gathered that it was applicable to a young woman who enticed with false smiles and words and suggestions. Who allured with all feminine…I should say female powers…and never gave a single thing she promised.”

  “Stephen, you are calling a turn on all women from Eve to Pola Negri…Say,” she burst out suddenly, “I’ll bet you a new saddle to a pair of gauntlets that I make you swallow your salamander jest.”

  “You’re on, Miss Winters,” he declared. “I’ll enjoy riding that saddle, and remembering this winter, while you are back in New York…”

  “Doing what?” she interposed as he hesitated.

  But he dropped his head and returned to his interrupted digging.

  “I’ll finish it for you,” she added with scorn. “While I am idling, flirting, dancing, sleeping away the beautiful sunrise hours, wasting money, wearing indecent clothes, drinking…and worse!”

  She saw him flinch, then his jaw set, but that was all the satisfaction she got. Cherry had an unreasonable longing to hear him passionately deny most of these vices for her. But he did not. He believed them—perhaps now thought the very worst of her. This was what she had desired, yet most inconsistently, she would have preferred him to defend her as he had to her father.

  Cherry let him alone for a while, although her contemplative gaze often returned from the lofty crags and wonderful walls to his strong, stooping figure, and his tireless labor.

  When the enchantment of the cañon began once more to lay hold of her, with its transforming magic, she had recourse to a very devil of perversity and provocation. Studying the ledges and slopes of all this great section of ruined wall, she at last noted a narrow strip where even a goat might have had difficulties. It led toward another projecting corner of red wall, beyond which another and larger level beckoned with a strange spell. Cherry studied the place a long time. She had reason to believe that Heftral had not worked any farther than where he now stood. She yielded to an unaccountable impulse to gain that level.

  Rising, she took occasion to stroll around in front of Heftral, then up to the edge of the amphitheater and in the direction of a rounded wall that led toward the objective point. The ring of Heftral’s pick ceased. Cherry missed it with infinite satisfaction.

  “Cherry, where are you going?” he demanded. “Didn’t I…?”

  She crossed the rim of curved wall and gained the near end of the narrow strip. How fearful the depth below.

  “Hold on!” yelled Heftral, his boots thudding over the rock.

  Then Cherry turned. “Don’t dare come another step!” she cried more than defiantly.

  Heftral halted short, perhaps a matter of fifty steps from her.

  “Please, come back.”

  “I’m going across to the next bench.”

  “Cherry! That is worse than this other place. I have never risked beyond where you are now. Honest. It is more treacherous than it looks.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “My God, girl, if you should slip! Have you no heart?”

  “You’ll have only yourself to blame.”

  Heftral struggled as if resisting a temptation to leap. He was silent a full moment. Cherry saw his expression and color change.

  “You damned little fool!” he roared, at last. “Come back!”

  “Nothing doing, Stephen,” she taunted.

  “Come back!” The stentorian voice only inflamed Cherry the more.

  “Say, how’d you get like that?”

  Heftral started for her and strode halfway around the curved-rim wall before he halted. Cherry backed upon the narrow strip, an exceedingly risky move, but her blood was up and she had no fear. He saw and stopped as if struck.

  “Cherry, darling!” he called with an importuning, almost hopeless, gesture.

  This, strangely, came near being Cherry’s undoing. She wanted to obey him. Never could she be driven, but she was not tenderness proof. Her sudden incomprehensible weakness roused her to fury.

  “Stephen, sweetheart, you’ve kidnaped the wrong flapper!” she screamed at him.

  Heftral deliberately wheeled and went back to the bench. Facing her then, he called out: “Flap and be damned! You’ll find you can’t fly. And you’d better stay over there, for, if you ever come back, you’ll pay for this.”

  Thus inspired, Cherry turned to the narrow strip. It would not have frightened her if it had been a beanpole across Niagara. Sure as a mountain sheep she stepped, and never got down on hands and knees until she reached the knife-like edge. Over this she crawled as might a monkey. She stood up again and ran the rest of the way. Gaining the bench, she went for a peep around the vast corner of wall. The most wonderful of all the caverns opened before her. It was stupendous, overpowering. How marvelous to come back again and explore. Whereupon she retraced her steps.

  Heftral remained as motionless as a statue watching her. On the return, Cherry exercised coolness where at first she had been daring. She crawled most of the way and never looked down into the abyss once. Breathless and hot she rested a moment before taking to the rim wall, then walked across that to where Heftral stood waiting. She saw that he was white to the lips, but he wheeled before she could get a second look at his face. It seemed silly to follow him, but she did, wondering what he would do or say. He led the way back toward camp.

  Cherry had not anticipated this. Had she gone too far? Had she hurt him irretrievably? And now that it was over she reproached herself. What a spiteful vengeful little baggage she was! Still there was the part she had set herself to play.

  She had difficulty in keeping up with Heftral. She kept up on the easy level ground, but over the rock slides she fell behind. It seemed a long way back to camp. Excitement and exertion had told on her. When the last corner of wall had been passed, Cherry thought she was pretty well all in.

  Heftral had his back to her. How square his shoulders—rigid. He pivoted on his heels, to disclose terrible eyes.

  “Cherry Winters, do you remember what I told you?” he demanded.

  Swift as his words came a sensation of sickening weakness. Like a stroke of lightning it had come. She imagined she had been prepared, but she was not. She had misjudged him, underestimated his courage. Her subtle mind grasped at straws.

  “Re-member?” she faltered, trying to smile. “About being…mad about me?”

  “Mad at you!” he replied grimly. Then he seized her before she could move a hand. Surprise and fear inhibited her natural fighting instinct. Heftral lifted her—carried her.

  Suddenly he sat down on the flat rock and flung her over his knees, face down. All her body went rigid. A terror of realization and horror of expectation clamped her mind. He spanked her with such stunning force that it seemed every bone in her body broke to the blow. The pain to her flesh was hot, stinging, fierce. The shock to her mind exceeded the sum of all shocks Cherry had ever sustained. She sank limply over his knees. Smack! Harder this time. Her head and feet jerked up. Her teeth jarred in their sockets. Again! Again! Again!

  Cherry all but fainted. Intense fury saved her that. She rolled off his knees to the ground and bounded up like a cat. A bursting, tearing gush of hot blood ran riot in her breast.

  “I’ll…kill…you,” she panted, low and deep.

  Heftral was pale, shaken. He realized what he had done. The enormity of it must have flashed over him when she blazed so fiercely her fists clenched, her breast swelling.

  “Once in your life, Miss Winters,” he said huskily. “It’s done. You can’t change that. And I did it. I
shall have that unique distinction among your men acquaintances.”

  Cherry tried to fly at him, to scratch out his eyes, to beat him before murdering him. But she let him pass. She felt her legs sag under her. Blindly then she groped and crawled up to her bed, sank under the blankets, and covered her face. The tension of her body relaxed. She stretched limply, palpitating, quivering. That numb dead sensation—where Heftral had smacked her—gradually gave place to burning, smarting pain. The physical suffering at first had precedence over the chaos of her mind. The hurt was terrific. Hot tears streamed down her cheeks. And she lay there panting, slowly succumbing, her spirit subservient to her tortured flesh.

  It was dark when she had to uncover her head to keep from suffocating. The bright shadows of a campfire flickered on the stone above her.

  “Cherry, child!” called Heftral like a fond parent, “wash your face and hands and come to supper.”

  Her blood leaped and boiled again. Rising on her hand, she was about to give passionate vent to all the profanity she had ever heard, but, as she saw Heftral moving around the fire, she stilled the impulse. She sank back under a compulsion she had never known. Was she beaten—whipped—cowed? Fierce devils of spirit answered that query. She had only been preposterously shamed and humiliated by an educated ruffian. Her pride had been laid low. Her vanity was bleeding to death. Cherry writhed in her bed, only to be made painfully aware again of the maltreated part of her anatomy. The instant there was a possibility of her returning to the old Cherry Winters, that burning pain had to recur. What a strangely subduing thing. Her mind had no control over it or the whirling thoughts it engendered.

  She composed herself at last, in as comfortable a position as she could find. Again Heftral called her to supper. Eat! She would starve to death before she would eat anything he had prepared. How terribly she hated him. The revenge she had planned seemed nothing to her wild ragings now. Mere killing would not be enough. Death ended all sufferings. He must be made most horribly wretched. He must grovel at her feet and bite the very dust.